The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York

"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.

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 retroussé, 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.

"Well," proceeded Miss Bowyer, "this is what we call Christian Science. It's the science of sciences. It's as much above the rude method of primitive faith-cure practised by the apostles as the heavens are above the earth. We understand from knowing the philosophy of miracles the reason why we do not always succeed. We can not always secure the impressible condition by producing the quiescence of the large brain. But if we understand the theory of hypnotism we shall be able to put the cerebrum at rest and secure the passive impressible state of the cerebellum; that is, an introverted condition of the mind. This securing of interior perception is the basis of all success."

"Then you do not believe that God does it all," said Phillida, with a twitch of the shoulder expressing the repulsion she felt from this incomprehensible explication.

"Oh, yes. Faith in God the All-good is at the root of it all. It is one of the things that induces passive receptivity. We must convince the patient that the unity of God excludes the real existence of evil."

"But still you do not admit the direct action of God?" queried Phillida.

"God works through the forces in nature, according to law," said Miss Bowyer, glibly.

"That is just as true of the action of medicine," said Phillida. "I don't like this affecting to put God in while you leave him out of your mixture. Besides, I don't pretend that I understand your explanation."

"It is somewhat fine; all philosophy of man's internal nature is so. It's not a thing to argue about. Intellect argues; spirit perceives. But if you would give your mind to Truth in a receptive way, Truth would set you free. I am sure you would be convinced after reading the books on the question."

Phillida made no offer to read the books, and this seemed to disappoint Miss Bowyer. After a pause she began again:

"You might as well know, Miss Callender, that I had a business object in view in coming to see you. Some of our Christian Science people are all enthusiasm, but I am trained to business, and I carry on my practice on business principles. There is no reason why a doctor who treats diseases on the mortal plane by medication should be paid for his time, and you and I not be. Is there?"

"I don't know," said Phillida, mechanically.

"Well, now, I have given my time to the beautiful work of Christian Science healing. I have an office in East Fourteenth street. It is a blessed religious work. But I can't work without pay; I follow it as a business, and it's got to support me. I have as much right to get on in the world as anybody else. Now I've cleared over and above my office-rent, including what I get for teaching a class in Christian Science, almost eighteen hundred dollars in the very first year since I set up. That's pretty good for a lone woman; don't you think so?"

Phillida slightly inclined her head to avoid speaking.

"Well, now, I haven't got many advantages. My brother kept a health-lift a few years ago when everything was cured by condensed exercise. But people got tired of condensed exercise, and then he had a blue-glass solarium until that somehow went out of fashion. I helped run the female side of his business, you know, for part of the profits. My education is all business. I didn't have any time to learn painting or fine manners, or any music, except to play Moody-and-Sankeys on the melodeon. My practice is mostly among the poor, or the people that are only so-so. I haven't got the ways that go down with rich people, nor anybody to give me a start among them. Well, now, I say to myself, science is all very well, and faith is all very well, but you want something more than that to get on in a large way. I would rather get on in a large way. Wouldn't you?"

Here she paused, but Phillida sat motionless and stoically attentive. She only answered, "Well, I don't know."

"Now, when I heard that you'd been sent for to the Maginnis child, and that you have got relations that go among rich people, I says to myself, she's my partner. I'll furnish the science, and I'll do the talking, and the drumming-up business, and the collecting bills, and all that; and you, with your stylish ways, don't you know? and your good looks, and your family connections, and all that, will help me to get in where I want to get in. Once in, we're sure to win. There's no reason, Miss Callender, why we shouldn't get rich. I will give you half of my practice already established, and I'll teach you the science and how to manage, you know; the great thing is to know how to manage your patients, you see. I learned that in the health-lift and the blue-glass solarium. We'll move farther up town, say to West Thirty-fourth street. Then you can, no doubt, write a beautiful letter—that'll qualify us to go into what is called 'absent treatment.' We'll advertise, 'Absent treatment a specialty,' and altogether we can make ten thousand or even twenty thousand, maybe, a year, in a little while. Keep our own carriage, and so on. What do you say to that?" Miss Bowyer's uplifted nose was now turned toward Phillida in triumphant expectation. She had not long to wait for a reply. Phillida's feelings had gathered head enough to break through. She answered promptly:

"I do not believe in your science, and wouldn't for the world take money from those that I am able to help with my prayers." Phillida said this with a sudden fire that dismayed Miss Bowyer.

