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FAIRFAX AND HIS PRIDE
_A NOVEL_
BY
MARIE VAN VORST
Author of "Big Tremaine," etc.
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1920,
BY SMALL, MAYNARD& COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
TO
B. VAN VORST
IN MEMORY OF A LONG FRIENDSHIP
FAIRFAX AND HIS PRIDE
BOOK I
THE KINSMEN
CHAPTER I
One bitter day in January in the year 1880, when New York was a tranquil
city, a young man stood at the South Ferry waiting for the up-town horse
car. With a few other passengers he had just left the packet which had
arrived in New York harbour that afternoon from New Orleans.
Antony Fairfax was an utter stranger to the North.
In his hand he carried a small hand-bag, and by his side on the snow
rested his single valise. Before him waited a red and yellow tram-car
drawn by lean horses, from whose backs the vapour rose on the frosty
air. Muffled to his ears, the driver beat together his hands in their
leather gloves; the conductor stamped his feet. The traveller climbed
into the car, lifting his big bag after him.
The cold was even more terrible to him than to the conductor and driver.
He had come from the South, where he had left the roses and magnolias in
bloom, and the warmth of the country was in his blood. He dug his feet
into the straw covering the floor of the car, buttoned his coat tight
about his neck, pushed his hands deep in his pockets and sat wondering
at the numbing cold.
This, then, was the North!
He watched with interest the few other passengers board the little car:
two fruit vendors and after them were amiably lifted in great bunches of
bananas. Antony asked himself the question whether this new country
would be friendly to him, what would its spirit be toward him, and as
he asked this question of the cold winter air the city suddenly took
reality and formed for him out of his dreams. Would it be kind or cruel?
The coming days would answer: meanwhile he could wait. Some places, like
some people whom we meet, at once extend to us a hand; there are some
that even seem to offer an embrace. Through the car blew a sudden icy
blast and New York's welcome to Fairfax was keen as a blow. There was an
actual physical affront in this wind that struck him in the face.
Suppose the elements were an indication of what the rest would be? But
no--that was ridiculous! There would be certainly warm interiors behind
the snow-fretted panes of the windows in the houses that lined the
streets on either side. There would be warm and cordial hearts to
welcome him somewhere. There would be understanding of heart, indulgence
for youth. He would find open doors for all his ambitions, spurs to his
integrity and effort. He would know how to make use of these ways and
means of progress. For years he had dreamed of the galleries of pictures
and of the museum. It was from this wonderful city whose wideness had
the intense outreach of the unknown that Fairfax had elected to step
into the world.
New York was to be his threshold. There was no limit to what he intended
to do in his special field of work. From his boyhood he had told himself
that he would become great. He was too young to have discovered the
traitors that hide in the brain and the emptiness of the deepest tears.
He was a pioneer and had the faith of the pioneer. According to him
everything was real, the beauty of form was enchanting, all hearts were
true, and all roads led to fame. His short life focused now at this
hour.
Life is a series of successive stages to which point of culmination a
man brings all he has of the past and all his hopes. All along the road
these blessed visions crowd, fulminate and form as it were torches, and
these lights mark the road for the traveller. Now all Antony's life came
to a point in this hour. He had longed to go to New York from the day
when in New Orleans he had completed his first bust. He had moulded from
the soft clay on the banks of the levees the head of a famous general,
who had later become president. He was only twelve years old then, but
his little work bore all the indications of genius.
He was an artist from the ends of the slender hands to the centre of the
sensitive heart. The childlikeness, the beauty of his nature revealed it
in everything he did; and he was only twenty-two years old.
As he sat in the horse car, his heart full of hope, his brain teeming
with the ideal, he was an interesting figure to watch, and a fine old
gentleman on his way up town was struck by the brilliancy, the aspect of
the fellow passenger. He studied the young fellow from behind his
evening paper, but the old gentleman could not make up his mind what the
young man was. Aside from the valise at his feet Antony had no other
worldly goods, and aside from the twenty-five dollars in his pocket, he
had no other money. There was nothing about him to suggest the artistic
type: broad-shouldered, muscular, he seemed built for battles and feats
of physical strength, but his face was thoughtful for one so young. His
eyes were clear. "He looks," mused the gentleman, "like a man who has
come home after a very successful journey. I suspect the young fellow is
returning with something resembling the story books' bag of gold." He
humorously fancied even that the treasure might be in the valise on the
straw of the car at the traveller's feet.
The car tinkled slowly through the cold. After a long while, well above
a street marked Fiftieth, its road appeared to lie in the country. There
were vacant lots on either side; there were low-roofed, ramshackle
shanties; there were stray goats here and there among the rocks. Antony
said to the conductor in a pleasant, Southern voice: "You won't forget
to let me off at 70th Street." He rose at the conductor's signal and the
ringing of the bell. The old gentleman, who was a canon of the Church,
saw as the young man rose that he was lame, that he limped, that he wore
a high, double-soled boot. As Fairfax went out he lifted his hat with a
courteous "Good evening" to his only fellow passenger, for the others
had one by one left the car to go to their different destinations. "Too
bad," thought the canon to himself, "Lame, by Jove! With a smile like
that a man can win the world."
CHAPTER II
The little figure in the corner of the pink sofa had read away the hours
of the short winter afternoon curled up in a ball, her soft red dress,
her soft red cheeks, her soft red lips vivid bits of colour in the
lamplight. She had read through the twilight, until the lamps came to
help her pretty eyes, and like a scholar of old over some problem she
bent above her fairy tale. The volume was unwieldy, and she supported it
on her knees. Close to her side a little boy of six watched the absorbed
face, watched the lamp and the shadows of the lamp on the pink walls of
the room; watched his mother as she sat sewing, but most devotedly of
all he watched through his half-dreaming lids his sister as she read her
story. His sister charmed him very much and terrified him not a little;
she was so quick, so strong, so alive--she rushed him so. He loved his
sister, she was his illustrated library of fairy tales and wonderful
plays, she was his companion, his ruler, his dominator, and his best
friend.
"Bella," he whispered at the second when she turned the page and he
thought he might venture to interrupt, "Bella, _wouldn't_ you read it to
me?"
The absorbed child made an impatient gesture, bent her head lower and
snuggled down into her feast. She shook her mane of hair.
"Gardiner," his mother noticed the appeal, "when will you learn to read
for yourself? You are a big boy."
"Oh, I'm not so vewy big," his tone was indolent, "I'm not so big as
Bella. You said yesterday that you bought me five-year-old clothes."
In the distance, above the noise of the wind, came the tinkle of the
car-bell. Gardiner silently wished, as he heard the not unmusical sound,
that the eternal, ugly little cars, with the overworked horses, could
be turned into fairy chariots and this one, as it came ringing and
tinkling along, would stop at the front door and fetch.... A loud ring
at the front door made the little boy spring up.
His sister frowned and glanced up from her book. "It isn't father!" she
flashed out at him. "He's got his key. You needn't look scared yet,
Gardiner. It is a bundle or a beggar or something or other stupid. Don't
disturb."
However, the three of them listened, and in another second the door of
the sitting-room was opened by a servant and, behind the maid, on the
bare wood floor of the stairs, there fell a heavy step and a light step,
a light step and a heavy step. Bella never forgot the first time she
heard those footfalls.
The lady at the table put her sewing down, and at that moment, behind
the servant, a young man came in, a tall young man, holding out his hand
and smiling a wonderful and beautiful smile.
"Aunt Caroline. I'm Antony Fairfax from New Orleans. I've just reached
New York, and I came, of course, at once to you."
* * * * *
Not very much later, as they all stood about the table talking, Bella
uncurled and once upon her feet, astonishingly tall for twelve years
old, stood by Fairfax's side, while Gardiner, an old-fashioned little
figure in queer home-made clothes, flushed, delicate and timid, leaned
on his mother. The older woman had stopped sewing. With her work in her
lap she was looking at the seventh son of her beautiful sister of whom
she had been gently, mildly envious all her life.
Bella said brusquely: "You've got an awfully light smile, Cousin
Antony."
He laughed. "I suppose that comes from an awfully light heart, little
cousin!"
"Bella," her mother frowned, "don't be personal. You will learn not to
mind her, Antony; she is frightfully spoiled."
The little girl threw back her hair. "And you've got one light step,
Cousin Antony, and one heavy step. No one ever came up our stairs like
that before. How do you do it?"
The stranger's face clouded. He had been looking at her with keen
delight, and he was caught up short at her words. He put out his
deformed shoe.
"This is the heavy step."
Bella's cheeks had been flushed with excitement, but the dark red that
rose at Fairfax's words made her look like a little Indian.
"Oh, I didn't know!" she stammered. "I didn't know."
Her cousin comforted her cheerfully. "That's all right. I don't mind. I
fell from a cherry tree when I was a little chap and I've stumped about
ever since."
His aunt's gentle voice, indifferent and soft, like Gardiner's
murmured--
"Oh, don't listen to her, Antony, she's a spoiled, inconsiderate little
girl."
But Bella had drawn nearer the stranger. She leaned on the table close
to him and lifted her face in which her eyes shone like stars. She had
wounded him, and it didn't seem to her generous little heart that she
could quite let it go. And under her breath she whispered--
"But there's the _light_ step, isn't there, Cousin Antony? And the
smile--the awfully light smile?"
Fairfax laughed and leaned forward as though he would catch her, but
she had escaped from under his hand like an elusive fairy, and when he
next saw her she was back in her corner with her book on her knees and
her dark hair covering her face.
CHAPTER III
He talked with his aunt for a long while. Her grace and dignity
suggested his mother, but she was not so lovely as the other woman,
whose memory was always thrilling to him. Fairfax ran eagerly on, on
fire with his subject, finally stopping himself with a laugh.
"I reckon I'm boring you to death, Aunt Caroline."
"Oh, no," she breathed, "how can you say so? How proud she must be of
you!"
Downstairs in the hall he had left his valise and his little hand
satchel, with the snow melting on them. He came from a household whose
hospitality was as large, as warm, as bright as the sun. He had made a
stormy passage by the packet _Nore_. His head was beginning to whirl.
From the sofa there was not a sign. Bella read ardently, her hand
pressing a lock of her dark hair across her burning cheek. Gardiner, his
eyes on his cousin, drank in, fascinated, the figure of the big,
handsome young man.
"He's my relation," he said to himself. "He's one of our family. I know
he can tell stories, and he's a traveller. He came in the fairy cars."
Mrs. Carew tapped her lip with her thimble. "So you will learn to model
here," she murmured. "Now I wonder who would be the best man?"
And Fairfax responded quickly, "Cedersholm, auntie, he's the only man."
"My husband," his aunt began to blush, "your uncle knows Mr. Cedersholm
in the Century Club, but I hardly think...."
Antony threw up his bright head. "I have brought a letter from the
President to Cedersholm and several of the little figures I have
modelled."
"Ah, that will be better," and his aunt breathed with relief. Mrs.
Carew's mention of her husband came to Antony like a sharp chill.
Nothing that had been told him of the New York banker who had married
his gentle aunt was calculated to inspire him with a sense of kinship.
It was as though a window had been opened into the bright room. A slight
noise at the door downstairs acted like a current of alarm upon the
family. The colour left his aunt's cheeks, and little Gardiner
exclaimed, "I hear father's key." The child came over to his mother's
side. It seemed discourteous to Antony to suggest going just as his
uncle arrived, so he waited a moment in the strange silence that fell
over the group. In a few seconds Mr. Carew came in and his wife
presented. "My dear, this is Antony Fairfax, my sister Bella's only
child, you know. You remember Bella, Henry."
A wave of red, which must have been vigorous in order to sweep in and
under the ruddy colour already in Carew's cheeks, testified that he did
remember the beautiful Mrs. Fairfax.
"I remember her very well," he returned; "is she as handsome as ever?
You have chosen a cold day to land in the North. I presume you came by
boat? We have been two hours coming up town. The cars are blocked by
snow. It's ten degrees below zero to-night. I wish you would see that
ashes are poured on the front steps, Caroline, at once."
The guest put out his hand. "I must be going. Good night, Aunt
Caroline----good night, Gardiner. Good night, sir."
Fairfax marked the ineffectuality in his aunt's face. It was neither
embarrassment nor shame, it was impotence. Her expression was not
appealing, but inadequate, and the slender hand that she gave him melted
in his like the snow. There was no grasp there, no stimulus to go on. He
turned to the red figure of the huddled child in the sofa corner.
"Good night, little cousin."
Bella dropped her book and sprang up. "Good night," she cried; "why,
you're not going, Cousin Antony?"
And as the older woman had done she extended her hand. It was only a
small child's hand, but the essential was there. The same sex but with
a different hand. It did not melt in Antony's; it lay, it clasped, lost
in his big palm. He felt, nevertheless, the vital little grasp, its
warmth and sweetness against his hand.
"Where are you going?"
Mr. Carew had passed out now that he had successfully eliminated from
the mind of the guest any idea that hospitality was to be extended. Once
more the little group were by themselves.
"There is the Buckingham Hotel," Mrs. Carew ventured. "It's an excellent
hotel; we get croquettes from there when Gardiner's appetite flags. The
children have their hair cut there as well."
Tired as Fairfax was, rebuffed as he was, he could not but be cheered by
the bright look of the little girl who stood between him and her mother.
She nodded at her cousin.
"Why, the Buckingham is six dollars a day," she said. "I asked the
barber when he cut Gardiner's hair."
Fairfax smiled. "I reckon that is a little steep, Bella."
"It's too far away, anyhow, Cousin Antony, it's a mile; twenty blocks is
a New York mile. There are the Whitcombs." And the child turned to the
less capable woman.
Her mother exclaimed: "Why, of course, of course, there are the
Whitcombs! My dear Antony," said his aunt, "if you could only stay with
them you would be doing a real charity. They are dear little old maids
and self-supporting women. They sell their work in my women's exchange.
They have a nice little house."
Bella interrupted. "A dear little red-brick house, Cousin Antony, two
stories, on the next block."
She tucked her book under her arm as though it were a little trunk she
was tucking away to get ready to journey with him.
"The Whitcombs would be perfectly enchanted, Antony," urged his aunt,
"they want a lodger badly. It's Number 700, Madison Avenue."
"It looks like the house that Jack built," murmured Gardiner, dreamily;
"they have just wepainted it bwight wed with yellow doors...."
Fairfax thanked them and went, his heavy and his light step echoing on
the hard stairway of his kinsmen's inhospitable house. Bella watched him
from the head of the stairs, her book under her arm, and below, at the
door, he shouldered his bag and went out into the whirling, whirling
snow. It met him softly, like a caress, but it was very cold. Bella had
said two blocks away to the left, and he started blindly.
This was his welcome from his own people.
His Southern home seemed a million miles away; but come what would, he
would never return to it empty-handed as he had left it. He had been
thrust from the door where he felt he had a right to enter. That
threshold he would never darken again--never. A pile of unshovelled snow
blocked his path. As he crossed the street to avoid it, he looked up at
the big, fine house. From an upper window the shade was lifted, and in
the square of yellow light stood the two children, the little boy's head
just visible, and Bella, her dark hair blotting against the light, waved
to him her friendly, cousinly little hand. He forged on through the snow
to "The House that Jack built."
CHAPTER IV
He was the seventh son, and his mother was tired of child-bearing when
Antony was born. The others, mediocre, fine fellows, left to their
father's control, had turned out as well as children are likely to turn
out when brought up by a man. One by one, during the interval of years
before Antony came, one by one they had died, and when Mr. Fairfax
himself passed away, he left his wife alone with Antony a baby in her
arms. She then gave herself up to her grief and the contemplation of her
beauty. Adored, spoiled, an indifferent house-keeper, Mrs. Fairfax was,
nevertheless, what is known as a charming creature, and a sincere
artist. She had her studio, her canvases, she wrote plays and songs, and
nothing, with the exception perhaps of realities, for she knew nothing
of them, nothing made less impression on her than did her only child,
until one day she suddenly remembered Antony when it was too late.
He was like his mother, but she was unconscious of the fact. She only
knew him as a rowdy boy, fond of sports, an alarmingly rough fighter,
the chief in the neighbourhood scuffles, a vigorous, out-of-door boy, at
the head of a yelling, wild little band that made her nerves quiver.
Coloured servants and his Mammy soothed Antony's ills and washed his
bruises. With a feeling of shame he thrust aside his artistic
inclinations, lest his comrades should call him a milksop, but he drew
copiously in secret, when he was kept in at school or housed with a
cold. And from the distance at which she kept him, Antony worshipped his
mother. He admired her hauteur, the proud cold loveliness. His sunny
nature, incapable of morose or morbid brooding, felt no neglect. Late in
spring they too had gone north to a water cure popular with Louisiana
people, where a more vigorous growth of trees magnetized Antony, who
climbed like a squirrel and tore his clothes to his heart's content. He
had come in from a tramp and, scandalized by his rough and tumbled
appearance as she caught a glimpse of him swinging along, Mrs. Fairfax
summoned her little son. Rocking idly on the verandah she watched him
obey her call, and there was so much buoyant life in his running step,
such a boy's grace and brightness about him that he charmed her
beauty-loving eyes.
