Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel

The working hours were long and his employment physically exhausting, but he embraced his duties and fell in love with the great steel and iron creature which it was his work to feed and clean and oil. And when he left his engine silent in the shed, the roar and the motion absent, tranquil, breathless, and yet superb, Antony left his machine with regret, the regret of a lover for his mistress. He was fireman to a wild-cat engineer.

CHAPTER V

Fairfax, used to the Southern climate, found no fault with the heat of summer, bone-racking and blood-boiling though it was; but, remembering his past experience of winds and snow in January, he wondered how winter would seem in the yards, endured in the cab of the engine, but his toil had now toughened him, roughened him, and strengthened his heart of steel. November, with its Indian summer smoothness, with its fine, glorious light that glowed over West Albany, passed, and the year went out in beauty and December followed, still windless and mild. But that was the last touch of mercy. January rushed down upon them, fierce, tempestuous, and up and down the yards, from his window, Fairfax watched the whirling shrouds of snow sweep over the ground, cover the tracks, and through the veil the lights flickered like candles that the snuffers of the storm were vainly trying to extinguish. He put on an extra flannel shirt under his red shirt; he buttoned his vest high, got into his coat, jammed his hat on fiercely and shook himself like a reluctant dog before going to his work. Under his window he could hear the soughing of the wind and it sucked under the door; he was sure that he would never be warm here again.

"Jove!" he thought, "there will be two inches of snow inside my window when I get back at midnight." He drove his razor into the crack to stiffen the casement, and took an old flannel shirt and laid it along the ledge. As he did so the storm blew a whirl of snow across the pane.

"Siberia," he muttered to himself; "don't talk to me about Russia. This is far enough North for me!"

He could not have said why the thought of the children came, but its spirit came back to him. For months he had fiercely thrust out every memory of the children, but to-night, as the wind struck him, he thought of their games and the last time they had played that romping sport together. Like a warm garment to shield him against the cold he was just going to fight, he seemed to feel Bella's arms around his neck as they had clung whilst he rushed with her through the hall. It was just a year ago that he had arrived in the unfriendly city of his kinsmen, and as he thought of them, going down the narrow dark stairs of the shanty hotel, strangely enough it was not the icy welcome that he remembered, but Bella – Bella in her corner with her book, Bella with her bright red dress, Bella with her dancing eyes and her eager face.

"You've got an awfully light smile, Cousin Antony."

The door of the hotel eating-room was open and dimly lighted. Kenny and his wife were talking before the stove. They heard their lodger's step – a unique step in the house – and the woman, who would have gone down on her knees and blacked his big boot and the smaller boot, called out to him —

"Ah, don't yez go out unless ye have a cup of hot coffee, Misther Fairfax. It's biting cold. Come on in now."

Kenny's was a temperance hotel, obliged to be by the railroad. There were two others in the room besides the landlady and Kenny: Sanders and Molly Shannon. They sat together by the stove. As Fairfax came in Molly drew her chair away from the engineer. Fairfax accepted gratefully Mrs. Kenny's suggestion of hot coffee, and while she busied herself in getting it for him, he sat down.

"Running out at eight, Sanders?"

"You bet," said the other shortly. "New York Central don't change its schedule for the weather."

Sanders was suspicious regarding Fairfax and the girl, not that the fireman paid the least attention to Molly Shannon, but she had changed in her attitude to all her old friends since the new-comer first drank a cup of coffee in Sheedy's. Sanders had asked Molly to marry him every Sunday since spring, and he firmly believed that if he had begun his demands the Sunday before Fairfax appeared, the girl would be Mrs. Sanders now.

Molly wore a red merino dress. According to the fashion of the time it fitted her closely like a glove. Its lines revealed every curve of her young, shapely figure, and the red dress stopped short at the dazzling whiteness of her neck. Her skin and colouring were Irish, coral-like and pure. Her hair was auburn and the vivid tint of her costume was an unfortunate contrast; but her grey eyes with black flecks in them and long black lashes, her piquant nose and dimples, brought back the artistic mistake, as the French say. She was too girlish, too young, too pretty not to score high above her dreadful dress.

