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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/34402-8.txt b/34402-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..574bc17 --- /dev/null +++ b/34402-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12135 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Phases of an Inferior Planet, by Ellen Glasgow + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Phases of an Inferior Planet + +Author: Ellen Glasgow + +Release Date: November 22, 2010 [EBook #34402] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images at The Internet Archive) + + + + + + + + + +Phases of an +Inferior Planet + +_By_ ELLEN GLASGOW + +_Author of "The Descendant"_ + +[Illustration] + +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + +NEW YORK AND LONDON + +1898 + +BY THE SAME AUTHOR. + +THE DESCENDANT. A Novel. Post 8vo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1 25. + +The writer has a sure touch, a firm and philosophically consistent hold +upon his theme, much delicacy of perception, and a sane sense of humor. +The style, if not of the fastidiously fine school, is fluent and often +brilliant. ... The character drawing is vivid and realistic.--_Boston +Transcript._ + +The characters here are skilfully drawn, and the drama in which they +take part is unusually novel and impressive. ... The work of an author +who has not written at random, but who has woven into a strong story +some of the cardinal truths of modern science.--_N. Y. Herald._ + +NEW YORK AND LONDON: + +HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. + +Copyright, 1898, by HARPER & BROTHERS. + +_All rights reserved._ + +TO + +CARY McC. + + _"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the + swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, + nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of + skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."_ + + + + +Phase First + + _"Some turned to folly and the sweet works of the flesh."_ + + --Hymn to Zeus. + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Along Broadway at six o'clock a throng of pedestrians was stepping +northward. A grayish day was settling into a gray evening, and a +negative lack of color and elasticity had matured into a positive +condition of atmospheric flatness. The air exhaled a limp and insipid +moisture, like that given forth by a sponge newly steeped in an +anęsthetic. Upon the sombre fretwork of leafless trees, bare against +red-brick buildings, drops of water hung trembling, though as yet there +had been no rainfall, and the straggling tufts of grass in the city +parks drooped earthward like the damp and uncurled fringe of a woman's +hair. + +Spanning the remote west as a rainbow stretched an unfulfilled pledge of +better things, for beyond the smoke-begrimed battalion of tenement +chimney-pots a faint streak of mauve defined the line of the horizon--an +ineffectual and transparent sheet of rose-tinted vapor, through which +the indomitable neutrality of background was revealed. The city swam in +a sea of mist, and the electric lights, coming slowly into being, must +have seemed to a far-off observer a galaxy of wandering stars that had +burst the woof of heaven and fallen from their allotted spheres to be +caught like blossoms in the white obscurity of fog. Above them their +deserted habitation frowned blackly down with closed doors and +impenetrable walls. + +The effect of the immortal transformation of day into night was +singularly elusive. It had come so stealthily that the fleet-footed +hours seemed to have tripped one another in the fever of the race, the +monotonous grayness of their garments shrouding, as they fluttered past, +the form of each sprightly elf. + +Along Broadway the throng moved hurriedly. At a distance indescribably +homogeneous, as it passed the lighted windows of shops it was seen to be +composed of individual atoms, and their outlines were relieved against +the garish interiors like a panorama of automatic silhouettes. Then, as +they neared a crossing, a flood of radiant electricity, revealing minute +details of face and figure, the atoms were revivified from automatic +into animal existence. + +With an inhuman disregard of caste and custom, the aberrant shadows of +the passers-by met and mingled one into another. A phantasmagoric +procession took place upon the sidewalk. The ethereal accompaniment of +the physical substance of a Wall Street plutocrat glided sedately after +that of a bedizened daughter of the people, whose way, beginning in the +glare of the workhouse, was ending in the dusk of the river; a lady of +quality, whose very shadow seemed pregnant with the odor of spice and +sables, melted before the encroaching presence of a boot-black fresh +from the Bowery; a gentleman of fashion gave place to the dull phantom +of a woman with burning brows and fingers purple with the stain of many +stitches. It was as if each material substance, warm with the lust of +the flesh and reeking with a burnt-offering of vanity, was pursued by +the inevitable presence of a tragic destiny. + +At the corner of Seventeenth Street, a girl in a last season's coat left +the crowd and paused before a photographer's window. As she passed from +shadow into light the play of her limbs was suggested by the close folds +of her shabby skirt. She had the light and steadfast gait of one to whom +exercise is as essential as food, and more easily attained. + +A man coming from Union Square turned to look at her as she passed. + +"That girl is a _danseuse_," he said to his companion, "or she ought to +be. She walks to music." + +"Your induction is false," retorted the other. "She happens to be--" + +And they passed on. + +As the girl paused before the lighted window the outlines of head and +shoulders were accentuated, while the rest of her body remained in +obscurity. Her head was shapely and well poised. Beneath the small toque +of black velvet, an aureole of dry brown hair framed her sensitive +profile like a setting of old mahogany. Even in the half-light +silhouette it could be noticed that eyes, hair, and complexion differed +in tone rather than in color. Her sallow skin blended in peculiar +harmony with the gray-green of her eyes and the brown of her hair. Her +face was long, with irregular features and straight brows. The bones of +cheek and chin were rendered sharper by extreme thinness. + +A new photograph of Alvary was displayed, and a small group had +assembled about the window. + +The girl looked at it for a moment; then, as some one in the crowd +jostled against her, she turned with an exclamation of annoyance and +entered the shop. Hesitating an instant, she drew a worn purse from her +pocket, looked into it, gave a decisive little shrug, and approached the +counter. + +The shop-girl came up, and, recognizing her, nodded. + +"Music?" she inquired, glancing at the leather roll which the other +carried. + +The girl shook her head slowly. + +"No," she replied, "I want a photograph of Alvary--as Lohengrin. Oh, the +Swan Song--" + +A man who was sorting a pile of music in the rear of the shop came +forward smiling. He was small and dark and foreign. + +"Ah, mademoiselle," he said, "it ees a plaisir for w'ich I live, ees ze +Elsa of your." + +The girl smiled in return. In the clear light the glint of green in her +eyes deepened. + +"No," she replied, "this is Elsa." She pointed to a photograph in the +case. "This is the only Elsa. I should not dare." + +He bowed deprecatingly. + +"Zat ees ontil you come," he said. "I live for ze day w'en we sing +togezzer, you an' I. I live to sing wiss you in ze grand opera." + +"Ah, monsieur," lamented the girl, regretfully, "one cannot live +forever. The Lord has allotted a term." + +She took her change, nodded gayly, and departed. + +In the street she passed unheeded. She was as ignored by the crowd +around her as the colorless shadow at her side. Upon a massive woman in +a feather boa a dozen men gazed with evident desire, and after the +sables enveloping the lady of quality the eyes of the boot-black +yearned. But the girl moved among them unnoticed--she was insignificant +and easily overlooked. + +A violet falling upon the pavement from the breast of a woman in front +of her, the girl lifted her skirt, and, to avoid crushing it, made a +slight divergence from her path. Then impulsively she turned to rescue +it from the cold sidewalk, but in so doing she stumbled against a man +whose heel had been its Juggernaut. A tiny blot of purple marked the +scene of its destruction. + +Over the girl's face a shadow fell; she glanced up and caught the +courteous smile of an acquaintance, and the shadow was lifted. But +before her upward glance tended earthward it rested upon an overdriven +horse standing in the gutter, and the shadow that returned had gathered +to itself the force of a rain-cloud. + +An impressionable and emotional temperament cast its light and darkness +upon her features, as the shifting clouds cast their varying shades upon +an evening landscape. With such a face, her moods must be as evanescent +as the colors of a kaleidoscope. + +As she neared an electric light she slipped the photograph she carried +from its envelope, and surveyed it with warming eyes. She spoke in a +soft whisper-- + +"I shall never sing Elsa--never--never! Lehmann is Elsa. But what does +it matter? By the time I reach grand opera I shall have dinners--real +dinners--with napkins the size of a sheet and vegetables of curious +kinds. Then I'll grow fat and become famous. I may even sing Isolde." + +She broke into a regretful little sigh. "And Alvary will be too old to +be my Tristan." + +At the corner of Twenty-third Street she took a cross-town car. It was +crowded, and, with half-suppressed disgust, she rested the tips of her +fingers upon a leather strap. The gloves covering the fingers were worn +and badly mended, but the touch was delicate. + +Something graceful and feminine and fragile in her unsteady figure +caused half a dozen men to rise hastily, and she accepted a proffered +seat with the merest inclination of her head. + +With an involuntary coquetry she perceived that, as the newest feminine +arrival, she was being stealthily regarded from behind the wall of +newspapers skirting the opposite seat. She raised her hand to her +loosened hair, half frowned, and glanced at the floor with demure +indifference. + +Beside her sat an Irishwoman with a heavy basket and a black bruise upon +her temple. The girl looked at the woman and the bruise with an +expression of repugnance. The repugnance was succeeded by a tidal wave +of self-commiseration. She pitied herself that she was forced to make +use of public means of conveyance. The onions in the Irishwoman's basket +offended her nostrils. + +Her gaze returned to her lap. As daintily as she had withdrawn her +person from contact with the woman beside her, she withdrew her finely +strung senses from contact with the odor of onions and the closeness of +the humanity hemming her in. + +She sat in disdainful self-absorption. Her sensitive features became +impassive, her head drooped, the green in her eyes faded into gray, and +the lashes obscured them. The shadow of her heavy hair rested like a +veil upon her face. + +When the car reached Ninth Avenue she got out, walked to Thirtieth +Street, and crossed westward. Facing her stood the immense and +unpicturesque apartment-house known as "The Gotham"--a monument of human +Philistinism and brownstone-finished effrontery. She entered and passed +through the unventilated hall to the restaurant at the rear. + +As she crossed the threshold, a man seated at one of the larger tables +looked up. + +"My dear girl," he said, reproachfully, "lateness for dinner at The +Gotham entails serious consequences. We were just planning a +search-party." + +His right-hand neighbor spoke warningly. "Don't believe him, Miss Musin; +he refused to get uneasy until he had finished his dinner." + +"When one is empty," retorted the first, "one can't get even uneasy. +Anxiety can't be produced from a void." + +The girl nodded good-evening, took her seat, and unfolded her napkin. +The first gentleman passed her the butter, the second the water-bottle. +The first was named Nevins. He was fair and pallid, with a long face +that would have been round had nature supplied gratification as well as +instinct. His shoulders were high and narrow, suggesting the perpetual +shrug with which he met his fate. He was starving upon an artistic +career. The second gentleman--Mr. Sellars--was sleek and middle-aged. +Providence had intended him for a poet; life had made of him a +philosopher--and a plumber. He was still a man of sentiment. + +At the head of the table sat Mr. Paul--an apostle of pessimism, whose +general flavor marked the pessimist rather than the apostle. The +peculiarity of his face was its construction--the features which should +have gone up coming down, and the features which should have come down +going up. Perhaps had Mr. Paul himself moralized upon the fact, which is +not likely, he would have concluded that it was merely a physical +expression of his mental attitude towards the universe. He had long +since arrived at the belief that whatever came in life was the thing of +all others which should have kept away, and its coming was sufficient +proof of its inappropriateness. He had become a pessimist, not from +passion, but from principle. He had chosen his view of the eternal +condition of things as deliberately as he would have selected the +glasses with which to survey a given landscape. Having made his choice, +he stood to it. No surreptitious favors at the hands of Providence were +able to modify his honest conviction of its general unpleasantness. + +The remaining persons at this particular table were of less importance. +There was Miss Ramsey, the journalist, who was pretty and faded and +harassed, and who ate her cold dinner, to which she usually arrived an +hour late, in exhausted silence. Miss Ramsey was one whom, her friends +said, adversity had softened; but Miss Ramsey herself knew that the +softness of adversity is the softness of decay. There was Mr. Ardly, a +handsome young fellow, who did the dramatic column of a large daily, and +who regarded life as a gigantic jag, facing failure with facetiousness +and gout with inconsequence. There was Mr. Morris, who was thin, and Mr. +Mason, who was fat, and Mr. Hogarth, who was neither. + +The restaurant consisted of a long and queerly shaped room. It had +originally been divided into two apartments, but when the house had +passed into the present management the partition had been torn down, and +two long and narrow tables marked the line where the division had been. +The walls were dingy and unpapered. Where the plaster was of an unusual +degree of smokiness, several cheap chromos, in cheaper frames, had been +hung, like brilliant patches laid upon a dingy background. Above the +chromos lingered small bunches of evergreen--faded and dried remnants of +the last holiday season--and from the tarnished and fly-specked +chandelier hung a withered spray of mistletoe. + +The room was crowded. There was not so much as a vacant seat at the +tables. The hum of voices passed through the doors and into the rumble +of the street without. In a far corner a lady in a blouse of geranium +pink was engaged in catching reckless flies for the sustenance of the +chameleon upon her breast; nearer at hand a gentleman was polishing his +plate and knife with his napkin. It was warm and oppressive, and the +voices sounded shrilly through the glare. The girl whom they had called +"Miss Musin" looked up with absent-minded abruptness. + +"I had as soon wear wooden shoes as eat with a pewter fork!" she +remarked, irritably. + +Mr. Nevins shook his flaxen head and laid down his spoon. + +"So long as it remains a question of forks," he observed, "let us give +thanks. Who knows when it may become one of food?" Then he sighed. "If +it is only a sacrifice of decency, I'm equal to it, but I refuse to live +without food." + +"The audacity of youth!" commented Mr. Sellars, the philosopher. "I said +the same at your age. But for taking the conceit out of one, commend me +to experience." + +"From a profound study of the subject," broke in Mr. Paul, grimly, "I +have been able to calculate to a nicety that each one of these potatoes, +taken internally, lessens an hour of one's existence. As a method of +self-destruction"--and he proceeded to help himself--"there is none more +efficacious than an exclusive diet of Gotham potatoes. Allow me to pass +them." He looked at Miss Musin, but Mr. Nevins rose to the occasion. + +"After such an analysis, my gallantry forbids," and he intercepted the +dish. + +The girl glanced up at him. + +"Extinction long drawn out is boring," she said. "And is food the only +factor of human life? It may be the most important, I admit, but +important things should not always be talked of." + +"I declare it quite staggers me," interrupted a cheerful individual, who +was Mr. Morris, "to think of the number of things that should not be +talked of--some amazingly interesting things, too! Do you know, +sometimes I wonder if social intercourse will not finally be reduced to +a number of persons assembling to sit in silent meditation upon the +subjects which are not to be spoken of? One so soon exhausts the +absolutely correct topics." + +"We are a nation of prudes," declared Mr. Paul, with emphasis, "and +there is no vice that rots a people to the core so rapidly as the vice +of prudery. All our good red blood has passed into a limbo of social +ostracism along with ladies' legs." + +"I was just thinking," commented Mr. Hogarth, who aspired to the rakish +and achieved the asinine, "that the last-named subject had been +particularly in evidence of late. What with the ballet and the +bicycle--" He blushed and glanced at Miss Musin. + +She was smiling. "Oh, I don't object," she said, "so long as they are +well shaped." + +Mr. Nevins upheld her from an artistic stand-point. + +"I hold," he said, authoritatively, "that indecency can only exist where +beauty is wanting. All beauty is moral. I have noticed in regard to my +models--" + +"On the contrary," interrupted Mr. Paul, "there is no such thing as +beauty. It is merely the creation of a diseased imagination pursuing +novelty. We call nature beautiful, but it is only a term we employ to +express a chimera of the senses. Nature is not beautiful. Its colors are +glaringly defective. It is ugly. The universe is ugly. Civilization is +ugly. We are ugly--" + +"Oh, Mr. Paul!" said Miss Musin, reproachfully. + +"Our one consolation," continued Mr. Paul, in an unmoved voice, "is the +knowledge that if we could possibly have been uglier we should have been +so created. Providence would have seen to it." + +"When Providence provided ugliness," put in Mr. Morris, good-naturedly, +"it provided ignorance along with it." + +Mr. Ardly, who was eating his dinner with a copy of the _Evening Post_ +spread out upon his knees, looked up languidly. + +"We are becoming unpleasantly personal," he remarked. "Personalities in +conversation should be avoided as sedulously as onions in soup. They are +stimulating, but vulgar." + +Mr. Paul seized the bait of the unconscious thrower with avidity. + +"Vulgarity," he announced, with ringing emphasis, "is the most prominent +factor in the universe. It is as essential to our existence as the +original slime from which we and it emanated. If there is one thing more +vulgar than nature, it is civilization. Whatever remnant of innocence +nature left in the mind of man civilization has wiped out. It has +debased the human intellect--" + +"And deformed the human figure," interpolated Mr. Nevins, with a sigh. +"Oh, for the days of Praxiteles!" + +The emotionless tones of Mr. Paul flowed smoothly on. + +"And if there is one thing more vulgar than civilization, it is art." + +Mr. Nevins retorted in a voice of storm. + +"Sir," he cried, "art is my divinity!" + +"A vulgar superstition," commented Mr. Paul, calmly; and he pointed to a +poster beside Mr. Nevins's plate. "You call that art, I suppose?" + +Mr. Nevins colored, but met him valiantly. "No," he returned; "I call +that bread and meat." + +As the girl next him rose from her chair she bestowed upon him an +approving smile, which he returned with sentimental interest. + +"You haven't finished," he remonstrated, in an aside. "My posters aren't +only bread and meat; they are pie--principally pie." + +The girl laughed and shook her head. + +"And principally pumpkin," she returned. "No, thank you!" + +She left the dining-room and mounted the stairs to the fourth landing. +Her room was in the front of the house, and the way to it lay through a +long and dimly lighted corridor, the floor of which was covered with +figured oil-cloth. + +As she slipped the key into the lock the door swung back, and a blast of +damp air from the open window blew into her face. She crossed the room +and stood for a moment with her hand upon the sash, looking down into +the street. A train upon the elevated road was passing, and she saw the +profiles of the passengers dark against the lighted interior. Clouds of +white smoke, blown rearward by the engine's breath, hovered about the +track, too light to fall. Then, as the wind chased westward, the clouds +were torn asunder, and stray wreaths, deepening into gray, drifted along +the cross street leading to the river. + +The girl reached out and drew in a can of condensed milk from the +fire-escape. Then she lowered the window and turned on the steam-heater +in the corner, which set up a hissing monotone. + +The room was small and square. There was a half-worn carpet upon the +floor, and the walls were covered with cheap paper, the conspicuous +feature of which was a sprawling design in green and yellow cornucopias. +In one corner stood a small iron bedstead, partially concealed by a +Japanese screen, which extended nominal protection to the wash-stand as +well. On the wall above the screen an iron hook was visible, from which +hung a couple of bath-towels and a scrubbing-brush suspended by a +string. Nearer the window there was an upright piano, with a scarf of +terra-cotta flung across it and a row of photographs of great singers +arranged along the ledge. Here and there on the furniture vivid bits of +drapery were pinned over barren places. + +But with the proof of a sensuous craving for color a latent untidiness +was discernible. Her slippers lay upon the hearth-rug where she had +tossed them when dressing for the street; a box of hair-pins had been +upset upon the bureau, and a half-open drawer revealed a tangled mass of +net veiling. + +Throwing her hat and coat upon the bed, the girl turned up the lights, +selected a score of "Lucia" from a portfolio under the piano, and, +seating herself at the music-stool, struck the key-board with sudden +fervor. The light soprano notes rang out, filling the small room with a +frail yet penetrating sweetness. It was a clear and brilliant voice, but +it was a voice in miniature, of which the first freshness was +marred--and it was not the voice for Lucia. + +With quick dismay the girl realized it, and rising impatiently, tossed +the score upon the carpet and left the piano. + +Standing before the long mirror on the wall, she slipped off her +walking-gown, letting it fall in a black heap to her feet. Then stepping +over it, she kicked it aside and stood with gleaming arms and breast in +the flickering gas-light. She loosened her heavy hair, drawing the pins +from it one by one, until it fell in a brown mane upon her shoulders. + +Doffing her conventional dress, she doffed conventionality as well. She +was transformed into something seductive and subtle--something in +woman's flesh as ethereal as sea-foam and as vivid as flame. + +She smiled suddenly. Then to a humming accompaniment she twirled upon +her toes, her steps growing faster and faster until her figure was +obscured in the blur of action and her hair flew about her face like the +hair of a painted witch. + +The words of the air she hummed came with a dash of bravado from between +her lips: + + "--Ange ou diable, + Écume de la mer?" + +Still smiling, she sank in an exhausted heap upon the floor. + +Then she went to bed and fell asleep, lamenting that her head rested +upon a cotton pillow-slip. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +In time long past, when the Huguenots were better known, if less +esteemed, an impecunious gentleman of France left his native land for +the sake of faith and fortune. + +Lured by that blatant boast of liberty which swelled the throats of the +Western colonies, even while their hands were employed in meting out the +reward of witchcraft and in forging the chains of slavery, he directed +his way towards American soil. + +His mission failed, and, in search of theological freedom, he only +succeeded in weaving matrimonial fetters. Amid an unassorted medley of +creeds and customs he came upon the red-cheeked daughter of a Swiss +adventurer--an ambitious pioneer who lived upon the theory that the New +World having been created for the service of its foreign invaders, the +might of the sword was the right of possession. + +The gentleman of France, deciding to found a farm and family in the land +of his adoption, awoke suddenly to the knowledge that, to insure the +success of such an enterprise, feminine intervention is a necessary +evil. + +Accordingly, he set about his preparations with an economic industry. +Casting his eye upon a tract of land upon a Southern river, he acquired +it for certain services rendered in an unguarded moment to the Swiss +adventurer, who had acquired it in a manner that concerned himself +alone. + +The next step of the French gentleman was to build beside the Southern +river a family mansion, whose door he promptly closed upon the Swiss +adventurer, since virtue consists not so much in refusing to benefit by +vice as in refusing to acknowledge the benefit. Not without a sense of +nervous perturbation, he then proceeded to cast his gaze upon the most +promising feminine pledges of progeny. From among a dozen or so of his +fair neighbors he selected, with the experienced eye of a woman-fancier, +the blooming specimen of Swiss buxomness, and, the adventurer coming to +terms, the marriage had been celebrated without the retarding +curtain-raiser of a romantic prelude. + +The gentleman's name was Marcel Musin de Biencourt; the lady's has no +place in the following history. + +For a period matters progressed in natural sequence. The land was +tilled, the cotton picked, and the lady installed in the best bedroom of +the newly erected mansion. Had she played the part for which nature and +her lord intended her, there is reason to suppose that she would have +become a serviceable instrument in the preservation of the species. + +But the gentleman had reckoned without Providence. With the ending of +the year of her bridehood the roses in the lady's cheeks grew waxen, and +she turned with a sigh of relief from the labor of travail to the rest +of the little church-yard upon the hill. + +The aspens shivered above her, the river purled between level fields far +down below, and from the uprooted furrows around the dutiful corn put +forth tender sprouts; but the lady had shirked her mission in its first +fulfilment, and with the birth-time of the year she neither rose nor +stirred. + +In the best bedroom the dust thickened upon the chintz curtains, and a +weak and sickly hostage to fortune yelled his new throat hoarse with +premonition of the inhospitality of the planet upon which he had been +precipitated. + +Disappointed in his estimate of woman's nature, the gentleman of France +decided to economize in material, and to rear a race from the +unpromising specimen in his possession. Faithfully he strove to fulfil +his part, and when the boy reached manhood, he laid himself down beside +his wife upon the hill. + +From this time on the family record is biblically concise. Marcel begot +Marcel, and again Marcel begot Marcel, and yet again. + +While the root Musin languished, De Biencourt, the lofty family tree, +withered and died, to be forgotten. Neither in history nor in tradition, +nor in the paths of private virtue, was a Musin known to have +distinguished himself. If he took up arms in the American Revolution, he +took them up in a manner unworthy of record; if he favored the +Declaration of Independence, he did not commit his preference to paper; +if he excelled in any way, it was in the way of mediocrity--which is +perhaps the safest way of all. + +But extinction was not to be the end of the venturesome blood of the +French gentleman. His spirit animated one of his name to confide to the +care of his ex-slaves the mansion crumbling above his head, and to +become a wanderer in the States which had been so nearly disunited. Like +the minstrels of old, he strung his harp from his shoulder, and +journeyed from South to North and from East to West. His Norman blood +still ran blue in his veins, and his faith was the faith of his fathers. + +In his travels he played his passage into the vivacious affections of an +Irish maiden, who wore a rosary about her neck and a cross upon her +sleeve. But these conspicuous badges of Popery failed to chill the +passion of Marcel. And, in truth, if the maiden's heart was as black as +the arch-fiend, her eyes (which is more to the point) were not less blue +than heaven. With an improvidence sufficient to bleach the ghost of his +colonial progenitor, he tossed forebodings into the capacious lap of the +future, and stormed the yielding heart of young Ireland. + +Love was lord, and their marriage-bonds were double-locked and barred by +Protestant and Catholic clergy. But there is a power which laughs at +religious locksmiths. Within six months the illusions with which each +had draped the other melted before the fire and brimstone of +ecclesiastical dispute. Between the kisses of their lips each offered +petitions to a patient Omnipotence for the salvation of the other's +soul. As the kisses grew colder the prayers grew warmer. There is a +tendency in man, when he has fallen out with the human brother whom he +has seen, to wax more zealous in his attentions to the Divine Father +whom he has not. To be courteous to one's neighbor is so much more +difficult than to be cringing to one's God. + +And then a child was given. In the large family Bible upon the father's +desk the event is recorded in two different hands, and the child was +christened with two different names. + +The first reads: + + "MARIE MUSIN, _born April_ 24, 1868." + +And the second: + + "MARY ANN MUSIN, _born April_ 24, 1868." + +After fifteen years the matter was settled, as were most family matters, +by the child herself. + +"I will be both," she said, decisively. "I will be Mariana." + +And Mariana she became. + +In the same high-handed fashion the theological disputes of the parents +were reduced to trifles as light as air. + +"I will be a Presbyterian one Sunday and a Catholic the next," she +concluded, with amiable acquiescence; "only on fast-days and +lecture-nights I'll be a heathen." + +For a time these regulations were observed with uncompromising +impartiality, but, upon moving to a smaller town, she foresaw a +diplomatic stroke. + +"I think it better," she announced, sweetly, "for one of us to become an +Episcopalian. I have noticed that most of the society people here are +Episcopalians--and in that way the family will be so evenly distributed. +I see that it will be easier for me to make the sacrifice than for +either of you. Of course, I should love to go with you, mamma, but +incense makes me sneeze; and you know, papa, I can't stand +congregational singing. It grates upon my nerves. And I must be +something, for I have so much religious feeling. I will be an +Episcopalian." + +She cast herself into the arms of the Church with all the zeal of a +convert. From an artistic stand-point she repudiated insincerity, and, +though cultivated, her professions were as fertile as the most natural +product. Even to herself she scorned to admit that her alliance with a +particular creed was the result of aught but a moral tendency in that +direction. And the burden of the truth was with her. She was as +changeable as wind and as impressionable as wax, and the swelling tide +of sentiment had taken an ecclesiastical turn. + +She dressed in sober grays, and attended service with the regularity of +the sexton; she decorated her walls with Madonnas; and she undertook, by +way of the Sunday-school room, to lead a class of eight small boys into +the path of righteousness. She read Christina Rossetti and George +Herbert, and she placed tiny silver crosses, suspended from purple +ribbons, in her school-books. + +At the age of sixteen she attached herself to a society whose mission it +was to cultivate, by frequent calls, the religious poor, and she +neglected social observances to retard by her presence the domestic +duties of the indigent members of the community. She descended in a +special detachment upon a series of beer saloons, enforcing the pledge +upon a number of helpless gentlemen, and thereby multiplying the sin of +intemperance by that of perjury. While her mother mended the rents in +her garments, Mariana promoted a circle of stocking-darners for the +inhabitants of the almshouse. + +At that period her expression was in perfect harmony with the tenor of +her mind. The dramatic effect was always good. + +In the daily school, which she attended when the fancy seized her, she +ruled as a popular fetish. Between the younger children, whom she +terrorized, and the elder, whom she mesmerized, there was an +intermediate class with whom she was in high favor. As a tiny child she +had caught the street songs quicker than any other, and had sung them +better; and to the accompaniment of a hand-organ she could render a +marvellous ballet. + +During her tenth year she fell into a passionate friendship for one of +the scholars--a stately girl with phlegmatic eyes of gray. For six +months she paid her lover-like attentions in surreptitious ways, and +expended her pocket-money in nosegays, with which to adorn the desk of +her divinity. She wore a photograph of the gray-eyed girl above her +heart, and lingered for an hour to walk home with her upon Fridays. + +The friendship was sundered at last by visits exchanged between them, +and Mariana's emotions became theological. + +But this passed also. Vague amatory impulses of old racial meaning were +born. At sixteen she was precipitated into a sentiment for the +photograph, printed by the daily press, of a young fellow who was at +that time in the custody of the State, preparatory to responding to a +charge of highway-robbery. The photograph was romantic, the crime was +also. It was a nineteenth-century attempt at a revival of the part of +Claude Duval. + +Mariana attended missions less and meditated more. She divided her time +between her journal and the piano, showing a preference for songs of +riotous sentiment. Without apparent trouble to herself, she grew wan and +mysteriously poetic. She wore picturesque gowns with romantic draperies. +Her hair possessed a charming disorder, the expression of her face +passed from the placid into the intense. The dramatic effect was as good +as ever. Her journal of that year contains a declaration of undying +constancy. The object of this avowal is nominally the young +highwayman--in reality the creation of an over-fertile brain craving the +intoxicant of a great passion. The highwayman was but a picturesque +nucleus round which her dreams clustered and from which they gathered +color. She existed in a maze of the imagination, feasting upon the +unsubstantial food of idealism. Her longings for fame and for love were +so closely interwoven that even in her own mind it was impossible to +disassociate them. If she bedewed her pillow with tears of anguish for +the sake of a man whom she had never seen, and whom, seeing, she would +have passed with averted eyes, the tears were often dried by ecstatic +visions of artistic aspirations. And yet this romance of straw was not +the less intense because it was the creation of overwrought +susceptibilities; perhaps the more so. If real troubles were the only +troubles, how many tortured hearts would be uplifted to the hills. And +Mariana's mystical romance was a _daemon_ that lured her in a dozen +different disguises towards the quicksands of life. + +But this passed also and was done with. + +Her mother died, and her father married an early love. Mariana, who had +been first, declined to become last. Dissensions followed swiftly, and +the domestic atmosphere only cleared when Mariana departed from the +paternal dwelling-place. + +From the small Southern village, under the protection of an elderly +female relation, she had flown to New York in search of theatrical +employment. Failing in her object, she turned desperately to the culture +of her voice, living meanwhile upon a meagre allowance donated by her +father. The elderly female relation had remained with her for a time, +but finding Mariana intractable in minor ways, and foreseeing a future +in which she would serve as cat's-paw for the girl's vagaries, she had +blessed her young relative and departed. + +"One must either worship or detest you, my dear," she remarked as a +parting shaft. "And to worship you means to wait upon you, which is +wearing. Your personality is as absorbent as cotton. It absorbs the +individual comfort of those around you. It is very pleasant to be +absorbed, and you do it charmingly; but there is so much to see in the +world, and I'm getting old fast enough." + +So she went, leaving Mariana alone in a fourth-story front room of The +Gotham apartment-house. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Mr. Nevins once said to Mariana: "You are as elusive as thistle-down +whipped up with snow." + +Mariana smiled that radiating, indescribable smile which dawned +gradually from within, deepening until it burst into pervasive wealth of +charm. + +"Why snow?" was her query. + +Mr. Paul, who apparently had been engrossed in his dinner, glanced up +grimly. "The only possible reason for a metaphor," he observed, "is lack +of reason." + +Mr. Nevins dismissed him with a shrug and looked in sentimental +perplexity at Mariana. + +"Merely because it is impossible to whip up ice with anything," he +replied. + +"I should have supposed," interrupted Mr. Paul, in unabashed +disapproval, "that the same objection would apply to thistle-down. It +would certainly apply to a woman." + +Miss Ramsey, who sat opposite, turned her tired eyes upon him. + +"Life is not of your opinion, Mr. Paul," she said. "It whips us up with +all kinds of ingredients, and it never seems to realize when we have +been reduced to the proper consistency." + +She looked worn and harassed, and had come in to dinner later than +usual. It was the first remark she had made, and, after making it, she +relapsed into silence. Her small red hands trembled as she lifted her +fork, the rebellious lines between her brows grew deeper, and she ate +her dinner with that complete exhaustion which so often passes for +resignation in the eyes of our neighbors. Nervous prostration has +produced more saints than all the sermons since Moses. + +Mariana watched her sympathetically. She wondered why the gravy upon +Miss Ramsey's plate congealed sooner than it did upon any one else's, +while the sobbiest potatoes invariably fell to her share. + +"A false metaphor!" commented Mr. Paul. "Most metaphors are false. I +don't trust Shakespeare himself when he gets to metaphor. I always skip +them." + +"Oh, they have their uses," broke in the cheery tones of the optimist. +"I'm not much on Shakespeare, but I've no doubt he has his uses also. As +for metaphor, it is a convenient way of saying more than you mean." + +"So is lying," retorted Mr. Paul, crossly, and the conversation +languished. Mariana ate her dinner and looked at the table-cloth. Mr. +Nevins ate his dinner and looked at Mariana. He regarded her as an +artistic possibility. Her appearance was a source of constant interest +to him, and he felt, were he in the position of nature, with the palette +and brush of an omnipotent colorist, he might blend the harmonious lines +of Mariana's person to better advantage. He resented the fact that her +nose was irregular and her chin too long. He wondered how such a subject +could have been wilfully neglected. + +As for himself, he honestly felt that he had wasted no opportunities. +Upon their first acquaintance he had made a poster of Mariana which +undeniably surpassed the original. It represented her in a limp and +scantily made gown of green, with strange reptiles sprawling over it, +relieved against the ardor of a purple sunset. The hair was a marvel of +the imagination. + +Mariana had liked it, with the single exception of the reptilian +figures. + +"They have such an unpleasant suggestion," was her critical comment. "I +feel quite like Medusa. Couldn't you change them into nice little +butterflies and things?" + +Mr. Nevins was afraid he could not. The poster satisfied him as it was. +Miss Musin could not deny, he protested, that he had remodelled her nose +and chin in an eminently successful job, and if the hair and eyes and +complexion in the poster bore close resemblance in color, so did the +hair and eyes and complexion in the original. He had done his best. + +Mariana accepted his explanation and went complacently on her way, as +enigmatical as a Chinese puzzle. She was full of swift surprises and +tremulous changes, varying color with her environment; gay one moment, +and sad before the gayety had left her lips--cruel and calm, passionate +and tender--always and ever herself. + +Twice a week she went to Signor Morani's for a vocal lesson. Signor +Morani was small and romantic and severe. In his youth he had travelled +as Jenny Lind's barytone, and he had fallen a slave to her voice. He had +worshipped a voice as other men worship a woman. Unlike other men, he +had been faithful for a lifetime--to a voice. + +When Mariana had gone to him, an emotional and aspiring soprano of +nineteen, he had listened to her quietly and advised patience. + +"You must wait," he said. "All art is waiting." + +"I will not wait," said Mariana. "Waiting is starvation." + +He looked at her critically. + +"More of us starve than the world suspects," he answered. "It is the +privilege of genius. This is a planet, my dear child, where mediocrity +is exalted and genius brought low. It is a living fulfilment of the +scriptural prophecy, 'The first shall be last and the last shall be +first.'" Then he added: "Sing again." + +Mariana stood up and sang. His words had depressed her, and her voice +trembled. She looked at him wistfully, her hands hanging at her sides, +her head thrown back. It was an aria from "Faust." He shook his head +slowly. + +"You will never be great," he said. "I can give you technique, but not +volume. Your voice will never be great." + +With a half-defiant gesture Mariana broke forth again. This time it was +a popular song, with a quick refrain running through it. As she sang she +acted the accompaniment half unconsciously. + +Signor Morani frowned as she commenced, and then watched her +attentively. In the fragile little girl, with the changeable eyes of +green and the aureole of shadowless hair, he scented possibilities. + +"Your voice will never be great," he repeated; "but you may make men +believe so." + +"And you will take me?" pleaded Mariana. She stretched out her beautiful +hands. Her eyes prayed. Her flexible tones drooped. + +Signor Morani took her hands in his with kindly reassurance. + +"Yes," he said--"yes; it will keep you out of mischief, at least." + +And it had kept her out of mischief. It had opened a channel for her +emotions. Like a tide, the romanticism of her nature veered towards art. +She became the most fanatical of devotees. She breathed it and lived it. +In her heart it transplanted all other religions, and the ęstheticism of +its expression gained a marvellous hold upon her faith. Above the little +mosaic altar at her bedside she enshrined a bust of Wagner, and she +worshipped it as some more orthodox believer had once worshipped an +enshrined Madonna. At midnight she held devotional services all alone, +sitting before the piano, bending to the uses of a litany the +intellectual rhapsodies of Beethoven or the sensuous repinings of +Chopin, while the little red flame sent up praise and incense from dried +rose leaves and cinnamon to the memories of dead musicians. She +introduced a rare, sensuous beauty into this new worship, as she had +introduced it into the old. She typified the Church when, in its fresh +young passion, and suffused with the dying splendors of paganism, it +turned from the primitive exercises of its founders and revived the +worship of the gracious Madonna of Old Egypt in the worship of the +Madonna of Nazareth, and the flower-scented feasts of Venus in the +Purification of the Virgin. There existed in the girl an unsatisfied +restlessness of self, resulting in the desire for complete submergence +of soul in idea. Her nature veered constantly from extreme to extreme; +there was no semblance of a saner medium, and as a system must have +exponents, the high priests and priestesses of art became her lesser +divinities. + +She began to haunt the Metropolitan Opera-house. From the fifth gallery +she looked down every evening upon an Italian or German landscape. She +herself trembled like a harp swept by invisible fingers; she grew pale +with Marguerite, wept over the dead Juliet, and went mad with the +madness of Lucia. + +When the voice of that fair Bride of Lammermoor who sang for us that +season was borne to her on the notes of a flute which flagged beneath +the exceeding sweetness of the human notes they carried, Mariana grasped +the railing with her quivering hands and bowed her head in an ecstasy of +appreciation. It was the ecstasy with which a monk in medięval days must +have thrilled when he faced in a dim cathedral some beautiful and +earthly Virgin of the great Raphael. It was the purest form of sensuous +self-abnegation. Then, as the curtain fell, she would rise and step +gropingly towards the door, cast into sudden darkness. Wrapped in that +mental state as in a mantle, she would descend the stairs and pass out +into the street. At such times she was as far removed from the existence +to which she was returning as was the poor mad Lucia herself. And then +in the night she would awake and sing softly to herself in the +stillness, lying with seraphic eyes and hands clasped upon her breast, +until the morning sun flashed into her face and the day began. + +There was also a tragic side to her emotions. Her past inheritance of +ages of image-worshippers laid hold upon her. From being merely symbols +of art the singers became divinities in their own right. She haunted +their hotels for fleeting glimpses of them. She bought their photographs +with the money which should have gone for a winter hat. She would gladly +have kissed the dust upon which they trod. After her first hearing of +"Tristan and Isolde," she placed the prima donna's photograph beneath +the bust of Wagner, and worshipped her for weeks as a bright particular +star. + +In the evening she attended the opera alone. Returning when it was over, +she crossed Broadway, boarded a car, and, reaching The Gotham, toiled up +to the fourth landing. She was innocent of prudery, and she went +unharmed. Perhaps her complete absorption in something beyond herself +was her safeguard. At all events, she brushed men by, glanced at them +with unseeing eyes, and passed placidly on her way. + +Mariana was famished for romance, but not for the romance of the street. +She had an instinctive aversion to things common and of vulgar intent. +Her unsatisfied desire was but the craving of a young and impressionable +heart for untried emotion. It was the poetry of living she thirsted +for--poetry in ęsthetic proportions, with a careful adjustment of light +and shade. She desired harmonious effects and exquisite schemes of +color, all as appropriate settings to a romance which she could arrange +and blend in treatment as an artist arranges models of still life. So, +for a time, she expended herself upon great singers. A new tenor +appeared as Edgardo. Upon the stage he was dark and fierce and +impassioned. He made an adorable lover. He sang to Lucia, not to the +audience, and he threw half his arias into his eyes. Mariana was +enraptured. She fell desperately in love. During the day she went about +in meditative abstraction; during the night she turned upon her little +cotton pillow-slip, and wept to think how far below him she must ever +remain. She even wished herself a chorus girl, that she might intercept +his glances. She grew frantically jealous of the prima donna, whom, +also, she adored. She imagined innumerable romances in which he enacted +upon the stage of life the part of Edgardo. Then, through the kindness +of Signor Morani, she was introduced to the object of her regard, and +the awakening was abrupt. He was fat and commonplace. He proved to be +the faithful husband of a red-faced little German wife, and the devoted +father of a number of red-faced German children. He possessed no +qualities for romantic development, and Mariana recovered. + +For a period her susceptibilities abated. The wave of activity spent its +violence. Life flowed for her like a meadow stream, sensitive to faint +impressions from a passing breeze, but calm when the breeze was afar. + +Upon a night of "Carmen" she saw from the fifth gallery a velvet rose +fall from the prima donna's bosom to the stage. When the curtain fell +she rushed madly down and begged it of an usher. She carried it home, +and hung it upon the wall above her bed. At night, before falling +asleep, she would draw the curtains aside, and, in the electric light +that flooded the room, cast her eyes upon the vivid bit of color. In the +early morning she would awake, and, raising herself upon her elbow, +touch it reverently with her hand. It was homage rendered to her own +ambition. + +At The Gotham, her bare little chamber, with its garish wall-paper, was +a source of acute discomfort to her. Once, after a long spell of +pneumonia, she had fallen into a fit of desperation, and had attacked +the paper with a breakfast-knife. The result was a square of whitewashed +wall above the bureau. An atmosphere of harmony was so necessary to her +growth that she seemed to droop and pine in uncongenial environment. In +the apartment-house, with its close, unventilated halls, its creaking +elevator, its wretchedly served dinners, she had always felt strangely +ill at ease. Her last prayer at night was that the morrow might see her +transplanted to richer soil, her first thought upon awakening was that +the coming day was pregnant with possibilities. Life in its entirety, +life with passionate color and emotional fulfilment, was the food she +craved. + +Of Mariana, Mr. Ardly had made a laborious and profound analysis. + +"That young person is a self-igniting taper," he had concluded. "If some +one doesn't apply the match, she will go off of her own accord--and she +will burn herself out before time has cast a wet blanket upon her." + +He himself was a self-contained young fellow, who, like a greater before +him, followed with wisdom both wine and women. His life was regulated by +a theory which he had propounded in youth and attempted to practice in +maturer years. The theory asserted that experience was the one reliable +test of existing conditions. "I refused to believe that alcohol was an +intoxicant," he had once said, "until I tested it." + +When Mariana first arrived, he surprised in his heart an embryonic +sentiment concerning her, and proceeded to crush it as coolly as he +would have crushed a fly that encroached upon the private domain of his +person. + +"I have no dissipations," he explained, when discussing the affair with +Mariana. "I neither drink nor love." + +"Which is unwise," retorted Mariana. "I do both in moderation. And a man +who has never been in love is always a great school-boy. I should be +continually expecting him to tread upon my gown or to break my fan. +Sentiment is the greatest civilizer of the race. If I were you I would +begin immediately." + +"I dislike all effort," returned Ardly, gravely, "and love is cloying. +Over-loving produces mental indigestion, as over-eating produces +physical. I have suffered from it, and experience has made me +abstemious. I shall abstain from falling in love with you." + +"What a pity!" sighed Mariana, lifting her lashes. + +"Well, I can't agree with you," argued Ardly, "and I don't regret it. I +am very comfortable as I am." + +"I am not," retorted Mariana. "I detest the dinners. Who could be +comfortable on overdone mutton and cold potatoes?" + +"Even in the matter of food I am without prejudices," declared the +other. "I had as soon want a good dinner and have a poor one as have a +good one and want none. These are the only conditions with which I am +acquainted. There may be estates where things are more equally adjusted, +but I know nothing of them; I have not experienced them." + +Mariana sighed. "You are as depressing as Mr. Paul," she complained. + +"I only speak of what I know," explained Ardly, complacently. "Upon +other matters I have no opinions, and I calmly repeat that I have found +appetite and gratification to be situated upon opposite sides of a +revolving globe. When one's up the other's down." + +"I shall cut a passage through," said Mariana. "If life doesn't equalize +things, I will." + +"And I will watch the process," remarked Ardly, indolently. + +It was shortly after this that Mariana went to Long Island for a +holiday, spending a couple of weeks in the cottage of an acquaintance, +who, by dint of successive matrimonial ventures, had succeeded in +reaching the equilibrium to which Mariana aspired. + +Upon returning to New York the girl found her distaste for The Gotham to +have trebled. When she had toiled up the dingy stairway and installed +herself in her old place, she sat upon her trunk and looked about her. +Never had the room appeared so dull, so desperately plain. The close +odor caused by lack of ventilation offended her nostrils, and yet she +hesitated to fling back the shutters and reveal the rusty balcony with +its spindling fire-escape, beyond which stretched the sombre outlook, +the elevated road looming like a skeleton in the foreground. The door +into the hall was ajar, and she could see a dull expanse of corridor, +lighted day and night by a solitary and ineffectual electric jet. + +A sob stuck in her throat, and, crossing to the window, she raised it +and threw back the shutters, letting in a thin stream of dust and +sunshine. Her geranium stood where she had left it, and its withered and +yellow leaves smote her with accusing neglect. + +"Oh, you poor thing!" she cried, in an impulsive burst of pity. + +Then she saw that it had been freshly watered, and that its famished +leaves were unfolding. Turning her eyes, they encountered a row of small +pots containing seedlings which lined her neighbor's window, encroaching +slightly upon her own possession. Before them a man was standing, a +watering-can in one hand, a small trowel in the other. As Mariana +stepped upon the fire-escape he turned in evident resentment, glanced at +her indifferently, and resumed his task of invigoration. + +The afternoon sun shone full upon him, and Mariana saw him plainly. He +was young, with stooping shoulders, and he wore a cheap and shabby suit +of clothes, with apparent disregard of their quality. His face was thin +and cleanly shaven, there was a nervous tension about the mouth, and the +hair, falling dark and heavy upon the temples, lent a haggardness to his +colorless and burned-out profile. It was a face in which the poetic +principle was obscured by an ascetic veneering. In his whole appearance +was borne out the suggestion flashing from the eyes--a suggestion of +mental sustentation upon physical force. + +Mariana regarded him mutely. Her gaze was almost tragic in its +intensity. For a moment her lips quivered and her fingers interlaced. +Then she retreated into her room, slamming the shutters after her. +Throwing herself into a chair, she buried her face in her hands. + +"I--I can't have even that to myself!" she said, and burst into tears. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Mariana's neighbor sat in his room. He sat motionless, his head resting +upon his hands, his arms resting upon an office desk, which was plainly +finished and of cheap walnut. At his left elbow a lamp cast an +illumination upon his relaxed and exhausted figure, upon the straight, +dark hair, upon the bulging brow, and upon the sinewy and squarely +shaped hands, with their thin and nervous fingers. + +The desk upon which he leaned was covered with a litter of closely +written letter-sheets, and at the back a row of pigeon-holes contained +an unassorted profusion of manuscripts. + +The walls of the room were lined with roughly constructed shelves of +painted wood, which were filled to overflowing with well-worn volumes in +English, French, and German, Oken's _Die Zeugung_ upon the north side +confronting Darwin's _The Variation of Animals and Plants Under +Domestication_ upon the south. A cabinet in one corner contained a +number of alcoholic specimens of embryonic development, and a small +table near by supported a microscope and several instruments for +physiological experiments. Above the mantel, perhaps arranged in +freakish disregard of superstition, hung a skull and a pair of +cross-bones, and beneath them a series of photographs illustrating the +evolution of rudimentary nervous systems. + +Upon the hearth, within convenient reach of the desk, stood a small +spirit-stove, and on it a coffee-pot, which emitted a strong and +stimulating aroma. Beside it a table was spread, with the remains of a +cold supper and an unused cup and saucer. + +The man lifted his head from his hands, turned up the wick of the lamp, +and took up his pen. + +From without came the rumble of the elevated road and the shrill cries +of a newsboy proclaiming the redundant virtues of the _Evening Post_. A +warm August breeze, entering at the open window, which was raised from +the floor, caused the flame of the lamp to flicker slightly. Outside +upon the fire-escape the young plants were arranged in rows of +systematic precision, their tender leaves revealed in the narrow path of +lamplight leading from the heated room to the iron railing overlooking +the street. With absent-minded elaboration the man drew an irregular +line upon the paper before him. The line bore no relation whatever to +the heading of the paper, which was written in a remarkably firm and +heavy hand, and read: + + "Transmission of Acquired Characteristics." + +Suddenly he laid the pen aside, and rose, wiping the moisture from his +brow with his handkerchief. Then he threw off his coat and drew up his +shirt-sleeves. It was oppressively warm, and the lamp seemed to possess +the heating qualities of a Latrobe stove. For a couple of minutes he +walked slowly up and down the uncarpeted floor. From the adjoining room +came the sound of a piano and a woman singing. He shook his head +impatiently, but the sound continued, and he yawned and stretched his +arms with resentful resignation. After which he lifted the coffee-pot +from the little stove and filled the cup upon the table. + +Returning to his seat, he drank his coffee slowly, allowing his +abstracted gaze to wander through the window and into the city night +without. Upon the drawn shades of the opposite tenement-house he could +trace the shadows of men and women passing to and fro like the +unsubstantial outlines of figures remembered in a dream. His thoughts +fluttered restlessly. He was tired. Yes, but the coffee would get him +into shape again, and he must work. It was barely ten o'clock. The day +had been trying. The experiments made in the college laboratory had been +unsuccessful. He had gone about them wrongly. Professor Myers had been +mistaken in his calculations. It was unfortunate. The opportunity for +work had been excellent, and in September, when the session began, his +lectures at that infernal Woman's College would take a good two hours +daily, to say nothing of the preparations. What a bore it would be! If +he had only money enough to follow out his work independently he might +make a splendid success of it. True, he had spent enough on those +travels and excavations in Egypt and Assyria to have supported an +ordinary Philistine in comfort for an ordinary lifetime. But he did not +regret them. They had given balance to his judgment, and he had acquired +an immense amount of information. And those studies in Ancient India. +Why, they had even more direct bearing upon his theories. Involuntarily +his glance strayed round the book-lined walls and to the manuscripts in +his desk. He devoured the closely written, almost illegible pages with +insatiable eyes--eyes stricken with the mania for knowledge. The bronzed +and sallow face he turned towards the light was suffused with the glow +of a consuming purpose. In its deep-eyed, thin-lipped severity of +drawing, every sensuous curve had been erased by lines of toil. + +He set the cup aside and returned to his work. From a drawer of his desk +he drew a thick volume, consisting of a number of legal-cap sheets, +bound with a systematic regard for subject. Upon the cover was written +in printed letters: "Notes," and beneath: "A History of Man, with +Special Application of the Science of Ontogeny." + +After consulting this briefly he laid it away and fell to writing. From +the adjoining room still came the sound of a woman singing. The voice +was light and flippant. + +"Damn it!" said the man, suddenly, with angry impatience. He said it +vehemently, looking up from his work with nervous irritability. At the +same moment there came a slight tap at his door. + +He laid aside his pen, rose, and opened it. Mr. Paul stood upon the +outside. + +"Well, Mr. Algarcife," he began, grimly, "you see I have broken a +life-long principle and taken a man at his word. I came for the book you +spoke of." + +Algarcife welcomed him impatiently. "So I suppose I must prove your +principle relative, if not erroneous," he answered. His voice was +singularly full and clear. "It was _Milligan on the Vocabulary of +Aboriginal Tasmanians_, was it not? Yes, I think it will aid you." + +Mr. Paul came in and they sat down. Algarcife offered him coffee and +cigars, but he declined. He sat stiffly in his chair and looked at the +other with cynical interest. + +"You write all night on this lye, I suppose?" he said, abruptly. "A +combined production of brains and coffee." + +Algarcife lighted his pipe and leaned back in his chair, blowing gray +circles of smoke upon the atmosphere. + +"You are right," he responded; "I find I do my best work after midnight, +when I am drunk on caffeine or coffee. I suppose it will do for me in +the end." + +Mr. Paul returned his indifferent gaze with one of severity. "You are +all nerves as it is," he said. "You haven't an ounce of good barbarian +blood in your body--merely a colorless machine for ratiocination. I tell +you, there is no bigger fool than the man who, because he possesses a +few brains, forgets that he is an animal." + +The other laughed abstractedly. + +"What wholesome truths you deliver," he said. "I think Luther must have +had your manner. Well, if I were in your place, I should probably say +the same, though less forcibly. But they are theories. You see, I argue +this way: with one man's mind and one man's power of work, I could never +accomplish what I have before me--any more than poor Buckle, with the +brain of a giant, could accomplish what he undertook. It is too big for +a single man in this stage of development. So, with one man's mind, I +intend to do six men's amount of labor. If I hold out, I will have my +reward; if I go to pieces, I shall at least have the satisfaction of a +good fight." + +His voice was distinct and forcible, with a widely varied range of +expression. + +There was a second tap at the door, and Mr. Nevins entered, looking +depressed and ill-humored. + +"Hello, Anthony!" he called. "What! is Mr. Paul squandering your +midnight oil? You should have sent him to bed long ago." + +"It is not my hour for retiring," responded Mr. Paul. + +Anthony interrupted pacifically. + +"Mr. Paul is exhorting me," he said, "and I have no doubt that, with +slight modifications, his sermon may be adapted to your case. He +predicts brain-softening and general senility." + +"An inspired prophecy," returned Mr. Nevins, crossly, "and savoring of +Jeremiah. As for myself, it is but common justice that a man who has +conscientiously refused the cultivation of the mind should not be called +upon to lose what he doesn't possess." Then he grew suddenly cheerful. +"Confound it! What's the use of being a philosopher on paper when you +can be one in practice. What's the use of dying when you can eat, +drink, and be merry?" + +"Eating," remarked Mr. Paul, with depressing effect, "produces +dyspepsia, drinking produces gout." + +"And thought, paresis," added Anthony, lightly. "They are all merely +different forms of dissipation. I have chosen mine; Nevins has chosen +his. Only, as a matter of taste, I'd rather die by work than wine. +Personally, I prefer consumption to apoplexy." + +"There is such a thing as the means justifying the end," responded Mr. +Nevins, in reckless ill-humor. "And it is a great principle. If I wasn't +a fool, I'd make a bonfire of my brush and palette, and start afresh on +a level with my appetite. I would become the apostle of good-living, +which means fast living. I tell you, an hour of downright devilment is +worth all the art since Adam. Aristippus is greater than Raphael." + +"What has gone wrong?" demanded Algarcife, soothingly. "Too much purple +in the 'Andromeda'? I always said that purple was the imperial color of +his satanic majesty. If you had followed the orthodox art of your +college days, and hadn't gone wandering after strange gods, you might +have escaped a dash of that purple melancholia." + +"You're a proper fellow," returned Mr. Nevins, with disgust. "Who was it +that won that last debate in '82 by a glowing defence of Christianity +against agnosticism, and, when the Reverend Miles lit out about the new +orator in his flock, floored him with: 'Was that good? Then what a +magnificent thing I could have made of the other side!'" + +Mr. Paul had opened his book, and glanced up with candid lack of +interest. Anthony laughed languidly. + +"I saw Miles some weeks ago," he said, "and he is still talking about my +'defection,' as he calls it. I couldn't convince him that I was merely +the counsel for a weak case, and that I was always an agnostic at +heart." + +Mr. Nevins lighted a cigar in silence. Then he nodded abruptly towards +the wall. "What's that noise?" he demanded, irritably. + +"That," replied Algarcife, "is a fiend in woman's form, who makes night +hideous. I can't begin to work until she sings herself hoarse, and she +doesn't do that until midnight. Verily, she is possessed of seven +devils, and singing devils at that." + +Mr. Nevins was listening attentively. His irritability had vanished. + +"Why, it's Mariana!" he exclaimed. "Bless her pretty throat! An hour of +Mariana is worth all the spoken or unspoken thoughts of--of Marcus +Aurelius, to say nothing of Solomon." + +Mr. Paul closed his book and looked up gravely. "A worthy young woman," +he observed, "though a trifle fast. As for Solomon, his wisdom has been +greatly exaggerated." + +"Fast!" protested Mr. Nevins. "She's as fast as--as Mr. Paul--" + +"Your insinuation is absurd," returned Mr. Paul, stiffly. But Mr. Nevins +was not to be suppressed. + +"Then don't display your ignorance of such matters. As for this St. +Anthony, he thinks every woman who walks the New York streets a bleached +pattern of virtue. I don't believe he'd know a painted Jezebel unless +she wore a scarlet letter." + +Anthony turned upon him resentfully. "Confound it, Nevins," he said, "I +am not a born fool!" + +"Only an innocent," retorted Mr. Nevins, complacently. + +A resounding rap upon the panels of the door interrupted them. Mr. +Nevins rose. + +"That's Ardly," he said. "He and I are doing New York to-night." + +Ardly came inside, and stood with his hand upon the door-knob. + +"Come on, Nevins," he said. "I've got to do a column on that new +_danseuse_. She dances like a midge, but, by Jove! she has a figure to +swear by--" + +"And escape perjury," added Mr. Nevins. "Mariana says it is false." + +"Mariana," replied Ardly, "is a sworn enemy to polite illusions. She +surveys the stage through a microscope situated upon the end of a +lorgnette. It is a mistake. One should never look at a woman through +glasses unless they be rose-colored ones. A man preserves this +principle, and his faith in plumpness and curves along with it; a woman +penetrates to the padding and powder. Come on, Nevins." + +Mr. Nevins followed him into the hall, and then turned to look in again. +"Algarcife, won't you join us on a jolly little drunk? Won't you, Mr. +Paul?" + +When they had gone, and Mr. Paul had gone likewise, though upon a +different way, Anthony heated the coffee, drank two cups, and resumed +his work. + +"Taken collectively," he remarked, "the human race is a consummate +nuisance. What a deuced opportunity for work the last man will +have--only, most likely, he'll be an ass." + +The next day he passed Mariana on the stairs without seeing her. He was +returning from the college laboratory, and his mind was full of his +experiments. Later in the afternoon, when he watered his plants, he +turned his can, in absent-minded custom, upon the geranium, and saw that +there was a scarlet bloom among the leaves. The sight pleased him. It +was as if he had given sustenance to a famished life. + +But Mariana, engrossed in lesser things, had seen him upon the stairs +and upon the balcony. She still cherished an unreasonable resentment at +what she considered his trespass upon her individual rights; and yet, +despite herself, the trenchant quality in the dark, massive-browed face +had not been without effect upon her. The ascetic self-repression that +chastened his lips, and the utter absence of emotion in the mental heat +of his glance tantalized her in its very unlikeness to her own nature. +She, who thrilled into responsive joy or gloom at reflected light or +shade, found her quick senses awake to each passing impression, and had +learned to recognize her neighbor's step upon the stair; while he, +wrapped in an intellectual trance, created his environment at will, and +was as oblivious of the girl at the other end of the fire-escape as he +was to the articles of furniture in his room. + +It was as if semi-barbarism, in all its exuberance of undisciplined +emotion, had converged with the highest type of modern civilization--the +civilization in which the flesh is degraded from its pedestal and forced +to serve as a jangled vehicle for the progress of the mind. + +The next night, as Algarcife stood at his window looking idly down upon +the street below, he heard the sound of a woman sobbing in the adjoining +room. His first impulse was to hasten in the direction from whence the +sound came. He curbed the impulse with a shake. + +"Hang it," he said, "it is no business of mine!" + +But the suppressed sobbing from the darkness beyond invited him with its +enlistment of his quick sympathies. + +The electric light, falling upon the fire-escape, cast inky shadows from +end to end. They formed themselves into dense outlines, which shivered +as if stirred by a phantom breeze. + +He turned and went back to his desk. Upon the table he had spread the +supper of which he intended partaking at eleven o'clock. For an unknown +reason he had conceived an aversion to the restaurant in the basement, +and seldom entered it. He slept late in the day and worked at night, +and his meals were apt to be at irregular hours. + +He wrote a line, and rose and went back to the window. For an instant he +stood and listened, then stepped out upon the fire-escape and walked +across the shivering shadows towards the open window beyond. + +Upon the little door beneath the window a girl was leaning, her head +bowed upon her outstretched arm. The light in the room beyond was low, +but he could see distinctly the slight outlines of her figure and the +confusion of her heavy hair. She was sobbing softly. + +"I beg your pardon," he said, the sympathetic quality in his voice +dominating, "but I am sure that I can help you." + +His forcible self-confidence exercised a compelling effect. The girl +lifted her head and looked at him. Tears stood in her eyes, and as the +electric light caught the clear drops they cast out scintillant flashes. +Against the dim interior her head, with its nimbus of hair, had the +droop and poise of the head of a medięval saint. + +"Oh, but you don't know how unhappy I am!" she said. + +He spoke as he would have spoken to Mr. Paul in the same circumstances. +"You have no one to whom you can go?" + +"No." + +"Then tell me about it." + +His tone was that in which a physician might inquire the condition of a +patient's digestion. It was absolutely devoid of the recognition of sex. + +"Oh, I have worked so hard!" said Mariana. + +"Yes?" + +"And I hoped to sing in opera, and--Morani tells me that--it will be +impossible." + +"Ah!" In the peculiar power of his voice the exclamation had the warmth +of a handshake. + +Mariana rested her chin upon her clasped hands and looked at him. "He +says it must be a music-hall--or--or nothing," she added. + +He was silent for a moment. He felt that it was a case in which his +sympathy could be exceeded only by his ignorance. "And this is why you +are unhappy?" he asked. "Is there nothing else?" + +She gave a little sob. "I am tired," she said. "My allowance hasn't +come--and I missed my dinner, and I am--hungry." + +Algarcife responded with relieved cheerfulness. + +"Why, we are prepared for that," he said. "I was just sitting down to my +supper, and you will join me." + +In his complete estrangement from the artificial restraints of society, +it seemed to him the simplest of possible adjustments of the difficulty. +He felt that his intervention had not been wholly without beneficial +results. + +Mariana glanced swiftly up into his face. + +"Come!" he said; and she rose and followed him. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +As Mariana crossed the threshold the light dazzled her, and she raised +her hand to her eyes. Then she lowered it and looked at him between +half-closed lids. It was a trick of mannerism which heightened the +subtlety of her smile. In the deep shadows cast by her lashes her eyes +were untranslatable. + +"You are very hospitable," she said. + +"A virtue which covers a multitude of sins," he answered, pleasantly. +"If you will make yourself at home, I'll fix things up a bit." + +He opened the doors of the cupboard and took out a plate and a cup and +saucer, which he placed before her. "I am sorry I can't offer you a +napkin," he said, apologetically, "but they allow me only one a day, and +I had that at luncheon." + +Mariana laughed merrily. The effects of recent tears were visible only +in the added lustre of her glance and the pallor of her face. She had +grown suddenly mirthful. + +"Don't let's be civilized!" she pleaded. "I abhor civilization. It +invented so many unnecessary evils. Barbarians didn't want napkins; they +wanted only food. I am a barbarian." + +Algarcife cut the cold chicken and passed her the bread and butter. + +"Why, none of us are really civilized, you know," he returned, +dogmatically. "True, we have a thin layer of hypocrisy, which we call +civilization. It prompts us to sugar-coat the sins which our forefathers +swallowed in the rough; that is all. It is purely artificial. In a +hundred thousand years it may get soaked in, and then the artificial +refinement will become real and civilization will set in." + +Mariana leaned forward with a pretty show of interest. She did not quite +understand what he meant, but she adapted herself instinctively to +whatever he might mean. + +"And then?" she questioned. + +"And then we will realize that to be civilized is to shrink as +instinctively from inflicting as from enduring pain. Sympathy is merely +a quickening of the imagination, in which state we are able to propel +ourselves mentally into conditions other than our own." His manner was +aggressive in its self-assertiveness. Then he smiled, regarded her with +critical keenness, and lifted the coffee-pot. + +"I sha'n't give you coffee," he said, "because it is not good for you. +You need rest. Why, your hands are trembling! You shall have milk +instead." + +"I don't like milk," returned Mariana, fretfully. "I'd rather have +coffee, please. I want to be stimulated." + +"But not artificially," he responded. His gaze softened. "This is my +party, you know," he said, "and it isn't polite to ask for what is not +offered you. Come here." + +He had risen and was standing beside his desk. Mariana went up to him. +The power of his will had enthralled her, and she felt strangely +submissive. Her coquetry she recognized as an unworthy weapon, and it +was discarded. She grew suddenly shy and nervous, and stood before him +in the flushed timidity of a young feminine thing. + +He had taken a bottle from a shelf and was measuring some dark liquid +into a wine-glass. As Mariana reached him he took her hand with frank +kindliness. In his cool and composed touch there was not so much as a +suggestion of sexual difference. The possibility that, as a woman, she +possessed an attraction for him, as a man, was ignored in its entirety. + +"You have cried half the evening?" + +"Yes." + +"Drink this." His tone was peremptory. + +He gave her the glass, watching her as she looked into it, with the +gleam of a smile in his intent regard. Mariana hesitated an instant. +Then she drank it with a slight grimace. + +"Your hospitality has taken an unpleasant turn," she remarked. "You +might at least give me something to destroy the taste." + +He laughed and pointed to a plate of grapes, and they sat down to +supper. + +The girl glanced about the room critically. Then she looked at her +companion. + +"I don't quite like your room," she observed. "It is grewsome." + +"It is a work-shop," he answered. "But your dislike is pure nonsense. +Skulls and cross-bones are as natural in their way as flesh and blood. +Nothing in nature is repellent to the mind that follows her." + +Mariana repressed a shudder. "I have no doubt that toads are natural +enough in their way," she returned, "but I don't like the way of toads." + +Anthony met her serious protest lightly. + +"You are a beautiful subject for morbid psychology," he said. "Why, +toads are eminently respectable creatures, and if we regard them without +prejudice, we will discover that, as a point of justice, they have an +equal right with ourselves to the possession of this planet. Only, right +is not might, you know." + +"But I love beautiful things," protested Mariana. She looked at him +wistfully, like a child desiring approbation. There was an amber light +in her eyes. + +He smiled upon her. + +"So do I," he made answer; "but to me each one of those nice little +specimens is a special revelation of beauty." + +The girl broke her bread daintily. "You misunderstand me," she said, +with flattering earnestness and a deprecatory inflection in her voice. +Her head drooped sideways on its slender throat. There was a virginal +illusiveness about her that tinged with seriousness the lightness of her +words. "Surely you love art," she said. + +"Oh, I like painting, if that is what you mean," he answered, +carelessly, though her image in his eyes was relieved against a sudden +warmth. "That is, I like Raphael and Murillo and a few of the modern +French fellows. As for music, I don't know one note from another. The +only air I ever caught was 'In the Fragrant Summer-time,' and that was +an accident. I thought it was 'Maryland.'" + +Mariana did not smile. She shrank from him, and he felt as if he had +struck her. + +"It isn't worth your thinking of," he said, "nor am I." + +Mariana protested with her restless hands. + +"Oh, but I can't help thinking of it," she answered. "It is dreadful. +Why, such things are a part of my religion!" + +He returned her startled gaze with one of amusement. + +"I might supply you with an alphabetical dictionary of my peculiar +vices. An unabridged edition would serve for a criminal catalogue as +well. A--Acrimony, Adhesiveness, Atheism, Aggressiveness, Aggravation, +Ambition, Artfulness--" + +"Oh, stop!" cried Mariana. "You bewilder me." + +He leaned back in his chair and fixed his intent gaze upon her. His eyes +were so deeply set as to be almost indistinguishable, but in the spell +of lamplight she saw that the pupils differed in color, one having a +hazel cast, while the other was of a decided gray. + +"Why, I thought you displayed an interest in the subject!" he rejoined. +"You lack the genius of patience." + +"Patience," returned Mariana, with a swift change of manner, "is only +lack of vitality. I haven't an atom of it." + +A shade of the nervous irritability, which appeared from apparently no +provocation, was in his voice as he answered: + +"There is nothing fate likes better than to drill it into us. And it is +not without its usefulness. If patience is the bugbear of youth, it is +the panacea of middle age. We learn to sit and wait as we learn to +accept passivity for passion and indifference for belief. The worst of +it is that it is a lesson which none of us may skip and most of us are +forced to learn by heart." He spoke slowly, his voice softened. Beneath +the veneering of philosophic asceticism, the scarlet veins of primeval +nature were still palpitant. The chill lines of self-restraint in his +face might, in the whirlwind of strong passions, become ingulfed in +chaos. + +With an effort Mariana threw off the spell of his personality. She +straightened herself with an energetic movement. From the childlike her +manner passed to the imperious. Her head poised itself proudly, her eyes +darkened, her lips lost their pliant curve and grew audacious. + +"That is as grewsome as your room," she said. "Let's talk of pleasant +things." + +The changes in her mystified Algarcife. He regarded her gravely. "Of +yourself, or of myself?" he demanded. + +"The first would only display your ignorance. I should prefer the +latter. Begin, please." She had grown vivid. + +He spoke jestingly. "Here goes. Name, Algarcife. Christened Anthony. +Age, twenty-seven years, three weeks, ten days. Height, five feet eleven +inches. Complexion, anęmic. Physique, bad. Disposition, worse. Manners, +still worse. Does the exactness of my information satisfy you?" + +"No;" she enveloped him in her smile. "You haven't told me anything I +want to know. I could have guessed your height, and your manners I have +tested. What were you doing before I came in?" + +"Cursing my luck." + +"And before that?" She leaned forward eagerly. + +"Dogging at a theory of heredity which will reconcile Darwin's gemmules, +Weismann's germ-plasm, and Galton's stirp." + +She wrinkled her brows in perplexity. Her show of interest had not fled. +A woman who cannot talk of the things she knows nothing about might as +well be a man. + +"And you will do it?" she asked. He had a sudden consciousness that no +one had ever been quite so in sympathy with him as this elusive little +woman with the changeable eyes. + +"Well, I hardly think so," he said. "At any rate, I expect to discover +what Spencer would call the germ of truth in each one of them, and then +I suppose I'll formulate a theory of my own which will contain the best +in all of them." + +Her manner did not betray her ignorance of his meaning. + +"And you will explain it all to me when it is finished?" she asked. + +His smile cast a light upon her. + +"If you wish it," he answered, "but I had no idea that you cared for +such things." + +"You did not know me," she responded, reproachfully. "I am very, very +ignorant, but I want so much to learn." Then her voice regained its +brightness. "And you have read all these books?" she questioned. + +He followed with his eyes her swift gestures. + +"Those," he answered, pointing to the north shelves, "I have skimmed. +Those behind you, I have read; and those," he nodded towards his right, +"I know word for word." + +"And what do you do?" The delicacy of her manner imbued the question +with unconscious flattery. + +"I--oh, I eke out an existence with the assistance of the Bodley +College." + +"What have you to do with it? Oh, I beg your pardon! I had forgotten we +were almost strangers." + +He answered, naturally. + +"It is my unhappy fate to endeavor to instil a few brains and a good +deal of information into the heads of sixty-one young females." + +"And don't you like them?" queried Mariana, eagerly. + +"I do not." + +"Why?" + +"What an inquisitor you are, to be sure!" + +"But tell me," she pleaded. + +"Why?" he demanded, in his turn. + +She lowered her lashes, looking at her quiet hands. + +"Because I want so much to know." + +His smiling eyes were probing her. "Tell me why." + +She raised her lashes suddenly and returned his gaze. There was a +wistful sincerity in her eyes. + +"I wish to know," she said, slowly, "so that I may not be like them." + +For a moment he regarded her silently. Then he spoke. "My reasons are +valid. They giggle; they flirt; and they put candy in my pockets." + +"And you don't like women at all?" + +"I like nice, sensible women, who wear square-toed shoes, and who don't +distort themselves with corsets." + +The girl put out her pretty foot in its pointed and high-heeled slipper. +Then she shook her head with mock seriousness. + +"I don't suppose you think that very sensible?" she remarked. + +He looked at it critically. + +"Well, hardly. No, it isn't in the least sensible, but it--it is very +small, isn't it?" + +"Oh yes," responded Mariana, eagerly. She felt a sudden desire to flaunt +her graces in his face. He was watching the play of her hands, but she +became conscious, with an aggrieved surprise, that he was not thinking +of them. + +"But you don't like just mere--mere women?" she asked, gravely. + +"Are you a mere--mere woman?" + +"Yes." + +"Then I like them." + +The radiance that overflowed her eyes startled him. + +"But you aren't just a mere--mere man," she volunteered. + +"But I am--a good deal merer, in fact, than many others. I am a shape of +clay." + +"Then I like shapes of clay," said Mariana. + +For an instant they looked at each other in silence. In Mariana's +self-conscious eyes there was a soft suffusion of shyness; in his +subjective ones there was the quickening of an involuntary interest. + +"Then we agree most amicably," he remarked, quietly. As she rose he +stood facing her. "It is time for your sleep and my work," he added, and +held out his hand. + +As Mariana placed her own within it she flashed whitely with a sudden +resentment of his cool dismissal. + +"Good-night!" she said. + +He looked down at her as she lingered before him. "I want to be of use +to you," he said, frankly, "but things have an unfortunate way of +slipping my memory. If at any time I can serve you, just come to the +fire-escape and call me." + +"No," answered the girl, pettishly, "certainly not." + +His brow wrinkled. "That was rude, I know," he rejoined, "but I meant it +honestly." + +"I have no doubt of it." + +As she turned to go he detained her with a compelling touch. + +"You aren't angry?" + +"No." + +"And you forgive me?" + +"I have nothing to forgive. Indeed, I am grateful for your charity." + +He surveyed her in puzzled scrutiny. "Well, I am sure I sha'n't forget +you," he said. "Yes, I am quite sure of it." + +"What a marvellous memory!" exclaimed Mariana, crossly, and she stepped +out upon the fire-escape. + +"Good-night!" he called. + +"Good-night!" she responded, and entered her room. + +"He is very rude," she whispered as she closed the shutters. In the +half-light she undressed and sat in her night-gown, brushing the heavy +tangles of her hair. Then she lighted the flame before the little altar +and said her prayers; kneeling with bowed head. As she turned off the +light she spoke again. "I am not sure that I don't like rudeness," she +added. + +Meanwhile Algarcife had watched her vanish into the shadows, a smile +lightening the gravity of his face. When she had disappeared he turned +to his desk. With his singular powers of concentration, he had not taken +up his pen before all impressions save those relating to the subject in +hand had been banished from his mind. His expression was buoyant and +alert. Turning over his papers, he passed with a sense of reinvigoration +to the matter before him. + +"Yes; I think, after all, that a strongly modified theory of pangenesis +may survive," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +At the extreme end of the corridor upon which Mariana's door opened +there was a small apartment occupied by three young women from the +South, who were bent upon aims of art. + +They had moved in a month before, and had celebrated a room-warming by +asking Mariana and several of the other lodgers to a feast of beer and +pretzels. Since then the girl had seen them occasionally. She knew that +they lived in a semi-poverty-stricken Bohemia, and that the pretty one +with pink cheeks and a ragged and uncurled fringe of hair, whose name +was Freighley, worked in Mr. Nevins's studio and did chrysanthemums in +oils. She had once heard Mr. Nevins remark that she was a pupil worth +having, and upon asking, "Has she talent?" had met with, "Not a bit, but +she's pretty." + +"Then it is a pity she isn't a model," said Mariana. + +"An example of the eternal contrariness of things," responded Mr. +Nevins. "All the good-looking ones want to paint and all the ugly ones +want to be painted." Then he rumpled his flaxen head. "In this +confounded century everything is in the wrong place, from a woman to her +waist-line." + +After this Mariana accompanied Miss Freighley on students' day to the +Metropolitan Museum, and watched her make a laborious copy of "The +Christian Martyr." Upon returning she was introduced to Miss Hill and +Miss Oliver, who shared the apartment, and was told to make herself at +home. + +Then, one rainy Saturday afternoon there was a knock at her door, and, +opening it, she found Miss Freighley upon the outside. + +"It is our mending afternoon," she said, "and we want you to come and +sit with us. If you have any sewing to do, just bring it." + +Mariana picked up her work-basket, and, finding that her thimble was +missing, began rummaging in a bureau-drawer. + +"I never mend anything until I go to put it on," she said. "It saves so +much trouble." + +Then she found her thimble and followed Miss Freighley into the hall. + +Miss Freighley laughed in a pretty, inconsequential way. She had a soft, +monotonous voice, and spoke with a marked elimination of vowel sounds. + +"We take the last Saturday of the month," she said. "Only Juliet and I +do Gerty's things, because she can't sew, and she cleans our palettes +and brushes in return." + +She swung open the door of the apartment, and they entered a room which +served as studio and general lounging-room in one. + +A tall girl, sitting upon the hearth-rug beside a heap of freshly +laundered garments, stood up and held out a limp, thin hand. + +"I told Carrie she would find you," she said, speaking with a slight +drawl and an affected listlessness. + +She was angular, with a consumptive chest and narrow shoulders. She wore +her hair--which was vivid, like flame, with golden ripples in the +undulations--coiled confusedly upon the crown of her head. Her name was +Juliet Hill. A mistaken but well-known colorist had once traced in her a +likeness to Rossetti's "Beata Beatrix." The tracing had resulted in the +spoiling of a woman without the making of an artist. + +Mariana threw herself upon a divan near the hearth-rug and looked down +upon the pile of clothes. + +"What a lot of them!" she observed, sympathetically. + +Miss Hill drew a stocking from the heap and ran her darning-egg into the +heel to locate a hole. + +"It is, rather," she responded, "but we never mend until everything we +have is in rags. I couldn't find a single pair of stockings this +morning, so I knew it was time." + +"If you had looked into Gerty's bureau-drawer you might have found +them," said Miss Freighley, seating herself upon the end of the divan. +"Gerty never marks her things, and somehow she gets all of ours. +Regularly once a month I institute a search through her belongings, and +discover more of my clothes than I knew I possessed. Here, give me that +night-gown, Juliet. The laundress tore every bit of lace off the sleeve. +What a shame!" + +Mariana removed a guitar from the couch and leaned back among the +pillows, glancing about the room. The walls were covered with coarse +hangings, decorated in vague outlines of flying cranes and vaguer +rushes. Here and there were tacked groups of unframed water-colors and +drawings in charcoal--all crude and fanciful and feminine. Upon a small +shelf above the door stood a plaster bust, and upon it a dejected and +moth-eaten raven--the relic of a past passion for taxidermy. In the +centre of the room were several easels, a desk, with Webster's +Unabridged for a foot-stool, and a collection of palettes, half-used +tubes of paint, and unassorted legs and arms in plaster. + +"How do you ever find anything?" asked Mariana, leaning upon her arm. + +"We don't," responded a small, dark girl, coming from the tiny kitchen +with a dish of cooling caramels in her hand; "we don't find, we just +lose." She placed the dish upon the table and drew up a chair. "I would +mortgage a share of my life if I could turn my old mammy loose in here +for an hour." + +"Gerty used to be particular," explained Miss Freighley; "but it is a +vicious habit, and we broke her of it. Even now it attacks her at +intervals, and she gets out a duster and goes to work." + +"I can't write in a mess," interrupted Miss Oliver, a shade ruefully. "I +haven't written a line since I came to New York." Then she sighed. "I +only wish I hadn't written a word before coming. At home I thought I was +a genius; now I know I am a fool." + +"I have felt the same way," said Mariana, sympathetically, "but it +doesn't last. The first stage-manager I went to I almost fell at his +feet; the next almost fell at mine. Neither of them gave me a place, but +they taught me the value of men." + +"I don't think it's worth learning," returned Miss Oliver, passing her +caramels. "Try one, and see if they are hard." + +"Poor Gerty!" drawled Miss Hill, watching Mariana bite the caramel. "She +faces editors and all kinds of bad characters. Her views of life are +depressing." + +"They are not views," remonstrated Miss Oliver, "they are facts. Facts +are always depressing, except when they are maddening." + +"I have begged her to leave off writing and take to water-color or china +painting," said Miss Freighley, cheerfully, "but she won't." + +"How can she?" asked Mariana. + +"Of course I can't," retorted Miss Oliver, shortly. "I never had a +paint-brush in my hand in my life, except when I was cleaning it." + +Miss Freighley laid her sewing aside and stretched her arms. + +"It only requires a little determination," she said, "and I have it. I +got tired of Alabama. I couldn't come to New York without an object, so +I invented one. It was as good as any other, and I stuck to it." + +Miss Hill shook her head, and her glorious hair shone like amber. + +"Art is serious," she said, slowly. She was just entering the life-class +at the Art League. + +"But the artist is not," returned Miss Freighley, "and one can be an +artist without having any art. I am. They think at home I am learning to +paint pictures to go on the parlor wall in place of the portraits that +were burned in the war. But I am not. I am here because I love New York, +and--" + +"Claude Nevins," concluded Miss Oliver. + +Mariana looked up with interest. "How nice!" she said. "He told me you +were awfully pretty." + +Miss Freighley blushed and laughed. + +"Nonsense!" she rejoined; "but Gerty is so faithful to her young fellow +down South that it has gone to her brain." + +"I am faithful because I have no opportunity for faithlessness," sang +Gerty to an accompaniment she was picking upon the guitar. "I have been +in love one--two--six times since I came to New York. Once it was with +an editor, who accepted my first story. He was short and thick and +gray-haired, but I loved him. Once it was with that dark, ill-fed man +who rooms next to Mariana. He almost knocked me down upon the stairway +and forgot to apologize. I have forgotten the honorable others, as the +Japanese say, but I know it is six times, because whenever it happened I +made a little cross-mark on my desk, and there are six of them." + +"It must have been Mr. Ardly," said Mariana. "I never look at him +without thinking what an adorable lover he would make." + +"He has such nice hands," said Miss Oliver. "I do like a man with nice +hands." + +"And he is clean-shaven," added Miss Freighley. "I detest a man with a +beard." + +Miss Hill crossed her thin ankles upon the hearth. + +"Love should be taken seriously," she said, with a wistful look in her +dark eyes. + +Miss Freighley's pretty, inconsequent laugh broke in. + +"That is one of Juliet's platitudes," she said. "But, my dear, it +shouldn't be taken seriously. Indeed, it shouldn't be taken at +all--except in cases of extreme _ennui_, and then in broken doses. The +women who take men seriously--and taking love means taking men, of +course--sit down at home and grow shapeless and have babies galore. To +grow shapeless is the fate of the woman who takes sentiment seriously. +It is a more convincing argument against it than all the statistics of +the divorce court--" + +"For the Lord's sake, Carrie, beware of woman's rights," protested Miss +Oliver. "That is exactly what Mrs. Simpson said in her lecture on 'Our +Tyrant, Man.' Why, those dear old aunts of yours in Alabama have +inserted an additional clause in their Litany: 'From intemperance, evil +desires, and woman's suffrage, good Lord deliver us!' They are grounded +in the belief that the new woman is an _édition de luxe_ of the devil." + +Mariana rose and shook out her skirts. "I must go," she said, "and you +haven't done a bit of work." + +"So we haven't," replied Miss Hill, picking up her needle. "But take +some caramels--do." + +Mariana took a caramel and went out into the hall. Algarcife's door was +open, and he was standing upon the threshold talking to Claude Nevins. + +As Mariana passed, Nevins smiled and called to her: + +"I say, Miss Musin, here is a vandal who complains that you make night +hideous." + +Algarcife scowled. + +"Nevins is a fool," he retorted, "and if he doesn't know it, he ought to +be told so." + +"Thanks," returned Nevins, amiably, "but I have long since learned not +to believe anything I hear." + +Anthony's irritation increased. "I should have thought the presumptive +evidence sufficient to overcome any personal bias," he replied. + +Nevins spread out his hands with an imperturbable shrug. + +"My dear fellow, I never found my conclusions upon presumptive evidence. +Had I done so, I should hold life to be a hollow mockery--whereas I am +convinced that it is a deuced solid one." + +"You are so bad-tempered--both of you," said Mariana; "but, Mr. +Algarcife, do you really object to my singing? I can't keep silent, you +know." + +Algarcife smiled. + +"I never supposed that you could," he answered. "And as for music, I had +as soon listen to you as to--to Patti." + +"Not that he values your accomplishments more, but Patti's less," +observed Nevins, placidly. + +"On the other hand, I should say that Miss Musin would make decidedly +the less noise," said Anthony. + +"He's a brute, isn't he, Mariana?" asked Nevins--and added, "Now I never +said you made anything hideous, did I?" + +Mariana laughed, looking a little vexed. "If you wouldn't always repeat +everything you hear other people say, it would be wiser," she responded, +tartly. + +"Such is the reward of virtue," sighed Nevins. "All my life I have been +held as responsible for other people's speeches as for my own. And all +from a conscientious endeavor to let my neighbors see themselves as +others see them--" + +Algarcife smiled good-humoredly. "Whatever bad qualities Nevins may +possess," he said, "he has at least the courage of his convictions--" + +Nevins shrugged his shoulders. + +"I don't know about the convictions," he rejoined, "but I've got the +courage all right." Then he looked at Mariana. "Is that an implement of +housewifery that I see?" he demanded. + +"I have been to a darning-party," she answered, "but we didn't darn +anything--not even circumstances." + +"Lucky circumstances!" ejaculated Nevins. Then he lowered his voice. "I +should not have believed it of you," he protested; "to attend a +darning-party, and to leave not only me, but my socks, outside." + +Mariana flushed angrily. + +"You are insufferable," she said, "and you haven't a particle of +tact--not a particle. Only yesterday I heard you tell Mr. Morris that +his head looked like an advertisement for sapolio, and the day before +you told Miss Freighley that I said she didn't know how to dress her +hair." + +"It was true," said Nevins. "You can't make a liar of me, Mariana." + +"I wish you wouldn't call me Mariana," she retorted; and he went upon +his way with a lament. + +As Mariana laid her hand upon her door-knob she looked at Anthony. + +"Mr. Algarcife," she said, "do you really mind my singing so very much?" + +From the end of the corridor Nevins's voice was heard chanting: + + "How fickle women are, + Fickle as falling star." + +"I wish that Nevins would attend to his own affairs," Algarcife +responded. "As for me, you may dance a break-down every night of your +life, and, if it amuses you, I'll grin and bear it." + + + + +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 ęsthetic 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. + +"You laugh at me," she added. "You were kinder to that woman--" + +He broke in upon her, perplexity giving place to amusement. + +"Oh!" he said; "so that is what you mean! Why, if you were to lose your +hat, I shouldn't laugh, I assure you." + +Mariana walked on silently. Her eyes were bent upon the gray sidewalk, +there was a faint flush in her face. A line of men seated upon the +benches beside the way surveyed her with interest. + +"Miss Musin!" + +Her face quickened. + +"I have a confession to make." + +She looked up inquiringly. A finger of sunlight pierced the branches of +an elm and pointed to her upraised face. + +"I have rather bad manners," he went on. "It is a failing which you must +accept as you accept the color of my hair--" + +Mariana smiled. + +"I say just what I think," he added. + +Mariana frowned. + +"That is what I complain of," she responded. Then she laughed so +brightly that a tiny child, toddling with a toy upon the walk, looked up +and clapped its hands. + +His eyes warmed. + +"But you will take me for better or for worse?" he demanded. + +"Could it be better?" she asked, demurely. + +"That is a matter of opinion." + +They left the park and turned into a cross-town street. The distant +blocks sloped down into the blue blur of the river, from which several +gaunt, gray masts rose like phantom wrecks evolved from the mist. Beyond +them the filmy outline of the opposite shore was revealed. + +Suddenly Mariana stopped. + +"This is Morani's, and I must go in." She held out her hand. + +"How is the voice?" he asked. + +"I am nursing it. Some day you shall hear it." + +"I have heard it," he responded. + +She smiled. + +"Oh, I forgot. You are next door. Well, some day you shall hear it in +opera." + +"Shall I?" + +"And I shall sing Elsa with Alvary. My God! I would give ten years of my +life for that--to sing with Alvary." + +He smiled at the warmth in her words and, as he smiled he became +conscious that her artistic passion ignited the fire of a more material +passion in himself. A fugitive desire seized him to possess the woman +before him, body and brain. From the quivering of his pulses he knew +that the physical nature he had drugged had stirred in response to a +passing appeal. + +"Good-bye," said Mariana. She tripped lightly up the brown-stone steps. +As she opened the outer door she turned with a smile and a nod. Then the +door closed and he went on his way. But the leaping of his pulses was +not appeased. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +One morning, several days later, Mariana, looking from her window, saw +Anthony standing upon the fire-escape. He had thrown a handful of crumbs +to a swarm of noisy sparrows quarrelling about his feet. + +As he stood there with the morning sunlight flashing upon his face and +gilding the dark abundance of his hair, the singularly mystic beauty of +his appearance was brought into bold relief. It was a beauty which +contained no suggestion of physical supremacy. He seemed the survival of +a lost type--of those purified prophets of old who walked with God and +trampled upon the flesh which was His handiwork. It was the striking +contrast between the intellectual tenor of his mind and its physical +expression which emphasized his personality. To the boldest advance in +scientific progress he had the effect of uniting a suggestion of that +poetized mysticism which constitutes the charm of a remote past. With +the addition of the yellow robe and a beggar's bowl, he might have been +transformed into one of the Enlightened of nigh on three thousand years +ago, and have followed the Blessed One upon his pilgrimage towards +Nirvana. The modernity of his mind was almost tantalizing in its +inconsistency with his external aspect. + +Mariana, looking through the open window, smiled unconsciously. Anthony +glanced up, saw her, and nodded. + +"Good-morning," he called. "Won't you come out and help quiet these +rogues?" + +Mariana opened the little door beneath the window and stepped outside. +She looked shy and girlish, and the flutter with which she greeted him +had a quaint suggestion of flattery. + +He came towards her, and they stood together beside the railing. Beneath +them the noise of trade and traffic went on tumultuously. Overhead the +sky was of a still, intense blueness, the horizon flecked by several +church-spires, which rose sharply against the burning remoteness. Across +the tenement roofs lines of drying garments fluttered like banners. + +Mariana, in her cotton gown of dull blue, cast a slender shadow across +the fire-escape. In the morning light her eyes showed gray and limpid. +The sallow tones of her skin were exaggerated, and the peculiar harmony +of hair and brows and complexion was strongly marked. She was looking +her plainest, and she knew it. + +But Anthony did not. He had seen her, perhaps, half a dozen times, and +upon each occasion he had discovered his previous conceptions of her to +be erroneous. Her extreme mobility of mood and manner at once perplexed +and attracted him. Yesterday he had resolved her character into a +compound of surface emotions. Now he told himself that she was cool and +calm and sweetly reasonable. + +"I am glad you like sparrows," she said, "because nobody else does, and, +somehow, it doesn't seem fair. You do like them, don't you?" + +"I believe," he answered, "that I have two passions beyond the usual +number with which man is supplied--a passion for books and a passion for +animals. I can't say I have a special regard for sparrows, but I like +them. They are hardy little fellows, though a trifle pugnacious, and +they have learned the value of co-operation." + +"I had a canary," remarked Mariana, with pathos, "but it died. +Everything that belongs to me always dies, sooner or later." + +He laughed, looking at her with quizzical humor. "Do you expect them to +escape the common fate?" he demanded; and then: "If there is anything +that could give me an attack of horrors sooner than a dancing dog--and +there isn't--it would be a bird in a cage. I left my last lodgings +because my neighbor kept a mocking-bird outside of her window. If it had +been a canary I might have endured it, but I knew that if I stayed there +a week longer I should break in and set that bird free. I used to hear +it at night beating itself against the cage." + +"Oh, hush!" said Mariana, putting her hands to her ears. She wondered +vaguely at his peculiar sensitiveness of sympathy. It was a type of +manhood that she had not before encountered--one as unlike the jovial, +fox-hunting heroes of her childish days as mind is unlike matter. She +remembered that among them such expressions would have been regarded as +a mark of effeminacy and ruthlessly laughed to scorn. She even +remembered that her own father had denounced a prohibition of +prize-fighting as "mawkish rot." This eccentric type of nervous vigor, +in which all remnants of semi-barbarism were apparently extinguished, +possessed a fascination for her in its very strangeness. In his +character all those active virtues around which her youthful romances +were woven held no place. Patriotism was modified into a sense of +general humanity; chivalry was tempered into commonplace politeness. She +did not know that the force which attracted her was but a dominant +mentality; that where the mind holds sway the character is modified +accordingly. With a great expenditure of nerve force those attributes +which result from physical hardihood occupy a less prominent part. In +Anthony she beheld, without knowing it, a forced and abnormal result of +existing conditions. Nature often foreshadows a coming civilization by +an advance-guard of individuals. As a supreme test she places a century +before his time the victim of her experiments in vivisection. And a +character that might have fitted with uncut edges into the circle of +existence, had he but been permitted to insert himself at the proper +moment, has often been trampled into nothingness by the incessant trend +of the inopportune. The priest of the coming generation is the pariah of +the present, and the dogma of to-morrow the heresy of to-day. + +To Mariana's ignorant eyes Anthony seemed one in whom passion had been +annihilated. In reality it was only smothered beneath the weight of a +strenuous will. Let the pressure be removed, and it would burst forth +the fiercer for its long confinement, ingulfing perhaps the whole +organism in its destructive flame. + +"Oh, hush!" Mariana had said, and turned from him. "You seem to delight +in unpleasant things. I make it a point to believe that suffering and +death do not exist. I _know_ they do, but I _believe_ they do not." + +He drew nearer. Across his face she saw a sudden flash--so vivid that it +seemed the awakening of a dormant element in his nature. "You are +wonderfully vital," he said. "There is as much life in you as there is +in a dozen of us poor effete mortals. What is your secret?" + +The girl leaned her arm upon the railing and rested her chin in her +hand. She looked up at him and her eyes grew darker. "It is the pure +animal love of existence," she answered. "I love the world. I love +living and breathing, and feeling the blood quicken in my veins. I love +dancing and singing and eating and sleeping. The simple sensuousness of +life is delicious to me. If I could not be a queen, I had rather be a +beggar upon the road-side than to be nothing. If I could not be a human +being, I had rather be a butterfly in the sunshine than not to be at +all. So long as I had the blue sky and the air and the world about me I +could not be miserable. It is life--life in its physical +fulfilment--that I love. So long as they leave me the open world I can +be happy. Only, if I were taken and shut up in an ugly dungeon I should +want to die. And even then there would be hope." + +She had spoken passionately, the words coming quickly from between her +parted lips. She seemed so light and etherealized as to be almost +bodiless. The materialistic philosophy to which she gave utterance was +spiritualized by her own illusiveness. + +For an instant she hesitated, looking across the tenement roofs to the +horizon beyond. Then she went on: "I am different from you--oh, so +different! Where you think, I feel. You are all mind, I am all senses. I +am only fulfilling my place in nature when I am hearing or seeing or +feeling beautiful things. My sense of beauty is my soul." + +Anthony watched her with steadfast intentness. He had never before seen +her in this mood, and it was a new surprise to him. His former +generalizations were displaced. + +But if he had known it, the present aspect was a result of his own +influence upon Mariana. In a moment of contrition for small deceptions, +she had been precipitated into an extravagant self-abasement. + +"You are disappointed," she added, presently, meeting his gaze. "You +expected something different, but I am shallow, and I can't help it." It +was like her that in the tendency to self-depreciation she was as +sincere as she had been in the former tendency to self-esteem. + +And perhaps Anthony was the juster judge of the two. He was certainly +the more dispassionate. + +"I have told you," concluded Mariana, with an eager catch at the +redeeming grace, "because I want to be truthful." + +"My dear girl," responded Anthony, a warm friendliness in his voice, +"you might have spared yourself this little piece of analysis. It is as +useless as most morbid rot of the kind. It doesn't in the least affect +what I think of you, and what I do think of you is of little +consequence." + +"But what do you think?" demanded Mariana. + +"I think that you know yourself just a little less well than you know +that old lady wheeling her cart of vegetables in the street below. Had +she, by the way, known herself a little better she would not have flown +into such a rage because she spilled a few. If we knew ourselves we +would see that things are not very much our fault, after all, and that a +few slips the more or less on our uphill road are very little matter." + +Mariana glowed suddenly. She looked up at him, a woman's regard for +power warming her eyes. To her impressionable temperament there seemed +an element of sublimity in his ethical composure. + +"Teach me," she said, simply. Anthony smiled. If he seemed a Stoic to +Mariana, it was not because he was one, and perhaps he was conscious of +it. But our conceptions of others are colored solely by their attitudes +towards ourselves, and not in the least by their attitudes towards the +universe, which, when all is said, is of far less consequence. + +"I should have first to learn the lesson myself," he answered. + +"Would you, if you could?" asked Mariana. + +For an instant he looked at her thoughtfully. "Teach you what?" he +questioned. "Teach you to endure instead of to enjoy? To know instead of +to believe? To play with skulls and cross-bones instead of with flowers +and sunshine? No, I think not." + +Mariana grew radiant. She felt a desire to force from him a reluctant +confession of liking. "Why wouldn't you?" she demanded. + +"Well, on the whole, I think your present point of view better suited to +you. And everything, after all, is in the point of view." He leaned +against the railing, looking down into the street. "Look over and tell +me what you see. Is it not the color of those purple egg-plants in the +grocer's stall? the pretty girl in that big hat, standing upon the +corner? the roguish faces of those ragamuffins at play? Well, I see +these, but I see also the drooping figure of the woman beside the stall; +the consumptive girl with the heavy bundle, going from her work; the +panting horses that draw the surface cars." + +They both gazed silently from the balcony. Then Mariana turned away. "It +is the hour for my music," she said. "I must go." + +The sunlight caught the nimbus around her head and brightened it with +veins of gold. + +"All joy goes with you," he answered, lightly. "And I shall return to +work." + +"All frivolity, you mean," laughed Mariana, and she left him with a +nod. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +According to the theory that vices are but virtues run to seed, +moderation was the dominant characteristic of Anthony Algarcife. At the +time of his meeting with Mariana, his natural tendencies, whatever they +may have been, were atrophied in the barren soil of long +self-repression. It is only when one is freed from the prejudices +engendered by the play of the affections that one's horizon is unbroken +by a vision of the objects in the foreground, and the forest is no +longer lost in consideration of the trees. + +And it was under the spell of this moderation that Mariana had fallen. +Her own virtues were of that particular quality of which the species is +by no means immutable, and of which the crossing often produces an +opposite variety, since a union of negative virtues has not infrequently +begotten a positive vice. But Mariana's character, of which at that time +even the verdict of society had not deprived her, possessed a jewel in +its inconsistency. Her very faults were rendered generous by their +vivacity, and redeemed her from inflexibility, that most unforgivable +trait in womanhood, which, after all, is merely firmness crystallized. +And as the lack of formativeness in Mariana left her responsive to the +influences beneath which she came, so the anger of yesterday was +tempered into the tenderness of to-day, and her nature modified by the +changes rung upon her moods. + +So far, the influence of Anthony had worked for good. The girl was +startled at the wave of gentleness which pervaded her. With a sudden +fervor she strained towards an indistinct ideal of goodness, an ideal +borrowed in its sanctity from a superficial study of Thomas ą Kempis, +and in its unreality from the faded recollection of certain +Sunday-school literature read in her childhood. She aspired to be good +almost as much as she had once aspired to be famous, and set about it +with quite as unprincipled an abandon. But her ambition for holiness was +ill-timed. An excess of virtue is often as disastrous a form of +dissipation as an excess of vice, and the wreck of one's neighbor's +peace of mind no less to be deplored than the wreck of one's own +physique. For a fool may jog shoulder to shoulder with a comfortable +sinner, but it takes a philosopher to support the presence of an +unmitigated saint. + +So it was as well that Mariana's aspirations were short-lived. She +confessed them to Anthony, and they were overruled. + +"My dear girl," he said, "stop fasting, and don't wear away your knees +at prayer. All the breath in your body isn't going to affect the +decision of Omniscience. The only duty you owe to the universe is to +scatter as much pleasure in life as you can. Eat good red beef and ward +off anęmia, and give the time you have wasted in devotions to exercise +and fresh air. If we are all doomed to hell, you can't turn the earth +out of its track by bodily maceration. Evil plus evil doesn't equal +good." + +Mariana ceased praying and went out to walk. She was conscious of +strange quickenings of sympathy. She loved the world and the people that +passed her and the children laughing in the gutter. She bought a pot of +primroses from the flower-stall at the corner, and, having spent a +week's car-fare, walked a couple of miles in the sun to carry them to a +rheumatic old lady who had once been kind to her. With patient +good-humor she sat an hour in the sick-room, and, when she left, the +rheumatic old lady kissed and blessed her. + +The praise stirred her pulses with pleasure. She wondered if she might +not become a Sister of Charity and spend her life in ministering to +others, and when a ragged boot-black in the street begged for a dime she +gave him the money she had saved for a pair of gloves, and glorified the +sacrifice by the smile of a Saint Elizabeth. She felt that she would +like to give some one the coat from her back, and, as she passed in and +out of the crowd around her, her heart stirred in imaginative sympathy +for humanity. That vital recognition of the fellowship of man which is +as transient as it is inspiring, uplifted her. She wished that some one +from the crowd would single her out, saying, "I am wretched, comfort +me!" or, "I am starving, feed me!" + +But no one did so. They looked at her with indifferent eyes, and her +impulses recoiled upon themselves. At that moment she felt capable of +complete self-abnegation in the cause of mankind, and even commonplace +goodness possessed an attraction. But she realized that the desire to +sacrifice is short-lived, and that, after all, it is easier to lay down +one's life for the human race than to endure the idiosyncrasies of its +atoms. + +To us who adopt the proprieties as a profession and wear respectability +for a mantle, unauthorized impulses in any form are to be contemned, and +Mariana, flushed with generous desires, was as unacceptable as Mariana +submerged in self. + +After paying a couple of calls the girl's spirit of altruism evaporated. +It was warm and close, and the sun made her head ache, while the fatigue +from the unusual exercise produced a fit of ill-humor. She wondered why +she had left her room, and then looked at her soiled gloves and +regretted her encounter with the boot-black. The recollection of the +pot of primroses and the week's car-fare caused her even more annoyance. + +A block from The Gotham she ran upon Jerome Ardly, and her irritation +vanished. + +"Hello!" he ejaculated, "you are as white as a sheet. Too much September +sun. Had luncheon?" + +"Yes," responded Mariana; and she added, plaintively, "I am so tired. I +have walked myself to death--and all for nothing." + +"Form of monomania?" he inquired, sympathetically. "Nothing short of +arrant idiocy would take any one out for nothing on a day like this." + +Mariana looked at him and laughed. "I have been paying calls," she said. +"I went to see Mrs. Simpson and she told me all about the rights of +women. It was very instructive." + +"If they resemble the rights of man," remarked Ardly, "they are not to +be seen, heard, or felt." + +"Ah, but it is all the fault of men," responded Mariana; "she told me +so. She said that men were the only things that kept us back." + +Ardly laughed. + +"And you?" he inquired. + +"I! Oh, I agreed with her! I told her that if men hindered us we would +stamp them out." + +"The devil you did!" retorted Ardly. "I know of no one better fitted for +the job. You will begin on your fellow-lodgers, I suppose. As if you had +not been treading on our hearts for the last year!" + +Mariana lowered her parasol and entered The Gotham. As she mounted the +stairs she turned towards him. The time had been when the presence of +Jerome Ardly had caused a flutter among the tremulous strings of her +heart, but that had been before Anthony crossed her horizon. And yet +coquetry was not extinguished. "_Our?_" she emphasized, smiling. + +Ardly grasped at the hand which lay upon the railing, but Mariana eluded +him. + +"Why, all of us," he returned, with unabashed good-nature--"poor devils +that we are! Myself, Nevins, Mr. Paul, to say nothing of Algarcife." + +Mariana's color rose swiftly. "Oh, nonsense!" she laughed, and sped +upward. + +Upon the landing Mr. Nevins opened the door of his studio and greeted +them. + +"I say, Miss Musin, won't you come and have a look at 'Andromeda'?" + +Mariana entered the studio, and Ardly followed her. In the centre of the +room a tea-table was spread, and Miss Freighley, a smear of yellow ochre +on the sleeve where she had accidentally wiped her brush, was engaged in +brewing the beverage. Upon the hearth-rug Juliet Hill was standing, her +tall, undeveloped figure and vivid hair relieved against a dull-brown +hanging, and around the "Andromeda" a group of youthful artists were +gathered. + +"How delightful!" exclaimed Mariana, genially. She kissed Miss +Freighley, and pressed the extended hands of the others with +demonstrative cordiality. + +"Oh, if I could only paint!" she said to Miss Freighley, in affectionate +undertones. "If I could only go about with a box of brushes, without +feeling silly, and wear a smudge of paint upon my sleeve without being +dishonest." And she wiped Miss Freighley's sleeve upon her handkerchief. + +"Thanks," responded that young lady, amiably; "but you can carry a +music-roll, you know, which is much handier and a good deal tidier." + +Mariana had turned to the "Andromeda." "Oh, Mr. Ponsonby!" she remarked, +to one of the group surrounding it, "don't you uphold me in thinking the +shadows upon the throat too heavy?" + +Mr. Ponsonby protested that he would uphold her in any statement she +might choose to make, so long as he was not expected to agree with her. +Mariana appealed to Mr. Nevins, who declared that he would agree with +her in any matter whatsoever, so long as he was not expected to change +his "Andromeda." + +Mariana frowned. "Mr. Ardly thinks as I do--now don't you?" + +Ardly sauntered over to them. + +"Why, of course," he assented. "That shadow was put on with a pitchfork. +I am positively surprised at you, Nevins." + +"On your conscience?" demanded Mariana. + +"Haven't any," protested Ardly, indolently. "Left it in Boston. It is +indigenous to the soil, and won't bear transplanting." + +"Miss Ramsey brought hers with her," replied Mariana, with a smile. "It +worries her dreadfully. It is just like a ball on the leg of a convict. +She has to drag it wherever she goes, and it makes her awfully tired +sometimes." + +"A good Bohemian conscience is the only variety worth possessing," +observed Mr. Nevins. "It changes color with every change of scene and +revolves upon an axis. Hurrah for Bohemia!" + +"Hear! hear!" cried Mariana, gayly. She lifted a glass of sherry, and, +lighting a cigarette, sprang upon the music-stool. Mr. Ponsonby drew up +a chair and seated himself at the piano, and, blowing a cloud of smoke +about her head, Mariana sang a rollicking song of the street. + +As she finished, the door opened and Algarcife stood upon the threshold. +For a moment he gazed at the scene--at Mariana poised upon the +music-stool with upraised arms, her hat hanging by an elastic from her +shoulder, her head circled by wreaths of cigarette smoke, her eyes +reckless. His look was expressive of absolute amazement. Innocent as the +scene was in reality, to him it seemed an orgy of abandon, and there +was not a man in the room who would not have understood Mariana at that +moment better than he did. + +"I beg your pardon, Nevins," he said, abruptly. "No, I won't come in." +And the door closed. + +But Mariana had seen his face, and, with a flutter of impulse and a +precipitate rush, she was after him. + +"Mr. Algarcife!" Her voice broke. + +He turned and faced her. + +"What is it?" + +"You--you looked so shocked!" she cried. + +She stood before him, breathless and warm, the smoking cigarette still +in her hand. + +"Throw that away!" he said. + +She took a step forward, struggling like a netted bird beneath the spell +of his power. + +"How absurd!" she said, softly. The cigarette dropped from her fingers +to the floor. + +He laughed. His eyes burned steadily upon her. Before his gaze her +lashes wavered and fell, but not until she had seen the flashing of +latent impulse in his face. + +"But you dropped it," he said. + +"Yes." + +"Why did you?" + +Mariana made a desperate effort at her old fearlessness. It failed her. +Her eyes were upon the floor, but she felt his gaze piercing her fallen +lids. She spoke hurriedly. + +"Because--because I did," she answered. + +He came a step nearer. She felt that the passion in his glance was +straining at the leash of self-control. She did not know that desire was +insurgent against the dominion of will, and was waging a combat with +fire and sword. + +She put up her hands. + +"You are my friend," she said. Her tones faltered. The haze of idealism +with which he had surrounded her was suffused with a roseate glow. He +caught her hands. His face had grown dark and set, and the lines upon +his forehead seemed ineffaceable. + +Mariana was conscious of a sudden uplifting within her. It was as if her +heart had broken into song. She stood motionless, her hands closing upon +his detaining ones. Her face was vivid with animation, and there was a +suggestion of frank surrender in her attitude. He caught his breath +sharply. Then his accustomed composure fell upon him. His mouth relaxed +its nervous tension, and the electric current which had burned his +fingers was dissipated. + +At the other end of the corridor a door opened and shut, and some one +came whistling along the hall. + +"It is Mr. Sellars," said Mariana, smiling. "I recognize his whistling +two blocks away, because it is always out of tune. He thinks he is +whistling 'Robin Hood,' but he is mistaken." + +"Is he?" asked Anthony, abstractedly. His mind was less agile than +Mariana's, and he found more difficulty in spanning the space between +sentiment and comic opera. + +Mr. Sellars greeted them cheerfully and passed on. + +"I must go," said Mariana. "I promised to dine with Miss Ramsey." + +There was an aggrieved note in her voice, but it had no connection with +Anthony. With the passing of the enjoyment of emotion for the sake of +the mental exaltation which accompanied it, the dramatic instinct +reasserted itself. She even experienced a mild resentment against fate +that the emotional altitude she had craved should have been revealed to +her in the damp and unventilated corridor of The Gotham apartment-house. +At a glance from Anthony the resentment would have vanished, and Mariana +have been swept once more into a maze of romanticism. But he did not +look at her, and the half-conscious demand for scenic effects was +unsatisfied. + +"Yes," said Anthony, "it is late." His voice sounded hushed and +constrained, and, as he stood aside to allow her to pass, he looked +beyond and not at the girl. + +She turned from him and entered her room. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Mariana found Miss Ramsey lying at length upon the hearth-rug in her +tiny sitting-room, her head resting upon an eider-down cushion. + +At the girl's entrance she looked up nervously. "I can't rest," she +said, with a plaintive intonation, "and I am so tired. But when I shut +my eyes I see spread before me all the work I've got to do to-morrow." + +She sat up, passing her hand restlessly across her forehead. In her +appearance there might be detected an almost fierce renunciation of +youth. Her gown was exaggerated in severity, and her colorless and +uncurled hair was strained from her forehead and worn in a tight knot +upon the crown of her head. The prettiness of her face was almost +aggressive amid contrasting disfigurements. + +Miss Ramsey belonged to that numerous army of women who fulfil life as +they fulfil an appointment at the dentist's--with a desperate sense of +duty and shaken nerves. And beside such commonplace tragedies all +dramatic climaxes show purposeless. The saints of old, who were +sanctified by fire and sword, might well shrink from the martyrdom +sustained, smiling, by many who have endured the rack of daily despair. +To be a martyr for an hour is so much less heroic than to be a man for a +lifetime. + +But in Miss Ramsey's worn little body, incased in its network of nerves, +there was the passionless determination of her Puritan ancestors. Life +had been thrust upon her, and she accepted it. In much the same spirit +she would have accepted hell. Perhaps, in meeting the latter, a little +cheerfulness might have been added to positive pain--since of all +tragedies her present tragedy of unfulfilment was the most tragic of +all. + +Mariana knelt beside her and kissed her with quick sympathy. + +"I can't rest," repeated the elder woman, fretfully. "I can't rest for +thinking of the work I must do to-morrow." + +"Don't think of it," remonstrated Mariana. "This isn't to-morrow, so +there is no use thinking of it." + +In Miss Ramsey's eyes there shone a flicker of girlishness which, had +fate willed it, might have irradiated her whole face. + +"I have been wondering," added Mariana, softly, "what you need, and I +believe it is a canary. I will buy you a canary when my allowance +comes." + +For the girl had looked into her own heart and had read an unwritten +law. She had seen sanctification through love, and she felt that a woman +may owe her salvation to a canary. + +"How could I care for it?" asked the other, a little wistfully. "I have +no time. But it would be nice to own something." + +Then they left the hearth-rug and ate dinner, and Mariana drove the +overhanging cloud from Miss Ramsey's eyes. The desire to be first with +all who surrounded her had prompted her to ingratiate herself in every +heart that throbbed and ached within. The Gotham, from little, +overworked Miss Ramsey to the smaller and more overworked maid who +dusted her chamber. + +After dinner, when Mariana returned to her room, she found a letter +awaiting her. It was from her father, and, as was usual with his +utterances, it was straight and to the mark. + +"I have met with reverses," it stated, "and the family is growing large. +In my present position I find it impossible to continue your allowance, +and I think that, on the whole, your duty is at home. My wife has much +care with the children, and you would be of service in educating them." + +Mariana dropped the letter and sat motionless. In a flash she realized +all that it meant. It meant returning to drudgery and hideous monotony. +It meant returning to the house she hated and to the atmosphere that +stifled her. It meant a colorless life of poverty and sordid +self-denial. It meant relinquishing her art and Anthony. + +With a rush of impulse she stepped out upon the fire-escape, the letter +fluttering in her hand. + +"Mr. Algarcife!" she called, softly. + +As his figure darkened the lighted space between the window-sashes she +went towards him. He faced her in surprise. "What is it?" he inquired, +abruptly. + +Mariana held out the letter, and then followed him as he re-entered his +room. + +"I cannot do it!" she said, passionately. "I cannot! I cannot!" + +Without heeding her, Anthony unfolded the letter, read it and reread it +with judicial composure; after which he folded it again, placed it in +the envelope, and stood holding it in his right hand. The only visible +effect it produced upon him was a nervous twitching of his thin lips. + +"And what have you decided?" he asked, slowly. + +Mariana interlaced her fingers impatiently. She looked small and white, +and excitement caused her eyes to appear abnormally large. Her features +quivered and her tone was tremulous. + +"I will not go back," she protested. "I will not! Oh, I will not!" + +"Is it so bad?" He still held the letter. + +"Bad! It is worse than--than anything. If I had stayed there I should +have gone mad. It was paralyzing me inch by inch. Oh, if you could only +know what it is--a dusty, dirty little house, smelling of cabbage, a +troop of screaming children, and quarrels all day long." + +He met her outburst with a remonstrative gesture, but there was a mellow +light in his eyes and his face had softened. As if resenting a voluntary +restraint, he shook back a lock of hair that had fallen upon his +forehead. + +"But your father?" + +Mariana looked at him as if he represented the bar of judgment and she +were pleading her cause. She spoke with feverish conviction. + +"Oh, he doesn't want me! If you only knew what a relief it was to him +when I came away. Things were so much quieter. He likes his wife and I +hate her, so we don't agree. There is never any peace when I am +there--never." + +"And the children?" His eyes met Mariana's, and again his lips twitched +nervously. He held the check-rein of desire with a relentless hand, but +the struggle told. + +"They are horrid," responded Mariana, insistently. "They are all hers. +If they had really belonged to me, I wouldn't have left them, but they +didn't, not one. And I won't teach them. I'd rather teach the children +of that shoemaker across the way. I'd rather scrub the streets." + +Anthony smiled, and the tenderness in his eyes rained upon her. The fact +that she had thrown herself upon his sympathy completed the charm she +exercised over him. + +Still he held himself in hand. + +"You know of nothing that could call you back?" he asked. + +"Nothing," answered Mariana. "I shouldn't like to starve, but I'd almost +as soon starve as live on cabbage." Then she faced him tragically. "My +father's wife is a very coarse woman. She has cabbage one day and onions +the next." + +The smile in Anthony's eyes deepened. "It would be impossible to select +a more wholesome article of food than the latter," he observed. + +But Mariana was unmoved. + +"Before I left, it was horrible," she continued. "Whenever onions were +served I would leave the table. My father's wife would get angry and +that would make me angry." + +"A congenial family." + +"But when we get angry we quarrel. It is our nature to do so." She +lifted her lashes. "And when we quarrel we talk a great deal, and some +of us talk very loud. That is unpleasant, isn't it?" + +"Very," Algarcife commented. "I find, by the way, that I am beginning to +harbor a sympathy for your father's wife." + +Mariana stared at him and shook her head. + +"I wasn't nice to her," she admitted, "but she is such a loud woman. I +am never nice to people I dislike--but I don't dislike many." + +She smiled. Algarcife took a step forward, but checked himself. "We will +talk it over--to-morrow," he said, and his voice sounded cold from +constraint. + +"I won't go back," protested Mariana. "I--I will marry Mr. Paul first." + +He held out his hand, and it closed firmly over the one she gave him. +"You will not do that, at all events," he said; "for Mr. Paul's sake, as +well as your own." + +Then he drew aside, and Mariana went back to her room. + +Anthony recrossed the window-sill and paced slowly up and down the +uncarpeted floor. His head was bent and his gaze preoccupied, but there +was composure in his bearing. He had sent the girl away that he might +think before acting. Not that he was not fully aware what the result of +his meditation would be, but that for six years he had been in training +to resist impulse, and the habit was strong. But there are things +stronger than habit, and emotion is among them. In a man who has neither +squandered feeling in excesses nor succumbed to the allurement of the +senses, passion, when once aroused, is trebly puissant, and is apt to +sweep all lesser desires as chaff before the whirlwind. In the love of +such a man there is of necessity the freshness of adolescence and the +tenacity of maturity. When one has not expended lightly the fulness of +desire, the supply is constantly augmented, and its force will be in +proportion to the force of the pressure by which it has been restrained. +Algarcife, pacing to and fro between his book-lined walls, felt the +current of his being straining towards emotion, and knew that the +dominance of will was over. In the realization there existed a tinge of +regret, and with the rationality which characterized his mental attitude +he lamented that the pulseless sanity of his past was broken. And yet he +loved Mariana--loved her with a love that would grow with his growth and +strengthen with his weakness. He bowed his head, and his hands clinched, +while the edge of his blood was sharpened. He beheld her eyes, curtains +veiling formless purity--he felt the touch of her hands, the breath of +her lips--he heard the rustle of her skirts--and the virginal femininity +of her hovered like an atmosphere about him. + +Presently he crossed to the fire-escape, stepped outside, hesitated an +instant, and then went to Mariana's window. The shutters were closed, +but the light burned behind them. + +"Mariana!" he called; and again, "Mariana!" + +Through the slats of the shutters the figure of Mariana was visible in +high relief against the brightness. + +"What is it?" she asked, coming nearer. + +He spoke slowly and with constraint. + +"Mariana, you will not marry Mr. Paul." + +She laughed. The sound was like wine in his blood, and constraint was +shattered. + +"Is there any obstacle?" she inquired. + +"There will be," he answered, and his voice rang clear. + +"What?" She was leaning against the shutters. He felt her breath upon +his brow. + +"You will marry me." + +"Oh!" gasped Mariana, and was silent. + +Suddenly he surrendered self-control. "Open the shutters," he said. + +The shutters were unfastened, they swung back, and Mariana came out. She +looked very young, her hair hung about her shoulders, and in the dim +light her face showed small and white. For a moment they stood +motionless, each dumb before the knowledge of the other's dominance. +Anthony looked at her in heated silence. His face was pale, his eyes +glowing. + +"Mariana!" He did not move nearer, but his voice thrilled her like a +caress. She shrank from him, and a heavy shadow fell between them. + +"Mariana, you will marry me?" In the stillness following his words she +heard the sharpness of his breathing. + +"I--I am not good enough," said Mariana. + +"My saint!" + +As if impelled, she leaned towards him, and he caught her in his arms. +Beneath them the noise of traffic went on, and with it the hunger and +the thirst and the weariness, but they stood above it all, and he felt +the beating of her pulses as he held her. + +"Say you love me," he pleaded--"say it." His breath burned her forehead. + +"Oh, don't you see?" she asked--"don't you see?" + +She lifted her head and he took her hands and drew her from the darkness +into the light and looked into her eyes. They shone like lamps +illuminating an altar, and the altar was his own. + +"Yes," he said; "but say it." + +Mariana was silent for an instant, and when she spoke her voice was +vibrant with passion. + +"You are my love, and I love you," she answered. "And I?" + +"The desire of my eyes." + +She came nearer, laying one hand upon his arm. He did not move, and his +arm hung motionless, but his eyes were hot. + +"I am yours," she said, slowly, "for ever and ever, to have and to hold, +to leave or to take--yours utterly." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +The news of Mariana's engagement was received without enthusiasm in The +Gotham. A resentment against innovations of so sweeping an order was +visible in the bearing of a number of the lodgers, and Mr. Nevins was +heard publicly expressing his disapproval. "I never got comfortably +settled anywhere in my life," he announced, "that somebody didn't step +in and disarrange matters. At the last place the head waiter married the +cook, and now Algarcife is marrying Mariana. After our discovering her, +too. I say, it's a beastly shame!" + +Mr. Ardly was of one mind with him; so was Mr. Morris. Alone, of all the +table, Mr. Paul stood firm upon the opposite side. An hour after the +news was out he encountered Algarcife upon the stairs and smiled +compassionately. + +"I have heard with concern," he began, stiffly, "that you contemplate +taking a serious step." + +"Indeed?" returned Anthony, with embarrassment. "I believe I do +contemplate something of the kind, but I had hoped to get it over before +anybody heard of it." + +"Such things travel fast," commented Mr. Paul, cheerfully. "I think I +may say that I was in possession of the fact five minutes after your +ultimate decision was reached. It is a serious step, as I have said. As +for the young woman, I have no doubt of her worthiness, though I have +heard contrary opinions--" + +"Who has dared?" demanded Anthony. + +"Merely opinions, my dear sir, and the right of private judgment is what +we stand on. But, I repeat, I have no doubt of her uprightness. It is +not the individual, sir, but the office. It is the office that is at +fault." + +Mr. Paul passed on, and upon the next landing Algarcife found Mr. Nevins +in wait. + +"Look here, Algarcife," he remonstrated, "I don't call this fair play, +you know! I've had my eye on Mariana for the last twelve months!" + +A thunder-cloud broke upon Anthony's brow. "Then you will be kind enough +to remove it!" he retorted, angrily. + +"Oh, come off!" protested Mr. Nevins. "Why, Mariana and I were chums +before you darkened this blessed Gotham! She'd have married me long ago +if I'd had the funds." + +"Confound you!" exclaimed Anthony. "Can't you hold your tongue?" + +Mr. Nevins smiled amiably and spread out his hands. + +"No, I cannot," he answered, imperturbably. "Say, old man, don't get +riled! You'll let me appear at the wedding, won't you?" + +Algarcife strode on in a rage, which was not appeased by Ardly's voice +singing out from his open door. + +"Congratulations, Algarcife! You are a lucky dog! Like to change shoes." + +Upon the balcony he found Mariana, with a blossom of scarlet geranium in +her hair. She stretched out both hands and flashed him a smile like a +caress. "You look positively furious," she observed. + +Algarcife's sensitiveness had caused him to treat Mariana much as he +would have treated a Galatea in Dresden, had one been in his possession. +But Claude Nevins had annoyed him, and he spoke irritably. + +"I wish you would have nothing to do with that fellow Nevins," he said. + +"Why, what has he done?" + +"Done? Why, he's an ass--a consummate ass! He told me he had his eye on +you!" + +Mariana's laugh pealed out. She raised her hand and brushed the heavy +hair from his forehead. Then she tried to brush the lines from his brow, +but they would not go. + +"Why, he's going to give me a supper the night before our marriage," she +said; "that is, they all are--Mr. Ardly, Mr. Sellars, and the rest. They +made a pot of money for it, and each one of them contributed a share, +and it is quite a large pot. We are to have champagne, and I am to sing, +and so will Mr. Nevins. I wanted them to ask you, but Mr. Nevins said +you'd be a damper, and Mr. Ardly said you would be bored." + +"Probably," interpolated Anthony. + +"But I insisted I wanted you, so Mr. Ardly said they would have to have +you, and Mr. Nevins said they'd have Mr. Paul, if I made a point of it; +but they thought I might give them one jolly evening before settling +down, so I said I would." + +"You will do nothing of the kind," retorted Algarcife. + +"But they are so anxious. It will be such a dreadful disappointment to +them." + +"I will not have it." + +"But I've done it before." + +"Don't tell me of it. You want to go, and without me?" + +"Of course I'd rather you should be there, but it is cruel to disappoint +them," Mariana objected, "when they have made such a nice pot of money." + +"But I do not like it," said Anthony. + +Mariana laughed into his eyes. "Then you sha'n't have it," she said, and +leaned against the railing and touched his arm with her fingers. "Say +you love me, and I will not go," she added. + +Anthony did not touch the hand that lay upon his arm. His mood was too +deep for caresses. + +"If you knew how I love you," he said, slowly--"if you only knew! There +is no happiness in it; it is agony. I am afraid--afraid for the first +time in my life--afraid of losing you." + +"You shall never lose me." + +"It is a horrible thing, this fear--this fear for something outside of +yourself!" He spoke with a sudden, half-fierce possession. "You are +mine," he said, "and you love me!" + +Mariana pressed closer to his side. "If I had not come," she began, +softly, "you would have read and worked and fed the sparrows, and you +would never have known it." + +"But you came." The hand upon the railing relaxed. "My mother was a +Creole," he continued. "She came from New Orleans to marry my father, +and died because the North was cold and her heart was in the South. You +are my South, and the world is cold, for my heart is in you." + +"I have wanted love all my life," said Mariana, "and now I have found +it. I have thought before that I had it, but it was only a shadow. This +is real. As real as myself--as real as this railing. I feel glad--oh, so +glad!--and I feel tender. I should like to pray and go softly. I should +like to make that old woman at the flower-stall happy and to freshen the +withered flowers. I should like to kiss the children playing on the +sidewalk. See how merry they look," and she leaned far over. "I should +like to pat the head of that yellow dog in the gutter. I should like to +make the whole world glad--because of you." + +"Mariana!" + +"The world is beautiful, and I love you; but I am sorry--oh, so +sorry!--for the people in the street." + +"Forget them, beloved, and think of me." + +"But you taught me to think of them." + +"I will teach you to think of me." + +"That I have learned by heart." + +"Mariana!" + +They stood with locked hands upon the balcony, and the roar of the +elevated road came up to them, and the old flower-woman put up her +withered flowers and went her way, and the children's laughter grew +fainter upon the air, and the yellow dog gnawed at a rock that it took +for a bone; and the great, great wheel ground on, grinding to each man +and to each dog according to his kind his share of the things written +and unwritten in the book of life. + + * * * * * + +A week later they were married. Mariana had coveted a church ceremony, +and Anthony had desired a registrar's office, so they compromised, and +the service was read in Mr. Speares's study. + +"I should have dearly liked the 'Lohengrin March' and stained-glass +windows," remarked Mariana, a little regretfully, as they walked +homeward. "It seems as if something were missing. I can't tell just +what." + +"What does it matter?" asked Algarcife, cheerfully. "A street corner and +an organ-grinder would have answered my purpose, had he been legally +empowered to pronounce the blessing. It is all rot, I suppose, but I'd +face every priest and rabbi in New York if they could bind us closer." + +He smiled at Mariana. His eager face looked almost boyish, and he walked +with the confident air of one who is sure of his pathway. + +"But they could not," added Mariana, and they both laughed, because they +were young and life was before them. + +They retained the rooms in The Gotham with the fire-escape outside the +windows, though Anthony found that his income, after deducting a portion +for Mariana's expenses, was barely sufficient. He had not realized +before how complete was his reliance for existence upon the Bodley +College. Even in the thrill of his first happiness there was a haunting +vision of Mariana reduced to poverty and himself powerless. He +endeavored to insure an independent livelihood by contributing +semi-scientific articles to various reviews, but the work was +uncongenial, and he felt it to be a failure. The basis of his mental +attitude was too firmly embedded to yield superficial product, and he +tasted the knowledge that, had he known less, he might have lived +easier. + +At this time his great work was laid aside, a sacrifice to necessity, +and he spent his days and nights in unmurmuring toil for the sake of +Mariana. He was willing to labor, so long as he might love in the +intervals of rest. + +As for Mariana, she was vividly alive. Beneath the warmth of emotion her +nature expanded into fulfilment, and with fulfilment awoke the subtle +charm of her personality. + +"Have you seen Mariana?" inquired Nevins of Ardly one day. "If so, you +have seen a woman in love." + +Ardly smiled and flicked the ashes from his cigar. + +"Is she?" he asked, cynically; "or is it that the froth of sentiment +above her heart is troubled and she believes the depth of passion is +stirred? I have lived, my dear fellow, as you probably know, and I have +seen strange things, but the strangest of these is the way of a maid +with a man." + +"Be that as it may, she is charming," returned Nevins. "And Algarcife +ought to thank his stars, though why she married him is a mystery I +relegate to the general unravelling of judgment-day." + +"She probably had sense enough to appreciate the most brilliant man in +New York," concluded Ardly, loyally, as he took up a volume of +Maupassant and departed. + +And that Mariana did appreciate Algarcife was not to be questioned. She +threw herself into the worship of him with absolute disregard of all +retarding interests. When he was near, she lavished demonstrations upon +him; when he was away, she sat with folded hands and dreamed day-dreams. +She had given up her music, and she even went so far as to declare that +she would give up her acquaintances, that they might be sufficient unto +each other. For his sake she discussed theories which she did not +understand, and accepted doctrines of which she had once been +intolerant. That emotional energy which had led her imagination into +devious ways had at last, she told herself, found its appropriate +channel. Even the stringent economy which was forced upon them was +turned into merriment by the play of Mariana's humor. + +"Life must only be taken seriously," she said, "when it has ceased to be +a jest, and that will be when one has grown too dull to see the +point--for the point is always there." + +"And sometimes it pricks," laughed Anthony. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +In an up-town block, a stone's-throw west of Fifth Avenue, stands the +Church of the Immaculate Conception. It is a newly erected structure of +gray stone, between two rows of expressionless tenements, and, despite +the aggressive finality emphasized in its architecture, wearing a +general air of holding its ground by sheer force of stolidity. + +The interior of the church is less suggestive of modernity, and bears, +on the whole, a surface relationship to a medięval cathedral. The purple +light filtering through the stained-glass windows is, in its essential +quality, a European importation, and the altar-piece is a passable +reproduction of a painting of Murillo's. + +More than fifty years ago the church, then an unpretentious building of +red brick, endowed neither with rood-screen nor waxen candles, had +called to its rectorship the Reverend Clement Speares, a youthful leader +of the ritualistic element in Episcopalianism. Father Speares heard the +call and accepted the charge, and within a dozen years he had succeeded +in trebling the number of his congregation, and in exchanging the +red-brick building for the present Church of the Immaculate Conception, +with its mystic light of medięvalism. + +The congregation, of that class who toil not, neither spin, but before +whose raiment Easter lilies falter, was fashionable, and also wealthy. +The single-hearted zeal which its priest had put into fifty years of +service had failed to wean his flock from a taste for the flesh-pots. +In return for the generosity with which they supported their place of +worship and its appurtenances, they claimed the indefeasible right to +regulate their own attire and to reserve their pews from the +encroachment of aliens. They were willing to erect a mission chapel in +the slums, but they submitted to no trespassing upon the exclusiveness +of their accustomed preserves. + +Father Speares, who, had his temporal power been in proportion to his +ecclesiastical influence, would have thrown open the Holy of Holies to +the beggar in the street, and have knelt with equal charity between the +Pharisees and Publicans, resigned himself to the recognition of +spiritual caste, and devoted his days to Fifth Avenue and his evenings +to the Bowery. + +To his honor be it said that he made no more valiant stand for the +salvation of the one than of the other. A soul was a soul to him, and +personal cleanliness a matter of taste. + +He was a man of resolute convictions and unswerving purpose. If he did +not possess eloquence of speech, he possessed sincerity of mind, which +is quite as rare, and very nearly as effective. He had a benevolent +countenance combined with a sympathetic manner, and the combination +exercised a charm over those of his hearers who attended his church in +the endeavor to narcotize troublesome nerves. Unconsciously, by his +adoption of celibacy from the mother church, he had borrowed from the +elder faith the powerful weapon of romanticism, exciting the imaginative +qualities, while he emphasized the maxim of the right of private +judgment by rejecting the dogma of papal infallibility. + +But since the Church of the Immaculate Conception had risen into being +with Father Speares, there was an Ishmaelitish rumor afloat that with +Father Speares it would pass away. Father Speares himself was not +insensible to the danger, and with the fervor of an enthusiast he +labored to perpetuate the ceremonials his soul loved. With the force of +a revelation there was borne upon him the conception that on him and his +successors rested the mission to impel the conservative wing of +Episcopalianism into that assimilation to Roman Catholicism whose +resultant is the Ritualistic movement. Unto this end he had spent more +than fifty years of labor. At the close of the nineteenth century he +stood a picturesque and pathetic figure, combating with a medięval +eloquence the advancing spirit of his time, a representative of the lost +age of faith lingering far into the new-found age of rationalism. + +When Anthony Algarcife, a young orphan, had been sent to him, he had +taken the child into his confidence. + +"I will help you," the boy had said, enthusiastically--"I will help +you." And he rolled up his little shirt-sleeves in the desire to settle +spiritual differences in the good old fashion of physical force. + +Father Speares had smiled and patted him upon the shoulder. "Please God, +you shall, my boy!" he had answered, and had made the child a +white-robed acolyte, that he might ignite by youthful hands the fires of +faith. + +Anthony had been a disappointment, he had said, but of the bitterness of +the disappointment he had made no mention. Beneath his teaching he had +seen the young mind unfold and expand strenuously, and then, while his +eager eyes were watching, he had seen it shoot from him and beyond his +grasp, trampling his cherished convictions beneath ruthless feet. + +"It is all rubbish," Anthony had declared in the first intolerance of +his youth. "The mental world is filled with a lot of decaying theology, +which has been accumulating for centuries. It remains for us to sweep it +away." + +"And you would sweep me with it," said Father Speares, a little +bitterly. + +"The ground must be cleared," returned Anthony. "You are sitting upon +the rubbish, as a miser in Pompeii might have sat upon his gold while +Vesuvius overflowed. It is wiser to flee and leave hoarded treasure to +be ingulfed. That the rubbish was once sound theology, I grant, but it +has crumbled, and its usefulness of a thousand years ago will not it +save from the ash-heap of outgrown ideas to-day." + +Father Speares sighed and set his lips. "The boy is young," he said, +with the yearning self-deception of age. "It will pass, and he will +return the stronger for his wandering." + +But the event had not borne out his prophecy. It did not pass, and +Anthony did not return. + +"It is my head," he explained, half irritably. "There is a wall of +scepticism surrounding my brain, through which only the toughest facts +may penetrate. I am minus the faculty of credulity." + +"Or reverence," Father Speares added, reproachfully. "You regard +spiritual things as a deaf man regards sound or a blind man sight." + +Anthony's irritation triumphed. + +"Or as a man awake regards a dream," he suggested. "The film of +superstition has cleared from my eyes, and I see. The truth is that I +regard all religions exactly as you regard all except the one which you +inherited. An accident of birth has made you a Christian instead of a +Moslem or a Brahman, that is all." + +"And a twist of the mind has made you an atheist." + +"As you please--atheist, agnostic, sceptic, what you will. It only means +that you offer me an irrational assumption, and I reject it. It is the +custom of you theologians to fit ugly epithets to your opponents, +whereas the denial of Christianity no more argues atheism than the +denial of Confucianism does. It merely proves that a man refuses to +acknowledge any one of the gods which men have created, and that he +leaves the ultimate essence outside his generalizations. Such a man has +learned the first lesson in knowledge--the lesson of his own ignorance." + +"And has missed the greater lesson of the wisdom of God." + +Algarcife shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is no use," he said; "I can't believe, and I wouldn't if I could." + +So he had gone from Father Speares into the world. Virile, strenuous, +and possessed with intellectual passion, he had closed the doors of his +mind upon commonplaces, and with the improvidence from which mental +stamina failed to redeem him had wedded himself to poverty and science. + +Five years after leaving Father Speares's roof he returned with Mariana +at his side. + +"We have come to be married," he announced. + +Father Speares gasped and suggested prudence. "It is unwise," he +remonstrated--"it is utterly unwise." + +"I agree with you," admitted Anthony. "It is unwise, and we know it; but +there is nothing else to be done--is there, Mariana?" + +Mariana looked into Father Speares's face and smiled. + +"Of course you are right," she said, "and we are very foolish, but--but +there really isn't anything else to do." + +And Father Speares was silenced. He looked at the license a little +ruefully, read the service, and sent them off with a benediction. + +"God knows, I wish you happiness," he assured Mariana when she kissed +him. + +Several months later, meeting Algarcife on Broadway, he repeated the +words. + +"I am happy," returned Algarcife, emphatically. "Mariana is an angel." + +"I am glad to hear it," said Father Speares, and he sighed irrelevantly. +"A good woman is a jewel of rare value." + +The term "good woman," applied to Mariana, gave Anthony a sense of +unfitness. Mariana was certainly a jewel, but, somehow, it had never +occurred to him to look upon her as a "good woman." + +"She is very charming," he remarked, quietly. + +Father Speares was regarding him critically. "You are not looking well," +he said. "Is it work or worry?" + +Algarcife shook his head impatiently. "I--oh, I am all right," he +rejoined. "A little extra work, that's all." + +"Your book?" + +Algarcife's face contracted, and the harassed expression about his mouth +deepened. + +"No, not my book," he answered, hastily. "I've put that aside for a +while. I am trying a hand at bread-winning." + +"With satisfactory results, I hope." + +Anthony's laugh was slightly constrained. + +"Why, certainly! Am I the man to fail?" + +"I don't know," commented Father Speares--"I don't know. I never thought +of you in that light, somehow. But if I can help you, remember that you +were once my boy." + +Anthony held out his hand quickly, his voice trembling. + +"You are generous--generous as you have always been, but--I am all +right." + +They parted, Algarcife turning into a cross street. He walked slowly, +and the harassed lines did not fade from his mouth. He seemed to have +grown older within the last few months, and the fight he was making had +bowed his shoulders and sown the seeds of future furrows upon his face. + +At the corner he bought a box of sardines and a pound of crackers for +Mariana, who liked a late supper. Then he crossed to The Gotham and +ascended the stairs. + +He found Mariana in a dressing-sack of pink flannel, sitting upon the +bed, and engaged in manufacturing an opera-bonnet out of a bit of black +gauze and a few pink rose-buds. She was trying it on as he entered, and, +catching sight of him, did not remove it as she raised her hand +warningly. "Tell me if it is becoming before you kiss me," she +commanded, pressing her thimble against her lips. + +Anthony drew back and surveyed her. + +"Of course it is," he replied; "but what is it, anyway?" + +Mariana laughed and leaned towards him. + +"A bonnet, of course; not a coal-scuttle or a lamp-shade." + +Then she took it from her head and held it before her, turning it +critically from side to side. + +"Don't you think it might have a few violets against the hair, just +above the left temple? I am sure I could take some out of my last +summer's hat." + +She left the bed and stood upon a chair, to place the bonnet in a box +upon the top of the wardrobe. "As a scientific problem it should +interest you," she observed. "I created it out of nothing." + +Anthony caught her as she descended from the chair. + +"As a possible adornment for your head it interests me still more," he +replied. + +"Because you haven't been married long enough to discover what an empty +little head it is?" + +"Because it is the dearest head in the world, and the wisest. But what a +thriftless house-keeper, not to have set the table!" A door had been cut +into his study, and he glanced through. "Do you think you are still +below Mason and Dixon's line, where time is not recognized?" + +"I forgot it," said Mariana; "but there isn't any bread, so you must go +after it. Oh, you didn't get sardines again, did you? I said potted +ham--and it is really a very small chicken they sent us." + +"Well, no matter. It might have been a chop. By the way, I met Mr. +Speares--" + +"Father Speares," corrected Mariana. + +"Mr. or Father, he's a nice old chap, isn't he?" + +"He's a saint," said Mariana. Then she grew serious. "If you could have +gone into the Church--honestly, I mean--how pleased he would have been, +dearest." + +"Yes; but I couldn't, you know, and if I had I could not have married +you. He is High Church, you see. Celibacy is his pet institution." + +Mariana colored. "Then I am glad you didn't." She flung herself upon +him; then, drawing back, added, wistfully, "But you wouldn't have been +poor." + +"Do you find it so hard?" + +"I hate it--for you. You work so hard. And I can't help you." + +"My beloved!" + +"I mind it most for you. But, of course, I feel badly when the +washer-woman comes and there isn't any money--and I should like to have +some gloves--" + +"You shall have them, my darling. Why didn't you tell me?" + +Mariana leaned upon his breast and swept her loosened hair across his +arm. "It doesn't matter very much," she answered. "If I were starving +and you kissed me I should forget it." And she added, with +characteristic inconsequence: "Only I haven't been out for several days +because I didn't have any." + +"You shall have them to-morrow. Is there anything else, dearest?" + +"Nothing!" laughed Mariana. + +She went to the mirror and began coiling her hair. From the glass her +eyes met Anthony's, and she threw him a smiling glance. + +"I have been reading one of your books," she said, pointing with the +brush; "there it is." + +Anthony lifted the volume from the bureau and grew serious. "Mill?" he +observed. "It is a good start. Every woman should know political +economy. I am glad it interests you." + +"I haven't gone beyond the first page yet," returned Mariana, putting up +both hands to fluff her aureole, and pausing to run her fingers over her +eyebrows in the attempt to narrow them. "There was something in the +first page about 'a web of muslin,' and, somehow, it suggested to me the +idea of making that bonnet. Odd, wasn't it? And I am so glad I read it, +for I am sure I should never have thought of the bonnet otherwise--and +it is becoming." + +"But you like Mill?" + +"Oh yes," said Mariana; "I find him very suggestive." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Anthony and Mariana founded their life together upon well-worn +principles. They accepted in its entirety the fallacy that love is a +self-sustaining force, independent of material conditions. + +"So long as we love each other," Mariana declared, "nothing matters." + +And Anthony upheld this declaration. To Algarcife those first months of +intimate association were inexpressibly fresh and inspiriting. That +acute sense of nearness to Mariana supplied what had been a void in his +existence, and he looked back upon the time he had spent without her as +a colorless stretch of undifferentiated days. + +And yet, with a feminine presence beside him, work was less easy. In the +evenings, when Mariana followed him to his study and seated herself in a +rocking-chair beneath the lamplight, he sometimes experienced a vague +recognition of its inappropriateness. He found the old absorption to +have grown intractable, and the creak of Mariana's rocker, or the low +humming of her voice, was sufficient to surprise in him that repressed +irascibility from which he had never been able to shake himself free. +Even in the midst of his passionate delight in her, a profound +melancholy would seize him at times, and he would find the cravings of +his intellectual nature harassed by the superficial tenor of his daily +employment. Again, as Mariana sat in the lamplight, her swift fingers +busy with some useless bit of millinery, he would regard her with a +sudden tightening of his pulses, and a thrill of fear at the prospect +of a coming separation. The droop of her head, the contour of her face +where the bone of her chin was accentuated by thinness, the soft line of +throat above the full collar, the nimbus of hair shining in the light, +the fall of her skirt, the slender slippered feet, aroused in him a +tumultuous sense of possession. He would turn from his writing to rest +upon her a warm and magnetic glance, before which her lowered lashes +would be lifted, her pensive lips break into a smile. + +Then, again, the instinct for solitude, which his years of study had +intensified, would reawaken, and the creaking of the rocker would act as +an irritant upon his nerves. + +It was at such a moment that Mariana had looked up and spoken, the +bright inflection of her voice aggravating the interruption. + +"Anthony!" + +Algarcife turned towards her, his pen raised as if in self-defence. + +"When did you begin to love me?" + +The pen was lowered, Algarcife smiled. "In the beginning," he answered; +then he frowned, his tone grew captious. "I can't, Mariana," he +protested--"I really can't. I must get this work over." + +"You are always working." + +"Heaven knows, I am! If I weren't, we would starve." + +"It is horrible to be poor." + +"We don't improve matters by exclaiming over them. On the contrary, you +will prevent my getting this article off to-night, and we will be a few +dollars the poorer." + +"You never talk to me. You are always working." + +She spoke pettishly, with an impulse to exasperate. + +"Mariana!" + +Mariana threw aside her work and clasped her hands. Her face was +upturned, her head supported by the back of the chair. He could see the +violet shadow which rested like a faint suffusion where the heavy hair +swept from behind her ear. + +Suddenly her head was lowered, and the mellow lamplight irradiated +across the pallor of her face. + +"Of course I know you are working for me," she said, "but I had rather +have less labor and more love." + +"I love you as much when I am working for you as when I am shouting it +in your ear." + +"But I like to hear it." + +"I love you. Now be quiet." + +Mariana came and leaned over him. She put her arms about his shoulders +and rested her head upon them. There was a sob in her voice. "Let me +help you," she said. "It is so hard to sit still and do nothing, while +you are killing yourself. Let me help you." + +Anthony turned and caught her, and she lay limp and motionless in his +embrace. He kissed her with sudden passion. + +"You help me by living," he said, "by breathing, by being near me, by +giving yourself to me unreservedly. Without you I lived but half a +life--without you, now that I have had you, I should go to +pieces--absolutely. I love you as a man loves once in a thousand years. +But we must live, and I must work." + +He released her and went back to his writing, while Mariana, in +passionate elation, picked up Mill's _Political Economy_, and fell to +studying. + +It was shortly after this that she sought to turn her own talents to +financial results. With this end in view she invested her pocket-money +in a yard or so of white linen and a mass of colored silks, and wove a +garland of nasturtiums around a centre-piece intended to decorate a +dinner-table. When it was finished she was seized with a fit of +sanguineness, and as she rinsed it in a dozen different waters to insure +whiteness, she calculated what the annual products of her labor would +amount to. "If I manage to do one a month," she remarked, pressing the +centre-piece lightly between her moistened hands, "and say I get about +fifteen dollars for each one, I should soon have quite a little income; +twelve times fifteen is--how much, Anthony?" + +"More than I am going to let you work for," replied Algarcife. "Your +eyes have been red ever since you started that confounded table-cover. +It is the very last." + +Mariana placed one finger to her lips, and then applied it lightly to +the iron she held in her hand. "I do hope I won't scorch it," she +observed. "Oh, do give me that blanket! It must be ironed on a blanket +to make the flowers stand out. Aren't they natural?" + +She lifted her heated face and glanced at him for approbation. + +"I feel like plucking them," returned Algarcife. "Don't tire yourself. +Good-bye." And he passed into the next room and closed the door. + +Mariana ironed the centre-piece, wrapped it in yellow tissue-paper, and +carried it to an exchange for women's work around the corner. It was +placed in a glass-case amid a confusion of similar articles, where it +languished for the space of several months. At the end of that time she +redeemed it. + +The failure of the enterprise precipitated an attack of hysteria, which +spent itself in Anthony's arms and left her resigned and exhausted. + +"I can't do anything to help you," she observed, hopelessly. "I hoped to +clear at least fifteen dollars from that centre-piece, and, instead, I +lost five. I shall always be an encumbrance." + +"You are my beloved counsellor." + +"My love isn't of much use, and you never take my advice." + +"But I like to listen to it." + +Mariana rested her head upon his shoulder and closed her eyes. + +"I am only a luxury," she said, "like wine or cigars, but it wouldn't be +pleasant to dispense with me, would it?" + +"It would be death." + +She sighed contentedly, her hand wandered across his brow. There was a +faint, magnetic force in her finger-tips which left a burning sensation +like that caused by a slightly charged electric current. + +"I made you marry me, you know," she remarked, complacently, "so I am +glad you don't regret it." + +"Nonsense," remonstrated Algarcife, his lips upon her hair, the warm +contact of her body inducing a sense of nearness. "I married you by +force. I quite took your breath away. If you had resisted, I should have +had you whether or no." + +"Oh, but I did make you," returned Mariana. "But there was nothing else +to do. I couldn't possibly have gone home, and I did love you so +distractedly." + +"As you do now." + +"As I do now. Of course I must have known that rushing to you that night +with the letter was just like a proposal of marriage." + +"It was, rather," concluded Algarcife. + +"But you needn't have married me unless you wanted to," urged Mariana. +"There was Mr. Paul--" + +Anthony laughed. "I was a vicarious sacrifice," he declared, "to insure +the peace of Mr. Paul." + +The next day Algarcife received an unexpected sum of money, and they +agreed to celebrate their rising fortunes by a night at the opera. It +was "Tannhauser," and Mariana craved music. + +"I am afraid it is improvident," Anthony, whom the opera bored, +remarked, dubiously; then looking into Mariana's wistful face, he +recanted. "It doesn't matter," he added. "A little extravagance won't +affect the probability of future starvation. We will go." + +And they went. Mariana wore her freshest gown and the little bonnet with +the knot of violets above the left temple. She was in her gayest mood, +which was only dampened in a slight degree by the odor of the benzine +clinging to her newly cleaned gloves. + +As she leaned against the railing in the fifth gallery, gazing +plaintively down into the pit, she looked subtle and seductive--like a +creation in half-tones, swept by fugitive lights and shadows. The pallor +of her face was intensified, her radiant lips compressed, and the green +flame in her glance scintillated beneath luxurious lashes. Anthony, +fastening upon her contented eyes, wondered at the singular charm which +she radiated. Small, slight, insignificant, and charged with +imperfections as she was, her very imperfections possessed the +fascination of elusiveness. Her radiance was intensified in the memory +by the plainness succeeding it; the sensitive curve of her nostrils was +heightened in effect by the irregularity of feature, and the angular +distinctness of the bones of her chin emphasized the faint violet +shadows suffusing the hollows. Had her charm been less impalpable it +would have lost its power. The desire of beauty might have satiated +itself in a dozen women, or of amativeness in a dozen others, but +Mariana fascinated instinctively, and her spell was without beginning in +a single attribute and without end in possession. + +As she sat there in the fifth gallery, drinking with insatiable thirst +the swelling harmony, her emotional nature, which association with +Algarcife had somewhat subdued, was revivified, and she pressed +Anthony's responsive hand in exaltation. The music reverberating round +her brought in its train all those lurid dreams which she had half +forgotten, and the dramatic passion awoke and burned her pulses. She +felt herself invigorated, swept from the moorings of the commonplace, +and subverted by the scenic intensity before her. She felt taller, +stronger, fuller of unimpregnated germs of power, and, like an infusion +of splendid barbaric blood, there surged through her veins a flame of +color. With a triumphant crash of harmonious discord, she felt that the +artistic instinct was stimulated from its supineness, and the desire to +achieve was aglow within her. The electric lights beneath the brilliant +ceiling, the odor of hot-house flowers, the music sweeping upward and +bearing her on its swelling tide, acted upon her overwrought +sensibilities like an intoxicant. She drew near to Anthony; her lips +quivered. + +"Oh, if it would last," she said--"if it would last!" + +But it did not last, and when it was over Mariana pressed her hand to +her brow like one in pain. The return to reality jarred upon her vibrant +nerves, and she became aware of shooting throbs in her temples, and of +the depressing moisture in the atmosphere. + +"I am faint," she complained. "I must have something--anything." + +"It is all that clashing and banging," responded Anthony. "What a relief +silence is!" + +They bought ale and cheese and crackers from a grocery at the corner, +and carried the parcels to their room. Mariana let down her hair, put on +her dressing-gown, and threw herself upon the hearth-rug. She felt weak +and hungry. "If there were only a fire," she lamented regretfully, +stretching her hands towards the register; after which she opened the +paper-bags and ate ravenously. + +In the night she awoke with a start and a sob. She reached out moaningly +in the darkness. Her hands were trembling and the neck of her gown was +damp and chill. "I believe I shall go mad," she said, desperately. + +Anthony struck a match, lighted the candle, and looked at her. He laid a +cool hand upon her forehead. + +"What is it?" he asked. "Are you nervous? Have you been dreaming?" + +"No, no," cried Mariana, rolling her head upon the pillow, "but I want +music. I want art. There is so much that is beautiful, and I want +something." + +She wept hysterically. Anthony got up and made her a cup of tea, which +she could not drink because it was smoked. + +But on the morrow she was herself again. As she was arranging her hair +she laughed and chattered gayly, and the effect of the previous evening +was shown only in a tendency to break into song. Before drinking her +coffee she turned to the piano and trilled an Italian aria, the fingers +of one hand wandering over the key-board in a careless accompaniment. + +During the day her buoyancy was unfailing. She took up her studies +zealously, and the morning devoted to Mill was rich in results. Her +acuteness of apprehension was a continual marvel to Algarcife's steadier +perception, and he regarded with deference the quickness with which she +grasped the general drift of unstudied social problems. An exaggerated +example of feminine intuition he ascribed unhesitatingly to a profundity +of intellectual ability. That Mariana was adapting herself to his +theories of life, he recognized and accepted. There was relief in the +thought that his influence over her was weightier than the appeal of her +art. With adolescent egotism, he convinced himself that he was shaping +and perfecting a mental energy into channels other than the predestined +ones; and while Mariana was matured into a palpitant reflection of his +own image, he believed that he was liberating an intellect enthralled by +superficialities. But, in truth, the stronger force was assimilating to +itself the weaker, and the comradeship existing in their love was +perfect in smoothness and finish. The opinions which Anthony radiated +Mariana reflected, and they presented to the world proof of a domestic +unity complete in its harmony. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +One evening in March, Mr. Nevins gave a supper in his studio. + +Anthony had come in that morning looking somewhat perplexed. "Nevins +wants us to-night," he said to Mariana, "and I couldn't get out of it." + +Mariana looked up eagerly from her practising. "Oh, it is the +'Andromeda,'" she replied. "He said he would celebrate it. So it has +been accepted." + +"But it hasn't been. It is the rejection he is celebrating. He told me +so. I feel sorry for the fellow, so I said we would go." + +"Of course we will!" exclaimed Mariana. "But I'm afraid he'll be +gloomy." + +"On the contrary, he has just come off a spree, and has a patch over his +left eye. His hilarity is positively annoying. He and Ardly are smashing +everything in their rooms. The pitcher went as I passed." + +"Oh, it is his way of expressing feeling," returned Mariana, +sympathetically. "Listen to this new air. It goes tra la la, tra--" + +Anthony cut her short. + +"My dear girl, I'm in an awful hurry. Would you mind being quiet +awhile?" And he entered his study, closing the door after him. Mariana +left the piano and sat with folded hands looking down into the street +below. A fine rain was falling, and the streets were sloppy with a +whitish slime. The women that passed held their skirts well above their +ankles, revealing all shapes and varieties of feet. She noticed that +they carried their skirts awkwardly, with a curious hitch upon the right +hip. They were working-women for the most part, and their gowns were +neither well made nor well cut, but they walked aggressively, with an +uneven, almost masculine, swagger. + +Mariana yawned and sighed. She would have liked to go back to the piano +and bang a march or some stirring strain of martial music, but she +recalled Anthony's injunction and yawned again. She remembered suddenly +that her practising had become uncertain of late, and that Anthony's +objection seemed to lie like a drawn sword between her and her art. An +involuntary smile crossed her lips, that she who had pledged herself to +the pursuit of music had also given herself to a man to whom Wagner was +as Rossini. She dwelt upon her changed conditions almost unconsciously. +It was not that her devotion to art had cooled since her marriage, but +that something was forever preventing the expression of it. That Anthony +regarded it as one of the trivialities of life, she saw clearly, and +there was an aggrieved note in her regret. To her, in whom the artistic +instinct was bone of her bone and blood of her blood, the sacrifice of a +professional career was less slight than Algarcife believed, and in the +depths of her heart there still lurked the hope that in time Anthony's +impassioned opposition to a stage life would wear itself out. When the +moment came, she dreamed of a final reinspiration of the slumbering +fires of her ambition. Now, as she sat beside the window, she became +aware of the awakening. Once again she allowed her mind to hover above +the distant future and to illuminate its neutral canvas with garish +colors. In the future anything and everything was possible. Some weeks +ago Signor Morani had sent for her and offered her tuition, and she had +accepted. "If you achieve success you can repay me," he had said, +adding, with philosophic intention, "If not, I shall have lost nothing +that was my own." + +Mariana, in a burst of gratitude, had wept upon his shoulder, and he had +smiled as he patted her prostrate head. + +"Remember," he said, "that you are an artist first, and a wife and +mother afterwards, and you will succeed." + +Sitting beside the window and staring at the expressionless tenements +across the way, she laughed with soft insistence at the professor's +warning. What a consuming force was love, that it had destroyed her old +mad longing for the stage! Was it all love, or was it only the love of +Anthony? + +Then before her, in the train of her thoughts, the sentiments of her +life were limned vividly, and she remembered the young highwayman whose +picture she had seen. She saw the bold, Byronic countenance, with the +shadow of evil upon the lips and the uncultured eyes. She recalled the +blur by which the printer had obscured the chin, and she felt again the +tremor with which she had awaited the sentence of the court. She thought +of Edgardo, the romantic tenor, of his impassioned arias, and then of +his fat and immobile face, of his red-cheeked German wife, to whom he +was a faithful husband, and of his red-cheeked German children, to whom +he was a devoted father. She laughed again as she remembered the tears +with which she had bedewed her pillow, and the spasm of jealousy in +which she had mentally attacked the prima donna. Last of all she thought +of Jerome Ardly, as she had seen him upon the night of her arrival, +sitting in indolent discussion of his dinner, the _Evening Post_ spread +out upon his knee. She experienced in memory the thrill which had seized +her at his voice. She remembered how strong and masterful he had looked +with the glow of heart disease, which she had thought the glow of +health, upon his face. Then her thoughts returned to Anthony and +settled to rest. To dwell upon him was as if she had laid her head upon +his arm and felt his hand above her heart; as if she had anchored +herself in deep waters, far beyond the breakers and shallows of life. + +In the next room she knew that Anthony was at work, that he had +probably, for the time being, forgotten her existence. The knowledge +caused her a twinge of pain, and she went to the door, opened it, and +looked in. + +Algarcife glanced up absently. + +"You don't wish anything, do you?" he inquired, and she saw that an +irritable mood was upon him, "I can't be interrupted." + +"It is nothing," answered Mariana as she closed the door, but she felt a +sudden tightening of the heart, and, as she gathered up several loose +sheets of music lying upon the floor, she thought, with a spasm of +regretful pain, of the practising she had given up. "He does not know," +she said, and a few tears fell upon the key-board. + +That night, when she was dressing for Nevins's supper, she noticed that +there was a faint flush in her cheeks and her hands were hot. + +"We lead such a quiet life," she said, laughing, "that a very little +thing excites me." + +Algarcife, who was shaving, put down his razor and came towards her. He +was in his shirt-sleeves, and she noticed that he looked paler and more +haggard than usual. + +"Look here, Mariana," he began, "don't talk too much to Nevins; I don't +like it." + +Mariana confronted him smilingly. + +"You are positively the green-eyed monster himself," she said. "But why +don't you say Ardly, and come nearer the truth? I was in love with him +once, you know." + +"Hush!" said Anthony, savagely; "you oughtn't to joke about such things; +it isn't decent." + +"Oh, it didn't go as far as that!" returned Mariana, with audacity. + +"How dare you!" exclaimed Algarcife, and they flung themselves into each +other's arms. + +"How absurd you are!" said Mariana, looking up. "You haven't one little +atom of common-sense--not one." + +Then they finished dressing, lowered the lights, and went down-stairs. + +Mr. Nevins greeted them effusively. He was standing in the centre of a +small group composed of Miss Freighley, Mr. Sellars, and Mr. Paul, and +the patch above his left eye, as well as his general unsteadiness, bore +evidence to his need of the moral suasion to which Mr. Paul was giving +utterance. In a corner of the room the "Andromeda" was revealed naked to +her friends as well as to her enemies, and at the moment of Anthony's +and Mariana's entrance Mr. Ardly was engaged in crowning her with a +majestic wreath of willow. + +He looked up from his task to bestow a morose greeting. + +"We have invited you to weep with us," he remarked. "The gentle pronoun +'us,' which you may have observed, is due, not to my sympathetic nature, +but to the fact that I have lost a wager upon the rejected one to Mr. +Paul--" + +"Who is also among the prophets," broke in Mr. Nevins, with a +declamatory wave of his hand. "For behold, he prophesied, and his +prophecy it came to pass! For he spake, saying, 'The "Andromeda," she +shall be barren of honor, and lo! in one hour shall she be made +desolate, and her creator shall put dust upon his head and rend his +clothes, yet shall it avail not--'" + +"Shut up, Nevins!" roared Ardly, seating himself at the table beside +Mariana. "As if everybody didn't know that Mr. Paul's prophecy was +obliged to come to pass! Did you ever see a pessimist who wasn't +infallible as a soothsayer? It beats a special revelation all hollow." + +"Please don't be irreverent," remonstrated Mariana. "I am sure I am +awfully sorry about the 'Andromeda,' and I believe that if Mr. Nevins +had taken my advice and lightened those shadows--" + +"Or mine, and lengthened that thigh," broke in Ardly. + +"Or mine, and shortened the fingers," added Miss Freighley. + +"Or mine, and never painted it," in a savage whisper from Algarcife. + +Mr. Nevins silenced the quartet with promptness. "Hang it all!" he +exclaimed, crossly; "between most of your suggestions for art's sake, +and Mr. Paul's suggestions for decency's sake, there wouldn't be a +blamed rag of her left." + +"On the contrary," commented Mr. Paul, "an additional rag or two would +be decidedly advantageous." + +Mariana raised her finger, with an admonishing shake of the head. + +"Out upon you for a Philistine!" she said. "I haven't heard such +profanity since I showed my colored mammy a 'Venus de Milo,' and her +criticism was, 'Lor', child! nakedness ain't no treat to me!'" + +Mr. Nevins laughed uproariously, and filled Mariana's glass, while +Algarcife glared from across the table. + +"I should like to paste that motto in every studio in New York," +returned Mr. Paul. "It was the healthful sentiment of a mind undepraved +by civilization." + +"What a first-rate censor you would make!" smiled Ardly, +good-naturedly--"the fitting exponent of a people who see nastiness in +a box of colors and evil in everything." + +Mr. Paul bore the charge with gravity. "Yes, I keep my eyes well open," +he responded, complacently. + +Algarcife leaned across the table, and discussed woman's suffrage with +Miss Ramsey. Mariana flushed and smiled, and glanced from Nevins to +Ardly and back again. + +Mr. Sellars, who had been engrossed by his salad, took up the cue. + +"Oh, the world isn't to blame if we see it through a fog!" he said. +"Excellent salad." + +"Thanks," drawled Mr. Nevins, amicably. "I cut it up, and Ardly made the +dressing. The cutting up is the part that tells." + +"But why didn't you bring it to me?" asked Mariana. "I should have liked +to help you." Then she raised her glass. "Health to 'Andromeda' and +confusion to her enemies!" + +There followed a wild clashing of glasses and a series of hoarse hurrahs +from Mr. Nevins. After which Mariana was borne tumultuously to the +piano, where she sang a little French song about love and fame. + +Then Mr. Sellars sang an Irish ballad, and Nevins volunteered the +statement that, after hearing Ardly, anybody who didn't mistake his nose +for his mouth would be a relief. + +"You don't listen," protested Ardly. "We have an excellent system," he +explained. "We sometimes spend a musical evening, and when Nevins sings +I look through the portfolio for my pieces, and when I sing he looks for +his." + +That night when Mariana went up to her room she was in exuberant +spirits. In a whirl of energy she pirouetted before the mirror. Then she +stopped suddenly, grew white, and swayed forward. + +"I can't stand excitement," she said, and before Anthony could reach +her she fell a limp heap upon the floor. Algarcife dashed into the +adjoining room and returned with a flask of brandy. Then he undressed +her, wrapped her in a dressing-gown, and, drawing off her shoes and +stockings, chafed her cold feet. Mariana was too exhausted to protest, +and allowed herself to be lulled to sleep like a child. + +For several weeks after this she was nervous and unstrung. She grew +hollow-eyed, the shadows deepened, and her sunniness of temper gave +place to an unaccustomed melancholy. She had learned that a new life was +quickening within her, and she experienced a blind and passionate fear +of inevitable agony. She feared herself, she feared suffering, and she +feared the fate of the unborn life. One evening she threw herself into +Anthony's arms. "It is the inevitableness," she said. "If I knew that it +might not happen, I could bear it better. But nothing can prevent it, +and I am afraid--afraid." + +Algarcife grew white. "I am afraid for you," he answered. + +"And the child? We shall be responsible for it. The thought maddens me. +We are so poor, and it seems to me that it is wrong. I feel as if I had +committed a sin--as if I were forcing something into the world to fight +with poverty and discomforts. It may even hate us for bringing it. I +almost hope it will die." + +"We will make it a happy child." + +"But doesn't it frighten you?" + +Algarcife smiled. "Not as much as you do, you bodiless bit of +eccentricity." + +"All the same, I feel as if it were a sin," said Mariana. "Mill says--" + +Anthony laughed aloud and caught her to him. "So you are turning my own +weapons upon me," he said. "For the sake of domestic harmony, don't +quote Mill to me, Mariana." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +In the autumn the child was born. Mariana, dissolved in nervous hysteria +in the beginning, rallied when the time drew on, and faced the final +throes triumphantly. For several months beforehand she sat and waited +with desperate resignation. Her existence, hedged in by the four walls +of her room and broken only by the strolls she took with Algarcife after +night-fall, exasperated her resentment against social enactments, and +she protested bitterly. + +"A woman is treated as if she were in disgrace," she said, "and forced +to shun the light, when, in reality, she is sacrificing herself for the +continuance of the race, and should be respected and allowed to go about +in a right and natural manner. I believe all this indecency started with +those old scriptural purifications, and I wish it hadn't." + +But when the days passed, her lamentations gave place to serenity of +speech, and her expression became almost matronly. Dramatically she was +stifling her ęsthetic aversion and adjusting herself to her part. + +When it was over, and she lay still and etherealized among the pillows, +she was conscious only of an infinite restfulness. It was as if the +travail through which she had passed had purged her of all capacity for +sensation, and the crying of the new-born child fell upon her ear like +the breaking of faint and far-off waves of sound. + +From Anthony's caress she turned with a gesture of annoyance, and, in a +vague association of ideas, she wondered if a man who had climbed from +hell to heaven would be gratified by a draught of milk-and-water. She +seemed to stand aloof and far off upon some ice-crowned summit, where +the air was too rarefied to support the growth of human passions. She +felt that she had become a pure intelligence, and that the appeal of her +flesh no longer retarded her ascent. The elemental values of life were +obscured by the shadows of indifference. Love existed only as an +intangible and forced illusion, passion as a disease of the blood. While +her still and inert body lay freed from pain, her mind was singularly +strong and clear. The limitations of a personality seemed no longer to +encompass her. She imagined she saw as God saw, sustained by pulseless +repose, seeing, not feeling, the swing of the universe. She wondered if +the time would ever come when she would descend from this altitude and +take up again the substance of self, when her senses would again enmesh +her. + +Some one came across the room and laid a bundle upon the bed beside her, +but she did not look at it. Then her hand was lifted and a glass put to +her lips, and the faint odor of chloroform which hung about her faded +before the fresher odor of digitalis. The child cried at her side, and +the first sensation she felt was one of irritation. + +"Take it away," she said, fretfully, and fainted. + +With her returning vigor, Mariana's normal nature reasserted itself. The +first day that she was able to sit propped up among the pillows she had +the child brought to her, and looked at it critically, half in +curiosity, half in tenderness. + +"Did you ever see one with quite such a screwed-up face?" she inquired, +dubiously, of the nurse who hovered about. + +"Plenty, ma'am; most of 'em are like that--all puckers and wrinkles." + +"It might be a thousand years old," continued Mariana, "or a +hickory-nut." Then she added: "I don't feel as if it belonged to me at +all. I don't care for it in the least." + +"That'll come." + +"I hope so," answered Mariana, "and I am sorry that it is a girl. It +will have so much to bear. I wonder if I looked like that when I was a +baby. I declare, it is positively green. What is the matter with it?" + +"Just the shadow from the blind, ma'am." + +The baby lay upon its back, with half-closed, indistinguishable eyes, +slobbering over one red fist. It looked old and wizened, as if oppressed +by the understanding that it had entered upon the most perilous of +mundane transmigrations. It had cried only once, and that was upon its +entrance into the predestined conditions. There was something almost +uncanny in its imperturbability, suggesting, as it did, that it had been +awed into silence by the warning finger of fate. + +"Poor little thing," said Mariana. She leaned over it and stroked the +smooth, round head, from which the soft hair was rubbing off, leaving it +preternaturally bald. "What a mite!" She encircled it within the curve +of her arm and lay looking up at the ceiling. "How strange it all is!" +she thought. "It was only yesterday that I was a child myself--and now +my first and last and only born is here alive." Then she frowned. It +seemed inexplicable to her that women went on travailing and giving +birth. That a woman who had once known the agony of maternity should +consent to bear a second or third or fourth child struck her as +ridiculous. She closed her eyes and laughed. Suddenly she felt a clammy +clutch upon her finger and looked down. The baby's eyes were open, and +it was staring straight ahead at the cloud of dust and sunshine that +flooded the room. The red fist had left its mouth and fastened upon her +hand. + +Mariana smiled. + +"Its eyes are blue!" she cried, "just like turquoises. Look, nurse! Oh, +my dear, poor, ugly little baby!" + +A rush of tenderness choked her words, and she lay silent and rapt, her +hand responding to the weak grasp upon her finger. In some way she felt +changed and tremulous. That invincible instinct of motherhood, which was +a forced and abnormal product of her temperament, pulsed from her heart +to her answering veins. She experienced in its fulness the sense of +guardianship upon which rests the first intuitive recognition of the +maternal responsibility. Her emotion welled forth to meet the appeal of +the helplessness beside her, and she extended her fragile arm as if in +the act of giving shelter. When Algarcife came in some hours later he +found her lying asleep, her hand still upon the small, soft head of the +child. In the noonday light the intense, opaline pallor of her face was +startling. + +In quick alarm he leaned over her, listening for the rise and fall of +her breathing. It came softly, with a still insistence, like the ripple +of a faint wind upon rose leaves. The heavy lashes resting upon her +cheeks accentuated the entire absence of color, and the violet tones +rising in the shadows of mouth and chin lent to her face the look of one +in a trance or in death. It was as if the scarlet current in her blood +had, by some necromancer's magic, been transfused from pale violets. Her +gown was open at the throat, and he marked the same bloodlessness and +hints of bluish shadows in her cold breast. He saw it also in the +fragile curve of her uncovered arm and in the marble-like beauty of her +hands. + +"Mariana," he whispered. + +She turned slowly towards him and unclosed her eyes. + +"Give me something," she said; "brandy--a great deal." + +He brought it to her and raised her on his arm as she drank it. + +"I was dreaming," she said, fretfully. "I dreamed that I was +falling--falling past the earth, past millions of worlds--past a great +many apple orchards, and they were all in bloom. But, somehow, I never +reached the bottom. There wasn't any bottom." + +"You are stronger now?" he questioned, almost wistfully. + +"Not a bit," returned Mariana, peevishly. "I am so--so--so weak." Then +she laughed softly. "Do you know that brandy makes me think of my +childhood, and a great goblet of mint-julep, with the crushed ice all +frosted on the glass. My father was famous for his mint-juleps. I wish I +had one now." + +"Shall I make it for you?" + +"Oh, it wouldn't be the same! I should never like one that didn't have +the ice frosted on the glass." She grew weakly reminiscent. "Once, when +I was a little child," she said, "I was dressed up in a nice white frock +and red sash, and sent out on the sidewalk to play, and I grew tired and +wandered off and got lost. I went a long way, and at last I came to the +city almshouse. I was going up the steps when I looked into a bar-room +across the way, and saw a gentleman with a very red face drinking a +toddy. I went over and asked him if he were related to my father, and he +said he supposed not, but he took me in behind the screen and sat me +upon a table and offered me a taste of toddy, and I said, 'No, thank +you. I have plenty of that at home.'" + +Then she turned over and went to sleep, while Algarcife sat beside her +and held her hand. His gaze ravished her with its fierce tenderness. His +life and heart and brain seemed bound up and enshrined in the sleeping +woman who lay in that death-like pallor, with the child at her side. He +followed the sweep of the loosened and disordered hair that fell in a +heavy braid across the pillow. He lingered, unsatisfied, upon the worn +and emaciated face, in which there was none of the material beauty of +flesh and blood. With an impassioned ardor he studied the defects of +outline, the thin and irregular features, the hollows of the blue-veined +temples, the firm and accentuated chin. Now there was none of that +bewildering illumination of expression left, which in moments of +intensity was like a fleeting search-light thrown across her face, +forever changing in tone and color. She lay rapt and wan and pallid--a +woman overthrown. + +His glance fell upon the child in the hollow of her arm, and he bent to +look at it. He was conscious of no feeling for it as his own, but of a +general feeling of pity for it as a helpless animal. He supposed the +other would come later, and in the meantime Mariana was sufficient. + +Then, as he sat there, a harassed look crept into his eyes, and he +frowned impatiently. Mariana's illness had entirely exhausted the small +fund he had accumulated, and he knew that the next few years would bring +a hand-to-hand, disastrous conflict with want. For himself he cared +little, but for Mariana and the child he experienced a blind and bitter +disgust at his own impotence. Working night and day, as he did, and +preserving his hold upon the Bodley College, which was at best an +uncertain reef, he knew that he could manage to wring from the world but +a bare subsistence. He felt resentful of the fact that all his +knowledge, all his years of study, all his scientific value would weigh +for nothing in the struggle for bread against a moderate capacity for +fulfilling the dictates of other men. This ruthless waste of energy +exasperated him in its inevitable assault upon his theories of life. He +looked at his hands--thin and virile hands, with knotted knuckles and +square-cut finger-tips--the hands of a nervous, impracticable +temperament. Of a sudden he felt himself as helpless to contend with +existing conditions as the baby lying within the crook of Mariana's arm. +For an instant his natural irascibility of temper seemed to have +overborne the bounds of his reserve. That extreme sensitiveness to minor +irritants became painful in its acuteness. He saw in it the effects of +the nervous exhaustion which followed in the wake of uncongenial mental +work combined with the stress of financial worries, and withdrew the +curb of will. For the moment he regretted his old life--regretted his +freedom and the solitude which had surrounded him even amid the tumult +of the city. He reproached himself that he had not allowed Mariana to +live her life as it pleased her, unhampered by the obligations he had +permitted her to assume. Then he recalled her as she came to him that +September night, the letter fluttering in her hand, and it seemed to him +that he was not wholly responsible--that something mightier than himself +had manipulated their destinies. To his dark and embittered mood there +appeared a certain humor in the thought that they were puppets in the +hands of the grim comedian Time. And then the scientific tenor of his +mind, which contrasted saliently with his nervous temperament, +reasserted itself, and he traced in vague outline the inviolable +sequence of cause and effect, upon which his own and the world's +revolutions hung. Again he fortified himself with a philosophic +acceptance of the authoritative "must" of those unconquerable forces +which we call fate. + +With a returning gentleness he loosened Mariana's hand and went back to +his work. + +When Mariana grew strong enough to wear a blue wrapper and sit in a +rocking-chair beside the window, she began working upon dainty garments +for the baby. With characteristic extravagance she embroidered a +hundred roses upon a white carriage-robe which would probably not +survive the first laundering. She made tiny bags for powdered +orris-root, and scattered them among the tucked and ruffled cambric, and +that faint suggestion of fresh violets was extended from herself to the +child. + +One day, Miss Ramsey, coming in on her way up-stairs, found her tearing +up a linen petticoat to make night-slips for the baby, whom she had +called "Isolde." + +Miss Ramsey remonstrated. She had been a faithful servitor during +Mariana's convalescence, and she felt that she had earned the right to +interpose. "My dear Mariana," she said, "what are you doing? Cotton at +ten cents a yard would do equally well." + +"But I couldn't make the little thing sleep in cotton," answered +Mariana, "and I haven't any money, so I cut up a few of my things. It +must be well cared for. I really couldn't have a child that wasn't nice +and clean." + +Miss Ramsey smiled. + +"Do you think," she asked, "that it would know the difference between +cotton and linen? Besides, I've always heard that cotton was more +healthful." + +Mariana threaded her needle and bent her head. + +"It is in the blood," she returned. "My grandmother couldn't bear to be +touched by anything but silk. She lived upon her plantations and owned a +great many slaves, and she could afford it. Everything, from her +night-caps to her chemises, was made of soft white silk. I have one of +her chemises, and it is all hand-sewed, with a fall of real lace around +the bosom. My mother inherited the taste, and she never wore cotton +stockings, even when she couldn't afford meat but twice a week. I am +just like her, only she was proud of it and I am ashamed of it." + +"But you have overcome it," said Miss Ramsey. + +Mariana laughed. + +"I can't. Anthony says luxury is bred in my bone, but then he doesn't +even care for comforts. I believe he had just as soon eat turnip-salad +on a plain deal table as sweetbreads on Irish damask." + +"Life teaches us the pettiness of such things," said Miss Ramsey. "When +one isn't sure one will get a dinner at all, one is not apt to worry +about the possible serving. By-the-way, Mr. Nevins wants to paint the +baby when it gets a little larger." + +Mariana looked delighted. + +"Of course he shall," she said; then she took the child from the nurse's +arms and gave it into Miss Ramsey's. "Feel how light she is," she +continued. "I know she isn't very pretty, but she is beautifully +formed--nurse says so--and did you ever see one with quite so much +expression?" + +Miss Ramsey held it upon her knee, patting its flexible back with one +timid hand. "I really believe it notices things," she said. "It is +looking straight at you." + +"Of course it does," Mariana answered. "Of course it knows its own +blessed little mamma--doesn't it, Isolde?" + +The child whimpered and squirmed upon Miss Ramsey's knee. + +"Take it, nurse," said Mariana. "It doesn't look nice when it cries." + +A week later Mr. Speares came, and was introduced to the baby as it lay +in its crib. He leaned over it in the helpless inattention of a man who +has a mortal terror of a human being during the first stages of its +development. + +"It looks very pleasant," he said, finally. + +Mariana lifted the child and held it against her shoulder. Had Mr. +Nevins seen her in her light-blue gown, with the soft look in her eyes, +he would have seized the opportunity and used it to advantage. + +"Look at her eyes," she said. "Is she like Anthony used to be?" + +Mr. Speares examined it critically. "I don't observe it," he replied; +"but I don't suppose its features are quite formed as yet. It will be +easier to trace a likeness later on." + +Mariana laughed and smoothed the long dress with her frail, blue-veined +hand. "The nurse says it is like me," she returned, good-humoredly. "I +say it is like Anthony, and Anthony says it is like the original +primate." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +"I am getting old," said Mariana. She was sitting before the mirror, and +as she spoke she rose and leaned forward in closer inspection. "This +line," she added, dolefully, rubbing her forehead, "is caused by the +laundress, this by the departure of the nurse, and this by the curdling +of the baby's milk." + +Anthony crossed over and stood behind her. "I would give my right arm to +smooth them away," he said. + +Mariana fastened the collar of her breakfast sacque and looked back at +him from the glass. She did not reply. Not that she would not have liked +to say something affectionate, but that she felt the effort to be +pleasant to be physically beyond her. Her life of the last few weeks had +taught her that demonstrative expressions are an unnecessary waste of +energy. + +There was a rap at the door, and she opened it and took the milk-bottle +from the dairy-man. After setting a cupful upon the little gas-stove, +she raised the window and placed the remainder upon the fire-escape. "I +am afraid," she remarked, "that I will have to try one of those +innumerable infant foods. One can never be sure that the milk is quite +fresh." + +Anthony tied a cravat which was particularly worn, put on a coat which +was particularly shiny across the shoulders, and went into the adjoining +room to set the table. He boiled the coffee, took in the baker's rolls +from a tray on the threshold, and put on a couple of eggs. Then he +called Mariana. + +She came, sat down at the table, and lifted the coffee-pot. She looked +hollow-eyed and haggard, and her hand shook slightly. "I am so weak," +she said, fretfully. "I can't get my strength. I just go dragging +about." + +Anthony looked at her in sudden pain. "If there were a speculating devil +around who took stock in souls," he said, "I am sure we might offer him +an investment. People are fools to think there is any happiness without +money." + +"Or any decency," added Mariana. Then the baby cried, and she took it up +and brought it to the table, holding it upon her knee as she ate. Her +appetite failed, and she pushed her plate away. + +"The egg is so white," she said, pettishly, "I can't eat it." Then her +voice choked. "I--I sometimes wish I were dead," she added, and went to +pour the baby's milk into its bottle. + +Mariana's strength did not return. As the months passed she grew more +listless, her pallor deepened, and the shadows under her eyes darkened +to a purplish cast. The incessant round of minor cares clouded her +accustomed sunniness of temper, and her buoyant step gave place to a +languid tread. It was as if the inexorable hand of poverty had crushed +her beneath its weight. + +Algarcife, coming in from his more systematic employment, would marvel +vaguely at her unresponsiveness. His tenderness would recoil in pained +surprise as he felt her indifference to his caress, and her long +silences while he sat beside her. "Mariana," he would begin, "won't you +talk to me?" and Mariana would rouse herself with a start. "But what is +there to say?" she would ask, and sink back into stillness. It was, +perhaps, impossible for him to understand that at such times she was but +undergoing the inevitable reaction from long months of physical and +mental suffering--that the energy which she had expended in supplying +the drains upon her nature had left her incapable of further effort. He +did not know that emotion with a woman is so largely regulated by +nervous conditions, that complete exhaustion of body and mind is apt to +repress, not the fund of affection, but its outward manifestations. In +his passionate desire to shield Mariana, he had kept from her knowledge +the financial stress into which her prolonged illness had plunged him. +He had watched his growing indebtedness silently, and had reduced his +personal expenses to a minimum while he sought to supply her with +comforts. But from the immediate needs and anxieties of her own life he +had not been able to guard her. The gnawing fears for the child, the +nights when she awoke from needed sleep to lean over its crib and soothe +it with lullabies, the weary hours in the day when she walked with +aching head back and forth, he could not prevent, nor could he restore +to her the health which she had lost. That the vein of iron which lay +beneath the surface lightness of her nature had developed through +responsibility, he saw clearly, but he also saw that she lived her life +in apparent unrepining, not because of a rational acceptance of the +order of things, but because illness and toil had for the time +overthrown her ęsthetic intuitions. To recall her as she had been during +the first months of their marriage, white, fresh, and exquisite in +attire, and then to look at her in a faded wrapper, her heavy hair +disordered, her lips compressed, was to know that Mariana as she was +to-day was not Mariana in a normal state. That it could not last, he +knew. That with the first wave of returning vigor her longing for +dramatic effects and the small requirements of existence would reawaken, +he admitted unhesitatingly. She would grow vital again, she would demand +with passionate desire the satisfaction of her senses--she would crave +music, color, light, all the sensuous fulness of life. And where would +she find it? + +One day, as he came in to luncheon, he found her playing with the baby, +a flash of brightness upon her face. + +He looked at her and smiled. + +"It is company for you, isn't it, dearest?" + +Mariana's smile passed. + +"I don't have time to think about that part," she returned. "I am always +working. When I've got her all nice and fresh, and laid her on the bed, +she begins to cry for her bottle. Then, while I am heating the milk, she +cries to be walked, and, by the time the bottle is ready, she is so red +in the face she can't drink it, and she spills it all over herself. Then +I begin and go through it all again." + +"What a little beast she is," said Algarcife, surveying the baby with +parental displeasure. "What a pity she isn't a Japanese! Japanese babies +never cry." Then he grew serious. "I sometimes wonder how you stand it," +he added. "Here, give me the little devil!" + +Mariana rescued the baby's rattle from its throat and laid it in the +crib. It screamed, and she took it up again. + +"There is a good deal in having to," she replied. + +Algarcife walked to the window and stood looking down into the street. +His brow was gloomy. Suddenly he faced her. "Are you sorry that you +married me, Mariana?" + +Mariana did not impulsively negative the question, as he had half +expected. She even appeared to consider it. Then she slowly shook her +head. + +"I should have been more unhappy if I hadn't," she answered. + +"It would have been a confounded sight better if you had never seen +me." + +But Mariana put the child down and fell into his outstretched arms. + +"No, no," she said; "but I am tired--so tired." + +Anthony picked her up and laid her on the bed. Then he threw a shawl +over her. "I am going to take an hour off and discipline your tyrant," +he said. "Go to sleep." He lifted the baby and went towards the door. +"You aren't such a black-hearted chap, after all, are you, Isolde?" + +The baby cuddled against his shoulder, and he passed into the next room, +closing the door after him. + +Mariana lay upon the bed and thought. Her eyes were wide open, and she +stared fixedly at the ceiling, watching the fluctuations of light that +chased across its plastered surface. It was a relief to be absolutely +alone, to be freed from the restraint which the presence of another +thinking entity necessitated. She drew the shawl closer about her and +pressed her cheek upon the pillow. The contact of the cotton was +exciting to her fevered flesh. In the dim train of association it +brought back to her an illness in her childhood, and she recalled her +first sensations of headache and fatigue. They had come upon her as she +was playing in an open meadow, and, before toiling to the house, she had +stopped beside the reedy brook and knelt to drink, while the cool, fresh +notes of the bobolinks sounded about her. She remembered it all now as +she lay amid the noise of the city. The roar of the elevated road was +silenced, and she heard the bobolinks again. She saw the emerald sweep +of the wheat fields, undulating in golden lights and olive shadows. She +saw the stagnant ice pond, with the overhanging branches of willows and +the whir of the parti-colored insects. She smelt the pungent sweetness +of the wild rose and the subtle odor of the trumpet-flower, glowing amid +its luxuriant foliage like a heart of fire. + +Then she raised her head and surveyed the room in which she lay. She +saw the garish daylight streaming in a flood of dust and sunshine +through the narrow window. She saw the lack of grace that surrounded +her, emphasized by a crowd of trivial details. She saw the tall, painted +wardrobe with its bulging doors and the bandboxes upon the top, the +cheap bureau with its gaping drawers, and the assortment of shoes +half-hidden under it. She saw her work-basket, overflowing with +stockings to be darned and small slips to be mended. + +With a stifled sob she turned from it all, pressing her face against the +pillow. The heritage of yearning for vivid beauty and sharp, sweet odors +surged upon her. "I can't be poor!" she cried, passionately. "I can't be +poor!" + +But as the spring came, Mariana regained something of her old vigor, and +it was in April of that year that Mr. Nevins painted the portrait which +was exhibited some six months later, and with which began his rising +fortunes. It represented her in the blue wrapper, holding the sleeping +Isolde upon her knee, that soft and pensive stillness in her eyes. +Within a couple of months after its appearance, Mr. Nevins had received +orders for similar portraits from a dozen mothers, and had taken his +position in the art world as the popular baby specialist. + +Mariana had enjoyed the portrait and the sittings. They diverted her +thoughts from the groove of the ordinary and gratified to a small extent +her social instinct. When it was finished, and Mr. Nevins no longer +came, she relapsed into listlessness. It was the friction of the outside +world she needed. Hers was not the nature to develop through stagnation. +In barren soil she wilted and grew colorless, while at the touch of +sunshine she expanded and put forth her old radiance. + +Anthony, watching her, would become oppressed at times with the thought +that this thin and fragile woman, dragging through her irksome round of +duties, anęmic and hollow-eyed, might by the magic of wealth and ease +mature into a passionate, lithe, and gracious creature, of which she was +now the wraith--and yet which even now she suggested. For the furnace +through which she had passed, in robbing her of freshness and bloom, had +been unable to destroy her vague and ineffable charm. + +"She is a woman ruined," he said, bitterly, and he said it with a dull +aching in his heart. To him Mariana, emaciated and unresponsive, was +still the Mariana to be possessed and held with burning desire. The +small clashes of temper, the long silences, the apparent indifference, +had been powerless to weaken the force of his love. It was still +indomitable. + +One night, upon going to his room, he found her in her night-gown +kneeling on the hearth-rug. From her breathing he knew that she was +asleep, and it was a moment before he aroused her. In the dim light she +resembled a marble figure of prayer, her cheek resting upon her hand, +the lashes fallen over the violet circles beneath her eyes. + +Beside the bed, the baby lay in its little crib, the restless fists +lying upon its breast, a fine moisture shining like dew upon the +infantile face. He stood looking at it, a thrill shooting into his +heart. For the first time he realized with acuteness a positive feeling +for the child--realized that it was his as well as Mariana's, that it +had a claim upon him other than the claim of Mariana, that he was not +only the husband of a woman, but the father of a child. + +Bending over the crib, he touched with one finger the crumpled rose-leaf +hands, with the soft indentation around the wrist as if left by a +tightly drawn cord. + +He smiled slightly. Then he crossed over and kissed Mariana. She opened +her eyes, yawned, stretched her arms above her head, and rose. + +"I have really been asleep," she said. + +"You were so tired," answered Algarcife, and his voice was limpid with +tenderness. "It kills me that you should work so, Mariana." + +Mariana rested against him for an instant. Then she went to the crib, +and, raising the baby's head, smoothed its pillow. As she laid it down +again she pressed the cover carefully over its arms; then, throwing +herself into bed, she fell asleep with a sigh. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +With the closing session, Algarcife lost his position at the Bodley +College. He had published, for a mere pittance, a series of articles +upon the origin of sex, and, as a result, he was requested to deliver +his resignation to the principal of the institution. A man holding such +views, it was argued, was an unsuitable instructor for sixty-one young +women. So the instructorship was transferred to a divinity student who +was casually looking into science, and Algarcife was dismissed. + +Upon receiving his dismissal, he descended into the street and walked +slowly homeward. His first sensation was one of anger--blind anger +against the blindness of the universe. It seemed incredible that a +premium should be set upon commonplaceness, that modern civilization +should demand of a man that he shape his mind by an artificial process +after the minds of semi-savage ancestors. Was thought to be forever +prostrate beneath the feet of superstition? Was all boldness of inquiry, +all mental advancement along other than given lines, to be branded in +the nineteenth century by the _odium theologicum_ as it had been branded +in the time of Bruno? + +Then there followed a wave of personal bitterness which in its turn was +succeeded by a flood-tide of indifference. + +Going home, he found Mariana in nervous despair. The baby, who had been +unwell for several days, had been suddenly threatened with convulsions. +Upon the doctor's arrival, he had predicted a dangerous teething, and +had insisted upon Isolde leaving town before the beginning of hot +weather. + +"I am so miserable," said Mariana, moistening a towel to remove the +traces of milk that she had upset upon her wrapper. "What can we do?" +With a feverish gesture she brushed her heavy and disordered hair from +her brow and shook her head helplessly. "Monday is the first of June," +she added. + +Anthony listened almost stolidly. When he spoke there was a dogged +decision in his voice. "The money must be had," he answered. "God knows, +I believe I'd steal it if I'd half a chance!" + +"Then we'd all go to prison," remarked Mariana, ruefully, as she +measured the coffee into the coffee-pot. + +Algarcife smiled with a quick sense of humor. "At any rate, a livelihood +would be insured," he returned. "Honest industry is the only thing that +goes a-begging in this philanthropic century." Then, as Mariana returned +to the baby, he drank his coffee in silence and went out. As a +beginning, he secured an order to write hygienic articles for a Sunday +newspaper. Then he called upon Father Speares and found that he was out +of town, and even in his desperation was conscious of a sensation of +relief at the thought that Father Speares was beyond appeal. But the +sensation was reactionary, and, upon consulting the weather bulletin and +finding that a change in temperature was expected, he wrote a letter, +which he left at the clergyman's house. + +"How is Isolde?" he asked of Mariana an hour later. + +Mariana smiled and raised her finger warningly. "Much brighter to-day," +she answered, "and sleeping sweetly." + +Anthony bent over the crib, holding his breath as he watched the child. +He noticed that she looked thinner; the blue veins showed in a delicate +tracery upon the forehead, and the crease around the tiny wrists was +less deep. + +Mariana, serious and careworn, leaned upon the opposite side. + +"What do you think?" she whispered. + +"Only a little pale," he replied; "all children are when teething, I +suppose." + +They went into the next room and sat down, leaving the door ajar. + +"The doctor was here again," began Mariana, playing with the folds of +her gown. "June is the dangerous month--he says so." + +Algarcife raised his eyes and looked at her. + +"I wrote to Father Speares to-day," he said. + +For a moment Mariana was silent, a flush rising to her brow. Then she +rose and came over to his side, putting her arms about his neck. + +"My poor love," she murmured. Anthony drew her down upon the sofa beside +him. + +"It was tough," he said, slowly, "but--how I hate to tell you, +Mariana!--there is something else." + +Mariana flinched sharply. + +"Surely he has not refused?" she exclaimed. + +"He is away, but the College has given me notice." + +Mariana did not answer, but she grew white and her lips trembled. Then +she flung her arms out upon the sofa and laid her head upon them. Her +sobs came short and fast. + +"Mariana!" + +She lifted her head and choked back her tears, sitting cold and stiff +beside him. + +"If it were only ourselves," she said; "but the baby--what will become +of the baby?" + +There was a strained note of cheerfulness in Algarcife's voice. + +"Don't cry," he said, laying his hand upon her shoulder. "I must get the +money. Father Speares will lend it to me. We will pull through all +right, never fear." + +Mariana rested her head upon his arm and looked up at him. + +"How ill you look!" she said. "My poor boy!" + +Then the baby cried, and she went back to it. As Algarcife rose from the +sofa, he was seized with a sudden swimming in his head, and, to steady +himself, leaned against the mantel. The objects in the room seemed to +whirl in a tangle before him, and his vision was obscured by a vaporous +fog, while a tumultuous ringing sounded in his ears. But in a moment it +passed, and he was himself again. + +"Biliousness," he remarked, and started out in search of stray +journalistic work. He found it easier to obtain than he had supposed, +and, with his usual precision of method, calculated that by working +fifteen hours a day he might, provided the supply of work continued, +make up the amount which he would lose with the loss of the Bodley +College. + +After a week of such work, he became optimistic in mind and +correspondingly depressed in body. "If my brains didn't get so +sluggish," he said to Mariana, "the work would be nothing; but caffeine +will remedy that." And he returned to the use of the drug, silencing +Mariana's remonstrances with a laugh. + +"My dear girl, if I didn't take something to keep me awake, I'd fall +asleep in my chair at ten o'clock, and the subscribers to the evening +issue would never learn the hygienic value of regular hours and a +sufficient amount of recreation." + +"But you will wreck yourself," urged Mariana. + +"Nonsense. This caffeine is going to take Isolde and yourself to the +country." + +"And you?" + +"I--oh, don't worry about me! I am all right." + +And he would begin work with a pretence of alacrity, keeping to it +until drowsiness warned him of physical exhaustion, when he would pause, +stretch himself, measure his dose of caffeine, and, lifting his pen, dog +away until past midnight. + +It was an afternoon shortly after this that Mariana came to him flushed +and expectant. + +"Signor Morani sent for me," she explained. "I left Isolde with a +daughter of the laundress and went. He has offered me an engagement in a +comic opera." + +Algarcife started and looked up. + +"It seems that the manager heard me sing one day when I was at my +lesson. He liked my dramatic power, Signor Morani says. At any rate, one +of his troupe has given out, and he offers me the part." + +"But, Mariana--" + +Mariana did not look at him, but went rapidly on, as if waiving possible +objections. + +"We need the money. It might take Isolde away--and it is a chance. I am +so young, you see--and--" + +"Mariana!" cried Algarcife, sharply. There was a note in his voice which +caused her to shrink away as if he had struck her. "Mariana," he put out +his hand in protest, "you shall not do it. I will not let you. I could +not bear it." + +Mariana tapped her foot upon the floor impatiently. "I believe it is a +child's part," she said. + +"You shall not do it," he said, passionately. + +Mariana turned her eyes upon him. + +"But the money?" + +"Oh, we will arrange it. I will leave The Gotham and take a room +down-town, and you and Isolde shall go." + +"Very well," said Mariana, sullenly, and left the room. + +The next few days brought a wave of heat, and Algarcife made +arrangements to send Mariana and the child away. He gave notice at The +Gotham, and secured a room upon Fourth Street, and in spare moments +assisted Mariana with the packing. Then there was some delay in the +payment for the articles he had written, and Mariana's departure was +postponed. "Get your things ready," said Algarcife, when the heat grew +more intense and Isolde drooped. "The moment that the money arrives, you +can start. It was due a week ago." + +So Mariana continued her packing with nervous hands. She was divided +between anxiety for Anthony and anxiety for the child, and she was +profoundly depressed on her own account. + +"If it wasn't for Isolde, I wouldn't go a step," she declared, standing +before a trunk into which she was putting cans of baby's milk. "I feel +as if I could weep gallons of tears--only I haven't time." + +Miss Ramsey, who was rocking Isolde, smiled encouragingly. "The change +will do you good," she responded, "and I am sure you need it. You are +quite ghastly." + +Mariana sighed and looked at herself in the glass. "I suppose so," she +remarked, a little wistfully. "I might be thirty." + +And she went on packing. "Of course we may not leave for weeks," she +explained, "and yet I feel driven. The uncertainty is horrible." + +But Algarcife, coming in at dusk, found her more cheerful. She kissed +him with something of her old warmth, and talked almost animatedly while +he ate his supper. + +"I shall miss you so," she said, "and yet I do wish we could get off. +Isolde has been very fretful all day, and is badly broken out with heat. +She has just fallen asleep." + +After supper Mariana went to bed, and Anthony returned to work. He had +an article to do upon the moral effects of the bicycle, which was to be +handed in in the morning, and this, with some additional work, would +keep him writing far into the night. With a strong feeling of distaste +he took up his pen, and his repugnance increased with every line. In a +moment he rose, threw off his coat, and applied himself with dull +determination. It was warm to oppression, and the noises of the city +came distinctly through the open window. The elevated road grated upon +him as if it were running along his nervous system, and he started at +the shrill sounds which rose at intervals above the monotonous roar of +the streets. + +He had been writing some hours, and it was twelve o'clock when the door +opened and Mariana came in. She was barefooted and in her night-gown. +Her face shone gray in the lamplight, and there were heavy circles under +her eyes. She spoke rapidly. + +"The baby is ill," she said. "You must find a doctor. She can't +breathe." + +In an instant Algarcife had passed her and was bending over the crib. +The child was lying upon its back, staring with a mute interrogation at +vacancy. There was a purple tinge over its face, and its breath came +shortly. + +"In a moment," said Anthony, and, taking up his hat, went out. + +Within half an hour he returned, followed by the doctor, a well-meaning +young fellow, fresh from college and wholly in earnest. + +He looked at the child, spoke soothingly to Mariana, wrote a +prescription, which he himself had filled at the nearest druggist's, +gave a multitude of directions, sat an hour, and departed with the +assurance that he would return at daybreak. + +"She looks easier now," said Anthony, with a nervous tremor in his +voice. "It must have been the heat." + +Mariana, with tragic eyes, was fanning the little, flushed face, +crooning a negro lullaby which she had treasured from her own childhood. +The wavings of the palm-leaf fan cast a grotesque shadow that hovered +like a gigantic hand above the baby's head, and, with the flitting of +the shadow, the wistful little plantation melody went on. Ever since the +birth of Isolde, Mariana had sung that song, and it fell upon Anthony's +ears with an acute familiarity, like the breaking of happier +associations against a consciousness of present pain. + + "Ba! ba! black sheep. Where yo' lef' yo' lamb? + Way down yonder in de val-ley. + De birds an' de butterflies a-peckin' out its eyes, + An' de po' little thing cries: 'Mammy.'" + +As Algarcife looked down upon the small and motionless body, he felt a +sudden tightening of his heart. The infantile hands, with their waxen +look of helplessness, caused him to draw his breath as he turned away, +and to wonder how Mariana could sit there hour after hour, crooning the +negro song and waving to and fro the palm-leaf fan. + +And yet her figure in its pallid outline against the dim light was +photographed upon his brain, and it was Mariana at that moment that he +loved with the love more abundant, and that in the after-years he found +it hardest to forget. + +He saw her with the reddish glow from the night-lamp upon her profile, +her drooping body in the shadow, the fixed look of pain upon her face +softened by the look which fell upon the sick child. He saw the child +lying mute and motionless, the wide eyes staring, the small hands +folded, the soft rings of flaxen hair wet and dark with perspiration, +and the moisture lying upon the fragile little chest which the gown left +bare; and he saw it all shadowed and lightened by the wavings of +Mariana's fan. + +Beyond this he saw the homely and disordered room, the articles dropped +hastily as if in the start of sudden anxiety, the half-packed trunk with +the piles of clothes upon the floor beside it, the tiny socks with the +impress of the feet just learning to stand, the battered India-rubber +doll with the crocheted frock of bright-hued worsteds, and at Mariana's +hand the medicines which the doctor had left. + +All these things were one with Mariana and himself. They were the +heritage of their marriage, the memories which must always be +inviolate--memories that could be shared by none other, could be undone +by no stretch of time. In that atmosphere of common pain, which is more +powerful both to sever and to unite than the less trenchant atmosphere +of joy, he felt his heart leap into an invisible communion with the +heart of Mariana. At that moment he was conscious of an additional +sense-perception in the acuteness of his sympathy. He returned to his +desk and took up his pen. The articles must be finished, and yet between +himself and the unwritten page rose the vision of the still room, the +pallid woman, and the sick child. The wavings of Mariana's fan seemed to +obscure the light, and in his nervous tension he convinced himself that +he heard the difficult breathing of a dying child--his child and +Mariana's. + +He swallowed an added dose of caffeine and looked at the page before +him. The last written words stared him in the face and seemed so alien +to his present train of thought as to have emanated from another person. +He wondered what that other person's completion of the sentence would +have been. + +"Optimism is the first duty of the altruist." What in thunder had that +to do with the effects of the bicycle? And what beastly rot it was. One +might as well state that to be comfortable is the first duty of the +damned. + +"Optimism is the first duty of the altruist." He wrote on with the +feeling that he was existing as an automaton, that while his hand was +executing the result of some reflex action, his thinking entity was in +the still room behind the closed door. + +But with the absence of personality his senses were rendered doubly +acute, and he seemed to see the rhythm of the atmospheric waves about +him, while his ears were responsive to every sound in the night +without--hearing them, not in a confused discord, but in distinct +differentiation of note and key. Once his gaze encountered the grinning +skull above the mantel, and, to his giddy senses, it seemed to wink with +its hollow sockets. He found himself idly wondering if the skull had +caught the trick of winking from its former accompaniment of flesh, and +was forced to pull his thoughts together with a jerk. Then there came +one of those sudden attacks of vertigo to which he had become subject, +and he laid aside his pen and closed his eyes. "Too much caffeine," he +muttered. But when it passed he went on again. + +As the day broke he finished his articles, placed them in envelopes, +stamped and addressed them, and rose to his feet. He blew out the lamp, +and the faint odor of heated oil caused him a sensation of nausea. +Crossing to the window, he raised the shade and stood inhaling the +insipidity of atmosphere which is the city imitation of the freshness of +a country morning. Without, a sombre, neutral-toned light flooded the +almost deserted streets. In the highest heaven a star was still visible, +and the vaguest herald of dawn flaunted itself beyond the chimney-pots. + +As he lifted the shade he noticed that his hand trembled and that his +head was unusually light. That massive sense of loneliness which the +transition hour from darkness to day begets in the on-looker oppressed +him with the force of an estrangement of hope. Such an impression had +been produced upon him a hundred times by the breaking of dawn after a +sleepless night. + +He turned away and opened the door softly. + +The night-lamp was still burning, but the beginning of the morrow washed +with a faint grayness the atmosphere. The objects he had dwelt upon the +night before were magnified in size, and in an instant the unpacked +trunks, the rubber doll, and the bottles of medicine obtruded themselves +upon his vision. + +Mariana was still sitting as he had left her, waving to and fro the +palm-leaf fan. He wondered vaguely if she had sat thus since midnight. +Then he laid his hand upon her shoulder. + +"Mariana, you must lie down." And as he stooped nearer he saw that the +child was dead. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +For the next six weeks Anthony was forced to listen to the distracted +self-accusations of Mariana. When the little white coffin had been +carried to Greenwood and laid in the over-grown plot beside the graves +of Algarcife's parents, to be shadowed by the storied urns that +redounded to the honor of a less impoverished generation, Mariana +returned, and, throwing herself upon the floor, refused consolation. + +"I want nothing," she said--"nothing, nothing. What could comfort me?" + +At Anthony's protestations of love and grief she lifted dull and +scornful eyes, wherein the triumph of motherhood showed supreme over all +other emotions. + +"How can you know?" she asked, between tearless sobs. "You did not nurse +her, and hold her in your arms night and day; you did not bathe her +while she laughed at the bubbles; you did not put on her little dresses +and socks. Oh, my baby! my baby! I want my baby!" + +Then she would rise and pace up and down in a sudden frenzy of despair, +clinching her hands at her own impotence, tearing her wounds asunder +with remorseless recollections. It was as if she found satisfaction in +thus inflicting upon herself the added agony of recalling the minor +details of her loss--in voicing the keenest passion of her grief. + +Algarcife, writing in the adjoining room and wrung by a tortured brain, +would listen to her unsteady tread as she walked ceaselessly back and +forth, until the sound would madden him with its pauseless +monotony--and then would come that half-choked cry for reckoning with +fate, "Oh, my baby!" + +To his more self-contained nature the violence of Mariana's grief was +like the searing of the bleeding sores in his own heart. To avoid that +cry of stricken motherhood he would have given the better portion of his +life--to have been deaf to that impulsive expression of a pain he felt +but could not utter he would have damned his soul. + +And when, during the first few days, Mariana gathered together all the +scattered little garments, and brooded over them with the passion of +irremediableness, he would cry aloud out of his own bitterness, + +"Put them away! If you love me, Mariana, hide them." + +But Mariana, in the selfishness of loss, would glance at him with +reproachful eyes, and turn to stroke the rubber doll in its bright-hued +dress, and the half-worn socks with the impress of restless feet. + +In the night she would start from a troubled sleep with corroding +self-questionings. "Make a light," she would say, fretfully, sitting up +and staring into the gloom. "Make a light. The darkness stifles me. I +can't breathe." + +Then, when the flame of the candle would flare up beside her, she would +turn upon Anthony the blaze of her excited eyes, and play upon the sheet +with feverish fingers. The loss of sleep which these spasms entailed +upon Algarcife was an additional drain upon his wrecking system, and +sometimes in sheer exhaustion he would plead for peace. + +"Mariana, only sleep. Lie still, and I will fan you--or shall I give you +bromide?" + +But the hot questions would rush upon him and he would answer them as he +had answered such questions for the past six weeks. + +"Was it my fault? Could I have done anything? Was it taken away because +I didn't want it to come?" + +"Mariana!" + +"Do you remember that I said I hoped it would die? You knew they were +idle words, didn't you? You knew that I didn't mean it?" + +"Of course, my dearest." + +"But somebody told me once that for every idle word we would be held to +account. Is this the account?" + +"Hush." + +For a moment she would lie silent, and then, rising again, the torrent +would come. + +"Perhaps if I had not left the window open that first warm day. And I +did not send for the doctor at once. I thought it was only fretful. +Perhaps--" + +"You could have done nothing." + +"I did not know. I was so ignorant. I should have studied. I should have +asked questions." + +Then she would turn towards him, laying her hot hand upon his arm. + +"Tell me that it was not my fault. Tell me--tell me!" + +"It was not. It was not." + +"But I want her so. I want to feel her. I want to feel her soft and warm +in my arms. Oh, my baby!" + +And so the summer nights would wear away. + +But as time went on a reactionary lethargy pervaded her. Her vitality +being spent, she was left limp and devoid of energy. For hours she would +lie motionless in the heated room, the afternoon sun, intensified by the +reflected glare of pressed brick, streaming upon her, and she would +appear to be indifferent to both heat and glare. From Algarcife she +turned with an avoidance which was almost instinctive. When he touched +her she shrank into silence, when he spoke she met his words with +lethargic calm. It was as if the demands he made upon her emotional +nature became irksome to her when that nature lay dormant. + +"I suppose I love you," she said one day, in answer to his questions. "I +think I do, but I don't feel it. I don't feel anything. I only want to +forget." + +"Not to forget me, Mariana?" + +Mariana shook her head impatiently. + +"Do you know," she continued, "that the thought of feeling makes me +positively sick? I haven't any left, and I don't like it in other +people. I am tired of it all." + +"And of me?" + +"I don't know. I think not, but I oughtn't to have married you." + +"Mariana!" + +"It would have been much better. You said so yourself once. But love is +so strange. It makes people do such absurd things." + +Algarcife did not reply. There was resentment in the look he bent upon +her. He had not learned that even a woman in love is not a woman always +in love--that love, in common with all other conditions, is subject to +the forces which attract and repel, and that its equilibrium is +maintained by a logical adjustment of opposites. To him Mariana's +alienation betokened a fundamental failing in her nature, and with the +thought he experienced a dull anger. + +"I have felt so much in my life," continued Mariana, "that my capacity +for sensations is lying fallow. The lack of ice in my tea and the heat +in my room are of more importance than the excesses of affection. Were +you ever that way?" + +For a moment Algarcife did not reply; then he said, "You are very +uncomfortable?" + +"Yes." + +"When we leave The Gotham it will be still worse. That room on Fourth +Street is hellish." + +"No doubt." + +"How will you stand it?" + +Mariana interlaced her fingers with impatient weariness and yawned. + +"I don't know. As I stand it now, I suppose. We are poorer than ever, +aren't we?" + +"Poorer than ever." + +She fingered her gown softly. "I suppose I shouldn't have bought this +mourning," she said. "What a pity!" + +When Anthony had gone she went out upon the fire-escape and looked down +into the street below. The cry of a vender rolling his cart of over-ripe +melons came up to her, and she followed his figure with curious +intentness. From some indefinable cause, the vender suggested Signor +Morani to her mind, and she recalled his warning, as she had recalled it +in a different mood that rainy evening over a year ago. She realized now +that Anthony's objection to her accepting Signor Morani's offer was +still a canker within her heart. There remained, and there would always +remain, the possibility that had she overruled his objection and entered +into the engagement, Isolde might have been sent from the city, and +might now be playing in some country meadow. The possibility, facing her +as it did in all its ghastliness, produced a gnawing remorse, as +invincible as a devil's thrust. + +Upon this followed the conception that her marriage had doomed to +failure not only her own life, but Anthony's; and there came a +passionate regret for the part she had played in drawing him from his +isolated abstraction into the turmoil of life and its passions. She +blamed herself that she had gone to him that night, carrying the letter +in her hand. She blamed herself that she had not resisted the appeal of +her love, and, with a sudden pang, she realized all that the change had +meant to him--the book that remained unwritten, the treadmill of +uncongenial toil, the physical hardihood which was being slowly ground +to dust. She realized this in its fulness, but with no determination of +endeavor, no resolutions to battle more with fate. There was regret for +the past, but there were no pledges for the future. The outcome was +beyond her and beyond Anthony, this she knew. It was something to be +left to the floodgates of hope that would be overborne by the press of +time. In the lowered state of her vitality she felt almost indifferently +her own inability to contest for larger measures of individual gain. She +accepted destiny, and acquiesced, not in resignation, but in the apathy +of one whom despair has drugged. + +And above it all there rose the desire to escape, to be freed from it +forever. "If he had never seen me!" she cried, passionately. "If he had +never seen me!" Then colorless adumbrations of her own past blocked her +horizon--and she confronted the ashes of her aspirations. She saw those +illuminated dreams of her girlhood--the ideals which had crumbled at the +corroding touch of care. She saw the demand for power which had been +thwarted, the ambitions which had been undone, the cry for life more +abundant which had been forced back upon her quivering lips. She saw +herself walking day after day with empty arms along the way she had +carried the child. She saw herself a drag upon her own existence and +upon the existence of the man for whom she thought a love she had no +power to feel. She saw the stretch of those monotonous and neutral-toned +years, saw the sordid fight for bread, saw her sense of joy and beauty +blunted, saw the masculine brain that was fitted to grasp universal laws +decaying in the atmosphere of vulgar toil. And, woven and interwoven in +her thoughts, was the knowledge that the affection to be invigorated by +deprivations and to rise triumphant over poverty was not hers--that the +love which in happier surroundings might have shown inviolable, which +the great calamities of life might have left unassailed, had grown gray +in the round of unsatisfied desires and victorious commonplaces. In the +days to come, would not the jarring notes of their natures be +exaggerated, the sympathetic ones suppressed? When old age came, as come +it surely would, what would remain to them save a memory of discords and +a present of unfulfilment? Was not death itself preferable to death in +life? + +Down on the sidewalk below a ragged urchin was turning somersaults in +the shade. Suddenly, with a howl of delight, he pounced upon a +half-rotten peach which a passer-by had thrown into the gutter. Mariana +smiled faintly, left the fire-escape, and went in-doors. + +A week later they gave up The Gotham and moved into the room on Fourth +Street. Algarcife made an attempt to sell the greater part of his +library before moving, but the price offered was merely nominal, and at +the last moment his heart misgave him. So he hired a dilapidated van, +and the books were transported to the new lodgings and stacked along the +south wall. + +When the hour came for their departure, it was with a feeling of despair +that he took Mariana's bag and descended for the last time the steps of +The Gotham. A black finality seemed looming beyond their destination. + +At the entrance, Mr. Nevins, with tears in his eyes, grasped Anthony's +hand, and Miss Ramsey fell upon Mariana's neck. + +Mariana laughed a little desperately. + +"It reminds me of the time I saw a family move to the poor-house," she +said; "only their friends weren't quite so affectionate." + +"But you will come back," insisted Mr. Nevins. "Surely you will come +back when things look a little brighter." + +"Which will be when the flames of spontaneous combustion illuminate this +planet," remarked Ardly, cynically, but his eyes were sad as they rested +upon Mariana. + +"Or when a relation dies," said Mr. Nevins. + +"How we shall miss you!" said Miss Ramsey. + +Here Mr. Paul, who had sauntered up as if by chance, drew Algarcife +aside. + +"If you had only told me," he said, dryly. "I have a few thousands in +bank, and I--" + +Anthony caught his hand, but his voice was choked and he could only +shake his head. Then Mariana said good-bye, and they left the house and +ascended the steps to the platform of the elevated road. + +As Mariana took her seat, she turned to the window and watched the +little fire-escape upon the fourth story until The Gotham was lost to +sight. Then she raised her veil and wiped a tear-drop from her +eyelashes. + +When the door was unlocked and she entered the new room, a fit of +restlessness seized her. The barrenness of existence struck her with the +force of a blow, and, with a swift return of impulse, she cried out in +rebellion. The stale odor of cooking, which rose from the apartment +below, the dustiness of the floor, the blackened ceiling, the hard and +unyielding bed, gave her a convulsive shudder. + +"I cannot bear it," she said. "I cannot bear it." + +Algarcife left the window, where he had been standing, and came towards +her. Between himself and Mariana a constraint had been growing, and he +recalled suddenly the fact that their old warmth of intercourse had +chilled into an indifferent reserve. + +"It is bad," he said. "I am very sorry." + +Mariana took off her hat and veil and laid them in one of the bureau +drawers. The drawer creaked as she opened it, and the sound jarred upon +Anthony's overwrought sensitiveness. He noticed suddenly that Mariana's +expression had grown querulous, and that she had ceased to wear her hair +becomingly. + +"You can hardly think that I enjoy it," he added. "An existence composed +of two-thirds nerves and one-third caffeine is hardly rose-color." + +He looked gray and haggard, and the hand which he raised trembled +slightly. + +"Hardly," returned Mariana, shortly. + +Both felt an instinctive desire to vent their wretchedness in words, and +yet each felt an almost passionate pity for the other. The very pity +emphasized the aggravation from which they suffered, and it was by a +process of reflex action that, when goaded by thoughts of each other, +they would strike out recklessly. + +"No," repeated Mariana; "but it seems to be a case where two, instead of +lessening the misery, increase the discomforts." + +Immediately after supper she went to bed, tossing restlessly for hours +because the mattress was uneven, the sheets coarse, and the lamp, by +which Anthony worked, shining in her face. + +When she finally fell asleep, it was with a sob of revolt. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +Mariana's restlessness did not pass with the passing days. It developed +until it gathered the force of a malady, and she lived in persistent +movement, as if impelled by an invisible lash. As her aversion to their +lodgings became more pronounced, her powers of endurance increased, and +through the long, hot days she was rarely in-doors. Algarcife often +wondered where she spent the morning and afternoon hours, but the +constraint between them had strengthened, and he did not ask her. When +breakfast was over, he would see her put on her hat, take her shabby +black parasol, and go out into the street. At luncheon she would return, +looking flushed and warm, as if from exercise in the summer sun; but +when they had risen from the table she would move uneasily about, until, +at last, she would turn in desperation and go out again. He seldom +sought to detain her. Indeed, her absence was almost a relief, and he +found it less difficult to work when the silence was unbroken by +impetuous footsteps and the rustle of skirts. + +Once he said: "It is too hot for you this afternoon." + +And she answered: "No, I will go to a square." + +He was silent, and she left in sudden haste. + +That she walked miles in that fearful weather, driven on by sheer +inability to rest, he realized pityingly. Occasionally he would go to +the window as she descended the stairs, and the sight of the fragile, +black-robed figure, making its rapid way through the fierce sunshine, +would cause him a spasmodic contraction of pain. And yet the +remembrance of her indifference would chill the words with which he +greeted her return, and the knowledge that her heart had passed from him +and was straining towards the outside world would veil his mental +suffering in an assumption of pride. That Mariana's withered desires for +the fulness of life had grown green again, he could but know. He had +seen the agony inflicted upon her by every trivial detail of their +lives--by the poorly cooked food, by the fly-specks upon the dishes, by +the absence of a hundred superficial refinements. He had seen her flinch +at the odors of stale vegetables, and set her teeth at the grating +voices of the other lodgers. He had heard her moans in the night, rising +from a wail for the small comforts of life to a wail for the child she +had lost. He had marked every added line about her mouth, every bitter +word that fell from her lips. And yet he had gone unswervingly on his +way, and she had not known, but had thought him as pulseless to her +presence as she to his. + +"I am late," she said one day in September, coming in with more +brightness than usual. "Have you had luncheon?" + +"I waited for you," responded Anthony. + +As she laid aside a roll of music she carried, he saw that it was the +score of a light opera. + +"You have been to Signor Morani's?" he asked. + +"Yes, I have been taking lessons again." + +Anthony glanced dubiously round. + +"And you have no piano," he said. "You will miss it." + +Mariana shook her head, and pushed away her tea with a gesture of +disgust. "But I practise at Signor Morani's. He lets me use one of his +rooms." + +He noticed that she spoke cheerfully, and that a wave of her lost +freshness had returned to her face. The instantaneous effect of her +moods upon her appearance was an ever-recurring surprise to him. It was +as if, by the play of her features, she unconsciously translated feeling +into expression. + +In a moment she spoke again. + +"It is a part that I have been studying," she continued, "and I must +commit the words to memory." + +He picked it up. It was a serio-comic opera, entitled, "La Sorcičre." + +"Morani says that my voice has developed during the long rest. He was +surprised when I sang." + +"Was he?" asked Anthony, absently. He was wondering dully what would be +the end of Mariana's ambitions--if there was any end for ambitions other +than obliteration. Had fate anything to offer more durable than dust and +ashes? + +Mariana glanced about her and her face clouded. "It is that horrible +cabbage again," she complained. "I believe those people down-stairs do +nothing but fry cabbage. It makes me ill." + +Anthony was recalled from his abstraction with a sense of annoyance. + +"It seems to me," he retorted, sharply, "that, in our condition, to +worry over a grievance of that order would be refreshing--when one's +heels are hanging over the verge of starvation, it is a relief to be +allowed to smell some one else's dinner." + +"That depends upon what the dinner consists of," Mariana rejoined. "I +may be reduced to living on dry bread, but I hope you will spare me the +fried cabbage." + +"You speak as if I had reduced you to this state for my own +gratification." His temper was getting the better of him, and, with a +snap, he set his teeth and was silent. + +The mental distress, the stimulants he had used to spur a jaded brain +into action, and his failing health had left him a prey to anger. An +unexpected interruption, a jarring sound, a trivial mishap, were +sufficient to cause him an outburst from which he often saved himself +by flight. + +Mariana replied tartly. + +"I am sure I don't see how my objection to living upon fried cabbage +could reflect upon you. I did not know you cared for it." + +"You know I do not. But I don't see why you should make a fuss about a +wholesome article of food." + +"It is not wholesome. It is exceedingly indigestible." + +"At any rate, it belongs to your neighbors. You aren't forced to eat +it." + +"No, but you implied that the time would come when I'd be glad to. I +merely said it never would." + +"Then let the cabbage be damned," said Algarcife. + +"Gladly," responded Mariana, and they said no more. + +Algarcife selected a manuscript from his desk and went out. He felt as +if his nerves had quickened into ramifying wires through which a current +of electricity was passing. He was not angry with Mariana. He was angry +with no one, but he was racked by the agony of diseased sensibilities, +and, though rationally he endeavored to be sympathetic in his bearing to +his wife, his rational nature seemed ploughed by the press of his +nerves, and for the first time in his life he found self-restraint +beyond his grasp. + +As he ascended the steps of the newspaper office where he was to leave +the manuscript, he ran against a man whom he knew and who stared at him +in astonishment. + +"My God, Algarcife, you are a ghost! What have you been doing?" + +"Wrestling with Providence," returned Algarcife, shortly. "Hardly a +becoming job." + +"Well, take my advice and leave off at the first round. If you don't +mind the comparison, you bear a close resemblance to that Egyptian +mummy in the museum." + +"No doubt. But that Egyptian has a damned sight the best of it. He lived +three thousand years ago." + +And he passed on. + +It was several nights after this that he started from a heavy sleep to +find that Mariana had left his side. Rising upon his elbow, he glanced +about the room, and saw her white-robed form revealed in nebulous +indistinctness against the open window. Her head was resting upon her +clasped hands and she was looking out into the night. + +"Mariana," he said. + +Her voice came with a muffled sound from the obscurity. + +"Yes." + +"What are you doing?" + +The white figure stirred slightly. + +"Thinking," she answered. + +"Don't think. It is a confounded mistake. Go to sleep." + +"I can't sleep. It is so hot." + +"Lie down and I will fan you." + +"No." + +Algarcife turned over wearily, and for a time there was silence. + +Suddenly Mariana spoke, her voice wavering a little. + +"Anthony--are you asleep?" + +"No." + +Again she was silent, and again her voice wavered as it rose. + +"I have been thinking about--about how poor we are. Will it ever be +better?" + +"I cannot say. Don't think of it?" + +"But I must think of it. I am trying to find a way out of it. Is there +any way?" + +"None that I know of." + +Mariana half rose and sat down again. + +"There is one," she said, "and I--" + +"What do you mean?" Algarcife demanded, starting up. + +Her voice came slowly. + +"I mean that I am--that it is better--that I am--going away." + +For a moment the stillness seemed tangible in its oppressiveness. +Mariana's head had fallen upon her hands, and as she stared at the +electric light on the opposite corner she heard Anthony's heavy +breathing. A moth circled about the ball of light, showing to her fixed +gaze like some black spirit of evil hovering above a planet. + +Algarcife's tones fell cold and constrained. + +"To leave me, you mean?" + +"It is the only way." + +"Where will you go?" + +Something that was not grief and yet akin to it choked Mariana as she +answered. + +"I have an offer. The one that--that I told you of. It is an excellent +opening--so Morani says. The company goes abroad--next week. And I know +the part." + +"And you wish to go?" His voice hurt her with its absence of color. + +She lifted her hands and let them fall in her lap. Her gaze left the +electric light, where the moth was still revolving in its little orbit. + +"It is not choice," she replied; "it is necessity. What else is there to +do--except starve? Can we go on living like this day after day, you +killing yourself with work, I a drag? It is better that I should +go--better for us both." + +He hesitated a moment as if in thought, and when he spoke it was with +judicial calm. + +"And would you have gone--a year ago?" + +She was silent so long that he would have repeated the question, but at +his first word the answer came with a wave of self-abasement. + +"I--I suppose not." + +And that was all. + +During the next few days the subject of Mariana's decision was not +mentioned. Both felt a constraint in alluding to it, and yet both felt +the inevitableness of the final hour. Anthony's pride had long since +sealed his lips over the expressions of an unwished-for affection, and +Mariana had grown chary of words. + +But both went quietly along their daily lives, Anthony working at his +desk while Mariana gathered together her shabby garments and made ready +for the moment which by word and look they both ignored. + +Then at last, when the night before her going came, Mariana spoke. They +had just risen from the supper-table and the slipshod maid of work had +carried off the unemptied tray. Mariana had eaten nothing. Her face was +flushed, and she was moving excitedly about the room. + +"I go to-morrow," she began, feverishly. + +Algarcife looked up from a book through which he was searching for a +date. + +"So you have decided?" His lips twitched slightly and the veins upon his +forehead contracted. + +Mariana shook out a night-gown which she had taken from a drawer, folded +it carefully, and laid it in the trunk. + +"There is nothing else to do," she replied, mechanically, as if she were +fencing with fate from a corner into which she had been driven. + +Algarcife closed the book and rose to his feet. He pressed his hand upon +his eyes to screen them from the glare of light. Then he moistened his +lips before speaking. + +"Do you realize what it means?" he asked. + +Mariana lowered her head into the trunk and her voice sounded from among +the clothes. + +"There is nothing else to do," she repeated, as mechanically as before. + +"I hope that it will be for your happiness," said Algarcife, and turned +away. Then he went towards her in sudden determination. + +"Is there anything that I can help you about?" + +Mariana stood up and shook her head. "I think not," she answered. +"Signor Morani calls for me to-morrow at six." + +Algarcife sat down, but the old sensation of dizziness came upon him and +he closed his eyes. + +"Have you a headache?" asked Mariana. "The tea was very bad. Shall I +make you a cup?" + +He shook his head and opened a book, but she crossed to his side and +laid her hand upon his shoulder. + +"It may not be for long," she said. "If I am successful--" + +He flinched from her touch and shook her hand off almost fiercely. His +eyes were bloodshot and his lips white. + +"The room is so warm," he said, "it makes me dizzy. I'll go out." + +And he went down-stairs. + +Mariana stood where he had left her and looked down upon the pile of +unpacked garments. A tear glistened upon her lashes, but it was a tear +of impersonal sorrow and regret. For herself she was conscious only of a +dulness of sensation, as if her usually vital emotions had been blunted +and rendered ineffectual. In a mute way, as she stood there, she +realized an almost tragic pity, but it was purely mental, and she +recalled calmly the fact that a separation, which six months ago would +have seared her soul with agony, she was now accepting with a feeling +that was one of relief. The stress of accumulated griefs and anxieties +had crushed her impressionable nature past all resemblance to its former +responsiveness. Yet it is possible that even then, had Anthony returned +to overpower her with his appeal, she would have wavered in her +decision, but the wavering would have been the result of a fight between +the instincts which were virile and the memory of the instincts which +were buried with her buried passions, and it is doubtful where the +victory would have rested. Her impulse for flight was as keen as the +impulse which causes a bird to beat its breast against the bars that +hold it. She wanted to flee from the sorrow she had known and all its +associations; she wanted to flee from poverty and ugliness to beauty and +bright colors. The artistic genius of her nature was calling, calling, +and she thrilled into an answering echo. + +But, for all that, a tear glistened upon her lashes as she looked down +upon the unpacked clothes. + +"O God! if you would only make a miracle!" she said--"if you only +would!" + +Her glance fell upon the desk where Anthony's work was lying. She saw +the freshly written page upon which the ink was not dry. She lifted the +pen in her fingers and felt the thick cork handle which was stained and +indented by constant use. She sighed and turned slowly away. + +The next afternoon, in hat and veil, with a small black satchel in her +hand, she stood waiting for Signor Morani. Her trunk had already been +carried down, and the carriage was turning the corner. She spoke +lightly, dreading silence and dreading an accent of seriousness. "It is +cooler," she said. "I hope a change is coming." + +Then, as the carriage stopped beside the pavement below, she held out +her hands. They shook slightly. + +"Good-bye," she said. + +"I hope you will be happy." + +"And you. It will be easier for you." + +"Good-bye." + +She raised her veil, her eyes shining. + +"Kiss me." + +He kissed her, but his lips were cold, and there was no pressure upon +hers. + +She lowered her veil and went out. Algarcife stood at the window and +heard her footsteps as she descended the stairs. He saw her leave the +house, pause for an instant to greet Signor Morani, give the black bag +into his hands, and enter the carriage. As she sat down, she leaned out +for an instant and glanced up to where he stood. Then the carriage +started, turned the corner, and was gone. + +Still he did not leave the window. He stood motionless, his head bent, +looking down into the heated streets, across which were stretching the +slanting shadows from the west. A splash of scarlet, like the impress of +a bloody hand, projected above the jagged line of tenement roofs, while +a film of rising smoke obscured its lurid distinctness. He felt that +complete sense of isolation, that loss of connection with the chain of +humanity which follows a separation from one who has shared with us, +night and day, the commonplaces of existence. The past and future seemed +to have clashed together and shattered into the present. + +In the street below men and women were going homeward from the day's +work. He noticed that they wore, one and all, an aspect of despair, as +if passing automatically along the endless round of a treadmill. He felt +a vague wonder at the old, indomitable instinct of the preservation of +self which seemed so alien to his mood. Situated as he was above it all, +humanity assumed to his indifferent eyes a comic effect, and he found +himself laughing cynically at the moving figures that blocked the +sidewalk below. A physical disgust for the naked facts of life attacked +him like nausea. The struggle for existence, the propagation of the +species, the interminable circle of birth, marriage, and death, appeared +to him in revolting bestiality. In his bodily and mental wreckage, all +action became repellent and hideous, and the slanting sun-rays +bespattering the human atoms in the street produced a giddiness in his +brain. At that moment he was in the throes of a mental revolution, and +his old philosophic sanity was ingulfed. + +He remembered suddenly that he had eaten nothing all day, and, turning +from the window, drank a cup of tea which had been left upon the table. +The continual use of stimulants, in exciting his nervous system, had +made sleep impossible, and he felt as if a furnace blazed behind his +eyeballs. He sat down, staring blankly at the opposite wall. In the +corner, upon a heap of books, the skull and cross-bones had been thrown, +and they caught his glance and held it with a curious fascination. They +seemed to typify his own life, those remnants of dry bones that had once +supported flesh and blood. He regarded himself impersonally, as he might +once have regarded a body for dissection. He saw that he had passed the +zenith of his physical and mental power, and that from this day forth it +would mean to him retrogression or stagnation. He saw that the press of +untoward circumstances had forced his intellect from its natural orbit +into a common rut from which there was no side-track of escape. He +weighed his labors, his knowledge, his impassioned aims for truth, and, +in the balance with a handful of dust, he found them wanting. He stirred +the ashes heaped where once had been a vital passion, and he found a +wasted skeleton and dry bones. He looked at his thin and pallid hand, +and it seemed to him as incapable of work as the hand of one palsied. + +Before his tragic eyes, the years of his past stood marshalled, and, one +and all, they bore the badge of failure. + +As he rose from his chair in sudden desperation, the recurring faintness +seized him and he steadied himself against the open drawer of the +bureau. Looking into it as he turned away, he saw some loose articles +which Mariana had forgotten--a bit of veiling, a single stocking, and a +tiny, half-worn sock of pink worsted. He closed the drawer and turned +hastily away. + +Then he sat down beside his desk and bowed his head into his hands. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +For a week after Mariana's departure Algarcife worked on ploddingly. He +closed his eyes to actualities and allowed his overwrought mind no +cessation from labor. It was as if all molecular motion in his brain had +been suspended save that relating to the subject in hand, and he wrote +with mechanical readiness journalistic essays upon the "Advantages of a +Vegetable Diet" and "The Muscular Development of the Body." Then, upon +trying to rise one morning, he found that his shattered system was +turning in revolt, and that no artificial spur could sting his exhausted +brain into action. + +Through the long, hot day he lay relaxed and nerveless, conscious of the +glare of the sunshine, but dreading to draw the shades, conscious of the +closeness of the atmosphere, and conscious of a beating, like the +strokes of an anvil, in his temples. When his dinner was brought he +drank a cup of tea and sat up. Then he reached for a phial of morphia +pellets which he kept in his desk, and, dissolving one in water, +swallowed it. For a moment the temptation to take the contents of the +phial at a dose assailed him, but, more from inability to venture a +decisive step than from any mental determination, he laid the bottle +aside. Action of any kind appeared intolerably irksome, and he waived +with disgust the solution of the simple problem of his life. + +As he fell back upon the bed, his glance passed over the pillow beside +him, and he pictured to himself the circle which Mariana's head had +drawn upon the cotton. He remembered that she always slept lying upon +her right side, her left knee bent, one hand under the pillow and one +lying upon her breast, her profile shadowed by dreams. He remembered the +nervous fear she felt of resting upon her heart, and that, having once +turned upon her left side, she awoke with palpitating breaths and a +smothered cry. He saw her calmer slumber, he felt her rhythmic +breathing, and he recalled his sensation when one of her loosened braids +had brushed his cheek. Again he saw her as she leaned over to soothe the +child, and, raising it in her arms, hushed it upon her breast. He +recalled it dully, as one recalls the incidents of long-past years over +which the colorless mantle of time has been cast to deaden the +flickering embers amid the ashes. In his mind there was no virility of +passion nor intensity of bitterness--there was only an almighty +melancholy. Life in its sufficiency of satisfied desires showed stale +and unprofitable, and in its barrenness it was but a blank. + +The sunshine, blazing through the open window, accelerated the throbbing +in his temples. In the morbid acuteness of his senses, the cries of the +vegetable venders in the street below harassed his ears. Along his whole +body there ran a quivering flame of fever, and his thoughts spun like a +revolving globe. The morphia had not stilled the beating in his head. It +had produced a sensation of sickness, which seemed but the physical +accompaniment of his mental syncope. + +He surveyed the books stacked against the opposite wall and wondered +vaguely at the energy with which he had attacked those volumes upon +whose covers the dust was now lying like a veil. He tried to arouse a +memory of the old intellectual exhilaration with which he had grappled +with and vanquished an unexplored department of thought. He remembered +that at such moments the printed lines before him had assumed an unusual +degree of clearness, and that he had been reading _The Wealth of +Nations_ when a point in comparative morphology occurred to him. But the +sensation itself he could not recover. The association of ideas was +still unbroken, but the mental state was lost. + +As he lay there, tossing restlessly upon the heated pillows, he reviewed +unsympathetically his old pursuit of knowledge. What did it all mean? +For what had he given his heritage of youth and manhood? For Truth. +Granted, but what was Truth that he should follow it unswervingly until +he passed from flesh and blood to a parcel of dry bones? How could he +find it, and, finding, know it? That gray and ancient scepticism which +had never appealed to him in health preyed now upon his wasting vitals. +Since through the senses alone one could perceive, and the senses were +but faulty instruments, what was perception worth? What were ideas but +the figments produced by faculties which were at best deceptive? And in +the infinite complexity of the self-sustaining reality, of what account +were the abstractions of the finite intellect? In Truth itself, that +all-pervading immateriality, were not the myriads of man's little truths +ingulfed and lost? Were not true and false but symbols to express the +differing relations of a great whole, as evolution and dissolution were +symbols to express the recurring waves of a great force. As one man with +his single hand barring the march of the seasons, was the man who by his +single brain sought to hasten the advance of the Law which is Truth. And +though he crumbled to dust, not one needful fact but would find its way +into the moving world. + +Stunned by despondency, he closed his eyes and groaned. In the absolute +grasp of the futility of endeavor, he realized the lowest depths of +human hopelessness. It was as if he had reached the ultimate nothing, +the end to which his pathway led. Though he dashed his brains into the +void, not one breath of the universal progress would swerve from its +course. + +And happiness? What was it but another symbol to signify the wistful +yearning of the world? Where was it found? Not in love, which is the +thirsting for a woman's spirit; not in passion, which is the burning for +a woman's flesh. Did not bitterness follow upon the one, and upon the +other satiety? His nature was deadened to the verge of obliviousness, +and in his waning vitality the impulse of self-gratification had gone +first. Physical desires shrank into decay, and mental ones passed with +them. He wondered that he had ever sought in love other than calm +reasonableness and a cooling presence. The emotion that sent scarlet +thrills to his brain he analyzed with callousness. He remembered his +mother as she lay upon the invalid's sofa, her Bible and a novel of +Victor Hugo's upon the table beside her. He saw the placid beauty of her +face, the slender, blue-veined hand which she laid upon his forehead +when he went to her a wailing child; and it seemed to him that such a +touch was the only touch of love with the power to console. Then he +remembered Mariana's hand as she laid it upon her child and his, and he +knew that the touch was the same. He thought of her as she sat beside +the crib when the child lay dying. The passionate self-control about the +mouth, the agony in her eyes, the tragic droop of her figure--these +returned to soften him. He saw the black shadow of the palm-leaf fan, +passing to and fro above the little bluish face, and he heard the +labored breathing. + +In sudden bitterness he opened his arms and cried aloud, "Mariana!" + +Then the tears of weakness and despair stained the pillow where her head +had lain. + +When the twilight fell he rose, dressed himself with an effort, and +descended the stairs. His limbs trembled as he moved, and, upon reaching +the open air, he staggered and leaned for support against the red brick +wall. Then he straightened himself, and wandered aimlessly from street +to street. As he passed among men and women he was aware of a strange +aloofness, as if the links connecting him with his kind had snapped +asunder; and he felt that he might have been the being of another planet +to whom earthly passions and fulfilments bore no palpable relation, but +were to be considered with cosmic composure. The thought jarred upon him +insistently that these moving men and women, whom he brushed in passing, +were each stirred by an entity akin to that which in himself lay +drugged. He realized that the condition of a mind without the attraction +of physical desires is as chaotic as the condition of a world suddenly +freed from the attraction of gravitation. + +He looked at his fellow human beings with forced intentness. It struck +him with an almost hysterical shock that they were of ludicrous shapes, +and he laughed. Then he glanced at a carriage rolling along the street, +and it appeared absurd that one mortal should sit upon four wheels while +a fellow-mortal of a nobler build should draw him. He laughed again. As +he did so he had a quick perception that delirium was approaching, and +he stopped to swallow another pellet. He reeled slightly, and a +boot-black upon the corner surveyed him with interest. + +"Air yer drunk, mister?" + +He laughed aloud. "Damned drunk," he responded, and walked on. Some +hours later he found himself in Whitehall Street, passing the lighted +windows of the Eastern Hotel. Beneath the station of the elevated road +he came upon a stand, with the words "Cider and Root-Beer" flaming in +red letters on a white background, and for the first time he was +conscious of a sensation of thirst. He stopped, felt in his pocket, and +then, checking himself, passed onward to the Battery. A sharp wind +struck him, blowing the damp hair from his forehead and chilling the +drops of perspiration upon his face. With a feeling of relief he leaned +against one of the stone pillars and bared his head to the incoming +breeze. Far out the islands shone in iridescent lights, flashing through +variations of green and amber, and over the water the ferry-boats +skimmed like gigantic insects studded with parti-colored eyes. + +Down below the water lay black and cold, the slow breakers flecked with +light foam. He saw a glimmer as of phosphorescence rise suddenly upon +the waves, and, looking deeper, he saw the eternal stillness. Between +the throbs of fever the passion for death seized him in a paroxysm, and +mentally he felt the quiet waters stir beneath him and the quietness +close over him. His hand fastened upon the iron chain between the +pillars; then he drew back. + +He remembered the row of acids upon a shelf in his room, and his +assurance returned. With a sensation of luxuriousness he recalled the +labels with the large "Poison!" above, and the inscription "Hydrocyanic +Acid" stared him in the eyes. When he had made that collection for +experimental purposes how little had he foreseen the experiment in which +it would play a part. He sat down upon a bench and stared idly at the +stream of passers-by, some lovers who went arm-in-arm, some husbands and +wives who walked apart, some fathers and mothers who carried sickly +children--all bound and burdened with the flesh. The fretful wail of a +baby came to him and mingled mechanically with his train of thought. It +seemed the frail treble in the great symphony of human woe. + +Beyond the men and women he saw the black water and the dancing lights, +and, farther still, the misty islands. + +Gradually the fever starts grew less, and calmness came back to him. +With a wave of regret he looked back upon his lost serenity, and +lamented that it had failed him. He knew that in his mental upheaval the +opposing elements in his nature had waged a combat. The scientific tenor +of his mind had for the past few weeks been crushed out by the virulence +of his nerves. That physical force which he had so long held enthralled +had at last asserted its supremacy, and for the time his mind was under +the sway of bodily weakness. + +This duality of being occurred to him in perplexing inconsistency. Had +he been a pure mentality, his life would have been one steep and +victorious ascent towards knowledge. Were he but a physical organism, +carnality would have satisfied his cravings. Then the remembrance that +stronger than will or flesh is necessity arose and smote him into +silence. + +Many of the people had gone, but he still sat plunged in thought. A +hatless woman, fresh from a midnight carousal, with a bleeding cut upon +her lip, took the seat beside him, and he found a forlorn comfort in the +contact with alien wretchedness. When she laid her head upon the back of +the bench and fell asleep, he listened to her drunken snores calmly and +without aversion. He became aware that his old kinship to humanity was +at the moment restored, that, losing it with the loss of desire, it was +regained in despair. Suddenly the head of the woman beside him rolled +forward and rested against his shoulder. She stirred slightly, heaved a +sigh of satisfaction, and returned to her ribald dreams, while he, in +numbness and pain, found consolation in this forced sacrifice of +comfort. + +He did not move, and through the long night the drunken woman slept with +her head upon his shoulder. + +For the next few days he dragged out a methodical existence. In the +mornings he would force himself to rise, swallow his food, and take his +accustomed seat before his desk. With a failing hand he would take up +his pen and endeavor to bend his fever-stricken brain to its task, but +before a dozen lines were penned his strength would falter and the +effort be abandoned. Then he would rise and finger the phials on the +shelf, until, turning from them, he would say, "I will fight--fight +until the last gasp--and then--" + +At the beginning of the week, when his lodging bill was due, he carried +by the armful a number of his books and pawned them for a nominal sum. +Then he remembered his watch, and left that also. It was a heavy +hunting-case of his father's, which he had always used from the nearness +of the association, and as he laid it down something came into his +throat. He opened the watch and took out the picture of his mother which +was inside--a sketch in color, showing the lustrous Creole beauty in her +first youth. Then he snapped the case and saw the initials "A. K. A." +pass into the hands behind the counter. + +Leaving the pawn-shop, he walked rapidly through the oppressive +September sun until his limbs failed. Then turning with the throng of +men that flowed into City Hall Square, he came to a sudden halt before +the fountain. He was dazed and weakened, like a man who has recovered +from a lapse into unconsciousness. The constant passing of the crowd +bewildered him, and the sound of falling water in the fountain irritated +him with the suggestion of thirst. He turned away and threw himself upon +a bench beneath the shade of a tree. For an instant he closed his eyes, +and when he opened them he found the scene before him to have +intensified. The falling water sounded more distinctly, the sky was of a +glaring blueness, and the dome of the _World_ building glittered like a +cloud of fire. + +To his straining eyes the statue of Horace Greeley seemed to grin at +him from across the traffic in the street, and as he staggered to his +feet he felt an impulse to shake his fist at it and say: + +"Damn you! It is a chance that I want," but his muscles faltered, and he +fell back. + +Then his glance wandered to the man beside him, a filthy vagrant with +the smell of grease about his clothes. Did not he want his chance as +well? And a few feet away a boy with a scowl on his lips and a bruise +above his eye--why not a chance for him? Then a gray haze obscured his +vision and the noise of the street was dulled into a monotone. + +The throbbing in his temples grew faster, and as he sat there he knew +that he had fought to the final gasp and that the end had come. In his +physical downfall there was room for neither alarm nor regret. He was +lost to all vaguer impressions than the trembling of his frame, the icy +starts through his limbs, the burning of his eyes, and the inevitable +beating in his temples. Beyond these things he neither knew nor cared. + +With the instinct for solitude, he started and rose to move onward, when +he saw that the earth was undulating beneath his feet and that the +atmosphere was filled with fog. The dome of the _World_ building reeled +suddenly and clashed into the flaming sky. He heard the sound of +brazen-tongued bells ringing higher and higher above the falling of the +water, above the tread of passing feet, and above the dull, insistent +din of the traffic in the streets. + +Then his name was called and he felt a hand upon his arm. + +"Why, Anthony!" + +He looked up bewildered, but straightened himself and stood erect, +straining at the consciousness that was escaping him. + +"How are you, Mr. Speares?" he asked. His voice was without inflection. + +Father Speares spoke with impassioned pity. "What are you doing? You are +ill--a ghost--" + +Algarcife steadied himself against the bench and said nothing. + +"What does it mean? Your wife--where is she?" + +Anthony's voice came slowly and without emotion. "I am alone," he +answered. + +A quick moisture sprang to the older man's eyes. He held out his hand. +"Come with me," he said, fervently. "I am alone also. Come to my house." + +Algarcife left the bench and took a step from him. + +"No," he replied. "I--I am all right." + +Then he staggered and would have fallen but for the other's sustaining +arm. + + + + +Phase Second + +_"And not even here do all agree--no, not any one with himself."_ + +--MARCUS AURELIUS. (LONG.) + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Two men passed the Church of the Immaculate Conception, wheeled suddenly +round, and came back. + +"By Jove, Driscoll, you have been outside of civilization!" said one, +who was fair and florid, with a general suggestion of potential apoplexy +polished by the oil of indulgence. "What! you haven't heard the Reverend +Algarcife? Why, he rivals in popularity the Brockenhurst scandal, and +his power is only equalled by that of--of Tammany." + +John Driscoll laughed cynically. + +"Let's have the scandal, by all means," he returned. "Spare me the +puling priests." + +"Bless my soul, man, don't tell me the Brockenhurst affair hasn't +reached the Pacific slope! What a hell of a place! Well, Darbey was +named corespondent, you know. You remember Darbey, the fellow who owned +that dandy racer, La Bella, and lost her to Owens at cards? But the +papers are full of it. Next thing you'll tell me you don't see the +_Sun_." + +"A fact. I don't read newspapers, I write them--or used to. But what +about this priest? I knew an Algarcife in my green and ambitious youth, +but he wasn't a priest; he was a pagan, and a deuced solemn one at +that." + +They stood upon the gray stone steps, and the belated worshippers +trooped past them to vespers. A woman with a virginal calm face and a +camellia in her hymnal brushed them lightly, leaving a trail of +luxurious sweetness on the air; a portly vestryman, with inflated +cheeks and short-sighted eyes, mounted the steps pantingly, his lean and +flat-chested wife hanging upon his arm; a gray-browed gentlewoman, her +eyes inscrutable with chastity unsurprised, held her black silk skirt +primly as she ascended, carrying her prayer-book as if it were a +bayonet. + +In the street a carriage was standing, the driver yawning above his +robes. From the quivering flanks of the horses a white steam rose like +mist. Near the horses' hoofs a man born blind sat with a tray of matches +upon his knee. + +"Why, that's the jolliest part!" responded the first man, with a +tolerant smile. "This one was an atheist once--or something of the sort, +but the old man--Father Speares, I mean--got hold of him, and a +conversion followed. And, by Jove, he has driven all the women into a +religious mania! I believe he could found a new faith to-morrow if he'd +be content with female apostles." + +Driscoll shrugged his shoulders. "Religion might be called the feminine +element of modern society," he observed. "It owes its persistence to the +attraction of sex, and St. Paul was shrewd enough to foresee it. He knew +when he forbade women to speak in public that he was insuring +congregations of feminine posterity. Oh, it is sex--sex that moves the +world!" + +"And mars it." + +"The same thing. Listen!" + +As the heavy doors swung back, the voices of the choir swelled out into +the faint sunshine, the notes of a high soprano skimming bird-like over +the deeper voices of the males and the profundo of the organ. + +When next Driscoll spoke it was with sudden interest. "I say, Ryder, if +this is Algarcife, why on earth did he turn theologian? Any evidences of +brain softening?" + +"Hardly. It is a second Tractarian excitement, with Algarcife for the +leader. The High-Church party owes him canonization, as I said to the +bishop yesterday. He is the best advertising medium of the century. +After Father Speares died, he took things in hand, you know, and raised +a thunder-cloud. The old man's mantle fell upon him, along with whatever +worldly possessions he possessed. Then some physiologist named Clynn got +him into a controversy, and it was like applying an electric-battery to +the sluggish limbs of the Church." + +Driscoll gave a low whistle. + +"Well, as I'm alive!" he said. "What is it all for, anyway?" + +"Let's go inside," said Ryder, drawing his collar about his throat. +"Beastly chill for October. Wind's due east." + +For an instant they paused in the vestibule; then Ryder laid his hand +upon the door; it swung open, and they entered the church. + +At first the change of light dazzled Driscoll, and he raised his hand to +his eyes; then, lowering it, he leaned against a pillar and looked over +the heads of the congregation. A mellow obscurity flooded the nave, +lightening in opalescent values where the stained-glass windows cast +faint glints of green and gold. The atmosphere was so highly charged +with color that it seemed to possess the tangible qualities of fine +gauze, drawn in transparent tissue from the vaulted ceiling to the gray +dusk of the aisles. A single oblique ray of sunshine, filtering through +a western pane, crept slowly along the walls to the first station of the +cross, where it lay warm and still. Through the heavy luminousness the +voices of the choir swelled in triumphant acclamation: + + "And His mercy is on them that fear Him: + Throughout all generations. + He hath showed strength with His arm: + He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. + He hath put down the mighty from their seat." + +Beyond the rood-screen in the chancel the candles on the altar flickered +in yellow flames beneath a slight draught. Above them, from the window, +a Christ in red and purple fainted beneath his crown of thorns. At the +foot of the crucifix a heap of white chrysanthemums lay like snow. + +Before the candles and the cross the priest stood in his heavy +vestments, his face turned towards the altar, the sanctuary-lamp shining +above his head. Around him incense rose in clouds of fragrant smoke, and +through the vapor his dark head and white profile were drawn against the +foot of the cross. The yellow candle-light, beside which the gas-light +grew pallid, caught the embroideries on the hood of the cope, and they +glistened like jewels. + +He stood motionless when the censing was over, stray wreaths of mist +encircling his head. Then, when the Magnificat was finished, he turned +from the altar, the light rippling in the gold of his vestments. His +glance fell for a moment upon his congregation, then upon the mute faces +of his choristers seated and within the chancel. + +Through the reading of the lesson he sat silently. There was no +suggestion of emotion in his closed lips, and the composure in his eyes +did not lessen when he rose and came forward, meeting the hush in the +church. From the stillness of the altar his voice rose suddenly, +sustaining the chant of the choir in a deep undertone of unwavering +richness: + + "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. + And in Jesus Christ, His only Son-- ... I believe in the Holy + Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints--the + forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body--and the life + everlasting--Amen." + +When the organ burst forth into the recessional hymn, Driscoll turned to +his companion. "Come outside," he said. "I feel as if I had been +drinking. And it was Algarcife--" + + * * * * * + +Half an hour later Father Algarcife left the church, and, crossing to +Broadway, boarded a down-town car. At Twentieth Street he got out and +turned eastward. He walked slowly, with long, almost mechanical strides. +His head was bent and his shoulders stooped slightly, but there was a +suggestion of latent vigor in his appearance, as if he carried a reserve +fund of strength of which his brain had not yet taken account. Beneath +the rich abundance of his hair his features struck one with peculiar +force. They had the firm and compressed look which is the external mark +of sterile emotions, and the traces of nervous wear on brow and lips +showed like the scars of past experiences rather than the wounds of +present ones. His complexion possessed that striking pallor resulting +from long physical waste, a pallor warmed by tawny tones beneath the +surface, deepening into bluish shadows about his closely shaven mouth +and chin. In his long clerical coat he seemed to have gained in height, +and the closest observer would perhaps have detected in his face only a +physical illustration of the spiritual function he fulfilled. In another +profession he would have suggested the possible priest--the priest +unordained by circumstances. As it was, he presented the appearance of +having been inserted in his ecclesiastical position from a mere ęsthetic +sense of fitness on the part of Destiny. + +Although it was an afternoon in early October, the winds, blowing from +the river along the cross-town blocks, had an edge of frost. Overhead +the sky was paling into tones of dull lavender that shaded into purple +where the west was warmed by stray vestiges of the afterglow. Through +the dusk the street lights flickered here and there like swarming +fire-flies. As he passed the Post-graduate Hospital at the corner of +Second Avenue a man came down the steps and joined him. + +"Good-afternoon, father," he said. "Your charge is coming on finely. +Going in?" + +His name was Salvers, and he was a rising young specialist in pulmonary +troubles. He had met Father Algarcife in his work among the poor on the +East Side. + +"Not to-day," responded the other; "but I am glad to have good news of +the little fellow." + +He was known to have endowed one of the babies' cots and to feel great +interest in its occupant. + +Dr. Salvers returned his quiet gaze with one of sudden admiration. "What +a wonder you are!" he said. "If there is a man in New York who does your +amount of work, I don't know him. But take my advice and slacken speed. +You will kill yourself." + +Into Father Algarcife's eyes a gleam of humor shot. It went out as +suddenly as it had come, and a tinge of sadness rose to the surface. + +"Perhaps I am trying to," he answered, lightly. + +"It looks like it. Here's Sunday, and you've come from a half-dozen +services to run at the call of a beggar or so who might have had the +politeness to wait till week-day. How is the Bowery Mission?" + +"Very well," responded the other, showing an interest for the first +time. "I have persuaded ten converts to take the pledge of a daily bath. +It was tough work." + +Salvers laughed. "I should say so. But, you know, that is what I like +about your mission. It has the virtue of confusing cleanliness with +godliness. Are you still delivering your sermons on hygiene?" + +"Yes. You know we have been sending out nurses to women in confinement +in connection with those Sunday-night lectures on the care of children. +The great question of the tenement-house is the one of the children it +produces." + +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 assertion +that the association of the love of beauty with the love of God destroys +sympathy for poverty and disease." + +A cloud passed 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 assistant." + +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 passed 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 compassion 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 nobody 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 passed +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-ą-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 passionately. "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 God 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?" + +He was regarding her with intentness. + +"And you are happier?" he asked. + +"Happier! It is an odd word for a woman like me. I am fifty years old, I +am alone, I am loveless. It has given me something to hope for, that is +all." + +"Yes?" + +With a sudden yearning she stretched out her thin, white hands in +appeal. + +"Talk to me," she said. "Make me feel it. I am so alone." + +When Father Algarcife descended the brown-stone steps an hour later, his +face was drawn and his lips firmly closed. The electric light, shining +upon his resolute features, gave them the look of marble. + +He turned into Fifth Avenue and continued his way to Fifty-eighth +Street. Before the door of the rectory, which was at the distance of a +stone's-throw from the church, a carriage was drawn up to the sidewalk, +and as he passed his name was called softly in a woman's voice: + +"It is I--Mrs. Bruce Ryder. I have been waiting in the hope of seeing +you." + +He paused on the sidewalk and his hand closed over the one she gave him. +She was a large, fair woman, with a superb head and shoulders, and slow, +massive movements, such as the women of the old masters must have had. + +"It is to force a promise that you will dine with me to-morrow," she +said. "You have disappointed me so often--and I must talk with you." Her +voice had a caressing inflection akin to the maternal. + +He smiled into her expectant face. + +"Yes," he said. "To-morrow--yes; I will do so. That is, if you won't +wait for me if I am detained." + +"That is kind," she responded. "I know you hate it. And I won't wait. I +remember that you don't eat oysters." + +The maternal suggestion in her manner had deepened. She laughed softly, +pleased at the knowledge of his trivial tastes her words betrayed. + +"But I won't keep you," she went on, "Thank you again--and good-bye." + +The carriage rolled into the street, and he drew out a latch-key and let +himself in at the rectory door, which opened on the sidewalk. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Mrs. Bruce Ryder unfolded her napkin and cast a swift glance over the +heavy damask, sparkling with glass and silver. + +"Yes; he is late," she said; "but he doesn't like to be waited for." + +From the foot of the table Mr. Bruce Ryder smiled complacently, his eye +upon his Blue Points. + +"And his wish is law, even unto the third and fourth courses," he +responded, pleasantly. "As far as Mrs. Ryder is concerned, the pulpit of +the Church of the Immaculate Conception is a modern Mount Sinai." + +"Bruce, how can you?" remonstrated his wife, upbraiding him across the +pink shades of candles and a centre-piece of orchids. "And you are so +ignorant. There is no pulpit in the church." + +"The metaphor holds. Translate pulpit into altar-step--and you have the +Mount Sinai." + +"Minus Jehovah," commented Claude Nevins, who sat between a tall, slight +girl, fresh from boarding-school, and a stout lady with an enormous +necklace. + +Ryder shook his head with easy pleasantry. He had been handsome once, +and was still well groomed. His figure had thickened, but was not +unshapely, and had not lost a certain athletic grace. His face was fair, +with a complexion that showed a faint purplish flush beneath the skin, +paling where his smooth flaxen hair was parted upon his forehead. On the +crown of his head there was a round bald spot which had the effect of +transparency. His deceptive frankness of manner was contradicted by an +expression of secretiveness in his light-blue eyes. + +He lifted the slice of lemon from his plate, squeezing it with his ruddy +and well-formed fingers. + +"Oh, but he's a divinity in his own right!" he retorted. "Apollo turned +celibate, you know. He is the Lothario of religions--" + +"Bruce!" said his wife again. A vexed light was shining in her eyes, +giving a girlish look to her full and mature beauty. She wore a dress of +black gauze, cut low from her splendid shoulders, above which her head, +with its ash-blond hair, rose with a poise that was almost pagan in its +perfection. + +"For my part," said a little lady upon Mr. Ryder's right, "Mount Sinai +or not, I quite feel that he speaks with God." + +Her name was Dubley, and she was round and soft and white, suggesting +the sugar-coated dinner-pills which rested as the pedestal of her social +position, since her father, with a genius for turning opportunities to +account, had coined into gold the indigestion of his fellows. + +"Ah! You are a woman," returned Ryder, smilingly. "You might as well ask +a needle to resist a magnet as a woman to resist a priest. I wonder what +the attraction is?" + +"Aberration of the religious instinct," volunteered Nevins, who had not +lost his youthful look with his youthful ardor, and whom success had +appeared to settle without surfeiting. + +"On the contrary," interposed a short-sighted gentleman in eye-glasses, +who regarded the oyster upon his fork as if he expected to recognize an +old acquaintance, "the religious instinct is entirely apart from the +vapid feminine sentimentalizing over men in long coats and white +neckties. Indeed, I question if woman has developed the true religious +instinct. I am collecting notes for a treatise upon the subject." + +He stopped breathlessly, swallowed his oyster, and looked gloomily at +the table-cloth. His name was Layton, and he was a club-man who had +turned criminologist for a whim. Having convinced himself by +generalizations from experience of the total depravity of the female +sex, he had entered upon his researches in the hope of verifying his +deductions. + +The point he advanced being called in question by a vivacious and pretty +woman who sat next him, there followed a short debate upon the subject. +When it was ended, John Driscoll looked up languidly from Mrs. Ryder's +left hand. + +"My dear Layton," he advised, "return to the race-course if you value +your sanity. The enigma of the Sphinx is merely the woman question in +antiquity and stone." Then he turned to Mrs. Ryder. "How is the renowned +father?" he inquired. "I was decoyed into buying a volume of his sermons +this morning." + +A smile shone upon him from her large, pale eyes. "Oh yes," she +responded, her beauty quickening from its repose. "They are in answer to +those articles in the _Scientific Weekly_. Are they not magnificent?" + +Driscoll assented amiably. + +"Yes," he admitted. "He has the happy faculty of convincing those who +already agree with him." + +She reproached him in impulsive championship, looking hurt and a little +displeased. "Why, the bishop was saying to me yesterday that never +before had the arguments against the vital truths of Christianity been +so forcibly refuted." + +"May I presume that the bishop already agreed with him?" + +Mrs. Ryder's full red lips closed firmly. Then she appealed to a small, +dark man who sat near her. "Mr. Driscoll doesn't like Father +Algarcife's sermons," she said. "I am disappointed." + +"On the contrary," observed Driscoll, placidly, "I like them so well +that I sent them to a missionary I am trying to convert--to atheism." + +"But that is shocking," said Mrs. Dubley, in a low voice. + +"Shocking," repeated Driscoll. "I should say so. Such an example of +misdirected energy you never saw. Why, when I met that man in Japan he +was actually hewing to pieces before the Lord one of the most adorable +Kwannons I ever beheld. The treasures he had shattered in the name of +religion were good ground for blasphemy. In the interest of art, I +sought his conversion. At first I tried agnosticism, but that was not +strong enough. He said that if he came to believe in an unknown god he +should feel it his duty to smash all attempts to sculpture him. So I +said: 'How about becoming an out-and-out infidel? Then you wouldn't care +how many gods people made.' He admitted the possibility of such a state +of mind, and I have been working on him ever since." + +Mrs. Ryder looked slightly pained. + +"If you only weren't so flippant," she said, gently. "I can't quite +follow you." + +Driscoll laughed softly. + +"Flippant! My dear lady, thank your stars that I am. Flippant people +don't go about knocking things to pieces for a principle. The religion +of love is not nearly so much needed as the religion of letting alone." + +"I am sure I shouldn't call Father Algarcife meddling," commented Mrs. +Dubley, stiffly; "and I know that he opposes sending missionaries to +Japan." + +"As a priest he is perfection," broke in Mr. Layton, argumentatively. + +"The chasuble does hang well on him," admitted Nevins in an aside. + +Mr. Layton ignored the interruption. "As a priest," he went on, "there +is nothing left to be desired. But I consider science entirely outside +his domain. Why, on those questions, the _Scientific Weekly_ articles do +not leave him a--a leg to stand on." + +"The truth is that, mentally, he is quite inferior to the writer of +those articles," remarked the short, dark gentleman in a brusque voice. +"By the way, I have heard that they were said to be posthumous papers of +Professor Huxley's. An error, of course." + +At that moment the door was opened and Father Algarcife was announced. +An instant later he came into the room. He entered slowly, and crossed +to Mrs. Ryder's chair, where he made his excuses in a low voice. Then he +greeted the rest of the table indifferently. He wore his clerical dress, +and the hair upon his forehead was slightly ruffled from the removal of +his hat. About the temples there were dashes of gray and a few white +hairs showed in his heavy eyebrows, but eyes and mouth blended the +firmness of maturity with an expression of boyish vigor. As he was about +to seat himself at Mrs. Ryder's right, his eye fell upon Driscoll, and +he paled and drew back. Then he spoke stiffly. + +"So it is you, John?" + +"I had quite lost sight of you," responded Driscoll. + +There followed an awkward silence, which was abridged by Mrs. Ryder's +pleasant voice. + +"I like to watch the meeting of old friends," she said; "especially when +I believed them strangers. Were you at college together?" + +"Yes," answered Driscoll, his assurance returning. "At college--well, +let me see--not far from twenty years ago. Bless me! I am a middle-aged +man. What a discovery!" + +"You were in the Senior class," observed Father Algarcife, almost +mechanically, and with little show of interest. "You were the pride of +the faculty, I believe." + +"I believe I was; and, like pride proverbial, I ended in a fall. Well, +there have been many changes." + +"A great many." + +"And not the least surprising one is to find you in the fold. You were a +lamb astray in my time. Indeed, I remember flattering myself in the +fulness of my egoism that I had opened other channels for you. But a +reaction came, I suppose." + +"Yes," said Father Algarcife, slowly, "a reaction came." + +"And my nourishing of the embryonic sceptic went for naught." + +"Yes; it went for naught." + +"Well, I am glad to see you, all the same." + +"How serious you have become!" broke in Mrs. Ryder. "Don't let's call up +old memories. I am sure Mr. Nevins will tell us that those college days +weren't so solemn, after all." + +Nevins, thus called upon, glanced up from his roast, with accustomed +disregard of dangerous ground. + +"I can't answer for Mr. Driscoll," he responded. "His fame preceded +mine; but the first time I saw Father Algarcife he had just won a +whiskey-punch at poker, and was celebrating." + +Mrs. Ryder colored faintly in protest, and Driscoll cast an admonishing +glance at Nevins, but Father Algarcife laughed good-naturedly, a +humorous gleam in his eyes. + +"So the sins of my youth are rising to confound me," he said. "Well, I +make an honest confession. I was good at poker." + +Nevins disregarded Driscoll's glance with unconcern. + +"An honest confession may be good for the soul," he returned, "but it +seldom redounds to the honor of the reputation." + +"Happily, Father Algarcife is above suspicion," remarked Ryder, +pleasantly. Then he changed the subject. "By the way, Mr. Nevins, I hear +you have been displaying an unholy interest in the coming elections." + +"Not a bit of it," protested Nevins, feelingly. "They might as well be +electing the mayor of the moon for aught I care. But, you see, my friend +Ardly has got himself on the Tammany ticket for alderman." + +"What! You aren't working for Tammany?" + +"Guess not. I am working for Ardly. The mayor is a mere incident." + +"I wish he would remain one," announced the short, dark gentleman. "The +Tammany tiger has gorged itself on the city government long enough." + +"Oh, it has its uses," reasoned Driscoll. "Tammany Hall makes a +first-rate incubator for prematurely developed politicians." + +"And peoples the country with them," said Ryder. "I always look upon a +politician as a decent citizen spoiled." + +"And you really think they will elect Vaden?" asked the vivacious and +pretty young woman at Layton's left. "It does seem a shame. Just after +we have got clean streets and a respectable police force." + +"But what does it matter?" argued Driscoll, reassuringly. "Turn about is +fair play, and a party is merely a plaything for the people. In point of +impartiality, I vote one ticket at one election and another at the +next." + +When Driscoll left, that evening, he joined Claude Nevins on the +sidewalk, and they walked down the avenue together. For some blocks +Nevins was silent, his face revealing rising perplexity. Then, as they +paused to light cigars, he spoke: + +"I believe Algarcife was a friend of yours at college?" he said. + +Driscoll was holding his palm around the blue flame of the match. He +drew in his breath slowly as he waited for a light. + +"Yes," he responded, "for a time. But he has made his reputation since I +knew him--and I have lost mine. By Jove, he is a power!" + +"There is not a man of more influence in New York, and the odd part of +it is that he does nothing to gain it--except work along his own way and +not give a hang for opposition. I believe his indifference is a part of +his attraction--for women especially." + +"Ah, that reminds me," said Driscoll, holding his cigar between his +fingers and slackening his pace. "I was under the impression that he +married after leaving college." + +Nevins's lips closed with sudden reserve. It was a moment before he +replied. + +"I believe I did hear something of the sort," he said. + + * * * * * + +When Mrs. Bruce Ryder turned back into the drawing-room, where Father +Algarcife sat alone, the calm color faded from her face. "I am so glad," +she said. "I have waited for this the whole evening." + +She seated herself near him, resting one large, fair arm on the table +beside her. With the closing of the door upon her guests she had thrown +aside the social mask, and a passionate sadness had settled upon her +face. + +"I wanted to go to the sacristy on Friday," she went on, "but I could +not. And I am so unhappy." + +Brought face to face, as he often was, with the grinning skeleton that +lies beneath the fleshly veil of many a woman's life, Father Algarcife +had developed an almost intuitive conception of degrees in suffering. +Above all, he had learned, as only a priest and a physician can learn, +the measures of sorrow that Fate may dole out to the victim who writhes +behind a smile. + +The sympathetic quality in his voice deepened. + +"Have you gained no strength," he asked, "no indifference?" + +"I cannot! I have tried, tried, tried so long, but just when I think I +have steeled myself something touches the old spring, and it all comes +back. On Thursday I saw a woman who was happy. It has tortured me ever +since." + +"Perhaps she thought you happy." + +"No; she knew and she pitied me. We had been at school together. I was +romantic then, and she laughed at me. The tears came into her eyes when +she recalled it. She is not a wealthy woman. The man she married works +very hard, but I envy her." + +"Of what use?" + +She leaned nearer, resting her chin upon her clasped hands. The diamonds +on her fingers blazed in the lamplight. "You don't know what it means to +me," she said. "I am not a clever woman. I was made to be a happy one. I +believe myself a good one, and yet there are days when I feel myself to +be no better than a lost woman--when I would do anything--for love." + +"You fight such thoughts?" + +"I try to, but they haunt me." + +"And there is no happiness for you in your marriage? None that you can +wring from disappointment?" + +"It is too late. He loved me in the beginning, as he has loved a dozen +women since--as he loves a woman of the town--for an hour." + +A shiver of disgust crossed her face. + +"I know." He was familiar with the story. He had heard it from her lips +before. He had seen the whole tragic outcome of man's and woman's +ignorance--the ignorance of passion and the ignorance of innocence. He +had seen it pityingly, condemning neither the one nor the other, +neither the man surfeited with lust nor the woman famished for love. + +"I cannot help you," he said. "I can only say what I have said before, +and said badly. There is no happiness in the things you cry for. So long +as self is self, gratification will fail it. When it has waded through +one mirage it looks for another. Take your life as you find it, face it +like a woman, make the best of what remains of it. The world is full of +opportunities for usefulness--and you have your faith and your child." + +She started. "Yes," she said. "The child is everything." Then she rose. +"I want to show him to you," she said, "while he sleeps." + +Father Algarcife made a sudden negative gesture; then, as she left the +room, he followed her. + +As they passed the billiard-room on their way up-stairs there was a +sound of knocking balls, and Ryder's voice was heard in a laugh. + +"This way," said Mrs. Ryder. They mounted the carpeted stairs and +stopped before a door to the right. She turned the handle softly and +entered. A night-lamp was burning in one corner, and on the hearth-rug a +tub was prepared for the morning bath. On a chair, a little to one side, +lay a pile of filmy, lace-trimmed linen. + +In a small brass bedstead in the centre of the room a child of two or +three years was sleeping, its soft hair falling upon the embroidered +pillow. A warm, rosy flush was on its face, and the dimpled hands lay +palms upward on the blanket. + +Like a mounting flame the passion of motherhood illuminated the woman's +face. She leaned over and kissed one of the pink hands. + +"How quietly he sleeps!" she said. + +The child stirred, opened its eyes, and smiled, stretching out its +arms. + +The mother drew back softly. Then she knelt down, and, raising the child +with one hand, smoothed the pillow under its head. As she rose she +pressed the blanket carefully over the tiny arms lying outside the +cover. + +When she turned to Father Algarcife she saw that he had grown suddenly +haggard. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Father Algarcife withdrew the latch-key from the outer door and stopped +in the hall to remove his hat and coat. He had just returned from a +meeting of the wardens, called to discuss the finances of the church. + +"Agnes!" he said. + +A woman came from the dining-room at the end of the hall, and, taking +his coat from his hands, hung it upon the rack. She was stout and +middle-aged, with a face like a full-blown dahlia beneath her cap of +frilled muslin. She had been house-keeper and upper servant to Father +Speares, and had descended to his successor as a matter of course. + +"Have there been any callers, Agnes?" + +"Only two, sir. One of the sisters, who left word that she would return +in the evening, and that same woman from Elizabeth Street, who wanted +you to take charge of her husband who was drunk. I told her a policeman +could manage him better, and she said she hadn't thought of that. She +went to find one." + +"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?" + +"Yes, 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 portičre 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. + +It seemed but yesterday, that morning eight years ago, when he had +fainted in the crowded square. He could close his eyes now and review +each detail with the dispassionateness of indifference. He could see the +flaming blue of the sky, the statue of Horace Greeley across the way, +and the confused blur of the bulletin-board before the _World_ building. +He could hear the incessant falling of the water in the fountain, and he +could feel the old sensation of nausea that had blotted out the +consciousness of place. He remembered the long convalescence from the +fever that had followed--the trembling of his limbs when he moved and +the weakness of his voice when he spoke--the utter vanquishment of his +power of volition. He reviewed, almost methodically, that collapse into +black despair and the mental and emotional stagnation that had covered +all the crawling years. The fever, mounting to his brain, had left it +seared of energy and had sapped the passion in his blood. It had +consumed his old loves, with his old ambitions, and had left his +emotions as sterile as his mind. + +He remembered the struggle that had come, his resistance and his defeat, +and he saw the joy in the older man's eyes when he had laid before him +the remainder of his life--when he had said, "I no longer care. Make of +me what you will." + +The other had answered, "I will not take the sacrifice without sincerity +or without the will of God." + +"It is no sacrifice," he had replied. "It is a debt. If I can believe, I +will." + +And he had felt the words as a man half drugged by ether feels the first +incision of the knife. + +But he had not believed. Sitting now in his clerical dress, before the +fire kindled by his ordination, he knew that it was his weakness, not +his will, that had bent. Whether the motive was gratitude or despair he +did not question. There had been a debt, and he had met it by the bond +of flesh and blood. Yes, he had repaid it in full. + +From the moment when he had been called into Father Speares's place he +had striven untiringly to do honor to the dead. He had spared neither +himself nor others. He had toiled night and day, as a man toils who +loves a cause--or is mad. Though his heart was not in the work, his will +was, and he was goaded to it by the knowledge that his intellect +revolted. Because the life was loathsome to him he left not one detail +unperformed. He had given a bond, and he fulfilled it, though his bond +was a lie. + +He lifted his head impatiently and looked before him. Then he smiled, +half bitterly, in the flickering firelight. Across the drawn curtains at +the window he could see the almost indistinguishable forms of people +passing in the street. He felt suddenly that his whole existence was +filled with such vague outlines, surrounded by gray dusk. The only thing +that was real was the lie. + +That was with him always, at every instant of the day. It lay in his +coat, in his clothes, in his very necktie. It filled the book-shelves in +the room and covered the closely written sheets upon his desk. It was in +the cope and in the chasuble, in the paten and in the chalice, in the +censer and in the Creed. Yes; he had sworn his faith to a myth, and had +said "I believe--" to a fable. + +The words of the Creed that he had chanted the day before rang suddenly +in his ears: + + "And in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten of His + Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of + very God--" + +What if he had lived a lie decently, what if he had fought a good fight +for a cause he opposed, what if he, in the name of that cause, had +closed his eyes and his nostrils to the things that repel and had +labored to cleanse the sewer at his door, was it any the less a lie? + +"Father, dinner is served." + +He raised himself and stood upon the hearth-rug. The dog awoke and +circled about his feet. Then together they passed into the dining-room. + +For a moment he stood before his chair, silently making the sign of the +cross. Then he sat down and unfolded his napkin. It was a simple meal, +and he ate it in silence. When the soup was finished and the meat +brought on, he cut up a portion for the dog at his side, placing the +plate upon the floor. Then he pushed his own plate away, and sat looking +into his glass of claret as it sparkled in the light. + +The bell rang, and the maid went to answer it. In a moment she came +back. + +"It is the sister," she said. "She is in your study." + +"Very well," Father Algarcife responded. + +He laid his napkin upon the table and passed out. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Jerome Ardly turned into one of the entrances leading to the Holbein +studios, ascended the long flight of stairs, and paused before a door +bearing a brass plate, on which was engraved + + _CLAUDE NEVINS_ + +As the knocker fell beneath his touch the door swung open, revealing +Nevins in a velvet smoking-jacket rather the worse for wear, his flaxen +hair standing on end above his wrinkled brow. + +"Hello!" was his greeting, taking the end of a camel's-hair brush from +his mouth. "So you've turned up at last. I've been doing your dirty work +all the morning." + +Ardly entered with a swing, closing the door after him. He had grown +handsomer in the last eight years, though the world had gone less well +with him than with Nevins. His large brown eyes still held their old +recklessness, and there had come into his voice a constant ring of +bravado. + +"Plenty for us both," he responded, blandly, throwing his hat on the +divan and himself into a chair. "My hand hath found its share to do, and +I have done it with all my might. I've been interviewing a lot of voters +in the old Ninth Ward. If Tammany doesn't make a clean sweep of that +district I'm a--a fool." + +"I wish you were not. Then you wouldn't be polling round these +confounded politicians. It seems to me your own district is more than +you can manage, but somehow you seem to be attending to everybody +else's. What under heaven does any self-respecting man want to be +alderman for, anyway? I wouldn't look at it." + +"My dear fellow, view it as a stepping-stone to greater glory." + +"A deuced long step downward." + +Ardly laughed, then, stretching himself, looked idly at the opening in +the ceiling through which the daylight fell. It framed a square of blue +sky across which a stray cloud drifted. + +The room was large and oblong, and the atmosphere was heavy with the +odors of oil and turpentine. The furniture consisted of a number of +covered easels, several coarse hangings ornamented in bizarre designs, +and a divan surmounted by an Oriental canopy. Over the door there was a +row of death-masks in plaster, relieved against a strip of ebony, and +from a pedestal in one corner a bust of Antinous smiled the world-worn +smile of all the ages. + +"Temper seems soured," remarked Ardly, raising himself and turning to +survey Nevins. "What's up?" + +Nevins smiled mysteriously, then waxed communicative. + +"Saw Algarcife to-day," he said, carelessly. + +"Oh! What did he say for himself?" + +Nevins laughed. + +"Does he ever say anything?" he demanded. "I asked him what he thought +of the elections, and he replied that they did not come within the +sphere of his profession." + +Ardly grinned. + +"Guess not," he ejaculated. "Was that all?" + +"Oh, the rest was about as follows: I went to his house, you know, and +told him I wanted his spiritual certificate as to your modesty and +worth. I also observed that the newspapers had undertaken to throw +moral search-lights indiscriminately around--" + +"What did he say to that?" chuckled Ardly. + +"He: 'Ardly can sustain them, I suppose.' + +"I: 'Don't know, I'm sure. Would like to have your opinion.' + +"He: 'It seems to me that you are in a better position to pass judgment +on that point than I am.' + +"I: 'But the standards are not the same, father.' (That 'father' ripped +out as pat as possible.) + +"He (rather bored): 'Oh, he is a fine fellow. I wish there were more +like him.'" + +"He is a fine fellow himself," retorted Ardly, loyally. + +Nevins examined his brushes complacently. "If I were a Tammanyite," he +said, "I'd post his certificate in the districts lying off the Bowery." + +"It would be a shame," returned Ardly. Then he smiled. "By Jove! I +believe if those districts knew Algarcife favored the little finger of a +candidate, they would swallow the whole Tammany ticket." + +"Queer influence, isn't it?" + +"Well, I don't know. He works night and day over these people--and he +knows how to deal with them. Leave it to the Bowery or to the ladies in +his congregation, and he might turn this government into a despotism +without a single dissenting vote." + +"I believe you're right. By the way, you know he gave me that portrait +of Father Speares to do for the church." + +"Glad to hear it. But I never understood his conversion, somehow." + +"Oh, I don't know. Men change like that every day." + +"But not for logic. I say, it happened shortly after Mariana left, +didn't it?" + +"I think so." + +"Heard anything of her?" + +Nevins shook his head. + +"Only what you know already," he answered. + +"Deuced little, then." + +"She came back, you know that, and went out West for a divorce. Then she +married an ass of an Englishman, named the Honorable Cecil somebody." + +"Good Lord! You've known that all these years?" + +"Pretty nearly." + +"Why in the devil didn't you tell me before?" + +Nevins shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, I don't feel the +necessity to confide to you the secrets of my bosom." + +"I call that a sneak." + +"Why couldn't you find it out for yourself?" + +"Because I don't go round diving into other people's affairs." + +"Neither do I," responded Nevins, with dignity. + +"How did you know, then?" + +"It just came to me." + +"Humph!" retorted Ardly, suspiciously. + +Nevins squeezed a trifle of white-lead on his palette. Then he rose and +drew the cord attached to the shade beneath the skylight. After which he +stood to one side, studying the canvas with half-closed eyes, and +shaking his dissatisfied head. As he returned to his seat he brushed the +mouth of a tube of paint with his trousers, and swore softly. At last he +spoke. + +"I know something else," he volunteered, cautiously. + +"About Mariana?" + +"Yes." + +"Let's have it, man." + +Nevins laid his palette aside, and, seating himself astride the back of +a chair, surveyed Ardly impressively. + +"I can't see that there is any use," he remarked. + +Ardly threw the end of a cigar at him and squared up wrathfully. "Are +you a damned fool or a utilitarian?" he demanded. + +"She left the Honorable somebody," said Nevins, slowly. + +"By Jove! what a woman!" + +"She came to America." + +"You don't say so!" + +"She is in New York." + +"What!" + +Ardly left his chair and straightened himself against the mantel. + +"How do you know?" he asked. + +"I have seen her." + +"Seen her!" + +"Her photograph," concluded Nevins, suavely. + +"Where?" + +"In Ponsonby's show-case, on Fifth Avenue, near Thirtieth Street." + +"How do you know it is she?" + +"Well, I'll be damned! Don't I know Mariana?" + +"Is it like her?" + +"It is a gem; but you know she always photographed well. She knew how to +pose." + +"Has she changed?" + +"Fatter, a trifle; fairer, a trifle; better groomed, a great deal--older +and graver, I fancy." + +"Well, I never!" said Ardly, and he whistled a street song between +half-closed lips. + +Nevins spoke again. + +"She is a kind of rage with a lot of club-men," he said, "but the women +haven't taken her up. I heard Mrs. Ryder call her an adventuress. But +Layton told me Ryder was mad about her." + +"Queer creatures, women," said Ardly. "They have a margin of morality, +and a woman's virtue is determined by its difference in degree from the +lowest stage worth cultivating. They imagine her not worth cultivating, +I suppose." + +"Oh, Mariana is all right," rejoined Nevins. Then he went on, +reflectively: "Odd thing about it is her reputation for beauty. Judge +her calmly, and she isn't even pretty." + +"But who could judge her calmly?" responded Ardly. He picked up his hat +and moved towards the door. "Well, I'll be off," he said. + +"To the club?" + +"No, just a little stroll down the avenue." + +Nevins smiled broadly. + +"Don't forget that Ponsonby's window-case is on the avenue," he +remarked, placidly. + +"Oh; so it is!" + +Ardly went out into the crisp sunshine, a rising glow in his face. He +walked briskly, with an almost impatient buoyancy. Near Thirtieth Street +he stopped before the window-case and looked in. + +From a square of gray card-board Mariana smiled at him, the aureole of +her hair defined against a dark background. For a moment he stared +blankly, and then an expression of hunger crept into his eyes--the +hunger of one who has never been satisfied. + +She was fairer, older, graver, as Nevins had said. There was a wistful +droop in her pose, and in the splendor of her half-closed eyes there was +something the old Mariana had never known--something left by the +gathering of experience and the memory of tears. + +He turned abruptly away, his face darkening and the buoyancy failing his +step. He knew suddenly that the world was very stale and flat, and +politics unprofitable. He crossed to Broadway and a few blocks farther +down met Father Algarcife, who stopped him. + +"Nevins was talking to me about you this morning," he said. "And so you +are taking the matter seriously." + +"As seriously as one takes--castor-oil." + +The other smiled. + +"Why, I thought you liked the chase." + +"Like it! My dear sir, life is not exactly a question of one's likes or +dislikes." + +Father Algarcife looked at him with intentness. + +"What! has not the world served you well?" he asked. + +Ardly laughed. + +"As well as a flute serves a man who doesn't know how to play it," he +answered. "I am a master of discords." + +"And so journalism didn't fit you?" + +"Oh, journalism led to this. I did the chief a good turn or two, and he +doesn't forget." + +"I see," said Father Algarcife. Then he laughed. "And here is the other +side," he added. Across the street before them hung a flaunting banner +of white bunting, ornamented in red letters. Half mechanically his eyes +followed the words: + + _SAMUEL J. SLOANE SAYS,_ + + _If I am elected Mayor, the government of New York will be conducted + upon the highest plane of_ + + _EFFICIENCY! JUSTICE! AND RIGHT!_ + +The wind caught the bunting and it swelled out as if inflated by the +pledges it bore. + +Ardly laughed cynically. + +"I wish he'd drop a few hints to Providence," he remarked. "It is +certainly a plane upon which the universe has never been conducted." + +Father Algarcife walked on in silence, making his way along the crowded +street with a slow yet determined step. The people who knew him turned +to look after him, and those who did not stepped from before his way, +moved by the virile dignity in his carriage, which suggested a man +possessed by an absorbing motive. + +Ardly looked a little abashed, and laughed half apologetically. + +"I have been in harness all my life," he said, "and now I'm doing a +little kicking against the traces." + +A boyish humor rushed to the other's lips. + +"In that case, I can make but one recommendation," he replied: "if you +kick against the traces--kick hard." + +He drew out his watch and paused a moment as if in doubt. + +"Yes, I'll go to the hospital," he said; "there is a half-hour before +luncheon," and he turned into East Twentieth Street on his way to Second +Avenue. When he reached the hospital, he entered the elevator upon the +first floor and ascended to the babies' ward. As he stepped upon the +landing, a calm-faced nurse in a fresh uniform passed him, holding a +glass of milk in her white, capable hand. + +His eyes brightened as he saw her, and under the serene system of the +place he felt a sense of restfulness steal over him like warmth. + +"How is my charge?" he asked. + +A ripple of tenderness crossed the nurse's lips as she answered: + +"He has been looking for you, and he is always better on the days that +you come." + +She passed along the hall and entered a large room into which the +daylight fell like a bath of sunshine. In the centre of the room there +was a tiny table around which a dozen children were sitting in small +white chairs. Despite the bandaged heads and the weak limbs, there was +no sign of suffering. It was all cheerfulness and sunshine, as if the +transition from a tenement-house room to space and air had unfolded the +shrunken little bodies into bloom. + +In a cot near a window, where the sunlight flashed across the cover, a +boy of three or four years lay with a strap beneath his small pink +wrapper, fastening him to a board of wood. At the head of the bed was +printed the name, and below: + + "Pott's disease of the spine. + Received, October, 1896; discharged ..." + +As he saw the priest he stretched out his pallid little hands with a +gurgle of welcome, merriment overflowing his eyes. + +Father Algarcife took the hands in his and sat down beside the cot. +Since entering the room he seemed to have caught something of the infant +stoicism surrounding him, for his face had lost its strained pallor and +the lines about his mouth had softened. + +"So it is a good day," he said. "The little man is better. He has been +on the roof-garden." + +The child laughed. + +"It ith a good day," he made answer. "There ith the woof-garden and +there ith ithe-cream." + +"And which is the best?" + +"Bofe," said the child. + +"That's right, little soldier; and what did you do in the garden?" + +The child clapped his hands. + +"I played," he responded; "an' I'm goin' to play ball on my legs when I +mend." + +One of the nurses came and stood for a moment at the foot of the bed. +"He has learned a hymn for you," she said. "He is teaching the other +children to sing--aren't you, baby?" + +"Yeth." + +"And you'll sing for the father?" + +The child's mouth quivered with pleasure and his eyes gleamed. Then his +gay little voice rang out in a shrill treble: + + "Yeth, Jesuth lovths me, + Yeth, Jesuth lovths me, + Yeth, Jesuth lovths me, + The Bible tells me so." + +He ended with a triumphant little gasp and lay smiling at the sunshine. + +A quarter of an hour later Father Algarcife returned to the street. It +was Friday, and at two o'clock he was to be in the sacristy, where it +was his custom to receive the members of his parish. It was the most +irksome of his duties, and he fulfilled it with a repugnance that had +not lessened with time. Now it represented even a greater strain than +usual. He had been soothed by his visit to the hospital, and he dreaded +the friction of the next few hours--the useless advice delivered, the +trivialities responded to, the endless details of fashionable foibles +that would be heard. He wondered, resentfully, if there were not some +means by which this office might be abolished or delivered into the +hands of an assistant. Then his eyes shot humor as he imagined Miss +Vernish, Mrs. Ryder, or a dozen others consenting to receive spiritual +instruction from a lesser priest with a snub-nose. + +As he passed a book-shop in Union Square, a man reading the posters upon +the outside attracted his notice. + +"Oh, I say, Mr. Algarcife!" + +He stopped abruptly, recognized the speaker, and nodded. + +The other went on with a heated rush of words. + +"Those are fine things of yours, those sermons. I congratulate you." + +"Thank you." + +"Yes, they are fine. But, I say, you got the better of the _Scientific +Weekly_ writer. It was good." + +"I don't know," responded Father Algarcife. "It is a good deal in the +way you look at it, I suppose." + +"Not at all. I am not prejudiced--not in the least--never knew anybody +less so. But he isn't your equal in controversy, by a long shot." + +A sudden boyish laugh broke from Father Algarcife--a laugh wrung from +him by the pressure of an overwhelming sense of humor. "I don't think it +is a question of equality," he replied, "but of points of view." + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +The next afternoon Ardly burst into Nevins's studio without knocking, +and paused in the centre of the floor to give dignity to his +announcement. + +"I have seen her," he said. + +Nevins, who was stretched upon the divan, with his feet in the air and a +cigarette in his mouth, rolled his eyes indolently in Ardly's direction. + +"My dear fellow," he returned, "am I to presume that the pronoun 'her' +refers to an individual or to a sex?" + +"Don't be an ass," retorted Ardly. "I tell you I've seen Mariana." + +Nevins turned upon his side and removed the cigarette from his lips. + +"Where?" he responded, shortly. + +"She was coming out of Thorley's. She wore an acre of violets. She has a +footman in livery." + +"How do you know it was she?" + +"Well, I'll be damned! Don't I know Mariana?" + +Nevins sat up and rested his head in his hands. + +"How did she look?" he asked. + +"Stunning. She has an air about her--" + +"Always had." + +"Oh, a new kind of air; the way a woman moves when she is all silk on +the wrong side." + +Nevins nodded. + +"Speak to you?" + +"I didn't give her a chance," returned Ardly, gloomily. "What's the +use?" + +The knocker rose and fell, and Mr. Paul entered, as unaltered as if he +had stepped aside while the eight years slid by. + +Nevins greeted him with a slight surprise, for they had drifted +different ways. + +"Glad to see you," he said, hospitably; "but this is an unusual honor." + +"It is unusual," admitted Mr. Paul, seating himself stiffly on the edge +of the divan. + +"I am afraid to flatter myself with the hope that a whisper of my +spreading fame has brought you," continued Nevins, nodding affably. + +Mr. Paul looked up absently. "I have heard no such rumor," he replied, +and regarded the floor as if impressed with facts of import. + +"Perhaps it is your social charm," suggested Ardly; "or it may be that +in passing along Fifty-fifth Street he felt my presence near." + +Nevins frowned at him and lighted a fresh cigarette. + +"I hope you are well, Mr. Paul," he remarked. + +Mr. Paul looked up placidly. + +"I may say," he returned, "that I am never well." + +"Sorry to hear it." + +There was a period of silence, which Mr. Paul broke at last in dry +tones. + +"I have occasion to know," he announced, "that the young woman whom we +knew by the name of Mariana, to which I believe she had no legal title, +has returned to the city." + +Nevins jumped. "You don't say so!" he exclaimed. + +"My information," returned Mr. Paul, "was obtained from the elevator boy +who took her to the apartment of Miss Ramsey." + +"Did she go to see Miss Ramsey?" demanded Nevins and Ardly in a breath. + +Mr. Paul shook his head. + +"I do not know her motive," he said, "but she has taken Miss Ramsey +away. For three days we have had no news of her." + +The knocker fell with a decisive sound. Nevins rose, went to the door, +and opened it. Then he started back before the apparition of Mariana. + +She was standing near the threshold, her hand raised as when the knocker +had fallen, her head bent slightly forward. + +With an impulsive gesture she held out her gloved hands, her eyes +shining. + +"Oh, I am so glad!" she said. + +Nevins took her hands in his and held them while he looked at her. She +was older and graver and changed in some vital way, as if the years or +sorrow had mellowed the temperament of her youth. There was a deeper +thrill to her voice, a softer light in her eyes, and a gentler curve to +her mouth, and over all, in voice and eyes and mouth, there was the +shadow of discontent. + +She wore a coat of green velvet, with ruffles of white showing at the +loosened front, where a bunch of violets was knotted, and over the brim +of her hat a plume fell against the aureole of her hair. + +"I am so glad," she repeated. Then she turned to Ardly with the same +fervent pressure of the hands. + +"It is too good to be true," she went on. "It is like dropping back into +girlhood. Why, there is dear Mr. Paul!" + +Mr. Paul rose and accepted the proffered hands. + +"You have fattened, madam," he remarked, with a vague idea that she had +in some way connected herself with a title. + +Mariana's old laugh pealed out. + +"Why, he is just as he used to be," she said, glancing brightly from +Ardly to Nevins in pursuit of sympathy. "He hasn't changed a bit." + +"The changes of eight years," returned Mr. Paul, "are not to be detected +by a glance." + +Mariana nodded smilingly and turned to Nevins. + +"Now let me look at _you_," she said. "Come under the light. Ah! you +haven't been dining at The Gotham." + +"Took my last dinner there exactly six years ago next Thanksgiving Day," +answered Nevins, cheerfully. "Turkey and pumpkin-pie." + +She turned her eyes critically on Ardly. + +"Well, he has survived his sentiment for me," she said. + +Ardly protested. + +"I don't keep that in the heart I wear on my sleeve," he returned. "You +would need a plummet to sound the depths, I fancy." + +Mariana blushed and laughed, the faint color warming the opaline pallor +of her face. Then she glanced about the room. + +"So this is the studio," she exclaimed, eagerly--"the studio we so often +planned together--and there is the divan I begged for! Ah, and the dear +adorable 'Antinous.' But what queer stuff for hangings!" + +"If you had sent me word that you were coming," returned Nevins, +apologetically, passing his hands over his hair in an endeavor to make +it lie flat, "I'd have put the place to rights, and myself too." + +"Oh, but I wanted to see you just as you are every day. It is so +home-like--and what a delightful smell of paint! But do you always keep +your boots above the canopy? They spoil the effect somehow." + +"I tossed them up there to get rid of them," explained Nevins. "But tell +me about yourself. You look as if you had just slid out of the lap of +luxury." + +"Without rumpling her gown," added Ardly. + +"I was about to observe that she seemed in prosperous circumstances," +remarked Mr. Paul. + +"Oh, I am," responded Mariana. "Stupidly prosperous. But let me look at +the paintings first, then I'll talk of myself. What is on the big easel, +Mr. Nevins?" + +"That's a portrait," said Nevins, drawing the curtain aside and +revealing a lady in black. "I am only a photographer in oils. I am +painting everybody's portrait." + +"That means success, doesn't it? And success means money, and money +means so many things. Yes, that's good. I like it." + +Nevins smiled, enraptured. + +"You were the beginning," he said. "It was the painting of you and--and +the blue wrapper that did it. It gave me such a push uphill that I +haven't stood still since." + +The wistfulness beneath the surface in Mariana's eyes deepened suddenly. +Her manner grew nervous. + +"Oh yes," she said, turning away. "I remember." + +Mr. Paul, who had watched her gloomily, with traces of disapprobation in +his gaze, took his leave with a stilted good-bye, and Mariana threw +herself upon the divan, while Ardly and Nevins seated themselves on +footstools at her feet and looked into her eyes. + +"I want to hear all--all," she said. "Are you happy?" + +"Are you?" asked Ardly. + +She shook her head impatiently. "I? Oh yes," she answered. "I have +clothes, and a carriage, and even a few jewels." + +She slipped the long glove from her hand, which came soft and white from +its imprisonment, with the indentation of the buttons on the supple +wrist. She held up her fingers, where a blaze of diamonds ran. Then she +smiled. + +"But I never sang with Alvary," she added. + +"Where is the voice?" + +"It is dead," she replied; "but it was only a skeleton when it lived. I +learned that afterwards. I had the artistic temperament without the +art." + +Nevins and Ardly, watching the mobility of her face, saw the old +half-disdainful weariness steal back. + +"So you have learned that," said Nevins. "It is the greater wisdom--to +learn what one has not." + +"I don't idealize any longer," answered Mariana, playing with the glove +in her lap. "I have lopped off an ideal every hour since I saw you." + +"Sensible woman," returned Ardly. "We don't lop off our ideals--we +distort them. Life is a continuous adjustment of the things that should +be to the things that are." + +"And middle-age shows the adjustment to be a misfit," added Nevins, his +boyish face growing almost sad. "We grow tired of burnishing up the +facts of life, and we leave the tarnish to mix with the triple-plate." + +"Are you middle-aged?" asked Mariana. + +"Not since you entered." + +She smiled, pleased with the flattery. "So I am a restorer of youth. Do +I look young?" + +"There is a glass." + +She turned towards it, catching the reflection of her face shadowed by +the plume against her hair. + +"Your eyes are older," said Nevins. "They look as if they had seen +things, but your mouth is young. It could never hold an expression long +enough for it to impress a line. Heavens! It is a mouth that would +madden one to model, because of the impossibility! It is twenty mouths +in one!" + +"You never liked my nose," said Mariana, her eyes still on the glass. +"Do you remember how you straightened it in the poster?" + +"I have the poster still." + +"And I have the nose." + +Then she laughed. "It is so delightful to be here," she said. + +Ardly and Nevins talked rapidly, running over the years one by one, +giving glimpses of the changes in their lives, meeting Mariana's gay +reserve with fuller confidence. They had both grown boyish and more +buoyant, and as they spoke they felt like an incoming tide the warmth of +Mariana's manner. She seemed more lovable to them, more generous, more +utterly to be desired. Her nature had ripened amid the luxury of her +life, which, instead of rendering her self-centred, as poverty had done, +had left her more responsive to the needs of others. She threw herself +into the records of their lives with an impulsive fervor, stopping them +at intervals to question as to details, and covering the past eight +years with sympathetic search-lights. + +And yet beneath the superficial animation in her voice there was a +restless thrill, and the eagerness with which she turned to trivial +interests was but the nervous veil that hid the weariness in her heart. +It was as if she plunged into the thoughts of others that she might put +away the memory of herself. + +"So you have become a politician?" she said to Ardly. "I am so +interested!" + +"You wouldn't be if you knew as much of it as I do," remarked Nevins. +"You'd be ashamed. It makes me blush every time I see his name on a +ticket. I consider it an offence against the paths of our fathers." + +"Why, Mr. Ryder told me you were working for him," Mariana returned; +"but he did say that he couldn't reconcile it with your common-sense. +He's for the other side, you know." + +"So am I!" groaned Nevins; "but what has a man's convictions to do with +his vote?" + +"Or with his election?" laughed Ardly. "But Nevins is an unwilling +accomplice of my aspirations." + +"I wouldn't call them aspirations," remonstrated Nevins. + +Mariana buttoned her glove and rose. "I am going to work for you," she +said, "and my influence is not to be scorned. I have not one vote, but +dozens. I shall elect you." + +"Don't," pleaded Nevins; "it will soil your hands!" + +"Oh, I can wash them!" she laughed; "and it is worth a few smuts. I +shall tell Mr. Ryder to canvass for you," she added. + +Ardly shouted, "Good heavens! He is one of the best fighters the +Republicans have!" + +Mariana smiled inscrutably. + +"But that was before I had a candidate," she answered. + +They followed her to the sidewalk and tucked her carriage furs about her +while the footman looked on. + +"And you are coming to see me soon?" she insisted--"very soon?" + +"We swear it!" they protested. + +"And you will tell me all the news of the elections?" + +"On our manly faith." + +"That I will trust. Good-bye!" + +"Good-bye!" + +The carriage started, when suddenly she lowered the window and looked +out, the plume in her hat waving black against the wind. + +"I forgot to tell you," she said; "my name is Gore--Mrs. Cecil Gore." + +With the light of audacity in his face, Nevins laid his hand upon the +window. + +"And where is the Honorable Cecil?" he asked. + +A flash of irritation darkened Mariana's eyes. She laughed with a ring +of recklessness. + +"The Lord forbid that I should know!" she replied. + +She motioned to the coachman, and the carriage rolled rapidly away. +Nevins stood looking after it until it turned the corner. When the last +wheel vanished, he spoke slowly: + +"Well, I'll be blessed!" he said. + +Ardly stooped and picked up a violet that lay upon the curbing. + +"And so will I," he responded. + +"Have a whiskey?" + +"All right." + +They entered the building and mounted the stairs in silence. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +The Reverend Anthony Algarcife had inspired his congregation with an +almost romantic fervor. + +When he had first appeared before them as assistant to Father Speares in +his Bowery Mission, and a little later as server in the celebrations, +they regarded him as a thoughtful-eyed young priest, whose appearance +fitted into the general scheme of color in the chancel. When he read the +lessons they noticed the richness of his voice, and when at last he came +to the altar-step to deliver his first sermon they thrilled into the +knowledge of his power. + +But he turned from their adulations almost impatiently to throw himself +into the mission in the slums. His eloquence had passed from the rich to +the poor, and beyond an occasional sermon he became only a harmonious +figure in the setting of the church. For the honors they meted out to +him he had no glance, for their favors he had only indifference. He +seemed as insensible to praise as to censure, and to the calls of +ambition his ears were closed. He lived in the fevered haste of a man +who has but one end remaining--to have life over. + +But his indifference redounded to his honor. Because he shunned +popularity, it fell upon him; because he put aside personal gains, he +found them in the reverence of his people. His apathy was construed into +humility, his compassion into loving-kindness, his endeavors to stifle +memory into the fires of faith. At the end of six years his +determination to remain a cipher in religion had made him the leader of +his church, and the means which he had taken to annihilate self had +drawn on him the wondering eyes of his world. Almost unconsciously he +bowed his head to receive the yoke. + +When, at the death of Father Speares, he was called to the charge, he +accepted it without a struggle and without emotion. He saw in it but an +opening to heavier labor and an opportunity to hasten the progress of +his slow suicide. + +So he took the work from the failing hands and devoted to it the fulness +of his own frenzied vigor. The ritual which his predecessor loved became +sacred to him, and the most trivial ceremonials grew mighty with memory +of the dead. Each candle upon the altar, each silken thread in the +embroidered vestments he wore, was a tribute to a sincerity which was +not his. + +He lent a sudden fervor to the decoration of the church and to the +training of his choristers, passionately reviving lost and languishing +rites of religion, and silencing the faint protests of his more +conservative parishioners by an arrogant appeal to the "Ornaments +Rubric" of the Prayer-book. In defiance of the possible opposition of +the bishop, he transposed the "Gloria" to its old place in the Catholic +Mass, hurling, like an avenging thunderbolt, at a priestly objector to +the good old rule of St. Vincent, "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab +omnibus." + +"My dear father," his senior warden had once said to him, "I doubt if +most priests put as much work into their whole lives as you do into one +celebration." + +"I know," replied Father Algarcife slowly. "If I have left anything +undone it has been from oversight, not fear of labor." + +The warden smiled. + +"Your life is a proof of your industry as well as your faith," he +responded. "Only a man who loves his religion better than his life would +risk himself daily. It is your great hold upon your people. They believe +in you." + +"Yes, yes," said the other. + +"But I have wanted to warn you," continued the warden. "It cannot last. +Give yourself rest." + +Father Algarcife shook his head. + +"I rest only when I am working," he answered, and he added, a little +wistfully, "The parish bears witness that I have done my best by the +charge." + +The warden, touched by the wistfulness, lowered his eyes. "That you have +done any man's best," he returned. + +"Thank you," said Father Algarcife. Then he passed into the sacristy to +listen to the confession of a parishioner. + +It was a tedious complaint, and he followed it abstractedly--winding +through the sick imaginings of a nervous woman and administering +well-worn advice in his rich voice, which lent a charm to the truisms. +When it was over, he advised physical exercise, and, closing the door, +seated himself to await the next comer. + +It was Miss Vernish, and as she entered, with her impatient limp, the +bitterness of her mouth relaxed. She was supervising the embroidering of +the vestments to be worn at Easter, and in a spirit of devotion she had +sacrificed her diamonds to their ornamentation. Her eyes grew bright as +she talked, and a religious warmth softened her manner. + +"It has made me so happy," she said, "to feel that I can give something +beautiful to the service. It is the sincerest pleasure I have known for +years." + +She left, and her place was taken by a young divinity student who had +been drawn from law to theology by the eloquence of Father Algarcife. He +had come to obtain the priest's advice upon a matter of principle, and +departed with a quickening of his religious tendencies. + +Then came several women, entering with a great deal of rustling and no +evident object in view. Then a vestryman to talk over a point in +business; then the wife of a well-known politician, to ask if she should +consent to her husband's accepting a foreign appointment; then a man who +wished to be confirmed in his church; and, after all, Mrs. Ryder, large +and warm and white, to say that since the last communion she had felt +herself stronger to contend with disappointment. + +When it was over and he came out into the evening light, he drew himself +together with a quick movement, as if he had knelt in a strained +position for hours. Vaguely he wondered how his nerves had sustained it, +and he smiled half bitterly as he admitted that eight years ago he would +have succumbed. + +"It is because my nerves are dead," he said; "as dead as my emotions." + +He knew that since the pressure of feeling had been lifted the things +which would have overwhelmed him in the past had lost the power to +thrill his supine sensations, that from a mere jangled structure of +nerve wires he had become a physical being--a creature who ate and drank +and slept, but did not feel. + +He went about his daily life as methodically as if it were mapped out +for him by a larger hand. His very sermons came to him with no effort of +will or of memory, but as thoughts long thought out and forgotten +sometimes obtrude themselves upon the mind that has passed into other +channels. They were but twisted and matured phrases germinating since +his college days. The old fatal facility for words remained with him, +though the words had ceased to be symbols of honest thought. He could +still speak, it was only the ability to think that the fever had +drained--it was only the power to plod with mental patience in the +pursuit of a single fact. Otherwise he was unchanged. But as every +sensation is succeeded by a partial incapacity, so the strain of years +had been followed by years of stagnation. + +He went home to dinner with a physical zest. + +"I believe I have one sentiment remaining," he said, "the last a man +loses--the sentiment for food." + + * * * * * + +The next evening, which chanced to be that of Election Day, Dr. Salvers +came to dine with him, and when dinner was over they went out to +ascertain the returns. Salvers had entered the fight with an +enthusiastic support of what he called "good government," and the other +watched it with the interest of a man who looks on. + +"Shall we cross to Broadway?" he asked; "the people are more +interesting, after all, than the politicians." + +"The politicians," responded Salvers, "are only interesting viewed +through the eyes of the people. No, let's keep to the avenue for a +while. I prefer scenting the battle from afar." + +The sounds grew louder as they walked on, becoming, as they neared +Madison Square, a tumultuous medley issuing from tin horns and human +throats. Over the ever-moving throngs in the square a shower of +sky-rockets shot upward at the overhanging clouds and descended in a +rain of orange sparks. The streets were filled with a stream of crushed +humanity, which struggled and pushed and panted, presenting to a distant +view the effect of a writhing mass of dark-bodied insects. From the +tower of the Garden a slender search-light pointed southward, a pale, +still finger remaining motionless, while the crowd clamored below and +the fireworks exploded in the blackness above. + +Occasionally, as the white light fell on the moving throng, it +exaggerated in distinctness a face here and there, which assumed the +look of a grotesque mask, illuminated by an instantaneous flash and +fading quickly into the half-light of surrounding shadows. Then another +took its place, and the illumination played variations upon the changing +features. + +Suddenly a shrill cheer went up from the streets. + +"That means Vaden," said Salvers. "Let's move on." + +They left the square, making their way up Broadway. At the first corner +a man offered them papier-maché tigers, at the second roosters, at the +third chrysanthemums. + +"Look at this," said Salvers, drawing aside. "Odd for women, isn't it? +Half these girls don't know what they are shrieking about." + +In the throng jostling past them there were a dozen school-girls, +wearing yellow chrysanthemums in their button-holes and carrying small +flags in their hands. The light from the windows fell upon their pretty +faces, rosy from excitement. Behind them a gang of college students blew +deafening blasts on tin trumpets, and on the other side a newsboy was +yelling-- + +"_Eve-ning Wor-ld!_ Vaden elected!--Va-den--!" + +His voice was drowned in the rising cheers of men politically mad. + +"I'll go to the club," said Salvers, presently; "this is too deuced +democratic. Will you come?" + +Father Algarcife shook his head. + +"Not now," he replied. "I'll keep on to Herald Square, then I'll turn +in. The fight is over." + +And he passed on. + +Upon a white sheet stretched along the side of the _Herald_ building a +stereopticon portrait of a candidate appeared, followed by a second, and +then by the figures of the latest returns from the election boroughs. +Here the crowd had stagnated, and he found difficulty in forcing his +way. Then, as the mass swayed back, a woman fainted at his side and was +carried into the nearest drug-store. + +In the endeavor to reach Fifth Avenue he stepped into the centre of the +street, where a cable car, a carriage, and a couple of hansom cabs were +blocked. As he left the sidewalk the crowd divided, and the carriage +started, while a horse attached to a cab shied suddenly. A woman +stumbled beneath the carriage and he drew her away. As he did so the +wheel of the cab struck him, stunning him for the moment. + +"Look out, man!" called Nevins, who was seated beside the coachman upon +the carriage-box; "that was an escape. Are you hurt? Here, hold on!" + +At the same moment the door opened and a hand reached out. + +"Come inside," said a woman's voice. + +He shook his head, dizzy from the shock. Red lights flashed before his +eyes, and he staggered. + +Then the crowd pressed together, some one pushed him into the carriage, +and the door closed. + +"To Father Algarcife's house," said the voice. A moment more and the +horses started. Consciousness escaped him, and he lay against the +cushions with closed eyes. When he came to himself, it was to hear the +breathing of the woman beside him--a faint insistence of sound that +seemed a vital element in the surrounding atmosphere. For an instant it +lulled him, and then, as reason returned, the sound brought in its train +the pale survivals of old associations. Half stunned as he was, it was +by feeling rather than conception that he became aware that the woman +was Mariana. He was conscious of neither surprise nor emotion. There was +merely a troublous sense of broken repose and a slight bitterness always +connected with the thought of her--a bitterness that was but an +after-taste of his portion of gall and wormwood. + +He turned his head upon the cushions and looked at her as she sat +beside him. She had not spoken, and she sat quite motionless, her fitful +breathing alone betraying the animation of flesh. Her head was in the +shadow, but a single ray of light fell across her lap, showing her +folded hands in their long gloves. He smelled the fragrance of the +violets she wore, but the darkness hid them. + +Surging beneath that rising bitterness, the depths of his memory stirred +in its sleep. He remembered the day that he had stood at the window of +that Fourth Street tenement, watching the black-robed figure enter the +carriage below. He saw the door close, the wheels turn, and the last +upward glance she gave. Then he saw the long street flecked with +sunshine stretching onward into the aridity of endless to-morrows. + +Strange that he remembered it after these eight years. The woman beside +him stirred, and he recalled in that same slow bitterness the last kiss +he had put upon her mouth. Bah! It meant nothing. + +But his apathy was rended by a sudden fury--an instinct of hate--of +cruelty insatiable. An impulse to turn and strike her through the +darkness--to strike her until he had appeased his thirst for blood. + +The impulse passed as quickly as it came, fleeing like a phantom of +delirium, and in its place the old unutterable bitterness welled back. +His apathy reclosed upon him. + +The carriage turned a corner, and a blaze of light fell upon the shadow +of the seat. It swept the white profile and dark figure of Mariana, and +he saw the wistfulness in her eyes and the maddening tremor of her +mouth. But it did not move him. He was done with such things forever. + +All at once she turned towards him. + +"You are not hurt?" + +"It was nothing." + +She flinched at the sound of his voice, and the dusk of the cross-street +shrouded them again. The hands in her lap fluttered nervously, running +along the folds of her dress. + +Suddenly the carriage stopped, and Nevins jumped down from the box and +swung the door open. + +"Are you all right?" he asked, and his voice was unsteady. + +"All right," responded Father Algarcife, cheerfully. He stepped upon the +sidewalk, staggered slightly, and caught Nevins's arm. Then he turned to +the woman within the carriage. "I thank you," he said. + +He entered the rectory, and Nevins came back and got inside the +carriage. + +"Will you go home?" he asked, with attempted lightness. "The returns +from the Assembly districts won't be in till morning, but Ardly is +sure." + +Mariana smiled at him. + +"Tell him to drive home," she answered. "I am very tired." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +The morning papers reported that the Reverend Anthony Algarcife had been +struck by a cab while crossing Broadway, and as he left the +breakfast-table Mrs. Ryder's carriage appeared at his door, quickly +followed by that of Miss Vernish. + +By ten o'clock the rectory was besieged and bunches of flowers, with +cards attached, were scattered about the hall. Dr. Salvers, coming in a +little later, stumbled over a pile of roses, and recovered himself, +laughing. + +"Looks as if they mean to bury you," he remarked. "But how are you +feeling? Of course, I knew it was nothing serious or I should have +heard." + +Father Algarcife rose impatiently from his chair. + +"Of course," he returned. "But all this fuss is sufficient to drive a +man mad. Yes, Agnes," to the maid who entered with a tray of carnations +and a solicitous inquiry as to his health. "Say I am perfectly well--and +please have all these flowers sent to the hospital at once. No, I don't +care for any on my desk. I dislike the perfume." Then he turned to +Salvers. "I am going out to escape it," he said. "Will you walk with me +to the church?" + +"With pleasure," responded the doctor, cheerfully; and he added: "You +will find the church a poor protection, I fancy." + +As they left the rectory they met Claude Nevins upon the sidewalk. + +"I wanted to assure myself that it was not a serious accident," he said. +"Glad to see you out." + +Father Algarcife frowned. + +"If I hear another word of this affair," he replied, irritably, "I shall +feel tempted to regret that there is not some cause for the alarm." + +"And you are quite well?" + +"Perfectly." + +"By the way, I didn't know that you felt enough interest in the +elections to induce you to parade the streets on their account." + +"Oh, it was the doctor's fault. He got me into the medley, and then +deserted because he found it too democratic." + +"It is democracy turned upsidedown that I object to," remarked Salvers. +"There seems a lack of decency about it--as if we were to awake some +morning to find the statue of Liberty on its head, with its legs in the +air. I believe in the old conservative goddess of our fathers--Freedom +shackled by the chains of respectability." + +"So did Father Algarcife once," said Nevins. "He had an oration entitled +'The Jeffersonian Principles' which he used to deliver before the mirror +when he thought I was asleep." + +"I believe in it still," interrupted Father Algarcife, "but I no longer +deliver orations. Greater wisdom has made me silent. Well, I suppose the +result of last night was hardly a surprise." + +"Hardly," responded Nevins. "What can one expect when everybody who +knows the value of an office is running for it, and everybody who +doesn't is blowing horns about the runners. But I won't keep you. +Good-day." + +"Good-day." + +Nevins turned back. + +"By the way," he said to Father Algarcife, "I wish you would drop in and +look at that portrait the first chance you have. I am waiting for your +criticism." + +"Very well. Congratulate Ardly for me." + +And they separated, Salvers motioning to his coachman to follow him to +the church. + +Upon going inside, Father Algarcife found his principal assistant, a +young fellow with a fair, fresh face, like a girl's, and a high +forehead, surmounted by waves of flaxen hair. His name was Ellerslie, +and his devotional sincerity was covered by a shy and nervous manner. + +He greeted the elder priest with a furtive deprecation, the result of an +innate humility of character. + +"I went by the rectory as soon as I had seen the morning papers," he +said. "Thank God you escaped unhurt!" + +The irritation with which Father Algarcife had replied to Nevins's +solicitude did not appear now. + +"I hope you were not troubled by the report," he answered. "There was +absolutely nothing in it except that I was struck by a vehicle and +stunned slightly. But the exaggerated accounts have caused me a great +deal of annoyance. By the way, John," and his face softened, "I have not +told you how much I liked your last sermon." + +The other flushed and shook his head. "They fall so far short," he +returned, and his voice trembled. "I know now that I shall never be able +to speak. When I face the people there is so much that I want to say +that I grow dumb. My feeling is so strong that my words are weak." + +"Time may change that." + +"No," said Ellerslie; "but if I may listen to you I am content. I will +serve God in humble ways. It is the service that I love, after all, and +not the glory." + +"Yes, yes," responded Father Algarcife, gently. + +He went into the sacristy, where he sat for a few moments in reverie, +his head resting upon his hand. Then he rose and shook himself free of +the thought which haunted him. + +For several weeks after this he paid no calls except among his poor. The +houses of his richer parishioners he appeared to shun, and his days were +spent in active work in the mission districts. At all hours his calm +black figure and virile face might be seen passing in and out of the +grimy tenements or along the narrow streets. He had opened, in +connection with his mission-house, a lodging for waifs, and it was his +custom to spend several evenings of the week among its inmates. The +house had been founded by funds which, until his call to the church, had +been expended in Asiatic missions, but which, before his indomitable +opposition, had been withdrawn. As the work went on it became of special +interest to him, and a good half of his personal income went yearly to +its support. + +"It is not a charity," he had once said to Salvers. "I disapprove of +such charities. It is merely a house where lodgings are let in as +business-like a manner as they are around the corner, for five cents a +spot; only our lodgings are better, and there is a bath thrown in." + +"And a dinner as well," Salvers had answered, "to say nothing of +breakfast and a bed to one's self. By the way, is your system of serving +newsboys and boot-blacks on credit successful?" + +Father Algarcife smiled. + +"I have found it so," he replied; "but, you know, our terms are long, +and we give good measure for the money." + +It was in this work that he was absorbing himself, when, one day in +early December, he received a note from Mrs. Ryder: + + "I have secured a box at the opera for Thursday night," (she + wrote), "that I might beg you to hear Madame Cambria, who sings + Ortrude in 'Lohengrin.' Her contralto is superb, and I wish to + engage her for our Christmas services, but I hesitate to do so + until I have had your verdict upon her voice. This is a new + charitable appeal, and one which I trust you will not refuse. + + "Believe me to be, + "Always sincerely yours, + "FLORENCE VAN HORNE RYDER. + + "The De Reszkes sing also." + +He sent an acceptance, and the following day received an urgent request +that he should dine quietly with Mr. Ryder and herself on Thursday +evening. To this he consented, after some hesitation; and when the +evening came he presented himself, to find Mrs. Ryder awaiting him with +the pretty, vivacious young woman of the dinner-party, who was a guest +in the house. + +Mrs. Ryder crossed the room, with her large white hand outstretched, her +satin gown rustling as she moved, and the lamplight shimmering over her +massive shoulders in their setting of old lace. The vivacious young +woman, whose name was Darcy, greeted him with a smile which seemed to +blend in a flash of brightness her black eyes and white teeth. + +"Mr. Ryder is a little late," his wife explained, "but he will not delay +us long." And she passed to the subject of the Christmas services and +the contralto she wished to secure. + +While she was speaking, Ryder came in with his usual cordial +pleasantries. He was looking fresh and a little flushed, as if he had +just left a Turkish bath, and was dressed with an immaculateness of +detail which carried a suggestion of careful polish. His sensitive skin, +beneath which the purplish flush rose, was as fine as a child's, and his +round, smooth hands had a suffusion of pink in the palms. + +In a moment dinner was served, and they went into the dining-room. Ryder +was easy and affable. He talked pleasantly about the events of the past +few weeks, describing as if for the hundredth time the success of the +Horse Show, and stating good-natured objections to the awards of the +judges. + +"It is a farce," he said--"a mere farce. They don't recognize the best +horse-flesh when they see it." Then he smiled at his wife. "But who can +blame them? It was really a puzzle to decide which were the most worth +looking at, the horses or the women. It is hard to say where the blue +ribbon belonged. Ah, father, you miss a great deal by being a saint." + +Miss Darcy interrupted him with a pretty protest. "I am sure a saint may +look at a horse," she said, "and a woman." And she added: "I have always +forgotten to ask you who the lady in violet and silver-fox was who sat +in Mr. Buisson's box? I did not recognize her." + +Ryder's eyes narrowed slightly, but he answered easily, "Oh, that was +Mrs. Gore, I believe." + +Miss Darcy flashed a smile. + +"The Englishwoman I have heard so much about? Why, I thought she was +called a beauty!" + +Ryder laughed. + +"She is a beauty when you know her," he said, "or, rather, you get the +idea that she is. But she isn't English, you know. She married an +Englishman." + +Then he changed the subject and drew Father Algarcife into a discussion +of church decorations. + +When dinner was over, Mrs. Ryder's maid appeared, bearing the +opera-wraps, and the two women trailed down the steps and into the +carriage. When Father Algarcife had stepped inside, Ryder closed the +door and made his excuses. + +"I'll look in a little later," he said; "but if Mr. Nevins finds you you +won't need me, and a whole evening of it tires my nerves." + +Then he lighted a cigar and strolled off leisurely, while the carriage +started. + +When they entered the opera-house the curtain had risen, and the tenor +was singing his farewell to the swan. + +As Father Algarcife seated himself in the shadow of the box and looked +over Mrs. Ryder's superb shoulders at the stage and the glittering +foot-lights, he felt a quick impulse to rush away from it all. He hated +the noise and the heat and the glare. The heavy atmosphere seemed +oppressive and unnatural, and the women, sparkling brilliantly in the +tiers of boxes, looked like beautiful exotics, fragrant with the +perishable bloom of a hot-house. It was with a sensation of relief that +he recalled the dull mission in the slums, where he had spent the +morning. + +On the stage, Elsa had cast herself into the arms of Lohengrin, and the +voice of love dominant was translated into song. The music filled the +house with a throbbing ecstasy--an ecstasy that had captured in its +notes the joys of all the senses--the light to the eye of a spring +morning, the perfume to the nostrils of fresh meadows, the warmth to the +touch of falling sunshine. It was the voice of love ethereal--of love +triumphant over flesh, of love holding to its breast the phantom of its +dreams. It was the old, ever-young voice of the human heart panting for +the possession of its vision--the vision realized in the land of +legends. + + * * * * * + +The curtain was rung down, and in a moment Nevins came in and they fell +to talking. They spoke of the tenor, of the fact that the prima donna's +voice had strengthened, and of Madame Cambria, the contralto, who was a +little hoarse. Then they spoke of the people in the boxes and of the +absence of several whose names they mentioned. + +Father Algarcife was silent, and he only aroused himself to attention +when Miss Darcy, lowering her opera-glass, turned to Nevins +inquiringly. + +"Do tell me if that is Mrs. Gore across from us--the one in green and +violets?" + +Nevins replied constrainedly. "Yes," he said; "I think so. The other is +Miss Ramsey, I believe--a friend who lives with her." + +Miss Darcy smiled. + +"Why, I thought she lived alone," she returned; "but I have heard so +many odd things about her that I may be mistaken in this one. She is +evidently the kind of person that nobody possesses any positive +information about." + +"Perhaps it is as well," observed Mrs. Ryder, stiffly. "It is better to +know too little on such subjects than too much." + +Nevins was writhing in his chair, his mouth half open, when Father +Algarcife spoke. + +"In this case," he said, and his voice sounded cold and firm, "what is +not known seems to be incorrectly surmised. I knew Mrs. +Gore--before--before her marriage. She is a Southerner." + +Mrs. Ryder looked up. + +"Yes?" she interrogated, as he paused. + +"And, although I cannot vouch for her discretion, I can for her innate +purity of character." + +Mrs. Ryder flushed, and spoke with a beautiful contrition in her eyes. + +"I was wrong," she said, "to trust rumor. It makes me ashamed of +myself--of my lack of generosity." + +The curtain rose, and Father Algarcife turned to the stage. But he did +not see it. The figures were blurred before his eyes and the glare +tortured him. Across the circle of space he knew that Mariana was +sitting, her head upraised, her cheek resting upon her hand, her face in +the shadow. He could almost see her eyes growing rich and soft like +green velvet. + +Then, as the voice of the soprano rang out, he started slightly. +Beneath the song of love he heard the cry of ambition--a cry that said: + +_"I would give half my life for this--to sing with Alvary."