Fairfax and His Pride Part 60

"'All Roads Meet,'" he quoted keenly. "Good name, don't you think? They all do meet somewhere"--he put his hand affectionately on Tony's shoulder--"even if it is only at the Open Door." Then he asked, partly smiling, "And the beautiful Mrs. Cedersholm, is she in Paris too?"

"My wife," said Cedersholm shortly, "died two years ago."

"Dead!" exclaimed Robert Dearborn in a low tone of regret, the tone of every man who regrets the pa.s.sing of a lovely creature that they have admired. "Dead! I beg your pardon, I did not know. I am too heartily sorry."

He put out his kindly hand. Cedersholm scarcely touched it. He was excited, overwhelmed, and began to take his leave, to walk rapidly across the big room.

As the three men went together toward the door of the studio, Fairfax turned up an electric light. It shone brightly on them all, on Dearborn's grave, charming face, touched with the news of the death of the woman his friend had loved, on Cedersholm's almost livid face, on his thick gla.s.ses, and on Antony limping at his side. Cedersholm saw the limp, the unmistakable limp, the heavy boot, his stature, his beautiful head, and in spite of his infirmity he saw enough of his host to make him know him, to make him remember him, and his heart, which had begun to ache at Fairfax's cry of Mary, seemed to die within him. He remembered the man whom he had cheated out of his work and out of public acknowledgment. He knew now what Fairfax meant by the repurchase of his miserable youth. He had believed Antony Fairfax dead years ago. He had been told that he was dead. Now he limped beside him, powerful, clever, acknowledged, and moreover, there he stood beside him with memories that Cedersholm would never know, with memories that linked him with Mary Faversham-Cedersholm. In an unguarded moment that cry had escaped from the heart of a man who must have loved her. He thought of the bas-relief that hung always above her bed, and he thought of her silence, more eloquent now to him even than Antony's cry, and that silence and that cry would haunt him till the end, and the silence could never be broken now that she had gone through the Open Door.

Dearborn had not been with him all day until now. He had come up radiant to Tony, and putting his hand on his shoulder, said--

"My dear Tony, I had to come in to-day just to bring you a piece of news--to tell you a rumour, rather. The 'Open Door' has been bought by the Government. Your fame is made. I wanted to be the first to tell you.

I went into the Emba.s.sy for a little while to hear them talk about you, and I can a.s.sure you that I did hear them. The amba.s.sador himself told me this news is official. Every one will know to-morrow."

They talked together until the morning light came grey across the panes of the atelier, and the light was full of new creations, of new ideals of fame and life, of new ambitions and dreams for them both. Enthralled and inspired each by the other, the two artists talked and dreamed.

Dearborn's new play was running into its two-hundredth performance. He was a rich man. Now Antony paused on the threshold of his studio, looking back into the deserted workroom filling with the April evening.

In every corner, one by one, the visions rose and floated. They became new statues, new creations, indistinct and ethereal. Only the s.p.a.ce, where the work that had been carried away to the Salon had once stood, was bare. As he shut the door he felt that he shut the door for ever upon his past, upon his young manhood and upon his youth.

CHAPTER II

In the early days of July he found himself once more alone in the empty studio, where he had worked for twelve months at the "Open Door."

The place where the huge marble had stood was empty; in its stead fame remained.

Looking back, it seemed now that his hardships had not been severe enough. Had success really come? Would it stay? Was he only the child of an hour? Could he sustain? He recalled the little statuettes which he had made out of the clay of the levee when he was a boy. He remembered his beautiful mother's praise--

"Why, Tony, they are extraordinary, my darling."

And the constant fever had run through his veins all his life. He had made his apprenticeship over theft and death. He said to himself--

"I shall sustain."

As he mused there, the praise he had received ringing in his ears, he entertained fame and saw the shadow of laurel on the floor, under the lamplight, where his marble had stood, long and white.

He had made warm friends and bound them to him. He loved the city and its beauties. His refinement and sense of taste had matured. Antony knew that in his soul he was unaltered, that he was marked by his past, and that the scars upon him were deep.

He was very much alone; there was no one with whom he could share his glory. Should he become the greatest living sculptor, to whom could he bring his honours, his joys?

For a long time Bella went with him in everything he did. His visions were banished by the vivid thought of her. When he came into his studio at twilight he would fancy he saw her sitting by the table.

She would lean there, not like a spirit-like woman under the shaded lamp, sewing at little children's garments ... not like that!

Nevertheless, Bella sat there as a woman who waits for a return, the charming figure, the charming head with its crown of dark hair, and the lovely, brilliantly coloured face. Now there was nothing spirit-like in Antony's picture.

Then again he would imagine that he saw her in the crowd before his bas-relief at the Salon; he would select some woman dressed in an unusually smart spring gown and call her Bella to himself, until he saw her turn.

