Rainsford soothed his friend, but Fairfax's voice was low with passion, no one could overhear its intense tone.
"Don't for a moment think I have lost my senses. If you don't believe me, give me a pencil and paper and I'll sketch you what I mean."
Rainsford was very much impressed and startled. "If what you say is true," he murmured.
And Fairfax, who had regained some of his control—he knew better than any one the futility of his miserable adventure—exclaimed—
"Oh, it's true enough; but there is nothing to do about it. Cedersholm knows that better than any one else."
He sat back, and his face grew dark and heavy with its brooding. His companion watched him helplessly, only half convinced of the truth of the statement. Fairfax lifted his eyes and naïvely exclaimed—
"Isn't it cruel, Rainsford? You speak of failures; did you ever see such a useless one as this? Cedersholm and his beasts which they say right here are the best things in modern sculpture, and me with my engine and my—" He stopped. "Give me the bill," he called to George Washington.
The old darkey, used as he was to his gentleman's moods, found this one stranger than usual.
"Anythin' wrong with the dinner, Kunnell?" he asked tremulously. "Very sorry, Capting. Fust time yo'—"
Fairfax put the money in his hand. "All right, George," he assured kindly, "your dinner's all right—don't worry. Good-bye." And he did not say as he usually did, "See you next Sunday." For he had determined to go down to New York for the unveiling of the monument.
The May afternoon, all sunshine and sparkle, had a wine to make young hope spring from old graves and age forget its years, and youth mad with its handicaps; a day to inspire passion, talent, desire, and to make even goodness take new wings.
With the crowd of interested and curious, Antony Fairfax entered Central Park through the Seventy-second Street gate. Lines of carriages extended far into Fifth Avenue, and he walked along by the side of a smart victoria where a pretty woman sat under her sunshade and smiled on the world and spring. Fairfax saw that she was young and worldly, and thought for some time of his mother, of women he might have known, and when the victoria passed him, caught the lady's glance as her look wandered over the crowd. A May-day party of school children spread over the lawn at his left, the pole's bright streamers fluttering in the breeze. The children danced gaily, too small to care for the unveiling of statues or for ancient Egypt. The bright scene and the day's gladness struck Antony harsh as a glare in weakened eyes. He was gloomy and sardonic, his heart beating out of tune, his genial nature had been turned to gall.
The Mall was roped off, and at an extempore gate a man in uniform received the cards of admission. Fairfax remembered the day he had endeavoured to enter the Field Palace and his failure.
"I'm a mechanic," he said hastily to the gateman, "one of Mr. Cedersholm's workmen."
The man pushed him through, and he went in with a group of students from Columbia College.
In a corner of the Mall, on the site he had indicated to the little cousins, rose a white object covered by asheeting, which fell to the ground. Among the two hundred persons gathered were people of distinction. There was to be speech-making. Fairfax did not know this or who the speakers were to be. All that he knew or cared was that at three o'clock of this Saturday his Beasts—his four primitive creatures—were to be unveiled. He wore his workday clothes, his Pride had led him to make the arrogant display of his contempt of the class he had deserted. His hat was pushed back on his blond head. His blue eyes sparkled and he thrust his disfigured hands into his pockets to keep them quiet. The lady beside whose carriage he had stood came into the roped-off enclosure, and found a place opposite Fairfax. Once more her eyes fell on the workman's handsome face. He looked out of harmony with the people who had gathered to see the unveiling of Mr. Cedersholm's pedestal.
For the speakers, a desk and platform had been arranged, draped with an American flag. Antony listened coldly to the first address, arésuméof the dynasty in whose dim years the Abydos Sphinx was hewn, and the Egyptologist's learning, the dust he stirred of golden tombs, and the perfumes of the times that he evoked, were lost to the up-state engineer who only gazed on the veiled monument.
His look, however, returned to the desk, when Cedersholm took the place, and Fairfax, from the sole of his lame foot to his fair head, grew cold. His bronze beasts were not more hard and cold in their metallic bodies, nor was the Sphinx more petrified. Cedersholm had aged, and seemed to Fairfax to have warped and shrunk and to stand little more than a pitiful suit of clothes with aboutonnièrein the lapel of the pepper-and-salt coat. There was nothing impressive about the sleek grey head, though his single eye-glass gave him distinction. The Columbia student next to Fairfax, pushed by the crowd, touched Antony Fairfax's great form and felt as though he had touched a colossus.
Cedersholm spoke on art, on the sublimity of plastic expression. He spoke rapidly and cleverly. His audience interrupted him by gratifying whispers of "Bravo, bravo," and the gentle tapping of hands. He was clearly a favourite, a great citizen, a great New Yorker, and agreat man. Directly opposite the desk was a delegation from the Century Club, Cedersholm's friends all around him. To Fairfax, they were only brutes, black and white creatures, no more—mummers in a farce. Cedersholm did not speak of his own work. With much delicacy he confined his address to the past. And his adulation of antiquity showed him to be a real artist, and he spoke with love of the relics of the perfect age. In closing he said—
"Warm as may be our inspirations, great as may be any modern genius, ardent as may be our labour, let each artist look at the Abydos Sphinx and know that the climax has been attained. We can never touch the antique perfection again."
Glancing as he did from face to face, Cedersholm turned toward the Columbia students who adored him and whose professor in art he was. Searching the young faces for sympathy, he caught sight of Fairfax. He remembered who he was, their eyes met. Cedersholm drank a glass of water at his hand, bowed to his audience, and stepped down. He moved briskly, his head a little bent, crossed the enclosure, and joined the lady whom Fairfax had observed.
"That," Fairfax heard one of his neighbours say, "is Mr. Cedersholm's fiancée, Mrs. Faversham."
Fairfax raised his eyes to the statue. There was a slight commotion as the workmen ranged the ropes. Then, very gracefully, evidently proud as a queen, the lady, followed by Mr. Cedersholm, went up to the pedestal, took the ropes in her gloved hands, and there was a flutter and the conventional covering slipped and fell to the earth. There was an exclamation, a murmur, the released voices murmured their praise, Cedersholm was surrounded. Fairfax, immovable, stood and gazed.
The pedestal was of shell-pink marble, carved in delicate bas-relief. Many of the drawings Antony had made. Isis with her cap of Upper and Lower Egypt, Hathor with the eternal oblation—the Sphinx.... God and the Immortals alone knew who had made it.
