Phases of an Inferior Planet

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 the Turkish 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:

"For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?"

And he spoke slowly, telling the people before him in new phrases the eternal truth – that it is good for a man to do right, and to leave happiness to take care of itself – the one great creed to which all religions and all nations have bowed. He spoke the rich phrases in his full, beautiful voice – spoke as he had spoken a hundred times to these same people – to all, save one.

She stirred slightly. It seemed to her that a wind blew from the altar where the candles fluttered, chilling her flesh. She shivered beneath the still smile of the painted Christ.

The stone pillar pressed into her temple, and she closed her eyes. Her head ached in dull, startled throbs.

As she listened, she knew that the final blow had fallen – that it is not given one to begin over again for a single day; that of all things under the sun, the past is the one thing irremediable.

The sermon was soon over. He returned to the altar, and the offertory anthem filled the church. Pressed against the pillar, she raised her hand to her ear, but the repetition was driven in dull strokes to her brain:

"Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps."

CHAPTER XV

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? She might arouse his passion and fire his blood, but when the passion and the fire burned out, what remained? In the eight years since she had left him a new growth had sprung up in his heart – a growth stronger than the growth of love.

The memory of him defined against the carving of the screen, the altar shining beyond, his vestments gilded by the light, his white face lifted to the cross, arose from the ground at her feet and confronted her through the falling rain. Yes, he had gone back to his God. And it seemed to her that she saw the same smile upon his face that she had seen upon the face of the painted Christ, whose purple robes tinted the daylight as it fell upon the chancel.

As she reached Ninth Avenue, an elevated train passed with its reverberating rumble, and the reflection of its lights ran in a lurid flame along the wet sidewalk. Clouds of smoke from the engine were blown westward, scudding like a flock of startled swans into the river. Straight ahead the street was lost in grayness and the lamps came slowly out of the fog. A wagon-load of calves was driven past her on the way to slaughter, and the piteous bleating was borne backward on the wind. Suddenly her knees trembled, and she leaned against a railing.

A man passed and spoke to her, and she turned to retrace her steps. From the wet sidewalk the standing water oozed up through her thin soles and soaked her feet. A pain struck her in the side – sharp and cold, like the blow of a knife. In sudden terror she started and looked about her.

A cab was passing; she hailed it, but it was engaged, and drove on.

She leaned against the railing of a house, and, looking up, saw the cheerful lights in the windows. The idea of warmth invigorated her, and she moved on to the next, then to the next. At each step her knees trembled and she hesitated, fearing to fall and lie dead upon the cold sidewalk. The horror of death gave her strength. Beyond the desires of warmth and light and rest, she was unconscious of all sensation.

Then the pain in her side seized her again, and the shrinking of her limbs caused her to pause for a longer space. The monotonous cross-town blocks sloped upward in a black incline before her, seeming to rise perpendicularly from before her feet to a height in the foggy perspective. She clung to the railing and moaned softly. A woman, passing with a bundle on her arm, stared at her, hesitated an instant, and went on.

At Broadway the lights of the moving cars interchanged like the colors of a kaleidoscope, swimming amid the falling rain before her eyes.

At Sixth Avenue she steadied herself with sudden resolve, beginning that last long block with a kind of delirious joy. To stimulate her faltering feet she glanced back over the terrible distance that she had come, and she found that the black incline of blocks now sloped in the opposite direction. She seemed to have descended a hillside of slate. Good God! How had she lived? Her own door came at last, and she crawled up the slippery steps, steadying herself against the stone balustrade. The door was unlatched. She opened it and went inside. At the first suffusion of warmth and rest her waning thoughts flickered into life.

Then she raised her eyes and uttered a shriek of joy.

"Anthony!"

He was standing on the threshold of the drawing-room, and, as she cried out, he caught her in his arms.

"My beloved, what is it? What does it mean?"

But as he held her he felt the wet of her clothing, and he lifted her and carried her to the fire.

"Mariana, what does it mean?"

He was kneeling beside her, unfastening her shoes with nervous fingers. She opened her eyes and looked at him.

"I went out in the rain," she said. "I don't know why; I have forgotten. I believe I thought it was all a mistake. The blocks were very long." Then she clung to him, sobbing.

"Don't let me die!" she cried – "don't let me die!"

He raised her in his arms, and, crossing to the bell, rang it hastily. Then he went into the hall and up-stairs. On the landing he met the maid.

"Where is Mrs. Gore's room?" he asked, and, entering, laid her upon the hearth-rug. "She is ill," he went on. "She must be got to bed and warmed. Put mustard-plasters to her chest and rub her feet. I will get the doctor."

He left the room, and Miss Ramsey came in, her eyes red and her small hands trembling.

They took off her wet things, while she lay faint and still, a tinge of blueness rising to her face and to her fallen eyelids.

Suddenly she spoke.

"Give me the medicine on the mantel," she said – "quick!"

It was tincture of digitalis. Miss Ramsey measured out the drops and gave them to her. After she had swallowed them the color in her face became more natural and her breathing less labored. Miss Ramsey was applying a mustard-plaster to her chest, while the maid rubbed her cold, white feet, which lay like plaster casts in the large, red hands.