"Rainsford," whispered Potowski, laying his hand on Antony's knee, "what do you t'ink, my friend?" The tears were raining down his mobile face; he sighed. "Arrt," he said in his mellow whisper, "is only the expression of the feeling, the beautiful expression of the feeling. That is the meaning of allarrt."
The big red curtain fell slowly and the three men, poet, singer and sculptor, kept their seats as though still under the spell of Dumas and unable to break it.
"Tony," said Dearborn, as they went out together, "I am going to burn up all four acts."
The middle of January arrived, and he thought Cedersholm would have come by that time and supposed that they would be off for Rome.
The study of his mother was accepted by the jury for the exhibition in the Rue de Sèvres, and Fairfax went on the opening day, saw his name in the catalogue, and his study on the red pedestal made a dark mellow note amongst the marbles. He stood with the crowd and listened with beating heart to the comments of the public. He watched the long-haired Bohemians and the worldly people, the Philistine and the élite as they surged, a little sea of criticism, approval, praise and blame, through the rooms.
"Pas mal, ça." "Here is a study that is worth looking at." "By whom is this?"
And each time that he heard his name read aloud—Thomas Rainsford—he was jealous of it for Antony. It seemed a sacrilege, a treachery. He wandered about, looking at the other exhibits, but could not keep away from his own, and came back timidly, happily, to stand by the figure of his mother in her chair. There was much peace in the little work of art, much repose. He seemed to see himself again a boy, as he had been that day when she asked for the cherries and he had run off to climb for them—and had gone limping ever since. She had sat languidly with her book that day, as she sat now, immortalized by her son in clay.
Some one came up and touched his arm. "Bonjour, Rainsford." It was Barye, his chief. He had been looking at the group behind the sculptor. He said briefly: "Je vous félicite, monsieur." He smiled on his journeyman from under shaggy brows. "They will talk about you in theFigaro. C'est exquis."
Fairfax thanked him and watched Barye's face as the master scrutinized and went around the little figure. He put out his hand to Fairfax.
"Come and see me to-morrow. I want to talk to you."
Fairfax answered that he would be sure to come, just as though he were not modelling at the studio for ten francs a day. He had been careful all along not to repeat his error of years before. He had avoided personalities with his master, as he toiled like a common day-labourer, content to make his living and to display no originality; but now he felt a sense of fellowship with the great Frenchman and walked along by Barye's side to the door, proud to be so distinguished. He glanced over the crowd in the hope of seeing Her, but instead, walking through the rooms, his eyeglass in his eye, the little red badge of the Legion of Honour in his coat, he saw Cedersholm.
The following day, when he went to the exhibition, the man at the door handed a catalogue to Fairfax and pointed to No. 102, against which was the word "Sold." His price had been unpretentious.
"Moreover," said the man, "No. 102 will certainly have a medal."
Fairfax, his hands in his empty pockets, was less impressed by that prognostication than by the fact that there was money for him somewhere. The man opened the desk and handed Fairfax an envelope with five hundred francs in it.
"Who was the purchaser?" Fairfax looked at the receipt he was given to sign and read: "Sold to Mr. Cedersholm."
"Mais non," he exclaimed shortly, "ça, non!"
He was assured, however, that it was the American sculptor and no other. On his way home he reflected, "She sent him to purchase it." And the five hundred francs bill burned in his pocket. Then he called himself a fool and asked what possible interest she could still have in Thomas Rainsford, whose news she had not taken in four weeks. And also, he reflected, that so far as Cedersholm was concerned, Thomas Rainsford had nothingto do with Antony Fairfax. "He merely admired my work," he reflected bitterly. "He has seemed always singularly to admire it."
He paid some pressing debts, got his clothes out of pawn, left Dearborn what he wanted, and was relieved when the last sou of the money was gone.
"I wonder, Bob," he said to Dearborn, "when I shall ever have any 'serious money.'" And with sudden tenderness he thought of Bella.
Dearborn, who had also recovered a partially decent suit of clothes, displayed his trousers and said—
"I think some chap has been wearing my clothes and stretched them." They hung loose on him.
Fairfax laughed. "You have only shrunk, Bob, that's all. You need feeding up."
The studio had undergone a slight transformation, which the young men had been forced to accede to. A grand piano covered with a bright bit of brocade stood in the centre of the studio, a huge armchair, with a revolving smoking-table, by its side. The chair was for Dearborn to loll in and dream in whilst Potowski played and sang at the piano. Dearborn was thus supposed to work the libretto for "Fiametta."
Potowski, who came in at all hours, charmed the very walls with his voice, sang and improvised; Fairfax worked on the study he was making for Barye, and Dearborn, in the big chair, swathed in his wrapper, made notes, or more often fell serenely to sleep, for he worked all night on his own beloved drama, and if it had not been for Potowski he would have slept nearly all day. The Pole, at present, had gone to Belgium to fetch his wife, who had been away for several weeks.
When there was a knock on the door on this afternoon, the young men, used to unexpected visitors, cried out—
"Come in—entrez donc!"
But there was the murmur of a woman's voice without, and Fairfax, his sculpting tools in his hands, opened the door. It was Mrs. Faversham.
He stood for a dazed second unable even to welcome her. Dearborn sprang up in embarrassment and amusement. Mrs. Faversham herself was not embarrassed.
"Is not Potowski here?" shaking hands with Antony."I had expected to meet him. Didn't he tell you that I was coming? I understood that you expected me."
Fairfax shut the door behind her. "You are more than welcome. This is my friend, Mr. Dearborn. You may have heard Potowski speak of him."
She shook hands with the red-haired playwright, whom she captivated at once by her cordiality and her sweet smile. Of course she had heard of him and the libretto. Potowski had given her to understand that she might hear the overture of "Fiametta."
The young men exchanged glances and neither of them told her that Potowski was in Belgium. Dearborn rolled the chair toward her and waved to it gracefully.
"This is the chair of the muses, Mrs. Faversham, and not one of them has been good enough to sit in it before now."
She laughed and sat down, and Fairfax looked at her with joy.
"We must give Mrs. Faversham some tea," said Dearborn, "and if you will excuse me while we wait for Potowski, I will pop out and get some milk and you boil the tea-kettle."
He took his hat and cape and ran out, leaving them alone.
Mrs. Faversham looked at the sculptor in his velveteen working clothes, the background of his workshop, its disorder and its poverty around him.
"How nice it is here," she said. "I don't wonder you are a hermit."
"Oh," he exclaimed, "don't compliment this desolation."
She interrupted him. "I think it is charming. You feel the atmosphere of living and of work. You seem to see things here that are not visible in rooms where nothing is accomplished."