On its great, impassive face, on its ponderous body, there was no signature, no name. Under the four corners, between Sphinx and pedestal, crouched four bronzecreatures, their forms and bodies visible between the stones of the pink pedestal and the soft blue of the Egyptian granite. The bold, severe modelling, their curious primitive conception, the life and realism of the creatures were poignant in their suggestion of power. The colour of the bronze was beautiful, would be more beautiful still as the years went on. The beasts supported the Egyptian monument. They rested between the pedestal and the Sphinx; they were the support and they were his. They seemed, to the man who had made them, beautiful indeed. Forgetting his outrage and his revenge, in the artist, Fairfax listened timidly, eagerly, for some word to be murmured in the crowd, some praise for his Beasts.
He heard many.
The students at his side were enthusiastic, they had made studies from the moulds; moulds of the Beasts were already in the Metropolitan Museum. The young critics were lavish, profuse. They compared the creatures with the productions of the Ancients.
"Cedersholm is a magician, he is one of the greatest men of his time...."
The man in working clothes smiled, but his expression was gentler than it had been hitherto. He lifted his soft hat and ran his fingers through his blond hair and remained bareheaded in the May air that blew about him; his fascinated eyes were fastened on the Abydos Sphinx, magnetized by the calm, inscrutable melancholy, by the serene indifference. The stony eyes were fixed on the vistas of the new world, the crude Western continent, as they had been fixed for centuries on the sands of the pathless desert, on the shifting sands that relentlessly effaced footsteps of artist and Pharaoh, dynasty and race.
Who knew who had made this wonder?
How small and puny Cedersholm seemed in his pepper-and-salt suit, hisboutonnièreand single eye-glass, his trembling heart. His heart trembled, but only Fairfax knew it; he felt that he held it between his hands. "He must have thought I was dead," he reflected. "What difference did it make," Fairfax thought, "whether or not the Egyptian who had hewn the Sphinx had murdered another man for stealing his renown? After four thousand years, all the footsteps were effaced." His heart grewsomewhat lighter, and between himself and the unknown sculptor there seemed a bond of union.
The students and the master had drifted away. Cedersholm was in the midst of his friends. Fairfax would not have put out his hand to take his laurel. His spirit and soul had gone into communion with a greater sculptor of the Sphinx, the unknown Egyptian. Standing apart from the crowd where Cedersholm was being congratulated, Fairfax remarked the lady again, and that she stood alone as was he. She seemed pensive, turning her lace parasol between her hands, her eyes on the ground. The young man supposed her to be dreaming of her lover's greatness. He recalled the day, two years ago, when with Bella and Gardiner he had come up before the opening in the earth prepared for the pedestal. "Wait, wait, my hearties!" he had said.
Well, one of them had gone on, impatient, to the unveiling of greater wonders, and Antony had come to his unclaimed festival alone....
He said to Rainsford at luncheon, over nuts and raisins, and coffee as black as George Washington's smiling face—
"I reckon you think I've got a heart of cotton, don't you? I reckon you think I don't come up to the scratch, do you, old man? I assure you that I went down to New York seeing scarlet. I had made my plans. Afterward, mind you, Rainsford, not of course before a whole lot of people,—but in his own studio, I intended to tell Cedersholm a few truths. Upon my honour, I believe Icouldhave killed him."
Rainsford held a pecan nut between the crackers which he pressed slowly as he listened to his friend. Antony's big hand was spread out on the table; its grip would have been powerful on a man's throat.
"We often get rid of our furies on the way," said Rainsford, slowly. "We keep them housed so long that they fly away unobserved at length. And when at last we open the door, and expect to find them ready with their poisons, they've gone, vanished every one."
"Not in this case," Fairfax shook his head. "I shall call on them all some day and they will all answer me. But yesterday wasn't the time. You'll think me poorer-spirited than ever, I daresay, but the woman he is going to marry was there, a pretty woman, and she seemed to love him."
Fairfax glanced up at the agent and saw only comprehension.
"Quite right, Tony." Rainsford returned Fairfax's look over his glistening eyeglasses, cracked the pecan nut and took out the meat. "I am not surprised."
Antony, who had taken a clipping from his wallet, held it out.
"Read this. I cut it out a week ago. Yesterday in the Central Park old ambitions struck me hard. Read it."
The notice was from a Western paper, and spoke in detail of a competition offered to American sculptors by the State of California, for the design in plaster of a tomb. The finished work was to be placed in the great new cemetery in Southern California. The prize to be awarded was ten thousand dollars and the time for handing in the design a year.
"Not a very cheerful or inspiring subject, Tony."
On the contrary, Fairfax thought so. He leaned forward eagerly, and Rainsford, watching him, saw a transfigured man.
"Death," said the engineer, "has taken everything from me. Life has given me nothing, old man. I have a feeling that perhaps now, through this, I may regain what I have lost.... I long to take my chance."
The other exclaimed sympathetically, "My dear fellow, you must take it by all means."
Fairfax remained thoughtful a moment, then asked almost appealingly——
"Why, how can I do so? Such an effort would cost my living,herliving, the renting of a place to work in...." As he watched Rainsford's face his eyes kindled.
"I offered to lend you money once, Tony," recalled his friend, "and I wish to God you'd taken the loan then, because just at present—"
The Utter Failure raised his near-sighted eyes, and the look of disappointment on the bright countenance of the engineer cut him to the heart.
"Never mind." Fairfax's voice was forced in its cheerfulness. "Something or other will turn up, I shall work Sundays and half-days, and I reckon I can put it through. I am bound to," he finished ardently, "just bound to."
Rainsford said musingly, "I made a little investment, but it went to pot. I hoped—I'm always hoping—but the money didn't double itself."
The engineer didn't hear him. He was already thinking how he could transform his kitchen into a studio, although it had an east light. Just here Rainsford leaned over and put his hand on Antony's sleeve."I want to say a word to you about your wife. I don't think she's very well."
"Molly?" answered his companion calmly. "She's all right. She has a mighty fine constitution, and I never heard her complain. When did you see her, Rainsford?" He frowned.
"Saturday, when you were in New York. You forgot to send your pass-book, and I went for it myself."
"Well?" queried Antony. "What then?"
"Mrs. Fairfax gave me the book, and I stopped to speak with her for a few moments. I find her very much changed."
The light died from the young man's illumined face where his visions had kindled a sacred fire. The realities of life blotted it out.
"I'm not able to give Molly any distractions, that you know."
"She doesn't want them, Tony." Rainsford looked kindly and affectionately, almost tenderly, at him, and repeated gently: "She doesn't want amusement, Tony."
And Fairfax threw up his head with a sort of despair on his face—
"My God, Rainsford," he murmured, "what can I do?"
