Chapter I: The Origin of a Man of Fashion 7 (8)

Phillida was begged to come without ceremony up to the front room on the second floor. Here she found Mrs. Frankland in a wrapper, lying on a lounge, her face still flushed by the excitement of her speech.

"Dear child, how are you?" said Mrs. Frankland in a tone of semi-exhaustion, reaching out her hand, without rising. "Sit here by me. It is a benediction to see you. To you is given the gift of faith. The gift of healing and such like ministration is not mine. I can not do the work you do. But if I can comfort and strengthen those chosen ones who have these gifts, it is enough. I will not complain." Saying this last plaintively, she pressed Phillida's hand in both of hers.

If her profession of humility was not quite sincere, Mrs. Frankland at least believed that it was.

"Mrs. Frankland, I am in trouble, in a great deal of trouble," said Phillida in a voice evidently steadied by effort.

"In trouble? I am _so_ sorry." Saying this she laid her right hand on Phillida's lap caressingly. "Tell me, beloved, what it is all about?" Mrs. Frankland was still in a state of stimulation from public speaking, and her words were pitched in the key of a peroration. At this moment she would probably have spoken with pathos if she had been merely giving directions for cooking the dinner spinach.

The barriers of Phillida's natural reserve were melted away by her friend's effusive sympathy, and the weary heart lightened its burdens, as many another had done before, by confessing them to the all-motherly Mrs. Frankland. Phillida told the story of her lover, of his dislike to the notoriety of her faith-cures. She told of her own struggles and of the grave questions she might soon have to settle. Should she yield, if ever so little, to the demands of one who was to be her husband? Or should she maintain her course as she had begun? And what if it should ever come to be a question of breaking her engagement? This last was spoken with faltering, for at the very suggestion Phillida saw the abyss open before her.

A person of Mrs. Frankland's temperament is rarely a good counselor in practical affairs, but if she had been entirely at herself she would perhaps have advised with caution, if not with wisdom, in a matter so vital and delicate. But the exhilaration of oratorical inebriety still lingered with her, and she heard Phillida professionally rather than personally. She was hardly conscious, indeed, of the personality of the suffering soul before her. What she perceived was that here was a new and beautiful instance of the victory of faith and a consecrated spirit. In her present state of mind she listened to Phillida's experience with much the feeling she would have had if some one had brought her a story of martyrdom in the days of Nero. St. Francis himself was hardly finer than this, and the glory of this instance was that it was so modern and withal so romantic in its elements. She exulted in the struggle, without realizing, as she might have done in a calmer mood, the vast perspective of present and future sorrow which it presented to Phillida. The disclosure of Phillida's position opened up not the modicum of practical wisdom which she possessed but the floodgates of her eloquence.

"You will stand fast, my dear," she said, rising to a sitting posture and flushing with fresh interest. "You will be firm. You will not shrink from your duty."

"But what is my duty?" asked Phillida.

"To give the Lord and his work no second place in your affections. He has honored your faith and works above those of other people. Therefore stand unfalteringly faithful, my dear Phillida. It is a hard saying, that of Christ: 'If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he can not be my disciple.' But you are one of those able to receive the hard words of Christ."

All this was said as it might have been in an address, with little realization of its application to the individual case before her. Mrs. Frankland would have been the last person to advise an extreme course of action. She admired the extravagance of religious devotion for its artistic effect when used in oratory. It was the artistic effect she was dreaming of now. Phillida got little from her but such generalities, pitched in the key of her recent address; but what she got tended to push her to yet greater extremes.

In the hour that followed, Phillida's habitually strenuous spirit resolved and held itself ready for any surrender that might be demanded of it. Is the mistaken soul that makes sacrifice needlessly through false perceptions of duty intrinsically less heroic than the wiser martyr for a worthy cause?

XXIV.

THE PARTING.

On that Thursday evening Millard dined at his club. Instead of signing a joint order with a friend for a partnership dinner, he ordered and ate alone. He chose a table in a deep window from which he could look out on the passers-by. A rain had set in, and he watched the dripping umbrellas that glistened in the lamplight as they moved under the windows, and took note of the swift emergence of approaching vehicles and then of their disappearance. His interest in the familiar street-world was insipid enough, but even an insipid interest in external affairs he found better than giving his mind up wholly to the internal drizzle of melancholy thoughts.

Presently Millard became dimly conscious of a familiar voice in conversation at the table in the next window. Though familiar, the voice was not associated with the club-restaurant; it must be that of some non-member brought in as the dinner-guest of a member. He could not make out at first whose it was without changing his position, which he disliked to do, the more that the voice excited disagreeable feelings, and by some association not sufficiently distinct to enable him to make out the person. But when the visitor, instead of leaving the direction of the meal to his host, called out an exasperatingly imperative, "Hist! waitah!" Millard was able to recognize his invisible neighbor. Why should any member of a club so proper as the Terrapin ask Meadows? But there he was with his inborn relish for bulldozing whatever bulldozable creature came in his way. Once he had made him out, Millard engaged in a tolerably successful effort to ignore his conversation, returning again to his poor diversion of studying the people plashing disconsolately along the wet street. It was only when he heard Meadows say, "You know I am a director of that bank," that his attention was sharply arrested.