"Go, wash your face and hands and bring your school books here. I do
hope you have brought your books with you."
When he reappeared with the volumes of dog-eared school books, she
fingered them gingerly, fell on his drawing portfolio and opened it.
"Who drew these for you, Tony?"
"Mother, no one. I did them. They are rotten."
Mrs. Fairfax exclaimed with excitement: "Why, they are quite
extraordinary! You must study with some one."
Blushing, enraptured, Antony was tongue-tied, although a host of things
rushed to his lips that now he might be permitted to speak to her he
longed to tell everything that was on his heart.
Neither of them forgot that day. The wistaria was purple in the vines,
and his mother, a shawl with trailing fringe over her shoulders, rocked
indolent and charming in her chair. She had made her husband and her
other sons her slaves, and she remembered now, with a sense of comfort,
that she had another servitor.
"My shoe is unbuttoned"--she raised her small foot--"button it, Tony."
The boy fell on his knees, eager to offer his first service to the
lovely woman, but his hands were awkward. He bungled and pinched the
delicate skin. The mother cried out, leaned over and smartly boxed his
ears.
"Stupid boy, go; send me Emmeline."
Poor Antony retired, and as Emmeline took his place he heard his mother
murmur--
"Aren't the cherries ripe yet, Emmy? I'm dying to taste some cherries,
they're so delicious in the North."
Emmeline had fastened the shoe and lagged away with southern negligence,
leaving Antony's books as he had flung them on the porch, and though it
was an effort to lean over, Mrs. Fairfax did so, picked up the
drawing-book and studied it again.
"Talented little monkey," she mused, "he has my gift, my looks too, I
think. How straight he walks! He has '_l'elegance d'un homme du
monde_.'"
She called herself Creole and prided herself on her French and her
languor.
She sat musing thus, the book on her knees, when half an hour later they
carried him in to her. He had fallen from a rotten branch on the highest
cherry tree in the grounds.
He struck on his hip.
All night she sat by his side. The surgeons had told her that he would
be a cripple for life if he ever walked again. Toward morning he
regained his senses and saw her sitting there. Mrs. Fairfax remembered
Antony that day. She remembered him that day and that night, and his cry
of "Oh, mother, I was getting the cherries for you!"
* * * * *
Before they built him his big, awkward boot, when he walked again at
all, Antony went about on crutches, debarred from boyish games. In order
to forget his fellows and the school-yard and "the street" he modelled
in the soft delicious clay, making hosts of creatures, figures, heads
and arms and hands, and brought them in damp from the clay of the levee.
His own small room was a studio, peopled by his young art. No sooner,
however, was he strong again and his big shoe built up, than his
boy-self was built up as well, and Antony, lame, limping Antony, was out
again with his mates. He never again could run as they did, but he
contrived to fence and spar and box, and strangely enough, he grew tall
and strong. One day he came into his little room from a ball game, for
he was the pitcher of the nine, and found his mother handling his clayey
creatures.
"Tony, when did you do these?"
"Oh, they are nothing. Leave them alone, mother. I meant to fire them
all out."
"But this is an excellent likeness of the General, Tony."
He threw down his baseball mask and gloves and began to gather up
unceremoniously the little objects which had dried crisp and hard.
"Don't destroy them," his mother said; "I want every one of them. And
you must stop being a rowdy and a ruffian, Antony--you are an artist."
He was smoothing between his palms one of the small figures.
"Professor Dufaucon could teach you something--not much, poor old
gentleman, but something elementary. To-morrow, after school, you must
go to take your first lesson."
Mrs. Fairfax took the boy herself, with the bust of the famous General
in her hands, and afterwards sent the bust to Washington, to its subject
himself, who was pleased to commend the portrait made of him by the
little Southern boy from the clay of the New Orleans levee.
Professor Dufaucon taught him all he knew of art and something of what
he knew of other things. In the small hall-room of the poor French
drawing-master, Antony talked French, learned the elements of the study
of beauty and listened to the sweet strains of the Professor's flute
when he played, "J'ai perdu ma tourterelle...."
In everything that he modelled Antony tried to portray his mother's
face. As she had been indifferent to him before, so ardently Mrs.
Fairfax adored him now. She poured out her tenderness on this crippled
boy. He had been known to say to his Mammy that he was glad that he had
fallen from the cherry tree because his mother had never kissed him
before, and her tears and her love, he thought, were worth the price.
She was as selfish with him in her affection as she had been in her
indifference. She would not hear of college, and he learned what he
could in New Orleans. But the day came when his mistress, art, put in a
claim so seductive and so strong that it clouded everything else.
Professor Dufaucon died, and in the same year Antony sent a statuette to
the New York Academy of Design. It was accepted, and the wine of that
praise went to his head.
Mrs. Fairfax, broken as no event in her life had been able to break
her, saw Antony leave for the North to seek his fortune and his fame.
She owned her house in Charles Street, and lived on in it, and the
little income that she had barely sufficed for her needs. She showed
what race and what pride she had when she bade Antony good-bye, standing
under the jasmine vine. She never wore any other dress than a loose
morning robe of a white or a soft mauve material. Standing there, with a
smile of serene beauty, she waved her handkerchief to him as she saw him
go limping down the walk from the garden to the street and put of sight.
True to her type then, she fainted dead away, and Emmeline and Mammy
brought her to.
* * * * *
He thought of things in Miss Whitcomb's front room. There was nothing
fairylike about the red-brick dwelling, although at the corner of the
New York Avenue these two stories seemed diminutive and out of place. He
made with the timid maiden ladies his own timid arrangement. He was so
poor and they were so poor that the transaction was timorous--Antony on
his part was afraid that they might not take him in, they, on theirs,
were terrified lest the lodger would not come in. When at length they
left him alone, his first feeling was gratitude for a room of any kind
that represented shelter from the Northern cold, but when he had
divested himself of his coat, he realized that the little unheated room
was as cold as the outside. A meagre bed, a meagre bureau and washstand,
two unwelcoming chairs, these few inanimate objects were shut in with
Antony, and unattractive as they were, they were appealing in their
scant ugliness. Before the window slight white curtains hung, the same
colour as the snow without. They hung like little shrouds. Around the
windows of his Southern home the vine had laid its beauty, and the
furnishings had been comfortable and tasteful. The homelessness of this
interior, to the young man who had never passed a night from under his
own roof, struck with a chill, and he thought of the sitting-room in the
vast house of his kinsmen not a block away. His kinspeople had not even
asked him to break bread. Dressed as he was, he lay down exhausted on
his bed, and when a knock came and Miss Whitcomb's voice invited him to
supper, Fairfax sprang up and answered as out of a dream.
CHAPTER V
His fortune of twenty-five dollars he divided into five equal packets.
His weekly bill with the old ladies, to whom his aunt had begged Antony
to go _in charity_, was to be six dollars. There would of course be
extras, car-fare and so forth. With economy--it would last. Antony saw
everything on the bright side; youth and talent can only imagine that
the best will last for ever. Decidedly, before his money gave out he
would have found some suitable employment.
With the summons for supper he flung on his coat, plunged downstairs and
into the dining-room, and shone upon his hostesses over their tea and
preserves. The new boarder chatted and planned and listened, jovial and
kindly, his soul's good-fellowship and sweet temper shedding a radiance
in the chill little room. Miss Eulalie Whitcomb was in the sixties, and
she fell in love with Antony in a motherly way. Miss Mitty was fifteen
years her junior, and she fell in love with Antony as a woman might.
Fairfax never knew the poignant ache he caused in that heart, virginal
only, cold only because of the prolonged winter of her maidenhood.
That night he heard his aunt's praises sung, and listened, going back
with a pang to the picture the family group had made before his
home-loving eyes.
Such a marvellous woman, Mr. Fairfax (she must call him Antony if he was
to live with them. Miss Mitty couldn't. She must. Well, Mr. Antony
then), such a brilliant and executive woman. Mrs. Carew had founded the
Women's Exchange for the work of indigent ladies, such a dignified,
needed charity.
Miss Mitty knew a little old lady who made fifteen hundred dollars in
rag dolls alone.
"Dear me," said Fairfax, "couldn't you pass me off for a niece, Miss
Whitcomb? I can make clay figures that will beat rag dolls to bits."
Fifteen hundred dollars! He mused on his aunt's charity.
"And another," murmured Miss Eulalie, "another friend of ours made
altogether ten thousand dollars in chicken pies."
"Ah," exclaimed the lodger, "that's even easier to believe. And does my
uncle Carew make pies or dolls?"
"He is a pillar of the Church," said his hostess gravely, "a very
distinguished gentleman, Mr. Antony. He bowed once to one of us in the
street. Which of us was it, sister?"
Not Miss Mitty, at any rate, and she was inclined to think that Mr.
Carew had made a mistake, whichever way it had been!
Their lodger listened with more interest when they spoke of the
children. The little creatures went to school near the Whitcomb house.
Gardiner was always ailing. Miss Mitty used to watch them from her
window.
"Bella runs like a deer down the block, you never saw such nimble legs,
and her skirts are _so_ short! They _should_ come down, Mr. Antony, and
her hair is quite like a wild savage's."
Miss Eulalie had called Bella in once to mend a hole in her stocking
"really too bad for school."
"She should have gone into the Women's Exchange," suggested her cousin,
"and employed some one who was out of orders for chicken pies or dolls!"
* * * * *
That night, under the gas jet and its blue and ghastly light, Fairfax
tried to write to his mother, began his letter and left it as he began.
"My dearest Mother...." She had told him little of his kinspeople, the
sisters had never been friends. Nevertheless, he quite understood that,
whatever she might have thought of the eccentricities of his uncle, this
welcome to her boy would cut her cruelly. She had fully expected him to
be a guest at the Carews.
"My dearest Mother...." He began to draw idly on the page. A spray of
jasmine uncurled its leaves beneath his hand. Across his shoulders he
felt the coldness of the room where he sat. A few more hurried strokes
and Fairfax had indicated on the page before him a child's head--an
upturned face. As he rounded the chin, Antony saw that the sketch would
be likely to charm him, and he was tired out and cold. He threw down his
pen, dragged out his valise, opened it, took out his things and prepared
for his first night's rest in the city of his unfriendly kinsmen.
CHAPTER VI
If it had been only spring, or any season less brutal than this winter,
whose severity met him at times with a fresh rebuff and a fresh
surprise--if it had been spring, Antony would have procrastinated, hung
back, unaccustomed as he was to taking quick, decisive action, but the
ugliness of the surroundings at Miss Whitcomb's and the bitter winter
weather forced him to a decision. In the three following days he visited
every one of the few studios that existed at that period in New York.
What were his plans? What were his ideas? But, when he came face to face
with the reality of the matter-of-fact question, he had no plans.
Idealistic, impractical, untried and unschooled, he faced the fact that
he had no plan or idea whatsoever of how to forge his life: he never had
had any and his mother had given him no advice. He wanted to work at
art, but how and where he did not know. Some of the studios could use
models--Fairfax burned at the thought. He could not study as a pupil and
live on air. No one wanted practical workmen.
The man he most wanted to see was Gunner Cedersholm. He had fallen in
love with the works of the Swedish master as he had seen them in
photograph and plaster cast at the exposition in New Orleans. He had
read all the accounts in the papers he could find of the great Swede.
When he learned that Gunner Cedersholm was in Europe and that he should
not be able to see him until spring, poor Antony longed to stow himself
on a ship and follow the artist.
Meanwhile, the insignificant fact that an insignificant piece of
modelling had been accepted by an inadvertent jury and placed in the New
York Academy, began to appear to him ridiculous. He had not ventured to
mention this to any one, and the fact that at his fingers' ends lay
undoubted talent began to seem to him a useless thing as well. The only
moment of balm he knew came to him one afternoon in the Metropolitan
Museum. This museum was at that period sparsely dowered. Fairfax stood
before a plaster figure of Rameses, and for the first time the young
artist saw around him the effigies of an art long perfect, long retained
and long dead.
Turning down through the Egyptian room, his overcoat on his arm, for,
thank Heaven, the place was warmed, his beauty-loving eyes fell on the
silent objects whose presence was meed and balm. He took in the
nourishment of the food to his senses and the colour in his cheeks
brightened, the blue deepened in his eyes. He was repeating the line:
"Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time ..." when two living objects
caught his attention, in a room beyond devoted to a collection of
shells. Before a low case stood the figure of a very little boy in a
long awkward ulster and jockey cap, and by his side, in a conspicuously
short crimson skirt and a rough coat, was a little girl. Her slender
legs and her abundant hair that showered from beneath a crimson
tam-o'-shanter recalled Miss Mitty's description of Bella; but Antony
knew her for herself when she turned.
"Cousin Antony!" She rushed at him. Childlike, the two made no reference
to the lapse of time between his first visit and this second meeting.
Gardiner took his hand and Antony thought the little boy clung to it,
seized it with singular appealing force, as though he made a refuge of
the strong clasp. Bella greeted him with her eager, brilliant look, then
she rapidly glanced round the room, deserted save for themselves.
"Something perfectly fearful happened last week, Cousin Antony. Yes,
Gardiner, I will tell. Anyhow, it's all over now, thank the stars." (He
learned to hear her thank these silent heavenly guardians often.) "What
do you think? Last week we came here, Gardiner and me, we come often. We
play with the ancient Egyptians. I'm Cleopatra and Gardiner's' different
things, and there's a guardian here that we specially like because he
taught us things useful for school if you have a weak memory. This is
how you remember the poets--
Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Pope,
Go upstairs and get some soap.
So you see we can't forget them like that. And Shakespeare's birth and
death I never could remember till he taught me--
Fifteen hundred and sixty-four
Shakespeare first was heard to roar.
Sixteen hundred and sixteen
Billy Shakespeare last was seen.
When your memory's weak it's a great help, Cousin Antony. Then what do
you think Gardiner did?"
Here Fairfax was more than ever sensible of the little boy's clinging
hand. He looked down at the sensitive, flushed face, and the fascinated
eyes of Gardiner were fixed on the vigorous, ardent little sister.
"Well," said Antony, cordially, "I reckon it's not anything very bad,
little cousin."
He led them to a bench under the calm serene chaperonage of Rameses who
kept sentinel over them.
"Bad," whispered Bella, "why it was the worst thing you can possibly
imagine, Cousin Antony. He stole."
The child's voice dropped solemnly and the silence that fell in the
museum was impressive, even though the situation was humorous. Gardiner,
whom Antony had lifted on his knee, raised his head and looked his
cousin mildly in the eyes.
"It was a shell," he said slowly, "a blue and bwown shell. Nobody was
looking and I took it home."
He confessed calmly and without shame, and his sister said--
"The guardian was cleaning the cases. I think they trusted us, Cousin
Antony, we were alone here, and it makes it much worse. When we got home
Gardiner showed it to me, and we have had to wait a week to come back
and restore it."
"I westored it," repeated the boy, "Bella made me."
With his diminutive hand he made a shell and discoursed regretfully--
"It was a perfectly lovely shell. It's over there in its place. Bella
made me put it back again."
"The worst of it is," said the sister, "that he doesn't seem to care. He
doesn't mind being a thief."
"Well," laughed Antony, "don't you trouble about it, Bella honey, you
have been a policeman and a judge and a benefactor all in one, and you
have brought the booty back. Come," said Fairfax, "there's the man that
shuts us out and the shells in, and we must go." And they were all three
at the park gate in the early twilight before the children asked him--
"Cousin Antony, where have you been all these days?"
* * * * *
He saw the children to their own door, and on the way little Gardiner
complained that his shoes were tight, so his cousin carried him, and
nearly carried Bella, who, linking her arm firmly in his, walked close
to him, and, unobserved by Antony, with sympathetic gallantry, copied
his limp all the way home.
Their companionship had been of the most perfect. He learned where they
roller skated, and which were the cracks to avoid in the pavement, and
which were the treasure lots. He saw where, in dreary excavations, where
plantain and goatweed grew, Bella found stores of quartz and flints, and
where she herded the mangy goat when the Irish ragpickers were out
ragpicking.