"I'm afraid she's breaking her heart," said the older man. "Poor little woman!"
In the little room they used as parlour-kitchen and which to one of the inhabitants at least was lovely, Fairfax found Molly sitting by the window through which the spring light fell. The evening was warm. Molly wore a print dress, and in her bodice he saw that she had thrust a spray of pink geranium from the window-boxes that Antony had made and filled for her. Nothing that had claim to beauty failed to touch his senses, and he saw the charm of the picture in the pale spring light. He had softly turned the door-handle, and as there was a hand-organ playing without and Molly listening to the music, he entered without her hearing him.
"Is it yourself?" she exclaimed, startled. "You're home early, Tony."
He told her that he had come to take her for a little walk, and as she moved out of the light and came toward him, he thought he knew what Rainsford had meant. She was thin and yet not thin. The roundness had gone from her cheeks, and there was a mild sadness in her eyes. Reproached and impatient, suffering as keenly as she, he was nevertheless too kind of heart and nature not to feel the tragedy of her life. He drew her to him and kissed her. She made no response, and feeling her a dead weight he found that as he held her she had fainted away. He laid her on the bed, loosened her dress, and bathed her icy temples. Before she regained consciousness he saw her pallor, and that she had greatly changed. He was very gentle and tender with her when she came to herself; and, holding her, said—
"Molly, why didn't you tell me, dear? Why didn't you tell me?"
She had thought he would be angry with her.
He exclaimed, hurt: "Am I such a brute to you, Molly?"
Ah, no; not that. But two was all he could look out for.
He kneeled, supporting her. Oh, if he could only be glad of it, then she would be happy. She'd not let it disturb him. It would be sure to be beautiful and have his eyes and hair.
He listened, touched. There was a mystery, a beauty in her voice with its rich cadence, her trembling breath, her fast beating pulse, her excitement. Below in the street the organ played, "Gallagher's Daughter Belle," then changed to—ah, how could he bear it!—"My Old Kentucky Home." Tears sprang to his eyes. Motherhood was sacred to him. Was he to have a son? Was he to be a father? He must make her happy, this modest, undemanding girl whom he had made woman and a wife. He kissed her and she clung to him, daring to whisper something of her adoration and her gratitude.
When after supper he stood with her in the window and looked out over the river where the anchored steamers were in port for over Sunday, and the May sunset covered the crude brick buildings with a garment of glory, he was astonished to find that the stone at his heart which had lain there so long was rolled a little away. He picked up the geranium which Molly had worn at her breast and which had fallen when she fainted, and put it in his button-hole. It was crushed and sweet. Molly whispered that he would kill her with goodness, and that "she was heart happy."
"Are you, really?" he asked her eagerly. "Then we'll have old Rainsford to supper, and you must tell him so!"
Fairfax, stirred as he had been to the depths by his visit to New York, awake again to the voices of his visions, could give but little of himself to his home life or to his work. The greatest proof of his kindly heart was that he did not let Molly see his irritation or his agony of discontent. If he were only nothing but an engineer with an Irish wife! Why, why, was he otherwise? In his useless rebellion the visions came and told him why—told him that to be born as he was, gifted as he was, was the most glorious thing and the most suffering thing in the world.
To the agent who had accepted the Fairfax hospitality and come to supper, Tony said—
"To ease my soul, Peter, I want to tell you of something I did."
Molly had washed the dishes and put them away, and, with a delicate appreciation of her husband's wish to be alone with his friend, went into the next room.
"After mother died my old nigger mammy in New Orleans sent me a packet of little things. I could never open the parcel until the other day. Amongst the treasures was a diamond ring, Rainsford, one I had seen her wear when I was a little boy. I took it to a jeweller on Market Street, and he told me it was worth a thousand dollars."
Here Tony remained silent so long that his companion said—
"That's a lot of money, Tony."
"Well, it came to me," said the young man simply, "like a gift from her. I asked them to lend me five hundred dollars on it for a year. It seems that it's a peculiarly fine stone, and they didn't hesitate."
Rainsford was smoking a peaceful pipe, and he heldthe bowl affectionately in his hand, his attention fixed on the blond young man sitting in the full light of the evening. The night was warm, Fairfax was in snowy shirt-sleeves, his bright hair cropped close revealed the beautiful lines of his head; he was a powerful man, clean in habits of body and mind, and his expression as he talked was brilliant and fascinating, his eyes profound and blue. Around his knees he clasped the hands that drove an engine and ached to model in plaster and clay. His big shoe was a deformity, otherwise he was superb.
"I've taken a studio, Rainsford," he smiled. "Tito Falutini found it for me. It is a shed next to the lime-kiln in Canal Street. I've got my material and I'm going to begin my work for the California competition."
The older, to whom enthusiasm was as past a joy as success was a dim possibility, said thoughtfully—
"When will you work?"
"Sundays, half-holidays and nights. God!" he exclaimed in anticipation, holding out his strong arms, "it seems too good to be true!"
And Rainsford said, "I think I can contrive to get Saturdays off for you. The Commodore is coming up next week. He owes me a favour or two. I think I can make it foryou, old man."
There was a little stir in the next room. Fairfax called "Molly!" and she came in. She might have been a lady. Long association with Fairfax and her love had taught her wonders. Her hair was carefully arranged and brushed until it shone like glass. Her dress was simple and refined; her face had the beauty on it that a great and unselfish love sheds.
"It means," said Rainsford to himself as he rose and placed a chair for her, "that Molly will be left entirely alone."
What Rainsford procured for him in the Saturday holidays was worth the weight of its hours in gold. This, with Sundays, gave him two working days, and no lover went more eagerly to his mistress than Antony to the barracks where he toiled and dreamed. He began with too mad enthusiasm, lacking the patience to wait until his conceptions ripened. He roughly made his studies for an Angel of the Resurrection, inspired by the figure in the West Albany Cemetery. As he progressed he was conscious that his hand had been idle, as far as his art was concerned, too long; his fingers were blunted and awkward, and many an hour he paced his shed in agony of soul, conscious of his lack of technique. He was too engrossed to be aware of the passing months, but autumn came again with its wonderful haze, veiling death, decay and destruction, and Fairfax found himself but little more advanced than in May, when he had shut himself in his studio, a happy man.
He grew moody and tried to keep his despair from his wife, for not the least of his unrest was caused by the knowledge that he was selfish with her for the sake of his art. By October he had destroyed a hundred little figures, crushed his abortive efforts to bits, and made a clean sweep of six months' work and stood among the ruins. He never in these moments thought of his wife as a comforter, having never opened his heart to her regarding his art. He shrank from giving her entrance into his sanctuaries. He was alone in his crisis of artistic infecundity.