"Farnsworth is cashier," continued Meadows. "He ought to have resigned long ago, but he isn't that sort of a man. So he's at last taken to bed, has he? Some complication of the heart, I believe. Won't live long, and--well, I'll have on hand a hard fight about the filling of his place. But I didn't hear of that faith-doctor plan before."

"I don't believe they've carried it out," said the club man who had invited Meadows and who was a stranger to Millard. "Farnsworth wouldn't agree. I used to dine with Farnsworth often, and my sister knows Mrs. Farnsworth; they go to the same church. Mrs. Farnsworth has heard of a Miss Callender that can pray a person up out of the grave almost, and she's nearly persuaded Farnsworth to send for her. His mind is weakening a little, and I shouldn't wonder if he did consent to have her pray over him. The doctors have given him up, and--"

"Who is this Miss Callender?" interrupted Meadows; and though Millard could not see him he knew that in the very nature of things Meadows's pugnacious chin must be shoved forward as he asked this.

"She's a young woman that won't take any money for her services. That's the greatest miracle of all," said the other. "If anything could make me believe her mission supernatural, it would be that."

"Don't you believe it," said Meadows; "don't you believe a word of it. The dead may be raised, but not for nothing. There's money below it all. Money makes the mare go"; and Meadows laughed complacently at the proverb, giving himself credit for it with a notion that adopted wit was as good as the native born.

"No; she won't have it. I heard that Mrs. Maginnis sent her a check for curing her little girl, and that she sent it back."

"Wasn't enough," sneered Meadows.

"Well, I believe they tried a larger check with the same result. She doesn't seem to be an impostor; only a crank."

"These people that refuse money when it's pushed under their noses are the worst knaves of all," said Meadows. "She knows that Maginnis is very rich. She's laying for something bigger. She'll get into Mrs. Maginnis for something handsome. More fool if she doesn't, I say"; and Meadows laughed in an unscrupulous, under-breath fashion, as of a man who thought a well-played trick essentially meritorious.

Millard was debating. Should he protest against these words? Or should he knock Meadows down? That is not just the form it took in his mind. Any rowdy or a policeman may knock a man down. Your man of fashion, when he wishes to punish an enemy or have an affray with a friend, only "punches his head." It is a more precise phrase, and has no boast in it. No one knows which may go down, but the aggressor feels sure that he can begin by punching his enemy's head. Millard was on the point of rising and punching Meadows's head in the most gentlemanly fashion. But he reflected that a head-punching affray with Meadows in the club-room would make Phillida and her cures the talk of the town, and in imagination he saw a horrible vision of a group of newspaper reporters hovering about Mrs. Callender's house, and trying to gain some information about the family from the servant girl and the butcher boy. To protest, to argue, to say anything at all, would be but an awful aggravation. Having concluded not to punch the head of a bank director, he rose from the table himself, and, avoiding Meadows's notice, beckoned the waiter to serve his coffee in the reading-room. When he had swallowed the coffee he rose and went out. As he stood in the door of the club-house and buttoned up his coat, a cabman from the street called, "Kerrige, sir?" but not knowing where he should go, Millard raised his umbrella and walked. Mechanically he went toward Mrs. Callender's. He had formed no deliberate resolution, but he became aware that a certain purpose had taken possession of him all uninvited and without any approval of its wisdom on his part. Right or wrong, wise or unwise, there was that which impelled him to lay the condition of things before Phillida in all its repulsiveness and have it out with her. He could not think but that she would recoil if she knew how her course was regarded. He fancied that his own influence with her would be dominant if the matter were brought to an issue. But these considerations aside, there was that which impelled him to the step he was about to take. In crises of long suppressed excitement the sanest man sometimes finds himself bereft of the power of choosing his line of action; the directing will seems to lie outside of him. It is not strange that a Greek, not being a psychologist, should say that a Fate was driving him to his destiny, or that his Daemon had taken the helm and was directing affairs as a sort of _alter ego_.

When at length Millard found himself in front of Mrs. Callender's, and saw by the light that the family were sitting together in the front basement, his heart failed him, and he walked past the house and as far as the next corner, where his Fate, his Daemon, his blind impulsion, turned him back, and he did not falter again until he had rung the door-bell; and then it was too late to withdraw.

"You are wet, Charley; sit nearer the register," said Phillida, when she saw how the rain had beaten upon his trousers and how recklessly he had plunged his patent-leather shoes into the street puddles. This little attention to his comfort softened Millard's mood, but it was impossible long to keep back the torrent of feeling. Phillida was alarmed at his ominous abstraction.

"I don't care for the rain," he said.

"But you know there is a good deal of pneumonia about."

"I--I am not afraid of pneumonia," he said. "I might as well die as to suffer what I do."

"What is the matter, Charley?" demanded Phillida, alarmed.

"Matter? Why, I have to sit in the club and hear you called a crank and an impostor."

Phillida turned pale.

"Vulgar cads like Meadows," he gasped, "not fit for association with gentlemen, call you a quack seeking after money, and will not be set right. I came awfully near to punching his head."

"Why, Charley!"