Under his burden of Gardiner Antony's heart had, nevertheless, grown
light, and before they had reached the house he had murmured to them, in
his rich singing voice, Spartacus' address to the gladiators, and where
it says: "Oh, Rome, Rome, thou hast been a tender nurse to me; thou hast
given to the humble shepherd boy muscles of iron and a heart of
steel,"--where these eloquent words occurred he was obliged to stand
still on Madison Avenue, with the little boy in his arms, to give the
lines their full impressiveness.
Once deposited on the steps, where Fairfax looked to see rise the
effigies of the ashes his uncle had ordered scattered, Gardiner seemed
hardly able to crawl.
Trevelyan encouraged him: "Brace up, Gardiner, be a man."
And the child had mildly responded that "his bones were tired." His
sister supported him maternally and helped him up, nodding to Antony
that she would look after her little brother, and Antony heard the boy
say--
"Six and six are twelve, Bella, and you're both, and I'm only one of
them. How can you expect...?"
Antony expected by this time nothing.
And when that night the eager Miss Whitcombs handed him a letter from
his aunt, with the heading 780, Madison Avenue, in gold, he eagerly tore
it open.
"My dear Antony," the letter ran, "the children should have drawing
lessons, Gardiner especially draws constantly; I think he has talent.
Will you come and teach them three times a week? I don't know about
remuneration for such things, except as the school bills indicate. Shall
we say twenty dollars a term--and I am not clear as to what a 'term' is!
In music lessons, for instance--" (She had evidently made some
calculations and scratched it out, and here the price was dropped for
ever and ever.)
To an unpractical woman such a drop is always soothing, and to a
sensitive pauper probably no less so. The letter ended with the
suggestion to Antony that he meet them in their own pew on Sunday
morning at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, and that he return with
them for dinner.
CHAPTER VII
He succeeded in keeping from the kind and curious interest of the
little ladies the state of his mind and his pocket, and his intentions.
It had not been easy, for when their courteous hints brought no
satisfaction, Miss Eulalie and Miss Mitty asked Fairfax out boldly what
he "was going to do"? Miss Mitty, on whom the task of doing up the hall
room had fallen, dreamed over the sketches she found (in his valise).
Spellbound, she held in her hand a small head of a dryad, and modestly
covered up with her handkerchief a tiny figure whose sweet nudity had
startled her. Antony parried questions. He had come to seek Fortune. So
far it rolled before him with the very devil in its tantalizing wheel,
but he did not say this to Miss Whitcomb. Miss Eulalie suggested to him
that his uncle "could make a place for him in the bank," but Fairfax's
short reply cooled her enthusiasm, and both ladies took their cue. In
the first week he had exhausted his own projects and faced the horrible
thought of disaster.
His nature was not one to harbour anything but sweetness, and the next
day, Sunday, when the sunlight poured upon New York, he thought of the
little cousins and decided to accept his aunt's invitation. The sky was
cloudless and under its hard blue the city looked colder and whiter than
ever. It was a sky which in New Orleans would have made the birds sing.
The steeples sang, one slender tower rocking as its early ringing bells
sang out its Sunday music on the next corner of the street, and Antony
listened as he dressed, and recognized the melody. He found it beautiful
and sang in his young voice as he shaved and tied his cravat, and made
himself impeccable for the Presbyterian Church. His own people were High
Church Episcopalians, and from the tone and music of these bells he
believed that they rang in an Episcopal building. There was no
melancholy in the honied tone of the chime, and it gave him a glow that
went with him happily throughout the dreary day.
He found himself between the children in the deep dark pew, where the
back of the seat was especially contrived to seize the sinner in a
sensitive point, and it clutched Antony and made him think of all the
crimes that he had ever committed. Fortunately it met Bella and Gardiner
at their heads. Antony's position between the children was not without
danger. He was to serve as a quieter for Bella's nerves, spirits and
perpetual motion, and to guard against Gardiner's somnolence. He
remained deaf to Bella's clear whispers, and settled Gardiner
comfortably and propped him up. Finally the little boy fell securely
against the cousinly arm. At the end of the pew, Mr. and Mrs. Carew were
absorbed, she in her emotional interest in the pastor, a brilliant
Irishman who thundered for an hour, and Mr. Carew in his own importance
and his position. Antony remembered Miss Mitty and that his uncle was a
pillar of the Church, and he watched the pillar support in grave
pomposity his part of the edifice.
But neither time nor place nor things eternal nor things present
affected the little girl at Antony's side. Sunk in the deep pew,
unobserved and sheltered by Antony's figure, she lived what she called
her "Sunday pew life," lived it as ardently as she did everything. After
a short interval in which she pored over the open hymnbook, she
whispered to him ---- ----
"Cousin Antony, I have learned the whole hymn, ten verses in five
minutes. Hear me."
He tried to ignore her, but he was obliged to hear her as with great
feeling and in a soft droning undertone she murmured the hymn through.
"'Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.' Isn't it perfectly beautiful,
Cousin Antony?"
This done, she took off her yellow kid gloves carefully, finger by
finger, and blew them out into a shapely little hand like Zephyr's, to
the dangerous amusement of a child in the next pew. Antony confiscated
the gloves. By squeezing up her eyes and making a lorgnon of her pretty
bare hand, Bella scrutinized the solemn preacher. Antony severely
refused her pencils and paper and remained deaf to her soft questions,
and, thrown on her own resources, Bella extracted her father's huge
Bible from the rack and, to Fairfax's relief, with much turning of the
leaves she finally found a favourite chapter in Revelation and settled
down and immersed herself in the Apocalypse. She read with fervour, her
bonnet back on her rebellious hair, her legs crossed in defiance of
every rule of polite demeanour. Something of the sermon's eloquent,
passionate savagery was heard by Fairfax, and at the close, as the
preacher rose to his climax, Bella heard too. At the text, "There shall
be no more night there, neither candle nor light of the sun," she shut
her book.
"He is preaching from my chapter, Cousin Antony," she whispered; "isn't
it perfectly beautiful?"
Fairfax learned to wait for this phrase of hers, a ready approval of
sensuous and lovely and poetic things. He learned to wait for it as one
does for a word of praise from a sympathetic companion. Gardiner woke up
and yawned, and Fairfax got him on his feet; his tumbled blonde head
reached just to the hymnbook rail. He was a pretty picture with his
flushed soft cheeks, red as roses, and his sleepy eyes wide. So they
stood for the solemn benediction, "The love of God ... go with you ...
always."
CHAPTER VIII
He decided not to be the one to shut doors against himself. If life as
it went on chose with backward fling to close portals behind him of its
own accord, he at least would not assist fate, and with both hands,
generously, as his heart was generous, Fairfax threw all gates wide.
Therefore with no _arriere pensee_ or any rankling thought, he went on
the appointed afternoon to teach his little cousins the rudiments of
drawing.
The weather continued brutal, grew more severe rather, and smartly
whipped him up the avenue and hurled him into the house. He arrived
covered with snow, white as Santa Claus, and he heard by the voices at
the stair head that he was welcome. The three were alone, the upper
floor had been assigned to the drawing party. It was a big room full of
forgotten things, tons of books that people had ceased to want to read,
the linen chest, a capital hiding-place where a soft hand beneath the
lid might prevent a second Mistletoe Bough tragedy. There were old
trunks stored there, boxes which could not travel any more, one of which
had been on a wedding journey and still contained, amongst less poetic
objects, mother's wedding slippers. There was a dear disorder in the big
room whose windows overlooked Madison and Fifth Avenues, and the
distant, black wintry trees of Central Park. A child on either side of
him, Fairfax surveyed his workshop, and he thought to himself, "I could
model here, if I only had some clay."
Bella had already installed herself. Their tables and their boards and a
prodigal outlay of pencils and paper were in themselves inspiring.
"There is no chair high enough for Gardiner," Bella said, "but we can
build him one up out of books."
"I'd wather sit on Cousin Antony's lap," said the little boy; "built-up
books shake me off so, Bella."
Both children wore blue gingham play aprons. Fairfax told them they
looked like real workmen in a real studio, with which idea they were
much delighted.
"Gardiner looks like a charity child," said his sister, "in that apron,
and his hair's too long. It ought to be cut, but I gave my solemn word
of honour that I wouldn't cut it again."
"Why don't you go to your famous Buckingham barber?" asked the cousin.
"It's too far for Gardiner to walk," she returned, "and we have lost our
last ten cents. Besides, it's thirty-five cents to get a hair-cut."
Fairfax had placed the boy before his drawing board, and confiscated a
long piece of kitchen bread, telling Bella that less than a whole loaf
was enough for an eraser, extracted the rubber from Gardiner's mouth,
and sat down by the little boy's side.
"There's not much money in this house, Cousin Antony," Bella informed
him when the seance opened. "Please let me use the soft pencils, will
you? They slide like delicious velvet."
Fairfax made an equal division of the implements, avoiding a scene, and
made Bella a straight line across the page.
"Draw a line under it."
"But any one can draw a straight line," said Bella, scornfully, "and I
don't think they are very pretty."
"Don't you?" he answered; "the horizon is pretty, don't you think? And
the horizon is a straight line."
"Yes, it is," said Gardiner, "the howizon is where the street cars fall
over into the sunset."
"Gardiner's only six," said Bella, apologetically, "you mustn't expect
much of him, Cousin Antony."
She curled over the table and bent her head and broke her pencils one by
one, and Fairfax guided Gardiner's hand and watched the little girl. She
was lightly and finely made. From under her short red skirt the pretty
leg in its woollen stocking swung to and fro. There was a hole in the
stocking heel, visible above the tiny, tiny slipper. Through the crude
dark collar of the gingham apron came her dark head and its wild
torrent of curling hair, wonderful hair, tangled and unkempt, curling
roundly at the ends, and beneath the locks the curve of her cheek was
like ivory. She was a Southern beauty--her little red mouth twisted awry
over her drawing.
"I thought dwawing was making pictures, Cousin Antony; if I'd have known
it was _lines_, I wouldn't have taken," said his youngest cousin.
"You have to begin with those things, old man. I'll wipe your hands off
on my handkerchief."
"Please do," said the little boy; "my hands leak awful easy."
His sister laughed softly, and said to herself in an undertone--
"I've drawn my lines long--long--ago, and now I'm making...."
"Don't make anything, Bella, until I tell you to," commanded her
teacher, and glanced over her page where she had covered the paper with
her big formless handwriting, "Dramatiss personi, first act."
"Why, I had a lovely idea for a play, Cousin Antony, and I thought I'd
just jot it down. We're the company, Gardiner and I, and we give plays
here every now and then. You can play too, if you like, and say
'Spartacus.' Ah, say it now."
Trevelyan felt the appealing little hand of the boy stealing into his.
"Do, please," he urged; "I don't want ever to draw again, never, never."
"Hush," said his sister severely, "you mustn't say that, Gardiner;
Cousin Antony is our drawing master."
Gardiner's sensitive face flushed. "I thought he was only my cousin,"
said the child, and continued timidly, "I'll dwaw a howizon now and then
if you want me to, but I'd wather not."
They left their tables. Fairfax said, "I'm no good at teaching, Bella."
He stretched his arms. "I reckon you're not much good at learning
either. Gardiner's too young and you're not an artist."
"Say about the 'timid shepherd boy,' Cousin Antony."
He had taken his coat off in the furnace-heated room and stood in his
snowy shirt sleeves, glad to be released from the unwelcome task of
teaching restless children. He loved the ring and the thrill of the
words and declaimed the lines enthusiastically.
* * * * *
"You look like a gladiator, Cousin Antony," Bella cried; "you must have
a perfectly splendid muscle."
He bared his right arm, carried away by his recitation and the picture
evoked. The children admired the sinews and the swelling biceps.
Gardiner touched it with his little fingers; the muscular firm arm,
ending in the vigorous wrist, held their fascinated gaze. The sculptor
himself looked up it with pardonable approval.
"Feel mine," said Gardiner, crimson with the exertion of lifting his
tiny arm to the position of his cousin's.
"Immense, Gardiner!" Fairfax complimented, "immense."
"Feel mine," cried Bella, and the sculptor touched between his fingers
the fine little member.
"Great, little cousin!"
"I'll be the gladiator's wife and applaud him from the Coliseum and
throw flowers on him."
Fairfax lingered with them another hour, laughing at his simplicity in
finding them such companions. With compunction, he endeavoured to take
up his lesson again with Bella, unwilling and recalcitrant. She drew a
few half-hearted circles, a page of wobbly lines, and at the suspicion
of tears Fairfax desisted, surprised to find how the idea of tears from
her touched him. Then in the window between them, he watched as the
children told him they always did, for "mother's car to come home."
"She is sharping," exclaimed Gardiner, slowly; "she has to sharp very
hard, my mother does. She comes back in the cars, only she never comes,"
he finished with patient fatality.
"Silly," exclaimed his sister, "she always comes at dinner-time. And we
bet on the cars, Cousin Antony. Now let's say it will be the
seventy-first. We have to put it far away off," she explained, "'cause
we're beginning early."
Fairfax left them, touched by their patience in watching for the mother
bird. He promised to return soon, soon, to go on with his wonderful
tales. As he went downstairs Bella called after him.
"But you didn't say _which_ car you bet on, Cousin Antony."
And Fairfax called back in his Southern drawl: "I reckon she'll come in
a pumpkin chariot." And he heard their delighted giggles as he limped
downstairs.
CHAPTER IX
He avoided his uncle, Mr. Carew, and made up his mind that if the master
of the house were brusque to him, he would not return, were the
threshold worn never so dear by little feet. Bella had the loveliest
little feet a fellow connoisseur of plastic beauty could wish to see,
could wish to watch twinkle in run-down slippers, in scuffled boots--in
boots where a button or two was always lacking--and once when she kicked
off her strap slipper at a lesson Fairfax saw, through a hole in the
stocking, one small perfect toe--a toe of Greek marble perfection, a
most charming, snowy, rosy bit of flesh, and he imagined how adorable
the little foot must be.
To an audience, composed of a dreamy boy and an ardent, enthusiastic
little girl, Fairfax confessed his talent, spoke of his hopes, of his
art, even hinted at genius, and one day fetched his treasures, his bits
of moistened clay, to show the children.
"Oh, they are perfectly _beautiful_, Cousin Antony. Wouldn't you do
Gardiner's head for mother?"
On this day, with his overcoat and hat, Fairfax had laid by a paper
parcel. It was stormy, and around the upper windows the snow blew and
the winds cried. Propped up by pillows, Gardiner, in his red flannel
dressing-gown, nestled in the corner of the sofa. Antony regarded Bella,
red as a cardinal bird in her homely dress; he had seen her wear no
other dress and would have regretted the change.
"Oh, I'll do Gardiner one of these days, but I reckon I'll make another
study to-day."
"Me?" Bella shook back her mane.
Her cousin considered her with an impersonal eye, whose expression she
did not understand to be the artist's gauge and measure.
"Bella," he said shortly, "I'm going to make a cast of your foot."
She was sitting on the sofa and drew her feet under her.
"Only just my foot, Cousin Antony, not all of me?"
"Come now," said the sculptor, "it won't take long. It's heaps of
sport."
He unrolled the paper parcel he had brought, unfolding a mass of snowy,
delectable looking powder.
"Ask old Ann to fetch us a couple of basins, deep ones, some water and a
little oil and salt."
When after toilsome journeys up and down the stairs of the four-storied
house, the things had been fetched, Fairfax mixed his plaster, eagerly
watched by the children. Perched on the edge of the divan, Bella brooded
over the foaming, marvellous concoction, into whose milky bubbles she
saw art fall like a star--a genius blossom like a flower. She gazed at
Antony's hands as they plunged in and came out dripping; gazed as though
she expected him to bring forth some peerless image his touch had called
to life. His shirt sleeves rolled up over his fine arms, his close
high-cropped and sunny hair warm upon his brow, his eyes sparkling, he
bent an impassioned face over the milky plaster.
"Now," Fairfax said, "hurry along, Bella, I'm ready!"
She responded quietly. "I'm here. It's like a snow pie, Cousin Antony."
"Take off your shoe and stocking."
"Cousin Antony!"
A painful flush of red, the drawing under her more closely of the little
legs, showed how far she had been from comprehending.
"Casts are taken from life, Bella," informed her cousin practically,
"you'll see. I'm going to make a model from life, then watch what
happens. I reckon you're not afraid, honey?"
Gardiner kicked his foot out from under the rugs. "Do mine."
With the first timidity Antony had seen her display, Bella divested
herself of her shoe and drew off her dark stocking, and held him out the
little naked foot, a charming, graceful concession to art.
"It's clean," she said simply.
He took it in his big hand and it lay like a pearl and coral thing in
his palm. Bella did not hear his murmured artistic ecstasies. Fairfax
deftly oiled the foot, kneeling before it as at a shrine of beauty. He
placed it in one of the basins and poured the plaster slowly over it,
sternly bidding her to control her giggles and her "ouches" as it could
not harm.