On this Sunday morning he left his studio early, turned the key and walked up Eagle Street toward the church he had not entered since he was married. Ledby discontent and by a hope that beneath the altar in his old place he might find peace and possibly hear a voice which would tell him as every creator must be told—HOW. He listened to the music and to the Litany, the rich, full voices singing their grave, solemn pagan appeal; but the sensuous ecstasy left Fairfax indifferent and cold. To-day there were no visions around the altar through whose high windows came the autumn glory staining the chancel like the Grail. His glance wandered to the opposite side of the church where in the front pew were the young scholars of Canon's School, a bevy of girls; and he thought with a pang of Bella. She wouldn't be little Bella Carew much longer, for she was nearly sixteen, charming little Bella. He thought of the statue he had made and which had been so wantonly destroyed, and with this came the feeling that everything he touched had been warped and distorted. Ashamed of this point of view, he sighed and rose with the others at the Creed. He repeated it with conviction, and at the words, "Resurrection and the Life Everlasting," he dwelt upon "Everlasting Life" as though he would draw from the expression such consolation as should make him belittle the transient show with its mass of failures and unhappy things, and render immortal only that in him which was still aspiring, still his highest. He was glad to see instead of the curate a man with a red hood mount the pulpit steps, and he knew it was the Canon himself. With a new interest in his mind he sat erect.
For the first time since he had come to the North a man whom he could revere and admire stood before him. The Canon's clear-cut heavenly face, his gracious voice, his outstretched hand as he blessed his people, made an agreeable impression on the young man out of his element, nearly shipwrecked and entirely alone. It occurred to him to speak to the Canon after service; but what should he say? What appeal could he make? He was an engineer married to a Roman Catholic woman of the other class, too poor a specimen of his own class to remain in it. Since his marriage he had felt degraded in society, out of place. If the Canon had advice to give him, it would be to shut up his studio and devote himself to his wife.
He wandered slowly out of the building amongst the others into the golden autumn day, and the music of the organ rolled after him like a rich blessing. He waited to let the line of schoolgirls pass him, and all of a sudden as he looked at them their ranks broke, he heard a cry, an exclamation, and a call—
"Cousin Antony!"
Before she could be prevented she had flown to him. Not throwing herself against him in the old mad sweetness of her impulsive nature,—both pretty gloved hands were held out to him and her upturned face lifted all sparkle and brilliance, her red lips parted. "Oh, Cousin Antony!"
Both Fairfax's hands held hers.
"Quick!" she cried, "before Miss Jackson comes out. Where do you live? When will you come to see me? But you can't come! We're not allowed to have gentlemen callers! When can I come to see you? Dear Cousin Antony, how glad I am!"
"Bella!" he murmured, and gazed at her.
The rank-and-file of schoolgirls, giggling, outraged and diverted, passed them by, and the stiff teachers were the last to appear from the church.
"Tell me," Bella repeated, "where do you live? I'll write you. I've composed tons of letters, but I forgot the number in Nut Street. Here's Miss Jackson, the horrid thing! Hurry, Cousin Antony."
He said, "Forty, Canal Street," and wondered why he had told her.
Miss Jackson and Miss Teeter passed the two, and were so absorbed in discussing the text of the sermon that neither saw Mistress Bella Carew.
"I'm safe," she cried, "the old cats! The girls will never tell—they're all too sweet. But I must go; I'll just say I've dropped my Prayer-book. There, you take it!"
And she was gone.
Antony stood staring at the flitting figure as Bella ran after the others down the steps like an autumn leaf blown by a light wind. She wore a brown dress down to her boot tops (her boots too were brown with bows at the tops); her little brown gloves had held his hand in what had been the warmest, friendliest clasp imaginable.She wore a brown hat with a plume in it that drooped and dangled, and Antony had looked into her brown eyes and seen their bright affection once more.
Well, he had known that she was going to be like this! Not quite, though; no man ever knows what a woman can be, will be, or ever is. He felt fifty years old as he walked down the steps and turned towards Canal Street to the door he had fastened four hours before on his formless visions.
He did not go home that day.
Towards late evening he sat in the twilight, his head in his hands, a pile of smoked cigarettes and Bella's Prayer-book on the table before him.... In the wretched afternoon he had read, one after another, the services: Marriage ... for better or for worse, till death do us part.... The Baptismal service, and the Burial for the Dead.
At six he rose with a sigh, and, though it was growing dark, he began to draw aimlessly, and Rainsford, when he came in, found Tony sketching, and the young man said—
"You don't give a fellow much of your company these days, Peter. Have a cigarette? I've smoked a whole box myself."
"I'm glad to see you working, Fairfax."
"You don't know how glad I am," Fairfax exclaimed; "but the light's bad."
Putting aside his drawing-board, he turned to his friend, and, with an ardour such as he had not displayed since the old days at the Delavan, began to tell of his conception.
"I have given up my idea of a single figure. I shall make a bas-relief, a great circular tablet, if you understand, a wall with curving sides, and emblematic figures in high relief. It will be a mighty fine piece of work, Rainsford, if it's ever done."
"What will your figures be, Tony?"
"Ah, they won't let me see their forms or faces yet." He changed the subject. "What have you done with your Sunday, old man? Slept all day?"
"No, I've been sitting for an hour or two with Mrs. Fairfax."
Molly's husband murmured, "I'm a brute, and no one knows it better than I do."
Rainsford made no refutation of his friend's accusation of himself, but suggested—
"She might bring her sewing in the afternoons, Tony; it would be less lonely for her?"
Fairfax noticed the flush that rose along the agent's thin cheek.
"By Jove!" Fairfax reflected. "I wonder if old Rainsford is in love with Molly?" The supposition did not make him jealous.
The two men went home together, and Rainsford stayed to supper as he had taken a habit of doing, for Fairfax did not wish to be alone. But when at ten o'clock the guest had gone and the engineer and his wife were alone together in their homely room, Fairfax said—
"Don't judge me too harshly, Molly."
Judge him? Did he think she did?
"You might well, my dear."
He took the hand that did all the work for his life and home and which she tried to keep as "ladylike" as she knew, and said, his eyes full on her—
"I do the best I can. I'm an artist, that's the truth of it! There's something in me that's stronger than anything else in the world. I reckon it's talent. I don't know how good it is or how ignoble; but it's brutal, and I've got to satisfy it, Molly."
Didn't she know it, didn't Mr. Rainsford tell her? Didn't she want to leave him free?
