Part 43 (1/2)
He said now, lightly, as he handed the letter back, ”You haven't been playing perfectly square with me, Tony. I'm afraid you have been wearing the boots under false pretences, but, nevertheless, I guess you will have to wear them to-morrow night, old man.”
As Fairfax did not move, Dearborn finished more gravely--
”I would be glad to hear anything you are willing to tell me about it.”
Fairfax turned slowly and put the letter back in his pocket. Then leaning across the table, in an undertone, he told Dearborn everything--everything. He spoke quietly and did not linger, sketching for him rapidly his life as far as it had gone. Twice Dearborn rose and fed the stove recklessly with fuel. Once he stood up, took a coverlet and wrapped it around him, and sat blinking like a resurrected mummy.
And Fairfax talked till Bella flashed like a red bird across the shadows, lifted her lips to his and was gone. Molly shone from the shadows and pa.s.sed like light through the open door. And, last of all, Mrs. Faversham came and brought a magic wand and she lingered, for Fairfax stopped here.
He had talked until morning. The dawn was grey across the frosty pane when he rose to throw himself down on his bed to sleep. The five-hundred-franc note lay where he had left it on the table between the empty plate and the empty cup. The fire was dead in the stove and the room was cold.
Dearborn, excited and interested, watched with the visions of Antony's past and the visions of his own creations for a long time. And Fairfax, exhausted by the eventful day, troubled by it, touched by it, watched the vision of a woman coming toward him, coming fatally toward him, wonderfully toward him--but he was tired, and, before she had reached him, he fell asleep.
CHAPTER VIII
Antony waited in the drawing-room of her hotel in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne some quarter of an hour before she came downstairs. He thought later that she had purposely given him this time to look about and grow accustomed to the atmosphere, to the room in which he afterward more or less lived for several months.
There was not a false note to disturb his beauty-loving sense. He stood waiting, on one side a long window giving on a rose garden, as he afterward discovered, on the other a group in marble by Cedersholm. He was studying this with interest when he heard Mrs. Faversham enter the room. She had foreseen that he would not be likely to wear an evening dress and she herself had put on the simplest of her frocks. But he thought her quite dazzling, and the grace of her hands, and her welcome as she greeted him, were divine to the young man.
”I'm so glad to see you, Mr. Rainsford.”
Instantly he bent and kissed her hand. She saw him flush to his fair hair. He felt a grat.i.tude to her, a thankfulness, which awakened in him immediately the strongest of emotions.
She seemed to consider him a distinguished guest. She told him that she was going to Rome when Mr. Cedersholm came over--there would be a little party going down to Italy.
Fairfax's eyes kindled, and in the few moments he stood with her there, in her fragrant drawing-room, where the fire in the logs sang and whispered and the lamp-light threw its long, fair shadows on the crimson floors and melted in the crimson hangings, he felt that he stood with an old friend, with some one he had known his life long and known well, even before he had known--and there was a poignancy in his treason--even before he had known his mother.
When the doors were thrown open and another visitor was announced, he was jealous and regretful and glanced at Mrs. Faversham as though he thought she had done him a wrong.
”My vife, oui,” said the gentleman who came in and who was of a nationality whose type was not yet familiar to Fairfax. ”My wife is horsed to-night, chere Madame; she cannot come to the dinner--a thousand pardons.”
”I am sorry the Countess is ill.”
Potowski, who had been told by his hostess not to dress, had made up for the sacrifice as brilliantly as he could. His waistcoat was of embroidered satin, his cravat a flaming scarlet, and in his b.u.t.ton-hole an exotic flower which went well with his dark, exotic face. He was a little ridiculous: short and fat, with a fas.h.i.+on of gesticulating with his hands as though he were swimming into society, but his expression was agreeable and candid. His near-sighted eyes were nave, his voice sweet and caressing. Rainsford saw that his hostess liked Potowski. She was too sweet a lady to be annoyed by peculiarities.
In a few moments, the lame sculptor on one side and the flashy Slav on the other, she led them to the little dining-room, to an exquisite table, served by two men in livery.
There was an intimacy in the apartment shut in by the panelling from floor to ceiling of the walls. The windows were covered with yellow damask curtains and the footfalls made no sound on the thick carpet.
”Mr. Rainsford is a sculptor,” his hostess told Potowski. ”He has studied with Cedersholm, but we shall soon forget whose pupil he is when he is a master himself.”
”Ah,” murmured the young man, who was nevertheless thrilled.
”He is going to do a bas-relief of me, Potowski--that is, I hope he will not refuse to make my portrait.”
”Ah, no,” exclaimed Potowski, clasping his soft hands, ”not a bas-relief, chere Madame, but a statuary, all of it. The figure, is not it, Mr. Rainsford? You hear people say of the face it is beautiful, or the hand, or the head of a woman. I think it is all of her. It should be the entirety always, I think. I think it is monstrous to dissect the parts of the human body even in art. When I go to the _Museo_ and see a hand here, a foot there, a torso somewhere else--you will laugh, I am ridiculous, but it makes me think I look at a _haccident_.
”_Therefore_,” exclaimed Potowski, gaily swimming toward the fruit and flowers with his soft hand, ”begin, cher Monsieur, by making a whole woman! I never, never sing part of a _hopera_. I sing a lyric, a little complete song, but in its entirety.”
”But, my dear Potowski,” Mrs. Faversham laughed, ”a bas-relief or a bust is complete.”