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The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York, a novel by Edward Eggleston |
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Chapter 27. A Bad Case |
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_ CHAPTER XXVII. A BAD CASE Notwithstanding Phillida's efforts to the contrary, the most irrelevant things were sufficient to send her thoughts flitting--like homing pigeons that can ply their swift wings in but one direction--toward Millard, or toward that past so thickly peopled by memories of him. Now that Eleanor Arabella Bowyer, Christian Scientist and metaphysical healer of ailments the substantial existence of which she denied, had cast a shadow upon her, Phillida realized for the first time the source of that indignant protest of Millard's which had precipitated the breaking of their engagement. Her name was on men's lips in the same class with this hard-cheeked professor of religious flummery, this mercenary practitioner of an un-medical imposture calculated to cheat the unfortunate by means of delusive hopes. How such mention of her must have stung a proud-spirited lover of propriety like Millard! For the first time she could make allowance and feel grateful for his chivalrous impulse to defend her. No child is just like a parent. Phillida differed from her strenuous father in nature by the addition of esthetic feeling. Her education had not tended to develop this, but it made itself felt. Her lofty notions of self-sacrifice were stimulated by a love for the sublime. Other young girls read romances; Phillida tried to weave her own life into one. The desire for the beautiful, the graceful, the externally appropriate, so long denied and suppressed, furnished the basis of her affection for Millard. A strong passion never leaves the nature the same, and under the influence of Millard her esthetic sense had grown. Nothing that Eleanor Arabella Bowyer had said assailed the logical groundwork of her faith. But during the hours following that conversation it was impossible for her to reflect with pleasure, as had been her wont, on the benefits derived from her prayers by those who had been healed in whole or in part through her mediation. A remembrance of the jargon of the Christian Scientist mingled with and disturbed her meditations; the case of a belief in rheumatism and the case of a belief in consumption with goitre stood grinning at her like rude burlesques of her own cures, making ridiculous the work that had hitherto seemed so holy. But when the morrow came she was better able to disentangle her thoughts of healing from such phrases as "the passive impressible state" and "interior perception." And when at length the remembrance of Miss Bowyer had grown more dim, the habitual way of looking at her work returned. One morning about ten days later, while she was at breakfast, the basement door-bell was rung, and when the servant answered it Phillida heard some one in the area, speaking with a German accent. "Please tell Miss Callender that Rudolph Schulenberg will like to speak with her." Phillida rose and went to the door. "Miss Callender," said Rudolph, "Mina is so sick for three days already and she hopes you will come to her right away this morning, wunst, if you will be so kind." "Certainly I will. But what is the matter with her? Is it the old trouble with the back?" "No; it is much worse as that. She has got such a cough, and she can not breathe. Mother she believe that Mina is heart-sick and will die wunst already." "I will come in half an hour or so." "If you would. My mother her heart is just breaking. But Mina is sure that if Miss Callender will come and pray with her the cough will all go away wunst more already." Phillida finished her breakfast in almost total silence, and then without haste left the house. She distinctly found it harder to maintain her attitude of faith than it had been. But all along the street she braced herself by prayer and meditation, until her spirit was once more wrought into an ecstasy of religious exaltation. She mounted the familiar stairs, thronged now with noisy-footed and vociferous children issuing from the various family cells on each level to set out for school. "How do you do, Mrs. Schulenberg?" said Phillida, as she encountered the mother on the landing in front of her door. "How is Wilhelmina?" "Bad, very bad," whispered the mother, closing the door behind her and looking at Phillida with a face laden with despair. Then alternately wiping her eyes with her apron and shaking her head ominously, she said: "She will never get well this time. She is too bad already. She is truly heart-sick." "Have you had a doctor?" "No; Mina will not have only but you. I tell her it is no use to pray when she is so sick; she must have a doctor. But no." "How long has she been sick?" "Well, three or four days; but she was not well"--the mother put her hand on her chest--"for a week. She has been thinking you would come." Mrs. Schulenberg's speech gave way to tears and a despairing shaking of the head from side to side. Phillida entered, and found Mina bolstered in her chair, flushed with fever and gasping for breath. The sudden change in her appearance was appalling. "I thought if you would come, nothing would seem too hard for your prayers. O Miss Callender,"--her voice died to a hoarse whisper,--"pray for me, I wanted to die wunst already; you remember it. But ever since I have been better it has made my mother and Rudolph so happy again. If now I die what will mother do?" The spectacle of the emaciated girl wrestling for breath and panting with fever, while her doom was written upon her face, oppressed the mind