Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 37

The other had answered, "I will not take the sacrifice without sincerity or without the will of G.o.d."

"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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d, begotten of His Father before all worlds, G.o.d of G.o.d, Light of Light, very G.o.d of very G.o.d--"

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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 bra.s.s 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.

"h.e.l.lo!" 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 coa.r.s.e 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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 pa.s.s 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?"