He avoided his uncle, Mr. Carew, and made up his mind that if the master of the house were brusque to him, he would not return, were the threshold worn never so dear by little feet. Bella had the loveliest little feet a fellow connoisseur of plastic beauty could wish to see, could wish to watch twinkle in run-down slippers, in scuffled boots—in boots where a button or two was always lacking—and once when she kicked off her strap slipper at a lesson Fairfax saw, through a hole in the stocking, one small perfect toe—a toe of Greek marble perfection, a most charming, snowy, rosy bit of flesh, and he imagined how adorable the little foot must be.
To an audience, composed of a dreamy boy and an ardent, enthusiastic little girl, Fairfax confessed his talent, spoke of his hopes, of his art, even hinted at genius, and one day fetched his treasures, his bits of moistened clay, to show the children.
"Oh, they are perfectlybeautiful, Cousin Antony. Wouldn't you do Gardiner's head for mother?"
On this day, with his overcoat and hat, Fairfax had laid by a paper parcel. It was stormy, and around the upper windows the snow blew and the winds cried. Propped up by pillows, Gardiner, in his red flannel dressing-gown, nestled in the corner of the sofa. Antony regarded Bella, red as a cardinal bird in her homely dress; he had seen her wear no other dress and would have regretted the change.
"Oh, I'll do Gardiner one of these days, but I reckon I'll make another study to-day."
"Me?" Bella shook back her mane.
Her cousin considered her with an impersonal eye, whose expression she did not understand to be the artist's gauge and measure.
"Bella," he said shortly, "I'm going to make a cast of your foot."
She was sitting on the sofa and drew her feet under her.
"Only just my foot, Cousin Antony, not all of me?"
"Come now," said the sculptor, "it won't take long. It's heaps of sport."
He unrolled the paper parcel he had brought, unfolding a mass of snowy, delectable looking powder.
"Ask old Ann to fetch us a couple of basins, deep ones, some water and a little oil and salt."
When after toilsome journeys up and down the stairs of the four-storied house, the things had been fetched, Fairfax mixed his plaster, eagerly watched by the children. Perched on the edge of the divan, Bella brooded over the foaming, marvellous concoction, into whose milky bubbles she saw art fall like a star—a genius blossom like a flower. She gazed at Antony's hands as they plunged in and came out dripping; gazed as though she expected him to bring forth some peerless image his touch had called to life. His shirt sleeves rolled up over his fine arms, his close high-cropped and sunny hair warm upon his brow, his eyes sparkling, he bent an impassioned face over the milky plaster.
"Now," Fairfax said, "hurry along, Bella, I'm ready!"
She responded quietly. "I'm here. It's like a snow pie, Cousin Antony."
"Take off your shoe and stocking."
"Cousin Antony!"
A painful flush of red, the drawing under her more closely of the little legs, showed how far she had been from comprehending.
"Casts are taken from life, Bella," informed her cousin practically, "you'll see. I'm going to make a model from life, then watch what happens. I reckon you're not afraid, honey?"
Gardiner kicked his foot out from under the rugs. "Do mine."
With the first timidity Antony had seen her display, Bella divested herself of her shoe and drew off her dark stocking, and held him out the little naked foot, a charming, graceful concession to art.
"It's clean," she said simply.
He took it in his big hand and it lay like a pearl and coral thing in his palm. Bella did not hear his murmured artistic ecstasies. Fairfax deftly oiled the foot, kneeling before it as at a shrine of beauty. He placed it in one of the basins and poured the plaster slowly over it, sternly bidding her to control her giggles and her "ouches" as it could not harm.
"Keep perfectly still. Do not budge till the plaster sets."
"Oh, it's setting already," she told him, "hard! You won't break off my foot, Cousin Antony?"
"Nonsense."
Whilst the cast set he recited for them "St. Agnes's Eve," a great favourite with the children, beyond their comprehension, but their hearts nevertheless stirred to the melody. As Fairfax leant down to break the model Bella helped him bravely.
"Now, might I put on my stocking, Cousin Antony?"
He had been pouring the warm plaster into the mould and had forgotten her, and was reproached.
The twilight gathered and made friends with the storm as they waited for the cast to harden. Old Ann came in and lighted the gas above the group on the old divan.
"Be the hivenly powers! Mr. Fairfax, ye've here a power of a dirt."
Fairfax, who had taken a fancy to the patient old creature, who had' known his mother and was really more a slave to the children than his own black Mammy, bore the scolding peacefully.
"Ye're the childest of the three, sor."
Antony caught her arm. "Wait and see, old Ann," and he kneeled before the cooled plaster and broke his model, released his work and held up the cast.
"For the love of hiven, Mr. Antony, it's Miss Bella's foot ye've got, sor."
She stared as at a miracle, then at her little lady as though she expected to see a missing member. Bella danced around it, pleaded for it, claimed it. Gardiner was allowed to feel how cold it was, and Fairfax took it home in his overcoat pocket, anxious to get safely awaywith it before his uncle came and smashed it, as he had the feeling that Mr. Carew would some day smash everything for him. That night when she undressed Bella regarded with favour the foot that had been considered worthy of a cast and extracted sacredly a bit of plaster which she found between the toes, and Antony Fairfax limped home to the House that Jack Built, his heavy step lighter for the fairy foot, the snow-white, perfect little foot he carried triumphantly in his pocket.
He was too sincerely an artist not to make pictures of all he saw, and, being sincere, he made his lines true, and then outlined the sketch, softening, moulding, moulding.... His aunt's gentle inefficiency (she was kind to him, affectionate, and called him "her dear boy") was to Fairfax only charming, feminine softness, and he grew fond of Mrs. Carew, indulgent to her faults, listened half convinced to her arguments, admired her in her multitudinous toilettes, in all of which she was original, found her lovely and graceful. Her eyes were deer-like—not those of a startled fawn, but like a doe's who stands gazing at a perfect park, whose bosks she takes to be real forests. Mrs. Carew knew absolutely nothing of life. Fairfax at twenty-three, knew less of it, and he could not criticize her vision. He saw his uncle through Bella's eyes, but he never passed the master of the house in the halls, taking good care to escape him. It was not easy to associate fear with Bella; her father had not impressed her free mind with this sentiment.
