Part 24 (1/2)

He returned to Nut Street dazed, excited but less sentimentally miserable and more profoundly touched. He had made himself a mechanical career; he had a.s.sumed the responsibilities of a man. He might have been a miserable failure as a sculptor, perhaps he would be a good mechanic.

Who knows where any flight will carry a man? Making his life, married and founding a home, he would be a factor in the world's progress, and a self-supporting citizen. He tried to fire himself with this sacrifice.

At any rate, in order to save his body he had lost his soul--that is, his spiritual soul. ”Is not the life more than the meat?” In the recesses of his artist's mind a voice which he had strangled tried to tell him that he had done his soul a great, great wrong. Nevertheless, a solemn feeling of responsibility and of manhood came upon him, a grave quiet strength was his, and as he journeyed back to his lodgings, he did not then regret.

Mrs. Kenny and her husband and the children were in the kitchen as he pa.s.sed and the landlady called out something, but he did not hear for he was half-way upstairs. As he opened the door and went into his room he saw some one was standing by the window--no, leaning far out of the window, very far; a small figure in a black dress.

”Bella!” he cried.

She flashed about, rushed at him, and for the first time since ”Going to Siberia” he felt the entwining arms. He suffered the das.h.i.+ng embrace, then, freeing himself, saw her hair dark under her black hat, and that she had grown in eighteen months, and he heard--

”Oh, Cousin Antony, how long you have been coming home! I have been waiting for your engine to come under the window, but I didn't see you.

How did you get here without my seeing you?”

If the sky had opened and shown him the vision of his own mother he could not have been more overwhelmed with surprise.

”Where did you come from, Bella? Who is with you?”

She took her hat off, dropped it easily on the floor, and he saw that her hair was braided in a great braid. She sat on the ledge of the open window and swung her feet. Her skirts had been lengthened, but she was still a little girl. The charming affectionate eyes beamed on him.

”But you are like anybody else, Cousin Antony, to-day. When I saw you in your flannel s.h.i.+rt I thought you were a fireman.”

At the remembrance of when she had seen him, a look of distress crossed her mobile face. She burst out crying, sprang up and ran to him.

”Oh, Cousin Antony, I want him so, my little brother, my little playmate.”

He soothed her, made her sit on his bed and dried her tears, as he had dried them when she had cried over the blackbird.

”Who is with you, honey? Who brought you here?”

As though she had stored up all her sorrow, as though she had waited with a child's loyal tenderness for this moment, she wound her arms around Fairfax's neck and brought her face close to his cheek.

”I miss him perfectly dreadfully, Cousin Antony. n.o.body took care of him much but me. Now father is broken-hearted. You loved him, didn't you? He perfectly wors.h.i.+pped you.”

”There, Bella, you choke me, honey. I can't breathe. Now tell me who let you come. Is Aunt Caroline here?”

She had no intention of answering him, and wiped her eyes briskly on the handkerchief that he gave her.

”Tobacco,” she sniffed, ”your handkerchief has got little wisps of tobacco on it. I think it is perfectly splendid to be an engineer! I wouldn't have thought so though, if I hadn't seen you in the flannel s.h.i.+rt. Wouldn't you rather be a _genius_ as you used to think? Don't you make casts any more? Isn't it _sweet_ in your little room, and aren't the tracks mixing? How do you ever know which ones to go on, Cousin Antony? And _which_ is your engine? Take me down to see it. How Gardiner would have loved to ride!”

She was a startling combination of child and woman. Her slenderness, her grace, her tender words, the easy flow of speech, the choice of words caught and remembered from the varied books she devoured, her ardour and her rare brilliant little face, all made her an unusual companion.

”Now answer me,” he ordered, ”who came with you to Albany?”

”No one, Cousin Antony.”

”What do you mean?”

”I came alone.”