Fairfax and His Pride Part 30

"Oh, it's true enough; but there is nothing to do about it. Cedersholm knows that better than any one else."

He sat back, and his face grew dark and heavy with its brooding. His companion watched him helplessly, only half convinced of the truth of the statement. Fairfax lifted his eyes and navely exclaimed--

"Isn't it cruel, Rainsford? You speak of failures; did you ever see such a useless one as this? Cedersholm and his beasts which they say right here are the best things in modern sculpture, and me with my engine and my--" He stopped. "Give me the bill," he called to George Washington.

The old darkey, used as he was to his gentleman's moods, found this one stranger than usual.

"Anythin' wrong with the dinner, Kunnell?" he asked tremulously. "Very sorry, Capting. Fust time yo'--"

Fairfax put the money in his hand. "All right, George," he a.s.sured kindly, "your dinner's all right--don't worry. Good-bye." And he did not say as he usually did, "See you next Sunday." For he had determined to go down to New York for the unveiling of the monument.

CHAPTER XXV

The May afternoon, all sunshine and sparkle, had a wine to make young hope spring from old graves and age forget its years, and youth mad with its handicaps; a day to inspire pa.s.sion, talent, desire, and to make even goodness take new wings.

With the crowd of interested and curious, Antony Fairfax entered Central Park through the Seventy-second Street gate. Lines of carriages extended far into Fifth Avenue, and he walked along by the side of a smart victoria where a pretty woman sat under her sunshade and smiled on the world and spring. Fairfax saw that she was young and worldly, and thought for some time of his mother, of women he might have known, and when the victoria pa.s.sed him, caught the lady's glance as her look wandered over the crowd. A May-day party of school children spread over the lawn at his left, the pole's bright streamers fluttering in the breeze. The children danced gaily, too small to care for the unveiling of statues or for ancient Egypt. The bright scene and the day's gladness struck Antony harsh as a glare in weakened eyes. He was gloomy and sardonic, his heart beating out of tune, his genial nature had been turned to gall.

The Mall was roped off, and at an extempore gate a man in uniform received the cards of admission. Fairfax remembered the day he had endeavoured to enter the Field Palace and his failure.

"I'm a mechanic," he said hastily to the gateman, "one of Mr.

Cedersholm's workmen."

The man pushed him through, and he went in with a group of students from Columbia College.

In a corner of the Mall, on the site he had indicated to the little cousins, rose a white object covered by a sheeting, which fell to the ground. Among the two hundred persons gathered were people of distinction. There was to be speech-making. Fairfax did not know this or who the speakers were to be. All that he knew or cared was that at three o'clock of this Sat.u.r.day his Beasts--his four primitive creatures--were to be unveiled. He wore his workday clothes, his Pride had led him to make the arrogant display of his contempt of the cla.s.s he had deserted.

His hat was pushed back on his blond head. His blue eyes sparkled and he thrust his disfigured hands into his pockets to keep them quiet. The lady beside whose carriage he had stood came into the roped-off enclosure, and found a place opposite Fairfax. Once more her eyes fell on the workman's handsome face. He looked out of harmony with the people who had gathered to see the unveiling of Mr. Cedersholm's pedestal.

For the speakers, a desk and platform had been arranged, draped with an American flag. Antony listened coldly to the first address, a _resume_ of the dynasty in whose dim years the Abydos Sphinx was hewn, and the Egyptologist's learning, the dust he stirred of golden tombs, and the perfumes of the times that he evoked, were lost to the up-state engineer who only gazed on the veiled monument.

His look, however, returned to the desk, when Cedersholm took the place, and Fairfax, from the sole of his lame foot to his fair head, grew cold.

His bronze beasts were not more hard and cold in their metallic bodies, nor was the Sphinx more petrified. Cedersholm had aged, and seemed to Fairfax to have warped and shrunk and to stand little more than a pitiful suit of clothes with a _boutonniere_ in the lapel of the pepper-and-salt coat. There was nothing impressive about the sleek grey head, though his single eye-gla.s.s gave him distinction. The Columbia student next to Fairfax, pushed by the crowd, touched Antony Fairfax's great form and felt as though he had touched a colossus.

Cedersholm spoke on art, on the sublimity of plastic expression. He spoke rapidly and cleverly. His audience interrupted him by gratifying whispers of "Bravo, bravo," and the gentle tapping of hands. He was clearly a favourite, a great citizen, a great New Yorker, and a great man. Directly opposite the desk was a delegation from the Century Club, Cedersholm's friends all around him. To Fairfax, they were only brutes, black and white creatures, no more--mummers in a farce. Cedersholm did not speak of his own work. With much delicacy he confined his address to the past. And his adulation of antiquity showed him to be a real artist, and he spoke with love of the relics of the perfect age. In closing he said--

"Warm as may be our inspirations, great as may be any modern genius, ardent as may be our labour, let each artist look at the Abydos Sphinx and know that the climax has been attained. We can never touch the antique perfection again."

Glancing as he did from face to face, Cedersholm turned toward the Columbia students who adored him and whose professor in art he was.

Searching the young faces for sympathy, he caught sight of Fairfax. He remembered who he was, their eyes met. Cedersholm drank a gla.s.s of water at his hand, bowed to his audience, and stepped down. He moved briskly, his head a little bent, crossed the enclosure, and joined the lady whom Fairfax had observed.

"That," Fairfax heard one of his neighbours say, "is Mr. Cedersholm's fiancee, Mrs. Faversham."

