Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel

Tony pointed to his studies. "These are my only assets; these are my finances, auntie. I shall have to sell something to live on – if I am so lucky as to be able to find a customer."

"If I could give the dealer a thousand francs tomorrow I think he would wait," said his aunt.

Tony shook his head. "I wish I were a millionaire for five minutes, Aunt Caroline."

His aunt rose and smoothed her glove. "I shall have to pawn my watch and necklace," she said tranquilly. "Bella is fearfully rich," she drawled, nodding at him, "and she is of age. Her father will settle a million on her when she marries."

A pang went through Fairfax's heart. Another heiress!

"They say she is awfully pretty and awfully sought after."

Antony murmured, "Yes, yes, of course," and took a few paces up and down the room.

"Do you know," said his aunt, who had slowly walked over to the door and stood with her hand on the knob, "I used to think you were a little in love with Bella. She was such a funny, old-fashioned child, so grown up."

Fairfax exclaimed fiercely, "Aunt Caroline, I don't like to re-live the past!"

"I don't wonder," she murmured quietly; "and you are going to make such a brilliant marriage."

He saw her go with relief. She was terrible to him – like a vampire in her silks and jewels. Would she ruin her innocent, kindly husband? What would she do if she could not raise the money? He believed her capable of anything.

For three days he worked feverishly, and then he wrote to Mrs. Faversham that he was a little seedy and working, and that as Dearborn was away he would rather she would not come to the studio. Mrs. Faversham accepted his decision and wrote that she was organizing a charity concert for some fearfully poor people whom the Comtesse Potowski was patronizing; the comte and comtesse would both sing at the musicale, and he must surely come. "We must raise five thousand francs," she wrote, "and perhaps you may have some little figurine that we could raffle off in chances."

Tony laughed as he read the letter. He sent her a statuette to be raffled off for his aunt's Chinese paintings. She was ignorant of any sense of honour.

When Dearborn came back from London he found Antony working like mad.

Dearborn threw his suit-case down in the corner, his hat on top of it, and extended his hands.

"Empty-handed, Tony!"

But Fairfax, as he scanned his friend's face, saw no expression of defeat there.

"Which means you left your play in London, Bob."

"Tony," said Dearborn, linking his arm in Fairfax's and marching him up and down the studio, "we are going to be very rich."

"Only that," said Tony shortly.

"This is the beginning of fame and fortune, old man!"

Dearborn sat down on the worn sofa, drew his wallet out of his pocket, took from it a sheaf of English notes, which he held up to Fairfax.

"Count it, old chap."

Fairfax shook his head. "No; tell me how much for two years' flesh and blood and soul – how you worked here, Bob, starved here, how you felt and suffered!"

"I forget it all," said the playwright quietly; "but it can never be paid for with such chaff as this," – he touched the notes. "But the applause, the people's voices, the tears and laughter, that will pay."

"By heaven!" exclaimed Fairfax, grasping Dearborn's hand, "I bless you for saying that!"

Dearborn regarded him quietly. "Do you think I care for money?" he said simply. "I thought you knew me better than that."

Fairfax exclaimed, "Oh, I don't know what I know or think; I am in a bad dream."

Dearborn laid the notes down on the sofa. "It is for you and me and Nora, the bunch, just as long as it lasts."

Between Dearborn and himself, since Antony's engagement, there had been a distinct reserve.

Antony lit a cigarette and Dearborn lighted his from Antony's. The two friends settled themselves comfortably. It was the close of the day. Without, as usual, rolled the sea of the Paris streets, going to, going with the river's tide, and going away from it; the impersonal noise always made for them an accompaniment not disagreeable. The last light of the spring day fell on Fairfax's uncovered work, on the damp clay with the fresh marks of his instruments. He sat in his corduroys, a red scarf at his throat, a beautiful manly figure half curled up on the divan. The last of the day's light fell too on Dearborn's reddish hair, on his fine intelligent face. Fairfax said —

"Now tell me everything, Bob, from the beginning, from the window as you looked over the chimney-pots with the hyacinthine smoke curling up in the air – tell me everything, to the last word the manager said."

