The following year—in January—lying on his back on the scaffolding, Fairfax drew in his designs for the millionaire's ceiling, freely, boldly, convincingly, and it is doubtful if the eye of the proprietor—he was a fat, practical, easy-going millionaire, who had made money out of hog's lard—it is doubtful that Mr. Field's eyes, when gazing upward, saw the things that Fairfax thought he drew.
Fairfax whistled softly and drew and drew, and his cramped position was painful to his left leg and thigh. Benvenuto Cellini came below and sang up at him—
"Cielo azuro,Giornata splendidaAh, Maddelena,"
and told him in Italian about his own affairs, and Fairfax half heard and less than half understood. Cedersholm came once, bade him draw on, always comforting one of them at least, with the assurance that the work could be taken out.
During the following weeks, Fairfax never went back to the studio, and one day he swung himself down when Cedersholm came in, and said—
"I'm a little short of money, sir."
Cedersholm put his hand in his pocket and gave Antony a bill with the air of a man to whom money is as disagreeable and dangerous as a contagious disease. The bill was for fifty dollars, and seemed a great deal to Antony; then a great deal too little, and, in comparison with his debts, it seemed nothing at all.Cedersholm had followed up his payment with an invitation to Antony to come to Ninth Street the following day.
"I am sketching out my idea for the pedestal in Central Park. Would you care to see it? It might interest you as a student."
The ceiling in Rudolph Field's house is not all the work of Antony Fairfax. Half-way across the ceiling he stopped. It is easy enough to see where the painting is carried on by another hand. He finished the bas-reliefs at the end of March, and the fine frieze running round the little music-room. Mr. Field liked music little and had his room in proportion.
Antony stood with Cedersholm in the studio where he had made his scheme for the fountain and his first sketches. Cedersholm's design for the base of the pedestal, designed to support the winged victory, was placed against the wall. It was admirable, harmonious, noble.
Fairfax had seen Cedersholm work. The sculptor wore no apron, no blouse. He dressed with his usual fastidiousness; his eyeglass adjusted, he worked as neatly as a little old lady at her knitting, but his work had not the quality of wool.
"What do you think of it, Fairfax?"
Fairfax started from his meditation. "It's immense," he murmured.
"You think it does not express what is intended?" Cedersholm's clever eyes were directed at Fairfax. "What's the matter with it?"
Without reply, the young man took up a sheet of paper and a piece of charcoal and drew steadily for a few seconds and held out the sheet.
"Something like this ... under the four corners ... wouldn't it give an idea ... of life? The Sphinx is winged. Doesn't it seem as if its body should rest on life?"
If Cedersholm had in mind to say, "You have quite caught my suggestion," he controlled this remark, covered his mouth with his hand, and considered—he considered for a day or two. He then went to Washington to talk with the architects of the new State Museum. AndFairfax once more found the four walls of the quiet studio shutting him in ... found himself inhabiting with the friendly silence and with the long days as spring began to come.
He finished the modelling of his four curious, original creatures, beasts intended to be the supports of the Sphinx. He finished his work in Easter week, and wrote to Cedersholm begging for his directions and authority to have them cast in bronze.
The four beasts were of heroic size. They came out of the moulds like creatures of a prehistoric age. Benvenuto Cellini, who was to have met his friend Antony at the foundry on the day Fairfax's first plaster cast was carried down, failed to put in an appearance, and Fairfax had the lonely joy, the melancholy, lonely joy, of assisting at the birth of one of his big creatures. All four of them were ultimately cast, but they were to remain in the foundry until Cedersholm's return.
His plans for the future took dignity, and importance, from the fact of his success, and he reviewed with joy the hard labour of the winter, for which in all he had been paid one hundred dollars. He was in need of everything new, from shoes up. He was a great dandy, or would have liked to have afforded to be. As for a spring overcoat—well, he couldn't bear to read the tempting advertisements, and even Gardiner's microscopic coat, chosen by Bella, caused his big cousin a twinge of envy. Bella's new outfit was complete, a deeper colour glowed on the robin-red dress she wore, and Fairfax felt shabby between them as he limped along into the Park under the budding trees, a child's hand on either arm.
"Cousin Antony, why are there suchdelicious smells to-day?"
Bella sniffed them. The spring was at work under the turf, the grass was as fragrant as a bouquet.
"Breathe it in, Cousin Antony! It makes you wish to doheapsof things you oughtn't to!"
On the pond the little craft of the school children flew about like butterflies, the sun on the miniature sails.
"What kind of things does the grass cutter, shearing off a few miserable dandelions, make you want to do,Bella? You should smell the jasmine and the oleanders of New Orleans. These are nothing but weeds."
"How can you say so?" she exclaimed; "besides, most of the things I want to do are wicked, anyhow."
"Jove!" exclaimed Fairfax. "Thatisa confession."
She corrected. "You ought not to say 'Jove' like that, Cousin Antony. You can cut it and make it sound like 'Jovah,' it sounds just like it."
"What wicked things do you want to do, Bella?"
She pointed to the merry-go-rounds, where the giraffes, elephants, and horses raced madly round to the plaintive tune of "Annie Laurie," ground out by a hurdy-gurdy.
"I'dloveto go on."
Fairfax put his hand in his pocket, but she pulled it back.
"No, Cousin Antony, please. It's not the money that keeps me back, though I haven't any. It's Sunday, you know."
"Oh," her cousin accepted dismally.
And Bella indicated a small boy carrying a tray of sweets who had advanced towards the three with a hopeful grin.
"I'd perfectlyloveto have some of thoselossingers, but mother says 'street candy isn't pure.' Besides, it's Sunday."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Fairfax. "Do you mean to say that out here in God's free air you are going to preach me a sermon?"
He beckoned the boy.
"Oh," cried Gardiner, "can't wechoose, Cousin Antony?"
The little cousins bent above the tray and slowly and passionately selected, and their absorption in the essence of wintergreen, sassafras, and peppermint showed him how much this pleasure meant to these rich children. Their pockets full, they linked their arms in his again.
"I have never had such fun in all my life as I do with you, Cousin Antony," Bella told him.