"I should have done it, only I reflected that such an affray might drag you into the newspapers. I tell you, Phillida, it is unendurable that you should go on in this way."

Phillida's face was pale as death. She had been praying all the afternoon that the bitterness of this cup might not be pressed to her lips. She now saw that the issue was joined. She had vowed that not even her love for the man dearest to her should swerve her from her course. The abyss was under her feet, and she longed to draw back. She heard the voice of duty in the tones of Mrs. Frankland saying: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he can not be my disciple." It was a cruel alternative that was set before her, and she trembled visibly.

"I--I can't neglect what I believe to be duty," she said. She wished that, by some circumlocution or some tenderness in the tone, she could have softened the words that she spoke, but all her forces had to be rallied to utter the decision, and there was no power left to qualify the bare words which sounded to Millard hard and cruel. A suspicion crossed his mind that Phillida wished to be released from the engagement.

"You do not consider that you owe any duty to me at all," he said in a voice smothered by feeling.

Phillida tried to reply, but she could not speak.

Millard was now pacing the floor. "It is all that Mrs. Frankland's work. She isn't worthy to tie your shoes. She never fed the hungry, or clothed the naked, or visited the sick. It's all talk, talk, talk, with her. She talks beautifully, and she knows it. She loves to talk and to have people crowd around her and tell her how much good she is doing. She denies herself nothing; she feeds her vanity on the flattery she gets, and then thinks herself a saint besides. She exhorts people to a self-sacrifice she wouldn't practise for the world. She's making more money out of her piety than her husband can out of law. And now she comes with her foolish talk and breaks up the happiness you and I have had." This was spoken with bitterness. "We can not go on in this way," he said, sitting down exhausted, and looking at her.

Phillida had listened in silence and anguish to his words, spoken hurriedly but not loudly. What he said had an effect the opposite of what he had expected. The first impression produced by his words was that the engagement had become a source of misery to Millard; the second thought was that, considering only her duty to him, she ought to release him from bonds that had proved so painful. His last words seemed to indicate that he wished the engagement broken, and after what he had said it was evident that she must break with him or swerve from the duty she had vowed never to desert. Taking up the word where he had left off, she said in a low, faltering voice:

"We certainly can not go on in this way."

Then, rising, she turned to the antique desk in the corner of the parlor. With a key from her pocket she unlocked a drawer, and from it took hurriedly every keepsake she had had from her lover, not allowing herself to contemplate them, but laying them all at last on the ancient center-table in the middle of the room. With a twinge of regret, visible to Millard, she drew her engagement ring from her finger, and with an unsteady hand laid it softly down with the rest.

Millard was too much startled at first to know what to say. Had she misunderstood the intent of his last remark? Or did she wish to be released?

"It is all over, Mr. Millard. Take them, please."

"I--I have not--asked you to release me, Phillida."

"You have said that we can not go on in this way. I say the same. It--" she could not speak for a quarter of a minute; then she slowly finished her sentence with an effort of desperation and without raising her eyes to his--"it is better that it is over."

"Is it over?" he asked, stunned. "Think what you say."

"We have agreed that we can not go on," she answered. "You must take these. I can not keep them."

"Don't make me take them. Why not keep them?"

"I will send them to-morrow. I can not retain them."

Millard could not take them. He would have felt much as he might in rifling a grave of its treasures had he lifted those tokens from the table. But he saw, or thought he saw, that remonstrances might make Phillida more unhappy, but that it would be perfectly useless. It was better to accept his fate, and forbear. He tried to say something to soften the harshness of parting, but his powers of thought and speech deserted him, and he knew that whatever he would say must be put into one or two words. He looked up, hesitatingly stretched out his hand, and asked huskily:

"Part friends?"

Phillida, pale and speechless, took his hand a moment, and then he went out. She leaned her head against the window-jamb, lifted the shade, and watched his form retreating through the drizzly night until he disappeared from view, and then she turned out the lights. But instead of returning to her mother and Agatha in the basement, she threw herself on the floor, resting her arms on the sofa while she sobbed in utter wretchedness. All her courage was spent; all her faith had fled; helpless, wounded, wretched as a soul in bottomless perdition, she could see neither life nor hope in any future before her. She had believed herself able to go on alone and to bear any sacrifice. But in losing him she had lost even the power to pray.

About an hour after Millard's departure, Mrs. Callender came up the stairs and called gently:

"Phillida!"

Then she entered the parlor. The shutters were not closed, and the room was faintly lighted by rays that came through the shades from the lamp on the other side of the street.

"I'm here, mother," said Phillida, rising and coming toward her. Then, embracing her mother, she said, "And I'm so unhappy, mother, so utterly wretched."

Such an appeal for sympathy on the part of the daughter was an occurrence almost unknown. She had been the self-reliant head of the family, but now she leaned helplessly upon her mother and whispered, "It's all over between Charley and me."

XXV.

MRS. FRANKLAND'S REPENTANCE.

