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.