CHAPTER IX

MARIANA

Rosalie went away again, upstairs to that corridor on which the rooms in which she lived were situated. Another meal was there in readiness, for the hour was now past one. She ate with little heart, the silent attendant by her side unwittingly depressing her. When the meal was over she went to a little sitting-room which Mariana had shown her, taking her small parcel of belongings with her, and shut the door.

Here a fire was burning, the only one in that particular wing, for they seemed to be chary of fires here. The room had little of brightness about it otherwise. Its walls were panelled oak without design or ornament. An oaken table on three legs, a few high-backed chairs, a rug before the fireplace, polished boards the floor; that was all. A narrow window looked out upon the blank wall opposite, giving the room a gloomy, darkened look. Yet there was something about this simply furnished room that Rosalie liked. It was less luxurious than any other in that house which she had visited.

She drew one of the high-backed chairs toward the fire, and sat down, her feet upon the fender. She had taken her small Book of Divine Inspiration from the parcel, and sat holding it idly in her hands, staring at the flames. After all, it was comforting to be able to hold something, something familiar and not strange, something that had been handled and read by loving hands and eyes, though now they were passed away for ever.

For Rosalie, despite her behaviour downstairs, was only playing a part. Laughing or answering, there had been ever in her heart the Serpent’s tooth. It gnawed and stung with almost unendurable pain. O God! to be but rid of it for five sweet minutes.

So far as Rosalie was concerned, there were no late dinners in this house of mystery. She had ordinary tea at five o’clock, and then the lights for the evening were brought in, and the red curtains drawn. About seven Mariana knocked at the door, and entered.

“This is my evening for playing,” said she quietly; “would you care to come and listen to me?”

“Thank you; I should like to come very much. What do you play?”

“Play? Oh! I always play on a violin; it’s my favourite amusement. It’s the way I always spend my night out.”

“Night out,” thought Rosalie; “what an expression coming from her lips!”

Aloud she said: “I’m very fond of music. Have you learnt long?”

“I don’t remember learning, but I suppose I must have done.”

She led the way along the corridor, down the slippery stairs, and turned in at the glass door leading from the central hall towards Mr. Barringcourt’s study; but she did not go there. Instead, she paused at a door next to it on the same side. She passed in, and held the door for Rosalie to follow. The room within was dark, but it must have overlooked the Avenue, for lights from the outside shone weirdly in through the long windows, lighting up short lines of furniture, half a grand piano, a strip of table, an ottoman, and a piece of wall.

Mariana turned on one light. It was soft and shaded, but had not strength enough to illuminate the whole room. The farther corners were entirely in the shade.

“Will you not turn on more lights?” asked Rosalie.

“No; I like the twilight best. I can think and feel better when the light is low.”

Then she uncased the violin which she had brought down with her, and tried the strings, testing them by the piano, which was now a little better brought to view.

Rosalie went over to a window—it was the natural instinct of a prisoner—and looked out of it with hungry eyes.

Passing, passing, never ceasing, went the traffic, and through the closed windows came the muffled sound of horses’ feet, and wheels, and voices. Feverishly she scanned each face as closely as she could in the distance; but she read nothing on them but what one reads on a hundred faces every day. Her heart beat with an aching longing to touch the pavement again with free feet. Three years! It was a lifetime. One day in a house like this contained an agony of years.

“I am impatient,” she said, and closed her lips patiently and tight.

She had forgotten Mariana’s music—in the testing of the chords—till suddenly, after a short pause, she began to play.

Rosalie’s attention was first divided between the music and the street. What was played seemed to fit in with her mood—a simple air of sadness. But this harmonic accompaniment had its dangers, for by degrees Rosalie felt her spirits, instead of keeping pace with it, begin to follow. Then the street claimed her attention less, the music absorbing it. And at last she turned round reluctantly and looked toward the player. Mariana, never an ordinary-looking woman, was by the one pale light quite extraordinary. The long graceful robe she wore made her look more than commonly tall. Her pretty arms, white and delicate yet, full of a certain indefinable strength, and the ivory whiteness of her face, had a curious charm and fascination in the dim lights. But beside her playing, the musician herself was insignificant. From sadness her notes changed to melancholy, from melancholy on to misery, from misery to despair. Despondency, tragedy, hopeless complaint, and restless, weary wandering on those spiritual wastes where no light comes, or even narrow track to show that ever pilgrim passed before—this was her music.

