Fairfax and His Pride Part 45

"Why, I mean, Tony, that it is a valuable study for a playwright. I should like to understand the psychology of all characters."

Fairfax shrugged impatiently. "Confound you, you are a brute. All artists are, I reckon. You drive your chariot over human hearts in order to get a dramatic point."

Here the post came and with it a blue letter whose colour was familiar to Dearborn now, and he busied himself with his own mail under the lamp.

Fairfax opened his note. It had no beginning.

"If it does not rain to-morrow, will you take me to Versailles? Unless you send me word that you cannot go, I will call for you at ten o'clock.

We will drive through the Bois and lunch at the Reservoirs."

For a moment it seemed as though Antony would hand over his note to Dearborn, as he had handed Mrs. Faversham's first letter the night it came. But he replaced it in its envelope and put it in his pocket.

CHAPTER X

He wrote her that he should not be able to go to Versailles. He deserted his day's work at Barye's and remained at home modelling. And Dearborn, seeing Fairfax's distraction, went out early and did not return until dark. Fairfax found himself alone again, alone with his visions, alone with his pride, alone with powerful and new emotions.

Sometimes in January, in the middle of the month, days come that surprise the Parisians with their inconstancy and their softness. The sun shone out suddenly and the sky was as blue as in Italy.

Fairfax could see the people strolling along the quays, with coats open, and the little booksellers did a thriving business and the "_bateaux mouche_" shot off into the sunlight bound toward the suburbs which Fairfax had learned in the summer time to know and love. Versailles would be divine on such a day.

His hours spent at the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne must have been impersonal. His first essay he destroyed and began again. He did not want to bring these intimate visits suddenly to an end. But when his sitter very courteously began to question him, he was uncommunicative.

He could not tell her the truth. He did not wish to romance or to lie to her. Mrs. Faversham, both sensitive and "fine," respected his reticence.

But she found out about him. They talked of art and letters and life in general, circling around life in particular, and Fairfax revealed himself more than he knew, although of his actual existence he told nothing. He enjoyed the charm of the society of a worldly woman, of a clever woman. He fed his mind and cultivated his taste, delighted his eyes with the graceful picture she made, sitting, her head on her hand, posing for her portrait. Her features were not perfect, but the ensemble was lovely and he modelled with tenderness and pleasure until the little bas-relief was magically like her. He was forced to remember that the study was intended as a present for Cedersholm. He was very silent and very often wondered why she asked him so constantly to her house, why she should be so interested in so ungracious a companion.

This morning, in his studio on the Quai, he unwrapped his statue of his mother. It was a figure sitting in her chair, a book in her hand, as he had seen her countless times on the veranda of the New Orleans house, dreaming, her face lifted, her eyes looking into the distance. He went back to his work with complicated feelings and a heart at which there was a new ache. He had hardly expected that this statue, left when he had gone to take up the study of another woman, would charm him as it did. He began to model. As he worked, he thought the face was singularly like Bella's--a touch to the head, to the lips, and it was still more like the young girl. Another year was gone. Bella was a woman now.

Everything, as he modelled, came back to him vividly--all the American life, with its rush and struggle. So closely did it come, so near to him, that he threw down his tools to walk up and down in the sunlight pouring through the big window. He took up his tools and began modelling again. The statuette was tenderly like his mother. He smoothed the folds at her waist--and saw under the clay the colour of the violet lawn with its sprinkling flowers of darker violet. He touched the frills he had indicated around the throat--and felt the stirring of the Southern breeze across his hand and smelled the jasmine. He paused after working for two hours, standing back, resting his lame limb and musing on the little figure. It grew to suggest all womanhood: Molly, as he had seen her under the lamp-light--Mrs. Faversham, as he had watched her leaning on her hand--not Bella. He looked and thought. Bella was a child, a little girl. There was nothing reposeful or meditative about Bella, yet he had seen her pore over a book, her hair about her face. Would she ever sit like this, tranquil, reposeful, reading, dreaming? The face was like her, but the resemblance pa.s.sed.

CHAPTER XI

Mrs. Faversham's dresses and jewels, her luxuries, her carriages and her horses, the extravagance of her life, had not dazzled Antony; his eyes had been pleased, but her possessions were a distinct envelope surrounding her and separating them. After watching Potowski's natatorial gestures, Fairfax had longed to swim out of the elegance into a freer sea.

He had told her nothing of his companion or of his life. He often longed to stuff some of the dainties of the table into his pockets for Dearborn, to carry away some of the fire in his hands, to bring something of the comfort back, but he would not have spoken for the world. Once she had broached the subject of further payment, and had seen by his tightening lips that she had made a mistake. In spite of the fact of his reserve and that he was proud to coldness and sometimes not quite kind, intimacy grew between them. Mrs. Faversham was engaged to be married, but Fairfax did not believe that she loved Cedersholm. What her feelings were, or why she wanted to marry him, he could not guess. The intimacy between them was caused by what they knew of each other as human beings, unknown, unexplained, unformulated. There was a tremendous sympathy, and neither the man nor the woman knew how real it was. And although there was her life--she was five years his senior--and his life with its tragedies, its depths and its ascensions, although there was all this unread and unspoken between them, neither of them, when they were together, was conscious of any past. A word, a touch, a look, a hazard chance would have revealed to them how near they stood.

As he went on modelling, he found that he was beginning to think of her as he had not let himself do during the weeks when she had sat for him.

He found that he could not go on with his work now and think of her. He had voluntarily denied himself this day at Versailles where he might have enjoyed her for hours. When she had told him that she had written to Cedersholm about him he had smiled.

"He will not recall my name. I was an obscure pupil with others. He will not remember Tom Rainsford."

Evidently Cedersholm had not remembered him. The subject was never mentioned between them again. Except as he heard it in general conversation, Cedersholm's name was no longer frequently on Mrs.

Faversham's lips. He stopped working, wrapped his plaster carefully and pushed the stool back into the corner. Near it was a pile of books which he had carefully done up to return to Mrs. Faversham. She had obtained orders for him from her friends, none of which he had accepted. Why should he be so churlish? Why should he refuse to take advantage of her kindness and generosity? Why should not her influence help him on his stony way? What part did his pride play in it? Was it on account of Cedersholm, or was it something else?

At noon he went out to eat his luncheon in a little cafe where he was known and popular. The little room was across a court-yard filled with potted plants on which the winter had laid icy fingers, but which to-day in the suns.h.i.+ne seemed to have garbed themselves with something like spring. The little restaurant was low, noisy, filled with the clatter and bustle of the noon meal served to hungry students and artists. The walls were painted by the brush of different skilful craftsmen, young artists who could not pay their accounts and had settled their scores by leaving paintings on the walls, and one could read distinguished names.

When Fairfax came here, as he sometimes did, he always took a little table in the second and darker room by another window which gave on a quiet court on whose stones were heaped up the statues and remains of an old Louis XV palace. This room was reserved for the older and quieter clients, and here, at another table in the corner, a pretty girl with a shock of curly hair under a soft hat and an old cape and an old portfolio, always ate, and she sometimes smiled at him. He would catch her eye, and she was, as Fairfax, always alone.

Girl-students and grisettes, and others less respectable, had eyed him and elbowed him, but not one had tempted him. There was no merit in his celibacy, but to-day, as he glanced over at the English girl-student, something about her caught his attention as never before. She was half turned to him; her portfolio lay on the table at her side with the remains of a scanty lunch. Her head was bowed on her hands. She looked dejected, forlorn, bringing her little unhappiness to the small restaurant where so many strugglers and aspirants brought their hopes and their inspirations. This little bit of humanity seemed on this day uninspired, cast down, and he had remarked her generally before because of her gaiety, her eagerness, and he had avoided her because he knew that she would be sympathetic with him.

In a sort of revenge possible on himself, and feeling his own loneliness, he permitted himself to look long at her and saw how miserably poor her dress was, how rusty and dusty her cape, how trodden down were her little shoes. She was all in brown, from the old beaver hat to her boots, in a soft, old-faded note of colour, and her hair was gloriously golden like a chrysanthemum. As Antony looked at her she took out her handkerchief and wiped something off her cheek and from her eyes. His luncheon of steak and potatoes had been served him. He took up his napkin and his dinner and limped over to the table where the English girl sat bowed over.

"Would you like a comrade for luncheon? Say so, if you don't want me."

He saw her start, wipe her eyes and look up with a sob on her lips.

"Oh, yes, I don't mind." Her voice was stifled. "Sit down, it is good of you."

The girl covered her face with her hands for a second and then wiped her eyes determinedly, as if she fetched herself out of stony depths. She smiled tremulously and her lips were as red and full and sweet as a rose.

"Garcon," he ordered, "fetch two bocks. Yes, mademoiselle, it will do you good."

"I say," she fluttered, "were you lonely over there in your corner?"

Fairfax nodded. She put out her little hand, stained with paint and oil, and it was cold and delicate as it touched his. It seemed to need the strength of the man's big, warm grasp.

"I have always liked your face, do you know--always," she said. "I knew that you could be a real pal if you wanted. You are not like the others.

I expect you are a great swell at something. Writing?"

"No, I am a workman in Barye's studio--a sculptor."

"Oh," she said incredulously. "You look '_arrive_,' awfully distinguished. I expect you really _are_ something splendid."

The beer came foaming. The girl lifted her gla.s.s with a hand which trembled. Tears hung on her lashes still, ready to fall, but she was a little sport and full of character and life. She nodded at Fairfax and murmured--

"Here's to our being friends."

Her voice was sweet and musical. They drank the draught to friends.h.i.+p.

Fairfax asked cruelly: "What made you cry?"

She touched her portfolio. "There," she said, "that is the reason. My last fortnight's work. I draw at Julian's, and I had a fearful criticism this morning, most discouraging. I am here on my own." She stopped and said rather faintly: "Why should I tell you?"

"We drank just now to the reason why you should."

"That's true," she laughed. "Well, then, this is my last week in Paris.

I will have to go back to England and drop painting, unless they tell me that I am sure to have a career and that it is worth while."

A career! She was a soft, sweet, tender little creature in spite of her good comrades.h.i.+p and the brave little tilt to her hat, and she was fit for a home nest, and no more fit to battle with the storm of a career than a young bird with a tempest.

"Let me see your portfolio, will you?"

"First," she said practically, "eat your steak and your potatoes."