Phases of an Inferior Planet

Ardly shouted, "Good heavens! He is one of the best fighters the Republicans have!"

Mariana smiled inscrutably.

"But that was before I had a candidate," she answered.

They followed her to the sidewalk and tucked her carriage furs about her while the footman looked on.

"And you are coming to see me soon?" she insisted – "very soon?"

"We swear it!" they protested.

"And you will tell me all the news of the elections?"

"On our manly faith."

"That I will trust. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!"

The carriage started, when suddenly she lowered the window and looked out, the plume in her hat waving black against the wind.

"I forgot to tell you," she said; "my name is Gore – Mrs. Cecil Gore."

With the light of audacity in his face, Nevins laid his hand upon the window.

"And where is the Honorable Cecil?" he asked.

A flash of irritation darkened Mariana's eyes. She laughed with a ring of recklessness.

"The Lord forbid that I should know!" she replied.

She motioned to the coachman, and the carriage rolled rapidly away. Nevins stood looking after it until it turned the corner. When the last wheel vanished, he spoke slowly:

"Well, I'll be blessed!" he said.

Ardly stooped and picked up a violet that lay upon the curbing.

"And so will I," he responded.

"Have a whiskey?"

"All right."

They entered the building and mounted the stairs in silence.

CHAPTER VI

The Reverend Anthony Algarcife had inspired his congregation with an almost romantic fervor.

When he had first appeared before them as assistant to Father Speares in his Bowery Mission, and a little later as server in the celebrations, they regarded him as a thoughtful-eyed young priest, whose appearance fitted into the general scheme of color in the chancel. When he read the lessons they noticed the richness of his voice, and when at last he came to the altar-step to deliver his first sermon they thrilled into the knowledge of his power.

But he turned from their adulations almost impatiently to throw himself into the mission in the slums. His eloquence had passed from the rich to the poor, and beyond an occasional sermon he became only a harmonious figure in the setting of the church. For the honors they meted out to him he had no glance, for their favors he had only indifference. He seemed as insensible to praise as to censure, and to the calls of ambition his ears were closed. He lived in the fevered haste of a man who has but one end remaining – to have life over.

But his indifference redounded to his honor. Because he shunned popularity, it fell upon him; because he put aside personal gains, he found them in the reverence of his people. His apathy was construed into humility, his compassion into loving-kindness, his endeavors to stifle memory into the fires of faith. At the end of six years his determination to remain a cipher in religion had made him the leader of his church, and the means which he had taken to annihilate self had drawn on him the wondering eyes of his world. Almost unconsciously he bowed his head to receive the yoke.

When, at the death of Father Speares, he was called to the charge, he accepted it without a struggle and without emotion. He saw in it but an opening to heavier labor and an opportunity to hasten the progress of his slow suicide.

So he took the work from the failing hands and devoted to it the fulness of his own frenzied vigor. The ritual which his predecessor loved became sacred to him, and the most trivial ceremonials grew mighty with memory of the dead. Each candle upon the altar, each silken thread in the embroidered vestments he wore, was a tribute to a sincerity which was not his.

He lent a sudden fervor to the decoration of the church and to the training of his choristers, passionately reviving lost and languishing rites of religion, and silencing the faint protests of his more conservative parishioners by an arrogant appeal to the "Ornaments Rubric" of the Prayer-book. In defiance of the possible opposition of the bishop, he transposed the "Gloria" to its old place in the Catholic Mass, hurling, like an avenging thunderbolt, at a priestly objector to the good old rule of St. Vincent, "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus."

"My dear father," his senior warden had once said to him, "I doubt if most priests put as much work into their whole lives as you do into one celebration."

"I know," replied Father Algarcife slowly. "If I have left anything undone it has been from oversight, not fear of labor."

The warden smiled.

"Your life is a proof of your industry as well as your faith," he responded. "Only a man who loves his religion better than his life would risk himself daily. It is your great hold upon your people. They believe in you."

"Yes, yes," said the other.

"But I have wanted to warn you," continued the warden. "It cannot last. Give yourself rest."

Father Algarcife shook his head.

