Fairfax and His Pride Part 54

"Dear old man,"--the letter was dated London--"I am sky-high in a room for which I pay a s.h.i.+lling a night. A thing in the roof is called a window. Through it I see a field of pots--not flower-pots, but chimney-pots--and the smoke from them is hyacinthine. The smoke of endless winters and innumerable fogs has grimed every blessed thing in this filthy room. My bed-spread is grey cloth, once meant to be white.

Other lodgers have left burnt matches on the faded carpet, whose flowers have long since been put out by the soot. Out of this hole in the roof I see London, the sky-line of London in a spring sky. There is a singular sort of beauty in this sky, as if it had trailed its cerulean mantle over fields of English bluebells. For another s.h.i.+lling I dine; for another I lunch. I skip breakfast. I calculate I can stay here ten days, then the s.h.i.+llings will be all gone, Tony. In these ten days, old man, I shall sell my play. I am writing you this on the window-sill; without is the mutter of soft thunder of London--the very word London thrills me to the marrow. Such great things have come out of London--such prose--such verse--such immortality!

"To-day I pa.s.sed 'Jo,' d.i.c.kens's street-sweeper, in d.i.c.kens's 'Bleak House.' I felt like saying to him, 'I am as poor as you are, Jo, to-day,' but I remembered there were a few s.h.i.+llings between us.

"Well, old man, as I sit here I seem to have risen high above the roof-tops and to look down on the struggle in this great vortex of life, and here and there a man goes amongst them all, carrying a wreath of laurel. Tony, my eyes are upon him! Call me a fool if you will, call me mad; at any rate I have faith. I know I will succeed. Something tells me I will stand before the curtain when they call my name. It is growing late. I must go out and forage for food ... Tony. I kiss the hand of the beautiful Mrs. Faversham."

Antony turned the pages between his fingers. The reading of the letter had smoothed the creases from his brow. He sighed as he lifted his head to say "Come in," for some one had knocked timidly at the door.

"h.e.l.lo!" Fairfax said, and now that they were alone he called her "Aunt Caroline."

Madame Potowski came forward and kissed him.

He drew a big chair into the window. He was always solicitous of her and a little pitiful.

Madame Potowski's hair had been soft brown once; it was golden, frankly so, now, and her fine lips were a little rouged. In her dress of changeable silk, her cape of tulle, her hat with a bunch of roses, her tiny gloved hands, she was a very elegant little lady. She rested her hands on her parasol and had suggested his mother to Antony. Then, as that resemblance pa.s.sed, came the fleeting suggestion which he never cared to hold--of Bella.

"I have come, my dear Tony, to see you. I wanted to see you alone."

Tony lit a cigar and sat by her side. The Comtesse Potowski had a little diamond watch with a chain on her breast. Outside the clock struck five.

"I have only a second to stay--my husband misses me if I am five minutes out of his sight."

"I do not wonder, Aunt Caroline."

"Isn't it all strange, Tony," she asked, "how very far up we have come?"

He shook the ashes off his cigar. "Well, I don't feel myself very far up, Aunt Caroline."

"My dear Tony, aren't you going to marry an immense fortune?"

"Is that what people say, Aunt Caroline?"

"You are going to do a very brilliant thing, Tony."

"Is that what you call going very far up?"

His aunt shook her pretty head. "Money is the greatest power in the world, dear boy. Art is very well, but there is nothing in the wide world like an income, dear."

Her nephew stirred in his chair. Caroline Potowski looked down at her little diamond watch, her dress s.h.i.+ning like a bunch of many-hued roses.

Antony knew that her husband was rich; he also made a good income from his singing and she must have made not an inconsiderable fortune.

"What are you thinking about?" said his aunt later, her hand on his own.

"You have shown great wisdom, great worldly wisdom."

"My G.o.d!" exclaimed her nephew between his teeth.

If Madame Potowski heard this exclamation, it was not tragic to her. She lowered her tone, although there was no one to hear them.

"Tony, I am very anxious about money."

Her nephew laughed aloud. In spite of himself there came over him in a flash the memory of the day nearly ten years ago when she sat on the side of his miserable little bed in his miserable little room in New York and took from him as a loan--which she never meant to pay back--all the money he had in the world. He put his hands in his pockets.

"Has your husband any financial difficulties?"

"My husband knows nothing about it," she said serenely. "You don't suppose I could tell him, do you? I must have five thousand francs, dear Tony, before to-morrow."

Tony said lightly, "I am afraid economy is not your strong point."

"Tony," she exclaimed reproachfully, "I am a wonderful manager; I can make a franc go further than my husband can a louis, and I have a real gift for bargains. Think of it! I only had one hundred dollars a month to dress myself and Bella and poor little Gardiner, and for all my little expenses." The children's names on her lips seemed sacrilege to him. He did not wish her to speak those sacred names, or destroy his sacred past, whose charm and tenderness persisted over all the suffering and which nothing could destroy. "I have been buying a quant.i.ty of old Chinese paintings--a great bargain; in ten years they will be worth double the money. You must come and see them. The dealer will deliver them to-morrow."

"History," Antony thought, "how it repeats itself!"

Caroline Potowski leaned toward her nephew persuasively, and even in the softened twilight he saw the weakness and the caprices of her pretty face, and he pitied Potowski.

"I must have five thousand francs before to-morrow," said his aunt, "otherwise these dealers will make me trouble."

Fairfax laughed again. With a touch of bitterness he said--

"And I must have an income of five times as much as that a year--ten times as much as that a year--unless I wish to feel degraded because I am a poor labourer."

The comtesse did not reply to this. As she did not, Fairfax saw the humour of it.

"You do not really think I could give you five thousand francs, auntie?"

"I know you haven't a great deal of money, dear boy----"

"Not a great deal, auntie."

"But you seem to have such a lot of time to spend to amuse yourself."

He nodded. "So I seem to have."

The comtesse looked at him a little askance. "You are going to make such a brilliant marriage. Mrs. Faversham is so fearfully rich."

Fairfax exclaimed, but shut down on the words that came to his lips. He realized that his aunt was a toy woman, utterly irresponsible, a pretty fool. He said simply--

"You had better frankly tell your husband."

She swung her parasol to and fro. "You think so, Tony?"

"Decidedly."

"And you couldn't possibly manage, Tony?"

Tony pointed to his studies. "These are my only a.s.sets; these are my finances, auntie. I shall have to sell something to live on--if I am so lucky as to be able to find a customer."

"If I could give the dealer a thousand francs to-morrow I think he would wait," said his aunt.

Tony shook his head. "I wish I were a millionaire for five minutes, Aunt Caroline."