The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York

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 portières 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 aërial, 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.

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.

As April wore into May, Millard ventured on more frequent attentions, and from day to day meditated how he might light on an opportunity to tell her what he felt and wished. But at her house he was always held in check by remembering the crash of an overturned chair at the time of his first call, and he could not speak very confidential words with no other screen than those thin sliding doors. When on two occasions he contrived to encounter Phillida returning from her Sunday afternoon mission to the east, he thought he perceived certain traces of debate going on in her mind, and an apparent effort on her part to hold the talk to cool and indifferent topics. That she was strongly attracted to him he readily believed, and had she been a woman of the ordinary type this would have been sufficient. But she was Phillida Callender, and he who would win her must gain consent not alone of her affections but of her conscience as well, and of her judgment. Such a decision as he should ask her to make would be tried by the test of the high life purpose that ruled her and looked on all interfering delights and affections with something like fierceness. For how shall one of the daughters of God be persuaded to wed one of the sons of men?

And thus, by the procrastination that comes of lack of opportunity, and the procrastination that comes of timidity, the spring was fast passing into summer. Hilbrough had taken Millard into partnership in an enterprise of his own—the reorganization of a bankrupt railway company in the interest of the bondholders. It was necessary to secure the co-operation of certain English holders of the securities, and Hilbrough felt sure that a man of Millard's address and flexibility would achieve more than he himself could in a negotiation abroad. So it was arranged that on the first Saturday in June the assistant cashier should sail for London on a ten weeks' leave of absence from the bank, and that when his business in London should be completed he was to make a short tour over the well-beaten paths of European travel. This arrangement rendered it necessary that Millard should bring his diplomatic delays to an end, and run the risk of an immediate proposal to Phillida Callender.

Memorial Day came round, and all the land showed its sorrow for the innumerable host that perished untimely in deadly battle and deadlier hospital by keeping the day right joyously. This gave Millard a holiday, and he set off after a lazy breakfast to walk up Fifth Avenue and through Central Park. He proposed to explore the Ramble and meditate all the time how he might best come to an understanding with Phillida that very evening.

He entered the Park at the southeast corner, but instead of pushing straight up to the Mall, a childish impulse to take a hurried glance at the animals deflected him toward the old armory. The holiday crowd already gathering proved quite too miscellaneous for his fastidious nerves; the dumb brutes he could stand, but these pushing and chattering human monkeys were uninteresting, and he went on through the region of wild beasts to that of tame ones, where the patient donkeys were busily employed carrying timid little children and showing their skill in their favorite game of doing the least possible amount of work in any given time. Though the motion of these creatures was barely perceptible, the pace seemed frightful to some of the alarmed infants clinging to their backs. Millard looked at them a moment in amusement, then refusing the donkey path he turned to the left toward the shady Mall. The narrow walk he chose was filled to-day with people, who, having fed the elephant, admired the diving of the seal, wondered at the inconceivable ugliness of the hippopotamus, watched the chimpanzee tie knots in the strands of an untwisted rope by using her four deft hands, and shuddered a little at the young alligators, were now moving away—a confused mass of children, eager to spend their nickels for a ride at the carrousel, and elders bent on finding shelter from the heat under the elms that overhang the Mall. There was a counter-current of those who had entered the Park by remoter gateways and were making their way toward the menagerie, and Millard's whole attention was absorbed in navigating these opposite and intermingling streams of people and in escaping the imminent danger of being run over by some of the fleet of baby-carriages. From a group of three ladies that he had just passed a little beyond the summer-house, he heard a voice say, half under breath:

"Mr. Millard, I declare!"

It was Agatha Callender, and as he turned to greet her he saw behind her Phillida supporting her mother.

"Mama is not very well, and we persuaded her to take a holiday," explained Agatha; "and I am trying to find a way for her out of this crowd."

Millard took charge of the convoy and succeeded in landing the party on shady seats at the lower end of the Mall, where the colossal Walter Scott is asking his distinguished countryman Robert Burns, just opposite, if all poets engaged in the agonizing work of poetic composition fall into such contortions as Burns does in this perpetual brass.

After a while Agatha grew as restless as the poet seems in the statue. She had brought money enough to take her party about the Park in the regular coaches, and spending-money unspent always made Agatha unhappy. She now broached the subject of taking a coach, and remembered that it was a free day at the Art Museum. Millard proposed to go to the Fifth Avenue gate and get a carriage for the party. This extravagance the prudent Mrs. Callender would not consent to, and so Millard conducted the ladies to the place where Shakspere, a little weak in the knees, has long been doing his best, according to his ability, to learn a part in a new play. The first coach that came by had but two vacancies. Millard hailed it, and said promptly:

"Now, Miss Agatha, we shall not find four places in one coach to-day. You and Mrs. Callender get into this one, and take stop-over checks at the Museum. Miss Callender and I will join you there in the next coach or on foot."