_ + +Whence the words came he did not know. He had no memory of them in time +or place, but they struggled in the throat of the soprano and filled the +air. + +He turned and looked at her as she sat across from him, her cheek +resting in her hand against a blaze of diamonds. She looked white, he +thought, and wistful and unsatisfied. Then a fierce joy took possession +of him--a joy akin to the gloating of a savage cruelty. She had failed. +Yes, in spite of the brocade of her gown, in spite of the diamonds in +her hair, in spite of the homage in the eyes of men that followed +her--she had failed. + +The blood rushed into his temples, and he felt it beating in his pulses. +He was glad--glad that she was unsatisfied--glad of the struggle and of +the failure--glad of the slow torture of famished aspirations. + +And from the throat of the soprano the words rang heavy with throbs of +unfulfilment: + +_"I would give half my life for this--to sing with Alvary."_ + +Then as he looked at her she stirred restlessly, and their eyes met. It +was a blank look, such as two strangers might have interchanged, but +suddenly he remembered the night they came together and sat in the fifth +gallery. A dozen details of that evening flickered in his memory and +reddened into life. He remembered the splendors of her eyes, the thrill +in her voice, the nervous tremor of her hands. He remembered the violets +in her bonnet, created from nothing after a chapter of Mill--and the +worn gloves with the stains inside, which benzine had not taken away. He +remembered her faintness when the opera was over, and the grocery-shop +across from The Gotham, where they had bought ale and crackers. He saw +her figure as she sat on the hearth-rug in her white gown, her hair +hanging loose about her shoulders, her eyes drowsy with sleep. He saw +her hands--bare then of jewels--as she unfastened the parcels, and heard +her laugh as he drew the cork and the ale spilled upon the crackers. +Good God! He had forgotten these things eight years ago. + +Again he looked across at her and their eyes met. He turned to the stage +and listened to the faltering of love as it struggled with doubt. The +music had changed. It had deepened in color and a new note had throbbed +into it--a note of flesh that weighed upon spirit--of disbelief that +shadowed faith. The ideal was singing the old lesson of the real found +wanting--of passion tarnished by the touch of clay. The ecstasy had +fled. Love was not satisfied with itself. It craved knowledge, and the +vision beautiful was fading before the eyes of earth. It was the song of +the eternal vanquishment of love by distrust, of the eternal failure of +faith. + + * * * * * + +When the curtain fell Ryder came into the box. He was looking depressed, +and lines of irritation had gathered about his mouth. He pulled his fair +mustache nervously. His wife rose and looked at him with a frank smile +in her eyes. + +"I have been watching Mrs. Gore," she said, "and she is very lovely. +Will you take me to her box for a moment?" + +Nevins looked up with quick gratitude, and Ryder grew radiant. He smiled +on his wife in affectionate admiration. + +"Of course I will," he answered, and as they left the box he added: "You +are magnificent. There is not a woman in town with your neck and arms." + +She smiled faintly, unmoved by his words. She had learned long since +that he still admired though he no longer desired her--and desire was +the loadstar of his life. + +Father Algarcife, looking at the box across from him, saw Mariana start +suddenly and rise with an impulsive welcome as Mrs. Ryder entered. He +could see the light on her face, and the frank pleasure of her greeting. +Then, as the two women stood together, he saw Ryder glance from one to +the other with his pleasant smile and turn to speak to Miss Ramsey. He +heard Nevins breathing behind him, and he was conscious of a strange +feeling of irritation against him. Why should he, who was at enmity with +no man, cherish that curious dislike for one who was his friend? + +"Mrs. Ryder is a creature to be adored," said Nevins to Miss Darcy. "She +is Isis incarnate." + +Miss Darcy responded with her flashing smile. "And Mrs. Gore's +divinity?" + +Nevins gave an embarrassed laugh. + +"Oh, I am not sure that she is a goddess at all," he answered. "She is +merely a woman." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +As Mariana entered her house after the opera was over she unwound the +lace scarf from her head, letting it trail like a silvery serpent on the +floor behind her. Then she unfastened her long cloak, and threw it on a +chair in the drawing-room. + +"The fire is out," she said, looking at the ashes in the grate, "and I +am cold--cold." + +"Shall I start it?" asked Miss Ramsey, a little timidly, as she tugged +awkwardly at her gloves, embarrassed by their length. + +Mariana laughed absently. + +"Start it? Why should you?" she questioned. "There are servants--or +there ought to be--but no, I'll go up-stairs." + +She went into the hall, and Miss Ramsey followed her. On the second +landing they entered a large room, the floor of which was spread with +white fur rugs, warmed by the reddish lights and shadows from an open +fire. + +Mariana crossed to the fire, and, drawing off her gloves, held her hands +to the flames. There was a strained look in her eyes, as if she had not +awaked to her surroundings. + +Miss Ramsey raised the wick of the lamp, yawned behind her hand, and +came to where Mariana was standing. + +"Are you tired?" she asked. "The opera was very long." + +Mariana started and looked at her. + +"You poor little thing," she said. "It half killed you. No, don't go. +Sit down for a moment. I want to talk to you." + +As she spoke she unfastened her gown, slipped it off, and threw it +across a chair. Then she put on a wrapper of white flannel, and, seating +herself on the rug before the fire, loosened her heavy hair. + +"I want to talk," she repeated. + +Miss Ramsey drew a chair beside her and sat down. She laid her hand on +Mariana's hair. + +"Shall I braid it?" she asked. + +Mariana shook her head. + +"I don't want you to wait on me," she replied, half pettishly. "Janet +can do that. I want you to love me." + +Miss Ramsey smiled. + +"How shall I begin?" she inquired. + +But Mariana was silent, staring moodily into the fire, where the ruddy +coals assumed sharp and bizarre designs. As the light flickered over her +face it brought out the changes in her eyes and the warmth of her mouth. + +"Do you see that head in the fire?" she asked, suddenly. "It is the head +of the Sphinx--and before it there is a burning desert--do you see?" + +Then she laid her head in Miss Ramsey's lap, and her voice sounded faint +and far off. + +"I want to be told that I am good," she said; "that I have been good all +my life--that I am a saint, like that splendid creature who came to +speak to me to-night. Am I as good as she?" + +"I do not know her," responded Miss Ramsey. + +Mariana raised her eyes to her face. + +"Am I like I used to be--at The Gotham?" + +Miss Ramsey smiled. + +"You are older." + +"And wiser?" + +"I don't think you will ever be wise, my dear." + +"I am afraid not," said Mariana. "I am wedded to folly." Then she sighed +softly. "Am I better?" she asked. + +"You are very good to me." + +"Am I better--to look at?" + +Miss Ramsey shook her head gently. + +"Dress makes a good deal of difference," she returned, presently. + +Mariana rose and kissed her good-night. + +"Sleep well," she said. "And don't make your bed in the morning--please +don't. Yes, I am very sleepy." + +But when the door had closed after Miss Ramsey she sat looking into the +grate until the crimson coals had waned to livid ashes. The room grew +cold and the shadows deepened in the folds of the curtains at the +windows, which were stirred by a faint draught. From the street below an +occasional noise rose, vague, unseizable--the roll of a wagon or the +tramp of a passer-by upon the sidewalk. In a distant room a clock struck +twice, with a soft whirring sound. From her gown, thrown across the back +of a chair, the bruised violets diffused a fading sweetness. The embers +waned one by one, and the visions in the fire grew spectral, like living +faces which the warm blood forsakes. As the last one died she rose and +went to bed. + +When she awoke in the morning it was to find Miss Ramsey standing beside +her, holding her breakfast-tray. + +"You were sleeping very soundly," she said. "Did you have a good night?" + +"Oh yes," Mariana responded. She yawned and turned upon the pillows, +stretching her arms above her head. The lace on her sleeves fell away +from her bare elbows. + +"I slept very soundly, and I am sleepy still. The mere fact of getting +up in the morning makes life a failure. Until I have had my bath I am +always a pessimist." + +She sat up drowsily, running her hands through her hair. Then she turned +to her tea, which was placed on a table beside her. + +"There are your violets also," remarked Miss Ramsey, pointing to a +couple of florist's boxes; and, as an afterthought, she added: "Men are +odd creatures." + +Mariana laughed. + +"Oh, they imagine that they are laying up treasures on earth," she +answered, stirring her tea. "And they have overlooked the fact that +moths corrupt. I shall advise them to transfer their attentions to +Heaven. Who was it that called me 'unpropitious'?" + +"I don't like it," said Miss Ramsey. "I may be old-fashioned, but I +don't approve of married men living as if they had no responsibilities." + +"Nor do I," agreed Mariana. "It bores one awfully." + +"And it makes people say unkind things of you, my dear. It is so hard +for them to draw the distinction between imprudence and infamy." + +"Yes," admitted Mariana, pushing her cup aside. "I suppose it is--and I +suppose I am imprudent." + +"I wish you would try to be a little more careful." + +Mariana caught her hand and pulled her down on the bed beside her. + +"What a treasure you are!" she said. "Do you know you are the one woman +I absolutely believe in? You might have made a fortune by reporting +scandals about me, and you haven't done so." + +The maid brought in several letters, and Mariana took them from her and +broke the seals carelessly. + +"Mr. Gore is coming forward again," she remarked, tossing an open sheet +on the counterpane. "You knew he did not like that worshipful old uncle +of his leaving me his property. He says it has made me too independent. +Well, it has made me independent of him, for which Heaven be praised. +When I heard of it I repeated the Thirty-nine Articles, fifty _Hail +Mary's_, and as much of the Shorter Catechism as I could think of. I +feel _so_ thankful." + +"I am sorry for that, Mariana." + +"You wouldn't be if you knew him. You are too economical to squander +emotions." + +"But it does seem rather hard on him," said Miss Ramsey. + +Mariana laughed. + +"It would have been worse on me had I stayed with him," she responded. +"And now, if Janet has my bath ready, I think I'll get up." + +An hour later she came down-stairs in her hat and coat, and went for her +morning walk in the park. When she returned she ordered the carriage, +and went shopping, accompanied by Miss Ramsey. + +"You are to have a heliotrope satin," Mariana declared, in a burst of +generosity, "and I am to have one that is all amber and dull gold." + +As she stood in the centre of the costumer's show-room, surveying the +lustrous folds of heliotrope and amber, her eyes shone with pleasure. +Miss Ramsey protested faintly. + +"My dear Mariana, I beg of you," she said, "leave me the black silk. +Colors confuse me." + +But Mariana was obdurate. + +"No," she replied, "I have selected it. We will go to the milliner's." + +They drove to the milliner's, where they remained for a couple of +hours--Mariana finding difficulty in deciding upon a bonnet. When the +choice was made Miss Ramsey was threatened with hysteria, and they went +home. + +"I quite forgot," said Mariana, as they entered the house, a small +brown-stone one on Fifty-seventh Street, which she had leased--"I quite +forgot that I was to have sat for Mr. Nevins this morning. How provoking +I am! But it is too late now, and, besides, I am looking a fright. My +dear, good Miss Ramsey, I do wish you would express yourself more about +the purchases I make." + +"I did express myself," protested Miss Ramsey, looking jaded and +harassed. "I expressed myself against that heliotrope satin, but it did +no good." + +"But that was absurd," responded Mariana. "I do hope luncheon is ready," +and she went up-stairs to change her dress. + +After luncheon Mrs. Ryder called, and Mariana went in to see her, a +flush of pleasure suffusing her face. + +"How very kind of you!" she said, taking the proffered hand, and there +was a thrill of gratitude in her voice. They seated themselves near +together and talked of mutual acquaintances, principally men, of the +weather, and of the opera the evening before--all with the flippancy +with which society veils the primordial network of veins coursing +beneath its bloodless surface. Then, when Mrs. Ryder rose to go, she +hesitated an instant, looking down at the smaller woman. + +"I should like to be your friend," she said at last. "Will you let me?" + +Mariana raised her eyes. + +"I need them," she answered; and then she added, impulsively: "Do you +know all that has been said of me--all?" + +Mrs. Ryder drew herself up with a slow, gracious movement. + +"But it is not true," she said. + +"No, it is not true," repeated Mariana. + +The other smiled and held out her hand. + +"I want you to come to luncheon with me," she said. "I shall be alone +to-morrow. Will you come?" + +"Yes," Mariana responded, "to-morrow." + +And after Mrs. Ryder had gone she sat down at her desk and wrote a note. + +"You must not talk to me again as you did last evening," it said. "I +have told you so before, but I may not have seemed in earnest. Now I am +in earnest, and you must not--you shall not do it. I know it has been a +great deal my fault, and I am sorry for it. Indeed, you must believe +that I did not think of its coming to this." + +Then she sealed it and gave it to the servant to mail, after which she +went up-stairs and talked to Miss Ramsey until dinner. + +The next day she went to Mrs. Ryder's, and they sat down to luncheon at +a small round table and talked as women talk in whom feeling is +predominant over thought, and to whom life represents a rhythmic series +of emotions rather than waves of mental evolution. + +They spoke in low, almost affectionate voices, conscious of one of those +sudden outreaches of sympathy to which women are subject. When luncheon +was over they went up to the nursery, and Mariana knelt upon the floor +and romped with the child, who pulled her loosened hair, uttering shrill +shrieks of delight. At last she rose hurriedly, and Mrs. Ryder saw that +a tear trembled on her lashes. + +The elder woman's heart expanded. + +"You have had a child?" she asked, softly. + +"Yes." + +"And lost it?" + +"Yes, I lost it." + +Mrs. Ryder's eyes grew soft. + +"I am so sorry for you," she said. The tear on Mariana's lashes fell +upon her hand. + +"It was eight years ago," she said. "That is a long time, but I suppose +one never entirely forgets." + +"No," answered the other, "one never forgets." + +She stooped suddenly, and, lifting her child, kissed it passionately. + +Several mornings after this Mariana's carriage stopped before Nevins's +studio, and Mariana got out and ascended the long flight of stairs. In +response to the fall of the brass knocker, the door was opened and +Nevins greeted her reproachfully. "Are you aware," he demanded, gravely, +"that there has been sufficient time for the appearance of a wrinkle +since your last sitting?" + +"Portraits don't have wrinkles," returned Mariana, cheerfully, entering +and unfastening her coat; "nor do I." + +She removed her hat and gave an impatient little fluff to her hair. + +"Do I look well?" she asked. + +"Were you ever otherwise to me?" rejoined Nevins, in impassioned +protest. + +Mariana turned from him with a slight shrug of her shoulders. + +"For the last week," she said, "I have had a horrible cold. It made my +eyes red and my nose also. That is why I stayed away." + +"And plunged me into a seven days' despair--for a cold." + +"Oh, but such a cold!" + +She seated herself on a low chair between two large curtained easels. +Then she rose to examine the portrait. + +"I suppose the touching-up makes a great deal of difference," she +remarked. + +"A great deal," assented Nevins; "but don't you like it?" + +She hesitated, her head first on one side, then on the other. + +"Oh yes," she said, "but I should like it to be ideal, you know." + +"Nonsense! You don't need to be idealized. To idealize means to wipe out +character with turpentine and put in inanity with a paint-brush." Then +he added: "Sit down just as you are, and turn your head towards the +purple curtain on that easel. A little farther--there. I must have that +expression." + +He picked up his brush and worked steadily for twenty minutes. Then he +frowned. + +"You have suffered twelve changes of expression within the last sixty +seconds," he said. "What are you thinking of?" + +"Oh, lots of things." + +"Keep to one, please." + +She smiled. + +"Which shall it be?" + +His eyes lingered upon her in sudden brightness. + +"Think of me," he responded. + +"I do," returned Mariana, amiably; "but when I think of you I think of +Mr. Ardly, and when I think of Mr. Ardly I think of The Gotham, and when +I think of The Gotham I think of--Mr. Paul." + +"Confound Mr. Paul!" retorted Nevins, crossly. + +"Please don't," protested Mariana; and she added, "you know he +disapproves of me very much." + +"The scoundrel!" + +"But a great many people do that." + +"The scoundrels!" + +"Oh no," said Mariana, plaintively; "it is only your kindness of heart +that makes you say so." + +He laid down his brush and looked at her. + +"My God!--Mariana!" he exclaimed. + +"Nevins," said a voice in the doorway. + +He turned abruptly. Mariana, behind the curtained easel, paled suddenly. + +"I knocked, my dear fellow," the voice went on, "and I thought you +answered. So you _are_ alone. I came to look at the portrait." + +"I am not alone," returned Nevins, awkwardly; "but come in, +a--a--Algarcife." + +Mariana rose from behind the easel and came forward. Her face was white, +but she was smiling. + +"He is painting every one's portrait," she said, "and I am one of +everybody." She held out her hand. He took it limply, and it fell from +his grasp. + +"I beg your pardon," he said; "I did not know." + +"Oh, it doesn't matter," responded Mariana. "Please look at the +portrait. I want to--to rest." + +He turned from her coldly. + +"Since Mrs. Gore is so kind," he said to Nevins, "I will look at it. It +will only detain you a moment." + +He crossed the room and drew aside the curtain from a large canvas, then +he fell back from the light and examined it carefully for a few seconds, +suggesting an alteration or two, and making a favorable comment. + +Mariana followed him with her eyes, her hands clasped before her, her +face pallid, and the red of her lips shining like a scarlet thread. +"It--it is very like," she said, suddenly. + +He bowed quietly, showing a slight surprise, as he might have done at +the remark of a stranger. Then he turned to the door. + +"I am sorry to have interrupted you," he said. "Good-morning." + +When the door closed upon him Mariana stood for an instant with her head +bent as if listening to his footsteps on the stairs. Then she turned to +Nevins, a smile flashing across her face. + +"We must go back to the portrait," she said. "It must be finished +quickly--quickly. I am afraid of wrinkles." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Mariana was walking under the elms that skirt the park on Fifth Avenue. +It was a mild December morning, and the sunshine fell in silvery waves +through the bare branches of trees overhead and rippled lightly across +the concrete sidewalk, while the slender shadows of the boughs assumed +the effect of irregular lines drawn by crude fingers upon a slate. Far +ahead, through the narrowing archway of naked elms, the perspective +sloped in gradual incline, blending the changing shades of blue and gray +into a vista of pale violet. On the low stone wall to her left the +creepers showed occasional splashes of scarlet berries, glowing warm and +vivid through the autumnal haze which tinted the atmosphere. December +had reverted for a single day into the majesty of dead October. + +Mariana walked slowly, the furs, which she found oppressive, open at the +throat, and her muff hanging idly from her hand. There was a rapt +expression upon her face, and her eyes were sombre. She had the strained +and preoccupied air of one whose mind has winged back to long-past days, +leaving the body adrift in its relation to present events. All at once a +tiny child, rolling a toy along the sidewalk, stumbled and fell before +her feet, uttering shrieks of dismay. The incident recalled her to +herself, and, as she stooped to lift it, she smiled at the profuse +apologies of the nurse. Then she glanced about her, as if uncertain of +the number of blocks that she had walked. + +Three aspens, standing together in the park, arrested her gaze, and she +looked at them with momentary intentness. Their slender bodies shone +like leprous fingers, pointing heavenward, and on the topmost point of +one a broken spray of frosted leaves shivered whitely. They recalled to +her with a shudder the little graveyard on the old plantation, where she +had spent her earliest childhood, and she was seized with a spasm of +memory. She saw the forgotten and deserted graves, with the rank +periwinkle corroding the marble slabs, and she saw the little brown +lizards that crept out to bask upon them in the summer sunshine. With +the recollection, death appeared to her hideous and loathsome, and she +walked on quickly, her eyes on the pavement. A group of street-cleaners +were seated against the stone wall, eating their mid-day meal, and she +looked at the hunks of bread and ham with a feeling of sympathy for the +consumers. Then, as she passed, her thoughts swung to the owner of the +house across the way whom she knew, and who was descending the front +steps. At Sixty-seventh Street she turned into the park, her eyes drawn +by the clump of pines darkly defined against the gray rock beyond. For +the second time her errant thoughts went back to her childhood and to +the great pine forest where the wind played lullabies through the white +heat of August days. She felt a swift desire to throw herself beneath +the little alien growth of pine, to lie on the soft grass, which was +still like emerald deepened by bluish shadows, and to let the spicy +needles fall upon her upturned face. + +As she moved onward, a man crossing the park in a rapid walk approached +her. It was Father Algarcife, and in a moment their glances met. + +He raised his hat, and would have passed on, but she stopped him by a +gesture. + +"Won't you speak to me?" she asked, and her voice wavered like a harp +over which the player has lost control. + +As she looked at him she saw that he had grown thinner since she had +last seen him, and that his eyes shone with an unnatural lustre. + +"What is there for me to say?" he returned, arresting her wavering +glance. + +Her lips quivered. + +"I may go away," she said, "and this is the last chance. There is +something I must tell you. Will you turn and walk back with me?" + +He shook his head. + +"What is the use?" he asked, impatiently. "There is nothing to be said +that cannot better be left--unsaid." + +"No! No!" she said. "You must not think worse of me than--than I +deserve." + +He was smiling bitterly. + +"What I think of you," he returned, "matters very little." Then the +smile passed, and he looked at her gravely. "I have little time," he +said. "My days are not my own." And he added, slowly: "If you wish it, I +will walk back with you for a short distance." + +"Thank you," she replied, and they passed the clump of pines on their +way in the park. + +For a time they were silent, he was looking ahead, and her eyes followed +their shadows as they flitted before her on the ground. The two shadows +drew nearer, almost melted into one, and fell away. + +Suddenly he turned to her. + +"There was something you wished to say?" he asked, as he had asked his +parishioners a hundred times; then he added: "Even though it were better +left unsaid?" + +Her eyes left the shadows, and were raised to his face. She thought +suddenly that there was a line of cruelty about his mouth, and shrank +from him. Had she really seen that face illuminated by passion, or was +memory a lie? She spoke rapidly, her words tripping upon one another. + +"I want you to know," she said, "how it happened--how I did it--how--" + +He looked at her again, and the mocking smile flamed in his eyes. + +"What does it matter how it happened," he questioned, "since it did +happen? In these days we have become impressionists in all things--even +in our experiences. Details are tiresome." Then, as she was silent, he +went on. "And these things are done with. There is nothing between +Mrs.--Gore and the Reverend Anthony Algarcife except a meeting in a +studio and a morning walk in the park. The air is spring-like." + +"Don't," she said, suddenly. "You are hard." + +He laughed shortly. + +"Hard things survive," he answered. "They aren't easy to smash." + +She looked at the shadows and then into his face. + +"Have you ever forgiven me?" she asked. + +He did not answer. + +"I should like to feel," she went on, "that you see it was not my +fault--that I was not to blame--that you forgive me for what you +suffered." + +But he looked ahead into the blue-gray distance and was silent. + +"Tell me that I was not to blame," she said, again. + +He turned to her. + +"It was as much your fault," he said, slowly, "as it is the fault of +that feather that the wind is blowing it into the lake. What are you +that you should conquer the wind?" + +She smiled sadly. + +"And you have forgiven me?" + +His eyes grew hard and his voice cut like steel. + +"No." + +"And yet you see that I was not to blame." + +He smiled again. + +"It is the difference," he answered, "between logic and life. What have +they in common?" + +She spoke almost passionately. "Do you think that I have not suffered?" +she asked. "Do you think that you have had all--all the pain?" + +He shook his head. + +"I do not suffer," he replied. "My life is calm." + +She paid no heed to him. + +"I have been tortured," she went on; "tortured night and day with +memory--and remorse." + +His voice was cold, but a sudden anger blazed in his eyes. + +"There are drugs for both," he said. + +She shivered. + +"I have tried to buy happiness as I bought diamonds," she continued. "I +have gone from place to place in pursuit of it. I have cheated myself +with the belief that I might find it. I did not know that the lack lay +in myself--always in myself." + +She was silent, and he softened suddenly. "And you have never found it?" +he asked. "Of all the things that you craved in youth there is lacking +to you now--only your ambition." + +She raised her head. + +"And love," she finished. + +His voice grew hard again. + +"We are speaking of realities," he returned, and added, bitterly: "Who +should have had love--if not you?" + +They had passed the lake, and were walking through the Ramble. The dead +leaves rustled beneath their feet. + +"It is not true," she said, passionately. "It is false." + +"What is false?" he demanded, quietly. "That you have had opportunities +for love?" + +She did not reply. Her lips were trembling, and her hand played +nervously with the ribbon on her muff. + +Suddenly she looked up. + +"When I left you," she said, slowly, "I went with the opera troupe +abroad. For several years I was very successful, and I believed it would +end well. I was given a leading part. Then one winter, when we were in +Paris, I was taken ill. It was pneumonia. I was very ill, and the pain +was frightful. They thought it would go to my heart. But when I grew +better the troupe went on. I was left at the hotel, ill and +alone--except for one friend--an Englishman--" + +He interrupted her harshly. + +"You have made a mistake," he said, and his voice was dull and lifeless. +"I have no right to know your story. You are not of my parish--nor am I +your confessor." + +She flinched, but went on steadily, though her tones drooped. + +"He had followed me for a long time. He loved me--or thought he did. +When I was deserted by the troupe he stayed with me. He paid my bills +and brought me back to life. I grew strong again, but--my voice was +gone." + +She paused as if in pain. + +"Sit down," he said. + +And they sat down on a bench beneath the naked branches of an oak. + +"I was penniless, alone, and very weak. He wanted me even then. At first +he did not want to marry me, but when I would not yield, he begged me to +come back with him and secure a divorce. I think he was mad with +passion." + +She hesitated and glanced at him, but he was looking away. + +"At last the end came. There was nothing else to do--and I wrote to +you." + +He moistened his lips as if they were parched from fever. + +"Did you get the letter?" + +"Yes," he answered, "I got it." + +"And you did not answer?" + +"What was there for me to say? You were free." + +For an instant her eyes blazed. + +"You never loved me," she said. + +He smiled slightly. + +"Do you think so?" he asked. + +The anger died from her eyes and she spoke softly. + +"I waited for the answer," she said; "waited months, and it did not +come. Then I came back. We went out West. A divorce was very easy--and I +married him. I owed him so much." + +"Yes?" + +"It was a mistake. I did not satisfy him. He thought me cold. We +quarrelled, and he went to other women. He drank a great deal. I was +much to blame, but I could not help it. I hated him. Then his uncle took +my part and loved me--God bless him, he was a saint--and kind--oh, so +kind. When he died he left me the money, and his nephew and I separated. +I have not seen him since." + +They were both silent. She could hear his heavy breathing, and her heart +throbbed. + +"It was all a mistake," she said. "My whole life has been a mistake. But +there is no salvation for us who make mistakes." + +His eyes grew dark as he looked at her. + +"A mistake that one stands by may become the part of wisdom," he said. +"Could you not go back to him and begin again?" His face had grown +haggard. + +Her wrath flamed out. + +"If I begin again," she answered, "it must be from the beginning--to +relive my whole life." + +He looked at her restless hands. + +"Then you must look to the future," he said, "since there is no +present--and no past." + +"There is a past," she returned, passionately. + +He shook his head. + +"A dead one." + +Her mouth shone scarlet in the pallor of her face. + +"And shall we forget our dead?" she asked. + +His lips closed together with brutal force. His eyes were hot with +self-control. + +Then he stooped for her muff, which had rolled to the ground, brushing +it lightly with his hand. As he gave it to her he rose to his feet. + +"Shall we return?" he asked. "It has grown cloudy." + +She rose also, but stood for an instant with her hand resting upon the +back of the bench. Her lips opened, but closed again, and she turned and +walked at his side in silence. + +Suddenly he looked at her. + +"It is late," he said, "as you doubtless know, and I have neglected a +call. May I leave you to go on alone?" Then his voice softened. "Are you +ill?" he asked--"or in pain?" + +She laughed mirthlessly. + +"You are too strong," she returned, "to stoop to irony." + +"It was not irony," he answered, gently. + +She smiled sadly, her eyes raised. + +"Tell me that you will come to see me--once," she said. + +He looked at her with sudden tenderness. + +"Yes," he answered; "I will come. Good-bye!" + +"Good-bye!" + +And they went different ways. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Mariana went home with throbs of elation in her heart. She was thrilled +with a strange, unreasoning joy--a sense of wonder and of mystery--that +caused her pulses to quiver and her feet to hasten. + +"I shall see him again," she thought--"I shall see him again." + +She forgot the years of separation, her past indifference, the barriers +between them. She forgot the coldness of his voice and his accusing +glance. Her nature had leaped suddenly into fulness, and a storm of +passion such as she had never known had seized her. The emotions of her +girlhood seemed to her stale and bloodless beside the tempest which +possessed her now. As she walked her lips trembled, and she thought, "I +shall see him again." + +At dinner Miss Ramsey noticed her flushed face, and, when they went into +the drawing-room, took her hands. "You are feverish," she said, "and you +ate nothing." + +Mariana laughed excitedly. + +"No," she answered, "I am well--very well." + +They sat down together, and she looked at Miss Ramsey with quick +tenderness. + +"Am I good to you?" she asked. "Am I good to the servants?--to +everybody?" + +"What is it, dear?" + +"Oh, I want to begin over again--all over again! It is but fair that one +should have a second chance, is it not?" + +Miss Ramsey smiled. + +"Some of us never have a first," she said; and Mariana took her in her +arms and kissed her. "You shall have yours," she declared. "I will give +it to you." + +When she went up-stairs a little later she took down an old square desk +from a shelf in the dressing-room and brought it to the rug before the +fire. Kneeling beside it, she turned the key and raised the narrow lid +of ink-stained mahogany. It was like unlocking the past years to sit +surrounded by these memories in tangible forms, to smell the close, +musty odor which clings about the relics of a life or a love that is +dead. + +She drew them out one by one and laid them on the hearth-rug--these +faded things that seemed in some way to waft with the scent of decay +unseizable associations of long-gone joy or sorrow. The dust lay thickly +over them, as the dust of forgetfulness lay over the memories they +invoked. There was a letter from her mother written to her in her +babyhood, and the fine, faded handwriting recalled to her the drooping +figure--a slight and passionate woman, broken by poverty and +disappointments, with vivacious lips and eyes of honest Irish blue. +There was a handful of mouldered acorns, gathered by childish fingers on +the old plantation; there was the scarlet handkerchief her mammy had +worn, and the dance-card of her first ball, with a colorless silk tassel +hanging from one end. Then she pushed these things hastily aside and +looked for others, as one looks beneath the sentiments for the passions +of one's life. She found a photograph of Anthony, pasted on cheap +card-board--a face young and intolerant, with the fires of ambition in +the eyes and the lines of self-absorption about the mouth. Still looking +at the boyish face, she remembered the man that she had seen that +morning--the fires of ambition burned to ashes, the self-absorption +melted into pain. + +With the photograph still in her hand, she turned back to the desk and +took out a tiny cambric shirt with hemstitched edges, upon which the +narrow lace was yellow and worn. As the little garment fell open in her +lap she remembered the day she had worked the hemstitching--a hot August +day before the child came, when she had lived like a prisoner in the +close rooms, sewing for months upon the dainty slips, and dreaming in +that subconscious existence in which women await the birth of a new +life. She remembered the day of its coming, her agony, and the first cry +of the child; then the weeks when she had lain watching the dressing and +undressing of the soft, round body, and then the moist and feeble clutch +upon her hand. She remembered the days when it did not leave her arms, +the nights when she walked it to and fro, crooning the lullaby revived +from her own infancy, and at last the hours when she sat in the +half-darkness and watched the life flicker out from the little bluish +face upon the pillow. + +"Was that yesterday or eight years ago?" + +Her tears fell fast upon the tiny shirt, and she folded it and laid it +away with the photograph and the other relics--laid away side by side +the relics and the recollections covered with dust. + +She rose to her feet and carried the desk back to its place in the +dressing-room. In a moment she returned and stood silently before the +fire, her hand resting upon the mantel-piece, her head leaning upon her +arm. She was thinking of the two things a woman never forgets--the voice +of the man she has loved and the face of her dead child. + +But when she went to bed an hour later there was a smile on her lips. + +"I shall see him again," she said. "Perhaps to-morrow." + +The next day she went to Nevins's studio and sat for the portrait. Her +face was aglow and she talked nervously. He noticed that she started at +a noise on the stair, and that her attention wandered from his words. He +made daring, if delicate, love to her, but she seemed oblivious of it, +and, when she rose to go, remarked that he was depressed. In return, he +observed that she was feverish, and advised consulting her physician. +"Your eyes are too bright," he said. "What is it?" + +"Your reflected brilliancy, perhaps." + +"By no means. The lustre is too unnatural." + +"Then it is sleeplessness. I lay awake last night." + +"Anything the matter? Can I help you?" + +She shook her head, smiling. + +"I am adjusting a few difficulties," she answered; "chiefly matrimonial, +but they belong to my cook." + +He looked at her attentively. + +"Don't worry," he said. "It is not becoming. The flush is all right, but +in time it will give place to discontent. You will sow perplexities to +reap--" + +"Furrows," finished Mariana. Then she nodded gayly. "What a pessimist +you are!" she said. "No, I am going to use the best cosmetic--happiness." + +And she lifted her skirts and descended the stairs. + +That afternoon she remained in-doors, wandering aimlessly from room to +room, opening a book to turn a page or two and to throw it aside for +another. + +In the evening she went out to dinner, and Ryder, who was among the +guests, remarked that he had never seen her in better form. "If there +was such a thing as eternally effervescent champagne, I'd compare you to +it," he said. "Are you never out of spirits?" + +She looked at him with sparkling eyes. "Oh, sometimes," she responded; +"but as soon as I discover it, I jump in again." + +"And I must believe," he returned, his gaze warming, "that your element +is one that cheers but not inebriates." + +"You are very charitable. I wonder if all my friends are?" + +He lowered his voice and looked into her eyes. "Say all your +worshippers," he corrected, and she turned from him to her left-hand +neighbor. + +She laughed and jested as lightly as if her heart were a feather, and +went home at last to weep upon her pillow. + +For the next few days she lived like one animated by an unnatural +stimulant. She talked and moved nervously, and her eyes shone with +suppressed excitement, but she had never appeared more brilliant, and +her manner was charged with an irresistible vivacity. To Miss Ramsey she +was unusually gentle and generous. + +Each morning, on rising, the thought fired her, "He may come to-day"; +each night the change was rung to, "He may come to-morrow"; and she +would toss feverishly until daybreak, to dress and meet her engagement, +with a laugh upon her lips. To a stranger she would have seemed to face +pain as she faced joy, with a dauntless insolence to fate. To a closer +observer there would have appeared, with the sharper gnawing at her +heart, the dash of a freer grace to her gestures, a richer light to her +eyes. It was as if she proposed to conquer destiny by the exercise of +personal charm. + +At the end of the week she came down to luncheon one day with a softer +warmth in her face. When the meal was over she went up to her room and +called her maid. "I want the gray dress," she said; but when it was laid +on the bed she tossed it aside. "It is too gloomy," she complained. +"Bring me the red;" and from the red she turned to the green. + +She dressed herself with passionate haste, arranging and rearranging +the coil of her hair, and altering with reckless fingers the lace at her +throat. At last she drew back from the glass, throwing a dissatisfied +glance at her reflection--at the green-clad figure and the small and +brilliant face, surmounted by its coils of shining brown. Then she added +a knot of violets to the old lace on her breast, and went down-stairs to +walk the drawing-room floor. An instinctive belief in his coming +possessed her. As she walked slowly up and down on the heavy carpet, the +long mirrors suspended here and there threw back at her fugitive +glimpses of her moving figure. In the dusk of the room beyond she saw +herself irradiated by the glimmering firelight. + +The hands of the clock upon the mantel travelled slowly round the +lettered face. As she watched it she felt a sudden desire to shake them +into swiftness. She touched the clock and drew back, laughing at her +childishness. A carriage in the street caught her ears and she went to +the window, glancing through the half-closed curtains. It passed by. +Then a tall, black figure turning the corner arrested her gaze, and her +heart leaped suddenly. The figure came on and she saw that it was an +elderly clergyman with white hair and a benevolent face. She was seized +with anger against him, and her impatience caused her to press her teeth +into her trembling lip. In the street a light wind chased a cloud of +dust along the sidewalk until it danced in little eddying waves into the +gutter. An organ-grinder, passing below, looked up and lifted his hand. +She took her purse from the drawer of the desk and threw him some +change; but when the broken tune was ground out she shook her head and +motioned him away. The sound grated upon her discordant nerves. + +She left the window and crossed the room again. The hands of the clock +had made a half-hour's progress in their tedious march. + +A book of poems lay on the table, and she opened it idly, her mental +fever excited by the lighter words of one who had sounded the depths and +sunk beneath. + + "If Midge will pine and curse its hours away, + Because Midge is not everything--for aye, + Poor Midge thus loses its one summer day, + Loses its all--and winneth what, I pray?" + +She threw the book aside and turned away--back to the window where there +was dust and wind--back into the still room where the monotonous tick of +the clock maddened her quivering mood. She walked to and fro in that +silent waiting which is the part of women, and beside which the action +of battle is to be faced with a song of thanksgiving. + +The trembling of her limbs frightened her, and she flung herself upon a +divan. The weakness passed, and she got up again. Another half-hour had +gone. + +All at once there was a ring at the bell. For an instant she felt her +heart contract, and then a delirious dash of blood through her veins to +her temples. Her pulses fluttered like imprisoned birds. + +A footstep crossed the hall, and the door of the drawing-room opened. + +"Mr. Ryder!" + +She wavered for an instant and went forward to meet him with an +hysterical laugh. Her eyes were like emeralds held before a blaze, and +the intense, opaline pallor of her face was warm as if tinged by a +flame. + +He took her outstretched hand hungrily, his face flushing until the +purplish tint rose to his smooth, white forehead. + +"Were you expecting me?" he asked. "I would sell my soul to believe that +you were--with that look in your eyes." + +She shook her head impatiently. + +"I was not," she answered. "I was expecting no one. It is very warm in +here--that is all." + +He looked disappointed. + +"Have you ever expected me?" he questioned, moodily--"or thought of me +when I was not with you?" + +She smiled. "Oh yes!" she returned, lightly. "When I had a note from you +saying that you were coming." + +He set his teeth. + +"You are as cruel as a--a devil, or a woman," he said. + +"What you call cruelty," she answered, gently, "is merely a weapon which +we sometimes thrust too far. When you talk to me in this way, you force +me to use it." And she added, flippantly, "Some day I may thrust it to +your heart." + +"I wish to God you would!" + +But she laughed merrily and led him to impersonal topics, talking +rapidly, with a constant play of her slim, white hands. She allowed him +no time for protestations. It was all bright, frivolous gossip of the +day, with no hint of seriousness. As she talked, there was no sign that +her ears were straining for an expected sound, or her flesh quivering +with impatience. + +At last he rose to go. + +"You are the only woman I know," he remarked, as he looked at her with +his easy and familiar glance, "who is never dull. How do you manage it?" + +"Oh, it is not difficult," she answered. "To laugh is much easier than +to cry." + +"And much more agreeable. I detest a woman who weeps." + +Her brilliant laugh rang out. + +"And so do I," she said. + +When he had gone, and the house door had closed after him, she crossed +to the heavily hanging curtains, pushed them aside, and looked out. + +Only dust and wind and gray streets and the sound of the footsteps of a +passer-by. From out the blue mist a single light burst, then another and +another. She held her head erect, a scornful smile curving her lips. + +Again the bell rang, and again she quivered and started forward, +listening to the steps that crossed the hall. The door opened. + +"Mr. Buisson!" + +She hesitated a moment, and then went forward with the same cordial +gesture of her cold, white hand. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Father Algarcife was working like a man spurred by an invisible lash. At +the breaking of the cold winter dawns he might be seen on his rounds in +the mission districts, which began before the early Mass, to end long +after dusk, when the calls of his richer parishioners had been treated +and dismissed. During the morning celebrations one of the younger +priests often noticed that he appeared faint from exhaustion, and +attributed it to the strain of several hours' work without nourishment. + +One morning, shortly after New Year, John Ellerslie joined him and went +in with him to breakfast. It was then he noticed that Father Algarcife +ate only cold bread with his coffee, while he apologized for the +scantiness of the fare. "It is lack of appetite with me," he explained, +"not injudicious fasting;" and he turned to the maid: "Agnes, will you +see that Father Ellerslie has something more substantial?" But when +cakes and eggs were brought, he pushed them aside, and crumbled, without +eating, his stale roll. + +The younger man remonstrated, his face flushing from embarrassment. + +"I am concerned for your health," he said. "Will you let me speak to Dr. +Salvers?" + +Father Algarcife shook his head. + +"It is nothing," he answered. "But I expect to see Dr. Salvers later in +the day, and I'll mention it to him." + +Later in the day he did see Salvers, and as they were parting he alluded +to the subject of his health. + +"I am under a pledge to tell you," he said, lightly, "that I am +suffering from loss of appetite and prolonged sleeplessness. I don't +especially object to the absence of appetite, but there is something +unpleasant about walking the floor all night. I don't want to become a +chloral fiend. Can't you suggest a new opiate?" + +"Rest," responded Salvers, shortly. "Take a holiday and cut for +Florida." + +"Impossible. Too much work on hand." + +Salvers regarded him intently. + +"The next thing, you'll take to bed," he said, irritably, "and I'll have +all the ladies of your congregation besieging my office door." He added: +"I am going to send you a prescription immediately." + +"All right. Thanks. I stop at Brentano's." + +He entered the book-shop, and came out in a few moments with a package +under his arm. As he stepped to the sidewalk a lady in a rustling gown +descended from her carriage and paused as she was passing him. + +"I was just going in for a copy of your sermons," she said. "I am +distributing quite a number. By the by, have you ever found out who the +_Scientific Weekly_ writer really is?" + +He looked at her gravely. + +"I have a suspicion," he answered, "but suspicions are unjustifiable +things at best." + +He walked home rapidly, unlatched his outer door, and entered his study. +Going to his desk, he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and, +unlocking a drawer, drew out several manuscripts, which he glanced over +with a half-humorous expression. One was the manuscript of the volume of +addresses he had lately published, the other of the articles which had +appeared in the pages of the _Scientific Weekly_. They were both in his +handwriting, but one showed the impassioned strokes of a younger pen, +and belonged to the time when he had written under the veil of +anonymity, that it might not interfere with the plan of his great work. +Now the great work lay at the bottom of the last drawer, with its +half-finished sheets yellowed and sown with dust, while the lighter +articles had risen after a silence of ten years to assault his unstable +present with the convictions of his past. + +He crossed to the fireplace and laid both manuscripts upon the coals. +They caught, and the leaves curled upward like tongues of flame, +illuminating the faded text with scrolls of fire. Then they smouldered +to gray spectres and floated in slender spirals up the yawning chimney. + +The next day a storm set in, and pearl-gray clouds swollen with snow +drove from the northwest. The snow fell thickly through the day, as it +had fallen through the night, blown before the wind in fluttering +curtains of white, and coating the gray sidewalks, to drift in fleecy +mounds into the gutters. + +In the evening, when he came in to dinner, he received an urgent message +from Mrs. Ryder, which had been sent in the morning and which he had +missed by being absent from luncheon. Her child had died suddenly during +the night from an attack of croup. + +Without removing his coat, he turned and started to her at once, his +heart torn by the thought of her suffering. + +As he ascended the steps the door was opened by Ryder, who came out and +grasped his hand, speaking hurriedly, with a slight huskiness in his +voice. + +"She has been expecting you," he said, leading him into the hall. "Come +up to her immediately. I can do nothing with her. My God! I would have +given my right hand to have spared her this." The sincerity in his voice +rang true, and there were circles of red about his eyes. + +They went up-stairs, and Ryder opened the door of the nursery, and, +motioning him inside, closed it softly after him. The room was faintly +lighted, the chill curtain of falling snow veiling the windows. On the +little bed, where he had seen it sleeping several months ago, the child +was lying, its flaxen curls massed upon the embroidered pillow; but the +flush of health on the little face had given place to a waxen pallor, +and the tiny hands that had tossed restlessly in sleep were still +beneath white rose-buds. A faint odor of medicine clung about the room, +but the disorder of dying had been succeeded by the order of death. + +Mrs. Ryder, sitting near the window, her profile dark against the storm, +turned her heavy eyes upon him, and then, rising, came towards him. He +caught her extended hands and held them firmly in his own. At that +instant the past seemed predominant over the present--and the grief more +his own than another's. + +"You have come at last," she said. "Help me. You must help me. I cannot +live unless you do. Give me some comfort--anything!" + +His face was almost as haggard as her own. + +"What would comfort you?" he asked. + +She turned from him towards the little bed, and, falling on her knees +beside it, burst into passionate weeping. + +"It was all I had!" she cried. "All I had! O God! How cruel!" + +He laid his hand upon her shoulder, not to stay her tears, but to +suggest sympathy. Beyond her the sweet, grave face of the dead child lay +wreathed in rose-buds. + +At his touch she rose and faced him. + +"Tell me that I shall see him again!" she cried. "Tell me that he is not +dead--that he is somewhere--somewhere! Tell me that God is just!" + +His lips were blue, and he put up his hand imploring mercy; then he +opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. + +She clung to him, sobbing. + +"Pray to God for me," she said. + +He staggered for a moment beneath her touch. Then he knelt with her +beside the little bed and prayed. + +When he walked home through the storm an hour later he reeled like a +drunken man, and, despite the cold, his flesh was on fire. + +As he entered his door the wind drove a drift of snow into the hall, and +the water dripping from his coat made shining pools on the carpet. + +He went into his study and slammed the door behind him. The little dog +sleeping on the rug came to welcome him, and he patted it mechanically +with a nerveless hand. His face was strained and set, and his breath +came pantingly. In a sudden revolution the passion which he believed +buried forever had risen, reincarnated, to overwhelm him. He lived +again, more vitally because of the dead years, the death of a child who +was his and the grief of a woman who was his also. He, who had believed +himself arbiter of his fate, had awakened to find himself the slave of +passion--a passion mighty in its decay, but all victorious in its +resurrection. He shivered and looked about him. The room, the fire, the +atmosphere seemed thrilled with an emotional essence. He felt it in his +blood, and it warmed the falling snow beyond the window. Before the +consuming flame the apathy of years was lost in smoke. A memory floated +before him. He was sitting again in that silent room, driving the heavy +pen, listening to the breathing of his dying child, watching the still +droop of Mariana's profile, framed by dusk. He felt her sobbing upon his +breast, her hands clinging in pain when he lifted her from beside her +dead--and his. He heard again her cry: "Tell me that I shall see her! +Tell me that God is just!" The eternal cry of stricken motherhood. + +Whatever the present or the future held, these things were locked within +the past. He might live them over or live them down, but unlive them he +could not. They had been and they would be forever. + + * * * * * + +The door opened and the servant came in. + +"If you please, father, there is a lady to see you." + +He looked up, startled. + +"A lady? On such a night?" + +"She came in a carriage, but she is very wet. Will you see her at once?" + +"Yes, at once." + +He turned to the door. It opened and closed, and Mariana came towards +him. + +She came like a ghost, pale and still as he had seen her in his memory, +with a veil of snow clinging to her coat and to the feathers in her hat. +Her eyes alone were aflame. + +He drew back and looked at her. + +"You?" he said. + +She was silent, holding out her gloved hand with an impulsive gesture. +He did not take it. He had made a sudden clutch at self-control, and he +clung to it desperately. + +"Can I do anything for you?" he asked, and his voice rang hollow and +without inflection. + +She still held out her hand. Flecks of snow lay on her loosened hair, +and the snow was hardly whiter than her face. + +"You must speak to me," she said. "You promised to come, and I +waited--and waited." + +"I was busy," he returned, in the same voice. + +"We cannot be as strangers," she went on, passionately. "We must be +friends. Can you or I undo the past? Can you or I undo our love--or our +child?" + +"Hush!" he said, harshly. + +"I came only to hear that you forgive me," she continued, a brave smile +softening the intensity of her face. "Tell me that and I will go away." + +He was silent for a moment; then he spoke. + +"I forgive you." + +She took a step towards the door and came back. + +"And is that all?" + +"That is all." Beneath the brutal pressure of his teeth a drop of blood +rose to his lips. There was a wave of scarlet before his eyes, and he +clinched his hands to keep them at his sides. A terrible force was +drawing him to her, impelling him to fall upon her as she stood +defenceless--to bear her away out of reach. + +She looked at him, and a light flamed in her face. + +"It is not all," she retorted, triumphantly. "You have not forgotten +me." + +He looked at her dully. + +"I had--until to-night." + +Tears rose to her eyes and fell upon her hands, while the snow on her +hair melted and rained down until she seemed to weep from head to foot. + +"I was never good enough," she said, brokenly. "I have always done +wrong, even when I most wanted to be good." Then she raised her head +proudly. "But I loved you," she added. "I never loved any one but you. +Will you believe it?" + +He shook his head, smiling bitterly. As he stood there in his priestly +dress he looked like one in a mighty struggle between the calls of the +flesh and of the spirit. The last wavering fires of anger flamed within +him, and he took a step towards her. + +"Do you think," he asked, slowly, forcing his words, "that I would have +left you while there remained a crust to live on? Do you think that I +would not have starved with you rather than have lived in luxury without +you? Bah! It is all over!" + +"I was too young," she answered--"too young. I did not know. I have +learned since then." + +His outburst had exhausted his bitterness, and a passionate tenderness +was in his eyes. + +"I would to God that you had been spared the knowledge," he said. + +She shook her head. + +"No," she responded. "Not that--not that." + +She swayed, and he caught her in his arms. For an instant he held +her--not in passion, but with a gentleness that was almost cold. Then he +released her, and she moved away. + +"Good-bye." + +"Good-bye." + +He followed her into the hall and opened the door. An icy draught blew +past him. + +"Wait a moment," he said. He took an umbrella from the rack, and, +raising it, held it over her until she entered the carriage. + +"I hope you will not take cold," he said, as he closed the door. + +Then he went back into his study and walked the floor until dawn. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +One afternoon during the third week in January, Father Algarcife went to +the studio of Claude Nevins, and found the artist smoking a moody pipe +over a brandy-and-soda. His brush and palette lay upon the floor. + +"How are you?" inquired Father Algarcife, with attempted lightness; "and +what are you doing?" + +Nevins looked up gloomily, blowing a wreath of gray smoke towards the +skylight. + +"Enjoying life," he responded. + +The other laughed. + +"It doesn't look exactly like enjoyment," he returned. "From a casual +view, I should call it a condition of boredom." + +He had aged ten years in the last fortnight, and his eyes had the +shifting look of a man who flees an inward fear. + +Nevins regarded him unsmilingly. + +"Oh, I like it," he answered, lifting his glass. "Come and join me. I +tell you I'd rather be drunk to-day than be President to-morrow." + +"What's the matter?" + +"Oh, nothing. I haven't done a damned stroke for a week; that's all. I +am tired of painting people's portraits." + +"Nonsense. Ten years ago you went on a spree because there were no +portraits to paint." + +"Yes," Nevins admitted, "history repeats itself--with variations. The +truth is, Anthony, I can't work." + +"Can't? Well, what are you going to do about it?" + +"I am going to drink about it." + +He drained his glass, laid his pipe aside, and rose, running his hand +through his hair until it stood on end. + +"Don't be an idiot. You gave all that up long ago." + +Nevins filled his glass and looked up at the skylight. + + "'Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before + I swore--but was I sober when I swore?'" + +he retorted, with a laugh. Then he lowered his voice. "Between you and +me," he said, "drinking is not what it is cracked up to be. To save my +life, I can't detect a whiff of that old delicious savor of vice. I +detect a twinge of gout instead. Coming conditions cast their claws +before." + +Father Algarcife glanced about the room impatiently. + +"Come," he said, "I am hurried. Let's see the portrait." + +Nevins tossed a silk scarf from a canvas in the corner, and the other +regarded the work for a moment in silence. + +"Yes, I like it," he said. "I like it very much indeed." + +As he turned away, he stumbled against the easel containing the canvas +on which Nevins had been working, and he started and drew back, his face +paling. It was the portrait of Mariana, her profile drawn against the +purple curtain. + +Nevins, following him with his eyes, spoke suddenly. + +"That also is good, is it not?" he asked. + +Father Algarcife stared above the portrait to the row of death-masks on +their ebony frame. + +"Yes, that also is good," he repeated. + +As he descended the stairs he met Ardly coming up, his eyes bright and +his handsome face aglow. + +They stopped and shook hands. + +"Politics agree with you, I see," said Father Algarcife. "I am glad of +it." + +Ardly nodded animatedly. + +"Yes, yes," he returned, "there is nothing like it, and we are going to +give you the best government the city has ever seen. There is no doubt +of that." + +"All right," and he passed on. When he reached the street he turned +westward. It was the brilliant hour of a changeable afternoon, the +sunshine slanting across the sidewalks in sharp lights and shadows, and +the river wind entering the lungs like the incision of a blade. The +people he met wore their collars close about their throats, their faces +blue from the cold. + +Then, even as he watched the crisp sunshine, a cloud crossed the sky, +its shade descending like a gray blotter upon the shivering city. + +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. + +He was gazing at her with burning eyes. His hands were clinched at his +sides, and the veins on his temples swelled like blue cords. + +Then his look met hers and held it, and the desire in their eyes leaped +out and closed together, drawing them slowly to each other. + +Still they were silent, he standing straight and white in the centre of +the room, she shrinking back against the mantel. + +Suddenly he reached out. + +"Mariana!" + +"Anthony!" + +She was sobbing upon his breast, his arms about her, her face hidden. +The heavy sobs shook her frame like the lashing of a storm, and she +braced herself against him to withstand the terrible weeping. + +Presently she grew quiet, and he released her. Her face was suffused +with a joy that shone through her tears. + +"You love me?" she asked. + +"I love you." + +She smiled. + +"I will stay near you," she said. "I will not go South." + +For a moment he was silent, and when he spoke his voice rang with +determination. + +"You will go South," he said, "and I will go with you." + +Her eyes shone. + +"South? And you with me?" + +He smiled into her upturned face. + +"Do you think it could be otherwise?" he asked. "Do you think we could +be near--and not together?" + +"I--I had not thought," she answered. + +He held her hands, looking passionately at her fragile fingers. + +"You are mine," he said--"mine as you have been no other man's. Nature +has joined us together. Who can put us asunder?" Then he held her from +him in sudden fear. "But--but can you face poverty again?" he asked. + +"What will matter," she replied, "so long as we are together?" + +"You will leave all this," he went on. "We will start afresh. We will +have a farm in the South. It will be bare and comfortless." + +She smiled. + +"There will be peach-trees," she said, "all pink in the spring-time, and +there will be the sound of cow-bells across green pastures." + +"I will turn farmer," he added. "I will wring a living from the soil." + +She lifted her glowing eyes. + +"And we will begin over again," she said--"begin from the beginning. Oh, +my love, kiss me!" + +He stooped and kissed her. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +When Anthony descended Mariana's brown-stone steps the afterglow had +faded from the west, and far down the street the electric lights shone +coldly through frosted globes. He walked with a springing step, lifting +his head as if impatient of restraint. His future was firm. There was no +hesitancy, no possibility of retrenchment. In one breath he had pledged +himself to break the bonds that held him, and this vow there was no +undoing. He had sealed it with his passion for a woman. Already his mind +was straining towards the freedom which he faced. The years of +insincerity would fall away, and the lies which he had uttered would +shrivel before one fearless blaze of truth. Fate had settled it. He was +free, and deception was at an end. He was free! + +In the effort to collect his thoughts before going to dinner he crossed +to Broadway, walking several blocks amid the Saturday-evening crowd. He +regarded the passing faces idly, as he had regarded them for twenty +years. They were the same types, the invincible survivals from a wreck +of individuals. He saw the dapper young fellow with the bloodless face, +pale with the striving to ascend a rung in the social ladder; he saw the +heavy features of the common laborer, the keen, quick glance of the +mechanic, and the paint upon the haggard cheeks of the actress who was +out of an engagement. They passed him rapidly, pallid, nervous, strung +to the point of a breaking note, supine to placid pleasures, and alert +to the eternal struggle of the race. When he had walked several blocks +he turned and went back. The noise irritated him. He winced at the +shrill voices and the insistent clanging of cable-car bells. He wanted +to be alone--to think. + +In the quiet of the side-street his thoughts assumed more definite +shape. The mad thrill of impulse gave place to a rational joy. He +possessed her, this was sufficient. She was his to be held forever, come +what would. His in wealth and in poverty, in sickness and in health. His +for better or for worse--eternally his. + +He set his teeth sharply at the memory of her tear-wet face. He felt the +trembling of her limbs, the burning pressure of her lips. Broken and +worn and robbed of youth--was she not trebly to be desired? Was his the +frail passion that exacts perfection? He had not loved beauty or youth; +he had loved that impalpable something which resists all ravages of +decay--which rises triumphant from death. + +Yes, trebly to be desired! He remembered her as he had first seen her, +lifting her head from her outstretched arms, her eyes scintillant with +tears. He recalled the tremulous voice, the plaintive droop of the head. +Then the night when he had held her in the shadow of the fire-escape, +her loosened hair falling about him, her hands hot in his own. She had +said: "I am yours--yours utterly," and the pledge had held. She was his, +first and last. What if another man had embraced her body, from the +beginning unto the end her heart was locked in his. + +All the trivial details of their old life thronged back to him; struggle +and poverty, birth and death, and the emptiness of the ensuing years +yawned, chasm-like, before his feet. He was like a man suddenly recalled +from the dead--a skeleton reclothed in flesh and reattuned to the +changes of sensations. Yes, after eight years he was alive once more. + +He entered the rectory, and in a few moments went in to dinner. To his +surprise he found that he was hungry, and ate heartily. All instincts, +even that for food, had quickened with the rebirth of emotion. + +He drank his claret slowly, seeing Mariana seated across from him, and +the vision showed her pale and still, as she had come to him the night +of the storm, the snow powdering her hair. Then he banished the memory +and invoked her image as he had seen her in the afternoon, wan and +hollow-eyed, but faintly coloring and tremulous with passion. She would +sit opposite him again, but not here. + +He had a farm in the South, a valueless piece of land left him by a +relative of his mother. It was there that they would go to begin life +anew and to mend the faith that had been broken. He would till the land +and drive the plough and take up the common round of life again--a life +free from action as from failure, into which no changes might ring +despair. + +He left the table and went into his study, seating himself before the +fire. The little dog, with that subtle perception of mental states +possessed by animals, pressed his cold nose into the palm of his +master's hand, whimpering softly, a wistful look in his warm, brown +eyes. Then he lay down, and, resting his head upon his paws, stared into +the fire--seeing in the flames his silent visions. + +Anthony leaned back upon the cushions, and the face of Mariana looked at +him from the vacant chair on the hearth-rug. The reddish shadows from +the fire flitted across her features and across the slim, white hand +that was half outstretched. He saw the slippered feet upon the rug and a +filmy garment in her lap, as the work had fallen from her idle hands. + +The maid came in with his coffee and he lighted his pipe. In a moment +the bell rang and Ellerslie entered, his face flushed, his hands hanging +nervously before him. He sat down in the chair, still warm from the +vision of Mariana, and Father Algarcife looked at him with a sudden +contraction of remorse. For the first time he winced before the glance +of another--of a girlish-looking boy with a tremulous voice and an +honest heart. He was looking into the fire when Ellerslie spoke. + +"I want you to meet my mother," he said. "You know she is coming to town +next week. She is very anxious to know you; I have written so often +about you." + +The other looked up. + +"Next week--ah, yes," he responded. He was thinking that by that time he +would have passed beyond the praise or blame of Ellerslie and his +mother--he would be with Mariana. + +The younger man went on, still flushing. + +"She often sends you messages which I don't deliver. She has never +forgotten that illness you nursed me through five years ago." + +Father Algarcife shook his head slightly, his eyes on the flames that +played among the coals. + +"She must not exaggerate that," he answered. + +Ellerslie opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. His shyness +had overcome him. + +For a time they were silent, and then Father Algarcife looked up. + +"John," he said. + +"Yes?" + +"If--if things should ever occur to--to shake your faith in me, you will +always remember that I tried to do my best by the parish--that I tried +to serve it as faithfully as Father Speares would have done?" + +Ellerslie started. + +"Of course," he answered--"of course. But why do you say this? Could +anything shake my faith in you? I would take your word against--against +the bishop's." + +Father Algarcife smiled. + +"And against myself?" he asked, but added, "I am grateful, John." + +When Ellerslie had gone, a man from the Bowery came in to recount a +story of suffering. He had just served a year in jail, and did not want +to go back. He preferred to live straight. But it took money to do that. +His wife, who made shirts, and belonged to Father Algarcife's mission, +had sent him to the priest. As he told his story he squirmed uneasily on +the edge of Mariana's chair, twirling his shapeless hat in the hands +hanging between his knees. The dog crouched against his master's feet, +growling suspiciously. + +Father Algarcife rested his head against the cushioned back, and +regarded the man absently. He believed the man's tale, and he +sympathized with his philosophy. It was preferable to live straight, but +it took money to do so. Indeed, the wisest of preachers had once +remarked that "money answereth all things." He wondered how nearly the +preacher spoke the truth, and if he would have recognized a +demonstration of his text in the man before him with the shapeless hat. + +Then he asked his caller a few questions, promised to look into his case +on Monday, and dismissed him. + +Next came Sister Agatha, to bring to his notice the name of a child on +East Twentieth Street, whom they wished to receive into the orphanage. +He promised to consider this also, and she rose to go, her grave lashes +falling reverently before his glance. After she had gone he pushed his +chair impatiently aside and went to his desk. + +On the lid lay the completed sermon, and he realized suddenly that it +must be delivered to-morrow--that he must play his part for a while +longer. At the same instant he determined that on Monday he would deed +over his property to the church. He would face his future with clean +hands. He would start again as penniless as when he received the +vestments of religion. Save for the farm in the South and a small sum +of rental, he would have nothing. He would be free! + +There was no hesitancy, and yet, mixed with the elation, there was pain. +Beyond Mariana's eyes, beyond the desire for honest speech, he saw the +girlish face of young Ellerslie, and the grave, reverential droop of +Sister Agatha's lashes. He saw, following him through all his +after-years, the reproach of the people who had believed in him and been +betrayed. He saw it, and he accepted it in silence. + +Raising his head, he encountered the eyes of the ancestor of Father +Speares. For an instant he shivered from a sudden chill, and then met +them fearlessly. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Through the long night Mariana lay with her hands clasped upon her +breast and her eyes upon the ceiling. The electric light, sifting +through the filmy curtains at the windows, cast spectral shadows over +the pale-green surface. Sometimes the shadows, tracing the designs on +the curtains, wreathed themselves into outlines of large poplar leaves +and draped the chandeliers, and again they melted to indistinguishable +dusk, leaving a vivid band of light around the cornice. + +She did not stir, but she slept little. + +In the morning, when Miss Ramsey came to her bedside, there was a flush +in her face and she appeared stronger than she had done since her +illness. + +"Is it clear?" she asked, excitedly. "If it is clear, I must go out. I +feel as if I were caged." + +Miss Ramsey raised the shades, revealing the murky aspect of a variable +day. + +"It is not quite clear," she answered. "I don't think you had better +venture out. There is a damp wind." + +"Very well," responded Mariana. She rose and dressed herself hurriedly; +then she sat down with Miss Ramsey to breakfast, but she had little +appetite, and soon left the table, to wander about the house with a +nervous step. + +"I can't settle myself," she said, a little pettishly. + +Going up-stairs to her room presently, she threw herself into a chair +before the fire, and looked into the long mirror hanging on the opposite +wall. + +She was possessed with a pulsating memory of the evening before--of +Anthony, and of the kiss he had left upon her lips. Then swift darts of +fear shot through her that it might all be unreal--that, upon leaving +her, he had yielded once more to the sway of his judgment. She did not +want judgment, she wanted love. + +As she looked at her image in the long mirror, meeting her haggard face +and dilated eyes, she grew white with the foreboding of failure. What +was there left in her that a man might love? What was she--the wreck of +a woman's form--that she could immortalize a man's fugitive desire? Was +it love, after all? Was it not pity, passing itself for passion? Her +cheeks flamed and her pulses beat feverishly. + +She turned from the glass and looked at her walking-gown lying upon the +bed. + +"I can't wait," she said, breathlessly. "I must see him. He must tell me +with his own lips that it is true." + +She dressed herself with quivering fingers, stumbling over the buttons +of her coat. Then she put on her hat and tied a dark veil over her face. + +As she came down-stairs she met Miss Ramsey in the hall. + +"Mariana, you are not going out!" she exclaimed. + +"Only a little way," said Mariana. + +"But it has clouded. It may rain." + +"Not before I return. Good-bye." + +She opened the hall door. Pausing for an instant upon the threshold, a +soft, damp air struck her, and overhead a ray of sunshine pierced the +clouds. + +She fastened the furs at her throat and descended to the street. + +At first she had no definite end in view, but when she had walked a +block the idea of seeing Anthony grew stronger, and she turned in the +direction of his house. The contact of the moist air invigorated her, +and she felt less weak than she had believed herself to be. When she +reached the rectory she hesitated a moment with her hand upon the bell, +trembling before the thought of seeing him--of hearing him speak. She +rang, and the door was opened. + +"Can I see Father Algarcife?" she asked. + +Agnes eyed her curiously. + +"Why, he's at church!" she responded. "He's been gone about a half-hour +or so. Is it important?" + +"No, no," answered Mariana, her voice recovering. "Don't say I called, +please. I'll come again." + +"Perhaps you'll step in and rest a bit. You look tired. You can sit in +the study if you like." + +"Oh no, I will go on. I will go to the church." She started, and then +turned back. "I believe I will come in for a few minutes," she said. + +She entered the house and passed through the open door into the study. A +bright fire was burning, and the dog was lying before it. She seated +herself in the easy-chair, resting her head against the cushions. Agnes +stood on the rug and looked at her. + +"You are the lady that came once in that terrible storm," she said. + +"Yes, I am the one." + +"Would you like a glass of water--or wine?" + +Mariana looked up, in the hope of dismissing her. + +"I should like some water, please," she said, and as Agnes went into the +dining-room she looked about the luxurious study with passionate eyes. + +It was so different from the one at The Gotham, that comfortless square +of uncarpeted floor, with the pine book-shelves and the skull and +cross-bones above the mantel. + +The desk, with its hand-carving of old mahogany, recalled to her the one +that he had used when she had first known him, with its green baize +cover splotched with ink. + +The swing of the rich curtains, the warmth of the Turkish rugs, the +portraits in their massive frames, jarred her vibrant emotions. How +could he pass from this to the farm in the South--to the old, old fight +with poverty and the drama of self-denial? Would she not fail him again, +as she had failed him once before? Would she not shatter his happiness +in a second chance, as she had shattered it in the first? + +The tears sprang to her eyes and scorched her lids. She rose hastily +from her chair. + +When the servant returned with the glass of water she drank a few +swallows. "Thank you," she said, gently. "I will go now. Perhaps I will +come again to-morrow." + +She passed to the sidewalk and turned in the direction of the church, +walking rapidly. She had not thought of his being at church. Indeed, +until entering his study she had forgotten the office he held. She had +remembered only that he loved her. + +As she neared the building an impulse seized her to turn and go back--to +wait for him at the rectory. The sound of the intoning of the gospel +came to her like a lament. She felt suddenly afraid. + +Then several persons brushed her in passing, and she entered the heavy +doors, which closed behind her with a dull thud. + +After the grayness of the day without, the warmth and color of the +interior were as vivid as a revelation. They enveloped her like the +perfumed air of a hot-house, heavy with the breath of rare +exotics--exotics that had flowered amid the ardent glooms of medięvalism +and the colorific visions of cloistered emotions. Entering a pew in the +side-aisle, she leaned her head against a stone pillar and closed her +eyes in sudden restfulness. That emotional, religious instinct which had +always been a part of her artistic temperament was quickened in +intensity. She felt a desire to worship--something--anything. + +When she raised her lids the colors seemed to have settled into +harmonious half-tones. The altar, which had at first showed blurred +before her eyes, dawned through the rising clouds of incense. She saw +the white of the altar-cloth, and the flaming candles, shivering from a +slight draught, and above the crucifix the Christ in his purple robes, +smiling his changeless smile. + +Within the chancel, through the carving of the rood-screen, she saw the +flutter of the white gowns of the choristers, and here and there the +fair locks of a child. + +Then the priest came to the middle of the altar, his figure softened by +circles of incense, the sanctuary lamp burning above his head. + +He sang the opening phrase of the Creed, and the choir joined in with a +full, reverberating roll of male voices, while the heads of the people +bowed. + +Mariana did not leave her seat, but sat motionless, leaning against the +pillar of stone. + +From the first moment that she had seen him, wearing the honors of the +creed he served, her heart had contracted with a throb of pain. This was +his life, and what was hers? What had she that could recompense him for +the sacrifice of the Eucharistic robes and the pride of the Cross? + +He came slowly forward to the altar steps, his vestments defined against +the carving of the screen, his face white beneath the darkness of his +hair. + +When the notices of the festivals and fasts were over, he lifted his +head almost impatiently as he pronounced the text, his rich voice +rolling sonorously through the church: + + "For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of + his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? For who can tell a man + what shall be after him under the sun?" + +And he spoke slowly, telling the people before him in new phrases the +eternal truth--that it is good for a man to do right, and to leave +happiness to take care of itself--the one great creed to which all +religions and all nations have bowed. He spoke the rich phrases in his +full, beautiful voice--spoke as he had spoken a hundred times to these +same people--to all, save one. + +She stirred slightly. It seemed to her that a wind blew from the altar +where the candles fluttered, chilling her flesh. She shivered beneath +the still smile of the painted Christ. + +The stone pillar pressed into her temple, and she closed her eyes. Her +head ached in dull, startled throbs. + +As she listened, she knew that the final blow had fallen--that it is not +given one to begin over again for a single day; that of all things under +the sun, the past is the one thing irremediable. + +The sermon was soon over. He returned to the altar, and the offertory +anthem filled the church. Pressed against the pillar, she raised her +hand to her ear, but the repetition was driven in dull strokes to her +brain: + + "Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers + not, nor sleeps." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Several hours later Mariana was wandering along a cross-street near +Ninth Avenue. Rain was falling, descending in level sheets from the gray +sky to the stone pavement, where it lay in still pools. A fog had rolled +up over the city. She had walked unthinkingly, spurred at first by the +impulse to collect her thoughts and later by the thoughts themselves. It +was all over; this was what she saw clearly--the finality of all things. +What was she that she should think herself strong enough to contend with +a man's creed?--faith?--God? She might arouse his passion and fire his +blood, but when the passion and the fire burned out, what remained? In +the eight years since she had left him a new growth had sprung up in his +heart--a growth stronger than the growth of love. + +The memory of him defined against the carving of the screen, the altar +shining beyond, his vestments gilded by the light, his white face lifted +to the cross, arose from the ground at her feet and confronted her +through the falling rain. Yes, he had gone back to his God. And it +seemed to her that she saw the same smile upon his face that she had +seen upon the face of the painted Christ, whose purple robes tinted the +daylight as it fell upon the chancel. + +As she reached Ninth Avenue, an elevated train passed with its +reverberating rumble, and the reflection of its lights ran in a lurid +flame along the wet sidewalk. Clouds of smoke from the engine were blown +westward, scudding like a flock of startled swans into the river. +Straight ahead the street was lost in grayness and the lamps came slowly +out of the fog. A wagon-load of calves was driven past her on the way to +slaughter, and the piteous bleating was borne backward on the wind. +Suddenly her knees trembled, and she leaned against a railing. + +A man passed and spoke to her, and she turned to retrace her steps. From +the wet sidewalk the standing water oozed up through her thin soles and +soaked her feet. A pain struck her in the side--sharp and cold, like the +blow of a knife. In sudden terror she started and looked about her. + +A cab was passing; she hailed it, but it was engaged, and drove on. + +She leaned against the railing of a house, and, looking up, saw the +cheerful lights in the windows. The idea of warmth invigorated her, and +she moved on to the next, then to the next. At each step her knees +trembled and she hesitated, fearing to fall and lie dead upon the cold +sidewalk. The horror of death gave her strength. Beyond the desires of +warmth and light and rest, she was unconscious of all sensation. + +Then the pain in her side seized her again, and the shrinking of her +limbs caused her to pause for a longer space. The monotonous cross-town +blocks sloped upward in a black incline before her, seeming to rise +perpendicularly from before her feet to a height in the foggy +perspective. She clung to the railing and moaned softly. A woman, +passing with a bundle on her arm, stared at her, hesitated an instant, +and went on. + +At Broadway the lights of the moving cars interchanged like the colors +of a kaleidoscope, swimming amid the falling rain before her eyes. + +At Sixth Avenue she steadied herself with sudden resolve, beginning that +last long block with a kind of delirious joy. To stimulate her faltering +feet she glanced back over the terrible distance that she had come, and +she found that the black incline of blocks now sloped in the opposite +direction. She seemed to have descended a hillside of slate. Good God! +How had she lived? Her own door came at last, and she crawled up the +slippery steps, steadying herself against the stone balustrade. The door +was unlatched. She opened it and went inside. At the first suffusion of +warmth and rest her waning thoughts flickered into life. + +Then she raised her eyes and uttered a shriek of joy. + +"Anthony!" + +He was standing on the threshold of the drawing-room, and, as she cried +out, he caught her in his arms. + +"My beloved, what is it? What does it mean?" + +But as he held her he felt the wet of her clothing, and he lifted her +and carried her to the fire. + +"Mariana, what does it mean?" + +He was kneeling beside her, unfastening her shoes with nervous fingers. +She opened her eyes and looked at him. + +"I went out in the rain," she said. "I don't know why; I have forgotten. +I believe I thought it was all a mistake. The blocks were very long." +Then she clung to him, sobbing. + +"Don't let me die!" she cried--"don't let me die!" + +He raised her in his arms, and, crossing to the bell, rang it hastily. +Then he went into the hall and up-stairs. On the landing he met the +maid. + +"Where is Mrs. Gore's room?" he asked, and, entering, laid her upon the +hearth-rug. "She is ill," he went on. "She must be got to bed and +warmed. Put mustard-plasters to her chest and rub her feet. I will get +the doctor." + +He left the room, and Miss Ramsey came in, her eyes red and her small +hands trembling. + +They took off her wet things, while she lay faint and still, a tinge of +blueness rising to her face and to her fallen eyelids. + +Suddenly she spoke. + +"Give me the medicine on the mantel," she said--"quick!" + +It was tincture of digitalis. Miss Ramsey measured out the drops and +gave them to her. After she had swallowed them the color in her face +became more natural and her breathing less labored. Miss Ramsey was +applying a mustard-plaster to her chest, while the maid rubbed her cold, +white feet, which lay like plaster casts in the large, red hands. + +Mariana looked at them wistfully. "I have done foolish things all my +life," she said, "and this is the most foolish of all." + +"What, dear?" asked Miss Ramsey, but she did not answer. + +When Anthony came in, followed by the doctor, she was lying propped up +among the pillows, with soft white blankets heaped over her. Her eyes +were closed and she was breathing quietly. + +Salvers took her hand and bent his ear to her chest. + +"She must be stimulated," he said. "You say she has already taken +digitalis--yes?" + +He took Miss Ramsey's seat, still holding Mariana's hand, and turning +now and then to give directions in his smooth, well-modulated voice. +Anthony was standing at the foot of the bed, his eyes upon the blankets. + +A light fall of rain beat rhythmically against the window-panes. The +fire crackled in the grate and sent up a sudden, luminous flame, +transfiguring the furniture in the room and the faces gathered in the +shadow about the bed. Mariana stirred slightly. Presently Salvers rose +and drew Miss Ramsey aside. + +"It is very serious," he said. "The danger is heart failure. In another +case I should say that it was hopeless--but her constitution is +wonderful. She may pull through." Then he asked a few questions +concerning the cause of the relapse, and turned to go. "Keep her +stimulated, as I have said," he continued; "that is all that can be +done. I would stay until morning, but several of my patients are at +critical points. As soon as I have seen them I will come back." He +started, paused to repeat several directions, and left the room softly, +the sound of his footsteps lost in the heavy carpets. + +Anthony took the chair beside the bed and laid his hand on the coverlet. +He thought Mariana asleep. She was lying motionless, her heavy hair +tangled in the lace on the pillow, her lashes resting like a black +shadow upon her cheeks, her lips half parted. + +He remembered that she had looked like this after the birth of Isolde, +when he sat beside the bed and the child lay within the crook of her +arm. + +A groan rose to his lips, but he choked it back. The hand upon the +coverlet was clinched, and the nails, pressed into the livid palm, had +become purple. Still he sat motionless, his head bent, his muscles +quivering like those of one palsied. + +The flame of the fire shot up again, illuminating Mariana's face, and +then died slowly down. The rain beat softly against the window. + +Miss Ramsey went noiselessly into an adjoining room and came back, a +glass in her hand. From across the hall a clock struck. + +Suddenly Mariana opened her eyes, moaning in short sobs. A blue wave was +rising over her face, deepening into tones of violet beneath the shadows +of her eyes. They measured the medicine and gave it to her and she lay +quiet again. He put his arm across her. + +"Anthony!" she said. + +He bent his ear. + +"My beloved?" + +"Hold me, the bed is going down. My head is so low." + +He caught her passionately, his kisses falling distractedly upon her +eyes, her lips, the lace upon her breast, and her cold hands. + +"And you do love me?" + +"Love you?" he answered, fiercely. "Have I ever loved anything else? O +my love! My love!" + +His tears stung her face like fire. + +"Don't," she said, gently; and then, "It would have been very nice, the +little farm in the South, and the peaches, and the cows in the pastures, +but," she smiled, "I am not very thrifty--the peaches would have rotted +where they fell, and the cows would never have been milked." + +"Mariana!" + +She lay in his arms, and they were both silent. + +The clock struck again. In the street a passer-by was whistling "Oh, +Nellie's blue eyes." + +She spoke drowsily: "Speak softly. You will wake the baby." + + * * * * * + +In the glimmer of dawn Salvers entered. A sombre mist penetrated the +curtains at the windows, and in the grate a heap of embers reddened and +waned and reddened and waned again. A light dust had settled over the +room, over the mantel, the furniture, and the blankets on the bed--a +fine gray powder, pale like the ashes of yesterday's flame. + +He crossed to the bed and took Mariana from Anthony's arms. Her head +fell back and the violet shadows in her face had frozen into marble. She +was smiling faintly. + +"My God!" said Salvers, in a whisper. "She has been dead--for hours." + +He laid her down and turned to the man beside him, looking at him for a +moment without speaking. Then he laid his hand upon his arm and spoke to +him as if to a child. "You must go home," he said, emphasizing the +syllables. "It is over. You can do no good. You must go home." + +The other shook his head. His eyes were blank, like those of a man in +whom the springs of thought have been suddenly paralyzed. + +"You must go home," repeated Salvers, his hand still upon his arm. "I +will be with you in an hour. You must go." + +Beneath his touch Anthony moved slowly into the hall, descending the +stairs mechanically. Salvers gave him his hat and opened the outer door. +Going to the sidewalk, he motioned to his coachman. + +"Take Father Algarcife home," he said. + +He slammed the door and looked after the carriage as it rolled down the +block and rounded the corner. Then he turned and re-entered the house. + + * * * * * + +When Father Algarcife reached the rectory, he went into his study, +locking the door after him. Then he seated himself at his desk and +rested his head in his hands. His mind had cleared from the fog, but he +did not think. He remained staring blankly before him. + +The room was cold and damp, the fire had not been kindled, and the +burned-out coals lay livid upon the hearth. The easy-chair was drawn +before the fender where he had sat yesterday, and the lamp which he had +not lighted the evening before stood on the little marble-top table. An +open book, his pipe, and an untasted cup of coffee were beside it. + +On the desk his yesterday's sermon lay unrolled, the text facing him in +bold black and white: + + "For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?" + +The dull, neutral tones of advancing dawn flooded the room. There was a +suggestion of expectancy about it, as of a world uncreate, waiting for +light and birth. + +He raised his eyes, not his head, and stared over the desk at the wall +beyond. From above the mantel the portrait of Father Speares's ancestor +glared at him from its massive frame, wearing the fierce and faded +aspect of a past century. Near the window stood the sofa, with the worn +spot on the leather arm where the head of the dead man had rested. It +was all chill and leaden and devoid of color. + +Presently he moved, and, opening a drawer of the desk, drew out a small +dark phial and placed it upon the unfolded leaves of the sermon. Through +the blue glass the transparent liquid gleamed like silver. His movements +were automatic. There was no haste, no precipitation, no hint of +indecision. He looked at the clock upon the mantel, watching the gradual +passage of the hands. When the minute-hand reached the hour he would +have done with it all--with all things forever. + +The colorless liquid in the small blue phial lay within reach of his +grasp. It seemed to him that he saw already a man lying on that leathern +sofa--saw the protruding eyes, the relaxed limbs, the clammy sweat, and +saw nothing more that would be after him under the sun. The hands of the +clock moved on. A finger of sunlight pierced the curtains and pointed to +the ashes in the grate. Outside the noise of a crowded city went on +tumultuously. He removed the cork of the bottle, inhaling a pungent and +pervasive odor of bitter almonds. + +At the same instant a voice called him, and there was a knock at his +door. + +"Father!" + +He replaced the stopper, still holding the phial in his hand. For a +moment the heavy silence hung oppressively, and then he answered: "What +is it?" His voice sounded lifeless, like that of one awakening from +heavy sleep or a trance. + +"You are there? Come quickly. Your men at the Beasley Rolling Mills have +gone on a strike. A policeman was shot and several of the strikers +wounded. You are wanted to speak to them." + +"To speak to them?" + +"I have a cab. You may prevent bloodshed. Come." + +Father Algarcife returned the phial to its drawer, withdrew the key from +the locker, and rose. He opened the door and faced the messenger. His +words came thickly. + +"There is no time to lose," he said. "I am ready." + +He seized his hat, descended the steps, and rushed into the street. + +THE END + +ERRATUM + +On page 194, 4th line from bottom, the word "begotten" should be +omitted. + + +BY MARY E. WILKINS + +JEROME, A POOR MAN. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. + +MADELON. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. + +PEMBROKE. A Novel. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. + +JANE FIELD. A Novel. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. + +A NEW ENGLAND NUN, and Other Stories. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. + +A HUMBLE ROMANCE, and Other Stories. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. + +YOUNG LUCRETIA, and Other Stories. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1 25. + +GILES COREY, Yeoman. A Play. Illustrated. 32mo, Cloth, Ornamental, 50 +cents. + +Mary E. Wilkins writes of New England country life, analyzes New England +country character, with the skill and deftness of one who knows it +through and through, and yet never forgets that, while realistic, she is +first and last an artist.--_Boston Advertiser._ + +Miss Wilkins has attained an eminent position among her literary +contemporaries as one of the most careful, natural, and effective +writers of brief dramatic incident. Few surpass her in expressing the +homely pathos of the poor and ignorant, while the humor of her stories +is quiet, pervasive, and suggestive.--_Philadelphia Press._ + +It takes just such distinguished literary art as Mary E. Wilkins +possesses to give an episode of New England its soul, pathos, and +poetry.--_N. Y. Times._ + +The pathos of New England life, its intensities of repressed feeling, +its homely tragedies, and its tender humor, have never been better told +than by Mary E. Wilkins.--_Boston Courier._ + +The simplicity, purity, and quaintness of these stories set them apart +in a niche of distinction where they have no rivals.--_Literary World, +Boston._ + +The charm of Miss Wilkins's stories is in her intimate acquaintance and +comprehension of humble life, and the sweet human interest she feels and +makes her readers partake of, in the simple, common, homely people she +draws.--_Springfield Republican._ + +Studies from real life which must be the result of a lifetime of +patient, sympathetic observation.... No one has done the same kind of +work so lovingly and so well.--_Christian Register, Boston._ + +NEW YORK AND LONDON: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS + +=> _The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by +the publishers, postage prepaid, on receipt of the price._ + +BY LILIAN BELL + +FROM A GIRL'S POINT OF VIEW. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and +Gilt Top, $1 25. + +Miss Bell's former books have proved conclusively that she is a shrewd +observer, and in the series of character studies which she has brought +together under the title "From a Girl's Point of View" she is at her +best. The book is an intimate analysis of the manner of the modern man, +as seen with the eyes of the modern woman; and it is of interest not +only to those from whose stand-point it is written, but to those at whom +its good-humored shafts are directed. The best of it is that Miss Bell, +while she may be severe, is never unjust, and her observations are so +apt that the masculine reader cannot but laugh, even while he realizes +that she is dealing with one of his own shortcomings. + +THE UNDER SIDE OF THINGS. A Novel. With a Portrait of the Author. 16mo, +Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $1 25. + +Miss Bell's little story is very charming.... Miss Bell has plenty to +say, and says it, for the most part, in a fashion engaging and simple, +with touches of eloquence and passages of real strength. She has gifts +of a sort far from common, and an admirable spirit. Her observation of +life is keen, shrewd, and clear; it is also sympathetic. She has a +strong and easy hold on the best realities.--_N. Y. Times._ + +This is a tenderly beautiful story.... This book is Miss Bell's best +effort, and most in the line of what we hope to see her proceed in, +dainty and keen and bright, and always full of the fine warmth and +tenderness of splendid womanhood.--_Interior, Chicago._ + +THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges +and Gilt Top, $1 25. + +So much sense, sentiment, and humor are not often united in a single +volume.--_Observer, N. Y._ + +One of the most charming books of its kind that has recently come under +our notice. From its bright "Dedication" to its sweet and gracious +close, its spirit is wholesome, full of happy light, and one lingers +over its pages.--_Independent, N. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Phases of an Inferior Planet + +Author: Ellen Glasgow + +Release Date: November 22, 2010 [EBook #34402] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images at The Internet Archive) + + + + + + +</pre> + +<hr class="full" /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;"> +<a href="images/cover.jpg"> +<img src="images/cover_sml.jpg" +id="coverpage" width="350" height="550" alt="image of book's cover" title="" /></a> +</div> + +<h1>P h a s e s o f a n<br /> +I n f e r i o r P l a n e t</h1> + +<p class="lrg"><i>By</i> ELLEN GLASGOW<br /> +<i>Author of "The Descendant"</i></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 136px;"> +<img src="images/colophon.png" width="136" height="182" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="c"><b>HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br /> +NEW YORK AND LONDON<br /> +1898</b></p> + +<p> +<br /> +</p> + +<div style="border:1px solid black; +padding:2%;max-width:60%;margin:auto;"> + +<p class="c">BY THE SAME AUTHOR.<br /> +——</p> + +<p>THE DESCENDANT. A Novel. Post 8vo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1 25.</p> + +<p>The writer has a sure touch, a firm and philosophically +consistent hold upon his theme, much delicacy of perception, +and a sane sense of humor. The style, if not +of the fastidiously fine school, is fluent and often brilliant. +... The character drawing is vivid and realistic.—<i>Boston +Transcript.</i></p> + +<p>The characters here are skilfully drawn, and the drama +in which they take part is unusually novel and impressive. +... The work of an author who has not written at random, +but who has woven into a strong story some of the +cardinal truths of modern science.—<i>N. Y. Herald.</i></p> + +<p class="c">——<br /> +NEW YORK AND LONDON:<br /> +HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.</p> +</div> + +<p class="c">Copyright, 1898, by <span class="smcap">Harper & Brothers.</span><br /> +——<br /> +<i>All rights reserved.</i></p> + +<p> +<br /> +</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="contents" +style="padding:2%;border:double gray 3px;text-align:center;"> +<tr><td> +<a href="#Phase_First">Phase First: </a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_I-a">Chapter I, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II-a">II, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III-a">III, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV-a">IV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V-a">V, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI-a">VI, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII-a">VII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-a">VIII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX-a">IX, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X-a">X, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI-a">XI, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII-a">XII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII-a">XIII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV-a">XIV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV-a">XV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI-a">XVI, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII-a">XVII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII-a">XVIII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX-a">XIX, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XX-a">XX, </a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#Phase_Second">Phase Second: </a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_I-b">Chapter I, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II-b">II, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III-b">III, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV-b">IV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V-b">V, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI-b">VI, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII-b">VII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-b">VIII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX-b">IX, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X-b">X, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI-b">XI, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII-b">XII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII-b">XIII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV-b">XIV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV-b">XV</a></td></tr> +</table> + +<p> +<br /> +</p> + +<p class="c">TO<br /><br /> +CARY McC.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the +swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, +nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of +skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."</i></p></div> + +<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="Phase_First" id="Phase_First"></a>Phase First</h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><i>"Some turned to folly and the sweet works of the flesh."</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">—Hymn to Zeus.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p><a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a></p> + +<p><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-a" id="CHAPTER_I-a"></a>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<p>Along Broadway at six o'clock a throng of pedestrians was stepping +northward. A grayish day was settling into a gray evening, and a +negative lack of color and elasticity had matured into a positive +condition of atmospheric flatness. The air exhaled a limp and insipid +moisture, like that given forth by a sponge newly steeped in an +anęsthetic. Upon the sombre fretwork of leafless trees, bare against +red-brick buildings, drops of water hung trembling, though as yet there +had been no rainfall, and the straggling tufts of grass in the city +parks drooped earthward like the damp and uncurled fringe of a woman's +hair.</p> + +<p>Spanning the remote west as a rainbow stretched an unfulfilled pledge of +better things, for beyond the smoke-begrimed battalion of tenement +chimney-pots a faint streak of mauve defined the line of the horizon—an +ineffectual and transparent sheet of rose-tinted vapor, through which +the indomitable neutrality of background was revealed. The city swam in +a sea of mist, and the electric lights, coming slowly into being, must +have seemed to a far-off observer a galaxy of wandering stars that had +burst the woof of heaven and fallen from their allotted spheres to be +caught like blossoms in the white obscurity of fog. Above<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> them their +deserted habitation frowned blackly down with closed doors and +impenetrable walls.</p> + +<p>The effect of the immortal transformation of day into night was +singularly elusive. It had come so stealthily that the fleet-footed +hours seemed to have tripped one another in the fever of the race, the +monotonous grayness of their garments shrouding, as they fluttered past, +the form of each sprightly elf.</p> + +<p>Along Broadway the throng moved hurriedly. At a distance indescribably +homogeneous, as it passed the lighted windows of shops it was seen to be +composed of individual atoms, and their outlines were relieved against +the garish interiors like a panorama of automatic silhouettes. Then, as +they neared a crossing, a flood of radiant electricity, revealing minute +details of face and figure, the atoms were revivified from automatic +into animal existence.</p> + +<p>With an inhuman disregard of caste and custom, the aberrant shadows of +the passers-by met and mingled one into another. A phantasmagoric +procession took place upon the sidewalk. The ethereal accompaniment of +the physical substance of a Wall Street plutocrat glided sedately after +that of a bedizened daughter of the people, whose way, beginning in the +glare of the workhouse, was ending in the dusk of the river; a lady of +quality, whose very shadow seemed pregnant with the odor of spice and +sables, melted before the encroaching presence of a boot-black fresh +from the Bowery; a gentleman of fashion gave place to the dull phantom +of a woman with burning brows and fingers purple with the stain of many +stitches. It was as if each material substance, warm with the lust of +the flesh and reeking with a burnt-offering of vanity, was pursued by +the inevitable presence of a tragic destiny.</p> + +<p>At the corner of Seventeenth Street, a girl in a last season's coat left +the crowd and paused before a <a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a>photographer's window. As she passed from +shadow into light the play of her limbs was suggested by the close folds +of her shabby skirt. She had the light and steadfast gait of one to whom +exercise is as essential as food, and more easily attained.</p> + +<p>A man coming from Union Square turned to look at her as she passed.</p> + +<p>"That girl is a <i>danseuse</i>," he said to his companion, "or she ought to +be. She walks to music."</p> + +<p>"Your induction is false," retorted the other. "She happens to be—"</p> + +<p>And they passed on.</p> + +<p>As the girl paused before the lighted window the outlines of head and +shoulders were accentuated, while the rest of her body remained in +obscurity. Her head was shapely and well poised. Beneath the small toque +of black velvet, an aureole of dry brown hair framed her sensitive +profile like a setting of old mahogany. Even in the half-light +silhouette it could be noticed that eyes, hair, and complexion differed +in tone rather than in color. Her sallow skin blended in peculiar +harmony with the gray-green of her eyes and the brown of her hair. Her +face was long, with irregular features and straight brows. The bones of +cheek and chin were rendered sharper by extreme thinness.</p> + +<p>A new photograph of Alvary was displayed, and a small group had +assembled about the window.</p> + +<p>The girl looked at it for a moment; then, as some one in the crowd +jostled against her, she turned with an exclamation of annoyance and +entered the shop. Hesitating an instant, she drew a worn purse from her +pocket, looked into it, gave a decisive little shrug, and approached the +counter.</p> + +<p>The shop-girl came up, and, recognizing her, nodded.</p> + +<p>"Music?" she inquired, glancing at the leather roll which the other +carried.<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a></p> + +<p>The girl shook her head slowly.</p> + +<p>"No," she replied, "I want a photograph of Alvary—as Lohengrin. Oh, the +Swan Song—"</p> + +<p>A man who was sorting a pile of music in the rear of the shop came +forward smiling. He was small and dark and foreign.</p> + +<p>"Ah, mademoiselle," he said, "it ees a plaisir for w'ich I live, ees ze +Elsa of your."</p> + +<p>The girl smiled in return. In the clear light the glint of green in her +eyes deepened.</p> + +<p>"No," she replied, "this is Elsa." She pointed to a photograph in the +case. "This is the only Elsa. I should not dare."</p> + +<p>He bowed deprecatingly.</p> + +<p>"Zat ees ontil you come," he said. "I live for ze day w'en we sing +togezzer, you an' I. I live to sing wiss you in ze grand opera."</p> + +<p>"Ah, monsieur," lamented the girl, regretfully, "one cannot live +forever. The Lord has allotted a term."</p> + +<p>She took her change, nodded gayly, and departed.</p> + +<p>In the street she passed unheeded. She was as ignored by the crowd +around her as the colorless shadow at her side. Upon a massive woman in +a feather boa a dozen men gazed with evident desire, and after the +sables enveloping the lady of quality the eyes of the boot-black +yearned. But the girl moved among them unnoticed—she was insignificant +and easily overlooked.</p> + +<p>A violet falling upon the pavement from the breast of a woman in front +of her, the girl lifted her skirt, and, to avoid crushing it, made a +slight divergence from her path. Then impulsively she turned to rescue +it from the cold sidewalk, but in so doing she stumbled against a man +whose heel had been its Juggernaut. A tiny blot of purple marked the +scene of its destruction.<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a></p> + +<p>Over the girl's face a shadow fell; she glanced up and caught the +courteous smile of an acquaintance, and the shadow was lifted. But +before her upward glance tended earthward it rested upon an overdriven +horse standing in the gutter, and the shadow that returned had gathered +to itself the force of a rain-cloud.</p> + +<p>An impressionable and emotional temperament cast its light and darkness +upon her features, as the shifting clouds cast their varying shades upon +an evening landscape. With such a face, her moods must be as evanescent +as the colors of a kaleidoscope.</p> + +<p>As she neared an electric light she slipped the photograph she carried +from its envelope, and surveyed it with warming eyes. She spoke in a +soft whisper—</p> + +<p>"I shall never sing Elsa—never—never! Lehmann is Elsa. But what does +it matter? By the time I reach grand opera I shall have dinners—real +dinners—with napkins the size of a sheet and vegetables of curious +kinds. Then I'll grow fat and become famous. I may even sing Isolde."</p> + +<p>She broke into a regretful little sigh. "And Alvary will be too old to +be my Tristan."</p> + +<p>At the corner of Twenty-third Street she took a cross-town car. It was +crowded, and, with half-suppressed disgust, she rested the tips of her +fingers upon a leather strap. The gloves covering the fingers were worn +and badly mended, but the touch was delicate.</p> + +<p>Something graceful and feminine and fragile in her unsteady figure +caused half a dozen men to rise hastily, and she accepted a proffered +seat with the merest inclination of her head.</p> + +<p>With an involuntary coquetry she perceived that, as the newest feminine +arrival, she was being stealthily regarded from behind the wall of +newspapers skirting the opposite seat. She raised her hand to her +loosened<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> hair, half frowned, and glanced at the floor with demure +indifference.</p> + +<p>Beside her sat an Irishwoman with a heavy basket and a black bruise upon +her temple. The girl looked at the woman and the bruise with an +expression of repugnance. The repugnance was succeeded by a tidal wave +of self-commiseration. She pitied herself that she was forced to make +use of public means of conveyance. The onions in the Irishwoman's basket +offended her nostrils.</p> + +<p>Her gaze returned to her lap. As daintily as she had withdrawn her +person from contact with the woman beside her, she withdrew her finely +strung senses from contact with the odor of onions and the closeness of +the humanity hemming her in.</p> + +<p>She sat in disdainful self-absorption. Her sensitive features became +impassive, her head drooped, the green in her eyes faded into gray, and +the lashes obscured them. The shadow of her heavy hair rested like a +veil upon her face.</p> + +<p>When the car reached Ninth Avenue she got out, walked to Thirtieth +Street, and crossed westward. Facing her stood the immense and +unpicturesque apartment-house known as "The Gotham"—a monument of human +Philistinism and brownstone-finished effrontery. She entered and passed +through the unventilated hall to the restaurant at the rear.</p> + +<p>As she crossed the threshold, a man seated at one of the larger tables +looked up.</p> + +<p>"My dear girl," he said, reproachfully, "lateness for dinner at The +Gotham entails serious consequences. We were just planning a +search-party."</p> + +<p>His right-hand neighbor spoke warningly. "Don't believe him, Miss Musin; +he refused to get uneasy until he had finished his dinner."</p> + +<p>"When one is empty," retorted the first, "one can't<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> get even uneasy. +Anxiety can't be produced from a void."</p> + +<p>The girl nodded good-evening, took her seat, and unfolded her napkin. +The first gentleman passed her the butter, the second the water-bottle. +The first was named Nevins. He was fair and pallid, with a long face +that would have been round had nature supplied gratification as well as +instinct. His shoulders were high and narrow, suggesting the perpetual +shrug with which he met his fate. He was starving upon an artistic +career. The second gentleman—Mr. Sellars—was sleek and middle-aged. +Providence had intended him for a poet; life had made of him a +philosopher—and a plumber. He was still a man of sentiment.</p> + +<p>At the head of the table sat Mr. Paul—an apostle of pessimism, whose +general flavor marked the pessimist rather than the apostle. The +peculiarity of his face was its construction—the features which should +have gone up coming down, and the features which should have come down +going up. Perhaps had Mr. Paul himself moralized upon the fact, which is +not likely, he would have concluded that it was merely a physical +expression of his mental attitude towards the universe. He had long +since arrived at the belief that whatever came in life was the thing of +all others which should have kept away, and its coming was sufficient +proof of its inappropriateness. He had become a pessimist, not from +passion, but from principle. He had chosen his view of the eternal +condition of things as deliberately as he would have selected the +glasses with which to survey a given landscape. Having made his choice, +he stood to it. No surreptitious favors at the hands of Providence were +able to modify his honest conviction of its general unpleasantness.</p> + +<p>The remaining persons at this particular table were of less importance. +There was Miss Ramsey, the journalist, who was pretty and faded and +harassed,<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> and who ate her cold dinner, to which she usually arrived an +hour late, in exhausted silence. Miss Ramsey was one whom, her friends +said, adversity had softened; but Miss Ramsey herself knew that the +softness of adversity is the softness of decay. There was Mr. Ardly, a +handsome young fellow, who did the dramatic column of a large daily, and +who regarded life as a gigantic jag, facing failure with facetiousness +and gout with inconsequence. There was Mr. Morris, who was thin, and Mr. +Mason, who was fat, and Mr. Hogarth, who was neither.</p> + +<p>The restaurant consisted of a long and queerly shaped room. It had +originally been divided into two apartments, but when the house had +passed into the present management the partition had been torn down, and +two long and narrow tables marked the line where the division had been. +The walls were dingy and unpapered. Where the plaster was of an unusual +degree of smokiness, several cheap chromos, in cheaper frames, had been +hung, like brilliant patches laid upon a dingy background. Above the +chromos lingered small bunches of evergreen—faded and dried remnants of +the last holiday season—and from the tarnished and fly-specked +chandelier hung a withered spray of mistletoe.</p> + +<p>The room was crowded. There was not so much as a vacant seat at the +tables. The hum of voices passed through the doors and into the rumble +of the street without. In a far corner a lady in a blouse of geranium +pink was engaged in catching reckless flies for the sustenance of the +chameleon upon her breast; nearer at hand a gentleman was polishing his +plate and knife with his napkin. It was warm and oppressive, and the +voices sounded shrilly through the glare. The girl whom they had called +"Miss Musin" looked up with absent-minded abruptness.</p> + +<p>"I had as soon wear wooden shoes as eat with a pewter fork!" she +remarked, irritably.<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a></p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins shook his flaxen head and laid down his spoon.</p> + +<p>"So long as it remains a question of forks," he observed, "let us give +thanks. Who knows when it may become one of food?" Then he sighed. "If +it is only a sacrifice of decency, I'm equal to it, but I refuse to live +without food."</p> + +<p>"The audacity of youth!" commented Mr. Sellars, the philosopher. "I said +the same at your age. But for taking the conceit out of one, commend me +to experience."</p> + +<p>"From a profound study of the subject," broke in Mr. Paul, grimly, "I +have been able to calculate to a nicety that each one of these potatoes, +taken internally, lessens an hour of one's existence. As a method of +self-destruction"—and he proceeded to help himself—"there is none more +efficacious than an exclusive diet of Gotham potatoes. Allow me to pass +them." He looked at Miss Musin, but Mr. Nevins rose to the occasion.</p> + +<p>"After such an analysis, my gallantry forbids," and he intercepted the +dish.</p> + +<p>The girl glanced up at him.</p> + +<p>"Extinction long drawn out is boring," she said. "And is food the only +factor of human life? It may be the most important, I admit, but +important things should not always be talked of."</p> + +<p>"I declare it quite staggers me," interrupted a cheerful individual, who +was Mr. Morris, "to think of the number of things that should not be +talked of—some amazingly interesting things, too! Do you know, +sometimes I wonder if social intercourse will not finally be reduced to +a number of persons assembling to sit in silent meditation upon the +subjects which are not to be spoken of? One so soon exhausts the +absolutely correct topics."</p> + +<p>"We are a nation of prudes," declared Mr. Paul, with<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> emphasis, "and +there is no vice that rots a people to the core so rapidly as the vice +of prudery. All our good red blood has passed into a limbo of social +ostracism along with ladies' legs."</p> + +<p>"I was just thinking," commented Mr. Hogarth, who aspired to the rakish +and achieved the asinine, "that the last-named subject had been +particularly in evidence of late. What with the ballet and the +bicycle—" He blushed and glanced at Miss Musin.</p> + +<p>She was smiling. "Oh, I don't object," she said, "so long as they are +well shaped."</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins upheld her from an artistic stand-point.</p> + +<p>"I hold," he said, authoritatively, "that indecency can only exist where +beauty is wanting. All beauty is moral. I have noticed in regard to my +models—"</p> + +<p>"On the contrary," interrupted Mr. Paul, "there is no such thing as +beauty. It is merely the creation of a diseased imagination pursuing +novelty. We call nature beautiful, but it is only a term we employ to +express a chimera of the senses. Nature is not beautiful. Its colors are +glaringly defective. It is ugly. The universe is ugly. Civilization is +ugly. We are ugly—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mr. Paul!" said Miss Musin, reproachfully.</p> + +<p>"Our one consolation," continued Mr. Paul, in an unmoved voice, "is the +knowledge that if we could possibly have been uglier we should have been +so created. Providence would have seen to it."</p> + +<p>"When Providence provided ugliness," put in Mr. Morris, good-naturedly, +"it provided ignorance along with it."</p> + +<p>Mr. Ardly, who was eating his dinner with a copy of the <i>Evening Post</i> +spread out upon his knees, looked up languidly.</p> + +<p>"We are becoming unpleasantly personal," he remarked. "Personalities in +conversation should be avoided as sedulously as onions in soup. They are +stimulating, but vulgar."<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a></p> + +<p>Mr. Paul seized the bait of the unconscious thrower with avidity.</p> + +<p>"Vulgarity," he announced, with ringing emphasis, "is the most prominent +factor in the universe. It is as essential to our existence as the +original slime from which we and it emanated. If there is one thing more +vulgar than nature, it is civilization. Whatever remnant of innocence +nature left in the mind of man civilization has wiped out. It has +debased the human intellect—"</p> + +<p>"And deformed the human figure," interpolated Mr. Nevins, with a sigh. +"Oh, for the days of Praxiteles!"</p> + +<p>The emotionless tones of Mr. Paul flowed smoothly on.</p> + +<p>"And if there is one thing more vulgar than civilization, it is art."</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins retorted in a voice of storm.</p> + +<p>"Sir," he cried, "art is my divinity!"</p> + +<p>"A vulgar superstition," commented Mr. Paul, calmly; and he pointed to a +poster beside Mr. Nevins's plate. "You call that art, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins colored, but met him valiantly. "No," he returned; "I call +that bread and meat."</p> + +<p>As the girl next him rose from her chair she bestowed upon him an +approving smile, which he returned with sentimental interest.</p> + +<p>"You haven't finished," he remonstrated, in an aside. "My posters aren't +only bread and meat; they are pie—principally pie."</p> + +<p>The girl laughed and shook her head.</p> + +<p>"And principally pumpkin," she returned. "No, thank you!"</p> + +<p>She left the dining-room and mounted the stairs to the fourth landing. +Her room was in the front of the house, and the way to it lay through a +long and dimly lighted corridor, the floor of which was covered with +figured oil-cloth.<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a></p> + +<p>As she slipped the key into the lock the door swung back, and a blast of +damp air from the open window blew into her face. She crossed the room +and stood for a moment with her hand upon the sash, looking down into +the street. A train upon the elevated road was passing, and she saw the +profiles of the passengers dark against the lighted interior. Clouds of +white smoke, blown rearward by the engine's breath, hovered about the +track, too light to fall. Then, as the wind chased westward, the clouds +were torn asunder, and stray wreaths, deepening into gray, drifted along +the cross street leading to the river.</p> + +<p>The girl reached out and drew in a can of condensed milk from the +fire-escape. Then she lowered the window and turned on the steam-heater +in the corner, which set up a hissing monotone.</p> + +<p>The room was small and square. There was a half-worn carpet upon the +floor, and the walls were covered with cheap paper, the conspicuous +feature of which was a sprawling design in green and yellow cornucopias. +In one corner stood a small iron bedstead, partially concealed by a +Japanese screen, which extended nominal protection to the wash-stand as +well. On the wall above the screen an iron hook was visible, from which +hung a couple of bath-towels and a scrubbing-brush suspended by a +string. Nearer the window there was an upright piano, with a scarf of +terra-cotta flung across it and a row of photographs of great singers +arranged along the ledge. Here and there on the furniture vivid bits of +drapery were pinned over barren places.</p> + +<p>But with the proof of a sensuous craving for color a latent untidiness +was discernible. Her slippers lay upon the hearth-rug where she had +tossed them when dressing for the street; a box of hair-pins had been +upset upon the bureau, and a half-open drawer revealed a tangled mass of +net veiling.<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a></p> + +<p>Throwing her hat and coat upon the bed, the girl turned up the lights, +selected a score of "Lucia" from a portfolio under the piano, and, +seating herself at the music-stool, struck the key-board with sudden +fervor. The light soprano notes rang out, filling the small room with a +frail yet penetrating sweetness. It was a clear and brilliant voice, but +it was a voice in miniature, of which the first freshness was +marred—and it was not the voice for Lucia.</p> + +<p>With quick dismay the girl realized it, and rising impatiently, tossed +the score upon the carpet and left the piano.</p> + +<p>Standing before the long mirror on the wall, she slipped off her +walking-gown, letting it fall in a black heap to her feet. Then stepping +over it, she kicked it aside and stood with gleaming arms and breast in +the flickering gas-light. She loosened her heavy hair, drawing the pins +from it one by one, until it fell in a brown mane upon her shoulders.</p> + +<p>Doffing her conventional dress, she doffed conventionality as well. She +was transformed into something seductive and subtle—something in +woman's flesh as ethereal as sea-foam and as vivid as flame.</p> + +<p>She smiled suddenly. Then to a humming accompaniment she twirled upon +her toes, her steps growing faster and faster until her figure was +obscured in the blur of action and her hair flew about her face like the +hair of a painted witch.</p> + +<p>The words of the air she hummed came with a dash of bravado from between +her lips:</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;">"—Ange ou diable,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">Écume de la mer?"</span></td></tr> +</table> + +<p>Still smiling, she sank in an exhausted heap upon the floor.</p> + +<p>Then she went to bed and fell asleep, lamenting that her head rested +upon a cotton pillow-slip.<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-a" id="CHAPTER_II-a"></a>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<p>In time long past, when the Huguenots were better known, if less +esteemed, an impecunious gentleman of France left his native land for +the sake of faith and fortune.</p> + +<p>Lured by that blatant boast of liberty which swelled the throats of the +Western colonies, even while their hands were employed in meting out the +reward of witchcraft and in forging the chains of slavery, he directed +his way towards American soil.</p> + +<p>His mission failed, and, in search of theological freedom, he only +succeeded in weaving matrimonial fetters. Amid an unassorted medley of +creeds and customs he came upon the red-cheeked daughter of a Swiss +adventurer—an ambitious pioneer who lived upon the theory that the New +World having been created for the service of its foreign invaders, the +might of the sword was the right of possession.</p> + +<p>The gentleman of France, deciding to found a farm and family in the land +of his adoption, awoke suddenly to the knowledge that, to insure the +success of such an enterprise, feminine intervention is a necessary +evil.</p> + +<p>Accordingly, he set about his preparations with an economic industry. +Casting his eye upon a tract of land upon a Southern river, he acquired +it for certain services rendered in an unguarded moment to the Swiss +adventurer, who had acquired it in a manner that concerned himself +alone.</p> + +<p>The next step of the French gentleman was to build<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> beside the Southern +river a family mansion, whose door he promptly closed upon the Swiss +adventurer, since virtue consists not so much in refusing to benefit by +vice as in refusing to acknowledge the benefit. Not without a sense of +nervous perturbation, he then proceeded to cast his gaze upon the most +promising feminine pledges of progeny. From among a dozen or so of his +fair neighbors he selected, with the experienced eye of a woman-fancier, +the blooming specimen of Swiss buxomness, and, the adventurer coming to +terms, the marriage had been celebrated without the retarding +curtain-raiser of a romantic prelude.</p> + +<p>The gentleman's name was Marcel Musin de Biencourt; the lady's has no +place in the following history.</p> + +<p>For a period matters progressed in natural sequence. The land was +tilled, the cotton picked, and the lady installed in the best bedroom of +the newly erected mansion. Had she played the part for which nature and +her lord intended her, there is reason to suppose that she would have +become a serviceable instrument in the preservation of the species.</p> + +<p>But the gentleman had reckoned without Providence. With the ending of +the year of her bridehood the roses in the lady's cheeks grew waxen, and +she turned with a sigh of relief from the labor of travail to the rest +of the little church-yard upon the hill.</p> + +<p>The aspens shivered above her, the river purled between level fields far +down below, and from the uprooted furrows around the dutiful corn put +forth tender sprouts; but the lady had shirked her mission in its first +fulfilment, and with the birth-time of the year she neither rose nor +stirred.</p> + +<p>In the best bedroom the dust thickened upon the chintz curtains, and a +weak and sickly hostage to fortune yelled his new throat hoarse with +premonition of the inhospitality of the planet upon which he had been +precipitated.<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a></p> + +<p>Disappointed in his estimate of woman's nature, the gentleman of France +decided to economize in material, and to rear a race from the +unpromising specimen in his possession. Faithfully he strove to fulfil +his part, and when the boy reached manhood, he laid himself down beside +his wife upon the hill.</p> + +<p>From this time on the family record is biblically concise. Marcel begot +Marcel, and again Marcel begot Marcel, and yet again.</p> + +<p>While the root Musin languished, De Biencourt, the lofty family tree, +withered and died, to be forgotten. Neither in history nor in tradition, +nor in the paths of private virtue, was a Musin known to have +distinguished himself. If he took up arms in the American Revolution, he +took them up in a manner unworthy of record; if he favored the +Declaration of Independence, he did not commit his preference to paper; +if he excelled in any way, it was in the way of mediocrity—which is +perhaps the safest way of all.</p> + +<p>But extinction was not to be the end of the venturesome blood of the +French gentleman. His spirit animated one of his name to confide to the +care of his ex-slaves the mansion crumbling above his head, and to +become a wanderer in the States which had been so nearly disunited. Like +the minstrels of old, he strung his harp from his shoulder, and +journeyed from South to North and from East to West. His Norman blood +still ran blue in his veins, and his faith was the faith of his fathers.</p> + +<p>In his travels he played his passage into the vivacious affections of an +Irish maiden, who wore a rosary about her neck and a cross upon her +sleeve. But these conspicuous badges of Popery failed to chill the +passion of Marcel. And, in truth, if the maiden's heart was as black as +the arch-fiend, her eyes (which is more to the point) were not less blue +than heaven. With an improvidence sufficient to bleach the ghost of his<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a> +colonial progenitor, he tossed forebodings into the capacious lap of the +future, and stormed the yielding heart of young Ireland.</p> + +<p>Love was lord, and their marriage-bonds were double-locked and barred by +Protestant and Catholic clergy. But there is a power which laughs at +religious locksmiths. Within six months the illusions with which each +had draped the other melted before the fire and brimstone of +ecclesiastical dispute. Between the kisses of their lips each offered +petitions to a patient Omnipotence for the salvation of the other's +soul. As the kisses grew colder the prayers grew warmer. There is a +tendency in man, when he has fallen out with the human brother whom he +has seen, to wax more zealous in his attentions to the Divine Father +whom he has not. To be courteous to one's neighbor is so much more +difficult than to be cringing to one's God.</p> + +<p>And then a child was given. In the large family Bible upon the father's +desk the event is recorded in two different hands, and the child was +christened with two different names.</p> + +<p>The first reads:</p> + +<p class="c">"<span class="smcap">Marie Musin</span>, <i>born April</i> 24, 1868."</p> + +<p>And the second:</p> + +<p class="c"><span class="smcap">"Mary Ann Musin</span>, <i>born April</i> 24, 1868."</p> + +<p>After fifteen years the matter was settled, as were most family matters, +by the child herself.</p> + +<p>"I will be both," she said, decisively. "I will be Mariana."</p> + +<p>And Mariana she became.</p> + +<p>In the same high-handed fashion the theological disputes of the parents +were reduced to trifles as light as air.</p> + +<p>"I will be a Presbyterian one Sunday and a Catholic<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> the next," she +concluded, with amiable acquiescence; "only on fast-days and +lecture-nights I'll be a heathen."</p> + +<p>For a time these regulations were observed with uncompromising +impartiality, but, upon moving to a smaller town, she foresaw a +diplomatic stroke.</p> + +<p>"I think it better," she announced, sweetly, "for one of us to become an +Episcopalian. I have noticed that most of the society people here are +Episcopalians—and in that way the family will be so evenly distributed. +I see that it will be easier for me to make the sacrifice than for +either of you. Of course, I should love to go with you, mamma, but +incense makes me sneeze; and you know, papa, I can't stand +congregational singing. It grates upon my nerves. And I must be +something, for I have so much religious feeling. I will be an +Episcopalian."</p> + +<p>She cast herself into the arms of the Church with all the zeal of a +convert. From an artistic stand-point she repudiated insincerity, and, +though cultivated, her professions were as fertile as the most natural +product. Even to herself she scorned to admit that her alliance with a +particular creed was the result of aught but a moral tendency in that +direction. And the burden of the truth was with her. She was as +changeable as wind and as impressionable as wax, and the swelling tide +of sentiment had taken an ecclesiastical turn.</p> + +<p>She dressed in sober grays, and attended service with the regularity of +the sexton; she decorated her walls with Madonnas; and she undertook, by +way of the Sunday-school room, to lead a class of eight small boys into +the path of righteousness. She read Christina Rossetti and George +Herbert, and she placed tiny silver crosses, suspended from purple +ribbons, in her school-books.</p> + +<p>At the age of sixteen she attached herself to a society whose mission it +was to cultivate, by frequent<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> calls, the religious poor, and she +neglected social observances to retard by her presence the domestic +duties of the indigent members of the community. She descended in a +special detachment upon a series of beer saloons, enforcing the pledge +upon a number of helpless gentlemen, and thereby multiplying the sin of +intemperance by that of perjury. While her mother mended the rents in +her garments, Mariana promoted a circle of stocking-darners for the +inhabitants of the almshouse.</p> + +<p>At that period her expression was in perfect harmony with the tenor of +her mind. The dramatic effect was always good.</p> + +<p>In the daily school, which she attended when the fancy seized her, she +ruled as a popular fetish. Between the younger children, whom she +terrorized, and the elder, whom she mesmerized, there was an +intermediate class with whom she was in high favor. As a tiny child she +had caught the street songs quicker than any other, and had sung them +better; and to the accompaniment of a hand-organ she could render a +marvellous ballet.</p> + +<p>During her tenth year she fell into a passionate friendship for one of +the scholars—a stately girl with phlegmatic eyes of gray. For six +months she paid her lover-like attentions in surreptitious ways, and +expended her pocket-money in nosegays, with which to adorn the desk of +her divinity. She wore a photograph of the gray-eyed girl above her +heart, and lingered for an hour to walk home with her upon Fridays.</p> + +<p>The friendship was sundered at last by visits exchanged between them, +and Mariana's emotions became theological.</p> + +<p>But this passed also. Vague amatory impulses of old racial meaning were +born. At sixteen she was precipitated into a sentiment for the +photograph, printed by the daily press, of a young fellow who was<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> at +that time in the custody of the State, preparatory to responding to a +charge of highway-robbery. The photograph was romantic, the crime was +also. It was a nineteenth-century attempt at a revival of the part of +Claude Duval.</p> + +<p>Mariana attended missions less and meditated more. She divided her time +between her journal and the piano, showing a preference for songs of +riotous sentiment. Without apparent trouble to herself, she grew wan and +mysteriously poetic. She wore picturesque gowns with romantic draperies. +Her hair possessed a charming disorder, the expression of her face +passed from the placid into the intense. The dramatic effect was as good +as ever. Her journal of that year contains a declaration of undying +constancy. The object of this avowal is nominally the young +highwayman—in reality the creation of an over-fertile brain craving the +intoxicant of a great passion. The highwayman was but a picturesque +nucleus round which her dreams clustered and from which they gathered +color. She existed in a maze of the imagination, feasting upon the +unsubstantial food of idealism. Her longings for fame and for love were +so closely interwoven that even in her own mind it was impossible to +disassociate them. If she bedewed her pillow with tears of anguish for +the sake of a man whom she had never seen, and whom, seeing, she would +have passed with averted eyes, the tears were often dried by ecstatic +visions of artistic aspirations. And yet this romance of straw was not +the less intense because it was the creation of overwrought +susceptibilities; perhaps the more so. If real troubles were the only +troubles, how many tortured hearts would be uplifted to the hills. And +Mariana's mystical romance was a <i>daemon</i> that lured her in a dozen +different disguises towards the quicksands of life.</p> + +<p>But this passed also and was done with.<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a></p> + +<p>Her mother died, and her father married an early love. Mariana, who had +been first, declined to become last. Dissensions followed swiftly, and +the domestic atmosphere only cleared when Mariana departed from the +paternal dwelling-place.</p> + +<p>From the small Southern village, under the protection of an elderly +female relation, she had flown to New York in search of theatrical +employment. Failing in her object, she turned desperately to the culture +of her voice, living meanwhile upon a meagre allowance donated by her +father. The elderly female relation had remained with her for a time, +but finding Mariana intractable in minor ways, and foreseeing a future +in which she would serve as cat's-paw for the girl's vagaries, she had +blessed her young relative and departed.</p> + +<p>"One must either worship or detest you, my dear," she remarked as a +parting shaft. "And to worship you means to wait upon you, which is +wearing. Your personality is as absorbent as cotton. It absorbs the +individual comfort of those around you. It is very pleasant to be +absorbed, and you do it charmingly; but there is so much to see in the +world, and I'm getting old fast enough."</p> + +<p>So she went, leaving Mariana alone in a fourth-story front room of The +Gotham apartment-house.<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-a" id="CHAPTER_III-a"></a>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<p>Mr. Nevins once said to Mariana: "You are as elusive as thistle-down +whipped up with snow."</p> + +<p>Mariana smiled that radiating, indescribable smile which dawned +gradually from within, deepening until it burst into pervasive wealth of +charm.</p> + +<p>"Why snow?" was her query.</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul, who apparently had been engrossed in his dinner, glanced up +grimly. "The only possible reason for a metaphor," he observed, "is lack +of reason."</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins dismissed him with a shrug and looked in sentimental +perplexity at Mariana.</p> + +<p>"Merely because it is impossible to whip up ice with anything," he +replied.</p> + +<p>"I should have supposed," interrupted Mr. Paul, in unabashed +disapproval, "that the same objection would apply to thistle-down. It +would certainly apply to a woman."</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey, who sat opposite, turned her tired eyes upon him.</p> + +<p>"Life is not of your opinion, Mr. Paul," she said. "It whips us up with +all kinds of ingredients, and it never seems to realize when we have +been reduced to the proper consistency."</p> + +<p>She looked worn and harassed, and had come in to dinner later than +usual. It was the first remark she had made, and, after making it, she +relapsed into silence. Her small red hands trembled as she lifted her +fork, the rebellious lines between her brows grew deeper, and she ate +her dinner with that complete exhaustion<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> which so often passes for +resignation in the eyes of our neighbors. Nervous prostration has +produced more saints than all the sermons since Moses.</p> + +<p>Mariana watched her sympathetically. She wondered why the gravy upon +Miss Ramsey's plate congealed sooner than it did upon any one else's, +while the sobbiest potatoes invariably fell to her share.</p> + +<p>"A false metaphor!" commented Mr. Paul. "Most metaphors are false. I +don't trust Shakespeare himself when he gets to metaphor. I always skip +them."</p> + +<p>"Oh, they have their uses," broke in the cheery tones of the optimist. +"I'm not much on Shakespeare, but I've no doubt he has his uses also. As +for metaphor, it is a convenient way of saying more than you mean."</p> + +<p>"So is lying," retorted Mr. Paul, crossly, and the conversation +languished. Mariana ate her dinner and looked at the table-cloth. Mr. +Nevins ate his dinner and looked at Mariana. He regarded her as an +artistic possibility. Her appearance was a source of constant interest +to him, and he felt, were he in the position of nature, with the palette +and brush of an omnipotent colorist, he might blend the harmonious lines +of Mariana's person to better advantage. He resented the fact that her +nose was irregular and her chin too long. He wondered how such a subject +could have been wilfully neglected.</p> + +<p>As for himself, he honestly felt that he had wasted no opportunities. +Upon their first acquaintance he had made a poster of Mariana which +undeniably surpassed the original. It represented her in a limp and +scantily made gown of green, with strange reptiles sprawling over it, +relieved against the ardor of a purple sunset. The hair was a marvel of +the imagination.</p> + +<p>Mariana had liked it, with the single exception of the reptilian +figures.<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a></p> + +<p>"They have such an unpleasant suggestion," was her critical comment. "I +feel quite like Medusa. Couldn't you change them into nice little +butterflies and things?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins was afraid he could not. The poster satisfied him as it was. +Miss Musin could not deny, he protested, that he had remodelled her nose +and chin in an eminently successful job, and if the hair and eyes and +complexion in the poster bore close resemblance in color, so did the +hair and eyes and complexion in the original. He had done his best.</p> + +<p>Mariana accepted his explanation and went complacently on her way, as +enigmatical as a Chinese puzzle. She was full of swift surprises and +tremulous changes, varying color with her environment; gay one moment, +and sad before the gayety had left her lips—cruel and calm, passionate +and tender—always and ever herself.</p> + +<p>Twice a week she went to Signor Morani's for a vocal lesson. Signor +Morani was small and romantic and severe. In his youth he had travelled +as Jenny Lind's barytone, and he had fallen a slave to her voice. He had +worshipped a voice as other men worship a woman. Unlike other men, he +had been faithful for a lifetime—to a voice.</p> + +<p>When Mariana had gone to him, an emotional and aspiring soprano of +nineteen, he had listened to her quietly and advised patience.</p> + +<p>"You must wait," he said. "All art is waiting."</p> + +<p>"I will not wait," said Mariana. "Waiting is starvation."</p> + +<p>He looked at her critically.</p> + +<p>"More of us starve than the world suspects," he answered. "It is the +privilege of genius. This is a planet, my dear child, where mediocrity +is exalted and genius brought low. It is a living fulfilment of the +scriptural prophecy, 'The first shall be last and<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a> the last shall be +first.'" Then he added: "Sing again."</p> + +<p>Mariana stood up and sang. His words had depressed her, and her voice +trembled. She looked at him wistfully, her hands hanging at her sides, +her head thrown back. It was an aria from "Faust." He shook his head +slowly.</p> + +<p>"You will never be great," he said. "I can give you technique, but not +volume. Your voice will never be great."</p> + +<p>With a half-defiant gesture Mariana broke forth again. This time it was +a popular song, with a quick refrain running through it. As she sang she +acted the accompaniment half unconsciously.</p> + +<p>Signor Morani frowned as she commenced, and then watched her +attentively. In the fragile little girl, with the changeable eyes of +green and the aureole of shadowless hair, he scented possibilities.</p> + +<p>"Your voice will never be great," he repeated; "but you may make men +believe so."</p> + +<p>"And you will take me?" pleaded Mariana. She stretched out her beautiful +hands. Her eyes prayed. Her flexible tones drooped.</p> + +<p>Signor Morani took her hands in his with kindly reassurance.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said—"yes; it will keep you out of mischief, at least."</p> + +<p>And it had kept her out of mischief. It had opened a channel for her +emotions. Like a tide, the romanticism of her nature veered towards art. +She became the most fanatical of devotees. She breathed it and lived it. +In her heart it transplanted all other religions, and the ęstheticism of +its expression gained a marvellous hold upon her faith. Above the little +mosaic altar at her bedside she enshrined a bust of Wagner, and she +worshipped it as some more orthodox believer had once worshipped an +enshrined Madonna.<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> At midnight she held devotional services all alone, +sitting before the piano, bending to the uses of a litany the +intellectual rhapsodies of Beethoven or the sensuous repinings of +Chopin, while the little red flame sent up praise and incense from dried +rose leaves and cinnamon to the memories of dead musicians. She +introduced a rare, sensuous beauty into this new worship, as she had +introduced it into the old. She typified the Church when, in its fresh +young passion, and suffused with the dying splendors of paganism, it +turned from the primitive exercises of its founders and revived the +worship of the gracious Madonna of Old Egypt in the worship of the +Madonna of Nazareth, and the flower-scented feasts of Venus in the +Purification of the Virgin. There existed in the girl an unsatisfied +restlessness of self, resulting in the desire for complete submergence +of soul in idea. Her nature veered constantly from extreme to extreme; +there was no semblance of a saner medium, and as a system must have +exponents, the high priests and priestesses of art became her lesser +divinities.</p> + +<p>She began to haunt the Metropolitan Opera-house. From the fifth gallery +she looked down every evening upon an Italian or German landscape. She +herself trembled like a harp swept by invisible fingers; she grew pale +with Marguerite, wept over the dead Juliet, and went mad with the +madness of Lucia.</p> + +<p>When the voice of that fair Bride of Lammermoor who sang for us that +season was borne to her on the notes of a flute which flagged beneath +the exceeding sweetness of the human notes they carried, Mariana grasped +the railing with her quivering hands and bowed her head in an ecstasy of +appreciation. It was the ecstasy with which a monk in medięval days must +have thrilled when he faced in a dim cathedral some beautiful and +earthly Virgin of the great Raphael. It was the purest form of sensuous +self-abnegation.<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> Then, as the curtain fell, she would rise and step +gropingly towards the door, cast into sudden darkness. Wrapped in that +mental state as in a mantle, she would descend the stairs and pass out +into the street. At such times she was as far removed from the existence +to which she was returning as was the poor mad Lucia herself. And then +in the night she would awake and sing softly to herself in the +stillness, lying with seraphic eyes and hands clasped upon her breast, +until the morning sun flashed into her face and the day began.</p> + +<p>There was also a tragic side to her emotions. Her past inheritance of +ages of image-worshippers laid hold upon her. From being merely symbols +of art the singers became divinities in their own right. She haunted +their hotels for fleeting glimpses of them. She bought their photographs +with the money which should have gone for a winter hat. She would gladly +have kissed the dust upon which they trod. After her first hearing of +"Tristan and Isolde," she placed the prima donna's photograph beneath +the bust of Wagner, and worshipped her for weeks as a bright particular +star.</p> + +<p>In the evening she attended the opera alone. Returning when it was over, +she crossed Broadway, boarded a car, and, reaching The Gotham, toiled up +to the fourth landing. She was innocent of prudery, and she went +unharmed. Perhaps her complete absorption in something beyond herself +was her safeguard. At all events, she brushed men by, glanced at them +with unseeing eyes, and passed placidly on her way.</p> + +<p>Mariana was famished for romance, but not for the romance of the street. +She had an instinctive aversion to things common and of vulgar intent. +Her unsatisfied desire was but the craving of a young and impressionable +heart for untried emotion. It was the poetry of living she thirsted +for—poetry in ęsthetic<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> proportions, with a careful adjustment of light +and shade. She desired harmonious effects and exquisite schemes of +color, all as appropriate settings to a romance which she could arrange +and blend in treatment as an artist arranges models of still life. So, +for a time, she expended herself upon great singers. A new tenor +appeared as Edgardo. Upon the stage he was dark and fierce and +impassioned. He made an adorable lover. He sang to Lucia, not to the +audience, and he threw half his arias into his eyes. Mariana was +enraptured. She fell desperately in love. During the day she went about +in meditative abstraction; during the night she turned upon her little +cotton pillow-slip, and wept to think how far below him she must ever +remain. She even wished herself a chorus girl, that she might intercept +his glances. She grew frantically jealous of the prima donna, whom, +also, she adored. She imagined innumerable romances in which he enacted +upon the stage of life the part of Edgardo. Then, through the kindness +of Signor Morani, she was introduced to the object of her regard, and +the awakening was abrupt. He was fat and commonplace. He proved to be +the faithful husband of a red-faced little German wife, and the devoted +father of a number of red-faced German children. He possessed no +qualities for romantic development, and Mariana recovered.</p> + +<p>For a period her susceptibilities abated. The wave of activity spent its +violence. Life flowed for her like a meadow stream, sensitive to faint +impressions from a passing breeze, but calm when the breeze was afar.</p> + +<p>Upon a night of "Carmen" she saw from the fifth gallery a velvet rose +fall from the prima donna's bosom to the stage. When the curtain fell +she rushed madly down and begged it of an usher. She carried it home, +and hung it upon the wall above her bed. At night, before falling +asleep, she would draw the curtains<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> aside, and, in the electric light +that flooded the room, cast her eyes upon the vivid bit of color. In the +early morning she would awake, and, raising herself upon her elbow, +touch it reverently with her hand. It was homage rendered to her own +ambition.</p> + +<p>At The Gotham, her bare little chamber, with its garish wall-paper, was +a source of acute discomfort to her. Once, after a long spell of +pneumonia, she had fallen into a fit of desperation, and had attacked +the paper with a breakfast-knife. The result was a square of whitewashed +wall above the bureau. An atmosphere of harmony was so necessary to her +growth that she seemed to droop and pine in uncongenial environment. In +the apartment-house, with its close, unventilated halls, its creaking +elevator, its wretchedly served dinners, she had always felt strangely +ill at ease. Her last prayer at night was that the morrow might see her +transplanted to richer soil, her first thought upon awakening was that +the coming day was pregnant with possibilities. Life in its entirety, +life with passionate color and emotional fulfilment, was the food she +craved.</p> + +<p>Of Mariana, Mr. Ardly had made a laborious and profound analysis.</p> + +<p>"That young person is a self-igniting taper," he had concluded. "If some +one doesn't apply the match, she will go off of her own accord—and she +will burn herself out before time has cast a wet blanket upon her."</p> + +<p>He himself was a self-contained young fellow, who, like a greater before +him, followed with wisdom both wine and women. His life was regulated by +a theory which he had propounded in youth and attempted to practice in +maturer years. The theory asserted that experience was the one reliable +test of existing conditions. "I refused to believe that alcohol was an +intoxicant," he had once said, "until I tested it."<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a></p> + +<p>When Mariana first arrived, he surprised in his heart an embryonic +sentiment concerning her, and proceeded to crush it as coolly as he +would have crushed a fly that encroached upon the private domain of his +person.</p> + +<p>"I have no dissipations," he explained, when discussing the affair with +Mariana. "I neither drink nor love."</p> + +<p>"Which is unwise," retorted Mariana. "I do both in moderation. And a man +who has never been in love is always a great school-boy. I should be +continually expecting him to tread upon my gown or to break my fan. +Sentiment is the greatest civilizer of the race. If I were you I would +begin immediately."</p> + +<p>"I dislike all effort," returned Ardly, gravely, "and love is cloying. +Over-loving produces mental indigestion, as over-eating produces +physical. I have suffered from it, and experience has made me +abstemious. I shall abstain from falling in love with you."</p> + +<p>"What a pity!" sighed Mariana, lifting her lashes.</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't agree with you," argued Ardly, "and I don't regret it. I +am very comfortable as I am."</p> + +<p>"I am not," retorted Mariana. "I detest the dinners. Who could be +comfortable on overdone mutton and cold potatoes?"</p> + +<p>"Even in the matter of food I am without prejudices," declared the +other. "I had as soon want a good dinner and have a poor one as have a +good one and want none. These are the only conditions with which I am +acquainted. There may be estates where things are more equally adjusted, +but I know nothing of them; I have not experienced them."</p> + +<p>Mariana sighed. "You are as depressing as Mr. Paul," she complained.</p> + +<p>"I only speak of what I know," explained Ardly, complacently. "Upon +other matters I have no opinions, and I calmly repeat that I have found +appetite<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> and gratification to be situated upon opposite sides of a +revolving globe. When one's up the other's down."</p> + +<p>"I shall cut a passage through," said Mariana. "If life doesn't equalize +things, I will."</p> + +<p>"And I will watch the process," remarked Ardly, indolently.</p> + +<p>It was shortly after this that Mariana went to Long Island for a +holiday, spending a couple of weeks in the cottage of an acquaintance, +who, by dint of successive matrimonial ventures, had succeeded in +reaching the equilibrium to which Mariana aspired.</p> + +<p>Upon returning to New York the girl found her distaste for The Gotham to +have trebled. When she had toiled up the dingy stairway and installed +herself in her old place, she sat upon her trunk and looked about her. +Never had the room appeared so dull, so desperately plain. The close +odor caused by lack of ventilation offended her nostrils, and yet she +hesitated to fling back the shutters and reveal the rusty balcony with +its spindling fire-escape, beyond which stretched the sombre outlook, +the elevated road looming like a skeleton in the foreground. The door +into the hall was ajar, and she could see a dull expanse of corridor, +lighted day and night by a solitary and ineffectual electric jet.</p> + +<p>A sob stuck in her throat, and, crossing to the window, she raised it +and threw back the shutters, letting in a thin stream of dust and +sunshine. Her geranium stood where she had left it, and its withered and +yellow leaves smote her with accusing neglect.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you poor thing!" she cried, in an impulsive burst of pity.</p> + +<p>Then she saw that it had been freshly watered, and that its famished +leaves were unfolding. Turning her eyes, they encountered a row of small +pots containing seedlings which lined her neighbor's window, encroaching +slightly upon her own possession. Before them a<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> man was standing, a +watering-can in one hand, a small trowel in the other. As Mariana +stepped upon the fire-escape he turned in evident resentment, glanced at +her indifferently, and resumed his task of invigoration.</p> + +<p>The afternoon sun shone full upon him, and Mariana saw him plainly. He +was young, with stooping shoulders, and he wore a cheap and shabby suit +of clothes, with apparent disregard of their quality. His face was thin +and cleanly shaven, there was a nervous tension about the mouth, and the +hair, falling dark and heavy upon the temples, lent a haggardness to his +colorless and burned-out profile. It was a face in which the poetic +principle was obscured by an ascetic veneering. In his whole appearance +was borne out the suggestion flashing from the eyes—a suggestion of +mental sustentation upon physical force.</p> + +<p>Mariana regarded him mutely. Her gaze was almost tragic in its +intensity. For a moment her lips quivered and her fingers interlaced. +Then she retreated into her room, slamming the shutters after her. +Throwing herself into a chair, she buried her face in her hands.</p> + +<p>"I—I can't have even that to myself!" she said, and burst into tears.<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-a" id="CHAPTER_IV-a"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<p>Mariana's neighbor sat in his room. He sat motionless, his head resting +upon his hands, his arms resting upon an office desk, which was plainly +finished and of cheap walnut. At his left elbow a lamp cast an +illumination upon his relaxed and exhausted figure, upon the straight, +dark hair, upon the bulging brow, and upon the sinewy and squarely +shaped hands, with their thin and nervous fingers.</p> + +<p>The desk upon which he leaned was covered with a litter of closely +written letter-sheets, and at the back a row of pigeon-holes contained +an unassorted profusion of manuscripts.</p> + +<p>The walls of the room were lined with roughly constructed shelves of +painted wood, which were filled to overflowing with well-worn volumes in +English, French, and German, Oken's <i>Die Zeugung</i> upon the north side +confronting Darwin's <i>The Variation of Animals and Plants Under +Domestication</i> upon the south. A cabinet in one corner contained a +number of alcoholic specimens of embryonic development, and a small +table near by supported a microscope and several instruments for +physiological experiments. Above the mantel, perhaps arranged in +freakish disregard of superstition, hung a skull and a pair of +cross-bones, and beneath them a series of photographs illustrating the +evolution of rudimentary nervous systems.</p> + +<p>Upon the hearth, within convenient reach of the desk, stood a small +spirit-stove, and on it a coffee-pot, which emitted a strong and +stimulating aroma. Beside<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a> it a table was spread, with the remains of a +cold supper and an unused cup and saucer.</p> + +<p>The man lifted his head from his hands, turned up the wick of the lamp, +and took up his pen.</p> + +<p>From without came the rumble of the elevated road and the shrill cries +of a newsboy proclaiming the redundant virtues of the <i>Evening Post</i>. A +warm August breeze, entering at the open window, which was raised from +the floor, caused the flame of the lamp to flicker slightly. Outside +upon the fire-escape the young plants were arranged in rows of +systematic precision, their tender leaves revealed in the narrow path of +lamplight leading from the heated room to the iron railing overlooking +the street. With absent-minded elaboration the man drew an irregular +line upon the paper before him. The line bore no relation whatever to +the heading of the paper, which was written in a remarkably firm and +heavy hand, and read:</p> + +<p class="c">"Transmission of Acquired Characteristics."</p> + +<p>Suddenly he laid the pen aside, and rose, wiping the moisture from his +brow with his handkerchief. Then he threw off his coat and drew up his +shirt-sleeves. It was oppressively warm, and the lamp seemed to possess +the heating qualities of a Latrobe stove. For a couple of minutes he +walked slowly up and down the uncarpeted floor. From the adjoining room +came the sound of a piano and a woman singing. He shook his head +impatiently, but the sound continued, and he yawned and stretched his +arms with resentful resignation. After which he lifted the coffee-pot +from the little stove and filled the cup upon the table.</p> + +<p>Returning to his seat, he drank his coffee slowly, allowing his +abstracted gaze to wander through the window and into the city night +without. Upon the drawn shades of the opposite tenement-house he could +trace the shadows of men and women passing to and fro like the +unsubstantial outlines of figures remembered<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> in a dream. His thoughts +fluttered restlessly. He was tired. Yes, but the coffee would get him +into shape again, and he must work. It was barely ten o'clock. The day +had been trying. The experiments made in the college laboratory had been +unsuccessful. He had gone about them wrongly. Professor Myers had been +mistaken in his calculations. It was unfortunate. The opportunity for +work had been excellent, and in September, when the session began, his +lectures at that infernal Woman's College would take a good two hours +daily, to say nothing of the preparations. What a bore it would be! If +he had only money enough to follow out his work independently he might +make a splendid success of it. True, he had spent enough on those +travels and excavations in Egypt and Assyria to have supported an +ordinary Philistine in comfort for an ordinary lifetime. But he did not +regret them. They had given balance to his judgment, and he had acquired +an immense amount of information. And those studies in Ancient India. +Why, they had even more direct bearing upon his theories. Involuntarily +his glance strayed round the book-lined walls and to the manuscripts in +his desk. He devoured the closely written, almost illegible pages with +insatiable eyes—eyes stricken with the mania for knowledge. The bronzed +and sallow face he turned towards the light was suffused with the glow +of a consuming purpose. In its deep-eyed, thin-lipped severity of +drawing, every sensuous curve had been erased by lines of toil.</p> + +<p>He set the cup aside and returned to his work. From a drawer of his desk +he drew a thick volume, consisting of a number of legal-cap sheets, +bound with a systematic regard for subject. Upon the cover was written +in printed letters: "Notes," and beneath: "A History of Man, with +Special Application of the Science of Ontogeny."<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a></p> + +<p>After consulting this briefly he laid it away and fell to writing. From +the adjoining room still came the sound of a woman singing. The voice +was light and flippant.</p> + +<p>"Damn it!" said the man, suddenly, with angry impatience. He said it +vehemently, looking up from his work with nervous irritability. At the +same moment there came a slight tap at his door.</p> + +<p>He laid aside his pen, rose, and opened it. Mr. Paul stood upon the +outside.</p> + +<p>"Well, Mr. Algarcife," he began, grimly, "you see I have broken a +life-long principle and taken a man at his word. I came for the book you +spoke of."</p> + +<p>Algarcife welcomed him impatiently. "So I suppose I must prove your +principle relative, if not erroneous," he answered. His voice was +singularly full and clear. "It was <i>Milligan on the Vocabulary of +Aboriginal Tasmanians</i>, was it not? Yes, I think it will aid you."</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul came in and they sat down. Algarcife offered him coffee and +cigars, but he declined. He sat stiffly in his chair and looked at the +other with cynical interest.</p> + +<p>"You write all night on this lye, I suppose?" he said, abruptly. "A +combined production of brains and coffee."</p> + +<p>Algarcife lighted his pipe and leaned back in his chair, blowing gray +circles of smoke upon the atmosphere.</p> + +<p>"You are right," he responded; "I find I do my best work after midnight, +when I am drunk on caffeine or coffee. I suppose it will do for me in +the end."</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul returned his indifferent gaze with one of severity. "You are +all nerves as it is," he said. "You haven't an ounce of good barbarian +blood in your body—merely a colorless machine for ratiocination. I tell +you, there is no bigger fool than the man who,<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> because he possesses a +few brains, forgets that he is an animal."</p> + +<p>The other laughed abstractedly.</p> + +<p>"What wholesome truths you deliver," he said. "I think Luther must have +had your manner. Well, if I were in your place, I should probably say +the same, though less forcibly. But they are theories. You see, I argue +this way: with one man's mind and one man's power of work, I could never +accomplish what I have before me—any more than poor Buckle, with the +brain of a giant, could accomplish what he undertook. It is too big for +a single man in this stage of development. So, with one man's mind, I +intend to do six men's amount of labor. If I hold out, I will have my +reward; if I go to pieces, I shall at least have the satisfaction of a +good fight."</p> + +<p>His voice was distinct and forcible, with a widely varied range of +expression.</p> + +<p>There was a second tap at the door, and Mr. Nevins entered, looking +depressed and ill-humored.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Anthony!" he called. "What! is Mr. Paul squandering your +midnight oil? You should have sent him to bed long ago."</p> + +<p>"It is not my hour for retiring," responded Mr. Paul.</p> + +<p>Anthony interrupted pacifically.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Paul is exhorting me," he said, "and I have no doubt that, with +slight modifications, his sermon may be adapted to your case. He +predicts brain-softening and general senility."</p> + +<p>"An inspired prophecy," returned Mr. Nevins, crossly, "and savoring of +Jeremiah. As for myself, it is but common justice that a man who has +conscientiously refused the cultivation of the mind should not be called +upon to lose what he doesn't possess." Then he grew suddenly cheerful. +"Confound it! What's the use of being a philosopher on paper when you +can be<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> one in practice. What's the use of dying when you can eat, +drink, and be merry?"</p> + +<p>"Eating," remarked Mr. Paul, with depressing effect, "produces +dyspepsia, drinking produces gout."</p> + +<p>"And thought, paresis," added Anthony, lightly. "They are all merely +different forms of dissipation. I have chosen mine; Nevins has chosen +his. Only, as a matter of taste, I'd rather die by work than wine. +Personally, I prefer consumption to apoplexy."</p> + +<p>"There is such a thing as the means justifying the end," responded Mr. +Nevins, in reckless ill-humor. "And it is a great principle. If I wasn't +a fool, I'd make a bonfire of my brush and palette, and start afresh on +a level with my appetite. I would become the apostle of good-living, +which means fast living. I tell you, an hour of downright devilment is +worth all the art since Adam. Aristippus is greater than Raphael."</p> + +<p>"What has gone wrong?" demanded Algarcife, soothingly. "Too much purple +in the 'Andromeda'? I always said that purple was the imperial color of +his satanic majesty. If you had followed the orthodox art of your +college days, and hadn't gone wandering after strange gods, you might +have escaped a dash of that purple melancholia."</p> + +<p>"You're a proper fellow," returned Mr. Nevins, with disgust. "Who was it +that won that last debate in '82 by a glowing defence of Christianity +against agnosticism, and, when the Reverend Miles lit out about the new +orator in his flock, floored him with: 'Was that good? Then what a +magnificent thing I could have made of the other side!'"</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul had opened his book, and glanced up with candid lack of +interest. Anthony laughed languidly.</p> + +<p>"I saw Miles some weeks ago," he said, "and he is still talking about my +'defection,' as he calls it. I couldn't convince him that I was merely +the counsel<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> for a weak case, and that I was always an agnostic at +heart."</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins lighted a cigar in silence. Then he nodded abruptly towards +the wall. "What's that noise?" he demanded, irritably.</p> + +<p>"That," replied Algarcife, "is a fiend in woman's form, who makes night +hideous. I can't begin to work until she sings herself hoarse, and she +doesn't do that until midnight. Verily, she is possessed of seven +devils, and singing devils at that."</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins was listening attentively. His irritability had vanished.</p> + +<p>"Why, it's Mariana!" he exclaimed. "Bless her pretty throat! An hour of +Mariana is worth all the spoken or unspoken thoughts of—of Marcus +Aurelius, to say nothing of Solomon."</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul closed his book and looked up gravely. "A worthy young woman," +he observed, "though a trifle fast. As for Solomon, his wisdom has been +greatly exaggerated."</p> + +<p>"Fast!" protested Mr. Nevins. "She's as fast as—as Mr. Paul—"</p> + +<p>"Your insinuation is absurd," returned Mr. Paul, stiffly. But Mr. Nevins +was not to be suppressed.</p> + +<p>"Then don't display your ignorance of such matters. As for this St. +Anthony, he thinks every woman who walks the New York streets a bleached +pattern of virtue. I don't believe he'd know a painted Jezebel unless +she wore a scarlet letter."</p> + +<p>Anthony turned upon him resentfully. "Confound it, Nevins," he said, "I +am not a born fool!"</p> + +<p>"Only an innocent," retorted Mr. Nevins, complacently.</p> + +<p>A resounding rap upon the panels of the door interrupted them. Mr. +Nevins rose.</p> + +<p>"That's Ardly," he said. "He and I are doing New York to-night."<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a></p> + +<p>Ardly came inside, and stood with his hand upon the door-knob.</p> + +<p>"Come on, Nevins," he said. "I've got to do a column on that new +<i>danseuse</i>. She dances like a midge, but, by Jove! she has a figure to +swear by—"</p> + +<p>"And escape perjury," added Mr. Nevins. "Mariana says it is false."</p> + +<p>"Mariana," replied Ardly, "is a sworn enemy to polite illusions. She +surveys the stage through a microscope situated upon the end of a +lorgnette. It is a mistake. One should never look at a woman through +glasses unless they be rose-colored ones. A man preserves this +principle, and his faith in plumpness and curves along with it; a woman +penetrates to the padding and powder. Come on, Nevins."</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins followed him into the hall, and then turned to look in again. +"Algarcife, won't you join us on a jolly little drunk? Won't you, Mr. +Paul?"</p> + +<p>When they had gone, and Mr. Paul had gone likewise, though upon a +different way, Anthony heated the coffee, drank two cups, and resumed +his work.</p> + +<p>"Taken collectively," he remarked, "the human race is a consummate +nuisance. What a deuced opportunity for work the last man will +have—only, most likely, he'll be an ass."</p> + +<p>The next day he passed Mariana on the stairs without seeing her. He was +returning from the college laboratory, and his mind was full of his +experiments. Later in the afternoon, when he watered his plants, he +turned his can, in absent-minded custom, upon the geranium, and saw that +there was a scarlet bloom among the leaves. The sight pleased him. It +was as if he had given sustenance to a famished life.</p> + +<p>But Mariana, engrossed in lesser things, had seen him upon the stairs +and upon the balcony. She still cherished an unreasonable resentment at +what she considered his trespass upon her individual rights; and<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> yet, +despite herself, the trenchant quality in the dark, massive-browed face +had not been without effect upon her. The ascetic self-repression that +chastened his lips, and the utter absence of emotion in the mental heat +of his glance tantalized her in its very unlikeness to her own nature. +She, who thrilled into responsive joy or gloom at reflected light or +shade, found her quick senses awake to each passing impression, and had +learned to recognize her neighbor's step upon the stair; while he, +wrapped in an intellectual trance, created his environment at will, and +was as oblivious of the girl at the other end of the fire-escape as he +was to the articles of furniture in his room.</p> + +<p>It was as if semi-barbarism, in all its exuberance of undisciplined +emotion, had converged with the highest type of modern civilization—the +civilization in which the flesh is degraded from its pedestal and forced +to serve as a jangled vehicle for the progress of the mind.</p> + +<p>The next night, as Algarcife stood at his window looking idly down upon +the street below, he heard the sound of a woman sobbing in the adjoining +room. His first impulse was to hasten in the direction from whence the +sound came. He curbed the impulse with a shake.</p> + +<p>"Hang it," he said, "it is no business of mine!"</p> + +<p>But the suppressed sobbing from the darkness beyond invited him with its +enlistment of his quick sympathies.</p> + +<p>The electric light, falling upon the fire-escape, cast inky shadows from +end to end. They formed themselves into dense outlines, which shivered +as if stirred by a phantom breeze.</p> + +<p>He turned and went back to his desk. Upon the table he had spread the +supper of which he intended partaking at eleven o'clock. For an unknown +reason he had conceived an aversion to the restaurant in the basement, +and seldom entered it. He slept late in the<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> day and worked at night, +and his meals were apt to be at irregular hours.</p> + +<p>He wrote a line, and rose and went back to the window. For an instant he +stood and listened, then stepped out upon the fire-escape and walked +across the shivering shadows towards the open window beyond.</p> + +<p>Upon the little door beneath the window a girl was leaning, her head +bowed upon her outstretched arm. The light in the room beyond was low, +but he could see distinctly the slight outlines of her figure and the +confusion of her heavy hair. She was sobbing softly.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," he said, the sympathetic quality in his voice +dominating, "but I am sure that I can help you."</p> + +<p>His forcible self-confidence exercised a compelling effect. The girl +lifted her head and looked at him. Tears stood in her eyes, and as the +electric light caught the clear drops they cast out scintillant flashes. +Against the dim interior her head, with its nimbus of hair, had the +droop and poise of the head of a medięval saint.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but you don't know how unhappy I am!" she said.</p> + +<p>He spoke as he would have spoken to Mr. Paul in the same circumstances. +"You have no one to whom you can go?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Then tell me about it."</p> + +<p>His tone was that in which a physician might inquire the condition of a +patient's digestion. It was absolutely devoid of the recognition of sex.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I have worked so hard!" said Mariana.</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"And I hoped to sing in opera, and—Morani tells me that—it will be +impossible."</p> + +<p>"Ah!" In the peculiar power of his voice the exclamation had the warmth +of a handshake.<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a></p> + +<p>Mariana rested her chin upon her clasped hands and looked at him. "He +says it must be a music-hall—or—or nothing," she added.</p> + +<p>He was silent for a moment. He felt that it was a case in which his +sympathy could be exceeded only by his ignorance. "And this is why you +are unhappy?" he asked. "Is there nothing else?"</p> + +<p>She gave a little sob. "I am tired," she said. "My allowance hasn't +come—and I missed my dinner, and I am—hungry."</p> + +<p>Algarcife responded with relieved cheerfulness.</p> + +<p>"Why, we are prepared for that," he said. "I was just sitting down to my +supper, and you will join me."</p> + +<p>In his complete estrangement from the artificial restraints of society, +it seemed to him the simplest of possible adjustments of the difficulty. +He felt that his intervention had not been wholly without beneficial +results.</p> + +<p>Mariana glanced swiftly up into his face.</p> + +<p>"Come!" he said; and she rose and followed him.