"Keep perfectly still. Do not budge till the plaster sets."
"Oh, it's setting already," she told him, "_hard_! You won't break off
my foot, Cousin Antony?"
"Nonsense."
Whilst the cast set he recited for them "St. Agnes's Eve," a great
favourite with the children, beyond their comprehension, but their
hearts nevertheless stirred to the melody. As Fairfax leant down to
break the model Bella helped him bravely.
"_Now_, might I put on my stocking, Cousin Antony?"
He had been pouring the warm plaster into the mould and had forgotten
her, and was reproached.
The twilight gathered and made friends with the storm as they waited for
the cast to harden. Old Ann came in and lighted the gas above the group
on the old divan.
"Be the hivenly powers! Mr. Fairfax, ye've here a power of a dirt."
Fairfax, who had taken a fancy to the patient old creature, who had'
known his mother and was really more a slave to the children than his
own black Mammy, bore the scolding peacefully.
"Ye're the childest of the three, sor."
Antony caught her arm. "Wait and see, old Ann," and he kneeled before
the cooled plaster and broke his model, released his work and held up
the cast.
"For the love of hiven, Mr. Antony, it's Miss Bella's foot ye've got,
sor."
She stared as at a miracle, then at her little lady as though she
expected to see a missing member. Bella danced around it, pleaded for
it, claimed it. Gardiner was allowed to feel how cold it was, and
Fairfax took it home in his overcoat pocket, anxious to get safely away
with it before his uncle came and smashed it, as he had the feeling
that Mr. Carew would some day smash everything for him. That night when
she undressed Bella regarded with favour the foot that had been
considered worthy of a cast and extracted sacredly a bit of plaster
which she found between the toes, and Antony Fairfax limped home to the
House that Jack Built, his heavy step lighter for the fairy foot, the
snow-white, perfect little foot he carried triumphantly in his pocket.
CHAPTER X
He was too sincerely an artist not to make pictures of all he saw, and,
being sincere, he made his lines true, and then outlined the sketch,
softening, moulding, moulding.... His aunt's gentle inefficiency (she
was kind to him, affectionate, and called him "her dear boy") was to
Fairfax only charming, feminine softness, and he grew fond of Mrs.
Carew, indulgent to her faults, listened half convinced to her
arguments, admired her in her multitudinous toilettes, in all of which
she was original, found her lovely and graceful. Her eyes were
deer-like--not those of a startled fawn, but like a doe's who stands
gazing at a perfect park, whose bosks she takes to be real forests. Mrs.
Carew knew absolutely nothing of life. Fairfax at twenty-three, knew
less of it, and he could not criticize her vision. He saw his uncle
through Bella's eyes, but he never passed the master of the house in the
halls, taking good care to escape him. It was not easy to associate fear
with Bella; her father had not impressed her free mind with this
sentiment.
"Father," she told Antony, "is the most important man in New York City,
the cook said so. He might be President, but he doesn't want to; he
likes his own work best. Father's work is making money, and he quite
understands how hard such a thing is. That is why there is so little in
the house, Cousin Antony. Even the cook hadn't a cent when I asked her
to lend me a penny. We used to have five cents a week, but now mother
has to be so careful that we're hard up. It's awful when there are
treats on, Cousin Antony, because you see, you ought to do your share.
That is why Gardiner and I always stick around together and say we don't
like children.... No," she said firmly, "I really _couldn't_ take five
cents, Cousin Antony; thank you ever so much. We're bound in honour not
to; we promised never to take from a stranger; yes, I know you're not a
stranger, and I forget to whom we promised, but I really couldn't,
Cousin Antony."
Mrs. Carew could, however. One day, on her way to the magic car, as it
waited with its lean horses and jingle-jangle to take the lady
"sharping," that day she borrowed two dollars from Fairfax, who, being a
pauper, had always money in his pocket; having in reality nowhere else
to keep it--and having none to keep elsewhere. The two dollar bill went
to join ghostly company with the drawing lessons money, and fluttered
away to the country of unpaid bills, of forgotten obligations, of
benefits forgot, and it is to be wondered if souls are ever at peace
there.
"Father," said Bella, "is the 'soul of honour.' When Ann comes to rub
Gardiner's feet at night (they are so often tired, Cousin Antony), she
told me about father's character. She's awfully Irish, you wouldn't
understand her. Father goes to 'board meetings' (I don't know what they
are, but they're very important) and they call him 'your honour,' and
Ann says it's all because of his soul. _He never breaks his word_, and
when the bills come in...."
The drawing lessons went bravely and wearily on day after day. Because
his aunt wished it, Fairfax guided Gardiner's inert fingers across the
page and almost tied Bella to her chair. On drawing days he lunched with
the household, and honestly earned his food. Half fed, keen with a
healthy appetite, he ate gratefully. They had been pausing at the end of
a half-hour's torture when Bella took up her monologue on her father's
character.
"When the bills come in he shuts himself in the library. I hear him walk
up and down; then he comes out with his face white, and once, long past
dinner-time, when mother didn't come in, he said to me, 'Where in
heaven's name is your mother? What can she find left in the shops to
buy?' just that, he asked me that, Cousin Antony. I felt awfully sorry.
I was just going to ask him for five cents, but I hadn't the heart."
That she had heart for her father, this child of twelve, and at so
tender an age could see and comprehend, could pity, struck Fairfax, and
on his part he began to see many things, but being a man and chivalrous,
he pitied the woman as well.
"My aunt is out of her element," he decided; "she cannot be in love with
her husband; no woman who loved anything on earth could gad about as she
does," and he wondered, and the deer in the park gazing at an artificial
wilderness became more and more of a symbol of her.
Regarding the man they called "his honour" Fairfax had not made up his
mind.
* * * * *
Gardiner developed scarlet fever and lay, so Mrs. Carew assured Antony,
"at the door of death," and Bella had been sent away to the country. Mr.
Carew lived at the Club, and Antony made daily visits and did countless
errands for his aunt. One day, toward the end of the little boy's
convalescence, Fairfax came in late and heard the sound of a sweet voice
singing. He entered the drawing-room quietly and the song went on. Mrs.
Carew had a lovely voice, one of those natural born voices,
heart-touching, appealing; one of those voices that cause an ache and go
to the very marrow, that make the eyes fill. As though she knew Antony
was there, and liked the entertainment, she sang him song after song,
closing with "Oh, wert thou in the cold blast," then let her hands rest
on the keys. Fairfax went over to the piano.
"Why didn't you tell me you sang like this, Aunt Caroline?" The emotion
her songs had kindled remained in his voice.
"Oh, I never sing, my dear boy, your uncle doesn't like music."
"Damn," said the young man sharply; "I beg your pardon. You've got the
family talent; your voice is divine."
She was touched but shook her head. "I might have sung possibly, if your
uncle had ever cared for it. He'll be back to-morrow and I thought I'd
just run these things over."
As she rose and left the piano he observed how young she was, how
graceful in her trailing dress. The forced housing of these weeks of
Gardiner's illness had quieted the restless spirit. Mrs. Carew was
womanly to him, feminine for the first time since his arrival. It was at
the end of his tongue to say, "Why did you ever marry that man?" He
thought with keen dislike of the husband whose appearance would close
the piano, silence the charming voice, and drive his aunt to find
occupation in the shops and in charities. He became too chivalrous.
"Flow gently, sweet Afton," as sung by her, echoed thence afterwards in
his mind all his life. The melody was stored in the chambers of his
memory, and whenever, in later years, he tried not to recall 700 Madison
Avenue, and the inhospitable home, maddeningly and plaintively these
tunes would come: "Roll on, silver moon," that too. How that moon rolled
and hung in the pale sky of remembrance, whose colour and hue is more
enchanting than ever were Italian skies!
Mrs. Carew had an audience composed of two people. Little Gardiner, up
and dressed in his flannel gown, and the big cousin fathering him with a
protecting arm, both in the sofa corner. Mrs. Carew's mellow voice on
those winter afternoons before Bella returned, before Mr. Carew came
back from the Club, flowed and quavered and echoed sweetly through the
room. In the twilight, before the gas came, with old-fashioned stars set
in the candelabra, the touching pathos of the ballads spoke to the
romantic Fairfax ... spoke to his twenty-three years and spoke
dangerously. He became more and more chivalrous and considered his aunt
a misunderstood and unloved woman. Long, long afterwards, a chord, a
note, was sufficient to bring before him the square drawing-room with
its columns, furnish with an agglomeration of gaudy, rich, fantastic
things expressive of her uncertain taste. He saw again the long dark
piano and the silhouette of the woman behind it, graceful, shadowy, and
felt the pressure against his arm of little Gardiner, as they two sat
sympathetically lifted to an emotional pitch, stirred as only the music
of a woman's voice in love-songs can stir a man's heart.
Bella came back and there was an end of the concerts. A charm to keep
Bella silent had not yet been found, unless that charm were a book. "She
could not read when mother sang," she said, "and more than that, it
made her cry." And when Mr. Carew's latchkey scratched in the door,
Bella flew upstairs to the top story, Antony and Gardiner followed more
slowly; Mrs. Carew shut her piano, and took the cars again to forget her
restlessness in the purchase of silks and dry goods and house
decorations, and was far from guessing the emotion she had aroused in
the breast of her nephew--"Flow gently, sweet Afton." Nothing flowed
gently in Fairfax's impetuous breast. Nothing flowed gently on the tide
of events that drifted past slowly, leaving him unsuccessful, without
any opening into fame.
CHAPTER XI
Cedersholm returned to New York and Fairfax presented himself again at
the studio, getting as far as the workroom of the great Swede who had
started in life the son of a tinsmith in Copenhagen. The smell of the
clay, the sight of the figures swathed in damp cloths, the shaded light,
struck Fairfax deliciously as he waited for an audience with Cedersholm.
Fairfax drew his breath deep as though he were once again in his
element. Cedersholm was out, and with no other encouragement than the
sight of the interior of the four walls, Antony was turned away. His
mother had added to his fast melting funds by a birthday gift, and
Fairfax was nearly at the end of this.
Walking up from Cedersholm's to his uncle's house, a tramp of three
miles, he limped into the children's room, on his usually bright face
the first shadow they had seen. Bella was already seated at her table.
Her six weeks in the country had sent her back, longer, slimmer, her
skirt let down at the hem an inch, and some pretence to order in her
hair. The dark mass of her hair was lifted back, held by a round comb;
Bella was much transformed.
"Hello, honey," cried her cousin, "what have you been changing into?"
"What do you think of my back comb, Cousin Antony? It's the fourth. I've
broken three. All cheap, luckily, not the best quality."
Bella took the comb from her hair and handed it to Antony, and,
unprisoned, her locks fell triumphantly around her face.
"I like you better that way, little cousin," said Fairfax, "and,"
continued the drawing master, "you've a wonderful new pair of shoes,
Bella!"
The little leg was encased in a light blue silk stocking, and the
perfect little foot, whose rosy curves and lines Fairfax knew, was
housed in a new blue kid shoe with shining white buttons, entirely out
of keeping with the dear old red dress which, to Fairfax, seemed part of
Bella Carew.
"Dancing school," she said briefly; "mother promised us we might go ages
ago, long before you came, Cousin Antony."
"About ten years ago, I fink," said Gardiner helpfully.
"Nonsense," corrected his sister sharply, "but long enough ago for
_these_ to grow too small." She held up her pretty foot. "We got as far
as the shoes and stockings (real silk, Cousin Antony, feel). Aren't they
perfectly _beautiful_? We didn't _dare_, because of the bills, get the
dress, you know, so I guess mother's been waiting for better times. But
just as soon as I came back from the country and they let out the hem
and bought the comb, I said to Gardiner, 'There, my dancing shoes will
be too small.'" She leant down and pinched the toes. "They _do_
squeeze." She crinkled up her eyes and pursed up the little red mouth.
"They pinch awfully, but I'm going to wear them to drawing lessons, if I
can't to dancing lessons. See," she smoothed out her drawing board and
pointed to her queer lines, "I have drawn some old things for you, a
couple of squares and a triangle."
Fairfax listened, amused; the problems of his life were vital, she could
not distract him. He took the rubber, erasing her careless work, sat
down by her and began to give her real instruction. Little Gardiner,
excused from all study, amused himself after his own fashion in a corner
of the sofa, and after a few moments of silence, Fairfax's pupil
whispered to him in a low tone--
"I can't draw anything, Cousin Antony, when you've got that look on."
Fairfax continued his work.
"It's no use, you've got the heavy look like the heavy step. Are you
angry with me?"
Not her words, but her voice made her cousin stop his drawing. In it was
a hint of the tears she hated to shed. Bella leant her elbow on the
table, rested her head in her hand and searched Fairfax's face with her
eloquent eyes. They were not like her mother's, doe-like and patient;
Bella's were dark eyes, superb and shadowy. They held something of the
Spanish mystery, caught from the strain that ran through the Carew
family from the Middle Ages, when the Carez were nobles in Andalusia.
"I am angry with myself, Bella; I am a fool."
"Oh no, you're _not_," she breathed devotedly, "you're a genius."
The tension of Fairfax's heart relaxed. The highest praise that any
woman could have found, this child, in her naivete, gave him.
"Why don't you make some figures and sell them, Cousin Antony? Are you
worried about money troubles?" She had heard these terms often.
"Yes," he said shortly, "just that."
He had gone on to sketch a head on the drawing-board, touching it
absently, and over his shoulder Bella murmured--
"Cousin Antony, it's just like me. You just draw wonderfully."
He deepened the shadows in the hair and rounded the ear, held it some
way off and looked at it.
"I wish I had some clay," he murmured.
He had brought the cast of the foot back to show it to his aunt when an
occasion should offer. It stood now in the little cabinet where Bella
and Gardiner kept their treasures.
"I went to see Mr. Cedersholm to-day," Fairfax continued, for lack of
other confidant taking the dark-eyed child; "now, if Cedersholm would
only take me up, and give me the chance to work under him, I'd soon show
him."
Bella agreed warmly. "Yes, indeed, you soon would."
CHAPTER XII
The odours of strange meats and sauces were wafted throughout the house.
Little troublesome feet pattered up and down the dingy back stairs, and
whenever Bella and Gardiner were laid hold upon they were banished. They
were inoculated with excitement and their nostrils pricked with the
delicious smells of flowers and smilax and feast meats.
Mr. Carew annually gave a banquet to some twenty New Yorkers, who he was
so generous as to think were nearly as great as himself. The household
was not constructed or run on a hospitable basis and nothing was in tune
for entertaining. Sympathetic Bella, thrilling with liveliest interest,
assisted at the preparations, and to her bright cheeks and eyes her
mother bewailed--
"Only _twenty_ glasses, Bella, of the fine engraved deer and pheasant
pattern, and we shall be twenty-four."
"Mother, give me one in a paper and I'll take it down town and match
it."
Her mother laughed. "Match it, why they were made by hand years ago, and
are worth ten dollars apiece."
"Oh, dear," breathed the little girl, and multiplied: "Two hundred
dollars for twenty. _Mother!_"
The child stole silently out from the glistening array. Ten dollars
apiece. And she and Gardiner at their last nursery tea-party.... Through
the door, as she slipped away, she looked back at her mother, standing
thoughtful over the rows of crystal. In the great mahogany cage which,
like a small dark chateau, surmounted the pedestal of carved wood, the
blackbird Jetty huddled on his perch. He was a superb specimen, black as
jet, whence his name, a free woodland spirit, with a yellow bill like a
crocus flower, and piercing eyes. Bella passed under the cage and
called up to him, "Sing, Jetty, sing."
Piped a blackbird from a beechwood spray,
"Little maid, slow wandering this way,
What's your name?" said he.
Little Bell had wandered through the glade,
She looked up between the beechwood's shade,
"Little Bell," said she....
The child crooned to the bird her schoolroom poem. In return, Jetty sang
a short, brilliant little roulade, his one trained tune, which Bella had
vainly tried to pick out on the piano. She never heard half so sweet a
song from any bird.
"Jetty is my _favourite_ singer," she had said to Antony. But as she
lingered now under his cage in order to lengthen out the time, which,
because of her aching conscience, was hanging heavy, Jetty blinked down
at her as she stood with her hands behind her back, her face uplifted;
he peered at her like a weird familiar spirit. "Listen, Jetty. Gardiner
and I took those perfectly beautiful, expensive glasses for our tea
party. He smashed all three of them. There was a glass for Gardiner, a
glass for me and one for the uninvited guest--no, I mean the unexpected
guest. Gardiner sat down on the glasses where I had put them out to wash
them. He would have been awfully cut only he had father's overcoat on
(one of father's old coats, we got it out of the camphor chest)." She
ceased, for Jetty, in the midst of the confession, hopped down to take a
valetudinarian peck at his yellow seeds.