There was no time for debate, and before Mrs. Callender could muster her wits to decide what was best to be done about this, Charley's gloved hands had gently helped her into the coach, put Agatha in beside her, and handed a half-dollar to the driver for the fare. Just as Mrs. Callender was beginning to protest against this last act the coach rolled away, and Agatha saw Millard and Phillida face about without waiting for another coach and return toward Shakspere and the Mall.

"I oughtn't to have let him pay for us," murmured Mrs. Callender.

"Oh, you needn't feel under any obligations," whispered Agatha; "he just wanted to be alone with Phillida."

But now that Millard had seized the advantage of an unchaperoned stroll with Phillida, he found himself without the courage to use it. The very suddenness with which they had been left to themselves made Phillida feel that a crisis was imminent, and this served to give her an air of confusion and restraint. In presence of this reserve Millard drew back.

The two strolled along the Mall, admiring the wide, elm-shaded triple avenue, and talking of uninteresting subjects. They were involved once more in the evergrowing holiday crowd, and Millard saw with vexation that his opportunity was slipping away from him. When they had traversed the length of the Mall and were approaching the bust of Beethoven, Phillida said suddenly:

"There is Mina Schulenberg in a wheel-chair. I wonder how she contrived to get one."

She pushed forward toward the invalid, but Millard hung back a little, and Phillida suspected that he was probably ashamed to be seen talking with Mina, who was wheeled by her brother, a stalwart young man of twenty, in his Sunday clothes.

"O Miss Callender, is it you? Do you see my chair already? It must have been you who managed to get it for me."

"No, Wilhelmina; indeed I knew nothing about it till I saw you in it this moment."

"Then I don't know what to think," said the invalid. "It was sent up from a place down in Grand street already, with my name on a ticket and the word 'Paid' marked on the ticket. I wish I could thank the one that gave it to me wunst already, for I don't feel like it belonged to me till I do."

Phillida turned about and looked at Millard, who still lurked behind her. When he met her penetrating gaze he colored as though he had been caught doing wrong.

"Miss Schulenberg, this is Mr. Millard," said Phillida. "I don't know who sent you this chair; but if you thank him the person who paid for your chair will hear about it, I feel sure."

Mina looked at Millard. The faultlessness of his dress and the perfection of style in his carriage abashed her. But she presently reached her emaciated hand to him, while tears stood in her eyes. Millard trembled as he took the semi-translucent fingers in his hand: they looked brittle, and he could feel the joints through his gloves as though it were a skeleton that thus joined hands with him.

"You gave me my chair!" she said. "Yesterday I was out in it for the first time already—in Tompkins Square. But to-day Rudolph here—he is such a good fellow—he wanted to give me a big treat wunst, and so he brought me all the way up here already to see this beautiful Park. It's the—the first time—" but shadowy people like Wilhelmina hover always on the verge of hysteria, and her feelings choked her utterance at this point.

Millard could not bear the sight of her emotion. He said hastily, "Never mind, Miss Schulenberg; never mind. Good-morning. I hope you will enjoy your day."

Then as he and Phillida went up the stairs that lead out of the Mall at the north of the arbor by the Casino, Millard made use of his handkerchief, explaining that he must have taken a slight cold. He half halted, intending to ask Phillida to sit down with him on a seat partly screened by a bush at each end; but there were many people passing, and the two went on and mounted the steps to the circular asphalted space at the top of the knoll. Phillida, shy of what she felt must come, began to ask about the great buildings in view, and he named for her the lofty Dakota Flats rising from a rather naked plain to the westward, the low southern façade of the Art Museum to the northward, to the east the somber front of the Lenox Library,—as forbidding as the countenance of a rich collector is to him who would borrow,—and the columnar gable chimneys of the Tiffany house.

Millard now guided Phillida to a descending path on the side of the hill opposite to that by which they had come up, and which perversely turned southeastward for a while, it having been constructed on the theory that a park walk should describe the longest distance between any two points. Here he found a seat shaded by the horizontal limbs of an exotic tree and confronted by a thicket that shut out at this season almost all but little glimpses of the Tiffany house and the frowning Lenox. He asked Phillida to sit down, and he sat beside her. The momentary silence that followed was unendurable to Phillida's excited nerves, so she said:

"Mr. Millard, it was a splendid thing to do."

