Читать книгу Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel - Van Vorst Marie - Страница 3

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."

Mrs. Carew tapped her lip with her thimble. "So you will learn to model here," she murmured. "Now I wonder who would be the best man?"

And Fairfax responded quickly, "Cedersholm, auntie, he's the only man."

"My husband," his aunt began to blush, "your uncle knows Mr. Cedersholm in the Century Club, but I hardly think…"

Antony threw up his bright head. "I have brought a letter from the President to Cedersholm and several of the little figures I have modelled."

"Ah, that will be better," and his aunt breathed with relief. Mrs. Carew's mention of her husband came to Antony like a sharp chill. Nothing that had been told him of the New York banker who had married his gentle aunt was calculated to inspire him with a sense of kinship. It was as though a window had been opened into the bright room. A slight noise at the door downstairs acted like a current of alarm upon the family. The colour left his aunt's cheeks, and little Gardiner exclaimed, "I hear father's key." The child came over to his mother's side. It seemed discourteous to Antony to suggest going just as his uncle arrived, so he waited a moment in the strange silence that fell over the group. In a few seconds Mr. Carew came in and his wife presented. "My dear, this is Antony Fairfax, my sister Bella's only child, you know. You remember Bella, Henry."

A wave of red, which must have been vigorous in order to sweep in and under the ruddy colour already in Carew's cheeks, testified that he did remember the beautiful Mrs. Fairfax.

"I remember her very well," he returned; "is she as handsome as ever? You have chosen a cold day to land in the North. I presume you came by boat? We have been two hours coming up town. The cars are blocked by snow. It's ten degrees below zero to-night. I wish you would see that ashes are poured on the front steps, Caroline, at once."

The guest put out his hand. "I must be going. Good night, Aunt Caroline – good night, Gardiner. Good night, sir."

Fairfax marked the ineffectuality in his aunt's face. It was neither embarrassment nor shame, it was impotence. Her expression was not appealing, but inadequate, and the slender hand that she gave him melted in his like the snow. There was no grasp there, no stimulus to go on. He turned to the red figure of the huddled child in the sofa corner.

"Good night, little cousin."

Bella dropped her book and sprang up. "Good night," she cried; "why, you're not going, Cousin Antony?"

And as the older woman had done she extended her hand. It was only a small child's hand, but the essential was there. The same sex but with a different hand. It did not melt in Antony's; it lay, it clasped, lost in his big palm. He felt, nevertheless, the vital little grasp, its warmth and sweetness against his hand.

"Where are you going?"

Mr. Carew had passed out now that he had successfully eliminated from the mind of the guest any idea that hospitality was to be extended. Once more the little group were by themselves.

"There is the Buckingham Hotel," Mrs. Carew ventured. "It's an excellent hotel; we get croquettes from there when Gardiner's appetite flags. The children have their hair cut there as well."

Tired as Fairfax was, rebuffed as he was, he could not but be cheered by the bright look of the little girl who stood between him and her mother. She nodded at her cousin.

"Why, the Buckingham is six dollars a day," she said. "I asked the barber when he cut Gardiner's hair."

Fairfax smiled. "I reckon that is a little steep, Bella."

"It's too far away, anyhow, Cousin Antony, it's a mile; twenty blocks is a New York mile. There are the Whitcombs." And the child turned to the less capable woman.

Her mother exclaimed: "Why, of course, of course, there are the Whitcombs! My dear Antony," said his aunt, "if you could only stay with them you would be doing a real charity. They are dear little old maids and self-supporting women. They sell their work in my women's exchange. They have a nice little house."

Bella interrupted. "A dear little red-brick house, Cousin Antony, two stories, on the next block."

She tucked her book under her arm as though it were a little trunk she was tucking away to get ready to journey with him.

"The Whitcombs would be perfectly enchanted, Antony," urged his aunt, "they want a lodger badly. It's Number 700, Madison Avenue."

"It looks like the house that Jack built," murmured Gardiner, dreamily; "they have just wepainted it bwight wed with yellow doors…"

Fairfax thanked them and went, his heavy and his light step echoing on the hard stairway of his kinsmen's inhospitable house. Bella watched him from the head of the stairs, her book under her arm, and below, at the door, he shouldered his bag and went out into the whirling, whirling snow. It met him softly, like a caress, but it was very cold. Bella had said two blocks away to the left, and he started blindly.

This was his welcome from his own people.

His Southern home seemed a million miles away; but come what would, he would never return to it empty-handed as he had left it. He had been thrust from the door where he felt he had a right to enter. That threshold he would never darken again – never. A pile of unshovelled snow blocked his path. As he crossed the street to avoid it, he looked up at the big, fine house. From an upper window the shade was lifted, and in the square of yellow light stood the two children, the little boy's head just visible, and Bella, her dark hair blotting against the light, waved to him her friendly, cousinly little hand. He forged on through the snow to "The House that Jack built."