Part 43 (1/2)

A flash of irritation darkened Mariana's eyes. She laughed with a ring of recklessness.

”The Lord forbid that I should know!” she replied.

She motioned to the coachman, and the carriage rolled rapidly away.

Nevins stood looking after it until it turned the corner. When the last wheel vanished, he spoke slowly:

”Well, I'll be blessed!” he said.

Ardly stooped and picked up a violet that lay upon the curbing.

”And so will I,” he responded.

”Have a whiskey?”

”All right.”

They entered the building and mounted the stairs in silence.

CHAPTER VI

The Reverend Anthony Algarcife had inspired his congregation with an almost romantic fervor.

When he had first appeared before them as a.s.sistant 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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.sion 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, pa.s.sionately reviving lost and languis.h.i.+ng rites of religion, and silencing the faint protests of his more conservative paris.h.i.+oners 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 Ma.s.s, 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.”