It was inevitable that Phillida should turn Philip's talk over in her
mind again and again. There were moments when she felt that her healing
power might be as much of a delusion as the divinity in the touch of the
merry King Charles. There were other times when Dr. Beswick's infecting
bacteria germinated in her imagination and threatened destruction to her
faith, and yet other times when sheer repulsion from Miss Bowyer's cant
of metaphysical and Christian therapeutics inclined her to renounce the
belief in faith-cure, which seemed somehow a second cousin to this
grotesque science. But the great barrier remained; in her mind
faith-healing had associated itself with other phases of religious
belief, and she could find no resting-place for her feet betwixt her
faith and Philip's ill-concealed general skepticism. She did go so far
as to adopt Philip's opinion that an exclusive occupation of the mind
with the immensities rendered life unendurable. She came to envy her
cousin his eagerness over unreadable Indian Bibles, black-letter
Caxtons, and a rare date on a title-page. She envied Millard the
diversion that came to him from his interest in people, his taste in
dress, his care for the small proprieties, his love for all the minor
graces of life. Why should she alone of the three be crushed beneath the
trip-hammer of the immensities? But she ended always as she had begun,
by reverting to that ancestral spirit of religious strenuousness in
which she had been bred and cradled, and by planting herself once more
upon the eleventh of Hebrews and the renowned victories of faith that
had been the glory of the Church in every age. To leave this ground
seemed to her an abandonment by consequence of all that was dearest and
noblest in life. Nor was she aware that with each cross-examination her
hold on the cherished belief became less firm.
About two weeks after her talk with Philip she had just concluded a
fresh conflict of this sort, and settled herself once more in what she
intended should hereafter prove an unwavering faith in the efficacy of
prayer, at least in certain cases, even against all sorts of bacteria,
when it was announced that Mr. Martin wished to see her. It was eight
o'clock, and the evening was a raw and rainy one in March.
"Howdy do, Miss Callender? How's all with you?" said Martin, when
Phillida appeared at the door.
"How do you do, Mr. Martin?" she said. "Won't you come in?"
"No, thank you," said Martin, standing shivering in the vestibule, his
solemn face looking neither more nor less like mortuary sculpture than
it ever did. "Mother wants to know if you won't come down right away
this evening. Our Tommy is seemingly sick."
"Seemingly sick?" asked Phillida. "How do you mean?"
"He's got a belief in a sore throat," said Mr. Martin, "and he's
seemingly not well. Mother'd like to see you."
After a moment of puzzled thought Phillida comprehended that this way of
speaking of disease was a part of the liturgy of Christian Science. She
could not persuade Mr. Martin into the parlor; he waited in the
vestibule while she got ready to go. Once out on the wet sidewalk he
said:
"It's all the fault of the infant-class teacher, down at the Mission."
"What is the fault of the infant-class teacher, Mr. Martin?" asked
Phillida with some surprise.
"This seeming sore throat of Tommy's."
"How can that be? I don't understand."
"Well, you see she talked to the children last Sunday about
swearing and other such sins of speech. Now sin and disease are
cor--what-you-may-call-it. Tommy he came home with that big head of
his running on the talk about swearing, and in two days here he is
with a--a belief in a sore throat. If I had my way I'd take the
children out of Sunday-school. But mother will have her own way,
you know, and I ain't anywhere when it comes to anything like
that."
Phillida said nothing in reply to this, and presently Mr. Martin began
again:
"It ain't my doing, the getting you to come and pray for Tommy. I wanted
somebody ruther more scientific; Miss Bowyer she knows the cause and
effect of things. But mother ain't enlightened yet, and she declared up
and down against Miss Bowyer. And I declared up and down against doctors
that can only cure sickness on the mortal plane. So, you see, we
comp'omised on you. But I let mother know that if she would be so
obs'inate ag'inst Miss Bowyer I wa'n't risponsible for the consequences;
they'd be on her head. She can't say that I'm risponsible."
