Bella Carew's visit did disastrous work for Fairfax. The day following
he was like a dead man at his engine, mechanically fulfilling his
duties, his eyes blood-shot, his face worn and desperate. The fireman
Falutini bore Fairfax's rudeness with astonishing patience. Their run
was from nine until four, with a couple of hours lying off at Fonda, and
back again to Albany along in the night.
The fatality of what he had been doing appeared to Antony Fairfax in its
full magnitude. He had cut himself off from his class, from his kind for
ever. Bella Carew, baby though she was, exquisite, refined, brilliant,
what a woman she would be! At sixteen she would be a woman, at eighteen
any chap, who had the luck and the fortune, could marry her. She would
be the kind of woman that a man would climb for, achieve for, go mad
for. As far as he was concerned, he had made his choice. He was engaged
to be married to an Irish factory girl, and her words came back to him--
"If I'm any good, take me as I am. You couldn't marry the likes o' me."
Why had he ever been such a short-sighted Puritan, so little of a
worldling as to entangle himself in marriage? More terribly the sense of
his lost art had come in with the little figure he had admitted.
When he flung himself into his room Monday morning his brain was beyond
his usual control, it worked like magic, and one by one they passed
before him, the tauntingly beautiful aerial figures of his visions, the
angelic forms of his ideals, and if under his hands there had been any
tools he would have fallen upon them and upon the clay like a famished
man on bread. He threw himself down on his lonely bed in his room
through which magic had passed, and slept heavily until Mrs. Kenny
pounded on the door and roused him an hour before his train.
* * * * *
At Fonda, in the shed, he climbed stiffly from his cab, his head aching,
his eyes drunk with sleep. All there was of brute in him was rampant,
and anything that came in his way would have to bear the brunt of his
unbalanced spleen.
Falutini, a great bunch of rags in his hand, was at the side of the
engine, wiping the brass and softly humming. Fairfax heard it--
"Azuro puro,
Cielo azuro,
Mia Maddalena..."
"Stop that infernal bellow," he said, "will you?"
The Italian lifted himself upright and responded in his own tongue--
"I work, I slave, I endure. Now I may not sing? Macche," he cried
defiantly, "I will sing, I will."
He threw his chest out, his black eyes on Tony's cross blue ones. He
burst out carolling--
"Ah Mia Maddalena."
Fairfax struck his face; the Italian sprang at him like a cat. Falutini
was as tall as Fairfax, more agile and with a hard head. However, with
one big blow, Fairfax sent him whirling, and as he struck and felt the
flesh and blood he discovered how glorious a thing a fight is, how nerve
relaxing, and he received the other's assault with a kind of ecstasy.
They were not unequally matched. Falutini's skin and muscles were like
toughened velvet; he was the cock of his village, a first-rate boxer;
and Tony's muscles were of iron, but Fairfax was mad and gloomy, and the
Italian was desperate and disgusted, and he made the better show.
A few men lounged in and one called out: "You darned cusses are due to
start in ten minutes."
Fairfax just then had his arm round the Italian's neck, the close
cropped head came under his chin, and as Fairfax panted and as he smelt
the garlic that at first had nauseated him in his companion, he was
about to lay his man when the same voice that called before, yelled in
horror--
"Look out, for God's sake, Fairfax, he's got a knife."
At the word, Fairfax gave a wrench, caught his companion's right hand
with his left and twisted the wrist, and before he knew how he had
accomplished it, he had flung the man and knife from him. The knife hit
Number Twenty-four and rattled and the fireman fell in a lump on the
ground. Fairfax stood over him.
"What a mean lout you are," he said in the jargon he had learned to
speak, "what a mean pup. Now you get up, Tito, and clear out."
The fellow rose with difficulty, white, trembling, punched a little
about the face, and breathing like a saw-mill. Some one handed the knife
to Fairfax.
"It never was made in America. It's a deadly weapon. Ugh, you onion!"
The Italian wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirt sleeve and
spat out on the floor.
Fairfax felt better than he had felt for years. He went back to his
engine.
"Get up, Tito," he commanded his fireman; "you get in quickly or I'll
help you up. Give me the oil can, will you?" he said. And Tito,
trembling, his teeth dry between his lips, obeyed.
