By the time the sublime spring days came, Fairfax discovered that he
needed consolation. He must have been a very stubborn, dull animal, he
decided, to have so successfully stuffed down and crushed out Antony
Fairfax. Antony Fairfax could not have been much of a man at any time to
have gone down so uncomplainingly in the fight.
"A chap who is uniquely an artist and poet," he wrote to his mother, "is
not a real man, I reckon."
But he had not described to her what kind of a fellow stood in his
stead. Instead of going to church on Sundays he exercised in the free
gymnasium, joined a base-ball team--the firemen against the
engineers--and read and studied more than he should have done whenever
he could keep his eyes open. Then spring came, and he could not deny
another moment, another day or another night, that he needed
consolation.
The wives and daughters of the railroad hands and officials--those he
saw in Nut Street--were not likely to charm his eyes. Fairfax waited for
Easter--waited with a strange young crying voice in his heart, a
threatening softness around his heart of steel.
He went on rapidly with his new studies; his mind grasped readily
whatever he attacked, and his teacher, less worldly than the choir-master
at St. Angel's, wondered at his quickness, and looked at his disfigured
hands. Joe Mead knew Tony's plans and his ambitions; by June they would
give Fairfax an engine and Mead would look out for another fireman to
feed "the Girl." The bulky, panting, puffing, sliding thing, feminine as
the machine seemed, could no longer charm Fairfax nor occupy all his
thoughts.
He had been sincere when he told Sanders that he would look out for
Molly Shannon. The pinnacle this decision lifted him to, whether felt to
be the truth or purely a sentimental advance, nevertheless gave him a
view which seemed to do him good. The night after Sanders' visit,
Fairfax slept in peace, and the next day he went over to Sanders' mother
and asked to see Molly Shannon. She had left Nut Street, had run away
without leaving any address. Fairfax did not push his chivalry to try to
find her. He slept better than ever that night, and when during the
month Sanders himself went to take a job further up in the State and the
entire Sanders family moved to Buffalo, Fairfax's slumbers grew sounder
still. At length his own restless spirit broke his repose.
April burst over the country in a mad display of blossoms, which
Fairfax, through the cab of his engine, saw lying like snow across the
hills. He passed through blossoming orchards, and above the smell of oil
and grease came the ineffable sweetness of spring, the perfume of the
earth and the trees. Just a year ago he had gone with Bella and Gardiner
to Central Park, and he remembered Gardiner's little arm outstretched
for the prize ring he could never secure, and Bella's sparkling success.
The children had been in spring attire; now Fairfax could buy himself a
new overcoat and did so, a grey one, well-made and well-fitting, a straw
hat with a crimson band, and a stick to carry on his Sunday
jauntings--but he walked alone.
He flung his books in the bottom drawer of his bureau, locked it and
pitched the key out of the window. He would not let them tempt him, for
he had weakly bought certain volumes that he had always wanted to read,
and Nut Street did not understand them.
"It's the books," he decided; "I can't be an engineer if I go on, nor
will I be able to bear my lonely state."
Verse and lovely prose did not help him; their rhythm and swell drew
away the curtains from the window of his heart, and the golden light of
spring dazzled the young man's eyes. He eagerly observed the womenkind
he passed, and Easter week, with its solemn festival, ran in hymn and
prayer toward Easter Day. New frocks, new jackets, new hats were bright
in the street. On Easter Sunday Fairfax sat in his old place by the
choir and sang. The passion and tenderness brooding in him made his
voice rich and the choir-master heard him above the congregation. From
the lighted altar and the lilies, from the sunlight streaming through
the stained windows, inspiration came to him, and as Fairfax sat and
listened to the service he saw in imagination a great fountain to the
left of the altar, a fountain of his building that should stand there, a
marble fountain held by young angels with folded wings, and he would
model, as Della Robbia modelled, angels in their primitive beauty, their
bright infancy. The young man's head sank forward, he breathed a deep
sigh. He owed every penny that he had laid by to Mrs. Kenny, to the
tailor and the doctor, and in another month he would be engineer on
probation. His inspiration left him at the church door. He walked
restlessly up to the station and with a crowd of excursionists took his
train to West Albany. Luncheon baskets, crying babies, oranges, peanuts,
and the rest of the excursion paraphernalia filled the car. Fairfax
looked over the crowd, and down by the farther door caught sight of a
familiar face and figure.
It was Molly Shannon coming back to Nut Street for Easter. For several
months the girl had been working in the Troy collar factory, and drawn
by the most powerful of magnets was reluctantly returning to Nut Street
on her holiday. Molly had no new dress for Easter. She hadn't even a new
hat. Her long hours in the factory and her state of unhappy, unrequited
love, had worn away the crude brilliance of her form. She was pale,
thinner, and in her cheap dress, her old hat with its faded ribbon, with
her hands clasped over a little imitation leather handbag, she sat
utterly alone, as youth and beauty should never be.
Fairfax limped down the car and took his place by her side.