Phases of an Inferior Planet

Nevins laughed.

"Does he ever say anything?" he demanded. "I asked him what he thought of the elections, and he replied that they did not come within the sphere of his profession."

Ardly grinned.

"Guess not," he ejaculated. "Was that all?"

"Oh, the rest was about as follows: I went to his house, you know, and told him I wanted his spiritual certificate as to your modesty and worth. I also observed that the newspapers had undertaken to throw moral search-lights indiscriminately around – "

"What did he say to that?" chuckled Ardly.

"He: 'Ardly can sustain them, I suppose.'

"I: 'Don't know, I'm sure. Would like to have your opinion.'

"He: 'It seems to me that you are in a better position to pass judgment on that point than I am.'

"I: 'But the standards are not the same, father.' (That 'father' ripped out as pat as possible.)

"He (rather bored): 'Oh, he is a fine fellow. I wish there were more like him.'"

"He is a fine fellow himself," retorted Ardly, loyally.

Nevins examined his brushes complacently. "If I were a Tammanyite," he said, "I'd post his certificate in the districts lying off the Bowery."

"It would be a shame," returned Ardly. Then he smiled. "By Jove! I believe if those districts knew Algarcife favored the little finger of a candidate, they would swallow the whole Tammany ticket."

"Queer influence, isn't it?"

"Well, I don't know. He works night and day over these people – and he knows how to deal with them. Leave it to the Bowery or to the ladies in his congregation, and he might turn this government into a despotism without a single dissenting vote."

"I believe you're right. By the way, you know he gave me that portrait of Father Speares to do for the church."

"Glad to hear it. But I never understood his conversion, somehow."

"Oh, I don't know. Men change like that every day."

"But not for logic. I say, it happened shortly after Mariana left, didn't it?"

"I think so."

"Heard anything of her?"

Nevins shook his head.

"Only what you know already," he answered.

"Deuced little, then."

"She came back, you know that, and went out West for a divorce. Then she married an ass of an Englishman, named the Honorable Cecil somebody."

"Good Lord! You've known that all these years?"

"Pretty nearly."

"Why in the devil didn't you tell me before?"

Nevins shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, I don't feel the necessity to confide to you the secrets of my bosom."

"I call that a sneak."

"Why couldn't you find it out for yourself?"

"Because I don't go round diving into other people's affairs."

"Neither do I," responded Nevins, with dignity.

"How did you know, then?"

"It just came to me."

"Humph!" retorted Ardly, suspiciously.

Nevins squeezed a trifle of white-lead on his palette. Then he rose and drew the cord attached to the shade beneath the skylight. After which he stood to one side, studying the canvas with half-closed eyes, and shaking his dissatisfied head. As he returned to his seat he brushed the mouth of a tube of paint with his trousers, and swore softly. At last he spoke.

"I know something else," he volunteered, cautiously.

"About Mariana?"

"Yes."

"Let's have it, man."

Nevins laid his palette aside, and, seating himself astride the back of a chair, surveyed Ardly impressively.

"I can't see that there is any use," he remarked.

Ardly threw the end of a cigar at him and squared up wrathfully. "Are you a damned fool or a utilitarian?" he demanded.

"She left the Honorable somebody," said Nevins, slowly.

"By Jove! what a woman!"

"She came to America."

"You don't say so!"

"She is in New York."

"What!"

Ardly left his chair and straightened himself against the mantel.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"I have seen her."

"Seen her!"

"Her photograph," concluded Nevins, suavely.

"Where?"

"In Ponsonby's show-case, on Fifth Avenue, near Thirtieth Street."

"How do you know it is she?"

"Well, I'll be damned! Don't I know Mariana?"

"Is it like her?"

"It is a gem; but you know she always photographed well. She knew how to pose."

"Has she changed?"

"Fatter, a trifle; fairer, a trifle; better groomed, a great deal – older and graver, I fancy."

"Well, I never!" said Ardly, and he whistled a street song between half-closed lips.

Nevins spoke again.

"She is a kind of rage with a lot of club-men," he said, "but the women haven't taken her up. I heard Mrs. Ryder call her an adventuress. But Layton told me Ryder was mad about her."

"Queer creatures, women," said Ardly. "They have a margin of morality, and a woman's virtue is determined by its difference in degree from the lowest stage worth cultivating. They imagine her not worth cultivating, I suppose."