Phillida shuddered, and made a motion as of drawing her sack more
closely about her.
"Though for that matter," Martin went on, "Tommy's kind of settled the
thing himself. He declared up and down that he didn't want Miss Bowyer,
and he declared up and down he didn't want a man doctor. What he wanted
was Dick's Sunday-school teacher. And neither one of us kind of liked to
refuse him anything, seeing he's sick; and so that kind of settled it.
And so the risponsibility'll be--I don't know where--unless it's on
you."
Phillida found Tommy in a state of restlessness and dullness,
complaining of difficulty in swallowing. Mrs. Martin was uneasy lest
there should be something malignant about the attack; but to Phillida
the case seemed an ordinary one, not likely to prove serious. She held
Tommy in her arms for a while and this was a solace to the little
fellow. Then she prayed with him, and at half-past nine she returned
home leaving Tommy sleeping quietly. When she neared her own door she
suddenly bethought her that she had not seen the other children. She
turned to Mr. Martin, who was walking by her side in silence and with a
measured stride that would have been very becoming to an undertaker, but
with which Phillida found it quite impossible to keep step.
"I didn't see the rest of the children, Mr. Martin; where are they?" she
asked.
"Well, a neighbor acrost the street come over to-day and took 'em away.
She didn't know but it might be dip'thery."
"Have you had any diphtheria in your neighborhood?"
"Well, yes; the caretaker of our flats down on the first floor of the
next house lost a child last week by a belief in dip'thery. The neighbor
acrost the street thought Tommy might have got it, but we didn't believe
it. But it made mother kind of uneasy, and she wanted to see you or a
doctor to-night. For my part, I knew that it was the talk of the
infant-class teacher that was at the bottom of it, dip'thery or not. Sin
oughtn't to be mentioned to a child. It's likely to break out into a
belief about sickness."
Phillida's spirits suddenly sank to zero. Alarm at the responsibility
she had taken got the better of her faith by surprise, and she said:
"Mr. Martin, get a doctor. It may be diphtheria."
"Why, what if it is?" said Mr. Martin. "It's better to treat it on a
spiritual plane. No, I'm not a-going back on my faith in the very words
of the Bible."
"But, Mr. Martin, I don't feel sure enough to want to be responsible for
Tommy's life. You must get a doctor as you go home. You go almost past
Dr. Beswick's in Seventeenth street."
"No, I won't do that; I'd made up my mind already that your treatment
wa'n't thorough enough. You haven't had the experience; you haven't
studied the nature of disease and the cor-what-you-may-call-it between
sin and sickness. I'll call Miss Bowyer if Tommy don't mend before
morning."
Just then it began to rain again. The sudden plash of the downpour and
Phillida's instinctive impulse to get quickly under shelter interrupted
the conversation. A minute later Miss Callender was standing in the
vestibule with a weeping umbrella in her hand, while she heard Mr.
Martin's retreating footsteps, no whit hurried by the fitful gusts of
rain, or the late hour, or the illness at home.
She thought of running after him, but of what use would that be, seeing
his obstination against treating diseases on the mortal plane? She would
have liked to go home with him and beg the mother to send for a doctor;
but she could not feel sure that this would serve the purpose, and while
she debated the rain came on in driving torrents, and the steady beat of
Mr. Martin's steps was lost in the distance and the rush of waters. In
vain she told her mother that the child did not seem very ill, in vain
she told herself during the night that Tommy had only an ordinary cold.
She was restless and wakeful the night long; two or three times she
lighted a match and looked at the slow-going clock on the mantelpiece.