"Then come along," he suggested, recklessly. "You must ride once on the merry-go-round." And before the little Puritans realized the extent of their impiety, Fairfaxhad lifted Bella on a horse and Gardiner on an elephant, paid their fare and started them away. He watched Bella, her hat caught by its elastic, fallen off her head on the first round, her cheeks flushed and her eyes like stars, and bravely her straight little arm stretched out to catch the ring. There was triumph in her cry, "Oh, CousinAntony, Cousin Antony, I've won the ring!"
Such flash and sparkle as there was about her, with her teeth like grains of corn and her eyes dancing as she nodded and smiled at him! Poor little Gardiner! Antony paid for him again and patted him on the back. There was a pathos about the mild, sweet little face and in the timid, ineffectual arm, too short and too weak to snap the iron ring on to his sword. Bella rode till "Annie Laurie" changed to "Way down upon de Swanee river," and Fairfax's heart beat for Louisiana, and he had come to the end of his nickels. He lifted the children down.
Bella now wound both arms firmly in her cousin's, and clung to him.
"Think of it, I never rode before, never! All the children on the block have, though. Isn't it perfectly delightful, Cousin Antony? Iwishyour legs weren't so long."
"Cousin Antony," asked little Gardiner, "couldn't we go over to the animals and see the seals fall off and dwown themselves?"
They saw the lion in his lair and the "tiger, tiger burning bright," and the shining, slippery seals, and they made an absorbed group at the nettings where Antony discoursed about the animals as he discoursed about art, and Spartacus talked to them about the wild beast show in Cæsar's arena. His audience shivered at his side.
They walked up the big driveway, and Fairfax saw for the first time the Mall, and observed that the earth was turned up round a square some twelve feet by twelve. He half heard the children at his side; his eyes were fastened on the excavation for the pedestal of the Sphinx; the stone base would soon be raised there, and then his beasts would be poised.
"Let's walk over to the Mall, children."
Along the walk the small goat carriages were drawnup with their teams; little landaus, fairy-like for small folk to drive in. Fairfax stood before the cavity in the earth and the scaffolding left by the workmen. He was conscious of his little friends at length by the dragging on his arms of their too affectionate weight. "Cousin Antony."
Fairfax waved to the vacant spot. "Oh, Egypt, Egypt," he began, in his "recitation voice," a voice that promised treats at home, but that palled in the sunny open, with goat rides in the fore-ground.
"Out of the soft, smooth coral of thy sands,Out of thy Nilus tide, out of thy heart,Such dreams have come, such mighty splendours——"
"Bella, do you see that harmonious square?"
"Yes," she answered casually, with a lack lustre. "And do you see thegoats?"
"Goats, Bella! I see a pedestal some ten feet high, and on it at its four corners, before they poise the Sphinx—what do you think I see, Bella?"
"... Cousin Antony, that boy there has thesweetest goats. They'realmostclean! Too dear for anything! With such cunning noses!"
He dropped his arm and put his hand on the little girl's shoulder and turned her round.
"I'm disappointed in you for the first time, honey," he said.
"Oh, CousinAntony."
"Little cousin, this is where my creatures, my beautiful bronze creatures, are to be eternally set—there, there before your eyes." He pointed to the blue May air.
"Cousin Antony," said Gardiner's slow voice, "the only thing I'm not too tired to do is to wide in a goat carwage."
Fairfax lifted the little boy in his arms. "If I lift you, Gardiner, like this, high in my arms, you could just about see the top of the pedestal. Wait till it's unveiled, my hearties! Wait—wait!"
He put Gardiner down with a laugh and a happy sigh, and then he saw the goats.
"Do you want a ride, children?"
"Didthey!"
He ran his hands through the pockets that had been wantonly emptied.
"Not a picayune, honey. Your poor old cousin is dead broke."
"Then," said Bella, practically, "let's go right away from here, Cousin Antony. I can't bear to look at those goats another minute. It hurts."
Fairfax regarded her thoughtfully. "Bella the Desirous," he murmured. "What are you going to be when you grow up, little cousin?"
They started slowly away from temptation, away from the vision of the pedestal and the shadowy creatures, and the apparition of the Sphinx seemed to brood over them as they went, and nothing but a Sphinx's wisdom could have answered the question Fairfax put: "What are you going to be when you grow up, little Bella?"
Fairfax soon carried the little boy, and Bella in a whisper said—
"He is almost too small for our parties, Cousin Antony."
"Not a bit," said the limping cousin, stoically. "We couldn't get on without him, could we, old chap?"
But the old chap didn't answer, for he had fallen asleep as soon as his head touched his cousin's shoulder.
When Fairfax left them at their door, he was surprised at Bella's melancholy. She held out to him the sticky remnant of the roll of lozenges.
"Please take it. I shouldn't be allowed to eat it."
"But what on earth's the matter?" he asked.
"Never mind," she said heroically, "you don't have to bear it. You're Episcopalian; butI've got to tell!" She sighed heavily. "I don't care; it was worth it!"
As the door clicked behind the children, Fairfax laughed.
"What a little trump she is! She thinks the game is worth the candle!"
That miserable foot of his gave him pain. The unusual strain of standing long at his work, the tramps he took to save car-fare, wearied him, and he was finally laid up for ten days. No one missed him, apparently, and the long, painful hours dragged, and he saw no one but his little landladies. His mother, as if she knew, sent him extra money and wonderful letters breathing pride in him and confidence in his success. When he was finally up and setting forth again to the studio, a visitor was announced. Fairfax thought of Benvenuto—(he would have been welcome)—he thought of Bella, and not of his Aunt Caroline.
"My dear boy, why didn't you let us know you had been ill?"
There is something exquisite to a man in the presence of a woman in his sick-room, be she lovely or homely, old or young.
"This is awfully, awfully good of you, Auntie. I've had a mighty bad time with this foot of mine."
Mrs. Carew in her street dress, ready for an all-day's shopping, came airily in and laid her hand on her nephew's shoulder. Fairfax thought he saw a look of Bella, a look of his mother. He eagerly leaned forward and kissed his visitor.
"It's mighty good of you, Auntie."