"You're the best girl in the world!" he cried contritely, and checked the words, "You should never have married me."
She couldn't see the struggle in him, but she could observe how pale he was. She never caressed him. She had long since learned that it was not what he wanted; but she laid her hand on his head, for he was sitting on the bed, and it might have been his mother who spoke—
"You're clear tired out," she said gently. "Will I fix up a bed for you in the kitchen to-night? You'll lie better."
He accepted gratefully. To-morrow, being Monday, was the longest day in the week for him.
He could not permit himself to go to church again, but during the next few days he half expected to hear a knock at the door which should announce Bella. But she did not come, and he was glad that she did not, and more than once, in the evening, he walked around the school building, up —— Street, looking at the lighted windows of the house where the doves were safely coted, and thought of the schoolgirl, with her books and her companions.
"... Not any more perfectly straight lines, Cousin Antony ..."
And the leaves fell, piles of them, red and yellow, and were swept and burned in fires whose incense was sweet to him, and the trees in the school garden grew bare.
In the first days of his Albany life, his Visions had used to meet him in those streets; now there seemed to be no inspiration for him anywhere, and he wondered if it were his marriage that had levelled all pinnacles for him or his daily mechanical work? His associations with Tito Falutini? Or if it were only that he was no sculptor at all, not equal to his dreams!
In the leaf-strewn street, near the Canon's School, he called on the Images to return, and, half halting in his walk, he looked up at one lighted window as if he expected to see a girlish figure there and catch sight of a friendly little hand that waved to him; but there was no such greeting.
That afternoon, as he went into his studio, some one rose from the sofa, and his wife's voice called to him—
"Don't be startled, Tony. I just came for awhile to sit with you."
He was amazed. Molly had never crossed the threshold of the workroom before, not having been invited. She had brought her sewing. It was so lonely in the little rooms, she wondered if it wasn't lonesome in the studio as well?
Smoking and walking to and fro, his hands in his pockets, Fairfax glanced at his wife as she took up the little garments on which she was at work. Her skin was stainless as a lily save here and there where the golden fleck of a freckle marred its whiteness. Her reddish hair, braided in strands, was wound flatly around her head.There was a purity in her face, a Mystery that was holy to him. He crossed over to her side and lit the lamp for her.
"Who suggested your coming? Rainsford?"
"Nobody. I wanted to come, just."
He threw himself down on the sofa near her. "I can't work!" he exclaimed. "I've not been able to do anything for weeks. I reckon I'm no good. I'm going to let the whole thing go."
Molly folded her sewing and laid it on the table. "Would you show me what you've been workin' at, Tony?"
The softness of her brogue had not gone, but she had been a rapid pupil unconsciously taught, and her speech had improved.
"I've destroyed most of my work," he said, hopelessly; "but this is something of the new scheme I've planned."
He went over to the other part of the studio and uncovered the clay in which he had begun to work, and mused before it. He took some clay from the barrel, mixed it and began to model. Molly watched him.
"I get an idea," he murmured; "but when I go to fix it it escapes and eludes me. It has no form. I want a group of figures in the foreground and the idea of distance and far-away on the other side."
"It will be lovely, Tony," she encouraged him. "I mind the day we walked in the cemetery for the first time and you looked at the angel so long."
"Yes." He was kneeling, bending forward, putting the clay on with his thumb.
"Ever since then"—Molly's tone was meditative—"that angel seems like a friend to me. Many's the time when there's a hard thing to do he seems to open the door and I go through, and it's not so hard."
She was imaginative, Fairfax knew it. She was superstitious, like the people of her country. The things she said were often full of fancy, like the legends and stories of the Celts; but now he hardly heard her, for he was working, and she went back to her task by the lamp, and, under the quiet of her presence and its companionship, his modelling grew. He heard her finally stir, andthe clock struck seven, and they had had no supper. Until she crossed the floor, he did not speak. Then he turned—
"I'll work on a little longer. I want to finish this hand."
"Take your time, Tony. I'll be going home slowly, anyway."
She was at the door, stood in it, held it half-open, her arm out along the panel looking back at him. Her figure was in the shadow, but the light fell on her face, on her hair and on her hand. The unconscious charm of her pose, her slow pause, her attitude of farewell and waiting, the solemnity of it, the effect of light and shadow, struck Fairfax.
"Molly," he cried, "wait!"
But she had dropped her arm. "You'll be coming along," she said, smiling, "and it's getting late."
He found that the spell for work was broken after she left, though a fleeting idea, a picture, an image he could not fix, tantalized him. He followed his wife. He had passed the most peaceful hour in his Canal Street studio since he had signed the lease with the money of his mother's ring. He would have told Molly this, but Rainsford was there for supper.
Molly came and sat with him Saturday afternoons and Sundays. Fairfax made studies of his wife as she sewed, a modern conception of a woman sitting under a lamp, her face lifted, dreaming. He told Rainsford that when the lease was up he should vacate the studio, for he could not go on with his scheme for the monument. He had the memories of Molly's coming to him during the late autumn and winter afternoons. The remembrance of these holidays soothed and pardoned many faults and delinquencies. She seemed another Molly to the Sheedy counter girl, the Troy collar factory girl, and an indefinable Presence came with her, lingered as she sewed or read some book she had picked up, and if Fairfax the artist watched the change and transformation of her face as it refined and thinned, grew more delicate and meditative, it was Fairfax the man who recalled the picture afterward.
She was exceedingly gentle, very silent, ready with a word of encouragement and admiration if he spoke to her. She knew nothing of the art he adored, but seemed to know his temperament and to understand. She posed tranquilly while the short days met the early nights; she disguised her fatigue and her ennui, so that he never knew she grew tired, and the Presence surrounded her like an envelope, until Antony, drawing and modelling, wondered if it were not the soul of the child about to be born to him, and if from the new emotion his inspiration would not stir and bless him at the last?
What there was of humour and fantasy in her Irish heart, how imaginative and tender she was, he might have gathered in those hours, if he had chosen to talk with her and make her his companion. But he was reserved, mentally and spiritually, and he kept the depths of himselfdown, nor could he reveal his soul which from boyhood he had dreamed to give to One Woman with his whole being. He felt himself condemned to silence and only partially to develop, and no one but Molly Fairfax, with her humility and her admiration, could have kept him from unholy dreams and unfaithfulness.
His life on the engine was hard in the winter. He felt the cold intensely, and as his art steadily advanced, his daily labour in the yards grew hateful, and he pushed the days of the week through till Sunday should come and he be free. His face was set and white when Rainsford informed him that it would be impossible to give him "Saturdays off" any longer. Antony turned on his heel and left the office without response to his chief, and thought as he strode back to his tenement: "It's Peter's personal feeling. He's in love with Molly, and those days in the studio gall him."
