Chapter I: The Origin of a Man of Fashion 7 (4)

Being a fastidious man and for years accustomed to the refinements of life, he exaggerated the discomforts of tenement-house living. How people endured such misery and yet seemed so cheerful he could not imagine. And though he did not feel that diffusive benevolence which prompted Phillida to try to ameliorate the moral condition of such of this mass as she could reach, he had a strong desire to lift his aunt and her children to a little higher plane. To this, hitherto, he had found an obstacle in the pride of her husband. Henry Martin was a tinsmith who had come to the city to work in a great factory for a little higher wages than he could get as a journeyman tinker in a country town. He did not refuse to let the children accept presents from "Cousin Charley," but he was not willing "to be beholden to any of his wife's folks," as he expressed it. He resented the fact that even in Cappadocia he had been somewhat outstripped by his brother-in-law, Charles Millard's father, and when the "Millard boys" had inherited money from their father's brother, and Martin saw their mother, his wife's sister, living in a style to which he could never hope to lift his own family, it weighed on his mind, and this offense to his pride had helped to fix his resolution in favor of a removal to New York.

During the walk eastward Millard was debating what might be done for the promising eldest girl in his aunt's family and for the two boys. Once, it is true, the throng of children that obstructed his path, as they chased one another round and round in a maze, did suggest to him that from Miss Callender's standpoint he ought to do something "for those less fortunate than himself" even beyond the circle of relationship. But what could he do? He felt that by his very nature he was disqualified for contact and personal sympathy with humanity rough-hewn. And as he crossed Avenue A, and paused to look up and down it, he saw such inexhaustible swarms of people that what one man could do for them seemed of no avail. He might give something to some mission or other agency, and thus get the disagreeables of benevolence done, as he got his boots blacked, by paying for it. Then he wondered what Miss Callender would think of such a device, and whether in the luminous moral atmosphere which enveloped her it would seem mean to substitute a money service for a personal one--to employ a substitute when you have no stomach for the war yourself.

He climbed the flights of dark stairs to his aunt's dwelling, which occupied half of the next to the top floor of a four-story building; the flat above being the dwelling and working-place of a slop-shop tailor. He was welcomed with sincere affection by Aunt Hannah Martin, and with shouts of delight by the two smaller children--the two older ones had not yet come back from Sunday-school. Mr. Martin, a tallish and rather broad-shouldered man, with a face whose habitual seriousness was deepened into a tombstone solemnity by its breadth and flatness in the region of the cheek-bones, shook hands cordially, but with a touch of reserve in favor of his own dignity, saying, "How are you, Charley? How's things with you?" He was proud enough of his connection with a prosperous man like Millard, and among his comrades in the shop he often affected to settle points in dispute regarding finance or the ways of people in high life by gravely reminding the others that he had superior opportunities for knowing, since his nephew was a banker and "knew all the rich men in Wall street." But face to face with Charley Millard his pride was rendered uneasy, and he generally managed to have some pressing occasion for absenting himself on the afternoons of Millard's visits.

Millard's attentions were soon engrossed by the little boy Tommy, who of all the children was his favorite. Tommy climbed on his knees and rifled his pockets, certain of finding something hidden there for himself. Presently Millard drew Uncle Martin into talk. With his chair tilted back and his broad hands locked together on his lap, Uncle Martin gave Charley an oracular account of all the mistakes which his employers had recently made in the conduct of their business. From his standpoint the affairs of the company were usually on the high road to bankruptcy, and all because of certain failures of judgment which Uncle Martin could have pointed out in a moment had they taken the trouble to consult a man of his experience. When Charley suggested that the company had paid an eight per cent. dividend during the past year Uncle Martin put on a look of contempt, and shook his head.

"Dividing their capital in order to keep up the price of stock," he said sagely. Then he proceeded to show that if they would only do this and not do the other they might easily crowd their rivals to the wall. He knew three months before it took place that tin would fall in price. But the company laid in a big stock just in time to get caught.

Having done the polite by Uncle Martin, Millard turned to Aunt Hannah. Uncle Martin proceeded, therefore, to fill up the stove; which done, he said:

"Well, Charley, I am going to see one of the men in our shop that got his foot hurt a week ago Friday. I'll see you at supper; you'll take tea with us."

"Thank you, Uncle Martin, but this time I can't stay so long. I've promised to take dinner with some friends."

He held out his hand, and Uncle Martin said good-by, and good luck to you, and come again, and always glad to see you, Charley, and then made his exit, stooping a little as he went out through the low door, leaving Charley what he wanted most, a chance to talk with his aunt about the progress her children were making in their studies, and to find out what he could do to help them. The mother told him that besides their school they were reading some books brought to them by Dick's Sunday-school teacher, who took a great interest in all the children. Millard always expected to hear the praises of this Sunday-school teacher when he came to see his aunt. Once on this theme good Aunt Hannah could not easily stop.

"She doesn't put on the fine lady or talk to me as though I was somebody different because I am a workingman's wife. I haven't many friends; the people down here are so different from the people up in the country. But I think she is the best friend I ever had. There, she's coming up now," she said, hearing the clatter of feet and voices ascending the stairway.