"But you'll look into the matter maybe, Miss Callender?"

"No; I will not. I hate the whole business." Phillida wanted to add, "and you besides"; however, she only said: "Don't say any more, please. I won't have anything at all to do with it." Phillida rose, but Miss Bowyer did not take the hint.

"You're pretty high-toned, it seems to me," said the Scientist, smiling, and speaking without irritation. "You're going to throw away the great chance of your life. Perhaps you'll read some books that set forth the mighty truths of Christian Science if I send them. You ought to be open to conviction. If you could only know some of the cases I myself have lately cured—a case of belief in rheumatism of three years' standing, and a case of belief in mental prostration of six years' duration. If you could only have seen the joyful results. I cured lately an obstinate case of belief in neuralgia, and another of cancer—advanced stage. A case of belief in consumption with goitre was lately cured in the West. Perhaps you'll look over some numbers of the 'International Magazine of Christian Science' if I send them to you; under the head of 'Sheaves from the Harvest Field,' it gives many remarkable cases."

"I have no time to read anything of the sort," said Phillida, still standing.

"Oh, well, then, I'll just come in now and then and explain the different parts of the science to you. It's a great subject, and we may get mutual benefit by comparing notes."

The prospect of repeated calls from Eleanor Arabella Bowyer put Phillida's already excited nerves into something like a panic. She had reached the utmost point of endurance.

"No," she said; "I will have nothing at all to do with it. You must excuse me; positively, I must be excused. I am very busy, and I can not pursue the subject further."

"Certainly," said the Metaphysical Practitioner, rising reluctantly; "but I think I'll take the liberty of calling again when you're more at leisure. You won't object, I'm sure, to my coming in next week?"

"Yes," said Phillida; "I will not have anything to do with the matter you propose, and I can not see you again. You must excuse me."

"Well, we never get offended, Miss Callender. Christian Science does not argue. We never resent an affront, but live in love and charity with all. That is Christian Science. Our success depends on purity and a Christian spirit. I think I'll send you a little book," added Miss Bowyer, as reluctantly she felt herself propelled towards the door by the sheer force of Phillida's manner. "Just a little book; it won't take long to read."

As Miss Bowyer said this she paused in the vestibule with her back to Phillida. She was looking into the street, trying to think of some new device for gaining her end.

"I won't read a book if you send it. Save yourself the trouble," said Phillida, softly closing the inner door behind Miss Bowyer, leaving her standing face outwards in the vestibule.

"You had a hard time shaking her off, didn't you, Philly?" said Agatha, issuing from the back part of the dark hall, having come out of the back room just in time to catch a glimpse of Eleanor Bowyer. "I declare, the way you closed the door on her at the last was too good."

"Sh-h!" said Phillida, pointing to the shadow cast against the ground glass of the inner door by the tall form of the Christian Scientist and Metaphysical Practitioner in the light of the street lamp.

"I don't care whether she hears or not," said Agatha, dropping her voice, nevertheless; "she ought to be snubbed. You're a little too easy. That woman is meditating whether she sha'n't break into the house to preach Christian Science. There, she's going at last; she won't commit Christian burglary this time. I suppose she thinks burglary doesn't really exist, since it's contrary to the unity of God. Anyhow, she wouldn't commit burglary, because housebreaking is a physical thing that's transacted on the mortal plane."

Agatha said this in Miss Bowyer's tone, and Phillida's vexation gave way to laughter.

XXVII.
A BAD CASE.

No child is just like a parent. Phillida differed from her strenuous father in nature by the addition of esthetic feeling. Her education had not tended to develop this, but it made itself felt. Her lofty notions of self-sacrifice were stimulated by a love for the sublime. Other young girls read romances; Phillida tried to weave her own life into one. The desire for the beautiful, the graceful, the externally appropriate, so long denied and suppressed, furnished the basis of her affection for Millard. A strong passion never leaves the nature the same, and under the influence of Millard her esthetic sense had grown. Nothing that Eleanor Arabella Bowyer had said assailed the logical groundwork of her faith. But during the hours following that conversation it was impossible for her to reflect with pleasure, as had been her wont, on the benefits derived from her prayers by those who had been healed in whole or in part through her mediation. A remembrance of the jargon of the Christian Scientist mingled with and disturbed her meditations; the case of a belief in rheumatism and the case of a belief in consumption with goitre stood grinning at her like rude burlesques of her own cures, making ridiculous the work that had hitherto seemed so holy. But when the morrow came she was better able to disentangle her thoughts of healing from such phrases as "the passive impressible state" and "interior perception." And when at length the remembrance of Miss Bowyer had grown more dim, the habitual way of looking at her work returned.