"No, my dear boy, it isn't! I really didn't know you were ill. We would have sent you things from the Buckingham. Our own cook is so poor."
She couldn't sit down, she had just run in on her way to shop. She had something to say to him....
"What's wrong, Aunt Caroline?"
His aunt took a seat beside him on the bed. Herdove-like eyes wandered about his room, bare save for the drawings on the walls and on a chair in the corner, a cast covered by a wet cloth. Mrs. Carew's hands clasped over her silk bead purse hanging empty between the rings.
"I have come to ask a great favour of you, Antony."
He repeated, in astonishment, "Ofme—why, Auntie, anything that I can do...."
Mrs. Carew's slender figure undulated, the sculptor thought. She made him think of a swan—of a lily. Her pale, ineffectual features had an old-fashioned loveliness. He put his hand over his aunt's. He murmured devotedly—
"You must let me do anything there is to do."
"I am in debt, Tony," she murmured, tremulously. "Your uncle gives mesolittle money—it's impossible to run the establishment."
He exclaimed hotly, "It's ashame, Aunt Caroline."
"Henry thinks we spend a great deal of money, but I like to dress the children well."
Her nephew recalled Bella's wardrobe. Mrs. Carew, as though she confessed a readily-forgiven fault, whispered—
"I am so fond of bric-à-brac, Antony."
He could not help smiling.
"Down in Maiden Lane last week I bought a beautiful lamp for the front hall. I intended paying for it by instalments; but I've not been able to save enough—the men are waiting at the house. Ican'ttell your uncle, I reallycan't. He would turn me out of doors."
Over Fairfax's mind flashed the picture of the "Soul of honour" confronted by a debt to a Jew ironmonger. His aunt's daily pilgrimage began to assume a picturesqueness and complexity that were puzzling.
"Carew's a brute," he said, shortly. "I can't see why you married him."
Mrs. Carew, absorbed in the picture of the men waiting in the front hall and the iron lamp waiting as well, did not reply.
"How much do you need, Auntie?"
"Only fifty dollars, my dear boy. I can give it back next week when Henry pays me my allowance."
He exclaimed: "I am lucky to have it to help you out, Auntie. I've got it right here."
The sense of security transformed Mrs. Carew. She laughed gently, put her hand on her nephew's shoulder again, exclaiming—
"Howfortunate! Tony, howgladI am I thought of you!"
He gave her all of his mother's gift but ten dollars, and as she bestowed it carefully away she murmured—
"Itisa superb lamp, and agreatbargain. You shall see it lit to-night."
"I'm afraid not to-night, Aunt Caroline. I'm off to see Cedersholm now, and I shan't be up to much, I reckon, when I get back."
His visitor rose, and Fairfax discovered that he did not wish to detain her as he had thought to do before she had mentioned her errand. She seemed to have entirely escaped him. She was as intangible as air, as unreal.
As he opened the door for her, considering her, he said—
"Bella looks very much like my mother, doesn't she, Aunt Caroline?"
Mrs. Carew thought that Bella resembled her father.
As Fairfax took his car to go down to Ninth Street, he said to himself—
"Ifthisis the first sentimental history on which I am to embark, it lacks romance from the start."
At the studio he was informed by Cedersholm's man, Charley, that his master was absent on a long voyage.
"He has left me a letter, Charley, a note?"
"Posted it, no doubt, sir."
Charley asked Mr. Fairfax if he had been ill. Charley was thoroughly sympathetic with the Southerner, but he was as well an excellent servant, notwithstanding that he served a master whom he did not understand.
"I should like to get my traps in the studio, Charley."
"Yes, Mr. Fairfax." But Charley did not ask him in.
"I'll come back again to-morrow.... I'll find a note at home."
"Sure to, Mr. Fairfax."
"Benvenuto been around?"
The Italian had sailed home to Italy on the last week's steamer. Fairfax, too troubled and dazed to pursue the matter further, did not comprehend how strange it all was. The doors of the studio were henceforth shut against him, and Charley obeyed the mysterious orders given him. There reigned profound mystery at the foundry. The young man was sensible of a reticence among the men, who lacked Charley's kindliness. Every one waited for Cedersholm's orders.
TheBeastswere cast.
"Look out how you treat those moulds," he fiercely ordered the men. "Those colossi belong to me. What's the damage for casting them?"
At the man's response, Fairfax winced and thrust his hands into his empty pockets.
Under his breath he said: "Damn Cedersholm for a cold-blooded brute! My youth and my courage have gone into these weeks here."
As he left the foundry he repeated his injunction about the care of the moulds, and his personal tenderness for the bronze creatures was so keen that he did not appreciate the significant fact that he was treated with scant respect. He stepped in at the Field palace on the way up-town, and a man in an official cap at the door asked him for his card of admission.
"Card of admission? Why, I'm one of the decorators here.... I reckon you're new, my boy. I only quit working a fortnight ago."
He was nervous and pale; his clothes were shabby.
"Sorry," returned the man, "my orders are strict from Mr. Cedersholm himself.Nobodycomes in without his card."
The sculptor ground his heel on the cruel stones.
He had been shut away by his concentrated work in Cedersholm's studio from outside interests. He had no friends in New York but the children. No friend but his aunt, who had borrowed of him nearly all he possessed, no sympathizers but the little old ladies, no consolations but his visions. In the May evenings, now warm, he sat on a bench in Central Park, listlessly watching the wind in the young trees and the voices of happy children on their way to the lake with their boats. He began to have a proper conception of his own single-handed struggle. He began to know what it is, without protection or home or any capital, to grapple with life first-hand.
"Why,art is the longest way in the world," he thought. "It's the rudest and steepest, and to climb it successfully needs colossalgenius, as well as the other things, and it needs money."
He went slowly back to his lodging and his hall room. Along the wall his array of boots, all in bad condition—his unequal boots and his deformity struck him and his failure. A mist rose before his eyes. Over by the mirror he had pinned the sketch he liked the best.