Millard was a little curious to see the teacher of whom he had heard so much. He figured to himself some one only a little above his aunt in station, and so the more ready to form an intimacy with humble people. When Mary and Dick threw open the hall door of the apartment, so as to make the interior visible from the obscurity of the stair-landing, Millard, who was sitting with his back to the door, holding Tommy on his lap, heard the voice of Phillida Callender say:

"I'll not go in this time; you have company."

"Do come in; it's only our Cousin Charley," pleaded Mary Martin, a girl of fourteen.

Millard felt himself caught, and he would have liked to sit there and let Miss Callender go down the stairs without recognizing him. But he felt that he must be polite to her above all things, and his relationship to the Martins was not a thing to be ashamed of, and must besides soon be known to Phillida. So he rose with quick decision and said as he walked towards the door:

"Don't let my presence keep you from coming in, Miss Callender; I am on the point of leaving."

"You, Mr. Millard!" Phillida came forward, coloring a little, while Aunt Hannah and the children stood and looked on in amazement. "Who would have believed it! You are the cousin--the Cousin Charley of whom the children here speak as though he were a good fairy. They pronounce the name _Mill_erd, you know, and I didn't suspect _you_."

"But fancy _my_ surprise!" said Millard. "I ought to have guessed that such a famous Sunday-school teacher could not be anybody but Miss Callender. But I didn't even think to ask the name. So you are the person of whose praises I am so jealous when I come here."

"Don't you think we're lucky to have such a cousin?" said Dick Martin, the second child and the eldest boy, looking up at Miss Callender.

"Ah! now, Dick, you can't trap me into praising Mr. Millard to his face," said Miss Callender. "Maybe I'll tell you some time when he isn't here what I think of him." She was patting Dick on the shoulder. "But I don't mind telling Mr. Millard right here and now that he is a very lucky man to have such an aunt as your mother."

"Well said and true," answered Millard. "I like that better than anything Miss Callender could say about me, Dick, even if what she should say were to be all good; and that it wouldn't be, for she speaks the truth, and I'll tell you for a secret that she doesn't quite approve of a man that wastes his leisure time as I do. She'd like me better if I were to come down to the mission every Sunday."

"Well, there ain't anybody at the mission as good as you, except Miss Callender," objected Dick.

That young lady only laughed and put her arms about Tommy, who had deserted Millard and was now climbing on her lap.

This encounter advanced Millard's acquaintance with Phillida more than a dozen calls or conversations in formal society. Phillida was pleased to find that Millard was not merely a male butterfly, and he in turn felt strangely drawn to this young woman who had discovered the royal excellence of Aunt Hannah Martin amid the rubbish of Avenue C. Millard, who was "just going" when Phillida came in, sat out the half-hour that she staid, and when she rose to go he asked her if he might have the pleasure of walking with her as far as Second Avenue. It seemed to him, though he did not say so, that a young lady needed an escort in that part of the town; but Phillida, who knew the people better, had no such thought.

"Thank you, Mr. Millard," she said; "I should be glad of your company. But I am not going home; I am going to Washington Square: I promised my aunt that I would go directly there from Sunday-school, and now I've staid here longer than I intended, and I shall be late."

"Why, I'm expected there too. If you don't object we'll go together."

The two said good-by all around and descended the stairs, holding on to the narrow steps with their heels, as it were. When they came into the light, and breathed the cool salt air blowing into the avenue from the neighboring East River, Phillida, who had something on her mind, said rather awkwardly:

"I did not know that you were expected at Aunt Harriet's this evening."

The speech was one of maidenly modesty; if Aunt Gouverneur had planned to bring the two people together at her table, Phillida wished it known that she was not a party to the plot. But Millard laughed and said:

"If you had known, I am to understand that you would have declined to go."

"I did not say that I should be sorry to have you there," she answered, with the hesitancy of one stepping among pitfalls.

"Shall we take the Tenth street car?" asked Millard. "It runs through Eighth street on the west side."

"As you please. I should have walked if alone," said Phillida.

"And I would much rather walk with good company than ride. So we will walk."

It took them full three-quarters of an hour to reach Washington Square, though either would have done it alone in a quarter less, for walking is a kind of work that is not shortened when shared with a friend.

Millard purposely drew Miss Callender into talk about the work of the mission, and he was soon rewarded by seeing her break through her habitual restraint and reveal the enthusiastic self within. She told him of the reading-room at the mission, and of the coffee-room where rolls and hot coffee were served to men every day in the week, so as to keep them from the saloons. Her face was aglow with interest as she talked, but Millard would rather have drawn her to speak of her own relation to the work. This she avoided, beyond confessing that she took her turn with the other ladies in superintending the coffee-room. At length, however, as they passed one of those open stairways that lead to thronged tenements above,--like the entrance to a many-chambered ant-hill, save that this mounts and that descends,--she spoke to a lad on the sidewalk, telling him to give her love to his sister and say that she was coming in to see her the next day. To Millard she explained that the boy's sister was an invalid young woman on one of the upper floors, bed-ridden for many years.

