The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York

To a nature like Phillida's one door of comfort, or at least of blessed forgetfulness, is hardly ever shut. After the first bitter week she found hours of relief from an aching memory in her labors among the suffering poor. Work of any kind is a sedative; sympathy with the sorrows of others is a positive balm. Her visits to the Schulenberg tenement were always an alleviation to her unhappiness. There she was greeted as a beneficent angel. The happiness of Wilhelmina, of her mother, and of her brother, for a time put Phillida almost at peace with her destiny.

Her visits to and her prayers for other sufferers were attended with varying success as to their ailments. The confidence in the healing power of her prayers among the tenement people was not based altogether on the betterment of some of those for whom she prayed. Knowing her patient long-suffering with the evil she contended against, they reasoned, in advance of proof, that her prayers ought to have virtue in them. The reverence for her was enhanced by a report, which began to circulate about this time, that she had refused to marry a rich man in order to keep up her labor among the poor. Rumor is always an artist, and tradition, which is but fossil rumor, is the great saint-maker. The nature and extent of Phillida's sacrifice were amplified and adapted until people came to say that Miss Callender had refused a young millionaire because he wished her not to continue her work in Mackerelville. This pretty story did not mitigate the notoriety which was an ingredient of her pain.

In spite of the sedative of labor and the consolation of altruism, Poe's raven would croak in her ears through hours spent in solitude. In the evenings she found herself from habit and longing listening for the door-bell, and its alarm would always give her a moment of fluttering expectation, followed by a period of revulsion. Once the bell rang at about the hour of Millard's habitual coming, and Phillida sat in that state in which one expects without having reason to expect anything in particular until the servant brought her a card bearing the legend, "Eleanor Arabella Bowyer, Christian Scientist and Metaphysical Practitioner."

"Eleanor Arabella Bowyer," she said, reading it to her mother as they sat in the front basement below the parlor. "Who is she? I've never heard of her."

"I don't know, Phillida. I don't seem to remember any Bowyers."

"Where is the lady, Sarah?" asked Phillida of the servant.

"She is in the parlor, Miss."

Phillida rose and went up-stairs. She found awaiting her a woman rather above medium height. Phillida noted a certain obtrusiveness about the bony substructure of her figure, a length and breadth of framework never quite filled out as it was meant to be, so that the joints and angles of her body showed themselves with the effect of headlands and rocky promontories. She had a sallow complexion and a nose that was retroussé, with a prompt outward and upward thrust about the lower half of it, accompanied by a tendency to thinness as it approached its termination, quite out of agreement with the prominent cheek-bones. The whole face had a certain air of tough endurance, of determination, of resolute go-forwardness untempered by the recoil of sensitiveness. Miss Bowyer was clad in good clothes without being well-dressed.

"Miss Callender, I suppose," said the visitor, rising, and extending her hand with confidence. Her voice was without softness or resonance, but it was not nasal – a voice admirably suited, one would think, for calling cows. Her grasp of the hand was positive, square, unreserved, but as destitute of sympathetic expression as her vowels. "I've heard a good deal about you, one way and another," she said. "You've been remarkably successful in your faith-cures, I am told. It's a great gift, and you must be proud of it – grateful for it, I should think." She closed this speech with a smile which seemed not exactly spontaneous but, rather, habitual, as though it were a fixed principle with her to smile at about this stage of every conversation.

Phillida was puzzled to reply to this speech. She did not feel proud of her gift of faith-healing; hardly was she grateful for it. It was rather a burden laid on her, which had been mainly a source of pain and suffering. But she could not bring herself to enter on a subject so personal with a stranger.

"I don't know that I am," was all she said.

"Well, there's a great deal in it," said Miss Bowyer. "I have had a good deal of experience. There's a great deal more in it than you think."

"I don't quite understand you," said Phillida.

"No; of course not. I am a faith-healer myself."

"Are you?" said Phillida, mechanically, with a slight mental shudder at finding herself thus classified with one for whom she did not feel any affinity.

"Yes; that is, I was. I began as a faith-doctor, but I found there was a great deal more in it, don't you know?"

"A great deal more in it?" queried Phillida. "A great deal more of what, may I ask?"

"Oh, everything, you know."

This was not clarifying, and Phillida waited without responding until the metaphysical practitioner should deign to explain.

"I mean there's a great deal more science in it, as well as a great deal more success, usefulness, and – and – and remuneration to be had out of it than you think."

"Oh," said Phillida, not knowing what else to say.

"Yes," said Eleanor Arabella Bowyer with a smile. She had a way of waiting for the sense of her words to soak into the minds of her hearers, and she now watched Phillida for a moment before proceeding. "You see when I began I didn't know anything about Christian Science, – the new science of mental healing, faith-cure, psychopathy, – by which you act on the spirit and through the spirit upon the body. Matter is subject to mind. Matter is unreal. All merely physical treatment of disease is on the mortal plane." Miss Bowyer paused here waiting for this great truth to produce its effect; then she said, "Don't you think so?" and looked straight at Phillida.