"Oh, Mariana is all right," rejoined Nevins. Then he went on, reflectively: "Odd thing about it is her reputation for beauty. Judge her calmly, and she isn't even pretty."

"But who could judge her calmly?" responded Ardly. He picked up his hat and moved towards the door. "Well, I'll be off," he said.

"To the club?"

"No, just a little stroll down the avenue."

Nevins smiled broadly.

"Don't forget that Ponsonby's window-case is on the avenue," he remarked, placidly.

"Oh; so it is!"

Ardly went out into the crisp sunshine, a rising glow in his face. He walked briskly, with an almost impatient buoyancy. Near Thirtieth Street he stopped before the window-case and looked in.

From a square of gray card-board Mariana smiled at him, the aureole of her hair defined against a dark background. For a moment he stared blankly, and then an expression of hunger crept into his eyes – the hunger of one who has never been satisfied.

She was fairer, older, graver, as Nevins had said. There was a wistful droop in her pose, and in the splendor of her half-closed eyes there was something the old Mariana had never known – something left by the gathering of experience and the memory of tears.

He turned abruptly away, his face darkening and the buoyancy failing his step. He knew suddenly that the world was very stale and flat, and politics unprofitable. He crossed to Broadway and a few blocks farther down met Father Algarcife, who stopped him.

"Nevins was talking to me about you this morning," he said. "And so you are taking the matter seriously."

"As seriously as one takes – castor-oil."

The other smiled.

"Why, I thought you liked the chase."

"Like it! My dear sir, life is not exactly a question of one's likes or dislikes."

Father Algarcife looked at him with intentness.

"What! has not the world served you well?" he asked.

Ardly laughed.

"As well as a flute serves a man who doesn't know how to play it," he answered. "I am a master of discords."

"And so journalism didn't fit you?"

"Oh, journalism led to this. I did the chief a good turn or two, and he doesn't forget."

"I see," said Father Algarcife. Then he laughed. "And here is the other side," he added. Across the street before them hung a flaunting banner of white bunting, ornamented in red letters. Half mechanically his eyes followed the words:

SAMUEL J. SLOANE SAYS,

If I am elected Mayor, the government of New York will be conducted upon the highest plane of

EFFICIENCY! JUSTICE! AND RIGHT!

The wind caught the bunting and it swelled out as if inflated by the pledges it bore.

Ardly laughed cynically.

"I wish he'd drop a few hints to Providence," he remarked. "It is certainly a plane upon which the universe has never been conducted."

Father Algarcife walked on in silence, making his way along the crowded street with a slow yet determined step. The people who knew him turned to look after him, and those who did not stepped from before his way, moved by the virile dignity in his carriage, which suggested a man possessed by an absorbing motive.

Ardly looked a little abashed, and laughed half apologetically.

"I have been in harness all my life," he said, "and now I'm doing a little kicking against the traces."

A boyish humor rushed to the other's lips.

"In that case, I can make but one recommendation," he replied: "if you kick against the traces – kick hard."

He drew out his watch and paused a moment as if in doubt.

"Yes, I'll go to the hospital," he said; "there is a half-hour before luncheon," and he turned into East Twentieth Street on his way to Second Avenue. When he reached the hospital, he entered the elevator upon the first floor and ascended to the babies' ward. As he stepped upon the landing, a calm-faced nurse in a fresh uniform passed him, holding a glass of milk in her white, capable hand.

His eyes brightened as he saw her, and under the serene system of the place he felt a sense of restfulness steal over him like warmth.

"How is my charge?" he asked.

A ripple of tenderness crossed the nurse's lips as she answered:

"He has been looking for you, and he is always better on the days that you come."

She passed along the hall and entered a large room into which the daylight fell like a bath of sunshine. In the centre of the room there was a tiny table around which a dozen children were sitting in small white chairs. Despite the bandaged heads and the weak limbs, there was no sign of suffering. It was all cheerfulness and sunshine, as if the transition from a tenement-house room to space and air had unfolded the shrunken little bodies into bloom.

In a cot near a window, where the sunlight flashed across the cover, a boy of three or four years lay with a strap beneath his small pink wrapper, fastening him to a board of wood. At the head of the bed was printed the name, and below:

"Pott's disease of the spine.Received, October, 1896; discharged …"

As he saw the priest he stretched out his pallid little hands with a gurgle of welcome, merriment overflowing his eyes.

