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The Nest Builder

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"Listen," he said, and translated the brief words.

Hearing them, the good Adolph sat down on his trunk, and quite frankly
cried. "Ah, quel dommage! quel dommage!" he exclaimed, over and over.

"So you see, mon cher, we go together," said Stefan, and lifted his
Gladstone bag to a chair. As he fumbled among its forgotten contents, a
tiny box met his hand. He drew out the signet ring Mary had given him,
with the winged head.

"Ah, Mary," he whispered with a half sob, "after all, you gave me wings!"
and he put the ring on. He was only twenty-seven.

* * * * *

Later in the day Stefan went to the bank and had Mary's draft endorsed
back to New York. He enclosed it in a letter to James Farraday, in which
he asked him to give it to his wife, with his love and blessing, and to
tell her that he was enlisting with Adolph Jensen in the Foreign Legion.

That night they both went to a vaudeville theatre. It was packed to the
doors--an opera star was to sing the Marseillaise. Stefan and Adolph
stood at the back. No one regarded the performance at all till the singer
appeared, clad in white, the French liberty cap upon her head, a great
tricolor draped in her arms. Then the house rose in a storm of applause;
every one in the vast audience was on his feet.

"'_Allons, enfants de la patrie_,'" began the singer in a
magnificent contralto, her eyes flashing. The house hung breathless.

"'_Aux armes, citoyens!_'" Her hands swept the audience.
"'_Marchons! Marchons!_'" She pointed at the crowd. Each man felt
her fiery glance pierce to him--France called--she was holding out her
arms to her sons to die for her--

"'_Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!_'"

The singer gathered the great flag to her heart. The tears rolled down
her cheeks; she kissed it with the passion of a mistress. The house broke
into wild cheers. Men fell upon each other's shoulders; women sobbed. The
singer was dumb, but the drums rolled on--they were calling, calling. The
folds of the flag dazzled Stefan's eyes. He burst into tears.

* * * * *

The next morning Stefan Byrd and Adolph Jensen were enrolled in the
Foreign Legion of France.




PART V

THE BUILDER

I


It was spring once more. In the garden of the Byrdsnest flowering shrubs
were in bloom; the beds were studded with daffodils; the scent of lilac
filled the air. Birds flashed and sang, for it was May, high May, and the
nests were built. Mary, warm-cheeked in the sun, and wearing a broad-
brimmed hat and a pair of gardening gloves, was thinning out a clump of
cornflowers. At one corner of the lawn, shaded by a flowering dog-wood,
was a small sand-pit, and in this a yellow-haired two-year-old boy
diligently poured sand through a wire sieve. In a white perambulator lay
a pink, brown-haired, baby girl, soundly sleeping, a tiny thumb held
comfortably in her mouth. Now and then Mary straightened from her task
and tiptoed over to the baby, to see that she was still in the shade, or
that no flies disturbed her.

Mary's face was not that of a happy woman, but it was the face of one who
has found peace. It was graver than of old, but lightened whenever she
looked at her children with an expression of proud tenderness. She was
dressed in the simplest of white cotton gowns, beneath which the lines of
her figure showed a little fuller, but strong and graceful as ever. She
looked very womanly, very desirable, as she bent over the baby's
carriage.

Lily emerged from the front door, and set a tea-tray upon the low porch
table. She lingered for a moment, glancing with pride at the verandah
with its green rocking chairs, hammock, and white creeping-rug.

"My, Mrs. Byrd, don't our new porch look nice, now it's all done?" she
exclaimed, beaming.

"Yes," said Mary, dropping into a rocking-chair to drink her tea, and
throwing off her hat to loosen the warm waves of hair about her forehead,
"isn't it awfully pretty? I don't know how we should have managed without
it on damp mornings, now that Baby wants to crawl all the time. Ah, here
is Miss Mason!" she exclaimed, smiling as that spinster, in white
shirtwaist and alpaca skirt, dismounted from a smart bicycle at the gate.

"Any letters, Sparrow?"

Miss Mason, extracting several parcels from her carrier, flopped
gratefully into a rocker, and drew off her gloves.

"One or two," she said. "Here, Lily; here's your marmalade, and here's
the soap, and a letter for you. There are a few bills, Mary, and a couple
of notes--" she passed them across--"and here's an afternoon paper one of
the Haven youngsters handed me as I passed him on the road. He called out
something about another atrocity. I haven't looked at it. I hate to open
the things these days."

