Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 7

Nothing in nature is repellent to the mind that follows her."

Mariana repressed a shudder. "I have no doubt that toads are natural enough in their way," she returned, "but I don't like the way of toads."

Anthony met her serious protest lightly.

"You are a beautiful subject for morbid psychology," he said. "Why, toads are eminently respectable creatures, and if we regard them without prejudice, we will discover that, as a point of justice, they have an equal right with ourselves to the possession of this planet. Only, right is not might, you know."

"But I love beautiful things," protested Mariana. She looked at him wistfully, like a child desiring approbation. There was an amber light in her eyes.

He smiled upon her.

"So do I," he made answer; "but to me each one of those nice little specimens is a special revelation of beauty."

The girl broke her bread daintily. "You misunderstand me," she said, with flattering earnestness and a deprecatory inflection in her voice.

Her head drooped sideways on its slender throat. There was a virginal illusiveness about her that tinged with seriousness the lightness of her words. "Surely you love art," she said.

"Oh, I like painting, if that is what you mean," he answered, carelessly, though her image in his eyes was relieved against a sudden warmth. "That is, I like Raphael and Murillo and a few of the modern French fellows. As for music, I don't know one note from another. The only air I ever caught was 'In the Fragrant Summer-time,' and that was an accident. I thought it was 'Maryland.'"

Mariana did not smile. She shrank from him, and he felt as if he had struck her.

"It isn't worth your thinking of," he said, "nor am I."

Mariana protested with her restless hands.

"Oh, but I can't help thinking of it," she answered. "It is dreadful.

Why, such things are a part of my religion!"

He returned her startled gaze with one of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I might supply you with an alphabetical dictionary of my peculiar vices. An unabridged edition would serve for a criminal catalogue as well. A--Acrimony, Adhesiveness, Atheism, Aggressiveness, Aggravation, Ambition, Artfulness--"

"Oh, stop!" cried Mariana. "You bewilder me."

He leaned back in his chair and fixed his intent gaze upon her. His eyes were so deeply set as to be almost indistinguishable, but in the spell of lamplight she saw that the pupils differed in color, one having a hazel cast, while the other was of a decided gray.

"Why, I thought you displayed an interest in the subject!" he rejoined.

"You lack the genius of patience."

"Patience," returned Mariana, with a swift change of manner, "is only lack of vitality. I haven't an atom of it."

A shade of the nervous irritability, which appeared from apparently no provocation, was in his voice as he answered:

"There is nothing fate likes better than to drill it into us. And it is not without its usefulness. If patience is the bugbear of youth, it is the panacea of middle age. We learn to sit and wait as we learn to accept pa.s.sivity for pa.s.sion and indifference for belief. The worst of it is that it is a lesson which none of us may skip and most of us are forced to learn by heart." He spoke slowly, his voice softened. Beneath the veneering of philosophic asceticism, the scarlet veins of primeval nature were still palpitant. The chill lines of self-restraint in his face might, in the whirlwind of strong pa.s.sions, become ingulfed in chaos.

With an effort Mariana threw off the spell of his personality. She straightened herself with an energetic movement. From the childlike her manner pa.s.sed to the imperious. Her head poised itself proudly, her eyes darkened, her lips lost their pliant curve and grew audacious.

"That is as grewsome as your room," she said. "Let's talk of pleasant things."

The changes in her mystified Algarcife. He regarded her gravely. "Of yourself, or of myself?" he demanded.

"The first would only display your ignorance. I should prefer the latter. Begin, please." She had grown vivid.

He spoke jestingly. "Here goes. Name, Algarcife. Christened Anthony.

Age, twenty-seven years, three weeks, ten days. Height, five feet eleven inches. Complexion, anaemic. Physique, bad. Disposition, worse. Manners, still worse. Does the exactness of my information satisfy you?"

"No;" she enveloped him in her smile. "You haven't told me anything I want to know. I could have guessed your height, and your manners I have tested. What were you doing before I came in?"

"Cursing my luck."

"And before that?" She leaned forward eagerly.

"d.o.g.g.i.ng at a theory of heredity which will reconcile Darwin's gemmules, Weismann's germ-plasm, and Galton's stirp."

She wrinkled her brows in perplexity. Her show of interest had not fled.

A woman who cannot talk of the things she knows nothing about might as well be a man.

"And you will do it?" she asked. He had a sudden consciousness that no one had ever been quite so in sympathy with him as this elusive little woman with the changeable eyes.

"Well, I hardly think so," he said. "At any rate, I expect to discover what Spencer would call the germ of truth in each one of them, and then I suppose I'll formulate a theory of my own which will contain the best in all of them."

Her manner did not betray her ignorance of his meaning.

"And you will explain it all to me when it is finished?" she asked.

His smile cast a light upon her.

"If you wish it," he answered, "but I had no idea that you cared for such things."

"You did not know me," she responded, reproachfully. "I am very, very ignorant, but I want so much to learn." Then her voice regained its brightness. "And you have read all these books?" she questioned.

He followed with his eyes her swift gestures.

"Those," he answered, pointing to the north shelves, "I have skimmed.

Those behind you, I have read; and those," he nodded towards his right, "I know word for word."

"And what do you do?" The delicacy of her manner imbued the question with unconscious flattery.

"I--oh, I eke out an existence with the a.s.sistance of the Bodley College."

"What have you to do with it? Oh, I beg your pardon! I had forgotten we were almost strangers."

He answered, naturally.

"It is my unhappy fate to endeavor to instil a few brains and a good deal of information into the heads of sixty-one young females."

"And don't you like them?" queried Mariana, eagerly.

"I do not."