Kitabı oku: «Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel», sayfa 5

CHAPTER XVI

Before Fairfax became dead to the world he wrote his mother a letter that made her cry, reading it on her veranda in the gentle sunlight. Her son wrote her only good news, and when the truth was too black he disguised it. But after his interview with Cedersholm, with these first good tidings he had to send, he broke forth into ecstasy, and his mother, as she read, saw her boy successful by one turn of the wheel. Mrs. Fairfax laughed and cried over the letter.

"Emmy, Master Tony's doing wonders, wonders! He is working under a great genius in the North, but it is easy to see that Tony is the spirit of the studio. He is at work from nine in the morning till dark, poor honey boy! and he is making all the drawings and designs and sketches for a millionaire's palace on Fifth Avenue."

"Fo' de Lawd, Mis' Bella."

"Think of it, we shall soon see his name in the papers – heaven knows where he'll stop. How proud I am of my darling, darling boy."

And she dreamed over the pages of Antony's closely-written letter, seeing his youth and his talent burn there like flame. She sent him – selling her watch and her drop earrings to do so – a hundred dollars, all she could get for her jewels. And the sum of money came like manna into his famished state. His mother's gift gave him courage to rise early and to work late, and the silver sang in his waistcoat pockets again, and he paid his little ladies, thanking them graciously for their patience; he sent his aunt a bunch of flowers, bought an image of the Virgin for old Ann, a box of colours for Gardiner, and a book for Bella.

Then Antony, passing over the threshold of the workshop, was swallowed up by art.

And he paid for his salt!

How valuable he was to Cedersholm those days he discovered some ten years later. Perched on his high stool at the drawing-table, his materials before him, he drew in freehand what his ideas suggested. The third day he went with Cedersholm to the palace of Rudolph Field on Fifth Avenue to inspect the rooms to be decorated. Fairfax went into the "Castle of the Chinking Guineas" (as he called it in writing to his mother), as buoyantly as though he had not a leaking boot on one foot and a bill for a cheap suit of clothes in his pocket. He mentally ranged his visions on the frieze he was to consider, and as he thought, his own stature seemed to rise gigantic in the vast salon. He was alone with Cedersholm. The Fields were in Europe, not to return until the palace had been made beautiful.

Cedersholm planned out his scheme rather vaguely, discoursing on a commonplace theme, indicating ceilings and walls, and Fairfax heard him through his own meditations. He impulsively caught the Master's arm, and himself pointing, "Just there," he said, "why not…" And when he had finished, Cedersholm accepted, but without warmth.

"Perfectly. You have caught my suggestions, Mr. Fairfax," and poor Antony shut his lips over his next flight.

In the same week Cedersholm left for Florida, and Fairfax, in the deserted studio, sketched and modelled à sa faim, as the French say, as old Professor Dufaucon used to say, and as the English say, less materially, "to his soul's content." February went by in this fashion, and Fairfax was only conscious of it when the day came round that he must pay his board and had nothing to do it with. Cedersholm was to return in a few days, and he would surely be reimbursed – to what extent he had no notion. His excitement rose high as he took an inventory of his work, of his essays and drawings and bas-reliefs, his projects for the ceiling of the music room. At one time his labour seemed of the best quality, and then again so poor, so abortive, that the young fellow had more than half a mind to destroy the lot before the return of the Master. During the last week he had a comrade, a great, soft-eyed, curly-locked Italian, who didn't speak a word of English, who arrived gentle as an ox to put himself under the yoke of labour. Antony, thanks to his keenness and his gift for languages, and his knowledge of French, made out something of what he was and from where. He had been born in Carrara and was a worker in marble in his own land, and had come to work on the fountain for the music room in the Field palace.

"The fountain!" Fairfax tumbled over his sketches and showed one to his brown-eyed friend, who told him rapidly that it was "divinely beautiful," and asked to see the clay model.

None had been made.

The same night, Fairfax wrote to Cedersholm that he had begun a model of the fountain, and in the following days was up to his ears and eyes in clay.

The block of marble arrived from Italy, and Fairfax superintended its difficult entry by derrick through the studio window. He restrained "Benvenuto Cellini," as he called his comrade, from cutting into the marble, and the Italian used to come and sit idle, for he had no work to do, and waited Cedersholm's orders. He used to come and sit and stare at his block of marble and sing pleasantly —

 
"Aria pura
Cielo azuro
Mia Maddelena,"
 

and jealously watch Fairfax who could work. Fairfax could and did, in a long blouse made for him by Miss Mitty, after his directions. With a twenty-five cent book of phrases, Fairfax in no time mastered enough Italian to talk with his companion, and his own baritone was sweet enough to blend with Benvenuto Cellini's "Mia Maddelena," and other songs of the same character, and he exulted in the companionship of the young man, and talked at him and over him, and dreamed aloud to him, and Benvenuto, who had only the dimmest idea of what the frenzy meant – not so dim, possibly, for he knew it was the ravings of art – supplied the "bellisimos" and "grandiosos," and felt the spirit of the moment, and was young with Fairfax, if not as much of a soul or a talent.

