Title: The Nest Builder: A Novel
Author: Hale, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson
Language: English
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THE NEST-BUILDER

_A NOVEL_


By Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

Author Of “What Women Want”


_With A Frontispiece By J. Henry_



CONTENTS

PART I

  MATE-SONG

PART II

  MATED

PART III

  THE NESTLING

PART IV

  WINGS

PART V

  THE BUILDER



PART I

MATE-SONG

I


Outbound from Liverpool, the Lusitania bucked down the Irish Sea against
a September gale. Aft in her second-class quarters each shouldering from
the waves brought a sickening vibration as one or another of the ship’s
great propellers raced out of water. The gong had sounded for the second
sitting, and trails of hungry and weary travelers, trooping down the
companionway, met files of still more uneasy diners emerging from the
saloon. The grinding jar of the vessel, the heavy smell of food, and
the pound of ragtime combined to produce an effect as of some sordid
and demoniac orgy--an effect derided by the smug respectability of the
saloon’s furnishings.

Stefan Byrd, taking in the scene as he balanced a precarious way to his
seat, felt every hypercritical sense rising in revolt. Even the prosaic
but admirably efficient table utensils repelled him. “They are so
useful, so abominably enduring,” he thought. The mahogany trimmings of
doors and columns seemed to announce from every overpolished surface a
pompous self-sufficiency. Each table proclaimed the aesthetic level of
the second class through the lifeless leaves of a rubber plant and
two imitation cut-glass dishes of tough fruit. The stewards, casually
hovering, lacked the democracy which might have humanized the steerage
as much as the civility which would have oiled the workings of the first
cabin. Byrd resented their ministrations as he did the heavy English
dishes of the bill of fare. There were no Continental passengers near
him. He had left the dear French tongue behind, and his ears, homesick
already, shrank equally from the see-saw Lancashire of the stewards and
the monotonous rasp of returning Americans.

Byrd’s left hand neighbor, a clergyman of uncertain denomination, had
tried vainly for several minutes to attract his attention by clearing
his throat, passing the salt, and making measured requests for water,
bread, and the like.

“I presume, sir,” he at last inquired loudly, “that you are an American,
and as glad as I am to be returning to our country?”

“No, sir,” retorted Byrd, favoring his questioner with a withering
stare, “I am a Bohemian, and damnably sorry that I ever have to see
America again.”

The man of God turned away, pale to the temples with offense--a
high-bosomed matron opposite emitted a shocked “Oh!”--the faces of
the surrounding listeners assumed expressions either dismayed or
deprecating. Budding conversationalists were temporarily frost-bitten,
and the watery helpings of fish were eaten in a constrained silence. But
with the inevitable roast beef a Scot of unshakeable manner, decorated
with a yellow forehead-lock as erect as a striking cobra, turned
to follow up what he apparently conceived to be an opportunity for
discussion.

“I’m not so strongly partial to the States mysel’, ye ken, but I’ll
confess it’s a grand place to mak’ money. Ye would be going there,
perhaps, to improve your fortunes?”

Byrd was silent.

“Also,” continued the Scot, quite unrebuffed, “it would be interesting
to know what exactly ye mean when ye call yoursel’ a Bohemian. Would ye
be referring to your tastes, now, or to your nationality?”

His hand trembling with nervous temper, Byrd laid down his napkin, and
rose with an attempt at dignity somewhat marred by the viselike clutch
of the swivel chair upon his emerging legs.

“My mother was a Bohemian, my father an American. Neither, happily,
was Scotch,” said he, almost stammering in his attempt to control his
extreme distaste of his surroundings--and hurried out of the saloon,
leaving a table of dropped jaws behind him.

“The young man is nairvous,” contentedly boomed the Scot. “I’m thinking
he’ll be feeling the sea already. What kind of a place would Bohemia,
be, d’ye think, to have a mother from?” turning to the clergyman.

“A place of evil life, seemingly,” answered that worthy in his
high-pitched, carrying voice. “I shall certainly ask to have my seat
changed. I cannot subject myself for the voyage to the neighborhood of a
man of profane speech.”

The table nodded approval.

“A traitor to his country, too,” said a pursy little man opposite,
snapping his jaws shut like a turtle.

A bony New England spinster turned deprecating eyes to him. “My,” she
whispered shrilly, “he was just terrible, wasn’t he? But so handsome!
I can’t help but think it was more seasickness with him than an evil
nature.”

Meanwhile the subject of discussion, who would have writhed far more at
the spinster’s palliation of his offense than at the men’s disdain,
lay in his tiny cabin, a prey to an attack of that nervous misery which
overtakes an artist out of his element as surely and speedily as air
suffocates a fish.

Stefan Byrd’s table companions were guilty in his eyes of the one
unforgivable sin--they were ugly. Ugly alike in feature, dress, and
bearing, they had for him absolutely no excuse for existence. He felt no
bond of common humanity with them. In his lexicon what was not beautiful
was not human, and he recognized no more obligation of good fellowship
toward them than he would have done toward a company of ground-hogs.
He lay back, one fine and nervous hand across his eyes, trying to
obliterate the image of the saloon and all its inmates by conjuring up a
vision of the world he had left, the winsome young cosmopolitan Paris of
the art student. The streets, the cafés, the studios; his few men, his
many women, friends--Adolph Jensen, the kindly Swede who loved him;
Louise, Nanette, the little Polish Yanina, who had said they loved him;
the slanting-glanced Turkish students, the grave Syrians, the democratic
un-British Londoners--the smell, the glamour of Paris, returned to him
with the nostalgia of despair.

These he had left. To what did he go?



II


In his shivering, creaking little cabin, suspended, as it were, by the
uncertain waters between two lives, Byrd forced himself to remember
the America he had known before his Paris days. He recalled his
birthplace--a village in upper Michigan--and his mental eyes bored
across the pictures that came with the running speed of a cinematograph
to his memory.

The place was a village, but it called itself a city. The last he had
seen of it was the “depot,” a wooden shed surrounded by a waste of
rutted snow, and backed by grimy coal yards. He could see the broken
shades of the town’s one hotel, which faced the tracks, drooping across
their dirty windows, and the lopsided sign which proclaimed from the
porch roof in faded gilt on black the name of “C. E. Trench, Prop.” He
could see the swing-doors of the bar, and hear the click of balls from
the poolroom advertising the second of the town’s distractions. He could
smell the composite odor of varnish, stale air, and boots, which made
the overheated station waiting-room hideous. Heavy farmers in ear-mitts,
peaked caps, and fur collars spat upon the hissing stove round which
their great hide boots sprawled. They were his last memory of his fellow
citizens.

Looking farther back Stefan saw the town in summer. There were trees in
the street where he lived, but they were all upon the sidewalk-public
property. In their yards (the word garden, he recalled, was never used)
the neighbors kept, with unanimity, in the back, washing, and in the
front, a porch. Over these porches parched vines crept--the town’s
enthusiasm for horticulture went as far as that--and upon them
concentrated the feminine social life of the place. Of this intercourse
the high tones seemed to be giggles, and the bass the wooden thuds of
rockers. Street after street he could recall, from the square about
the “depot” to the outskirts, and through them all the dusty heat, the
rockers, gigglers, the rustle of a shirt-sleeved father’s newspaper, and
the shrill coo-ees of the younger children. Finally, the piano--for he
looked back farther than the all-conquering phonograph. He heard “Nita,
Juanita;” he heard “Sweet Genevieve.”

Beyond the village lay the open country, level, blindingly hot,
half-cultivated, with the scorched foliage of young trees showing in the
ruins of what had been forest land. Across it the roads ran straight as
rulers. In the winter wolves were not unknown there; in the summer there
were tramps of many strange nationalities, farm hands and men bound for
the copper mines. For the most part they walked the railroad ties, or
rode the freight cars; winter or summer, the roads were never wholly
safe, and children played only in the town.

There, on the outskirts, was a shallow, stony river, but deep enough at
one point for gingerly swimming. Stefan seemed never to have been cool
through the summer except when he was squatting or paddling in this
hole. He remembered only indistinctly the boys with whom he bathed;
he had no friends among them. But there had been a little girl with
starched white skirts, huge blue bows over blue eyes, and yellow hair,
whom he had admired to adoration. She wanted desperately to bathe in
the hole, and he demanded of her mother that this be permitted. Stefan
smiled grimly as he recalled the horror of that lady, who had boxed his
ears for trying to lead her girl into ungodliness, and to scandalize the
neighbors. The friendship had been kept up surreptitiously after this,
with interchange of pencils and candy, until the little girl--he
had forgotten her name--put her tongue out at him over a matter of
chewing-gum which he had insisted she should not use. Revolted, he
played alone again.

The Presbyterian Church Stefan remembered as a whitewashed praying box,
resounding to his father’s high-pitched voice. It was filled with heat
and flies from without in summer, and heat and steam from within in
winter. The school, whitewashed again, he recalled as a succession
of banging desks, flying paper pellets, and the drone of undigested
lessons. Here the water bucket loomed as the alleviation in summer, or
the red hot oblong of the open stove in winter time. Through all these
scenes, by an egotistical trick of the brain, he saw himself moving,
a small brown-haired boy, with olive skin and queer, greenish eyes,
entirely alien, absolutely lonely, completely critical. He saw himself
in too large, ill-chosen clothes, the butt of his playfellows. He saw
the sidelong, interested glances of little girls change to curled lips
and tossed heads at the grinning nudge of their boy companions. He saw
the harassed eyes of an anaemic teacher stare uncomprehendingly at
him over the pages of an exercise book filled with colored drawings of
George III and the British flag, instead of a description of the battle
of Bunker Hill. He remembered the hatred he had felt even then for
the narrowness of the local patriotism which had prompted him to this
revenge. As a result, he saw himself backed against the schoolhouse
wall, facing with contempt a yelling, jumping tangle of boys who, from
a safe distance, called upon the “traitor” and the “Dago” to come and
be licked. He felt the rage mount in his head like a burning wave, saw
a change in the eyes and faces of his foes, felt himself spring with a
catlike leap, his lips tight above his teeth and his arms moving like
clawed wheels, saw boys run yelling and himself darting between them
down the road, to fall at last, a trembling, sobbing bundle of reaction,
into the grassy ditch.

In memory Stefan followed himself home. The word was used to denote the
house in which he and his father lived. A portrait of his mother hung
over the parlor stove. It was a chalk drawing from a photograph, crudely
done, but beautiful by reason of the subject. The face was young and
very round, the forehead beautifully low and broad under black waves of
hair. The nose was short and proud, the chin small but square, the mouth
gaily curving around little, even teeth. But the eyes were deep and
somber; there was passion in them, and romance. Stefan had not seen that
face for years, he barely remembered the original, but he could have
drawn it now in every detail. If the house in which it hung could be
called home at all, it was by virtue of that picture, the only thing of
beauty in it.

Behind the portrait lay a few memories of joy and heartache, and one
final one of horror. Stefan probed them, still with his nervous hand
across his eyes. He listened while his mother sang gay or mournful
little songs with haunting tunes in a tongue only a word or two of which
he understood. He watched while she drew from her bureau drawer a box of
paints and some paper. She painted for long hours, day after day through
the winter, while he played beside her with longing eyes on her brushes.
She painted always one thing--flowers--using no pencil, drawing their
shapes with the brush. Her flowers were of many kinds, nearly all
strange to him, but most were roses--pink, yellow, crimson, almost
black. Sometimes their petals flared like wings; sometimes they were
close-furled. Of these paintings he remembered much, but of her speech
little, for she was silent as she worked.

One day his mother put a brush into his hand. The rapture of it was as
sharp and near as to-day’s misery. He sat beside her after that for many
days and painted. First he tried to paint a rose, but he had never seen
such roses as her brush drew, and he tired quickly. Then he drew a bird.
His mother nodded and smiled--it was good. After that his memory showed
him the two sitting side by side for weeks, or was it months?--while
the snow lay piled beyond the window--she with her flowers, he with his
birds.

First he drew birds singly, hopping on a branch, or simply standing,
claws and beaks defined. Then he began to make them fly, alone, and
again in groups. Their wings spread across the paper, wider and more
sweepingly. They pointed upward sharply, or lay flat across the page.
Flights of tiny birds careened from corner to corner. They were blue,
gold, scarlet, and white. He left off drawing birds on branches and drew
them only in flight, smudging in a blue background for the sky.

One day by accident he made a dark smudge in the lower left-hand corner
of his page.

“What is that?” asked his mother.

The little boy looked at it doubtfully for a moment, unwilling to admit
it a blot. Then he laughed.

“Mother, Mother, that is America.” (Stefan heard himself.) “Look!” And
rapidly he drew a bird flying high above the blot, with its head pointed
to the right, away from it.

His mother laughed and hugged him quickly. “Yes, eastward,” she said.

After that all his birds flew one way, and in the left-hand lower corner
there was usually a blob of dark brown or black. Once it was a square,
red, white, and blue.

On her table his mother had a little globe which revolved above a
brass base. Because of this he knew the relative position of two
places--America and Bohemia. Of this country he thought his mother was
unwilling to speak, but its name fell from her lips with sighs, with--as
it now seemed to him--a wild longing. Knowing nothing of it, he had
pictured it a paradise, a land of roses. He seemed to have no knowledge
of why she had left it; but years later his father spoke of finding her
in Boston in the days when he preached there, penniless, searching for
work as a teacher of singing. How she became jettisoned in that--to
her--cold and inhospitable port, Stefan did not know, nor how soon
after their marriage the two moved to the still more alien peninsula of
Michigan.

Into his memories of the room where they painted a shadow constantly
intruded, chilling them, such a shadow, deep and cold, as is cast by an
iceberg. The door would open, and his father’s face, high and white with
ice-blue eyes, would hang above them. Instantly, the man remembered, the
boy would cower like a fledgling beneath the sparrow-hawk, but with as
much distaste as fear in his cringing. The words that followed always
seemed the same--he could reconstruct the scene clearly, but whether it
had occurred once or many times he could not tell. His father’s voice
would snap across the silence like a high, tight-drawn string--

“Still wasting time? Have you nothing better to do? Where is your
sewing? And the boy--why is he not outside playing?”

“This helps me, Henry,” his mother answered, hesitating and low. “Surely
it does no harm. I cannot sew all the time.”

“It is a childish and vain occupation, however, and I disapprove of
the boy being encouraged in it. This of course you know perfectly well.
Under ordinary circumstances I should absolutely forbid it; as it is, I
condemn it.”

“Henry,” his mother’s voice trembled, “don’t ask me to give up his
companionship. It is too cold for me to be outdoors, and perhaps after
the spring I might not be with him.”

This sentence terrified Stefan, who did not know the meaning of it. He
was glad, for once, of his father’s ridicule.

“That is perfectly absurd, the shallow excuse women always make their
husbands for self-indulgence,” said the man, turning to go. “You are a
healthy woman, and would be more so but for idleness.”

His wife called him back, pleadingly. “Please don’t be angry with me,
I’m doing the best I can, Henry--the very best I can.” There was a sweet
foreign blur in her speech, Stefan remembered.

His father paused at the door. “I have shown you your duty, my dear. I
am a minister, and you cannot expect me to condone in my wife habits of
frivolity and idleness which I should be the first to reprimand in my
flock. I expect you to set an example.”

“Oh,” the woman wailed, “when you married me you loved me as I was--”

With a look of controlled annoyance her husband closed the door. Whether
the memory of his father’s words was exact or not, Stefan knew their
effect by heart. The door shut, his mother would begin to cry, quietly
at first, then with deep, catching sobs that seemed to stifle her, so
that she rose and paced the room breathlessly. Then she would hold the
boy to her breast, and slowly the storm would change again to gentle
tears. That day there would be no more painting.

These, his earliest memories, culminated in tragedy. A spring day of
driving rain witnessed the arrival of a gray, plain-faced woman, who
mounted to his mother’s room. The house seemed full of mysterious
bustle. Presently he heard moans, and rushed upstairs thinking his
mother was crying and needed him. The gray-haired woman thrust him from
the bedroom door, but he returned again and again, calling his mother,
until his father emerged from the study downstairs, and, seizing him in
his cold grip, pushed him into the sanctum and turned the key upon him.

Much later, a man whom Stefan knew as their doctor entered the room
with his father. A strange new word passed between them, and, in his
high-strung state, impressed the boy’s memory. It was “chloroform.” The
doctor used the word several times, and his father shook his head.

“No, doctor,” he heard him saying, “we neither of us approve of it.
It is contrary to the intention of God. Besides, you say the case is
normal.”

The doctor seemed to be repeating something about nerves and hysteria.
“Exactly,” his father replied, “and for that, self-control is needed,
and not a drug that reverses the dispensation of the Almighty.”

Both men left the room. Presently the boy heard shrieks. Lying, a grown
man, in his berth, Stefan trembled at the memory of them. He fled
in spirit as he had fled then--out of the window, down the roaring,
swimming street, where he knew not, pursued by a writhing horror. Hours
later, as it seemed, he returned. The shades were pulled down across the
windows of his house. His mother was dead.

Looking back, the man hardly knew how the conviction had come to the
child that his father had killed his mother. A vague comprehension
perhaps of the doctor’s urgings and his father’s denials--a head-shaking
mutter from the nurse--the memory of all his mother’s tears. He was
hardly more than a baby, but he had always feared and disliked his
father--now he hated him, blindly and intensely. He saw him as the cause
not only of his mother’s tears and death, but of all the ugliness in the
life about him. “Bohemia,” he thought, would have been theirs but for
this man. He even blamed him, in a sullen way, for the presence in their
house of a tiny little red and wizened object, singularly ugly, which
the gray-haired woman referred to as his “brother.” Obviously, the thing
was not a brother, and his father must be at the bottom of a conspiracy
to deceive him. The creature made a great deal of noise, and when, by
and by, it went away, and they told him his brother too was dead, he
felt nothing but relief.

So darkened the one bright room in his childhood’s mansion. Obscured, it
left the other chambers dingier than before, and filled with the ache of
loss. Slowly he forgot his mother’s companionship, but not her beauty,
nor her roses, nor “Bohemia,” nor his hatred of the “America” which was
his father’s. To get away from his native town, to leave America, became
the steadfast purpose of his otherwise unstable nature.

The man watched himself through high school. He saw himself still hating
his surroundings and ignoring his schoolfellows--save for an occasional
girl whose face or hair showed beauty. At this time the first step in
his plan of escape shaped itself--he must work hard enough to get to
college, to Ann Arbor, where he had heard there was an art course. For
the boy painted now, in all his spare time, not merely birds, but dogs
and horses, boys and girls, all creatures that had speed, that he could
draw in action, leaping, flying, or running against the wind. Even now
Stefan could warm to the triumph he felt the day he discovered the old
barn where he could summon these shapes undetected. His triumph was over
the arch-enemy, his father--who had forbidden him paint and brushes and
confiscated the poor little fragments of his mother’s work that he had
hoarded. His father destined him for a “fitting” profession--the man
smiled to remember it--and with an impressive air of generosity gave him
the choice of three--the Church, the Law, or Medicine. Hate had given
him too keen a comprehension of his father to permit him the mistake of
argument. He temporized. Let him be sent to college, and there he would
discover where his aptitude lay.

So at last it was decided. A trunk was found, a moth-eaten bag. His
cheap, ill-cut clothes were packed. On a day of late summer he stepped
for the first time upon a train--beautiful to him because it moved--and
was borne southward.

At Ann Arbor he found many new things, rules, and people, but he brushed
them aside like flies, hardly perceiving them; for there, for the first
time, he saw photographs and casts of the world’s great art. The
first sight, even in a poor copy, of the two Discoboli--Diana with her
swinging knee-high tunic--the winged Victory of Samothrace--to see them
first at seventeen, without warning, without a glimmering knowledge
of their existence! And the pictures! Portfolios of Angelo, of the
voluptuous Titian, of the swaying forms of Botticelli’s maidens--trite
enough now--but then!

How long he could have deceived his father as to the real nature of
his interests he did not know. Already there had been complaints of
cut lectures, reprimands, and letters from home. Evading mathematics,
science, and divinity, he read only the English and classic
subjects--because they contained beauty--and drew, copying and creating,
in every odd moment. The storm began to threaten, but it never broke;
for in his second year in college the unbelievable, the miracle,
happened--his father died. They said he had died of pneumonia,
contracted while visiting the sick in the winter blizzards, and they
praised him; but Stefan hardly listened.

One fact alone stood out amid the ugly affairs of death, so that he
regarded and remembered nothing else. He was free--and he had wings!
His father left insurance, and a couple of savings-bank accounts, but
through some fissure of vanity or carelessness in the granite of his
propriety, he left no will. The sums, amounting in all to something over
three thousand dollars, came to Stefan without conditions, guardians,
or other hindrances. The rapture of that discovery, he thought, almost
wiped out his father’s debt to him.

He knew now that not Bohemia, but Paris, was his El Dorado. In wild
haste he made ready for his journey, leaving the rigid trappings of his
home to be sold after him. But his dead father was to give him one more
pang--the scales were to swing uneven at the last. For when he would
have packed the only possession, other than a few necessities, he
planned to carry with him, he found his mother’s picture gone. Dying,
his father, it appeared, had wandered from his bed, detached the
portrait, and with his own hands burnt it in the stove. The motive of
the act Stefan could not comprehend. He only knew that this man had
robbed him of his mother twice. All that remained of her was her wedding
ring, which, drawn from his father’s cash-box, he wore on his little
finger. With bitterness amid his joy he took the train once more,
and saw the lights of the town’s shabby inn blink good-bye behind its
frazzled shades.



III


Byrd had lived for seven years in Paris, wandering on foot in summer
through much of France and Italy. His little patrimony, stretched to the
last sou, and supplemented in later years by the occasional sale of his
work to small dealers, had sufficed him so long. His headquarters were
in a high windowed attic facing north along the rue des Quatre Ermites.
His work had been much admired in the ateliers, but his personal
unpopularity with, the majority of the students had prevented their
admiration changing to a friendship whose demands would have drained his
small resources. “Ninety-nine per cent of the Quarter dislikes Stefan
Byrd,” an Englishman had said, “but one per cent adores him.” Repeated
to Byrd, this utterance was accepted by him with much complacence, for,
even more than the average man, he prided himself upon his faults of
character. His adoration of Paris had not prevented him from criticizing
its denizens; the habits of mental withdrawal and reservation developed
in his boyhood did not desert him in the city of friendship, but he
became more deeply aware of the loneliness which they involved. He
searched eagerly for the few whose qualities of mind or person lifted
them beyond reach of his demon of disparagement, and he found them,
especially among women.

To a minority of that sex he was unusually attractive, and he became a
lover of women, but as subjects for enthusiasm rather than desire. In
passion he was curious but capricious, seldom rapidly roused, nor
long held. In his relations with women emotion came second to mental
stimulation, so that he never sought one whose mere sex was her main
attraction. This saved him from much--he was experienced, but not
degraded. Of love, however, in the fused sense of body, mind, and
spirit, he knew nothing. Perhaps his work claimed too much from him;
at any rate he was too egotistical, too critical and self-sufficient
to give easily. Whether he had received such love he did not
ask himself--it is probable that he had, without knowing it, or
understanding that he had not himself given full measure in return. The
heart of France is practical; with all her ardor Paris had given Byrd
desire and friendship, but not romance.

In his last year, with only a few francs of his inheritance remaining,
Stefan had three pictures in the Beaux Arts. One of these was sold,
but the other two importuned vainly from their hanging places. Enormous
numbers of pictures had been exhibited that year. Every gallery, public
and private, was crowded; Paris was glutted with works of art. Stefan
faced the prospect of speedy starvation if he could not dispose of
another canvas. He had enough for a summer in Brittany, after which, if
the dealers could do nothing for him, he was stranded. Nevertheless,
he enjoyed his holiday light-heartedly, confident that his two large
pictures could not long fail to be appreciated. Returning to Paris
in September, however, he was dismayed to find his favorite dealers
uninterested in his canvases, and disinclined to harbor them longer.
Portraits and landscapes, they told him, were in much demand, but
fantasies, no. His sweeping groups of running, flying figures against
stormy skies, or shoals of mermaids hurrying down lanes of the deep
sea, did not appeal to the fashionable taste of the year. Something
more languorous, more subdued, or, on the other hand, more “chic,” was
demanded.

In a high rage of disgust, Stefan hired a fiacre, and bore his children
defiantly home to their birthplace. Sitting in his studio like a ruffled
bird upon a spoiled hatching, he reviewed the fact that he had 325
francs in the world, that the rent of his attic was overdue, and that
his pictures had never been so unmarketable as now.

At this point his one intimate man friend, Adolph Jensen, a Swede,
appeared as the deus ex machine. He had, he declared, an elder
brother in New York, an art dealer. This brother had just written him,
describing the millionaires who bought his pictures and bric-a-brac.
His shop was crowded with them. Adolph’s brother was shrewd and hard
to please, but let his cher Stefan go himself to New York with his
canvases, impress the brother with his brilliance and the beauty of his
work, and, undoubtedly, his fortune would at once be made. The season in
New York was in the winter. Let Stefan go at once, by the fastest boat,
and be first in the field--he, Adolph, who had a little laid by, would
lend him the necessary money, and would write his brother in advance of
the great opportunity he was sending him.

Ultimately, with a very ill grace on Stefan’s part--who could hardly
be persuaded that even a temporary return to America was preferable to
starvation--it was so arranged. The second-class passage money was 250
francs; for this and incidentals, he had enough, and Adolph lent him
another 250 to tide him over his arrival. He felt unable to afford
adequate crating, so his canvases were unstretched and made into a
roll which he determined should never leave his hands. His clothing was
packed in two bags, one contributed by Adolph. Armed with his roll, and
followed by his enthusiastic friend carrying the bags, Stefan departed
from the Gare Saint-Lazare for Dieppe, Liverpool, and the Lusitania.

Reacting to his friend’s optimism, Stefan had felt confident enough on
leaving Paris, but the discomforts of the journey had soon flattened
his spirits, and now, limp in his berth, he saw the whole adventure
mistaken, unreal, and menacing. In leaving the country of his adoption
for that of his birth, he now felt that he had put himself again in the
clutches of a chimera which had power to wither with its breath all that
was rare and beautiful in his life. Nursing a grievance against himself
and fate, he at last fell asleep, clothed as he was, and forgot himself
for a time in such uneasy slumber as the storm allowed.



IV


The second-class deck was rapidly filling. Chairs, running in a double
row about the deck-house were receiving bundles of women, rugs, and
babies. Energetic youths, in surprising ulsters and sweaters, tramped in
broken file between these chairs and the bulwarks. Older men, in woolen
waistcoats and checked caps, or in the aging black of the small clergy
and professional class, obstructed, with a rooted constancy, the few
clear corners of the deck. Elderly women, with the parchment skin and
dun tailored suit of the “personally conducted” tourist, tied their
heads in veils and ventured into sheltered corners. On the boat-deck a
game of shuffleboard was in progress. Above the main companion-way
the ship’s bands condescended to a little dance music on behalf of the
second class. The Scotchman, clad in inch-thick heather mixture, was
already discussing with all whom he could buttonhole the possibilities
of a ship’s concert. In a word, it was the third day out, the storm was
over, and the passengers were cognizant of life, and of each other.

The Scot had gravitated to a group of men near the smoking-room door,
and having received from his turtle-jawed neighbor of the dinner table,
who was among them, the gift of a cigar, interrogated him as to musical
gifts. “I shall recite mesel’,” he explained complacently, sucking in
his smoke. “Might we hope for a song, now, from you? I’ve asked yon
artist chap, but he says he doesna’ sing.”

His neighbor also disclaimed talents. “Sorry I can’t oblige you. Who
wants to hear a man sing, anyway? Where are your girls?”

“There seems to be a singular absence of bonny girrls on board,” replied
the Scot, twisting his erect forelock reflectively.

“Have you asked the English girl?” suggested a tall, rawboned New
Englander.

“Which English girrl?” demanded the Scot.

“Listen to him--which! Why, that one over there, you owl.”

The Scotchman’s eyes followed the gesture toward a group of children
surrounding a tall girl who stood by the rail on the leeward side. She
was facing into the wind toward the smoking-room door.

“Eh, mon,” said the Scot, “till now I’d only seen the back of yon young
woman,” and he promptly strode down the deck to ask, and receive, the
promise of a song.

Stefan Byrd, after a silent breakfast eaten late to avoid his table
companions, had just come on deck. It had been misty earlier, but now
the sun was beginning to break through in sudden glints of brightness.
The deck was still damp, however, and the whole prospect seemed to
the emerging Stefan cheerless in the extreme. His eyes swept the gray,
huddled shapes upon the chairs, the knots of gossiping men, the clumsy,
tramping youths, with the same loathing that the whole voyage had
hitherto inspired in him. The forelocked Scot, tweed cap in hand,
was crossing the deck. “There goes the brute, busy with his infernal
concert,” he thought, watching balefully. Then he actually seemed to
point, like a dog, limbs fixed, eyes set, his face, with its salient
nose, thrust forward.

The Scot was speaking to a tall, bareheaded girl, about whom half a
dozen nondescript children crowded. She was holding herself against
the wind, and from her long, clean limbs her woolen dress was whipped,
rippling. The sun had gleamed suddenly, and under the shaft of
brightness her hair shone back a golden answer. Her eyes, hardly raised
to those of the tall Scotchman, were wide, gray, and level--the eyes of
Pallas Athene; her features, too, were goddess-like. One hand upon the
bulwarks, she seemed, even as she listened, to be poised for flight,
balancing to the sway of the ship.

Stefan exhaled a great breath of joy. There was something beautiful
upon the ship, after all. He found and lit a cigarette, and squaring
his shoulders to the deckhouse wall, leaned back the more comfortably
to indulge what he took to be his chief mission--the art of perceiving
beauty.

The girl listened in silence till the Scotchman had finished speaking,
and replied briefly and quietly, inclining her head. The Scot, jotting
something in a pocket notebook, left her with an air of elation, and she
turned again to the children. One, a toddler, was picking at her
skirt. She bent toward him a smile which gave Stefan almost a stab of
satisfaction, it was so gravely sweet, so fitted to her person. She
stooped lower to speak to the baby, and the artist saw the free,
rhythmic motion which meant developed, and untrammeled muscles.
Presently the children, wriggling with joy, squatted in a circle,
and the girl sank to the deck in their midst with one quick and easy
movement, curling her feet under her. There proceeded an absurd game,
involving a slipper and much squealing, whose intricacies she directed
with unruffled ease.

Suddenly the wind puffed the hat of one of the small boys from his
head, carrying it high above their reach. In an instant the girl was up,
springing to her feet unaided by hand or knee. Reaching out, she caught
the hat as it descended slantingly over the bulwarks, and was down again
before the child’s clutching hands had left his head.

A mother, none other than the prominently busted lady of Stefan’s table,
blew forward with admiring cries of gratitude. Other matrons, vocative,
surrounded the circle, momentarily cutting off his view. He changed his
position to the bulwarks beside the group. There, a yard or two from the
gleaming head, he perched on the rail, feet laced into its supports, and
continued his concentrated observation.

“See yon chap,” remarked the Scot from the smoking-room door to which
his talent-seeking round of the deck had again brought him. “He’s fair
staring the eyes oot o’his head!”

“Exceedingly annoying to the young lady, I should imagine,” returned his
table neighbor, the prim minister, who had joined the group.

“Hoots, she willna’ mind the likes of him,” scoffed the other, with his
booming laugh.

And indeed she did not. Oblivious equally of Byrd and of her more
distant watchers, the English girl passed from “Hunt the Slipper” to “A
Cold and Frosty Morning,” and from that to story-telling, as absorbed as
her small companions, or as her watcher-in-chief.

Gradually the sun broke out, the water danced, huddled shapes began to
rise in their chairs, disclosing unexpected spots of color--a bright tie
or a patterned blouse--animation increased on all sides, and the ring
about the storyteller became three deep.

After a time a couple of perky young stewards appeared with huge iron
trays, containing thick white cups half full of chicken broth, and piles
of biscuits. Upon this, the pouter-pigeon lady bore off her small son to
be fed, other mothers did the same, and the remaining children, at the
lure of food, sidled off of their own accord, or sped wildly, whooping
out promises to return. For the moment, the story-teller was alone.
Stefan, seeing the Scot bearing down upon her with two cups of broth
in his hand and purpose in his eye, wakened to the danger just in time.
Throwing his cigarette overboard, he sprang lightly between her and the
approaching menace.

“Won’t you be perfectly kind, and come for a walk?” he asked, stooping
to where she sat. The girl looked up into a pair of green-gold eyes set
in a brown, eager face. The face was lighted with a smile of dazzling
friendliness, and surmounted by an uncovered head of thick, brown-black
hair. Slowly her own eyes showed an answering smile.

“Thank you, I should love to,” she said, and rising, swung off beside
him, just in time--as Stefan maneuvered it--to avoid seeing the Scot and
his carefully balanced offering. Discomfited, that individual consoled
himself with both cups of broth, and bided his time.

“My name is Stefan Byrd. I am a painter, going to America to sell some
pictures. I’m twenty-six. What is your name?” said Stefan, who never
wasted time in preliminaries and abhorred small talk--turning his
brilliant happy smile upon her.

“To answer by the book,” she replied, smiling too, “my name is Mary
Elliston. I’m twenty-five. I do odd jobs, and am going to America to try
to find one to live on.”

“What fun!” cried Stefan, with a faunlike skip of pleasure, as they
turned onto the emptier windward deck. “Then we’re both seeking our
fortunes.”

“Living, rather than fortune, in my case, I’m afraid.”

“Well, of course you don’t need a fortune, you carry so much gold with
you,” and he glanced at her shining hair.

“Not negotiable, unluckily,” she replied, taking his compliment as he
had paid it, without a trace of self-consciousness.

“Like the sunlight,” he answered. “In fact,”--confidentially--“I’m
afraid you’re a thief; you’ve imprisoned a piece of the sun, which
should belong to us all. However, I’m not going to complain to the
authorities, I like the result too much. You don’t mind my saying that,
do you?” he continued, sure that she did not. “You see, I’m a painter.
Color means everything to me--that and form.”

