Phases of an Inferior Planet

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-à-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.