"I haven't thought a great deal about it," said Phillida.

"No?" This was said with the rising inflection. "I thought not; mere faith-healing doesn't require much thought. I know, you see, having been a faith-healer at first. But we must go deeper. We must always go deeper. Don't you think so?"

"I don't understand just what you mean," said Phillida.

"You see," said Miss Bowyer, "faith-healing is a primitive and apostolic mode of healing the sick."

Miss Bowyer paused, and Phillida said, "Yes," in a hesitant way; for even the things she believed seemed false when uttered by Eleanor Bowyer.

"Well, ours is a scientific age. Now we practise – we revive this mode of healing, but in a scientific spirit, in the spirit of our age, and with a great deal more of knowledge than people had in ancient times. We reject the belief in evil; we call it unreal. Disease is a mistake. We teach faith in the unity of God the All-good."

Miss Bowyer evidently expected Phillida to say something at this point, but as she did not, Miss Bowyer was forced to proceed without encouragement.

"When I found that there was a great deal in it, I took the subject up and studied it. I studied mind-cure, or metaphysical healing, which strikes at the root of disease; I went into hypnotism, mesmerism, and phreno-magnetism, and the od force – I don't suppose you know about the od which Reichenbach discovered."

"No."

"Well, it's wonderful, but mysterious. Blue blazes seen by the sensitive, and all that. I studied that, and theosophy a little too, and I took up Swedenborg; but he was rather too much for me. You can't quite understand him, and then life is too short to ever get through him. So I only read what somebody else had printed about Swedenborgianism, and I understand him a good deal better that way. That's the best way to tackle him, you know. Well, now, all of these go to explain the unity of truth, and how the miracles of the Bible were worked."

Phillida said nothing, though her interlocutor gave her an opportunity.

"Well," proceeded Miss Bowyer, "this is what we call Christian Science. It's the science of sciences. It's as much above the rude method of primitive faith-cure practised by the apostles as the heavens are above the earth. We understand from knowing the philosophy of miracles the reason why we do not always succeed. We can not always secure the impressible condition by producing the quiescence of the large brain. But if we understand the theory of hypnotism we shall be able to put the cerebrum at rest and secure the passive impressible state of the cerebellum; that is, an introverted condition of the mind. This securing of interior perception is the basis of all success."

"Then you do not believe that God does it all," said Phillida, with a twitch of the shoulder expressing the repulsion she felt from this incomprehensible explication.

"Oh, yes. Faith in God the All-good is at the root of it all. It is one of the things that induces passive receptivity. We must convince the patient that the unity of God excludes the real existence of evil."

"But still you do not admit the direct action of God?" queried Phillida.

"God works through the forces in nature, according to law," said Miss Bowyer, glibly.

"That is just as true of the action of medicine," said Phillida. "I don't like this affecting to put God in while you leave him out of your mixture. Besides, I don't pretend that I understand your explanation."

"It is somewhat fine; all philosophy of man's internal nature is so. It's not a thing to argue about. Intellect argues; spirit perceives. But if you would give your mind to Truth in a receptive way, Truth would set you free. I am sure you would be convinced after reading the books on the question."

Phillida made no offer to read the books, and this seemed to disappoint Miss Bowyer. After a pause she began again:

"You might as well know, Miss Callender, that I had a business object in view in coming to see you. Some of our Christian Science people are all enthusiasm, but I am trained to business, and I carry on my practice on business principles. There is no reason why a doctor who treats diseases on the mortal plane by medication should be paid for his time, and you and I not be. Is there?"

"I don't know," said Phillida, mechanically.

"Well, now, I have given my time to the beautiful work of Christian Science healing. I have an office in East Fourteenth street. It is a blessed religious work. But I can't work without pay; I follow it as a business, and it's got to support me. I have as much right to get on in the world as anybody else. Now I've cleared over and above my office-rent, including what I get for teaching a class in Christian Science, almost eighteen hundred dollars in the very first year since I set up. That's pretty good for a lone woman; don't you think so?"

Phillida slightly inclined her head to avoid speaking.

"Well, now, I haven't got many advantages. My brother kept a health-lift a few years ago when everything was cured by condensed exercise. But people got tired of condensed exercise, and then he had a blue-glass solarium until that somehow went out of fashion. I helped run the female side of his business, you know, for part of the profits. My education is all business. I didn't have any time to learn painting or fine manners, or any music, except to play Moody-and-Sankeys on the melodeon. My practice is mostly among the poor, or the people that are only so-so. I haven't got the ways that go down with rich people, nor anybody to give me a start among them. Well, now, I say to myself, science is all very well, and faith is all very well, but you want something more than that to get on in a large way. I would rather get on in a large way. Wouldn't you?"