Fairfax, who knew why he did not eat at the coffee-house any more, looked at the reason, and the artist in him and the man simultaneously regarded the Irish girl.

"Somebody's got on a new frock," he said. "Did you make it, Miss Molly?"

"Sure," she answered, without lifting her eyes, and went all red from her dress to her hair.

Fairfax drank the hot coffee and felt the warmth at his heart. He heard Sanders say under his breath —

"Why, I bet you could make anything, Molly, you're so smart. Now I have a rip in my coat here; if Mrs. Kenny has a needle will you be a good girl and mend it?"

And Fairfax heard her say, "Sanders, leave me be."

Since Sanders had cooled to him, Fairfax took special pains to be friendly, for his pride shrank against having any jars here in these quarters. He could not bear the idea of a disagreement with these people with whom he was playing a false part. He took out a couple of excellent cigars from his waistcoat and gave one to Kenny, who stood picking his teeth in the doorway.

"Thank you, Mister Fairfax. For a felly who don't smoke, ye smoke the best cigars."

Sanders refused shortly, and as the whistle of an engine was heard above the fierce cry of the storm, he rose. He took the eight o'clock express from Albany to New York. He left all his work to his fireman, jumping on his locomotive at the last moment, always hanging round Molly Shannon till she shook him off like a burr. Fairfax put the discarded cigar back in his pocket. He was not due for some twenty minutes at the engine-house, and Sanders, gloomily considering his rival, was certain that Fairfax intended remaining behind with the girl. Indeed, Antony's impulse to do just this thing was strong. He was tempted to take Sanders' chair and sit down by Molly. She remained quietly, her eyes downcast, twisting her handkerchief, which she rolled and unrolled. Mrs. Kenny cleared away the dishes, her husband lit his cigar and beamed. Sanders got his hat off the hook, put on his coat slowly, the cloud black on his face. Fairfax wanted to make the girl lift her eyes to him, he wanted to look into those grey eyes with the little black flecks along the iris. As the language of the street went, Molly was crazy about him. He wanted to feel the sensation that her lifted lashes and her Irish eyes would bring. Temptations are all of one kind; there are no different kinds. What they are and where they lead depends upon the person to whom they come.

"Good-night," said Sanders, shortly. "Give up the door, Kenny, will you? You're not a ghost."

"I'm going with you, Sanders," Fairfax said; "hold on a bit."

Sanders' heart bounded and his whole expression changed. He growled —

"What are you going for? You're not due. It's cold as hell down in the yards."

Fairfax was looking at Molly and instinctively she raised her head and her eyes.

"Better give this cigar to your fireman, Sandy," Fairfax said to him as the two men buttoned up their coats and bent against the January wind.

"All right," muttered the other graciously, "give it over here. Ain't this the deuce of a night?"

The wind went down Sandy's throat and neither man spoke again. They parted at the yards, and Sanders went across the track where his fireman waited for him on his engine, and Fairfax went to the engine-house and found his legitimate mistress, his steel and iron friend, with whom he was not forbidden by common-sense to play.

CHAPTER VI

By the time he reached the engine-house he was white with snow, and wet and warm. There was no heating in the sheds where the locomotives waited for their firemen, and the snow and wind beat in, and on the cow-catchers of the two in line was a fringe of white like the embroidery on a woman's dress. The gas lamps lit the big place insufficiently, and the storm whistled through the thin wooden shed.

Number Ten at the side of Antony's engine was the midnight express locomotive, to be hitched at West Albany to the Far West Limited. His own, Number Forty-one, was smaller, less powerful, more slender, graceful, more feminine, and Antony kept it shining and gleaming and lustreful. It was his pride to regard it as a living thing. Love was essential to any work he did; he did not understand toil without it, and he cared for his locomotive with enthusiasm.

He did not draw out for half an hour. His machine was in perfect order; the fire had already been started by one of the shed firemen, and Fairfax shook down the coals and prepared to get up steam. They were scheduled to leave West Albany at nine and carry a freight train into the State as far as Utica. He would be in the train till dawn. It was his first night's work in several weeks, and the first ever in a temperature like this. Since morning the thermometer had fallen twenty points.

