Part 50

"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.