"And you visit her?" asked Millard, with a hardly concealed repulsion at the notion of Phillida climbing these populous stairs and threading the dingy and malodorous hallways above.

"Yes; she thinks so much of seeing me--because I am well, I suppose. She says it makes her stronger just to look at me. And if I can take her a flower, or some little bit of outdoors, it is more in her life than a trip to the country would be in mine. Poor Wilhelmina Schulenberg has not been down the stairs for five years. We talk of trying to get an invalid's chair for her when the warm weather comes, so that her brother can wheel her in the Square."

Millard turned and looked again at the stairway as though noticing all the particulars of its environment. It was a balmy day in the last of February, and they were soon crossing Tompkins Square diagonally towards Eighth street. He had caught the infection of Phillida's exaltation; instead of feeling repulsion at sight of the swarming children in cheap and often shabby clothes, racing madly up and down the broad asphalted walks, instead of turning in aversion from the commonplace people sitting talking, staring, smoking, sleeping, flirting, or courting on the benches, he was able to take Miss Callender's view of the matter and to feel gratified that the poor, and especially the little folk so long winter-cribbed in narrow tenements, were now able to get so much happiness in the open ground.

IX.

WASHINGTON SQUARE AND ELSEWHERE.

Mrs. Gouverneur had invited both Phillida and Millard to a family dinner this evening with a notion of furthering their acquaintance and drawing her niece into society. She would not admit to herself any purpose or expectation ulterior. She had engaged each one to come two hours before dinner to make a quiet afternoon of it, and when she found them both unpunctual she wondered.

"Philip," she said to her son, who was sitting by the window reading a folio volume of Sir Thomas Browne, "I asked Phillida to come early this afternoon, and I can't imagine what keeps her."

"Oh, some leper, or some one who has fallen among thieves. It's a dreadful thing to be a Christian. I have only known three or four, and Phillida is one of them."

"You don't mean to say we are not all Christians?" demanded Philip's father, a taciturn man with a rather handsome face of the broad Dutch type. What history it carried was mainly one of good dinners and fine wines. The senior Gouverneur had been sitting looking into the fire for half an hour without saying a word. His son's way of treating the sacred white elephants of conventionality was the main grief of this dignified, well-bred, entirely commonplace man.

"Yes, you're all--we're all, Christians in the sense that we're neither Jews, Mohammedans, nor Buddhists. But most of us don't belong to the same totem with Jesus."

"What do you mean by the same totem with Jesus?" said the mother, who could not help shuddering a little at the temerity of her son's paradoxes, though fondly indulgent of his irreverent cleverness.

"A totem among the Indians is the subdivision of a tribe. The Mohawks or Cayugas, for example, were subdivided into totems called the 'Wolf,' the 'Turtle,' the 'Bear.' Every man belonged to the totem of his mother and was akin to everybody in it. If a Mohawk of the Wolf totem stopped in the village of the Cayugas or the Senecas, he was entertained by some Seneca of the same totem who claimed him for a kinsman."

"That's very curious," said his mother.

"I don't see what it's got to do with your cousin Phillida or with religion," said Mr. Gouverneur, who as an elder in the Dutch Reformed Church, and as the descendant of a long line of men and women who had traveled in the same well-worn path since the good old days of the Synod of Dort, felt much annoyed at Philip's waywardness.

"Well," said Philip, leaning back in his chair and letting the folio rest on his knees, "you see there are religious totems that run through all denominations of Christians and even through different religions, and the lines of cleavage between them are deeper than those between Moslems and Christians, or between Jews and idolaters. There is what I call the totem of the Wahahbees--the people who translate religion into dispute or persecution. In central Asia they get rid of an opponent by assassination in the name of Almighty God and his prophet. In the United States doctrine defenders are inconveniently placed, and they have to be content with newspaper and pulpit scolding and with excommunicating those who differ from them. Then there is the most respectable sect of all--the Pharisees, which counts eminent divines and rabbis of every religion among its people. Great church-goers and Sabbath-keepers, great distributors of shalls and shall-nots, great observers of scruples and ordinances. They hold a tight rein over recreations and keep their mint-and-cumin tithes by double-entry. Now, Phillida is no Wahahbee and she is no Pharisee. She is not above enjoying herself at your table on Sunday evening, you see, or going to Mrs. Hilbrough's reception. She takes her religion in the noblest way. Her enthusiasms all have a philanthropic coloring. She's what I call a Jesus-ite."

"Ah, now, Philip," said his mother, half-amused and half-startled by the irreverent sound of this expression, but full of admiration for Philip's originality.

"And what are _you_, please?" demanded his father with some severity and a slightly heightened color. He knew that Philip must be wrong, for he had never seen anything of this sort in the "Christian Intelligencer" in his life. "What are you?" he repeated.

"Only a poor doubting, mocking, useless Sadducee, I suppose," said the son as he bent again over the Religio Medici. There was a touch of dejection in his voice, which served to disarm that resentment which his father felt towards every view of anything that varied from the consecrated commonplace.

