Part 33 (2/2)

She stirred pettishly.

”I 'ain't no belief in drugs,” she returned. ”But I don't want to go alone, with n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+ning bric-a-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 pa.s.sionately. ”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 G.o.d 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?”

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