Dr. Beswick of East Seventeenth street was a man from the country, still
under thirty, who had managed to earn money enough to get through the
College of Physicians and Surgeons by working as a school-teacher
between times. Ambitious as such self-lifted country fellows are apt to
be, he had preferred to engage in the harsh competition of the
metropolis in hope of one day achieving professional distinction. To a
poor man the first necessity is an immediate livelihood. Such favorite
cross-streets of the doctors as Thirty-fourth, and the yet more
fashionable doctor-haunted up-and-down thoroughfares, were for long
years to come far beyond the reach of a man without money or social
backing, though Beswick saw visions of a future. He had planted himself
in Mackerelville, where the people must get their medical advice cheap,
and where a young doctor might therefore make a beginning. The
sweetheart of his youth had entered the Training School for Nurses just
when he had set out to study medicine. They two had waited long, but she
had saved a few dollars, and at the end of his second year in practice,
his income having reached a precarious probability of five hundred a
year, they had married and set up office and house together in two
rooms and a dark closet. There were advantages in this condensed
arrangement, since the new Mrs. Beswick could enjoy the husband for whom
she had waited so long and faithfully, by sitting on the lounge in the
office whenever she had sedentary employment--the same lounge that was
opened out at night into a bed. Both of the Beswicks were inured to
small and hard quarters, and even these they had been obliged to share
with strangers; since, therefore, they must lead a kind of camp life in
the crowded metropolis they found it delightful to season their
perpetual picnic with each other's society. And, moreover, two rooms for
two people seemed by comparison a luxury of expansion. When youth and
love go into partnership they feel no hardships, and for the present the
most renowned doctor in Madison Avenue was probably something less than
half as happy as these two lovers living in a cubbyhole with all the
world before them, though but precious little of it within their reach
beyond two well-worn trunks, three chairs, a table, and a bedstead
lounge.
Dr. Beswick was profoundly unknown to fame, but he was none the less a
great authority on medicine as well as on most other things in the
estimation of Mrs. Beswick, and, for that matter, of himself as well. He
liked, as most men do, to display his knowledge before his wife, and to
her he talked of his patients and of the good advice he had given them
and how he had managed them, and sometimes also of the mistakes of his
competitors; and he treated her to remarks on that favorite theme of
the struggling general practitioner, the narrowness of the celebrated
specialists. When he came back from his visit to Wilhelmina it was with
a smile lighting up all that was visible of his face between two thrifty
patches of red side-whiskers.
"The patient is not very sick, I should say from your face," was Mrs.
Beswick's remark as she finished sewing together the two ends of a piece
of crash for a towel. For this towel the doctor had made a kind of
roller, the night before, by cutting a piece off a broken mop-stick and
hanging it on brackets carved with his jack-knife and nailed to the
closet-door. "I can always tell by your face the condition of the
patient," added Mrs. Beswick.
"That's where you're mistaken this time, my love," he said triumphantly.
"The Schulenberg girl will die within two weeks." And he smiled again at
the thought.
"What do you smile so for? You are not generally so glad to lose a
patient," she said, holding up the towel for his inspection, using her
hand and forearm for a temporary roller to show it off.
"Oh! no; not that," he said, nodding appreciatively at the towel while
he talked of something else. "I suppose I ought to be sorry for the poor
girl, and her mother does take on dreadfully. But this case'll explode
that faith-quackery if anything can. The Christian Science doctor, Miss
Cullender, or something of the sort, made her great sensation over this
girl, who had some trouble in her back and a good deal the matter with
her nerves."
"She's the one there was so much talk about, is she?" asked Mrs.
Beswick, showing more animation than sympathy.
"Yes; when her mind had been sufficiently excited she believed herself
cured, and got up and even walked a little in the square. That's what
gave the woman faith-doctor her run. I don't know much about the
faith-doctor, but she's made a pretty penny, first and last, out of this
Schulenberg case, I'll bet. Now the girl's going to die out of hand, and
I understand from the mother that the faith-cure won't work. The
faith-doctor's thrown up the case."
"I suppose the faith-doctor believes in herself," said the wife.
"Naah!" said the doctor with that depth of contempt which only a rather
young man can express. "She? She's a quack and a humbug. Making money
out of religion and tomfoolery. I'll give her a piece of my mind if she
ever crosses my track or meddles with my patients."
Crowing is a masculine foible, and this sort of brag is the natural
recreation of a young man in the presence of femininity.
Two hours later, a frugal dinner of soup and bread and butter having
been served and eaten in the mean time, and Mrs. Beswick having also
washed a double set of plate, cup, saucer, knife, and fork,--there were
no tumblers; it seemed more affectionate and social in this turtle-dove
stage to drink water from a partnership cup,--the afternoon hung a
little heavy on their hands. It was not his day at the dispensary, and
so there was nothing for the doctor to do but to read a medical journal
and wait for patients who did not come, while his wife sat and sewed.
