Kitabı oku: «The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York», sayfa 8
Now it is not in the nature of things that a hen should see a new egg in her nest without cackling over it, or that a man in charge of a benevolent enterprise should have a hundred-dollar check mysteriously and unexpectedly dropped into his hat without talking about it. Such a gift smacks of special divine favor, and offers a good theme for an address calculated to animate those engaged in the work. The very next Sunday, when the Testaments had been shut up and the lesson papers had all been put away, Phillida and the others heard from the superintendent some very inspiriting remarks on the subject of the encouragements which ought to make them take heart in their work. He wound up, of course, by telling of this donation from an unknown well-wisher. Had he stopped there – but what talker to young people would or could have stopped there? He whisked out the check and showed it, and then the identical letter from the assistant cashier of the Bank of Manhadoes was held up before the admiring boys and girls and read aloud to show how modestly this benevolent well-wisher had hidden his hand.
And thus the only person in the audience from whom Millard had particularly wished to conceal his agency in the matter knew perfectly that the anonymous well-wisher was none other than the assistant cashier himself. And she thought what a fine thing it was to have money when there was so much good to be done with it.
X.
BROKEN RESOLVES
Once the check was dispatched, Millard's conscience, which had been aroused – irritated – by the standing rebuke of Phillida's superior disinterestedness, was in a measure appeased. After sitting an hour in slippery meditation he resolved to master his inclination toward Miss Callender's society, for fear of jeopardizing that bachelor ideal of life he had long cherished. Hilbrough's especial friendship, supported by Mrs. Hilbrough's gratitude, had of late put him in the way of making money more rapidly than heretofore; the probable early retirement of Farnsworth would advance him to the cashiership of the bank, and there opened before him as much as he had ever desired of business and social success. It was not exactly that he put advantages of this sort into one side of the scale and the undefinable charms of Phillida into the other. But he was restrained by that natural clinging to the main purpose which saves men from frivolous changes of direction under the wayward impulses of each succeeding day. This conservative holding by guiding resolutions once formed is the balance-wheel that keeps a human life from wabbling. Western hunters used to make little square boxes with their names graven in reverse on the inside. These they fixed over a young gourd, which grew till it filled the box. Then the hunter by removing the box and cutting off the end of the stem of the gourd, to make an opening like the mouth of a bottle, secured a curious natural powder-flask, shaped to his fancy and bearing his name in relief on its side. Like the boxed gourd, the lives of men become at length rigidly shaped to their guiding purposes, and one may read early resolutions ineffaceably inscribed upon them. But the irony of it! Here was Millard, for example, a mature man of affairs, held to a scheme of life adopted almost by accident when he was but just tottering, callow, from his up-country nest. What a haphazard world is this! Draw me no Fates with solemn faces, holding distaffs and deadly snipping shears. The Fates? Mere children pitching heads and tails upon the paving-stones.
But if the dominant purpose to which the man has fitted himself is not to be suddenly changed, there are forces that modify it by degrees and sometimes gradually undermine and then break it down altogether. The man whose ruling purpose is crossed by a grand passion may say to himself, like the shorn Samson, "I will go out as at other times before," for the change that has come over him is subtle and not at once apparent to his consciousness. Millard resolutely repressed his inclination to call on Miss Callender, resolutely set himself to adhere to his old life as though adherence had been a duty. But he ceased to be interested in the decorations and amused by the articles of virtu in his apartment; he no longer contemplated with pleasure the artistic effect of his rich 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
Although love had at length come to Millard like an inundation sweeping away the barriers of habit and preconception, he was quite aware that Phillida Callender's was not a temperament to forget duty in favor of inclination, and the strength of his desire to possess her served as a restraint upon his action. He followed the habits of business negotiation even in love-making; he put down his impatience and made his approaches slowly that he might make sure of success. As a prudent beginning to his courtship he called on Phillida at first but once a week. She soon regained her wonted placidity of exterior, and Millard found it difficult to divine how far his affection was reciprocated.
For himself, he kept up his round of post-Easter social engagements. It would be time enough to lop these off if Phillida should require it when his affairs with her should be upon a more secure footing. Phillida, too, kept up a series of post-Easter engagements, but of another sort. Besides the ordinary work of the mission, and the extraordinary work attending the preparations for Fresh Air excursions for the invalid poor which were to be carried on in the heats of summer, she went once a week to the parlor Bible readings of Mrs. Frankland, which were, in fact, eloquent addresses, and which served greatly to stimulate her zeal. Thus these two lovers journeyed upon paths that had no convergence, even while feeling themselves drawn irresistibly toward each other.
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."
