Kitabı oku: «The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York», sayfa 20

XXXIII.
A FAMOUS VICTORY

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

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

"At what time does he come down?"

"At a quarter to eight."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Miss Bowyer."

"Does she still refuse to leave?"

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

"You want her out?"

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

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

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

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

"Did you wish to see me?"

"Are you Miss Bowyer?"

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

"Are you the Christian Scientist?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charley laughed in spite of himself.

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

Miss Bowyer now pushed on the door in vain.

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

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

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

"You are now dismissed by the wife."

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

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

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

"I don't like to dispute the word of a lady," he said, "but you know that you are not a proper practitioner, and that in case of a contagious disease the Board of Health would put you out of here neck and heels, if I must speak so roughly. Mrs. Martin is my aunt. If you make any trouble, I shall feel obliged to have you arrested at once. If you go home quietly and do not say a word to Mr. Martin, I'll let you off. You have no doubt lost patients of this kind before, and if I look up your record – "

"My hat and cloak are in there," said Miss Bowyer.

"If you renounce the case and say no more to Mr. Martin I will not follow you up," said Charley; "but turn your hand against Mrs. Martin, and I'll spend a thousand dollars to put you in prison."

This put a new aspect on the case in Miss Bowyer's mind. That Mrs. Martin had influential friends she had not dreamed. Miss Bowyer had had one tilt with the authorities, and she preferred not to try it again.

"My hat and cloak are in there," she repeated, pushing on the door.

"Stand aside," said Millard, "and I will get them."

Somehow Millard had reached Miss Bowyer's interior perception and put her into the conscious, impressible, passive state, in which his will was hers. She moved to the other side of the dark hall in such a state of mind that she could hardly have told whether the magnetism of her brain was in the cerebrum or in the cerebellum or in a state of oscillation between the two.

"Aunt Hannah," called Millard, "open the door."

The bolt was shoved back by Mrs. Martin. Millard opened the door a little way, holding the knob firmly in his right hand. Mrs. Martin stood well out of sight behind the door, from an undefined fear of getting in range of Miss Bowyer, whose calm bullying had put Mrs. Martin into some impassive state not laid down in works on Christian Science.

"Give me Miss Bowyer's hat and cloak," said Millard.

The things were passed out by Mrs. Martin, who, in doing so, exposed nothing but her right hand to the enemy, while Charley took them in his left and passed them to Miss Bowyer.

"Now remember," he said, closing the door and holding it until he heard the bolt shoved to its place again, "if you know what is good for you, you will not make the slightest movement in this case."

"But you will not refuse me my fee," she said. "You have put me out of a case that would have been worth ten or twenty dollars. I shall expect you to pay me something."

Millard hesitated. It might be better not to provoke her too far; but on the other hand, he could not suppress his indignation on his aunt's behalf so far as to give her money.

"Send me your bill, made out explicitly for medical services in this case. Address the cashier of the Bank of Manhadoes. I will pay you if your bill is regularly made out."

Miss Bowyer went down the stairs and into the street. But the more she thought of it the more she was convinced that this demand for a regular bill for medical services from a non-registered practitioner concealed some new device to entrap her. She had had enough of that young man up-stairs, and, much as she disliked the alternative, she thought it best to let her fee go uncollected, unless she could some day collect it quietly from the head of the Martin family. Her magnetism had never before been so much out of harmony with every sort of odylic emanation in the universe as at this moment.

XXXIV.
DOCTORS AND LOVERS

Faint from the all-night strain upon her feelings, Phillida returned to her home from the Graydon to find her mother and sister at breakfast.

"Philly, you're 'most dead," said Agatha, as Phillida walked wearily into the dining-room by way of the basement door. "You're pale and sick. Here, sit down and take a cup of coffee."

Phillida sat down without removing her bonnet or sack, but Agatha took them off while her mother poured her coffee.

"Where have you been and what made you go off so early?" went on Agatha. "Or did you run away in the night?"

"Let Phillida take her coffee and get rested," said the mother.

"All right, she shall," said Agatha, patting her on the back in a baby-cuddling way. "Only tell me how that little boy is; I do want to know, and you can just say 'better,' 'worse,' 'well,' or 'dead,' without waiting for the effect of the coffee, don't you see?"

"The child has diphtheria. I don't know whether I ought to come home and expose the rest of you."

"Nonsense," said Agatha. "Do you think we're going to send you off to the Island? You take care of the rest of the world, Philly, but mama and I take care of you. When you get up into a private box in heaven as a great saint, we'll hang on to your robe and get good seats."

"Sh-sh," said Phillida, halting between a revulsion at Agatha's irreverent speech and a feeling more painful. "I'll never be a great saint, Aggy. Only a poor, foolish girl, mistaking her fancies for her duty."

"Oh, that's the way with all the great saints. They just missed being shut up for lunatics. But do you think you'll be able to save that little boy? Don't you think you ought to get them to call a doctor?"

"I? Oh, I gave up the case. I'm done with faith-healing once for all, Agatha." This was said with a little gulp, indicating that the confession cost her both effort and pain.

