"What was there for me to say? You were free."
For an instant her eyes blazed.
"You never loved me," she said.
He smiled slightly.
"Do you think so?" he asked.
The anger died from her eyes and she spoke softly.
"I waited for the answer," she said; "waited months, and it did not come. Then I came back. We went out West. A divorce was very easy—and I married him. I owed him so much."
"Yes?"
"It was a mistake. I did not satisfy him. He thought me cold. We quarrelled, and he went to other women. He drank a great deal. I was much to blame, but I could not help it. I hated him. Then his uncle took my part and loved me—God bless him, he was a saint—and kind—oh, so kind. When he died he left me the money, and his nephew and I separated. I have not seen him since."
They were both silent. She could hear his heavy breathing, and her heart throbbed.
"It was all a mistake," she said. "My whole life has been a mistake. But there is no salvation for us who make mistakes."
His eyes grew dark as he looked at her.
"A mistake that one stands by may become the part of wisdom," he said. "Could you not go back to him and begin again?" His face had grown haggard.
Her wrath flamed out.
"If I begin again," she answered, "it must be from the beginning—to relive my whole life."
He looked at her restless hands.
"Then you must look to the future," he said, "since there is no present—and no past."
"There is a past," she returned, passionately.
He shook his head.
"A dead one."
Her mouth shone scarlet in the pallor of her face.
"And shall we forget our dead?" she asked.
His lips closed together with brutal force. His eyes were hot with self-control.
Then he stooped for her muff, which had rolled to the ground, brushing it lightly with his hand. As he gave it to her he rose to his feet.
"Shall we return?" he asked. "It has grown cloudy."
She rose also, but stood for an instant with her hand resting upon the back of the bench. Her lips opened, but closed again, and she turned and walked at his side in silence.
Suddenly he looked at her.
"It is late," he said, "as you doubtless know, and I have neglected a call. May I leave you to go on alone?" Then his voice softened. "Are you ill?" he asked—"or in pain?"
She laughed mirthlessly.
"You are too strong," she returned, "to stoop to irony."
"It was not irony," he answered, gently.
She smiled sadly, her eyes raised.
"Tell me that you will come to see me—once," she said.
He looked at her with sudden tenderness.
"Yes," he answered; "I will come. Good-bye!"
"Good-bye!"
And they went different ways.
Mariana went home with throbs of elation in her heart. She was thrilled with a strange, unreasoning joy—a sense of wonder and of mystery—that caused her pulses to quiver and her feet to hasten.
"I shall see him again," she thought—"I shall see him again."
She forgot the years of separation, her past indifference, the barriers between them. She forgot the coldness of his voice and his accusing glance. Her nature had leaped suddenly into fulness, and a storm of passion such as she had never known had seized her. The emotions of her girlhood seemed to her stale and bloodless beside the tempest which possessed her now. As she walked her lips trembled, and she thought, "I shall see him again."
At dinner Miss Ramsey noticed her flushed face, and, when they went into the drawing-room, took her hands. "You are feverish," she said, "and you ate nothing."
Mariana laughed excitedly.
"No," she answered, "I am well—very well."
They sat down together, and she looked at Miss Ramsey with quick tenderness.
"Am I good to you?" she asked. "Am I good to the servants?—to everybody?"
"What is it, dear?"
"Oh, I want to begin over again—all over again! It is but fair that one should have a second chance, is it not?"
Miss Ramsey smiled.
"Some of us never have a first," she said; and Mariana took her in her arms and kissed her. "You shall have yours," she declared. "I will give it to you."
When she went up-stairs a little later she took down an old square desk from a shelf in the dressing-room and brought it to the rug before the fire. Kneeling beside it, she turned the key and raised the narrow lid of ink-stained mahogany. It was like unlocking the past years to sit surrounded by these memories in tangible forms, to smell the close, musty odor which clings about the relics of a life or a love that is dead.
She drew them out one by one and laid them on the hearth-rug—these faded things that seemed in some way to waft with the scent of decay unseizable associations of long-gone joy or sorrow. The dust lay thickly over them, as the dust of forgetfulness lay over the memories they invoked. There was a letter from her mother written to her in her babyhood, and the fine, faded handwriting recalled to her the drooping figure—a slight and passionate woman, broken by poverty and disappointments, with vivacious lips and eyes of honest Irish blue. There was a handful of mouldered acorns, gathered by childish fingers on the old plantation; there was the scarlet handkerchief her mammy had worn, and the dance-card of her first ball, with a colorless silk tassel hanging from one end. Then she pushed these things hastily aside and looked for others, as one looks beneath the sentiments for the passions of one's life. She found a photograph of Anthony, pasted on cheap card-board—a face young and intolerant, with the fires of ambition in the eyes and the lines of self-absorption about the mouth. Still looking at the boyish face, she remembered the man that she had seen that morning—the fires of ambition burned to ashes, the self-absorption melted into pain.
With the photograph still in her hand, she turned back to the desk and took out a tiny cambric shirt with hemstitched edges, upon which the narrow lace was yellow and worn. As the little garment fell open in her lap she remembered the day she had worked the hemstitching—a hot August day before the child came, when she had lived like a prisoner in the close rooms, sewing for months upon the dainty slips, and dreaming in that subconscious existence in which women await the birth of a new life. She remembered the day of its coming, her agony, and the first cry of the child; then the weeks when she had lain watching the dressing and undressing of the soft, round body, and then the moist and feeble clutch upon her hand. She remembered the days when it did not leave her arms, the nights when she walked it to and fro, crooning the lullaby revived from her own infancy, and at last the hours when she sat in the half-darkness and watched the life flicker out from the little bluish face upon the pillow.
"Was that yesterday or eight years ago?"
Her tears fell fast upon the tiny shirt, and she folded it and laid it away with the photograph and the other relics—laid away side by side the relics and the recollections covered with dust.
She rose to her feet and carried the desk back to its place in the dressing-room. In a moment she returned and stood silently before the fire, her hand resting upon the mantel-piece, her head leaning upon her arm. She was thinking of the two things a woman never forgets—the voice of the man she has loved and the face of her dead child.
But when she went to bed an hour later there was a smile on her lips.
"I shall see him again," she said. "Perhaps to-morrow."
