The next day the cold wave had begun to let go a little, and there were
omens of a coming storm. The forenoon Phillida gave to domestic industry
of one sort and another, but in the afternoon she put on her overshoes
against icy pavements, and set out for a visit to Wilhelmina
Schulenberg, remembering how lonesome the invalid must be in wintry
weather. There were few loiterers on the sidewalks on such a day, but
Phillida was pretty sure of a recognition from somebody by the time she
reached Avenue A, for her sympathetic kindness had made friends for her
beyond those with whom she came into immediate contact as a
Sunday-school teacher.
"O Miss Callender," said a thinly clad girl of thirteen, with chattering
teeth, and arms folded against her body for warmth, rocking from one
foot to the other, as she stood in the door of a tenement house, "this
is hard weather for poor folks, ain't it?" And then, unable longer to
face the penetrating rawness of the east wind, she turned and ran up the
stairs.
Phillida's meditations as she walked were occupied with what Mrs.
Frankland had said the day before. She reflected that if she herself
only possessed the necessary faith she might bring healing to many
suffering people. Why not to Wilhelmina? With this thought there came a
drawing back--that instinctive resistance of human nature to anything
out of the conventional and mediocre; a resistance that in a time of
excitement often saves us from absurdity at the expense of reducing us
to commonplace. But in Phillida this conservatism was counteracted by a
quick imagination in alliance with a passion for moral excellence, both
warmed by the fire of youth; and in all ventures youth counts for much.
"Dat is coot; you gomes to see Mina wunst more already," said Mrs.
Schulenberg, whom Phillida encountered on the second flight of stairs,
descending with a market-basket on her arm. She was not the
strong-framed peasant, but of lighter build and somewhat finer fiber
than the average immigrant, and her dark hair and eyes seemed to point
to South Germany as her place of origin.
"Wilhelmina she so badly veels to-day," added Mrs. Schulenberg. "I don'
know"--and she shook her head ominously--"I vas mos' afraid to leef her
all py herself already. She is with bein' zick zo tired. She dalk
dreadful dis mornin' already; I don' know." And the mother went on down
the stairs shaking her head dolefully, while Phillida climbed up to the
Schulenberg apartment and entered without knocking, going straight over
to the couch where the emaciated girl lay, and kissing her.
Wilhelmina embraced her while Phillida pushed back the hair from the
pale, hard forehead with something like a shudder, for it was only skin
and skull. In the presence of sympathy Wilhelmina's mood of melancholy
desperation relaxed, and she began to shed tears.
"O Miss Callender, you have from black thoughts saved me to-day," she
said in a sobbing voice, speaking with a slight German accent. "If I
could only die. Here I drag down the whole family already. I make them
sorry. Poor Rudolph, he might be somebody if away off he would go wunst;
but no, he will not leave me. It is such a nice girl he love; I can see
that he love her. But he will say nothing at all. He feels so he must
not anyway leave his poor sister; and I hate myself and my life that for
all my family is unfortunate. Black thoughts will come. If, now, I was
only dead; if I could only find some way myself to put out of the way
wunst, for Rudolph it would be better, and after a while the house would
not any more so sorry be. Last night I thought much about it; but when
falling asleep I saw you plain come in the door and shake your head, and
I say, Miss Callender think it wicked. She will not let me. But I am so
wicked and unfortunate."
Here the frail form was shaken by hysterical weeping that cut off
speech. Phillida shed tears also, and one of them dropped on the
emaciated hand of Wilhelmina. Phillida quickly wiped it away with her
handkerchief, but another took its place.
"Let it be, Miss Callender," sobbed Wilhelmina; "it will surely make me
not so wicked."
She looked up wistfully at Phillida and essayed to speak; then she
turned her eyes away, while she said:
"If now, Miss Callender, you would--but may be you will think that it is
wicked also."
"Speak freely, dear," said Phillida, softly; "it will do you good to
tell me all--all that is in your heart."
"If you would only pray that I might die, then it would be granted
already, maybe. I am such a curse, a dreadful curse, to this house."
"No, no; you mustn't say that. Your sickness is a great misfortune to
your family, but it is not your fault. It is a greater misfortune to
you. Why should you pray to die? Why not pray to get well?"