"Father," she told Antony, "is the most important man in New York City, the cook said so. He might be President, but he doesn't want to; he likes his own work best. Father's work is making money, and he quite understands how hard such a thing is. That is why there is so little in the house, Cousin Antony. Even the cook hadn't a cent when I asked her to lend me a penny. We used to have five cents a week, but now mother has to be so careful that we're hard up. It's awful when there are treats on, Cousin Antony, because you see, you ought to do your share. That is why Gardiner and I always stick around together and say we don't like children.... No," she said firmly, "I reallycouldn'ttake five cents, Cousin Antony; thank you ever so much. We're bound in honour not to; we promised never to take from a stranger; yes, I know you're not a stranger, and I forget to whom we promised, but I really couldn't, Cousin Antony."
Mrs. Carew could, however. One day, on her way to the magic car, as it waited with its lean horses and jingle-jangle to take the lady "sharping," that day she borrowed two dollars from Fairfax, who, being a pauper, had always money in his pocket; having in reality nowhere else to keep it—and having none to keep elsewhere. The two dollar bill went to join ghostly company with the drawing lessons money, and fluttered away to the country of unpaid bills, of forgotten obligations, of benefits forgot, and it is to be wondered if souls are ever at peace there.
"Father," said Bella, "is the 'soul of honour.' When Ann comes to rub Gardiner's feet at night (they are so often tired, Cousin Antony), she told me about father's character. She's awfully Irish, you wouldn't understand her. Father goes to 'board meetings' (I don't know what they are, but they're very important) and they call him 'your honour,' and Ann says it's all because of his soul.He never breaks his word, and when the bills come in...."
The drawing lessons went bravely and wearily on day after day. Because his aunt wished it, Fairfax guided Gardiner's inert fingers across the page and almost tied Bella to her chair. On drawing days he lunched with the household, and honestly earned his food. Half fed, keen with a healthy appetite, he ate gratefully. They had been pausing at the end of a half-hour's torture when Bella took up her monologue on her father's character.
"When the bills come in he shuts himself in the library. I hear him walk up and down; then he comes out with his face white, and once, long past dinner-time, when mother didn't come in, he said to me, 'Where in heaven's name is your mother? What can she find left in the shops to buy?' just that, he asked me that, Cousin Antony. I felt awfully sorry. I was just going to ask him for five cents, but I hadn't the heart."
That she had heart for her father, this child of twelve, and at so tender an age could see and comprehend, couldpity, struck Fairfax, and on his part he began to see many things, but being a man and chivalrous, he pitied the woman as well.
"My aunt is out of her element," he decided; "she cannot be in love with her husband; no woman who loved anything on earth could gad about as she does," and he wondered, and the deer in the park gazing at an artificial wilderness became more and more of a symbol of her.
Regarding the man they called "his honour" Fairfax had not made up his mind.
Gardiner developed scarlet fever and lay, so Mrs. Carew assured Antony, "at the door of death," and Bella had been sent away to the country. Mr. Carew lived at the Club, and Antony made daily visits and did countless errands for his aunt. One day, toward the end of the little boy's convalescence, Fairfax came in late and heard the sound of a sweet voice singing. He entered the drawing-room quietly and the song went on. Mrs. Carew had a lovely voice, one of those natural born voices, heart-touching, appealing; one of those voices that cause an ache and go to the very marrow, that make the eyes fill. As though she knew Antony was there, and liked the entertainment, she sang him song after song, closing with "Oh, wert thou in the cold blast," then let her hands rest on the keys. Fairfax went over to the piano.
"Why didn't you tell me you sang like this, Aunt Caroline?" The emotion her songs had kindled remained in his voice.
"Oh, I never sing, my dear boy, your uncle doesn't like music."
"Damn," said the young man sharply; "I beg your pardon. You've got the family talent; your voice is divine."
She was touched but shook her head. "I might have sung possibly, if your uncle had ever cared for it. He'll be back to-morrow and I thought I'd just run these things over."
As she rose and left the piano he observed how young she was, how graceful in her trailing dress. The forcedhousing of these weeks of Gardiner's illness had quieted the restless spirit. Mrs. Carew was womanly to him, feminine for the first time since his arrival. It was at the end of his tongue to say, "Why did you ever marry that man?" He thought with keen dislike of the husband whose appearance would close the piano, silence the charming voice, and drive his aunt to find occupation in the shops and in charities. He became too chivalrous.
"Flow gently, sweet Afton," as sung by her, echoed thence afterwards in his mind all his life. The melody was stored in the chambers of his memory, and whenever, in later years, he tried not to recall 700 Madison Avenue, and the inhospitable home, maddeningly and plaintively these tunes would come: "Roll on, silver moon," that too. How that moon rolled and hung in the pale sky of remembrance, whose colour and hue is more enchanting than ever were Italian skies!
Mrs. Carew had an audience composed of two people. Little Gardiner, up and dressed in his flannel gown, and the big cousin fathering him with a protecting arm, both in the sofa corner. Mrs. Carew's mellow voice on those winter afternoons before Bella returned, before Mr. Carew came back from the Club, flowed and quavered and echoed sweetly through the room. In the twilight, before the gas came, with old-fashioned stars set in the candelabra, the touching pathos of the ballads spoke to the romantic Fairfax ... spoke to his twenty-three years and spoke dangerously. He became more and more chivalrous and considered his aunt a misunderstood and unloved woman. Long, long afterwards, a chord, a note, was sufficient to bring before him the square drawing-room with its columns, furnish with an agglomeration of gaudy, rich, fantastic things expressive of her uncertain taste. He saw again the long dark piano and the silhouette of the woman behind it, graceful, shadowy, and felt the pressure against his arm of little Gardiner, as they two sat sympathetically lifted to an emotional pitch, stirred as only the music of a woman's voice in love-songs can stir a man's heart.
Bella came back and there was an end of the concerts. A charm to keep Bella silent had not yet been found, unless that charm were a book. "She could not readwhen mother sang," she said, "and more than that, it made her cry." And when Mr. Carew's latchkey scratched in the door, Bella flew upstairs to the top story, Antony and Gardiner followed more slowly; Mrs. Carew shut her piano, and took the cars again to forget her restlessness in the purchase of silks and dry goods and house decorations, and was far from guessing the emotion she had aroused in the breast of her nephew—"Flow gently, sweet Afton." Nothing flowed gently in Fairfax's impetuous breast. Nothing flowed gently on the tide of events that drifted past slowly, leaving him unsuccessful, without any opening into fame.
Cedersholm returned to New York and Fairfax presented himself again at the studio, getting as far as the workroom of the great Swede who had started in life the son of a tinsmith in Copenhagen. The smell of the clay, the sight of the figures swathed in damp cloths, the shaded light, struck Fairfax deliciously as he waited for an audience with Cedersholm. Fairfax drew his breath deep as though he were once again in his element. Cedersholm was out, and with no other encouragement than the sight of the interior of the four walls, Antony was turned away. His mother had added to his fast melting funds by a birthday gift, and Fairfax was nearly at the end of this.
