By the time the coupe reached the curb in front of the Graydon, Millard
had fixed in his mind the first move in his campaign, and had scribbled
a little note as he stood at the clerk's counter in the office. Handing
the driver a dollar as a comprehensible hint that speed was required,
and, taking Robert with him, he was soon bowling along the yet rather
empty Fifth Avenue. He alighted in front of a rather broad, low-stoop,
brownstone house, with a plain sign upon it, which read "Dr. Augustine
Gunstone." What ills and misfortunes had crossed that door-stone! What
celebrities had here sought advice from the great doctor in matters of
life and death! Few men can enjoy a great reputation and be so unspoiled
as Dr. Gunstone. The shyest young girl among his patients felt drawn to
unburden her sorrows to him as to a father; the humblest sufferer
remembered gratefully the reassuring gentleness of his voice and manner.
But Millard made no reflections this morning; he rang the bell sharply.
"The doctor hasn't come down yet," said the servant. "He will not see
patients before nine o'clock."
"At what time does he come down?"
"At a quarter to eight."
"It's half-past seven now," said Millard. "Kindly take this note to his
room with my card, and say that I wait for an answer."
There was that in Millard's manner that impressed the servant. He was
sure that this must be one of those very renowned men who sometimes came
to see Dr. Gunstone and who were not to be refused. He ran up the stairs
and timidly knocked at the doctor's door. Millard waited five minutes in
a small reception-room, and then the old doctor came down, kindly,
dignified, unruffled as ever, a man courteous to all, friendly with all,
but without any familiars.
"Good-morning, Mr. Millard. I can't see your patient now. Every moment
of my time to-day is engaged. Perhaps I might contrive to see the child
on my way to the hospital at twelve."
"If I could have a carriage here at the moment you finish your
breakfast, with my valet in it to see that no time is lost, could you
give us advice, and get back here before your office hours begin?"
Dr. Gunstone hesitated a moment. "Yes," he said; "but you would want a
doctor in the vicinity. I can not come often enough to take charge of
the case."
"We'll call any one you may name. The family are poor, I am interested
in them, they are relatives of mine, and this child I have set my heart
on saving, and I will not mind expense. I wish you to come every day as
consultant, if possible."
Dr. Gunstone's was a professional mind before all. He avoided those
profound questions of philosophy toward which modern science propels the
mind, limiting himself to the science of pathology and the art of
healing. On the other hand, he habitually bounded his curiosity
concerning his patients to their physical condition and such of their
surroundings as affected for good or ill their chances of recovery. He
did not care to know more of this poor family than that he was to see a
patient there; but he knew something of Millard from the friendly
relations existing between him and younger members of his own family,
and the disclosure that Millard had kinsfolk in Avenue C, and was deeply
interested in people of a humble rank, gave Dr. Gunstone a momentary
surprise, which, however, it would have been contrary to all his habits
to manifest. He merely bowed a polite good-morning and turned toward the
breakfast-room.
These men, in whose lives life and death are matters of hourly
business--matters of bread and butter and bank-account--acquire in
self-defense a certain imperviousness; they learn to shed their
responsibilities with facility in favor of digestion and sleep. Dr.
Gunstone ate in a leisurely way, relishing his chops and coffee, and
participating in the conversation of the family, who joined him one by
one at the table. It did not trouble him that another family in Avenue C
was in agonized waiting for his presence, and that haste or delay might
make the difference between life and death to a human being. This was
not heartlessness, but a condition of his living and working--a
postponement of particular service, however important, in favor of the
general serviceableness of his life.
Millard was not sorry for the delay; it gave him time to dispose of Miss
Bowyer.
Seeing that Phillida had gone to seek re-enforcements, Mrs. Martin had
concluded that, in Tommy's interest, a truce would be the better thing.
So, while Miss Bowyer was seeking to induce in little Tommy the
impressible conscious state--or, to be precise, the conscious, passive,
impressible state--Mrs. Martin offered to hold him in her arms. To this
the metaphysical healer assented with alacrity, as likely to put the
child into a favorable condition for the exercise of her occult
therapeutic powers.
"Hold him with his back to the north, Mrs. Martin," she said; "there, in
a somewhat reclining posture; that will increase his susceptibility to
psychic influence. There is no doubt that the magnetism of the earth has
a polar distribution. It is quite probable also that the odylic
emanation of the terrestrial magnet has also a polar arrangement. Does
the little fellow ever turn round in his bed at night?"
"Yes."
"That shows that he is sensitive to magnetic influences. He is trying to
get himself north and south, so as to bring the body into harmony with
the magnetic poles of the earth. You see the brain is normally positive.
