"Why, Bella, you are the most ridiculous little cousin in the world. You have read too much. Now, please don't cry, Bella."

He flung the door open and called: "Mrs. Kenny, Mrs. Kenny! Will you come up-stairs?"

CHAPTER XIX

Those five hours were short to him travelling back to New York. Bella talked to Fairfax until she was completely talked out. Leaning on him, pouring out her childish confidences, telling him things, asking him things, until his heart yearned over her, and he stored away the tones of her sweet gay voice, exquisite with pathos when she spoke of Gardiner, and navely tender when she said--

"Cousin Antony, I love you better than any one else. Why can't I stay with you and be happy? I want to work for my living too. I could be a factory girl."

_A factory girl!_

Then she fell asleep, her head on his shoulder, and was hardly awake when they reached Miss Mitty's house and the cab stopped.

He said, "Bella, we are home."

She did not answer, and, big girl as she was, he carried her in asleep.

"I wish you could make her believe it's all a dream," he said to the Whitcombs. "I don't want the Carews to know about it. It would be far better if she could be induced to keep the secret."

"I am afraid you can't make Bella believe anything unless she likes, Mr.

Antony."

No one had missed her. From the Long Branch boat she had gone directly to the Forty-second Street station, and started bravely away on her sentimental journey.

The little ladies induced him to eat what they could prepare for him, and he hurried away. He was obliged to take his train out at nine Monday morning.

He bade them look after bold Bella and teach her reason, and before he left he went in and looked at the little girl lying with her face on her hand, the stains of tears and travel on her face.

"I told her that I had come to marry you, Cousin Antony...."

"Little cousin! Honey child!"

His heart was tender to his discarded little love.

CHAPTER XX

Bella Carew's visit did disastrous work for Fairfax. The day following he was like a dead man at his engine, mechanically fulfilling his duties, his eyes blood-shot, his face worn and desperate. The fireman Falutini bore Fairfax's rudeness with astonishing patience. Their run was from nine until four, with a couple of hours lying off at Fonda, and back again to Albany along in the night.

The fatality of what he had been doing appeared to Antony Fairfax in its full magnitude. He had cut himself off from his cla.s.s, from his kind for ever. Bella Carew, baby though she was, exquisite, refined, brilliant, what a woman she would be! At sixteen she would be a woman, at eighteen any chap, who had the luck and the fortune, could marry her. She would be the kind of woman that a man would climb for, achieve for, go mad for. As far as he was concerned, he had made his choice. He was engaged to be married to an Irish factory girl, and her words came back to him--

"If I'm any good, take me as I am. You couldn't marry the likes o' me."

Why had he ever been such a short-sighted Puritan, so little of a worldling as to entangle himself in marriage? More terribly the sense of his lost art had come in with the little figure he had admitted.

When he flung himself into his room Monday morning his brain was beyond his usual control, it worked like magic, and one by one they pa.s.sed before him, the tauntingly beautiful aerial figures of his visions, the angelic forms of his ideals, and if under his hands there had been any tools he would have fallen upon them and upon the clay like a famished man on bread. He threw himself down on his lonely bed in his room through which magic had pa.s.sed, and slept heavily until Mrs. Kenny pounded on the door and roused him an hour before his train.

At Fonda, in the shed, he climbed stiffly from his cab, his head aching, his eyes drunk with sleep. All there was of brute in him was rampant, and anything that came in his way would have to bear the brunt of his unbalanced spleen.

Falutini, a great bunch of rags in his hand, was at the side of the engine, wiping the bra.s.s and softly humming. Fairfax heard it--

"Azuro puro, Cielo azuro, Mia Maddalena..."

"Stop that infernal bellow," he said, "will you?"

The Italian lifted himself upright and responded in his own tongue--

"I work, I slave, I endure. Now I may not sing? Macche," he cried defiantly, "I will sing, I will."

He threw his chest out, his black eyes on Tony's cross blue ones. He burst out carolling--

"Ah Mia Maddalena."

Fairfax struck his face; the Italian sprang at him like a cat. Falutini was as tall as Fairfax, more agile and with a hard head. However, with one big blow, Fairfax sent him whirling, and as he struck and felt the flesh and blood he discovered how glorious a thing a fight is, how nerve relaxing, and he received the other's a.s.sault with a kind of ecstasy.

They were not unequally matched. Falutini's skin and muscles were like toughened velvet; he was the c.o.c.k of his village, a first-rate boxer; and Tony's muscles were of iron, but Fairfax was mad and gloomy, and the Italian was desperate and disgusted, and he made the better show.

A few men lounged in and one called out: "You darned cusses are due to start in ten minutes."

Fairfax just then had his arm round the Italian's neck, the close cropped head came under his chin, and as Fairfax panted and as he smelt the garlic that at first had nauseated him in his companion, he was about to lay his man when the same voice that called before, yelled in horror--

"Look out, for G.o.d's sake, Fairfax, he's got a knife."

At the word, Fairfax gave a wrench, caught his companion's right hand with his left and twisted the wrist, and before he knew how he had accomplished it, he had flung the man and knife from him. The knife hit Number Twenty-four and rattled and the fireman fell in a lump on the ground. Fairfax stood over him.

"What a mean lout you are," he said in the jargon he had learned to speak, "what a mean pup. Now you get up, t.i.to, and clear out."

The fellow rose with difficulty, white, trembling, punched a little about the face, and breathing like a saw-mill. Some one handed the knife to Fairfax.

"It never was made in America. It's a deadly weapon. Ugh, you onion!"

The Italian wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirt sleeve and spat out on the floor.

Fairfax felt better than he had felt for years. He went back to his engine.

"Get up, t.i.to," he commanded his fireman; "you get in quickly or I'll help you up. Give me the oil can, will you?" he said. And t.i.to, trembling, his teeth dry between his lips, obeyed.

Fairfax extended his hand, meeting his companion's eyes for the first time, and said frankly--

"My fault. No hard feeling, t.i.to. Bene benissimo."