Walking up from Cedersholm's to his uncle's house, a tramp of three miles, he limped into the children's room, on his usually bright face the first shadow they had seen. Bella was already seated at her table. Her six weeks in the country had sent her back, longer, slimmer, her skirt let down at the hem an inch, and some pretence to order in her hair. The dark mass of her hair was lifted back, held by a round comb; Bella was much transformed.
"Hello, honey," cried her cousin, "what have you been changing into?"
"What do you think of my back comb, Cousin Antony? It's the fourth. I've broken three. All cheap, luckily, not the best quality."
Bella took the comb from her hair and handed it to Antony, and, unprisoned, her locks fell triumphantly around her face.
"I like you better that way, little cousin," said Fairfax, "and," continued the drawing master, "you've a wonderful new pair of shoes, Bella!"
The little leg was encased in a light blue silk stocking,and the perfect little foot, whose rosy curves and lines Fairfax knew, was housed in a new blue kid shoe with shining white buttons, entirely out of keeping with the dear old red dress which, to Fairfax, seemed part of Bella Carew.
"Dancing school," she said briefly; "mother promised us we might go ages ago, long before you came, Cousin Antony."
"About ten years ago, I fink," said Gardiner helpfully.
"Nonsense," corrected his sister sharply, "but long enough ago fortheseto grow too small." She held up her pretty foot. "We got as far as the shoes and stockings (real silk, Cousin Antony, feel). Aren't they perfectlybeautiful? We didn'tdare, because of the bills, get the dress, you know, so I guess mother's been waiting for better times. But just as soon as I came back from the country and they let out the hem and bought the comb, I said to Gardiner, 'There, my dancing shoes will be too small.'" She leant down and pinched the toes. "Theydosqueeze." She crinkled up her eyes and pursed up the little red mouth. "They pinch awfully, but I'm going to wear them to drawing lessons, if I can't to dancing lessons. See," she smoothed out her drawing board and pointed to her queer lines, "I have drawn some old things for you, a couple of squares and a triangle."
Fairfax listened, amused; the problems of his life were vital, she could not distract him. He took the rubber, erasing her careless work, sat down by her and began to give her real instruction. Little Gardiner, excused from all study, amused himself after his own fashion in a corner of the sofa, and after a few moments of silence, Fairfax's pupil whispered to him in a low tone—
"I can't draw anything, Cousin Antony, when you've got that look on."
Fairfax continued his work.
"It's no use, you've got the heavy look like the heavy step. Are you angry with me?"
Not her words, but her voice made her cousin stop his drawing. In it was a hint of the tears she hated to shed. Bella leant her elbow on the table, rested her head in her hand and searched Fairfax's face with her eloquent eyes. They were not like her mother's, doe-like andpatient; Bella's were dark eyes, superb and shadowy. They held something of the Spanish mystery, caught from the strain that ran through the Carew family from the Middle Ages, when the Carez were nobles in Andalusia.
"I am angry with myself, Bella; I am a fool."
"Oh no, you'renot," she breathed devotedly, "you're a genius."
The tension of Fairfax's heart relaxed. The highest praise that any woman could have found, this child, in her naïveté, gave him.
"Why don't you make some figures and sell them, Cousin Antony? Are you worried about money troubles?" She had heard these terms often.
"Yes," he said shortly, "just that."
He had gone on to sketch a head on the drawing-board, touching it absently, and over his shoulder Bella murmured—
"Cousin Antony, it's just like me. You just draw wonderfully."
He deepened the shadows in the hair and rounded the ear, held it some way off and looked at it.
"I wish I had some clay," he murmured.
He had brought the cast of the foot back to show it to his aunt when an occasion should offer. It stood now in the little cabinet where Bella and Gardiner kept their treasures.
"I went to see Mr. Cedersholm to-day," Fairfax continued, for lack of other confidant taking the dark-eyed child; "now, if Cedersholm would only take me up, and give me the chance to work under him, I'd soon show him."
Bella agreed warmly. "Yes, indeed, you soon would."
The odours of strange meats and sauces were wafted throughout the house. Little troublesome feet pattered up and down the dingy back stairs, and whenever Bella and Gardiner were laid hold upon they were banished. They were inoculated with excitement and their nostrils pricked with the delicious smells of flowers and smilax and feast meats.
Mr. Carew annually gave a banquet to some twenty New Yorkers, who he was so generous as to think were nearly as great as himself. The household was not constructed or run on a hospitable basis and nothing was in tune for entertaining. Sympathetic Bella, thrilling with liveliest interest, assisted at the preparations, and to her bright cheeks and eyes her mother bewailed—
"Onlytwentyglasses, Bella, of the fine engraved deer and pheasant pattern, and we shall be twenty-four."
"Mother, give me one in a paper and I'll take it down town and match it."
Her mother laughed. "Match it, why they were made by hand years ago, and are worth ten dollars apiece."
"Oh, dear," breathed the little girl, and multiplied: "Two hundred dollars for twenty.Mother!"
The child stole silently out from the glistening array. Ten dollars apiece. And she and Gardiner at their last nursery tea-party.... Through the door, as she slipped away, she looked back at her mother, standing thoughtful over the rows of crystal. In the great mahogany cage which, like a small dark château, surmounted the pedestal of carved wood, the blackbird Jetty huddled on his perch. He was a superb specimen, black as jet, whence his name, a free woodland spirit, with a yellow bill like a crocusflower, and piercing eyes. Bella passed under the cage and called up to him, "Sing, Jetty, sing."
Piped a blackbird from a beechwood spray,"Little maid, slow wandering this way,What's your name?" said he.Little Bell had wandered through the glade,She looked up between the beechwood's shade,"Little Bell," said she....
The child crooned to the bird her schoolroom poem. In return, Jetty sang a short, brilliant little roulade, his one trained tune, which Bella had vainly tried to pick out on the piano. She never heard half so sweet a song from any bird.
"Jetty is myfavouritesinger," she had said to Antony. But as she lingered now under his cage in order to lengthen out the time, which, because of her aching conscience, was hanging heavy, Jetty blinked down at her as she stood with her hands behind her back, her face uplifted; he peered at her like a weird familiar spirit. "Listen, Jetty. Gardiner and I took those perfectly beautiful, expensive glasses for our tea party. He smashed all three of them. There was a glass for Gardiner, a glass for me and one for the uninvited guest—no, I mean the unexpected guest. Gardiner sat down on the glasses where I had put them out to wash them. He would have been awfully cut only he had father's overcoat on (one of father's old coats, we got it out of the camphor chest)." She ceased, for Jetty, in the midst of the confession, hopped down to take a valetudinarian peck at his yellow seeds.
