Part 4 (1/2)

His nature was not one to harbour anything but sweetness, and the next day, Sunday, when the sunlight poured upon New York, he thought of the little cousins and decided to accept his aunt's invitation. The sky was cloudless and under its hard blue the city looked colder and whiter than ever. It was a sky which in New Orleans would have made the birds sing.

The steeples sang, one slender tower rocking as its early ringing bells sang out its Sunday music on the next corner of the street, and Antony listened as he dressed, and recognized the melody. He found it beautiful and sang in his young voice as he shaved and tied his cravat, and made himself impeccable for the Presbyterian Church. His own people were High Church Episcopalians, and from the tone and music of these bells he believed that they rang in an Episcopal building. There was no melancholy in the honied tone of the chime, and it gave him a glow that went with him happily throughout the dreary day.

He found himself between the children in the deep dark pew, where the back of the seat was especially contrived to seize the sinner in a sensitive point, and it clutched Antony and made him think of all the crimes that he had ever committed. Fortunately it met Bella and Gardiner at their heads. Antony's position between the children was not without danger. He was to serve as a quieter for Bella's nerves, spirits and perpetual motion, and to guard against Gardiner's somnolence. He remained deaf to Bella's clear whispers, and settled Gardiner comfortably and propped him up. Finally the little boy fell securely against the cousinly arm. At the end of the pew, Mr. and Mrs. Carew were absorbed, she in her emotional interest in the pastor, a brilliant Irishman who thundered for an hour, and Mr. Carew in his own importance and his position. Antony remembered Miss Mitty and that his uncle was a pillar of the Church, and he watched the pillar support in grave pomposity his part of the edifice.

But neither time nor place nor things eternal nor things present affected the little girl at Antony's side. Sunk in the deep pew, un.o.bserved and sheltered by Antony's figure, she lived what she called her ”Sunday pew life,” lived it as ardently as she did everything. After a short interval in which she pored over the open hymnbook, she whispered to him ---- ----

”Cousin Antony, I have learned the whole hymn, ten verses in five minutes. Hear me.”

He tried to ignore her, but he was obliged to hear her as with great feeling and in a soft droning undertone she murmured the hymn through.

”'Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.' Isn't it perfectly beautiful, Cousin Antony?”

This done, she took off her yellow kid gloves carefully, finger by finger, and blew them out into a shapely little hand like Zephyr's, to the dangerous amus.e.m.e.nt of a child in the next pew. Antony confiscated the gloves. By squeezing up her eyes and making a lorgnon of her pretty bare hand, Bella scrutinized the solemn preacher. Antony severely refused her pencils and paper and remained deaf to her soft questions, and, thrown on her own resources, Bella extracted her father's huge Bible from the rack and, to Fairfax's relief, with much turning of the leaves she finally found a favourite chapter in Revelation and settled down and immersed herself in the Apocalypse. She read with fervour, her bonnet back on her rebellious hair, her legs crossed in defiance of every rule of polite demeanour. Something of the sermon's eloquent, pa.s.sionate savagery was heard by Fairfax, and at the close, as the preacher rose to his climax, Bella heard too. At the text, ”There shall be no more night there, neither candle nor light of the sun,” she shut her book.

”He is preaching from my chapter, Cousin Antony,” she whispered; ”isn't it perfectly beautiful?”

Fairfax learned to wait for this phrase of hers, a ready approval of sensuous and lovely and poetic things. He learned to wait for it as one does for a word of praise from a sympathetic companion. Gardiner woke up and yawned, and Fairfax got him on his feet; his tumbled blonde head reached just to the hymnbook rail. He was a pretty picture with his flushed soft cheeks, red as roses, and his sleepy eyes wide. So they stood for the solemn benediction, ”The love of G.o.d ... go with you ...

always.”

CHAPTER VIII

He decided not to be the one to shut doors against himself. If life as it went on chose with backward fling to close portals behind him of its own accord, he at least would not a.s.sist fate, and with both hands, generously, as his heart was generous, Fairfax threw all gates wide.

Therefore with no _arriere pensee_ or any rankling thought, he went on the appointed afternoon to teach his little cousins the rudiments of drawing.

The weather continued brutal, grew more severe rather, and smartly whipped him up the avenue and hurled him into the house. He arrived covered with snow, white as Santa Claus, and he heard by the voices at the stair head that he was welcome. The three were alone, the upper floor had been a.s.signed to the drawing party. It was a big room full of forgotten things, tons of books that people had ceased to want to read, the linen chest, a capital hiding-place where a soft hand beneath the lid might prevent a second Mistletoe Bough tragedy. There were old trunks stored there, boxes which could not travel any more, one of which had been on a wedding journey and still contained, amongst less poetic objects, mother's wedding slippers. There was a dear disorder in the big room whose windows overlooked Madison and Fifth Avenues, and the distant, black wintry trees of Central Park. A child on either side of him, Fairfax surveyed his workshop, and he thought to himself, ”I could model here, if I only had some clay.”

Bella had already installed herself. Their tables and their boards and a prodigal outlay of pencils and paper were in themselves inspiring.

”There is no chair high enough for Gardiner,” Bella said, ”but we can build him one up out of books.”

”I'd wather sit on Cousin Antony's lap,” said the little boy; ”built-up books shake me off so, Bella.”

Both children wore blue gingham play ap.r.o.ns. Fairfax told them they looked like real workmen in a real studio, with which idea they were much delighted.

”Gardiner looks like a charity child,” said his sister, ”in that ap.r.o.n, and his hair's too long. It ought to be cut, but I gave my solemn word of honour that I wouldn't cut it again.”

”Why don't you go to your famous Buckingham barber?” asked the cousin.

”It's too far for Gardiner to walk,” she returned, ”and we have lost our last ten cents. Besides, it's thirty-five cents to get a hair-cut.”

Fairfax had placed the boy before his drawing board, and confiscated a long piece of kitchen bread, telling Bella that less than a whole loaf was enough for an eraser, extracted the rubber from Gardiner's mouth, and sat down by the little boy's side.

”There's not much money in this house, Cousin Antony,” Bella informed him when the seance opened. ”Please let me use the soft pencils, will you? They slide like delicious velvet.”

Fairfax made an equal division of the implements, avoiding a scene, and made Bella a straight line across the page.

”Draw a line under it.”