Father Algarcife took the hands in his and sat down beside the cot. Since entering the room he seemed to have caught something of the infant stoicism surrounding him, for his face had lost its strained pallor and the lines about his mouth had softened.

"So it is a good day," he said. "The little man is better. He has been on the roof-garden."

The child laughed.

"It ith a good day," he made answer. "There ith the woof-garden and there ith ithe-cream."

"And which is the best?"

"Bofe," said the child.

"That's right, little soldier; and what did you do in the garden?"

The child clapped his hands.

"I played," he responded; "an' I'm goin' to play ball on my legs when I mend."

One of the nurses came and stood for a moment at the foot of the bed. "He has learned a hymn for you," she said. "He is teaching the other children to sing – aren't you, baby?"

"Yeth."

"And you'll sing for the father?"

The child's mouth quivered with pleasure and his eyes gleamed. Then his gay little voice rang out in a shrill treble:

"Yeth, Jesuth lovths me,Yeth, Jesuth lovths me,Yeth, Jesuth lovths me,The Bible tells me so."

He ended with a triumphant little gasp and lay smiling at the sunshine.

A quarter of an hour later Father Algarcife returned to the street. It was Friday, and at two o'clock he was to be in the sacristy, where it was his custom to receive the members of his parish. It was the most irksome of his duties, and he fulfilled it with a repugnance that had not lessened with time. Now it represented even a greater strain than usual. He had been soothed by his visit to the hospital, and he dreaded the friction of the next few hours – the useless advice delivered, the trivialities responded to, the endless details of fashionable foibles that would be heard. He wondered, resentfully, if there were not some means by which this office might be abolished or delivered into the hands of an assistant. Then his eyes shot humor as he imagined Miss Vernish, Mrs. Ryder, or a dozen others consenting to receive spiritual instruction from a lesser priest with a snub-nose.

As he passed a book-shop in Union Square, a man reading the posters upon the outside attracted his notice.

"Oh, I say, Mr. Algarcife!"

He stopped abruptly, recognized the speaker, and nodded.

The other went on with a heated rush of words.

"Those are fine things of yours, those sermons. I congratulate you."

"Thank you."

"Yes, they are fine. But, I say, you got the better of the Scientific Weekly writer. It was good."

"I don't know," responded Father Algarcife. "It is a good deal in the way you look at it, I suppose."

"Not at all. I am not prejudiced – not in the least – never knew anybody less so. But he isn't your equal in controversy, by a long shot."

A sudden boyish laugh broke from Father Algarcife – a laugh wrung from him by the pressure of an overwhelming sense of humor. "I don't think it is a question of equality," he replied, "but of points of view."

CHAPTER V

The next afternoon Ardly burst into Nevins's studio without knocking, and paused in the centre of the floor to give dignity to his announcement.

"I have seen her," he said.

Nevins, who was stretched upon the divan, with his feet in the air and a cigarette in his mouth, rolled his eyes indolently in Ardly's direction.

"My dear fellow," he returned, "am I to presume that the pronoun 'her' refers to an individual or to a sex?"

"Don't be an ass," retorted Ardly. "I tell you I've seen Mariana."

Nevins turned upon his side and removed the cigarette from his lips.

"Where?" he responded, shortly.

"She was coming out of Thorley's. She wore an acre of violets. She has a footman in livery."

"How do you know it was she?"

"Well, I'll be damned! Don't I know Mariana?"

Nevins sat up and rested his head in his hands.

"How did she look?" he asked.

"Stunning. She has an air about her – "

"Always had."

"Oh, a new kind of air; the way a woman moves when she is all silk on the wrong side."

Nevins nodded.

"Speak to you?"

"I didn't give her a chance," returned Ardly, gloomily. "What's the use?"

The knocker rose and fell, and Mr. Paul entered, as unaltered as if he had stepped aside while the eight years slid by.

Nevins greeted him with a slight surprise, for they had drifted different ways.

"Glad to see you," he said, hospitably; "but this is an unusual honor."

"It is unusual," admitted Mr. Paul, seating himself stiffly on the edge of the divan.

"I am afraid to flatter myself with the hope that a whisper of my spreading fame has brought you," continued Nevins, nodding affably.