The door-bell rang, and Mrs. Gouverneur, who had intended that Phillida and Millard should each consider the other a mere coincidence, was a little disconcerted to have them enter together at a later time than she had set, and with an air of slight fatigue, as though they had come from a long walk. And, moreover, without a chaperon. The acquaintance was progressing more rapidly than she had expected.

Millard smilingly explained: "I encountered Miss Callender in a very unfashionable quarter of the city, and I thought it my duty to take charge of her."

At ten o'clock that evening Phillida was escorted to her home, her cousin Philip Gouverneur walking on one side and Millard on the other. She left them with a pleased sense of having passed an uncommonly happy afternoon and evening, but was alarmed, nevertheless, to think what a romance Agatha would build out of the encounter with Mr. Millard in Avenue C and the detected contrivance of Aunt Gouverneur.

And when she had finished deprecating Agatha's raptures and had escaped her sister's further questions by going to bed, Phillida found that her own imagination had at length been set a-going, and her pillow reveries kept her awake. Why was it always Mr. Millard? She had chanced upon him at Mrs. Hilbrough's; his desire to bring Mrs. Gouverneur to the Hilbrough reception had made him her escort; and now most unexpectedly she finds that he and she are intimates and, in a sense, benefactors in the same tenement in Avenue C; they are companions in a walk, and again guests at the same table. It made her superstitious; these coincidences looked like fate--or rather like a special manifestation of the will of Providence--to the mind of Phillida Callender.

Undeniably there was something in Charles Millard that attracted her. He was not just of her own kind, but if he had been would she have liked him so well? Certainly the young men at the mission, exemplary fellows that they were, did not excite even a languid interest in her mind. Millard took life less seriously than she did, but perhaps that very otherness was agreeable: when one is prone by nature to travel dusty paths and dutifully to wound one's feet on mountainous rocky roads, a companion who habitually beckons to green sward and shady seats, who makes life put on a little more of the air of a picnic excursion into the world, is a source of refreshment. She now knew that Millard was not without benevolence, that he clung faithfully to his aunt in spite of his connections in the great world, and that he was planning to assist in the education of his cousins. If she had not somewhat exaggerated these virtues of fidelity and generosity she would not have been a woman, for it is one of the crowning good fortunes of life that a woman can contrive to make so much of a little virtue in a man.

Having left Phillida, Millard and Gouverneur walked together up Second Avenue, past the closed gateways of Stuyvesant Park. Millard was doing the talking, at a great rate. Philip was silent in regard to everything, or if he spoke he said only so much as a decent courtesy demanded. This soon became tiresome to Millard, who was relieving the internal pressure of his thoughts by mere bubble talk about things of no interest to himself, while it seemed impossible to excite his companion's interest in anything.

"You and I have changed places to-night, Phil," he said at length; "you make me do all the talking. Come now, it's your turn."

"I don't feel in the humor," said Philip. "Are you going to the club?"

"No; I shall go home and write some letters, maybe, now I think of it. So good-night."

Philip's "Good-night" was more curt than courteous, and he made his way to the club, where, according to his habit, he crouched his small form into one of the great chairs, drawing his head down between his shoulders, which were thrust upward by the resting of his elbows on the chair-arms. Here he sat long, taking no part in any conversation, but watching the smoke from his cigar.

The next morning he came late to breakfast, and his mother lingered after the rest had left the table, to see that his coffee and chops were right and to mitigate his apparent depression.

"Your little match-making scheme is likely to succeed beautifully," he said to her when the servant had gone.

"What do you mean? I'm sure I had no views of that kind in asking Charley Millard and Phillida. I only wished to encourage Phillida to go more into society."

"Views or no views, what it'll come to will be a match," Philip retorted.

"Well, there'll be no harm done, I suppose."

"Not if you think Charley the best man for her."

There was something of dejection in the tone of this last remark, and a note of reproach to her, that rendered Mrs. Gouverneur uneasy. When Philip had left the table she revolved it in her mind. Was Philip himself in love with Phillida? Or did he know anything to the disadvantage of Millard?

"Tell Mr. Philip I wish to see him before he goes out," she said to one of the maids.

When Philip came to her room she looked at him with anxiety.

"Do you know anything against Charley, Philip?"

"Nothing whatever," said Philip, emphatically, as he pulled on his gloves.

"Philip, tell me truly, do you care for your cousin yourself?"

"Why, of course. She is my cousin, and a good girl--a little too fearfully good."

"You know what I mean, Philip. Don't trifle with me."

"What would be the use of my caring for Phillida, as you call it? Charley, with his usual luck, will get her, I am sure. You've fixed that."

"Now, Philip, you reproach me unjustly. You've had years of intimacy with Phillida. Why did you never let her know what your feelings were?"

"I? I haven't said that I have any feelings in the matter. Do you think Phillida would have me if Charley were out of the way? She knows me too well. She's a utilitarian. She would say, 'Cousin Phil is interesting, but he hides his talent in a napkin. He studied law, and now neglects to practise it because his uncle left him two or three thousand dollars a year.' To her I am only an idler, when I'm not a mocker."

