CHAPTER XXXVII

He was too young to be engulfed by death.

But he did not think or understand then that the great events which had

racked his nerves in suffering were only incidents. Nor did he know that

neither his soul nor his heart had suffered all they were capable of

enduring. In spite of his deep heart-ache and his feelings that quivered

with the memories of his wife, he was above all an artist, a creator.

Hope sprang from this last grave. Desire in Fairfax had never been fully

born; how then could it be fully satisfied or grow old and cold before

it had lived!

Tony Fairfax was the sole mourner that followed Rainsford's coffin to

the Potter's Field. They would not bury him in consecrated ground. Canon

Prynne had been surprised by a visit at eight o'clock in the morning.

Fairfax was received by the Bishop in his bedroom, where the Bishop was

shaving. Fairfax, as he talked, caught sight of his own face in the

glass, deathly white, his burning eyes as blue as the heavens to which

he was sure Rainsford had gone.

"My friend," the ecclesiastic said, "my friend, I have nothing to do

with laws, thank God. I am glad that no responsibility has been given me

but to do my work. But let me say, to comfort you, is not every whit of

the earth that God made holy? What could make it more sacred than the

fact that He created it?"

Fairfax thought of these words as he saw the dust scatter and heard the

rattle of the stones on the lid of Rainsford's coffin, and in a clear

and assured voice of one who knows in whom he has believed, he read from

Bella's Prayer-book (he had never given it back to her), "I am the

Resurrection and the Life." He could find no parson to go with him.

On the way back to Albany he met the spring everywhere; it was just

before the Easter holidays. Overhead the clouds rolled across a

stainless sky, and they took ship-like forms to him and he felt a strong

wish to escape--to depart. Rainsford had set him free. It would be

months before he could hear from his competition. There was nothing in

this continent to keep him. He had come North full of living hope and

vital purpose, and meekly, solemnly, his graves had laid themselves out

around him, and he alone stood living.

Was there nothing to keep him?

Bella Carew.

He had, of all people in the world, possibly the least right to her. She

was his first cousin, nothing but a child; worth, the papers had said, a

million in her own right. The heiress of a man who despised him.

But her name was music still; music as yet too delicate, sweet as it

was, not to be drowned by the deeper, graver notes that were sounding

through Fairfax. There was a call to labour, there was the imperious

demand of his art. In him, something sang Glory, and if the other tones

meant struggle and battle, nevertheless his desire was all toward them.

BOOK III

THE VISIONS

CHAPTER I

The sea which he had just crossed lay gleaming behind him, every lovely

ripple washing the shores of a new continent.

The cliffs which he saw rising white in the sunlight were the Norman

cliffs. Beyond them the fields waved in the summer air and the June sky

spread blue over France.

As he stepped down from the gang-plank and touched French soil, he gazed

about him in delight.

The air was salt and indescribably sweet. The breeze came to him over

the ripening fields and mingled with the breath of the sea.

They passed his luggage through the Customs quickly, and Antony was free

to wonder and to explore. Not since he had left the oleanders and

jasmines of New Orleans had he smelled such delicious odours as those of

sea-girdled Havre. A few soldiers in red uniforms tramped down the

streets singing the Marseillaise. A group of fish-wives offered him

mussels and crabs.

In his grey travelling clothes, his soft grey hat, his bag in his hand,

he went away from the port toward the wide avenue.

The bright colour of a red awning of a cafe caught his eye; he decided

to breakfast before going on to Paris.

Paris! The word thrilled him through and through.

At a small table out of doors he ordered "boeuf a la mode" and "pommes

de terre." It seemed agreeable to speak French again and his soft Creole

accent charmed the ear of the waiter who bent smiling to take his order.

Antony watched with interest the scene around him; those about him

seemed to be good-humoured, contented travellers on the road of life.

There was a neat alacrity about the waiters in their white aprons.

A girl with a bouquet of roses came up to him. Antony gave her a sou and

in exchange she gave him a white rose.

"Thank you, Monsieur the Englishman."

He had never tasted steak and potatoes like these. He had never tasted

red wine like this. And it cost only a franc! He ordered his coffee and

smoked and mused in the bland June light.

He was happier than he had been for many a long day.

* * * * *

Eventful, tremulous, terrible and expressive, his past lay behind him on

another shore. He felt as though he were about to seek his fortune for

the first time.

As soon as Rainsford's generous gift became his own, the possession of

his little fortune, even at such a tragic price, made a new man of

Fairfax. He magnified its power, but it proved sufficient to buy him a

gentlemanly outfit, the ticket to France, and leave him a little

capital.

His plans unfolded themselves to him now, as he sat musing before the

restaurant. He would study in the schools with Cormon or Julian. He had

brought with him his studies of Molly--he would have them criticized by

the great masters. All Paris was before him. The wonders of the

galleries, whose masterpieces were familiar to him in casts and

photographs, would disclose themselves to him now. He would see the

Louvre, Notre Dame de Paris....

His spirits rose as he touched the soil of France. Now Paris should be

his mistress, and art should be his passion!

* * * * *

His ticket took him second-class on a slow train and he found a seat

amongst the humble travelling world; between a priest and a soldier, he

smoked his cigarettes and offered them to his companions, and watched

the river flowing between the poplars, the fields red with poppies,

yellow with wheat. The summer light shining on all shone on him through

the small window of the carriage, and though it was sunset it seemed to

Fairfax sunrise. The hour grew late. The darkness fell and the motion of

the cars made him drowsy, and he fell asleep.

* * * * *

He was awakened by the stirring of his fellow-passengers, by the rich

Norman voices, by the jostling and moving among the occupants of the

carriage, and he gathered his thoughts together, took his valise in his

hand and climbed down from the car.

He passed out with the crowd through the St. Lazare station. He had in

Havre observed with interest the novel constructions of the engines and

the rolling stock. The crowd of market-women, peasants, cures, was

anonymous to him, but as he passed the engine which had brought him from

Havre, he glanced up at the mechanician, a big, blond-moustached fellow

in a blue blouse. The engineer's face streamed with perspiration and he

was smoking a cigarette.

He had shunned engines and yards, and everything that had to do with his

old existence, for months; now he nodded with a friendly sympathetic

smile to the engine-driver.

"Bien le bonjour," he said cheerfully, as he had heard the people in the

train say it, "Bien le bonjour."

The Frenchman nodded and grinned and watched him limp down and out with

the others to the waiting-room called, picturesquely, the Hall of the

Lost Footsteps--"La Salle des Pas Perdus."

And Antony's light step and his heavy step fell among the countless

millions that come and go, go and come, unmarked, forgotten--to walk

with the Paris multitudes into paths of obscurity or fame--"_les pas

perdus_."

CHAPTER II

It was the first beginning of summer dawn when he turned breathlessly

into the Rue de Rome and stood at length in Paris. He shouldered his big

bag and took his bearings. At that early hour there were few people

abroad--here and there a small open carriage, drawn by a limp,

melancholy horse and dominated by what he thought a picturesque cabby,

passed him invitingly. A drive in a cab in America is not for a man of

uncertain means, and the folly of taking a vehicle did not occur to him.

Along the broad avenue at the street's foot, lights were still lit in

the massive lamps, shops and houses were closed, and by a blue sign on

the wall he read that he was crossing a great avenue. The Boulevard

Haussmann was as tranquil as a village street. A couple of good-looking

men, whom he thought were soldiers, caught his eye in their uniforms of

white trousers and blue coats. He asked them, touching his hat, the

first thing that came to his mind: "La Rue Mazarine, Messieurs--would

they direct him?"

When he came out on the Place de la Concorde at four o'clock he was

actually the only speck visible in the great circle. He stopped,

enchanted, to look about him. The imaginative and inadequate picture of

the Place de la Concorde his idea had drawn, faded. The light mists of

the morning swept up the Avenue des Champs Elysees, and there stood out

before his eyes the lines of the Triumphal Arch, which to Antony said:

Napoleon!

On the left stretched gardens toward a great palace, all that has been

left to France and the glory which was her doom.

From the spectral line of the Louvre, his eyes came back to the

melancholy statues that rose near him--Strassburg, Luxemburg, Alsace

and Lorraine. Huge iron wreaths hung about their bases, wreaths that

blossomed as he looked, like flowers of blood and lilies of death.

Then in front of him the calm, rose-hued obelisk lifted its finger, and

once again the shadow of Egypt fell across the heart of a modern city.

To Antony, the obelisk had an affinity with the Abydos Sphinx, but this

obelisk did not rest on the backs of four bronze creatures!

The small cabs continued to tinkle slowly across the Place; a group of

young fellows passed by, singing on their way to the Latin Quarter, from

some fete in Montmartre--they were students going home before morning.

In the distance, here and there, were a few foot passengers like

himself, but to Antony it seemed that he was alone in Paris. And in the

fresh beginning of a day untried and momentous, the city was like a

personality. In the summer softness, in the tender, agreeable light, the

welcome to him was caressing and as lovely as New York had been brutal.

