CHAPTER XX

For a week after Mariana's departure Algarcife worked on ploddingly. He

closed his eyes to actualities and allowed his overwrought mind no

cessation from labor. It was as if all molecular motion in his brain had

been suspended save that relating to the subject in hand, and he wrote

with mechanical readiness journalistic essays upon the "Advantages of a

Vegetable Diet" and "The Muscular Development of the Body." Then, upon

trying to rise one morning, he found that his shattered system was

turning in revolt, and that no artificial spur could sting his exhausted

brain into action.

Through the long, hot day he lay relaxed and nerveless, conscious of the

glare of the sunshine, but dreading to draw the shades, conscious of the

closeness of the atmosphere, and conscious of a beating, like the

strokes of an anvil, in his temples. When his dinner was brought he

drank a cup of tea and sat up. Then he reached for a phial of morphia

pellets which he kept in his desk, and, dissolving one in water,

swallowed it. For a moment the temptation to take the contents of the

phial at a dose assailed him, but, more from inability to venture a

decisive step than from any mental determination, he laid the bottle

aside. Action of any kind appeared intolerably irksome, and he waived

with disgust the solution of the simple problem of his life.

As he fell back upon the bed, his glance passed over the pillow beside

him, and he pictured to himself the circle which Mariana's head had

drawn upon the cotton. He remembered that she always slept lying upon

her right side, her left knee bent, one hand under the pillow and one

lying upon her breast, her profile shadowed by dreams. He remembered the

nervous fear she felt of resting upon her heart, and that, having once

turned upon her left side, she awoke with palpitating breaths and a

smothered cry. He saw her calmer slumber, he felt her rhythmic

breathing, and he recalled his sensation when one of her loosened braids

had brushed his cheek. Again he saw her as she leaned over to soothe the

child, and, raising it in her arms, hushed it upon her breast. He

recalled it dully, as one recalls the incidents of long-past years over

which the colorless mantle of time has been cast to deaden the

flickering embers amid the ashes. In his mind there was no virility of

passion nor intensity of bitterness--there was only an almighty

melancholy. Life in its sufficiency of satisfied desires showed stale

and unprofitable, and in its barrenness it was but a blank.

The sunshine, blazing through the open window, accelerated the throbbing

in his temples. In the morbid acuteness of his senses, the cries of the

vegetable venders in the street below harassed his ears. Along his whole

body there ran a quivering flame of fever, and his thoughts spun like a

revolving globe. The morphia had not stilled the beating in his head. It

had produced a sensation of sickness, which seemed but the physical

accompaniment of his mental syncope.

He surveyed the books stacked against the opposite wall and wondered

vaguely at the energy with which he had attacked those volumes upon

whose covers the dust was now lying like a veil. He tried to arouse a

memory of the old intellectual exhilaration with which he had grappled

with and vanquished an unexplored department of thought. He remembered

that at such moments the printed lines before him had assumed an unusual

degree of clearness, and that he had been reading _The Wealth of

Nations_ when a point in comparative morphology occurred to him. But the

sensation itself he could not recover. The association of ideas was

still unbroken, but the mental state was lost.

As he lay there, tossing restlessly upon the heated pillows, he reviewed

unsympathetically his old pursuit of knowledge. What did it all mean?

For what had he given his heritage of youth and manhood? For Truth.

Granted, but what was Truth that he should follow it unswervingly until

he passed from flesh and blood to a parcel of dry bones? How could he

find it, and, finding, know it? That gray and ancient scepticism which

had never appealed to him in health preyed now upon his wasting vitals.

Since through the senses alone one could perceive, and the senses were

but faulty instruments, what was perception worth? What were ideas but

the figments produced by faculties which were at best deceptive? And in

the infinite complexity of the self-sustaining reality, of what account

were the abstractions of the finite intellect? In Truth itself, that

all-pervading immateriality, were not the myriads of man's little truths

ingulfed and lost? Were not true and false but symbols to express the

differing relations of a great whole, as evolution and dissolution were

symbols to express the recurring waves of a great force. As one man with

his single hand barring the march of the seasons, was the man who by his

single brain sought to hasten the advance of the Law which is Truth. And

though he crumbled to dust, not one needful fact but would find its way

into the moving world.

Stunned by despondency, he closed his eyes and groaned. In the absolute

grasp of the futility of endeavor, he realized the lowest depths of

human hopelessness. It was as if he had reached the ultimate nothing,

the end to which his pathway led. Though he dashed his brains into the

void, not one breath of the universal progress would swerve from its

course.

