Fairfax and His Pride Part 24

He returned to Nut Street dazed, excited but less sentimentally miserable and more profoundly touched. He had made himself a mechanical career; he had a.s.sumed the responsibilities of a man. He might have been a miserable failure as a sculptor, perhaps he would be a good mechanic.

Who knows where any flight will carry a man? Making his life, married and founding a home, he would be a factor in the world's progress, and a self-supporting citizen. He tried to fire himself with this sacrifice.

At any rate, in order to save his body he had lost his soul--that is, his spiritual soul. "Is not the life more than the meat?" In the recesses of his artist's mind a voice which he had strangled tried to tell him that he had done his soul a great, great wrong. Nevertheless, a solemn feeling of responsibility and of manhood came upon him, a grave quiet strength was his, and as he journeyed back to his lodgings, he did not then regret.

Mrs. Kenny and her husband and the children were in the kitchen as he pa.s.sed and the landlady called out something, but he did not hear for he was half-way upstairs. As he opened the door and went into his room he saw some one was standing by the window--no, leaning far out of the window, very far; a small figure in a black dress.

"Bella!" he cried.

She flashed about, rushed at him, and for the first time since "Going to Siberia" he felt the entwining arms. He suffered the dashing embrace, then, freeing himself, saw her hair dark under her black hat, and that she had grown in eighteen months, and he heard--

"Oh, Cousin Antony, how long you have been coming home! I have been waiting for your engine to come under the window, but I didn't see you.

How did you get here without my seeing you?"

If the sky had opened and shown him the vision of his own mother he could not have been more overwhelmed with surprise.

"Where did you come from, Bella? Who is with you?"

She took her hat off, dropped it easily on the floor, and he saw that her hair was braided in a great braid. She sat on the ledge of the open window and swung her feet. Her skirts had been lengthened, but she was still a little girl. The charming affectionate eyes beamed on him.

"But you are like anybody else, Cousin Antony, to-day. When I saw you in your flannel shirt I thought you were a fireman."

At the remembrance of when she had seen him, a look of distress crossed her mobile face. She burst out crying, sprang up and ran to him.

"Oh, Cousin Antony, I want him so, my little brother, my little playmate."

He soothed her, made her sit on his bed and dried her tears, as he had dried them when she had cried over the blackbird.

"Who is with you, honey? Who brought you here?"

As though she had stored up all her sorrow, as though she had waited with a child's loyal tenderness for this moment, she wound her arms around Fairfax's neck and brought her face close to his cheek.

"I miss him perfectly dreadfully, Cousin Antony. n.o.body took care of him much but me. Now father is broken-hearted. You loved him, didn't you? He perfectly worshipped you."

"There, Bella, you choke me, honey. I can't breathe. Now tell me who let you come. Is Aunt Caroline here?"

She had no intention of answering him, and wiped her eyes briskly on the handkerchief that he gave her.

"Tobacco," she sniffed, "your handkerchief has got little wisps of tobacco on it. I think it is perfectly splendid to be an engineer! I wouldn't have thought so though, if I hadn't seen you in the flannel shirt. Wouldn't you rather be a _genius_ as you used to think? Don't you make casts any more? Isn't it _sweet_ in your little room, and aren't the tracks mixing? How do you ever know which ones to go on, Cousin Antony? And _which_ is your engine? Take me down to see it. How Gardiner would have loved to ride!"

She was a startling combination of child and woman. Her slenderness, her grace, her tender words, the easy flow of speech, the choice of words caught and remembered from the varied books she devoured, her ardour and her rare brilliant little face, all made her an unusual companion.

"Now answer me," he ordered, "who came with you to Albany?"

"No one, Cousin Antony."

"What do you mean?"

"I came alone."

"From New York? You're crazy, Bella!"

She sat up with spirit, brought her heavy braid around over her shoulder and fastened the black ribbon securely.

"I lose my hair ribbons like anything," she said. "Why, I've done things alone for years, Cousin Antony. I've been all over New York matching things. I used to buy all Gardiner's things alone and have them charged.

I know my way. I'm going on fourteen. You dropped your telegram, the one Miss Mitty sent you, when you rushed out that night. I found it on the stairs." She fished it out of her pocket. "Mr. Antony Fairfax, 42, Nut Street, West Albany. I had to watch for a good chance to come, and when I got to Forty-second Street I just took a ticket for West Albany, and no one ever asked me my name or address, and the people in the cars gave me candy and oranges. At the station down here I asked the ticket man where Nut Street was, and he said: 'Right over those tracks, young lady,' and laughed at me. Downstairs the woman gave me a gla.s.s of milk--and aren't the children too sweet, Cousin Antony, with so many freckles? And doesn't she speak with a brogue just like old Ann's?"

"This is the wildest thing I ever heard of," said her cousin. "I must telegraph your mother and take you home at once."

She gasped. "Oh, you wouldn't do that? I'm not going home. I have run away for good."

"Don't be a goose, little cousin."

"I hate home," she said hotly, "it's lonely, and I miss my little brother. They won't let me go to school, and mother takes lessons from an opera singer, and there is no quiet place to read. I never go to the Top Floor where we used to play." She clung to his hand. "Let me stay, Cousin Antony," she pleaded, "I want to live with you."

She coloured furiously and stopped. And Fairfax saw that she was like his mother, and that the promises were fulfilled. Her low collar, edged with fine lace, fell away from the pure young throat. Her mouth, piquant and soft, half-coaxing and half-humorous, and her glorious eyes fast losing the look of childhood, were becoming mysterious.

"You are too big a girl," he said sternly, "to talk such nonsense. You are too old to be so silly, Bella. Why, your people must be insane with anxiety."

But her people, as it turned out, were at Long Branch for the summer, and Bella, presumably to go to the dentist, had come up to stay for a day or two with the little Whitcomb ladies. She had chosen her time well.

"No one knows where I am. The Whitcombs don't know I am coming to New York, and the family think I am with Miss Eulalie and Miss Mitty."

"There is a train to New York," he said, "in half an hour."

"Oh," she cried, "Cousin Antony, how horrid! You've changed perfectly dreadfully. I see it now. You used to be fond of me. I thought you were fond of me. I don't want to force myself on you, Cousin Antony."

Fairfax was amazed, charmed and bewildered by her. What did Mrs. Kenny think? He opened the door and called her, and said over his shoulder to Bella--

"What did you tell the woman downstairs?"

Bella picked her hat up from the floor and wound the elastic around her fingers. Her face clouded.

"Tell me," Antony urged, "what did you say to Mrs. Kenny?" He saw her embarra.s.sment, and repeated seriously: "For heaven's sake, Bella, tell me."

"No," she whispered, "I can't."

He shrugged in despair. "Come, it can't be anything very dreadful. I've got to know, you see."

The bell of the Catholic Church tolled out eight o'clock.

"Come, little cousin."

Half-defiantly and half-shamefacedly, she raised her eyes.

"It's rather hard to tell you," she stammered, "you seem to be so mad at me." She put a brave face on it. "I just told them that I was engaged to you and that I had come to marry you." And she stood her ground, her little head held up.

Fairfax stifled a shout, but was obliged to laugh gently.