Molly, who was lying down when he came in, brushed her hand across her eyes as if to brush away whatever was there before he came. She took his hat and coat; his slippers and warm jacket were before the stove.
"Rainsford has knocked me off my Saturdays," he said bitterly.
She stopped at the hook, the things in her hand. "That's hard on you, Tony, and you getting on so well with your work."
She didn't say that she could not have gone on any more ... that the walk she took the week before to Canal Street had been her last; but Fairfax, observing her, rendered keen by his own disappointment, understood. He called her to him, made her sit down on the sofa beside him.
"Peter has been better to you than I have," he said sadly. "I've tired you out, my dear, and I've been a selfish brute to you."
He saw that his words gave her pain, and desisted. He was going to be nothing more from henceforth but an engineer. He would shut the studio and take her out on Sundays. She received his decision meekly, without rebuffing it, and he said—
"Molly, if I had not come along, I reckon you would have married Peter Rainsford. There! Don't look like that!"
"Tony," she replied, "I'd rather be wretched with you—if I were, and I'm not, dear. I'd rather be unhappy along of you than the happiest queen."
He kissed her hand with a gallantry new to her and which made her crimson, and half laugh and half cry.
She went early to bed, and Antony, alone in the kitchen, raked down the coals, covered the fire in the stove, heard the clock tick and the whistles of the boat on the river. In the silence of the winter night, as it fell around him, he thought: "I reckon I'll have to try to make her happy, even if I cut out my miserable talent and kill it." And as he straightened himself he felt the Presence there. The solemn Presence that had come with her to his workshop and kept him company, and it was so impressive that he passed his hand across his forehead as though dazed, and opened the door of his bedroom to see her and be assured. She was already asleep; by her side, the little basket prepared, waited for the life to come. He stepped in softly, and his heart melted. He knelt down and buried his face in the pillow by her side, and without waking she turned her face toward him in her sleep.
He did not go to the studio for a month, but though he remained with her the poor girl profited little by his company. He smoked countless cigarettes, in spite of the fact that he had doctor's bills to look forward to. In the long winter evenings he read books that he fetched from the library while the blizzards and storms swept round the window, and the next day his duties stared him in the face. He dreamed before the stove, his cigarette between his fingers, and Molly watched him; but Rainsford, when he came, did not find her any more alone.
Finally, in the last Sunday of January, after the noon dinner, she fetched him his coat and muffler.
"I can't let you stay home any more like this, Tony," she told him. "Take your things and go to the studio; I'm sure you're dying to, and don't hurry back. I'm feeling fine."
He caught her suggestion with an eagerness that made her bite her lip; she kept her face from him lest he should see her disappointment. He exclaimed joyously—
"Why, I reckon you're right, Molly. Iwillgo for awhile. I'll work all the better for the holiday."
He might have said "sacrifice."
As he got into his things he asked her: "You're sure you'll not need anything, Molly? You think it's all right for me to go?"
She assured him she would rest and sleep, and that the woman "below stairs" would come up if she wanted anything. He mustn't hurry.
He took the studio key. He was gone, his uneven step echoed on the narrow stairs. She listened till it died away.
Fairfax before his panel during the afternoon worked as though Fate were at his heels. When he came in the room was bitter cold, and it took the big fire he built longto make the shed inhabitable; but no sooner had the chill left the air, and he unwrapped his plaster, than a score of ideas came beating upon him like emancipated ghosts and shades, and he saw the forms, though the faces were still veiled. He sang and whistled, he declaimed aloud as the clay he mixed softened and rolled under his fingers.... It let him shape it, its magic was under his thumb, its plasticity,its response fascinated the scupltor. He tried now with the intensity of his being to fix his conception for the gate of Death and Eternal Life. He had already made his drawing for the new scaffolding, and it would take him two Sundays to build it up. Falutini would help him.
It seemed strange to work without Molly sitting in her corner. He wondered how long the daylight would last; he had three months still until spring; that meant twelve Sundays. He thought of Molly's approaching illness, and a shadow crossed his face. Why had he come back only to tempt and tantalize himself with freedom and the joy of creation?
Sunday-Albany outside was as tranquil as the tomb, and scarcely a footstep passed under his window. The snow lay light upon the window-ledge and the roof, and as the room grew warmer the cordial light fell upon him as he worked, and a sense of the right to labour, the right to be free, made him take heart and inspired his hand. He began the sketch of his group on a large scale.
As he bent over his board the snow without shifted rustling from the roof, and the slipping, feathery shower fell gleaming before his window; the sound made him glance up and back towards the door. As he did so he recalled, with the artist's vivid vision, the form of his wife, as she had stood in the opened door, her arm along the panel, in the attitude of waiting and parting.
"By Jove!" he murmured, gazing as though it were reality. Half wondering, but with assurance, he indicated what he recalled, and was drawing in rapidly, absorbed in his idea, when some one struck the door harshly from without, and Rainsford called him.
Fairfax started, threw down his pencil, and seized his hat and muffler—he worked in his overcoat because he was cold—to follow the man who had come to fetch him in haste.
Over and over again that night in his watch that lasted until dawn, as he walked the floor of his little parlour-kitchen and listened, as he stood in the window before the soundless winter night and listened, Fairfax said the word he had said to her when she had paused in the doorway—
"Wait...!"
For what should she wait?
Did he want her to wait until he had caught the image of her on his mind and brain that he might call upon it for his inspiration?
He called her to "wait!"
Until he should become a great master and need her with her simplicity and her humble mind less than ever? Until he should be honoured by his kind and crowned successful and come at last into his own, and she be the only shadow on his glory? Not for that!
Until Fairfax one day should need the warmth of a perfectly unselfish woman's heart, a self-effacing tenderness, a breast to lean upon? She had given him all this.
He smelled the ether and strange drugs. The doctor came and went. The nurse he had engaged from the hospital, "the woman from below stairs" as well, came and went, spoke to him and shut him out.
He was conscious that in a chair in a corner, in a desperate position, his head in his hands, Rainsford was sitting. Of these things he was conscious afterward, but he felt now that he only listened, his every emotion concentrated in the sense of hearing. What was it he was so intent to hear? The passing of the Irrevocable or the advent of a new life? He stood at length close to her door, and it was nearly morning. A clock somewherestruck four presently, and the whistle of the Limited blew; but those were not the sounds he waited to hear.