Fairfax raised his eyes to the statue. There was a slight commotion as the workmen ranged the ropes. Then, very gracefully, evidently proud as a queen, the lady, followed by Mr. Cedersholm, went up to the pedestal, took the ropes in her gloved hands, and there was a flutter and the conventional covering slipped and fell to the earth. There was an exclamation, a murmur, the released voices murmured their praise, Cedersholm was surrounded. Fairfax, immovable, stood and gazed.

The pedestal was of sh.e.l.l-pink marble, carved in delicate bas-relief.

Many of the drawings Antony had made. Isis with her cap of Upper and Lower Egypt, Hathor with the eternal oblation--the Sphinx.... G.o.d and the Immortals alone knew who had made it.

On its great, impa.s.sive face, on its ponderous body, there was no signature, no name. Under the four corners, between Sphinx and pedestal, crouched four bronze creatures, their forms and bodies visible between the stones of the pink pedestal and the soft blue of the Egyptian granite. The bold, severe modelling, their curious primitive conception, the life and realism of the creatures were poignant in their suggestion of power. The colour of the bronze was beautiful, would be more beautiful still as the years went on. The beasts supported the Egyptian monument. They rested between the pedestal and the Sphinx; they were the support and they were his. They seemed, to the man who had made them, beautiful indeed. Forgetting his outrage and his revenge, in the artist, Fairfax listened timidly, eagerly, for some word to be murmured in the crowd, some praise for his Beasts.

He heard many.

The students at his side were enthusiastic, they had made studies from the moulds; moulds of the Beasts were already in the Metropolitan Museum. The young critics were lavish, profuse. They compared the creatures with the productions of the Ancients.

"Cedersholm is a magician, he is one of the greatest men of his time...."

The man in working clothes smiled, but his expression was gentler than it had been hitherto. He lifted his soft hat and ran his fingers through his blond hair and remained bareheaded in the May air that blew about him; his fascinated eyes were fastened on the Abydos Sphinx, magnetized by the calm, inscrutable melancholy, by the serene indifference. The stony eyes were fixed on the vistas of the new world, the crude Western continent, as they had been fixed for centuries on the sands of the pathless desert, on the shifting sands that relentlessly effaced footsteps of artist and Pharaoh, dynasty and race.

Who knew who had made this wonder?

How small and puny Cedersholm seemed in his pepper-and-salt suit, his _boutonniere_ and single eye-gla.s.s, his trembling heart. His heart trembled, but only Fairfax knew it; he felt that he held it between his hands. "He must have thought I was dead," he reflected. "What difference did it make," Fairfax thought, "whether or not the Egyptian who had hewn the Sphinx had murdered another man for stealing his renown? After four thousand years, all the footsteps were effaced." His heart grew somewhat lighter, and between himself and the unknown sculptor there seemed a bond of union.

The students and the master had drifted away. Cedersholm was in the midst of his friends. Fairfax would not have put out his hand to take his laurel. His spirit and soul had gone into communion with a greater sculptor of the Sphinx, the unknown Egyptian. Standing apart from the crowd where Cedersholm was being congratulated, Fairfax remarked the lady again, and that she stood alone as was he. She seemed pensive, turning her lace parasol between her hands, her eyes on the ground. The young man supposed her to be dreaming of her lover's greatness. He recalled the day, two years ago, when with Bella and Gardiner he had come up before the opening in the earth prepared for the pedestal.

"Wait, wait, my hearties!" he had said.

Well, one of them had gone on, impatient, to the unveiling of greater wonders, and Antony had come to his unclaimed festival alone....

CHAPTER XXVI

He said to Rainsford at luncheon, over nuts and raisins, and coffee as black as George Washington's smiling face--

"I reckon you think I've got a heart of cotton, don't you? I reckon you think I don't come up to the scratch, do you, old man? I a.s.sure you that I went down to New York seeing scarlet. I had made my plans. Afterward, mind you, Rainsford, not of course before a whole lot of people,--but in his own studio, I intended to tell Cedersholm a few truths. Upon my honour, I believe I _could_ have killed him."

Rainsford held a pecan nut between the crackers which he pressed slowly as he listened to his friend. Antony's big hand was spread out on the table; its grip would have been powerful on a man's throat.

"We often get rid of our furies on the way," said Rainsford, slowly. "We keep them housed so long that they fly away un.o.bserved at length. And when at last we open the door, and expect to find them ready with their poisons, they've gone, vanished every one."

"Not in this case," Fairfax shook his head. "I shall call on them all some day and they will all answer me. But yesterday wasn't the time.

You'll think me poorer-spirited than ever, I daresay, but the woman he is going to marry was there, a pretty woman, and she seemed to love him."

Fairfax glanced up at the agent and saw only comprehension.

"Quite right, Tony." Rainsford returned Fairfax's look over his glistening eyegla.s.ses, cracked the pecan nut and took out the meat. "I am not surprised."

Antony, who had taken a clipping from his wallet, held it out.

"Read this. I cut it out a week ago. Yesterday in the Central Park old ambitions struck me hard. Read it."

The notice was from a Western paper, and spoke in detail of a compet.i.tion offered to American sculptors by the State of California, for the design in plaster of a tomb. The finished work was to be placed in the great new cemetery in Southern California. The prize to be awarded was ten thousand dollars and the time for handing in the design a year.

"Not a very cheerful or inspiring subject, Tony."