Part 4 (1/2)

At The Gotham, her bare little chamber, with its garish wall-paper, was a source of acute discomfort to her. Once, after a long spell of pneumonia, she had fallen into a fit of desperation, and had attacked the paper with a breakfast-knife. The result was a square of whitewashed wall above the bureau. An atmosphere of harmony was so necessary to her growth that she seemed to droop and pine in uncongenial environment. In the apartment-house, with its close, unventilated halls, its creaking elevator, its wretchedly served dinners, she had always felt strangely ill at ease. Her last prayer at night was that the morrow might see her transplanted to richer soil, her first thought upon awakening was that the coming day was pregnant with possibilities. Life in its entirety, life with pa.s.sionate color and emotional fulfilment, was the food she craved.

Of Mariana, Mr. Ardly had made a laborious and profound a.n.a.lysis.

”That young person is a self-igniting taper,” he had concluded. ”If some one doesn't apply the match, she will go off of her own accord--and she will burn herself out before time has cast a wet blanket upon her.”

He himself was a self-contained young fellow, who, like a greater before him, followed with wisdom both wine and women. His life was regulated by a theory which he had propounded in youth and attempted to practice in maturer years. The theory a.s.serted that experience was the one reliable test of existing conditions. ”I refused to believe that alcohol was an intoxicant,” he had once said, ”until I tested it.”

When Mariana first arrived, he surprised in his heart an embryonic sentiment concerning her, and proceeded to crush it as coolly as he would have crushed a fly that encroached upon the private domain of his person.

”I have no dissipations,” he explained, when discussing the affair with Mariana. ”I neither drink nor love.”

”Which is unwise,” retorted Mariana. ”I do both in moderation. And a man who has never been in love is always a great school-boy. I should be continually expecting him to tread upon my gown or to break my fan.

Sentiment is the greatest civilizer of the race. If I were you I would begin immediately.”

”I dislike all effort,” returned Ardly, gravely, ”and love is cloying.

Over-loving produces mental indigestion, as over-eating produces physical. I have suffered from it, and experience has made me abstemious. I shall abstain from falling in love with you.”

”What a pity!” sighed Mariana, lifting her lashes.

”Well, I can't agree with you,” argued Ardly, ”and I don't regret it. I am very comfortable as I am.”

”I am not,” retorted Mariana. ”I detest the dinners. Who could be comfortable on overdone mutton and cold potatoes?”

”Even in the matter of food I am without prejudices,” declared the other. ”I had as soon want a good dinner and have a poor one as have a good one and want none. These are the only conditions with which I am acquainted. There may be estates where things are more equally adjusted, but I know nothing of them; I have not experienced them.”

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 appet.i.te and gratification to be situated upon opposite sides of a revolving globe. When one's up the other's down.”

”I shall cut a pa.s.sage through,” said Mariana. ”If life doesn't equalize things, I will.”

”And I will watch the process,” remarked Ardly, indolently.

It was shortly after this that Mariana went to Long Island for a holiday, spending a couple of weeks in the cottage of an acquaintance, who, by dint of successive matrimonial ventures, had succeeded in reaching the equilibrium to which Mariana aspired.

Upon returning to New York the girl found her distaste for The Gotham to have trebled. When she had toiled up the dingy stairway and installed herself in her old place, she sat upon her trunk and looked about her.

Never had the room appeared so dull, so desperately plain. The close odor caused by lack of ventilation offended her nostrils, and yet she hesitated to fling back the shutters and reveal the rusty balcony with its spindling fire-escape, beyond which stretched the sombre outlook, the elevated road looming like a skeleton in the foreground. The door into the hall was ajar, and she could see a dull expanse of corridor, lighted day and night by a solitary and ineffectual electric jet.

A sob stuck in her throat, and, crossing to the window, she raised it and threw back the shutters, letting in a thin stream of dust and suns.h.i.+ne. Her geranium stood where she had left it, and its withered and yellow leaves smote her with accusing neglect.

”Oh, you poor thing!” she cried, in an impulsive burst of pity.

Then she saw that it had been freshly watered, and that its famished leaves were unfolding. Turning her eyes, they encountered a row of small pots containing seedlings which lined her neighbor's window, encroaching slightly upon her own possession. Before them a man was standing, a watering-can in one hand, a small trowel in the other. As Mariana stepped upon the fire-escape he turned in evident resentment, glanced at her indifferently, and resumed his task of invigoration.

The afternoon sun shone full upon him, and Mariana saw him plainly. He was young, with stooping shoulders, and he wore a cheap and shabby suit of clothes, with apparent disregard of their quality. His face was thin and cleanly shaven, there was a nervous tension about the mouth, and the hair, falling dark and heavy upon the temples, lent a haggardness to his colorless and burned-out profile. It was a face in which the poetic principle was obscured by an ascetic veneering. In his whole appearance was borne out the suggestion flas.h.i.+ng from the eyes--a suggestion of mental sustentation upon physical force.

Mariana regarded him mutely. Her gaze was almost tragic in its intensity. For a moment her lips quivered and her fingers interlaced.