Mariana

“ Mariana no sooner knew him than she loved, and her love, lovely as she was, soon excited his. But, oh! it is a curse to woman to love first, or most. In so doing she reverses the natural relations, and her heart can never, never be satisfied with what ensues.
Mariana loved first, and loved most, for she had most force and variety to love with. Sylvain seemed, at first, to take her to himself, as the deep southern night might some fair star. ”

“ In Mariana, expanded from a hint of the forsaken maid in Shakspere's Measure for Measure, "Mariana at the moated grange," the poet showed an art then peculiar, but since grown familiar, of heightening the central feeling by landscape accessories. The level waste, the stagnant sluices, the neglected garden, the wind in the single poplar, re-enforce, by their monotonous sympathy, the loneliness, the hopeless waiting and weariness of life in the one human figure of the poem. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ But Mariana shook her head.
“I heard from the Master you had gained strength from weakness; and I heard from Everard you had jewels of your own that you have worn to counteract the fatal charm of these.”
“Not of my own, Mariana; they were of God.” “Ah, God! I had forgotten Him. The dream has passed so long ago.”
“God is no dream, but a living reality, Mariana.”
“I was once bitten by a snake, and here they call the Serpent God. I love not such an image, but live in the never-ending twilight. I think it is the shadowed light the idol throws, placing itself betwixt the world and God.” ”

“ You never had a better opportunity. If you don’t catch your butterfly this time, you never will. This is your home, you know, and you know too that I shall treat you with no ceremony. You can go about your butterflies, and I shall go about my fairies, and if I seem to neglect you, Mariana will make up for me.”
Mariana entered at that moment, and stood by her father. When Laleham had last seen her hers were still those reluctant feet of maidenhood of which the great poet has sung. Now she was a woman; a very young woman, it is true, but a woman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Mariana sighed. "You are as depressing as Mr. Paul," she complained.
"I only speak of what I know," explained Ardly, complacently. "Upon other matters I have no opinions, and I calmly repeat that I have found appetite and gratification to be situated upon opposite sides of a revolving globe. When one's up the other's down."
"I shall cut a passage through," said Mariana. "If life doesn't equalize things, I will." ”

“ The priest of the coming generation is the pariah of the present, and the dogma of to-morrow the heresy of to-day.
To Mariana's ignorant eyes Anthony seemed one in whom passion had been annihilated. In reality it was only smothered beneath the weight of a strenuous will. Let the pressure be removed, and it would burst forth the fiercer for its long confinement, ingulfing perhaps the whole organism in its destructive flame.
"Oh, hush!" Mariana had said, and turned from him. "You seem to delight in unpleasant things. I make it a point to believe that suffering and death do not exist. ”

“ She walked fast, because it seemed to her she could not possibly bear to meet a neighbor. Even through the dusk her tell-tale basket would be visible, the dishes in it clinking to the tune that Mariana was no sort of a woman to marry. ”

“ She looked shy and girlish, and the flutter with which she greeted him had a quaint suggestion of flattery.
He came towards her, and they stood together beside the railing. Beneath them the noise of trade and traffic went on tumultuously. Overhead the sky was of a still, intense blueness, the horizon flecked by several church-spires, which rose sharply against the burning remoteness. Across the tenement roofs lines of drying garments fluttered like banners.
Mariana, in her cotton gown of dull blue, cast a slender shadow across the fire-escape. ”

“ MARIANA. Borne to mishap, my self am only she On whom the Sun of Fortune never shined: But Planets ruled by retrogard aspect Foretold mine ill in my nativity. LUBECK. Sweet Lady, cease, let my intreaty serve To pacify the passion of thy grief, Which, well I know, proceeds of ardent love. MARIANA. But Lubeck now regards not Mariana. LUBECK. Even as my life, so love I Mariana. MARIANA. Why do you post me to another then? LUBECK. He is my friend, and I do love the man. MARIANA. Then will Duke William rob me of my Love? LUBECK. No, as his life Mariana he doth love. ”

“ If we knew ourselves we would see that things are not very much our fault, after all, and that a few slips the more or less on our uphill road are very little matter."
Mariana glowed suddenly. She looked up at him, a woman's regard for power warming her eyes. To her impressionable temperament there seemed an element of sublimity in his ethical composure.
"Teach me," she said, simply. Anthony smiled. If he seemed a Stoic to Mariana, it was not because he was one, and perhaps he was conscious of it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gillies was fairly trembling with agitation. "Nobody cares here whether you live or die! But I suppose you hardly looked at those girls yourself, Mariana. You have such a strange manner sometimes... If you would only wear your hair a little looser; but you won't even put on your pink hat."
"Oh, Mother!" flared Mariana. Then her tone changed. "Here, for goodness' sake, don't get so excited; you'll be sick again. Now smile at me! ... Mother, you're a perfect infant about some things—it's time you grew up! Why should anybody think of us? They're occupied with far more important things." ”