<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-a" id="CHAPTER_V-a"></a>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<p>As Mariana crossed the threshold the light dazzled her, and she raised +her hand to her eyes. Then she lowered it and looked at him between +half-closed lids. It was a trick of mannerism which heightened the +subtlety of her smile. In the deep shadows cast by her lashes her eyes +were untranslatable.</p> + +<p>"You are very hospitable," she said.</p> + +<p>"A virtue which covers a multitude of sins," he answered, pleasantly. +"If you will make yourself at home, I'll fix things up a bit."</p> + +<p>He opened the doors of the cupboard and took out a plate and a cup and +saucer, which he placed before her. "I am sorry I can't offer you a +napkin," he said, apologetically, "but they allow me only one a day, and +I had that at luncheon."</p> + +<p>Mariana laughed merrily. The effects of recent tears were visible only +in the added lustre of her glance and the pallor of her face. She had +grown suddenly mirthful.</p> + +<p>"Don't let's be civilized!" she pleaded. "I abhor civilization. It +invented so many unnecessary evils. Barbarians didn't want napkins; they +wanted only food. I am a barbarian."</p> + +<p>Algarcife cut the cold chicken and passed her the bread and butter.</p> + +<p>"Why, none of us are really civilized, you know," he returned, +dogmatically. "True, we have a thin layer of hypocrisy, which we call +civilization. It prompts us to sugar-coat the sins which our forefathers +swallowed<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a> in the rough; that is all. It is purely artificial. In a +hundred thousand years it may get soaked in, and then the artificial +refinement will become real and civilization will set in."</p> + +<p>Mariana leaned forward with a pretty show of interest. She did not quite +understand what he meant, but she adapted herself instinctively to +whatever he might mean.</p> + +<p>"And then?" she questioned.</p> + +<p>"And then we will realize that to be civilized is to shrink as +instinctively from inflicting as from enduring pain. Sympathy is merely +a quickening of the imagination, in which state we are able to propel +ourselves mentally into conditions other than our own." His manner was +aggressive in its self-assertiveness. Then he smiled, regarded her with +critical keenness, and lifted the coffee-pot.</p> + +<p>"I sha'n't give you coffee," he said, "because it is not good for you. +You need rest. Why, your hands are trembling! You shall have milk +instead."</p> + +<p>"I don't like milk," returned Mariana, fretfully. "I'd rather have +coffee, please. I want to be stimulated."</p> + +<p>"But not artificially," he responded. His gaze softened. "This is my +party, you know," he said, "and it isn't polite to ask for what is not +offered you. Come here."</p> + +<p>He had risen and was standing beside his desk. Mariana went up to him. +The power of his will had enthralled her, and she felt strangely +submissive. Her coquetry she recognized as an unworthy weapon, and it +was discarded. She grew suddenly shy and nervous, and stood before him +in the flushed timidity of a young feminine thing.</p> + +<p>He had taken a bottle from a shelf and was measuring some dark liquid +into a wine-glass. As Mariana reached him he took her hand with frank +kindliness.<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> In his cool and composed touch there was not so much as a +suggestion of sexual difference. The possibility that, as a woman, she +possessed an attraction for him, as a man, was ignored in its entirety.</p> + +<p>"You have cried half the evening?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Drink this." His tone was peremptory.</p> + +<p>He gave her the glass, watching her as she looked into it, with the +gleam of a smile in his intent regard. Mariana hesitated an instant. +Then she drank it with a slight grimace.</p> + +<p>"Your hospitality has taken an unpleasant turn," she remarked. "You +might at least give me something to destroy the taste."</p> + +<p>He laughed and pointed to a plate of grapes, and they sat down to +supper.</p> + +<p>The girl glanced about the room critically. Then she looked at her +companion.</p> + +<p>"I don't quite like your room," she observed. "It is grewsome."</p> + +<p>"It is a work-shop," he answered. "But your dislike is pure nonsense. +Skulls and cross-bones are as natural in their way as flesh and blood. +Nothing in nature is repellent to the mind that follows her."</p> + +<p>Mariana repressed a shudder. "I have no doubt that toads are natural +enough in their way," she returned, "but I don't like the way of toads."</p> + +<p>Anthony met her serious protest lightly.</p> + +<p>"You are a beautiful subject for morbid psychology," he said. "Why, +toads are eminently respectable creatures, and if we regard them without +prejudice, we will discover that, as a point of justice, they have an +equal right with ourselves to the possession of this planet. Only, right +is not might, you know."</p> + +<p>"But I love beautiful things," protested Mariana. She looked at him +wistfully, like a child desiring approbation. There was an amber light +in her eyes.<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a></p> + +<p>He smiled upon her.</p> + +<p>"So do I," he made answer; "but to me each one of those nice little +specimens is a special revelation of beauty."</p> + +<p>The girl broke her bread daintily. "You misunderstand me," she said, +with flattering earnestness and a deprecatory inflection in her voice. +Her head drooped sideways on its slender throat. There was a virginal +illusiveness about her that tinged with seriousness the lightness of her +words. "Surely you love art," she said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I like painting, if that is what you mean," he answered, +carelessly, though her image in his eyes was relieved against a sudden +warmth. "That is, I like Raphael and Murillo and a few of the modern +French fellows. As for music, I don't know one note from another. The +only air I ever caught was 'In the Fragrant Summer-time,' and that was +an accident. I thought it was 'Maryland.'"</p> + +<p>Mariana did not smile. She shrank from him, and he felt as if he had +struck her.</p> + +<p>"It isn't worth your thinking of," he said, "nor am I."</p> + +<p>Mariana protested with her restless hands.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but I can't help thinking of it," she answered. "It is dreadful. +Why, such things are a part of my religion!"</p> + +<p>He returned her startled gaze with one of amusement.</p> + +<p>"I might supply you with an alphabetical dictionary of my peculiar +vices. An unabridged edition would serve for a criminal catalogue as +well. A—Acrimony, Adhesiveness, Atheism, Aggressiveness, Aggravation, +Ambition, Artfulness—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, stop!" cried Mariana. "You bewilder me."</p> + +<p>He leaned back in his chair and fixed his intent gaze upon her. His eyes +were so deeply set as to be almost<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> indistinguishable, but in the spell +of lamplight she saw that the pupils differed in color, one having a +hazel cast, while the other was of a decided gray.</p> + +<p>"Why, I thought you displayed an interest in the subject!" he rejoined. +"You lack the genius of patience."</p> + +<p>"Patience," returned Mariana, with a swift change of manner, "is only +lack of vitality. I haven't an atom of it."</p> + +<p>A shade of the nervous irritability, which appeared from apparently no +provocation, was in his voice as he answered:</p> + +<p>"There is nothing fate likes better than to drill it into us. And it is +not without its usefulness. If patience is the bugbear of youth, it is +the panacea of middle age. We learn to sit and wait as we learn to +accept passivity for passion and indifference for belief. The worst of +it is that it is a lesson which none of us may skip and most of us are +forced to learn by heart." He spoke slowly, his voice softened. Beneath +the veneering of philosophic asceticism, the scarlet veins of primeval +nature were still palpitant. The chill lines of self-restraint in his +face might, in the whirlwind of strong passions, become ingulfed in +chaos.</p> + +<p>With an effort Mariana threw off the spell of his personality. She +straightened herself with an energetic movement. From the childlike her +manner passed to the imperious. Her head poised itself proudly, her eyes +darkened, her lips lost their pliant curve and grew audacious.</p> + +<p>"That is as grewsome as your room," she said. "Let's talk of pleasant +things."</p> + +<p>The changes in her mystified Algarcife. He regarded her gravely. "Of +yourself, or of myself?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"The first would only display your ignorance. I<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> should prefer the +latter. Begin, please." She had grown vivid.</p> + +<p>He spoke jestingly. "Here goes. Name, Algarcife. Christened Anthony. +Age, twenty-seven years, three weeks, ten days. Height, five feet eleven +inches. Complexion, anęmic. Physique, bad. Disposition, worse. Manners, +still worse. Does the exactness of my information satisfy you?"</p> + +<p>"No;" she enveloped him in her smile. "You haven't told me anything I +want to know. I could have guessed your height, and your manners I have +tested. What were you doing before I came in?"</p> + +<p>"Cursing my luck."</p> + +<p>"And before that?" She leaned forward eagerly.</p> + +<p>"Dogging at a theory of heredity which will reconcile Darwin's gemmules, +Weismann's germ-plasm, and Galton's stirp."</p> + +<p>She wrinkled her brows in perplexity. Her show of interest had not fled. +A woman who cannot talk of the things she knows nothing about might as +well be a man.</p> + +<p>"And you will do it?" she asked. He had a sudden consciousness that no +one had ever been quite so in sympathy with him as this elusive little +woman with the changeable eyes.</p> + +<p>"Well, I hardly think so," he said. "At any rate, I expect to discover +what Spencer would call the germ of truth in each one of them, and then +I suppose I'll formulate a theory of my own which will contain the best +in all of them."</p> + +<p>Her manner did not betray her ignorance of his meaning.</p> + +<p>"And you will explain it all to me when it is finished?" she asked.</p> + +<p>His smile cast a light upon her.</p> + +<p>"If you wish it," he answered, "but I had no idea that you cared for +such things."<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a></p> + +<p>"You did not know me," she responded, reproachfully. "I am very, very +ignorant, but I want so much to learn." Then her voice regained its +brightness. "And you have read all these books?" she questioned.</p> + +<p>He followed with his eyes her swift gestures.</p> + +<p>"Those," he answered, pointing to the north shelves, "I have skimmed. +Those behind you, I have read; and those," he nodded towards his right, +"I know word for word."</p> + +<p>"And what do you do?" The delicacy of her manner imbued the question +with unconscious flattery.</p> + +<p>"I—oh, I eke out an existence with the assistance of the Bodley +College."</p> + +<p>"What have you to do with it? Oh, I beg your pardon! I had forgotten we +were almost strangers."</p> + +<p>He answered, naturally.</p> + +<p>"It is my unhappy fate to endeavor to instil a few brains and a good +deal of information into the heads of sixty-one young females."</p> + +<p>"And don't you like them?" queried Mariana, eagerly.</p> + +<p>"I do not."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"What an inquisitor you are, to be sure!"</p> + +<p>"But tell me," she pleaded.</p> + +<p>"Why?" he demanded, in his turn.</p> + +<p>She lowered her lashes, looking at her quiet hands.</p> + +<p>"Because I want so much to know."</p> + +<p>His smiling eyes were probing her. "Tell me why."</p> + +<p>She raised her lashes suddenly and returned his gaze. There was a +wistful sincerity in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I wish to know," she said, slowly, "so that I may not be like them."</p> + +<p>For a moment he regarded her silently. Then he spoke. "My reasons are +valid. They giggle; they flirt; and they put candy in my pockets."</p> + +<p>"And you don't like women at all?"<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a></p> + +<p>"I like nice, sensible women, who wear square-toed shoes, and who don't +distort themselves with corsets."</p> + +<p>The girl put out her pretty foot in its pointed and high-heeled slipper. +Then she shook her head with mock seriousness.</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose you think that very sensible?" she remarked.</p> + +<p>He looked at it critically.</p> + +<p>"Well, hardly. No, it isn't in the least sensible, but it—it is very +small, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," responded Mariana, eagerly. She felt a sudden desire to flaunt +her graces in his face. He was watching the play of her hands, but she +became conscious, with an aggrieved surprise, that he was not thinking +of them.</p> + +<p>"But you don't like just mere—mere women?" she asked, gravely.</p> + +<p>"Are you a mere—mere woman?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Then I like them."</p> + +<p>The radiance that overflowed her eyes startled him.</p> + +<p>"But you aren't just a mere—mere man," she volunteered.</p> + +<p>"But I am—a good deal merer, in fact, than many others. I am a shape of +clay."</p> + +<p>"Then I like shapes of clay," said Mariana.</p> + +<p>For an instant they looked at each other in silence. In Mariana's +self-conscious eyes there was a soft suffusion of shyness; in his +subjective ones there was the quickening of an involuntary interest.</p> + +<p>"Then we agree most amicably," he remarked, quietly. As she rose he +stood facing her. "It is time for your sleep and my work," he added, and +held out his hand.</p> + +<p>As Mariana placed her own within it she flashed whitely with a sudden +resentment of his cool dismissal.<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a></p> + +<p>"Good-night!" she said.</p> + +<p>He looked down at her as she lingered before him. "I want to be of use +to you," he said, frankly, "but things have an unfortunate way of +slipping my memory. If at any time I can serve you, just come to the +fire-escape and call me."</p> + +<p>"No," answered the girl, pettishly, "certainly not."</p> + +<p>His brow wrinkled. "That was rude, I know," he rejoined, "but I meant it +honestly."</p> + +<p>"I have no doubt of it."</p> + +<p>As she turned to go he detained her with a compelling touch.</p> + +<p>"You aren't angry?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"And you forgive me?"</p> + +<p>"I have nothing to forgive. Indeed, I am grateful for your charity."</p> + +<p>He surveyed her in puzzled scrutiny. "Well, I am sure I sha'n't forget +you," he said. "Yes, I am quite sure of it."</p> + +<p>"What a marvellous memory!" exclaimed Mariana, crossly, and she stepped +out upon the fire-escape.</p> + +<p>"Good-night!" he called.</p> + +<p>"Good-night!" she responded, and entered her room.</p> + +<p>"He is very rude," she whispered as she closed the shutters. In the +half-light she undressed and sat in her night-gown, brushing the heavy +tangles of her hair. Then she lighted the flame before the little altar +and said her prayers; kneeling with bowed head. As she turned off the +light she spoke again. "I am not sure that I don't like rudeness," she +added.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Algarcife had watched her vanish into the shadows, a smile +lightening the gravity of his face. When she had disappeared he turned +to his desk. With his singular powers of concentration, he had not taken +up his pen before all impressions save<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> those relating to the subject in +hand had been banished from his mind. His expression was buoyant and +alert. Turning over his papers, he passed with a sense of reinvigoration +to the matter before him.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I think, after all, that a strongly modified theory of pangenesis +may survive," he said.<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-a" id="CHAPTER_VI-a"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<p>At the extreme end of the corridor upon which Mariana's door opened +there was a small apartment occupied by three young women from the +South, who were bent upon aims of art.</p> + +<p>They had moved in a month before, and had celebrated a room-warming by +asking Mariana and several of the other lodgers to a feast of beer and +pretzels. Since then the girl had seen them occasionally. She knew that +they lived in a semi-poverty-stricken Bohemia, and that the pretty one +with pink cheeks and a ragged and uncurled fringe of hair, whose name +was Freighley, worked in Mr. Nevins's studio and did chrysanthemums in +oils. She had once heard Mr. Nevins remark that she was a pupil worth +having, and upon asking, "Has she talent?" had met with, "Not a bit, but +she's pretty."</p> + +<p>"Then it is a pity she isn't a model," said Mariana.</p> + +<p>"An example of the eternal contrariness of things," responded Mr. +Nevins. "All the good-looking ones want to paint and all the ugly ones +want to be painted." Then he rumpled his flaxen head. "In this +confounded century everything is in the wrong place, from a woman to her +waist-line."</p> + +<p>After this Mariana accompanied Miss Freighley on students' day to the +Metropolitan Museum, and watched her make a laborious copy of "The +Christian Martyr." Upon returning she was introduced to Miss Hill and +Miss Oliver, who shared the apartment, and was told to make herself at +home.<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a></p> + +<p>Then, one rainy Saturday afternoon there was a knock at her door, and, +opening it, she found Miss Freighley upon the outside.</p> + +<p>"It is our mending afternoon," she said, "and we want you to come and +sit with us. If you have any sewing to do, just bring it."</p> + +<p>Mariana picked up her work-basket, and, finding that her thimble was +missing, began rummaging in a bureau-drawer.</p> + +<p>"I never mend anything until I go to put it on," she said. "It saves so +much trouble."</p> + +<p>Then she found her thimble and followed Miss Freighley into the hall.</p> + +<p>Miss Freighley laughed in a pretty, inconsequential way. She had a soft, +monotonous voice, and spoke with a marked elimination of vowel sounds.</p> + +<p>"We take the last Saturday of the month," she said. "Only Juliet and I +do Gerty's things, because she can't sew, and she cleans our palettes +and brushes in return."</p> + +<p>She swung open the door of the apartment, and they entered a room which +served as studio and general lounging-room in one.</p> + +<p>A tall girl, sitting upon the hearth-rug beside a heap of freshly +laundered garments, stood up and held out a limp, thin hand.</p> + +<p>"I told Carrie she would find you," she said, speaking with a slight +drawl and an affected listlessness.</p> + +<p>She was angular, with a consumptive chest and narrow shoulders. She wore +her hair—which was vivid, like flame, with golden ripples in the +undulations—coiled confusedly upon the crown of her head. Her name was +Juliet Hill. A mistaken but well-known colorist had once traced in her a +likeness to Rossetti's "Beata Beatrix." The tracing had resulted in the +spoiling of a woman without the making of an artist.</p> + +<p>Mariana threw herself upon a divan near the hearth-rug and looked down +upon the pile of clothes.<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a></p> + +<p>"What a lot of them!" she observed, sympathetically.</p> + +<p>Miss Hill drew a stocking from the heap and ran her darning-egg into the +heel to locate a hole.</p> + +<p>"It is, rather," she responded, "but we never mend until everything we +have is in rags. I couldn't find a single pair of stockings this +morning, so I knew it was time."</p> + +<p>"If you had looked into Gerty's bureau-drawer you might have found +them," said Miss Freighley, seating herself upon the end of the divan. +"Gerty never marks her things, and somehow she gets all of ours. +Regularly once a month I institute a search through her belongings, and +discover more of my clothes than I knew I possessed. Here, give me that +night-gown, Juliet. The laundress tore every bit of lace off the sleeve. +What a shame!"</p> + +<p>Mariana removed a guitar from the couch and leaned back among the +pillows, glancing about the room. The walls were covered with coarse +hangings, decorated in vague outlines of flying cranes and vaguer +rushes. Here and there were tacked groups of unframed water-colors and +drawings in charcoal—all crude and fanciful and feminine. Upon a small +shelf above the door stood a plaster bust, and upon it a dejected and +moth-eaten raven—the relic of a past passion for taxidermy. In the +centre of the room were several easels, a desk, with Webster's +Unabridged for a foot-stool, and a collection of palettes, half-used +tubes of paint, and unassorted legs and arms in plaster.</p> + +<p>"How do you ever find anything?" asked Mariana, leaning upon her arm.</p> + +<p>"We don't," responded a small, dark girl, coming from the tiny kitchen +with a dish of cooling caramels in her hand; "we don't find, we just +lose." She placed the dish upon the table and drew up a chair. "I would +mortgage a share of my life if I could turn my old mammy loose in here +for an hour."<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a></p> + +<p>"Gerty used to be particular," explained Miss Freighley; "but it is a +vicious habit, and we broke her of it. Even now it attacks her at +intervals, and she gets out a duster and goes to work."</p> + +<p>"I can't write in a mess," interrupted Miss Oliver, a shade ruefully. "I +haven't written a line since I came to New York." Then she sighed. "I +only wish I hadn't written a word before coming. At home I thought I was +a genius; now I know I am a fool."</p> + +<p>"I have felt the same way," said Mariana, sympathetically, "but it +doesn't last. The first stage-manager I went to I almost fell at his +feet; the next almost fell at mine. Neither of them gave me a place, but +they taught me the value of men."</p> + +<p>"I don't think it's worth learning," returned Miss Oliver, passing her +caramels. "Try one, and see if they are hard."</p> + +<p>"Poor Gerty!" drawled Miss Hill, watching Mariana bite the caramel. "She +faces editors and all kinds of bad characters. Her views of life are +depressing."</p> + +<p>"They are not views," remonstrated Miss Oliver, "they are facts. Facts +are always depressing, except when they are maddening."</p> + +<p>"I have begged her to leave off writing and take to water-color or china +painting," said Miss Freighley, cheerfully, "but she won't."</p> + +<p>"How can she?" asked Mariana.</p> + +<p>"Of course I can't," retorted Miss Oliver, shortly. "I never had a +paint-brush in my hand in my life, except when I was cleaning it."</p> + +<p>Miss Freighley laid her sewing aside and stretched her arms.</p> + +<p>"It only requires a little determination," she said, "and I have it. I +got tired of Alabama. I couldn't come to New York without an object, so +I invented one. It was as good as any other, and I stuck to it."<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a></p> + +<p>Miss Hill shook her head, and her glorious hair shone like amber.</p> + +<p>"Art is serious," she said, slowly. She was just entering the life-class +at the Art League.</p> + +<p>"But the artist is not," returned Miss Freighley, "and one can be an +artist without having any art. I am. They think at home I am learning to +paint pictures to go on the parlor wall in place of the portraits that +were burned in the war. But I am not. I am here because I love New York, +and—"</p> + +<p>"Claude Nevins," concluded Miss Oliver.</p> + +<p>Mariana looked up with interest. "How nice!" she said. "He told me you +were awfully pretty."</p> + +<p>Miss Freighley blushed and laughed.</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" she rejoined; "but Gerty is so faithful to her young fellow +down South that it has gone to her brain."</p> + +<p>"I am faithful because I have no opportunity for faithlessness," sang +Gerty to an accompaniment she was picking upon the guitar. "I have been +in love one—two—six times since I came to New York. Once it was with +an editor, who accepted my first story. He was short and thick and +gray-haired, but I loved him. Once it was with that dark, ill-fed man +who rooms next to Mariana. He almost knocked me down upon the stairway +and forgot to apologize. I have forgotten the honorable others, as the +Japanese say, but I know it is six times, because whenever it happened I +made a little cross-mark on my desk, and there are six of them."</p> + +<p>"It must have been Mr. Ardly," said Mariana. "I never look at him +without thinking what an adorable lover he would make."</p> + +<p>"He has such nice hands," said Miss Oliver. "I do like a man with nice +hands."</p> + +<p>"And he is clean-shaven," added Miss Freighley. "I detest a man with a +beard."<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a></p> + +<p>Miss Hill crossed her thin ankles upon the hearth.</p> + +<p>"Love should be taken seriously," she said, with a wistful look in her +dark eyes.</p> + +<p>Miss Freighley's pretty, inconsequent laugh broke in.</p> + +<p>"That is one of Juliet's platitudes," she said. "But, my dear, it +shouldn't be taken seriously. Indeed, it shouldn't be taken at +all—except in cases of extreme <i>ennui</i>, and then in broken doses. The +women who take men seriously—and taking love means taking men, of +course—sit down at home and grow shapeless and have babies galore. To +grow shapeless is the fate of the woman who takes sentiment seriously. +It is a more convincing argument against it than all the statistics of +the divorce court—"</p> + +<p>"For the Lord's sake, Carrie, beware of woman's rights," protested Miss +Oliver. "That is exactly what Mrs. Simpson said in her lecture on 'Our +Tyrant, Man.' Why, those dear old aunts of yours in Alabama have +inserted an additional clause in their Litany: 'From intemperance, evil +desires, and woman's suffrage, good Lord deliver us!' They are grounded +in the belief that the new woman is an <i>édition de luxe</i> of the devil."</p> + +<p>Mariana rose and shook out her skirts. "I must go," she said, "and you +haven't done a bit of work."</p> + +<p>"So we haven't," replied Miss Hill, picking up her needle. "But take +some caramels—do."</p> + +<p>Mariana took a caramel and went out into the hall. Algarcife's door was +open, and he was standing upon the threshold talking to Claude Nevins.</p> + +<p>As Mariana passed, Nevins smiled and called to her:</p> + +<p>"I say, Miss Musin, here is a vandal who complains that you make night +hideous."</p> + +<p>Algarcife scowled.</p> + +<p>"Nevins is a fool," he retorted, "and if he doesn't know it, he ought to +be told so."<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a></p> + +<p>"Thanks," returned Nevins, amiably, "but I have long since learned not +to believe anything I hear."</p> + +<p>Anthony's irritation increased. "I should have thought the presumptive +evidence sufficient to overcome any personal bias," he replied.</p> + +<p>Nevins spread out his hands with an imperturbable shrug.</p> + +<p>"My dear fellow, I never found my conclusions upon presumptive evidence. +Had I done so, I should hold life to be a hollow mockery—whereas I am +convinced that it is a deuced solid one."</p> + +<p>"You are so bad-tempered—both of you," said Mariana; "but, Mr. +Algarcife, do you really object to my singing? I can't keep silent, you +know."</p> + +<p>Algarcife smiled.</p> + +<p>"I never supposed that you could," he answered. "And as for music, I had +as soon listen to you as to—to Patti."</p> + +<p>"Not that he values your accomplishments more, but Patti's less," +observed Nevins, placidly.</p> + +<p>"On the other hand, I should say that Miss Musin would make decidedly +the less noise," said Anthony.</p> + +<p>"He's a brute, isn't he, Mariana?" asked Nevins—and added, "Now I never +said you made anything hideous, did I?"</p> + +<p>Mariana laughed, looking a little vexed. "If you wouldn't always repeat +everything you hear other people say, it would be wiser," she responded, +tartly.</p> + +<p>"Such is the reward of virtue," sighed Nevins. "All my life I have been +held as responsible for other people's speeches as for my own. And all +from a conscientious endeavor to let my neighbors see themselves as +others see them—"</p> + +<p>Algarcife smiled good-humoredly. "Whatever bad qualities Nevins may +possess," he said, "he has at least the courage of his convictions—"</p> + +<p>Nevins shrugged his shoulders.<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a></p> + +<p>"I don't know about the convictions," he rejoined, "but I've got the +courage all right." Then he looked at Mariana. "Is that an implement of +housewifery that I see?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"I have been to a darning-party," she answered, "but we didn't darn +anything—not even circumstances."</p> + +<p>"Lucky circumstances!" ejaculated Nevins. Then he lowered his voice. "I +should not have believed it of you," he protested; "to attend a +darning-party, and to leave not only me, but my socks, outside."</p> + +<p>Mariana flushed angrily.</p> + +<p>"You are insufferable," she said, "and you haven't a particle of +tact—not a particle. Only yesterday I heard you tell Mr. Morris that +his head looked like an advertisement for sapolio, and the day before +you told Miss Freighley that I said she didn't know how to dress her +hair."</p> + +<p>"It was true," said Nevins. "You can't make a liar of me, Mariana."</p> + +<p>"I wish you wouldn't call me Mariana," she retorted; and he went upon +his way with a lament.</p> + +<p>As Mariana laid her hand upon her door-knob she looked at Anthony.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Algarcife," she said, "do you really mind my singing so very much?"</p> + +<p>From the end of the corridor Nevins's voice was heard chanting:</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;">"How fickle women are,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">Fickle as falling star."</span></td></tr> +</table> + +<p>"I wish that Nevins would attend to his own affairs," Algarcife +responded. "As for me, you may dance a break-down every night of your +life, and, if it amuses you, I'll grin and bear it."<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-a" id="CHAPTER_VII-a"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Wait and see," he responded, shortly, and the fraternity man had waited +and had seen.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It is a sheer waste of time," said John Driscoll, of the Senior class. +"You haven't learned the first principle<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> 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."</p> + +<p>Algarcife laughed. "I am going to reform," he said. "I am not enough of +an artist to see the ęsthetic values of vice. Let's become decent. It is +more economical."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Then he took a prominent part in a debating society. With a readiness +which his friends declared to spring<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> +not then gained its varied range and richness of expression.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It can't be," he said. "I give it up."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean it?" he asked, slowly—"that you give up your faith?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>The other flinched suddenly. He put out one frail, white hand as if in +protest.</p> + +<p>"I—I cannot believe it," he said.<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a></p> + +<p>"And yet I have been honest."</p> + +<p>"Honest! Yes, I suppose so. Honest—" he lifted the paper from the table +and unfolded it mechanically. "And yet you could write this?"</p> + +<p>Anthony shook his head impatiently. "I was but a special pleader with +the side assigned, and you knew it."</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"They were words. The case was given me, and I defended it as a lawyer +defends a client. What else could I do?"</p> + +<p>Father Speares sighed and passed his hand across his brow.</p> + +<p>"It is not the first disappointment of my life," he said, "but it is the +greatest."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But you are young. The pendulum may swing back—"</p> + +<p>"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,<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> 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?"</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"And may God help you!" said the elder man; and then, "Where will you +go?"</p> + +<p>"To Egypt—to India—to the old civilizations."</p> + +<p>"And then?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know. I shall work and I shall succeed—with or without the +help of God."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>She spoke impulsively.</p> + +<p>"I have been watching you," she said.</p> + +<p>He looked at her in perplexity.<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a></p> + +<p>"Indeed! And what have you discovered?"</p> + +<p>"I discovered that you are a gentleman."</p> + +<p>He laughed outright.</p> + +<p>"Your powers of intuition are positively miraculous," he replied.</p> + +<p>She upbraided him with a glance.</p> + +<p>"You are unkind," she said.</p> + +<p>"Am I?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"You laugh at me," she added. "You were kinder to that woman—"</p> + +<p>He broke in upon her, perplexity giving place to amusement.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" he said; "so that is what you mean! Why, if you were to lose your +hat, I shouldn't laugh, I assure you."</p> + +<p>Mariana walked on silently. Her eyes were bent upon the gray sidewalk, +there was a faint flush in her face. A line of men seated upon the +benches beside the way surveyed her with interest.</p> + +<p>"Miss Musin!"</p> + +<p>Her face quickened.</p> + +<p>"I have a confession to make."</p> + +<p>She looked up inquiringly. A finger of sunlight pierced the branches of +an elm and pointed to her upraised face.</p> + +<p>"I have rather bad manners," he went on. "It is a failing which you must +accept as you accept the color of my hair—"</p> + +<p>Mariana smiled.</p> + +<p>"I say just what I think," he added.</p> + +<p>Mariana frowned.</p> + +<p>"That is what I complain of," she responded. Then she laughed so +brightly that a tiny child, toddling with a toy upon the walk, looked up +and clapped its hands.<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a></p> + +<p>His eyes warmed.</p> + +<p>"But you will take me for better or for worse?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Could it be better?" she asked, demurely.</p> + +<p>"That is a matter of opinion."</p> + +<p>They left the park and turned into a cross-town street. The distant +blocks sloped down into the blue blur of the river, from which several +gaunt, gray masts rose like phantom wrecks evolved from the mist. Beyond +them the filmy outline of the opposite shore was revealed.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Mariana stopped.</p> + +<p>"This is Morani's, and I must go in." She held out her hand.</p> + +<p>"How is the voice?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I am nursing it. Some day you shall hear it."</p> + +<p>"I have heard it," he responded.</p> + +<p>She smiled.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I forgot. You are next door. Well, some day you shall hear it in +opera."</p> + +<p>"Shall I?"</p> + +<p>"And I shall sing Elsa with Alvary. My God! I would give ten years of my +life for that—to sing with Alvary."</p> + +<p>He smiled at the warmth in her words and, as he smiled he became +conscious that her artistic passion ignited the fire of a more material +passion in himself. A fugitive desire seized him to possess the woman +before him, body and brain. From the quivering of his pulses he knew +that the physical nature he had drugged had stirred in response to a +passing appeal.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," said Mariana. She tripped lightly up the brown-stone steps. +As she opened the outer door she turned with a smile and a nod. Then the +door closed and he went on his way. But the leaping of his pulses was +not appeased.<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-a" id="CHAPTER_VIII-a"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<p>One morning, several days later, Mariana, looking from her window, saw +Anthony standing upon the fire-escape. He had thrown a handful of crumbs +to a swarm of noisy sparrows quarrelling about his feet.</p> + +<p>As he stood there with the morning sunlight flashing upon his face and +gilding the dark abundance of his hair, the singularly mystic beauty of +his appearance was brought into bold relief. It was a beauty which +contained no suggestion of physical supremacy. He seemed the survival of +a lost type—of those purified prophets of old who walked with God and +trampled upon the flesh which was His handiwork. It was the striking +contrast between the intellectual tenor of his mind and its physical +expression which emphasized his personality. To the boldest advance in +scientific progress he had the effect of uniting a suggestion of that +poetized mysticism which constitutes the charm of a remote past. With +the addition of the yellow robe and a beggar's bowl, he might have been +transformed into one of the Enlightened of nigh on three thousand years +ago, and have followed the Blessed One upon his pilgrimage towards +Nirvana. The modernity of his mind was almost tantalizing in its +inconsistency with his external aspect.</p> + +<p>Mariana, looking through the open window, smiled unconsciously. Anthony +glanced up, saw her, and nodded.</p> + +<p>"Good-morning," he called. "Won't you come out and help quiet these +rogues?"<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a></p> + +<p>Mariana opened the little door beneath the window and stepped outside. +She looked shy and girlish, and the flutter with which she greeted him +had a quaint suggestion of flattery.</p> + +<p>He came towards her, and they stood together beside the railing. Beneath +them the noise of trade and traffic went on tumultuously. Overhead the +sky was of a still, intense blueness, the horizon flecked by several +church-spires, which rose sharply against the burning remoteness. Across +the tenement roofs lines of drying garments fluttered like banners.</p> + +<p>Mariana, in her cotton gown of dull blue, cast a slender shadow across +the fire-escape. In the morning light her eyes showed gray and limpid. +The sallow tones of her skin were exaggerated, and the peculiar harmony +of hair and brows and complexion was strongly marked. She was looking +her plainest, and she knew it.</p> + +<p>But Anthony did not. He had seen her, perhaps, half a dozen times, and +upon each occasion he had discovered his previous conceptions of her to +be erroneous. Her extreme mobility of mood and manner at once perplexed +and attracted him. Yesterday he had resolved her character into a +compound of surface emotions. Now he told himself that she was cool and +calm and sweetly reasonable.</p> + +<p>"I am glad you like sparrows," she said, "because nobody else does, and, +somehow, it doesn't seem fair. You do like them, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I believe," he answered, "that I have two passions beyond the usual +number with which man is supplied—a passion for books and a passion for +animals. I can't say I have a special regard for sparrows, but I like +them. They are hardy little fellows, though a trifle pugnacious, and +they have learned the value of co-operation."</p> + +<p>"I had a canary," remarked Mariana, with pathos,<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> "but it died. +Everything that belongs to me always dies, sooner or later."</p> + +<p>He laughed, looking at her with quizzical humor. "Do you expect them to +escape the common fate?" he demanded; and then: "If there is anything +that could give me an attack of horrors sooner than a dancing dog—and +there isn't—it would be a bird in a cage. I left my last lodgings +because my neighbor kept a mocking-bird outside of her window. If it had +been a canary I might have endured it, but I knew that if I stayed there +a week longer I should break in and set that bird free. I used to hear +it at night beating itself against the cage."</p> + +<p>"Oh, hush!" said Mariana, putting her hands to her ears. She wondered +vaguely at his peculiar sensitiveness of sympathy. It was a type of +manhood that she had not before encountered—one as unlike the jovial, +fox-hunting heroes of her childish days as mind is unlike matter. She +remembered that among them such expressions would have been regarded as +a mark of effeminacy and ruthlessly laughed to scorn. She even +remembered that her own father had denounced a prohibition of +prize-fighting as "mawkish rot." This eccentric type of nervous vigor, +in which all remnants of semi-barbarism were apparently extinguished, +possessed a fascination for her in its very strangeness. In his +character all those active virtues around which her youthful romances +were woven held no place. Patriotism was modified into a sense of +general humanity; chivalry was tempered into commonplace politeness. She +did not know that the force which attracted her was but a dominant +mentality; that where the mind holds sway the character is modified +accordingly. With a great expenditure of nerve force those attributes +which result from physical hardihood occupy a less prominent part. In +Anthony she beheld, without knowing it, a forced and abnormal result of +existing<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> conditions. Nature often foreshadows a coming civilization by +an advance-guard of individuals. As a supreme test she places a century +before his time the victim of her experiments in vivisection. And a +character that might have fitted with uncut edges into the circle of +existence, had he but been permitted to insert himself at the proper +moment, has often been trampled into nothingness by the incessant trend +of the inopportune. The priest of the coming generation is the pariah of +the present, and the dogma of to-morrow the heresy of to-day.</p> + +<p>To Mariana's ignorant eyes Anthony seemed one in whom passion had been +annihilated. In reality it was only smothered beneath the weight of a +strenuous will. Let the pressure be removed, and it would burst forth +the fiercer for its long confinement, ingulfing perhaps the whole +organism in its destructive flame.</p> + +<p>"Oh, hush!" Mariana had said, and turned from him. "You seem to delight +in unpleasant things. I make it a point to believe that suffering and +death do not exist. I <i>know</i> they do, but I <i>believe</i> they do not."</p> + +<p>He drew nearer. Across his face she saw a sudden flash—so vivid that it +seemed the awakening of a dormant element in his nature. "You are +wonderfully vital," he said. "There is as much life in you as there is +in a dozen of us poor effete mortals. What is your secret?"</p> + +<p>The girl leaned her arm upon the railing and rested her chin in her +hand. She looked up at him and her eyes grew darker. "It is the pure +animal love of existence," she answered. "I love the world. I love +living and breathing, and feeling the blood quicken in my veins. I love +dancing and singing and eating and sleeping. The simple sensuousness of +life is delicious to me. If I could not be a queen, I had rather be a +beggar upon the road-side than to be nothing. If I could not be a human +being, I had rather be a butterfly<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> in the sunshine than not to be at +all. So long as I had the blue sky and the air and the world about me I +could not be miserable. It is life—life in its physical +fulfilment—that I love. So long as they leave me the open world I can +be happy. Only, if I were taken and shut up in an ugly dungeon I should +want to die. And even then there would be hope."</p> + +<p>She had spoken passionately, the words coming quickly from between her +parted lips. She seemed so light and etherealized as to be almost +bodiless. The materialistic philosophy to which she gave utterance was +spiritualized by her own illusiveness.</p> + +<p>For an instant she hesitated, looking across the tenement roofs to the +horizon beyond. Then she went on: "I am different from you—oh, so +different! Where you think, I feel. You are all mind, I am all senses. I +am only fulfilling my place in nature when I am hearing or seeing or +feeling beautiful things. My sense of beauty is my soul."</p> + +<p>Anthony watched her with steadfast intentness. He had never before seen +her in this mood, and it was a new surprise to him. His former +generalizations were displaced.</p> + +<p>But if he had known it, the present aspect was a result of his own +influence upon Mariana. In a moment of contrition for small deceptions, +she had been precipitated into an extravagant self-abasement.</p> + +<p>"You are disappointed," she added, presently, meeting his gaze. "You +expected something different, but I am shallow, and I can't help it." It +was like her that in the tendency to self-depreciation she was as +sincere as she had been in the former tendency to self-esteem.</p> + +<p>And perhaps Anthony was the juster judge of the two. He was certainly +the more dispassionate.</p> + +<p>"I have told you," concluded Mariana, with an eager catch at the +redeeming grace, "because I want to be truthful."<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a></p> + +<p>"My dear girl," responded Anthony, a warm friendliness in his voice, +"you might have spared yourself this little piece of analysis. It is as +useless as most morbid rot of the kind. It doesn't in the least affect +what I think of you, and what I do think of you is of little +consequence."</p> + +<p>"But what do you think?" demanded Mariana.</p> + +<p>"I think that you know yourself just a little less well than you know +that old lady wheeling her cart of vegetables in the street below. Had +she, by the way, known herself a little better she would not have flown +into such a rage because she spilled a few. If we knew ourselves we +would see that things are not very much our fault, after all, and that a +few slips the more or less on our uphill road are very little matter."</p> + +<p>Mariana glowed suddenly. She looked up at him, a woman's regard for +power warming her eyes. To her impressionable temperament there seemed +an element of sublimity in his ethical composure.</p> + +<p>"Teach me," she said, simply. Anthony smiled. If he seemed a Stoic to +Mariana, it was not because he was one, and perhaps he was conscious of +it. But our conceptions of others are colored solely by their attitudes +towards ourselves, and not in the least by their attitudes towards the +universe, which, when all is said, is of far less consequence.</p> + +<p>"I should have first to learn the lesson myself," he answered.</p> + +<p>"Would you, if you could?" asked Mariana.</p> + +<p>For an instant he looked at her thoughtfully. "Teach you what?" he +questioned. "Teach you to endure instead of to enjoy? To know instead of +to believe? To play with skulls and cross-bones instead of with flowers +and sunshine? No, I think not."</p> + +<p>Mariana grew radiant. She felt a desire to force from him a reluctant +confession of liking. "Why wouldn't you?" she demanded.<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a></p> + +<p>"Well, on the whole, I think your present point of view better suited to +you. And everything, after all, is in the point of view." He leaned +against the railing, looking down into the street. "Look over and tell +me what you see. Is it not the color of those purple egg-plants in the +grocer's stall? the pretty girl in that big hat, standing upon the +corner? the roguish faces of those ragamuffins at play? Well, I see +these, but I see also the drooping figure of the woman beside the stall; +the consumptive girl with the heavy bundle, going from her work; the +panting horses that draw the surface cars."</p> + +<p>They both gazed silently from the balcony. Then Mariana turned away. "It +is the hour for my music," she said. "I must go."</p> + +<p>The sunlight caught the nimbus around her head and brightened it with +veins of gold.</p> + +<p>"All joy goes with you," he answered, lightly. "And I shall return to +work."</p> + +<p>"All frivolity, you mean," laughed Mariana, and she left him with a +nod.<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-a" id="CHAPTER_IX-a"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<p>According to the theory that vices are but virtues run to seed, +moderation was the dominant characteristic of Anthony Algarcife. At the +time of his meeting with Mariana, his natural tendencies, whatever they +may have been, were atrophied in the barren soil of long +self-repression. It is only when one is freed from the prejudices +engendered by the play of the affections that one's horizon is unbroken +by a vision of the objects in the foreground, and the forest is no +longer lost in consideration of the trees.</p> + +<p>And it was under the spell of this moderation that Mariana had fallen. +Her own virtues were of that particular quality of which the species is +by no means immutable, and of which the crossing often produces an +opposite variety, since a union of negative virtues has not infrequently +begotten a positive vice. But Mariana's character, of which at that time +even the verdict of society had not deprived her, possessed a jewel in +its inconsistency. Her very faults were rendered generous by their +vivacity, and redeemed her from inflexibility, that most unforgivable +trait in womanhood, which, after all, is merely firmness crystallized. +And as the lack of formativeness in Mariana left her responsive to the +influences beneath which she came, so the anger of yesterday was +tempered into the tenderness of to-day, and her nature modified by the +changes rung upon her moods.</p> + +<p>So far, the influence of Anthony had worked for good. The girl was +startled at the wave of gentleness<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> which pervaded her. With a sudden +fervor she strained towards an indistinct ideal of goodness, an ideal +borrowed in its sanctity from a superficial study of Thomas ą Kempis, +and in its unreality from the faded recollection of certain +Sunday-school literature read in her childhood. She aspired to be good +almost as much as she had once aspired to be famous, and set about it +with quite as unprincipled an abandon. But her ambition for holiness was +ill-timed. An excess of virtue is often as disastrous a form of +dissipation as an excess of vice, and the wreck of one's neighbor's +peace of mind no less to be deplored than the wreck of one's own +physique. For a fool may jog shoulder to shoulder with a comfortable +sinner, but it takes a philosopher to support the presence of an +unmitigated saint.</p> + +<p>So it was as well that Mariana's aspirations were short-lived. She +confessed them to Anthony, and they were overruled.</p> + +<p>"My dear girl," he said, "stop fasting, and don't wear away your knees +at prayer. All the breath in your body isn't going to affect the +decision of Omniscience. The only duty you owe to the universe is to +scatter as much pleasure in life as you can. Eat good red beef and ward +off anęmia, and give the time you have wasted in devotions to exercise +and fresh air. If we are all doomed to hell, you can't turn the earth +out of its track by bodily maceration. Evil plus evil doesn't equal +good."</p> + +<p>Mariana ceased praying and went out to walk. She was conscious of +strange quickenings of sympathy. She loved the world and the people that +passed her and the children laughing in the gutter. She bought a pot of +primroses from the flower-stall at the corner, and, having spent a +week's car-fare, walked a couple of miles in the sun to carry them to a +rheumatic old lady who had once been kind to her. With patient +good-humor she sat an hour in the sick-room, and,<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> when she left, the +rheumatic old lady kissed and blessed her.</p> + +<p>The praise stirred her pulses with pleasure. She wondered if she might +not become a Sister of Charity and spend her life in ministering to +others, and when a ragged boot-black in the street begged for a dime she +gave him the money she had saved for a pair of gloves, and glorified the +sacrifice by the smile of a Saint Elizabeth. She felt that she would +like to give some one the coat from her back, and, as she passed in and +out of the crowd around her, her heart stirred in imaginative sympathy +for humanity. That vital recognition of the fellowship of man which is +as transient as it is inspiring, uplifted her. She wished that some one +from the crowd would single her out, saying, "I am wretched, comfort +me!" or, "I am starving, feed me!"</p> + +<p>But no one did so. They looked at her with indifferent eyes, and her +impulses recoiled upon themselves. At that moment she felt capable of +complete self-abnegation in the cause of mankind, and even commonplace +goodness possessed an attraction. But she realized that the desire to +sacrifice is short-lived, and that, after all, it is easier to lay down +one's life for the human race than to endure the idiosyncrasies of its +atoms.</p> + +<p>To us who adopt the proprieties as a profession and wear respectability +for a mantle, unauthorized impulses in any form are to be contemned, and +Mariana, flushed with generous desires, was as unacceptable as Mariana +submerged in self.</p> + +<p>After paying a couple of calls the girl's spirit of altruism evaporated. +It was warm and close, and the sun made her head ache, while the fatigue +from the unusual exercise produced a fit of ill-humor. She wondered why +she had left her room, and then looked at her soiled gloves and +regretted her encounter with<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> the boot-black. The recollection of the +pot of primroses and the week's car-fare caused her even more annoyance.</p> + +<p>A block from The Gotham she ran upon Jerome Ardly, and her irritation +vanished.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" he ejaculated, "you are as white as a sheet. Too much September +sun. Had luncheon?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," responded Mariana; and she added, plaintively, "I am so tired. I +have walked myself to death—and all for nothing."</p> + +<p>"Form of monomania?" he inquired, sympathetically. "Nothing short of +arrant idiocy would take any one out for nothing on a day like this."</p> + +<p>Mariana looked at him and laughed. "I have been paying calls," she said. +"I went to see Mrs. Simpson and she told me all about the rights of +women. It was very instructive."</p> + +<p>"If they resemble the rights of man," remarked Ardly, "they are not to +be seen, heard, or felt."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but it is all the fault of men," responded Mariana; "she told me +so. She said that men were the only things that kept us back."</p> + +<p>Ardly laughed.</p> + +<p>"And you?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"I! Oh, I agreed with her! I told her that if men hindered us we would +stamp them out."</p> + +<p>"The devil you did!" retorted Ardly. "I know of no one better fitted for +the job. You will begin on your fellow-lodgers, I suppose. As if you had +not been treading on our hearts for the last year!"</p> + +<p>Mariana lowered her parasol and entered The Gotham. As she mounted the +stairs she turned towards him. The time had been when the presence of +Jerome Ardly had caused a flutter among the tremulous strings of her +heart, but that had been before Anthony crossed her horizon. And yet +coquetry was not extinguished. "<i>Our?</i>" she emphasized, smiling.<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a></p> + +<p>Ardly grasped at the hand which lay upon the railing, but Mariana eluded +him.</p> + +<p>"Why, all of us," he returned, with unabashed good-nature—"poor devils +that we are! Myself, Nevins, Mr. Paul, to say nothing of Algarcife."</p> + +<p>Mariana's color rose swiftly. "Oh, nonsense!" she laughed, and sped +upward.</p> + +<p>Upon the landing Mr. Nevins opened the door of his studio and greeted +them.</p> + +<p>"I say, Miss Musin, won't you come and have a look at 'Andromeda'?"</p> + +<p>Mariana entered the studio, and Ardly followed her. In the centre of the +room a tea-table was spread, and Miss Freighley, a smear of yellow ochre +on the sleeve where she had accidentally wiped her brush, was engaged in +brewing the beverage. Upon the hearth-rug Juliet Hill was standing, her +tall, undeveloped figure and vivid hair relieved against a dull-brown +hanging, and around the "Andromeda" a group of youthful artists were +gathered.</p> + +<p>"How delightful!" exclaimed Mariana, genially. She kissed Miss +Freighley, and pressed the extended hands of the others with +demonstrative cordiality.</p> + +<p>"Oh, if I could only paint!" she said to Miss Freighley, in affectionate +undertones. "If I could only go about with a box of brushes, without +feeling silly, and wear a smudge of paint upon my sleeve without being +dishonest." And she wiped Miss Freighley's sleeve upon her handkerchief.</p> + +<p>"Thanks," responded that young lady, amiably; "but you can carry a +music-roll, you know, which is much handier and a good deal tidier."</p> + +<p>Mariana had turned to the "Andromeda." "Oh, Mr. Ponsonby!" she remarked, +to one of the group surrounding it, "don't you uphold me in thinking the +shadows upon the throat too heavy?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Ponsonby protested that he would uphold her<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> in any statement she +might choose to make, so long as he was not expected to agree with her. +Mariana appealed to Mr. Nevins, who declared that he would agree with +her in any matter whatsoever, so long as he was not expected to change +his "Andromeda."</p> + +<p>Mariana frowned. "Mr. Ardly thinks as I do—now don't you?"</p> + +<p>Ardly sauntered over to them.</p> + +<p>"Why, of course," he assented. "That shadow was put on with a pitchfork. +I am positively surprised at you, Nevins."</p> + +<p>"On your conscience?" demanded Mariana.</p> + +<p>"Haven't any," protested Ardly, indolently. "Left it in Boston. It is +indigenous to the soil, and won't bear transplanting."</p> + +<p>"Miss Ramsey brought hers with her," replied Mariana, with a smile. "It +worries her dreadfully. It is just like a ball on the leg of a convict. +She has to drag it wherever she goes, and it makes her awfully tired +sometimes."</p> + +<p>"A good Bohemian conscience is the only variety worth possessing," +observed Mr. Nevins. "It changes color with every change of scene and +revolves upon an axis. Hurrah for Bohemia!"</p> + +<p>"Hear! hear!" cried Mariana, gayly. She lifted a glass of sherry, and, +lighting a cigarette, sprang upon the music-stool. Mr. Ponsonby drew up +a chair and seated himself at the piano, and, blowing a cloud of smoke +about her head, Mariana sang a rollicking song of the street.</p> + +<p>As she finished, the door opened and Algarcife stood upon the threshold. +For a moment he gazed at the scene—at Mariana poised upon the +music-stool with upraised arms, her hat hanging by an elastic from her +shoulder, her head circled by wreaths of cigarette smoke, her eyes +reckless. His look was expressive of absolute amazement. Innocent as the +scene was in<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> reality, to him it seemed an orgy of abandon, and there +was not a man in the room who would not have understood Mariana at that +moment better than he did.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon, Nevins," he said, abruptly. "No, I won't come in." +And the door closed.</p> + +<p>But Mariana had seen his face, and, with a flutter of impulse and a +precipitate rush, she was after him.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Algarcife!" Her voice broke.</p> + +<p>He turned and faced her.</p> + +<p>"What is it?"</p> + +<p>"You—you looked so shocked!" she cried.</p> + +<p>She stood before him, breathless and warm, the smoking cigarette still +in her hand.</p> + +<p>"Throw that away!" he said.</p> + +<p>She took a step forward, struggling like a netted bird beneath the spell +of his power.</p> + +<p>"How absurd!" she said, softly. The cigarette dropped from her fingers +to the floor.</p> + +<p>He laughed. His eyes burned steadily upon her. Before his gaze her +lashes wavered and fell, but not until she had seen the flashing of +latent impulse in his face.</p> + +<p>"But you dropped it," he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Why did you?"</p> + +<p>Mariana made a desperate effort at her old fearlessness. It failed her. +Her eyes were upon the floor, but she felt his gaze piercing her fallen +lids. She spoke hurriedly.</p> + +<p>"Because—because I did," she answered.</p> + +<p>He came a step nearer. She felt that the passion in his glance was +straining at the leash of self-control. She did not know that desire was +insurgent against the dominion of will, and was waging a combat with +fire and sword.</p> + +<p>She put up her hands.<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a></p> + +<p>"You are my friend," she said. Her tones faltered. The haze of idealism +with which he had surrounded her was suffused with a roseate glow. He +caught her hands. His face had grown dark and set, and the lines upon +his forehead seemed ineffaceable.</p> + +<p>Mariana was conscious of a sudden uplifting within her. It was as if her +heart had broken into song. She stood motionless, her hands closing upon +his detaining ones. Her face was vivid with animation, and there was a +suggestion of frank surrender in her attitude. He caught his breath +sharply. Then his accustomed composure fell upon him. His mouth relaxed +its nervous tension, and the electric current which had burned his +fingers was dissipated.</p> + +<p>At the other end of the corridor a door opened and shut, and some one +came whistling along the hall.</p> + +<p>"It is Mr. Sellars," said Mariana, smiling. "I recognize his whistling +two blocks away, because it is always out of tune. He thinks he is +whistling 'Robin Hood,' but he is mistaken."</p> + +<p>"Is he?" asked Anthony, abstractedly. His mind was less agile than +Mariana's, and he found more difficulty in spanning the space between +sentiment and comic opera.</p> + +<p>Mr. Sellars greeted them cheerfully and passed on.</p> + +<p>"I must go," said Mariana. "I promised to dine with Miss Ramsey."</p> + +<p>There was an aggrieved note in her voice, but it had no connection with +Anthony. With the passing of the enjoyment of emotion for the sake of +the mental exaltation which accompanied it, the dramatic instinct +reasserted itself. She even experienced a mild resentment against fate +that the emotional altitude she had craved should have been revealed to +her in the damp and unventilated corridor of The Gotham apartment-house. +At a glance from Anthony the resentment would have vanished, and Mariana +have been swept<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> once more into a maze of romanticism. But he did not +look at her, and the half-conscious demand for scenic effects was +unsatisfied.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Anthony, "it is late." His voice sounded hushed and +constrained, and, as he stood aside to allow her to pass, he looked +beyond and not at the girl.</p> + +<p>She turned from him and entered her room.<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-a" id="CHAPTER_X-a"></a>CHAPTER X</h3> + +<p>Mariana found Miss Ramsey lying at length upon the hearth-rug in her +tiny sitting-room, her head resting upon an eider-down cushion.</p> + +<p>At the girl's entrance she looked up nervously. "I can't rest," she +said, with a plaintive intonation, "and I am so tired. But when I shut +my eyes I see spread before me all the work I've got to do to-morrow."</p> + +<p>She sat up, passing her hand restlessly across her forehead. In her +appearance there might be detected an almost fierce renunciation of +youth. Her gown was exaggerated in severity, and her colorless and +uncurled hair was strained from her forehead and worn in a tight knot +upon the crown of her head. The prettiness of her face was almost +aggressive amid contrasting disfigurements.</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey belonged to that numerous army of women who fulfil life as +they fulfil an appointment at the dentist's—with a desperate sense of +duty and shaken nerves. And beside such commonplace tragedies all +dramatic climaxes show purposeless. The saints of old, who were +sanctified by fire and sword, might well shrink from the martyrdom +sustained, smiling, by many who have endured the rack of daily despair. +To be a martyr for an hour is so much less heroic than to be a man for a +lifetime.</p> + +<p>But in Miss Ramsey's worn little body, incased in its network of nerves, +there was the passionless determination of her Puritan ancestors. Life +had been thrust upon her, and she accepted it. In much the<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> same spirit +she would have accepted hell. Perhaps, in meeting the latter, a little +cheerfulness might have been added to positive pain—since of all +tragedies her present tragedy of unfulfilment was the most tragic of +all.</p> + +<p>Mariana knelt beside her and kissed her with quick sympathy.</p> + +<p>"I can't rest," repeated the elder woman, fretfully. "I can't rest for +thinking of the work I must do to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Don't think of it," remonstrated Mariana. "This isn't to-morrow, so +there is no use thinking of it."</p> + +<p>In Miss Ramsey's eyes there shone a flicker of girlishness which, had +fate willed it, might have irradiated her whole face.</p> + +<p>"I have been wondering," added Mariana, softly, "what you need, and I +believe it is a canary. I will buy you a canary when my allowance +comes."</p> + +<p>For the girl had looked into her own heart and had read an unwritten +law. She had seen sanctification through love, and she felt that a woman +may owe her salvation to a canary.</p> + +<p>"How could I care for it?" asked the other, a little wistfully. "I have +no time. But it would be nice to own something."</p> + +<p>Then they left the hearth-rug and ate dinner, and Mariana drove the +overhanging cloud from Miss Ramsey's eyes. The desire to be first with +all who surrounded her had prompted her to ingratiate herself in every +heart that throbbed and ached within. The Gotham, from little, +overworked Miss Ramsey to the smaller and more overworked maid who +dusted her chamber.</p> + +<p>After dinner, when Mariana returned to her room, she found a letter +awaiting her. It was from her father, and, as was usual with his +utterances, it was straight and to the mark.<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a></p> + +<p>"I have met with reverses," it stated, "and the family is growing large. +In my present position I find it impossible to continue your allowance, +and I think that, on the whole, your duty is at home. My wife has much +care with the children, and you would be of service in educating them."</p> + +<p>Mariana dropped the letter and sat motionless. In a flash she realized +all that it meant. It meant returning to drudgery and hideous monotony. +It meant returning to the house she hated and to the atmosphere that +stifled her. It meant a colorless life of poverty and sordid +self-denial. It meant relinquishing her art and Anthony.</p> + +<p>With a rush of impulse she stepped out upon the fire-escape, the letter +fluttering in her hand.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Algarcife!" she called, softly.</p> + +<p>As his figure darkened the lighted space between the window-sashes she +went towards him. He faced her in surprise. "What is it?" he inquired, +abruptly.</p> + +<p>Mariana held out the letter, and then followed him as he re-entered his +room.</p> + +<p>"I cannot do it!" she said, passionately. "I cannot! I cannot!"</p> + +<p>Without heeding her, Anthony unfolded the letter, read it and reread it +with judicial composure; after which he folded it again, placed it in +the envelope, and stood holding it in his right hand. The only visible +effect it produced upon him was a nervous twitching of his thin lips.</p> + +<p>"And what have you decided?" he asked, slowly.</p> + +<p>Mariana interlaced her fingers impatiently. She looked small and white, +and excitement caused her eyes to appear abnormally large. Her features +quivered and her tone was tremulous.</p> + +<p>"I will not go back," she protested. "I will not! Oh, I will not!"</p> + +<p>"Is it so bad?" He still held the letter.<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a></p> + +<p>"Bad! It is worse than—than anything. If I had stayed there I should +have gone mad. It was paralyzing me inch by inch. Oh, if you could only +know what it is—a dusty, dirty little house, smelling of cabbage, a +troop of screaming children, and quarrels all day long."</p> + +<p>He met her outburst with a remonstrative gesture, but there was a mellow +light in his eyes and his face had softened. As if resenting a voluntary +restraint, he shook back a lock of hair that had fallen upon his +forehead.</p> + +<p>"But your father?"</p> + +<p>Mariana looked at him as if he represented the bar of judgment and she +were pleading her cause. She spoke with feverish conviction.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he doesn't want me! If you only knew what a relief it was to him +when I came away. Things were so much quieter. He likes his wife and I +hate her, so we don't agree. There is never any peace when I am +there—never."</p> + +<p>"And the children?" His eyes met Mariana's, and again his lips twitched +nervously. He held the check-rein of desire with a relentless hand, but +the struggle told.</p> + +<p>"They are horrid," responded Mariana, insistently. "They are all hers. +If they had really belonged to me, I wouldn't have left them, but they +didn't, not one. And I won't teach them. I'd rather teach the children +of that shoemaker across the way. I'd rather scrub the streets."</p> + +<p>Anthony smiled, and the tenderness in his eyes rained upon her. The fact +that she had thrown herself upon his sympathy completed the charm she +exercised over him.</p> + +<p>Still he held himself in hand.</p> + +<p>"You know of nothing that could call you back?" he asked.<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a></p> + +<p>"Nothing," answered Mariana. "I shouldn't like to starve, but I'd almost +as soon starve as live on cabbage." Then she faced him tragically. "My +father's wife is a very coarse woman. She has cabbage one day and onions +the next."</p> + +<p>The smile in Anthony's eyes deepened. "It would be impossible to select +a more wholesome article of food than the latter," he observed.</p> + +<p>But Mariana was unmoved.</p> + +<p>"Before I left, it was horrible," she continued. "Whenever onions were +served I would leave the table. My father's wife would get angry and +that would make me angry."</p> + +<p>"A congenial family."</p> + +<p>"But when we get angry we quarrel. It is our nature to do so." She +lifted her lashes. "And when we quarrel we talk a great deal, and some +of us talk very loud. That is unpleasant, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Very," Algarcife commented. "I find, by the way, that I am beginning to +harbor a sympathy for your father's wife."</p> + +<p>Mariana stared at him and shook her head.</p> + +<p>"I wasn't nice to her," she admitted, "but she is such a loud woman. I +am never nice to people I dislike—but I don't dislike many."</p> + +<p>She smiled. Algarcife took a step forward, but checked himself. "We will +talk it over—to-morrow," he said, and his voice sounded cold from +constraint.</p> + +<p>"I won't go back," protested Mariana. "I—I will marry Mr. Paul first."</p> + +<p>He held out his hand, and it closed firmly over the one she gave him. +"You will not do that, at all events," he said; "for Mr. Paul's sake, as +well as your own."</p> + +<p>Then he drew aside, and Mariana went back to her room.</p> + +<p>Anthony recrossed the window-sill and paced slowly<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> up and down the +uncarpeted floor. His head was bent and his gaze preoccupied, but there +was composure in his bearing. He had sent the girl away that he might +think before acting. Not that he was not fully aware what the result of +his meditation would be, but that for six years he had been in training +to resist impulse, and the habit was strong. But there are things +stronger than habit, and emotion is among them. In a man who has neither +squandered feeling in excesses nor succumbed to the allurement of the +senses, passion, when once aroused, is trebly puissant, and is apt to +sweep all lesser desires as chaff before the whirlwind. In the love of +such a man there is of necessity the freshness of adolescence and the +tenacity of maturity. When one has not expended lightly the fulness of +desire, the supply is constantly augmented, and its force will be in +proportion to the force of the pressure by which it has been restrained. +Algarcife, pacing to and fro between his book-lined walls, felt the +current of his being straining towards emotion, and knew that the +dominance of will was over. In the realization there existed a tinge of +regret, and with the rationality which characterized his mental attitude +he lamented that the pulseless sanity of his past was broken. And yet he +loved Mariana—loved her with a love that would grow with his growth and +strengthen with his weakness. He bowed his head, and his hands clinched, +while the edge of his blood was sharpened. He beheld her eyes, curtains +veiling formless purity—he felt the touch of her hands, the breath of +her lips—he heard the rustle of her skirts—and the virginal femininity +of her hovered like an atmosphere about him.</p> + +<p>Presently he crossed to the fire-escape, stepped outside, hesitated an +instant, and then went to Mariana's window. The shutters were closed, +but the light burned behind them.<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a></p> + +<p>"Mariana!" he called; and again, "Mariana!"</p> + +<p>Through the slats of the shutters the figure of Mariana was visible in +high relief against the brightness.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" she asked, coming nearer.</p> + +<p>He spoke slowly and with constraint.</p> + +<p>"Mariana, you will not marry Mr. Paul."</p> + +<p>She laughed. The sound was like wine in his blood, and constraint was +shattered.</p> + +<p>"Is there any obstacle?" she inquired.</p> + +<p>"There will be," he answered, and his voice rang clear.</p> + +<p>"What?" She was leaning against the shutters. He felt her breath upon +his brow.</p> + +<p>"You will marry me."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" gasped Mariana, and was silent.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he surrendered self-control. "Open the shutters," he said.</p> + +<p>The shutters were unfastened, they swung back, and Mariana came out. She +looked very young, her hair hung about her shoulders, and in the dim +light her face showed small and white. For a moment they stood +motionless, each dumb before the knowledge of the other's dominance. +Anthony looked at her in heated silence. His face was pale, his eyes +glowing.</p> + +<p>"Mariana!" He did not move nearer, but his voice thrilled her like a +caress. She shrank from him, and a heavy shadow fell between them.</p> + +<p>"Mariana, you will marry me?" In the stillness following his words she +heard the sharpness of his breathing.</p> + +<p>"I—I am not good enough," said Mariana.</p> + +<p>"My saint!"</p> + +<p>As if impelled, she leaned towards him, and he caught her in his arms. +Beneath them the noise of traffic went on, and with it the hunger and +the thirst and the weariness, but they stood above it all, and he felt +the beating of her pulses as he held her.<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a></p> + +<p>"Say you love me," he pleaded—"say it." His breath burned her forehead.</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't you see?" she asked—"don't you see?"</p> + +<p>She lifted her head and he took her hands and drew her from the darkness +into the light and looked into her eyes. They shone like lamps +illuminating an altar, and the altar was his own.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said; "but say it."</p> + +<p>Mariana was silent for an instant, and when she spoke her voice was +vibrant with passion.</p> + +<p>"You are my love, and I love you," she answered. "And I?"</p> + +<p>"The desire of my eyes."</p> + +<p>She came nearer, laying one hand upon his arm. He did not move, and his +arm hung motionless, but his eyes were hot.</p> + +<p>"I am yours," she said, slowly, "for ever and ever, to have and to hold, +to leave or to take—yours utterly."<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI-a" id="CHAPTER_XI-a"></a>CHAPTER XI</h3> + +<p>The news of Mariana's engagement was received without enthusiasm in The +Gotham. A resentment against innovations of so sweeping an order was +visible in the bearing of a number of the lodgers, and Mr. Nevins was +heard publicly expressing his disapproval. "I never got comfortably +settled anywhere in my life," he announced, "that somebody didn't step +in and disarrange matters. At the last place the head waiter married the +cook, and now Algarcife is marrying Mariana. After our discovering her, +too. I say, it's a beastly shame!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Ardly was of one mind with him; so was Mr. Morris. Alone, of all the +table, Mr. Paul stood firm upon the opposite side. An hour after the +news was out he encountered Algarcife upon the stairs and smiled +compassionately.</p> + +<p>"I have heard with concern," he began, stiffly, "that you contemplate +taking a serious step."</p> + +<p>"Indeed?" returned Anthony, with embarrassment. "I believe I do +contemplate something of the kind, but I had hoped to get it over before +anybody heard of it."</p> + +<p>"Such things travel fast," commented Mr. Paul, cheerfully. "I think I +may say that I was in possession of the fact five minutes after your +ultimate decision was reached. It is a serious step, as I have said. As +for the young woman, I have no doubt of her worthiness, though I have +heard contrary opinions—"</p> + +<p>"Who has dared?" demanded Anthony.<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a></p> + +<p>"Merely opinions, my dear sir, and the right of private judgment is what +we stand on. But, I repeat, I have no doubt of her uprightness. It is +not the individual, sir, but the office. It is the office that is at +fault."</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul passed on, and upon the next landing Algarcife found Mr. Nevins +in wait.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Algarcife," he remonstrated, "I don't call this fair play, +you know! I've had my eye on Mariana for the last twelve months!"</p> + +<p>A thunder-cloud broke upon Anthony's brow. "Then you will be kind enough +to remove it!" he retorted, angrily.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come off!" protested Mr. Nevins. "Why, Mariana and I were chums +before you darkened this blessed Gotham! She'd have married me long ago +if I'd had the funds."</p> + +<p>"Confound you!" exclaimed Anthony. "Can't you hold your tongue?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins smiled amiably and spread out his hands.</p> + +<p>"No, I cannot," he answered, imperturbably. "Say, old man, don't get +riled! You'll let me appear at the wedding, won't you?"</p> + +<p>Algarcife strode on in a rage, which was not appeased by Ardly's voice +singing out from his open door.</p> + +<p>"Congratulations, Algarcife! You are a lucky dog! Like to change shoes."</p> + +<p>Upon the balcony he found Mariana, with a blossom of scarlet geranium in +her hair. She stretched out both hands and flashed him a smile like a +caress. "You look positively furious," she observed.</p> + +<p>Algarcife's sensitiveness had caused him to treat Mariana much as he +would have treated a Galatea in Dresden, had one been in his possession. +But Claude Nevins had annoyed him, and he spoke irritably.</p> + +<p>"I wish you would have nothing to do with that fellow Nevins," he said.<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a></p> + +<p>"Why, what has he done?"</p> + +<p>"Done? Why, he's an ass—a consummate ass! He told me he had his eye on +you!"</p> + +<p>Mariana's laugh pealed out. She raised her hand and brushed the heavy +hair from his forehead. Then she tried to brush the lines from his brow, +but they would not go.</p> + +<p>"Why, he's going to give me a supper the night before our marriage," she +said; "that is, they all are—Mr. Ardly, Mr. Sellars, and the rest. They +made a pot of money for it, and each one of them contributed a share, +and it is quite a large pot. We are to have champagne, and I am to sing, +and so will Mr. Nevins. I wanted them to ask you, but Mr. Nevins said +you'd be a damper, and Mr. Ardly said you would be bored."</p> + +<p>"Probably," interpolated Anthony.</p> + +<p>"But I insisted I wanted you, so Mr. Ardly said they would have to have +you, and Mr. Nevins said they'd have Mr. Paul, if I made a point of it; +but they thought I might give them one jolly evening before settling +down, so I said I would."</p> + +<p>"You will do nothing of the kind," retorted Algarcife.</p> + +<p>"But they are so anxious. It will be such a dreadful disappointment to +them."</p> + +<p>"I will not have it."</p> + +<p>"But I've done it before."</p> + +<p>"Don't tell me of it. You want to go, and without me?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I'd rather you should be there, but it is cruel to disappoint +them," Mariana objected, "when they have made such a nice pot of money."</p> + +<p>"But I do not like it," said Anthony.</p> + +<p>Mariana laughed into his eyes. "Then you sha'n't have it," she said, and +leaned against the railing and touched his arm with her fingers. "Say +you love me, and I will not go," she added.<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a></p> + +<p>Anthony did not touch the hand that lay upon his arm. His mood was too +deep for caresses.</p> + +<p>"If you knew how I love you," he said, slowly—"if you only knew! There +is no happiness in it; it is agony. I am afraid—afraid for the first +time in my life—afraid of losing you."</p> + +<p>"You shall never lose me."</p> + +<p>"It is a horrible thing, this fear—this fear for something outside of +yourself!" He spoke with a sudden, half-fierce possession. "You are +mine," he said, "and you love me!"</p> + +<p>Mariana pressed closer to his side. "If I had not come," she began, +softly, "you would have read and worked and fed the sparrows, and you +would never have known it."</p> + +<p>"But you came." The hand upon the railing relaxed. "My mother was a +Creole," he continued. "She came from New Orleans to marry my father, +and died because the North was cold and her heart was in the South. You +are my South, and the world is cold, for my heart is in you."</p> + +<p>"I have wanted love all my life," said Mariana, "and now I have found +it. I have thought before that I had it, but it was only a shadow. This +is real. As real as myself—as real as this railing. I feel glad—oh, so +glad!—and I feel tender. I should like to pray and go softly. I should +like to make that old woman at the flower-stall happy and to freshen the +withered flowers. I should like to kiss the children playing on the +sidewalk. See how merry they look," and she leaned far over. "I should +like to pat the head of that yellow dog in the gutter. I should like to +make the whole world glad—because of you."</p> + +<p>"Mariana!"</p> + +<p>"The world is beautiful, and I love you; but I am sorry—oh, so +sorry!—for the people in the street."</p> + +<p>"Forget them, beloved, and think of me."<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a></p> + +<p>"But you taught me to think of them."</p> + +<p>"I will teach you to think of me."</p> + +<p>"That I have learned by heart."</p> + +<p>"Mariana!"</p> + +<p>They stood with locked hands upon the balcony, and the roar of the +elevated road came up to them, and the old flower-woman put up her +withered flowers and went her way, and the children's laughter grew +fainter upon the air, and the yellow dog gnawed at a rock that it took +for a bone; and the great, great wheel ground on, grinding to each man +and to each dog according to his kind his share of the things written +and unwritten in the book of life.</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>A week later they were married. Mariana had coveted a church ceremony, +and Anthony had desired a registrar's office, so they compromised, and +the service was read in Mr. Speares's study.</p> + +<p>"I should have dearly liked the 'Lohengrin March' and stained-glass +windows," remarked Mariana, a little regretfully, as they walked +homeward. "It seems as if something were missing. I can't tell just +what."</p> + +<p>"What does it matter?" asked Algarcife, cheerfully. "A street corner and +an organ-grinder would have answered my purpose, had he been legally +empowered to pronounce the blessing. It is all rot, I suppose, but I'd +face every priest and rabbi in New York if they could bind us closer."</p> + +<p>He smiled at Mariana. His eager face looked almost boyish, and he walked +with the confident air of one who is sure of his pathway.</p> + +<p>"But they could not," added Mariana, and they both laughed, because they +were young and life was before them.</p> + +<p>They retained the rooms in The Gotham with the fire-escape outside the +windows, though Anthony found that his income, after deducting a portion +for Mariana'<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a>s expenses, was barely sufficient. He had not realized +before how complete was his reliance for existence upon the Bodley +College. Even in the thrill of his first happiness there was a haunting +vision of Mariana reduced to poverty and himself powerless. He +endeavored to insure an independent livelihood by contributing +semi-scientific articles to various reviews, but the work was +uncongenial, and he felt it to be a failure. The basis of his mental +attitude was too firmly embedded to yield superficial product, and he +tasted the knowledge that, had he known less, he might have lived +easier.</p> + +<p>At this time his great work was laid aside, a sacrifice to necessity, +and he spent his days and nights in unmurmuring toil for the sake of +Mariana. He was willing to labor, so long as he might love in the +intervals of rest.</p> + +<p>As for Mariana, she was vividly alive. Beneath the warmth of emotion her +nature expanded into fulfilment, and with fulfilment awoke the subtle +charm of her personality.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen Mariana?" inquired Nevins of Ardly one day. "If so, you +have seen a woman in love."</p> + +<p>Ardly smiled and flicked the ashes from his cigar.</p> + +<p>"Is she?" he asked, cynically; "or is it that the froth of sentiment +above her heart is troubled and she believes the depth of passion is +stirred? I have lived, my dear fellow, as you probably know, and I have +seen strange things, but the strangest of these is the way of a maid +with a man."</p> + +<p>"Be that as it may, she is charming," returned Nevins. "And Algarcife +ought to thank his stars, though why she married him is a mystery I +relegate to the general unravelling of judgment-day."</p> + +<p>"She probably had sense enough to appreciate the most brilliant man in +New York," concluded Ardly,<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> loyally, as he took up a volume of +Maupassant and departed.</p> + +<p>And that Mariana did appreciate Algarcife was not to be questioned. She +threw herself into the worship of him with absolute disregard of all +retarding interests. When he was near, she lavished demonstrations upon +him; when he was away, she sat with folded hands and dreamed day-dreams. +She had given up her music, and she even went so far as to declare that +she would give up her acquaintances, that they might be sufficient unto +each other. For his sake she discussed theories which she did not +understand, and accepted doctrines of which she had once been +intolerant. That emotional energy which had led her imagination into +devious ways had at last, she told herself, found its appropriate +channel. Even the stringent economy which was forced upon them was +turned into merriment by the play of Mariana's humor.</p> + +<p>"Life must only be taken seriously," she said, "when it has ceased to be +a jest, and that will be when one has grown too dull to see the +point—for the point is always there."</p> + +<p>"And sometimes it pricks," laughed Anthony.<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII-a" id="CHAPTER_XII-a"></a>CHAPTER XII</h3> + +<p>In an up-town block, a stone's-throw west of Fifth Avenue, stands the +Church of the Immaculate Conception. It is a newly erected structure of +gray stone, between two rows of expressionless tenements, and, despite +the aggressive finality emphasized in its architecture, wearing a +general air of holding its ground by sheer force of stolidity.</p> + +<p>The interior of the church is less suggestive of modernity, and bears, +on the whole, a surface relationship to a medięval cathedral. The purple +light filtering through the stained-glass windows is, in its essential +quality, a European importation, and the altar-piece is a passable +reproduction of a painting of Murillo's.</p> + +<p>More than fifty years ago the church, then an unpretentious building of +red brick, endowed neither with rood-screen nor waxen candles, had +called to its rectorship the Reverend Clement Speares, a youthful leader +of the ritualistic element in Episcopalianism. Father Speares heard the +call and accepted the charge, and within a dozen years he had succeeded +in trebling the number of his congregation, and in exchanging the +red-brick building for the present Church of the Immaculate Conception, +with its mystic light of medięvalism.</p> + +<p>The congregation, of that class who toil not, neither spin, but before +whose raiment Easter lilies falter, was fashionable, and also wealthy. +The single-hearted zeal which its priest had put into fifty years of +service had failed to wean his flock from a taste for the flesh-pots.<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> +In return for the generosity with which they supported their place of +worship and its appurtenances, they claimed the indefeasible right to +regulate their own attire and to reserve their pews from the +encroachment of aliens. They were willing to erect a mission chapel in +the slums, but they submitted to no trespassing upon the exclusiveness +of their accustomed preserves.</p> + +<p>Father Speares, who, had his temporal power been in proportion to his +ecclesiastical influence, would have thrown open the Holy of Holies to +the beggar in the street, and have knelt with equal charity between the +Pharisees and Publicans, resigned himself to the recognition of +spiritual caste, and devoted his days to Fifth Avenue and his evenings +to the Bowery.</p> + +<p>To his honor be it said that he made no more valiant stand for the +salvation of the one than of the other. A soul was a soul to him, and +personal cleanliness a matter of taste.</p> + +<p>He was a man of resolute convictions and unswerving purpose. If he did +not possess eloquence of speech, he possessed sincerity of mind, which +is quite as rare, and very nearly as effective. He had a benevolent +countenance combined with a sympathetic manner, and the combination +exercised a charm over those of his hearers who attended his church in +the endeavor to narcotize troublesome nerves. Unconsciously, by his +adoption of celibacy from the mother church, he had borrowed from the +elder faith the powerful weapon of romanticism, exciting the imaginative +qualities, while he emphasized the maxim of the right of private +judgment by rejecting the dogma of papal infallibility.</p> + +<p>But since the Church of the Immaculate Conception had risen into being +with Father Speares, there was an Ishmaelitish rumor afloat that with +Father Speares it would pass away. Father Speares himself was not +insensible<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> to the danger, and with the fervor of an enthusiast he +labored to perpetuate the ceremonials his soul loved. With the force of +a revelation there was borne upon him the conception that on him and his +successors rested the mission to impel the conservative wing of +Episcopalianism into that assimilation to Roman Catholicism whose +resultant is the Ritualistic movement. Unto this end he had spent more +than fifty years of labor. At the close of the nineteenth century he +stood a picturesque and pathetic figure, combating with a medięval +eloquence the advancing spirit of his time, a representative of the lost +age of faith lingering far into the new-found age of rationalism.</p> + +<p>When Anthony Algarcife, a young orphan, had been sent to him, he had +taken the child into his confidence.</p> + +<p>"I will help you," the boy had said, enthusiastically—"I will help +you." And he rolled up his little shirt-sleeves in the desire to settle +spiritual differences in the good old fashion of physical force.</p> + +<p>Father Speares had smiled and patted him upon the shoulder. "Please God, +you shall, my boy!" he had answered, and had made the child a +white-robed acolyte, that he might ignite by youthful hands the fires of +faith.</p> + +<p>Anthony had been a disappointment, he had said, but of the bitterness of +the disappointment he had made no mention. Beneath his teaching he had +seen the young mind unfold and expand strenuously, and then, while his +eager eyes were watching, he had seen it shoot from him and beyond his +grasp, trampling his cherished convictions beneath ruthless feet.</p> + +<p>"It is all rubbish," Anthony had declared in the first intolerance of +his youth. "The mental world is filled with a lot of decaying theology, +which has been accumulating for centuries. It remains for us to sweep it +away."<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a></p> + +<p>"And you would sweep me with it," said Father Speares, a little +bitterly.</p> + +<p>"The ground must be cleared," returned Anthony. "You are sitting upon +the rubbish, as a miser in Pompeii might have sat upon his gold while +Vesuvius overflowed. It is wiser to flee and leave hoarded treasure to +be ingulfed. That the rubbish was once sound theology, I grant, but it +has crumbled, and its usefulness of a thousand years ago will not it +save from the ash-heap of outgrown ideas to-day."</p> + +<p>Father Speares sighed and set his lips. "The boy is young," he said, +with the yearning self-deception of age. "It will pass, and he will +return the stronger for his wandering."</p> + +<p>But the event had not borne out his prophecy. It did not pass, and +Anthony did not return.</p> + +<p>"It is my head," he explained, half irritably. "There is a wall of +scepticism surrounding my brain, through which only the toughest facts +may penetrate. I am minus the faculty of credulity."</p> + +<p>"Or reverence," Father Speares added, reproachfully. "You regard +spiritual things as a deaf man regards sound or a blind man sight."</p> + +<p>Anthony's irritation triumphed.</p> + +<p>"Or as a man awake regards a dream," he suggested. "The film of +superstition has cleared from my eyes, and I see. The truth is that I +regard all religions exactly as you regard all except the one which you +inherited. An accident of birth has made you a Christian instead of a +Moslem or a Brahman, that is all."</p> + +<p>"And a twist of the mind has made you an atheist."</p> + +<p>"As you please—atheist, agnostic, sceptic, what you will. It only means +that you offer me an irrational assumption, and I reject it. It is the +custom of you theologians to fit ugly epithets to your opponents, +whereas the denial of Christianity no more<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> argues atheism than the +denial of Confucianism does. It merely proves that a man refuses to +acknowledge any one of the gods which men have created, and that he +leaves the ultimate essence outside his generalizations. Such a man has +learned the first lesson in knowledge—the lesson of his own ignorance."</p> + +<p>"And has missed the greater lesson of the wisdom of God."</p> + +<p>Algarcife shrugged his shoulders.</p> + +<p>"It is no use," he said; "I can't believe, and I wouldn't if I could."</p> + +<p>So he had gone from Father Speares into the world. Virile, strenuous, +and possessed with intellectual passion, he had closed the doors of his +mind upon commonplaces, and with the improvidence from which mental +stamina failed to redeem him had wedded himself to poverty and science.</p> + +<p>Five years after leaving Father Speares's roof he returned with Mariana +at his side.</p> + +<p>"We have come to be married," he announced.</p> + +<p>Father Speares gasped and suggested prudence. "It is unwise," he +remonstrated—"it is utterly unwise."</p> + +<p>"I agree with you," admitted Anthony. "It is unwise, and we know it; but +there is nothing else to be done—is there, Mariana?"</p> + +<p>Mariana looked into Father Speares's face and smiled.</p> + +<p>"Of course you are right," she said, "and we are very foolish, but—but +there really isn't anything else to do."</p> + +<p>And Father Speares was silenced. He looked at the license a little +ruefully, read the service, and sent them off with a benediction.</p> + +<p>"God knows, I wish you happiness," he assured Mariana when she kissed +him.</p> + +<p>Several months later, meeting Algarcife on Broadway, he repeated the +words.<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a></p> + +<p>"I am happy," returned Algarcife, emphatically. "Mariana is an angel."</p> + +<p>"I am glad to hear it," said Father Speares, and he sighed irrelevantly. +"A good woman is a jewel of rare value."</p> + +<p>The term "good woman," applied to Mariana, gave Anthony a sense of +unfitness. Mariana was certainly a jewel, but, somehow, it had never +occurred to him to look upon her as a "good woman."</p> + +<p>"She is very charming," he remarked, quietly.</p> + +<p>Father Speares was regarding him critically. "You are not looking well," +he said. "Is it work or worry?"</p> + +<p>Algarcife shook his head impatiently. "I—oh, I am all right," he +rejoined. "A little extra work, that's all."</p> + +<p>"Your book?"</p> + +<p>Algarcife's face contracted, and the harassed expression about his mouth +deepened.</p> + +<p>"No, not my book," he answered, hastily. "I've put that aside for a +while. I am trying a hand at bread-winning."</p> + +<p>"With satisfactory results, I hope."</p> + +<p>Anthony's laugh was slightly constrained.</p> + +<p>"Why, certainly! Am I the man to fail?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," commented Father Speares—"I don't know. I never thought +of you in that light, somehow. But if I can help you, remember that you +were once my boy."</p> + +<p>Anthony held out his hand quickly, his voice trembling.</p> + +<p>"You are generous—generous as you have always been, but—I am all +right."</p> + +<p>They parted, Algarcife turning into a cross street. He walked slowly, +and the harassed lines did not fade from his mouth. He seemed to have +grown older within the last few months, and the fight he was making had +bowed his shoulders and sown the seeds of future furrows upon his face.<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a></p> + +<p>At the corner he bought a box of sardines and a pound of crackers for +Mariana, who liked a late supper. Then he crossed to The Gotham and +ascended the stairs.</p> + +<p>He found Mariana in a dressing-sack of pink flannel, sitting upon the +bed, and engaged in manufacturing an opera-bonnet out of a bit of black +gauze and a few pink rose-buds. She was trying it on as he entered, and, +catching sight of him, did not remove it as she raised her hand +warningly. "Tell me if it is becoming before you kiss me," she +commanded, pressing her thimble against her lips.</p> + +<p>Anthony drew back and surveyed her.</p> + +<p>"Of course it is," he replied; "but what is it, anyway?"</p> + +<p>Mariana laughed and leaned towards him.</p> + +<p>"A bonnet, of course; not a coal-scuttle or a lamp-shade."</p> + +<p>Then she took it from her head and held it before her, turning it +critically from side to side.</p> + +<p>"Don't you think it might have a few violets against the hair, just +above the left temple? I am sure I could take some out of my last +summer's hat."</p> + +<p>She left the bed and stood upon a chair, to place the bonnet in a box +upon the top of the wardrobe. "As a scientific problem it should +interest you," she observed. "I created it out of nothing."</p> + +<p>Anthony caught her as she descended from the chair.</p> + +<p>"As a possible adornment for your head it interests me still more," he +replied.</p> + +<p>"Because you haven't been married long enough to discover what an empty +little head it is?"</p> + +<p>"Because it is the dearest head in the world, and the wisest. But what a +thriftless house-keeper, not to have set the table!" A door had been cut +into his study, and he glanced through. "Do you think you are still<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> +below Mason and Dixon's line, where time is not recognized?"</p> + +<p>"I forgot it," said Mariana; "but there isn't any bread, so you must go +after it. Oh, you didn't get sardines again, did you? I said potted +ham—and it is really a very small chicken they sent us."</p> + +<p>"Well, no matter. It might have been a chop. By the way, I met Mr. +Speares—"</p> + +<p>"Father Speares," corrected Mariana.</p> + +<p>"Mr. or Father, he's a nice old chap, isn't he?"</p> + +<p>"He's a saint," said Mariana. Then she grew serious. "If you could have +gone into the Church—honestly, I mean—how pleased he would have been, +dearest."</p> + +<p>"Yes; but I couldn't, you know, and if I had I could not have married +you. He is High Church, you see. Celibacy is his pet institution."</p> + +<p>Mariana colored. "Then I am glad you didn't." She flung herself upon +him; then, drawing back, added, wistfully, "But you wouldn't have been +poor."</p> + +<p>"Do you find it so hard?"</p> + +<p>"I hate it—for you. You work so hard. And I can't help you."</p> + +<p>"My beloved!"</p> + +<p>"I mind it most for you. But, of course, I feel badly when the +washer-woman comes and there isn't any money—and I should like to have +some gloves—"</p> + +<p>"You shall have them, my darling. Why didn't you tell me?"</p> + +<p>Mariana leaned upon his breast and swept her loosened hair across his +arm. "It doesn't matter very much," she answered. "If I were starving +and you kissed me I should forget it." And she added, with +characteristic inconsequence: "Only I haven't been out for several days +because I didn't have any."</p> + +<p>"You shall have them to-morrow. Is there anything else, dearest?"<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a></p> + +<p>"Nothing!" laughed Mariana.</p> + +<p>She went to the mirror and began coiling her hair. From the glass her +eyes met Anthony's, and she threw him a smiling glance.</p> + +<p>"I have been reading one of your books," she said, pointing with the +brush; "there it is."</p> + +<p>Anthony lifted the volume from the bureau and grew serious. "Mill?" he +observed. "It is a good start. Every woman should know political +economy. I am glad it interests you."</p> + +<p>"I haven't gone beyond the first page yet," returned Mariana, putting up +both hands to fluff her aureole, and pausing to run her fingers over her +eyebrows in the attempt to narrow them. "There was something in the +first page about 'a web of muslin,' and, somehow, it suggested to me the +idea of making that bonnet. Odd, wasn't it? And I am so glad I read it, +for I am sure I should never have thought of the bonnet otherwise—and +it is becoming."</p> + +<p>"But you like Mill?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," said Mariana; "I find him very suggestive."<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIII-a" id="CHAPTER_XIII-a"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h3> + +<p>Anthony and Mariana founded their life together upon well-worn +principles. They accepted in its entirety the fallacy that love is a +self-sustaining force, independent of material conditions.</p> + +<p>"So long as we love each other," Mariana declared, "nothing matters."</p> + +<p>And Anthony upheld this declaration. To Algarcife those first months of +intimate association were inexpressibly fresh and inspiriting. That +acute sense of nearness to Mariana supplied what had been a void in his +existence, and he looked back upon the time he had spent without her as +a colorless stretch of undifferentiated days.</p> + +<p>And yet, with a feminine presence beside him, work was less easy. In the +evenings, when Mariana followed him to his study and seated herself in a +rocking-chair beneath the lamplight, he sometimes experienced a vague +recognition of its inappropriateness. He found the old absorption to +have grown intractable, and the creak of Mariana's rocker, or the low +humming of her voice, was sufficient to surprise in him that repressed +irascibility from which he had never been able to shake himself free. +Even in the midst of his passionate delight in her, a profound +melancholy would seize him at times, and he would find the cravings of +his intellectual nature harassed by the superficial tenor of his daily +employment. Again, as Mariana sat in the lamplight, her swift fingers +busy with some useless bit of millinery, he would regard her with a +sudden tightening <a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a>of his pulses, and a thrill of fear at the prospect +of a coming separation. The droop of her head, the contour of her face +where the bone of her chin was accentuated by thinness, the soft line of +throat above the full collar, the nimbus of hair shining in the light, +the fall of her skirt, the slender slippered feet, aroused in him a +tumultuous sense of possession. He would turn from his writing to rest +upon her a warm and magnetic glance, before which her lowered lashes +would be lifted, her pensive lips break into a smile.</p> + +<p>Then, again, the instinct for solitude, which his years of study had +intensified, would reawaken, and the creaking of the rocker would act as +an irritant upon his nerves.</p> + +<p>It was at such a moment that Mariana had looked up and spoken, the +bright inflection of her voice aggravating the interruption.</p> + +<p>"Anthony!"</p> + +<p>Algarcife turned towards her, his pen raised as if in self-defence.</p> + +<p>"When did you begin to love me?"</p> + +<p>The pen was lowered, Algarcife smiled. "In the beginning," he answered; +then he frowned, his tone grew captious. "I can't, Mariana," he +protested—"I really can't. I must get this work over."</p> + +<p>"You are always working."</p> + +<p>"Heaven knows, I am! If I weren't, we would starve."</p> + +<p>"It is horrible to be poor."</p> + +<p>"We don't improve matters by exclaiming over them. On the contrary, you +will prevent my getting this article off to-night, and we will be a few +dollars the poorer."</p> + +<p>"You never talk to me. You are always working."</p> + +<p>She spoke pettishly, with an impulse to exasperate.</p> + +<p>"Mariana!"</p> + +<p>Mariana threw aside her work and clasped her hands.<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> Her face was +upturned, her head supported by the back of the chair. He could see the +violet shadow which rested like a faint suffusion where the heavy hair +swept from behind her ear.</p> + +<p>Suddenly her head was lowered, and the mellow lamplight irradiated +across the pallor of her face.</p> + +<p>"Of course I know you are working for me," she said, "but I had rather +have less labor and more love."</p> + +<p>"I love you as much when I am working for you as when I am shouting it +in your ear."</p> + +<p>"But I like to hear it."</p> + +<p>"I love you. Now be quiet."</p> + +<p>Mariana came and leaned over him. She put her arms about his shoulders +and rested her head upon them. There was a sob in her voice. "Let me +help you," she said. "It is so hard to sit still and do nothing, while +you are killing yourself. Let me help you."</p> + +<p>Anthony turned and caught her, and she lay limp and motionless in his +embrace. He kissed her with sudden passion.</p> + +<p>"You help me by living," he said, "by breathing, by being near me, by +giving yourself to me unreservedly. Without you I lived but half a +life—without you, now that I have had you, I should go to +pieces—absolutely. I love you as a man loves once in a thousand years. +But we must live, and I must work."</p> + +<p>He released her and went back to his writing, while Mariana, in +passionate elation, picked up Mill's <i>Political Economy</i>, and fell to +studying.</p> + +<p>It was shortly after this that she sought to turn her own talents to +financial results. With this end in view she invested her pocket-money +in a yard or so of white linen and a mass of colored silks, and wove a +garland of nasturtiums around a centre-piece intended to decorate a +dinner-table. When it was finished she was<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> seized with a fit of +sanguineness, and as she rinsed it in a dozen different waters to insure +whiteness, she calculated what the annual products of her labor would +amount to. "If I manage to do one a month," she remarked, pressing the +centre-piece lightly between her moistened hands, "and say I get about +fifteen dollars for each one, I should soon have quite a little income; +twelve times fifteen is—how much, Anthony?"</p> + +<p>"More than I am going to let you work for," replied Algarcife. "Your +eyes have been red ever since you started that confounded table-cover. +It is the very last."</p> + +<p>Mariana placed one finger to her lips, and then applied it lightly to +the iron she held in her hand. "I do hope I won't scorch it," she +observed. "Oh, do give me that blanket! It must be ironed on a blanket +to make the flowers stand out. Aren't they natural?"</p> + +<p>She lifted her heated face and glanced at him for approbation.</p> + +<p>"I feel like plucking them," returned Algarcife. "Don't tire yourself. +Good-bye." And he passed into the next room and closed the door.</p> + +<p>Mariana ironed the centre-piece, wrapped it in yellow tissue-paper, and +carried it to an exchange for women's work around the corner. It was +placed in a glass-case amid a confusion of similar articles, where it +languished for the space of several months. At the end of that time she +redeemed it.</p> + +<p>The failure of the enterprise precipitated an attack of hysteria, which +spent itself in Anthony's arms and left her resigned and exhausted.</p> + +<p>"I can't do anything to help you," she observed, hopelessly. "I hoped to +clear at least fifteen dollars from that centre-piece, and, instead, I +lost five. I shall always be an encumbrance."</p> + +<p>"You are my beloved counsellor."<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a></p> + +<p>"My love isn't of much use, and you never take my advice."</p> + +<p>"But I like to listen to it."</p> + +<p>Mariana rested her head upon his shoulder and closed her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I am only a luxury," she said, "like wine or cigars, but it wouldn't be +pleasant to dispense with me, would it?"</p> + +<p>"It would be death."</p> + +<p>She sighed contentedly, her hand wandered across his brow. There was a +faint, magnetic force in her finger-tips which left a burning sensation +like that caused by a slightly charged electric current.</p> + +<p>"I made you marry me, you know," she remarked, complacently, "so I am +glad you don't regret it."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense," remonstrated Algarcife, his lips upon her hair, the warm +contact of her body inducing a sense of nearness. "I married you by +force. I quite took your breath away. If you had resisted, I should have +had you whether or no."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but I did make you," returned Mariana. "But there was nothing else +to do. I couldn't possibly have gone home, and I did love you so +distractedly."</p> + +<p>"As you do now."</p> + +<p>"As I do now. Of course I must have known that rushing to you that night +with the letter was just like a proposal of marriage."</p> + +<p>"It was, rather," concluded Algarcife.</p> + +<p>"But you needn't have married me unless you wanted to," urged Mariana. +"There was Mr. Paul—"</p> + +<p>Anthony laughed. "I was a vicarious sacrifice," he declared, "to insure +the peace of Mr. Paul."</p> + +<p>The next day Algarcife received an unexpected sum of money, and they +agreed to celebrate their rising fortunes by a night at the opera. It +was "Tannhauser," and Mariana craved music.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid it is improvident," Anthony, whom the<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> opera bored, +remarked, dubiously; then looking into Mariana's wistful face, he +recanted. "It doesn't matter," he added. "A little extravagance won't +affect the probability of future starvation. We will go."</p> + +<p>And they went. Mariana wore her freshest gown and the little bonnet with +the knot of violets above the left temple. She was in her gayest mood, +which was only dampened in a slight degree by the odor of the benzine +clinging to her newly cleaned gloves.</p> + +<p>As she leaned against the railing in the fifth gallery, gazing +plaintively down into the pit, she looked subtle and seductive—like a +creation in half-tones, swept by fugitive lights and shadows. The pallor +of her face was intensified, her radiant lips compressed, and the green +flame in her glance scintillated beneath luxurious lashes. Anthony, +fastening upon her contented eyes, wondered at the singular charm which +she radiated. Small, slight, insignificant, and charged with +imperfections as she was, her very imperfections possessed the +fascination of elusiveness. Her radiance was intensified in the memory +by the plainness succeeding it; the sensitive curve of her nostrils was +heightened in effect by the irregularity of feature, and the angular +distinctness of the bones of her chin emphasized the faint violet +shadows suffusing the hollows. Had her charm been less impalpable it +would have lost its power. The desire of beauty might have satiated +itself in a dozen women, or of amativeness in a dozen others, but +Mariana fascinated instinctively, and her spell was without beginning in +a single attribute and without end in possession.</p> + +<p>As she sat there in the fifth gallery, drinking with insatiable thirst +the swelling harmony, her emotional nature, which association with +Algarcife had somewhat subdued, was revivified, and she pressed +Anthony's responsive hand in exaltation. The music reverberating round +her brought in its train all those lurid dreams<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> which she had half +forgotten, and the dramatic passion awoke and burned her pulses. She +felt herself invigorated, swept from the moorings of the commonplace, +and subverted by the scenic intensity before her. She felt taller, +stronger, fuller of unimpregnated germs of power, and, like an infusion +of splendid barbaric blood, there surged through her veins a flame of +color. With a triumphant crash of harmonious discord, she felt that the +artistic instinct was stimulated from its supineness, and the desire to +achieve was aglow within her. The electric lights beneath the brilliant +ceiling, the odor of hot-house flowers, the music sweeping upward and +bearing her on its swelling tide, acted upon her overwrought +sensibilities like an intoxicant. She drew near to Anthony; her lips +quivered.</p> + +<p>"Oh, if it would last," she said—"if it would last!"</p> + +<p>But it did not last, and when it was over Mariana pressed her hand to +her brow like one in pain. The return to reality jarred upon her vibrant +nerves, and she became aware of shooting throbs in her temples, and of +the depressing moisture in the atmosphere.</p> + +<p>"I am faint," she complained. "I must have something—anything."</p> + +<p>"It is all that clashing and banging," responded Anthony. "What a relief +silence is!"</p> + +<p>They bought ale and cheese and crackers from a grocery at the corner, +and carried the parcels to their room. Mariana let down her hair, put on +her dressing-gown, and threw herself upon the hearth-rug. She felt weak +and hungry. "If there were only a fire," she lamented regretfully, +stretching her hands towards the register; after which she opened the +paper-bags and ate ravenously.</p> + +<p>In the night she awoke with a start and a sob. She reached out moaningly +in the darkness. Her hands were trembling and the neck of her gown was +damp<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a> and chill. "I believe I shall go mad," she said, desperately.</p> + +<p>Anthony struck a match, lighted the candle, and looked at her. He laid a +cool hand upon her forehead.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" he asked. "Are you nervous? Have you been dreaming?"</p> + +<p>"No, no," cried Mariana, rolling her head upon the pillow, "but I want +music. I want art. There is so much that is beautiful, and I want +something."</p> + +<p>She wept hysterically. Anthony got up and made her a cup of tea, which +she could not drink because it was smoked.</p> + +<p>But on the morrow she was herself again. As she was arranging her hair +she laughed and chattered gayly, and the effect of the previous evening +was shown only in a tendency to break into song. Before drinking her +coffee she turned to the piano and trilled an Italian aria, the fingers +of one hand wandering over the key-board in a careless accompaniment.</p> + +<p>During the day her buoyancy was unfailing. She took up her studies +zealously, and the morning devoted to Mill was rich in results. Her +acuteness of apprehension was a continual marvel to Algarcife's steadier +perception, and he regarded with deference the quickness with which she +grasped the general drift of unstudied social problems. An exaggerated +example of feminine intuition he ascribed unhesitatingly to a profundity +of intellectual ability. That Mariana was adapting herself to his +theories of life, he recognized and accepted. There was relief in the +thought that his influence over her was weightier than the appeal of her +art. With adolescent egotism, he convinced himself that he was shaping +and perfecting a mental energy into channels other than the predestined +ones; and while Mariana was matured into a palpitant reflection of his +own image, he believed that he was liberating an intellect enthralled by +superficialities. But,<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> in truth, the stronger force was assimilating to +itself the weaker, and the comradeship existing in their love was +perfect in smoothness and finish. The opinions which Anthony radiated +Mariana reflected, and they presented to the world proof of a domestic +unity complete in its harmony.<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIV-a" id="CHAPTER_XIV-a"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h3> + +<p>One evening in March, Mr. Nevins gave a supper in his studio.</p> + +<p>Anthony had come in that morning looking somewhat perplexed. "Nevins +wants us to-night," he said to Mariana, "and I couldn't get out of it."</p> + +<p>Mariana looked up eagerly from her practising. "Oh, it is the +'Andromeda,'" she replied. "He said he would celebrate it. So it has +been accepted."</p> + +<p>"But it hasn't been. It is the rejection he is celebrating. He told me +so. I feel sorry for the fellow, so I said we would go."</p> + +<p>"Of course we will!" exclaimed Mariana. "But I'm afraid he'll be +gloomy."</p> + +<p>"On the contrary, he has just come off a spree, and has a patch over his +left eye. His hilarity is positively annoying. He and Ardly are smashing +everything in their rooms. The pitcher went as I passed."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is his way of expressing feeling," returned Mariana, +sympathetically. "Listen to this new air. It goes tra la la, tra—"</p> + +<p>Anthony cut her short.</p> + +<p>"My dear girl, I'm in an awful hurry. Would you mind being quiet +awhile?" And he entered his study, closing the door after him. Mariana +left the piano and sat with folded hands looking down into the street +below. A fine rain was falling, and the streets were sloppy with a +whitish slime. The women that passed held their skirts well above their +ankles, revealing all shapes and varieties of feet. She noticed<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> that +they carried their skirts awkwardly, with a curious hitch upon the right +hip. They were working-women for the most part, and their gowns were +neither well made nor well cut, but they walked aggressively, with an +uneven, almost masculine, swagger.</p> + +<p>Mariana yawned and sighed. She would have liked to go back to the piano +and bang a march or some stirring strain of martial music, but she +recalled Anthony's injunction and yawned again. She remembered suddenly +that her practising had become uncertain of late, and that Anthony's +objection seemed to lie like a drawn sword between her and her art. An +involuntary smile crossed her lips, that she who had pledged herself to +the pursuit of music had also given herself to a man to whom Wagner was +as Rossini. She dwelt upon her changed conditions almost unconsciously. +It was not that her devotion to art had cooled since her marriage, but +that something was forever preventing the expression of it. That Anthony +regarded it as one of the trivialities of life, she saw clearly, and +there was an aggrieved note in her regret. To her, in whom the artistic +instinct was bone of her bone and blood of her blood, the sacrifice of a +professional career was less slight than Algarcife believed, and in the +depths of her heart there still lurked the hope that in time Anthony's +impassioned opposition to a stage life would wear itself out. When the +moment came, she dreamed of a final reinspiration of the slumbering +fires of her ambition. Now, as she sat beside the window, she became +aware of the awakening. Once again she allowed her mind to hover above +the distant future and to illuminate its neutral canvas with garish +colors. In the future anything and everything was possible. Some weeks +ago Signor Morani had sent for her and offered her tuition, and she had +accepted. "If you achieve success you can repay me," he had said, +adding, with philosophic<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> intention, "If not, I shall have lost nothing +that was my own."</p> + +<p>Mariana, in a burst of gratitude, had wept upon his shoulder, and he had +smiled as he patted her prostrate head.</p> + +<p>"Remember," he said, "that you are an artist first, and a wife and +mother afterwards, and you will succeed."</p> + +<p>Sitting beside the window and staring at the expressionless tenements +across the way, she laughed with soft insistence at the professor's +warning. What a consuming force was love, that it had destroyed her old +mad longing for the stage! Was it all love, or was it only the love of +Anthony?</p> + +<p>Then before her, in the train of her thoughts, the sentiments of her +life were limned vividly, and she remembered the young highwayman whose +picture she had seen. She saw the bold, Byronic countenance, with the +shadow of evil upon the lips and the uncultured eyes. She recalled the +blur by which the printer had obscured the chin, and she felt again the +tremor with which she had awaited the sentence of the court. She thought +of Edgardo, the romantic tenor, of his impassioned arias, and then of +his fat and immobile face, of his red-cheeked German wife, to whom he +was a faithful husband, and of his red-cheeked German children, to whom +he was a devoted father. She laughed again as she remembered the tears +with which she had bedewed her pillow, and the spasm of jealousy in +which she had mentally attacked the prima donna. Last of all she thought +of Jerome Ardly, as she had seen him upon the night of her arrival, +sitting in indolent discussion of his dinner, the <i>Evening Post</i> spread +out upon his knee. She experienced in memory the thrill which had seized +her at his voice. She remembered how strong and masterful he had looked +with the glow of heart disease, which she had thought the glow of +health, upon his face. Then her thoughts<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> returned to Anthony and +settled to rest. To dwell upon him was as if she had laid her head upon +his arm and felt his hand above her heart; as if she had anchored +herself in deep waters, far beyond the breakers and shallows of life.</p> + +<p>In the next room she knew that Anthony was at work, that he had +probably, for the time being, forgotten her existence. The knowledge +caused her a twinge of pain, and she went to the door, opened it, and +looked in.</p> + +<p>Algarcife glanced up absently.</p> + +<p>"You don't wish anything, do you?" he inquired, and she saw that an +irritable mood was upon him, "I can't be interrupted."</p> + +<p>"It is nothing," answered Mariana as she closed the door, but she felt a +sudden tightening of the heart, and, as she gathered up several loose +sheets of music lying upon the floor, she thought, with a spasm of +regretful pain, of the practising she had given up. "He does not know," +she said, and a few tears fell upon the key-board.</p> + +<p>That night, when she was dressing for Nevins's supper, she noticed that +there was a faint flush in her cheeks and her hands were hot.</p> + +<p>"We lead such a quiet life," she said, laughing, "that a very little +thing excites me."</p> + +<p>Algarcife, who was shaving, put down his razor and came towards her. He +was in his shirt-sleeves, and she noticed that he looked paler and more +haggard than usual.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Mariana," he began, "don't talk too much to Nevins; I don't +like it."</p> + +<p>Mariana confronted him smilingly.</p> + +<p>"You are positively the green-eyed monster himself," she said. "But why +don't you say Ardly, and come nearer the truth? I was in love with him +once, you know."<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a></p> + +<p>"Hush!" said Anthony, savagely; "you oughtn't to joke about such things; +it isn't decent."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it didn't go as far as that!" returned Mariana, with audacity.</p> + +<p>"How dare you!" exclaimed Algarcife, and they flung themselves into each +other's arms.</p> + +<p>"How absurd you are!" said Mariana, looking up. "You haven't one little +atom of common-sense—not one."</p> + +<p>Then they finished dressing, lowered the lights, and went down-stairs.</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins greeted them effusively. He was standing in the centre of a +small group composed of Miss Freighley, Mr. Sellars, and Mr. Paul, and +the patch above his left eye, as well as his general unsteadiness, bore +evidence to his need of the moral suasion to which Mr. Paul was giving +utterance. In a corner of the room the "Andromeda" was revealed naked to +her friends as well as to her enemies, and at the moment of Anthony's +and Mariana's entrance Mr. Ardly was engaged in crowning her with a +majestic wreath of willow.</p> + +<p>He looked up from his task to bestow a morose greeting.</p> + +<p>"We have invited you to weep with us," he remarked. "The gentle pronoun +'us,' which you may have observed, is due, not to my sympathetic nature, +but to the fact that I have lost a wager upon the rejected one to Mr. +Paul—"</p> + +<p>"Who is also among the prophets," broke in Mr. Nevins, with a +declamatory wave of his hand. "For behold, he prophesied, and his +prophecy it came to pass! For he spake, saying, 'The "Andromeda," she +shall be barren of honor, and lo! in one hour shall she be made +desolate, and her creator shall put dust upon his head and rend his +clothes, yet shall it avail not—'"<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a></p> + +<p>"Shut up, Nevins!" roared Ardly, seating himself at the table beside +Mariana. "As if everybody didn't know that Mr. Paul's prophecy was +obliged to come to pass! Did you ever see a pessimist who wasn't +infallible as a soothsayer? It beats a special revelation all hollow."</p> + +<p>"Please don't be irreverent," remonstrated Mariana. "I am sure I am +awfully sorry about the 'Andromeda,' and I believe that if Mr. Nevins +had taken my advice and lightened those shadows—"</p> + +<p>"Or mine, and lengthened that thigh," broke in Ardly.</p> + +<p>"Or mine, and shortened the fingers," added Miss Freighley.</p> + +<p>"Or mine, and never painted it," in a savage whisper from Algarcife.</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins silenced the quartet with promptness. "Hang it all!" he +exclaimed, crossly; "between most of your suggestions for art's sake, +and Mr. Paul's suggestions for decency's sake, there wouldn't be a +blamed rag of her left."</p> + +<p>"On the contrary," commented Mr. Paul, "an additional rag or two would +be decidedly advantageous."</p> + +<p>Mariana raised her finger, with an admonishing shake of the head.</p> + +<p>"Out upon you for a Philistine!" she said. "I haven't heard such +profanity since I showed my colored mammy a 'Venus de Milo,' and her +criticism was, 'Lor', child! nakedness ain't no treat to me!'"</p> + +<p>Mr. Nevins laughed uproariously, and filled Mariana's glass, while +Algarcife glared from across the table.</p> + +<p>"I should like to paste that motto in every studio in New York," +returned Mr. Paul. "It was the healthful sentiment of a mind undepraved +by civilization."</p> + +<p>"What a first-rate censor you would make!" smiled Ardly, +good-naturedly—"the fitting exponent of a<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a> people who see nastiness in +a box of colors and evil in everything."</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul bore the charge with gravity. "Yes, I keep my eyes well open," +he responded, complacently.</p> + +<p>Algarcife leaned across the table, and discussed woman's suffrage with +Miss Ramsey. Mariana flushed and smiled, and glanced from Nevins to +Ardly and back again.</p> + +<p>Mr. Sellars, who had been engrossed by his salad, took up the cue.</p> + +<p>"Oh, the world isn't to blame if we see it through a fog!" he said. +"Excellent salad."</p> + +<p>"Thanks," drawled Mr. Nevins, amicably. "I cut it up, and Ardly made the +dressing. The cutting up is the part that tells."</p> + +<p>"But why didn't you bring it to me?" asked Mariana. "I should have liked +to help you." Then she raised her glass. "Health to 'Andromeda' and +confusion to her enemies!"</p> + +<p>There followed a wild clashing of glasses and a series of hoarse hurrahs +from Mr. Nevins. After which Mariana was borne tumultuously to the +piano, where she sang a little French song about love and fame.</p> + +<p>Then Mr. Sellars sang an Irish ballad, and Nevins volunteered the +statement that, after hearing Ardly, anybody who didn't mistake his nose +for his mouth would be a relief.</p> + +<p>"You don't listen," protested Ardly. "We have an excellent system," he +explained. "We sometimes spend a musical evening, and when Nevins sings +I look through the portfolio for my pieces, and when I sing he looks for +his."</p> + +<p>That night when Mariana went up to her room she was in exuberant +spirits. In a whirl of energy she pirouetted before the mirror. Then she +stopped suddenly, grew white, and swayed forward.</p> + +<p>"I can't stand excitement," she said, and before<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> Anthony could reach +her she fell a limp heap upon the floor. Algarcife dashed into the +adjoining room and returned with a flask of brandy. Then he undressed +her, wrapped her in a dressing-gown, and, drawing off her shoes and +stockings, chafed her cold feet. Mariana was too exhausted to protest, +and allowed herself to be lulled to sleep like a child.</p> + +<p>For several weeks after this she was nervous and unstrung. She grew +hollow-eyed, the shadows deepened, and her sunniness of temper gave +place to an unaccustomed melancholy. She had learned that a new life was +quickening within her, and she experienced a blind and passionate fear +of inevitable agony. She feared herself, she feared suffering, and she +feared the fate of the unborn life. One evening she threw herself into +Anthony's arms. "It is the inevitableness," she said. "If I knew that it +might not happen, I could bear it better. But nothing can prevent it, +and I am afraid—afraid."</p> + +<p>Algarcife grew white. "I am afraid for you," he answered.</p> + +<p>"And the child? We shall be responsible for it. The thought maddens me. +We are so poor, and it seems to me that it is wrong. I feel as if I had +committed a sin—as if I were forcing something into the world to fight +with poverty and discomforts. It may even hate us for bringing it. I +almost hope it will die."</p> + +<p>"We will make it a happy child."</p> + +<p>"But doesn't it frighten you?"</p> + +<p>Algarcife smiled. "Not as much as you do, you bodiless bit of +eccentricity."</p> + +<p>"All the same, I feel as if it were a sin," said Mariana. "Mill says—"</p> + +<p>Anthony laughed aloud and caught her to him. "So you are turning my own +weapons upon me," he said. "For the sake of domestic harmony, don't +quote Mill to me, Mariana."<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XV-a" id="CHAPTER_XV-a"></a>CHAPTER XV</h3> + +<p>In the autumn the child was born. Mariana, dissolved in nervous hysteria +in the beginning, rallied when the time drew on, and faced the final +throes triumphantly. For several months beforehand she sat and waited +with desperate resignation. Her existence, hedged in by the four walls +of her room and broken only by the strolls she took with Algarcife after +night-fall, exasperated her resentment against social enactments, and +she protested bitterly.</p> + +<p>"A woman is treated as if she were in disgrace," she said, "and forced +to shun the light, when, in reality, she is sacrificing herself for the +continuance of the race, and should be respected and allowed to go about +in a right and natural manner. I believe all this indecency started with +those old scriptural purifications, and I wish it hadn't."</p> + +<p>But when the days passed, her lamentations gave place to serenity of +speech, and her expression became almost matronly. Dramatically she was +stifling her ęsthetic aversion and adjusting herself to her part.</p> + +<p>When it was over, and she lay still and etherealized among the pillows, +she was conscious only of an infinite restfulness. It was as if the +travail through which she had passed had purged her of all capacity for +sensation, and the crying of the new-born child fell upon her ear like +the breaking of faint and far-off waves of sound.</p> + +<p>From Anthony's caress she turned with a gesture of annoyance, and, in a +vague association of ideas, she<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> wondered if a man who had climbed from +hell to heaven would be gratified by a draught of milk-and-water. She +seemed to stand aloof and far off upon some ice-crowned summit, where +the air was too rarefied to support the growth of human passions. She +felt that she had become a pure intelligence, and that the appeal of her +flesh no longer retarded her ascent. The elemental values of life were +obscured by the shadows of indifference. Love existed only as an +intangible and forced illusion, passion as a disease of the blood. While +her still and inert body lay freed from pain, her mind was singularly +strong and clear. The limitations of a personality seemed no longer to +encompass her. She imagined she saw as God saw, sustained by pulseless +repose, seeing, not feeling, the swing of the universe. She wondered if +the time would ever come when she would descend from this altitude and +take up again the substance of self, when her senses would again enmesh +her.</p> + +<p>Some one came across the room and laid a bundle upon the bed beside her, +but she did not look at it. Then her hand was lifted and a glass put to +her lips, and the faint odor of chloroform which hung about her faded +before the fresher odor of digitalis. The child cried at her side, and +the first sensation she felt was one of irritation.</p> + +<p>"Take it away," she said, fretfully, and fainted.</p> + +<p>With her returning vigor, Mariana's normal nature reasserted itself. The +first day that she was able to sit propped up among the pillows she had +the child brought to her, and looked at it critically, half in +curiosity, half in tenderness.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever see one with quite such a screwed-up face?" she inquired, +dubiously, of the nurse who hovered about.</p> + +<p>"Plenty, ma'am; most of 'em are like that—all puckers and wrinkles."<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a></p> + +<p>"It might be a thousand years old," continued Mariana, "or a +hickory-nut." Then she added: "I don't feel as if it belonged to me at +all. I don't care for it in the least."</p> + +<p>"That'll come."</p> + +<p>"I hope so," answered Mariana, "and I am sorry that it is a girl. It +will have so much to bear. I wonder if I looked like that when I was a +baby. I declare, it is positively green. What is the matter with it?"</p> + +<p>"Just the shadow from the blind, ma'am."</p> + +<p>The baby lay upon its back, with half-closed, indistinguishable eyes, +slobbering over one red fist. It looked old and wizened, as if oppressed +by the understanding that it had entered upon the most perilous of +mundane transmigrations. It had cried only once, and that was upon its +entrance into the predestined conditions. There was something almost +uncanny in its imperturbability, suggesting, as it did, that it had been +awed into silence by the warning finger of fate.</p> + +<p>"Poor little thing," said Mariana. She leaned over it and stroked the +smooth, round head, from which the soft hair was rubbing off, leaving it +preternaturally bald. "What a mite!" She encircled it within the curve +of her arm and lay looking up at the ceiling. "How strange it all is!" +she thought. "It was only yesterday that I was a child myself—and now +my first and last and only born is here alive." Then she frowned. It +seemed inexplicable to her that women went on travailing and giving +birth. That a woman who had once known the agony of maternity should +consent to bear a second or third or fourth child struck her as +ridiculous. She closed her eyes and laughed. Suddenly she felt a clammy +clutch upon her finger and looked down. The baby's eyes were open, and +it was staring straight ahead at the cloud of dust<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a> and sunshine that +flooded the room. The red fist had left its mouth and fastened upon her +hand.</p> + +<p>Mariana smiled.</p> + +<p>"Its eyes are blue!" she cried, "just like turquoises. Look, nurse! Oh, +my dear, poor, ugly little baby!"</p> + +<p>A rush of tenderness choked her words, and she lay silent and rapt, her +hand responding to the weak grasp upon her finger. In some way she felt +changed and tremulous. That invincible instinct of motherhood, which was +a forced and abnormal product of her temperament, pulsed from her heart +to her answering veins. She experienced in its fulness the sense of +guardianship upon which rests the first intuitive recognition of the +maternal responsibility. Her emotion welled forth to meet the appeal of +the helplessness beside her, and she extended her fragile arm as if in +the act of giving shelter. When Algarcife came in some hours later he +found her lying asleep, her hand still upon the small, soft head of the +child. In the noonday light the intense, opaline pallor of her face was +startling.</p> + +<p>In quick alarm he leaned over her, listening for the rise and fall of +her breathing. It came softly, with a still insistence, like the ripple +of a faint wind upon rose leaves. The heavy lashes resting upon her +cheeks accentuated the entire absence of color, and the violet tones +rising in the shadows of mouth and chin lent to her face the look of one +in a trance or in death. It was as if the scarlet current in her blood +had, by some necromancer's magic, been transfused from pale violets. Her +gown was open at the throat, and he marked the same bloodlessness and +hints of bluish shadows in her cold breast. He saw it also in the +fragile curve of her uncovered arm and in the marble-like beauty of her +hands.</p> + +<p>"Mariana," he whispered.</p> + +<p>She turned slowly towards him and unclosed her eyes.<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a></p> + +<p>"Give me something," she said; "brandy—a great deal."</p> + +<p>He brought it to her and raised her on his arm as she drank it.</p> + +<p>"I was dreaming," she said, fretfully. "I dreamed that I was +falling—falling past the earth, past millions of worlds—past a great +many apple orchards, and they were all in bloom. But, somehow, I never +reached the bottom. There wasn't any bottom."</p> + +<p>"You are stronger now?" he questioned, almost wistfully.</p> + +<p>"Not a bit," returned Mariana, peevishly. "I am so—so—so weak." Then +she laughed softly. "Do you know that brandy makes me think of my +childhood, and a great goblet of mint-julep, with the crushed ice all +frosted on the glass. My father was famous for his mint-juleps. I wish I +had one now."</p> + +<p>"Shall I make it for you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it wouldn't be the same! I should never like one that didn't have +the ice frosted on the glass." She grew weakly reminiscent. "Once, when +I was a little child," she said, "I was dressed up in a nice white frock +and red sash, and sent out on the sidewalk to play, and I grew tired and +wandered off and got lost. I went a long way, and at last I came to the +city almshouse. I was going up the steps when I looked into a bar-room +across the way, and saw a gentleman with a very red face drinking a +toddy. I went over and asked him if he were related to my father, and he +said he supposed not, but he took me in behind the screen and sat me +upon a table and offered me a taste of toddy, and I said, 'No, thank +you. I have plenty of that at home.'"</p> + +<p>Then she turned over and went to sleep, while Algarcife sat beside her +and held her hand. His gaze ravished her with its fierce tenderness. His +life and heart and brain seemed bound up and enshrined in the<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a> sleeping +woman who lay in that death-like pallor, with the child at her side. He +followed the sweep of the loosened and disordered hair that fell in a +heavy braid across the pillow. He lingered, unsatisfied, upon the worn +and emaciated face, in which there was none of the material beauty of +flesh and blood. With an impassioned ardor he studied the defects of +outline, the thin and irregular features, the hollows of the blue-veined +temples, the firm and accentuated chin. Now there was none of that +bewildering illumination of expression left, which in moments of +intensity was like a fleeting search-light thrown across her face, +forever changing in tone and color. She lay rapt and wan and pallid—a +woman overthrown.</p> + +<p>His glance fell upon the child in the hollow of her arm, and he bent to +look at it. He was conscious of no feeling for it as his own, but of a +general feeling of pity for it as a helpless animal. He supposed the +other would come later, and in the meantime Mariana was sufficient.</p> + +<p>Then, as he sat there, a harassed look crept into his eyes, and he +frowned impatiently. Mariana's illness had entirely exhausted the small +fund he had accumulated, and he knew that the next few years would bring +a hand-to-hand, disastrous conflict with want. For himself he cared +little, but for Mariana and the child he experienced a blind and bitter +disgust at his own impotence. Working night and day, as he did, and +preserving his hold upon the Bodley College, which was at best an +uncertain reef, he knew that he could manage to wring from the world but +a bare subsistence. He felt resentful of the fact that all his +knowledge, all his years of study, all his scientific value would weigh +for nothing in the struggle for bread against a moderate capacity for +fulfilling the dictates of other men. This ruthless waste of energy +exasperated him in its inevitable assault upon his theories of<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a> life. He +looked at his hands—thin and virile hands, with knotted knuckles and +square-cut finger-tips—the hands of a nervous, impracticable +temperament. Of a sudden he felt himself as helpless to contend with +existing conditions as the baby lying within the crook of Mariana's arm. +For an instant his natural irascibility of temper seemed to have +overborne the bounds of his reserve. That extreme sensitiveness to minor +irritants became painful in its acuteness. He saw in it the effects of +the nervous exhaustion which followed in the wake of uncongenial mental +work combined with the stress of financial worries, and withdrew the +curb of will. For the moment he regretted his old life—regretted his +freedom and the solitude which had surrounded him even amid the tumult +of the city. He reproached himself that he had not allowed Mariana to +live her life as it pleased her, unhampered by the obligations he had +permitted her to assume. Then he recalled her as she came to him that +September night, the letter fluttering in her hand, and it seemed to him +that he was not wholly responsible—that something mightier than himself +had manipulated their destinies. To his dark and embittered mood there +appeared a certain humor in the thought that they were puppets in the +hands of the grim comedian Time. And then the scientific tenor of his +mind, which contrasted saliently with his nervous temperament, +reasserted itself, and he traced in vague outline the inviolable +sequence of cause and effect, upon which his own and the world's +revolutions hung. Again he fortified himself with a philosophic +acceptance of the authoritative "must" of those unconquerable forces +which we call fate.</p> + +<p>With a returning gentleness he loosened Mariana's hand and went back to +his work.</p> + +<p>When Mariana grew strong enough to wear a blue wrapper and sit in a +rocking-chair beside the window, she began working upon dainty garments +for the baby.<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> With characteristic extravagance she embroidered a +hundred roses upon a white carriage-robe which would probably not +survive the first laundering. She made tiny bags for powdered +orris-root, and scattered them among the tucked and ruffled cambric, and +that faint suggestion of fresh violets was extended from herself to the +child.</p> + +<p>One day, Miss Ramsey, coming in on her way up-stairs, found her tearing +up a linen petticoat to make night-slips for the baby, whom she had +called "Isolde."</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey remonstrated. She had been a faithful servitor during +Mariana's convalescence, and she felt that she had earned the right to +interpose. "My dear Mariana," she said, "what are you doing? Cotton at +ten cents a yard would do equally well."</p> + +<p>"But I couldn't make the little thing sleep in cotton," answered +Mariana, "and I haven't any money, so I cut up a few of my things. It +must be well cared for. I really couldn't have a child that wasn't nice +and clean."</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey smiled.</p> + +<p>"Do you think," she asked, "that it would know the difference between +cotton and linen? Besides, I've always heard that cotton was more +healthful."</p> + +<p>Mariana threaded her needle and bent her head.</p> + +<p>"It is in the blood," she returned. "My grandmother couldn't bear to be +touched by anything but silk. She lived upon her plantations and owned a +great many slaves, and she could afford it. Everything, from her +night-caps to her chemises, was made of soft white silk. I have one of +her chemises, and it is all hand-sewed, with a fall of real lace around +the bosom. My mother inherited the taste, and she never wore cotton +stockings, even when she couldn't afford meat but twice a week. I am +just like her, only she was proud of it and I am ashamed of it."</p> + +<p>"But you have overcome it," said Miss Ramsey.<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a></p> + +<p>Mariana laughed.</p> + +<p>"I can't. Anthony says luxury is bred in my bone, but then he doesn't +even care for comforts. I believe he had just as soon eat turnip-salad +on a plain deal table as sweetbreads on Irish damask."</p> + +<p>"Life teaches us the pettiness of such things," said Miss Ramsey. "When +one isn't sure one will get a dinner at all, one is not apt to worry +about the possible serving. By-the-way, Mr. Nevins wants to paint the +baby when it gets a little larger."</p> + +<p>Mariana looked delighted.</p> + +<p>"Of course he shall," she said; then she took the child from the nurse's +arms and gave it into Miss Ramsey's. "Feel how light she is," she +continued. "I know she isn't very pretty, but she is beautifully +formed—nurse says so—and did you ever see one with quite so much +expression?"</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey held it upon her knee, patting its flexible back with one +timid hand. "I really believe it notices things," she said. "It is +looking straight at you."</p> + +<p>"Of course it does," Mariana answered. "Of course it knows its own +blessed little mamma—doesn't it, Isolde?"</p> + +<p>The child whimpered and squirmed upon Miss Ramsey's knee.</p> + +<p>"Take it, nurse," said Mariana. "It doesn't look nice when it cries."</p> + +<p>A week later Mr. Speares came, and was introduced to the baby as it lay +in its crib. He leaned over it in the helpless inattention of a man who +has a mortal terror of a human being during the first stages of its +development.</p> + +<p>"It looks very pleasant," he said, finally.</p> + +<p>Mariana lifted the child and held it against her shoulder. Had Mr. +Nevins seen her in her light-blue gown, with the soft look in her eyes, +he would have seized the opportunity and used it to advantage.<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a></p> + +<p>"Look at her eyes," she said. "Is she like Anthony used to be?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Speares examined it critically. "I don't observe it," he replied; +"but I don't suppose its features are quite formed as yet. It will be +easier to trace a likeness later on."</p> + +<p>Mariana laughed and smoothed the long dress with her frail, blue-veined +hand. "The nurse says it is like me," she returned, good-humoredly. "I +say it is like Anthony, and Anthony says it is like the original +primate."<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVI-a" id="CHAPTER_XVI-a"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h3> + +<p>"I am getting old," said Mariana. She was sitting before the mirror, and +as she spoke she rose and leaned forward in closer inspection. "This +line," she added, dolefully, rubbing her forehead, "is caused by the +laundress, this by the departure of the nurse, and this by the curdling +of the baby's milk."</p> + +<p>Anthony crossed over and stood behind her. "I would give my right arm to +smooth them away," he said.</p> + +<p>Mariana fastened the collar of her breakfast sacque and looked back at +him from the glass. She did not reply. Not that she would not have liked +to say something affectionate, but that she felt the effort to be +pleasant to be physically beyond her. Her life of the last few weeks had +taught her that demonstrative expressions are an unnecessary waste of +energy.</p> + +<p>There was a rap at the door, and she opened it and took the milk-bottle +from the dairy-man. After setting a cupful upon the little gas-stove, +she raised the window and placed the remainder upon the fire-escape. "I +am afraid," she remarked, "that I will have to try one of those +innumerable infant foods. One can never be sure that the milk is quite +fresh."</p> + +<p>Anthony tied a cravat which was particularly worn, put on a coat which +was particularly shiny across the shoulders, and went into the adjoining +room to set the table. He boiled the coffee, took in the baker's rolls +from a tray on the threshold, and put on a couple of eggs. Then he +called Mariana.<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a></p> + +<p>She came, sat down at the table, and lifted the coffee-pot. She looked +hollow-eyed and haggard, and her hand shook slightly. "I am so weak," +she said, fretfully. "I can't get my strength. I just go dragging +about."</p> + +<p>Anthony looked at her in sudden pain. "If there were a speculating devil +around who took stock in souls," he said, "I am sure we might offer him +an investment. People are fools to think there is any happiness without +money."</p> + +<p>"Or any decency," added Mariana. Then the baby cried, and she took it up +and brought it to the table, holding it upon her knee as she ate. Her +appetite failed, and she pushed her plate away.</p> + +<p>"The egg is so white," she said, pettishly, "I can't eat it." Then her +voice choked. "I—I sometimes wish I were dead," she added, and went to +pour the baby's milk into its bottle.</p> + +<p>Mariana's strength did not return. As the months passed she grew more +listless, her pallor deepened, and the shadows under her eyes darkened +to a purplish cast. The incessant round of minor cares clouded her +accustomed sunniness of temper, and her buoyant step gave place to a +languid tread. It was as if the inexorable hand of poverty had crushed +her beneath its weight.</p> + +<p>Algarcife, coming in from his more systematic employment, would marvel +vaguely at her unresponsiveness. His tenderness would recoil in pained +surprise as he felt her indifference to his caress, and her long +silences while he sat beside her. "Mariana," he would begin, "won't you +talk to me?" and Mariana would rouse herself with a start. "But what is +there to say?" she would ask, and sink back into stillness. It was, +perhaps, impossible for him to understand that at such times she was but +undergoing the inevitable reaction from long months of physical and +mental suffering—<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a>that the energy which she had expended in supplying +the drains upon her nature had left her incapable of further effort. He +did not know that emotion with a woman is so largely regulated by +nervous conditions, that complete exhaustion of body and mind is apt to +repress, not the fund of affection, but its outward manifestations. In +his passionate desire to shield Mariana, he had kept from her knowledge +the financial stress into which her prolonged illness had plunged him. +He had watched his growing indebtedness silently, and had reduced his +personal expenses to a minimum while he sought to supply her with +comforts. But from the immediate needs and anxieties of her own life he +had not been able to guard her. The gnawing fears for the child, the +nights when she awoke from needed sleep to lean over its crib and soothe +it with lullabies, the weary hours in the day when she walked with +aching head back and forth, he could not prevent, nor could he restore +to her the health which she had lost. That the vein of iron which lay +beneath the surface lightness of her nature had developed through +responsibility, he saw clearly, but he also saw that she lived her life +in apparent unrepining, not because of a rational acceptance of the +order of things, but because illness and toil had for the time +overthrown her ęsthetic intuitions. To recall her as she had been during +the first months of their marriage, white, fresh, and exquisite in +attire, and then to look at her in a faded wrapper, her heavy hair +disordered, her lips compressed, was to know that Mariana as she was +to-day was not Mariana in a normal state. That it could not last, he +knew. That with the first wave of returning vigor her longing for +dramatic effects and the small requirements of existence would reawaken, +he admitted unhesitatingly. She would grow vital again, she would demand +with passionate desire the satisfaction of her<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> senses—she would crave +music, color, light, all the sensuous fulness of life. And where would +she find it?</p> + +<p>One day, as he came in to luncheon, he found her playing with the baby, +a flash of brightness upon her face.</p> + +<p>He looked at her and smiled.</p> + +<p>"It is company for you, isn't it, dearest?"</p> + +<p>Mariana's smile passed.</p> + +<p>"I don't have time to think about that part," she returned. "I am always +working. When I've got her all nice and fresh, and laid her on the bed, +she begins to cry for her bottle. Then, while I am heating the milk, she +cries to be walked, and, by the time the bottle is ready, she is so red +in the face she can't drink it, and she spills it all over herself. Then +I begin and go through it all again."</p> + +<p>"What a little beast she is," said Algarcife, surveying the baby with +parental displeasure. "What a pity she isn't a Japanese! Japanese babies +never cry." Then he grew serious. "I sometimes wonder how you stand it," +he added. "Here, give me the little devil!"</p> + +<p>Mariana rescued the baby's rattle from its throat and laid it in the +crib. It screamed, and she took it up again.</p> + +<p>"There is a good deal in having to," she replied.</p> + +<p>Algarcife walked to the window and stood looking down into the street. +His brow was gloomy. Suddenly he faced her. "Are you sorry that you +married me, Mariana?"</p> + +<p>Mariana did not impulsively negative the question, as he had half +expected. She even appeared to consider it. Then she slowly shook her +head.</p> + +<p>"I should have been more unhappy if I hadn't," she answered.</p> + +<p>"It would have been a confounded sight better if you had never seen +me."<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a></p> + +<p>But Mariana put the child down and fell into his outstretched arms.</p> + +<p>"No, no," she said; "but I am tired—so tired."</p> + +<p>Anthony picked her up and laid her on the bed. Then he threw a shawl +over her. "I am going to take an hour off and discipline your tyrant," +he said. "Go to sleep." He lifted the baby and went towards the door. +"You aren't such a black-hearted chap, after all, are you, Isolde?"</p> + +<p>The baby cuddled against his shoulder, and he passed into the next room, +closing the door after him.</p> + +<p>Mariana lay upon the bed and thought. Her eyes were wide open, and she +stared fixedly at the ceiling, watching the fluctuations of light that +chased across its plastered surface. It was a relief to be absolutely +alone, to be freed from the restraint which the presence of another +thinking entity necessitated. She drew the shawl closer about her and +pressed her cheek upon the pillow. The contact of the cotton was +exciting to her fevered flesh. In the dim train of association it +brought back to her an illness in her childhood, and she recalled her +first sensations of headache and fatigue. They had come upon her as she +was playing in an open meadow, and, before toiling to the house, she had +stopped beside the reedy brook and knelt to drink, while the cool, fresh +notes of the bobolinks sounded about her. She remembered it all now as +she lay amid the noise of the city. The roar of the elevated road was +silenced, and she heard the bobolinks again. She saw the emerald sweep +of the wheat fields, undulating in golden lights and olive shadows. She +saw the stagnant ice pond, with the overhanging branches of willows and +the whir of the parti-colored insects. She smelt the pungent sweetness +of the wild rose and the subtle odor of the trumpet-flower, glowing amid +its luxuriant foliage like a heart of fire.</p> + +<p>Then she raised her head and surveyed the room in<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> which she lay. She +saw the garish daylight streaming in a flood of dust and sunshine +through the narrow window. She saw the lack of grace that surrounded +her, emphasized by a crowd of trivial details. She saw the tall, painted +wardrobe with its bulging doors and the bandboxes upon the top, the +cheap bureau with its gaping drawers, and the assortment of shoes +half-hidden under it. She saw her work-basket, overflowing with +stockings to be darned and small slips to be mended.</p> + +<p>With a stifled sob she turned from it all, pressing her face against the +pillow. The heritage of yearning for vivid beauty and sharp, sweet odors +surged upon her. "I can't be poor!" she cried, passionately. "I can't be +poor!"</p> + +<p>But as the spring came, Mariana regained something of her old vigor, and +it was in April of that year that Mr. Nevins painted the portrait which +was exhibited some six months later, and with which began his rising +fortunes. It represented her in the blue wrapper, holding the sleeping +Isolde upon her knee, that soft and pensive stillness in her eyes. +Within a couple of months after its appearance, Mr. Nevins had received +orders for similar portraits from a dozen mothers, and had taken his +position in the art world as the popular baby specialist.</p> + +<p>Mariana had enjoyed the portrait and the sittings. They diverted her +thoughts from the groove of the ordinary and gratified to a small extent +her social instinct. When it was finished, and Mr. Nevins no longer +came, she relapsed into listlessness. It was the friction of the outside +world she needed. Hers was not the nature to develop through stagnation. +In barren soil she wilted and grew colorless, while at the touch of +sunshine she expanded and put forth her old radiance.</p> + +<p>Anthony, watching her, would become oppressed at<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a> times with the thought +that this thin and fragile woman, dragging through her irksome round of +duties, anęmic and hollow-eyed, might by the magic of wealth and ease +mature into a passionate, lithe, and gracious creature, of which she was +now the wraith—and yet which even now she suggested. For the furnace +through which she had passed, in robbing her of freshness and bloom, had +been unable to destroy her vague and ineffable charm.</p> + +<p>"She is a woman ruined," he said, bitterly, and he said it with a dull +aching in his heart. To him Mariana, emaciated and unresponsive, was +still the Mariana to be possessed and held with burning desire. The +small clashes of temper, the long silences, the apparent indifference, +had been powerless to weaken the force of his love. It was still +indomitable.</p> + +<p>One night, upon going to his room, he found her in her night-gown +kneeling on the hearth-rug. From her breathing he knew that she was +asleep, and it was a moment before he aroused her. In the dim light she +resembled a marble figure of prayer, her cheek resting upon her hand, +the lashes fallen over the violet circles beneath her eyes.</p> + +<p>Beside the bed, the baby lay in its little crib, the restless fists +lying upon its breast, a fine moisture shining like dew upon the +infantile face. He stood looking at it, a thrill shooting into his +heart. For the first time he realized with acuteness a positive feeling +for the child—realized that it was his as well as Mariana's, that it +had a claim upon him other than the claim of Mariana, that he was not +only the husband of a woman, but the father of a child.</p> + +<p>Bending over the crib, he touched with one finger the crumpled rose-leaf +hands, with the soft indentation around the wrist as if left by a +tightly drawn cord.</p> + +<p>He smiled slightly. Then he crossed over and kissed<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a> Mariana. She opened +her eyes, yawned, stretched her arms above her head, and rose.</p> + +<p>"I have really been asleep," she said.</p> + +<p>"You were so tired," answered Algarcife, and his voice was limpid with +tenderness. "It kills me that you should work so, Mariana."</p> + +<p>Mariana rested against him for an instant. Then she went to the crib, +and, raising the baby's head, smoothed its pillow. As she laid it down +again she pressed the cover carefully over its arms; then, throwing +herself into bed, she fell asleep with a sigh.<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVII-a" id="CHAPTER_XVII-a"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h3> + +<p>With the closing session, Algarcife lost his position at the Bodley +College. He had published, for a mere pittance, a series of articles +upon the origin of sex, and, as a result, he was requested to deliver +his resignation to the principal of the institution. A man holding such +views, it was argued, was an unsuitable instructor for sixty-one young +women. So the instructorship was transferred to a divinity student who +was casually looking into science, and Algarcife was dismissed.</p> + +<p>Upon receiving his dismissal, he descended into the street and walked +slowly homeward. His first sensation was one of anger—blind anger +against the blindness of the universe. It seemed incredible that a +premium should be set upon commonplaceness, that modern civilization +should demand of a man that he shape his mind by an artificial process +after the minds of semi-savage ancestors. Was thought to be forever +prostrate beneath the feet of superstition? Was all boldness of inquiry, +all mental advancement along other than given lines, to be branded in +the nineteenth century by the <i>odium theologicum</i> as it had been branded +in the time of Bruno?</p> + +<p>Then there followed a wave of personal bitterness which in its turn was +succeeded by a flood-tide of indifference.</p> + +<p>Going home, he found Mariana in nervous despair. The baby, who had been +unwell for several days, had been suddenly threatened with convulsions. +Upon the doctor's arrival, he had predicted a dangerous teething,<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> and +had insisted upon Isolde leaving town before the beginning of hot +weather.</p> + +<p>"I am so miserable," said Mariana, moistening a towel to remove the +traces of milk that she had upset upon her wrapper. "What can we do?" +With a feverish gesture she brushed her heavy and disordered hair from +her brow and shook her head helplessly. "Monday is the first of June," +she added.</p> + +<p>Anthony listened almost stolidly. When he spoke there was a dogged +decision in his voice. "The money must be had," he answered. "God knows, +I believe I'd steal it if I'd half a chance!"</p> + +<p>"Then we'd all go to prison," remarked Mariana, ruefully, as she +measured the coffee into the coffee-pot.</p> + +<p>Algarcife smiled with a quick sense of humor. "At any rate, a livelihood +would be insured," he returned. "Honest industry is the only thing that +goes a-begging in this philanthropic century." Then, as Mariana returned +to the baby, he drank his coffee in silence and went out. As a +beginning, he secured an order to write hygienic articles for a Sunday +newspaper. Then he called upon Father Speares and found that he was out +of town, and even in his desperation was conscious of a sensation of +relief at the thought that Father Speares was beyond appeal. But the +sensation was reactionary, and, upon consulting the weather bulletin and +finding that a change in temperature was expected, he wrote a letter, +which he left at the clergyman's house.</p> + +<p>"How is Isolde?" he asked of Mariana an hour later.</p> + +<p>Mariana smiled and raised her finger warningly. "Much brighter to-day," +she answered, "and sleeping sweetly."</p> + +<p>Anthony bent over the crib, holding his breath as he watched the child. +He noticed that she looked thinner; the blue veins showed in a delicate +tracery upon the<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> forehead, and the crease around the tiny wrists was +less deep.</p> + +<p>Mariana, serious and careworn, leaned upon the opposite side.</p> + +<p>"What do you think?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Only a little pale," he replied; "all children are when teething, I +suppose."</p> + +<p>They went into the next room and sat down, leaving the door ajar.</p> + +<p>"The doctor was here again," began Mariana, playing with the folds of +her gown. "June is the dangerous month—he says so."</p> + +<p>Algarcife raised his eyes and looked at her.</p> + +<p>"I wrote to Father Speares to-day," he said.</p> + +<p>For a moment Mariana was silent, a flush rising to her brow. Then she +rose and came over to his side, putting her arms about his neck.</p> + +<p>"My poor love," she murmured. Anthony drew her down upon the sofa beside +him.</p> + +<p>"It was tough," he said, slowly, "but—how I hate to tell you, +Mariana!—there is something else."</p> + +<p>Mariana flinched sharply.</p> + +<p>"Surely he has not refused?" she exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"He is away, but the College has given me notice."</p> + +<p>Mariana did not answer, but she grew white and her lips trembled. Then +she flung her arms out upon the sofa and laid her head upon them. Her +sobs came short and fast.</p> + +<p>"Mariana!"</p> + +<p>She lifted her head and choked back her tears, sitting cold and stiff +beside him.</p> + +<p>"If it were only ourselves," she said; "but the baby—what will become +of the baby?"</p> + +<p>There was a strained note of cheerfulness in Algarcife's voice.</p> + +<p>"Don't cry," he said, laying his hand upon her shoulder. "I must get the +money. Father Speares<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a> will lend it to me. We will pull through all +right, never fear."</p> + +<p>Mariana rested her head upon his arm and looked up at him.</p> + +<p>"How ill you look!" she said. "My poor boy!"</p> + +<p>Then the baby cried, and she went back to it. As Algarcife rose from the +sofa, he was seized with a sudden swimming in his head, and, to steady +himself, leaned against the mantel. The objects in the room seemed to +whirl in a tangle before him, and his vision was obscured by a vaporous +fog, while a tumultuous ringing sounded in his ears. But in a moment it +passed, and he was himself again.</p> + +<p>"Biliousness," he remarked, and started out in search of stray +journalistic work. He found it easier to obtain than he had supposed, +and, with his usual precision of method, calculated that by working +fifteen hours a day he might, provided the supply of work continued, +make up the amount which he would lose with the loss of the Bodley +College.</p> + +<p>After a week of such work, he became optimistic in mind and +correspondingly depressed in body. "If my brains didn't get so +sluggish," he said to Mariana, "the work would be nothing; but caffeine +will remedy that." And he returned to the use of the drug, silencing +Mariana's remonstrances with a laugh.</p> + +<p>"My dear girl, if I didn't take something to keep me awake, I'd fall +asleep in my chair at ten o'clock, and the subscribers to the evening +issue would never learn the hygienic value of regular hours and a +sufficient amount of recreation."</p> + +<p>"But you will wreck yourself," urged Mariana.</p> + +<p>"Nonsense. This caffeine is going to take Isolde and yourself to the +country."</p> + +<p>"And you?"</p> + +<p>"I—oh, don't worry about me! I am all right."</p> + +<p>And he would begin work with a pretence of alacrity,<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a> keeping to it +until drowsiness warned him of physical exhaustion, when he would pause, +stretch himself, measure his dose of caffeine, and, lifting his pen, dog +away until past midnight.</p> + +<p>It was an afternoon shortly after this that Mariana came to him flushed +and expectant.</p> + +<p>"Signor Morani sent for me," she explained. "I left Isolde with a +daughter of the laundress and went. He has offered me an engagement in a +comic opera."</p> + +<p>Algarcife started and looked up.</p> + +<p>"It seems that the manager heard me sing one day when I was at my +lesson. He liked my dramatic power, Signor Morani says. At any rate, one +of his troupe has given out, and he offers me the part."</p> + +<p>"But, Mariana—"</p> + +<p>Mariana did not look at him, but went rapidly on, as if waiving possible +objections.</p> + +<p>"We need the money. It might take Isolde away—and it is a chance. I am +so young, you see—and—"</p> + +<p>"Mariana!" cried Algarcife, sharply. There was a note in his voice which +caused her to shrink away as if he had struck her. "Mariana," he put out +his hand in protest, "you shall not do it. I will not let you. I could +not bear it."</p> + +<p>Mariana tapped her foot upon the floor impatiently. "I believe it is a +child's part," she said.</p> + +<p>"You shall not do it," he said, passionately.</p> + +<p>Mariana turned her eyes upon him.</p> + +<p>"But the money?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, we will arrange it. I will leave The Gotham and take a room +down-town, and you and Isolde shall go."</p> + +<p>"Very well," said Mariana, sullenly, and left the room.</p> + +<p>The next few days brought a wave of heat, and Algarcife made +arrangements to send Mariana and the child away. He gave notice at The +Gotham, and <a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a>secured a room upon Fourth Street, and in spare moments +assisted Mariana with the packing. Then there was some delay in the +payment for the articles he had written, and Mariana's departure was +postponed. "Get your things ready," said Algarcife, when the heat grew +more intense and Isolde drooped. "The moment that the money arrives, you +can start. It was due a week ago."</p> + +<p>So Mariana continued her packing with nervous hands. She was divided +between anxiety for Anthony and anxiety for the child, and she was +profoundly depressed on her own account.</p> + +<p>"If it wasn't for Isolde, I wouldn't go a step," she declared, standing +before a trunk into which she was putting cans of baby's milk. "I feel +as if I could weep gallons of tears—only I haven't time."</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey, who was rocking Isolde, smiled encouragingly. "The change +will do you good," she responded, "and I am sure you need it. You are +quite ghastly."</p> + +<p>Mariana sighed and looked at herself in the glass. "I suppose so," she +remarked, a little wistfully. "I might be thirty."</p> + +<p>And she went on packing. "Of course we may not leave for weeks," she +explained, "and yet I feel driven. The uncertainty is horrible."</p> + +<p>But Algarcife, coming in at dusk, found her more cheerful. She kissed +him with something of her old warmth, and talked almost animatedly while +he ate his supper.</p> + +<p>"I shall miss you so," she said, "and yet I do wish we could get off. +Isolde has been very fretful all day, and is badly broken out with heat. +She has just fallen asleep."</p> + +<p>After supper Mariana went to bed, and Anthony returned to work. He had +an article to do upon the moral effects of the bicycle, which was to be +handed in<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a> in the morning, and this, with some additional work, would +keep him writing far into the night. With a strong feeling of distaste +he took up his pen, and his repugnance increased with every line. In a +moment he rose, threw off his coat, and applied himself with dull +determination. It was warm to oppression, and the noises of the city +came distinctly through the open window. The elevated road grated upon +him as if it were running along his nervous system, and he started at +the shrill sounds which rose at intervals above the monotonous roar of +the streets.</p> + +<p>He had been writing some hours, and it was twelve o'clock when the door +opened and Mariana came in. She was barefooted and in her night-gown. +Her face shone gray in the lamplight, and there were heavy circles under +her eyes. She spoke rapidly.</p> + +<p>"The baby is ill," she said. "You must find a doctor. She can't +breathe."</p> + +<p>In an instant Algarcife had passed her and was bending over the crib. +The child was lying upon its back, staring with a mute interrogation at +vacancy. There was a purple tinge over its face, and its breath came +shortly.</p> + +<p>"In a moment," said Anthony, and, taking up his hat, went out.</p> + +<p>Within half an hour he returned, followed by the doctor, a well-meaning +young fellow, fresh from college and wholly in earnest.</p> + +<p>He looked at the child, spoke soothingly to Mariana, wrote a +prescription, which he himself had filled at the nearest druggist's, +gave a multitude of directions, sat an hour, and departed with the +assurance that he would return at daybreak.</p> + +<p>"She looks easier now," said Anthony, with a nervous tremor in his +voice. "It must have been the heat."</p> + +<p>Mariana, with tragic eyes, was fanning the little,<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> flushed face, +crooning a negro lullaby which she had treasured from her own childhood. +The wavings of the palm-leaf fan cast a grotesque shadow that hovered +like a gigantic hand above the baby's head, and, with the flitting of +the shadow, the wistful little plantation melody went on. Ever since the +birth of Isolde, Mariana had sung that song, and it fell upon Anthony's +ears with an acute familiarity, like the breaking of happier +associations against a consciousness of present pain.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;">"Ba! ba! black sheep. Where yo' lef' yo' lamb?</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">Way down yonder in de val-ley.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">De birds an' de butterflies a-peckin' out its eyes,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">An' de po' little thing cries: 'Mammy.'"</span></td></tr> +</table> + +<p>As Algarcife looked down upon the small and motionless body, he felt a +sudden tightening of his heart. The infantile hands, with their waxen +look of helplessness, caused him to draw his breath as he turned away, +and to wonder how Mariana could sit there hour after hour, crooning the +negro song and waving to and fro the palm-leaf fan.</p> + +<p>And yet her figure in its pallid outline against the dim light was +photographed upon his brain, and it was Mariana at that moment that he +loved with the love more abundant, and that in the after-years he found +it hardest to forget.</p> + +<p>He saw her with the reddish glow from the night-lamp upon her profile, +her drooping body in the shadow, the fixed look of pain upon her face +softened by the look which fell upon the sick child. He saw the child +lying mute and motionless, the wide eyes staring, the small hands +folded, the soft rings of flaxen hair wet and dark with perspiration, +and the moisture lying upon the fragile little chest which the gown left +bare; and he saw it all shadowed and lightened by the wavings of +Mariana's fan.<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a></p> + +<p>Beyond this he saw the homely and disordered room, the articles dropped +hastily as if in the start of sudden anxiety, the half-packed trunk with +the piles of clothes upon the floor beside it, the tiny socks with the +impress of the feet just learning to stand, the battered India-rubber +doll with the crocheted frock of bright-hued worsteds, and at Mariana's +hand the medicines which the doctor had left.</p> + +<p>All these things were one with Mariana and himself. They were the +heritage of their marriage, the memories which must always be +inviolate—memories that could be shared by none other, could be undone +by no stretch of time. In that atmosphere of common pain, which is more +powerful both to sever and to unite than the less trenchant atmosphere +of joy, he felt his heart leap into an invisible communion with the +heart of Mariana. At that moment he was conscious of an additional +sense-perception in the acuteness of his sympathy. He returned to his +desk and took up his pen. The articles must be finished, and yet between +himself and the unwritten page rose the vision of the still room, the +pallid woman, and the sick child. The wavings of Mariana's fan seemed to +obscure the light, and in his nervous tension he convinced himself that +he heard the difficult breathing of a dying child—his child and +Mariana's.</p> + +<p>He swallowed an added dose of caffeine and looked at the page before +him. The last written words stared him in the face and seemed so alien +to his present train of thought as to have emanated from another person. +He wondered what that other person's completion of the sentence would +have been.</p> + +<p>"Optimism is the first duty of the altruist." What in thunder had that +to do with the effects of the bicycle? And what beastly rot it was. One +might as well state that to be comfortable is the first duty of the +damned.<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a></p> + +<p>"Optimism is the first duty of the altruist." He wrote on with the +feeling that he was existing as an automaton, that while his hand was +executing the result of some reflex action, his thinking entity was in +the still room behind the closed door.</p> + +<p>But with the absence of personality his senses were rendered doubly +acute, and he seemed to see the rhythm of the atmospheric waves about +him, while his ears were responsive to every sound in the night +without—hearing them, not in a confused discord, but in distinct +differentiation of note and key. Once his gaze encountered the grinning +skull above the mantel, and, to his giddy senses, it seemed to wink with +its hollow sockets. He found himself idly wondering if the skull had +caught the trick of winking from its former accompaniment of flesh, and +was forced to pull his thoughts together with a jerk. Then there came +one of those sudden attacks of vertigo to which he had become subject, +and he laid aside his pen and closed his eyes. "Too much caffeine," he +muttered. But when it passed he went on again.</p> + +<p>As the day broke he finished his articles, placed them in envelopes, +stamped and addressed them, and rose to his feet. He blew out the lamp, +and the faint odor of heated oil caused him a sensation of nausea. +Crossing to the window, he raised the shade and stood inhaling the +insipidity of atmosphere which is the city imitation of the freshness of +a country morning. Without, a sombre, neutral-toned light flooded the +almost deserted streets. In the highest heaven a star was still visible, +and the vaguest herald of dawn flaunted itself beyond the chimney-pots.</p> + +<p>As he lifted the shade he noticed that his hand trembled and that his +head was unusually light. That massive sense of loneliness which the +transition hour from darkness to day begets in the on-looker oppressed +him with the force of an estrangement of hope. Such an<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a> impression had +been produced upon him a hundred times by the breaking of dawn after a +sleepless night.</p> + +<p>He turned away and opened the door softly.</p> + +<p>The night-lamp was still burning, but the beginning of the morrow washed +with a faint grayness the atmosphere. The objects he had dwelt upon the +night before were magnified in size, and in an instant the unpacked +trunks, the rubber doll, and the bottles of medicine obtruded themselves +upon his vision.</p> + +<p>Mariana was still sitting as he had left her, waving to and fro the +palm-leaf fan. He wondered vaguely if she had sat thus since midnight. +Then he laid his hand upon her shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Mariana, you must lie down." And as he stooped nearer he saw that the +child was dead.<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII-a" id="CHAPTER_XVIII-a"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h3> + +<p>For the next six weeks Anthony was forced to listen to the distracted +self-accusations of Mariana. When the little white coffin had been +carried to Greenwood and laid in the over-grown plot beside the graves +of Algarcife's parents, to be shadowed by the storied urns that +redounded to the honor of a less impoverished generation, Mariana +returned, and, throwing herself upon the floor, refused consolation.</p> + +<p>"I want nothing," she said—"nothing, nothing. What could comfort me?"</p> + +<p>At Anthony's protestations of love and grief she lifted dull and +scornful eyes, wherein the triumph of motherhood showed supreme over all +other emotions.</p> + +<p>"How can you know?" she asked, between tearless sobs. "You did not nurse +her, and hold her in your arms night and day; you did not bathe her +while she laughed at the bubbles; you did not put on her little dresses +and socks. Oh, my baby! my baby! I want my baby!"</p> + +<p>Then she would rise and pace up and down in a sudden frenzy of despair, +clinching her hands at her own impotence, tearing her wounds asunder +with remorseless recollections. It was as if she found satisfaction in +thus inflicting upon herself the added agony of recalling the minor +details of her loss—in voicing the keenest passion of her grief.</p> + +<p>Algarcife, writing in the adjoining room and wrung by a tortured brain, +would listen to her unsteady tread as she walked ceaselessly back and +forth, until the<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> sound would madden him with its pauseless +monotony—and then would come that half-choked cry for reckoning with +fate, "Oh, my baby!"</p> + +<p>To his more self-contained nature the violence of Mariana's grief was +like the searing of the bleeding sores in his own heart. To avoid that +cry of stricken motherhood he would have given the better portion of his +life—to have been deaf to that impulsive expression of a pain he felt +but could not utter he would have damned his soul.</p> + +<p>And when, during the first few days, Mariana gathered together all the +scattered little garments, and brooded over them with the passion of +irremediableness, he would cry aloud out of his own bitterness,</p> + +<p>"Put them away! If you love me, Mariana, hide them."</p> + +<p>But Mariana, in the selfishness of loss, would glance at him with +reproachful eyes, and turn to stroke the rubber doll in its bright-hued +dress, and the half-worn socks with the impress of restless feet.</p> + +<p>In the night she would start from a troubled sleep with corroding +self-questionings. "Make a light," she would say, fretfully, sitting up +and staring into the gloom. "Make a light. The darkness stifles me. I +can't breathe."</p> + +<p>Then, when the flame of the candle would flare up beside her, she would +turn upon Anthony the blaze of her excited eyes, and play upon the sheet +with feverish fingers. The loss of sleep which these spasms entailed +upon Algarcife was an additional drain upon his wrecking system, and +sometimes in sheer exhaustion he would plead for peace.</p> + +<p>"Mariana, only sleep. Lie still, and I will fan you—or shall I give you +bromide?"</p> + +<p>But the hot questions would rush upon him and he would answer them as he +had answered such questions for the past six weeks.<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a></p> + +<p>"Was it my fault? Could I have done anything? Was it taken away because +I didn't want it to come?"</p> + +<p>"Mariana!"</p> + +<p>"Do you remember that I said I hoped it would die? You knew they were +idle words, didn't you? You knew that I didn't mean it?"</p> + +<p>"Of course, my dearest."</p> + +<p>"But somebody told me once that for every idle word we would be held to +account. Is this the account?"</p> + +<p>"Hush."</p> + +<p>For a moment she would lie silent, and then, rising again, the torrent +would come.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps if I had not left the window open that first warm day. And I +did not send for the doctor at once. I thought it was only fretful. +Perhaps—"</p> + +<p>"You could have done nothing."</p> + +<p>"I did not know. I was so ignorant. I should have studied. I should have +asked questions."</p> + +<p>Then she would turn towards him, laying her hot hand upon his arm.</p> + +<p>"Tell me that it was not my fault. Tell me—tell me!"</p> + +<p>"It was not. It was not."</p> + +<p>"But I want her so. I want to feel her. I want to feel her soft and warm +in my arms. Oh, my baby!"</p> + +<p>And so the summer nights would wear away.