"She likes you, I am sure."

"Yes, in a way, no doubt. But I'm a doubter, and a mocker, and a failure, and Phillida knows it. And so do I."

"Ah, now, Philip, why will you be so discouraged with yourself? You're the cleverest young man in New York."

But Philip only smiled and said, "Good-morning, mother," and ran down the stairs and out the door.

When Philip had left Millard in Second Avenue the evening before, the latter was puzzled. He had never seen Gouverneur so depressed and irritable. But when they had separated, Millard was relieved that he no longer had to force a conversation about things of no interest to himself, and that his thoughts were at length free to range where they would.

He turned his footsteps towards his apartment, making a detour through Madison Square to lengthen the stroll. His interest in and affection for the family of his aunt was a fact so paradoxical to the rest of his life that it was in some sense his main secret. It was not a thing he should like to have explained to Philip Gouverneur, his bosom friend, for example. But that Phillida Callender was now in possession of the chief secret of his life gave him a sort of pleasure he had never known before. That she was in friendship with his aunt's family and a sharer in this off-color part of his existence made a sort of community of feeling between him and her. He turned the matter over in his mind, he went over in memory all parts of his encounter with her in his aunt's tenement, he dwelt upon the glow of surprise on her countenance, and in imagination he again took her hand in friendly greeting. He recalled every detail of the walk through Avenue C, in Tompkins Square, and then through the cross-streets. He made himself feel over again the pleasure he had felt in those rare moments when she turned her dark, earnest eyes toward him at some more than usually interesting moment in the conversation.

This was the pleasant side of the reverie. For the rest, he was tormented with a certain feeling of unworthiness that had never troubled him so much before. The more he thought of the purposes, sweet, high, and disinterested, that moved her, the more was he pained at a sense of frivolity, or, at least, at a want of "worthwhileness" in his own aims. He was a communicant at St. Matthias's, and highly esteemed for his exemplary life and his liberality to the church. But the rector of St. Matthias's did not trouble himself, as Phillida did, about the lost sheep in the wilderness of the lettered avenues. His own flock, well washed and kempt, were much more agreeable subjects of contemplation.

Millard sat in revery a long time. He was really afraid that he should presently find himself in love with Miss Callender, and such a marriage was contrary to his whole plan of life. His purpose was primarily to remain a bachelor, though he had dreamed of himself well established, but always with a wife whose tastes and connections should incline her to those pursuits that go with a fashionable career, and he always saw a vision of himself and his wife entertaining the very elect of New York City. Here suddenly a new path, hitherto untrodden by his imagination, opened before him as a possibility. Judged by the standards used among his friends it was an undesirable road. It involved a voluntary sacrifice of that position of social prominence and leadership which he had striven so hard to secure. He resolved to put the thought away from him.

A little later his lights were out and he was abed. But he did not sleep at once, for in spite of the best resolutions he could not help recalling again and again the face and figure, the voice and movement, of Phillida Callender. Again and again he crossed Tompkins Square and walked through Eighth street and Waverley Place with her; and she once more confronted him across Mrs. Gouverneur's dinner-table.

One result of Millard's meditations was a desire to relieve his conscience by sharing a little--if ever so little--in the effort to improve the life of the multitudinous East-siders. To touch them by personal effort and contact was out of the question; he could not bring himself to attempt it, nor would it have availed anything, perhaps, if he had, for the East-siders would have shrunk from his gloves as instinctively as he did from their work-darkened palms. But there was the other resort of his check-book. He sent a check the next evening to the superintendent of the mission. He stated that he remitted this as assistant cashier of the Bank of Manhadoes on behalf of a gentleman who did not wish his name known, and requested that the subscription be announced merely as from "A Well-wisher." One half of the hundred dollars was to go to the expenses of the coffee-room and the other half to be appropriated to the library and reading-room.

Now it is not in the nature of things that a hen should see a new egg in her nest without cackling over it, or that a man in charge of a benevolent enterprise should have a hundred-dollar check mysteriously and unexpectedly dropped into his hat without talking about it. Such a gift smacks of special divine favor, and offers a good theme for an address calculated to animate those engaged in the work. The very next Sunday, when the Testaments had been shut up and the lesson papers had all been put away, Phillida and the others heard from the superintendent some very inspiriting remarks on the subject of the encouragements which ought to make them take heart in their work. He wound up, of course, by telling of this donation from an unknown well-wisher. Had he stopped there--but what talker to young people would or could have stopped there? He whisked out the check and showed it, and then the identical letter from the assistant cashier of the Bank of Manhadoes was held up before the admiring boys and girls and read aloud to show how modestly this benevolent well-wisher had hidden his hand.

And thus the only person in the audience from whom Millard had particularly wished to conceal his agency in the matter knew perfectly that the anonymous well-wisher was none other than the assistant cashier himself. And she thought what a fine thing it was to have money when there was so much good to be done with it.

X.

BROKEN RESOLVES.

