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.