The next day she went to Nevins's studio and satfor the portrait. Her face was aglow and she talked nervously. He noticed that she started at a noise on the stair, and that her attention wandered from his words. He made daring, if delicate, love to her, but she seemed oblivious of it, and, when she rose to go, remarked that he was depressed. In return, he observed that she was feverish, and advised consulting her physician. "Your eyes are too bright," he said. "What is it?"
"Your reflected brilliancy, perhaps."
"By no means. The lustre is too unnatural."
"Then it is sleeplessness. I lay awake last night."
"Anything the matter? Can I help you?"
She shook her head, smiling.
"I am adjusting a few difficulties," she answered; "chiefly matrimonial, but they belong to my cook."
He looked at her attentively.
"Don't worry," he said. "It is not becoming. The flush is all right, but in time it will give place to discontent. You will sow perplexities to reap—"
"Furrows," finished Mariana. Then she nodded gayly. "What a pessimist you are!" she said. "No, I am going to use the best cosmetic—happiness."
And she lifted her skirts and descended the stairs.
That afternoon she remained in-doors, wandering aimlessly from room to room, opening a book to turn a page or two and to throw it aside for another.
In the evening she went out to dinner, and Ryder, who was among the guests, remarked that he had never seen her in better form. "If there was such a thing as eternally effervescent champagne, I'd compare you to it," he said. "Are you never out of spirits?"
She looked at him with sparkling eyes. "Oh, sometimes," she responded; "but as soon as I discover it, I jump in again."
"And I must believe," he returned, his gaze warming,"that your element is one that cheers but not inebriates."
"You are very charitable. I wonder if all my friends are?"
He lowered his voice and looked into her eyes. "Say all your worshippers," he corrected, and she turned from him to her left-hand neighbor.
She laughed and jested as lightly as if her heart were a feather, and went home at last to weep upon her pillow.
For the next few days she lived like one animated by an unnatural stimulant. She talked and moved nervously, and her eyes shone with suppressed excitement, but she had never appeared more brilliant, and her manner was charged with an irresistible vivacity. To Miss Ramsey she was unusually gentle and generous.
Each morning, on rising, the thought fired her, "He may come to-day"; each night the change was rung to, "He may come to-morrow"; and she would toss feverishly until daybreak, to dress and meet her engagement, with a laugh upon her lips. To a stranger she would have seemed to face pain as she faced joy, with a dauntless insolence to fate. To a closer observer there would have appeared, with the sharper gnawing at her heart, the dash of a freer grace to her gestures, a richer light to her eyes. It was as if she proposed to conquer destiny by the exercise of personal charm.
At the end of the week she came down to luncheon one day with a softer warmth in her face. When the meal was over she went up to her room and called her maid. "I want the gray dress," she said; but when it was laid on the bed she tossed it aside. "It is too gloomy," she complained. "Bring me the red;" and from the red she turned to the green.
She dressed herself with passionate haste, arrangingand rearranging the coil of her hair, and altering with reckless fingers the lace at her throat. At last she drew back from the glass, throwing a dissatisfied glance at her reflection—at the green-clad figure and the small and brilliant face, surmounted by its coils of shining brown. Then she added a knot of violets to the old lace on her breast, and went down-stairs to walk the drawing-room floor. An instinctive belief in his coming possessed her. As she walked slowly up and down on the heavy carpet, the long mirrors suspended here and there threw back at her fugitive glimpses of her moving figure. In the dusk of the room beyond she saw herself irradiated by the glimmering firelight.
The hands of the clock upon the mantel travelled slowly round the lettered face. As she watched it she felt a sudden desire to shake them into swiftness. She touched the clock and drew back, laughing at her childishness. A carriage in the street caught her ears and she went to the window, glancing through the half-closed curtains. It passed by. Then a tall, black figure turning the corner arrested her gaze, and her heart leaped suddenly. The figure came on and she saw that it was an elderly clergyman with white hair and a benevolent face. She was seized with anger against him, and her impatience caused her to press her teeth into her trembling lip. In the street a light wind chased a cloud of dust along the sidewalk until it danced in little eddying waves into the gutter. An organ-grinder, passing below, looked up and lifted his hand. She took her purse from the drawer of the desk and threw him some change; but when the broken tune was ground out she shook her head and motioned him away. The sound grated upon her discordant nerves.
She left the window and crossed the room again. The hands of the clock had made a half-hour's progress in their tedious march.
A book of poems lay on the table, and she opened it idly, her mental fever excited by the lighter words of one who had sounded the depths and sunk beneath.
She threw the book aside and turned away—back to the window where there was dust and wind—back into the still room where the monotonous tick of the clock maddened her quivering mood. She walked to and fro in that silent waiting which is the part of women, and beside which the action of battle is to be faced with a song of thanksgiving.
The trembling of her limbs frightened her, and she flung herself upon a divan. The weakness passed, and she got up again. Another half-hour had gone.
All at once there was a ring at the bell. For an instant she felt her heart contract, and then a delirious dash of blood through her veins to her temples. Her pulses fluttered like imprisoned birds.
A footstep crossed the hall, and the door of the drawing-room opened.
"Mr. Ryder!"
She wavered for an instant and went forward to meet him with an hysterical laugh. Her eyes were like emeralds held before a blaze, and the intense, opaline pallor of her face was warm as if tinged by a flame.
He took her outstretched hand hungrily, his face flushing until the purplish tint rose to his smooth, white forehead.
"Were you expecting me?" he asked. "I would sell my soul to believe that you were—with that look in your eyes."
She shook her head impatiently.
"I was not," she answered. "I was expecting no one. It is very warm in here—that is all."
He looked disappointed.
"Have you ever expected me?" he questioned, moodily—"or thought of me when I was not with you?"
She smiled. "Oh yes!" she returned, lightly. "When I had a note from you saying that you were coming."
He set his teeth.
"You are as cruel as a—a devil, or a woman," he said.
"What you call cruelty," she answered, gently, "is merely a weapon which we sometimes thrust too far. When you talk to me in this way, you force me to use it." And she added, flippantly, "Some day I may thrust it to your heart."
"I wish to God you would!"
But she laughed merrily and led him to impersonal topics, talking rapidly, with a constant play of her slim, white hands. She allowed him no time for protestations. It was all bright, frivolous gossip of the day, with no hint of seriousness. As she talked, there was no sign that her ears were straining for an expected sound, or her flesh quivering with impatience.
