Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
Phases of an Inferior Planet
CHAPTER XI
Father Algarcife was working like a man spurred by an invisible lash. At the breaking of the cold winter dawns he might be seen on his rounds in the mission districts, which began before the early Mass, to end long after dusk, when the calls of his richer parishioners had been treated and dismissed. During the morning celebrations one of the younger priests often noticed that he appeared faint from exhaustion, and attributed it to the strain of several hours' work without nourishment.
One morning, shortly after New Year, John Ellerslie joined him and went in with him to breakfast. It was then he noticed that Father Algarcife ate only cold bread with his coffee, while he apologized for the scantiness of the fare. "It is lack of appetite with me," he explained, "not injudicious fasting;" and he turned to the maid: "Agnes, will you see that Father Ellerslie has something more substantial?" But when cakes and eggs were brought, he pushed them aside, and crumbled, without eating, his stale roll.
The younger man remonstrated, his face flushing from embarrassment.
"I am concerned for your health," he said. "Will you let me speak to Dr. Salvers?"
Father Algarcife shook his head.
"It is nothing," he answered. "But I expect to see Dr. Salvers later in the day, and I'll mention it to him."
Later in the day he did see Salvers, and as they were parting he alluded to the subject of his health.
"I am under a pledge to tell you," he said, lightly, "that I am suffering from loss of appetite and prolonged sleeplessness. I don't especially object to the absence of appetite, but there is something unpleasant about walking the floor all night. I don't want to become a chloral fiend. Can't you suggest a new opiate?"
"Rest," responded Salvers, shortly. "Take a holiday and cut for Florida."
"Impossible. Too much work on hand."
Salvers regarded him intently.
"The next thing, you'll take to bed," he said, irritably, "and I'll have all the ladies of your congregation besieging my office door." He added: "I am going to send you a prescription immediately."
"All right. Thanks. I stop at Brentano's."
He entered the book-shop, and came out in a few moments with a package under his arm. As he stepped to the sidewalk a lady in a rustling gown descended from her carriage and paused as she was passing him.
"I was just going in for a copy of your sermons," she said. "I am distributing quite a number. By the by, have you ever found out who the Scientific Weekly writer really is?"
He looked at her gravely.
"I have a suspicion," he answered, "but suspicions are unjustifiable things at best."
He walked home rapidly, unlatched his outer door, and entered his study. Going to his desk, he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and, unlocking a drawer, drew out several manuscripts, which he glanced over with a half-humorous expression. One was the manuscript of the volume of addresses he had lately published, the other of the articles which had appeared in the pages of the Scientific Weekly. They were both in his handwriting, but one showed the impassioned strokes of a younger pen, and belonged to the time when he had written under the veil of anonymity, that it might not interfere with the plan of his great work. Now the great work lay at the bottom of the last drawer, with its half-finished sheets yellowed and sown with dust, while the lighter articles had risen after a silence of ten years to assault his unstable present with the convictions of his past.
He crossed to the fireplace and laid both manuscripts upon the coals. They caught, and the leaves curled upward like tongues of flame, illuminating the faded text with scrolls of fire. Then they smouldered to gray spectres and floated in slender spirals up the yawning chimney.
The next day a storm set in, and pearl-gray clouds swollen with snow drove from the northwest. The snow fell thickly through the day, as it had fallen through the night, blown before the wind in fluttering curtains of white, and coating the gray sidewalks, to drift in fleecy mounds into the gutters.
In the evening, when he came in to dinner, he received an urgent message from Mrs. Ryder, which had been sent in the morning and which he had missed by being absent from luncheon. Her child had died suddenly during the night from an attack of croup.
Without removing his coat, he turned and started to her at once, his heart torn by the thought of her suffering.
As he ascended the steps the door was opened by Ryder, who came out and grasped his hand, speaking hurriedly, with a slight huskiness in his voice.
"She has been expecting you," he said, leading him into the hall. "Come up to her immediately. I can do nothing with her. My God! I would have given my right hand to have spared her this." The sincerity in his voice rang true, and there were circles of red about his eyes.
They went up-stairs, and Ryder opened the door of the nursery, and, motioning him inside, closed it softly after him. The room was faintly lighted, the chill curtain of falling snow veiling the windows. On the little bed, where he had seen it sleeping several months ago, the child was lying, its flaxen curls massed upon the embroidered pillow; but the flush of health on the little face had given place to a waxen pallor, and the tiny hands that had tossed restlessly in sleep were still beneath white rose-buds. A faint odor of medicine clung about the room, but the disorder of dying had been succeeded by the order of death.