Once indeed, there, on the edge of the crowd, leaning with her hands upon the handle of her parasol, he was sure he saw her. The pose of the body was charming, the turn of the head almost as haughty as his own mother's, but the slenderness and the magnetism were Bella's own.

Antony chose this woman upon whom to fix his attention, and he thought that when she would move the resemblance would be gone.

The young girl suddenly altered her pose, and Antony saw her fully; he saw the proud beautiful face, piquant, alluring, a trifle sad; the brilliant lips, the colour in the cheeks, like a snow-set peach, the wonderful eyes, could belong to but one woman.

Separated from her by a little concourse of people, Antony could only cry, "Bella!" to himself. He started eagerly toward the place where he had seen her, but she vanished as the mirage on the desert's face.

What had he seen? A real woman, or only a trick of resemblance?

It was real enough to make him search the newspapers and the hotel lists and the bankers. Now he could not think of her name without a mighty emotion. If that were Bella, she was too lovely to be true! She _must_ be his, no matter at what price, no matter what her life might be.

A fortnight after he received in his mail a letter from America. The address, "Mr. Thomas Rainsford," was in a round full hand, a handsome hand; first he thought it a man's. He opened it with slight interest.

The paper exhaled an intangible odour; it was not perfume, but a delicate scent which recalled to him, for some reason, or other, the smell of the vines around the veranda-trellis in New Orleans. He read--

"Mr. Thomas Rainsford.

"DEAR SIR,--

"This will seem to be a very extraordinary letter, I know. I hardly know how to write such a letter. When I was in Paris a few weeks ago, I stood before the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have ever seen. I do not know that any one could do a more wonderful, a more deeply spiritual thing in clay or marble. But it is not what I think about it in that way, which is of interest. It cannot be of any interest to you, as you do not know me, nor is it for this that I am writing to you. Again, I do not know how to tell you.

"Where did you get your ideas for your statue? That is what I want to know. Years ago, a bas-relief, very much like yours--I should almost say identically yours--was made by my cousin, Antony Fairfax, in Albany. That bas-relief took the ten-thousand-dollar prize in Chicago. It was, unfortunately, destroyed in a fire, and no record of it was kept. My cousin is dead. For this reason I write to ask you where you got your inspiration for the 'Open Door.' It can be nothing to him that his beautiful work has been more beautifully done by a stranger, can do him no harm, but I want to know. Will you write me to the care of the Women's Art League, 5th Avenue, New York? Perhaps you will not deign to answer this letter. Do not think that I am making any reproach to you. It can be nothing to my cousin; he is dead but it would be a comfort to me. Once again, I hope you will let me hear from you.

"Yours faithfully, "BELLA CAREW."

The man reading in his studio looked at the signature, looked at the handwriting, held it before his eyes, to which the tears rushed. He pressed the faintly scented pages to his lips. Gallant little Bella ...

He stretched out his arms in the darkness, called to her across three thousand miles--

"Little cousin, please Heaven he can show you some day, Bella Carew."

It was at this time that he modelled his wonderful bust of Bella Carew.

When he finished the "Open Door," he said that he would not work for a year, that he was exhausted bodily and mentally; certainly he had lacked inspiration. But the afternoon of the day on which he had read this letter--this letter that opened for him a future--he set feverishly to work and modelled. He made a head of Bella which the critics have likened to the busts of Houdon, Carpeaux, and other masters. He modelled from memory, guided by his recollections of that picturesque face he had seen under the big hat on the outskirts of the crowd before his bas-relief. He modelled from memory, from imagination, with hope and new love, from old love too; told himself he had fallen in love with Bella the first night he had seen her, when she had comforted him about his heavy step.

Into the beautiful head and face he worked upon he put all his ideal of what a woman's face should be. He fell in love with his creation, in love with the clay that he moulded. Once more he had a companion in the studio from which had been removed his study for the tomb, and this represented a living woman. It seemed almost to become flesh and blood under his ardent hand. "Bella!" he called to her as he smoothed the lovely cheek and saw the peach bloom under it.

"Little cousin," he breathed, as he touched the hair along her neck, and remembered the wild, tangled forest that had fallen across his face when he carried her in his arms during their childish romps. "Honey child,"

he murmured as he modelled and moulded the youthful lines of the mouth and lips and stood yearning before them, all his heart and soul in his hands that made before his eyes a lovely woman. She became to him the very conception and expression of what he wanted his wife to be.

They say that men have fallen in love with that beautiful face of Bella Carew as modelled by Fairfax.

Arch and subtle, tender and provoking, distinguished, youthful, alluring, it is the most charming expression of young womanhood that an artist's hand could give to the world.

"Beloved," he murmured like a man half in sleep and half awakening, and he folded the lines of her bodice across her breast and fastened them there by a single rose.

With a sweep of her lovely hair, with an uplift of the corners of her beautiful lips, with the rose at her breast, Bella Carew will charm the artistic world so long as the clay endures.