One morning about ten days later, while she was at breakfast, the basement door-bell was rung, and when the servant answered it Phillida heard some one in the area, speaking with a German accent.

"Please tell Miss Callender that Rudolph Schulenberg will like to speak with her."

Phillida rose and went to the door.

"Miss Callender," said Rudolph, "Mina is so sick for three days already and she hopes you will come to her right away this morning, wunst, if you will be so kind."

"Certainly I will. But what is the matter with her? Is it the old trouble with the back?"

"No; it is much worse as that. She has got such a cough, and she can not breathe. Mother she believe that Mina is heart-sick and will die wunst already."

"I will come in half an hour or so."

"If you would. My mother her heart is just breaking. But Mina is sure that if Miss Callender will come and pray with her the cough will all go away wunst more already."

Phillida finished her breakfast in almost total silence, and then without haste left the house. She distinctly found it harder to maintain her attitude of faith than it had been. But all along the street she braced herself by prayer and meditation, until her spirit was once more wrought into an ecstasy of religious exaltation. She mounted the familiar stairs, thronged now with noisy-footed and vociferous children issuing from the various family cells on each level to set out for school.

"How do you do, Mrs. Schulenberg?" said Phillida, as she encountered the mother on the landing in front of her door. "How is Wilhelmina?"

"Bad, very bad," whispered the mother, closing the door behind her and looking at Phillida with a face laden with despair. Then alternately wiping her eyes with her apron and shaking her head ominously, she said: "She will never get well this time. She is too bad already. She is truly heart-sick."

"Have you had a doctor?"

"No; Mina will not have only but you. I tell her it is no use to pray when she is so sick; she must have a doctor. But no."

"How long has she been sick?"

"Well, three or four days; but she was not well"—the mother put her hand on her chest—"for a week. She has been thinking you would come." Mrs. Schulenberg's speech gave way to tears and a despairing shaking of the head from side to side.

Phillida entered, and found Mina bolstered in her chair, flushed with fever and gasping for breath. The sudden change in her appearance was appalling.

"I thought if you would come, nothing would seem too hard for your prayers. O Miss Callender,"—her voice died to a hoarse whisper,—"pray for me, I wanted to die wunst already; you remember it. But ever since I have been better it has made my mother and Rudolph so happy again. If now I die what will mother do?"

The spectacle of the emaciated girl wrestling for breath and panting with fever, while her doom was written upon her face, oppressed the mind of Phillida. Was it possible that prayer could save one so visibly smitten? She turned and looked at the mother standing just inside the door, her face wrung with the agony of despair while she yet watched Phillida with eagerness to see if she had anything to propose that promised relief. Then a terrible sense of what was expected of her by mother and daughter came over her mind, and her spirits sank as under the weight of a millstone.

Phillida was not one of those philanthropists whom use has enabled to look on suffering in a dry and professional way. She was most susceptible on the side of her sympathies. Her depression came from pity, and her religious exaltation often came from the same source. After a minute of talk and homely ministry to Wilhelmina's comfort, Phillida's soul rose bravely to its burden. The threat of bereavement that hung over the widow and her son, the shadow of death that fell upon the already stricken life of the unfortunate young woman, might be dissipated by the goodness of God. The sphere into which Phillida rose was not one of thought but one of intense and exalted feeling. The sordid and depressing surroundings—the dingy and broken-backed chairs, the cracked and battered cooking-stove, the ancient chest of drawers without a knob left upon it, the odor of German tenement cookery and of feather-beds—vanished now. Wilhelmina, for her part, held Phillida fast by the hand and saw no one but her savior, and Phillida felt a moving of the heart that one feels in pulling a drowning person from the water, and that uplifting of the spirit that comes to those of the true prophetic temperament. She read in a gentle, fervent voice some of the ancient miracles of healing from the English columns of the leather-covered German and English Testament, while the exhausted Wilhelmina still held her hand and wrestled for the breath of life.

