Chapter I: The Origin of a Man of Fashion 7 (10)

"Indeed I do. You see the splendid John Smith looks lonesome. It needs a complete set of De Bry's Voyages to keep it company. But I couldn't find a complete De Bry for sale probably, and I couldn't afford to buy it if I should stumble on it. John Smith has eaten up the remainder of my book allowance for this year and nibbled about two hundred dollars out of next year."

When dinner was over Philip said:

"Come up-stairs, Phillida, you and mother, and see my lovely old Captain Smith in the very first edition, with the fresh-looking portrait of Pocahontas as Lady Rebecca."

"You go, Phillida; I'll follow you in a minute," said Mrs. Gouverneur.

"The book is of the earliest impression known," went on Philip with enthusiasm as he led the way up-stairs followed by his cousin, "and is perfect throughout except that one page has been mended."

"Mended?" queried Phillida, as she followed Philip into his library and sitting room. "Do they darn old books as they do old stockings?"

"Oh, yes! it is a regular trade to patch books."

Saying this, Philip turned up the gas, and then unlocked a glass case which held what he called his "nuggets," and took down the two precious volumes of the bravest and boastfullest of all the Smiths, laying them tenderly on a table under the chandelier. Turning the leaves, he directed Phillida's attention to one that seemed to have the slightest discoloration of one corner; rather the corner seemed just perceptibly less time-stained than the rest of the leaf.

"There," he said; "the most skillful mender in London did that."

"Did what?" said Phillida.

"Put on that corner. Isn't it a work of art?"

"I don't see that anything has been done there," said Phillida. "The corner is ever so little paler than the rest, maybe."

"That is the new piece. The mender selected a piece of hand-made paper of similar texture to the old, and stained the new piece as nearly to the tint of the old leaf as possible. Then he beveled the edge of the leaf, and made a reverse bevel on the piece, and joined them with exquisite skill and pains."

Phillida held the leaf between her and the light, regarding it with wonder, hardly able to believe that a piece had been affixed.

"But, Philip, how did he get a corner with the right printing on it? The line where the two are joined seems to run through the middle of words and even through the middle of letters."

"All the letters and parts of letters on the corner were made by the hand of the mender. He has imitated the ink and the style of the ancient letters. Take this magnifying glass and you may be able to detect the difference between the hand-made letters in the new part and the printed ones. But to the naked eye it is perfect."

"What a genius he must be!" said Phillida. "I should think that the book would be worth more than if it had never been torn. Do they ever tear a piece out just for the sake of mending it?"

"On the contrary, it would have added fifty dollars to the price of this copy if the original page had been complete, or if it could have been mended without a possibility of detection--say by a process of faith-cure."

Philip said this laughing, as he set a chair for Phillida, and then sat down himself.

"I beg pardon, Phillida. I oughtn't to jest about what you--feel--to be sacred."

Phillida colored, and compressed her lips a little. Then she said:

"I don't think I ought to refuse to hear anything you have to say about faith-cure, Philip. You evidently differ with me. But I want to know the truth; and I--" here Phillida made a long pause, smoothing out the folds of her gown the meanwhile. "I will tell you, Cousin Phil, that I am not always so confident as I used to be about the matter."

Mrs. Gouverneur looked into the room at this moment, but perceiving that the conversation had taken on a half-confidential tone, she only said:

"I'll have to leave you with Philip a little longer, Phillida. I have some things to see to," and went out again.

Philip went to a drawer of rare old prints, and turned them over rapidly until he came to one of Charles II. touching for the king's evil.

"There," he said; "Charles was a liar, a traitor who took money to betray the interests of his country, and a rake of the worst. You wouldn't believe that he could cure sickness by any virtue in his royal touch. Yet great doctors and clergymen of the highest ranks certify incredible things regarding the marvelous cures wrought by him. If one might believe their solemn assertions, more cures were wrought by him than by any other person known to history. The only virtue that Charles possessed was lodged in his finger-tips."

"How do you account for it?"

"The evidence of a cure is the obscurest thing in the world. People get well by sheer force of nature in most cases. Every patent medicine and every quack system is therefore able to count up its cures. Then, too, many diseases are mere results of mental disturbance or depression. The mind has enormous influence on the body. I know a doctor who cured a woman that had not walked for years by setting fire to the bedding where she lay and leaving her a choice to exert herself or be burned."

"But there are the cures by faith related in the Bible. I am afraid that if I give up modern cures I must lose my faith in miracles," said Phillida. An unusual tenderness in Philip's speech had dissipated her reserve, and she was in a mood to lay bare her heart. In this last remark she disclosed to Philip her main difficulty. With a mind like hers such things are rather matters of association than of simple logic. Religion and miracles were bound up in the same bundle in her mind. To reject the latter was to throw away the former, and this, by another habitual association in her mind, would have seemed equivalent to the moral subversion of the universe. On the other hand she had associated modern faith-healing with Scripture miracles; the rejection of faith-cures involved therefore a series of consequences that seemed infinitely disastrous.

If it had been merely an abstract question Philip would not have hesitated to reject the miraculous altogether, particularly in any conversation in which such a rejection would have yielded interesting results. But Phillida's confiding attitude touched him profoundly. After all, he deemed faith a very good thing for a woman; unbelief, like smoking and occasional by-words, was appropriate only to the coarser sex.