He sat down beside her. "Are there such rooms?" he asked. "I don't believe it. The most thrilling dramas take place, don't they, in the most commonplace settings?"
As though she feared that Dearborn would come back, she said quickly—
"I don't know why you should have been so unkind.I have heard nothing of you for weeks, do you know, excepting through Potowski. It wasn't kind, was it?"
"I was rude and ungrateful, but I could not do otherwise."
She bent forward to him as he sat on the divan. "I wonder why?" she asked. "Were we not friends? Could you not have trusted me? Do you think me so narrow and conventional—so stupid?"
"Oh!" he exclaimed, and he smiled a little, thinking of Nora Scarlet. "It is not quite what you think."
He was angry with her, with the facts of their existence, with her great fortune, and her engagement to the man he despised above all others, his own incognito and the fact that she had sent Cedersholm to buy his study, and that he could not express to her, without insult, his feelings or tell her frankly who he was.
"You were not kind, Mr. Rainsford."
He reflected that she thought him the lover of a Latin Quarter student, if she thought at all, which she probably did not. Without humility he confessed—
"Yes, I have been very rude indeed." He wiped his clay-covered hands slowly, each finger separately, his eyes bent. He rose abruptly. "Would you care to look at a study I am making for Barye?" He drew off the cloths from the clay he was engaged in modelling. She only glanced at the group and he asked her, almost roughly: "Why did you buy by proxy my little study in the exhibition? Why did you ask Cedersholm to do so?"
Mrs. Faversham looked at him in frank surprise. "Your study in the exhibition? I knew nothing of it. I did not know you had exhibited. I have been ill for a fortnight, and have not seen a paper or heard a hit of news."
He was softened. His emotions violently contradicted themselves, and he saw now that she had grown a little thinner and looked pale.
"Have you been ill? What a boor you must think me never to have returned!"
She was standing close to the pedestal and rested her hand on the support near his wooden tools. She wore a beautiful grey drees, such a one as only certain Parisianhands can create. It fitted her to perfection, displaying her shape, and, where the fur opened at the neck, amongst the lace he saw the gleaming and flashing of a jewel whose value would have made a man rich. Already the air was sweet with the fragrance of the scent she used. She had been in grey when he had first seen her on the day of the unveiling of the monument. Fairfax passed his hand across his eyes, as though to brush away a vision which, like a mist, was still between them. He put his hand down over hers on the pedestal.
"I love you," he said very low. "That is the matter. That is the trouble. I love you. I want you to know it. I dare love you. I am perfectly penniless and I am glad of it. I want to owe everything to my art, to climb through the thorns to where I shall some day reach. I am proud of my poverty and of my emancipation from everything that others think is necessary to happiness. I am rude. I cannot help it. I shall never see you again. I ought not to speak to you in my barren room. I know that you are not free and that you are going to be married, but you must hear once what I have to tell you. I love you.... I love you."
She was as motionless as the grey study. He might himself have made and carved "the woman in her entirety," for she stood motionless before him.
"Tell Cedersholm," he said bitterly, "tell him that a poor sculptor, a struggler who lives to climb beyond him, who will some day climb beyond him, loves you."
The arrogance and pride of his words and her immobility affected him more than a reproof or even speech. He took her in his arms, and she was neither marble nor clay, but a woman there.
"Tell him," he murmured close to her cheek, "that I have kissed you and held you."
And here she said; "Hush!" almost inaudibly, and released herself. She was trembling. She put her hands to her eyes. "I shall tell him nothing. He is nothing to me. I sent him away when he first came, a fortnight ago. I shall never see Cedersholm again."
"What!" cried Tony, looking at her in rapture, "what, you arefree?" At his heart there was triumph, excitement, wonder, all blending with the bigger emotion.He heard himself ask her eagerly: "Why, why did you do this?"
There were tears on her eyelids.
His face flushing, his eyes illumined, he looked down on her and lifted her face to him in both his hands.
"Why?"
"I think you know," she murmured, her lips trembling.
He gave a cry, and as he was about again to embrace her they heard Dearborn's step upon the stairs.
Mrs. Faversham was in the window looking out upon Paris, and Fairfax was modelling on his study when the playwright came in with a can of milk, some madeleines and a pot of jam.
After she had gone he wanted to escape and be alone, but Dearborn chatted, pacing the studio, whilst Fairfax dressed and shaved, praising the visitor.
"She's a great lady, Tony. What breeding and race! And she's not what the books call 'indifferent' to you."
"Go to the devil, Dearborn!"
Dearborn went to work instead, not to lose the inspiration of the lovely woman. He began a new scene, and dressed his character in dove grey with silver fox at her throat.
Fairfax, at the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, found instead of the entrance he had expected, a note for him.
"I cannot see you to-night. Be generous,—understand me. Mr. Cedersholm leaves for Russia to-morrow, he has asked me as a last favour to let him see me. I have done him so much wrong that I cannot refuse him. Come early to-morrow morning, and we will walk in the Bois together."I am yours,"Mary."
"I cannot see you to-night. Be generous,—understand me. Mr. Cedersholm leaves for Russia to-morrow, he has asked me as a last favour to let him see me. I have done him so much wrong that I cannot refuse him. Come early to-morrow morning, and we will walk in the Bois together.
"I am yours,"Mary."
He read the letter before the footman, and the "yours, Mary" made his heart bound and his throat contract. He walked toward the Champs Elysées slowly, thinking. Cedersholm sailed to-morrow, away from France. He was sent away beaten, bruised, conquered. He must have loved her. No man could help it. Was this the beginning of Fairfax's triumph? Well, he could not help it—he was glad. Cedersholm had stolen his fire, the labour of his youth, and now he would not have been human if there had not been a thrill through him that the conqueror knows. He could spare him this farewell evening with the woman who signed herself "I am yours, Mary."
"Vade in Pace," he murmured.
Then the vision of the woman rose more poignant than anything else, and he saw her as she had stood under his hands, the tears in her eyes, and the fire and pallor of passion on her face.
