Phases of an Inferior Planet

Driscoll assented amiably.

"Yes," he admitted. "He has the happy faculty of convincing those who already agree with him."

She reproached him in impulsive championship, looking hurt and a little displeased. "Why, the bishop was saying to me yesterday that never before had the arguments against the vital truths of Christianity been so forcibly refuted."

"May I presume that the bishop already agreed with him?"

Mrs. Ryder's full red lips closed firmly. Then she appealed to a small, dark man who sat near her. "Mr. Driscoll doesn't like Father Algarcife's sermons," she said. "I am disappointed."

"On the contrary," observed Driscoll, placidly, "I like them so well that I sent them to a missionary I am trying to convert – to atheism."

"But that is shocking," said Mrs. Dubley, in a low voice.

"Shocking," repeated Driscoll. "I should say so. Such an example of misdirected energy you never saw. Why, when I met that man in Japan he was actually hewing to pieces before the Lord one of the most adorable Kwannons I ever beheld. The treasures he had shattered in the name of religion were good ground for blasphemy. In the interest of art, I sought his conversion. At first I tried agnosticism, but that was not strong enough. He said that if he came to believe in an unknown god he should feel it his duty to smash all attempts to sculpture him. So I said: 'How about becoming an out-and-out infidel? Then you wouldn't care how many gods people made.' He admitted the possibility of such a state of mind, and I have been working on him ever since."

Mrs. Ryder looked slightly pained.

"If you only weren't so flippant," she said, gently. "I can't quite follow you."

Driscoll laughed softly.

"Flippant! My dear lady, thank your stars that I am. Flippant people don't go about knocking things to pieces for a principle. The religion of love is not nearly so much needed as the religion of letting alone."

"I am sure I shouldn't call Father Algarcife meddling," commented Mrs. Dubley, stiffly; "and I know that he opposes sending missionaries to Japan."

"As a priest he is perfection," broke in Mr. Layton, argumentatively.

"The chasuble does hang well on him," admitted Nevins in an aside.

Mr. Layton ignored the interruption. "As a priest," he went on, "there is nothing left to be desired. But I consider science entirely outside his domain. Why, on those questions, the Scientific Weekly articles do not leave him a – a leg to stand on."

"The truth is that, mentally, he is quite inferior to the writer of those articles," remarked the short, dark gentleman in a brusque voice. "By the way, I have heard that they were said to be posthumous papers of Professor Huxley's. An error, of course."

At that moment the door was opened and Father Algarcife was announced. An instant later he came into the room. He entered slowly, and crossed to Mrs. Ryder's chair, where he made his excuses in a low voice. Then he greeted the rest of the table indifferently. He wore his clerical dress, and the hair upon his forehead was slightly ruffled from the removal of his hat. About the temples there were dashes of gray and a few white hairs showed in his heavy eyebrows, but eyes and mouth blended the firmness of maturity with an expression of boyish vigor. As he was about to seat himself at Mrs. Ryder's right, his eye fell upon Driscoll, and he paled and drew back. Then he spoke stiffly.

"So it is you, John?"

"I had quite lost sight of you," responded Driscoll.

There followed an awkward silence, which was abridged by Mrs. Ryder's pleasant voice.

"I like to watch the meeting of old friends," she said; "especially when I believed them strangers. Were you at college together?"

"Yes," answered Driscoll, his assurance returning. "At college – well, let me see – not far from twenty years ago. Bless me! I am a middle-aged man. What a discovery!"

"You were in the Senior class," observed Father Algarcife, almost mechanically, and with little show of interest. "You were the pride of the faculty, I believe."

"I believe I was; and, like pride proverbial, I ended in a fall. Well, there have been many changes."

"A great many."

"And not the least surprising one is to find you in the fold. You were a lamb astray in my time. Indeed, I remember flattering myself in the fulness of my egoism that I had opened other channels for you. But a reaction came, I suppose."

"Yes," said Father Algarcife, slowly, "a reaction came."

"And my nourishing of the embryonic sceptic went for naught."

"Yes; it went for naught."

"Well, I am glad to see you, all the same."