"Well," he replied evasively, "the Bible stands on a very different ground. We couldn't examine the ancient miracles just as we do modern faith-cures if we wished. The belief in Bible miracles is a poetic and religious belief, and it does not involve any practical question of action to-day. But faith-healing now is a matter of great responsibility."

Philip spoke with a tremor of emotion in his voice. His cousin was sitting at the other side of the table looking intently at him, and doing her best to understand the ground of his distinction between ancient and modern miracles, which Philip, agitated as he was by a feeling that had no relation to the question, did not succeed in clearing up quite to his own satisfaction. Abandoning that field abruptly, he said:

"What I urge is that you ought not to trust too much to accidental recoveries like that of the Maginnis child. If faith-healing is a mistake it may do a great deal of harm."

Phillida's eyes fell to the table, and she fingered a paper-weight with manifest emotion.

"What you say in regard to responsibility is true, Philip. But if you have a power to heal, refusal is also a responsibility. I know I must seem like a fool to the rest of you."

"No," said Philip, in a low, earnest voice; "you are the noblest of us all. You are mistaken, but your mistake is the result of the best that is in you; and, by George! Phillida, there is no better in anybody that lives than there is in you."

This enthusiastic commendation, so unexpected by Phillida, who had felt herself in some sense under the ban of her family, brought to the parched and thirsty heart the utmost refreshment. She trembled visibly, and tears appeared in her eyes.

"Thank you, Philip. I know the praise is not deserved, but your kindness does me no end of good."

Mrs. Gouverneur came in at this moment. Phillida's eyes and Philip's constraint showed her that something confidential had passed between them, and she congratulated herself on the success of her plan, though she could not divine the nature of the conversation. Phillida would not be a brilliant match for Philip in a worldly point of view, but it had long been a ruling principle with Mrs. Gouverneur that whatever Philip wanted he was to have, if it were procurable, and as the husband of such a woman as Phillida he ought to be a great deal happier than in mousing among old books and moping over questions that nobody could solve. Besides, Phillida possessed one qualification second to no other in Mrs. Gouverneur's opinion--there could be no question that her family was a first-rate one, at least upon the mother's side. The intrusion of a third person at this moment produced a little constraint. To relieve this Mrs. Gouverneur felt bound to talk of something.

"I scold Philip for wasting his time over old books and such trifles," she said to Phillida. "I wish you could persuade him out of it."

"Trifles!" exclaimed Philip. "Trifles are the only real consolation of such beings as we are. They keep us from being crushed by the immensities. If we were to spend our time chiefly about the momentous things, life would become unendurable."

The conversation drifted to indifferent subjects, and Philip talked with an unwonted gayety that caused Phillida to forget her anxieties, while Mrs. Gouverneur wondered what change had come over her son that he should feel so much elation. The confidence and affection that Phillida had exhibited while conversing with him this evening consoled Philip for the misery of having to live, and his cheerfulness lasted throughout her visit. At its close he walked towards her home, with her hand upon his arm, in an atmosphere of hope which he had not been accustomed to breathe. At the door Phillida said:

"Good-night, Cousin Philip. Thank you for the kind advice you have given me. I don't think I shall agree with it, but I'll think about it." Then in a low voice she added, "If I have made a mistake it has cost me dear--nobody knows how dear."

After he had left her Philip's buoyancy declined. These last words, evidently full of regrets as regarded her relation with Charley, gave him a twinge of his old jealousy and restored him to his habitual discouragement.

XXXI.

A CASE OF BELIEF IN DIPHTHERIA.

It was inevitable that Phillida should turn Philip's talk over in her mind again and again. There were moments when she felt that her healing power might be as much of a delusion as the divinity in the touch of the merry King Charles. There were other times when Dr. Beswick's infecting bacteria germinated in her imagination and threatened destruction to her faith, and yet other times when sheer repulsion from Miss Bowyer's cant of metaphysical and Christian therapeutics inclined her to renounce the belief in faith-cure, which seemed somehow a second cousin to this grotesque science. But the great barrier remained; in her mind faith-healing had associated itself with other phases of religious belief, and she could find no resting-place for her feet betwixt her faith and Philip's ill-concealed general skepticism. She did go so far as to adopt Philip's opinion that an exclusive occupation of the mind with the immensities rendered life unendurable. She came to envy her cousin his eagerness over unreadable Indian Bibles, black-letter Caxtons, and a rare date on a title-page. She envied Millard the diversion that came to him from his interest in people, his taste in dress, his care for the small proprieties, his love for all the minor graces of life. Why should she alone of the three be crushed beneath the trip-hammer of the immensities? But she ended always as she had begun, by reverting to that ancestral spirit of religious strenuousness in which she had been bred and cradled, and by planting herself once more upon the eleventh of Hebrews and the renowned victories of faith that had been the glory of the Church in every age. To leave this ground seemed to her an abandonment by consequence of all that was dearest and noblest in life. Nor was she aware that with each cross-examination her hold on the cherished belief became less firm.

About two weeks after her talk with Philip she had just concluded a fresh conflict of this sort, and settled herself once more in what she intended should hereafter prove an unwavering faith in the efficacy of prayer, at least in certain cases, even against all sorts of bacteria, when it was announced that Mr. Martin wished to see her. It was eight o'clock, and the evening was a raw and rainy one in March.