"What?"

"To give that chair to Mina Schulenberg, and all so quietly."

"Miss Callender—Phillida—may I call you Phillida?"

A tone of entreaty in this inquiry went to her heart and set her thoughts in a whirl. It was not possible to say "No." She did not lift her eyes from the asphalt, which she was pushing with the ferrule of her parasol, but she said "Yes," filled with she knew not what pleasure at having Millard use this familiarity.

"Phillida, you have taught me a great deal. It is to you that the poor girl owes her ride to-day, and to you that I owe the pleasure of seeing her enjoy it. I'm not so good as you are. I am a rather—a rather useless person, I'm afraid. But I am learning. And I want to ask you before I go away whether you could love me?"

Phillida kept trying to bore into the pavement with her parasol, but she did not reply.

After a pause Millard went on. "I know you don't decide such things by mere passion. But you've had reason to think that I loved you for a good while. Haven't you?"

"I—I think I have." This was said with difficulty after a pause of some seconds.

"And you must have thought about it, and turned it over in the light of duty. Haven't you—Phillida?"

This address by her Christian name startled her. It was almost like a caress. But presently she said, "Yes; I have." She remembered that her prayer this very morning had been that before she should be called upon to decide the question of marrying Millard she might have some sign to guide her, and now the happy face of Wilhelmina seemed the very omen she had sought.

"And you haven't made up your mind to reject me?" said Millard.

The answer this time was longer than ever in coming.

"No; no, Mr. Millard."

Millard paused before putting the next question. "I'm going away, you know, on Saturday. May I get out of that last answer all that I wish to, Phillida?"

The parasol trembled in her hand, and perceiving that it betrayed her she ceased to push the ground and let go of the staff, grasping the edge of the seat instead. Millard could see her frame tremble, and in his eagerness he scarcely breathed. With visible effort she at length slowly raised her flushed face until her gaze encountered his. But utterance died on her lips. Either from some inclination of the head or from some assent in her eyes Millard understood her unuttered answer to be in the affirmative. He lifted her hand from the seat beside him and gently kissed it. And then as he held it he presently felt her fingers grasp his hand ever so lightly. It was answer enough. A noisy party was coming down the steps toward them.

"Now, Phillida dear, we must go," he said, rising. "Your mother will not know what has detained us."

Phillida looked up playfully as they walked away, and said, her voice still husky with feeling:

"Agatha will be sure to guess."

XII.
PHILIP.

"Well, Phil, I'm going to be kin to you. Congratulate me."

The color fled from Philip's face as he said:

"How's that?"

"Phillida Callender and I are engaged."

"You and Phillida?" said Philip, struggling to collect his wits. "I expected it." He spoke low and as though some calamity had befallen him. A moment he stood trying to muster his forces to utter some phrase proper to the occasion, and then he abruptly said:

"Good-night; don't come out"; and walked away toward the elevator like a somnambulist doing what he is compelled to by preconception without making note of his environment. And Millard wondered as he looked after him.

The next morning Philip came to breakfast so late that even his indulgent mother had forsaken the table after leaving directions to "have things kept hot for Mr. Philip, and some fresh coffee made for him."

When he had eaten a rather slender meal he sought his mother's sitting-room.

"Aunt Callender called last night, I hear. She must have had something to say, or she would hardly have persuaded herself to leave her sewing so long."

"She came to tell me of Phillida's engagement," said Mrs. Gouverneur, looking at Philip furtively as she spoke.

"I supposed that was it."

"Did you know it, then?"

"Oh, Charley Millard told me last night. These lucky fellows always take it for granted that you'll rejoice in all their good fortune; they air their luck before you as though it were your own." He was looking out of the window at the limited landscape of Washington Square.

"I'm sorry you feel bad about it," said his mother.

Philip was silent.

"I never dreamed that you had any special attachment for Phillida," said Mrs. Gouverneur.

"What did you think I was made of?" said Philip, turning toward his mother. "Since she came from Siam I have seen her about every week. Now consider what a woman she is, and do you wonder that I like her?"

"Why didn't you tell her so?"

"I might if I'd had Charley's brass. But what is there about a critical, inefficient young man like me, chiefly celebrated for piquant talk and sarcasm—what is there to recommend me to such a woman as Phillida? If I'd had Charley's physique—I suppose even Phillida isn't insensible to his appearance—but look at me. It might have recommended me to her, though, that in one respect I do resemble St. Paul—my bodily presence is weak." And he smiled at his joke. "No, mother, I am jealous of Charley, but I am not disappointed. I never had any hopes. I'd about as soon have thought of making love to any beatified saint in glory as to Phillida. But Charley's refined audacity is equal to anything."

