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."
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 facade 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."