Antony resumed his way to the river, followed the quays where at his

side the Seine ran along, reddening in the summer's sunrise. Along the

river, when he crossed the Pont des Arts, he saw the stirring of

Parisian life. He went on down the quays, past quaint old houses whose

traditions and history he wanted to know, turned off into a dark

street--la Rue Mazarine. He smiled as he read the sign. What had this

narrow Parisian alley to do with him? He had adopted it out of caprice,

distinguished it from all Paris.

He scanned the shops and houses; many were still closed, neither

milk-shops nor antiquity dealers suggested shelter. A modest sign over a

dingy-looking building caught his eye. In the courtyard, in green wooden

tubs, flourished two bay-trees.

"Hotel of the Universe"--Hotel de l'Univers.

That was hospitable enough, wide enough to take Antony Fairfax in.

Behind the bay-trees a dirty, discouraged looking waiter, to whom the

universe had apparently not been generous, welcomed, or at least

glanced, at Fairfax. The fellow wore a frayed, colourless dress-suit;

his linen was suspicious, but his head at this early hour was sleekly

brushed and oiled.

"No, the hotel is not yet full," he told the stranger, as though he

said, "The entire universe, thank God, has not yet descended upon us."

For one franc fifty a room could be had on the sixth floor. Antony

yielded up his bag and bade the man show the way.

CHAPTER III

He could hardly wait to make his hasty toilet and set forth into the

city. He saw something of it from the eave-window in his microscopic

room. Chimney-pots, stained, mossy roofs, the flash of old spires, the

round of a dome, the river, the bridges, all under the supernal blue of,

to him, a friendly sky--he felt that he must quaff it all at a draught.

But the fatigue of his lame limb began to oppress him. There was the

weight of sleep on his eyelids, and he turned gratefully to the small

bed under the red rep curtains. It was ridiculously small for his six

feet of body, but he threw himself down thankfully and slept.

Dreams chased each other through his brain and he stretched out his

hands toward elusive forms in his sleep. He seized upon one, thinking it

was Bella, and when he pressed his cheek to hers, the cheek was cold and

the form was cold. He slept till afternoon and rose still with the daze

upon him of his arrival and his dreams, and the first excitement

somewhat calmed. He had enough change for his lodging and dinner, but

nothing more.

He walked across the bridge and the light and brilliance of the city

dazzled him. He went into the Louvre, and the coolness and breadth of

the place fell on him like a spell. He wondered if any in that vast

place was as athirst as he was and as mad for beauty. He wandered

through the rooms enthralled, and made libations to the relics of old

Egypt; he sent up hymns to the remains of ancient Greece, and before the

Venus of Milo gave up his heart, standing long absorbed before the

statue, swearing to slave for the production of beauty. He found himself

stirred to his most passionate depths, musing on form and artistic

creation, and when the pulse in his heart became too strong and the

Venus oppressed his sense, he wandered out, limped up the staircase and

delivered up his soul at the foot of the pedestal of the Winged Victory.

He did not go to the paintings; the feast had been tremendous--he could

bear no more.

On his way out of the Louvre he passed through the Egyptian room. Ever

since the Abydos Sphinx had been brought to America, from the Nile,

Egypt had charmed him. He had read of Egypt, its treasures, in the

Albany library now and then on Sunday afternoons. It had a tremendous

attraction for him, and he entered the room where its relics were with

worship of the antique in his soul.

He turned to go, when his foot touched something on the floor and he

stooped to pick it up--a fine chain purse heavy with pieces of gold. He

balanced it in his hand and looked around for the possible owner, but he

was the only sightseer. He went, however, quickly from the museum, not

knowing in just what manner to restore this property, and in front of

him, passing out on to the gallery above the grand staircase, he saw a

lady leisurely making her exit. She was beautifully dressed and had such

an air of riches about her that he thought to himself, with every

reason, why should she not be the possessor of a gold purse? He went up

to her.

"I beg pardon," he began, and as she turned he recognized her in a

moment as the woman by whose carriage he had stood in the crowd on the

day of the unveiling of his statue--he recognized her as the woman who

had drawn the veil of the Sphinx. She was Cedersholm's fiancee. "Have

you lost anything, Madame?"

She exclaimed: "My purse! Oh, thank you very much." Then looked at him,

smiling, and said, "But I think I have seen you before. Whom must I

thank?"

He had his hat in his hand. His fine, clear brow over which the hair

grew heavily, his beautiful face, his strength and figure, once seen and

remembered as she had remembered them in that brief instant in New York,

were not to be forgotten. Still the resemblance puzzled her.

"My name is Rainsford," he said quietly, "Thomas Rainsford. I am one of

Mr Cedersholm's pupils."

"If that is so," she said, "you are welcome at my house at any time. I

am home Sundays. Won't you give me the pleasure of calling, Mr.

Rainsford?"

He bowed, thanked her, and they walked down the stairs together, and she

was unable to recall where she had seen this handsome young man.

CHAPTER IV

In his little hotel that night he lighted a candle in a tall nickel

candlestick, and, when he was ready for bed, he peered into his mirror

at his own face, which he took pains to consider thoughtfully. Like a

friend's it looked back at him, the marks of Life deep upon it.

At two o'clock he was in a heavy sleep when he was roused by the turning

of the handle of his door. Some one had come into the room and Antony,

bolt upright, heard the door drawn and the key turned. Then something

slipped and fell with a thud. He lit his candle, shielded it, and to his

amazement saw sitting on the floor, his big form taking up half the

little room, a young fellow in full evening dress, an opera hat on the

back of his head.

"Don't squeal," said the visitor gently with a hiccough; "I see I'm too

late or too early, or shomething or other."

He was evidently a gentleman out of his room and evidently drunk. Antony

laughed and got half-way out of bed.

"You're in the wrong room, that's clear, and how are you going to get

out of it? Can you get up with a lift?"

"Look here"--the young man who was an American and who would have been

agreeable-looking if he had not been drunk and hebetated, sat back and

leaned comfortably against the door--"roomsh all right, good roomsh,

just like mine; don't mind me, old man, go back to bed."

Antony came over and tried to pull him up, but the stranger was immense,

as big as himself, and determined and happy. He had made up his mind to

pass his night on the floor.

Antony rang his bell in vain, then sighed, himself overcome with sleep.

To the young man who barricaded the door, and who was already beginning

to drowse, he said pleasantly----

"Give us your hat, anyway, and take off your coat."

"Now you go back to bed, sir," ordered the other with solemn dignity,

"go back to bed, don't mind me. I'm nothing but a little mountain

flower," he quoted pathetically. His head fell over, his big body

followed it.

Antony took one of his pillows, put it under the fellow's head, and

turned in himself, amused by his singularly companioned night.

* * * * *

"What the deuce!" he heard the next morning from a voice not unpleasant,

although markedly Western. And he opened his eyes to see bending over

him a ruffled, untidy, pasty-looking individual whom he remembered to

have last seen sprawling on the floor.

"Say, are you in my bed or am I only out of my own?" asked the young

man.

Antony told him.

"George!" exclaimed the other, sitting down on the bed and taking his

head in his hands, "I was screwed all right, and I fell like a barrel in

the Falls of Niagara. I'm ever so much obliged to you for not kicking up

a row here. My room is next or opposite or somewhere, I guess--that is,

if I'm in the Universe."

Antony said that he was.

"I feel," said the young man, "as though its revolutions had

accelerated."

"There's water over there," said Antony; "you're welcome to have it."

"See here," said the total stranger, "if you're half the brick you

seem--and you are or you wouldn't have let me snore all night on the

carpet--ring for Alphonse and send him out to get some bromo seltzer.

There's a chemist's bang up against the hotel, and he's got that line of

drugs."

Fairfax put out his arm and rang from the bed. The young man waited

dejectedly; having taken off his coat and collar, he looked somewhat

mournfully at his silk hat which, the worse for his usage of it, had

rolled in a corner of Fairfax's room.

Alphonse, who for a wonder was within a few steps of the room, answered

the bell, his advent announced by the shuffling of his old slippers; but

before he had knocked the young man slid across the room and stood flat

behind the door so that, when it opened, his presence would not be

observed by the valet.

The man, for whom Fairfax had not yet had occasion to ring, opened the

door and stood waiting for the order. He was a small, round-faced fellow

in a green barege apron, that came up and down and all over him. In his

hand he carried a melancholy feather duster.

"Le dejeuner, Monsieur?" smiled Alphonse cordially, "un cafe complet?"

"Yes," acquiesced Antony eagerly, "and as well, would you go to the

pharmacy and get me a bottle of bromo seltzer?"

"Bien, Monsieur." The valet looked much surprised and considered

Fairfax's handsome, healthy face. "Bien, Monsieur," and he waited.

Fairfax was about to say: "Give me my waistcoat," but remembering his

secluded friend, sprang out of bed and gave to Alphonse a five-franc

piece.

"You're a brick," said the young man, coming out from behind the door.

"I'm awfully obliged. Now let me get my head in a basin of water and

I'll be back with you in a jiffy." And he darted out evidently into the

next room, for Fairfax heard the door bang and lock.