"Now," murmured Bella, "the question is, _shall_ I tell mother on an
exciting day like this when she is worried and nervous, and, if I do
tell her, wouldn't it be carrying tales on poor little Gardiner?"
Jetty, by his food cup, disheartened and discouraged and apparently in a
profound melancholy, depressed Bella; she left him, turned and fled.
Bella picked a forbidden way up the freshly oiled stairs and joined her
little brother. There she listened to tales, danced on tiptoe to peer
through the stair rails, and hung with Gardiner over the balustrade and
watched and listened. The children flew to the window to see the cabs
and carriages drive up, fascinated by the clicking of the doors, finding
magic in the awning and the carpeting that stretched down the stoop to
the curb; found music in the voices below in the hallway as the guests
arrived. Bella could hardly eat the flat and unpalatable supper prepared
for her on the tray, and, finally, she seized her little brother.
"Come, let's go down and see the party, Gardiner."
She dragged him after her, half-reluctant and wholly timid. On the
middle of the stairway she paused. The house below was transformed, hot
and perfumed with flowers, the very atmosphere was strange. Along the
balustrade, their hands touched smilax garlands. The blaze of light
dazzled them, the sweet odours, the gaiety and the spirit of cheer and
life and good-fellowship came up on fragrant wings. The little brother
and sister stood entranced. The sound of laughter and men's agreeable
voices came soaring in, the gaiety of guests at a feast, and, over all
rose a sound most heavenly, a low, thrilling, thrilling sound.
Jetty was singing.
The children knew the blackbird's idyl well, but it was different this
night. They heard the first notes rise softly, half stifled in his
throat, where Jetty caressed his tune, soothed it, crooned with it, and
then, preluded by a burst all his own of a few adorable silver notes,
the trained melody came forth.
"Oh, _Gardiner_," breathed the little girl, "hear Jetty. Isn't it
perfectly beautiful?"
They stepped softly on downstairs, hand in hand, into the lower rooms,
over to the dining-room where the thick red curtains hung before the
doorway. Gardiner wore his play apron and his worsted bed slippers.
Bella--neither the little brother nor the old nurse had observed that
Bella had made herself a toilette. The dark hair carefully brushed and
combed, was tied back with a crimson ribbon, and below her short dress
shone out her dancing school blue stockings and her tight blue shoes.
Peering through the curtains, the children could see the dinner company
to their hearts' content. Bella viewed the great New Yorkers, murmuring
under her breath the names and wondering to whom they belonged. Judge
Noah Davis, famous for the breaking of the Tweed ring--him, Bella knew,
he was a frequent caller. There was a prelate of the Church and there
was some one whom Bella wanted especially to see--Cedersholm, Mr.
Cedersholm--which could he be? Which might he be? Little Gardiner's hand
was hot in hers. He whispered beseechingly--
"Come, Bella, come, I'm afwaid."
"Hear Jetty, Gardiner, be quiet."
And the bird's voice nearly drowned the murmur and the clamour of the
dining-room. Mr. Carew, resplendent in evening clothes, displayed upon
his shirt front the badge of the Spanish Society (a golden medal hung by
a silken band). It was formed and founded by the banker and he was proud
of his creation.
"Who would ever suppose that father didn't like company? Whoever would
think that you could be afraid of father!"
Suave, eloquent, Carew beamed upon his guests, and his little daughter
admired him extravagantly. His hair and beard were beautiful. Touching
the medal on his breast, Carew said--
"Carez is the old name, Cedersholm."
Cedersholm! Bella stared and listened.
"Yes, Carez, Andalusian, I believe, to be turned later in England into
Carew; and the bas-relief is an excellent bit of sculpturing."
Mr. Carew undid the medal and handed it to the guest on his right.
"Here, Cedersholm, what do you think of the bas-relief?"
Cedersholm, already famous in New York, faced Bella Carew and she saw
him plainly. This was the sculptor who could give Cousin Antony his
start, "his fair chance." He did not look a great man, as Bella thought
geniuses should look; not one of the guests looked as great and
beautiful as Cousin Antony. Why didn't they have him to the dinner, she
wondered loyally. Hasn't he got money enough? Perhaps because he was
lame.
Jetty was lame. He had broken his leg in the bars once upon a time. How
he sang! From his throat poured one ecstatic roulade after another, one
cascade after another of liquid delicious sweetness. Fields, woods,
copses, and dells; sunlight, moonlight, seas and streams, all, all were
in Jetty's passion of song.
Gardiner had left his sister's side and stood under the bird-cage gazing
up with an enraptured face. He made a pretty, quaint figure in the
deserted room, in his gingham apron and his untidy blonde hair.
Bella heard some one say, "What wonderful singing, Mrs. Carew." And she
looked at her mother for the first time. The lady was all in white with
a bit of old black point crossed at her breast and a red camellia
fastened there. Her soft fine hair was unpretentiously drawn away
neatly, and her doe-like eyes rested amiably on her guests. She seemed
to enjoy her unwonted entertainment.
Still Bella clung to her hiding-place, fascinated by the subdued noise
of the service, the clinking of the glasses, listening intelligently to
a clever raconteur when he told his anecdote, and clapping her hand on
her mouth to keep from joining aloud in the praise that followed, and
the bead of excitement mounted to her head like the wine that filled the
glasses, the engraved deer and pheasant glasses, three of which had been
massacred upstairs. The dinner had nearly reached its end when the
children slipped down, and the scraping of chairs and a lull made Bella
realize where she was, and when she escaped she found that Gardiner had
made his little journey upstairs without her guardianship. Bella's mind
was working rapidly, for her heart was on fire with a scheme. In her
bright dress she leaned close to the dark wainscoting of the stairway
and heard Jetty sing. How he sang! _That_ was music!
"Why do people sing when there are birds!" Bella thought. Low and sweet,
high and fine, the running of little country brooks, unattainable as a
weather vane in the sun.
Bella was at a pitch of sensitive emotion and she felt her heart swell
and her eyes fill. She would have wept ignominiously, but instead shot
upstairs, a red bird herself, and rushed to the cabinet where her
childish treasures were stored away.
CHAPTER XIII
The sculptor Cedersholm had come from Sweden himself a poor boy. He had
worked his way into recognition and fame, but his experience in life had
embittered rather than softened him. He early discovered that there is
nothing but example that we can learn from the poor or take from the
poor, and he avoided everything that did not add to his fame and
everything that did not bring in immediate aids. It was only during the
late years that he had made his name known in New York. He had been
working in Rome, and during the past three years his expositions had
made him enormously talked of. He would not have dined at the Carews'
without a reason. Henry Carew was something of a figure in the Century
Club. His pretence to dilettantism was not small. But Cedersholm had not
foreseen what a wretched dinner he would be called on to eat. Cooked by
a woman hired in for the day, half cold and wholly poor, Mr. Carew's
banquet was far from being the magnificent feast it seemed in Bella's
eyes. Somewhat cheered by his cigar and liqueur, Cedersholm found a seat
in a small reception room out of earshot of his host and hostess, and,
in company with Canon Prynne of Albany, managed to pass an agreeable
half hour.
The Canon agreed with the Swede--he had never heard a bird sing so
divinely.
"I told Mrs. Carew she should throw a scarf over the cage. The blackbird
will sing his heart out."
The sculptor took up his conversation with his friend where he had left
it in the dining-room. He had been speaking of a recent commission given
him by the city for an important piece of work to be done for Central
Park.
"You know, Canon, we have succeeded in bringing to the port of New York
the Abydos Sphinx--a marvellous, gigantic creature. It is to be placed
in Central Park, in the Mall."
This, Canon Prynne had heard. "The base pedestal and fixtures are to be
yours, Cedersholm?"
The sculptor nodded. "Yes, and manual labour such as this is tremendous.
If I were in France, now, or in Italy, I could find chaps to help me. As
it is, I work alone." After a pause, he said, "However, I like the sole
responsibility."
"Now, I am not sure," returned his companion, "whether it is well to
like too sole a responsibility. As far as _I_ am concerned, no sooner do
I think myself important than I discover half a dozen persons in my
environment to whom I am doing a wrong, if I do not invite them to share
my glory."
There was no one in the small room to which the gentlemen had withdrawn,
and their chat was suddenly interrupted by a small, clear voice asking,
"Is this Mr. Cedersholm?" Neither guest had seen steal into the room and
slip from the shadow to where they sat, a little girl, slender,
overgrown, in a ridiculously short dress, ridiculous shoes and
stockings, her arms full of treasures, her dark hair falling around her
glowing cheeks, in terror of being caught and banished and punished; but
ardent and determined, she had nevertheless braved her father's
displeasure. Bella fixed her eyes on the sculptor and said rapidly--
"Excuse me for coming to father's party, but I am in a great hurry. I
want to speak to you about my Cousin Antony. He is a great genius," she
informed earnestly, "a sculptor, just like you, only he can't get any
work. If he had a chance he'd make _perfectly beautiful_ things."
The other gentleman put out his hand and drew the child to him. Unused
to fatherly caress, Bella held back, but was soon drawn within the
Canon's arm. She held out her treasures: "He did these," and she
presented to Cedersholm the white cast of her own foot.
"Cousin Antony explained that it is only a cast, and that anybody could
do it, but it _is_ awfully natural, isn't it? only so deadly white."
She held out a sheet of paper Fairfax had left at the last lesson. It
bore a sketch of Bella's head and several decorative studies. Cedersholm
regarded the cast and the paper.
"Who is Cousin Antony, my child?" asked the Canon.
"Mother's sister's son, from New Orleans--Antony Fairfax."
Cedersholm exclaimed, "Fairfax; but yes, I have a letter from a Mr.
Fairfax. It came while I was in France."
The drawing and the cast in Cedersholm's possession seemed to have found
their home. Bella felt all was well for Cousin Antony.
"Oh, listen!" she exclaimed, eagerly, "listen to our blackbird. Isn't it
perfectly beautiful?"
"Divine indeed," replied the clergyman. "Are you Carew's little
daughter?"
"Bella Carew. And I must go now, sir. Arabella is my real name."
She slipped from under the detaining arm. "Nobody knows I'm up. I'll
lend you those," she offered her treasures to Cedersholm, "but I am very
fond of the foot."
It lay in Cedersholm's hand without filling it. He said kindly--
"I quite understand that. Will you tell your Cousin Antony that I shall
be glad to see him?"
"Oh, thank you," she nodded. "And he'll be _very_ glad to see you."
Cedersholm, smiling, put the cast and the bit of paper back in her
hands.
"I won't rob you of these, Miss Bella. Your cousin shall make me
others."
As the little girl ran quickly out it seemed to the guests as if the
blackbird's song went with her, for in a little while Jetty stopped
singing.
"What a quaint, old-fashioned little creature," Cedersholm mused.
"Charming," murmured Canon Prynne, "perfectly charming. Now, my dear
Cedersholm, there's your fellow for the Central Park pedestal."
CHAPTER XIV
The month was nearly at its end, and his money with it. Some time since,
he had given up riding in the cars, and walked everywhere. This exercise
was the one thing that tired him, because of his unequal stride.
Nevertheless, he strode, and though it seemed impossible that a chap
like himself could come to want, he finally reached his last "picayune,"
and at the same time owed the week's board and washing. The excitement
of his new life thus far had stimulated him, but the time came when this
stimulus was dead, and as he went up the steps of his uncle's house to
be greeted on the stoop by a beggar woman, huddling by her basket under
her old shawl, the sculptor looked sadly down at her greasy palm which
she hopefully extended. Then, with a brilliant smile, he exclaimed--
"I wonder, old lady, _just_ how poor you are?"
"Wurra," replied the woman, "if the wurrld was for sale for a cint, I
couldn't buy it."
Beneath his breath he murmured, "Nor could I," and thought of his watch.
Curiously enough, it had not occurred to him that he might pawn his
father's watch.
He now looked forward with pleasure to the tri-weekly drawing lessons,
for the friendly fires of his little cousins' hearts warmed his own. But
on this afternoon they failed to meet him in the hall or to cry to him
over the stairs or rush upon him like catapults from unexpected corners.
As he went through the silent house its unusual quiet struck him
forcibly, and he thought: "_What_ a tomb it would be without the
children!"
No one responded to his "Hello you," and at the entrance of the common
play and study room Fairfax paused, to see Bella and Gardiner in their
play aprons, their backs to the door, motionless before the table, one
dark head and one light one bent over an object apparently demanding
tender, reverent care.
At Fairfax's "Hello _you_ all!" they turned, and the big cousin never
forgot it as long as he lived--never forgot the Bella that turned, that
called out in what the French call "a torn voice"--_une voix dechiree_.
Afterwards it struck him that she called him "Antony" _tout court_, like
a grown person as she rushed to him. He never forgot how the little
thing flung herself at him, threw herself against his breast. For an
answer to her appeal with a quick comprehension of grief, Antony bent
and took her hand.
"Cousin Antony, Cousin Antony----"
"Why, Bella, Bella, little cousin, what's the matter?"
And above the sobs that he felt tremble through him, he asked of
Gardiner--who, young as he was, stifled his tears back and gulped his
own grief like a man--
"What's the row, old chap?"
But Bella told him passionately. "Jetty, _Jetty's dead_!"
Soothed by her cousin's hand on her head, she calmed, buried her face in
the cool handkerchief with which he wiped her tears. In the circle of
his arms Bella stood, tearful, sobbing, nothing but a child, and yet she
appealed to Fairfax in her tears as she had not done before, and her
abandon went to the core of his being and smote a bell which from
thenceforth rang like her name--"Bella"--and he used to think that it
was from that moment.... Well, her tears at any rate stirred him as
never did any tears in the world.
She wiped her eyes. "Jetty died last night; he sang himself to death.
You should have heard him sing! This morning when they came to give him
water and feed him, Jetty was dead."
Gardiner pointed to the table. "See, we've made him a coffin. We're
going to his funewal now."
A discarded cigar box lined with cotton was the only coffin the children
had found for the wild wood creature whose life had gone out in song.
"We don't know where to buwy him, Cousin Antony."
"I tried," Bella murmured, touching the blackbird's breast with gentle
fingers, "I tried to write him a poem, an epitaph; but I cried so I
couldn't."
She held Antony's handkerchief to her tear-stained cheek.
"May I keep your handkerchief for just this afternoon? It smells so
delicious. You could make a cast of him, couldn't you?--like the
death-mask of great men in father's books?"
Fairfax dissuaded them from the funeral, at which Gardiner was to say,
"Now I lay me," and Fairfax had been elected to read the Lord's Prayer.
He rolled the bird up in another handkerchief (he appeared to be rich in
them) and put it reverently in his overcoat pocket, promising faithfully
to see that Jetty should be buried in Miss Whitcomb's back yard, under
the snow, and, moreover, to mark the place with a stick, so that the
children could find it when spring came.
Then Bella, tear-stained but resigned, suggested that they should play
"going to Siberia."
"I _can't_ work to-day, Cousin Antony! Don't make me. It would seem like
sewing on Sunday."
Without comment, Fairfax accepted the feminine inconsistency, and
himself entered, with what spirit he might, into the children's game.
"Going to Siberia" laid siege to all the rooms in the upper story. It
was a mad rush on Fairfax's part, little Gardiner held in his arms,
pursued by Bella as a wolf. It was a tear over beds and chairs, around
tables,--a wild, screaming, excited journey, ending at last in the
farthest room in the middle of the children's bed, where, one after
another, they were thrown by the big cousin. The game was enriched by
Fairfax's description of Russia and the steppes and the plains. But on
this day Bella insisted that Gardiner, draped in a hearthrug, be the
wolf, and that Fairfax carry her "because her heart ached." And if
Gardiner's growls and baying failed to give the usual zest to the sport,
the carrying by Fairfax of Bella was a new emotion! The twining round
his neck of soft arms, the confusion of dark hair against his face, the
flower-like breath on his cheeks, Bella's excitement of sighs and cries
and giggles gave the game, for one player at least, fresh charm. Chased
by Ann back into the studio, the play-mates fell on the sofa, worn out
and happy; but, in the momentary calm, a little cousin on either side of
him, the poor young man felt the cruel return of his own miseries and
his own crisis.
"Misther Fairfax," said the Irish woman, "did the childhren give ye the
letter what come to-day? I thawt Miss Bella'd not mind it, what wid
funnerals and tearin' like a mad thing over the house!" (Ann's reproof
was for Fairfax.) "Yez'll be the using up of little Gardiner, sir, the
both of ye. The letther's forbye the clock. I putt it there m'self."