On Sunday afternoon, in his desire to see the children, he forgot his distaste of meeting the master of the house, and rang the bell at an hour when Carew was likely to be at home. He had, too, for the first time, a wish to see the man who had made a success of his own life. Whateverhis home and family were—Carewwas a success. Fairfax often noted his uncle's name mentioned at directors' meetings and functions where his presence indicated that the banker was an authority on finance. Ever since Mrs. Carew had borrowed money of him, Fairfax had been inclined to think better of his uncle. As the door opened before him now he heard singing, and though the music was a hymn, it rolled out so roundly, so fully, so whole-heartedly, that he knew his uncle must be out.
The three were alone at the piano, and the young man's face brightened at the sight of the children. On either side of their mother Bella and Gardiner were singing with delight the little boy's favorite hymn.
"No parting yonder,All light and song,The while I ponderAnd say 'how longShall time me sunderFrom that glad throng?'"
Curious how syllables and tones and inflections can contain and hold our feelings, and how their memory makes a winding-sheet.
Fairfax came in quietly, and the singers finished their hymn. Then the children fell upon him and, as Gardiner said, "Cousin Antonyalways did," he "gobbled them up."
"You might havetoldus you were ill," Bella reproved him. "When I heard I made some wine jelly for you, but it wobbled away, and Gardiner drank it."
"It wasn'twealwine," said the little boy, "orwealjelly...."
Fairfax glanced toward his aunt, unconsciously looking to her for comfort on this trying day.
Mrs. Carew was truly embarrassed at the sight of her creditor, but she continued to play lightly among the hymns, and gave him up to the children. But Fairfax was too desperate to be set aside. If there was any comfort anywhere he was going to have it. He said to his aunt in a voice deepened by feeling—
"Aunt Caroline, I'm a little down on my luck."
The lady turned her doe-like eyes on her nephew. "My dear Tony...."
He clenched his vigorous hands to keep down his emotion.
"Yes. Cedersholm has turned his back on me, as far as I can see."
With a short laugh he threw off his intense mood, thoroughly ashamed of his weakness.
"Ourbranch of the family, Aunt Caroline, are unlucky all round, I reckon."
There was one thought uppermost in his aunt's mind.She had no money with which to pay her debt to him.When there weren't lamps to buy there were rugs and figures ofbiscuitVenuses bending overbiscuitstreams. She had confessed her vice; she "adored bric-à-brac." The jumble in her mind made her eyes more vague than ever.
"Will you go back South?" she wondered.
He started, spread out his empty hands. "Go back to mother like this? Auntie!"
As ineffectual as she had been on the night of his arrival, so now Mrs. Carew sat ineffectual before his crisis. She breathed, "My poor boy!" and her fingers strayed amongst the keys and found the melody of the song he loved so much.
The young traveller at her side was too much of a man, even in his state of despair, to have expected a woman to lift his burden. If she did, he did not think of the money she owed him. What he wanted was a soothing touch to be laid on his heart, and the song in which, not six weeks before, he had nearly loved his aunt, did what she did not.
The children had gone upstairs. Mrs. Carew sang through the first verse of the song. As far as she was concerned nothing could have been a greater relief. The sympathy she did not know how to give, the debt she had never discharged, the affection she had for Antony, and her own self-pity, Mrs. Carew threw into her voice, and it shook its tremulo through him.
He breathed devotedly: "Thank you,dear," and raised one of his aunt's hands to his lips.
Mr. Carew had let himself in with his latchkey, and was within a few feet of them as his wife finished her song.
Neither Antony nor Mrs. Carew had the presence of mind to stir. Mrs. Fairfax said of her brother-in-law that he was a "vain creature whose pomposity stood in place of dignity." Carew, at all events, came upon a scene which he had never supposed would confront his eyes. Before him in his own drawing-room, a whipper-snapper from the South was kissing his wife's hands. To Carew the South was the heart of sedition, bad morals, lackadaisical indolence. What the South could not do for him in arousing his distaste, the word "artist" completed. He said to his wife—
"Isthisthe way you pass your Sabbath afternoons, Mrs. Carew?"
And before she could murmur, "MydearHenry—" he turned on Fairfax.
"Can'tyoufind anything better to do in New York, sir?" He could not finish.
Fairfax rose. "Don't say anything you will regret, sir. I kissed my aunt's hand as I would have kissed my mother's. Not that I need to make excuse."
Mr. Carew's idea of his own importance, of the importance of everything that belonged to him, was colossal, and it would have taken more than this spectacle, unpleasant as it was, to make him fancy his wife harboured a sentiment for her jackanapes of a nephew. If the tableau he had had time to observe on his way across the dining-room floor had aroused his jealousy, that sentiment was less strong that was his anger and his dislike. Young Fairfax had been a thorn in his side for several weeks.
"You are wise to make no excuses," he said coldly. "I could not understand your sentiments. I have my own ideas of how a young man should employ his timeand carve out his existence. Your romantic ideas are as unsympathetic to me as was this exhibition."
Mrs. Carew, who had never been so terrified in her life, thought she should faint, but had presence of mind sufficient to realize that unconsciousness would be prejudicial to her, and by bending over the keys she kept her balance.
She murmured, "My dear, you are very hard on Antony."
Carew paid no attention to her. "Your career, sir, your manner of life, are no affair of mine. I am concerned in you as you fetch your point of view" (Carew was celebrated for his extempore speaking), "your customs and your morals into my house."
"Believe me," said Mrs. Fairfax's son, in a choked voice, "I shall take them out of it for ever."
Carew bowed. "You are at liberty to do so, Fairfax. You have not asked my advice nor my opinions. You have ingratiated yourself with my friends, to my regret and theirs."
Antony exclaimed violently, "Now, what do you mean bythat, sir?"
"I am in no way obliged to explain myself to you, Fairfax."
"But you are!" fairly shouted the young man. "With whom have I ingratiated myself to your regret?"
"I speak of Cedersholm, the sculptor."
"Well, what doeshesay of me?" pursued the poor young man.
"It seems you have had the liberty of his workshop for months—"
"Yes,"—Antony calmed his voice by great effort,—"I have, and I have slaved in it like a nigger—like a slave in the sugar-cane. What of that?"
