Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel

Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel
Marie Van Vorst

Van Vorst Marie

Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel

BOOK I

THE KINSMEN

CHAPTER I

One bitter day in January in the year 1880, when New York was a tranquil city, a young man stood at the South Ferry waiting for the up-town horse car. With a few other passengers he had just left the packet which had arrived in New York harbour that afternoon from New Orleans.

Antony Fairfax was an utter stranger to the North.

In his hand he carried a small hand-bag, and by his side on the snow rested his single valise. Before him waited a red and yellow tram-car drawn by lean horses, from whose backs the vapour rose on the frosty air. Muffled to his ears, the driver beat together his hands in their leather gloves; the conductor stamped his feet. The traveller climbed into the car, lifting his big bag after him.

The cold was even more terrible to him than to the conductor and driver. He had come from the South, where he had left the roses and magnolias in bloom, and the warmth of the country was in his blood. He dug his feet into the straw covering the floor of the car, buttoned his coat tight about his neck, pushed his hands deep in his pockets and sat wondering at the numbing cold.

This, then, was the North!

He watched with interest the few other passengers board the little car: two fruit vendors and after them were amiably lifted in great bunches of bananas. Antony asked himself the question whether this new country would be friendly to him, what would its spirit be toward him, he asked this question of the cold winter air the city suddenly took reality and formed for him out of his dreams. Would it be kind or cruel? The coming days would answer: meanwhile he could wait. Some places, like some people whom we meet, at once extend to us a hand; there are some that even seem to offer an embrace. Through the car blew a sudden icy blast and New York's welcome to Fairfax was keen as a blow. There was an actual physical affront in this wind that struck him in the face.

Suppose the elements were an indication of what the rest would be? But no – that was ridiculous! There would be certainly warm interiors behind the snow-fretted panes of the windows in the houses that lined the streets on either side. There would be warm and cordial hearts to welcome him somewhere. There would be understanding of heart, indulgence for youth. He would find open doors for all his ambitions, spurs to his integrity and effort. He would know how to make use of these ways and means of progress. For years he had dreamed of the galleries of pictures and of the museum. It was from this wonderful city whose wideness had the intense outreach of the unknown that Fairfax had elected to step into the world.

New York was to be his threshold. There was no limit to what he intended to do in his special field of work. From his boyhood he had told himself that he would become great. He was too young to have discovered the traitors that hide in the brain and the emptiness of the deepest tears. He was a pioneer and had the faith of the pioneer. According to him everything was real, the beauty of form was enchanting, all hearts were true, and all roads led to fame. His short life focused now at this hour.

Life is a series of successive stages to which point of culmination a man brings all he has of the past and all his hopes. All along the road these blessed visions crowd, fulminate and form as it were torches, and these lights mark the road for the traveller. Now all Antony's life came to a point in this hour. He had longed to go to New York from the day when in New Orleans he had completed his first bust. He had moulded from the soft clay on the banks of the levees the head of a famous general, who had later become president. He was only twelve years old then, but his little work bore all the indications of genius.

He was an artist from the ends of the slender hands to the centre of the sensitive heart. The childlikeness, the beauty of his nature revealed it in everything he did; and he was only twenty-two years old.

As he sat in the horse car, his heart full of hope, his brain teeming with the ideal, he was an interesting figure to watch, and a fine old gentleman on his way up town was struck by the brilliancy, the aspect of the fellow passenger. He studied the young fellow from behind his evening paper, but the old gentleman could not make up his mind what the young man was. Aside from the valise at his feet Antony had no other worldly goods, and aside from the twenty-five dollars in his pocket, he had no other money. There was nothing about him to suggest the artistic type: broad-shouldered, muscular, he seemed built for battles and feats of physical strength, but his face was thoughtful for one so young. His eyes were clear. "He looks," mused the gentleman, "like a man who has come home after a very successful journey. I suspect the young fellow is returning with something resembling the story books' bag of gold." He humorously fancied even that the treasure might be in the valise on the straw of the car at the traveller's feet.

The car tinkled slowly through the cold. After a long while, well above a street marked Fiftieth, its road appeared to lie in the country. There were vacant lots on either side; there were low-roofed, ramshackle shanties; there were stray goats here and there among the rocks. Antony said to the conductor in a pleasant, Southern voice: "You won't forget to let me off at 70th Street." He rose at the conductor's signal and the ringing of the bell. The old gentleman, who was a canon of the Church, saw as the young man rose that he was lame, that he limped, that he wore a high, double-soled boot. As Fairfax went out he lifted his hat with a courteous "Good evening" to his only fellow passenger, for the others had one by one left the car to go to their different destinations. "Too bad," thought the canon to himself, "Lame, by Jove! With a smile like that a man can win the world."

