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CHAPTER XX

The third day he went up to see her and found her in the garden, a basket on her arm, cutting flowers. She wore a garden hat covered with roses and carried a pair of gilded shears with which to snip her flowers. As Antony came down the steps of the house she dropped the scissors into the basket with her garden gloves. She lifted her cheek to him.

"You may kiss me, dear," she said; "no one will see us but the flowers and the birds."

Antony bent to kiss her. It seemed to him as though his arms were full of flowers.

"If you had not come to-day, I should have gone to you. You look well, Tony," she said. "I don't believe you have been ill at all."

"My work, Mary."

She took his arm and started towards the house. "You must let me come and see what wonderful things you are doing."

"I am doing nothing wonderful," he said slowly. "It has taken me all this time to realize I was never a sculptor; I have been so atrociously idle, Mary."

"But you need rest, my dear Tony."

"I shall not need any rest until I am an old man."

He caressed the hand that lay on his arm. They walked past the flower-beds, and she picked the dead roses, cutting the withered leaves, and talking to him gaily, telling him all she had done during the days of their separation, and suddenly he said —

"You do not seem to have missed me."

"Everywhere," she answered, pressing his arm.

They walked together slowly to the house, where she left her roses in the hall and took him into the music-room, where they had been last when he left her, the afternoon following the luncheon.

"I must impress her indelibly on my mind," Antony thought. "I may never see her again."

When she had seated herself by the window through which he could see the roses on the high rose trees and the iron balcony on whose other side was the rumble of Paris, he stood before her gravely.

"Come and sit beside me," she invited, slowly. "You seem suddenly like a stranger."

"Mary," he said simply, "the time has come for me to ask you – " The words stuck in his throat. What in God's name was he going to ask her? What a fanatic he was! Utterly unconscious of his thoughts, she interrupted him.

"I know what you want to ask me, Tony, and I have been waiting." She leaned against him. "You see, I have had the foolish feeling that perhaps you didn't care as you thought you did. It is that dreadful difference in our age."

"Do you care, Mary?"

She might have answered him, "Why otherwise should I marry a penniless man, five years my junior, when the world is before me?"

She said, "Yes, I care deeply."

"Ah," he breathed, "then it is all right, Mary; that is all we need." After a few seconds he said gently: "Now look at me." Her face was flushed and her eyes humid. She raised them to him. He was holding one of her hands in both of his as he spoke, and from time to time touched it with his lips. "Listen to me; try to understand. I am a Bohemian, an artist; say that over and over. Do you think me crazy? I have not been ill. I went into a retreat. I shut myself up with my soul. This life here," – he gestured to the room as though it held a host of enemies, – "this life here has crushed me. I had begun to think myself a miserable creature just because I am poor. Now, if money is the only thing that counts in the world, of course I am a miserable creature, and then let us drink life to its dregs; and if it is not the only thing, well then, let us drink the other things to their dregs." She said, "What other things?"

"Why, the beauty of struggling together with every material consideration cast out! Think how beautiful it is to work for one you love; think of the beauty of being all in all to each other, Mary!"

"But we are that, Tony."

Now that Antony had embarked, he spoke rapidly. "You owe your luxury to your husband whom you never loved. Now I cannot let you owe him anything more, Mary."

She began, "But I don't think of my fortune in connection with him."

Antony did not hear her. "I feel lately as though I had been selling my soul," he said passionately. "And what can a man have in exchange for his soul? Of course, it was presumptuous folly of me to have asked you to marry me."

She put both her hands over his and breathed his name. He spoke desperately, and the picture rose up before him of his bare studio and his meagre life.

"Will you marry me now?"

"I said I was quite ready."

"The day will come when I will be rich and great." He paused. He saw that her eyes were already troubled, and asked eagerly, "You believe that, don't you?"

"Of course."

"Great enough, rich enough, not to make a woman ashamed. You must wait for that time with me."

Mary Faversham said quietly, "You have been shutting yourself up with a lot of fanatical ideas."

He covered her lips gently with his hands. His face became grave.

"Oh," he said, "don't speak – wait. You don't dream what every word you say is going to mean – wait. You don't understand what I mean!"

And he began to tell her the gigantic sacrifice he was about to impose upon her. If he had been assured of his love for her, assured of her love for him, he might have made a magnetic appeal, but he seemed to be talking to her through a veil. He shook his head.

"No, I cannot ask it, Mary."

Mary Faversham's face had undergone a change. It was never lovelier than now, as with gravity and sweetness she put her arms around his neck and looked up at him with great tenderness. She said —

"I think I know what you mean. You want me to give up my fortune and go to you."

She seemed to radiate before Fairfax's eyes, and his worship of her at this moment increased a thousandfold. He leaned forward and laid his head against her breast.