We wish to invert the poles of the body, and send the magnetism of the
brain to the feet."
Miss Bowyer now took out a small silver cross and held it up before the
child a little above the natural range of vision.
"Will you look at this, little boy?" she said.
She did her best to make her naturally unsympathetic voice persuasive,
even to pronouncing the last word of her entreaty "baw-ee." But the
"little baw-ee" was faint with sickness, and he only lifted his eyes a
moment to the trinket, and then closed the eyelids and turned his face
toward his mother's bosom.
"Come, little baw-ee. Look at this, my child. Isn't it pretty? Little
baw-ee, see here!"
But the little baw-ee wanted rest, and he showed no signs of having
heard Miss Bowyer's appeal, except that he fretted with annoyance after
each sentence she addressed to him.
"That is bad," said Miss Bowyer, seeing that Tommy would not look. "If I
could get him to strain the eyes upward for five minutes, while I gazed
at him and concentrated my mind on the act of gazing, I should be able
to produce what is known in psychopathic science as the conscious
impressible state--something resembling hypnotism, but stopping short of
the unconscious state. I could make him forget his disease by willing
forgetfulness. I must try another plan."
Miss Bowyer now sat and gazed on the child, who was half-slumbering. For
five minutes she sat there like a cat ready to jump at the first
movement of a moribund mouse. Apparently she was engaged in
concentrating her mind on the act of gazing.
"Now," she said to Mrs. Martin in a whisper--for explication was a
necessity of Miss Bowyer's nature, or perhaps essential to the potency
of her measures--"now I will gently place the right hand on the fore
brain and the left over the cerebellum, willing the vital force of the
cerebrum to retreat backward to the cerebellum. This is the condition of
the brain in the somnambulic state and in ordinary sleep. The right
hand, you must know, acts from without inward, while the left acts from
within outward." She suited the action to the words; but Tommy did not
take kindly to the action of her right hand from without inward, or else
he was annoyed by the action of the left hand from within outward.
Evidently Miss Bowyer's positive and negative poles failed to harmonize
with his. He put up his hands to push away her positive and negative
poles; but finding that impossible, he kicked and cried in a way which
showed him to be utterly out of harmony with the odylic emanations of
the terrestrial magnet.
With these and other mummeries Miss Bowyer proceeded during all the long
hour and a quarter that intervened between Phillida's departure and the
arrival of the reinforcement. Miss Bowyer was wondering meanwhile what
could have been the nature of Phillida's conference outside the door
with Mrs. Martin, and whether Mrs. Martin were sufficiently convinced of
her skill by this time for her to venture to leave the place presently
to meet certain office patients whom she expected. But she concluded to
run no risks of defeat; she had left word at her office that she had
been called to see a patient dangerously ill, and such a report would do
her reputation no harm.
Mrs. Martin was driven to the very verge of distraction by the sense of
Tommy's danger and the necessity she was under of suppressing her
feelings while this woman, crank or impostor, held possession of the
child and of her house. Not to disturb Tommy, she affected a peaceful
attitude toward the professor of Christian sorcery, whom, in the anguish
of her spirit, she would have liked to project out of a window into the
dizzy space occupied by pulleys and clothes-lines. Footsteps came and
went past her door, but there was as yet no interruption to Miss
Bowyer's pow-wow. At length there came a step on the stairs, and a rap.
Mrs. Martin laid Tommy on the bed and opened the door. Charley beckoned
her to be silent and to come out.
"What is the name of the faith-healer, Aunt Hannah?" he whispered.
"Miss Bowyer."
"Does she still refuse to leave?"
"Oh, yes! She declares she will not leave."
"You want her out?"
"Yes; I want a doctor," said Mrs. Martin, giving her hands a little
wring.
"Tell Miss Bowyer that there is a gentleman outside the door who wishes
to see her. Whenever the door is shut, do you fasten it inside."
"Miss Bowyer, there's a gentleman inquiring for you outside," said Mrs.
Martin when she returned.
Miss Bowyer opened the door suspiciously, standing in the doorway as she
spoke.
"Did you wish to see me?"
"Are you Miss Bowyer?"
"Yes,"--with a wave inflection, as though half inquiring.
"Are you the Christian Scientist?"
"Yes," said Miss Bowyer, "I am."
"This is a case of diphtheria, isn't it?"
"It's a case of belief in diphtheria. I have no doubt I shall be able to
reduce the morbid action soon. The child is already in the state of
interior perception," she said, seeing in Millard a possible patient,
and coming a little further out of the door.
"It's catching, I believe," said Millard. "Would you mind closing the
door a moment while I speak with you?"