Her face as she played betrayed no great emotion. The brightness in her eyes spoke more of mental activity and retrospection than of sentiment. Gradually the listener’s eyes fell on the furniture around. Much of it, in conjunction with the rest of the house, was of polished oak, carved finely and curiously. Opposite there was a cabinet museum about the height of a man, and above it the carved head of some idolater’s god, growing in clearness as she became accustomed to the light

But surely the music had affected it. Its ugly eyes, protruding and rid of all intelligence, altered slowly to expression almost human. For every quivering note struck from the violin found a resting-place within these staring orbs, filling them both with misery. Their dumb speech was terrible, but when Rosalie moved away, more ghastly still by reason of their persistence. She looked away. There on the floor beside her was a tiger-skin, a rug of worth and beauty, with a head and glassy eyes. Its eyes met hers. Their dumb misery told a tale beyond the power of speech. Shivering, she turned and moved away.

When would Mariana stop and take her from this wretched room? She had moved within range of the statues, those dim, misty forms of whiteness which rose like ghosts with out and upstretched arms to beckon her. Faces of cold, white, and deathly beauty, and eyes! Oh, terrible! all gazing into hers with that sad gaze and straining misery, reaching to the height and depth of agony.

It was enough. Had they but wailed, or cried, or uttered sound, the spell had broken. But here was silence—ghastly, terrible, because so secret and so unexpected.

At last the tension reached a limit. On all sides Rosalie encountered ghastly faces of long-suffering pain to which the music seemed to form a fitting background. Turning hurriedly to escape one face belonging to a child, set in a picture hung upon the wall, her glance fell by chance upon the mirror and revealed herself, strained horror in her eyes, with blanched cheeks and open lips. She scarcely recognised who stood there. It was enough. She crossed the room half running, and clutched Mariana’s arm.

“How much longer?”

“The time is up. Alas! how quickly it has passed. Never again till next week, and then but two short hours. And yet you ask me, ‘How much longer?’”

“Can you play like that, and never feel it?”

Mariana shook her head.

“It’s the only time I ever feel, the only time I ever live.”

“But it is pain and sorrow.”

“Better than emptiness. Now I have lost the only thing I love. All week it lies quite mute, a thing of idleness, bursting with life. And when I take it up it utters so long a wail, so sad a sigh, that my heart returns to it, and we weep together till pain becomes an ecstasy and sadness joy.”

“Oh, Mariana! what a life is yours!”

“No different from the rest. A life of grey to-morrows that come and go in endless twilight.”

“Will you feel like this to-morrow?”

“No. To-morrow brings a calm existence. To-night I fill my heart with tears.”

“What was it brought you here?”

“Oh! I loved not wisely, but too well, this little fiddle.”

“And has it brought you to this pass?”

“Yes, if pass you call it.”

“Then, Mariana, give it up!”

For her the dimness of the room had vanished, its fantasies and ghostly shadows thrown off with one great effort. She grasped the other’s arms in both her hands, and stared at her, taller by her sudden force and fierceness. The other looked at her, and then recoiled.

“Give it up! The only joy of life—the only life beyond a dull existence! Why, I should die—the very thought would kill me.”

“No! It would make you live!”

But Mariana only looked at her, and shook her head.

“Rosalie, can I play? Can you make anything out of it?”

“I never heard such music; but it is wrong—it’s the wrong sort.”

Then Mariana came close up to her, just as before she had drawn back, and, with a sudden weakness, drooped her head upon the other’s shoulder, clasping her hands about her waist.

“Don’t say that!” she cried, her voice little above a whisper. “I cannot bear it. I can do nothing more. There is no time. Once or twice I asked the Master would he listen, and he did. But he said there was no tune in what I played, no harmony of any sort—that all was a delusion, a fancy of my brain.”

“But that was not the truth.” And Rosalie held her very tight, that woman who in the morning had seemed so strong to her. “And he only said it because he knew you would be fool enough to take it all to heart.”

“Hush! hush! It’s treason to talk like that.”

“Nothing’s treason but failure. You follow my advice, and give up the fiddle. Then after a while you’ll get it back again in such a way that even Mr. Barringcourt will not be able to say there’s no tune in it.”

Mariana looked at her, with surprise and misunderstanding on every feature.

“I can’t give it up. I’m bound to play for two hours every Wednesday night, harmony or discord.”

“Why bound?”

“It was the stipulation I made when first I came here. It’s the kind of thing one can’t break through.”

“You don’t want to?”

“No, I don’t; but if I did I could not.”

“You would rather live for two hours a week than seven times twenty-four?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“No, and never will.”

It was Mr. Barringcourt’s voice, and he spoke from the door, through which he had entered.