What should he do now? Marry her, of course. He would be married, then, twice at thirty. He shook his broad shoulders as though instinctively he chafed under the sudden adjusting to them of a burden. He limpedout into the Champs Elysées, under the rows of light where the lamps were like illumined oranges. The vehicles twinkled by like fire-flies in the mist. Before him was the Palais de l'Industrie and back of it stretched the Champ de Mars and Napoleon's tomb. The freedom of the night and the hour was sweet to him; and he dreamed as he limped slowly down the Avenue under the leafless trees. Probably wisdom would tell him that, if he married now, it would be the end of his career. Love was an inspiration, a sharp impelling power to art, but marriage, a home, another household, another hearth and family, beautiful as the picture was, seemed to him, even bright and keen as was his passion, to be captivity. And the memory of Albany came back to him, the cold winter months, the days on the engine, the blizzards against the tenement panes, household cares, small and petty, the buying of coal and food, and the constant duties which no man can shrink from and be a man, and which fret the free spirit of the creator. Moreover, the anguish of those days returned, biting his very entrails at the remembrance of his griefs, his remorse, his regrets. Molly by the study light, patient and wifely, rose before his eyes. There was his wife, and she seemed holy and stainless, set apart for that position and very perfect. He saw her lying pale and cold, beautiful as marble, with the little swathed form on her bosom, which had given and never nourished. He saw them both—his wife and child. Can a man begin over again? Can he create anew, perfectly anew, the same vision? He saw her go through the open door, holding it wide for him. So she should hold it at the last. He could give her this. He had defrauded her of so much. He could give to her to eternity a certain faithfulness.
He was exalted. He walked freely, with his head uplifted. It was a misty evening and the mists blew about him as he limped along in his student's cape, his spirit communing with his ideals and with his dead. Before, his visions took form and floated down the Avenue. Now they seemed unearthly, without any stain of human desire, without any worldly tarnish. He must be free. The latitude of his life must be unbounded by any human law, otherwise he would never attain. The flying forms were sexless and his eyes pursued them like a worshipper.They were angelic. For the moment he had emancipated himself from passion.
He reached the Place de la Concorde. It was ten o'clock. He could not go home to be questioned by Dearborn—indeed, he could not have stood a companion. He called a cab and told the man to drive him up to the Bois de Boulogne, and they rolled slowly up the Avenue down which he had just come. But in what position did he stand toward Mary Faversham? She had refused Cedersholm because she loved him and he loved her—more than he ever could love, more than he ever had loved. A cab passed him in which two forms were enlaced. The figures of two lovers blotted in the darkness. Along the alleys, under the winter trees, every now and then he saw other lovers walking arm-in-arm, even in winter warmed by the eternal fire. He touched his pocket where her note lay and his emotions stirred afresh.
He dreamed of her.
He had been tortured day by day, these weeks, by jealousy of Cedersholm, and this helped him on in his sentimental progress. They passed the street, which a moment before he had taken from her house, to come out upon the Champs Elysées. They rolled into the Bois, under the damp darkness and the night, and the forest odours came to him through the window of the cab. She would have to wait until he was rich and famous. As far as her fortune was concerned, if she loved him she could give it to the poor. He could tell her how to use it. She should never spend a cent of it on herself. He must be able to suffice for her and for him. Rich or poor, the woman who married him would have to take him as he was. On the lake the mists blew over the water. They lay white as spirits among the trees. Everything about the dark and silent night was beautiful to him, made beautiful by the sacred warfare in his own mind. Above all came the human eagerness to see her again, to touch her again, to tell his love, to hear her say what Dearborn's coming had prevented. And he would see her to-morrow morning. It was profanity to walk in these woods without her.
"Go back," he called to the coachman, "go back quietly to the Quais."
He hoped that he should be able to sleep and that the next day would come quickly. He became ardent and devoted as he dreamed, and all the way back his heart ached for her.
When he entered the studio and called Dearborn he received no response. There was a note from the playwright on the table—he would not be back until the next morning.
Fairfax, his hand under his pillow, crushed her letter, and the words: "I am yours, Mary," flushed his palm and his cheek.
He had been awake since dawn, fire in his blood and heart animating his brain and stimulating his creative power. In the early light he had seated himself to make a few sketches, drawing little exquisite studies of her, and the face on the paper was ideal, irritatingly so. The chin and the cheek was young and soft, too youthful for Mrs. Faversham. It suggested Bella.
When he went to see her that afternoon, for the first time he was shown upstairs. Each step was sacred to him as he mounted to the part of the house in which she lived her intimate life. The stairs were marble, covered by thick rugs; the iron balustrade had been brought from a château in the days of the Revolution. Along the wall at his side hung splendid tapestries, whose colours would have delighted him at another time. But his eyes now were blinded to material things. His soul, heart and nature were aflame, and he walked on air. When he was shown into a small room, Mrs. Faversham's own sitting-room, his agitation was so great that he seemed to walk through a mist.
She was not there. The day was fresh and the wood fire burning across the andirons called to him with a friendly voice. The objects by which she surrounded herself represented a fortune; the clock before him, which marked the hour in which he first came to see his love, had belonged to Marie Antoinette, and it beamed on the lover from its wise old clever face,—crystal water fell noiselessly, as the minutes passed, from a little golden mill over which watched two Loves like millers. There were her books on the table, bound with art and taste.There were her writing things on her desk, and a half-finished letter on the blotter. There was her "chaise-longue" with its protective pillows, its sable cover, and between the lace curtains Antony could see the trees of the park. On the footstool a Pekinese dog sat looking at him malevolently. It lifted its fluffy body daintily and raised its impertinent little face to the visitor. Then a door opened and she came in murmuring his name. Antony, seeing her through a mist of love which had not yet cleared, took her in his arms, calling her "Mary, Mary!" He felt the form and shape of her in his arms. As dream women had never given themselves to him, so she seemed to yield.
When they sat side by side on the little sofa the Pekinese dog jumped up and sat between them. She caressed it with one hand, laying the other on Antony's shoulder.
"I must tell you my life," he said, and his sight cleared as he spoke, and he saw her face transformed by its emotion, her eyes adoring and beautiful, her lips parted as if the breath of life he had given to her left her wondering still.
"Don't tell me of anything to-day."
He took the hand that lay on his shoulder and raised it. "I must tell you now."
"I ask for nothing, Antony. What does the past matter?" She bent forward and kissed him on his eyes. "I would like to think they had never looked at anything before to-day."
He smiled. "But they have looked hard at many things, Mary. They will always look deeply, and I want you to look back with me."
She sighed. "Then, forward with me." The Pekinese dog sprang into her lap. "Go on," she said docilely; "but I am so divinely happy! Why should we think of anything else?"
He brushed away the mist that threatened again to cloud his vision. He took her hand and held it firmly and, lifting up his head, began frankly to tell her of his past.
"I am a Southerner, born in New Orleans...."
