Phases of an Inferior Planet

CHAPTER VII

During Algarcife's first term at college, a fellow fraternity man remarked of him that he resembled the eternal void, in that he might have been anything and was nothing. Algarcife accepted the criticism with a shrug.

"Wait and see," he responded, shortly, and the fraternity man had waited and had seen.

In that first year Anthony succeeded in sowing a supply of wild oats sufficient for the domestication of the species. He was improvident from principle and reckless from an inborn distrust of accepted dogmas. "I shall live as I please," he replied, in answer to the warnings of a classmate, "and I shall think as I damn please."

For a year he went about his dissipations in a kind of inquiring ardor. He called it "seeing life," and he pursued his observations with entire obliviousness to public regard, but with philosophic concern as to the accuracy of the information obtained. He was known to have got drunk upon whiskey and light wine in order to test the differences in effect, and it was rumored that he made love to the homeliest and most virtuous daughter of the saloon-keeper that he might convince himself whether her virtue was the logical resultant of her homeliness. Into all experiments he carried an entire absence of prejudice, and a half-defiant acceptance of consequences.

"It is a sheer waste of time," said John Driscoll, of the Senior class. "You haven't learned the first principle of scientific dissipation. Instead of plunging into excesses, you stroll into them. By Jove! if you broke every command in the Decalogue, you would appear to sin in moderation."

Algarcife laughed. "I am going to reform," he said. "I am not enough of an artist to see the æsthetic values of vice. Let's become decent. It is more economical."

It was at this time that he reduced his living expenses one-half, and appropriated the surplus funds to the support of a young mechanic, whose health had collapsed in the struggle to work his way to a university degree. "He not only gave it," declared the young mechanic, in a burst of gratitude, "but he gave it without knowing that he did a generous thing."

When Algarcife left college that summer he followed Driscoll to his cabin in the Adirondacks and spent several months botanizing. The chance application to science decided the tenor of his mind, and, upon his return to study, he refused to bow beneath the weight of authority hurled upon him. He denounced the classics and a classical training. Several courses he declared superficial, and he mastered various systems of moral philosophy that he might refute the fallacies of the professor. The brilliancy which he had frittered during the preceding year was turned into newer channels, and the closeness of his reliance upon inductive reasoning caused him to become at once a source of amusement to his classmates and of annoyance to his instructor. To see him rise in class, his face charged with the nervous vigor which seized him in moments of excitement, his keen glance riveted upon the professor as he mercilessly dissected his utterances, was an event which, to his fellow-students, rendered even old Monckton's lectures of interest.

Then he took a prominent part in a debating society. With a readiness which his friends declared to spring from love of logic, his enemies from lack of principle, he accepted either side of a given argument, and had been known to undertake at once the negative and the affirmative, detecting his own weaknesses as ruthlessly as he had detected those of old Monckton.

Before leaving college, and at the urgency of his guardian, he had carried through with dogged distaste a course in dogmatic theology. It was then that he fell into the way of writing theses from opposite sides of a subject, and when handing in a treatise upon "Historical Evidences of Christianity," or "The Pelagian Heresy," it was invariably accompanied by the remark: "I wish you'd look over that 'Lack of Historical Evidences,' or 'Defence of Pelagianism,' at the same time. You know, I always do the other side."

And it was "the other side" which finally drove him out of theology and his guardian into despair. Whether it was an argument in moral philosophy, a mooted question in Egyptology, or a stand in current politics, Algarcife was ready with what his classmates called "the damned eternal opposition." It was even said that a facetious professor, in remarking to his class that it was "a fine day," had turned in absent-minded custom and called upon Mr. Algarcife for "the other side," an appeal which drew a howl of approbation from hilarious students.

Anthony was not popular at college, though his friends were steadfast. It was not until later years, when life had tempered the incisive irony of his speech and endowed him with the diplomacy of indifference, that men fell beneath the attraction of his personality. At that time he was looked upon in an ominous light, and the scintillant scepticism which he carried fearlessly into every department of knowledge caused him to be regarded as one who might prove himself to be an enemy to society. Even his voice, which long afterwards exerted so potent an influence, had not then gained its varied range and richness of expression.

