Kitabı oku: «The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York», sayfa 9

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

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

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

"What?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer this time was longer than ever in coming.

"No; no, Mr. Millard."

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

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

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

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

"Agatha will be sure to guess."

XII.
PHILIP

Philip Gouverneur, passing the Graydon on his return from a dinner-party, thought to make a farewell call on Millard. He encountered Charley in the elevator, just coming home from an evening with Phillida, his face aglow with pleasure.

"Fancied I should find you packing," Philip said. "I thought as you would cross the Alps for the first time I'd come and give you a few points. If I were not so lazy and inefficient I believe I should go with you and 'personally conduct' you."

"That would be jolly. Come over in three or four weeks and I'll be quits with London. We'll engage a traveled English valet together, and journey in comfort. I will follow your lead and go anywhere."

"No; I shall not get over this year."

They entered Millard's rooms, where things were in a state of upheaval, but orderly even in their upheaval. Seating themselves for half an hour by the open windows they talked of things to be seen in Europe. Then Philip, remembering that his friend had much to do, rose to go, and Millard said with an effort:

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

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

"How's that?"

"Phillida Callender and I are engaged."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I supposed that was it."

"Did you know it, then?"

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

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

Philip was silent.

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

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

"Why didn't you tell her so?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he went himself to call the coachman.

XIII.
MRS. FRANKLAND

Mrs. Frankland, the Bible reader, was a natural orator – a person with plenty of blood for her brain, ample breathing space in her chest, a rich-toned voice responsive to her feelings, and a mind not exactly intellectual, but felicitous in vocabulation and ingenious in the construction of sentences. Her emotions were mettlesome horses well-bitted – quick and powerful, but firmly held. Though her exegesis was second-hand and commonplace, yet upon the familiar chords of traditional and superficial interpretation of the Bible she knew how to play many emotional variations, and her hearers, who were all women, were caught up into a state of religious exaltation under her instruction. A buoyant and joyous spirit and a genial good-fellowship of manner added greatly to her personal charms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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