Fairfax threw back his head and laughed. He was not utterly alone in

France, he had a drunken neighbour, a fellow companion on the sixth

floor of the Universe, which, after all, divides itself more or less

into stories in more ways than one. He opened his window and let in the

June morning, serene and lovely. It shone on him over chimney-pots and

many roofs and slender towers in the far distance. He heard the dim

noise of the streets. He had gone as far in his toilet as mixing the

shaving water, when the valet returned with a tray and presented Fairfax

with his first "petit dejeuner" in France. The young man thought it

tempting--butter in a golden pat, with a flower stamped on it. The

little rolls and something about the appearance of the little meal

suggested his New Orleans home--he half looked to see a dusky face beam

on him--"Massa Tony, chile"--and the vines at the window.

"Voici, Monsieur." Alphonse indicated the bromide. "I think everything

is here." The intelligent servant had perceived the crushed silk hat in

the corner and gave a little cough behind his hand.

Fairfax, six feet and more in his stockings, blond and good to look at,

his bright humour, his charm, his soft Creole accent, pleased Alphonse.

"I see Monsieur has not unpacked his things. If I can serve Monsieur he

has only to ask me." Alphonse picked up the opera hat, straightened it

out and looked at it. "Shall I hang this up, Monsieur?"

"Do, behind the door, Alphonse."

The man did so and withdrew, and no sooner his rapid, light footsteps

patted down the hall-way than Fairfax eagerly seated himself before his

breakfast and poured out his excellent cafe au lait. The door was softly

pushed in again, shut to and locked--the dissipated young gentleman

seemed extremely partial to locked doors--and Fairfax's companion of the

night before said in an undertone----

"Go slow, nobody in the hotel knows I'm in it."

Fairfax, who was not going slow over his breakfast, indicated the opera

hat behind the door and the bromide.

"Hurrah for you and Alphonse," exclaimed the young fellow, who prepared

himself a pick-me-up eagerly, and without invitation seated himself at

Fairfax's table.

A good-looking young man of twenty-five, not more, with a cheerful,

intelligent face in sober moments, now pale, with parched lips and eyes

not clear yet. He had washed and his hair was smoothly brushed. He had

no regularity of features such as Fairfax, being a well-set-up, ordinary

young fellow, such as one might see in any American college or

university. But there was a fineness in the lines of his mouth, a

drollery and wit in his eyes, and he was thoroughly agreeable.

"I'm from the West," he said, putting his glass down empty. "Robert

Dearborn, from Cincinnati--and I'm no end obliged to you, old chap,

whoever you are. You've got a good breakfast there, haven't you?"

"Have some," Antony offered with real generosity, for he was famished.

"Well," returned Dearborn, "to tell you the truth, I feel as if I were

robbing a sleeping man to take it, for I know how fiendishly hungry you

must be. But, by Jove, I haven't had a thing to eat since"--and he

laughed--"since I was a child."

He rinsed the glass that had held the bromide, poured out some black

coffee for himself and took half of Fairfax's bread and half of his

flower-stamped butter, and devoured it eagerly. When he had finished he

wiped his mouth and genially held out his hand.

"Ever been hungry?"

Antony did not tell him how lately.

"Good," nodded Dearborn, "I understand. Passing through Paris?"

"Just arrived."

"Well, I've been here for two whole years. By the way," he questioned

Antony, "you haven't told me your name."

Fairfax hesitated because of a fancy that had come into his mind when he

had discovered the loss of his fortune.

"Thomas Rainsford," he said; then, for he could not deny his home, "from

New Orleans."

"Ah!" exclaimed his companion, "that's why you speak such ripping

French. Now, do you know, to hear me you wouldn't think I'd seen a

gendarme or a Parisian pavement. My Western accent, you must have

remarked it, refuses to mix with a foreign language. I can speak

French," he said calmly, "but they can't understand me yet; I have been

here two years."

There was a knock at the door. Dearborn started and held up his hand.

"If Monsieur will give me his boots," suggested the mellow voice of

Alphonse, "I will clean them."

Fairfax picked up his boots, the big shoe and the smaller one, and

handed out the pair through a crack in the door.

When once again the rabbit steps had pattered away--"Go on dressing,"

Dearborn said, "don't let me stop you. You don't mind my sitting here a

minute until Alphonse does with his boot-cleaning operations. He's a

magician at that. They keep their boots clean, here, if they don't

wash."

Dearborn made himself comfortable, accepted a cigarette from the packet

the landlady had given Fairfax, and put his feet on the chair that

Fairfax had vacated.

"I went out last night to a little supper with some friends of mine. The

banquet rather used me up."

He smiled, and Fairfax saw how he looked when he was more himself. His

hair, as the water dried on it, was reddish, he was clean-shaven, his

teeth were white and sound, his smile agreeable.

"Now, if I hadn't been drunk, I shouldn't have come back to the

Universe. I was due a quarter of a mile away from here. They'll keep me

when they find me. I haven't paid my bill here to Madame Poulet for six

weeks. But they are decent, trustful sort of people and can't believe a

chap won't ever pay. But I was fool enough to leave my father's cable in

my room and Madame Poulet had it translated. I grant you it wasn't

encouraging for a creditor, Rainsford."

Antony heard his name used for the first time, the R's rolled and made

the most of. It seemed to bring back the dead.

"Listen to the cable," said the communicative young man: "'You can go to

the devil. Not a cent more from me or your mother.'"

Fairfax, who was tying his cravat, turned around and smiled, and he

limped over to his visitor.

"It's not the most friendly telegram I ever heard," he said.

"Step-father," returned the other briefly. "She knows nothing about

it--my mother, I mean. I've been living on her money here for two years

and over and it's gone; but before I take a penny from him ..."

"I understand," said Fairfax, going back to the mirror and beginning to

brush his hair.

"Did you ever have a mother?" asked the red-haired young man with a

queer look on his face, and added, "I see you have. Well, let's drop the

subject, then, but you may discuss step-fathers all you choose."

Fairfax, for he was not Rainsford, yet, took a fancy to his visitor, a

fancy to his rough, deep voice; he liked the eyes that were clearing

fast, liked the kindly spirited face and the ready, boy-like confidence.

"What are you up to in Paris?" he asked Dearborn, regarding him with

interest.

"I'm a playwright," said the other simply.

CHAPTER V

"A playwright," Fairfax repeated softly. If Dearborn had said "Ali

Baba," Fairfax would scarcely have been more surprised.

"You must know the Bohemian life here?" he asked, "even possibly know

some artists?"

"Well, rather," drawled his companion; "I live among them. I don't know

a single chap who isn't doing something, burning the midnight oil or

using the daylight in a studio."

As Dearborn spoke, Fairfax, looking at him more observantly, saw

something in his countenance that responded to his own feelings.

"What are you over here for, Rainsford?" asked the Westerner.

"I am a sculptor."

"Delightful!" exclaimed his companion. "Where are you going to work?

With Carrier-Belleuse or Rude?"

"Ah, I don't know--I don't know where I can go or what I can do."

His companion, with an understanding nod, said, "Didn't bring over a

gold-mine with you, perhaps?"

As he said this he laughed, extended both his hands and jumped up from

his seat.

"I like you exceedingly," he exclaimed heartily. "The governor had

telegraphed me to go to the devil and I thought I'd take his advice. The

little supper I was giving last night was to say good-bye to a

hundred-franc note, some money that I won at poker. I might have paid

some of this hotel bill, but I didn't. I wish you had been there,

Rainsford! But, never mind, you had the afterglow anyway! No," he

laughed, "let us surprise them at home. I don't quite know how, but

let's surprise them."

Fairfax shook his head as though he didn't quite understand.

"Is there no one who thinks you an insane fool for going in for art?

Nobody that your success will be gall to?"

"No, I'm all alone."

"Come," urged the other, too excited to see the sadness on his

companion's face. "Come, isn't there some one who will cringe when your

statues are unveiled?"

"Stop!" cried Fairfax eagerly.

"Come on then," cried the boy; "whoever it may be, your enemy or my

stepfather--we will surprise them yet!"

CHAPTER VI

In January of the following year he leaned out of the window and smelled

Paris, drank it in, penetrated by its fragrance and perfume. He saw the

river milkily flowing between the shores, the stones of the quay

parapet, the arches of the bridges, the wide domain of roofs and towers.

The Sacre-Coeur on Montmartre had not yet begun to rise, though they

were laying its foundation stones, and his eyes travelled, as they

always did, through the fog to the towers of Notre-Dame with its black,

mellow front and its melancholy beauty. The bourdon of the bells smote

sympathetically through him. No matter what his state of mind might be,

Paris took him out of himself, and he adored it.

He was looking upon the first of the winter mists. The first grey

mystery had obscured the form of the city. Paris had a new seduction. He

could not believe now that he had not been born in France and been

always part of the country he had adopted by temperament and spirit.

Like all artists, his country was where he worked the best. For him now,

unless the place were a workshop, it could never be a hearthstone, and

he took satisfaction in recalling his ancestry on his mother's

side--Debaillet, or, as they called it in New Orleans, Ballet. As

Arabella Ballet his mother had been beautiful; as Mrs. Fairfax she had

given him Irish and French blood.

