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
portieres 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 aerial, 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.