And happiness? What was it but another symbol to signify the wistful

yearning of the world? Where was it found? Not in love, which is the

thirsting for a woman's spirit; not in passion, which is the burning for

a woman's flesh. Did not bitterness follow upon the one, and upon the

other satiety? His nature was deadened to the verge of obliviousness,

and in his waning vitality the impulse of self-gratification had gone

first. Physical desires shrank into decay, and mental ones passed with

them. He wondered that he had ever sought in love other than calm

reasonableness and a cooling presence. The emotion that sent scarlet

thrills to his brain he analyzed with callousness. He remembered his

mother as she lay upon the invalid's sofa, her Bible and a novel of

Victor Hugo's upon the table beside her. He saw the placid beauty of her

face, the slender, blue-veined hand which she laid upon his forehead

when he went to her a wailing child; and it seemed to him that such a

touch was the only touch of love with the power to console. Then he

remembered Mariana's hand as she laid it upon her child and his, and he

knew that the touch was the same. He thought of her as she sat beside

the crib when the child lay dying. The passionate self-control about the

mouth, the agony in her eyes, the tragic droop of her figure--these

returned to soften him. He saw the black shadow of the palm-leaf fan,

passing to and fro above the little bluish face, and he heard the

labored breathing.

In sudden bitterness he opened his arms and cried aloud, "Mariana!"

Then the tears of weakness and despair stained the pillow where her head

had lain.

When the twilight fell he rose, dressed himself with an effort, and

descended the stairs. His limbs trembled as he moved, and, upon reaching

the open air, he staggered and leaned for support against the red brick

wall. Then he straightened himself, and wandered aimlessly from street

to street. As he passed among men and women he was aware of a strange

aloofness, as if the links connecting him with his kind had snapped

asunder; and he felt that he might have been the being of another planet

to whom earthly passions and fulfilments bore no palpable relation, but

were to be considered with cosmic composure. The thought jarred upon him

insistently that these moving men and women, whom he brushed in passing,

were each stirred by an entity akin to that which in himself lay

drugged. He realized that the condition of a mind without the attraction

of physical desires is as chaotic as the condition of a world suddenly

freed from the attraction of gravitation.

He looked at his fellow human beings with forced intentness. It struck

him with an almost hysterical shock that they were of ludicrous shapes,

and he laughed. Then he glanced at a carriage rolling along the street,

and it appeared absurd that one mortal should sit upon four wheels while

a fellow-mortal of a nobler build should draw him. He laughed again. As

he did so he had a quick perception that delirium was approaching, and

he stopped to swallow another pellet. He reeled slightly, and a

boot-black upon the corner surveyed him with interest.

"Air yer drunk, mister?"

He laughed aloud. "Damned drunk," he responded, and walked on. Some

hours later he found himself in Whitehall Street, passing the lighted

windows of the Eastern Hotel. Beneath the station of the elevated road

he came upon a stand, with the words "Cider and Root-Beer" flaming in

red letters on a white background, and for the first time he was

conscious of a sensation of thirst. He stopped, felt in his pocket, and

then, checking himself, passed onward to the Battery. A sharp wind

struck him, blowing the damp hair from his forehead and chilling the

drops of perspiration upon his face. With a feeling of relief he leaned

against one of the stone pillars and bared his head to the incoming

breeze. Far out the islands shone in iridescent lights, flashing through

variations of green and amber, and over the water the ferry-boats

skimmed like gigantic insects studded with parti-colored eyes.

Down below the water lay black and cold, the slow breakers flecked with

light foam. He saw a glimmer as of phosphorescence rise suddenly upon

the waves, and, looking deeper, he saw the eternal stillness. Between

the throbs of fever the passion for death seized him in a paroxysm, and

mentally he felt the quiet waters stir beneath him and the quietness

close over him. His hand fastened upon the iron chain between the

pillars; then he drew back.

He remembered the row of acids upon a shelf in his room, and his

assurance returned. With a sensation of luxuriousness he recalled the

labels with the large "Poison!" above, and the inscription "Hydrocyanic

Acid" stared him in the eyes. When he had made that collection for

experimental purposes how little had he foreseen the experiment in which

it would play a part. He sat down upon a bench and stared idly at the

stream of passers-by, some lovers who went arm-in-arm, some husbands and

wives who walked apart, some fathers and mothers who carried sickly

children--all bound and burdened with the flesh. The fretful wail of a

baby came to him and mingled mechanically with his train of thought. It

seemed the frail treble in the great symphony of human woe.

Beyond the men and women he saw the black water and the dancing lights,

and, farther still, the misty islands.

Gradually the fever starts grew less, and calmness came back to him.

With a wave of regret he looked back upon his lost serenity, and

lamented that it had failed him. He knew that in his mental upheaval the

opposing elements in his nature had waged a combat. The scientific tenor

of his mind had for the past few weeks been crushed out by the virulence

of his nerves. That physical force which he had so long held enthralled

had at last asserted its supremacy, and for the time his mind was under

the sway of bodily weakness.