"Hark!" exclaimed Dearborn, lifting his hand. "Nora is coming. I want to tell it to her as well. No one can tell twice alike the story of his first success – the first agony of first success." He caught his breath and struck Fairfax a friendly blow on his chest. "It will be a success, thank God! There is Nora," and he crossed the studio to let Nora Scarlet in.

CHAPTER XX

The third day he went up to see her and found her in the garden, a basket on her arm, cutting flowers. She wore a garden hat covered with roses and carried a pair of gilded shears with which to snip her flowers. As Antony came down the steps of the house she dropped the scissors into the basket with her garden gloves. She lifted her cheek to him.

"You may kiss me, dear," she said; "no one will see us but the flowers and the birds."

Antony bent to kiss her. It seemed to him as though his arms were full of flowers.

"If you had not come to-day, I should have gone to you. You look well, Tony," she said. "I don't believe you have been ill at all."

"My work, Mary."

She took his arm and started towards the house. "You must let me come and see what wonderful things you are doing."

"I am doing nothing wonderful," he said slowly. "It has taken me all this time to realize I was never a sculptor; I have been so atrociously idle, Mary."

"But you need rest, my dear Tony."

"I shall not need any rest until I am an old man."

He caressed the hand that lay on his arm. They walked past the flower-beds, and she picked the dead roses, cutting the withered leaves, and talking to him gaily, telling him all she had done during the days of their separation, and suddenly he said —

"You do not seem to have missed me."

"Everywhere," she answered, pressing his arm.

They walked together slowly to the house, where she left her roses in the hall and took him into the music-room, where they had been last when he left her, the afternoon following the luncheon.

"I must impress her indelibly on my mind," Antony thought. "I may never see her again."

When she had seated herself by the window through which he could see the roses on the high rose trees and the iron balcony on whose other side was the rumble of Paris, he stood before her gravely.

"Come and sit beside me," she invited, slowly. "You seem suddenly like a stranger."

"Mary," he said simply, "the time has come for me to ask you – " The words stuck in his throat. What in God's name was he going to ask her? What a fanatic he was! Utterly unconscious of his thoughts, she interrupted him.

"I know what you want to ask me, Tony, and I have been waiting." She leaned against him. "You see, I have had the foolish feeling that perhaps you didn't care as you thought you did. It is that dreadful difference in our age."

"Do you care, Mary?"

She might have answered him, "Why otherwise should I marry a penniless man, five years my junior, when the world is before me?"

She said, "Yes, I care deeply."

"Ah," he breathed, "then it is all right, Mary; that is all we need." After a few seconds he said gently: "Now look at me." Her face was flushed and her eyes humid. She raised them to him. He was holding one of her hands in both of his as he spoke, and from time to time touched it with his lips. "Listen to me; try to understand. I am a Bohemian, an artist; say that over and over. Do you think me crazy? I have not been ill. I went into a retreat. I shut myself up with my soul. This life here," – he gestured to the room as though it held a host of enemies, – "this life here has crushed me. I had begun to think myself a miserable creature just because I am poor. Now, if money is the only thing that counts in the world, of course I am a miserable creature, and then let us drink life to its dregs; and if it is not the only thing, well then, let us drink the other things to their dregs." She said, "What other things?"

"Why, the beauty of struggling together with every material consideration cast out! Think how beautiful it is to work for one you love; think of the beauty of being all in all to each other, Mary!"

"But we are that, Tony."

Now that Antony had embarked, he spoke rapidly. "You owe your luxury to your husband whom you never loved. Now I cannot let you owe him anything more, Mary."

She began, "But I don't think of my fortune in connection with him."

Antony did not hear her. "I feel lately as though I had been selling my soul," he said passionately. "And what can a man have in exchange for his soul? Of course, it was presumptuous folly of me to have asked you to marry me."

She put both her hands over his and breathed his name. He spoke desperately, and the picture rose up before him of his bare studio and his meagre life.

"Will you marry me now?"

"I said I was quite ready."

"The day will come when I will be rich and great." He paused. He saw that her eyes were already troubled, and asked eagerly, "You believe that, don't you?"

"Of course."

"Great enough, rich enough, not to make a woman ashamed. You must wait for that time with me."

Mary Faversham said quietly, "You have been shutting yourself up with a lot of fanatical ideas."

He covered her lips gently with his hands. His face became grave.