"Howdy do, Miss Callender? How's all with you?" said Martin, when Phillida appeared at the door.

"How do you do, Mr. Martin?" she said. "Won't you come in?"

"No, thank you," said Martin, standing shivering in the vestibule, his solemn face looking neither more nor less like mortuary sculpture than it ever did. "Mother wants to know if you won't come down right away this evening. Our Tommy is seemingly sick."

"Seemingly sick?" asked Phillida. "How do you mean?"

"He's got a belief in a sore throat," said Mr. Martin, "and he's seemingly not well. Mother'd like to see you."

After a moment of puzzled thought Phillida comprehended that this way of speaking of disease was a part of the liturgy of Christian Science. She could not persuade Mr. Martin into the parlor; he waited in the vestibule while she got ready to go. Once out on the wet sidewalk he said:

"It's all the fault of the infant-class teacher, down at the Mission."

"What is the fault of the infant-class teacher, Mr. Martin?" asked Phillida with some surprise.

"This seeming sore throat of Tommy's."

"How can that be? I don't understand."

"Well, you see she talked to the children last Sunday about swearing and other such sins of speech. Now sin and disease are cor--what-you-may-call-it. Tommy he came home with that big head of his running on the talk about swearing, and in two days here he is with a--a belief in a sore throat. If I had my way I'd take the children out of Sunday-school. But mother will have her own way, you know, and I ain't anywhere when it comes to anything like that."

Phillida said nothing in reply to this, and presently Mr. Martin began again:

"It ain't my doing, the getting you to come and pray for Tommy. I wanted somebody ruther more scientific; Miss Bowyer she knows the cause and effect of things. But mother ain't enlightened yet, and she declared up and down against Miss Bowyer. And I declared up and down against doctors that can only cure sickness on the mortal plane. So, you see, we comp'omised on you. But I let mother know that if she would be so obs'inate ag'inst Miss Bowyer I wa'n't risponsible for the consequences; they'd be on her head. She can't say that I'm risponsible."

Phillida shuddered, and made a motion as of drawing her sack more closely about her.

"Though for that matter," Martin went on, "Tommy's kind of settled the thing himself. He declared up and down that he didn't want Miss Bowyer, and he declared up and down he didn't want a man doctor. What he wanted was Dick's Sunday-school teacher. And neither one of us kind of liked to refuse him anything, seeing he's sick; and so that kind of settled it. And so the risponsibility'll be--I don't know where--unless it's on you."

Phillida found Tommy in a state of restlessness and dullness, complaining of difficulty in swallowing. Mrs. Martin was uneasy lest there should be something malignant about the attack; but to Phillida the case seemed an ordinary one, not likely to prove serious. She held Tommy in her arms for a while and this was a solace to the little fellow. Then she prayed with him, and at half-past nine she returned home leaving Tommy sleeping quietly. When she neared her own door she suddenly bethought her that she had not seen the other children. She turned to Mr. Martin, who was walking by her side in silence and with a measured stride that would have been very becoming to an undertaker, but with which Phillida found it quite impossible to keep step.

"I didn't see the rest of the children, Mr. Martin; where are they?" she asked.

"Well, a neighbor acrost the street come over to-day and took 'em away. She didn't know but it might be dip'thery."

"Have you had any diphtheria in your neighborhood?"

"Well, yes; the caretaker of our flats down on the first floor of the next house lost a child last week by a belief in dip'thery. The neighbor acrost the street thought Tommy might have got it, but we didn't believe it. But it made mother kind of uneasy, and she wanted to see you or a doctor to-night. For my part, I knew that it was the talk of the infant-class teacher that was at the bottom of it, dip'thery or not. Sin oughtn't to be mentioned to a child. It's likely to break out into a belief about sickness."

Phillida's spirits suddenly sank to zero. Alarm at the responsibility she had taken got the better of her faith by surprise, and she said:

"Mr. Martin, get a doctor. It may be diphtheria."

"Why, what if it is?" said Mr. Martin. "It's better to treat it on a spiritual plane. No, I'm not a-going back on my faith in the very words of the Bible."

"But, Mr. Martin, I don't feel sure enough to want to be responsible for Tommy's life. You must get a doctor as you go home. You go almost past Dr. Beswick's in Seventeenth street."

"No, I won't do that; I'd made up my mind already that your treatment wa'n't thorough enough. You haven't had the experience; you haven't studied the nature of disease and the cor-what-you-may-call-it between sin and sickness. I'll call Miss Bowyer if Tommy don't mend before morning."

Just then it began to rain again. The sudden plash of the downpour and Phillida's instinctive impulse to get quickly under shelter interrupted the conversation. A minute later Miss Callender was standing in the vestibule with a weeping umbrella in her hand, while she heard Mr. Martin's retreating footsteps, no whit hurried by the fitful gusts of rain, or the late hour, or the illness at home.

She thought of running after him, but of what use would that be, seeing his obstination against treating diseases on the mortal plane? She would have liked to go home with him and beg the mother to send for a doctor; but she could not feel sure that this would serve the purpose, and while she debated the rain came on in driving torrents, and the steady beat of Mr. Martin's steps was lost in the distance and the rush of waters. In vain she told her mother that the child did not seem very ill, in vain she told herself during the night that Tommy had only an ordinary cold. She was restless and wakeful the night long; two or three times she lighted a match and looked at the slow-going clock on the mantelpiece.

