Fairfax and His Pride Part 16

"It is curious how we are all taking pains to escape consequences to which we say we are indifferent. What matter is it if he _does_ arrest me? I should at least have a cup of coffee at the station house."

On either side of the alley through which Fairfax now walked there was not a friendly door open, or a shutter flung back from a window. At the head of the street Fairfax stopped and looked back upon the yards and the tracks of the workshops. The ugly scene lay in the mist of very early morning and the increasing daylight made its crudeness each moment more apparent. As he stood alone in Nut Street, on either side of him hundreds of sleeping workmen, the sun rose over the yards, filling the dreary, unlovely outlook with a pure glory. To Fairfax's senses it brought no consolation but the sharp suffering that any beauty brings to the poet and the seer. It was a new day--he was too young to be crushed out of life because he had an empty pocket, and faint as he was, hungry as he was, the visions began to rise again in his brain. The crimson glory, as it swam over the railroad yards, over the bridge, over the unsightly buildings, was peopled by his ideals--his breath came fast and his heart beat. The clouds from which the sun emerged took winged shapes and soared; the power of the iron creatures in the shed seemed to invigorate him. Fairfax drew a deep breath and murmured: "Art has made many victims. I won't sacrifice my life to it." And he seemed a coward to himself to be beaten so early in the race.

"Muscles of iron and a heart of steel," he murmured again, "_a heart of steel_."

He turned on his feet and limped on, and as he walked he saw a light in an opposite window with the early opening of a cheap restaurant. The shutters on either side of Nut Street were flung back. He heard the clattering of feet, doors were pushed open and the workers began to drift out into the day. Antony made for the light in the coffee house; it was extinguished before he arrived and the growing daylight took its place. A man from a lodging-house pa.s.sed in at the restaurant door.

Fairfax's hands were deep in the pockets of his overcoat, his fingers touched a loose b.u.t.ton. He turned it, but it did not feel like a b.u.t.ton.

He drew it out; it was twenty-five cents. He had not shaken out quite all the children's coins on the hall floor. This bit of silver had caught between the lining and the cloth and resisted his angry fling. As the young man looked at it, his face softened. He went into the eating-house with the other man and said to himself as he crossed the door-sill--

"Little cousin! you don't know what 'serious' money this is!"

CHAPTER II

A girl who he judged by her frowzled hair and her heavy eyes had just been aroused from sleep, stood behind the counter pouring hot and steaming coffee into thick china cups. The smell to the hungry man was divine. Fairfax's mouth watered. From the one pot the coffee came out with milk added, and from another the liquid poured clear. Fairfax asked for coffee with milk and a sandwich, and as the girl pushed the plate with hunks of bread and ham towards him, he asked, "How much, please?"

The girl raised her heavy lids. Her gray eyes could have sparkled if she had been less sleepy. She glanced at him and responded in a soft brogue--

"Two cints a cup. Sandwiches two cints apiece."

He took his breakfast over to the table where a customer was already seated before a huge breakfast. After watching Fairfax for a few moments, this man said to him--

"Got a rattling good appet.i.te, Mister."

"I have, indeed," Fairfax returned, "and I'm going to begin over again."

The man wore a red shirt under his coat, his battered bowler was a-c.o.c.k on his head. Antony often recalled Sanders as he looked that morning.

His face from his neck up was clean. He exuded water and brown soap; he had a bright healthy colour; he was a good-looking workman, but his hands! Fairfax thought them appalling--grimed with coal. They could never be washed clean, Fairfax reflected, and one finger on the left hand was missing.

"Stranger?" the man asked him. "Just going through?"

And as Fairfax replied, he thought to himself, "He doesn't dream _how_ strange I am and that I don't even know the name of the town."

He asked the man, "Much going on here?"

"Yards. Up here in West Albany it's nothing but yards and railroading."

"Ah," nodded Fairfax, and to himself: "This is the capital of New York State--_Albany_--that's where I am."

And it was not far enough away to please him.

The man's breakfast, which had been fed into him by his knife, was disposed of, and he went on--

"Good steady employment; they're decent to you. Have to be, good men are scarce."

A tall, well-set-up engineer came to the coffee counter, and Fairfax's companion called out to him--

"Got your new fireman yet, Joe?"

And the other, with a cheerful string of oaths, responded that he had not got him, and that he didn't want anybody, either, who wasn't going to stay more than five minutes in his cab.

"They've got a sign out at the yards," he finished, "advertising for hands, and when I run in at noon I'll call up and see what's doing."

Fairfax digested his meal and watched the entrance and exit of the railroad hands. Nearly all took their breakfast standing at the counter jollying the girl; only a few brakemen and conductors gave themselves the luxury of sitting down at the table. Antony went and paid what he owed at the counter, and found that the waitress had waked up, and, in spite of the fact that she had doled out coffee and food to some fifty customers, she had found time to glance at "the new one."

"Was it all right?" she asked.

She handed him the change out of his quarter. He had had a dime's worth of food.

"Excellent," Fairfax a.s.sured her; "first-rate."

Her sleeves came only to the elbow, her fore-arm was firm and white as milk. Her hands were coa.r.s.e and red; she was pretty and her cheerfulness touched him.

He wanted to ask for a wash-up, but he was timid.

"I'll be back at lunchtime," he said to her, nodding, and the girl, charmed by his smile, asked hesitatingly--

"Workin' here?"

And as Fairfax said "No" rather quickly, she flashed scarlet.

"Excuse me," she murmured.

He was as keen to get out of the restaurant now as he had been to cross its threshold. The room grew small around him, and he felt himself too closely confined with these common workmen, with whom for some reason or other he began to feel a curious fraternity. Once outside the house, instead of taking his way into the more important part of West Albany, he retraced his steps down Nut Street, now filled with men and women.

Opposite the gateman's house at the foot of the hill, he saw a sign hanging in a window, "New York Central Railroad," and under this was a poster which read, "Men wanted. Apply here between nine and twelve."

Fairfax read the sign over once or twice, and found that it fascinated him. This brief notice was the only call he had heard for labour, it was the only invitation given him to make his livelihood since he had come North. "Men wanted."

He touched the muscles of his right arm, and repeated "Muscles of iron and a heart of steel." There was nothing said on the sign about sculptors and artists and men of talent, and poets who saw visions, and young ardent fellows of good family, who thought the world was at their feet; but it did say, "Men wanted." Well, he was a man, at any rate. He accosted a fellow who pa.s.sed him whistling.

"Can you tell me where a chap can get a shave in this neighbourhood? Any barbers hereabouts?"

The other grinned. "Every feller is his own razor in Nut Street, partner! You can find barber shops uptown."

"I want to get a wash-up," Fairfax said, smiling on him his light smile.

"I want to get hold of a towel and some soap."

The workman pointed across the street. "There's a hotel. They'll fix you up."

Fairfax followed the man's indication, and he saw the second sign that hung in Nut Street. It gave the modest information, "Rooms and board three dollars a week. Room one dollar a week. All at Kenny's first-cla.s.s hotel. Gents only." Of the proprietor who stood in the doorway, and whose morning toilet had gone as far as shirt and trousers, Antony asked--

"How much will it cost me to wash-up? I'd like soap and a towel and to lie down on a bed for a couple of hours."

The Irish hotel-keeper looked at him. Fairfax took off his hat, and he didn't explain himself further.