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The Nest Builder

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




Mary recognized it instantly--there could be no mistake. She stared
stupidly, unable to find speech, while Miss Berber's tones were wafted to
her like an echo from cooing doves.

"Ah, Mrs. Byrd," she was saying, "how lovely you look as a matron. We are
having a short sitting in my luncheon hour. This studio calms me after
the banal cackling of my clients. I almost think of ceasing to create
raiment, I weary so of the stupidities of New York's four hundred.
Corsets, heels"--her hands fluttered in repudiation. She sank full length
upon the divan, lighting a cigarette from a case of mother-of-pearl.
"Your husband is the only artist, Mrs. Byrd, who has succeeded in
painting me as an individual instead of a beauty. It's relieving"--her
voice fainted--"very"--it failed--her lids drooped, she was still.

Stefan looked bored. "Why, Felicity, what's the matter? I haven't seen
you so completely lethargic for a long time. I thought you kept that
manner for the store."

Mary could not help feeling pleased by this remark, which drew no
response from Felicity save a shadowy but somewhat forced smile.

"Turn round, Mary," went on Stefan; "the Nixie is behind you."

Mary faced the canvas, another of his favorite underwater pictures. The
Nixie sat on a rock, in the green light of a river-bed. Green river-weed
swayed and clung about her, and her hair, green too, streamed out to
mingle with it. In the ooze at her feet lay a drowned girl, holding a
tiny baby to her breast. This part of the picture was unfinished, but the
Nixie stood out clearly, looking down at the dead woman with an
expression compounded of wonder and sly scorn. "Lord, what fools these
mortals be," she might have been saying.

The face was not a portrait--it was Felicity only in its potentialities,
but it was she, unmistakably. The picture was brilliant, fantastic, and
unpleasant. Mary said so.

"Of course it is unpleasant," he answered, "and so is life. Isn't it
unpleasant that girls should kill themselves because of some fool man?
And wouldn't sub-humans have a right to ribald laughter at a system which
fosters such things!"

"He has painted me as a sub-human, Mrs. Byrd," drawled Felicity through
her smoke, "but when I hear his opinion of humans I feel complimented."

"It seems to me," said Mary, "that she's not laughing at humans in
general, but at this particular girl, for having cared. That's what makes
it unpleasant to me."

"I dare say she is," said Stefan carelessly. "In any case, I'm glad you
find it unpleasant--in popular criticism the word is only a synonym for
true."

To Mary the picture was theatrical rather than true, but she did not care
to argue the point. She turned to the portrait, a clever study in lights
keyed to the opalescent tones of the silk dress, and showing Felicity
poised for the first step of a dance. The face was still in charcoal
--Stefan always blocked in his whole color scheme before beginning a head
--but even so, it was alluring.

Mary said with truth that it would be a fine portrait.

"Yes, I like it. Full of movement. Nothing architectural about that," he
said, glancing by way of contrast at the great Demeter drowsing from the
furthest wall. "The silk is interesting, isn't it?"

Mary's throat ached painfully. He was utterly unconscious of any hurt to
her in the transfer of this first extravagance of theirs. If he had done
it consciously, with intent to wound, she thought it might have hurt her
less.

"It's very pretty," she said conventionally.

"Bare, perhaps, rather than pretty," murmured Miss Berber behind her veil
of smoke.

Mary flushed. This woman had a trick of always making her appear gauche.
She looked at her watch, not sorry to see that it was already time to
leave.

"I must go, Stefan, I have to catch the one o'clock," she said, holding
out her hand.

"What a shame. Can't you even stay to lunch?" he asked dutifully. She
shook her head, the ache in her throat making speech difficult. She
seemed very stiff and matter-of-fact, he thought, and her clothes were
uninteresting. He kissed her, however, and held the door while she shook
hands with Felicity, who half rose. The transom was open, and through it
Mary, who had paused on the landing to button her glove, overheard Miss
Berber's valedictory pronouncement.

"The English are a remarkable race--remarkable. Character in them is
fixed--in us, fluid."

Mary sped down the first flight, in terror of hearing Stefan's reply.

All that evening she held the baby in her arms--she could hardly bring
herself to put him down when it was time to go to bed.




