Phases of an Inferior Planet

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.

Mariana looked at them wistfully. "I have done foolish things all my life," she said, "and this is the most foolish of all."

"What, dear?" asked Miss Ramsey, but she did not answer.

When Anthony came in, followed by the doctor, she was lying propped up among the pillows, with soft white blankets heaped over her. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing quietly.

Salvers took her hand and bent his ear to her chest.

"She must be stimulated," he said. "You say she has already taken digitalis – yes?"

He took Miss Ramsey's seat, still holding Mariana's hand, and turning now and then to give directions in his smooth, well-modulated voice. Anthony was standing at the foot of the bed, his eyes upon the blankets.

A light fall of rain beat rhythmically against the window-panes. The fire crackled in the grate and sent up a sudden, luminous flame, transfiguring the furniture in the room and the faces gathered in the shadow about the bed. Mariana stirred slightly. Presently Salvers rose and drew Miss Ramsey aside.

"It is very serious," he said. "The danger is heart failure. In another case I should say that it was hopeless – but her constitution is wonderful. She may pull through." Then he asked a few questions concerning the cause of the relapse, and turned to go. "Keep her stimulated, as I have said," he continued; "that is all that can be done. I would stay until morning, but several of my patients are at critical points. As soon as I have seen them I will come back." He started, paused to repeat several directions, and left the room softly, the sound of his footsteps lost in the heavy carpets.

Anthony took the chair beside the bed and laid his hand on the coverlet. He thought Mariana asleep. She was lying motionless, her heavy hair tangled in the lace on the pillow, her lashes resting like a black shadow upon her cheeks, her lips half parted.

He remembered that she had looked like this after the birth of Isolde, when he sat beside the bed and the child lay within the crook of her arm.

A groan rose to his lips, but he choked it back. The hand upon the coverlet was clinched, and the nails, pressed into the livid palm, had become purple. Still he sat motionless, his head bent, his muscles quivering like those of one palsied.

The flame of the fire shot up again, illuminating Mariana's face, and then died slowly down. The rain beat softly against the window.

Miss Ramsey went noiselessly into an adjoining room and came back, a glass in her hand. From across the hall a clock struck.

Suddenly Mariana opened her eyes, moaning in short sobs. A blue wave was rising over her face, deepening into tones of violet beneath the shadows of her eyes. They measured the medicine and gave it to her and she lay quiet again. He put his arm across her.

"Anthony!" she said.

He bent his ear.

"My beloved?"

"Hold me, the bed is going down. My head is so low."

He caught her passionately, his kisses falling distractedly upon her eyes, her lips, the lace upon her breast, and her cold hands.

"And you do love me?"

"Love you?" he answered, fiercely. "Have I ever loved anything else? O my love! My love!"

His tears stung her face like fire.

"Don't," she said, gently; and then, "It would have been very nice, the little farm in the South, and the peaches, and the cows in the pastures, but," she smiled, "I am not very thrifty – the peaches would have rotted where they fell, and the cows would never have been milked."

"Mariana!"

She lay in his arms, and they were both silent.

The clock struck again. In the street a passer-by was whistling "Oh, Nellie's blue eyes."

She spoke drowsily: "Speak softly. You will wake the baby."

In the glimmer of dawn Salvers entered. A sombre mist penetrated the curtains at the windows, and in the grate a heap of embers reddened and waned and reddened and waned again. A light dust had settled over the room, over the mantel, the furniture, and the blankets on the bed – a fine gray powder, pale like the ashes of yesterday's flame.

He crossed to the bed and took Mariana from Anthony's arms. Her head fell back and the violet shadows in her face had frozen into marble. She was smiling faintly.

"My God!" said Salvers, in a whisper. "She has been dead – for hours."

He laid her down and turned to the man beside him, looking at him for a moment without speaking. Then he laid his hand upon his arm and spoke to him as if to a child. "You must go home," he said, emphasizing the syllables. "It is over. You can do no good. You must go home."

The other shook his head. His eyes were blank, like those of a man in whom the springs of thought have been suddenly paralyzed.

"You must go home," repeated Salvers, his hand still upon his arm. "I will be with you in an hour. You must go."

Beneath his touch Anthony moved slowly into the hall, descending the stairs mechanically. Salvers gave him his hat and opened the outer door. Going to the sidewalk, he motioned to his coachman.

"Take Father Algarcife home," he said.

He slammed the door and looked after the carriage as it rolled down the block and rounded the corner. Then he turned and re-entered the house.

When Father Algarcife reached the rectory, he went into his study, locking the door after him. Then he seated himself at his desk and rested his head in his hands. His mind had cleared from the fog, but he did not think. He remained staring blankly before him.

The room was cold and damp, the fire had not been kindled, and the burned-out coals lay livid upon the hearth. The easy-chair was drawn before the fender where he had sat yesterday, and the lamp which he had not lighted the evening before stood on the little marble-top table. An open book, his pipe, and an untasted cup of coffee were beside it.

On the desk his yesterday's sermon lay unrolled, the text facing him in bold black and white:

"For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?"

The dull, neutral tones of advancing dawn flooded the room. There was a suggestion of expectancy about it, as of a world uncreate, waiting for light and birth.

He raised his eyes, not his head, and stared over the desk at the wall beyond. From above the mantel the portrait of Father Speares's ancestor glared at him from its massive frame, wearing the fierce and faded aspect of a past century. Near the window stood the sofa, with the worn spot on the leather arm where the head of the dead man had rested. It was all chill and leaden and devoid of color.

Presently he moved, and, opening a drawer of the desk, drew out a small dark phial and placed it upon the unfolded leaves of the sermon. Through the blue glass the transparent liquid gleamed like silver. His movements were automatic. There was no haste, no precipitation, no hint of indecision. He looked at the clock upon the mantel, watching the gradual passage of the hands. When the minute-hand reached the hour he would have done with it all – with all things forever.

The colorless liquid in the small blue phial lay within reach of his grasp. It seemed to him that he saw already a man lying on that leathern sofa – saw the protruding eyes, the relaxed limbs, the clammy sweat, and saw nothing more that would be after him under the sun. The hands of the clock moved on. A finger of sunlight pierced the curtains and pointed to the ashes in the grate. Outside the noise of a crowded city went on tumultuously. He removed the cork of the bottle, inhaling a pungent and pervasive odor of bitter almonds.

At the same instant a voice called him, and there was a knock at his door.

"Father!"

He replaced the stopper, still holding the phial in his hand. For a moment the heavy silence hung oppressively, and then he answered: "What is it?" His voice sounded lifeless, like that of one awakening from heavy sleep or a trance.

"You are there? Come quickly. Your men at the Beasley Rolling Mills have gone on a strike. A policeman was shot and several of the strikers wounded. You are wanted to speak to them."

"To speak to them?"

"I have a cab. You may prevent bloodshed. Come."

Father Algarcife returned the phial to its drawer, withdrew the key from the locker, and rose. He opened the door and faced the messenger. His words came thickly.

"There is no time to lose," he said. "I am ready."

He seized his hat, descended the steps, and rushed into the street.

THE END