"Oh," he said, "don't speak – wait. You don't dream what every word you say is going to mean – wait. You don't understand what I mean!"

And he began to tell her the gigantic sacrifice he was about to impose upon her. If he had been assured of his love for her, assured of her love for him, he might have made a magnetic appeal, but he seemed to be talking to her through a veil. He shook his head.

"No, I cannot ask it, Mary."

Mary Faversham's face had undergone a change. It was never lovelier than now, as with gravity and sweetness she put her arms around his neck and looked up at him with great tenderness. She said —

"I think I know what you mean. You want me to give up my fortune and go to you."

She seemed to radiate before Fairfax's eyes, and his worship of her at this moment increased a thousandfold. He leaned forward and laid his head against her breast.

In the love of all women there is a strong quality of the maternal. Mary bent over the blond head and pressed her lips to his hair. When Antony lifted his face there were tears in his eyes. He cried —

"Heaven bless you, darling! You don't know how high I will take you, how far I will carry us both. The world shall talk of us! Mary – Mary!"

She smoothed his forehead. She knew there would never be another moment in her life like this one.

He said, "I will take you to the studio, of course. I haven't told you that in June I shall have fifty thousand francs, and from then on I will be succeeding so fast that we will forget we were ever poor." He saw her faintly smile, and said sharply, "I suppose you spend fifty thousand francs now on your clothes!"

She said frankly, "And more; but that makes no difference," and ventured, "You don't seem to think, Tony, what a pleasure it would be to me to do for you." She paused at his exclamation. "Oh, of course, I understand your pride," and asked, "What shall I do with my fortune, Tony?"

"This money on which you are living," he said gravely, "that you have accepted from a man you never loved, give it all to the poor. Keep the commandment for once, and we will see what the treasures of heaven are like."

He thought she clung to him desperately, and there was an ardour in the return of her caress that made him say —

"Mary, don't answer me to-day, please; I want you to think it calmly over. Just now you have shown me what I wanted to see."

She asked, "What?"

"That you love me."

She said, "Yes, I do love you. Will you believe it always?"

Bending over her he said passionately, "I shall believe it when I have your answer, and you are going to make me divinely happy."

She echoed the word softly, "Happy!" and her lips trembled. Across the ante-chamber came the sound of voices. Their retreat was about to be invaded by the people of the world who never very long left Mary Faversham alone.

"Oh!" she cried, "I cannot see any one. Why did they let any one in?" And, lifting her face to him, she said in a low tone, "Tony, kiss me again."

Antony, indifferent as to who might come and who might not, caught her to him and held her for a second, then crossed the room to the curtained door and went down the terrace steps and across the garden.

By the big wall he turned and looked back to where, through the long French windows, he could see the music-room with the palms and gilt furniture. Mary Faversham was already surrounded by the Comte de B – and the Baron de F – . He knew them vaguely. Before going to get his hat and stick from the vestibule, he watched her for a few moments, with a strange adoration in his heart. She was his, she was ready to give up everything for the sake of his ideals. He thought he could never love more than at this moment. He believed that he was not asking her to make a ridiculous sacrifice, but on the contrary to accept a spiritual gain – a sacrifice of all for love and art and honour, too! As he looked across the room a distinguished figure came to Mary Faversham. He was welcomed very cordially. It was Cedersholm. He had been in Russia for months. Fairfax's heart grew cold.

As though Mary fancied that her mad lover might linger, she came over to the window and drew down the Venetian shade. It fell, rippling softly, and blotted out the room for Fairfax. A wave of anger swept him, a sudden uncertainty regarding the woman herself followed, and immediately he saw himself ridiculous, crude and utterly fantastical in his ultimatum. The egoism and childishness of what he had done stood out to him, and in that second he knew that he had lost her – lost her for ever.

CHAPTER XXI

He did not go home. He went into the Bois and walked for miles. His unequal, limping strides tired him to death and he was finally the only wanderer there. Over the exquisite forest of new-leaf trees the stars came out at length, and the guardians began to observe him. At eight o'clock in the morning he had not eaten. He went into a small restaurant and made a light meal. For the first time since Albany, when he had drank too much in despair and grief, he took now too much red wine. He walked on feathers and felt his blood dance. He rang the bell at Mary Faversham's at nine-thirty in the morning, and the butler, intensely surprised, informed him that Mary had gone out riding in the Bois with Monsieur Cedersholm. Antony had given this servant more fees that he could afford. He found a piece of money in his pocket and gave it to Ferdinand.

