Annie Kilburn

In a reverie of rare vividness following her recovery of the minister's

child, Annie Kilburn dramatised an escape from all the failures and

humiliations of her life in Hatboro'. She took Idella with her and went

back to Rome, accomplishing the whole affair so smoothly and rapidly that

she wondered at herself for not having thought of such a simple solution of

her difficulties before. She even began to put some little things together

for her flight, while she explained to old friends in the American colony

that Idella was the orphan child of a country minister, which she had

adopted. That old lady who had found her motives in returning to Hatboro'

insufficient questioned her sharply _why_ she had adopted the

minister's child, and did not find her answers satisfactory. They were such

as also failed to pacify inquiry in Hatboro', where Annie remained, in

spite of her reverie; but people accepted the fact, and accounted for it in

their own way, and approved it, even though they could not quite approve

her.

The dramatic impressiveness of the minister's death won him undisputed

favour, yet it failed to establish unity in his society. Supply after

supply filled his pulpit, but the people found them all unsatisfactory when

they remembered his preaching, and could not make up their minds to any

one of them. They were more divided than ever, except upon the point of

regretting Mr. Peck. But they distinguished, in honouring his memory. They

revered his goodness and his wisdom, but they regarded his conduct of life

as unpractical. They said there never was a more inspired teacher, but it

was impossible to follow him, and he could not himself have kept the course

he had marked out. They said, now that he was beyond recall, no one else

could have built up the church in Hatboro' as he could, if he could only

have let impracticable theories alone. Mr. Gerrish called many people to

witness that this was what he had always said. He contended that it was the

spirit of the gospel which you were to follow. He said that if Mr. Peck had

gone to teaching among the mill hands, he would have been sick of it inside

of six weeks; but he was a good Christian man, and no one wished less than

Mr. Gerrish to reproach him for what was, after all, more an error of the

head than the heart. His critics had it their own way in this, for he had

not lived to offer that full exposition of his theory and justification of

his purpose which he had been expected to give on the Sunday after he was

killed; and his death was in no wise exegetic. It said no more to his

people than it had said to Annie; it was a mere casualty; and his past

life, broken and unfulfilled, with only its intimations and intentions of

performance, alone remained.