This duality of being occurred to him in perplexing inconsistency. Had

he been a pure mentality, his life would have been one steep and

victorious ascent towards knowledge. Were he but a physical organism,

carnality would have satisfied his cravings. Then the remembrance that

stronger than will or flesh is necessity arose and smote him into

silence.

Many of the people had gone, but he still sat plunged in thought. A

hatless woman, fresh from a midnight carousal, with a bleeding cut upon

her lip, took the seat beside him, and he found a forlorn comfort in the

contact with alien wretchedness. When she laid her head upon the back of

the bench and fell asleep, he listened to her drunken snores calmly and

without aversion. He became aware that his old kinship to humanity was

at the moment restored, that, losing it with the loss of desire, it was

regained in despair. Suddenly the head of the woman beside him rolled

forward and rested against his shoulder. She stirred slightly, heaved a

sigh of satisfaction, and returned to her ribald dreams, while he, in

numbness and pain, found consolation in this forced sacrifice of

comfort.

He did not move, and through the long night the drunken woman slept with

her head upon his shoulder.

For the next few days he dragged out a methodical existence. In the

mornings he would force himself to rise, swallow his food, and take his

accustomed seat before his desk. With a failing hand he would take up

his pen and endeavor to bend his fever-stricken brain to its task, but

before a dozen lines were penned his strength would falter and the

effort be abandoned. Then he would rise and finger the phials on the

shelf, until, turning from them, he would say, "I will fight--fight

until the last gasp--and then--"

At the beginning of the week, when his lodging bill was due, he carried

by the armful a number of his books and pawned them for a nominal sum.

Then he remembered his watch, and left that also. It was a heavy

hunting-case of his father's, which he had always used from the nearness

of the association, and as he laid it down something came into his

throat. He opened the watch and took out the picture of his mother which

was inside--a sketch in color, showing the lustrous Creole beauty in her

first youth. Then he snapped the case and saw the initials "A. K. A."

pass into the hands behind the counter.

Leaving the pawn-shop, he walked rapidly through the oppressive

September sun until his limbs failed. Then turning with the throng of

men that flowed into City Hall Square, he came to a sudden halt before

the fountain. He was dazed and weakened, like a man who has recovered

from a lapse into unconsciousness. The constant passing of the crowd

bewildered him, and the sound of falling water in the fountain irritated

him with the suggestion of thirst. He turned away and threw himself upon

a bench beneath the shade of a tree. For an instant he closed his eyes,

and when he opened them he found the scene before him to have

intensified. The falling water sounded more distinctly, the sky was of a

glaring blueness, and the dome of the _World_ building glittered like a

cloud of fire.

To his straining eyes the statue of Horace Greeley seemed to grin at

him from across the traffic in the street, and as he staggered to his

feet he felt an impulse to shake his fist at it and say:

"Damn you! It is a chance that I want," but his muscles faltered, and he

fell back.

Then his glance wandered to the man beside him, a filthy vagrant with

the smell of grease about his clothes. Did not he want his chance as

well? And a few feet away a boy with a scowl on his lips and a bruise

above his eye--why not a chance for him? Then a gray haze obscured his

vision and the noise of the street was dulled into a monotone.

The throbbing in his temples grew faster, and as he sat there he knew

that he had fought to the final gasp and that the end had come. In his

physical downfall there was room for neither alarm nor regret. He was

lost to all vaguer impressions than the trembling of his frame, the icy

starts through his limbs, the burning of his eyes, and the inevitable

beating in his temples. Beyond these things he neither knew nor cared.

With the instinct for solitude, he started and rose to move onward, when

he saw that the earth was undulating beneath his feet and that the

atmosphere was filled with fog. The dome of the _World_ building reeled

suddenly and clashed into the flaming sky. He heard the sound of

brazen-tongued bells ringing higher and higher above the falling of the

water, above the tread of passing feet, and above the dull, insistent

din of the traffic in the streets.

Then his name was called and he felt a hand upon his arm.

"Why, Anthony!"

He looked up bewildered, but straightened himself and stood erect,

straining at the consciousness that was escaping him.

"How are you, Mr. Speares?" he asked. His voice was without inflection.

Father Speares spoke with impassioned pity. "What are you doing? You are

ill--a ghost--"

Algarcife steadied himself against the bench and said nothing.

"What does it mean? Your wife--where is she?"

Anthony's voice came slowly and without emotion. "I am alone," he

answered.

A quick moisture sprang to the older man's eyes. He held out his hand.

"Come with me," he said, fervently. "I am alone also. Come to my house."

Algarcife left the bench and took a step from him.

"No," he replied. "I--I am all right."

