Fairfax and His Pride Part 14

Charley asked Mr. Fairfax if he had been ill. Charley was thoroughly sympathetic with the Southerner, but he was as well an excellent servant, notwithstanding that he served a master whom he did not understand.

"I should like to get my traps in the studio, Charley."

"Yes, Mr. Fairfax." But Charley did not ask him in.

"I'll come back again to-morrow.... I'll find a note at home."

"Sure to, Mr. Fairfax."

"Benvenuto been around?"

The Italian had sailed home to Italy on the last week's steamer.

Fairfax, too troubled and dazed to pursue the matter further, did not comprehend how strange it all was. The doors of the studio were henceforth shut against him, and Charley obeyed the mysterious orders given him. There reigned profound mystery at the foundry. The young man was sensible of a reticence among the men, who lacked Charley's kindliness. Every one waited for Cedersholm's orders.

The _Beasts_ were cast.

"Look out how you treat those moulds," he fiercely ordered the men.

"Those colossi belong to me. What's the damage for casting them?"

At the man's response, Fairfax winced and thrust his hands into his empty pockets.

Under his breath he said: "d.a.m.n Cedersholm for a cold-blooded brute! My youth and my courage have gone into these weeks here."

As he left the foundry he repeated his injunction about the care of the moulds, and his personal tenderness for the bronze creatures was so keen that he did not appreciate the significant fact that he was treated with scant respect. He stepped in at the Field palace on the way up-town, and a man in an official cap at the door asked him for his card of admission.

"Card of admission? Why, I'm one of the decorators here.... I reckon you're new, my boy. I only quit working a fortnight ago."

He was nervous and pale; his clothes were shabby.

"Sorry," returned the man, "my orders are strict from Mr. Cedersholm himself. _n.o.body_ comes in without his card."

The sculptor ground his heel on the cruel stones.

He had been shut away by his concentrated work in Cedersholm's studio from outside interests. He had no friends in New York but the children.

No friend but his aunt, who had borrowed of him nearly all he possessed, no sympathizers but the little old ladies, no consolations but his visions. In the May evenings, now warm, he sat on a bench in Central Park, listlessly watching the wind in the young trees and the voices of happy children on their way to the lake with their boats. He began to have a proper conception of his own single-handed struggle. He began to know what it is, without protection or home or any capital, to grapple with life first-hand.

"Why, _art is the longest way in the world_," he thought. "It's the rudest and steepest, and to climb it successfully needs colossal _genius_, as well as the other things, and it needs money."

He went slowly back to his lodging and his hall room. Along the wall his array of boots, all in bad condition--his unequal boots and his deformity struck him and his failure. A mist rose before his eyes. Over by the mirror he had pinned the sketch he liked the best.

On Sunday afternoon, in his desire to see the children, he forgot his distaste of meeting the master of the house, and rang the bell at an hour when Carew was likely to be at home. He had, too, for the first time, a wish to see the man who had made a success of his own life.

Whatever his home and family were--_Carew_ was a success. Fairfax often noted his uncle's name mentioned at directors' meetings and functions where his presence indicated that the banker was an authority on finance. Ever since Mrs. Carew had borrowed money of him, Fairfax had been inclined to think better of his uncle. As the door opened before him now he heard singing, and though the music was a hymn, it rolled out so roundly, so fully, so whole-heartedly, that he knew his uncle must be out.

The three were alone at the piano, and the young man's face brightened at the sight of the children. On either side of their mother Bella and Gardiner were singing with delight the little boy's favorite hymn.

"No parting yonder, All light and song, The while I ponder And say 'how long Shall time me sunder From that glad throng?'"

Curious how syllables and tones and inflections can contain and hold our feelings, and how their memory makes a winding-sheet.

Fairfax came in quietly, and the singers finished their hymn. Then the children fell upon him and, as Gardiner said, "Cousin Antony _always did_," he "gobbled them up."

"You might have _told_ us you were ill," Bella reproved him. "When I heard I made some wine jelly for you, but it wobbled away, and Gardiner drank it."

"It wasn't _weal_ wine," said the little boy, "or _weal_ jelly...."

Fairfax glanced toward his aunt, unconsciously looking to her for comfort on this trying day.

Mrs. Carew was truly embarra.s.sed at the sight of her creditor, but she continued to play lightly among the hymns, and gave him up to the children. But Fairfax was too desperate to be set aside. If there was any comfort anywhere he was going to have it. He said to his aunt in a voice deepened by feeling--

"Aunt Caroline, I'm a little down on my luck."

The lady turned her doe-like eyes on her nephew. "My dear Tony...."

He clenched his vigorous hands to keep down his emotion.

"Yes. Cedersholm has turned his back on me, as far as I can see."

With a short laugh he threw off his intense mood, thoroughly ashamed of his weakness.

"_Our_ branch of the family, Aunt Caroline, are unlucky all round, I reckon."

There was one thought uppermost in his aunt's mind. _She had no money with which to pay her debt to him._ When there weren't lamps to buy there were rugs and figures of _biscuit_ Venuses bending over _biscuit_ streams. She had confessed her vice; she "adored bric-a-brac." The jumble in her mind made her eyes more vague than ever.

"Will you go back South?" she wondered.

He started, spread out his empty hands. "Go back to mother like this?

Auntie!"

As ineffectual as she had been on the night of his arrival, so now Mrs.

Carew sat ineffectual before his crisis. She breathed, "My poor boy!"

and her fingers strayed amongst the keys and found the melody of the song he loved so much.

The young traveller at her side was too much of a man, even in his state of despair, to have expected a woman to lift his burden. If she did, he did not think of the money she owed him. What he wanted was a soothing touch to be laid on his heart, and the song in which, not six weeks before, he had nearly loved his aunt, did what she did not.

The children had gone upstairs. Mrs. Carew sang through the first verse of the song. As far as she was concerned nothing could have been a greater relief. The sympathy she did not know how to give, the debt she had never discharged, the affection she had for Antony, and her own self-pity, Mrs. Carew threw into her voice, and it shook its tremulo through him.

He breathed devotedly: "Thank you, _dear_," and raised one of his aunt's hands to his lips.

Mr. Carew had let himself in with his latchkey, and was within a few feet of them as his wife finished her song.

CHAPTER XXI

Neither Antony nor Mrs. Carew had the presence of mind to stir. Mrs.