The mother said nothing. She felt her son's bitterness too deeply to try to comfort him.

"I hate it most of all for Phillida's sake," Philip went on. "It can not be a happy marriage. Here they've gone and engaged themselves without reflection, and a catastrophe is sure to follow."

"Oh, maybe not," said Mrs. Gouverneur, who could not help feeling that Philip partly blamed her for the engagement.

"Why, just look at it. They haven't really kept company. He has been going to dinner and dancing parties this spring, and she to Mackerelville Mission and Mrs. Frankland's Bible Readings. If they should discover their incompatibility before marriage it wouldn't be so bad; but he's off to Europe for the summer, and then they'll be married in the autumn, probably, and then what? Phillida will never spend her time dancing germans with Charley; and he would make a pretty fist running a class of urchins in Mackerelville. I tell you it only means misery for both of them." And with this prediction Philip mounted to his own room.

Millard was too busy with the packing of trunks, the arrangement of business, and farewell visits to Phillida, to give much thought to Philip's curious behavior; but it troubled him nevertheless. And when, on the deck of the steamer Arcadia, he bade good-by to a large circle of friends, including Mr. Hilbrough, who brought a bouquet from his wife, and Mrs. Callender and her daughters, he looked about in vain for Philip. He could no longer doubt that for some reason Philip disliked his engagement. But when the last adieus had been waved to diminishing and no longer distinguishable friends on the pier-end, and the great city had shrunk into the background and passed from view as the vessel glided steadily forward into the Narrows, Millard entered his cabin and found a package of guide-books and a note from Philip excusing his absence on the ground of a headache, but hoping that his friend would have a pleasant voyage and expressing hearty good wishes for his future with Phillida. It was all very curious and unlike Philip. But the truth below dawned upon Charley, and it gave him sorrow that his great joy might be Philip's disappointment.

When September had come Philip sat one day in a wide wicker chair on the piazza of the old-fashioned cottage of the Gouverneurs at Newport. This plain but ample cottage had once held up its head stoutly as one of the best. But now that the age of the Newport cliff-dwellers had come, in which great architects are employed to expend unsparingly all the ideas they have ever borrowed, on cottages costlier than kings' palaces, the Gouverneur house had been overshadowed, and, after the manner of age outstripped by youth, had taken refuge in the inexpugnable advantage of priority. Like the family that dwelt within, it maintained a certain dignity of repose that could well afford to despise decoration and garniture, and look with contempt on newness. The very althæas, and lilacs, and clambering jasmines in the dooryard and the large trees that lent shade to a lawn alongside, bespoke the chronological superiority of the place. There was no spruceness of biweekly mowing about the lawn, no ambitious spick-and-spanness about the old, white, wooden, green-blinded cottage itself, but rather a restful mossiness of ancient respectability.

Here Philip watched out the lazy September days, as he had watched them since he was a lad. This was a Newport afternoon, not cloudy, but touched by a certain marine mistiness which took the edge off the hard outlines of things and put the world into tone with sweet do-nothingness. Half-sitting, half-lying, in the wide piazza chair, clearly not made to measure for him, Philip had remained for two hours, reading a little at intervals, sometimes smoking, but mostly with head drawn down between his shoulders while he gazed off at the familiar trees and houses, and noted the passing of white-capped maids with their infant convoys, and the infrequent carriages that rolled by. His mother, with her fingers busy at something of no consequence, sat near him. Each was fond of the other's presence, neither cared much for conversation. Gouverneur, the father, was enjoying a fine day in his fashion, asleep on a lounge in the library.

"It's just as I expected, mother," said Philip, coming out of a prolonged reverie. "Charley and Phillida will marry without ever getting acquainted, and then will come the blow-out."

"What do you mean by the blow-out?" said Mrs. Gouverneur. "They are neither of them quarrelsome."

"No; but they are both sensitive. Aunt Callender's sickness took Phillida to the Catskills before he got home, and she's been there ever since. I suppose he has gone up once or twice on a Saturday. But what chance has either of them to know the other's tastes? What do you suppose they talk about? Does Phillida explain her high ideals, or tell him the shabby epics of lame beggars and blind old German women in Mackerelville? Or does he explain to her how to adjust a cravat, or tell her the amusing incidents of a private ball? They can't go on always billing and cooing, and what will they talk about on rainy Sundays after they are married? I'd like to see him persuade Phillida to wear an ultra-fashionable evening dress and spend six evenings a week at entertainments and the opera. Maybe it'll be the other way; she may coax him to teach a workingmen's class in the Mission. By George! It would be a comedy to see Charley try it once." And Philip indulged in a gentle laugh.