Once the check was dispatched, Millard's conscience, which had been aroused--irritated--by the standing rebuke of Phillida's superior disinterestedness, was in a measure appeased. After sitting an hour in slippery meditation he resolved to master his inclination toward Miss Callender's society, for fear of jeopardizing that bachelor ideal of life he had long cherished. Hilbrough's especial friendship, supported by Mrs. Hilbrough's gratitude, had of late put him in the way of making money more rapidly than heretofore; the probable early retirement of Farnsworth would advance him to the cashiership of the bank, and there opened before him as much as he had ever desired of business and social success. It was not exactly that he put advantages of this sort into one side of the scale and the undefinable charms of Phillida into the other. But he was restrained by that natural clinging to the main purpose which saves men from frivolous changes of direction under the wayward impulses of each succeeding day. This conservative holding by guiding resolutions once formed is the balance-wheel that keeps a human life from wabbling. Western hunters used to make little square boxes with their names graven in reverse on the inside. These they fixed over a young gourd, which grew till it filled the box. Then the hunter by removing the box and cutting off the end of the stem of the gourd, to make an opening like the mouth of a bottle, secured a curious natural powder-flask, shaped to his fancy and bearing his name in relief on its side. Like the boxed gourd, the lives of men become at length rigidly shaped to their guiding purposes, and one may read early resolutions ineffaceably inscribed upon them. But the irony of it! Here was Millard, for example, a mature man of affairs, held to a scheme of life adopted almost by accident when he was but just tottering, callow, from his up-country nest. What a haphazard world is this! Draw me no Fates with solemn faces, holding distaffs and deadly snipping shears. The Fates? Mere children pitching heads and tails upon the paving-stones.

But if the dominant purpose to which the man has fitted himself is not to be suddenly changed, there are forces that modify it by degrees and sometimes gradually undermine and then break it down altogether. The man whose ruling purpose is crossed by a grand passion may say to himself, like the shorn Samson, "I will go out as at other times before," for the change that has come over him is subtle and not at once apparent to his consciousness. Millard resolutely repressed his inclination to call on Miss Callender, resolutely set himself to adhere to his old life as though adherence had been a duty. But he ceased to be interested in the decorations and amused by the articles of virtu in his apartment; he no longer contemplated with pleasure the artistic effect of his rich portieres and the soft tone of his translucent window-hangings. The place seemed barren and lonely, and the life he led not much worth the having after all.

But, like the brave man he was, he stuck to his resolution not to call on Miss Callender, from a sort of blind loyalty to nothing in particular. Perhaps a notion that a beau like himself would make a ridiculous figure suing to such a saint as Phillida had something to do with his firmness of purpose. But when, a month later, he started once more for Avenue C, he became at length aware that he had not made any headway whatever in conquering his passion, which like some wild creature only grew the fiercer under restraint. In spite of himself he looked about in hope of meeting Miss Callender in the street, and all the way across the avenues he wondered whether he should encounter her at his aunt's. But Phillida had taken precautions against this. She remembered, this time, that the last Sunday in the month was his day for visiting his aunt, and she went directly home from the mission, disturbed in spite of herself by conflicting emotions.

Millard could not but respect her dignified avoidance of him, which he felt to be in keeping with her character. He listened with such grace as he could to Uncle Martin, whose pessimistic oration to-day chanced to be on the general ignorance and uselessness of doctors. His complaints about the medical faculty were uttered slowly and with long pauses between the sentences. Doctors, according to Uncle Martin, only pretend to know something, and use a lot of big words to fool people. "Now I doctor myself. I know what does me good, and I take it, doctor or no doctor." This was said with a you-don't-fool-me expression on his solemn face. "W'y, one doctor'll tell you one thing, and another'll tell you another. One says bathing's good for you, and another says no; one wants you to get up bright and early, and another says sleep a plenty; one will half-starve you, and the other says the thing is to feed you up."

At this point Uncle Martin rested his elbows against his sides, threw his forearms outward and upward at an angle of forty-five degrees, holding his broad palms toward the ceiling, while he dropped his heavy shorn chin upon his breast and gazed impressively upon Millard from under his eyebrows. The young man was rendered uneasy by this climactic pause, and he thought to break the force of Uncle Martin's attitude by changing the subject.

"Doctors differ among themselves as much as ministers do," he said.

"Ministers?" said Uncle Martin, erecting his head again, and sniffing a little. "They are just after money nowadays. W'y, I joined the Baptist church over here"--beckoning with his thumb--"when I came to New York, and the minister never come a-nigh us. We are not fine enough, I suppose. Ministers don't believe the plain Bible; they go on about a lot of stuff that they get from somewheres else. I say take the plain Bible, that a plain man like me can understand. I don't want the Greek and Latin of it. Now the Bible says in one place that if a man's sick the elders are to pray over him and anoint him with oil--I suppose it was sweet oil; but I don't know--that they used. But did you ever know any elder to do that? Naw; they just off for the doctor. Now, I say take the plain word of God, that's set down so't you couldn't noways make any mistakes."