CHAPTER II

The little figure in the corner of the pink sofa had read away the hours of the short winter afternoon curled up in a ball, her soft red dress, her soft red cheeks, her soft red lips vivid bits of colour in the lamplight. She had read through the twilight, until the lamps came to help her pretty eyes, and like a scholar of old over some problem she bent above her fairy tale. The volume was unwieldy, and she supported it on her knees. Close to her side a little boy of six watched the absorbed face, watched the lamp and the shadows of the lamp on the pink walls of the room; watched his mother as she sat sewing, but most devotedly of all he watched through his half-dreaming lids his sister as she read her story. His sister charmed him very much and terrified him not a little; she was so quick, so strong, so alive – she rushed him so. He loved his sister, she was his illustrated library of fairy tales and wonderful plays, she was his companion, his ruler, his dominator, and his best friend.

"Bella," he whispered at the second when she turned the page and he thought he might venture to interrupt, "Bella, wouldn't you read it to me?"

The absorbed child made an impatient gesture, bent her head lower and snuggled down into her feast. She shook her mane of hair.

"Gardiner," his mother noticed the appeal, "when will you learn to read for yourself? You are a big boy."

"Oh, I'm not so vewy big," his tone was indolent, "I'm not so big as Bella. You said yesterday that you bought me five-year-old clothes."

In the distance, above the noise of the wind, came the tinkle of the car-bell. Gardiner silently wished, as he heard the not unmusical sound, that the eternal, ugly little cars, with the overworked horses, could be turned into fairy chariots and this one, as it came ringing and tinkling along, would stop at the front door and fetch… A loud ring at the front door made the little boy spring up.

His sister frowned and glanced up from her book. "It isn't father!" she flashed out at him. "He's got his key. You needn't look scared yet, Gardiner. It is a bundle or a beggar or something or other stupid. Don't disturb."

However, the three of them listened, and in another second the door of the sitting-room was opened by a servant and, behind the maid, on the bare wood floor of the stairs, there fell a heavy step and a light step, a light step and a heavy step. Bella never forgot the first time she heard those footfalls.

The lady at the table put her sewing down, and at that moment, behind the servant, a young man came in, a tall young man, holding out his hand and smiling a wonderful and beautiful smile.

"Aunt Caroline. I'm Antony Fairfax from New Orleans. I've just reached New York, and I came, of course, at once to you."

Not very much later, as they all stood about the table talking, Bella uncurled and once upon her feet, astonishingly tall for twelve years old, stood by Fairfax's side, while Gardiner, an old-fashioned little figure in queer home-made clothes, flushed, delicate and timid, leaned on his mother. The older woman had stopped sewing. With her work in her lap she was looking at the seventh son of her beautiful sister of whom she had been gently, mildly envious all her life.

Bella said brusquely: "You've got an awfully light smile, Cousin Antony."

He laughed. "I suppose that comes from an awfully light heart, little cousin!"

"Bella," her mother frowned, "don't be personal. You will learn not to mind her, Antony; she is frightfully spoiled."

The little girl threw back her hair. "And you've got one light step, Cousin Antony, and one heavy step. No one ever came up our stairs like that before. How do you do it?"

The stranger's face clouded. He had been looking at her with keen delight, and he was caught up short at her words. He put out his deformed shoe.

"This is the heavy step."

Bella's cheeks had been flushed with excitement, but the dark red that rose at Fairfax's words made her look like a little Indian.

"Oh, I didn't know!" she stammered. "I didn't know."

Her cousin comforted her cheerfully. "That's all right. I don't mind. I fell from a cherry tree when I was a little chap and I've stumped about ever since."

His aunt's gentle voice, indifferent and soft, like Gardiner's murmured —

"Oh, don't listen to her, Antony, she's a spoiled, inconsiderate little girl."

But Bella had drawn nearer the stranger. She leaned on the table close to him and lifted her face in which her eyes shone like stars. She had wounded him, and it didn't seem to her generous little heart that she could quite let it go. And under her breath she whispered —

"But there's the light step, isn't there, Cousin Antony? And the smile – the awfully light smile?"

Fairfax laughed and leaned forward as though he would catch her, but she had escaped from under his hand like an elusive fairy, and when he next saw her she was back in her corner with her book on her knees and her dark hair covering her face.

CHAPTER III

He talked with his aunt for a long while. Her grace and dignity suggested his mother, but she was not so lovely as the other woman, whose memory was always thrilling to him. Fairfax ran eagerly on, on fire with his subject, finally stopping himself with a laugh.

"I reckon I'm boring you to death, Aunt Caroline."

"Oh, no," she breathed, "how can you say so? How proud she must be of you!"

Downstairs in the hall he had left his valise and his little hand satchel, with the snow melting on them. He came from a household whose hospitality was as large, as warm, as bright as the sun. He had made a stormy passage by the packet Nore. His head was beginning to whirl. From the sofa there was not a sign. Bella read ardently, her hand pressing a lock of her dark hair across her burning cheek. Gardiner, his eyes on his cousin, drank in, fascinated, the figure of the big, handsome young man.

"He's my relation," he said to himself. "He's one of our family. I know he can tell stories, and he's a traveller. He came in the fairy cars."