During Algarcife's first term at college, a fellow fraternity man
remarked of him that he resembled the eternal void, in that he might
have been anything and was nothing. Algarcife accepted the criticism
with a shrug.
"Wait and see," he responded, shortly, and the fraternity man had waited
and had seen.
In that first year Anthony succeeded in sowing a supply of wild oats
sufficient for the domestication of the species. He was improvident from
principle and reckless from an inborn distrust of accepted dogmas. "I
shall live as I please," he replied, in answer to the warnings of a
classmate, "and I shall think as I damn please."
For a year he went about his dissipations in a kind of inquiring ardor.
He called it "seeing life," and he pursued his observations with entire
obliviousness to public regard, but with philosophic concern as to the
accuracy of the information obtained. He was known to have got drunk
upon whiskey and light wine in order to test the differences in effect,
and it was rumored that he made love to the homeliest and most virtuous
daughter of the saloon-keeper that he might convince himself whether her
virtue was the logical resultant of her homeliness. Into all experiments
he carried an entire absence of prejudice, and a half-defiant acceptance
of consequences.
"It is a sheer waste of time," said John Driscoll, of the Senior class.
"You haven't learned the first principle of scientific dissipation.
Instead of plunging into excesses, you stroll into them. By Jove! if you
broke every command in the Decalogue, you would appear to sin in
moderation."
Algarcife laughed. "I am going to reform," he said. "I am not enough of
an artist to see the aesthetic values of vice. Let's become decent. It is
more economical."
It was at this time that he reduced his living expenses one-half, and
appropriated the surplus funds to the support of a young mechanic, whose
health had collapsed in the struggle to work his way to a university
degree. "He not only gave it," declared the young mechanic, in a burst
of gratitude, "but he gave it without knowing that he did a generous
thing."
When Algarcife left college that summer he followed Driscoll to his
cabin in the Adirondacks and spent several months botanizing. The chance
application to science decided the tenor of his mind, and, upon his
return to study, he refused to bow beneath the weight of authority
hurled upon him. He denounced the classics and a classical training.
Several courses he declared superficial, and he mastered various systems
of moral philosophy that he might refute the fallacies of the professor.
The brilliancy which he had frittered during the preceding year was
turned into newer channels, and the closeness of his reliance upon
inductive reasoning caused him to become at once a source of amusement
to his classmates and of annoyance to his instructor. To see him rise in
class, his face charged with the nervous vigor which seized him in
moments of excitement, his keen glance riveted upon the professor as he
mercilessly dissected his utterances, was an event which, to his
fellow-students, rendered even old Monckton's lectures of interest.
Then he took a prominent part in a debating society. With a readiness
which his friends declared to spring from love of logic, his enemies
from lack of principle, he accepted either side of a given argument, and
had been known to undertake at once the negative and the affirmative,
detecting his own weaknesses as ruthlessly as he had detected those of
old Monckton.
Before leaving college, and at the urgency of his guardian, he had
carried through with dogged distaste a course in dogmatic theology. It
was then that he fell into the way of writing theses from opposite sides
of a subject, and when handing in a treatise upon "Historical Evidences
of Christianity," or "The Pelagian Heresy," it was invariably
accompanied by the remark: "I wish you'd look over that 'Lack of
Historical Evidences,' or 'Defence of Pelagianism,' at the same time.
You know, I always do the other side."
And it was "the other side" which finally drove him out of theology and
his guardian into despair. Whether it was an argument in moral
philosophy, a mooted question in Egyptology, or a stand in current
politics, Algarcife was ready with what his classmates called "the
damned eternal opposition." It was even said that a facetious professor,
in remarking to his class that it was "a fine day," had turned in
absent-minded custom and called upon Mr. Algarcife for "the other side,"
an appeal which drew a howl of approbation from hilarious students.
Anthony was not popular at college, though his friends were steadfast.
It was not until later years, when life had tempered the incisive irony
of his speech and endowed him with the diplomacy of indifference, that
men fell beneath the attraction of his personality. At that time he was
looked upon in an ominous light, and the scintillant scepticism which he
carried fearlessly into every department of knowledge caused him to be
regarded as one who might prove himself to be an enemy to society. Even
his voice, which long afterwards exerted so potent an influence, had
not then gained its varied range and richness of expression.
So, when, years later, the public lauded the qualities they had formerly
condemned, there was no inconsistence--since life is more colored by
points of view than by principles. At the end of his theological course
he had delivered an address, at the request of his class, upon the
"Christian Revelation." When it was over he went into his guardian's
room, the flame of a long determination in his eyes. The paper which he
had read was still in his hands, and he laid it upon the table as he
spoke.
"It can't be," he said. "I give it up."
The man whom he addressed rose slowly and faced him, standing, a tall,
gaunt figure in his clerical coat. His hair was white, and at a first
glance he presented the impression of a statue modelled in plaster, so
much did the value of form outweigh that of color in his appearance. In
meeting his eyes an observer would, perhaps, have gained a conception of
expression rather than shade. One would have said that the eyes were
benevolent, not that they were gray or blue. His forehead was high and
somewhat narrow, three heavy furrows running diagonally between the
eyebrows--ruts left by the constant passage of perplexities. He was
called Father Speares, and was an impassioned leader of the High Church
movement.
"Do you mean it?" he asked, slowly--"that you give up your faith?"
Algarcife's brow wrinkled in sudden irritation. "That I have given up
long ago," he answered. "If I ever had any, it was an ingrafted product.
What I do mean is that I give up the Church--that I give up
theology--that I give up religion."