Then he staggered and would have fallen but for the other's sustaining

arm.

Phase Second

_"And not even here do all agree--no, not any one with himself."_

--MARCUS AURELIUS. (LONG.)

CHAPTER I

Two men passed the Church of the Immaculate Conception, wheeled suddenly

round, and came back.

"By Jove, Driscoll, you have been outside of civilization!" said one,

who was fair and florid, with a general suggestion of potential apoplexy

polished by the oil of indulgence. "What! you haven't heard the Reverend

Algarcife? Why, he rivals in popularity the Brockenhurst scandal, and

his power is only equalled by that of--of Tammany."

John Driscoll laughed cynically.

"Let's have the scandal, by all means," he returned. "Spare me the

puling priests."

"Bless my soul, man, don't tell me the Brockenhurst affair hasn't

reached the Pacific slope! What a hell of a place! Well, Darbey was

named corespondent, you know. You remember Darbey, the fellow who owned

that dandy racer, La Bella, and lost her to Owens at cards? But the

papers are full of it. Next thing you'll tell me you don't see the

_Sun_."

"A fact. I don't read newspapers, I write them--or used to. But what

about this priest? I knew an Algarcife in my green and ambitious youth,

but he wasn't a priest; he was a pagan, and a deuced solemn one at

that."

They stood upon the gray stone steps, and the belated worshippers

trooped past them to vespers. A woman with a virginal calm face and a

camellia in her hymnal brushed them lightly, leaving a trail of

luxurious sweetness on the air; a portly vestryman, with inflated

cheeks and short-sighted eyes, mounted the steps pantingly, his lean and

flat-chested wife hanging upon his arm; a gray-browed gentlewoman, her

eyes inscrutable with chastity unsurprised, held her black silk skirt

primly as she ascended, carrying her prayer-book as if it were a

bayonet.

In the street a carriage was standing, the driver yawning above his

robes. From the quivering flanks of the horses a white steam rose like

mist. Near the horses' hoofs a man born blind sat with a tray of matches

upon his knee.

"Why, that's the jolliest part!" responded the first man, with a

tolerant smile. "This one was an atheist once--or something of the sort,

but the old man--Father Speares, I mean--got hold of him, and a

conversion followed. And, by Jove, he has driven all the women into a

religious mania! I believe he could found a new faith to-morrow if he'd

be content with female apostles."

Driscoll shrugged his shoulders. "Religion might be called the feminine

element of modern society," he observed. "It owes its persistence to the

attraction of sex, and St. Paul was shrewd enough to foresee it. He knew

when he forbade women to speak in public that he was insuring

congregations of feminine posterity. Oh, it is sex--sex that moves the

world!"

"And mars it."

"The same thing. Listen!"

As the heavy doors swung back, the voices of the choir swelled out into

the faint sunshine, the notes of a high soprano skimming bird-like over

the deeper voices of the males and the profundo of the organ.

When next Driscoll spoke it was with sudden interest. "I say, Ryder, if

this is Algarcife, why on earth did he turn theologian? Any evidences of

brain softening?"

"Hardly. It is a second Tractarian excitement, with Algarcife for the

leader. The High-Church party owes him canonization, as I said to the

bishop yesterday. He is the best advertising medium of the century.

After Father Speares died, he took things in hand, you know, and raised

a thunder-cloud. The old man's mantle fell upon him, along with whatever

worldly possessions he possessed. Then some physiologist named Clynn got

him into a controversy, and it was like applying an electric-battery to

the sluggish limbs of the Church."

Driscoll gave a low whistle.

"Well, as I'm alive!" he said. "What is it all for, anyway?"

"Let's go inside," said Ryder, drawing his collar about his throat.

"Beastly chill for October. Wind's due east."

For an instant they paused in the vestibule; then Ryder laid his hand

upon the door; it swung open, and they entered the church.

At first the change of light dazzled Driscoll, and he raised his hand to

his eyes; then, lowering it, he leaned against a pillar and looked over

the heads of the congregation. A mellow obscurity flooded the nave,

lightening in opalescent values where the stained-glass windows cast

faint glints of green and gold. The atmosphere was so highly charged

with color that it seemed to possess the tangible qualities of fine

gauze, drawn in transparent tissue from the vaulted ceiling to the gray

dusk of the aisles. A single oblique ray of sunshine, filtering through

a western pane, crept slowly along the walls to the first station of the

cross, where it lay warm and still. Through the heavy luminousness the

voices of the choir swelled in triumphant acclamation:

"And His mercy is on them that fear Him:

Throughout all generations.

He hath showed strength with His arm:

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat."

Beyond the rood-screen in the chancel the candles on the altar flickered

in yellow flames beneath a slight draught. Above them, from the window,

a Christ in red and purple fainted beneath his crown of thorns. At the

foot of the crucifix a heap of white chrysanthemums lay like snow.