At last he rose to go.
"You are the only woman I know," he remarked, as he looked at her with his easy and familiar glance, "who is never dull. How do you manage it?"
"Oh, it is not difficult," she answered. "To laugh is much easier than to cry."
"And much more agreeable. I detest a woman who weeps."
Her brilliant laugh rang out.
"And so do I," she said.
When he had gone, and the house door had closedafter him, she crossed to the heavily hanging curtains, pushed them aside, and looked out.
Only dust and wind and gray streets and the sound of the footsteps of a passer-by. From out the blue mist a single light burst, then another and another. She held her head erect, a scornful smile curving her lips.
Again the bell rang, and again she quivered and started forward, listening to the steps that crossed the hall. The door opened.
"Mr. Buisson!"
She hesitated a moment, and then went forward with the same cordial gesture of her cold, white hand.
Father Algarcife was working like a man spurred by an invisible lash. At the breaking of the cold winter dawns he might be seen on his rounds in the mission districts, which began before the early Mass, to end long after dusk, when the calls of his richer parishioners had been treated and dismissed. During the morning celebrations one of the younger priests often noticed that he appeared faint from exhaustion, and attributed it to the strain of several hours' work without nourishment.
One morning, shortly after New Year, John Ellerslie joined him and went in with him to breakfast. It was then he noticed that Father Algarcife ate only cold bread with his coffee, while he apologized for the scantiness of the fare. "It is lack of appetite with me," he explained, "not injudicious fasting;" and he turned to the maid: "Agnes, will you see that Father Ellerslie has something more substantial?" But when cakes and eggs were brought, he pushed them aside, and crumbled, without eating, his stale roll.
The younger man remonstrated, his face flushing from embarrassment.
"I am concerned for your health," he said. "Will you let me speak to Dr. Salvers?"
Father Algarcife shook his head.
"It is nothing," he answered. "But I expect to see Dr. Salvers later in the day, and I'll mention it to him."
Later in the day he did see Salvers, and as they were parting he alluded to the subject of his health.
"I am under a pledge to tell you," he said, lightly, "that I am suffering from loss of appetite and prolonged sleeplessness. I don't especially object to the absence of appetite, but there is something unpleasant about walking the floor all night. I don't want to become a chloral fiend. Can't you suggest a new opiate?"
"Rest," responded Salvers, shortly. "Take a holiday and cut for Florida."
"Impossible. Too much work on hand."
Salvers regarded him intently.
"The next thing, you'll take to bed," he said, irritably, "and I'll have all the ladies of your congregation besieging my office door." He added: "I am going to send you a prescription immediately."
"All right. Thanks. I stop at Brentano's."
He entered the book-shop, and came out in a few moments with a package under his arm. As he stepped to the sidewalk a lady in a rustling gown descended from her carriage and paused as she was passing him.
"I was just going in for a copy of your sermons," she said. "I am distributing quite a number. By the by, have you ever found out who theScientific Weeklywriter really is?"
He looked at her gravely.
"I have a suspicion," he answered, "but suspicions are unjustifiable things at best."
He walked home rapidly, unlatched his outer door, and entered his study. Going to his desk, he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and, unlocking a drawer, drew out several manuscripts, which he glanced over with a half-humorous expression. One was the manuscript of the volume of addresses he had lately published, the other of the articles which had appeared in the pages of theScientific Weekly. They were both in his handwriting, but one showed the impassioned strokes of a younger pen, and belonged to the timewhen he had written under the veil of anonymity, that it might not interfere with the plan of his great work. Now the great work lay at the bottom of the last drawer, with its half-finished sheets yellowed and sown with dust, while the lighter articles had risen after a silence of ten years to assault his unstable present with the convictions of his past.
He crossed to the fireplace and laid both manuscripts upon the coals. They caught, and the leaves curled upward like tongues of flame, illuminating the faded text with scrolls of fire. Then they smouldered to gray spectres and floated in slender spirals up the yawning chimney.
The next day a storm set in, and pearl-gray clouds swollen with snow drove from the northwest. The snow fell thickly through the day, as it had fallen through the night, blown before the wind in fluttering curtains of white, and coating the gray sidewalks, to drift in fleecy mounds into the gutters.
In the evening, when he came in to dinner, he received an urgent message from Mrs. Ryder, which had been sent in the morning and which he had missed by being absent from luncheon. Her child had died suddenly during the night from an attack of croup.
Without removing his coat, he turned and started to her at once, his heart torn by the thought of her suffering.
As he ascended the steps the door was opened by Ryder, who came out and grasped his hand, speaking hurriedly, with a slight huskiness in his voice.
"She has been expecting you," he said, leading him into the hall. "Come up to her immediately. I can do nothing with her. My God! I would have given my right hand to have spared her this." The sincerity in his voice rang true, and there were circles of red about his eyes.
They went up-stairs, and Ryder opened the door ofthe nursery, and, motioning him inside, closed it softly after him. The room was faintly lighted, the chill curtain of falling snow veiling the windows. On the little bed, where he had seen it sleeping several months ago, the child was lying, its flaxen curls massed upon the embroidered pillow; but the flush of health on the little face had given place to a waxen pallor, and the tiny hands that had tossed restlessly in sleep were still beneath white rose-buds. A faint odor of medicine clung about the room, but the disorder of dying had been succeeded by the order of death.
Mrs. Ryder, sitting near the window, her profile dark against the storm, turned her heavy eyes upon him, and then, rising, came towards him. He caught her extended hands and held them firmly in his own. At that instant the past seemed predominant over the present—and the grief more his own than another's.
"You have come at last," she said. "Help me. You must help me. I cannot live unless you do. Give me some comfort—anything!"
His face was almost as haggard as her own.
"What would comfort you?" he asked.
She turned from him towards the little bed, and, falling on her knees beside it, burst into passionate weeping.
"It was all I had!" she cried. "All I had! O God! How cruel!"
He laid his hand upon her shoulder, not to stay her tears, but to suggest sympathy. Beyond her the sweet, grave face of the dead child lay wreathed in rose-buds.
At his touch she rose and faced him.
"Tell me that I shall see him again!" she cried. "Tell me that he is not dead—that he is somewhere—somewhere! Tell me that God is just!"