The other flinched suddenly. He put out one frail, white hand as if in
protest.
"I--I cannot believe it," he said.
"And yet I have been honest."
"Honest! Yes, I suppose so. Honest--" he lifted the paper from the table
and unfolded it mechanically. "And yet you could write this?"
Anthony shook his head impatiently. "I was but a special pleader with
the side assigned, and you knew it."
"But I did not know your power--nor do you. It convinced me--convinced
me, though I came with the knowledge that your words were empty--empty
and rotten--"
"They were words. The case was given me, and I defended it as a lawyer
defends a client. What else could I do?"
Father Speares sighed and passed his hand across his brow.
"It is not the first disappointment of my life," he said, "but it is the
greatest."
Algarcife was looking through the open window to the sunlight falling
upon the waving grass. A large butterfly, with black and yellow wings,
was dancing above a clump of dandelions.
"I am sorry," he said, more gently--"sorry for that--but it can't be
helped. I am not a theologian, but a scientist; I am not a believer, but
an agnostic; I am not a priest, but a man."
"But you are young. The pendulum may swing back--"
"Never," said Algarcife--"never." He lifted his head, looking into the
other's eyes. "Don't you see that when a man has once conceived the
magnitude of the universe he can never bow his head to a creed? Don't
you see that when he has grasped the essential verity in all religions
he no longer allies himself to a single one? Don't you see that when he
has realized the dominance of law in religions--the law of their growth
and decay, of their evolution and dissolution, when he has once grasped
the fact that man creates, and is not created by, his god--don't you see
that he can never bind himself to the old beliefs?"
"I see that he can awake to the knowledge of the spiritual life as well
as to the physical--that he can grasp the existence of a vital ethical
principle in nature. I shall pray for you, and I shall hope--"
Algarcife frowned. "I am sick of it," he said--"sick to death. To please
you, I plodded away at theology for three solid years. To please you, I
weighed assumptions as light as air. To please you, I read all the rot
of all the Fathers--and I am sick of it. I shall live my own life in my
own way."
"And may God help you!" said the elder man; and then, "Where will you
go?"
"To Egypt--to India--to the old civilizations."
"And then?"
"I do not know. I shall work and I shall succeed--with or without the
help of God."
And he had gone. During the next few years he travelled in Africa and
Asia, when the sudden loss of his income recalled him to America.
Finding it fruitless to rebel, he resigned himself philosophically,
secured a position as instructor in a woman's college, made up an annual
deficit by writing for the scientific reviews, and continued his
studies. His physical nature he believed he had rendered quiescent.
Some days after his encounter with Mariana he came upon her again. He
had just entered the park at the Seventy-second Street entrance, on his
way from his lecture at the Bodley College. The battered bonnet of a
beggar-woman had blown beneath the horses' hoofs in the drive, and he
had stopped to rescue it, when he heard his name called, and saw Mariana
beside him.
She spoke impulsively.
"I have been watching you," she said.
He looked at her in perplexity.
"Indeed! And what have you discovered?"
"I discovered that you are a gentleman."
He laughed outright.
"Your powers of intuition are positively miraculous," he replied.
She upbraided him with a glance.
"You are unkind," she said.
"Am I?"
"You are unkind to me." Her manner had grown subtly personal. He felt
suddenly as if he had known her from the beginning of time and through
various transmigrations.
"You laugh at me," she added. "You were kinder to that woman--"
He broke in upon her, perplexity giving place to amusement.
"Oh!" he said; "so that is what you mean! Why, if you were to lose your
hat, I shouldn't laugh, I assure you."
Mariana walked on silently. Her eyes were bent upon the gray sidewalk,
there was a faint flush in her face. A line of men seated upon the
benches beside the way surveyed her with interest.
"Miss Musin!"
Her face quickened.
"I have a confession to make."
She looked up inquiringly. A finger of sunlight pierced the branches of
an elm and pointed to her upraised face.
"I have rather bad manners," he went on. "It is a failing which you must
accept as you accept the color of my hair--"
Mariana smiled.
"I say just what I think," he added.
Mariana frowned.
"That is what I complain of," she responded. Then she laughed so
brightly that a tiny child, toddling with a toy upon the walk, looked up
and clapped its hands.
His eyes warmed.
"But you will take me for better or for worse?" he demanded.
"Could it be better?" she asked, demurely.
"That is a matter of opinion."
They left the park and turned into a cross-town street. The distant
blocks sloped down into the blue blur of the river, from which several
gaunt, gray masts rose like phantom wrecks evolved from the mist. Beyond
them the filmy outline of the opposite shore was revealed.
Suddenly Mariana stopped.
"This is Morani's, and I must go in." She held out her hand.
"How is the voice?" he asked.
"I am nursing it. Some day you shall hear it."
"I have heard it," he responded.
She smiled.
"Oh, I forgot. You are next door. Well, some day you shall hear it in
opera."
"Shall I?"
"And I shall sing Elsa with Alvary. My God! I would give ten years of my
life for that--to sing with Alvary."
He smiled at the warmth in her words and, as he smiled he became
conscious that her artistic passion ignited the fire of a more material
passion in himself. A fugitive desire seized him to possess the woman
before him, body and brain. From the quivering of his pulses he knew
that the physical nature he had drugged had stirred in response to a
passing appeal.
"Good-bye," said Mariana. She tripped lightly up the brown-stone steps.
As she opened the outer door she turned with a smile and a nod. Then the
door closed and he went on his way. But the leaping of his pulses was
not appeased.