Fairford

“ She thought Mrs. Fairford "bright," and wanted to be liked by her; and she was in the state of dizzy self-assurance when it seemed easy to win any sympathy she chose to seek.
For the only other guests—Mrs. Fairford's husband, and the elderly Charles Bowen who seemed to be her special friend—Undine had no attention to spare: they remained on a plane with the dim pictures hanging at her back. She had expected a larger party; but she was relieved, on the whole, that it was small enough to permit of her dominating it. Not that she wished to do so by any loudness of assertion. ”

“ Miss Jones replied by putting on her bonnet and going with her—leaving Maria, as she sadly remarked, to spoil a nice dinner in the cooking.
"But you see, Ruth, the best wine in Fairford is to be had at Hawes's, of the Blue Bear; and that is no place for a girl like you to go to alone." ”

“ Fairford wrote on the old-fashioned white sheet, without even a monogram--simply her address and telephone number. It gave Undine rather a poor opinion of Mrs. Fairford's social standing, and for a moment she thought with considerable satisfaction of answering the note on her pigeon-blood paper. Then she remembered Mrs. Heeny's emphatic commendation of Mrs. Fairford, and her pen wavered. What if white paper were really newer than pigeon blood? It might be more stylish, anyhow. Well, she didn't care if Mrs. Fairford didn't like red paper--SHE did! ”

“ The real Alan Fairford and Darsie Latimer 'put on the gown' the same day, a solemn ceremony followed by a jolly dinner to their companions.
Scott was now a fine, handsome young fellow with a host of friends. The sickliness of childhood had given way to a robust and vigorous manhood. His lameness still remained, but in spite of this he had acquired the frame of a young athlete. He was tall, well formed, big-chested, and powerful. ”

“ Our parochial churches are yet rich in screens; of wooden rood-lofts we may particularize Sleaford, Newark, Bury St. Edmunds, Fairford, Tong, Lanryst, Sefton, Ranworth, and Southwold as some amongst the most remarkable. The countries most abounding in screens, are Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and Devonshire, but each county presents many interesting examples, and it must be distinctly understood that every church, small or great, was originally provided with a screen. ”

“ Garland,' then, 'whom they expected to find in Fairford. Apply to Mr. Ralph Trulock, Lady Mabel's Rest, Fairford.' There, I'll pay for this, Ruth, so you need not think about it."
"Pay for it! Do you pay for things being put in the paper? I never knew that. Thank you, sir. And will you write for me to Monsieur Mordan?" ”

“ Fairford's wake. Their stalls were near the stage, and progress thither was slow enough to permit of prolonged enjoyment of this sensation. Before passing to her place she paused for Ralph to remove her cloak, and as he lifted it from her shoulders she heard a lady say behind her: "There she is--the one in white, with the lovely back--" and a man answer: "Gad! ”

“ Saunders Fairford, as he was usually called, was a man of business of the old school, moderate in his charges, economical and even niggardly in his expenditure, strictly honest in conducting his own affairs and those of his clients, but taught by long experience to be wary and suspicious in observing the motions of others. ”

“ She turned and lifted a smile of possessorship to Ralph. Mrs. Fairford seemed also struck by the presence Of the two ladies, and Undine heard her whisper to Mr. Bowen: "Do you see Clare over there—and Harriet with her? Harriet WOULD COME—I call it Spartan! And so like Clare to ask her!"
Her companion laughed. "It's one of the deepest instincts in human nature. The murdered are as much given as the murderer to haunting the scene of the crime." ”

“ He never comes near me, Laura: I have to hunt him down to get a glimpse of him!"
Slender and shadowy in her long furs, she bent to kiss Mrs. Fairford and then turned back to Ralph. "Yes, I knew I'd catch you here. I knew it was the boy's birthday, and I've brought him a present: a vulgar expensive Van Degen offering. I've not enough imagination left to find the right thing, the thing it takes feeling and not money to buy. ”

