"Thank you, Agnes," replied Father Algarcife, with a laugh. "A policeman could manage him much better."
"So any fool might have known, sir; but those poor creatures seem kind of crazy. I believe they get you twisted with the Creator. They'll be asking you to bring back the dead next. Will you have dinner at eight?"
He passed into his study, closing the door after him. A shaggy little cur, lying on the hearth-rug, jumped up at his entrance, and came towards him, his tail cutting semicircles in the air.
"How are you, Comrade?" said the man, cheerfully. He bent over, running his fingers along the rough, yellow body of the dog. It was a vagrant that he had rescued from beneath a cable-car and brought home in his arms. His care had met its reward in gratitude, and the bond between them was perhaps the single emotion remaining in either life.
The room was small, and furnished in a manner that suggested luxurious comfort. It had been left thus by Father Speares, and the younger man, moved by a sense of loyalty, had guarded it unchanged. Over the high mantel one of Father Speares's ancestors looked down from a massive frame, and upon the top of the book-shelves lining the four walls there was the marble bust of another. Heavy curtains of russet-brown fell from the windows, and a portière of the same material hung across the door. In the centre of the room, where the light fell full upon it while it was yet day, there was a quaint old desk of hand-carved mahogany. On the lid, covered by a white blotter, lay a number of unanswered letters, containing appeals for charities, the manuscript of an unfinished sermon, and the small black-velvet case in which the sermon would be placed upon its completion. In the open grate a fire burned brightly, and a table bearing an unlighted lamp was drawn into the glow.
The dog, trembling with welcome, curled upon the rug, and Father Algarcife, throwing himself into the easy-chair beside the table, stretched his hands towards the blaze. They were thin and virile hands, and the firelight, shining behind them, threw into relief the lines crossing and recrossing the palms, giving to them the look of hieroglyphics on old parchment. His face, across which the flickering shadows chased, assumed the effect of a drawing in strong black and white.
Before the intense heat of the grate, a languor crept over him, a sensation of comfort inspired by the firelight, the warmth, and the welcome of the fellow-mortal at his feet. Half yawning, his head fell back against the cushion of the chair and his thoughts stirred drowsily.
He thought of the ruddy reflection dancing on the carving of the desk, of the text of the unfinished sermon, of a pamphlet on the table beside the unlighted lamp, and of a letter to his lawyer that remained unwritten. Then he thought of Mrs. Ryder in her full and unsatisfied beauty, and then of a woman in his congregation who had given a thurible of gold to the church, and then of one of the members of the sisterhood. He wondered if it were Sister Agatha who had called, and if she wished to consult him about the home of which she had charge. He feared that the accommodations were too crowded, and questioned if the state of the finances justified moving into larger quarters. In the same connection, he remembered that he had intended mentioning to the sacristan the insufficient heating of the church during services. From this he passed suddenly to the memory of the face of the woman who had died of cancer that morning. He recalled the dirt and poverty and the whimpering of the blear-eyed child with the chronic cold.
"What a life!" he said, and he glanced about the luxurious room calmly, half disdainfully. His eyes fell on the arm of the sofa which was slightly worn as if from friction, and he remembered that he never used it, and that it was the one on which Father Speares had been accustomed to take his daily nap. He shivered faintly, brushed by that near association with the dead which trivialities invoke.