For some time after Phillida had left Mrs. Frankland resting on the lounge that lady had felt an additional exaltation in contemplating this new and admirable instance of faith and devotion--an instance that seemed to owe much to the influence of her own teachings. Her mind had toyed with it as a brilliant having many facets. She had unconsciously reduced it to words; she could only get the virtue out of anything when she had phrased it. Phillida she had abstracted into a "young woman of a distinguished family," "beautiful as the day," "who had all the advantages of high associations," and "who might have filled to the brim the cup of social enjoyment." The lover, whose name and circumstances she did not know, she yet set up in her mind as "an accomplished young man of splendid gifts and large worldly expectations." It would have been a serious delinquency in him had he failed to answer to this personal description, for how else could this glorious instance be rounded into completeness? Incapable of intentional misrepresentation, Mrs. Frankland could never help believing that the undisclosed portion of any narrative conformed to the exigencies of artistic symmetry and picturesque effect. She set the story of Phillida's sacrifice before her now in one and now in another light, and found in contemplating it much exhilaration--spiritual joy and gratitude in her phraseology. How charmingly it would fit into an address!

But as the hours wore on the excitement of her oratorical effort subsided and a natural physical reaction began. Her pulses, which had been beating so strenuously as to keep her brain in a state of combustion, were now correspondingly below their normal fullness and rapidity, and the exhausted nerves demanded repose. It was at such times as these that Mrs. Frankland's constitutional buoyancy of spirit sank down on an ebb tide; it was at such times that her usually sunny temper chafed under the irritations of domestic affairs. On this evening, when the period of depression set in, Mrs. Frankland's view of Phillida's case suffered a change. She no longer saw it through the iridescent haze of excited fancy. She began to doubt whether it was best that Phillida should break with her lover for the mere sake of being a shining example. In this mood Mrs. Frankland appreciated for the first time the fact that Phillida could hardly feel the same exultation in slaughtering her affections and hopes that Mrs. Frankland had felt in advising such a course of spiritual discipline. Just a little ripple of remorse flecked the surface of her mind, but she found consolation in a purpose to make the matter right by seeing Phillida the next day and inquiring more fully into the matter. Her natural hopefulness came to her rescue, and Mrs. Frankland slept without disturbance from regrets.

When she awaked in the morning it was with a dull sense that there was something which needed to be righted. She had to rummage her memory awhile to discover just what it was. Having placed it at length in Phillida's affair, she suddenly reflected that perhaps Mrs. Hilbrough could throw light on it, and she would postpone seeing Phillida until after her drive with Mrs. Hilbrough in the afternoon. "It is better to give counsel advisedly," was the phrase with which she ticketed this decision and sustained it.

The day was fine, and the drive in Mrs. Hilbrough's easy-rolling open carriage was exhilarating, and in that sort of bird-chatter about nothing in particular in which two people enjoying motion are prone to engage Mrs. Frankland was in danger of forgetting her purpose to inquire about Phillida Callender, until at length, when the carriage was fairly within the Park, Mrs. Hilbrough, whose businesslike brain never let go its grasp on a main purpose, said:

"Mrs. Frankland, I wanted to speak to you about Miss Callender."

"The very person I wished to ask your advice about," said Mrs. Frankland. "She called on me yesterday late in the afternoon."

"Did she?" Mrs. Hilbrough asked this with internal alarm. "Did she say anything to you about her love affair?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Frankland; "I suppose I ought not to repeat what she said, but you are her friend and you will be able to advise me in the matter. I'm afraid I didn't say just the right thing--I mean that I didn't advise her as fully as I should have done. It's hard to know what to say about other people's affairs. I felt worried about her, and I came near going to see her this morning. But I remembered that you were her friend, and I thought it best to see what you would say. It's always best to give counsel advisedly, I think."

"May I ask what you said to her?" said Mrs. Hilbrough, characteristically refusing to be shunted from the main line of her purpose.

Mrs. Frankland winced at the question, and especially at the straightforward thrust with which it was asked. But she said: "I only advised her in a very general way. It was just after I had finished speaking, and I wasn't able to take up the matter as carefully as I should have liked to do, you know, until after I had rested."

"Did you advise her to break her engagement?" The steadiness with which Mrs. Hilbrough pushed her inquiry was disagreeable to her companion, who liked to find refuge from an unpleasant subject in vagueness of statement. But at least she was not driven to bay yet; she had not definitely advised Phillida to break with her lover.

"No; not that. I only gave her general advice to be faithful to her convictions."

Mrs. Frankland's avoidance of the explicit confirmed Mrs. Hilbrough's suspicion as to the tenor of the advice given. The latter blamed herself for having moved too slowly, and she was impatient, moreover, with Mrs. Frankland; for one is apt to be vexed when a person very clever in one way is conspicuously stupid in other regards. When Mrs. Hilbrough spoke again a trace of irritation showed itself.

"Phillida is the only person I know to whom I think your Bible readings may do harm."

"My Bible readings?" queried Mrs. Frankland. She had been used so long to hear her readings spoken of in terms not of praise but rather of rapture, as though they were the result of a demi-divine inspiration, that this implied censure or qualification of the universality of their virtue and application came to her, not exactly as a personal offense, but with the shock of something like profanation; and she reddened with suppressed annoyance.

"I don't mean that it is your fault," said Mrs. Hilbrough, seeking to get on a more diplomatic footing with her companion. "Phillida is very peculiar and enthusiastic in her nature, and she knows nothing of the world. She is prone to take all exhortations rather too literally."

