Annie Kilburn

It was in her revulsion from the direct beneficence which had proved so

dangerous that Annie was able to give herself to the more general interests

of the Social Union. She had not the courage to test her influence for

it among the workpeople whom it was to entertain and elevate, and whose

co-operation Mr. Peck had thought important; but she went about among the

other classes, and found a degree of favour and deference which surprised

her, and an ignorance of what lay so heavy on her heart which was still

more comforting. She was nowhere treated as the guilty wretch she called

herself; some who knew of the facts had got them wrong; and she discovered

what must always astonish the inquirer below the pretentious surface of

our democracy--an indifference and an incredulity concerning the feelings

of people of lower station which could not be surpassed in another

civilisation. Her concern for Mrs. Savor was treated as a great trial for

Miss Kilburn; but the mother's bereavement was regarded as something those

people were used to, and got over more easily than one could imagine.

Annie's mission took her to the ministers of the various denominations, and

she was able to overcome any scruples they might have about the theatricals

by urging the excellence of their object. As a Unitarian, she was not

prepared for the liberality with which the matter was considered; the

Episcopalians of course were with her; but the Universalist minister

himself was not more friendly than the young Methodist preacher, who

volunteered to call with her on the pastor of the Baptist church, and

help present the affair in the right light; she had expected a degree of

narrow-mindedness, of bigotry, which her sect learned to attribute to

others in the militant period before they had imbibed so much of its own

tolerance.

But the recollection of what had passed with Mr. Peck remained a reproach

in her mind, and nothing that she accomplished for the Social Union with

the other ministers was important. In her vivid reveries she often met him,

and combated his peculiar ideas, while she admitted a wrong in her own

position, and made every expression of regret, and parted from him on the

best terms, esteemed and complimented in high degree; in reality she saw

him seldom, and still more rarely spoke to him, and then with a distance

and consciousness altogether different from the effects dramatised in her

fancy. Sometimes during the period of her interest in the sick children of

the hands, she saw him in their houses, or coming and going outside; but

she had no chance to speak with him, or else said to herself that she had

none, because she was ashamed before him. She thought he avoided her;

but this was probably only a phase of the impersonality which seemed

characteristic of him in everything. At these times she felt a strange

pathos in the lonely man whom she knew to be at odds with many of his own

people, and she longed to interpret herself more sympathetically to him,

but actually confronted with him she was sensible of something cold and

even hard in the nimbus her compassion cast about him. Yet even this added

to the mystery that piqued her, and that loosed her fancy to play, as soon

as they parted, in conjecture about his past life, his marriage, and the

mad wife who had left him with the child he seemed so ill-fitted to care

for. Then, the next time they met she was abashed with the recollection of

having unwarrantably romanced the plain, simple, homely little man, and she

added an embarrassment of her own to that shyness of his which kept them

apart.