"Atavism," he said to Dearborn, "you cannot love this place as I do,

Bob. My grandfather escaped in the disguise of a French cook to save his

head in 1793. I seem to see his figure walking before me when I cross

the Place de la Concorde, and the shadow of the guillotine falls across

his path."

From his corner of the room Dearborn drawled, "If the substance of the

guillotine had fallen across his neck, Tony, where would you be in our

mutual history?"

Antony had asked his companion to call him Tony. He had not been able to

disassociate himself with everything that recalled the past.

Fairfax's figure as he turned was dark against the light of the window

and the room was full of the shadows of the early January twilight. He

wore a pair of velveteen breeches whose original colour might have been

a dark, rich blue. His flannel shirt (no longer red) was fastened

loosely at the neck by a soft black cravat under a rolling collar. It

was Sunday and he was working, the clay white upon his fingers and

nails. He wore an old pair of slippers, and Dearborn on a couch in a

corner watched him, a Turkish drapery wound around his shoulders, for

the big room was chilly and it smelled of clay and tobacco smoke. The

studio was an enormous attic, running the length of an hotel once of

some magnificence, now a tumble-down bit of still beautiful

architecture. The room was portioned off for the use of two people. Two

couches served in the night-time as their beds, there was a small stove

guiltless of fire, a few pieces of studio property, a skylight, a desk

covered with papers and books and manuscripts, and in the part of the

room near the window and under the skylight, Tony Fairfax, now Thomas

Rainsford, worked among his casts and drawings, amidst the barrels of

clay and plaster. To him, in spite of being almost always hungry, in

spite of the discomfort, of the constant presence and companionship of

another when he often longed for solitude, in spite of this, his domain

was a heaven. He had come into the place in June with Dearborn.

Tony had paid a year's rent in advance. He was working as a common

journeyman in the studio of Barye, and early in the morning, late at

night, and on Sundays, worked for himself eagerly, hungrily, like the

slave of old in Albany, and yet, with what a difference! He had no one

but himself to consider, but had the interest of the atelier where he

studied, even as he sold his skill that it might be lost in the

creations of more advanced artists, and there, during the days of his

apprenticeship, his visions came to him, and what conceptions he then

had he tried to work out and to mature, when he had the chance, in his

own room.

Dearborn, who never left the studio except to eat, smoked and worked and

read all day.

The two men were sufficiently of a size to wear each other's clothes.

They had thought it out carefully and had preserved from the holocaust,

of the different financial crises, one complete out-of-door outfit, from

hat to boots--and those boots!

It was "deplorable" the bookseller, whose little shelf of books lay on

the stone wall of the quay, said, it was "deplorable" that such a fine

pair of men should be lame and in exactly the same fashion. Fairfax

could not walk at all in the other man's shoes, so his normal friend

made the sacrifice and the proper shoes were pawned, and Robert Dearborn

and Tony Fairfax had shared alternately the big boot and the small one,

the light and the heavy step. And they were directed by such different

individuals, the boots went through Paris in such diverse ways!

"By Jove!" exclaimed Dearborn, examining the boots carefully, "it isn't

fair. You're walking these boots of ours to death! Who the deuce will

take them out in his bare feet to be repaired?"

They were just as absurdly poor as this. Nobody whose soul is not

absorbed in art can ever understand what it is to be so stupidly poor.

Dearborn, when he could be forced out of the house, put on the shoes

with reluctance; he was greatly annoyed by the clatter of the big boot.

The shoes didn't fit him in the least. He would shuffle into the nearest

cafe, if his credit was good enough to permit it, and there, under the

small table on which he wrote page after page over his cigarette and cup

of black coffee, he hid the big awkward shoe for as long as he could

endure exile from the studio. Then he came home.

Fairfax swung the boot down the stairs, he swung it along the pavements

of Paris! What distance he took it! It seemed to have a wing at the

heel. It tramped through the quarters of the city from the quays to

fine old streets, to forgotten alleys, to the Cite on the Ile, then

again by the fresh gay avenues of the Champs Elysees to the Bois, again

to the quays, and, when well up the river, he would sometimes board the

boat and come back down the Seine, dreaming, musing, creating, and,

floating home, would take the big boot upstairs.

"By Jove, Tony!" Dearborn remarked, examining the boots closely, "it's

not fair! One of us will have to _drive_ if you don't let up, old man!"

Dearborn, when he did not haunt his cafe and when inspiration failed,

would haunt the Bibliotheque Nationale, and amongst the "Rats de

litterature"--savant, actor, poet, amongst the cold and weary who lounge

in the chairs of the library to dream, to get warm, and to imagine real

firesides with one's own books and one's own walls around them--Dearborn

would sit for hours poring over old manuscripts from which he had hoped

to extract inspiration, listening, as do his sort, for "the voices."

CHAPTER VII

It was a year of privation, but there were moments spent on the

threshold of Paradise.

His materials, barrels of clay and plaster, were costly. Dearborn said

that he thanked God he had a "metier" requiring no further expenditure

than a pot of ink and a lot of paper.

"The ideas," he told Fairfax, "are expensive, and I think, old man, that

I shall have to _buy_ some. I find that they will not come unless I

invite them to dinner!"

Neither of the young men had made a hearty meal for an unconsciously

long time. The weather grew colder and they lived as they could on

Fairfax's day wage.

At this time, when during the hours of his freedom he was housed with

his companion, Fairfax was overwhelmed by the rush of his ideas and his

desire to create. He would not let himself long for solitude, for he was

devoted to his friend and grateful for his companionship and affection,

but a certain piece of work had haunted him since his first Sunday

afternoon at the Louvre, and he was eager to finish the statue he had

begun and to send it to the Salon.

The Visions no longer eluded him--ever present, sometimes they

overpowered him by their obsession. They flattered the young man,

seeming to embrace him, called to him, uplifted him until heights

levelled before his eyes and became roads upon which he walked lightly,

and his pride in his own power grew. Antony forgot to be humble. He was

his own master--he had scorned the Academies. For several weeks, when he

first came to Paris, he had posed as a model. Sitting there before the

students, glowing with shame and pride, his heart was defiant, and not

one of the students, who modelled the fine bust and head, imagined how

ardent his heart was or what an artist posed for them. Often he longed

to seize a tool from inefficient hands and say, "Here, my children, like

this, don't you see?"

He learned much from the rare visits of the Master and his cursory,

hasty criticism, but he welcomed the impersonal labour in the atelier of

Barye, where he was not a student but a worker, mechanical supposedly,

yet creative to his fingertips. And as he watched Barye work, admiring

him profoundly, eager for the man's praise, crushing down his own

individuality, careful to do nothing but the technical, mechanical

things he was given to do there--before his hand grew tired, while his

brain was fresh, he would plan and dream of what he would do in his own

attic, and he went back as a thirsty man to a source.

There came the dead season. Barye shut his atelier and went to Spain.

There was nothing to do for Antony Fairfax and he was without any means

of making his bread. After a few days of idleness, when his hands and

feet were chilblained and he could hardly pass the cafes and

restaurants, where the meals were cooking, without a tightening of the

chest, he thought to himself, "Now is the time for the competition money

to fall among us like a shower of gold"; but he had not heard one word

from America or from Falutini, to whom the result was to have been

written and who had Fairfax's address.

Dearborn, in a pair of old tennis trousers, a shabby black velvet

jacket, sat Turkish fashion on his divan, his writing tablet on his

knees. For weeks past he had been writing a five-act play--

"Too hungry, Tony, by Jove, to go on. Every time I start to write, the

lines of some old-time menu run across the page--Canards a la presse,

Potage a la Reine. Just now it was only pie and yellow cheese, such as

we have out in Cincinnati."

Fairfax was breaking a mould. By common consent a fire had been built in

the stove. Tony had taken advantage of the warm water to mix his

plaster. Dearborn came over from his sofa.

"I wouldn't care to have a barrel of plaster roll on those chilblains

of mine, Tony. It's a toss up with us now, isn't it, which of us _can_

wear the boots?"

Pinched and haggard, his hands in his pockets, the young fellow watched

the sculptor. Fairfax skilfully released his statue from the mould. He

had been working on this, with other things, for a month. He unprisoned

the little figurine, a little nude dancer, her arms above her head, the

face and smile faun-like.

"Pleine de malice," said Dearborn, "extremement fine, my dear Tony. As

an object of 'luxe' I find it as exquisite as an article of food, if not

as satisfying. It's not good enough to _eat_, Tony, and those are the

only standards I judge by now."

Fairfax turned the figure between his fingers lovingly--lily-white,

freshly cold, bits of the mould clinging to it, small and fine, it lay

in the palm of his shapely hand.

"If you don't want the boots, Bob," he said, "I think I'll go out in

them."

The legal owner of the boots went out in them into the damp, bitter

cold. His big figure cut along through the mist and he limped over the

Pont des Arts towards the Louvre. All Paris seemed to him blue with

cold. The river flowed between its banks with suppressed intent and

powerful westward rush, and its mighty flow expressed indifference to

the life and passion of existence along its shores.

He leaned a moment on the bridge. Paris was personal to him and the

river was like its soul. He was faint from lack of food and overstrain.

