Fairfax and His Pride Part 48

"Or imprisoned for debt," said Dearborn, cheerfully, "that's more likely. The tailor doesn't believe you have gone to London, Fairfax. Try a more congenial place, Tony. Let it be Monte Carlo next time--every one goes there sooner or later."

When he came back from Versailles he told Dearborn nothing about his escapade in detail, simply mentioning the fact that he had taken out a little girl to spend the day in the woods and that she had bored him in the end, and that he had had the misfortune to meet Mrs. Faversham unexpectedly.

Dearborn was one of those subtle spirits who do not need to be told everything. He rated Antony for playing what he called an ungallant part to the little Bohemian.

"You say her hair was like chrysanthemums and that she had violet eyes?

Why, she is a priceless treasure, Tony! How could you desert her?"

And several times Dearborn tried to extract something more about the deserted little girl from his friend, but it was in vain.

"I am sorry," Dearborn said. "We need women, Tony--we need to see the flutter of their dresses, to watch them come and go in this little room.

By Jove, I often want to open the door and invite up the concierge, the concierge's wife, his aunt 'and children three' or any, or all of Paris who would come and infuse new life into us. Anything that is real flesh and blood, to chase for a moment visions and dreams away and let us touch real hands."

"You don't go out enough, old man."

"And you went out too much, Fairfax. It's not going out--I want some one to come in. I want to see the studio peopled. You have grown so morose and I have become such a navvy that our points of view will be false the first thing we know."

The snow had been falling lightly. There was a little fringe of it along the sill, and toward sunset it had turned cold, and under the winter fog the sun hung like an orange ball behind a veil. The Seine flowed tawny and yellow under their eyes, as they stood together talking in the window.

Fairfax was in his painting clothes, the playwright in his beloved dressing-gown that Fairfax had not the heart to p.a.w.n for coffee and coal. There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs without.

"It's the fellows coming to take my statuette," said Fairfax.

"It's the tailor, the bootmaker and the shirtmaker," said Dearborn. "Go behind the screen, Tony--run to Monte Carlo."

There was a tap at the door and a cheerful voice called--

"Mr. Rainsford, _c'est moi_."

"It is Potowski. I will have to let him in, Bob. Here's all Paris for you. You wanted it."

He opened the door for Count Potowski.

The Polish singer came quickly in, his silk hat and his cane in his hand. He looked around brightly.

"You don't hide from me," he said. "I have a fatal grasp when I take hold. You never call on me, Monsieur--so I call on you. Guerrea!--which means in Polish what 'altro' means in Italian, 'Doch' in German, 'Voila'

in French, and in unenthusiastic English, nothing at all."

Fairfax presented the Count to Dearborn, who beamed on him, amused, and Potowski glanced at the cold, cheerless Bohemia. It was meagre. It was cold. Privation was apparent. The place was not without a charm, and it had distinction. There were the evidences of intense work, of devotion to the ideal. There were the evidences of good taste and good breeding.

The few bits of furniture were old and had been bought for a song, but selected with judgment. Fairfax's statuette waited on its pedestal to be carried away--in the winter light, softened and subdued by mist, Mrs.

Fairfax read in her chair. Dearborn's table, strewn with his papers and books, told of hours spent at a beloved labour. There was nothing material to attract--no studio properties or decorations to speak of.

Two long divans were placed against a wall of agreeable colour. There was nothing but the spirit of art and work, and the spirit of youth as well, but Potowski was delighted. He pointed to the statuette.

"This," he said, "is the lovely lady with whom you have been shut up all these days. It is charming, Monsieur."

"It is a study of my mother as I remember her."

"I salute it," said Potowski, making a little inclination. "I salute _you_. It is beautiful." He put his hand on Fairfax's arm. "You do my wife. You do the Contessa," said Potowski, "the same. I adore it. It looks my wife. It might be her, Monsieur. But all beauty is alike, is not it? One lovely woman is all women. Are you not of my opinion?"

He swam toward Dearborn who was fascinated by Potowski's overcoat lined with fur, and with the huge fur collar, with his patent shoes with their white tops, with his bright waistcoat, his single eyegla.s.s, his shining silk hat and, above all, by the gay foreign face, its waxed moustache and its sparkling dark eyes.