"How serious you have become!" broke in Mrs. Ryder. "Don't let's call up old memories. I am sure Mr. Nevins will tell us that those college days weren't so solemn, after all."

Nevins, thus called upon, glanced up from his roast, with accustomed disregard of dangerous ground.

"I can't answer for Mr. Driscoll," he responded. "His fame preceded mine; but the first time I saw Father Algarcife he had just won a whiskey-punch at poker, and was celebrating."

Mrs. Ryder colored faintly in protest, and Driscoll cast an admonishing glance at Nevins, but Father Algarcife laughed good-naturedly, a humorous gleam in his eyes.

"So the sins of my youth are rising to confound me," he said. "Well, I make an honest confession. I was good at poker."

Nevins disregarded Driscoll's glance with unconcern.

"An honest confession may be good for the soul," he returned, "but it seldom redounds to the honor of the reputation."

"Happily, Father Algarcife is above suspicion," remarked Ryder, pleasantly. Then he changed the subject. "By the way, Mr. Nevins, I hear you have been displaying an unholy interest in the coming elections."

"Not a bit of it," protested Nevins, feelingly. "They might as well be electing the mayor of the moon for aught I care. But, you see, my friend Ardly has got himself on the Tammany ticket for alderman."

"What! You aren't working for Tammany?"

"Guess not. I am working for Ardly. The mayor is a mere incident."

"I wish he would remain one," announced the short, dark gentleman. "The Tammany tiger has gorged itself on the city government long enough."

"Oh, it has its uses," reasoned Driscoll. "Tammany Hall makes a first-rate incubator for prematurely developed politicians."

"And peoples the country with them," said Ryder. "I always look upon a politician as a decent citizen spoiled."

"And you really think they will elect Vaden?" asked the vivacious and pretty young woman at Layton's left. "It does seem a shame. Just after we have got clean streets and a respectable police force."

"But what does it matter?" argued Driscoll, reassuringly. "Turn about is fair play, and a party is merely a plaything for the people. In point of impartiality, I vote one ticket at one election and another at the next."

When Driscoll left, that evening, he joined Claude Nevins on the sidewalk, and they walked down the avenue together. For some blocks Nevins was silent, his face revealing rising perplexity. Then, as they paused to light cigars, he spoke:

"I believe Algarcife was a friend of yours at college?" he said.

Driscoll was holding his palm around the blue flame of the match. He drew in his breath slowly as he waited for a light.

"Yes," he responded, "for a time. But he has made his reputation since I knew him – and I have lost mine. By Jove, he is a power!"

"There is not a man of more influence in New York, and the odd part of it is that he does nothing to gain it – except work along his own way and not give a hang for opposition. I believe his indifference is a part of his attraction – for women especially."

"Ah, that reminds me," said Driscoll, holding his cigar between his fingers and slackening his pace. "I was under the impression that he married after leaving college."

Nevins's lips closed with sudden reserve. It was a moment before he replied.

"I believe I did hear something of the sort," he said.

When Mrs. Bruce Ryder turned back into the drawing-room, where Father Algarcife sat alone, the calm color faded from her face. "I am so glad," she said. "I have waited for this the whole evening."

She seated herself near him, resting one large, fair arm on the table beside her. With the closing of the door upon her guests she had thrown aside the social mask, and a passionate sadness had settled upon her face.

"I wanted to go to the sacristy on Friday," she went on, "but I could not. And I am so unhappy."

Brought face to face, as he often was, with the grinning skeleton that lies beneath the fleshly veil of many a woman's life, Father Algarcife had developed an almost intuitive conception of degrees in suffering. Above all, he had learned, as only a priest and a physician can learn, the measures of sorrow that Fate may dole out to the victim who writhes behind a smile.

The sympathetic quality in his voice deepened.

"Have you gained no strength," he asked, "no indifference?"

"I cannot! I have tried, tried, tried so long, but just when I think I have steeled myself something touches the old spring, and it all comes back. On Thursday I saw a woman who was happy. It has tortured me ever since."

"Perhaps she thought you happy."

"No; she knew and she pitied me. We had been at school together. I was romantic then, and she laughed at me. The tears came into her eyes when she recalled it. She is not a wealthy woman. The man she married works very hard, but I envy her."