"But my words have often encouraged Phillida," said Mrs. Frankland, who had been touched to the quick. "You would rob me of one of the solid comforts of my life if you took from me the belief that I have been able to strengthen her for her great work."

"I am sure you have encouraged her to go on," said Mrs. Hilbrough, desirous not to antagonize Mrs. Frankland. "But she also needs moderating. She is engaged to an admirable man, a man getting to be very well off, and who will be made cashier of our bank very soon. He is kind-hearted, liberal with his money, and universally beloved and admired in society."

Mrs. Frankland was not the person to undervalue such a catalogue of qualities when presented to her in the concrete. True, on her theory, a Christian young woman ought to be ready in certain circumstances to throw such a lover over the gunwale as ruthlessly as the sailors pitched Jonah headlong. That is to say, a Christian young woman in the abstract ought to be abstractly willing to discard a rich lover in the abstract. But presented in this concrete and individual way the case was different. She was a little dazzled at the brightness of Phillida's worldly prospects, now that they were no longer merely rhetorical, but real, tangible, and, in commercial phrase, convertible.

"True, true," she answered reflectively. "She would be so eminently useful if she had money." This was the way Mrs. Frankland phrased her sense of the attractiveness of such a man. "She might exert an excellent influence in society. We do need more such people as the leaven of the kingdom of heaven in wealthy circles."

"Indeed we do," said Mrs. Hilbrough, "and for Phillida to throw away such prospects, and such opportunities for usefulness"--she added this last as an afterthought, taking her cue from Mrs. Frankland--"seems to me positively wrong."

"It would certainly be a mistake," said Mrs. Frankland. Mrs. Hilbrough thought she detected just a quiver of regret in her companion's voice. "Does he object strongly to her mission work?"

"No; he doesn't object to her work, I am sure, for she was already absorbed in it when he first met her at my house, and if he had objected there would have been no beginning of their attachment. But he is greatly annoyed that she should be talked about and ridiculed as a faith-doctor. He is a man of society, and he feels such things. Now, considering how much danger of mistake and of enthusiasm there is in such matters, Phillida might yield a little to so good a man."

"Perhaps I had better see her, Mrs. Hilbrough," was Mrs. Frankland's non-committal reply.

"It would be necessary to see her at once, I fear. She is very resolute, and he is greatly distressed by what people are saying about her, and a little provoked, no doubt, at what he thinks her obstinacy."

"Perhaps I had better see her this evening," said Mrs. Frankland, with a twinge of regret that she had not spoken with more caution the day before.

"I do wish you would," said Mrs. Hilbrough. Just then the driver sent the horses into a swift trot on a down grade, and the conversation was broken off. When talk began again it was on commonplace themes, and therefore less strenuous. Mrs. Frankland was glad to get away from an affair that put her into an attitude of apology.

Phillida had passed the day miserably. She had tried to bolster herself with the consciousness of having acted from the sincerest motives, and from having done only what was right. But consciousness of rectitude, whatever the moralists may say, is an inadequate balm for a heart that is breaking. Phillida had not dared to enter the parlor to gather up the little presents that Millard had given her and dispatch them to him until after supper, when she made them all into a bundle and sent them away. The messenger boy had hardly left the door when Mrs. Frankland rang. Her husband had accompanied her, and she dismissed him at the steps with instructions to call for her in about an hour.

Phillida was glad to see Mrs. Frankland. A cruel doubt had been knocking at her door the livelong day. It had demanded over and over whether her tremendous sacrifice was necessary after all. She had succeeded indifferently well in barring out this painful skepticism by two considerations. The one was, that Millard, who had almost asked to be released, would hereafter be saved from mortification on her account. The other was, that Mrs. Frankland's authority was all on the side of the surrender she had made. And now here was Mrs. Frankland, sent like a messenger to confirm her faith and to console her in her sorrow.

"You are looking troubled," said Mrs. Frankland, kissing her now on this cheek and now on the other. "Dear child, if I could only bring you some comfort!"

"Thank you, Mrs. Frankland," said Phillida; "I am so glad that you have come. I have wished for you all day."

"Maybe I am sent to console you. Who knows? Perhaps, after all, things may turn out better than you think." This was said in a full round voice and an under manifestation of buoyant hopefulness and self-reliance characteristic of Mrs. Frankland; but Phillida shook her head despondently.

"Since I saw you I have heard a good deal about your Mr. Millard; I get the most favorable accounts of him; they say he is good, and every way a worthy, liberal, and charming man."

Phillida sat up straight in her chair with eyes averted, and made no reply.

"I have been thinking that, after all, perhaps you ought to make some concessions to such a man."

Phillida trembled visibly. This was not what she had expected.

"You wouldn't wish me to be unfaithful to my duty, would you?" she asked in a low voice.

"No, dear; I don't say you ought to sacrifice anything that is _clearly_ your duty. Some duties are so clear that they shine like the pole-star which guides the mariner. But there are many duties that are not quite clear. We should be careful not to insist too strongly on things in which we may be mistaken. There would be no such thing as marriage if there was not some yielding on both sides; I mean in matters not certainly essential to a Christian life."