</p> + +<p>But as time went on a reactionary lethargy pervaded her. Her vitality +being spent, she was left limp and devoid of energy. For hours she would +lie motionless in the heated room, the afternoon sun, intensified by the +reflected glare of pressed brick, streaming upon her, and she would +appear to be indifferent to both heat and glare. From Algarcife she +turned with an avoidance which was almost instinctive. When he touched +her she shrank into silence, when he spoke she met his words with +lethargic calm. It was as if the demands he made upon her<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> emotional +nature became irksome to her when that nature lay dormant.</p> + +<p>"I suppose I love you," she said one day, in answer to his questions. "I +think I do, but I don't feel it. I don't feel anything. I only want to +forget."</p> + +<p>"Not to forget me, Mariana?"</p> + +<p>Mariana shook her head impatiently.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," she continued, "that the thought of feeling makes me +positively sick? I haven't any left, and I don't like it in other +people. I am tired of it all."</p> + +<p>"And of me?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I think not, but I oughtn't to have married you."</p> + +<p>"Mariana!"</p> + +<p>"It would have been much better. You said so yourself once. But love is +so strange. It makes people do such absurd things."</p> + +<p>Algarcife did not reply. There was resentment in the look he bent upon +her. He had not learned that even a woman in love is not a woman always +in love—that love, in common with all other conditions, is subject to +the forces which attract and repel, and that its equilibrium is +maintained by a logical adjustment of opposites. To him Mariana's +alienation betokened a fundamental failing in her nature, and with the +thought he experienced a dull anger.</p> + +<p>"I have felt so much in my life," continued Mariana, "that my capacity +for sensations is lying fallow. The lack of ice in my tea and the heat +in my room are of more importance than the excesses of affection. Were +you ever that way?"</p> + +<p>For a moment Algarcife did not reply; then he said, "You are very +uncomfortable?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"When we leave The Gotham it will be still worse. That room on Fourth +Street is hellish."<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a></p> + +<p>"No doubt."</p> + +<p>"How will you stand it?"</p> + +<p>Mariana interlaced her fingers with impatient weariness and yawned.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. As I stand it now, I suppose. We are poorer than ever, +aren't we?"</p> + +<p>"Poorer than ever."</p> + +<p>She fingered her gown softly. "I suppose I shouldn't have bought this +mourning," she said. "What a pity!"</p> + +<p>When Anthony had gone she went out upon the fire-escape and looked down +into the street below. The cry of a vender rolling his cart of over-ripe +melons came up to her, and she followed his figure with curious +intentness. From some indefinable cause, the vender suggested Signor +Morani to her mind, and she recalled his warning, as she had recalled it +in a different mood that rainy evening over a year ago. She realized now +that Anthony's objection to her accepting Signor Morani's offer was +still a canker within her heart. There remained, and there would always +remain, the possibility that had she overruled his objection and entered +into the engagement, Isolde might have been sent from the city, and +might now be playing in some country meadow. The possibility, facing her +as it did in all its ghastliness, produced a gnawing remorse, as +invincible as a devil's thrust.</p> + +<p>Upon this followed the conception that her marriage had doomed to +failure not only her own life, but Anthony's; and there came a +passionate regret for the part she had played in drawing him from his +isolated abstraction into the turmoil of life and its passions. She +blamed herself that she had gone to him that night, carrying the letter +in her hand. She blamed herself that she had not resisted the appeal of +her love, and, with a sudden pang, she realized all that the change had +meant to him—the book that remained unwritten, the treadmill of +uncongenial toil, the<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> physical hardihood which was being slowly ground +to dust. She realized this in its fulness, but with no determination of +endeavor, no resolutions to battle more with fate. There was regret for +the past, but there were no pledges for the future. The outcome was +beyond her and beyond Anthony, this she knew. It was something to be +left to the floodgates of hope that would be overborne by the press of +time. In the lowered state of her vitality she felt almost indifferently +her own inability to contest for larger measures of individual gain. She +accepted destiny, and acquiesced, not in resignation, but in the apathy +of one whom despair has drugged.</p> + +<p>And above it all there rose the desire to escape, to be freed from it +forever. "If he had never seen me!" she cried, passionately. "If he had +never seen me!" Then colorless adumbrations of her own past blocked her +horizon—and she confronted the ashes of her aspirations. She saw those +illuminated dreams of her girlhood—the ideals which had crumbled at the +corroding touch of care. She saw the demand for power which had been +thwarted, the ambitions which had been undone, the cry for life more +abundant which had been forced back upon her quivering lips. She saw +herself walking day after day with empty arms along the way she had +carried the child. She saw herself a drag upon her own existence and +upon the existence of the man for whom she thought a love she had no +power to feel. She saw the stretch of those monotonous and neutral-toned +years, saw the sordid fight for bread, saw her sense of joy and beauty +blunted, saw the masculine brain that was fitted to grasp universal laws +decaying in the atmosphere of vulgar toil. And, woven and interwoven in +her thoughts, was the knowledge that the affection to be invigorated by +deprivations and to rise triumphant over poverty was not hers—that the +love which in happier surroundings might have shown<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> inviolable, which +the great calamities of life might have left unassailed, had grown gray +in the round of unsatisfied desires and victorious commonplaces. In the +days to come, would not the jarring notes of their natures be +exaggerated, the sympathetic ones suppressed? When old age came, as come +it surely would, what would remain to them save a memory of discords and +a present of unfulfilment? Was not death itself preferable to death in +life?</p> + +<p>Down on the sidewalk below a ragged urchin was turning somersaults in +the shade. Suddenly, with a howl of delight, he pounced upon a +half-rotten peach which a passer-by had thrown into the gutter. Mariana +smiled faintly, left the fire-escape, and went in-doors.</p> + +<p>A week later they gave up The Gotham and moved into the room on Fourth +Street. Algarcife made an attempt to sell the greater part of his +library before moving, but the price offered was merely nominal, and at +the last moment his heart misgave him. So he hired a dilapidated van, +and the books were transported to the new lodgings and stacked along the +south wall.</p> + +<p>When the hour came for their departure, it was with a feeling of despair +that he took Mariana's bag and descended for the last time the steps of +The Gotham. A black finality seemed looming beyond their destination.</p> + +<p>At the entrance, Mr. Nevins, with tears in his eyes, grasped Anthony's +hand, and Miss Ramsey fell upon Mariana's neck.</p> + +<p>Mariana laughed a little desperately.</p> + +<p>"It reminds me of the time I saw a family move to the poor-house," she +said; "only their friends weren't quite so affectionate."</p> + +<p>"But you will come back," insisted Mr. Nevins. "Surely you will come +back when things look a little brighter."<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a></p> + +<p>"Which will be when the flames of spontaneous combustion illuminate this +planet," remarked Ardly, cynically, but his eyes were sad as they rested +upon Mariana.</p> + +<p>"Or when a relation dies," said Mr. Nevins.</p> + +<p>"How we shall miss you!" said Miss Ramsey.</p> + +<p>Here Mr. Paul, who had sauntered up as if by chance, drew Algarcife +aside.</p> + +<p>"If you had only told me," he said, dryly. "I have a few thousands in +bank, and I—"</p> + +<p>Anthony caught his hand, but his voice was choked and he could only +shake his head. Then Mariana said good-bye, and they left the house and +ascended the steps to the platform of the elevated road.</p> + +<p>As Mariana took her seat, she turned to the window and watched the +little fire-escape upon the fourth story until The Gotham was lost to +sight. Then she raised her veil and wiped a tear-drop from her +eyelashes.</p> + +<p>When the door was unlocked and she entered the new room, a fit of +restlessness seized her. The barrenness of existence struck her with the +force of a blow, and, with a swift return of impulse, she cried out in +rebellion. The stale odor of cooking, which rose from the apartment +below, the dustiness of the floor, the blackened ceiling, the hard and +unyielding bed, gave her a convulsive shudder.</p> + +<p>"I cannot bear it," she said. "I cannot bear it."</p> + +<p>Algarcife left the window, where he had been standing, and came towards +her. Between himself and Mariana a constraint had been growing, and he +recalled suddenly the fact that their old warmth of intercourse had +chilled into an indifferent reserve.</p> + +<p>"It is bad," he said. "I am very sorry."</p> + +<p>Mariana took off her hat and veil and laid them in one of the bureau +drawers. The drawer creaked as she opened it, and the sound jarred upon +Anthony's<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> overwrought sensitiveness. He noticed suddenly that Mariana's +expression had grown querulous, and that she had ceased to wear her hair +becomingly.</p> + +<p>"You can hardly think that I enjoy it," he added. "An existence composed +of two-thirds nerves and one-third caffeine is hardly rose-color."</p> + +<p>He looked gray and haggard, and the hand which he raised trembled +slightly.</p> + +<p>"Hardly," returned Mariana, shortly.</p> + +<p>Both felt an instinctive desire to vent their wretchedness in words, and +yet each felt an almost passionate pity for the other. The very pity +emphasized the aggravation from which they suffered, and it was by a +process of reflex action that, when goaded by thoughts of each other, +they would strike out recklessly.</p> + +<p>"No," repeated Mariana; "but it seems to be a case where two, instead of +lessening the misery, increase the discomforts."</p> + +<p>Immediately after supper she went to bed, tossing restlessly for hours +because the mattress was uneven, the sheets coarse, and the lamp, by +which Anthony worked, shining in her face.</p> + +<p>When she finally fell asleep, it was with a sob of revolt.<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIX-a" id="CHAPTER_XIX-a"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h3> + +<p>Mariana's restlessness did not pass with the passing days. It developed +until it gathered the force of a malady, and she lived in persistent +movement, as if impelled by an invisible lash. As her aversion to their +lodgings became more pronounced, her powers of endurance increased, and +through the long, hot days she was rarely in-doors. Algarcife often +wondered where she spent the morning and afternoon hours, but the +constraint between them had strengthened, and he did not ask her. When +breakfast was over, he would see her put on her hat, take her shabby +black parasol, and go out into the street. At luncheon she would return, +looking flushed and warm, as if from exercise in the summer sun; but +when they had risen from the table she would move uneasily about, until, +at last, she would turn in desperation and go out again. He seldom +sought to detain her. Indeed, her absence was almost a relief, and he +found it less difficult to work when the silence was unbroken by +impetuous footsteps and the rustle of skirts.</p> + +<p>Once he said: "It is too hot for you this afternoon."</p> + +<p>And she answered: "No, I will go to a square."</p> + +<p>He was silent, and she left in sudden haste.</p> + +<p>That she walked miles in that fearful weather, driven on by sheer +inability to rest, he realized pityingly. Occasionally he would go to +the window as she descended the stairs, and the sight of the fragile, +black-robed figure, making its rapid way through the fierce sunshine, +would cause him a spasmodic contraction of<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a> pain. And yet the +remembrance of her indifference would chill the words with which he +greeted her return, and the knowledge that her heart had passed from him +and was straining towards the outside world would veil his mental +suffering in an assumption of pride. That Mariana's withered desires for +the fulness of life had grown green again, he could but know. He had +seen the agony inflicted upon her by every trivial detail of their +lives—by the poorly cooked food, by the fly-specks upon the dishes, by +the absence of a hundred superficial refinements. He had seen her flinch +at the odors of stale vegetables, and set her teeth at the grating +voices of the other lodgers. He had heard her moans in the night, rising +from a wail for the small comforts of life to a wail for the child she +had lost. He had marked every added line about her mouth, every bitter +word that fell from her lips. And yet he had gone unswervingly on his +way, and she had not known, but had thought him as pulseless to her +presence as she to his.</p> + +<p>"I am late," she said one day in September, coming in with more +brightness than usual. "Have you had luncheon?"</p> + +<p>"I waited for you," responded Anthony.</p> + +<p>As she laid aside a roll of music she carried, he saw that it was the +score of a light opera.</p> + +<p>"You have been to Signor Morani's?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I have been taking lessons again."</p> + +<p>Anthony glanced dubiously round.</p> + +<p>"And you have no piano," he said. "You will miss it."</p> + +<p>Mariana shook her head, and pushed away her tea with a gesture of +disgust. "But I practise at Signor Morani's. He lets me use one of his +rooms."</p> + +<p>He noticed that she spoke cheerfully, and that a wave of her lost +freshness had returned to her face. The instantaneous effect of her +moods upon her appearance<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> was an ever-recurring surprise to him. It was +as if, by the play of her features, she unconsciously translated feeling +into expression.</p> + +<p>In a moment she spoke again.</p> + +<p>"It is a part that I have been studying," she continued, "and I must +commit the words to memory."</p> + +<p>He picked it up. It was a serio-comic opera, entitled, "La Sorcičre."</p> + +<p>"Morani says that my voice has developed during the long rest. He was +surprised when I sang."</p> + +<p>"Was he?" asked Anthony, absently. He was wondering dully what would be +the end of Mariana's ambitions—if there was any end for ambitions other +than obliteration. Had fate anything to offer more durable than dust and +ashes?</p> + +<p>Mariana glanced about her and her face clouded. "It is that horrible +cabbage again," she complained. "I believe those people down-stairs do +nothing but fry cabbage. It makes me ill."</p> + +<p>Anthony was recalled from his abstraction with a sense of annoyance.</p> + +<p>"It seems to me," he retorted, sharply, "that, in our condition, to +worry over a grievance of that order would be refreshing—when one's +heels are hanging over the verge of starvation, it is a relief to be +allowed to smell some one else's dinner."</p> + +<p>"That depends upon what the dinner consists of," Mariana rejoined. "I +may be reduced to living on dry bread, but I hope you will spare me the +fried cabbage."</p> + +<p>"You speak as if I had reduced you to this state for my own +gratification." His temper was getting the better of him, and, with a +snap, he set his teeth and was silent.</p> + +<p>The mental distress, the stimulants he had used to spur a jaded brain +into action, and his failing health had left him a prey to anger. An +unexpected interruption, a jarring sound, a trivial mishap, were +sufficient<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> to cause him an outburst from which he often saved himself +by flight.</p> + +<p>Mariana replied tartly.</p> + +<p>"I am sure I don't see how my objection to living upon fried cabbage +could reflect upon you. I did not know you cared for it."</p> + +<p>"You know I do not. But I don't see why you should make a fuss about a +wholesome article of food."</p> + +<p>"It is not wholesome. It is exceedingly indigestible."</p> + +<p>"At any rate, it belongs to your neighbors. You aren't forced to eat +it."</p> + +<p>"No, but you implied that the time would come when I'd be glad to. I +merely said it never would."</p> + +<p>"Then let the cabbage be damned," said Algarcife.</p> + +<p>"Gladly," responded Mariana, and they said no more.</p> + +<p>Algarcife selected a manuscript from his desk and went out. He felt as +if his nerves had quickened into ramifying wires through which a current +of electricity was passing. He was not angry with Mariana. He was angry +with no one, but he was racked by the agony of diseased sensibilities, +and, though rationally he endeavored to be sympathetic in his bearing to +his wife, his rational nature seemed ploughed by the press of his +nerves, and for the first time in his life he found self-restraint +beyond his grasp.</p> + +<p>As he ascended the steps of the newspaper office where he was to leave +the manuscript, he ran against a man whom he knew and who stared at him +in astonishment.</p> + +<p>"My God, Algarcife, you are a ghost! What have you been doing?"</p> + +<p>"Wrestling with Providence," returned Algarcife, shortly. "Hardly a +becoming job."</p> + +<p>"Well, take my advice and leave off at the first round. If you don't +mind the comparison, you bear<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> a close resemblance to that Egyptian +mummy in the museum."</p> + +<p>"No doubt. But that Egyptian has a damned sight the best of it. He lived +three thousand years ago."</p> + +<p>And he passed on.</p> + +<p>It was several nights after this that he started from a heavy sleep to +find that Mariana had left his side. Rising upon his elbow, he glanced +about the room, and saw her white-robed form revealed in nebulous +indistinctness against the open window. Her head was resting upon her +clasped hands and she was looking out into the night.</p> + +<p>"Mariana," he said.</p> + +<p>Her voice came with a muffled sound from the obscurity.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"What are you doing?"</p> + +<p>The white figure stirred slightly.</p> + +<p>"Thinking," she answered.</p> + +<p>"Don't think. It is a confounded mistake. Go to sleep."</p> + +<p>"I can't sleep. It is so hot."</p> + +<p>"Lie down and I will fan you."</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>Algarcife turned over wearily, and for a time there was silence.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Mariana spoke, her voice wavering a little.</p> + +<p>"Anthony—are you asleep?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>Again she was silent, and again her voice wavered as it rose.</p> + +<p>"I have been thinking about—about how poor we are. Will it ever be +better?"</p> + +<p>"I cannot say. Don't think of it?"</p> + +<p>"But I must think of it. I am trying to find a way out of it. Is there +any way?"<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a></p> + +<p>"None that I know of."</p> + +<p>Mariana half rose and sat down again.</p> + +<p>"There is one," she said, "and I—"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" Algarcife demanded, starting up.</p> + +<p>Her voice came slowly.</p> + +<p>"I mean that I am—that it is better—that I am—going away."</p> + +<p>For a moment the stillness seemed tangible in its oppressiveness. +Mariana's head had fallen upon her hands, and as she stared at the +electric light on the opposite corner she heard Anthony's heavy +breathing. A moth circled about the ball of light, showing to her fixed +gaze like some black spirit of evil hovering above a planet.</p> + +<p>Algarcife's tones fell cold and constrained.</p> + +<p>"To leave me, you mean?"</p> + +<p>"It is the only way."</p> + +<p>"Where will you go?"</p> + +<p>Something that was not grief and yet akin to it choked Mariana as she +answered.</p> + +<p>"I have an offer. The one that—that I told you of. It is an excellent +opening—so Morani says. The company goes abroad—next week. And I know +the part."</p> + +<p>"And you wish to go?" His voice hurt her with its absence of color.</p> + +<p>She lifted her hands and let them fall in her lap. Her gaze left the +electric light, where the moth was still revolving in its little orbit.</p> + +<p>"It is not choice," she replied; "it is necessity. What else is there to +do—except starve? Can we go on living like this day after day, you +killing yourself with work, I a drag? It is better that I should +go—better for us both."</p> + +<p>He hesitated a moment as if in thought, and when he spoke it was with +judicial calm.<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a></p> + +<p>"And would you have gone—a year ago?"</p> + +<p>She was silent so long that he would have repeated the question, but at +his first word the answer came with a wave of self-abasement.</p> + +<p>"I—I suppose not."</p> + +<p>And that was all.</p> + +<p>During the next few days the subject of Mariana's decision was not +mentioned. Both felt a constraint in alluding to it, and yet both felt +the inevitableness of the final hour. Anthony's pride had long since +sealed his lips over the expressions of an unwished-for affection, and +Mariana had grown chary of words.</p> + +<p>But both went quietly along their daily lives, Anthony working at his +desk while Mariana gathered together her shabby garments and made ready +for the moment which by word and look they both ignored.</p> + +<p>Then at last, when the night before her going came, Mariana spoke. They +had just risen from the supper-table and the slipshod maid of work had +carried off the unemptied tray. Mariana had eaten nothing. Her face was +flushed, and she was moving excitedly about the room.</p> + +<p>"I go to-morrow," she began, feverishly.</p> + +<p>Algarcife looked up from a book through which he was searching for a +date.</p> + +<p>"So you have decided?" His lips twitched slightly and the veins upon his +forehead contracted.</p> + +<p>Mariana shook out a night-gown which she had taken from a drawer, folded +it carefully, and laid it in the trunk.</p> + +<p>"There is nothing else to do," she replied, mechanically, as if she were +fencing with fate from a corner into which she had been driven.</p> + +<p>Algarcife closed the book and rose to his feet. He pressed his hand upon +his eyes to screen them from the glare of light. Then he moistened his +lips before speaking.<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a></p> + +<p>"Do you realize what it means?" he asked.</p> + +<p>Mariana lowered her head into the trunk and her voice sounded from among +the clothes.</p> + +<p>"There is nothing else to do," she repeated, as mechanically as before.</p> + +<p>"I hope that it will be for your happiness," said Algarcife, and turned +away. Then he went towards her in sudden determination.</p> + +<p>"Is there anything that I can help you about?"</p> + +<p>Mariana stood up and shook her head. "I think not," she answered. +"Signor Morani calls for me to-morrow at six."</p> + +<p>Algarcife sat down, but the old sensation of dizziness came upon him and +he closed his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Have you a headache?" asked Mariana. "The tea was very bad. Shall I +make you a cup?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head and opened a book, but she crossed to his side and +laid her hand upon his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"It may not be for long," she said. "If I am successful—"</p> + +<p>He flinched from her touch and shook her hand off almost fiercely. His +eyes were bloodshot and his lips white.</p> + +<p>"The room is so warm," he said, "it makes me dizzy. I'll go out."</p> + +<p>And he went down-stairs.</p> + +<p>Mariana stood where he had left her and looked down upon the pile of +unpacked garments. A tear glistened upon her lashes, but it was a tear +of impersonal sorrow and regret. For herself she was conscious only of a +dulness of sensation, as if her usually vital emotions had been blunted +and rendered ineffectual. In a mute way, as she stood there, she +realized an almost tragic pity, but it was purely mental, and she +recalled calmly the fact that a separation, which six months ago would +have seared her soul with agony,<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> she was now accepting with a feeling +that was one of relief. The stress of accumulated griefs and anxieties +had crushed her impressionable nature past all resemblance to its former +responsiveness. Yet it is possible that even then, had Anthony returned +to overpower her with his appeal, she would have wavered in her +decision, but the wavering would have been the result of a fight between +the instincts which were virile and the memory of the instincts which +were buried with her buried passions, and it is doubtful where the +victory would have rested. Her impulse for flight was as keen as the +impulse which causes a bird to beat its breast against the bars that +hold it. She wanted to flee from the sorrow she had known and all its +associations; she wanted to flee from poverty and ugliness to beauty and +bright colors. The artistic genius of her nature was calling, calling, +and she thrilled into an answering echo.</p> + +<p>But, for all that, a tear glistened upon her lashes as she looked down +upon the unpacked clothes.</p> + +<p>"O God! if you would only make a miracle!" she said—"if you only +would!"</p> + +<p>Her glance fell upon the desk where Anthony's work was lying. She saw +the freshly written page upon which the ink was not dry. She lifted the +pen in her fingers and felt the thick cork handle which was stained and +indented by constant use. She sighed and turned slowly away.</p> + +<p>The next afternoon, in hat and veil, with a small black satchel in her +hand, she stood waiting for Signor Morani. Her trunk had already been +carried down, and the carriage was turning the corner. She spoke +lightly, dreading silence and dreading an accent of seriousness. "It is +cooler," she said. "I hope a change is coming."</p> + +<p>Then, as the carriage stopped beside the pavement below, she held out +her hands. They shook slightly.<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a></p> + +<p>"Good-bye," she said.</p> + +<p>"I hope you will be happy."</p> + +<p>"And you. It will be easier for you."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye."</p> + +<p>She raised her veil, her eyes shining.</p> + +<p>"Kiss me."</p> + +<p>He kissed her, but his lips were cold, and there was no pressure upon +hers.</p> + +<p>She lowered her veil and went out. Algarcife stood at the window and +heard her footsteps as she descended the stairs. He saw her leave the +house, pause for an instant to greet Signor Morani, give the black bag +into his hands, and enter the carriage. As she sat down, she leaned out +for an instant and glanced up to where he stood. Then the carriage +started, turned the corner, and was gone.</p> + +<p>Still he did not leave the window. He stood motionless, his head bent, +looking down into the heated streets, across which were stretching the +slanting shadows from the west. A splash of scarlet, like the impress of +a bloody hand, projected above the jagged line of tenement roofs, while +a film of rising smoke obscured its lurid distinctness. He felt that +complete sense of isolation, that loss of connection with the chain of +humanity which follows a separation from one who has shared with us, +night and day, the commonplaces of existence. The past and future seemed +to have clashed together and shattered into the present.</p> + +<p>In the street below men and women were going homeward from the day's +work. He noticed that they wore, one and all, an aspect of despair, as +if passing automatically along the endless round of a treadmill. He felt +a vague wonder at the old, indomitable instinct of the preservation of +self which seemed so alien to his mood. Situated as he was above it all, +humanity assumed to his indifferent eyes a comic effect, and he found +himself laughing cynically at the moving figures<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a> that blocked the +sidewalk below. A physical disgust for the naked facts of life attacked +him like nausea. The struggle for existence, the propagation of the +species, the interminable circle of birth, marriage, and death, appeared +to him in revolting bestiality. In his bodily and mental wreckage, all +action became repellent and hideous, and the slanting sun-rays +bespattering the human atoms in the street produced a giddiness in his +brain. At that moment he was in the throes of a mental revolution, and +his old philosophic sanity was ingulfed.</p> + +<p>He remembered suddenly that he had eaten nothing all day, and, turning +from the window, drank a cup of tea which had been left upon the table. +The continual use of stimulants, in exciting his nervous system, had +made sleep impossible, and he felt as if a furnace blazed behind his +eyeballs. He sat down, staring blankly at the opposite wall. In the +corner, upon a heap of books, the skull and cross-bones had been thrown, +and they caught his glance and held it with a curious fascination. They +seemed to typify his own life, those remnants of dry bones that had once +supported flesh and blood. He regarded himself impersonally, as he might +once have regarded a body for dissection. He saw that he had passed the +zenith of his physical and mental power, and that from this day forth it +would mean to him retrogression or stagnation. He saw that the press of +untoward circumstances had forced his intellect from its natural orbit +into a common rut from which there was no side-track of escape. He +weighed his labors, his knowledge, his impassioned aims for truth, and, +in the balance with a handful of dust, he found them wanting. He stirred +the ashes heaped where once had been a vital passion, and he found a +wasted skeleton and dry bones. He looked at his thin and pallid hand, +and it seemed to him as incapable of work as the hand of one palsied.<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a></p> + +<p>Before his tragic eyes, the years of his past stood marshalled, and, one +and all, they bore the badge of failure.</p> + +<p>As he rose from his chair in sudden desperation, the recurring faintness +seized him and he steadied himself against the open drawer of the +bureau. Looking into it as he turned away, he saw some loose articles +which Mariana had forgotten—a bit of veiling, a single stocking, and a +tiny, half-worn sock of pink worsted. He closed the drawer and turned +hastily away.</p> + +<p>Then he sat down beside his desk and bowed his head into his hands.<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XX-a" id="CHAPTER_XX-a"></a>CHAPTER XX</h3> + +<p>For a week after Mariana's departure Algarcife worked on ploddingly. He +closed his eyes to actualities and allowed his overwrought mind no +cessation from labor. It was as if all molecular motion in his brain had +been suspended save that relating to the subject in hand, and he wrote +with mechanical readiness journalistic essays upon the "Advantages of a +Vegetable Diet" and "The Muscular Development of the Body." Then, upon +trying to rise one morning, he found that his shattered system was +turning in revolt, and that no artificial spur could sting his exhausted +brain into action.</p> + +<p>Through the long, hot day he lay relaxed and nerveless, conscious of the +glare of the sunshine, but dreading to draw the shades, conscious of the +closeness of the atmosphere, and conscious of a beating, like the +strokes of an anvil, in his temples. When his dinner was brought he +drank a cup of tea and sat up. Then he reached for a phial of morphia +pellets which he kept in his desk, and, dissolving one in water, +swallowed it. For a moment the temptation to take the contents of the +phial at a dose assailed him, but, more from inability to venture a +decisive step than from any mental determination, he laid the bottle +aside. Action of any kind appeared intolerably irksome, and he waived +with disgust the solution of the simple problem of his life.</p> + +<p>As he fell back upon the bed, his glance passed over the pillow beside +him, and he pictured to himself<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> the circle which Mariana's head had +drawn upon the cotton. He remembered that she always slept lying upon +her right side, her left knee bent, one hand under the pillow and one +lying upon her breast, her profile shadowed by dreams. He remembered the +nervous fear she felt of resting upon her heart, and that, having once +turned upon her left side, she awoke with palpitating breaths and a +smothered cry. He saw her calmer slumber, he felt her rhythmic +breathing, and he recalled his sensation when one of her loosened braids +had brushed his cheek. Again he saw her as she leaned over to soothe the +child, and, raising it in her arms, hushed it upon her breast. He +recalled it dully, as one recalls the incidents of long-past years over +which the colorless mantle of time has been cast to deaden the +flickering embers amid the ashes. In his mind there was no virility of +passion nor intensity of bitterness—there was only an almighty +melancholy. Life in its sufficiency of satisfied desires showed stale +and unprofitable, and in its barrenness it was but a blank.</p> + +<p>The sunshine, blazing through the open window, accelerated the throbbing +in his temples. In the morbid acuteness of his senses, the cries of the +vegetable venders in the street below harassed his ears. Along his whole +body there ran a quivering flame of fever, and his thoughts spun like a +revolving globe. The morphia had not stilled the beating in his head. It +had produced a sensation of sickness, which seemed but the physical +accompaniment of his mental syncope.</p> + +<p>He surveyed the books stacked against the opposite wall and wondered +vaguely at the energy with which he had attacked those volumes upon +whose covers the dust was now lying like a veil. He tried to arouse a +memory of the old intellectual exhilaration with which he had grappled +with and vanquished an unexplored<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a> department of thought. He remembered +that at such moments the printed lines before him had assumed an unusual +degree of clearness, and that he had been reading <i>The Wealth of +Nations</i> when a point in comparative morphology occurred to him. But the +sensation itself he could not recover. The association of ideas was +still unbroken, but the mental state was lost.</p> + +<p>As he lay there, tossing restlessly upon the heated pillows, he reviewed +unsympathetically his old pursuit of knowledge. What did it all mean? +For what had he given his heritage of youth and manhood? For Truth. +Granted, but what was Truth that he should follow it unswervingly until +he passed from flesh and blood to a parcel of dry bones? How could he +find it, and, finding, know it? That gray and ancient scepticism which +had never appealed to him in health preyed now upon his wasting vitals. +Since through the senses alone one could perceive, and the senses were +but faulty instruments, what was perception worth? What were ideas but +the figments produced by faculties which were at best deceptive? And in +the infinite complexity of the self-sustaining reality, of what account +were the abstractions of the finite intellect? In Truth itself, that +all-pervading immateriality, were not the myriads of man's little truths +ingulfed and lost? Were not true and false but symbols to express the +differing relations of a great whole, as evolution and dissolution were +symbols to express the recurring waves of a great force. As one man with +his single hand barring the march of the seasons, was the man who by his +single brain sought to hasten the advance of the Law which is Truth. And +though he crumbled to dust, not one needful fact but would find its way +into the moving world.</p> + +<p>Stunned by despondency, he closed his eyes and groaned. In the absolute +grasp of the futility of endeavor, he realized the lowest depths of +human hopelessness.<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> It was as if he had reached the ultimate nothing, +the end to which his pathway led. Though he dashed his brains into the +void, not one breath of the universal progress would swerve from its +course.</p> + +<p>And happiness? What was it but another symbol to signify the wistful +yearning of the world? Where was it found? Not in love, which is the +thirsting for a woman's spirit; not in passion, which is the burning for +a woman's flesh. Did not bitterness follow upon the one, and upon the +other satiety? His nature was deadened to the verge of obliviousness, +and in his waning vitality the impulse of self-gratification had gone +first. Physical desires shrank into decay, and mental ones passed with +them. He wondered that he had ever sought in love other than calm +reasonableness and a cooling presence. The emotion that sent scarlet +thrills to his brain he analyzed with callousness. He remembered his +mother as she lay upon the invalid's sofa, her Bible and a novel of +Victor Hugo's upon the table beside her. He saw the placid beauty of her +face, the slender, blue-veined hand which she laid upon his forehead +when he went to her a wailing child; and it seemed to him that such a +touch was the only touch of love with the power to console. Then he +remembered Mariana's hand as she laid it upon her child and his, and he +knew that the touch was the same. He thought of her as she sat beside +the crib when the child lay dying. The passionate self-control about the +mouth, the agony in her eyes, the tragic droop of her figure—these +returned to soften him. He saw the black shadow of the palm-leaf fan, +passing to and fro above the little bluish face, and he heard the +labored breathing.</p> + +<p>In sudden bitterness he opened his arms and cried aloud, "Mariana!"</p> + +<p>Then the tears of weakness and despair stained the pillow where her head +had lain.<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a></p> + +<p>When the twilight fell he rose, dressed himself with an effort, and +descended the stairs. His limbs trembled as he moved, and, upon reaching +the open air, he staggered and leaned for support against the red brick +wall. Then he straightened himself, and wandered aimlessly from street +to street. As he passed among men and women he was aware of a strange +aloofness, as if the links connecting him with his kind had snapped +asunder; and he felt that he might have been the being of another planet +to whom earthly passions and fulfilments bore no palpable relation, but +were to be considered with cosmic composure. The thought jarred upon him +insistently that these moving men and women, whom he brushed in passing, +were each stirred by an entity akin to that which in himself lay +drugged. He realized that the condition of a mind without the attraction +of physical desires is as chaotic as the condition of a world suddenly +freed from the attraction of gravitation.</p> + +<p>He looked at his fellow human beings with forced intentness. It struck +him with an almost hysterical shock that they were of ludicrous shapes, +and he laughed. Then he glanced at a carriage rolling along the street, +and it appeared absurd that one mortal should sit upon four wheels while +a fellow-mortal of a nobler build should draw him. He laughed again. As +he did so he had a quick perception that delirium was approaching, and +he stopped to swallow another pellet. He reeled slightly, and a +boot-black upon the corner surveyed him with interest.</p> + +<p>"Air yer drunk, mister?"</p> + +<p>He laughed aloud. "Damned drunk," he responded, and walked on. Some +hours later he found himself in Whitehall Street, passing the lighted +windows of the Eastern Hotel. Beneath the station of the elevated road +he came upon a stand, with the words "Cider and Root-Beer" flaming in +red letters on a white<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a> background, and for the first time he was +conscious of a sensation of thirst. He stopped, felt in his pocket, and +then, checking himself, passed onward to the Battery. A sharp wind +struck him, blowing the damp hair from his forehead and chilling the +drops of perspiration upon his face. With a feeling of relief he leaned +against one of the stone pillars and bared his head to the incoming +breeze. Far out the islands shone in iridescent lights, flashing through +variations of green and amber, and over the water the ferry-boats +skimmed like gigantic insects studded with parti-colored eyes.</p> + +<p>Down below the water lay black and cold, the slow breakers flecked with +light foam. He saw a glimmer as of phosphorescence rise suddenly upon +the waves, and, looking deeper, he saw the eternal stillness. Between +the throbs of fever the passion for death seized him in a paroxysm, and +mentally he felt the quiet waters stir beneath him and the quietness +close over him. His hand fastened upon the iron chain between the +pillars; then he drew back.</p> + +<p>He remembered the row of acids upon a shelf in his room, and his +assurance returned. With a sensation of luxuriousness he recalled the +labels with the large "Poison!" above, and the inscription "Hydrocyanic +Acid" stared him in the eyes. When he had made that collection for +experimental purposes how little had he foreseen the experiment in which +it would play a part. He sat down upon a bench and stared idly at the +stream of passers-by, some lovers who went arm-in-arm, some husbands and +wives who walked apart, some fathers and mothers who carried sickly +children—all bound and burdened with the flesh. The fretful wail of a +baby came to him and mingled mechanically with his train of thought. It +seemed the frail treble in the great symphony of human woe.</p> + +<p>Beyond the men and women he saw the black water<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a> and the dancing lights, +and, farther still, the misty islands.</p> + +<p>Gradually the fever starts grew less, and calmness came back to him. +With a wave of regret he looked back upon his lost serenity, and +lamented that it had failed him. He knew that in his mental upheaval the +opposing elements in his nature had waged a combat. The scientific tenor +of his mind had for the past few weeks been crushed out by the virulence +of his nerves. That physical force which he had so long held enthralled +had at last asserted its supremacy, and for the time his mind was under +the sway of bodily weakness.</p> + +<p>This duality of being occurred to him in perplexing inconsistency. Had +he been a pure mentality, his life would have been one steep and +victorious ascent towards knowledge. Were he but a physical organism, +carnality would have satisfied his cravings. Then the remembrance that +stronger than will or flesh is necessity arose and smote him into +silence.</p> + +<p>Many of the people had gone, but he still sat plunged in thought. A +hatless woman, fresh from a midnight carousal, with a bleeding cut upon +her lip, took the seat beside him, and he found a forlorn comfort in the +contact with alien wretchedness. When she laid her head upon the back of +the bench and fell asleep, he listened to her drunken snores calmly and +without aversion. He became aware that his old kinship to humanity was +at the moment restored, that, losing it with the loss of desire, it was +regained in despair. Suddenly the head of the woman beside him rolled +forward and rested against his shoulder. She stirred slightly, heaved a +sigh of satisfaction, and returned to her ribald dreams, while he, in +numbness and pain, found consolation in this forced sacrifice of +comfort.</p> + +<p>He did not move, and through the long night the drunken woman slept with +her head upon his shoulder.</p> + +<p>For the next few days he dragged out a methodical<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a> existence. In the +mornings he would force himself to rise, swallow his food, and take his +accustomed seat before his desk. With a failing hand he would take up +his pen and endeavor to bend his fever-stricken brain to its task, but +before a dozen lines were penned his strength would falter and the +effort be abandoned. Then he would rise and finger the phials on the +shelf, until, turning from them, he would say, "I will fight—fight +until the last gasp—and then—"</p> + +<p>At the beginning of the week, when his lodging bill was due, he carried +by the armful a number of his books and pawned them for a nominal sum. +Then he remembered his watch, and left that also. It was a heavy +hunting-case of his father's, which he had always used from the nearness +of the association, and as he laid it down something came into his +throat. He opened the watch and took out the picture of his mother which +was inside—a sketch in color, showing the lustrous Creole beauty in her +first youth. Then he snapped the case and saw the initials "A. K. A." +pass into the hands behind the counter.</p> + +<p>Leaving the pawn-shop, he walked rapidly through the oppressive +September sun until his limbs failed. Then turning with the throng of +men that flowed into City Hall Square, he came to a sudden halt before +the fountain. He was dazed and weakened, like a man who has recovered +from a lapse into unconsciousness. The constant passing of the crowd +bewildered him, and the sound of falling water in the fountain irritated +him with the suggestion of thirst. He turned away and threw himself upon +a bench beneath the shade of a tree. For an instant he closed his eyes, +and when he opened them he found the scene before him to have +intensified. The falling water sounded more distinctly, the sky was of a +glaring blueness, and the dome of the <i>World</i> building glittered like a +cloud of fire.</p> + +<p>To his straining eyes the statue of Horace Greeley<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> seemed to grin at +him from across the traffic in the street, and as he staggered to his +feet he felt an impulse to shake his fist at it and say:</p> + +<p>"Damn you! It is a chance that I want," but his muscles faltered, and he +fell back.</p> + +<p>Then his glance wandered to the man beside him, a filthy vagrant with +the smell of grease about his clothes. Did not he want his chance as +well? And a few feet away a boy with a scowl on his lips and a bruise +above his eye—why not a chance for him? Then a gray haze obscured his +vision and the noise of the street was dulled into a monotone.</p> + +<p>The throbbing in his temples grew faster, and as he sat there he knew +that he had fought to the final gasp and that the end had come. In his +physical downfall there was room for neither alarm nor regret. He was +lost to all vaguer impressions than the trembling of his frame, the icy +starts through his limbs, the burning of his eyes, and the inevitable +beating in his temples. Beyond these things he neither knew nor cared.</p> + +<p>With the instinct for solitude, he started and rose to move onward, when +he saw that the earth was undulating beneath his feet and that the +atmosphere was filled with fog. The dome of the <i>World</i> building reeled +suddenly and clashed into the flaming sky. He heard the sound of +brazen-tongued bells ringing higher and higher above the falling of the +water, above the tread of passing feet, and above the dull, insistent +din of the traffic in the streets.</p> + +<p>Then his name was called and he felt a hand upon his arm.</p> + +<p>"Why, Anthony!"</p> + +<p>He looked up bewildered, but straightened himself and stood erect, +straining at the consciousness that was escaping him.</p> + +<p>"How are you, Mr. Speares?" he asked. His voice was without inflection.<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a></p> + +<p>Father Speares spoke with impassioned pity. "What are you doing? You are +ill—a ghost—"</p> + +<p>Algarcife steadied himself against the bench and said nothing.</p> + +<p>"What does it mean? Your wife—where is she?"</p> + +<p>Anthony's voice came slowly and without emotion. "I am alone," he +answered.</p> + +<p>A quick moisture sprang to the older man's eyes. He held out his hand. +"Come with me," he said, fervently. "I am alone also. Come to my house."</p> + +<p>Algarcife left the bench and took a step from him.</p> + +<p>"No," he replied. "I—I am all right."</p> + +<p>Then he staggered and would have fallen but for the other's sustaining +arm.<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="Phase_Second" id="Phase_Second"></a>Phase Second</h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><i>"And not even here do all agree—no, not any one with himself."</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">—<span class="smcap">Marcus Aurelius</span>. (<span class="smcap">Long.</span>)</td></tr> +</table> + +<p><a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a></p> + +<p><a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-b" id="CHAPTER_I-b"></a>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<p>Two men passed the Church of the Immaculate Conception, wheeled suddenly +round, and came back.</p> + +<p>"By Jove, Driscoll, you have been outside of civilization!" said one, +who was fair and florid, with a general suggestion of potential apoplexy +polished by the oil of indulgence. "What! you haven't heard the Reverend +Algarcife? Why, he rivals in popularity the Brockenhurst scandal, and +his power is only equalled by that of—of Tammany."</p> + +<p>John Driscoll laughed cynically.</p> + +<p>"Let's have the scandal, by all means," he returned. "Spare me the +puling priests."</p> + +<p>"Bless my soul, man, don't tell me the Brockenhurst affair hasn't +reached the Pacific slope! What a hell of a place! Well, Darbey was +named corespondent, you know. You remember Darbey, the fellow who owned +that dandy racer, La Bella, and lost her to Owens at cards? But the +papers are full of it. Next thing you'll tell me you don't see the +<i>Sun</i>."</p> + +<p>"A fact. I don't read newspapers, I write them—or used to. But what +about this priest? I knew an Algarcife in my green and ambitious youth, +but he wasn't a priest; he was a pagan, and a deuced solemn one at +that."</p> + +<p>They stood upon the gray stone steps, and the belated worshippers +trooped past them to vespers. A woman with a virginal calm face and a +camellia in her hymnal brushed them lightly, leaving a trail of +luxurious sweetness on the air; a portly vestryman, with<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> inflated +cheeks and short-sighted eyes, mounted the steps pantingly, his lean and +flat-chested wife hanging upon his arm; a gray-browed gentlewoman, her +eyes inscrutable with chastity unsurprised, held her black silk skirt +primly as she ascended, carrying her prayer-book as if it were a +bayonet.</p> + +<p>In the street a carriage was standing, the driver yawning above his +robes. From the quivering flanks of the horses a white steam rose like +mist. Near the horses' hoofs a man born blind sat with a tray of matches +upon his knee.</p> + +<p>"Why, that's the jolliest part!" responded the first man, with a +tolerant smile. "This one was an atheist once—or something of the sort, +but the old man—Father Speares, I mean—got hold of him, and a +conversion followed. And, by Jove, he has driven all the women into a +religious mania! I believe he could found a new faith to-morrow if he'd +be content with female apostles."</p> + +<p>Driscoll shrugged his shoulders. "Religion might be called the feminine +element of modern society," he observed. "It owes its persistence to the +attraction of sex, and St. Paul was shrewd enough to foresee it. He knew +when he forbade women to speak in public that he was insuring +congregations of feminine posterity. Oh, it is sex—sex that moves the +world!"</p> + +<p>"And mars it."</p> + +<p>"The same thing. Listen!"</p> + +<p>As the heavy doors swung back, the voices of the choir swelled out into +the faint sunshine, the notes of a high soprano skimming bird-like over +the deeper voices of the males and the profundo of the organ.</p> + +<p>When next Driscoll spoke it was with sudden interest. "I say, Ryder, if +this is Algarcife, why on earth did he turn theologian? Any evidences of +brain softening?"</p> + +<p>"Hardly. It is a second Tractarian excitement,<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> with Algarcife for the +leader. The High-Church party owes him canonization, as I said to the +bishop yesterday. He is the best advertising medium of the century. +After Father Speares died, he took things in hand, you know, and raised +a thunder-cloud. The old man's mantle fell upon him, along with whatever +worldly possessions he possessed. Then some physiologist named Clynn got +him into a controversy, and it was like applying an electric-battery to +the sluggish limbs of the Church."</p> + +<p>Driscoll gave a low whistle.</p> + +<p>"Well, as I'm alive!" he said. "What is it all for, anyway?"</p> + +<p>"Let's go inside," said Ryder, drawing his collar about his throat. +"Beastly chill for October. Wind's due east."</p> + +<p>For an instant they paused in the vestibule; then Ryder laid his hand +upon the door; it swung open, and they entered the church.</p> + +<p>At first the change of light dazzled Driscoll, and he raised his hand to +his eyes; then, lowering it, he leaned against a pillar and looked over +the heads of the congregation. A mellow obscurity flooded the nave, +lightening in opalescent values where the stained-glass windows cast +faint glints of green and gold. The atmosphere was so highly charged +with color that it seemed to possess the tangible qualities of fine +gauze, drawn in transparent tissue from the vaulted ceiling to the gray +dusk of the aisles. A single oblique ray of sunshine, filtering through +a western pane, crept slowly along the walls to the first station of the +cross, where it lay warm and still. Through the heavy luminousness the +voices of the choir swelled in triumphant acclamation:</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;">"And His mercy is on them that fear Him:</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">Throughout all generations.<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">He hath showed strength with His arm:</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">He hath put down the mighty from their seat."</span></td></tr> +</table> + +<p>Beyond the rood-screen in the chancel the candles on the altar flickered +in yellow flames beneath a slight draught. Above them, from the window, +a Christ in red and purple fainted beneath his crown of thorns. At the +foot of the crucifix a heap of white chrysanthemums lay like snow.</p> + +<p>Before the candles and the cross the priest stood in his heavy +vestments, his face turned towards the altar, the sanctuary-lamp shining +above his head. Around him incense rose in clouds of fragrant smoke, and +through the vapor his dark head and white profile were drawn against the +foot of the cross. The yellow candle-light, beside which the gas-light +grew pallid, caught the embroideries on the hood of the cope, and they +glistened like jewels.</p> + +<p>He stood motionless when the censing was over, stray wreaths of mist +encircling his head. Then, when the Magnificat was finished, he turned +from the altar, the light rippling in the gold of his vestments. His +glance fell for a moment upon his congregation, then upon the mute faces +of his choristers seated and within the chancel.</p> + +<p>Through the reading of the lesson he sat silently. There was no +suggestion of emotion in his closed lips, and the composure in his eyes +did not lessen when he rose and came forward, meeting the hush in the +church. From the stillness of the altar his voice rose suddenly, +sustaining the chant of the choir in a deep undertone of unwavering +richness:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. +And in Jesus Christ, His only Son— ... I believe in the Holy +Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints—the +forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body—and the life +everlasting—Amen."</p></div> + +<p>When the organ burst forth into the recessional hymn, Driscoll turned to +his companion. "Come outside," he said. "I feel as if I had been +drinking. And it was Algarcife—"</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>Half an hour later Father Algarcife left the church, and, crossing to +Broadway, boarded a down-town car. At Twentieth Street he got out and +turned eastward. He walked slowly, with long, almost mechanical strides. +His head was bent and his shoulders stooped slightly, but there was a +suggestion of latent vigor in his appearance, as if he carried a reserve +fund of strength of which his brain had not yet taken account. Beneath +the rich abundance of his hair his features struck one with peculiar +force. They had the firm and compressed look which is the external mark +of sterile emotions, and the traces of nervous wear on brow and lips +showed like the scars of past experiences rather than the wounds of +present ones. His complexion possessed that striking pallor resulting +from long physical waste, a pallor warmed by tawny tones beneath the +surface, deepening into bluish shadows about his closely shaven mouth +and chin. In his long clerical coat he seemed to have gained in height, +and the closest observer would perhaps have detected in his face only a +physical illustration of the spiritual function he fulfilled. In another +profession he would have suggested the possible priest—the priest +unordained by circumstances. As it was, he presented the appearance of +having been inserted in his ecclesiastical position from a mere ęsthetic +sense of fitness on the part of Destiny.</p> + +<p>Although it was an afternoon in early October, the winds, blowing from +the river along the cross-town blocks, had an edge of frost. Overhead +the sky was paling into tones of dull lavender that shaded into purple +where the west was warmed by stray vestiges<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> of the afterglow. Through +the dusk the street lights flickered here and there like swarming +fire-flies. As he passed the Post-graduate Hospital at the corner of +Second Avenue a man came down the steps and joined him.</p> + +<p>"Good-afternoon, father," he said. "Your charge is coming on finely. +Going in?"</p> + +<p>His name was Salvers, and he was a rising young specialist in pulmonary +troubles. He had met Father Algarcife in his work among the poor on the +East Side.</p> + +<p>"Not to-day," responded the other; "but I am glad to have good news of +the little fellow."</p> + +<p>He was known to have endowed one of the babies' cots and to feel great +interest in its occupant.</p> + +<p>Dr. Salvers returned his quiet gaze with one of sudden admiration. "What +a wonder you are!" he said. "If there is a man in New York who does your +amount of work, I don't know him. But take my advice and slacken speed. +You will kill yourself."</p> + +<p>Into Father Algarcife's eyes a gleam of humor shot. It went out as +suddenly as it had come, and a tinge of sadness rose to the surface.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I am trying to," he answered, lightly.</p> + +<p>"It looks like it. Here's Sunday, and you've come from a half-dozen +services to run at the call of a beggar or so who might have had the +politeness to wait till week-day. How is the Bowery Mission?"</p> + +<p>"Very well," responded the other, showing an interest for the first +time. "I have persuaded ten converts to take the pledge of a daily bath. +It was tough work."</p> + +<p>Salvers laughed. "I should say so. But, you know, that is what I like +about your mission. It has the virtue of confusing cleanliness with +godliness. Are you still delivering your sermons on hygiene?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. You know we have been sending out nurses<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> to women in confinement +in connection with those Sunday-night lectures on the care of children. +The great question of the tenement-house is the one of the children it +produces."</p> + +<p>The light that fired his features had chased from them their habitual +expression of lethargic calm.</p> + +<p>"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 assertion +that the association of the love of beauty with the love of God destroys +sympathy for poverty and disease."</p> + +<p>A cloud passed over the other's face.</p> + +<p>"My predecessor prepared the ground for me," he replied, constrainedly. +"I hope to sow the seed for future usefulness."</p> + +<p>"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 assistant."</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife shook his head.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>His rich voice rang with an intonation that was almost reckless. Then +his tone changed.</p> + +<p>"I go a block or two farther," he said. "Good-day."</p> + +<p>And he passed on, the old lethargy settling upon his face.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Is Mrs. Watson worse?" he asked, gently.<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a></p> + +<p>A voice from the room beyond reached him in the shrill tones of one +unreconciled to continual suffering.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>As he looked down at her there was neither pity nor repulsion in his +glance. It was merely negative in quality.</p> + +<p>"Has the nurse been here to-day?" he asked, in the same gentle voice.</p> + +<p>The woman nodded, rolling her bandaged head upon the pillow. "Ain't you +going to sit down, now you've come?" she said.</p> + +<p>He drew a chair to the bedside and sat down, laying his hand on the +burning one that played nervously upon the quilt.</p> + +<p>"Are you in pain?"</p> + +<p>"Always—night and day."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>She answered timidly, with a faint deprecation:</p> + +<p>"I thought I was going. It came all faint-like, and then it went away."</p> + +<p>A compassion more mental than emotional awoke in his glance.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>She stirred pettishly.<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a></p> + +<p>"I 'ain't no belief in drugs," she returned. "But I don't want to go +alone, with nobody round but the child."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Say to Miss Vernish that it is Father Algarcife," he said, and passed +into the drawing-room.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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-ą-brac reflected in +long mirrors. As he leaned forward it fell upon his features and +softened them to sudden beauty.</p> + +<p>"I am sorry," he answered, "but I could not come<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a> yesterday, and to-day +a woman dying of cancer sent for me."</p> + +<p>She crushed a pillow beneath her arm, smiling a little bitterly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is your poor!" she said. "It is always your poor! We rich must +learn to yield precedence—"</p> + +<p>"It is not a question of wealth or of poverty," he returned. "It is one +of suffering. Can I help you?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"How do you know?" he asked, gravely. "Call no man unpurchasable until +he has been bargained for."</p> + +<p>She looked at him passionately. "That is why I give to your church," she +went on; "because to you my thousand counts no more than my laundress's +dime."</p> + +<p>"But it does," he corrected; "and the church is grateful."</p> + +<p>"But you?"</p> + +<p>"I am the instrument of the church."</p> + +<p>"The pillar, you mean."</p> + +<p>He shook his head. There was no feeling in voice or eyes—but there was +no hardness.</p> + +<p>"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—</p> + +<p>"Stop," he said, in a voice that flinched slightly.</p> + +<p>She raised her head with a gesture that had a touch of defiance. "Why +should I stop?" she asked. "Do you think God will mind if I give His +servant his due? Yesterday religion was nothing to me; to-day it is<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> +everything, and it is you who have been its revelation. Why should I not +tell you so?"</p> + +<p>He was regarding her with intentness.</p> + +<p>"And you are happier?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Happier! It is an odd word for a woman like me. I am fifty years old, I +am alone, I am loveless. It has given me something to hope for, that is +all."</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>With a sudden yearning she stretched out her thin, white hands in +appeal.</p> + +<p>"Talk to me," she said. "Make me feel it. I am so alone."</p> + +<p>When Father Algarcife descended the brown-stone steps an hour later, his +face was drawn and his lips firmly closed. The electric light, shining +upon his resolute features, gave them the look of marble.</p> + +<p>He turned into Fifth Avenue and continued his way to Fifty-eighth +Street. Before the door of the rectory, which was at the distance of a +stone's-throw from the church, a carriage was drawn up to the sidewalk, +and as he passed his name was called softly in a woman's voice:</p> + +<p>"It is I—Mrs. Bruce Ryder. I have been waiting in the hope of seeing +you."</p> + +<p>He paused on the sidewalk and his hand closed over the one she gave him. +She was a large, fair woman, with a superb head and shoulders, and slow, +massive movements, such as the women of the old masters must have had.</p> + +<p>"It is to force a promise that you will dine with me to-morrow," she +said. "You have disappointed me so often—and I must talk with you." Her +voice had a caressing inflection akin to the maternal.</p> + +<p>He smiled into her expectant face.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "To-morrow—yes; I will do so. That is, if you won't +wait for me if I am detained."</p> + +<p>"That is kind," she responded. "I know you hate<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a> it. And I won't wait. I +remember that you don't eat oysters."</p> + +<p>The maternal suggestion in her manner had deepened. She laughed softly, +pleased at the knowledge of his trivial tastes her words betrayed.</p> + +<p>"But I won't keep you," she went on, "Thank you again—and good-bye."</p> + +<p>The carriage rolled into the street, and he drew out a latch-key and let +himself in at the rectory door, which opened on the sidewalk.<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-b" id="CHAPTER_II-b"></a>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<p>Mrs. Bruce Ryder unfolded her napkin and cast a swift glance over the +heavy damask, sparkling with glass and silver.</p> + +<p>"Yes; he is late," she said; "but he doesn't like to be waited for."</p> + +<p>From the foot of the table Mr. Bruce Ryder smiled complacently, his eye +upon his Blue Points.</p> + +<p>"And his wish is law, even unto the third and fourth courses," he +responded, pleasantly. "As far as Mrs. Ryder is concerned, the pulpit of +the Church of the Immaculate Conception is a modern Mount Sinai."</p> + +<p>"Bruce, how can you?" remonstrated his wife, upbraiding him across the +pink shades of candles and a centre-piece of orchids. "And you are so +ignorant. There is no pulpit in the church."</p> + +<p>"The metaphor holds. Translate pulpit into altar-step—and you have the +Mount Sinai."</p> + +<p>"Minus Jehovah," commented Claude Nevins, who sat between a tall, slight +girl, fresh from boarding-school, and a stout lady with an enormous +necklace.</p> + +<p>Ryder shook his head with easy pleasantry. He had been handsome once, +and was still well groomed. His figure had thickened, but was not +unshapely, and had not lost a certain athletic grace. His face was fair, +with a complexion that showed a faint purplish flush beneath the skin, +paling where his smooth flaxen hair was parted upon his forehead. On the +crown of his head there was a round bald spot which had the effect of +transparency. His deceptive frankness of manner<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> was contradicted by an +expression of secretiveness in his light-blue eyes.</p> + +<p>He lifted the slice of lemon from his plate, squeezing it with his ruddy +and well-formed fingers.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but he's a divinity in his own right!" he retorted. "Apollo turned +celibate, you know. He is the Lothario of religions—"</p> + +<p>"Bruce!" said his wife again. A vexed light was shining in her eyes, +giving a girlish look to her full and mature beauty. She wore a dress of +black gauze, cut low from her splendid shoulders, above which her head, +with its ash-blond hair, rose with a poise that was almost pagan in its +perfection.</p> + +<p>"For my part," said a little lady upon Mr. Ryder's right, "Mount Sinai +or not, I quite feel that he speaks with God."</p> + +<p>Her name was Dubley, and she was round and soft and white, suggesting +the sugar-coated dinner-pills which rested as the pedestal of her social +position, since her father, with a genius for turning opportunities to +account, had coined into gold the indigestion of his fellows.</p> + +<p>"Ah! You are a woman," returned Ryder, smilingly. "You might as well ask +a needle to resist a magnet as a woman to resist a priest. I wonder what +the attraction is?"</p> + +<p>"Aberration of the religious instinct," volunteered Nevins, who had not +lost his youthful look with his youthful ardor, and whom success had +appeared to settle without surfeiting.</p> + +<p>"On the contrary," interposed a short-sighted gentleman in eye-glasses, +who regarded the oyster upon his fork as if he expected to recognize an +old acquaintance, "the religious instinct is entirely apart from the +vapid feminine sentimentalizing over men in long coats and white +neckties. Indeed, I question if woman has developed the true religious +instinct. I<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> am collecting notes for a treatise upon the subject."</p> + +<p>He stopped breathlessly, swallowed his oyster, and looked gloomily at +the table-cloth. His name was Layton, and he was a club-man who had +turned criminologist for a whim. Having convinced himself by +generalizations from experience of the total depravity of the female +sex, he had entered upon his researches in the hope of verifying his +deductions.</p> + +<p>The point he advanced being called in question by a vivacious and pretty +woman who sat next him, there followed a short debate upon the subject. +When it was ended, John Driscoll looked up languidly from Mrs. Ryder's +left hand.</p> + +<p>"My dear Layton," he advised, "return to the race-course if you value +your sanity. The enigma of the Sphinx is merely the woman question in +antiquity and stone." Then he turned to Mrs. Ryder. "How is the renowned +father?" he inquired. "I was decoyed into buying a volume of his sermons +this morning."</p> + +<p>A smile shone upon him from her large, pale eyes. "Oh yes," she +responded, her beauty quickening from its repose. "They are in answer to +those articles in the <i>Scientific Weekly</i>. Are they not magnificent?"</p> + +<p>Driscoll assented amiably.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he admitted. "He has the happy faculty of convincing those who +already agree with him."</p> + +<p>She reproached him in impulsive championship, looking hurt and a little +displeased. "Why, the bishop was saying to me yesterday that never +before had the arguments against the vital truths of Christianity been +so forcibly refuted."</p> + +<p>"May I presume that the bishop already agreed with him?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ryder's full red lips closed firmly. Then she appealed to a small, +dark man who sat near her. "Mr.<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a> Driscoll doesn't like Father +Algarcife's sermons," she said. "I am disappointed."</p> + +<p>"On the contrary," observed Driscoll, placidly, "I like them so well +that I sent them to a missionary I am trying to convert—to atheism."</p> + +<p>"But that is shocking," said Mrs. Dubley, in a low voice.</p> + +<p>"Shocking," repeated Driscoll. "I should say so. Such an example of +misdirected energy you never saw. Why, when I met that man in Japan he +was actually hewing to pieces before the Lord one of the most adorable +Kwannons I ever beheld. The treasures he had shattered in the name of +religion were good ground for blasphemy. In the interest of art, I +sought his conversion. At first I tried agnosticism, but that was not +strong enough. He said that if he came to believe in an unknown god he +should feel it his duty to smash all attempts to sculpture him. So I +said: 'How about becoming an out-and-out infidel? Then you wouldn't care +how many gods people made.' He admitted the possibility of such a state +of mind, and I have been working on him ever since."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ryder looked slightly pained.</p> + +<p>"If you only weren't so flippant," she said, gently. "I can't quite +follow you."</p> + +<p>Driscoll laughed softly.</p> + +<p>"Flippant! My dear lady, thank your stars that I am. Flippant people +don't go about knocking things to pieces for a principle. The religion +of love is not nearly so much needed as the religion of letting alone."</p> + +<p>"I am sure I shouldn't call Father Algarcife meddling," commented Mrs. +Dubley, stiffly; "and I know that he opposes sending missionaries to +Japan."</p> + +<p>"As a priest he is perfection," broke in Mr. Layton, argumentatively.</p> + +<p>"The chasuble does hang well on him," admitted Nevins in an aside.<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a></p> + +<p>Mr. Layton ignored the interruption. "As a priest," he went on, "there +is nothing left to be desired. But I consider science entirely outside +his domain. Why, on those questions, the <i>Scientific Weekly</i> articles do +not leave him a—a leg to stand on."</p> + +<p>"The truth is that, mentally, he is quite inferior to the writer of +those articles," remarked the short, dark gentleman in a brusque voice. +"By the way, I have heard that they were said to be posthumous papers of +Professor Huxley's. An error, of course."</p> + +<p>At that moment the door was opened and Father Algarcife was announced. +An instant later he came into the room. He entered slowly, and crossed +to Mrs. Ryder's chair, where he made his excuses in a low voice. Then he +greeted the rest of the table indifferently. He wore his clerical dress, +and the hair upon his forehead was slightly ruffled from the removal of +his hat. About the temples there were dashes of gray and a few white +hairs showed in his heavy eyebrows, but eyes and mouth blended the +firmness of maturity with an expression of boyish vigor. As he was about +to seat himself at Mrs. Ryder's right, his eye fell upon Driscoll, and +he paled and drew back. Then he spoke stiffly.</p> + +<p>"So it is you, John?"</p> + +<p>"I had quite lost sight of you," responded Driscoll.</p> + +<p>There followed an awkward silence, which was abridged by Mrs. Ryder's +pleasant voice.</p> + +<p>"I like to watch the meeting of old friends," she said; "especially when +I believed them strangers. Were you at college together?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," answered Driscoll, his assurance returning. "At college—well, +let me see—not far from twenty years ago. Bless me! I am a middle-aged +man. What a discovery!"</p> + +<p>"You were in the Senior class," observed Father<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> Algarcife, almost +mechanically, and with little show of interest. "You were the pride of +the faculty, I believe."</p> + +<p>"I believe I was; and, like pride proverbial, I ended in a fall. Well, +there have been many changes."</p> + +<p>"A great many."</p> + +<p>"And not the least surprising one is to find you in the fold. You were a +lamb astray in my time. Indeed, I remember flattering myself in the +fulness of my egoism that I had opened other channels for you. But a +reaction came, I suppose."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Father Algarcife, slowly, "a reaction came."</p> + +<p>"And my nourishing of the embryonic sceptic went for naught."</p> + +<p>"Yes; it went for naught."</p> + +<p>"Well, I am glad to see you, all the same."</p> + +<p>"How serious you have become!" broke in Mrs. Ryder. "Don't let's call up +old memories. I am sure Mr. Nevins will tell us that those college days +weren't so solemn, after all."</p> + +<p>Nevins, thus called upon, glanced up from his roast, with accustomed +disregard of dangerous ground.</p> + +<p>"I can't answer for Mr. Driscoll," he responded. "His fame preceded +mine; but the first time I saw Father Algarcife he had just won a +whiskey-punch at poker, and was celebrating."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ryder colored faintly in protest, and Driscoll cast an admonishing +glance at Nevins, but Father Algarcife laughed good-naturedly, a +humorous gleam in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"So the sins of my youth are rising to confound me," he said. "Well, I +make an honest confession. I was good at poker."</p> + +<p>Nevins disregarded Driscoll's glance with unconcern.</p> + +<p>"An honest confession may be good for the soul,"<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a> he returned, "but it +seldom redounds to the honor of the reputation."</p> + +<p>"Happily, Father Algarcife is above suspicion," remarked Ryder, +pleasantly. Then he changed the subject. "By the way, Mr. Nevins, I hear +you have been displaying an unholy interest in the coming elections."</p> + +<p>"Not a bit of it," protested Nevins, feelingly. "They might as well be +electing the mayor of the moon for aught I care. But, you see, my friend +Ardly has got himself on the Tammany ticket for alderman."</p> + +<p>"What! You aren't working for Tammany?"</p> + +<p>"Guess not. I am working for Ardly. The mayor is a mere incident."</p> + +<p>"I wish he would remain one," announced the short, dark gentleman. "The +Tammany tiger has gorged itself on the city government long enough."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it has its uses," reasoned Driscoll. "Tammany Hall makes a +first-rate incubator for prematurely developed politicians."</p> + +<p>"And peoples the country with them," said Ryder. "I always look upon a +politician as a decent citizen spoiled."</p> + +<p>"And you really think they will elect Vaden?" asked the vivacious and +pretty young woman at Layton's left. "It does seem a shame. Just after +we have got clean streets and a respectable police force."</p> + +<p>"But what does it matter?" argued Driscoll, reassuringly. "Turn about is +fair play, and a party is merely a plaything for the people. In point of +impartiality, I vote one ticket at one election and another at the +next."</p> + +<p>When Driscoll left, that evening, he joined Claude Nevins on the +sidewalk, and they walked down the avenue together. For some blocks +Nevins was silent, his face revealing rising perplexity. Then, as they +paused to light cigars, he spoke:<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a></p> + +<p>"I believe Algarcife was a friend of yours at college?" he said.</p> + +<p>Driscoll was holding his palm around the blue flame of the match. He +drew in his breath slowly as he waited for a light.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he responded, "for a time. But he has made his reputation since I +knew him—and I have lost mine. By Jove, he is a power!"</p> + +<p>"There is not a man of more influence in New York, and the odd part of +it is that he does nothing to gain it—except work along his own way and +not give a hang for opposition. I believe his indifference is a part of +his attraction—for women especially."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that reminds me," said Driscoll, holding his cigar between his +fingers and slackening his pace. "I was under the impression that he +married after leaving college."</p> + +<p>Nevins's lips closed with sudden reserve. It was a moment before he +replied.</p> + +<p>"I believe I did hear something of the sort," he said.</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>When Mrs. Bruce Ryder turned back into the drawing-room, where Father +Algarcife sat alone, the calm color faded from her face. "I am so glad," +she said. "I have waited for this the whole evening."</p> + +<p>She seated herself near him, resting one large, fair arm on the table +beside her. With the closing of the door upon her guests she had thrown +aside the social mask, and a passionate sadness had settled upon her +face.</p> + +<p>"I wanted to go to the sacristy on Friday," she went on, "but I could +not. And I am so unhappy."</p> + +<p>Brought face to face, as he often was, with the grinning skeleton that +lies beneath the fleshly veil of many a woman's life, Father Algarcife +had developed an almost intuitive conception of degrees in suffering. +Above all, he had learned, as only a priest and a physician<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> can learn, +the measures of sorrow that Fate may dole out to the victim who writhes +behind a smile.</p> + +<p>The sympathetic quality in his voice deepened.</p> + +<p>"Have you gained no strength," he asked, "no indifference?"</p> + +<p>"I cannot! I have tried, tried, tried so long, but just when I think I +have steeled myself something touches the old spring, and it all comes +back. On Thursday I saw a woman who was happy. It has tortured me ever +since."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps she thought you happy."</p> + +<p>"No; she knew and she pitied me. We had been at school together. I was +romantic then, and she laughed at me. The tears came into her eyes when +she recalled it. She is not a wealthy woman. The man she married works +very hard, but I envy her."</p> + +<p>"Of what use?"</p> + +<p>She leaned nearer, resting her chin upon her clasped hands. The diamonds +on her fingers blazed in the lamplight. "You don't know what it means to +me," she said. "I am not a clever woman. I was made to be a happy one. I +believe myself a good one, and yet there are days when I feel myself to +be no better than a lost woman—when I would do anything—for love."</p> + +<p>"You fight such thoughts?"</p> + +<p>"I try to, but they haunt me."</p> + +<p>"And there is no happiness for you in your marriage? None that you can +wring from disappointment?"</p> + +<p>"It is too late. He loved me in the beginning, as he has loved a dozen +women since—as he loves a woman of the town—for an hour."</p> + +<p>A shiver of disgust crossed her face.</p> + +<p>"I know." He was familiar with the story. He had heard it from her lips +before. He had seen the whole tragic outcome of man's and woman's +ignorance—the ignorance of passion and the ignorance of innocence. He +had seen it pityingly, condemning neither the one<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> nor the other, +neither the man surfeited with lust nor the woman famished for love.</p> + +<p>"I cannot help you," he said. "I can only say what I have said before, +and said badly. There is no happiness in the things you cry for. So long +as self is self, gratification will fail it. When it has waded through +one mirage it looks for another. Take your life as you find it, face it +like a woman, make the best of what remains of it. The world is full of +opportunities for usefulness—and you have your faith and your child."</p> + +<p>She started. "Yes," she said. "The child is everything." Then she rose. +"I want to show him to you," she said, "while he sleeps."</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife made a sudden negative gesture; then, as she left the +room, he followed her.</p> + +<p>As they passed the billiard-room on their way up-stairs there was a +sound of knocking balls, and Ryder's voice was heard in a laugh.</p> + +<p>"This way," said Mrs. Ryder. They mounted the carpeted stairs and +stopped before a door to the right. She turned the handle softly and +entered. A night-lamp was burning in one corner, and on the hearth-rug a +tub was prepared for the morning bath. On a chair, a little to one side, +lay a pile of filmy, lace-trimmed linen.</p> + +<p>In a small brass bedstead in the centre of the room a child of two or +three years was sleeping, its soft hair falling upon the embroidered +pillow. A warm, rosy flush was on its face, and the dimpled hands lay +palms upward on the blanket.</p> + +<p>Like a mounting flame the passion of motherhood illuminated the woman's +face. She leaned over and kissed one of the pink hands.</p> + +<p>"How quietly he sleeps!" she said.</p> + +<p>The child stirred, opened its eyes, and smiled, stretching out its +arms.<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a></p> + +<p>The mother drew back softly. Then she knelt down, and, raising the child +with one hand, smoothed the pillow under its head. As she rose she +pressed the blanket carefully over the tiny arms lying outside the +cover.</p> + +<p>When she turned to Father Algarcife she saw that he had grown suddenly +haggard.<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-b" id="CHAPTER_III-b"></a>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<p>Father Algarcife withdrew the latch-key from the outer door and stopped +in the hall to remove his hat and coat. He had just returned from a +meeting of the wardens, called to discuss the finances of the church.</p> + +<p>"Agnes!" he said.</p> + +<p>A woman came from the dining-room at the end of the hall, and, taking +his coat from his hands, hung it upon the rack. She was stout and +middle-aged, with a face like a full-blown dahlia beneath her cap of +frilled muslin. She had been house-keeper and upper servant to Father +Speares, and had descended to his successor as a matter of course.</p> + +<p>"Have there been any callers, Agnes?"</p> + +<p>"Only two, sir. One of the sisters, who left word that she would return +in the evening, and that same woman from Elizabeth Street, who wanted +you to take charge of her husband who was drunk. I told her a policeman +could manage him better, and she said she hadn't thought of that. She +went to find one."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Agnes," replied Father Algarcife, with a laugh. "A policeman +could manage him much better."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, at eight."<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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 portičre 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.</p> + +<p>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.<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> His face, across which the flickering +shadows chased, assumed the effect of a drawing in strong black and +white.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a></p> + +<p>It seemed but yesterday, that morning eight years ago, when he had +fainted in the crowded square. He could close his eyes now and review +each detail with the dispassionateness of indifference. He could see the +flaming blue of the sky, the statue of Horace Greeley across the way, +and the confused blur of the bulletin-board before the <i>World</i> building. +He could hear the incessant falling of the water in the fountain, and he +could feel the old sensation of nausea that had blotted out the +consciousness of place. He remembered the long convalescence from the +fever that had followed—the trembling of his limbs when he moved and +the weakness of his voice when he spoke—the utter vanquishment of his +power of volition. He reviewed, almost methodically, that collapse into +black despair and the mental and emotional stagnation that had covered +all the crawling years. The fever, mounting to his brain, had left it +seared of energy and had sapped the passion in his blood. It had +consumed his old loves, with his old ambitions, and had left his +emotions as sterile as his mind.</p> + +<p>He remembered the struggle that had come, his resistance and his defeat, +and he saw the joy in the older man's eyes when he had laid before him +the remainder of his life—when he had said, "I no longer care. Make of +me what you will."</p> + +<p>The other had answered, "I will not take the sacrifice without sincerity +or without the will of God."</p> + +<p>"It is no sacrifice," he had replied. "It is a debt. If I can believe, I +will."</p> + +<p>And he had felt the words as a man half drugged by ether feels the first +incision of the knife.</p> + +<p>But he had not believed. Sitting now in his clerical dress, before the +fire kindled by his ordination, he knew that it was his weakness, not +his will, that had bent. Whether the motive was gratitude or despair he +did not question. There had been a debt, and he had met<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> it by the bond +of flesh and blood. Yes, he had repaid it in full.</p> + +<p>From the moment when he had been called into Father Speares's place he +had striven untiringly to do honor to the dead. He had spared neither +himself nor others. He had toiled night and day, as a man toils who +loves a cause—or is mad. Though his heart was not in the work, his will +was, and he was goaded to it by the knowledge that his intellect +revolted. Because the life was loathsome to him he left not one detail +unperformed. He had given a bond, and he fulfilled it, though his bond +was a lie.</p> + +<p>He lifted his head impatiently and looked before him. Then he smiled, +half bitterly, in the flickering firelight. Across the drawn curtains at +the window he could see the almost indistinguishable forms of people +passing in the street. He felt suddenly that his whole existence was +filled with such vague outlines, surrounded by gray dusk. The only thing +that was real was the lie.</p> + +<p>That was with him always, at every instant of the day. It lay in his +coat, in his clothes, in his very necktie. It filled the book-shelves in +the room and covered the closely written sheets upon his desk. It was in +the cope and in the chasuble, in the paten and in the chalice, in the +censer and in the Creed. Yes; he had sworn his faith to a myth, and had +said "I believe—" to a fable.</p> + +<p>The words of the Creed that he had chanted the day before rang suddenly +in his ears:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"And in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, +begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of +Light, very God of very God—"</p></div> + +<p>What if he had lived a lie decently, what if he had fought a good fight +for a cause he opposed, what if he,<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a> in the name of that cause, had +closed his eyes and his nostrils to the things that repel and had +labored to cleanse the sewer at his door, was it any the less a lie?</p> + +<p>"Father, dinner is served."</p> + +<p>He raised himself and stood upon the hearth-rug. The dog awoke and +circled about his feet. Then together they passed into the dining-room.</p> + +<p>For a moment he stood before his chair, silently making the sign of the +cross. Then he sat down and unfolded his napkin. It was a simple meal, +and he ate it in silence. When the soup was finished and the meat +brought on, he cut up a portion for the dog at his side, placing the +plate upon the floor. Then he pushed his own plate away, and sat looking +into his glass of claret as it sparkled in the light.</p> + +<p>The bell rang, and the maid went to answer it. In a moment she came +back.</p> + +<p>"It is the sister," she said. "She is in your study."</p> + +<p>"Very well," Father Algarcife responded.</p> + +<p>He laid his napkin upon the table and passed out.<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-b" id="CHAPTER_IV-b"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<p>Jerome Ardly turned into one of the entrances leading to the Holbein +studios, ascended the long flight of stairs, and paused before a door +bearing a brass plate, on which was engraved</p> + +<p class="c"><i>CLAUDE NEVINS</i></p> + +<p>As the knocker fell beneath his touch the door swung open, revealing +Nevins in a velvet smoking-jacket rather the worse for wear, his flaxen +hair standing on end above his wrinkled brow.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" was his greeting, taking the end of a camel's-hair brush from +his mouth. "So you've turned up at last. I've been doing your dirty work +all the morning."</p> + +<p>Ardly entered with a swing, closing the door after him. He had grown +handsomer in the last eight years, though the world had gone less well +with him than with Nevins. His large brown eyes still held their old +recklessness, and there had come into his voice a constant ring of +bravado.</p> + +<p>"Plenty for us both," he responded, blandly, throwing his hat on the +divan and himself into a chair. "My hand hath found its share to do, and +I have done it with all my might. I've been interviewing a lot of voters +in the old Ninth Ward. If Tammany doesn't make a clean sweep of that +district I'm a—a fool."</p> + +<p>"I wish you were not. Then you wouldn't be polling round these +confounded politicians. It seems to<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a> me your own district is more than +you can manage, but somehow you seem to be attending to everybody +else's. What under heaven does any self-respecting man want to be +alderman for, anyway? I wouldn't look at it."</p> + +<p>"My dear fellow, view it as a stepping-stone to greater glory."</p> + +<p>"A deuced long step downward."</p> + +<p>Ardly laughed, then, stretching himself, looked idly at the opening in +the ceiling through which the daylight fell. It framed a square of blue +sky across which a stray cloud drifted.</p> + +<p>The room was large and oblong, and the atmosphere was heavy with the +odors of oil and turpentine. The furniture consisted of a number of +covered easels, several coarse hangings ornamented in bizarre designs, +and a divan surmounted by an Oriental canopy. Over the door there was a +row of death-masks in plaster, relieved against a strip of ebony, and +from a pedestal in one corner a bust of Antinous smiled the world-worn +smile of all the ages.</p> + +<p>"Temper seems soured," remarked Ardly, raising himself and turning to +survey Nevins. "What's up?"</p> + +<p>Nevins smiled mysteriously, then waxed communicative.</p> + +<p>"Saw Algarcife to-day," he said, carelessly.</p> + +<p>"Oh! What did he say for himself?"</p> + +<p>Nevins laughed.</p> + +<p>"Does he ever say anything?" he demanded. "I asked him what he thought +of the elections, and he replied that they did not come within the +sphere of his profession."</p> + +<p>Ardly grinned.</p> + +<p>"Guess not," he ejaculated. "Was that all?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, the rest was about as follows: I went to his house, you know, and +told him I wanted his spiritual certificate as to your modesty and +worth. I also observed<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> that the newspapers had undertaken to throw +moral search-lights indiscriminately around—"</p> + +<p>"What did he say to that?" chuckled Ardly.</p> + +<p>"He: 'Ardly can sustain them, I suppose.'</p> + +<p>"I: 'Don't know, I'm sure. Would like to have your opinion.'</p> + +<p>"He: 'It seems to me that you are in a better position to pass judgment +on that point than I am.'</p> + +<p>"I: 'But the standards are not the same, father.' (That 'father' ripped +out as pat as possible.)</p> + +<p>"He (rather bored): 'Oh, he is a fine fellow. I wish there were more +like him.'"</p> + +<p>"He is a fine fellow himself," retorted Ardly, loyally.</p> + +<p>Nevins examined his brushes complacently. "If I were a Tammanyite," he +said, "I'd post his certificate in the districts lying off the Bowery."</p> + +<p>"It would be a shame," returned Ardly. Then he smiled. "By Jove! I +believe if those districts knew Algarcife favored the little finger of a +candidate, they would swallow the whole Tammany ticket."</p> + +<p>"Queer influence, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know. He works night and day over these people—and he +knows how to deal with them. Leave it to the Bowery or to the ladies in +his congregation, and he might turn this government into a despotism +without a single dissenting vote."</p> + +<p>"I believe you're right. By the way, you know he gave me that portrait +of Father Speares to do for the church."</p> + +<p>"Glad to hear it. But I never understood his conversion, somehow."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know. Men change like that every day."</p> + +<p>"But not for logic. I say, it happened shortly after Mariana left, +didn't it?"</p> + +<p>"I think so."<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a></p> + +<p>"Heard anything of her?"</p> + +<p>Nevins shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Only what you know already," he answered.</p> + +<p>"Deuced little, then."</p> + +<p>"She came back, you know that, and went out West for a divorce. Then she +married an ass of an Englishman, named the Honorable Cecil somebody."</p> + +<p>"Good Lord! You've known that all these years?"</p> + +<p>"Pretty nearly."</p> + +<p>"Why in the devil didn't you tell me before?"</p> + +<p>Nevins shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, I don't feel the +necessity to confide to you the secrets of my bosom."</p> + +<p>"I call that a sneak."</p> + +<p>"Why couldn't you find it out for yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Because I don't go round diving into other people's affairs."</p> + +<p>"Neither do I," responded Nevins, with dignity.</p> + +<p>"How did you know, then?"</p> + +<p>"It just came to me."</p> + +<p>"Humph!" retorted Ardly, suspiciously.</p> + +<p>Nevins squeezed a trifle of white-lead on his palette. Then he rose and +drew the cord attached to the shade beneath the skylight. After which he +stood to one side, studying the canvas with half-closed eyes, and +shaking his dissatisfied head. As he returned to his seat he brushed the +mouth of a tube of paint with his trousers, and swore softly. At last he +spoke.</p> + +<p>"I know something else," he volunteered, cautiously.</p> + +<p>"About Mariana?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Let's have it, man."</p> + +<p>Nevins laid his palette aside, and, seating himself astride the back of +a chair, surveyed Ardly impressively.</p> + +<p>"I can't see that there is any use," he remarked.<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a></p> + +<p>Ardly threw the end of a cigar at him and squared up wrathfully. "Are +you a damned fool or a utilitarian?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"She left the Honorable somebody," said Nevins, slowly.</p> + +<p>"By Jove! what a woman!"</p> + +<p>"She came to America."</p> + +<p>"You don't say so!"</p> + +<p>"She is in New York."</p> + +<p>"What!"</p> + +<p>Ardly left his chair and straightened himself against the mantel.</p> + +<p>"How do you know?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I have seen her."</p> + +<p>"Seen her!"</p> + +<p>"Her photograph," concluded Nevins, suavely.</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"In Ponsonby's show-case, on Fifth Avenue, near Thirtieth Street."</p> + +<p>"How do you know it is she?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll be damned! Don't I know Mariana?"</p> + +<p>"Is it like her?"</p> + +<p>"It is a gem; but you know she always photographed well. She knew how to +pose."</p> + +<p>"Has she changed?"</p> + +<p>"Fatter, a trifle; fairer, a trifle; better groomed, a great deal—older +and graver, I fancy."</p> + +<p>"Well, I never!" said Ardly, and he whistled a street song between +half-closed lips.</p> + +<p>Nevins spoke again.</p> + +<p>"She is a kind of rage with a lot of club-men," he said, "but the women +haven't taken her up. I heard Mrs. Ryder call her an adventuress. But +Layton told me Ryder was mad about her."</p> + +<p>"Queer creatures, women," said Ardly. "They have a margin of morality, +and a woman's virtue is determined by its difference in degree from the +lowest stage<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> worth cultivating. They imagine her not worth cultivating, +I suppose."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mariana is all right," rejoined Nevins. Then he went on, +reflectively: "Odd thing about it is her reputation for beauty. Judge +her calmly, and she isn't even pretty."</p> + +<p>"But who could judge her calmly?" responded Ardly. He picked up his hat +and moved towards the door. "Well, I'll be off," he said.</p> + +<p>"To the club?"</p> + +<p>"No, just a little stroll down the avenue."</p> + +<p>Nevins smiled broadly.</p> + +<p>"Don't forget that Ponsonby's window-case is on the avenue," he +remarked, placidly.</p> + +<p>"Oh; so it is!"</p> + +<p>Ardly went out into the crisp sunshine, a rising glow in his face. He +walked briskly, with an almost impatient buoyancy. Near Thirtieth Street +he stopped before the window-case and looked in.</p> + +<p>From a square of gray card-board Mariana smiled at him, the aureole of +her hair defined against a dark background. For a moment he stared +blankly, and then an expression of hunger crept into his eyes—the +hunger of one who has never been satisfied.</p> + +<p>She was fairer, older, graver, as Nevins had said. There was a wistful +droop in her pose, and in the splendor of her half-closed eyes there was +something the old Mariana had never known—something left by the +gathering of experience and the memory of tears.</p> + +<p>He turned abruptly away, his face darkening and the buoyancy failing his +step. He knew suddenly that the world was very stale and flat, and +politics unprofitable. He crossed to Broadway and a few blocks farther +down met Father Algarcife, who stopped him.</p> + +<p>"Nevins was talking to me about you this morning," he said. "And so you +are taking the matter seriously."<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a></p> + +<p>"As seriously as one takes—castor-oil."</p> + +<p>The other smiled.</p> + +<p>"Why, I thought you liked the chase."</p> + +<p>"Like it! My dear sir, life is not exactly a question of one's likes or +dislikes."</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife looked at him with intentness.</p> + +<p>"What! has not the world served you well?" he asked.</p> + +<p>Ardly laughed.</p> + +<p>"As well as a flute serves a man who doesn't know how to play it," he +answered. "I am a master of discords."</p> + +<p>"And so journalism didn't fit you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, journalism led to this. I did the chief a good turn or two, and he +doesn't forget."</p> + +<p>"I see," said Father Algarcife. Then he laughed. "And here is the other +side," he added. Across the street before them hung a flaunting banner +of white bunting, ornamented in red letters. Half mechanically his eyes +followed the words:</p> + +<p class="c"><i>SAMUEL J. SLOANE SAYS,</i></p> + +<p><i>If I am elected Mayor, the government of New York will be conducted +upon the highest plane of</i></p> + +<p class="c"><i>EFFICIENCY! JUSTICE! AND RIGHT!</i></p> + +<p>The wind caught the bunting and it swelled out as if inflated by the +pledges it bore.</p> + +<p>Ardly laughed cynically.</p> + +<p>"I wish he'd drop a few hints to Providence," he remarked. "It is +certainly a plane upon which the universe has never been conducted."</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife walked on in silence, making his way along the crowded +street with a slow yet determined step. The people who knew him turned +to look after him, and those who did not stepped from before his way, +moved by the virile dignity in his carriage,<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a> which suggested a man +possessed by an absorbing motive.</p> + +<p>Ardly looked a little abashed, and laughed half apologetically.</p> + +<p>"I have been in harness all my life," he said, "and now I'm doing a +little kicking against the traces."</p> + +<p>A boyish humor rushed to the other's lips.</p> + +<p>"In that case, I can make but one recommendation," he replied: "if you +kick against the traces—kick hard."</p> + +<p>He drew out his watch and paused a moment as if in doubt.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'll go to the hospital," he said; "there is a half-hour before +luncheon," and he turned into East Twentieth Street on his way to Second +Avenue. When he reached the hospital, he entered the elevator upon the +first floor and ascended to the babies' ward. As he stepped upon the +landing, a calm-faced nurse in a fresh uniform passed him, holding a +glass of milk in her white, capable hand.</p> + +<p>His eyes brightened as he saw her, and under the serene system of the +place he felt a sense of restfulness steal over him like warmth.</p> + +<p>"How is my charge?" he asked.</p> + +<p>A ripple of tenderness crossed the nurse's lips as she answered:</p> + +<p>"He has been looking for you, and he is always better on the days that +you come."</p> + +<p>She passed along the hall and entered a large room into which the +daylight fell like a bath of sunshine. In the centre of the room there +was a tiny table around which a dozen children were sitting in small +white chairs. Despite the bandaged heads and the weak limbs, there was +no sign of suffering. It was all cheerfulness and sunshine, as if the +transition from a tenement-house room to space and air had unfolded the +shrunken little bodies into bloom.</p> + +<p>In a cot near a window, where the sunlight flashed<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> across the cover, a +boy of three or four years lay with a strap beneath his small pink +wrapper, fastening him to a board of wood. At the head of the bed was +printed the name, and below:</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;">"Pott's disease of the spine.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">Received, October, 1896; discharged ..."</span></td></tr> +</table> + +<p>As he saw the priest he stretched out his pallid little hands with a +gurgle of welcome, merriment overflowing his eyes.</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife took the hands in his and sat down beside the cot. +Since entering the room he seemed to have caught something of the infant +stoicism surrounding him, for his face had lost its strained pallor and +the lines about his mouth had softened.</p> + +<p>"So it is a good day," he said. "The little man is better. He has been +on the roof-garden."</p> + +<p>The child laughed.</p> + +<p>"It ith a good day," he made answer. "There ith the woof-garden and +there ith ithe-cream."</p> + +<p>"And which is the best?"</p> + +<p>"Bofe," said the child.</p> + +<p>"That's right, little soldier; and what did you do in the garden?"</p> + +<p>The child clapped his hands.</p> + +<p>"I played," he responded; "an' I'm goin' to play ball on my legs when I +mend."</p> + +<p>One of the nurses came and stood for a moment at the foot of the bed. +"He has learned a hymn for you," she said. "He is teaching the other +children to sing—aren't you, baby?"</p> + +<p>"Yeth."</p> + +<p>"And you'll sing for the father?"</p> + +<p>The child's mouth quivered with pleasure and his eyes gleamed. Then his +gay little voice rang out in a shrill treble:<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;">"Yeth, Jesuth lovths me,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">Yeth, Jesuth lovths me,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">Yeth, Jesuth lovths me,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">The Bible tells me so."</span></td></tr> +</table> + +<p>He ended with a triumphant little gasp and lay smiling at the sunshine.</p> + +<p>A quarter of an hour later Father Algarcife returned to the street. It +was Friday, and at two o'clock he was to be in the sacristy, where it +was his custom to receive the members of his parish. It was the most +irksome of his duties, and he fulfilled it with a repugnance that had +not lessened with time. Now it represented even a greater strain than +usual. He had been soothed by his visit to the hospital, and he dreaded +the friction of the next few hours—the useless advice delivered, the +trivialities responded to, the endless details of fashionable foibles +that would be heard. He wondered, resentfully, if there were not some +means by which this office might be abolished or delivered into the +hands of an assistant. Then his eyes shot humor as he imagined Miss +Vernish, Mrs. Ryder, or a dozen others consenting to receive spiritual +instruction from a lesser priest with a snub-nose.</p> + +<p>As he passed a book-shop in Union Square, a man reading the posters upon +the outside attracted his notice.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say, Mr. Algarcife!"</p> + +<p>He stopped abruptly, recognized the speaker, and nodded.</p> + +<p>The other went on with a heated rush of words.</p> + +<p>"Those are fine things of yours, those sermons. I congratulate you."</p> + +<p>"Thank you."</p> + +<p>"Yes, they are fine. But, I say, you got the better of the <i>Scientific +Weekly</i> writer. It was good."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," responded Father Algarcife. "It is a good deal in the +way you look at it, I suppose."<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a></p> + +<p>"Not at all. I am not prejudiced—not in the least—never knew anybody +less so. But he isn't your equal in controversy, by a long shot."</p> + +<p>A sudden boyish laugh broke from Father Algarcife—a laugh wrung from +him by the pressure of an overwhelming sense of humor. "I don't think it +is a question of equality," he replied, "but of points of view."<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-b" id="CHAPTER_V-b"></a>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<p>The next afternoon Ardly burst into Nevins's studio without knocking, +and paused in the centre of the floor to give dignity to his +announcement.</p> + +<p>"I have seen her," he said.</p> + +<p>Nevins, who was stretched upon the divan, with his feet in the air and a +cigarette in his mouth, rolled his eyes indolently in Ardly's direction.</p> + +<p>"My dear fellow," he returned, "am I to presume that the pronoun 'her' +refers to an individual or to a sex?"</p> + +<p>"Don't be an ass," retorted Ardly. "I tell you I've seen Mariana."</p> + +<p>Nevins turned upon his side and removed the cigarette from his lips.</p> + +<p>"Where?" he responded, shortly.</p> + +<p>"She was coming out of Thorley's. She wore an acre of violets. She has a +footman in livery."</p> + +<p>"How do you know it was she?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll be damned! Don't I know Mariana?"</p> + +<p>Nevins sat up and rested his head in his hands.</p> + +<p>"How did she look?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Stunning. She has an air about her—"</p> + +<p>"Always had."</p> + +<p>"Oh, a new kind of air; the way a woman moves when she is all silk on +the wrong side."</p> + +<p>Nevins nodded.</p> + +<p>"Speak to you?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't give her a chance," returned Ardly, gloomily. "What's the +use?"<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a></p> + +<p>The knocker rose and fell, and Mr. Paul entered, as unaltered as if he +had stepped aside while the eight years slid by.</p> + +<p>Nevins greeted him with a slight surprise, for they had drifted +different ways.</p> + +<p>"Glad to see you," he said, hospitably; "but this is an unusual honor."</p> + +<p>"It is unusual," admitted Mr. Paul, seating himself stiffly on the edge +of the divan.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid to flatter myself with the hope that a whisper of my +spreading fame has brought you," continued Nevins, nodding affably.</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul looked up absently. "I have heard no such rumor," he replied, +and regarded the floor as if impressed with facts of import.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it is your social charm," suggested Ardly; "or it may be that +in passing along Fifty-fifth Street he felt my presence near."</p> + +<p>Nevins frowned at him and lighted a fresh cigarette.</p> + +<p>"I hope you are well, Mr. Paul," he remarked.</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul looked up placidly.</p> + +<p>"I may say," he returned, "that I am never well."</p> + +<p>"Sorry to hear it."</p> + +<p>There was a period of silence, which Mr. Paul broke at last in dry +tones.</p> + +<p>"I have occasion to know," he announced, "that the young woman whom we +knew by the name of Mariana, to which I believe she had no legal title, +has returned to the city."</p> + +<p>Nevins jumped. "You don't say so!" he exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"My information," returned Mr. Paul, "was obtained from the elevator boy +who took her to the apartment of Miss Ramsey."</p> + +<p>"Did she go to see Miss Ramsey?" demanded Nevins and Ardly in a breath.</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul shook his head.<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a></p> + +<p>"I do not know her motive," he said, "but she has taken Miss Ramsey +away. For three days we have had no news of her."</p> + +<p>The knocker fell with a decisive sound. Nevins rose, went to the door, +and opened it. Then he started back before the apparition of Mariana.</p> + +<p>She was standing near the threshold, her hand raised as when the knocker +had fallen, her head bent slightly forward.</p> + +<p>With an impulsive gesture she held out her gloved hands, her eyes +shining.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I am so glad!" she said.</p> + +<p>Nevins took her hands in his and held them while he looked at her. She +was older and graver and changed in some vital way, as if the years or +sorrow had mellowed the temperament of her youth. There was a deeper +thrill to her voice, a softer light in her eyes, and a gentler curve to +her mouth, and over all, in voice and eyes and mouth, there was the +shadow of discontent.</p> + +<p>She wore a coat of green velvet, with ruffles of white showing at the +loosened front, where a bunch of violets was knotted, and over the brim +of her hat a plume fell against the aureole of her hair.</p> + +<p>"I am so glad," she repeated. Then she turned to Ardly with the same +fervent pressure of the hands.</p> + +<p>"It is too good to be true," she went on. "It is like dropping back into +girlhood. Why, there is dear Mr. Paul!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul rose and accepted the proffered hands.</p> + +<p>"You have fattened, madam," he remarked, with a vague idea that she had +in some way connected herself with a title.</p> + +<p>Mariana's old laugh pealed out.</p> + +<p>"Why, he is just as he used to be," she said, glancing brightly from +Ardly to Nevins in pursuit of sympathy. "He hasn't changed a bit."<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a></p> + +<p>"The changes of eight years," returned Mr. Paul, "are not to be detected +by a glance."</p> + +<p>Mariana nodded smilingly and turned to Nevins.</p> + +<p>"Now let me look at <i>you</i>," she said. "Come under the light. Ah! you +haven't been dining at The Gotham."</p> + +<p>"Took my last dinner there exactly six years ago next Thanksgiving Day," +answered Nevins, cheerfully. "Turkey and pumpkin-pie."</p> + +<p>She turned her eyes critically on Ardly.</p> + +<p>"Well, he has survived his sentiment for me," she said.</p> + +<p>Ardly protested.</p> + +<p>"I don't keep that in the heart I wear on my sleeve," he returned. "You +would need a plummet to sound the depths, I fancy."</p> + +<p>Mariana blushed and laughed, the faint color warming the opaline pallor +of her face. Then she glanced about the room.</p> + +<p>"So this is the studio," she exclaimed, eagerly—"the studio we so often +planned together—and there is the divan I begged for! Ah, and the dear +adorable 'Antinous.' But what queer stuff for hangings!"</p> + +<p>"If you had sent me word that you were coming," returned Nevins, +apologetically, passing his hands over his hair in an endeavor to make +it lie flat, "I'd have put the place to rights, and myself too."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but I wanted to see you just as you are every day. It is so +home-like—and what a delightful smell of paint! But do you always keep +your boots above the canopy? They spoil the effect somehow."</p> + +<p>"I tossed them up there to get rid of them," explained Nevins. "But tell +me about yourself. You look as if you had just slid out of the lap of +luxury."</p> + +<p>"Without rumpling her gown," added Ardly.</p> + +<p>"I was about to observe that she seemed in prosperous circumstances," +remarked Mr. Paul.<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a></p> + +<p>"Oh, I am," responded Mariana. "Stupidly prosperous. But let me look at +the paintings first, then I'll talk of myself. What is on the big easel, +Mr. Nevins?"</p> + +<p>"That's a portrait," said Nevins, drawing the curtain aside and +revealing a lady in black. "I am only a photographer in oils. I am +painting everybody's portrait."</p> + +<p>"That means success, doesn't it? And success means money, and money +means so many things. Yes, that's good. I like it."</p> + +<p>Nevins smiled, enraptured.</p> + +<p>"You were the beginning," he said. "It was the painting of you and—and +the blue wrapper that did it. It gave me such a push uphill that I +haven't stood still since."</p> + +<p>The wistfulness beneath the surface in Mariana's eyes deepened suddenly. +Her manner grew nervous.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," she said, turning away. "I remember."</p> + +<p>Mr. Paul, who had watched her gloomily, with traces of disapprobation in +his gaze, took his leave with a stilted good-bye, and Mariana threw +herself upon the divan, while Ardly and Nevins seated themselves on +footstools at her feet and looked into her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I want to hear all—all," she said. "Are you happy?"</p> + +<p>"Are you?" asked Ardly.</p> + +<p>She shook her head impatiently. "I? Oh yes," she answered. "I have +clothes, and a carriage, and even a few jewels."</p> + +<p>She slipped the long glove from her hand, which came soft and white from +its imprisonment, with the indentation of the buttons on the supple +wrist. She held up her fingers, where a blaze of diamonds ran. Then she +smiled.</p> + +<p>"But I never sang with Alvary," she added.</p> + +<p>"Where is the voice?"</p> + +<p>"It is dead," she replied; "but it was only a skeleton<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a> when it lived. I +learned that afterwards. I had the artistic temperament without the +art."</p> + +<p>Nevins and Ardly, watching the mobility of her face, saw the old +half-disdainful weariness steal back.</p> + +<p>"So you have learned that," said Nevins. "It is the greater wisdom—to +learn what one has not."</p> + +<p>"I don't idealize any longer," answered Mariana, playing with the glove +in her lap. "I have lopped off an ideal every hour since I saw you."</p> + +<p>"Sensible woman," returned Ardly. "We don't lop off our ideals—we +distort them. Life is a continuous adjustment of the things that should +be to the things that are."</p> + +<p>"And middle-age shows the adjustment to be a misfit," added Nevins, his +boyish face growing almost sad. "We grow tired of burnishing up the +facts of life, and we leave the tarnish to mix with the triple-plate."</p> + +<p>"Are you middle-aged?" asked Mariana.</p> + +<p>"Not since you entered."</p> + +<p>She smiled, pleased with the flattery. "So I am a restorer of youth. Do +I look young?"</p> + +<p>"There is a glass."</p> + +<p>She turned towards it, catching the reflection of her face shadowed by +the plume against her hair.</p> + +<p>"Your eyes are older," said Nevins. "They look as if they had seen +things, but your mouth is young. It could never hold an expression long +enough for it to impress a line. Heavens! It is a mouth that would +madden one to model, because of the impossibility! It is twenty mouths +in one!"</p> + +<p>"You never liked my nose," said Mariana, her eyes still on the glass. +"Do you remember how you straightened it in the poster?"</p> + +<p>"I have the poster still."</p> + +<p>"And I have the nose."</p> + +<p>Then she laughed. "It is so delightful to be here," she said.<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a></p> + +<p>Ardly and Nevins talked rapidly, running over the years one by one, +giving glimpses of the changes in their lives, meeting Mariana's gay +reserve with fuller confidence. They had both grown boyish and more +buoyant, and as they spoke they felt like an incoming tide the warmth of +Mariana's manner. She seemed more lovable to them, more generous, more +utterly to be desired. Her nature had ripened amid the luxury of her +life, which, instead of rendering her self-centred, as poverty had done, +had left her more responsive to the needs of others. She threw herself +into the records of their lives with an impulsive fervor, stopping them +at intervals to question as to details, and covering the past eight +years with sympathetic search-lights.</p> + +<p>And yet beneath the superficial animation in her voice there was a +restless thrill, and the eagerness with which she turned to trivial +interests was but the nervous veil that hid the weariness in her heart. +It was as if she plunged into the thoughts of others that she might put +away the memory of herself.</p> + +<p>"So you have become a politician?" she said to Ardly. "I am so +interested!"</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't be if you knew as much of it as I do," remarked Nevins. +"You'd be ashamed. It makes me blush every time I see his name on a +ticket. I consider it an offence against the paths of our fathers."</p> + +<p>"Why, Mr. Ryder told me you were working for him," Mariana returned; +"but he did say that he couldn't reconcile it with your common-sense. +He's for the other side, you know."</p> + +<p>"So am I!" groaned Nevins; "but what has a man's convictions to do with +his vote?"</p> + +<p>"Or with his election?" laughed Ardly. "But Nevins is an unwilling +accomplice of my aspirations."</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't call them aspirations," remonstrated Nevins.<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a></p> + +<p>Mariana buttoned her glove and rose. "I am going to work for you," she +said, "and my influence is not to be scorned. I have not one vote, but +dozens. I shall elect you."</p> + +<p>"Don't," pleaded Nevins; "it will soil your hands!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can wash them!" she laughed; "and it is worth a few smuts. I +shall tell Mr. Ryder to canvass for you," she added.</p> + +<p>Ardly shouted, "Good heavens! He is one of the best fighters the +Republicans have!"</p> + +<p>Mariana smiled inscrutably.</p> + +<p>"But that was before I had a candidate," she answered.</p> + +<p>They followed her to the sidewalk and tucked her carriage furs about her +while the footman looked on.</p> + +<p>"And you are coming to see me soon?" she insisted—"very soon?"</p> + +<p>"We swear it!" they protested.</p> + +<p>"And you will tell me all the news of the elections?"</p> + +<p>"On our manly faith."</p> + +<p>"That I will trust. Good-bye!"</p> + +<p>"Good-bye!"</p> + +<p>The carriage started, when suddenly she lowered the window and looked +out, the plume in her hat waving black against the wind.</p> + +<p>"I forgot to tell you," she said; "my name is Gore—Mrs. Cecil Gore."</p> + +<p>With the light of audacity in his face, Nevins laid his hand upon the +window.</p> + +<p>"And where is the Honorable Cecil?" he asked.</p> + +<p>A flash of irritation darkened Mariana's eyes. She laughed with a ring +of recklessness.</p> + +<p>"The Lord forbid that I should know!" she replied.</p> + +<p>She motioned to the coachman, and the carriage rolled rapidly away. +Nevins stood looking after it until it turned the corner. When the last +wheel vanished, he spoke slowly:<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a></p> + +<p>"Well, I'll be blessed!" he said.</p> + +<p>Ardly stooped and picked up a violet that lay upon the curbing.</p> + +<p>"And so will I," he responded.</p> + +<p>"Have a whiskey?"</p> + +<p>"All right."</p> + +<p>They entered the building and mounted the stairs in silence.<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-b" id="CHAPTER_VI-b"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<p>The Reverend Anthony Algarcife had inspired his congregation with an +almost romantic fervor.</p> + +<p>When he had first appeared before them as assistant to Father Speares in +his Bowery Mission, and a little later as server in the celebrations, +they regarded him as a thoughtful-eyed young priest, whose appearance +fitted into the general scheme of color in the chancel. When he read the +lessons they noticed the richness of his voice, and when at last he came +to the altar-step to deliver his first sermon they thrilled into the +knowledge of his power.</p> + +<p>But he turned from their adulations almost impatiently to throw himself +into the mission in the slums. His eloquence had passed from the rich to +the poor, and beyond an occasional sermon he became only a harmonious +figure in the setting of the church. For the honors they meted out to +him he had no glance, for their favors he had only indifference. He +seemed as insensible to praise as to censure, and to the calls of +ambition his ears were closed. He lived in the fevered haste of a man +who has but one end remaining—to have life over.</p> + +<p>But his indifference redounded to his honor. Because he shunned +popularity, it fell upon him; because he put aside personal gains, he +found them in the reverence of his people. His apathy was construed into +humility, his compassion into loving-kindness, his endeavors to stifle +memory into the fires of faith. At the end of six years his +determination to remain a<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a> cipher in religion had made him the leader of +his church, and the means which he had taken to annihilate self had +drawn on him the wondering eyes of his world. Almost unconsciously he +bowed his head to receive the yoke.</p> + +<p>When, at the death of Father Speares, he was called to the charge, he +accepted it without a struggle and without emotion. He saw in it but an +opening to heavier labor and an opportunity to hasten the progress of +his slow suicide.</p> + +<p>So he took the work from the failing hands and devoted to it the fulness +of his own frenzied vigor. The ritual which his predecessor loved became +sacred to him, and the most trivial ceremonials grew mighty with memory +of the dead. Each candle upon the altar, each silken thread in the +embroidered vestments he wore, was a tribute to a sincerity which was +not his.</p> + +<p>He lent a sudden fervor to the decoration of the church and to the +training of his choristers, passionately reviving lost and languishing +rites of religion, and silencing the faint protests of his more +conservative parishioners by an arrogant appeal to the "Ornaments +Rubric" of the Prayer-book. In defiance of the possible opposition of +the bishop, he transposed the "Gloria" to its old place in the Catholic +Mass, hurling, like an avenging thunderbolt, at a priestly objector to +the good old rule of St. Vincent, "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab +omnibus."</p> + +<p>"My dear father," his senior warden had once said to him, "I doubt if +most priests put as much work into their whole lives as you do into one +celebration."</p> + +<p>"I know," replied Father Algarcife slowly. "If I have left anything +undone it has been from oversight, not fear of labor."</p> + +<p>The warden smiled.</p> + +<p>"Your life is a proof of your industry as well as<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> your faith," he +responded. "Only a man who loves his religion better than his life would +risk himself daily. It is your great hold upon your people. They believe +in you."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," said the other.</p> + +<p>"But I have wanted to warn you," continued the warden. "It cannot last. +Give yourself rest."</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife shook his head.</p> + +<p>"I rest only when I am working," he answered, and he added, a little +wistfully, "The parish bears witness that I have done my best by the +charge."</p> + +<p>The warden, touched by the wistfulness, lowered his eyes. "That you have +done any man's best," he returned.</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Father Algarcife. Then he passed into the sacristy to +listen to the confession of a parishioner.</p> + +<p>It was a tedious complaint, and he followed it abstractedly—winding +through the sick imaginings of a nervous woman and administering +well-worn advice in his rich voice, which lent a charm to the truisms. +When it was over, he advised physical exercise, and, closing the door, +seated himself to await the next comer.</p> + +<p>It was Miss Vernish, and as she entered, with her impatient limp, the +bitterness of her mouth relaxed. She was supervising the embroidering of +the vestments to be worn at Easter, and in a spirit of devotion she had +sacrificed her diamonds to their ornamentation. Her eyes grew bright as +she talked, and a religious warmth softened her manner.</p> + +<p>"It has made me so happy," she said, "to feel that I can give something +beautiful to the service. It is the sincerest pleasure I have known for +years."</p> + +<p>She left, and her place was taken by a young divinity student who had +been drawn from law to theology by the eloquence of Father Algarcife. He +had come to<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> obtain the priest's advice upon a matter of principle, and +departed with a quickening of his religious tendencies.</p> + +<p>Then came several women, entering with a great deal of rustling and no +evident object in view. Then a vestryman to talk over a point in +business; then the wife of a well-known politician, to ask if she should +consent to her husband's accepting a foreign appointment; then a man who +wished to be confirmed in his church; and, after all, Mrs. Ryder, large +and warm and white, to say that since the last communion she had felt +herself stronger to contend with disappointment.</p> + +<p>When it was over and he came out into the evening light, he drew himself +together with a quick movement, as if he had knelt in a strained +position for hours. Vaguely he wondered how his nerves had sustained it, +and he smiled half bitterly as he admitted that eight years ago he would +have succumbed.</p> + +<p>"It is because my nerves are dead," he said; "as dead as my emotions."</p> + +<p>He knew that since the pressure of feeling had been lifted the things +which would have overwhelmed him in the past had lost the power to +thrill his supine sensations, that from a mere jangled structure of +nerve wires he had become a physical being—a creature who ate and drank +and slept, but did not feel.</p> + +<p>He went about his daily life as methodically as if it were mapped out +for him by a larger hand. His very sermons came to him with no effort of +will or of memory, but as thoughts long thought out and forgotten +sometimes obtrude themselves upon the mind that has passed into other +channels. They were but twisted and matured phrases germinating since +his college days. The old fatal facility for words remained with him, +though the words had ceased to be symbols of honest thought. He could +still speak, it was only the ability to think that the fever had +drained—it was only<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> the power to plod with mental patience in the +pursuit of a single fact. Otherwise he was unchanged. But as every +sensation is succeeded by a partial incapacity, so the strain of years +had been followed by years of stagnation.</p> + +<p>He went home to dinner with a physical zest.</p> + +<p>"I believe I have one sentiment remaining," he said, "the last a man +loses—the sentiment for food."</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>The next evening, which chanced to be that of Election Day, Dr. Salvers +came to dine with him, and when dinner was over they went out to +ascertain the returns. Salvers had entered the fight with an +enthusiastic support of what he called "good government," and the other +watched it with the interest of a man who looks on.</p> + +<p>"Shall we cross to Broadway?" he asked; "the people are more +interesting, after all, than the politicians."</p> + +<p>"The politicians," responded Salvers, "are only interesting viewed +through the eyes of the people. No, let's keep to the avenue for a +while. I prefer scenting the battle from afar."</p> + +<p>The sounds grew louder as they walked on, becoming, as they neared +Madison Square, a tumultuous medley issuing from tin horns and human +throats. Over the ever-moving throngs in the square a shower of +sky-rockets shot upward at the overhanging clouds and descended in a +rain of orange sparks. The streets were filled with a stream of crushed +humanity, which struggled and pushed and panted, presenting to a distant +view the effect of a writhing mass of dark-bodied insects. From the +tower of the Garden a slender search-light pointed southward, a pale, +still finger remaining motionless, while the crowd clamored below and +the fireworks exploded in the blackness above.</p> + +<p>Occasionally, as the white light fell on the moving throng, it +exaggerated in distinctness a face here and<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> there, which assumed the +look of a grotesque mask, illuminated by an instantaneous flash and +fading quickly into the half-light of surrounding shadows. Then another +took its place, and the illumination played variations upon the changing +features.</p> + +<p>Suddenly a shrill cheer went up from the streets.</p> + +<p>"That means Vaden," said Salvers. "Let's move on."</p> + +<p>They left the square, making their way up Broadway. At the first corner +a man offered them papier-maché tigers, at the second roosters, at the +third chrysanthemums.</p> + +<p>"Look at this," said Salvers, drawing aside. "Odd for women, isn't it? +Half these girls don't know what they are shrieking about."</p> + +<p>In the throng jostling past them there were a dozen school-girls, +wearing yellow chrysanthemums in their button-holes and carrying small +flags in their hands. The light from the windows fell upon their pretty +faces, rosy from excitement. Behind them a gang of college students blew +deafening blasts on tin trumpets, and on the other side a newsboy was +yelling—</p> + +<p>"<i>Eve-ning Wor-ld!</i> Vaden elected!—Va-den—!"</p> + +<p>His voice was drowned in the rising cheers of men politically mad.</p> + +<p>"I'll go to the club," said Salvers, presently; "this is too deuced +democratic. Will you come?"</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Not now," he replied. "I'll keep on to Herald Square, then I'll turn +in. The fight is over."</p> + +<p>And he passed on.</p> + +<p>Upon a white sheet stretched along the side of the <i>Herald</i> building a +stereopticon portrait of a candidate appeared, followed by a second, and +then by the figures of the latest returns from the election boroughs. +Here the crowd had stagnated, and he found difficulty in forcing his +way. Then, as the mass swayed back, a<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a> woman fainted at his side and was +carried into the nearest drug-store.</p> + +<p>In the endeavor to reach Fifth Avenue he stepped into the centre of the +street, where a cable car, a carriage, and a couple of hansom cabs were +blocked. As he left the sidewalk the crowd divided, and the carriage +started, while a horse attached to a cab shied suddenly. A woman +stumbled beneath the carriage and he drew her away. As he did so the +wheel of the cab struck him, stunning him for the moment.</p> + +<p>"Look out, man!" called Nevins, who was seated beside the coachman upon +the carriage-box; "that was an escape. Are you hurt? Here, hold on!"</p> + +<p>At the same moment the door opened and a hand reached out.</p> + +<p>"Come inside," said a woman's voice.</p> + +<p>He shook his head, dizzy from the shock. Red lights flashed before his +eyes, and he staggered.</p> + +<p>Then the crowd pressed together, some one pushed him into the carriage, +and the door closed.</p> + +<p>"To Father Algarcife's house," said the voice. A moment more and the +horses started. Consciousness escaped him, and he lay against the +cushions with closed eyes. When he came to himself, it was to hear the +breathing of the woman beside him—a faint insistence of sound that +seemed a vital element in the surrounding atmosphere. For an instant it +lulled him, and then, as reason returned, the sound brought in its train +the pale survivals of old associations. Half stunned as he was, it was +by feeling rather than conception that he became aware that the woman +was Mariana. He was conscious of neither surprise nor emotion. There was +merely a troublous sense of broken repose and a slight bitterness always +connected with the thought of her—a bitterness that was but an +after-taste of his portion of gall and wormwood.</p> + +<p>He turned his head upon the cushions and looked at<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a> her as she sat +beside him. She had not spoken, and she sat quite motionless, her fitful +breathing alone betraying the animation of flesh. Her head was in the +shadow, but a single ray of light fell across her lap, showing her +folded hands in their long gloves. He smelled the fragrance of the +violets she wore, but the darkness hid them.</p> + +<p>Surging beneath that rising bitterness, the depths of his memory stirred +in its sleep. He remembered the day that he had stood at the window of +that Fourth Street tenement, watching the black-robed figure enter the +carriage below. He saw the door close, the wheels turn, and the last +upward glance she gave. Then he saw the long street flecked with +sunshine stretching onward into the aridity of endless to-morrows.</p> + +<p>Strange that he remembered it after these eight years. The woman beside +him stirred, and he recalled in that same slow bitterness the last kiss +he had put upon her mouth. Bah! It meant nothing.</p> + +<p>But his apathy was rended by a sudden fury—an instinct of hate—of +cruelty insatiable. An impulse to turn and strike her through the +darkness—to strike her until he had appeased his thirst for blood.</p> + +<p>The impulse passed as quickly as it came, fleeing like a phantom of +delirium, and in its place the old unutterable bitterness welled back. +His apathy reclosed upon him.</p> + +<p>The carriage turned a corner, and a blaze of light fell upon the shadow +of the seat. It swept the white profile and dark figure of Mariana, and +he saw the wistfulness in her eyes and the maddening tremor of her +mouth. But it did not move him. He was done with such things forever.</p> + +<p>All at once she turned towards him.</p> + +<p>"You are not hurt?"</p> + +<p>"It was nothing."<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a></p> + +<p>She flinched at the sound of his voice, and the dusk of the cross-street +shrouded them again. The hands in her lap fluttered nervously, running +along the folds of her dress.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the carriage stopped, and Nevins jumped down from the box and +swung the door open.</p> + +<p>"Are you all right?" he asked, and his voice was unsteady.</p> + +<p>"All right," responded Father Algarcife, cheerfully. He stepped upon the +sidewalk, staggered slightly, and caught Nevins's arm. Then he turned to +the woman within the carriage. "I thank you," he said.</p> + +<p>He entered the rectory, and Nevins came back and got inside the +carriage.</p> + +<p>"Will you go home?" he asked, with attempted lightness. "The returns +from the Assembly districts won't be in till morning, but Ardly is +sure."</p> + +<p>Mariana smiled at him.</p> + +<p>"Tell him to drive home," she answered. "I am very tired."<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-b" id="CHAPTER_VII-b"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<p>The morning papers reported that the Reverend Anthony Algarcife had been +struck by a cab while crossing Broadway, and as he left the +breakfast-table Mrs. Ryder's carriage appeared at his door, quickly +followed by that of Miss Vernish.</p> + +<p>By ten o'clock the rectory was besieged and bunches of flowers, with +cards attached, were scattered about the hall. Dr. Salvers, coming in a +little later, stumbled over a pile of roses, and recovered himself, +laughing.</p> + +<p>"Looks as if they mean to bury you," he remarked. "But how are you +feeling? Of course, I knew it was nothing serious or I should have +heard."</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife rose impatiently from his chair.</p> + +<p>"Of course," he returned. "But all this fuss is sufficient to drive a +man mad. Yes, Agnes," to the maid who entered with a tray of carnations +and a solicitous inquiry as to his health. "Say I am perfectly well—and +please have all these flowers sent to the hospital at once. No, I don't +care for any on my desk. I dislike the perfume." Then he turned to +Salvers. "I am going out to escape it," he said. "Will you walk with me +to the church?"</p> + +<p>"With pleasure," responded the doctor, cheerfully; and he added: "You +will find the church a poor protection, I fancy."</p> + +<p>As they left the rectory they met Claude Nevins upon the sidewalk.</p> + +<p>"I wanted to assure myself that it was not a serious accident," he said. +"Glad to see you out."<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a></p> + +<p>Father Algarcife frowned.</p> + +<p>"If I hear another word of this affair," he replied, irritably, "I shall +feel tempted to regret that there is not some cause for the alarm."</p> + +<p>"And you are quite well?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly."</p> + +<p>"By the way, I didn't know that you felt enough interest in the +elections to induce you to parade the streets on their account."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it was the doctor's fault. He got me into the medley, and then +deserted because he found it too democratic."</p> + +<p>"It is democracy turned upsidedown that I object to," remarked Salvers. +"There seems a lack of decency about it—as if we were to awake some +morning to find the statue of Liberty on its head, with its legs in the +air. I believe in the old conservative goddess of our fathers—Freedom +shackled by the chains of respectability."</p> + +<p>"So did Father Algarcife once," said Nevins. "He had an oration entitled +'The Jeffersonian Principles' which he used to deliver before the mirror +when he thought I was asleep."</p> + +<p>"I believe in it still," interrupted Father Algarcife, "but I no longer +deliver orations. Greater wisdom has made me silent. Well, I suppose the +result of last night was hardly a surprise."</p> + +<p>"Hardly," responded Nevins. "What can one expect when everybody who +knows the value of an office is running for it, and everybody who +doesn't is blowing horns about the runners. But I won't keep you. +Good-day."</p> + +<p>"Good-day."</p> + +<p>Nevins turned back.</p> + +<p>"By the way," he said to Father Algarcife, "I wish you would drop in and +look at that portrait the first chance you have. I am waiting for your +criticism."<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a></p> + +<p>"Very well. Congratulate Ardly for me."</p> + +<p>And they separated, Salvers motioning to his coachman to follow him to +the church.</p> + +<p>Upon going inside, Father Algarcife found his principal assistant, a +young fellow with a fair, fresh face, like a girl's, and a high +forehead, surmounted by waves of flaxen hair. His name was Ellerslie, +and his devotional sincerity was covered by a shy and nervous manner.</p> + +<p>He greeted the elder priest with a furtive deprecation, the result of an +innate humility of character.</p> + +<p>"I went by the rectory as soon as I had seen the morning papers," he +said. "Thank God you escaped unhurt!"</p> + +<p>The irritation with which Father Algarcife had replied to Nevins's +solicitude did not appear now.</p> + +<p>"I hope you were not troubled by the report," he answered. "There was +absolutely nothing in it except that I was struck by a vehicle and +stunned slightly. But the exaggerated accounts have caused me a great +deal of annoyance. By the way, John," and his face softened, "I have not +told you how much I liked your last sermon."</p> + +<p>The other flushed and shook his head. "They fall so far short," he +returned, and his voice trembled. "I know now that I shall never be able +to speak. When I face the people there is so much that I want to say +that I grow dumb. My feeling is so strong that my words are weak."</p> + +<p>"Time may change that."</p> + +<p>"No," said Ellerslie; "but if I may listen to you I am content. I will +serve God in humble ways. It is the service that I love, after all, and +not the glory."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," responded Father Algarcife, gently.</p> + +<p>He went into the sacristy, where he sat for a few moments in reverie, +his head resting upon his hand. Then he rose and shook himself free of +the thought which haunted him.<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a></p> + +<p>For several weeks after this he paid no calls except among his poor. The +houses of his richer parishioners he appeared to shun, and his days were +spent in active work in the mission districts. At all hours his calm +black figure and virile face might be seen passing in and out of the +grimy tenements or along the narrow streets. He had opened, in +connection with his mission-house, a lodging for waifs, and it was his +custom to spend several evenings of the week among its inmates. The +house had been founded by funds which, until his call to the church, had +been expended in Asiatic missions, but which, before his indomitable +opposition, had been withdrawn. As the work went on it became of special +interest to him, and a good half of his personal income went yearly to +its support.</p> + +<p>"It is not a charity," he had once said to Salvers. "I disapprove of +such charities. It is merely a house where lodgings are let in as +business-like a manner as they are around the corner, for five cents a +spot; only our lodgings are better, and there is a bath thrown in."</p> + +<p>"And a dinner as well," Salvers had answered, "to say nothing of +breakfast and a bed to one's self. By the way, is your system of serving +newsboys and boot-blacks on credit successful?"</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife smiled.</p> + +<p>"I have found it so," he replied; "but, you know, our terms are long, +and we give good measure for the money."</p> + +<p>It was in this work that he was absorbing himself, when, one day in +early December, he received a note from Mrs. Ryder:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have secured a box at the opera for Thursday night," (she +wrote), "that I might beg you to hear Madame Cambria, who sings +Ortrude in 'Lohengrin.' Her contralto is superb, and I wish to +engage her for our Christmas services, but I<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> hesitate to do so +until I have had your verdict upon her voice. This is a new +charitable appeal, and one which I trust you will not refuse.</p> + +<p class="r"><span style="margin-right: 30%;">"Believe me to be,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-right: 20%;">"Always sincerely yours,</span><br /> +"<span class="smcap">Florence van Horne Ryder.</span></p> + +<p>"The De Reszkes sing also."</p></div> + +<p>He sent an acceptance, and the following day received an urgent request +that he should dine quietly with Mr. Ryder and herself on Thursday +evening. To this he consented, after some hesitation; and when the +evening came he presented himself, to find Mrs. Ryder awaiting him with +the pretty, vivacious young woman of the dinner-party, who was a guest +in the house.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ryder crossed the room, with her large white hand outstretched, her +satin gown rustling as she moved, and the lamplight shimmering over her +massive shoulders in their setting of old lace. The vivacious young +woman, whose name was Darcy, greeted him with a smile which seemed to +blend in a flash of brightness her black eyes and white teeth.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Ryder is a little late," his wife explained, "but he will not delay +us long." And she passed to the subject of the Christmas services and +the contralto she wished to secure.</p> + +<p>While she was speaking, Ryder came in with his usual cordial +pleasantries. He was looking fresh and a little flushed, as if he had +just left a Turkish bath, and was dressed with an immaculateness of +detail which carried a suggestion of careful polish. His sensitive skin, +beneath which the purplish flush rose, was as fine as a child's, and his +round, smooth hands had a suffusion of pink in the palms.</p> + +<p>In a moment dinner was served, and they went into the dining-room. Ryder +was easy and affable. He talked pleasantly about the events of the past +few<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> weeks, describing as if for the hundredth time the success of the +Horse Show, and stating good-natured objections to the awards of the +judges.</p> + +<p>"It is a farce," he said—"a mere farce. They don't recognize the best +horse-flesh when they see it." Then he smiled at his wife. "But who can +blame them? It was really a puzzle to decide which were the most worth +looking at, the horses or the women. It is hard to say where the blue +ribbon belonged. Ah, father, you miss a great deal by being a saint."</p> + +<p>Miss Darcy interrupted him with a pretty protest. "I am sure a saint may +look at a horse," she said, "and a woman." And she added: "I have always +forgotten to ask you who the lady in violet and silver-fox was who sat +in Mr. Buisson's box? I did not recognize her."</p> + +<p>Ryder's eyes narrowed slightly, but he answered easily, "Oh, that was +Mrs. Gore, I believe."</p> + +<p>Miss Darcy flashed a smile.</p> + +<p>"The Englishwoman I have heard so much about? Why, I thought she was +called a beauty!"</p> + +<p>Ryder laughed.</p> + +<p>"She is a beauty when you know her," he said, "or, rather, you get the +idea that she is. But she isn't English, you know. She married an +Englishman."</p> + +<p>Then he changed the subject and drew Father Algarcife into a discussion +of church decorations.</p> + +<p>When dinner was over, Mrs. Ryder's maid appeared, bearing the +opera-wraps, and the two women trailed down the steps and into the +carriage. When Father Algarcife had stepped inside, Ryder closed the +door and made his excuses.</p> + +<p>"I'll look in a little later," he said; "but if Mr. Nevins finds you you +won't need me, and a whole evening of it tires my nerves."</p> + +<p>Then he lighted a cigar and strolled off leisurely, while the carriage +started.<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a></p> + +<p>When they entered the opera-house the curtain had risen, and the tenor +was singing his farewell to the swan.</p> + +<p>As Father Algarcife seated himself in the shadow of the box and looked +over Mrs. Ryder's superb shoulders at the stage and the glittering +foot-lights, he felt a quick impulse to rush away from it all. He hated +the noise and the heat and the glare. The heavy atmosphere seemed +oppressive and unnatural, and the women, sparkling brilliantly in the +tiers of boxes, looked like beautiful exotics, fragrant with the +perishable bloom of a hot-house. It was with a sensation of relief that +he recalled the dull mission in the slums, where he had spent the +morning.</p> + +<p>On the stage, Elsa had cast herself into the arms of Lohengrin, and the +voice of love dominant was translated into song. The music filled the +house with a throbbing ecstasy—an ecstasy that had captured in its +notes the joys of all the senses—the light to the eye of a spring +morning, the perfume to the nostrils of fresh meadows, the warmth to the +touch of falling sunshine. It was the voice of love ethereal—of love +triumphant over flesh, of love holding to its breast the phantom of its +dreams. It was the old, ever-young voice of the human heart panting for +the possession of its vision—the vision realized in the land of +legends.</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>The curtain was rung down, and in a moment Nevins came in and they fell +to talking. They spoke of the tenor, of the fact that the prima donna's +voice had strengthened, and of Madame Cambria, the contralto, who was a +little hoarse. Then they spoke of the people in the boxes and of the +absence of several whose names they mentioned.</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife was silent, and he only aroused himself to attention +when Miss Darcy, lowering her opera-glass, turned to Nevins +inquiringly.<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a></p> + +<p>"Do tell me if that is Mrs. Gore across from us—the one in green and +violets?"</p> + +<p>Nevins replied constrainedly. "Yes," he said; "I think so. The other is +Miss Ramsey, I believe—a friend who lives with her."</p> + +<p>Miss Darcy smiled.</p> + +<p>"Why, I thought she lived alone," she returned; "but I have heard so +many odd things about her that I may be mistaken in this one. She is +evidently the kind of person that nobody possesses any positive +information about."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it is as well," observed Mrs. Ryder, stiffly. "It is better to +know too little on such subjects than too much."</p> + +<p>Nevins was writhing in his chair, his mouth half open, when Father +Algarcife spoke.</p> + +<p>"In this case," he said, and his voice sounded cold and firm, "what is +not known seems to be incorrectly surmised. I knew Mrs. +Gore—before—before her marriage. She is a Southerner."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ryder looked up.</p> + +<p>"Yes?" she interrogated, as he paused.</p> + +<p>"And, although I cannot vouch for her discretion, I can for her innate +purity of character."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ryder flushed, and spoke with a beautiful contrition in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I was wrong," she said, "to trust rumor. It makes me ashamed of +myself—of my lack of generosity."</p> + +<p>The curtain rose, and Father Algarcife turned to the stage. But he did +not see it. The figures were blurred before his eyes and the glare +tortured him. Across the circle of space he knew that Mariana was +sitting, her head upraised, her cheek resting upon her hand, her face in +the shadow. He could almost see her eyes growing rich and soft like +green velvet.</p> + +<p>Then, as the voice of the soprano rang out, he started<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> slightly. +Beneath the song of love he heard the cry of ambition—a cry that said:</p> + +<p><i>"I would give half my life for this—to sing with Alvary."</i></p> + +<p>Whence the words came he did not know. He had no memory of them in time +or place, but they struggled in the throat of the soprano and filled the +air.</p> + +<p>He turned and looked at her as she sat across from him, her cheek +resting in her hand against a blaze of diamonds. She looked white, he +thought, and wistful and unsatisfied. Then a fierce joy took possession +of him—a joy akin to the gloating of a savage cruelty. She had failed. +Yes, in spite of the brocade of her gown, in spite of the diamonds in +her hair, in spite of the homage in the eyes of men that followed +her—she had failed.</p> + +<p>The blood rushed into his temples, and he felt it beating in his pulses. +He was glad—glad that she was unsatisfied—glad of the struggle and of +the failure—glad of the slow torture of famished aspirations.</p> + +<p>And from the throat of the soprano the words rang heavy with throbs of +unfulfilment:</p> + +<p><i>"I would give half my life for this—to sing with Alvary."</i></p> + +<p>Then as he looked at her she stirred restlessly, and their eyes met. It +was a blank look, such as two strangers might have interchanged, but +suddenly he remembered the night they came together and sat in the fifth +gallery. A dozen details of that evening flickered in his memory and +reddened into life. He remembered the splendors of her eyes, the thrill +in her voice, the nervous tremor of her hands. He remembered the violets +in her bonnet, created from nothing after a chapter of Mill—and the +worn gloves with the stains inside, which benzine had not taken away. He +remembered her faintness when the opera was over, and the grocery-shop +across from The Gotham,<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a> where they had bought ale and crackers. He saw +her figure as she sat on the hearth-rug in her white gown, her hair +hanging loose about her shoulders, her eyes drowsy with sleep. He saw +her hands—bare then of jewels—as she unfastened the parcels, and heard +her laugh as he drew the cork and the ale spilled upon the crackers. +Good God! He had forgotten these things eight years ago.</p> + +<p>Again he looked across at her and their eyes met. He turned to the stage +and listened to the faltering of love as it struggled with doubt. The +music had changed. It had deepened in color and a new note had throbbed +into it—a note of flesh that weighed upon spirit—of disbelief that +shadowed faith. The ideal was singing the old lesson of the real found +wanting—of passion tarnished by the touch of clay. The ecstasy had +fled. Love was not satisfied with itself. It craved knowledge, and the +vision beautiful was fading before the eyes of earth. It was the song of +the eternal vanquishment of love by distrust, of the eternal failure of +faith.</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>When the curtain fell Ryder came into the box. He was looking depressed, +and lines of irritation had gathered about his mouth. He pulled his fair +mustache nervously. His wife rose and looked at him with a frank smile +in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I have been watching Mrs. Gore," she said, "and she is very lovely. +Will you take me to her box for a moment?"</p> + +<p>Nevins looked up with quick gratitude, and Ryder grew radiant. He smiled +on his wife in affectionate admiration.</p> + +<p>"Of course I will," he answered, and as they left the box he added: "You +are magnificent. There is not a woman in town with your neck and arms."</p> + +<p>She smiled faintly, unmoved by his words. She had<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a> learned long since +that he still admired though he no longer desired her—and desire was +the loadstar of his life.</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife, looking at the box across from him, saw Mariana start +suddenly and rise with an impulsive welcome as Mrs. Ryder entered. He +could see the light on her face, and the frank pleasure of her greeting. +Then, as the two women stood together, he saw Ryder glance from one to +the other with his pleasant smile and turn to speak to Miss Ramsey. He +heard Nevins breathing behind him, and he was conscious of a strange +feeling of irritation against him. Why should he, who was at enmity with +no man, cherish that curious dislike for one who was his friend?</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Ryder is a creature to be adored," said Nevins to Miss Darcy. "She +is Isis incarnate."</p> + +<p>Miss Darcy responded with her flashing smile. "And Mrs. Gore's +divinity?"</p> + +<p>Nevins gave an embarrassed laugh.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I am not sure that she is a goddess at all," he answered. "She is +merely a woman."<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-b" id="CHAPTER_VIII-b"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<p>As Mariana entered her house after the opera was over she unwound the +lace scarf from her head, letting it trail like a silvery serpent on the +floor behind her. Then she unfastened her long cloak, and threw it on a +chair in the drawing-room.</p> + +<p>"The fire is out," she said, looking at the ashes in the grate, "and I +am cold—cold."</p> + +<p>"Shall I start it?" asked Miss Ramsey, a little timidly, as she tugged +awkwardly at her gloves, embarrassed by their length.</p> + +<p>Mariana laughed absently.</p> + +<p>"Start it? Why should you?" she questioned. "There are servants—or +there ought to be—but no, I'll go up-stairs."</p> + +<p>She went into the hall, and Miss Ramsey followed her. On the second +landing they entered a large room, the floor of which was spread with +white fur rugs, warmed by the reddish lights and shadows from an open +fire.</p> + +<p>Mariana crossed to the fire, and, drawing off her gloves, held her hands +to the flames. There was a strained look in her eyes, as if she had not +awaked to her surroundings.</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey raised the wick of the lamp, yawned behind her hand, and +came to where Mariana was standing.</p> + +<p>"Are you tired?" she asked. "The opera was very long."</p> + +<p>Mariana started and looked at her.<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a></p> + +<p>"You poor little thing," she said. "It half killed you. No, don't go. +Sit down for a moment. I want to talk to you."</p> + +<p>As she spoke she unfastened her gown, slipped it off, and threw it +across a chair. Then she put on a wrapper of white flannel, and, seating +herself on the rug before the fire, loosened her heavy hair.</p> + +<p>"I want to talk," she repeated.</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey drew a chair beside her and sat down. She laid her hand on +Mariana's hair.</p> + +<p>"Shall I braid it?" she asked.</p> + +<p>Mariana shook her head.</p> + +<p>"I don't want you to wait on me," she replied, half pettishly. "Janet +can do that. I want you to love me."</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey smiled.</p> + +<p>"How shall I begin?" she inquired.</p> + +<p>But Mariana was silent, staring moodily into the fire, where the ruddy +coals assumed sharp and bizarre designs. As the light flickered over her +face it brought out the changes in her eyes and the warmth of her mouth.</p> + +<p>"Do you see that head in the fire?" she asked, suddenly. "It is the head +of the Sphinx—and before it there is a burning desert—do you see?"</p> + +<p>Then she laid her head in Miss Ramsey's lap, and her voice sounded faint +and far off.</p> + +<p>"I want to be told that I am good," she said; "that I have been good all +my life—that I am a saint, like that splendid creature who came to +speak to me to-night. Am I as good as she?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know her," responded Miss Ramsey.</p> + +<p>Mariana raised her eyes to her face.</p> + +<p>"Am I like I used to be—at The Gotham?"</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey smiled.</p> + +<p>"You are older."</p> + +<p>"And wiser?"<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a></p> + +<p>"I don't think you will ever be wise, my dear."</p> + +<p>"I am afraid not," said Mariana. "I am wedded to folly." Then she sighed +softly. "Am I better?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"You are very good to me."</p> + +<p>"Am I better—to look at?"</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey shook her head gently.</p> + +<p>"Dress makes a good deal of difference," she returned, presently.</p> + +<p>Mariana rose and kissed her good-night.</p> + +<p>"Sleep well," she said. "And don't make your bed in the morning—please +don't. Yes, I am very sleepy."</p> + +<p>But when the door had closed after Miss Ramsey she sat looking into the +grate until the crimson coals had waned to livid ashes. The room grew +cold and the shadows deepened in the folds of the curtains at the +windows, which were stirred by a faint draught. From the street below an +occasional noise rose, vague, unseizable—the roll of a wagon or the +tramp of a passer-by upon the sidewalk. In a distant room a clock struck +twice, with a soft whirring sound. From her gown, thrown across the back +of a chair, the bruised violets diffused a fading sweetness. The embers +waned one by one, and the visions in the fire grew spectral, like living +faces which the warm blood forsakes. As the last one died she rose and +went to bed.</p> + +<p>When she awoke in the morning it was to find Miss Ramsey standing beside +her, holding her breakfast-tray.</p> + +<p>"You were sleeping very soundly," she said. "Did you have a good night?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," Mariana responded. She yawned and turned upon the pillows, +stretching her arms above her head. The lace on her sleeves fell away +from her bare elbows.</p> + +<p>"I slept very soundly, and I am sleepy still. The mere fact of getting +up in the morning makes life a<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a> failure. Until I have had my bath I am +always a pessimist."</p> + +<p>She sat up drowsily, running her hands through her hair. Then she turned +to her tea, which was placed on a table beside her.</p> + +<p>"There are your violets also," remarked Miss Ramsey, pointing to a +couple of florist's boxes; and, as an afterthought, she added: "Men are +odd creatures."</p> + +<p>Mariana laughed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, they imagine that they are laying up treasures on earth," she +answered, stirring her tea. "And they have overlooked the fact that +moths corrupt. I shall advise them to transfer their attentions to +Heaven. Who was it that called me 'unpropitious'?"</p> + +<p>"I don't like it," said Miss Ramsey. "I may be old-fashioned, but I +don't approve of married men living as if they had no responsibilities."</p> + +<p>"Nor do I," agreed Mariana. "It bores one awfully."</p> + +<p>"And it makes people say unkind things of you, my dear. It is so hard +for them to draw the distinction between imprudence and infamy."</p> + +<p>"Yes," admitted Mariana, pushing her cup aside. "I suppose it is—and I +suppose I am imprudent."</p> + +<p>"I wish you would try to be a little more careful."</p> + +<p>Mariana caught her hand and pulled her down on the bed beside her.</p> + +<p>"What a treasure you are!" she said. "Do you know you are the one woman +I absolutely believe in? You might have made a fortune by reporting +scandals about me, and you haven't done so."</p> + +<p>The maid brought in several letters, and Mariana took them from her and +broke the seals carelessly.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Gore is coming forward again," she remarked, tossing an open sheet +on the counterpane. "You knew he did not like that worshipful old uncle +of his leaving me his property. He says it has made me too<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a> independent. +Well, it has made me independent of him, for which Heaven be praised. +When I heard of it I repeated the Thirty-nine Articles, fifty <i>Hail +Mary's</i>, and as much of the Shorter Catechism as I could think of. I +feel <i>so</i> thankful."</p> + +<p>"I am sorry for that, Mariana."</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't be if you knew him. You are too economical to squander +emotions."</p> + +<p>"But it does seem rather hard on him," said Miss Ramsey.</p> + +<p>Mariana laughed.</p> + +<p>"It would have been worse on me had I stayed with him," she responded. +"And now, if Janet has my bath ready, I think I'll get up."</p> + +<p>An hour later she came down-stairs in her hat and coat, and went for her +morning walk in the park. When she returned she ordered the carriage, +and went shopping, accompanied by Miss Ramsey.</p> + +<p>"You are to have a heliotrope satin," Mariana declared, in a burst of +generosity, "and I am to have one that is all amber and dull gold."</p> + +<p>As she stood in the centre of the costumer's show-room, surveying the +lustrous folds of heliotrope and amber, her eyes shone with pleasure. +Miss Ramsey protested faintly.</p> + +<p>"My dear Mariana, I beg of you," she said, "leave me the black silk. +Colors confuse me."</p> + +<p>But Mariana was obdurate.</p> + +<p>"No," she replied, "I have selected it. We will go to the milliner's."</p> + +<p>They drove to the milliner's, where they remained for a couple of +hours—Mariana finding difficulty in deciding upon a bonnet. When the +choice was made Miss Ramsey was threatened with hysteria, and they went +home.</p> + +<p>"I quite forgot," said Mariana, as they entered the house, a small +brown-stone one on Fifty-seventh Street,<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a> which she had leased—"I quite +forgot that I was to have sat for Mr. Nevins this morning. How provoking +I am! But it is too late now, and, besides, I am looking a fright. My +dear, good Miss Ramsey, I do wish you would express yourself more about +the purchases I make."</p> + +<p>"I did express myself," protested Miss Ramsey, looking jaded and +harassed. "I expressed myself against that heliotrope satin, but it did +no good."</p> + +<p>"But that was absurd," responded Mariana. "I do hope luncheon is ready," +and she went up-stairs to change her dress.</p> + +<p>After luncheon Mrs. Ryder called, and Mariana went in to see her, a +flush of pleasure suffusing her face.</p> + +<p>"How very kind of you!" she said, taking the proffered hand, and there +was a thrill of gratitude in her voice. They seated themselves near +together and talked of mutual acquaintances, principally men, of the +weather, and of the opera the evening before—all with the flippancy +with which society veils the primordial network of veins coursing +beneath its bloodless surface. Then, when Mrs. Ryder rose to go, she +hesitated an instant, looking down at the smaller woman.</p> + +<p>"I should like to be your friend," she said at last. "Will you let me?"</p> + +<p>Mariana raised her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I need them," she answered; and then she added, impulsively: "Do you +know all that has been said of me—all?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ryder drew herself up with a slow, gracious movement.</p> + +<p>"But it is not true," she said.</p> + +<p>"No, it is not true," repeated Mariana.</p> + +<p>The other smiled and held out her hand.</p> + +<p>"I want you to come to luncheon with me," she said. "I shall be alone +to-morrow. Will you come?"<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a></p> + +<p>"Yes," Mariana responded, "to-morrow."</p> + +<p>And after Mrs. Ryder had gone she sat down at her desk and wrote a note.</p> + +<p>"You must not talk to me again as you did last evening," it said. "I +have told you so before, but I may not have seemed in earnest. Now I am +in earnest, and you must not—you shall not do it. I know it has been a +great deal my fault, and I am sorry for it. Indeed, you must believe +that I did not think of its coming to this."</p> + +<p>Then she sealed it and gave it to the servant to mail, after which she +went up-stairs and talked to Miss Ramsey until dinner.</p> + +<p>The next day she went to Mrs. Ryder's, and they sat down to luncheon at +a small round table and talked as women talk in whom feeling is +predominant over thought, and to whom life represents a rhythmic series +of emotions rather than waves of mental evolution.</p> + +<p>They spoke in low, almost affectionate voices, conscious of one of those +sudden outreaches of sympathy to which women are subject. When luncheon +was over they went up to the nursery, and Mariana knelt upon the floor +and romped with the child, who pulled her loosened hair, uttering shrill +shrieks of delight. At last she rose hurriedly, and Mrs. Ryder saw that +a tear trembled on her lashes.</p> + +<p>The elder woman's heart expanded.</p> + +<p>"You have had a child?" she asked, softly.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"And lost it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I lost it."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ryder's eyes grew soft.</p> + +<p>"I am so sorry for you," she said. The tear on Mariana's lashes fell +upon her hand.</p> + +<p>"It was eight years ago," she said. "That is a long time, but I suppose +one never entirely forgets."</p> + +<p>"No," answered the other, "one never forgets."<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a></p> + +<p>She stooped suddenly, and, lifting her child, kissed it passionately.</p> + +<p>Several mornings after this Mariana's carriage stopped before Nevins's +studio, and Mariana got out and ascended the long flight of stairs. In +response to the fall of the brass knocker, the door was opened and +Nevins greeted her reproachfully. "Are you aware," he demanded, gravely, +"that there has been sufficient time for the appearance of a wrinkle +since your last sitting?"</p> + +<p>"Portraits don't have wrinkles," returned Mariana, cheerfully, entering +and unfastening her coat; "nor do I."</p> + +<p>She removed her hat and gave an impatient little fluff to her hair.</p> + +<p>"Do I look well?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Were you ever otherwise to me?" rejoined Nevins, in impassioned +protest.</p> + +<p>Mariana turned from him with a slight shrug of her shoulders.</p> + +<p>"For the last week," she said, "I have had a horrible cold. It made my +eyes red and my nose also. That is why I stayed away."</p> + +<p>"And plunged me into a seven days' despair—for a cold."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but such a cold!"</p> + +<p>She seated herself on a low chair between two large curtained easels. +Then she rose to examine the portrait.</p> + +<p>"I suppose the touching-up makes a great deal of difference," she +remarked.</p> + +<p>"A great deal," assented Nevins; "but don't you like it?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated, her head first on one side, then on the other.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," she said, "but I should like it to be ideal, you know."<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a></p> + +<p>"Nonsense! You don't need to be idealized. To idealize means to wipe out +character with turpentine and put in inanity with a paint-brush." Then +he added: "Sit down just as you are, and turn your head towards the +purple curtain on that easel. A little farther—there. I must have that +expression."</p> + +<p>He picked up his brush and worked steadily for twenty minutes. Then he +frowned.</p> + +<p>"You have suffered twelve changes of expression within the last sixty +seconds," he said. "What are you thinking of?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, lots of things."</p> + +<p>"Keep to one, please."</p> + +<p>She smiled.</p> + +<p>"Which shall it be?"</p> + +<p>His eyes lingered upon her in sudden brightness.</p> + +<p>"Think of me," he responded.</p> + +<p>"I do," returned Mariana, amiably; "but when I think of you I think of +Mr. Ardly, and when I think of Mr. Ardly I think of The Gotham, and when +I think of The Gotham I think of—Mr. Paul."</p> + +<p>"Confound Mr. Paul!" retorted Nevins, crossly.</p> + +<p>"Please don't," protested Mariana; and she added, "you know he +disapproves of me very much."</p> + +<p>"The scoundrel!"</p> + +<p>"But a great many people do that."</p> + +<p>"The scoundrels!"</p> + +<p>"Oh no," said Mariana, plaintively; "it is only your kindness of heart +that makes you say so."</p> + +<p>He laid down his brush and looked at her.</p> + +<p>"My God!—Mariana!" he exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"Nevins," said a voice in the doorway.</p> + +<p>He turned abruptly. Mariana, behind the curtained easel, paled suddenly.</p> + +<p>"I knocked, my dear fellow," the voice went on, "and I thought you +answered. So you <i>are</i> alone. I came to look at the portrait."<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a></p> + +<p>"I am not alone," returned Nevins, awkwardly; "but come in, +a—a—Algarcife."</p> + +<p>Mariana rose from behind the easel and came forward. Her face was white, +but she was smiling.</p> + +<p>"He is painting every one's portrait," she said, "and I am one of +everybody." She held out her hand. He took it limply, and it fell from +his grasp.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," he said; "I did not know."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it doesn't matter," responded Mariana. "Please look at the +portrait. I want to—to rest."</p> + +<p>He turned from her coldly.</p> + +<p>"Since Mrs. Gore is so kind," he said to Nevins, "I will look at it. It +will only detain you a moment."</p> + +<p>He crossed the room and drew aside the curtain from a large canvas, then +he fell back from the light and examined it carefully for a few seconds, +suggesting an alteration or two, and making a favorable comment.</p> + +<p>Mariana followed him with her eyes, her hands clasped before her, her +face pallid, and the red of her lips shining like a scarlet thread. +"It—it is very like," she said, suddenly.</p> + +<p>He bowed quietly, showing a slight surprise, as he might have done at +the remark of a stranger. Then he turned to the door.</p> + +<p>"I am sorry to have interrupted you," he said. "Good-morning."</p> + +<p>When the door closed upon him Mariana stood for an instant with her head +bent as if listening to his footsteps on the stairs. Then she turned to +Nevins, a smile flashing across her face.</p> + +<p>"We must go back to the portrait," she said. "It must be finished +quickly—quickly. I am afraid of wrinkles."<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-b" id="CHAPTER_IX-b"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<p>Mariana was walking under the elms that skirt the park on Fifth Avenue. +It was a mild December morning, and the sunshine fell in silvery waves +through the bare branches of trees overhead and rippled lightly across +the concrete sidewalk, while the slender shadows of the boughs assumed +the effect of irregular lines drawn by crude fingers upon a slate. Far +ahead, through the narrowing archway of naked elms, the perspective +sloped in gradual incline, blending the changing shades of blue and gray +into a vista of pale violet. On the low stone wall to her left the +creepers showed occasional splashes of scarlet berries, glowing warm and +vivid through the autumnal haze which tinted the atmosphere. December +had reverted for a single day into the majesty of dead October.</p> + +<p>Mariana walked slowly, the furs, which she found oppressive, open at the +throat, and her muff hanging idly from her hand. There was a rapt +expression upon her face, and her eyes were sombre. She had the strained +and preoccupied air of one whose mind has winged back to long-past days, +leaving the body adrift in its relation to present events. All at once a +tiny child, rolling a toy along the sidewalk, stumbled and fell before +her feet, uttering shrieks of dismay. The incident recalled her to +herself, and, as she stooped to lift it, she smiled at the profuse +apologies of the nurse. Then she glanced about her, as if uncertain of +the number of blocks that she had walked.</p> + +<p>Three aspens, standing together in the park, arrested<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a> her gaze, and she +looked at them with momentary intentness. Their slender bodies shone +like leprous fingers, pointing heavenward, and on the topmost point of +one a broken spray of frosted leaves shivered whitely. They recalled to +her with a shudder the little graveyard on the old plantation, where she +had spent her earliest childhood, and she was seized with a spasm of +memory. She saw the forgotten and deserted graves, with the rank +periwinkle corroding the marble slabs, and she saw the little brown +lizards that crept out to bask upon them in the summer sunshine. With +the recollection, death appeared to her hideous and loathsome, and she +walked on quickly, her eyes on the pavement. A group of street-cleaners +were seated against the stone wall, eating their mid-day meal, and she +looked at the hunks of bread and ham with a feeling of sympathy for the +consumers. Then, as she passed, her thoughts swung to the owner of the +house across the way whom she knew, and who was descending the front +steps. At Sixty-seventh Street she turned into the park, her eyes drawn +by the clump of pines darkly defined against the gray rock beyond. For +the second time her errant thoughts went back to her childhood and to +the great pine forest where the wind played lullabies through the white +heat of August days. She felt a swift desire to throw herself beneath +the little alien growth of pine, to lie on the soft grass, which was +still like emerald deepened by bluish shadows, and to let the spicy +needles fall upon her upturned face.</p> + +<p>As she moved onward, a man crossing the park in a rapid walk approached +her. It was Father Algarcife, and in a moment their glances met.</p> + +<p>He raised his hat, and would have passed on, but she stopped him by a +gesture.</p> + +<p>"Won't you speak to me?" she asked, and her voice wavered like a harp +over which the player has lost control.<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a></p> + +<p>As she looked at him she saw that he had grown thinner since she had +last seen him, and that his eyes shone with an unnatural lustre.</p> + +<p>"What is there for me to say?" he returned, arresting her wavering +glance.</p> + +<p>Her lips quivered.</p> + +<p>"I may go away," she said, "and this is the last chance. There is +something I must tell you. Will you turn and walk back with me?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"What is the use?" he asked, impatiently. "There is nothing to be said +that cannot better be left—unsaid."</p> + +<p>"No! No!" she said. "You must not think worse of me than—than I +deserve."</p> + +<p>He was smiling bitterly.</p> + +<p>"What I think of you," he returned, "matters very little." Then the +smile passed, and he looked at her gravely. "I have little time," he +said. "My days are not my own." And he added, slowly: "If you wish it, I +will walk back with you for a short distance."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," she replied, and they passed the clump of pines on their +way in the park.</p> + +<p>For a time they were silent, he was looking ahead, and her eyes followed +their shadows as they flitted before her on the ground. The two shadows +drew nearer, almost melted into one, and fell away.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he turned to her.</p> + +<p>"There was something you wished to say?" he asked, as he had asked his +parishioners a hundred times; then he added: "Even though it were better +left unsaid?"</p> + +<p>Her eyes left the shadows, and were raised to his face. She thought +suddenly that there was a line of cruelty about his mouth, and shrank +from him. Had she really seen that face illuminated by passion, or was +memory a lie? She spoke rapidly, her words tripping upon one another.<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a></p> + +<p>"I want you to know," she said, "how it happened—how I did it—how—"</p> + +<p>He looked at her again, and the mocking smile flamed in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"What does it matter how it happened," he questioned, "since it did +happen? In these days we have become impressionists in all things—even +in our experiences. Details are tiresome." Then, as she was silent, he +went on. "And these things are done with. There is nothing between +Mrs.—Gore and the Reverend Anthony Algarcife except a meeting in a +studio and a morning walk in the park. The air is spring-like."</p> + +<p>"Don't," she said, suddenly. "You are hard."</p> + +<p>He laughed shortly.</p> + +<p>"Hard things survive," he answered. "They aren't easy to smash."</p> + +<p>She looked at the shadows and then into his face.</p> + +<p>"Have you ever forgiven me?" she asked.</p> + +<p>He did not answer.</p> + +<p>"I should like to feel," she went on, "that you see it was not my +fault—that I was not to blame—that you forgive me for what you +suffered."</p> + +<p>But he looked ahead into the blue-gray distance and was silent.</p> + +<p>"Tell me that I was not to blame," she said, again.</p> + +<p>He turned to her.</p> + +<p>"It was as much your fault," he said, slowly, "as it is the fault of +that feather that the wind is blowing it into the lake. What are you +that you should conquer the wind?"</p> + +<p>She smiled sadly.</p> + +<p>"And you have forgiven me?"</p> + +<p>His eyes grew hard and his voice cut like steel.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"And yet you see that I was not to blame."</p> + +<p>He smiled again.<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a></p> + +<p>"It is the difference," he answered, "between logic and life. What have +they in common?"</p> + +<p>She spoke almost passionately. "Do you think that I have not suffered?" +she asked. "Do you think that you have had all—all the pain?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"I do not suffer," he replied. "My life is calm."</p> + +<p>She paid no heed to him.</p> + +<p>"I have been tortured," she went on; "tortured night and day with +memory—and remorse."</p> + +<p>His voice was cold, but a sudden anger blazed in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"There are drugs for both," he said.</p> + +<p>She shivered.</p> + +<p>"I have tried to buy happiness as I bought diamonds," she continued. "I +have gone from place to place in pursuit of it. I have cheated myself +with the belief that I might find it. I did not know that the lack lay +in myself—always in myself."</p> + +<p>She was silent, and he softened suddenly. "And you have never found it?" +he asked. "Of all the things that you craved in youth there is lacking +to you now—only your ambition."</p> + +<p>She raised her head.</p> + +<p>"And love," she finished.</p> + +<p>His voice grew hard again.</p> + +<p>"We are speaking of realities," he returned, and added, bitterly: "Who +should have had love—if not you?"</p> + +<p>They had passed the lake, and were walking through the Ramble. The dead +leaves rustled beneath their feet.</p> + +<p>"It is not true," she said, passionately. "It is false."</p> + +<p>"What is false?" he demanded, quietly. "That you have had opportunities +for love?"</p> + +<p>She did not reply. Her lips were trembling, and her hand played +nervously with the ribbon on her muff.<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a></p> + +<p>Suddenly she looked up.</p> + +<p>"When I left you," she said, slowly, "I went with the opera troupe +abroad. For several years I was very successful, and I believed it would +end well. I was given a leading part. Then one winter, when we were in +Paris, I was taken ill. It was pneumonia. I was very ill, and the pain +was frightful. They thought it would go to my heart. But when I grew +better the troupe went on. I was left at the hotel, ill and +alone—except for one friend—an Englishman—"</p> + +<p>He interrupted her harshly.</p> + +<p>"You have made a mistake," he said, and his voice was dull and lifeless. +"I have no right to know your story. You are not of my parish—nor am I +your confessor."</p> + +<p>She flinched, but went on steadily, though her tones drooped.</p> + +<p>"He had followed me for a long time. He loved me—or thought he did. +When I was deserted by the troupe he stayed with me. He paid my bills +and brought me back to life. I grew strong again, but—my voice was +gone."</p> + +<p>She paused as if in pain.</p> + +<p>"Sit down," he said.</p> + +<p>And they sat down on a bench beneath the naked branches of an oak.</p> + +<p>"I was penniless, alone, and very weak. He wanted me even then. At first +he did not want to marry me, but when I would not yield, he begged me to +come back with him and secure a divorce. I think he was mad with +passion."</p> + +<p>She hesitated and glanced at him, but he was looking away.</p> + +<p>"At last the end came. There was nothing else to do—and I wrote to +you."</p> + +<p>He moistened his lips as if they were parched from fever.<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a></p> + +<p>"Did you get the letter?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he answered, "I got it."</p> + +<p>"And you did not answer?"</p> + +<p>"What was there for me to say? You were free."</p> + +<p>For an instant her eyes blazed.</p> + +<p>"You never loved me," she said.</p> + +<p>He smiled slightly.</p> + +<p>"Do you think so?" he asked.</p> + +<p>The anger died from her eyes and she spoke softly.</p> + +<p>"I waited for the answer," she said; "waited months, and it did not +come. Then I came back. We went out West. A divorce was very easy—and I +married him. I owed him so much."