"I know," nodded Mary, busy with her letters, "so do I. This is from Mr.
Gunther, from California. He's been there all the winter, you know. Oh,
how nice; he's coming back! Says we are to expect a visit from him soon,"
Mary exclaimed, with a pleased smile. "Here's a line from Constance," she
went on. "Everything is doing splendidly in her garden, she says. She
wants us all to go up in June, before she begins her auto speaking trip.
Don't you think it would be nice!"

"Perfectly elegant," said the Sparrow. "I'm glad she's taking a little
rest. I thought she looked real tired this spring."

"She works so frightfully hard."

"Land sakes, work agrees with _you_, Mary! You look simply great. If
your new book does as well as the old one I suppose porches won't satisfy
you--you'll be wanting to build an ell on the house?"

"That's just what I do want," said Mary, smiling. "I want to have a spare
room, and proper place for the babies. We're awfully crowded. Did I tell
you Mr. Farraday had some lovely plans that he had made years ago, for a
wing?"

"You don't say!"

"Yes, but I'm afraid we'll have to wait another year for that, till I can
increase my short story output."

"My, it seems to me you write them like a streak."

Mary shook her head. "No, after Baby is weaned I expect to work faster,
and ever so much better."

"Well, if you do any better than you are doing, Frances Hodgson Burnett
won't be in it; that's all I can say."

"Oh, Sparrow!" smiled Mary, "she writes real grown-up novels, too, and I
can only do silly little children's things."

"They're not silly, Mary Byrd, I can tell you that," sniffed Miss Mason,
shaking out her paper.

"My gracious!" She turned a shocked face to Mary. "What do you suppose
those Germans have done now? Sunk the Lusitania!"

"The Lusitania?" exclaimed Mary, incredulously.

"Yes, my dear; torpedoed her without warning. My, ain't that terrible? It
says they hope most of the passengers are saved--but they don't know
yet."

"Let me see!" Mary bent over her shoulder. "The Lusitania gone!" she
whispered, awed.

"No, no!" exclaimed the Sparrow suddenly, hurrying off the porch. "Ellie
not pour sand over his head! No, naughty!"

Mary sank into her chair with the paper. There was the staring black
headline, but she could hardly believe it. The Lusitania gone? The great
ship she knew so well, on which she and Stefan had met, gone! Lying in
the ooze, with fish darting above the decks where she had walked with
Stefan. Those hundreds of cabins a labyrinth for fish to lose their way
in--all rotting in the black sea currents. The possible loss of life had
not yet come home to her. It was inconceivable that there would not have
been ample time for every one to escape. But the ship, the great English
ship! So swift--so proud!

Dropping the paper, she walked slowly across the garden and the lane, and
found her way to a little seat she had made on the side of the bluff
overlooking the water. Here, her back to a tree trunk, she sat immobile,
trying to still the turmoil of memories that rose within her.

The Lusitania gone!

It seemed like the breaking of the last link that bound her to the past.
All the belief, all the wonder of that time were already gone, and now
the ship, her loveship, was gone, too, lost forever to the sight of men.

She saw again its crowded decks, saw the lithe, picturesque figure of the
young artist with the eager face bending over her--

"Won't you be perfectly kind, and come for a walk?"

She saw the saloon on her engagement night when she
sang at the ship's concert. What were the last words she had sung?

"Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty--
Love's a stuff will not endure."

Alas, how unconsciously prophetic she had been. Nothing had endured,
neither love, nor faith, nor the great ship of their pilgrimage herself.

Other memories crowded. Their honeymoon at Shadeham, the sweet early days
of their studio life, her glorious pride in his great painting of love
exalted.... The night of Constance's party, when, after her singing, her
husband had left his place by Miss Berber and crossed the room so eagerly
to her side. Their first weeks at the Byrdsnest--how happy they had been
then, and how worshipfully he had looked at her the morning their son was
born. All gone. She had another baby now, but he had never seen it--never
would see it, she supposed. Her memory traveled on, flitting over the
dark places and lingering at every sunny peak of their marriage journey.
Their week in Vermont! How they had skated and danced together; how much
he seemed to love her then! Even the day he sailed for France he seemed
to care for her. "Why are we parting?" he had cried, kissing her. Yes,
even then their marriage, for all the clouds upon it, had seemed real
--she had never doubted in her inmost heart that they were each other's.

With a stab of the old agony, Mary remembered the day she got his letter
admitting his relations with Felicity. The unbelievable breakdown of her
whole life! His easy, lightly made excuses. He, in whose arms she had
lain a hundred times, with whom she had first learnt the sacrament of
love, had given himself to another woman, had given all that most close
and sacred intimacy of love, and had written, "I cannot say with truth
that I regret it." How she had lived through the reading of those words
she did not know. Grief does not kill, or surely she would have died that
hour. Her own strength, and the miracle of life within her, alone stayed
her longing for death. It was ten months ago; she had lived down much
since then, had schooled herself daily to forgetfulness; yet now again
the unutterable pang swept over her--the desolation of loss, and the
incapacity to believe that such loss could be.

