Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 15

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 pa.s.sionless determination of her Puritan ancestors. Life had been thrust upon her, and she accepted it. In much the same spirit she would have accepted h.e.l.l. 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 relinquis.h.i.+ng 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 s.p.a.ce 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, pa.s.sionately. "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 coa.r.s.e 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 succ.u.mbed to the allurement of the senses, pa.s.sion, 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 att.i.tude 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.