"I rest only when I am working," he answered, and he added, a little wistfully, "The parish bears witness that I have done my best by the charge."

The warden, touched by the wistfulness, lowered his eyes. "That you have done any man's best," he returned.

"Thank you," said Father Algarcife. Then he passed into the sacristy to listen to the confession of a parishioner.

It was a tedious complaint, and he followed it abstractedly – winding through the sick imaginings of a nervous woman and administering well-worn advice in his rich voice, which lent a charm to the truisms. When it was over, he advised physical exercise, and, closing the door, seated himself to await the next comer.

It was Miss Vernish, and as she entered, with her impatient limp, the bitterness of her mouth relaxed. She was supervising the embroidering of the vestments to be worn at Easter, and in a spirit of devotion she had sacrificed her diamonds to their ornamentation. Her eyes grew bright as she talked, and a religious warmth softened her manner.

"It has made me so happy," she said, "to feel that I can give something beautiful to the service. It is the sincerest pleasure I have known for years."

She left, and her place was taken by a young divinity student who had been drawn from law to theology by the eloquence of Father Algarcife. He had come to obtain the priest's advice upon a matter of principle, and departed with a quickening of his religious tendencies.

Then came several women, entering with a great deal of rustling and no evident object in view. Then a vestryman to talk over a point in business; then the wife of a well-known politician, to ask if she should consent to her husband's accepting a foreign appointment; then a man who wished to be confirmed in his church; and, after all, Mrs. Ryder, large and warm and white, to say that since the last communion she had felt herself stronger to contend with disappointment.

When it was over and he came out into the evening light, he drew himself together with a quick movement, as if he had knelt in a strained position for hours. Vaguely he wondered how his nerves had sustained it, and he smiled half bitterly as he admitted that eight years ago he would have succumbed.

"It is because my nerves are dead," he said; "as dead as my emotions."

He knew that since the pressure of feeling had been lifted the things which would have overwhelmed him in the past had lost the power to thrill his supine sensations, that from a mere jangled structure of nerve wires he had become a physical being – a creature who ate and drank and slept, but did not feel.

He went about his daily life as methodically as if it were mapped out for him by a larger hand. His very sermons came to him with no effort of will or of memory, but as thoughts long thought out and forgotten sometimes obtrude themselves upon the mind that has passed into other channels. They were but twisted and matured phrases germinating since his college days. The old fatal facility for words remained with him, though the words had ceased to be symbols of honest thought. He could still speak, it was only the ability to think that the fever had drained – it was only the power to plod with mental patience in the pursuit of a single fact. Otherwise he was unchanged. But as every sensation is succeeded by a partial incapacity, so the strain of years had been followed by years of stagnation.

He went home to dinner with a physical zest.

"I believe I have one sentiment remaining," he said, "the last a man loses – the sentiment for food."

The next evening, which chanced to be that of Election Day, Dr. Salvers came to dine with him, and when dinner was over they went out to ascertain the returns. Salvers had entered the fight with an enthusiastic support of what he called "good government," and the other watched it with the interest of a man who looks on.

"Shall we cross to Broadway?" he asked; "the people are more interesting, after all, than the politicians."

"The politicians," responded Salvers, "are only interesting viewed through the eyes of the people. No, let's keep to the avenue for a while. I prefer scenting the battle from afar."

The sounds grew louder as they walked on, becoming, as they neared Madison Square, a tumultuous medley issuing from tin horns and human throats. Over the ever-moving throngs in the square a shower of sky-rockets shot upward at the overhanging clouds and descended in a rain of orange sparks. The streets were filled with a stream of crushed humanity, which struggled and pushed and panted, presenting to a distant view the effect of a writhing mass of dark-bodied insects. From the tower of the Garden a slender search-light pointed southward, a pale, still finger remaining motionless, while the crowd clamored below and the fireworks exploded in the blackness above.

Occasionally, as the white light fell on the moving throng, it exaggerated in distinctness a face here and there, which assumed the look of a grotesque mask, illuminated by an instantaneous flash and fading quickly into the half-light of surrounding shadows. Then another took its place, and the illumination played variations upon the changing features.