Before the candles and the cross the priest stood in his heavy

vestments, his face turned towards the altar, the sanctuary-lamp shining

above his head. Around him incense rose in clouds of fragrant smoke, and

through the vapor his dark head and white profile were drawn against the

foot of the cross. The yellow candle-light, beside which the gas-light

grew pallid, caught the embroideries on the hood of the cope, and they

glistened like jewels.

He stood motionless when the censing was over, stray wreaths of mist

encircling his head. Then, when the Magnificat was finished, he turned

from the altar, the light rippling in the gold of his vestments. His

glance fell for a moment upon his congregation, then upon the mute faces

of his choristers seated and within the chancel.

Through the reading of the lesson he sat silently. There was no

suggestion of emotion in his closed lips, and the composure in his eyes

did not lessen when he rose and came forward, meeting the hush in the

church. From the stillness of the altar his voice rose suddenly,

sustaining the chant of the choir in a deep undertone of unwavering

richness:

"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son-- ... I believe in the Holy

Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints--the

forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body--and the life

everlasting--Amen."

When the organ burst forth into the recessional hymn, Driscoll turned to

his companion. "Come outside," he said. "I feel as if I had been

drinking. And it was Algarcife--"

* * * * *

Half an hour later Father Algarcife left the church, and, crossing to

Broadway, boarded a down-town car. At Twentieth Street he got out and

turned eastward. He walked slowly, with long, almost mechanical strides.

His head was bent and his shoulders stooped slightly, but there was a

suggestion of latent vigor in his appearance, as if he carried a reserve

fund of strength of which his brain had not yet taken account. Beneath

the rich abundance of his hair his features struck one with peculiar

force. They had the firm and compressed look which is the external mark

of sterile emotions, and the traces of nervous wear on brow and lips

showed like the scars of past experiences rather than the wounds of

present ones. His complexion possessed that striking pallor resulting

from long physical waste, a pallor warmed by tawny tones beneath the

surface, deepening into bluish shadows about his closely shaven mouth

and chin. In his long clerical coat he seemed to have gained in height,

and the closest observer would perhaps have detected in his face only a

physical illustration of the spiritual function he fulfilled. In another

profession he would have suggested the possible priest--the priest

unordained by circumstances. As it was, he presented the appearance of

having been inserted in his ecclesiastical position from a mere aesthetic

sense of fitness on the part of Destiny.

Although it was an afternoon in early October, the winds, blowing from

the river along the cross-town blocks, had an edge of frost. Overhead

the sky was paling into tones of dull lavender that shaded into purple

where the west was warmed by stray vestiges of the afterglow. Through

the dusk the street lights flickered here and there like swarming

fire-flies. As he passed the Post-graduate Hospital at the corner of

Second Avenue a man came down the steps and joined him.

"Good-afternoon, father," he said. "Your charge is coming on finely.

Going in?"

His name was Salvers, and he was a rising young specialist in pulmonary

troubles. He had met Father Algarcife in his work among the poor on the

East Side.

"Not to-day," responded the other; "but I am glad to have good news of

the little fellow."

He was known to have endowed one of the babies' cots and to feel great

interest in its occupant.

Dr. Salvers returned his quiet gaze with one of sudden admiration. "What

a wonder you are!" he said. "If there is a man in New York who does your

amount of work, I don't know him. But take my advice and slacken speed.

You will kill yourself."

Into Father Algarcife's eyes a gleam of humor shot. It went out as

suddenly as it had come, and a tinge of sadness rose to the surface.

"Perhaps I am trying to," he answered, lightly.

"It looks like it. Here's Sunday, and you've come from a half-dozen

services to run at the call of a beggar or so who might have had the

politeness to wait till week-day. How is the Bowery Mission?"

"Very well," responded the other, showing an interest for the first

time. "I have persuaded ten converts to take the pledge of a daily bath.

It was tough work."

Salvers laughed. "I should say so. But, you know, that is what I like

about your mission. It has the virtue of confusing cleanliness with

godliness. Are you still delivering your sermons on hygiene?"

"Yes. You know we have been sending out nurses to women in confinement

in connection with those Sunday-night lectures on the care of children.

The great question of the tenement-house is the one of the children it

produces."

The light that fired his features had chased from them their habitual

expression of lethargic calm.

"It is a great work," said the doctor, enthusiastically. "But, do you

know, father, it seems to me odd that so intense a believer in the rules

of the rubric should have been the first to put religion into practical

use among the poor. It seems a direct contradiction to the assertion

that the association of the love of beauty with the love of God destroys

sympathy for poverty and disease."

A cloud passed over the other's face.

