Mariana's restlessness did not pass with the passing days. It developed
until it gathered the force of a malady, and she lived in persistent
movement, as if impelled by an invisible lash. As her aversion to their
lodgings became more pronounced, her powers of endurance increased, and
through the long, hot days she was rarely in-doors. Algarcife often
wondered where she spent the morning and afternoon hours, but the
constraint between them had strengthened, and he did not ask her. When
breakfast was over, he would see her put on her hat, take her shabby
black parasol, and go out into the street. At luncheon she would return,
looking flushed and warm, as if from exercise in the summer sun; but
when they had risen from the table she would move uneasily about, until,
at last, she would turn in desperation and go out again. He seldom
sought to detain her. Indeed, her absence was almost a relief, and he
found it less difficult to work when the silence was unbroken by
impetuous footsteps and the rustle of skirts.
Once he said: "It is too hot for you this afternoon."
And she answered: "No, I will go to a square."
He was silent, and she left in sudden haste.
That she walked miles in that fearful weather, driven on by sheer
inability to rest, he realized pityingly. Occasionally he would go to
the window as she descended the stairs, and the sight of the fragile,
black-robed figure, making its rapid way through the fierce sunshine,
would cause him a spasmodic contraction of pain. And yet the
remembrance of her indifference would chill the words with which he
greeted her return, and the knowledge that her heart had passed from him
and was straining towards the outside world would veil his mental
suffering in an assumption of pride. That Mariana's withered desires for
the fulness of life had grown green again, he could but know. He had
seen the agony inflicted upon her by every trivial detail of their
lives--by the poorly cooked food, by the fly-specks upon the dishes, by
the absence of a hundred superficial refinements. He had seen her flinch
at the odors of stale vegetables, and set her teeth at the grating
voices of the other lodgers. He had heard her moans in the night, rising
from a wail for the small comforts of life to a wail for the child she
had lost. He had marked every added line about her mouth, every bitter
word that fell from her lips. And yet he had gone unswervingly on his
way, and she had not known, but had thought him as pulseless to her
presence as she to his.
"I am late," she said one day in September, coming in with more
brightness than usual. "Have you had luncheon?"
"I waited for you," responded Anthony.
As she laid aside a roll of music she carried, he saw that it was the
score of a light opera.
"You have been to Signor Morani's?" he asked.
"Yes, I have been taking lessons again."
Anthony glanced dubiously round.
"And you have no piano," he said. "You will miss it."
Mariana shook her head, and pushed away her tea with a gesture of
disgust. "But I practise at Signor Morani's. He lets me use one of his
rooms."
He noticed that she spoke cheerfully, and that a wave of her lost
freshness had returned to her face. The instantaneous effect of her
moods upon her appearance was an ever-recurring surprise to him. It was
as if, by the play of her features, she unconsciously translated feeling
into expression.
In a moment she spoke again.
"It is a part that I have been studying," she continued, "and I must
commit the words to memory."
He picked it up. It was a serio-comic opera, entitled, "La Sorciere."
"Morani says that my voice has developed during the long rest. He was
surprised when I sang."
"Was he?" asked Anthony, absently. He was wondering dully what would be
the end of Mariana's ambitions--if there was any end for ambitions other
than obliteration. Had fate anything to offer more durable than dust and
ashes?
Mariana glanced about her and her face clouded. "It is that horrible
cabbage again," she complained. "I believe those people down-stairs do
nothing but fry cabbage. It makes me ill."
Anthony was recalled from his abstraction with a sense of annoyance.
"It seems to me," he retorted, sharply, "that, in our condition, to
worry over a grievance of that order would be refreshing--when one's
heels are hanging over the verge of starvation, it is a relief to be
allowed to smell some one else's dinner."
"That depends upon what the dinner consists of," Mariana rejoined. "I
may be reduced to living on dry bread, but I hope you will spare me the
fried cabbage."