In the Louvre, other men of conglomerate costumes as well as he sought

the warm rooms. Tramps, vagrants in pitiful rags, affected interest in

the works of art, resting their worn figures on the benches, exulting in

the public welcome of the museum. Fairfax was more presentable, if as

poor. He wore a soft black hat of good make and quality, bought in a

sporting moment by Dearborn early in his career. Tony wore his own

clothes, retained because they were the newest and a soft black scarf,

the vogue in the quarter, was tied under his collar in rather an

extravagant bow. He wandered aimlessly through the rooms, glanced at the

visitors and saw that they were many, and when he had become thoroughly

warm, screwed his courage to the sticking point and went out of the

front entrance. A little way from the guides he took his place, and from

his pocket his figurine. It showed quite as a lily in the foggy light,

pale and ashamed. Its nudity appealed more to the sculptor because of

this wanton exposure to the vulgar herd. He trembled, began to regret,

but offered it, holding it out for sale.

Some dozen people passed him, glanced at him and his small statue, but

he would have passed unnoticed had a lady not come slowly down the steps

and seen him, stopped and looked at him, though he did not see her until

she had approached. He flamed scarlet, covered his statuette and wished

that the cobbles of the pavement would open and swallow him.

She was--he thought of it afterward a hundred times--a woman of singular

tact and an illumined sympathy, as well as a woman of exquisite

comprehension.

"Mr. Rainsford!" she exclaimed. "You have something to sell?" she added,

and simply, as though she spoke to an ordinary vendor, yet he saw that

as she spoke a lovely colour rose in her cheek under her veil, and he

found that he was not ashamed any more.

She put out her hand. It came from a mantle of velvet and a cuff of

costly fur--he couldn't have dreamt then how costly. He lifted his hat,

bareheaded in the cold, and laid the little figure in her hand.

"How perfectly charming!" she murmured, holding it. And the dryad-like

figure, with its slender arms above its head and the faun-like,

brilliant little face, seemed perfection to her. She said so. "What a

perfect thing! Of course, you have the clay original?"

Fairfax could not speak. The sight of this woman so worldly, elegant,

sumptuous, at the first praise of his little statue, he realized that he

was selling it, and it struck him as a crime--his creation, his vision,

hawking it as a fish-wife might hawk crabs in the public street!

He felt a great humiliation and could have wept--indeed, tears did

spring to his eyes and the cold dried them.

Two "sergents de ville" came up to them.

"Pardon, Monsieur," asked one of them, "have you a license?"

Fairfax started, but the lady holding the little statue turned quickly

to the officials--

"A license? _Pourquoi faire, mes amis?_"

"It is against the rules to sell anything in the streets of Paris

without a license," said the policeman.

"Well," she exclaimed, "my friend has just made me a gift. This

gentleman is a friend of mine for whom I am waiting to take me to my

carriage. Allez vous en," she smiled at them, "I will excuse you, and so

will Monsieur."

She was so perfectly mistress of the situation that he had nothing to do

but leave himself in her hands.

"You will let me take you home," she said, "in whatever direction you

are going," and he followed her to her little carriage, waiting before

the curb.

She got in, gave the address of his studio to her coachman, and the next

thing he knew was that he was rolling over the pavement he had so

painfully traversed a few hours before.

She talked to him of the master, Cedersholm, and Antony listened. She

talked enthusiastically, admiringly, and he parried her questions as to

when and where he had worked with the Swedish sculptor. The statuette

lay on her lap.

At the studio door, when Fairfax left her, she said, taking up the

self-same gold purse that he had restored to her in the Louvre seven

months ago--

"I hope that I have enough money to pay for this treasure, Mr.

Rainsford. It's so beautiful that it must be very dear. What is the

price?"

And Fairfax, hot all over, warm indeed for the first time in long,

stammered--

"Don't speak of price--of course, I don't know you well enough, but if

you really like it, please take it."

"Take it!" Mrs. Faversham had cried, "but I mean to--I adore it. Mr.

Cedersholm will tell you how valuable it is, but I must pay you for it,

my dear Mr. Rainsford."

Holding the carriage door open, his fine face on fire and his blue eyes

illumined, he had insisted, and Antony's voice, his personality, his

outstretched hand bare, cold, shapely, charmed her and impressed her,

and he saw her slowly, unwillingly accept his sudden gift. He had seen

her embarrassed suddenly, as he was. Then she had driven away in her

carriage, to be lost in the mists with other people who did not matter

to him, and poor as he had started out, poorer, for he had not the

statuette, he limped down the stairs again and into the street to forage

for them both.

He thought whimsically: "I must feed up the whole dramatis personae of

old Bob's play, for he can't get on until he's fed up the cast!"

He limped along the Rue du Bac, his cold hands in his pockets, his head

a little bent. But no battle with life now, be it what it would, could

compare with his battle in New York. Now, indeed, though he was cold and

hungry and tired, he was the inhabitant of a city that he loved, he was

working alone for the art he adored. He believed in himself--not once

had he yet come to the period of artistic despair.

During these seven months the little personal work he had been able to

do had only whetted his desire; he was young, possessed of great talent

and of brilliant imagination, and he was happy and hopeful and

determined; the physical wants did not weigh on his spirit nor did the

long period of labour injure his power of production. He chafed, indeed,

but he felt his strength even as he pulled against the material things

from which he had to free himself.

And as Fairfax, part of the throng, walked aimlessly up the Rue du Bac

with his problems, he walked less alone that night than ever in his

life, for he was absorbed in the thought of the woman.

He realized now how keenly he had observed her, that she was very

charming and very beautiful. He could have drawn those dear features,

the contour of her neck and chin, the poise of her head, the curve of

her shoulder, and, imperceptible, but no less real and strong, her grace

and charm made her an entity to him, so much so that she actually seemed

to have remained by his side, and he almost fancied, as he breathed the

misty air, that he breathed again the odour of the scent that she used,

sweet and delicate, and that he felt the touch of her velvet sleeve

against his coat.

He still had in his possession one object, which, if pawned, might

furnish enough money to pay for a meal. It was a little seal, belonging

to his mother, set in old gold.

This afternoon, before leaving the studio, he had thrust it in his

waistcoat pocket, in case the little statuette did not sell.

They gave him five francs for it, and he laid in a stock of provisions,

and with his little parcel once more he limped up the studio stairs to

Dearborn, who, wrapped in the coverlet, waited by the stove.

He told his story, and Dearborn listened delightedly, his literary and

dramatic sense pleased by the adventure.

They were talking of the lady when the concierge, toward nine o'clock,

tapped at the door and handed Antony a thick blue envelope, inscribed

"Mr. Thomas Rainsford" by a woman's hand.

"Tony, old man," said the playwright, as Antony's fingers trembled

turning the page, "the romance of a poor young man has begun."

The letter ran as follows:--

"MY DEAR MR. RAINSFORD,

"I am anxious to have a small bas-relief of me, to give to Mr.

Cedersholm when he shall come over. Would you have time to

undertake this work? I can pose when you like.

"I know how many claims a man of talent has upon his time, and I

want to secure some of yours and make it mine. I venture to send

this sum in advance. I hope you will not refuse it. Perhaps you

will dine with me to-morrow and we will talk things over.

"Yours faithfully,

"MARY FAVERSHAM."

Fairfax read this letter twice--the second time the words were not quite

clear. He handed it across the table to his companion silently. The

five-hundred-franc bill lay between the plate where the veal had been

and the empty coffee cup.

Dearborn, when he had eagerly read the note, glanced up to speak to

Fairfax and saw that he had turned away from him. In his figure, as he

bowed over, leaning his head upon his hands, there were the first marks

of weariness that Dearborn had ever seen. There had been weariness in

the step that limped up the stairs and crossed the room when Fairfax had

entered with the meagre bundle of food. Dearborn leaned over and saw his

friend's fine profile, and there was unmistakably the mark of fatigue on

the face, flushed by fire and lamp-light. Dearborn knew of his companion

very little. The two had housed together, come together, bits of

driftwood on the river of life, drawn by sympathy in the current, and

few questions had been asked. He knew that Rainsford was from New

Orleans, that he had studied in New York. Of Antony's life he knew

nothing, although he had wondered much.

He said now, lightly, as he handed the letter back, "You haven't been

playing perfectly square with me, Tony. I'm afraid you have been wearing

the boots under false pretences, but, nevertheless, I guess you will

have to wear them to-morrow night, old man."

As Fairfax did not move, Dearborn finished more gravely--

"I would be glad to hear anything you are willing to tell me about it."

Fairfax turned slowly and put the letter back in his pocket. Then

leaning across the table, in an undertone, he told Dearborn

everything--everything. He spoke quietly and did not linger, sketching

for him rapidly his life as far as it had gone. Twice Dearborn rose and

fed the stove recklessly with fuel. Once he stood up, took a coverlet

and wrapped it around him, and sat blinking like a resurrected mummy.

And Fairfax talked till Bella flashed like a red bird across the

shadows, lifted her lips to his and was gone. Molly shone from the

shadows and passed like light through the open door. And, last of all,

Mrs. Faversham came and brought a magic wand and she lingered, for

Fairfax stopped here.