Mrs. Ryder, sitting near the window, her profile dark against the storm, turned her heavy eyes upon him, and then, rising, came towards him. He caught her extended hands and held them firmly in his own. At that instant the past seemed predominant over the present – and the grief more his own than another's.
"You have come at last," she said. "Help me. You must help me. I cannot live unless you do. Give me some comfort – anything!"
His face was almost as haggard as her own.
"What would comfort you?" he asked.
She turned from him towards the little bed, and, falling on her knees beside it, burst into passionate weeping.
"It was all I had!" she cried. "All I had! O God! How cruel!"
He laid his hand upon her shoulder, not to stay her tears, but to suggest sympathy. Beyond her the sweet, grave face of the dead child lay wreathed in rose-buds.
At his touch she rose and faced him.
"Tell me that I shall see him again!" she cried. "Tell me that he is not dead – that he is somewhere – somewhere! Tell me that God is just!"
His lips were blue, and he put up his hand imploring mercy; then he opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came.
She clung to him, sobbing.
"Pray to God for me," she said.
He staggered for a moment beneath her touch. Then he knelt with her beside the little bed and prayed.
When he walked home through the storm an hour later he reeled like a drunken man, and, despite the cold, his flesh was on fire.
As he entered his door the wind drove a drift of snow into the hall, and the water dripping from his coat made shining pools on the carpet.
He went into his study and slammed the door behind him. The little dog sleeping on the rug came to welcome him, and he patted it mechanically with a nerveless hand. His face was strained and set, and his breath came pantingly. In a sudden revolution the passion which he believed buried forever had risen, reincarnated, to overwhelm him. He lived again, more vitally because of the dead years, the death of a child who was his and the grief of a woman who was his also. He, who had believed himself arbiter of his fate, had awakened to find himself the slave of passion – a passion mighty in its decay, but all victorious in its resurrection. He shivered and looked about him. The room, the fire, the atmosphere seemed thrilled with an emotional essence. He felt it in his blood, and it warmed the falling snow beyond the window. Before the consuming flame the apathy of years was lost in smoke. A memory floated before him. He was sitting again in that silent room, driving the heavy pen, listening to the breathing of his dying child, watching the still droop of Mariana's profile, framed by dusk. He felt her sobbing upon his breast, her hands clinging in pain when he lifted her from beside her dead – and his. He heard again her cry: "Tell me that I shall see her! Tell me that God is just!" The eternal cry of stricken motherhood.
Whatever the present or the future held, these things were locked within the past. He might live them over or live them down, but unlive them he could not. They had been and they would be forever.
The door opened and the servant came in.
"If you please, father, there is a lady to see you."
He looked up, startled.
"A lady? On such a night?"
"She came in a carriage, but she is very wet. Will you see her at once?"
"Yes, at once."
He turned to the door. It opened and closed, and Mariana came towards him.
She came like a ghost, pale and still as he had seen her in his memory, with a veil of snow clinging to her coat and to the feathers in her hat. Her eyes alone were aflame.
He drew back and looked at her.
"You?" he said.
She was silent, holding out her gloved hand with an impulsive gesture. He did not take it. He had made a sudden clutch at self-control, and he clung to it desperately.
"Can I do anything for you?" he asked, and his voice rang hollow and without inflection.
She still held out her hand. Flecks of snow lay on her loosened hair, and the snow was hardly whiter than her face.
"You must speak to me," she said. "You promised to come, and I waited – and waited."
"I was busy," he returned, in the same voice.
"We cannot be as strangers," she went on, passionately. "We must be friends. Can you or I undo the past? Can you or I undo our love – or our child?"
"Hush!" he said, harshly.
"I came only to hear that you forgive me," she continued, a brave smile softening the intensity of her face. "Tell me that and I will go away."
He was silent for a moment; then he spoke.
"I forgive you."
She took a step towards the door and came back.
"And is that all?"
"That is all." Beneath the brutal pressure of his teeth a drop of blood rose to his lips. There was a wave of scarlet before his eyes, and he clinched his hands to keep them at his sides. A terrible force was drawing him to her, impelling him to fall upon her as she stood defenceless – to bear her away out of reach.
She looked at him, and a light flamed in her face.
"It is not all," she retorted, triumphantly. "You have not forgotten me."
He looked at her dully.
"I had – until to-night."
Tears rose to her eyes and fell upon her hands, while the snow on her hair melted and rained down until she seemed to weep from head to foot.