"Of what use?"

She leaned nearer, resting her chin upon her clasped hands. The diamonds on her fingers blazed in the lamplight. "You don't know what it means to me," she said. "I am not a clever woman. I was made to be a happy one. I believe myself a good one, and yet there are days when I feel myself to be no better than a lost woman – when I would do anything – for love."

"You fight such thoughts?"

"I try to, but they haunt me."

"And there is no happiness for you in your marriage? None that you can wring from disappointment?"

"It is too late. He loved me in the beginning, as he has loved a dozen women since – as he loves a woman of the town – for an hour."

A shiver of disgust crossed her face.

"I know." He was familiar with the story. He had heard it from her lips before. He had seen the whole tragic outcome of man's and woman's ignorance – the ignorance of passion and the ignorance of innocence. He had seen it pityingly, condemning neither the one nor the other, neither the man surfeited with lust nor the woman famished for love.

"I cannot help you," he said. "I can only say what I have said before, and said badly. There is no happiness in the things you cry for. So long as self is self, gratification will fail it. When it has waded through one mirage it looks for another. Take your life as you find it, face it like a woman, make the best of what remains of it. The world is full of opportunities for usefulness – and you have your faith and your child."

She started. "Yes," she said. "The child is everything." Then she rose. "I want to show him to you," she said, "while he sleeps."

Father Algarcife made a sudden negative gesture; then, as she left the room, he followed her.

As they passed the billiard-room on their way up-stairs there was a sound of knocking balls, and Ryder's voice was heard in a laugh.

"This way," said Mrs. Ryder. They mounted the carpeted stairs and stopped before a door to the right. She turned the handle softly and entered. A night-lamp was burning in one corner, and on the hearth-rug a tub was prepared for the morning bath. On a chair, a little to one side, lay a pile of filmy, lace-trimmed linen.

In a small brass bedstead in the centre of the room a child of two or three years was sleeping, its soft hair falling upon the embroidered pillow. A warm, rosy flush was on its face, and the dimpled hands lay palms upward on the blanket.

Like a mounting flame the passion of motherhood illuminated the woman's face. She leaned over and kissed one of the pink hands.

"How quietly he sleeps!" she said.

The child stirred, opened its eyes, and smiled, stretching out its arms.

The mother drew back softly. Then she knelt down, and, raising the child with one hand, smoothed the pillow under its head. As she rose she pressed the blanket carefully over the tiny arms lying outside the cover.

When she turned to Father Algarcife she saw that he had grown suddenly haggard.

CHAPTER III

Father Algarcife withdrew the latch-key from the outer door and stopped in the hall to remove his hat and coat. He had just returned from a meeting of the wardens, called to discuss the finances of the church.

"Agnes!" he said.

A woman came from the dining-room at the end of the hall, and, taking his coat from his hands, hung it upon the rack. She was stout and middle-aged, with a face like a full-blown dahlia beneath her cap of frilled muslin. She had been house-keeper and upper servant to Father Speares, and had descended to his successor as a matter of course.

"Have there been any callers, Agnes?"

"Only two, sir. One of the sisters, who left word that she would return in the evening, and that same woman from Elizabeth Street, who wanted you to take charge of her husband who was drunk. I told her a policeman could manage him better, and she said she hadn't thought of that. She went to find one."

"Thank you, Agnes," replied Father Algarcife, with a laugh. "A policeman could manage him much better."

"So any fool might have known, sir; but those poor creatures seem kind of crazy. I believe they get you twisted with the Creator. They'll be asking you to bring back the dead next. Will you have dinner at eight?"

"Yes, at eight."

He passed into his study, closing the door after him. A shaggy little cur, lying on the hearth-rug, jumped up at his entrance, and came towards him, his tail cutting semicircles in the air.

"How are you, Comrade?" said the man, cheerfully. He bent over, running his fingers along the rough, yellow body of the dog. It was a vagrant that he had rescued from beneath a cable-car and brought home in his arms. His care had met its reward in gratitude, and the bond between them was perhaps the single emotion remaining in either life.