His lips were blue, and he put up his hand imploringmercy; then he opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came.
She clung to him, sobbing.
"Pray to God for me," she said.
He staggered for a moment beneath her touch. Then he knelt with her beside the little bed and prayed.
When he walked home through the storm an hour later he reeled like a drunken man, and, despite the cold, his flesh was on fire.
As he entered his door the wind drove a drift of snow into the hall, and the water dripping from his coat made shining pools on the carpet.
He went into his study and slammed the door behind him. The little dog sleeping on the rug came to welcome him, and he patted it mechanically with a nerveless hand. His face was strained and set, and his breath came pantingly. In a sudden revolution the passion which he believed buried forever had risen, reincarnated, to overwhelm him. He lived again, more vitally because of the dead years, the death of a child who was his and the grief of a woman who was his also. He, who had believed himself arbiter of his fate, had awakened to find himself the slave of passion—a passion mighty in its decay, but all victorious in its resurrection. He shivered and looked about him. The room, the fire, the atmosphere seemed thrilled with an emotional essence. He felt it in his blood, and it warmed the falling snow beyond the window. Before the consuming flame the apathy of years was lost in smoke. A memory floated before him. He was sitting again in that silent room, driving the heavy pen, listening to the breathing of his dying child, watching the still droop of Mariana's profile, framed by dusk. He felt her sobbing upon his breast, her hands clinging in pain when he lifted her from beside her dead—and his. He heard again her cry: "Tellme that I shall see her! Tell me that God is just!" The eternal cry of stricken motherhood.
Whatever the present or the future held, these things were locked within the past. He might live them over or live them down, but unlive them he could not. They had been and they would be forever.
The door opened and the servant came in.
"If you please, father, there is a lady to see you."
He looked up, startled.
"A lady? On such a night?"
"She came in a carriage, but she is very wet. Will you see her at once?"
"Yes, at once."
He turned to the door. It opened and closed, and Mariana came towards him.
She came like a ghost, pale and still as he had seen her in his memory, with a veil of snow clinging to her coat and to the feathers in her hat. Her eyes alone were aflame.
He drew back and looked at her.
"You?" he said.
She was silent, holding out her gloved hand with an impulsive gesture. He did not take it. He had made a sudden clutch at self-control, and he clung to it desperately.
"Can I do anything for you?" he asked, and his voice rang hollow and without inflection.
She still held out her hand. Flecks of snow lay on her loosened hair, and the snow was hardly whiter than her face.
"You must speak to me," she said. "You promised to come, and I waited—and waited."
"I was busy," he returned, in the same voice.
"We cannot be as strangers," she went on, passionately. "We must be friends. Can you or I undo the past? Can you or I undo our love—or our child?"
"Hush!" he said, harshly.
"I came only to hear that you forgive me," she continued, a brave smile softening the intensity of her face. "Tell me that and I will go away."
He was silent for a moment; then he spoke.
"I forgive you."
She took a step towards the door and came back.
"And is that all?"
"That is all." Beneath the brutal pressure of his teeth a drop of blood rose to his lips. There was a wave of scarlet before his eyes, and he clinched his hands to keep them at his sides. A terrible force was drawing him to her, impelling him to fall upon her as she stood defenceless—to bear her away out of reach.
She looked at him, and a light flamed in her face.
"It is not all," she retorted, triumphantly. "You have not forgotten me."
He looked at her dully.
"I had—until to-night."
Tears rose to her eyes and fell upon her hands, while the snow on her hair melted and rained down until she seemed to weep from head to foot.
"I was never good enough," she said, brokenly. "I have always done wrong, even when I most wanted to be good." Then she raised her head proudly. "But I loved you," she added. "I never loved any one but you. Will you believe it?"
He shook his head, smiling bitterly. As he stood there in his priestly dress he looked like one in a mighty struggle between the calls of the flesh and of the spirit. The last wavering fires of anger flamed within him, and he took a step towards her.
"Do you think," he asked, slowly, forcing his words, "that I would have left you while there remained a crust to live on? Do you think that I would not have starved with you rather than have lived in luxury without you? Bah! It is all over!"
"I was too young," she answered—"too young. I did not know. I have learned since then."
His outburst had exhausted his bitterness, and a passionate tenderness was in his eyes.
"I would to God that you had been spared the knowledge," he said.
She shook her head.
"No," she responded. "Not that—not that."
She swayed, and he caught her in his arms. For an instant he held her—not in passion, but with a gentleness that was almost cold. Then he released her, and she moved away.
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
He followed her into the hall and opened the door. An icy draught blew past him.
"Wait a moment," he said. He took an umbrella from the rack, and, raising it, held it over her until she entered the carriage.
"I hope you will not take cold," he said, as he closed the door.
Then he went back into his study and walked the floor until dawn.
One afternoon during the third week in January, Father Algarcife went to the studio of Claude Nevins, and found the artist smoking a moody pipe over a brandy-and-soda. His brush and palette lay upon the floor.
"How are you?" inquired Father Algarcife, with attempted lightness; "and what are you doing?"
Nevins looked up gloomily, blowing a wreath of gray smoke towards the skylight.
"Enjoying life," he responded.
The other laughed.
"It doesn't look exactly like enjoyment," he returned. "From a casual view, I should call it a condition of boredom."
He had aged ten years in the last fortnight, and his eyes had the shifting look of a man who flees an inward fear.
Nevins regarded him unsmilingly.
"Oh, I like it," he answered, lifting his glass. "Come and join me. I tell you I'd rather be drunk to-day than be President to-morrow."
"What's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing. I haven't done a damned stroke for a week; that's all. I am tired of painting people's portraits."
"Nonsense. Ten years ago you went on a spree because there were no portraits to paint."
"Yes," Nevins admitted, "history repeats itself—with variations. The truth is, Anthony, I can't work."
"Can't? Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"I am going to drink about it."
He drained his glass, laid his pipe aside, and rose, running his hand through his hair until it stood on end.
"Don't be an idiot. You gave all that up long ago."
Nevins filled his glass and looked up at the skylight.
he retorted, with a laugh. Then he lowered his voice. "Between you and me," he said, "drinking is not what it is cracked up to be. To save my life, I can't detect a whiff of that old delicious savor of vice. I detect a twinge of gout instead. Coming conditions cast their claws before."
Father Algarcife glanced about the room impatiently.
