Winthrop asked solemnly, "How did he do that?"
"Oh, I can't tell exactly, Winthrop," she said, touched by the boy's simple
interest in this abstruse point. "He made me feel that I had been rather
mean and cruel when I thought I had only been practical. I can't explain;
but it wasn't a comfortable feeling, my dear."
"I guess that's the trouble with Brother Peck," said Putney. "He doesn't
make you feel comfortable. He doesn't flatter you up worth a cent.
There was Annie expecting him to take the most fervent interest in her
theatricals, and her Social Union, and coo round, and tell her what a noble
woman she was, and beg her to consider her health, and not overwork herself
in doing good; but instead of that he simply showed her that she was a
moral Cave-Dweller, and that she was living in a Stone Age of social
brutalities; and of course she hated him."
"Yes, that was the way, Winthrop," said Annie; and they all laughed with
her.
"Now you take them into the parlour, Ralph," said his wife, rising, "and
tell them how he made _you_ hate him."
"I shouldn't like anything better," replied Putney. He lifted the large
ugly kerosene lamp that had been set on the table when it grew dark during
tea, and carried it into the parlour with him. His wife remained to speak
with her little helper, but she sent Annie with the gentlemen.
"Why, there isn't a great deal of it--more spirit than letter, so to
speak," said Putney, when he put down the lamp in the parlour. "You know
how I like to go on about other people's sins, and the world's wickedness
generally; but one day Brother Peck, in that cool, impersonal way of his,
suggested that it was not a wholly meritorious thing to hate evil. He went
so far as to say that perhaps we could not love them that despitefully used
us if we hated their evil so furiously. He said it was a good deal more
desirable to understand evil than to hate it, for then we could begin to
cure it. Yes, Brother Peck let in a good deal of light on me. He rather
insinuated that I must be possessed by the very evils I hated, and that was
the reason I was so violent about them. I had always supposed that I hated
other people's cruelty because I was merciful, and their meanness because
I was magnanimous, and their intolerance because I was generous, and
their conceit because I was modest, and their selfishness because I was
disinterested; but after listening to Brother Peck a while I came to the
conclusion that I hated these things in others because I was cruel myself,
and mean, and bigoted, and conceited, and piggish; and that's why I've
hated Brother Peck ever since--just like you, Annie. But he didn't reform
me, I'm thankful to say, any more than he did you. I've gone on just
the same, and I suppose I hate more infernal scoundrels and loathe more
infernal idiots to-day than ever; but I perceive that I'm no part of the
power that makes for righteousness as long as I work that racket; and now
I sin with light and knowledge, anyway. No, Annie," he went on, "I can
understand why Brother Peck is not the success with women, and feminine
temperaments like me, that his virtues entitle him to be. What we feminine
temperaments want is a prophet, and Brother Peck doesn't prophesy worth
a cent. He doesn't pretend to be authorised in any sort of way; he has a
sneaking style of being no better than you are, and of being rather stumped
by some of the truths he finds out. No, women like a good prophet about
as well as they do a good doctor. Now if you, if you could unite the two
functions, Doc--"