A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Nest Builder

B >> Beatrice Forbes Robertson Hale >> The Nest Builder




"That's the first objection I've found to your country, Stefan," she
said.

He was scowling moodily out of the window. "The first? I see nothing but
objections."

"Oh, come!" she smiled at him; "it hasn't been so bad, has it?"

"Better than I had expected," he conceded. "But it will soon be April,
and I remember the leaves in the Luxembourg for so many Aprils back."

She came and put her arm through his. "Do you want to go, dear?"

"Oh, hang it all, Mary, you don't suppose I want to leave you?" he
answered brusquely, releasing his arm. "I want my own place, that's all."

She had, in her quieter way, become just as homesick for England, though
sharing none of his dislike of her adopted land.

"Well, shall we both go?" she suggested.

He laughed shortly. "Don't be absurd, dearest--what would your doctor say
to such a notion? No, we've got to stick it out," and he ruffled his hair
impatiently.

With a suppressed sigh Mary changed the subject. "By the by, I want you
to meet Dr. Hillyard; I have asked her to tea this afternoon."

"Do you honestly mean it when you say she is not an elderly ironsides
with spectacles?"

"I honestly assure you she is young and pretty. Moreover, I forbid you to
talk like an anti-suffragist," she laughed.

"Very well, then, I will be at home," with an answering grin.

And so he was, and on his best behavior, when the little doctor arrived
an hour later. She had been found by the omniscient Miss Mason, and after
several visits Mary had more than endorsed the Sparrow's enthusiastic
praise.

When the slight, well-tailored little figure entered the room Stefan
found it hard to believe that this fresh-faced girl was the physician,
already a specialist in her line, to whom Mary's fate had been entrusted.
For the first time he wondered if he should not have shared with Mary
some responsibility for her arrangements. But as, with an unwonted sense
of duty, he questioned the little doctor, his doubts vanished. Without a
trace of the much hated professional manner she gave him glimpses of wide
experience, and at one point mentioned an operation she had just
performed--which he knew by hearsay as one of grave difficulty--with the
same enthusiastic pleasure another young woman might have shown in the
description of a successful bargain-hunt. She was to Stefan a new type,
and he was delighted with her. Mary, watching him, thought with
affectionate irony that had the little surgeon been reported plain of
face he would have denied himself in advance both the duty and the
pleasure of meeting her.

Over their tea, Dr. Hillyard made a suggestion.

"Where are you planning to spend the summer?" she asked.

Stefan looked surprised. "We thought we ought to be here, near you," he
answered.

"Oh, no," the doctor shook her head; "young couples are always
martyrizing themselves for these events. By May it will be warm, and Mrs.
Byrd isn't acclimatized to our American summers. Find a nice place not
too far from the city--say on Long Island--and I can run out whenever
necessary. You both like the country, I imagine?"

Stefan was overjoyed. He jumped up.

"Dr. Hillyard, you've saved us. We thought we had to be prisoners, and
I've been eating my heart out for France. The country will be a
compromise."

"Yes," said the doctor, smiling a little, "Mrs. Byrd has been longing for
England for a month or more."

"I never said so!" and "She never told me!" exclaimed Mary and Stefan
simultaneously.

"No, you didn't," the little doctor nodded wisely at her patient, "but I
know."

Stefan immediately began to plan an expedition in search of the ideal
spot, as unspoiled if possible as Shadeham, but much nearer town. All
through dinner he discussed it, his spirits hugely improved, and
immediately after rang up Constance Elliot for advice.

"Hold the line," the lady's voice replied, "while I consult." In a minute
or two she returned.

"Mr. Farraday is dining with us, and I've asked him. He lives at Crab's
Bay, you know."

"No, I don't," objected Stefan.

"Well, he does," her voice laughed back. "He was born there. He says if
you like he will come over and talk to you about it, and I, like a self-
sacrificing hostess, am willing to let him."

"Splendid idea," said Stefan, "ask him to come right over. Mary," he
called, hanging up the receiver, "Constance is sending Farraday across to
advise us."

"Oh, dear," said she; "sometimes I feel almost overwhelmed by all the
favors we receive from our friends."

"Fiddlesticks! They are paid by the pleasure of our society. You don't
seem to realize that we are unusually interesting and attractive people,"
laughed he with a flourish.

"Vain boy!"

"So I am, and vain of being vain. I believe in being as conceited as
possible, conceited enough to make one's conceit good."

She smiled indulgently, knowing that, as he was talking nonsense, he felt
happy.

Farraday appeared in a few minutes, and they settled in a group round the
fire with coffee and cigarettes. Stefan offered Mary one. She shook her
head.