As he talked she listened spellbound by his power ofnarrative. In his speech he was as charming a creator as in his art. She saw the picture of his Louisiana home; she saw the exquisite figure of his mother; she saw the beginning of his genius and his poetic, dreaming years. When he began the more realistic part of his story, talking aloud like this of himself for the first time to a woman he loved, he forgot her entirely, carried back by a strong force to the beginning of his struggles in New York. She listened, unchanged and a little terrified, as he told her of his work in the sculptor's studio, disguising the name of the man for whom he worked. She stopped him, her hand on his. So had she asked previously Cedersholm. Her voice brought him back to the present, to a feeling that for nothing in the world would he tell her yet, and he said "No, no," veiling the fact so that he could not guess, and passed over the misery of his master's treachery and his defeat. But through his narrative like a flame, charming, brilliant, vivifying, flashed the personality of Bella, though a child only, still a woman, and again Mary Faversham, with her hand on his stopped him—
"What a bewitching child," she said. "Don't speak of her with such fire. I believe you loved her! She must be a woman."
Antony stirred. He rose from the divan where he was sitting and crossed over to the fireplace and stood by the eighteenth-century clock where the crystal water fell with the passing moments. She looked at him as he stood there, powerfully built, strong, the light of his feeling and of his introspection kindling in his eyes and on his brow. It had been three o'clock when he began his story. The afternoon grew paler, the fire died down to ashes on the little hearth. He took a cigarette from his pocket, lit it and stood smoking a few moments. Then he went in his imagination to Albany and carried his hearer with him, and he began to speak of Molly. He waited for a moment before laying bare to her his intimate life. As he turned and met her eyes, he said—
"I do not know how to tell you this. You must listen as well as you can. It is life, you know, and there are many kinds."
Antony, absorbed in his speech, forgot her entirely. He told her of Molly Shannon with a tenderness thatwould have moved any woman. When he closed the chapter of his married life, with his last words a silence fell, and he saw that she was moved beyond what he had dreamed she would be. He went back to her, waited a moment, then sat down and put his arm around her.
"That is my past," he murmured. "Can you forget what there is in it of defeat and forget its sorrow?"
She kissed him and murmured: "I love you the better for it. It seems you have come to me through thorny ways, Antony. Perhaps I can make you forget them."
He did not tell her that she would. Even in this moment, when she was in his arms, he knew that in her there would be no such oblivion for him. The marks were too deep upon him. He felt them now. With what he had been saying, there came back to him a sense of the tremendous burden he had borne when poor, a sense of the common burden we all bear and which in the heart of the poet nothing ever entirely lifts.
"Listen," he said urgently and with a certain solemnity. "Any other man would speak to you about nothing but love. I can do it some day perhaps too easily, but not now, for this is our beginning and between us both there must be nothing to conceal." He thought she started a little, and said hastily: "I mean, nothing for our souls to hide. What I have told you is my life, but it does not end there. I adore my work. I am a worker born, I don't know how much of one, but I must give my time and my talent to it."
"I know, I know," she breathed. "Do you think I don't realize it, Antony? Do you think I don't adore you for it? Why, it is part of what makes me love you."
"That is all," he said. "I could no more emancipate myself from my work than I can from my ideals; they are part of me. I am perfectly poor."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, softly, "don't, don't speak of that."
He turned his fine eyes on her with a light in them whose courage and beauty she did not understand.
"Why not speak of it?" he asked quietly. "I am not ashamed of the fact that I have no money. Such as money is, I shall make it some day, and I shall notvalue it then any more than I do now. It is necessary, I begin to see, but only that. Its only importance is the importance we give to it: to keep straight with our kind; to justify our existence, and," he continued, "to help the next man."
His face took a firmer expression. More than in his recitation of his life he seemed to forget her. As he said so, his arms fell a little way away from her—she grew cold—he seemed a stranger. Only for a moment, however, for he turned, put out his arms, and drew her to him. He kissed her as he had not kissed her yet, and after a few moments said—
"Mary, I bring you my talent, and my manhood, and my courage—nothing else—and I want it to be enough for you."
She said that it was. That it was more than enough.
Fairfax sighed, his arms dropped, he smiled and looked at her, and said—
"I wonder if it is?" He glanced round the room quietly, with an arrogance of which he was unconscious. "You must give all this up, Mary."
"Must I?" She flushed and laughed. "You mean to say you want me to come to Bohemia?"
"I want you to live as I can live," he said, "share what I must have ... that is, I should ask you that if you married me now ..."
He watched her face. It was still illuminated. Her love for him was too vital to be touched by this proposition which she did not wholly understand.
"Most men shrink," Fairfax said, "from taking the woman they love from her luxuries. I believe that I shall not be poor very long. It will be a struggle. If you marry me now, you will share it with me, otherwise ..." He waited a moment.
And she repeated: "Otherwise, Antony?"
"I shall go away," he answered, "and not come back again until I am rich and great."
After he had left her he was dazed and incredulous. His egoism, his enthusiasm, his idea of his own self-sufficiency seemed preposterous. A man in love should entertain no idea but the thought of the woman herself. He began to chafe at poverty which he had assured her made no difference to him. Did he wish to live again terrible years of sacrifice and sordidness? If so, he could not hope a woman accustomed to luxury would choose to share his struggle. He was absurd.
"Money," Dearborn said, regarding his shabby cuffs, "opens many doors. I am inclined also to think that it shuts many doors. You remember the Kingdom of Heaven and the needle's eye; but," he continued whimsically, "I should not think of comparing Mrs. Faversham to a camel, Tony!"
"Don't be an ass," said Antony, proudly. "Mrs. Faversham and I feel alike about it. Money will play no part in our mutual future." And, as he said this, was sure neither of her nor of himself.
"Under which circumstances," said his companion, "I shall offer you another cup of coffee and tell you my secret. Going with my play to London is not the only one. I am in love. When you have drunk your coffee we'll go home. Potowski is going to play for us, and he is going to bring his wife at last."
The two friends sat that evening in a corner of a café on the Boulevard Montparnasse. There were Bohemians around them at their table, and they themselves were part of that happy, struggling world. Dearborn dropped his voice, and said softly to Fairfax—
"And I have asked my little girl to come as well to-night to hear the music."
Fairfax, instead of drinking his coffee, stared at Dearborn, and when Dearborn murmured, "Nora Scarlet is her name. Isn't it a name for a drama?" Fairfax stared still harder and repeated the girl's name under his breath, flushing, but Dearborn did not observe it.
"I want you to see her, Tony; she is sweet and good."
"Bob," said Fairfax gravely, "you mean to tell me you have been falling in love and carrying on a romance without telling me a word about it?"
Dearborn smiled. "To tell the truth, old man," he replied, "you have been so absorbed; there was not room for two romances in the studio.
"I met her in the springtime, Gentle Annie," Dearborn said whimsically, "and it was raining cats and dogs—but for me it rained just love and Nora. We were both waiting for a 'bus. Neither one of us had an umbrella. Now that you speak of it, Tony, I think we have never mended that lack in our possessions. We climbed to theimpérialetogether, and the rain beat upon us both. We laughed, and I said to myself, a girl that can laugh like that in a shower should be put aside for a rainy day. We talked and we giggled. The rain stopped. We forgot to get down. We went to the end of the line and still we forgot to get down. The conductor collected a double fare, and afterward I took her home."