Here she paused, but Phillida sat motionless and stoically attentive. She only answered, "Well, I don't know."

"Now, when I heard that you'd been sent for to the Maginnis child, and that you have got relations that go among rich people, I says to myself, she's my partner. I'll furnish the science, and I'll do the talking, and the drumming-up business, and the collecting bills, and all that; and you, with your stylish ways, don't you know? and your good looks, and your family connections, and all that, will help me to get in where I want to get in. Once in, we're sure to win. There's no reason, Miss Callender, why we shouldn't get rich. I will give you half of my practice already established, and I'll teach you the science and how to manage, you know; the great thing is to know how to manage your patients, you see. I learned that in the health-lift and the blue-glass solarium. We'll move farther up town, say to West Thirty-fourth street. Then you can, no doubt, write a beautiful letter – that'll qualify us to go into what is called 'absent treatment.' We'll advertise, 'Absent treatment a specialty,' and altogether we can make ten thousand or even twenty thousand, maybe, a year, in a little while. Keep our own carriage, and so on. What do you say to that?" Miss Bowyer's uplifted nose was now turned toward Phillida in triumphant expectation. She had not long to wait for a reply. Phillida's feelings had gathered head enough to break through. She answered promptly:

"I do not believe in your science, and wouldn't for the world take money from those that I am able to help with my prayers." Phillida said this with a sudden fire that dismayed Miss Bowyer.

"But you'll look into the matter maybe, Miss Callender?"

"No; I will not. I hate the whole business." Phillida wanted to add, "and you besides"; however, she only said: "Don't say any more, please. I won't have anything at all to do with it." Phillida rose, but Miss Bowyer did not take the hint.

"You're pretty high-toned, it seems to me," said the Scientist, smiling, and speaking without irritation. "You're going to throw away the great chance of your life. Perhaps you'll read some books that set forth the mighty truths of Christian Science if I send them. You ought to be open to conviction. If you could only know some of the cases I myself have lately cured – a case of belief in rheumatism of three years' standing, and a case of belief in mental prostration of six years' duration. If you could only have seen the joyful results. I cured lately an obstinate case of belief in neuralgia, and another of cancer – advanced stage. A case of belief in consumption with goitre was lately cured in the West. Perhaps you'll look over some numbers of the 'International Magazine of Christian Science' if I send them to you; under the head of 'Sheaves from the Harvest Field,' it gives many remarkable cases."

"I have no time to read anything of the sort," said Phillida, still standing.

"Oh, well, then, I'll just come in now and then and explain the different parts of the science to you. It's a great subject, and we may get mutual benefit by comparing notes."

The prospect of repeated calls from Eleanor Arabella Bowyer put Phillida's already excited nerves into something like a panic. She had reached the utmost point of endurance.

"No," she said; "I will have nothing at all to do with it. You must excuse me; positively, I must be excused. I am very busy, and I can not pursue the subject further."

"Certainly," said the Metaphysical Practitioner, rising reluctantly; "but I think I'll take the liberty of calling again when you're more at leisure. You won't object, I'm sure, to my coming in next week?"

"Yes," said Phillida; "I will not have anything to do with the matter you propose, and I can not see you again. You must excuse me."

"Well, we never get offended, Miss Callender. Christian Science does not argue. We never resent an affront, but live in love and charity with all. That is Christian Science. Our success depends on purity and a Christian spirit. I think I'll send you a little book," added Miss Bowyer, as reluctantly she felt herself propelled towards the door by the sheer force of Phillida's manner. "Just a little book; it won't take long to read."

As Miss Bowyer said this she paused in the vestibule with her back to Phillida. She was looking into the street, trying to think of some new device for gaining her end.

"I won't read a book if you send it. Save yourself the trouble," said Phillida, softly closing the inner door behind Miss Bowyer, leaving her standing face outwards in the vestibule.

"You had a hard time shaking her off, didn't you, Philly?" said Agatha, issuing from the back part of the dark hall, having come out of the back room just in time to catch a glimpse of Eleanor Bowyer. "I declare, the way you closed the door on her at the last was too good."

"Sh-h!" said Phillida, pointing to the shadow cast against the ground glass of the inner door by the tall form of the Christian Scientist and Metaphysical Practitioner in the light of the street lamp.

"I don't care whether she hears or not," said Agatha, dropping her voice, nevertheless; "she ought to be snubbed. You're a little too easy. That woman is meditating whether she sha'n't break into the house to preach Christian Science. There, she's going at last; she won't commit Christian burglary this time. I suppose she thinks burglary doesn't really exist, since it's contrary to the unity of God. Anyhow, she wouldn't commit burglary, because housebreaking is a physical thing that's transacted on the mortal plane."

Agatha said this in Miss Bowyer's tone, and Phillida's vexation gave way to laughter.

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.