Fairfax and His Pride Part 38

He had, of all people in the world, possibly the least right to her. She was his first cousin, nothing but a child; worth, the papers had said, a million in her own right. The heiress of a man who despised him.

But her name was music still; music as yet too delicate, sweet as it was, not to be drowned by the deeper, graver notes that were sounding through Fairfax. There was a call to labour, there was the imperious demand of his art. In him, something sang Glory, and if the other tones meant struggle and battle, nevertheless his desire was all toward them.

BOOK III

THE VISIONS

CHAPTER I

The sea which he had just crossed lay gleaming behind him, every lovely ripple washing the sh.o.r.es of a new continent.

The cliffs which he saw rising white in the sunlight were the Norman cliffs. Beyond them the fields waved in the summer air and the June sky spread blue over France.

As he stepped down from the gang-plank and touched French soil, he gazed about him in delight.

The air was salt and indescribably sweet. The breeze came to him over the ripening fields and mingled with the breath of the sea.

They pa.s.sed his luggage through the Customs quickly, and Antony was free to wonder and to explore. Not since he had left the oleanders and jasmines of New Orleans had he smelled such delicious odours as those of sea-girdled Havre. A few soldiers in red uniforms tramped down the streets singing the Ma.r.s.eillaise. A group of fish-wives offered him mussels and crabs.

In his grey travelling clothes, his soft grey hat, his bag in his hand, he went away from the port toward the wide avenue.

The bright colour of a red awning of a cafe caught his eye; he decided to breakfast before going on to Paris.

Paris! The word thrilled him through and through.

At a small table out of doors he ordered "boeuf a la mode" and "pommes de terre." It seemed agreeable to speak French again and his soft Creole accent charmed the ear of the waiter who bent smiling to take his order.

Antony watched with interest the scene around him; those about him seemed to be good-humoured, contented travellers on the road of life.

There was a neat alacrity about the waiters in their white ap.r.o.ns.

A girl with a bouquet of roses came up to him. Antony gave her a sou and in exchange she gave him a white rose.

"Thank you, Monsieur the Englishman."

He had never tasted steak and potatoes like these. He had never tasted red wine like this. And it cost only a franc! He ordered his coffee and smoked and mused in the bland June light.

He was happier than he had been for many a long day.

Eventful, tremulous, terrible and expressive, his past lay behind him on another sh.o.r.e. He felt as though he were about to seek his fortune for the first time.

As soon as Rainsford's generous gift became his own, the possession of his little fortune, even at such a tragic price, made a new man of Fairfax. He magnified its power, but it proved sufficient to buy him a gentlemanly outfit, the ticket to France, and leave him a little capital.

His plans unfolded themselves to him now, as he sat musing before the restaurant. He would study in the schools with Cormon or Julian. He had brought with him his studies of Molly--he would have them criticized by the great masters. All Paris was before him. The wonders of the galleries, whose masterpieces were familiar to him in casts and photographs, would disclose themselves to him now. He would see the Louvre, Notre Dame de Paris....

His spirits rose as he touched the soil of France. Now Paris should be his mistress, and art should be his pa.s.sion!

His ticket took him second-cla.s.s on a slow train and he found a seat amongst the humble travelling world; between a priest and a soldier, he smoked his cigarettes and offered them to his companions, and watched the river flowing between the poplars, the fields red with poppies, yellow with wheat. The summer light shining on all shone on him through the small window of the carriage, and though it was sunset it seemed to Fairfax sunrise. The hour grew late. The darkness fell and the motion of the cars made him drowsy, and he fell asleep.

He was awakened by the stirring of his fellow-pa.s.sengers, by the rich Norman voices, by the jostling and moving among the occupants of the carriage, and he gathered his thoughts together, took his valise in his hand and climbed down from the car.