"My predecessor prepared the ground for me," he replied, constrainedly.

"I hope to sow the seed for future usefulness."

"And capital seed it is. But, as I said, it saps the sower. You are

running a race with Death. No man can work as you work and not pay the

penalty. Get an extra assistant."

Father Algarcife shook his head.

"They cannot do my work," he answered. "That is for me. As for

consequences--well, the race is worth them. If Death wins or I--who

knows?"

His rich voice rang with an intonation that was almost reckless. Then

his tone changed.

"I go a block or two farther," he said. "Good-day."

And he passed on, the old lethargy settling upon his face.

At some distance he stopped, and, entering a doorway, ascended the

stairs to the second landing. A knock at the first door brought a

blear-eyed child with straight wisps of hair and a chronic cold in the

head. She looked at him with dull recognition.

"Is Mrs. Watson worse?" he asked, gently.

A voice from the room beyond reached him in the shrill tones of one

unreconciled to continual suffering.

"Is it the father?" it said. "Show him in. Ain't I been lying here and

expecting him all day?" The voice was querulous and sharp. Father

Algarcife entered the room and crossed to where the woman lay.

The bed was squalid, and the unclean odors of the disease consuming her

flesh hung about the quilt and the furniture. The yellow and haggard

face upon the pillow was half-obscured by a bandage across the left

cheek.

As he looked down at her there was neither pity nor repulsion in his

glance. It was merely negative in quality.

"Has the nurse been here to-day?" he asked, in the same gentle voice.

The woman nodded, rolling her bandaged head upon the pillow. "Ain't you

going to sit down, now you've come?" she said.

He drew a chair to the bedside and sat down, laying his hand on the

burning one that played nervously upon the quilt.

"Are you in pain?"

"Always--night and day."

He looked at her for a moment in silence; then he spoke soothingly. "You

sent for me," he said. "I came as soon as the services were over."

She answered timidly, with a faint deprecation:

"I thought I was going. It came all faint-like, and then it went away."

A compassion more mental than emotional awoke in his glance.

"It was weakness," he answered. "You know this is the tenth time in the

last fortnight that you have felt it. When it comes, do you take the

medicine?"

She stirred pettishly.

"I 'ain't no belief in drugs," she returned. "But I don't want to go

alone, with nobody round but the child."

He held the withered hand in his as he rose. "Don't be afraid," he

answered. "I will come if you want me. Has the milk been good? And do

you remember to watch the unfolding of that bud on the geranium? It will

soon blossom."

He descended the stairs and went out into the street. At Madison Avenue

he took the car to Fortieth Street. Near the corner, on the west side,

there was a large brown-stone house, with curtains showing like gossamer

webs against the lighted interiors of the rooms. He mounted the steps,

rang the bell, and entered through an archway of palms the carpeted

hall.

"Say to Miss Vernish that it is Father Algarcife," he said, and passed

into the drawing-room.

A woman, buried amid the pillows of a divan, rose as he entered and came

towards him, her trailing skirts rustling over the velvet carpet. She

was thin and gray-haired, with a faded beauty of face and a bitter

mouth. She walked as if impatient of a slight lameness in her foot.

"So you got my message," she said. "I waited for you all day yesterday.

I am ill--ill and chained to this couch. I have not been to church for

eight weeks, and I have needed the confessional. See, my nerves are

trying me. If you had only come sooner."

She threw herself upon the couch and he seated himself on a chair beside

her. The heavily shaded lamplight fell over the richness of the room,

over the Turkish rugs scattered upon the floor, over the hangings of old

tapestries on the walls, and over the shining bric-a-brac reflected in

long mirrors. As he leaned forward it fell upon his features and

softened them to sudden beauty.

"I am sorry," he answered, "but I could not come yesterday, and to-day

a woman dying of cancer sent for me."

She crushed a pillow beneath her arm, smiling a little bitterly.

"Oh, it is your poor!" she said. "It is always your poor! We rich must

learn to yield precedence--"

"It is not a question of wealth or of poverty," he returned. "It is one

of suffering. Can I help you?"

The bitterness faded from her mouth. "You can let me believe in you,"

she said. "Don't you know that it is because you despise my money that I

call for you? I might have sent for a hundred persons yesterday who

would have outrun my messenger. But I could not bring you an instant

sooner for all my wealth--no, not even for the sake of the church you

love."

"How do you know?" he asked, gravely. "Call no man unpurchasable until

he has been bargained for."

She looked at him passionately. "That is why I give to your church," she

went on; "because to you my thousand counts no more than my laundress's

dime."

"But it does," he corrected; "and the church is grateful."

"But you?"

"I am the instrument of the church."

"The pillar, you mean."

He shook his head. There was no feeling in voice or eyes--but there was

no hardness.

