The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York. Eggleston Edward
I don't just like to ask a favor of such a dude. I'll ask him to dinner, and you can ask his advice as though by accident."
"No; that won't do. That kind of man would see through it all. Tell him that I wish his advice. That will show him that I recognize his position as an authority. He'll like that better."
Warren Hilbrough suddenly discovered that his wife was cleverer – or, as he would have said, "smarter" – than he had thought her.
"You are a good hand, Jenny," he said. "You'll win your game." And after he had resumed the reading of his paper he looked over the top of it once or twice in furtive admiration of her as she sat between him and the dark portière, which set her form in relief against the rich background and made her seem a picture to the fond eyes of her husband. He reflected that perhaps after all managing church fairs and running sewing societies was no bad training for a larger social activity.
VI.
PHILLIDA CALLENDER
"Hilbrough has sent for me," said Millard to Philip Gouverneur, who was sitting so as to draw his small form into the easy-chair as he smoked by the open fire in the newspaper room at the Terrapin Club. Millard, who had never liked tobacco, was pretending to smoke a cigarette because smoking seemed to him the right thing to do. He had no taste for any more desperate vice, and tobacco smoke served to take the gloss off a character which seemed too highly finished for artistic effect.
"Hilbrough" – Charley smiled as he recalled it – "always gets uneasy when he's talking to me. He takes his foot off the chair and puts it on the floor. Then he throws himself forward on the table with his elbows outward, and then he straightens up. He's a jolly kind of man, though, and a good banker. But his wife – she is the daughter of a Yankee school-teacher that taught in Brooklyn till he died – is a vigorous little woman. She hasn't come to New York to live quietly. She's been head and front of her set in Brooklyn, and the Lord knows what she won't undertake now that Hilbrough's getting rich very fast. I haven't seen her yet, but I rather like her in advance. She didn't try to trap me into an acquaintance, but sent me word that she wanted advice. There's a woman who knows what she wants, and goes for it with a clear head. But what can I do for her? She'll be wanting to give a tea or a ball before she has acquaintances enough. It's awfully ticklish making such people understand that they must go slow and take what they can get to begin with."
"Why," said Gouverneur, "you can tell her to take the religious or moral reform dodge, and invite all the friends of some cause to meet some distinguished leader of that cause. Bishop Whipple, if she could capture him, would bring all the Friends of the Red Man, just as Miss Willard or Mrs. Livermore would fetch the temperance and woman-suffrage people. You remember the converted Hindu princess they had over here last winter? Between her rank, and her piety, and her coming from the antipodes, and her heathen antecedents, she drew beautifully. Fine woman, too. Even my mother forgave her for not having a drop of Dutch or Revolutionary blood in her veins, and we all liked her very much. Give Mrs. Hilbrough that tip."
Millard shook his head, and smiled. He had the appreciative smile of a man with a genius for listening, which is a better, because a rarer, contribution to conversation than good speech. Philip, crouched in his chair with his face averted from the electric lights, went on:
"Well, then you know there is the literary dodge. Have papers read, not enough to bore people too deeply, but to bore them just enough to give those who attend an impression of intellectuality. Have discussions of literary questions, seasoned with stewed terrapin, and decorated with dress coats and external anatomy gowns. Those who go to such places flatter themselves that they are getting into literary circles and improving their minds, especially if a popular magazinist or the son of some great author can be persuaded to read one of his rejected articles or to make a few remarks now and then. Then there is the musical dodge on the drawing-room scale, or by wholesale, like the Seidl Society, for example. One is able by this means to promote a beautiful art and increase one's social conspicuousness at the same time. Then there is the distinguished-foreigner dodge, give a reception in honor of – "
"Hang it, Philip; I'll tell Mrs. Hilbrough to send for you," said Millard, laughing as he got up and threw his cigarette into the grate. "I don't like to interrupt your lecture, but it's eleven o'clock, and I'm going home. Good-night."
Philip sat there alone and listened to the rain against the windows, and smoked until his cigar went out. The mere turning of things over in his mind, and tacking witty labels to them, afforded so much amusement that inactivity and revery were his favorite indulgences.
Mrs. Hilbrough gave a good deal of thought to her dinner on the next evening after the conversation between Philip Gouverneur and Millard. To have it elegant, and yet not to appear vulgar by making too much fuss over a dinner en famille, taxed her thought and taste. Half an hour before dinner she met her husband with a perturbed face.
"It's too bad that Phillida Callender should have come this evening. That's just the way with an indefinite invitation. Poor girl, I've been asking her to come any evening, and now she has hit on the only one in the year on which I would rather she should have stayed at home."
"I'm sure Phillida is nice enough for anybody," said Hilbrough, sturdily. "I don't see how she interferes with your plan."
"Well, Mr. Millard'll think I've asked her specially to help entertain him, and Phillida is so peculiar. She's nobody in particular, socially, and it will seem an unskillful thing to have asked her – and then she has ideas. Young girls with notions of their own are – well – you know."
"Yes, I know, home-made ideas are a little out of fashion," laughed Hilbrough. "But I'll bet he likes her. Millard isn't a fool if he does part his hair in the middle and carry his cane balanced in his fingers like a pair of steelyards."
"If he takes me to dinner, you must follow with Phillida. Give your left arm – "
"I'll feel like a fool escorting Phillida – "
"But you must if Mr. Millard escorts me."
Hilbrough could have cursed Millard. He hated what he called "flummery." Why couldn't people walk to the table without hooking themselves together, and why couldn't they eat their food without nonsense? But he showed his vexation in a characteristic way by laughing inwardly at his wife and Millard, and most of all at himself for an old fool.
Phillida Callender was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister who had gone as missionary to one of the Oriental countries. After years of life in the East, Mr. Callender had returned to America on account of his wife's health, and had settled in Brooklyn. If illusions of his youth had been dispelled in the attempt to convert Orientals to a belief in the Shorter Catechism he never confessed it, even to himself, and he cherished the notion that he would some day return to his missionary vocation. The family had an income from the rent of a house in New York that had been inherited by Mrs. Callender, and the husband received considerable sums for supplying the pulpits of vacant churches. He had occupied the pulpit of the church that the Hilbroughs attended during the whole time of Dr. North's journey to the Holy Land, and had thus come into a half-pastoral relation to the Hilbrough family. Mr. Callender sickened and died; the fragile wife and two daughters were left to plan their lives without him. The sudden shock and the new draft upon Mrs. Callender's energies had completed her restoration to a tolerable degree of health and activity. Between the elder daughter, whom the father had fancifully named Phillida, from the leafy grove in which stood the house where she was born, and Mrs. Hilbrough there had grown up a friendship in spite of the difference in age and temperament – a friendship that had survived the shock of prosperity. Lately the Callenders had found it prudent to remove to their house situate in the region near Second Avenue below Fourteenth Street, a quarter which, having once been fashionable, abides now in the merest twilight of its former grandeur. The letting of the upper rooms of the house was a main source of income.
Born in Siam, bred in a family pervaded with religious and propagandist ideas, and having led a half-recluse life, Phillida Callender did not seem to Mrs. Hilbrough just the sort of person to entertain a man of the world.
When dinner was announced Millard did give Mrs. Hilbrough his arm, and Phillida was startled and amused, when Mr. Hilbrough, after pausing an instant to remember which of his stout arms he was to offer,