"You don't know how much they have seen of each other, Philip. Phillida is a friend of the Hilbroughs, and Mr. Millard once brought her to our house on Sunday afternoon from the Mission or somewhere over there."

"That's so?" said Philip. "They may be better acquainted than I think. But they'll never get on."

Perceiving that this line of talk was making his mother uncomfortable, he said:

"Nature has got the soft pedal down to-day. Come, mother, it's a good day for a drive. Will you go?"

And he went himself to call the coachman.

XIII.
MRS. FRANKLAND.

She was the wife of a lawyer of moderate abilities and great trustworthiness, whose modesty, rather than his mediocrity, had confined him to a small practice in the quieter walks of the profession. Mrs. Frankland had been bred a Friend, but there was a taste for magnificence in her that argued an un-Quaker strain in her pedigree. On her marriage she had with alacrity transferred her allegiance from no-ceremony Quakerism to liturgical Episcopalianism, the religion of her husband. She gave herself credit for having in this made some sacrifice to wifely duty, though her husband would have been willing to join the orthodox Friends with her, for the simplicity and stillness of the Quakers consorted well with his constitution. Mrs. Frankland did not relinquish certain notions derived from the Friends concerning the liberty of women to speak when moved thereto. No doubt her tenacity in this particular was due to her own consciousness of possessing a gift for swaying human sympathies. Such a gift the Anglican communion, from time immemorial, has delighted to bury in a napkin—in a tablecloth, if a napkin should prove insufficient. But Mrs. Frankland was not a person to allow her talent to be buried even in the most richly dight altar-cloth. In her, as in most of the world's shining lights, zeal for a cause was indistinguishably blended with personal aspirations—honest desire to be serviceable with an unconscious desire to be known. It is only healthy and normal that any human being possessed of native power should wish to show his credentials by turning possibility into fact accomplished.

Mrs. Frankland's temperament inclined her to live like a city set on a hill, but the earlier years of her married life had been too constantly engrossed by domestic cares for her to undertake public duties. It had often been out of the question for the Franklands to keep a servant, and they had never kept more than one in a family of four children. At first this ambitious wife sought to spur her timid and precise husband to achievements that were quite impossible to him. But when the children grew larger, so that the elder ones could be of assistance in the care of the house, Mrs. Frankland's opportunity came. The fame of such women as Mrs. Livermore, Miss Willard, and Mrs. Bottome had long been a spur to her aspiration. She did not set up as a reformer. Denunciation and contention were not proper to her temperament. She was, above all, pathetic and sympathetic. She took charge of a Bible class of young ladies in the Sunday-school, and these were soon deeply moved by her talks to them as a class, and profoundly attracted to her by a way she had of gathering each one of them under the hen-mother wings of her sympathies. That she and they exaggerated the degree of her personal feeling for her individual listeners is probable; the oratorical temperament enlarges the image of a sentiment as naturally as a magic lantern magnifies a picture. In later days beloved Maggies and Matildas of the class, who had believed themselves special favorites of Mrs. Frankland—their images graven on her heart of hearts—were amazed to find that they had been quite forgotten when they had been out of sight a year or two.

The Bible-class room in the Church of St. James the Less soon became uncomfortably crowded. This was what Mrs. Frankland had long desired. She thereupon availed herself of the hospitality of a disciple of hers who had a rather large parlor, and in this she opened a Bible reading on Friday afternoons. Eloquent talk, and especially pathetic talk and vivid illustrations by means of incidents and similes, were as natural to her as melodious whistling is to a brown thrush, and the parlors were easily filled, though out of deference to church authorities men were excluded.

The success of this first course of so-called Bible readings was marked, and it determined Mrs. Frankland's career. She was enough of a woman to be particularly pleased that some of the wealthiest parishioners of St. James the Less were among her hearers, and that, having neglected her in all the years of baby-tending and dishwashing obscurity, these people now invited her to their houses and made her the confidante of their sorrows. This sort of success was as agreeable to her as merely social climbing was to Mrs. Hilbrough. For even in people of a higher type than Mrs. Frankland the unmixed heroic is not to be looked for: if one finds zeal or heroism in the crude ore it ought to be enough; the refined articles have hardly been offered in the market since the lives of the saints were written and the old romances went out of fashion.