(Antony thought to himself, "Just what I did not do.")
"She is angelic, Tony, delightful, an artist's dream, a writer's inspiration, and a poor man's fairy."
Fairfax laughed.
"Don't laugh, old man," said Dearborn simply. "I have never heard you rave like this about the peerless Mary."
Fairfax said, "No. But then you talk better than I do." He shook Dearborn's hand warmly. "You know I am most awfully glad, don't you?"
"I know I am," said Dearborn, lighting a cigarette.
He settled himself with a beautiful content, asking nothing better than to go on rehearsing his love affair.
"We have been engaged a long time, Tony. It is only a question of how little two people can dare to tryto get on with, you know, and I have determined to risk it."
As they went up the steps of the studio together, Fairfax said—
"She is coming to-night, Bob, you say? Does she know anything about me?"
At this Dearborn laughed aloud. "She knows a great deal about me, Tony. My dear boy, do you think we have talked much about anything but each other? Do you talk with Mrs. Faversham about me? Nora knows I live here with a chum. She doesn't even know your name."
As Dearborn threw open the door they could hear Potowski playing softly the old French ballad, "J'ai perdu ma tourterelle."
A woman sat by Potowski in a big chair, and the lamp on the piano shone yellow upon her. When the two men entered the studio she rose, and Potowski, still playing, said—
"Let me present, at last, my better half. Mes amis, la Comtesse Potowski."
Dearborn greeted her enthusiastically, and Tony stood petrified. The comtesse, more mistress of the moment than Tony was, put out one hand and smiled, but she had turned very pale.
It was his Aunt Caroline....
"Mr. Rainsford," she lifted her brows, "I think I have seen you before."
Tony bowed over her hand and Potowski, still smiling and nodding, cried—
"These are great men and geniuses,ma chérie. You have here two great artists together. They both have wings on their shoulders. Before they fly away from us and are lost on Olympus, be charming to them. Carolina,ma chérie, they shall hear you sing."
Robert Dearborn put his hand on Potowski's shoulder and said—
"We love your husband, madame. He has been such a bully friend to us, such a wonderful friend."
"Poof, my dear Bobbie," murmured Potowski.
("J'ai perdu ma tourterelle.")
Fairfax asked, looking directly at her, "Will youreally sing for us, Madame Potowski? Can you sing some old English ballad? We have not heard a word of English for many a long day."
Potowski wandered softly into a familiar tune. He smiled over his shoulder at his wife, and, standing by the piano, Caroline Carew—Carolina Potowski—put her hands over her husband's on the keys and indicated an accompaniment, humming.
"If you can, dear, I will sing Mr. Rainsfordthis."
Tony took his place on the divan.
Then Madame Potowski sang:
"Flow gently, sweet Afton."
In New York Tony had said, as he sat in the big Puritan parlour, that her voice was divine. No one who has ever heard Carolina Potowski sing "Flow gently, sweet Afton" can ever forget it. Tony covered his face with his hands and said to himself, being an artist as well, "No matter what she has done, it was worth it to produce such art as that."
"Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braesFlow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise,My Mary is asleep by your turbulent stream,Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream."
Little Gardiner once more leaned against his arm; restless little Bella in red, her hair down her back, slipped out of the room to read in peace, and he sat there, a homeless stranger in a Northern city without a cent of money in his pocket, and the desires of life and art shining in his soul.
"Flow gently, sweet Afton."
He indistinctly heard Dearborn open the door. A woman slipped in and went over and sat down by her lover. The two sat together holding hands, and "Sweet Afton" flowed on, and nobody's dream was disturbed. Little Gardiner slept his peaceful sleep in his child's grave; his mother slept her sleep in a Southern cemetery; the Angel of Resurrection raised his spotless wings over the city of the silent dead, and Antony's heart swelled in his breast.
When the Comtesse Potowski stopped singing no one said a word. Her husband played a few bars of Werther and she sang the "Love Letters." Then, before she ceased, Antony was conscious that Nora Scarlet had recognized him. Before any embarrassment could be between them, he went over to her and took her hand, saying warmly—
"I am so glad, Miss Scarlet. Dearborn has told me of his good fortune. He is the best fellow in the world, and I know how lucky he is," and Nora Scarlet murmured something, with her eyes turned away from him.
Tony turned to Madame Potowski and said ardently, "You must let me come to see you to-morrow. I want to thank you for this wonderful treat."
And when Potowski and his Aunt Caroline had gone, and when Dearborn had taken Nora Scarlet home, Antony stood in the studio, which still vibrated with the tones of the lovely voice. He had lived once again a part of his old life. This was his mother's sister, and she had made havoc of her home. He thought of little Bella's visit to him in Albany.
"Mother has done something perfectly terrible, Cousin Antony—something a daughter is not supposed to know."
Well, the something perfectly terrible was, she had set herself free from a man she did not love; that she was making Potowski happy; that she had found her sphere and soared into it.
Fairfax tried in vain to think of himself now and Mary Faversham, but he could not. The past rushed on him with its palpitating wings. He groaned and stretched out his arms into the shadows of the room.
"There is something that chains me, holds me prisoner. I am wedded to something—is it death and a tomb?"
During the following weeks it seemed to him he was chasing his soul and her own. In their daily intercourse—sweet, of course, tender, of course—there was a constant sense of limitation. He wanted her to share with him his love of the beautiful, but Mary Faversham was conventional. He would have spent hours with her in the Louvre, hanging over treasures, musing before pictures whose art he felt he could never sufficiently make his own. Mrs. Faversham followed him closely, but after a time watched the people. Whilst her lover—in love with all beauty—remained transfixed over the contemplation of a petrified rose found in the ruins of Pompeii, or intoxicated himself with the beauty of an urn, she would interrupt his meditation by speaking to him of unimportant things. She found resemblances in the little Grecian statues to her friends in society. Tony sighed and relinquished seeing museums with Mary. She patronized art withlargesseand generosity but he discovered it was one way to her of spending money, an agreeable, satisfying way to a woman of breeding and refinement.
The bewitching charm of her clothes, her great expenditures on herself, made him open his blue eyes. Once he held her exquisitely shod foot in his hand, admiring its beauty and its slenderness. On the polished leather was the sparkle of her paste buckles; he admired the ephemeral web of her silk stocking, and was ashamed that the thought should cross his mind as to what this lovely foot represented of extravagance. But he had been with her when she bought the buckles on the Rue de la Paix; he knew the price they cost. Was the money making him sordid—hypercritical, unkind?