of Phillida. Was it possible that prayer could save one so visibly smitten? She turned and looked at the mother standing just inside the door, her face wrung with the agony of despair while she yet watched Phillida with eagerness to see if she had anything to propose that promised relief. Then a terrible sense of what was expected of her by mother and daughter came over her mind, and her spirits sank as under the weight of a millstone. Phillida was not one of those philanthropists whom use has enabled to look on suffering in a dry and professional way. She was most susceptible on the side of her sympathies. Her depression came from pity, and her religious exaltation often came from the same source. After a minute of talk and homely ministry to Wilhelmina's comfort, Phillida's soul rose bravely to its burden. The threat of bereavement that hung over the widow and her son, the shadow of death that fell upon the already stricken life of the unfortunate young woman, might be dissipated by the goodness of God. The sphere into which Phillida rose was not one of thought but one of intense and exalted feeling. The sordid and depressing surroundings--the dingy and broken-backed chairs, the cracked and battered cooking-stove, the ancient chest of drawers without a knob left upon it, the odor of German tenement cookery and of feather-beds--vanished now. Wilhelmina, for her part, held Phillida fast by the hand and saw no one but her savior, and Phillida felt a moving of the heart that one feels in pulling a drowning person from the water, and that uplifting of the spirit that comes to those of the true prophetic temperament. She read in a gentle, fervent voice some of the ancient miracles of healing from the English columns of the leather-covered German and English Testament, while the exhausted Wilhelmina still held her hand and wrestled for the breath of life. Then Phillida knelt by the well-worn wooden-bottom chair while Mrs. Schulenberg knelt by a stool on the other side of the stove, burying her face in her apron. Never was prayer more sincere, never was prayer more womanly or more touching. As Phillida proceeded with her recital of Wilhelmina's sufferings, as she alluded to the value of Mina to her mother and the absent Rudolph, and then prayed for the merciful interposition of God, the mother sobbed aloud, Phillida's faith rose with the growing excitement of her pity, and she closed the prayer at length without a doubt that Mina would be cured. "I do feel a little better now," said Wilhelmina, when the prayer was ended. "I will bring you something from the Diet Kitchen," said Phillida as she went out. The patient had scarcely tasted food for two days, but when Phillida came back she ate a little and thought herself better. Phillida came again in the afternoon, and was disappointed not to find Mina improving. But the sick girl clung to her, and while Phillida remained she would have nothing even from the hand of her mother. The scene of the morning was repeated; again Phillida prayed, again Wilhelmina was a little better, and ate a little broth from the hands of her good angel. The burden of the poor girl and her mother rested heavily on Phillida during the evening and whenever she awakened during the night. Mrs. Callender and Agatha only asked how she found Wilhelmina; they thought it best not to intrude on the anxiety in Phillida's mind, the nature of which they divined. When breakfast was over the next morning Phillida hastened again to the Schulenbergs. "Ah! it is no good this time; I shall surely die," gasped Wilhelmina, sitting bolstered on her couch and looking greatly worse than the day before. "The night has been bad. I have had to fight and fight all the long night for my breath. Miss Callender, my time has come." The mother was looking out of the window to conceal her tears. But Phillida's courage was of the military sort that rises with supreme difficulty. She exhorted Wilhelmina to faith, to unswerving belief, and then again she mingled her petitions with the sobs of the mother and the distressful breathing of the daughter. This morning Wilhelmina grew no better after the prayer, and she ate hardly two spoonfuls of the broth that was given her. She would not take it from Phillida this time. Seeing prayers could not save her and that she must die, the instincts of infancy and the memories of long invalidism and dependence were now dominant, and she clung only to her mother. "You haf always loved me, mother; I will haf nobody now any more but you, my mother, the time I haf to stay with you is so short. You will be sorry, mother, so sorry, when poor unfortunate Wilhelmina, that has always been such a trouble, is gone already." This talk from the smitten creature broke down Phillida's self-control, and she wept with the others. Then in despondency she started home. But at the bottom of the stairs she turned back and climbed again to the top, and, re-entering the tenement, she called Mrs. Schulenberg to her. "You'd better get a doctor." Wilhelmina with the preternaturally quick hearing of a feverish invalid caught the words and said: "No. What is the use? The doctor will want some of poor Rudolph's money. What good can the doctor do? I am just so good as dead already." "But, Wilhelmina dear," said Phillida, coming over to her, "we have no right to leave the matter this way. If you die, then Rudolph and your mother will say, 'Ah, if we'd only had a doctor!'" "That is true," gasped Mina. "Send for Dr. Beswick, mother." A neighbor was engaged to carry the message to Dr. Beswick in Seventeenth street, and Phillida went her way homeward, slowly and in dejection. _ |
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