Fairfax, to whom no news could be but welcome, limped over to the
mantel, where, by the clock, he perceived a letter addressed to him on
big paper in a small, distinguished hand. He tore it open, Ann lit the
gas, and he read--
"DEAR MR. FAIRFAX,
"I have not answered your letter because I was so unfortunate as to
have lost your address. Learning last night that you are a nephew
of Mr. Carew, and sure of a response if I send this to his care, I
write to ask that you will come in to see me to-day at three
o'clock.
"Yours sincerely,
"GUNNER CEDERSHOLM."
Fairfax gave an exclamation that was almost a cry, and looked at the
clock. It was past four!
"When did this letter come?" His nerves were on end, his cheeks pale.
Bella sat forward on the sofa. "Why, Mother gave it me to give to you
when you should come to-day, Cousin Antony."
In the strain to his patience, Fairfax was sharp. He bit his lip,
snatched up his coat and hat.
"You should have given it me at once." His blue eyes flashed. "You don't
know what you may have done. This may ruin my career! I've missed my
appointment with Cedersholm. It's too late now."
He couldn't trust himself further, and, before Bella could regain
countenance, he was gone.
Cut to the heart with remorse, crimson with astonishment, but more
deeply wounded in her pride, the child sat immovable on the sofa.
"Bella," whispered her little brother, "I don't like Cousin Antony, do
you?"
She looked at her brother, touched by Gardiner's chivalry.
"I fink he's a mean man, Bella."
"He's dreadful," she cried, incensed; "he's just too horrid for
anything. Anyhow, it was me made Cedersholm write that letter for him,
and he didn't _even_ say he was obliged."
She ran to the window to watch Antony go, as he always did, on the other
side of the road, in order that the children might see him. She hoped
for a reconcilement, or a soothing wave of his hand; but Antony did not
pass, the window was icy cold, and she turned, discomfited. At her
foot--for as Antony had snatched up his coat he had wantonly desecrated
a last resting-place--at her foot lay the blackbird. With a murmured
word Bella lifted Jetty in both hands to her cheek, and on the cold
breast and toneless throat the tears fell--Bella's first real tears.
CHAPTER XV
Fairfax went into the studio of the first sculptor in the United States
with set determination to find work. Cedersholm was cool and absorbed,
occupied and preoccupied, overburdened with orders, all of which meant
money and fame, but required time. Fairfax was an hour and a half late,
and, in spite of the refusal of the manservant, came limping in, and
found the master taking a glass of hot milk and a biscuit. Cedersholm
reposed on a divan in the corner of a vast studio giving on a less
magnificent workroom. The studio was in semi-darkness, and a table near
the sofa bore a lamp whose light lit the sculptor's face. To Fairfax,
Cedersholm was a lion and wore a mane. In reality, he was a small,
insignificant man who might have been a banker. The Southerner
introduced himself, and when he was seated by the sculptor's side, began
to expose his projects, to dream aloud. He could have talked for ever,
but the sum of what he said was that he wanted to enter Cedersholm's
studio.
"The old Italians took subordinates, sir," he pleaded.
"There are classes at Cooper Union," Cedersholm began.
But Fairfax, his clear eyes on the artist, said, "But I want to work
under a genius."
The other, complimented, pushed his milk aside and wiped his lips.
"Well, of course, there _is_ plenty of hard work to be done right here
in this studio." He spoke cautiously and in a measured tone. "I have
workmen with me, but no artists."
Fairfax patiently waited. He was as verdant as the young jasmine leaves,
as inexperienced and guileless as a child.
"I had not thought of taking such an assistant as you represent, Mr.
Fairfax." The older man fixed him with clever eyes. "A man must have no
end of courage in him, no end of patience, no end of humility, to do
what you _say_ you want to do."
The young man bowed his head. "Courage, patience, and humility are the
attributes of genius, sir."
"Yes," admitted Cedersholm, "they are, but ordinary talent will do very
well in my workshop, and it is all that I need in a subordinate."
Fairfax smiled lightly. "I think I may say I am a good worker, Mr.
Cedersholm. Any hod-carrier may say that without vanity, and if you turn
me out, I'll take a mason's place at two dollars a day."
Cedersholm smiled. "You don't look like a mason," he said hesitatingly,
"though you do appear muscular. What would be your suggestion with
regard to our relations?"
(Fairfax's eager heart was saying, "Oh, teach me, Master, all you know;
let me come and play with the clay, finger it, handle it; set me loose
in that big, cool, silent room beyond there; let me wander where I can
see the shadow of that cast and the white draped figure from where I
sit.")
"You are a fairly good draftsman?" Cedersholm asked. "Have you any taste
for decoration and applied design?"
"I think I have."
The Master rose. "Come to-morrow morning at ten and I'll give you
something to do. I have just accepted a contract for interior
decoration, a new house on Fifth Avenue. I might possibly make you
useful there."
* * * * *
Fairfax walked home on air. He walked from Ninth Street, where the
studio was, to his boarding-house, in the cold, still winter night--a
long tramp. In spite of his limp he swung along, his coat open, his hat
on the back of his head, his cheeks bright, his lips smiling. As he
passed under the gas lamps they shone like Oriental stars. He no longer
shivered at the cold and, warm with faith and confidence, his heart
could have melted a storm. He fairly floated up Madison Avenue, and by
his side the spirits of his ideals kept him company. Oh, he would do
beautiful things for New York city. He would become great here. He would
garland the metropolis with laurel, leave statues on its places, that
should bear his name. At ten o'clock on the following day, he was to
begin his apprenticeship, and he would soon show his power to
Cedersholm. He felt that power now in him like wine, like nectar, and in
his veins the spirit of creation, the impulse to art, rose like a
draught. His aunt should be proud of him, his uncle should cease to
despise him, and the children--they would not understand--but they would
be glad.
When he reached his boarding-house, Miss Eulalie opened the door and
cried out at the sight of his face--
"Oh, Mr. Antony; you've had good news, sir."
He put both hands on the thin shoulders, he kissed her roundly on both
cheeks. The cold fresh air was on his cool fresh lips, and the kiss was
as chaste as an Alpine breeze.
He cried: "_Good_ news; well, I reckon I have! The great Mr. Cedersholm
has given me a place in his studio."
He laughed aloud as she hung up his coat. Miss Eulalie's glasses were
pushed up on her forehead--she might have been his grandmother.
"The Lord be praised!" she breathed. "I have been praying for you night
and day."
"I shall go to Cedersholm to-morrow. I have not spoken about terms, but
that will be all right, and if you ladies will be so good as to wait
until Saturday----"
Of course they would wait. If it had not been that their means were so
cruelly limited, they would never have spoken. Didn't he think?... He
knew! he thought they were the best, dearest friends a young fortune
hunter could have. Wait, wait till they could see his name in the
papers--Antony Fairfax, the rising sculptor! Wait until they could go
with him to the unveiling of his work in Central Park!
Supper was already on the table, and Antony talked to them both until
they _could_ hardly wait for the wonders!
"When you're great you'll not forget us, Mr. Antony?"
"Forget them----!"
Over the cold mutton and the potato salad, Fairfax held out a hand to
each, and the little old ladies each laid a fluttering hand in his. But
it was at Miss Eulalie he looked, and the remembrance of his happy kiss
on this first day of his good fortune, made her more maternal than she
had ever hoped to be in her life.
There was a note for him on the table upstairs, a note in a big envelope
with the business stamp of Mr. Carew's bank in the corner. It was
addressed to him in red ink. He didn't know the handwriting, but
guessed, and laughed, and drew the letter out.
"DEAR COUSIN ANTONY,
"I feel perfectly dreadful. How _could_ I do such a selfish thing?
I hope you will forgive me and come again. I drew two whole pages
of parlel lines after you went away, some are nearly strait. I did
it for punishment. You forgot the blackbird.
"Your little BELLA."
What a cad he had been! He had forgotten the dead bird and been a brute
to the little living cousin. As the remembrance of how she had flown to
him in her tears came to him, a softer look crossed his face, fell like
a veil over his eyes that had been dazzled by the visions of his art. He
smiled at the childish signature, "_Your little Bella._" "Honey child!"
he murmured, and as he fell asleep that night the figure of the little
cousin mourning for her blackbird moved before him down the halls of
fame.
CHAPTER XVI
Before Fairfax became dead to the world he wrote his mother a letter
that made her cry, reading it on her veranda in the gentle sunlight. Her
son wrote her only good news, and when the truth was too black he
disguised it. But after his interview with Cedersholm, with these first
good tidings he had to send, he broke forth into ecstasy, and his
mother, as she read, saw her boy successful by one turn of the wheel.
Mrs. Fairfax laughed and cried over the letter.
"Emmy, Master Tony's doing wonders, wonders! He is working under a great
genius in the North, but it is easy to see that Tony is the spirit of
the studio. He is at work from nine in the morning till dark, poor honey
boy! and he is making all the drawings and designs and sketches for a
millionaire's palace on Fifth Avenue."
"Fo' de Lawd, Mis' Bella."
"Think of it, we shall soon see his name in the papers--heaven knows
where he'll stop. How proud I am of my darling, darling boy."
And she dreamed over the pages of Antony's closely-written letter,
seeing his youth and his talent burn there like flame. She sent
him--selling her watch and her drop earrings to do so--a hundred
dollars, all she could get for her jewels. And the sum of money came
like manna into his famished state. His mother's gift gave him courage
to rise early and to work late, and the silver sang in his waistcoat
pockets again, and he paid his little ladies, thanking them graciously
for their patience; he sent his aunt a bunch of flowers, bought an image
of the Virgin for old Ann, a box of colours for Gardiner, and a book for
Bella.
Then Antony, passing over the threshold of the workshop, was swallowed
up by art.
And he paid for his salt!
How valuable he was to Cedersholm those days he discovered some ten
years later. Perched on his high stool at the drawing-table, his
materials before him, he drew in freehand what his ideas suggested. The
third day he went with Cedersholm to the palace of Rudolph Field on
Fifth Avenue to inspect the rooms to be decorated. Fairfax went into the
"Castle of the Chinking Guineas" (as he called it in writing to his
mother), as buoyantly as though he had not a leaking boot on one foot
and a bill for a cheap suit of clothes in his pocket. He mentally ranged
his visions on the frieze he was to consider, and as he thought, his own
stature seemed to rise gigantic in the vast salon. He was alone with
Cedersholm. The Fields were in Europe, not to return until the palace
had been made beautiful.
Cedersholm planned out his scheme rather vaguely, discoursing on a
commonplace theme, indicating ceilings and walls, and Fairfax heard him
through his own meditations. He impulsively caught the Master's arm, and
himself pointing, "Just there," he said, "why not...." And when he had
finished, Cedersholm accepted, but without warmth.
"Perfectly. You have caught my suggestions, Mr. Fairfax," and poor
Antony shut his lips over his next flight.
In the same week Cedersholm left for Florida, and Fairfax, in the
deserted studio, sketched and modelled _a sa faim_, as the French say,
as old Professor Dufaucon used to say, and as the English say, less
materially, "to his soul's content." February went by in this fashion,
and Fairfax was only conscious of it when the day came round that he
must pay his board and had nothing to do it with. Cedersholm was to
return in a few days, and he would surely be reimbursed--to what extent
he had no notion. His excitement rose high as he took an inventory of
his work, of his essays and drawings and bas-reliefs, his projects for
the ceiling of the music room. At one time his labour seemed of the best
quality, and then again so poor, so abortive, that the young fellow had
more than half a mind to destroy the lot before the return of the
Master. During the last week he had a comrade, a great, soft-eyed,
curly-locked Italian, who didn't speak a word of English, who arrived
gentle as an ox to put himself under the yoke of labour. Antony, thanks
to his keenness and his gift for languages, and his knowledge of French,
made out something of what he was and from where. He had been born in
Carrara and was a worker in marble in his own land, and had come to work
on the fountain for the music room in the Field palace.
"The fountain!" Fairfax tumbled over his sketches and showed one to his
brown-eyed friend, who told him rapidly that it was "divinely
beautiful," and asked to see the clay model.
None had been made.
The same night, Fairfax wrote to Cedersholm that he had begun a model of
the fountain, and in the following days was up to his ears and eyes in
clay.
* * * * *
The block of marble arrived from Italy, and Fairfax superintended its
difficult entry by derrick through the studio window. He restrained
"Benvenuto Cellini," as he called his comrade, from cutting into the
marble, and the Italian used to come and sit idle, for he had no work to
do, and waited Cedersholm's orders. He used to come and sit and stare at
his block of marble and sing pleasantly--
"Aria pura
Cielo azuro
Mia Maddelena,"
and jealously watch Fairfax who _could_ work. Fairfax could and did, in
a long blouse made for him by Miss Mitty, after his directions. With a
twenty-five cent book of phrases, Fairfax in no time mastered enough
Italian to talk with his companion, and his own baritone was sweet
enough to blend with Benvenuto Cellini's "Mia Maddelena," and other
songs of the same character, and he exulted in the companionship of the
young man, and talked at him and over him, and dreamed aloud to him, and
Benvenuto, who had only the dimmest idea of what the frenzy meant--not
so dim, possibly, for he knew it was the ravings of art--supplied the
"bellisimos" and "grandiosos," and felt the spirit of the moment, and
was young with Fairfax, if not as much of a soul or a talent.
The model for the fountain was completed before Cedersholm's return.
After a month's rest under the palms of Florida, the sculptor lounged
into the studio, much as he might have strolled up a Paris boulevard and
ordered a liqueur at a round table before some favourite _cafe_.
Cedersholm had hot milk and biscuits in a corner instead, and Fairfax
drew off the wet covering from his clay. Cedersholm enjoyed his light
repast, considering the model which nearly filled the corner of the
room. He fitted in an eyeglass, and in a distinguished manner regarded
the modelling. Fairfax, who had been cold with excitement, felt his
blood run tepid in his veins.
"And your sketches, Fairfax?" asked the Master, and held out his hand.
Fairfax carried him over a goodly pile from the table. Cedersholm turned
them over for a long time, and finally held one out, and said--
"This seems to be in the scale of the measurements of the library
ceiling?"
Fairfax's voice sounded childish to himself as he responded--
"I think it's correct, sir, to working scale."
"It might do with a few alterations," said Cedersholm. "If you care to
try it, Fairfax, it might do. I will order the scaffolding placed
to-morrow, and you can sketch it in, in charcoal. It can always come
out, you know. You might begin the day after to-morrow."
The Master rose leisurely and looked about him. "Jove," he murmured,
"it's good to be back again to the lares and penates."
Fairfax left the Master among the lares and penates, left him amongst
the treasures of his own first youth, the first-fruits of his ardent
young labour, and he went out, not conscious of how he quivered until he
was on his way up-town. What an ass he was! No doubt the stuff was
rubbish! What could he hope to attain without study and long
apprenticeship? Why, he was nothing more than a boy. Cedersholm had been
decent not to laugh in his face--Cedersholm's had been at once the
kindest and the cruelest criticism. He called himself a thousand times a
fool. He had no talent, he was marked for failure. He would sweep the
streets, however, and lay bricks, before he went back to his mother in
New Orleans unsuccessful. His letters home, his excitement and
enthusiasm, how ridiculous they seemed, how fatuous his boastings before
the old ladies and little Bella!
Fairfax passed his boarding-house and walked on, and as he walked he
recalled what Cedersholm had said the day he engaged him: "Courage,
patience, humility." These words had cooled his anger as nothing else
could have done, and laid their salutary touch on his flushed face.
"These qualities are the attributes of genius. Mediocrity is incapable
of possessing them." He would have them _all_, every one, every one!
Courage, he was full of it. Patience he didn't know by sight. Humility
he had despised--the poor fellow did not know that its hand touched him
as he strode.
"I ought to be thankful that he didn't kick me out," he thought. "I
daresay he was laughing in his sleeve at my abortions!"
Then he remembered his design for the ceiling, and at the Carews'
doorstep he paused. Cedersholm had told him to draw it on the Field
ceiling. This meant that he had another chance.
"It's perfectly ripping of the old boy," he thought, enthusiastically,
as he rang the door-bell. "I'll begin to-morrow."
Bella opened the door to him.
CHAPTER XVII
The following year--in January--lying on his back on the scaffolding,
Fairfax drew in his designs for the millionaire's ceiling, freely,
boldly, convincingly, and it is doubtful if the eye of the
proprietor--he was a fat, practical, easy-going millionaire, who had
made money out of hog's lard--it is doubtful that Mr. Field's eyes, when
gazing upward, saw the things that Fairfax thought he drew.