Suddenly a shrill cheer went up from the streets.

"That means Vaden," said Salvers. "Let's move on."

They left the square, making their way up Broadway. At the first corner a man offered them papier-maché tigers, at the second roosters, at the third chrysanthemums.

"Look at this," said Salvers, drawing aside. "Odd for women, isn't it? Half these girls don't know what they are shrieking about."

In the throng jostling past them there were a dozen school-girls, wearing yellow chrysanthemums in their button-holes and carrying small flags in their hands. The light from the windows fell upon their pretty faces, rosy from excitement. Behind them a gang of college students blew deafening blasts on tin trumpets, and on the other side a newsboy was yelling —

"Eve-ning Wor-ld! Vaden elected! – Va-den – !"

His voice was drowned in the rising cheers of men politically mad.

"I'll go to the club," said Salvers, presently; "this is too deuced democratic. Will you come?"

Father Algarcife shook his head.

"Not now," he replied. "I'll keep on to Herald Square, then I'll turn in. The fight is over."

And he passed on.

Upon a white sheet stretched along the side of the Herald building a stereopticon portrait of a candidate appeared, followed by a second, and then by the figures of the latest returns from the election boroughs. Here the crowd had stagnated, and he found difficulty in forcing his way. Then, as the mass swayed back, a woman fainted at his side and was carried into the nearest drug-store.

In the endeavor to reach Fifth Avenue he stepped into the centre of the street, where a cable car, a carriage, and a couple of hansom cabs were blocked. As he left the sidewalk the crowd divided, and the carriage started, while a horse attached to a cab shied suddenly. A woman stumbled beneath the carriage and he drew her away. As he did so the wheel of the cab struck him, stunning him for the moment.

"Look out, man!" called Nevins, who was seated beside the coachman upon the carriage-box; "that was an escape. Are you hurt? Here, hold on!"

At the same moment the door opened and a hand reached out.

"Come inside," said a woman's voice.

He shook his head, dizzy from the shock. Red lights flashed before his eyes, and he staggered.

Then the crowd pressed together, some one pushed him into the carriage, and the door closed.

"To Father Algarcife's house," said the voice. A moment more and the horses started. Consciousness escaped him, and he lay against the cushions with closed eyes. When he came to himself, it was to hear the breathing of the woman beside him – a faint insistence of sound that seemed a vital element in the surrounding atmosphere. For an instant it lulled him, and then, as reason returned, the sound brought in its train the pale survivals of old associations. Half stunned as he was, it was by feeling rather than conception that he became aware that the woman was Mariana. He was conscious of neither surprise nor emotion. There was merely a troublous sense of broken repose and a slight bitterness always connected with the thought of her – a bitterness that was but an after-taste of his portion of gall and wormwood.

He turned his head upon the cushions and looked at her as she sat beside him. She had not spoken, and she sat quite motionless, her fitful breathing alone betraying the animation of flesh. Her head was in the shadow, but a single ray of light fell across her lap, showing her folded hands in their long gloves. He smelled the fragrance of the violets she wore, but the darkness hid them.

Surging beneath that rising bitterness, the depths of his memory stirred in its sleep. He remembered the day that he had stood at the window of that Fourth Street tenement, watching the black-robed figure enter the carriage below. He saw the door close, the wheels turn, and the last upward glance she gave. Then he saw the long street flecked with sunshine stretching onward into the aridity of endless to-morrows.

Strange that he remembered it after these eight years. The woman beside him stirred, and he recalled in that same slow bitterness the last kiss he had put upon her mouth. Bah! It meant nothing.

But his apathy was rended by a sudden fury – an instinct of hate – of cruelty insatiable. An impulse to turn and strike her through the darkness – to strike her until he had appeased his thirst for blood.

The impulse passed as quickly as it came, fleeing like a phantom of delirium, and in its place the old unutterable bitterness welled back. His apathy reclosed upon him.

The carriage turned a corner, and a blaze of light fell upon the shadow of the seat. It swept the white profile and dark figure of Mariana, and he saw the wistfulness in her eyes and the maddening tremor of her mouth. But it did not move him. He was done with such things forever.

