Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel

"No, my kind friend."

"Don't refuse me then, if I am that." The other's lip twitched. "Take it, Tony."

"You mustn't ask me to, Peter."

"I made a turnover last week in N. Y. U. I can afford it. I ask you for the sake of old times."

Fairfax covered the slender hand with his. He shook it warmly.

"I'm sorry, old man. I can't do it."

The near-sighted eyes of the paymaster met those of Fairfax with a melancholy appeal, and the other responded to his unspoken words —

"No, Rainsford, not for anything in the world."

"It's your Pride," Rainsford murmured, and he put on his shining glasses and looked through them fully at Fairfax. "It's your Pride, Tony. What are you going to do?"

For answer, Fairfax rose, stretched out his arms, walked toward his covered bas-relief and drew away the curtain.

His friend followed him, stood by his side, and, with his thin hand covering his eyes, looked without speaking at the bas-relief. When he finally removed his hand and turned, Fairfax saw that his friend's face was transformed. Rainsford wore a strangely peaceful look, even an uplifted expression, such as a traveller might wear who sees the door open to a friendly shelter and foretastes his repose.

Rainsford held out his hand. "Thank you, Tony," and his voice was clear. "You're a great artist."

When he had gone, Fairfax recalled his rapt expression, and thought, sadly, "I'm afraid he's a doomed man, dear old Rainsford! Poor old Peter, I doubt if any climate can save him now." And went heavy-hearted to prepare his little luncheon of sandwiches and milk.

CHAPTER XXXV

Fairfax had finished his lunch and was preparing to work again when, in answer to a knock, he opened the door for Tito Falutini, who bore in in his Sunday clothes, behind him a rosy, smiling, embarrassed lady, whom Fairfax had not seen for a "weary while."

"Mrs. Falutini," grinned his fireman. "I married! Shakka de han."

"Cora!" exclaimed Fairfax, kissing the bride on both her cheeks; "I would have come to see your mother and you long ago, but I couldn't."

"Shure," said the Irish girl tenderly, her eyes full of tears. "I know, Mr. Fairfax, dear, and so does the all of us."

He realized more and more how well these simple people knew and how kindly is the heart of the poor, and he wondered if "Blessed are the poor in spirit" that the Canon had spoken of in church on Sunday did not refer to some peculiar kind of richness of which the millionaires of the world are ignorant. He made Falutini and his bride welcome, and Cora's brogue and her sympathy caused his grief to freshen. But their boisterous happiness and their own content was stronger than all else, and when at last Cora said, "Och, show us the statywary 't you're makin', Misther Fairfax, dear," he languidly rose and uncovered again his bas-relief. Then he watched curiously the Irish girl and the Italian workman before his labour.

"Shure," Cora murmured, her eyes full of tears, "it's Molly herself, Mr. Fairfax, dear. It's living."

He let the covering fall, and its folds suggested the garments of the tomb.

The young couple, starting out in life arm-in-arm, had seen only life in his production, and he was glad. He let them go without reluctance, eager to return to his modelling, and to retouch a line in the woman's figure, for the bas-relief was still warm clay, and had not been cast in plaster, and he kept at his work until five o'clock in the afternoon, when there was another knock at his door. He bade the intruder absently "Come in," heard the door softly open and close, and the sound jarred his nerves, as did every sound at that door, and with his scalpel in his hand, turned sharply. In the door close to his shadow stood the figure of a slender young girl. There was only the space of the room between them, and even in his surprise he thought, "Now, there is nothing else!"

"Cousin Antony," she said from the doorway where he had seen the vision, "aren't you going to speak to me? Aren't you glad to see me?"

Her words were the first Fairfax had heard in the rich voice of a woman, for the child tone had changed, and there was a "timbre" now in the tone that struck the old and a new thrill. Her boldness, the bright assurance seemed gone. He thought her voice trembled.

"Why don't you speak to me, Cousin Antony? Do you think I'm a ghost?"

(A ghost!)

