Chapter 23

"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 coupe 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.

XXXV.

PHILLIDA AND HER FRIENDS.

The appearance in the Martin apartment of the trained nurse, who was an old friend and hospital associate of Mrs. Beswick's, relieved Phillida of night service; but nothing could relieve her sense of partial responsibility for the delay in calling a doctor, and her resolution to stay by little Tommy as much as possible until the issue should be known. Every day while the nurse rested she took her place with the patient, holding him in her arms for long hours at a time, and every day Millard called to make inquiries. He was not only troubled about the little boy, but there hung over him a dread of imminent calamity to Phillida. On the fifth day the symptoms in Tommy's case became more serious, but at the close of the sixth Dr. Beswick expressed himself as hopeful. The next evening, when Millard called, he learned that Tommy was improving slowly, and that Miss Callender had not come to the Martins' on that day. His aunt thought that she was probably tired out, and that she had taken advantage of Tommy's improvement to rest. But when had Phillida been known to rest when anybody within her range was suffering? Millard felt sure that she would at least have come to learn the condition of the sick boy had she been able.

He hesitated to make inquiry after Phillida's health. Her effort to avoid conversation with him assured him that she preferred not to encourage a new intimacy. But though he debated, he did not delay going straight to the Callenders' and ringing the bell.

Agatha came to the door.

"Good-evening, Miss Agatha," he said, presuming so much on his old friendship as to use her first name.

"Good-evening, Mr. Millard," said Agatha, in an embarrassed but austere voice.

"I called to inquire after your sister. Knowing that she had been exposed to diphtheria, I was afraid--" He paused here, remembering that he no longer had any right to be afraid on her account.

Agatha did not wait for him to re-shape or complete his sentence. She said, "Thank you. She has a sore throat, which makes us very uneasy. Cousin Philip has just gone to see if he can get Dr. Gunstone."

When Millard had gone, Agatha told her mother that Charley had called.

"I am glad of it," said Mrs. Callender. "Did you ask him in?"

"Not I," said Agatha, with a high head. "If he wants to renew his acquaintance with Phillida, he can do it without our asking him. I was just as stiff as I could be with him, and I told him that Cousin Phil had gone for the doctor. That'll be a thorn in his side, for he always was a little jealous of Philip, I believe."

"Why, Agatha, I'm afraid you haven't done right. You oughtn't to be so severe. For my part, I hope the engagement will be renewed. I am sick and tired of having Phillida risk her life in the tenements. It was very kind of Mr. Millard to call and inquire, I am sure."

"He ought to," said Agatha. "She got this dreadful disease taking care of his relations. I don't want him to think we're dying to have him take Phillida off our hands." Agatha's temper was ruffled by her anxiety at Phillida's sickness. "I'm sure his high and mighty tone about Phillida's faith-cures has worried her enough. Now just let him worry awhile."

Certainly, Agatha Callender's bearing toward him did not reassure Millard. He thought she might have called him Charley; or if that was not just the thing to do, she might have made her voice a little less frosty. He could not get rid of a certain self-condemnation regarding Phillida, and he conjectured that her family were disposed to condemn him also. He thought they ought to consider how severely his patience had been tried; but then they could not know how Phillida was talked about. How could they ever imagine Meadows's brutal impertinence?

He was not clear regarding the nature of the change in Phillida's views. Had she wholly renounced her faith-healing, or was she only opposed to the Christian Science imposture? Or did she think that medicine should be called in after an appeal to Heaven had failed? If he had felt that there was any probability of a renewal of his engagement with Phillida, he could have wished that she might not yet have given up her career as a faith-doctor. He would then have a chance to prove to her that he was not too cowardly to endure reproach for her sake. But, from the way Agatha spoke, it must be that Philip Gouverneur was now in favor rather than he. Nothing had been more evident to him than that Philip was in love with his cousin. What was to be expected but that Philip, with the advantage of cousinly intimacy, should urge his suit, once Phillida was free from her engagement?

But all his other anxieties were swallowed up in the one fear that she who had ventured her life for others so bravely might have sacrificed it. Millard was uneasy the night long, and before he went to the bank he called again at the Callender house. He was glad that it was Sarah, and not Agatha, who came to the door. He sent in a card to Mrs. Callender with the words, "Kind inquiries," written on it, and received through Sarah the reply that Mrs. Callender was much obliged to him for inquiring, and that Miss Callender had diphtheria and was not so well as yesterday.

The cashier of the Bank of Manhadoes was not happy that day. He threw himself into his business with an energy that seemed feverish. He did not feel that it would be proper for him to call again before the next morning; it would seem like trying to take advantage of Phillida's illness. But, with such a life in jeopardy, how could his impatience delay till morning?

Just before three o'clock the Hilbrough carriage stopped at the bank. Mrs. Hilbrough had come to take up her husband for a drive. Hilbrough was engaged with some one in the inner office, which he had occupied since Masters had virtually retired from the bank. Millard saw the carriage from his window, and, with more than his usual gallantry, quitted his desk to assist Mrs. Hilbrough to alight. But she declined to come in; she would wait in the carriage for Mr. Hilbrough.

"Did you know of Miss Callender's illness?" he asked.

"No; is it anything serious?" Mrs. Hilbrough showed a sincere solicitude.

"Diphtheria," he said. "I called there this morning. Mrs. Callender sent word that Phillida was not so well as yesterday."

Mrs. Hilbrough was pleased that Millard had gone so far as to inquire. She reflected that an illness, if not a dangerous one, might be a good thing for lovers situated as these two. But diphtheria was another matter.

"I wish I knew how she's getting along this afternoon," said Mrs. Hilbrough.

"I would call again at once," said Millard, "but, you know, my relations are peculiar. To call twice in a day might seem intrusive."