“ Perhaps no landscape says so little and is yet so richly eloquent as the elegiac landscape of a fen country. How beyond all speech is its silence, how beyond the shallow, spectacular changes of showier natural effects is its solemn art of imperturbability! Mariana was strangely silent—but, indeed, not speechless. The lesson of the nature about her seemed to have entered into her whole being, the lesson that such silence must only be broken by very significant, very beautiful words—as though silence were an exquisite, unsullied sky, only now and again to be interrupted by stars. ”

“ All his old wounds had been torn up afresh, and the sentiment that Mariana was not wholly unworthy of his love had again been brought to life. The interest the old man had shown about her fate, the praises he gave her against his will, displayed her again in all her attractiveness. ”

“ 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." ”

“ She slipped through the kitchen into the pantry and put her basket softly down, lest he should hear that shameful clink. Even Cap'n Hanscom could not be allowed, she thought, to know she had been carrying pies to a man who would not marry her because she was not the kind of woman to marry. When she came back, [129] bearing the shining lamp, the cap'n looked at her in a frank approval.
Mariana was a round, pleasant body with pink cheeks, kindly eyes, and, bearing witness to her character, a determined mouth; but now she seemed to be enveloped by some transforming aura. ”

“ Mariana, on the contrary, drew back: she repelled the half-opened confidence of him she loved, and sought to conceal her approving feelings by apparent indifference. But I have understood thee! What a miserable creature must I be, if I did not by these tokens recognize the pure and generous love that cares not for itself, but for its object! Confide in me, and fear nothing. We belong to one another; and neither of us leaves aught or forsakes aught, if we live for one another. ”

“ Several months later, meeting Algarcife on Broadway, he repeated the words.
"I am happy," returned Algarcife, emphatically. "Mariana is an angel."
"I am glad to hear it," said Father Speares, and he sighed irrelevantly. "A good woman is a jewel of rare value."
The term "good woman," applied to Mariana, gave Anthony a sense of unfitness. Mariana was certainly a jewel, but, somehow, it had never occurred to him to look upon her as a "good woman." ”

“ Her auburn hair, touched with gray, had blown about her head in an unusual abandon, her cheeks were flaming, and her eyes had pin-points of light. She set the lamp down on the table with a steady hand and drew the shades. Then she became aware that the cap'n was looking at her. He had a fatherly gaze for everybody, the index of his extreme kindliness, but it had apparently been startled into some keener interest.
"Well," said Mariana, and found that she was speaking irritably. "What's the matter? You look as if you never see anybody before." ”

“ But Mariana, in the selfishness of loss, would glance at him with reproachful eyes, and turn to stroke the rubber doll in its bright-hued dress, and the half-worn socks with the impress of restless feet. ”

“ Mariana pushed her off, exclaiming, "Not so fast! I expect a visit to-night."
"Visit!" rejoined Barbara: "you surely do not look for Meister, the young, soft-hearted, callow merchant's son?"
"Just for him," replied Mariana.
"Generosity appears to be growing your ruling passion," said the old woman with a grin: "you connect yourself with minors and moneyless [17] people, as if they were the chosen of the earth. Doubtless it is charming to be worshipped as a benefactress."
"Jeer as thou pleasest. I love him! I love him! With what rapture do I now, for the first time, speak the word! ”

“ Mariana chose her way back along the muddy road, choking a temptation to turn the corner to her own little house, build a fire there, and let single men fight the domestic battle for themselves. But that night when the spring wind was still moving and she stood on Cap'n Hanscom's doorstone and looked at the dark lilac buds at her hand, the tears came, and the cap'n, bearing in his last armful of wood for the night, saw them and was undone. ”

“ Mariana was sitting as usual, her hair loose, her dress the same robe they had put on her at first, her eyes fixed vacantly upon the whited-wall. To the proffers and entreaties of her nurse, she made no reply.
‘The lady burst into tears, but Mariana did not seem even to observe it.
‘The lady then said, “O, my child, do not despair; do not think that one great fault can mar a whole life! Let me trust you; let me tell you the griefs of my sad life. I will tell you, Mariana, what I never expected to impart to any one.” ”