"You – "

"Don't ask me any questions till I'm better able to answer. I'm awfully tired out and cross."

"What have you been doing this morning?" said Agatha, notwithstanding Phillida's injunction against questions.

"Getting Miss Bowyer out of the Martin house. Mr. Martin was determined to have her, and he went for her when his wife sent him for a doctor."

"Miss Bowyer! I don't see how you ever got her out," said Agatha. "Did you get a policeman to put her into the station-house on the mortal plane?"

"No; I did worse. I actually had to go to the Graydon and wake up Charley Millard – "

"You did?"

"Yes; I couldn't get a messenger, and so I went myself. And I put the case into Charley's hands, and he sent his man Friday scampering after a coupé, and I came home and left him to go over there and fight it out."

"Well, I declare!" said Agatha. "What remarkable adventures you have! And I never have anything real nice and dreadful happen to me. But he might have brought you home."

"It wasn't his fault that he didn't. But give me a little bit of steak, please; I have got to go back to the Martins'."

"No, you mustn't. Mother, don't you let her."

"I do wish, Phillida," said the mother, "that you wouldn't go down into the low quarters of the town any more. You're so exposed to disease. And then you're a young woman. You haven't got your father's endurance. It's a dreadful risk."

"Well, I'm rather responsible for the child, and then I ought to be there to protect Mrs. Martin from her husband when he comes home at noon, and to share the blame with her when he finds his favorite put out and Charley's doctor in possession."

"So you and Charley are in partnership in saving the boy's life," said Agatha, "and you've got a regular doctor. That's something like. I can guess what'll come next."

"Hush, Agatha," said the mother.

Phillida's appetite for beefsteak failed in a moment, and she pushed her plate back and looked at her sister with vexation.

"If you think there's going to be a new engagement, you're mistaken."

"Think!" said Agatha, with a provoking laugh, "I don't think anything about it. I know just what's got to happen. You and Charley are just made for each other, though for my part I should prefer a young man something like Cousin Philip."

Phillida was silent for a moment, and Mrs. Callender made a protesting gesture at the impulsive Agatha.

"I don't think you ought to talk about such things when I'm so tired," said Phillida, struggling to maintain self-control. "Mr. Millard is a man used to great popularity and much flattery in society. He would never stand it in the world; it would hurt him twenty years hence to be reminded that his wife had been a – well – a fanatic." This was uttered with a sharp effort of desperation, Phillida grinding a bit of bread to pieces between thumb and finger the meanwhile. "If he were to offer to renew the engagement I should refuse. It would be too mortifying to think of."

Agatha said nothing, and Phillida presently added, "And if you think I went to the Graydon to renew the acquaintance of Charley, it's – very – unkind of you, that's all." Phillida could no longer restrain her tears.

"Why, Phillida, dear, Agatha didn't say any such thing," interposed Mrs. Callender.

"If you think," said Agatha, angrily, "that I could even imagine such a thing as that, it's just too awfully mean, that's all. But you've worried yourself sick and you're unreasonable. There, now, please don't cry, Philly," she added, going around and stroking her sister's hair. "You're too good for any man that ever lived, and that's a great misfortune. If they could have split the difference between your goodness and my badness, they might have made two fair average women. There, now, if you don't eat something I'll blame myself all day. I'm going to toast you a piece of bread."

In spite of remonstrance, the repentant Agatha toasted a piece of bread and boiled the only egg that Sarah had in the house, to tempt her sister's appetite.

"Your motto is, 'Hard words and kind acts,'" said Mrs. Callender, as Agatha came in with the toast and the egg.

"My motto is, 'Hard words and soft boiled eggs,'" said Agatha, who had by this penance secured her own forgiveness and recovered her gayety.

In vain was Phillida entreated to rest. She felt herself drawn to Mrs. Martin, who would, as she concluded, have got rid of Miss Bowyer, and seen the doctor and Charley, and be left alone, by this time. So, promising to be back by one o'clock, if possible, she went out again, indulging her fatigue so far as to take a car in Fourteenth street. Arrived at Mrs. Martin's, she was embarrassed at finding Millard sitting with his aunt. She gave him a look of recognition as she entered, and said to Mrs. Martin, who was holding Tommy:

"I thought I should find you alone by this time."

This indirect statement that she had not considered it desirable to encounter Millard again cut him, and he said, as though the words had been addressed to him, "I am expecting Dr. Gunstone every moment."

"Dr. Gunstone? I am glad he is coming," said Phillida, firing the remark in the air indiscriminately at the aunt or nephew, as either might please to accept it.

At that moment Millard's valet, Robert, in the capacity of pioneer and pilot, knocked at the door. When Millard opened it he said, "Dr. Gunstone, sir," and stood aside to let the physician pass.