All at once she turned towards him.

"You are not hurt?"

"It was nothing."

She flinched at the sound of his voice, and the dusk of the cross-street shrouded them again. The hands in her lap fluttered nervously, running along the folds of her dress.

Suddenly the carriage stopped, and Nevins jumped down from the box and swung the door open.

"Are you all right?" he asked, and his voice was unsteady.

"All right," responded Father Algarcife, cheerfully. He stepped upon the sidewalk, staggered slightly, and caught Nevins's arm. Then he turned to the woman within the carriage. "I thank you," he said.

He entered the rectory, and Nevins came back and got inside the carriage.

"Will you go home?" he asked, with attempted lightness. "The returns from the Assembly districts won't be in till morning, but Ardly is sure."

Mariana smiled at him.

"Tell him to drive home," she answered. "I am very tired."

CHAPTER VII

The morning papers reported that the Reverend Anthony Algarcife had been struck by a cab while crossing Broadway, and as he left the breakfast-table Mrs. Ryder's carriage appeared at his door, quickly followed by that of Miss Vernish.

By ten o'clock the rectory was besieged and bunches of flowers, with cards attached, were scattered about the hall. Dr. Salvers, coming in a little later, stumbled over a pile of roses, and recovered himself, laughing.

"Looks as if they mean to bury you," he remarked. "But how are you feeling? Of course, I knew it was nothing serious or I should have heard."

Father Algarcife rose impatiently from his chair.

"Of course," he returned. "But all this fuss is sufficient to drive a man mad. Yes, Agnes," to the maid who entered with a tray of carnations and a solicitous inquiry as to his health. "Say I am perfectly well – and please have all these flowers sent to the hospital at once. No, I don't care for any on my desk. I dislike the perfume." Then he turned to Salvers. "I am going out to escape it," he said. "Will you walk with me to the church?"

"With pleasure," responded the doctor, cheerfully; and he added: "You will find the church a poor protection, I fancy."

As they left the rectory they met Claude Nevins upon the sidewalk.

"I wanted to assure myself that it was not a serious accident," he said. "Glad to see you out."

Father Algarcife frowned.

"If I hear another word of this affair," he replied, irritably, "I shall feel tempted to regret that there is not some cause for the alarm."

"And you are quite well?"

"Perfectly."

"By the way, I didn't know that you felt enough interest in the elections to induce you to parade the streets on their account."

"Oh, it was the doctor's fault. He got me into the medley, and then deserted because he found it too democratic."

"It is democracy turned upsidedown that I object to," remarked Salvers. "There seems a lack of decency about it – as if we were to awake some morning to find the statue of Liberty on its head, with its legs in the air. I believe in the old conservative goddess of our fathers – Freedom shackled by the chains of respectability."

"So did Father Algarcife once," said Nevins. "He had an oration entitled 'The Jeffersonian Principles' which he used to deliver before the mirror when he thought I was asleep."

"I believe in it still," interrupted Father Algarcife, "but I no longer deliver orations. Greater wisdom has made me silent. Well, I suppose the result of last night was hardly a surprise."

"Hardly," responded Nevins. "What can one expect when everybody who knows the value of an office is running for it, and everybody who doesn't is blowing horns about the runners. But I won't keep you. Good-day."

"Good-day."

Nevins turned back.

"By the way," he said to Father Algarcife, "I wish you would drop in and look at that portrait the first chance you have. I am waiting for your criticism."

"Very well. Congratulate Ardly for me."

And they separated, Salvers motioning to his coachman to follow him to the church.

Upon going inside, Father Algarcife found his principal assistant, a young fellow with a fair, fresh face, like a girl's, and a high forehead, surmounted by waves of flaxen hair. His name was Ellerslie, and his devotional sincerity was covered by a shy and nervous manner.

He greeted the elder priest with a furtive deprecation, the result of an innate humility of character.

"I went by the rectory as soon as I had seen the morning papers," he said. "Thank God you escaped unhurt!"

The irritation with which Father Algarcife had replied to Nevins's solicitude did not appear now.