“ Undine heard Mrs. Fairford breathe to Mr. Bowen; who replied, at the same pitch: "It's a Van Degen reason, isn't it?"--to which Mrs. Fairford shrugged assentingly.
"That delightful Popple--he paints so exactly as he talks!" the white-haired lady took it up. "All his portraits seem to proclaim what a gentleman he is, and how he fascinates women! They're not pictures of Mrs. or Miss So-and-so, but simply of the impression Popple thinks he's made on them."
Mrs. Fairford smiled. "I've sometimes thought," she mused, "that Mr. Popple must be the only gentleman I know ”

“ He kept his secret with the beginner's deadly fear of losing his hold on his half-real creations if he let in any outer light on them; but he went about with a more assured step, shrank less from meeting his friends, and even began to dine out again, and to laugh at some of the jokes he heard.
Laura Fairford, to get Paul away from town, had gone early to the country; and Ralph, who went down to her every Saturday, usually found Clare Van Degen there. Since his divorce he had never entered his cousin's pinnacled palace; and Clare had never asked him why he stayed away. ”

“ Thompson, nevertheless, was not to be deterred from his enterprise. He proceeded at once to Fairford House, the trading post kept by Malcolm Ross on the Churchill near the mouth of the Reindeer river, where he hoped to get some assistance. To his great disappointment, he found that not a man could be spared from the trade in furs. There were, however, a few Chepawyan Indians lingering about the fort and from among these he managed to engage two young men. ”

“ He had a rare power of attracting to himself the finest spirits, a power which lay not so much in his ability or his genius as in his character, so simple, so humble, so pure, so unworldly, yet wanting not that severity which can stand by principle and maintain what he holds to be the truth. In 1823 he returned to Fairford, there to assist his father, and with his brother to serve one or two small and poorly endowed curacies in the neighbourhood of Coln. ”

“ One of the other ladies, having white hair, did not long arrest Undine's attention; and the fourth, a girl like herself, who was introduced as Miss Harriet Ray, she dismissed at a glance as plain and wearing a last year's "model."
The men, too, were less striking than she had hoped. She had not expected much of Mr. Fairford, since married men were intrinsically uninteresting, and his baldness and grey moustache seemed naturally to relegate him to the background; but she had looked for some brilliant youths of her own age—in her inmost heart she had looked for Mr. Popple. ”

“ So wisely and so well had Lady Mabel done her work, that the machinery she set going is going on well to this day. The rector of the parish for the time being manages the affairs of the charity, and is well paid for so doing. The only conditions for election are, respectability, poverty, and being a native of Fairford; the most deserving person of those whose names are sent in is to have the preference. As a general rule the selection is wisely made, but an occasional mistake occurs once in a way, of course. ”

“ Fairford Church is much larger than Hursley, so that the plan could not be exactly followed, but it was always in Mr. Keble’s mind. It was proposed that the glass should be given by the contribution of friends and lovers of the Christian Year. Two of the windows came from the Offertory on the Consecration day, one three-light was given by Mrs. Heathcote (mother of Sir William) , another by Sir William and Lady Heathcote, one by the Marchioness of Bath, and one by the Marchioness of Lothian. ”

“ It ruffles the moss on the slopes of the hills, scatters the scarlet leaves of the raspberry-trees, and sends the waters of the large blue lakes leaping in frolicsome waves up the beach to the feet of the rocking pines. Behind the hills to the west the clouds are tinged with amber, silver, and gold, and the clang of the woodman’s axe is caught in the clutches of the wind, to be carried o’er chasm and crag far out to sea. Yes, half the joy of life in Newfoundland is to be found in its soul-haunting wind. ”

“ The boss was a Massachusetts man and new to Nut Street, and Fairfax, when he took the paper with his orders from Rainsford's hand, saw for the first time in months a man of his own class, sitting in the revolving chair before the desk where his papers and schedules and ledgers were filed. The man's clothes were too thin for the season, his linen was old and his appearance meagre, and in his face with its sunken cheeks, the drooping of the eyes and the thinness of the brow, were the marks of the sea of life and its waste, and the scars of the storm. ”