The fact of the matter was that Cedersholm in the Century Club had spoken to Carew lightly of Fairfax, and slightingly. He had given the young sculptor scant praise, and had wounded and cut Carew's pride in a possession even so remote as an undesirable nephew by marriage. He could not remember what Cedersholm had really said, but it had been unfortunate.
"I don't know what Cedersholm has said to you,"cried Antony Fairfax, "nor do I care. He has sapped my life's blood. He has taken the talent of me for three long months. He is keeping my drawings and my designs, and, by God—"
"Stop!" said Mr. Carew, sharply. "Howdareyou use such language in my house, before my wife?"
Antony laughed shortly. He fixed his ardent blue eyes on the older man, and as he did so the sense of his own youth came to him. He was twenty years this man's junior. Youth was his, if he was poor and unlucky. The desire to say to the banker, "If I should tell you what I thought ofyouas a husband and a father," he checked, and instead cried hotly—
"God's here, at all events, sir, and perhaps my way of calling on Him is as good as another."
He extended his hand. It did not tremble. "Good-bye, Aunt Caroline."
Hers, cold as ice, just touched his. "Henry," she gasped, "he's Arabella's son."
Again the scarlet Antony had seen, touched the banker's face. Fairfax limped out of the room. His clothes were so shabby (as he had said a few moments before, he had worked in them like a nigger), that, warm as it was, he wore his overcoat to cover his suit. The coat lay in the hall. Bella and Gardiner had been busy during his visit on their own affairs. They had broken open their bank. Bella's keen ears had heard Antony's remark to her mother about being down on his luck, and her tender heart had recognized the heavy note in his voice. The children's bank had been their greatest treasure for a year or two. It represented all the "serious" money, as Bella called it, that had ever been given them. The children had been so long breaking it open that they had not heard the scene below in the drawing-room.
As Fairfax lifted his coat quickly it jingled. He got into it, thrust his hands in the pockets. They were full of coin. His sorrow, anger and horror were so keen that he was guilty of the unkindest act of his life.
"What's this!" he cried, and emptied out his pockets on the floor. The precious coins fell and rolled on every side. Bella and her little brother, who had hid on the stairs in order to watch the effect of their surprise, saw thedisaster, and heard the beloved cousin's voice in anger. The little girl flew down.
"CousinAntony, howcouldyou? It was foryou! Gardiner and I broke our bank for you. There were ten dollars there and fifty-nine cents."
There was nothing gracious in Fairfax's face as it bent on the excited child.
"Pick up your money," he said harshly, his hand on the door. "Good-bye."
"Oh," cried the child, "I didn't know you were proud likethat. I didn't know."
"Proud," he breathed deeply. "I'd rather starve in the gutter than touch a penny in this house."
He saw the flaming cheeks and averted eyes, and was conscious of Gardiner's little steps running down the stairs, and he heard Bella call "CousinAntony," in a heart-rent voice, as he opened the door, banged it furiously, and strode out into the street.
He had slept all night in a strained position between a barrel of tallow candles and a bag of potatoes. In spite of the hardness of the potatoes on which he lay and the odour of the candles, he lost consciousness for a part of the night, and when he awoke, bruised and weary, he found the car stationary. As he listened he could not hear a sound, and crawling out from between the sacks in the car, he saw the dim light of early dawn through a crack in the door. Pushing open the sliding door he discovered that the car had stopped on a siding in an immense railroad-yard and that he was the only soul in sight. He climbed out stiffly. On all sides of him ran innumerable lines of gleaming rails. The signal house up high was alight and the green and yellow and white signal lamps at the switches shone bright as stars. Further on he could see the engine-house, where in lines, their cow-catchers at the threshold, a row of engines waited, sombre, inert horses of iron and steel, superb in their repose. Fairfax reckoned that it must be nearly four-thirty, and as he stood, heard a switch click, saw a light change from green to red, and with a rattle and commotion a train rolled in—along and away. On the other side of the tracks in front of him were barrack-like workshops, and over the closed station ran a name in black letters, but it did not inform Fairfax as to his whereabouts except that he was at "West Junction." He made his way across the tracks towards the workshops, every inch of him sore from his cramped ride.
He always thought that on that day he was as mentally unhinged as a healthy young man can be. Unbalanced by hunger, despair and rage, his kindly face was drawn and bore the pallor of death. He was dirty and unshaven, his heavy boot weighed on his foot like lead. Without any special direction he limped across the tracks and once, as he stopped to look up and down the rails on which the daylight was beginning to glimmer, in his eyes was the morbidness of despair. A signalman from his box could see him over the yards, and Fairfax reflected that if he lingered he might be arrested, and he limped away.
"Rome, Rome," he muttered under his breath, "thou hast been a tender nurse to me! Thou hast given to the timid shepherd-boy muscles of iron and a heart of steel."
The night before he had rushed headlong from his uncle's house, smarting under injustice, and had walked blindly until he came to the Forty-second Street station. His faint and wretched spirit longed for nothing but escape from the brutal city where he had squandered his talent, crushed his spirit and made a poor apprenticeship to ingratitude. A baggage car on the main line, with an open door, was the only means of transportation of which Fairfax could avail himself, and he had crept into it undiscovered, stowed himself away, hoping that the train's direction was westward and expecting to be thrown out at any moment. Thus far his journey had been made undiscovered. He didn't wonder where he was—he didn't care. Any place was good enough to be penniless in and to jump off from! His one idea at the moment was food.
"God!" he thought to himself, "to be hungry like this and not be a beggar or a criminal, just a duffer of a gentleman of no account!"
He reached the engine-house and passed before the line of iron locomotives, silent and vigorous in their quiescent might, and full of inert power. He set his teeth, for the locomotives made him think of his beloved beasts. A choking sensation came in his throat and tears to his blue eyes. He thrust his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and went on. In front of him a city street came down to the tracks, and sharp across it cutthe swinging gates which fell as Fairfax approached. Behind him the switches snapped; another train, this time a fast express, rushed past him. He watched it mutely; the flinging up of the dust around the wheels, the siss and roar and wind of its passing smote through him. It was gone.