He had talked until morning. The dawn was grey across the frosty pane

when he rose to throw himself down on his bed to sleep. The

five-hundred-franc note lay where he had left it on the table between

the empty plate and the empty cup. The fire was dead in the stove and

the room was cold.

Dearborn, excited and interested, watched with the visions of Antony's

past and the visions of his own creations for a long time. And Fairfax,

exhausted by the eventful day, troubled by it, touched by it, watched

the vision of a woman coming toward him, coming fatally toward him,

wonderfully toward him--but he was tired, and, before she had reached

him, he fell asleep.

CHAPTER VIII

Antony waited in the drawing-room of her hotel in the Avenue du Bois de

Boulogne some quarter of an hour before she came downstairs. He thought

later that she had purposely given him this time to look about and grow

accustomed to the atmosphere, to the room in which he afterward more or

less lived for several months.

There was not a false note to disturb his beauty-loving sense. He stood

waiting, on one side a long window giving on a rose garden, as he

afterward discovered, on the other a group in marble by Cedersholm. He

was studying this with interest when he heard Mrs. Faversham enter the

room. She had foreseen that he would not be likely to wear an evening

dress and she herself had put on the simplest of her frocks. But he

thought her quite dazzling, and the grace of her hands, and her welcome

as she greeted him, were divine to the young man.

"I'm so glad to see you, Mr. Rainsford."

Instantly he bent and kissed her hand. She saw him flush to his fair

hair. He felt a gratitude to her, a thankfulness, which awakened in him

immediately the strongest of emotions.

She seemed to consider him a distinguished guest. She told him that she

was going to Rome when Mr. Cedersholm came over--there would be a little

party going down to Italy.

Fairfax's eyes kindled, and in the few moments he stood with her there,

in her fragrant drawing-room, where the fire in the logs sang and

whispered and the lamp-light threw its long, fair shadows on the crimson

floors and melted in the crimson hangings, he felt that he stood with an

old friend, with some one he had known his life long and known well,

even before he had known--and there was a poignancy in his

treason--even before he had known his mother.

When the doors were thrown open and another visitor was announced, he

was jealous and regretful and glanced at Mrs. Faversham as though he

thought she had done him a wrong.

"My vife, oui," said the gentleman who came in and who was of a

nationality whose type was not yet familiar to Fairfax. "My wife is

horsed to-night, chere Madame; she cannot come to the dinner--a thousand

pardons."

"I am sorry the Countess is ill."

Potowski, who had been told by his hostess not to dress, had made up for

the sacrifice as brilliantly as he could. His waistcoat was of

embroidered satin, his cravat a flaming scarlet, and in his button-hole

an exotic flower which went well with his dark, exotic face. He was a

little ridiculous: short and fat, with a fashion of gesticulating with

his hands as though he were swimming into society, but his expression

was agreeable and candid. His near-sighted eyes were naive, his voice

sweet and caressing. Rainsford saw that his hostess liked Potowski. She

was too sweet a lady to be annoyed by peculiarities.

In a few moments, the lame sculptor on one side and the flashy Slav on

the other, she led them to the little dining-room, to an exquisite

table, served by two men in livery.

There was an intimacy in the apartment shut in by the panelling from

floor to ceiling of the walls. The windows were covered with yellow

damask curtains and the footfalls made no sound on the thick carpet.

"Mr. Rainsford is a sculptor," his hostess told Potowski. "He has

studied with Cedersholm, but we shall soon forget whose pupil he is when

he is a master himself."

"Ah," murmured the young man, who was nevertheless thrilled.

"He is going to do a bas-relief of me, Potowski--that is, I hope he will

not refuse to make my portrait."

"Ah, no," exclaimed Potowski, clasping his soft hands, "not a

bas-relief, chere Madame, but a statuary, all of it. The figure, is not

it, Mr. Rainsford? You hear people say of the face it is beautiful, or

the hand, or the head of a woman. I think it is all of her. It should

be the entirety always, I think. I think it is monstrous to dissect the

parts of the human body even in art. When I go to the _Museo_ and see a

hand here, a foot there, a torso somewhere else--you will laugh, I am

ridiculous, but it makes me think I look at a _haccident_.

"_Therefore_," exclaimed Potowski, gaily swimming toward the fruit and

flowers with his soft hand, "begin, cher Monsieur, by making a whole

woman! I never, never sing part of a _hopera_. I sing a lyric, a little

complete song, but in its entirety."

"But, my dear Potowski," Mrs. Faversham laughed, "a bas-relief or a bust

is complete."

"But why," cried the Pole, "why behead a lady? As for a profile, it is

destruction to the human face." He turned to Fairfax. "You think I am a

pagan. In France they have an impolite proverb, 'Stupid as a musician,'

but don't think it is true. We see harmony and melody in everything."

Apparently Potowski's lunacy had suggested something to Fairfax, for he

said seriously----

"Perhaps Mrs. Faversham will let me make a figure of her some day"--he

hesitated--"in the entirety," he quoted; and the words sounded madness,

tremendously personal, tremendously daring. "A figure of her standing in

a long cloak edged with fur, holding a little statuette in her hand."

"Charming," gurgled Potowski--he had a grape in his mouth which he had

culled unceremoniously from the fruit dish. "That is a very modern idea,

Rainsford, but I don't understand why she should hold a statuette in her

hand."

"For my part," said the hostess, "I only understand what I have been

taught. I am a common-place public, and I prefer a classic bas-relief, a

profile, just a little delicate study. Will you make it for me, Mr.

Rainsford?"

The new name he had chosen, and which was never real to him, sounded

pleasantly on her lips, and it gave him, for the first time, a

personality. His past was slipping from him; he glanced around the oval

room with its soft lights and its warm colouring. It glowed like a

beautiful setting for the pearl which was the lady. The dinner before

him was delicious. It ceased to be food--it was a delicate refreshment.

The perfume of the flowers and wines and the cooking was intoxicating.

"You eat and drink nothing," Mrs. Faversham said to him.

"No," exclaimed Potowski, sympathetically, peering across the table at

Rainsford. "You are suffering perhaps--you diet?"

Antony drank the champagne in his glass and said he was thinking of his

bas-relief.

Potowski, adjusting a single eye-glass in his eye, stared through it at

Rainsford.

"You should do everything in its entirety, Mr. Rainsford. Eat, drink,

sculpt and sing," and he swam out again gently toward Rainsford and Mrs.

Faversham, "and love."

Antony smiled on them both his radiant smile. "Ah, sir," he said, "is

not that just the thing it is hard for us all not to do? We mutilate the

rest, our art and our endeavours, but a young man usually once in his

life loves in entirety."

"I don't know," said the Pole thoughtfully, "I think perhaps not.

Sometimes it's the head, or the hands, or the figure, something we call

perfect or beautiful as long as it lasts, Mr. Rainsford, but if we loved

the entirety there would be no broken marriages."

Mrs. Faversham, whom the musician entertained and amused, laughed softly

and rose, and, a man on each side of her, went into the drawing-room, to

the fire burning across the andirons. Coffee and liqueurs were brought

and put on a small table.

"Potowski is a philosopher, is he not, Mr. Rainsford? When you hear him

sing, though, you will find that his best argument."

Potowski stirred six lumps of sugar into his small coffee cup, drank the

syrup, drank a glass of liqueur with a sort of cheerful eagerness, and

stood without speaking, dangling his eyeglass and looking into the fire.

Mrs. Faversham took a deep chair and her dark, slim figure was lost in

it, and Antony, who had lit his cigarette, leaned on the chimney-piece

near her.

She glanced at him, at the deformed shoe, at his shabby clothes. He had

made his toilet as carefully as he could; his linen was spotless, his

cravat new and fashioned in a big bow. His fine, thoughtful face, lit

now by the pleasure of the evening, where spirit and courage were never

absent if other marks were there; his fine brow with the slightly

curling blond hair bright upon it, and the profound blue of his eyes--he

was different from any man she had seen, and she had known many men and

been a great favourite with them. It pleased her to think that she knew

and understood them fairly well. She was thinking what she could do for

this man. She had wondered this suddenly, the day Fairfax had met her

and left her in the Louvre; she had wondered more sincerely the evening

she left him at his door. She had asked him to her house in a spirit of

real kindness, although she had already felt his charm. Looking at him

now, she thought that no woman could see him and hear him speak, watch

him for an hour, and not be conscious of that charm. She wondered what

she could do for Mr. Rainsford.

"Sit there, won't you?"--she indicated the sofa near her--"you will find

that a comfortable place in which to listen. Count Potowski is the one

unmaterial musician I ever knew. Time and place, food or feast, make no

difference to him."

Potowski, without replying, turned abruptly and went toward the next

room, separated from the salon by glass doors. In another moment they

heard the prelude of Bohm's "Still as the Night," and then Potowski

began to sing.

CHAPTER IX

The studio underwent something of a transformation. Dearborn devoted

himself to its decoration. The crisp banknote was divided between the

two companions.

