Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 42

Mr. Paul, who had watched her gloomily, with traces of disapprobation in his gaze, took his leave with a stilted good-bye, and Mariana threw herself upon the divan, while Ardly and Nevins seated themselves on footstools at her feet and looked into her eyes.

"I want to hear all--all," she said. "Are you happy?"

"Are you?" asked Ardly.

She shook her head impatiently. "I? Oh yes," she answered. "I have clothes, and a carriage, and even a few jewels."

She slipped the long glove from her hand, which came soft and white from its imprisonment, with the indentation of the b.u.t.tons on the supple wrist. She held up her fingers, where a blaze of diamonds ran. Then she smiled.

"But I never sang with Alvary," she added.

"Where is the voice?"

"It is dead," she replied; "but it was only a skeleton when it lived. I learned that afterwards. I had the artistic temperament without the art."

Nevins and Ardly, watching the mobility of her face, saw the old half-disdainful weariness steal back.

"So you have learned that," said Nevins. "It is the greater wisdom--to learn what one has not."

"I don't idealize any longer," answered Mariana, playing with the glove in her lap. "I have lopped off an ideal every hour since I saw you."

"Sensible woman," returned Ardly. "We don't lop off our ideals--we distort them. Life is a continuous adjustment of the things that should be to the things that are."

"And middle-age shows the adjustment to be a misfit," added Nevins, his boyish face growing almost sad. "We grow tired of burnis.h.i.+ng up the facts of life, and we leave the tarnish to mix with the triple-plate."

"Are you middle-aged?" asked Mariana.

"Not since you entered."

She smiled, pleased with the flattery. "So I am a restorer of youth. Do I look young?"

"There is a gla.s.s."

She turned towards it, catching the reflection of her face shadowed by the plume against her hair.

"Your eyes are older," said Nevins. "They look as if they had seen things, but your mouth is young. It could never hold an expression long enough for it to impress a line. Heavens! It is a mouth that would madden one to model, because of the impossibility! It is twenty mouths in one!"

"You never liked my nose," said Mariana, her eyes still on the gla.s.s.

"Do you remember how you straightened it in the poster?"

"I have the poster still."

"And I have the nose."

Then she laughed. "It is so delightful to be here," she said.

Ardly and Nevins talked rapidly, running over the years one by one, giving glimpses of the changes in their lives, meeting Mariana's gay reserve with fuller confidence. They had both grown boyish and more buoyant, and as they spoke they felt like an incoming tide the warmth of Mariana's manner. She seemed more lovable to them, more generous, more utterly to be desired. Her nature had ripened amid the luxury of her life, which, instead of rendering her self-centred, as poverty had done, had left her more responsive to the needs of others. She threw herself into the records of their lives with an impulsive fervor, stopping them at intervals to question as to details, and covering the past eight years with sympathetic search-lights.

And yet beneath the superficial animation in her voice there was a restless thrill, and the eagerness with which she turned to trivial interests was but the nervous veil that hid the weariness in her heart.

It was as if she plunged into the thoughts of others that she might put away the memory of herself.

"So you have become a politician?" she said to Ardly. "I am so interested!"

"You wouldn't be if you knew as much of it as I do," remarked Nevins.

"You'd be ashamed. It makes me blush every time I see his name on a ticket. I consider it an offence against the paths of our fathers."

"Why, Mr. Ryder told me you were working for him," Mariana returned; "but he did say that he couldn't reconcile it with your common-sense.

He's for the other side, you know."

"So am I!" groaned Nevins; "but what has a man's convictions to do with his vote?"

"Or with his election?" laughed Ardly. "But Nevins is an unwilling accomplice of my aspirations."

"I wouldn't call them aspirations," remonstrated Nevins.

Mariana b.u.t.toned her glove and rose. "I am going to work for you," she said, "and my influence is not to be scorned. I have not one vote, but dozens. I shall elect you."

"Don't," pleaded Nevins; "it will soil your hands!"

"Oh, I can wash them!" she laughed; "and it is worth a few s.m.u.ts. I shall tell Mr. Ryder to canva.s.s for you," she added.

Ardly shouted, "Good heavens! He is one of the best fighters the Republicans have!"

Mariana smiled inscrutably.

"But that was before I had a candidate," she answered.

They followed her to the sidewalk and tucked her carriage furs about her while the footman looked on.

"And you are coming to see me soon?" she insisted--"very soon?"

"We swear it!" they protested.

"And you will tell me all the news of the elections?"

"On our manly faith."

"That I will trust. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!"

The carriage started, when suddenly she lowered the window and looked out, the plume in her hat waving black against the wind.

"I forgot to tell you," she said; "my name is Gore--Mrs. Cecil Gore."

With the light of audacity in his face, Nevins laid his hand upon the window.

"And where is the Honorable Cecil?" he asked.