In the love of all women there is a strong quality of the maternal. Mary bent over the blond head and pressed her lips to his hair. When Antony lifted his face there were tears in his eyes. He cried —

"Heaven bless you, darling! You don't know how high I will take you, how far I will carry us both. The world shall talk of us! Mary – Mary!"

She smoothed his forehead. She knew there would never be another moment in her life like this one.

He said, "I will take you to the studio, of course. I haven't told you that in June I shall have fifty thousand francs, and from then on I will be succeeding so fast that we will forget we were ever poor." He saw her faintly smile, and said sharply, "I suppose you spend fifty thousand francs now on your clothes!"

She said frankly, "And more; but that makes no difference," and ventured, "You don't seem to think, Tony, what a pleasure it would be to me to do for you." She paused at his exclamation. "Oh, of course, I understand your pride," and asked, "What shall I do with my fortune, Tony?"

"This money on which you are living," he said gravely, "that you have accepted from a man you never loved, give it all to the poor. Keep the commandment for once, and we will see what the treasures of heaven are like."

He thought she clung to him desperately, and there was an ardour in the return of her caress that made him say —

"Mary, don't answer me to-day, please; I want you to think it calmly over. Just now you have shown me what I wanted to see."

She asked, "What?"

"That you love me."

She said, "Yes, I do love you. Will you believe it always?"

Bending over her he said passionately, "I shall believe it when I have your answer, and you are going to make me divinely happy."

She echoed the word softly, "Happy!" and her lips trembled. Across the ante-chamber came the sound of voices. Their retreat was about to be invaded by the people of the world who never very long left Mary Faversham alone.

"Oh!" she cried, "I cannot see any one. Why did they let any one in?" And, lifting her face to him, she said in a low tone, "Tony, kiss me again."

Antony, indifferent as to who might come and who might not, caught her to him and held her for a second, then crossed the room to the curtained door and went down the terrace steps and across the garden.

By the big wall he turned and looked back to where, through the long French windows, he could see the music-room with the palms and gilt furniture. Mary Faversham was already surrounded by the Comte de B – and the Baron de F – . He knew them vaguely. Before going to get his hat and stick from the vestibule, he watched her for a few moments, with a strange adoration in his heart. She was his, she was ready to give up everything for the sake of his ideals. He thought he could never love more than at this moment. He believed that he was not asking her to make a ridiculous sacrifice, but on the contrary to accept a spiritual gain – a sacrifice of all for love and art and honour, too! As he looked across the room a distinguished figure came to Mary Faversham. He was welcomed very cordially. It was Cedersholm. He had been in Russia for months. Fairfax's heart grew cold.

As though Mary fancied that her mad lover might linger, she came over to the window and drew down the Venetian shade. It fell, rippling softly, and blotted out the room for Fairfax. A wave of anger swept him, a sudden uncertainty regarding the woman herself followed, and immediately he saw himself ridiculous, crude and utterly fantastical in his ultimatum. The egoism and childishness of what he had done stood out to him, and in that second he knew that he had lost her – lost her for ever.

CHAPTER XXI

He did not go home. He went into the Bois and walked for miles. His unequal, limping strides tired him to death and he was finally the only wanderer there. Over the exquisite forest of new-leaf trees the stars came out at length, and the guardians began to observe him. At eight o'clock in the morning he had not eaten. He went into a small restaurant and made a light meal. For the first time since Albany, when he had drank too much in despair and grief, he took now too much red wine. He walked on feathers and felt his blood dance. He rang the bell at Mary Faversham's at nine-thirty in the morning, and the butler, intensely surprised, informed him that Mary had gone out riding in the Bois with Monsieur Cedersholm. Antony had given this servant more fees that he could afford. He found a piece of money in his pocket and gave it to Ferdinand.

"But, monsieur," said the man, embarrassed, and handled the piece. It was a louis. Antony waved magnificently and started away. He took a cab back to the studio, but could not pay the cabman, for the louis was his last piece of money. He waked Dearborn out of a profound sleep, in which the playwright was dreaming of two hundred night performances.

"Bob, can you let me have a few francs?"

"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 passed 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 space 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 snatched 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 Elysées, part of the great multitude, 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 apron and duster over his arm; painters came out with ladders and placed them against the wall. The old gardener, Félicien, who had given him countless boutonnières, 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 God, 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.

He had exhibited each year with increasing success at private exhibitions, but never at the Salon, and had been called "poseur" because of his reluctance to expose his work in national academies. His bas-reliefs had made him favourably known, but nothing equalled the solemn marble that came now from his studio. Antony's work occupied some twenty feet in the Champ de Mars.

