Fairfax and His Pride Part 57

"In my vest pocket," said Dearborn. "Take what you like."

Tony paid his cab out of the change and realized that it was some of the money from Dearborn's advance royalties. It gave him pleasure to think that he was spending money which had been made by art. It was "serious money." He did not hesitate to use it. He sat by the table when he came in from paying his cab and fell into a heavy sleep, his head upon his arm. Thus the two friends slumbered until noon, Dearborn dreaming of fame and Antony of despair.

At two o'clock that afternoon, bathed and dressed, himself again save for a certain bewilderment in his head, he stood in his window looking out on the quays. Underneath, Nora Scarlet and Dearborn pa.s.sed arm-in-arm. They were going to Versailles to talk of love, of fame and artistic struggle, under the trees. Antony heard the shuffling of his old concierge on the stairs. He knew that the man was bringing him a letter and that it would be from Mary.

With the letter between his hands, he waited some few minutes before opening it. He finally read it, sitting forward on the divan, his face set.

"DEAREST," it began, and then there was a long s.p.a.ce as though the woman could not bear to write the words, "You will never be able to judge me fairly. I cannot ask it of you. You are too much of a genius to understand a mere woman. I am writing you in my boudoir, just where you came to me that day when you told me your love and when I wept to hear it, dearest. I shall cry again, thinking of it, many times. I have done you a great wrong in taking ever so little of you, and taking even those few months from the work which shall mean so much to the world. Now I am glad I have found it out before it is too late. I have no right to you, Tony. In answer to what you asked me yesterday, I say no. You will not believe it is for your sake, dear, but it is. I see you could not share my life in any way, and keep your ideals. How could I ask you to? I see I could not share your struggle and leave you free enough to keep your ideals.

"I can never quite believe that love is a mistake. I shall think of mine for you the rest of my life. When you read this letter I shall have left Paris. Do not try to find me or follow me. I know your pride, dear, the greatest pride I ever saw or dreamed of. I wonder if it is a right one. At any rate, it will not let you follow me; I am sure of that. I wish to put between us an immeasurable distance, one which no folly on your part and no weakness on mine could bridge. Cedersholm has returned from Russia, and I told him last night that I would marry him.--MARY."

Then, for the first time, Tony knew how he loved her. Crushing the letter between his hands, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat and rushed out, took a cab, and drove like mad to her house.

The little horse galloped with him, the driver cracked his whip with utterances like the sparks flying, and they tore up the Champs Elysees, part of the great mult.i.tude, yet distinct, as is every individual with their definite sufferings and their definite joys.

Her house stood white and distinct at the back of the garden, the windows were flung open. On the steps of the terrace a man-servant, to whom Antony had given fat tips which he could not afford, stood in an undress uniform, blue ap.r.o.n and duster over his arm; painters came out with ladders and placed them against the wall. The old gardener, Felicien, who had given him countless _boutonnieres_, mounted the steps with a flower-pot in his hand and talked with the man-servant; he was joined by two maids. The place was left, then, to servants. Everything seemed changed. She might never--he was sure she would never--return as Mrs. Faversham. Immeasurably far away indeed, as she said--immeasurably far--she seemed to have gone into another sphere, and yet he had held her in his arms! The thought of his tenderness was too real to permit of any other consideration holding its place. He sprang out of his cab, rang the door-bell, and when the door was opened he asked the surprised servant for Mrs. Faversham's address.

"But I have no idea of it, monsieur," said the man with a comprehensive gesture. "None."

"You are not sending any letters?"

"None, monsieur."

Fairfax's blue eyes, his pale, handsome face, appealed very much to Ferdinand. He liked Monsieur Rainsford. Although the chap did not know it himself, Tony had been far more generous than were the millionaires.

Ferdinand called one of the maids.

"Where's madame's maid stopping in London?" asked the butler.

"Why, at the Ritz," said Louise promptly. "She is always at the Ritz, monsieur."

Tony had no more gold to reward this treachery.

When Dearborn came home that night from Versailles he found a note on the table, leaning up against the box in which the two comrades kept their mutual fund of money. Dearborn's advance royalty was all gone but a hundred francs.

"I have gone to London," Fairfax's note ran. "Sell anything of mine you like before I get back, if you are hard up.--TONY."

He spent two pounds on a pistol. If he had chanced to meet Cedersholm with her, he would have shot him. From the hour he had received her letter and learned that she was going to marry Cedersholm, he had been hardly sane.

At five o'clock on a bland, sweet afternoon, three days after he had left Paris, he was shown up to her sitting-room at the Whiteheart Hotel, in Windsor. He had traced her there from the Ritz.

Mary Faversham, who was alone, rose to meet him, white as death.

"Tony," she said, "don't come nearer--stand there, Tony. Dear Tony, it is too late, too late!"

He limped across the room and took her in his arms, looking at her wildly. Her lips trembled, her eyes filled.

"I married him by special license yesterday, Tony. Go, go, before he comes."

He saw she could not stand. He put her in a chair, fell on his knees and buried his head in her lap. He clung to her, to the Woman, to his Vision of the Woman, to the form, the substance, the reality which he thought at last he had really caught for ever. She bent over him and kissed his hair, weeping.

"Go," she said. "Go, my darling."

Fairfax had not spoken a word. Curses, invectives, prayers were in his heart. He crushed them down.

"I love you for your pride," she said. "I adore you for the brave demand you made me. I could not fulfil it, Tony, for your sake."

Then he spoke, and meant what he said, "You have ruined my life."

"Oh no!" she cried. "Don't say such a thing!"

"Some day I shall kill him." He had risen, with tears in his eyes. "You loved me," he challenged, "you did love me!"

She did not dare to say "I love you still." She saw what the tragedy would be.

"We could not have been poor," she said, "could we, dear?"

He exclaimed bitterly, "If you thought of that, you could not have cared." And she was strong enough to take advantage of his change.

"I suppose I could not have cared as you mean, or I should never have done this."

Then Fairfax cursed under his breath, and once again, this time brutally, caught her in his arms and kissed her, crying to her as he had cried once before--

"Tell him how I kissed you--tell him!"

White as death, Mary Faversham pushed him from her. "For the love of G.o.d, Tony, go!"

And he went, stumbling down the stairs. Out in Windsor the bugles for some solemn festivity were blowing.

"The flowers of the forest are all wied away."

BOOK IV

BELLA

CHAPTER I

From the Western world he heard nothing for four years. Meanwhile he brought his new skill, his maturer knowledge, the result of seven years'

study and creation in the workshops of masters and in his own studio, to the sculpturing of the second tomb--the Open Door.

There were crowds around his marble in the Salon, and he mingled with them, watching them muse, discuss, criticize, grow sad and thoughtful before his conception of Life and Death. Some of them looked as poor Tom Rainsford had looked, yearningly toward the door of the tomb. Others hurried past the inscrutable beauty of the Open Door. Purely white, stainless, slender, luminous and yet cold, Molly stood immortalized by Antony. His conception made him famous.