“ On the way out to Versailles from the top of the tram, lifted high above Paris and the river, alongside of the vulgar head, alongside of the strange little English girl, Fairfax listened to the outpouring of her heart. She took his interest for granted. With an appreciative understanding of human nature, and as though she had been bearing a burden for years which she had never let slip, she rested it now, and her blue eyes on his, her hands in the old woollen gloves, which she had slipped on before they started, clasped in her lap, she talked to Fairfax. ”

“ It is rather ironic that neither Lord Culpeper nor Lord Fairfax, who inherited his estate and for whom the County and Town were named, cared particularly for Virginia. Lord Culpeper came under duress and returned as soon as possible to England. Lord Fairfax came, according to tradition, only after he had been disappointed in love in England and because his holdings demanded his attention. The people struggled on, however, and gradually the wealthy land owners began to move northward to occupy the tracts of land upon which their grandfathers had speculated. ”

“ Lord Fairfax was a man of cultivated mind, educated at Oxford, the associate of the wits of London, the author of one or two papers in the Spectator, and an habitué of the polite circles of the metropolis. A disappointment in love is said to have cast a shadow over his after life, and to have led him to pass his time in voluntary exile on his Virginia estates, watching and promoting the rapid development of the resources of the country, following the hounds through the primeval forests, and cheering his solitary hours by reading and a limited society of chosen friends. ”

“ The boss, his thin hand opening and shutting over a small book which looked like a daily ledger, regarded the engineer in his red shirt as Fairfax paused.
"Irish, I expect? Your name, Fairfax, is Irish. I understand you've had a hard blow this year, been sick and lost your mother."
At the quiet statement of this sacred fact Fairfax started painfully, his face flushed.
"He would not have spoken to me like that," he thought, "if he had not imagined me a working man."
"Work is the best friend a young man can have," Rainsford went on; "it is a great safeguard. I take it that you are about thirty?" ”

“ Fairfax laughed harshly. "Poor Tito. He's a judge, I daresay." His face clouded, grew quite stern before Rainsford's intent eyes. "Yes," he said slowly, "I think I have talent; I think I must have a lot somewhere, but I have got a mighty dangerous Pride and it has driven me to a sort of revenge on Fate, an arrogant showing of my disdain—God knows of what and of whom!" More quietly he said: "Whilst my mother lived I could not beg, Rainsford, I couldn't starve, I couldn't scratch and crawl and live as a starving artist must when he is making his way. ”

“ To Fairfax's senses it brought no consolation but the sharp suffering that any beauty brings to the poet and the seer. It was a new day—he was too young to be crushed out of life because he had an empty pocket, and faint as he was, hungry as he was, the visions began to rise again in his brain. The crimson glory, as it swam over the railroad yards, over the bridge, over the unsightly buildings, was peopled by his ideals—his breath came fast and his heart beat. ”

“ The Earl by this time had put on his clothes and had joined Lance and George.
"I think the door is giving way, sir," said George, quietly, to Lord Fairfax, as the sound of breaking timbers mingled with the screech of the savages.
"I know it, sir," added Lance, grimly. "We can keep the scoundrels out of the front door by stationing men in the half-story above, but there is no way of defending the kitchen door from the inside."
"How many Indians do you think you saw, George?" asked Lord Fairfax, as coolly as if he were asking the number of cabbages in a garden. ”

“ Fairfax looked at me searchingly, “Where’ll I get my supper?”
“Why, they usually have the church suppers out on the church green unless it rains, and then they go down to the basement rooms.”
Fairfax said apathetically, “No’m, they don’t want me.”
I saw now what was in his mind, and said, to set him right, “Oh, yes, they do. You know the people around here haven’t any of those notions. Come on.” ”

“ The mysterious lodger enclosed, moreover, a week's board in advance, but no address; nor had the coloured man any information for Nut Street, and a decided antipathy existed between George Washington and Mary Kenny. She was pale when she packed up Fairfax's belongings and cried into his trunk, as she laid the drawing of Bella Carew next to the unopened packet of his mother's treasures. She was unconscious of what sacred thing she touched, but she was cut to the heart, as was poor Falutini. Peter Rainsford, who had not gone far in his friendship with the elusive Fairfax, was only disappointed. ”