Mr. Paul looked up absently. "I have heard no such rumor," he replied, and regarded the floor as if impressed with facts of import.

"Perhaps it is your social charm," suggested Ardly; "or it may be that in passing along Fifty-fifth Street he felt my presence near."

Nevins frowned at him and lighted a fresh cigarette.

"I hope you are well, Mr. Paul," he remarked.

Mr. Paul looked up placidly.

"I may say," he returned, "that I am never well."

"Sorry to hear it."

There was a period of silence, which Mr. Paul broke at last in dry tones.

"I have occasion to know," he announced, "that the young woman whom we knew by the name of Mariana, to which I believe she had no legal title, has returned to the city."

Nevins jumped. "You don't say so!" he exclaimed.

"My information," returned Mr. Paul, "was obtained from the elevator boy who took her to the apartment of Miss Ramsey."

"Did she go to see Miss Ramsey?" demanded Nevins and Ardly in a breath.

Mr. Paul shook his head.

"I do not know her motive," he said, "but she has taken Miss Ramsey away. For three days we have had no news of her."

The knocker fell with a decisive sound. Nevins rose, went to the door, and opened it. Then he started back before the apparition of Mariana.

She was standing near the threshold, her hand raised as when the knocker had fallen, her head bent slightly forward.

With an impulsive gesture she held out her gloved hands, her eyes shining.

"Oh, I am so glad!" she said.

Nevins took her hands in his and held them while he looked at her. She was older and graver and changed in some vital way, as if the years or sorrow had mellowed the temperament of her youth. There was a deeper thrill to her voice, a softer light in her eyes, and a gentler curve to her mouth, and over all, in voice and eyes and mouth, there was the shadow of discontent.

She wore a coat of green velvet, with ruffles of white showing at the loosened front, where a bunch of violets was knotted, and over the brim of her hat a plume fell against the aureole of her hair.

"I am so glad," she repeated. Then she turned to Ardly with the same fervent pressure of the hands.

"It is too good to be true," she went on. "It is like dropping back into girlhood. Why, there is dear Mr. Paul!"

Mr. Paul rose and accepted the proffered hands.

"You have fattened, madam," he remarked, with a vague idea that she had in some way connected herself with a title.

Mariana's old laugh pealed out.

"Why, he is just as he used to be," she said, glancing brightly from Ardly to Nevins in pursuit of sympathy. "He hasn't changed a bit."

"The changes of eight years," returned Mr. Paul, "are not to be detected by a glance."

Mariana nodded smilingly and turned to Nevins.

"Now let me look at you," she said. "Come under the light. Ah! you haven't been dining at The Gotham."

"Took my last dinner there exactly six years ago next Thanksgiving Day," answered Nevins, cheerfully. "Turkey and pumpkin-pie."

She turned her eyes critically on Ardly.

"Well, he has survived his sentiment for me," she said.

Ardly protested.

"I don't keep that in the heart I wear on my sleeve," he returned. "You would need a plummet to sound the depths, I fancy."

Mariana blushed and laughed, the faint color warming the opaline pallor of her face. Then she glanced about the room.

"So this is the studio," she exclaimed, eagerly – "the studio we so often planned together – and there is the divan I begged for! Ah, and the dear adorable 'Antinous.' But what queer stuff for hangings!"

"If you had sent me word that you were coming," returned Nevins, apologetically, passing his hands over his hair in an endeavor to make it lie flat, "I'd have put the place to rights, and myself too."

"Oh, but I wanted to see you just as you are every day. It is so home-like – and what a delightful smell of paint! But do you always keep your boots above the canopy? They spoil the effect somehow."

"I tossed them up there to get rid of them," explained Nevins. "But tell me about yourself. You look as if you had just slid out of the lap of luxury."

"Without rumpling her gown," added Ardly.

"I was about to observe that she seemed in prosperous circumstances," remarked Mr. Paul.

"Oh, I am," responded Mariana. "Stupidly prosperous. But let me look at the paintings first, then I'll talk of myself. What is on the big easel, Mr. Nevins?"

"That's a portrait," said Nevins, drawing the curtain aside and revealing a lady in black. "I am only a photographer in oils. I am painting everybody's portrait."

"That means success, doesn't it? And success means money, and money means so many things. Yes, that's good. I like it."