They essayed to break the ennui a little by a conversation which
consisted in his throwing her a kiss upon his hand, now and then, and
her responding with some term of endearment. But even this grew
monotonous. Late in the afternoon the bell rang, and the doctor opened
the door. There entered some one evidently not of Mackerelville, a
modestly well-dressed young lady of dignified bearing and a gentle grace
of manner that marked her position in life beyond mistake. Mrs. Beswick
glanced hurriedly at the face, and then made a mental but descriptive
inventory of the costume down to the toes of the boots, rising
meanwhile, work in hand, to leave the room.
"Please don't let me disturb you," said the newcomer to the doctor's
wife; "don't go. What I have to say to the doctor is not private."
Mrs. Beswick sat down again, glad to know more of so unusual a visitor.
"Dr. Beswick, I am Miss Callender," said the young lady, accepting the
chair the doctor had set out for her. "I called as a friend to inquire,
if you don't mind telling me, what you think of Wilhelmina Schulenberg."
When Dr. Beswick had made up his mind to dislike Miss Callender and to
snub her on the first occasion in the interest of science and
professional self-respect, he had not figured to himself just this kind
of a person. So much did she impress him that if it had not been for the
necessity he felt to justify himself in the presence of his wife he
might have put away his professional scruples. As it was he colored a
little, and it was only after a visible struggle with himself that he
said:
"You know, Miss Callender, that I am precluded by the rules of the
profession from consultation with one who is not a regular
practitioner."
Miss Callender looked puzzled. She said, "I did not know that I was
violating proprieties. I did not know the rules were so strict. I
thought you might tell me as a friend of the family."
"Don't you think you might do that, dear?" suggested Mrs. Beswick, who
felt herself drawn to this young lady, for Miss Callender had won her
heart by an evident deference for Dr. Beswick's position and
professional knowledge, and she was touched by a certain sadness in the
face and voice of the visitor.
The doctor relented when he found that his wife would sustain him in it.
"I may answer your question if you ask it merely as a friend of the
patient, but not as recognizing your standing as a practitioner," he
said.
Phillida answered with a quick flush of pain and surprise, "I am not a
practitioner, Dr. Beswick. You are under some mistake. I know nothing
about medicine."
"I didn't suppose you did," said the doctor with a smile. "But are you
not what they call a Christian Scientist?"
"I? I hate what they call Christian Science. It seems to me a lot of
nonsense that nobody can comprehend. I suppose it's an honest delusion
on the part of some people and a mixture of mistake and imposture on
the part of others."
"You have made a pretty good diagnosis, if you are not a physician,"
said Dr. Beswick, laughing, partly at Phillida's characterization of
Christian Science and partly at his own reply, which seemed to him a
remark that skillfully combined wit with a dash of polite flattery.
"But, Miss Callender,--I beg your pardon for saying it,--people call you
a faith-doctor."
"Yes; I know," said Phillida, compressing her lips.
"Did you not treat this Schulenberg girl as a faith-healer?"
"I prayed for her as a friend," said Phillida, "and encouraged her to
believe that she might be healed if she could exercise faith. She _did_
get much better."
"I know, I know," said the doctor in an offhand way; "a well-known
result of strong belief in cases of nerve disease. But, pardon me, you
have had other cases that I have heard of. Now don't you think that the
practice of faith-healing for--for--compensation makes you a
practitioner?"
"For compensation?" said Phillida, with a slight gesture of impatience.
"Who told you that I took money?"
It was the doctor's turn to be confounded.
"I declare, I don't know. Don't you take pay, though?"
"Not a cent have I ever taken directly or indirectly." Phillida's
already overstrained sensitiveness on this subject now broke forth into
something like anger. "I would not accept money for such a service for
the world," she said. "In making such an unwarranted presumption you
have done me great wrong. I am a Sunday-school teacher and mission
worker. Such services are not usually paid for, and such an assumption
on your part is unjustifiable. If you had only informed yourself better,
Dr. Beswick--"
"I am very sorry," broke in the doctor. "I didn't mean to be offensive.
I--"
"Indeed, Miss Callender," said Mrs. Beswick, speaking in a pleasant,
full voice and with an accent that marked her as not a New Yorker, "he
didn't mean to be disrespectful. The doctor is a gentleman; he couldn't
be disrespectful to a lady intentionally. He didn't know anything but
just what folks say, and they speak of you as the faith-doctor and the
woman doctor, you see. You must forgive the mistake."