Life for six months whirled round him. MaryFaversham dazzled and bewitched him, charmed and flattered him. Their engagement had not been made public. He ceased to work; he was at her beck and call; he went with her everywhere. At her house, in her box at the opera, he met all Paris. She was hardly ever alone with him; he made one of a group. Nevertheless, they were talked about. Several orders for busts were the outcome of his meeting fashionable Paris; but he did not work. Toward March he received word from America that his bas-relief under the name of Thomas Rainsford had won the ten thousand dollar prize. He felt like a prince. For some singular reason he told no one, not even Dearborn. In writing to him the committee had told him that according to the contracts the money would not be forthcoming until July. He had gone through so many bitter disappointments in his life that he did not want in the minds of his friends to anticipate this payment and be disappointed anew.
Among his fellow-workers in the Barye studio was the son of a millionaire pork-packer from Chicago. The young man took a tremendous liking to Antony. With a certain perspicacity, the rich young fellow divined much of his new friend's needs. He came to the studio, to their different reunions, and chummed heartily with Dearborn and Fairfax. Peterson was singularly lacking in talent and tremendously over-furnished with heart. One day, as they worked side by side in the studio of the big man, Peterson watched Antony's handling of a tiger's head.
"By Jove!" cried the Chicagoan, "you are simply great—you are simply great! I wonder if you would be furious with me if I said something to you that is on my mind?"
The something on the simple young man's mind was that he wanted to lend Fairfax a sum of money, to be paid back when the sculptor saw fit. After a moment's hesitation Antony accepted the loan, making it one-third as much as the big-hearted chap had suggested. Fairfax set July as the date of payment, when his competitive money should come in. He borrowed just enough to keep him in food and clothes for the following months.
There were no motors in Paris then. In the mornings he drove with Mrs. Faversham to the Bois and limped by her side in theallées, whilst the worldly people stared at the distinguished, conspicuous couple. One day Barye himself stopped them, and to the big man Antony presented Mrs. Faversham who did not happen to know her fiancé's chief.
Fairfax looked at her critically as she laughed and was sweet and gracious. Carriages filed past them; shining equipages, the froth and wine of life flowed around them under the trees, whose chestnut torches were lit with spring.
Barye said to Antony, "Not working, are you, Rainsford?C'est dommage", and turning to Mrs. Faversham he added, nodding, "C'est dommage."
Antony heard the words throughout the day, and they haunted him—c'est dommage. Barye's voice had been light, but the sculptor knew the underlying ring in it. There is, indeed, no greater pity than for a man of talent not to work. That day he lunched with her on the terrace of her hotel overlooking the rose garden. Fairfax ate scarcely anything. Below his eyes spread aparterreof perfect purple heliotropes. The roses were beginning to bloom on their high trees, and the moist earth odours from the garden he had thought so exquisite came to him delicately on the warm breeze. But this day the place seemed oppressive, shut in by its high iron walls. In the corner of the garden, the gardener, an old man in blue overalls, bent industriously over his potting, and to Antony he seemed the single worthy figure. At the table he was surrounded by idlers and millionaires. He judged them bitterly to-day, brutally and unreasonably, and hastily looked toward Mrs. Faversham, his future life's companion, hoping that something in her expression or in her would disenchant him from the growing horror that was threatening to destroy his peace of mind. Mary Faversham was all in white; from her ears hung the pearls given her by her husband, whom she had never loved; around her neck hung a creamy rope of pearls; she was discussing with her neighbour the rising value of different jewels. It seemed to them both a vital and interesting subject.
It was the end of luncheon; the fragrance of the strawberries, the fragrance of the roses came heavily to Antony's nostrils.
His aunt, the Comtesse Potowski, sat at his right. She was saying—
"My dear boy, when are you going to be married? There is nothing like a happy marriage, Tony. A woman may have children, you know, and be miserable; she has not found the right man. I hope you will be very happy, Tony."
Some one asked her to sing, and Madame Potowski, languid, slim, with unmistakable distinction, rose to play. She suggested his mother to Antony. She sang selections from the opera then in vogue. Tony stood near the piano and listened. Her voice always affected him deeply, and as he had responded to it in the old days in New York he responded now, and there was a sense of misery at his heart as he listened to her singing the music of old times when he had been unable to carry out his ideals because of his suffering and poverty.
There was now a sense of soul discontent, of pitiless remorse. As if again to disenchant himself, he glanced at Mary as she, too, listened. Back of her in the vases were high branches of lilac, white and delicate, with the first beauty of spring; she sat gracefully indolent, smoking a cigarette, evidently dreaming of pleasant things. To Antony there was a blank wall now between him and his visions. How unreal everything but money seemed, and his soul stifled and his senses numbed. In this atmosphere of riches and luxury what place had he? Penniless, unknown, his stature stunted—for it had been dwarfed by his idleness. Again he heard Barye say, "C'est dommage."
His aunt's voice, bright as silver, filled the room. He believed she was singing for him expressly, for she had chosen an English ballad—"Roll on, silvery moon." Again, with a sadness which all imaginative and poetic natures understand, his present slipped away. He was back in Albany in the cab of his engine; the air bellied in his sleeve, the air of home whipped in his veins—he saw the fields as the engine flashed by them, whitening under the moonlight as the silvery moon rolled on! Howhe had sweated to keep himself a man, how he had toiled to keep his hope up and to live his life well, what a fight he had made in order that his visions might declare themselves to him!
When his aunt ceased to sing and people gathered around her, Tony rose and limped over to Mrs. Faversham. He put out his hand.
"I must go, Mary," he said. "I have some work to do this afternoon."
She smiled at him. "Don't be ridiculous, Tony."
The others had moved away to speak to the Comtesse Potowski, and they were alone.
"I am becoming ridiculous," said Antony, "that is true, but it is not because I am going to work."
She did not seem to notice anything in his gravity. "Don't forget we are dining and driving out to Versailles; don't forget, Tony."
Fairfax made no response. On his face was a pitiless look, but Mrs. Faversham, happy in her successful breakfast and enchanted with the music, did not read his expression.
"I will come in to-morrow, Mary."
Mrs. Faversham, turning to a man who had come up to her, still understood nothing.
"Don't forget, Tony,"—she nodded at him—"this afternoon."
Antony bade her good-bye. He looked back at her across the room, and she seemed to him then the greatest stranger of them all.
He went upstairs to his atelier with a strange eager hammering at his heart. For several weeks the studio had been, for him, little more than an ante-chamber—a dressing-room where he had made careful toilettes before going to Mrs. Faversham. His constant attendance upon a beautiful woman had turned him into something of a dandy, and the purchase of fine clothes and linen had eaten well into his borrowed money, which had been frankly used by Dearborn when in need.