"I'm not smoking now, you know."

"Did Dr. Hillyard say so?" he asked quickly.

"No, but--"

"Then don't be poky, dearest." He lit the cigarette and held it out to
her, but she waved it back.

"Don't tease, dear," she murmured, noticing that Farraday was watching
them. Stefan with a shrug retained the cigarette in his left hand, and
smoked it ostentatiously for some minutes, alternately with his own.
Mary, hoping he was not going to be naughty, embarked on the Long Island
topic.

"We want to be within an hour of the city," she explained, "but in pretty
country. We want to keep house, but not to pay too much. We should like
to be near the sea. Does that sound wildly impossible?"

Farraday fingered his cigarette reflectively.

"I rather think," he said at last, "that my neighborhood most nearly
meets the requirements. I have several hundred acres at Crab's Bay, which
belonged to my father, running from the shore halfway to the railroad
station. The village itself is growing suburban, but the properties
beyond mine are all large, and keep the country open. We are only an hour
from the city--hardly more, by automobile."

"Are there many tin cans?" enquired Stefan, flippantly. "In Michigan I
remember them as the chief suburban decoration."

"Yes?" said Farraday, in his invariably courteous tone, "I've never been
there. It is a long way from New York."

"Touché," cried Stefan, grinning. "But you would think pessimism
justified if you'd ever had my experience of rural life."

"Was your father really American?" enquired his guest with apparent
irrelevance.

"Yes, and a minister."

"Oh, a minister. I see," the other replied, quietly.

"Explains it, does it?" beamed Stefan, who was nothing if not quick. They
all laughed, and the little duel was ended. Mary took up the broken
discussion.

"Is there the slightest chance of our finding anything reasonably cheap
in such a neighborhood?" she asked.

"I was just coming to that," said Farraday. "You would not care to be in
the village, and any houses that might be for rent there would be
expensive, I'm afraid. But it so happens there is a cottage on the edge
of my property where my father's old farmer used to live. After his death
I put a little furniture in the place, and have occasionally used it. But
it is entirely unnecessary to me, and you are welcome to it for the
summer if it would suit you. The rent would be nominal. I don't regard it
commercially, it's too near my own place."

Mary flushed. "It's most awfully good of you," she said, "but I don't
know if we ought to accept. I'm afraid you may be making it convenient
out of kindness."

"Mary, how British!" Stefan interrupted. He had taken lately so to
labeling her small conventionalities. "Why accuse Mr. Farraday of
altruistic insincerity? I think his description sounds delightful. Let's
go tomorrow and see the cottage."

"If you will wait till Sunday," Farraday smiled, "I shall be delighted to
drive you out. It might be easier for Mrs. Byrd."

Mary again demurred on the score of giving unnecessary trouble, but
Stefan overrode her, and Farraday was obviously pleased with the plan. It
was arranged that he should call for them in his car the following
Sunday, and that they should lunch with him and his mother. When he had
left Stefan performed a little pas seul around the room.

"Tra-la-la!" he sang; "birds, Mary, trees, water. No more chimney pots,
no more walking up and down that tunnel of an avenue. See what it is to
have admiring friends."

Mary flushed again. "Why will you spoil everything by putting it like
that?"

He stopped and patted her cheek teasingly.

"It's me they admire, Mary, the great artist, creator of the famous
Danaë," and he skipped again, impishly.

Mary was obliged to laugh. "You exasperating creature!" she said, and
went to bed, while he ran up to the studio to pull out the folding easel
and sketching-box of his old Brittany days.




III


When on the following Sunday morning Farraday drove up to the house, Mary
was delighted to find Constance Elliot in the tonneau.

"Theodore has begun golfing again, now that the snow has gone," she
greeted her, "so that I am a grass widow on holidays as well as all the
week."

"Why don't you learn to play, too?" Mary asked, as they settled
themselves, Stefan sitting in front with Farraday, who was driving.

"Oh, for your English feet, my dear!" sighed Constance. "They are bigger
than mine--I dare say so, as I wear fours--but you can walk on them. I
was brought up to be vain of my extremities, and have worn two-inch heels
too long to be good for more than a mile. The links would kill me.
Besides," she sighed again prettily, "dear Theodore is so much happier
without me."

"How can you, Constance!" objected Mary.

"Yes, my dear," went on the other, her beautiful little hands, which she
seldom gloved, playing with the inevitable string of jade, "the result of
modern specialization. Theodore is a darling, and in theory a Suffragist,
but he has practised the matrimonial division of labor so long that he
does not know what to do with the woman out of the home."

