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The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York, a novel by Edward Eggleston |
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Chapter 30. Phillida And Philip |
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_ CHAPTER XXX. PHILLIDA AND PHILIP Mrs. Gouverneur concluded not to try her clever hand on Millard and Phillida again. Pessimistic Philip could no longer reproach her for having blasted his hopes, for he had a new chance if he chose to improve it. But to improve any opportunity seemed to be out of Philip's power, except perhaps the opportunity to spend his last available dollars on a rare book. He had of late been seeking a chance to invest some hundreds in a copy of Captain John Smith's "Generall Historie of Virginia," provided that he could find a copy with 1624 on the title-page. The 1626 was rare and almost, if not exactly, word for word the same as the 1624; but it would not do. For there were already several twenty-sixes in this country, and there was no fun in possessing a book that two or three other people could boast of having. When not busy with his books Philip was mostly crouched in an armchair in his library, or for a change crouched in an armchair at the Terrapin Club--in either case smoking and, as his mother believed, making profound reflections which might one day come to something. For how could a bright-minded man like Philip fail to bring forth something of value, seeing he bought expensive books and gave so much of his time to meditation? That Phillida should be specially asked to dine at her aunt's was rather inevitable under the circumstances, and Mrs. Gouverneur saw to it that she came when Philip was at home and when there was no other company. This arrangement pleased Phillida; Uncle Gouverneur was dull enough, but Cousin Philip was always interesting in talk, and a good fellow, if he did spend his life in collecting books mostly of no particular value to anybody but a curiosity-hunter, and in poking good-natured fun at other people's cherished beliefs. The meal was well-nigh finished when Philip said to his cousin who confronted him--there were only four at the table: "Phillida, I saw Mrs. Maginnis day before yesterday at Mrs. Benthuysen's. She is still sounding your praises as a faith-healer, but she confided to me that a pious girl and a minister's daughter ought not to be proud. She suggested that you didn't get that from your father. 'Her pride comes from the mother's side, they tell me,' she said. 'How's that, Mr. Gouverneur?' and she laughed at what she regarded a capital drive at me." Phillida was not pleased at the mention of Mrs. Maginnis. Since the death of Wilhelmina, two weeks before, her mind had been disturbed as to the substantial value of faith-cures. Dr. Beswick's rationalism on the subject rose to trouble her. Happily she had not been sent for to visit any new cases, the death of Wilhelmina, her first notable example, having a little spoiled the charm of her success, as Dr. Beswick had foreseen. Doubt had made her cowardly, and there lurked in her mind a hope that she might no more be called upon to exercise her gift in the direction of faith-healing, and that she might thus without the necessity of a formal decision creep out of responsibility and painful notoriety in a matter concerning which she could not always feel absolutely sure of her ground. To this shrinking the revolt of her taste against such getters-on as Miss Bowyer had contributed, for her mind was after all that of a young woman, and in a young woman's mind taste is likely to go for more than logic. To Philip's words about Mrs. Maginnis she only replied: "Curious woman, isn't she?" "Yes," interposed Mrs. Gouverneur, desirous of turning the talk away from what she saw was a disagreeable subject to Phillida--"yes; and I don't see the use of taking such people into society in such a hurry, merely because they _are_ exceedingly rich." "Mrs. Maginnis is respectable enough," said Philip, "and interesting," he added with a laugh; "and I thought her the most brilliant of the party at Mrs. Benthuysen's, taking her diamond necklace into the account." "Yes; no doubt she's entirely respectable," said Mrs. Gouverneur. "So are ten thousand other people whom one doesn't care to meet in society. It seems to me that New York society is too easy nowadays." "It's not too easy toward the poor; eh, Phillida?" "That's no great deprivation to the poor," said Phillida. "They could not indulge in fashionable amusements anyhow, and some of the most sensible among them believe that the families of fairly prosperous workingmen are happier and more content than the rich." "Certainly people in the social world are not examples of peace of mind," said Philip. "For me, now, I would have sworn last week that I should be as perfectly happy as a phoebe-bird on a chimneytop if I could only get a John Smith of 1624, which I've been trying for so long. But I got it yesterday, and now I'm just miserable again." "You want something else?" queried Phillida, laughing. "Indeed I do. You see the splendid John Smith looks lonesome. It needs a complete set of De Bry's Voyages to keep it company. But I couldn't find a