His thoughts kindled as his fire kindled – a red dress flashed before his eyes. Sometimes it was vivid scarlet, too vivid and too violent, then it changed to a warm crimson, and Bella's head was dark above it. But the vision of the child was too young to hold Antony, now desirous and gloomy. His point of view had changed and his face set as he worked about in the cab and his adjustable lamp cast its light upon a face that was grave and stern.

He hummed under his breath the different things as they came to him.

"J'ai perdu ma tourterelle."

Dear old Professor Dufaucon, with his yellow goatee and his broken English. And the magnolias were blooming in the yard, for the professor lived on the veranda and liked the open air, and in the spring there were the nightingales.

"J'ai perdu ma tourterelle."

"First catch your hare," Antony said. "I have never had a turtle-dove, never had a sweetheart since I fell from the cherry-tree."

Sounds that were now familiar to him came from outside, the ringing of the bells as the locomotives drew through the storm, the high scream of the whistles, the roll and rumble of the wheels and the calling of the employer to the railroad hands as they passed to their duties outside the shed. Fairfax left Louisiana and stopped singing. He threw open the door of his furnace, and the water hissed and bubbled in the boiler. He opened the cock and the escaping steam filled the engine-house and mixed with the damp air.

Looking through the window of the cab, Fairfax saw a figure pass in under the shed. It was a woman with a shawl over her head. He climbed down out of the cab; the woman threw the shawl back, he saw the head and dress.

"Why, Miss Molly!" he exclaimed. He thought she had come for Sanders.

She held out a yellow envelope, but even though she knew she brought him news and that he would not think of her, her big eyes fastened on him were eloquent. Fairfax did not answer their appeal. He tore open the telegram.

"I brought it myself," she murmured. "I hope it ain't bad news."

He tore it open with hands stained with grease and oil. He read it in the light of his cab lamp, read it twice, and a man who was hanging around for a job felt the fireman of Number Forty-one grasp his arm.

"Tell Joe Mead to take you to-night to fire for him – tell him I've got bad news. I'm going to New York."

"It's too bad," said the other cheerfully. "I'll tell him."

Fairfax had gone flying on his well foot and his lame foot like a jackdaw. He was out of the shed without a word to Molly Shannon.

"Your felly's got bad news," said the man, and, keenly delighted with his sudden luck, climbed agilely into the cab of Number Forty-one, and, leaning out of the window, looked down on Molly.

"He ain't my felly," she responded heavily, "he boards to Kenny's. I just brought him the despatch, but I think it's bad news, sure enough."

And wrapping the shawl closer over her head, she passed out into the storm whose fringe was deepening on the cow-catchers of Number Ten and Number Forty-one.

Sanders' big locomotive ran in from the side to the main track as smoothly as oil, and backed up the line to the cars of the night mail. Sanders was to start at eight o'clock, and it was a minute before the hour. The ringing of his bell and the hiss of the steam were in his ears. He was just about to open the throttle when a voice on the other side called to him, and Fairfax climbed up into the cab.

"Take me in, Sanders, old man; let me hang on here, will you? I've got to get to New York as fast as you can take me."

Sanders nodded, the station signal had been given. He started out, and Antony made himself as small as possible in the only available place between the fireman, who was one of his special pals, and the engineer. Sanders' face was towards his valves and brakes. He pulled out into the driving sleet, scanning the tracks under the searchlight.

"What's up, Tony?" the fireman at his side asked him as they rolled out into the night to the ringing of the bell. Fairfax handed him his despatch and the fireman read it, and Fairfax answered him —

"A little cousin. One of my little cousins. What time are we due in New York?"

CHAPTER VII

It was past midnight when Antony rushed out of the Forty-second Street station into a blizzard of sleet and snow. He stood a second looking up and down Madison Avenue, searching vainly for a car. There were no cabs at the station, there was nothing in sight but the blinding storm, and he began on foot to battle his way with the elements. It had been snowing in New York for twelve hours. The same fierce challenge met him that he had received the year before, and he pushed his way through the dim streets where the storm veils wrapped the gas lamps like shrouds. He had been on duty since six that morning, except for a few hours in the afternoon. Every now and then he had to stop for breath and to shake the weight of snow off his collar. He was white as wool. The houses on either side were dark with a stray light here and there, but he knew that farther on he should find one house lit with the light that burns for watchers. He glowed like a gladiator, panted like a runner, and he reached the door and leaned for breath and waited for an answer to his ring. Like a gladiator! How he had mouthed Spartacus for them! He could see the dancing eyes, and little Gardiner touched the muscles of his arm.

