He did not go home that day.
Towards late evening he sat in the twilight, his head in his hands, a
pile of smoked cigarettes and Bella's Prayer-book on the table before
him.... In the wretched afternoon he had read, one after another, the
services: Marriage ... for better or for worse, till death do us
part.... The Baptismal service, and the Burial for the Dead.
At six he rose with a sigh, and, though it was growing dark, he began to
draw aimlessly, and Rainsford, when he came in, found Tony sketching,
and the young man said--
"You don't give a fellow much of your company these days, Peter. Have a
cigarette? I've smoked a whole box myself."
"I'm glad to see you working, Fairfax."
"You don't know how glad I am," Fairfax exclaimed; "but the light's
bad."
Putting aside his drawing-board, he turned to his friend, and, with an
ardour such as he had not displayed since the old days at the Delavan,
began to tell of his conception.
"I have given up my idea of a single figure. I shall make a bas-relief,
a great circular tablet, if you understand, a wall with curving sides,
and emblematic figures in high relief. It will be a mighty fine piece of
work, Rainsford, if it's ever done."
"What will your figures be, Tony?"
"Ah, they won't let me see their forms or faces yet." He changed the
subject. "What have you done with your Sunday, old man? Slept all day?"
"No, I've been sitting for an hour or two with Mrs. Fairfax."
Molly's husband murmured, "I'm a brute, and no one knows it better than
I do."
Rainsford made no refutation of his friend's accusation of himself, but
suggested--
"She might bring her sewing in the afternoons, Tony; it would be less
lonely for her?"
Fairfax noticed the flush that rose along the agent's thin cheek.
"By Jove!" Fairfax reflected. "I wonder if old Rainsford is in love with
Molly?" The supposition did not make him jealous.
The two men went home together, and Rainsford stayed to supper as he had
taken a habit of doing, for Fairfax did not wish to be alone. But when
at ten o'clock the guest had gone and the engineer and his wife were
alone together in their homely room, Fairfax said--
"Don't judge me too harshly, Molly."
Judge him? Did he think she did?
"You might well, my dear."
He took the hand that did all the work for his life and home and which
she tried to keep as "ladylike" as she knew, and said, his eyes full on
her--
"I do the best I can. I'm an artist, that's the truth of it! There's
something in me that's stronger than anything else in the world. I
reckon it's talent. I don't know how good it is or how ignoble; but it's
brutal, and I've got to satisfy it, Molly."
Didn't she know it, didn't Mr. Rainsford tell her? Didn't she want to
leave him free?
"You're the best girl in the world!" he cried contritely, and checked
the words, "You should never have married me."
She couldn't see the struggle in him, but she could observe how pale he
was. She never caressed him. She had long since learned that it was not
what he wanted; but she laid her hand on his head, for he was sitting on
the bed, and it might have been his mother who spoke--
"You're clear tired out," she said gently. "Will I fix up a bed for you
in the kitchen to-night? You'll lie better."
He accepted gratefully. To-morrow, being Monday, was the longest day in
the week for him.
He could not permit himself to go to church again, but during the next
few days he half expected to hear a knock at the door which should
announce Bella. But she did not come, and he was glad that she did not,
and more than once, in the evening, he walked around the school
building, up ---- Street, looking at the lighted windows of the house
where the doves were safely coted, and thought of the schoolgirl, with
her books and her companions.
"... Not any more perfectly straight lines, Cousin Antony ..."
And the leaves fell, piles of them, red and yellow, and were swept and
burned in fires whose incense was sweet to him, and the trees in the
school garden grew bare.
In the first days of his Albany life, his Visions had used to meet him
in those streets; now there seemed to be no inspiration for him
anywhere, and he wondered if it were his marriage that had levelled all
pinnacles for him or his daily mechanical work? His associations with
Tito Falutini? Or if it were only that he was no sculptor at all, not
equal to his dreams!
In the leaf-strewn street, near the Canon's School, he called on the
Images to return, and, half halting in his walk, he looked up at one
lighted window as if he expected to see a girlish figure there and catch
sight of a friendly little hand that waved to him; but there was no such
greeting.
* * * * *
That afternoon, as he went into his studio, some one rose from the sofa,
and his wife's voice called to him--
"Don't be startled, Tony. I just came for awhile to sit with you."
He was amazed. Molly had never crossed the threshold of the workroom
before, not having been invited. She had brought her sewing. It was so
lonely in the little rooms, she wondered if it wasn't lonesome in the
studio as well?
Smoking and walking to and fro, his hands in his pockets, Fairfax
glanced at his wife as she took up the little garments on which she was
at work. Her skin was stainless as a lily save here and there where the
golden fleck of a freckle marred its whiteness. Her reddish hair,
braided in strands, was wound flatly around her head. There was a
purity in her face, a Mystery that was holy to him. He crossed over to
her side and lit the lamp for her.
"Who suggested your coming? Rainsford?"
"Nobody. I wanted to come, just."
He threw himself down on the sofa near her. "I can't work!" he
exclaimed. "I've not been able to do anything for weeks. I reckon I'm no
good. I'm going to let the whole thing go."
Molly folded her sewing and laid it on the table. "Would you show me
what you've been workin' at, Tony?"
The softness of her brogue had not gone, but she had been a rapid pupil
unconsciously taught, and her speech had improved.
"I've destroyed most of my work," he said, hopelessly; "but this is
something of the new scheme I've planned."
He went over to the other part of the studio and uncovered the clay in
which he had begun to work, and mused before it. He took some clay from
the barrel, mixed it and began to model. Molly watched him.
"I get an idea," he murmured; "but when I go to fix it it escapes and
eludes me. It has no form. I want a group of figures in the foreground
and the idea of distance and far-away on the other side."
"It will be lovely, Tony," she encouraged him. "I mind the day we walked
in the cemetery for the first time and you looked at the angel so long."
"Yes." He was kneeling, bending forward, putting the clay on with his
thumb.
"Ever since then"--Molly's tone was meditative--"that angel seems like a
friend to me. Many's the time when there's a hard thing to do he seems
to open the door and I go through, and it's not so hard."
She was imaginative, Fairfax knew it. She was superstitious, like the
people of her country. The things she said were often full of fancy,
like the legends and stories of the Celts; but now he hardly heard her,
for he was working, and she went back to her task by the lamp, and,
under the quiet of her presence and its companionship, his modelling
grew. He heard her finally stir, and the clock struck seven, and they
had had no supper. Until she crossed the floor, he did not speak. Then
he turned--
"I'll work on a little longer. I want to finish this hand."
"Take your time, Tony. I'll be going home slowly, anyway."
She was at the door, stood in it, held it half-open, her arm out along
the panel looking back at him. Her figure was in the shadow, but the
light fell on her face, on her hair and on her hand. The unconscious
charm of her pose, her slow pause, her attitude of farewell and waiting,
the solemnity of it, the effect of light and shadow, struck Fairfax.
"Molly," he cried, "wait!"
But she had dropped her arm. "You'll be coming along," she said,
smiling, "and it's getting late."
* * * * *
He found that the spell for work was broken after she left, though a
fleeting idea, a picture, an image he could not fix, tantalized him. He
followed his wife. He had passed the most peaceful hour in his Canal
Street studio since he had signed the lease with the money of his
mother's ring. He would have told Molly this, but Rainsford was there
for supper.