complete De Bry for sale probably, and I couldn't afford to buy it if I should stumble on it. John Smith has eaten up the remainder of my book allowance for this year and nibbled about two hundred dollars out of next year." When dinner was over Philip said: "Come up-stairs, Phillida, you and mother, and see my lovely old Captain Smith in the very first edition, with the fresh-looking portrait of Pocahontas as Lady Rebecca." "You go, Phillida; I'll follow you in a minute," said Mrs. Gouverneur. "The book is of the earliest impression known," went on Philip with enthusiasm as he led the way up-stairs followed by his cousin, "and is perfect throughout except that one page has been mended." "Mended?" queried Phillida, as she followed Philip into his library and sitting room. "Do they darn old books as they do old stockings?" "Oh, yes! it is a regular trade to patch books." Saying this, Philip turned up the gas, and then unlocked a glass case which held what he called his "nuggets," and took down the two precious volumes of the bravest and boastfullest of all the Smiths, laying them tenderly on a table under the chandelier. Turning the leaves, he directed Phillida's attention to one that seemed to have the slightest discoloration of one corner; rather the corner seemed just perceptibly less time-stained than the rest of the leaf. "There," he said; "the most skillful mender in London did that." "Did what?" said Phillida. "Put on that corner. Isn't it a work of art?" "I don't see that anything has been done there," said Phillida. "The corner is ever so little paler than the rest, maybe." "That is the new piece. The mender selected a piece of hand-made paper of similar texture to the old, and stained the new piece as nearly to the tint of the old leaf as possible. Then he beveled the edge of the leaf, and made a reverse bevel on the piece, and joined them with exquisite skill and pains." Phillida held the leaf between her and the light, regarding it with wonder, hardly able to believe that a piece had been affixed. "But, Philip, how did he get a corner with the right printing on it? The line where the two are joined seems to run through the middle of words and even through the middle of letters." "All the letters and parts of letters on the corner were made by the hand of the mender. He has imitated the ink and the style of the ancient letters. Take this magnifying glass and you may be able to detect the difference between the hand-made letters in the new part and the printed ones. But to the naked eye it is perfect." "What a genius he must be!" said Phillida. "I should think that the book would be worth more than if it had never been torn. Do they ever tear a piece out just for the sake of mending it?" "On the contrary, it would have added fifty dollars to the price of this copy if the original page had been complete, or if it could have been mended without a possibility of detection--say by a process of faith-cure." Philip said this laughing, as he set a chair for Phillida, and then sat down himself. "I beg pardon, Phillida. I oughtn't to jest about what you--feel--to be sacred." Phillida colored, and compressed her lips a little. Then she said: "I don't think I ought to refuse to hear anything you have to say about faith-cure, Philip. You evidently differ with me. But I want to know the truth; and I--" here Phillida made a long pause, smoothing out the folds of her gown the meanwhile. "I will tell you, Cousin Phil, that I am not always so confident as I used to be about the matter." Mrs. Gouverneur looked into the room at this moment, but perceiving that the conversation had taken on a half-confidential tone, she only said: "I'll have to leave you with Philip a little longer, Phillida. I have some things to see to," and went out again. Philip went to a drawer of rare old prints, and turned them over rapidly until he came to one of Charles II. touching for the king's evil. "There," he said; "Charles was a liar, a traitor who took money to betray the interests of his country, and a rake of the worst. You wouldn't believe that he could cure sickness by any virtue in his royal touch. Yet great doctors and clergymen of the highest ranks certify incredible things regarding the marvelous cures wrought by him. If one might believe their solemn assertions, more cures were wrought by him than by any other person known to history. The only virtue that Charles possessed was lodged in his finger-tips." "How do you account for it?" "The evidence of a cure is the obscurest thing in the world. People get well by sheer force of nature in most cases. Every patent medicine and every quack system is therefore able to count up its cures. Then, too, many diseases are mere results of mental disturbance or depression. The mind has enormous influence on the body. I know a doctor who cured a woman that had not walked for years by setting fire to the bedding where she lay and leaving her a choice to exert herself or be burned." "But there are the cures by faith related in the Bible. I am afraid that if I give up modern cures I must lose my faith in miracles," said Phillida. An unusual tenderness in Philip's speech had dissipated her reserve, and she was in a mood to lay bare her heart. In this