"You speak as if I had reduced you to this state for my own
gratification." His temper was getting the better of him, and, with a
snap, he set his teeth and was silent.
The mental distress, the stimulants he had used to spur a jaded brain
into action, and his failing health had left him a prey to anger. An
unexpected interruption, a jarring sound, a trivial mishap, were
sufficient to cause him an outburst from which he often saved himself
by flight.
Mariana replied tartly.
"I am sure I don't see how my objection to living upon fried cabbage
could reflect upon you. I did not know you cared for it."
"You know I do not. But I don't see why you should make a fuss about a
wholesome article of food."
"It is not wholesome. It is exceedingly indigestible."
"At any rate, it belongs to your neighbors. You aren't forced to eat
it."
"No, but you implied that the time would come when I'd be glad to. I
merely said it never would."
"Then let the cabbage be damned," said Algarcife.
"Gladly," responded Mariana, and they said no more.
Algarcife selected a manuscript from his desk and went out. He felt as
if his nerves had quickened into ramifying wires through which a current
of electricity was passing. He was not angry with Mariana. He was angry
with no one, but he was racked by the agony of diseased sensibilities,
and, though rationally he endeavored to be sympathetic in his bearing to
his wife, his rational nature seemed ploughed by the press of his
nerves, and for the first time in his life he found self-restraint
beyond his grasp.
As he ascended the steps of the newspaper office where he was to leave
the manuscript, he ran against a man whom he knew and who stared at him
in astonishment.
"My God, Algarcife, you are a ghost! What have you been doing?"
"Wrestling with Providence," returned Algarcife, shortly. "Hardly a
becoming job."
"Well, take my advice and leave off at the first round. If you don't
mind the comparison, you bear a close resemblance to that Egyptian
mummy in the museum."
"No doubt. But that Egyptian has a damned sight the best of it. He lived
three thousand years ago."
And he passed on.
It was several nights after this that he started from a heavy sleep to
find that Mariana had left his side. Rising upon his elbow, he glanced
about the room, and saw her white-robed form revealed in nebulous
indistinctness against the open window. Her head was resting upon her
clasped hands and she was looking out into the night.
"Mariana," he said.
Her voice came with a muffled sound from the obscurity.
"Yes."
"What are you doing?"
The white figure stirred slightly.
"Thinking," she answered.
"Don't think. It is a confounded mistake. Go to sleep."
"I can't sleep. It is so hot."
"Lie down and I will fan you."
"No."
Algarcife turned over wearily, and for a time there was silence.
Suddenly Mariana spoke, her voice wavering a little.
"Anthony--are you asleep?"
"No."
Again she was silent, and again her voice wavered as it rose.
"I have been thinking about--about how poor we are. Will it ever be
better?"
"I cannot say. Don't think of it?"
"But I must think of it. I am trying to find a way out of it. Is there
any way?"
"None that I know of."
Mariana half rose and sat down again.
"There is one," she said, "and I--"
"What do you mean?" Algarcife demanded, starting up.
Her voice came slowly.
"I mean that I am--that it is better--that I am--going away."
For a moment the stillness seemed tangible in its oppressiveness.
Mariana's head had fallen upon her hands, and as she stared at the
electric light on the opposite corner she heard Anthony's heavy
breathing. A moth circled about the ball of light, showing to her fixed
gaze like some black spirit of evil hovering above a planet.
Algarcife's tones fell cold and constrained.
"To leave me, you mean?"
"It is the only way."
"Where will you go?"
Something that was not grief and yet akin to it choked Mariana as she
answered.
"I have an offer. The one that--that I told you of. It is an excellent
opening--so Morani says. The company goes abroad--next week. And I know
the part."
"And you wish to go?" His voice hurt her with its absence of color.
She lifted her hands and let them fall in her lap. Her gaze left the
electric light, where the moth was still revolving in its little orbit.
"It is not choice," she replied; "it is necessity. What else is there to
do--except starve? Can we go on living like this day after day, you
killing yourself with work, I a drag? It is better that I should
go--better for us both."