He limped on. The street leading down to the tracks was filthy with mud and with the effects of the late rain. It was to Fairfax an avenue into an empty and unknown town. Small, vile, cobbled with great stones, the alley ran between lines of two-storied frame buildings, tenement houses which were the home of the railroad employes. The shutters were all closed, there was not a sign of life. Fairfax came up with the signal-box by the swinging gate, and a man with a rolled red flag stood in the doorway. He looked at Fairfax with little curiosity and the young man decided not to ask him any questions for fear that his stolen ride should be discovered. As he passed on and went into the empty street, he mused—
"It is curious how we are all taking pains to escape consequences to which we say we are indifferent. What matter is it if hedoesarrest me? I should at least have a cup of coffee at the station house."
On either side of the alley through which Fairfax now walked there was not a friendly door open, or a shutter flung back from a window. At the head of the street Fairfax stopped and looked back upon the yards and the tracks of the workshops. The ugly scene lay in the mist of very early morning and the increasing daylight made its crudeness each moment more apparent. As he stood alone in Nut Street, on either side of him hundreds of sleeping workmen, the sun rose over the yards, filling the dreary, unlovely outlook with a pure glory. To Fairfax's senses it brought no consolation but the sharp suffering that any beauty brings to the poet and the seer. It was a new day—he was too young to be crushed out of life because he had an empty pocket, and faint as he was, hungry as he was, the visions began to rise again in his brain. The crimson glory, as it swam over the railroad yards, over the bridge, over the unsightly buildings, was peopled by his ideals—his breath came fast and his heart beat. The clouds from which the sun emergedtook winged shapes and soared; the power of the iron creatures in the shed seemed to invigorate him. Fairfax drew a deep breath and murmured: "Art has made many victims. I won't sacrifice my life to it." And he seemed a coward to himself to be beaten so early in the race.
"Muscles of iron and a heart of steel," he murmured again, "a heart of steel."
He turned on his feet and limped on, and as he walked he saw a light in an opposite window with the early opening of a cheap restaurant. The shutters on either side of Nut Street were flung back. He heard the clattering of feet, doors were pushed open and the workers began to drift out into the day. Antony made for the light in the coffee house; it was extinguished before he arrived and the growing daylight took its place. A man from a lodging-house passed in at the restaurant door.
Fairfax's hands were deep in the pockets of his overcoat, his fingers touched a loose button. He turned it, but it did not feel like a button. He drew it out; it was twenty-five cents. He had not shaken out quite all the children's coins on the hall floor. This bit of silver had caught between the lining and the cloth and resisted his angry fling. As the young man looked at it, his face softened. He went into the eating-house with the other man and said to himself as he crossed the door-sill—
"Little cousin! you don't know what 'serious' money this is!"
A girl who he judged by her frowzled hair and her heavy eyes had just been aroused from sleep, stood behind the counter pouring hot and steaming coffee into thick china cups. The smell to the hungry man was divine. Fairfax's mouth watered. From the one pot the coffee came out with milk added, and from another the liquid poured clear. Fairfax asked for coffee with milk and a sandwich, and as the girl pushed the plate with hunks of bread and ham towards him, he asked, "How much, please?" The girl raised her heavy lids. Her gray eyes could have sparkled if she had been less sleepy. She glanced at him and responded in a soft brogue—
"Two cints a cup. Sandwiches two cints apiece."
He took his breakfast over to the table where a customer was already seated before a huge breakfast. After watching Fairfax for a few moments, this man said to him—
"Got a rattling good appetite, Mister."
"I have, indeed," Fairfax returned, "and I'm going to begin over again."
The man wore a red shirt under his coat, his battered bowler was a-cock on his head. Antony often recalled Sanders as he looked that morning. His face from his neck up was clean. He exuded water and brown soap; he had a bright healthy colour; he was a good-looking workman, but his hands! Fairfax thought them appalling—grimed with coal. They could never be washed clean, Fairfax reflected, and one finger on the left hand was missing.
"Stranger?" the man asked him. "Just going through?"
And as Fairfax replied, he thought to himself, "Hedoesn't dreamhowstrange I am and that I don't even know the name of the town."
He asked the man, "Much going on here?"
"Yards. Up here in West Albany it's nothing but yards and railroading."
"Ah," nodded Fairfax, and to himself: "This is the capital of New York State—Albany—that's where I am."
And it was not far enough away to please him.
The man's breakfast, which had been fed into him by his knife, was disposed of, and he went on—
"Good steady employment; they're decent to you. Have to be, good men are scarce."
A tall, well-set-up engineer came to the coffee counter, and Fairfax's companion called out to him—
"Got your new fireman yet, Joe?"
And the other, with a cheerful string of oaths, responded that he had not got him, and that he didn't want anybody, either, who wasn't going to stay more than five minutes in his cab.
"They've got a sign out at the yards," he finished, "advertising for hands, and when I run in at noon I'll call up and see what's doing."
Fairfax digested his meal and watched the entrance and exit of the railroad hands. Nearly all took their breakfast standing at the counter jollying the girl; only a few brakemen and conductors gave themselves the luxury of sitting down at the table. Antony went and paid what he owed at the counter, and found that the waitress had waked up, and, in spite of the fact that she had doled out coffee and food to some fifty customers, she had found time to glance at "the new one."
"Was it all right?" she asked.
She handed him the change out of his quarter. He had had a dime's worth of food.
"Excellent," Fairfax assured her; "first-rate."
Her sleeves came only to the elbow, her fore-arm was firm and white as milk. Her hands were coarse and red; she was pretty and her cheerfulness touched him.
He wanted to ask for a wash-up, but he was timid.
"I'll be back at lunchtime," he said to her, nodding, and the girl, charmed by his smile, asked hesitatingly—
"Workin' here?"
And as Fairfax said "No" rather quickly, she flashed scarlet.
"Excuse me," she murmured.
He was as keen to get out of the restaurant now as he had been to cross its threshold. The room grew small around him, and he felt himself too closely confined with these common workmen, with whom for some reason or other he began to feel a curious fraternity. Once outside the house, instead of taking his way into the more important part of West Albany, he retraced his steps down Nut Street, now filled with men and women. Opposite the gateman's house at the foot of the hill, he saw a sign hanging in a window, "New York Central Railroad," and under this was a poster which read, "Men wanted. Apply here between nine and twelve."
