Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

“ I am positively surprised at you, Nevins."
"On your conscience?" demanded Mariana.
"Haven't any," protested Ardly, indolently. "Left it in Boston. It is indigenous to the soil, and won't bear transplanting."
"Miss Ramsey brought hers with her," replied Mariana, with a smile. "It worries her dreadfully. It is just like a ball on the leg of a convict. She has to drag it wherever she goes, and it makes her awfully tired sometimes."
"A good Bohemian conscience is the only variety worth possessing," observed Mr. Nevins. "It changes color with every change of scene and revolves upon an axis. ”

“ 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." ”

“ From Anthony's caress she turned with a gesture of annoyance, and, in a vague association of ideas, she wondered if a man who had climbed from hell to heaven would be gratified by a draught of milk-and-water. She seemed to stand aloof and far off upon some ice-crowned summit, where the air was too rarefied to support the growth of human passions. She felt that she had become a pure intelligence, and that the appeal of her flesh no longer retarded her ascent. The elemental values of life were obscured by the shadows of indifference. ”

“ For the furnace through which she had passed, in robbing her of freshness and bloom, had been unable to destroy her vague and ineffable charm.
"She is a woman ruined," he said, bitterly, and he said it with a dull aching in his heart. To him Mariana, emaciated and unresponsive, was still the Mariana to be possessed and held with burning desire. The small clashes of temper, the long silences, the apparent indifference, had been powerless to weaken the force of his love. It was still indomitable.
One night, upon going to his room, he found her in her night-gown kneeling on the hearth-rug. ”

“ 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 aspired to be good almost as much as she had once aspired to be famous, and set about it with quite as unprincipled an abandon. But her ambition for holiness was ill-timed. An excess of virtue is often as disastrous a form of dissipation as an excess of vice, and the wreck of one's neighbor's peace of mind no less to be deplored than the wreck of one's own physique. For a fool may jog shoulder to shoulder with a comfortable sinner, but it takes a philosopher to support the presence of an unmitigated saint.
So it was as well that Mariana's aspirations were short-lived. ”

“ When Mariana had gone to him, an emotional and aspiring soprano of nineteen, he had listened to her quietly and advised patience.
"You must wait," he said. "All art is waiting."
"I will not wait," said Mariana. "Waiting is starvation."
He looked at her critically.
"More of us starve than the world suspects," he answered. "It is the privilege of genius. This is a planet, my dear child, where mediocrity is exalted and genius brought low. It is a living fulfilment of the scriptural prophecy, 'The first shall be last and the last shall be first.'" Then he added: "Sing again." ”

“ Several hours later Mariana was wandering along a cross-street near Ninth Avenue. Rain was falling, descending in level sheets from the gray sky to the stone pavement, where it lay in still pools. A fog had rolled up over the city. She had walked unthinkingly, spurred at first by the impulse to collect her thoughts and later by the thoughts themselves. It was all over; this was what she saw clearly—the finality of all things. What was she that she should think herself strong enough to contend with a man's creed?—faith?—God? ”

“ Ryder's superb shoulders at the stage and the glittering foot-lights, he felt a quick impulse to rush away from it all. He hated the noise and the heat and the glare. The heavy atmosphere seemed oppressive and unnatural, and the women, sparkling brilliantly in the tiers of boxes, looked like beautiful exotics, fragrant with the perishable bloom of a hot-house. It was with a sensation of relief that he recalled the dull mission in the slums, where he had spent the morning.
On the stage, Elsa had cast herself into the arms of Lohengrin, and the voice of love dominant was translated into song. ”

“ Again, as Mariana sat in the lamplight, her swift fingers busy with some useless bit of millinery, he would regard her with a sudden tightening of his pulses, and a thrill of fear at the prospect of a coming separation. The droop of her head, the contour of her face where the bone of her chin was accentuated by thinness, the soft line of throat above the full collar, the nimbus of hair shining in the light, the fall of her skirt, the slender slippered feet, aroused in him a tumultuous sense of possession. ”

“ Mariana accepted his explanation and went complacently on her way, as enigmatical as a Chinese puzzle. She was full of swift surprises and tremulous changes, varying color with her environment; gay one moment, and sad before the gayety had left her lips—cruel and calm, passionate and tender—always and ever herself.
Twice a week she went to Signor Morani's for a vocal lesson. Signor Morani was small and romantic and severe. In his youth he had travelled as Jenny Lind's barytone, and he had fallen a slave to her voice. He had worshipped a voice as other men worship a woman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mariana was too exhausted to protest, and allowed herself to be lulled to sleep like a child.
For several weeks after this she was nervous and unstrung. She grew hollow-eyed, the shadows deepened, and her sunniness of temper gave place to an unaccustomed melancholy. She had learned that a new life was quickening within her, and she experienced a blind and passionate fear of inevitable agony. She feared herself, she feared suffering, and she feared the fate of the unborn life. One evening she threw herself into Anthony's arms. "It is the inevitableness," she said. ”