"I would drive there at once," said Mrs. Hilbrough, meditatively, "but Mr. Hilbrough is so wrapped up in his children, and so much afraid of their getting diphtheria, that he will not venture into the street where it is. If I should send the footman, Mr. Hilbrough would not let him return to the house again. I'm afraid he would not even approve of communication by a telegraph-boy."

"A boy would be long enough returning to be disinfected," said Millard; but the pleasantry was all in his words; his face showed solicitude and disappointment. He could think of no one but Mrs. Hilbrough through whom he could inquire.

"Perhaps," he said, "you would not object to my sending an inquiry in your name?"

"Oh, certainly not; that would be a good plan, especially if you will take the trouble to let me know how she is. Use my name at your discretion, Mr. Millard. I give you _carte blanche_," said she, smiling with pleasure at the very notion of bearing so intimate a relation to a clever scheme which lent a little romance to a love-affair highly interesting to her on all accounts. She took out a visiting-card and penciled the words, "Hoping that Miss Callender is not very ill, and begging Mrs. Callender to let her know." This she handed to Millard.

Mr. Hilbrough came out at that moment, and Millard bowed to Mrs. Hilbrough and went in. Hilbrough had been as deeply grieved as his wife to hear that the much-admired Phillida was ill.

"What are you going to do, my dear?" he said. "You can not go there without risking the children. You can't send James without danger of bringing the infection into the house. But we mustn't leave Phillida without some attentions; I don't see how to manage it."

"I've just made Mr. Millard my deputy," said Mrs. Hilbrough. "You see, he feels delicate about inquiring too often; so I have written inquiries on one of my cards and given it to Mr. Millard."

Hilbrough didn't like to do things in a stinted way, particularly in cases which involved his generous feelings.

"Give me a lot of your cards," he said.

"What for?"

"For Mr. Millard."

"I don't see what use he can make of them," said Mrs. Hilbrough, slowly opening her card-case.

"He'll know," said Hilbrough. "He can work a visiting-card in more ways than any other man in New York." Hilbrough took half a dozen of his wife's cards and carried them into the bank.

"Use these as you see fit," he said to Millard, "and if you need a dozen or two more let me know."

Under other circumstances Millard would have been amused, this liberal overdoing was so characteristic of Hilbrough. But he only took the cards with thanks, reflecting that there might be some opportunity to use them.

As he would be detained at the bank until near four o'clock, his first impulse was to call a district messenger and dispatch Mrs. Hilbrough's card of inquiry at once. But he reflected that the illness might be a long one, and that his measures should be taken with reference to his future conduct. On his way home from the bank he settled the manner of his procedure. The Callender family, outside of Phillida at most, did not know his man Robert. By sending the discreet Robert systematically with messages in Mrs. Hilbrough's name, those who attended the door would come to regard him as the Hilbrough messenger.

It was about five o'clock when Robert, under careful instructions, presented Mrs. Hilbrough's card at the Callender door. Unfortunately for Millard's plan, Mrs. Callender, despite Robert's hint that a verbal message would be sufficient, wrote her reply. When the note came into Millard's hands he did not know what to do. His commission did not extend to opening a missive addressed to Mrs. Hilbrough. The first impulse was to dispatch Robert with the note to Mrs. Hilbrough. Then Millard remembered Mr. Hilbrough's apprehension of diphtheria, and that Robert had come from the infected house. He would send Mrs. Callender's note by a messenger. But, on second thought, the note would be a more deadly missile in Hilbrough's eyes than Robert, who had not gone beyond the vestibule of the Callender house. He therefore sent a note by a messenger, stating the case, and received in return permission to open all letters addressed to Mrs. Hilbrough which his man might bring away from the Callenders'. This scheme, by which Millard personated Mrs. Hilbrough, had so much the air of a romantic intrigue of the harmless variety that it fascinated Mrs. Hilbrough, who dearly loved a manoeuver, and who would have given Millard permission to forge her name and seal his notes of inquiry with the recently discovered Hilbrough coat-of-arms, if such extreme measures had been necessary. Mrs. Callender's reply stated that Dr. Gunstone was hopeful, but that Phillida seemed pretty ill.

The next morning Millard's card with "Kind inquiries" was sent in, and the reply was returned that Phillida was no worse. Her mother showed her the card, and Phillida looked at it for half a minute and then wearily put it away. An hour later Robert appeared at the door with a bunch of callas, to which Mrs. Hilbrough's card was attached.

"Oh! see, Philly," said Agatha softly, "Mrs. Hilbrough has sent you some flowers."

Phillida reached her hand and touched them, gazed at them a moment, and then turned her head away, and began to weep.

"What is the matter, Philly? What are you crying about?" said her mother, with solicitation.

"The flowers make me want to die."

"Why, how can the flowers trouble you?"

"They are just like what Charley used to send me. They remind me that there is nothing more for me but to die and have done with the world."

The flowers were put out of her sight; but Phillida's mind had fastened itself on those other callas whose mute appeal for Charley Millard, at the crisis of her history, had so deeply moved her, though her perverse conscience would not let her respond to it.

XXXVI.

MRS. BESWICK.

About the time that Phillida got her flowers Mrs. Beswick sat mending her husband's threadbare overcoat. His vigorous thumbs, in frequent fastening and loosening, had worn the cloth quite through in the neighborhood of the buttons. To repair this, his wife had cut little bits of the fabric off the overplus of cloth at the seams, and worked these little pieces through the holes, and then sewed the cloth down upon them so as to underlay the thumb-worn places. The buttonholes had also frayed out, and these had to be reworked.

"I declare, my love," she said, "you ought to have a new overcoat. This one is not decent enough for a man in your position to wear."

"It'll have to do till warm weather," he said; "I couldn't buy another if I wanted to."