His lame foot touched a pile of newspapers on the floor, in which the critics spoke of him in terms he thought fulsome and ridiculous, and they pained him while they dazzled him. He thought of Bella. He had thought of Bella constantly of late, and there were no answers to his questions. She would be twenty-three, a woman, married, no doubt, always enchanting. How she had stood before his bas-relief in Albany, musing, and her eyes had been wet when she had turned to him and asked, "Who is it, Cousin Antony? It is perfectly beautiful, beautiful!" He would have liked to have led Bella to his work in the Salon, and, hand-in-hand with her, until the crowd around them should have melted away, have stood there with her alone. From the night her inspiring little hand had stolen into his, Bella's hand had seemed a mate for his.

"Who is it, Cousin Antony?"

Indeed, who was the woman going through the Open Door? What woman's face and form constantly inspired him, haunting him, promising to haunt him until the end? He was always seeking to unveil the face of his visions and find the one woman, the supplement, the mate, the companion.

Who would inspire him now? His memories, his dead, his past, had done their work. What fresh inspiration would urge him now to create?

The public had no fault to find with him. The tomb made him celebrated in twenty-four hours. At a time when all Paris was laughing at Rodin's Balzac, there was a place for a sculptor like Antony, for the idealist and dreamer, gifted with a strong and faultless technique.

He read hastily and with surprise the exaggerated praise which the "Open Door" called forth from the reviews. "It is not as good as all that," he thought, "and it is too soon to hear thunder about my ears."

He seemed to see the door of his future open and himself standing there, the burden of proof upon him. What work he must continue to produce in order to sustain such sudden fame! The Figaro called him a "giant," and several critics said he was the sculptor of the time. His mail was full of letters from friends and strangers. By ten o'clock the night of the "Vernissage" all his acquaintances and intimates in Paris had brought him their felicitations. He turned back to his table where his letters lay. He had just read an affectionate, enthusiastic expression of praise and belief from Potowski. There was another note which he had read first with anger, then with keen satisfaction, and then with as much malice as his heart could hold.

"My dear Sir,

"I have the honour to represent in France the committee for the construction in Boston of a triumphal arch to be raised in commemoration of the men who first fell in the battle of the Revolution. The idea is to crown this arch with a group of figures, either realistic or symbolical, as the sculptor shall see fit. After carefully considering the modern work of men in France, I am inclined to offer this commission to you if you can accept it. Your 'Open Door' is the most beautiful piece of sculpture, according to my opinion, in modern times. An appointment would gratify me very much.

"I have the honour to be, sir, etc.,

"Gunner Cedersholm."

Antony had given the appointment with excitement, and he was waiting now to see for the first time in ten years the man who had stolen from him fame, honour, and love.

He had heard nothing of the Cedersholms for six years. As far as he knew, during this time they had never returned to France. Once he vaguely understood that they were travelling for Mrs. Cedersholm's health.

His eyes ached to look upon the man whom he regarded as his bitterest enemy. Of Mrs. Cedersholm he thought now only as he thought of woman, of vain visions which he might never, never grasp or hold. He had bitterly torn his love out of his heart.

After leaving her at Windsor he had remained for some time in London where Dearborn had followed him, and where Dearborn and Nora Scarlet were married. Fairfax had sat with them in the gallery at Regent's Theatre when the curtain rose on Dearborn's successful play. Fairfax took a position as professor of drawing in a girls' school in the West End and taught a group of schoolgirls for several months. Between times he modelled on his statues for his new conception of the "Open Door." Then in the following spring, with a yearning in his heart and homesickness for France, he returned into the city with the May. He could scarcely look up at the windows of the old studio on the quays. He rented a barren place in the Vaugirard quarter and began his work in terrible earnestness.

Now, as he waited for his visitor, he wondered if Mary Cedersholm had visited the Salon, if with others she had stood before his sculpture. His servant announced "Monsieur Cedersholm," then let in the visitor and shut the door behind him. Cedersholm entered the vast studio in the soft light of late afternoon with which the spring twilight, rapidly withdrawing, filled the room. Antony did not stir from his chair, where he sat enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke.

The small man – Fairfax had forgotten how small he was – entered cautiously as though he were entering the room of a foe, which, indeed, he was doing, without being aware of it. Fairfax remembered that he had seen Cedersholm wearing a single eyeglass, and now spectacles of extraordinary thickness covered his eyes. He evidently saw with difficulty. As Fairfax did not rise to greet him, Cedersholm approached, saying tentatively —

"Mr. Rainsford? I believe I have an appointment with Mr. Rainsford."

"Yes," said Fairfax curtly, "I am here. Sit down, will you?"

His lame foot, which would have disclosed his identity, was withdrawn under his chair.