Fairfax ordered a suit of clothes on trust, a new pair of boots on

trust, and bought outright sundry necessaries for his appearance in the

world.

And Dearborn spent too much in making the studio decent, and bought an

outfit of writing materials, a wadded dressing-gown with fur collar and

deep pockets, the cast-off garment of some elegant rastaquouere, in a

second-hand clothing shop on the boulevard. He had no plans for

enjoying Paris. He philosophically looked at the cast-off shoes that had

gallantly limped with the two of them up and down the stairs and here

and there in the streets on such devious missions. If he should be

inclined to go out he would wear them. His slippers were his real

comfort. He devoted himself to the interior life and to his play. He had

the place to himself, and after a long day's work he would read or plan,

looking out on the quays and the Louvre, biting his fingers and weaving

new plots and making youthful reflections upon life.

In the evenings Fairfax would limp home. Five days of the week he went

to Barye's studio and worked for the master. Twice a week he went to the

Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. Just how his friend spent his time when he

was not in the studio Dearborn wondered vainly. The sculptor grew less

and less communicative, almost morose. Tony took to smoking countless

cigarettes and sitting in the corner of the big divan, his arms folded

across his chest, his eyes fixed on some object which Dearborn could not

see. He would listen, or appear to, whilst Dearborn read his play; or

draw for him the scenario for a new play; or the young man would read

aloud bits of verse or prose that he loved and found inspiring. And

Antony, more than once, could hear his own voice as he had declaimed

aloud to the little cousins on a winter's afternoon, "St. Agnes' Eve,

how bitter chill it was," or some other favourite repeated to shining

eyes and flushed attention. Very often what Dearborn read was neither

familiar nor distinguishable, for Fairfax was thinking about other

things. They were not always alone in the workroom. Dearborn had

friends, and those of them who had not gone away on other quests or been

starved out or pushed out, would come noisily in of an evening, bringing

with them perhaps a man with a fiddle and a man with a flute, and they

would dance and there would be beer and "madeleines" and gay amusement

of a very inoffensive kind, of a youthful kind. There would be dancing

and singing, and sometimes Fairfax would take part in it all and sing

with them in his pleasant baritone and smile upon them; but he liked it

best when they were alone, and Dearborn did too; and in Fairfax's

silence and the other man's absorption they nevertheless daily grew

firmer and faster friends.

"Bob," Fairfax said--and as he spoke he abruptly interrupted Dearborn in

the most vital scene of his act--"I can't take a penny from her for this

portrait."

Dearborn dropped his manuscript on his knee. His expression was that of

a slightly hurt egotism, for he had sat up all night working over this

scene and burned all day to read it to Fairfax.

"Well, anyhow, don't ask me to cough up the two hundred and fifty

francs. That's all I ask," he said a little curtly.

"I shall give her some study, one of these other statuettes," Fairfax

said moodily, "some kind of return for the five hundred francs."

"She wouldn't care for anything I have got, would she, Tony?" Dearborn

put his hands in the ample pockets and displayed his voluminous wrapper.

"I'm crazy about this dressing-gown," he said affectionately. "It has

warmed and sheltered my best thoughts. It has wrapped around and

comforted my fainting heart. It's hatched ideas for me; it's been a

plaidie to the angry airs. Tony, she wouldn't take the dressing-gown,

would she?"

"Rot!" exclaimed his friend fiercely. "Don't be an ass. Don't you see

how I feel?"

"No, I don't," said the other simply. "I am not a mind reader. I'm an

imaginator. I can make up a lot of stuff about your feeling. I daresay I

do invent. You will see this in my play some day. You are really an

inspiration, old man, but as for having an accurate idea of your

feelings...! For three weeks, ever since that banknote fluttered amongst

the crumbs of our table, you have scarcely said a word to me, not a

whole paragraph." He shook his finger emphatically. "If I were not

absorbed myself, no doubt I should be beastly, diabolically lonesome."

Antony seemed entirely unmoved by this picture. "I think I shall go to

Rome, Bob," he began, then cried: "No, I mean to St. Petersburg."

"It will be less expensive," Dearborn suggested dryly, "and considerably

less travel, not to go to the Bois de Boulogne."

"I shall finish this portrait this week," Fairfax went on. "Now I can't

scrape it out and begin again. I have done it twice. It would be

desecration, for it's mightily like her, and my reason for my going

there is over."

"Well, how about that full-length figure of her in furs and velvets,

holding a little statuette in her hands, that you used to rave about

doing? If at first you make a bas-relief, begin and begin again! There

are busts and statues, as there are odes and sonnets and curtain-raisers

and five-act tragedies."

"Yes," returned Fairfax, "there are tragedies, no doubt about it."

Fairfax, smoking, struggled with the emotions rising in him and which he

had no notion of betraying to his friend. In the corner where Dearborn

had rolled it, for he made the whole studio pretty much his own now, was

the statue Fairfax was making of his mother. It was covered with a white

cloth which took the lines and form of the head and shoulders. It stood

ghostly amongst the shadows of the room and near it, on a stool, were

Antony's sculpting tools, his broad wooden knives and a barrel of

plaster. His gaze wandered to these inanimate objects, nothing in

themselves, but which suggested and made possible and real his art--the

reason for his existence. Now, when he stopped modelling Mrs. Faversham,

he would go on with the bust of his mother. He turned his eyes to

Dearborn.

"I have been up there for five weeks; I have been entertained there like

a friend; I have eaten and drunk; I have accepted her hospitality; I

have gone with her to the plays and opera. I have pretty well lived on

her money."

"All men of the world do that," Dearborn said reasonably. "It's an

awfully nice thing for a woman to have a handsome young man whom she can

call on when she likes."

Fairfax ignored this and went on. "I have met her friends, delightful

and distinguished people, who have invited me to their houses. I have

never gone, not once, not even to see Potowski. Now I shall go up next

Sunday and finish my work, and then I'm going away."

Dearborn crossed his thin legs, his beloved knit slippers, a remnant of

his mother's affection, dangling on the toe of his foot. He made a

telescope of his manuscript and peered through it as though he saw some

illumination at the other end.

"You are not serious, Tony?"

Antony left the sofa and came over to his friend. Five weeks of

comparative comfort and comparative release from the anxiety of

existence--that is, of material existence--had changed him wonderfully.

His contact with worldly people, the entertainments of Paris, the

stimulant to his mind and senses, his pleasures, had done him good. His

face was something fuller. He had come home early from dining with Mrs.

Faversham, and in his evening dress there was an elegance about him that

added to his natural distinction. In the lapel of his coat drooped a few

violets from the _boutonniere_ that had been placed by his plate.

"Cedersholm is coming next week." He lit a fresh cigarette.

"Well," returned Dearborn, coolly, "he is neither the deluge nor the

earthquake, but he may be the plague. What has he got to do with you,

old man?"

"She is going to marry him."

"That," said Dearborn with spirit, "is rotten. Now, I will grant you

that, Tony. It's rotten for her. Things have got so mixed up in your

scenario that you cannot frankly go and tell her what a hog he is. That

is what ought to be done, though. She ought to know what kind of a cheat

and poor sort she is going to marry. In real life or drama the simple

thing never happens." Dearborn smiled finely. "She ought to know, but

you can't tell her."

"No," said his friend slowly, "nor would I. But neither can I meet him

in her house or anywhere else. I think I should strike him."

"You didn't strike him, though," said Dearborn, meaningly, "when you had

a good impersonal chance."

"I wish I had."

"I thought you told me they were all going to Rome?"

"Mrs. Faversham doesn't want to go."

"Ah," murmured Dearborn, nodding, "she doesn't."

"No." Fairfax did not seem to observe his friend's tone. "She is

mightily set on having me meet Cedersholm. She wants to have him

patronize me, help me!" He laughed dryly and walked up and down the

studio into the cold, away from the fire, and then back to Dearborn in

his dressing-gown and slippers. "Patronize me, encourage me, pat me on

the back--put me in the way of meeting men of the world of art and

letters, possibly work with him. She has all sorts of kindly patronizing

schemes. But she doesn't know that I have been hungry and cold, and have

been housed and fed by her money. Perhaps she does, though," he cried

furiously to Dearborn. "No doubt she does. Do you think she does, Bob?"

"No, no--don't be an ass, Tony, old man."

"You see, now don't you, that I can't stay in Paris, that I can't meet

that man and knock him down--not tell her that I am not the poor

insignificant creature that she thinks, that without me Cedersholm could

not have whipped up his old brain and his tired imagination to have done

the work that brought him so marked a success. I would have to tell her

what I did, and that, crude and unschooled as I was, she would have to

see that he was afraid of me, afraid of my future and my talent. Oh,

Dearborn!" he cried, throwing up his arms.

Dearborn left his chair and went to Fairfax and put his hand on his

shoulder.

"That's right," he said heartily, "blurt it all out, old man. Some day,

when the right time comes, you will let it out to him."

Fairfax leaned on Dearborn's arm. "There were eight of us at dinner

to-night," he said, "and Cedersholm was the general topic. He is much

admired. He is to have the Legion of Honour. Much of what they said

about him was just, of course, perfectly just and fair, but it sickened

me. They were enthusiastic about his character, his generosity to his

pupils, his sympathy with struggling artists, and one man, who had been

at the unveiling of the Sphinx, spoke of my Beasts."