The model for the fountain was completed before Cedersholm's return. After a month's rest under the palms of Florida, the sculptor lounged into the studio, much as he might have strolled up a Paris boulevard and ordered a liqueur at a round table before some favourite café. Cedersholm had hot milk and biscuits in a corner instead, and Fairfax drew off the wet covering from his clay. Cedersholm enjoyed his light repast, considering the model which nearly filled the corner of the room. He fitted in an eyeglass, and in a distinguished manner regarded the modelling. Fairfax, who had been cold with excitement, felt his blood run tepid in his veins.

"And your sketches, Fairfax?" asked the Master, and held out his hand.

Fairfax carried him over a goodly pile from the table. Cedersholm turned them over for a long time, and finally held one out, and said —

"This seems to be in the scale of the measurements of the library ceiling?"

Fairfax's voice sounded childish to himself as he responded —

"I think it's correct, sir, to working scale."

"It might do with a few alterations," said Cedersholm. "If you care to try it, Fairfax, it might do. I will order the scaffolding placed to-morrow, and you can sketch it in, in charcoal. It can always come out, you know. You might begin the day after to-morrow."

The Master rose leisurely and looked about him. "Jove," he murmured, "it's good to be back again to the lares and penates."

Fairfax left the Master among the lares and penates, left him amongst the treasures of his own first youth, the first-fruits of his ardent young labour, and he went out, not conscious of how he quivered until he was on his way up-town. What an ass he was! No doubt the stuff was rubbish! What could he hope to attain without study and long apprenticeship? Why, he was nothing more than a boy. Cedersholm had been decent not to laugh in his face – Cedersholm's had been at once the kindest and the cruelest criticism. He called himself a thousand times a fool. He had no talent, he was marked for failure. He would sweep the streets, however, and lay bricks, before he went back to his mother in New Orleans unsuccessful. His letters home, his excitement and enthusiasm, how ridiculous they seemed, how fatuous his boastings before the old ladies and little Bella!

Fairfax passed his boarding-house and walked on, and as he walked he recalled what Cedersholm had said the day he engaged him: "Courage, patience, humility." These words had cooled his anger as nothing else could have done, and laid their salutary touch on his flushed face.

"These qualities are the attributes of genius. Mediocrity is incapable of possessing them." He would have them all, every one, every one! Courage, he was full of it. Patience he didn't know by sight. Humility he had despised – the poor fellow did not know that its hand touched him as he strode.

"I ought to be thankful that he didn't kick me out," he thought. "I daresay he was laughing in his sleeve at my abortions!"

Then he remembered his design for the ceiling, and at the Carews' doorstep he paused. Cedersholm had told him to draw it on the Field ceiling. This meant that he had another chance.

"It's perfectly ripping of the old boy," he thought, enthusiastically, as he rang the door-bell. "I'll begin to-morrow."

Bella opened the door to him.

CHAPTER XVII

The following year – in January – lying on his back on the scaffolding, Fairfax drew in his designs for the millionaire's ceiling, freely, boldly, convincingly, and it is doubtful if the eye of the proprietor – he was a fat, practical, easy-going millionaire, who had made money out of hog's lard – it is doubtful that Mr. Field's eyes, when gazing upward, saw the things that Fairfax thought he drew.

Fairfax whistled softly and drew and drew, and his cramped position was painful to his left leg and thigh. Benvenuto Cellini came below and sang up at him —

 
"Cielo azuro,
Giornata splendida
Ah, Maddelena,"
 

and told him in Italian about his own affairs, and Fairfax half heard and less than half understood. Cedersholm came once, bade him draw on, always comforting one of them at least, with the assurance that the work could be taken out.

During the following weeks, Fairfax never went back to the studio, and one day he swung himself down when Cedersholm came in, and said —

"I'm a little short of money, sir."

Cedersholm put his hand in his pocket and gave Antony a bill with the air of a man to whom money is as disagreeable and dangerous as a contagious disease. The bill was for fifty dollars, and seemed a great deal to Antony; then a great deal too little, and, in comparison with his debts, it seemed nothing at all. Cedersholm had followed up his payment with an invitation to Antony to come to Ninth Street the following day.

"I am sketching out my idea for the pedestal in Central Park. Would you care to see it? It might interest you as a student."

The ceiling in Rudolph Field's house is not all the work of Antony Fairfax. Half-way across the ceiling he stopped. It is easy enough to see where the painting is carried on by another hand. He finished the bas-reliefs at the end of March, and the fine frieze running round the little music-room. Mr. Field liked music little and had his room in proportion.