So, when, years later, the public lauded the qualities they had formerly condemned, there was no inconsistence – since life is more colored by points of view than by principles. At the end of his theological course he had delivered an address, at the request of his class, upon the "Christian Revelation." When it was over he went into his guardian's room, the flame of a long determination in his eyes. The paper which he had read was still in his hands, and he laid it upon the table as he spoke.

"It can't be," he said. "I give it up."

The man whom he addressed rose slowly and faced him, standing, a tall, gaunt figure in his clerical coat. His hair was white, and at a first glance he presented the impression of a statue modelled in plaster, so much did the value of form outweigh that of color in his appearance. In meeting his eyes an observer would, perhaps, have gained a conception of expression rather than shade. One would have said that the eyes were benevolent, not that they were gray or blue. His forehead was high and somewhat narrow, three heavy furrows running diagonally between the eyebrows – ruts left by the constant passage of perplexities. He was called Father Speares, and was an impassioned leader of the High Church movement.

"Do you mean it?" he asked, slowly – "that you give up your faith?"

Algarcife's brow wrinkled in sudden irritation. "That I have given up long ago," he answered. "If I ever had any, it was an ingrafted product. What I do mean is that I give up the Church – that I give up theology – that I give up religion."

The other flinched suddenly. He put out one frail, white hand as if in protest.

"I – I cannot believe it," he said.

"And yet I have been honest."

"Honest! Yes, I suppose so. Honest – " he lifted the paper from the table and unfolded it mechanically. "And yet you could write this?"

Anthony shook his head impatiently. "I was but a special pleader with the side assigned, and you knew it."

"But I did not know your power – nor do you. It convinced me – convinced me, though I came with the knowledge that your words were empty – empty and rotten – "

"They were words. The case was given me, and I defended it as a lawyer defends a client. What else could I do?"

Father Speares sighed and passed his hand across his brow.

"It is not the first disappointment of my life," he said, "but it is the greatest."

Algarcife was looking through the open window to the sunlight falling upon the waving grass. A large butterfly, with black and yellow wings, was dancing above a clump of dandelions.

"I am sorry," he said, more gently – "sorry for that – but it can't be helped. I am not a theologian, but a scientist; I am not a believer, but an agnostic; I am not a priest, but a man."

"But you are young. The pendulum may swing back – "

"Never," said Algarcife – "never." He lifted his head, looking into the other's eyes. "Don't you see that when a man has once conceived the magnitude of the universe he can never bow his head to a creed? Don't you see that when he has grasped the essential verity in all religions he no longer allies himself to a single one? Don't you see that when he has realized the dominance of law in religions – the law of their growth and decay, of their evolution and dissolution, when he has once grasped the fact that man creates, and is not created by, his god – don't you see that he can never bind himself to the old beliefs?"

"I see that he can awake to the knowledge of the spiritual life as well as to the physical – that he can grasp the existence of a vital ethical principle in nature. I shall pray for you, and I shall hope – "

Algarcife frowned. "I am sick of it," he said – "sick to death. To please you, I plodded away at theology for three solid years. To please you, I weighed assumptions as light as air. To please you, I read all the rot of all the Fathers – and I am sick of it. I shall live my own life in my own way."

"And may God help you!" said the elder man; and then, "Where will you go?"

"To Egypt – to India – to the old civilizations."

"And then?"

"I do not know. I shall work and I shall succeed – with or without the help of God."

And he had gone. During the next few years he travelled in Africa and Asia, when the sudden loss of his income recalled him to America. Finding it fruitless to rebel, he resigned himself philosophically, secured a position as instructor in a woman's college, made up an annual deficit by writing for the scientific reviews, and continued his studies. His physical nature he believed he had rendered quiescent.

Some days after his encounter with Mariana he came upon her again. He had just entered the park at the Seventy-second Street entrance, on his way from his lecture at the Bodley College. The battered bonnet of a beggar-woman had blown beneath the horses' hoofs in the drive, and he had stopped to rescue it, when he heard his name called, and saw Mariana beside him.

She spoke impulsively.

"I have been watching you," she said.

He looked at her in perplexity.

"Indeed! And what have you discovered?"

"I discovered that you are a gentleman."

He laughed outright.

"Your powers of intuition are positively miraculous," he replied.

She upbraided him with a glance.

"You are unkind," she said.

"Am I?"

"You are unkind to me." Her manner had grown subtly personal. He felt suddenly as if he had known her from the beginning of time and through various transmigrations.