Nevins smiled, enraptured.

"You were the beginning," he said. "It was the painting of you and – and the blue wrapper that did it. It gave me such a push uphill that I haven't stood still since."

The wistfulness beneath the surface in Mariana's eyes deepened suddenly. Her manner grew nervous.

"Oh yes," she said, turning away. "I remember."

Mr. Paul, who had watched her gloomily, with traces of disapprobation in his gaze, took his leave with a stilted good-bye, and Mariana threw herself upon the divan, while Ardly and Nevins seated themselves on footstools at her feet and looked into her eyes.

"I want to hear all – all," she said. "Are you happy?"

"Are you?" asked Ardly.

She shook her head impatiently. "I? Oh yes," she answered. "I have clothes, and a carriage, and even a few jewels."

She slipped the long glove from her hand, which came soft and white from its imprisonment, with the indentation of the buttons on the supple wrist. She held up her fingers, where a blaze of diamonds ran. Then she smiled.

"But I never sang with Alvary," she added.

"Where is the voice?"

"It is dead," she replied; "but it was only a skeleton when it lived. I learned that afterwards. I had the artistic temperament without the art."

Nevins and Ardly, watching the mobility of her face, saw the old half-disdainful weariness steal back.

"So you have learned that," said Nevins. "It is the greater wisdom – to learn what one has not."

"I don't idealize any longer," answered Mariana, playing with the glove in her lap. "I have lopped off an ideal every hour since I saw you."

"Sensible woman," returned Ardly. "We don't lop off our ideals – we distort them. Life is a continuous adjustment of the things that should be to the things that are."

"And middle-age shows the adjustment to be a misfit," added Nevins, his boyish face growing almost sad. "We grow tired of burnishing up the facts of life, and we leave the tarnish to mix with the triple-plate."

"Are you middle-aged?" asked Mariana.

"Not since you entered."

She smiled, pleased with the flattery. "So I am a restorer of youth. Do I look young?"

"There is a glass."

She turned towards it, catching the reflection of her face shadowed by the plume against her hair.

"Your eyes are older," said Nevins. "They look as if they had seen things, but your mouth is young. It could never hold an expression long enough for it to impress a line. Heavens! It is a mouth that would madden one to model, because of the impossibility! It is twenty mouths in one!"

"You never liked my nose," said Mariana, her eyes still on the glass. "Do you remember how you straightened it in the poster?"

"I have the poster still."

"And I have the nose."

Then she laughed. "It is so delightful to be here," she said.

Ardly and Nevins talked rapidly, running over the years one by one, giving glimpses of the changes in their lives, meeting Mariana's gay reserve with fuller confidence. They had both grown boyish and more buoyant, and as they spoke they felt like an incoming tide the warmth of Mariana's manner. She seemed more lovable to them, more generous, more utterly to be desired. Her nature had ripened amid the luxury of her life, which, instead of rendering her self-centred, as poverty had done, had left her more responsive to the needs of others. She threw herself into the records of their lives with an impulsive fervor, stopping them at intervals to question as to details, and covering the past eight years with sympathetic search-lights.

And yet beneath the superficial animation in her voice there was a restless thrill, and the eagerness with which she turned to trivial interests was but the nervous veil that hid the weariness in her heart. It was as if she plunged into the thoughts of others that she might put away the memory of herself.

"So you have become a politician?" she said to Ardly. "I am so interested!"

"You wouldn't be if you knew as much of it as I do," remarked Nevins. "You'd be ashamed. It makes me blush every time I see his name on a ticket. I consider it an offence against the paths of our fathers."

"Why, Mr. Ryder told me you were working for him," Mariana returned; "but he did say that he couldn't reconcile it with your common-sense. He's for the other side, you know."

"So am I!" groaned Nevins; "but what has a man's convictions to do with his vote?"

"Or with his election?" laughed Ardly. "But Nevins is an unwilling accomplice of my aspirations."

"I wouldn't call them aspirations," remonstrated Nevins.

Mariana buttoned her glove and rose. "I am going to work for you," she said, "and my influence is not to be scorned. I have not one vote, but dozens. I shall elect you."

"Don't," pleaded Nevins; "it will soil your hands!"

"Oh, I can wash them!" she laughed; "and it is worth a few smuts. I shall tell Mr. Ryder to canvass for you," she added.