The room was small, and furnished in a manner that suggested luxurious comfort. It had been left thus by Father Speares, and the younger man, moved by a sense of loyalty, had guarded it unchanged. Over the high mantel one of Father Speares's ancestors looked down from a massive frame, and upon the top of the book-shelves lining the four walls there was the marble bust of another. Heavy curtains of russet-brown fell from the windows, and a portière of the same material hung across the door. In the centre of the room, where the light fell full upon it while it was yet day, there was a quaint old desk of hand-carved mahogany. On the lid, covered by a white blotter, lay a number of unanswered letters, containing appeals for charities, the manuscript of an unfinished sermon, and the small black-velvet case in which the sermon would be placed upon its completion. In the open grate a fire burned brightly, and a table bearing an unlighted lamp was drawn into the glow.

The dog, trembling with welcome, curled upon the rug, and Father Algarcife, throwing himself into the easy-chair beside the table, stretched his hands towards the blaze. They were thin and virile hands, and the firelight, shining behind them, threw into relief the lines crossing and recrossing the palms, giving to them the look of hieroglyphics on old parchment. His face, across which the flickering shadows chased, assumed the effect of a drawing in strong black and white.

Before the intense heat of the grate, a languor crept over him, a sensation of comfort inspired by the firelight, the warmth, and the welcome of the fellow-mortal at his feet. Half yawning, his head fell back against the cushion of the chair and his thoughts stirred drowsily.

He thought of the ruddy reflection dancing on the carving of the desk, of the text of the unfinished sermon, of a pamphlet on the table beside the unlighted lamp, and of a letter to his lawyer that remained unwritten. Then he thought of Mrs. Ryder in her full and unsatisfied beauty, and then of a woman in his congregation who had given a thurible of gold to the church, and then of one of the members of the sisterhood. He wondered if it were Sister Agatha who had called, and if she wished to consult him about the home of which she had charge. He feared that the accommodations were too crowded, and questioned if the state of the finances justified moving into larger quarters. In the same connection, he remembered that he had intended mentioning to the sacristan the insufficient heating of the church during services. From this he passed suddenly to the memory of the face of the woman who had died of cancer that morning. He recalled the dirt and poverty and the whimpering of the blear-eyed child with the chronic cold.

"What a life!" he said, and he glanced about the luxurious room calmly, half disdainfully. His eyes fell on the arm of the sofa which was slightly worn as if from friction, and he remembered that he never used it, and that it was the one on which Father Speares had been accustomed to take his daily nap. He shivered faintly, brushed by that near association with the dead which trivialities invoke.

It seemed but yesterday, that morning eight years ago, when he had fainted in the crowded square. He could close his eyes now and review each detail with the dispassionateness of indifference. He could see the flaming blue of the sky, the statue of Horace Greeley across the way, and the confused blur of the bulletin-board before the World building. He could hear the incessant falling of the water in the fountain, and he could feel the old sensation of nausea that had blotted out the consciousness of place. He remembered the long convalescence from the fever that had followed – the trembling of his limbs when he moved and the weakness of his voice when he spoke – the utter vanquishment of his power of volition. He reviewed, almost methodically, that collapse into black despair and the mental and emotional stagnation that had covered all the crawling years. The fever, mounting to his brain, had left it seared of energy and had sapped the passion in his blood. It had consumed his old loves, with his old ambitions, and had left his emotions as sterile as his mind.

He remembered the struggle that had come, his resistance and his defeat, and he saw the joy in the older man's eyes when he had laid before him the remainder of his life – when he had said, "I no longer care. Make of me what you will."

The other had answered, "I will not take the sacrifice without sincerity or without the will of God."

"It is no sacrifice," he had replied. "It is a debt. If I can believe, I will."

And he had felt the words as a man half drugged by ether feels the first incision of the knife.

But he had not believed. Sitting now in his clerical dress, before the fire kindled by his ordination, he knew that it was his weakness, not his will, that had bent. Whether the motive was gratitude or despair he did not question. There had been a debt, and he had met it by the bond of flesh and blood. Yes, he had repaid it in full.