She rebelled against the needlessness of it all now, as she had done
then, in those bitter days before her little Rosamond came to half-
assuage her pain.

Well, he had redeemed himself in a way. The day James Farraday came to
tell her that Stefan had enlisted, some part of her load was eased. The
father of her children was not all ignoble.

Mary mused on. How would it end? Would Stefan live? Should she--could
she--ever see him again? She thanked God he was there, serving the
country he loved. "The only thing he ever really loved, perhaps," she
thought. She supposed he would be killed--all that genius lost like so
much more of value that the world was scrapping to-day--and then it would
all be quite gone--

Through the trees dropped the insistent sound of a baby's cry to its
mother. She rose; the heavy clouds of memory fell away. The past was
gone; she lived for the future, and the future was in her children.

* * * * *

The next morning Mary had just bathed the baby, and was settling her in
her carriage, when the Sparrow, who, seated on the porch with Elliston,
was engaged in cutting war maps from the papers and pasting them in an
enormous scrapbook, gave a warning cough.

"Here comes Mr. McEwan," she whispered, in the hushed voice reserved by
her simple type for allusions to the afflicted.

"Oh, poor dear," said Mary, hurrying across the lawn to meet him. She
felt more than ever sympathetic toward him, for Mac's wife had died in a
New Hampshire sanitarium only a few weeks before, and all his hopes of
mending her poor broken spirit were at an end. Reaching the gate, she
gave an involuntary cry.

McEwan was stumbling toward her almost like a drunken man. His face was
red, his eyes bloodshot; a morning paper trailed loosely from his hand.

"Mary," he cried, "I came back from the station to see ye--hae ye heard,
my girl?"

"Wallace!" she exclaimed, frightened, "what is it? What has happened?"
She led him to a seat on the porch; he sank into it unresisting. Miss
Mason pushed away her scrapbook, white-faced.

"The Lusitania! They were na' saved, Mary. There's o'er a thousand gone.
O'er a hundred Americans--hundreds of women and little bairns, Mary--like
yours--Canadian mithers and bairns going to be near their brave lads
--babies, Mary." And the big fellow dropped his rough head on his arms and
sobbed like a child.

"Oh, Wallace; oh, Wallace!" whispered Mary, fairly wringing her hands;
"it can't be! Over a thousand lost?"

"Aye," he cried suddenly, bringing his heavy fist down with a crash on
the wicker table, "they drooned them like rats--God damn their bloody
souls."

His face, crimson with rage and pity, worked uncontrollably. Mary covered
her eyes with her hands. The Sparrow sat petrified. The little Elliston,
terrified by their strange aspects, burst into loud wails.

"There, darling; there, mother's boy," crooned Mary soothingly, pressing
her wet cheek to his.

"Little bairns like that, Mary," McEwan repeated brokenly. Mary gathered
the child close into her arms. They sat in stunned horror.

"Weel," said McEwan at last, more quietly. "I'll be going o'er to enlist.
I would ha' gone long sine, but that me poor girl would ha' thocht I'd
desairted her. She doesna' need me now, and there's eno' left for the
lad. Aye, this is me call. I was ay a slow man to wrath, Mary, but now if
I can but kill one German before I die--" His great fist clenched again
on the table.

"Oh, don't, dear man, don't," whispered Mary, with trembling lips, laying
her cool hand over his. "You're right; you must go. But don't feel so
terribly."

His grip relaxed; his big hand lay under hers quietly.

"I could envy you, Wallace, being able to go. It's hard for us who have
to stay here, just waiting. My poor sister has lost her husband already,
and I don't know whether mine is alive or dead. And now you're going!
Elliston's pet uncle!" She smiled at him affectionately through her
tears.

"I'll write you if I hear aught about the Foreign Legion, Mary," he said,
under his breath.

She pressed his hand in gratitude. "When shall you go?" she asked.

"By the next boat."

"Go by the American Line."

His jaw set grimly. "Aye, I will. They shall no torpedo me till I've had
ae shot at them!"

Mary rose. "Now, Wallace, you are to stay and lunch with us. You must let
us make much of the latest family hero while we have him. Eh, Sparrow?"

"Yes," nodded Miss Mason emphatically, "I've hated the British ever since
the Revolution--I and my parents and my grandparents--but I guess I'm
with them, and those that fight for them, from now on."