Fairfax whistled softly and drew and drew, and his cramped position was
painful to his left leg and thigh. Benvenuto Cellini came below and sang
up at him--
"Cielo azuro,
Giornata splendida
Ah, Maddelena,"
and told him in Italian about his own affairs, and Fairfax half heard
and less than half understood. Cedersholm came once, bade him draw on,
always comforting one of them at least, with the assurance that the work
could be taken out.
During the following weeks, Fairfax never went back to the studio, and
one day he swung himself down when Cedersholm came in, and said--
"I'm a little short of money, sir."
Cedersholm put his hand in his pocket and gave Antony a bill with the
air of a man to whom money is as disagreeable and dangerous as a
contagious disease. The bill was for fifty dollars, and seemed a great
deal to Antony; then a great deal too little, and, in comparison with
his debts, it seemed nothing at all. Cedersholm had followed up his
payment with an invitation to Antony to come to Ninth Street the
following day.
"I am sketching out my idea for the pedestal in Central Park. Would you
care to see it? It might interest you as a student."
The ceiling in Rudolph Field's house is not all the work of Antony
Fairfax. Half-way across the ceiling he stopped. It is easy enough to
see where the painting is carried on by another hand. He finished the
bas-reliefs at the end of March, and the fine frieze running round the
little music-room. Mr. Field liked music little and had his room in
proportion.
Antony stood with Cedersholm in the studio where he had made his scheme
for the fountain and his first sketches. Cedersholm's design for the
base of the pedestal, designed to support the winged victory, was placed
against the wall. It was admirable, harmonious, noble.
Fairfax had seen Cedersholm work. The sculptor wore no apron, no blouse.
He dressed with his usual fastidiousness; his eyeglass adjusted, he
worked as neatly as a little old lady at her knitting, but his work had
not the quality of wool.
"What do you think of it, Fairfax?"
Fairfax started from his meditation. "It's immense," he murmured.
"You think it does not express what is intended?" Cedersholm's clever
eyes were directed at Fairfax. "What's the matter with it?"
Without reply, the young man took up a sheet of paper and a piece of
charcoal and drew steadily for a few seconds and held out the sheet.
"Something like this ... under the four corners ... wouldn't it give an
idea ... of life? The Sphinx is winged. Doesn't it seem as if its body
should rest on life?"
If Cedersholm had in mind to say, "You have quite caught my suggestion,"
he controlled this remark, covered his mouth with his hand, and
considered--he considered for a day or two. He then went to Washington
to talk with the architects of the new State Museum. And Fairfax once
more found the four walls of the quiet studio shutting him in ... found
himself inhabiting with the friendly silence and with the long days as
spring began to come.
* * * * *
He finished the modelling of his four curious, original creatures,
beasts intended to be the supports of the Sphinx. He finished his work
in Easter week, and wrote to Cedersholm begging for his directions and
authority to have them cast in bronze.
CHAPTER XVIII
The four beasts were of heroic size. They came out of the moulds like
creatures of a prehistoric age. Benvenuto Cellini, who was to have met
his friend Antony at the foundry on the day Fairfax's first plaster cast
was carried down, failed to put in an appearance, and Fairfax had the
lonely joy, the melancholy, lonely joy, of assisting at the birth of one
of his big creatures. All four of them were ultimately cast, but they
were to remain in the foundry until Cedersholm's return.
His plans for the future took dignity, and importance, from the fact of
his success, and he reviewed with joy the hard labour of the winter, for
which in all he had been paid one hundred dollars. He was in need of
everything new, from shoes up. He was a great dandy, or would have liked
to have afforded to be. As for a spring overcoat--well, he couldn't bear
to read the tempting advertisements, and even Gardiner's microscopic
coat, chosen by Bella, caused his big cousin a twinge of envy. Bella's
new outfit was complete, a deeper colour glowed on the robin-red dress
she wore, and Fairfax felt shabby between them as he limped along into
the Park under the budding trees, a child's hand on either arm.
"Cousin Antony, why are there such _de_licious smells to-day?"
Bella sniffed them. The spring was at work under the turf, the grass was
as fragrant as a bouquet.
"Breathe it in, Cousin Antony! It makes you wish to do _heaps_ of things
you oughtn't to!"
On the pond the little craft of the school children flew about like
butterflies, the sun on the miniature sails.
"What kind of things does the grass cutter, shearing off a few miserable
dandelions, make you want to do, Bella? You should smell the jasmine
and the oleanders of New Orleans. These are nothing but weeds."
"How can you say so?" she exclaimed; "besides, most of the things I want
to do are wicked, anyhow."
"Jove!" exclaimed Fairfax. "That _is_ a confession."
She corrected. "You ought not to say 'Jove' like that, Cousin Antony.
You can cut it and make it sound like 'Jovah,' it sounds just like it."
"What wicked things do you want to do, Bella?"
She pointed to the merry-go-rounds, where the giraffes, elephants, and
horses raced madly round to the plaintive tune of "Annie Laurie," ground
out by a hurdy-gurdy.
"I'd _love_ to go on."
Fairfax put his hand in his pocket, but she pulled it back.
"No, Cousin Antony, please. It's not the money that keeps me back,
though I haven't any. It's Sunday, you know."
"Oh," her cousin accepted dismally.
And Bella indicated a small boy carrying a tray of sweets who had
advanced towards the three with a hopeful grin.
"I'd perfectly _love_ to have some of those _lossingers_, but mother
says 'street candy isn't pure.' Besides, it's Sunday."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Fairfax. "Do you mean to say that out here in
God's free air you are going to preach me a sermon?"
He beckoned the boy.
"Oh," cried Gardiner, "can't we _choose_, Cousin Antony?"
The little cousins bent above the tray and slowly and passionately
selected, and their absorption in the essence of wintergreen, sassafras,
and peppermint showed him how much this pleasure meant to these rich
children. Their pockets full, they linked their arms in his again.
"I have never had such fun in all my life as I do with you, Cousin
Antony," Bella told him.
"Then come along," he suggested, recklessly. "You must ride once on the
merry-go-round." And before the little Puritans realized the extent of
their impiety, Fairfax had lifted Bella on a horse and Gardiner on an
elephant, paid their fare and started them away. He watched Bella, her
hat caught by its elastic, fallen off her head on the first round, her
cheeks flushed and her eyes like stars, and bravely her straight little
arm stretched out to catch the ring. There was triumph in her cry, "Oh,
Cousin _Antony_, Cousin Antony, I've won the ring!"
Such flash and sparkle as there was about her, with her teeth like
grains of corn and her eyes dancing as she nodded and smiled at him!
Poor little Gardiner! Antony paid for him again and patted him on the
back. There was a pathos about the mild, sweet little face and in the
timid, ineffectual arm, too short and too weak to snap the iron ring on
to his sword. Bella rode till "Annie Laurie" changed to "Way down upon
de Swanee river," and Fairfax's heart beat for Louisiana, and he had
come to the end of his nickels. He lifted the children down.
Bella now wound both arms firmly in her cousin's, and clung to him.
"Think of it, I never rode before, never! All the children on the block
have, though. Isn't it perfectly delightful, Cousin Antony? I _wish_
your legs weren't so long."
"Cousin Antony," asked little Gardiner, "couldn't we go over to the
animals and see the seals fall off and dwown themselves?"
They saw the lion in his lair and the "tiger, tiger burning bright," and
the shining, slippery seals, and they made an absorbed group at the
nettings where Antony discoursed about the animals as he discoursed
about art, and Spartacus talked to them about the wild beast show in
Caesar's arena. His audience shivered at his side.
They walked up the big driveway, and Fairfax saw for the first time the
Mall, and observed that the earth was turned up round a square some
twelve feet by twelve. He half heard the children at his side; his eyes
were fastened on the excavation for the pedestal of the Sphinx; the
stone base would soon be raised there, and then his beasts would be
poised.
"Let's walk over to the Mall, children."
Along the walk the small goat carriages were drawn up with their teams;
little landaus, fairy-like for small folk to drive in. Fairfax stood
before the cavity in the earth and the scaffolding left by the workmen.
He was conscious of his little friends at length by the dragging on his
arms of their too affectionate weight. "Cousin Antony."
Fairfax waved to the vacant spot. "Oh, Egypt, Egypt," he began, in his
"recitation voice," a voice that promised treats at home, but that
palled in the sunny open, with goat rides in the fore-ground.
"Out of the soft, smooth coral of thy sands,
Out of thy Nilus tide, out of thy heart,
Such dreams have come, such mighty splendours----"
"Bella, do you see that harmonious square?"
"Yes," she answered casually, with a lack lustre. "And do you see the
_goats_?"
"Goats, Bella! I see a pedestal some ten feet high, and on it at its
four corners, before they poise the Sphinx--what do you think I see,
Bella?"
"... Cousin Antony, that boy there has the _sweetest goats_. They're
_almost_ clean! Too dear for anything! With such cunning noses!"
He dropped his arm and put his hand on the little girl's shoulder and
turned her round.
"I'm disappointed in you for the first time, honey," he said.
"Oh, Cousin _Antony_."
"Little cousin, this is where my creatures, my beautiful bronze
creatures, are to be eternally set--there, there before your eyes." He
pointed to the blue May air.
"Cousin Antony," said Gardiner's slow voice, "the only thing I'm not too
tired to do is to wide in a goat carwage."
Fairfax lifted the little boy in his arms. "If I lift you, Gardiner,
like this, high in my arms, you could just about see the top of the
pedestal. Wait till it's unveiled, my hearties! Wait--wait!"
He put Gardiner down with a laugh and a happy sigh, and then he saw the
goats.
"Do you want a ride, children?"
"_Did_ they!"
He ran his hands through the pockets that had been wantonly emptied.
"Not a picayune, honey. Your poor old cousin is dead broke."
"Then," said Bella, practically, "let's go right away from here, Cousin
Antony. I can't bear to look at those goats another minute. It hurts."
Fairfax regarded her thoughtfully. "Bella the Desirous," he murmured.
"What are you going to be when you grow up, little cousin?"
They started slowly away from temptation, away from the vision of the
pedestal and the shadowy creatures, and the apparition of the Sphinx
seemed to brood over them as they went, and nothing but a Sphinx's
wisdom could have answered the question Fairfax put: "What are you going
to be when you grow up, little Bella?"
Fairfax soon carried the little boy, and Bella in a whisper said--
"He is almost too small for our parties, Cousin Antony."
"Not a bit," said the limping cousin, stoically. "We couldn't get on
without him, could we, old chap?"
But the old chap didn't answer, for he had fallen asleep as soon as his
head touched his cousin's shoulder.
When Fairfax left them at their door, he was surprised at Bella's
melancholy. She held out to him the sticky remnant of the roll of
lozenges.
"Please take it. I shouldn't be allowed to eat it."
"But what on earth's the matter?" he asked.
"Never mind," she said heroically, "you don't have to bear it. You're
Episcopalian; but _I've got to tell_!" She sighed heavily. "I don't care;
it was worth it!"
As the door clicked behind the children, Fairfax laughed.
"What a little trump she is! She thinks the game is worth the candle!"
CHAPTER XIX
That miserable foot of his gave him pain. The unusual strain of standing
long at his work, the tramps he took to save car-fare, wearied him, and
he was finally laid up for ten days. No one missed him, apparently, and
the long, painful hours dragged, and he saw no one but his little
landladies. His mother, as if she knew, sent him extra money and
wonderful letters breathing pride in him and confidence in his success.
When he was finally up and setting forth again to the studio, a visitor
was announced. Fairfax thought of Benvenuto--(he would have been
welcome)--he thought of Bella, and not of his Aunt Caroline.
"My dear boy, why didn't you let us know you had been ill?"
There is something exquisite to a man in the presence of a woman in his
sick-room, be she lovely or homely, old or young.
"This is awfully, awfully good of you, Auntie. I've had a mighty bad
time with this foot of mine."
Mrs. Carew in her street dress, ready for an all-day's shopping, came
airily in and laid her hand on her nephew's shoulder. Fairfax thought he
saw a look of Bella, a look of his mother. He eagerly leaned forward and
kissed his visitor.
"It's mighty good of you, Auntie."
"No, my dear boy, it isn't! I really didn't know you were ill. We would
have sent you things from the Buckingham. Our own cook is so poor."
She couldn't sit down, she had just run in on her way to shop. She had
something to say to him....
"What's wrong, Aunt Caroline?"
His aunt took a seat beside him on the bed. Her dove-like eyes wandered
about his room, bare save for the drawings on the walls and on a chair
in the corner, a cast covered by a wet cloth. Mrs. Carew's hands clasped
over her silk bead purse hanging empty between the rings.
"I have come to ask a great favour of you, Antony."
He repeated, in astonishment, "Of _me_--why, Auntie, anything that I can
do...."
Mrs. Carew's slender figure undulated, the sculptor thought. She made
him think of a swan--of a lily. Her pale, ineffectual features had an
old-fashioned loveliness. He put his hand over his aunt's. He murmured
devotedly--
"You must let me do anything there is to do."
"I am in debt, Tony," she murmured, tremulously. "Your uncle gives me
_so_ little money--it's impossible to run the establishment."
He exclaimed hotly, "It's a _shame_, Aunt Caroline."
"Henry thinks we spend a great deal of money, but I like to dress the
children well."
Her nephew recalled Bella's wardrobe. Mrs. Carew, as though she
confessed a readily-forgiven fault, whispered--
"I am so fond of bric-a-brac, Antony."
He could not help smiling.
"Down in Maiden Lane last week I bought a beautiful lamp for the front
hall. I intended paying for it by instalments; but I've not been able to
save enough--the men are waiting at the house. I _can't_ tell your
uncle, I really _can't_. He would turn me out of doors."
Over Fairfax's mind flashed the picture of the "Soul of honour"
confronted by a debt to a Jew ironmonger. His aunt's daily pilgrimage
began to assume a picturesqueness and complexity that were puzzling.
"Carew's a brute," he said, shortly. "I can't see why you married him."
Mrs. Carew, absorbed in the picture of the men waiting in the front hall
and the iron lamp waiting as well, did not reply.
"How much do you need, Auntie?"
"Only fifty dollars, my dear boy. I can give it back next week when
Henry pays me my allowance."
He exclaimed: "I am lucky to have it to help you out, Auntie. I've got
it right here."
The sense of security transformed Mrs. Carew. She laughed gently, put
her hand on her nephew's shoulder again, exclaiming--
"How _fortunate_! Tony, how _glad_ I am I thought of you!"
He gave her all of his mother's gift but ten dollars, and as she
bestowed it carefully away she murmured--
"It _is_ a superb lamp, and a _great_ bargain. You shall see it lit
to-night."
"I'm afraid not to-night, Aunt Caroline. I'm off to see Cedersholm now,
and I shan't be up to much, I reckon, when I get back."
His visitor rose, and Fairfax discovered that he did not wish to detain
her as he had thought to do before she had mentioned her errand. She
seemed to have entirely escaped him. She was as intangible as air, as
unreal.
As he opened the door for her, considering her, he said--
"Bella looks very much like my mother, doesn't she, Aunt Caroline?"
Mrs. Carew thought that Bella resembled her father.
As Fairfax took his car to go down to Ninth Street, he said to himself--
"If _this_ is the first sentimental history on which I am to embark, it
lacks romance from the start."
CHAPTER XX
At the studio he was informed by Cedersholm's man, Charley, that his
master was absent on a long voyage.
"He has left me a letter, Charley, a note?"
"Posted it, no doubt, sir."
Charley asked Mr. Fairfax if he had been ill. Charley was thoroughly
sympathetic with the Southerner, but he was as well an excellent
servant, notwithstanding that he served a master whom he did not
understand.
"I should like to get my traps in the studio, Charley."
"Yes, Mr. Fairfax." But Charley did not ask him in.
"I'll come back again to-morrow.... I'll find a note at home."
"Sure to, Mr. Fairfax."
"Benvenuto been around?"
The Italian had sailed home to Italy on the last week's steamer.
Fairfax, too troubled and dazed to pursue the matter further, did not
comprehend how strange it all was. The doors of the studio were
henceforth shut against him, and Charley obeyed the mysterious orders
given him. There reigned profound mystery at the foundry. The young man
was sensible of a reticence among the men, who lacked Charley's
kindliness. Every one waited for Cedersholm's orders.
The _Beasts_ were cast.
"Look out how you treat those moulds," he fiercely ordered the men.
"Those colossi belong to me. What's the damage for casting them?"
At the man's response, Fairfax winced and thrust his hands into his
empty pockets.
Under his breath he said: "Damn Cedersholm for a cold-blooded brute! My
youth and my courage have gone into these weeks here."
As he left the foundry he repeated his injunction about the care of the
moulds, and his personal tenderness for the bronze creatures was so keen
that he did not appreciate the significant fact that he was treated with
scant respect. He stepped in at the Field palace on the way up-town, and
a man in an official cap at the door asked him for his card of
admission.