Bella came forward as she spoke, and he saw that she wore a girlish dress, a long dress, a womanly dress. With her old affectionate gesture she held out her hand, and on her dark hair was a little red bonnet of some fashion too modish for him to find familiar, but very bewitching and becoming, and he saw that she was a lovely woman, nearly seventeen.

"I lost the precious little paper you gave me, Cousin Antony, that day at church, and I only found it to-day in packing. I'm going home for the Easter holidays."

He realized that she was close to him, and that she innocently lifted up her face. Fairfax bent and kissed her under the red hat on the hair.

"Now," she cried, nodding at him, "I've hunted you down, tracked you to your lair, and you can't escape. I want to see your work. Show me everything."

But Fairfax put his hand up quickly, and before her eyes rested on the bas-relief he had let the curtain fall.

"You're not an engineer any more, then, Cousin Antony?"

"No, Bella."

"Tell me why you ran away from us as you did? Oh!" she exclaimed, clasping her pretty hands, "I've thought over and over the questions I wanted to ask you, things I wanted to tell you, and now I forget them all. Cousin Antony, it wasn't kind to leave us as you did, – Gardiner and me."

He watched her as she took a chair, half-leaning on its back before his covered work. Bella's pose was graceful and elegant. Girl as she was, she was a little woman of the world. She swung her gloves between her fingers, looking up at him.

"It's nearly five years, Cousin Antony."

"I know it."

She laughed and blushed. "I've been running after you, shockingly, haven't I? I ran away from home and found you in the queer little street in the queer little home with those angel Irish people! How are they all, Cousin Antony, and the freckled children?"

"Bella," her cousin asked, "haven't they nearly finished with you in school? You are grown up."

She shook her head vehemently. "Nonsense, I'm a dreadful hoyden still. Think of it! I've never been on the roll of honour yet at St. Mary's."

"No?" he smiled. "They were wrong not to put you there. How is Aunt Caroline?"

The girl's face clouded, and she said half under her breath —

"Why, don't you know?"

Ah, there was another grave, then? What did Bella mean?

She exclaimed, stopped swinging her gloves, folded her hands gravely —

"Why, Cousin Antony, didn't you read in the papers?"

He saw a rush of colour fill her cheeks. It wasn't death, then? He hadn't seen any papers for some time, and he never should have expected to find his aunt's name in the papers.

"I don't believe I can tell you, Cousin Antony."

He drew up a chair and sat down by her. "Yes, you can, little cousin."

Her face was troubled, but she smiled. "Yes, that was what you used to call me, didn't you? You see, I'm hardly supposed to know. It's not a thing a girl should know, Cousin Antony. Can't you guess?"

"Hardly, Bella."

Fairfax wiped his hands on a bunch of cloths, and the dry morsels of clay fell to the floor.

"Tell me what it is about Aunt Caroline."

"She is not my mother any more, Cousin Antony, nor father's wife either."

He waited. Bella's tone was low and embarrassed.

"I don't know how to tell it. She had a lovely voice, Cousin Antony."

"She had indeed, Bella."

"Well," slowly commented the young girl, "she took music lessons from a teacher who sang in the opera, and I used to hear them at it until I nearly lost my mind sometimes. I hate music– I mean that kind, Cousin Antony."

"Well," he interrupted, impatient to hear the dénouement. "What then, honey?"

"One night at dinner-time mother didn't come home; but she is often late, and we waited, and then went on without her… She never came home, and no one ever told me anything, not even old Ann. Father said I was not to speak my mother's name again. And I never have, until now, to you."

Fairfax took in his Bella's hands that turned the little rolled kid gloves; they were cold. He bent his eyes on her. Young as she was, she saw there and recognized compassion and human understanding, qualities which, although she hardly knew their names, were sympathetic to her. He bent his eyes on her.

"Honey," Fairfax said, "you have spoken your mother's name in the right place. Don't judge her, Bella!"

"Oh!" exclaimed the young girl, crimsoning. She tossed her proud, dark head. "I do judge her, Cousin Antony, I do."