"Now," murmured Bella, "the question is,shallI tell mother on an exciting day like this when she is worried and nervous, and, if I do tell her, wouldn't it be carrying tales on poor little Gardiner?"
Jetty, by his food cup, disheartened and discouraged and apparently in a profound melancholy, depressed Bella; she left him, turned and fled.
Bella picked a forbidden way up the freshly oiled stairs and joined her little brother. There she listened to tales, danced on tiptoe to peer through the stair rails, and hung with Gardiner over the balustrade and watchedand listened. The children flew to the window to see the cabs and carriages drive up, fascinated by the clicking of the doors, finding magic in the awning and the carpeting that stretched down the stoop to the curb; found music in the voices below in the hallway as the guests arrived. Bella could hardly eat the flat and unpalatable supper prepared for her on the tray, and, finally, she seized her little brother.
"Come, let's go down and see the party, Gardiner."
She dragged him after her, half-reluctant and wholly timid. On the middle of the stairway she paused. The house below was transformed, hot and perfumed with flowers, the very atmosphere was strange. Along the balustrade, their hands touched smilax garlands. The blaze of light dazzled them, the sweet odours, the gaiety and the spirit of cheer and life and good-fellowship came up on fragrant wings. The little brother and sister stood entranced. The sound of laughter and men's agreeable voices came soaring in, the gaiety of guests at a feast, and, over all rose a sound most heavenly, a low, thrilling, thrilling sound.
Jetty was singing.
The children knew the blackbird's idyl well, but it was different this night. They heard the first notes rise softly, half stifled in his throat, where Jetty caressed his tune, soothed it, crooned with it, and then, preluded by a burst all his own of a few adorable silver notes, the trained melody came forth.
"Oh,Gardiner," breathed the little girl, "hear Jetty. Isn't it perfectly beautiful?"
They stepped softly on downstairs, hand in hand, into the lower rooms, over to the dining-room where the thick red curtains hung before the doorway. Gardiner wore his play apron and his worsted bed slippers. Bella—neither the little brother nor the old nurse had observed that Bella had made herself a toilette. The dark hair carefully brushed and combed, was tied back with a crimson ribbon, and below her short dress shone out her dancing school blue stockings and her tight blue shoes. Peering through the curtains, the children could see the dinner company to their hearts' content. Bella viewed the great New Yorkers, murmuring under her breath thenames and wondering to whom they belonged. Judge Noah Davis, famous for the breaking of the Tweed ring—him, Bella knew, he was a frequent caller. There was a prelate of the Church and there was some one whom Bella wanted especially to see—Cedersholm, Mr. Cedersholm—which could he be? Which might he be? Little Gardiner's hand was hot in hers. He whispered beseechingly—
"Come, Bella, come, I'm afwaid."
"Hear Jetty, Gardiner, be quiet."
And the bird's voice nearly drowned the murmur and the clamour of the dining-room. Mr. Carew, resplendent in evening clothes, displayed upon his shirt front the badge of the Spanish Society (a golden medal hung by a silken band). It was formed and founded by the banker and he was proud of his creation.
"Who would ever suppose that father didn't like company? Whoever would think that you could be afraid of father!"
Suave, eloquent, Carew beamed upon his guests, and his little daughter admired him extravagantly. His hair and beard were beautiful. Touching the medal on his breast, Carew said—
"Carez is the old name, Cedersholm."
Cedersholm! Bella stared and listened.
"Yes, Carez, Andalusian, I believe, to be turned later in England into Carew; and thebas-reliefis an excellent bit of sculpturing."
Mr. Carew undid the medal and handed it to the guest on his right.
"Here, Cedersholm, what do you think of thebas-relief?"
Cedersholm, already famous in New York, faced Bella Carew and she saw him plainly. This was the sculptor who could give Cousin Antony his start, "his fair chance." He did not look a great man, as Bella thought geniuses should look; not one of the guests looked as great and beautiful as Cousin Antony. Why didn't they have him to the dinner, she wondered loyally. Hasn't he got money enough? Perhaps because he was lame.
Jetty was lame. He had broken his leg in the barsonce upon a time. How he sang! From his throat poured one ecstatic roulade after another, one cascade after another of liquid delicious sweetness. Fields, woods, copses, and dells; sunlight, moonlight, seas and streams, all, all were in Jetty's passion of song.
Gardiner had left his sister's side and stood under the bird-cage gazing up with an enraptured face. He made a pretty, quaint figure in the deserted room, in his gingham apron and his untidy blonde hair.
Bella heard some one say, "What wonderful singing, Mrs. Carew." And she looked at her mother for the first time. The lady was all in white with a bit of old black point crossed at her breast and a red camellia fastened there. Her soft fine hair was unpretentiously drawn away neatly, and her doe-like eyes rested amiably on her guests. She seemed to enjoy her unwonted entertainment.
Still Bella clung to her hiding-place, fascinated by the subdued noise of the service, the clinking of the glasses, listening intelligently to a clever raconteur when he told his anecdote, and clapping her hand on her mouth to keep from joining aloud in the praise that followed, and the bead of excitement mounted to her head like the wine that filled the glasses, the engraved deer and pheasant glasses, three of which had been massacred upstairs. The dinner had nearly reached its end when the children slipped down, and the scraping of chairs and a lull made Bella realize where she was, and when she escaped she found that Gardiner had made his little journey upstairs without her guardianship. Bella's mind was working rapidly, for her heart was on fire with a scheme. In her bright dress she leaned close to the dark wainscoting of the stairway and heard Jetty sing. How he sang!Thatwas music!
"Why do people sing when there are birds!" Bella thought. Low and sweet, high and fine, the running of little country brooks, unattainable as a weather vane in the sun.
Bella was at a pitch of sensitive emotion and she felt her heart swell and her eyes fill. She would have wept ignominiously, but instead shot upstairs, a red bird herself, and rushed to the cabinet where her childish treasures were stored away.