In that hour unbelief in the validity of her cures came into her mind with a rush that bore down all barriers before it. Her mind went over to Dr. Beswick's side of the question, and she saw her success in some cases as the mere effect on the nervous system. In the bitterness of something like despair she thought herself a deluded and culpable enthusiast, worthy of ridicule, of contempt, of condemnation. There were no longer any oscillations of her mind toward the old belief; the foundations of sand had been swept away, and there was no space to make a reconstruction. Scarcely could she pray; unbelief tardily admitted threatened to revenge itself for the long siege by sacking the whole city. She was almost ready to plunge into Philip's general skepticism, which had seemed hitherto a horrible abyss. At a quarter to five o'clock she lighted the gas, turning it low so as not to disturb the others. She dressed herself quickly, then she wrote a little note in which she said:

I am uneasy about Mrs. Martin's child, and have gone down there.
Back to breakfast. PHILLIDA.

This she pinned to Agatha's stocking, so that it would certainly be seen. Then she threw an old gray shawl over her hat, drawing it about her head, in order to look as much as possible like a tenement-house dweller running an early morning errand, hoping thus to escape the curiosity that a well-dressed lady might encounter if seen on the street at so early an hour. The storm and the clouds had gone, but the air was moist from the recent rain. When she sallied forth no dawn was perceptible, though the street lamps were most of them already out. Just as the sky above Greenpoint began to glow and the reeking streets took on a little gray, Phillida entered the stairway up which she stumbled in black darkness to the Martin apartment.

The Martins were already up, and breakfast was cooking on the stove.

"Is that you, Miss Callender?" said Mrs. Martin. "I didn't expect you at this hour. How did you get here alone?"

"Oh, well enough," said Phillida. "But how is little Tommy?"

"I'm afraid he is worse. I was just trying to persuade Mr. Martin to go for you."

"I came to give up the case," said Phillida, hurriedly, "and to beg you to get a doctor. I have done with faith-cures. I've lost my faith in them entirely, and I'm afraid from what Mr. Martin told me last night that this is diphtheria."

"I hope not," said Mrs. Martin, in renewed alarm.

Mr. Martin, who was shaving in his shirt-sleeves near the window, only turned about when he got the lather off his face to say: "Good-morning, Miss Callender. How's things with you?"

Phillida returned this with the slightest good-morning. She was out of patience with Mr. Martin, and she was revolving a plan for discovering whether Tommy's distemper were diphtheria or not. During her long midnight meditations she had gone over every word of Dr. Beswick's about bacteria and bacilli. She remembered his statement that the _micrococcus diphtheriticus_ was to be found in the light-colored patches visible in the throat of a diphtheria patient. At what stage these were developed she did not know, but during her hours of waiting for morning she had imagined herself looking down little Tommy's throat. She now asked for a spoon, and, having roused Tommy from a kind of stupor, she inserted the handle as she had seen physicians do, and at length succeeded in pressing down the tongue so as to discover what she took to be diphtheria patches on the fauces.

"Mrs. Martin, I am sure this is diphtheria. You must get a doctor right away."

"I'll attend to that," said Mr. Martin, who had now got his beard off and his coat on.

As he donned his hat and went out the door, Mrs. Martin called: "Father, you'd better get Dr. Beswick"; but her husband made no reply further than to say, "I'll attend to that," without interrupting for a moment his steady tramp down the stairs.

"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Martin, "that he has gone for Miss Bowyer."

"I hope not," said Phillida.

"If he gets her he'll be awfully stubborn. He has been offended that I sent for you last night. It touches his dignity. He thinks that if he doesn't have his way in certain things he is put out of his place as head of the family."

Phillida presently perceived that Mrs. Martin was shedding tears of apprehension.

"My poor little Tommy! I shall lose him."

"Oh, no; I hope not," said Phillida.

But Mrs. Martin shook her head.

In about half an hour Henry Martin, with a look that came near to being more than usually solemn, ushered in Dr. Eleanor Arabella Bowyer, and then sat himself down to his breakfast, which was on the table, without a word, except to ask Phillida if she wouldn't have breakfast, too, which invitation was declined.

Miss Bowyer nodded to Phillida, saying, "Your case?"

"No," said Phillida; "I have no case. This is a case of diphtheria."

"Case of belief in diphtheria?" queried Miss Bowyer, and without waiting for an invitation she calmly poured out a cup of coffee and drank it, standing. When she had finished the coffee and was ready for business, Phillida said:

"Miss Bowyer, let me speak with you a moment." She drew the psychopathic healer over toward a large old-fashioned bureau that the Martins had brought from the country and that seemed not to have room enough for its ancient and simple dignity in its present close quarters. "Miss Bowyer, this is diphtheria. A child in the next house died last week of the same disease. Mrs. Martin wishes to call a doctor, a regular doctor. Don't you think you ought to give way to her wish?"

"Not at all. The father is enlightened, and I am thankful for that. He knows the mighty power of Christian Science, and he does not wish to have his child treated on the mortal plane. Parents often differ this way, and I am sometimes supported by only one of them. But I never give way on that account. It's a great and glorious work that must be pushed."

"But if the child should die?" urged Phillida.

"It's not half so apt to die if treated on the spiritual plane; and if it dies we'll know that we have done all that opportunity offered. In all such cases the true physician can only commend the patient to the care of a loving Providence, feeling assured that disorder has its laws and limitations and that suffering is a means of developing the inner nature."