IV


On November the 1st Mary received their joint bank book. The figures
appalled her. She had drawn nothing except for the household bills, but
Stefan had apparently been drawing cash, in sums of fifty or twenty-five
dollars, every few days for weeks past. Save for his meals and a little
new clothing she did not know on what he could have spent it; but as they
had made nothing since the sale of his drawings in the spring, their once
stout balance had dwindled alarmingly. One check, even while she felt its
extravagance, touched her to sympathy. It was drawn to Henrik Jensen for
two hundred dollars. Stefan must have been helping Adolph's brother to
his feet again; perhaps that was where more of the money had gone.

Stefan came home that afternoon, and Mary very unwillingly tackled the
subject. He looked surprised.

"I'd no idea I'd been drawing so much! Why didn't you tell me sooner?" he
exclaimed. "Yes, I've given poor old Henrik a bit from time to time; I
thought I'd mentioned it to you."

"You did in the summer, now I come to think of it, but I thought you
meant a few dollars, ten or twenty."

"Much good that would have done him. The poor old chap was stranded. He's
all right now, has a new business. I've been meaning to tell you about
it. He supplies furniture on order to go with Felicity's gowns--
backgrounds for personalities, and all that stuff. I put it up to her to
help find him a job, and she thought of this right off." He grinned
appreciatively. "Smart, eh? We both gave him a hand to start it."

"You might have told me, I should have been so interested," said Mary,
trying not to sound hurt.

"I meant to, but it's only just been arranged, and I've had no chance to
talk to you for ages."

"Not my doing, Stefan," she said softly.

"Oh, yes, the baby and all that." He waved his arm vaguely, and began to
fidget. She steered away from the rocks.

"Anyhow, I'm glad you've helped him," she said sincerely.

"I knew you would be. Look here, Mary, can we go on at the present rate
--barring Jensen--till I finish the Nixie? I don't want Constantine to
have the Demeter alone, it isn't good enough."

"I think it is as good as the Nixie," she said, on a sudden impulse. He
swung round, staring at her almost insolently.

"My dear girl, what do you know about it?" His voice was cold.

The blood rushed to her heart. He had never spoken to her in that tone
before. As always, her hurt silenced her.

He prowled for a minute, then repeated his question about their expenses.

"I don't want to have to think in cents again unless I must," he added.

Mary considered, remembering the now almost finished manuscript in her
desk.

"Yes, I think we can manage, dear."

"That's a blessing; then we won't talk about it any more," he exclaimed,
pinching her ear in token of satisfaction.

The next day Mary sent her manuscript to be typed. In a week it had gone
to Farraday at his office, complete all but three chapters, of which she
enclosed an outline. With it she sent a purely formal note, asking, in
the event of the book being accepted, what terms the Company could offer
her, and whether she could be paid partly in advance. She put the request
tentatively, knowing nothing of the method of paying for serials. In
another week she had a typewritten reply from Farraday, saying that the
serial had been most favorably reported, that the Company would buy it
for fifteen hundred dollars, with a guarantee to begin serialization
within the year, on receipt of the final chapters, that they enclosed a
contract, and were hers faithfully, etc. With this was a personal note
from her friend, congratulating her, and explaining that his estimate of
her book had been more than borne out by his readers.

"I don't want you to think others less appreciative than I," was his
tactful way of intimating that her work had been accepted on its merits
alone.

The letters took Mary's breath away. She had no idea that her work could
fetch such a price. This stroke of fortune completely lifted her
financial anxieties, but her spirits did not rise correspondingly. Six
months ago she would have been girlishly triumphant at such a success,
but now she felt at most a dull satisfaction. She hastened, however, to
write the final chapters, and deposited the check when it came in her own
bank, drawing the next month's housekeeping money half from that and half
from Stefan's rapidly dwindling account. That she was able to do this
gave her a feeling of relief, no more.

Mary had now nursed her baby for over four months, and began to feel a
nervous lassitude which she attributed--quite wrongly--to this fact. As
Elliston still gained weight steadily, however, she gave her own
condition no thought. But the last leaves had fallen from the trees, sea
and woods looked friendless, and the evenings were long and lonely. The
neighbors had nearly all gone back to the city. Farraday only came down
at week-ends, Jamie was busy with his lessons, and Constance still
lingered in Vermont. As for Stefan, he came home late and left early;
often he did not come at all. She began to question seriously if she had
been right to remain in the cottage. Her heart told her no, but her pride
said yes, and her pride was strong; also, it was backed by reason. Her
steady brain, which was capable of quite impersonal thinking, told her
that Stefan would be actively discontented just now in company with his
family, and that this discontent would eat into his remaining love for
her.

