Mariana's restlessness did not pass with the passing 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 pronounced, 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 sunshine, 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 passed from him and was straining towards the outside world would veil his mental suffering in an assumption 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, entitled, "La Sorcière."
"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 refreshing—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.
Mariana replied tartly.
"I am sure I don't see how my objection to living upon fried cabbage could reflect upon you. I did not know you cared for it."
"You know I do not. But I don't see why you should make a fuss about a wholesome article of food."
"It is not wholesome. It is exceedingly indigestible."
"At any rate, it belongs to your neighbors. You aren't forced to eat it."
"No, but you implied that the time would come when I'd be glad to. I merely said it never would."
"Then let the cabbage be damned," said Algarcife.
"Gladly," responded Mariana, and they said no more.
Algarcife selected a manuscript from his desk and went out. He felt as if his nerves had quickened into ramifying wires through which a current of electricity was passing. He was not angry with Mariana. He was angry with no one, but he was racked by the agony of diseased sensibilities, and, though rationally he endeavored to be sympathetic in his bearing to his wife, his rational nature seemed ploughed by the press of his nerves, and for the first time in his life he found self-restraint beyond his grasp.
As he ascended the steps of the newspaper office where he was to leave the manuscript, he ran against a man whom he knew and who stared at him in astonishment.
"My God, Algarcife, you are a ghost! What have you been doing?"
"Wrestling with Providence," returned Algarcife, shortly. "Hardly a becoming job."
"Well, take my advice and leave off at the first round. If you don't mind the comparison, you bear a close resemblance to that Egyptian mummy in the museum."
"No doubt. But that Egyptian has a damned sight the best of it. He lived three thousand years ago."
And he passed on.
It was several nights after this that he started from a heavy sleep to find that Mariana had left his side. Rising upon his elbow, he glanced about the room, and saw her white-robed form revealed in nebulous indistinctness against the open window. Her head was resting upon her clasped hands and she was looking out into the night.
"Mariana," he said.
Her voice came with a muffled sound from the obscurity.
"Yes."
"What are you doing?"
The white figure stirred slightly.
"Thinking," she answered.
"Don't think. It is a confounded mistake. Go to sleep."
"I can't sleep. It is so hot."
"Lie down and I will fan you."
"No."
Algarcife turned over wearily, and for a time there was silence.
Suddenly Mariana spoke, her voice wavering a little.
"Anthony—are you asleep?"
"No."
Again she was silent, and again her voice wavered as it rose.
"I have been thinking about—about how poor we are. Will it ever be better?"
"I cannot say. Don't think of it?"
"But I must think of it. I am trying to find a way out of it. Is there any way?"
"None that I know of."
Mariana half rose and sat down again.
"There is one," she said, "and I—"
"What do you mean?" Algarcife demanded, starting up.
Her voice came slowly.
"I mean that I am—that it is better—that I am—going away."
For a moment the stillness seemed tangible in its oppressiveness. Mariana's head had fallen upon her hands, and as she stared at the electric light on the opposite corner she heard Anthony's heavy breathing. A moth circled about the ball of light, showing to her fixed gaze like some black spirit of evil hovering above a planet.
Algarcife's tones fell cold and constrained.
"To leave me, you mean?"
"It is the only way."
"Where will you go?"
Something that was not grief and yet akin to it choked Mariana as she answered.
"I have an offer. The one that—that I told you of. It is an excellent opening—so Morani says. The company goes abroad—next week. And I know the part."
"And you wish to go?" His voice hurt her with its absence of color.
She lifted her hands and let them fall in her lap. Her gaze left the electric light, where the moth was still revolving in its little orbit.
"It is not choice," she replied; "it is necessity. What else is there to do—except starve? Can we go on living like this day after day, you killing yourself with work, I a drag? It is better that I should go—better for us both."
He hesitated a moment as if in thought, and when he spoke it was with judicial calm.
"And would you have gone—a year ago?"
She was silent so long that he would have repeated the question, but at his first word the answer came with a wave of self-abasement.
"I—I suppose not."
And that was all.
During the next few days the subject of Mariana's decision was not mentioned. Both felt a constraint in alluding to it, and yet both felt the inevitableness of the final hour. Anthony's pride had long since sealed his lips over the expressions of an unwished-for affection, and Mariana had grown chary of words.
But both went quietly along their daily lives, Anthony working at his desk while Mariana gathered together her shabby garments and made ready for the moment which by word and look they both ignored.
Then at last, when the night before her going came, Mariana spoke. They had just risen from the supper-table and the slipshod maid of work had carried off the unemptied tray. Mariana had eaten nothing. Her face was flushed, and she was moving excitedly about the room.
"I go to-morrow," she began, feverishly.
Algarcife looked up from a book through which he was searching for a date.
"So you have decided?" His lips twitched slightly and the veins upon his forehead contracted.
Mariana shook out a night-gown which she had taken from a drawer, folded it carefully, and laid it in the trunk.
"There is nothing else to do," she replied, mechanically, as if she were fencing with fate from a corner into which she had been driven.
Algarcife closed the book and rose to his feet. He pressed his hand upon his eyes to screen them from the glare of light. Then he moistened his lips before speaking.
"Do you realize what it means?" he asked.
Mariana lowered her head into the trunk and her voice sounded from among the clothes.
"There is nothing else to do," she repeated, as mechanically as before.
"I hope that it will be for your happiness," said Algarcife, and turned away. Then he went towards her in sudden determination.