"But, monsieur," said the man, embarrassed, and handled the piece. It was a louis. Antony waved magnificently and started away. He took a cab back to the studio, but could not pay the cabman, for the louis was his last piece of money. He waked Dearborn out of a profound sleep, in which the playwright was dreaming of two hundred night performances.

"Bob, can you let me have a few francs?"

"In my vest pocket," said Dearborn. "Take what you like."

Tony paid his cab out of the change and realized that it was some of the money from Dearborn's advance royalties. It gave him pleasure to think that he was spending money which had been made by art. It was "serious money." He did not hesitate to use it. He sat by the table when he came in from paying his cab and fell into a heavy sleep, his head upon his arm. Thus the two friends slumbered until noon, Dearborn dreaming of fame and Antony of despair.

At two o'clock that afternoon, bathed and dressed, himself again save for a certain bewilderment in his head, he stood in his window looking out on the quays. Underneath, Nora Scarlet and Dearborn passed arm-in-arm. They were going to Versailles to talk of love, of fame and artistic struggle, under the trees. Antony heard the shuffling of his old concierge on the stairs. He knew that the man was bringing him a letter and that it would be from Mary.

With the letter between his hands, he waited some few minutes before opening it. He finally read it, sitting forward on the divan, his face set.

"Dearest," it began, and then there was a long space as though the woman could not bear to write the words, "You will never be able to judge me fairly. I cannot ask it of you. You are too much of a genius to understand a mere woman. I am writing you in my boudoir, just where you came to me that day when you told me your love and when I wept to hear it, dearest. I shall cry again, thinking of it, many times. I have done you a great wrong in taking ever so little of you, and taking even those few months from the work which shall mean so much to the world. Now I am glad I have found it out before it is too late. I have no right to you, Tony. In answer to what you asked me yesterday, I say no. You will not believe it is for your sake, dear, but it is. I see you could not share my life in any way, and keep your ideals. How could I ask you to? I see I could not share your struggle and leave you free enough to keep your ideals.

"I can never quite believe that love is a mistake. I shall think of mine for you the rest of my life. When you read this letter I shall have left Paris. Do not try to find me or follow me. I know your pride, dear, the greatest pride I ever saw or dreamed of. I wonder if it is a right one. At any rate, it will not let you follow me; I am sure of that. I wish to put between us an immeasurable distance, one which no folly on your part and no weakness on mine could bridge. Cedersholm has returned from Russia, and I told him last night that I would marry him. – Mary."

Then, for the first time, Tony knew how he loved her. Crushing the letter between his hands, he snatched up his hat and rushed out, took a cab, and drove like mad to her house.

The little horse galloped with him, the driver cracked his whip with utterances like the sparks flying, and they tore up the Champs Elysées, part of the great multitude, yet distinct, as is every individual with their definite sufferings and their definite joys.

Her house stood white and distinct at the back of the garden, the windows were flung open. On the steps of the terrace a man-servant, to whom Antony had given fat tips which he could not afford, stood in an undress uniform, blue apron and duster over his arm; painters came out with ladders and placed them against the wall. The old gardener, Félicien, who had given him countless boutonnières, mounted the steps with a flower-pot in his hand and talked with the man-servant; he was joined by two maids. The place was left, then, to servants. Everything seemed changed. She might never – he was sure she would never – return as Mrs. Faversham. Immeasurably far away indeed, as she said – immeasurably far – she seemed to have gone into another sphere, and yet he had held her in his arms! The thought of his tenderness was too real to permit of any other consideration holding its place. He sprang out of his cab, rang the door-bell, and when the door was opened he asked the surprised servant for Mrs. Faversham's address.

"But I have no idea of it, monsieur," said the man with a comprehensive gesture. "None."

"You are not sending any letters?"

"None, monsieur."

Fairfax's blue eyes, his pale, handsome face, appealed very much to Ferdinand. He liked Monsieur Rainsford. Although the chap did not know it himself, Tony had been far more generous than were the millionaires. Ferdinand called one of the maids.

"Where's madame's maid stopping in London?" asked the butler.

