Fairfax and His Pride Part 21

Followed by a little group of people whom Fairfax refused to enlighten, they went down the street, and Sanders disappeared within the door of the shanty where his family lived.

The incident gave Antony food for thought, and he chewed a bitter cud as he shut himself into his room. He couldn't help the girl's coming to him in his illness. He could have sent her about her business the first day that he was conscious. She would not have gone. She had lost her place and her reputation, according to Sanders, because of her love for him.

There was not any use in mincing the matter. That's the way it stood.

What should he do? What could he do?

He took off his heavy overcoat and m.u.f.fler, rubbed his hands, which were taking on their accustomed dirt and healthy vigour, poured out a gla.s.s of milk from the bottle on his window sill, and drank it, musing. The Company had acted well to him. The paymaster was a mighty fine man, and Antony had won his interest long ago. They had advanced him a month's pay on account of his illness. He brushed his blonde hair meditatively before the gla.s.s, settled the cravat under the low rolling collar of his flannel shirt. He was a New York Central fireman on regular duty, no further up the scale than Molly Shannon--as far as Nut Street and the others knew. Was there any reason why he should not marry her? She had harmed herself to do him good. He was reading his books on mechanics, a little later he was going to night school when his hours changed; he was going to study engineering; he had his yard ambitions, the only ones he permitted himself to have.

It was four o'clock of the winter afternoon, and the sunset left its red over the sky. Through his little window he saw the smoke of a locomotive rise in a milky column, cradle and flow and melt away. The ringing of the bells, the crying note of the whistles, had become musical to Fairfax.

There was no reason why he should not marry the Irish girl who doled out coffee to railroad hands.... Was there none? The figure of his mother rose before him, beautiful, proud, ambitious Mrs. Fairfax. She was waiting for his brilliant success, she was waiting to crown him when he should bring his triumphs home. The ugly yards blurred before his eyes, he almost fancied that a spray of jasmine blew across the pane.

He would write--

"Mother, I have married an Irish girl, a loving, honest creature who saved my life and lost her own good name doing so. It was my duty, mother, wasn't it? I am not striving for name or fame; I don't know what art means any more. I am a day labourer, a common fireman on an engine in the Albany yards--that's the truth, mother."

"Good heavens!" He turned brusquely from the window, paced his room a few times, limping up and down it, the lame jackdaw, the crippled bird in his cage, and his heart swelled in his breast. No--he could not do it. The Pride that had led him here and forced him to make his way in spite of fate, the Pride that kept him here would not let him. He had ambitions then? He was not then dead to fame? Where were those dreams?

Let them come to him and inspire him now. He recalled the choir-master of St. Angel's church. He could get a job to sing in St. Angel's if he pleased. He would run away to Albany. He had run away from New York; now he would run from Nut Street like a cad and save his Pride. He would leave the girl with the broken arm, the coffee-house door shut against her, to shift for herself, because he was a gentleman. Alongside the window he had hung up his coat and hat, and they recalled to him her things as they had hung there. There had been something dove-like and dear in her presence in his room of sickness. His Pride! He could hear his old Mammy say--

"Ma.s.sa Tony, chile, you' pride's gwine to lead yo thru black waters some day, sh.o.r.e."

He said "Come in" to the short, harsh rap at the door, and Sanders entered, slamming the door behind him. His face was hostile but not murderous; as usual his bowler was a-c.o.c.k on his head.

"See here, Fairfax, she sent me. She ain't hurt much, just a d.a.m.ned nasty bruise. I gave her my promise not to stick a knife into you."

Fairfax pushed up his sleeves; his arms were white as snow. He had lost flesh.

"I'll fight you right here, Sanders," he said, "and we'll not make a sound. I'm not as fit as you are, but I'll punish you less for that reason. Come on."

Molly's lover put his hand in his pockets because he was afraid to leave them out. He shook his head.

"I gave the girl my word, and I'd rather please Molly than break every bone in your ---- body, and that's saying a good deal. And here on my own hook I want to ask you a plain question."

"I shan't answer it, Sandy."

The other with singular patience returned, "All right. I'm going to ask just the same. Are you ... will you ... what the h.e.l.l...!" he exclaimed.

"Don't go on," said Fairfax; "shut up and go home."

Instead, Sanders took off his hat, a sign of unusual excitement with him. He wiped his face and said huskily--

"Ain't got a chance in the world alongside you, Fairfax, and I'd go down and crawl for her. That's how _I'm_ about her, mate." His face broke up.

Fairfax answered quietly, "That's all right, Sanders--that's all right."

The engineer went on: "I want you to clear out and give me my show, Tony. I had one before you turned up in Nut Street."

"Why, I can't do that, Sanders," said Fairfax gently; "you oughtn't to ask a man to do that. Don't you see how it will look to the girl?"

The other man's face whitened; he couldn't believe his ears.

"Why, you don't mean to say...?" he wondered slowly.

The figure under the jasmine vine, the proud form and face of his mother, grew smaller, paler as does the fading landscape when we look back upon it from the hill we have climbed.

"The doctor told me Molly had saved my life," Fairfax said. "They have turned her out of doors in ---- Street. Now you must let me make good as far as I can."