“One never minds hearing nice things, I think,” she replied, with a
frank smile. They were swinging up and down the windward deck, and as he
talked he was acutely aware of her free movements beside him, and of
the blow of her skirts to leeward. Her hair, too closely pinned to fly
loose, yet seemed to spring from her forehead with the urge of pinioned
wings. Life radiated from her, he thought, with a steady, upward
flame--not fitfully, as with most people.

“And one doesn’t mind questions, does one--from real people?” he
continued. “I’m going to ask you lots more, and you may ask me as many
as you like. I never talk to people unless they are worth talking to,
and then I talk hard. Will you begin, or shall I? I have at least two
hundred things to ask.”

“It is my turn, though, I think.” She accepted him on his own ground,
with an open and natural friendliness.

“I have only one at the moment, which is, ‘Why haven’t we talked
before?’” and she glanced with a quiet humorousness at the few
unpromising samples of the second cabin who obstructed the windward
deck.

“Oh, good for you!” he applauded, “aren’t they loathly!”

“Oh, no, all right, only not stimulating--”

“And we are,” he finished for her, “so that, obviously, your question
has only one answer. We haven’t talked before because I haven’t seen
you before, and I haven’t seen you because I have been growling in my
cabin--voilà tout!”

“Oh, never growl--it’s such a waste of time,” she answered. “You’ll see,
the second cabin isn’t bad.”

“It certainly isn’t, _now_,” rejoiced Stefan. “My turn for a question.
Have you relatives, or are you, like myself, alone in the world?”

“Quite alone,” said Mary, “except for a married sister, who hardly
counts, as she’s years older than I, and fearfully preoccupied with
husband, houses, and things.” She paused, then added, “She hasn’t any
babies, or I might have stayed to look after them, but she has lots of
money and ‘position to keep up,’ and so forth.”

“I see her,” said Stefan. “Obviously, she takes after the _other_
parent. You are alone then. Next question--”

“Oh, isn’t it my turn again?” Mary interposed, smilingly.

“It is, but I ask you to waive it. You see, questions about _me_ are so
comparatively trivial. What sort of work do you do?”

“Well, I write a little,” she replied, “and I’ve been a governess and
a companion. But I’m really a victim of the English method of
educating girls. That’s my chief profession--being a monument to its
inefficiency,” and she laughed, low and bell-like.

“Tell me about that--I’ve never lived in England,” he questioned, with
eager interest. (“And oh, Pan and Apollo, her voice!” he thought.)

“Well,” she continued, “they bring us up so nicely that we can’t do
anything--except _be_ nice. I was brought up in a cathedral town,
right in the Close, and my dear old Dad, who was a doctor, attended the
Bishop, the Dean, and all the Chapter. Mother would not let us go to
boarding-school, for fear of ‘influences’--so we had governesses at
home, who taught us nothing we didn’t choose to learn. My sister Isobel
married ‘well,’ as they say, while I was still in the schoolroom. Her
husband belongs to the county--”

“What’s that?” interrupted Stefan.

“Don’t you know what the county is? How delightful! The ‘county’ is
the county families--landed gentry--very ancient and swagger and all
that--much more so than the titled people often. It was very great
promotion for the daughter of one of the town to marry into the
county--or would have been except that Mother was county also.” She
spoke with mock solemnity.

“How delightfully picturesque and medieval!” exclaimed Stefan. “The
Guelphs and Ghibellines, eh?”

“Yes,” Mary replied, “only there is no feud, and it doesn’t seem so
romantic when you’re in it. The man my sister married I thought was
frightfully boring except for his family place, and being in the army,
which is rather decent. He talks,” she smiled, “like a phonograph with
only one set of records.”

“Wondrous Being--Winged Goddess--” chanted Stefan, stopping before her
and apostrophizing the sky or the boat-deck--“a goddess with a sense of
humor!” And he positively glowed upon her.

“About the first point I know nothing,” she laughed, walking on again
beside him, “but for the second,” and her face became a little grave,
“you have to have some humor if you are a girl in Lindum, or you go
under.”

“Tell me, tell me all about it,” he urged. “I’ve never met an English
girl before, _nor_ a goddess, and I’m so interested!”

They rested for a time against the bulwarks. The wind was dropping, and
the spume seethed against the black side of the ship without force from
the waves to throw it up to them in spray. They looked down into deep
blue and green water glassing a sky warm now, and friendly, in which
high white cumuli sailed slowly, like full-rigged ships all but
becalmed.

“It is a very commonplace story with us,” Mary began. “Mother died a
little time after Isobel married, and Dad kept my governess on. I begged
to go to Girton, or any other college he liked, but he wouldn’t hear of
it. Said he wanted a womanly daughter.” She smiled rather ruefully. “Dad
was doing well with his practice, for a small-town doctor, and had a
good deal saved, and a little of mother’s money. He wanted to have more,
so he put it all into rubber. You’ve heard about rubber, haven’t you?”
 she asked, turning to Stefan.

“Not a thing,” he smiled.

“Well, every one in England was putting money into rubber last year, and
lots of people did well, but lots--didn’t. Poor old Dad didn’t--he lost
everything. It wouldn’t have really mattered--he had his profession--but
the shock killed him, I think; that and being lonely without Mother.”
 She paused a moment, looking into the water. “Anyhow, he died, and there
was nothing for me to do except to begin earning my living without any
of the necessary equipment.”

“What about the brother-in-law?” asked Stefan.

“Oh, yes, I could have gone to them--I wasn’t in danger of starvation.
But,” she shook her head emphatically, “a poor relation! I couldn’t have
stood that.”

“Well,” he turned squarely toward her, his elbow on the rail, “I can’t
help asking this, you know; where were the bachelors of Lindum?”

She smiled, still in her friendly, unembarrassed way.

“I know what you mean, of course. The older men say it quite openly in
England.--‘Why don’t a nice gel like you get married?’--It’s rather a
long story.” (“Has she been in love?” Stefan wondered.) “First of all,
there are very few young men of one’s own sort in Lindum; most of them
are in the Colonies. Those there are--one or two lawyers, doctors, and
squires’ sons--are frightfully sought after.” She made a wry face.
“Too much competition for them, altogether, and--” she seemed to take a
plunge before adding--“I’ve never been successful at bargain counters.”

He turned that over for a moment. “I see,” he said. “At least I should
do, if it weren’t for it being you. Look here, Miss Elliston, honestly
now, fair and square--” he smiled confidingly at her--“you’re not asking
me to believe that the competition in your ease didn’t appear in the
other sex?”

“Mr. Byrd,” she answered straightly, “in my world girls have to
have more than a good appearance.” She shrugged her shoulders rather
disdainfully. “I had no money, and I had opinions.”

(“She’s been in love--slightly,” he decided.) “Opinions,” he echoed,
“what kind? Mustn’t one have any in Lindum?”

“Young girls mustn’t--only those they are taught,” she replied. “I read
a good deal, I sympathized with the Liberals. I was even--” her voice
dropped to mock horror--“a Suffragist!”

“I’ve heard about that,” he interposed eagerly, “though the French women
don’t seem to care much. You wanted to vote? Well, why ever not?”

She gave him the brightest smile he had yet received.

“Oh, how nice of you!” she cried. “You really mean that?”

“Couldn’t see it any other way. I’ve always liked and believed in women
more than men. I learnt that in childhood,” he added, frowning.

“Splendid! I’m so glad,” she responded. “You see, with our men it’s
usually the other way round. My ideas were a great handicap at home.”

“So you decided to leave?”

“Yes; I went to London and got a job teaching some children sums and
history--two hours every morning. In the afternoons I worked at stories
for the magazines, and placed a few, but they pay an unknown writer
horribly badly. I lived with an old lady as companion for two months,
but that was being a poor relation minus the relationship--I couldn’t
stand it. I joined the Suffragists in London--not the Militants--I don’t
quite see their point of view--and marched in a parade. Brother-in-law
heard of it, and wrote me I could not expect anything from them unless I
stopped it.” She laughed quietly.

Stefan flushed. He pronounced something--conclusively--in French.
Then--“Don’t ask me to apologize, Miss Elliston.”

“I won’t,” reassuringly. “I felt rather like that, too. I wrote that I
didn’t expect anything as it was. Then I sat down and thought about the
whole question of women in England and their chances. I had a hundred
pounds and a few ornaments of Mother’s. I love children, but I didn’t
want to be a governess. I wanted to stand alone in some place where my
head wouldn’t be pushed down every time I tried to raise it. I believed
in America people wouldn’t say so often, ‘Why doesn’t a nice girl like
you get married?’ so I came, and here I am. That’s the whole story--a
very humdrum one.”

“Yes, here you are, thank God!” proclaimed Stefan devoutly. “What
magnificent pluck, and how divine of you to tell me it all! You’ve saved
me from suicide, almost. These people immolate me.”

“How delightfully he exaggerates!” she thought.

“What thousands of things we can talk about,” he went on in a burst of
enthusiasm. “What a perfectly splendid time we are going to have!” He
all but warbled.

“I hope so,” she answered, smilingly, “but there goes the gong, and I’m
ravenous.”

“Dinner!” he cried scornfully; “suet pudding, all those horrible
people--you want to leave this--?” He swept his arm over the glittering
water.

“I don’t, but I want my dinner,” she maintained.

This checked his spirits for a moment; then enlightenment seemed to
burst upon him.

“Glorious creature!” he apostrophized her. “She must be fed, or she
would not glow with such divine health! That gong was for the first
table, and I’m not in the least hungry. Nevertheless, we will eat, here
and now.”

She demurred, but he would have his way, demanding it in celebration of
their meeting. He found the deck steward, tipped him, and exacted the
immediate production of two dinners. He ensconced Miss Elliston in some
one else’s chair, conveniently placed, settled her with some one else’s
cushions, which he chose from the whole deck for their color--a clean
blue--and covered her feet with the best rug he could find. She accepted
his booty with only slight remonstrance, being too frankly engaged by
his spirits to attempt the role of extinguisher. He settled himself
beside her, and they lunched delightedly, like children, on chops and a
rice pudding.



V


It is not too easy to appropriate a pretty girl on board ship. There are
always young men who expect the voyage to offer a flirtation, and who
spend much ingenuity in heading each other off from the companionship
of the most attractive damsels. But the “English girl” was not in the
“pretty” class. She was a beauty, of the grave and pure type which
implies character. All the children knew her; all the women and men
watched her; but few of the latter had ventured to speak to her, even
before Stefan claimed her as his monopoly. For this he did, from the
moment of their first encounter. To him nobody on the ship existed but
her, and he assumed the right to show it.

He had trouble from only two people. One was the Scotchman, McEwan,
whose hide seemed impervious to rebuffs, and who would charge into
a conversation with the weight of a battering ram, planting himself
implacably in a chair beside Miss Elliston, and occasionally reducing
even Stefan to silence. The other was Miss Elliston herself. She was
kind, she was friendly, she was boyishly frank. But occasionally she
would withdraw into herself, and sometimes would disappear altogether
into her cabin, to be found again, after long search, telling stories
to some of the children. On such occasions Stefan roamed the decks and
saloons very like a hungry wolf, snapping with intolerable rudeness at
any one who spoke to him. This, however, few troubled to do, for he was
cordially disliked, both for his own sake and because of his success
with Miss Elliston. That success the ship could not doubt. Though she
was invariably polite to every one, she walked and talked only with
him or the children. She was, of course, above the social level of
the second-class; but this the English did not resent, because they
understood it, nor the Americans, because they were unaware of it. On
the other hand, English and Americans alike resented Byrd, whom
they could neither place nor understand. These two became the most
conspicuous people in the cabin, and their every movement was eagerly
watched and discussed, though both remained entirely oblivious to it.
Stefan was absorbed in the girl, that was clear; but how far she might
be in him the cabin could not be sure. She brightened when he appeared.
She liked him, smiled at him, and listened to him. She allowed him to
monopolize her. But she never sought him out, never snubbed McEwan for
his intrusions into their tête-à-têtes, seemed not to be “managing” the
affair in any way. Used to more obvious methods, most of the company
were puzzled. They did not understand that they were watching
the romance of a woman who added perfect breeding to her racial
self-control. Mary Elliston would never wear her feelings nakedly, nor
allow them to ride her out of hand.

Not so Stefan, who was, as yet unknowingly, experiencing romantic love
for the first time. This girl was the most glorious creature he had ever
known, and the most womanly. Her sex was the very essence of her; she
had no need to wear it like a furbelow. She was utterly different from
the feminine, adroit women he had known; there was something cool and
deep about her like a pool, and withal winged, like the birds that fly
over it. She was marvelous--marvelous! he thought. What a find!

His spirit flung itself, kneeling, to drink at the pool--his imagination
reached out to touch the wings. For the first time in his life he was
too deeply enthralled to question himself or her. He gloried in her
openly, conspicuously.

On the morning of the fifth day they had their first dispute. They
were sitting on the boat deck, aft, watching the wake of the ship as it
twisted like an uncertain white serpent. Stefan was sketching her, as he
had done already several times when he could get her apart from hovering
children--he could not endure being overlooked as he worked. “They chew
gum in my ear, and breathe down my neck,” he would explain.

He had almost completed an impression of her head against the sky, with
a flying veil lifting above it, when a shadow fell across the canvas,
and the voice of McEwan blared out a pleased greeting.

“Weel, here ye are!” exclaimed that mountain of tweed, lowering himself
onto a huge iron cleat between which and the bulwarks the two were
sitting cross-legged. “I was speerin’ where ye’d both be.”

“Good Lord, McEwan, can’t you speak English?” exclaimed Byrd, with quick
exasperation.

“I hae to speak the New York lingo when I get back there, ye ken,”
 replied the Scot with imperturbable good humor, “so I like to use a wee
bit o’ the guid Scotch while I hae the chance.”

“A wee bit!” snorted Stefan, and “Good morning, Mr. McEwan, isn’t it
beautiful up here?” interposed Miss Elliston, pleasantly.

“It’s grand,” replied the Scotchman, “and ye look bonnie i’ the sun,” he
added simply.

“So Mr. Byrd thinks. You see he has just been painting me,” she answered
smilingly, indicating, with a touch of mischief, the drawing that Stefan
had hastily slipped between them.

The Scotchman stooped, and, before Stefan could stop him, had the sketch
in his hand.

“It’s a guid likeness,” he pronounced, “though I dinna care mesel’
for yon new-fangled way o’ slappin’ on the color. I’ll mak’ye a
suggestion--” But he got no further, for Stefan, incoherent with
irritation, snatched the sketch from his hands and broke out at him in
a stammering torrent of French of the Quarter, which neither of his
listeners, he was aware, could understand. Having safely consigned all
the McEwans of the universe to pig-sties and perdition, he walked off
to cool himself, the sketch under his arm, leaving both his hearers
incontinently dumb.

McEwan recovered first. “The puir young mon suffers wi’ his temper,
there’s nae dooting,” said he, addressing himself to the task of
entertaining his rather absent-minded companion.

His advantage lasted but a few moments, however. Byrd, repenting his
strategic error, returned, and in despair of other methods succeeded in
summoning a candid smile.

“Look here, McEwan,” said he, with the charm of manner he knew so well
how to assume, “don’t mind my irritability; I’m always like that when
I’m painting and any one interrupts--it sends me crazy. The light’s just
right, and it won’t be for long. I can’t possibly paint with anybody
round. Won’t you, like a good fellow, get out and let me finish?”

His frankness was wonderfully disarming, but in any case, the Scot was
always good nature’s self.

“Aye, I ken your nairves trouble ye,” he replied, lumbering to his feet,
“and I’ll no disobleege ye, if the leddy will excuse me?” turning to
her.

Miss Elliston, who had not looked at Stefan since his outburst, murmured
her consent, and the Scot departed.

Stefan exploded into a sigh of relief. “Thank heaven! Isn’t he
maddening?” he exclaimed, reassembling his brushes. “Isn’t he the most
fatuous idiot that ever escaped from his native menagerie? Did you hear
him commence to criticize my work? The oaf! I’m afraid--” glancing at
her face--“that I swore at him, but he deserved it for butting in like
that, and he couldn’t understand what I said.” His tone was slightly,
very slightly, apologetic.

“I don’t think that’s the point, is it?” asked the girl, in a very cool
voice. She was experiencing her first shock of disappointment in him,
and felt unhappy; but she only appeared critical.

“What do you mean?” he asked, dashed.

“Whether he understood or not.” She was still looking away from him.
“It was so unkind and unnecessary to break out at the poor man like
that--and,” her voice dropped, “so horribly rude.”

“Well,” Stefan answered uncomfortably, “I can’t be polite to people like
that. I don’t even try.”

“No, I know you don’t. That’s what I don’t like,” Mary replied, even
more coldly. She meant that it hurt her, obscured the ideal she was
constructing of him, but she could not have expressed that.

He painted for a few minutes in a silence that grew more and more
constrained. Then he threw down his brush. “Well, I can’t paint,” he
exclaimed in an aggrieved tone, “I’m absolutely out of tune. You’ll have
to realize I’m made like that. I can’t change, can’t hide my real self.”
 As she still did not speak, he added, with an edge to his voice, “I may
as well go away; there’s nothing I can do here.” He stood up.

“Perhaps you had better,” she replied, very quietly. Her throat was
aching with hurt, so that she could hardly speak, but to him she
appeared indifferent.

“Good-bye,” he exclaimed shortly, and strode off.

For some time she remained where he had left her, motionless. She felt
very tired, without knowing why. Presently she went to her cabin and lay
down.

Mary did not see Stefan again until after the midday meal, though by the
time she appeared on deck he had been waiting and searching for her for
an hour. When he found her it was in an alcove of the lounge, screened
from the observation of the greater part of the room. She was reading,
but as he came toward her she looked up and closed her book. Before he
spoke both knew that their relation to each other had subtly changed.
They were self-conscious; the hearts of both beat. In a word, their
quarrel had taught them their need of each other.

He took her hand and spoke rather breathlessly.

“I’ve been looking for you for hours. Thank God you’re here. I was
abominable to you this morning. Can you possibly forgive me? I’m so
horribly lonely without you.” He was extraordinarily handsome as he
stood before her, looking distressed, but with his eyes shining.

“Of course I can,” she murmured, while a weight seemed to roll off her
heart--and she blushed, a wonderful pink, up to the eyes.

He sat beside her, still holding her hand. “I must say it. You are the
most beautiful thing in the world. The--most--beautiful!” They looked at
each other.

“Oh!” he exclaimed with a long breath, jumping up again and half
pulling her after him in a revulsion of relief, “come on deck and let’s
walk--and talk--or,” he laughed excitedly, “I don’t know what I shall do
next!”

She obeyed, and they almost sped round the deck, he looking spiritually
intoxicated, and she, calm by contrast, but with an inward glow as
though behind her face a rose was on fire. The deck watched them and
nodded its head. There was no doubt about it now, every one agreed. Bets
began to circulate on the engagement. A fat salesman offered two to one
it was declared before they picked up the Nantucket light. The pursy
little passenger snapped an acceptance. “I’ll take you. Here’s a dollar
says the lady is too particular.” The high-bosomed matron confided
her fears for the happiness of the girl, “who has been real kind to
Johnnie,” to the spinster who had admired Stefan the first day out.
Gossip was universal, but through it all the two moved radiant and
oblivious.



VI


McEwan had succeeded in his fell design of getting up a concert, and the
event was to take place that night. Miss Elliston, who had promised to
sing, went below a little earlier than usual to dress for dinner. Byrd
had tried to dissuade her from taking part, but she was firm.

“It’s a frightful bother,” she said, “but I can’t get out of it. I
promised Mr. McEwan, you know.”

“I won’t say any further what I think of McEwan,” replied Stefan,
laughing. “Instead, I’ll heap coals of fire on him by not trying any
longer to persuade you to turn him down.”

As she left, Stefan waved her a gay “Grand succès!” but he was already
prey to an agony of nervousness. Suppose she didn’t make a success,
or--worse still--suppose she _did_ make a success--by singing bad music!
Suppose she lacked art in what she did! _She_ was perfection; he was
terrified lest her singing should not be. His fastidious brain tortured
him, for it told him he would love her less completely if she failed.

Like most artists, Stefan adored music, and, more than most, understood
it. Suppose--just suppose--she were to sing Tosti’s “Good-bye!” He
shuddered. Yet, if she did not sing something of that sort, it would
fall flat, and she would be disappointed. So he tortured himself all
through dinner, at which he did not see her, for he had been unable to
get his place changed to the first sitting with hers. He longed to keep
away from the concert, yet knew that he could not. At last, leaving his
dessert untouched, he sought refuge in his cabin.

The interval that must be dragged through while the stewards cleared the
saloon Stefan occupied in routing from Adolph’s huge old Gladstone his
one evening suit. He had not at first dreamed of dressing, but many of
the other men had done so, and he determined that for her sake he must
play the game at least to that extent. Byrd added the scorn of the
artist to the constitutional dislike of the average American for
conventional evening dress. His, however, was as little conventional
as possible, and while he nervously adjusted it he could not help
recognizing that it was exceedingly becoming. He tore a tie and
destroyed two collars, however, before the result satisfied him, and
his nerves were at leaping pitch when staccato chords upon the piano
announced that the concert had begun. He found a seat in the farthest
corner of the saloon, and waited, penciling feverish circles upon the
green-topped table to keep his hands steady.

Mary Elliston’s name was fourth on the program, and came immediately
after McEwan’s, who was down for a “recitation.” Stefan managed to sit
through the piano-solo and a song by a seedy little English baritone
about “the rolling deep.” But when the Scot began to blare out, with
tremendous vehemence, what purported to be a poem by Sir Walter Scott,
Stefan, his forehead and hands damp with horror, could endure no more,
and fled, pushing his way through the crowd at the door. He climbed to
the deck and waited there, listening apprehensively. When the scattered
applause warned him that the time for Mary’s song had come, he found
himself utterly unable to face the saloon again. Fortunately the main
companionway gave on a well opening directly over the saloon; and it was
from the railing of this well that Stefan saw Mary, just as the piano
sounded the opening bars.

She stood full under the brilliant lights in a gown of white chiffon,
low in the neck, which drooped and swayed about her in flowing lines of
grace. Her hair gleamed; her arms showed slim, white, but strong. And
“Oh, my golden girl!” his heart cried to her, leaping. Her lips parted,
and quite easily, in full, clear tones that struck the very center of
the notes, she began to sing. “Good girl, _good girl!”_ he thought. For
what she sang was neither sophisticated nor obvious--was indeed the only
thing that could at once have satisfied him and pleased her audience.
“Under the greenwood tree--” the notes came gay and sweet. Then, “Fear
no more the heat o’ the sun--” and the tones darkened. Again, “Oh,
mistress mine--” they pulsed with happy love. Three times Mary sang--the
immortal ballads of Shakespeare--simply, but with sure art and feeling.
As the last notes ceased, “Love’s a stuff will not endure,” and the
applause broke out, absolute peace flooded Stefan’s heart.

In a dream he waited for her at the saloon door, held her coat, and
mounted beside her to the boat deck. Not until they stood side by side
at the rail, and she turned questioningly toward him, did he speak.

“You were perfect, without flaw. I can’t tell you--” he broke off,
wordless.

“I’m so glad--glad that you were pleased,” she whispered.

They leant side by side over the bulwarks. They were quite alone, and
the moon was rising. There are always liberating moments at sea when
the spirit seems to grow--to expand to the limits of sky and water,
to become one with them. Such a moment was theirs, the perfect hour of
moonrise on a calm and empty sea. The horizon was undefined. They seemed
suspended in limitless ether, which the riding moon pierced with a swale
of living brightness, like quicksilver. They heard nothing save the
hidden throb and creak of the ship, mysterious yet familiar, as the
night itself. It was the perfect time. Stefan turned to her. Her face
and hair shone silver, glorified. They looked at each other, their eyes
strange in the moonlight. They seemed to melt together. His arms were
round her, and they kissed.

A little later he began to talk, and it was of his young mother, dead
years ago in Michigan, that he spoke. “You are the only woman who has
ever reminded me of her, Mary. The only one whose beauty has been
so divinely kind. All my life has been lonely between losing her and
finding you.”

This thrilled her with an ache of mother-pity. She saw him
misunderstood, unhappy, and instantly her heart wrapped him about with
protection. In that moment his faults were all condoned--she saw them
only as the fruits of his loneliness.

Later, “Mary,” he said, “yours is the most beautiful of all names. Poets
and painters have glorified it in every age, but none as I shall do”;
and he kissed her adoringly.

Again, he held his cheek to hers. “Beloved,” he whispered, “when we are
married” (even as he spoke he marveled at himself that the word should
come so naturally) “I want to paint you as you really are--a goddess of
beauty and love.”

She thrilled in response to him, half fearful, yet exalted. She was his,
utterly.

As they clung together he saw her winged, a white flame of love,
a goddess elusive even in yielding. He aspired, and saw her,
Cytheria-like, shining above yet toward him. But her vision, leaning on
his heart, was of those two still and close together, nestling beneath
Love’s protecting wings, while between their hands she felt the fingers
of a little child.



VII


That night Mary and Stefan spoke only of love, but the morning brought
plans. Before breakfast they were together, pacing the sun-swept deck.

Mary took it for granted that their engagement would continue till
Stefan’s pictures were sold, till they had found work, till their
future was in some way arranged. Stefan, who was enormously under her
influence, and a trifle, in spite of his rapture, in awe of her sweet
reasonableness, listened at first without demur. After breakfast,
however, which they ate together, he occupying the place of a late
comer at her table after negotiation with the steward, his impatient
temperament asserted itself in a burst.

“Dearest one,” he cried, when they were comfortably settled in their
favorite corner of the boat deck, “listen! I’m sure we’re all wrong.
I know we are. Why should you and I--” and he took her hand--“wait and
plan and sour ourselves as little people do? We’ve both got to live,
haven’t we? And we are going to live; you don’t expect we shall starve,
do you?”

She shook her head, smiling.

“Well, then,” triumphantly, “why shouldn’t we live together? Why, it
would be absurd not to, even from the base and practical point of view.
Think of the saving! One rent instead of two--one everything instead of
two!” His arm gave her a quick pressure.

“Yes, but--” she demurred.

He turned on her suddenly. “You don’t want to wait for
trimmings--clothes, orange blossoms, all that stuff--do you?” he
expostulated.

“No, of course not, foolish one,” she laughed.

“Well, then, where’s the difficulty?” exultingly.

She could not answer--could hardly formulate the answer to herself.
Deep in her being she seemed to feel an urge toward waiting, toward
preparation, toward the collection of she knew not what small household
gods. It was as if she wished to make fair a place to receive her
sacrament of love. But this she could not express, could not speak to
him of the vision of the tiny hand.

“You’re brave, Mary. Your courage was one of the things I most loved in
you. Let’s be brave together!” His smile was irresistibly happy.

She could not bear that he should doubt her courage, and she wanted
passionately not to take that smile from his face. She began to weaken.

“Mary,” he cried, fired by the instinct to make the courage of their
mating artistically perfect. “I’ve told you about my pictures. I know
they are good--I know I can sell them in New York. But let’s not wait
for that. Let’s bind ourselves together before we put our fortunes to
the touch! Then we shall be one, whatever happens. We shall have that.”
 He kissed her, seeing her half won.

“You’ve got five hundred dollars, I’ve only got fifty, but the pictures
are worth thousands,” he went on rapidly. “We can have a wonderful week
in the country somewhere, and have plenty left to live on while I’m
negotiating the sale. Even at the worst,” he exulted, “I’m strong. I can
work at anything--with you! I don’t mind asking you to spend your money,
sweetheart, because I _know_ my things are worth it five times over.”

She was rather breathless by this time. He pressed his advantage,
holding her close.

“Beloved, I’ve found you. Suppose I lost you! Suppose, when you were
somewhere in the city without me, you got run over or something.”
 Even as she was, strained to him, she saw the horror that the thought
conjured in his eyes, and touched his cheek with her hand, protectingly.

“No,” he pleaded, “don’t let us run any risks with our wonderful
happiness, don’t let us ever leave each other!” He looked imploringly at
her.

She saw that for Stefan what he urged was right. Her love drew her to
him, and upon its altar she laid her own retarding instinct in happy
sacrifice. She drew his head to hers, and holding his face in the cup
of her hands, kissed him with an almost solemn tenderness. This was her
surrender. She took upon herself the burden of his happiness, even
as she yielded to her own. It was a sacrament. He saw it only as a
response.

Later in the day Stefan sought out the New England spinster, Miss Mason,
who sat opposite to him at table. He had entirely ignored her hitherto,
but he remembered hearing her talk familiarly about New York, and his
male instinct told him that in her he would find a ready confidante.
Such she proved, and a most flattered and delighted one. Moreover she
proffered all the information and assistance he desired. She had moved
from Boston five years ago, she said, and shared a flat with a widowed
sister uptown. If they docked that night Miss Elliston could spend it
with them. The best and cheapest places to go to near the city, she
assured him, were on Long Island. She mentioned one where she had spent
a month, a tiny village of summer bungalows on the Sound, with one small
but comfortable inn. Questioned further, she was sure this inn would be
nearly empty, but not closed, now in mid-September. She was evidently
practical, and pathetically eager to help.

Unwilling to stay his plans, however, on such a feeble prop, Byrd hunted
up the minister, whom he took to be a trifle less plebeian than most of
the men, and obtained from him an endorsement of Miss Mason’s views. The
man of God, though stiff, was too conscientious to be unforgiving, and
on receiving Stefan’s explanation congratulated him sincerely, if with
restraint. He did not know Shadeham personally, he explained, but he
knew similar places, and doubted if Byrd could do better.

Mary, all enthusiasm now that her mind was made up, was enchanted at the
prospect of a tiny seaside village for their honeymoon. In gratitude she
made herself charming to Miss Mason until Stefan, impatient every moment
that he was not with her, bore her away.

They docked at eight o’clock that night. Stefan saw Mary and Miss Mason
to the door of their flat, and would have lingered with them, but they
were both tired with the long process of customs inspection. Moreover,
Mary said that she wanted to sleep well so as to look “very nice” for
him to-morrow.

“Imperturbable divinity!” admired Stefan, in mock amazement. “I shall
not sleep at all. I am far too happy; but to you, what is a mere
marriage?”

The jest hurt her a little, and seeing it, he was quick with loverlike
recompense. They parted on a note of deep tenderness. He lay sleepless,
as he had prophesied, at the nearest cheap hotel, companioned by visions
at once eagerly masculine and poetically exalted. Mary slept fitfully,
but sweetly.

The next morning they were married. Stefan’s first idea had been the
City Hall, as offering the most expeditious method, but Mary had been
firm for a church. A sight of the municipal authorities from whom they
obtained their license made of Stefan an enthusiastic convert to her
view. “All the ugliness and none of the dignity of democracy,” he
snorted as they left the building. They found a not unlovely church,
half stifled between tall buildings, and were married by a curate whose
reading of the service was sufficiently reverent. For a wedding ring
Mary had that of Stefan’s mother, drawn from his little finger.

By late afternoon they were in Shadeham, ensconced in a small wooden
hotel facing a silent beach and low cliffs shaded with scrub-oak.
The house was clean, and empty of other guests, and they were given a
pleasant room overlooking the water. From its windows they watched the
moon rise over the sea as they had watched her two nights before on
deck. She was the silver witness to their nuptials.



PART II

MATED

I


Mary found Stefan an ideal lover. Their marriage, entered into with
such, headlong adventurousness, seemed to unfold daily into more perfect
bloom. The difficulties of his temperament, which had been thrown into
sharp relief by the crowded life of shipboard, smoothed themselves away
at the touch of happiness and peace. No woman, Mary realized, could wish
for a fuller cup of joy than Stefan offered her in these first days of
their mating. She was amazed at herself, at the suddenness with which
love had transmuted her, at the ease with which she adjusted herself to
this new world. She found it difficult to remember what kind of life she
had led before her marriage--hardly could she believe that she had ever
lived at all.

As for Stefan, he wasted no moments in backward glances. He neither
remembered the past nor questioned the future, but immersed himself
utterly in his present joy with an abandonment he had never experienced
save in painting. Questioned, he would have scoffed at the idea that
life for him could ever hold more than his work, and Mary.

Thus absorbed, Stefan would have allowed the days to slip into weeks
uncounted. But on the ninth day Mary, incapable of a wholly carefree
attitude, reminded him that they had planned only a week of holiday.

“Let’s stay a month,” he replied promptly.

But Mary had been questioning her landlord about New York.

“It appears,” she explained, “that every one moves on the first of
October, and that if one hasn’t found a studio by then, it is almost
impossible to get one. He says he has heard all the artists live round
about Washington Square, but that even there rents are fearfully high.
It’s at the foot of Fifth Avenue, he says, which sounds very fashionable
to me, but he explains it is too far ‘down town.’”

“Yes, Fifth Avenue is the great street, I understand,” said Stefan, “and
my dealer’s address is on Fourth, so he’s in a very good neighborhood.
I don’t know that I should like Washington Square--it sounds so
patriotic.”

“Fanatic!” laughed Mary. “Well, whether we go there or not, it’s evident
we must get back before October the first, and it’s now September the
twenty-fourth.”

“Angel, don’t let’s be mathematical,” he replied, pinching the lobe of
her ear, which he had proclaimed to be entrancingly pretty. “I can’t
add; tell me the day we have to leave, and on that day we will go.”

“Three days from now, then,” and she sighed.

“Oh, no! Not only three more days of heaven, Mary?”

“It will hurt dreadfully to leave,” she agreed, “but,” and she nestled
to him, “it won’t be any less heaven there, will it, dearest?”

This spurred him to reassurance. “Of course not,” he responded, quickly
summoning new possibilities of delight. “Imagine it, you haven’t even
seen my pictures yet.” They had left them, rolled, at Miss Mason’s. “And
I want to paint you--really paint you--not just silly little sketches
and heads, but a big thing that I can only do in a studio. Oh, darling,
think of a studio with you to sit to me! How I shall work!” His
imagination was fired; instantly he was ready to pack and leave.

But they had their three days more, in the golden light of the Indian
summer. Three more swims, in which Stefan could barely join for joy of
watching her long lines cutting the water in her close English bathing
dress. Three more evening walks along the shimmering sands. Three more
nights in their moon-haunted room within sound of the slow splash of the
waves. And, poignant with the sadness of a nearing change, these days
were to Mary the most exquisite of all.