The sculptor Cedersholm had come from Sweden himself a poor boy. He had worked his way into recognition and fame, but his experience in life had embittered rather than softened him. He early discovered that there is nothing but example that we can learn from the poor or take from the poor, and he avoided everything that did not add to his fame and everything that did not bring in immediate aids. It was only during the late years that he had made his name known in New York. He had been working in Rome, and during the past three years his expositions had made him enormously talked of. He would not have dined at the Carews' without a reason. Henry Carew was something of a figure in the Century Club. His pretence to dilettantism was not small. But Cedersholm had not foreseen what a wretched dinner he would be called on to eat. Cooked by a woman hired in for the day, half cold and wholly poor, Mr. Carew's banquet was far from being the magnificent feast it seemed in Bella's eyes. Somewhat cheered by his cigar and liqueur, Cedersholm found a seat in a small reception room out of earshot of his host and hostess, and, in company with Canon Prynne of Albany, managed to pass an agreeable half hour.
The Canon agreed with the Swede—he had never heard a bird sing so divinely.
"I told Mrs. Carew she should throw a scarf over the cage. The blackbird will sing his heart out."
The sculptor took up his conversation with his friend where he had left it in the dining-room. He had been speaking of a recent commission given him by the city for an important piece of work to be done for Central Park.
"You know, Canon, we have succeeded in bringing to the port of New York the Abydos Sphinx—a marvellous, gigantic creature. It is to be placed in Central Park, in the Mall."
This, Canon Prynne had heard. "The base pedestal and fixtures are to be yours, Cedersholm?"
The sculptor nodded. "Yes, and manual labour such as this is tremendous. If I were in France, now, or in Italy, I could find chaps to help me. As it is, I work alone." After a pause, he said, "However, I like the sole responsibility."
"Now, I am not sure," returned his companion, "whether it is well to like too sole a responsibility. As far asIam concerned, no sooner do I think myself important than I discover half a dozen persons in my environment to whom I am doing a wrong, if I do not invite them to share my glory."
There was no one in the small room to which the gentlemen had withdrawn, and their chat was suddenly interrupted by a small, clear voice asking, "Is this Mr. Cedersholm?" Neither guest had seen steal into the room and slip from the shadow to where they sat, a little girl, slender, overgrown, in a ridiculously short dress, ridiculous shoes and stockings, her arms full of treasures, her dark hair falling around her glowing cheeks, in terror of being caught and banished and punished; but ardent and determined, she had nevertheless braved her father's displeasure. Bella fixed her eyes on the sculptor and said rapidly—
"Excuse me for coming to father's party, but I am in a great hurry. I want to speak to you about my Cousin Antony. He is a great genius," she informed earnestly, "a sculptor, just like you, only he can't get any work. If he had a chance he'd makeperfectly beautifulthings."
The other gentleman put out his hand and drew the child to him. Unused to fatherly caress, Bella held back, but was soon drawn within the Canon's arm. She held out her treasures: "He did these," and she presented to Cedersholm the white cast of her own foot.
"Cousin Antony explained that it is only a cast, and that anybody could do it, but itisawfully natural, isn't it? only so deadly white."
She held out a sheet of paper Fairfax had left at the last lesson. It bore a sketch of Bella's head and several decorative studies. Cedersholm regarded the cast and the paper.
"Who is Cousin Antony, my child?" asked the Canon.
"Mother's sister's son, from New Orleans—Antony Fairfax."
Cedersholm exclaimed, "Fairfax; but yes, I have a letter from a Mr. Fairfax. It came while I was in France."
The drawing and the cast in Cedersholm's possession seemed to have found their home. Bella felt all was well for Cousin Antony.
"Oh, listen!" she exclaimed, eagerly, "listen to our blackbird. Isn't it perfectly beautiful?"
"Divine indeed," replied the clergyman. "Are you Carew's little daughter?"
"Bella Carew. And I must go now, sir. Arabella is my real name."
She slipped from under the detaining arm. "Nobody knows I'm up. I'll lend you those," she offered her treasures to Cedersholm, "but I am very fond of the foot."
It lay in Cedersholm's hand without filling it. He said kindly—
"I quite understand that. Will you tell your Cousin Antony that I shall be glad to see him?"
"Oh, thank you," she nodded. "And he'll beveryglad to see you."
Cedersholm, smiling, put the cast and the bit of paper back in her hands.
"I won't rob you of these, Miss Bella. Your cousin shall make me others."
As the little girl ran quickly out it seemed to the guests as if the blackbird's song went with her, for in a little while Jetty stopped singing.
"What a quaint, old-fashioned little creature," Cedersholm mused.
"Charming," murmured Canon Prynne, "perfectly charming. Now, my dear Cedersholm, there's your fellow for the Central Park pedestal."
The month was nearly at its end, and his money with it. Some time since, he had given up riding in the cars, and walked everywhere. This exercise was the one thing that tired him, because of his unequal stride. Nevertheless, he strode, and though it seemed impossible that a chap like himself could come to want, he finally reached his last "picayune," and at the same time owed the week's board and washing. The excitement of his new life thus far had stimulated him, but the time came when this stimulus was dead, and as he went up the steps of his uncle's house to be greeted on the stoop by a beggar woman, huddling by her basket under her old shawl, the sculptor looked sadly down at her greasy palm which she hopefully extended. Then, with a brilliant smile, he exclaimed—
"I wonder, old lady,justhow poor you are?"
"Wurra," replied the woman, "if the wurrld was for sale for a cint, I couldn't buy it."
Beneath his breath he murmured, "Nor could I," and thought of his watch. Curiously enough, it had not occurred to him that he might pawn his father's watch.
He now looked forward with pleasure to the tri-weekly drawing lessons, for the friendly fires of his little cousins' hearts warmed his own. But on this afternoon they failed to meet him in the hall or to cry to him over the stairs or rush upon him like catapults from unexpected corners. As he went through the silent house its unusual quiet struck him forcibly, and he thought: "Whata tomb it would be without the children!"
No one responded to his "Hello you," and at the entrance of the common play and study room Fairfax paused, to see Bella and Gardiner in their play aprons,their backs to the door, motionless before the table, one dark head and one light one bent over an object apparently demanding tender, reverent care.
At Fairfax's "Helloyouall!" they turned, and the big cousin never forgot it as long as he lived—never forgot the Bella that turned, that called out in what the French call "a torn voice"—une voix dechirée. Afterwards it struck him that she called him "Antony"tout court, like a grown person as she rushed to him. He never forgot how the little thing flung herself at him, threw herself against his breast. For an answer to her appeal with a quick comprehension of grief, Antony bent and took her hand.
"Cousin Antony, Cousin Antony——"
"Why, Bella, Bella, little cousin, what's the matter?"
And above the sobs that he felt tremble through him, he asked of Gardiner—who, young as he was, stifled his tears back and gulped his own grief like a man—
"What's the row, old chap?"