Two results of Mrs. Frankland's first winter's readings, or preachings, had not entered into her calculations, but they were potent in deciding her to continue her career. One was that her husband's law practice was somewhat increased by her conspicuousness and popularity. He was not intrusted with great cases, but there was a very decided increase in his collection business. At the close of the season Mrs. Frankland, in making her farewell to her class, had, like a true orator, coined even her private life into effect. She touched feelingly on the sacrifice she and her family had had to make in order that she might maintain the readings, and alluded to her confidence that if Providence intended her to go forward, provision would be made for her and her children, whom she solemnly committed by an act of faith, like that of the mother of Moses, to the care of the Almighty. She said this with deep solemnity, holding up her hands toward heaven as though to lay an infant in the arms of the Good Shepherd. The vision of a house-mother trusting the Lord even for the darning of stockings was an example of faith that touched the hearers. Under the lead of a few active women in the company a purse of two hundred dollars was collected and presented to her. It was done delicately; the givers stated that their purpose was simply to enable her to relieve herself of care that the good work might not suffer. The money was thus handed not to her but to the Lord, and Mrs. Frankland could not refuse it. Do you blame her? She had earned it as fairly as the rector of St. James the Less earned his. Perhaps even more fairly, for her service was spontaneous and enthusiastic; he had grown old and weary, and his service had long since come to be mainly perfunctory.

There are cynics who imagine a woman with a mission saying, "Well, I've increased my husband's business, and I have made two hundred very necessary dollars this winter; and I will try it again." If the matter had presented itself to her mind in that way Mrs. Frankland probably would have felt a repulsion from the work she was doing. It is a very bungling mind, or a more than usually clear and candid mind, that would view a delicate personal concern in so blunt a fashion. Mrs. Frankland's mind was too clever to be bungling, and too emotional and imaginative to be critical. What she saw, with a rush of grateful emotion, was that the Divine approval of her sacrifices was manifested by this sustaining increase of temporal prosperity. The ravens of Elijah had replenished her purse because she trusted. Thus commended from above and lifted into the circle of those who like the prophets and apostles have a special vocation, she felt herself ready, as she put it, "to go forward through fire and flood if need be." It would not have been like her to remember that the fire and flood to be encountered in her career could be only rhetorical at best—painted fire and a stage flood.

Among those who chanced to be drawn to Mrs. Frankland's first course of Bible readings, and who had listened with zest, was Phillida Callender. Phillida's was a temperament different from Mrs Frankland's. The common point at which they touched was religious enthusiasm. Mrs. Frankland's enthusiasms translated themselves instantly into eloquent expression; she was an instrument richly toned that gave forth melody of joy or sorrow when smitten by emotion. Phillida was very susceptible to her congenial eloquence, but hers was essentially the higher nature, and Mrs. Frankland's religious passion, when once it reached Phillida, was transformed into practical endeavor. Mrs. Frankland was quite content to embody her ideals in felicitous speech, and cease; Phillida Callender labored day and night to make her ideals actual. Mrs. Frankland had no inclination or qualification for grappling with such thorny problems as the Mackerelville Mission afforded. It was enough for her to play the martial music which nerved others for the strife.

It often happens that the superior nature is dominated by one not its equal. Phillida did not question the superlative excellence of Mrs. Frankland, from whom she drew so many inspirations. That eloquent lady in turn admired and loved Phillida as a model disciple. Phillida drew Mrs. Hilbrough to the readings, and Mrs. Frankland bestowed on that lady all the affectionate attention her immortal soul and worldly position entitled her to, and under Mrs. Frankland's influence Mrs. Hilbrough became more religious without becoming less worldly. For nothing could have seemed more proper and laudable to Mrs. Hilbrough than the steady pursuit of great connections appropriate to her husband's wealth.

Mrs. Frankland's imagination had been moved by her success. It was not only a religious but a social triumph. Some of the rich had come, and it was in the nature of an orator of Mrs. Frankland's type to love any association with magnificence. Her figures of speech were richly draped; her imagination delighted in the grandiose. The same impulse which carried her easily from drab Quakerism to stained-glass Episcopalianism now moved her to desire that her ministry might lead her to the great, for such an association seemed to glorify the cause she had at heart. She did not think of her purpose nakedly; she was an artist in drapery, and her ideas never presented themselves in the nude; she was indeed quite incapable of seeing the bare truth; truth itself became visible to her only when it had on a wedding garment. As she stated her aspiration to herself, she longed to carry the everlasting gospel to the weary rich. "The weary rich" was the phrase she outfitted them with when considered as objects of pity and missionary zeal. To her mind they seemed, in advance, shining trophies which she hoped to win, and in her reveries she saw herself presenting them before the Almighty, somewhat as a Roman general might lead captive barbarian princes to the throne of his imperial master.

