Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 21

"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 clas.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.similating to itself the weaker, and the comrades.h.i.+p 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.

CHAPTER XIV

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 smas.h.i.+ng everything in their rooms. The pitcher went as I pa.s.sed."

"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 pa.s.sed 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. .h.i.tch 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 impa.s.sioned 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 grat.i.tude, 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 impa.s.sioned 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 s.h.i.+rt-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."

"Hus.h.!.+" 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 p.r.o.noun '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 pa.s.s! 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--'"