"I love your church," she went on, more gently. "I love what you have

made of it. I love religion because it produces men like you--

"Stop," he said, in a voice that flinched slightly.

She raised her head with a gesture that had a touch of defiance. "Why

should I stop?" she asked. "Do you think God will mind if I give His

servant his due? Yesterday religion was nothing to me; to-day it is

everything, and it is you who have been its revelation. Why should I not

tell you so?"

He was regarding her with intentness.

"And you are happier?" he asked.

"Happier! It is an odd word for a woman like me. I am fifty years old, I

am alone, I am loveless. It has given me something to hope for, that is

all."

"Yes?"

With a sudden yearning she stretched out her thin, white hands in

appeal.

"Talk to me," she said. "Make me feel it. I am so alone."

When Father Algarcife descended the brown-stone steps an hour later, his

face was drawn and his lips firmly closed. The electric light, shining

upon his resolute features, gave them the look of marble.

He turned into Fifth Avenue and continued his way to Fifty-eighth

Street. Before the door of the rectory, which was at the distance of a

stone's-throw from the church, a carriage was drawn up to the sidewalk,

and as he passed his name was called softly in a woman's voice:

"It is I--Mrs. Bruce Ryder. I have been waiting in the hope of seeing

you."

He paused on the sidewalk and his hand closed over the one she gave him.

She was a large, fair woman, with a superb head and shoulders, and slow,

massive movements, such as the women of the old masters must have had.

"It is to force a promise that you will dine with me to-morrow," she

said. "You have disappointed me so often--and I must talk with you." Her

voice had a caressing inflection akin to the maternal.

He smiled into her expectant face.

"Yes," he said. "To-morrow--yes; I will do so. That is, if you won't

wait for me if I am detained."

"That is kind," she responded. "I know you hate it. And I won't wait. I

remember that you don't eat oysters."

The maternal suggestion in her manner had deepened. She laughed softly,

pleased at the knowledge of his trivial tastes her words betrayed.

"But I won't keep you," she went on, "Thank you again--and good-bye."

The carriage rolled into the street, and he drew out a latch-key and let

himself in at the rectory door, which opened on the sidewalk.

CHAPTER II

Mrs. Bruce Ryder unfolded her napkin and cast a swift glance over the

heavy damask, sparkling with glass and silver.

"Yes; he is late," she said; "but he doesn't like to be waited for."

From the foot of the table Mr. Bruce Ryder smiled complacently, his eye

upon his Blue Points.

"And his wish is law, even unto the third and fourth courses," he

responded, pleasantly. "As far as Mrs. Ryder is concerned, the pulpit of

the Church of the Immaculate Conception is a modern Mount Sinai."

"Bruce, how can you?" remonstrated his wife, upbraiding him across the

pink shades of candles and a centre-piece of orchids. "And you are so

ignorant. There is no pulpit in the church."

"The metaphor holds. Translate pulpit into altar-step--and you have the

Mount Sinai."

"Minus Jehovah," commented Claude Nevins, who sat between a tall, slight

girl, fresh from boarding-school, and a stout lady with an enormous

necklace.

Ryder shook his head with easy pleasantry. He had been handsome once,

and was still well groomed. His figure had thickened, but was not

unshapely, and had not lost a certain athletic grace. His face was fair,

with a complexion that showed a faint purplish flush beneath the skin,

paling where his smooth flaxen hair was parted upon his forehead. On the

crown of his head there was a round bald spot which had the effect of

transparency. His deceptive frankness of manner was contradicted by an

expression of secretiveness in his light-blue eyes.

He lifted the slice of lemon from his plate, squeezing it with his ruddy

and well-formed fingers.

"Oh, but he's a divinity in his own right!" he retorted. "Apollo turned

celibate, you know. He is the Lothario of religions--"

"Bruce!" said his wife again. A vexed light was shining in her eyes,

giving a girlish look to her full and mature beauty. She wore a dress of

black gauze, cut low from her splendid shoulders, above which her head,

with its ash-blond hair, rose with a poise that was almost pagan in its

perfection.

"For my part," said a little lady upon Mr. Ryder's right, "Mount Sinai

or not, I quite feel that he speaks with God."

Her name was Dubley, and she was round and soft and white, suggesting

the sugar-coated dinner-pills which rested as the pedestal of her social

position, since her father, with a genius for turning opportunities to

account, had coined into gold the indigestion of his fellows.

"Ah! You are a woman," returned Ryder, smilingly. "You might as well ask

a needle to resist a magnet as a woman to resist a priest. I wonder what

the attraction is?"

"Aberration of the religious instinct," volunteered Nevins, who had not

lost his youthful look with his youthful ardor, and whom success had

appeared to settle without surfeiting.