This pleading of a wife in defense of her husband touched a chord in
Phillida and excited an emotion she could not define. There was that in
her own heart which answered to this conjugal championship. She could
have envied Mrs. Beswick her poverty with her right to defend the man
she loved. She felt an increasing interest in the quiet, broad-faced,
wholesome-looking woman, and she answered:
"I know, Mrs. Beswick, your husband is not so much to blame. I spoke too
hastily. I am a little too sensitive on that point. I don't pretend to
like to be talked about and called a faith-doctor."
There was an awkward pause, which the doctor broke by saying presently
in a subdued voice:
"In regard to your perfectly proper question, Miss Callender, I will say
that the Schulenberg young woman has acute pulmonary tuberculosis."
"Which means?" queried Phillida, contracting her brows.
"What people call galloping consumption," said the doctor. "Now, I can't
help saying, Miss Callender,"--the doctor's habitual self-contentment
regained sway in his voice and manner,--"that this particular sort of
consumption is one of the things that neither medicine nor faith was
ever known to heal since the world was made. This young woman's lungs
are full of miliary tubercles--little round bodies the size of a millet
seed. The tissues are partly destroyed already. You might as well try to
make an amputated leg grow on again by medicine or by prayer as to try
to reconstruct her lungs by similar means. She has got to die, and I
left her only some soothing medicine, and told her mother there was no
use of making a doctor's bill."
There was a straightforward rectitude in Dr. Beswick that inclined
Phillida to forgive his bluntness of utterance and lack of manner. Here
at least was no managing of a patient to get money, after the manner
hinted at by Miss Bowyer. The distinction between diseases that might
and those that might not be cured or mitigated by a faith-process, which
Phillida detected in the doctor's words, quickened again the doubts
which had begun to assail her regarding the soundness of the belief on
which she had been acting, and awakened a desire to hear more. She
wanted to ask him about it, but sensitiveness regarding her private
affairs made her shrink. In another moment she had reflected that it
would be better to hear what was to be said on this subject from a
stranger than from one who knew her. The natural honesty and courage of
her nature impelled her to submit further to Dr. Beswick's rather blunt
knife.
"You seem to think that some diseases are curable by faith and some not,
Dr. Beswick," she said.
"Certainly," said Beswick, tipping his chair back and drumming on the
table softly with his fingers. "We use faith-cure and mind-cure in
certain diseases of the nerves. Nothing could have been better for that
Schulenberg girl than for you to make her believe she could walk. I
should have tried that dodge myself, but in a different way, if I had
been called."
"Don't speak in that way, dear," interposed Mrs. Beswick, softly, seeing
that Phillida was pained.
"Why, what's the matter with that way?" said the doctor, good-naturedly.
"Well, Miss Callender will think you are not honest if you talk about
trying a dodge. Besides, I'm sure Miss Callender isn't the kind of
person that would say what she didn't believe. It was no dodge with
her."
"No; of course not," said the doctor. "I didn't mean that."
"You do not admit any divine agency in the matter, doctor?" asked
Phillida.
"How can we? The starting-point of that poor girl's galloping
consumption, according to the highest medical opinion of our time, is a
little organism called a bacillus. These bacilli are so small that ten
thousand of them laid in a row lengthwise would only measure an inch.
They multiply with great rapidity, and as yet we can not destroy them
without destroying the patient. You might just as well go to praying
that the weeds should be exterminated in your garden, or try to clear
the Schulenberg tenement of croton bugs by faith, as to try to heal that
young woman in that way. Did you ever look into the throat of a
diphtheria patient?"
"No," said Phillida.
"Well, you can plainly see little white patches of false membrane there.
By examining this membrane we have come to know the very species that
does the mischief--the _micrococcus diphtheriticus_."
The conversation was naturally a little disagreeable to Phillida, who
now rose to depart without making reply. She went over and shook hands
with Mrs. Beswick, partly from an instinctive kindness, judging from her
speech that she was a stranger in New York. Besides, she felt strongly
drawn to this simple and loyal-hearted woman.
"If you'd like to come to the mission, Mrs. Beswick," she said, "I'd
take pleasure in introducing you. You'd find good friends among the
people there and good work to do. The mission people are not all
faith-healers like me."
"Oh, now, I'd like them better if they were like you, Miss Callender. I
think I'd like to go. I couldn't do much; I have to do my own work; the
doctor's practice is growing, but he hasn't been here long, you know. I
think I might go"--this with a look of inquiry at her husband.
"Why not?" said Dr. Beswick. He could not help seeing that the
association of his wife with the mission might serve to extend his
practice, and that even Mrs. Beswick must grow tired after a while of
conversations with him alone, sugared though they were.
When Phillida had gone the doctor's wife said to her husband that she
never had seen a nicer lady than that Miss Callender. "I just love her,"
she declared, "if she does believe in faith-healing."
"Ah, well, what I said to her will have its effect," he replied, with
suppressed exultation.
"You said just the right thing, my love. You 'most always do. But I was
afraid you would hurt her feelings a little. She doesn't seem very
happy."