But her heart repudiated this mental cautioning, crying out to her to go
to him, to pour out her love and need, to capture him safely in her arms.
More than once she nerved herself for such an effort, only to become
incapable of the least expression at his approach. Emotionally
inarticulate even in happiness, Mary was quite dumb in grief. Her
conversation became trite, her sore heart drew a mantle of the
commonplace over its wound; Stefan found her more than ever "English."

So lonely was she at this time that she would have asked little Miss
Mason to stay with her, but for the lack of a spare bedroom. Of all her
friends, only Mrs. Farraday remained at hand. Mary spent many hours at
the old lady's house, and rejoiced each time the pony chaise brought her
to the Byrdsnest. Mrs. Farraday loved to drive up in the morning and
watch the small Elliston in his bath, comparing his feats with her
memories of her own baby. She liked, too, to call at the cottage for
mother and child, and take them for long rambling drives behind her
ruminant pony.

But the little Quakeress usually had her house full of guests--quaint,
elderly folk from Delaware or from the Quaker regions of Pennsylvania--
and could not give more than occasional time to these excursions. She had
become devoted to Mary, whom she secretly regarded as her ideal of the
woman her James should marry. That her son had not yet met such a woman
was, after the loss of her husband, the little lady's greatest grief.

In the midst of this dead period of graying days, Constance Elliot burst
one morning--a God from the Machine--tearing down the lane in her
diminutive car with the great figure of Gunther, like some Norse
divinity, beside her. She fell out of her auto, and into an explanation,
in one breath, embracing Mary warmly between sentences.

"You lovely creature, here I am at last! Theodore hadn't been up for a
week, so I came down, to find Mr. Gunther thundering like Odin because I
had promised to help him arrange sittings with you, and had forgotten it.
I had to bring him at once. He says his group is all done but the two
heads, and he must have yours and the baby's. But he'll tell you all
about it. Where is he? Elliston, I mean. I've brought him some short
frocks. Where are they, Mr. Gunther? If he's put them in his pockets,
he'll never find them--they are feet long--the pockets, I mean. Bless
you, Mary Byrd, how good it is to see you! Come into the house, every
one, and let me rest."

Mary was bubbling with laughter.

"Constance, you human dynamo, we'll go in by all means, and hold our
breaths listening to your 'resting'!"

"Don't sass your elders, naughty girl. Oh, my heavens, I've been five
months in New England, and have behaved like a perfect gentlewoman all
the time! Now I'm due for an attack of New Yorkitis!" Constance rushed
into the sitting room, pulled off her hat and patted her hair into shape,
ran to the kitchen door to say hello to Lily, and was back in her chair
by the time the others had found theirs. Her quick glance traveled from
one to the other.

"Now I shall listen," she said. "Mary, tell your news. Mr. Gunther,
explain your ideas."


Mary laughed again. "Visitors first," she nodded to the Norwegian who, as
always, was staring at her with a perfectly civil fixity.

He placed a great hand on either knee and prepared to state his case.
With his red-gold beard and piercing eyes, he was, Mary thought, quite
the handsomest, and, after Stefan, the most attractive man she had ever
seen.

"Mrs. Byrd," he began, "I am doing, among other things, a large group
called 'Pioneers' for the Frisco exhibition. It is finished in the clay--
as Mrs. Elliot said--all but two heads, and is already roughly blocked in
marble. I want your head, with your son's--I must have them. Six sittings
will be enough. If you cannot, as I imagine, come to the city, I will
bring my clay here, and we will work in your husband's studio. These
figures, of whom the man is modeled from myself, do not represent
pioneers in the ordinary sense. They embody my idea of those who will
lead the race to future greatness. That is why I feel it essential to
have you as a model."

He spoke quite simply, without a trace of flattery, as if he were merely
putting into words a self-evident truth. A compliment of such staggering
dimensions, however, left Mary abashed.

"You may wonder," he went on, seeing her silent, "why I so regard you. It
is not merely your beauty, Mrs. Byrd, of which as an artist I can speak
without offense, it is because to my mind you combine strong mentality
and morale with simplicity of temperament. You are an Apollonian, rather
than a Dionysian. Of such, in my judgment, will the super-race be made."
Gunther folded his arms and leaned back.

He was sufficiently distinguished to be able to carry off a pronouncement
which in a lesser man would have been an impertinence, and he knew it.