"Feel mine, Cousin Antony."

Heart of steel! Well, he would need it now.

The door was opened, he never knew by whom, and a silence met him that was profound after the voices of the storm. He stamped his feet and shook off the drift from without, threw off his coat, caked thick and fairly rattling with its burden, threw off his hat, heavy and dripping, and as he was, his heart of steel beating in him like a tender human heart, he limped up the quiet stairs. Even then he noticed that there were signs of a feast in the house. It should have been the annual dinner of Mr. Carew. The odours of flowers that had died were sickening in the heat. Smilax twisted around the balustrade of the stairs met his work-stained hand that trembled in the leaves. On the second floor, some one, he was not clear, but afterwards he thought it must have been Miss Eulalie, met him and took him in.

In the feeble sick-room light, grouped a few people whose forms and faces go to make part of the sombre pictures of watchers; that group in which at some time or other each inhabitant of the world takes his place. There was one kneeling figure; the others stood round the bed. The little bark, quite big enough to carry such a small freight thus far on the voyage, was nearly into port.

Bella lay close to her little brother, her dark hair and dress the only shadow on the white bed covers. Gardiner's hair was brushed back from his brow, he looked older, but still very small to go so far alone. Gardiner was travelling, travelling – climbing steep mountains, white with snow, and his breath came in short laboured sighs, fast, fast – it was the only sound in the room. Bella had not left his side for hours, her cheek pressed the pillow by his restless head. Her tears had fallen and dried, fallen and dried. Bella alone knew what Gardiner tried to say. His faltering words, his halting English, were familiar to the sister and she interpreted to the others, to whom Gardiner, too small to reach them, had never been very near. Twenty times the kneeling figure had asked —

"What does he say, Bella? What does he want?"

"He thinks it is a game," the little sister said; "he says it's cold, he says he wants Cousin Antony."

Since his summons, when Gardiner found that he must gird his little loins for the journey, his mind had gone to the big cousin who had so triumphantly carried him over the imaginary steeps.

From the door, where he had been standing on the edge of the group, a tall figure in a red flannel shirt came forward, bent down, and before any one knew that he had come, or who he was, he was speaking to the sick child.

"Gardiner, little cousin, here's your old cousin Antony come back."

Gardiner was travelling hard, but his head stopped its restless turning. He looked up into the beloved face, whose smile shone on him and lit his dark journey. Gardiner tried to answer the brightness of that smile, he tried to hold out his little arms. In a sob Bella whispered —

"He wants Cousin Antony to carry him."

Without removing his look of tender brightness from the traveller's face, Fairfax murmured —

"I reckon I'll take him in my arms, Aunt Caroline."

And as the steepest, coldest place came in sight to little Gardiner, he was lifted in a warm embrace. He opened his eyes upon Antony's and with a radiant look gave up the painful climbing to the rescuer.

CHAPTER VIII

Fairfax himself made many cruel Siberian journeys and voyages through hellish tropics, on his own narrow bed in the hall room overlooking the New York Central yards. He had something close to pneumonia and turned and cried out on his bed, too small for his big form, and in his delirium he kicked away the footboard. His uncle's house, which he had left as brusquely this time as before, haunted him in his mind troubled by sickness. He cried out that it was a cursed place and that Gardiner had been killed by neglect, and that he shook the dust of New York from his feet. From wild blue eyes that flamed under his hair grown long, he stared into the space peopled by delirium and called his solitary attendant "Bella," and begged her to come away with him before it was too late, for, as many sick people seem to be, he was travelling. In his case he journeyed back to his boarding-house and laid his visions down and waked up in the same old world that had treated him badly, but which he was not ready to leave.

