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.