Dearborn wrapped his dressing-gown modestly around him to conceal his shirtless, collarless condition. Running his hands through dishevelled red hair, he responded--

"No, I don't agree with you. I guess your feminine psychology is at fault there, Count."

"_Rreally_ not," murmured the Count, looking at him eagerly.

"Mr. Dearborn is a playwright," said Antony. "He is a great student of character."

Potowski waved his hand in its light glove. "You write plays, Monsieur?

You shall write me a libretto. I have been looking for ever for some one to write the words for a _hopera_ I am making."

Dearborn nodded. "Far from being all alike, I don't think that there have been two women alike since Eve."

"_Rreally!_"

Potowski looked at the red-headed man as if he wondered whether he had met and known all women.

"You find it so, Monsieur? Now I have been married three times. Every one of them were lovely women. I find them all the same."

"You must have a very adaptable, a.s.similating and modifying nature,"

said Dearborn, smiling.

"Modifying? What is that?" asked the Pole sweetly.

Neither of the young men made excuses for the icy cold room. They were too proud. They had nothing to offer Potowski, not even a cigarette, but the Pole forced his cigar-case upon them, telling them that he made his cigarettes with a machine by the thousand.

"My wife, Contessa Potowski, makes them, I mean. I do myself the pleasure to send you a box. They're contraband. You will be arrested if the police knows so."

"That," said Dearborn, "would really disappoint the tailor. I think he would like to get in his own score first. But I would rather go to prison as a contrabander than as a debtor."

They sat on the sofa together and smoked, their breath white in the cold room. But the amiable Potowski beamed on them, and Antony saw Dearborn's delight at the outside element. And Dearborn sketched his scenario, the colour hot in his thin cheeks, and Potowski, rubbing his hands to warm them, hummed airs from his own opera in a heavenly voice, and the voice and the enthusiasm magnetized poor Dearborn, carried out of his rut, and before he knew it he had promised to write a libretto for "Fiametta."

Whilst they talked the porters came and took away the statuette of Mrs.

Fairfax, and Potowski said--

"It was like seeing _they_ carry away my wife." And, when they had gone, Antony lighted the candles and Potowski rose and cried, as though the idea had just come to him: "Guerrea! My friends, I am alone to-night. My wife has gone to sing in Brussels. I implore you to come out to dinner with me--I know not where." He glanced at the sculptor and playwright, as they stood in the candle light. He had only seen Fairfax a well-dressed visitor at Mrs. Faversham's entertainments. On him now a different light fell. In his working clothes, there was nothing poverty-stricken about him, but the marks of need were unmistakably in the environment. He spoke to Dearborn, but he looked at Fairfax. "I have grown very fond of him. I love to speak my thoughts at him. We don't always agree, but we are always good for each other. I have not seen him for some time. I thought he go away."

Dearborn smiled. "He _was_ just going to Monte Carlo," he murmured.

Potowski, who did not hear, went on: "We will go and eat in some restaurant on this side of the river. I am tired of the Cafe de Paris.

We will see a play afterwards. There is 'La Dame aux Camelias' with the divine Sarah. We laugh at dinner and we shall go and sob at La Dame aux Camelias. I like a happy weeping now and then." He swam toward them affably and appealingly. "I don't dress. I go as I am."

Dearborn grasped one of the yellow-gloved hands and shook it.

"Hang it all! I'm going, Tony. There are two pair of boots, anyhow. I haven't been to a play," he laughed excitedly, "since I was a child.

Hustle, Tony, we will toss up for the best suit of clothes."

The drama of Dumas gave Antony a beautiful escape from reality. La Dame aux Camelias disenchanted him from his own problems for the time. In the Count's box he sat in the background and fed his eyes and his ears with the romantic and ardent art of the Second Empire. He found the piece great, mobile, and palpitating, and he was not ashamed. The divine Sarah and Marguerite Gautier died before his eyes, and out of the ashes womanhood arose and called to him, as the Venus de Milo had called to him down the long gallery, and distractions he had known seemed soulless and unreal shapes. He worshipped Dumas in his creation.