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."
Mrs. Frankland was not the sort of person to relish being guided by
another, but in Mrs. Hilbrough she had met her superior in leadership.
Reluctantly she felt herself obliged to hand over the helm of her own
craft, holding herself ready to disembark at length wherever Mrs.
Hilbrough might reach dry ground.
Of all that Mrs. Hilbrough had won in her first winter's social
campaign, the achievement that gave her most pleasure was the making
acquaintance and entering into fast ripening friendship with Mrs. Van
Horne. Little Mrs. Van Horne was not in herself very desirable as a
friend, but she was one of those whose fortune it is to have the toil of
thousands at their disposal. Her magnificence was fed by an army:
innumerable laborers with spades and shovels, picks and blasting-drills,
working in smoke and dripping darkness to bore railway paths through
mountain chains; grimy stokers and clear-sighted engineers; brakemen
dripping in the chilly rain; switchmen watching out the weary night by
dim lanterns or flickering torches; desk-worn clerks and methodical
ticket-sellers; civil engineers using brains and long training over
their profiles and cross-sectionings; and scores of able "captains of
industry," such as superintendents, passenger agents, and traffic
managers--all these, and others, by their steady toil kept an unfailing
cataract of wealth pouring into the Van Horne coffers. In herself Mrs.
Van Horne had not half the force of Mrs. Hilbrough, but as the queen bee
of this widespread toil and traffic, fed and clad and decked as she was
by the fruits of the labor of a hundred thousand men, Mrs. Van Horne had
an enormous factitious value in the world. How to bear her dignity as
the wife of a man who used the million as a unit she did not know, for
though she affected a reserved stateliness of manner, it did not set
well on such a round-faced, impressionable little woman quite incapable
of charting a course for herself. No show of leadership had been hers,
but she had taken her cue from this and that stronger nature, until by
chance she came in hailing distance of Mrs. Hilbrough. The two were
perfect counterparts. Mrs. Hilbrough was clairvoyant and of prompt
decision, but she lacked the commanding position for personal
leadership. She was superficially deferential to Mrs. Van Horne's older
standing and vastly greater wealth, but she swiftly gained the real
ascendancy. Her apparent submission of everything to Mrs. Van Horne's
wisdom, while adroitly making up a judgment for the undecided little
lady, was just what Mrs. Van Horne liked, and in three months'
acquaintance that lady had come to lean more and more on Mrs. Hilbrough.
The intimacy with so close a friend rendered life much more comfortable
for Mrs. Van Horne, in that it relieved her from taking advice of her
sisters-in-law, who always gave counsel with a consciousness of
superiority. Now she could appear in her family with opinions and
purposes apparently home-made. To a woman of Mrs. Hilbrough's cleverness
the friendship with one whose brooks ran gold rendered social success
certain.
Mrs. Hilbrough was a natural promoter. Her energy inclined her to take
hold of a new enterprise for the mere pleasure of pushing it. She felt a
real delight in the religious passions awakened by Mrs. Frankland's
addresses; she foresaw an interesting career opening up before that
gifted woman, and to help her would give Mrs. Hilbrough a complex
pleasure. That Mrs. Frankland's addresses if given in Mrs. Van Horne's
parlors would excite attention and make a great stir she foresaw, and
for many reasons she would like to bring this about. Mrs. Hilbrough did
not analyze her motives; that would have been tiresome. She entered them
all up in a sort of lump sum to the credit of her religious zeal, and
was just a little pleased to find so much of her early devotion to
religion left over. Let the entry stand as she made it. Let us not be of
the class unbearable who are ever trying to dissipate those lovely
illusions that keep alive human complacency and make life endurable.
Mrs. Hilbrough contrived to bring Mrs. Frankland with her abounding
enthusiasm and her wide-sweeping curves of inflection and gesture into
acquaintance with the great but rather pulpy Mrs. Van Horne. The natural
inequality of forces in the two did the rest. Mrs. Van Horne, weary of
the inevitable limitations of abnormal wealth, and fatigued in the vain
endeavor to procure any satisfaction which bore the slightest proportion
to the vast family accretion, found a repose she had longed for when she
was caught up in the fiery chariot of Mrs. Frankland's eloquent talk.
All the vast mass of things that had confronted and bullied her so long
was swept into a rhetorical dustpan, and she could feel herself at
length as a human soul without having to remember her possessions. Mrs.
Frankland's phrase of "the weary rich" exactly fitted her, and to her
Mrs. Frankland's eloquent pulverizing of the glory of this world brought
a sort of emancipation.
Mrs. Frankland unfolded to her a desire to reach those who would not
attend her readings at any but a very fashionable house. Mrs. Van Horne,
encouraged thereto by Mrs. Hilbrough, was delighted at finding a novel
and congenial use for some of the luxurious and pompous upholstery of
her life of which she was so tired. Her parlors were opened, and
"persons of the highest fashion" were pleased to find a private and
suitably decorated wicker-gate leading into a strait and narrow
vestibule train, limited, fitted up with all the consolations and
relieved of most of the discomforts of an old-fashioned religious
pilgrimage.