"Hush!" he exclaimed sternly, "as you say, you are too young to understand what she has done, but not too young to be merciful."

She snatched her hands away, and sprang up, her eyes rebellious.

"Why should I not judge her?" Her voice was indignant. "It's a disgrace to my honourable father, to our name. How can you, Cousin Antony?" Fairfax did not remove his eyes from her intense little face. "She was never a mother to us," the young girl judged, with the cruelty of youth. "Think how I ran wild! Do you remember my awful clothes? My things that never met, the buttons off my shoes? Think of darling little Gardiner, Cousin Antony…!"

Her cousin again bade her be silent. She stamped her foot passionately.

"But I will speak! Why should you take her part?"

With an expression which Bella felt to be grave, Fairfax repeated —

"You must not speak her name, as your father told you. It's a mighty hard thing for one woman to judge another, little cousin. Wait until you are a woman yourself."

Fairfax understood. He thought how the way had opened to his weak, sentimental aunt; he fancied that he saw again the doe at the gate of the imposing park of the unreal forest; the gate had swung open, and, her eyes as mild as ever, the doe had entered the mystic world. To him this image of his aunt was perfect. Oh! mysterious, dreadful, wonderful heart of woman!

Bella stood by his side, looking up at him. "Cousin Antony," she breathed, "why do you take her part?"

"I want her daughter to take it, Bella, or say nothing."

Her dark eyes were on him intently, curiously. His throat was bare, his blond hair cut close around his neck; the marks of his recent grief and struggle had thinned and saddened his face. He had altered very much in five years.

"I remember," Bella said sharply, "you used to seem fond of her;" and added, "I loved my father best."

Fairfax made no reply, and Bella walked slowly across the studio, and started to sit down under the green lamp.

"No," cried Fairfax, "not there, Bella!"

Her hand on the back of the chair, the young girl paused in surprise.

"Why, why not, Cousin Antony?"

Why not, indeed! He had not prevented Rainsford from sitting there.

"Is the chair weak in its legs?" she laughed. "I'm light – I'll risk it," and, half defiantly, she seated herself by the table, leaning both elbows on it. She looked back at him. "Now, make a little drawing of me as you used to do. I'll show it to the girls in school to prove what a genius we have in the family; and I must go back, too, or I'll have more bad marks than ever."

Fairfax did not obey her. Instead, he looked at her as though he saw through her to eternity.

Bella sprang up impulsively, and came toward him. "Cousin Antony," she murmured, "I'm perfectly dreadful. I'm selfish and inconsiderate. It's only because I'm a little wild. I don't mean it. You've told me nothing." She lifted his cravat from the chair. "You wear a black cravat and your clothes are black. Is it for Aunt Arabella still?"

Fairfax seemed to himself to look down on her from a height. Her brilliance, her sparkle and youth were far away. His heart ached within him.

"One goes mighty far in five years, Bella… One loses many things."

"I know – Gardiner and your mother. But who else?"

He saw her face sadden; the young girl extended her hand to him, her eyes darkened.

"Who else?" she breathed.

Fairfax put out his arms toward her, but did not enfold her. He let his hands rest on her shoulders and murmured, "Bella, little Bella," and choked the other words back.

"No," she said, "I'm not little Bella any more. Please answer me, Cousin Antony."

He could not have told her for his life. He could tell her nothing; her charm, her lifted face, beautiful, ardent, were the most real, the most vital things the world had ever held for him. The fascination found him under his new grief. He exclaimed, turning brusquely toward his covered scaffolding —

"Don't you want to see my work, Bella? I've been at it nearly a year."

He rapidly drew the curtain and exposed his bas-relief.

There was in the distance a vague indication of distant sky-line – a far horizon – upon which, into which, a door opened, held ajar by a woman's arm and hand. The woman's figure, draped in the clinging garment of the grave, was passing through, but in going her face was turned, uplifted, to look back at a man without, who, apparently unconscious of her, gazed upon life and the world. That was all – the two figures and the feeling of the vast illimitable far-away.

