Marie Van Vorst - Fairfax and His Pride - A Novel

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 aprons. 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 apron, 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 séance 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."

"But any one can draw a straight line," said Bella, scornfully, "and I don't think they are very pretty."

"Don't you?" he answered; "the horizon is pretty, don't you think? And the horizon is a straight line."

"Yes, it is," said Gardiner, "the howizon is where the street cars fall over into the sunset."

"Gardiner's only six," said Bella, apologetically, "you mustn't expect much of him, Cousin Antony."

She curled over the table and bent her head and broke her pencils one by one, and Fairfax guided Gardiner's hand and watched the little girl. She was lightly and finely made. From under her short red skirt the pretty leg in its woollen stocking swung to and fro. There was a hole in the stocking heel, visible above the tiny, tiny slipper. Through the crude dark collar of the gingham apron came her dark head and its wild torrent of curling hair, wonderful hair, tangled and unkempt, curling roundly at the ends, and beneath the locks the curve of her cheek was like ivory. She was a Southern beauty – her little red mouth twisted awry over her drawing.

"I thought dwawing was making pictures, Cousin Antony; if I'd have known it was lines , I wouldn't have taken," said his youngest cousin.

"You have to begin with those things, old man. I'll wipe your hands off on my handkerchief."

"Please do," said the little boy; "my hands leak awful easy."

His sister laughed softly, and said to herself in an undertone —

"I've drawn my lines long – long – ago, and now I'm making…"

"Don't make anything, Bella, until I tell you to," commanded her teacher, and glanced over her page where she had covered the paper with her big formless handwriting, "Dramatiss personi, first act."

"Why, I had a lovely idea for a play, Cousin Antony, and I thought I'd just jot it down. We're the company, Gardiner and I, and we give plays here every now and then. You can play too, if you like, and say 'Spartacus.' Ah, say it now."

Trevelyan felt the appealing little hand of the boy stealing into his.

"Do, please," he urged; "I don't want ever to draw again, never, never."

"Hush," said his sister severely, "you mustn't say that, Gardiner; Cousin Antony is our drawing master."

Gardiner's sensitive face flushed. "I thought he was only my cousin," said the child, and continued timidly, "I'll dwaw a howizon now and then if you want me to, but I'd wather not."

They left their tables. Fairfax said, "I'm no good at teaching, Bella." He stretched his arms. "I reckon you're not much good at learning either. Gardiner's too young and you're not an artist."

"Say about the 'timid shepherd boy,' Cousin Antony."

He had taken his coat off in the furnace-heated room and stood in his snowy shirt sleeves, glad to be released from the unwelcome task of teaching restless children. He loved the ring and the thrill of the words and declaimed the lines enthusiastically.

"You look like a gladiator, Cousin Antony," Bella cried; "you must have a perfectly splendid muscle."

He bared his right arm, carried away by his recitation and the picture evoked. The children admired the sinews and the swelling biceps. Gardiner touched it with his little fingers; the muscular firm arm, ending in the vigorous wrist, held their fascinated gaze. The sculptor himself looked up it with pardonable approval.

"Feel mine," said Gardiner, crimson with the exertion of lifting his tiny arm to the position of his cousin's.

"Immense, Gardiner!" Fairfax complimented, "immense."

"Feel mine," cried Bella, and the sculptor touched between his fingers the fine little member.

"Great, little cousin!"

"I'll be the gladiator's wife and applaud him from the Coliseum and throw flowers on him."

Fairfax lingered with them another hour, laughing at his simplicity in finding them such companions. With compunction, he endeavoured to take up his lesson again with Bella, unwilling and recalcitrant. She drew a few half-hearted circles, a page of wobbly lines, and at the suspicion of tears Fairfax desisted, surprised to find how the idea of tears from her touched him. Then in the window between them, he watched as the children told him they always did, for "mother's car to come home."

"She is sharping," exclaimed Gardiner, slowly; "she has to sharp very hard, my mother does. She comes back in the cars, only she never comes," he finished with patient fatality.

"Silly," exclaimed his sister, "she always comes at dinner-time. And we bet on the cars, Cousin Antony. Now let's say it will be the seventy-first. We have to put it far away off," she explained, "'cause we're beginning early."

Fairfax left them, touched by their patience in watching for the mother bird. He promised to return soon, soon, to go on with his wonderful tales. As he went downstairs Bella called after him.

"But you didn't say which car you bet on, Cousin Antony."

And Fairfax called back in his Southern drawl: "I reckon she'll come in a pumpkin chariot." And he heard their delighted giggles as he limped downstairs.

He avoided his uncle, Mr. Carew, and made up his mind that if the master of the house were brusque to him, he would not return, were the threshold worn never so dear by little feet. Bella had the loveliest little feet a fellow connoisseur of plastic beauty could wish to see, could wish to watch twinkle in run-down slippers, in scuffled boots – in boots where a button or two was always lacking – and once when she kicked off her strap slipper at a lesson Fairfax saw, through a hole in the stocking, one small perfect toe – a toe of Greek marble perfection, a most charming, snowy, rosy bit of flesh, and he imagined how adorable the little foot must be.

To an audience, composed of a dreamy boy and an ardent, enthusiastic little girl, Fairfax confessed his talent, spoke of his hopes, of his art, even hinted at genius, and one day fetched his treasures, his bits of moistened clay, to show the children.

"Oh, they are perfectly beautiful , Cousin Antony. Wouldn't you do Gardiner's head for mother?"

On this day, with his overcoat and hat, Fairfax had laid by a paper parcel. It was stormy, and around the upper windows the snow blew and the winds cried. Propped up by pillows, Gardiner, in his red flannel dressing-gown, nestled in the corner of the sofa. Antony regarded Bella, red as a cardinal bird in her homely dress; he had seen her wear no other dress and would have regretted the change.