"On the contrary," interposed a short-sighted gentleman in eye-glasses,

who regarded the oyster upon his fork as if he expected to recognize an

old acquaintance, "the religious instinct is entirely apart from the

vapid feminine sentimentalizing over men in long coats and white

neckties. Indeed, I question if woman has developed the true religious

instinct. I am collecting notes for a treatise upon the subject."

He stopped breathlessly, swallowed his oyster, and looked gloomily at

the table-cloth. His name was Layton, and he was a club-man who had

turned criminologist for a whim. Having convinced himself by

generalizations from experience of the total depravity of the female

sex, he had entered upon his researches in the hope of verifying his

deductions.

The point he advanced being called in question by a vivacious and pretty

woman who sat next him, there followed a short debate upon the subject.

When it was ended, John Driscoll looked up languidly from Mrs. Ryder's

left hand.

"My dear Layton," he advised, "return to the race-course if you value

your sanity. The enigma of the Sphinx is merely the woman question in

antiquity and stone." Then he turned to Mrs. Ryder. "How is the renowned

father?" he inquired. "I was decoyed into buying a volume of his sermons

this morning."

A smile shone upon him from her large, pale eyes. "Oh yes," she

responded, her beauty quickening from its repose. "They are in answer to

those articles in the _Scientific Weekly_. Are they not magnificent?"

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 portiere 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?"

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.

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-mache 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."

Miss Darcy interrupted him with a pretty protest. "I am sure a saint may

look at a horse," she said, "and a woman." And she added: "I have always

forgotten to ask you who the lady in violet and silver-fox was who sat

in Mr. Buisson's box? I did not recognize her."

Ryder's eyes narrowed slightly, but he answered easily, "Oh, that was

Mrs. Gore, I believe."

Miss Darcy flashed a smile.

"The Englishwoman I have heard so much about? Why, I thought she was

called a beauty!"

Ryder laughed.

"She is a beauty when you know her," he said, "or, rather, you get the

idea that she is. But she isn't English, you know. She married an

Englishman."

Then he changed the subject and drew Father Algarcife into a discussion

of church decorations.

When dinner was over, Mrs. Ryder's maid appeared, bearing the

opera-wraps, and the two women trailed down the steps and into the

carriage. When Father Algarcife had stepped inside, Ryder closed the

door and made his excuses.

"I'll look in a little later," he said; "but if Mr. Nevins finds you you

won't need me, and a whole evening of it tires my nerves."

Then he lighted a cigar and strolled off leisurely, while the carriage

started.

When they entered the opera-house the curtain had risen, and the tenor

was singing his farewell to the swan.

As Father Algarcife seated himself in the shadow of the box and looked

over Mrs. Ryder's superb shoulders at the stage and the glittering

foot-lights, he felt a quick impulse to rush away from it all. He hated

the noise and the heat and the glare. The heavy atmosphere seemed

oppressive and unnatural, and the women, sparkling brilliantly in the

tiers of boxes, looked like beautiful exotics, fragrant with the

perishable bloom of a hot-house. It was with a sensation of relief that

he recalled the dull mission in the slums, where he had spent the

morning.

On the stage, Elsa had cast herself into the arms of Lohengrin, and the

voice of love dominant was translated into song. The music filled the

house with a throbbing ecstasy--an ecstasy that had captured in its

notes the joys of all the senses--the light to the eye of a spring

morning, the perfume to the nostrils of fresh meadows, the warmth to the

touch of falling sunshine. It was the voice of love ethereal--of love

triumphant over flesh, of love holding to its breast the phantom of its

dreams. It was the old, ever-young voice of the human heart panting for

the possession of its vision--the vision realized in the land of

legends.

* * * * *

The curtain was rung down, and in a moment Nevins came in and they fell

to talking. They spoke of the tenor, of the fact that the prima donna's

voice had strengthened, and of Madame Cambria, the contralto, who was a

little hoarse. Then they spoke of the people in the boxes and of the

absence of several whose names they mentioned.

Father Algarcife was silent, and he only aroused himself to attention

when Miss Darcy, lowering her opera-glass, turned to Nevins

inquiringly.

"Do tell me if that is Mrs. Gore across from us--the one in green and

violets?"

Nevins replied constrainedly. "Yes," he said; "I think so. The other is

Miss Ramsey, I believe--a friend who lives with her."

Miss Darcy smiled.

"Why, I thought she lived alone," she returned; "but I have heard so

many odd things about her that I may be mistaken in this one. She is

evidently the kind of person that nobody possesses any positive

information about."

"Perhaps it is as well," observed Mrs. Ryder, stiffly. "It is better to

know too little on such subjects than too much."

Nevins was writhing in his chair, his mouth half open, when Father

Algarcife spoke.