II


On the Monday following the sinking of the Lusitania, James Farraday
received a letter from the American Hospital in Paris, written in French
in a shaky hand, and signed Adolph Jensen.

New York was still strained and breathless from Saturday's horror. Men
sat idle in their offices reading edition after edition of the papers,
rage mounting in their hearts. Flags were at half mast. Little work was
being done anywhere save at the newspaper offices, which were keyed to
the highest pitch. Farraday's office was hushed. Those members of his
staff who were responsible for The Child at Home--largely women, all
picked for their knowledge of child life--were the worst demoralized. How
think of children's play-time stories when those little bodies were being
brought into Queenstown harbor? Farraday himself, the efficient, the
concentrated, sat absent-mindedly reading the papers, or drumming a slow,
ceaseless tap with his fingers upon the desk. The general gloom was
enhanced by their knowledge that Mac, their dear absurd Mac, was going.
But they were all proud of him.

By two o'clock Farraday had read all the news twice over, and Adolph's
letter three times.

Telephoning for his car to meet him, he left the office and caught an
early afternoon train home. He drove straight to the Byrdsnest and found
Mary alone in the sitting room.

She rose swiftly and pressed his hand:

"Oh, my dear friend," she murmured, "isn't it terrible?"

He nodded. "Sit down, Mary, my dear girl." He spoke very quietly,
unconsciously calling her by name for the first time. "I have something
to tell you."

She turned white.

"No," he said quickly, "he isn't dead."

She sat down, trembling.

"I have a letter from Adolph Jensen. They are both wounded, and in the
American Hospital in Paris. The Foreign Legion has suffered heavily.
Jensen is convalescent, and returns to the front. He was beside your
husband in the trench. It was a shell. Byrd was hit in the back. My dear
child--" he stopped for a moment. "Mary--"

"Go on," she whispered through stiff lips.

"He is paralyzed, my dear, from the hips down."

She stared at him.

"Oh, no, James--oh, no, James--oh, no!" she whispered, over and over.

"Yes, my poor child. He is quite convalescent, and going about the wards
in a wheeled chair. But he will never be able to walk again."

"Why," said Mary, wonderingly, "he never used to be still--he always ran,
and skipped, like a child." Her breast heaved. "He always ran, James--"
she began to cry--the tears rolled down her cheeks--she ran quickly out
of the room, sobbing.

James waited in silence, smoking a pipe, his face set in lines of
inexpressible sadness. In half an hour she returned. Her eyes were
swollen, but she was calm again.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long," she said, with a pitiful
attempt at a smile. "Please read me the letter, will you?"

James read the French text. Stefan had been so brave in the trenches,
always kept up a good heart. He used to sing to the others. A shell had
struck the trench; they were nearly all killed or wounded. Stefan knew he
would walk no more, but he was still so brave, with a smile for every
one. He was drawing, too, wonderful pencil drawings of the front. Adolph
thought they were much more wonderful than anything he had ever done. All
the nurses and wounded asked for them. Adolph would be going back in a
month. He ventured to ask Mr. Farraday to lay the affair before Mrs.
Byrd. Stefan had no money, and no one to take care of him when he left
the hospital. He, Adolph, would do all that was possible, but he was sure
that his friend should go home. Stefan often, very often, spoke of his
wife to Adolph. He wore a ring of hers. Would Mr. Farraday use his good
offices?

James folded the letter and looked at Mary.

"I must go and fetch him," she said simply.

"Mrs. Byrd--Mary--I want you to let me go. Mac has offered to do it
before enlisting, but I don't think your husband cared for Mac, and he
always liked me. It wouldn't be fair to the baby for you to go, and it
would be very painful for you. But it will give me real happiness--the
first thing I've been able to do in this awful business."

"Oh, no, James, I couldn't let you. Your work--it is too much
altogether."

"The office can manage without me for three weeks. I want you to let me
do this for you both--it's such a small thing."

"I feel I ought to go, James," she reiterated, "I ought to be there."

"You can't take the baby--and she mustn't suffer," he urged. "There will
be any amount of red tape. You really must let me go."

They discussed it for some time, and at last she agreed, for the sake of
the small Rosamond. She began to see, too, that there would be much for
her to do at this end. With her racial habit of being coolest in an
emergency, Mary found herself mentally reorganizing the régime of the
Byrdsnest, and rapidly reviewing one possible means after another of
ensuring Stefan's comfort. She talked over her plans with James, and
before he left that afternoon their arrangements were made. On one point
he was obliged to give way. Stefan's money, which he had returned to Mary
before enlisting, was still intact, and she insisted it should be used
for the expenses of the double journey. Enough would be left to carry out
her plans at this end, and Stefan would know that he was in no sense an
object of charity.