"That is too hard, Miss Callender. If now I had but a little while been
sick. But I am so long. I can not ever get well. Oh, the medicines I
have took, the pills and the sarsaparillas and the medicine of the
German doctor! And then the American doctor he burnt my back. No; I
can't get well any more. It is better as I die. Pray that I die. Will
you not?"
"But if God can make you die he can make you well. One is no harder than
the other for him."
"No, no; not if I was but a little while sick. But you see it is years
since I was sick."
This illogical ground of skepticism Phillida set herself to combat. She
read from Wilhelmina's sheepskin-bound Testament, printed in parallel
columns in English and German, the story of the miracle at the Pool of
Bethesda, the story of the woman that touched the hem of the garment of
Jesus, and of other cures told in the New Testament with a pathos and
dignity not to be found in similar modern recitals.
Then Phillida, her soul full of hope, talked to Mina of the power of
faith, going over the ground traversed by Mrs. Frankland. She read the
eleventh of Hebrews, and her face was transformed by the earnestness of
her own belief as she advanced. Call it mesmerism, or what you will, she
achieved this by degrees, that Wilhelmina thought as she thought, and
felt as she felt. The poor girl with shaken nerves and enfeebled
vitality saw a vision of health. She watched Phillida closely, and
listened eagerly to her words, for to her they were words of life.
"Now, Mina, if you believe, if you have faith as a grain of mustard
seed, all things are possible."
The girl closed her eyes a moment, then she opened them with her face
radiant.
"Miss Callender, I do believe."
Already her face was changing under the powerful influence of the newly
awakened hope. She folded her hands peacefully, and closed her eyes,
whispering:
"Pray, Miss Callender; pray!"
Phillida laid down the Bible and solemnly knelt by the invalid, taking
hold of one of her hands. It would have been impossible to listen to the
prayer of one so passionately sincere and so believingly devout without
falling into sympathy with it. To the bed-ridden and long-despairing
Wilhelmina it made God seem something other than she had ever thought
him. An hour before she could have believed that God might be persuaded
to take her life in answer to prayer, but not that he could be brought
to restore her. The moment that Phillida began to pray, a new God
appeared to her mind--Phillida's God. Wilhelmina followed the action of
Phillida's mind as a hypnotized subject does that of the dominant agent:
as Phillida believed, so she believed; Phillida's confidence became
hers, and the weak nerves tingled all the way from the nerve-centers
with new life.
"Now, Wilhelmina," said Phillida at length, slowly rising from her knees
and looking steadily into the invalid's eyes, "the good Lord will make
you whole. Rise up and sit upon the bed, believing with all your heart."
In a sort of ecstasy the invalid set to work to obey. There was a
hideous trick of legerdemain in the last generation, by which an
encoffined skeleton was made to struggle to its feet. Something like
this took place as Mina's feeble arms were brought into the most violent
effort to assist her to rise. But a powerful emotion, a tremendous hope,
stimulated the languid nerves; the almost disused muscles were
galvanized into power; and Wilhelmina succeeded at length in sitting
upright without support for the first time in years. When she perceived
this actually accomplished she cried out: "O God! I am getting well!"
Wilhelmina's mother had come to the top of the stairs just as Phillida
had begun to pray. She paused without the door and listened to the
prayer and to what followed. She now burst into the room to see her
daughter sitting up on the side of her couch; and then there were
embraces and tears, and ejaculations of praise to God in German and in
broken English.
"Sit there, Mina, and believe with all your heart," said Phillida, who
was exteriorly the calmest of the three; "I will come back soon."
Wilhelmina did as she was bidden. The shock of excitement thus prolonged
was overcoming the sluggishness of her nerves. The mother could not
refrain from calling in a neighbor who was passing by the open door, and
the news of Mina's partial restoration spread through the building. When
Phillida got back from the Diet Kitchen with some savory food, the
doorway was blocked; but the people stood out of her way with as much
awe as they would had she worn an aureole, and she passed in and put the
food before Wilhelmina, who ate with a relish she hardly remembered to
have known before. The spectators dropped back into the passageway, and
Phillida gently closed the door.
"Now, Wilhelmina, lie down and rest. To-morrow you will walk a little.
Keep on believing with all your heart."
Having seen the patient, who was fatigued with unwonted exertion,
sleeping quietly, Phillida returned home. She said nothing of her
experiences of the day, but Millard, who called in the evening, found
her more abstracted and less satisfactory than ever. For her mind
continually reverted to her patient.