Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 28

Mariana laughed a little desperately.

"It reminds me of the time I saw a family move to the poor-house," she said; "only their friends weren't quite so affectionate."

"But you will come back," insisted Mr. Nevins. "Surely you will come back when things look a little brighter."

"Which will be when the flames of spontaneous combustion illuminate this planet," remarked Ardly, cynically, but his eyes were sad as they rested upon Mariana.

"Or when a relation dies," said Mr. Nevins.

"How we shall miss you!" said Miss Ramsey.

Here Mr. Paul, who had sauntered up as if by chance, drew Algarcife aside.

"If you had only told me," he said, dryly. "I have a few thousands in bank, and I--"

Anthony caught his hand, but his voice was choked and he could only shake his head. Then Mariana said good-bye, and they left the house and ascended the steps to the platform of the elevated road.

As Mariana took her seat, she turned to the window and watched the little fire-escape upon the fourth story until The Gotham was lost to sight. Then she raised her veil and wiped a tear-drop from her eyelashes.

When the door was unlocked and she entered the new room, a fit of restlessness seized her. The barrenness of existence struck her with the force of a blow, and, with a swift return of impulse, she cried out in rebellion. The stale odor of cooking, which rose from the apartment below, the dustiness of the floor, the blackened ceiling, the hard and unyielding bed, gave her a convulsive shudder.

"I cannot bear it," she said. "I cannot bear it."

Algarcife left the window, where he had been standing, and came towards her. Between himself and Mariana a constraint had been growing, and he recalled suddenly the fact that their old warmth of intercourse had chilled into an indifferent reserve.

"It is bad," he said. "I am very sorry."

Mariana took off her hat and veil and laid them in one of the bureau drawers. The drawer creaked as she opened it, and the sound jarred upon Anthony's overwrought sensitiveness. He noticed suddenly that Mariana's expression had grown querulous, and that she had ceased to wear her hair becomingly.

"You can hardly think that I enjoy it," he added. "An existence composed of two-thirds nerves and one-third caffeine is hardly rose-color."

He looked gray and haggard, and the hand which he raised trembled slightly.

"Hardly," returned Mariana, shortly.

Both felt an instinctive desire to vent their wretchedness in words, and yet each felt an almost pa.s.sionate pity for the other. The very pity emphasized the aggravation from which they suffered, and it was by a process of reflex action that, when goaded by thoughts of each other, they would strike out recklessly.

"No," repeated Mariana; "but it seems to be a case where two, instead of lessening the misery, increase the discomforts."

Immediately after supper she went to bed, tossing restlessly for hours because the mattress was uneven, the sheets coa.r.s.e, and the lamp, by which Anthony worked, s.h.i.+ning in her face.

When she finally fell asleep, it was with a sob of revolt.

CHAPTER XIX

Mariana's restlessness did not pa.s.s with the pa.s.sing 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 pa.s.sed from him and was straining towards the outside world would veil his mental suffering in an a.s.sumption 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, ent.i.tled, "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 refres.h.i.+ng--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.