James, anxious as he was to help his friends in all ways, had to admit
that she was right. He was infinitely relieved that the necessity for
practical action had so completely steadied her. He knew now that she
would be almost too busy in the intervening weeks for distress.

The next day James engaged his passage, sent a long cable to Adolph, and
performed prodigies of work at the office. By means of some wire-pulling
he and Mac succeeded in securing a cabin together on the next American
liner out.

Meanwhile, Mary began her campaign. At breakfast she expounded her plans
to Miss Mason, who had received the news overnight.

"You see, Sparrow," she said, "we don't know how much quiet he will need,
but we couldn't give him _any_ in this little cottage, with the
babies. So I shall fit up the studio--a big room for him, a small one for
the nurse, and a bath. The nurse will be the hardest part, for I'm sure
he would rather have a man. The terrible helplessness"--her voice
faltered for a second--"would humiliate him before a woman. But it must
be the right man, Sparrow, some one he can like--who won't jar him--and
some one we can afford to keep permanently. I've been thinking about it
all night and, do you know, I have an idea. Do you remember my telling
you about Adolph Jensen's brother?"

"The old one, who failed over here?"

"Yes. Stefan helped him, you know, and I'm sure he was awfully grateful.
When the Berber shop changed hands in January, I wondered what would
become of him; I believe Miss Berber was only using him out of kindness.
It seems to me he might be just the person, if we could find him."

"You're a smart girl, Mary, and as plucky as they make 'em," nodded the
spinster.

"Oh, Sparrow, when I think of his helplessness! He, who always wanted
wings!" Mary half choked.

"Now," said Miss Mason, rising briskly, "we've got to act, not think.
Come along, child, and let's go over to the barn." Gratefully Mary
followed her.

Enquiries at the now cheapened and popularized Berber studio elicited
Jensen's old address, and Mary drove there in a taxi, only to find that
he had moved to an even poorer quarter of the city. She discovered his
lodgings at last, in a slum on the lower east side. He was out, looking
for a job, the landlady thought, but Mary left a note for him, with a
bill inside it, asking him to come out to Crab's Bay the next morning.
She hurried back to Rosamond, and found that the excellent Sparrow had
already held lively conferences with the village builders and plumbers.

"I told 'em they'd get a bonus for finishing the job in three weeks, and
I guess I got the whole outfit on the jump," said she with satisfaction.
"Though the dear Lord knows," she added, "if the plumbers get through on
schedule it'll be the first time in history."

When Henrik Jensen arrived next day Mary took an instant liking to him.
He was shabbier and more hopeless than ever, but his eyes were kind, his
mouth gentle, and when she spoke of Stefan his face lighted up.

She told him the story of the two friends, of his brother's wound and
Stefan's crippling, and saw that his eyes filled with tears.

"He was wonderful to me, Mrs. Byrd, he gave me a chance. I was making
good, too, till Miss Berber left and the whole scheme fell to pieces. I'm
glad Adolph is with him; it was very gracious of you to let me hear about
it."

"Are you very busy now, Mr. Jensen?"

He smiled hopelessly.

"Yes, very busy--looking for work. I'm down and out, Mrs. Byrd."

She unfolded her scheme to him. Stefan would need some one near him night
and day. He would be miserable with a servant; he would--she knew--feel
his helplessness more keenly in the presence of a woman. She herself
could help, but she had her work, and the children. Mr. Jensen would be
one of the family. She could offer him a home, and a salary which she
hoped would be sufficient for his needs--

"I have no needs, Mrs. Byrd," he interrupted at this point, his eyes
shining with eagerness. "Enough clothes for decency, that's all. If I
could be of some use to your husband, to my friend and Adolph's, I should
ask no more of life. I'm a hopeless failure, ma'am, and getting old--you
don't know what it is like to feel utterly useless."

Mary listened to his gentle voice and watched his fine hands--hands used
to appraising delicate, beautiful things. The longer they talked, the
more certain she felt that here was the ideal person, one bound to her
husband by ties of gratitude, and whose ministrations could not possibly
offend him.

She rang up Mrs. Farraday, put the case to her, and obtained her offer of
a room to house Mr. Jensen while the repairs were making. She arranged
with him to return next day with his belongings, and advanced a part of
his salary for immediate expenses. Mary wanted him to come to her at
once, both out of sympathy for his wretched circumstances, and because
she wished thoroughly to know him before Stefan's return.

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