Their journey to the city, on the little, gritty, perpetually stopping
train was made jocund by the lively anticipations of Stefan, who was in
a mood of high confidence.

They had decided from the first to try their fortunes in New York that
winter; not to return to Paris till they had established a sure market
for Stefan’s work. He had halcyon plans. Masterpieces were to be painted
under the inspiration of Mary’s presence. His success in the Beaux Arts
would be an Open Sesame to the dealers, and they would at once become
prosperous,--for he had the exaggerated continental idea of American
prices. In the spring they would return to Paris, so that Mary should
see it first at its most beautiful. There they would have a studio,
making it their center, but they would also travel.

“Spain, Italy, Greece, Mary--we will see all the world’s masterpieces
together,” he jubilated. “You shall be my wander-bride.” And he sang
her little snatches of gay song, in French and Italian, thrumming an
imaginary guitar or making castanets of his fingers.

“I will paint you on the Acropolis, Mary, a new Pallas to guard the
Parthenon.” His imagination leapt from vista to vista of the future,
each opening to new delights. Mary’s followed, lured, dazzled, a little
hesitant. Her own visions, unformulated though they were, seemed of
somewhat different stuff, but she saw he could not conceive them other
than his, and yielded her doubts happily.

At the Pennsylvania Station they took a taxicab, telling the driver
they wanted a hotel near Washington Square. The amount registered on the
meter gave Mary an apprehensive chill, but Stefan paid it carelessly.
A moment later he was in raptures, for, quite unexpectedly, they found
themselves in a French hotel.

“What wonderful luck--what a good omen!” he cried. “Mary, it’s almost
like Paris!” and he broke into rapid gesticulating talk with the desk
clerk. Soon they were installed in a bright little room with French
prints on the walls, a gay old-fashioned wall paper and patterned
curtains. Stefan assured her it was extraordinarily cheap for New York.
While she freshened her face and hair he dashed downstairs, ignoring
the elevator--which seemed to exist there only as an American
afterthought--in search of a packet of French cigarettes. Finding
them, he was completely in his element, and leant over the desk puffing
luxuriously, to engage the clerk in further talk. From him he obtained
advice as to the possibilities of the neighborhood in respect of
studios, and armed with this, bounded up the stairs again to Mary.
Presently, fortified by a pot of tea and delicious French rolls, they
sallied out on their quest.

That afternoon they discovered two vacant studios. One was on a
top floor on Washington Square South, a big room with bathroom and
kitchenette attached and a small bedroom opening into it. The other was
an attic just off the Square. It had water, but no bathroom, was heated
only by an open fire, and consisted of one large room with sufficient
light, and a large closet in which was a single pane of glass high up.
The studio contained an abandoned model throne, the closet a gas ring
and a sink. The rent of the first apartment was sixty dollars a month;
of the second, twenty-five. Both were approached by a dark staircase,
but in one case there was a carpet, in the other the stairs were bare,
dirty, and creaking, while from depths below was wafted an unmistakable
odor of onions and cats.

Mary, whose father’s rambling sunny house in Lindum with its Elizabethan
paneling and carvings had been considered dear at ninety pounds a year,
was staggered at the price of these mean garrets, the better of which
she felt to be quite beyond their reach. Even Stefan was a little
dashed, but was confident that after his interview with Adolph’s brother
sixty dollars would appear less formidable.

“You should have seen my attic in Paris, Mary--absolutely falling to
pieces--but then I didn’t mind, not having a goddess to house,” and he
pressed her arm. “For you there should be something spacious and bright
enough to be a fitting background.” He glanced up a little ruefully at
the squalid house they had just left.

But she was quick to reassure him, her courage mounting to sustain
his. “We could manage perfectly well in the smaller place for a time,
dearest, and how lucky we don’t have to take a lease, as we should in
England.” Her mind jumped to perceive any practical advantage. Already,
mentally, she was arranging furniture in the cheaper place, planning
for a screen, a tin tub, painting the dingy woodwork. They asked for
the refusal of both studios till the next day, and for that evening left
matters suspended.

In the morning, Stefan, retrieving his canvases from Miss Mason’s
flat, sought out the dealer, Jensen. Walking from Fifth Avenue, he was
surprised at the cheap appearance of the houses on Fourth, only one
block away. He had expected to find Adolph’s brother in such a great
stone building as those he had just passed, with their show windows
empty save for one piece of tapestry or sculpture, or a fine painting
brilliant against its background of dull velvet. Instead, the number on
Fourth Avenue proved a tumbledown house of two stories, with tattered
awnings flapping above its shop-window, which was almost too grimy
to disclose the wares within. These were a jumble of bric-a-brac, old
furniture of doubtful value, stained prints, and one or two blackened
oil paintings in tarnished frames. With ominous misgivings, Stefan
entered the half-opened door. The place was a confused medley of the
flotsam and jetsam of dwelling houses, and appeared to him much more
like a pawnbroker’s than the business place of an art dealer. From its
dusty shadows a stooped figure emerged, gray-haired and spectacled,
which waited for Stefan to speak with an air of patient humbleness.

“This isn’t Mr. Jensen’s, is it?” Stefan asked, feeling he had mistaken
the number.

“My name is Jensen. What can I do for you?” replied the man in a
toneless voice.

“You are Adolph’s brother?” incredulously.

At the name the gray face flushed pathetically. Jensen came forward,
pressing his hands together, and peered into Stefan’s face.

“Yes, I am,” he answered, “and you are Mr. Byrd that he wrote to me
about. I’d hoped you weren’t coming, after all. Well,” and he waved his
hand, “you see how it is.”

Stefan was completely dismayed. “Why,” he stammered, “I thought you were
so successful--”

“I’m sorry.” Jensen dropped his eyes, picking nervously at his coat.
“You see, I am the eldest brother; a man does not like to admit
failure. I may be sold up any time now. I wanted Adolph not to guess,
so I--wrote--him--differently.” He flushed painfully again. Stefan was
silent, too taken aback for speech.

“I tell you, Mr. Byrd,” Jensen stammered on, striking his hands together
impotently, “for all its wealth, this is a city of dead hopes. It’s been
a long fight, but it’s over now.... Yes, you are Adolph’s friend, and
I can’t so much as buy a sketch from you. It’s quite, quite over.” And
suddenly he sank his head in his hands, while Stefan stood, infinitely
embarrassed, clutching his roll of canvases. After a moment Jensen,
mastering himself, lifted his head. His lined, prematurely old face
showed an expression at once pleading and dignified.

“I didn’t dream what I wrote would do any harm, Mr. Byrd, but now of
course you will have to explain to Adolph--?”

Stefan, moved to sympathy, held out his hand.

“Look here, Jensen, you’ve put me in an awful hole, worse than you
know. But why should I say anything? Let Adolph think we’re both
millionaires,” and he grinned ruefully.

Jensen straightened and took the proffered hand in one that trembled.
“Thank you,” he said, and his eyes glistened. “I’m grateful. If there
were only something I could do--”

“Well, give me the names of some dealers,” said Stefan, to whom scenes
were exquisitely embarrassing, anxious to be gone.

Jensen wrote several names on a smudged half sheet of paper. “These
are the best. Try them. My introduction wouldn’t help, I’m afraid,”
 bitterly.

On that Stefan left him, hurrying with relief from the musty atmosphere
of failure into the busy street. Though half dazed by the sudden
subsidence of his plans, unable to face as yet the possible
consequences, he had his pictures, and the names of the real dealers;
confidence still buoyed him.



II


Three hours later Mary, anxiously waiting, heard Stefan’s step approach
their bedroom door. Instantly her heart dropped like lead. She did
not need his voice to tell her what those dragging feet announced.
She sprang to the door and had her arms round his neck before he could
speak. She took the heavy roll of canvases from him and half pushed
him into the room’s one comfortable arm-chair. Kneeling beside him, she
pressed her cheek to his, stroking back his heat-damped hair. “Darling,”
 she said, “you are tired to death. Don’t tell me about your day till
you’ve rested a little.”

He closed his eyes, leaning back. He looked exhausted; every line of his
face drooped. In spite of his tan, it was pale, with hollows under the
eyes. It was extraordinary that a few hours should make such a change,
she thought, and held him close, comfortingly.

He did not speak for a long time, but at last, “Mary,” he said, in a
flat voice, “I’ve had a complete failure. Nobody wants my things. This
is what I’ve let you in for.” His tone had the indifferent quality of
extreme fatigue, but Mary was not deceived. She knew that his whole
being craved reassurance, rehabilitation in its own eyes.

“Why, you old foolish darling, you’re too tired to know what you’re
talking about,” she cried, kissing him. “Wait till you’ve had something
to eat.” She rang the bell--four times for the waiter, as the card
over it instructed her. “Failure indeed!” she went on, clearing a small
table, “there’s no such word! One doesn’t grow rich in a day, you
know.” She moved silently and quickly about, hung up his hat, stood
the canvases in a corner, ordered coffee, rolls and eggs, and finally
unlaced Stefan’s shoes in spite of his rather horrified if feeble
protest.

Not until she had watched him drink two cups of coffee and devour the
food--she guessed he had had no lunch--did she allow him to talk, first
lighting his cigarette and finding a place for herself on the arm of his
chair. By this time Stefan’s extreme lassitude, and with it his despair,
had vanished. He brightened perceptibly. “You wonder,” he exclaimed,
catching her hand and kissing it, “now I can tell you about it.” With
his arm about her he described all his experiences, the fiasco of the
Jensen affair and his subsequent interviews with Fifth Avenue dealers.
“They are all Jews, Mary. Some are decent enough fellows, I suppose,
though I hate the Israelites!” (“Silly boy!” she interposed.) “Others
are horrors. None of them want the work of an American. Old masters,
or well known foreigners, they say. I explained my success at the Beaux
Arts. Two of them had seen my name in the Paris papers, but said it
would mean nothing to their clients. Hopeless Philistines, all of them!
I do believe I should have had a better chance if I’d called myself
Austrian, instead of American, and I only revived my American
citizenship because I thought it would be an asset!” He laughed,
ironically. “They advised me to have a one-man show, late in the winter,
so as to get publicity.”

“So we will then,” interposed Mary confidently.

“Good Lord, child,” he exclaimed, half irritably, “you don’t suppose I
could have a gallery for nothing, do you? God knows what it would cost.
Besides, I haven’t enough pictures--and think of the frames!” He sat up,
fretfully.

She saw his nerves were on edge, and quickly offered a diversion.
“Stefan,” she cried, jumping to her feet and throwing her arms back with
a gesture the grace of which did not escape him even in his impatient
mood, “I haven’t even seen the pictures yet, you know, and can’t wait
any longer. Let me look at them now, and then I’ll tell you just how
idiotic those dealers were!” and she gave her bell-like laugh. “I’ll
undo them.” Her fingers were busy at the knots.

“I hate the sight of that roll,” said Stefan, frowning. “Still--” and
he jumped up, “I do immensely want you to see them. I know _you’ll_
understand them.” Suddenly he was all eagerness again. He took the
canvases from her, undid them and, casting aside the smaller ones,
spread the two largest against the wall, propping their corners adroitly
with chairs, an umbrella, and a walking stick. “Don’t look yet,”
 he called meanwhile. “Close your eyes.” He moved with agile speed,
instinctively finding the best light and thrusting back the furniture
to secure a clearer view. “There!” he cried. “Wait a minute--stand here.
_Now_ look!” triumphantly.

Mary opened her eyes. “Why, Stefan, they’re wonderful!” she exclaimed.
But even as she spoke, and amidst her sincere admiration, her heart,
very slightly, sank. She knew enough of painting to see that here was
genius. The two fantasies, one representing the spirits of a wind-storm,
the other a mermaid fleeing a merman’s grasp, were brilliant in color,
line and conception. They were things of beauty, but it was a beauty
strange, menacing, subhuman. The figures that tore through the clouds
urged on the storm with a wicked and abandoned glee. The face of the
merman almost frightened her; it was repellent in its likeness at once
to a fish and a man. The mermaid’s face was less inhuman, but it was
stricken with a horrid terror. She was swimming straight out of the
picture as if to fling herself, shrieking, into the safety of the
spectator’s arms. The pictures were imaginative, powerful, arresting,
but they were not pleasing. Few people, she felt, would care to live
with them. After a long scrutiny she turned to her husband, at once
glorying in the strength of his talent and troubled by its quality.

“You are a genius, Stefan,” she said.

“You really like them?” he asked eagerly.

“I think they are wonderful!” He was satisfied, for it was her heart,
not her voice, that held a reservation.

Stefan showed her the smaller canvases, some unfinished. Most were of
nymphs and winged elves, but there were three landscapes. One of these,
a stream reflecting a high spring sky between banks of young meadow
grass, showed a little faun skipping merrily in the distance. The
atmosphere was indescribably light-hearted. Mary smiled as she looked at
it. The other two were empty of figures; they were delicately graceful
and alluring, but there was something lacking in them---what, she could
not tell. She liked best a sketch of a baby boy, lost amid trees, behind
which wood-nymphs and fauns peeped at him, roguish and inquisitive. The
boy was seated on the ground, fat and solemn, with round, tear-wet
eyes. He was so lonely that Mary wanted to hug him; instead, she kissed
Stefan.

“What a duck of a baby, dearest!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, he was a nice kid--belonged to my concierge,” he answered
carelessly. “The picture is sentimental, though. This is better,” and he
pointed to another mermaid study.

“Yes, it’s splendid,” she answered, instinctively suppressing a sigh.
She began to realize a little what a strange being she had married. With
an impulsive need of protection she held him close, hiding her face in
his neck. The reality of his arms reassured her.

That day they decided, at Mary’s urging, to take the smaller studio at
once, abandoning the extravagance of hotel life. In practical manners
she was already assuming a leadership which he was glad to follow. She
suggested that in the morning he should take his smaller canvases, and
try some of the less important dealers, while she made an expedition in
search of necessary furniture. To this he eagerly agreed.

“It seems horrible to let you do it alone, but it would be sacrilegious
to discuss the price of saucepans with a goddess,” he explained. “Are
you sure you can face the tedium?”

“Why, I shall love it!” she cried, astonished at such an expression.

He regarded her whimsically. “Genius of efficiency, then I shall leave
it to you. Such things appal me. In Paris, my garret was furnished only
with pictures. I inherited the bed from the last occupant, and I think
Adolph insisted on finding a pillow and a frying-pan. He used to come
up and cook for us both sometimes, when he thought I had been eating too
often at restaurants. He approved of economy, did Adolph.” Stefan was
lounging on the bed, with his perpetual cigarette.

“He must be a dear,” said Mary. She had begun to make a shopping list.
“Tell me, absurd creature, what you really need in the studio. There is
a model throne, you will remember.”

“Oh, I’ll get my own easel and stool,” he replied quickly. “There’s
nothing else, except of course a table for my paints. A good solid one,”
 he added with emphasis. “I’ll tell you what,” and he sat up. “I go out
early to-morrow on my dealer hunt. I force myself to stay out until late
afternoon. When I return, behold! The goddess has waved her hand,
and invisible minions--” he circled the air with his cigarette--“have
transported her temple across the square. There she sits enthroned,
waiting for her acolyte. How will that do?” He turned his radiant smile
on her.

“Splendid,” she answered, amused. “I only hope the goddess won’t get
chipped in the passage.”

She thought of the dusty studio, of brooms and scrubbing brushes, but
she was already wise enough in wife-lore not to mention them. Mary
came of a race whose women had always served their men. It did not seem
strange to her, as it might have to an American, that the whole labor of
their installation should devolve on her.

With her back turned to him, she counted over their resources,
calculating what would be available when their hotel bill was paid.
Except for a dollar or two, Stefan had turned his small hoard over to
her. “It’s all yours anyway, dearest,” he had said, “and I don’t want to
spend a cent till I have made something.” They had spent very little so
far; she was relieved to realize that the five hundred dollars remained
almost intact. While Stefan continued to smoke luxuriously on the bed,
she jotted down figures, apportioning one hundred and fifty dollars
for six months’ rent, and trying to calculate a weekly basis for their
living expenses. She knew that they were both equally ignorant of prices
in New York, and determined to call in the assistance of Miss Mason.

“Stefan,” she said, taking up the telephone, “I’m going to summon a
minion.” She explained to Miss Mason over the wire. “We are starting
housekeeping to-morrow, and I know absolutely nothing about where to
shop, or what things ought to cost. Would it be making too great demands
on your kindness if I asked you to meet me here to-morrow morning and
join me in a shopping expedition?”

The request, delivered in her civil English voice, enchanted Miss Mason,
who had to obtain all her romance vicariously. “I should just love to!”
 she exclaimed, and it was arranged.

Mary then telephoned that they would take the studio--a technicality
which she knew Stefan had entirely forgotten--and notified the hotel
office that their room would be given up next morning.

“O thou above rubies and precious pearls!” chanted Stefan from the bed.

After dinner they sat in Washington Square. Their marriage moon was
waning, but still shone high and bright. Under her the trees appeared
etherealized, and her light mingled in magic contest with the white
beams of the arc lamps near the arch. Above each of these, a myriad tiny
moths fluttered their desirous wings. Under the trees Italian couples
wandered, the men with dark amorous glances, the girls laughing, their
necks gay with colored shawls. Brightly ribboned children, black-haired,
played about the benches where their mothers gossiped. There was
enchantment in the tired but cooling air.

Stefan was enthusiastic. “Look at the types, Mary! The whole place is
utterly foreign, full of ardor and color. I have cursed America without
cause--here I can feel at home.” To her it was all alien, but her heart
responded to his happiness.

On the bench next them sat a group of Italian women. From this a tiny
boy detached himself, plump and serious, and, urged by curiosity,
gradually approached Mary, his velvet eyes fixed on her face. She lifted
him, resistless, to her knee, and he sat there contentedly, sucking a
colored stick of candy.

“Look, Stefan!” she cried; “isn’t he a lamb?”

Stefan cast a critical glance at the baby. “He’s paintable, but horribly
sticky,” he said. “Let’s move on before he begins to yell. I want to see
the effect from the roadway of these shifting groups under the trees. It
might be worth doing, don’t you think?” and he stood up.

His manner slightly rebuffed Mary, who would gladly have nursed the
little boy longer. However, she gently lowered him and, rising, moved
off in silence with Stefan, who was ignorant of any offense. The rest of
their outing passed sweetly enough, as they wandered, arm in arm, about
the square.



III


The next morning Stefan started immediately after his premier déjeuner
of rolls and coffee in quest of the less important dealers, taking with
him only his smaller canvases. “I’ll stay away till five o’clock, not
a minute longer,” he admonished. Mary, still seated in the dining-room
over her English bacon and eggs--she had smilingly declined to adopt his
French method of breakfasting--glowed acquiescence, and offered him a
parting suggestion.

“Be sure to show them the baby in the wood.”

“Why that one?” he questioned. “You admit it isn’t the best.”

“Perhaps, but neither are they the best connoisseurs. You’ll see.” She
nodded wisely at him.

“The oracle has spoken--I will obey,” he called from the door, kissing
his fingers to her. She ventured an answering gesture, knowing the room
empty save for waiters. She was almost as unselfconscious as he, but had
her nation’s shrinking from any public expression of emotion.

Hardly had he gone when the faithful Miss Mason arrived, her mild
eyes almost youthful with enthusiasm. Prom a black satin reticule of
dimensions beyond all proportion to her meager self she drew a list of
names on which she discoursed volubly while Mary finished her breakfast.

“You’ll get most everything at this first place,” she said. “It’s pretty
near the biggest department store in the city, and only two blocks
from here--ain’t that convenient? You can deal there right along for
everything in the way of dry goods.”

Mary had no conception of what either a department store or dry goods
might be, but determined not to confound her mentor by a display of such
ignorance.

“Seemed to me, though, you might get some things second hand, so I got a
list of likely places from my sister, who’s lived in New York longer’n I
have. I thought mebbe--” her tone was tactful--“you didn’t want to waste
your money any?”

Mary was impressed again, as she had been before her wedding, by the
natural good manners of this simple and half educated woman. “Why is
it,” she wondered to herself, “that one would not dream of knowing
people of her class at home, but rather likes them here?” She did
not realize as yet that for Miss Mason no classes existed, and that
consequently she was as much at ease with Mary, whose mother had been
“county,” as she would be with her own colored “help.”

“You guessed quite rightly, Miss Mason,” Mary smiled. “I want to spend
as little as possible, and shall depend on you to prevent my making
mistakes.”

“I reckon I know all there is t’ know ‘bout economy,” nodded Miss Mason,
and, as if by way of illustration, drew from her bag a pair of cotton
gloves, for which she exchanged her kid ones, rolling these carefully
away. “They get real mussed shopping,” she explained.

Within half an hour, Mary realized that she would have been lost indeed
without her guide. First they inspected the studio. Mary had had a
vague idea of cleaning it herself, but Miss Mason demanded to see the
janitress, and ascended, after a ten minutes’ emersion in the noisome
gloom of the basement, in high satisfaction. “She’s a dago,” she
reported, “but not so dirty as some, and looks a husky worker. It’s her
business to clean the flats for new tenants, but I promised her fifty
cents to get the place done by noon, windows and all. She seemed real
pleased. She says her husband will carry your coal up from the cellar
for a quarter a week; I guess it will be worth it to you. You don’t
want to give the money to him though,” she admonished, “the woman runs
everything. I shouldn’t calc’late,” she sniffed, “he does more’n a
couple of real days’ work a month. They mostly don’t.”

So the first problem was solved, and it was the same with all the rest.
Many dollars did Miss Mason save the Byrds that day. Mary would have
bought a bedstead and screened it, but her companion pointed out the
extravagance and inconvenience of such a course, and initiated her
forthwith into the main secret of New York’s apartment life.

“You’ll want your divan new,” she said, and led her in the great
department store to a hideous object of gilded iron which opened into
a double bed, and closed into a divan. At first Mary rejected this
Janus-faced machine unequivocally, but became a convert when Miss Mason
showed her how cretonne (she pronounced it “_cree_ton”) or rugs would
soften its nakedness to dignity, and how bed-clothes and pillows were
swallowed in its maw by day to be released when the studio became a
sleeping room at night.

These trappings they purchased at first hand, and obliging salesmen
promised Miss Mason with their lips, but Mary with their eyes, that they
should go out on the noon delivery. For other things, however, the two
searched the second-hand stores which stand in that district like logs
in a stream, staying abandoned particles of the city’s ever moving
current. Here they bought a high, roomy chest of drawers of painted
pine, a Morris chair, three single chairs, and a sturdy folding table
in cherry, quite old, which Mary felt to be a “find,” and which she
destined for Stefan’s paints. Miss Mason recommended a “rocker,” and
Mary, who had had visions of stuffed English easy chairs, acquiesced on
finding in the rocker and Morris types the only available combinations
of cheapness and comfort. A second smaller table of good design, two
brass candlesticks, and a little looking-glass in faded greenish gilt,
rejoiced Mary’s heart, without unreasonably lightening her pocket.
During these purchases Miss Mason’s authority paled, but she reasserted
herself on the question of iceboxes. One dealer’s showroom was half full
of them, and Miss Mason pounced on a small one, little used, marked six
dollars. “That’s real cheap--you couldn’t do better--it’s a good make,
too.” Mary had never seen an ice-box in her life, and said so, striking
Miss Mason almost dumb.

“I’m sure we shouldn’t need such a thing,” she demurred.

Recovering speech, Miss Mason launched into the creed of the
ice-box--its ubiquity, values and economies. Mary understood she was
receiving her second initiation into flat life, and mentally bracketed
this new cult with that of the divan.

“All right, Miss Mason. In Rome, et cetera,” she capitulated, and paid
for the ice-box.

Thanks to her friend, their shopping had been so expeditious that the
day was still young. Mary was fired by the determination to have some
sort of nest for her tired and probably disheartened husband to return
to that evening, and Miss Mason entered whole-heartedly into the scheme.
The transportation of their scattered purchases was the main difficulty,
but it yielded to the little spinster’s inspiration. A list of
their performances between noon and five o’clock would read like the
description of a Presidential candidate’s day. They dashed back to the
studio and reassured themselves as to the labors of the janitress. Miss
Mason unearthed the lurking husband, and demanded of him a friend and a
hand-cart. These she galvanized him into producing on the spot, and sent
the pair off armed with a list of goods to be retrieved. In the midst
of this maneuver the department store’s great van faithfully disgorged
their bed and bedding. Hardly waiting to see these deposited, the two
hurried out in quest of sandwiches and milk.

“I guess we’re the lightning home-makers, all right,” was Miss Mason’s
comment as they lunched.

Returning to the department store they bought and brought away with them
a kettle, a china teapot (“Fifteen cents in the basement,” Miss Mason
instructed), three cups and saucers, six plates, a tin of floor-polish
and a few knives, forks, and spoons. Meanwhile they had telephoned the
hotel to send over the baggage. When the street car dropped them
near the studio they found the two Italians seated on the steps, the
furniture and baggage in the room, and Mrs. Corriani wiping her last
window pane. “I shall want your husband again for this floor,” commanded
the indefatigable Miss Mason, opening her tin of polish, “and his friend
for errands.” They fell upon their task.

An hour later the spinster dropped into the rocking chair. “Well, we’ve
done it,” she said, “and I don’t mind telling you I’m tuckered out.”

Mary’s voice answered from the sink, where she was sluicing her face and
arms.

“You’ve been a marvel--the whole thing has been Napoleonic--and I simply
don’t know how to thank you.” She appeared at the door of the closet,
which was to serve as kitchenette and bathroom, drying her hands.

“My, your face is like a rose! _You_ don’t look tired any!” exclaimed
the spinster. “As for thanks, why, it’s been a treat to me. I’ve felt
like I was a girl again. But we’re through now, and I’ve got to go.” She
rose. “I guess I’ll enjoy my sleep to-night.”

“Oh, don’t go, Miss Mason, stay for tea and let my husband thank you
too.”

But the little New Englander again showed her simple tact. “No, no,
my dear, it’s time I went, and you and Mr. Byrd will want to be alone
together your first evening,” and she pulled on her cotton gloves.

At the door Mary impulsively put her arms round Miss Mason and kissed
her.

“You have been good to me--I shall never forget it,” she whispered,
almost loath to let this first woman friend of her new life go.

Alone, Mary turned to survey the room.

The floor, of wide uneven planks, was bare, but it carried a dark stain,
and this had been waxed until it shone. The walls, painted gray, had
yielded a clean surface to the mop. The grate was blackened. On either
side of it stood the two large chairs, and Mary had thrown a strip of
bright stuff over the cushions of the Morris. Beside this chair stood
the smaller table, polished, and upon it blue and white tea things. Near
the large window stood the other table, with Stefan’s palette, paint
tubes, and brushes in orderly array, and a plain chair beside it, while
centered at that end was the model-throne. Opposite the fireplace the
divan fronted the wall, obscured by Mary’s steamer rug and green deck
cushion. At the end of the room the heavy chest of drawers, with its
dark walnut paint, faced the window, bearing the gilded mirror and a
strip of embroidery. On the mantlepiece stood Mary’s traveling clock and
the two brass candlesticks, and above it Stefan’s pastoral of the stream
and the dancing faun was tacked upon the wall. She could hear the kettle
singing from the closet, through the open door of which a shaft of
sunlight fell from the tiny window to the floor.

Suddenly Mary opened her arms. “Home,” she whispered, “home.” Tears
started to her eyes. With a caressing movement she leant her face
against the wall, as to the cheek of her lover.

But emotion lay deep in Mary--she was ashamed that it should rise to
facile tears. “Silly girl,” she thought, and drying her eyes proceeded
more calmly to her final task, which was to change her dress for one
fitted to honor Stefan’s homecoming.

Hardly was she ready when she heard his feet upon the stair. Her heart
leapt with a double joy, for he was springing up two steps at a time,
triumph in every bound. The door burst open; she was enveloped in a
whirlwind embrace. “Mary,” he gasped between kisses, “I’ve sold the
boy--sold him for a hundred! At the very last place--just as I’d given
up. You beloved oracle!”

Then he held her away from him, devouring with his eyes her glowing
face, her hair, and her soft blue dress. “Oh, you beauty! The day has
been a thousand years long without you!” He caught her to him again.

Mary’s heart was almost bursting with happiness as she clung to him.
Here, in the home she had prepared, he had brought her his success,
and their love glorified both. Her emotion left her wordless. Another
moment, and his eyes swept the room.

“Why, Mary!” It was a shout of joy. “You magician, you miracle-worker!
It’s beautiful! Don’t tell me how you did it--” hastily--“I couldn’t
understand. It’s enough that you waved your hand and beauty sprang up!
Look at my little faun dancing--we must dance too!” He lilted a swaying
air, and whirled her round the room with gipsy glee. His face looked
like the faun’s, elfin, mischievous, happy as the springtime.

At last he dropped into a chair. Then Mary fetched her teakettle. They
quenched their thirst, she shared his cigarette, they prattled like
children. It was late before they remembered to go out in search
of dinner, hours later before they dropped asleep upon the gilded
Janus-faced couch that had become for Mary the altar of a sacrament.



IV


Mary’s original furnishings had cost her less than a hundred dollars.
In the first days of their housekeeping she made several additions, and
Stefan contributed a large second-hand easel, a stool, and a piece of
strangely colored drapery for the divan. This he discovered during a
walk with Mary, in the window of an old furniture dealer, and instantly
fell a victim to. He was so delighted with it that Mary had not the
heart to veto its purchase, though it was a sad extravagance, costing
them more than a week’s living expenses. The stuff was of oriental silk,
shot with a changing sheen, of colors like a fire burning over water,
which made it seem a living thing in their hands. The night they took it
home Stefan lit six candles in its honor.

In spite of these expenses Mary banked four hundred dollars, leaving
herself enough in hand for a fortnight to come, for she found that they
could live on twenty-five dollars a week. She calculated that they must
make, as an absolute minimum, to be safe, one hundred dollars a month,
for she was determined, if possible, not to draw further upon their
hoard. This was destined for a future use, the hope of which trembled
constantly in her heart. All her plans centered about this hope, but
she still forebore to speak of it to Stefan, even as she had done before
their marriage. Perhaps she instinctively feared a possible lack of
response in him. Meanwhile, she must safeguard her nest.

In spite of Stefan’s initial success, Mary wondered if his art would at
first yield the necessary monthly income, and cast about for some means
by which she could increase his earnings. She had come to America
to attain independence, and there was nothing in her code to make
dependence a necessary element of marriage.

“Stefan,” she said one morning, as she sat covering a cushion, while
he worked at one of the unfinished pastorals, “you know I sold several
short stories for children when I was in London. I think I ought to try
my luck here, don’t you?”

“You don’t need to, sweetheart,” he replied. “Wait till I’ve finished
this little thing. You see if the man I sold the boy to won’t jump at it
for another hundred.” And he whistled cheerily.

“I’m sure he will,” she smiled. “Still, I should like to help.”

“Do it if you want to, Beautiful, only I can’t associate you with pens
and typewriters. I’m sure if you were just to open your mouth, and sing,
out there in the square--” he waved a brush--“people would come running
from all over the city and throw yellow and green bills at you like
leaves, till you had to be dug out with long shovels by those funny
street-cleaners who go about looking dirty in white clothes. You would
be a nymph in a shower of gold--only the gold would be paper! How like
America!” He whistled again absently, touching the canvas with delicate
strokes.

“You are quite the most ridiculous person in the world,” she laughed at
him. “You know perfectly well that my voice is much too small to be of
practical value.”

“But I’m not being practical, and you mustn’t be literal,
darling--goddesses never should.”

“Be practical just for a moment then,” she urged, “and think about my
chances of selling stories.”

“I couldn’t,” he said absently, holding his brush suspended. “Wait a
minute, I’ve got an idea! That about the shower of gold--I know--Danaë!”
 he shouted suddenly, throwing down his palette. “That’s how I’ll paint
you. I’ve been puzzling over it for days. Darling, it will be my chef
d’oeuvre!” He seized her hands. “Think of it! You standing under a great
shaft of sun, nude, exalted, your hands and eyes lifted. About you
gold, pouring down in cataracts, indistinguishable from the sunlight--a
background of prismatic fire--and your hair lifting into it like wings!”
 He was irradiated.

She had blushed to the eyes. “You want me to sit to you--like that!” Her
voice trembled.

He gazed at her in frank amazement. “Should you mind?” he asked, amazed.
“Why, you rose, you’re blushing. I believe you’re shy!” He put his arms
around her, smiling into her face. “You wouldn’t mind, darling, for me!”
 he urged, his cheek to hers. “You are so glorious. I’ve always wanted to
paint your glory since the first day I saw you. You _can’t_ mind!”

He saw she still hesitated, and his tone became not only surprised but
hurt. He could not conceive of shame in connection with beauty. Seeing
this she mastered her shrinking. He was right, she felt--she had given
him her beauty, and a denial of it in the service of his art would
rebuff the God in him--the creator. She yielded, but she could not
express the deeper reason for her emotion. As he was so oblivious, she
could not bring herself to tell him why in particular she shrank from
sitting as Danaë. He had not thought of the meaning of the myth in
connection with her all-absorbing hope.

“Promise me one thing,” she pleaded. “Don’t make the face too like
me--just a little different, dearest, please!”

This a trifle fretted him.

“I don’t really see why; your face is just the right type,” he puzzled.
“I shan’t sell the picture, you know. It will be for us--our marriage
present to each other.”

“Nevertheless, I ask it, dearest.” With that he had to be content.

Stefan obtained that afternoon a full-length canvas, and the sittings
began next morning. He was at his most inspiring, laughed away Mary’s
stage fright, posed her with a delight which, inspired her, too, so
that she stood readily as he suggested, and made half a dozen
lightning sketches to determine the most perfect position, exclaiming
enthusiastically meanwhile.

When absorbed, Stefan was a sure and rapid worker. Mary posed for him
every morning, and at the end of a week the picture had advanced to a
thing of wonderful promise and beauty. Mary would stand before it almost
awed. Was this she, she pondered, this aspiring woman of flame?
It troubled her a little that his ideal of her should rise to such
splendor; this apotheosis left no place for the pitying tenderness of
love, only for its glory. The color of this picture was like the sound
of silver trumpets; the heart-throb of the strings was missing. Mary was
neither morbid nor introspective, but at this time her whole being was
keyed to more than normal comprehension. Watching the picture, seeing
that it was a portrayal not of her but of his love for her, she wondered
if any woman could long endure the arduousness of such deification, or
if a man who had visioned a goddess could long content himself with a
mortal.