Fairfax extended his hand, meeting his companion's eyes for the first
time, and said frankly--
"My fault. No hard feeling, Tito. Bene benissimo."
He smiled and slapped the Italian on the back almost affectionately.
Tito saw that radiant light for the first time--the light smile. The old
gentleman had said a man could win the world with an expression like
that upon his face.
"Keep your knife, Falutini; cut up garlic with it: don't use it on me,
amico--partner."
They went to work without a word further on the part of either, and
Number Twenty-four slipped out on to the switch and was wedded to the
local on the main line.
Fairfax was relieved in mind, and the morbid horror of his crisis had
been beaten and shaken out.
"What brutes we are," he thought, "what brutes and animals. It is a
wonder that any spirit can grow its wings at any time."
He drew up into a station and stopped, and, leaning out of his window,
watched the passengers board the train. Pluff, pluff, pant, pant. The
steal and flow and glide, the run and the motion that his hand on the
throttle controlled and regulated, became oftentimes musical to him, and
when he was morose he would not let the glide and the roll run to
familiar melodies in his head, above all, no Southern melodies. "Tramp,
tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," that was the favourite with Number
Twenty-four. He had used to whistle it as he modelled in his room in New
Orleans, where the vines grew around his window and Maris made molasses
cake and brought it up hot when the syrup was thick on the side, and
downstairs a voice would call, "Emmeline, oh, Emmeline." That sacred
voice...! When Number Twenty-four was doing her thirty miles an hour,
that was the maximum speed of the local, her wheels were inclined to
sing--
"Flow gently, sweet Afton,
Among thy green braes:
Flow gently, I'll sing thee
A song in thy praise.
My Mary's asleep
By thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton,
Disturb not her dream."
And little Gardiner leaned hard against his arm and Bella ran upstairs
to escape the music because she did not like to cry, and his aunt's
dove-like eyes reproached him for his brutal flight. He would not hear
any ballads; but to-night, no sooner had he rolled out again into the
open country than he began to hum unconsciously the first tune the
wheels suggested. They were between the harvest fields and in the
moonlight lay the grain left by the reapers.
"Cielo azuro
Giornata splendida,
Mia Maddalena."
Fairfax laughed when he recognized it. He glanced over at Falutini who
was leaning out of his window dejectedly. At the next station, whilst
the engine let off steam, Fairfax called to his fireman, and the man, as
he turned his face to his chief, looked more miserably homesick than
revengeful.
"_I_ used to know a chap from Italy!" Fairfax said in his halting
Italian, "a molto bravo diavolo. Shake her down, Tito, and brace her up
a little, will you?"
The fireman bent to the furnace, its blast red on his face; from under
the belly of the engine the sparks sang as they fell into the water
gutter along the track.
"My chap was a marble cutter from Carrara."
Tito banged the door of the furnace. "_I_ too am from Carrara."
"Good!" cried Fairfax, "good enough." And to himself he said: "I'll be
darned if I ever knew Benvenuto Cellini's real name!"
"Carrara," continued his companion, "is small. He may have been a
cousin. What was his name?"
"Benvenuto Cellini," replied Tony, easily, and rang his bell.
Once more they rolled out into the night. As they drove through the
country Fairfax saw the early moonlight lie along the tracks, sifting
from the heavens like a luminous snow. No breeze stirred and over the
grain fields the atmosphere hung hot and heavy, and they rushed through
a sea of heat and wheat and harvest smells. The wind of their going made
a stir, and as Fairfax peered out from his window his head was blown
upon by the wind of the speed.
Falutini from his side of the cab said, "Benvenuto Cellini. That is not
a Carrara man, no, no."
"I never knew him by any other name," said the engineer. "I like
Italians." He threw this cheerfully over his shoulder at his inferior.
There was a childlike and confiding smile on the Italian's face; brutal
as all Italian peasants are, brutal but kindly and unsuspicious as a
child, ready to love and ready to hate.
"Only you mustn't use your knife; it's not well thought of in America.
You'll get sent to gaol."
The Limited whistled from around a curve, came roaring toward them, tore
past them, cutting the air, and Fairfax's local plugged along when the
mile-a-minute left them. Tony was conscious that as he hummed the sound
grew full and louder; he was accompanied by a voice more assured than
his own, and in melodious fraternity the two men sang together. So they
took their train in.