"This is Queensborough Bridge," she pointed out in a few minutes, as they
sped up a huge iron-braced incline. "It looks like eight pepper-castors
on a grid, surmounted by bayonets, but it is very convenient."

Mary laughed. Constance's flow of small talk always put her in good
spirits. She looked about her with interest as the car emerged from the
bridge into a strange waste land of automobile factories, new stone-faced
business buildings, and tumbledown wooden cottages. The houses, in their
disarray, lay as if cast like seeds from some titanic hand, to fall,
wither or sprout as they listed, regardless of plan. The bridge seemed to
divide a settled civilization from pioneer country, and as they left the
factories behind and emerged into fields dotted with advertisements and
wooden shacks Mary was reminded of stories she had read of the far West,
or of Australia. Stefan leant back from the front seat, and waved at the
view.

"Behold the tin can," he cried, "emblem of American civilization!" She
saw that he was right; the fields on either side were dotted with tins,
bottles, and other husks of dinners past and gone. Gradually, however,
this stage was left behind: they began to pass through villages of
pleasant wooden houses painted white or cream, with green shutters, or
groups of red-tiled stucco dwellings surrounded by gardens in the English
manner. Soon these, too, were left, and real country appeared, prettily
wooded, in which low-roofed homesteads clung timidly to the roadside as
if in search of company.

"What dear little houses!" Mary exclaimed.

"Yes," said Constance, "that is the Long Island farmhouse type, as good
architecturally as anything America has produced, but abandoned in favor
of Oriental bungalows, Italian palaces and French châteaux."

"I should adore a little house like one of those."

"Wait till you see Mr. Farraday's cottage; it's a lamb, and his home like
it, only bigger. What can one call an augmented lamb? I can only think of
sheep, which doesn't sound well."

"I'm afraid we should say it was 'twee' in England," Mary smiled, "which
sounds worse."

"Yes, I'd rather my house were a sheep than a 'twee,' because I do at
least know that a sheep is useful, and I'm sure a 'twee' can't be."

"It's not a noun, Constance, but an adjective, meaning sweet," translated
Mary, laughing. She loved Constance's nonsense because it was never more
than that. Stefan's absurdities were always personal and, often, not
without a hidden sting.

"Well," Constance went on, "you must be particularly 'twee' then, to
James' mother, who is a Quaker from Philadelphia, and an American
gentlewoman of the old school. His father was a New Englander, and took
his pleasures sadly, as I tell James he does; but his mother is as warm
as a dear little toast, and as pleasant--well--as the dinner bell."

"What culinary similes, Constance!"

"My dear, from sheep to mutton is only a step, and I'm so hungry I can
think only in terms of a menu. And that," she prattled on, "reminds me of
Mr. McEwan, whose face is the shape of a mutton chop. He is sure to be
there, for he spends half his time with James. Do you like him?"

"Yes, I do," said Mary; "increasingly."

"He's one of the best of souls. Have you heard his story?"

"No, has he one?"

"Indeed, yes," replied Constance. "The poor creature, who, by the way,
adores you, is a victim of Quixotism. When he first came to New York he
married a young girl who lived in his boarding-house and was in trouble
by another man. Mac found her trying to commit suicide, and, as the other
man had disappeared, married her to keep her from it. She was pretty, I
believe, and I think he was fond of her because of her terrible
helplessness. The first baby died, luckily, but when his own was born a
year or two later the poor girl was desperately ill, and lost most of
what little mind she possessed. She developed two manias--the common
spendthrift one, and the conviction that he was trying to divorce her.
That was ten years ago. He has to keep her at sanitariums with a
companion to check her extravagance, and he pays her weekly visits to
reassure her as to the divorce. She costs him nearly all he makes, in
doctors' bills and so forth--he never spends a penny on himself, except
for a cheap trip to Scotland once a year. Yet, with it all, he is one of
the most cheerful souls alive."

"Poor fellow!" said Mary. "What about the child?"

"He's alive, but she takes very little notice of him. He spends most of
his time with Mrs. Farraday, who is a saint. James, poor man, adores
children, and is glad to have him."

"Why hasn't Mr. Farraday married, I wonder?" Mary murmured under the
covering purr of the car.

"Oh, what a waste," groaned Constance. "An ideal husband thrown away!
Nobody knows, my dear. I think he was hit very hard years ago, and never
got over it. He won't say, but I tell him if I weren't ten years older,
and Theodore in evidence, I should marry him myself out of hand."

"I like him tremendously, but I don't think I should ever have felt
attracted in that way," said Mary, who was much too natural a woman not
to be interested in matrimonial speculations.