The face, too, vaguely troubled her. True to his promise, Stefan had
not made it a portrait, but its unlikeness lay rather in the meaning and
expression than in the features. These differed only in detail from her
own. A slight lengthening of the corners of the eyes, a fuller and wider
mouth were the only changes. But the expression amidst its exaltation
held a quality she did not understand. Translated into music, it was
the call of the wood-wind, something wild and unhuman flowing across the
silver triumph of the horns.

Of these half questionings, however, Mary said nothing, telling Stefan
only what she was sure of, that the picture would be a masterpiece.

The days were shortening. Stefan found the light poor in the afternoons,
and had to take part of the mornings for work on his pastoral. This he
would have neglected in his enthusiasm for the Danaë, but for
Mary’s urgings. He obeyed her mandates on practical issues with the
unquestioning acceptance of a child. His attitude suggested that he was
willing to be worldly from time to time if his Mary--not too often--told
him to.

The weather had turned cool, and Mr. Corriani brought them up their
first scuttle of coal. They were glad to drink their morning coffee and
eat their lunch before the fire, and Mary’s little sable neck-piece,
relic of former opulence, appeared in the evenings when they sought
their dinner. This they took in restaurants near by--quaint basements,
or back parlors of once fine houses, where they were served nutritious
meals on bare boards, in china half an inch thick. Autumn, New York’s
most beautiful season, was in the air with its heart-lightening tang;
energy seemed to flow into them as they breathed. They took long walks
in the afternoons to the Park, which Stefan voted hopelessly banal; to
the Metropolitan Museum, where they paid homage to the Sorollas and the
Rodins; to the Battery, the docks, and the whole downtown district. This
they found oppressive at first, till they saw it after dark from a ferry
boat, when Stefan became fired by the towerlike skyscrapers sketched in
patterns of light against the void.

Immediately he developed a cult for these buildings. “America’s one
creation,” he called them, “monstrous, rooted repellently in the earth’s
bowels, growing rank like weeds, but art for all that.” He made several
sketches of them, in which the buildings seemed to sway in a drunken
abandonment of power. “Wicked things,” he named them, and saw them
menacing but fascinating, titanic engines that would overwhelm their
makers. He and Mary had quite an argument about this, for she thought
the skyscrapers beautiful.

“They reach sunward, Stefan, they do not menace, they aspire,” she
objected.

“The aspiration is yours, Goddess. They are only fit symbols of a
super-materialism. Their strength is evil, but it lures.”

He was delighted with his drawings. Mary, who was beginning to develop
civic pride, told him they were goblinesque.

“Clever girl, that’s why I like them,” he replied.

Late in October Stefan sold his pastoral, though only for seventy-five
dollars. This disappointed him greatly. He was anxious to repay his
debt to Adolph, but would not accept the loan of it from his wife. Mary
renewed her determination to be helpful, and sent one of her old stories
to a magazine, but without success. She had no one to advise her as
to likely markets, and posted her manuscript to two more unsuitable
publications, receiving it back with a printed rejection slip.

Her fourth attempt, however, was rewarded by a note from the editor
which gave her much encouragement. Children’s stories, he explained,
were outside the scope of his magazine, but he thought highly of Mrs.
Byrd’s manuscript, and advised her to submit it to one of the women’s
papers--he named several--where it might be acceptable. Mary was
delighted by this note, and read it to Stefan.

“Splendid!” he cried, “I had no idea you had brought any stories over
with you. Guarded oracle!” he added, teasingly.

“Oracles don’t tell secrets unless they are asked,” she rejoined.

“True. And now I do ask. Give me the whole secret--read me the story,”
 he exclaimed, promptly putting away his brushes, lighting a cigarette,
and throwing himself, eagerly attentive, into the Morris chair.

Mary prepared to comply, gladly, if a little nervously. She had been
somewhat hurt at his complete lack of interest in her writing; now she
was anxious for his approbation. Seated in the rocking chair she read
aloud the little story in her clear low voice. When she had finished she
found Stefan regarding her with an expression affectionate but somewhat
quizzical.

“Mary, you have almost a maternal air, sitting there reading so lovingly
about a baby. It’s a new aspect--the rocker helps. I’ve never quite
liked that chair--it reminds me of Michigan.”

Mary had flushed painfully, but he did not notice it in the half light
of the fire. It had grown dark as she read.

“But the story, Stefan?” she asked, her tone obviously hurt. He jumped
up and kissed her, all contrition.

“Darling, it sounded beautiful in your voice, and I’m sure it is. In
fact I know it is. But I simply don’t understand that type of fiction;
I have no key to it. So my mind wandered a little. I listened to the
lovely sounds your voice made, and watched the firelight on your hair.
You were like a Dutch interior--quite a new aspect, as I said--and I got
interested in that.”

Mary was abashed and disappointed. For the first time she questioned
Stefan’s generosity, contrasting his indifference with her own absorbed
interest in his work. She knew her muse trivial by comparison with his,
but she loved it, and ached for the stimulus his praise would bring.

Beneath the wound to her craftsmanship lay another, in which the knife
was turning, but she would not face its implication. Nevertheless it
oppressed her throughout the evening, so that Stefan commented on her
silence. That night as she lay awake listening to his easy breathing,
for the first time since her marriage her pillow was dampened by tears.



V


In the nest morning’s sun Mary’s premonitions appeared absurd. Stefan
waked in high spirits, and planned a morning’s work on his drawings of
the city, while Mary, off duty as a model, decided to take her story in
person to the office of one of the women’s papers. As she crossed the
Square and walked up lower Fifth Avenue she had never felt more buoyant.
The sun was brilliant, and a cool breeze whipped color into her cheeks.

The office to which she was bound was on the north side of Union Square.
Crossing Broadway, she was held up half way over by the traffic. As she
waited for an opening her attention was attracted by the singular antics
of a large man, who seemed to be performing some kind of a ponderous
fling upon the curbstone opposite. A moment more and she grasped that
the dance was a signal to her, and that the man was none other than
McEwan, sprucely tailored and trimmed in the American fashion, but
unmistakable for all that. She crossed the street and shook hands with
him warmly, delighted to see any one connected with the romantic days of
her voyage. McEwan’s smile seemed to buttress his whole face with teeth,
but to her amazement he greeted her without a trace of Scotch accent.

“Well,” said he, pumping both her hands up and down in his enormous
fist, “here’s Mrs. Byrd! That’s simply great. I’ve been wondering where
I could locate you both. Ought to have nosed you out before now, but
my job keeps me busy. I’m with a magazine house, you know--advertising
manager.”

“I didn’t know,” answered Mary, whose head was whirling.

“Ah,” he grinned at her, “you’re surprised at my metamorphosis. I allow
myself a month every year of my native heath, heather-mixture, and
burr--I like to do the thing up brown. The rest of the time I’m a
Gothamite, of necessity. Some time, when I’ve made my pile, I shall
revert for keeps, and settle down into a kilt and a castle.”

Much amused by this unsuspected histrionic gift, Mary walked on beside
McEwan. He was full of interest in her affairs, and she soon confided to
him the object of her expedition.

“You’re just the man to advise me, being on a paper,” she said, and
added laughing, “I should have been terrified of you if I’d known that
on the ship.”

“Then I’m glad I kept it dark. You say your stuff is for children? Where
were you going to?”

She told him.

“A woman’s the boss of that shop. She’s O.K. and so’s her paper, but her
prices aren’t high.” He considered. “Better come to our shop. We run two
monthlies and a weekly, one critical, one household, one entirely
for children. The boss is a great pal of mine. Name of Farraday--an
American. Come on!” And he wheeled her abruptly back the way they had
come. She followed unresistingly, intensely amused at his quick, jerky
sentences and crisp manner--the very antithesis of his former Scottish
heaviness.

“Mr. McEwan, what an actor you would have made!”

She smiled up at him as she hurried at his side. He looked about with
pretended caution, then stooped to her ear.

“Hoots, lassie!” he whispered, with a solemn wink.

“Stefan will never believe this!” she said, bubbling with laughter.

At the door of a building close to the corner where they had met he
stopped, and for a moment his manner, though not his voice, assumed its
erstwhile weightiness.

“Never mind!” he held up an admonishing forefinger. “I do the talking.
What do you know about business? Nothing!” His hand swept away possible
objections. “I know your work.” She gasped, but the finger was up
again, solemnly wagging. “And I say it’s good. How many words?” he half
snapped.

“Three thousand five hundred,” she answered.

“Then I say, two hundred dollars--not a cent less--and what I say
_goes_, see?” The finger shot out at her, menacing.

“I leave it to you, Mr. McEwan,” she answered meekly, and followed
him to the lift, dazed. “This,” she said to herself, “simply is not
happening!” She felt like Alice in Wonderland.

They shot up many stories, and emerged into a large office furnished
with a switch-board, benches, tables, desks, pictures, and office boys.
A ceaseless stenographic click resounded from behind an eight-foot
partition; the telephone girl seemed to be engaged conjointly on a novel
and a dozen plugs; the office boys were diligent with their chewing gum;
all was activity. Mary felt at a loss, but the great McEwan, towering
over the switchboard like a Juggernaut, instantly compelled the
operator’s eyes from their multiple distractions. “Good morning, Mr.
McEwan--Spring one-O-two-four,” she greeted him.

“‘Morning. T’see Mr. Farraday,” he economized.

“M’st Farraday--M’st McEwan an’ lady t’see you. Yes. M’st Farraday’ll
see you right away. ‘Sthis three-one hundred? Hold th’ line, please,”
 said the operator in one breath, connecting two calls and waving McEwan
forward simultaneously. Mary followed him down a long corridor of doors
to one which he opened, throwing back a second door within it.

They entered a sunny room, quiet, and with an air of spacious order.
Facing them was a large mahogany table, almost bare, save for a vase
which held yellow roses. Flowers grew in a window box and another vase
of white roses stood on a book shelf. Mary’s eyes flew to the flowers
even before she observed the man who rose to greet them from beyond the
table. He was very tall, with the lean New England build. His long,
bony face was unhandsome save for the eyes and mouth, which held an
expression of great sweetness. He shook hands with a kindly smile, and
Mary took an instant liking to him, feeling In his presence the ease
that comes of class-fellowship. He looked, she thought, something under
forty years old.

“I am fortunate. You find me in a breathing spell,” he was saying.

“He’s the busiest man in New York, but he always has time,” McEwan
explained, and, indeed, nothing could have been more unhurried than the
whole atmosphere of both man and room. Mary said so.

“Yes, I must have quiet or I can’t work,” Farraday replied. “My windows
face the back, you see, and my walls are double; I doubt if there’s a
quieter office in New York.”

“Nor a more charming, I should think,” added Mary, looking about at the
restful tones of the room, with its landscapes, its beautifully chosen
old furniture, and its flowers.

“The owner thanks you,” he acknowledged, with his kindly smile.

“Business, business,” interjected McEwan, who, Mary was amused to
observe, approximated much more to the popular idea of an American than
did his friend. “I’ve brought you a find, Farraday. This lady writes for
children--she’s printed stuff in England. I haven’t read it, but I know
it’s good because I’ve seen her telling stories to the kids by the hour
aboard ship, and you couldn’t budge them. You can see,” he waved his
hand at her, “that her copy would be out of the ordinary run.”

This absurdity would have embarrassed Mary but that Mr. Farraday
turned on her a smile which seemed to make them allies in their joint
comprehension of McEwan’s advocacy.

“She’s got a story with her for you to see,” went on that enthusiast.
“I’ve told her if it’s good enough for our magazine it’s two hundred
dollars good enough. There’s the script.” He took it from her, and
flattened it out on Farraday’s table. “Look it over and write her.”

“What’s your address?” he shot at Mary. She produced it.

“I’ll remember that,” McEwan nodded; “coming round to see you. There you
are, James. We won’t keep you. You have no time and I have less. Come
on, Mrs. Byrd.” He made for the door, but Farraday lifted his hand.

“Too fast, Mac,” he smiled. “I haven’t had a chance yet. A mere American
can’t keep pace with the dynamic energy you store in Scotland. Where
does it come from? Do you do nothing but sleep there?”

“Much more than that. He practises the art of being a Scotchman,”
 laughed Mary.

“He has no need to practise. You should have heard him when he first
came over,” said Farraday.

“Well, if you two are going to discuss me, I’ll leave you at it; I’m
not a highbrow editor; I’m the poor ad man--my time means money to me.”
 McEwan opened the door, and Mary rose to accompany him.

“Won’t you sit down again, Mrs. Byrd? I’d like to ask you a few
questions,” interposed Farraday, who had been turning the pages of
Mary’s manuscript. “Mac, you be off. I can’t focus my mind in the
presence of a human gyroscope.”

“I’ve got to beat it,” agreed the other, shaking hands warmly with Mary.
“But don’t you be taken in by him; he likes to pretend he’s slow, but
he’s really as quick as a buzz-saw. See you soon,” and with a final wave
of the hand he was gone.

“Now tell me a little about your work,” said Farraday, turning on Mary
his kind but penetrating glance. She told him she had published three or
four stories, and in what magazines.

“I only began to write fiction a year ago,” she explained. “Before that
I’d done nothing except scribble a little verse at home.”

“What kind of verse?”

“Oh, just silly little children’s rhymes.”

“Have you sold any of them?”

“No, I never tried.”

“I should like to see them,” he said, to her surprise. “I could use them
perhaps if they were good. As for this story,” he turned the pages, “I
see you have an original idea. A child bird-tamer, dumb, whose power no
one can explain. Before they talk babies can understand the birds, but
as soon as they learn to speak they forget bird language. This child is
dumb, so he remembers, but can’t tell any one. Very pretty.”

Mary gasped at his accurate summary of her idea. He seemed to have
photographed the pages in his mind at a glance.

“I had tried to make it a little mysterious,” she said rather ruefully.
His smile reassured her.

“You have,” he nodded, “but we editors learn to get impressions quickly.
Yes,” he was reading as he spoke, “I think it likely I can use this.
The style is good, and individual.” He touched a bell, and handed the
manuscript to an answering office boy. “Ask Miss Haviland to read this,
and report to me to-day,” he ordered.

“I rarely have time to read manuscripts myself,” he went on, “but Miss
Haviland is my assistant for our children’s magazine. If her judgment
confirms mine, as I feel sure it will, we will mail you a cheque
to-night, Mrs. Byrd--according to our friend McEwan’s instructions--”
 and he smiled.

Mary blushed with pleasure, and again rose to go, with an attempt at
thanks. The telephone bell had twice, with a mere thread of sound,
announced a summons. The editor took up the receiver. “Yes, in five
minutes,” he answered, hanging up and turning again to Mary.

“Don’t go yet, Mrs. Byrd; allow me the luxury of postponing other
business for a moment. We do not meet a new contributor and a new
citizen every day.” He leant back with an air of complete leisure,
turning to her his kindly, open smile. She felt wonderfully at her ease,
as though this man and she were old acquaintances. He asked more about
her work and that of her husband.

“We like to have some personal knowledge of our authors; it helps us in
criticism and suggestion,” he explained.

Mary described Stefan’s success in Paris, and mentioned his sketches of
downtown New York. Farraday looked interested.

“I should like to see those,” he said. “We have an illustrated review in
which we sometimes use such things. If you are bringing me your verses,
your husband might care to come too, and show me the drawings.”

Again the insistent telephone purred, and this time he let Mary go,
shaking her hand and holding the door for her.

“Bring the verses whenever you like, Mrs. Byrd,” was his farewell.

When she had gone, James Farraday returned to his desk, lit a cigar, and
smoked absently for a few moments, staring out of the window. Then he
pulled his chair forward, and unhooked the receiver.



VI


Mary hurried home vibrant with happiness, and ran into the studio to
find Stefan disconsolately gazing out of the window. He whirled at her
approach, and caught her in his arms.

“Wicked one! I thought, like Persephone, you had been carried off by
Dis and his wagon,” he chided. “I could not work when I realized you had
been gone so long. Where have you been?” He looked quite woebegone.

“Ah, I’m so glad you missed me,” she cried from his arms. Then, unable
to contain her delight, she danced to the center of the room, and,
throwing back her head, burst into song. “Praise God from whom all
blessings flow,” chanted Mary full-throated, her chest expanded, pouring
out her gratitude as whole-heartedly as a lark.

“Mary, I can see your wings,” interrupted Stefan excitedly. “You’re
soaring!” He seized a stick of charcoal and dashed for paper, only
to throw down his tools again in mock despair. “Pouf, you’re beyond
sketching at this moment--you need a cathedral organ to express you.
What has happened? Have you been sojourning with the immortals?”

But Mary had stopped singing, and dropped on the divan as if suddenly
tired. She held out her arms to Stefan, and he sat beside her,
lover-like.

“Oh, dearest,” she said, her voice vibrating with tenderness, “I’ve
wanted so to help, and now I think I’ve sold a story, and I’ve found a
chance for your New York drawings. I’m so happy.”

“Why, you mysterious creature, your eyes have tears in them--and all
because you’ve helped me! I’ve never seen your tears, Mary; they make
your eyes like stars lost in a pool.” He kissed her passionately, and
she responded, but waited eagerly to hear him praise her success. After
a moment, however, he got up and wandered to his drawing board.

“You say you found a chance for these,” indicating the sketches. “How
splendid of you! Tell me all about it.” He was eagerly attentive, but
she might never have mentioned her story. Apparently, that part of her
report simply had not registered in his brain.

Mary’s spirits suddenly dropped. She had come from an interview in which
she was treated as a serious artist, and her husband could not even
hear the account of her success. She rose and began to prepare their
luncheon, recounting her adventures meanwhile in a rather flat voice.
Stefan listened to her description of McEwan’s metamorphosis only half
credulously.

“Don’t tell me,” he commented, “that the cloven hoof will not out. Do
you mean to say it’s to him that you owe this chance?”

She nodded.

“I don’t see how we can take favors from that brute,” he said, running
his hands moodily into his pockets.

Mary looked at him in frank astonishment.

“I don’t understand you, Stefan,” she said. “Mr. McEwan was kindness
itself, and I am grateful to him, but there can be no question of
receiving favors on your part. He introduced me to Mr. Farraday as a
writer, and it was only through me that your work was mentioned at all.”
 She was hurt by his narrow intolerance, and he saw it.

“Very well, goddess, don’t flash your lightnings at me.” He laughed
gaily, and sat down to his luncheon. Throughout it Mary listened to a
detailed account of his morning’s work.

Next day she received by the first post a cheque for two hundred
dollars, with a formal typewritten note from Farraday, expressing
pleasure, and a hope that the Household Publishing Company might receive
other manuscripts from her for its consideration. Stefan was setting
his pallette for a morning’s work on the Danaë. She called to him rather
constrainedly from the door where she had opened the letter.

“Stefan, I’ve received a cheque for two hundred dollars for my story.”

“That’s splendid,” he answered cheerfully. “If I sell these sketches
we shall be quite rich. We must move from this absurd place to a proper
studio flat. Mary shall have a white bathroom, and a beautiful blue and
gold bed. Also minions to set food before her. Tra-la-la,” and he hummed
gaily. “I’m ready to begin, beloved,” he added.

As Mary prepared for her sitting she could not subdue a slight feeling
of irritation. Apparently she might never, even for a moment, enjoy the
luxury of being a human being with ambitions like Stefan’s own, but must
remain ever pedestaled as his inspiration. She was irked, too, by his
hopelessly unpractical attitude toward affairs. She would have enjoyed
the friendly status of a partner as a wholesome complement to the ardors
of marriage. She knew that her husband differed from the legendary
bohemian in having a strictly upright code in money matters, but she
wished it could be less visionary. He mentally oscillated between
pauperism and riches. Let him fail to sell a picture and he offered to
pawn his coat; but the picture sold, he aspired to hire a mansion. In
a word, she began to see that he was incapable either of foresight or
moderation. Could she alone, she wondered, supply the deficiency?

That evening when they returned from dinner, which as a rare treat they
had eaten in the café of their old hotel, they found McEwan waiting
their arrival from a seat on the stairs.

“Here you are,” his hearty voice called to them as they labored up
the last flight. “I was determined not to miss you. I wanted to pay my
respects to the couple, and see how the paint-slinging was getting on.”

Mary, knowing now that the Scotchman was not the slow-witted blunderer
he had appeared on board ship, looked at him with sudden suspicion. Was
she deceived, or did there lurk a teasing gleam in those blue eyes?
Had McEwan used the outrageous phrase “paint-slinging” with malice
aforethought? She could not be sure. But if his object was to get a rise
from Stefan, he was only partly successful. True, her husband snorted
with disgust, but, at a touch from her and a whispered “Be nice to him,”
 restrained himself sufficiently to invite McEwan in with a frigid show
of politeness. But once inside, and the candles lighted, Stefan leant
glumly against the mantelpiece with his hands in his pockets, evidently
determined to leave their visitor entirely on Mary’s hands.

McEwan was nothing loath. He helped himself to a cigarette, and
proceeded to survey the walls of the room with interest.

“Nifty work, Mrs. Byrd. You must be proud of him,” and again Mary seemed
to catch a glint in his eye. “These sketches now,” he approached the
table on which lay the skyscraper studies. “Very harsh--cruel, you might
say--but clever, yes, _sir_, mighty clever.” Mary saw Stefan writhe with
irritation at the other’s air of connoisseur. She shot him a glance
at once amused and pleading, but he ignored it with a shrug, as if to
indicate that Mary was responsible for this intrusion, and must expect
no aid from him.

McEwan now faced the easel which held the great Danaë, shrouded by a
cloth.

“Is this the latest masterpiece--can it be seen?” he asked, turning to
his host, his hand half stretched to the cover.

Mary made an exclamation of denial, and started forward to intercept the
hand. But even as she moved, dismay visible on her face, the perverse
devil which had been mounting in Stefan’s brain attained the mastery.
She had asked him to be nice to this jackass--very well, he would.

“Yes, that’s the best thing I’ve done, McEwan. As you’re a friend of
both of us, you ought to see it,” he exclaimed, and before Mary could
utter a protest had wheeled the easel round to the light and thrown
back the drapery. He massed the candles on the mantelpiece. “Here,” he
called, “stand here where you can see properly. Mythological, you see,
Danaë. What do you think of it?” There were mischief and triumph in his
tone, and a shadow of spite.

Mary had blushed crimson and stood, incapable of speech, in the darkest
corner of the room. McEwan had not noticed her protest, it had all
happened so instantaneously. He followed Stefan’s direction, and faced
the canvas expectantly. There was a long silence. Mary, watching,
saw the spruce veneer of metropolitanism fall from their guest like a
discarded mask--the grave, steady Highlander emerged. Stefan’s moment
of malice had flashed and died--he stood biting his nails, already too
ashamed to glance in Mary’s direction. At last McEwan turned. There was
homage in his eyes, and gravity.

“Mr. Byrd,” he said, and his deep voice carried somewhat of its old
Scottish burr, “I owe ye an apology. I took ye for a tricky young mon,
clever, but better pleased with yersel’ than ye had a right to be. I see
ye are a great artist, and as such, ye hae the right even to the love of
that lady. Now I will congratulate her.” He strode over to Mary’s corner
and took her hand. “Dear leddy,” he said, his native speech still more
apparent, “I confess I didna think the young mon worthy, and in me
blunderin’ way, I would hae kept the two o’ ye apart could I hae done
it. But I was wrong. Ye’ve married a genius, and ye can be proud o’
the way ye’re helping him. Now I’ll bid ye good night, and I hope ye’ll
baith count me yer friend in all things.” He offered his hand to Stefan,
who took it, touched. Gravely he picked up his hat, and opened the door,
turning for a half bow before closing it behind him.

Stefan knew that he had behaved unpardonably, that he had been betrayed
into a piece of caddishness, but McEwan had given him the cue for his
defense. He hastened to Mary and seized her hand.

“Darling, forgive me. I knew you didn’t want the picture shown, but it’s
got to be done some day, hasn’t it? It seemed a shame for McEwan not to
see what you have inspired. I ought not to have shown it without asking
you, but his appreciation justified me, don’t you think?” His tone
coaxed.

Mary was choking back her tears. Explanations, excuses, were to her
trivial, nor was she capable of them. Wounded, she was always dumb, and
to discuss a hurt seemed to her to aggravate it.

“Don’t let’s talk about it, Stefan,” she murmured. “It seemed to me
you showed the picture because I did not wish it--that’s what I don’t
understand.” She spoke lifelessly.

“No, no, you mustn’t think that,” he urged. “I was irritated, and I’m
horribly sorry, but I do think it should be shown.”

But Mary was not deceived. If only for a moment, he had been disloyal to
her. The urge of her love made it easy to forgive him, but she knew she
could not so readily forget.

Though she put a good face on the incident, though Stefan was his
most charming self throughout the evening, even though she refused to
recognize the loss, one veil of illusion had been stripped from her
heart’s image of him.

In his contrite mood, determined to please her, Stefan recalled the
matter of her stories, and for the first time spoke of her success with
enthusiasm. He asked her about the editor, and offered to go with her
the next morning to show Mr. Farraday his sketches.

“Have you anything else to take him?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Mary. “I am to show him some verses I wrote at home in
Lindum. Just little songs for children.”

“Verses,” he exclaimed; “how wonderful! I knew you were a goddess and a
song-bird, but not that you were a poet, too.”

“Nor am I; they are the most trifling things.”


“I expect they are delicious, like your singing. Read them to me,
beloved,” he begged.

But Mary would not. He pressed her several times during the evening, but
for the first time since their marriage he found he could not move her
to compliance.

“Please don’t bother about them, Stefan. They are for children; they
would not interest you.”

He felt himself not wholly forgiven.



VII


A day or two later the Byrds went together to the office of the
Household Publishing Company and sent in their names to Mr. Farraday.
This time they had to wait their turn for admittance for over half an
hour, sharing the benches of the outer office with several men and
women of types ranging from the extreme of aestheticism to the obviously
commercial. The office was hung with original drawings of the covers
of the firm’s three publications--The Household Review, The Household
Magazine, and The Child at Home. Stefan prowled around the room mentally
demolishing the drawings, while Mary glanced through the copies of the
magazines that covered the large central table. She was impressed by
the high level of makeup and illustration in all three periodicals,
contrasting them with the obvious and often inane contents of similar
English publications. At a glance the sheets appeared wholesome, but not
narrow; dignified, but not dull. She wondered how much of their general
tone they owed to Mr. Farraday, and determined to ask McEwan more about
his friend when next she saw him. Her speculations were interrupted by
Stefan, who somewhat excitedly pulled her sleeve, pointing to a colored
drawing of a woman’s head on the wall behind her.

“Look, Mary!” he ejaculated. “Rotten bourgeois art, but an interesting
face, eh? I wonder if it’s a good portrait. It says in the corner,
‘Study of Miss Felicity Berber.’ An actress, I expect. Look at the eyes;
subtle, aren’t they? And the heavy little mouth. I’ve never seen a face
quite like it.” He was visibly intrigued.

Mary thought the face provocative, but somewhat unpleasant.

“It’s certainly interesting--the predatory type, I should think,” she
replied. “I’ll bet it’s true to life--the artist is too much of a fool
to have created that expression,” Stefan went on. “Jove, I should like
to meet her, shouldn’t you?” he asked naïvely.

“Not particularly,” said Mary, smiling at him. “She’ll have to be your
friend; she’s too feline for me.”

“The very word, observant one,” he agreed.

At this point their summons came. Mary was very anxious that her husband
should make a good impression. “I hope you’ll like him, dearest,” she
whispered as for the second time the editor’s door opened to her.

Farraday shook hands with them pleasantly, but turned his level glance
rather fixedly on her husband, Mary thought, before breaking into his
kindly smile. Stefan returned the smile with interest, plainly delighted
at the evidences of taste that surrounded him.

“I’m sorry you should have had to wait so long,” said Farraday. “I’m
rarely so fortunately unoccupied as on your first visit, Mrs. Byrd.
You’ve brought the verses to show me? Good! And Mr. Byrd has his
drawings?” He turned to Stefan. “America owes you a debt for the new
citizen you have given her, Mr. Byrd. May I offer my congratulations?”

“Thanks,” beamed Stefan, “but you couldn’t, adequately, you know.”

“Obviously not,” assented the other with a glance at Mary. “Our mutual
friend, McEwan, was here again yesterday, with a most glowing account
of your work, Mr. Byrd; he seems to have adopted the rôle of press agent
for the family.”

“He’s the soul of kindness,” said Mary.

“Yes, a thoroughly good sort,” Stefan conceded. “Here are the New York
sketches,” he went on, opening his portfolio on Farraday’s desk. “Half a
dozen of them.”

“Thank you, just a moment,” interposed the editor, who had opened Mary’s
manuscript. “Your wife’s work takes precedence. She is an established
contributor, you see,” he smiled, running his eyes over the pages.

Stefan sat down. “Of course,” he said, rather absently.

Farraday gave an exclamation of pleasure.

“Mrs. Byrd, these are good; unusually so. They have the Stevenson flavor
without being imitations. A little condensation, perhaps--I’ll pencil
a few suggestions--but I must have them all. I would not let another
magazine get them for the world! Let me see, how many are there! Eight.
We might bring them out in a series, illustrated. What if I were to
offer the illustrating to Mr. Byrd, eh?” He put down the sheets and
glanced from wife to husband, evidently charmed with his idea. “What do
you think, Mr. Byrd? Is your style suited to her work?” he asked.

Stefan looked thoroughly taken aback. He laughed shortly. “I’m a
painter, Mr. Farraday, not an illustrator. I haven’t time to undertake
that kind of thing. Even these drawings,” he indicated the portfolio,
“were done in spare moments as an amusement. My wife suggested placing
them with you--I shouldn’t have thought of it.”

To Mary his tone sounded needlessly ungracious, but the editor appeared
not to notice it.

“I beg your pardon,” he replied suavely. “Of course, if you don’t
illustrate--I’m sorry. The collaboration of husband and wife would have
been an attraction, even though the names were unknown here. I’ll get
Ledward to do them.”

Stefan sat up. “You don’t mean Metcalf Ledward, the painter, do you?” he
exclaimed.

“Yes,” replied Farraday quietly; “he often does things for us--our
policy is to popularize the best American artists.”

Stefan was nonplused. Ledward illustrating Mary’s rhymes! He felt
uncomfortable.

“Don’t you think he would get the right atmosphere better perhaps than
anyone?” queried Farraday, who seemed courteously anxious to elicit
Stefan’s opinion. Mary interposed hastily.

“Mr. Farraday, he can’t answer you. I’m afraid I’ve been stupid, but I
was so pessimistic about these verses that I wouldn’t show them to him.
I thought I would get an outside criticism first, just to save my face,”
 she hurried on, anxious in reality to save her husband’s.

“I pleaded, but she was obdurate,” contributed Stefan, looking at her
with reproach.

Farraday smiled enlightenment. “I see. Well, I shall hope you will
change your mind about the illustrations when you have read the
poems--that is, if your style would adapt itself. Now may I see the
sketches?” and he held out his hand for them.

Stefan rose with relief. Much as he adored Mary, he could not comprehend
the seriousness with which this man was taking the rhymes which she
herself had described as “just little songs for children.” He was the
more baffled as he could not dismiss Farraday’s critical pretensions
with contempt, the editor being too obviously a man of cultivation. Now,
however, that attention had been turned to his own work, Stefan was at
his ease. Here, he felt, was no room for doubts.

“They are small chalk and charcoal studies of the spirit of the
city--mere impressions,” he explained, putting the drawings in
Farraday’s hands with a gesture which belied the carelessness of his
words.

Farraday glanced at them, looked again, rose, and carried them to the
window, where he examined them carefully, one by one. Mary watched him
breathlessly, Stefan with unconcealed triumph. Presently he turned
again and placed them in a row on the bare expanse of his desk. He stood
looking silently at them for a moment more before he spoke.


“Mr. Byrd,” he said at last, “this is very remarkable work.” Mary
exhaled an audible breath of relief, and turned a glowing face to
Stefan. “It is the most remarkable work,” went on the editor, “that has
come into this office for some time past. Frankly, however, I can’t use
it.”

Mary caught her breath--Stefan stared. The other went on without looking
at them:

“This company publishes strictly for the household. Our policy is to
send into the average American home the best that America produces, but
it must be a best that the home can comprehend. These drawings interpret
New York as you see it, but they do not interpret the New York in which
our readers live, or one which they would be willing to admit existed.”

“They interpret the real New York, though,” interposed Stefan.

“Obviously so, to you,” replied the editor, looking at him for the first
time. “For me, they do not. These drawings are an arraignment, Mr. Byrd,
and--if you will pardon my saying so--a rather bitter and inhuman one.
You are not very patriotic, are you?” His keen eyes probed the artist.

“Emphatically no,” Stefan rejoined. “I’m only half American by birth,
and wholly French by adoption.”

“That explains it,” nodded Farraday gravely. “Well, Mr. Byrd, there are
undoubtedly publications in which these drawings could find a place, and
I am only sorry that mine are not amongst them. May I, however, venture
to offer you a suggestion?”

Stefan was beginning to look bored, but Mary interposed with a quick
“Oh, please do!” Farraday turned to her.

“Mrs. Byrd, you will bear me out in this, I think. Your husband has
genius--that is beyond question--but he is unknown here as yet. Would
it not be a pity for him to be introduced to the American public through
these rather sinister drawings? We are not fond of the too frank critic
here, you know,” he smiled, whimsically. “You may think me a Philistine,
Mr. Byrd,” he continued, “but I have your welfare in mind. Win your
public first with smiles, and later they may perhaps accept chastisement
from you. If you have any drawings in a different vein I shall feel
honored in publishing them”--his tone was courteous--“if not, I should
suggest that you seek your first opening through the galleries rather
than the press. Whichever way you decide, if I can assist you at all by
furnishing introductions, I do hope you will call on me. Both for
your wife’s sake and for your own, it would be a pleasure. And
now”--gathering up the drawings--“I must ask you both to excuse me, as
I have a long string of appointments. Mrs. Byrd, I will write you our
offer for the verses. I don’t know about the illustrations; you must
consult your husband.” They found themselves at the door bidding him
goodbye: Mary with a sense of disappointment mingled with comprehension;
Stefan not knowing whether the more to deplore what he considered
Farraday’s Philistinism, or to admire his critical acumen.

