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."