"Come," he said, "I am hurried. Let's see the portrait."
Nevins tossed a silk scarf from a canvas in the corner, and the other regarded the work for a moment in silence.
"Yes, I like it," he said. "I like it very much indeed."
As he turned away, he stumbled against the easel containing the canvas on which Nevins had been working, and he started and drew back, his face paling. It was the portrait of Mariana, her profile drawn against the purple curtain.
Nevins, following him with his eyes, spoke suddenly.
"That also is good, is it not?" he asked.
Father Algarcife stared above the portrait to the row of death-masks on their ebony frame.
"Yes, that also is good," he repeated.
As he descended the stairs he met Ardly coming up, his eyes bright and his handsome face aglow.
They stopped and shook hands.
"Politics agree with you, I see," said Father Algarcife. "I am glad of it."
Ardly nodded animatedly.
"Yes, yes," he returned, "there is nothing like it, and we are going to give you the best government the city has ever seen. There is no doubt of that."
"All right," and he passed on. When he reached the street he turned westward. It was the brilliant hour of a changeable afternoon, the sunshine slanting across the sidewalks in sharp lights and shadows, and the river wind entering the lungs like the incision of a blade. The people he met wore their collars close about their throats, their faces blue from the cold.
Then, even as he watched the crisp sunshine, a cloud crossed the sky, its shade descending like a gray blotter upon the shivering city.
At first he walked rapidly, but a sudden fatigue seized him, and his pace slackened. He remembered that he had not rested for six hours. In a moment he saw the cross on the steeple of his church emblazoned in fire upon the heavens where the sun had burst forth, and, crossing the street, he pushed the swinging doors and entered softly. It was deserted. With a sensation of relief he passed along the right side aisle, and seated himself within the shadow of the little chapel.
Atmospheric waves of green and gold sifted through the windows and suffused the chancel. Beyond the dusk of the nave he saw the gilded vessels upon the altar and the high crucifix above. A crimson flame was burning in the sanctuary lamp, a symbol of the presence of the sacrament reserved. Above the chancel the figure of the Christ in red and purple was illuminated by the light of the world without.
Suddenly the sound of the organ broke the stillness, and he remembered that it was the day of the choirpractising. The disturbance irritated him. During all the years of his priesthood he had not lost his old aversion to music. Now he felt that he loathed it—as he loathed the lie that he was living.
He raised his eyes to the stained-glass window, where the Christ in his purple robes smiled a changeless smile. A swift desire stung him to see the insipid smile strengthen into a frown—to behold an overthrow of the strained monotony. Change for the sake of change were preferable. Only let the still red flame in the sanctuary-lamp send up one fitful blaze, one shadow darken the gilded serenity of the altar. Would it forever face him with that bland assumption of the permanence of creed—the damnation of doubt? Would time never tarnish the blinding brightness of the brazen cross? He shivered as if from cold.
Then the voices of the choir swelled out in a song of exhortation—the passionate and profound exhortation of the "Elijah." In an instant it filled the church, flooding nave and chancel with its anthem of adoration:
"Lift thine eyes. O, lift thine eyes unto the mountains whence cometh help. Thy help cometh from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He hath said thy foot shall not be moved. Thy Keeper will never slumber."
"Lift thine eyes. O, lift thine eyes unto the mountains whence cometh help. Thy help cometh from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He hath said thy foot shall not be moved. Thy Keeper will never slumber."
Over and over again rang the promise of the prophet:
"Thy Keeper will never slumber—thy Keeper will never slumber."
"Thy Keeper will never slumber—thy Keeper will never slumber."
With the words in his ears he looked at the altar, the white altar-cloth, and the gilded vessels. He saw laid there as a sacrament the bonds of his service. He saw the obligations of a child to the one who had sheltered him, of a boy to the one who had shielded him, of a man to the one who had reachedinto the gutter and lifted him up. He saw the good he had done, the sick he had healed, the filthy he had made clean. He saw the love of his people—rich and poor—the faiths that would be shattered by the unsealing of his lips, the work of regeneration that would crumble to decay. Looking back, he saw the blessings he had left upon his pathway rotting to curses where they had fallen. Against all this he saw the lie.
"Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps."
"Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps."
But was it really a lie? He did not believe? No, but he begrudged no man his belief. He had extinguished the last embers of intolerance in his heart. The good that he had done in the name of a religion had endeared that religion to the mind that rejected it.
He had taken its armor upon him, and he had borne it victoriously. He had worn unsullied the badge of a creed emblazoned upon his breast, not upon his heart. Was not this justification?
Then, with his eyes upon the altar and the crucifix, beneath the changeless smile of the Christ in purple robes, he knew that it was not. He knew that he had sinned the one sin unpardonable in his own eyes; that he had taken the one step from which for him there was no returning—that the sin was insincerity, and the step the one that hid the face of truth.
"He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps. Shouldst thou, walking in grief, languish, He will quicken thee—He will quicken thee."
"He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps. Shouldst thou, walking in grief, languish, He will quicken thee—He will quicken thee."
He rose and left the church.
It was several days after this that, in unfolding the morning paper, his glance was arrested by the announcement,"The Honorable Mrs. Cecil Gore, who has been dangerously ill of pneumonia, is reported to be convalescent."
The paper shook in his hands, and he laid it hastily aside.
He went out and followed his customary duties, but the thought of Mariana's illness furrowed his mind with a slow fear. It seemed to him then that the mere fact of her existence was all he demanded from fate. Not to see her or to touch her, but to know that she filled a corner of space—that she had her part in the common daily life of the world.
It was Saturday, and the sermon for the next day lay upon his desk. He had written it carefully, with a certain interest in the fact that it would lend itself to oratorical effects—an art which still possessed a vague attraction for him. As he folded the manuscript and placed it in the small black case, the text caught his eye, and he repeated it with an enjoyment of the roll of the words. Then he rose and went out.
In the afternoon, as he was coming out of the church after an interview with the sacristan, he caught sight of Ryder's figure crossing towards him from the opposite corner. He had always entertained a distrust of the man, and yet the anxiety upon his ruddy and well-groomed countenance was so real that he felt an instantaneous throb of sympathy.
Ryder, seeing him, stopped and spoke, "We have been looking for you," he said, "but I suppose you are as much occupied as usual."