"Dearborn, wear any of my things you like, only don't get ink spots on them, for God's sake!"
And Dearborn had responded, "I don't need to go courting in four-hundred-franc suits, Tony; Nora is my kind, you know."
And when Antony had flashed out, "What the devil do you mean?" Dearborn explained—
"Only that Nora and I are poor together. I didn't intend to be rude, old man."
Dearborn had gone to London third-class with his play under his arm and hope in his heart. Antony had not been sorry to find himself alone. When he was not with Mary he paced the floor, his idle hands in his pockets. At night he was restless, and he did not disturb any one when at two o'clock he would rise to smoke, and, leaning out of the window, watch the dawn come up over the Louvre, over the river and the quays. His easels, his tools, his covered busts mocked him as the dust settled down upon them. His part of the big room had fallen into disuse. In the salons of Mary Faversham nothing seemed important but the possession of riches; they talked of art there, but they discussed it easily, and no one ever spoke of work. They talked of books there,but the makers of them seemed men of another sphere. His aunt and the Comte Potowski sang there indeed, but to Antony their voices were only echoes. He had grown accustomed to objects whose possession meant small fortunes. His own few belongings seemed pitiful and sordid. Poverty at Albany had appalled him, but as yet his soul had been untarnished. Life seemed then a beautiful struggle. Here in Paris, too, as he worked with Dearborn in his studio, the lack of money had been unimportant, and privation only a step on which men of talent poised before going on. Lessons had been precious to him, and in his meagre existence all his untrammelled senses had been keen. Now his lack of material resource was terrible, degrading, sickening.
He threw open wide the window and let in the May sunlight, and the noise of the streets came with it. Below his window paused the "goat's milkman," calling sweetly on his little pipe; a girl cried lilies of the valley; there was a cracking of whips, the clattering of horses' feet, and the rattling of the little cabs. The peculiar impersonality of the few of the big city, the passing of the anonymous throng, had a soothing effect upon him. The river flowed quietly, swiftly past the Louvre, on which great white clouds massed themselves like snow. Fairfax drew a long breath and turned to the studio, put on his old corduroy clothes, filled himself a pipe, and uncovered one of his statues in the corner, and with his tools in his hand took his position before his discarded work.
This study had not struck him as being successful when he had thrown the cloth over it in February, when he had gone up to the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. Since that time he had not touched his clay. Now the piece of work struck his critical sense with its several qualities of merit. He was too real an artist not to see its value and to judge it. Was it possible that he had created that charming thing—had there been in him sufficient talent to form those plastic lines? It was impossible for Antony to put himself in the frame of mind in which he had been before he left his work; in vain he tried to bring back the old inspiration of feeling. The work was strange to him, and almost beautiful too. He was jealous of it, angry at it. Had he become in so shorta time a useless man? He should have been gaining in experience. A man is all the richer for being in love and being loved. The image of Mary would not come to him to soothe his irritation. He seemed to see her surrounded by people and things. Evidently his love had not inspired him, nor did luxury and the intercourse with worldly people. He had been the day before with Mary to see the crowning exhibition of a celebrated painter's work, the fruits of four years of labour. The artist himself, frightfully obese, smiling and self-satisfied, stood surrounded by his canvases. None of the paintings had the spontaneity and beauty of his early works—not one. Fairfax had heard a Latin Quarter student say, "B—— used to paint with his soul before he was rich, now he paints with his stomach." The marks of the beast had stamped out the divine seal.
As Fairfax mixed his clay in the silent room where he and Dearborn had half starved together, he said, "I have never yet become so frightfully rich as to imperil my soul."
In the declining spring light he began to model. He did not look like a happy man, like a happy lover, like a man destined to marry a beautiful woman with several millions of dollars. "Damn money," he muttered as he worked, and, after a little, "Damn poverty," he murmured. What was it, then, he could bless? In his present point of view nothing seemed blessed. He was working savagely and heavily, but hungrily too, as though he besought his hands to find again for him the sacred touch that should electrify him again, or as though he prayed his brain to send its enlightened message to his hand, or as though he called on his emotion to warm his hardened heart—a combination which he believed was needful to work and art. Fairfax was so working when the porter brought him a letter.
It was from Dearborn, and Antony read it eagerly, holding it up to the fading light. As he saw Dearborn's handwriting he realized that he missed his companion, and also realized the strong link between them which is so defined between those who work at a kindred art.
"Dear old man,"—the letter was dated London—"I am sky-high in a room for which I pay a shilling anight. A thing in the roof is called a window. Through it I see a field of pots—not flower-pots, but chimney-pots—and the smoke from them is hyacinthine. The smoke of endless winters and innumerable fogs has grimed every blessed thing in this filthy room. My bed-spread is grey cloth, once meant to be white. Other lodgers have left burnt matches on the faded carpet, whose flowers have long since been put out by the soot. Out of this hole in the roof I see London, the sky-line of London in a spring sky. There is a singular sort of beauty in this sky, as if it had trailed its cerulean mantle over fields of English bluebells. For another shilling I dine; for another I lunch. I skip breakfast. I calculate I can stay here ten days, then the shillings will be all gone, Tony. In these ten days, old man, I shall sell my play. I am writing you this on the window-sill; without is the mutter of soft thunder of London—the very word London thrills me to the marrow. Such great things have come out of London—such prose—such verse—such immortality!
"To-day I passed 'Jo,' Dickens's street-sweeper, in Dickens's 'Bleak House.' I felt like saying to him, 'I am as poor as you are, Jo, to-day,' but I remembered there were a few shillings between us.
"Well, old man, as I sit here I seem to have risen high above the roof-tops and to look down on the struggle in this great vortex of life, and here and there a man goes amongst them all, carrying a wreath of laurel. Tony, my eyes are upon him! Call me a fool if you will, call me mad; at any rate I have faith. I know I will succeed. Something tells me I will stand before the curtain when they call my name. It is growing late. I must go out and forage for food ... Tony. I kiss the hand of the beautiful Mrs. Faversham."
Antony turned the pages between his fingers. The reading of the letter had smoothed the creases from his brow. He sighed as he lifted his head to say "Come in," for some one had knocked timidly at the door.
"Hello!" Fairfax said, and now that they were alone he called her "Aunt Caroline."
Madame Potowski came forward and kissed him.
He drew a big chair into the window. He was always solicitous of her and a little pitiful.
Madame Potowski's hair had been soft brown once; it was golden, frankly so, now, and her fine lips were a little rouged. In her dress of changeable silk, her cape of tulle, her hat with a bunch of roses, her tiny gloved hands, she was a very elegant little lady. She rested her hands on her parasol and had suggested his mother to Antony. Then, as that resemblance passed, came the fleeting suggestion which he never cared to hold—of Bella.