He pa.s.sed out with the crowd through the St. Lazare station. He had in Havre observed with interest the novel constructions of the engines and the rolling stock. The crowd of market-women, peasants, cures, was anonymous to him, but as he pa.s.sed the engine which had brought him from Havre, he glanced up at the mechanician, a big, blond-moustached fellow in a blue blouse. The engineer's face streamed with perspiration and he was smoking a cigarette.

He had shunned engines and yards, and everything that had to do with his old existence, for months; now he nodded with a friendly sympathetic smile to the engine-driver.

"Bien le bonjour," he said cheerfully, as he had heard the people in the train say it, "Bien le bonjour."

The Frenchman nodded and grinned and watched him limp down and out with the others to the waiting-room called, picturesquely, the Hall of the Lost Footsteps--"La Salle des Pas Perdus."

And Antony's light step and his heavy step fell among the countless millions that come and go, go and come, unmarked, forgotten--to walk with the Paris mult.i.tudes into paths of obscurity or fame--"_les pas perdus_."

CHAPTER II

It was the first beginning of summer dawn when he turned breathlessly into the Rue de Rome and stood at length in Paris. He shouldered his big bag and took his bearings. At that early hour there were few people abroad--here and there a small open carriage, drawn by a limp, melancholy horse and dominated by what he thought a picturesque cabby, pa.s.sed him invitingly. A drive in a cab in America is not for a man of uncertain means, and the folly of taking a vehicle did not occur to him.

Along the broad avenue at the street's foot, lights were still lit in the ma.s.sive lamps, shops and houses were closed, and by a blue sign on the wall he read that he was crossing a great avenue. The Boulevard Haussmann was as tranquil as a village street. A couple of good-looking men, whom he thought were soldiers, caught his eye in their uniforms of white trousers and blue coats. He asked them, touching his hat, the first thing that came to his mind: "La Rue Mazarine, Messieurs--would they direct him?"

When he came out on the Place de la Concorde at four o'clock he was actually the only speck visible in the great circle. He stopped, enchanted, to look about him. The imaginative and inadequate picture of the Place de la Concorde his idea had drawn, faded. The light mists of the morning swept up the Avenue des Champs Elysees, and there stood out before his eyes the lines of the Triumphal Arch, which to Antony said: Napoleon!

On the left stretched gardens toward a great palace, all that has been left to France and the glory which was her doom.

From the spectral line of the Louvre, his eyes came back to the melancholy statues that rose near him--Stra.s.sburg, Luxemburg, Alsace and Lorraine. Huge iron wreaths hung about their bases, wreaths that blossomed as he looked, like flowers of blood and lilies of death.

Then in front of him the calm, rose-hued obelisk lifted its finger, and once again the shadow of Egypt fell across the heart of a modern city.

To Antony, the obelisk had an affinity with the Abydos Sphinx, but this obelisk did not rest on the backs of four bronze creatures!

The small cabs continued to tinkle slowly across the Place; a group of young fellows pa.s.sed by, singing on their way to the Latin Quarter, from some fete in Montmartre--they were students going home before morning.

In the distance, here and there, were a few foot pa.s.sengers like himself, but to Antony it seemed that he was alone in Paris. And in the fresh beginning of a day untried and momentous, the city was like a personality. In the summer softness, in the tender, agreeable light, the welcome to him was caressing and as lovely as New York had been brutal.

Antony resumed his way to the river, followed the quays where at his side the Seine ran along, reddening in the summer's sunrise. Along the river, when he crossed the Pont des Arts, he saw the stirring of Parisian life. He went on down the quays, past quaint old houses whose traditions and history he wanted to know, turned off into a dark street--la Rue Mazarine. He smiled as he read the sign. What had this narrow Parisian alley to do with him? He had adopted it out of caprice, distinguished it from all Paris.

He scanned the shops and houses; many were still closed, neither milk-shops nor antiquity dealers suggested shelter. A modest sign over a dingy-looking building caught his eye. In the courtyard, in green wooden tubs, flourished two bay-trees.

"Hotel of the Universe"--Hotel de l'Univers.