But Bella told him passionately. "Jetty,Jetty's dead!"
Soothed by her cousin's hand on her head, she calmed, buried her face in the cool handkerchief with which he wiped her tears. In the circle of his arms Bella stood, tearful, sobbing, nothing but a child, and yet she appealed to Fairfax in her tears as she had not done before, and her abandon went to the core of his being and smote a bell which from thenceforth rang like her name—"Bella"—and he used to think that it was from that moment.... Well, her tears at any rate stirred him as never did any tears in the world.
She wiped her eyes. "Jetty died last night; he sang himself to death. You should have heard him sing! This morning when they came to give him water and feed him, Jetty was dead."
Gardiner pointed to the table. "See, we've made him a coffin. We're going to his funewal now."
A discarded cigar box lined with cotton was the only coffin the children had found for the wild wood creature whose life had gone out in song.
"We don't know where to buwy him, Cousin Antony."
"I tried," Bella murmured, touching the blackbird's breast with gentle fingers, "I tried to write him a poem, an epitaph; but I cried so I couldn't."
She held Antony's handkerchief to her tear-stained cheek.
"May I keep your handkerchief for just this afternoon? It smells so delicious. You could make a cast of him, couldn't you?—like the death-mask of great men in father's books?"
Fairfax dissuaded them from the funeral, at which Gardiner was to say, "Now I lay me," and Fairfax had been elected to read the Lord's Prayer. He rolled the bird up in another handkerchief (he appeared to be rich in them) and put it reverently in his overcoat pocket, promising faithfully to see that Jetty should be buried in Miss Whitcomb's back yard, under the snow, and, moreover, to mark the place with a stick, so that the children could find it when spring came.
Then Bella, tear-stained but resigned, suggested that they should play "going to Siberia."
"Ican'twork to-day, Cousin Antony! Don't make me. It would seem like sewing on Sunday."
Without comment, Fairfax accepted the feminine inconsistency, and himself entered, with what spirit he might, into the children's game. "Going to Siberia" laid siege to all the rooms in the upper story. It was a mad rush on Fairfax's part, little Gardiner held in his arms, pursued by Bella as a wolf. It was a tear over beds and chairs, around tables,—a wild, screaming, excited journey, ending at last in the farthest room in the middle of the children's bed, where, one after another, they were thrown by the big cousin. The game was enriched by Fairfax's description of Russia and the steppes and the plains. But on this day Bella insisted that Gardiner, draped in a hearthrug, be the wolf, and that Fairfax carry her "because her heart ached." And if Gardiner's growls and baying failed to give the usual zest to the sport, the carrying by Fairfax of Bella was a new emotion! The twining round his neck of soft arms, the confusion of dark hair against his face, the flower-like breath on his cheeks, Bella's excitement of sighs and cries and giggles gave the game, for one player at least, freshcharm. Chased by Ann back into the studio, the play-mates fell on the sofa, worn out and happy; but, in the momentary calm, a little cousin on either side of him, the poor young man felt the cruel return of his own miseries and his own crisis.
"Misther Fairfax," said the Irish woman, "did the childhren give ye the letter what come to-day? I thawt Miss Bella'd not mind it, what wid funnerals and tearin' like a mad thing over the house!" (Ann's reproof was for Fairfax.) "Yez'll be the using up of little Gardiner, sir, the both of ye. The letther's forbye the clock. I putt it there m'self."
Fairfax, to whom no news could be but welcome, limped over to the mantel, where, by the clock, he perceived a letter addressed to him on big paper in a small, distinguished hand. He tore it open, Ann lit the gas, and he read—
Dear Mr. Fairfax,"I have not answered your letter because I was so unfortunate as to have lost your address. Learning last night that you are a nephew of Mr. Carew, and sure of a response if I send this to his care, I write to ask that you will come in to see me to-day at three o'clock."Yours sincerely,"Gunner Cedersholm."
Dear Mr. Fairfax,"I have not answered your letter because I was so unfortunate as to have lost your address. Learning last night that you are a nephew of Mr. Carew, and sure of a response if I send this to his care, I write to ask that you will come in to see me to-day at three o'clock.
"Yours sincerely,"Gunner Cedersholm."
Fairfax gave an exclamation that was almost a cry, and looked at the clock. It was past four!
"When did this letter come?" His nerves were on end, his cheeks pale.
Bella sat forward on the sofa. "Why, Mother gave it me to give to you when you should come to-day, Cousin Antony."
In the strain to his patience, Fairfax was sharp. He bit his lip, snatched up his coat and hat.
"You should have given it me at once." His blue eyes flashed. "You don't know what you may have done. This may ruin my career! I've missed my appointment with Cedersholm. It's too late now."
He couldn't trust himself further, and, before Bella could regain countenance, he was gone.
Cut to the heart with remorse, crimson with astonishment, but more deeply wounded in her pride, the child sat immovable on the sofa.
"Bella," whispered her little brother, "I don't like Cousin Antony, do you?"
She looked at her brother, touched by Gardiner's chivalry.
"I fink he's a mean man, Bella."
"He's dreadful," she cried, incensed; "he's just too horrid for anything. Anyhow, it was me made Cedersholm write that letter for him, and he didn'tevensay he was obliged."
She ran to the window to watch Antony go, as he always did, on the other side of the road, in order that the children might see him. She hoped for a reconcilement, or a soothing wave of his hand; but Antony did not pass, the window was icy cold, and she turned, discomfited. At her foot—for as Antony had snatched up his coat he had wantonly desecrated a last resting-place—at her foot lay the blackbird. With a murmured word Bella lifted Jetty in both hands to her cheek, and on the cold breast and toneless throat the tears fell—Bella's first real tears.
Fairfax went into the studio of the first sculptor in the United States with set determination to find work. Cedersholm was cool and absorbed, occupied and preoccupied, overburdened with orders, all of which meant money and fame, but required time. Fairfax was an hour and a half late, and, in spite of the refusal of the manservant, came limping in, and found the master taking a glass of hot milk and a biscuit. Cedersholm reposed on a divan in the corner of a vast studio giving on a less magnificent workroom. The studio was in semi-darkness, and a table near the sofa bore a lamp whose light lit the sculptor's face. To Fairfax, Cedersholm was a lion and wore a mane. In reality, he was a small, insignificant man who might have been a banker. The Southerner introduced himself, and when he was seated by the sculptor's side, began to expose his projects, to dream aloud. He could have talked for ever, but the sum of what he said was that he wanted to enter Cedersholm's studio.
"The old Italians took subordinates, sir," he pleaded.