"I have just come from the Soudan," said Cedersholm, "where I had a sunstroke of the eyes. I see badly."

"Blindness," said Fairfax shortly, "is a common failing, but many of us don't know we have anything the matter with our eyes."

"It is, however, a tragedy for a sculptor," said Cedersholm, taking the chair to which Fairfax had pointed.

From the box on the table Fairfax offered his guest a cigar, which was refused. Antony lit a fresh one; it was evident he had not been recognized.

"I have not touched a tool for five years," Cedersholm said. "A man like you who must adore his work can easily imagine what this means."

"For two or three years I did not touch a tool. I know what it means."

"Ah!" exclaimed Cedersholm with interest. "What was your infirmity?"

"Poverty," returned Fairfax. Then added, "You have not come to talk with me about the short and simple annals of the poor."

"All that which goes to make the education and career of a great man," said Cedersholm, "is deeply interesting, especially to a confrère. You have executed a very great piece of work, Mr. Rainsford."

Fairfax made no response.

"You seem," said Cedersholm, "to doubt my sincerity. You received my letter?"

"Yes."

"Would you be reluctant to undertake such a work?"

The man who stood before Fairfax was so altered from his former self that Tony was obliged to whip up his memories, to call up all his past in order to connect this visitor with the man who had ruined him. Pale, meagre, so thin that his clothes hung upon him, disfigured by his thick glasses, he seemed to have shrunk into a little insignificant creature. No man could connect him with the idea of greatness or success. Fairfax answered it would depend upon circumstances.

"I expect you are very much overrun with orders, Mr. Rainsford. I can understand that. I do not take up a newspaper without reading some appreciative criticism of your work." The Swedish sculptor removed his glasses and wiped his eyes with a fragrant silk handkerchief. Then carefully replacing his spectacles, begged Fairfax's pardon. "I have suffered dreadfully with these infirm eyes," he said.

Fairfax leaned forward a little, continuing to whip up his memories, and, once goaded, like all revengeful and evil things, they came now quickly to bring back to him his anger of the past. Hatred and malice had disappeared – his nature was too sweet, too generous and forgiving to brood upon that which was irrevocably gone. He had been living fast; he had been working intensely; he had been loved, and he had shut his eyes and sighed and tried to think he loved in return. But the walls of his studio in the Rue Vaugirard melted away, and, instead, Cedersholm's rich, extravagant New York workshop rose up before his eyes. He saw himself again the young, ardent student, his blood beating with hope and trust, and his hands busy over what he had supposed was to be immortal labour; it had been given for this man then, the greatest living sculptor, to adopt it for his own. Now his heart began to beat fast. He clasped his hands strongly together, his voice trembling in his throat.

"I should ask a tremendous price," he said slowly, "a tremendous price."

"Quite right," returned the Swedish sculptor. "Talent such as yours should be paid for generously. I used to think so. I have commanded my price, Mr. Rainsford."

"I know your reputation and your fame," said Fairfax.

The other accepted what his host said as a compliment, and continued —

"The committee is very rich; there are men of enormous fortunes interested in the monument. They can pay – in reason," he added; "of course, in reason – and as you are an American there would be in your mind the ideal of patriotism."

"My demand would not be in reason," said Fairfax.

Cedersholm, struck at length by his tone, finding him lacking in courtesy and manners, began to peer at him keenly in the rapidly deepening twilight.

"In a way," he said sententiously, eager to be understood and approved of by the man who, in his judgment, was important in the sculpture of the time, he continued courteously, "there is no price too much to pay for art. I have followed your work for years."

"Have you?" said Antony.

"Six years ago I bought a little statue in an exhibition of the works of the pupils of Barye's studio." Cedersholm again took out his fine silk handkerchief and pressed it to his eyes. "Since then I have looked for comments on your work everywhere, and, whenever I saw you mentioned, I reminded the fact to my wife, who was an admirer of your talent."

Antony grew cold. At the mention of her name his blood chilled. Mary! Mary Faversham-Cedersholm. He drew his breath hard, clasped one hand across his forehead, and still back in the far remote past he did not bid this vision of Mary Cedersholm to linger.

"When I came back to Paris, I found you had justified my faith in your work. The question of payment now, in case you undertake this group, for instance, I dare say the matter would be satisfactorily adjusted."

"I doubt it, Mr. Cedersholm."

Cedersholm, already interested in the man as a worker, became now interested in his personality, and found him curious, settled himself comfortably in his chair and swung his monocle, which he still wore, by its string. He saw the face of his host indistinctly, and his eyes wandered around the vast, shadowy studio where the swathed casts stood in the corners. The place gave him a twinge of jealousy and awakened all his longings as an artist.