Then Phillida knelt by the well-worn wooden-bottom chair while Mrs. Schulenberg knelt by a stool on the other side of the stove, burying her face in her apron. Never was prayer more sincere, never was prayer more womanly or more touching. As Phillida proceeded with her recital of Wilhelmina's sufferings, as she alluded to the value of Mina to her mother and the absent Rudolph, and then prayed for the merciful interposition of God, the mother sobbed aloud, Phillida's faith rose with the growing excitement of her pity, and she closed the prayer at length without a doubt that Mina would be cured.

"I do feel a little better now," said Wilhelmina, when the prayer was ended.

"I will bring you something from the Diet Kitchen," said Phillida as she went out. The patient had scarcely tasted food for two days, but when Phillida came back she ate a little and thought herself better.

Phillida came again in the afternoon, and was disappointed not to find Mina improving. But the sick girl clung to her, and while Phillida remained she would have nothing even from the hand of her mother. The scene of the morning was repeated; again Phillida prayed, again Wilhelmina was a little better, and ate a little broth from the hands of her good angel.

The burden of the poor girl and her mother rested heavily on Phillida during the evening and whenever she awakened during the night. Mrs. Callender and Agatha only asked how she found Wilhelmina; they thought it best not to intrude on the anxiety in Phillida's mind, the nature of which they divined.

When breakfast was over the next morning Phillida hastened again to the Schulenbergs.

"Ah! it is no good this time; I shall surely die," gasped Wilhelmina, sitting bolstered on her couch and looking greatly worse than the day before. "The night has been bad. I have had to fight and fight all the long night for my breath. Miss Callender, my time has come."

The mother was looking out of the window to conceal her tears. But Phillida's courage was of the military sort that rises with supreme difficulty. She exhorted Wilhelmina to faith, to unswerving belief, and then again she mingled her petitions with the sobs of the mother and the distressful breathing of the daughter. This morning Wilhelmina grew no better after the prayer, and she ate hardly two spoonfuls of the broth that was given her. She would not take it from Phillida this time. Seeing prayers could not save her and that she must die, the instincts of infancy and the memories of long invalidism and dependence were now dominant, and she clung only to her mother.

"You haf always loved me, mother; I will haf nobody now any more but you, my mother, the time I haf to stay with you is so short. You will be sorry, mother, so sorry, when poor unfortunate Wilhelmina, that has always been such a trouble, is gone already."

This talk from the smitten creature broke down Phillida's self-control, and she wept with the others. Then in despondency she started home. But at the bottom of the stairs she turned back and climbed again to the top, and, re-entering the tenement, she called Mrs. Schulenberg to her. "You'd better get a doctor."

Wilhelmina with the preternaturally quick hearing of a feverish invalid caught the words and said: "No. What is the use? The doctor will want some of poor Rudolph's money. What good can the doctor do? I am just so good as dead already."

"But, Wilhelmina dear," said Phillida, coming over to her, "we have no right to leave the matter this way. If you die, then Rudolph and your mother will say, 'Ah, if we'd only had a doctor!'"

"That is true," gasped Mina. "Send for Dr. Beswick, mother."

A neighbor was engaged to carry the message to Dr. Beswick in Seventeenth street, and Phillida went her way homeward, slowly and in dejection.

XXVIII.
DR. BESWICK'S OPINION.

Dr. Beswick of East Seventeenth street was a man from the country, still under thirty, who had managed to earn money enough to get through the College of Physicians and Surgeons by working as a school-teacher between times. Ambitious as such self-lifted country fellows are apt to be, he had preferred to engage in the harsh competition of the metropolis in hope of one day achieving professional distinction. To a poor man the first necessity is an immediate livelihood. Such favorite cross-streets of the doctors as Thirty-fourth, and the yet more fashionable doctor-haunted up-and-down thoroughfares, were for long years to come far beyond the reach of a man without money or social backing, though Beswick saw visions of a future. He had planted himself in Mackerelville, where the people must get their medical advice cheap, and where a young doctor might therefore make a beginning. The sweetheart of his youth had entered the Training School for Nurses just when he had set out to study medicine. They two had waited long, but she had saved a few dollars, and at the end of his second year in practice, his income having reached a precarious probability of five hundred a year, they had married and set up office and house together in two rooms and a dark closet. There were advantages in this condensed arrangement, since the new Mrs. Beswick could enjoy the husband for whom she had waited so long and faithfully, by sitting on the lounge in the office whenever she had sedentary employment—the same lounge that was opened out at night into a bed. Both of the Beswicks were inured to small and hard quarters, and even these they had been obliged to share with strangers; since, therefore, they must lead a kind of camp life in the crowded metropolis they found it delightful to season their perpetual picnic with each other's society. And, moreover, two rooms for two people seemed by comparison a luxury of expansion. When youth and love go into partnership they feel no hardships, and for the present the most renowned doctor in Madison Avenue was probably something less than half as happy as these two lovers living in a cubbyhole with all the world before them, though but precious little of it within their reach beyond two well-worn trunks, three chairs, a table, and a bedstead lounge.