At five o'clock, whilst it was still dark in the winter morning, he started, his heart thumping against his breast, a sob in his throat. Out of the stillness which to him had been unbroken, came a cry, then another, terribly sweet and heart-touching—the cry of life. He opened the door of his wife's room and entered softly in his stocking feet. There seemed to be a multitude between him and his wife and child. He did not dare to approach, but stood leaning against the wall, cold with apprehension and stirred to his depths. He seemed to stand there for a lifetime, and his knees nearly gave way beneath him. His hand pressed against his cheek. He leaned forward.
"Wait!"
He almost murmured the word that came to his lips.
For what should Molly Fairfax wait? Life had given her a state too high. She had brought much grace to it and much love. She had given a great deal. To wait for return, for such gifts, was to wait for the unattainable.
She went through the open door that she saw open, perhaps not all unwillingly; and she was not alone, for the child went with her, and they came to Fairfax and told him that she had gone through gently murmuring his name.
As Nut Street, with the destruction of his little statue, had been wiped out of his history, so the two rooms overlooking the river and steamboats knew Antony Fairfax no more. He turned the key in the door the day they carried away the body of his wife, and when he came back from the snowy earth and the snowy white city where he left her with his hour-old child, he went to the Delavan House as he had done before, and buried his head in his arms on his lowly bed in a hotel room and wept.
The following day he sent word to Rainsford to look out for another engineer in his place. He had driven his last trip.
Tito Falutini wrung his friend's hand, and told Fairfax, in his broken Italian-English, that he knew a fellow would take the rooms as they stood. "Would Tony give the job to him?" Save for his clothes and Molly's things, and they were few, he took nothing, not even the drawings decorating the wall on which other Irish eyes should look with admiration.
He interviewed the jewellers again. They gave him four hundred dollars and took his mother's ring. He paid his doctor's bills and funeral expenses, and had fifty dollars left until he should finish his bas-relief. He went to live at the Canal Street studio and shut himself up with his visions, his freedom, his strange reproach and his sense of untrammelled wings.
He worked with impassioned fervour, for now heknew. He modelled with assurance, for now hesaw. His hands were so eager to create the idea of his brain that he sighed as he worked, fairly panted at his task as though he ran a race with inspiration. Half-fed, sometimes quite sleepless, he lost weight and flesh. He missed the open-airlife of the engine and the air at his ears. But now at his ears were the audible voices of his conceptions. February and March passed. His models were, a mannequin, his studies of Molly Fairfax, and once the daughter of the man who rented him the workshop stood before him draped in the long garment; but he sent her away: she was toolivingfor his use. He ate in little cheap restaurants down by the riverside, or cooked himself coffee and eggs over his lamp, and wondered who would be the first to break the silence and isolation, for it was six weeks before he saw a single human being save those he passed in the street.
"Rainsford," he said to the agent, who on the last day of March came slowly in at noon, walking like a man just out of a long illness, "I reckoned you'd be along when you were ready. I've waited for you here."
Fairfax's hand was listlessly touched by his friend's, then Rainsford went over and took Molly's place by the lamp. Fairfax checked the words, "Notthere, for God's sake, Rainsford!" He thought, "Let the living come. Nothing can brush away the image of her sitting there in the lamplight, no matter how many fill the place."
Rainsford's eyes were hollow, and his tone as pale as his face, whose sunken cheeks and hollows, to Fairfax, marked the progress of a fatal disease. His voice sounded hoarse and strained; he spoke with effort.
"I've come to say good-bye. I've given up my job here in West Albany. I'm going to try another country, Tony."
The sculptor sat down on the lounge where he had used to sit near his wife, and said solicitously—
"I see you're not well, old man. I don't wonder you're going to try a better climate. I hope to heaven I shall never see another snow-flake fall. I assure you I feel them fall on graves."
There was a moment's silence. The agent passed his hand across his face and said, as if reluctant to speak at all—
"Yes, I am going to try another country." He glanced at Fairfax and coughed.
"California?" questioned Antony. "I hope you'll get a job in some such paradise. Do you think you will?"
The other man did not reply. He looked about the studio, now living-room and workshop, and said—
"I should like to see what you have been doing, Fairfax. How are you getting on?"
Tony, however, did not rise from the sofa nor show any inclination to comply, and his friend irrelevantly, as though he took up the young man's problems where he had left them, before his own sentiment for Molly had estranged him from her husband—
"You must be pretty hard up by now, Tony." He drew from his waistcoat pocket his wallet, and took out a roll of bills which he folded mechanically and held in his transparent hand. "Ever since the day you came in to take your orders from me in West Albany, I've wanted to help you. Now I've got the money to do so, old man."
"No, my kind friend."
"Don't refuse me then, if I am that." The other's lip twitched. "Take it, Tony."
"You mustn't ask me to, Peter."
"I made a turnover last week in N. Y. U. I can afford it. I ask you for the sake of old times."
Fairfax covered the slender hand with his. He shook it warmly.
"I'm sorry, old man. I can't do it."
The near-sighted eyes of the paymaster met those of Fairfax with a melancholy appeal, and the other responded to his unspoken words—
"No, Rainsford, not for anything in the world."
"It's yourPride," Rainsford murmured, and he put on his shining glasses and looked through them fully at Fairfax. "It's your Pride, Tony. What are you going to do?"
For answer, Fairfax rose, stretched out his arms, walked toward his covered bas-relief and drew away the curtain.
His friend followed him, stood by his side, and, with his thin hand covering his eyes, looked without speaking at the bas-relief. When he finally removed his hand and turned, Fairfax saw that his friend's face was transformed. Rainsford wore a strangely peaceful look, even an uplifted expression, such as a traveller might wear who seesthe door open to a friendly shelter and foretastes his repose.
Rainsford held out his hand. "Thank you, Tony," and his voice was clear. "You're a great artist."
When he had gone, Fairfax recalled his rapt expression, and thought, sadly, "I'm afraid he's a doomed man, dear old Rainsford! Poor old Peter, I doubt if any climate can save him now." And went heavy-hearted to prepare his little luncheon of sandwiches and milk.
Fairfax had finished his lunch and was preparing to work again when, in answer to a knock, he opened the door for Tito Falutini, who bore in in his Sunday clothes, behind him a rosy, smiling, embarrassed lady, whom Fairfax had not seen for a "weary while."
"Mrs.Falutini," grinned his fireman. "Imarried! Shakka de han."
"Cora!" exclaimed Fairfax, kissing the bride on both her cheeks; "I would have come to see your mother and you long ago, but I couldn't."