Fairfax read the sign over once or twice, and found that it fascinated him. This brief notice was the only call he had heard for labour, it was the only invitation given him to make his livelihood since he had come North. "Men wanted."
He touched the muscles of his right arm, and repeated "Muscles of iron and a heart of steel." There was nothing said on the sign about sculptors and artists and men of talent, and poets who saw visions, and young ardent fellows of good family, who thought the world was at their feet; but it did say, "Men wanted." Well, he was a man, at any rate. He accosted a fellow who passed him whistling.
"Can you tell me where a chap can get a shave in this neighbourhood? Any barbers hereabouts?"
The other grinned. "Every feller is his own razor in Nut Street, partner! You can find barber shops uptown."
"I want to get a wash-up," Fairfax said, smiling on him his light smile. "I want to get hold of a towel and some soap."
The workman pointed across the street. "There's a hotel. They'll fix you up."
Fairfax followed the man's indication, and he saw the second sign that hung in Nut Street. It gave the modest information, "Rooms and board three dollars a week. Room one dollar a week. All at Kenny's first-class hotel.Gents only." Of the proprietor who stood in the doorway, and whose morning toilet had gone as far as shirt and trousers, Antony asked—
"How much will it cost me to wash-up? I'd like soap and a towel and to lie down on a bed for a couple of hours."
The Irish hotel-keeper looked at him. Fairfax took off his hat, and he didn't explain himself further.
"Well," said Patrick Kenny, "yez don't look very dirthy. Charge fifteen cents. Pay in advance."
"Show me up," accepted Fairfax, and put the last of Bella's charity into the man's hand.
That was May. Five months later, when the Hudson flowed between flaming October shores, and the mists of autumn hung like a golden grail on the air, Fairfax leaned out of the window of the engine-cab and cried to another man, in another cab on the opposite track—
"Hello, Sanders; how's your health?"
It was the slang greeting of the time. The engineer responded that he was fine as silk, and rang his bell and passed on his rolling way.
Fairfax wore a red shirt, his trousers were thick with oil and grease. His collar, open at the neck, showed how finely his head was set upon his shoulders, and left free the magnificent column of his throat. Down to his neck came his crisp fair hair, just curling at the ends; his sleeves were up to his elbows and his bare arms were dirty, vigorous and powerful, with the muscles standing out like cords. He never looked at his hands any more, his clever sensitive hands. He had been Joe Mead's fireman for five months, a record ticket for Joe Mead's cab. Fairfax had borne cursing and raging from his chief, borne them with equanimity, feeding into the belly of his engine whatever disgust he felt. Thrown together with these strange men of a different class, he learned new things of life, and at first he was as amused as a child at play. He made two dollars a day. This amply fed him and kept him, and he put by, with a miserliness that was out of all keeping with his temperament, every cent he could spare from the necessities of life.
Not that Fairfax had any plans.
From the first opening of his eyes on West Albany, when he had crawled out of the baggage car in the dawn, he shut out his past from himself. He crushed backeven his own identity. He earned his bread by the sweat of his brow in the real sense of the word, and for what reason he saved his money he could not have told. He had become a day labourer, a fireman on the New York Central road, and he was a first-rate hand. His figure in the rude, dirty clothes, his bowler always worn on the back of his blonde head, his limp (that big boot had gone hard with him on the day that he applied for a job at the boss's office), all were familiar in Nut Street by this. His voice, his smile, his rare good heart, made him a popular companion, and he was, too, popular with the women.
His miserable reception in New York, the bruises inflicted upon him by Cedersholm and his uncle, had embittered Tony Fairfax to an extent of which his humble Nut Street friends were ignorant. He didn't do them any harm, however. If any harm were done at all—and there is a question even regarding that—it was done to himself, for he crushed down his ambitions, he thrust them out of his heart, and he bit the dust with a feeling of vengeance. He had been a gentleman with talent, and his own world had not wanted him; so he went down to the people. All that his mother knew was that he had gone on to the north of the State, to perfect certain branches of his art, and that it was better for him to be in Albany. Reclining under the vines, she read his letters, smiling, fanning herself with a languid hand.
"Emmy, Master Tony's getting on, getting on."
"Yas'm, Mis' Bella, I do speck he is."
"Listen, Emmy." And Mrs. Fairfax would read aloud to the devoted negro the letters planned, concocted, by her son in his miserable lodgings, letters which cost him the keenest pangs of his life, kind and tender lines; things he would have done if he could; things he had hoped for and knew would never come true; joys he meant to bring her and that he knew she would grow old and never see; success and fame, whose very sound to him now was like the knell of fate. At the end of the letter he said—
"I am studying mechanics. I reckon you'll laugh at me, mother, but they are useful to a sculptor."
And she had not laughed in the way he meant as she kissed his letter and wet it with her tears.
No Sunday duties took him to the yards, and washed and dressed, shaved and brushed, he became a beautiful man of the world, in a new overcoat and a new sleek hat, and over his hands thick doeskin gloves. He could afford to pay for his clothes, and like this he left Nut Street every Sunday at nine o'clock, not to see West Albany again till midnight. On the seventh day of the week he was a mystery to his chums and his landlady, and if any one in Nut Street had had time to be suspicious and curious they might have given themselves the trouble of following Fairfax. There were not many idlers, however, and no saloons. Drunkards were unwelcome, and Sunday was a day of rest for decent hard workers. When Antony, in his elegance, came out he used to pass between fathers of families in their shirt sleeves, if it were warm weather, and between complacent couples, and many of the hands slept all day. The most curious eyes were those of Molly Shannon, the girl at the restaurant, and her eyes were more than curious.