It was a sunny, brilliant January day. The snow had frozen on his window and the light played upon gleaming bands, and through the dingy yellow shade the sunlight came determinedly. On the table by his bedside were his medicines and milk, and he was covered by counterpanes lent by the other lodgers.

He felt the perspiration pour off him as his mind found its balance, and he saw how weak he was; but though it hurt him to breathe, he could do so, and the crisis was past. He had fallen on his bed when he came from New York and here he had remained. He wet his cracked lips, said "Water," and from behind him, where she had been sitting, a girl came and held a glass to his lips. Fairfax drank, closed his eyes, made no sign of recognition, for he knew Molly Shannon. She wiped the sweat from his brow and face tenderly, and though her hand had not trembled before in her ministrations, it trembled now. Her heart was beating with gratitude for she knew he was saved. She gave him milk and brandy, after a few moments, then sat down to her work. Fairfax, speaking each word distinctly, said —

"I reckon I've been pretty sick, haven't I?"

"You're all right now, Misther Fairfax."

He smiled faintly. He was indifferent, very weak, but he felt a kind of mild happiness steal over him as he lay there, a sense of being looked after, cared for, and of having beaten the enemy which had clutched his throat and chest. He heard the voices of Molly and the doctor, heard her pretty Irish accent, half-opened his eyes and saw her hat and plaid red-and-black shawl hanging by the window. The plaid danced before his eyes, became a signal flag, and, watching it, he drowsed and then fell into the profound sleep which means recovery.

CHAPTER IX

Fairfax took Molly Shannon's presence for granted, accepted her services, obeyed her docilely and thanked her with his smile which regained its old radiance as he grew stronger. Lying shaven, with his hair cut at last – for she had listened to his pleading and sent for a barber – in clean sheets and jacket, he looked boyish and thin, and to the Irish girl he was beautiful. She kept her eyes from him for fear that he should see her passion and her adoration, and she effaced herself in the nurse, the mother, the sister, in the angel.

Sure, she hadn't sent word to any one. How should she? Sorry an idea she had where he came from or who were his folks.

"I am glad. I wouldn't have worried my mother."

And answering the question that was bounding in Molly's heart, he said —

"There's no one else to frighten or to reassure. I must write to my mother to-day."

As he said this he remembered that he would be obliged to tell her of little Gardiner, and the blood rose to his cheek, a spasm seized his heart, and his past rushed over him and smote him like a great wave.

Molly sat sewing in the window, mending his shirts, the light outlining her form and her head like a red flower. He covered his face with his hand and a smothered groan escaped him, and he fell back on the pillow. Molly ran to him, terrified: "a relapse," that's what it was. The doctor had warned her.

"God in heaven!" she cried, and knowing nothing better to do, she put her arms round him as if he had been a boy. She saw the tears trickle through his thin hands that in his idleness had grown white, though the dark ridges around the broken nails were blackened still.

Fairfax quickly regained his control and made the girl go back to her work. After a little he said —

"Who's been paying for all these medicines, and so forth?"

"Lord love ye, that's nothing to cry about."

"There is money in my vest pocket, Molly; get it, will you?"

She found a roll of bills. There were twenty dollars.

She exclaimed —

"That's riches! I've only spent the inside of a five-dollar bill."

"And the doctor?"

"Oh, he'll wait. He's used to waiting in Nut Street."

Fairfax fingered the money. "And your work at Sheedy's?"

Molly stood by the bed, his shirt in her hand, her brass thimble on one finger, a bib apron over her bosom.

"Don't bother."

"You've lost your place, Molly; given it up to take care of me."

She took a few stitches, the colour high in her face, and with a rare sensitiveness understood that she must not let Antony see her sacrifice, that she must not put her responsibility on Fairfax. She met his eyes candidly.

"If you go on like this, you'll be back again worse nor ye were. Sheedy's afther me ivery day at the dure there, waitin' till I'm free again. He is that. Meanwhile he's payin' me full time. He is that. He'll keep me me place!"

She lied sweetly, serenely, and when the look of relief crept over Fairfax's face, she endured it as humble women in love endure, when their natures are sweet and honey-like and their hearts are pure gold.

She took the five dollars he paid her back. He was too delicate in sentiment to offer her more, and he watched her, his hands idly on the sheets.