"Shure," said the Irish girl tenderly, her eyes full of tears. "I know, Mr. Fairfax, dear, and so does the all of us."
He realized more and more how well these simple people knew and how kindly is the heart of the poor, and he wondered if "Blessed are the poor in spirit" that the Canon had spoken of in church on Sunday did not refer to some peculiar kind of richness of which the millionaires of the world are ignorant. He made Falutini and his bride welcome, and Cora's brogue and her sympathy caused his grief to freshen. But their boisterous happiness and their own content was stronger than all else, and when at last Cora said, "Och, show us the statywary 't you're makin', Misther Fairfax, dear," he languidly rose and uncovered again his bas-relief. Then he watched curiously the Irish girl and the Italian workman before his labour.
"Shure," Cora murmured, her eyes full of tears, "it's Molly herself, Mr. Fairfax, dear. It'sliving."
He let the covering fall, and its folds suggested the garments of the tomb.
The young couple, starting out in life arm-in-arm, hadseen only life in his production, and he was glad. He let them go without reluctance, eager to return to his modelling, and to retouch a line in the woman's figure, for the bas-relief was still warm clay, and had not been cast in plaster, and he kept at his work until five o'clock in the afternoon, when there was another knock at his door. He bade the intruder absently "Come in," heard the door softly open and close, and the sound jarred his nerves, as did every sound at that door, and with his scalpel in his hand, turned sharply. In the door close to his shadow stood the figure of a slender young girl. There was only the space of the room between them, and even in his surprise he thought, "Now, there is nothing else!"
"Cousin Antony," she said from the doorway where he had seen the vision, "aren't you going to speak to me? Aren't you glad to see me?"
Her words were the first Fairfax had heard in the rich voice of a woman, for the child tone had changed, and there was a "timbre" now in the tone that struck the old and a new thrill. Her boldness, the bright assurance seemed gone. He thought her voice trembled.
"Why don't you speak to me, Cousin Antony? Do you think I'm aghost?"
(A ghost!)
Bella came forward as she spoke, and he saw that she wore a girlish dress, a long dress, a womanly dress. With her old affectionate gesture she held out her hand, and on her dark hair was a little red bonnet of some fashion too modish for him to find familiar, but very bewitching and becoming, and he saw that she was a lovely woman, nearly seventeen.
"I lost the precious little paper you gave me, Cousin Antony, that day at church, and I only found it to-day in packing. I'm going home for the Easter holidays."
He realized that she was close to him, and that she innocently lifted up her face. Fairfax bent and kissed her under the red hat on the hair.
"Now," she cried, nodding at him, "I've hunted you down, tracked you to your lair, and youcan'tescape. I want to see your work. Show me everything."
But Fairfax put his hand up quickly, and before her eyes rested on the bas-relief he had let the curtain fall.
"You're not an engineer any more, then, Cousin Antony?"
"No, Bella."
"Tell me why you ran away from us as you did? Oh!" she exclaimed, clasping her pretty hands, "I've thought over and over the questions I wanted to ask you, things I wanted to tell you, and now I forget them all. Cousin Antony, it wasn'tkindto leave us as you did,—Gardiner and me."
He watched her as she took a chair, half-leaning on its back before his covered work. Bella's pose was graceful and elegant. Girl as she was, she was a little woman of the world. She swung her gloves between her fingers, looking up at him.
"It's nearly five years, Cousin Antony."
"I know it."
She laughed and blushed. "I've been running after you,shockingly, haven't I? I ran away from home and found you in the queer little street in the queer little home with thoseangelIrish people! How are they all, Cousin Antony, and the freckled children?"
"Bella," her cousin asked, "haven't they nearly finished with you in school? You are grown up."
She shook her head vehemently. "Nonsense, I'm a dreadful hoyden still. Think of it! I've never been on the roll of honour yet at St. Mary's."
"No?" he smiled. "They were wrong not to put you there. How is Aunt Caroline?"
The girl's face clouded, and she said half under her breath—
"Why, don't you know?"
Ah, there was another grave, then? What did Bella mean?
She exclaimed, stopped swinging her gloves, folded her hands gravely—
"Why, Cousin Antony, didn't you read in the papers?"
He saw a rush of colour fill her cheeks. It wasn't death, then? He hadn't seen any papers for some time,and he never should have expected to find his aunt's name in the papers.
"I don't believe I can tell you, Cousin Antony."
He drew up a chair and sat down by her. "Yes, you can, little cousin."
Her face was troubled, but she smiled. "Yes, that was what you used to call me, didn't you? You see, I'm hardly supposed to know. It's not a thing a girlshouldknow, Cousin Antony. Can't you guess?"
"Hardly, Bella."
Fairfax wiped his hands on a bunch of cloths, and the dry morsels of clay fell to the floor.
"Tell me what it is about Aunt Caroline."
"She is not my mother any more, Cousin Antony, nor father's wife either."
He waited. Bella's tone was low and embarrassed.
"I don't know how to tell it. She had a lovely voice, Cousin Antony."
"She had indeed, Bella."
"Well," slowly commented the young girl, "she took music lessons from a teacher who sang in the opera, and I used to hear them at it until I nearly lost my mind sometimes. Ihate music—I mean that kind, Cousin Antony."
"Well," he interrupted, impatient to hear thedénouement. "What then, honey?"
"One night at dinner-time mother didn't come home; but she is often late, and we waited, and then went on without her.... She never came home, and no one ever told me anything, not even old Ann. Father said I was not to speak my mother's name again. And I never have, until now, to you."
Fairfax took in his Bella's hands that turned the little rolled kid gloves; they were cold. He bent his eyes on her. Young as she was, she saw there and recognized compassion and human understanding, qualities which, although she hardly knew their names, were sympathetic to her. He bent his eyes on her.
"Honey," Fairfax said, "you have spoken your mother's name in the right place. Don't judge her, Bella!"
"Oh!" exclaimed the young girl, crimsoning. Shetossed her proud, dark head. "I do judge her, Cousin Antony, I do."
"Hush!" he exclaimed sternly, "as you say, you are too young to understand what she has done, but not too young to be merciful."
She snatched her hands away, and sprang up, her eyes rebellious.
"Why should I not judge her?" Her voice was indignant. "It's a disgrace to my honourable father, to our name. How can you, Cousin Antony?" Fairfax did not remove his eyes from her intense little face. "She was never a mother to us," the young girl judged, with the cruelty of youth. "Think how I ran wild! Do you remember my awful clothes? My things that never met, the buttons off my shoes? Think of darling little Gardiner, Cousin Antony...!"