It seemed to Fairfax as he unveiled his work that he looked upon it himself for the first time; it seemed to him finished, moreover, complete. He knew that he could do nothing more with it. He heard Bella ask, "Who is it, Cousin Antony? It is perfectly beautiful!" her old enthusiasm soft and warm in her voice.

At her repeated question, "Who is it?" he replied, "A dream woman." And his cousin said, "You have lovely dreams, but it is too sad."

He told her for what it was destined, and she listened, musing, and when she turned her face to him again there were tears in her eyes. She pointed to the panel.

"There should be a child there," she said, with trembling lips. "They go in too, Cousin Antony."

"Yes," he responded, "they go in too."

He crossed the floor with her toward the door, neither of them speaking. She drew on her gloves, but at the door he said —

"Stop a moment. I'm going a little way with you."

"No, Cousin Antony, you can't. Myra Scutfield, my best friend, is waiting for me with her brother. I'm supposed to be visiting her for Sunday. You mustn't come."

Her hand was on the door latch. He gently took her hand and pushed it aside. He did not wish her to open that door or to go through it alone. As they stood there silent, she lifted her face and said —

"I'm going away for the Easter holidays. Kiss me good-bye."

And he stooped and kissed her – kissed Bella, the little cousin, the honey child – no, kissed Bella, the woman, on her lips.

CHAPTER XXXVI

From the window he watched her fly up the street like a scarlet bird, and realized what a child she was still, and, whereas he had felt a hundred that day at church, he now felt as old as the ancient Egyptians, as the Sphinx, a Sage in suffering and knowledge of life, beside his cousin. He called her little, but she was tall and slender, standing as high as his shoulder.

He turned heavily about to his room which the night now filled. The street lamps were lit, and their frail glimmer flickered in, like the fingers of a ghost. His money was nearly gone. There was the expense of casting his work in plaster, the packing and shipping of the bas-relief. He lit his lamp, and, as he adjusted the green shade, under which Molly had used to sit and sew, he saw on the table the roll of bills which Rainsford had offered to him that morning. He picked up the money with a smile.

"Poor old Rainsford, dear old chap. He was determined, wasn't he?"

Fairfax wrapped up the heavy roll of money, marked it with Rainsford's name, and stood musing on his friend's failing health, his passion for Molly, and the fruitless, vanishing story that ended, as all seemed to end for him, in death. Suddenly, over his intense feelings, came the need of nourishment, and he wanted to escape from the room where he had been caged all day.

At the Delavan, George Washington welcomed him with delight.

"Yo' dun forgit yo' ol' friends, Massa' Kunnell Fairfax, sah. Yo doan favour dis ol' nigger any moh."

Fairfax told him that he was an expensive luxury, and enjoyed his quiet meal and his cigar, took a walk in a different direction from Canal Street, and at ten o'clock returned to find a boy waiting at the door with a note, whistling and staring up and down the street, waiting for the gentleman to whom he was to deliver his note in person.

Fairfax went in with his letter, knowing before he opened it that Rainsford had something grave to tell him. He sat down in Molly's chair, around which the Presence had gathered and brooded until the young man's soul had seemed engulfed in the shadow of Death.

"My dear Tony,

"When you read this letter, it will be of no use to come to me. Don't come. I said my final word to you to-day when I went to make my will and testament. You will discover on your table all my fortune. It counts up to a thousand dollars. I have a feeling that it may help you to success. You know what a failure I have been. I should have been one right along. Now that I have found out that a mortal disease is upon me, my last spurt of courage is gone. When I stood before your work to-day, Tony, it was a benediction to me. Although I had fully decided to go out, I should have gone hopelessly; now there is something grand to me in the retreat. The uplift and the solemnity of the far horizon charm me, and though I open the door for myself and have no right to any claim for mercy, nevertheless I think that I shall find it there, and I am going through the open door. God bless you, Fairfax. Don't let the incidents of your life in Albany cloud what I believe will be a great career.

"Thomas Rainsford."

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 café 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 à 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.