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."