Constance threw up her hands. "There, Mary, your niche is carved. I don't
quite know what Mr. Gunther means, but he sounds right."

Mary found her voice. "Mr. Gunther honors me very much, and, although of
course I do not deserve his praise, I shall certainly not refuse his
request."

Gunther bowed gravely from the hips in the Continental manner, without
rising.

"When may I come," he asked; "to-morrow? Good! I will bring the clay out
by auto."

"You lucky woman," exclaimed Constance. "To think of being immortalized
by two great artists in one year!"

"Her type is very rare," said Gunther in explanation. "When does one see
the classic face with expression added? Almost always, it is dull."

"Now, Mary, produce the infant!" Constance did not intend the whole
morning to be devoted to the Olympian discourse of the sculptor.

The baby was brought down, and the rest of the visit pivoted about him.
Mary glowed at the praises he received; she looked immeasurably brighter,
Constance thought, than when they arrived.

On the way home Gunther unbosomed himself of a final pronouncement. "She
does not look too happy, but her beauty is richer and its meaning deeper
than before. She is what the mothers of men should be. I am sorry," he
concluded simply, "that I did not meet her more than a year ago."

Constance almost gasped. What an advantage, she thought, great physical
gifts bring. Even without this man's distinction in his art, it was
obvious that he had some right to assume his ability to mate with
whomever he might choose.

Early the next morning the sculptor drove up to the barn, his tonneau
loaded with impedimenta. Mary was ready for him, and watched with
interest while he lifted out first a great wooden box of clay, then a
small model throne, then two turntables, and finally, two tin buckets.
These baffled her, till, having installed the clay-box, which she doubted
if an ordinary man could lift, he made for the garden pump and watered
his clay with the contents of the buckets.

He set up his three-legged turntables, each of which bore an angle-iron
supporting a twisted length of lead pipe, stood a bucket of water beneath
one, and explained that in a few minutes he would be ready to begin.
Donning a linen blouse, he attacked the mass of damp clay powerfully,
throwing great pieces onto the skeleton lead-pipe, which he explained had
been bent to the exact angle of the head in his group.

"The woman's figure I modeled from ideal proportions, Mrs. Byrd, and this
head will be set upon its shoulders. My statue will then be a living
thing instead of a mere symbol."

When Mary was posed she became absorbed in watching Gunther's work grow.
He modeled with extraordinary speed, yet his movements had none of the
lightning swoops and darts of Stefan's method. Each motion of his
powerful hands might have been preordained; they seemed to move with a
deliberate and effortless precision, so that she would hardly have
realized their speed had the head and face not leaped under them into
being. He was a silent worker, yet she felt companioned; the man's
presence seemed to fill the little building.

"After to-day I shall ask you to hold the child, for as long as it will
not disturb him. I shall then have the expression on your face which I
desire, and I will work at a study of the boy's head at those moments
when he is awake."

Mary sincerely enjoyed her sittings, which came as a welcome change in
her even days. Gunther usually stayed to lunch, Constance joining them on
one occasion, and Mrs. Farraday on another. Both these came to watch the
work, Gunther, unlike Stefan, being oblivious of an audience; and once
McEwan came, his sturdy form appearing insignificant beside the giant
Norseman. Wallace hung about smoking a pipe for half an hour or more. He
was at his most Scotch, appeared well pleased, and ejaculated "Aye, aye,"
several times, nodding a ponderous head.

"Wallace, what are you so solemnly aye-ayeing about? Why so mysterious?"
enquired Mary.

"I'm haeing a few thochts," responded the Scot, his expression divided
between an irritating smile and a kindly twinkle.

"Well, don't be annoying, and stay to lunch," said Mary, dispensing even
justice to both expressions.

Stefan, returning home one afternoon half way through the sittings,
expressed a mild interest in the news of them, and, going out to the
barn, unwrapped the wet cloths from the head.

"He's an artist," said he; "this has power and beauty. Never sit to a
second-rater, Mary, you've had the best now." And he covered the head
again with a craftsman's thoroughness.

Mary was sorry when the sittings came to an end. On the last day the
sculptor brought two men with him, who made the return journey in the
tonneau, each guarding a carefully swathed bust against the inequalities
of the road. Gunther bowed low over her hand with a word of thanks at
parting, and she watched his car out of sight regretfully.