last remark she disclosed to Philip her main difficulty. With a mind like hers such things are rather matters of association than of simple logic. Religion and miracles were bound up in the same bundle in her mind. To reject the latter was to throw away the former, and this, by another habitual association in her mind, would have seemed equivalent to the moral subversion of the universe. On the other hand she had associated modern faith-healing with Scripture miracles; the rejection of faith-cures involved therefore a series of consequences that seemed infinitely disastrous. If it had been merely an abstract question Philip would not have hesitated to reject the miraculous altogether, particularly in any conversation in which such a rejection would have yielded interesting results. But Phillida's confiding attitude touched him profoundly. After all, he deemed faith a very good thing for a woman; unbelief, like smoking and occasional by-words, was appropriate only to the coarser sex. "Well," he replied evasively, "the Bible stands on a very different ground. We couldn't examine the ancient miracles just as we do modern faith-cures if we wished. The belief in Bible miracles is a poetic and religious belief, and it does not involve any practical question of action to-day. But faith-healing now is a matter of great responsibility." Philip spoke with a tremor of emotion in his voice. His cousin was sitting at the other side of the table looking intently at him, and doing her best to understand the ground of his distinction between ancient and modern miracles, which Philip, agitated as he was by a feeling that had no relation to the question, did not succeed in clearing up quite to his own satisfaction. Abandoning that field abruptly, he said: "What I urge is that you ought not to trust too much to accidental recoveries like that of the Maginnis child. If faith-healing is a mistake it may do a great deal of harm." Phillida's eyes fell to the table, and she fingered a paper-weight with manifest emotion. "What you say in regard to responsibility is true, Philip. But if you have a power to heal, refusal is also a responsibility. I know I must seem like a fool to the rest of you." "No," said Philip, in a low, earnest voice; "you are the noblest of us all. You are mistaken, but your mistake is the result of the best that is in you; and, by George! Phillida, there is no better in anybody that lives than there is in you." This enthusiastic commendation, so unexpected by Phillida, who had felt herself in some sense under the ban of her family, brought to the parched and thirsty heart the utmost refreshment. She trembled visibly, and tears appeared in her eyes. "Thank you, Philip. I know the praise is not deserved, but your kindness does me no end of good." Mrs. Gouverneur came in at this moment. Phillida's eyes and Philip's constraint showed her that something confidential had passed between them, and she congratulated herself on the success of her plan, though she could not divine the nature of the conversation. Phillida would not be a brilliant match for Philip in a worldly point of view, but it had long been a ruling principle with Mrs. Gouverneur that whatever Philip wanted he was to have, if it were procurable, and as the husband of such a woman as Phillida he ought to be a great deal happier than in mousing among old books and moping over questions that nobody could solve. Besides, Phillida possessed one qualification second to no other in Mrs. Gouverneur's opinion--there could be no question that her family was a first-rate one, at least upon the mother's side. The intrusion of a third person at this moment produced a little constraint. To relieve this Mrs. Gouverneur felt bound to talk of something. "I scold Philip for wasting his time over old books and such trifles," she said to Phillida. "I wish you could persuade him out of it." "Trifles!" exclaimed Philip. "Trifles are the only real consolation of such beings as we are. They keep us from being crushed by the immensities. If we were to spend our time chiefly about the momentous things, life would become unendurable." The conversation drifted to indifferent subjects, and Philip talked with an unwonted gayety that caused Phillida to forget her anxieties, while Mrs. Gouverneur wondered what change had come over her son that he should feel so much elation. The confidence and affection that Phillida had exhibited while conversing with him this evening consoled Philip for the misery of having to live, and his cheerfulness lasted throughout her visit. At its close he walked towards her home, with her hand upon his arm, in an atmosphere of hope which he had not been accustomed to breathe. At the door Phillida said: "Good-night, Cousin Philip. Thank you for the kind advice you have given me. I don't think I shall agree with it, but I'll think about it." Then in a low voice she added, "If I have made a mistake it has cost me dear--nobody knows how dear." After he had left her Philip's buoyancy declined. These last words, evidently full of regrets as regarded her relation with Charley, gave him a twinge of his old jealousy and restored him to his habitual discouragement. _ |
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