Miss Bowyer peered into the room to see Mrs. Martin giving Tommy a
drink. Feeling secure, she softly closed the door, keeping hold of the
handle. Then she turned to Millard.
"Did you wish to see me professionally?" she asked.
"Well," said Millard, "I think you might call it professionally. I live
over on the west side. Do you know where the Graydon apartment building
is?"
"Yes, oh, yes; I attended a patient near there once, in one of the
brownstone houses on the other side of the street. He got well
beautifully."
"Well, I live in the Graydon," said Millard.
"Yes," said Miss Bowyer, with a rising inflection, wondering what could
be the outcome of this roundabout talk. "Is some member of your family
sick?" she asked.
A bolt clicked behind the metaphysical healer, who turned with the alarm
of a trapped mouse and essayed to push the door. Then, remembering what
seemed more profitable game in front, she repeated her question, but in
a ruffled tone, "Some member of your family?"
Charley laughed in spite of himself.
"Not of my family, but a relative," he said. "It is my cousin who is
sick in this room, and I called to get you outside of the door. I beg
your pardon for the seeming rudeness."
Miss Bowyer now pushed on the door in vain.
"You think this is a gentlemanly way to treat a lady?" she said, choking
with indignation.
"It doesn't seem handsome, does it?" he said. "But do you think you have
treated Mrs. Martin in a ladylike way?"
"I was called by her husband," she said.
"You are now dismissed by the wife."
"I will see Mr. Martin at once, and he will reinstate me."
"You will not see Mr. Martin. I shall not give you a chance. I am going
to report you to the County Medical Society and the Board of Health at
once. Have you reported this case of diphtheria, as the law requires?"
"No, I have not," said Miss Bowyer; "but I was going to do so to-day."
"I don't like to dispute the word of a lady," he said, "but you know
that you are not a proper practitioner, and that in case of a contagious
disease the Board of Health would put you out of here neck and heels, if
I must speak so roughly. Mrs. Martin is my aunt. If you make any
trouble, I shall feel obliged to have you arrested at once. If you go
home quietly and do not say a word to Mr. Martin, I'll let you off. You
have no doubt lost patients of this kind before, and if I look up your
record--"
"My hat and cloak are in there," said Miss Bowyer.
"If you renounce the case and say no more to Mr. Martin I will not
follow you up," said Charley; "but turn your hand against Mrs. Martin,
and I'll spend a thousand dollars to put you in prison."
This put a new aspect on the case in Miss Bowyer's mind. That Mrs.
Martin had influential friends she had not dreamed. Miss Bowyer had had
one tilt with the authorities, and she preferred not to try it again.
"My hat and cloak are in there," she repeated, pushing on the door.
"Stand aside," said Millard, "and I will get them."
Somehow Millard had reached Miss Bowyer's interior perception and put
her into the conscious, impressible, passive state, in which his will
was hers. She moved to the other side of the dark hall in such a state
of mind that she could hardly have told whether the magnetism of her
brain was in the cerebrum or in the cerebellum or in a state of
oscillation between the two.
"Aunt Hannah," called Millard, "open the door."
The bolt was shoved back by Mrs. Martin. Millard opened the door a
little way, holding the knob firmly in his right hand. Mrs. Martin stood
well out of sight behind the door, from an undefined fear of getting in
range of Miss Bowyer, whose calm bullying had put Mrs. Martin into some
impassive state not laid down in works on Christian Science.
"Give me Miss Bowyer's hat and cloak," said Millard.
The things were passed out by Mrs. Martin, who, in doing so, exposed
nothing but her right hand to the enemy, while Charley took them in his
left and passed them to Miss Bowyer.
"Now remember," he said, closing the door and holding it until he heard
the bolt shoved to its place again, "if you know what is good for you,
you will not make the slightest movement in this case."
"But you will not refuse me my fee," she said. "You have put me out of a
case that would have been worth ten or twenty dollars. I shall expect
you to pay me something."
Millard hesitated. It might be better not to provoke her too far; but on
the other hand, he could not suppress his indignation on his aunt's
behalf so far as to give her money.
"Send me your bill, made out explicitly for medical services in this
case. Address the cashier of the Bank of Manhadoes. I will pay you if
your bill is regularly made out."
Miss Bowyer went down the stairs and into the street. But the more she
thought of it the more she was convinced that this demand for a regular
bill for medical services from a non-registered practitioner concealed
some new device to entrap her. She had had enough of that young man
up-stairs, and, much as she disliked the alternative, she thought it
best to let her fee go uncollected, unless she could some day collect
it quietly from the head of the Martin family. Her magnetism had never
before been so much out of harmony with every sort of odylic emanation
in the universe as at this moment.