Phillida was now looking directly at her visitor with a fixed and hopeless melancholy which puzzled Mrs. Frankland, who had expected that she would seize gratefully upon any advice tending to relax the rigor of her self-sacrifice. Phillida's attitude was incomprehensible to her visitor. Could it be that she had resolved to break with her lover at all hazards?

"You know, dear," said Mrs. Frankland, sailing on a new tack now, as was her wont when her audience proved unresponsive, "I think, that as the wife of a man with increasing wealth and of excellent social position, like Mr. Millard, you would be very useful. We need such devoted and faithful people as you are in society. And, after all, your gift of healing might be exercised without publicity--you might, I think, defer a good deal to one whom you have promised to love. Love is also a gift of God and a divine ordinance. In fact, considering how ample your opportunities would be as the wife of a man of wealth and position, such as Mr. Millard, it seems to be your duty to examine carefully and prayerfully whether there is not some reasonable ground on which you can meet him. At least, my dear, do not act too hastily in a matter of so much moment."

Advice pitched in this key did not weigh much at any time with Phillida. A thin veil of religious sentiment served a purpose of self-deception with Mrs. Frankland, but such disguises could not conceal from Phillida's utterly sincere spirit the thoroughly worldly standpoint of Mrs. Frankland's suggestions. The effect of this line of talk upon her mind was very marked, nevertheless. It produced a disenchantment, rapid, sudden, abrupt, terrible. Mrs. Frankland, the oracle upon whose trustworthiness she had ventured her all, had proven herself one of the most fallible of guides. The advice given yesterday with an assurance that only a settled and undoubting conviction could possibly excuse, was to-day pettifogged away mainly on the ground of Charley's worldly prosperity. Phillida had revered the woman before her as a sort of divine messenger, had defended her against Millard's aspersions, had followed her counsel at the most critical moment of her life in opposition to the judgment of her family and of the man she loved. And now, too late, the strenuous exhortation was retracted, not so much in the interest of a breaking heart as in that of a good settlement.

When, after a pause, Phillida spoke, the abrupt and profound change in the relations of the two became manifest. Her voice was broken and reproachful as she said, "You come this evening to take back what you said yesterday."

"I spoke without time to think yesterday," said Mrs. Frankland, making a movement of uneasiness. One accustomed to adulation does not receive reproach gracefully.

"You spoke very strongly," said Phillida. "I thought you must feel very sure that you were right, for you knew how critical my position was." The words were uttered slowly and by starts. Mrs. Frankland did not reply. Phillida presently went on: "I don't care anything about the worldly prospects you think so much of to-day. But God knows what an awful sacrifice I have made. In following your advice, which was very solemnly given, I have thrown away the love and devotion of one of the best men in the world." She lifted her hands from her lap as she spoke and let them fall when she had finished.

"Have you broken your engagement already?" said Mrs. Frankland, with a start.

"What else could I do? You told me to stand by my work of healing. I hope you were right, for it has cost me everything--everything. I thought you had come to comfort me to-night and to strengthen my faith. Instead of that you have taken back all that you said before."

"I only spoke generally before. I didn't know the circumstances. I did not know anything about Mr. Millard, or--" Here she paused.

"You didn't know about Mr. Millard's property or social position, I suppose. These are what you have talked to me about this evening. They are not bad things to have, perhaps, but, if they were all, I could give them up--trample them under foot, and be glad."

"Don't be provoked with me, Phillida dear. Indeed, I hardly realized what I said yesterday. I had just got through with speaking, I was very much exhausted, and I did not quite understand."

"You may have been right yesterday," said Phillida; "I hope you were. If you were wrong, it was a dreadful mistake." She made a long pause, and then went on. "I thought the course you advised yesterday a brave course at least. But what you have said to-day, about social position and so on, I hate. And it makes me doubt it all."

Phillida thrust out the toe of her boot, unconsciously giving expression to her disposition to spurn Mrs. Frankland's worldly-wise counsel.

"You're excited, my dear," said Mrs. Frankland. "Your break with Mr. Millard may not be so irretrievable as you think it. Providence will direct. If, on the whole, it is thought best, I have no doubt things may be replaced on their old footing. I am sure Mrs. Hilbrough and I could manage that. You ought not to be unreasonable."

"I sent him in agony out into the rainy night, forsaken and discarded." Phillida could not quite suppress a little sob as she stretched her hand a moment in the direction in which Millard had gone. "God knows I thought I was doing right. Now because you have heard that he has money and moves in fashionable circles you wish me to intrigue with you and Mrs. Hilbrough to bring him back."

Phillida rose to her feet, excitement breaking through the habitual reserve with which her emotional nature was overlaid. "I tell you, Mrs. Frankland," she went on with a directness verging on vehemence, "that I will have none of your interference, nor any of Mrs. Hilbrough's. What I have done, is done, and can never be recalled."

"Indeed, Phillida, you are excited," said Mrs. Frankland. "You reject the advice and assistance of your best friends. You have quite misunderstood what I have said. I only wished to repair my error."

Phillida remained silent, but she resumed her seat.

"Think the matter over. Take time to make your decision. I have acted only in your interest, and yet you blame me." Mrs. Frankland said this with persuasive plaintiveness of tone.