"Why, at the Ritz," said Louise promptly. "She is always at the Ritz, monsieur."

Tony had no more gold to reward this treachery.

When Dearborn came home that night from Versailles he found a note on the table, leaning up against the box in which the two comrades kept their mutual fund of money. Dearborn's advance royalty was all gone but a hundred francs.

"I have gone to London," Fairfax's note ran. "Sell anything of mine you like before I get back, if you are hard up. – Tony."

He spent two pounds on a pistol. If he had chanced to meet Cedersholm with her, he would have shot him. From the hour he had received her letter and learned that she was going to marry Cedersholm, he had been hardly sane.

At five o'clock on a bland, sweet afternoon, three days after he had left Paris, he was shown up to her sitting-room at the Whiteheart Hotel, in Windsor. He had traced her there from the Ritz.

Mary Faversham, who was alone, rose to meet him, white as death.

"Tony," she said, "don't come nearer – stand there, Tony. Dear Tony, it is too late, too late!"

He limped across the room and took her in his arms, looking at her wildly. Her lips trembled, her eyes filled.

"I married him by special license yesterday, Tony. Go, go, before he comes."

He saw she could not stand. He put her in a chair, fell on his knees and buried his head in her lap. He clung to her, to the Woman, to his Vision of the Woman, to the form, the substance, the reality which he thought at last he had really caught for ever. She bent over him and kissed his hair, weeping.

"Go," she said. "Go, my darling."

Fairfax had not spoken a word. Curses, invectives, prayers were in his heart. He crushed them down.

"I love you for your pride," she said. "I adore you for the brave demand you made me. I could not fulfil it, Tony, for your sake."

Then he spoke, and meant what he said, "You have ruined my life."

"Oh no!" she cried. "Don't say such a thing!"

"Some day I shall kill him." He had risen, with tears in his eyes. "You loved me," he challenged, "you did love me!"

She did not dare to say "I love you still." She saw what the tragedy would be.

"We could not have been poor," she said, "could we, dear?"

He exclaimed bitterly, "If you thought of that, you could not have cared." And she was strong enough to take advantage of his change.

"I suppose I could not have cared as you mean, or I should never have done this."

Then Fairfax cursed under his breath, and once again, this time brutally, caught her in his arms and kissed her, crying to her as he had cried once before —

"Tell him how I kissed you – tell him!"

White as death, Mary Faversham pushed him from her. "For the love of God, Tony, go!"

And he went, stumbling down the stairs. Out in Windsor the bugles for some solemn festivity were blowing.

"The flowers of the forest are all wied away."

BOOK IV

BELLA

CHAPTER I

From the Western world he heard nothing for four years. Meanwhile he brought his new skill, his maturer knowledge, the result of seven years' study and creation in the workshops of masters and in his own studio, to the sculpturing of the second tomb – the Open Door.

There were crowds around his marble in the Salon, and he mingled with them, watching them muse, discuss, criticize, grow sad and thoughtful before his conception of Life and Death. Some of them looked as poor Tom Rainsford had looked, yearningly toward the door of the tomb. Others hurried past the inscrutable beauty of the Open Door. Purely white, stainless, slender, luminous and yet cold, Molly stood immortalized by Antony. His conception made him famous.

He had exhibited each year with increasing success at private exhibitions, but never at the Salon, and had been called "poseur" because of his reluctance to expose his work in national academies. His bas-reliefs had made him favourably known, but nothing equalled the solemn marble that came now from his studio. Antony's work occupied some twenty feet in the Champ de Mars.

His lame foot touched a pile of newspapers on the floor, in which the critics spoke of him in terms he thought fulsome and ridiculous, and they pained him while they dazzled him. He thought of Bella. He had thought of Bella constantly of late, and there were no answers to his questions. She would be twenty-three, a woman, married, no doubt, always enchanting. How she had stood before his bas-relief in Albany, musing, and her eyes had been wet when she had turned to him and asked, "Who is it, Cousin Antony? It is perfectly beautiful, beautiful!" He would have liked to have led Bella to his work in the Salon, and, hand-in-hand with her, until the crowd around them should have melted away, have stood there with her alone. From the night her inspiring little hand had stolen into his, Bella's hand had seemed a mate for his.