Dr. Beswick was profoundly unknown to fame, but he was none the less a great authority on medicine as well as on most other things in the estimation of Mrs. Beswick, and, for that matter, of himself as well. He liked, as most men do, to display his knowledge before his wife, and to her he talked of his patients and of the good advice he had given them and how he had managed them, and sometimes also of the mistakes of his competitors; and he treated her to remarks on that favorite theme of the struggling general practitioner, the narrowness of the celebrated specialists. When he came back from his visit to Wilhelmina it was with a smile lighting up all that was visible of his face between two thrifty patches of red side-whiskers.

"The patient is not very sick, I should say from your face," was Mrs. Beswick's remark as she finished sewing together the two ends of a piece of crash for a towel. For this towel the doctor had made a kind of roller, the night before, by cutting a piece off a broken mop-stick and hanging it on brackets carved with his jack-knife and nailed to the closet-door. "I can always tell by your face the condition of the patient," added Mrs. Beswick.

"That's where you're mistaken this time, my love," he said triumphantly. "The Schulenberg girl will die within two weeks." And he smiled again at the thought.

"What do you smile so for? You are not generally so glad to lose a patient," she said, holding up the towel for his inspection, using her hand and forearm for a temporary roller to show it off.

"Oh! no; not that," he said, nodding appreciatively at the towel while he talked of something else. "I suppose I ought to be sorry for the poor girl, and her mother does take on dreadfully. But this case'll explode that faith-quackery if anything can. The Christian Science doctor, Miss Cullender, or something of the sort, made her great sensation over this girl, who had some trouble in her back and a good deal the matter with her nerves."

"She's the one there was so much talk about, is she?" asked Mrs. Beswick, showing more animation than sympathy.

"Yes; when her mind had been sufficiently excited she believed herself cured, and got up and even walked a little in the square. That's what gave the woman faith-doctor her run. I don't know much about the faith-doctor, but she's made a pretty penny, first and last, out of this Schulenberg case, I'll bet. Now the girl's going to die out of hand, and I understand from the mother that the faith-cure won't work. The faith-doctor's thrown up the case."

"I suppose the faith-doctor believes in herself," said the wife.

"Naah!" said the doctor with that depth of contempt which only a rather young man can express. "She? She's a quack and a humbug. Making money out of religion and tomfoolery. I'll give her a piece of my mind if she ever crosses my track or meddles with my patients."

Crowing is a masculine foible, and this sort of brag is the natural recreation of a young man in the presence of femininity.

Two hours later, a frugal dinner of soup and bread and butter having been served and eaten in the mean time, and Mrs. Beswick having also washed a double set of plate, cup, saucer, knife, and fork,—there were no tumblers; it seemed more affectionate and social in this turtle-dove stage to drink water from a partnership cup,—the afternoon hung a little heavy on their hands. It was not his day at the dispensary, and so there was nothing for the doctor to do but to read a medical journal and wait for patients who did not come, while his wife sat and sewed. They essayed to break the ennui a little by a conversation which consisted in his throwing her a kiss upon his hand, now and then, and her responding with some term of endearment. But even this grew monotonous. Late in the afternoon the bell rang, and the doctor opened the door. There entered some one evidently not of Mackerelville, a modestly well-dressed young lady of dignified bearing and a gentle grace of manner that marked her position in life beyond mistake. Mrs. Beswick glanced hurriedly at the face, and then made a mental but descriptive inventory of the costume down to the toes of the boots, rising meanwhile, work in hand, to leave the room.

