Fairfax and His Pride Part 37

"One goes mighty far in five years, Bella.... One loses many things."

"I know--Gardiner and your mother. But who else?"

He saw her face sadden; the young girl extended her hand to him, her eyes darkened.

"Who else?" she breathed.

Fairfax put out his arms toward her, but did not enfold her. He let his hands rest on her shoulders and murmured, "Bella, little Bella," and choked the other words back.

"No," she said, "I'm not little Bella any more. Please answer me, Cousin Antony."

He could not have told her for his life. He could tell her nothing; her charm, her lifted face, beautiful, ardent, were the most real, the most vital things the world had ever held for him. The fascination found him under his new grief. He exclaimed, turning brusquely toward his covered scaffolding--

"Don't you want to see my work, Bella? I've been at it nearly a year."

He rapidly drew the curtain and exposed his bas-relief.

There was in the distance a vague indication of distant sky-line--a far horizon--upon which, into which, a door opened, held ajar by a woman's arm and hand. The woman's figure, draped in the clinging garment of the grave, was pa.s.sing through, but in going her face was turned, uplifted, to look back at a man without, who, apparently unconscious of her, gazed upon life and the world. That was all--the two figures and the feeling of the vast illimitable far-away.

It seemed to Fairfax as he unveiled his work that he looked upon it himself for the first time; it seemed to him finished, moreover, complete. He knew that he could do nothing more with it. He heard Bella ask, "Who is it, Cousin Antony? It is perfectly beautiful!" her old enthusiasm soft and warm in her voice.

At her repeated question, "Who is it?" he replied, "A dream woman." And his cousin said, "You have lovely dreams, but it is too sad."

He told her for what it was destined, and she listened, musing, and when she turned her face to him again there were tears in her eyes. She pointed to the panel.

"There should be a child there," she said, with trembling lips. "They go in too, Cousin Antony."

"Yes," he responded, "they go in too."

He crossed the floor with her toward the door, neither of them speaking.

She drew on her gloves, but at the door he said--

"Stop a moment. I'm going a little way with you."

"No, Cousin Antony, you can't. Myra Scutfield, my best friend, is waiting for me with her brother. I'm supposed to be visiting her for Sunday. You mustn't come."

Her hand was on the door latch. He gently took her hand and pushed it aside. He did not wish her to open that door or to go through it alone.

As they stood there silent, she lifted her face and said--

"I'm going away for the Easter holidays. Kiss me good-bye."

And he stooped and kissed her--kissed Bella, the little cousin, the honey child--no, kissed Bella, the woman, on her lips.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

From the window he watched her fly up the street like a scarlet bird, and realized what a child she was still, and, whereas he had felt a hundred that day at church, he now felt as old as the ancient Egyptians, as the Sphinx, a Sage in suffering and knowledge of life, beside his cousin. He called her little, but she was tall and slender, standing as high as his shoulder.

He turned heavily about to his room which the night now filled. The street lamps were lit, and their frail glimmer flickered in, like the fingers of a ghost. His money was nearly gone. There was the expense of casting his work in plaster, the packing and s.h.i.+pping of the bas-relief.

He lit his lamp, and, as he adjusted the green shade, under which Molly had used to sit and sew, he saw on the table the roll of bills which Rainsford had offered to him that morning. He picked up the money with a smile.

"Poor old Rainsford, dear old chap. He was determined, wasn't he?"

Fairfax wrapped up the heavy roll of money, marked it with Rainsford's name, and stood musing on his friend's failing health, his pa.s.sion for Molly, and the fruitless, vanis.h.i.+ng story that ended, as all seemed to end for him, in death. Suddenly, over his intense feelings, came the need of nourishment, and he wanted to escape from the room where he had been caged all day.

At the Delavan, George Was.h.i.+ngton welcomed him with delight.

"Yo' dun forgit yo' ol' friends, Ma.s.sa' Kunnell Fairfax, sah. Yo doan favour dis ol' n.i.g.g.e.r any moh."

Fairfax told him that he was an expensive luxury, and enjoyed his quiet meal and his cigar, took a walk in a different direction from Ca.n.a.l Street, and at ten o'clock returned to find a boy waiting at the door with a note, whistling and staring up and down the street, waiting for the gentleman to whom he was to deliver his note in person.

Fairfax went in with his letter, knowing before he opened it that Rainsford had something grave to tell him. He sat down in Molly's chair, around which the Presence had gathered and brooded until the young man's soul had seemed engulfed in the shadow of Death.

"MY DEAR TONY,

"When you read this letter, it will be of no use to come to me.

Don't come. I said my final word to you to-day when I went to make my will and testament. You will discover on your table all my fortune. It counts up to a thousand dollars. I have a feeling that it may help you to success. You know what a failure I have been. I should have been one right along. Now that I have found out that a mortal disease is upon me, my last spurt of courage is gone. When I stood before your work to-day, Tony, it was a benediction to me.

Although I had fully decided to _go out_, I should have gone hopelessly; now there is something grand to me in the retreat. The uplift and the solemnity of the far horizon charm me, and though I open the door for myself and have no right to any claim for mercy, nevertheless I think that I shall find it there, and I am going through the open door. G.o.d bless you, Fairfax. Don't let the incidents of your life in Albany cloud what I believe will be a great career.

"THOMAS RAINSFORD."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

He was too young to be engulfed by death.

But he did not think or understand then that the great events which had racked his nerves in suffering were only incidents. Nor did he know that neither his soul nor his heart had suffered all they were capable of enduring. In spite of his deep heart-ache and his feelings that quivered with the memories of his wife, he was above all an artist, a creator.

Hope sprang from this last grave. Desire in Fairfax had never been fully born; how then could it be fully satisfied or grow old and cold before it had lived!

Tony Fairfax was the sole mourner that followed Rainsford's coffin to the Potter's Field. They would not bury him in consecrated ground. Canon Prynne had been surprised by a visit at eight o'clock in the morning.

Fairfax was received by the Bishop in his bedroom, where the Bishop was shaving. Fairfax, as he talked, caught sight of his own face in the gla.s.s, deathly white, his burning eyes as blue as the heavens to which he was sure Rainsford had gone.

"My friend," the ecclesiastic said, "my friend, I have nothing to do with laws, thank G.o.d. I am glad that no responsibility has been given me but to do my work. But let me say, to comfort you, is not every whit of the earth that G.o.d made holy? What could make it more sacred than the fact that He created it?"

Fairfax thought of these words as he saw the dust scatter and heard the rattle of the stones on the lid of Rainsford's coffin, and in a clear and a.s.sured voice of one who knows in whom he has believed, he read from Bella's Prayer-book (he had never given it back to her), "I am the Resurrection and the Life." He could find no parson to go with him.

On the way back to Albany he met the spring everywhere; it was just before the Easter holidays. Overhead the clouds rolled across a stainless sky, and they took s.h.i.+p-like forms to him and he felt a strong wish to escape--to depart. Rainsford had set him free. It would be months before he could hear from his compet.i.tion. There was nothing in this continent to keep him. He had come North full of living hope and vital purpose, and meekly, solemnly, his graves had laid themselves out around him, and he alone stood living.

Was there nothing to keep him?

Bella Carew.