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."