Having reeled this off like a phrase often spoken, Miss Bowyer walked over to the bed where the little lad lay.

"Miss Bowyer," said Mrs. Martin, with an earnestness born of her agony, "I don't believe in your treatment at all."

"That's not necessary," said the doctor with a jaunty firmness; "the faith of one parent is sufficient to save the sick."

"This is my child, and I wish you to leave him alone," said Mrs. Martin.

"I am called by the child's father, Mrs. Martin, and I can not shirk my responsibility in this case."

"Please leave my house. I don't want you here," said Mrs. Martin, with an excitement almost hysterical. "I believe you are an impostor."

"I've often been called that," said Miss Bowyer, with a winning smile. "Used to it. One has to bear reproach and persecution in a Christian spirit for the sake of a good cause. You are only delaying the cure of your child, and perhaps risking his precious life."

"Henry," said Mrs. Martin, "I want you to send this woman away and get a doctor."

"Hannah, I'm the head of this family," said Martin, dropping his chin and looking ludicrously impressive. But as a matter of precaution he thought it best to leave the conflict to be fought out by Miss Bowyer. He feared that if he stayed he might find himself deposed from the only leadership that had ever fallen to his lot in life. So he executed a strategic move by quitting his breakfast half-finished and hurrying away to the shop.

Miss Bowyer was now exultingly confident that nothing short of force and a good deal of it could dislodge a person of her psychic endurance from the post of duty.

She began to apply her hands to Tommy's neck, but as there was external soreness, the little lad wakened and cried for his mother and "the teacher," as he called Phillida.

Mrs. Martin approached him and said: "Miss Bowyer, this is my child; stand aside."

"Not at all, Mrs. Martin. You are doing your child harm, and you ought to desist. If you continue to agitate him in this way the consequences will be fatal."

Certainly an affray over Tommy's bed was not desirable; the more so that no force at present available could expel the tenacious scientist. Phillida, who somehow felt frightfully accountable for the state of affairs, beckoned Mrs. Martin to the landing at the top of the stairs, closing the door of the apartment behind them. But even there the hoarse and piteous crying of Tommy rent the hearts of both of them.

"You must send for Mr. Millard," said Phillida. "He will have authority with Mr. Martin, and he will know how to get rid of her," pointing through the door in the direction in which they had left Miss Bowyer bending over the patient.

"There is nobody to send," answered Mrs. Martin, in dismay.

"I will send," said Phillida. They re-entered the room, and Phillida put on her sack in haste, seizing her hat and hurrying down the long flight of stairs into Avenue C, where the sidewalks, steaming after the yesterday's rain, were peopled by men on their way to work, and by women and children seeking the grocery-stores and butcher-shops. Loiterers were already gathering, in that slouching fashion characteristic of people out of work, about the doors of the drinking-saloons; buildings whose expensive up-fittings lent a touch of spurious grandeur to the pinched and populous avenue.

XXXII.

FACE TO FACE.

Once in the street, Phillida's perplexities began. She had undertaken to send for Millard, but there were no slow-footed district Mercuries to be had in the Mackerelville part of New York. It was now barely half-past six, and Millard would hardly have risen yet. In a battle against grim death and Miss Bowyer time seemed all important. She therefore took a Fourteenth street car and changed to an up-town line carrying her to the vicinity of the Graydon, debating all the way how quickest to get an explicit message to Millard without a personal interview, which would be painful to both, and which might be misconstrued. Phillida alighted from the car in the neighborhood of the Graydon, whose mountainous dimensions deflected the March wind into sudden and disagreeable backsets and whirling eddies that threatened the perpendicularity of foot-passengers. She requested a florist, who was opening his shop and arranging a little exhibition of the hardier in-door plants on the sidewalk, to direct her to a district telegraph office, and was referred to one just around the corner. To this always open place she walked as rapidly as possible, to find a sleepy-looking young woman just settling herself at the desk, having at that moment relieved the man who had been on duty all night.

"Can you give me a messenger right away?" she demanded.

"In about fifteen or twenty minutes we'll have one in," said the girl. "We don't keep but two on duty at this hour, and they're both out, and there's one call ahead of you. Take a seat, won't you?"

But Phillida saw in her imagination Mrs. Martin badgered by Eleanor Bowyer, and heard again the grievous cry of the frightened and suffering Tommy. After all, she could only make the matter understood imperfectly by means of a message. Why should she stand on delicacy in a matter of life and death? She reflected that there was no animosity between her and Millard, and she recalled his figure as he reached his hand to her that fatal evening, and she remembered the emotion in his voice when he said, "Part friends?" She resolved to go in person to the Graydon.

The entrance to the apartment building displayed a good deal of that joint-stock grandeur which goes for much and yet costs each individual householder but little. Despite her anxiety, Phillida was so far impressed by the elaborate bronze mantelpiece over the great hall fireplace, the carved wooden seats, and the frescoing and gilding of the walls, as to remember that she was dressed for a tenement in Avenue C, and not for a west-side apartment house. The gray shawl she had left behind; but she felt sure that the important-looking hall boys and, above all, the plump and prosperous-seeming clerk at the desk, with an habitually neutral expression upon his countenance, must wonder why a woman had intruded into the sacred front entrance in so plain a hat and gown at seven o'clock in the morning. She felt in her pocket for her card-case, but of course that had been left in the pocket of a better dress, and she must write upon one of those little cards that the house furnishes; and all this while the clerk would be wondering who she was. But there was a native self-reliance about Phillida that shielded her from contempt. She asked for the card, took up a pen, and wrote:

"Miss Callender wishes to see Mr. Millard in great haste, on a matter of the utmost importance."