"Please don't let me disturb you," said the newcomer to the doctor's wife; "don't go. What I have to say to the doctor is not private."

Mrs. Beswick sat down again, glad to know more of so unusual a visitor.

"Dr. Beswick, I am Miss Callender," said the young lady, accepting the chair the doctor had set out for her. "I called as a friend to inquire, if you don't mind telling me, what you think of Wilhelmina Schulenberg."

When Dr. Beswick had made up his mind to dislike Miss Callender and to snub her on the first occasion in the interest of science and professional self-respect, he had not figured to himself just this kind of a person. So much did she impress him that if it had not been for the necessity he felt to justify himself in the presence of his wife he might have put away his professional scruples. As it was he colored a little, and it was only after a visible struggle with himself that he said:

"You know, Miss Callender, that I am precluded by the rules of the profession from consultation with one who is not a regular practitioner."

Miss Callender looked puzzled. She said, "I did not know that I was violating proprieties. I did not know the rules were so strict. I thought you might tell me as a friend of the family."

"Don't you think you might do that, dear?" suggested Mrs. Beswick, who felt herself drawn to this young lady, for Miss Callender had won her heart by an evident deference for Dr. Beswick's position and professional knowledge, and she was touched by a certain sadness in the face and voice of the visitor.

The doctor relented when he found that his wife would sustain him in it.

"I may answer your question if you ask it merely as a friend of the patient, but not as recognizing your standing as a practitioner," he said.

Phillida answered with a quick flush of pain and surprise, "I am not a practitioner, Dr. Beswick. You are under some mistake. I know nothing about medicine."

"I didn't suppose you did," said the doctor with a smile. "But are you not what they call a Christian Scientist?"

"I? I hate what they call Christian Science. It seems to me a lot of nonsense that nobody can comprehend. I suppose it's an honest delusion on the part of some people and a mixture of mistake and imposture on the part of others."

"You have made a pretty good diagnosis, if you are not a physician," said Dr. Beswick, laughing, partly at Phillida's characterization of Christian Science and partly at his own reply, which seemed to him a remark that skillfully combined wit with a dash of polite flattery. "But, Miss Callender,—I beg your pardon for saying it,—people call you a faith-doctor."

"Yes; I know," said Phillida, compressing her lips.

"Did you not treat this Schulenberg girl as a faith-healer?"

"I prayed for her as a friend," said Phillida, "and encouraged her to believe that she might be healed if she could exercise faith. She did get much better."

"I know, I know," said the doctor in an offhand way; "a well-known result of strong belief in cases of nerve disease. But, pardon me, you have had other cases that I have heard of. Now don't you think that the practice of faith-healing for—for—compensation makes you a practitioner?"

"For compensation?" said Phillida, with a slight gesture of impatience. "Who told you that I took money?"

It was the doctor's turn to be confounded.

"I declare, I don't know. Don't you take pay, though?"

"Not a cent have I ever taken directly or indirectly." Phillida's already overstrained sensitiveness on this subject now broke forth into something like anger. "I would not accept money for such a service for the world," she said. "In making such an unwarranted presumption you have done me great wrong. I am a Sunday-school teacher and mission worker. Such services are not usually paid for, and such an assumption on your part is unjustifiable. If you had only informed yourself better, Dr. Beswick—"

"I am very sorry," broke in the doctor. "I didn't mean to be offensive. I—"

"Indeed, Miss Callender," said Mrs. Beswick, speaking in a pleasant, full voice and with an accent that marked her as not a New Yorker, "he didn't mean to be disrespectful. The doctor is a gentleman; he couldn't be disrespectful to a lady intentionally. He didn't know anything but just what folks say, and they speak of you as the faith-doctor and the woman doctor, you see. You must forgive the mistake."

This pleading of a wife in defense of her husband touched a chord in Phillida and excited an emotion she could not define. There was that in her own heart which answered to this conjugal championship. She could have envied Mrs. Beswick her poverty with her right to defend the man she loved. She felt an increasing interest in the quiet, broad-faced, wholesome-looking woman, and she answered:

"I know, Mrs. Beswick, your husband is not so much to blame. I spoke too hastily. I am a little too sensitive on that point. I don't pretend to like to be talked about and called a faith-doctor."

