"The kneeling people lifted their wet faces ... But the chancel was empty"

THE

SUPPLY AT SAINT AGATHA'S

BY

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
E. BOYD SMITH AND MARCIA OAKES WOODBURY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1896

Copyright, 1896,
BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD AND
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved.


The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

THE SUPPLY AT SAINT AGATHA'S.

At the crossing of the old avenue with the stream of present traffic, in a city which, for obvious reasons, will not be identified by the writer of these pages, there stood—and still stands—the Church of Saint Agatha's.

The church is not without a history, chiefly such as fashion and sect combine to record. It is an eminent church, with a stately date upon its foundation stone, and a pew-list unsurpassed for certain qualities among the worshipers of the Eastern States. Saint Agatha's has long been distinguished for three things, its money, its music, and its soundness.

When the tax-list of the town is printed in the daily papers once a year, the wardens and the leading parishioners of Saint Agatha's stand far upwards in the score, and their names are traced by slow, grimy fingers of mechanics and strikers and socialists laboriously reading on Saturday nights.

The choir of Saint Agatha's, as all the world knows, is superior. Her soprano alone (a famous prima donna) would fill the house. Women throng the aisles to hear the tenor, and musical critics, hat in hand, and pad on hat, drop in to report the anthem and the offertory for the Monday morning press.

In ecclesiastical position, it is needless to add, Saint Agatha's has always been above reproach. When did Saint Agatha's question a canon? When did she contend with a custom? When did she criticise a creed? Why should she contest a tradition? She accepts, she conforms, she prospers.

In one particular Saint Agatha's has been thrust into an attitude of originality foreign to her taste. Her leading men feel called upon occasionally to explain how the eternal feminine came—a little contrary to the fashion of our land—to be recognized in the name of the church. Saint Agatha's first pastor, one should know, was a very young man of enthusiastic and unconventional temperament. He did not live long enough to outgrow this—for a clergyman—unfortunate trend of nature, having died, full of dreams and visions, in the teeth of a lowering conflict with his wardens; but he lived long enough to carry the day and the name for a portion of his people who desired to call their church in honor of a sweet, though rich, old lady who had put her private fortune into their beautiful house of worship, and her warm heart into their future success. It had befallen this dear old lady to bear the name of Agatha, which, for her sake,—and, of course, in due ecclesiastical remembrance of the strictly canonical saint of similar cognomen,—was accordingly bestowed upon the church.

In the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and another numeral, which I am requested not to indicate, but I may not deny that it is a recent one, the popular rector of Saint Agatha's took a winter vacation. He was an imposing and imperious man, full of years and honors, in the full sway of his professional fame, when he fell a victim, like any common person, to the grippe.

In the attempt to recover from this vulgar malady, he was forced to observe that his select physician had drugged him, via an exclusive bronchitis, into a minister's sore throat, such as any ordinary country parson might develop for lack of an overcoat, or a fire in his bedroom. Without undue delay or reluctance, the rector of Saint Agatha's took ship for the south of France; and in the comfortable way in which such things are done in such quarters, the church was set trundling upon the wheels of a two-months' "supply." This was managed so gracefully by the experienced vestry of Saint Agatha's that hardly a visible jar occurred in the parish machinery. Many of the people did not know that their rector had gone until a canon from London sonorously filled the pulpit one Sunday morning. A distinguished Middle State clergyman followed the next week; the West sent her brightest and best the succeeding Sunday; and so it went.

Eminent variety easily occupied that sacred desk. The wardens of St. Agatha's have but to say, Come, and he cometh who weigheth the honor of ministering in this aristocratic pulpit. In brief, the most distinguished men in the denomination cordially supplied. On the whole, perhaps the parish enjoyed their rector's vacation as much as he did.

Now, upon the vestry there chanced at that time to be one man who was "different." One does find such people even among the officers of fashionable churches. This man (he was, by the way, a grand-nephew of the old lady who built the church when Saint Agatha's was an unendowed experiment) had occasional views not wholly in harmony with the policy of his brother officers; and, being himself a heavy rate-payer, was allowed, sometimes, by the courtesy of the majority,—when his notion was not really in bad form, you know,—to have his way. He did not get it so often but that he was glad to make the most of it when he did; and when his turn came to control the supply for that Sunday with which this narrative has to do, he asked the privilege of being intrusted with the details of the business. This request, as from a useful man of certain eccentricities, was indulgently granted; and thus there occurred the events which I am privileged to relate.

It was just before Lent, and the winter had been a cold one. One Friday evening in early March there came up, or came down, a drifting snow-storm. It was bad enough in town, but in the suburbs it was worse, and in the country it was little less than dangerous to passengers through the wide, wind-swept streets, the choking lanes, and bitter moors.

An old clergyman, the pastor of a scattered parish, sat in his study on that Friday night, and thanked God that the weekly evening service was over, and his day's work done. He would have regretted being called out again that night, for he had got quite wet in walking to church and back, and the cold from which he had been suffering for a week past might not be benefited thereby. This fact in itself was a matter of no concern, under ordinary conditions, to the old clergyman, who, being a lonely man in a forlorn country boarding-house, with nobody to take care of him, was accustomed to live under the shadow of a "common cold," and who paid no more attention to his own physical discomforts in the face of daily duty than he paid to the latest fashion in sable trimmings in the front pews at Saint Agatha's. There was no fur trimming on his overcoat, which was seven years old and pitiably thin. But he had been invited to supply at Saint Agatha's next Sunday, and to that unexampled honor and opportunity he gave the pathetic attention—half personal pleasure, half religious fervor—of an overlooked and devout man. In