Here Uncle Martin again dropped his head forward in a butting position, and stared at Charley Millard from under his brows. This time the younger man judged it best to make no rejoinder. Instead, he took the little Tommy in his arms and began to stroke the cheeks of the nestling child. The diversion had the proper effect. Uncle Martin, perceiving that the results of his exhaustive meditations in medicine and theology, which were as plain as the most self-evident nose on a man's face, were not estimated at their par value, got up and explained that he must go to Greenpoint and call on a man who had lately lost a child; and then, fearing he wouldn't get back to supper, he said good-by, and come again, and always glad to see you, Charley, and good luck to you; and so made his way down the dingy stairs.

Charley Millard now turned to his aunt, a thin-faced woman whose rather high forehead, wide and delicately formed in the region of the temples, made one think that in a more favorable soil she might have blossomed. She was sitting by the window that looked out upon the narrow courtyard below and on the rear house to which Aunt Martin's apartment was bound by a double clothes-line running upon pulleys. In fact the whole straitened landscape in view from the back windows was a vision of ropes on pulleys. Sunday was the only day that Mrs. Martin cared to look on this view, for on week-days it was a spectacle of sheets and pillow-cases and the most intimate male and female garments flapping and straddling shamelessly in the eddying wind.

Millard, while yet the older children had not returned, broached the subject of their education. He particularly wished to put Mary, the eldest, into a better school than the public school in her neighborhood, or at least into a school where the associations would be better. He proposed this to his aunt as delicately as possible.

"It's very kind of you, Charley," she said. "You want to make a fine lady of her. But what would you do with her? Would it make her any happier? She would want better clothes than we could give her; she would become dependent on you, maybe; and she would be ashamed of the rest of us."

"She could never be ashamed of you, aunt," said Millard. But he was struck with a certain good sense and originality in his aunt which kept her from accepting anything for good merely because it was commonly so taken. What service, indeed, would it be to Mary to declass her? Of what advantage to a poor girl to separate her from her surroundings unless you can secure to her a life certainly better?

"It would be well," he said after a while, "if Mary could prepare herself for some occupation by which she might some day get a living if other resources fail. You wouldn't like her to have to go out to service, or to fall below her family, Aunt Hannah?"

"No; certainly not. But there's the trouble. Her father is like many other men from the country; he can't bear the idea of Mary's earning her own living. He says he expects to support his own girls. And you know Henry won't have her educated at your expense. He's very proud. But if she could somehow get into a school better than the public schools in this part of the city, a school where she would get better teaching and meet a better class of children, I would like it, provided she did not get a notion of being a fine lady. There is nothing worse than half-cut quality, and that's all she'd be. And are you sure, Charley, that rich people are happier than we are? We don't worry about what we haven't got."

The children were now upon the stairs, and the private talk was ended. They greeted their cousin eagerly, and began as usual to talk of Miss Callender.

"We tried to bring her home with us," said Dick, "but she said, 'Not to-day, Dick, not to-day,' and she stuck to it. I told her you'd be here, and I thought that would fetch her, but she only laughed and said she had to call and see a poor sick young lady that hadn't walked for five years; and then she said, 'Give my love to your mother,' and left us. I sh'd thought she'd 'a' sent her love to Cousin Charley, too, but she never done it."

"Don't say 'never done it,' Dick," broke in Mary. "It's not proper."

Millard accepted his aunt's invitation to tea, and then walked homeward by a very round-about way. He was not quite aware of the nature of the impulse that caused him to turn downtown and thus to trace a part of the route he had walked over with Phillida four weeks before. He paused to look again at the now dark stairway up which lived the bedridden Wilhelmina Schulenberg, and though he shuddered with a sort of repulsion at thought of her hard lot, it was not sympathy with Mina Schulenberg that had arrested his steps at the mouth of this human hive. To his imagination it seemed that these dark, uninviting stairs were yet warm with the tread of the feet of Phillida Callender; it could not be more than two hours since she came down. So instead of following the route of a month ago through Tompkins Square and Eighth street, as he had half unconsciously set out to do, he walked through Tenth street to Second Avenue. This way Phillida must have gone this very afternoon, and this way he felt himself drawn by an impulse increasing in force ever as he journeyed. It seemed of prime importance that he should call on Miss Callender without delay, just to consult her about Mary's education. His reasoning in favor of this course was convincing, for logic never gets on so well as when inclination picks all the pebbles out of the pathway.

A long discussion concerning Mary Martin's education was held that evening between the young people sitting by the drop-lamp in Mrs. Callender's parlor. Many nice theories were broached by each of them, but during the whole of the discussion they were both in a state of double consciousness. Canvassing Mary and her outlook in life in one center of thought, they were thinking and feeling more profoundly regarding the outlook in life of two other people in another vortex of brain action. For Phillida could not conceal from herself the fact that Mr. Millard was only half interested in what he was saying, but was utterly absorbed in her with whom he was talking. His passion, so long denied, now had its revenge, and even the training of a man of the world to conceal what he felt and to say what he did not think was of no avail against it.