"I have come, my dear Tony, to see you. I wanted to see you alone."
Tony lit a cigar and sat by her side. The Comtesse Potowski had a little diamond watch with a chain on her breast. Outside the clock struck five.
"I have only a second to stay—my husband misses me if I am five minutes out of his sight."
"I do not wonder, Aunt Caroline."
"Isn't it all strange, Tony," she asked, "how very far up we have come?"
He shook the ashes off his cigar. "Well, I don't feel myself very far up, Aunt Caroline."
"My dear Tony, aren't you going to marry an immense fortune?"
"Is that what people say, Aunt Caroline?"
"You are going to do a very brilliant thing, Tony."
"Is that what you call going very far up?"
His aunt shook her pretty head. "Money is the greatest power in the world, dear boy. Art is very well, but there is nothing in the wide world like an income, dear."
Her nephew stirred in his chair. Caroline Potowski looked down at her little diamond watch, her dress shining like a bunch of many-hued roses. Antony knew that her husband was rich; he also made a good income from his singing and she must have made not an inconsiderable fortune.
"What are you thinking about?" said his aunt later, her hand on his own. "You have shown great wisdom, great worldly wisdom."
"My God!" exclaimed her nephew between his teeth.
If Madame Potowski heard this exclamation, it was not tragic to her. She lowered her tone, although there was no one to hear them.
"Tony, I am very anxious about money."
Her nephew laughed aloud. In spite of himself there came over him in a flash the memory of the day nearly ten years ago when she sat on the side of his miserable little bed in his miserable little room in New York and took from him as a loan—which she never meant to pay back—all the money he had in the world. He put his hands in his pockets.
"Has your husband any financial difficulties?"
"My husband knows nothing about it," she said serenely. "You don't suppose I could tell him, do you? I must have five thousand francs, dear Tony, before to-morrow."
Tony said lightly, "I am afraid economy is not your strong point."
"Tony," she exclaimed reproachfully, "I am a wonderful manager; I can make a franc go further than my husband can a louis, and I have a real gift for bargains. Think of it! I only had one hundred dollars a month to dress myself and Bella and poor little Gardiner, and for all my little expenses." The children's names on her lips seemed sacrilege to him. He did not wish her to speak those sacred names, or destroy his sacred past, whose charm and tenderness persisted over all the suffering and which nothing could destroy. "I have been buying a quantity of old Chinese paintings—a great bargain; in ten years they will be worth double the money. You must come and see them. The dealer will deliver them to-morrow."
"History," Antony thought, "how it repeats itself!"
Caroline Potowski leaned toward her nephew persuasively, and even in the softened twilight he saw the weakness and the caprices of her pretty face, and he pitied Potowski.
"I must have five thousand francs before to-morrow," said his aunt, "otherwise these dealers will make me trouble."
Fairfax laughed again. With a touch of bitterness he said—
"And I must have an income of five times as much as that a year—ten times as much as that a year—unless I wish to feel degraded because I am a poor labourer."
The comtesse did not reply to this. As she did not, Fairfax saw the humour of it.
"You do not really think I could give you five thousand francs, auntie?"
"I know you haven't a great deal of money, dear boy——"
"Not a great deal, auntie."
"But you seem to have such a lot of time to spend to amuse yourself."
He nodded. "So I seem to have."
The comtesse looked at him a little askance. "You are going to make such a brilliant marriage. Mrs. Faversham is so fearfully rich."
Fairfax exclaimed, but shut down on the words that came to his lips. He realized that his aunt was a toy woman, utterly irresponsible, a pretty fool. He said simply—
"You had better frankly tell your husband."
She swung her parasol to and fro. "You think so, Tony?"
"Decidedly."
"And you couldn't possibly manage, Tony?"
Tony pointed to his studies. "These are my only assets; these are my finances, auntie. I shall have to sell something to live on—if I am so lucky as to be able to find a customer."
"If I could give the dealer a thousand francs tomorrow I think he would wait," said his aunt.
Tony shook his head. "I wish I were a millionaire for five minutes, Aunt Caroline."
His aunt rose and smoothed her glove. "I shall have to pawn my watch and necklace," she said tranquilly. "Bella is fearfully rich," she drawled, nodding at him, "and she is of age. Her father will settle a million on her when she marries."
A pang went through Fairfax's heart. Another heiress!
"They say she is awfully pretty and awfully sought after."
Antony murmured, "Yes, yes, of course," and took a few paces up and down the room.
"Do you know," said his aunt, who had slowly walkedover to the door and stood with her hand on the knob, "I used to think you were a little in love with Bella. She was such a funny, old-fashioned child, so grown up."
Fairfax exclaimed fiercely, "Aunt Caroline, I don't like to re-live the past!"
"I don't wonder," she murmured quietly; "and you are going to make such a brilliant marriage."
He saw her go with relief. She was terrible to him—like a vampire in her silks and jewels. Would she ruin her innocent, kindly husband? What would she do if she could not raise the money? He believed her capable of anything.
For three days he worked feverishly, and then he wrote to Mrs. Faversham that he was a little seedy and working, and that as Dearborn was away he would rather she would not come to the studio. Mrs. Faversham accepted his decision and wrote that she was organizing a charity concert for some fearfully poor people whom the Comtesse Potowski was patronizing; the comte and comtesse would both sing at themusicale, and he must surely come. "We must raise five thousand francs," she wrote, "and perhaps you may have some little figurine that we could raffle off in chances."
Tony laughed as he read the letter. He sent her a statuette to be raffled off for his aunt's Chinese paintings. She was ignorant of any sense of honour.
When Dearborn came back from London he found Antony working like mad.
Dearborn threw his suit-case down in the corner, his hat on top of it, and extended his hands.
"Empty-handed, Tony!"
But Fairfax, as he scanned his friend's face, saw no expression of defeat there.
"Which means you left your play in London, Bob."
"Tony," said Dearborn, linking his arm in Fairfax's and marching him up and down the studio, "we are going to be very rich."
"Only that," said Tony shortly.
"This is the beginning of fame and fortune, old man!"
Dearborn sat down on the worn sofa, drew his wallet out of his pocket, took from it a sheaf of English notes, which he held up to Fairfax.
"Count it, old chap."
Fairfax shook his head. "No; tell me how much for two years' flesh and blood and soul—how you worked here, Bob, starved here, how you felt and suffered!"
"I forget it all," said the playwright quietly; "but it can never be paid for with such chaff as this,"—he touched the notes. "But the applause, the people's voices, the tears and laughter, that will pay."