“His papers and his policy are piffling,” he summed up at last, as they
walked down the Avenue, “but I must say I like the man himself--he is
the first person of distinction I have seen since I left France.”

“Oh! Oh! The first?” queried Mary.

“Darling,” he seized her hand and pressed it, “I said the first person,
not the first immortal!” He had a way of bestowing little endearments
in public, which Mary found very attractive, even while her training
obliged her to class them as solecisms.

“I felt sure you would like him. He seems to me charming,” she said,
withdrawing the hand with a smile.

“Grundy!” he teased at this. “Yes, the man is all right, but if that
is a sample of their attitude toward original work over here we have a
pretty prospect of success. ‘Genius, get thee behind me!’ would sum it
up. Imbeciles!” He strode on, his face mutinous.

Mary was thinking. She knew that Farraday’s criticism of her husband’s
work was just. The word “sinister” had struck home to her. It could
be applied, she felt, with equal truth to all his large paintings but
one--the Danaë.

“Stefan,” she asked, “what did you think of his advice to win the public
first by smiles?”

“Tennysonian!” pronounced Stefan, using what she knew to be his final
adjective of condemnation.

“A little Victorian, perhaps,” she admitted, smiling at this succinct
repudiation. “Nevertheless, I’m inclined to think he was right. There is
a sort of Pan-inspired terror in your work, you know.”

He appeared struck. “Mary, I believe you’ve hit it!” he exclaimed,
suddenly standing still. “I’ve never thought of it like that before--the
thing that makes my work unique, I mean. Like the music of Pan, it’s
outside humanity, because I am.”

“Don’t say that, dear,” she interrupted, shocked.

“Yes, I am. I hate my kind--all except a handful. I love beauty. It is
not my fault that humanity is ugly.”

Mary was deeply disturbed. Led on by a chance phrase of hers, he was
actually boasting of just that lack which was becoming her secret fear
for him. She touched his arm, pleadingly.

“Stefan, don’t speak like that; it hurts me dreadfully. It is awful for
any one to build up a barrier between himself and the world. It means
much unhappiness, both for himself and others.”

He laughed affectionately at her. “Why, sweet, what do we care? I love
you enough to make the balance true. You are on my side of the barrier,
shutting me in with beauty.”

“Is that your only reason for loving me?” she asked, still distressed.

“I love you because you have a beautiful body and a beautiful
mind--because you are like a winged goddess of inspiration. Could there
be a more perfect reason?”

Mary was silent. Again the burden of his ideal oppressed her. There was
no comfort in it. It might be above humanity, she felt, but it was not
of it. Again her mind returned to the pictures and Farraday’s criticism.
“Sinister!” So he would have summed up all the others, except the Danaë.
To that at least the word could not apply. Her heart lifted at the
realization of how truly she had helped Stefan. In his tribute to
her there was only beauty. She knew now that her gift must be without
reservation.

Home again, she stood long before the picture, searching its strange
face. Was she wrong, or did there linger even here the sinister,
half-human note?

“Stefan,” she said, calling him to her, “I was wrong to ask you not to
make the face like me. It was stupid--‘Tennysonian,’ I’m afraid.” She
smiled bravely. “It _is_ me--your ideal of me, at least--and I want you
to make the face, too, express me as I seem to you.” She leant against
him. “Then I want you to exhibit it. I want you to be known first by
our gift to each other, this--which is our love’s triumph.” She was
trembling; her face quivered--he had never seen her so moved. She fired
him.

“How glorious of you, darling!” he exclaimed, “and oh, how beautiful you
look! You have never been so wonderful. If I could paint that rapt face!
Quick, I believe I can get it. Stand there, on the throne.” He seized
his pallette and brushes and worked furiously while Mary stood, still
flaming with her renunciation. In a few minutes it was done. He ran
to her and covered her face with kisses. “Come and look!” he cried
exultingly, holding her before the canvas.

The strange face with its too-wide eyes and exotic mouth was gone.
Instead, she saw her own purely cut features, but fired by such exultant
adoration as lifted them to the likeness of a deity. The picture now was
incredibly pure and passionate--the very flaming essence of love. Tears
started to her eyes and dropped unheeded. She turned to him worshiping.

“Beloved,” she cried, “you are great, great. I adore you,” and she
kissed him passionately.

He had painted love’s apotheosis, and his genius had raised her love to
its level. At that moment Mary’s actually was the soul of flame he had
depicted it.

That day, illumined by the inspiration each had given each, was destined
to mark a turning point in their common life. The next morning the
understanding which Mary had for long instinctively feared, and against
which she had raised a barrier of silence, came at last.

She was standing for some final work on the Danaë, but she had awakened
feeling rather unwell, and her pose was listless. Stefan noticed it, and
she braced herself by an effort, only to droop again. To his surprise,
she had to ask for her rest much sooner than usual; he had hitherto
found her tireless. But hardly had she again taken the pose than she
felt herself turning giddy. She tottered, and sat down limply on the
throne. He ran to her, all concern.

“Why, darling, what’s the matter, aren’t you well?” She shook her head.
“What can be wrong?” She looked at him speechless.

“What is it, dearest, has anything upset you?” he went on with--it
seemed to her--incredible blindness.

“I can’t stand in that pose any longer, Stefan; this must be the last
time,” she said at length, slowly.

He looked at her as she sat, pale-faced, drooping on the edge of the
throne. Suddenly, in a flash, realization came to him. He strode across
the room, looked again, and came back to her.

“Why, Mary, are you going to have a baby?” he asked, quite baldly, with
a surprised and almost rueful expression.

Mary flushed crimson, tears of emotion in her eyes. “Oh, Stefan, yes.
I’ve known it for weeks; haven’t you guessed?” Her arms reached to him
blindly.

He stood rooted for a minute, looking as dumfounded as if an earthquake
had rolled under him. Then with a quick turn he picked up her wrap,
folded it round her, and took her into his arms. But it was a moment
too late. He had hesitated, had not been there at the instant of her
greatest need. Her midnight fears were fulfilled, just as her instinct
had foretold. He was not glad. There in his arms her heart turned cold.

He soon rallied; kissed her, comforted her, told her what a fool he had
been; but all he said only confirmed her knowledge. “He is not glad. He
is not glad,” her heart beat out over and over, as he talked.

“Why did you not tell me sooner, darling? Why did you let me tire you
like this?” he asked.

Impossible to reply. “Why didn’t you know?” her heart cried out, and, “I
wasn’t tired until to-day,” her lips answered.

“But why didn’t you tell me?” he urged. “I never even guessed. It was
idiotic of me, but I was so absorbed in our love and my work that this
never came to my mind.”

“But at first, Stefan?” she questioned, probing for the answer she
already knew, but still clinging to the hope of being wrong. “I never
talked about it because you didn’t seem to care. But in the beginning,
when you proposed to me--the day we were married--at Shadeham--did you
never think of it then?” Her tone craved reassurance.

“Why, no,” he half laughed. “You’ll think me childish, but I never did.
I suppose I vaguely faced the possibility, but I put it from me. We had
each other and our love--that seemed enough.”

She raised her head and gazed at him in wide-eyed pain. “But, Stefan,
what’s marriage _for?_” she exclaimed.

He puckered his brows, puzzled. “Why, my dear, it’s for
love--companionship--inspiration. Nothing more so far as I am
concerned.” They stared nakedly at each other. For the first time the
veils were stripped away. They had felt themselves one, and behold!
here was a barrier, impenetrable as marble, dividing each from the
comprehension of the other. To Stefan it was inconceivable that a
marriage should be based on anything but mutual desire. To Mary the
thought of marriage apart from children was an impossibility. They had
come to their first spiritual deadlock.



VIII


Love, feeling its fusion threatened, ever makes a supreme effort for
reunity. In the days that followed, Stefan enthusiastically sought to
rebuild his image of Mary round the central fact of her maternity. He
became inspired with the idea of painting her as a Madonna, and recalled
all the famous artists of the past who had so glorified their hearts’
mistresses.

“You are named for the greatest of all mothers, dearest, and my picture
shall be worthy of the name,” he would cry. Or he would call her
Aphrodite, the mother of Love. “How beautiful our son will be--another
Eros,” he exclaimed.

Mary rejoiced in his new enthusiasm, and persuaded herself that
his indifference to children was merely the result of his lonely
bachelorhood, and would disappear forever at the sight of his own child.
Now that her great secret was shared she became happier, and openly
commenced those preparations which she had long been cherishing in
thought. Miss Mason was sent for, and the great news confided to her.
They undertook several shopping expeditions, as a result of which Mary
would sit with a pile of sewing on her knee while Stefan worked to
complete his picture. Miss Mason took to dropping in occasionally with a
pattern or some trifle of wool or silk. Mary was always glad to see
her, and even Stefan found himself laughing sometimes at her shrewd
New England wit. For the most part, however, he ignored her, while he
painted away in silence behind the great canvas.

Mary had received twelve dollars for each of her verses--ninety-six
dollars in all. Before Christmas Stefan sold his pastoral of the dancing
faun for one hundred and twenty-five, and Mary felt that financially
they were in smooth water, and ventured to discuss the possibility of
larger quarters. For these they were both eager, having begun to feel
the confinement of their single room; but Mary urged that they postpone
moving until spring.

“We are warm and snug here for the winter, and by spring we shall have
saved something substantial, and really be able to spread out,” she
argued.

“Very well, wise one, we will hold in our wings a little longer,” he
agreed, “but when we do fly, it must be high.” His brush soared in
illustration.

She had discussed with him the matter of the illustrations for her
verses as soon as she received her cheque from Farraday. They had
agreed that it would be a pity for him to take time for them from his
masterpiece.

“Besides, sweetheart,” he had said, “I honestly think Ledward will do
them better. His stuff is very graceful, without being sentimental,
and he understands children, which I’m afraid I don’t.” He shrugged
regretfully. “Didn’t you paint that adorable lost baby?” she reminded
him. “I’ve always grieved that we had to sell it.”

“I’ll buy it back for you, or paint you another better one,” he offered
promptly.

So the verses went to Ledward, and the first three appeared in the
Christmas number of The Child at Home, illustrated--as even Stefan had
to admit--with great beauty.

Mary would have given infinitely much for his collaboration, but she had
not urged it, feeling he was right in his refusal.

As Christmas approached they began to make acquaintances among the
polyglot population of the neighborhood. Their old hotel, the culinary
aristocrat of the district, possessed a cafe in which, with true French
hospitality, patrons were permitted to occupy tables indefinitely on
the strength of the slenderest orders. Here for the sake of the
French atmosphere Stefan would have dined nightly had Mary’s frugality
permitted. As it was, they began to eat there two or three nights a
week, and dropped in after dinner on many other nights. They would
sit at a bare round table smoking their cigarettes, Mary with a cup of
coffee, Stefan with the liqueur he could never induce her to share, and
watching the groups that dotted the other tables. Or they would linger
at the cheapest of their restaurants and listen to the conversation of
the young people, aggressively revolutionary, who formed its clientele.
These last were always noisy, and assumed as a pose manners even worse
than those they naturally possessed. Every one talked to every one else,
regardless of introductions, and Stefan had to summon his most crushing
manner to prevent Mary from being monopolized by various very youthful
and visionary men who openly admired her. He was inclined to abandon
the place, but Mary was amused by it for a time, bohemianism being a
completely unknown quantity to her.

“Don’t think this is the real thing,” he explained; “I’ve had seven
years of that in Paris. This is merely a very crass imitation.”

“Imitation or not, it’s most delightfully absurd and amusing,” said
she, watching the group nearest her. This consisted of a very short and
rotund man with hair a la Paderewski and a frilled evening shirt, a thin
man of incredible stature and lank black locks, and a pretty young
girl in a tunic, a tam o’ shanter, enormous green hairpins, and tiny
patent-leather shoes decorated with three inch heels. To her the lank
man, who wore a red velvet shirt and a khaki-colored suit reminiscent of
Mr. Bernard Shaw, was explaining the difference between syndicalism and
trade-unionism in the same conversational tone which men in Lindum had
used in describing to Mary the varying excellences of the two local
hunts. “I.W.W.” and “A.F. of L.” fell from his lips as “M.F.H.”
 and “J.P.” used to from theirs. The contrast between the two worlds
entertained her not a little. She thought all these young people looked
clever, though singularly vulgar, and that her old friends would have
appeared by comparison refreshingly clean and cultivated, but quite
stupid.

“Why, Stefan, are dull, correct people always so clean, and clever and
original ones usually so unwashed?” she wondered.

“Oh, the unwashed stage is like the measles,” he replied; “you are bound
to catch it in early life.”

“I suppose that’s true. I know even at Oxford the Freshmen go through
an utterly ragged and disreputable phase, in which they like to pretend
they have no laundry bill.”

“Yes, it advertises their emancipation. I went through it in Paris, but
mine was a light case.”

“And brief, I should think,” smiled Mary, to whom Stefan’s feline
perfection of neatness was one of his charms.

At the hotel, on the other hand, the groups, though equally individual,
lacked this harum-scarum quality, and, if occasionally noisy, were clean
and orderly.

“Is it because they can afford to dress better?” Mary asked on their
next evening there, noting the contrast.

“No,” said Stefan. “That velvet shirt cost as much probably as half a
dozen cotton ones. These people have more, certainly, or they wouldn’t
be here--but the real reason is that they are a little older. The other
crowd is raw with youth. These have begun to find themselves; they don’t
need to advertise their opinions on their persons.” He was looking about
him with quite a friendly eye.

“You don’t seem to hate humanity this evening, Stefan,” Mary commented.

“No,” he grinned. “I confess these people are less objectionable than
most.” He spoke in rapid French to the waiter, ordering another drink.

“And the language,” he continued. “If you knew what it means to me to
hear French!”

Mary nodded rather ruefully. Her French was of the British school-girl
variety, grammatically precise, but with a hopeless, insular accent.
After a few attempts Stefan had ceased trying to speak it with her.
“Darling,” he had begged, “don’t let us--it is the only ugly sound you
make.”

One by one they came to know the habitués of these places. In the
restaurant Stefan was detested, but tolerated for the sake of his wife.
“Beauty and the Beast” they were dubbed. But in the hotel café he made
himself more agreeable, and was liked for his charming appearance, his
fluent French, and his quick mentality. The “Villagers,” as these people
called themselves, owing to their proximity to New York’s old Greenwich
Village, admired Mary with ardor, and liked her, but for a time were
baffled by her innate English reserve. Mentally they stood round her
like a litter of yearling pups about a stranger, sniffing and wagging
friendly but uncertain tails, doubtful whether to advance with
affectionate fawnings or to withdraw to safety. This was particularly
true of the men--the women, finding Mary a stanch Feminist, and feeling
for her the sympathy a bride always commands from her sex, took to her
at once. The revolutionary group on the other hand would have broken
through her pleasant aloofness with the force--and twice the speed--of
a McEwan, had Stefan not, with them, adopted the role of snarling
watchdog.

One of Mary’s first after dinner friendships was made at the hotel with
a certain Mrs. Elliott, who turned out to be the President of the local
Suffrage Club. Scenting a new recruit, this lady early engaged the Byrds
in conversation and, finding Mary a believer, at once enveloped her in
the camaraderie which has been this cause’s gift to women all the world
over. They exchanged calls, and soon became firm friends.

Mrs. Elliot was an attractive woman in middle life, of slim, graceful
figure and vivacious manner. She had one son out in the world, and one
in college, and lived in a charming house just off the Avenue, with
an adored but generally invisible husband, who was engaged in business
downtown. As a girl Constance Elliot had been on the stage, and had
played smaller Shakespearean parts in the old Daly Company, but, bowing
to the code of her generation, had abandoned her profession at marriage.
Now, in middle life, too old to take up her calling again with any hope
of success, yet with her mental activity unimpaired, she found in the
Suffrage movement her one serious vocation.

“I am nearly fifty, Mrs. Byrd,” she said to Mary, “and have twenty good
years before me. I like my friends, and am interested in philanthropy,
but I am not a Jack-of-all-trades by temperament. I need work--a real
job such as I had when the boys were little, or when I was a girl. We
are all working hard enough to win the vote, but what we shall fill the
hole in our time with when we have it, I don’t know. It will be easy for
the younger ones--but I suppose women like myself will simply have to
pay the price of having been born of our generation. Some will find
solace as grandmothers--I hope I shall. But my elder son, who married a
pretty society girl, is childless, and my younger such a light-hearted
young rascal that I doubt if he marries for years to come.”

Mary was much interested in this problem, which seemed more salient here
than in her own class in England, in which social life was a vocation
for both sexes.

At Mrs. Elliot’s house she met many of the neighborhood’s more
conventional women, and began to have a great liking for these gently
bred but broad-minded and democratic Americans. She also met a mixed
collection of artists, actresses, writers, reformers and followers of
various “isms”; for as president of a suffrage club it was Mrs. Elliot’s
policy to make her drawing rooms a center for the whole neighborhood.
She was a charming hostess, combining discrimination with breadth of
view; her Fridays were rallying days for the followers of many more
cults than she would ever embrace, but for none toward which she could
not feel tolerance.


At first Stefan, who, man-like, professed contempt for social functions,
refused to accompany Mary to these at-homes. But after Mrs. Elliot’s
visit to the studio he conceived a great liking for her, and to Mary’s
delight volunteered to accompany her on the following Friday. Few
misanthropes are proof against an atmosphere of adulation, and in this
Mrs. Elliot enveloped Stefan from the moment of first seeing his Danaë.
She introduced him as a genius--America’s coming great painter, and
he frankly enjoyed the novel sensation of being lionized by a group of
clever and attractive women.

Mrs. Elliot affected house gowns of unusual texture and design,
which flowed in adroitly veiling lines about her too slim form. These
immediately attracted the attention of Stefan, who coveted something
equally original for Mary. He remarked on them to his hostess on his
second visit.

“Yes,” she said, “I love them. I am eclipsed by fashionable clothing.
Felicity Berber designs all my things. She’s ruinous,” with a sigh,
“but I have to have her. I am a fool at dressing myself, but I have
intelligence enough to know it,” she added, laughing.

“Felicity Berber,” questioned Stefan. “Is that a creature with Mongolian
eyes and an O-shaped mouth?”

“What a good description! Yes--have you met her?”

“I haven’t, but you will arrange it, won’t you?” he asked cajolingly.
“I saw a drawing of her--she’s tremendously paintable. Do tell me about
her. Wait a minute. I’ll get my wife!”

He jumped up, pounced on Mary, who was in a group by the tea-table, and
bore her off regardless of her interrupted conversation.

“Mary,” he explained, all excitement, “you remember that picture at the
magazine office? Yes, you do, a girl with slanting black eyes--Felicity
Berber. Well, she isn’t an actress after all. Sit down here. Mrs. Elliot
is going to tell us about her.” Mary complied, sharing their hostess’
sofa, while Stefan wrapped himself round a stool. “Now begin at the
beginning,” he demanded, beaming; “I’m thrilled about her.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Elliot, dropping a string of jade beads through her
fingers, “so are most people. She’s unique in her way. She came here
from the Pacific coast, I believe, quite unknown, and trailing an
impossible husband. That was five years ago--she couldn’t have been more
than twenty-three. She danced in the Duncan manner, but was too lazy to
keep it up. Then she went into the movies, and her face became the
rage; it was on all the picture postcards. She got royalties on every
photograph sold, and made quite a lot of money, I believe. But she hates
active work, and soon gave the movies up. About that time the appalling
husband disappeared. I don’t know if she divorced him or not, but he
ceased to be, as it were. His name was Noaks.” She paused, “Does this
bore you?” she asked Mary.

“On the contrary,” smiled she, “it’s most amusing--like the penny
novelettes they sell in England.”

“Olympian superiority!” teased Stefan. “Please go on, Mrs. Elliot. Did
she attach another husband?”

“No, she says she hates the bother of them,” laughed their hostess.
“Men are always falling in love with her, but-openly at least-she seems
uninterested in them.”

“Hasn’t found the right one, I suppose,” Stefan interjected.

“Perhaps that’s it. At any rate her young men are always confiding their
woes to me. My status as a potential grandmother makes me a suitable
repository for such secrets.”

“Ridiculous,” Stefan commented.

“But true, alas!” she laughed. “Well, Felicity had always designed the
gowns for her dancing and acting, and after the elimination of Mr.
Noaks she set up a dressmaking establishment for artistic and individual
gowns. She opened it with a thé dansant, at which she discoursed on
the art of dress. Her showroom is like a sublimated hotel lobby--tea is
served there for visitors every afternoon. Her prices are high, and she
has made a huge success. She’s wonderfully clever, directs everything
herself. Felicity detests exertion, but she has the art of making others
work for her.”

“That sounds as if she would get fat,” said Stefan, with a shudder.

“Doesn’t it?” agreed Mrs. Elliot. “But she’s as slim as a panther, and
intensely alive nervously, for all her physical laziness.”

“Do you like her?” Mary asked.

“Yes, I really do, though she’s terribly rude, and I tell her I’m
convinced she’s a dangerous person. She gives me a feeling that
gunpowder is secreted somewhere in the room with her. I will get her
here to meet you both--you would be interested. She’s never free in the
afternoon; we’ll make it an evening.” With a confirming nod, Mrs. Elliot
rose to greet some newcomers.

“Mary,” Stefan whispered, “we’ll go and order you a dress from this
person. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“How sweet of you, dearest, but we can’t afford it,” replied Mary,
surreptitiously patting his hand.

“Nonsense, of course we can. Aren’t we going to be rich?” scoffed he.

“Look who’s coming!” exclaimed Mary suddenly.

Farraday was shaking hands with their hostess, his tall frame looking
more than ever distinguished in its correct cutaway. Almost instantly he
caught sight of Mary and crossed the room to her with an expression of
keen pleasure.

“How delightful,” he greeted them both. “So you have found the
presiding genius of the district! Why did I not have the inspiration
of introducing you myself?” He turned to Mrs. Elliot, who had rejoined
them. “Two more lions for you, eh, Constance?” he said, with a twinkle
which betokened old friendship.

“Yes, indeed,” she smiled, “they have no rivals for my Art and Beauty
cages.”

“And what about the literary circus? I suppose you have been making Mrs.
Byrd roar overtime?”

Their hostess looked puzzled.

“Don’t tell me that you are in ignorance of her status as the Household
Company’s latest find?” he ejaculated in mock dismay.

Mrs. Elliot turned reproachful eyes on Mary. “She never told me, the
unfriendly woman!”

“Just retribution, Constance, for poring over your propagandist sheets
instead of reading our wholesome literature,” Farraday retorted. “Had
you done your duty by the Household magazines you would have needed no
telling.”

“A hit, a palpable hit,” she answered, laughing. “Which reminds me that
I want another article from you, James, for our Woman Citizen.”

“Mrs. Byrd,” said Farraday, “behold in me a driven slave. Won’t you come
to my rescue and write something for this insatiable suffragist?”

Mary shook her head. “No, no, Mr. Farraday, I can’t argue, either
personally or on paper. You should hear me trying to make a speech!
Pathetic.”

Stefan, who had ceased to follow the conversation, and was restlessly
examining prints on the wall, turned at this. “Don’t do it, dearest.
Argument is so unbeautiful, and I couldn’t stand your doing anything
badly.” He drifted away to a group of women who were discussing the
Italian Futurists.

“Tell me about this lion, James,” said Constance, settling herself on
the sofa. “I believe she is too modest to tell me herself.” She looked
at Mary affectionately.

“She has written a second ‘Child’s Garden,’ almost rivaling the first,
and we have a child’s story of hers which will be as popular as some of
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s,” summed up Farraday.

Mary blushed with pleasure at this praise, but was about to deprecate
it when Stefan signaled her away. “Mary,” he called, “I want you to hear
this I am saying about the Cubists!” She left them with a little smile
of excuse, and they watched her tall figure join her husband.

“James,” said Mrs. Elliot irrelevantly, “why in the world don’t you
marry?”

“Because, Constance,” he smiled, “all the women I most admire in the
world are already married.”

“À propos, have you seen Mr. Byrd’s work?” she asked.

“Only some drawings, from which I suspect him of genius. But she is as
gifted in her way as he, only it’s a smaller way.”

“Don’t place him till you’ve seen his big picture, painted from her.
It’s tremendous. We’ve got to have it exhibited at Constantine’s. I
want you to help me arrange it for them. She’s inexperienced, and he’s
helplessly unpractical. Oh!” she grasped his arm; “a splendid idea! Why
shouldn’t I have a private exhibition here first, for the benefit of the
Cause?”

Farraday threw up his hands. “You are indefatigable, Constance. We’d
better all leave it to you. The Byrds and Suffrage will benefit equally,
I am sure.”

“I will arrange it,” she nodded smiling, her eyes narrowing, her slim
hands dropping the jade beads from one to the other.

Farraday, knowing her for the moment lost to everything save her latest
piece of stage management, left her, and joined the Byrds. He engaged
himself to visit their studio the following week.



IX


Miss Mason was folding her knitting, and Mary sat in the firelight
sewing diligently. Stefan was out in search of paints.

“I tell you what ‘tis, Mary Elliston Byrd,” said Miss Mason. “It’s ‘bout
time you saw a doctor. My mother was a physician-homeopath, one of the
first that ever graduated. Take my advice, and have a woman.”

“I’d much rather,” said Mary.

“I should say!” agreed the other. “I never was one to be against the
men, but oh, my--” she threw up her bony little hands--“if there’s one
thing I never could abide it’s a man doctor for woman’s work. I s’pose
I got started that way by what my mother told me of the medical students
in her day. Anyway, it hardly seems Christian to me for a woman to go to
a man doctor.”

Mary laughed. “I wish my dear old Dad could have heard you. I remember
he once refused to meet a woman doctor in consultation. She had to leave
Lindum--no one would employ her. I was a child at the time, but even
then it seemed all wrong to me.”

“My dear, you thank the Lord you live under the Stars and Stripes,”
 rejoined Miss Mason, who conceived of England as a place beyond the
reach of liberty for either women or men.

“I shall live under the Tricolor if Stefan has his way,” smiled Mary.

“Child,” said her visitor, putting on her hat, “don’t say it. Your
husband’s an elegant man--I admire him--but don’t you ever let me hear
he doesn’t love his country.”

“I’m certainly learning to love it myself,” Mary discreetly evaded.

“You’re too fine a woman not to,” retorted the other. “Now I tell you.
I’ve been treated for my chest at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
There’s one little doctor there’s cute’s she can be. I’m goin’ to get
you her address. You’ve got to treat yourself right. Good-bye,” nodded
the little woman; and was gone in her usual brisk fashion.

It was the day of Mr. Farraday’s expected call, and Miss Mason had
hardly departed when the bell rang. Mary hastily put away her sewing
and pressed the electric button which opened the downstairs door to
visitors. She wished Stefan were back again to help her entertain the
editor, and greeted him with apologies for her husband’s absence. She
was anxious that this man, whom she instinctively liked and trusted,
should see her husband at his best. Seating Farraday in the Morris
chair, she got him some tea, while he looked about with interest.

The two big pictures, “Tempest,” and “Pursuit,” now hung stretched but
unframed, on either side of the room. Farraday’s gaze kept returning to
them.

“Those are his Beaux Arts pictures; extraordinary, aren’t they?” said
Mary, following his eyes.

“They certainly are. Remarkably powerful. I understand there is another,
though, that he has only just finished?”

“Yes, it’s on the easel, covered, you see,” she answered. “Stefan must
have the honor of showing you that himself.”

“I wish you would tell me, Mrs. Byrd,” said Farraday, changing the
subject, “how you happened to write those verses? Had you been brought
up with children, younger brothers and sisters, for instance?”

Mary shook her head. “No, I’m the younger of two. But I’ve always loved
children more than anything in the world.” She blushed, and Farraday,
watching her, realized for the first time what a certain heightened
radiance in her face betokened. He smiled very sweetly at her. She in
her turn saw that he knew, and was glad. His manner seemed to enfold her
in a mantle of comfort and understanding.

As they finished their tea, Stefan arrived. He entered gaily, greeted
Farraday, and fell upon the tea, consuming two cups and several slices
of bread and butter with the rapid concentration he gave to all his
acts.

That finished, he leaped up and made for the easel.

“Now, Farraday,” he cried, “you are going to see one of the finest
modern paintings in the world. Why should I be modest about it? I’m not.
It’s a masterpiece--Mary’s and mine!”

Mary wished he had not included her. Though determined to overcome the
feeling, she still shrank from having the picture shown in her presence.
Farraday placed himself in position, and Stefan threw back the cloth,
watching the other’s face with eagerness. The effect surpassed his
expectation. The editor flushed, then gradually became quite pale. After
a minute he turned rather abruptly from the canvas and faced Stefan.

“You are right, Mr. Byrd,” he said, in an obviously controlled voice,
“it _is_ a masterpiece. It will make your name and probably your
fortune. It is one of the most magnificent modern paintings I have ever
seen.”

Mary beamed.

“Your praise honors me,” said Stefan, genuinely delighted.

“I’m sorry I have to run away now,” Farraday continued almost hurriedly.
“You know what a busy man I am.” He shook hands with Stefan. “A thousand
congratulations,” he said. “Good-bye, Mrs. Byrd; I enjoyed my cup of tea
with you immensely.” The hand he offered her was cold; he hardly looked
up. “You will let me have some more stories, won’t you? I shall count
on them. Good-bye again--my warmest congratulations to you both,” and
he took his departure with a suddenness only saved from precipitation by
the deliberate poise of his whole personality.

“I’m sorry he had to go so soon,” said Mary, a little blankly.

“What got into the man?” Stefan wondered, thrusting his hands into his
pockets. “He was leisurely enough till he had seen the picture. I tell
you what!” he exclaimed. “Did you notice his expression when he looked
at it? I believe the chap is in love with you!” He turned his most
impish and mischievous face to her.

Mary blushed with annoyance. “How perfectly ridiculous, Stefan! Please
don’t say such things.”

“But he is!” He danced about the room, hugely entertained by his idea.
“Don’t you see, that is why he is so eager about your verses, and why he
was so bouleversé by the Danaë! Poor chap, I feel quite sorry for him.
You must be nice to him.”

Mary was thoroughly annoyed. “Please don’t talk like that,” she
reiterated. “You don’t know how it hurts when you are so flippant. If
you suggest such a reason for his acceptance of my work, of course I
can’t send in any more.” Tears of vexation were in her eyes.

“Darling, don’t be absurd,” he responded, teasingly. “Why shouldn’t he
be in love with you? I expect everybody to be so. As for your verses, of
course he wouldn’t take them if they weren’t good; I didn’t mean that.”

“Then why did you say it?” she asked, unplacated.

“Dearest!” and he kissed her. “Don’t be dignified; be Aphrodite again,
not Pallas. I never mean anything I say, except when I say I love you!”

“Love isn’t the only thing, Stefan,” she replied.

“Isn’t it? What else is there? I don’t know,” and he jumped on the table
and sat smiling there with his head on one side, like a naughty little
boy facing his schoolmaster.

She wanted to answer “comprehension,” but was silent, feeling the
uselessness of further words. How expect understanding of a common human
hurt from this being, who alternately appeared in the guise of a god
and a gamin? She remembered the old tale of the maiden wedded to
the beautiful and strange elf-king. Was the legend symbolic of that
mysterious thread--call it genius or what you will--that runs its
erratic course through humanity’s woof, marring yet illuminating the
staid design, never straightened with its fellow-threads, never tied,
and never to be followed to its source? With the feeling of having for
an instant held in her hand the key to the riddle of his nature, Mary
went to Stefan and ran her fingers gently through his hair.

“Child,” she said, smiling at him rather sadly; and “Beautiful,” he
responded, with a prompt kiss.



X


The next morning brought Constance Elliot, primed with a complete scheme
for the future of the Danaë. She found Mary busy with her sewing and
Stefan rather restlessly cleaning his pallette and brushes. The great
picture was propped against the wall, a smaller empty canvas being
screwed on the easel. Stefan greeted her enthusiastically.

“Come in!” he cried, forestalling Mary. “You find us betwixt and
between. She’s finished,” indicating the Danaë, “and I’m thinking
of doing an interior, with Mary seated. I don’t know,” he went on
thoughtfully; “it’s quite out of my usual line, but we’re too domestic
here just now for anything else.” His tone was slightly grumbling. From
the rocking chair Constance smiled importantly on them both. She had
the happy faculty of never appearing to hear what should not have been
expressed.

“Children,” she said, “your immediate future is arranged. I have a plan
for the proper presentation of the masterpiece to a waiting world, and
I haven’t been responsible for two suffrage matinees and a mile of the
Parade for nothing. I understand publicity. Now listen.”

She outlined her scheme to them. The reporters were to be sent for and
informed that the great new American painter, sensation of this year’s
Salon, had kindly consented to a private exhibition of his masterpiece
at her house for the benefit of the Cause. Tickets, one dollar each, to
be limited to two hundred.

“Then a bit about your both being Suffragists, and about Mary’s writing,
you know,” she threw in. “Note the value of the limited sale--at once it
becomes a privilege to be there.” Tickets, she went on to explain, would
be sent to the art critics of the newspapers, and Mr. Farraday would
arrange to get Constantine himself and one or two of the big private
connoisseurs. She personally knew the curator of the Metropolitan, and
would get him. The press notices would be followed by special letters
and articles by some of these men. Then Constantine would announce a
two weeks’ exhibition at his gallery, the public would flock, and the
picture would be bought by one of the big millionaires, or a gallery.
“I’ve arranged it all,” she concluded triumphantly, looking from one to
the other with her dark alert glance.

Stefan was grinning delightedly, his attention for the moment completely
captured. Mary’s sewing had dropped to her lap; she was round-eyed.

“But the sale itself, Mrs. Elliot, you can hardly have arranged that?”
 she laughed.

Constance waved her hand. “That arranges itself. It is enough to set the
machinery in motion.”

“Do you mean to say,” went on Mary, half incredulous, “that you can
simply send for the reporters and get them to write what you want?”

“Within reason, certainly,” answered the other. “Why not?”