But Phillida said nothing. Not seeing anything else to do, Mrs. Frankland rose and said: "Good-by, Phillida. When you have had time to think you will see things differently." She did not extend her hand, and Phillida felt that her own was too chill and limp to offer. She contrived, however, to utter a "Good-by."

When she had shut the door after Mrs. Frankland one swift thought and bitter came into her mind. "Charley was not wholly wrong as to Mrs. Frankland. Perhaps he was nearer right in other regards than I thought him."

Half an hour later the door-bell rang, and Agatha answered the call. Then she put her head into the parlor where Phillida sat, back to the door, gazing into the street.

"I say, Philly, what do you think? Mr. Frankland came to the door just now for his wife, and seemed quite crestfallen that she had forgotten him, and left him to go home alone. Didn't like to be out so late without an escort, I suppose."

It was one of a hundred devices to which Agatha had resorted during this day to cheer her sister. But seeing that this one served its purpose no better than the rest, Agatha went over and put her arms about her sister's neck and kissed her.

"You dear, dear Philly! You are the best in the world," she said, and the speech roused Phillida from her despair and brought her the balm of tears.

XXVI.

ELEANOR ARABELLA BOWYER.

It is a truth deep and wide, that a brother is born for adversity. The spirit of kin and clan, rooted in remote heredity, outlives other and livelier attachments. It not only survives rude blows, but its true virtue is only extracted by the pestle of tribulation. Having broken with her lover, and turned utterly away from her spiritual guide and adviser, Phillida found herself drawn more closely to her mother and her sister. It mattered little that they differed from her in regard to many things. She could at least count on their affection, and that sympathy which grows out of a certain entanglement of the rootlets of memory and consciousness, out of common interest and long and intimate association.

Mrs. Callender had been habituated when she was a little girl at home to leave the leadership to her sister Harriet, now Mrs. Gouverneur, and to keep her dissents to herself. Her relation with her husband was similar; she had rarely tried to influence a man whose convictions of duty were so pronounced, though the reasons for these convictions were often quite beyond the comprehension of his domestically minded wife. Toward Phillida she had early assumed the same diffident attitude; it was enough for her to say that Phillida was her father over again. That settled it once for all. Phillida was to be treated as her father had been; to be trusted with her own destiny without impertinent inquiries from one who never could understand, though she deeply respected, the mysterious impulses which urged these superior beings to philanthropic toil. For her own part she would have preferred to take the universe less broadly.

A second effect of this crisis in Phillida's life was to drive her back upon the example and teaching of her father. Having utterly abandoned the leadership of Mrs. Frankland, she naturally sought support for her self-sacrificing course of action outside of her own authority. All her father's old letters, written to her when she was a child, were unbundled and read over again, and some of his manuscript sermons had the dust of years shaken from their leaves that she might con their pages written in the dear, familiar hand.

If she had had her decision to make over again without any bolstering from Mrs. Frankland she would have sought, for a while at least, to establish a _modus vivendi_ between her love for Millard and the ultra form of her religious work. But the more she thought of it the more she considered it unlikely that her decision regarding her lover would ever come up for revision. She accepted it now as something providential, because inevitable, to which she must grow accustomed, an ugly fact with which she must learn to live in peace. She had a knack of judging of herself and her own affairs in an objective way. She would not refuse to see merely because it was painful to her that a woman of her tastes and pursuits was an unsuitable mate for a man of society. She admitted the incongruity; she even tried to console herself with it. For if the break had not come so soon, it might have come after marriage in forms more dreadful. There was not much comfort in this--might have been worse is but the skim-milk of consolation.

To a nature like Phillida's one door of comfort, or at least of blessed forgetfulness, is hardly ever shut. After the first bitter week she found hours of relief from an aching memory in her labors among the suffering poor. Work of any kind is a sedative; sympathy with the sorrows of others is a positive balm. Her visits to the Schulenberg tenement were always an alleviation to her unhappiness. There she was greeted as a beneficent angel. The happiness of Wilhelmina, of her mother, and of her brother, for a time put Phillida almost at peace with her destiny.

Her visits to and her prayers for other sufferers were attended with varying success as to their ailments. The confidence in the healing power of her prayers among the tenement people was not based altogether on the betterment of some of those for whom she prayed. Knowing her patient long-suffering with the evil she contended against, they reasoned, in advance of proof, that her prayers ought to have virtue in them. The reverence for her was enhanced by a report, which began to circulate about this time, that she had refused to marry a rich man in order to keep up her labor among the poor. Rumor is always an artist, and tradition, which is but fossil rumor, is the great saint-maker. The nature and extent of Phillida's sacrifice were amplified and adapted until people came to say that Miss Callender had refused a young millionaire because he wished her not to continue her work in Mackerelville. This pretty story did not mitigate the notoriety which was an ingredient of her pain.

In spite of the sedative of labor and the consolation of altruism, Poe's raven would croak in her ears through hours spent in solitude. In the evenings she found herself from habit and longing listening for the door-bell, and its alarm would always give her a moment of fluttering expectation, followed by a period of revulsion. Once the bell rang at about the hour of Millard's habitual coming, and Phillida sat in that state in which one expects without having reason to expect anything in particular until the servant brought her a card bearing the legend, "Eleanor Arabella Bowyer, Christian Scientist and Metaphysical Practitioner."