From the moment when he had been called into Father Speares's place he had striven untiringly to do honor to the dead. He had spared neither himself nor others. He had toiled night and day, as a man toils who loves a cause – or is mad. Though his heart was not in the work, his will was, and he was goaded to it by the knowledge that his intellect revolted. Because the life was loathsome to him he left not one detail unperformed. He had given a bond, and he fulfilled it, though his bond was a lie.

He lifted his head impatiently and looked before him. Then he smiled, half bitterly, in the flickering firelight. Across the drawn curtains at the window he could see the almost indistinguishable forms of people passing in the street. He felt suddenly that his whole existence was filled with such vague outlines, surrounded by gray dusk. The only thing that was real was the lie.

That was with him always, at every instant of the day. It lay in his coat, in his clothes, in his very necktie. It filled the book-shelves in the room and covered the closely written sheets upon his desk. It was in the cope and in the chasuble, in the paten and in the chalice, in the censer and in the Creed. Yes; he had sworn his faith to a myth, and had said "I believe – " to a fable.

The words of the Creed that he had chanted the day before rang suddenly in his ears:

"And in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God – "

What if he had lived a lie decently, what if he had fought a good fight for a cause he opposed, what if he, in the name of that cause, had closed his eyes and his nostrils to the things that repel and had labored to cleanse the sewer at his door, was it any the less a lie?

"Father, dinner is served."

He raised himself and stood upon the hearth-rug. The dog awoke and circled about his feet. Then together they passed into the dining-room.

For a moment he stood before his chair, silently making the sign of the cross. Then he sat down and unfolded his napkin. It was a simple meal, and he ate it in silence. When the soup was finished and the meat brought on, he cut up a portion for the dog at his side, placing the plate upon the floor. Then he pushed his own plate away, and sat looking into his glass of claret as it sparkled in the light.

The bell rang, and the maid went to answer it. In a moment she came back.

"It is the sister," she said. "She is in your study."

"Very well," Father Algarcife responded.

He laid his napkin upon the table and passed out.

CHAPTER IV

Jerome Ardly turned into one of the entrances leading to the Holbein studios, ascended the long flight of stairs, and paused before a door bearing a brass plate, on which was engraved

CLAUDE NEVINS

As the knocker fell beneath his touch the door swung open, revealing Nevins in a velvet smoking-jacket rather the worse for wear, his flaxen hair standing on end above his wrinkled brow.

"Hello!" was his greeting, taking the end of a camel's-hair brush from his mouth. "So you've turned up at last. I've been doing your dirty work all the morning."

Ardly entered with a swing, closing the door after him. He had grown handsomer in the last eight years, though the world had gone less well with him than with Nevins. His large brown eyes still held their old recklessness, and there had come into his voice a constant ring of bravado.

"Plenty for us both," he responded, blandly, throwing his hat on the divan and himself into a chair. "My hand hath found its share to do, and I have done it with all my might. I've been interviewing a lot of voters in the old Ninth Ward. If Tammany doesn't make a clean sweep of that district I'm a – a fool."

"I wish you were not. Then you wouldn't be polling round these confounded politicians. It seems to me your own district is more than you can manage, but somehow you seem to be attending to everybody else's. What under heaven does any self-respecting man want to be alderman for, anyway? I wouldn't look at it."

"My dear fellow, view it as a stepping-stone to greater glory."

"A deuced long step downward."

Ardly laughed, then, stretching himself, looked idly at the opening in the ceiling through which the daylight fell. It framed a square of blue sky across which a stray cloud drifted.

The room was large and oblong, and the atmosphere was heavy with the odors of oil and turpentine. The furniture consisted of a number of covered easels, several coarse hangings ornamented in bizarre designs, and a divan surmounted by an Oriental canopy. Over the door there was a row of death-masks in plaster, relieved against a strip of ebony, and from a pedestal in one corner a bust of Antinous smiled the world-worn smile of all the ages.

"Temper seems soured," remarked Ardly, raising himself and turning to survey Nevins. "What's up?"

Nevins smiled mysteriously, then waxed communicative.

"Saw Algarcife to-day," he said, carelessly.

"Oh! What did he say for himself?"