Gunstone made a little hurried bow to Millard, and, without waiting for an introduction, bowed with his usual deference to Mrs. Martin. "Good-morning, madam; is this the little sufferer?" at the same time making a hurried bow of courtesy to Phillida as a stranger; but as he did so, he arrested himself and said in the fatherly tone he habitually used with his young women patients, "How do you do? You came to see me last year with – "

"My mother, Mrs. Callender," said Phillida.

"Yes, yes; and how is your mother, my dear?"

"Quite well, thank you, doctor."

The doctor dispatched these courtesies with business-like promptness, and then settled himself to an examination of little Tommy.

"This is diphtheria," he said; "you will want a physician in the neighborhood. Let's see, whom have you?" This to Millard.

Millard turned to his aunt. She looked at Phillida. "There's Dr. Smith around the corner," said Phillida.

Dr. Gunstone said, "Dr. Smith?" inquiringly to himself. But the name did not seem to recall any particular Smith.

"And Dr. Beswick in Seventeenth street," said Phillida.

"Beswick is a very good young fellow, with ample hospital experience," said Gunstone. "Can you send for him at once?"

Robert, who stood alert without the door, was told to bring Dr. Beswick in the carriage, and in a very short space of time Beswick was there, having left Mrs. Beswick sure that success and renown could not be far away when her husband was called on Gunstone's recommendation, and fetched in a coupé under the conduct of what seemed to her a coachman and a footman. Beswick's awkwardness and his abrupt up-and-downness of manner contrasted strangely with Dr. Gunstone's simple but graceful ways. A few rapid directions served to put the case into Beswick's hands, and the old doctor bowed swiftly to all in the room, descended the stairs, and, having picked his way hurriedly through a swarm of children on the sidewalk, entered the carriage again, and was gone.

Millard looked at his watch, remembered that he had had no breakfast, and prepared to take his leave.

"Thank you, Charley, ever so much," said his aunt. "I don't know what I should have done without you."

"Miss Callender is the one to thank," said Millard, scarcely daring to look at her, as he bade her and Dr. Beswick good-morning.

When he had reached the bottom of the long flight of stairs, Millard suddenly turned about and climbed upward once more.

"Miss Callender," he said, standing in the door, "let me speak to you, please."

Phillida went out to him. This confidential conversation could not but excite a rush of associations and emotion in the minds of both of them, so that neither dared to look directly at the other as they stood there in the obscure light which struggled through two dusty panes of glass at the top of the next flight.

"You must not stay here," he said. "You're very weary; you will be liable to take the disease. I am going to send a professional nurse."

This solicitude for her was so like the Charley of other times that it made Phillida tremble with a grateful emotion she could not quite conceal.

"A professional nurse will be better for Tommy. But I can not leave while Mrs. Martin has any great need for me." She could not confess to him the responsibility she felt in the case on account of her having undertaken it the evening before as a faith-doctor.

"What is the best way to get a nurse?" asked Millard, regarding her downcast face, and repressing a dreadful impulse to manifest his reviving affection.

"Dr. Beswick will know," said Phillida. "I will send him out." She was glad to escape into the room again, for she was afraid to trust her own feelings longer in Millard's company. The arrangement was made that Dr. Beswick should send a nurse, and then Millard and Beswick went down-stairs together.

Phillida stayed till Mr. Martin came home, hoping to soften the scene between husband and wife. In his heart Martin revered his wife's good sense, but he thought it due to his sex to assert himself once in a while against a wife whose superiority he could not but recognize. As soon as he had accomplished this feat, thereby proving his masculinity, he always repented it. For so long as his wife approved his course he was sure that he could not be far astray; but whenever his vanity had made him act against her judgment he was a mariner out of reckoning, and he made haste to take account of the pole star of her good sense.

He had just now been impelled by certain ugly elements in his nature to give his wife a taste of his power as the head of the family, the more that she had dared to make sport of his new science and of his new oracle, Miss Bowyer. But once he had become individually responsible for Tommy's life without the security of Mrs. Martin's indorsement on the back of the bond, he became extremely miserable. As noontime approached he grew so restless that he got excused from his bench early, and came home.

Motives of delicacy had prevented any communication between Phillida and Mrs. Martin regarding the probable attitude of Mr. Martin toward the transactions of the morning. But when his ascending footsteps, steady and solemn as the Dead March in "Saul," were heard upon the stairs, their hearts failed them.

"How's little Tommy?" he asked.

"I don't think he's any better," said Mrs. Martin.

"Come to think," said the husband, "I guess I'd better send word to Miss Bowyer to give it up and not come any more, and then I'd better get a regular doctor. I don't somehow like to take all the responsibility, come to think."

"Miss Bowyer's given up the case," said Mrs. Martin. "Charley's been here, scared to death about Tommy. He brought a great doctor from Fifth Avenue, and together they sent for Dr. Beswick. Miss Bowyer gave up the case."

"Give up the case, did she?" he said wonderingly.

"Yes."

"Well, that's better. But I didn't ever hardly believe she'd go and give it up."

Mr. Martin did not care to inquire further. He was rid of responsibility, and finding himself once more under the lee of his wife, he could eat his dinner and go back to work a happier man.