Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel

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, curés, 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 Elysées, 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 fête 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 fiancée. "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 déjeuner, Monsieur?" smiled Alphonse cordially, "un café 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 déjeuner" 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 café 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 Sacré-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.