Dearborn felt Antony's hand trembling on his arm.

"The gall rose up in my throat, Bob. I saw myself working in a sacred

frenzy in his studio, sweating blood, and my joy over my creations. I

saw myself eager, hopeful, ardent, devoted, with a happy, cheerful

belief in everybody. I had it then, I did indeed. Then I saw my ruined

life, my wasted years as an engineer in Albany, my miserable, my cruel

marriage, the things I stooped to and the degradation I might have

known. My mother, whom I never saw again, called me--my wife, my child,

passed before me like ghosts. If I could have had a little encouragement

from him then, only just my due, well.... I was thinking of all those

things whilst they spoke of him, and then I looked over to her...." As

he spoke Mrs. Faversham's name, Antony's voice softened. "... And she

was looking at me so strangely, strangely, as though she felt something,

knew something, and my silence seemed ungracious and proof of my

jealousy; but I could not have said a warm word in praise of him to save

my character in her eyes. When we were alone after dinner she asked me,

in a voice different to any tone I have heard from her, 'Don't you like

Mr. Cedersholm? You don't seem to admire him. I have never heard you

speak his name, or say a friendly word about him,' and I couldn't answer

her properly, and she seemed troubled."

Fairfax stopped speaking. The two friends stood mutely side by side.

Then Antony said more naturally--

"You see a little of how I feel, Bob."

And the other replied, "Yes, I see a little of how you feel"; but he

continued with something of his old drollery: "I would like to know a

little of how _she_ feels."

"What do you mean?"

Antony's voice was so curt, and his words were so short, that Dearborn

was quick to understand that it would not be wise to touch on the

subject of the woman.

"Why, I mean, Tony, that it is a valuable study for a playwright. I

should like to understand the psychology of all characters."

Fairfax shrugged impatiently. "Confound you, you are a brute. All

artists are, I reckon. You drive your chariot over human hearts in order

to get a dramatic point."

Here the post came and with it a blue letter whose colour was familiar

to Dearborn now, and he busied himself with his own mail under the lamp.

Fairfax opened his note. It had no beginning.

* * * * *

"If it does not rain to-morrow, will you take me to Versailles? Unless

you send me word that you cannot go, I will call for you at ten o'clock.

We will drive through the Bois and lunch at the Reservoirs."

* * * * *

For a moment it seemed as though Antony would hand over his note to

Dearborn, as he had handed Mrs. Faversham's first letter the night it

came. But he replaced it in its envelope and put it in his pocket.

CHAPTER X

He wrote her that he should not be able to go to Versailles. He deserted

his day's work at Barye's and remained at home modelling. And Dearborn,

seeing Fairfax's distraction, went out early and did not return until

dark. Fairfax found himself alone again, alone with his visions, alone

with his pride, alone with powerful and new emotions.

Sometimes in January, in the middle of the month, days come that

surprise the Parisians with their inconstancy and their softness. The

sun shone out suddenly and the sky was as blue as in Italy.

Fairfax could see the people strolling along the quays, with coats open,

and the little booksellers did a thriving business and the "_bateaux

mouche_" shot off into the sunlight bound toward the suburbs which

Fairfax had learned in the summer time to know and love. Versailles

would be divine on such a day.

His hours spent at the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne must have been

impersonal. His first essay he destroyed and began again. He did not

want to bring these intimate visits suddenly to an end. But when his

sitter very courteously began to question him, he was uncommunicative.

He could not tell her the truth. He did not wish to romance or to lie to

her. Mrs. Faversham, both sensitive and "fine," respected his reticence.

But she found out about him. They talked of art and letters and life in

general, circling around life in particular, and Fairfax revealed

himself more than he knew, although of his actual existence he told

nothing. He enjoyed the charm of the society of a worldly woman, of a

clever woman. He fed his mind and cultivated his taste, delighted his

eyes with the graceful picture she made, sitting, her head on her hand,

posing for her portrait. Her features were not perfect, but the

ensemble was lovely and he modelled with tenderness and pleasure until

the little bas-relief was magically like her. He was forced to remember

that the study was intended as a present for Cedersholm. He was very

silent and very often wondered why she asked him so constantly to her

house, why she should be so interested in so ungracious a companion.

This morning, in his studio on the Quai, he unwrapped his statue of his

mother. It was a figure sitting in her chair, a book in her hand, as he

had seen her countless times on the veranda of the New Orleans house,

dreaming, her face lifted, her eyes looking into the distance. He went

back to his work with complicated feelings and a heart at which there

was a new ache. He had hardly expected that this statue, left when he

had gone to take up the study of another woman, would charm him as it

did. He began to model. As he worked, he thought the face was singularly

like Bella's--a touch to the head, to the lips, and it was still more

like the young girl. Another year was gone. Bella was a woman now.

Everything, as he modelled, came back to him vividly--all the American

life, with its rush and struggle. So closely did it come, so near to

him, that he threw down his tools to walk up and down in the sunlight

pouring through the big window. He took up his tools and began modelling

again. The statuette was tenderly like his mother. He smoothed the folds

at her waist--and saw under the clay the colour of the violet lawn with

its sprinkling flowers of darker violet. He touched the frills he had

indicated around the throat--and felt the stirring of the Southern

breeze across his hand and smelled the jasmine. He paused after working

for two hours, standing back, resting his lame limb and musing on the

little figure. It grew to suggest all womanhood: Molly, as he had seen

her under the lamp-light--Mrs. Faversham, as he had watched her leaning

on her hand--not Bella. He looked and thought. Bella was a child, a

little girl. There was nothing reposeful or meditative about Bella, yet

he had seen her pore over a book, her hair about her face. Would she

ever sit like this, tranquil, reposeful, reading, dreaming? The face was

like her, but the resemblance passed.

CHAPTER XI

Mrs. Faversham's dresses and jewels, her luxuries, her carriages and her

horses, the extravagance of her life, had not dazzled Antony; his eyes

had been pleased, but her possessions were a distinct envelope

surrounding her and separating them. After watching Potowski's

natatorial gestures, Fairfax had longed to swim out of the elegance into

a freer sea.

He had told her nothing of his companion or of his life. He often longed

to stuff some of the dainties of the table into his pockets for

Dearborn, to carry away some of the fire in his hands, to bring

something of the comfort back, but he would not have spoken for the

world. Once she had broached the subject of further payment, and had

seen by his tightening lips that she had made a mistake. In spite of the

fact of his reserve and that he was proud to coldness and sometimes not

quite kind, intimacy grew between them. Mrs. Faversham was engaged to be

married, but Fairfax did not believe that she loved Cedersholm. What her

feelings were, or why she wanted to marry him, he could not guess. The

intimacy between them was caused by what they knew of each other as

human beings, unknown, unexplained, unformulated. There was a tremendous

sympathy, and neither the man nor the woman knew how real it was. And

although there was her life--she was five years his senior--and his life

with its tragedies, its depths and its ascensions, although there was

all this unread and unspoken between them, neither of them, when they

were together, was conscious of any past. A word, a touch, a look, a

hazard chance would have revealed to them how near they stood.

As he went on modelling, he found that he was beginning to think of her

as he had not let himself do during the weeks when she had sat for him.

He found that he could not go on with his work now and think of her. He

had voluntarily denied himself this day at Versailles where he might

have enjoyed her for hours. When she had told him that she had written

to Cedersholm about him he had smiled.

"He will not recall my name. I was an obscure pupil with others. He will

not remember Tom Rainsford."

Evidently Cedersholm had not remembered him. The subject was never

mentioned between them again. Except as he heard it in general

conversation, Cedersholm's name was no longer frequently on Mrs.

Faversham's lips. He stopped working, wrapped his plaster carefully and

pushed the stool back into the corner. Near it was a pile of books which

he had carefully done up to return to Mrs. Faversham. She had obtained

orders for him from her friends, none of which he had accepted. Why

should he be so churlish? Why should he refuse to take advantage of her

kindness and generosity? Why should not her influence help him on his

stony way? What part did his pride play in it? Was it on account of

Cedersholm, or was it something else?

At noon he went out to eat his luncheon in a little cafe where he was

known and popular. The little room was across a court-yard filled with

potted plants on which the winter had laid icy fingers, but which to-day

in the sunshine seemed to have garbed themselves with something like

spring. The little restaurant was low, noisy, filled with the clatter

and bustle of the noon meal served to hungry students and artists. The

walls were painted by the brush of different skilful craftsmen, young

artists who could not pay their accounts and had settled their scores by

leaving paintings on the walls, and one could read distinguished names.

When Fairfax came here, as he sometimes did, he always took a little

table in the second and darker room by another window which gave on a

quiet court on whose stones were heaped up the statues and remains of an

old Louis XV palace. This room was reserved for the older and quieter

clients, and here, at another table in the corner, a pretty girl with a

shock of curly hair under a soft hat and an old cape and an old

portfolio, always ate, and she sometimes smiled at him. He would catch

her eye, and she was, as Fairfax, always alone.