</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"It was a mistake. I did not satisfy him. He thought me cold. We +quarrelled, and he went to other women. He drank a great deal. I was +much to blame, but I could not help it. I hated him. Then his uncle took +my part and loved me—God bless him, he was a saint—and kind—oh, so +kind. When he died he left me the money, and his nephew and I separated. +I have not seen him since."</p> + +<p>They were both silent. She could hear his heavy breathing, and her heart +throbbed.</p> + +<p>"It was all a mistake," she said. "My whole life has been a mistake. But +there is no salvation for us who make mistakes."</p> + +<p>His eyes grew dark as he looked at her.</p> + +<p>"A mistake that one stands by may become the part of wisdom," he said. +"Could you not go back to him and begin again?" His face had grown +haggard.</p> + +<p>Her wrath flamed out.</p> + +<p>"If I begin again," she answered, "it must be from the beginning—to +relive my whole life."</p> + +<p>He looked at her restless hands.</p> + +<p>"Then you must look to the future," he said, "since there is no +present—and no past."<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a></p> + +<p>"There is a past," she returned, passionately.</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"A dead one."</p> + +<p>Her mouth shone scarlet in the pallor of her face.</p> + +<p>"And shall we forget our dead?" she asked.</p> + +<p>His lips closed together with brutal force. His eyes were hot with +self-control.</p> + +<p>Then he stooped for her muff, which had rolled to the ground, brushing +it lightly with his hand. As he gave it to her he rose to his feet.</p> + +<p>"Shall we return?" he asked. "It has grown cloudy."</p> + +<p>She rose also, but stood for an instant with her hand resting upon the +back of the bench. Her lips opened, but closed again, and she turned and +walked at his side in silence.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he looked at her.</p> + +<p>"It is late," he said, "as you doubtless know, and I have neglected a +call. May I leave you to go on alone?" Then his voice softened. "Are you +ill?" he asked—"or in pain?"</p> + +<p>She laughed mirthlessly.</p> + +<p>"You are too strong," she returned, "to stoop to irony."</p> + +<p>"It was not irony," he answered, gently.</p> + +<p>She smiled sadly, her eyes raised.</p> + +<p>"Tell me that you will come to see me—once," she said.</p> + +<p>He looked at her with sudden tenderness.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he answered; "I will come. Good-bye!"</p> + +<p>"Good-bye!"</p> + +<p>And they went different ways.<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-b" id="CHAPTER_X-b"></a>CHAPTER X</h3> + +<p>Mariana went home with throbs of elation in her heart. She was thrilled +with a strange, unreasoning joy—a sense of wonder and of mystery—that +caused her pulses to quiver and her feet to hasten.</p> + +<p>"I shall see him again," she thought—"I shall see him again."</p> + +<p>She forgot the years of separation, her past indifference, the barriers +between them. She forgot the coldness of his voice and his accusing +glance. Her nature had leaped suddenly into fulness, and a storm of +passion such as she had never known had seized her. The emotions of her +girlhood seemed to her stale and bloodless beside the tempest which +possessed her now. As she walked her lips trembled, and she thought, "I +shall see him again."</p> + +<p>At dinner Miss Ramsey noticed her flushed face, and, when they went into +the drawing-room, took her hands. "You are feverish," she said, "and you +ate nothing."</p> + +<p>Mariana laughed excitedly.</p> + +<p>"No," she answered, "I am well—very well."</p> + +<p>They sat down together, and she looked at Miss Ramsey with quick +tenderness.</p> + +<p>"Am I good to you?" she asked. "Am I good to the servants?—to +everybody?"</p> + +<p>"What is it, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I want to begin over again—all over again! It is but fair that one +should have a second chance, is it not?"<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a></p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey smiled.</p> + +<p>"Some of us never have a first," she said; and Mariana took her in her +arms and kissed her. "You shall have yours," she declared. "I will give +it to you."</p> + +<p>When she went up-stairs a little later she took down an old square desk +from a shelf in the dressing-room and brought it to the rug before the +fire. Kneeling beside it, she turned the key and raised the narrow lid +of ink-stained mahogany. It was like unlocking the past years to sit +surrounded by these memories in tangible forms, to smell the close, +musty odor which clings about the relics of a life or a love that is +dead.</p> + +<p>She drew them out one by one and laid them on the hearth-rug—these +faded things that seemed in some way to waft with the scent of decay +unseizable associations of long-gone joy or sorrow. The dust lay thickly +over them, as the dust of forgetfulness lay over the memories they +invoked. There was a letter from her mother written to her in her +babyhood, and the fine, faded handwriting recalled to her the drooping +figure—a slight and passionate woman, broken by poverty and +disappointments, with vivacious lips and eyes of honest Irish blue. +There was a handful of mouldered acorns, gathered by childish fingers on +the old plantation; there was the scarlet handkerchief her mammy had +worn, and the dance-card of her first ball, with a colorless silk tassel +hanging from one end. Then she pushed these things hastily aside and +looked for others, as one looks beneath the sentiments for the passions +of one's life. She found a photograph of Anthony, pasted on cheap +card-board—a face young and intolerant, with the fires of ambition in +the eyes and the lines of self-absorption about the mouth. Still looking +at the boyish face, she remembered the man that she had seen that +morning—the fires of ambition burned to ashes, the self-absorption +melted into pain.<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a></p> + +<p>With the photograph still in her hand, she turned back to the desk and +took out a tiny cambric shirt with hemstitched edges, upon which the +narrow lace was yellow and worn. As the little garment fell open in her +lap she remembered the day she had worked the hemstitching—a hot August +day before the child came, when she had lived like a prisoner in the +close rooms, sewing for months upon the dainty slips, and dreaming in +that subconscious existence in which women await the birth of a new +life. She remembered the day of its coming, her agony, and the first cry +of the child; then the weeks when she had lain watching the dressing and +undressing of the soft, round body, and then the moist and feeble clutch +upon her hand. She remembered the days when it did not leave her arms, +the nights when she walked it to and fro, crooning the lullaby revived +from her own infancy, and at last the hours when she sat in the +half-darkness and watched the life flicker out from the little bluish +face upon the pillow.</p> + +<p>"Was that yesterday or eight years ago?"</p> + +<p>Her tears fell fast upon the tiny shirt, and she folded it and laid it +away with the photograph and the other relics—laid away side by side +the relics and the recollections covered with dust.</p> + +<p>She rose to her feet and carried the desk back to its place in the +dressing-room. In a moment she returned and stood silently before the +fire, her hand resting upon the mantel-piece, her head leaning upon her +arm. She was thinking of the two things a woman never forgets—the voice +of the man she has loved and the face of her dead child.</p> + +<p>But when she went to bed an hour later there was a smile on her lips.</p> + +<p>"I shall see him again," she said. "Perhaps to-morrow."</p> + +<p>The next day she went to Nevins's studio and sat<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a> for the portrait. Her +face was aglow and she talked nervously. He noticed that she started at +a noise on the stair, and that her attention wandered from his words. He +made daring, if delicate, love to her, but she seemed oblivious of it, +and, when she rose to go, remarked that he was depressed. In return, he +observed that she was feverish, and advised consulting her physician. +"Your eyes are too bright," he said. "What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Your reflected brilliancy, perhaps."</p> + +<p>"By no means. The lustre is too unnatural."</p> + +<p>"Then it is sleeplessness. I lay awake last night."</p> + +<p>"Anything the matter? Can I help you?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head, smiling.</p> + +<p>"I am adjusting a few difficulties," she answered; "chiefly matrimonial, +but they belong to my cook."</p> + +<p>He looked at her attentively.</p> + +<p>"Don't worry," he said. "It is not becoming. The flush is all right, but +in time it will give place to discontent. You will sow perplexities to +reap—"</p> + +<p>"Furrows," finished Mariana. Then she nodded gayly. "What a pessimist +you are!" she said. "No, I am going to use the best +cosmetic—happiness."</p> + +<p>And she lifted her skirts and descended the stairs.</p> + +<p>That afternoon she remained in-doors, wandering aimlessly from room to +room, opening a book to turn a page or two and to throw it aside for +another.</p> + +<p>In the evening she went out to dinner, and Ryder, who was among the +guests, remarked that he had never seen her in better form. "If there +was such a thing as eternally effervescent champagne, I'd compare you to +it," he said. "Are you never out of spirits?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him with sparkling eyes. "Oh, sometimes," she responded; +"but as soon as I discover it, I jump in again."</p> + +<p>"And I must believe," he returned, his gaze warming,<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a> "that your element +is one that cheers but not inebriates."</p> + +<p>"You are very charitable. I wonder if all my friends are?"</p> + +<p>He lowered his voice and looked into her eyes. "Say all your +worshippers," he corrected, and she turned from him to her left-hand +neighbor.</p> + +<p>She laughed and jested as lightly as if her heart were a feather, and +went home at last to weep upon her pillow.</p> + +<p>For the next few days she lived like one animated by an unnatural +stimulant. She talked and moved nervously, and her eyes shone with +suppressed excitement, but she had never appeared more brilliant, and +her manner was charged with an irresistible vivacity. To Miss Ramsey she +was unusually gentle and generous.</p> + +<p>Each morning, on rising, the thought fired her, "He may come to-day"; +each night the change was rung to, "He may come to-morrow"; and she +would toss feverishly until daybreak, to dress and meet her engagement, +with a laugh upon her lips. To a stranger she would have seemed to face +pain as she faced joy, with a dauntless insolence to fate. To a closer +observer there would have appeared, with the sharper gnawing at her +heart, the dash of a freer grace to her gestures, a richer light to her +eyes. It was as if she proposed to conquer destiny by the exercise of +personal charm.</p> + +<p>At the end of the week she came down to luncheon one day with a softer +warmth in her face. When the meal was over she went up to her room and +called her maid. "I want the gray dress," she said; but when it was laid +on the bed she tossed it aside. "It is too gloomy," she complained. +"Bring me the red;" and from the red she turned to the green.</p> + +<p>She dressed herself with passionate haste, arranging<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a> and rearranging +the coil of her hair, and altering with reckless fingers the lace at her +throat. At last she drew back from the glass, throwing a dissatisfied +glance at her reflection—at the green-clad figure and the small and +brilliant face, surmounted by its coils of shining brown. Then she added +a knot of violets to the old lace on her breast, and went down-stairs to +walk the drawing-room floor. An instinctive belief in his coming +possessed her. As she walked slowly up and down on the heavy carpet, the +long mirrors suspended here and there threw back at her fugitive +glimpses of her moving figure. In the dusk of the room beyond she saw +herself irradiated by the glimmering firelight.</p> + +<p>The hands of the clock upon the mantel travelled slowly round the +lettered face. As she watched it she felt a sudden desire to shake them +into swiftness. She touched the clock and drew back, laughing at her +childishness. A carriage in the street caught her ears and she went to +the window, glancing through the half-closed curtains. It passed by. +Then a tall, black figure turning the corner arrested her gaze, and her +heart leaped suddenly. The figure came on and she saw that it was an +elderly clergyman with white hair and a benevolent face. She was seized +with anger against him, and her impatience caused her to press her teeth +into her trembling lip. In the street a light wind chased a cloud of +dust along the sidewalk until it danced in little eddying waves into the +gutter. An organ-grinder, passing below, looked up and lifted his hand. +She took her purse from the drawer of the desk and threw him some +change; but when the broken tune was ground out she shook her head and +motioned him away. The sound grated upon her discordant nerves.</p> + +<p>She left the window and crossed the room again. The hands of the clock +had made a half-hour's progress in their tedious march.<a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a></p> + +<p>A book of poems lay on the table, and she opened it idly, her mental +fever excited by the lighter words of one who had sounded the depths and +sunk beneath.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;">"If Midge will pine and curse its hours away,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Because Midge is not everything—for aye,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">Poor Midge thus loses its one summer day,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Loses its all—and winneth what, I pray?"</span></td></tr> +</table> + +<p>She threw the book aside and turned away—back to the window where there +was dust and wind—back into the still room where the monotonous tick of +the clock maddened her quivering mood. She walked to and fro in that +silent waiting which is the part of women, and beside which the action +of battle is to be faced with a song of thanksgiving.</p> + +<p>The trembling of her limbs frightened her, and she flung herself upon a +divan. The weakness passed, and she got up again. Another half-hour had +gone.</p> + +<p>All at once there was a ring at the bell. For an instant she felt her +heart contract, and then a delirious dash of blood through her veins to +her temples. Her pulses fluttered like imprisoned birds.</p> + +<p>A footstep crossed the hall, and the door of the drawing-room opened.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Ryder!"</p> + +<p>She wavered for an instant and went forward to meet him with an +hysterical laugh. Her eyes were like emeralds held before a blaze, and +the intense, opaline pallor of her face was warm as if tinged by a +flame.</p> + +<p>He took her outstretched hand hungrily, his face flushing until the +purplish tint rose to his smooth, white forehead.</p> + +<p>"Were you expecting me?" he asked. "I would sell my soul to believe that +you were—with that look in your eyes."<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a></p> + +<p>She shook her head impatiently.</p> + +<p>"I was not," she answered. "I was expecting no one. It is very warm in +here—that is all."</p> + +<p>He looked disappointed.</p> + +<p>"Have you ever expected me?" he questioned, moodily—"or thought of me +when I was not with you?"</p> + +<p>She smiled. "Oh yes!" she returned, lightly. "When I had a note from you +saying that you were coming."</p> + +<p>He set his teeth.</p> + +<p>"You are as cruel as a—a devil, or a woman," he said.</p> + +<p>"What you call cruelty," she answered, gently, "is merely a weapon which +we sometimes thrust too far. When you talk to me in this way, you force +me to use it." And she added, flippantly, "Some day I may thrust it to +your heart."</p> + +<p>"I wish to God you would!"</p> + +<p>But she laughed merrily and led him to impersonal topics, talking +rapidly, with a constant play of her slim, white hands. She allowed him +no time for protestations. It was all bright, frivolous gossip of the +day, with no hint of seriousness. As she talked, there was no sign that +her ears were straining for an expected sound, or her flesh quivering +with impatience.</p> + +<p>At last he rose to go.</p> + +<p>"You are the only woman I know," he remarked, as he looked at her with +his easy and familiar glance, "who is never dull. How do you manage it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is not difficult," she answered. "To laugh is much easier than +to cry."</p> + +<p>"And much more agreeable. I detest a woman who weeps."</p> + +<p>Her brilliant laugh rang out.</p> + +<p>"And so do I," she said.</p> + +<p>When he had gone, and the house door had closed<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a> after him, she crossed +to the heavily hanging curtains, pushed them aside, and looked out.</p> + +<p>Only dust and wind and gray streets and the sound of the footsteps of a +passer-by. From out the blue mist a single light burst, then another and +another. She held her head erect, a scornful smile curving her lips.</p> + +<p>Again the bell rang, and again she quivered and started forward, +listening to the steps that crossed the hall. The door opened.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Buisson!"</p> + +<p>She hesitated a moment, and then went forward with the same cordial +gesture of her cold, white hand.<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI-b" id="CHAPTER_XI-b"></a>CHAPTER XI</h3> + +<p>Father Algarcife was working like a man spurred by an invisible lash. At +the breaking of the cold winter dawns he might be seen on his rounds in +the mission districts, which began before the early Mass, to end long +after dusk, when the calls of his richer parishioners had been treated +and dismissed. During the morning celebrations one of the younger +priests often noticed that he appeared faint from exhaustion, and +attributed it to the strain of several hours' work without nourishment.</p> + +<p>One morning, shortly after New Year, John Ellerslie joined him and went +in with him to breakfast. It was then he noticed that Father Algarcife +ate only cold bread with his coffee, while he apologized for the +scantiness of the fare. "It is lack of appetite with me," he explained, +"not injudicious fasting;" and he turned to the maid: "Agnes, will you +see that Father Ellerslie has something more substantial?" But when +cakes and eggs were brought, he pushed them aside, and crumbled, without +eating, his stale roll.</p> + +<p>The younger man remonstrated, his face flushing from embarrassment.</p> + +<p>"I am concerned for your health," he said. "Will you let me speak to Dr. +Salvers?"</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife shook his head.</p> + +<p>"It is nothing," he answered. "But I expect to see Dr. Salvers later in +the day, and I'll mention it to him."</p> + +<p>Later in the day he did see Salvers, and as they were parting he alluded +to the subject of his health.<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a></p> + +<p>"I am under a pledge to tell you," he said, lightly, "that I am +suffering from loss of appetite and prolonged sleeplessness. I don't +especially object to the absence of appetite, but there is something +unpleasant about walking the floor all night. I don't want to become a +chloral fiend. Can't you suggest a new opiate?"</p> + +<p>"Rest," responded Salvers, shortly. "Take a holiday and cut for +Florida."</p> + +<p>"Impossible. Too much work on hand."</p> + +<p>Salvers regarded him intently.</p> + +<p>"The next thing, you'll take to bed," he said, irritably, "and I'll have +all the ladies of your congregation besieging my office door." He added: +"I am going to send you a prescription immediately."</p> + +<p>"All right. Thanks. I stop at Brentano's."</p> + +<p>He entered the book-shop, and came out in a few moments with a package +under his arm. As he stepped to the sidewalk a lady in a rustling gown +descended from her carriage and paused as she was passing him.</p> + +<p>"I was just going in for a copy of your sermons," she said. "I am +distributing quite a number. By the by, have you ever found out who the +<i>Scientific Weekly</i> writer really is?"</p> + +<p>He looked at her gravely.</p> + +<p>"I have a suspicion," he answered, "but suspicions are unjustifiable +things at best."</p> + +<p>He walked home rapidly, unlatched his outer door, and entered his study. +Going to his desk, he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and, +unlocking a drawer, drew out several manuscripts, which he glanced over +with a half-humorous expression. One was the manuscript of the volume of +addresses he had lately published, the other of the articles which had +appeared in the pages of the <i>Scientific Weekly</i>. They were both in his +handwriting, but one showed the impassioned strokes of a younger pen, +and belonged to the time<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> when he had written under the veil of +anonymity, that it might not interfere with the plan of his great work. +Now the great work lay at the bottom of the last drawer, with its +half-finished sheets yellowed and sown with dust, while the lighter +articles had risen after a silence of ten years to assault his unstable +present with the convictions of his past.</p> + +<p>He crossed to the fireplace and laid both manuscripts upon the coals. +They caught, and the leaves curled upward like tongues of flame, +illuminating the faded text with scrolls of fire. Then they smouldered +to gray spectres and floated in slender spirals up the yawning chimney.</p> + +<p>The next day a storm set in, and pearl-gray clouds swollen with snow +drove from the northwest. The snow fell thickly through the day, as it +had fallen through the night, blown before the wind in fluttering +curtains of white, and coating the gray sidewalks, to drift in fleecy +mounds into the gutters.</p> + +<p>In the evening, when he came in to dinner, he received an urgent message +from Mrs. Ryder, which had been sent in the morning and which he had +missed by being absent from luncheon. Her child had died suddenly during +the night from an attack of croup.</p> + +<p>Without removing his coat, he turned and started to her at once, his +heart torn by the thought of her suffering.</p> + +<p>As he ascended the steps the door was opened by Ryder, who came out and +grasped his hand, speaking hurriedly, with a slight huskiness in his +voice.</p> + +<p>"She has been expecting you," he said, leading him into the hall. "Come +up to her immediately. I can do nothing with her. My God! I would have +given my right hand to have spared her this." The sincerity in his voice +rang true, and there were circles of red about his eyes.</p> + +<p>They went up-stairs, and Ryder opened the door of<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a> the nursery, and, +motioning him inside, closed it softly after him. The room was faintly +lighted, the chill curtain of falling snow veiling the windows. On the +little bed, where he had seen it sleeping several months ago, the child +was lying, its flaxen curls massed upon the embroidered pillow; but the +flush of health on the little face had given place to a waxen pallor, +and the tiny hands that had tossed restlessly in sleep were still +beneath white rose-buds. A faint odor of medicine clung about the room, +but the disorder of dying had been succeeded by the order of death.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ryder, sitting near the window, her profile dark against the storm, +turned her heavy eyes upon him, and then, rising, came towards him. He +caught her extended hands and held them firmly in his own. At that +instant the past seemed predominant over the present—and the grief more +his own than another's.</p> + +<p>"You have come at last," she said. "Help me. You must help me. I cannot +live unless you do. Give me some comfort—anything!"</p> + +<p>His face was almost as haggard as her own.</p> + +<p>"What would comfort you?" he asked.</p> + +<p>She turned from him towards the little bed, and, falling on her knees +beside it, burst into passionate weeping.</p> + +<p>"It was all I had!" she cried. "All I had! O God! How cruel!"</p> + +<p>He laid his hand upon her shoulder, not to stay her tears, but to +suggest sympathy. Beyond her the sweet, grave face of the dead child lay +wreathed in rose-buds.</p> + +<p>At his touch she rose and faced him.</p> + +<p>"Tell me that I shall see him again!" she cried. "Tell me that he is not +dead—that he is somewhere—somewhere! Tell me that God is just!"</p> + +<p>His lips were blue, and he put up his hand imploring<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a> mercy; then he +opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came.</p> + +<p>She clung to him, sobbing.</p> + +<p>"Pray to God for me," she said.</p> + +<p>He staggered for a moment beneath her touch. Then he knelt with her +beside the little bed and prayed.</p> + +<p>When he walked home through the storm an hour later he reeled like a +drunken man, and, despite the cold, his flesh was on fire.</p> + +<p>As he entered his door the wind drove a drift of snow into the hall, and +the water dripping from his coat made shining pools on the carpet.</p> + +<p>He went into his study and slammed the door behind him. The little dog +sleeping on the rug came to welcome him, and he patted it mechanically +with a nerveless hand. His face was strained and set, and his breath +came pantingly. In a sudden revolution the passion which he believed +buried forever had risen, reincarnated, to overwhelm him. He lived +again, more vitally because of the dead years, the death of a child who +was his and the grief of a woman who was his also. He, who had believed +himself arbiter of his fate, had awakened to find himself the slave of +passion—a passion mighty in its decay, but all victorious in its +resurrection. He shivered and looked about him. The room, the fire, the +atmosphere seemed thrilled with an emotional essence. He felt it in his +blood, and it warmed the falling snow beyond the window. Before the +consuming flame the apathy of years was lost in smoke. A memory floated +before him. He was sitting again in that silent room, driving the heavy +pen, listening to the breathing of his dying child, watching the still +droop of Mariana's profile, framed by dusk. He felt her sobbing upon his +breast, her hands clinging in pain when he lifted her from beside her +dead—and his. He heard again her cry: "Tell<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a> me that I shall see her! +Tell me that God is just!" The eternal cry of stricken motherhood.</p> + +<p>Whatever the present or the future held, these things were locked within +the past. He might live them over or live them down, but unlive them he +could not. They had been and they would be forever.</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>The door opened and the servant came in.</p> + +<p>"If you please, father, there is a lady to see you."</p> + +<p>He looked up, startled.</p> + +<p>"A lady? On such a night?"</p> + +<p>"She came in a carriage, but she is very wet. Will you see her at once?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, at once."</p> + +<p>He turned to the door. It opened and closed, and Mariana came towards +him.</p> + +<p>She came like a ghost, pale and still as he had seen her in his memory, +with a veil of snow clinging to her coat and to the feathers in her hat. +Her eyes alone were aflame.</p> + +<p>He drew back and looked at her.</p> + +<p>"You?" he said.</p> + +<p>She was silent, holding out her gloved hand with an impulsive gesture. +He did not take it. He had made a sudden clutch at self-control, and he +clung to it desperately.</p> + +<p>"Can I do anything for you?" he asked, and his voice rang hollow and +without inflection.</p> + +<p>She still held out her hand. Flecks of snow lay on her loosened hair, +and the snow was hardly whiter than her face.</p> + +<p>"You must speak to me," she said. "You promised to come, and I +waited—and waited."</p> + +<p>"I was busy," he returned, in the same voice.</p> + +<p>"We cannot be as strangers," she went on, passionately. "We must be +friends. Can you or I undo the past? Can you or I undo our love—or our +child?"<a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a></p> + +<p>"Hush!" he said, harshly.</p> + +<p>"I came only to hear that you forgive me," she continued, a brave smile +softening the intensity of her face. "Tell me that and I will go away."</p> + +<p>He was silent for a moment; then he spoke.</p> + +<p>"I forgive you."</p> + +<p>She took a step towards the door and came back.</p> + +<p>"And is that all?"</p> + +<p>"That is all." Beneath the brutal pressure of his teeth a drop of blood +rose to his lips. There was a wave of scarlet before his eyes, and he +clinched his hands to keep them at his sides. A terrible force was +drawing him to her, impelling him to fall upon her as she stood +defenceless—to bear her away out of reach.</p> + +<p>She looked at him, and a light flamed in her face.</p> + +<p>"It is not all," she retorted, triumphantly. "You have not forgotten +me."</p> + +<p>He looked at her dully.</p> + +<p>"I had—until to-night."</p> + +<p>Tears rose to her eyes and fell upon her hands, while the snow on her +hair melted and rained down until she seemed to weep from head to foot.</p> + +<p>"I was never good enough," she said, brokenly. "I have always done +wrong, even when I most wanted to be good." Then she raised her head +proudly. "But I loved you," she added. "I never loved any one but you. +Will you believe it?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head, smiling bitterly. As he stood there in his priestly +dress he looked like one in a mighty struggle between the calls of the +flesh and of the spirit. The last wavering fires of anger flamed within +him, and he took a step towards her.</p> + +<p>"Do you think," he asked, slowly, forcing his words, "that I would have +left you while there remained a crust to live on? Do you think that I +would not have starved with you rather than have lived in luxury without +you? Bah! It is all over!"<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a></p> + +<p>"I was too young," she answered—"too young. I did not know. I have +learned since then."</p> + +<p>His outburst had exhausted his bitterness, and a passionate tenderness +was in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"I would to God that you had been spared the knowledge," he said.</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>"No," she responded. "Not that—not that."</p> + +<p>She swayed, and he caught her in his arms. For an instant he held +her—not in passion, but with a gentleness that was almost cold. Then he +released her, and she moved away.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye."</p> + +<p>He followed her into the hall and opened the door. An icy draught blew +past him.</p> + +<p>"Wait a moment," he said. He took an umbrella from the rack, and, +raising it, held it over her until she entered the carriage.</p> + +<p>"I hope you will not take cold," he said, as he closed the door.</p> + +<p>Then he went back into his study and walked the floor until dawn.<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII-b" id="CHAPTER_XII-b"></a>CHAPTER XII</h3> + +<p>One afternoon during the third week in January, Father Algarcife went to +the studio of Claude Nevins, and found the artist smoking a moody pipe +over a brandy-and-soda. His brush and palette lay upon the floor.</p> + +<p>"How are you?" inquired Father Algarcife, with attempted lightness; "and +what are you doing?"</p> + +<p>Nevins looked up gloomily, blowing a wreath of gray smoke towards the +skylight.</p> + +<p>"Enjoying life," he responded.</p> + +<p>The other laughed.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't look exactly like enjoyment," he returned. "From a casual +view, I should call it a condition of boredom."</p> + +<p>He had aged ten years in the last fortnight, and his eyes had the +shifting look of a man who flees an inward fear.</p> + +<p>Nevins regarded him unsmilingly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I like it," he answered, lifting his glass. "Come and join me. I +tell you I'd rather be drunk to-day than be President to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing. I haven't done a damned stroke for a week; that's all. I +am tired of painting people's portraits."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense. Ten years ago you went on a spree because there were no +portraits to paint."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Nevins admitted, "history repeats itself—with variations. The +truth is, Anthony, I can't work."<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a></p> + +<p>"Can't? Well, what are you going to do about it?"</p> + +<p>"I am going to drink about it."</p> + +<p>He drained his glass, laid his pipe aside, and rose, running his hand +through his hair until it stood on end.</p> + +<p>"Don't be an idiot. You gave all that up long ago."</p> + +<p>Nevins filled his glass and looked up at the skylight.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;">"'Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">I swore—but was I sober when I swore?'"</span></td></tr> +</table> + +<p class="nind">he retorted, with a laugh. Then he lowered his voice. "Between you and +me," he said, "drinking is not what it is cracked up to be. To save my +life, I can't detect a whiff of that old delicious savor of vice. I +detect a twinge of gout instead. Coming conditions cast their claws +before."</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife glanced about the room impatiently.</p> + +<p>"Come," he said, "I am hurried. Let's see the portrait."</p> + +<p>Nevins tossed a silk scarf from a canvas in the corner, and the other +regarded the work for a moment in silence.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I like it," he said. "I like it very much indeed."</p> + +<p>As he turned away, he stumbled against the easel containing the canvas +on which Nevins had been working, and he started and drew back, his face +paling. It was the portrait of Mariana, her profile drawn against the +purple curtain.</p> + +<p>Nevins, following him with his eyes, spoke suddenly.</p> + +<p>"That also is good, is it not?" he asked.</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife stared above the portrait to the row of death-masks on +their ebony frame.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that also is good," he repeated.</p> + +<p>As he descended the stairs he met Ardly coming up, his eyes bright and +his handsome face aglow.<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a></p> + +<p>They stopped and shook hands.</p> + +<p>"Politics agree with you, I see," said Father Algarcife. "I am glad of +it."</p> + +<p>Ardly nodded animatedly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," he returned, "there is nothing like it, and we are going to +give you the best government the city has ever seen. There is no doubt +of that."</p> + +<p>"All right," and he passed on. When he reached the street he turned +westward. It was the brilliant hour of a changeable afternoon, the +sunshine slanting across the sidewalks in sharp lights and shadows, and +the river wind entering the lungs like the incision of a blade. The +people he met wore their collars close about their throats, their faces +blue from the cold.</p> + +<p>Then, even as he watched the crisp sunshine, a cloud crossed the sky, +its shade descending like a gray blotter upon the shivering city.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the sound of the organ broke the stillness, and he remembered +that it was the day of the choir<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"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."</p></div> + +<p>Over and over again rang the promise of the prophet:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Thy Keeper will never slumber—thy Keeper will never slumber."</p></div> + +<p>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<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a> 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.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers +not, nor sleeps. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor +sleeps."</p></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps. Shouldst thou, +walking in grief, languish, He will quicken thee—He will quicken +thee."</p></div> + +<p>He rose and left the church.</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>It was several days after this that, in unfolding the morning paper, his +glance was arrested by the announcement,<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a> "The Honorable Mrs. Cecil +Gore, who has been dangerously ill of pneumonia, is reported to be +convalescent."</p> + +<p>The paper shook in his hands, and he laid it hastily aside.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Ryder, seeing him, stopped and spoke, "We have been looking for you," he +said, "but I suppose you are as much occupied as usual."</p> + +<p>"Yes—how is Mrs. Ryder?"</p> + +<p>"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."<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a></p> + +<p>They walked on, talking composedly, with the same anxiety gnawing the +hearts of both.</p> + +<p>At the corner Ryder hailed the stage and got inside.</p> + +<p>"Come to see Mrs. Ryder," were his parting words. "She depends on you."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>As he laid his hand on the bell he paled slightly, but when the door was +opened he regained his composure.</p> + +<p>"I wish to ask how Mrs. Gore is to-day?" he said to the maid, giving his +card.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a> 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.</p> + +<p>Mariana came forward and held out her hand.</p> + +<p>"It was very kind of you to come," she said.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You are better?" he asked, constrainedly. "Stronger?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes; I have been out twice—no, three times—in the sunshine."</p> + +<p>She seated herself on the couch and motioned him to a chair, but he +shook his head and stood looking down at her.</p> + +<p>"You must be careful," he said, in the same forced tone. "The weather is +uncertain."</p> + +<p>"Yes. Dr. Salvers is sending me South."</p> + +<p>"And when do you go?"</p> + +<p>She turned her eyes away.</p> + +<p>"He wishes me to go at once," she said, "but I do not know."</p> + +<p>She rose suddenly, her lip quivering.</p> + +<p>He drew back and she leaned upon the mantel, looking into the low +mirror, which reflected her haggard eyes between two gilded urns.</p> + +<p>"I was very ill," she went on. "It has left me so weak, and I—I am +looking so badly."</p> + +<p>"Mariana!"</p> + +<p>She turned towards him, her face white, the lace on her breast +fluttering as if from a rising wind.</p> + +<p>"Mariana!" he said, again.</p> + +<p>He was gazing at her with burning eyes. His hands were clinched at his +sides, and the veins on his temples swelled like blue cords.<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a></p> + +<p>Then his look met hers and held it, and the desire in their eyes leaped +out and closed together, drawing them slowly to each other.</p> + +<p>Still they were silent, he standing straight and white in the centre of +the room, she shrinking back against the mantel.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he reached out.</p> + +<p>"Mariana!"</p> + +<p>"Anthony!"</p> + +<p>She was sobbing upon his breast, his arms about her, her face hidden. +The heavy sobs shook her frame like the lashing of a storm, and she +braced herself against him to withstand the terrible weeping.</p> + +<p>Presently she grew quiet, and he released her. Her face was suffused +with a joy that shone through her tears.</p> + +<p>"You love me?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I love you."</p> + +<p>She smiled.</p> + +<p>"I will stay near you," she said. "I will not go South."</p> + +<p>For a moment he was silent, and when he spoke his voice rang with +determination.</p> + +<p>"You will go South," he said, "and I will go with you."</p> + +<p>Her eyes shone.</p> + +<p>"South? And you with me?"</p> + +<p>He smiled into her upturned face.</p> + +<p>"Do you think it could be otherwise?" he asked. "Do you think we could +be near—and not together?"</p> + +<p>"I—I had not thought," she answered.</p> + +<p>He held her hands, looking passionately at her fragile fingers.</p> + +<p>"You are mine," he said—"mine as you have been no other man's. Nature +has joined us together. Who can put us asunder?" Then he held her from +him in sudden fear. "But—but can you face poverty again?" he asked.<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a></p> + +<p>"What will matter," she replied, "so long as we are together?"</p> + +<p>"You will leave all this," he went on. "We will start afresh. We will +have a farm in the South. It will be bare and comfortless."</p> + +<p>She smiled.</p> + +<p>"There will be peach-trees," she said, "all pink in the spring-time, and +there will be the sound of cow-bells across green pastures."</p> + +<p>"I will turn farmer," he added. "I will wring a living from the soil."</p> + +<p>She lifted her glowing eyes.</p> + +<p>"And we will begin over again," she said—"begin from the beginning. Oh, +my love, kiss me!"</p> + +<p>He stooped and kissed her.<a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIII-b" id="CHAPTER_XIII-b"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h3> + +<p>When Anthony descended Mariana's brown-stone steps the afterglow had +faded from the west, and far down the street the electric lights shone +coldly through frosted globes. He walked with a springing step, lifting +his head as if impatient of restraint. His future was firm. There was no +hesitancy, no possibility of retrenchment. In one breath he had pledged +himself to break the bonds that held him, and this vow there was no +undoing. He had sealed it with his passion for a woman. Already his mind +was straining towards the freedom which he faced. The years of +insincerity would fall away, and the lies which he had uttered would +shrivel before one fearless blaze of truth. Fate had settled it. He was +free, and deception was at an end. He was free!</p> + +<p>In the effort to collect his thoughts before going to dinner he crossed +to Broadway, walking several blocks amid the Saturday-evening crowd. He +regarded the passing faces idly, as he had regarded them for twenty +years. They were the same types, the invincible survivals from a wreck +of individuals. He saw the dapper young fellow with the bloodless face, +pale with the striving to ascend a rung in the social ladder; he saw the +heavy features of the common laborer, the keen, quick glance of the +mechanic, and the paint upon the haggard cheeks of the actress who was +out of an engagement. They passed him rapidly, pallid, nervous, strung +to the point of a breaking note, supine to placid pleasures, and alert +to the eternal struggle of the race.<a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a> When he had walked several blocks +he turned and went back. The noise irritated him. He winced at the +shrill voices and the insistent clanging of cable-car bells. He wanted +to be alone—to think.</p> + +<p>In the quiet of the side-street his thoughts assumed more definite +shape. The mad thrill of impulse gave place to a rational joy. He +possessed her, this was sufficient. She was his to be held forever, come +what would. His in wealth and in poverty, in sickness and in health. His +for better or for worse—eternally his.</p> + +<p>He set his teeth sharply at the memory of her tear-wet face. He felt the +trembling of her limbs, the burning pressure of her lips. Broken and +worn and robbed of youth—was she not trebly to be desired? Was his the +frail passion that exacts perfection? He had not loved beauty or youth; +he had loved that impalpable something which resists all ravages of +decay—which rises triumphant from death.</p> + +<p>Yes, trebly to be desired! He remembered her as he had first seen her, +lifting her head from her outstretched arms, her eyes scintillant with +tears. He recalled the tremulous voice, the plaintive droop of the head. +Then the night when he had held her in the shadow of the fire-escape, +her loosened hair falling about him, her hands hot in his own. She had +said: "I am yours—yours utterly," and the pledge had held. She was his, +first and last. What if another man had embraced her body, from the +beginning unto the end her heart was locked in his.</p> + +<p>All the trivial details of their old life thronged back to him; struggle +and poverty, birth and death, and the emptiness of the ensuing years +yawned, chasm-like, before his feet. He was like a man suddenly recalled +from the dead—a skeleton reclothed in flesh and reattuned to the +changes of sensations. Yes, after eight years he was alive once more.</p> + +<p>He entered the rectory, and in a few moments went<a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a> in to dinner. To his +surprise he found that he was hungry, and ate heartily. All instincts, +even that for food, had quickened with the rebirth of emotion.</p> + +<p>He drank his claret slowly, seeing Mariana seated across from him, and +the vision showed her pale and still, as she had come to him the night +of the storm, the snow powdering her hair. Then he banished the memory +and invoked her image as he had seen her in the afternoon, wan and +hollow-eyed, but faintly coloring and tremulous with passion. She would +sit opposite him again, but not here.</p> + +<p>He had a farm in the South, a valueless piece of land left him by a +relative of his mother. It was there that they would go to begin life +anew and to mend the faith that had been broken. He would till the land +and drive the plough and take up the common round of life again—a life +free from action as from failure, into which no changes might ring +despair.</p> + +<p>He left the table and went into his study, seating himself before the +fire. The little dog, with that subtle perception of mental states +possessed by animals, pressed his cold nose into the palm of his +master's hand, whimpering softly, a wistful look in his warm, brown +eyes. Then he lay down, and, resting his head upon his paws, stared into +the fire—seeing in the flames his silent visions.</p> + +<p>Anthony leaned back upon the cushions, and the face of Mariana looked at +him from the vacant chair on the hearth-rug. The reddish shadows from +the fire flitted across her features and across the slim, white hand +that was half outstretched. He saw the slippered feet upon the rug and a +filmy garment in her lap, as the work had fallen from her idle hands.</p> + +<p>The maid came in with his coffee and he lighted his pipe. In a moment +the bell rang and Ellerslie entered, his face flushed, his hands hanging +nervously before him. He sat down in the chair, still warm from<a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a> the +vision of Mariana, and Father Algarcife looked at him with a sudden +contraction of remorse. For the first time he winced before the glance +of another—of a girlish-looking boy with a tremulous voice and an +honest heart. He was looking into the fire when Ellerslie spoke.</p> + +<p>"I want you to meet my mother," he said. "You know she is coming to town +next week. She is very anxious to know you; I have written so often +about you."</p> + +<p>The other looked up.</p> + +<p>"Next week—ah, yes," he responded. He was thinking that by that time he +would have passed beyond the praise or blame of Ellerslie and his +mother—he would be with Mariana.</p> + +<p>The younger man went on, still flushing.</p> + +<p>"She often sends you messages which I don't deliver. She has never +forgotten that illness you nursed me through five years ago."</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife shook his head slightly, his eyes on the flames that +played among the coals.</p> + +<p>"She must not exaggerate that," he answered.</p> + +<p>Ellerslie opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. His shyness +had overcome him.</p> + +<p>For a time they were silent, and then Father Algarcife looked up.</p> + +<p>"John," he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"If—if things should ever occur to—to shake your faith in me, you will +always remember that I tried to do my best by the parish—that I tried +to serve it as faithfully as Father Speares would have done?"</p> + +<p>Ellerslie started.</p> + +<p>"Of course," he answered—"of course. But why do you say this? Could +anything shake my faith in you? I would take your word against—against +the bishop's."</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife smiled.<a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a></p> + +<p>"And against myself?" he asked, but added, "I am grateful, John."</p> + +<p>When Ellerslie had gone, a man from the Bowery came in to recount a +story of suffering. He had just served a year in jail, and did not want +to go back. He preferred to live straight. But it took money to do that. +His wife, who made shirts, and belonged to Father Algarcife's mission, +had sent him to the priest. As he told his story he squirmed uneasily on +the edge of Mariana's chair, twirling his shapeless hat in the hands +hanging between his knees. The dog crouched against his master's feet, +growling suspiciously.</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife rested his head against the cushioned back, and +regarded the man absently. He believed the man's tale, and he +sympathized with his philosophy. It was preferable to live straight, but +it took money to do so. Indeed, the wisest of preachers had once +remarked that "money answereth all things." He wondered how nearly the +preacher spoke the truth, and if he would have recognized a +demonstration of his text in the man before him with the shapeless hat.</p> + +<p>Then he asked his caller a few questions, promised to look into his case +on Monday, and dismissed him.</p> + +<p>Next came Sister Agatha, to bring to his notice the name of a child on +East Twentieth Street, whom they wished to receive into the orphanage. +He promised to consider this also, and she rose to go, her grave lashes +falling reverently before his glance. After she had gone he pushed his +chair impatiently aside and went to his desk.</p> + +<p>On the lid lay the completed sermon, and he realized suddenly that it +must be delivered to-morrow—that he must play his part for a while +longer. At the same instant he determined that on Monday he would deed +over his property to the church. He would face his future with clean +hands. He would start again as penniless as when he received the +vestments of religion.<a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a> Save for the farm in the South and a small sum +of rental, he would have nothing. He would be free!</p> + +<p>There was no hesitancy, and yet, mixed with the elation, there was pain. +Beyond Mariana's eyes, beyond the desire for honest speech, he saw the +girlish face of young Ellerslie, and the grave, reverential droop of +Sister Agatha's lashes. He saw, following him through all his +after-years, the reproach of the people who had believed in him and been +betrayed. He saw it, and he accepted it in silence.</p> + +<p>Raising his head, he encountered the eyes of the ancestor of Father +Speares. For an instant he shivered from a sudden chill, and then met +them fearlessly.<a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIV-b" id="CHAPTER_XIV-b"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h3> + +<p>Through the long night Mariana lay with her hands clasped upon her +breast and her eyes upon the ceiling. The electric light, sifting +through the filmy curtains at the windows, cast spectral shadows over +the pale-green surface. Sometimes the shadows, tracing the designs on +the curtains, wreathed themselves into outlines of large poplar leaves +and draped the chandeliers, and again they melted to indistinguishable +dusk, leaving a vivid band of light around the cornice.</p> + +<p>She did not stir, but she slept little.</p> + +<p>In the morning, when Miss Ramsey came to her bedside, there was a flush +in her face and she appeared stronger than she had done since her +illness.</p> + +<p>"Is it clear?" she asked, excitedly. "If it is clear, I must go out. I +feel as if I were caged."</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey raised the shades, revealing the murky aspect of a variable +day.</p> + +<p>"It is not quite clear," she answered. "I don't think you had better +venture out. There is a damp wind."</p> + +<p>"Very well," responded Mariana. She rose and dressed herself hurriedly; +then she sat down with Miss Ramsey to breakfast, but she had little +appetite, and soon left the table, to wander about the house with a +nervous step.</p> + +<p>"I can't settle myself," she said, a little pettishly.</p> + +<p>Going up-stairs to her room presently, she threw herself into a chair +before the fire, and looked into the long mirror hanging on the opposite +wall.<a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a></p> + +<p>She was possessed with a pulsating memory of the evening before—of +Anthony, and of the kiss he had left upon her lips. Then swift darts of +fear shot through her that it might all be unreal—that, upon leaving +her, he had yielded once more to the sway of his judgment. She did not +want judgment, she wanted love.</p> + +<p>As she looked at her image in the long mirror, meeting her haggard face +and dilated eyes, she grew white with the foreboding of failure. What +was there left in her that a man might love? What was she—the wreck of +a woman's form—that she could immortalize a man's fugitive desire? Was +it love, after all? Was it not pity, passing itself for passion? Her +cheeks flamed and her pulses beat feverishly.</p> + +<p>She turned from the glass and looked at her walking-gown lying upon the +bed.</p> + +<p>"I can't wait," she said, breathlessly. "I must see him. He must tell me +with his own lips that it is true."</p> + +<p>She dressed herself with quivering fingers, stumbling over the buttons +of her coat. Then she put on her hat and tied a dark veil over her face.</p> + +<p>As she came down-stairs she met Miss Ramsey in the hall.</p> + +<p>"Mariana, you are not going out!" she exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"Only a little way," said Mariana.</p> + +<p>"But it has clouded. It may rain."</p> + +<p>"Not before I return. Good-bye."</p> + +<p>She opened the hall door. Pausing for an instant upon the threshold, a +soft, damp air struck her, and overhead a ray of sunshine pierced the +clouds.</p> + +<p>She fastened the furs at her throat and descended to the street.</p> + +<p>At first she had no definite end in view, but when she had walked a +block the idea of seeing Anthony grew stronger, and she turned in the +direction of his house. The contact of the moist air invigorated her,<a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a> +and she felt less weak than she had believed herself to be. When she +reached the rectory she hesitated a moment with her hand upon the bell, +trembling before the thought of seeing him—of hearing him speak. She +rang, and the door was opened.</p> + +<p>"Can I see Father Algarcife?" she asked.</p> + +<p>Agnes eyed her curiously.</p> + +<p>"Why, he's at church!" she responded. "He's been gone about a half-hour +or so. Is it important?"</p> + +<p>"No, no," answered Mariana, her voice recovering. "Don't say I called, +please. I'll come again."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you'll step in and rest a bit. You look tired. You can sit in +the study if you like."</p> + +<p>"Oh no, I will go on. I will go to the church." She started, and then +turned back. "I believe I will come in for a few minutes," she said.</p> + +<p>She entered the house and passed through the open door into the study. A +bright fire was burning, and the dog was lying before it. She seated +herself in the easy-chair, resting her head against the cushions. Agnes +stood on the rug and looked at her.</p> + +<p>"You are the lady that came once in that terrible storm," she said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am the one."</p> + +<p>"Would you like a glass of water—or wine?"</p> + +<p>Mariana looked up, in the hope of dismissing her.</p> + +<p>"I should like some water, please," she said, and as Agnes went into the +dining-room she looked about the luxurious study with passionate eyes.</p> + +<p>It was so different from the one at The Gotham, that comfortless square +of uncarpeted floor, with the pine book-shelves and the skull and +cross-bones above the mantel.</p> + +<p>The desk, with its hand-carving of old mahogany, recalled to her the one +that he had used when she had first known him, with its green baize +cover splotched with ink.</p> + +<p>The swing of the rich curtains, the warmth of the<a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a> Turkish rugs, the +portraits in their massive frames, jarred her vibrant emotions. How +could he pass from this to the farm in the South—to the old, old fight +with poverty and the drama of self-denial? Would she not fail him again, +as she had failed him once before? Would she not shatter his happiness +in a second chance, as she had shattered it in the first?</p> + +<p>The tears sprang to her eyes and scorched her lids. She rose hastily +from her chair.</p> + +<p>When the servant returned with the glass of water she drank a few +swallows. "Thank you," she said, gently. "I will go now. Perhaps I will +come again to-morrow."</p> + +<p>She passed to the sidewalk and turned in the direction of the church, +walking rapidly. She had not thought of his being at church. Indeed, +until entering his study she had forgotten the office he held. She had +remembered only that he loved her.</p> + +<p>As she neared the building an impulse seized her to turn and go back—to +wait for him at the rectory. The sound of the intoning of the gospel +came to her like a lament. She felt suddenly afraid.</p> + +<p>Then several persons brushed her in passing, and she entered the heavy +doors, which closed behind her with a dull thud.</p> + +<p>After the grayness of the day without, the warmth and color of the +interior were as vivid as a revelation. They enveloped her like the +perfumed air of a hot-house, heavy with the breath of rare +exotics—exotics that had flowered amid the ardent glooms of medięvalism +and the colorific visions of cloistered emotions. Entering a pew in the +side-aisle, she leaned her head against a stone pillar and closed her +eyes in sudden restfulness. That emotional, religious instinct which had +always been a part of her artistic temperament was quickened in +intensity. She felt a desire to worship—something—anything.<a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a></p> + +<p>When she raised her lids the colors seemed to have settled into +harmonious half-tones. The altar, which had at first showed blurred +before her eyes, dawned through the rising clouds of incense. She saw +the white of the altar-cloth, and the flaming candles, shivering from a +slight draught, and above the crucifix the Christ in his purple robes, +smiling his changeless smile.</p> + +<p>Within the chancel, through the carving of the rood-screen, she saw the +flutter of the white gowns of the choristers, and here and there the +fair locks of a child.</p> + +<p>Then the priest came to the middle of the altar, his figure softened by +circles of incense, the sanctuary lamp burning above his head.</p> + +<p>He sang the opening phrase of the Creed, and the choir joined in with a +full, reverberating roll of male voices, while the heads of the people +bowed.</p> + +<p>Mariana did not leave her seat, but sat motionless, leaning against the +pillar of stone.</p> + +<p>From the first moment that she had seen him, wearing the honors of the +creed he served, her heart had contracted with a throb of pain. This was +his life, and what was hers? What had she that could recompense him for +the sacrifice of the Eucharistic robes and the pride of the Cross?</p> + +<p>He came slowly forward to the altar steps, his vestments defined against +the carving of the screen, his face white beneath the darkness of his +hair.</p> + +<p>When the notices of the festivals and fasts were over, he lifted his +head almost impatiently as he pronounced the text, his rich voice +rolling sonorously through the church:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of +his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? For who can tell a man +what shall be after him under the sun?"</p></div> + +<p>And he spoke slowly, telling the people before him<a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a> in new phrases the +eternal truth—that it is good for a man to do right, and to leave +happiness to take care of itself—the one great creed to which all +religions and all nations have bowed. He spoke the rich phrases in his +full, beautiful voice—spoke as he had spoken a hundred times to these +same people—to all, save one.</p> + +<p>She stirred slightly. It seemed to her that a wind blew from the altar +where the candles fluttered, chilling her flesh. She shivered beneath +the still smile of the painted Christ.</p> + +<p>The stone pillar pressed into her temple, and she closed her eyes. Her +head ached in dull, startled throbs.</p> + +<p>As she listened, she knew that the final blow had fallen—that it is not +given one to begin over again for a single day; that of all things under +the sun, the past is the one thing irremediable.</p> + +<p>The sermon was soon over. He returned to the altar, and the offertory +anthem filled the church. Pressed against the pillar, she raised her +hand to her ear, but the repetition was driven in dull strokes to her +brain:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers +not, nor sleeps."</p></div> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XV-b" id="CHAPTER_XV-b"></a>CHAPTER XV</h3> + +<p>Several hours later Mariana was wandering along a cross-street near +Ninth Avenue. Rain was falling, descending in level sheets from the gray +sky to the stone pavement, where it lay in still pools. A fog had rolled +up over the city. She had walked unthinkingly, spurred at first by the +impulse to collect her thoughts and later by the thoughts themselves. It +was all over; this was what she saw clearly—the finality of all things. +What was she that she should think herself strong enough to contend with +a man's creed?—faith?—God? She might arouse his passion and fire his +blood, but when the passion and the fire burned out, what remained? In +the eight years since she had left him a new growth had sprung up in his +heart—a growth stronger than the growth of love.</p> + +<p>The memory of him defined against the carving of the screen, the altar +shining beyond, his vestments gilded by the light, his white face lifted +to the cross, arose from the ground at her feet and confronted her +through the falling rain. Yes, he had gone back to his God. And it +seemed to her that she saw the same smile upon his face that she had +seen upon the face of the painted Christ, whose purple robes tinted the +daylight as it fell upon the chancel.</p> + +<p>As she reached Ninth Avenue, an elevated train passed with its +reverberating rumble, and the reflection of its lights ran in a lurid +flame along the wet sidewalk. Clouds of smoke from the engine were blown +westward, scudding like a flock of startled<a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a> swans into the river. +Straight ahead the street was lost in grayness and the lamps came slowly +out of the fog. A wagon-load of calves was driven past her on the way to +slaughter, and the piteous bleating was borne backward on the wind. +Suddenly her knees trembled, and she leaned against a railing.</p> + +<p>A man passed and spoke to her, and she turned to retrace her steps. From +the wet sidewalk the standing water oozed up through her thin soles and +soaked her feet. A pain struck her in the side—sharp and cold, like the +blow of a knife. In sudden terror she started and looked about her.</p> + +<p>A cab was passing; she hailed it, but it was engaged, and drove on.</p> + +<p>She leaned against the railing of a house, and, looking up, saw the +cheerful lights in the windows. The idea of warmth invigorated her, and +she moved on to the next, then to the next. At each step her knees +trembled and she hesitated, fearing to fall and lie dead upon the cold +sidewalk. The horror of death gave her strength. Beyond the desires of +warmth and light and rest, she was unconscious of all sensation.</p> + +<p>Then the pain in her side seized her again, and the shrinking of her +limbs caused her to pause for a longer space. The monotonous cross-town +blocks sloped upward in a black incline before her, seeming to rise +perpendicularly from before her feet to a height in the foggy +perspective. She clung to the railing and moaned softly. A woman, +passing with a bundle on her arm, stared at her, hesitated an instant, +and went on.</p> + +<p>At Broadway the lights of the moving cars interchanged like the colors +of a kaleidoscope, swimming amid the falling rain before her eyes.</p> + +<p>At Sixth Avenue she steadied herself with sudden resolve, beginning that +last long block with a kind of delirious joy. To stimulate her faltering +feet she<a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a> glanced back over the terrible distance that she had come, and +she found that the black incline of blocks now sloped in the opposite +direction. She seemed to have descended a hillside of slate. Good God! +How had she lived? Her own door came at last, and she crawled up the +slippery steps, steadying herself against the stone balustrade. The door +was unlatched. She opened it and went inside. At the first suffusion of +warmth and rest her waning thoughts flickered into life.</p> + +<p>Then she raised her eyes and uttered a shriek of joy.</p> + +<p>"Anthony!"</p> + +<p>He was standing on the threshold of the drawing-room, and, as she cried +out, he caught her in his arms.</p> + +<p>"My beloved, what is it? What does it mean?"</p> + +<p>But as he held her he felt the wet of her clothing, and he lifted her +and carried her to the fire.</p> + +<p>"Mariana, what does it mean?"</p> + +<p>He was kneeling beside her, unfastening her shoes with nervous fingers. +She opened her eyes and looked at him.</p> + +<p>"I went out in the rain," she said. "I don't know why; I have forgotten. +I believe I thought it was all a mistake. The blocks were very long." +Then she clung to him, sobbing.</p> + +<p>"Don't let me die!" she cried—"don't let me die!"</p> + +<p>He raised her in his arms, and, crossing to the bell, rang it hastily. +Then he went into the hall and up-stairs. On the landing he met the +maid.</p> + +<p>"Where is Mrs. Gore's room?" he asked, and, entering, laid her upon the +hearth-rug. "She is ill," he went on. "She must be got to bed and +warmed. Put mustard-plasters to her chest and rub her feet. I will get +the doctor."</p> + +<p>He left the room, and Miss Ramsey came in, her eyes red and her small +hands trembling.</p> + +<p>They took off her wet things, while she lay faint and<a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a> still, a tinge of +blueness rising to her face and to her fallen eyelids.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she spoke.</p> + +<p>"Give me the medicine on the mantel," she said—"quick!"</p> + +<p>It was tincture of digitalis. Miss Ramsey measured out the drops and +gave them to her. After she had swallowed them the color in her face +became more natural and her breathing less labored. Miss Ramsey was +applying a mustard-plaster to her chest, while the maid rubbed her cold, +white feet, which lay like plaster casts in the large, red hands.</p> + +<p>Mariana looked at them wistfully. "I have done foolish things all my +life," she said, "and this is the most foolish of all."</p> + +<p>"What, dear?" asked Miss Ramsey, but she did not answer.</p> + +<p>When Anthony came in, followed by the doctor, she was lying propped up +among the pillows, with soft white blankets heaped over her. Her eyes +were closed and she was breathing quietly.</p> + +<p>Salvers took her hand and bent his ear to her chest.</p> + +<p>"She must be stimulated," he said. "You say she has already taken +digitalis—yes?"</p> + +<p>He took Miss Ramsey's seat, still holding Mariana's hand, and turning +now and then to give directions in his smooth, well-modulated voice. +Anthony was standing at the foot of the bed, his eyes upon the blankets.</p> + +<p>A light fall of rain beat rhythmically against the window-panes. The +fire crackled in the grate and sent up a sudden, luminous flame, +transfiguring the furniture in the room and the faces gathered in the +shadow about the bed. Mariana stirred slightly. Presently Salvers rose +and drew Miss Ramsey aside.</p> + +<p>"It is very serious," he said. "The danger is heart failure. In another +case I should say that it was hopeless—but her constitution is +wonderful. She may pull<a name="page_321" id="page_321"></a> through." Then he asked a few questions +concerning the cause of the relapse, and turned to go. "Keep her +stimulated, as I have said," he continued; "that is all that can be +done. I would stay until morning, but several of my patients are at +critical points. As soon as I have seen them I will come back." He +started, paused to repeat several directions, and left the room softly, +the sound of his footsteps lost in the heavy carpets.</p> + +<p>Anthony took the chair beside the bed and laid his hand on the coverlet. +He thought Mariana asleep. She was lying motionless, her heavy hair +tangled in the lace on the pillow, her lashes resting like a black +shadow upon her cheeks, her lips half parted.</p> + +<p>He remembered that she had looked like this after the birth of Isolde, +when he sat beside the bed and the child lay within the crook of her +arm.</p> + +<p>A groan rose to his lips, but he choked it back. The hand upon the +coverlet was clinched, and the nails, pressed into the livid palm, had +become purple. Still he sat motionless, his head bent, his muscles +quivering like those of one palsied.</p> + +<p>The flame of the fire shot up again, illuminating Mariana's face, and +then died slowly down. The rain beat softly against the window.</p> + +<p>Miss Ramsey went noiselessly into an adjoining room and came back, a +glass in her hand. From across the hall a clock struck.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Mariana opened her eyes, moaning in short sobs. A blue wave was +rising over her face, deepening into tones of violet beneath the shadows +of her eyes. They measured the medicine and gave it to her and she lay +quiet again. He put his arm across her.</p> + +<p>"Anthony!" she said.</p> + +<p>He bent his ear.</p> + +<p>"My beloved?"</p> + +<p>"Hold me, the bed is going down. My head is so low."<a name="page_322" id="page_322"></a></p> + +<p>He caught her passionately, his kisses falling distractedly upon her +eyes, her lips, the lace upon her breast, and her cold hands.</p> + +<p>"And you do love me?"</p> + +<p>"Love you?" he answered, fiercely. "Have I ever loved anything else? O +my love! My love!"</p> + +<p>His tears stung her face like fire.</p> + +<p>"Don't," she said, gently; and then, "It would have been very nice, the +little farm in the South, and the peaches, and the cows in the pastures, +but," she smiled, "I am not very thrifty—the peaches would have rotted +where they fell, and the cows would never have been milked."</p> + +<p>"Mariana!"</p> + +<p>She lay in his arms, and they were both silent.</p> + +<p>The clock struck again. In the street a passer-by was whistling "Oh, +Nellie's blue eyes."</p> + +<p>She spoke drowsily: "Speak softly. You will wake the baby."</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>In the glimmer of dawn Salvers entered. A sombre mist penetrated the +curtains at the windows, and in the grate a heap of embers reddened and +waned and reddened and waned again. A light dust had settled over the +room, over the mantel, the furniture, and the blankets on the bed—a +fine gray powder, pale like the ashes of yesterday's flame.</p> + +<p>He crossed to the bed and took Mariana from Anthony's arms. Her head +fell back and the violet shadows in her face had frozen into marble. She +was smiling faintly.</p> + +<p>"My God!" said Salvers, in a whisper. "She has been dead—for hours."</p> + +<p>He laid her down and turned to the man beside him, looking at him for a +moment without speaking. Then he laid his hand upon his arm and spoke to +him as if to a child. "You must go home," he said, emphasizing<a name="page_323" id="page_323"></a> the +syllables. "It is over. You can do no good. You must go home."</p> + +<p>The other shook his head. His eyes were blank, like those of a man in +whom the springs of thought have been suddenly paralyzed.</p> + +<p>"You must go home," repeated Salvers, his hand still upon his arm. "I +will be with you in an hour. You must go."</p> + +<p>Beneath his touch Anthony moved slowly into the hall, descending the +stairs mechanically. Salvers gave him his hat and opened the outer door. +Going to the sidewalk, he motioned to his coachman.</p> + +<p>"Take Father Algarcife home," he said.</p> + +<p>He slammed the door and looked after the carriage as it rolled down the +block and rounded the corner. Then he turned and re-entered the house.</p> + +<p><br /> +</p> + +<p>When Father Algarcife reached the rectory, he went into his study, +locking the door after him. Then he seated himself at his desk and +rested his head in his hands. His mind had cleared from the fog, but he +did not think. He remained staring blankly before him.</p> + +<p>The room was cold and damp, the fire had not been kindled, and the +burned-out coals lay livid upon the hearth. The easy-chair was drawn +before the fender where he had sat yesterday, and the lamp which he had +not lighted the evening before stood on the little marble-top table. An +open book, his pipe, and an untasted cup of coffee were beside it.</p> + +<p>On the desk his yesterday's sermon lay unrolled, the text facing him in +bold black and white:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?"</p></div> + +<p>The dull, neutral tones of advancing dawn flooded the room. There was a +suggestion of expectancy about it, as of a world uncreate, waiting for +light and birth.<a name="page_324" id="page_324"></a></p> + +<p>He raised his eyes, not his head, and stared over the desk at the wall +beyond. From above the mantel the portrait of Father Speares's ancestor +glared at him from its massive frame, wearing the fierce and faded +aspect of a past century. Near the window stood the sofa, with the worn +spot on the leather arm where the head of the dead man had rested. It +was all chill and leaden and devoid of color.</p> + +<p>Presently he moved, and, opening a drawer of the desk, drew out a small +dark phial and placed it upon the unfolded leaves of the sermon. Through +the blue glass the transparent liquid gleamed like silver. His movements +were automatic. There was no haste, no precipitation, no hint of +indecision. He looked at the clock upon the mantel, watching the gradual +passage of the hands. When the minute-hand reached the hour he would +have done with it all—with all things forever.</p> + +<p>The colorless liquid in the small blue phial lay within reach of his +grasp. It seemed to him that he saw already a man lying on that leathern +sofa—saw the protruding eyes, the relaxed limbs, the clammy sweat, and +saw nothing more that would be after him under the sun. The hands of the +clock moved on. A finger of sunlight pierced the curtains and pointed to +the ashes in the grate. Outside the noise of a crowded city went on +tumultuously. He removed the cork of the bottle, inhaling a pungent and +pervasive odor of bitter almonds.</p> + +<p>At the same instant a voice called him, and there was a knock at his +door.</p> + +<p>"Father!"</p> + +<p>He replaced the stopper, still holding the phial in his hand. For a +moment the heavy silence hung oppressively, and then he answered: "What +is it?" His voice sounded lifeless, like that of one awakening from +heavy sleep or a trance.<a name="page_325" id="page_325"></a></p> + +<p>"You are there? Come quickly. Your men at the Beasley Rolling Mills have +gone on a strike. A policeman was shot and several of the strikers +wounded. You are wanted to speak to them."</p> + +<p>"To speak to them?"</p> + +<p>"I have a cab. You may prevent bloodshed. Come."</p> + +<p>Father Algarcife returned the phial to its drawer, withdrew the key from +the locker, and rose. He opened the door and faced the messenger. His +words came thickly.</p> + +<p>"There is no time to lose," he said. "I am ready."</p> + +<p>He seized his hat, descended the steps, and rushed into the street.</p> + +<p class="c">THE END</p> + +<p class="c">ERRATUM<br />On page 194, 4th line from bottom, the word "begotten" should be +omitted. (corrected in this etext)</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="c">BY MARY E. WILKINS</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Jerome, A Poor Man.</span> A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Madelon</span>. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Pembroke</span>. A Novel. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Jane Field.</span> A Novel. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">A New England Nun</span>, and Other Stories. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">A Humble Romance</span>, and Other Stories. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Young Lucretia,</span> and Other Stories. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1 25.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Giles Corey</span>, Yeoman. A Play. Illustrated. 32mo, Cloth, Ornamental, 50 +cents.</p> + +<p>Mary E. Wilkins writes of New England country life, analyzes New England +country character, with the skill and deftness of one who knows it +through and through, and yet never forgets that, while realistic, she is +first and last an artist.—<i>Boston Advertiser.</i></p> + +<p>Miss Wilkins has attained an eminent position among her literary +contemporaries as one of the most careful, natural, and effective +writers of brief dramatic incident. Few surpass her in expressing the +homely pathos of the poor and ignorant, while the humor of her stories +is quiet, pervasive, and suggestive.—<i>Philadelphia Press.</i></p> + +<p>It takes just such distinguished literary art as Mary E. Wilkins +possesses to give an episode of New England its soul, pathos, and +poetry.—<i>N. Y. Times.</i></p> + +<p>The pathos of New England life, its intensities of repressed feeling, +its homely tragedies, and its tender humor, have never been better told +than by Mary E. Wilkins.—<i>Boston Courier.</i></p> + +<p>The simplicity, purity, and quaintness of these stories set them apart +in a niche of distinction where they have no rivals.—<i>Literary World, +Boston.</i></p> + +<p>The charm of Miss Wilkins's stories is in her intimate acquaintance and +comprehension of humble life, and the sweet human interest she feels and +makes her readers partake of, in the simple, common, homely people she +draws.—<i>Springfield Republican.</i></p> + +<p>Studies from real life which must be the result of a lifetime of +patient, sympathetic observation.... No one has done the same kind of +work so lovingly and so well.—<i>Christian Register, Boston.</i></p> + +<p class="c">NEW YORK AND LONDON:<br />HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS</p> + +<p>=> <i>The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by +the publishers, postage prepaid, on receipt of the price.</i></p> + +<p class="c">BY LILIAN BELL</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">From a Girl's Point of View.</span> 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and +Gilt Top, $1 25.</p> + +<p>Miss Bell's former books have proved conclusively that she is a shrewd +observer, and in the series of character studies which she has brought +together under the title "From a Girl's Point of View" she is at her +best. The book is an intimate analysis of the manner of the modern man, +as seen with the eyes of the modern woman; and it is of interest not +only to those from whose stand-point it is written, but to those at whom +its good-humored shafts are directed. The best of it is that Miss Bell, +while she may be severe, is never unjust, and her observations are so +apt that the masculine reader cannot but laugh, even while he realizes +that she is dealing with one of his own shortcomings.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Under Side of Things.</span> A Novel. With a Portrait of the Author. 16mo, +Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $1 25.</p> + +<p>Miss Bell's little story is very charming.... Miss Bell has plenty to +say, and says it, for the most part, in a fashion engaging and simple, +with touches of eloquence and passages of real strength. She has gifts +of a sort far from common, and an admirable spirit. Her observation of +life is keen, shrewd, and clear; it is also sympathetic. She has a +strong and easy hold on the best realities.—<i>N. Y. Times.</i></p> + +<p>This is a tenderly beautiful story.... This book is Miss Bell's best +effort, and most in the line of what we hope to see her proceed in, +dainty and keen and bright, and always full of the fine warmth and +tenderness of splendid womanhood.—<i>Interior, Chicago.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Love Affairs of an Old Maid.</span> 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges +and Gilt Top, $1 25.</p> + +<p>So much sense, sentiment, and humor are not often united in a single +volume.—<i>Observer, N. Y.</i></p> + +<p>One of the most charming books of its kind that has recently come under +our notice. From its bright "Dedication" to its sweet and gracious +close, its spirit is wholesome, full of happy light, and one lingers +over its pages.—<i>Independent, N. Y.</i></p> + +<p class="c">NEW YORK AND LONDON:<br />HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS</p> + +<p>=> <i>The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by +mail by the publishers, postage prepaid, on receipt of the price.</i></p> + +<p> +<br /> +</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 354px;"> +<a href="images/rear.jpg"> +<img src="images/rear_sml.jpg" width="354" height="550" alt="image of book's back cover" title="" /></a> +</div> + +<hr class="full" /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Phases of an Inferior Planet, by Ellen Glasgow + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET *** + +***** This file should be named 34402-h.htm or 34402-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/4/0/34402/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images at The Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Phases of an Inferior Planet + +Author: Ellen Glasgow + +Release Date: November 22, 2010 [EBook #34402] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images at The Internet Archive) + + + + + + + + + +Phases of an +Inferior Planet + +_By_ ELLEN GLASGOW + +_Author of "The Descendant"_ + +[Illustration] + +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + +NEW YORK AND LONDON + +1898 + +BY THE SAME AUTHOR. + +THE DESCENDANT. A Novel. Post 8vo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1 25. + +The writer has a sure touch, a firm and philosophically consistent hold +upon his theme, much delicacy of perception, and a sane sense of humor. +The style, if not of the fastidiously fine school, is fluent and often +brilliant. ... The character drawing is vivid and realistic.--_Boston +Transcript._ + +The characters here are skilfully drawn, and the drama in which they +take part is unusually novel and impressive. ... The work of an author +who has not written at random, but who has woven into a strong story +some of the cardinal truths of modern science.--_N. Y. Herald._ + +NEW YORK AND LONDON: + +HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. + +Copyright, 1898, by HARPER & BROTHERS. + +_All rights reserved._ + +TO + +CARY McC. + + _"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the + swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, + nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of + skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."_ + + + + +Phase First + + _"Some turned to folly and the sweet works of the flesh."_ + + --Hymn to Zeus. + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Along Broadway at six o'clock a throng of pedestrians was stepping +northward. A grayish day was settling into a gray evening, and a +negative lack of color and elasticity had matured into a positive +condition of atmospheric flatness. The air exhaled a limp and insipid +moisture, like that given forth by a sponge newly steeped in an +anaesthetic. Upon the sombre fretwork of leafless trees, bare against +red-brick buildings, drops of water hung trembling, though as yet there +had been no rainfall, and the straggling tufts of grass in the city +parks drooped earthward like the damp and uncurled fringe of a woman's +hair. + +Spanning the remote west as a rainbow stretched an unfulfilled pledge of +better things, for beyond the smoke-begrimed battalion of tenement +chimney-pots a faint streak of mauve defined the line of the horizon--an +ineffectual and transparent sheet of rose-tinted vapor, through which +the indomitable neutrality of background was revealed. The city swam in +a sea of mist, and the electric lights, coming slowly into being, must +have seemed to a far-off observer a galaxy of wandering stars that had +burst the woof of heaven and fallen from their allotted spheres to be +caught like blossoms in the white obscurity of fog. Above them their +deserted habitation frowned blackly down with closed doors and +impenetrable walls. + +The effect of the immortal transformation of day into night was +singularly elusive. It had come so stealthily that the fleet-footed +hours seemed to have tripped one another in the fever of the race, the +monotonous grayness of their garments shrouding, as they fluttered past, +the form of each sprightly elf. + +Along Broadway the throng moved hurriedly. At a distance indescribably +homogeneous, as it passed the lighted windows of shops it was seen to be +composed of individual atoms, and their outlines were relieved against +the garish interiors like a panorama of automatic silhouettes. Then, as +they neared a crossing, a flood of radiant electricity, revealing minute +details of face and figure, the atoms were revivified from automatic +into animal existence. + +With an inhuman disregard of caste and custom, the aberrant shadows of +the passers-by met and mingled one into another. A phantasmagoric +procession took place upon the sidewalk. The ethereal accompaniment of +the physical substance of a Wall Street plutocrat glided sedately after +that of a bedizened daughter of the people, whose way, beginning in the +glare of the workhouse, was ending in the dusk of the river; a lady of +quality, whose very shadow seemed pregnant with the odor of spice and +sables, melted before the encroaching presence of a boot-black fresh +from the Bowery; a gentleman of fashion gave place to the dull phantom +of a woman with burning brows and fingers purple with the stain of many +stitches. It was as if each material substance, warm with the lust of +the flesh and reeking with a burnt-offering of vanity, was pursued by +the inevitable presence of a tragic destiny. + +At the corner of Seventeenth Street, a girl in a last season's coat left +the crowd and paused before a photographer's window. As she passed from +shadow into light the play of her limbs was suggested by the close folds +of her shabby skirt. She had the light and steadfast gait of one to whom +exercise is as essential as food, and more easily attained. + +A man coming from Union Square turned to look at her as she passed. + +"That girl is a _danseuse_," he said to his companion, "or she ought to +be. She walks to music." + +"Your induction is false," retorted the other. "She happens to be--" + +And they passed on. + +As the girl paused before the lighted window the outlines of head and +shoulders were accentuated, while the rest of her body remained in +obscurity. Her head was shapely and well poised. Beneath the small toque +of black velvet, an aureole of dry brown hair framed her sensitive +profile like a setting of old mahogany. Even in the half-light +silhouette it could be noticed that eyes, hair, and complexion differed +in tone rather than in color. Her sallow skin blended in peculiar +harmony with the gray-green of her eyes and the brown of her hair. Her +face was long, with irregular features and straight brows. The bones of +cheek and chin were rendered sharper by extreme thinness. + +A new photograph of Alvary was displayed, and a small group had +assembled about the window. + +The girl looked at it for a moment; then, as some one in the crowd +jostled against her, she turned with an exclamation of annoyance and +entered the shop. Hesitating an instant, she drew a worn purse from her +pocket, looked into it, gave a decisive little shrug, and approached the +counter. + +The shop-girl came up, and, recognizing her, nodded. + +"Music?" she inquired, glancing at the leather roll which the other +carried. + +The girl shook her head slowly. + +"No," she replied, "I want a photograph of Alvary--as Lohengrin. Oh, the +Swan Song--" + +A man who was sorting a pile of music in the rear of the shop came +forward smiling. He was small and dark and foreign. + +"Ah, mademoiselle," he said, "it ees a plaisir for w'ich I live, ees ze +Elsa of your." + +The girl smiled in return. In the clear light the glint of green in her +eyes deepened. + +"No," she replied, "this is Elsa." She pointed to a photograph in the +case. "This is the only Elsa. I should not dare." + +He bowed deprecatingly. + +"Zat ees ontil you come," he said. "I live for ze day w'en we sing +togezzer, you an' I. I live to sing wiss you in ze grand opera." + +"Ah, monsieur," lamented the girl, regretfully, "one cannot live +forever. The Lord has allotted a term." + +She took her change, nodded gayly, and departed. + +In the street she passed unheeded. She was as ignored by the crowd +around her as the colorless shadow at her side. Upon a massive woman in +a feather boa a dozen men gazed with evident desire, and after the +sables enveloping the lady of quality the eyes of the boot-black +yearned. But the girl moved among them unnoticed--she was insignificant +and easily overlooked. + +A violet falling upon the pavement from the breast of a woman in front +of her, the girl lifted her skirt, and, to avoid crushing it, made a +slight divergence from her path. Then impulsively she turned to rescue +it from the cold sidewalk, but in so doing she stumbled against a man +whose heel had been its Juggernaut. A tiny blot of purple marked the +scene of its destruction. + +Over the girl's face a shadow fell; she glanced up and caught the +courteous smile of an acquaintance, and the shadow was lifted. But +before her upward glance tended earthward it rested upon an overdriven +horse standing in the gutter, and the shadow that returned had gathered +to itself the force of a rain-cloud. + +An impressionable and emotional temperament cast its light and darkness +upon her features, as the shifting clouds cast their varying shades upon +an evening landscape. With such a face, her moods must be as evanescent +as the colors of a kaleidoscope. + +As she neared an electric light she slipped the photograph she carried +from its envelope, and surveyed it with warming eyes. She spoke in a +soft whisper-- + +"I shall never sing Elsa--never--never! Lehmann is Elsa. But what does +it matter? By the time I reach grand opera I shall have dinners--real +dinners--with napkins the size of a sheet and vegetables of curious +kinds. Then I'll grow fat and become famous. I may even sing Isolde." + +She broke into a regretful little sigh. "And Alvary will be too old to +be my Tristan." + +At the corner of Twenty-third Street she took a cross-town car. It was +crowded, and, with half-suppressed disgust, she rested the tips of her +fingers upon a leather strap. The gloves covering the fingers were worn +and badly mended, but the touch was delicate. + +Something graceful and feminine and fragile in her unsteady figure +caused half a dozen men to rise hastily, and she accepted a proffered +seat with the merest inclination of her head. + +With an involuntary coquetry she perceived that, as the newest feminine +arrival, she was being stealthily regarded from behind the wall of +newspapers skirting the opposite seat. She raised her hand to her +loosened hair, half frowned, and glanced at the floor with demure +indifference. + +Beside her sat an Irishwoman with a heavy basket and a black bruise upon +her temple. The girl looked at the woman and the bruise with an +expression of repugnance. The repugnance was succeeded by a tidal wave +of self-commiseration. She pitied herself that she was forced to make +use of public means of conveyance. The onions in the Irishwoman's basket +offended her nostrils. + +Her gaze returned to her lap. As daintily as she had withdrawn her +person from contact with the woman beside her, she withdrew her finely +strung senses from contact with the odor of onions and the closeness of +the humanity hemming her in. + +She sat in disdainful self-absorption. Her sensitive features became +impassive, her head drooped, the green in her eyes faded into gray, and +the lashes obscured them. The shadow of her heavy hair rested like a +veil upon her face. + +When the car reached Ninth Avenue she got out, walked to Thirtieth +Street, and crossed westward. Facing her stood the immense and +unpicturesque apartment-house known as "The Gotham"--a monument of human +Philistinism and brownstone-finished effrontery. She entered and passed +through the unventilated hall to the restaurant at the rear. + +As she crossed the threshold, a man seated at one of the larger tables +looked up. + +"My dear girl," he said, reproachfully, "lateness for dinner at The +Gotham entails serious consequences. We were just planning a +search-party." + +His right-hand neighbor spoke warningly. "Don't believe him, Miss Musin; +he refused to get uneasy until he had finished his dinner." + +"When one is empty," retorted the first, "one can't get even uneasy. +Anxiety can't be produced from a void." + +The girl nodded good-evening, took her seat, and unfolded her napkin. +The first gentleman passed her the butter, the second the water-bottle. +The first was named Nevins. He was fair and pallid, with a long face +that would have been round had nature supplied gratification as well as +instinct. His shoulders were high and narrow, suggesting the perpetual +shrug with which he met his fate. He was starving upon an artistic +career. The second gentleman--Mr. Sellars--was sleek and middle-aged. +Providence had intended him for a poet; life had made of him a +philosopher--and a plumber. He was still a man of sentiment. + +At the head of the table sat Mr. Paul--an apostle of pessimism, whose +general flavor marked the pessimist rather than the apostle. The +peculiarity of his face was its construction--the features which should +have gone up coming down, and the features which should have come down +going up. Perhaps had Mr. Paul himself moralized upon the fact, which is +not likely, he would have concluded that it was merely a physical +expression of his mental attitude towards the universe. He had long +since arrived at the belief that whatever came in life was the thing of +all others which should have kept away, and its coming was sufficient +proof of its inappropriateness. He had become a pessimist, not from +passion, but from principle. He had chosen his view of the eternal +condition of things as deliberately as he would have selected the +glasses with which to survey a given landscape. Having made his choice, +he stood to it. No surreptitious favors at the hands of Providence were +able to modify his honest conviction of its general unpleasantness. + +The remaining persons at this particular table were of less importance. +There was Miss Ramsey, the journalist, who was pretty and faded and +harassed, and who ate her cold dinner, to which she usually arrived an +hour late, in exhausted silence. Miss Ramsey was one whom, her friends +said, adversity had softened; but Miss Ramsey herself knew that the +softness of adversity is the softness of decay. There was Mr. Ardly, a +handsome young fellow, who did the dramatic column of a large daily, and +who regarded life as a gigantic jag, facing failure with facetiousness +and gout with inconsequence. There was Mr. Morris, who was thin, and Mr. +Mason, who was fat, and Mr. Hogarth, who was neither. + +The restaurant consisted of a long and queerly shaped room. It had +originally been divided into two apartments, but when the house had +passed into the present management the partition had been torn down, and +two long and narrow tables marked the line where the division had been. +The walls were dingy and unpapered. Where the plaster was of an unusual +degree of smokiness, several cheap chromos, in cheaper frames, had been +hung, like brilliant patches laid upon a dingy background. Above the +chromos lingered small bunches of evergreen--faded and dried remnants of +the last holiday season--and from the tarnished and fly-specked +chandelier hung a withered spray of mistletoe. + +The room was crowded. There was not so much as a vacant seat at the +tables. The hum of voices passed through the doors and into the rumble +of the street without. In a far corner a lady in a blouse of geranium +pink was engaged in catching reckless flies for the sustenance of the +chameleon upon her breast; nearer at hand a gentleman was polishing his +plate and knife with his napkin. It was warm and oppressive, and the +voices sounded shrilly through the glare. The girl whom they had called +"Miss Musin" looked up with absent-minded abruptness. + +"I had as soon wear wooden shoes as eat with a pewter fork!" she +remarked, irritably. + +Mr. Nevins shook his flaxen head and laid down his spoon. + +"So long as it remains a question of forks," he observed, "let us give +thanks. Who knows when it may become one of food?" Then he sighed. "If +it is only a sacrifice of decency, I'm equal to it, but I refuse to live +without food." + +"The audacity of youth!" commented Mr. Sellars, the philosopher. "I said +the same at your age. But for taking the conceit out of one, commend me +to experience." + +"From a profound study of the subject," broke in Mr. Paul, grimly, "I +have been able to calculate to a nicety that each one of these potatoes, +taken internally, lessens an hour of one's existence. As a method of +self-destruction"--and he proceeded to help himself--"there is none more +efficacious than an exclusive diet of Gotham potatoes. Allow me to pass +them." He looked at Miss Musin, but Mr. Nevins rose to the occasion. + +"After such an analysis, my gallantry forbids," and he intercepted the +dish. + +The girl glanced up at him. + +"Extinction long drawn out is boring," she said. "And is food the only +factor of human life? It may be the most important, I admit, but +important things should not always be talked of." + +"I declare it quite staggers me," interrupted a cheerful individual, who +was Mr. Morris, "to think of the number of things that should not be +talked of--some amazingly interesting things, too! Do you know, +sometimes I wonder if social intercourse will not finally be reduced to +a number of persons assembling to sit in silent meditation upon the +subjects which are not to be spoken of? One so soon exhausts the +absolutely correct topics." + +"We are a nation of prudes," declared Mr. Paul, with emphasis, "and +there is no vice that rots a people to the core so rapidly as the vice +of prudery. All our good red blood has passed into a limbo of social +ostracism along with ladies' legs." + +"I was just thinking," commented Mr. Hogarth, who aspired to the rakish +and achieved the asinine, "that the last-named subject had been +particularly in evidence of late. What with the ballet and the +bicycle--" He blushed and glanced at Miss Musin. + +She was smiling. "Oh, I don't object," she said, "so long as they are +well shaped." + +Mr. Nevins upheld her from an artistic stand-point. + +"I hold," he said, authoritatively, "that indecency can only exist where +beauty is wanting. All beauty is moral. I have noticed in regard to my +models--" + +"On the contrary," interrupted Mr. Paul, "there is no such thing as +beauty. It is merely the creation of a diseased imagination pursuing +novelty. We call nature beautiful, but it is only a term we employ to +express a chimera of the senses. Nature is not beautiful. Its colors are +glaringly defective. It is ugly. The universe is ugly. Civilization is +ugly. We are ugly--" + +"Oh, Mr. Paul!" said Miss Musin, reproachfully. + +"Our one consolation," continued Mr. Paul, in an unmoved voice, "is the +knowledge that if we could possibly have been uglier we should have been +so created. Providence would have seen to it." + +"When Providence provided ugliness," put in Mr. Morris, good-naturedly, +"it provided ignorance along with it." + +Mr. Ardly, who was eating his dinner with a copy of the _Evening Post_ +spread out upon his knees, looked up languidly. + +"We are becoming unpleasantly personal," he remarked. "Personalities in +conversation should be avoided as sedulously as onions in soup. They are +stimulating, but vulgar." + +Mr. Paul seized the bait of the unconscious thrower with avidity. + +"Vulgarity," he announced, with ringing emphasis, "is the most prominent +factor in the universe. It is as essential to our existence as the +original slime from which we and it emanated. If there is one thing more +vulgar than nature, it is civilization. Whatever remnant of innocence +nature left in the mind of man civilization has wiped out. It has +debased the human intellect--" + +"And deformed the human figure," interpolated Mr. Nevins, with a sigh. +"Oh, for the days of Praxiteles!" + +The emotionless tones of Mr. Paul flowed smoothly on. + +"And if there is one thing more vulgar than civilization, it is art." + +Mr. Nevins retorted in a voice of storm. + +"Sir," he cried, "art is my divinity!" + +"A vulgar superstition," commented Mr. Paul, calmly; and he pointed to a +poster beside Mr. Nevins's plate. "You call that art, I suppose?" + +Mr. Nevins colored, but met him valiantly. "No," he returned; "I call +that bread and meat." + +As the girl next him rose from her chair she bestowed upon him an +approving smile, which he returned with sentimental interest. + +"You haven't finished," he remonstrated, in an aside. "My posters aren't +only bread and meat; they are pie--principally pie." + +The girl laughed and shook her head. + +"And principally pumpkin," she returned. "No, thank you!" + +She left the dining-room and mounted the stairs to the fourth landing. +Her room was in the front of the house, and the way to it lay through a +long and dimly lighted corridor, the floor of which was covered with +figured oil-cloth. + +As she slipped the key into the lock the door swung back, and a blast of +damp air from the open window blew into her face. She crossed the room +and stood for a moment with her hand upon the sash, looking down into +the street. A train upon the elevated road was passing, and she saw the +profiles of the passengers dark against the lighted interior. Clouds of +white smoke, blown rearward by the engine's breath, hovered about the +track, too light to fall. Then, as the wind chased westward, the clouds +were torn asunder, and stray wreaths, deepening into gray, drifted along +the cross street leading to the river. + +The girl reached out and drew in a can of condensed milk from the +fire-escape. Then she lowered the window and turned on the steam-heater +in the corner, which set up a hissing monotone. + +The room was small and square. There was a half-worn carpet upon the +floor, and the walls were covered with cheap paper, the conspicuous +feature of which was a sprawling design in green and yellow cornucopias. +In one corner stood a small iron bedstead, partially concealed by a +Japanese screen, which extended nominal protection to the wash-stand as +well. On the wall above the screen an iron hook was visible, from which +hung a couple of bath-towels and a scrubbing-brush suspended by a +string. Nearer the window there was an upright piano, with a scarf of +terra-cotta flung across it and a row of photographs of great singers +arranged along the ledge. Here and there on the furniture vivid bits of +drapery were pinned over barren places. + +But with the proof of a sensuous craving for color a latent untidiness +was discernible. Her slippers lay upon the hearth-rug where she had +tossed them when dressing for the street; a box of hair-pins had been +upset upon the bureau, and a half-open drawer revealed a tangled mass of +net veiling. + +Throwing her hat and coat upon the bed, the girl turned up the lights, +selected a score of "Lucia" from a portfolio under the piano, and, +seating herself at the music-stool, struck the key-board with sudden +fervor. The light soprano notes rang out, filling the small room with a +frail yet penetrating sweetness. It was a clear and brilliant voice, but +it was a voice in miniature, of which the first freshness was +marred--and it was not the voice for Lucia. + +With quick dismay the girl realized it, and rising impatiently, tossed +the score upon the carpet and left the piano. + +Standing before the long mirror on the wall, she slipped off her +walking-gown, letting it fall in a black heap to her feet. Then stepping +over it, she kicked it aside and stood with gleaming arms and breast in +the flickering gas-light. She loosened her heavy hair, drawing the pins +from it one by one, until it fell in a brown mane upon her shoulders. + +Doffing her conventional dress, she doffed conventionality as well. She +was transformed into something seductive and subtle--something in +woman's flesh as ethereal as sea-foam and as vivid as flame. + +She smiled suddenly. Then to a humming accompaniment she twirled upon +her toes, her steps growing faster and faster until her figure was +obscured in the blur of action and her hair flew about her face like the +hair of a painted witch. + +The words of the air she hummed came with a dash of bravado from between +her lips: + + "--Ange ou diable, + Ecume de la mer?" + +Still smiling, she sank in an exhausted heap upon the floor. + +Then she went to bed and fell asleep, lamenting that her head rested +upon a cotton pillow-slip. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +In time long past, when the Huguenots were better known, if less +esteemed, an impecunious gentleman of France left his native land for +the sake of faith and fortune. + +Lured by that blatant boast of liberty which swelled the throats of the +Western colonies, even while their hands were employed in meting out the +reward of witchcraft and in forging the chains of slavery, he directed +his way towards American soil. + +His mission failed, and, in search of theological freedom, he only +succeeded in weaving matrimonial fetters. Amid an unassorted medley of +creeds and customs he came upon the red-cheeked daughter of a Swiss +adventurer--an ambitious pioneer who lived upon the theory that the New +World having been created for the service of its foreign invaders, the +might of the sword was the right of possession. + +The gentleman of France, deciding to found a farm and family in the land +of his adoption, awoke suddenly to the knowledge that, to insure the +success of such an enterprise, feminine intervention is a necessary +evil. + +Accordingly, he set about his preparations with an economic industry. +Casting his eye upon a tract of land upon a Southern river, he acquired +it for certain services rendered in an unguarded moment to the Swiss +adventurer, who had acquired it in a manner that concerned himself +alone. + +The next step of the French gentleman was to build beside the Southern +river a family mansion, whose door he promptly closed upon the Swiss +adventurer, since virtue consists not so much in refusing to benefit by +vice as in refusing to acknowledge the benefit. Not without a sense of +nervous perturbation, he then proceeded to cast his gaze upon the most +promising feminine pledges of progeny. From among a dozen or so of his +fair neighbors he selected, with the experienced eye of a woman-fancier, +the blooming specimen of Swiss buxomness, and, the adventurer coming to +terms, the marriage had been celebrated without the retarding +curtain-raiser of a romantic prelude. + +The gentleman's name was Marcel Musin de Biencourt; the lady's has no +place in the following history. + +For a period matters progressed in natural sequence. The land was +tilled, the cotton picked, and the lady installed in the best bedroom of +the newly erected mansion. Had she played the part for which nature and +her lord intended her, there is reason to suppose that she would have +become a serviceable instrument in the preservation of the species. + +But the gentleman had reckoned without Providence. With the ending of +the year of her bridehood the roses in the lady's cheeks grew waxen, and +she turned with a sigh of relief from the labor of travail to the rest +of the little church-yard upon the hill. + +The aspens shivered above her, the river purled between level fields far +down below, and from the uprooted furrows around the dutiful corn put +forth tender sprouts; but the lady had shirked her mission in its first +fulfilment, and with the birth-time of the year she neither rose nor +stirred. + +In the best bedroom the dust thickened upon the chintz curtains, and a +weak and sickly hostage to fortune yelled his new throat hoarse with +premonition of the inhospitality of the planet upon which he had been +precipitated. + +Disappointed in his estimate of woman's nature, the gentleman of France +decided to economize in material, and to rear a race from the +unpromising specimen in his possession. Faithfully he strove to fulfil +his part, and when the boy reached manhood, he laid himself down beside +his wife upon the hill. + +From this time on the family record is biblically concise. Marcel begot +Marcel, and again Marcel begot Marcel, and yet again. + +While the root Musin languished, De Biencourt, the lofty family tree, +withered and died, to be forgotten. Neither in history nor in tradition, +nor in the paths of private virtue, was a Musin known to have +distinguished himself. If he took up arms in the American Revolution, he +took them up in a manner unworthy of record; if he favored the +Declaration of Independence, he did not commit his preference to paper; +if he excelled in any way, it was in the way of mediocrity--which is +perhaps the safest way of all. + +But extinction was not to be the end of the venturesome blood of the +French gentleman. His spirit animated one of his name to confide to the +care of his ex-slaves the mansion crumbling above his head, and to +become a wanderer in the States which had been so nearly disunited. Like +the minstrels of old, he strung his harp from his shoulder, and +journeyed from South to North and from East to West. His Norman blood +still ran blue in his veins, and his faith was the faith of his fathers. + +In his travels he played his passage into the vivacious affections of an +Irish maiden, who wore a rosary about her neck and a cross upon her +sleeve. But these conspicuous badges of Popery failed to chill the +passion of Marcel. And, in truth, if the maiden's heart was as black as +the arch-fiend, her eyes (which is more to the point) were not less blue +than heaven. With an improvidence sufficient to bleach the ghost of his +colonial progenitor, he tossed forebodings into the capacious lap of the +future, and stormed the yielding heart of young Ireland. + +Love was lord, and their marriage-bonds were double-locked and barred by +Protestant and Catholic clergy. But there is a power which laughs at +religious locksmiths. Within six months the illusions with which each +had draped the other melted before the fire and brimstone of +ecclesiastical dispute. Between the kisses of their lips each offered +petitions to a patient Omnipotence for the salvation of the other's +soul. As the kisses grew colder the prayers grew warmer. There is a +tendency in man, when he has fallen out with the human brother whom he +has seen, to wax more zealous in his attentions to the Divine Father +whom he has not. To be courteous to one's neighbor is so much more +difficult than to be cringing to one's God. + +And then a child was given. In the large family Bible upon the father's +desk the event is recorded in two different hands, and the child was +christened with two different names. + +The first reads: + + "MARIE MUSIN, _born April_ 24, 1868." + +And the second: + + "MARY ANN MUSIN, _born April_ 24, 1868." + +After fifteen years the matter was settled, as were most family matters, +by the child herself. + +"I will be both," she said, decisively. "I will be Mariana." + +And Mariana she became. + +In the same high-handed fashion the theological disputes of the parents +were reduced to trifles as light as air. + +"I will be a Presbyterian one Sunday and a Catholic the next," she +concluded, with amiable acquiescence; "only on fast-days and +lecture-nights I'll be a heathen." + +For a time these regulations were observed with uncompromising +impartiality, but, upon moving to a smaller town, she foresaw a +diplomatic stroke. + +"I think it better," she announced, sweetly, "for one of us to become an +Episcopalian. I have noticed that most of the society people here are +Episcopalians--and in that way the family will be so evenly distributed. +I see that it will be easier for me to make the sacrifice than for +either of you. Of course, I should love to go with you, mamma, but +incense makes me sneeze; and you know, papa, I can't stand +congregational singing. It grates upon my nerves. And I must be +something, for I have so much religious feeling. I will be an +Episcopalian." + +She cast herself into the arms of the Church with all the zeal of a +convert. From an artistic stand-point she repudiated insincerity, and, +though cultivated, her professions were as fertile as the most natural +product. Even to herself she scorned to admit that her alliance with a +particular creed was the result of aught but a moral tendency in that +direction. And the burden of the truth was with her. She was as +changeable as wind and as impressionable as wax, and the swelling tide +of sentiment had taken an ecclesiastical turn. + +She dressed in sober grays, and attended service with the regularity of +the sexton; she decorated her walls with Madonnas; and she undertook, by +way of the Sunday-school room, to lead a class of eight small boys into +the path of righteousness. She read Christina Rossetti and George +Herbert, and she placed tiny silver crosses, suspended from purple +ribbons, in her school-books. + +At the age of sixteen she attached herself to a society whose mission it +was to cultivate, by frequent calls, the religious poor, and she +neglected social observances to retard by her presence the domestic +duties of the indigent members of the community. She descended in a +special detachment upon a series of beer saloons, enforcing the pledge +upon a number of helpless gentlemen, and thereby multiplying the sin of +intemperance by that of perjury. While her mother mended the rents in +her garments, Mariana promoted a circle of stocking-darners for the +inhabitants of the almshouse. + +At that period her expression was in perfect harmony with the tenor of +her mind. The dramatic effect was always good. + +In the daily school, which she attended when the fancy seized her, she +ruled as a popular fetish. Between the younger children, whom she +terrorized, and the elder, whom she mesmerized, there was an +intermediate class with whom she was in high favor. As a tiny child she +had caught the street songs quicker than any other, and had sung them +better; and to the accompaniment of a hand-organ she could render a +marvellous ballet. + +During her tenth year she fell into a passionate friendship for one of +the scholars--a stately girl with phlegmatic eyes of gray. For six +months she paid her lover-like attentions in surreptitious ways, and +expended her pocket-money in nosegays, with which to adorn the desk of +her divinity. She wore a photograph of the gray-eyed girl above her +heart, and lingered for an hour to walk home with her upon Fridays. + +The friendship was sundered at last by visits exchanged between them, +and Mariana's emotions became theological. + +But this passed also. Vague amatory impulses of old racial meaning were +born. At sixteen she was precipitated into a sentiment for the +photograph, printed by the daily press, of a young fellow who was at +that time in the custody of the State, preparatory to responding to a +charge of highway-robbery. The photograph was romantic, the crime was +also. It was a nineteenth-century attempt at a revival of the part of +Claude Duval. + +Mariana attended missions less and meditated more. She divided her time +between her journal and the piano, showing a preference for songs of +riotous sentiment. Without apparent trouble to herself, she grew wan and +mysteriously poetic. She wore picturesque gowns with romantic draperies. +Her hair possessed a charming disorder, the expression of her face +passed from the placid into the intense. The dramatic effect was as good +as ever. Her journal of that year contains a declaration of undying +constancy. The object of this avowal is nominally the young +highwayman--in reality the creation of an over-fertile brain craving the +intoxicant of a great passion. The highwayman was but a picturesque +nucleus round which her dreams clustered and from which they gathered +color. She existed in a maze of the imagination, feasting upon the +unsubstantial food of idealism. Her longings for fame and for love were +so closely interwoven that even in her own mind it was impossible to +disassociate them. If she bedewed her pillow with tears of anguish for +the sake of a man whom she had never seen, and whom, seeing, she would +have passed with averted eyes, the tears were often dried by ecstatic +visions of artistic aspirations. And yet this romance of straw was not +the less intense because it was the creation of overwrought +susceptibilities; perhaps the more so. If real troubles were the only +troubles, how many tortured hearts would be uplifted to the hills. And +Mariana's mystical romance was a _daemon_ that lured her in a dozen +different disguises towards the quicksands of life. + +But this passed also and was done with. + +Her mother died, and her father married an early love. Mariana, who had +been first, declined to become last. Dissensions followed swiftly, and +the domestic atmosphere only cleared when Mariana departed from the +paternal dwelling-place. + +From the small Southern village, under the protection of an elderly +female relation, she had flown to New York in search of theatrical +employment. Failing in her object, she turned desperately to the culture +of her voice, living meanwhile upon a meagre allowance donated by her +father. The elderly female relation had remained with her for a time, +but finding Mariana intractable in minor ways, and foreseeing a future +in which she would serve as cat's-paw for the girl's vagaries, she had +blessed her young relative and departed. + +"One must either worship or detest you, my dear," she remarked as a +parting shaft. "And to worship you means to wait upon you, which is +wearing. Your personality is as absorbent as cotton. It absorbs the +individual comfort of those around you. It is very pleasant to be +absorbed, and you do it charmingly; but there is so much to see in the +world, and I'm getting old fast enough." + +So she went, leaving Mariana alone in a fourth-story front room of The +Gotham apartment-house. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Mr. Nevins once said to Mariana: "You are as elusive as thistle-down +whipped up with snow." + +Mariana smiled that radiating, indescribable smile which dawned +gradually from within, deepening until it burst into pervasive wealth of +charm. + +"Why snow?" was her query. + +Mr. Paul, who apparently had been engrossed in his dinner, glanced up +grimly. "The only possible reason for a metaphor," he observed, "is lack +of reason." + +Mr. Nevins dismissed him with a shrug and looked in sentimental +perplexity at Mariana. + +"Merely because it is impossible to whip up ice with anything," he +replied. + +"I should have supposed," interrupted Mr. Paul, in unabashed +disapproval, "that the same objection would apply to thistle-down. It +would certainly apply to a woman." + +Miss Ramsey, who sat opposite, turned her tired eyes upon him. + +"Life is not of your opinion, Mr. Paul," she said. "It whips us up with +all kinds of ingredients, and it never seems to realize when we have +been reduced to the proper consistency." + +She looked worn and harassed, and had come in to dinner later than +usual. It was the first remark she had made, and, after making it, she +relapsed into silence. Her small red hands trembled as she lifted her +fork, the rebellious lines between her brows grew deeper, and she ate +her dinner with that complete exhaustion which so often passes for +resignation in the eyes of our neighbors. Nervous prostration has +produced more saints than all the sermons since Moses. + +Mariana watched her sympathetically. She wondered why the gravy upon +Miss Ramsey's plate congealed sooner than it did upon any one else's, +while the sobbiest potatoes invariably fell to her share. + +"A false metaphor!" commented Mr. Paul. "Most metaphors are false. I +don't trust Shakespeare himself when he gets to metaphor. I always skip +them." + +"Oh, they have their uses," broke in the cheery tones of the optimist. +"I'm not much on Shakespeare, but I've no doubt he has his uses also. As +for metaphor, it is a convenient way of saying more than you mean." + +"So is lying," retorted Mr. Paul, crossly, and the conversation +languished. Mariana ate her dinner and looked at the table-cloth. Mr. +Nevins ate his dinner and looked at Mariana. He regarded her as an +artistic possibility. Her appearance was a source of constant interest +to him, and he felt, were he in the position of nature, with the palette +and brush of an omnipotent colorist, he might blend the harmonious lines +of Mariana's person to better advantage. He resented the fact that her +nose was irregular and her chin too long. He wondered how such a subject +could have been wilfully neglected. + +As for himself, he honestly felt that he had wasted no opportunities. +Upon their first acquaintance he had made a poster of Mariana which +undeniably surpassed the original. It represented her in a limp and +scantily made gown of green, with strange reptiles sprawling over it, +relieved against the ardor of a purple sunset. The hair was a marvel of +the imagination. + +Mariana had liked it, with the single exception of the reptilian +figures. + +"They have such an unpleasant suggestion," was her critical comment. "I +feel quite like Medusa. Couldn't you change them into nice little +butterflies and things?" + +Mr. Nevins was afraid he could not. The poster satisfied him as it was. +Miss Musin could not deny, he protested, that he had remodelled her nose +and chin in an eminently successful job, and if the hair and eyes and +complexion in the poster bore close resemblance in color, so did the +hair and eyes and complexion in the original. He had done his best. + +Mariana accepted his explanation and went complacently on her way, as +enigmatical as a Chinese puzzle. She was full of swift surprises and +tremulous changes, varying color with her environment; gay one moment, +and sad before the gayety had left her lips--cruel and calm, passionate +and tender--always and ever herself. + +Twice a week she went to Signor Morani's for a vocal lesson. Signor +Morani was small and romantic and severe. In his youth he had travelled +as Jenny Lind's barytone, and he had fallen a slave to her voice. He had +worshipped a voice as other men worship a woman. Unlike other men, he +had been faithful for a lifetime--to a voice. + +When Mariana had gone to him, an emotional and aspiring soprano of +nineteen, he had listened to her quietly and advised patience. + +"You must wait," he said. "All art is waiting." + +"I will not wait," said Mariana. "Waiting is starvation." + +He looked at her critically. + +"More of us starve than the world suspects," he answered. "It is the +privilege of genius. This is a planet, my dear child, where mediocrity +is exalted and genius brought low. It is a living fulfilment of the +scriptural prophecy, 'The first shall be last and the last shall be +first.'" Then he added: "Sing again." + +Mariana stood up and sang. His words had depressed her, and her voice +trembled. She looked at him wistfully, her hands hanging at her sides, +her head thrown back. It was an aria from "Faust." He shook his head +slowly. + +"You will never be great," he said. "I can give you technique, but not +volume. Your voice will never be great." + +With a half-defiant gesture Mariana broke forth again. This time it was +a popular song, with a quick refrain running through it. As she sang she +acted the accompaniment half unconsciously. + +Signor Morani frowned as she commenced, and then watched her +attentively. In the fragile little girl, with the changeable eyes of +green and the aureole of shadowless hair, he scented possibilities. + +"Your voice will never be great," he repeated; "but you may make men +believe so." + +"And you will take me?" pleaded Mariana. She stretched out her beautiful +hands. Her eyes prayed. Her flexible tones drooped. + +Signor Morani took her hands in his with kindly reassurance. + +"Yes," he said--"yes; it will keep you out of mischief, at least." + +And it had kept her out of mischief. It had opened a channel for her +emotions. Like a tide, the romanticism of her nature veered towards art. +She became the most fanatical of devotees. She breathed it and lived it. +In her heart it transplanted all other religions, and the aestheticism of +its expression gained a marvellous hold upon her faith. Above the little +mosaic altar at her bedside she enshrined a bust of Wagner, and she +worshipped it as some more orthodox believer had once worshipped an +enshrined Madonna. At midnight she held devotional services all alone, +sitting before the piano, bending to the uses of a litany the +intellectual rhapsodies of Beethoven or the sensuous repinings of +Chopin, while the little red flame sent up praise and incense from dried +rose leaves and cinnamon to the memories of dead musicians. She +introduced a rare, sensuous beauty into this new worship, as she had +introduced it into the old. She typified the Church when, in its fresh +young passion, and suffused with the dying splendors of paganism, it +turned from the primitive exercises of its founders and revived the +worship of the gracious Madonna of Old Egypt in the worship of the +Madonna of Nazareth, and the flower-scented feasts of Venus in the +Purification of the Virgin. There existed in the girl an unsatisfied +restlessness of self, resulting in the desire for complete submergence +of soul in idea. Her nature veered constantly from extreme to extreme; +there was no semblance of a saner medium, and as a system must have +exponents, the high priests and priestesses of art became her lesser +divinities. + +She began to haunt the Metropolitan Opera-house. From the fifth gallery +she looked down every evening upon an Italian or German landscape. She +herself trembled like a harp swept by invisible fingers; she grew pale +with Marguerite, wept over the dead Juliet, and went mad with the +madness of Lucia. + +When the voice of that fair Bride of Lammermoor who sang for us that +season was borne to her on the notes of a flute which flagged beneath +the exceeding sweetness of the human notes they carried, Mariana grasped +the railing with her quivering hands and bowed her head in an ecstasy of +appreciation. It was the ecstasy with which a monk in mediaeval days must +have thrilled when he faced in a dim cathedral some beautiful and +earthly Virgin of the great Raphael. It was the purest form of sensuous +self-abnegation. Then, as the curtain fell, she would rise and step +gropingly towards the door, cast into sudden darkness. Wrapped in that +mental state as in a mantle, she would descend the stairs and pass out +into the street. At such times she was as far removed from the existence +to which she was returning as was the poor mad Lucia herself. And then +in the night she would awake and sing softly to herself in the +stillness, lying with seraphic eyes and hands clasped upon her breast, +until the morning sun flashed into her face and the day began. + +There was also a tragic side to her emotions. Her past inheritance of +ages of image-worshippers laid hold upon her. From being merely symbols +of art the singers became divinities in their own right. She haunted +their hotels for fleeting glimpses of them. She bought their photographs +with the money which should have gone for a winter hat. She would gladly +have kissed the dust upon which they trod. After her first hearing of +"Tristan and Isolde," she placed the prima donna's photograph beneath +the bust of Wagner, and worshipped her for weeks as a bright particular +star. + +In the evening she attended the opera alone. Returning when it was over, +she crossed Broadway, boarded a car, and, reaching The Gotham, toiled up +to the fourth landing. She was innocent of prudery, and she went +unharmed. Perhaps her complete absorption in something beyond herself +was her safeguard. At all events, she brushed men by, glanced at them +with unseeing eyes, and passed placidly on her way. + +Mariana was famished for romance, but not for the romance of the street. +She had an instinctive aversion to things common and of vulgar intent. +Her unsatisfied desire was but the craving of a young and impressionable +heart for untried emotion. It was the poetry of living she thirsted +for--poetry in aesthetic proportions, with a careful adjustment of light +and shade. She desired harmonious effects and exquisite schemes of +color, all as appropriate settings to a romance which she could arrange +and blend in treatment as an artist arranges models of still life. So, +for a time, she expended herself upon great singers. A new tenor +appeared as Edgardo. Upon the stage he was dark and fierce and +impassioned. He made an adorable lover. He sang to Lucia, not to the +audience, and he threw half his arias into his eyes. Mariana was +enraptured. She fell desperately in love. During the day she went about +in meditative abstraction; during the night she turned upon her little +cotton pillow-slip, and wept to think how far below him she must ever +remain. She even wished herself a chorus girl, that she might intercept +his glances. She grew frantically jealous of the prima donna, whom, +also, she adored. She imagined innumerable romances in which he enacted +upon the stage of life the part of Edgardo. Then, through the kindness +of Signor Morani, she was introduced to the object of her regard, and +the awakening was abrupt. He was fat and commonplace. He proved to be +the faithful husband of a red-faced little German wife, and the devoted +father of a number of red-faced German children. He possessed no +qualities for romantic development, and Mariana recovered. + +For a period her susceptibilities abated. The wave of activity spent its +violence. Life flowed for her like a meadow stream, sensitive to faint +impressions from a passing breeze, but calm when the breeze was afar. + +Upon a night of "Carmen" she saw from the fifth gallery a velvet rose +fall from the prima donna's bosom to the stage. When the curtain fell +she rushed madly down and begged it of an usher. She carried it home, +and hung it upon the wall above her bed. At night, before falling +asleep, she would draw the curtains aside, and, in the electric light +that flooded the room, cast her eyes upon the vivid bit of color. In the +early morning she would awake, and, raising herself upon her elbow, +touch it reverently with her hand. It was homage rendered to her own +ambition. + +At The Gotham, her bare little chamber, with its garish wall-paper, was +a source of acute discomfort to her. Once, after a long spell of +pneumonia, she had fallen into a fit of desperation, and had attacked +the paper with a breakfast-knife. The result was a square of whitewashed +wall above the bureau. An atmosphere of harmony was so necessary to her +growth that she seemed to droop and pine in uncongenial environment. In +the apartment-house, with its close, unventilated halls, its creaking +elevator, its wretchedly served dinners, she had always felt strangely +ill at ease. Her last prayer at night was that the morrow might see her +transplanted to richer soil, her first thought upon awakening was that +the coming day was pregnant with possibilities. Life in its entirety, +life with passionate color and emotional fulfilment, was the food she +craved. + +Of Mariana, Mr. Ardly had made a laborious and profound analysis. + +"That young person is a self-igniting taper," he had concluded. "If some +one doesn't apply the match, she will go off of her own accord--and she +will burn herself out before time has cast a wet blanket upon her." + +He himself was a self-contained young fellow, who, like a greater before +him, followed with wisdom both wine and women. His life was regulated by +a theory which he had propounded in youth and attempted to practice in +maturer years. The theory asserted that experience was the one reliable +test of existing conditions. "I refused to believe that alcohol was an +intoxicant," he had once said, "until I tested it." + +When Mariana first arrived, he surprised in his heart an embryonic +sentiment concerning her, and proceeded to crush it as coolly as he +would have crushed a fly that encroached upon the private domain of his +person. + +"I have no dissipations," he explained, when discussing the affair with +Mariana. "I neither drink nor love." + +"Which is unwise," retorted Mariana. "I do both in moderation. And a man +who has never been in love is always a great school-boy. I should be +continually expecting him to tread upon my gown or to break my fan. +Sentiment is the greatest civilizer of the race. If I were you I would +begin immediately." + +"I dislike all effort," returned Ardly, gravely, "and love is cloying. +Over-loving produces mental indigestion, as over-eating produces +physical. I have suffered from it, and experience has made me +abstemious. I shall abstain from falling in love with you." + +"What a pity!" sighed Mariana, lifting her lashes. + +"Well, I can't agree with you," argued Ardly, "and I don't regret it. I +am very comfortable as I am." + +"I am not," retorted Mariana. "I detest the dinners. Who could be +comfortable on overdone mutton and cold potatoes?" + +"Even in the matter of food I am without prejudices," declared the +other. "I had as soon want a good dinner and have a poor one as have a +good one and want none. These are the only conditions with which I am +acquainted. There may be estates where things are more equally adjusted, +but I know nothing of them; I have not experienced them." + +Mariana sighed. "You are as depressing as Mr. Paul," she complained. + +"I only speak of what I know," explained Ardly, complacently. "Upon +other matters I have no opinions, and I calmly repeat that I have found +appetite and gratification to be situated upon opposite sides of a +revolving globe. When one's up the other's down." + +"I shall cut a passage through," said Mariana. "If life doesn't equalize +things, I will." + +"And I will watch the process," remarked Ardly, indolently. + +It was shortly after this that Mariana went to Long Island for a +holiday, spending a couple of weeks in the cottage of an acquaintance, +who, by dint of successive matrimonial ventures, had succeeded in +reaching the equilibrium to which Mariana aspired. + +Upon returning to New York the girl found her distaste for The Gotham to +have trebled. When she had toiled up the dingy stairway and installed +herself in her old place, she sat upon her trunk and looked about her. +Never had the room appeared so dull, so desperately plain. The close +odor caused by lack of ventilation offended her nostrils, and yet she +hesitated to fling back the shutters and reveal the rusty balcony with +its spindling fire-escape, beyond which stretched the sombre outlook, +the elevated road looming like a skeleton in the foreground. The door +into the hall was ajar, and she could see a dull expanse of corridor, +lighted day and night by a solitary and ineffectual electric jet. + +A sob stuck in her throat, and, crossing to the window, she raised it +and threw back the shutters, letting in a thin stream of dust and +sunshine. Her geranium stood where she had left it, and its withered and +yellow leaves smote her with accusing neglect. + +"Oh, you poor thing!" she cried, in an impulsive burst of pity. + +Then she saw that it had been freshly watered, and that its famished +leaves were unfolding. Turning her eyes, they encountered a row of small +pots containing seedlings which lined her neighbor's window, encroaching +slightly upon her own possession. Before them a man was standing, a +watering-can in one hand, a small trowel in the other. As Mariana +stepped upon the fire-escape he turned in evident resentment, glanced at +her indifferently, and resumed his task of invigoration. + +The afternoon sun shone full upon him, and Mariana saw him plainly. He +was young, with stooping shoulders, and he wore a cheap and shabby suit +of clothes, with apparent disregard of their quality. His face was thin +and cleanly shaven, there was a nervous tension about the mouth, and the +hair, falling dark and heavy upon the temples, lent a haggardness to his +colorless and burned-out profile. It was a face in which the poetic +principle was obscured by an ascetic veneering. In his whole appearance +was borne out the suggestion flashing from the eyes--a suggestion of +mental sustentation upon physical force. + +Mariana regarded him mutely. Her gaze was almost tragic in its +intensity. For a moment her lips quivered and her fingers interlaced. +Then she retreated into her room, slamming the shutters after her. +Throwing herself into a chair, she buried her face in her hands. + +"I--I can't have even that to myself!" she said, and burst into tears. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Mariana's neighbor sat in his room. He sat motionless, his head resting +upon his hands, his arms resting upon an office desk, which was plainly +finished and of cheap walnut. At his left elbow a lamp cast an +illumination upon his relaxed and exhausted figure, upon the straight, +dark hair, upon the bulging brow, and upon the sinewy and squarely +shaped hands, with their thin and nervous fingers. + +The desk upon which he leaned was covered with a litter of closely +written letter-sheets, and at the back a row of pigeon-holes contained +an unassorted profusion of manuscripts. + +The walls of the room were lined with roughly constructed shelves of +painted wood, which were filled to overflowing with well-worn volumes in +English, French, and German, Oken's _Die Zeugung_ upon the north side +confronting Darwin's _The Variation of Animals and Plants Under +Domestication_ upon the south. A cabinet in one corner contained a +number of alcoholic specimens of embryonic development, and a small +table near by supported a microscope and several instruments for +physiological experiments. Above the mantel, perhaps arranged in +freakish disregard of superstition, hung a skull and a pair of +cross-bones, and beneath them a series of photographs illustrating the +evolution of rudimentary nervous systems. + +Upon the hearth, within convenient reach of the desk, stood a small +spirit-stove, and on it a coffee-pot, which emitted a strong and +stimulating aroma. Beside it a table was spread, with the remains of a +cold supper and an unused cup and saucer. + +The man lifted his head from his hands, turned up the wick of the lamp, +and took up his pen. + +From without came the rumble of the elevated road and the shrill cries +of a newsboy proclaiming the redundant virtues of the _Evening Post_. A +warm August breeze, entering at the open window, which was raised from +the floor, caused the flame of the lamp to flicker slightly. Outside +upon the fire-escape the young plants were arranged in rows of +systematic precision, their tender leaves revealed in the narrow path of +lamplight leading from the heated room to the iron railing overlooking +the street. With absent-minded elaboration the man drew an irregular +line upon the paper before him. The line bore no relation whatever to +the heading of the paper, which was written in a remarkably firm and +heavy hand, and read: + + "Transmission of Acquired Characteristics." + +Suddenly he laid the pen aside, and rose, wiping the moisture from his +brow with his handkerchief. Then he threw off his coat and drew up his +shirt-sleeves. It was oppressively warm, and the lamp seemed to possess +the heating qualities of a Latrobe stove. For a couple of minutes he +walked slowly up and down the uncarpeted floor. From the adjoining room +came the sound of a piano and a woman singing. He shook his head +impatiently, but the sound continued, and he yawned and stretched his +arms with resentful resignation. After which he lifted the coffee-pot +from the little stove and filled the cup upon the table. + +Returning to his seat, he drank his coffee slowly, allowing his +abstracted gaze to wander through the window and into the city night +without. Upon the drawn shades of the opposite tenement-house he could +trace the shadows of men and women passing to and fro like the +unsubstantial outlines of figures remembered in a dream. His thoughts +fluttered restlessly. He was tired. Yes, but the coffee would get him +into shape again, and he must work. It was barely ten o'clock. The day +had been trying. The experiments made in the college laboratory had been +unsuccessful. He had gone about them wrongly. Professor Myers had been +mistaken in his calculations. It was unfortunate. The opportunity for +work had been excellent, and in September, when the session began, his +lectures at that infernal Woman's College would take a good two hours +daily, to say nothing of the preparations. What a bore it would be! If +he had only money enough to follow out his work independently he might +make a splendid success of it. True, he had spent enough on those +travels and excavations in Egypt and Assyria to have supported an +ordinary Philistine in comfort for an ordinary lifetime. But he did not +regret them. They had given balance to his judgment, and he had acquired +an immense amount of information. And those studies in Ancient India. +Why, they had even more direct bearing upon his theories. Involuntarily +his glance strayed round the book-lined walls and to the manuscripts in +his desk. He devoured the closely written, almost illegible pages with +insatiable eyes--eyes stricken with the mania for knowledge. The bronzed +and sallow face he turned towards the light was suffused with the glow +of a consuming purpose. In its deep-eyed, thin-lipped severity of +drawing, every sensuous curve had been erased by lines of toil. + +He set the cup aside and returned to his work. From a drawer of his desk +he drew a thick volume, consisting of a number of legal-cap sheets, +bound with a systematic regard for subject. Upon the cover was written +in printed letters: "Notes," and beneath: "A History of Man, with +Special Application of the Science of Ontogeny." + +After consulting this briefly he laid it away and fell to writing. From +the adjoining room still came the sound of a woman singing. The voice +was light and flippant. + +"Damn it!" said the man, suddenly, with angry impatience. He said it +vehemently, looking up from his work with nervous irritability. At the +same moment there came a slight tap at his door. + +He laid aside his pen, rose, and opened it. Mr. Paul stood upon the +outside. + +"Well, Mr. Algarcife," he began, grimly, "you see I have broken a +life-long principle and taken a man at his word. I came for the book you +spoke of." + +Algarcife welcomed him impatiently. "So I suppose I must prove your +principle relative, if not erroneous," he answered. His voice was +singularly full and clear. "It was _Milligan on the Vocabulary of +Aboriginal Tasmanians_, was it not? Yes, I think it will aid you." + +Mr. Paul came in and they sat down. Algarcife offered him coffee and +cigars, but he declined. He sat stiffly in his chair and looked at the +other with cynical interest. + +"You write all night on this lye, I suppose?" he said, abruptly. "A +combined production of brains and coffee." + +Algarcife lighted his pipe and leaned back in his chair, blowing gray +circles of smoke upon the atmosphere. + +"You are right," he responded; "I find I do my best work after midnight, +when I am drunk on caffeine or coffee. I suppose it will do for me in +the end." + +Mr. Paul returned his indifferent gaze with one of severity. "You are +all nerves as it is," he said. "You haven't an ounce of good barbarian +blood in your body--merely a colorless machine for ratiocination. I tell +you, there is no bigger fool than the man who, because he possesses a +few brains, forgets that he is an animal." + +The other laughed abstractedly. + +"What wholesome truths you deliver," he said. "I think Luther must have +had your manner. Well, if I were in your place, I should probably say +the same, though less forcibly. But they are theories. You see, I argue +this way: with one man's mind and one man's power of work, I could never +accomplish what I have before me--any more than poor Buckle, with the +brain of a giant, could accomplish what he undertook. It is too big for +a single man in this stage of development. So, with one man's mind, I +intend to do six men's amount of labor. If I hold out, I will have my +reward; if I go to pieces, I shall at least have the satisfaction of a +good fight." + +His voice was distinct and forcible, with a widely varied range of +expression. + +There was a second tap at the door, and Mr. Nevins entered, looking +depressed and ill-humored. + +"Hello, Anthony!" he called. "What! is Mr. Paul squandering your +midnight oil? You should have sent him to bed long ago." + +"It is not my hour for retiring," responded Mr. Paul. + +Anthony interrupted pacifically. + +"Mr. Paul is exhorting me," he said, "and I have no doubt that, with +slight modifications, his sermon may be adapted to your case. He +predicts brain-softening and general senility." + +"An inspired prophecy," returned Mr. Nevins, crossly, "and savoring of +Jeremiah. As for myself, it is but common justice that a man who has +conscientiously refused the cultivation of the mind should not be called +upon to lose what he doesn't possess." Then he grew suddenly cheerful. +"Confound it! What's the use of being a philosopher on paper when you +can be one in practice. What's the use of dying when you can eat, +drink, and be merry?" + +"Eating," remarked Mr. Paul, with depressing effect, "produces +dyspepsia, drinking produces gout." + +"And thought, paresis," added Anthony, lightly. "They are all merely +different forms of dissipation. I have chosen mine; Nevins has chosen +his. Only, as a matter of taste, I'd rather die by work than wine. +Personally, I prefer consumption to apoplexy." + +"There is such a thing as the means justifying the end," responded Mr. +Nevins, in reckless ill-humor. "And it is a great principle. If I wasn't +a fool, I'd make a bonfire of my brush and palette, and start afresh on +a level with my appetite. I would become the apostle of good-living, +which means fast living. I tell you, an hour of downright devilment is +worth all the art since Adam. Aristippus is greater than Raphael." + +"What has gone wrong?" demanded Algarcife, soothingly. "Too much purple +in the 'Andromeda'? I always said that purple was the imperial color of +his satanic majesty. If you had followed the orthodox art of your +college days, and hadn't gone wandering after strange gods, you might +have escaped a dash of that purple melancholia." + +"You're a proper fellow," returned Mr. Nevins, with disgust. "Who was it +that won that last debate in '82 by a glowing defence of Christianity +against agnosticism, and, when the Reverend Miles lit out about the new +orator in his flock, floored him with: 'Was that good? Then what a +magnificent thing I could have made of the other side!'" + +Mr. Paul had opened his book, and glanced up with candid lack of +interest. Anthony laughed languidly. + +"I saw Miles some weeks ago," he said, "and he is still talking about my +'defection,' as he calls it. I couldn't convince him that I was merely +the counsel for a weak case, and that I was always an agnostic at +heart." + +Mr. Nevins lighted a cigar in silence. Then he nodded abruptly towards +the wall. "What's that noise?" he demanded, irritably. + +"That," replied Algarcife, "is a fiend in woman's form, who makes night +hideous. I can't begin to work until she sings herself hoarse, and she +doesn't do that until midnight. Verily, she is possessed of seven +devils, and singing devils at that." + +Mr. Nevins was listening attentively. His irritability had vanished. + +"Why, it's Mariana!" he exclaimed. "Bless her pretty throat! An hour of +Mariana is worth all the spoken or unspoken thoughts of--of Marcus +Aurelius, to say nothing of Solomon." + +Mr. Paul closed his book and looked up gravely. "A worthy young woman," +he observed, "though a trifle fast. As for Solomon, his wisdom has been +greatly exaggerated." + +"Fast!" protested Mr. Nevins. "She's as fast as--as Mr. Paul--" + +"Your insinuation is absurd," returned Mr. Paul, stiffly. But Mr. Nevins +was not to be suppressed. + +"Then don't display your ignorance of such matters. As for this St. +Anthony, he thinks every woman who walks the New York streets a bleached +pattern of virtue. I don't believe he'd know a painted Jezebel unless +she wore a scarlet letter." + +Anthony turned upon him resentfully. "Confound it, Nevins," he said, "I +am not a born fool!" + +"Only an innocent," retorted Mr. Nevins, complacently. + +A resounding rap upon the panels of the door interrupted them. Mr. +Nevins rose. + +"That's Ardly," he said. "He and I are doing New York to-night." + +Ardly came inside, and stood with his hand upon the door-knob. + +"Come on, Nevins," he said. "I've got to do a column on that new +_danseuse_. She dances like a midge, but, by Jove! she has a figure to +swear by--" + +"And escape perjury," added Mr. Nevins. "Mariana says it is false." + +"Mariana," replied Ardly, "is a sworn enemy to polite illusions. She +surveys the stage through a microscope situated upon the end of a +lorgnette. It is a mistake. One should never look at a woman through +glasses unless they be rose-colored ones. A man preserves this +principle, and his faith in plumpness and curves along with it; a woman +penetrates to the padding and powder. Come on, Nevins." + +Mr. Nevins followed him into the hall, and then turned to look in again. +"Algarcife, won't you join us on a jolly little drunk? Won't you, Mr. +Paul?" + +When they had gone, and Mr. Paul had gone likewise, though upon a +different way, Anthony heated the coffee, drank two cups, and resumed +his work. + +"Taken collectively," he remarked, "the human race is a consummate +nuisance. What a deuced opportunity for work the last man will +have--only, most likely, he'll be an ass." + +The next day he passed Mariana on the stairs without seeing her. He was +returning from the college laboratory, and his mind was full of his +experiments. Later in the afternoon, when he watered his plants, he +turned his can, in absent-minded custom, upon the geranium, and saw that +there was a scarlet bloom among the leaves. The sight pleased him. It +was as if he had given sustenance to a famished life. + +But Mariana, engrossed in lesser things, had seen him upon the stairs +and upon the balcony. She still cherished an unreasonable resentment at +what she considered his trespass upon her individual rights; and yet, +despite herself, the trenchant quality in the dark, massive-browed face +had not been without effect upon her. The ascetic self-repression that +chastened his lips, and the utter absence of emotion in the mental heat +of his glance tantalized her in its very unlikeness to her own nature. +She, who thrilled into responsive joy or gloom at reflected light or +shade, found her quick senses awake to each passing impression, and had +learned to recognize her neighbor's step upon the stair; while he, +wrapped in an intellectual trance, created his environment at will, and +was as oblivious of the girl at the other end of the fire-escape as he +was to the articles of furniture in his room. + +It was as if semi-barbarism, in all its exuberance of undisciplined +emotion, had converged with the highest type of modern civilization--the +civilization in which the flesh is degraded from its pedestal and forced +to serve as a jangled vehicle for the progress of the mind. + +The next night, as Algarcife stood at his window looking idly down upon +the street below, he heard the sound of a woman sobbing in the adjoining +room. His first impulse was to hasten in the direction from whence the +sound came. He curbed the impulse with a shake. + +"Hang it," he said, "it is no business of mine!" + +But the suppressed sobbing from the darkness beyond invited him with its +enlistment of his quick sympathies. + +The electric light, falling upon the fire-escape, cast inky shadows from +end to end. They formed themselves into dense outlines, which shivered +as if stirred by a phantom breeze. + +He turned and went back to his desk. Upon the table he had spread the +supper of which he intended partaking at eleven o'clock. For an unknown +reason he had conceived an aversion to the restaurant in the basement, +and seldom entered it. He slept late in the day and worked at night, +and his meals were apt to be at irregular hours. + +He wrote a line, and rose and went back to the window. For an instant he +stood and listened, then stepped out upon the fire-escape and walked +across the shivering shadows towards the open window beyond. + +Upon the little door beneath the window a girl was leaning, her head +bowed upon her outstretched arm. The light in the room beyond was low, +but he could see distinctly the slight outlines of her figure and the +confusion of her heavy hair. She was sobbing softly. + +"I beg your pardon," he said, the sympathetic quality in his voice +dominating, "but I am sure that I can help you." + +His forcible self-confidence exercised a compelling effect. The girl +lifted her head and looked at him. Tears stood in her eyes, and as the +electric light caught the clear drops they cast out scintillant flashes. +Against the dim interior her head, with its nimbus of hair, had the +droop and poise of the head of a mediaeval saint. + +"Oh, but you don't know how unhappy I am!" she said. + +He spoke as he would have spoken to Mr. Paul in the same circumstances. +"You have no one to whom you can go?" + +"No." + +"Then tell me about it." + +His tone was that in which a physician might inquire the condition of a +patient's digestion. It was absolutely devoid of the recognition of sex. + +"Oh, I have worked so hard!" said Mariana. + +"Yes?" + +"And I hoped to sing in opera, and--Morani tells me that--it will be +impossible." + +"Ah!" In the peculiar power of his voice the exclamation had the warmth +of a handshake. + +Mariana rested her chin upon her clasped hands and looked at him. "He +says it must be a music-hall--or--or nothing," she added. + +He was silent for a moment. He felt that it was a case in which his +sympathy could be exceeded only by his ignorance. "And this is why you +are unhappy?" he asked. "Is there nothing else?" + +She gave a little sob. "I am tired," she said. "My allowance hasn't +come--and I missed my dinner, and I am--hungry." + +Algarcife responded with relieved cheerfulness. + +"Why, we are prepared for that," he said. "I was just sitting down to my +supper, and you will join me." + +In his complete estrangement from the artificial restraints of society, +it seemed to him the simplest of possible adjustments of the difficulty. +He felt that his intervention had not been wholly without beneficial +results. + +Mariana glanced swiftly up into his face. + +"Come!" he said; and she rose and followed him. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +As Mariana crossed the threshold the light dazzled her, and she raised +her hand to her eyes. Then she lowered it and looked at him between +half-closed lids. It was a trick of mannerism which heightened the +subtlety of her smile. In the deep shadows cast by her lashes her eyes +were untranslatable. + +"You are very hospitable," she said. + +"A virtue which covers a multitude of sins," he answered, pleasantly. +"If you will make yourself at home, I'll fix things up a bit." + +He opened the doors of the cupboard and took out a plate and a cup and +saucer, which he placed before her. "I am sorry I can't offer you a +napkin," he said, apologetically, "but they allow me only one a day, and +I had that at luncheon." + +Mariana laughed merrily. The effects of recent tears were visible only +in the added lustre of her glance and the pallor of her face. She had +grown suddenly mirthful. + +"Don't let's be civilized!" she pleaded. "I abhor civilization. It +invented so many unnecessary evils. Barbarians didn't want napkins; they +wanted only food. I am a barbarian." + +Algarcife cut the cold chicken and passed her the bread and butter. + +"Why, none of us are really civilized, you know," he returned, +dogmatically. "True, we have a thin layer of hypocrisy, which we call +civilization. It prompts us to sugar-coat the sins which our forefathers +swallowed in the rough; that is all. It is purely artificial. In a +hundred thousand years it may get soaked in, and then the artificial +refinement will become real and civilization will set in." + +Mariana leaned forward with a pretty show of interest. She did not quite +understand what he meant, but she adapted herself instinctively to +whatever he might mean. + +"And then?" she questioned. + +"And then we will realize that to be civilized is to shrink as +instinctively from inflicting as from enduring pain. Sympathy is merely +a quickening of the imagination, in which state we are able to propel +ourselves mentally into conditions other than our own." His manner was +aggressive in its self-assertiveness. Then he smiled, regarded her with +critical keenness, and lifted the coffee-pot. + +"I sha'n't give you coffee," he said, "because it is not good for you. +You need rest. Why, your hands are trembling! You shall have milk +instead." + +"I don't like milk," returned Mariana, fretfully. "I'd rather have +coffee, please. I want to be stimulated." + +"But not artificially," he responded. His gaze softened. "This is my +party, you know," he said, "and it isn't polite to ask for what is not +offered you. Come here." + +He had risen and was standing beside his desk. Mariana went up to him. +The power of his will had enthralled her, and she felt strangely +submissive. Her coquetry she recognized as an unworthy weapon, and it +was discarded. She grew suddenly shy and nervous, and stood before him +in the flushed timidity of a young feminine thing. + +He had taken a bottle from a shelf and was measuring some dark liquid +into a wine-glass. As Mariana reached him he took her hand with frank +kindliness. In his cool and composed touch there was not so much as a +suggestion of sexual difference. The possibility that, as a woman, she +possessed an attraction for him, as a man, was ignored in its entirety. + +"You have cried half the evening?" + +"Yes." + +"Drink this." His tone was peremptory. + +He gave her the glass, watching her as she looked into it, with the +gleam of a smile in his intent regard. Mariana hesitated an instant. +Then she drank it with a slight grimace. + +"Your hospitality has taken an unpleasant turn," she remarked. "You +might at least give me something to destroy the taste." + +He laughed and pointed to a plate of grapes, and they sat down to +supper. + +The girl glanced about the room critically. Then she looked at her +companion. + +"I don't quite like your room," she observed. "It is grewsome." + +"It is a work-shop," he answered. "But your dislike is pure nonsense. +Skulls and cross-bones are as natural in their way as flesh and blood. +Nothing in nature is repellent to the mind that follows her." + +Mariana repressed a shudder. "I have no doubt that toads are natural +enough in their way," she returned, "but I don't like the way of toads." + +Anthony met her serious protest lightly. + +"You are a beautiful subject for morbid psychology," he said. "Why, +toads are eminently respectable creatures, and if we regard them without +prejudice, we will discover that, as a point of justice, they have an +equal right with ourselves to the possession of this planet. Only, right +is not might, you know." + +"But I love beautiful things," protested Mariana. She looked at him +wistfully, like a child desiring approbation. There was an amber light +in her eyes. + +He smiled upon her. + +"So do I," he made answer; "but to me each one of those nice little +specimens is a special revelation of beauty." + +The girl broke her bread daintily. "You misunderstand me," she said, +with flattering earnestness and a deprecatory inflection in her voice. +Her head drooped sideways on its slender throat. There was a virginal +illusiveness about her that tinged with seriousness the lightness of her +words. "Surely you love art," she said. + +"Oh, I like painting, if that is what you mean," he answered, +carelessly, though her image in his eyes was relieved against a sudden +warmth. "That is, I like Raphael and Murillo and a few of the modern +French fellows. As for music, I don't know one note from another. The +only air I ever caught was 'In the Fragrant Summer-time,' and that was +an accident. I thought it was 'Maryland.'" + +Mariana did not smile. She shrank from him, and he felt as if he had +struck her. + +"It isn't worth your thinking of," he said, "nor am I." + +Mariana protested with her restless hands. + +"Oh, but I can't help thinking of it," she answered. "It is dreadful. +Why, such things are a part of my religion!" + +He returned her startled gaze with one of amusement. + +"I might supply you with an alphabetical dictionary of my peculiar +vices. An unabridged edition would serve for a criminal catalogue as +well. A--Acrimony, Adhesiveness, Atheism, Aggressiveness, Aggravation, +Ambition, Artfulness--" + +"Oh, stop!" cried Mariana. "You bewilder me." + +He leaned back in his chair and fixed his intent gaze upon her. His eyes +were so deeply set as to be almost indistinguishable, but in the spell +of lamplight she saw that the pupils differed in color, one having a +hazel cast, while the other was of a decided gray. + +"Why, I thought you displayed an interest in the subject!" he rejoined. +"You lack the genius of patience." + +"Patience," returned Mariana, with a swift change of manner, "is only +lack of vitality. I haven't an atom of it." + +A shade of the nervous irritability, which appeared from apparently no +provocation, was in his voice as he answered: + +"There is nothing fate likes better than to drill it into us. And it is +not without its usefulness. If patience is the bugbear of youth, it is +the panacea of middle age. We learn to sit and wait as we learn to +accept passivity for passion and indifference for belief. The worst of +it is that it is a lesson which none of us may skip and most of us are +forced to learn by heart." He spoke slowly, his voice softened. Beneath +the veneering of philosophic asceticism, the scarlet veins of primeval +nature were still palpitant. The chill lines of self-restraint in his +face might, in the whirlwind of strong passions, become ingulfed in +chaos. + +With an effort Mariana threw off the spell of his personality. She +straightened herself with an energetic movement. From the childlike her +manner passed to the imperious. Her head poised itself proudly, her eyes +darkened, her lips lost their pliant curve and grew audacious. + +"That is as grewsome as your room," she said. "Let's talk of pleasant +things." + +The changes in her mystified Algarcife. He regarded her gravely. "Of +yourself, or of myself?" he demanded. + +"The first would only display your ignorance. I should prefer the +latter. Begin, please." She had grown vivid. + +He spoke jestingly. "Here goes. Name, Algarcife. Christened Anthony. +Age, twenty-seven years, three weeks, ten days. Height, five feet eleven +inches. Complexion, anaemic. Physique, bad. Disposition, worse. Manners, +still worse. Does the exactness of my information satisfy you?" + +"No;" she enveloped him in her smile. "You haven't told me anything I +want to know. I could have guessed your height, and your manners I have +tested. What were you doing before I came in?" + +"Cursing my luck." + +"And before that?" She leaned forward eagerly. + +"Dogging at a theory of heredity which will reconcile Darwin's gemmules, +Weismann's germ-plasm, and Galton's stirp." + +She wrinkled her brows in perplexity. Her show of interest had not fled. +A woman who cannot talk of the things she knows nothing about might as +well be a man. + +"And you will do it?" she asked. He had a sudden consciousness that no +one had ever been quite so in sympathy with him as this elusive little +woman with the changeable eyes. + +"Well, I hardly think so," he said. "At any rate, I expect to discover +what Spencer would call the germ of truth in each one of them, and then +I suppose I'll formulate a theory of my own which will contain the best +in all of them." + +Her manner did not betray her ignorance of his meaning. + +"And you will explain it all to me when it is finished?" she asked. + +His smile cast a light upon her. + +"If you wish it," he answered, "but I had no idea that you cared for +such things." + +"You did not know me," she responded, reproachfully. "I am very, very +ignorant, but I want so much to learn." Then her voice regained its +brightness. "And you have read all these books?" she questioned. + +He followed with his eyes her swift gestures. + +"Those," he answered, pointing to the north shelves, "I have skimmed. +Those behind you, I have read; and those," he nodded towards his right, +"I know word for word." + +"And what do you do?" The delicacy of her manner imbued the question +with unconscious flattery. + +"I--oh, I eke out an existence with the assistance of the Bodley +College." + +"What have you to do with it? Oh, I beg your pardon! I had forgotten we +were almost strangers." + +He answered, naturally. + +"It is my unhappy fate to endeavor to instil a few brains and a good +deal of information into the heads of sixty-one young females." + +"And don't you like them?" queried Mariana, eagerly. + +"I do not." + +"Why?" + +"What an inquisitor you are, to be sure!" + +"But tell me," she pleaded. + +"Why?" he demanded, in his turn. + +She lowered her lashes, looking at her quiet hands. + +"Because I want so much to know." + +His smiling eyes were probing her. "Tell me why." + +She raised her lashes suddenly and returned his gaze. There was a +wistful sincerity in her eyes. + +"I wish to know," she said, slowly, "so that I may not be like them." + +For a moment he regarded her silently. Then he spoke. "My reasons are +valid. They giggle; they flirt; and they put candy in my pockets." + +"And you don't like women at all?" + +"I like nice, sensible women, who wear square-toed shoes, and who don't +distort themselves with corsets." + +The girl put out her pretty foot in its pointed and high-heeled slipper. +Then she shook her head with mock seriousness. + +"I don't suppose you think that very sensible?" she remarked. + +He looked at it critically. + +"Well, hardly. No, it isn't in the least sensible, but it--it is very +small, isn't it?" + +"Oh yes," responded Mariana, eagerly. She felt a sudden desire to flaunt +her graces in his face. He was watching the play of her hands, but she +became conscious, with an aggrieved surprise, that he was not thinking +of them. + +"But you don't like just mere--mere women?" she asked, gravely. + +"Are you a mere--mere woman?" + +"Yes." + +"Then I like them." + +The radiance that overflowed her eyes startled him. + +"But you aren't just a mere--mere man," she volunteered. + +"But I am--a good deal merer, in fact, than many others. I am a shape of +clay." + +"Then I like shapes of clay," said Mariana. + +For an instant they looked at each other in silence. In Mariana's +self-conscious eyes there was a soft suffusion of shyness; in his +subjective ones there was the quickening of an involuntary interest. + +"Then we agree most amicably," he remarked, quietly. As she rose he +stood facing her. "It is time for your sleep and my work," he added, and +held out his hand. + +As Mariana placed her own within it she flashed whitely with a sudden +resentment of his cool dismissal. + +"Good-night!" she said. + +He looked down at her as she lingered before him. "I want to be of use +to you," he said, frankly, "but things have an unfortunate way of +slipping my memory. If at any time I can serve you, just come to the +fire-escape and call me." + +"No," answered the girl, pettishly, "certainly not." + +His brow wrinkled. "That was rude, I know," he rejoined, "but I meant it +honestly." + +"I have no doubt of it." + +As she turned to go he detained her with a compelling touch. + +"You aren't angry?" + +"No." + +"And you forgive me?" + +"I have nothing to forgive. Indeed, I am grateful for your charity." + +He surveyed her in puzzled scrutiny. "Well, I am sure I sha'n't forget +you," he said. "Yes, I am quite sure of it." + +"What a marvellous memory!" exclaimed Mariana, crossly, and she stepped +out upon the fire-escape. + +"Good-night!" he called. + +"Good-night!" she responded, and entered her room. + +"He is very rude," she whispered as she closed the shutters. In the +half-light she undressed and sat in her night-gown, brushing the heavy +tangles of her hair. Then she lighted the flame before the little altar +and said her prayers; kneeling with bowed head. As she turned off the +light she spoke again. "I am not sure that I don't like rudeness," she +added. + +Meanwhile Algarcife had watched her vanish into the shadows, a smile +lightening the gravity of his face. When she had disappeared he turned +to his desk. With his singular powers of concentration, he had not taken +up his pen before all impressions save those relating to the subject in +hand had been banished from his mind. His expression was buoyant and +alert. Turning over his papers, he passed with a sense of reinvigoration +to the matter before him. + +"Yes; I think, after all, that a strongly modified theory of pangenesis +may survive," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +At the extreme end of the corridor upon which Mariana's door opened +there was a small apartment occupied by three young women from the +South, who were bent upon aims of art. + +They had moved in a month before, and had celebrated a room-warming by +asking Mariana and several of the other lodgers to a feast of beer and +pretzels. Since then the girl had seen them occasionally. She knew that +they lived in a semi-poverty-stricken Bohemia, and that the pretty one +with pink cheeks and a ragged and uncurled fringe of hair, whose name +was Freighley, worked in Mr. Nevins's studio and did chrysanthemums in +oils. She had once heard Mr. Nevins remark that she was a pupil worth +having, and upon asking, "Has she talent?" had met with, "Not a bit, but +she's pretty." + +"Then it is a pity she isn't a model," said Mariana. + +"An example of the eternal contrariness of things," responded Mr. +Nevins. "All the good-looking ones want to paint and all the ugly ones +want to be painted." Then he rumpled his flaxen head. "In this +confounded century everything is in the wrong place, from a woman to her +waist-line." + +After this Mariana accompanied Miss Freighley on students' day to the +Metropolitan Museum, and watched her make a laborious copy of "The +Christian Martyr." Upon returning she was introduced to Miss Hill and +Miss Oliver, who shared the apartment, and was told to make herself at +home. + +Then, one rainy Saturday afternoon there was a knock at her door, and, +opening it, she found Miss Freighley upon the outside. + +"It is our mending afternoon," she said, "and we want you to come and +sit with us. If you have any sewing to do, just bring it." + +Mariana picked up her work-basket, and, finding that her thimble was +missing, began rummaging in a bureau-drawer. + +"I never mend anything until I go to put it on," she said. "It saves so +much trouble." + +Then she found her thimble and followed Miss Freighley into the hall. + +Miss Freighley laughed in a pretty, inconsequential way. She had a soft, +monotonous voice, and spoke with a marked elimination of vowel sounds. + +"We take the last Saturday of the month," she said. "Only Juliet and I +do Gerty's things, because she can't sew, and she cleans our palettes +and brushes in return." + +She swung open the door of the apartment, and they entered a room which +served as studio and general lounging-room in one. + +A tall girl, sitting upon the hearth-rug beside a heap of freshly +laundered garments, stood up and held out a limp, thin hand. + +"I told Carrie she would find you," she said, speaking with a slight +drawl and an affected listlessness. + +She was angular, with a consumptive chest and narrow shoulders. She wore +her hair--which was vivid, like flame, with golden ripples in the +undulations--coiled confusedly upon the crown of her head. Her name was +Juliet Hill. A mistaken but well-known colorist had once traced in her a +likeness to Rossetti's "Beata Beatrix." The tracing had resulted in the +spoiling of a woman without the making of an artist. + +Mariana threw herself upon a divan near the hearth-rug and looked down +upon the pile of clothes. + +"What a lot of them!" she observed, sympathetically. + +Miss Hill drew a stocking from the heap and ran her darning-egg into the +heel to locate a hole. + +"It is, rather," she responded, "but we never mend until everything we +have is in rags. I couldn't find a single pair of stockings this +morning, so I knew it was time." + +"If you had looked into Gerty's bureau-drawer you might have found +them," said Miss Freighley, seating herself upon the end of the divan. +"Gerty never marks her things, and somehow she gets all of ours. +Regularly once a month I institute a search through her belongings, and +discover more of my clothes than I knew I possessed. Here, give me that +night-gown, Juliet. The laundress tore every bit of lace off the sleeve. +What a shame!" + +Mariana removed a guitar from the couch and leaned back among the +pillows, glancing about the room. The walls were covered with coarse +hangings, decorated in vague outlines of flying cranes and vaguer +rushes. Here and there were tacked groups of unframed water-colors and +drawings in charcoal--all crude and fanciful and feminine. Upon a small +shelf above the door stood a plaster bust, and upon it a dejected and +moth-eaten raven--the relic of a past passion for taxidermy. In the +centre of the room were several easels, a desk, with Webster's +Unabridged for a foot-stool, and a collection of palettes, half-used +tubes of paint, and unassorted legs and arms in plaster. + +"How do you ever find anything?" asked Mariana, leaning upon her arm. + +"We don't," responded a small, dark girl, coming from the tiny kitchen +with a dish of cooling caramels in her hand; "we don't find, we just +lose." She placed the dish upon the table and drew up a chair. "I would +mortgage a share of my life if I could turn my old mammy loose in here +for an hour." + +"Gerty used to be particular," explained Miss Freighley; "but it is a +vicious habit, and we broke her of it. Even now it attacks her at +intervals, and she gets out a duster and goes to work." + +"I can't write in a mess," interrupted Miss Oliver, a shade ruefully. "I +haven't written a line since I came to New York." Then she sighed. "I +only wish I hadn't written a word before coming. At home I thought I was +a genius; now I know I am a fool." + +"I have felt the same way," said Mariana, sympathetically, "but it +doesn't last. The first stage-manager I went to I almost fell at his +feet; the next almost fell at mine. Neither of them gave me a place, but +they taught me the value of men." + +"I don't think it's worth learning," returned Miss Oliver, passing her +caramels. "Try one, and see if they are hard." + +"Poor Gerty!" drawled Miss Hill, watching Mariana bite the caramel. "She +faces editors and all kinds of bad characters. Her views of life are +depressing." + +"They are not views," remonstrated Miss Oliver, "they are facts. Facts +are always depressing, except when they are maddening." + +"I have begged her to leave off writing and take to water-color or china +painting," said Miss Freighley, cheerfully, "but she won't." + +"How can she?" asked Mariana. + +"Of course I can't," retorted Miss Oliver, shortly. "I never had a +paint-brush in my hand in my life, except when I was cleaning it." + +Miss Freighley laid her sewing aside and stretched her arms. + +"It only requires a little determination," she said, "and I have it. I +got tired of Alabama. I couldn't come to New York without an object, so +I invented one. It was as good as any other, and I stuck to it." + +Miss Hill shook her head, and her glorious hair shone like amber. + +"Art is serious," she said, slowly. She was just entering the life-class +at the Art League. + +"But the artist is not," returned Miss Freighley, "and one can be an +artist without having any art. I am. They think at home I am learning to +paint pictures to go on the parlor wall in place of the portraits that +were burned in the war. But I am not. I am here because I love New York, +and--" + +"Claude Nevins," concluded Miss Oliver. + +Mariana looked up with interest. "How nice!" she said. "He told me you +were awfully pretty." + +Miss Freighley blushed and laughed. + +"Nonsense!" she rejoined; "but Gerty is so faithful to her young fellow +down South that it has gone to her brain." + +"I am faithful because I have no opportunity for faithlessness," sang +Gerty to an accompaniment she was picking upon the guitar. "I have been +in love one--two--six times since I came to New York. Once it was with +an editor, who accepted my first story. He was short and thick and +gray-haired, but I loved him. Once it was with that dark, ill-fed man +who rooms next to Mariana. He almost knocked me down upon the stairway +and forgot to apologize. I have forgotten the honorable others, as the +Japanese say, but I know it is six times, because whenever it happened I +made a little cross-mark on my desk, and there are six of them." + +"It must have been Mr. Ardly," said Mariana. "I never look at him +without thinking what an adorable lover he would make." + +"He has such nice hands," said Miss Oliver. "I do like a man with nice +hands." + +"And he is clean-shaven," added Miss Freighley. "I detest a man with a +beard." + +Miss Hill crossed her thin ankles upon the hearth. + +"Love should be taken seriously," she said, with a wistful look in her +dark eyes. + +Miss Freighley's pretty, inconsequent laugh broke in. + +"That is one of Juliet's platitudes," she said. "But, my dear, it +shouldn't be taken seriously. Indeed, it shouldn't be taken at +all--except in cases of extreme _ennui_, and then in broken doses. The +women who take men seriously--and taking love means taking men, of +course--sit down at home and grow shapeless and have babies galore. To +grow shapeless is the fate of the woman who takes sentiment seriously. +It is a more convincing argument against it than all the statistics of +the divorce court--" + +"For the Lord's sake, Carrie, beware of woman's rights," protested Miss +Oliver. "That is exactly what Mrs. Simpson said in her lecture on 'Our +Tyrant, Man.' Why, those dear old aunts of yours in Alabama have +inserted an additional clause in their Litany: 'From intemperance, evil +desires, and woman's suffrage, good Lord deliver us!' They are grounded +in the belief that the new woman is an _edition de luxe_ of the devil." + +Mariana rose and shook out her skirts. "I must go," she said, "and you +haven't done a bit of work." + +"So we haven't," replied Miss Hill, picking up her needle. "But take +some caramels--do." + +Mariana took a caramel and went out into the hall. Algarcife's door was +open, and he was standing upon the threshold talking to Claude Nevins. + +As Mariana passed, Nevins smiled and called to her: + +"I say, Miss Musin, here is a vandal who complains that you make night +hideous." + +Algarcife scowled. + +"Nevins is a fool," he retorted, "and if he doesn't know it, he ought to +be told so." + +"Thanks," returned Nevins, amiably, "but I have long since learned not +to believe anything I hear." + +Anthony's irritation increased. "I should have thought the presumptive +evidence sufficient to overcome any personal bias," he replied. + +Nevins spread out his hands with an imperturbable shrug. + +"My dear fellow, I never found my conclusions upon presumptive evidence. +Had I done so, I should hold life to be a hollow mockery--whereas I am +convinced that it is a deuced solid one." + +"You are so bad-tempered--both of you," said Mariana; "but, Mr. +Algarcife, do you really object to my singing? I can't keep silent, you +know." + +Algarcife smiled. + +"I never supposed that you could," he answered. "And as for music, I had +as soon listen to you as to--to Patti." + +"Not that he values your accomplishments more, but Patti's less," +observed Nevins, placidly. + +"On the other hand, I should say that Miss Musin would make decidedly +the less noise," said Anthony. + +"He's a brute, isn't he, Mariana?" asked Nevins--and added, "Now I never +said you made anything hideous, did I?" + +Mariana laughed, looking a little vexed. "If you wouldn't always repeat +everything you hear other people say, it would be wiser," she responded, +tartly. + +"Such is the reward of virtue," sighed Nevins. "All my life I have been +held as responsible for other people's speeches as for my own. And all +from a conscientious endeavor to let my neighbors see themselves as +others see them--" + +Algarcife smiled good-humoredly. "Whatever bad qualities Nevins may +possess," he said, "he has at least the courage of his convictions--" + +Nevins shrugged his shoulders. + +"I don't know about the convictions," he rejoined, "but I've got the +courage all right." Then he looked at Mariana. "Is that an implement of +housewifery that I see?" he demanded. + +"I have been to a darning-party," she answered, "but we didn't darn +anything--not even circumstances." + +"Lucky circumstances!" ejaculated Nevins. Then he lowered his voice. "I +should not have believed it of you," he protested; "to attend a +darning-party, and to leave not only me, but my socks, outside." + +Mariana flushed angrily. + +"You are insufferable," she said, "and you haven't a particle of +tact--not a particle. Only yesterday I heard you tell Mr. Morris that +his head looked like an advertisement for sapolio, and the day before +you told Miss Freighley that I said she didn't know how to dress her +hair." + +"It was true," said Nevins. "You can't make a liar of me, Mariana." + +"I wish you wouldn't call me Mariana," she retorted; and he went upon +his way with a lament. + +As Mariana laid her hand upon her door-knob she looked at Anthony. + +"Mr. Algarcife," she said, "do you really mind my singing so very much?" + +From the end of the corridor Nevins's voice was heard chanting: + + "How fickle women are, + Fickle as falling star." + +"I wish that Nevins would attend to his own affairs," Algarcife +responded. "As for me, you may dance a break-down every night of your +life, and, if it amuses you, I'll grin and bear it." + + + + +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 aesthetic 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. + +"You laugh at me," she added. "You were kinder to that woman--" + +He broke in upon her, perplexity giving place to amusement. + +"Oh!" he said; "so that is what you mean! Why, if you were to lose your +hat, I shouldn't laugh, I assure you." + +Mariana walked on silently. Her eyes were bent upon the gray sidewalk, +there was a faint flush in her face. A line of men seated upon the +benches beside the way surveyed her with interest. + +"Miss Musin!" + +Her face quickened. + +"I have a confession to make." + +She looked up inquiringly. A finger of sunlight pierced the branches of +an elm and pointed to her upraised face. + +"I have rather bad manners," he went on. "It is a failing which you must +accept as you accept the color of my hair--" + +Mariana smiled. + +"I say just what I think," he added. + +Mariana frowned. + +"That is what I complain of," she responded. Then she laughed so +brightly that a tiny child, toddling with a toy upon the walk, looked up +and clapped its hands. + +His eyes warmed. + +"But you will take me for better or for worse?" he demanded. + +"Could it be better?" she asked, demurely. + +"That is a matter of opinion." + +They left the park and turned into a cross-town street. The distant +blocks sloped down into the blue blur of the river, from which several +gaunt, gray masts rose like phantom wrecks evolved from the mist. Beyond +them the filmy outline of the opposite shore was revealed. + +Suddenly Mariana stopped. + +"This is Morani's, and I must go in." She held out her hand. + +"How is the voice?" he asked. + +"I am nursing it. Some day you shall hear it." + +"I have heard it," he responded. + +She smiled. + +"Oh, I forgot. You are next door. Well, some day you shall hear it in +opera." + +"Shall I?" + +"And I shall sing Elsa with Alvary. My God! I would give ten years of my +life for that--to sing with Alvary." + +He smiled at the warmth in her words and, as he smiled he became +conscious that her artistic passion ignited the fire of a more material +passion in himself. A fugitive desire seized him to possess the woman +before him, body and brain. From the quivering of his pulses he knew +that the physical nature he had drugged had stirred in response to a +passing appeal. + +"Good-bye," said Mariana. She tripped lightly up the brown-stone steps. +As she opened the outer door she turned with a smile and a nod. Then the +door closed and he went on his way. But the leaping of his pulses was +not appeased. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +One morning, several days later, Mariana, looking from her window, saw +Anthony standing upon the fire-escape. He had thrown a handful of crumbs +to a swarm of noisy sparrows quarrelling about his feet. + +As he stood there with the morning sunlight flashing upon his face and +gilding the dark abundance of his hair, the singularly mystic beauty of +his appearance was brought into bold relief. It was a beauty which +contained no suggestion of physical supremacy. He seemed the survival of +a lost type--of those purified prophets of old who walked with God and +trampled upon the flesh which was His handiwork. It was the striking +contrast between the intellectual tenor of his mind and its physical +expression which emphasized his personality. To the boldest advance in +scientific progress he had the effect of uniting a suggestion of that +poetized mysticism which constitutes the charm of a remote past. With +the addition of the yellow robe and a beggar's bowl, he might have been +transformed into one of the Enlightened of nigh on three thousand years +ago, and have followed the Blessed One upon his pilgrimage towards +Nirvana. The modernity of his mind was almost tantalizing in its +inconsistency with his external aspect. + +Mariana, looking through the open window, smiled unconsciously. Anthony +glanced up, saw her, and nodded. + +"Good-morning," he called. "Won't you come out and help quiet these +rogues?" + +Mariana opened the little door beneath the window and stepped outside. +She looked shy and girlish, and the flutter with which she greeted him +had a quaint suggestion of flattery. + +He came towards her, and they stood together beside the railing. Beneath +them the noise of trade and traffic went on tumultuously. Overhead the +sky was of a still, intense blueness, the horizon flecked by several +church-spires, which rose sharply against the burning remoteness. Across +the tenement roofs lines of drying garments fluttered like banners. + +Mariana, in her cotton gown of dull blue, cast a slender shadow across +the fire-escape. In the morning light her eyes showed gray and limpid. +The sallow tones of her skin were exaggerated, and the peculiar harmony +of hair and brows and complexion was strongly marked. She was looking +her plainest, and she knew it. + +But Anthony did not. He had seen her, perhaps, half a dozen times, and +upon each occasion he had discovered his previous conceptions of her to +be erroneous. Her extreme mobility of mood and manner at once perplexed +and attracted him. Yesterday he had resolved her character into a +compound of surface emotions. Now he told himself that she was cool and +calm and sweetly reasonable. + +"I am glad you like sparrows," she said, "because nobody else does, and, +somehow, it doesn't seem fair. You do like them, don't you?" + +"I believe," he answered, "that I have two passions beyond the usual +number with which man is supplied--a passion for books and a passion for +animals. I can't say I have a special regard for sparrows, but I like +them. They are hardy little fellows, though a trifle pugnacious, and +they have learned the value of co-operation." + +"I had a canary," remarked Mariana, with pathos, "but it died. +Everything that belongs to me always dies, sooner or later." + +He laughed, looking at her with quizzical humor. "Do you expect them to +escape the common fate?" he demanded; and then: "If there is anything +that could give me an attack of horrors sooner than a dancing dog--and +there isn't--it would be a bird in a cage. I left my last lodgings +because my neighbor kept a mocking-bird outside of her window. If it had +been a canary I might have endured it, but I knew that if I stayed there +a week longer I should break in and set that bird free. I used to hear +it at night beating itself against the cage." + +"Oh, hush!" said Mariana, putting her hands to her ears. She wondered +vaguely at his peculiar sensitiveness of sympathy. It was a type of +manhood that she had not before encountered--one as unlike the jovial, +fox-hunting heroes of her childish days as mind is unlike matter. She +remembered that among them such expressions would have been regarded as +a mark of effeminacy and ruthlessly laughed to scorn. She even +remembered that her own father had denounced a prohibition of +prize-fighting as "mawkish rot." This eccentric type of nervous vigor, +in which all remnants of semi-barbarism were apparently extinguished, +possessed a fascination for her in its very strangeness. In his +character all those active virtues around which her youthful romances +were woven held no place. Patriotism was modified into a sense of +general humanity; chivalry was tempered into commonplace politeness. She +did not know that the force which attracted her was but a dominant +mentality; that where the mind holds sway the character is modified +accordingly. With a great expenditure of nerve force those attributes +which result from physical hardihood occupy a less prominent part. In +Anthony she beheld, without knowing it, a forced and abnormal result of +existing conditions. Nature often foreshadows a coming civilization by +an advance-guard of individuals. As a supreme test she places a century +before his time the victim of her experiments in vivisection. And a +character that might have fitted with uncut edges into the circle of +existence, had he but been permitted to insert himself at the proper +moment, has often been trampled into nothingness by the incessant trend +of the inopportune. The priest of the coming generation is the pariah of +the present, and the dogma of to-morrow the heresy of to-day. + +To Mariana's ignorant eyes Anthony seemed one in whom passion had been +annihilated. In reality it was only smothered beneath the weight of a +strenuous will. Let the pressure be removed, and it would burst forth +the fiercer for its long confinement, ingulfing perhaps the whole +organism in its destructive flame. + +"Oh, hush!" Mariana had said, and turned from him. "You seem to delight +in unpleasant things. I make it a point to believe that suffering and +death do not exist. I _know_ they do, but I _believe_ they do not." + +He drew nearer. Across his face she saw a sudden flash--so vivid that it +seemed the awakening of a dormant element in his nature. "You are +wonderfully vital," he said. "There is as much life in you as there is +in a dozen of us poor effete mortals. What is your secret?" + +The girl leaned her arm upon the railing and rested her chin in her +hand. She looked up at him and her eyes grew darker. "It is the pure +animal love of existence," she answered. "I love the world. I love +living and breathing, and feeling the blood quicken in my veins. I love +dancing and singing and eating and sleeping. The simple sensuousness of +life is delicious to me. If I could not be a queen, I had rather be a +beggar upon the road-side than to be nothing. If I could not be a human +being, I had rather be a butterfly in the sunshine than not to be at +all. So long as I had the blue sky and the air and the world about me I +could not be miserable. It is life--life in its physical +fulfilment--that I love. So long as they leave me the open world I can +be happy. Only, if I were taken and shut up in an ugly dungeon I should +want to die. And even then there would be hope." + +She had spoken passionately, the words coming quickly from between her +parted lips. She seemed so light and etherealized as to be almost +bodiless. The materialistic philosophy to which she gave utterance was +spiritualized by her own illusiveness. + +For an instant she hesitated, looking across the tenement roofs to the +horizon beyond. Then she went on: "I am different from you--oh, so +different! Where you think, I feel. You are all mind, I am all senses. I +am only fulfilling my place in nature when I am hearing or seeing or +feeling beautiful things. My sense of beauty is my soul." + +Anthony watched her with steadfast intentness. He had never before seen +her in this mood, and it was a new surprise to him. His former +generalizations were displaced. + +But if he had known it, the present aspect was a result of his own +influence upon Mariana. In a moment of contrition for small deceptions, +she had been precipitated into an extravagant self-abasement. + +"You are disappointed," she added, presently, meeting his gaze. "You +expected something different, but I am shallow, and I can't help it." It +was like her that in the tendency to self-depreciation she was as +sincere as she had been in the former tendency to self-esteem. + +And perhaps Anthony was the juster judge of the two. He was certainly +the more dispassionate. + +"I have told you," concluded Mariana, with an eager catch at the +redeeming grace, "because I want to be truthful." + +"My dear girl," responded Anthony, a warm friendliness in his voice, +"you might have spared yourself this little piece of analysis. It is as +useless as most morbid rot of the kind. It doesn't in the least affect +what I think of you, and what I do think of you is of little +consequence." + +"But what do you think?" demanded Mariana. + +"I think that you know yourself just a little less well than you know +that old lady wheeling her cart of vegetables in the street below. Had +she, by the way, known herself a little better she would not have flown +into such a rage because she spilled a few. If we knew ourselves we +would see that things are not very much our fault, after all, and that a +few slips the more or less on our uphill road are very little matter." + +Mariana glowed suddenly. She looked up at him, a woman's regard for +power warming her eyes. To her impressionable temperament there seemed +an element of sublimity in his ethical composure. + +"Teach me," she said, simply. Anthony smiled. If he seemed a Stoic to +Mariana, it was not because he was one, and perhaps he was conscious of +it. But our conceptions of others are colored solely by their attitudes +towards ourselves, and not in the least by their attitudes towards the +universe, which, when all is said, is of far less consequence. + +"I should have first to learn the lesson myself," he answered. + +"Would you, if you could?" asked Mariana. + +For an instant he looked at her thoughtfully. "Teach you what?" he +questioned. "Teach you to endure instead of to enjoy? To know instead of +to believe? To play with skulls and cross-bones instead of with flowers +and sunshine? No, I think not." + +Mariana grew radiant. She felt a desire to force from him a reluctant +confession of liking. "Why wouldn't you?" she demanded. + +"Well, on the whole, I think your present point of view better suited to +you. And everything, after all, is in the point of view." He leaned +against the railing, looking down into the street. "Look over and tell +me what you see. Is it not the color of those purple egg-plants in the +grocer's stall? the pretty girl in that big hat, standing upon the +corner? the roguish faces of those ragamuffins at play? Well, I see +these, but I see also the drooping figure of the woman beside the stall; +the consumptive girl with the heavy bundle, going from her work; the +panting horses that draw the surface cars." + +They both gazed silently from the balcony. Then Mariana turned away. "It +is the hour for my music," she said. "I must go." + +The sunlight caught the nimbus around her head and brightened it with +veins of gold. + +"All joy goes with you," he answered, lightly. "And I shall return to +work." + +"All frivolity, you mean," laughed Mariana, and she left him with a +nod. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +According to the theory that vices are but virtues run to seed, +moderation was the dominant characteristic of Anthony Algarcife. At the +time of his meeting with Mariana, his natural tendencies, whatever they +may have been, were atrophied in the barren soil of long +self-repression. It is only when one is freed from the prejudices +engendered by the play of the affections that one's horizon is unbroken +by a vision of the objects in the foreground, and the forest is no +longer lost in consideration of the trees. + +And it was under the spell of this moderation that Mariana had fallen. +Her own virtues were of that particular quality of which the species is +by no means immutable, and of which the crossing often produces an +opposite variety, since a union of negative virtues has not infrequently +begotten a positive vice. But Mariana's character, of which at that time +even the verdict of society had not deprived her, possessed a jewel in +its inconsistency. Her very faults were rendered generous by their +vivacity, and redeemed her from inflexibility, that most unforgivable +trait in womanhood, which, after all, is merely firmness crystallized. +And as the lack of formativeness in Mariana left her responsive to the +influences beneath which she came, so the anger of yesterday was +tempered into the tenderness of to-day, and her nature modified by the +changes rung upon her moods. + +So far, the influence of Anthony had worked for good. The girl was +startled at the wave of gentleness which pervaded her. With a sudden +fervor she strained towards an indistinct ideal of goodness, an ideal +borrowed in its sanctity from a superficial study of Thomas a Kempis, +and in its unreality from the faded recollection of certain +Sunday-school literature read in her childhood. She aspired to be good +almost as much as she had once aspired to be famous, and set about it +with quite as unprincipled an abandon. But her ambition for holiness was +ill-timed. An excess of virtue is often as disastrous a form of +dissipation as an excess of vice, and the wreck of one's neighbor's +peace of mind no less to be deplored than the wreck of one's own +physique. For a fool may jog shoulder to shoulder with a comfortable +sinner, but it takes a philosopher to support the presence of an +unmitigated saint. + +So it was as well that Mariana's aspirations were short-lived. She +confessed them to Anthony, and they were overruled. + +"My dear girl," he said, "stop fasting, and don't wear away your knees +at prayer. All the breath in your body isn't going to affect the +decision of Omniscience. The only duty you owe to the universe is to +scatter as much pleasure in life as you can. Eat good red beef and ward +off anaemia, and give the time you have wasted in devotions to exercise +and fresh air. If we are all doomed to hell, you can't turn the earth +out of its track by bodily maceration. Evil plus evil doesn't equal +good." + +Mariana ceased praying and went out to walk. She was conscious of +strange quickenings of sympathy. She loved the world and the people that +passed her and the children laughing in the gutter. She bought a pot of +primroses from the flower-stall at the corner, and, having spent a +week's car-fare, walked a couple of miles in the sun to carry them to a +rheumatic old lady who had once been kind to her. With patient +good-humor she sat an hour in the sick-room, and, when she left, the +rheumatic old lady kissed and blessed her. + +The praise stirred her pulses with pleasure. She wondered if she might +not become a Sister of Charity and spend her life in ministering to +others, and when a ragged boot-black in the street begged for a dime she +gave him the money she had saved for a pair of gloves, and glorified the +sacrifice by the smile of a Saint Elizabeth. She felt that she would +like to give some one the coat from her back, and, as she passed in and +out of the crowd around her, her heart stirred in imaginative sympathy +for humanity. That vital recognition of the fellowship of man which is +as transient as it is inspiring, uplifted her. She wished that some one +from the crowd would single her out, saying, "I am wretched, comfort +me!" or, "I am starving, feed me!" + +But no one did so. They looked at her with indifferent eyes, and her +impulses recoiled upon themselves. At that moment she felt capable of +complete self-abnegation in the cause of mankind, and even commonplace +goodness possessed an attraction. But she realized that the desire to +sacrifice is short-lived, and that, after all, it is easier to lay down +one's life for the human race than to endure the idiosyncrasies of its +atoms. + +To us who adopt the proprieties as a profession and wear respectability +for a mantle, unauthorized impulses in any form are to be contemned, and +Mariana, flushed with generous desires, was as unacceptable as Mariana +submerged in self. + +After paying a couple of calls the girl's spirit of altruism evaporated. +It was warm and close, and the sun made her head ache, while the fatigue +from the unusual exercise produced a fit of ill-humor. She wondered why +she had left her room, and then looked at her soiled gloves and +regretted her encounter with the boot-black. The recollection of the +pot of primroses and the week's car-fare caused her even more annoyance. + +A block from The Gotham she ran upon Jerome Ardly, and her irritation +vanished. + +"Hello!" he ejaculated, "you are as white as a sheet. Too much September +sun. Had luncheon?" + +"Yes," responded Mariana; and she added, plaintively, "I am so tired. I +have walked myself to death--and all for nothing." + +"Form of monomania?" he inquired, sympathetically. "Nothing short of +arrant idiocy would take any one out for nothing on a day like this." + +Mariana looked at him and laughed. "I have been paying calls," she said. +"I went to see Mrs. Simpson and she told me all about the rights of +women. It was very instructive." + +"If they resemble the rights of man," remarked Ardly, "they are not to +be seen, heard, or felt." + +"Ah, but it is all the fault of men," responded Mariana; "she told me +so. She said that men were the only things that kept us back." + +Ardly laughed. + +"And you?" he inquired. + +"I! Oh, I agreed with her! I told her that if men hindered us we would +stamp them out." + +"The devil you did!" retorted Ardly. "I know of no one better fitted for +the job. You will begin on your fellow-lodgers, I suppose. As if you had +not been treading on our hearts for the last year!" + +Mariana lowered her parasol and entered The Gotham. As she mounted the +stairs she turned towards him. The time had been when the presence of +Jerome Ardly had caused a flutter among the tremulous strings of her +heart, but that had been before Anthony crossed her horizon. And yet +coquetry was not extinguished. "_Our?_" she emphasized, smiling. + +Ardly grasped at the hand which lay upon the railing, but Mariana eluded +him. + +"Why, all of us," he returned, with unabashed good-nature--"poor devils +that we are! Myself, Nevins, Mr. Paul, to say nothing of Algarcife." + +Mariana's color rose swiftly. "Oh, nonsense!" she laughed, and sped +upward. + +Upon the landing Mr. Nevins opened the door of his studio and greeted +them. + +"I say, Miss Musin, won't you come and have a look at 'Andromeda'?" + +Mariana entered the studio, and Ardly followed her. In the centre of the +room a tea-table was spread, and Miss Freighley, a smear of yellow ochre +on the sleeve where she had accidentally wiped her brush, was engaged in +brewing the beverage. Upon the hearth-rug Juliet Hill was standing, her +tall, undeveloped figure and vivid hair relieved against a dull-brown +hanging, and around the "Andromeda" a group of youthful artists were +gathered. + +"How delightful!" exclaimed Mariana, genially. She kissed Miss +Freighley, and pressed the extended hands of the others with +demonstrative cordiality. + +"Oh, if I could only paint!" she said to Miss Freighley, in affectionate +undertones. "If I could only go about with a box of brushes, without +feeling silly, and wear a smudge of paint upon my sleeve without being +dishonest." And she wiped Miss Freighley's sleeve upon her handkerchief. + +"Thanks," responded that young lady, amiably; "but you can carry a +music-roll, you know, which is much handier and a good deal tidier." + +Mariana had turned to the "Andromeda." "Oh, Mr. Ponsonby!" she remarked, +to one of the group surrounding it, "don't you uphold me in thinking the +shadows upon the throat too heavy?" + +Mr. Ponsonby protested that he would uphold her in any statement she +might choose to make, so long as he was not expected to agree with her. +Mariana appealed to Mr. Nevins, who declared that he would agree with +her in any matter whatsoever, so long as he was not expected to change +his "Andromeda." + +Mariana frowned. "Mr. Ardly thinks as I do--now don't you?" + +Ardly sauntered over to them. + +"Why, of course," he assented. "That shadow was put on with a pitchfork. +I am positively surprised at you, Nevins." + +"On your conscience?" demanded Mariana. + +"Haven't any," protested Ardly, indolently. "Left it in Boston. It is +indigenous to the soil, and won't bear transplanting." + +"Miss Ramsey brought hers with her," replied Mariana, with a smile. "It +worries her dreadfully. It is just like a ball on the leg of a convict. +She has to drag it wherever she goes, and it makes her awfully tired +sometimes." + +"A good Bohemian conscience is the only variety worth possessing," +observed Mr. Nevins. "It changes color with every change of scene and +revolves upon an axis. Hurrah for Bohemia!" + +"Hear! hear!" cried Mariana, gayly. She lifted a glass of sherry, and, +lighting a cigarette, sprang upon the music-stool. Mr. Ponsonby drew up +a chair and seated himself at the piano, and, blowing a cloud of smoke +about her head, Mariana sang a rollicking song of the street. + +As she finished, the door opened and Algarcife stood upon the threshold. +For a moment he gazed at the scene--at Mariana poised upon the +music-stool with upraised arms, her hat hanging by an elastic from her +shoulder, her head circled by wreaths of cigarette smoke, her eyes +reckless. His look was expressive of absolute amazement. Innocent as the +scene was in reality, to him it seemed an orgy of abandon, and there +was not a man in the room who would not have understood Mariana at that +moment better than he did. + +"I beg your pardon, Nevins," he said, abruptly. "No, I won't come in." +And the door closed. + +But Mariana had seen his face, and, with a flutter of impulse and a +precipitate rush, she was after him. + +"Mr. Algarcife!" Her voice broke. + +He turned and faced her. + +"What is it?" + +"You--you looked so shocked!" she cried. + +She stood before him, breathless and warm, the smoking cigarette still +in her hand. + +"Throw that away!" he said. + +She took a step forward, struggling like a netted bird beneath the spell +of his power. + +"How absurd!" she said, softly. The cigarette dropped from her fingers +to the floor. + +He laughed. His eyes burned steadily upon her. Before his gaze her +lashes wavered and fell, but not until she had seen the flashing of +latent impulse in his face. + +"But you dropped it," he said. + +"Yes." + +"Why did you?" + +Mariana made a desperate effort at her old fearlessness. It failed her. +Her eyes were upon the floor, but she felt his gaze piercing her fallen +lids. She spoke hurriedly. + +"Because--because I did," she answered. + +He came a step nearer. She felt that the passion in his glance was +straining at the leash of self-control. She did not know that desire was +insurgent against the dominion of will, and was waging a combat with +fire and sword. + +She put up her hands. + +"You are my friend," she said. Her tones faltered. The haze of idealism +with which he had surrounded her was suffused with a roseate glow. He +caught her hands. His face had grown dark and set, and the lines upon +his forehead seemed ineffaceable. + +Mariana was conscious of a sudden uplifting within her. It was as if her +heart had broken into song. She stood motionless, her hands closing upon +his detaining ones. Her face was vivid with animation, and there was a +suggestion of frank surrender in her attitude. He caught his breath +sharply. Then his accustomed composure fell upon him. His mouth relaxed +its nervous tension, and the electric current which had burned his +fingers was dissipated. + +At the other end of the corridor a door opened and shut, and some one +came whistling along the hall. + +"It is Mr. Sellars," said Mariana, smiling. "I recognize his whistling +two blocks away, because it is always out of tune. He thinks he is +whistling 'Robin Hood,' but he is mistaken." + +"Is he?" asked Anthony, abstractedly. His mind was less agile than +Mariana's, and he found more difficulty in spanning the space between +sentiment and comic opera. + +Mr. Sellars greeted them cheerfully and passed on. + +"I must go," said Mariana. "I promised to dine with Miss Ramsey." + +There was an aggrieved note in her voice, but it had no connection with +Anthony. With the passing of the enjoyment of emotion for the sake of +the mental exaltation which accompanied it, the dramatic instinct +reasserted itself. She even experienced a mild resentment against fate +that the emotional altitude she had craved should have been revealed to +her in the damp and unventilated corridor of The Gotham apartment-house. +At a glance from Anthony the resentment would have vanished, and Mariana +have been swept once more into a maze of romanticism. But he did not +look at her, and the half-conscious demand for scenic effects was +unsatisfied. + +"Yes," said Anthony, "it is late." His voice sounded hushed and +constrained, and, as he stood aside to allow her to pass, he looked +beyond and not at the girl. + +She turned from him and entered her room. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Mariana found Miss Ramsey lying at length upon the hearth-rug in her +tiny sitting-room, her head resting upon an eider-down cushion. + +At the girl's entrance she looked up nervously. "I can't rest," she +said, with a plaintive intonation, "and I am so tired. But when I shut +my eyes I see spread before me all the work I've got to do to-morrow." + +She sat up, passing her hand restlessly across her forehead. In her +appearance there might be detected an almost fierce renunciation of +youth. Her gown was exaggerated in severity, and her colorless and +uncurled hair was strained from her forehead and worn in a tight knot +upon the crown of her head. The prettiness of her face was almost +aggressive amid contrasting disfigurements. + +Miss Ramsey belonged to that numerous army of women who fulfil life as +they fulfil an appointment at the dentist's--with a desperate sense of +duty and shaken nerves. And beside such commonplace tragedies all +dramatic climaxes show purposeless. The saints of old, who were +sanctified by fire and sword, might well shrink from the martyrdom +sustained, smiling, by many who have endured the rack of daily despair. +To be a martyr for an hour is so much less heroic than to be a man for a +lifetime. + +But in Miss Ramsey's worn little body, incased in its network of nerves, +there was the passionless determination of her Puritan ancestors. Life +had been thrust upon her, and she accepted it. In much the same spirit +she would have accepted hell. Perhaps, in meeting the latter, a little +cheerfulness might have been added to positive pain--since of all +tragedies her present tragedy of unfulfilment was the most tragic of +all. + +Mariana knelt beside her and kissed her with quick sympathy. + +"I can't rest," repeated the elder woman, fretfully. "I can't rest for +thinking of the work I must do to-morrow." + +"Don't think of it," remonstrated Mariana. "This isn't to-morrow, so +there is no use thinking of it." + +In Miss Ramsey's eyes there shone a flicker of girlishness which, had +fate willed it, might have irradiated her whole face. + +"I have been wondering," added Mariana, softly, "what you need, and I +believe it is a canary. I will buy you a canary when my allowance +comes." + +For the girl had looked into her own heart and had read an unwritten +law. She had seen sanctification through love, and she felt that a woman +may owe her salvation to a canary. + +"How could I care for it?" asked the other, a little wistfully. "I have +no time. But it would be nice to own something." + +Then they left the hearth-rug and ate dinner, and Mariana drove the +overhanging cloud from Miss Ramsey's eyes. The desire to be first with +all who surrounded her had prompted her to ingratiate herself in every +heart that throbbed and ached within. The Gotham, from little, +overworked Miss Ramsey to the smaller and more overworked maid who +dusted her chamber. + +After dinner, when Mariana returned to her room, she found a letter +awaiting her. It was from her father, and, as was usual with his +utterances, it was straight and to the mark. + +"I have met with reverses," it stated, "and the family is growing large. +In my present position I find it impossible to continue your allowance, +and I think that, on the whole, your duty is at home. My wife has much +care with the children, and you would be of service in educating them." + +Mariana dropped the letter and sat motionless. In a flash she realized +all that it meant. It meant returning to drudgery and hideous monotony. +It meant returning to the house she hated and to the atmosphere that +stifled her. It meant a colorless life of poverty and sordid +self-denial. It meant relinquishing her art and Anthony. + +With a rush of impulse she stepped out upon the fire-escape, the letter +fluttering in her hand. + +"Mr. Algarcife!" she called, softly. + +As his figure darkened the lighted space between the window-sashes she +went towards him. He faced her in surprise. "What is it?" he inquired, +abruptly. + +Mariana held out the letter, and then followed him as he re-entered his +room. + +"I cannot do it!" she said, passionately. "I cannot! I cannot!" + +Without heeding her, Anthony unfolded the letter, read it and reread it +with judicial composure; after which he folded it again, placed it in +the envelope, and stood holding it in his right hand. The only visible +effect it produced upon him was a nervous twitching of his thin lips. + +"And what have you decided?" he asked, slowly. + +Mariana interlaced her fingers impatiently. She looked small and white, +and excitement caused her eyes to appear abnormally large. Her features +quivered and her tone was tremulous. + +"I will not go back," she protested. "I will not! Oh, I will not!" + +"Is it so bad?" He still held the letter. + +"Bad! It is worse than--than anything. If I had stayed there I should +have gone mad. It was paralyzing me inch by inch. Oh, if you could only +know what it is--a dusty, dirty little house, smelling of cabbage, a +troop of screaming children, and quarrels all day long." + +He met her outburst with a remonstrative gesture, but there was a mellow +light in his eyes and his face had softened. As if resenting a voluntary +restraint, he shook back a lock of hair that had fallen upon his +forehead. + +"But your father?" + +Mariana looked at him as if he represented the bar of judgment and she +were pleading her cause. She spoke with feverish conviction. + +"Oh, he doesn't want me! If you only knew what a relief it was to him +when I came away. Things were so much quieter. He likes his wife and I +hate her, so we don't agree. There is never any peace when I am +there--never." + +"And the children?" His eyes met Mariana's, and again his lips twitched +nervously. He held the check-rein of desire with a relentless hand, but +the struggle told. + +"They are horrid," responded Mariana, insistently. "They are all hers. +If they had really belonged to me, I wouldn't have left them, but they +didn't, not one. And I won't teach them. I'd rather teach the children +of that shoemaker across the way. I'd rather scrub the streets." + +Anthony smiled, and the tenderness in his eyes rained upon her. The fact +that she had thrown herself upon his sympathy completed the charm she +exercised over him. + +Still he held himself in hand. + +"You know of nothing that could call you back?" he asked. + +"Nothing," answered Mariana. "I shouldn't like to starve, but I'd almost +as soon starve as live on cabbage." Then she faced him tragically. "My +father's wife is a very coarse woman. She has cabbage one day and onions +the next." + +The smile in Anthony's eyes deepened. "It would be impossible to select +a more wholesome article of food than the latter," he observed. + +But Mariana was unmoved. + +"Before I left, it was horrible," she continued. "Whenever onions were +served I would leave the table. My father's wife would get angry and +that would make me angry." + +"A congenial family." + +"But when we get angry we quarrel. It is our nature to do so." She +lifted her lashes. "And when we quarrel we talk a great deal, and some +of us talk very loud. That is unpleasant, isn't it?" + +"Very," Algarcife commented. "I find, by the way, that I am beginning to +harbor a sympathy for your father's wife." + +Mariana stared at him and shook her head. + +"I wasn't nice to her," she admitted, "but she is such a loud woman. I +am never nice to people I dislike--but I don't dislike many." + +She smiled. Algarcife took a step forward, but checked himself. "We will +talk it over--to-morrow," he said, and his voice sounded cold from +constraint. + +"I won't go back," protested Mariana. "I--I will marry Mr. Paul first." + +He held out his hand, and it closed firmly over the one she gave him. +"You will not do that, at all events," he said; "for Mr. Paul's sake, as +well as your own." + +Then he drew aside, and Mariana went back to her room. + +Anthony recrossed the window-sill and paced slowly up and down the +uncarpeted floor. His head was bent and his gaze preoccupied, but there +was composure in his bearing. He had sent the girl away that he might +think before acting. Not that he was not fully aware what the result of +his meditation would be, but that for six years he had been in training +to resist impulse, and the habit was strong. But there are things +stronger than habit, and emotion is among them. In a man who has neither +squandered feeling in excesses nor succumbed to the allurement of the +senses, passion, when once aroused, is trebly puissant, and is apt to +sweep all lesser desires as chaff before the whirlwind. In the love of +such a man there is of necessity the freshness of adolescence and the +tenacity of maturity. When one has not expended lightly the fulness of +desire, the supply is constantly augmented, and its force will be in +proportion to the force of the pressure by which it has been restrained. +Algarcife, pacing to and fro between his book-lined walls, felt the +current of his being straining towards emotion, and knew that the +dominance of will was over. In the realization there existed a tinge of +regret, and with the rationality which characterized his mental attitude +he lamented that the pulseless sanity of his past was broken. And yet he +loved Mariana--loved her with a love that would grow with his growth and +strengthen with his weakness. He bowed his head, and his hands clinched, +while the edge of his blood was sharpened. He beheld her eyes, curtains +veiling formless purity--he felt the touch of her hands, the breath of +her lips--he heard the rustle of her skirts--and the virginal femininity +of her hovered like an atmosphere about him. + +Presently he crossed to the fire-escape, stepped outside, hesitated an +instant, and then went to Mariana's window. The shutters were closed, +but the light burned behind them. + +"Mariana!" he called; and again, "Mariana!" + +Through the slats of the shutters the figure of Mariana was visible in +high relief against the brightness. + +"What is it?" she asked, coming nearer. + +He spoke slowly and with constraint. + +"Mariana, you will not marry Mr. Paul." + +She laughed. The sound was like wine in his blood, and constraint was +shattered. + +"Is there any obstacle?" she inquired. + +"There will be," he answered, and his voice rang clear. + +"What?" She was leaning against the shutters. He felt her breath upon +his brow. + +"You will marry me." + +"Oh!" gasped Mariana, and was silent. + +Suddenly he surrendered self-control. "Open the shutters," he said. + +The shutters were unfastened, they swung back, and Mariana came out. She +looked very young, her hair hung about her shoulders, and in the dim +light her face showed small and white. For a moment they stood +motionless, each dumb before the knowledge of the other's dominance. +Anthony looked at her in heated silence. His face was pale, his eyes +glowing. + +"Mariana!" He did not move nearer, but his voice thrilled her like a +caress. She shrank from him, and a heavy shadow fell between them. + +"Mariana, you will marry me?" In the stillness following his words she +heard the sharpness of his breathing. + +"I--I am not good enough," said Mariana. + +"My saint!" + +As if impelled, she leaned towards him, and he caught her in his arms. +Beneath them the noise of traffic went on, and with it the hunger and +the thirst and the weariness, but they stood above it all, and he felt +the beating of her pulses as he held her. + +"Say you love me," he pleaded--"say it." His breath burned her forehead. + +"Oh, don't you see?" she asked--"don't you see?" + +She lifted her head and he took her hands and drew her from the darkness +into the light and looked into her eyes. They shone like lamps +illuminating an altar, and the altar was his own. + +"Yes," he said; "but say it." + +Mariana was silent for an instant, and when she spoke her voice was +vibrant with passion. + +"You are my love, and I love you," she answered. "And I?" + +"The desire of my eyes." + +She came nearer, laying one hand upon his arm. He did not move, and his +arm hung motionless, but his eyes were hot. + +"I am yours," she said, slowly, "for ever and ever, to have and to hold, +to leave or to take--yours utterly." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +The news of Mariana's engagement was received without enthusiasm in The +Gotham. A resentment against innovations of so sweeping an order was +visible in the bearing of a number of the lodgers, and Mr. Nevins was +heard publicly expressing his disapproval. "I never got comfortably +settled anywhere in my life," he announced, "that somebody didn't step +in and disarrange matters. At the last place the head waiter married the +cook, and now Algarcife is marrying Mariana. After our discovering her, +too. I say, it's a beastly shame!" + +Mr. Ardly was of one mind with him; so was Mr. Morris. Alone, of all the +table, Mr. Paul stood firm upon the opposite side. An hour after the +news was out he encountered Algarcife upon the stairs and smiled +compassionately. + +"I have heard with concern," he began, stiffly, "that you contemplate +taking a serious step." + +"Indeed?" returned Anthony, with embarrassment. "I believe I do +contemplate something of the kind, but I had hoped to get it over before +anybody heard of it." + +"Such things travel fast," commented Mr. Paul, cheerfully. "I think I +may say that I was in possession of the fact five minutes after your +ultimate decision was reached. It is a serious step, as I have said. As +for the young woman, I have no doubt of her worthiness, though I have +heard contrary opinions--" + +"Who has dared?" demanded Anthony. + +"Merely opinions, my dear sir, and the right of private judgment is what +we stand on. But, I repeat, I have no doubt of her uprightness. It is +not the individual, sir, but the office. It is the office that is at +fault." + +Mr. Paul passed on, and upon the next landing Algarcife found Mr. Nevins +in wait. + +"Look here, Algarcife," he remonstrated, "I don't call this fair play, +you know! I've had my eye on Mariana for the last twelve months!" + +A thunder-cloud broke upon Anthony's brow. "Then you will be kind enough +to remove it!" he retorted, angrily. + +"Oh, come off!" protested Mr. Nevins. "Why, Mariana and I were chums +before you darkened this blessed Gotham! She'd have married me long ago +if I'd had the funds." + +"Confound you!" exclaimed Anthony. "Can't you hold your tongue?" + +Mr. Nevins smiled amiably and spread out his hands. + +"No, I cannot," he answered, imperturbably. "Say, old man, don't get +riled! You'll let me appear at the wedding, won't you?" + +Algarcife strode on in a rage, which was not appeased by Ardly's voice +singing out from his open door. + +"Congratulations, Algarcife! You are a lucky dog! Like to change shoes." + +Upon the balcony he found Mariana, with a blossom of scarlet geranium in +her hair. She stretched out both hands and flashed him a smile like a +caress. "You look positively furious," she observed. + +Algarcife's sensitiveness had caused him to treat Mariana much as he +would have treated a Galatea in Dresden, had one been in his possession. +But Claude Nevins had annoyed him, and he spoke irritably. + +"I wish you would have nothing to do with that fellow Nevins," he said. + +"Why, what has he done?" + +"Done? Why, he's an ass--a consummate ass! He told me he had his eye on +you!" + +Mariana's laugh pealed out. She raised her hand and brushed the heavy +hair from his forehead. Then she tried to brush the lines from his brow, +but they would not go. + +"Why, he's going to give me a supper the night before our marriage," she +said; "that is, they all are--Mr. Ardly, Mr. Sellars, and the rest. They +made a pot of money for it, and each one of them contributed a share, +and it is quite a large pot. We are to have champagne, and I am to sing, +and so will Mr. Nevins. I wanted them to ask you, but Mr. Nevins said +you'd be a damper, and Mr. Ardly said you would be bored." + +"Probably," interpolated Anthony. + +"But I insisted I wanted you, so Mr. Ardly said they would have to have +you, and Mr. Nevins said they'd have Mr. Paul, if I made a point of it; +but they thought I might give them one jolly evening before settling +down, so I said I would." + +"You will do nothing of the kind," retorted Algarcife. + +"But they are so anxious. It will be such a dreadful disappointment to +them." + +"I will not have it." + +"But I've done it before." + +"Don't tell me of it. You want to go, and without me?" + +"Of course I'd rather you should be there, but it is cruel to disappoint +them," Mariana objected, "when they have made such a nice pot of money." + +"But I do not like it," said Anthony. + +Mariana laughed into his eyes. "Then you sha'n't have it," she said, and +leaned against the railing and touched his arm with her fingers. "Say +you love me, and I will not go," she added. + +Anthony did not touch the hand that lay upon his arm. His mood was too +deep for caresses. + +"If you knew how I love you," he said, slowly--"if you only knew! There +is no happiness in it; it is agony. I am afraid--afraid for the first +time in my life--afraid of losing you." + +"You shall never lose me." + +"It is a horrible thing, this fear--this fear for something outside of +yourself!" He spoke with a sudden, half-fierce possession. "You are +mine," he said, "and you love me!" + +Mariana pressed closer to his side. "If I had not come," she began, +softly, "you would have read and worked and fed the sparrows, and you +would never have known it." + +"But you came." The hand upon the railing relaxed. "My mother was a +Creole," he continued. "She came from New Orleans to marry my father, +and died because the North was cold and her heart was in the South. You +are my South, and the world is cold, for my heart is in you." + +"I have wanted love all my life," said Mariana, "and now I have found +it. I have thought before that I had it, but it was only a shadow. This +is real. As real as myself--as real as this railing. I feel glad--oh, so +glad!--and I feel tender. I should like to pray and go softly. I should +like to make that old woman at the flower-stall happy and to freshen the +withered flowers. I should like to kiss the children playing on the +sidewalk. See how merry they look," and she leaned far over. "I should +like to pat the head of that yellow dog in the gutter. I should like to +make the whole world glad--because of you." + +"Mariana!" + +"The world is beautiful, and I love you; but I am sorry--oh, so +sorry!--for the people in the street." + +"Forget them, beloved, and think of me." + +"But you taught me to think of them." + +"I will teach you to think of me." + +"That I have learned by heart." + +"Mariana!" + +They stood with locked hands upon the balcony, and the roar of the +elevated road came up to them, and the old flower-woman put up her +withered flowers and went her way, and the children's laughter grew +fainter upon the air, and the yellow dog gnawed at a rock that it took +for a bone; and the great, great wheel ground on, grinding to each man +and to each dog according to his kind his share of the things written +and unwritten in the book of life. + + * * * * * + +A week later they were married. Mariana had coveted a church ceremony, +and Anthony had desired a registrar's office, so they compromised, and +the service was read in Mr. Speares's study. + +"I should have dearly liked the 'Lohengrin March' and stained-glass +windows," remarked Mariana, a little regretfully, as they walked +homeward. "It seems as if something were missing. I can't tell just +what." + +"What does it matter?" asked Algarcife, cheerfully. "A street corner and +an organ-grinder would have answered my purpose, had he been legally +empowered to pronounce the blessing. It is all rot, I suppose, but I'd +face every priest and rabbi in New York if they could bind us closer." + +He smiled at Mariana. His eager face looked almost boyish, and he walked +with the confident air of one who is sure of his pathway. + +"But they could not," added Mariana, and they both laughed, because they +were young and life was before them. + +They retained the rooms in The Gotham with the fire-escape outside the +windows, though Anthony found that his income, after deducting a portion +for Mariana's expenses, was barely sufficient. He had not realized +before how complete was his reliance for existence upon the Bodley +College. Even in the thrill of his first happiness there was a haunting +vision of Mariana reduced to poverty and himself powerless. He +endeavored to insure an independent livelihood by contributing +semi-scientific articles to various reviews, but the work was +uncongenial, and he felt it to be a failure. The basis of his mental +attitude was too firmly embedded to yield superficial product, and he +tasted the knowledge that, had he known less, he might have lived +easier. + +At this time his great work was laid aside, a sacrifice to necessity, +and he spent his days and nights in unmurmuring toil for the sake of +Mariana. He was willing to labor, so long as he might love in the +intervals of rest. + +As for Mariana, she was vividly alive. Beneath the warmth of emotion her +nature expanded into fulfilment, and with fulfilment awoke the subtle +charm of her personality. + +"Have you seen Mariana?" inquired Nevins of Ardly one day. "If so, you +have seen a woman in love." + +Ardly smiled and flicked the ashes from his cigar. + +"Is she?" he asked, cynically; "or is it that the froth of sentiment +above her heart is troubled and she believes the depth of passion is +stirred? I have lived, my dear fellow, as you probably know, and I have +seen strange things, but the strangest of these is the way of a maid +with a man." + +"Be that as it may, she is charming," returned Nevins. "And Algarcife +ought to thank his stars, though why she married him is a mystery I +relegate to the general unravelling of judgment-day." + +"She probably had sense enough to appreciate the most brilliant man in +New York," concluded Ardly, loyally, as he took up a volume of +Maupassant and departed. + +And that Mariana did appreciate Algarcife was not to be questioned. She +threw herself into the worship of him with absolute disregard of all +retarding interests. When he was near, she lavished demonstrations upon +him; when he was away, she sat with folded hands and dreamed day-dreams. +She had given up her music, and she even went so far as to declare that +she would give up her acquaintances, that they might be sufficient unto +each other. For his sake she discussed theories which she did not +understand, and accepted doctrines of which she had once been +intolerant. That emotional energy which had led her imagination into +devious ways had at last, she told herself, found its appropriate +channel. Even the stringent economy which was forced upon them was +turned into merriment by the play of Mariana's humor. + +"Life must only be taken seriously," she said, "when it has ceased to be +a jest, and that will be when one has grown too dull to see the +point--for the point is always there." + +"And sometimes it pricks," laughed Anthony. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +In an up-town block, a stone's-throw west of Fifth Avenue, stands the +Church of the Immaculate Conception. It is a newly erected structure of +gray stone, between two rows of expressionless tenements, and, despite +the aggressive finality emphasized in its architecture, wearing a +general air of holding its ground by sheer force of stolidity. + +The interior of the church is less suggestive of modernity, and bears, +on the whole, a surface relationship to a mediaeval cathedral. The purple +light filtering through the stained-glass windows is, in its essential +quality, a European importation, and the altar-piece is a passable +reproduction of a painting of Murillo's. + +More than fifty years ago the church, then an unpretentious building of +red brick, endowed neither with rood-screen nor waxen candles, had +called to its rectorship the Reverend Clement Speares, a youthful leader +of the ritualistic element in Episcopalianism. Father Speares heard the +call and accepted the charge, and within a dozen years he had succeeded +in trebling the number of his congregation, and in exchanging the +red-brick building for the present Church of the Immaculate Conception, +with its mystic light of mediaevalism. + +The congregation, of that class who toil not, neither spin, but before +whose raiment Easter lilies falter, was fashionable, and also wealthy. +The single-hearted zeal which its priest had put into fifty years of +service had failed to wean his flock from a taste for the flesh-pots. +In return for the generosity with which they supported their place of +worship and its appurtenances, they claimed the indefeasible right to +regulate their own attire and to reserve their pews from the +encroachment of aliens. They were willing to erect a mission chapel in +the slums, but they submitted to no trespassing upon the exclusiveness +of their accustomed preserves. + +Father Speares, who, had his temporal power been in proportion to his +ecclesiastical influence, would have thrown open the Holy of Holies to +the beggar in the street, and have knelt with equal charity between the +Pharisees and Publicans, resigned himself to the recognition of +spiritual caste, and devoted his days to Fifth Avenue and his evenings +to the Bowery. + +To his honor be it said that he made no more valiant stand for the +salvation of the one than of the other. A soul was a soul to him, and +personal cleanliness a matter of taste. + +He was a man of resolute convictions and unswerving purpose. If he did +not possess eloquence of speech, he possessed sincerity of mind, which +is quite as rare, and very nearly as effective. He had a benevolent +countenance combined with a sympathetic manner, and the combination +exercised a charm over those of his hearers who attended his church in +the endeavor to narcotize troublesome nerves. Unconsciously, by his +adoption of celibacy from the mother church, he had borrowed from the +elder faith the powerful weapon of romanticism, exciting the imaginative +qualities, while he emphasized the maxim of the right of private +judgment by rejecting the dogma of papal infallibility. + +But since the Church of the Immaculate Conception had risen into being +with Father Speares, there was an Ishmaelitish rumor afloat that with +Father Speares it would pass away. Father Speares himself was not +insensible to the danger, and with the fervor of an enthusiast he +labored to perpetuate the ceremonials his soul loved. With the force of +a revelation there was borne upon him the conception that on him and his +successors rested the mission to impel the conservative wing of +Episcopalianism into that assimilation to Roman Catholicism whose +resultant is the Ritualistic movement. Unto this end he had spent more +than fifty years of labor. At the close of the nineteenth century he +stood a picturesque and pathetic figure, combating with a mediaeval +eloquence the advancing spirit of his time, a representative of the lost +age of faith lingering far into the new-found age of rationalism. + +When Anthony Algarcife, a young orphan, had been sent to him, he had +taken the child into his confidence. + +"I will help you," the boy had said, enthusiastically--"I will help +you." And he rolled up his little shirt-sleeves in the desire to settle +spiritual differences in the good old fashion of physical force. + +Father Speares had smiled and patted him upon the shoulder. "Please God, +you shall, my boy!" he had answered, and had made the child a +white-robed acolyte, that he might ignite by youthful hands the fires of +faith. + +Anthony had been a disappointment, he had said, but of the bitterness of +the disappointment he had made no mention. Beneath his teaching he had +seen the young mind unfold and expand strenuously, and then, while his +eager eyes were watching, he had seen it shoot from him and beyond his +grasp, trampling his cherished convictions beneath ruthless feet. + +"It is all rubbish," Anthony had declared in the first intolerance of +his youth. "The mental world is filled with a lot of decaying theology, +which has been accumulating for centuries. It remains for us to sweep it +away." + +"And you would sweep me with it," said Father Speares, a little +bitterly. + +"The ground must be cleared," returned Anthony. "You are sitting upon +the rubbish, as a miser in Pompeii might have sat upon his gold while +Vesuvius overflowed. It is wiser to flee and leave hoarded treasure to +be ingulfed. That the rubbish was once sound theology, I grant, but it +has crumbled, and its usefulness of a thousand years ago will not it +save from the ash-heap of outgrown ideas to-day." + +Father Speares sighed and set his lips. "The boy is young," he said, +with the yearning self-deception of age. "It will pass, and he will +return the stronger for his wandering." + +But the event had not borne out his prophecy. It did not pass, and +Anthony did not return. + +"It is my head," he explained, half irritably. "There is a wall of +scepticism surrounding my brain, through which only the toughest facts +may penetrate. I am minus the faculty of credulity." + +"Or reverence," Father Speares added, reproachfully. "You regard +spiritual things as a deaf man regards sound or a blind man sight." + +Anthony's irritation triumphed. + +"Or as a man awake regards a dream," he suggested. "The film of +superstition has cleared from my eyes, and I see. The truth is that I +regard all religions exactly as you regard all except the one which you +inherited. An accident of birth has made you a Christian instead of a +Moslem or a Brahman, that is all." + +"And a twist of the mind has made you an atheist." + +"As you please--atheist, agnostic, sceptic, what you will. It only means +that you offer me an irrational assumption, and I reject it. It is the +custom of you theologians to fit ugly epithets to your opponents, +whereas the denial of Christianity no more argues atheism than the +denial of Confucianism does. It merely proves that a man refuses to +acknowledge any one of the gods which men have created, and that he +leaves the ultimate essence outside his generalizations. Such a man has +learned the first lesson in knowledge--the lesson of his own ignorance." + +"And has missed the greater lesson of the wisdom of God." + +Algarcife shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is no use," he said; "I can't believe, and I wouldn't if I could." + +So he had gone from Father Speares into the world. Virile, strenuous, +and possessed with intellectual passion, he had closed the doors of his +mind upon commonplaces, and with the improvidence from which mental +stamina failed to redeem him had wedded himself to poverty and science. + +Five years after leaving Father Speares's roof he returned with Mariana +at his side. + +"We have come to be married," he announced. + +Father Speares gasped and suggested prudence. "It is unwise," he +remonstrated--"it is utterly unwise." + +"I agree with you," admitted Anthony. "It is unwise, and we know it; but +there is nothing else to be done--is there, Mariana?" + +Mariana looked into Father Speares's face and smiled. + +"Of course you are right," she said, "and we are very foolish, but--but +there really isn't anything else to do." + +And Father Speares was silenced. He looked at the license a little +ruefully, read the service, and sent them off with a benediction. + +"God knows, I wish you happiness," he assured Mariana when she kissed +him. + +Several months later, meeting Algarcife on Broadway, he repeated the +words. + +"I am happy," returned Algarcife, emphatically. "Mariana is an angel." + +"I am glad to hear it," said Father Speares, and he sighed irrelevantly. +"A good woman is a jewel of rare value." + +The term "good woman," applied to Mariana, gave Anthony a sense of +unfitness. Mariana was certainly a jewel, but, somehow, it had never +occurred to him to look upon her as a "good woman." + +"She is very charming," he remarked, quietly. + +Father Speares was regarding him critically. "You are not looking well," +he said. "Is it work or worry?" + +Algarcife shook his head impatiently. "I--oh, I am all right," he +rejoined. "A little extra work, that's all." + +"Your book?" + +Algarcife's face contracted, and the harassed expression about his mouth +deepened. + +"No, not my book," he answered, hastily. "I've put that aside for a +while. I am trying a hand at bread-winning." + +"With satisfactory results, I hope." + +Anthony's laugh was slightly constrained. + +"Why, certainly! Am I the man to fail?" + +"I don't know," commented Father Speares--"I don't know. I never thought +of you in that light, somehow. But if I can help you, remember that you +were once my boy." + +Anthony held out his hand quickly, his voice trembling. + +"You are generous--generous as you have always been, but--I am all +right." + +They parted, Algarcife turning into a cross street. He walked slowly, +and the harassed lines did not fade from his mouth. He seemed to have +grown older within the last few months, and the fight he was making had +bowed his shoulders and sown the seeds of future furrows upon his face. + +At the corner he bought a box of sardines and a pound of crackers for +Mariana, who liked a late supper. Then he crossed to The Gotham and +ascended the stairs. + +He found Mariana in a dressing-sack of pink flannel, sitting upon the +bed, and engaged in manufacturing an opera-bonnet out of a bit of black +gauze and a few pink rose-buds. She was trying it on as he entered, and, +catching sight of him, did not remove it as she raised her hand +warningly. "Tell me if it is becoming before you kiss me," she +commanded, pressing her thimble against her lips. + +Anthony drew back and surveyed her. + +"Of course it is," he replied; "but what is it, anyway?" + +Mariana laughed and leaned towards him. + +"A bonnet, of course; not a coal-scuttle or a lamp-shade." + +Then she took it from her head and held it before her, turning it +critically from side to side. + +"Don't you think it might have a few violets against the hair, just +above the left temple? I am sure I could take some out of my last +summer's hat." + +She left the bed and stood upon a chair, to place the bonnet in a box +upon the top of the wardrobe. "As a scientific problem it should +interest you," she observed. "I created it out of nothing." + +Anthony caught her as she descended from the chair. + +"As a possible adornment for your head it interests me still more," he +replied. + +"Because you haven't been married long enough to discover what an empty +little head it is?" + +"Because it is the dearest head in the world, and the wisest. But what a +thriftless house-keeper, not to have set the table!" A door had been cut +into his study, and he glanced through. "Do you think you are still +below Mason and Dixon's line, where time is not recognized?" + +"I forgot it," said Mariana; "but there isn't any bread, so you must go +after it. Oh, you didn't get sardines again, did you? I said potted +ham--and it is really a very small chicken they sent us." + +"Well, no matter. It might have been a chop. By the way, I met Mr. +Speares--" + +"Father Speares," corrected Mariana. + +"Mr. or Father, he's a nice old chap, isn't he?" + +"He's a saint," said Mariana. Then she grew serious. "If you could have +gone into the Church--honestly, I mean--how pleased he would have been, +dearest." + +"Yes; but I couldn't, you know, and if I had I could not have married +you. He is High Church, you see. Celibacy is his pet institution." + +Mariana colored. "Then I am glad you didn't." She flung herself upon +him; then, drawing back, added, wistfully, "But you wouldn't have been +poor." + +"Do you find it so hard?" + +"I hate it--for you. You work so hard. And I can't help you." + +"My beloved!" + +"I mind it most for you. But, of course, I feel badly when the +washer-woman comes and there isn't any money--and I should like to have +some gloves--" + +"You shall have them, my darling. Why didn't you tell me?" + +Mariana leaned upon his breast and swept her loosened hair across his +arm. "It doesn't matter very much," she answered. "If I were starving +and you kissed me I should forget it." And she added, with +characteristic inconsequence: "Only I haven't been out for several days +because I didn't have any." + +"You shall have them to-morrow. Is there anything else, dearest?" + +"Nothing!" laughed Mariana. + +She went to the mirror and began coiling her hair. From the glass her +eyes met Anthony's, and she threw him a smiling glance. + +"I have been reading one of your books," she said, pointing with the +brush; "there it is." + +Anthony lifted the volume from the bureau and grew serious. "Mill?" he +observed. "It is a good start. Every woman should know political +economy. I am glad it interests you." + +"I haven't gone beyond the first page yet," returned Mariana, putting up +both hands to fluff her aureole, and pausing to run her fingers over her +eyebrows in the attempt to narrow them. "There was something in the +first page about 'a web of muslin,' and, somehow, it suggested to me the +idea of making that bonnet. Odd, wasn't it? And I am so glad I read it, +for I am sure I should never have thought of the bonnet otherwise--and +it is becoming." + +"But you like Mill?" + +"Oh yes," said Mariana; "I find him very suggestive." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Anthony and Mariana founded their life together upon well-worn +principles. They accepted in its entirety the fallacy that love is a +self-sustaining force, independent of material conditions. + +"So long as we love each other," Mariana declared, "nothing matters." + +And Anthony upheld this declaration. To Algarcife those first months of +intimate association were inexpressibly fresh and inspiriting. That +acute sense of nearness to Mariana supplied what had been a void in his +existence, and he looked back upon the time he had spent without her as +a colorless stretch of undifferentiated days. + +And yet, with a feminine presence beside him, work was less easy. In the +evenings, when Mariana followed him to his study and seated herself in a +rocking-chair beneath the lamplight, he sometimes experienced a vague +recognition of its inappropriateness. He found the old absorption to +have grown intractable, and the creak of Mariana's rocker, or the low +humming of her voice, was sufficient to surprise in him that repressed +irascibility from which he had never been able to shake himself free. +Even in the midst of his passionate delight in her, a profound +melancholy would seize him at times, and he would find the cravings of +his intellectual nature harassed by the superficial tenor of his daily +employment. Again, as Mariana sat in the lamplight, her swift fingers +busy with some useless bit of millinery, he would regard her with a +sudden tightening of his pulses, and a thrill of fear at the prospect +of a coming separation. The droop of her head, the contour of her face +where the bone of her chin was accentuated by thinness, the soft line of +throat above the full collar, the nimbus of hair shining in the light, +the fall of her skirt, the slender slippered feet, aroused in him a +tumultuous sense of possession. He would turn from his writing to rest +upon her a warm and magnetic glance, before which her lowered lashes +would be lifted, her pensive lips break into a smile. + +Then, again, the instinct for solitude, which his years of study had +intensified, would reawaken, and the creaking of the rocker would act as +an irritant upon his nerves. + +It was at such a moment that Mariana had looked up and spoken, the +bright inflection of her voice aggravating the interruption. + +"Anthony!" + +Algarcife turned towards her, his pen raised as if in self-defence. + +"When did you begin to love me?" + +The pen was lowered, Algarcife smiled. "In the beginning," he answered; +then he frowned, his tone grew captious. "I can't, Mariana," he +protested--"I really can't. I must get this work over." + +"You are always working." + +"Heaven knows, I am! If I weren't, we would starve." + +"It is horrible to be poor." + +"We don't improve matters by exclaiming over them. On the contrary, you +will prevent my getting this article off to-night, and we will be a few +dollars the poorer." + +"You never talk to me. You are always working." + +She spoke pettishly, with an impulse to exasperate. + +"Mariana!" + +Mariana threw aside her work and clasped her hands. Her face was +upturned, her head supported by the back of the chair. He could see the +violet shadow which rested like a faint suffusion where the heavy hair +swept from behind her ear. + +Suddenly her head was lowered, and the mellow lamplight irradiated +across the pallor of her face. + +"Of course I know you are working for me," she said, "but I had rather +have less labor and more love." + +"I love you as much when I am working for you as when I am shouting it +in your ear." + +"But I like to hear it." + +"I love you. Now be quiet." + +Mariana came and leaned over him. She put her arms about his shoulders +and rested her head upon them. There was a sob in her voice. "Let me +help you," she said. "It is so hard to sit still and do nothing, while +you are killing yourself. Let me help you." + +Anthony turned and caught her, and she lay limp and motionless in his +embrace. He kissed her with sudden passion. + +"You help me by living," he said, "by breathing, by being near me, by +giving yourself to me unreservedly. Without you I lived but half a +life--without you, now that I have had you, I should go to +pieces--absolutely. I love you as a man loves once in a thousand years. +But we must live, and I must work." + +He released her and went back to his writing, while Mariana, in +passionate elation, picked up Mill's _Political Economy_, and fell to +studying. + +It was shortly after this that she sought to turn her own talents to +financial results. With this end in view she invested her pocket-money +in a yard or so of white linen and a mass of colored silks, and wove a +garland of nasturtiums around a centre-piece intended to decorate a +dinner-table. When it was finished she was seized with a fit of +sanguineness, and as she rinsed it in a dozen different waters to insure +whiteness, she calculated what the annual products of her labor would +amount to. "If I manage to do one a month," she remarked, pressing the +centre-piece lightly between her moistened hands, "and say I get about +fifteen dollars for each one, I should soon have quite a little income; +twelve times fifteen is--how much, Anthony?" + +"More than I am going to let you work for," replied Algarcife. "Your +eyes have been red ever since you started that confounded table-cover. +It is the very last." + +Mariana placed one finger to her lips, and then applied it lightly to +the iron she held in her hand. "I do hope I won't scorch it," she +observed. "Oh, do give me that blanket! It must be ironed on a blanket +to make the flowers stand out. Aren't they natural?" + +She lifted her heated face and glanced at him for approbation. + +"I feel like plucking them," returned Algarcife. "Don't tire yourself. +Good-bye." And he passed into the next room and closed the door. + +Mariana ironed the centre-piece, wrapped it in yellow tissue-paper, and +carried it to an exchange for women's work around the corner. It was +placed in a glass-case amid a confusion of similar articles, where it +languished for the space of several months. At the end of that time she +redeemed it. + +The failure of the enterprise precipitated an attack of hysteria, which +spent itself in Anthony's arms and left her resigned and exhausted. + +"I can't do anything to help you," she observed, hopelessly. "I hoped to +clear at least fifteen dollars from that centre-piece, and, instead, I +lost five. I shall always be an encumbrance." + +"You are my beloved counsellor." + +"My love isn't of much use, and you never take my advice." + +"But I like to listen to it." + +Mariana rested her head upon his shoulder and closed her eyes. + +"I am only a luxury," she said, "like wine or cigars, but it wouldn't be +pleasant to dispense with me, would it?" + +"It would be death." + +She sighed contentedly, her hand wandered across his brow. There was a +faint, magnetic force in her finger-tips which left a burning sensation +like that caused by a slightly charged electric current. + +"I made you marry me, you know," she remarked, complacently, "so I am +glad you don't regret it." + +"Nonsense," remonstrated Algarcife, his lips upon her hair, the warm +contact of her body inducing a sense of nearness. "I married you by +force. I quite took your breath away. If you had resisted, I should have +had you whether or no." + +"Oh, but I did make you," returned Mariana. "But there was nothing else +to do. I couldn't possibly have gone home, and I did love you so +distractedly." + +"As you do now." + +"As I do now. Of course I must have known that rushing to you that night +with the letter was just like a proposal of marriage." + +"It was, rather," concluded Algarcife. + +"But you needn't have married me unless you wanted to," urged Mariana. +"There was Mr. Paul--" + +Anthony laughed. "I was a vicarious sacrifice," he declared, "to insure +the peace of Mr. Paul." + +The next day Algarcife received an unexpected sum of money, and they +agreed to celebrate their rising fortunes by a night at the opera. It +was "Tannhauser," and Mariana craved music. + +"I am afraid it is improvident," Anthony, whom the opera bored, +remarked, dubiously; then looking into Mariana's wistful face, he +recanted. "It doesn't matter," he added. "A little extravagance won't +affect the probability of future starvation. We will go." + +And they went. Mariana wore her freshest gown and the little bonnet with +the knot of violets above the left temple. She was in her gayest mood, +which was only dampened in a slight degree by the odor of the benzine +clinging to her newly cleaned gloves. + +As she leaned against the railing in the fifth gallery, gazing +plaintively down into the pit, she looked subtle and seductive--like a +creation in half-tones, swept by fugitive lights and shadows. The pallor +of her face was intensified, her radiant lips compressed, and the green +flame in her glance scintillated beneath luxurious lashes. Anthony, +fastening upon her contented eyes, wondered at the singular charm which +she radiated. Small, slight, insignificant, and charged with +imperfections as she was, her very imperfections possessed the +fascination of elusiveness. Her radiance was intensified in the memory +by the plainness succeeding it; the sensitive curve of her nostrils was +heightened in effect by the irregularity of feature, and the angular +distinctness of the bones of her chin emphasized the faint violet +shadows suffusing the hollows. Had her charm been less impalpable it +would have lost its power. The desire of beauty might have satiated +itself in a dozen women, or of amativeness in a dozen others, but +Mariana fascinated instinctively, and her spell was without beginning in +a single attribute and without end in possession. + +As she sat there in the fifth gallery, drinking with insatiable thirst +the swelling harmony, her emotional nature, which association with +Algarcife had somewhat subdued, was revivified, and she pressed +Anthony's responsive hand in exaltation. The music reverberating round +her brought in its train all those lurid dreams which she had half +forgotten, and the dramatic passion awoke and burned her pulses. She +felt herself invigorated, swept from the moorings of the commonplace, +and subverted by the scenic intensity before her. She felt taller, +stronger, fuller of unimpregnated germs of power, and, like an infusion +of splendid barbaric blood, there surged through her veins a flame of +color. With a triumphant crash of harmonious discord, she felt that the +artistic instinct was stimulated from its supineness, and the desire to +achieve was aglow within her. The electric lights beneath the brilliant +ceiling, the odor of hot-house flowers, the music sweeping upward and +bearing her on its swelling tide, acted upon her overwrought +sensibilities like an intoxicant. She drew near to Anthony; her lips +quivered. + +"Oh, if it would last," she said--"if it would last!" + +But it did not last, and when it was over Mariana pressed her hand to +her brow like one in pain. The return to reality jarred upon her vibrant +nerves, and she became aware of shooting throbs in her temples, and of +the depressing moisture in the atmosphere. + +"I am faint," she complained. "I must have something--anything." + +"It is all that clashing and banging," responded Anthony. "What a relief +silence is!" + +They bought ale and cheese and crackers from a grocery at the corner, +and carried the parcels to their room. Mariana let down her hair, put on +her dressing-gown, and threw herself upon the hearth-rug. She felt weak +and hungry. "If there were only a fire," she lamented regretfully, +stretching her hands towards the register; after which she opened the +paper-bags and ate ravenously. + +In the night she awoke with a start and a sob. She reached out moaningly +in the darkness. Her hands were trembling and the neck of her gown was +damp and chill. "I believe I shall go mad," she said, desperately. + +Anthony struck a match, lighted the candle, and looked at her. He laid a +cool hand upon her forehead. + +"What is it?" he asked. "Are you nervous? Have you been dreaming?" + +"No, no," cried Mariana, rolling her head upon the pillow, "but I want +music. I want art. There is so much that is beautiful, and I want +something." + +She wept hysterically. Anthony got up and made her a cup of tea, which +she could not drink because it was smoked. + +But on the morrow she was herself again. As she was arranging her hair +she laughed and chattered gayly, and the effect of the previous evening +was shown only in a tendency to break into song. Before drinking her +coffee she turned to the piano and trilled an Italian aria, the fingers +of one hand wandering over the key-board in a careless accompaniment. + +During the day her buoyancy was unfailing. She took up her studies +zealously, and the morning devoted to Mill was rich in results. Her +acuteness of apprehension was a continual marvel to Algarcife's steadier +perception, and he regarded with deference the quickness with which she +grasped the general drift of unstudied social problems. An exaggerated +example of feminine intuition he ascribed unhesitatingly to a profundity +of intellectual ability. That Mariana was adapting herself to his +theories of life, he recognized and accepted. There was relief in the +thought that his influence over her was weightier than the appeal of her +art. With adolescent egotism, he convinced himself that he was shaping +and perfecting a mental energy into channels other than the predestined +ones; and while Mariana was matured into a palpitant reflection of his +own image, he believed that he was liberating an intellect enthralled by +superficialities. But, in truth, the stronger force was assimilating to +itself the weaker, and the comradeship existing in their love was +perfect in smoothness and finish. The opinions which Anthony radiated +Mariana reflected, and they presented to the world proof of a domestic +unity complete in its harmony. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +One evening in March, Mr. Nevins gave a supper in his studio. + +Anthony had come in that morning looking somewhat perplexed. "Nevins +wants us to-night," he said to Mariana, "and I couldn't get out of it." + +Mariana looked up eagerly from her practising. "Oh, it is the +'Andromeda,'" she replied. "He said he would celebrate it. So it has +been accepted." + +"But it hasn't been. It is the rejection he is celebrating. He told me +so. I feel sorry for the fellow, so I said we would go." + +"Of course we will!" exclaimed Mariana. "But I'm afraid he'll be +gloomy." + +"On the contrary, he has just come off a spree, and has a patch over his +left eye. His hilarity is positively annoying. He and Ardly are smashing +everything in their rooms. The pitcher went as I passed." + +"Oh, it is his way of expressing feeling," returned Mariana, +sympathetically. "Listen to this new air. It goes tra la la, tra--" + +Anthony cut her short. + +"My dear girl, I'm in an awful hurry. Would you mind being quiet +awhile?" And he entered his study, closing the door after him. Mariana +left the piano and sat with folded hands looking down into the street +below. A fine rain was falling, and the streets were sloppy with a +whitish slime. The women that passed held their skirts well above their +ankles, revealing all shapes and varieties of feet. She noticed that +they carried their skirts awkwardly, with a curious hitch upon the right +hip. They were working-women for the most part, and their gowns were +neither well made nor well cut, but they walked aggressively, with an +uneven, almost masculine, swagger. + +Mariana yawned and sighed. She would have liked to go back to the piano +and bang a march or some stirring strain of martial music, but she +recalled Anthony's injunction and yawned again. She remembered suddenly +that her practising had become uncertain of late, and that Anthony's +objection seemed to lie like a drawn sword between her and her art. An +involuntary smile crossed her lips, that she who had pledged herself to +the pursuit of music had also given herself to a man to whom Wagner was +as Rossini. She dwelt upon her changed conditions almost unconsciously. +It was not that her devotion to art had cooled since her marriage, but +that something was forever preventing the expression of it. That Anthony +regarded it as one of the trivialities of life, she saw clearly, and +there was an aggrieved note in her regret. To her, in whom the artistic +instinct was bone of her bone and blood of her blood, the sacrifice of a +professional career was less slight than Algarcife believed, and in the +depths of her heart there still lurked the hope that in time Anthony's +impassioned opposition to a stage life would wear itself out. When the +moment came, she dreamed of a final reinspiration of the slumbering +fires of her ambition. Now, as she sat beside the window, she became +aware of the awakening. Once again she allowed her mind to hover above +the distant future and to illuminate its neutral canvas with garish +colors. In the future anything and everything was possible. Some weeks +ago Signor Morani had sent for her and offered her tuition, and she had +accepted. "If you achieve success you can repay me," he had said, +adding, with philosophic intention, "If not, I shall have lost nothing +that was my own." + +Mariana, in a burst of gratitude, had wept upon his shoulder, and he had +smiled as he patted her prostrate head. + +"Remember," he said, "that you are an artist first, and a wife and +mother afterwards, and you will succeed." + +Sitting beside the window and staring at the expressionless tenements +across the way, she laughed with soft insistence at the professor's +warning. What a consuming force was love, that it had destroyed her old +mad longing for the stage! Was it all love, or was it only the love of +Anthony? + +Then before her, in the train of her thoughts, the sentiments of her +life were limned vividly, and she remembered the young highwayman whose +picture she had seen. She saw the bold, Byronic countenance, with the +shadow of evil upon the lips and the uncultured eyes. She recalled the +blur by which the printer had obscured the chin, and she felt again the +tremor with which she had awaited the sentence of the court. She thought +of Edgardo, the romantic tenor, of his impassioned arias, and then of +his fat and immobile face, of his red-cheeked German wife, to whom he +was a faithful husband, and of his red-cheeked German children, to whom +he was a devoted father. She laughed again as she remembered the tears +with which she had bedewed her pillow, and the spasm of jealousy in +which she had mentally attacked the prima donna. Last of all she thought +of Jerome Ardly, as she had seen him upon the night of her arrival, +sitting in indolent discussion of his dinner, the _Evening Post_ spread +out upon his knee. She experienced in memory the thrill which had seized +her at his voice. She remembered how strong and masterful he had looked +with the glow of heart disease, which she had thought the glow of +health, upon his face. Then her thoughts returned to Anthony and +settled to rest. To dwell upon him was as if she had laid her head upon +his arm and felt his hand above her heart; as if she had anchored +herself in deep waters, far beyond the breakers and shallows of life. + +In the next room she knew that Anthony was at work, that he had +probably, for the time being, forgotten her existence. The knowledge +caused her a twinge of pain, and she went to the door, opened it, and +looked in. + +Algarcife glanced up absently. + +"You don't wish anything, do you?" he inquired, and she saw that an +irritable mood was upon him, "I can't be interrupted." + +"It is nothing," answered Mariana as she closed the door, but she felt a +sudden tightening of the heart, and, as she gathered up several loose +sheets of music lying upon the floor, she thought, with a spasm of +regretful pain, of the practising she had given up. "He does not know," +she said, and a few tears fell upon the key-board. + +That night, when she was dressing for Nevins's supper, she noticed that +there was a faint flush in her cheeks and her hands were hot. + +"We lead such a quiet life," she said, laughing, "that a very little +thing excites me." + +Algarcife, who was shaving, put down his razor and came towards her. He +was in his shirt-sleeves, and she noticed that he looked paler and more +haggard than usual. + +"Look here, Mariana," he began, "don't talk too much to Nevins; I don't +like it." + +Mariana confronted him smilingly. + +"You are positively the green-eyed monster himself," she said. "But why +don't you say Ardly, and come nearer the truth? I was in love with him +once, you know." + +"Hush!" said Anthony, savagely; "you oughtn't to joke about such things; +it isn't decent." + +"Oh, it didn't go as far as that!" returned Mariana, with audacity. + +"How dare you!" exclaimed Algarcife, and they flung themselves into each +other's arms. + +"How absurd you are!" said Mariana, looking up. "You haven't one little +atom of common-sense--not one." + +Then they finished dressing, lowered the lights, and went down-stairs. + +Mr. Nevins greeted them effusively. He was standing in the centre of a +small group composed of Miss Freighley, Mr. Sellars, and Mr. Paul, and +the patch above his left eye, as well as his general unsteadiness, bore +evidence to his need of the moral suasion to which Mr. Paul was giving +utterance. In a corner of the room the "Andromeda" was revealed naked to +her friends as well as to her enemies, and at the moment of Anthony's +and Mariana's entrance Mr. Ardly was engaged in crowning her with a +majestic wreath of willow. + +He looked up from his task to bestow a morose greeting. + +"We have invited you to weep with us," he remarked. "The gentle pronoun +'us,' which you may have observed, is due, not to my sympathetic nature, +but to the fact that I have lost a wager upon the rejected one to Mr. +Paul--" + +"Who is also among the prophets," broke in Mr. Nevins, with a +declamatory wave of his hand. "For behold, he prophesied, and his +prophecy it came to pass! For he spake, saying, 'The "Andromeda," she +shall be barren of honor, and lo! in one hour shall she be made +desolate, and her creator shall put dust upon his head and rend his +clothes, yet shall it avail not--'" + +"Shut up, Nevins!" roared Ardly, seating himself at the table beside +Mariana. "As if everybody didn't know that Mr. Paul's prophecy was +obliged to come to pass! Did you ever see a pessimist who wasn't +infallible as a soothsayer? It beats a special revelation all hollow." + +"Please don't be irreverent," remonstrated Mariana. "I am sure I am +awfully sorry about the 'Andromeda,' and I believe that if Mr. Nevins +had taken my advice and lightened those shadows--" + +"Or mine, and lengthened that thigh," broke in Ardly. + +"Or mine, and shortened the fingers," added Miss Freighley. + +"Or mine, and never painted it," in a savage whisper from Algarcife. + +Mr. Nevins silenced the quartet with promptness. "Hang it all!" he +exclaimed, crossly; "between most of your suggestions for art's sake, +and Mr. Paul's suggestions for decency's sake, there wouldn't be a +blamed rag of her left." + +"On the contrary," commented Mr. Paul, "an additional rag or two would +be decidedly advantageous." + +Mariana raised her finger, with an admonishing shake of the head. + +"Out upon you for a Philistine!" she said. "I haven't heard such +profanity since I showed my colored mammy a 'Venus de Milo,' and her +criticism was, 'Lor', child! nakedness ain't no treat to me!'" + +Mr. Nevins laughed uproariously, and filled Mariana's glass, while +Algarcife glared from across the table. + +"I should like to paste that motto in every studio in New York," +returned Mr. Paul. "It was the healthful sentiment of a mind undepraved +by civilization." + +"What a first-rate censor you would make!" smiled Ardly, +good-naturedly--"the fitting exponent of a people who see nastiness in +a box of colors and evil in everything." + +Mr. Paul bore the charge with gravity. "Yes, I keep my eyes well open," +he responded, complacently. + +Algarcife leaned across the table, and discussed woman's suffrage with +Miss Ramsey. Mariana flushed and smiled, and glanced from Nevins to +Ardly and back again. + +Mr. Sellars, who had been engrossed by his salad, took up the cue. + +"Oh, the world isn't to blame if we see it through a fog!" he said. +"Excellent salad." + +"Thanks," drawled Mr. Nevins, amicably. "I cut it up, and Ardly made the +dressing. The cutting up is the part that tells." + +"But why didn't you bring it to me?" asked Mariana. "I should have liked +to help you." Then she raised her glass. "Health to 'Andromeda' and +confusion to her enemies!" + +There followed a wild clashing of glasses and a series of hoarse hurrahs +from Mr. Nevins. After which Mariana was borne tumultuously to the +piano, where she sang a little French song about love and fame. + +Then Mr. Sellars sang an Irish ballad, and Nevins volunteered the +statement that, after hearing Ardly, anybody who didn't mistake his nose +for his mouth would be a relief. + +"You don't listen," protested Ardly. "We have an excellent system," he +explained. "We sometimes spend a musical evening, and when Nevins sings +I look through the portfolio for my pieces, and when I sing he looks for +his." + +That night when Mariana went up to her room she was in exuberant +spirits. In a whirl of energy she pirouetted before the mirror. Then she +stopped suddenly, grew white, and swayed forward. + +"I can't stand excitement," she said, and before Anthony could reach +her she fell a limp heap upon the floor. Algarcife dashed into the +adjoining room and returned with a flask of brandy. Then he undressed +her, wrapped her in a dressing-gown, and, drawing off her shoes and +stockings, chafed her cold feet. Mariana was too exhausted to protest, +and allowed herself to be lulled to sleep like a child. + +For several weeks after this she was nervous and unstrung. She grew +hollow-eyed, the shadows deepened, and her sunniness of temper gave +place to an unaccustomed melancholy. She had learned that a new life was +quickening within her, and she experienced a blind and passionate fear +of inevitable agony. She feared herself, she feared suffering, and she +feared the fate of the unborn life. One evening she threw herself into +Anthony's arms. "It is the inevitableness," she said. "If I knew that it +might not happen, I could bear it better. But nothing can prevent it, +and I am afraid--afraid." + +Algarcife grew white. "I am afraid for you," he answered. + +"And the child? We shall be responsible for it. The thought maddens me. +We are so poor, and it seems to me that it is wrong. I feel as if I had +committed a sin--as if I were forcing something into the world to fight +with poverty and discomforts. It may even hate us for bringing it. I +almost hope it will die." + +"We will make it a happy child." + +"But doesn't it frighten you?" + +Algarcife smiled. "Not as much as you do, you bodiless bit of +eccentricity." + +"All the same, I feel as if it were a sin," said Mariana. "Mill says--" + +Anthony laughed aloud and caught her to him. "So you are turning my own +weapons upon me," he said. "For the sake of domestic harmony, don't +quote Mill to me, Mariana." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +In the autumn the child was born. Mariana, dissolved in nervous hysteria +in the beginning, rallied when the time drew on, and faced the final +throes triumphantly. For several months beforehand she sat and waited +with desperate resignation. Her existence, hedged in by the four walls +of her room and broken only by the strolls she took with Algarcife after +night-fall, exasperated her resentment against social enactments, and +she protested bitterly. + +"A woman is treated as if she were in disgrace," she said, "and forced +to shun the light, when, in reality, she is sacrificing herself for the +continuance of the race, and should be respected and allowed to go about +in a right and natural manner. I believe all this indecency started with +those old scriptural purifications, and I wish it hadn't." + +But when the days passed, her lamentations gave place to serenity of +speech, and her expression became almost matronly. Dramatically she was +stifling her aesthetic aversion and adjusting herself to her part. + +When it was over, and she lay still and etherealized among the pillows, +she was conscious only of an infinite restfulness. It was as if the +travail through which she had passed had purged her of all capacity for +sensation, and the crying of the new-born child fell upon her ear like +the breaking of faint and far-off waves of sound. + +From Anthony's caress she turned with a gesture of annoyance, and, in a +vague association of ideas, she wondered if a man who had climbed from +hell to heaven would be gratified by a draught of milk-and-water. She +seemed to stand aloof and far off upon some ice-crowned summit, where +the air was too rarefied to support the growth of human passions. She +felt that she had become a pure intelligence, and that the appeal of her +flesh no longer retarded her ascent. The elemental values of life were +obscured by the shadows of indifference. Love existed only as an +intangible and forced illusion, passion as a disease of the blood. While +her still and inert body lay freed from pain, her mind was singularly +strong and clear. The limitations of a personality seemed no longer to +encompass her. She imagined she saw as God saw, sustained by pulseless +repose, seeing, not feeling, the swing of the universe. She wondered if +the time would ever come when she would descend from this altitude and +take up again the substance of self, when her senses would again enmesh +her. + +Some one came across the room and laid a bundle upon the bed beside her, +but she did not look at it. Then her hand was lifted and a glass put to +her lips, and the faint odor of chloroform which hung about her faded +before the fresher odor of digitalis. The child cried at her side, and +the first sensation she felt was one of irritation. + +"Take it away," she said, fretfully, and fainted. + +With her returning vigor, Mariana's normal nature reasserted itself. The +first day that she was able to sit propped up among the pillows she had +the child brought to her, and looked at it critically, half in +curiosity, half in tenderness. + +"Did you ever see one with quite such a screwed-up face?" she inquired, +dubiously, of the nurse who hovered about. + +"Plenty, ma'am; most of 'em are like that--all puckers and wrinkles." + +"It might be a thousand years old," continued Mariana, "or a +hickory-nut." Then she added: "I don't feel as if it belonged to me at +all. I don't care for it in the least." + +"That'll come." + +"I hope so," answered Mariana, "and I am sorry that it is a girl. It +will have so much to bear. I wonder if I looked like that when I was a +baby. I declare, it is positively green. What is the matter with it?" + +"Just the shadow from the blind, ma'am." + +The baby lay upon its back, with half-closed, indistinguishable eyes, +slobbering over one red fist. It looked old and wizened, as if oppressed +by the understanding that it had entered upon the most perilous of +mundane transmigrations. It had cried only once, and that was upon its +entrance into the predestined conditions. There was something almost +uncanny in its imperturbability, suggesting, as it did, that it had been +awed into silence by the warning finger of fate. + +"Poor little thing," said Mariana. She leaned over it and stroked the +smooth, round head, from which the soft hair was rubbing off, leaving it +preternaturally bald. "What a mite!" She encircled it within the curve +of her arm and lay looking up at the ceiling. "How strange it all is!" +she thought. "It was only yesterday that I was a child myself--and now +my first and last and only born is here alive." Then she frowned. It +seemed inexplicable to her that women went on travailing and giving +birth. That a woman who had once known the agony of maternity should +consent to bear a second or third or fourth child struck her as +ridiculous. She closed her eyes and laughed. Suddenly she felt a clammy +clutch upon her finger and looked down. The baby's eyes were open, and +it was staring straight ahead at the cloud of dust and sunshine that +flooded the room. The red fist had left its mouth and fastened upon her +hand. + +Mariana smiled. + +"Its eyes are blue!" she cried, "just like turquoises. Look, nurse! Oh, +my dear, poor, ugly little baby!" + +A rush of tenderness choked her words, and she lay silent and rapt, her +hand responding to the weak grasp upon her finger. In some way she felt +changed and tremulous. That invincible instinct of motherhood, which was +a forced and abnormal product of her temperament, pulsed from her heart +to her answering veins. She experienced in its fulness the sense of +guardianship upon which rests the first intuitive recognition of the +maternal responsibility. Her emotion welled forth to meet the appeal of +the helplessness beside her, and she extended her fragile arm as if in +the act of giving shelter. When Algarcife came in some hours later he +found her lying asleep, her hand still upon the small, soft head of the +child. In the noonday light the intense, opaline pallor of her face was +startling. + +In quick alarm he leaned over her, listening for the rise and fall of +her breathing. It came softly, with a still insistence, like the ripple +of a faint wind upon rose leaves. The heavy lashes resting upon her +cheeks accentuated the entire absence of color, and the violet tones +rising in the shadows of mouth and chin lent to her face the look of one +in a trance or in death. It was as if the scarlet current in her blood +had, by some necromancer's magic, been transfused from pale violets. Her +gown was open at the throat, and he marked the same bloodlessness and +hints of bluish shadows in her cold breast. He saw it also in the +fragile curve of her uncovered arm and in the marble-like beauty of her +hands. + +"Mariana," he whispered. + +She turned slowly towards him and unclosed her eyes. + +"Give me something," she said; "brandy--a great deal." + +He brought it to her and raised her on his arm as she drank it. + +"I was dreaming," she said, fretfully. "I dreamed that I was +falling--falling past the earth, past millions of worlds--past a great +many apple orchards, and they were all in bloom. But, somehow, I never +reached the bottom. There wasn't any bottom." + +"You are stronger now?" he questioned, almost wistfully. + +"Not a bit," returned Mariana, peevishly. "I am so--so--so weak." Then +she laughed softly. "Do you know that brandy makes me think of my +childhood, and a great goblet of mint-julep, with the crushed ice all +frosted on the glass. My father was famous for his mint-juleps. I wish I +had one now." + +"Shall I make it for you?" + +"Oh, it wouldn't be the same! I should never like one that didn't have +the ice frosted on the glass." She grew weakly reminiscent. "Once, when +I was a little child," she said, "I was dressed up in a nice white frock +and red sash, and sent out on the sidewalk to play, and I grew tired and +wandered off and got lost. I went a long way, and at last I came to the +city almshouse. I was going up the steps when I looked into a bar-room +across the way, and saw a gentleman with a very red face drinking a +toddy. I went over and asked him if he were related to my father, and he +said he supposed not, but he took me in behind the screen and sat me +upon a table and offered me a taste of toddy, and I said, 'No, thank +you. I have plenty of that at home.'" + +Then she turned over and went to sleep, while Algarcife sat beside her +and held her hand. His gaze ravished her with its fierce tenderness. His +life and heart and brain seemed bound up and enshrined in the sleeping +woman who lay in that death-like pallor, with the child at her side. He +followed the sweep of the loosened and disordered hair that fell in a +heavy braid across the pillow. He lingered, unsatisfied, upon the worn +and emaciated face, in which there was none of the material beauty of +flesh and blood. With an impassioned ardor he studied the defects of +outline, the thin and irregular features, the hollows of the blue-veined +temples, the firm and accentuated chin. Now there was none of that +bewildering illumination of expression left, which in moments of +intensity was like a fleeting search-light thrown across her face, +forever changing in tone and color. She lay rapt and wan and pallid--a +woman overthrown. + +His glance fell upon the child in the hollow of her arm, and he bent to +look at it. He was conscious of no feeling for it as his own, but of a +general feeling of pity for it as a helpless animal. He supposed the +other would come later, and in the meantime Mariana was sufficient. + +Then, as he sat there, a harassed look crept into his eyes, and he +frowned impatiently. Mariana's illness had entirely exhausted the small +fund he had accumulated, and he knew that the next few years would bring +a hand-to-hand, disastrous conflict with want. For himself he cared +little, but for Mariana and the child he experienced a blind and bitter +disgust at his own impotence. Working night and day, as he did, and +preserving his hold upon the Bodley College, which was at best an +uncertain reef, he knew that he could manage to wring from the world but +a bare subsistence. He felt resentful of the fact that all his +knowledge, all his years of study, all his scientific value would weigh +for nothing in the struggle for bread against a moderate capacity for +fulfilling the dictates of other men. This ruthless waste of energy +exasperated him in its inevitable assault upon his theories of life. He +looked at his hands--thin and virile hands, with knotted knuckles and +square-cut finger-tips--the hands of a nervous, impracticable +temperament. Of a sudden he felt himself as helpless to contend with +existing conditions as the baby lying within the crook of Mariana's arm. +For an instant his natural irascibility of temper seemed to have +overborne the bounds of his reserve. That extreme sensitiveness to minor +irritants became painful in its acuteness. He saw in it the effects of +the nervous exhaustion which followed in the wake of uncongenial mental +work combined with the stress of financial worries, and withdrew the +curb of will. For the moment he regretted his old life--regretted his +freedom and the solitude which had surrounded him even amid the tumult +of the city. He reproached himself that he had not allowed Mariana to +live her life as it pleased her, unhampered by the obligations he had +permitted her to assume. Then he recalled her as she came to him that +September night, the letter fluttering in her hand, and it seemed to him +that he was not wholly responsible--that something mightier than himself +had manipulated their destinies. To his dark and embittered mood there +appeared a certain humor in the thought that they were puppets in the +hands of the grim comedian Time. And then the scientific tenor of his +mind, which contrasted saliently with his nervous temperament, +reasserted itself, and he traced in vague outline the inviolable +sequence of cause and effect, upon which his own and the world's +revolutions hung. Again he fortified himself with a philosophic +acceptance of the authoritative "must" of those unconquerable forces +which we call fate. + +With a returning gentleness he loosened Mariana's hand and went back to +his work. + +When Mariana grew strong enough to wear a blue wrapper and sit in a +rocking-chair beside the window, she began working upon dainty garments +for the baby. With characteristic extravagance she embroidered a +hundred roses upon a white carriage-robe which would probably not +survive the first laundering. She made tiny bags for powdered +orris-root, and scattered them among the tucked and ruffled cambric, and +that faint suggestion of fresh violets was extended from herself to the +child. + +One day, Miss Ramsey, coming in on her way up-stairs, found her tearing +up a linen petticoat to make night-slips for the baby, whom she had +called "Isolde." + +Miss Ramsey remonstrated. She had been a faithful servitor during +Mariana's convalescence, and she felt that she had earned the right to +interpose. "My dear Mariana," she said, "what are you doing? Cotton at +ten cents a yard would do equally well." + +"But I couldn't make the little thing sleep in cotton," answered +Mariana, "and I haven't any money, so I cut up a few of my things. It +must be well cared for. I really couldn't have a child that wasn't nice +and clean." + +Miss Ramsey smiled. + +"Do you think," she asked, "that it would know the difference between +cotton and linen? Besides, I've always heard that cotton was more +healthful." + +Mariana threaded her needle and bent her head. + +"It is in the blood," she returned. "My grandmother couldn't bear to be +touched by anything but silk. She lived upon her plantations and owned a +great many slaves, and she could afford it. Everything, from her +night-caps to her chemises, was made of soft white silk. I have one of +her chemises, and it is all hand-sewed, with a fall of real lace around +the bosom. My mother inherited the taste, and she never wore cotton +stockings, even when she couldn't afford meat but twice a week. I am +just like her, only she was proud of it and I am ashamed of it." + +"But you have overcome it," said Miss Ramsey. + +Mariana laughed. + +"I can't. Anthony says luxury is bred in my bone, but then he doesn't +even care for comforts. I believe he had just as soon eat turnip-salad +on a plain deal table as sweetbreads on Irish damask." + +"Life teaches us the pettiness of such things," said Miss Ramsey. "When +one isn't sure one will get a dinner at all, one is not apt to worry +about the possible serving. By-the-way, Mr. Nevins wants to paint the +baby when it gets a little larger." + +Mariana looked delighted. + +"Of course he shall," she said; then she took the child from the nurse's +arms and gave it into Miss Ramsey's. "Feel how light she is," she +continued. "I know she isn't very pretty, but she is beautifully +formed--nurse says so--and did you ever see one with quite so much +expression?" + +Miss Ramsey held it upon her knee, patting its flexible back with one +timid hand. "I really believe it notices things," she said. "It is +looking straight at you." + +"Of course it does," Mariana answered. "Of course it knows its own +blessed little mamma--doesn't it, Isolde?" + +The child whimpered and squirmed upon Miss Ramsey's knee. + +"Take it, nurse," said Mariana. "It doesn't look nice when it cries." + +A week later Mr. Speares came, and was introduced to the baby as it lay +in its crib. He leaned over it in the helpless inattention of a man who +has a mortal terror of a human being during the first stages of its +development. + +"It looks very pleasant," he said, finally. + +Mariana lifted the child and held it against her shoulder. Had Mr. +Nevins seen her in her light-blue gown, with the soft look in her eyes, +he would have seized the opportunity and used it to advantage. + +"Look at her eyes," she said. "Is she like Anthony used to be?" + +Mr. Speares examined it critically. "I don't observe it," he replied; +"but I don't suppose its features are quite formed as yet. It will be +easier to trace a likeness later on." + +Mariana laughed and smoothed the long dress with her frail, blue-veined +hand. "The nurse says it is like me," she returned, good-humoredly. "I +say it is like Anthony, and Anthony says it is like the original +primate." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +"I am getting old," said Mariana. She was sitting before the mirror, and +as she spoke she rose and leaned forward in closer inspection. "This +line," she added, dolefully, rubbing her forehead, "is caused by the +laundress, this by the departure of the nurse, and this by the curdling +of the baby's milk." + +Anthony crossed over and stood behind her. "I would give my right arm to +smooth them away," he said. + +Mariana fastened the collar of her breakfast sacque and looked back at +him from the glass. She did not reply. Not that she would not have liked +to say something affectionate, but that she felt the effort to be +pleasant to be physically beyond her. Her life of the last few weeks had +taught her that demonstrative expressions are an unnecessary waste of +energy. + +There was a rap at the door, and she opened it and took the milk-bottle +from the dairy-man. After setting a cupful upon the little gas-stove, +she raised the window and placed the remainder upon the fire-escape. "I +am afraid," she remarked, "that I will have to try one of those +innumerable infant foods. One can never be sure that the milk is quite +fresh." + +Anthony tied a cravat which was particularly worn, put on a coat which +was particularly shiny across the shoulders, and went into the adjoining +room to set the table. He boiled the coffee, took in the baker's rolls +from a tray on the threshold, and put on a couple of eggs. Then he +called Mariana. + +She came, sat down at the table, and lifted the coffee-pot. She looked +hollow-eyed and haggard, and her hand shook slightly. "I am so weak," +she said, fretfully. "I can't get my strength. I just go dragging +about." + +Anthony looked at her in sudden pain. "If there were a speculating devil +around who took stock in souls," he said, "I am sure we might offer him +an investment. People are fools to think there is any happiness without +money." + +"Or any decency," added Mariana. Then the baby cried, and she took it up +and brought it to the table, holding it upon her knee as she ate. Her +appetite failed, and she pushed her plate away. + +"The egg is so white," she said, pettishly, "I can't eat it." Then her +voice choked. "I--I sometimes wish I were dead," she added, and went to +pour the baby's milk into its bottle. + +Mariana's strength did not return. As the months passed she grew more +listless, her pallor deepened, and the shadows under her eyes darkened +to a purplish cast. The incessant round of minor cares clouded her +accustomed sunniness of temper, and her buoyant step gave place to a +languid tread. It was as if the inexorable hand of poverty had crushed +her beneath its weight. + +Algarcife, coming in from his more systematic employment, would marvel +vaguely at her unresponsiveness. His tenderness would recoil in pained +surprise as he felt her indifference to his caress, and her long +silences while he sat beside her. "Mariana," he would begin, "won't you +talk to me?" and Mariana would rouse herself with a start. "But what is +there to say?" she would ask, and sink back into stillness. It was, +perhaps, impossible for him to understand that at such times she was but +undergoing the inevitable reaction from long months of physical and +mental suffering--that the energy which she had expended in supplying +the drains upon her nature had left her incapable of further effort. He +did not know that emotion with a woman is so largely regulated by +nervous conditions, that complete exhaustion of body and mind is apt to +repress, not the fund of affection, but its outward manifestations. In +his passionate desire to shield Mariana, he had kept from her knowledge +the financial stress into which her prolonged illness had plunged him. +He had watched his growing indebtedness silently, and had reduced his +personal expenses to a minimum while he sought to supply her with +comforts. But from the immediate needs and anxieties of her own life he +had not been able to guard her. The gnawing fears for the child, the +nights when she awoke from needed sleep to lean over its crib and soothe +it with lullabies, the weary hours in the day when she walked with +aching head back and forth, he could not prevent, nor could he restore +to her the health which she had lost. That the vein of iron which lay +beneath the surface lightness of her nature had developed through +responsibility, he saw clearly, but he also saw that she lived her life +in apparent unrepining, not because of a rational acceptance of the +order of things, but because illness and toil had for the time +overthrown her aesthetic intuitions. To recall her as she had been during +the first months of their marriage, white, fresh, and exquisite in +attire, and then to look at her in a faded wrapper, her heavy hair +disordered, her lips compressed, was to know that Mariana as she was +to-day was not Mariana in a normal state. That it could not last, he +knew. That with the first wave of returning vigor her longing for +dramatic effects and the small requirements of existence would reawaken, +he admitted unhesitatingly. She would grow vital again, she would demand +with passionate desire the satisfaction of her senses--she would crave +music, color, light, all the sensuous fulness of life. And where would +she find it? + +One day, as he came in to luncheon, he found her playing with the baby, +a flash of brightness upon her face. + +He looked at her and smiled. + +"It is company for you, isn't it, dearest?" + +Mariana's smile passed. + +"I don't have time to think about that part," she returned. "I am always +working. When I've got her all nice and fresh, and laid her on the bed, +she begins to cry for her bottle. Then, while I am heating the milk, she +cries to be walked, and, by the time the bottle is ready, she is so red +in the face she can't drink it, and she spills it all over herself. Then +I begin and go through it all again." + +"What a little beast she is," said Algarcife, surveying the baby with +parental displeasure. "What a pity she isn't a Japanese! Japanese babies +never cry." Then he grew serious. "I sometimes wonder how you stand it," +he added. "Here, give me the little devil!" + +Mariana rescued the baby's rattle from its throat and laid it in the +crib. It screamed, and she took it up again. + +"There is a good deal in having to," she replied. + +Algarcife walked to the window and stood looking down into the street. +His brow was gloomy. Suddenly he faced her. "Are you sorry that you +married me, Mariana?" + +Mariana did not impulsively negative the question, as he had half +expected. She even appeared to consider it. Then she slowly shook her +head. + +"I should have been more unhappy if I hadn't," she answered. + +"It would have been a confounded sight better if you had never seen +me." + +But Mariana put the child down and fell into his outstretched arms. + +"No, no," she said; "but I am tired--so tired." + +Anthony picked her up and laid her on the bed. Then he threw a shawl +over her. "I am going to take an hour off and discipline your tyrant," +he said. "Go to sleep." He lifted the baby and went towards the door. +"You aren't such a black-hearted chap, after all, are you, Isolde?" + +The baby cuddled against his shoulder, and he passed into the next room, +closing the door after him. + +Mariana lay upon the bed and thought. Her eyes were wide open, and she +stared fixedly at the ceiling, watching the fluctuations of light that +chased across its plastered surface. It was a relief to be absolutely +alone, to be freed from the restraint which the presence of another +thinking entity necessitated. She drew the shawl closer about her and +pressed her cheek upon the pillow. The contact of the cotton was +exciting to her fevered flesh. In the dim train of association it +brought back to her an illness in her childhood, and she recalled her +first sensations of headache and fatigue. They had come upon her as she +was playing in an open meadow, and, before toiling to the house, she had +stopped beside the reedy brook and knelt to drink, while the cool, fresh +notes of the bobolinks sounded about her. She remembered it all now as +she lay amid the noise of the city. The roar of the elevated road was +silenced, and she heard the bobolinks again. She saw the emerald sweep +of the wheat fields, undulating in golden lights and olive shadows. She +saw the stagnant ice pond, with the overhanging branches of willows and +the whir of the parti-colored insects. She smelt the pungent sweetness +of the wild rose and the subtle odor of the trumpet-flower, glowing amid +its luxuriant foliage like a heart of fire. + +Then she raised her head and surveyed the room in which she lay. She +saw the garish daylight streaming in a flood of dust and sunshine +through the narrow window. She saw the lack of grace that surrounded +her, emphasized by a crowd of trivial details. She saw the tall, painted +wardrobe with its bulging doors and the bandboxes upon the top, the +cheap bureau with its gaping drawers, and the assortment of shoes +half-hidden under it. She saw her work-basket, overflowing with +stockings to be darned and small slips to be mended. + +With a stifled sob she turned from it all, pressing her face against the +pillow. The heritage of yearning for vivid beauty and sharp, sweet odors +surged upon her. "I can't be poor!" she cried, passionately. "I can't be +poor!" + +But as the spring came, Mariana regained something of her old vigor, and +it was in April of that year that Mr. Nevins painted the portrait which +was exhibited some six months later, and with which began his rising +fortunes. It represented her in the blue wrapper, holding the sleeping +Isolde upon her knee, that soft and pensive stillness in her eyes. +Within a couple of months after its appearance, Mr. Nevins had received +orders for similar portraits from a dozen mothers, and had taken his +position in the art world as the popular baby specialist. + +Mariana had enjoyed the portrait and the sittings. They diverted her +thoughts from the groove of the ordinary and gratified to a small extent +her social instinct. When it was finished, and Mr. Nevins no longer +came, she relapsed into listlessness. It was the friction of the outside +world she needed. Hers was not the nature to develop through stagnation. +In barren soil she wilted and grew colorless, while at the touch of +sunshine she expanded and put forth her old radiance. + +Anthony, watching her, would become oppressed at times with the thought +that this thin and fragile woman, dragging through her irksome round of +duties, anaemic and hollow-eyed, might by the magic of wealth and ease +mature into a passionate, lithe, and gracious creature, of which she was +now the wraith--and yet which even now she suggested. For the furnace +through which she had passed, in robbing her of freshness and bloom, had +been unable to destroy her vague and ineffable charm. + +"She is a woman ruined," he said, bitterly, and he said it with a dull +aching in his heart. To him Mariana, emaciated and unresponsive, was +still the Mariana to be possessed and held with burning desire. The +small clashes of temper, the long silences, the apparent indifference, +had been powerless to weaken the force of his love. It was still +indomitable. + +One night, upon going to his room, he found her in her night-gown +kneeling on the hearth-rug. From her breathing he knew that she was +asleep, and it was a moment before he aroused her. In the dim light she +resembled a marble figure of prayer, her cheek resting upon her hand, +the lashes fallen over the violet circles beneath her eyes. + +Beside the bed, the baby lay in its little crib, the restless fists +lying upon its breast, a fine moisture shining like dew upon the +infantile face. He stood looking at it, a thrill shooting into his +heart. For the first time he realized with acuteness a positive feeling +for the child--realized that it was his as well as Mariana's, that it +had a claim upon him other than the claim of Mariana, that he was not +only the husband of a woman, but the father of a child. + +Bending over the crib, he touched with one finger the crumpled rose-leaf +hands, with the soft indentation around the wrist as if left by a +tightly drawn cord. + +He smiled slightly. Then he crossed over and kissed Mariana. She opened +her eyes, yawned, stretched her arms above her head, and rose. + +"I have really been asleep," she said. + +"You were so tired," answered Algarcife, and his voice was limpid with +tenderness. "It kills me that you should work so, Mariana." + +Mariana rested against him for an instant. Then she went to the crib, +and, raising the baby's head, smoothed its pillow. As she laid it down +again she pressed the cover carefully over its arms; then, throwing +herself into bed, she fell asleep with a sigh. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +With the closing session, Algarcife lost his position at the Bodley +College. He had published, for a mere pittance, a series of articles +upon the origin of sex, and, as a result, he was requested to deliver +his resignation to the principal of the institution. A man holding such +views, it was argued, was an unsuitable instructor for sixty-one young +women. So the instructorship was transferred to a divinity student who +was casually looking into science, and Algarcife was dismissed. + +Upon receiving his dismissal, he descended into the street and walked +slowly homeward. His first sensation was one of anger--blind anger +against the blindness of the universe. It seemed incredible that a +premium should be set upon commonplaceness, that modern civilization +should demand of a man that he shape his mind by an artificial process +after the minds of semi-savage ancestors. Was thought to be forever +prostrate beneath the feet of superstition? Was all boldness of inquiry, +all mental advancement along other than given lines, to be branded in +the nineteenth century by the _odium theologicum_ as it had been branded +in the time of Bruno? + +Then there followed a wave of personal bitterness which in its turn was +succeeded by a flood-tide of indifference. + +Going home, he found Mariana in nervous despair. The baby, who had been +unwell for several days, had been suddenly threatened with convulsions. +Upon the doctor's arrival, he had predicted a dangerous teething, and +had insisted upon Isolde leaving town before the beginning of hot +weather. + +"I am so miserable," said Mariana, moistening a towel to remove the +traces of milk that she had upset upon her wrapper. "What can we do?" +With a feverish gesture she brushed her heavy and disordered hair from +her brow and shook her head helplessly. "Monday is the first of June," +she added. + +Anthony listened almost stolidly. When he spoke there was a dogged +decision in his voice. "The money must be had," he answered. "God knows, +I believe I'd steal it if I'd half a chance!" + +"Then we'd all go to prison," remarked Mariana, ruefully, as she +measured the coffee into the coffee-pot. + +Algarcife smiled with a quick sense of humor. "At any rate, a livelihood +would be insured," he returned. "Honest industry is the only thing that +goes a-begging in this philanthropic century." Then, as Mariana returned +to the baby, he drank his coffee in silence and went out. As a +beginning, he secured an order to write hygienic articles for a Sunday +newspaper. Then he called upon Father Speares and found that he was out +of town, and even in his desperation was conscious of a sensation of +relief at the thought that Father Speares was beyond appeal. But the +sensation was reactionary, and, upon consulting the weather bulletin and +finding that a change in temperature was expected, he wrote a letter, +which he left at the clergyman's house. + +"How is Isolde?" he asked of Mariana an hour later. + +Mariana smiled and raised her finger warningly. "Much brighter to-day," +she answered, "and sleeping sweetly." + +Anthony bent over the crib, holding his breath as he watched the child. +He noticed that she looked thinner; the blue veins showed in a delicate +tracery upon the forehead, and the crease around the tiny wrists was +less deep. + +Mariana, serious and careworn, leaned upon the opposite side. + +"What do you think?" she whispered. + +"Only a little pale," he replied; "all children are when teething, I +suppose." + +They went into the next room and sat down, leaving the door ajar. + +"The doctor was here again," began Mariana, playing with the folds of +her gown. "June is the dangerous month--he says so." + +Algarcife raised his eyes and looked at her. + +"I wrote to Father Speares to-day," he said. + +For a moment Mariana was silent, a flush rising to her brow. Then she +rose and came over to his side, putting her arms about his neck. + +"My poor love," she murmured. Anthony drew her down upon the sofa beside +him. + +"It was tough," he said, slowly, "but--how I hate to tell you, +Mariana!--there is something else." + +Mariana flinched sharply. + +"Surely he has not refused?" she exclaimed. + +"He is away, but the College has given me notice." + +Mariana did not answer, but she grew white and her lips trembled. Then +she flung her arms out upon the sofa and laid her head upon them. Her +sobs came short and fast. + +"Mariana!" + +She lifted her head and choked back her tears, sitting cold and stiff +beside him. + +"If it were only ourselves," she said; "but the baby--what will become +of the baby?" + +There was a strained note of cheerfulness in Algarcife's voice. + +"Don't cry," he said, laying his hand upon her shoulder. "I must get the +money. Father Speares will lend it to me. We will pull through all +right, never fear." + +Mariana rested her head upon his arm and looked up at him. + +"How ill you look!" she said. "My poor boy!" + +Then the baby cried, and she went back to it. As Algarcife rose from the +sofa, he was seized with a sudden swimming in his head, and, to steady +himself, leaned against the mantel. The objects in the room seemed to +whirl in a tangle before him, and his vision was obscured by a vaporous +fog, while a tumultuous ringing sounded in his ears. But in a moment it +passed, and he was himself again. + +"Biliousness," he remarked, and started out in search of stray +journalistic work. He found it easier to obtain than he had supposed, +and, with his usual precision of method, calculated that by working +fifteen hours a day he might, provided the supply of work continued, +make up the amount which he would lose with the loss of the Bodley +College. + +After a week of such work, he became optimistic in mind and +correspondingly depressed in body. "If my brains didn't get so +sluggish," he said to Mariana, "the work would be nothing; but caffeine +will remedy that." And he returned to the use of the drug, silencing +Mariana's remonstrances with a laugh. + +"My dear girl, if I didn't take something to keep me awake, I'd fall +asleep in my chair at ten o'clock, and the subscribers to the evening +issue would never learn the hygienic value of regular hours and a +sufficient amount of recreation." + +"But you will wreck yourself," urged Mariana. + +"Nonsense. This caffeine is going to take Isolde and yourself to the +country." + +"And you?" + +"I--oh, don't worry about me! I am all right." + +And he would begin work with a pretence of alacrity, keeping to it +until drowsiness warned him of physical exhaustion, when he would pause, +stretch himself, measure his dose of caffeine, and, lifting his pen, dog +away until past midnight. + +It was an afternoon shortly after this that Mariana came to him flushed +and expectant. + +"Signor Morani sent for me," she explained. "I left Isolde with a +daughter of the laundress and went. He has offered me an engagement in a +comic opera." + +Algarcife started and looked up. + +"It seems that the manager heard me sing one day when I was at my +lesson. He liked my dramatic power, Signor Morani says. At any rate, one +of his troupe has given out, and he offers me the part." + +"But, Mariana--" + +Mariana did not look at him, but went rapidly on, as if waiving possible +objections. + +"We need the money. It might take Isolde away--and it is a chance. I am +so young, you see--and--" + +"Mariana!" cried Algarcife, sharply. There was a note in his voice which +caused her to shrink away as if he had struck her. "Mariana," he put out +his hand in protest, "you shall not do it. I will not let you. I could +not bear it." + +Mariana tapped her foot upon the floor impatiently. "I believe it is a +child's part," she said. + +"You shall not do it," he said, passionately. + +Mariana turned her eyes upon him. + +"But the money?" + +"Oh, we will arrange it. I will leave The Gotham and take a room +down-town, and you and Isolde shall go." + +"Very well," said Mariana, sullenly, and left the room. + +The next few days brought a wave of heat, and Algarcife made +arrangements to send Mariana and the child away. He gave notice at The +Gotham, and secured a room upon Fourth Street, and in spare moments +assisted Mariana with the packing. Then there was some delay in the +payment for the articles he had written, and Mariana's departure was +postponed. "Get your things ready," said Algarcife, when the heat grew +more intense and Isolde drooped. "The moment that the money arrives, you +can start. It was due a week ago." + +So Mariana continued her packing with nervous hands. She was divided +between anxiety for Anthony and anxiety for the child, and she was +profoundly depressed on her own account. + +"If it wasn't for Isolde, I wouldn't go a step," she declared, standing +before a trunk into which she was putting cans of baby's milk. "I feel +as if I could weep gallons of tears--only I haven't time." + +Miss Ramsey, who was rocking Isolde, smiled encouragingly. "The change +will do you good," she responded, "and I am sure you need it. You are +quite ghastly." + +Mariana sighed and looked at herself in the glass. "I suppose so," she +remarked, a little wistfully. "I might be thirty." + +And she went on packing. "Of course we may not leave for weeks," she +explained, "and yet I feel driven. The uncertainty is horrible." + +But Algarcife, coming in at dusk, found her more cheerful. She kissed +him with something of her old warmth, and talked almost animatedly while +he ate his supper. + +"I shall miss you so," she said, "and yet I do wish we could get off. +Isolde has been very fretful all day, and is badly broken out with heat. +She has just fallen asleep." + +After supper Mariana went to bed, and Anthony returned to work. He had +an article to do upon the moral effects of the bicycle, which was to be +handed in in the morning, and this, with some additional work, would +keep him writing far into the night. With a strong feeling of distaste +he took up his pen, and his repugnance increased with every line. In a +moment he rose, threw off his coat, and applied himself with dull +determination. It was warm to oppression, and the noises of the city +came distinctly through the open window. The elevated road grated upon +him as if it were running along his nervous system, and he started at +the shrill sounds which rose at intervals above the monotonous roar of +the streets. + +He had been writing some hours, and it was twelve o'clock when the door +opened and Mariana came in. She was barefooted and in her night-gown. +Her face shone gray in the lamplight, and there were heavy circles under +her eyes. She spoke rapidly. + +"The baby is ill," she said. "You must find a doctor. She can't +breathe." + +In an instant Algarcife had passed her and was bending over the crib. +The child was lying upon its back, staring with a mute interrogation at +vacancy. There was a purple tinge over its face, and its breath came +shortly. + +"In a moment," said Anthony, and, taking up his hat, went out. + +Within half an hour he returned, followed by the doctor, a well-meaning +young fellow, fresh from college and wholly in earnest. + +He looked at the child, spoke soothingly to Mariana, wrote a +prescription, which he himself had filled at the nearest druggist's, +gave a multitude of directions, sat an hour, and departed with the +assurance that he would return at daybreak. + +"She looks easier now," said Anthony, with a nervous tremor in his +voice. "It must have been the heat." + +Mariana, with tragic eyes, was fanning the little, flushed face, +crooning a negro lullaby which she had treasured from her own childhood. +The wavings of the palm-leaf fan cast a grotesque shadow that hovered +like a gigantic hand above the baby's head, and, with the flitting of +the shadow, the wistful little plantation melody went on. Ever since the +birth of Isolde, Mariana had sung that song, and it fell upon Anthony's +ears with an acute familiarity, like the breaking of happier +associations against a consciousness of present pain. + + "Ba! ba! black sheep. Where yo' lef' yo' lamb? + Way down yonder in de val-ley. + De birds an' de butterflies a-peckin' out its eyes, + An' de po' little thing cries: 'Mammy.'" + +As Algarcife looked down upon the small and motionless body, he felt a +sudden tightening of his heart. The infantile hands, with their waxen +look of helplessness, caused him to draw his breath as he turned away, +and to wonder how Mariana could sit there hour after hour, crooning the +negro song and waving to and fro the palm-leaf fan. + +And yet her figure in its pallid outline against the dim light was +photographed upon his brain, and it was Mariana at that moment that he +loved with the love more abundant, and that in the after-years he found +it hardest to forget. + +He saw her with the reddish glow from the night-lamp upon her profile, +her drooping body in the shadow, the fixed look of pain upon her face +softened by the look which fell upon the sick child. He saw the child +lying mute and motionless, the wide eyes staring, the small hands +folded, the soft rings of flaxen hair wet and dark with perspiration, +and the moisture lying upon the fragile little chest which the gown left +bare; and he saw it all shadowed and lightened by the wavings of +Mariana's fan. + +Beyond this he saw the homely and disordered room, the articles dropped +hastily as if in the start of sudden anxiety, the half-packed trunk with +the piles of clothes upon the floor beside it, the tiny socks with the +impress of the feet just learning to stand, the battered India-rubber +doll with the crocheted frock of bright-hued worsteds, and at Mariana's +hand the medicines which the doctor had left. + +All these things were one with Mariana and himself. They were the +heritage of their marriage, the memories which must always be +inviolate--memories that could be shared by none other, could be undone +by no stretch of time. In that atmosphere of common pain, which is more +powerful both to sever and to unite than the less trenchant atmosphere +of joy, he felt his heart leap into an invisible communion with the +heart of Mariana. At that moment he was conscious of an additional +sense-perception in the acuteness of his sympathy. He returned to his +desk and took up his pen. The articles must be finished, and yet between +himself and the unwritten page rose the vision of the still room, the +pallid woman, and the sick child. The wavings of Mariana's fan seemed to +obscure the light, and in his nervous tension he convinced himself that +he heard the difficult breathing of a dying child--his child and +Mariana's. + +He swallowed an added dose of caffeine and looked at the page before +him. The last written words stared him in the face and seemed so alien +to his present train of thought as to have emanated from another person. +He wondered what that other person's completion of the sentence would +have been. + +"Optimism is the first duty of the altruist." What in thunder had that +to do with the effects of the bicycle? And what beastly rot it was. One +might as well state that to be comfortable is the first duty of the +damned. + +"Optimism is the first duty of the altruist." He wrote on with the +feeling that he was existing as an automaton, that while his hand was +executing the result of some reflex action, his thinking entity was in +the still room behind the closed door. + +But with the absence of personality his senses were rendered doubly +acute, and he seemed to see the rhythm of the atmospheric waves about +him, while his ears were responsive to every sound in the night +without--hearing them, not in a confused discord, but in distinct +differentiation of note and key. Once his gaze encountered the grinning +skull above the mantel, and, to his giddy senses, it seemed to wink with +its hollow sockets. He found himself idly wondering if the skull had +caught the trick of winking from its former accompaniment of flesh, and +was forced to pull his thoughts together with a jerk. Then there came +one of those sudden attacks of vertigo to which he had become subject, +and he laid aside his pen and closed his eyes. "Too much caffeine," he +muttered. But when it passed he went on again. + +As the day broke he finished his articles, placed them in envelopes, +stamped and addressed them, and rose to his feet. He blew out the lamp, +and the faint odor of heated oil caused him a sensation of nausea. +Crossing to the window, he raised the shade and stood inhaling the +insipidity of atmosphere which is the city imitation of the freshness of +a country morning. Without, a sombre, neutral-toned light flooded the +almost deserted streets. In the highest heaven a star was still visible, +and the vaguest herald of dawn flaunted itself beyond the chimney-pots. + +As he lifted the shade he noticed that his hand trembled and that his +head was unusually light. That massive sense of loneliness which the +transition hour from darkness to day begets in the on-looker oppressed +him with the force of an estrangement of hope. Such an impression had +been produced upon him a hundred times by the breaking of dawn after a +sleepless night. + +He turned away and opened the door softly. + +The night-lamp was still burning, but the beginning of the morrow washed +with a faint grayness the atmosphere. The objects he had dwelt upon the +night before were magnified in size, and in an instant the unpacked +trunks, the rubber doll, and the bottles of medicine obtruded themselves +upon his vision. + +Mariana was still sitting as he had left her, waving to and fro the +palm-leaf fan. He wondered vaguely if she had sat thus since midnight. +Then he laid his hand upon her shoulder. + +"Mariana, you must lie down." And as he stooped nearer he saw that the +child was dead. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +For the next six weeks Anthony was forced to listen to the distracted +self-accusations of Mariana. When the little white coffin had been +carried to Greenwood and laid in the over-grown plot beside the graves +of Algarcife's parents, to be shadowed by the storied urns that +redounded to the honor of a less impoverished generation, Mariana +returned, and, throwing herself upon the floor, refused consolation. + +"I want nothing," she said--"nothing, nothing. What could comfort me?" + +At Anthony's protestations of love and grief she lifted dull and +scornful eyes, wherein the triumph of motherhood showed supreme over all +other emotions. + +"How can you know?" she asked, between tearless sobs. "You did not nurse +her, and hold her in your arms night and day; you did not bathe her +while she laughed at the bubbles; you did not put on her little dresses +and socks. Oh, my baby! my baby! I want my baby!" + +Then she would rise and pace up and down in a sudden frenzy of despair, +clinching her hands at her own impotence, tearing her wounds asunder +with remorseless recollections. It was as if she found satisfaction in +thus inflicting upon herself the added agony of recalling the minor +details of her loss--in voicing the keenest passion of her grief. + +Algarcife, writing in the adjoining room and wrung by a tortured brain, +would listen to her unsteady tread as she walked ceaselessly back and +forth, until the sound would madden him with its pauseless +monotony--and then would come that half-choked cry for reckoning with +fate, "Oh, my baby!" + +To his more self-contained nature the violence of Mariana's grief was +like the searing of the bleeding sores in his own heart. To avoid that +cry of stricken motherhood he would have given the better portion of his +life--to have been deaf to that impulsive expression of a pain he felt +but could not utter he would have damned his soul. + +And when, during the first few days, Mariana gathered together all the +scattered little garments, and brooded over them with the passion of +irremediableness, he would cry aloud out of his own bitterness, + +"Put them away! If you love me, Mariana, hide them." + +But Mariana, in the selfishness of loss, would glance at him with +reproachful eyes, and turn to stroke the rubber doll in its bright-hued +dress, and the half-worn socks with the impress of restless feet. + +In the night she would start from a troubled sleep with corroding +self-questionings. "Make a light," she would say, fretfully, sitting up +and staring into the gloom. "Make a light. The darkness stifles me. I +can't breathe." + +Then, when the flame of the candle would flare up beside her, she would +turn upon Anthony the blaze of her excited eyes, and play upon the sheet +with feverish fingers. The loss of sleep which these spasms entailed +upon Algarcife was an additional drain upon his wrecking system, and +sometimes in sheer exhaustion he would plead for peace. + +"Mariana, only sleep. Lie still, and I will fan you--or shall I give you +bromide?" + +But the hot questions would rush upon him and he would answer them as he +had answered such questions for the past six weeks. + +"Was it my fault? Could I have done anything? Was it taken away because +I didn't want it to come?" + +"Mariana!" + +"Do you remember that I said I hoped it would die? You knew they were +idle words, didn't you? You knew that I didn't mean it?" + +"Of course, my dearest." + +"But somebody told me once that for every idle word we would be held to +account. Is this the account?" + +"Hush." + +For a moment she would lie silent, and then, rising again, the torrent +would come. + +"Perhaps if I had not left the window open that first warm day. And I +did not send for the doctor at once. I thought it was only fretful. +Perhaps--" + +"You could have done nothing." + +"I did not know. I was so ignorant. I should have studied. I should have +asked questions." + +Then she would turn towards him, laying her hot hand upon his arm. + +"Tell me that it was not my fault. Tell me--tell me!" + +"It was not. It was not." + +"But I want her so. I want to feel her. I want to feel her soft and warm +in my arms. Oh, my baby!" + +And so the summer nights would wear away. + +But as time went on a reactionary lethargy pervaded her. Her vitality +being spent, she was left limp and devoid of energy. For hours she would +lie motionless in the heated room, the afternoon sun, intensified by the +reflected glare of pressed brick, streaming upon her, and she would +appear to be indifferent to both heat and glare. From Algarcife she +turned with an avoidance which was almost instinctive. When he touched +her she shrank into silence, when he spoke she met his words with +lethargic calm. It was as if the demands he made upon her emotional +nature became irksome to her when that nature lay dormant. + +"I suppose I love you," she said one day, in answer to his questions. "I +think I do, but I don't feel it. I don't feel anything. I only want to +forget." + +"Not to forget me, Mariana?" + +Mariana shook her head impatiently. + +"Do you know," she continued, "that the thought of feeling makes me +positively sick? I haven't any left, and I don't like it in other +people. I am tired of it all." + +"And of me?" + +"I don't know. I think not, but I oughtn't to have married you." + +"Mariana!" + +"It would have been much better. You said so yourself once. But love is +so strange. It makes people do such absurd things." + +Algarcife did not reply. There was resentment in the look he bent upon +her. He had not learned that even a woman in love is not a woman always +in love--that love, in common with all other conditions, is subject to +the forces which attract and repel, and that its equilibrium is +maintained by a logical adjustment of opposites. To him Mariana's +alienation betokened a fundamental failing in her nature, and with the +thought he experienced a dull anger. + +"I have felt so much in my life," continued Mariana, "that my capacity +for sensations is lying fallow. The lack of ice in my tea and the heat +in my room are of more importance than the excesses of affection. Were +you ever that way?" + +For a moment Algarcife did not reply; then he said, "You are very +uncomfortable?" + +"Yes." + +"When we leave The Gotham it will be still worse. That room on Fourth +Street is hellish." + +"No doubt." + +"How will you stand it?" + +Mariana interlaced her fingers with impatient weariness and yawned. + +"I don't know. As I stand it now, I suppose. We are poorer than ever, +aren't we?" + +"Poorer than ever." + +She fingered her gown softly. "I suppose I shouldn't have bought this +mourning," she said. "What a pity!" + +When Anthony had gone she went out upon the fire-escape and looked down +into the street below. The cry of a vender rolling his cart of over-ripe +melons came up to her, and she followed his figure with curious +intentness. From some indefinable cause, the vender suggested Signor +Morani to her mind, and she recalled his warning, as she had recalled it +in a different mood that rainy evening over a year ago. She realized now +that Anthony's objection to her accepting Signor Morani's offer was +still a canker within her heart. There remained, and there would always +remain, the possibility that had she overruled his objection and entered +into the engagement, Isolde might have been sent from the city, and +might now be playing in some country meadow. The possibility, facing her +as it did in all its ghastliness, produced a gnawing remorse, as +invincible as a devil's thrust. + +Upon this followed the conception that her marriage had doomed to +failure not only her own life, but Anthony's; and there came a +passionate regret for the part she had played in drawing him from his +isolated abstraction into the turmoil of life and its passions. She +blamed herself that she had gone to him that night, carrying the letter +in her hand. She blamed herself that she had not resisted the appeal of +her love, and, with a sudden pang, she realized all that the change had +meant to him--the book that remained unwritten, the treadmill of +uncongenial toil, the physical hardihood which was being slowly ground +to dust. She realized this in its fulness, but with no determination of +endeavor, no resolutions to battle more with fate. There was regret for +the past, but there were no pledges for the future. The outcome was +beyond her and beyond Anthony, this she knew. It was something to be +left to the floodgates of hope that would be overborne by the press of +time. In the lowered state of her vitality she felt almost indifferently +her own inability to contest for larger measures of individual gain. She +accepted destiny, and acquiesced, not in resignation, but in the apathy +of one whom despair has drugged. + +And above it all there rose the desire to escape, to be freed from it +forever. "If he had never seen me!" she cried, passionately. "If he had +never seen me!" Then colorless adumbrations of her own past blocked her +horizon--and she confronted the ashes of her aspirations. She saw those +illuminated dreams of her girlhood--the ideals which had crumbled at the +corroding touch of care. She saw the demand for power which had been +thwarted, the ambitions which had been undone, the cry for life more +abundant which had been forced back upon her quivering lips. She saw +herself walking day after day with empty arms along the way she had +carried the child. She saw herself a drag upon her own existence and +upon the existence of the man for whom she thought a love she had no +power to feel. She saw the stretch of those monotonous and neutral-toned +years, saw the sordid fight for bread, saw her sense of joy and beauty +blunted, saw the masculine brain that was fitted to grasp universal laws +decaying in the atmosphere of vulgar toil. And, woven and interwoven in +her thoughts, was the knowledge that the affection to be invigorated by +deprivations and to rise triumphant over poverty was not hers--that the +love which in happier surroundings might have shown inviolable, which +the great calamities of life might have left unassailed, had grown gray +in the round of unsatisfied desires and victorious commonplaces. In the +days to come, would not the jarring notes of their natures be +exaggerated, the sympathetic ones suppressed? When old age came, as come +it surely would, what would remain to them save a memory of discords and +a present of unfulfilment? Was not death itself preferable to death in +life? + +Down on the sidewalk below a ragged urchin was turning somersaults in +the shade. Suddenly, with a howl of delight, he pounced upon a +half-rotten peach which a passer-by had thrown into the gutter. Mariana +smiled faintly, left the fire-escape, and went in-doors. + +A week later they gave up The Gotham and moved into the room on Fourth +Street. Algarcife made an attempt to sell the greater part of his +library before moving, but the price offered was merely nominal, and at +the last moment his heart misgave him. So he hired a dilapidated van, +and the books were transported to the new lodgings and stacked along the +south wall. + +When the hour came for their departure, it was with a feeling of despair +that he took Mariana's bag and descended for the last time the steps of +The Gotham. A black finality seemed looming beyond their destination. + +At the entrance, Mr. Nevins, with tears in his eyes, grasped Anthony's +hand, and Miss Ramsey fell upon Mariana's neck. + +Mariana laughed a little desperately. + +"It reminds me of the time I saw a family move to the poor-house," she +said; "only their friends weren't quite so affectionate." + +"But you will come back," insisted Mr. Nevins. "Surely you will come +back when things look a little brighter." + +"Which will be when the flames of spontaneous combustion illuminate this +planet," remarked Ardly, cynically, but his eyes were sad as they rested +upon Mariana. + +"Or when a relation dies," said Mr. Nevins. + +"How we shall miss you!" said Miss Ramsey. + +Here Mr. Paul, who had sauntered up as if by chance, drew Algarcife +aside. + +"If you had only told me," he said, dryly. "I have a few thousands in +bank, and I--" + +Anthony caught his hand, but his voice was choked and he could only +shake his head. Then Mariana said good-bye, and they left the house and +ascended the steps to the platform of the elevated road. + +As Mariana took her seat, she turned to the window and watched the +little fire-escape upon the fourth story until The Gotham was lost to +sight. Then she raised her veil and wiped a tear-drop from her +eyelashes. + +When the door was unlocked and she entered the new room, a fit of +restlessness seized her. The barrenness of existence struck her with the +force of a blow, and, with a swift return of impulse, she cried out in +rebellion. The stale odor of cooking, which rose from the apartment +below, the dustiness of the floor, the blackened ceiling, the hard and +unyielding bed, gave her a convulsive shudder. + +"I cannot bear it," she said. "I cannot bear it." + +Algarcife left the window, where he had been standing, and came towards +her. Between himself and Mariana a constraint had been growing, and he +recalled suddenly the fact that their old warmth of intercourse had +chilled into an indifferent reserve. + +"It is bad," he said. "I am very sorry." + +Mariana took off her hat and veil and laid them in one of the bureau +drawers. The drawer creaked as she opened it, and the sound jarred upon +Anthony's overwrought sensitiveness. He noticed suddenly that Mariana's +expression had grown querulous, and that she had ceased to wear her hair +becomingly. + +"You can hardly think that I enjoy it," he added. "An existence composed +of two-thirds nerves and one-third caffeine is hardly rose-color." + +He looked gray and haggard, and the hand which he raised trembled +slightly. + +"Hardly," returned Mariana, shortly. + +Both felt an instinctive desire to vent their wretchedness in words, and +yet each felt an almost passionate pity for the other. The very pity +emphasized the aggravation from which they suffered, and it was by a +process of reflex action that, when goaded by thoughts of each other, +they would strike out recklessly. + +"No," repeated Mariana; "but it seems to be a case where two, instead of +lessening the misery, increase the discomforts." + +Immediately after supper she went to bed, tossing restlessly for hours +because the mattress was uneven, the sheets coarse, and the lamp, by +which Anthony worked, shining in her face. + +When she finally fell asleep, it was with a sob of revolt. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +Mariana's restlessness did not pass with the passing days. It developed +until it gathered the force of a malady, and she lived in persistent +movement, as if impelled by an invisible lash. As her aversion to their +lodgings became more pronounced, her powers of endurance increased, and +through the long, hot days she was rarely in-doors. Algarcife often +wondered where she spent the morning and afternoon hours, but the +constraint between them had strengthened, and he did not ask her. When +breakfast was over, he would see her put on her hat, take her shabby +black parasol, and go out into the street. At luncheon she would return, +looking flushed and warm, as if from exercise in the summer sun; but +when they had risen from the table she would move uneasily about, until, +at last, she would turn in desperation and go out again. He seldom +sought to detain her. Indeed, her absence was almost a relief, and he +found it less difficult to work when the silence was unbroken by +impetuous footsteps and the rustle of skirts. + +Once he said: "It is too hot for you this afternoon." + +And she answered: "No, I will go to a square." + +He was silent, and she left in sudden haste. + +That she walked miles in that fearful weather, driven on by sheer +inability to rest, he realized pityingly. Occasionally he would go to +the window as she descended the stairs, and the sight of the fragile, +black-robed figure, making its rapid way through the fierce sunshine, +would cause him a spasmodic contraction of pain. And yet the +remembrance of her indifference would chill the words with which he +greeted her return, and the knowledge that her heart had passed from him +and was straining towards the outside world would veil his mental +suffering in an assumption of pride. That Mariana's withered desires for +the fulness of life had grown green again, he could but know. He had +seen the agony inflicted upon her by every trivial detail of their +lives--by the poorly cooked food, by the fly-specks upon the dishes, by +the absence of a hundred superficial refinements. He had seen her flinch +at the odors of stale vegetables, and set her teeth at the grating +voices of the other lodgers. He had heard her moans in the night, rising +from a wail for the small comforts of life to a wail for the child she +had lost. He had marked every added line about her mouth, every bitter +word that fell from her lips. And yet he had gone unswervingly on his +way, and she had not known, but had thought him as pulseless to her +presence as she to his. + +"I am late," she said one day in September, coming in with more +brightness than usual. "Have you had luncheon?" + +"I waited for you," responded Anthony. + +As she laid aside a roll of music she carried, he saw that it was the +score of a light opera. + +"You have been to Signor Morani's?" he asked. + +"Yes, I have been taking lessons again." + +Anthony glanced dubiously round. + +"And you have no piano," he said. "You will miss it." + +Mariana shook her head, and pushed away her tea with a gesture of +disgust. "But I practise at Signor Morani's. He lets me use one of his +rooms." + +He noticed that she spoke cheerfully, and that a wave of her lost +freshness had returned to her face. The instantaneous effect of her +moods upon her appearance was an ever-recurring surprise to him. It was +as if, by the play of her features, she unconsciously translated feeling +into expression. + +In a moment she spoke again. + +"It is a part that I have been studying," she continued, "and I must +commit the words to memory." + +He picked it up. It was a serio-comic opera, entitled, "La Sorciere." + +"Morani says that my voice has developed during the long rest. He was +surprised when I sang." + +"Was he?" asked Anthony, absently. He was wondering dully what would be +the end of Mariana's ambitions--if there was any end for ambitions other +than obliteration. Had fate anything to offer more durable than dust and +ashes? + +Mariana glanced about her and her face clouded. "It is that horrible +cabbage again," she complained. "I believe those people down-stairs do +nothing but fry cabbage. It makes me ill." + +Anthony was recalled from his abstraction with a sense of annoyance. + +"It seems to me," he retorted, sharply, "that, in our condition, to +worry over a grievance of that order would be refreshing--when one's +heels are hanging over the verge of starvation, it is a relief to be +allowed to smell some one else's dinner." + +"That depends upon what the dinner consists of," Mariana rejoined. "I +may be reduced to living on dry bread, but I hope you will spare me the +fried cabbage." + +"You speak as if I had reduced you to this state for my own +gratification." His temper was getting the better of him, and, with a +snap, he set his teeth and was silent. + +The mental distress, the stimulants he had used to spur a jaded brain +into action, and his failing health had left him a prey to anger. An +unexpected interruption, a jarring sound, a trivial mishap, were +sufficient to cause him an outburst from which he often saved himself +by flight. + +Mariana replied tartly. + +"I am sure I don't see how my objection to living upon fried cabbage +could reflect upon you. I did not know you cared for it." + +"You know I do not. But I don't see why you should make a fuss about a +wholesome article of food." + +"It is not wholesome. It is exceedingly indigestible." + +"At any rate, it belongs to your neighbors. You aren't forced to eat +it." + +"No, but you implied that the time would come when I'd be glad to. I +merely said it never would." + +"Then let the cabbage be damned," said Algarcife. + +"Gladly," responded Mariana, and they said no more. + +Algarcife selected a manuscript from his desk and went out. He felt as +if his nerves had quickened into ramifying wires through which a current +of electricity was passing. He was not angry with Mariana. He was angry +with no one, but he was racked by the agony of diseased sensibilities, +and, though rationally he endeavored to be sympathetic in his bearing to +his wife, his rational nature seemed ploughed by the press of his +nerves, and for the first time in his life he found self-restraint +beyond his grasp. + +As he ascended the steps of the newspaper office where he was to leave +the manuscript, he ran against a man whom he knew and who stared at him +in astonishment. + +"My God, Algarcife, you are a ghost! What have you been doing?" + +"Wrestling with Providence," returned Algarcife, shortly. "Hardly a +becoming job." + +"Well, take my advice and leave off at the first round. If you don't +mind the comparison, you bear a close resemblance to that Egyptian +mummy in the museum." + +"No doubt. But that Egyptian has a damned sight the best of it. He lived +three thousand years ago." + +And he passed on. + +It was several nights after this that he started from a heavy sleep to +find that Mariana had left his side. Rising upon his elbow, he glanced +about the room, and saw her white-robed form revealed in nebulous +indistinctness against the open window. Her head was resting upon her +clasped hands and she was looking out into the night. + +"Mariana," he said. + +Her voice came with a muffled sound from the obscurity. + +"Yes." + +"What are you doing?" + +The white figure stirred slightly. + +"Thinking," she answered. + +"Don't think. It is a confounded mistake. Go to sleep." + +"I can't sleep. It is so hot." + +"Lie down and I will fan you." + +"No." + +Algarcife turned over wearily, and for a time there was silence. + +Suddenly Mariana spoke, her voice wavering a little. + +"Anthony--are you asleep?" + +"No." + +Again she was silent, and again her voice wavered as it rose. + +"I have been thinking about--about how poor we are. Will it ever be +better?" + +"I cannot say. Don't think of it?" + +"But I must think of it. I am trying to find a way out of it. Is there +any way?" + +"None that I know of." + +Mariana half rose and sat down again. + +"There is one," she said, "and I--" + +"What do you mean?" Algarcife demanded, starting up. + +Her voice came slowly. + +"I mean that I am--that it is better--that I am--going away." + +For a moment the stillness seemed tangible in its oppressiveness. +Mariana's head had fallen upon her hands, and as she stared at the +electric light on the opposite corner she heard Anthony's heavy +breathing. A moth circled about the ball of light, showing to her fixed +gaze like some black spirit of evil hovering above a planet. + +Algarcife's tones fell cold and constrained. + +"To leave me, you mean?" + +"It is the only way." + +"Where will you go?" + +Something that was not grief and yet akin to it choked Mariana as she +answered. + +"I have an offer. The one that--that I told you of. It is an excellent +opening--so Morani says. The company goes abroad--next week. And I know +the part." + +"And you wish to go?" His voice hurt her with its absence of color. + +She lifted her hands and let them fall in her lap. Her gaze left the +electric light, where the moth was still revolving in its little orbit. + +"It is not choice," she replied; "it is necessity. What else is there to +do--except starve? Can we go on living like this day after day, you +killing yourself with work, I a drag? It is better that I should +go--better for us both." + +He hesitated a moment as if in thought, and when he spoke it was with +judicial calm. + +"And would you have gone--a year ago?" + +She was silent so long that he would have repeated the question, but at +his first word the answer came with a wave of self-abasement. + +"I--I suppose not." + +And that was all. + +During the next few days the subject of Mariana's decision was not +mentioned. Both felt a constraint in alluding to it, and yet both felt +the inevitableness of the final hour. Anthony's pride had long since +sealed his lips over the expressions of an unwished-for affection, and +Mariana had grown chary of words. + +But both went quietly along their daily lives, Anthony working at his +desk while Mariana gathered together her shabby garments and made ready +for the moment which by word and look they both ignored. + +Then at last, when the night before her going came, Mariana spoke. They +had just risen from the supper-table and the slipshod maid of work had +carried off the unemptied tray. Mariana had eaten nothing. Her face was +flushed, and she was moving excitedly about the room. + +"I go to-morrow," she began, feverishly. + +Algarcife looked up from a book through which he was searching for a +date. + +"So you have decided?" His lips twitched slightly and the veins upon his +forehead contracted. + +Mariana shook out a night-gown which she had taken from a drawer, folded +it carefully, and laid it in the trunk. + +"There is nothing else to do," she replied, mechanically, as if she were +fencing with fate from a corner into which she had been driven. + +Algarcife closed the book and rose to his feet. He pressed his hand upon +his eyes to screen them from the glare of light. Then he moistened his +lips before speaking. + +"Do you realize what it means?" he asked. + +Mariana lowered her head into the trunk and her voice sounded from among +the clothes. + +"There is nothing else to do," she repeated, as mechanically as before. + +"I hope that it will be for your happiness," said Algarcife, and turned +away. Then he went towards her in sudden determination. + +"Is there anything that I can help you about?" + +Mariana stood up and shook her head. "I think not," she answered. +"Signor Morani calls for me to-morrow at six." + +Algarcife sat down, but the old sensation of dizziness came upon him and +he closed his eyes. + +"Have you a headache?" asked Mariana. "The tea was very bad. Shall I +make you a cup?" + +He shook his head and opened a book, but she crossed to his side and +laid her hand upon his shoulder. + +"It may not be for long," she said. "If I am successful--" + +He flinched from her touch and shook her hand off almost fiercely. His +eyes were bloodshot and his lips white. + +"The room is so warm," he said, "it makes me dizzy. I'll go out." + +And he went down-stairs. + +Mariana stood where he had left her and looked down upon the pile of +unpacked garments. A tear glistened upon her lashes, but it was a tear +of impersonal sorrow and regret. For herself she was conscious only of a +dulness of sensation, as if her usually vital emotions had been blunted +and rendered ineffectual. In a mute way, as she stood there, she +realized an almost tragic pity, but it was purely mental, and she +recalled calmly the fact that a separation, which six months ago would +have seared her soul with agony, she was now accepting with a feeling +that was one of relief. The stress of accumulated griefs and anxieties +had crushed her impressionable nature past all resemblance to its former +responsiveness. Yet it is possible that even then, had Anthony returned +to overpower her with his appeal, she would have wavered in her +decision, but the wavering would have been the result of a fight between +the instincts which were virile and the memory of the instincts which +were buried with her buried passions, and it is doubtful where the +victory would have rested. Her impulse for flight was as keen as the +impulse which causes a bird to beat its breast against the bars that +hold it. She wanted to flee from the sorrow she had known and all its +associations; she wanted to flee from poverty and ugliness to beauty and +bright colors. The artistic genius of her nature was calling, calling, +and she thrilled into an answering echo. + +But, for all that, a tear glistened upon her lashes as she looked down +upon the unpacked clothes. + +"O God! if you would only make a miracle!" she said--"if you only +would!" + +Her glance fell upon the desk where Anthony's work was lying. She saw +the freshly written page upon which the ink was not dry. She lifted the +pen in her fingers and felt the thick cork handle which was stained and +indented by constant use. She sighed and turned slowly away. + +The next afternoon, in hat and veil, with a small black satchel in her +hand, she stood waiting for Signor Morani. Her trunk had already been +carried down, and the carriage was turning the corner. She spoke +lightly, dreading silence and dreading an accent of seriousness. "It is +cooler," she said. "I hope a change is coming." + +Then, as the carriage stopped beside the pavement below, she held out +her hands. They shook slightly. + +"Good-bye," she said. + +"I hope you will be happy." + +"And you. It will be easier for you." + +"Good-bye." + +She raised her veil, her eyes shining. + +"Kiss me." + +He kissed her, but his lips were cold, and there was no pressure upon +hers. + +She lowered her veil and went out. Algarcife stood at the window and +heard her footsteps as she descended the stairs. He saw her leave the +house, pause for an instant to greet Signor Morani, give the black bag +into his hands, and enter the carriage. As she sat down, she leaned out +for an instant and glanced up to where he stood. Then the carriage +started, turned the corner, and was gone. + +Still he did not leave the window. He stood motionless, his head bent, +looking down into the heated streets, across which were stretching the +slanting shadows from the west. A splash of scarlet, like the impress of +a bloody hand, projected above the jagged line of tenement roofs, while +a film of rising smoke obscured its lurid distinctness. He felt that +complete sense of isolation, that loss of connection with the chain of +humanity which follows a separation from one who has shared with us, +night and day, the commonplaces of existence. The past and future seemed +to have clashed together and shattered into the present. + +In the street below men and women were going homeward from the day's +work. He noticed that they wore, one and all, an aspect of despair, as +if passing automatically along the endless round of a treadmill. He felt +a vague wonder at the old, indomitable instinct of the preservation of +self which seemed so alien to his mood. Situated as he was above it all, +humanity assumed to his indifferent eyes a comic effect, and he found +himself laughing cynically at the moving figures that blocked the +sidewalk below. A physical disgust for the naked facts of life attacked +him like nausea. The struggle for existence, the propagation of the +species, the interminable circle of birth, marriage, and death, appeared +to him in revolting bestiality. In his bodily and mental wreckage, all +action became repellent and hideous, and the slanting sun-rays +bespattering the human atoms in the street produced a giddiness in his +brain. At that moment he was in the throes of a mental revolution, and +his old philosophic sanity was ingulfed. + +He remembered suddenly that he had eaten nothing all day, and, turning +from the window, drank a cup of tea which had been left upon the table. +The continual use of stimulants, in exciting his nervous system, had +made sleep impossible, and he felt as if a furnace blazed behind his +eyeballs. He sat down, staring blankly at the opposite wall. In the +corner, upon a heap of books, the skull and cross-bones had been thrown, +and they caught his glance and held it with a curious fascination. They +seemed to typify his own life, those remnants of dry bones that had once +supported flesh and blood. He regarded himself impersonally, as he might +once have regarded a body for dissection. He saw that he had passed the +zenith of his physical and mental power, and that from this day forth it +would mean to him retrogression or stagnation. He saw that the press of +untoward circumstances had forced his intellect from its natural orbit +into a common rut from which there was no side-track of escape. He +weighed his labors, his knowledge, his impassioned aims for truth, and, +in the balance with a handful of dust, he found them wanting. He stirred +the ashes heaped where once had been a vital passion, and he found a +wasted skeleton and dry bones. He looked at his thin and pallid hand, +and it seemed to him as incapable of work as the hand of one palsied. + +Before his tragic eyes, the years of his past stood marshalled, and, one +and all, they bore the badge of failure. + +As he rose from his chair in sudden desperation, the recurring faintness +seized him and he steadied himself against the open drawer of the +bureau. Looking into it as he turned away, he saw some loose articles +which Mariana had forgotten--a bit of veiling, a single stocking, and a +tiny, half-worn sock of pink worsted. He closed the drawer and turned +hastily away. + +Then he sat down beside his desk and bowed his head into his hands. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +For a week after Mariana's departure Algarcife worked on ploddingly. He +closed his eyes to actualities and allowed his overwrought mind no +cessation from labor. It was as if all molecular motion in his brain had +been suspended save that relating to the subject in hand, and he wrote +with mechanical readiness journalistic essays upon the "Advantages of a +Vegetable Diet" and "The Muscular Development of the Body." Then, upon +trying to rise one morning, he found that his shattered system was +turning in revolt, and that no artificial spur could sting his exhausted +brain into action. + +Through the long, hot day he lay relaxed and nerveless, conscious of the +glare of the sunshine, but dreading to draw the shades, conscious of the +closeness of the atmosphere, and conscious of a beating, like the +strokes of an anvil, in his temples. When his dinner was brought he +drank a cup of tea and sat up. Then he reached for a phial of morphia +pellets which he kept in his desk, and, dissolving one in water, +swallowed it. For a moment the temptation to take the contents of the +phial at a dose assailed him, but, more from inability to venture a +decisive step than from any mental determination, he laid the bottle +aside. Action of any kind appeared intolerably irksome, and he waived +with disgust the solution of the simple problem of his life. + +As he fell back upon the bed, his glance passed over the pillow beside +him, and he pictured to himself the circle which Mariana's head had +drawn upon the cotton. He remembered that she always slept lying upon +her right side, her left knee bent, one hand under the pillow and one +lying upon her breast, her profile shadowed by dreams. He remembered the +nervous fear she felt of resting upon her heart, and that, having once +turned upon her left side, she awoke with palpitating breaths and a +smothered cry. He saw her calmer slumber, he felt her rhythmic +breathing, and he recalled his sensation when one of her loosened braids +had brushed his cheek. Again he saw her as she leaned over to soothe the +child, and, raising it in her arms, hushed it upon her breast. He +recalled it dully, as one recalls the incidents of long-past years over +which the colorless mantle of time has been cast to deaden the +flickering embers amid the ashes. In his mind there was no virility of +passion nor intensity of bitterness--there was only an almighty +melancholy. Life in its sufficiency of satisfied desires showed stale +and unprofitable, and in its barrenness it was but a blank. + +The sunshine, blazing through the open window, accelerated the throbbing +in his temples. In the morbid acuteness of his senses, the cries of the +vegetable venders in the street below harassed his ears. Along his whole +body there ran a quivering flame of fever, and his thoughts spun like a +revolving globe. The morphia had not stilled the beating in his head. It +had produced a sensation of sickness, which seemed but the physical +accompaniment of his mental syncope. + +He surveyed the books stacked against the opposite wall and wondered +vaguely at the energy with which he had attacked those volumes upon +whose covers the dust was now lying like a veil. He tried to arouse a +memory of the old intellectual exhilaration with which he had grappled +with and vanquished an unexplored department of thought. He remembered +that at such moments the printed lines before him had assumed an unusual +degree of clearness, and that he had been reading _The Wealth of +Nations_ when a point in comparative morphology occurred to him. But the +sensation itself he could not recover. The association of ideas was +still unbroken, but the mental state was lost. + +As he lay there, tossing restlessly upon the heated pillows, he reviewed +unsympathetically his old pursuit of knowledge. What did it all mean? +For what had he given his heritage of youth and manhood? For Truth. +Granted, but what was Truth that he should follow it unswervingly until +he passed from flesh and blood to a parcel of dry bones? How could he +find it, and, finding, know it? That gray and ancient scepticism which +had never appealed to him in health preyed now upon his wasting vitals. +Since through the senses alone one could perceive, and the senses were +but faulty instruments, what was perception worth? What were ideas but +the figments produced by faculties which were at best deceptive? And in +the infinite complexity of the self-sustaining reality, of what account +were the abstractions of the finite intellect? In Truth itself, that +all-pervading immateriality, were not the myriads of man's little truths +ingulfed and lost? Were not true and false but symbols to express the +differing relations of a great whole, as evolution and dissolution were +symbols to express the recurring waves of a great force. As one man with +his single hand barring the march of the seasons, was the man who by his +single brain sought to hasten the advance of the Law which is Truth. And +though he crumbled to dust, not one needful fact but would find its way +into the moving world. + +Stunned by despondency, he closed his eyes and groaned. In the absolute +grasp of the futility of endeavor, he realized the lowest depths of +human hopelessness. It was as if he had reached the ultimate nothing, +the end to which his pathway led. Though he dashed his brains into the +void, not one breath of the universal progress would swerve from its +course. + +And happiness? What was it but another symbol to signify the wistful +yearning of the world? Where was it found? Not in love, which is the +thirsting for a woman's spirit; not in passion, which is the burning for +a woman's flesh. Did not bitterness follow upon the one, and upon the +other satiety? His nature was deadened to the verge of obliviousness, +and in his waning vitality the impulse of self-gratification had gone +first. Physical desires shrank into decay, and mental ones passed with +them. He wondered that he had ever sought in love other than calm +reasonableness and a cooling presence. The emotion that sent scarlet +thrills to his brain he analyzed with callousness. He remembered his +mother as she lay upon the invalid's sofa, her Bible and a novel of +Victor Hugo's upon the table beside her. He saw the placid beauty of her +face, the slender, blue-veined hand which she laid upon his forehead +when he went to her a wailing child; and it seemed to him that such a +touch was the only touch of love with the power to console. Then he +remembered Mariana's hand as she laid it upon her child and his, and he +knew that the touch was the same. He thought of her as she sat beside +the crib when the child lay dying. The passionate self-control about the +mouth, the agony in her eyes, the tragic droop of her figure--these +returned to soften him. He saw the black shadow of the palm-leaf fan, +passing to and fro above the little bluish face, and he heard the +labored breathing. + +In sudden bitterness he opened his arms and cried aloud, "Mariana!" + +Then the tears of weakness and despair stained the pillow where her head +had lain. + +When the twilight fell he rose, dressed himself with an effort, and +descended the stairs. His limbs trembled as he moved, and, upon reaching +the open air, he staggered and leaned for support against the red brick +wall. Then he straightened himself, and wandered aimlessly from street +to street. As he passed among men and women he was aware of a strange +aloofness, as if the links connecting him with his kind had snapped +asunder; and he felt that he might have been the being of another planet +to whom earthly passions and fulfilments bore no palpable relation, but +were to be considered with cosmic composure. The thought jarred upon him +insistently that these moving men and women, whom he brushed in passing, +were each stirred by an entity akin to that which in himself lay +drugged. He realized that the condition of a mind without the attraction +of physical desires is as chaotic as the condition of a world suddenly +freed from the attraction of gravitation. + +He looked at his fellow human beings with forced intentness. It struck +him with an almost hysterical shock that they were of ludicrous shapes, +and he laughed. Then he glanced at a carriage rolling along the street, +and it appeared absurd that one mortal should sit upon four wheels while +a fellow-mortal of a nobler build should draw him. He laughed again. As +he did so he had a quick perception that delirium was approaching, and +he stopped to swallow another pellet. He reeled slightly, and a +boot-black upon the corner surveyed him with interest. + +"Air yer drunk, mister?" + +He laughed aloud. "Damned drunk," he responded, and walked on. Some +hours later he found himself in Whitehall Street, passing the lighted +windows of the Eastern Hotel. Beneath the station of the elevated road +he came upon a stand, with the words "Cider and Root-Beer" flaming in +red letters on a white background, and for the first time he was +conscious of a sensation of thirst. He stopped, felt in his pocket, and +then, checking himself, passed onward to the Battery. A sharp wind +struck him, blowing the damp hair from his forehead and chilling the +drops of perspiration upon his face. With a feeling of relief he leaned +against one of the stone pillars and bared his head to the incoming +breeze. Far out the islands shone in iridescent lights, flashing through +variations of green and amber, and over the water the ferry-boats +skimmed like gigantic insects studded with parti-colored eyes. + +Down below the water lay black and cold, the slow breakers flecked with +light foam. He saw a glimmer as of phosphorescence rise suddenly upon +the waves, and, looking deeper, he saw the eternal stillness. Between +the throbs of fever the passion for death seized him in a paroxysm, and +mentally he felt the quiet waters stir beneath him and the quietness +close over him. His hand fastened upon the iron chain between the +pillars; then he drew back. + +He remembered the row of acids upon a shelf in his room, and his +assurance returned. With a sensation of luxuriousness he recalled the +labels with the large "Poison!" above, and the inscription "Hydrocyanic +Acid" stared him in the eyes. When he had made that collection for +experimental purposes how little had he foreseen the experiment in which +it would play a part. He sat down upon a bench and stared idly at the +stream of passers-by, some lovers who went arm-in-arm, some husbands and +wives who walked apart, some fathers and mothers who carried sickly +children--all bound and burdened with the flesh. The fretful wail of a +baby came to him and mingled mechanically with his train of thought. It +seemed the frail treble in the great symphony of human woe. + +Beyond the men and women he saw the black water and the dancing lights, +and, farther still, the misty islands. + +Gradually the fever starts grew less, and calmness came back to him. +With a wave of regret he looked back upon his lost serenity, and +lamented that it had failed him. He knew that in his mental upheaval the +opposing elements in his nature had waged a combat. The scientific tenor +of his mind had for the past few weeks been crushed out by the virulence +of his nerves. That physical force which he had so long held enthralled +had at last asserted its supremacy, and for the time his mind was under +the sway of bodily weakness. + +This duality of being occurred to him in perplexing inconsistency. Had +he been a pure mentality, his life would have been one steep and +victorious ascent towards knowledge. Were he but a physical organism, +carnality would have satisfied his cravings. Then the remembrance that +stronger than will or flesh is necessity arose and smote him into +silence. + +Many of the people had gone, but he still sat plunged in thought. A +hatless woman, fresh from a midnight carousal, with a bleeding cut upon +her lip, took the seat beside him, and he found a forlorn comfort in the +contact with alien wretchedness. When she laid her head upon the back of +the bench and fell asleep, he listened to her drunken snores calmly and +without aversion. He became aware that his old kinship to humanity was +at the moment restored, that, losing it with the loss of desire, it was +regained in despair. Suddenly the head of the woman beside him rolled +forward and rested against his shoulder. She stirred slightly, heaved a +sigh of satisfaction, and returned to her ribald dreams, while he, in +numbness and pain, found consolation in this forced sacrifice of +comfort. + +He did not move, and through the long night the drunken woman slept with +her head upon his shoulder. + +For the next few days he dragged out a methodical existence. In the +mornings he would force himself to rise, swallow his food, and take his +accustomed seat before his desk. With a failing hand he would take up +his pen and endeavor to bend his fever-stricken brain to its task, but +before a dozen lines were penned his strength would falter and the +effort be abandoned. Then he would rise and finger the phials on the +shelf, until, turning from them, he would say, "I will fight--fight +until the last gasp--and then--" + +At the beginning of the week, when his lodging bill was due, he carried +by the armful a number of his books and pawned them for a nominal sum. +Then he remembered his watch, and left that also. It was a heavy +hunting-case of his father's, which he had always used from the nearness +of the association, and as he laid it down something came into his +throat. He opened the watch and took out the picture of his mother which +was inside--a sketch in color, showing the lustrous Creole beauty in her +first youth. Then he snapped the case and saw the initials "A. K. A." +pass into the hands behind the counter. + +Leaving the pawn-shop, he walked rapidly through the oppressive +September sun until his limbs failed. Then turning with the throng of +men that flowed into City Hall Square, he came to a sudden halt before +the fountain. He was dazed and weakened, like a man who has recovered +from a lapse into unconsciousness. The constant passing of the crowd +bewildered him, and the sound of falling water in the fountain irritated +him with the suggestion of thirst. He turned away and threw himself upon +a bench beneath the shade of a tree. For an instant he closed his eyes, +and when he opened them he found the scene before him to have +intensified. The falling water sounded more distinctly, the sky was of a +glaring blueness, and the dome of the _World_ building glittered like a +cloud of fire. + +To his straining eyes the statue of Horace Greeley seemed to grin at +him from across the traffic in the street, and as he staggered to his +feet he felt an impulse to shake his fist at it and say: + +"Damn you! It is a chance that I want," but his muscles faltered, and he +fell back. + +Then his glance wandered to the man beside him, a filthy vagrant with +the smell of grease about his clothes. Did not he want his chance as +well? And a few feet away a boy with a scowl on his lips and a bruise +above his eye--why not a chance for him? Then a gray haze obscured his +vision and the noise of the street was dulled into a monotone. + +The throbbing in his temples grew faster, and as he sat there he knew +that he had fought to the final gasp and that the end had come. In his +physical downfall there was room for neither alarm nor regret. He was +lost to all vaguer impressions than the trembling of his frame, the icy +starts through his limbs, the burning of his eyes, and the inevitable +beating in his temples. Beyond these things he neither knew nor cared. + +With the instinct for solitude, he started and rose to move onward, when +he saw that the earth was undulating beneath his feet and that the +atmosphere was filled with fog. The dome of the _World_ building reeled +suddenly and clashed into the flaming sky. He heard the sound of +brazen-tongued bells ringing higher and higher above the falling of the +water, above the tread of passing feet, and above the dull, insistent +din of the traffic in the streets. + +Then his name was called and he felt a hand upon his arm. + +"Why, Anthony!" + +He looked up bewildered, but straightened himself and stood erect, +straining at the consciousness that was escaping him. + +"How are you, Mr. Speares?" he asked. His voice was without inflection. + +Father Speares spoke with impassioned pity. "What are you doing? You are +ill--a ghost--" + +Algarcife steadied himself against the bench and said nothing. + +"What does it mean? Your wife--where is she?" + +Anthony's voice came slowly and without emotion. "I am alone," he +answered. + +A quick moisture sprang to the older man's eyes. He held out his hand. +"Come with me," he said, fervently. "I am alone also. Come to my house." + +Algarcife left the bench and took a step from him. + +"No," he replied. "I--I am all right." + +Then he staggered and would have fallen but for the other's sustaining +arm. + + + + +Phase Second + +_"And not even here do all agree--no, not any one with himself."