There was an awkward pause, which the doctor broke by saying presently in a subdued voice:

"In regard to your perfectly proper question, Miss Callender, I will say that the Schulenberg young woman has acute pulmonary tuberculosis."

"Which means?" queried Phillida, contracting her brows.

"What people call galloping consumption," said the doctor. "Now, I can't help saying, Miss Callender,"—the doctor's habitual self-contentment regained sway in his voice and manner,—"that this particular sort of consumption is one of the things that neither medicine nor faith was ever known to heal since the world was made. This young woman's lungs are full of miliary tubercles—little round bodies the size of a millet seed. The tissues are partly destroyed already. You might as well try to make an amputated leg grow on again by medicine or by prayer as to try to reconstruct her lungs by similar means. She has got to die, and I left her only some soothing medicine, and told her mother there was no use of making a doctor's bill."

There was a straightforward rectitude in Dr. Beswick that inclined Phillida to forgive his bluntness of utterance and lack of manner. Here at least was no managing of a patient to get money, after the manner hinted at by Miss Bowyer. The distinction between diseases that might and those that might not be cured or mitigated by a faith-process, which Phillida detected in the doctor's words, quickened again the doubts which had begun to assail her regarding the soundness of the belief on which she had been acting, and awakened a desire to hear more. She wanted to ask him about it, but sensitiveness regarding her private affairs made her shrink. In another moment she had reflected that it would be better to hear what was to be said on this subject from a stranger than from one who knew her. The natural honesty and courage of her nature impelled her to submit further to Dr. Beswick's rather blunt knife.

"You seem to think that some diseases are curable by faith and some not, Dr. Beswick," she said.

"Certainly," said Beswick, tipping his chair back and drumming on the table softly with his fingers. "We use faith-cure and mind-cure in certain diseases of the nerves. Nothing could have been better for that Schulenberg girl than for you to make her believe she could walk. I should have tried that dodge myself, but in a different way, if I had been called."

"Don't speak in that way, dear," interposed Mrs. Beswick, softly, seeing that Phillida was pained.

"Why, what's the matter with that way?" said the doctor, good-naturedly.

"Well, Miss Callender will think you are not honest if you talk about trying a dodge. Besides, I'm sure Miss Callender isn't the kind of person that would say what she didn't believe. It was no dodge with her."

"No; of course not," said the doctor. "I didn't mean that."

"You do not admit any divine agency in the matter, doctor?" asked Phillida.

"How can we? The starting-point of that poor girl's galloping consumption, according to the highest medical opinion of our time, is a little organism called a bacillus. These bacilli are so small that ten thousand of them laid in a row lengthwise would only measure an inch. They multiply with great rapidity, and as yet we can not destroy them without destroying the patient. You might just as well go to praying that the weeds should be exterminated in your garden, or try to clear the Schulenberg tenement of croton bugs by faith, as to try to heal that young woman in that way. Did you ever look into the throat of a diphtheria patient?"

"No," said Phillida.

"Well, you can plainly see little white patches of false membrane there. By examining this membrane we have come to know the very species that does the mischief—the micrococcus diphtheriticus."

The conversation was naturally a little disagreeable to Phillida, who now rose to depart without making reply. She went over and shook hands with Mrs. Beswick, partly from an instinctive kindness, judging from her speech that she was a stranger in New York. Besides, she felt strongly drawn to this simple and loyal-hearted woman.

"If you'd like to come to the mission, Mrs. Beswick," she said, "I'd take pleasure in introducing you. You'd find good friends among the people there and good work to do. The mission people are not all faith-healers like me."

"Oh, now, I'd like them better if they were like you, Miss Callender. I think I'd like to go. I couldn't do much; I have to do my own work; the doctor's practice is growing, but he hasn't been here long, you know. I think I might go"—this with a look of inquiry at her husband.

"Why not?" said Dr. Beswick. He could not help seeing that the association of his wife with the mission might serve to extend his practice, and that even Mrs. Beswick must grow tired after a while of conversations with him alone, sugared though they were.

When Phillida had gone the doctor's wife said to her husband that she never had seen a nicer lady than that Miss Callender. "I just love her," she declared, "if she does believe in faith-healing."

"Ah, well, what I said to her will have its effect," he replied, with suppressed exultation.

"You said just the right thing, my love. You 'most always do. But I was afraid you would hurt her feelings a little. She doesn't seem very happy."