"Yes—how is Mrs. Ryder?"
"Better, I think—I hope so. She is going to Florida for February and March. Beastly weather, isn't it? Nevins got off a good thing the other day, by the by. Somebody asked him what he thought of the New York climate, and he replied that New York didn't have a climate—it had unassorted samples of weather."
They walked on, talking composedly, with the same anxiety gnawing the hearts of both.
At the corner Ryder hailed the stage and got inside.
"Come to see Mrs. Ryder," were his parting words. "She depends on you."
Father Algarcife kept on his way to Fifty-seventh Street, where he walked several doors west, and stopped before a house with a brown-stone front.
As he laid his hand on the bell he paled slightly, but when the door was opened he regained his composure.
"I wish to ask how Mrs. Gore is to-day?" he said to the maid, giving his card.
She motioned him into the drawing-room and went up-stairs. In a few minutes she returned to say that Mrs. Gore would receive him, if he would walk up.
On the first landing she opened the door of a tiny sitting-room, closing it when he had entered. He took a step forward and paused. Before the burning grate, on a rug of white fur, Mariana was standing, and through the slender figure, in its blue wrapper, he seemed to see the flames of the fire beyond. She had just risen from a couch to one side, and the pillows still showed the impress of her form. An Oriental blanket lay on the floor, where it had fallen when she started at his entrance.
For a moment neither of them spoke. At the sight of her standing there, her thin hands clasped before her, her beauty broken and dimmed, his passion was softened into pity. In her hollow eyes and haggard cheeks he saw the ravage of pain; in the lines upon brow and temples he read the records of years.
Then a sudden tremor shook him. As she rose before him, shorn of her beauty, her scintillant charm extinguished, her ascendency over him was complete. Now that the brilliancy of her flesh had waned, it seemed to him that he saw shining in her faded eyes the clearer light of her spirit. Where another manwould have beheld only a broken and defaced wreckage, he saw the woman who had inspired him with that persistence of passion which feeds upon the shadows as upon the lights, upon the lack as upon the fulfilment.
Mariana came forward and held out her hand.
"It was very kind of you to come," she said.
The rings slipped loosely over her thin fingers. Her touch was very light. He looked at her so fixedly that a pale flush rose to her face.
"You are better?" he asked, constrainedly. "Stronger?"
"Oh yes; I have been out twice—no, three times—in the sunshine."
She seated herself on the couch and motioned him to a chair, but he shook his head and stood looking down at her.
"You must be careful," he said, in the same forced tone. "The weather is uncertain."
"Yes. Dr. Salvers is sending me South."
"And when do you go?"
She turned her eyes away.
"He wishes me to go at once," she said, "but I do not know."
She rose suddenly, her lip quivering.
He drew back and she leaned upon the mantel, looking into the low mirror, which reflected her haggard eyes between two gilded urns.
"I was very ill," she went on. "It has left me so weak, and I—I am looking so badly."
"Mariana!"
She turned towards him, her face white, the lace on her breast fluttering as if from a rising wind.
"Mariana!" he said, again.
He was gazing at her with burning eyes. His hands were clinched at his sides, and the veins on his temples swelled like blue cords.
Then his look met hers and held it, and the desire in their eyes leaped out and closed together, drawing them slowly to each other.
Still they were silent, he standing straight and white in the centre of the room, she shrinking back against the mantel.
Suddenly he reached out.
"Mariana!"
"Anthony!"
She was sobbing upon his breast, his arms about her, her face hidden. The heavy sobs shook her frame like the lashing of a storm, and she braced herself against him to withstand the terrible weeping.
Presently she grew quiet, and he released her. Her face was suffused with a joy that shone through her tears.
"You love me?" she asked.
"I love you."
She smiled.
"I will stay near you," she said. "I will not go South."
For a moment he was silent, and when he spoke his voice rang with determination.
"You will go South," he said, "and I will go with you."
Her eyes shone.
"South? And you with me?"
He smiled into her upturned face.
"Do you think it could be otherwise?" he asked. "Do you think we could be near—and not together?"
"I—I had not thought," she answered.
He held her hands, looking passionately at her fragile fingers.
"You are mine," he said—"mine as you have been no other man's. Nature has joined us together. Who can put us asunder?" Then he held her from him in sudden fear. "But—but can you face poverty again?" he asked.
"What will matter," she replied, "so long as we are together?"
"You will leave all this," he went on. "We will start afresh. We will have a farm in the South. It will be bare and comfortless."
She smiled.
"There will be peach-trees," she said, "all pink in the spring-time, and there will be the sound of cow-bells across green pastures."
"I will turn farmer," he added. "I will wring a living from the soil."
She lifted her glowing eyes.
"And we will begin over again," she said—"begin from the beginning. Oh, my love, kiss me!"
He stooped and kissed her.
When Anthony descended Mariana's brown-stone steps the afterglow had faded from the west, and far down the street the electric lights shone coldly through frosted globes. He walked with a springing step, lifting his head as if impatient of restraint. His future was firm. There was no hesitancy, no possibility of retrenchment. In one breath he had pledged himself to break the bonds that held him, and this vow there was no undoing. He had sealed it with his passion for a woman. Already his mind was straining towards the freedom which he faced. The years of insincerity would fall away, and the lies which he had uttered would shrivel before one fearless blaze of truth. Fate had settled it. He was free, and deception was at an end. He was free!
In the effort to collect his thoughts before going to dinner he crossed to Broadway, walking several blocks amid the Saturday-evening crowd. He regarded the passing faces idly, as he had regarded them for twenty years. They were the same types, the invincible survivals from a wreck of individuals. He saw the dapper young fellow with the bloodless face, pale with the striving to ascend a rung in the social ladder; he saw the heavy features of the common laborer, the keen, quick glance of the mechanic, and the paint upon the haggard cheeks of the actress who was out of an engagement. They passed him rapidly, pallid, nervous, strung to the point of a breaking note, supine to placid pleasures, and alert to the eternal struggle of the race.When he had walked several blocks he turned and went back. The noise irritated him. He winced at the shrill voices and the insistent clanging of cable-car bells. He wanted to be alone—to think.
In the quiet of the side-street his thoughts assumed more definite shape. The mad thrill of impulse gave place to a rational joy. He possessed her, this was sufficient. She was his to be held forever, come what would. His in wealth and in poverty, in sickness and in health. His for better or for worse—eternally his.
