Not that Fairfax had any plans.
From the first opening of his eyes on West Albany, when he had crawled out of the baggage car in the dawn, he shut out his past from himself. He crushed back
even his own identity. He earned his bread by the sweat of his brow in the real sense of the word, and for what reason he saved his money he could not have told. He had become a day labourer, a fireman on the New York Central road, and he was a first-rate hand. His figure in the rude, dirty clothes, his bowler always worn on the back of his blonde head, his limp (that big boot had gone hard with him on the day that he applied for a job at the boss's office), all were familiar in Nut Street by this. His voice, his smile, his rare good heart, made him a popular companion, and he was, too, popular with the women.
His miserable reception in New York, the bruises inflicted upon him by Cedersholm and his uncle, had embittered Tony Fairfax to an extent of which his humble Nut Street friends were ignorant. He didn't do them any harm, however. If any harm were done at all—and there is a question even regarding that—it was done to himself, for he crushed down his ambitions, he thrust them out of his heart, and he bit the dust with a feeling of vengeance. He had been a gentleman with talent, and his own world had not wanted him; so he went down to the people. All that his mother knew was that he had gone on to the north of the State, to perfect certain branches of his art, and that it was better for him to be in Albany. Reclining under the vines, she read his letters, smiling, fanning herself with a languid hand.
"Emmy, Master Tony's getting on, getting on."
"Yas'm, Mis' Bella, I do speck he is."
"Listen, Emmy." And Mrs. Fairfax would read aloud to the devoted negro the letters planned, concocted, by her son in his miserable lodgings, letters which cost him the keenest pangs of his life, kind and tender lines; things he would have done if he could; things he had hoped for and knew would never come true; joys he meant to bring her and that he knew she would grow old and never see; success and fame, whose very sound to him now was like the knell of fate. At the end of the letter he said—
"I am studying mechanics. I reckon you'll laugh at me, mother, but they are useful to a sculptor."
And she had not laughed in the way he meant as she kissed his letter and wet it with her tears.