Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 32

--MARCUS AURELIUS. (LONG.)

CHAPTER I

Two men pa.s.sed 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 h.e.l.l 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 chast.i.ty 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 s.e.x, 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 s.e.x--s.e.x 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-gla.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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 ill.u.s.tration of the spiritual function he fulfilled. In another profession he would have suggested the possible priest--the priest unordained by circ.u.mstances. 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.dliness. 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."