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.