“ It was at such a moment that Mariana had looked up and spoken, the bright inflection of her voice aggravating the interruption.
"Anthony!"
Algarcife turned towards her, his pen raised as if in self-defence.
"When did you begin to love me?"
The pen was lowered, Algarcife smiled. "In the beginning," he answered; then he frowned, his tone grew captious. "I can't, Mariana," he protested—"I really can't. I must get this work over."
"You are always working."
"Heaven knows, I am! If I weren't, we would starve."
"It is horrible to be poor."
"We don't improve matters by exclaiming over them. ”

“ Where another man would 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." ”

“ Situated as he was above it all, humanity assumed to his indifferent eyes a comic effect, and he found himself laughing cynically at the moving figures that blocked the sidewalk below. A physical disgust for the naked facts of life attacked him like nausea. The struggle for existence, the propagation of the species, the interminable circle of birth, marriage, and death, appeared to him in revolting bestiality. In his bodily and mental wreckage, all action became repellent and hideous, and the slanting sun-rays bespattering the human atoms in the street produced a giddiness in his brain. ”

“ Father Speares sighed and passed his hand across his brow.
"It is not the first disappointment of my life," he said, "but it is the greatest."
Algarcife was looking through the open window to the sunlight falling upon the waving grass. A large butterfly, with black and yellow wings, was dancing above a clump of dandelions.
"I am sorry," he said, more gently—"sorry for that—but it can't be helped. I am not a theologian, but a scientist; I am not a believer, but an agnostic; I am not a priest, but a man." ”

“ A night-lamp was burning in one corner, and on the hearth-rug a tub was prepared for the morning bath. On a chair, a little to one side, lay a pile of filmy, lace-trimmed linen.
In a small brass bedstead in the centre of the room a child of two or three years was sleeping, its soft hair falling upon the embroidered pillow. A warm, rosy flush was on its face, and the dimpled hands lay palms upward on the blanket.
Like a mounting flame the passion of motherhood illuminated the woman's face. She leaned over and kissed one of the pink hands. ”

“ Mariana laughed merrily. The effects of recent tears were visible only in the added lustre of her glance and the pallor of her face. She had grown suddenly mirthful.
"Don't let's be civilized!" she pleaded. "I abhor civilization. It invented so many unnecessary evils. Barbarians didn't want napkins; they wanted only food. I am a barbarian."
Algarcife cut the cold chicken and passed her the bread and butter.
"Why, none of us are really civilized, you know," he returned, dogmatically. "True, we have a thin layer of hypocrisy, which we call civilization. ”

“ Nevins took her hands in his and held them while he looked at her. She was older and graver and changed in some vital way, as if the years or sorrow had mellowed the temperament of her youth. There was a deeper thrill to her voice, a softer light in her eyes, and a gentler curve to her mouth, and over all, in voice and eyes and mouth, there was the shadow of discontent.
She wore a coat of green velvet, with ruffles of white showing at the loosened front, where a bunch of violets was knotted, and over the brim of her hat a plume fell against the aureole of her hair. ”

“ 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: "Tell me that I shall see her! Tell me that God is just!" The eternal cry of stricken motherhood. ”

“ For an instant she hesitated, looking across the tenement roofs to the horizon beyond. Then she went on: "I am different from you—oh, so different! Where you think, I feel. You are all mind, I am all senses. I am only fulfilling my place in nature when I am hearing or seeing or feeling beautiful things. My sense of beauty is my soul."
Anthony watched her with steadfast intentness. He had never before seen her in this mood, and it was a new surprise to him. His former generalizations were displaced.
But if he had known it, the present aspect was a result of his own influence upon Mariana. ”

“ Father Algarcife, looking at the box across from him, saw Mariana start suddenly and rise with an impulsive welcome as Mrs. Ryder entered. He could see the light on her face, and the frank pleasure of her greeting. Then, as the two women stood together, he saw Ryder glance from one to the other with his pleasant smile and turn to speak to Miss Ramsey. He heard Nevins breathing behind him, and he was conscious of a strange feeling of irritation against him. Why should he, who was at enmity with no man, cherish that curious dislike for one who was his friend? ”

“ The girl leaned her arm upon the railing and rested her chin in her hand. She looked up at him and her eyes grew darker. "It is the pure animal love of existence," she answered. "I love the world. I love living and breathing, and feeling the blood quicken in my veins. I love dancing and singing and eating and sleeping. The simple sensuousness of life is delicious to me. If I could not be a queen, I had rather be a beggar upon the road-side than to be nothing. If I could not be a human being, I had rather be a butterfly in the sunshine than not to be at all. ”

“ 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 glass. "Do you remember how you straightened it in the poster?" ”

“ At that moment she felt capable of complete self-abnegation in the cause of mankind, and even commonplace goodness possessed an attraction. But she realized that the desire to sacrifice is short-lived, and that, after all, it is easier to lay down one's life for the human race than to endure the idiosyncrasies of its atoms.
To us who adopt the proprieties as a profession and wear respectability for a mantle, unauthorized impulses in any form are to be contemned, and Mariana, flushed with generous desires, was as unacceptable as Mariana submerged in self. ”