Fairfax had been courteous to her, bidding her good-morning in a way that made her feel as though she were a lady. He had been there for his breakfast and lunch several months until finally Molly Shannon drove him away. This she did not do by her boldness, for she was not bold, but by her comeliness and her sex and her smile. Fairfax fed his Pride in his savage immolation before the monster of iron and steel; by his slavery to work he revenged himself upon his class. His Pride grew; he stood up against Fate, and he thought he was doing a very fine thing, when his Pride also stood up in the restaurant when he took his cup of coffee from the red-handed girl of the people, pretty Molly Shannon fromKillarney. Fairfax went farther up the street. He found another eating house, and later ate his sandwich on his knees at noon in the cab of his engine.
When Molly Shannon found that he was not coming there for his coffee any more, she grew listless, and doled out food to the other men with a lack of science and interest that won her sharp reproofs and coarse jokes. From her window over the restaurant she watched Mister Fairfax as every Sunday he went limping up the street. Molly watched him, her breast palpitating under the common shirtwaist, and the freckles on the milky white skin died out under the red that rose.
"He's got a girl," she reflected; "sure, he's got a girl."
One Sunday in October, a day of yellow sunlight and autumn air, when Nut Street and the yards and West Albany fringed the country like the hem of an ugly garment, Molly came down and out into the street, and at a distance she followed Fairfax. Fairfax cut down a couple of blocks further on to the main station. He went in and bought a ticket for Albany. He boarded the cars, and Molly followed.
She tracked him at a safe distance up Market Street to Eagle, and the young man walked so slowly that it was easy to keep him in sight. The man pursued by the Irish girl suggested nothing less than a New York Central fireman. He looked like any other well-set-up, well-made young gentleman out on a Sunday morning. In his fashionable coat, his fashionable hat, Molly saw him go through the doors of a stone church whose bells rang solemnly on the October air.
The girl was very much surprised.
She felt him safe even within the walls of the heathen church, and she went directly back to Nut Street, her holiday hanging heavy on her hands, and she went in and helped her patron wash the dishes, and upstairs that night she stopped in her simple preparations for bed and reddened.
"Sure, ain't I a silly! He's went to church tomeethis girl!"
Her morning's outing, the tramp and the excitement, were an unusual strain to Molly, not to speak of her emotions, and she cried herself to sleep.
Fairfax sat every Sunday in the same pew. The seat was to the left of the altar, and he sang with an ardour and a mellowness that was lost neither on the people near him nor on the choir-master. All arts were sympathetic to him: his ear was good and his voice agreeable. His youth, his sacrifice, his dying art he put into his church singing, and once the choir-master, who had taken pains to mark him, stopped him in the vestibule and spoke to him.
"No," Fairfax said, "I am not a musician. Don't know one note from another, and can't learn. Only sing by ear, and not very sure at that!"
He listened indifferently. As the gentleman spoke of art and success, over Antony's handsome mouth there flitted a smile that had something of iron in it.
"I don't care for any of those things, sir," he replied. "I reckon I'm a barbarian, a rudimentary sort of man."
He took a certain pride and glory in his station as he talked. There was a fascination in puzzling this mild, charming man, one of his own class, whose very voice and accent were a relief after the conversations he heard daily.
"You see," he said, "I happen to be a fireman in the New York Central yards down at West Albany."
The quiet choir-master stared at him. "Oh, come, come!" he smiled.
Fairfax thrust his cane under his arm, drew off his glove, and held out his hand, looking into the other man's eyes. The musician's hand closed over Fairfax's.
"My dear young fellow," he said gravely, "you are a terrible loss to art. You would make your way in the musical world."
Fairfax laughed outright, and the choir-master watched him as others did as he limped away, his broad, fine back, his straight figure, and Fairfax's voice swelling out in the processional came to the musician's mind.
"There is a mystery about that chap," he thought. "He is a gentleman. The Bishop would be interested."
By contrast Sundays were delightful to Antony. Amusements possible to a workingman with the tastes of a gentleman were difficult to obtain. Church in the morning, a lazy stroll through the town, an excellent dinner at the Delavan House, set Fairfax up for the week.The coloured waiter thought his new patron was a Southerner, and suspected him of being a millionaire.
"Yass, sar, Mr. Kunnell Fairfax, sar."
Antony, in a moment of heart hunger for the South, had told George Washington his name. George Washington kept the same place for him every Sunday, and polished the stone china plates till they glistened, displayed for Antony all his dazzling teeth, bowed himself double, his napkin under his arm, and addressed Antony as "Kunnell"; and Antony over his dessert laughed in his sleeve (he took great pains to keep his hands out of sight). After luncheon he smoked and read the papers in the lobby, lounged about, wrote a Sunday letter to his mother, and then loitered about through old Albany. On Sunday afternoons when it was fine, he would choose School Street and the Cathedral close, and now, under the falling of the yellow leaves there was a beauty in the day's end that thrilled him hour by hour. He made these pilgrimages to keep himself from thinking, from dreaming, from suffering; to keep his hands from pencil and design; to keep his artist soul from crying out aloud; to keep his talent from demanding, like a starving thing, bread that he had no means to give. Sometimes, however,—sometimes, when the stimulus of an excellent dinner, and a restful morning, when the cheer of George Washington's droll devotion had died, then the young man's step would lag in the streets of Albany, and with his hands behind his back and his bright head bowed, he would creep musing, half-seeing where he went.
Taking advantage of his lassitude, like peris whose wings had been folded against Paradise, and whose forms had been leaning hard against the gate, his ideals, his visions, would rush in upon him, and he would nearly sink under the beating of their wings—under their voluptuous appeal, under their imperious demand.
On these occasions Fairfax would go home oppressed, and content himself with a glass of milk and light food at the restaurant, and dressed as he was even to the hat on his head, he would sink by the table in his little room and bury his face in his hands. Then he would count up his money. Working from May until October, he had saved only fifty dollars. After his calculations there was nomagnitude in the sum to inspire him to new plans or to tempt him to make a fresh venture for art. He often thought, in looking back on those days, that it was nothing but his pride and his obstinacy that kept him there. The memory of his winter's creations, of his work in the studio, and his beasts with their powerful bodies and their bronze beauty, came upon him always with such cruel resentment and made him feel so impotent against the injustice of the great, that if drink had tempted Fairfax he would have gone to the nearest saloon and made a beast of himself.
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.