Fairfax and His Pride Part 35

"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 a.s.sure you I feel them fall on graves."

There was a moment's silence. The agent pa.s.sed 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 your _Pride_," Rainsford murmured, and he put on his s.h.i.+ning gla.s.ses 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 sees the 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

Fairfax had finished his lunch and was preparing to work again when, in answer to a knock, he opened the door for t.i.to Falutini, who bore in in his Sunday clothes, behind him a rosy, smiling, embarra.s.sed lady, whom Fairfax had not seen for a "weary while."

"_Mrs._ Falutini," grinned his fireman. "_I_ married! 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's _living_."

He let the covering fall, and its folds suggested the garments of the tomb.

The young couple, starting out in life arm-in-arm, had seen 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.surance seemed gone. He thought her voice trembled.

"Why don't you speak to me, Cousin Antony? Do you think I'm a _ghost_?"

(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 fas.h.i.+on 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 you _can't_ escape. 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't _kind_ to 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."