_ + +--MARCUS AURELIUS. (LONG.) + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Two men passed the Church of the Immaculate Conception, wheeled suddenly +round, and came back. + +"By Jove, Driscoll, you have been outside of civilization!" said one, +who was fair and florid, with a general suggestion of potential apoplexy +polished by the oil of indulgence. "What! you haven't heard the Reverend +Algarcife? Why, he rivals in popularity the Brockenhurst scandal, and +his power is only equalled by that of--of Tammany." + +John Driscoll laughed cynically. + +"Let's have the scandal, by all means," he returned. "Spare me the +puling priests." + +"Bless my soul, man, don't tell me the Brockenhurst affair hasn't +reached the Pacific slope! What a hell of a place! Well, Darbey was +named corespondent, you know. You remember Darbey, the fellow who owned +that dandy racer, La Bella, and lost her to Owens at cards? But the +papers are full of it. Next thing you'll tell me you don't see the +_Sun_." + +"A fact. I don't read newspapers, I write them--or used to. But what +about this priest? I knew an Algarcife in my green and ambitious youth, +but he wasn't a priest; he was a pagan, and a deuced solemn one at +that." + +They stood upon the gray stone steps, and the belated worshippers +trooped past them to vespers. A woman with a virginal calm face and a +camellia in her hymnal brushed them lightly, leaving a trail of +luxurious sweetness on the air; a portly vestryman, with inflated +cheeks and short-sighted eyes, mounted the steps pantingly, his lean and +flat-chested wife hanging upon his arm; a gray-browed gentlewoman, her +eyes inscrutable with chastity unsurprised, held her black silk skirt +primly as she ascended, carrying her prayer-book as if it were a +bayonet. + +In the street a carriage was standing, the driver yawning above his +robes. From the quivering flanks of the horses a white steam rose like +mist. Near the horses' hoofs a man born blind sat with a tray of matches +upon his knee. + +"Why, that's the jolliest part!" responded the first man, with a +tolerant smile. "This one was an atheist once--or something of the sort, +but the old man--Father Speares, I mean--got hold of him, and a +conversion followed. And, by Jove, he has driven all the women into a +religious mania! I believe he could found a new faith to-morrow if he'd +be content with female apostles." + +Driscoll shrugged his shoulders. "Religion might be called the feminine +element of modern society," he observed. "It owes its persistence to the +attraction of sex, and St. Paul was shrewd enough to foresee it. He knew +when he forbade women to speak in public that he was insuring +congregations of feminine posterity. Oh, it is sex--sex that moves the +world!" + +"And mars it." + +"The same thing. Listen!" + +As the heavy doors swung back, the voices of the choir swelled out into +the faint sunshine, the notes of a high soprano skimming bird-like over +the deeper voices of the males and the profundo of the organ. + +When next Driscoll spoke it was with sudden interest. "I say, Ryder, if +this is Algarcife, why on earth did he turn theologian? Any evidences of +brain softening?" + +"Hardly. It is a second Tractarian excitement, with Algarcife for the +leader. The High-Church party owes him canonization, as I said to the +bishop yesterday. He is the best advertising medium of the century. +After Father Speares died, he took things in hand, you know, and raised +a thunder-cloud. The old man's mantle fell upon him, along with whatever +worldly possessions he possessed. Then some physiologist named Clynn got +him into a controversy, and it was like applying an electric-battery to +the sluggish limbs of the Church." + +Driscoll gave a low whistle. + +"Well, as I'm alive!" he said. "What is it all for, anyway?" + +"Let's go inside," said Ryder, drawing his collar about his throat. +"Beastly chill for October. Wind's due east." + +For an instant they paused in the vestibule; then Ryder laid his hand +upon the door; it swung open, and they entered the church. + +At first the change of light dazzled Driscoll, and he raised his hand to +his eyes; then, lowering it, he leaned against a pillar and looked over +the heads of the congregation. A mellow obscurity flooded the nave, +lightening in opalescent values where the stained-glass windows cast +faint glints of green and gold. The atmosphere was so highly charged +with color that it seemed to possess the tangible qualities of fine +gauze, drawn in transparent tissue from the vaulted ceiling to the gray +dusk of the aisles. A single oblique ray of sunshine, filtering through +a western pane, crept slowly along the walls to the first station of the +cross, where it lay warm and still. Through the heavy luminousness the +voices of the choir swelled in triumphant acclamation: + + "And His mercy is on them that fear Him: + Throughout all generations. + He hath showed strength with His arm: + He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. + He hath put down the mighty from their seat." + +Beyond the rood-screen in the chancel the candles on the altar flickered +in yellow flames beneath a slight draught. Above them, from the window, +a Christ in red and purple fainted beneath his crown of thorns. At the +foot of the crucifix a heap of white chrysanthemums lay like snow. + +Before the candles and the cross the priest stood in his heavy +vestments, his face turned towards the altar, the sanctuary-lamp shining +above his head. Around him incense rose in clouds of fragrant smoke, and +through the vapor his dark head and white profile were drawn against the +foot of the cross. The yellow candle-light, beside which the gas-light +grew pallid, caught the embroideries on the hood of the cope, and they +glistened like jewels. + +He stood motionless when the censing was over, stray wreaths of mist +encircling his head. Then, when the Magnificat was finished, he turned +from the altar, the light rippling in the gold of his vestments. His +glance fell for a moment upon his congregation, then upon the mute faces +of his choristers seated and within the chancel. + +Through the reading of the lesson he sat silently. There was no +suggestion of emotion in his closed lips, and the composure in his eyes +did not lessen when he rose and came forward, meeting the hush in the +church. From the stillness of the altar his voice rose suddenly, +sustaining the chant of the choir in a deep undertone of unwavering +richness: + + "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. + And in Jesus Christ, His only Son-- ... I believe in the Holy + Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints--the + forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body--and the life + everlasting--Amen." + +When the organ burst forth into the recessional hymn, Driscoll turned to +his companion. "Come outside," he said. "I feel as if I had been +drinking. And it was Algarcife--" + + * * * * * + +Half an hour later Father Algarcife left the church, and, crossing to +Broadway, boarded a down-town car. At Twentieth Street he got out and +turned eastward. He walked slowly, with long, almost mechanical strides. +His head was bent and his shoulders stooped slightly, but there was a +suggestion of latent vigor in his appearance, as if he carried a reserve +fund of strength of which his brain had not yet taken account. Beneath +the rich abundance of his hair his features struck one with peculiar +force. They had the firm and compressed look which is the external mark +of sterile emotions, and the traces of nervous wear on brow and lips +showed like the scars of past experiences rather than the wounds of +present ones. His complexion possessed that striking pallor resulting +from long physical waste, a pallor warmed by tawny tones beneath the +surface, deepening into bluish shadows about his closely shaven mouth +and chin. In his long clerical coat he seemed to have gained in height, +and the closest observer would perhaps have detected in his face only a +physical illustration of the spiritual function he fulfilled. In another +profession he would have suggested the possible priest--the priest +unordained by circumstances. As it was, he presented the appearance of +having been inserted in his ecclesiastical position from a mere aesthetic +sense of fitness on the part of Destiny. + +Although it was an afternoon in early October, the winds, blowing from +the river along the cross-town blocks, had an edge of frost. Overhead +the sky was paling into tones of dull lavender that shaded into purple +where the west was warmed by stray vestiges of the afterglow. Through +the dusk the street lights flickered here and there like swarming +fire-flies. As he passed the Post-graduate Hospital at the corner of +Second Avenue a man came down the steps and joined him. + +"Good-afternoon, father," he said. "Your charge is coming on finely. +Going in?" + +His name was Salvers, and he was a rising young specialist in pulmonary +troubles. He had met Father Algarcife in his work among the poor on the +East Side. + +"Not to-day," responded the other; "but I am glad to have good news of +the little fellow." + +He was known to have endowed one of the babies' cots and to feel great +interest in its occupant. + +Dr. Salvers returned his quiet gaze with one of sudden admiration. "What +a wonder you are!" he said. "If there is a man in New York who does your +amount of work, I don't know him. But take my advice and slacken speed. +You will kill yourself." + +Into Father Algarcife's eyes a gleam of humor shot. It went out as +suddenly as it had come, and a tinge of sadness rose to the surface. + +"Perhaps I am trying to," he answered, lightly. + +"It looks like it. Here's Sunday, and you've come from a half-dozen +services to run at the call of a beggar or so who might have had the +politeness to wait till week-day. How is the Bowery Mission?" + +"Very well," responded the other, showing an interest for the first +time. "I have persuaded ten converts to take the pledge of a daily bath. +It was tough work." + +Salvers laughed. "I should say so. But, you know, that is what I like +about your mission. It has the virtue of confusing cleanliness with +godliness. Are you still delivering your sermons on hygiene?" + +"Yes. You know we have been sending out nurses to women in confinement +in connection with those Sunday-night lectures on the care of children. +The great question of the tenement-house is the one of the children it +produces." + +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 assertion +that the association of the love of beauty with the love of God destroys +sympathy for poverty and disease." + +A cloud passed 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 assistant." + +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 passed 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 compassion 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 nobody 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 passed +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 passionately. "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 God 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?" + +He was regarding her with intentness. + +"And you are happier?" he asked. + +"Happier! It is an odd word for a woman like me. I am fifty years old, I +am alone, I am loveless. It has given me something to hope for, that is +all." + +"Yes?" + +With a sudden yearning she stretched out her thin, white hands in +appeal. + +"Talk to me," she said. "Make me feel it. I am so alone." + +When Father Algarcife descended the brown-stone steps an hour later, his +face was drawn and his lips firmly closed. The electric light, shining +upon his resolute features, gave them the look of marble. + +He turned into Fifth Avenue and continued his way to Fifty-eighth +Street. Before the door of the rectory, which was at the distance of a +stone's-throw from the church, a carriage was drawn up to the sidewalk, +and as he passed his name was called softly in a woman's voice: + +"It is I--Mrs. Bruce Ryder. I have been waiting in the hope of seeing +you." + +He paused on the sidewalk and his hand closed over the one she gave him. +She was a large, fair woman, with a superb head and shoulders, and slow, +massive movements, such as the women of the old masters must have had. + +"It is to force a promise that you will dine with me to-morrow," she +said. "You have disappointed me so often--and I must talk with you." Her +voice had a caressing inflection akin to the maternal. + +He smiled into her expectant face. + +"Yes," he said. "To-morrow--yes; I will do so. That is, if you won't +wait for me if I am detained." + +"That is kind," she responded. "I know you hate it. And I won't wait. I +remember that you don't eat oysters." + +The maternal suggestion in her manner had deepened. She laughed softly, +pleased at the knowledge of his trivial tastes her words betrayed. + +"But I won't keep you," she went on, "Thank you again--and good-bye." + +The carriage rolled into the street, and he drew out a latch-key and let +himself in at the rectory door, which opened on the sidewalk. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Mrs. Bruce Ryder unfolded her napkin and cast a swift glance over the +heavy damask, sparkling with glass and silver. + +"Yes; he is late," she said; "but he doesn't like to be waited for." + +From the foot of the table Mr. Bruce Ryder smiled complacently, his eye +upon his Blue Points. + +"And his wish is law, even unto the third and fourth courses," he +responded, pleasantly. "As far as Mrs. Ryder is concerned, the pulpit of +the Church of the Immaculate Conception is a modern Mount Sinai." + +"Bruce, how can you?" remonstrated his wife, upbraiding him across the +pink shades of candles and a centre-piece of orchids. "And you are so +ignorant. There is no pulpit in the church." + +"The metaphor holds. Translate pulpit into altar-step--and you have the +Mount Sinai." + +"Minus Jehovah," commented Claude Nevins, who sat between a tall, slight +girl, fresh from boarding-school, and a stout lady with an enormous +necklace. + +Ryder shook his head with easy pleasantry. He had been handsome once, +and was still well groomed. His figure had thickened, but was not +unshapely, and had not lost a certain athletic grace. His face was fair, +with a complexion that showed a faint purplish flush beneath the skin, +paling where his smooth flaxen hair was parted upon his forehead. On the +crown of his head there was a round bald spot which had the effect of +transparency. His deceptive frankness of manner was contradicted by an +expression of secretiveness in his light-blue eyes. + +He lifted the slice of lemon from his plate, squeezing it with his ruddy +and well-formed fingers. + +"Oh, but he's a divinity in his own right!" he retorted. "Apollo turned +celibate, you know. He is the Lothario of religions--" + +"Bruce!" said his wife again. A vexed light was shining in her eyes, +giving a girlish look to her full and mature beauty. She wore a dress of +black gauze, cut low from her splendid shoulders, above which her head, +with its ash-blond hair, rose with a poise that was almost pagan in its +perfection. + +"For my part," said a little lady upon Mr. Ryder's right, "Mount Sinai +or not, I quite feel that he speaks with God." + +Her name was Dubley, and she was round and soft and white, suggesting +the sugar-coated dinner-pills which rested as the pedestal of her social +position, since her father, with a genius for turning opportunities to +account, had coined into gold the indigestion of his fellows. + +"Ah! You are a woman," returned Ryder, smilingly. "You might as well ask +a needle to resist a magnet as a woman to resist a priest. I wonder what +the attraction is?" + +"Aberration of the religious instinct," volunteered Nevins, who had not +lost his youthful look with his youthful ardor, and whom success had +appeared to settle without surfeiting. + +"On the contrary," interposed a short-sighted gentleman in eye-glasses, +who regarded the oyster upon his fork as if he expected to recognize an +old acquaintance, "the religious instinct is entirely apart from the +vapid feminine sentimentalizing over men in long coats and white +neckties. Indeed, I question if woman has developed the true religious +instinct. I am collecting notes for a treatise upon the subject." + +He stopped breathlessly, swallowed his oyster, and looked gloomily at +the table-cloth. His name was Layton, and he was a club-man who had +turned criminologist for a whim. Having convinced himself by +generalizations from experience of the total depravity of the female +sex, he had entered upon his researches in the hope of verifying his +deductions. + +The point he advanced being called in question by a vivacious and pretty +woman who sat next him, there followed a short debate upon the subject. +When it was ended, John Driscoll looked up languidly from Mrs. Ryder's +left hand. + +"My dear Layton," he advised, "return to the race-course if you value +your sanity. The enigma of the Sphinx is merely the woman question in +antiquity and stone." Then he turned to Mrs. Ryder. "How is the renowned +father?" he inquired. "I was decoyed into buying a volume of his sermons +this morning." + +A smile shone upon him from her large, pale eyes. "Oh yes," she +responded, her beauty quickening from its repose. "They are in answer to +those articles in the _Scientific Weekly_. Are they not magnificent?" + +Driscoll assented amiably. + +"Yes," he admitted. "He has the happy faculty of convincing those who +already agree with him." + +She reproached him in impulsive championship, looking hurt and a little +displeased. "Why, the bishop was saying to me yesterday that never +before had the arguments against the vital truths of Christianity been +so forcibly refuted." + +"May I presume that the bishop already agreed with him?" + +Mrs. Ryder's full red lips closed firmly. Then she appealed to a small, +dark man who sat near her. "Mr. Driscoll doesn't like Father +Algarcife's sermons," she said. "I am disappointed." + +"On the contrary," observed Driscoll, placidly, "I like them so well +that I sent them to a missionary I am trying to convert--to atheism." + +"But that is shocking," said Mrs. Dubley, in a low voice. + +"Shocking," repeated Driscoll. "I should say so. Such an example of +misdirected energy you never saw. Why, when I met that man in Japan he +was actually hewing to pieces before the Lord one of the most adorable +Kwannons I ever beheld. The treasures he had shattered in the name of +religion were good ground for blasphemy. In the interest of art, I +sought his conversion. At first I tried agnosticism, but that was not +strong enough. He said that if he came to believe in an unknown god he +should feel it his duty to smash all attempts to sculpture him. So I +said: 'How about becoming an out-and-out infidel? Then you wouldn't care +how many gods people made.' He admitted the possibility of such a state +of mind, and I have been working on him ever since." + +Mrs. Ryder looked slightly pained. + +"If you only weren't so flippant," she said, gently. "I can't quite +follow you." + +Driscoll laughed softly. + +"Flippant! My dear lady, thank your stars that I am. Flippant people +don't go about knocking things to pieces for a principle. The religion +of love is not nearly so much needed as the religion of letting alone." + +"I am sure I shouldn't call Father Algarcife meddling," commented Mrs. +Dubley, stiffly; "and I know that he opposes sending missionaries to +Japan." + +"As a priest he is perfection," broke in Mr. Layton, argumentatively. + +"The chasuble does hang well on him," admitted Nevins in an aside. + +Mr. Layton ignored the interruption. "As a priest," he went on, "there +is nothing left to be desired. But I consider science entirely outside +his domain. Why, on those questions, the _Scientific Weekly_ articles do +not leave him a--a leg to stand on." + +"The truth is that, mentally, he is quite inferior to the writer of +those articles," remarked the short, dark gentleman in a brusque voice. +"By the way, I have heard that they were said to be posthumous papers of +Professor Huxley's. An error, of course." + +At that moment the door was opened and Father Algarcife was announced. +An instant later he came into the room. He entered slowly, and crossed +to Mrs. Ryder's chair, where he made his excuses in a low voice. Then he +greeted the rest of the table indifferently. He wore his clerical dress, +and the hair upon his forehead was slightly ruffled from the removal of +his hat. About the temples there were dashes of gray and a few white +hairs showed in his heavy eyebrows, but eyes and mouth blended the +firmness of maturity with an expression of boyish vigor. As he was about +to seat himself at Mrs. Ryder's right, his eye fell upon Driscoll, and +he paled and drew back. Then he spoke stiffly. + +"So it is you, John?" + +"I had quite lost sight of you," responded Driscoll. + +There followed an awkward silence, which was abridged by Mrs. Ryder's +pleasant voice. + +"I like to watch the meeting of old friends," she said; "especially when +I believed them strangers. Were you at college together?" + +"Yes," answered Driscoll, his assurance returning. "At college--well, +let me see--not far from twenty years ago. Bless me! I am a middle-aged +man. What a discovery!" + +"You were in the Senior class," observed Father Algarcife, almost +mechanically, and with little show of interest. "You were the pride of +the faculty, I believe." + +"I believe I was; and, like pride proverbial, I ended in a fall. Well, +there have been many changes." + +"A great many." + +"And not the least surprising one is to find you in the fold. You were a +lamb astray in my time. Indeed, I remember flattering myself in the +fulness of my egoism that I had opened other channels for you. But a +reaction came, I suppose." + +"Yes," said Father Algarcife, slowly, "a reaction came." + +"And my nourishing of the embryonic sceptic went for naught." + +"Yes; it went for naught." + +"Well, I am glad to see you, all the same." + +"How serious you have become!" broke in Mrs. Ryder. "Don't let's call up +old memories. I am sure Mr. Nevins will tell us that those college days +weren't so solemn, after all." + +Nevins, thus called upon, glanced up from his roast, with accustomed +disregard of dangerous ground. + +"I can't answer for Mr. Driscoll," he responded. "His fame preceded +mine; but the first time I saw Father Algarcife he had just won a +whiskey-punch at poker, and was celebrating." + +Mrs. Ryder colored faintly in protest, and Driscoll cast an admonishing +glance at Nevins, but Father Algarcife laughed good-naturedly, a +humorous gleam in his eyes. + +"So the sins of my youth are rising to confound me," he said. "Well, I +make an honest confession. I was good at poker." + +Nevins disregarded Driscoll's glance with unconcern. + +"An honest confession may be good for the soul," he returned, "but it +seldom redounds to the honor of the reputation." + +"Happily, Father Algarcife is above suspicion," remarked Ryder, +pleasantly. Then he changed the subject. "By the way, Mr. Nevins, I hear +you have been displaying an unholy interest in the coming elections." + +"Not a bit of it," protested Nevins, feelingly. "They might as well be +electing the mayor of the moon for aught I care. But, you see, my friend +Ardly has got himself on the Tammany ticket for alderman." + +"What! You aren't working for Tammany?" + +"Guess not. I am working for Ardly. The mayor is a mere incident." + +"I wish he would remain one," announced the short, dark gentleman. "The +Tammany tiger has gorged itself on the city government long enough." + +"Oh, it has its uses," reasoned Driscoll. "Tammany Hall makes a +first-rate incubator for prematurely developed politicians." + +"And peoples the country with them," said Ryder. "I always look upon a +politician as a decent citizen spoiled." + +"And you really think they will elect Vaden?" asked the vivacious and +pretty young woman at Layton's left. "It does seem a shame. Just after +we have got clean streets and a respectable police force." + +"But what does it matter?" argued Driscoll, reassuringly. "Turn about is +fair play, and a party is merely a plaything for the people. In point of +impartiality, I vote one ticket at one election and another at the +next." + +When Driscoll left, that evening, he joined Claude Nevins on the +sidewalk, and they walked down the avenue together. For some blocks +Nevins was silent, his face revealing rising perplexity. Then, as they +paused to light cigars, he spoke: + +"I believe Algarcife was a friend of yours at college?" he said. + +Driscoll was holding his palm around the blue flame of the match. He +drew in his breath slowly as he waited for a light. + +"Yes," he responded, "for a time. But he has made his reputation since I +knew him--and I have lost mine. By Jove, he is a power!" + +"There is not a man of more influence in New York, and the odd part of +it is that he does nothing to gain it--except work along his own way and +not give a hang for opposition. I believe his indifference is a part of +his attraction--for women especially." + +"Ah, that reminds me," said Driscoll, holding his cigar between his +fingers and slackening his pace. "I was under the impression that he +married after leaving college." + +Nevins's lips closed with sudden reserve. It was a moment before he +replied. + +"I believe I did hear something of the sort," he said. + + * * * * * + +When Mrs. Bruce Ryder turned back into the drawing-room, where Father +Algarcife sat alone, the calm color faded from her face. "I am so glad," +she said. "I have waited for this the whole evening." + +She seated herself near him, resting one large, fair arm on the table +beside her. With the closing of the door upon her guests she had thrown +aside the social mask, and a passionate sadness had settled upon her +face. + +"I wanted to go to the sacristy on Friday," she went on, "but I could +not. And I am so unhappy." + +Brought face to face, as he often was, with the grinning skeleton that +lies beneath the fleshly veil of many a woman's life, Father Algarcife +had developed an almost intuitive conception of degrees in suffering. +Above all, he had learned, as only a priest and a physician can learn, +the measures of sorrow that Fate may dole out to the victim who writhes +behind a smile. + +The sympathetic quality in his voice deepened. + +"Have you gained no strength," he asked, "no indifference?" + +"I cannot! I have tried, tried, tried so long, but just when I think I +have steeled myself something touches the old spring, and it all comes +back. On Thursday I saw a woman who was happy. It has tortured me ever +since." + +"Perhaps she thought you happy." + +"No; she knew and she pitied me. We had been at school together. I was +romantic then, and she laughed at me. The tears came into her eyes when +she recalled it. She is not a wealthy woman. The man she married works +very hard, but I envy her." + +"Of what use?" + +She leaned nearer, resting her chin upon her clasped hands. The diamonds +on her fingers blazed in the lamplight. "You don't know what it means to +me," she said. "I am not a clever woman. I was made to be a happy one. I +believe myself a good one, and yet there are days when I feel myself to +be no better than a lost woman--when I would do anything--for love." + +"You fight such thoughts?" + +"I try to, but they haunt me." + +"And there is no happiness for you in your marriage? None that you can +wring from disappointment?" + +"It is too late. He loved me in the beginning, as he has loved a dozen +women since--as he loves a woman of the town--for an hour." + +A shiver of disgust crossed her face. + +"I know." He was familiar with the story. He had heard it from her lips +before. He had seen the whole tragic outcome of man's and woman's +ignorance--the ignorance of passion and the ignorance of innocence. He +had seen it pityingly, condemning neither the one nor the other, +neither the man surfeited with lust nor the woman famished for love. + +"I cannot help you," he said. "I can only say what I have said before, +and said badly. There is no happiness in the things you cry for. So long +as self is self, gratification will fail it. When it has waded through +one mirage it looks for another. Take your life as you find it, face it +like a woman, make the best of what remains of it. The world is full of +opportunities for usefulness--and you have your faith and your child." + +She started. "Yes," she said. "The child is everything." Then she rose. +"I want to show him to you," she said, "while he sleeps." + +Father Algarcife made a sudden negative gesture; then, as she left the +room, he followed her. + +As they passed the billiard-room on their way up-stairs there was a +sound of knocking balls, and Ryder's voice was heard in a laugh. + +"This way," said Mrs. Ryder. They mounted the carpeted stairs and +stopped before a door to the right. She turned the handle softly and +entered. A night-lamp was burning in one corner, and on the hearth-rug a +tub was prepared for the morning bath. On a chair, a little to one side, +lay a pile of filmy, lace-trimmed linen. + +In a small brass bedstead in the centre of the room a child of two or +three years was sleeping, its soft hair falling upon the embroidered +pillow. A warm, rosy flush was on its face, and the dimpled hands lay +palms upward on the blanket. + +Like a mounting flame the passion of motherhood illuminated the woman's +face. She leaned over and kissed one of the pink hands. + +"How quietly he sleeps!" she said. + +The child stirred, opened its eyes, and smiled, stretching out its +arms. + +The mother drew back softly. Then she knelt down, and, raising the child +with one hand, smoothed the pillow under its head. As she rose she +pressed the blanket carefully over the tiny arms lying outside the +cover. + +When she turned to Father Algarcife she saw that he had grown suddenly +haggard. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Father Algarcife withdrew the latch-key from the outer door and stopped +in the hall to remove his hat and coat. He had just returned from a +meeting of the wardens, called to discuss the finances of the church. + +"Agnes!" he said. + +A woman came from the dining-room at the end of the hall, and, taking +his coat from his hands, hung it upon the rack. She was stout and +middle-aged, with a face like a full-blown dahlia beneath her cap of +frilled muslin. She had been house-keeper and upper servant to Father +Speares, and had descended to his successor as a matter of course. + +"Have there been any callers, Agnes?" + +"Only two, sir. One of the sisters, who left word that she would return +in the evening, and that same woman from Elizabeth Street, who wanted +you to take charge of her husband who was drunk. I told her a policeman +could manage him better, and she said she hadn't thought of that. She +went to find one." + +"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?" + +"Yes, 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 portiere 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. + +It seemed but yesterday, that morning eight years ago, when he had +fainted in the crowded square. He could close his eyes now and review +each detail with the dispassionateness of indifference. He could see the +flaming blue of the sky, the statue of Horace Greeley across the way, +and the confused blur of the bulletin-board before the _World_ building. +He could hear the incessant falling of the water in the fountain, and he +could feel the old sensation of nausea that had blotted out the +consciousness of place. He remembered the long convalescence from the +fever that had followed--the trembling of his limbs when he moved and +the weakness of his voice when he spoke--the utter vanquishment of his +power of volition. He reviewed, almost methodically, that collapse into +black despair and the mental and emotional stagnation that had covered +all the crawling years. The fever, mounting to his brain, had left it +seared of energy and had sapped the passion in his blood. It had +consumed his old loves, with his old ambitions, and had left his +emotions as sterile as his mind. + +He remembered the struggle that had come, his resistance and his defeat, +and he saw the joy in the older man's eyes when he had laid before him +the remainder of his life--when he had said, "I no longer care. Make of +me what you will." + +The other had answered, "I will not take the sacrifice without sincerity +or without the will of God." + +"It is no sacrifice," he had replied. "It is a debt. If I can believe, I +will." + +And he had felt the words as a man half drugged by ether feels the first +incision of the knife. + +But he had not believed. Sitting now in his clerical dress, before the +fire kindled by his ordination, he knew that it was his weakness, not +his will, that had bent. Whether the motive was gratitude or despair he +did not question. There had been a debt, and he had met it by the bond +of flesh and blood. Yes, he had repaid it in full. + +From the moment when he had been called into Father Speares's place he +had striven untiringly to do honor to the dead. He had spared neither +himself nor others. He had toiled night and day, as a man toils who +loves a cause--or is mad. Though his heart was not in the work, his will +was, and he was goaded to it by the knowledge that his intellect +revolted. Because the life was loathsome to him he left not one detail +unperformed. He had given a bond, and he fulfilled it, though his bond +was a lie. + +He lifted his head impatiently and looked before him. Then he smiled, +half bitterly, in the flickering firelight. Across the drawn curtains at +the window he could see the almost indistinguishable forms of people +passing in the street. He felt suddenly that his whole existence was +filled with such vague outlines, surrounded by gray dusk. The only thing +that was real was the lie. + +That was with him always, at every instant of the day. It lay in his +coat, in his clothes, in his very necktie. It filled the book-shelves in +the room and covered the closely written sheets upon his desk. It was in +the cope and in the chasuble, in the paten and in the chalice, in the +censer and in the Creed. Yes; he had sworn his faith to a myth, and had +said "I believe--" to a fable. + +The words of the Creed that he had chanted the day before rang suddenly +in his ears: + + "And in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten of His + Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of + very God--" + +What if he had lived a lie decently, what if he had fought a good fight +for a cause he opposed, what if he, in the name of that cause, had +closed his eyes and his nostrils to the things that repel and had +labored to cleanse the sewer at his door, was it any the less a lie? + +"Father, dinner is served." + +He raised himself and stood upon the hearth-rug. The dog awoke and +circled about his feet. Then together they passed into the dining-room. + +For a moment he stood before his chair, silently making the sign of the +cross. Then he sat down and unfolded his napkin. It was a simple meal, +and he ate it in silence. When the soup was finished and the meat +brought on, he cut up a portion for the dog at his side, placing the +plate upon the floor. Then he pushed his own plate away, and sat looking +into his glass of claret as it sparkled in the light. + +The bell rang, and the maid went to answer it. In a moment she came +back. + +"It is the sister," she said. "She is in your study." + +"Very well," Father Algarcife responded. + +He laid his napkin upon the table and passed out. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Jerome Ardly turned into one of the entrances leading to the Holbein +studios, ascended the long flight of stairs, and paused before a door +bearing a brass plate, on which was engraved + + _CLAUDE NEVINS_ + +As the knocker fell beneath his touch the door swung open, revealing +Nevins in a velvet smoking-jacket rather the worse for wear, his flaxen +hair standing on end above his wrinkled brow. + +"Hello!" was his greeting, taking the end of a camel's-hair brush from +his mouth. "So you've turned up at last. I've been doing your dirty work +all the morning." + +Ardly entered with a swing, closing the door after him. He had grown +handsomer in the last eight years, though the world had gone less well +with him than with Nevins. His large brown eyes still held their old +recklessness, and there had come into his voice a constant ring of +bravado. + +"Plenty for us both," he responded, blandly, throwing his hat on the +divan and himself into a chair. "My hand hath found its share to do, and +I have done it with all my might. I've been interviewing a lot of voters +in the old Ninth Ward. If Tammany doesn't make a clean sweep of that +district I'm a--a fool." + +"I wish you were not. Then you wouldn't be polling round these +confounded politicians. It seems to me your own district is more than +you can manage, but somehow you seem to be attending to everybody +else's. What under heaven does any self-respecting man want to be +alderman for, anyway? I wouldn't look at it." + +"My dear fellow, view it as a stepping-stone to greater glory." + +"A deuced long step downward." + +Ardly laughed, then, stretching himself, looked idly at the opening in +the ceiling through which the daylight fell. It framed a square of blue +sky across which a stray cloud drifted. + +The room was large and oblong, and the atmosphere was heavy with the +odors of oil and turpentine. The furniture consisted of a number of +covered easels, several coarse hangings ornamented in bizarre designs, +and a divan surmounted by an Oriental canopy. Over the door there was a +row of death-masks in plaster, relieved against a strip of ebony, and +from a pedestal in one corner a bust of Antinous smiled the world-worn +smile of all the ages. + +"Temper seems soured," remarked Ardly, raising himself and turning to +survey Nevins. "What's up?" + +Nevins smiled mysteriously, then waxed communicative. + +"Saw Algarcife to-day," he said, carelessly. + +"Oh! What did he say for himself?" + +Nevins laughed. + +"Does he ever say anything?" he demanded. "I asked him what he thought +of the elections, and he replied that they did not come within the +sphere of his profession." + +Ardly grinned. + +"Guess not," he ejaculated. "Was that all?" + +"Oh, the rest was about as follows: I went to his house, you know, and +told him I wanted his spiritual certificate as to your modesty and +worth. I also observed that the newspapers had undertaken to throw +moral search-lights indiscriminately around--" + +"What did he say to that?" chuckled Ardly. + +"He: 'Ardly can sustain them, I suppose.' + +"I: 'Don't know, I'm sure. Would like to have your opinion.' + +"He: 'It seems to me that you are in a better position to pass judgment +on that point than I am.' + +"I: 'But the standards are not the same, father.' (That 'father' ripped +out as pat as possible.) + +"He (rather bored): 'Oh, he is a fine fellow. I wish there were more +like him.'" + +"He is a fine fellow himself," retorted Ardly, loyally. + +Nevins examined his brushes complacently. "If I were a Tammanyite," he +said, "I'd post his certificate in the districts lying off the Bowery." + +"It would be a shame," returned Ardly. Then he smiled. "By Jove! I +believe if those districts knew Algarcife favored the little finger of a +candidate, they would swallow the whole Tammany ticket." + +"Queer influence, isn't it?" + +"Well, I don't know. He works night and day over these people--and he +knows how to deal with them. Leave it to the Bowery or to the ladies in +his congregation, and he might turn this government into a despotism +without a single dissenting vote." + +"I believe you're right. By the way, you know he gave me that portrait +of Father Speares to do for the church." + +"Glad to hear it. But I never understood his conversion, somehow." + +"Oh, I don't know. Men change like that every day." + +"But not for logic. I say, it happened shortly after Mariana left, +didn't it?" + +"I think so." + +"Heard anything of her?" + +Nevins shook his head. + +"Only what you know already," he answered. + +"Deuced little, then." + +"She came back, you know that, and went out West for a divorce. Then she +married an ass of an Englishman, named the Honorable Cecil somebody." + +"Good Lord! You've known that all these years?" + +"Pretty nearly." + +"Why in the devil didn't you tell me before?" + +Nevins shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, I don't feel the +necessity to confide to you the secrets of my bosom." + +"I call that a sneak." + +"Why couldn't you find it out for yourself?" + +"Because I don't go round diving into other people's affairs." + +"Neither do I," responded Nevins, with dignity. + +"How did you know, then?" + +"It just came to me." + +"Humph!" retorted Ardly, suspiciously. + +Nevins squeezed a trifle of white-lead on his palette. Then he rose and +drew the cord attached to the shade beneath the skylight. After which he +stood to one side, studying the canvas with half-closed eyes, and +shaking his dissatisfied head. As he returned to his seat he brushed the +mouth of a tube of paint with his trousers, and swore softly. At last he +spoke. + +"I know something else," he volunteered, cautiously. + +"About Mariana?" + +"Yes." + +"Let's have it, man." + +Nevins laid his palette aside, and, seating himself astride the back of +a chair, surveyed Ardly impressively. + +"I can't see that there is any use," he remarked. + +Ardly threw the end of a cigar at him and squared up wrathfully. "Are +you a damned fool or a utilitarian?" he demanded. + +"She left the Honorable somebody," said Nevins, slowly. + +"By Jove! what a woman!" + +"She came to America." + +"You don't say so!" + +"She is in New York." + +"What!" + +Ardly left his chair and straightened himself against the mantel. + +"How do you know?" he asked. + +"I have seen her." + +"Seen her!" + +"Her photograph," concluded Nevins, suavely. + +"Where?" + +"In Ponsonby's show-case, on Fifth Avenue, near Thirtieth Street." + +"How do you know it is she?" + +"Well, I'll be damned! Don't I know Mariana?" + +"Is it like her?" + +"It is a gem; but you know she always photographed well. She knew how to +pose." + +"Has she changed?" + +"Fatter, a trifle; fairer, a trifle; better groomed, a great deal--older +and graver, I fancy." + +"Well, I never!" said Ardly, and he whistled a street song between +half-closed lips. + +Nevins spoke again. + +"She is a kind of rage with a lot of club-men," he said, "but the women +haven't taken her up. I heard Mrs. Ryder call her an adventuress. But +Layton told me Ryder was mad about her." + +"Queer creatures, women," said Ardly. "They have a margin of morality, +and a woman's virtue is determined by its difference in degree from the +lowest stage worth cultivating. They imagine her not worth cultivating, +I suppose." + +"Oh, Mariana is all right," rejoined Nevins. Then he went on, +reflectively: "Odd thing about it is her reputation for beauty. Judge +her calmly, and she isn't even pretty." + +"But who could judge her calmly?" responded Ardly. He picked up his hat +and moved towards the door. "Well, I'll be off," he said. + +"To the club?" + +"No, just a little stroll down the avenue." + +Nevins smiled broadly. + +"Don't forget that Ponsonby's window-case is on the avenue," he +remarked, placidly. + +"Oh; so it is!" + +Ardly went out into the crisp sunshine, a rising glow in his face. He +walked briskly, with an almost impatient buoyancy. Near Thirtieth Street +he stopped before the window-case and looked in. + +From a square of gray card-board Mariana smiled at him, the aureole of +her hair defined against a dark background. For a moment he stared +blankly, and then an expression of hunger crept into his eyes--the +hunger of one who has never been satisfied. + +She was fairer, older, graver, as Nevins had said. There was a wistful +droop in her pose, and in the splendor of her half-closed eyes there was +something the old Mariana had never known--something left by the +gathering of experience and the memory of tears. + +He turned abruptly away, his face darkening and the buoyancy failing his +step. He knew suddenly that the world was very stale and flat, and +politics unprofitable. He crossed to Broadway and a few blocks farther +down met Father Algarcife, who stopped him. + +"Nevins was talking to me about you this morning," he said. "And so you +are taking the matter seriously." + +"As seriously as one takes--castor-oil." + +The other smiled. + +"Why, I thought you liked the chase." + +"Like it! My dear sir, life is not exactly a question of one's likes or +dislikes." + +Father Algarcife looked at him with intentness. + +"What! has not the world served you well?" he asked. + +Ardly laughed. + +"As well as a flute serves a man who doesn't know how to play it," he +answered. "I am a master of discords." + +"And so journalism didn't fit you?" + +"Oh, journalism led to this. I did the chief a good turn or two, and he +doesn't forget." + +"I see," said Father Algarcife. Then he laughed. "And here is the other +side," he added. Across the street before them hung a flaunting banner +of white bunting, ornamented in red letters. Half mechanically his eyes +followed the words: + + _SAMUEL J. SLOANE SAYS,_ + + _If I am elected Mayor, the government of New York will be conducted + upon the highest plane of_ + + _EFFICIENCY! JUSTICE! AND RIGHT!_ + +The wind caught the bunting and it swelled out as if inflated by the +pledges it bore. + +Ardly laughed cynically. + +"I wish he'd drop a few hints to Providence," he remarked. "It is +certainly a plane upon which the universe has never been conducted." + +Father Algarcife walked on in silence, making his way along the crowded +street with a slow yet determined step. The people who knew him turned +to look after him, and those who did not stepped from before his way, +moved by the virile dignity in his carriage, which suggested a man +possessed by an absorbing motive. + +Ardly looked a little abashed, and laughed half apologetically. + +"I have been in harness all my life," he said, "and now I'm doing a +little kicking against the traces." + +A boyish humor rushed to the other's lips. + +"In that case, I can make but one recommendation," he replied: "if you +kick against the traces--kick hard." + +He drew out his watch and paused a moment as if in doubt. + +"Yes, I'll go to the hospital," he said; "there is a half-hour before +luncheon," and he turned into East Twentieth Street on his way to Second +Avenue. When he reached the hospital, he entered the elevator upon the +first floor and ascended to the babies' ward. As he stepped upon the +landing, a calm-faced nurse in a fresh uniform passed him, holding a +glass of milk in her white, capable hand. + +His eyes brightened as he saw her, and under the serene system of the +place he felt a sense of restfulness steal over him like warmth. + +"How is my charge?" he asked. + +A ripple of tenderness crossed the nurse's lips as she answered: + +"He has been looking for you, and he is always better on the days that +you come." + +She passed along the hall and entered a large room into which the +daylight fell like a bath of sunshine. In the centre of the room there +was a tiny table around which a dozen children were sitting in small +white chairs. Despite the bandaged heads and the weak limbs, there was +no sign of suffering. It was all cheerfulness and sunshine, as if the +transition from a tenement-house room to space and air had unfolded the +shrunken little bodies into bloom. + +In a cot near a window, where the sunlight flashed across the cover, a +boy of three or four years lay with a strap beneath his small pink +wrapper, fastening him to a board of wood. At the head of the bed was +printed the name, and below: + + "Pott's disease of the spine. + Received, October, 1896; discharged ..." + +As he saw the priest he stretched out his pallid little hands with a +gurgle of welcome, merriment overflowing his eyes. + +Father Algarcife took the hands in his and sat down beside the cot. +Since entering the room he seemed to have caught something of the infant +stoicism surrounding him, for his face had lost its strained pallor and +the lines about his mouth had softened. + +"So it is a good day," he said. "The little man is better. He has been +on the roof-garden." + +The child laughed. + +"It ith a good day," he made answer. "There ith the woof-garden and +there ith ithe-cream." + +"And which is the best?" + +"Bofe," said the child. + +"That's right, little soldier; and what did you do in the garden?" + +The child clapped his hands. + +"I played," he responded; "an' I'm goin' to play ball on my legs when I +mend." + +One of the nurses came and stood for a moment at the foot of the bed. +"He has learned a hymn for you," she said. "He is teaching the other +children to sing--aren't you, baby?" + +"Yeth." + +"And you'll sing for the father?" + +The child's mouth quivered with pleasure and his eyes gleamed. Then his +gay little voice rang out in a shrill treble: + + "Yeth, Jesuth lovths me, + Yeth, Jesuth lovths me, + Yeth, Jesuth lovths me, + The Bible tells me so." + +He ended with a triumphant little gasp and lay smiling at the sunshine. + +A quarter of an hour later Father Algarcife returned to the street. It +was Friday, and at two o'clock he was to be in the sacristy, where it +was his custom to receive the members of his parish. It was the most +irksome of his duties, and he fulfilled it with a repugnance that had +not lessened with time. Now it represented even a greater strain than +usual. He had been soothed by his visit to the hospital, and he dreaded +the friction of the next few hours--the useless advice delivered, the +trivialities responded to, the endless details of fashionable foibles +that would be heard. He wondered, resentfully, if there were not some +means by which this office might be abolished or delivered into the +hands of an assistant. Then his eyes shot humor as he imagined Miss +Vernish, Mrs. Ryder, or a dozen others consenting to receive spiritual +instruction from a lesser priest with a snub-nose. + +As he passed a book-shop in Union Square, a man reading the posters upon +the outside attracted his notice. + +"Oh, I say, Mr. Algarcife!" + +He stopped abruptly, recognized the speaker, and nodded. + +The other went on with a heated rush of words. + +"Those are fine things of yours, those sermons. I congratulate you." + +"Thank you." + +"Yes, they are fine. But, I say, you got the better of the _Scientific +Weekly_ writer. It was good." + +"I don't know," responded Father Algarcife. "It is a good deal in the +way you look at it, I suppose." + +"Not at all. I am not prejudiced--not in the least--never knew anybody +less so. But he isn't your equal in controversy, by a long shot." + +A sudden boyish laugh broke from Father Algarcife--a laugh wrung from +him by the pressure of an overwhelming sense of humor. "I don't think it +is a question of equality," he replied, "but of points of view." + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +The next afternoon Ardly burst into Nevins's studio without knocking, +and paused in the centre of the floor to give dignity to his +announcement. + +"I have seen her," he said. + +Nevins, who was stretched upon the divan, with his feet in the air and a +cigarette in his mouth, rolled his eyes indolently in Ardly's direction. + +"My dear fellow," he returned, "am I to presume that the pronoun 'her' +refers to an individual or to a sex?" + +"Don't be an ass," retorted Ardly. "I tell you I've seen Mariana." + +Nevins turned upon his side and removed the cigarette from his lips. + +"Where?" he responded, shortly. + +"She was coming out of Thorley's. She wore an acre of violets. She has a +footman in livery." + +"How do you know it was she?" + +"Well, I'll be damned! Don't I know Mariana?" + +Nevins sat up and rested his head in his hands. + +"How did she look?" he asked. + +"Stunning. She has an air about her--" + +"Always had." + +"Oh, a new kind of air; the way a woman moves when she is all silk on +the wrong side." + +Nevins nodded. + +"Speak to you?" + +"I didn't give her a chance," returned Ardly, gloomily. "What's the +use?" + +The knocker rose and fell, and Mr. Paul entered, as unaltered as if he +had stepped aside while the eight years slid by. + +Nevins greeted him with a slight surprise, for they had drifted +different ways. + +"Glad to see you," he said, hospitably; "but this is an unusual honor." + +"It is unusual," admitted Mr. Paul, seating himself stiffly on the edge +of the divan. + +"I am afraid to flatter myself with the hope that a whisper of my +spreading fame has brought you," continued Nevins, nodding affably. + +Mr. Paul looked up absently. "I have heard no such rumor," he replied, +and regarded the floor as if impressed with facts of import. + +"Perhaps it is your social charm," suggested Ardly; "or it may be that +in passing along Fifty-fifth Street he felt my presence near." + +Nevins frowned at him and lighted a fresh cigarette. + +"I hope you are well, Mr. Paul," he remarked. + +Mr. Paul looked up placidly. + +"I may say," he returned, "that I am never well." + +"Sorry to hear it." + +There was a period of silence, which Mr. Paul broke at last in dry +tones. + +"I have occasion to know," he announced, "that the young woman whom we +knew by the name of Mariana, to which I believe she had no legal title, +has returned to the city." + +Nevins jumped. "You don't say so!" he exclaimed. + +"My information," returned Mr. Paul, "was obtained from the elevator boy +who took her to the apartment of Miss Ramsey." + +"Did she go to see Miss Ramsey?" demanded Nevins and Ardly in a breath. + +Mr. Paul shook his head. + +"I do not know her motive," he said, "but she has taken Miss Ramsey +away. For three days we have had no news of her." + +The knocker fell with a decisive sound. Nevins rose, went to the door, +and opened it. Then he started back before the apparition of Mariana. + +She was standing near the threshold, her hand raised as when the knocker +had fallen, her head bent slightly forward. + +With an impulsive gesture she held out her gloved hands, her eyes +shining. + +"Oh, I am so glad!" she said. + +Nevins took her hands in his and held them while he looked at her. She +was older and graver and changed in some vital way, as if the years or +sorrow had mellowed the temperament of her youth. There was a deeper +thrill to her voice, a softer light in her eyes, and a gentler curve to +her mouth, and over all, in voice and eyes and mouth, there was the +shadow of discontent. + +She wore a coat of green velvet, with ruffles of white showing at the +loosened front, where a bunch of violets was knotted, and over the brim +of her hat a plume fell against the aureole of her hair. + +"I am so glad," she repeated. Then she turned to Ardly with the same +fervent pressure of the hands. + +"It is too good to be true," she went on. "It is like dropping back into +girlhood. Why, there is dear Mr. Paul!" + +Mr. Paul rose and accepted the proffered hands. + +"You have fattened, madam," he remarked, with a vague idea that she had +in some way connected herself with a title. + +Mariana's old laugh pealed out. + +"Why, he is just as he used to be," she said, glancing brightly from +Ardly to Nevins in pursuit of sympathy. "He hasn't changed a bit." + +"The changes of eight years," returned Mr. Paul, "are not to be detected +by a glance." + +Mariana nodded smilingly and turned to Nevins. + +"Now let me look at _you_," she said. "Come under the light. Ah! you +haven't been dining at The Gotham." + +"Took my last dinner there exactly six years ago next Thanksgiving Day," +answered Nevins, cheerfully. "Turkey and pumpkin-pie." + +She turned her eyes critically on Ardly. + +"Well, he has survived his sentiment for me," she said. + +Ardly protested. + +"I don't keep that in the heart I wear on my sleeve," he returned. "You +would need a plummet to sound the depths, I fancy." + +Mariana blushed and laughed, the faint color warming the opaline pallor +of her face. Then she glanced about the room. + +"So this is the studio," she exclaimed, eagerly--"the studio we so often +planned together--and there is the divan I begged for! Ah, and the dear +adorable 'Antinous.' But what queer stuff for hangings!" + +"If you had sent me word that you were coming," returned Nevins, +apologetically, passing his hands over his hair in an endeavor to make +it lie flat, "I'd have put the place to rights, and myself too." + +"Oh, but I wanted to see you just as you are every day. It is so +home-like--and what a delightful smell of paint! But do you always keep +your boots above the canopy? They spoil the effect somehow." + +"I tossed them up there to get rid of them," explained Nevins. "But tell +me about yourself. You look as if you had just slid out of the lap of +luxury." + +"Without rumpling her gown," added Ardly. + +"I was about to observe that she seemed in prosperous circumstances," +remarked Mr. Paul. + +"Oh, I am," responded Mariana. "Stupidly prosperous. But let me look at +the paintings first, then I'll talk of myself. What is on the big easel, +Mr. Nevins?" + +"That's a portrait," said Nevins, drawing the curtain aside and +revealing a lady in black. "I am only a photographer in oils. I am +painting everybody's portrait." + +"That means success, doesn't it? And success means money, and money +means so many things. Yes, that's good. I like it." + +Nevins smiled, enraptured. + +"You were the beginning," he said. "It was the painting of you and--and +the blue wrapper that did it. It gave me such a push uphill that I +haven't stood still since." + +The wistfulness beneath the surface in Mariana's eyes deepened suddenly. +Her manner grew nervous. + +"Oh yes," she said, turning away. "I remember." + +Mr. Paul, who had watched her gloomily, with traces of disapprobation in +his gaze, took his leave with a stilted good-bye, and Mariana threw +herself upon the divan, while Ardly and Nevins seated themselves on +footstools at her feet and looked into her eyes. + +"I want to hear all--all," she said. "Are you happy?" + +"Are you?" asked Ardly. + +She shook her head impatiently. "I? Oh yes," she answered. "I have +clothes, and a carriage, and even a few jewels." + +She slipped the long glove from her hand, which came soft and white from +its imprisonment, with the indentation of the buttons on the supple +wrist. She held up her fingers, where a blaze of diamonds ran. Then she +smiled. + +"But I never sang with Alvary," she added. + +"Where is the voice?" + +"It is dead," she replied; "but it was only a skeleton when it lived. I +learned that afterwards. I had the artistic temperament without the +art." + +Nevins and Ardly, watching the mobility of her face, saw the old +half-disdainful weariness steal back. + +"So you have learned that," said Nevins. "It is the greater wisdom--to +learn what one has not." + +"I don't idealize any longer," answered Mariana, playing with the glove +in her lap. "I have lopped off an ideal every hour since I saw you." + +"Sensible woman," returned Ardly. "We don't lop off our ideals--we +distort them. Life is a continuous adjustment of the things that should +be to the things that are." + +"And middle-age shows the adjustment to be a misfit," added Nevins, his +boyish face growing almost sad. "We grow tired of burnishing up the +facts of life, and we leave the tarnish to mix with the triple-plate." + +"Are you middle-aged?" asked Mariana. + +"Not since you entered." + +She smiled, pleased with the flattery. "So I am a restorer of youth. Do +I look young?" + +"There is a glass." + +She turned towards it, catching the reflection of her face shadowed by +the plume against her hair. + +"Your eyes are older," said Nevins. "They look as if they had seen +things, but your mouth is young. It could never hold an expression long +enough for it to impress a line. Heavens! It is a mouth that would +madden one to model, because of the impossibility! It is twenty mouths +in one!" + +"You never liked my nose," said Mariana, her eyes still on the glass. +"Do you remember how you straightened it in the poster?" + +"I have the poster still." + +"And I have the nose." + +Then she laughed. "It is so delightful to be here," she said. + +Ardly and Nevins talked rapidly, running over the years one by one, +giving glimpses of the changes in their lives, meeting Mariana's gay +reserve with fuller confidence. They had both grown boyish and more +buoyant, and as they spoke they felt like an incoming tide the warmth of +Mariana's manner. She seemed more lovable to them, more generous, more +utterly to be desired. Her nature had ripened amid the luxury of her +life, which, instead of rendering her self-centred, as poverty had done, +had left her more responsive to the needs of others. She threw herself +into the records of their lives with an impulsive fervor, stopping them +at intervals to question as to details, and covering the past eight +years with sympathetic search-lights. + +And yet beneath the superficial animation in her voice there was a +restless thrill, and the eagerness with which she turned to trivial +interests was but the nervous veil that hid the weariness in her heart. +It was as if she plunged into the thoughts of others that she might put +away the memory of herself. + +"So you have become a politician?" she said to Ardly. "I am so +interested!" + +"You wouldn't be if you knew as much of it as I do," remarked Nevins. +"You'd be ashamed. It makes me blush every time I see his name on a +ticket. I consider it an offence against the paths of our fathers." + +"Why, Mr. Ryder told me you were working for him," Mariana returned; +"but he did say that he couldn't reconcile it with your common-sense. +He's for the other side, you know." + +"So am I!" groaned Nevins; "but what has a man's convictions to do with +his vote?" + +"Or with his election?" laughed Ardly. "But Nevins is an unwilling +accomplice of my aspirations." + +"I wouldn't call them aspirations," remonstrated Nevins. + +Mariana buttoned her glove and rose. "I am going to work for you," she +said, "and my influence is not to be scorned. I have not one vote, but +dozens. I shall elect you." + +"Don't," pleaded Nevins; "it will soil your hands!" + +"Oh, I can wash them!" she laughed; "and it is worth a few smuts. I +shall tell Mr. Ryder to canvass for you," she added. + +Ardly shouted, "Good heavens! He is one of the best fighters the +Republicans have!" + +Mariana smiled inscrutably. + +"But that was before I had a candidate," she answered. + +They followed her to the sidewalk and tucked her carriage furs about her +while the footman looked on. + +"And you are coming to see me soon?" she insisted--"very soon?" + +"We swear it!" they protested. + +"And you will tell me all the news of the elections?" + +"On our manly faith." + +"That I will trust. Good-bye!" + +"Good-bye!" + +The carriage started, when suddenly she lowered the window and looked +out, the plume in her hat waving black against the wind. + +"I forgot to tell you," she said; "my name is Gore--Mrs. Cecil Gore." + +With the light of audacity in his face, Nevins laid his hand upon the +window. + +"And where is the Honorable Cecil?" he asked. + +A flash of irritation darkened Mariana's eyes. She laughed with a ring +of recklessness. + +"The Lord forbid that I should know!" she replied. + +She motioned to the coachman, and the carriage rolled rapidly away. +Nevins stood looking after it until it turned the corner. When the last +wheel vanished, he spoke slowly: + +"Well, I'll be blessed!" he said. + +Ardly stooped and picked up a violet that lay upon the curbing. + +"And so will I," he responded. + +"Have a whiskey?" + +"All right." + +They entered the building and mounted the stairs in silence. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +The Reverend Anthony Algarcife had inspired his congregation with an +almost romantic fervor. + +When he had first appeared before them as assistant to Father Speares in +his Bowery Mission, and a little later as server in the celebrations, +they regarded him as a thoughtful-eyed young priest, whose appearance +fitted into the general scheme of color in the chancel. When he read the +lessons they noticed the richness of his voice, and when at last he came +to the altar-step to deliver his first sermon they thrilled into the +knowledge of his power. + +But he turned from their adulations almost impatiently to throw himself +into the mission in the slums. His eloquence had passed from the rich to +the poor, and beyond an occasional sermon he became only a harmonious +figure in the setting of the church. For the honors they meted out to +him he had no glance, for their favors he had only indifference. He +seemed as insensible to praise as to censure, and to the calls of +ambition his ears were closed. He lived in the fevered haste of a man +who has but one end remaining--to have life over. + +But his indifference redounded to his honor. Because he shunned +popularity, it fell upon him; because he put aside personal gains, he +found them in the reverence of his people. His apathy was construed into +humility, his compassion into loving-kindness, his endeavors to stifle +memory into the fires of faith. At the end of six years his +determination to remain a cipher in religion had made him the leader of +his church, and the means which he had taken to annihilate self had +drawn on him the wondering eyes of his world. Almost unconsciously he +bowed his head to receive the yoke. + +When, at the death of Father Speares, he was called to the charge, he +accepted it without a struggle and without emotion. He saw in it but an +opening to heavier labor and an opportunity to hasten the progress of +his slow suicide. + +So he took the work from the failing hands and devoted to it the fulness +of his own frenzied vigor. The ritual which his predecessor loved became +sacred to him, and the most trivial ceremonials grew mighty with memory +of the dead. Each candle upon the altar, each silken thread in the +embroidered vestments he wore, was a tribute to a sincerity which was +not his. + +He lent a sudden fervor to the decoration of the church and to the +training of his choristers, passionately reviving lost and languishing +rites of religion, and silencing the faint protests of his more +conservative parishioners by an arrogant appeal to the "Ornaments +Rubric" of the Prayer-book. In defiance of the possible opposition of +the bishop, he transposed the "Gloria" to its old place in the Catholic +Mass, hurling, like an avenging thunderbolt, at a priestly objector to +the good old rule of St. Vincent, "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab +omnibus." + +"My dear father," his senior warden had once said to him, "I doubt if +most priests put as much work into their whole lives as you do into one +celebration." + +"I know," replied Father Algarcife slowly. "If I have left anything +undone it has been from oversight, not fear of labor." + +The warden smiled. + +"Your life is a proof of your industry as well as your faith," he +responded. "Only a man who loves his religion better than his life would +risk himself daily. It is your great hold upon your people. They believe +in you." + +"Yes, yes," said the other. + +"But I have wanted to warn you," continued the warden. "It cannot last. +Give yourself rest." + +Father Algarcife shook his head. + +"I rest only when I am working," he answered, and he added, a little +wistfully, "The parish bears witness that I have done my best by the +charge." + +The warden, touched by the wistfulness, lowered his eyes. "That you have +done any man's best," he returned. + +"Thank you," said Father Algarcife. Then he passed into the sacristy to +listen to the confession of a parishioner. + +It was a tedious complaint, and he followed it abstractedly--winding +through the sick imaginings of a nervous woman and administering +well-worn advice in his rich voice, which lent a charm to the truisms. +When it was over, he advised physical exercise, and, closing the door, +seated himself to await the next comer. + +It was Miss Vernish, and as she entered, with her impatient limp, the +bitterness of her mouth relaxed. She was supervising the embroidering of +the vestments to be worn at Easter, and in a spirit of devotion she had +sacrificed her diamonds to their ornamentation. Her eyes grew bright as +she talked, and a religious warmth softened her manner. + +"It has made me so happy," she said, "to feel that I can give something +beautiful to the service. It is the sincerest pleasure I have known for +years." + +She left, and her place was taken by a young divinity student who had +been drawn from law to theology by the eloquence of Father Algarcife. He +had come to obtain the priest's advice upon a matter of principle, and +departed with a quickening of his religious tendencies. + +Then came several women, entering with a great deal of rustling and no +evident object in view. Then a vestryman to talk over a point in +business; then the wife of a well-known politician, to ask if she should +consent to her husband's accepting a foreign appointment; then a man who +wished to be confirmed in his church; and, after all, Mrs. Ryder, large +and warm and white, to say that since the last communion she had felt +herself stronger to contend with disappointment. + +When it was over and he came out into the evening light, he drew himself +together with a quick movement, as if he had knelt in a strained +position for hours. Vaguely he wondered how his nerves had sustained it, +and he smiled half bitterly as he admitted that eight years ago he would +have succumbed. + +"It is because my nerves are dead," he said; "as dead as my emotions." + +He knew that since the pressure of feeling had been lifted the things +which would have overwhelmed him in the past had lost the power to +thrill his supine sensations, that from a mere jangled structure of +nerve wires he had become a physical being--a creature who ate and drank +and slept, but did not feel. + +He went about his daily life as methodically as if it were mapped out +for him by a larger hand. His very sermons came to him with no effort of +will or of memory, but as thoughts long thought out and forgotten +sometimes obtrude themselves upon the mind that has passed into other +channels. They were but twisted and matured phrases germinating since +his college days. The old fatal facility for words remained with him, +though the words had ceased to be symbols of honest thought. He could +still speak, it was only the ability to think that the fever had +drained--it was only the power to plod with mental patience in the +pursuit of a single fact. Otherwise he was unchanged. But as every +sensation is succeeded by a partial incapacity, so the strain of years +had been followed by years of stagnation. + +He went home to dinner with a physical zest. + +"I believe I have one sentiment remaining," he said, "the last a man +loses--the sentiment for food." + + * * * * * + +The next evening, which chanced to be that of Election Day, Dr. Salvers +came to dine with him, and when dinner was over they went out to +ascertain the returns. Salvers had entered the fight with an +enthusiastic support of what he called "good government," and the other +watched it with the interest of a man who looks on. + +"Shall we cross to Broadway?" he asked; "the people are more +interesting, after all, than the politicians." + +"The politicians," responded Salvers, "are only interesting viewed +through the eyes of the people. No, let's keep to the avenue for a +while. I prefer scenting the battle from afar." + +The sounds grew louder as they walked on, becoming, as they neared +Madison Square, a tumultuous medley issuing from tin horns and human +throats. Over the ever-moving throngs in the square a shower of +sky-rockets shot upward at the overhanging clouds and descended in a +rain of orange sparks. The streets were filled with a stream of crushed +humanity, which struggled and pushed and panted, presenting to a distant +view the effect of a writhing mass of dark-bodied insects. From the +tower of the Garden a slender search-light pointed southward, a pale, +still finger remaining motionless, while the crowd clamored below and +the fireworks exploded in the blackness above. + +Occasionally, as the white light fell on the moving throng, it +exaggerated in distinctness a face here and there, which assumed the +look of a grotesque mask, illuminated by an instantaneous flash and +fading quickly into the half-light of surrounding shadows. Then another +took its place, and the illumination played variations upon the changing +features. + +Suddenly a shrill cheer went up from the streets. + +"That means Vaden," said Salvers. "Let's move on." + +They left the square, making their way up Broadway. At the first corner +a man offered them papier-mache tigers, at the second roosters, at the +third chrysanthemums. + +"Look at this," said Salvers, drawing aside. "Odd for women, isn't it? +Half these girls don't know what they are shrieking about." + +In the throng jostling past them there were a dozen school-girls, +wearing yellow chrysanthemums in their button-holes and carrying small +flags in their hands. The light from the windows fell upon their pretty +faces, rosy from excitement. Behind them a gang of college students blew +deafening blasts on tin trumpets, and on the other side a newsboy was +yelling-- + +"_Eve-ning Wor-ld!_ Vaden elected!--Va-den--!" + +His voice was drowned in the rising cheers of men politically mad. + +"I'll go to the club," said Salvers, presently; "this is too deuced +democratic. Will you come?" + +Father Algarcife shook his head. + +"Not now," he replied. "I'll keep on to Herald Square, then I'll turn +in. The fight is over." + +And he passed on. + +Upon a white sheet stretched along the side of the _Herald_ building a +stereopticon portrait of a candidate appeared, followed by a second, and +then by the figures of the latest returns from the election boroughs. +Here the crowd had stagnated, and he found difficulty in forcing his +way. Then, as the mass swayed back, a woman fainted at his side and was +carried into the nearest drug-store. + +In the endeavor to reach Fifth Avenue he stepped into the centre of the +street, where a cable car, a carriage, and a couple of hansom cabs were +blocked. As he left the sidewalk the crowd divided, and the carriage +started, while a horse attached to a cab shied suddenly. A woman +stumbled beneath the carriage and he drew her away. As he did so the +wheel of the cab struck him, stunning him for the moment. + +"Look out, man!" called Nevins, who was seated beside the coachman upon +the carriage-box; "that was an escape. Are you hurt? Here, hold on!" + +At the same moment the door opened and a hand reached out. + +"Come inside," said a woman's voice. + +He shook his head, dizzy from the shock. Red lights flashed before his +eyes, and he staggered. + +Then the crowd pressed together, some one pushed him into the carriage, +and the door closed. + +"To Father Algarcife's house," said the voice. A moment more and the +horses started. Consciousness escaped him, and he lay against the +cushions with closed eyes. When he came to himself, it was to hear the +breathing of the woman beside him--a faint insistence of sound that +seemed a vital element in the surrounding atmosphere. For an instant it +lulled him, and then, as reason returned, the sound brought in its train +the pale survivals of old associations. Half stunned as he was, it was +by feeling rather than conception that he became aware that the woman +was Mariana. He was conscious of neither surprise nor emotion. There was +merely a troublous sense of broken repose and a slight bitterness always +connected with the thought of her--a bitterness that was but an +after-taste of his portion of gall and wormwood. + +He turned his head upon the cushions and looked at her as she sat +beside him. She had not spoken, and she sat quite motionless, her fitful +breathing alone betraying the animation of flesh. Her head was in the +shadow, but a single ray of light fell across her lap, showing her +folded hands in their long gloves. He smelled the fragrance of the +violets she wore, but the darkness hid them. + +Surging beneath that rising bitterness, the depths of his memory stirred +in its sleep. He remembered the day that he had stood at the window of +that Fourth Street tenement, watching the black-robed figure enter the +carriage below. He saw the door close, the wheels turn, and the last +upward glance she gave. Then he saw the long street flecked with +sunshine stretching onward into the aridity of endless to-morrows. + +Strange that he remembered it after these eight years. The woman beside +him stirred, and he recalled in that same slow bitterness the last kiss +he had put upon her mouth. Bah! It meant nothing. + +But his apathy was rended by a sudden fury--an instinct of hate--of +cruelty insatiable. An impulse to turn and strike her through the +darkness--to strike her until he had appeased his thirst for blood. + +The impulse passed as quickly as it came, fleeing like a phantom of +delirium, and in its place the old unutterable bitterness welled back. +His apathy reclosed upon him. + +The carriage turned a corner, and a blaze of light fell upon the shadow +of the seat. It swept the white profile and dark figure of Mariana, and +he saw the wistfulness in her eyes and the maddening tremor of her +mouth. But it did not move him. He was done with such things forever. + +All at once she turned towards him. + +"You are not hurt?" + +"It was nothing." + +She flinched at the sound of his voice, and the dusk of the cross-street +shrouded them again. The hands in her lap fluttered nervously, running +along the folds of her dress. + +Suddenly the carriage stopped, and Nevins jumped down from the box and +swung the door open. + +"Are you all right?" he asked, and his voice was unsteady. + +"All right," responded Father Algarcife, cheerfully. He stepped upon the +sidewalk, staggered slightly, and caught Nevins's arm. Then he turned to +the woman within the carriage. "I thank you," he said. + +He entered the rectory, and Nevins came back and got inside the +carriage. + +"Will you go home?" he asked, with attempted lightness. "The returns +from the Assembly districts won't be in till morning, but Ardly is +sure." + +Mariana smiled at him. + +"Tell him to drive home," she answered. "I am very tired." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +The morning papers reported that the Reverend Anthony Algarcife had been +struck by a cab while crossing Broadway, and as he left the +breakfast-table Mrs. Ryder's carriage appeared at his door, quickly +followed by that of Miss Vernish. + +By ten o'clock the rectory was besieged and bunches of flowers, with +cards attached, were scattered about the hall. Dr. Salvers, coming in a +little later, stumbled over a pile of roses, and recovered himself, +laughing. + +"Looks as if they mean to bury you," he remarked. "But how are you +feeling? Of course, I knew it was nothing serious or I should have +heard." + +Father Algarcife rose impatiently from his chair. + +"Of course," he returned. "But all this fuss is sufficient to drive a +man mad. Yes, Agnes," to the maid who entered with a tray of carnations +and a solicitous inquiry as to his health. "Say I am perfectly well--and +please have all these flowers sent to the hospital at once. No, I don't +care for any on my desk. I dislike the perfume." Then he turned to +Salvers. "I am going out to escape it," he said. "Will you walk with me +to the church?" + +"With pleasure," responded the doctor, cheerfully; and he added: "You +will find the church a poor protection, I fancy." + +As they left the rectory they met Claude Nevins upon the sidewalk. + +"I wanted to assure myself that it was not a serious accident," he said. +"Glad to see you out." + +Father Algarcife frowned. + +"If I hear another word of this affair," he replied, irritably, "I shall +feel tempted to regret that there is not some cause for the alarm." + +"And you are quite well?" + +"Perfectly." + +"By the way, I didn't know that you felt enough interest in the +elections to induce you to parade the streets on their account." + +"Oh, it was the doctor's fault. He got me into the medley, and then +deserted because he found it too democratic." + +"It is democracy turned upsidedown that I object to," remarked Salvers. +"There seems a lack of decency about it--as if we were to awake some +morning to find the statue of Liberty on its head, with its legs in the +air. I believe in the old conservative goddess of our fathers--Freedom +shackled by the chains of respectability." + +"So did Father Algarcife once," said Nevins. "He had an oration entitled +'The Jeffersonian Principles' which he used to deliver before the mirror +when he thought I was asleep." + +"I believe in it still," interrupted Father Algarcife, "but I no longer +deliver orations. Greater wisdom has made me silent. Well, I suppose the +result of last night was hardly a surprise." + +"Hardly," responded Nevins. "What can one expect when everybody who +knows the value of an office is running for it, and everybody who +doesn't is blowing horns about the runners. But I won't keep you. +Good-day." + +"Good-day." + +Nevins turned back. + +"By the way," he said to Father Algarcife, "I wish you would drop in and +look at that portrait the first chance you have. I am waiting for your +criticism." + +"Very well. Congratulate Ardly for me." + +And they separated, Salvers motioning to his coachman to follow him to +the church. + +Upon going inside, Father Algarcife found his principal assistant, a +young fellow with a fair, fresh face, like a girl's, and a high +forehead, surmounted by waves of flaxen hair. His name was Ellerslie, +and his devotional sincerity was covered by a shy and nervous manner. + +He greeted the elder priest with a furtive deprecation, the result of an +innate humility of character. + +"I went by the rectory as soon as I had seen the morning papers," he +said. "Thank God you escaped unhurt!" + +The irritation with which Father Algarcife had replied to Nevins's +solicitude did not appear now. + +"I hope you were not troubled by the report," he answered. "There was +absolutely nothing in it except that I was struck by a vehicle and +stunned slightly. But the exaggerated accounts have caused me a great +deal of annoyance. By the way, John," and his face softened, "I have not +told you how much I liked your last sermon." + +The other flushed and shook his head. "They fall so far short," he +returned, and his voice trembled. "I know now that I shall never be able +to speak. When I face the people there is so much that I want to say +that I grow dumb. My feeling is so strong that my words are weak." + +"Time may change that." + +"No," said Ellerslie; "but if I may listen to you I am content. I will +serve God in humble ways. It is the service that I love, after all, and +not the glory." + +"Yes, yes," responded Father Algarcife, gently. + +He went into the sacristy, where he sat for a few moments in reverie, +his head resting upon his hand. Then he rose and shook himself free of +the thought which haunted him. + +For several weeks after this he paid no calls except among his poor. The +houses of his richer parishioners he appeared to shun, and his days were +spent in active work in the mission districts. At all hours his calm +black figure and virile face might be seen passing in and out of the +grimy tenements or along the narrow streets. He had opened, in +connection with his mission-house, a lodging for waifs, and it was his +custom to spend several evenings of the week among its inmates. The +house had been founded by funds which, until his call to the church, had +been expended in Asiatic missions, but which, before his indomitable +opposition, had been withdrawn. As the work went on it became of special +interest to him, and a good half of his personal income went yearly to +its support. + +"It is not a charity," he had once said to Salvers. "I disapprove of +such charities. It is merely a house where lodgings are let in as +business-like a manner as they are around the corner, for five cents a +spot; only our lodgings are better, and there is a bath thrown in." + +"And a dinner as well," Salvers had answered, "to say nothing of +breakfast and a bed to one's self. By the way, is your system of serving +newsboys and boot-blacks on credit successful?" + +Father Algarcife smiled. + +"I have found it so," he replied; "but, you know, our terms are long, +and we give good measure for the money." + +It was in this work that he was absorbing himself, when, one day in +early December, he received a note from Mrs. Ryder: + + "I have secured a box at the opera for Thursday night," (she + wrote), "that I might beg you to hear Madame Cambria, who sings + Ortrude in 'Lohengrin.' Her contralto is superb, and I wish to + engage her for our Christmas services, but I hesitate to do so + until I have had your verdict upon her voice. This is a new + charitable appeal, and one which I trust you will not refuse. + + "Believe me to be, + "Always sincerely yours, + "FLORENCE VAN HORNE RYDER. + + "The De Reszkes sing also." + +He sent an acceptance, and the following day received an urgent request +that he should dine quietly with Mr. Ryder and herself on Thursday +evening. To this he consented, after some hesitation; and when the +evening came he presented himself, to find Mrs. Ryder awaiting him with +the pretty, vivacious young woman of the dinner-party, who was a guest +in the house. + +Mrs. Ryder crossed the room, with her large white hand outstretched, her +satin gown rustling as she moved, and the lamplight shimmering over her +massive shoulders in their setting of old lace. The vivacious young +woman, whose name was Darcy, greeted him with a smile which seemed to +blend in a flash of brightness her black eyes and white teeth. + +"Mr. Ryder is a little late," his wife explained, "but he will not delay +us long." And she passed to the subject of the Christmas services and +the contralto she wished to secure. + +While she was speaking, Ryder came in with his usual cordial +pleasantries. He was looking fresh and a little flushed, as if he had +just left a Turkish bath, and was dressed with an immaculateness of +detail which carried a suggestion of careful polish. His sensitive skin, +beneath which the purplish flush rose, was as fine as a child's, and his +round, smooth hands had a suffusion of pink in the palms. + +In a moment dinner was served, and they went into the dining-room. Ryder +was easy and affable. He talked pleasantly about the events of the past +few weeks, describing as if for the hundredth time the success of the +Horse Show, and stating good-natured objections to the awards of the +judges. + +"It is a farce," he said--"a mere farce. They don't recognize the best +horse-flesh when they see it." Then he smiled at his wife. "But who can +blame them? It was really a puzzle to decide which were the most worth +looking at, the horses or the women. It is hard to say where the blue +ribbon belonged. Ah, father, you miss a great deal by being a saint." + +Miss Darcy interrupted him with a pretty protest. "I am sure a saint may +look at a horse," she said, "and a woman." And she added: "I have always +forgotten to ask you who the lady in violet and silver-fox was who sat +in Mr. Buisson's box? I did not recognize her." + +Ryder's eyes narrowed slightly, but he answered easily, "Oh, that was +Mrs. Gore, I believe." + +Miss Darcy flashed a smile. + +"The Englishwoman I have heard so much about? Why, I thought she was +called a beauty!" + +Ryder laughed. + +"She is a beauty when you know her," he said, "or, rather, you get the +idea that she is. But she isn't English, you know. She married an +Englishman." + +Then he changed the subject and drew Father Algarcife into a discussion +of church decorations. + +When dinner was over, Mrs. Ryder's maid appeared, bearing the +opera-wraps, and the two women trailed down the steps and into the +carriage. When Father Algarcife had stepped inside, Ryder closed the +door and made his excuses. + +"I'll look in a little later," he said; "but if Mr. Nevins finds you you +won't need me, and a whole evening of it tires my nerves." + +Then he lighted a cigar and strolled off leisurely, while the carriage +started. + +When they entered the opera-house the curtain had risen, and the tenor +was singing his farewell to the swan. + +As Father Algarcife seated himself in the shadow of the box and looked +over Mrs. Ryder's superb shoulders at the stage and the glittering +foot-lights, he felt a quick impulse to rush away from it all. He hated +the noise and the heat and the glare. The heavy atmosphere seemed +oppressive and unnatural, and the women, sparkling brilliantly in the +tiers of boxes, looked like beautiful exotics, fragrant with the +perishable bloom of a hot-house. It was with a sensation of relief that +he recalled the dull mission in the slums, where he had spent the +morning. + +On the stage, Elsa had cast herself into the arms of Lohengrin, and the +voice of love dominant was translated into song. The music filled the +house with a throbbing ecstasy--an ecstasy that had captured in its +notes the joys of all the senses--the light to the eye of a spring +morning, the perfume to the nostrils of fresh meadows, the warmth to the +touch of falling sunshine. It was the voice of love ethereal--of love +triumphant over flesh, of love holding to its breast the phantom of its +dreams. It was the old, ever-young voice of the human heart panting for +the possession of its vision--the vision realized in the land of +legends. + + * * * * * + +The curtain was rung down, and in a moment Nevins came in and they fell +to talking. They spoke of the tenor, of the fact that the prima donna's +voice had strengthened, and of Madame Cambria, the contralto, who was a +little hoarse. Then they spoke of the people in the boxes and of the +absence of several whose names they mentioned. + +Father Algarcife was silent, and he only aroused himself to attention +when Miss Darcy, lowering her opera-glass, turned to Nevins +inquiringly. + +"Do tell me if that is Mrs. Gore across from us--the one in green and +violets?" + +Nevins replied constrainedly. "Yes," he said; "I think so. The other is +Miss Ramsey, I believe--a friend who lives with her." + +Miss Darcy smiled. + +"Why, I thought she lived alone," she returned; "but I have heard so +many odd things about her that I may be mistaken in this one. She is +evidently the kind of person that nobody possesses any positive +information about." + +"Perhaps it is as well," observed Mrs. Ryder, stiffly. "It is better to +know too little on such subjects than too much." + +Nevins was writhing in his chair, his mouth half open, when Father +Algarcife spoke. + +"In this case," he said, and his voice sounded cold and firm, "what is +not known seems to be incorrectly surmised. I knew Mrs. +Gore--before--before her marriage. She is a Southerner." + +Mrs. Ryder looked up. + +"Yes?" she interrogated, as he paused. + +"And, although I cannot vouch for her discretion, I can for her innate +purity of character." + +Mrs. Ryder flushed, and spoke with a beautiful contrition in her eyes. + +"I was wrong," she said, "to trust rumor. It makes me ashamed of +myself--of my lack of generosity." + +The curtain rose, and Father Algarcife turned to the stage. But he did +not see it. The figures were blurred before his eyes and the glare +tortured him. Across the circle of space he knew that Mariana was +sitting, her head upraised, her cheek resting upon her hand, her face in +the shadow. He could almost see her eyes growing rich and soft like +green velvet. + +Then, as the voice of the soprano rang out, he started slightly. +Beneath the song of love he heard the cry of ambition--a cry that said: + +_"I would give half my life for this--to sing with Alvary."_ + +Whence the words came he did not know. He had no memory of them in time +or place, but they struggled in the throat of the soprano and filled the +air. + +He turned and looked at her as she sat across from him, her cheek +resting in her hand against a blaze of diamonds. She looked white, he +thought, and wistful and unsatisfied. Then a fierce joy took possession +of him--a joy akin to the gloating of a savage cruelty. She had failed. +Yes, in spite of the brocade of her gown, in spite of the diamonds in +her hair, in spite of the homage in the eyes of men that followed +her--she had failed. + +The blood rushed into his temples, and he felt it beating in his pulses. +He was glad--glad that she was unsatisfied--glad of the struggle and of +the failure--glad of the slow torture of famished aspirations. + +And from the throat of the soprano the words rang heavy with throbs of +unfulfilment: + +_"I would give half my life for this--to sing with Alvary."_ + +Then as he looked at her she stirred restlessly, and their eyes met. It +was a blank look, such as two strangers might have interchanged, but +suddenly he remembered the night they came together and sat in the fifth +gallery. A dozen details of that evening flickered in his memory and +reddened into life. He remembered the splendors of her eyes, the thrill +in her voice, the nervous tremor of her hands. He remembered the violets +in her bonnet, created from nothing after a chapter of Mill--and the +worn gloves with the stains inside, which benzine had not taken away. He +remembered her faintness when the opera was over, and the grocery-shop +across from The Gotham, where they had bought ale and crackers. He saw +her figure as she sat on the hearth-rug in her white gown, her hair +hanging loose about her shoulders, her eyes drowsy with sleep. He saw +her hands--bare then of jewels--as she unfastened the parcels, and heard +her laugh as he drew the cork and the ale spilled upon the crackers. +Good God! He had forgotten these things eight years ago. + +Again he looked across at her and their eyes met. He turned to the stage +and listened to the faltering of love as it struggled with doubt. The +music had changed. It had deepened in color and a new note had throbbed +into it--a note of flesh that weighed upon spirit--of disbelief that +shadowed faith. The ideal was singing the old lesson of the real found +wanting--of passion tarnished by the touch of clay. The ecstasy had +fled. Love was not satisfied with itself. It craved knowledge, and the +vision beautiful was fading before the eyes of earth. It was the song of +the eternal vanquishment of love by distrust, of the eternal failure of +faith. + + * * * * * + +When the curtain fell Ryder came into the box. He was looking depressed, +and lines of irritation had gathered about his mouth. He pulled his fair +mustache nervously. His wife rose and looked at him with a frank smile +in her eyes. + +"I have been watching Mrs. Gore," she said, "and she is very lovely. +Will you take me to her box for a moment?" + +Nevins looked up with quick gratitude, and Ryder grew radiant. He smiled +on his wife in affectionate admiration. + +"Of course I will," he answered, and as they left the box he added: "You +are magnificent. There is not a woman in town with your neck and arms." + +She smiled faintly, unmoved by his words. She had learned long since +that he still admired though he no longer desired her--and desire was +the loadstar of his life. + +Father Algarcife, looking at the box across from him, saw Mariana start +suddenly and rise with an impulsive welcome as Mrs. Ryder entered. He +could see the light on her face, and the frank pleasure of her greeting. +Then, as the two women stood together, he saw Ryder glance from one to +the other with his pleasant smile and turn to speak to Miss Ramsey. He +heard Nevins breathing behind him, and he was conscious of a strange +feeling of irritation against him. Why should he, who was at enmity with +no man, cherish that curious dislike for one who was his friend? + +"Mrs. Ryder is a creature to be adored," said Nevins to Miss Darcy. "She +is Isis incarnate." + +Miss Darcy responded with her flashing smile. "And Mrs. Gore's +divinity?" + +Nevins gave an embarrassed laugh. + +"Oh, I am not sure that she is a goddess at all," he answered. "She is +merely a woman." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +As Mariana entered her house after the opera was over she unwound the +lace scarf from her head, letting it trail like a silvery serpent on the +floor behind her. Then she unfastened her long cloak, and threw it on a +chair in the drawing-room. + +"The fire is out," she said, looking at the ashes in the grate, "and I +am cold--cold." + +"Shall I start it?" asked Miss Ramsey, a little timidly, as she tugged +awkwardly at her gloves, embarrassed by their length. + +Mariana laughed absently. + +"Start it? Why should you?" she questioned. "There are servants--or +there ought to be--but no, I'll go up-stairs." + +She went into the hall, and Miss Ramsey followed her. On the second +landing they entered a large room, the floor of which was spread with +white fur rugs, warmed by the reddish lights and shadows from an open +fire. + +Mariana crossed to the fire, and, drawing off her gloves, held her hands +to the flames. There was a strained look in her eyes, as if she had not +awaked to her surroundings. + +Miss Ramsey raised the wick of the lamp, yawned behind her hand, and +came to where Mariana was standing. + +"Are you tired?" she asked. "The opera was very long." + +Mariana started and looked at her. + +"You poor little thing," she said. "It half killed you. No, don't go. +Sit down for a moment. I want to talk to you." + +As she spoke she unfastened her gown, slipped it off, and threw it +across a chair. Then she put on a wrapper of white flannel, and, seating +herself on the rug before the fire, loosened her heavy hair. + +"I want to talk," she repeated. + +Miss Ramsey drew a chair beside her and sat down. She laid her hand on +Mariana's hair. + +"Shall I braid it?" she asked. + +Mariana shook her head. + +"I don't want you to wait on me," she replied, half pettishly. "Janet +can do that. I want you to love me." + +Miss Ramsey smiled. + +"How shall I begin?" she inquired. + +But Mariana was silent, staring moodily into the fire, where the ruddy +coals assumed sharp and bizarre designs. As the light flickered over her +face it brought out the changes in her eyes and the warmth of her mouth. + +"Do you see that head in the fire?" she asked, suddenly. "It is the head +of the Sphinx--and before it there is a burning desert--do you see?" + +Then she laid her head in Miss Ramsey's lap, and her voice sounded faint +and far off. + +"I want to be told that I am good," she said; "that I have been good all +my life--that I am a saint, like that splendid creature who came to +speak to me to-night. Am I as good as she?" + +"I do not know her," responded Miss Ramsey. + +Mariana raised her eyes to her face. + +"Am I like I used to be--at The Gotham?" + +Miss Ramsey smiled. + +"You are older." + +"And wiser?" + +"I don't think you will ever be wise, my dear." + +"I am afraid not," said Mariana. "I am wedded to folly." Then she sighed +softly. "Am I better?" she asked. + +"You are very good to me." + +"Am I better--to look at?" + +Miss Ramsey shook her head gently. + +"Dress makes a good deal of difference," she returned, presently. + +Mariana rose and kissed her good-night. + +"Sleep well," she said. "And don't make your bed in the morning--please +don't. Yes, I am very sleepy." + +But when the door had closed after Miss Ramsey she sat looking into the +grate until the crimson coals had waned to livid ashes. The room grew +cold and the shadows deepened in the folds of the curtains at the +windows, which were stirred by a faint draught. From the street below an +occasional noise rose, vague, unseizable--the roll of a wagon or the +tramp of a passer-by upon the sidewalk. In a distant room a clock struck +twice, with a soft whirring sound. From her gown, thrown across the back +of a chair, the bruised violets diffused a fading sweetness. The embers +waned one by one, and the visions in the fire grew spectral, like living +faces which the warm blood forsakes. As the last one died she rose and +went to bed. + +When she awoke in the morning it was to find Miss Ramsey standing beside +her, holding her breakfast-tray. + +"You were sleeping very soundly," she said. "Did you have a good night?" + +"Oh yes," Mariana responded. She yawned and turned upon the pillows, +stretching her arms above her head. The lace on her sleeves fell away +from her bare elbows. + +"I slept very soundly, and I am sleepy still. The mere fact of getting +up in the morning makes life a failure. Until I have had my bath I am +always a pessimist." + +She sat up drowsily, running her hands through her hair. Then she turned +to her tea, which was placed on a table beside her. + +"There are your violets also," remarked Miss Ramsey, pointing to a +couple of florist's boxes; and, as an afterthought, she added: "Men are +odd creatures." + +Mariana laughed. + +"Oh, they imagine that they are laying up treasures on earth," she +answered, stirring her tea. "And they have overlooked the fact that +moths corrupt. I shall advise them to transfer their attentions to +Heaven. Who was it that called me 'unpropitious'?" + +"I don't like it," said Miss Ramsey. "I may be old-fashioned, but I +don't approve of married men living as if they had no responsibilities." + +"Nor do I," agreed Mariana. "It bores one awfully." + +"And it makes people say unkind things of you, my dear. It is so hard +for them to draw the distinction between imprudence and infamy." + +"Yes," admitted Mariana, pushing her cup aside. "I suppose it is--and I +suppose I am imprudent." + +"I wish you would try to be a little more careful." + +Mariana caught her hand and pulled her down on the bed beside her. + +"What a treasure you are!" she said. "Do you know you are the one woman +I absolutely believe in? You might have made a fortune by reporting +scandals about me, and you haven't done so." + +The maid brought in several letters, and Mariana took them from her and +broke the seals carelessly. + +"Mr. Gore is coming forward again," she remarked, tossing an open sheet +on the counterpane. "You knew he did not like that worshipful old uncle +of his leaving me his property. He says it has made me too independent. +Well, it has made me independent of him, for which Heaven be praised. +When I heard of it I repeated the Thirty-nine Articles, fifty _Hail +Mary's_, and as much of the Shorter Catechism as I could think of. I +feel _so_ thankful." + +"I am sorry for that, Mariana." + +"You wouldn't be if you knew him. You are too economical to squander +emotions." + +"But it does seem rather hard on him," said Miss Ramsey. + +Mariana laughed. + +"It would have been worse on me had I stayed with him," she responded. +"And now, if Janet has my bath ready, I think I'll get up." + +An hour later she came down-stairs in her hat and coat, and went for her +morning walk in the park. When she returned she ordered the carriage, +and went shopping, accompanied by Miss Ramsey. + +"You are to have a heliotrope satin," Mariana declared, in a burst of +generosity, "and I am to have one that is all amber and dull gold." + +As she stood in the centre of the costumer's show-room, surveying the +lustrous folds of heliotrope and amber, her eyes shone with pleasure. +Miss Ramsey protested faintly. + +"My dear Mariana, I beg of you," she said, "leave me the black silk. +Colors confuse me." + +But Mariana was obdurate. + +"No," she replied, "I have selected it. We will go to the milliner's." + +They drove to the milliner's, where they remained for a couple of +hours--Mariana finding difficulty in deciding upon a bonnet. When the +choice was made Miss Ramsey was threatened with hysteria, and they went +home. + +"I quite forgot," said Mariana, as they entered the house, a small +brown-stone one on Fifty-seventh Street, which she had leased--"I quite +forgot that I was to have sat for Mr. Nevins this morning. How provoking +I am! But it is too late now, and, besides, I am looking a fright. My +dear, good Miss Ramsey, I do wish you would express yourself more about +the purchases I make." + +"I did express myself," protested Miss Ramsey, looking jaded and +harassed. "I expressed myself against that heliotrope satin, but it did +no good." + +"But that was absurd," responded Mariana. "I do hope luncheon is ready," +and she went up-stairs to change her dress. + +After luncheon Mrs. Ryder called, and Mariana went in to see her, a +flush of pleasure suffusing her face. + +"How very kind of you!" she said, taking the proffered hand, and there +was a thrill of gratitude in her voice. They seated themselves near +together and talked of mutual acquaintances, principally men, of the +weather, and of the opera the evening before--all with the flippancy +with which society veils the primordial network of veins coursing +beneath its bloodless surface. Then, when Mrs. Ryder rose to go, she +hesitated an instant, looking down at the smaller woman. + +"I should like to be your friend," she said at last. "Will you let me?" + +Mariana raised her eyes. + +"I need them," she answered; and then she added, impulsively: "Do you +know all that has been said of me--all?" + +Mrs. Ryder drew herself up with a slow, gracious movement. + +"But it is not true," she said. + +"No, it is not true," repeated Mariana. + +The other smiled and held out her hand. + +"I want you to come to luncheon with me," she said. "I shall be alone +to-morrow. Will you come?" + +"Yes," Mariana responded, "to-morrow." + +And after Mrs. Ryder had gone she sat down at her desk and wrote a note. + +"You must not talk to me again as you did last evening," it said. "I +have told you so before, but I may not have seemed in earnest. Now I am +in earnest, and you must not--you shall not do it. I know it has been a +great deal my fault, and I am sorry for it. Indeed, you must believe +that I did not think of its coming to this." + +Then she sealed it and gave it to the servant to mail, after which she +went up-stairs and talked to Miss Ramsey until dinner. + +The next day she went to Mrs. Ryder's, and they sat down to luncheon at +a small round table and talked as women talk in whom feeling is +predominant over thought, and to whom life represents a rhythmic series +of emotions rather than waves of mental evolution. + +They spoke in low, almost affectionate voices, conscious of one of those +sudden outreaches of sympathy to which women are subject. When luncheon +was over they went up to the nursery, and Mariana knelt upon the floor +and romped with the child, who pulled her loosened hair, uttering shrill +shrieks of delight. At last she rose hurriedly, and Mrs. Ryder saw that +a tear trembled on her lashes. + +The elder woman's heart expanded. + +"You have had a child?" she asked, softly. + +"Yes." + +"And lost it?" + +"Yes, I lost it." + +Mrs. Ryder's eyes grew soft. + +"I am so sorry for you," she said. The tear on Mariana's lashes fell +upon her hand. + +"It was eight years ago," she said. "That is a long time, but I suppose +one never entirely forgets." + +"No," answered the other, "one never forgets." + +She stooped suddenly, and, lifting her child, kissed it passionately. + +Several mornings after this Mariana's carriage stopped before Nevins's +studio, and Mariana got out and ascended the long flight of stairs. In +response to the fall of the brass knocker, the door was opened and +Nevins greeted her reproachfully. "Are you aware," he demanded, gravely, +"that there has been sufficient time for the appearance of a wrinkle +since your last sitting?" + +"Portraits don't have wrinkles," returned Mariana, cheerfully, entering +and unfastening her coat; "nor do I." + +She removed her hat and gave an impatient little fluff to her hair. + +"Do I look well?" she asked. + +"Were you ever otherwise to me?" rejoined Nevins, in impassioned +protest. + +Mariana turned from him with a slight shrug of her shoulders. + +"For the last week," she said, "I have had a horrible cold. It made my +eyes red and my nose also. That is why I stayed away." + +"And plunged me into a seven days' despair--for a cold." + +"Oh, but such a cold!" + +She seated herself on a low chair between two large curtained easels. +Then she rose to examine the portrait. + +"I suppose the touching-up makes a great deal of difference," she +remarked. + +"A great deal," assented Nevins; "but don't you like it?" + +She hesitated, her head first on one side, then on the other. + +"Oh yes," she said, "but I should like it to be ideal, you know." + +"Nonsense! You don't need to be idealized. To idealize means to wipe out +character with turpentine and put in inanity with a paint-brush." Then +he added: "Sit down just as you are, and turn your head towards the +purple curtain on that easel. A little farther--there. I must have that +expression." + +He picked up his brush and worked steadily for twenty minutes. Then he +frowned. + +"You have suffered twelve changes of expression within the last sixty +seconds," he said. "What are you thinking of?" + +"Oh, lots of things." + +"Keep to one, please." + +She smiled. + +"Which shall it be?" + +His eyes lingered upon her in sudden brightness. + +"Think of me," he responded. + +"I do," returned Mariana, amiably; "but when I think of you I think of +Mr. Ardly, and when I think of Mr. Ardly I think of The Gotham, and when +I think of The Gotham I think of--Mr. Paul." + +"Confound Mr. Paul!" retorted Nevins, crossly. + +"Please don't," protested Mariana; and she added, "you know he +disapproves of me very much." + +"The scoundrel!" + +"But a great many people do that." + +"The scoundrels!" + +"Oh no," said Mariana, plaintively; "it is only your kindness of heart +that makes you say so." + +He laid down his brush and looked at her. + +"My God!--Mariana!" he exclaimed. + +"Nevins," said a voice in the doorway. + +He turned abruptly. Mariana, behind the curtained easel, paled suddenly. + +"I knocked, my dear fellow," the voice went on, "and I thought you +answered. So you _are_ alone. I came to look at the portrait." + +"I am not alone," returned Nevins, awkwardly; "but come in, +a--a--Algarcife." + +Mariana rose from behind the easel and came forward. Her face was white, +but she was smiling. + +"He is painting every one's portrait," she said, "and I am one of +everybody." She held out her hand. He took it limply, and it fell from +his grasp. + +"I beg your pardon," he said; "I did not know." + +"Oh, it doesn't matter," responded Mariana. "Please look at the +portrait. I want to--to rest." + +He turned from her coldly. + +"Since Mrs. Gore is so kind," he said to Nevins, "I will look at it. It +will only detain you a moment." + +He crossed the room and drew aside the curtain from a large canvas, then +he fell back from the light and examined it carefully for a few seconds, +suggesting an alteration or two, and making a favorable comment. + +Mariana followed him with her eyes, her hands clasped before her, her +face pallid, and the red of her lips shining like a scarlet thread. +"It--it is very like," she said, suddenly. + +He bowed quietly, showing a slight surprise, as he might have done at +the remark of a stranger. Then he turned to the door. + +"I am sorry to have interrupted you," he said. "Good-morning." + +When the door closed upon him Mariana stood for an instant with her head +bent as if listening to his footsteps on the stairs. Then she turned to +Nevins, a smile flashing across her face. + +"We must go back to the portrait," she said. "It must be finished +quickly--quickly. I am afraid of wrinkles." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Mariana was walking under the elms that skirt the park on Fifth Avenue. +It was a mild December morning, and the sunshine fell in silvery waves +through the bare branches of trees overhead and rippled lightly across +the concrete sidewalk, while the slender shadows of the boughs assumed +the effect of irregular lines drawn by crude fingers upon a slate. Far +ahead, through the narrowing archway of naked elms, the perspective +sloped in gradual incline, blending the changing shades of blue and gray +into a vista of pale violet. On the low stone wall to her left the +creepers showed occasional splashes of scarlet berries, glowing warm and +vivid through the autumnal haze which tinted the atmosphere. December +had reverted for a single day into the majesty of dead October. + +Mariana walked slowly, the furs, which she found oppressive, open at the +throat, and her muff hanging idly from her hand. There was a rapt +expression upon her face, and her eyes were sombre. She had the strained +and preoccupied air of one whose mind has winged back to long-past days, +leaving the body adrift in its relation to present events. All at once a +tiny child, rolling a toy along the sidewalk, stumbled and fell before +her feet, uttering shrieks of dismay. The incident recalled her to +herself, and, as she stooped to lift it, she smiled at the profuse +apologies of the nurse. Then she glanced about her, as if uncertain of +the number of blocks that she had walked. + +Three aspens, standing together in the park, arrested her gaze, and she +looked at them with momentary intentness. Their slender bodies shone +like leprous fingers, pointing heavenward, and on the topmost point of +one a broken spray of frosted leaves shivered whitely. They recalled to +her with a shudder the little graveyard on the old plantation, where she +had spent her earliest childhood, and she was seized with a spasm of +memory. She saw the forgotten and deserted graves, with the rank +periwinkle corroding the marble slabs, and she saw the little brown +lizards that crept out to bask upon them in the summer sunshine. With +the recollection, death appeared to her hideous and loathsome, and she +walked on quickly, her eyes on the pavement. A group of street-cleaners +were seated against the stone wall, eating their mid-day meal, and she +looked at the hunks of bread and ham with a feeling of sympathy for the +consumers. Then, as she passed, her thoughts swung to the owner of the +house across the way whom she knew, and who was descending the front +steps. At Sixty-seventh Street she turned into the park, her eyes drawn +by the clump of pines darkly defined against the gray rock beyond. For +the second time her errant thoughts went back to her childhood and to +the great pine forest where the wind played lullabies through the white +heat of August days. She felt a swift desire to throw herself beneath +the little alien growth of pine, to lie on the soft grass, which was +still like emerald deepened by bluish shadows, and to let the spicy +needles fall upon her upturned face. + +As she moved onward, a man crossing the park in a rapid walk approached +her. It was Father Algarcife, and in a moment their glances met. + +He raised his hat, and would have passed on, but she stopped him by a +gesture. + +"Won't you speak to me?" she asked, and her voice wavered like a harp +over which the player has lost control. + +As she looked at him she saw that he had grown thinner since she had +last seen him, and that his eyes shone with an unnatural lustre. + +"What is there for me to say?" he returned, arresting her wavering +glance. + +Her lips quivered. + +"I may go away," she said, "and this is the last chance. There is +something I must tell you. Will you turn and walk back with me?" + +He shook his head. + +"What is the use?" he asked, impatiently. "There is nothing to be said +that cannot better be left--unsaid." + +"No! No!" she said. "You must not think worse of me than--than I +deserve." + +He was smiling bitterly. + +"What I think of you," he returned, "matters very little." Then the +smile passed, and he looked at her gravely. "I have little time," he +said. "My days are not my own." And he added, slowly: "If you wish it, I +will walk back with you for a short distance." + +"Thank you," she replied, and they passed the clump of pines on their +way in the park. + +For a time they were silent, he was looking ahead, and her eyes followed +their shadows as they flitted before her on the ground. The two shadows +drew nearer, almost melted into one, and fell away. + +Suddenly he turned to her. + +"There was something you wished to say?" he asked, as he had asked his +parishioners a hundred times; then he added: "Even though it were better +left unsaid?" + +Her eyes left the shadows, and were raised to his face. She thought +suddenly that there was a line of cruelty about his mouth, and shrank +from him. Had she really seen that face illuminated by passion, or was +memory a lie? She spoke rapidly, her words tripping upon one another. + +"I want you to know," she said, "how it happened--how I did it--how--" + +He looked at her again, and the mocking smile flamed in his eyes. + +"What does it matter how it happened," he questioned, "since it did +happen? In these days we have become impressionists in all things--even +in our experiences. Details are tiresome." Then, as she was silent, he +went on. "And these things are done with. There is nothing between +Mrs.--Gore and the Reverend Anthony Algarcife except a meeting in a +studio and a morning walk in the park. The air is spring-like." + +"Don't," she said, suddenly. "You are hard." + +He laughed shortly. + +"Hard things survive," he answered. "They aren't easy to smash." + +She looked at the shadows and then into his face. + +"Have you ever forgiven me?" she asked. + +He did not answer. + +"I should like to feel," she went on, "that you see it was not my +fault--that I was not to blame--that you forgive me for what you +suffered." + +But he looked ahead into the blue-gray distance and was silent. + +"Tell me that I was not to blame," she said, again. + +He turned to her. + +"It was as much your fault," he said, slowly, "as it is the fault of +that feather that the wind is blowing it into the lake. What are you +that you should conquer the wind?" + +She smiled sadly. + +"And you have forgiven me?" + +His eyes grew hard and his voice cut like steel. + +"No." + +"And yet you see that I was not to blame." + +He smiled again. + +"It is the difference," he answered, "between logic and life. What have +they in common?" + +She spoke almost passionately. "Do you think that I have not suffered?" +she asked. "Do you think that you have had all--all the pain?" + +He shook his head. + +"I do not suffer," he replied. "My life is calm." + +She paid no heed to him. + +"I have been tortured," she went on; "tortured night and day with +memory--and remorse." + +His voice was cold, but a sudden anger blazed in his eyes. + +"There are drugs for both," he said. + +She shivered. + +"I have tried to buy happiness as I bought diamonds," she continued. "I +have gone from place to place in pursuit of it. I have cheated myself +with the belief that I might find it. I did not know that the lack lay +in myself--always in myself." + +She was silent, and he softened suddenly. "And you have never found it?" +he asked. "Of all the things that you craved in youth there is lacking +to you now--only your ambition." + +She raised her head. + +"And love," she finished. + +His voice grew hard again. + +"We are speaking of realities," he returned, and added, bitterly: "Who +should have had love--if not you?" + +They had passed the lake, and were walking through the Ramble. The dead +leaves rustled beneath their feet. + +"It is not true," she said, passionately. "It is false." + +"What is false?" he demanded, quietly. "That you have had opportunities +for love?" + +She did not reply. Her lips were trembling, and her hand played +nervously with the ribbon on her muff. + +Suddenly she looked up. + +"When I left you," she said, slowly, "I went with the opera troupe +abroad. For several years I was very successful, and I believed it would +end well. I was given a leading part. Then one winter, when we were in +Paris, I was taken ill. It was pneumonia. I was very ill, and the pain +was frightful. They thought it would go to my heart. But when I grew +better the troupe went on. I was left at the hotel, ill and +alone--except for one friend--an Englishman--" + +He interrupted her harshly. + +"You have made a mistake," he said, and his voice was dull and lifeless. +"I have no right to know your story. You are not of my parish--nor am I +your confessor." + +She flinched, but went on steadily, though her tones drooped. + +"He had followed me for a long time. He loved me--or thought he did. +When I was deserted by the troupe he stayed with me. He paid my bills +and brought me back to life. I grew strong again, but--my voice was +gone." + +She paused as if in pain. + +"Sit down," he said. + +And they sat down on a bench beneath the naked branches of an oak. + +"I was penniless, alone, and very weak. He wanted me even then. At first +he did not want to marry me, but when I would not yield, he begged me to +come back with him and secure a divorce. I think he was mad with +passion." + +She hesitated and glanced at him, but he was looking away. + +"At last the end came. There was nothing else to do--and I wrote to +you." + +He moistened his lips as if they were parched from fever. + +"Did you get the letter?" + +"Yes," he answered, "I got it." + +"And you did not answer?" + +"What was there for me to say? You were free." + +For an instant her eyes blazed. + +"You never loved me," she said. + +He smiled slightly. + +"Do you think so?" he asked. + +The anger died from her eyes and she spoke softly. + +"I waited for the answer," she said; "waited months, and it did not +come. Then I came back. We went out West. A divorce was very easy--and I +married him. I owed him so much." + +"Yes?" + +"It was a mistake. I did not satisfy him. He thought me cold. We +quarrelled, and he went to other women. He drank a great deal. I was +much to blame, but I could not help it. I hated him. Then his uncle took +my part and loved me--God bless him, he was a saint--and kind--oh, so +kind. When he died he left me the money, and his nephew and I separated. +I have not seen him since." + +They were both silent. She could hear his heavy breathing, and her heart +throbbed. + +"It was all a mistake," she said. "My whole life has been a mistake. But +there is no salvation for us who make mistakes." + +His eyes grew dark as he looked at her. + +"A mistake that one stands by may become the part of wisdom," he said. +"Could you not go back to him and begin again?" His face had grown +haggard. + +Her wrath flamed out. + +"If I begin again," she answered, "it must be from the beginning--to +relive my whole life." + +He looked at her restless hands. + +"Then you must look to the future," he said, "since there is no +present--and no past." + +"There is a past," she returned, passionately. + +He shook his head. + +"A dead one." + +Her mouth shone scarlet in the pallor of her face. + +"And shall we forget our dead?" she asked. + +His lips closed together with brutal force. His eyes were hot with +self-control. + +Then he stooped for her muff, which had rolled to the ground, brushing +it lightly with his hand. As he gave it to her he rose to his feet. + +"Shall we return?" he asked. "It has grown cloudy." + +She rose also, but stood for an instant with her hand resting upon the +back of the bench. Her lips opened, but closed again, and she turned and +walked at his side in silence. + +Suddenly he looked at her. + +"It is late," he said, "as you doubtless know, and I have neglected a +call. May I leave you to go on alone?" Then his voice softened. "Are you +ill?" he asked--"or in pain?" + +She laughed mirthlessly. + +"You are too strong," she returned, "to stoop to irony." + +"It was not irony," he answered, gently. + +She smiled sadly, her eyes raised. + +"Tell me that you will come to see me--once," she said. + +He looked at her with sudden tenderness. + +"Yes," he answered; "I will come. Good-bye!" + +"Good-bye!" + +And they went different ways. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Mariana went home with throbs of elation in her heart. She was thrilled +with a strange, unreasoning joy--a sense of wonder and of mystery--that +caused her pulses to quiver and her feet to hasten. + +"I shall see him again," she thought--"I shall see him again." + +She forgot the years of separation, her past indifference, the barriers +between them. She forgot the coldness of his voice and his accusing +glance. Her nature had leaped suddenly into fulness, and a storm of +passion such as she had never known had seized her. The emotions of her +girlhood seemed to her stale and bloodless beside the tempest which +possessed her now. As she walked her lips trembled, and she thought, "I +shall see him again." + +At dinner Miss Ramsey noticed her flushed face, and, when they went into +the drawing-room, took her hands. "You are feverish," she said, "and you +ate nothing." + +Mariana laughed excitedly. + +"No," she answered, "I am well--very well." + +They sat down together, and she looked at Miss Ramsey with quick +tenderness. + +"Am I good to you?" she asked. "Am I good to the servants?--to +everybody?" + +"What is it, dear?" + +"Oh, I want to begin over again--all over again! It is but fair that one +should have a second chance, is it not?" + +Miss Ramsey smiled. + +"Some of us never have a first," she said; and Mariana took her in her +arms and kissed her. "You shall have yours," she declared. "I will give +it to you." + +When she went up-stairs a little later she took down an old square desk +from a shelf in the dressing-room and brought it to the rug before the +fire. Kneeling beside it, she turned the key and raised the narrow lid +of ink-stained mahogany. It was like unlocking the past years to sit +surrounded by these memories in tangible forms, to smell the close, +musty odor which clings about the relics of a life or a love that is +dead. + +She drew them out one by one and laid them on the hearth-rug--these +faded things that seemed in some way to waft with the scent of decay +unseizable associations of long-gone joy or sorrow. The dust lay thickly +over them, as the dust of forgetfulness lay over the memories they +invoked. There was a letter from her mother written to her in her +babyhood, and the fine, faded handwriting recalled to her the drooping +figure--a slight and passionate woman, broken by poverty and +disappointments, with vivacious lips and eyes of honest Irish blue. +There was a handful of mouldered acorns, gathered by childish fingers on +the old plantation; there was the scarlet handkerchief her mammy had +worn, and the dance-card of her first ball, with a colorless silk tassel +hanging from one end. Then she pushed these things hastily aside and +looked for others, as one looks beneath the sentiments for the passions +of one's life. She found a photograph of Anthony, pasted on cheap +card-board--a face young and intolerant, with the fires of ambition in +the eyes and the lines of self-absorption about the mouth. Still looking +at the boyish face, she remembered the man that she had seen that +morning--the fires of ambition burned to ashes, the self-absorption +melted into pain. + +With the photograph still in her hand, she turned back to the desk and +took out a tiny cambric shirt with hemstitched edges, upon which the +narrow lace was yellow and worn. As the little garment fell open in her +lap she remembered the day she had worked the hemstitching--a hot August +day before the child came, when she had lived like a prisoner in the +close rooms, sewing for months upon the dainty slips, and dreaming in +that subconscious existence in which women await the birth of a new +life. She remembered the day of its coming, her agony, and the first cry +of the child; then the weeks when she had lain watching the dressing and +undressing of the soft, round body, and then the moist and feeble clutch +upon her hand. She remembered the days when it did not leave her arms, +the nights when she walked it to and fro, crooning the lullaby revived +from her own infancy, and at last the hours when she sat in the +half-darkness and watched the life flicker out from the little bluish +face upon the pillow. + +"Was that yesterday or eight years ago?" + +Her tears fell fast upon the tiny shirt, and she folded it and laid it +away with the photograph and the other relics--laid away side by side +the relics and the recollections covered with dust. + +She rose to her feet and carried the desk back to its place in the +dressing-room. In a moment she returned and stood silently before the +fire, her hand resting upon the mantel-piece, her head leaning upon her +arm. She was thinking of the two things a woman never forgets--the voice +of the man she has loved and the face of her dead child. + +But when she went to bed an hour later there was a smile on her lips. + +"I shall see him again," she said. "Perhaps to-morrow." + +The next day she went to Nevins's studio and sat for the portrait. Her +face was aglow and she talked nervously. He noticed that she started at +a noise on the stair, and that her attention wandered from his words. He +made daring, if delicate, love to her, but she seemed oblivious of it, +and, when she rose to go, remarked that he was depressed. In return, he +observed that she was feverish, and advised consulting her physician. +"Your eyes are too bright," he said. "What is it?" + +"Your reflected brilliancy, perhaps." + +"By no means. The lustre is too unnatural." + +"Then it is sleeplessness. I lay awake last night." + +"Anything the matter? Can I help you?" + +She shook her head, smiling. + +"I am adjusting a few difficulties," she answered; "chiefly matrimonial, +but they belong to my cook." + +He looked at her attentively. + +"Don't worry," he said. "It is not becoming. The flush is all right, but +in time it will give place to discontent. You will sow perplexities to +reap--" + +"Furrows," finished Mariana. Then she nodded gayly. "What a pessimist +you are!" she said. "No, I am going to use the best cosmetic--happiness." + +And she lifted her skirts and descended the stairs. + +That afternoon she remained in-doors, wandering aimlessly from room to +room, opening a book to turn a page or two and to throw it aside for +another. + +In the evening she went out to dinner, and Ryder, who was among the +guests, remarked that he had never seen her in better form. "If there +was such a thing as eternally effervescent champagne, I'd compare you to +it," he said. "Are you never out of spirits?" + +She looked at him with sparkling eyes. "Oh, sometimes," she responded; +"but as soon as I discover it, I jump in again." + +"And I must believe," he returned, his gaze warming, "that your element +is one that cheers but not inebriates." + +"You are very charitable. I wonder if all my friends are?" + +He lowered his voice and looked into her eyes. "Say all your +worshippers," he corrected, and she turned from him to her left-hand +neighbor. + +She laughed and jested as lightly as if her heart were a feather, and +went home at last to weep upon her pillow. + +For the next few days she lived like one animated by an unnatural +stimulant. She talked and moved nervously, and her eyes shone with +suppressed excitement, but she had never appeared more brilliant, and +her manner was charged with an irresistible vivacity. To Miss Ramsey she +was unusually gentle and generous. + +Each morning, on rising, the thought fired her, "He may come to-day"; +each night the change was rung to, "He may come to-morrow"; and she +would toss feverishly until daybreak, to dress and meet her engagement, +with a laugh upon her lips. To a stranger she would have seemed to face +pain as she faced joy, with a dauntless insolence to fate. To a closer +observer there would have appeared, with the sharper gnawing at her +heart, the dash of a freer grace to her gestures, a richer light to her +eyes. It was as if she proposed to conquer destiny by the exercise of +personal charm. + +At the end of the week she came down to luncheon one day with a softer +warmth in her face. When the meal was over she went up to her room and +called her maid. "I want the gray dress," she said; but when it was laid +on the bed she tossed it aside. "It is too gloomy," she complained. +"Bring me the red;" and from the red she turned to the green. + +She dressed herself with passionate haste, arranging and rearranging +the coil of her hair, and altering with reckless fingers the lace at her +throat. At last she drew back from the glass, throwing a dissatisfied +glance at her reflection--at the green-clad figure and the small and +brilliant face, surmounted by its coils of shining brown. Then she added +a knot of violets to the old lace on her breast, and went down-stairs to +walk the drawing-room floor. An instinctive belief in his coming +possessed her. As she walked slowly up and down on the heavy carpet, the +long mirrors suspended here and there threw back at her fugitive +glimpses of her moving figure. In the dusk of the room beyond she saw +herself irradiated by the glimmering firelight. + +The hands of the clock upon the mantel travelled slowly round the +lettered face. As she watched it she felt a sudden desire to shake them +into swiftness. She touched the clock and drew back, laughing at her +childishness. A carriage in the street caught her ears and she went to +the window, glancing through the half-closed curtains. It passed by. +Then a tall, black figure turning the corner arrested her gaze, and her +heart leaped suddenly. The figure came on and she saw that it was an +elderly clergyman with white hair and a benevolent face. She was seized +with anger against him, and her impatience caused her to press her teeth +into her trembling lip. In the street a light wind chased a cloud of +dust along the sidewalk until it danced in little eddying waves into the +gutter. An organ-grinder, passing below, looked up and lifted his hand. +She took her purse from the drawer of the desk and threw him some +change; but when the broken tune was ground out she shook her head and +motioned him away. The sound grated upon her discordant nerves. + +She left the window and crossed the room again. The hands of the clock +had made a half-hour's progress in their tedious march. + +A book of poems lay on the table, and she opened it idly, her mental +fever excited by the lighter words of one who had sounded the depths and +sunk beneath. + + "If Midge will pine and curse its hours away, + Because Midge is not everything--for aye, + Poor Midge thus loses its one summer day, + Loses its all--and winneth what, I pray?" + +She threw the book aside and turned away--back to the window where there +was dust and wind--back into the still room where the monotonous tick of +the clock maddened her quivering mood. She walked to and fro in that +silent waiting which is the part of women, and beside which the action +of battle is to be faced with a song of thanksgiving. + +The trembling of her limbs frightened her, and she flung herself upon a +divan. The weakness passed, and she got up again. Another half-hour had +gone. + +All at once there was a ring at the bell. For an instant she felt her +heart contract, and then a delirious dash of blood through her veins to +her temples. Her pulses fluttered like imprisoned birds. + +A footstep crossed the hall, and the door of the drawing-room opened. + +"Mr. Ryder!" + +She wavered for an instant and went forward to meet him with an +hysterical laugh. Her eyes were like emeralds held before a blaze, and +the intense, opaline pallor of her face was warm as if tinged by a +flame. + +He took her outstretched hand hungrily, his face flushing until the +purplish tint rose to his smooth, white forehead. + +"Were you expecting me?" he asked. "I would sell my soul to believe that +you were--with that look in your eyes." + +She shook her head impatiently. + +"I was not," she answered. "I was expecting no one. It is very warm in +here--that is all." + +He looked disappointed. + +"Have you ever expected me?" he questioned, moodily--"or thought of me +when I was not with you?" + +She smiled. "Oh yes!" she returned, lightly. "When I had a note from you +saying that you were coming." + +He set his teeth. + +"You are as cruel as a--a devil, or a woman," he said. + +"What you call cruelty," she answered, gently, "is merely a weapon which +we sometimes thrust too far. When you talk to me in this way, you force +me to use it." And she added, flippantly, "Some day I may thrust it to +your heart." + +"I wish to God you would!" + +But she laughed merrily and led him to impersonal topics, talking +rapidly, with a constant play of her slim, white hands. She allowed him +no time for protestations. It was all bright, frivolous gossip of the +day, with no hint of seriousness. As she talked, there was no sign that +her ears were straining for an expected sound, or her flesh quivering +with impatience. + +At last he rose to go. + +"You are the only woman I know," he remarked, as he looked at her with +his easy and familiar glance, "who is never dull. How do you manage it?" + +"Oh, it is not difficult," she answered. "To laugh is much easier than +to cry." + +"And much more agreeable. I detest a woman who weeps." + +Her brilliant laugh rang out. + +"And so do I," she said. + +When he had gone, and the house door had closed after him, she crossed +to the heavily hanging curtains, pushed them aside, and looked out. + +Only dust and wind and gray streets and the sound of the footsteps of a +passer-by. From out the blue mist a single light burst, then another and +another. She held her head erect, a scornful smile curving her lips. + +Again the bell rang, and again she quivered and started forward, +listening to the steps that crossed the hall. The door opened. + +"Mr. Buisson!" + +She hesitated a moment, and then went forward with the same cordial +gesture of her cold, white hand. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Father Algarcife was working like a man spurred by an invisible lash. At +the breaking of the cold winter dawns he might be seen on his rounds in +the mission districts, which began before the early Mass, to end long +after dusk, when the calls of his richer parishioners had been treated +and dismissed. During the morning celebrations one of the younger +priests often noticed that he appeared faint from exhaustion, and +attributed it to the strain of several hours' work without nourishment. + +One morning, shortly after New Year, John Ellerslie joined him and went +in with him to breakfast. It was then he noticed that Father Algarcife +ate only cold bread with his coffee, while he apologized for the +scantiness of the fare. "It is lack of appetite with me," he explained, +"not injudicious fasting;" and he turned to the maid: "Agnes, will you +see that Father Ellerslie has something more substantial?" But when +cakes and eggs were brought, he pushed them aside, and crumbled, without +eating, his stale roll. + +The younger man remonstrated, his face flushing from embarrassment. + +"I am concerned for your health," he said. "Will you let me speak to Dr. +Salvers?" + +Father Algarcife shook his head. + +"It is nothing," he answered. "But I expect to see Dr. Salvers later in +the day, and I'll mention it to him." + +Later in the day he did see Salvers, and as they were parting he alluded +to the subject of his health. + +"I am under a pledge to tell you," he said, lightly, "that I am +suffering from loss of appetite and prolonged sleeplessness. I don't +especially object to the absence of appetite, but there is something +unpleasant about walking the floor all night. I don't want to become a +chloral fiend. Can't you suggest a new opiate?" + +"Rest," responded Salvers, shortly. "Take a holiday and cut for +Florida." + +"Impossible. Too much work on hand." + +Salvers regarded him intently. + +"The next thing, you'll take to bed," he said, irritably, "and I'll have +all the ladies of your congregation besieging my office door." He added: +"I am going to send you a prescription immediately." + +"All right. Thanks. I stop at Brentano's." + +He entered the book-shop, and came out in a few moments with a package +under his arm. As he stepped to the sidewalk a lady in a rustling gown +descended from her carriage and paused as she was passing him. + +"I was just going in for a copy of your sermons," she said. "I am +distributing quite a number. By the by, have you ever found out who the +_Scientific Weekly_ writer really is?" + +He looked at her gravely. + +"I have a suspicion," he answered, "but suspicions are unjustifiable +things at best." + +He walked home rapidly, unlatched his outer door, and entered his study. +Going to his desk, he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and, +unlocking a drawer, drew out several manuscripts, which he glanced over +with a half-humorous expression. One was the manuscript of the volume of +addresses he had lately published, the other of the articles which had +appeared in the pages of the _Scientific Weekly_. They were both in his +handwriting, but one showed the impassioned strokes of a younger pen, +and belonged to the time when he had written under the veil of +anonymity, that it might not interfere with the plan of his great work. +Now the great work lay at the bottom of the last drawer, with its +half-finished sheets yellowed and sown with dust, while the lighter +articles had risen after a silence of ten years to assault his unstable +present with the convictions of his past. + +He crossed to the fireplace and laid both manuscripts upon the coals. +They caught, and the leaves curled upward like tongues of flame, +illuminating the faded text with scrolls of fire. Then they smouldered +to gray spectres and floated in slender spirals up the yawning chimney. + +The next day a storm set in, and pearl-gray clouds swollen with snow +drove from the northwest. The snow fell thickly through the day, as it +had fallen through the night, blown before the wind in fluttering +curtains of white, and coating the gray sidewalks, to drift in fleecy +mounds into the gutters. + +In the evening, when he came in to dinner, he received an urgent message +from Mrs. Ryder, which had been sent in the morning and which he had +missed by being absent from luncheon. Her child had died suddenly during +the night from an attack of croup. + +Without removing his coat, he turned and started to her at once, his +heart torn by the thought of her suffering. + +As he ascended the steps the door was opened by Ryder, who came out and +grasped his hand, speaking hurriedly, with a slight huskiness in his +voice. + +"She has been expecting you," he said, leading him into the hall. "Come +up to her immediately. I can do nothing with her. My God! I would have +given my right hand to have spared her this." The sincerity in his voice +rang true, and there were circles of red about his eyes. + +They went up-stairs, and Ryder opened the door of the nursery, and, +motioning him inside, closed it softly after him. The room was faintly +lighted, the chill curtain of falling snow veiling the windows. On the +little bed, where he had seen it sleeping several months ago, the child +was lying, its flaxen curls massed upon the embroidered pillow; but the +flush of health on the little face had given place to a waxen pallor, +and the tiny hands that had tossed restlessly in sleep were still +beneath white rose-buds. A faint odor of medicine clung about the room, +but the disorder of dying had been succeeded by the order of death. + +Mrs. Ryder, sitting near the window, her profile dark against the storm, +turned her heavy eyes upon him, and then, rising, came towards him. He +caught her extended hands and held them firmly in his own. At that +instant the past seemed predominant over the present--and the grief more +his own than another's. + +"You have come at last," she said. "Help me. You must help me. I cannot +live unless you do. Give me some comfort--anything!" + +His face was almost as haggard as her own. + +"What would comfort you?" he asked. + +She turned from him towards the little bed, and, falling on her knees +beside it, burst into passionate weeping. + +"It was all I had!" she cried. "All I had! O God! How cruel!" + +He laid his hand upon her shoulder, not to stay her tears, but to +suggest sympathy. Beyond her the sweet, grave face of the dead child lay +wreathed in rose-buds. + +At his touch she rose and faced him. + +"Tell me that I shall see him again!" she cried. "Tell me that he is not +dead--that he is somewhere--somewhere! Tell me that God is just!" + +His lips were blue, and he put up his hand imploring mercy; then he +opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. + +She clung to him, sobbing. + +"Pray to God for me," she said. + +He staggered for a moment beneath her touch. Then he knelt with her +beside the little bed and prayed. + +When he walked home through the storm an hour later he reeled like a +drunken man, and, despite the cold, his flesh was on fire. + +As he entered his door the wind drove a drift of snow into the hall, and +the water dripping from his coat made shining pools on the carpet. + +He went into his study and slammed the door behind him. The little dog +sleeping on the rug came to welcome him, and he patted it mechanically +with a nerveless hand. His face was strained and set, and his breath +came pantingly. In a sudden revolution the passion which he believed +buried forever had risen, reincarnated, to overwhelm him. He lived +again, more vitally because of the dead years, the death of a child who +was his and the grief of a woman who was his also. He, who had believed +himself arbiter of his fate, had awakened to find himself the slave of +passion--a passion mighty in its decay, but all victorious in its +resurrection. He shivered and looked about him. The room, the fire, the +atmosphere seemed thrilled with an emotional essence. He felt it in his +blood, and it warmed the falling snow beyond the window. Before the +consuming flame the apathy of years was lost in smoke. A memory floated +before him. He was sitting again in that silent room, driving the heavy +pen, listening to the breathing of his dying child, watching the still +droop of Mariana's profile, framed by dusk. He felt her sobbing upon his +breast, her hands clinging in pain when he lifted her from beside her +dead--and his. He heard again her cry: "Tell me that I shall see her! +Tell me that God is just!" The eternal cry of stricken motherhood. + +Whatever the present or the future held, these things were locked within +the past. He might live them over or live them down, but unlive them he +could not. They had been and they would be forever. + + * * * * * + +The door opened and the servant came in. + +"If you please, father, there is a lady to see you." + +He looked up, startled. + +"A lady? On such a night?" + +"She came in a carriage, but she is very wet. Will you see her at once?" + +"Yes, at once." + +He turned to the door. It opened and closed, and Mariana came towards +him. + +She came like a ghost, pale and still as he had seen her in his memory, +with a veil of snow clinging to her coat and to the feathers in her hat. +Her eyes alone were aflame. + +He drew back and looked at her. + +"You?" he said. + +She was silent, holding out her gloved hand with an impulsive gesture. +He did not take it. He had made a sudden clutch at self-control, and he +clung to it desperately. + +"Can I do anything for you?" he asked, and his voice rang hollow and +without inflection. + +She still held out her hand. Flecks of snow lay on her loosened hair, +and the snow was hardly whiter than her face. + +"You must speak to me," she said. "You promised to come, and I +waited--and waited." + +"I was busy," he returned, in the same voice. + +"We cannot be as strangers," she went on, passionately. "We must be +friends. Can you or I undo the past? Can you or I undo our love--or our +child?" + +"Hush!" he said, harshly. + +"I came only to hear that you forgive me," she continued, a brave smile +softening the intensity of her face. "Tell me that and I will go away." + +He was silent for a moment; then he spoke. + +"I forgive you." + +She took a step towards the door and came back. + +"And is that all?" + +"That is all." Beneath the brutal pressure of his teeth a drop of blood +rose to his lips. There was a wave of scarlet before his eyes, and he +clinched his hands to keep them at his sides. A terrible force was +drawing him to her, impelling him to fall upon her as she stood +defenceless--to bear her away out of reach. + +She looked at him, and a light flamed in her face. + +"It is not all," she retorted, triumphantly. "You have not forgotten +me." + +He looked at her dully. + +"I had--until to-night." + +Tears rose to her eyes and fell upon her hands, while the snow on her +hair melted and rained down until she seemed to weep from head to foot. + +"I was never good enough," she said, brokenly. "I have always done +wrong, even when I most wanted to be good." Then she raised her head +proudly. "But I loved you," she added. "I never loved any one but you. +Will you believe it?" + +He shook his head, smiling bitterly. As he stood there in his priestly +dress he looked like one in a mighty struggle between the calls of the +flesh and of the spirit. The last wavering fires of anger flamed within +him, and he took a step towards her. + +"Do you think," he asked, slowly, forcing his words, "that I would have +left you while there remained a crust to live on? Do you think that I +would not have starved with you rather than have lived in luxury without +you? Bah! It is all over!" + +"I was too young," she answered--"too young. I did not know. I have +learned since then." + +His outburst had exhausted his bitterness, and a passionate tenderness +was in his eyes. + +"I would to God that you had been spared the knowledge," he said. + +She shook her head. + +"No," she responded. "Not that--not that." + +She swayed, and he caught her in his arms. For an instant he held +her--not in passion, but with a gentleness that was almost cold. Then he +released her, and she moved away. + +"Good-bye." + +"Good-bye." + +He followed her into the hall and opened the door. An icy draught blew +past him. + +"Wait a moment," he said. He took an umbrella from the rack, and, +raising it, held it over her until she entered the carriage. + +"I hope you will not take cold," he said, as he closed the door. + +Then he went back into his study and walked the floor until dawn. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +One afternoon during the third week in January, Father Algarcife went to +the studio of Claude Nevins, and found the artist smoking a moody pipe +over a brandy-and-soda. His brush and palette lay upon the floor. + +"How are you?" inquired Father Algarcife, with attempted lightness; "and +what are you doing?" + +Nevins looked up gloomily, blowing a wreath of gray smoke towards the +skylight. + +"Enjoying life," he responded. + +The other laughed. + +"It doesn't look exactly like enjoyment," he returned. "From a casual +view, I should call it a condition of boredom." + +He had aged ten years in the last fortnight, and his eyes had the +shifting look of a man who flees an inward fear. + +Nevins regarded him unsmilingly. + +"Oh, I like it," he answered, lifting his glass. "Come and join me. I +tell you I'd rather be drunk to-day than be President to-morrow." + +"What's the matter?" + +"Oh, nothing. I haven't done a damned stroke for a week; that's all. I +am tired of painting people's portraits." + +"Nonsense. Ten years ago you went on a spree because there were no +portraits to paint." + +"Yes," Nevins admitted, "history repeats itself--with variations. The +truth is, Anthony, I can't work." + +"Can't? Well, what are you going to do about it?" + +"I am going to drink about it." + +He drained his glass, laid his pipe aside, and rose, running his hand +through his hair until it stood on end. + +"Don't be an idiot. You gave all that up long ago." + +Nevins filled his glass and looked up at the skylight. + + "'Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before + I swore--but was I sober when I swore?'" + +he retorted, with a laugh. Then he lowered his voice. "Between you and +me," he said, "drinking is not what it is cracked up to be. To save my +life, I can't detect a whiff of that old delicious savor of vice. I +detect a twinge of gout instead. Coming conditions cast their claws +before." + +Father Algarcife glanced about the room impatiently. + +"Come," he said, "I am hurried. Let's see the portrait." + +Nevins tossed a silk scarf from a canvas in the corner, and the other +regarded the work for a moment in silence. + +"Yes, I like it," he said. "I like it very much indeed." + +As he turned away, he stumbled against the easel containing the canvas +on which Nevins had been working, and he started and drew back, his face +paling. It was the portrait of Mariana, her profile drawn against the +purple curtain. + +Nevins, following him with his eyes, spoke suddenly. + +"That also is good, is it not?" he asked. + +Father Algarcife stared above the portrait to the row of death-masks on +their ebony frame. + +"Yes, that also is good," he repeated. + +As he descended the stairs he met Ardly coming up, his eyes bright and +his handsome face aglow. + +They stopped and shook hands. + +"Politics agree with you, I see," said Father Algarcife. "I am glad of +it." + +Ardly nodded animatedly. + +"Yes, yes," he returned, "there is nothing like it, and we are going to +give you the best government the city has ever seen. There is no doubt +of that." + +"All right," and he passed on. When he reached the street he turned +westward. It was the brilliant hour of a changeable afternoon, the +sunshine slanting across the sidewalks in sharp lights and shadows, and +the river wind entering the lungs like the incision of a blade. The +people he met wore their collars close about their throats, their faces +blue from the cold. + +Then, even as he watched the crisp sunshine, a cloud crossed the sky, +its shade descending like a gray blotter upon the shivering city. + +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. + +He was gazing at her with burning eyes. His hands were clinched at his +sides, and the veins on his temples swelled like blue cords. + +Then his look met hers and held it, and the desire in their eyes leaped +out and closed together, drawing them slowly to each other. + +Still they were silent, he standing straight and white in the centre of +the room, she shrinking back against the mantel. + +Suddenly he reached out. + +"Mariana!" + +"Anthony!" + +She was sobbing upon his breast, his arms about her, her face hidden. +The heavy sobs shook her frame like the lashing of a storm, and she +braced herself against him to withstand the terrible weeping. + +Presently she grew quiet, and he released her. Her face was suffused +with a joy that shone through her tears. + +"You love me?" she asked. + +"I love you." + +She smiled. + +"I will stay near you," she said. "I will not go South." + +For a moment he was silent, and when he spoke his voice rang with +determination. + +"You will go South," he said, "and I will go with you." + +Her eyes shone. + +"South? And you with me?" + +He smiled into her upturned face. + +"Do you think it could be otherwise?" he asked. "Do you think we could +be near--and not together?" + +"I--I had not thought," she answered. + +He held her hands, looking passionately at her fragile fingers. + +"You are mine," he said--"mine as you have been no other man's. Nature +has joined us together. Who can put us asunder?" Then he held her from +him in sudden fear. "But--but can you face poverty again?" he asked. + +"What will matter," she replied, "so long as we are together?" + +"You will leave all this," he went on. "We will start afresh. We will +have a farm in the South. It will be bare and comfortless." + +She smiled. + +"There will be peach-trees," she said, "all pink in the spring-time, and +there will be the sound of cow-bells across green pastures." + +"I will turn farmer," he added. "I will wring a living from the soil." + +She lifted her glowing eyes. + +"And we will begin over again," she said--"begin from the beginning. Oh, +my love, kiss me!" + +He stooped and kissed her. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +When Anthony descended Mariana's brown-stone steps the afterglow had +faded from the west, and far down the street the electric lights shone +coldly through frosted globes. He walked with a springing step, lifting +his head as if impatient of restraint. His future was firm. There was no +hesitancy, no possibility of retrenchment. In one breath he had pledged +himself to break the bonds that held him, and this vow there was no +undoing. He had sealed it with his passion for a woman. Already his mind +was straining towards the freedom which he faced. The years of +insincerity would fall away, and the lies which he had uttered would +shrivel before one fearless blaze of truth. Fate had settled it. He was +free, and deception was at an end. He was free! + +In the effort to collect his thoughts before going to dinner he crossed +to Broadway, walking several blocks amid the Saturday-evening crowd. He +regarded the passing faces idly, as he had regarded them for twenty +years. They were the same types, the invincible survivals from a wreck +of individuals. He saw the dapper young fellow with the bloodless face, +pale with the striving to ascend a rung in the social ladder; he saw the +heavy features of the common laborer, the keen, quick glance of the +mechanic, and the paint upon the haggard cheeks of the actress who was +out of an engagement. They passed him rapidly, pallid, nervous, strung +to the point of a breaking note, supine to placid pleasures, and alert +to the eternal struggle of the race. When he had walked several blocks +he turned and went back. The noise irritated him. He winced at the +shrill voices and the insistent clanging of cable-car bells. He wanted +to be alone--to think. + +In the quiet of the side-street his thoughts assumed more definite +shape. The mad thrill of impulse gave place to a rational joy. He +possessed her, this was sufficient. She was his to be held forever, come +what would. His in wealth and in poverty, in sickness and in health. His +for better or for worse--eternally his. + +He set his teeth sharply at the memory of her tear-wet face. He felt the +trembling of her limbs, the burning pressure of her lips. Broken and +worn and robbed of youth--was she not trebly to be desired? Was his the +frail passion that exacts perfection? He had not loved beauty or youth; +he had loved that impalpable something which resists all ravages of +decay--which rises triumphant from death. + +Yes, trebly to be desired! He remembered her as he had first seen her, +lifting her head from her outstretched arms, her eyes scintillant with +tears. He recalled the tremulous voice, the plaintive droop of the head. +Then the night when he had held her in the shadow of the fire-escape, +her loosened hair falling about him, her hands hot in his own. She had +said: "I am yours--yours utterly," and the pledge had held. She was his, +first and last. What if another man had embraced her body, from the +beginning unto the end her heart was locked in his. + +All the trivial details of their old life thronged back to him; struggle +and poverty, birth and death, and the emptiness of the ensuing years +yawned, chasm-like, before his feet. He was like a man suddenly recalled +from the dead--a skeleton reclothed in flesh and reattuned to the +changes of sensations. Yes, after eight years he was alive once more. + +He entered the rectory, and in a few moments went in to dinner. To his +surprise he found that he was hungry, and ate heartily. All instincts, +even that for food, had quickened with the rebirth of emotion. + +He drank his claret slowly, seeing Mariana seated across from him, and +the vision showed her pale and still, as she had come to him the night +of the storm, the snow powdering her hair. Then he banished the memory +and invoked her image as he had seen her in the afternoon, wan and +hollow-eyed, but faintly coloring and tremulous with passion. She would +sit opposite him again, but not here. + +He had a farm in the South, a valueless piece of land left him by a +relative of his mother. It was there that they would go to begin life +anew and to mend the faith that had been broken. He would till the land +and drive the plough and take up the common round of life again--a life +free from action as from failure, into which no changes might ring +despair. + +He left the table and went into his study, seating himself before the +fire. The little dog, with that subtle perception of mental states +possessed by animals, pressed his cold nose into the palm of his +master's hand, whimpering softly, a wistful look in his warm, brown +eyes. Then he lay down, and, resting his head upon his paws, stared into +the fire--seeing in the flames his silent visions. + +Anthony leaned back upon the cushions, and the face of Mariana looked at +him from the vacant chair on the hearth-rug. The reddish shadows from +the fire flitted across her features and across the slim, white hand +that was half outstretched. He saw the slippered feet upon the rug and a +filmy garment in her lap, as the work had fallen from her idle hands. + +The maid came in with his coffee and he lighted his pipe. In a moment +the bell rang and Ellerslie entered, his face flushed, his hands hanging +nervously before him. He sat down in the chair, still warm from the +vision of Mariana, and Father Algarcife looked at him with a sudden +contraction of remorse. For the first time he winced before the glance +of another--of a girlish-looking boy with a tremulous voice and an +honest heart. He was looking into the fire when Ellerslie spoke. + +"I want you to meet my mother," he said. "You know she is coming to town +next week. She is very anxious to know you; I have written so often +about you." + +The other looked up. + +"Next week--ah, yes," he responded. He was thinking that by that time he +would have passed beyond the praise or blame of Ellerslie and his +mother--he would be with Mariana. + +The younger man went on, still flushing. + +"She often sends you messages which I don't deliver. She has never +forgotten that illness you nursed me through five years ago." + +Father Algarcife shook his head slightly, his eyes on the flames that +played among the coals. + +"She must not exaggerate that," he answered. + +Ellerslie opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. His shyness +had overcome him. + +For a time they were silent, and then Father Algarcife looked up. + +"John," he said. + +"Yes?" + +"If--if things should ever occur to--to shake your faith in me, you will +always remember that I tried to do my best by the parish--that I tried +to serve it as faithfully as Father Speares would have done?" + +Ellerslie started. + +"Of course," he answered--"of course. But why do you say this? Could +anything shake my faith in you? I would take your word against--against +the bishop's." + +Father Algarcife smiled. + +"And against myself?" he asked, but added, "I am grateful, John." + +When Ellerslie had gone, a man from the Bowery came in to recount a +story of suffering. He had just served a year in jail, and did not want +to go back. He preferred to live straight. But it took money to do that. +His wife, who made shirts, and belonged to Father Algarcife's mission, +had sent him to the priest. As he told his story he squirmed uneasily on +the edge of Mariana's chair, twirling his shapeless hat in the hands +hanging between his knees. The dog crouched against his master's feet, +growling suspiciously. + +Father Algarcife rested his head against the cushioned back, and +regarded the man absently. He believed the man's tale, and he +sympathized with his philosophy. It was preferable to live straight, but +it took money to do so. Indeed, the wisest of preachers had once +remarked that "money answereth all things." He wondered how nearly the +preacher spoke the truth, and if he would have recognized a +demonstration of his text in the man before him with the shapeless hat. + +Then he asked his caller a few questions, promised to look into his case +on Monday, and dismissed him. + +Next came Sister Agatha, to bring to his notice the name of a child on +East Twentieth Street, whom they wished to receive into the orphanage. +He promised to consider this also, and she rose to go, her grave lashes +falling reverently before his glance. After she had gone he pushed his +chair impatiently aside and went to his desk. + +On the lid lay the completed sermon, and he realized suddenly that it +must be delivered to-morrow--that he must play his part for a while +longer. At the same instant he determined that on Monday he would deed +over his property to the church. He would face his future with clean +hands. He would start again as penniless as when he received the +vestments of religion. Save for the farm in the South and a small sum +of rental, he would have nothing. He would be free! + +There was no hesitancy, and yet, mixed with the elation, there was pain. +Beyond Mariana's eyes, beyond the desire for honest speech, he saw the +girlish face of young Ellerslie, and the grave, reverential droop of +Sister Agatha's lashes. He saw, following him through all his +after-years, the reproach of the people who had believed in him and been +betrayed. He saw it, and he accepted it in silence. + +Raising his head, he encountered the eyes of the ancestor of Father +Speares. For an instant he shivered from a sudden chill, and then met +them fearlessly. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Through the long night Mariana lay with her hands clasped upon her +breast and her eyes upon the ceiling. The electric light, sifting +through the filmy curtains at the windows, cast spectral shadows over +the pale-green surface. Sometimes the shadows, tracing the designs on +the curtains, wreathed themselves into outlines of large poplar leaves +and draped the chandeliers, and again they melted to indistinguishable +dusk, leaving a vivid band of light around the cornice. + +She did not stir, but she slept little. + +In the morning, when Miss Ramsey came to her bedside, there was a flush +in her face and she appeared stronger than she had done since her +illness. + +"Is it clear?" she asked, excitedly. "If it is clear, I must go out. I +feel as if I were caged." + +Miss Ramsey raised the shades, revealing the murky aspect of a variable +day. + +"It is not quite clear," she answered. "I don't think you had better +venture out. There is a damp wind." + +"Very well," responded Mariana. She rose and dressed herself hurriedly; +then she sat down with Miss Ramsey to breakfast, but she had little +appetite, and soon left the table, to wander about the house with a +nervous step. + +"I can't settle myself," she said, a little pettishly. + +Going up-stairs to her room presently, she threw herself into a chair +before the fire, and looked into the long mirror hanging on the opposite +wall. + +She was possessed with a pulsating memory of the evening before--of +Anthony, and of the kiss he had left upon her lips. Then swift darts of +fear shot through her that it might all be unreal--that, upon leaving +her, he had yielded once more to the sway of his judgment. She did not +want judgment, she wanted love. + +As she looked at her image in the long mirror, meeting her haggard face +and dilated eyes, she grew white with the foreboding of failure. What +was there left in her that a man might love? What was she--the wreck of +a woman's form--that she could immortalize a man's fugitive desire? Was +it love, after all? Was it not pity, passing itself for passion? Her +cheeks flamed and her pulses beat feverishly. + +She turned from the glass and looked at her walking-gown lying upon the +bed. + +"I can't wait," she said, breathlessly. "I must see him. He must tell me +with his own lips that it is true." + +She dressed herself with quivering fingers, stumbling over the buttons +of her coat. Then she put on her hat and tied a dark veil over her face. + +As she came down-stairs she met Miss Ramsey in the hall. + +"Mariana, you are not going out!" she exclaimed. + +"Only a little way," said Mariana. + +"But it has clouded. It may rain." + +"Not before I return. Good-bye." + +She opened the hall door. Pausing for an instant upon the threshold, a +soft, damp air struck her, and overhead a ray of sunshine pierced the +clouds. + +She fastened the furs at her throat and descended to the street. + +At first she had no definite end in view, but when she had walked a +block the idea of seeing Anthony grew stronger, and she turned in the +direction of his house. The contact of the moist air invigorated her, +and she felt less weak than she had believed herself to be. When she +reached the rectory she hesitated a moment with her hand upon the bell, +trembling before the thought of seeing him--of hearing him speak. She +rang, and the door was opened. + +"Can I see Father Algarcife?" she asked. + +Agnes eyed her curiously. + +"Why, he's at church!" she responded. "He's been gone about a half-hour +or so. Is it important?" + +"No, no," answered Mariana, her voice recovering. "Don't say I called, +please. I'll come again." + +"Perhaps you'll step in and rest a bit. You look tired. You can sit in +the study if you like." + +"Oh no, I will go on. I will go to the church." She started, and then +turned back. "I believe I will come in for a few minutes," she said. + +She entered the house and passed through the open door into the study. A +bright fire was burning, and the dog was lying before it. She seated +herself in the easy-chair, resting her head against the cushions. Agnes +stood on the rug and looked at her. + +"You are the lady that came once in that terrible storm," she said. + +"Yes, I am the one." + +"Would you like a glass of water--or wine?" + +Mariana looked up, in the hope of dismissing her. + +"I should like some water, please," she said, and as Agnes went into the +dining-room she looked about the luxurious study with passionate eyes. + +It was so different from the one at The Gotham, that comfortless square +of uncarpeted floor, with the pine book-shelves and the skull and +cross-bones above the mantel. + +The desk, with its hand-carving of old mahogany, recalled to her the one +that he had used when she had first known him, with its green baize +cover splotched with ink. + +The swing of the rich curtains, the warmth of the Turkish rugs, the +portraits in their massive frames, jarred her vibrant emotions. How +could he pass from this to the farm in the South--to the old, old fight +with poverty and the drama of self-denial? Would she not fail him again, +as she had failed him once before? Would she not shatter his happiness +in a second chance, as she had shattered it in the first? + +The tears sprang to her eyes and scorched her lids. She rose hastily +from her chair. + +When the servant returned with the glass of water she drank a few +swallows. "Thank you," she said, gently. "I will go now. Perhaps I will +come again to-morrow." + +She passed to the sidewalk and turned in the direction of the church, +walking rapidly. She had not thought of his being at church. Indeed, +until entering his study she had forgotten the office he held. She had +remembered only that he loved her. + +As she neared the building an impulse seized her to turn and go back--to +wait for him at the rectory. The sound of the intoning of the gospel +came to her like a lament. She felt suddenly afraid. + +Then several persons brushed her in passing, and she entered the heavy +doors, which closed behind her with a dull thud. + +After the grayness of the day without, the warmth and color of the +interior were as vivid as a revelation. They enveloped her like the +perfumed air of a hot-house, heavy with the breath of rare +exotics--exotics that had flowered amid the ardent glooms of mediaevalism +and the colorific visions of cloistered emotions. Entering a pew in the +side-aisle, she leaned her head against a stone pillar and closed her +eyes in sudden restfulness. That emotional, religious instinct which had +always been a part of her artistic temperament was quickened in +intensity. She felt a desire to worship--something--anything. + +When she raised her lids the colors seemed to have settled into +harmonious half-tones. The altar, which had at first showed blurred +before her eyes, dawned through the rising clouds of incense. She saw +the white of the altar-cloth, and the flaming candles, shivering from a +slight draught, and above the crucifix the Christ in his purple robes, +smiling his changeless smile. + +Within the chancel, through the carving of the rood-screen, she saw the +flutter of the white gowns of the choristers, and here and there the +fair locks of a child. + +Then the priest came to the middle of the altar, his figure softened by +circles of incense, the sanctuary lamp burning above his head. + +He sang the opening phrase of the Creed, and the choir joined in with a +full, reverberating roll of male voices, while the heads of the people +bowed. + +Mariana did not leave her seat, but sat motionless, leaning against the +pillar of stone. + +From the first moment that she had seen him, wearing the honors of the +creed he served, her heart had contracted with a throb of pain. This was +his life, and what was hers? What had she that could recompense him for +the sacrifice of the Eucharistic robes and the pride of the Cross? + +He came slowly forward to the altar steps, his vestments defined against +the carving of the screen, his face white beneath the darkness of his +hair. + +When the notices of the festivals and fasts were over, he lifted his +head almost impatiently as he pronounced the text, his rich voice +rolling sonorously through the church: + + "For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of + his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? For who can tell a man + what shall be after him under the sun?" + +And he spoke slowly, telling the people before him in new phrases the +eternal truth--that it is good for a man to do right, and to leave +happiness to take care of itself--the one great creed to which all +religions and all nations have bowed. He spoke the rich phrases in his +full, beautiful voice--spoke as he had spoken a hundred times to these +same people--to all, save one. + +She stirred slightly. It seemed to her that a wind blew from the altar +where the candles fluttered, chilling her flesh. She shivered beneath +the still smile of the painted Christ. + +The stone pillar pressed into her temple, and she closed her eyes. Her +head ached in dull, startled throbs. + +As she listened, she knew that the final blow had fallen--that it is not +given one to begin over again for a single day; that of all things under +the sun, the past is the one thing irremediable. + +The sermon was soon over. He returned to the altar, and the offertory +anthem filled the church. Pressed against the pillar, she raised her +hand to her ear, but the repetition was driven in dull strokes to her +brain: + + "Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers + not, nor sleeps." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Several hours later Mariana was wandering along a cross-street near +Ninth Avenue. Rain was falling, descending in level sheets from the gray +sky to the stone pavement, where it lay in still pools. A fog had rolled +up over the city. She had walked unthinkingly, spurred at first by the +impulse to collect her thoughts and later by the thoughts themselves. It +was all over; this was what she saw clearly--the finality of all things. +What was she that she should think herself strong enough to contend with +a man's creed?--faith?--God? She might arouse his passion and fire his +blood, but when the passion and the fire burned out, what remained? In +the eight years since she had left him a new growth had sprung up in his +heart--a growth stronger than the growth of love. + +The memory of him defined against the carving of the screen, the altar +shining beyond, his vestments gilded by the light, his white face lifted +to the cross, arose from the ground at her feet and confronted her +through the falling rain. Yes, he had gone back to his God. And it +seemed to her that she saw the same smile upon his face that she had +seen upon the face of the painted Christ, whose purple robes tinted the +daylight as it fell upon the chancel. + +As she reached Ninth Avenue, an elevated train passed with its +reverberating rumble, and the reflection of its lights ran in a lurid +flame along the wet sidewalk. Clouds of smoke from the engine were blown +westward, scudding like a flock of startled swans into the river. +Straight ahead the street was lost in grayness and the lamps came slowly +out of the fog. A wagon-load of calves was driven past her on the way to +slaughter, and the piteous bleating was borne backward on the wind. +Suddenly her knees trembled, and she leaned against a railing. + +A man passed and spoke to her, and she turned to retrace her steps. From +the wet sidewalk the standing water oozed up through her thin soles and +soaked her feet. A pain struck her in the side--sharp and cold, like the +blow of a knife. In sudden terror she started and looked about her. + +A cab was passing; she hailed it, but it was engaged, and drove on. + +She leaned against the railing of a house, and, looking up, saw the +cheerful lights in the windows. The idea of warmth invigorated her, and +she moved on to the next, then to the next. At each step her knees +trembled and she hesitated, fearing to fall and lie dead upon the cold +sidewalk. The horror of death gave her strength. Beyond the desires of +warmth and light and rest, she was unconscious of all sensation. + +Then the pain in her side seized her again, and the shrinking of her +limbs caused her to pause for a longer space. The monotonous cross-town +blocks sloped upward in a black incline before her, seeming to rise +perpendicularly from before her feet to a height in the foggy +perspective. She clung to the railing and moaned softly. A woman, +passing with a bundle on her arm, stared at her, hesitated an instant, +and went on. + +At Broadway the lights of the moving cars interchanged like the colors +of a kaleidoscope, swimming amid the falling rain before her eyes. + +At Sixth Avenue she steadied herself with sudden resolve, beginning that +last long block with a kind of delirious joy. To stimulate her faltering +feet she glanced back over the terrible distance that she had come, and +she found that the black incline of blocks now sloped in the opposite +direction. She seemed to have descended a hillside of slate. Good God! +How had she lived? Her own door came at last, and she crawled up the +slippery steps, steadying herself against the stone balustrade. The door +was unlatched. She opened it and went inside. At the first suffusion of +warmth and rest her waning thoughts flickered into life. + +Then she raised her eyes and uttered a shriek of joy. + +"Anthony!" + +He was standing on the threshold of the drawing-room, and, as she cried +out, he caught her in his arms. + +"My beloved, what is it? What does it mean?" + +But as he held her he felt the wet of her clothing, and he lifted her +and carried her to the fire. + +"Mariana, what does it mean?" + +He was kneeling beside her, unfastening her shoes with nervous fingers. +She opened her eyes and looked at him. + +"I went out in the rain," she said. "I don't know why; I have forgotten. +I believe I thought it was all a mistake. The blocks were very long." +Then she clung to him, sobbing. + +"Don't let me die!" she cried--"don't let me die!" + +He raised her in his arms, and, crossing to the bell, rang it hastily. +Then he went into the hall and up-stairs. On the landing he met the +maid. + +"Where is Mrs. Gore's room?" he asked, and, entering, laid her upon the +hearth-rug. "She is ill," he went on. "She must be got to bed and +warmed. Put mustard-plasters to her chest and rub her feet. I will get +the doctor." + +He left the room, and Miss Ramsey came in, her eyes red and her small +hands trembling. + +They took off her wet things, while she lay faint and still, a tinge of +blueness rising to her face and to her fallen eyelids. + +Suddenly she spoke. + +"Give me the medicine on the mantel," she said--"quick!" + +It was tincture of digitalis. Miss Ramsey measured out the drops and +gave them to her. After she had swallowed them the color in her face +became more natural and her breathing less labored. Miss Ramsey was +applying a mustard-plaster to her chest, while the maid rubbed her cold, +white feet, which lay like plaster casts in the large, red hands. + +Mariana looked at them wistfully. "I have done foolish things all my +life," she said, "and this is the most foolish of all." + +"What, dear?" asked Miss Ramsey, but she did not answer. + +When Anthony came in, followed by the doctor, she was lying propped up +among the pillows, with soft white blankets heaped over her. Her eyes +were closed and she was breathing quietly. + +Salvers took her hand and bent his ear to her chest. + +"She must be stimulated," he said. "You say she has already taken +digitalis--yes?" + +He took Miss Ramsey's seat, still holding Mariana's hand, and turning +now and then to give directions in his smooth, well-modulated voice. +Anthony was standing at the foot of the bed, his eyes upon the blankets. + +A light fall of rain beat rhythmically against the window-panes. The +fire crackled in the grate and sent up a sudden, luminous flame, +transfiguring the furniture in the room and the faces gathered in the +shadow about the bed. Mariana stirred slightly. Presently Salvers rose +and drew Miss Ramsey aside. + +"It is very serious," he said. "The danger is heart failure. In another +case I should say that it was hopeless--but her constitution is +wonderful. She may pull through." Then he asked a few questions +concerning the cause of the relapse, and turned to go. "Keep her +stimulated, as I have said," he continued; "that is all that can be +done. I would stay until morning, but several of my patients are at +critical points. As soon as I have seen them I will come back." He +started, paused to repeat several directions, and left the room softly, +the sound of his footsteps lost in the heavy carpets. + +Anthony took the chair beside the bed and laid his hand on the coverlet. +He thought Mariana asleep. She was lying motionless, her heavy hair +tangled in the lace on the pillow, her lashes resting like a black +shadow upon her cheeks, her lips half parted. + +He remembered that she had looked like this after the birth of Isolde, +when he sat beside the bed and the child lay within the crook of her +arm. + +A groan rose to his lips, but he choked it back. The hand upon the +coverlet was clinched, and the nails, pressed into the livid palm, had +become purple. Still he sat motionless, his head bent, his muscles +quivering like those of one palsied. + +The flame of the fire shot up again, illuminating Mariana's face, and +then died slowly down. The rain beat softly against the window. + +Miss Ramsey went noiselessly into an adjoining room and came back, a +glass in her hand. From across the hall a clock struck. + +Suddenly Mariana opened her eyes, moaning in short sobs. A blue wave was +rising over her face, deepening into tones of violet beneath the shadows +of her eyes. They measured the medicine and gave it to her and she lay +quiet again. He put his arm across her. + +"Anthony!" she said. + +He bent his ear. + +"My beloved?" + +"Hold me, the bed is going down. My head is so low." + +He caught her passionately, his kisses falling distractedly upon her +eyes, her lips, the lace upon her breast, and her cold hands. + +"And you do love me?" + +"Love you?" he answered, fiercely. "Have I ever loved anything else? O +my love! My love!" + +His tears stung her face like fire. + +"Don't," she said, gently; and then, "It would have been very nice, the +little farm in the South, and the peaches, and the cows in the pastures, +but," she smiled, "I am not very thrifty--the peaches would have rotted +where they fell, and the cows would never have been milked." + +"Mariana!" + +She lay in his arms, and they were both silent. + +The clock struck again. In the street a passer-by was whistling "Oh, +Nellie's blue eyes." + +She spoke drowsily: "Speak softly. You will wake the baby." + + * * * * * + +In the glimmer of dawn Salvers entered. A sombre mist penetrated the +curtains at the windows, and in the grate a heap of embers reddened and +waned and reddened and waned again. A light dust had settled over the +room, over the mantel, the furniture, and the blankets on the bed--a +fine gray powder, pale like the ashes of yesterday's flame. + +He crossed to the bed and took Mariana from Anthony's arms. Her head +fell back and the violet shadows in her face had frozen into marble. She +was smiling faintly. + +"My God!" said Salvers, in a whisper. "She has been dead--for hours." + +He laid her down and turned to the man beside him, looking at him for a +moment without speaking. Then he laid his hand upon his arm and spoke to +him as if to a child. "You must go home," he said, emphasizing the +syllables. "It is over. You can do no good. You must go home." + +The other shook his head. His eyes were blank, like those of a man in +whom the springs of thought have been suddenly paralyzed. + +"You must go home," repeated Salvers, his hand still upon his arm. "I +will be with you in an hour. You must go." + +Beneath his touch Anthony moved slowly into the hall, descending the +stairs mechanically. Salvers gave him his hat and opened the outer door. +Going to the sidewalk, he motioned to his coachman. + +"Take Father Algarcife home," he said. + +He slammed the door and looked after the carriage as it rolled down the +block and rounded the corner. Then he turned and re-entered the house. + + * * * * * + +When Father Algarcife reached the rectory, he went into his study, +locking the door after him. Then he seated himself at his desk and +rested his head in his hands. His mind had cleared from the fog, but he +did not think. He remained staring blankly before him. + +The room was cold and damp, the fire had not been kindled, and the +burned-out coals lay livid upon the hearth. The easy-chair was drawn +before the fender where he had sat yesterday, and the lamp which he had +not lighted the evening before stood on the little marble-top table. An +open book, his pipe, and an untasted cup of coffee were beside it. + +On the desk his yesterday's sermon lay unrolled, the text facing him in +bold black and white: + + "For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?" + +The dull, neutral tones of advancing dawn flooded the room. There was a +suggestion of expectancy about it, as of a world uncreate, waiting for +light and birth. + +He raised his eyes, not his head, and stared over the desk at the wall +beyond. From above the mantel the portrait of Father Speares's ancestor +glared at him from its massive frame, wearing the fierce and faded +aspect of a past century. Near the window stood the sofa, with the worn +spot on the leather arm where the head of the dead man had rested. It +was all chill and leaden and devoid of color. + +Presently he moved, and, opening a drawer of the desk, drew out a small +dark phial and placed it upon the unfolded leaves of the sermon. Through +the blue glass the transparent liquid gleamed like silver. His movements +were automatic. There was no haste, no precipitation, no hint of +indecision. He looked at the clock upon the mantel, watching the gradual +passage of the hands. When the minute-hand reached the hour he would +have done with it all--with all things forever. + +The colorless liquid in the small blue phial lay within reach of his +grasp. It seemed to him that he saw already a man lying on that leathern +sofa--saw the protruding eyes, the relaxed limbs, the clammy sweat, and +saw nothing more that would be after him under the sun. The hands of the +clock moved on. A finger of sunlight pierced the curtains and pointed to +the ashes in the grate. Outside the noise of a crowded city went on +tumultuously. He removed the cork of the bottle, inhaling a pungent and +pervasive odor of bitter almonds. + +At the same instant a voice called him, and there was a knock at his +door. + +"Father!" + +He replaced the stopper, still holding the phial in his hand. For a +moment the heavy silence hung oppressively, and then he answered: "What +is it?" His voice sounded lifeless, like that of one awakening from +heavy sleep or a trance. + +"You are there? Come quickly. Your men at the Beasley Rolling Mills have +gone on a strike. A policeman was shot and several of the strikers +wounded. You are wanted to speak to them." + +"To speak to them?" + +"I have a cab. You may prevent bloodshed. Come." + +Father Algarcife returned the phial to its drawer, withdrew the key from +the locker, and rose. He opened the door and faced the messenger. His +words came thickly. + +"There is no time to lose," he said. "I am ready." + +He seized his hat, descended the steps, and rushed into the street. + +THE END + +ERRATUM + +On page 194, 4th line from bottom, the word "begotten" should be +omitted. + + +BY MARY E. WILKINS + +JEROME, A POOR MAN. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. + +MADELON. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. + +PEMBROKE. A Novel. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. + +JANE FIELD. A Novel. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. + +A NEW ENGLAND NUN, and Other Stories. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. + +A HUMBLE ROMANCE, and Other Stories. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. + +YOUNG LUCRETIA, and Other Stories. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1 25. + +GILES COREY, Yeoman. A Play. Illustrated. 32mo, Cloth, Ornamental, 50 +cents. + +Mary E. Wilkins writes of New England country life, analyzes New England +country character, with the skill and deftness of one who knows it +through and through, and yet never forgets that, while realistic, she is +first and last an artist.--_Boston Advertiser._ + +Miss Wilkins has attained an eminent position among her literary +contemporaries as one of the most careful, natural, and effective +writers of brief dramatic incident. Few surpass her in expressing the +homely pathos of the poor and ignorant, while the humor of her stories +is quiet, pervasive, and suggestive.--_Philadelphia Press._ + +It takes just such distinguished literary art as Mary E. Wilkins +possesses to give an episode of New England its soul, pathos, and +poetry.--_N. Y. Times._ + +The pathos of New England life, its intensities of repressed feeling, +its homely tragedies, and its tender humor, have never been better told +than by Mary E. Wilkins.--_Boston Courier._ + +The simplicity, purity, and quaintness of these stories set them apart +in a niche of distinction where they have no rivals.--_Literary World, +Boston._ + +The charm of Miss Wilkins's stories is in her intimate acquaintance and +comprehension of humble life, and the sweet human interest she feels and +makes her readers partake of, in the simple, common, homely people she +draws.--_Springfield Republican._ + +Studies from real life which must be the result of a lifetime of +patient, sympathetic observation.... No one has done the same kind of +work so lovingly and so well.--_Christian Register, Boston._ + +NEW YORK AND LONDON: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS + +=> _The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by +the publishers, postage prepaid, on receipt of the price._ + +BY LILIAN BELL + +FROM A GIRL'S POINT OF VIEW. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and +Gilt Top, $1 25. + +Miss Bell's former books have proved conclusively that she is a shrewd +observer, and in the series of character studies which she has brought +together under the title "From a Girl's Point of View" she is at her +best. The book is an intimate analysis of the manner of the modern man, +as seen with the eyes of the modern woman; and it is of interest not +only to those from whose stand-point it is written, but to those at whom +its good-humored shafts are directed. The best of it is that Miss Bell, +while she may be severe, is never unjust, and her observations are so +apt that the masculine reader cannot but laugh, even while he realizes +that she is dealing with one of his own shortcomings. + +THE UNDER SIDE OF THINGS. A Novel. With a Portrait of the Author. 16mo, +Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $1 25. + +Miss Bell's little story is very charming.... Miss Bell has plenty to +say, and says it, for the most part, in a fashion engaging and simple, +with touches of eloquence and passages of real strength. She has gifts +of a sort far from common, and an admirable spirit. Her observation of +life is keen, shrewd, and clear; it is also sympathetic. She has a +strong and easy hold on the best realities.--_N. Y. Times._ + +This is a tenderly beautiful story.... This book is Miss Bell's best +effort, and most in the line of what we hope to see her proceed in, +dainty and keen and bright, and always full of the fine warmth and +tenderness of splendid womanhood.--_Interior, Chicago._ + +THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges +and Gilt Top, $1 25. + +So much sense, sentiment, and humor are not often united in a single +volume.--_Observer, N. Y._ + +One of the most charming books of its kind that has recently come under +our notice. From its bright "Dedication" to its sweet and gracious +close, its spirit is wholesome, full of happy light, and one lingers +over its pages.--_Independent, N. 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