"Eleanor Arabella Bowyer," she said, reading it to her mother as they sat in the front basement below the parlor. "Who is she? I've never heard of her."

"I don't know, Phillida. I don't seem to remember any Bowyers."

"Where is the lady, Sarah?" asked Phillida of the servant.

"She is in the parlor, Miss."

Phillida rose and went up-stairs. She found awaiting her a woman rather above medium height. Phillida noted a certain obtrusiveness about the bony substructure of her figure, a length and breadth of framework never quite filled out as it was meant to be, so that the joints and angles of her body showed themselves with the effect of headlands and rocky promontories. She had a sallow complexion and a nose that was retrousse, with a prompt outward and upward thrust about the lower half of it, accompanied by a tendency to thinness as it approached its termination, quite out of agreement with the prominent cheek-bones. The whole face had a certain air of tough endurance, of determination, of resolute go-forwardness untempered by the recoil of sensitiveness. Miss Bowyer was clad in good clothes without being well-dressed.

"Miss Callender, I suppose," said the visitor, rising, and extending her hand with confidence. Her voice was without softness or resonance, but it was not nasal--a voice admirably suited, one would think, for calling cows. Her grasp of the hand was positive, square, unreserved, but as destitute of sympathetic expression as her vowels. "I've heard a good deal about you, one way and another," she said. "You've been remarkably successful in your faith-cures, I am told. It's a great gift, and you must be proud of it--grateful for it, I should think." She closed this speech with a smile which seemed not exactly spontaneous but, rather, habitual, as though it were a fixed principle with her to smile at about this stage of every conversation.

Phillida was puzzled to reply to this speech. She did not feel proud of her gift of faith-healing; hardly was she grateful for it. It was rather a burden laid on her, which had been mainly a source of pain and suffering. But she could not bring herself to enter on a subject so personal with a stranger.

"I don't know that I am," was all she said.

"Well, there's a great deal in it," said Miss Bowyer. "I have had a good deal of experience. There's a great deal more in it than you think."

"I don't quite understand you," said Phillida.

"No; of course not. I am a faith-healer myself."

"Are you?" said Phillida, mechanically, with a slight mental shudder at finding herself thus classified with one for whom she did not feel any affinity.

"Yes; that is, I _was_. I began as a faith-doctor, but I found there was a great deal more in it, don't you know?"

"A great deal more in it?" queried Phillida. "A great deal more of what, may I ask?"

"Oh, everything, you know."

This was not clarifying, and Phillida waited without responding until the metaphysical practitioner should deign to explain.

"I mean there's a great deal more science in it, as well as a great deal more success, usefulness, and--and--and remuneration to be had out of it than you think."

"Oh," said Phillida, not knowing what else to say.

"Yes," said Eleanor Arabella Bowyer with a smile. She had a way of waiting for the sense of her words to soak into the minds of her hearers, and she now watched Phillida for a moment before proceeding. "You see when I began I didn't know anything about Christian Science,--the new science of mental healing, faith-cure, psychopathy,--by which you act on the spirit and through the spirit upon the body. Matter is subject to mind. Matter is unreal. All merely physical treatment of disease is on the mortal plane." Miss Bowyer paused here waiting for this great truth to produce its effect; then she said, "Don't you think so?" and looked straight at Phillida.

"I haven't thought a great deal about it," said Phillida.

"No?" This was said with the rising inflection. "I thought not; mere faith-healing doesn't require much thought. I know, you see, having been a faith-healer at first. But we must go deeper. We must always go deeper. Don't you think so?"

"I don't understand just what you mean," said Phillida.

"You see," said Miss Bowyer, "faith-healing is a primitive and apostolic mode of healing the sick."

Miss Bowyer paused, and Phillida said, "Yes," in a hesitant way; for even the things she believed seemed false when uttered by Eleanor Bowyer.

"Well, ours is a scientific age. Now we practise--we revive this mode of healing, but in a scientific spirit, in the spirit of our age, and with a great deal more of knowledge than people had in ancient times. We reject the belief in evil; we call it unreal. Disease is a mistake. We teach faith in the unity of God the All-good."

Miss Bowyer evidently expected Phillida to say something at this point, but as she did not, Miss Bowyer was forced to proceed without encouragement.

"When I found that there was a great deal in it, I took the subject up and studied it. I studied mind-cure, or metaphysical healing, which strikes at the root of disease; I went into hypnotism, mesmerism, and phreno-magnetism, and the od force--I don't suppose you know about the _od_ which Reichenbach discovered."

"No."

"Well, it's wonderful, but mysterious. Blue blazes seen by the sensitive, and all that. I studied that, and theosophy a little too, and I took up Swedenborg; but he was rather too much for me. You can't quite understand him, and then life is too short to ever get through him. So I only read what somebody else had printed about Swedenborgianism, and I understand him a good deal better that way. That's the best way to tackle him, you know. Well, now, all of these go to explain the unity of truth, and how the miracles of the Bible were worked."

Phillida said nothing, though her interlocutor gave her an opportunity.