She was about to put this into an envelope, but she reflected that an open message was better. She handed the card to the clerk, who took it hesitatingly, and with a touch of "style" in his bearing, saying, "Mr. Millard will not be down for half an hour yet. He is not up. Will you wait?"

"He must be called," said Phillida. "It is a matter of life and death."

The clerk still held the note in his hand.

"He will be very much annoyed if that is not delivered to him at once. It is his own affair, and, as I said, a matter of life and death," said Phillida, speaking peremptorily, her courage rising to the occasion.

The clerk still held the note. He presently beckoned to a negro boy sitting on one of the carved benches.

"Washington," he said.

Washington came forward to the counter.

"Wash," said the clerk in an undertone--an undress tone kept for those upon whom it would have been useless to waste his habitual bearing as the representative of the corporate proprietorship of the building--"has Mr. Millard's man come in yet?"

"No, sir."

"Take this up to seventy-nine, and say that the lady is below and insists on his being called at once." Then to Phillida, as the form of Washington vanished upward by way of the marble staircase, "Will you take a seat in the reception-room?" waving his hand slightly in the direction of a portiere, behind which Phillida found herself in the ladies' reception-room.

In ten minutes Millard came down the elevator, glanced about the office, and then quickly entered the reception-room. There were unwonted traces of haste in his toilet; his hair had been hastily brushed, but it had been brushed, as indeed it would probably have been if Washington had announced that the Graydon was in flames.

There was a moment of embarrassment. What manner was proper for such a meeting? It would not do to say "Phillida," and "Miss Callender" would sound forced and formal. Phillida was equally embarrassed as she came forward, but Millard's tact relieved the tension. He spoke in a tone of reserve and yet of friendliness.

"Good-morning. I hope no disaster has happened to you." The friendly eagerness of this inquiry took off the brusqueness of omitting her name, and the anxiety that prompted it was sincere.

"There is no time for explanations," said Phillida, hurriedly. "Mr. Martin has called a Christian Science healer to see Tommy, who is very ill with diphtheria."

"Tommy has diphtheria?" said Millard, his voice showing feeling.

"Your aunt wants a doctor," continued Phillida, "but Mr. Martin has left the woman in charge, and she refuses to give up the case. Tommy is crying, and Mrs. Martin is in a horrible position and wants to see you." Here Phillida's eyes fell as she added, "There was nobody to send; I couldn't get a messenger; and so I had to come myself."

"I am glad--" here Millard paused and began over--"You did the best thing to come yourself. You will excuse me, but I don't understand. You haven't charge of the case at all, then?"

"No, no, Charley--Mr. Millard; there is no time to explain. Get a good doctor, and put Miss Bowyer out, if you have to fetch a policeman. Get a good doctor at once. If you save the child you must be quick, quick! The horrible woman will be the death of him."

Millard caught the infection of urgency and began to take in the situation. He stepped to the door, drew aside the portiere, and said:

"Washington, call a coupe for me. Quick, now." Then he called after the boy as he went to the telephone, "Tell them to hurry it up."

He turned towards Phillida; then with a new impulse he turned again and walked impatiently to the office. "Mr. Oliver, won't you ask if my man is below, and send him here as quickly as possible?"

The clerk moved, without ruffling his dignity by undue haste, to the speaking-tube which communicated with the basement. In the course of half a minute a young Englishman, with a fore-and-aft cap in his hand, came running to the reception-room, in the door of which Millard was standing.

"Robert," said Millard, "run to the stable and have them send my coupe on the jump. Come back with it yourself."

The well-trained Robert glided swiftly out of the front door, not even asking a question with his eyes.

"You'll go back with me in the coupe?" Millard said to Phillida, who had risen and now stood waiting in embarrassment to say good-morning.

Phillida could not for a moment think of driving back with Millard, not so much on account of the conventional impropriety in it as because her visit was capable of misconstruction; and while she believed that Millard knew her too well to put any interpretation of self-interest on her coming, she could not have brought herself to return to Avenue C in his coupe. If for no other reason, she would have declined in order to avoid prolonging an interview painful and embarrassing to both. She was worn and faint from the fatigues of the night and the excitement of the morning, and she could not think of the right thing to say.

"No; I will go home," she said. Spoken thus, without calling him by name, the words had a severe sound, as of one mortally offended. A sudden access of fatigue and faintness reminded her that she had eaten nothing this morning.

"You will excuse me. I've had no breakfast yet. I've been at Mrs. Martin's since daylight. Good-morning, Mr. Millard."

This explanation made her perfectly proper refusal somewhat less abrupt and direct; but the words were still cold and severe.

"I will call another coupe, and send you home. You are faint," he said.

"No, thank you," she said, and went out.

But Millard followed her into the street, and hailed a car, and assisted her to enter it, and lifted his hat and bowed in response to her "Thank you," when she had gained the platform. As the car moved away he stood a moment looking after it, and then returned toward the sidewalk, saying softly to himself, "By Jove, what a woman! What a woman that is!"