Mrs. Frankland could not be oblivious to the fact that a Bible reading among the rich would be likely to bring her better pecuniary returns than one among the poor. But she did not let this consideration appear on the surface of her thoughts, nor was it at all a primary or essential one.

She knew but little of the intricacies of social complications, and her mind now turned to Mrs. Hilbrough as the wealthiest of all her occasional hearers, and one having an ample parlor in a fashionable quarter of the town.

Her first thought had been to get Phillida to accompany her when she should go to suggest the matter to Mrs. Hilbrough. But on second thought she gave up this intermediation, for reasons which it would have been impossible for her to define. If she exerted a powerful influence over Phillida in the direction of emotion, she could not escape in turn the influence of Phillida's view of life when in her presence. Although personal ambitions mixed themselves to a certain extent with Mrs. Frankland's religious zeal, disguising themselves in rhetorical costumes of a semi-ecclesiastical sort, they did not venture to masquerade too freely before Phillida. Mrs. Frankland, though less skillful in affairs than in speech, felt that it would be better in the present instance to go to Mrs. Hilbrough alone.

It was with a glow of pleasure not wholly unworldly that she found herself one afternoon in Mrs. Hilbrough's reception-room, and noted all about her marks of taste and unstinted expenditure. To a critical spectator the encounter between the two ladies would have afforded material for a curious comparison. The ample figure of Mrs. Frankland, her mellifluous voice, her large, sweeping, cheerily affectionate, influential mode of address, brought her into striking contrast with the rather slender, quietly self-reliant Mrs. Hilbrough, whose genial cordiality covered, while it hardly concealed, the thoroughly business-like carriage of her mind.

Mrs. Frankland opened her plan with the greatest fullness of explanation as to what her motives were, but she did not feel obliged wholly to conceal the element of personal aspiration, as she would have done in talking to Phillida. Her intuitions made her feel that Mrs. Hilbrough would accept religious zeal all the more readily for its being a little diluted. Mrs. Hilbrough responded with genial cordiality and even with some show of enthusiasm. But if she had less address in speech than the other she had more in affairs. While theoretically supporting this plan she did not commit herself to it. She knew how slender as yet was her hold upon the society she courted, and she would not risk an eccentric move. Her boat was still in shallow water, with hardly buoyancy enough to float a solitary occupant; if she should undertake to carry Mrs. Frankland, it would probably go fast aground. What she said to Mrs. Frankland with superficial fervor was:

"You ought to have a person that has been longer in New York, and is better acquainted than I am, to carry out your plan, Mrs. Frankland. It would be a pity to have so excellent a scheme fail; that would probably prevent your ever succeeding—would shut you out as long as you lived. It would be a great honor to me to have your readings, but you must begin under better auspices. I regret to say this. Your readings, rightly started, will be a great success, and I should like to have them here."

This last was in a sense sincere. Mrs. Hilbrough was sure of Mrs. Frankland's success if once the thing were patronized by the right people. Here Mrs. Frankland looked disappointed, but in a moment broke forth again in adroit and fervid statement of the good that might be done, mingled with a flattering protest against Mrs. Hilbrough's too humble estimate of her influence in society. While she proceeded, Mrs. Hilbrough was revolving a plan for giving Mrs. Frankland more than she asked, while avoiding personal responsibility.

"I think I can do something," she said, with a manner less cordial but more sincere than that she had previously assumed. "Leave the matter with me, and I may be able to open to you a grand house, not a plain, middling place like mine"—and she waved her hand deprecatingly toward the furnishings which seemed to Mrs. Frankland inconceivably rich—"a grand house with all the prestige of a great family. I don't know that I shall succeed with my friend, but for the sake of the cause I am willing to try. I won't tell you anything about it till I try. If I fail, I fail, but for the present leave all to me."

Mrs. Frankland was not the sort of person to relish being guided by another, but in Mrs. Hilbrough she had met her superior in leadership. Reluctantly she felt herself obliged to hand over the helm of her own craft, holding herself ready to disembark at length wherever Mrs. Hilbrough might reach dry ground.