He hesitated a moment as if in thought, and when he spoke it was with
judicial calm.
"And would you have gone--a year ago?"
She was silent so long that he would have repeated the question, but at
his first word the answer came with a wave of self-abasement.
"I--I suppose not."
And that was all.
During the next few days the subject of Mariana's decision was not
mentioned. Both felt a constraint in alluding to it, and yet both felt
the inevitableness of the final hour. Anthony's pride had long since
sealed his lips over the expressions of an unwished-for affection, and
Mariana had grown chary of words.
But both went quietly along their daily lives, Anthony working at his
desk while Mariana gathered together her shabby garments and made ready
for the moment which by word and look they both ignored.
Then at last, when the night before her going came, Mariana spoke. They
had just risen from the supper-table and the slipshod maid of work had
carried off the unemptied tray. Mariana had eaten nothing. Her face was
flushed, and she was moving excitedly about the room.
"I go to-morrow," she began, feverishly.
Algarcife looked up from a book through which he was searching for a
date.
"So you have decided?" His lips twitched slightly and the veins upon his
forehead contracted.
Mariana shook out a night-gown which she had taken from a drawer, folded
it carefully, and laid it in the trunk.
"There is nothing else to do," she replied, mechanically, as if she were
fencing with fate from a corner into which she had been driven.
Algarcife closed the book and rose to his feet. He pressed his hand upon
his eyes to screen them from the glare of light. Then he moistened his
lips before speaking.
"Do you realize what it means?" he asked.
Mariana lowered her head into the trunk and her voice sounded from among
the clothes.
"There is nothing else to do," she repeated, as mechanically as before.
"I hope that it will be for your happiness," said Algarcife, and turned
away. Then he went towards her in sudden determination.
"Is there anything that I can help you about?"
Mariana stood up and shook her head. "I think not," she answered.
"Signor Morani calls for me to-morrow at six."
Algarcife sat down, but the old sensation of dizziness came upon him and
he closed his eyes.
"Have you a headache?" asked Mariana. "The tea was very bad. Shall I
make you a cup?"
He shook his head and opened a book, but she crossed to his side and
laid her hand upon his shoulder.
"It may not be for long," she said. "If I am successful--"
He flinched from her touch and shook her hand off almost fiercely. His
eyes were bloodshot and his lips white.
"The room is so warm," he said, "it makes me dizzy. I'll go out."
And he went down-stairs.
Mariana stood where he had left her and looked down upon the pile of
unpacked garments. A tear glistened upon her lashes, but it was a tear
of impersonal sorrow and regret. For herself she was conscious only of a
dulness of sensation, as if her usually vital emotions had been blunted
and rendered ineffectual. In a mute way, as she stood there, she
realized an almost tragic pity, but it was purely mental, and she
recalled calmly the fact that a separation, which six months ago would
have seared her soul with agony, she was now accepting with a feeling
that was one of relief. The stress of accumulated griefs and anxieties
had crushed her impressionable nature past all resemblance to its former
responsiveness. Yet it is possible that even then, had Anthony returned
to overpower her with his appeal, she would have wavered in her
decision, but the wavering would have been the result of a fight between
the instincts which were virile and the memory of the instincts which
were buried with her buried passions, and it is doubtful where the
victory would have rested. Her impulse for flight was as keen as the
impulse which causes a bird to beat its breast against the bars that
hold it. She wanted to flee from the sorrow she had known and all its
associations; she wanted to flee from poverty and ugliness to beauty and
bright colors. The artistic genius of her nature was calling, calling,
and she thrilled into an answering echo.
But, for all that, a tear glistened upon her lashes as she looked down
upon the unpacked clothes.
"O God! if you would only make a miracle!" she said--"if you only
would!"
Her glance fell upon the desk where Anthony's work was lying. She saw
the freshly written page upon which the ink was not dry. She lifted the
pen in her fingers and felt the thick cork handle which was stained and
indented by constant use. She sighed and turned slowly away.