The young man's blue eyes rested quietly on the blood-shot eyes of his visitor. Sanders made no direct answer; he bit his moustache, considered his companion a second, and clapping his hat on his head, tore the door open.

"You are doing her a worse wrong than any," he stammered; "she ain't your kind and you don't love her."

His hand whitened in its grip on the door handle, then giving one look at his companion as though he meditated repeating his unfortunate attack upon him, he flung himself out of the door, muttering--

"I've got to get out of here.... I don't dare to stay!"

CHAPTER XI

By the time the sublime spring days came, Fairfax discovered that he needed consolation. He must have been a very stubborn, dull animal, he decided, to have so successfully stuffed down and crushed out Antony Fairfax. Antony Fairfax could not have been much of a man at any time to have gone down so uncomplainingly in the fight.

"A chap who is uniquely an artist and poet," he wrote to his mother, "is not a real man, I reckon."

But he had not described to her what kind of a fellow stood in his stead. Instead of going to church on Sundays he exercised in the free gymnasium, joined a base-ball team--the firemen against the engineers--and read and studied more than he should have done whenever he could keep his eyes open. Then spring came, and he could not deny another moment, another day or another night, that he needed consolation.

The wives and daughters of the railroad hands and officials--those he saw in Nut Street--were not likely to charm his eyes. Fairfax waited for Easter--waited with a strange young crying voice in his heart, a threatening softness around his heart of steel.

He went on rapidly with his new studies; his mind grasped readily whatever he attacked, and his teacher, less worldly than the choir-master at St. Angel's, wondered at his quickness, and looked at his disfigured hands. Joe Mead knew Tony's plans and his ambitions; by June they would give Fairfax an engine and Mead would look out for another fireman to feed "the Girl." The bulky, panting, puffing, sliding thing, feminine as the machine seemed, could no longer charm Fairfax nor occupy all his thoughts.

He had been sincere when he told Sanders that he would look out for Molly Shannon. The pinnacle this decision lifted him to, whether felt to be the truth or purely a sentimental advance, nevertheless gave him a view which seemed to do him good. The night after Sanders' visit, Fairfax slept in peace, and the next day he went over to Sanders' mother and asked to see Molly Shannon. She had left Nut Street, had run away without leaving any address. Fairfax did not push his chivalry to try to find her. He slept better than ever that night, and when during the month Sanders himself went to take a job further up in the State and the entire Sanders family moved to Buffalo, Fairfax's slumbers grew sounder still. At length his own restless spirit broke his repose.

April burst over the country in a mad display of blossoms, which Fairfax, through the cab of his engine, saw lying like snow across the hills. He pa.s.sed through blossoming orchards, and above the smell of oil and grease came the ineffable sweetness of spring, the perfume of the earth and the trees. Just a year ago he had gone with Bella and Gardiner to Central Park, and he remembered Gardiner's little arm outstretched for the prize ring he could never secure, and Bella's sparkling success.

The children had been in spring attire; now Fairfax could buy himself a new overcoat and did so, a grey one, well-made and well-fitting, a straw hat with a crimson band, and a stick to carry on his Sunday jauntings--but he walked alone.

He flung his books in the bottom drawer of his bureau, locked it and pitched the key out of the window. He would not let them tempt him, for he had weakly bought certain volumes that he had always wanted to read, and Nut Street did not understand them.

"It's the books," he decided; "I can't be an engineer if I go on, nor will I be able to bear my lonely state."

Verse and lovely prose did not help him; their rhythm and swell drew away the curtains from the window of his heart, and the golden light of spring dazzled the young man's eyes. He eagerly observed the womenkind he pa.s.sed, and Easter week, with its solemn festival, ran in hymn and prayer toward Easter Day. New frocks, new jackets, new hats were bright in the street. On Easter Sunday Fairfax sat in his old place by the choir and sang. The pa.s.sion and tenderness brooding in him made his voice rich and the choir-master heard him above the congregation. From the lighted altar and the lilies, from the sunlight streaming through the stained windows, inspiration came to him, and as Fairfax sat and listened to the service he saw in imagination a great fountain to the left of the altar, a fountain of his building that should stand there, a marble fountain held by young angels with folded wings, and he would model, as Della Robbia modelled, angels in their primitive beauty, their bright infancy. The young man's head sank forward, he breathed a deep sigh. He owed every penny that he had laid by to Mrs. Kenny, to the tailor and the doctor, and in another month he would be engineer on probation. His inspiration left him at the church door. He walked restlessly up to the station and with a crowd of excursionists took his train to West Albany. Luncheon baskets, crying babies, oranges, peanuts, and the rest of the excursion paraphernalia filled the car. Fairfax looked over the crowd, and down by the farther door caught sight of a familiar face and figure.

It was Molly Shannon coming back to Nut Street for Easter. For several months the girl had been working in the Troy collar factory, and drawn by the most powerful of magnets was reluctantly returning to Nut Street on her holiday. Molly had no new dress for Easter. She hadn't even a new hat. Her long hours in the factory and her state of unhappy, unrequited love, had worn away the crude brilliance of her form. She was pale, thinner, and in her cheap dress, her old hat with its faded ribbon, with her hands clasped over a little imitation leather handbag, she sat utterly alone, as youth and beauty should never be.

Fairfax limped down the car and took his place by her side.