Antony stood with Cedersholm in the studio where he had made his scheme for the fountain and his first sketches. Cedersholm's design for the base of the pedestal, designed to support the winged victory, was placed against the wall. It was admirable, harmonious, noble.

Fairfax had seen Cedersholm work. The sculptor wore no apron, no blouse. He dressed with his usual fastidiousness; his eyeglass adjusted, he worked as neatly as a little old lady at her knitting, but his work had not the quality of wool.

"What do you think of it, Fairfax?"

Fairfax started from his meditation. "It's immense," he murmured.

"You think it does not express what is intended?" Cedersholm's clever eyes were directed at Fairfax. "What's the matter with it?"

Without reply, the young man took up a sheet of paper and a piece of charcoal and drew steadily for a few seconds and held out the sheet.

"Something like this … under the four corners … wouldn't it give an idea … of life? The Sphinx is winged. Doesn't it seem as if its body should rest on life?"

If Cedersholm had in mind to say, "You have quite caught my suggestion," he controlled this remark, covered his mouth with his hand, and considered – he considered for a day or two. He then went to Washington to talk with the architects of the new State Museum. And Fairfax once more found the four walls of the quiet studio shutting him in … found himself inhabiting with the friendly silence and with the long days as spring began to come.

He finished the modelling of his four curious, original creatures, beasts intended to be the supports of the Sphinx. He finished his work in Easter week, and wrote to Cedersholm begging for his directions and authority to have them cast in bronze.

CHAPTER XVIII

The four beasts were of heroic size. They came out of the moulds like creatures of a prehistoric age. Benvenuto Cellini, who was to have met his friend Antony at the foundry on the day Fairfax's first plaster cast was carried down, failed to put in an appearance, and Fairfax had the lonely joy, the melancholy, lonely joy, of assisting at the birth of one of his big creatures. All four of them were ultimately cast, but they were to remain in the foundry until Cedersholm's return.

His plans for the future took dignity, and importance, from the fact of his success, and he reviewed with joy the hard labour of the winter, for which in all he had been paid one hundred dollars. He was in need of everything new, from shoes up. He was a great dandy, or would have liked to have afforded to be. As for a spring overcoat – well, he couldn't bear to read the tempting advertisements, and even Gardiner's microscopic coat, chosen by Bella, caused his big cousin a twinge of envy. Bella's new outfit was complete, a deeper colour glowed on the robin-red dress she wore, and Fairfax felt shabby between them as he limped along into the Park under the budding trees, a child's hand on either arm.

"Cousin Antony, why are there such delicious smells to-day?"

Bella sniffed them. The spring was at work under the turf, the grass was as fragrant as a bouquet.

"Breathe it in, Cousin Antony! It makes you wish to do heaps of things you oughtn't to!"

On the pond the little craft of the school children flew about like butterflies, the sun on the miniature sails.

"What kind of things does the grass cutter, shearing off a few miserable dandelions, make you want to do, Bella? You should smell the jasmine and the oleanders of New Orleans. These are nothing but weeds."

"How can you say so?" she exclaimed; "besides, most of the things I want to do are wicked, anyhow."

"Jove!" exclaimed Fairfax. "That is a confession."

She corrected. "You ought not to say 'Jove' like that, Cousin Antony. You can cut it and make it sound like 'Jovah,' it sounds just like it."

"What wicked things do you want to do, Bella?"

She pointed to the merry-go-rounds, where the giraffes, elephants, and horses raced madly round to the plaintive tune of "Annie Laurie," ground out by a hurdy-gurdy.

"I'd love to go on."

Fairfax put his hand in his pocket, but she pulled it back.

"No, Cousin Antony, please. It's not the money that keeps me back, though I haven't any. It's Sunday, you know."

"Oh," her cousin accepted dismally.

And Bella indicated a small boy carrying a tray of sweets who had advanced towards the three with a hopeful grin.

"I'd perfectly love to have some of those lossingers, but mother says 'street candy isn't pure.' Besides, it's Sunday."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Fairfax. "Do you mean to say that out here in God's free air you are going to preach me a sermon?"

He beckoned the boy.

"Oh," cried Gardiner, "can't we choose, Cousin Antony?"

The little cousins bent above the tray and slowly and passionately selected, and their absorption in the essence of wintergreen, sassafras, and peppermint showed him how much this pleasure meant to these rich children. Their pockets full, they linked their arms in his again.

"I have never had such fun in all my life as I do with you, Cousin Antony," Bella told him.

"Then come along," he suggested, recklessly. "You must ride once on the merry-go-round." And before the little Puritans realized the extent of their impiety, Fairfax had lifted Bella on a horse and Gardiner on an elephant, paid their fare and started them away. He watched Bella, her hat caught by its elastic, fallen off her head on the first round, her cheeks flushed and her eyes like stars, and bravely her straight little arm stretched out to catch the ring. There was triumph in her cry, "Oh, Cousin Antony, Cousin Antony, I've won the ring!"