“In England,” Mary laughed, “if a woman were to do that, unless she were
a duchess, a Pankhurst, or a great actress, they wouldn’t even come.”

Constance dismissed this with a shrug. “Ah, well, my dear, luckly we’re
not in England! I’m going to begin to-day. I only came over to get your
permission. Let me see--this is the sixteenth--too near Christmas. I’ll
have the tickets printed and the press announcement prepared, and
we’ll let them go in the dead week after Christmas, when the papers are
thankful for copy. We’ll exhibit the first Saturday in the New Year. For
a week we’ll have follow-up articles, and then Constantine will take
it. You blessed people,” and she rose to go, “don’t have any anxiety.
Suffragists always put things through, and I shall concentrate on this
for the next three weeks. I consider the picture sold.”

Mary tried to express her gratitude, but the other waved it aside. “I
just love you both,” she cried in her impulsive way, “and want to see
you where you ought to be--at the top!” She shook hands with Stefan
effusively. “Mind you get on with your next picture!” she cried in
parting; “every one will be clamoring for your work!”

“Oh, Stefan, isn’t it awfully good of her?” exclaimed Mary, linking her
arm through his. He was staring at his empty canvas. “Yes, splendid,”
 he responded carelessly, “but of course she’ll have the kudos, and her
organization will benefit, too.”

“Stefan!” Mary dropped his arm, dumfounded. It was not possible he
should be so ungenerous. She would have remonstrated, but saw he was
oblivious of her.

“Yes,” he went on absently, looking from the room to the canvas, “it’s
fine for every one all round--just as it should be. Now, Mary, if you
will sit over there by the fire and take your sewing, I think I’ll try
and block in that Dutch interior effect I noticed some time back. The
light is all wrong, but I can get the thing composed.”

He was lost in his new idea. Mary told herself she had in part misjudged
him. His comment on their friend’s assistance was not dictated by lack
of appreciation so much as by indifference. No sooner was the picture’s
future settled than he had ceased to be interested in it. The practical
results of its sale would have little real meaning for him, she knew.
She began to see that all he asked of humanity was that it should leave
him untrammeled to do his work, while yielding him full measure of the
beauty and acclamation that were his food. “Well,” she thought, “I’m
the wife of a genius. It’s a great privilege, but it is strange, for I
always supposed if I married it would simply be some good, kind man. He
would have been very dull,” she smiled to herself, mentally contrasting
the imagined with the real.

A few days before Christmas Mary noticed that one of the six skyscraper
studies was gone from the studio. She spoke of it, fearing the
possibility of a theft, but Stefan murmured rather vaguely that it was
all right--he was having it framed. Also, on three consecutive mornings
she awakened to find him busily painting at a small easel close under
the window, which he would hastily cover on hearing her move. As
he evidently did not wish her to see it, she wisely restrained her
curiosity. She was herself busy with various little secrets--there was
some knitting to be done whenever his back was turned, and she had made
several shopping expeditions. On Christmas Eve Stefan was gone the whole
afternoon, and returned radiant, full of absurd jokes and quivers of
suppressed glee. He was evidently highly pleased with himself, but
cherished with touching faith, she thought, the illusion that his manner
betrayed nothing.

That night, when she was supposed to be asleep, she felt him creep
carefully out of bed, heard him fumbling for his dressing gown, and
saw a shaft of light as the studio door was cautiously opened. A moment
later a rustling sounded through the transom, followed by the shrill
whisper of Madame Corriani. Listening, she fell asleep.

She was wakened by Stefan’s arms round her.

“A happy Christmas, darling! So wonderful--the first Christmas I ever
remember celebrating.”

There was a ruddy glow of firelight in the room, but to her opening eyes
it seemed unusually dark, and in a moment she saw that the great piece
of Chinese silk they used for their couch cover was stretched across the
room on cords, shutting off the window end. She jumped up hastily.

“Oh, Stefan, how thrilling!” she exclaimed, girlishly excited. As for
him, he was standing before her dressed, and obviously tingling with
impatience. She slipped into a dressing gown of white silk, and caught
her hair loosely up. Simultaneously Stefan emerged from the kitchenette
with two steaming cups of coffee, which he placed on a table before the
fire.

“Clever boy!” she exclaimed delighted, for he had never made the coffee
before. In a moment he produced rolls and butter.

“Déjeuner first,” he proclaimed gleefully, “and then the surprise!” They
ate their meal as excitedly as two children. In the midst of it Mary
rose and, fetching from the bureau two little ribbon-tied parcels,
placed them in his hands.

“For me? More excitements!” he warbled. “But I shan’t open them till the
curtain comes down. There, we’ve finished.” He jumped up. “Beautiful,
allow me to present to you the Byrds’ Christmas tree.” With a dramatic
gesture he unhooked a cord. The curtain fell. There in the full morning
light stood a tree, different from any Mary had ever seen. There were no
candles on it, but from top to bottom it was all one glittering white.
There were no garish tinsel ornaments, but from every branch hung a
white bird, wings outstretched, and under each bird lay, on the branch
below, something white. At the foot of the tree stood a little painting
framed in pale silver. It was of a nude baby boy, sitting wonderingly
upon a hilltop at early dawn. His eyes were lifted to the sky, his hands
groped. Mary, with an exclamation of delight, stepped nearer. Then she
saw what the white things were under the spreading wings of the birds.
Each was the appurtenance of a baby. One was a tiny cap, one a cloak,
others were dresses, little jackets, vests. There were some tiny white
socks, and, at the very top of the tree, a rattle of white coral and
silver.

“Oh, Stefan, my dearest--‘the little white bird’!” she cried.

“Do you like it, darling?” he asked delightedly, his arms about her.
“Mrs. Elliot told me about Barrie’s white bird--I hadn’t known the
story. But I wanted to show you I was glad about ours,” he held her
close, “and directly she spoke of the bird, I thought of this. She went
with me to get those little things--” he waved at the tree--“some of
them are from her. But the picture was quite my own idea. It’s right,
isn’t it? What you would feel, I mean? I tried to get inside your
heart.”

She nodded, her eyes shining with tears. She could find no words to
tell him how deeply she was touched. Her half-formed doubts were swept
away--he was her own dear man, kind and comprehending. She took the
little painting and sat with it on her knee, poring over it, Stefan
standing by delighted at his success. Then he remembered his own
parcels. The larger he opened first, and instantly donned one of the two
knitted ties it held, proclaiming its golden brown vastly becoming. The
smaller parcel contained a tiny jeweler’s box, and in it Stefan found an
old and heavy seal ring of pure design, set with a transparent greenish
stone, which bore the intaglio of a winged head. He was enchanted.

“Mary, you wonder,” he cried. “You must have created this--you couldn’t
just have found it. It symbolizes what you have given me--sums up all
that you are!” and he kissed her rapturously.

“Oh, Stefan,” she answered, “it is all perfect, for your gift symbolizes
what you have brought to me!”

“Yes, darling, but not all I am to you, I hope,” he replied, rubbing his
cheek against hers.

“Foolish one,” she smiled back at him.

They spent a completely happy day, rejoicing in the successful attempt
of each to penetrate the other’s mind. They had never, even on their
honeymoon, felt more at one. Later, Mary asked him about the missing
sketch.

“Yes, I sold it for the bird’s trappings,” he answered gleefully;
“wasn’t it clever of me? But don’t ask me for the horrid details, and
don’t tell me a word about my wonderful ring. I prefer to consider that
you fetched it from Olympus.”

And Mary, whose practical conscience had given her sharp twinges over
her extravagance, was glad to let it rest at that.

During the morning a great sheaf of roses came for Mary with the card
of James Farraday, and on its heels a bush of white heather inscribed to
them both from McEwan. The postman contributed several cards, and a
tiny string of pink coral from Miss Mason. “How kind every one is!” Mary
cried happily.

In the afternoon the Corrianis were summoned. Mary had small presents
for them and a glass of wine, which Stefan poured to the accompaniment
of a song in his best Italian. This melted the somewhat sulky Corriani
to smiles, and his wife to tears. The day closed with dinner at their
beloved French hotel, and a bottle of Burgundy shared with Stefan’s
favorite waiters.



XI


During Christmas week Stefan worked hard at his interior, but about the
fifth day began to show signs of restlessness. The following morning,
after only half an hour’s painting, he threw down his brush.

“It’s no use, Mary,” he announced, “I don’t think I shall ever be able
to do this kind of work; it simply doesn’t inspire me.”

She looked up from her sewing. “Why, I thought it promised charmingly.”

“That’s just it.” He ruffled his hair irritably. “It does. Can you
imagine my doing anything ‘charming’? No, the only hope for this
interior is for me to get depth into it, and depth won’t come--it’s
facile.” And he stared disgustedly at the canvas.

“I think I know what you mean,” Mary answered absently. She was thinking
that his work had power and height, but that depth she had never seen in
it.

Stefan shook himself. “Oh, come along, Mary, let’s get out of this.
We’ve been mewed up in this domestic atmosphere for days. I shall
explode soon. Let’s go somewhere.”

“Very well,” she agreed, folding up her work.

“You feel all right, don’t you?” he checked himself to ask.

“Rather, don’t I look it?”

“You certainly do,” he replied, but without his usual praise of her. “I
have it, let’s take a look at Miss Felicity Berber! I shall probably get
some new ideas from her. Happy thought! Come on, Mary, hat, coat, let’s
hurry.” He was all impatience to be gone.

They started to walk up the Avenue, stopping at the hotel to find in the
telephone book the number of the Berber establishment. It was entered,
“Berber, Felicity, Creator of Raiment.”

“How affected!” laughed Mary.

“Yes,” said Stefan, “amusing people usually are.”

Though he appeared moody the crisp, sunny air of the Avenue gradually
brightened him, and Mary, who was beginning to feel her confined
mornings, breathed it in joyfully.

The house was in the thirties, a large building of white marble. A lift
carried them to the top floor, and left them facing a black door with
“Felicity Berber” painted on it in vermilion letters. Opening this, they
found themselves in a huge windowless room roofed with opaque glass.
The floor was inlaid in a mosaic of uneven tiles which appeared to be of
different shades of black. The walls, from roof to floor, were hung with
shimmering green silk of the shade of a parrot’s wing. There were no
show-cases or other evidences of commercialism, but about the room were
set couches of black japanned wood, upon which rested flat mattresses
covered in the same green as the walls. On these silk cushions in black
and vermilion were piled. The only other furniture consisted of low
tables in black lacquer, one beside every couch. On each of these rested
a lacquered bowl of Chinese red, obviously for the receipt of cigarette
ashes. A similar but larger bowl on a table near the door was
filled with green orchids. One large green silk rug--innocent of
pattern--invited the entering visitor deeper into the room; otherwise
the floor was bare. There were no pictures, no decorations, merely
this green and black background, relieved by occasional splashes of
vermilion, and leading up to a great lacquered screen of the same hue
which obscured a door at the further end of the room.

From the corner nearest the entrance a young woman advanced to meet
them. She was clad in flowing lines of opalescent green, and her black
hair was banded low across the forehead with a narrow line of emerald.

“You wish to see raiment?” was her greeting.

Mary felt rather at a loss amidst these ultra-aestheticisms, but Stefan
promptly asked to see Miss Berber.

“Madame rarely sees new clients in the morning.” The green damsel was
pessimistic. Mary felt secretly amused at the ostentatious phraseology.

“Tell her we are friends of Mrs. Theodore Elliot’s,” replied Stefan,
with his most brilliant and ingratiating smile.

The damsel brightened somewhat. “If I may have your name I will see
what can be done,” she offered, extending a small vermilion tray. Stefan
produced a card and the damsel floated with it toward the distant exit.
Her footsteps were silent on the dead tiling, and there was no sound
from the door beyond the screen.

“Isn’t this a lark? Let’s sit down,” Stefan exclaimed, leading the way
to a couch.

“It’s rather absurd, don’t you think?” smiled Mary.

“No doubt, but amusing enough for mere mortals,” he shrugged, a scarcely
perceptible snub in his tone. Mary was silent. They waited for several
minutes. At last instinct rather than hearing made them turn to see a
figure advancing down the room.

Both instantly recognized the celebrated Miss Berber. A small, slim
woman, obviously light-boned and supple, she seemed to move forward
like a ripple. Her naturally pale face, with its curved scarlet lips and
slanting eyes, was set on a long neck, and round her small head a heavy
swathe of black hair was held by huge scarlet pins. Her dress, cut in
a narrow V at the neck, was all of semi-transparent reds, the brilliant
happy reds of the Chinese. In fact, but for her head, she would have
been only half visible as she advanced against the background of the
screen. Mary’s impression of her was blurred, but Stefan, whose artist’s
eye observed everything, noticed that her narrow feet were encased in
heelless satin shoes which followed the natural shape of the feet like
gloves.

“Mr. and Mrs. Byrd! How do you do?” she murmured, and her voice
was light-breathed, a mere memory of sound. It suggested that she
customarily mislaid it, and recaptured only an echo.

“Pull that other couch a little nearer, please,” she waved to Stefan,
appropriating the one from which they had just risen. Upon this she
stretched her full length, propping the cushions comfortably under her
shoulders.

“Do you smoke?” she breathed, and stretching an arm produced from a
hidden drawer in the table at her elbow cigarettes in a box of
black lacquer, and matches in one of red. Mary declined, but Stefan
immediately lighted a cigarette for himself and held a match for Miss
Berber. Mary and he settled themselves on the couch which he drew up,
and which slipped readily over the tiles.

“Now we can talk,” exhaled their hostess on a spiral of smoke. “I never
see strangers in the morning, not even friends of dear Connie’s, but
there was something in the name--” She seemed to be fingering a small
knob protruding from the lacquer of her couch. It must have been a bell,
for in a moment the green maiden appeared.

“Chloris, has that picture come for the sylvan fitting room?” she
murmured. “Yes? Bring it, please.” Her gesture seemed to waft the damsel
over the floor. During this interlude the Byrds were silent, Stefan
hugely entertained, Mary beginning to feel a slight antagonism toward
this super-casual dressmaker.

A moment and the attendant nymph reappeared, bearing a large canvas
framed in glistening green wood.

“Against the table--toward Mr. Byrd.” Miss Berber supplemented the
murmur with an indicative gesture. “You know that?” dropped from her
lips as the nymph glided away.

It was Stefan’s pastoral of the dancing faun. He nodded gaily, but Mary
felt herself blushing. Her husband’s work destined for a fitting room!

“I thought so,” Miss Berber enunciated through a breath of smoke.
“I picked it up the other day. Quite lovely. My sylvan fitting room
required just that note. I use it for country raiment only. Atmosphere,
Mr. Byrd. I want my clients to feel young when they are preparing for
the country. I am glad to see you here.”

Stefan reciprocated. So far, Miss Berber had ignored Mary.

“I might consult you about my next color scheme--original artists are so
rare. I change this room every year.” Her eyelids drooped.

At this point Mary ventured to draw attention to herself.

“Why is it, Miss Berber,” she asked in her clear English voice, “that
you have only couches here?”

Felicity’s lids trembled; she half looked up. “How seldom one hears
a beautiful voice,” she uttered. “Chairs, Mrs. Byrd, destroy women’s
beauty. Why sit, when one can recline? My clients may not wear corsets;
reclining encourages them to feel at ease without.”

Mary found Miss Berber’s affectations absurd, but this explanation
heightened her respect for her intelligence. “Method in her madness,”
 she quoted to herself.

“Miss Berber, I want you to create a gown for my wife. I am sure when
you look at her you will be interested in the idea.” Stefan expected
every one to pay tribute to Mary’s beauty.

Again Miss Berber’s fingers strayed. The nymph appeared. “How long
have I, Chloris? ... Half an hour? Then send me Daphne. You notice the
silence, Mr. Byrd? It rests my clients, brings health to their nerves.
Without it, I could not do my work.”

Mary smiled as she mentally contrasted these surroundings with
Farraday’s office, where she had last heard that expression. Was quiet
so rare a privilege in America, she wondered?

A moment, and a second damsel emerged, brown-haired, clad in a paler
green, and carrying paper and pencil. Not until this ministrant had
seated herself at the foot of Miss Berber’s couch did that lady refer
to Stefan’s request. Then, propping herself on her elbow, she at last
looked full at Mary. What she saw evidently pleased her, for she allowed
herself a slight smile. “Ah,” she breathed, “an evening, or a house
gown?”

“Evening,” interposed Stefan. Then to Mary, “You look your best
decolletée, you know.”

“Englishwomen always do,” murmured Miss Berber.

“Will you kindly take off your hat and coat, and stand up, Mrs. Byrd?”
 Mary complied, feeling uncomfortably like a cloak model.

“Classic, pure classic. How seldom one sees it!” Miss Berber’s voice
became quite audible. “Gold, of course, classic lines, gold sandals.
A fillet, but no ornaments. You wish to wear this raiment during the
ensuing months, Mrs. Byrd?” Mary nodded. “Then write Demeter type,” the
designer interpolated to her satellite, who was taking notes. “Otherwise
it would of course be Artemis--or Aphrodite even?” turning for agreement
to Stefan. “Would you say Aphrodite?”

“I always do,” beamed he, delighted.

At this point the first nymph, Chloris, again appeared, and at a motion
of Miss Berber’s hand rapidly and silently measured Mary, the paler hued
nymph assisting her as scribe.

“Mr. Byrd,” pronounced the autocrat of the establishment, when at the
conclusion of these rites the attendants had faded from the room. “I
never design for less than two hundred dollars. Such a garment as I
have in mind for your wife, queenly and abundant--” her hands waved in
illustration--“would cost three hundred. But--” her look checked Mary
in an exclamation of refusal--“we belong to the same world, the world
of art, not of finance. Yes?” She smiled. “Your painting, Mr. Byrd, is
worth three times what I gave for it, and Mrs. Byrd will wear my raiment
as few clients can. It will give me pleasure”--her lids drooped
to illustrate finality--“to make this garment for the value of
the material, which will be--” her lips smiled amusement at the
bagatelle--“between seventy and eighty-five dollars--no more.” She
ceased.


Mary felt uncomfortable. Why should she accept such a favor at the hands
of this poseuse? Stefan, however, saved her the necessity of decision.
He leapt to his feet, all smiles.

“Miss Berber,” he cried, “you honor us, and Mary will glorify your
design. It is probable,” he beamed, “that we cannot afford a dress at
all, but I disregard that utterly.” He shrugged, and snapped a finger.
“You have given me an inspiration. As soon as the dress arrives, I shall
paint Mary as Demeter. Mille remerciements!” Bending, he kissed Miss
Berber’s hand in the continental manner. Mary, watching, felt a tiny
prick of jealousy. “He never kissed my hand,” she thought, and instantly
scorned herself for the idea.

The designer smiled languidly up at Stefan. “I am happy,” she murmured.
“No fittings, Mrs. Byrd. We rarely fit, except the model gowns. You will
have the garment in a week. Au revoir.” Her eyes closed. They turned
to find a high-busted woman entering the room, accompanied by two young
girls. As they departed a breath-like echo floated after them, “Oh,
really, Mrs. Van Sittart--still those corsets? I can do nothing for you,
you know.” Tones of shrill excuse penetrated to the lift door. At the
curb below stood a dyspeptically stuffed limousine, guarded by two men
in puce liveries.

The Byrds swung southward in silence, but suddenly Stefan heaved a
great breath. “Nom d’un nom d’un nom d’un vieux bonhomme!” he exploded,
voicing in that cumulative expletive his extreme satisfaction with the
morning.



XII


Constance Elliot had not boasted her stage-management in vain. On the
first Saturday in January all proceeded according to schedule. The
Danaë, beautifully framed, stood at the farther end of Constance’s
double drawing-room, from which all other mural impedimenta, together
with most of the furniture, had been removed. Expertly lighted, the
picture glowed in the otherwise obscure room like a thing of flame.

Two hundred ticket holders came, saw, and were conquered. Farraday, in
his most correct cutaway, personally conducted a tour of three
eminent critics to the Village. Sir Micah, the English curator of the
Metropolitan, reflectively tapping an eye-glass upon an uplifted finger
tip, pronounced the painting a turning-point in American art. Four
reporters--whose presence in his immediate vicinity Constance had
insured--transferred this utterance to their note books. Artists gazed,
and well-dressed women did not forbear to gush. Tea, punch, and yellow
suffrage cakes were consumed in the dining room. There was much noise
and excessive heat. In short, the occasion was a success.

Toward the end, when few people remained except the genial Sir Micah,
whom Constance was judiciously holding with tea, smiles, and a good
cigar, the all-important Constantine arrived. Prompted, Sir Micah was
induced to repeat his verdict. But the picture spoke for itself, and
the famous dealer was visibly impressed. Constance was able to eat her
dinner at last with a comfortable sense of accomplishment. She was only
sorry that the Byrds had not been there to appreciate her strategy.
Stefan, indeed, did appear for half an hour, but Mary’s courage had
failed her entirely. She had succumbed to an attack of stage fright and
shut herself up at home.

As for Stefan, he had developed one of his most contrary moods. Refusing
conventional attire, he clad himself in the baggy trousers and flowing
tie of his student days, under the illusion that he was thus defying
the prejudices of Philistia. He was unaware that the Philistines,
as represented by the gentlemen of the press, considered his costume
quintessentially correct for an artist just returned from Paris, and
would have been grieved had he appeared otherwise. Unconsciously playing
to the gallery, Stefan on arrival squared himself against a doorway and
eyed the crowds with a frown of disapprobation. He had not forgotten his
early snubs from the dealers, and saw in every innocent male visitor one
of the fraternity.

Constance, in her bid for publicity, had sold most of her tickets to the
socially prominent, so that Stefan was soon surrounded by voluble ladies
unduly furred, corseted, and jeweled. He found these unbeautiful, and
his misanthropy, which had been quiescent of late, rose rampant.

Presently he was introduced to a stout matron, whose costume centered in
an enormous costal cascade of gray pearls.

“Mr. Byrd,” she gushed, “I dote on art. I’ve made a study of it, and I
can say that your picture is a triumph.”

“Madam,” he fairly scowled, “it is as easy for the rich to enter the
kingdom of Art as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”
 Leaving her pink with offense, he turned his back and, shaking off other
would-be admirers, sought his hostess.

“My God, I can’t stand any more of this--I’m off,” he confided to her.
Constance was beginning to know her man. She gave him a quick scrutiny.
“Yes, I think you’d better be,” she agreed, “before you spoil any of
my good work. An absent lion is better than a snarling one. Run home to
Mary.” She dismissed him laughingly, and Stefan catapulted himself
out of the house, thereby missing the attractive Miss Berber by a few
minutes. Dashing home across the Square, he flung himself on the divan
with every appearance of exhaustion. “Sing to me, Mary,” he implored.

“Why, Stefan,” she asked, startled, “wasn’t it a success? What’s the
matter?”

“Success!” he scoffed. “Oh, yes. They all gushed and gurgled and
squeaked and squalled. Horrible! Sing, dearest; I must hear something
beautiful.”

Failing to extract more from him, she complied.

The next day brought a full account of his success from Constance,
and glowing tributes from the papers. The head-lines ranged from
“Suffragettes Unearth New Genius” to “Distinguished Exhibit at Home of
Theodore M. Elliot.” The verdict was unanimous. A new star had risen in
the artistic firmament. One look at the headings, and Stefan dropped
the papers in disgust, but Mary pored over them all, and found him quite
willing to listen while she read eulogistic extracts aloud.

Thus started, the fuse of publicity burnt brightly. Constance’s
carefully planned follow-up articles appeared, and reporters besieged
the Byrds’ studio. Unfortunately for Mary, these gentry soon discovered
that she was the Danaë’s original, which fact created a mild succès de
scandale. Personal paragraphs appeared about her and her writing, and,
greatly embarrassed, she disconnected the door-bell for over a week. But
the picture was all the more talked about. In a week Constantine had it
on exhibition; in three, he had sold it for five thousand dollars to a
tobacco millionaire.

“Mary,” groaned Stefan when he heard the news, “we have given in to
Mammon. We are capitalists.”

“Oh, dear, think of our beautiful picture going to some odious nouveau
riche!” Mary sighed. But she was immeasurably relieved that Stefan’s
name was made, and that they were permanently lifted from the ranks of
the needy.

That very day, as if to illustrate their change of status, Mrs. Corriani
puffed up the stairs with the news that the flat immediately below
them had been abandoned over night. The tenants, a dark couple of
questionable habits and nationality, had omitted the formality of paying
their rent--the flat was on the market. The outcome was that Stefan
and Mary, keeping their studio as a workshop, overflowed into the flat
beneath, and found themselves in possession of a bed and bathroom, a
kitchen and maid’s room, and a sitting room. These they determined
to furnish gradually, and Mary looked forward to blissful mornings
at antique stores and auctions. She had been brought up amidst the
Chippendale, old oak, and brasses of a cathedral close, and new
furniture was anathema to her. A telephone and a colored maid-servant
were installed. Their picnicking days were over.



XIII


True to her word, Constance arranged a reception in the Byrds’ honor, at
which they were to meet Felicity Berber. The promise of this encounter
reconciled Stefan to the affair, and he was moreover enthusiastically
looking forward to Mary’s appearance in her new gown. This had arrived,
and lay swathed in tissue paper in its box. In view of their change
of fortune they had, in paying the account of seventy-five dollars,
concocted a little note to Miss Berber, hoping she would now reconsider
her offer, and render them a bill for her design. This note, written
and signed by Mary in her upright English hand, brought forth a
characteristic reply. On black paper and in vermilion ink arrived two
lines of what Mary at first took to be Egyptian hieroglyphics. Studied
from different angles, these yielded at last a single sentence: “A
gift is a gift, and repays itself.” This was followed by a signature
traveling perpendicularly down the page in Chinese fashion. It was
outlined in an oblong of red ink, but was itself written in green, the
capitals being supplied with tap-roots extending to the base of each
name. Mary tossed the letter over to Stefan with a smile. He looked at
it judicially.

“There’s draughtsmanship in that,” he said; “she might have made an
etcher. It’s drawing, but it’s certainly not handwriting.”

On the evening of the party Stefan insisted on helping Mary to dress.
Together they opened the great green box and spread its contents on the
bed. The Creator of Raiment had not done things by halves. In addition
to the gown, she had supplied a wreath of pale white and gold metals,
representing two ears of wheat arranged to meet in a point over
the brow, and a pair of gilded shoes made on the sandal plan, with
silver-white buckles. Pinned to the gown was a printed green slip,
reading “No corsets, petticoats or jewelry may be worn with this garb.”

The dress was of heavy gold tissue, magnificently draped in generous
classic folds. It left the arms bare, the drapery being fastened on
either shoulder with great brooches of white metal, reproduced, as
Stefan at once recognized, from Greek models. Along all the edges of the
drapery ran a border of ears of wheat, embroidered in deep gold and
pale silver. Mary, who had hitherto only peeped at the gown, felt quite
excited when she saw it flung across the bed.

“Oh, Stefan, I do think it will be becoming,” she cried, her cheeks
bright pink. She had never dreamed of owning such a dress.

He was enchanted. “It’s a work of art. Very few women could wear it, but
on you--! Well, it’s worthy of you, Beautiful.”

During the dressing he made her quite nervous by his exact attention to
every detail. The arrangement of her hair and the precise position of
the wreath had to be tried and tried again, but the result justified
him.

“Olympian Deity,” he cried, “I must kneel to you!” And so he did,
gaily adoring, with a kiss for the hem of her robe. They started in the
highest spirits, Stefan correct this time in an immaculate evening suit
which Mary had persuaded him to order. As they prepared to enter the
drawing room he whispered, “You’ll be a sensation. I’m dying to see
their faces.”

“Don’t make me nervous,” she whispered back.

By nature entirely without self-consciousness, she had become very
sensitive since the Danaë publicity. But her nervousness only heightened
her color, and as with her beautiful walk she advanced into the room
there was an audible gasp from every side. Constance pounced upon her.

“You perfectly superb creature! You ought to have clouds rolling under
your feet. There, I can’t express myself. Come and receive homage. Mr.
Byrd, you’re the luckiest man on earth--I hope you deserve it all--but
then of course no man could. Mary, here are two friends of yours--Mr.
Byrd, come and be presented to Felicity.”

Farraday and McEwan had advanced toward them and immediately formed
the nucleus of a group which gathered about Mary. Stefan followed his
hostess across the room to a green sofa, on which, cigarette in hand,
reclined Miss Berber, surrounded by a knot of interested admirers.

“Yes, Connie,” that lady murmured, with the ghost of a smile, “I’ve met
Mr. Byrd. He brought his wife to the Studio.” She extended a languid
hand to Stefan, who bowed over it.

“Ah! I might have known you had a hand in that effect,” Constance
exclaimed, looking across the room toward Mary.

“Of course you might,” the other sighed, following her friend’s eyes.
“It’s perfect, I think; don’t you agree, Mr. Byrd?” and she actually
rose from the sofa to obtain a better view.

“Absolutely,” answered Stefan, riveted in his turn upon her.

Miss Berber was clad in black tulle, so transparent as barely to obscure
her form. Sleeves she had none. A trifle of gauze traveled over one
shoulder, leaving the other bare save for a supporting strap of tiny
scarlet beads. Her triple skirt was serrated like the petals of a black
carnation, and outlined with the same minute beads. Her bodice could
scarcely be said to exist, so deep was its V. From her ears long
ornaments of jet depended, and a comb in scarlet bead-work ran wholly
across one side of her head. A flower of the same hue and workmanship
trembled from the point of her corsage. She wore no rings, but her nails
were reddened, and her sleek black hair and scarlet lips completed the
chromatic harmony. The whole effect was seductive, but so crisp as to
escape vulgarity.

“I must paint you, Miss Berber,” was Stefan’s comment.

“All the artists say that.” She waved a faint expostulation.

Her hands, he thought, had the whiteness and consistency of a camelia.

“All the artists are not I, however,” he answered with a smiling shrug.

“Greek meets Greek,” thought Constance, amused, turning away to other
guests.

“I admit that.” Miss Berber lit another cigarette. “I have seen your
Danaë. The people who have painted me have been fools. Obvious--treating
me like an advertisement for cold cream.”

She breathed a sigh, and sank again to the sofa. Her lids drooped as if
in weariness of such banalities. Stefan sat beside her, the manner of
both eliminating the surrounding group.

“One must have subtlety, must one not?” she murmured.

How subtle she was, he thought; how mysterious, in spite of her obvious
posing! He could not even tell whether she was interested in him.

“I shall paint you, Miss Berber,” he said, watching her, “as a Nixie.
Water creatures, you know, without souls.”

“No soul?” she reflected, lingering on a puff of smoke. “How chic!”

Stefan was delighted. Hopefully, he broke into French. She replied with
fluent ease, but with a strange, though charming, accent. The exotic
French fitted her whole personality, he felt, as English could not do.
He was pricked by curiosity as to her origin, and did not hesitate to
ask it, but she gave her shadow of a smile, and waved her cigarette
vaguely. “Quién sabe?” she shrugged.

“Do you know Spanish?” he asked in French, seeking a clue.

“Only what one picks up in California.” He was no nearer a solution.

“Were you out there long?”

She looked at him vaguely. “I should like some coffee, please.”

Defeated, he was obliged to fetch a cup. When he returned, it was to
find her talking monosyllabic English to a group of men.

Farraday and McEwan had temporarily resigned Mary to a stream of
newcomers, and stood watching the scene from the inner drawing room.

“James,” said McEwan, “get on to the makeup of the crowd round our lady,
and compare it with the specimens rubbering the little Berber.”

Farraday smiled in his grave, slow way.

“You’re right, Mac, the substance and the shadow.”

Many of the women seated about the room were covertly staring at
Felicity, but so far none had joined her group. This consisted, besides
Stefan, of two callow and obviously enthralled youths, a heavy semi-bald
man with paunched eyes and a gluttonous mouth, and a tall languid person
wearing tufts of hair on unexpected parts of his face, and showing the
hands of a musician.

Round Mary stood half a dozen women, their host, the kindly and
practical Mr. Elliot, a white-haired man of distinguished bearing, and a
gigantic young viking with tawny hair and beard and powerful hands.

“That’s Gunther, an A1 sculptor,” said McEwan, indicating the viking,
who was looking at Mary as his ancestors might have looked at a vision
of Freia.

“They’re well matched, eh, James?”

“As well as she could be,” the other answered gravely. McEwan looked at
his friend. “Mon,” he said, relapsing to his native speech, “come and
hae a drop o’ the guid Scotch.”

Constance had determined that Felicity should dance, in spite of her
well-known laziness. At this point she crossed the room to attack
her, expecting a difficult task, but, to her surprise, Felicity hardly
demurred. After a moment of sphinx-like communing, she dropped her
cigarette and rose.

“Mr. Byrd is going to paint me as something without a soul--I think I
will dance,” she cryptically vouchsafed.

“Shall I play?” offered Constance, delighted.

Miss Berber turned to the languid musician.

“Have you your ocarina, Marchmont?” she breathed.

“I always carry it, Felicity,” he replied, with a reproachful look,
drawing from his pocket what appeared to be a somewhat contorted
meerschaum pipe.

“Then no piano to-night, Connie. A little banal, the piano, perhaps.”
 Her hands waved vaguely.

A space was cleared; chairs were arranged.

Miss Berber vanished behind a portiere. The languid Marchmont draped
himself in a corner, and put the fat little meerschaum to his lips. A
clear, jocund sound, a mere thread of music, as from the pipe of some
hidden faun, penetrated the room. The notes trembled, paused, and fell
to the minor. Felicity, feet bare, toes touched with scarlet, wafted
into the room. Her dancing was incredibly light; she looked like
some exotic poppy swaying to an imperceptible breeze. The dance was
languorously sad, palely gay, a thing half asleep, veiled. It seemed
always about to break into fierce life, yet did not. The scent of
mandragora hung over it--it was as if the dancer, drugged, were dreaming
of the sunlight.

When, waving a negligent hand to the applause, Felicity passed Stefan at
the end of her dance, he caught a murmured phrase from her.

“Not soulless, perhaps, but sleeping.” Whether she meant this as an
explanation of her dance or of herself he was not sure.