V


The week's interlude over, Mary's days reverted to their monotonous
tenor. As November drew to a close, she began to think of Christmas,
remembering how happy her last had been, and wondering if she could
summon enough courage for an attempt to engage Stefan's interest in some
kind of celebration. She now admitted to herself that she was actively
worried about her relations with him. He was quite agreeable to her when
in the house, but she felt this was only because she made no demands on
him. Let her reach out ever so little for his love, and he instantly
became vague or restless. Their intercourse was friendly, but he appeared
absolutely indifferent to her as a woman; she might have been a well-
liked sister. Under the grueling strain of self-repression Mary was
growing nervous, and the baby began to feel the effects. His weekly gains
were smaller, and he had his first symptoms of indigestion.

She redoubled the care of her diet, and lengthened her daily walks, but
he became fretful, and at last, early in December, she found on weighing
him that he had made no gain for a week. Terrified, she telephoned for
Dr. Hillyard, and received her at the door with a white face. It was a
Sunday morning, and McEwan had just dropped in with some chrysanthemums
from the Farradays' greenhouse. Finding Mary disturbed he had not
remained, and was leaving the house as the doctor drove up.

Dr. Hillyard's first words were reassuring. There was absolutely nothing
to fear in a week's failure to gain, she explained. "It always happens at
some stage or other, and many babies don't gain for weeks."

Still, the outcome of her visit was that Mary, with an aching heart,
added a daily bottle to Elliston's régime. In a week the doctor came
again, gave Mary a food tonic, and advised the introduction of a second
bottle. Elliston immediately responded, palpably preferring his bottle
feedings to the others. His fretfulness after these continued, he turned
with increased eagerness to his bottle, and with tears of disappointment
Mary yielded to his loudly voiced demands. By Christmas time he was
weaned. His mother felt she could never forgive herself for failing him
so soon, and a tinge of real resentment colored for the first time her
attitude toward Stefan, whom she knew to be the indirect cause of her
failure.

The somewhat abrupt deterioration of Mary's magnificent nervous system
would have been unaccountable to Dr. Hillyard had it not been for a
chance encounter with McEwan after her first visit. The Scotchman had
hailed her in the lane, asking for a lift to a house beyond the village,
where he had some small errand. During a flow of discursive remarks he
elicited from the doctor, without her knowledge, her opinion that Mary
was nervously run down, after which he rambled at some length about the
value of art, allowing the doctor to pass his destination by a mile or
more.

With profuse thanks for her kindness in turning back, he continued his
ramblings, and she gathered the impression that he was a dull,
inconsequential talker, that he considered young couples "kittle cattle,"
that artists were always absorbed in their work, that females had a habit
of needless worrying, and that commuting in winter was distracting to a
man's labors. She only half listened to him, and dropped him with relief,
wondering if he was an anti-suffragist. Some memory of his remarks must,
however, have remained with her, for after her next visit to Mary she
found herself thinking that Mr. McEwan was probably neither an anti-
suffragist, nor dull.

A little before Christmas McEwan called on Constance, and found her
immersed in preparations for a Suffrage bazaar and fête.

"I can't talk to any one," she announced, receiving him in a chaos of
boxes, banners, paper flowers, and stenographers, in the midst of which
she appeared to be working with two voices and six hands. "Didn't the
maid warn you off the premises?"

"She did, but I sang 'Take back the lime that thou gavest' in such honey
tones that she complied," said Mac.

"Just for that, you can give the fête a two-inch free ad in The Household
Magazine," Constance implacably replied.

He grinned. "I raise the ante. Three inches, at the risk of losing my
job, for five minutes alone with you."

"You lose your job!" scoffed Constance, leading the way into an empty
room, and seating herself at attention, one eye on her watch. "Proceed--I
am yours."

Mac sat opposite her, and shot out an emphatic forefinger.

"The Berber girl's middle name is Mischief," he began, plunging in medias
res; "Byrd's is Variability; for the last five months the Mary lady's has
been Mother. Am I right?"

Constance's bright eyes looked squarely at him.

"Wallace McEwan, you are," she said.

His finger continued poised. "Very well, we are 'on,' and _our_
middle name is Efficiency, eh?"

"Yes," Constance nodded doubtfully, "but--"

McEwan's hand slapped his knee. "Here's the scheme," he went on rapidly.
"Variable folk must have variety, either in place or people. If we don't
want it to be people, we make it place, see? Is your country house closed
yet?"

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