He set his teeth sharply at the memory of her tear-wet face. He felt the trembling of her limbs, the burning pressure of her lips. Broken and worn and robbed of youth—was she not trebly to be desired? Was his the frail passion that exacts perfection? He had not loved beauty or youth; he had loved that impalpable something which resists all ravages of decay—which rises triumphant from death.
Yes, trebly to be desired! He remembered her as he had first seen her, lifting her head from her outstretched arms, her eyes scintillant with tears. He recalled the tremulous voice, the plaintive droop of the head. Then the night when he had held her in the shadow of the fire-escape, her loosened hair falling about him, her hands hot in his own. She had said: "I am yours—yours utterly," and the pledge had held. She was his, first and last. What if another man had embraced her body, from the beginning unto the end her heart was locked in his.
All the trivial details of their old life thronged back to him; struggle and poverty, birth and death, and the emptiness of the ensuing years yawned, chasm-like, before his feet. He was like a man suddenly recalled from the dead—a skeleton reclothed in flesh and reattuned to the changes of sensations. Yes, after eight years he was alive once more.
He entered the rectory, and in a few moments wentin to dinner. To his surprise he found that he was hungry, and ate heartily. All instincts, even that for food, had quickened with the rebirth of emotion.
He drank his claret slowly, seeing Mariana seated across from him, and the vision showed her pale and still, as she had come to him the night of the storm, the snow powdering her hair. Then he banished the memory and invoked her image as he had seen her in the afternoon, wan and hollow-eyed, but faintly coloring and tremulous with passion. She would sit opposite him again, but not here.
He had a farm in the South, a valueless piece of land left him by a relative of his mother. It was there that they would go to begin life anew and to mend the faith that had been broken. He would till the land and drive the plough and take up the common round of life again—a life free from action as from failure, into which no changes might ring despair.
He left the table and went into his study, seating himself before the fire. The little dog, with that subtle perception of mental states possessed by animals, pressed his cold nose into the palm of his master's hand, whimpering softly, a wistful look in his warm, brown eyes. Then he lay down, and, resting his head upon his paws, stared into the fire—seeing in the flames his silent visions.
Anthony leaned back upon the cushions, and the face of Mariana looked at him from the vacant chair on the hearth-rug. The reddish shadows from the fire flitted across her features and across the slim, white hand that was half outstretched. He saw the slippered feet upon the rug and a filmy garment in her lap, as the work had fallen from her idle hands.
The maid came in with his coffee and he lighted his pipe. In a moment the bell rang and Ellerslie entered, his face flushed, his hands hanging nervously before him. He sat down in the chair, still warm fromthe vision of Mariana, and Father Algarcife looked at him with a sudden contraction of remorse. For the first time he winced before the glance of another—of a girlish-looking boy with a tremulous voice and an honest heart. He was looking into the fire when Ellerslie spoke.
"I want you to meet my mother," he said. "You know she is coming to town next week. She is very anxious to know you; I have written so often about you."
The other looked up.
"Next week—ah, yes," he responded. He was thinking that by that time he would have passed beyond the praise or blame of Ellerslie and his mother—he would be with Mariana.
The younger man went on, still flushing.
"She often sends you messages which I don't deliver. She has never forgotten that illness you nursed me through five years ago."
Father Algarcife shook his head slightly, his eyes on the flames that played among the coals.
"She must not exaggerate that," he answered.
Ellerslie opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. His shyness had overcome him.
For a time they were silent, and then Father Algarcife looked up.
"John," he said.
"Yes?"
"If—if things should ever occur to—to shake your faith in me, you will always remember that I tried to do my best by the parish—that I tried to serve it as faithfully as Father Speares would have done?"
Ellerslie started.
"Of course," he answered—"of course. But why do you say this? Could anything shake my faith in you? I would take your word against—against the bishop's."
Father Algarcife smiled.
"And against myself?" he asked, but added, "I am grateful, John."
When Ellerslie had gone, a man from the Bowery came in to recount a story of suffering. He had just served a year in jail, and did not want to go back. He preferred to live straight. But it took money to do that. His wife, who made shirts, and belonged to Father Algarcife's mission, had sent him to the priest. As he told his story he squirmed uneasily on the edge of Mariana's chair, twirling his shapeless hat in the hands hanging between his knees. The dog crouched against his master's feet, growling suspiciously.
Father Algarcife rested his head against the cushioned back, and regarded the man absently. He believed the man's tale, and he sympathized with his philosophy. It was preferable to live straight, but it took money to do so. Indeed, the wisest of preachers had once remarked that "money answereth all things." He wondered how nearly the preacher spoke the truth, and if he would have recognized a demonstration of his text in the man before him with the shapeless hat.
Then he asked his caller a few questions, promised to look into his case on Monday, and dismissed him.
Next came Sister Agatha, to bring to his notice the name of a child on East Twentieth Street, whom they wished to receive into the orphanage. He promised to consider this also, and she rose to go, her grave lashes falling reverently before his glance. After she had gone he pushed his chair impatiently aside and went to his desk.
On the lid lay the completed sermon, and he realized suddenly that it must be delivered to-morrow—that he must play his part for a while longer. At the same instant he determined that on Monday he would deed over his property to the church. He would face his future with clean hands. He would start again as penniless as when he received the vestments of religion.Save for the farm in the South and a small sum of rental, he would have nothing. He would be free!
There was no hesitancy, and yet, mixed with the elation, there was pain. Beyond Mariana's eyes, beyond the desire for honest speech, he saw the girlish face of young Ellerslie, and the grave, reverential droop of Sister Agatha's lashes. He saw, following him through all his after-years, the reproach of the people who had believed in him and been betrayed. He saw it, and he accepted it in silence.
Raising his head, he encountered the eyes of the ancestor of Father Speares. For an instant he shivered from a sudden chill, and then met them fearlessly.
Through the long night Mariana lay with her hands clasped upon her breast and her eyes upon the ceiling. The electric light, sifting through the filmy curtains at the windows, cast spectral shadows over the pale-green surface. Sometimes the shadows, tracing the designs on the curtains, wreathed themselves into outlines of large poplar leaves and draped the chandeliers, and again they melted to indistinguishable dusk, leaving a vivid band of light around the cornice.