Of all that Mrs. Hilbrough had won in her first winter's social campaign, the achievement that gave her most pleasure was the making acquaintance and entering into fast ripening friendship with Mrs. Van Horne. Little Mrs. Van Horne was not in herself very desirable as a friend, but she was one of those whose fortune it is to have the toil of thousands at their disposal. Her magnificence was fed by an army: innumerable laborers with spades and shovels, picks and blasting-drills, working in smoke and dripping darkness to bore railway paths through mountain chains; grimy stokers and clear-sighted engineers; brakemen dripping in the chilly rain; switchmen watching out the weary night by dim lanterns or flickering torches; desk-worn clerks and methodical ticket-sellers; civil engineers using brains and long training over their profiles and cross-sectionings; and scores of able "captains of industry," such as superintendents, passenger agents, and traffic managers—all these, and others, by their steady toil kept an unfailing cataract of wealth pouring into the Van Horne coffers. In herself Mrs. Van Horne had not half the force of Mrs. Hilbrough, but as the queen bee of this widespread toil and traffic, fed and clad and decked as she was by the fruits of the labor of a hundred thousand men, Mrs. Van Horne had an enormous factitious value in the world. How to bear her dignity as the wife of a man who used the million as a unit she did not know, for though she affected a reserved stateliness of manner, it did not set well on such a round-faced, impressionable little woman quite incapable of charting a course for herself. No show of leadership had been hers, but she had taken her cue from this and that stronger nature, until by chance she came in hailing distance of Mrs. Hilbrough. The two were perfect counterparts. Mrs. Hilbrough was clairvoyant and of prompt decision, but she lacked the commanding position for personal leadership. She was superficially deferential to Mrs. Van Horne's older standing and vastly greater wealth, but she swiftly gained the real ascendancy. Her apparent submission of everything to Mrs. Van Horne's wisdom, while adroitly making up a judgment for the undecided little lady, was just what Mrs. Van Horne liked, and in three months' acquaintance that lady had come to lean more and more on Mrs. Hilbrough. The intimacy with so close a friend rendered life much more comfortable for Mrs. Van Horne, in that it relieved her from taking advice of her sisters-in-law, who always gave counsel with a consciousness of superiority. Now she could appear in her family with opinions and purposes apparently home-made. To a woman of Mrs. Hilbrough's cleverness the friendship with one whose brooks ran gold rendered social success certain.

Mrs. Hilbrough was a natural promoter. Her energy inclined her to take hold of a new enterprise for the mere pleasure of pushing it. She felt a real delight in the religious passions awakened by Mrs. Frankland's addresses; she foresaw an interesting career opening up before that gifted woman, and to help her would give Mrs. Hilbrough a complex pleasure. That Mrs. Frankland's addresses if given in Mrs. Van Horne's parlors would excite attention and make a great stir she foresaw, and for many reasons she would like to bring this about. Mrs. Hilbrough did not analyze her motives; that would have been tiresome. She entered them all up in a sort of lump sum to the credit of her religious zeal, and was just a little pleased to find so much of her early devotion to religion left over. Let the entry stand as she made it. Let us not be of the class unbearable who are ever trying to dissipate those lovely illusions that keep alive human complacency and make life endurable.

Mrs. Hilbrough contrived to bring Mrs. Frankland with her abounding enthusiasm and her wide-sweeping curves of inflection and gesture into acquaintance with the great but rather pulpy Mrs. Van Horne. The natural inequality of forces in the two did the rest. Mrs. Van Horne, weary of the inevitable limitations of abnormal wealth, and fatigued in the vain endeavor to procure any satisfaction which bore the slightest proportion to the vast family accretion, found a repose she had longed for when she was caught up in the fiery chariot of Mrs. Frankland's eloquent talk. All the vast mass of things that had confronted and bullied her so long was swept into a rhetorical dustpan, and she could feel herself at length as a human soul without having to remember her possessions. Mrs. Frankland's phrase of "the weary rich" exactly fitted her, and to her Mrs. Frankland's eloquent pulverizing of the glory of this world brought a sort of emancipation.

Mrs. Frankland unfolded to her a desire to reach those who would not attend her readings at any but a very fashionable house. Mrs. Van Horne, encouraged thereto by Mrs. Hilbrough, was delighted at finding a novel and congenial use for some of the luxurious and pompous upholstery of her life of which she was so tired. Her parlors were opened, and "persons of the highest fashion" were pleased to find a private and suitably decorated wicker-gate leading into a strait and narrow vestibule train, limited, fitted up with all the consolations and relieved of most of the discomforts of an old-fashioned religious pilgrimage.