"I was never good enough," she said, brokenly. "I have always done wrong, even when I most wanted to be good." Then she raised her head proudly. "But I loved you," she added. "I never loved any one but you. Will you believe it?"
He shook his head, smiling bitterly. As he stood there in his priestly dress he looked like one in a mighty struggle between the calls of the flesh and of the spirit. The last wavering fires of anger flamed within him, and he took a step towards her.
"Do you think," he asked, slowly, forcing his words, "that I would have left you while there remained a crust to live on? Do you think that I would not have starved with you rather than have lived in luxury without you? Bah! It is all over!"
"I was too young," she answered – "too young. I did not know. I have learned since then."
His outburst had exhausted his bitterness, and a passionate tenderness was in his eyes.
"I would to God that you had been spared the knowledge," he said.
She shook her head.
"No," she responded. "Not that – not that."
She swayed, and he caught her in his arms. For an instant he held her – not in passion, but with a gentleness that was almost cold. Then he released her, and she moved away.
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
He followed her into the hall and opened the door. An icy draught blew past him.
"Wait a moment," he said. He took an umbrella from the rack, and, raising it, held it over her until she entered the carriage.
"I hope you will not take cold," he said, as he closed the door.
Then he went back into his study and walked the floor until dawn.
CHAPTER XII
One afternoon during the third week in January, Father Algarcife went to the studio of Claude Nevins, and found the artist smoking a moody pipe over a brandy-and-soda. His brush and palette lay upon the floor.
"How are you?" inquired Father Algarcife, with attempted lightness; "and what are you doing?"
Nevins looked up gloomily, blowing a wreath of gray smoke towards the skylight.
"Enjoying life," he responded.
The other laughed.
"It doesn't look exactly like enjoyment," he returned. "From a casual view, I should call it a condition of boredom."
He had aged ten years in the last fortnight, and his eyes had the shifting look of a man who flees an inward fear.
Nevins regarded him unsmilingly.
"Oh, I like it," he answered, lifting his glass. "Come and join me. I tell you I'd rather be drunk to-day than be President to-morrow."
"What's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing. I haven't done a damned stroke for a week; that's all. I am tired of painting people's portraits."
"Nonsense. Ten years ago you went on a spree because there were no portraits to paint."
"Yes," Nevins admitted, "history repeats itself – with variations. The truth is, Anthony, I can't work."
"Can't? Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"I am going to drink about it."
He drained his glass, laid his pipe aside, and rose, running his hand through his hair until it stood on end.
"Don't be an idiot. You gave all that up long ago."
Nevins filled his glass and looked up at the skylight.
"'Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before
I swore – but was I sober when I swore?'"
he retorted, with a laugh. Then he lowered his voice. "Between you and me," he said, "drinking is not what it is cracked up to be. To save my life, I can't detect a whiff of that old delicious savor of vice. I detect a twinge of gout instead. Coming conditions cast their claws before."
Father Algarcife glanced about the room impatiently.
"Come," he said, "I am hurried. Let's see the portrait."
Nevins tossed a silk scarf from a canvas in the corner, and the other regarded the work for a moment in silence.
"Yes, I like it," he said. "I like it very much indeed."
As he turned away, he stumbled against the easel containing the canvas on which Nevins had been working, and he started and drew back, his face paling. It was the portrait of Mariana, her profile drawn against the purple curtain.
Nevins, following him with his eyes, spoke suddenly.
"That also is good, is it not?" he asked.
Father Algarcife stared above the portrait to the row of death-masks on their ebony frame.
"Yes, that also is good," he repeated.
As he descended the stairs he met Ardly coming up, his eyes bright and his handsome face aglow.
They stopped and shook hands.
"Politics agree with you, I see," said Father Algarcife. "I am glad of it."
Ardly nodded animatedly.
"Yes, yes," he returned, "there is nothing like it, and we are going to give you the best government the city has ever seen. There is no doubt of that."
"All right," and he passed on. When he reached the street he turned westward. It was the brilliant hour of a changeable afternoon, the sunshine slanting across the sidewalks in sharp lights and shadows, and the river wind entering the lungs like the incision of a blade. The people he met wore their collars close about their throats, their faces blue from the cold.
Then, even as he watched the crisp sunshine, a cloud crossed the sky, its shade descending like a gray blotter upon the shivering city.
At first he walked rapidly, but a sudden fatigue seized him, and his pace slackened. He remembered that he had not rested for six hours. In a moment he saw the cross on the steeple of his church emblazoned in fire upon the heavens where the sun had burst forth, and, crossing the street, he pushed the swinging doors and entered softly. It was deserted. With a sensation of relief he passed along the right side aisle, and seated himself within the shadow of the little chapel.