The next afternoon, in hat and veil, with a small black satchel in her
hand, she stood waiting for Signor Morani. Her trunk had already been
carried down, and the carriage was turning the corner. She spoke
lightly, dreading silence and dreading an accent of seriousness. "It is
cooler," she said. "I hope a change is coming."
Then, as the carriage stopped beside the pavement below, she held out
her hands. They shook slightly.
"Good-bye," she said.
"I hope you will be happy."
"And you. It will be easier for you."
"Good-bye."
She raised her veil, her eyes shining.
"Kiss me."
He kissed her, but his lips were cold, and there was no pressure upon
hers.
She lowered her veil and went out. Algarcife stood at the window and
heard her footsteps as she descended the stairs. He saw her leave the
house, pause for an instant to greet Signor Morani, give the black bag
into his hands, and enter the carriage. As she sat down, she leaned out
for an instant and glanced up to where he stood. Then the carriage
started, turned the corner, and was gone.
Still he did not leave the window. He stood motionless, his head bent,
looking down into the heated streets, across which were stretching the
slanting shadows from the west. A splash of scarlet, like the impress of
a bloody hand, projected above the jagged line of tenement roofs, while
a film of rising smoke obscured its lurid distinctness. He felt that
complete sense of isolation, that loss of connection with the chain of
humanity which follows a separation from one who has shared with us,
night and day, the commonplaces of existence. The past and future seemed
to have clashed together and shattered into the present.
In the street below men and women were going homeward from the day's
work. He noticed that they wore, one and all, an aspect of despair, as
if passing automatically along the endless round of a treadmill. He felt
a vague wonder at the old, indomitable instinct of the preservation of
self which seemed so alien to his mood. Situated as he was above it all,
humanity assumed to his indifferent eyes a comic effect, and he found
himself laughing cynically at the moving figures that blocked the
sidewalk below. A physical disgust for the naked facts of life attacked
him like nausea. The struggle for existence, the propagation of the
species, the interminable circle of birth, marriage, and death, appeared
to him in revolting bestiality. In his bodily and mental wreckage, all
action became repellent and hideous, and the slanting sun-rays
bespattering the human atoms in the street produced a giddiness in his
brain. At that moment he was in the throes of a mental revolution, and
his old philosophic sanity was ingulfed.
He remembered suddenly that he had eaten nothing all day, and, turning
from the window, drank a cup of tea which had been left upon the table.
The continual use of stimulants, in exciting his nervous system, had
made sleep impossible, and he felt as if a furnace blazed behind his
eyeballs. He sat down, staring blankly at the opposite wall. In the
corner, upon a heap of books, the skull and cross-bones had been thrown,
and they caught his glance and held it with a curious fascination. They
seemed to typify his own life, those remnants of dry bones that had once
supported flesh and blood. He regarded himself impersonally, as he might
once have regarded a body for dissection. He saw that he had passed the
zenith of his physical and mental power, and that from this day forth it
would mean to him retrogression or stagnation. He saw that the press of
untoward circumstances had forced his intellect from its natural orbit
into a common rut from which there was no side-track of escape. He
weighed his labors, his knowledge, his impassioned aims for truth, and,
in the balance with a handful of dust, he found them wanting. He stirred
the ashes heaped where once had been a vital passion, and he found a
wasted skeleton and dry bones. He looked at his thin and pallid hand,
and it seemed to him as incapable of work as the hand of one palsied.
Before his tragic eyes, the years of his past stood marshalled, and, one
and all, they bore the badge of failure.
As he rose from his chair in sudden desperation, the recurring faintness
seized him and he steadied himself against the open drawer of the
bureau. Looking into it as he turned away, he saw some loose articles
which Mariana had forgotten--a bit of veiling, a single stocking, and a
tiny, half-worn sock of pink worsted. He closed the drawer and turned
hastily away.
Then he sat down beside his desk and bowed his head into his hands.