Chapter IX

Mariana was walking under the elms that skirt the park on Fifth Avenue. It was a mild December morning, and the sunshine fell in silvery waves through the bare branches of trees overhead and rippled lightly across the concrete sidewalk, while the slender shadows of the boughs assumed the effect of irregular lines drawn by crude fingers upon a slate. Far ahead, through the narrowing archway of naked elms, the perspective sloped in gradual incline, blending the changing shades of blue and gray into a vista of pale violet. On the low stone wall to her left the creepers showed occasional splashes of scarlet berries, glowing warm and vivid through the autumnal haze which tinted the atmosphere. December had reverted for a single day into the majesty of dead October.

Mariana walked slowly, the furs, which she found oppressive, open at the throat, and her muff hanging idly from her hand. There was a rapt expression upon her face, and her eyes were sombre. She had the strained and preoccupied air of one whose mind has winged back to long-past days, leaving the body adrift in its relation to present events. All at once a tiny child, rolling a toy along the sidewalk, stumbled and fell before her feet, uttering shrieks of dismay. The incident recalled her to herself, and, as she stooped to lift it, she smiled at the profuse apologies of the nurse. Then she glanced about her, as if uncertain of the number of blocks that she had walked.

Three aspens, standing together in the park, arrested her gaze, and she looked at them with momentary intentness. Their slender bodies shone like leprous fingers, pointing heavenward, and on the topmost point of one a broken spray of frosted leaves shivered whitely. They recalled to her with a shudder the little graveyard on the old plantation, where she had spent her earliest childhood, and she was seized with a spasm of memory. She saw the forgotten and deserted graves, with the rank periwinkle corroding the marble slabs, and she saw the little brown lizards that crept out to bask upon them in the summer sunshine. With the recollection, death appeared to her hideous and loathsome, and she walked on quickly, her eyes on the pavement. A group of street-cleaners were seated against the stone wall, eating their mid-day meal, and she looked at the hunks of bread and ham with a feeling of sympathy for the consumers. Then, as she passed, her thoughts swung to the owner of the house across the way whom she knew, and who was descending the front steps. At Sixty-seventh Street she turned into the park, her eyes drawn by the clump of pines darkly defined against the gray rock beyond. For the second time her errant thoughts went back to her childhood and to the great pine forest where the wind played lullabies through the white heat of August days. She felt a swift desire to throw herself beneath the little alien growth of pine, to lie on the soft grass, which was still like emerald deepened by bluish shadows, and to let the spicy needles fall upon her upturned face.

As she moved onward, a man crossing the park in a rapid walk approached her. It was Father Algarcife, and in a moment their glances met.

He raised his hat, and would have passed on, but she stopped him by a gesture.

"Won't you speak to me?" she asked, and her voice wavered like a harp over which the player has lost control.

As she looked at him she saw that he had grown thinner since she had last seen him, and that his eyes shone with an unnatural lustre.

"What is there for me to say?" he returned, arresting her wavering glance.

Her lips quivered.

"I may go away," she said, "and this is the last chance. There is something I must tell you. Will you turn and walk back with me?"

He shook his head.

"What is the use?" he asked, impatiently. "There is nothing to be said that cannot better be left--unsaid."

"No! No!" she said. "You must not think worse of me than--than I deserve."

He was smiling bitterly.

"What I think of you," he returned, "matters very little." Then the smile passed, and he looked at her gravely. "I have little time," he said. "My days are not my own." And he added, slowly: "If you wish it, I will walk back with you for a short distance."

"Thank you," she replied, and they passed the clump of pines on their way in the park.

For a time they were silent, he was looking ahead, and her eyes followed their shadows as they flitted before her on the ground. The two shadows drew nearer, almost melted into one, and fell away.

Suddenly he turned to her.

"There was something you wished to say?" he asked, as he had asked his parishioners a hundred times; then he added: "Even though it were better left unsaid?"

Her eyes left the shadows, and were raised to his face. She thought suddenly that there was a line of cruelty about his mouth, and shrank from him. Had she really seen that face illuminated by passion, or was memory a lie? She spoke rapidly, her words tripping upon one another.

"I want you to know," she said, "how it happened--how I did it--how--"

He looked at her again, and the mocking smile flamed in his eyes.

"What does it matter how it happened," he questioned, "since it did happen? In these days we have become impressionists in all things--even in our experiences. Details are tiresome." Then, as she was silent, he went on. "And these things are done with. There is nothing between Mrs.--Gore and the Reverend Anthony Algarcife except a meeting in a studio and a morning walk in the park. The air is spring-like."

"Don't," she said, suddenly. "You are hard."

He laughed shortly.

"Hard things survive," he answered. "They aren't easy to smash."

She looked at the shadows and then into his face.

"Have you ever forgiven me?" she asked.

He did not answer.

"I should like to feel," she went on, "that you see it was not my fault--that I was not to blame--that you forgive me for what you suffered."

But he looked ahead into the blue-gray distance and was silent.

"Tell me that I was not to blame," she said, again.

He turned to her.