"Is there anything that I can help you about?"
Mariana stood up and shook her head. "I think not," she answered. "Signor Morani calls for me to-morrow at six."
Algarcife sat down, but the old sensation of dizziness came upon him and he closed his eyes.
"Have you a headache?" asked Mariana. "The tea was very bad. Shall I make you a cup?"
He shook his head and opened a book, but she crossed to his side and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
"It may not be for long," she said. "If I am successful—"
He flinched from her touch and shook her hand off almost fiercely. His eyes were bloodshot and his lips white.
"The room is so warm," he said, "it makes me dizzy. I'll go out."
And he went down-stairs.
Mariana stood where he had left her and looked down upon the pile of unpacked garments. A tear glistened upon her lashes, but it was a tear of impersonal sorrow and regret. For herself she was conscious only of a dulness of sensation, as if her usually vital emotions had been blunted and rendered ineffectual. In a mute way, as she stood there, she realized an almost tragic pity, but it was purely mental, and she recalled calmly the fact that a separation, which six months ago would have seared her soul with agony, she was now accepting with a feeling that was one of relief. The stress of accumulated griefs and anxieties had crushed her impressionable nature past all resemblance to its former responsiveness. Yet it is possible that even then, had Anthony returned to overpower her with his appeal, she would have wavered in her decision, but the wavering would have been the result of a fight between the instincts which were virile and the memory of the instincts which were buried with her buried passions, and it is doubtful where the victory would have rested. Her impulse for flight was as keen as the impulse which causes a bird to beat its breast against the bars that hold it. She wanted to flee from the sorrow she had known and all its associations; she wanted to flee from poverty and ugliness to beauty and bright colors. The artistic genius of her nature was calling, calling, and she thrilled into an answering echo.
But, for all that, a tear glistened upon her lashes as she looked down upon the unpacked clothes.
"O God! if you would only make a miracle!" she said—"if you only would!"
Her glance fell upon the desk where Anthony's work was lying. She saw the freshly written page upon which the ink was not dry. She lifted the pen in her fingers and felt the thick cork handle which was stained and indented by constant use. She sighed and turned slowly away.
The next afternoon, in hat and veil, with a small black satchel in her hand, she stood waiting for Signor Morani. Her trunk had already been carried down, and the carriage was turning the corner. She spoke lightly, dreading silence and dreading an accent of seriousness. "It is cooler," she said. "I hope a change is coming."
Then, as the carriage stopped beside the pavement below, she held out her hands. They shook slightly.
"Good-bye," she said.
"I hope you will be happy."
"And you. It will be easier for you."
"Good-bye."
She raised her veil, her eyes shining.
"Kiss me."
He kissed her, but his lips were cold, and there was no pressure upon hers.
She lowered her veil and went out. Algarcife stood at the window and heard her footsteps as she descended the stairs. He saw her leave the house, pause for an instant to greet Signor Morani, give the black bag into his hands, and enter the carriage. As she sat down, she leaned out for an instant and glanced up to where he stood. Then the carriage started, turned the corner, and was gone.
Still he did not leave the window. He stood motionless, his head bent, looking down into the heated streets, across which were stretching the slanting shadows from the west. A splash of scarlet, like the impress of a bloody hand, projected above the jagged line of tenement roofs, while a film of rising smoke obscured its lurid distinctness. He felt that complete sense of isolation, that loss of connection with the chain of humanity which follows a separation from one who has shared with us, night and day, the commonplaces of existence. The past and future seemed to have clashed together and shattered into the present.
In the street below men and women were going homeward from the day's work. He noticed that they wore, one and all, an aspect of despair, as if passing automatically along the endless round of a treadmill. He felt a vague wonder at the old, indomitable instinct of the preservation of self which seemed so alien to his mood. 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. At that moment he was in the throes of a mental revolution, and his old philosophic sanity was ingulfed.
He remembered suddenly that he had eaten nothing all day, and, turning from the window, drank a cup of tea which had been left upon the table. The continual use of stimulants, in exciting his nervous system, had made sleep impossible, and he felt as if a furnace blazed behind his eyeballs. He sat down, staring blankly at the opposite wall. In the corner, upon a heap of books, the skull and cross-bones had been thrown, and they caught his glance and held it with a curious fascination. They seemed to typify his own life, those remnants of dry bones that had once supported flesh and blood. He regarded himself impersonally, as he might once have regarded a body for dissection. He saw that he had passed the zenith of his physical and mental power, and that from this day forth it would mean to him retrogression or stagnation. He saw that the press of untoward circumstances had forced his intellect from its natural orbit into a common rut from which there was no side-track of escape. He weighed his labors, his knowledge, his impassioned aims for truth, and, in the balance with a handful of dust, he found them wanting. He stirred the ashes heaped where once had been a vital passion, and he found a wasted skeleton and dry bones. He looked at his thin and pallid hand, and it seemed to him as incapable of work as the hand of one palsied.
Before his tragic eyes, the years of his past stood marshalled, and, one and all, they bore the badge of failure.
As he rose from his chair in sudden desperation, the recurring faintness seized him and he steadied himself against the open drawer of the bureau. Looking into it as he turned away, he saw some loose articles which Mariana had forgotten—a bit of veiling, a single stocking, and a tiny, half-worn sock of pink worsted. He closed the drawer and turned hastily away.
Then he sat down beside his desk and bowed his head into his hands.