"There are classes at Cooper Union," Cedersholm began.
But Fairfax, his clear eyes on the artist, said, "But I want to work under a genius."
The other, complimented, pushed his milk aside and wiped his lips.
"Well, of course, thereisplenty of hard work to be done right here in this studio." He spoke cautiously and in a measured tone. "I have workmen with me, but no artists."
Fairfax patiently waited. He was as verdant as the young jasmine leaves, as inexperienced and guileless as a child.
"I had not thought of taking such an assistant as you represent, Mr. Fairfax." The older man fixed him with clever eyes. "A man must have no end of courage in him, no end of patience, no end of humility, to do what yousayyou want to do."
The young man bowed his head. "Courage, patience, and humility are the attributes of genius, sir."
"Yes," admitted Cedersholm, "they are, but ordinary talent will do very well in my workshop, and it is all that I need in a subordinate."
Fairfax smiled lightly. "I think I may say I am a good worker, Mr. Cedersholm. Any hod-carrier may say that without vanity, and if you turn me out, I'll take a mason's place at two dollars a day."
Cedersholm smiled. "You don't look like a mason," he said hesitatingly, "though you do appear muscular. What would be your suggestion with regard to our relations?"
(Fairfax's eager heart was saying, "Oh, teach me, Master, all you know; let me come and play with the clay, finger it, handle it; set me loose in that big, cool, silent room beyond there; let me wander where I can see the shadow of that cast and the white draped figure from where I sit.")
"You are a fairly good draftsman?" Cedersholm asked. "Have you any taste for decoration and applied design?"
"I think I have."
The Master rose. "Come to-morrow morning at ten and I'll give you something to do. I have just accepted a contract for interior decoration, a new house on Fifth Avenue. I might possibly make you useful there."
Fairfax walked home on air. He walked from Ninth Street, where the studio was, to his boarding-house, in the cold, still winter night—a long tramp. In spite of his limp he swung along, his coat open, his hat on the back of his head, his cheeks bright, his lips smiling. As he passed under the gas lamps they shone like Oriental stars. He no longer shivered at the cold and, warm with faith and confidence, his heart could have melted a storm. He fairly floated up Madison Avenue, and by his side thespirits of his ideals kept him company. Oh, he would do beautiful things for New York city. He would become great here. He would garland the metropolis with laurel, leave statues on its places, that should bear his name. At ten o'clock on the following day, he was to begin his apprenticeship, and he would soon show his power to Cedersholm. He felt that power now in him like wine, like nectar, and in his veins the spirit of creation, the impulse to art, rose like a draught. His aunt should be proud of him, his uncle should cease to despise him, and the children—they would not understand—but they would be glad.
When he reached his boarding-house, Miss Eulalie opened the door and cried out at the sight of his face—
"Oh, Mr. Antony; you've had good news, sir."
He put both hands on the thin shoulders, he kissed her roundly on both cheeks. The cold fresh air was on his cool fresh lips, and the kiss was as chaste as an Alpine breeze.
He cried: "Goodnews; well, I reckon I have! The great Mr. Cedersholm has given me a place in his studio."
He laughed aloud as she hung up his coat. Miss Eulalie's glasses were pushed up on her forehead—she might have been his grandmother.
"The Lord be praised!" she breathed. "I have been praying for you night and day."
"I shall go to Cedersholm to-morrow. I have not spoken about terms, but that will be all right, and if you ladies will be so good as to wait until Saturday——"
Of course they would wait. If it had not been that their means were so cruelly limited, they would never have spoken. Didn't he think?... He knew! he thought they were the best, dearest friends a young fortune hunter could have. Wait, wait till they could see his name in the papers—Antony Fairfax, the rising sculptor! Wait until they could go with him to the unveiling of his work in Central Park!
Supper was already on the table, and Antony talked to them both until theycouldhardly wait for the wonders!
"When you're great you'll not forget us, Mr. Antony?"
"Forget them——!"
Over the cold mutton and the potato salad, Fairfaxheld out a hand to each, and the little old ladies each laid a fluttering hand in his. But it was at Miss Eulalie he looked, and the remembrance of his happy kiss on this first day of his good fortune, made her more maternal than she had ever hoped to be in her life.
There was a note for him on the table upstairs, a note in a big envelope with the business stamp of Mr. Carew's bank in the corner. It was addressed to him in red ink. He didn't know the handwriting, but guessed, and laughed, and drew the letter out.
"Dear Cousin Antony,"I feel perfectly dreadful. HowcouldI do such a selfish thing? I hope you will forgive me and come again. I drew two whole pages of parlel lines after you went away, some are nearly strait. I did it for punishment. You forgot the blackbird."Your littleBella."
"Dear Cousin Antony,
"I feel perfectly dreadful. HowcouldI do such a selfish thing? I hope you will forgive me and come again. I drew two whole pages of parlel lines after you went away, some are nearly strait. I did it for punishment. You forgot the blackbird.
"Your littleBella."
What a cad he had been! He had forgotten the dead bird and been a brute to the little living cousin. As the remembrance of how she had flown to him in her tears came to him, a softer look crossed his face, fell like a veil over his eyes that had been dazzled by the visions of his art. He smiled at the childish signature, "Your little Bella." "Honey child!" he murmured, and as he fell asleep that night the figure of the little cousin mourning for her blackbird moved before him down the halls of fame.
Before Fairfax became dead to the world he wrote his mother a letter that made her cry, reading it on her veranda in the gentle sunlight. Her son wrote her only good news, and when the truth was too black he disguised it. But after his interview with Cedersholm, with these first good tidings he had to send, he broke forth into ecstasy, and his mother, as she read, saw her boy successful by one turn of the wheel. Mrs. Fairfax laughed and cried over the letter.
"Emmy, Master Tony's doing wonders, wonders! He is working under a great genius in the North, but it is easy to see that Tony is the spirit of the studio. He is at work from nine in the morning till dark, poor honey boy! and he is making all the drawings and designs and sketches for a millionaire's palace on Fifth Avenue."
"Fo' de Lawd, Mis' Bella."
"Think of it, we shall soon see his name in the papers—heaven knows where he'll stop. How proud I am of my darling, darling boy."
And she dreamed over the pages of Antony's closely-written letter, seeing his youth and his talent burn there like flame. She sent him—selling her watch and her drop earrings to do so—a hundred dollars, all she could get for her jewels. And the sum of money came like manna into his famished state. His mother's gift gave him courage to rise early and to work late, and the silver sang in his waistcoat pockets again, and he paid his little ladies, thanking them graciously for their patience; he sent his aunt a bunch of flowers, bought an image of the Virgin for old Ann, a box of colours for Gardiner, and a book for Bella.
