Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel. Van Vorst Marie
as only the music of a woman's voice in love-songs can stir a man's heart.
Bella came back and there was an end of the concerts. A charm to keep Bella silent had not yet been found, unless that charm were a book. "She could not read when mother sang," she said, "and more than that, it made her cry." And when Mr. Carew's latchkey scratched in the door, Bella flew upstairs to the top story, Antony and Gardiner followed more slowly; Mrs. Carew shut her piano, and took the cars again to forget her restlessness in the purchase of silks and dry goods and house decorations, and was far from guessing the emotion she had aroused in the breast of her nephew – "Flow gently, sweet Afton." Nothing flowed gently in Fairfax's impetuous breast. Nothing flowed gently on the tide of events that drifted past slowly, leaving him unsuccessful, without any opening into fame.
CHAPTER XI
Cedersholm returned to New York and Fairfax presented himself again at the studio, getting as far as the workroom of the great Swede who had started in life the son of a tinsmith in Copenhagen. The smell of the clay, the sight of the figures swathed in damp cloths, the shaded light, struck Fairfax deliciously as he waited for an audience with Cedersholm. Fairfax drew his breath deep as though he were once again in his element. Cedersholm was out, and with no other encouragement than the sight of the interior of the four walls, Antony was turned away. His mother had added to his fast melting funds by a birthday gift, and Fairfax was nearly at the end of this.
Walking up from Cedersholm's to his uncle's house, a tramp of three miles, he limped into the children's room, on his usually bright face the first shadow they had seen. Bella was already seated at her table. Her six weeks in the country had sent her back, longer, slimmer, her skirt let down at the hem an inch, and some pretence to order in her hair. The dark mass of her hair was lifted back, held by a round comb; Bella was much transformed.
"Hello, honey," cried her cousin, "what have you been changing into?"
"What do you think of my back comb, Cousin Antony? It's the fourth. I've broken three. All cheap, luckily, not the best quality."
Bella took the comb from her hair and handed it to Antony, and, unprisoned, her locks fell triumphantly around her face.
"I like you better that way, little cousin," said Fairfax, "and," continued the drawing master, "you've a wonderful new pair of shoes, Bella!"
The little leg was encased in a light blue silk stocking, and the perfect little foot, whose rosy curves and lines Fairfax knew, was housed in a new blue kid shoe with shining white buttons, entirely out of keeping with the dear old red dress which, to Fairfax, seemed part of Bella Carew.
"Dancing school," she said briefly; "mother promised us we might go ages ago, long before you came, Cousin Antony."
"About ten years ago, I fink," said Gardiner helpfully.
"Nonsense," corrected his sister sharply, "but long enough ago for these to grow too small." She held up her pretty foot. "We got as far as the shoes and stockings (real silk, Cousin Antony, feel). Aren't they perfectly beautiful? We didn't dare, because of the bills, get the dress, you know, so I guess mother's been waiting for better times. But just as soon as I came back from the country and they let out the hem and bought the comb, I said to Gardiner, 'There, my dancing shoes will be too small.'" She leant down and pinched the toes. "They do squeeze." She crinkled up her eyes and pursed up the little red mouth. "They pinch awfully, but I'm going to wear them to drawing lessons, if I can't to dancing lessons. See," she smoothed out her drawing board and pointed to her queer lines, "I have drawn some old things for you, a couple of squares and a triangle."
Fairfax listened, amused; the problems of his life were vital, she could not distract him. He took the rubber, erasing her careless work, sat down by her and began to give her real instruction. Little Gardiner, excused from all study, amused himself after his own fashion in a corner of the sofa, and after a few moments of silence, Fairfax's pupil whispered to him in a low tone —
"I can't draw anything, Cousin Antony, when you've got that look on."
Fairfax continued his work.
"It's no use, you've got the heavy look like the heavy step. Are you angry with me?"
Not her words, but her voice made her cousin stop his drawing. In it was a hint of the tears she hated to shed. Bella leant her elbow on the table, rested her head in her hand and searched Fairfax's face with her eloquent eyes. They were not like her mother's, doe-like and patient; Bella's were dark eyes, superb and shadowy. They held something of the Spanish mystery, caught from the strain that ran through the Carew family from the Middle Ages, when the Carez were nobles in Andalusia.
"I am angry with myself, Bella; I am a fool."
"Oh no, you're not," she breathed devotedly, "you're a genius."
The tension of Fairfax's heart relaxed. The highest praise that any woman could have found, this child, in her naïveté, gave him.
"Why don't you make some figures and sell them, Cousin Antony? Are you worried about money troubles?" She had heard these terms often.
"Yes," he said shortly, "just that."
He had gone on to sketch a head on the drawing-board, touching it absently, and over his shoulder Bella murmured —
"Cousin Antony, it's just like me. You just draw wonderfully."
He deepened the shadows in the hair and rounded the ear, held it some way off and looked at it.
"I wish I had some clay," he murmured.
He had brought the cast of the foot back to show it to his aunt when an occasion should offer. It stood now in the little cabinet where Bella and Gardiner kept their treasures.
"I went to see Mr. Cedersholm to-day," Fairfax continued, for lack of other confidant taking the dark-eyed child; "now, if Cedersholm would only take me up, and give me the chance to work under him, I'd soon show him."
Bella agreed warmly. "Yes, indeed, you soon would."
CHAPTER XII
The odours of strange meats and sauces were wafted throughout the house. Little troublesome feet pattered up and down the dingy back stairs, and whenever Bella and Gardiner were laid hold upon they were banished. They were inoculated with excitement and their nostrils pricked with the delicious smells of flowers and smilax and feast meats.
Mr. Carew annually gave a banquet to some twenty New Yorkers, who he was so generous as to think were nearly as great as himself. The household was not constructed or run on a hospitable basis and nothing was in tune for entertaining. Sympathetic Bella, thrilling with liveliest interest, assisted at the preparations, and to her bright cheeks and eyes her mother bewailed —
"Only twenty glasses, Bella, of the fine engraved deer and pheasant pattern, and we shall be twenty-four."
"Mother, give me one in a paper and I'll take it down town and match it."
Her mother laughed. "Match it, why they were made by hand years ago, and are worth ten dollars apiece."
"Oh, dear," breathed the little girl, and multiplied: "Two hundred dollars for twenty. Mother!"
The child stole silently out from the glistening array. Ten dollars apiece. And she and Gardiner at their last nursery tea-party… Through the door, as she slipped away, she looked back at her mother, standing thoughtful over the rows of crystal. In the great mahogany cage which, like a small dark château, surmounted the pedestal of carved wood, the blackbird Jetty huddled on his perch. He was a superb specimen, black as jet, whence his name, a free woodland spirit, with a yellow bill like a crocus flower, and piercing eyes. Bella passed under the cage and called up to him, "Sing, Jetty, sing."
Piped a blackbird from a beechwood spray,
"Little maid, slow wandering this way,
What's your name?" said he.
Little Bell had wandered through the glade,
She looked up between the beechwood's shade,
"Little Bell," said she…
The