In that hour unbelief in the validity of her cures came into her mind
with a rush that bore down all barriers before it. Her mind went over
to Dr. Beswick's side of the question, and she saw her success in some
cases as the mere effect on the nervous system. In the bitterness of
something like despair she thought herself a deluded and culpable
enthusiast, worthy of ridicule, of contempt, of condemnation. There were
no longer any oscillations of her mind toward the old belief; the
foundations of sand had been swept away, and there was no space to make
a reconstruction. Scarcely could she pray; unbelief tardily admitted
threatened to revenge itself for the long siege by sacking the whole
city. She was almost ready to plunge into Philip's general skepticism,
which had seemed hitherto a horrible abyss. At a quarter to five o'clock
she lighted the gas, turning it low so as not to disturb the others. She
dressed herself quickly, then she wrote a little note in which she said:
I am uneasy about Mrs. Martin's child, and have gone down there.
Back to breakfast. PHILLIDA.
This she pinned to Agatha's stocking, so that it would certainly be
seen. Then she threw an old gray shawl over her hat, drawing it about
her head, in order to look as much as possible like a tenement-house
dweller running an early morning errand, hoping thus to escape the
curiosity that a well-dressed lady might encounter if seen on the street
at so early an hour. The storm and the clouds had gone, but the air was
moist from the recent rain. When she sallied forth no dawn was
perceptible, though the street lamps were most of them already out.
Just as the sky above Greenpoint began to glow and the reeking streets
took on a little gray, Phillida entered the stairway up which she
stumbled in black darkness to the Martin apartment.
The Martins were already up, and breakfast was cooking on the stove.
"Is that you, Miss Callender?" said Mrs. Martin. "I didn't expect you at
this hour. How did you get here alone?"
"Oh, well enough," said Phillida. "But how is little Tommy?"
"I'm afraid he is worse. I was just trying to persuade Mr. Martin to go
for you."
"I came to give up the case," said Phillida, hurriedly, "and to beg you
to get a doctor. I have done with faith-cures. I've lost my faith in
them entirely, and I'm afraid from what Mr. Martin told me last night
that this is diphtheria."
"I hope not," said Mrs. Martin, in renewed alarm.
Mr. Martin, who was shaving in his shirt-sleeves near the window, only
turned about when he got the lather off his face to say: "Good-morning,
Miss Callender. How's things with you?"
Phillida returned this with the slightest good-morning. She was out of
patience with Mr. Martin, and she was revolving a plan for discovering
whether Tommy's distemper were diphtheria or not. During her long
midnight meditations she had gone over every word of Dr. Beswick's about
bacteria and bacilli. She remembered his statement that the _micrococcus
diphtheriticus_ was to be found in the light-colored patches visible in
the throat of a diphtheria patient. At what stage these were developed
she did not know, but during her hours of waiting for morning she had
imagined herself looking down little Tommy's throat. She now asked for a
spoon, and, having roused Tommy from a kind of stupor, she inserted the
handle as she had seen physicians do, and at length succeeded in
pressing down the tongue so as to discover what she took to be
diphtheria patches on the fauces.
"Mrs. Martin, I am sure this is diphtheria. You must get a doctor right
away."
"I'll attend to that," said Mr. Martin, who had now got his beard off
and his coat on.
As he donned his hat and went out the door, Mrs. Martin called: "Father,
you'd better get Dr. Beswick"; but her husband made no reply further
than to say, "I'll attend to that," without interrupting for a moment
his steady tramp down the stairs.
"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Martin, "that he has gone for Miss Bowyer."
"I hope not," said Phillida.
"If he gets her he'll be awfully stubborn. He has been offended that I
sent for you last night. It touches his dignity. He thinks that if he
doesn't have his way in certain things he is put out of his place as
head of the family."
Phillida presently perceived that Mrs. Martin was shedding tears of
apprehension.
"My poor little Tommy! I shall lose him."
"Oh, no; I hope not," said Phillida.
But Mrs. Martin shook her head.
In about half an hour Henry Martin, with a look that came near to being
more than usually solemn, ushered in Dr. Eleanor Arabella Bowyer, and
then sat himself down to his breakfast, which was on the table, without
a word, except to ask Phillida if she wouldn't have breakfast, too,
which invitation was declined.