Phases of an Inferior Planet

At first he walked rapidly, but a sudden fatigue seized him, and his pace slackened. He remembered that he had not rested for six hours. In a moment he saw the cross on the steeple of his church emblazoned in fire upon the heavens where the sun had burst forth, and, crossing the street, he pushed the swinging doors and entered softly. It was deserted. With a sensation of relief he passed along the right side aisle, and seated himself within the shadow of the little chapel.

Atmospheric waves of green and gold sifted through the windows and suffused the chancel. Beyond the dusk of the nave he saw the gilded vessels upon the altar and the high crucifix above. A crimson flame was burning in the sanctuary lamp, a symbol of the presence of the sacrament reserved. Above the chancel the figure of the Christ in red and purple was illuminated by the light of the world without.

Suddenly the sound of the organ broke the stillness, and he remembered that it was the day of the choir practising. The disturbance irritated him. During all the years of his priesthood he had not lost his old aversion to music. Now he felt that he loathed it – as he loathed the lie that he was living.

He raised his eyes to the stained-glass window, where the Christ in his purple robes smiled a changeless smile. A swift desire stung him to see the insipid smile strengthen into a frown – to behold an overthrow of the strained monotony. Change for the sake of change were preferable. Only let the still red flame in the sanctuary-lamp send up one fitful blaze, one shadow darken the gilded serenity of the altar. Would it forever face him with that bland assumption of the permanence of creed – the damnation of doubt? Would time never tarnish the blinding brightness of the brazen cross? He shivered as if from cold.

Then the voices of the choir swelled out in a song of exhortation – the passionate and profound exhortation of the "Elijah." In an instant it filled the church, flooding nave and chancel with its anthem of adoration:

"Lift thine eyes. O, lift thine eyes unto the mountains whence cometh help. Thy help cometh from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He hath said thy foot shall not be moved. Thy Keeper will never slumber."

Over and over again rang the promise of the prophet:

"Thy Keeper will never slumber – thy Keeper will never slumber."

With the words in his ears he looked at the altar, the white altar-cloth, and the gilded vessels. He saw laid there as a sacrament the bonds of his service. He saw the obligations of a child to the one who had sheltered him, of a boy to the one who had shielded him, of a man to the one who had reached into the gutter and lifted him up. He saw the good he had done, the sick he had healed, the filthy he had made clean. He saw the love of his people – rich and poor – the faiths that would be shattered by the unsealing of his lips, the work of regeneration that would crumble to decay. Looking back, he saw the blessings he had left upon his pathway rotting to curses where they had fallen. Against all this he saw the lie.

"Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps."

But was it really a lie? He did not believe? No, but he begrudged no man his belief. He had extinguished the last embers of intolerance in his heart. The good that he had done in the name of a religion had endeared that religion to the mind that rejected it.

He had taken its armor upon him, and he had borne it victoriously. He had worn unsullied the badge of a creed emblazoned upon his breast, not upon his heart. Was not this justification?

Then, with his eyes upon the altar and the crucifix, beneath the changeless smile of the Christ in purple robes, he knew that it was not. He knew that he had sinned the one sin unpardonable in his own eyes; that he had taken the one step from which for him there was no returning – that the sin was insincerity, and the step the one that hid the face of truth.

"He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps. Shouldst thou, walking in grief, languish, He will quicken thee – He will quicken thee."

He rose and left the church.

It was several days after this that, in unfolding the morning paper, his glance was arrested by the announcement, "The Honorable Mrs. Cecil Gore, who has been dangerously ill of pneumonia, is reported to be convalescent."

The paper shook in his hands, and he laid it hastily aside.

He went out and followed his customary duties, but the thought of Mariana's illness furrowed his mind with a slow fear. It seemed to him then that the mere fact of her existence was all he demanded from fate. Not to see her or to touch her, but to know that she filled a corner of space – that she had her part in the common daily life of the world.

It was Saturday, and the sermon for the next day lay upon his desk. He had written it carefully, with a certain interest in the fact that it would lend itself to oratorical effects – an art which still possessed a vague attraction for him. As he folded the manuscript and placed it in the small black case, the text caught his eye, and he repeated it with an enjoyment of the roll of the words. Then he rose and went out.

In the afternoon, as he was coming out of the church after an interview with the sacristan, he caught sight of Ryder's figure crossing towards him from the opposite corner. He had always entertained a distrust of the man, and yet the anxiety upon his ruddy and well-groomed countenance was so real that he felt an instantaneous throb of sympathy.

Ryder, seeing him, stopped and spoke, "We have been looking for you," he said, "but I suppose you are as much occupied as usual."

"Yes – how is Mrs. Ryder?"

"Better, I think – I hope so. She is going to Florida for February and March. Beastly weather, isn't it? Nevins got off a good thing the other day, by the by. Somebody asked him what he thought of the New York climate, and he replied that New York didn't have a climate – it had unassorted samples of weather."

They walked on, talking composedly, with the same anxiety gnawing the hearts of both.

At the corner Ryder hailed the stage and got inside.

"Come to see Mrs. Ryder," were his parting words. "She depends on you."

Father Algarcife kept on his way to Fifty-seventh Street, where he walked several doors west, and stopped before a house with a brown-stone front.

As he laid his hand on the bell he paled slightly, but when the door was opened he regained his composure.

"I wish to ask how Mrs. Gore is to-day?" he said to the maid, giving his card.

She motioned him into the drawing-room and went up-stairs. In a few minutes she returned to say that Mrs. Gore would receive him, if he would walk up.

On the first landing she opened the door of a tiny sitting-room, closing it when he had entered. He took a step forward and paused. Before the burning grate, on a rug of white fur, Mariana was standing, and through the slender figure, in its blue wrapper, he seemed to see the flames of the fire beyond. She had just risen from a couch to one side, and the pillows still showed the impress of her form. An Oriental blanket lay on the floor, where it had fallen when she started at his entrance.

For a moment neither of them spoke. At the sight of her standing there, her thin hands clasped before her, her beauty broken and dimmed, his passion was softened into pity. In her hollow eyes and haggard cheeks he saw the ravage of pain; in the lines upon brow and temples he read the records of years.

Then a sudden tremor shook him. As she rose before him, shorn of her beauty, her scintillant charm extinguished, her ascendency over him was complete. Now that the brilliancy of her flesh had waned, it seemed to him that he saw shining in her faded eyes the clearer light of her spirit. Where another man would have beheld only a broken and defaced wreckage, he saw the woman who had inspired him with that persistence of passion which feeds upon the shadows as upon the lights, upon the lack as upon the fulfilment.

Mariana came forward and held out her hand.

"It was very kind of you to come," she said.

The rings slipped loosely over her thin fingers. Her touch was very light. He looked at her so fixedly that a pale flush rose to her face.

"You are better?" he asked, constrainedly. "Stronger?"

"Oh yes; I have been out twice – no, three times – in the sunshine."

She seated herself on the couch and motioned him to a chair, but he shook his head and stood looking down at her.

"You must be careful," he said, in the same forced tone. "The weather is uncertain."

"Yes. Dr. Salvers is sending me South."

"And when do you go?"

She turned her eyes away.

"He wishes me to go at once," she said, "but I do not know."

She rose suddenly, her lip quivering.

He drew back and she leaned upon the mantel, looking into the low mirror, which reflected her haggard eyes between two gilded urns.

"I was very ill," she went on. "It has left me so weak, and I – I am looking so badly."

"Mariana!"

She turned towards him, her face white, the lace on her breast fluttering as if from a rising wind.

"Mariana!" he said, again.