Atmospheric waves of green and gold sifted through the windows and suffused the chancel. Beyond the dusk of the nave he saw the gilded vessels upon the altar and the high crucifix above. A crimson flame was burning in the sanctuary lamp, a symbol of the presence of the sacrament reserved. Above the chancel the figure of the Christ in red and purple was illuminated by the light of the world without.
Suddenly the sound of the organ broke the stillness, and he remembered that it was the day of the choir practising. The disturbance irritated him. During all the years of his priesthood he had not lost his old aversion to music. Now he felt that he loathed it – as he loathed the lie that he was living.
He raised his eyes to the stained-glass window, where the Christ in his purple robes smiled a changeless smile. A swift desire stung him to see the insipid smile strengthen into a frown – to behold an overthrow of the strained monotony. Change for the sake of change were preferable. Only let the still red flame in the sanctuary-lamp send up one fitful blaze, one shadow darken the gilded serenity of the altar. Would it forever face him with that bland assumption of the permanence of creed – the damnation of doubt? Would time never tarnish the blinding brightness of the brazen cross? He shivered as if from cold.
Then the voices of the choir swelled out in a song of exhortation – the passionate and profound exhortation of the "Elijah." In an instant it filled the church, flooding nave and chancel with its anthem of adoration:
"Lift thine eyes. O, lift thine eyes unto the mountains whence cometh help. Thy help cometh from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He hath said thy foot shall not be moved. Thy Keeper will never slumber."
Over and over again rang the promise of the prophet:
"Thy Keeper will never slumber – thy Keeper will never slumber."
With the words in his ears he looked at the altar, the white altar-cloth, and the gilded vessels. He saw laid there as a sacrament the bonds of his service. He saw the obligations of a child to the one who had sheltered him, of a boy to the one who had shielded him, of a man to the one who had reached into the gutter and lifted him up. He saw the good he had done, the sick he had healed, the filthy he had made clean. He saw the love of his people – rich and poor – the faiths that would be shattered by the unsealing of his lips, the work of regeneration that would crumble to decay. Looking back, he saw the blessings he had left upon his pathway rotting to curses where they had fallen. Against all this he saw the lie.
"Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps."
But was it really a lie? He did not believe? No, but he begrudged no man his belief. He had extinguished the last embers of intolerance in his heart. The good that he had done in the name of a religion had endeared that religion to the mind that rejected it.
He had taken its armor upon him, and he had borne it victoriously. He had worn unsullied the badge of a creed emblazoned upon his breast, not upon his heart. Was not this justification?
Then, with his eyes upon the altar and the crucifix, beneath the changeless smile of the Christ in purple robes, he knew that it was not. He knew that he had sinned the one sin unpardonable in his own eyes; that he had taken the one step from which for him there was no returning – that the sin was insincerity, and the step the one that hid the face of truth.
"He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps. Shouldst thou, walking in grief, languish, He will quicken thee – He will quicken thee."
He rose and left the church.
It was several days after this that, in unfolding the morning paper, his glance was arrested by the announcement, "The Honorable Mrs. Cecil Gore, who has been dangerously ill of pneumonia, is reported to be convalescent."
The paper shook in his hands, and he laid it hastily aside.
He went out and followed his customary duties, but the thought of Mariana's illness furrowed his mind with a slow fear. It seemed to him then that the mere fact of her existence was all he demanded from fate. Not to see her or to touch her, but to know that she filled a corner of space – that she had her part in the common daily life of the world.
It was Saturday, and the sermon for the next day lay upon his desk. He had written it carefully, with a certain interest in the fact that it would lend itself to oratorical effects – an art which still possessed a vague attraction for him. As he folded the manuscript and placed it in the small black case, the text caught his eye, and he repeated it with an enjoyment of the roll of the words. Then he rose and went out.
In the afternoon, as he was coming out of the church after an interview with the sacristan, he caught sight of Ryder's figure crossing towards him from the opposite corner. He had always entertained a distrust of the man, and yet the anxiety upon his ruddy and well-groomed countenance was so real that he felt an instantaneous throb of sympathy.
Ryder, seeing him, stopped and spoke, "We have been looking for you," he said, "but I suppose you are as much occupied as usual."
"Yes – how is Mrs. Ryder?"
"Better, I think – I hope so. She is going to Florida for February and March. Beastly weather, isn't it? Nevins got off a good thing the other day, by the by. Somebody asked him what he thought of the New York climate, and he replied that New York didn't have a climate – it had unassorted samples of weather."