She did not stir, but she slept little.
In the morning, when Miss Ramsey came to her bedside, there was a flush in her face and she appeared stronger than she had done since her illness.
"Is it clear?" she asked, excitedly. "If it is clear, I must go out. I feel as if I were caged."
Miss Ramsey raised the shades, revealing the murky aspect of a variable day.
"It is not quite clear," she answered. "I don't think you had better venture out. There is a damp wind."
"Very well," responded Mariana. She rose and dressed herself hurriedly; then she sat down with Miss Ramsey to breakfast, but she had little appetite, and soon left the table, to wander about the house with a nervous step.
"I can't settle myself," she said, a little pettishly.
Going up-stairs to her room presently, she threw herself into a chair before the fire, and looked into the long mirror hanging on the opposite wall.
She was possessed with a pulsating memory of the evening before—of Anthony, and of the kiss he had left upon her lips. Then swift darts of fear shot through her that it might all be unreal—that, upon leaving her, he had yielded once more to the sway of his judgment. She did not want judgment, she wanted love.
As she looked at her image in the long mirror, meeting her haggard face and dilated eyes, she grew white with the foreboding of failure. What was there left in her that a man might love? What was she—the wreck of a woman's form—that she could immortalize a man's fugitive desire? Was it love, after all? Was it not pity, passing itself for passion? Her cheeks flamed and her pulses beat feverishly.
She turned from the glass and looked at her walking-gown lying upon the bed.
"I can't wait," she said, breathlessly. "I must see him. He must tell me with his own lips that it is true."
She dressed herself with quivering fingers, stumbling over the buttons of her coat. Then she put on her hat and tied a dark veil over her face.
As she came down-stairs she met Miss Ramsey in the hall.
"Mariana, you are not going out!" she exclaimed.
"Only a little way," said Mariana.
"But it has clouded. It may rain."
"Not before I return. Good-bye."
She opened the hall door. Pausing for an instant upon the threshold, a soft, damp air struck her, and overhead a ray of sunshine pierced the clouds.
She fastened the furs at her throat and descended to the street.
At first she had no definite end in view, but when she had walked a block the idea of seeing Anthony grew stronger, and she turned in the direction of his house. The contact of the moist air invigorated her,and she felt less weak than she had believed herself to be. When she reached the rectory she hesitated a moment with her hand upon the bell, trembling before the thought of seeing him—of hearing him speak. She rang, and the door was opened.
"Can I see Father Algarcife?" she asked.
Agnes eyed her curiously.
"Why, he's at church!" she responded. "He's been gone about a half-hour or so. Is it important?"
"No, no," answered Mariana, her voice recovering. "Don't say I called, please. I'll come again."
"Perhaps you'll step in and rest a bit. You look tired. You can sit in the study if you like."
"Oh no, I will go on. I will go to the church." She started, and then turned back. "I believe I will come in for a few minutes," she said.
She entered the house and passed through the open door into the study. A bright fire was burning, and the dog was lying before it. She seated herself in the easy-chair, resting her head against the cushions. Agnes stood on the rug and looked at her.
"You are the lady that came once in that terrible storm," she said.
"Yes, I am the one."
"Would you like a glass of water—or wine?"
Mariana looked up, in the hope of dismissing her.
"I should like some water, please," she said, and as Agnes went into the dining-room she looked about the luxurious study with passionate eyes.
It was so different from the one at The Gotham, that comfortless square of uncarpeted floor, with the pine book-shelves and the skull and cross-bones above the mantel.
The desk, with its hand-carving of old mahogany, recalled to her the one that he had used when she had first known him, with its green baize cover splotched with ink.
The swing of the rich curtains, the warmth of theTurkish rugs, the portraits in their massive frames, jarred her vibrant emotions. How could he pass from this to the farm in the South—to the old, old fight with poverty and the drama of self-denial? Would she not fail him again, as she had failed him once before? Would she not shatter his happiness in a second chance, as she had shattered it in the first?
The tears sprang to her eyes and scorched her lids. She rose hastily from her chair.
When the servant returned with the glass of water she drank a few swallows. "Thank you," she said, gently. "I will go now. Perhaps I will come again to-morrow."
She passed to the sidewalk and turned in the direction of the church, walking rapidly. She had not thought of his being at church. Indeed, until entering his study she had forgotten the office he held. She had remembered only that he loved her.
As she neared the building an impulse seized her to turn and go back—to wait for him at the rectory. The sound of the intoning of the gospel came to her like a lament. She felt suddenly afraid.
Then several persons brushed her in passing, and she entered the heavy doors, which closed behind her with a dull thud.
After the grayness of the day without, the warmth and color of the interior were as vivid as a revelation. They enveloped her like the perfumed air of a hot-house, heavy with the breath of rare exotics—exotics that had flowered amid the ardent glooms of mediævalism and the colorific visions of cloistered emotions. Entering a pew in the side-aisle, she leaned her head against a stone pillar and closed her eyes in sudden restfulness. That emotional, religious instinct which had always been a part of her artistic temperament was quickened in intensity. She felt a desire to worship—something—anything.
When she raised her lids the colors seemed to have settled into harmonious half-tones. The altar, which had at first showed blurred before her eyes, dawned through the rising clouds of incense. She saw the white of the altar-cloth, and the flaming candles, shivering from a slight draught, and above the crucifix the Christ in his purple robes, smiling his changeless smile.
Within the chancel, through the carving of the rood-screen, she saw the flutter of the white gowns of the choristers, and here and there the fair locks of a child.
Then the priest came to the middle of the altar, his figure softened by circles of incense, the sanctuary lamp burning above his head.
He sang the opening phrase of the Creed, and the choir joined in with a full, reverberating roll of male voices, while the heads of the people bowed.
Mariana did not leave her seat, but sat motionless, leaning against the pillar of stone.
From the first moment that she had seen him, wearing the honors of the creed he served, her heart had contracted with a throb of pain. This was his life, and what was hers? What had she that could recompense him for the sacrifice of the Eucharistic robes and the pride of the Cross?
He came slowly forward to the altar steps, his vestments defined against the carving of the screen, his face white beneath the darkness of his hair.
When the notices of the festivals and fasts were over, he lifted his head almost impatiently as he pronounced the text, his rich voice rolling sonorously through the church: