Fairfax and His Pride Part 20

"I am glad. I wouldn't have worried my mother."

And answering the question that was bounding in Molly's heart, he said--

"There's no one else to frighten or to rea.s.sure. I must write to my mother to-day."

As he said this he remembered that he would be obliged to tell her of little Gardiner, and the blood rose to his cheek, a spasm seized his heart, and his past rushed over him and smote him like a great wave.

Molly sat sewing in the window, mending his shirts, the light outlining her form and her head like a red flower. He covered his face with his hand and a smothered groan escaped him, and he fell back on the pillow.

Molly ran to him, terrified: "a relapse," that's what it was. The doctor had warned her.

"G.o.d in heaven!" she cried, and knowing nothing better to do, she put her arms round him as if he had been a boy. She saw the tears trickle through his thin hands that in his idleness had grown white, though the dark ridges around the broken nails were blackened still.

Fairfax quickly regained his control and made the girl go back to her work. After a little he said--

"Who's been paying for all these medicines, and so forth?"

"Lord love ye, that's nothing to cry about."

"There is money in my vest pocket, Molly; get it, will you?"

She found a roll of bills. There were twenty dollars.

She exclaimed--

"That's riches! I've only spent the inside of a five-dollar bill."

"And the doctor?"

"Oh, he'll wait. He's used to waiting in Nut Street."

Fairfax fingered the money. "And your work at Sheedy's?"

Molly stood by the bed, his shirt in her hand, her bra.s.s thimble on one finger, a bib ap.r.o.n over her bosom.

"Don't bother."

"You've lost your place, Molly; given it up to take care of me."

She took a few st.i.tches, the colour high in her face, and with a rare sensitiveness understood that she must not let Antony see her sacrifice, that she must not put her responsibility on Fairfax. She met his eyes candidly.

"If you go on like this, you'll be back again worse nor ye were.

Sheedy's afther me ivery day at the dure there, waitin' till I'm free again. He is that. Meanwhile he's payin' me full time. He is that. He'll keep me me place!"

She lied sweetly, serenely, and when the look of relief crept over Fairfax's face, she endured it as humble women in love endure, when their natures are sweet and honey-like and their hearts are pure gold.

She took the five dollars he paid her back. He was too delicate in sentiment to offer her more, and he watched her, his hands idly on the sheets.

"I reckon Joe Mead's got another fireman, Molly?"

"Ah, no," she laughed, "Joe's been here every day to see when you would be working, and when Joe don't come the other felly comes to see when you'll let _him_ off!"

Life, then, was going on out there in the yards. He heard the shriek of the engines, the fine voices of the whistles, and the square of his sunny window framed the outer day. People were going on journeys, people were coming home. He had come back, and little Gardiner....

"Sit down," he said brusquely to the girl who stood at his side; "sit down, for G.o.d's sake, and talk to me; tell me something, anything, or I shall go crazy again."

CHAPTER X

He recovered rapidly; his hard work had strengthened his const.i.tution, and Molly Shannon modestly withdrew, and Mary Kenny, the landlady, who had disputed the place from the first, took it and gave Antony what further care he needed. He missed Molly the first day she left him, missed her shawl and hat and the music of her Irish voice. He had sent for books through Joe Mead, and read furiously, realizing how long he had been without intellectual food.

But the books made him wretched.

Not one of them was written for an artist who had been forced by hard luck to turn into a day labourer. All the beautiful things he read made him suffer and desire and long, and worse still, made him rebel. One phrase out of Werther lingered and fascinated him--

"The miseries of mankind would be lighter if--G.o.d knows why this is so--if they would not use all their imagination to remember their miseries and to recall to themselves the souvenirs of their unhappy past."

The unhappy past! Well, was it not sad at his age to have a past so melancholy that one could not recall it without tears?

Every one but Sanders came to see him, and jolly him up. Joe Mead gave him to understand that he only lived for the time when Tony should come back to feed "the Girl," as he called his engine. Tony looked at his chief out of cavernous eyes. Joe Mead had on his Sunday clothes and would not light his cigar out of deference to Tony's sick-room.

"You're forty, Mead, aren't you?"

"About that, I guess."

"And I am only twenty-three," returned Fairfax. "Is that going to be a picture of me at forty?" he thought, and answered himself violently: "My mother's pride and mine forbid."

"Sanders doesn't come to see me, Joe?"

"Nope," returned the other, "you bet your life. If he ain't waiting for you at the door with a gun when you come down it's only because he is off on his job."

When his chief got up to leave him, Fairfax said, "I want you to get me a book on mechanics, Joe, practical mechanics, and don't pay over a dollar and a half."

He owed Molly Shannon more than he could ever return. The doctor told him, because he imagined that it would give the young fireman satisfaction, that the nursing had saved his life. Sanders was not at the stair-foot when Fairfax finally crept down to take his first outing. It was the middle of February and a mild day. Indeed, he had been at work over a fortnight when he caught sight of Molly and Sanders standing at the head of Nut Street, talking.

As he came up to them, Sanders turned a face clouded with pa.s.sion on Fairfax.

"You cursed hound!" he growled under his breath, and struck out, but before he could reach Fairfax Molly threw herself on Sanders and caught the blow on her arm and shoulder. In spite of her courage she cried out and would have fallen but for Fairfax. The blow, furiously directed by an able-bodied man, had done worse work than Sanders intended, and the poor girl's arm hung limp and she fainted away.

"Mother of G.o.d," muttered Sanders, "I have killed you, Molly darling!"

Her head lay on Fairfax's shoulder. "Let's get her into the coffee house," he said shortly.

Sanders was horrified at the sight of the girl he adored lying like death from his blow, and with a determination which Fairfax could not thwart the engineer took the girl in his own arms.

"Give her to me," he said fiercely, "I'll settle with you later. Can't take her into the coffee house: they've turned her out on account of you. There's not a house that would take her but the hotel. I'm going to carry her to my mother."