"It was as much your fault," he said, slowly, "as it is the fault of that feather that the wind is blowing it into the lake. What are you that you should conquer the wind?"

She smiled sadly.

"And you have forgiven me?"

His eyes grew hard and his voice cut like steel.

"No."

"And yet you see that I was not to blame."

He smiled again.

"It is the difference," he answered, "between logic and life. What have they in common?"

She spoke almost passionately. "Do you think that I have not suffered?" she asked. "Do you think that you have had all--all the pain?"

He shook his head.

"I do not suffer," he replied. "My life is calm."

She paid no heed to him.

"I have been tortured," she went on; "tortured night and day with memory--and remorse."

His voice was cold, but a sudden anger blazed in his eyes.

"There are drugs for both," he said.

She shivered.

"I have tried to buy happiness as I bought diamonds," she continued. "I have gone from place to place in pursuit of it. I have cheated myself with the belief that I might find it. I did not know that the lack lay in myself--always in myself."

She was silent, and he softened suddenly. "And you have never found it?" he asked. "Of all the things that you craved in youth there is lacking to you now--only your ambition."

She raised her head.

"And love," she finished.

His voice grew hard again.

"We are speaking of realities," he returned, and added, bitterly: "Who should have had love--if not you?"

They had passed the lake, and were walking through the Ramble. The dead leaves rustled beneath their feet.

"It is not true," she said, passionately. "It is false."

"What is false?" he demanded, quietly. "That you have had opportunities for love?"

She did not reply. Her lips were trembling, and her hand played nervously with the ribbon on her muff.

Suddenly she looked up.

"When I left you," she said, slowly, "I went with the opera troupe abroad. For several years I was very successful, and I believed it would end well. I was given a leading part. Then one winter, when we were in Paris, I was taken ill. It was pneumonia. I was very ill, and the pain was frightful. They thought it would go to my heart. But when I grew better the troupe went on. I was left at the hotel, ill and alone--except for one friend--an Englishman--"

He interrupted her harshly.

"You have made a mistake," he said, and his voice was dull and lifeless. "I have no right to know your story. You are not of my parish--nor am I your confessor."

She flinched, but went on steadily, though her tones drooped.

"He had followed me for a long time. He loved me--or thought he did. When I was deserted by the troupe he stayed with me. He paid my bills and brought me back to life. I grew strong again, but--my voice was gone."

She paused as if in pain.

"Sit down," he said.

And they sat down on a bench beneath the naked branches of an oak.

"I was penniless, alone, and very weak. He wanted me even then. At first he did not want to marry me, but when I would not yield, he begged me to come back with him and secure a divorce. I think he was mad with passion."

She hesitated and glanced at him, but he was looking away.

"At last the end came. There was nothing else to do--and I wrote to you."

He moistened his lips as if they were parched from fever.

"Did you get the letter?"

"Yes," he answered, "I got it."

"And you did not answer?"

"What was there for me to say? You were free."

For an instant her eyes blazed.

"You never loved me," she said.

He smiled slightly.

"Do you think so?" he asked.

The anger died from her eyes and she spoke softly.

"I waited for the answer," she said; "waited months, and it did not come. Then I came back. We went out West. A divorce was very easy--and I married him. I owed him so much."

"Yes?"

"It was a mistake. I did not satisfy him. He thought me cold. We quarrelled, and he went to other women. He drank a great deal. I was much to blame, but I could not help it. I hated him. Then his uncle took my part and loved me--God bless him, he was a saint--and kind--oh, so kind. When he died he left me the money, and his nephew and I separated. I have not seen him since."

They were both silent. She could hear his heavy breathing, and her heart throbbed.

"It was all a mistake," she said. "My whole life has been a mistake. But there is no salvation for us who make mistakes."

His eyes grew dark as he looked at her.

"A mistake that one stands by may become the part of wisdom," he said. "Could you not go back to him and begin again?" His face had grown haggard.

Her wrath flamed out.

"If I begin again," she answered, "it must be from the beginning--to relive my whole life."

He looked at her restless hands.

"Then you must look to the future," he said, "since there is no present--and no past."

"There is a past," she returned, passionately.

He shook his head.

"A dead one."

Her mouth shone scarlet in the pallor of her face.

"And shall we forget our dead?" she asked.

His lips closed together with brutal force. His eyes were hot with self-control.

Then he stooped for her muff, which had rolled to the ground, brushing it lightly with his hand. As he gave it to her he rose to his feet.

"Shall we return?" he asked. "It has grown cloudy."

She rose also, but stood for an instant with her hand resting upon the back of the bench. Her lips opened, but closed again, and she turned and walked at his side in silence.

Suddenly he looked at her.

"It is late," he said, "as you doubtless know, and I have neglected a call. May I leave you to go on alone?" Then his voice softened. "Are you ill?" he asked--"or in pain?"

She laughed mirthlessly.

"You are too strong," she returned, "to stoop to irony."

"It was not irony," he answered, gently.

She smiled sadly, her eyes raised.

"Tell me that you will come to see me--once," she said.

He looked at her with sudden tenderness.

"Yes," he answered; "I will come. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!"

And they went different ways.