Then Antony, passing over the threshold of the workshop, was swallowed up by art.
And he paid for his salt!
How valuable he was to Cedersholm those days he discovered some ten years later. Perched on his high stool at the drawing-table, his materials before him, he drew in freehand what his ideas suggested. The third day he went with Cedersholm to the palace of Rudolph Field on Fifth Avenue to inspect the rooms to be decorated. Fairfax went into the "Castle of the Chinking Guineas" (as he called it in writing to his mother), as buoyantly as though he had not a leaking boot on one foot and a bill for a cheap suit of clothes in his pocket. He mentally ranged his visions on the frieze he was to consider, and as he thought, his own stature seemed to rise gigantic in the vast salon. He was alone with Cedersholm. The Fields were in Europe, not to return until the palace had been made beautiful.
Cedersholm planned out his scheme rather vaguely, discoursing on a commonplace theme, indicating ceilings and walls, and Fairfax heard him through his own meditations. He impulsively caught the Master's arm, and himself pointing, "Just there," he said, "why not...." And when he had finished, Cedersholm accepted, but without warmth.
"Perfectly. You have caught my suggestions, Mr. Fairfax," and poor Antony shut his lips over his next flight.
In the same week Cedersholm left for Florida, and Fairfax, in the deserted studio, sketched and modelledà sa faim, as the French say, as old Professor Dufaucon used to say, and as the English say, less materially, "to his soul's content." February went by in this fashion, and Fairfax was only conscious of it when the day came round that he must pay his board and had nothing to do it with. Cedersholm was to return in a few days, and he would surely be reimbursed—to what extent he had no notion. His excitement rose high as he took an inventory of his work, of his essays and drawings andbas-reliefs, his projects for the ceiling of the music room. At one time his labour seemed of the best quality, and then again so poor, so abortive, that the young fellow had more than half a mind to destroy the lot before the return of the Master. During the last week he had a comrade, agreat, soft-eyed, curly-locked Italian, who didn't speak a word of English, who arrived gentle as an ox to put himself under the yoke of labour. Antony, thanks to his keenness and his gift for languages, and his knowledge of French, made out something of what he was and from where. He had been born in Carrara and was a worker in marble in his own land, and had come to work on the fountain for the music room in the Field palace.
"The fountain!" Fairfax tumbled over his sketches and showed one to his brown-eyed friend, who told him rapidly that it was "divinely beautiful," and asked to see the clay model.
None had been made.
The same night, Fairfax wrote to Cedersholm that he had begun a model of the fountain, and in the following days was up to his ears and eyes in clay.
The block of marble arrived from Italy, and Fairfax superintended its difficult entry by derrick through the studio window. He restrained "Benvenuto Cellini," as he called his comrade, from cutting into the marble, and the Italian used to come and sit idle, for he had no work to do, and waited Cedersholm's orders. He used to come and sit and stare at his block of marble and sing pleasantly—
"Aria puraCielo azuroMia Maddelena,"
and jealously watch Fairfax whocouldwork. Fairfax could and did, in a long blouse made for him by Miss Mitty, after his directions. With a twenty-five cent book of phrases, Fairfax in no time mastered enough Italian to talk with his companion, and his own baritone was sweet enough to blend with Benvenuto Cellini's "Mia Maddelena," and other songs of the same character, and he exulted in the companionship of the young man, and talked at him and over him, and dreamed aloud to him, and Benvenuto, who had only the dimmest idea of what the frenzy meant—not so dim, possibly, for he knew it was the ravings of art—supplied the "bellisimos" and "grandiosos," and felt the spirit of the moment, and was young with Fairfax, if not as much of a soul or a talent.
The model for the fountain was completed before Cedersholm's return. After a month's rest under the palms of Florida, the sculptor lounged into the studio, much as he might have strolled up a Paris boulevard and ordered a liqueur at a round table before some favouritecafé. Cedersholm had hot milk and biscuits in a corner instead, and Fairfax drew off the wet covering from his clay. Cedersholm enjoyed his light repast, considering the model which nearly filled the corner of the room. He fitted in an eyeglass, and in a distinguished manner regarded the modelling. Fairfax, who had been cold with excitement, felt his blood run tepid in his veins.
"And your sketches, Fairfax?" asked the Master, and held out his hand.
Fairfax carried him over a goodly pile from the table. Cedersholm turned them over for a long time, and finally held one out, and said—
"This seems to be in the scale of the measurements of the library ceiling?"
Fairfax's voice sounded childish to himself as he responded—
"I think it's correct, sir, to working scale."
"It might do with a few alterations," said Cedersholm. "If you care to try it, Fairfax, it might do. I will order the scaffolding placed to-morrow, and you can sketch it in, in charcoal. It can always come out, you know. You might begin the day after to-morrow."
The Master rose leisurely and looked about him. "Jove," he murmured, "it's good to be back again to the lares and penates."
Fairfax left the Master among the lares and penates, left him amongst the treasures of his own first youth, the first-fruits of his ardent young labour, and he went out, not conscious of how he quivered until he was on his way up-town. What an ass he was! No doubt the stuff was rubbish! What could he hope to attain without study and long apprenticeship? Why, he was nothing more than a boy. Cedersholm had been decent not to laugh in his face—Cedersholm's had been at once the kindest and the cruelest criticism. He called himself a thousand times a fool. He had no talent, he was marked for failure. He would sweep the streets, however, and laybricks, before he went back to his mother in New Orleans unsuccessful. His letters home, his excitement and enthusiasm, how ridiculous they seemed, how fatuous his boastings before the old ladies and little Bella!
Fairfax passed his boarding-house and walked on, and as he walked he recalled what Cedersholm had said the day he engaged him: "Courage, patience, humility." These words had cooled his anger as nothing else could have done, and laid their salutary touch on his flushed face.
"These qualities are the attributes of genius. Mediocrity is incapable of possessing them." He would have themall, every one, every one! Courage, he was full of it. Patience he didn't know by sight. Humility he had despised—the poor fellow did not know that its hand touched him as he strode.
"I ought to be thankful that he didn't kick me out," he thought. "I daresay he was laughing in his sleeve at my abortions!"
Then he remembered his design for the ceiling, and at the Carews' doorstep he paused. Cedersholm had told him to draw it on the Field ceiling. This meant that he had another chance.
"It's perfectly ripping of the old boy," he thought, enthusiastically, as he rang the door-bell. "I'll begin to-morrow."
Bella opened the door to him.