"That's because you are two of a kind, simple and serious," nodded
Constance. "I could have adored him."

They had been speeding along a country lane between tall oaks, and,
breasting a hill, suddenly came upon the sea, half landlocked by curving
bays and little promontories. Beyond these, on the horizon, the coast of
Connecticut was softly visible. Mary breathed in great draughts of salt-
tanged air.

"Oh, how good!" she exclaimed.

"Here we are," cried Constance, as the machine swung past white posts
into a wooded drive, which curved and curved again, losing and finding
glimpses of the sea. No buds were out, but each twig bulged with nobbins
of new life; and the ground, brown still, had the swept and garnished
look which the March winds leave behind for the tempting of Spring.
Persephone had not risen, but the earth listened for her step, and the
air held the high purified quality that presages her coming.

"Lovely, lovely," breathed Mary, her eyes and cheeks glowing.

The car stopped under a porte cochère, before a long brown house of heavy
clapboards, with shingled roof and green blinds. Farraday jumped down and
helped Mary out, and the front door opened to reveal the shining grin of
McEwan, poised above the gray head of a little lady who advanced with
outstretched hand to greet them.

"My mother--Mrs. Byrd," Farraday introduced.

"I am very pleased to meet thee. My son has told me so much about thee
and thy husband. Thee must make thyself at home here," beamed the little
lady, with one of the most engaging smiles Mary had ever beheld.

Stefan was introduced in his turn, and made his best continental bow. He
liked old ladies, who almost invariably adored him. McEwan greeted him
with a "Hello," and shook hands warmly with the two women. They all moved
into the hall, Mary under the wing of Mrs. Farraday, who presently took
her upstairs to a bedroom.

"Thee must rest here before dinner," said she, smoothing with a tiny hand
the crocheted bedspread. "Ring this bell if there is anything thee wants.
Shall I send Mr. Byrd up to thee?"

"Indeed, I'm not a bit tired," said Mary, who had never felt better.

"All the same I would rest a little if I were thee," Mrs. Farraday nodded
wisely. Mary was fascinated by her grammar, never having met a Quaker
before. The little lady, who barely reached her guest's shoulder, had
such an air of mingled sweetness and dignity as to make Mary feel she
must instinctively yield to her slightest wish. Obediently she lay down,
and Mrs. Farraday covered her feet.

Mary noticed her fine white skin, soft as a baby's, the thousand tiny
lines round her gentle eyes, her simple dress of brown silk with a cameo
at the neck, her little, blue-veined hands. No wonder the son of such a
woman impressed one with his extraordinary kindliness.

The little lady slipped away, and Mary, feeling unexpected pleasure in
the quiet room and the soft bed, closed her eyes gratefully.

At luncheon, or rather dinner, for it was obvious that Mrs. Farraday kept
to the old custom of Sunday meals, a silent, shock-headed boy of about
ten appeared, whom McEwan with touching pride introduced as his son. He
was dressed in a kilt and small deerskin sporran, with the regulation
heavy stockings, tweed jacket and Eton collar.

"For Sundays only--we have to be Yankees on school days, eh, Jamie?"
explained his father. The boy grinned in speechless assent, instantly
looking a duplicate of McEwan.

Mary's heart warmed to him at once, he was so shy and clumsy; but Stefan,
who detested the mere suspicion of loutishness, favored him with an
absent-minded stare. Mary, who sat on Farraday's right, had the boy next
her, with his father beyond, Stefan being between Mrs. Farraday and
Constance. The meal was served by a gray-haired negro, of manners so
perfect as to suggest the ideal southern servant, already familiar to
Mary in American fiction. As if in answer to a cue, Mrs. Farraday
explained across the table that Moses and his wife had come from
Philadelphia with her on her marriage, and had been born in the South
before the war. Mary's literary sense of fitness was completely satisfied
by this remark, which was received by Moses with a smile of gentle pride.

"James," said Constance, "I never get tired of your mother's house; it is
so wonderful to have not one thing out of key."

Farraday smiled. "Bless you, she wouldn't change a footstool. It is all
just as when she married, and much of it, at that, belonged to her
mother."