They walked on, talking composedly, with the same anxiety gnawing the hearts of both.
At the corner Ryder hailed the stage and got inside.
"Come to see Mrs. Ryder," were his parting words. "She depends on you."
Father Algarcife kept on his way to Fifty-seventh Street, where he walked several doors west, and stopped before a house with a brown-stone front.
As he laid his hand on the bell he paled slightly, but when the door was opened he regained his composure.
"I wish to ask how Mrs. Gore is to-day?" he said to the maid, giving his card.
She motioned him into the drawing-room and went up-stairs. In a few minutes she returned to say that Mrs. Gore would receive him, if he would walk up.
On the first landing she opened the door of a tiny sitting-room, closing it when he had entered. He took a step forward and paused. Before the burning grate, on a rug of white fur, Mariana was standing, and through the slender figure, in its blue wrapper, he seemed to see the flames of the fire beyond. She had just risen from a couch to one side, and the pillows still showed the impress of her form. An Oriental blanket lay on the floor, where it had fallen when she started at his entrance.
For a moment neither of them spoke. At the sight of her standing there, her thin hands clasped before her, her beauty broken and dimmed, his passion was softened into pity. In her hollow eyes and haggard cheeks he saw the ravage of pain; in the lines upon brow and temples he read the records of years.
Then a sudden tremor shook him. As she rose before him, shorn of her beauty, her scintillant charm extinguished, her ascendency over him was complete. Now that the brilliancy of her flesh had waned, it seemed to him that he saw shining in her faded eyes the clearer light of her spirit. Where another man would have beheld only a broken and defaced wreckage, he saw the woman who had inspired him with that persistence of passion which feeds upon the shadows as upon the lights, upon the lack as upon the fulfilment.
Mariana came forward and held out her hand.
"It was very kind of you to come," she said.
The rings slipped loosely over her thin fingers. Her touch was very light. He looked at her so fixedly that a pale flush rose to her face.
"You are better?" he asked, constrainedly. "Stronger?"
"Oh yes; I have been out twice – no, three times – in the sunshine."
She seated herself on the couch and motioned him to a chair, but he shook his head and stood looking down at her.
"You must be careful," he said, in the same forced tone. "The weather is uncertain."
"Yes. Dr. Salvers is sending me South."
"And when do you go?"
She turned her eyes away.
"He wishes me to go at once," she said, "but I do not know."
She rose suddenly, her lip quivering.
He drew back and she leaned upon the mantel, looking into the low mirror, which reflected her haggard eyes between two gilded urns.
"I was very ill," she went on. "It has left me so weak, and I – I am looking so badly."
"Mariana!"
She turned towards him, her face white, the lace on her breast fluttering as if from a rising wind.
"Mariana!" he said, again.
He was gazing at her with burning eyes. His hands were clinched at his sides, and the veins on his temples swelled like blue cords.
Then his look met hers and held it, and the desire in their eyes leaped out and closed together, drawing them slowly to each other.
Still they were silent, he standing straight and white in the centre of the room, she shrinking back against the mantel.
Suddenly he reached out.
"Mariana!"
"Anthony!"
She was sobbing upon his breast, his arms about her, her face hidden. The heavy sobs shook her frame like the lashing of a storm, and she braced herself against him to withstand the terrible weeping.
Presently she grew quiet, and he released her. Her face was suffused with a joy that shone through her tears.
"You love me?" she asked.
"I love you."
She smiled.
"I will stay near you," she said. "I will not go South."
For a moment he was silent, and when he spoke his voice rang with determination.
"You will go South," he said, "and I will go with you."
Her eyes shone.
"South? And you with me?"
He smiled into her upturned face.
"Do you think it could be otherwise?" he asked. "Do you think we could be near – and not together?"
"I – I had not thought," she answered.
He held her hands, looking passionately at her fragile fingers.
"You are mine," he said – "mine as you have been no other man's. Nature has joined us together. Who can put us asunder?" Then he held her from him in sudden fear. "But – but can you face poverty again?" he asked.
"What will matter," she replied, "so long as we are together?"
"You will leave all this," he went on. "We will start afresh. We will have a farm in the South. It will be bare and comfortless."
She smiled.
"There will be peach-trees," she said, "all pink in the spring-time, and there will be the sound of cow-bells across green pastures."
"I will turn farmer," he added. "I will wring a living from the soil."
She lifted her glowing eyes.
"And we will begin over again," she said – "begin from the beginning. Oh, my love, kiss me!"
He stooped and kissed her.