Mary watched the dance with admiration, and wished to compare her
impressions of it with her husband’s. She tried to catch his eye across
the room at the end, but he had drifted away toward the dining room.
Momentarily disappointed, she turned to find Farraday at her elbow, and
gladly let him lead her, also, in search of refreshments. There was
a general movement in that direction, and the drawing room was almost
empty as McEwan, purpose in his eye, strode across it to Constance. He
spoke to her in an undertone.

“Sing? Does she? I had no idea! She never tells one such things,” his
hostess replied. “Do you think she would? But she has no music. You
could play for her? How splendid, Mr. McEwan. How perfectly lovely
of you. I’ll arrange it.” She hurried out, leaving McEwan smiling at
nothing in visible contentment. In a few minutes she returned with Mary.

“Of course I will if you wish it,” the latter was saying, “but I’ve no
music, and only know foolish little ballads.”

“Mr. McEwan says he can vamp them all, and it will be too delightful to
have something from each of my women stars,” Constance urged. “Now I’ll
leave you two to arrange it, and in a few minutes I’ll get every one
back from the dining room,” she nodded, slipping away again.

“Cruel man, you’ve given me away,” Mary smiled.

“I always brag about my friends,” grinned McEwan. They went over to the
piano.

“What price the Bard! Do you know this?” His fingers ran into the old
air for “Sigh No More, Ladies.” She nodded.

“Yes, I like that.”

“And for a second,” he spun round on his stool, “what do you say to a
duet?” His candid blue eyes twinkled at her.

“A duet!” she exclaimed in genuine surprise. “Do you sing, Mr. McEwan?”

“Once in a while,” and, soft pedal down, he played a few bars of
Marzials’ “My True Love Hath My Heart,” humming the words in an easy
barytone.

“Oh, what fun!” exclaimed Mary. “I love that.” They tried it over, below
their breaths.

The room was filling again. People began to settle down expectantly;
McEwan struck his opening chords.

Just as Mary’s first note sounded, Stefan and Felicity entered the room.
He started in surprise; then Mary saw him smile delightedly, and they
both settled themselves well in front.

“‘Men were deceivers ever,’” sang Mary, with simple ease, and “‘Hey
nonny, nonny.’” The notes fell gaily; her lips and eyes smiled.

There was generous applause at the end of the little song. Then McEwan
struck the first chords of the duet.

“‘My true love hath my heart,’” Mary sang clearly, head up, eyes
shining. “‘My true love hath my heart,’” replied McEwan, in his cheery
barytone.

“‘--And I have his,’” Mary’s bell tones announced.

“‘--And I have his,’” trolled McEwan.

“‘There never was a better bargain driven,’” the notes came, confident
and glad, from the golden figure with its clear-eyed, glowing face. They
ended in a burst of almost defiant optimism.

Applause was hearty and prolonged. McEwan slipped from his stool
and sought a cigarette in the adjoining room. There was a general
congratulatory movement toward Mary, in which both Stefan and Felicity
joined. Then people again began to break into groups. Felicity found her
sofa, Mary a chair. McEwan discovered Farraday under the arch between
the two drawing-rooms, and stood beside him to watch the crowd. Stefan
had moved with Felicity toward her sofa, and, as she disposed herself,
she seemed to be talking to him in French. McEwan and Farraday continued
their survey. Mary was surrounded by people, but her eyes strayed
across the room. Felicity appeared almost animated, but Stefan seemed
inattentive; he fidgeted, and looked vague.

A moment more, and quite abruptly he crossed the room, and planted
himself down beside Mary.

“Ah,” sighed McEwan, apparently à propos of nothing, and with a trace of
Scotch, “James, I’ll now hae another whusky.”



PART III

THE NESTLING

I


Stefan’s initial and astonishing success was not to be repeated that
winter. The great Constantine, anxious to benefit by the flood tide of
his client’s popularity, had indeed called at the studio in search
of more material, but after a careful survey, had decided against
exhibiting “Tempest” and “Pursuit.” Before these pictures he had stood
wrapped in speculation for some time, pursing his lips and fingering
the over-heavy seals of his fob. Mary had watched him eagerly, deeply
curious as to the effect of the paintings. But Stefan had been careless
to the point of rudeness; he had long since lost interest in his old
work. When at last the swarthy little dealer, who was a Greek Jew, and
had the keen, perceptions of both races, had shaken his head, Mary was
not surprised, was indeed almost glad.

“Mr. Byrd,” Constantine had pronounced, in his heavy, imperfect English,
“I think we would make a bad mistake to exhibit these paintings now.
Technically they are clever, oh, very clever indeed, but they would
be unpopular; and this once,” he smiled shrewdly, “the public would
be right about it. Your Danaë was a big conception as well as fine
painting; it had inspiration--feeling--” his thick but supple hands
circled in emphasis--“we don’t want to go back simply to cleverness.
When you paint me something as big again as that one I exhibit it;
otherwise,” with a shrug, “I think we spoil our market.”

After this visit Stefan, quite unperturbed, had turned the two fantasies
to the wall.

“I dare say Constantine is right about them,” he said; “they are rather
crazy things, and anyhow, I’m sick of them.”

Mary was quite relieved to have them hidden. The merman in particular
had got upon her nerves of late.

As the winter advanced, the Byrds’ circle of acquaintances grew,
and many visitors dropped into the studio for tea. These showed much
interest in Stefan’s new picture, a large study of Mary in the guise of
Demeter, for which she was posing seated, robed in her Berber gown. Miss
Mason in particular was delighted with the painting, which she dubbed
a “companion piece” to the Danaë. The story of Constantine’s decision
against the two salon canvases got about and, amusingly enough,
heightened the Byrds’ popularity. The Anglo-Saxon public is both to
take its art neat, preferring it coated with a little sentiment. It now
became accepted that Stefan’s genius was due to his wife, whose love had
lighted the torch of inspiration.

“Ah, Mr. Byrd,” Miss Mason had summed up the popular view, in one of her
rare romantic moments, “the love of a good woman--!” Stefan had looked
completely vague at this remark, and Mary had burst out laughing.

“Why, Sparrow,” for so, to Miss Mason’s delight, she had named her,
“don’t be Tennysonian, as Stefan would say. It was Stefan’s power to
feel love, and not mine to call it out, that painted the Danaë,” and she
looked at him with proud tenderness.

But the Sparrow was unconvinced. “You can’t tell me. If ‘twas all in
him, why didn’t some other girl over in Paris call it out long ago?”

“Lots tried,” grinned Stefan, with his cheeky-boy expression.

“Ain’t he terrible,” Miss Mason sighed, smiling. She adored Mary’s
husband, but consistently disapproved of him.

Try as she would, Mary failed to shake her friends’ estimate of her
share in the family success. It became the fashion to regard her as
a muse, and she, who had felt oppressed by Stefan’s lover-like
deification, now found her friends, too, conspiring to place her on a
pedestal. Essentially simple and modest, she suffered real discomfort
from the cult of adoration that surrounded her. Coming from a British
community which she felt had underestimated her, she now found herself
made too much of. A smaller woman would have grown vain amid so much
admiration; Mary only became inwardly more humble, while outwardly
carrying her honors with laughing deprecation.

For some time after the night of Constance’s reception, Stefan had shown
every evidence of contentment, but as the winter dragged into a cold
and slushy March he began to have recurrent moods of his restless
irritability. By this time Mary was moving heavily; she could no longer
keep brisk pace with him in his tramps up the Avenue, but walked more
slowly and for shorter distances. She no longer sprang swiftly from
her chair or ran to fetch him a needed tool; her every movement was
matronly. But she was so well, so entirely normal, as practically to be
unconscious of a change to which her husband was increasingly alive.

Another source of Stefan’s dissatisfaction lay in the progress of his
Demeter. This picture showed the Goddess enthroned under the shade of a
tree, beyond which spread harvest fields in brilliant sunlight. At her
feet a naked boy, brown from the sun, played with a pile of red and
golden fruits. In the distance maids and youths were dancing. The
Goddess sat back drowsily, her eyelids drooping, her hands and arms
relaxed over her chair. She had called all this richness into being, and
now in the heat of the day she rested, brooding over the fecund earth.
So far, the composition was masterly, but the tones lacked the necessary
depth; they were vivid where they should have been warm, and he felt the
deficiency without yet having been able to remedy it.

“Oh, damn!” said Stefan one morning, throwing down his brush. “This
picture is architectural, absolutely. What possessed me to try such a
conception? I can only do movement. I can’t be static. Earth! I don’t
understand it--everything good I’ve done has been made of air and fire,
or water.” He turned an irritable face to Mary.

“Why did you encourage me in this?”

She looked up in frank astonishment, about to reply, but he forestalled
her.

“Oh, yes, I know I was pleased with the idea--it isn’t your fault, of
course, and yet--Oh, what’s the use!” He slapped down his pallette and
made for the door. “I’m off to get some air,” he called.

Mary felt hurt and uneasy. The nameless doubts of the autumn again
assailed her. What would be the end, she wondered, of her great
adventure? The distant prospect vaguely troubled her, but she turned
easily from it to the immediate future, which held a blaze of joy
sufficient to obliterate all else.

The thought of her baby was to Mary like the opening of the gates of
paradise to Christian the Pilgrim. Her heart shook with joy of it. She
passed through her days now only half conscious of the world about
her. She had, together with her joy, an extraordinary sense of physical
well-being, of the actual value of the body. For the first time she
became actively interested in her beauty. Even on her honeymoon she had
never dressed to please her husband with the care she now gave to the
donning of her loose pink and white negligées and the little boudoir
caps she had bought to wear with them. That Stefan paid her fewer
compliments, that he often failed to notice small additions to her
wardrobe, affected her not at all. “Afterwards he will be pleased;
afterwards he will love me more than ever,” she thought, but, even so,
knew that it was not for him she was now fair, but for that other. She
did not love Stefan less, but her love was to be made flesh, and it was
that incarnation she now adored. If she had been given to self-analysis
she might have asked what it boded that she had never--save for that one
moment’s adoration of his genius the day he completed the Danaë--felt
for Stefan the abandonment of love she felt for his coming child. She
might have wondered, but she did not, for she felt too intensely in
these days to have much need of thought. She loved her husband--he was
a great man--they were to have a child. The sense of those three facts
made up her cosmos.

Farraday had asked her in vain on more than one occasion for another
manuscript. The last time she shook her head, with one of her rare
attempts at explanation, made less rarely to him than to her other
friends.

“No, Mr. Farraday, I can’t think about imaginary children just now.
There’s a spell over me--all the world waits, and I’m holding my breath.
Do you see?”

He took her hand between both his.

“Yes, my dear child, I do,” he answered, his mouth twisting into its
sad and gentle smile. He had come bringing a sheaf of spring flowers,
narcissus, and golden daffodils, which she was holding in her lap. He
thought as he said good-bye that she looked much more like Persephone
than the Demeter of Stefan’s picture.

In spite of her deep-seated emotion, Mary was gay and practical
enough in these late winter days, with her small household tasks, her
occasional shopping, and her sewing. This last had begun vaguely to
irritate Stefan, so incessant was it.

“Mary, do put down that sewing,” he would exclaim; or “Don’t sing the
song of the shirt any more to-day;” and she would laughingly fold her
work, only to take it up instinctively again a few minutes later.

One evening he came upon her bending over a table in their sitting room,
tracing a fine design on cambric with a pencil. Something in her pose
and figure opened a forgotten door of memory; he watched her puzzled for
a moment, then with a sudden exclamation ran upstairs, and returned with
a pad of paper and a box of water-color paints. He was visibly excited.
“Here, Mary,” he said, thrusting a brush into her hand and clearing a
place on the table. “Do something for me. Make a drawing on this pad,
anything you like, whatever first comes into your head.” His tone was
eagerly importunate. She looked up in surprise, “Why, you funny boy!
What shall I draw?”

“That’s just it--I don’t know. Please draw whatever you want to--it
doesn’t matter how badly--just draw something.”

Mystified, but acquiescent, Mary considered for a moment, looking from
paper to brush, while Stefan watched eagerly.

“Can’t I use a pencil?” she asked.

“No, a brush, please, I’ll explain afterwards.”

“Very well.” She attacked the brown paint, then the red, then mixed some
green. In a few minutes the paper showed a wobbly little house with a
red roof and a smudged foreground of green grass with the suggestion of
a shade-giving tree.

“There,” she laughed, handing him the pad, “I’m afraid I shall never be
an artist,” and she looked up.

His face had dropped. He was staring at the drawing with an expression
of almost comic disappointment.

“Why, Stefan,” she laughed, rather uncomfortably, “you didn’t think I
could draw, did you?”

“No, no, it isn’t that, Mary. It’s just--the house. I thought you
might--perhaps draw birds--or flowers.”

“Birds?--or flowers?” She was at a loss.

“It doesn’t matter; just an idea.”

He crumpled up the little house, and closed the paintbox. “I’m going out
for awhile; good-bye, dearest”; and, with a kiss, he left the room.

Mary sat still, too surprised for remonstrance, and in a moment heard
the bang of the flat door.

“Birds, or flowers?” Suddenly she remembered something Stefan had told
her, on the night of their engagement, about his mother. So that was it.
Tears came to her eyes. Rather lonely, she went to bed.

Meanwhile Stefan, his head bare in the cold wind, was speeding up the
Avenue on the top of an omnibus.

“Houses are cages,” he said to himself. For some reason, he felt
hideously depressed.

      *       *       *       *       *

“I called on Miss Berber last evening,” Stefan announced casually at
breakfast the next morning.

“Did you?” replied Mary, surprised, putting down her cup. “Well, did you
have a nice time?”

“It was mildly amusing,” he said, opening the newspaper. The subject
dropped.



II


Mary, who had lived all her life in a small town within sight of the
open fields, was beginning to feel the confinement of city life.
Even during her year in London she had joined other girls in weekend
bicycling excursions out of town, or tubed to Golder’s Green or
Shepherd’s Bush in search of country walks. Now that the late snows of
March had cleared away, she began eagerly to watch for swelling buds in
the Square, and was dismayed when Stefan told her that the spring, in
this part of America, was barely perceptible before May.

“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.

Farraday helped her down.

“Mrs. Byrd,” said he with his most kindly smile, “here is the key. Would
you like to unlock the door yourself?”

She blushed with pleasure. “Oh, yes!” she cried, and turned
instinctively to look for Stefan. He was standing at the plateau’s edge,
scrutinizing the view. She called, but he did not hear. Then she took
the key and, hurrying up the little walk, entered the house alone.

A moment later Stefan, hailed stentoriously by McEwan, followed her.

She was standing in a long sitting-room, low-ceilinged and white-walled,
with window-seats, geraniums on the sills, brass andirons on the
hearth, an eight-day clock, a small old fashioned piano, an oak desk, a
chintz-covered grandmother’s chair, a gate-legged table, and a braided
rag hearth-rug. Her hands were clasped, her eyes shining.

“Oh, Stefan!” she exclaimed as she heard his step. “Isn’t it a darling?
Wouldn’t it be simply ideal for us?”

“It seems just right, and the view is splendid. There’s a good deal
that’s paintable here.”

“Is there? I’m so glad. That makes it perfect. Look at the furniture,
Stefan, every bit right.”

“And the moldings,” he added. “All handcut, do you see? The whole place
is actually old. What a lark!” He appeared almost as pleased as she.

“Here come the others. Let’s go upstairs, dearest,” she whispered.

There were four bedrooms, and a bathroom. The main room had a four-post
bed, and opening out of it was a smaller room, almost empty. In this
Mary stood for some minutes, measuring with her eye the height of the
window from the floor, mentally placing certain small furnishings.
“It would be ideal, simply ideal,” she repeated to herself. Stefan was
looking out of the window, again absorbed in the view. She would have
liked so well to share with him her tenderness over the little room,
but he was all unmindful of its meaning to her, and, as always, his
heedlessness made expression hard for her. She was still communing with
the future when he turned from the window.

“Come along, Mary, let’s go downstairs again.”

They found the others waiting in the sitting-room, and Farraday detached
Stefan to show him a couple of old prints, while Mrs. Farraday led
Constance and Mary to an exploration of the kitchen. Chancing to look
back from the hall, Mary saw that McEwan had seated himself in the
grandmother’s chair, and was holding the heavy shy Jamie at his knee,
one arm thrown round him. The boy’s eyes were fixed in dumb devotion on
his father’s face.

“The two poor lonely things,” she thought.

The little kitchen was spotless, tiled shoulder-high, and painted blue
above. Against one wall a row of copper saucepans grinned their fat
content, echoed by the pale shine of an opposing row of aluminum. Snowy
larder shelves showed through one little door; through another, laundry
tubs were visible. There was a modern coal stove, with a boiler. The
quarters were small, but perfect to the last detail. Mrs. Farraday’s
little face fairly beamed with pride as they looked about them.

“He did it all, bought every pot and pan, arranged each detail. There
were no modern conveniences until old Cotter died--_he_ would not
let James put them in. My boy loves this cottage; he sometimes spends
several days here all alone, when he is very tired. He doesn’t even like
me to send Moses down, but of course I won’t hear of that.” She shook
her head with smiling finality. There were some things, her manner
suggested, that little boys could not be allowed.

“But, Mrs. Farraday,” Mary exclaimed, “how can we possibly take the
house from him if he uses it?”

“My dear,” the little lady’s hand lighted on Mary’s arm, “when thee
knows my James better, thee will know that his happiness lies in helping
his friends find theirs. He would be deeply disappointed if thee did not
take it,” and her hand squeezed Mary’s reassuringly.

“We are too wonderfully lucky--I don’t know how to express my
gratitude,” Mary answered.

“I think the good Lord sends us what we deserve, my dear, whether of
good or ill,” the little lady replied, smiling wisely.

Constance sighed contentedly. “Oh, Mrs. Farraday, you are so good for
us all. I’m a modern backslider, and hardly ever go to church, but you
always make me feel as if I had just been.”

“Backslider, Constance? ‘Thy own works praise thee, and thy children
rise up and call thee blessed--thy husband also,’” quoted their hostess.

“Well, I don’t know if my boys and Theodore call me blessed, but I hope
the Suffragists will one day. Goodness knows I work hard enough for
them.”

“I’ve believed in suffrage all my life, like all Friends,” Mrs. Farraday
answered, “but where thee has worked I have only prayed for it.”

“If prayers are heard, I am sure yours should count more than my work,
dear lady,” said Constance, affectionately pressing the other’s hand.

The little Quaker’s eyes were bright as she looked at her friend.

“Ah, my dear, thee is too generous to an old woman.”

Mary loved this little dialogue, “What dears all my new friends are,”
 she thought; “how truly good.” All the world seemed full of love to her
in these days; her heart blossomed out to these kind people; she folded
them in the arms of her spirit. All about, in nature and in human kind,
she felt the spring burgeoning, and within herself she felt it most of
all. But of this Mary could express nothing, save through her face--she
had never looked more beautiful.

Coming into the dining room she found Farraday watching her. He seemed
tired. She put out her hand.

“May we really have it? You are sure?”

“You like it?” he smiled, holding the hand.

She flushed with the effort to express herself. “I adore it. I can’t
thank you.”

“Please don’t,” he answered. “You don’t know what pleasure this gives
me. Come as soon as you can; everything is ready for you.”

“And about the rent?” she asked, hating to speak of money, but knowing
Stefan would forget.

“Dear Mrs. Byrd, I had so much rather lend it, but I know you wouldn’t
like that. Pay me what you paid for your first home in New York.”

“Oh, but that would be absurd,” she demurred.

“Make that concession to my pride in our friendship,” he smiled back.

She saw that she could not refuse without ungraciousness. Stefan had
disappeared, but now came quickly in from the kitchen door.

“Farraday,” he called, “I’ve been looking at the barn; you don’t use it,
I see. If we come, should you mind my having a north light cut in it?
With that it would make an ideal workshop.”

“I should be delighted,” the other answered; “it’s a good idea and will
make the place more valuable. I had the barn cleaned out thinking some
one might like it for a garage.”

“We shan’t run to such an extravagance yet awhile,” laughed Mary.

“A bicycle for me and the station hack for Mary,” Stefan summed up. “I
suppose there is such a thing at Crab’s Bay?”

“She won’t have to walk,” Farraday answered.

Started on practical issues, Mary’s mind had flown to the need of a
telephone to link them to her doctor. “May we install a ‘phone?” she
asked. “I never lived with one till two months ago, but already it is a
confirmed vice with me.”

“Mayn’t I have it put in for you--there should be one here,” said he.

“Oh, no, please!”

“At least let me arrange for it,” he urged.

“Now, son, thee must not keep Mrs. Byrd out too late. Get her home
before sundown,” Mrs. Farraday’s voice admonished. Obediently, every one
moved toward the hall. At a word from McEwan, the mute Jamie ran to
open the tonneau door. Farraday stopped to lock the kitchen entrance and
found McEwan on the little porch as he emerged, while the others were
busy settling themselves in the car. As Farraday turned the heavy front
door lock, his friend’s hand fell on his shoulder.

“Ought ye to do it, James?” McEwan asked quietly.

Farraday raised his eyes, and looked steadily at the other, with his
slow smile.

“Yes, Mac, it’s a good thing to do. In any case, I shouldn’t have been
likely to marry, you know.” The two friends took their places in the
car.



IV


After much consideration from Mary, the Byrds decided to give up their
recently acquired flat, but to keep the old studio. She felt they should
not attempt to carry three rents through the summer, but, on the other
hand, Stefan was still working at his Demeter, using an Italian model
for the boy’s figure, and could not finish it conveniently elsewhere.
Then, too, he expressed a wish for a pied-à-terre in the city, and as
Mary had very tender associations with the little studio she was glad to
think of keeping it.

Stefan was working fitfully at this time. He would have spurts of energy
followed by fits of depression and disgust with his work, during which
he would leave the house and take long rides uptown on the tops of
omnibuses. Mary could not see that these excursions in search of air
calmed his nervousness, and she concluded that the spring fever was in
his blood and that he needed a change of scene at least as much as she
did.

About this time he sold his five remaining drawings of New York to the
Pan-American Magazine, a progressive monthly. They gained considerable
attention from the art world, and were seized upon by certain groups
of radicals as a sermon on the capitalistic system. On the strength
of them, Stefan was hailed as that rarest of all beings, a politically
minded artist, and became popular in quarters from which his intolerance
had hitherto barred him.

It entertained him hugely to be proclaimed as a champion of democracy,
for he had made the drawings in impish hatred not of a class but of
American civilization as a whole.

Their bank account, in spite of much heightened living expenses,
remained substantial by reason of this new sale, but Stefan was as
indifferent as ever to its control, and Mary’s sense of caution was
little diminished. Her growing comprehension of him warned her that
their position was still insecure; he remained, for all his success, an
unknown quantity as a producer. She wanted him to assume some interest
in their affairs, and suggested separate bank accounts, but he begged
off.

“Let me have a signature at the bank, so that I can cash checks for
personal expenses, but don’t ask me to keep accounts, or know how much
we have,” he said. “If you find I am spending too much at any time, just
tell me, and I will stop.”

Further than this she could not get him to discuss the matter, and saw
that she must think out alone some method of bookkeeping which would
be fair to them both, and would establish a record for future use.
Ultimately she transferred her own money, less her private expenditures
during the winter, to a separate account, to be used for all her
personal expenses. The old account she put in both their names, and made
out a monthly schedule for the household, beyond which she determined
never to draw. Anything she could save from this amount she destined
for a savings bank, but over and above it she felt that her husband’s
earnings were his, and that she could not in honor interfere with them.
Mary was almost painfully conscientious, and this plan cost her many
heart-searchings before it was complete.

After her baby was born she intended to continue her writing; she did
not wish ever to draw on Stefan for her private purse. So far at least,
she would live up to feminist principles.

There was much to be done before they could leave the city, and Mary had
practically no assistance from Stefan in her arrangements. She would ask
his advice about the packing or disposal of a piece of furniture, and
he would make some suggestion, often impracticable; but on any further
questioning he would run his hands through his hair, or thrust them
into his pockets, looking either vague or nervous. “Why fuss about
such things, dear?” or “Do just as you like,” or “I’m sure I haven’t a
notion,” were his most frequent answers. He developed a habit of leaving
his work and following Mary restlessly from room to room as she packed
or sorted, which she found rather wearing.

On one such occasion--it was the day before they were to leave--she was
carrying a large pile of baby’s clothes from her bedroom to a trunk
in the sitting-room, while Stefan stood humped before the fireplace,
smoking. As she passed him he frowned nervously.

“How heavily you tread, Mary,” he jerked out. She stood stock-still and
flushed painfully.

“I think, Stefan,” she said, with the tears of feeling which came
over-readily in these days welling to her eyes, “instead of saying that
you might come and help me to carry these things.”

He looked completely contrite. “I’m sorry, dearest, it was a silly thing
to say. Forgive me,” and he kissed her apologetically, taking the bundle
from her. He offered to help several times that afternoon, but as he
never knew where anything was to go, and fidgeted from foot to foot
while he hung about her, she was obliged at last to plead release from
his efforts.

“Stefan dear,” she said, giving him rather a harassed smile, “you
evidently find this kind of thing a bore. Why don’t you run out and
leave me to get on quietly with it?”

“I know I’ve been rotten to you, and I thought you wanted me to help,”
 he explained, in a self-exculpatory tone.

She stroked his cheek maternally. “Run along, dearest. I can get on
perfectly well alone.”

“You’re a brick, Mary. I think I’ll go. This kind of thing--” he flung
his arm toward the disordered room--“is too utterly unharmonious.” And
kissing her mechanically he hastened out.

That night for the first time in their marriage he did not return for
dinner, but telephoned that he was spending the evening with friends.
Mary, tired out with her packing, ate her meal alone and went to bed
immediately afterwards. His absence produced in her a dull heartache,
but she was too weary to ponder over his whereabouts.

Early next morning Mary telephoned Miss Mason. Stefan, who had come home
late, was still asleep when the Sparrow arrived, and by the time he had
had his breakfast the whole flat was in its final stage of disruption.
A few pieces of furniture were to be sent to the cottage, a few more
stored, and the studio was to be returned to its original omnibus
status. Mrs. Corriani, priestess of family emergencies, had been
summoned from the depths; the Sparrow had donned an apron, Mary a smock;
Lily, the colored maid, was packing china into a barrel, surrounded by
writhing seas of excelsior. For Stefan, the flat might as well have been
given over to the Furies. He fetched his hat.

“Mary,” he said, “I’m not painting again until we have moved. Djinns,
Afrits and Goddesses should be allowed to perform their spiritings
unseen of mortals. I shall go and sit in the Metropolitan and
contemplate Rodin’s Penseur--he is so spacious.”

“Very well, dearest,” said Mary brightly. She had slept away her low
spirits. “Don’t forget Mr. Farraday is sending his car in for us at
three o’clock.”

He looked nonplused. “You don’t mean to say we are moving to-day?”

“Yes, you goose,” she laughed, “don’t you remember?”

“I’m frightfully sorry, Mary, but I made an engagement for this evening,
to go to the theatre. I knew you would not want to come,” he added.

Mary looked blank. “But, Stefan,” she exclaimed, “everything is
arranged! We are dining with the Farradays. I told you several times we
were moving on the fourth. You make it so difficult, dear, by not taking
any interest.” Her voice trembled. She had worked and planned for their
flitting for a week past, was all eagerness to be gone, and now he, who
had been equally keen, seemed utterly indifferent.

He fidgeted uncomfortably, looking contrite yet rebellious. Mary was at
a loss. The Sparrow, however, promptly raised her crest and exhibited a
claw.

“Land sakes, Mr. Byrd,” she piped, “you are a mighty fine artist, but
that don’t prevent your being a husband first these days! Men are all
alike--” she turned to Mary--“always ready to skedaddle off when there’s
work to be done. Now, young man--” she pointed a mandatory finger--“you
run and telephone your friends to call the party off.” Her voice
shrilled, her beady eyes snapped; she looked exactly like one of her
namesakes, ruffled and quarreling at the edge of its nest.

Stefan burst out laughing. “All right, Miss Sparrow, smooth your
feathers. Mary, I’m a mud-headed idiot--I forgot the whole thing. Pay
no attention to my vagaries, dearest, I’ll be at the door at three.” He
kissed her warmly, and went out humming, banging the door behind him.

“My father was the same, and my brothers,” the Sparrow philosophized.
“Spring-cleaning and moving took every ounce of sense out of them.” Mary
sighed. Her zest for the preparations had departed.

Presently, seeing her languor, Miss Mason insisted Mary should lie down
and leave the remaining work to her. The only resting place left was the
old studio, where their divan had been replaced. Thither Mary mounted,
and lying amidst its dusty disarray, traced in memory the months she had
spent there. It had been their first home. Here they had had their
first quarrel and their first success, and here had come to her her
annunciation. Though they were keeping the room, it would never hold the
same meaning for her again, and though she already loved their new home,
it hurt her at the last to bid their first good-bye. Perhaps it was a
trick of fatigue, but as she lay there the conviction came to her that
with to-day’s change some part of the early glamour of marriage was
to go, that not even the coming of her child could bring to life the
memories this room contained. She longed for her husband, for his voice
calling her the old, dear, foolish names. She felt alone, and fearful of
the future.

“My grief,” exclaimed Miss Mason from the door an hour later. “I told
you to go to sleep ‘n here you are wide awake and crying!”

Mary smiled shamefacedly.

“I’m just tired, Sparrow, that’s all, and have been indulging in the
‘vapors.’” She squeezed her friend’s hand. “Let’s have some lunch.”

“It’s all ready, and Lily with her hat ‘n coat on. Come right
downstairs--it’s most two o’clock.”

Mary jumped up, amazed at the time she had wasted. Her spell of
depression was over, and she was her usual cheerful self when, at three
o’clock, she heard Stefan’s feet bounding up the stairs for the last
time.

“Tra-la, Mary, the car is here!” he called. “Thank God we are getting
out of this city! Good-by, Miss Sparrow, don’t peck me, and come and
see us at Crab’s Bay. March, Lily. A riverderci, Signora Corriani. Come,
dearest.” He bustled them all out, seized two suitcases in one hand and
Mary’s elbow in the other, chattered his few words of Italian to the
janitress, chaffed Miss Mason, and had them all laughing by the time
they reached the street. He seemed in the highest spirits, his moods of
the last weeks forgotten.

As the car started he kissed his fingers repeatedly to Miss Mason and
waved his hat to the inevitable assemblage of small boys.

“The country, darling!” he cried, pressing Mary’s hand under the rug.
“Farewell to ugliness and squalor! How happy we are going to be!”

Mary’s hand pressed his in reply.



V


It was late April. The wooded slopes behind “The Byrdsnest,” as Mary
had christened the cottage, were peppered with a pale film of green.
The lawn before the house shone with new grass. Upon it, in the early
morning, Mary watched beautiful birds of types unknown to her, searching
for nest-making material. She admired the large, handsome robins, so
serious and stately after the merry pertness of the English sort, but
her favorites were the bluebirds, and another kind that looked like
greenish canaries, of which she did not know the name. None of them,
she thought, had such melodious song as at home in England, but their
brilliant plumage was a constant delight to her.

Daffodils were springing up in the garden, crocuses were out, and the
blue scylla. On the downward slope toward the bay the brown furry heads
of ferns had begun to push stoutly from the earth. The spring was awake.

Stefan seemed thoroughly contented again. He had his north light in the
barn, but seldom worked there, being absorbed in outdoor sketching. He
was making many small studies of the trees still bare against the gleam
of water, with a dust of green upon them. He could get a number of
valuable notes here, he told Mary.

During their first two weeks in the country his restlessness had
often recurred. He had gone back and forth to the city for work on his
Demeter, and had even slept there on several occasions. But one morning
he wakened Mary by coming in from an early ramble full of joy in the
spring, and announcing that the big picture was now as good as he could
make it, and that he was done with the town. He threw back the blinds
and called to her to look at the day.

“It’s vibrant, Mary; life is waking all about us.” He turned to the bed.

“You look like a beautiful white rose, cool with the dew.”

She blushed--he had forgotten lately his old habit of pretty
speech-making. He came and sat on the bed’s edge, holding her hand.

“I’ve had my restless devil with me of late, sweetheart,” he said. “But
now I feel renewed, and happy. I shan’t want to leave you any more.” He
kissed her with a gravity at which she might have wondered had she been
more thoroughly awake. His tone was that of a man who makes a promise to
himself.

Since that morning he had been consistently cheerful and carefree, more
attentive to Mary than for some time past, and pleased with all his
surroundings. She was overjoyed at the change, and for her own part
never tired of working in the house and garden, striving to make more
perfect the atmosphere of simple homeliness which Farraday had first
imparted to them. Lily was fascinated by her kitchen and little white
bedroom.

“This surely is a cute little house, yes, _ma’am_,” she would exclaim
emphatically, with a grin.

Lily was a small, chocolate-colored negress, with a neat figure, and the
ever ready smile which is God’s own gift to the race. Mary, who hardly
remembered having seen a negro till she came to America, had none of the
color-prejudice which grows up in biracial communities. She found Lily
civil, cheerful, and intelligent, and felt a sincere liking for her
which the other reciprocated with a growing devotion.

Often in these days a passerby--had there been any--could have heard a
threefold chorus rising about the cottage, a spring-song as unconscious
as the birds’. From the kitchen Lily’s voice rose in the endless refrain
of a hymn; Mary’s clear tones traveled down from the little room beside
her own, where she was preparing a place for the expected one; and
Stefan’s whistle, or his snatches of French song, resounded from woods
or barn. Youth and hope were in the house, youth was in the air and
earth.

Farraday’s gardens were the pride of the neighborhood, these and the
library expressing him as the house did his mother. Several times
he sent down an armful of flowers to the Byrdsnest, and, one Sunday
morning, Mary had just finished arranging such a bunch in her vases when
she heard the chug of an automobile in the lane. She looked out to see
Constance, a veiled figure beside her, stopping a runabout at the gate.
Delighted, she hastened to the door. Constance hailed her.

“Mary, behold the charioteer! Theodore has given me this machine for
suffrage propaganda during the summer, and I achieved my driver’s
license yesterday. I’m so vain I’m going to make Felicity design me a
gown with a peacock’s tail that I can spread. I’ve brought her with me
to show off too, and because she needed air. How are you, bless you? May
we come in?”