This explained what, with Mary's keen eye for interiors, had puzzled her
when they first arrived. She had expected to see more of the perfect
taste and knowledge displayed in Farraday's office, instead of which the
house, though dignified and hospitable, lacked all traces of the
connoisseur. She noticed in particular the complete absence of any color
sense. All the woodwork was varnished brown, the hangings were of dull
brown velvet or dark tapestry, the carpets toneless. Her bedroom had been
hung with white dimity, edged with crochet-work, but the furniture was of
somber cherry, and the chintz of the couch-cover brown with yellow
flowers. The library, into which she looked from where she sat, was
furnished with high glass-doored bookcases, turned walnut tables, and
stuffed chairs and couches with carved walnut rims. Down each window the
shade was lowered half way, and the light was further obscured by lace
curtains and heavy draperies of plain velvet. The pictures were mostly
family portraits, with a few landscapes of doubtful merit. There were no
flowers anywhere, except one small vase of daffodils upon the dinner
table. According to all modern canons the house should have been hideous;
but it was not. It held garnered with loving faith the memories of
another day, as a bowl of potpourri still holds the sun of long dead
summers. It fitted absolutely the quiet kindliness, the faded face and
soft brown dress of its mistress. It was keyed to her, as Constance had
understood, to the last detail.

"Yes," said Farraday, smiling down the table at his mother, "she could
hardly bring herself to let me build my picture gallery on the end of the
house--nothing but Christian charity enabled her to yield."

The old lady smiled back at her tall son almost like a sweetheart. "He
humors me," she said; "he knows I'm a foolish old woman who love, my nest
as it was first prepared for me."

"Oh, I can so well understand that," said Mary.

"Do you mean to say, Mrs. Farraday," interposed Stefan, "that you have
lived in this one house, without changing it, all your married life?"

She turned to him in simple surprise. "Why, of course; my husband chose
it for me."

"Marvelous!" said Stefan, who felt that one week of those brown hangings
would drive him to suicide.

"Nix on the home-sweet-home business for yours, eh, Byrd?" threw in
McEwan with his glint of a twinkle.

"Boy," interposed their little hostess, "why will thee always use such
shocking slang? How can I teach Jamie English with his father's example
before him?" She shook a tiny finger at the offender.

"Ma'am, if I didn't sling the lingo, begging your pardon, in my office,
they would think I was a highbrow, and then--good night Mac!"

"Don't believe him, Mother," said Farraday. "It isn't policy, but
affection. He loves the magazine crowd, and likes to do as it does.
Besides," he smiled, "he's a linguistic specialist."

"You think slang is an indication of local patriotism?" asked Mary.

"Certainly," said Farraday. "If we love a place we adopt its customs."

"That's quite true," Stefan agreed. "In Paris I used the worst argot of
the quarter, but I've always spoken straightforward English because the
only slang I knew in my own tongue reminded me of a place I loathed."

"Stefan used to be dreadfully unpatriotic, Mrs. Farraday," explained
Mary, "but he is outgrowing it."

"Am I?" Stefan asked rather pointedly.

"Art," said McEwan grandly, "is international; Byrd belongs to the
world." He raised his glass of lemonade, and ostentatiously drank
Stefan's health. The others laughed at him, and the conversation veered.
Mary absorbed herself in trying to draw out the bashful Jamie, and Stefan
listened while his hostess talked on her favorite theme, that of her son,
James Farraday.

They had coffee in the picture gallery, a beautiful room which Farraday
had extended beyond the drawing-room, and furnished with perfect examples
of the best Colonial period. It was hung almost entirely with the work of
Americans, in particular landscapes by Inness, Homer Martin, and George
Munn, while over the fireplace was a fine mother and child by Mary
Cassatt. For the first time since their arrival Stefan showed real
interest, and leaving the others, wandered round the room critically
absorbing each painting.

"Well, Farraday," he said at the end of his tour, "I must say you have
the best of judgment. I should have been mighty glad to paint one or two
of those myself." His tone indicated that more could not be said.

Meanwhile, Mary could hardly wait for the real object of their
expedition, the little house. When at last the car was announced, Mrs.
Farraday's bonnet and cloak brought by a maid, and everybody, Jamie
included, fitted into the machine, Mary felt her heart beating with
excitement. Were they going to have a real little house for their baby?
Was it to be born out here by the sea, instead of in the dusty,
overcrowded city? She strained her eyes down the road. "It's only half a
mile," called Farraday from the wheel, "and a mile and a half from the
station." They swung down a hill, up again, round a bend, and there was a
grassy plateau overlooking the water, backed by a tree-clad slope.
Nestling under the trees, but facing the bay, was just such a little
house as Mary had admired along the road, low and snug, shingled on walls
and roof, painted white, with green shutters and a little columned porch
at the front door. A small barn stood near; a little hedge divided house
from lane; evidences of a flower garden showed under the windows. "Oh,
what a duck!" Mary exclaimed. "Oh, Stefan!" She could almost have wept.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.