"Card of admission? Why, I'm one of the decorators here.... I reckon
you're new, my boy. I only quit working a fortnight ago."
He was nervous and pale; his clothes were shabby.
"Sorry," returned the man, "my orders are strict from Mr. Cedersholm
himself. _Nobody_ comes in without his card."
The sculptor ground his heel on the cruel stones.
He had been shut away by his concentrated work in Cedersholm's studio
from outside interests. He had no friends in New York but the children.
No friend but his aunt, who had borrowed of him nearly all he possessed,
no sympathizers but the little old ladies, no consolations but his
visions. In the May evenings, now warm, he sat on a bench in Central
Park, listlessly watching the wind in the young trees and the voices of
happy children on their way to the lake with their boats. He began to
have a proper conception of his own single-handed struggle. He began to
know what it is, without protection or home or any capital, to grapple
with life first-hand.
"Why, _art is the longest way in the world_," he thought. "It's the
rudest and steepest, and to climb it successfully needs colossal
_genius_, as well as the other things, and it needs money."
He went slowly back to his lodging and his hall room. Along the wall his
array of boots, all in bad condition--his unequal boots and his
deformity struck him and his failure. A mist rose before his eyes. Over
by the mirror he had pinned the sketch he liked the best.
* * * * *
On Sunday afternoon, in his desire to see the children, he forgot his
distaste of meeting the master of the house, and rang the bell at an
hour when Carew was likely to be at home. He had, too, for the first
time, a wish to see the man who had made a success of his own life.
Whatever his home and family were--_Carew_ was a success. Fairfax often
noted his uncle's name mentioned at directors' meetings and functions
where his presence indicated that the banker was an authority on
finance. Ever since Mrs. Carew had borrowed money of him, Fairfax had
been inclined to think better of his uncle. As the door opened before
him now he heard singing, and though the music was a hymn, it rolled out
so roundly, so fully, so whole-heartedly, that he knew his uncle must
be out.
The three were alone at the piano, and the young man's face brightened
at the sight of the children. On either side of their mother Bella and
Gardiner were singing with delight the little boy's favorite hymn.
"No parting yonder,
All light and song,
The while I ponder
And say 'how long
Shall time me sunder
From that glad throng?'"
Curious how syllables and tones and inflections can contain and hold our
feelings, and how their memory makes a winding-sheet.
Fairfax came in quietly, and the singers finished their hymn. Then the
children fell upon him and, as Gardiner said, "Cousin Antony _always
did_," he "gobbled them up."
"You might have _told_ us you were ill," Bella reproved him. "When I
heard I made some wine jelly for you, but it wobbled away, and Gardiner
drank it."
"It wasn't _weal_ wine," said the little boy, "or _weal_ jelly...."
Fairfax glanced toward his aunt, unconsciously looking to her for
comfort on this trying day.
Mrs. Carew was truly embarrassed at the sight of her creditor, but she
continued to play lightly among the hymns, and gave him up to the
children. But Fairfax was too desperate to be set aside. If there was
any comfort anywhere he was going to have it. He said to his aunt in a
voice deepened by feeling--
"Aunt Caroline, I'm a little down on my luck."
The lady turned her doe-like eyes on her nephew. "My dear Tony...."
He clenched his vigorous hands to keep down his emotion.
"Yes. Cedersholm has turned his back on me, as far as I can see."
With a short laugh he threw off his intense mood, thoroughly ashamed of
his weakness.
"_Our_ branch of the family, Aunt Caroline, are unlucky all round, I
reckon."
There was one thought uppermost in his aunt's mind. _She had no money
with which to pay her debt to him._ When there weren't lamps to buy
there were rugs and figures of _biscuit_ Venuses bending over _biscuit_
streams. She had confessed her vice; she "adored bric-a-brac." The
jumble in her mind made her eyes more vague than ever.
"Will you go back South?" she wondered.
He started, spread out his empty hands. "Go back to mother like this?
Auntie!"
As ineffectual as she had been on the night of his arrival, so now Mrs.
Carew sat ineffectual before his crisis. She breathed, "My poor boy!"
and her fingers strayed amongst the keys and found the melody of the
song he loved so much.
The young traveller at her side was too much of a man, even in his state
of despair, to have expected a woman to lift his burden. If she did, he
did not think of the money she owed him. What he wanted was a soothing
touch to be laid on his heart, and the song in which, not six weeks
before, he had nearly loved his aunt, did what she did not.
The children had gone upstairs. Mrs. Carew sang through the first verse
of the song. As far as she was concerned nothing could have been a
greater relief. The sympathy she did not know how to give, the debt she
had never discharged, the affection she had for Antony, and her own
self-pity, Mrs. Carew threw into her voice, and it shook its tremulo
through him.
He breathed devotedly: "Thank you, _dear_," and raised one of his aunt's
hands to his lips.
Mr. Carew had let himself in with his latchkey, and was within a few
feet of them as his wife finished her song.
CHAPTER XXI
Neither Antony nor Mrs. Carew had the presence of mind to stir. Mrs.
Fairfax said of her brother-in-law that he was a "vain creature whose
pomposity stood in place of dignity." Carew, at all events, came upon a
scene which he had never supposed would confront his eyes. Before him in
his own drawing-room, a whipper-snapper from the South was kissing his
wife's hands. To Carew the South was the heart of sedition, bad morals,
lackadaisical indolence. What the South could not do for him in arousing
his distaste, the word "artist" completed. He said to his wife--
"Is _this_ the way you pass your Sabbath afternoons, Mrs. Carew?"
And before she could murmur, "My _dear_ Henry--" he turned on Fairfax.
"Can't _you_ find anything better to do in New York, sir?" He could not
finish.
Fairfax rose. "Don't say anything you will regret, sir. I kissed my
aunt's hand as I would have kissed my mother's. Not that I need to make
excuse."
Mr. Carew's idea of his own importance, of the importance of everything
that belonged to him, was colossal, and it would have taken more than
this spectacle, unpleasant as it was, to make him fancy his wife
harboured a sentiment for her jackanapes of a nephew. If the tableau he
had had time to observe on his way across the dining-room floor had
aroused his jealousy, that sentiment was less strong that was his anger
and his dislike. Young Fairfax had been a thorn in his side for several
weeks.
"You are wise to make no excuses," he said coldly. "I could not
understand your sentiments. I have my own ideas of how a young man
should employ his time and carve out his existence. Your romantic ideas
are as unsympathetic to me as was this exhibition."
Mrs. Carew, who had never been so terrified in her life, thought she
should faint, but had presence of mind sufficient to realize that
unconsciousness would be prejudicial to her, and by bending over the
keys she kept her balance.
She murmured, "My dear, you are very hard on Antony."
Carew paid no attention to her. "Your career, sir, your manner of life,
are no affair of mine. I am concerned in you as you fetch your point of
view" (Carew was celebrated for his extempore speaking), "your customs
and your morals into my house."
"Believe me," said Mrs. Fairfax's son, in a choked voice, "I shall take
them out of it for ever."
Carew bowed. "You are at liberty to do so, Fairfax. You have not asked
my advice nor my opinions. You have ingratiated yourself with my
friends, to my regret and theirs."
Antony exclaimed violently, "Now, what do you mean by _that_, sir?"
"I am in no way obliged to explain myself to you, Fairfax."
"But you are!" fairly shouted the young man. "With whom have I
ingratiated myself to your regret?"
"I speak of Cedersholm, the sculptor."
"Well, what does _he_ say of me?" pursued the poor young man.
"It seems you have had the liberty of his workshop for months--"
"Yes,"--Antony calmed his voice by great effort,--"I have, and I have
slaved in it like a nigger--like a slave in the sugar-cane. What of
that?"
The fact of the matter was that Cedersholm in the Century Club had
spoken to Carew lightly of Fairfax, and slightingly. He had given the
young sculptor scant praise, and had wounded and cut Carew's pride in a
possession even so remote as an undesirable nephew by marriage. He could
not remember what Cedersholm had really said, but it had been
unfortunate.
"I don't know what Cedersholm has said to you," cried Antony Fairfax,
"nor do I care. He has sapped my life's blood. He has taken the talent
of me for three long months. He is keeping my drawings and my designs,
and, by God--"
"Stop!" said Mr. Carew, sharply. "How _dare_ you use such language in my
house, before my wife?"
Antony laughed shortly. He fixed his ardent blue eyes on the older man,
and as he did so the sense of his own youth came to him. He was twenty
years this man's junior. Youth was his, if he was poor and unlucky. The
desire to say to the banker, "If I should tell you what I thought of
_you_ as a husband and a father," he checked, and instead cried hotly--
"God's here, at all events, sir, and perhaps my way of calling on Him is
as good as another."
He extended his hand. It did not tremble. "Good-bye, Aunt Caroline."
Hers, cold as ice, just touched his. "_Henry_," she gasped, "he's
Arabella's son."
Again the scarlet Antony had seen, touched the banker's face. Fairfax
limped out of the room. His clothes were so shabby (as he had said a few
moments before, he had worked in them like a nigger), that, warm as it
was, he wore his overcoat to cover his suit. The coat lay in the hall.
Bella and Gardiner had been busy during his visit on their own affairs.
They had broken open their bank. Bella's keen ears had heard Antony's
remark to her mother about being down on his luck, and her tender heart
had recognized the heavy note in his voice. The children's bank had been
their greatest treasure for a year or two. It represented all the
"serious" money, as Bella called it, that had ever been given them. The
children had been so long breaking it open that they had not heard the
scene below in the drawing-room.
As Fairfax lifted his coat quickly it jingled. He got into it, thrust
his hands in the pockets. They were full of coin. His sorrow, anger and
horror were so keen that he was guilty of the unkindest act of his life.
"What's this!" he cried, and emptied out his pockets on the floor. The
precious coins fell and rolled on every side. Bella and her little
brother, who had hid on the stairs in order to watch the effect of their
surprise, saw the disaster, and heard the beloved cousin's voice in
anger. The little girl flew down.
"Cousin _Antony_, how _could_ you? It was for _you_! Gardiner and I
broke our bank for you. There were ten dollars there and fifty-nine
cents."
There was nothing gracious in Fairfax's face as it bent on the excited
child.
"Pick up your money," he said harshly, his hand on the door. "Good-bye."
"Oh," cried the child, "I didn't know you were proud like _that_. I
didn't know."
"Proud," he breathed deeply. "I'd rather starve in the gutter than touch
a penny in this house."
He saw the flaming cheeks and averted eyes, and was conscious of
Gardiner's little steps running down the stairs, and he heard Bella call
"Cousin _Antony_," in a heart-rent voice, as he opened the door, banged
it furiously, and strode out into the street.
BOOK II
THE OPEN DOOR
CHAPTER I
He had slept all night in a strained position between a barrel of tallow
candles and a bag of potatoes. In spite of the hardness of the potatoes
on which he lay and the odour of the candles, he lost consciousness for
a part of the night, and when he awoke, bruised and weary, he found the
car stationary. As he listened he could not hear a sound, and crawling
out from between the sacks in the car, he saw the dim light of early
dawn through a crack in the door. Pushing open the sliding door he
discovered that the car had stopped on a siding in an immense
railroad-yard and that he was the only soul in sight. He climbed out
stiffly. On all sides of him ran innumerable lines of gleaming rails.
The signal house up high was alight and the green and yellow and white
signal lamps at the switches shone bright as stars. Further on he could
see the engine-house, where in lines, their cow-catchers at the
threshold, a row of engines waited, sombre, inert horses of iron and
steel, superb in their repose. Fairfax reckoned that it must be nearly
four-thirty, and as he stood, heard a switch click, saw a light change
from green to red, and with a rattle and commotion a train rolled
in--along and away. On the other side of the tracks in front of him were
barrack-like workshops, and over the closed station ran a name in black
letters, but it did not inform Fairfax as to his whereabouts except that
he was at "West Junction." He made his way across the tracks towards the
workshops, every inch of him sore from his cramped ride.
He always thought that on that day he was as mentally unhinged as a
healthy young man can be. Unbalanced by hunger, despair and rage, his
kindly face was drawn and bore the pallor of death. He was dirty and
unshaven, his heavy boot weighed on his foot like lead. Without any
special direction he limped across the tracks and once, as he stopped to
look up and down the rails on which the daylight was beginning to
glimmer, in his eyes was the morbidness of despair. A signalman from his
box could see him over the yards, and Fairfax reflected that if he
lingered he might be arrested, and he limped away.
"Rome, Rome," he muttered under his breath, "thou hast been a tender
nurse to me! Thou hast given to the timid shepherd-boy muscles of iron
and a heart of steel."
The night before he had rushed headlong from his uncle's house, smarting
under injustice, and had walked blindly until he came to the
Forty-second Street station. His faint and wretched spirit longed for
nothing but escape from the brutal city where he had squandered his
talent, crushed his spirit and made a poor apprenticeship to
ingratitude. A baggage car on the main line, with an open door, was the
only means of transportation of which Fairfax could avail himself, and
he had crept into it undiscovered, stowed himself away, hoping that the
train's direction was westward and expecting to be thrown out at any
moment. Thus far his journey had been made undiscovered. He didn't
wonder where he was--he didn't care. Any place was good enough to be
penniless in and to jump off from! His one idea at the moment was food.
"God!" he thought to himself, "to be hungry like this and not be a
beggar or a criminal, just a duffer of a gentleman of no account!"
He reached the engine-house and passed before the line of iron
locomotives, silent and vigorous in their quiescent might, and full of
inert power. He set his teeth, for the locomotives made him think of his
beloved beasts. A choking sensation came in his throat and tears to his
blue eyes. He thrust his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and went
on. In front of him a city street came down to the tracks, and sharp
across it cut the swinging gates which fell as Fairfax approached.
Behind him the switches snapped; another train, this time a fast
express, rushed past him. He watched it mutely; the flinging up of the
dust around the wheels, the siss and roar and wind of its passing smote
through him. It was gone.
He limped on. The street leading down to the tracks was filthy with mud
and with the effects of the late rain. It was to Fairfax an avenue into
an empty and unknown town. Small, vile, cobbled with great stones, the
alley ran between lines of two-storied frame buildings, tenement houses
which were the home of the railroad employes. The shutters were all
closed, there was not a sign of life. Fairfax came up with the
signal-box by the swinging gate, and a man with a rolled red flag stood
in the doorway. He looked at Fairfax with little curiosity and the young
man decided not to ask him any questions for fear that his stolen ride
should be discovered. As he passed on and went into the empty street, he
mused--
"It is curious how we are all taking pains to escape consequences to
which we say we are indifferent. What matter is it if he _does_ arrest
me? I should at least have a cup of coffee at the station house."
On either side of the alley through which Fairfax now walked there was
not a friendly door open, or a shutter flung back from a window. At the
head of the street Fairfax stopped and looked back upon the yards and
the tracks of the workshops. The ugly scene lay in the mist of very
early morning and the increasing daylight made its crudeness each moment
more apparent. As he stood alone in Nut Street, on either side of him
hundreds of sleeping workmen, the sun rose over the yards, filling the
dreary, unlovely outlook with a pure glory. To Fairfax's senses it
brought no consolation but the sharp suffering that any beauty brings to
the poet and the seer. It was a new day--he was too young to be crushed
out of life because he had an empty pocket, and faint as he was, hungry
as he was, the visions began to rise again in his brain. The crimson
glory, as it swam over the railroad yards, over the bridge, over the
unsightly buildings, was peopled by his ideals--his breath came fast and
his heart beat. The clouds from which the sun emerged took winged
shapes and soared; the power of the iron creatures in the shed seemed to
invigorate him. Fairfax drew a deep breath and murmured: "Art has made
many victims. I won't sacrifice my life to it." And he seemed a coward
to himself to be beaten so early in the race.
"Muscles of iron and a heart of steel," he murmured again, "_a heart of
steel_."
He turned on his feet and limped on, and as he walked he saw a light in
an opposite window with the early opening of a cheap restaurant. The
shutters on either side of Nut Street were flung back. He heard the
clattering of feet, doors were pushed open and the workers began to
drift out into the day. Antony made for the light in the coffee house;
it was extinguished before he arrived and the growing daylight took its
place. A man from a lodging-house passed in at the restaurant door.
Fairfax's hands were deep in the pockets of his overcoat, his fingers
touched a loose button. He turned it, but it did not feel like a button.
He drew it out; it was twenty-five cents. He had not shaken out quite
all the children's coins on the hall floor. This bit of silver had
caught between the lining and the cloth and resisted his angry fling. As
the young man looked at it, his face softened. He went into the
eating-house with the other man and said to himself as he crossed the
door-sill--
"Little cousin! you don't know what 'serious' money this is!"