XXXIII.

A FAMOUS VICTORY.

By the time the coupe reached the curb in front of the Graydon, Millard had fixed in his mind the first move in his campaign, and had scribbled a little note as he stood at the clerk's counter in the office. Handing the driver a dollar as a comprehensible hint that speed was required, and, taking Robert with him, he was soon bowling along the yet rather empty Fifth Avenue. He alighted in front of a rather broad, low-stoop, brownstone house, with a plain sign upon it, which read "Dr. Augustine Gunstone." What ills and misfortunes had crossed that door-stone! What celebrities had here sought advice from the great doctor in matters of life and death! Few men can enjoy a great reputation and be so unspoiled as Dr. Gunstone. The shyest young girl among his patients felt drawn to unburden her sorrows to him as to a father; the humblest sufferer remembered gratefully the reassuring gentleness of his voice and manner. But Millard made no reflections this morning; he rang the bell sharply.

"The doctor hasn't come down yet," said the servant. "He will not see patients before nine o'clock."

"At what time does he come down?"

"At a quarter to eight."

"It's half-past seven now," said Millard. "Kindly take this note to his room with my card, and say that I wait for an answer."

There was that in Millard's manner that impressed the servant. He was sure that this must be one of those very renowned men who sometimes came to see Dr. Gunstone and who were not to be refused. He ran up the stairs and timidly knocked at the doctor's door. Millard waited five minutes in a small reception-room, and then the old doctor came down, kindly, dignified, unruffled as ever, a man courteous to all, friendly with all, but without any familiars.

"Good-morning, Mr. Millard. I can't see your patient now. Every moment of my time to-day is engaged. Perhaps I might contrive to see the child on my way to the hospital at twelve."

"If I could have a carriage here at the moment you finish your breakfast, with my valet in it to see that no time is lost, could you give us advice, and get back here before your office hours begin?"

Dr. Gunstone hesitated a moment. "Yes," he said; "but you would want a doctor in the vicinity. I can not come often enough to take charge of the case."

"We'll call any one you may name. The family are poor, I am interested in them, they are relatives of mine, and this child I have set my heart on saving, and I will not mind expense. I wish you to come every day as consultant, if possible."

Dr. Gunstone's was a professional mind before all. He avoided those profound questions of philosophy toward which modern science propels the mind, limiting himself to the science of pathology and the art of healing. On the other hand, he habitually bounded his curiosity concerning his patients to their physical condition and such of their surroundings as affected for good or ill their chances of recovery. He did not care to know more of this poor family than that he was to see a patient there; but he knew something of Millard from the friendly relations existing between him and younger members of his own family, and the disclosure that Millard had kinsfolk in Avenue C, and was deeply interested in people of a humble rank, gave Dr. Gunstone a momentary surprise, which, however, it would have been contrary to all his habits to manifest. He merely bowed a polite good-morning and turned toward the breakfast-room.

These men, in whose lives life and death are matters of hourly business--matters of bread and butter and bank-account--acquire in self-defense a certain imperviousness; they learn to shed their responsibilities with facility in favor of digestion and sleep. Dr. Gunstone ate in a leisurely way, relishing his chops and coffee, and participating in the conversation of the family, who joined him one by one at the table. It did not trouble him that another family in Avenue C was in agonized waiting for his presence, and that haste or delay might make the difference between life and death to a human being. This was not heartlessness, but a condition of his living and working--a postponement of particular service, however important, in favor of the general serviceableness of his life.

Millard was not sorry for the delay; it gave him time to dispose of Miss Bowyer.

Seeing that Phillida had gone to seek re-enforcements, Mrs. Martin had concluded that, in Tommy's interest, a truce would be the better thing. So, while Miss Bowyer was seeking to induce in little Tommy the impressible conscious state--or, to be precise, the conscious, passive, impressible state--Mrs. Martin offered to hold him in her arms. To this the metaphysical healer assented with alacrity, as likely to put the child into a favorable condition for the exercise of her occult therapeutic powers.

"Hold him with his back to the north, Mrs. Martin," she said; "there, in a somewhat reclining posture; that will increase his susceptibility to psychic influence. There is no doubt that the magnetism of the earth has a polar distribution. It is quite probable also that the odylic emanation of the terrestrial magnet has also a polar arrangement. Does the little fellow ever turn round in his bed at night?"

"Yes."

"That shows that he is sensitive to magnetic influences. He is trying to get himself north and south, so as to bring the body into harmony with the magnetic poles of the earth. You see the brain is normally positive. We wish to invert the poles of the body, and send the magnetism of the brain to the feet."

Miss Bowyer now took out a small silver cross and held it up before the child a little above the natural range of vision.

"Will you look at this, little boy?" she said.

She did her best to make her naturally unsympathetic voice persuasive, even to pronouncing the last word of her entreaty "baw-ee." But the "little baw-ee" was faint with sickness, and he only lifted his eyes a moment to the trinket, and then closed the eyelids and turned his face toward his mother's bosom.

"Come, little baw-ee. Look at this, my child. Isn't it pretty? Little baw-ee, see here!"

But the little baw-ee wanted rest, and he showed no signs of having heard Miss Bowyer's appeal, except that he fretted with annoyance after each sentence she addressed to him.