Notwithstanding the divided state of their minds, in consequence of which Mary's interests got only a minority of attention, her interests did not fare badly, for the very effort to keep the thoughts and feelings that were eddying below the surface from engulfing their whole mental action forced both talkers to concentrate their minds earnestly upon Mary's schooling.

In the first place both of them admitted the force of Mrs. Martin's objection to declassing Mary in such a way as to leave her segregated from family ties. Then it came out that Phillida did know a school--not a fine school, but a good school--where Mary would not be without companions in sober clothes, and where the teacher, a Miss Gillies, knew her business and had not too many scholars. But how to overcome Uncle Martin's objection to being helped by his wife's nephew?

"If," said Millard "the teacher of whom you speak had given to her a sufficient amount to pay the tuition of some suitable girl from a plain family, she would naturally consult you?"

"Yes; I think so," said Phillida.

"And under such circumstances why could you not recommend Mary?"

Phillida hesitated.

"I see you are more truthful than we men of business, who could not keep our feet without little ruses. There would be an implied deception of Uncle Martin, you think. Well, then, I will make the subscription absolute, and will leave Miss Gillies in entire control of it. I will advise her to consult you. If she does, and you think some other child than Mary ought to have it, or if it should be refused for Mary, you may give it to some one else. Do you know any one else who would profit by such a tuition?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Well, perhaps a better way would be this. I'll make it double, and you may have the entire disposal of both scholarships, if Miss Gillies will let you. Suppose I leave it to you to communicate the fact to her?"

"That will be very good, indeed"; and Phillida's face lost for a moment the blushing half-confusion that had marked it during the conversation, and a look of clear pleasure shone in her eyes--the enthusiastic pleasure of doing good and making happiness. Millard hardly rose to the height of her feeling; it was not to be expected. Whenever her face assumed this transfigured look his heart was smitten with pain--the mingled pain of love intensified and of hope declining; for this exaltation seemed to put Phillida above him, and perhaps out of his reach. Why should she fly away from him in this way?

"And may I come--to-morrow evening, perhaps--to inquire about this matter?" he said, making a movement to depart.

The question brought Phillida to the earth again, for Millard spoke with a voice getting beyond his control and telling secrets that he would fain have kept back. His question, tremulously put, seemed to ask so much more than it did! She responded in a voice betraying emotion quite out of keeping with the answer to a question like this, and with her face suffused, and eyes unable to look steadily at his, which were gazing into hers.

"Certainly, Mr. Millard," she said.

He took her hand gently and with some tremor as he said good-evening, and then he descended the brownstone steps aware that all debate and hesitancy were at an end. Come what might come, he knew himself to be irretrievably in love with Phillida Callender. This was what he had gained by abstaining from the sight of her for four weeks.

When the elevator had landed him on one of the high floors of the Graydon Building, a bachelor apartment house, and he had entered his own parlor, the large windows of which had a southern outlook, he stood a long time regarding the view. The electric lights were not visible, but their white glow, shining upward from the streets and open squares, glorified the buildings that were commonplace enough in daytime. Miles away across a visible space of water Liberty's torch shone like a star of the fifth magnitude. The great buildings about the City Hall Park, seen through a haze of light, seemed strangely aerial, like castles in a mirage or that ravishing Celestial City which Bunyan gazed upon in his dreams. A curved line of electric stars well up toward the horizon showed where the great East River Bridge spanned the unresting tides far below. Millard's apartment was so high that the street roar reached it in a dull murmur as of a distant sea, and he stood and absorbed the glory of the metropolitan scene--such a scene as was never looked upon in any age before our own decade--and it was to him but a fit accompaniment to his passion for Phillida, which by its subjective effect upon him had transformed all life and the universe itself. A month before he had sat and stared a hard-coal fire out of countenance in apprehension of falling in love with Phillida. Now he eagerly drank in the glory of earth and air, and loved her without reserve and without regret.

XI.

IN THE PARK.

Although love had at length come to Millard like an inundation sweeping away the barriers of habit and preconception, he was quite aware that Phillida Callender's was not a temperament to forget duty in favor of inclination, and the strength of his desire to possess her served as a restraint upon his action. He followed the habits of business negotiation even in love-making; he put down his impatience and made his approaches slowly that he might make sure of success. As a prudent beginning to his courtship he called on Phillida at first but once a week. She soon regained her wonted placidity of exterior, and Millard found it difficult to divine how far his affection was reciprocated.

For himself, he kept up his round of post-Easter social engagements. It would be time enough to lop these off if Phillida should require it when his affairs with her should be upon a more secure footing. Phillida, too, kept up a series of post-Easter engagements, but of another sort. Besides the ordinary work of the mission, and the extraordinary work attending the preparations for Fresh Air excursions for the invalid poor which were to be carried on in the heats of summer, she went once a week to the parlor Bible readings of Mrs. Frankland, which were, in fact, eloquent addresses, and which served greatly to stimulate her zeal. Thus these two lovers journeyed upon paths that had no convergence, even while feeling themselves drawn irresistibly toward each other.