"I hope you were not troubled by the report," he answered. "There was absolutely nothing in it except that I was struck by a vehicle and stunned slightly. But the exaggerated accounts have caused me a great deal of annoyance. By the way, John," and his face softened, "I have not told you how much I liked your last sermon."

The other flushed and shook his head. "They fall so far short," he returned, and his voice trembled. "I know now that I shall never be able to speak. When I face the people there is so much that I want to say that I grow dumb. My feeling is so strong that my words are weak."

"Time may change that."

"No," said Ellerslie; "but if I may listen to you I am content. I will serve God in humble ways. It is the service that I love, after all, and not the glory."

"Yes, yes," responded Father Algarcife, gently.

He went into the sacristy, where he sat for a few moments in reverie, his head resting upon his hand. Then he rose and shook himself free of the thought which haunted him.

For several weeks after this he paid no calls except among his poor. The houses of his richer parishioners he appeared to shun, and his days were spent in active work in the mission districts. At all hours his calm black figure and virile face might be seen passing in and out of the grimy tenements or along the narrow streets. He had opened, in connection with his mission-house, a lodging for waifs, and it was his custom to spend several evenings of the week among its inmates. The house had been founded by funds which, until his call to the church, had been expended in Asiatic missions, but which, before his indomitable opposition, had been withdrawn. As the work went on it became of special interest to him, and a good half of his personal income went yearly to its support.

"It is not a charity," he had once said to Salvers. "I disapprove of such charities. It is merely a house where lodgings are let in as business-like a manner as they are around the corner, for five cents a spot; only our lodgings are better, and there is a bath thrown in."

"And a dinner as well," Salvers had answered, "to say nothing of breakfast and a bed to one's self. By the way, is your system of serving newsboys and boot-blacks on credit successful?"

Father Algarcife smiled.

"I have found it so," he replied; "but, you know, our terms are long, and we give good measure for the money."

It was in this work that he was absorbing himself, when, one day in early December, he received a note from Mrs. Ryder:

"I have secured a box at the opera for Thursday night," (she wrote), "that I might beg you to hear Madame Cambria, who sings Ortrude in 'Lohengrin.' Her contralto is superb, and I wish to engage her for our Christmas services, but I hesitate to do so until I have had your verdict upon her voice. This is a new charitable appeal, and one which I trust you will not refuse.

"Believe me to be,"Always sincerely yours,"Florence van Horne Ryder.

"The De Reszkes sing also."

He sent an acceptance, and the following day received an urgent request that he should dine quietly with Mr. Ryder and herself on Thursday evening. To this he consented, after some hesitation; and when the evening came he presented himself, to find Mrs. Ryder awaiting him with the pretty, vivacious young woman of the dinner-party, who was a guest in the house.

Mrs. Ryder crossed the room, with her large white hand outstretched, her satin gown rustling as she moved, and the lamplight shimmering over her massive shoulders in their setting of old lace. The vivacious young woman, whose name was Darcy, greeted him with a smile which seemed to blend in a flash of brightness her black eyes and white teeth.

"Mr. Ryder is a little late," his wife explained, "but he will not delay us long." And she passed to the subject of the Christmas services and the contralto she wished to secure.

While she was speaking, Ryder came in with his usual cordial pleasantries. He was looking fresh and a little flushed, as if he had just left a Turkish bath, and was dressed with an immaculateness of detail which carried a suggestion of careful polish. His sensitive skin, beneath which the purplish flush rose, was as fine as a child's, and his round, smooth hands had a suffusion of pink in the palms.

In a moment dinner was served, and they went into the dining-room. Ryder was easy and affable. He talked pleasantly about the events of the past few weeks, describing as if for the hundredth time the success of the Horse Show, and stating good-natured objections to the awards of the judges.

"It is a farce," he said – "a mere farce. They don't recognize the best horse-flesh when they see it." Then he smiled at his wife. "But who can blame them? It was really a puzzle to decide which were the most worth looking at, the horses or the women. It is hard to say where the blue ribbon belonged. Ah, father, you miss a great deal by being a saint."