"That is bad," said Miss Bowyer, seeing that Tommy would not look. "If I could get him to strain the eyes upward for five minutes, while I gazed at him and concentrated my mind on the act of gazing, I should be able to produce what is known in psychopathic science as the conscious impressible state--something resembling hypnotism, but stopping short of the unconscious state. I could make him forget his disease by willing forgetfulness. I must try another plan."

Miss Bowyer now sat and gazed on the child, who was half-slumbering. For five minutes she sat there like a cat ready to jump at the first movement of a moribund mouse. Apparently she was engaged in concentrating her mind on the act of gazing.

"Now," she said to Mrs. Martin in a whisper--for explication was a necessity of Miss Bowyer's nature, or perhaps essential to the potency of her measures--"now I will gently place the right hand on the fore brain and the left over the cerebellum, willing the vital force of the cerebrum to retreat backward to the cerebellum. This is the condition of the brain in the somnambulic state and in ordinary sleep. The right hand, you must know, acts from without inward, while the left acts from within outward." She suited the action to the words; but Tommy did not take kindly to the action of her right hand from without inward, or else he was annoyed by the action of the left hand from within outward. Evidently Miss Bowyer's positive and negative poles failed to harmonize with his. He put up his hands to push away her positive and negative poles; but finding that impossible, he kicked and cried in a way which showed him to be utterly out of harmony with the odylic emanations of the terrestrial magnet.

With these and other mummeries Miss Bowyer proceeded during all the long hour and a quarter that intervened between Phillida's departure and the arrival of the reinforcement. Miss Bowyer was wondering meanwhile what could have been the nature of Phillida's conference outside the door with Mrs. Martin, and whether Mrs. Martin were sufficiently convinced of her skill by this time for her to venture to leave the place presently to meet certain office patients whom she expected. But she concluded to run no risks of defeat; she had left word at her office that she had been called to see a patient dangerously ill, and such a report would do her reputation no harm.

Mrs. Martin was driven to the very verge of distraction by the sense of Tommy's danger and the necessity she was under of suppressing her feelings while this woman, crank or impostor, held possession of the child and of her house. Not to disturb Tommy, she affected a peaceful attitude toward the professor of Christian sorcery, whom, in the anguish of her spirit, she would have liked to project out of a window into the dizzy space occupied by pulleys and clothes-lines. Footsteps came and went past her door, but there was as yet no interruption to Miss Bowyer's pow-wow. At length there came a step on the stairs, and a rap. Mrs. Martin laid Tommy on the bed and opened the door. Charley beckoned her to be silent and to come out.

"What is the name of the faith-healer, Aunt Hannah?" he whispered.

"Miss Bowyer."

"Does she still refuse to leave?"

"Oh, yes! She declares she will not leave."

"You want her out?"

"Yes; I want a doctor," said Mrs. Martin, giving her hands a little wring.

"Tell Miss Bowyer that there is a gentleman outside the door who wishes to see her. Whenever the door is shut, do you fasten it inside."

"Miss Bowyer, there's a gentleman inquiring for you outside," said Mrs. Martin when she returned.

Miss Bowyer opened the door suspiciously, standing in the doorway as she spoke.

"Did you wish to see me?"

"Are you Miss Bowyer?"

"Yes,"--with a wave inflection, as though half inquiring.

"Are you the Christian Scientist?"

"Yes," said Miss Bowyer, "I am."

"This is a case of diphtheria, isn't it?"

"It's a case of belief in diphtheria. I have no doubt I shall be able to reduce the morbid action soon. The child is already in the state of interior perception," she said, seeing in Millard a possible patient, and coming a little further out of the door.

"It's catching, I believe," said Millard. "Would you mind closing the door a moment while I speak with you?"

Miss Bowyer peered into the room to see Mrs. Martin giving Tommy a drink. Feeling secure, she softly closed the door, keeping hold of the handle. Then she turned to Millard.

"Did you wish to see me professionally?" she asked.

"Well," said Millard, "I think you might call it professionally. I live over on the west side. Do you know where the Graydon apartment building is?"

"Yes, oh, yes; I attended a patient near there once, in one of the brownstone houses on the other side of the street. He got well beautifully."

"Well, I live in the Graydon," said Millard.

"Yes," said Miss Bowyer, with a rising inflection, wondering what could be the outcome of this roundabout talk. "Is some member of your family sick?" she asked.

A bolt clicked behind the metaphysical healer, who turned with the alarm of a trapped mouse and essayed to push the door. Then, remembering what seemed more profitable game in front, she repeated her question, but in a ruffled tone, "Some member of your family?"

Charley laughed in spite of himself.

"Not of my family, but a relative," he said. "It is my cousin who is sick in this room, and I called to get you outside of the door. I beg your pardon for the seeming rudeness."

Miss Bowyer now pushed on the door in vain.

"You think this is a gentlemanly way to treat a lady?" she said, choking with indignation.

"It doesn't seem handsome, does it?" he said. "But do you think you have treated Mrs. Martin in a ladylike way?"

"I was called by her husband," she said.

"You are now dismissed by the wife."

"I will see Mr. Martin at once, and he will reinstate me."

"You will not see Mr. Martin. I shall not give you a chance. I am going to report you to the County Medical Society and the Board of Health at once. Have you reported this case of diphtheria, as the law requires?"

"No, I have not," said Miss Bowyer; "but I was going to do so to-day."