Part 41 (1/2)

”I am a sculptor.”

”Delightful!” exclaimed his companion. ”Where are you going to work?

With Carrier-Belleuse or Rude?”

”Ah, I don't know--I don't know where I can go or what I can do.”

His companion, with an understanding nod, said, ”Didn't bring over a gold-mine with you, perhaps?”

As he said this he laughed, extended both his hands and jumped up from his seat.

”I like you exceedingly,” he exclaimed heartily. ”The governor had telegraphed me to go to the devil and I thought I'd take his advice. The little supper I was giving last night was to say good-bye to a hundred-franc note, some money that I won at poker. I might have paid some of this hotel bill, but I didn't. I wish you had been there, Rainsford! But, never mind, you had the afterglow anyway! No,” he laughed, ”let us surprise them at home. I don't quite know how, but let's surprise them.”

Fairfax shook his head as though he didn't quite understand.

”Is there no one who thinks you an insane fool for going in for art?

n.o.body that your success will be gall to?”

”No, I'm all alone.”

”Come,” urged the other, too excited to see the sadness on his companion's face. ”Come, isn't there some one who will cringe when your statues are unveiled?”

”Stop!” cried Fairfax eagerly.

”Come on then,” cried the boy; ”whoever it may be, your enemy or my stepfather--we will surprise them yet!”

CHAPTER VI

In January of the following year he leaned out of the window and smelled Paris, drank it in, penetrated by its fragrance and perfume. He saw the river milkily flowing between the sh.o.r.es, the stones of the quay parapet, the arches of the bridges, the wide domain of roofs and towers.

The Sacre-Coeur on Montmartre had not yet begun to rise, though they were laying its foundation stones, and his eyes travelled, as they always did, through the fog to the towers of Notre-Dame with its black, mellow front and its melancholy beauty. The bourdon of the bells smote sympathetically through him. No matter what his state of mind might be, Paris took him out of himself, and he adored it.

He was looking upon the first of the winter mists. The first grey mystery had obscured the form of the city. Paris had a new seduction. He could not believe now that he had not been born in France and been always part of the country he had adopted by temperament and spirit.

Like all artists, his country was where he worked the best. For him now, unless the place were a workshop, it could never be a hearthstone, and he took satisfaction in recalling his ancestry on his mother's side--Debaillet, or, as they called it in New Orleans, Ballet. As Arabella Ballet his mother had been beautiful; as Mrs. Fairfax she had given him Irish and French blood.

”Atavism,” he said to Dearborn, ”you cannot love this place as I do, Bob. My grandfather escaped in the disguise of a French cook to save his head in 1793. I seem to see his figure walking before me when I cross the Place de la Concorde, and the shadow of the guillotine falls across his path.”

From his corner of the room Dearborn drawled, ”If the substance of the guillotine had fallen across his neck, Tony, where would you be in our mutual history?”

Antony had asked his companion to call him Tony. He had not been able to disa.s.sociate himself with everything that recalled the past.

Fairfax's figure as he turned was dark against the light of the window and the room was full of the shadows of the early January twilight. He wore a pair of velveteen breeches whose original colour might have been a dark, rich blue. His flannel s.h.i.+rt (no longer red) was fastened loosely at the neck by a soft black cravat under a rolling collar. It was Sunday and he was working, the clay white upon his fingers and nails. He wore an old pair of slippers, and Dearborn on a couch in a corner watched him, a Turkish drapery wound around his shoulders, for the big room was chilly and it smelled of clay and tobacco smoke. The studio was an enormous attic, running the length of an hotel once of some magnificence, now a tumble-down bit of still beautiful architecture. The room was portioned off for the use of two people. Two couches served in the night-time as their beds, there was a small stove guiltless of fire, a few pieces of studio property, a skylight, a desk covered with papers and books and ma.n.u.scripts, and in the part of the room near the window and under the skylight, Tony Fairfax, now Thomas Rainsford, worked among his casts and drawings, amidst the barrels of clay and plaster. To him, in spite of being almost always hungry, in spite of the discomfort, of the constant presence and companions.h.i.+p of another when he often longed for solitude, in spite of this, his domain was a heaven. He had come into the place in June with Dearborn.

Tony had paid a year's rent in advance. He was working as a common journeyman in the studio of Barye, and early in the morning, late at night, and on Sundays, worked for himself eagerly, hungrily, like the slave of old in Albany, and yet, with what a difference! He had no one but himself to consider, but had the interest of the atelier where he studied, even as he sold his skill that it might be lost in the creations of more advanced artists, and there, during the days of his apprentices.h.i.+p, his visions came to him, and what conceptions he then had he tried to work out and to mature, when he had the chance, in his own room.

Dearborn, who never left the studio except to eat, smoked and worked and read all day.