Such flash and sparkle as there was about her, with her teeth like grains of corn and her eyes dancing as she nodded and smiled at him! Poor little Gardiner! Antony paid for him again and patted him on the back. There was a pathos about the mild, sweet little face and in the timid, ineffectual arm, too short and too weak to snap the iron ring on to his sword. Bella rode till "Annie Laurie" changed to "Way down upon de Swanee river," and Fairfax's heart beat for Louisiana, and he had come to the end of his nickels. He lifted the children down.

Bella now wound both arms firmly in her cousin's, and clung to him.

"Think of it, I never rode before, never! All the children on the block have, though. Isn't it perfectly delightful, Cousin Antony? I wish your legs weren't so long."

"Cousin Antony," asked little Gardiner, "couldn't we go over to the animals and see the seals fall off and dwown themselves?"

They saw the lion in his lair and the "tiger, tiger burning bright," and the shining, slippery seals, and they made an absorbed group at the nettings where Antony discoursed about the animals as he discoursed about art, and Spartacus talked to them about the wild beast show in Cæsar's arena. His audience shivered at his side.

They walked up the big driveway, and Fairfax saw for the first time the Mall, and observed that the earth was turned up round a square some twelve feet by twelve. He half heard the children at his side; his eyes were fastened on the excavation for the pedestal of the Sphinx; the stone base would soon be raised there, and then his beasts would be poised.

"Let's walk over to the Mall, children."

Along the walk the small goat carriages were drawn up with their teams; little landaus, fairy-like for small folk to drive in. Fairfax stood before the cavity in the earth and the scaffolding left by the workmen. He was conscious of his little friends at length by the dragging on his arms of their too affectionate weight. "Cousin Antony."

Fairfax waved to the vacant spot. "Oh, Egypt, Egypt," he began, in his "recitation voice," a voice that promised treats at home, but that palled in the sunny open, with goat rides in the fore-ground.

 
"Out of the soft, smooth coral of thy sands,
Out of thy Nilus tide, out of thy heart,
Such dreams have come, such mighty splendours – "
 

"Bella, do you see that harmonious square?"

"Yes," she answered casually, with a lack lustre. "And do you see the goats?"

"Goats, Bella! I see a pedestal some ten feet high, and on it at its four corners, before they poise the Sphinx – what do you think I see, Bella?"

"… Cousin Antony, that boy there has the sweetest goats. They're almost clean! Too dear for anything! With such cunning noses!"

He dropped his arm and put his hand on the little girl's shoulder and turned her round.

"I'm disappointed in you for the first time, honey," he said.

"Oh, Cousin Antony."

"Little cousin, this is where my creatures, my beautiful bronze creatures, are to be eternally set – there, there before your eyes." He pointed to the blue May air.

"Cousin Antony," said Gardiner's slow voice, "the only thing I'm not too tired to do is to wide in a goat carwage."

Fairfax lifted the little boy in his arms. "If I lift you, Gardiner, like this, high in my arms, you could just about see the top of the pedestal. Wait till it's unveiled, my hearties! Wait – wait!"

He put Gardiner down with a laugh and a happy sigh, and then he saw the goats.

"Do you want a ride, children?"

"Did they!"

He ran his hands through the pockets that had been wantonly emptied.

"Not a picayune, honey. Your poor old cousin is dead broke."

"Then," said Bella, practically, "let's go right away from here, Cousin Antony. I can't bear to look at those goats another minute. It hurts."

Fairfax regarded her thoughtfully. "Bella the Desirous," he murmured. "What are you going to be when you grow up, little cousin?"

They started slowly away from temptation, away from the vision of the pedestal and the shadowy creatures, and the apparition of the Sphinx seemed to brood over them as they went, and nothing but a Sphinx's wisdom could have answered the question Fairfax put: "What are you going to be when you grow up, little Bella?"

Fairfax soon carried the little boy, and Bella in a whisper said —

"He is almost too small for our parties, Cousin Antony."

"Not a bit," said the limping cousin, stoically. "We couldn't get on without him, could we, old chap?"

But the old chap didn't answer, for he had fallen asleep as soon as his head touched his cousin's shoulder.

When Fairfax left them at their door, he was surprised at Bella's melancholy. She held out to him the sticky remnant of the roll of lozenges.

"Please take it. I shouldn't be allowed to eat it."

"But what on earth's the matter?" he asked.

"Never mind," she said heroically, "you don't have to bear it. You're Episcopalian; but I've got to tell!" She sighed heavily. "I don't care; it was worth it!"

As the door clicked behind the children, Fairfax laughed.

"What a little trump she is! She thinks the game is worth the candle!"