Phases of an Inferior Planet

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

Anthony picked her up and laid her on the bed. Then he threw a shawl over her. "I am going to take an hour off and discipline your tyrant," he said. "Go to sleep." He lifted the baby and went towards the door. "You aren't such a black-hearted chap, after all, are you, Isolde?"

The baby cuddled against his shoulder, and he passed into the next room, closing the door after him.

Mariana lay upon the bed and thought. Her eyes were wide open, and she stared fixedly at the ceiling, watching the fluctuations of light that chased across its plastered surface. It was a relief to be absolutely alone, to be freed from the restraint which the presence of another thinking entity necessitated. She drew the shawl closer about her and pressed her cheek upon the pillow. The contact of the cotton was exciting to her fevered flesh. In the dim train of association it brought back to her an illness in her childhood, and she recalled her first sensations of headache and fatigue. They had come upon her as she was playing in an open meadow, and, before toiling to the house, she had stopped beside the reedy brook and knelt to drink, while the cool, fresh notes of the bobolinks sounded about her. She remembered it all now as she lay amid the noise of the city. The roar of the elevated road was silenced, and she heard the bobolinks again. She saw the emerald sweep of the wheat fields, undulating in golden lights and olive shadows. She saw the stagnant ice pond, with the overhanging branches of willows and the whir of the parti-colored insects. She smelt the pungent sweetness of the wild rose and the subtle odor of the trumpet-flower, glowing amid its luxuriant foliage like a heart of fire.

Then she raised her head and surveyed the room in which she lay. She saw the garish daylight streaming in a flood of dust and sunshine through the narrow window. She saw the lack of grace that surrounded her, emphasized by a crowd of trivial details. She saw the tall, painted wardrobe with its bulging doors and the bandboxes upon the top, the cheap bureau with its gaping drawers, and the assortment of shoes half-hidden under it. She saw her work-basket, overflowing with stockings to be darned and small slips to be mended.

With a stifled sob she turned from it all, pressing her face against the pillow. The heritage of yearning for vivid beauty and sharp, sweet odors surged upon her. "I can't be poor!" she cried, passionately. "I can't be poor!"

But as the spring came, Mariana regained something of her old vigor, and it was in April of that year that Mr. Nevins painted the portrait which was exhibited some six months later, and with which began his rising fortunes. It represented her in the blue wrapper, holding the sleeping Isolde upon her knee, that soft and pensive stillness in her eyes. Within a couple of months after its appearance, Mr. Nevins had received orders for similar portraits from a dozen mothers, and had taken his position in the art world as the popular baby specialist.

Mariana had enjoyed the portrait and the sittings. They diverted her thoughts from the groove of the ordinary and gratified to a small extent her social instinct. When it was finished, and Mr. Nevins no longer came, she relapsed into listlessness. It was the friction of the outside world she needed. Hers was not the nature to develop through stagnation. In barren soil she wilted and grew colorless, while at the touch of sunshine she expanded and put forth her old radiance.

Anthony, watching her, would become oppressed at times with the thought that this thin and fragile woman, dragging through her irksome round of duties, anæmic and hollow-eyed, might by the magic of wealth and ease mature into a passionate, lithe, and gracious creature, of which she was now the wraith—and yet which even now she suggested. For the furnace through which she had passed, in robbing her of freshness and bloom, had been unable to destroy her vague and ineffable charm.

"She is a woman ruined," he said, bitterly, and he said it with a dull aching in his heart. To him Mariana, emaciated and unresponsive, was still the Mariana to be possessed and held with burning desire. The small clashes of temper, the long silences, the apparent indifference, had been powerless to weaken the force of his love. It was still indomitable.

One night, upon going to his room, he found her in her night-gown kneeling on the hearth-rug. From her breathing he knew that she was asleep, and it was a moment before he aroused her. In the dim light she resembled a marble figure of prayer, her cheek resting upon her hand, the lashes fallen over the violet circles beneath her eyes.