The light that fired his features had chased from them their habitual expression of lethargic calm.
"It is a great work," said the doctor, enthusiastically. "But, do you know, father, it seems to me odd that so intense a believer in the rules of the rubric should have been the first to put religion into practical use among the poor. It seems a direct contradiction to the a.s.sertion that the a.s.sociation of the love of beauty with the love of G.o.d destroys sympathy for poverty and disease."
A cloud pa.s.sed over the other"s face.
"My predecessor prepared the ground for me," he replied, constrainedly.
"I hope to sow the seed for future usefulness."
"And capital seed it is. But, as I said, it saps the sower. You are running a race with Death. No man can work as you work and not pay the penalty. Get an extra a.s.sistant."
Father Algarcife shook his head.
"They cannot do my work," he answered. "That is for me. As for consequences--well, the race is worth them. If Death wins or I--who knows?"
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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.sion 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 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 shining 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?"