Not waiting for an answer, she jumped down and hugged Mary, Miss
Berber following in more leisurely fashion. Mary could not help wishing
Constance had come alone, as she now felt a little self-conscious before
strangers. However, she shook hands with Miss Berber, and led them both
into the sitting-room.

“Simply delicious!” exclaimed Constance, glancing eagerly about her,
“and how divinely healthy you look--like a transcendental dairy-maid!
This place was made for you, and how you’ve improved it. Look, Felicity,
at her chintz, and her flowers, and her _cunning_ pair of china
shepherdesses!” She ran from one thing to another, ecstatically
appreciative.

Mary had had no chance to speak yet, and, as Felicity was absorbed in
the languid removal of a satin coat and incredible yards of apple green
veiling, Constance held the floor.

“Look at her pair of love-birds sidling along the curtain pole, as tame
as humans! Where did you find that wooden cage? And that white cotton
dress? You smell of lavender and an ironing-board! Oh, dear,” she began
again, “driving is very wearing, and I should like a cocktail, but I
must have milk. Milk, my dear Mary, is the only conceivable beverage
in this house. Have you a cow? You ought to have a cow--a brindled
cow--also a lamb; ‘Mary had,’ et cetera. My dear, stop me. Enthusiasm
converts me into an ‘agreeable rattle,’ as they used to call our
great-grandmothers.”

“Subdue yourself with this,” laughed Mary, holding out the desired glass
of milk. “Miss Berber, can I get anything for you?”

Felicity by this time was unwrapped, and had disposed herself upon a
window-seat, her back to the light.

“Wine or water, Mrs. Byrd; I do not drink milk,” she breathed, lighting
a cigarette.

“We have some Chianti; nothing else, I’m afraid,” said Mary, and a glass
of this the designer deigned to accept, together with a little yellow
cake set with currants, and served upon a pewter plate.

“I see, Mrs. Byrd,” Felicity murmured, as Constance in momentary silence
sipped her milk, “that you comprehend the first law of decoration for
woman--that her accessories must be a frame for her type. I--how should
I appear in a room like this?” She gave a faint shrug. “At best, a false
tone in a chromatic harmony. You are entirely in key.”

Her eyelids drooped; she exhaled a long breath of smoke. “Very well
thought out--unusually clever--for a layman,” she uttered, and was
still, with the suggestion of a sibyl whose oracle has ceased to speak.

Mary tried not to find her manner irritating, but could not wholly
dispel the impression that Miss Berber habitually patronized her.

She laughed pleasantly.

“I’m afraid I can’t claim to have been guided by any subtle theories--I
have merely collected together the kind of things I am fond of.”

“Mary decorates with her heart, Felicity, you with your head,” said
Constance, setting down her empty tumbler.

“I’m afraid I should find the heart too erratic a guide to art.
Knowledge, Mrs. Byrd, knowledge must supplement feeling,” said Felicity,
with a gesture of finality.

“Really!” answered Mary, falling back upon her most correct English
manner. There was nothing else to say. “She is either cheeky, or a
bromide,” she thought.

“Felicity,” exclaimed Constance, “don’t adopt your professional manner;
you can’t take us in. You know you are an outrageous humbug.”

“Dear Connie,” replied the other with the ghost of a smile, “you are
always so amusing, and so much more wide awake in the morning than I
am.”

Conversation languished for a minute, Constance having embarked on a
cake. For some reason which she could not analyze, Mary felt in no great
hurry to call Stefan from the barn, should he be there.

Felicity rose. “May we not see your garden, Mrs. Byrd?”

“Certainly,” said Mary, and led the way to the door. Felicity slipped
out first, and wandered with her delicate step a little down the path.

“Isn’t it darling!” exclaimed Constance from the porch, surveying the
flower-strewn grass, the feathery trees, and the pale gleam of the
water. Mary began to show her some recent plantings, in particular a
rose-bed which was her last addition to the garden.

“I see you have a barn,” said Felicity, flitting back to them with a
hint of animation. “Is it picturesque inside? Would it lend itself to
treatment?” She wandered toward it, and there was nothing for the others
to do but follow.

“Oh, yes,” explained Mary, “my husband has converted it into a studio.
He may be working there now--I had been meaning to call him.”

She felt a trifle uncomfortable, almost as if she had put herself in the
wrong.

“Coo-oo, Stefan,” she called as they neared the barn, Felicity still
flitting ahead. The door swung open, and there stood Stefan, pallette in
hand, screwing up his eyes in the sun.

As they lit on his approaching visitor an expression first of
astonishment, and then of something very like displeasure, crossed
his face. At sight of it, Mary’s spirits subconsciously responded by a
distinct upward lift. Stefan waved his brush without shaking hands, and
then, seeing Constance, broke into a smile.

“How delightful, Mrs. Elliot! How did you come? By auto? And you drove
Miss Berber? We are honored. You are our first visitors except the
Farradays. Come and see my studio.”

They trooped into the quaint little barn, which appeared to wear its big
north light rather primly, as a girl her first low-necked gown. It was
unfurnished, save for a table and easel, several canvases, and an old
arm-chair. Felicity glanced at the sketches.

“In pastoral mood again,” she commented, with what might have been the
faintest note of sarcasm. Stefan’s eyebrows twitched nervously.

“There’s nothing to see in here-these are the merest sketches,” he
said abruptly. “Come along, Mrs. Elliot, I’ve been working since before
breakfast; let’s say good-morning to the flowers.” And with his arm
linked through hers he piloted Constance back toward the lawn.

“Mr. Byrd ought never to wear tweed, do you think? It makes him look
heavy,” remarked Felicity.

Again Mary had to suppress a feeling of irritation. “I rather like it,”
 she said. “It’s so comfy and English.”

“Yes?” breathed Felicity vaguely, walking on.

Suddenly she appeared to have a return of animation.

She floated forward quickly for a few steps, turned with a swaying
movement, and waited for Mary with hands and feet poised.

“The grass under one’s feet, Mrs. Byrd, it makes them glad. One could
almost dance!”

Again she fluttered ahead, this time overtaking Constance and Stefan,
who had halted in the middle of the lawn. She swayed before them on
tiptoe.

“Connie,” she was saying as Mary came up, “why does one not more often
dance in the open?”

Though her lids still drooped she was half smiling as she swayed.

“It may be the spring; or perhaps I have caught the pastoral mood of Mr.
Byrd’s work; but I should like to dance a little. Music,” her palms were
lifted in repudiation, “is unnecessary. One has the birds.”

“Good for you, Felicity! That _will_ be fun,” Constance exclaimed
delightedly. “You don’t dance half often enough, bad girl. Come along,
people, let’s sit on the porch steps.”

They arranged themselves to watch, Constance and Mary on the upper
step, Stefan on the lower, his shoulders against his wife’s knees, while
Felicity dexterously slipped off her sandals and stockings.

Her dress, modeled probably on that of the central figure in
Botticelli’s Spring, was of white chiffon, embroidered with occasional
formal sprigs of green leaves and hyacinth-blue flowers, and kilted up
at bust and thigh. Her loosely draped sleeves hung barely to the elbow.
A line of green crossed from the shoulders under each breast, and her
hair, tightly bound, was decorated with another narrow band of green.
She looked younger than in the city--almost virginal. Stooping low, she
gathered a handful of blue scylla from the grass, Mary barely checking
an exclamation at this ravishing of her beloved bulbs. Then Felicity
lay down upon the grass; her eyes closed; she seemed asleep. They waited
silently for some minutes. Stefan began to fidget.

Suddenly a robin called. Felicity’s eyes opened. They looked calm and
dewy, like a child’s. She raised her head--the robin called again.
Felicity looked about her, at the flowers in her hand, the trees, the
sky. Her face broke into smiles, she rose tall, taller, feet on tiptoe,
hands reaching skyward. It was the waking of spring. Then she began to
dance.

Gone was the old languor, the dreamy, hushed steps of her former method.
Now she appeared to dart about the lawn like a swallow, following the
calls of the birds. She would stand poised to listen, her ear would
catch a twitter, and she was gone; flitting, skimming, seeming not to
touch the earth. She danced to the flowers in her hand, to the trees,
the sky, her face aglint with changing smiles, her skirts rippling like
water.

At last the blue flowers seemed to claim her solely. She held them
sunward, held them close, always swaying to the silent melody of the
spring. She kissed them, pressed them to her heart; she sank downward,
like a bird with folding wings, above a clump of scylla; her arms
encircled them, her head bent to her knees--she was still.

Constance broke the spell with prolonged applause; Mary was breathless
with admiration; Stefan rose, and after prowling restlessly for a
moment, hurried to the dancer and stooped to lift her.

As if only then conscious of her audience, Felicity looked up, and both
the other women noticed the expression that flashed across her face
before she took the proffered hand. It seemed compounded of triumph,
challenge, and something else. Mary again felt uncomfortable, and
Constance’s quick brain signaled a warning.

“Surely not getting into mischief, are you, Felicity?” she mentally
questioned, and instantly began to east about for two and two to put
together.

“Wonderful!” Stefan was saying. “You surely must have wings--great,
butterfly ones--only we are too dull to see them. You were exactly like
one of my pictures come to life.” He was visibly excited.

“Husband disposed of, available lovers unattractive, asks me to drive
her out here; that’s one half,” Constance’s mind raced. “Wife on the
shelf, variable temperament, studio in town; and that’s the other. I’ve
found two and two; I hope to goodness they won’t make four,” she sighed
to herself anxiously.

Mary meanwhile was thanking Miss Berber. She noticed that the dancer was
perfectly cool--not a hair ruffled by her efforts. She looked as smooth
as a bird that draws in its feathers after flight. Stefan was probably
observing this, too, she thought; at any rate he was hovering about,
staring at Felicity, and running his hands through his hair. Mary
could not be sure of his expression; he seemed uneasy, as if discomfort
mingled with his pleasure.

They had had a rare and lovely entertainment, and yet no one appeared
wholly pleased except the dancer herself. It was very odd.

Constance looked at her watch. “Now, Felicity, this has all been
ideal, but we must be getting on. I ‘phoned James, you know, and we are
lunching there. I was sure Mrs. Byrd wouldn’t want to be bothered with
us.”

Mary demurred, with a word as to Lily’s capacities, but Constance was
firm.

“No, my dear, it’s all arranged. Besides, you need peace and
quiet. Felicity, where are your things? Thank you, Mr. Byrd, in the
sitting-room. Mary, you dear, I adore you and your house--I shall come
again soon. Where are my gloves?” She was all energy, helping Felicity
with her veil, settling her own hat, kissing Mary, and cranking the
runabout--an operation she would not allow Stefan to attempt for
her--with her usual effervescent efficiency. “I’d no idea it was so
late!” she exclaimed.

As Felicity was handed by Stefan into the car, she murmured something
in French, Constance noticed, to which he shook his head with a nervous
frown. As the machine started, he was left staring moodily after it down
the lane.

“Thee is earlier than I expected,” little Mrs. Farraday said to
Constance, when they arrived at the house. “I am afraid we shall have to
keep thee waiting for thy lunch for half an hour or more.”

“How glad I shall be--” Stefan turned to Mary, half irritably--“when
this baby is born, and you can be active again.”

He ate his lunch in silence, and left the table abruptly at the end. Nor
did she see him again until dinner time, when he came in tired out, his
boots whitened with road dust.

“Where have you been, dearest?” she asked. “I’ve been quite anxious
about you.”

“Just walking,” he answered shortly, and went up to his room. The tears
came to her eyes, but she blinked them away resolutely. She must not
mind, must not show him that she even dreamed of any connection between
his moodiness and the events of the morning.

“My love must be stronger than that, now of all times,” thought Mary.
“Afterwards--afterwards it will be all right.” She smiled confidently to
herself.



VI


It was the end of June. Mary’s rosebushes were in full bloom and the
little garden was languid with the scent of them. The nesting birds
had all hatched their broods--every morning now Mary watched from her
bedroom window the careful parents carrying worms and insects into the
trees. She always looked for them the moment she got up. She would have
loved to hang far out of the window as she used to do in her old home in
England, and call good-morning to her little friends--but she was hemmed
in by the bronze wire of the windowscreens. These affected her almost
like prison bars; but Long Island’s summer scourge had come, and after
a few experiences of nights sung sleepless by the persistent horn of
the enemy and made agonizing by his sting, she welcomed the screens
as deliverers. The mosquitoes apart, Mary had adored the long, warm
days--not too hot as yet on the Byrdsnest’s shady eminence--and the
perpetually smiling skies, so different from the sulky heavens of
England. But she began to feel very heavy, and found it increasingly
difficult to keep cool, so that she counted the days till her
deliverance. She felt no fear of what was coming. Dr. Hillyard had
assured her that she was normal in every respect--“as completely
normal a woman as I have ever seen,” she put it--and should have no
complications. Moreover, Mary had obtained from her doctor a detailed
description of what lay before her, and had read one or two hand-books
on the subject, so that she was spared the fearful imaginings and
reliance on old wives’ tales which are the results of the ancient policy
of surrounding normal functions with mystery.

Now the nurse was here, a tall, grave-eyed Canadian girl, quiet of
speech, silent in every movement. Mary had wondered if she ought to go
into Dr. Hillyard’s hospital, and was infinitely relieved to have her
assurance that it was unnecessary. She wanted her baby to be born here
in the country, in the sweet place she had prepared for it, surrounded
by those she loved. Everything here was perfect for the advent--she
could ask for nothing more. True, she was seeking comparatively little
of Stefan, but she knew he was busily painting, and he was uniformly
kind and affectionate when they were together. He had not been to town
for over two months.

Mrs. Farraday was a frequent caller, and Mary had grown sincerely to
love the sweet-faced old lady, who would drive up in a low pony chaise,
bringing offerings of fruit and vegetables, or quaint preserves from
recipes unknown to Mary, which had been put up under her own direction.

Then, too, McEwan would appear at week-ends or in the evening, tramping
down the lane to hail the house in absurd varieties of the latest New
York slang, which, never failed to amuse Mary. The shy Jamie was often
with her; they were now the most intimate of friends. He would show her
primitive tools and mechanical contrivances of his own making, and she
would tell him stories of Scotland, of Prince Charlie and Flora, of
Bruce and Wallace, of Bannockburn, or of James, the poet king. Of these
she had a store, having been brought up, as many English girls happily
are, on the history and legends of the island, rather than on less
robust feminine fare.

Farraday, too, sometimes dropped in in the evening, to sit on the
porch with Stefan and Mary and talk quietly of books and the like.
Occasionally he came with McEwan or Jamie; he never came alone--though
this she had not noticed--at hours when Stefan was unlikely to be with
her.

At the suggestion of Mrs. Farraday, whose word was the social law of
the district, the most charming women in the neighborhood had called on
Mary, so that her circle of acquaintances was now quite wide. She had
had in addition several visits from Constance, and the Sparrow had spent
a week-end with them, chirping admiration of the place and encomiums of
her friend’s housekeeping. But Mary liked best to be with Stefan, or
to dream alone through the hushed, sunlit hours amid her small tasks
of house and garden. Now that the nurse was here, occupying the little
bedroom opening from Mary’s room, the final preparations had been made;
there was nothing left to do but wait.

Miss McCullock had been with them three days, and Stefan had become used
to her quiet presence, when late one evening certain small symptoms told
her that Mary’s time had come. Stefan, entering the hall, found her
at the telephone. “Dr. Hillyard will be here in about an hour and a
quarter,” she said quietly, hanging up the receiver. “Do you know if she
has driven out before? If not, it might be well for you, Mr. Byrd, to
walk to the foot of the lane soon, and be ready to signal the turning to
her.” Miss McCullock always distrusted the nerves of husbands on these
occasions, and planned adroitly to get them out of the way.

Stefan stared at her as flabbergasted as if this emergency had not been
hourly expected. “Do you mean,” he gasped, “that Mary is ill?”

“She is not ill, Mr. Byrd, but the baby will probably be born before
morning.”

“My God!” said Stefan, suddenly blanching. He had not faced this
moment, had not thought about it, had indeed hardly thought about Mary’s
motherhood at all except to deplore its toll upon her bodily beauty. He
had tried for her sake, harder than she knew, to appear sympathetic,
but in his heart the whole thing presented itself as nature’s grotesque
price for the early rapture of their love. That the price might be
tragic as well as grotesque had only now come home to him. He dropped on
a chair, his memory flying back to the one other such event in which he
had had part. He saw himself thrust from his mother’s door--he heard
her shrieks--felt himself fly again into the rain. His forehead was wet;
cold tingles ran to his fingertips.

The nurse’s voice sounded, calm and pleasant, above him. A whiff of
brandy met his nostrils. “You’d better drink this, Mr. Byrd, and then
in a minute you might go and see Mrs. Byrd. You will feel better after
that, I think.”

He drank, then looked up, haggard.

“They’ll give her plenty of chloroform, won’t they?” he whispered,
catching the nurse’s hand. She smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Mr.
Byrd, your wife is in splendid condition, and ether will certainly be
given when it becomes advisable.”

The brandy was working now and his nerves had steadied, but he found the
nurse’s manner maddeningly calm. “I’ll go to Mary,” he muttered, and,
brushing past her, sprang up the stairs.

What he expected to see he did not know, but his heart pounded as he
opened the bedroom door. The room was bright with lamplight, and in
spotless order. At her small writing-table sat Mary, in a loose white
dressing gown, her hair in smooth braids around her head, writing. What
was she doing? Was she leaving some last message for him, in case--? He
felt himself grow cold again. “Mary!” he exclaimed hoarsely.

She looked round, and called joyfully to him.

“Oh, darling, there you are. I’m getting everything ready. It’s coming,
Stefan dearest. I’m so happy!” Her face was excited, radiant.

He ran to her with a groan of relief, and, kneeling, caught her face to
his. “Oh, Beautiful, you’re all right then? She told me--I was afraid--”
 he stumbled, inarticulate.

She stroked his cheek comfortingly. “Dearest, isn’t it wonderful--just
think--by to-morrow our baby will be here.” She kissed him, between
happy tears and laughter.

“You are not in pain, darling? You’re all right? What were you writing
when I came in?” he stammered, anxiously.

“I’m putting all the accounts straight, and paying all the bills to
date, so that Lily won’t have any trouble while I’m laid up,” she
beamed.

Stefan stared uncomprehendingly for a moment, then burst into
half-hysterical laughter.

“Oh, you marvel,” he gasped, “goddess of efficiency, unshakable
Olympian! Bills! And I thought you were writing me a farewell message.”

“Silly boy,” she replied. “The bills have got to be paid; a nice muddle
you would be in if you had them to do yourself. But, dearest--” her face
grew suddenly grave and she took his hand--“listen. I _have_ written you
something--it’s there--” her fingers touched an elastic bound pile of
papers. “I’m perfectly well, but if anything _should_ happen, I want my
sister to have the baby. Because I think, dear--” she stroked his hand
with a look of compassionate understanding--“that without me you would
not want it very much. Miss Mason would take it to England for you, and
you could make my sister an allowance. I’ve left you her address, and
all that I can think of to suggest.”

He gazed at her dumbly. Her face glowed with life and beauty, her voice
was sweet and steady. There she sat, utterly mistress of herself, in the
shadow of life and death. Was it that her imagination was transcendent,
or that she had none? He did not know, he did not understand her, but in
that moment he could have said his prayers at her feet.

The nurse entered. “Now, Mr. Byrd, I think if you could go to the end of
the lane and be looking out for the doctor? Mrs. Byrd ought to have her
bath.”

Stefan departed. In a dream he walked to the lane’s end and waited
there. He was thinking of Mary, perhaps for the first time, not as a
beautiful object of love and inspiration, nor as his companion, but as a
woman. What was this calm strength, this certitude of hers? Why did her
every word and act seem to move straight forward, while his wheeled
and circled? What was it that Mary had that he had not? Of what was her
inmost fiber made? It came to him that for all their loving passages his
wife was a stranger to him, and a stranger whom he had never sought to
know. He felt ashamed.

It was about eleven o’clock when the distance was pricked by two points
of light, which, gradually expanding, proved to be the head-lamps of the
doctor’s car. She stopped at his hail and he climbed beside her.

“I’m glad you came, though I think I know the turning,” said Dr.
Hillyard cheerfully.

“How long will it be, doctor?” he asked nervously.

“Feeling jumpy?” she replied. “Better let me give you a bromide, and
try for a little sleep. Don’t you worry--unless we have complications it
will be over before morning.”

“Before _morning_!” he groaned. “Doctor, you won’t let her suffer--you
will give her something?”

He was again reassured. “Certainly. But she has a magnificent physique,
with muscles which have never been allowed to soften through tight
clothing or lack of exercise. I expect an easy case. Here we are, I
think.” The swift little car stopped accurately at the gate, and the
doctor, shutting off her power, was out in a moment, bag in hand. The
nurse met them in the hall.

“Getting on nicely--an easy first stage,” she reported. The two women
disappeared upstairs, and Stefan was left alone to live through as best
he could the most difficult hours that fall to the lot of civilized man.
Presently Miss McCullock came down to him with a powder, and advice from
the doctor anent bed, but he would take neither the one nor the other.
“What a sot I should be,” he thought, picturing himself lying drugged to
slumber while Mary suffered.

By and by he ventured upstairs. Clouds of steam rose from the bathroom,
brilliant light was everywhere, two white-swathed figures, scarcely
recognizable, seemed to move with incredible speed amid a perfectly
ordered chaos. All Mary’s pretty paraphernalia were gone; white oil
cloth covered every table, and was in its turn covered by innumerable
objects sealed in stiff paper. Amid these alien surroundings Mary sat in
her nightgown on the edge of the bed, her knees drawn up.

“Hello, dearest,” she called rather excitedly, “we’re getting awfully
busy.” Then her face contracted. “Here comes another,” she said
cheerily, and gasped a little. On that Stefan fled, with a muttered
“Call me if she wants me,” to the nurse.

He wandered to the kitchen. There was a roaring fire, but the room
was empty--even Lily had found work upstairs. For an hour more Stefan
prowled--then he rang up the Farraday’s house. After an interval James’
voice answered him.

“It’s Byrd, Farraday,” said Stefan. “No--” quickly--“everything’s
perfectly all right, perfectly, but it’s going on. Could you come over?”

In fifteen minutes Farraday had dressed and was at the door, his great
car gliding up silently beside the doctor’s. As he walked in Stefan saw
that his face was quite white.

“It was awfully good of you to come,” he said.

“I’m so glad you asked me. My car is a sixty horsepower, if anything
were needed.” Farraday sat down, and lighted a pipe. Stefan delivered
knowledge of the waiting machine upstairs, and then recommenced his
prowl. Back and forth through the two living rooms he walked, lighting,
smoking, or throwing away endless cigarettes. Farraday sat drawing at
his pipe. Neither spoke. One o’clock struck, and two.

Presently they heard a loud growling sound, quite un-human, but with no
quality of agony. It was merely as if some animal were making a supreme
physical effort. In about two minutes this was repeated. Farraday’s pipe
dropped on the hearth, Stefan tore upstairs. “What is it?” he asked at
the open door. Something large and white moved powerfully on the bed. At
the foot bent the little doctor, her hands hidden, and at the head stood
the nurse holding a small can. A heavy, sweet odor filled the room.

“It’s all right,” the doctor said rapidly. “Expulsive stage. She isn’t
suffering.”

“Hello, Stefan dear,” said a small, rather high voice, which made him
jump violently. Then he saw a face on the pillow, its eyes closed, and
its nose and mouth covered with a wire cone. In a moment there came a
gasp, the sheathed form drew tense, the nurse spilled a few drops from
her can upon the cone, the growling recommenced and heightened to a
crescendo. Stefan had an impression of tremendous physical life, but the
human tone of the “Hello, Stefan,” was quite gone again.

He was backing shakily out when the doctor called to him.

“It will be born quite soon, now, Mr. Byrd,” her cheery voice promised.

Trembling with relief, he stumbled downstairs. Farraday was standing
rigid before the fireplace, his face quite expressionless.

“She’s having ether--I don’t think she’s suffering. The doctor says
quite soon, now,” Stefan jerked out.

“I’m thankful,” said Farraday, quietly.

He stooped and picked up his fallen pipe, but it took him a long time
to refill it--particles of tobacco kept showering to the rug from his
fingers. Stefan, with a new cigarette, resumed his prowl.

Midsummer dawn was breaking. The lamplight began to pale before
the glimmer of the windows. A sleepy bird chirped, the room became
mysterious.

There had been rapid steps overhead for some moments, and now the two
men became aware that the tiger-like sounds had quite ceased. The steps
overhead quieted. Farraday put out the lamp, and the blue light flooded
the room.

A bird called loudly, and another answered it, high, repeatedly. The
notes were right over their heads; they rose higher, insistent. They
were not the notes of a bird. The nurse appeared at the door and looked
at Stefan.

“Your son is born,” she said.

Instantly to both men it was as if eerie bonds, drawn over-taut, had
snapped, releasing them again to the physical world about them. The high
mystery was over; life was human and kindly once again. Farraday dropped
into his chair and held a hand across his eyes. Stefan threw both arms
round Miss McCullock’s shoulders and hugged her like a child.

“Oh, hurrah!” he cried, almost sobbing with relief. “Bless you, nurse.
Is she all right?”

“She’s perfect--I’ve never seen finer condition. You can come up in a
few minutes, the doctor says, and see her before she goes to sleep.”

“There’s nothing needed, nurse?” asked Farraday, rising.

“Nothing at all, thank you.”

“Then I’ll be getting home, Byrd,” he said, offering his hand to Stefan.
“My warmest congratulations. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

Stefan shook the proffered hand with a deeper liking than he had yet
felt for this silent man.

“I’m everlastingly grateful to you, Farraday, for helping me out, and
Mary will be, too. I don’t know how I could have stood it alone.”

Stefan mounted the stairs tremblingly, to pause in amazement at the
door of Mary’s room. A second transformation had, as if by magic, taken
place. The lights were out. The dawn smiled at the windows, through
which a gentle breeze ruffled the curtains. Gone were all evidences of
the night’s tense drama; tables and chairs were empty; the room looked
calm and spacious.

On the bed Mary lay quiet, her form hardly outlined under the smooth
coverlet. Half fearfully he let his eyes travel to the pillow, dreading
he knew not what change. Instantly, relief overwhelmed him. Her face
was radiant, her cheeks pink--she seemed to glow with a sublimated
happiness. Only in her eyes lay any traces of the night--they were still
heavy from the anaesthetic, but they shone lovingly on him, as though
deep lights were behind them.

“Darling,” she whispered, “we’ve got a little boy. Did you worry? It
wasn’t anything--only the most thrilling adventure that’s ever happened
to me.”

He looked at her almost with awe--then, stooping, pressed his face to
the pillow beside hers.

“Were they merciful to you, Beautiful?” he whispered back. Weakly, her
hand found his head.

“Yes, darling, they were wonderful. I was never quite unconscious, yet
it wasn’t a bit bad--only as if I were in the hands of some prodigious
force. They showed me the baby, too--just for a minute. I want to see
him again now--with you.”

Stefan looked up. Dr. Hillyard was in the doorway of the little room.
She nodded, and in a moment reappeared, carrying a small white bundle.

“Here he is,” she said; “he weighs eight and a half pounds. You can both
look at him for a moment, and then Mrs. Byrd must go to sleep.” She put
the bundle gently down beside Mary, whose head turned toward it.

Almost hidden in folds of flannel Stefan saw a tiny red face, its
eyes closed, two microscopic fists doubled under its chin. It conveyed
nothing to him except a sense of amazement.

“He’s asleep,” whispered Mary, “but I saw his eyes--they are blue. Isn’t
he pretty?” Her own eyes, soft with adoration, turned from her son to
Stefan. Then they drooped, drowsily.

“She’s falling off,” said the doctor under her breath, recovering the
baby. “They’ll both sleep for several hours now. Lily is getting us some
breakfast--wouldn’t you like some, too, Mr. Byrd?”

Stefan felt grateful for her normal, cheery manner, and for Mary’s
sudden drowsiness; they seemed to cover what he felt to be a failure in
himself. He had been unable to find one word to say about the baby.

At breakfast, served by the sleepy but beaming Lily, Stefan was dazed by
the bearing of doctor and nurse. These two women, after a night spent
in work of an intensity and scope beyond his powers to gage, appeared
as fresh and normal as if they had just risen from sleep, while he,
unshaved and rumpled, could barely control his racked nerves and heavy
head, across which doctor and nurse discussed their case with animation.

“We are all going to bed, Mr. Byrd,” said the doctor at last, noting
his exhausted aspect. “I shall get two or, three hours’ nap on the sofa
before going back to town, and I hope you will take a thorough rest.”

Stefan rose rather dizzily from his unfinished meal.

“Please take my room,” he said, “I couldn’t stay in the house--I’m going
out.” He found the atmosphere of alert efficiency created by these women
utterly insupportable. The house stifled him with its teeming feminine
life. In it he felt superfluous, futile. Hurrying out, he stumbled down
the slope and, stripping, dived into the water. Its cold touch robbed
him of thought; he became at once merely one of Nature’s straying
children returned again to her arms.

Swimming back, he drew on his clothes, and mounting to the garden, threw
himself face down upon the grass, and fell asleep under the morning sun.

He dreamed that a drum was calling him. Its beat, muffled and irregular,
yet urged him forward. A flag waved dazzlingly before his eyes; its
folds stifled him. He tried to move, yet could not--the drum called ever
more urgently. He started awake, to find himself on his back, the sun
beating into his face, and the doctor’s machine chugging down the lane.



VII


The little June baby at the Byrdsnest was very popular with the
neighborhood. During the summer it seemed to Stefan that the house was
never free of visitors who came to admire the child, guess his weight,
and exclaim at his mother’s health.

As a convalescent, Mary was, according to Constance Elliot, a complete
fraud. Except for her hair, which had temporarily lost some of its
elasticity, she had never looked so radiant. She was out of bed on the
ninth day, and walking in the garden on the twelfth. The behavior of
the baby--who was a stranger to artificial food--was exemplary; he never
fretted, and cried only when he was hungry. But as his appetite troubled
him every three hours during the day, and every four at night, he
appeared to Stefan to cry incessantly, and his strenuous wail would
drive his father from house to barn, and from barn to woods. Lured from
one of these retreats by an interval of silence, Stefan was as likely as
not to find an auto at the gate and hear exclamatory voices proceeding
from the nursery, when he would fade into the woods again like a wild
thing fearful of the trap.

His old dislike of his kind reasserted itself. It is one thing to be
surrounded by pretty women proclaiming you the greatest artist of your
day, and quite another to listen while they exclaim on the perfections
of your offspring and the health of your wife. For the first type
of conversation Stefan had still an appetite; with the second he was
quickly surfeited.

Nor were women his only tormentors. The baby spent much of its time in
the garden, and every Sunday Stefan would find McEwan planted on the
lawn, prodding the infant with a huge forefinger, and exploding into
fatuous mirth whenever he deluded himself into believing he had made it
smile. Of late Stefan had begun to tolerate this man, but after three
such exhibitions decided to blacklist him permanently as an insufferable
idiot. Even Farraday lost ground in his esteem, for, though guilty of
no banalities, he had a way of silently hovering over the baby-carriage
which Stefan found mysteriously irritating. Jamie alone of their
masculine friends seemed to adopt a comprehensible attitude, for he
backed away in hasty alarm whenever the infant, in arms or carriage,
bore down upon him. On several occasions when the Farraday household
invaded the Byrdsnest Stefan and Jamie together sneaked away in search
of an environment more seemly for their sex.

“You are the only creature I know just now, Jamie,” Stefan said, “with
any sense of proportion;” and these two outcasts from notice would tramp
moodily through the woods, the boy faithfully imitating Stefan’s slouch
and his despondent way of carrying his hands thrust in his pockets.

There were no more tales of Scotland for Jamie in these days, and as for
Stefan he hardly saw his wife. True, she always brightened when he came
in and mutely evinced her desire that he should remain, but she was
never his. While he talked her eye would wander to the cradle, or if
they were in another room her ear would be constantly strained to catch
a cry. In the midst of a pleasant interlude she would jump to her feet
with a murmured “Dinner time,” or “He must have some water now,” and be
gone.

Stefan did not sleep with her--as he could not endure being disturbed
at night--and she took a long nap every afternoon, so that at best the
hours available for him were few. Any visitor, he thought morosely, won
more attention from her than he did, and this was in a sense true, for
the visitors openly admired the baby--the heart of Mary’s life--and he
did not.

He did not know how intensely she longed for this, how she ached to see
Stefan jab his finger at the baby as McEwan did, or watch it with the
tender smile of Farraday. She tried a thousand simple wiles to bring to
life the father in him. About to nurse the baby, she would call Stefan
to see his eager search for the comfort of her breast, looking up in
proud joy as the tiny mouth was satisfied.

At the very first, when the baby was newborn, Stefan had watched this
rite with some interest, but now he only fidgeted, exclaiming, “You are
looking wonderfully fit, Mary,” or “Greedy little beggar, isn’t he?” He
never spoke of his old idea of painting her as a Madonna. If she
drew his attention to the baby’s tiny hands or feet, he would glance
carelessly at them, with a “They’re all right,” or “I’ll like them
better when they’re bigger.”

Once, as they were going to bed, she showed Stefan the baby lying on his
chest, one fist balled on either side of the pillow, the downy back of
his head shining in the candle-light. She stooped and kissed it.

“His head is too deliciously soft and warm, Stefan; do kiss it
good-night.”

His face contracted into an expression of distaste. “No,” he said, “I
can’t kiss babies,” and left the room.

She felt terribly, unnecessarily hurt. It was so difficult for her to
make advances, so fatally easy for him to rebuff them.

After that, she did not draw the baby to his attention again.

Perhaps, had the child been a girl, Stefan would have felt more
sentiment about it. A girl baby, lying like a pink bud among the roses
of the garden, might have appealed to that elfin imagination which
largely took the place in him of romance--but a boy! A boy was merely in
his eyes another male, and Stefan considered the world far too full of
men already.

He sealed his attitude when the question of the child’s name came up.
Mary had fallen into a habit of calling it “Little Stefan,” or “Steve”
 for short, and one morning, as the older Stefan crossed the lawn to his
studio her voice floated down from the nursery in an improvised song to
her “Stefan Baby.” He bounded upstairs to her.

“Mary,” he called, “you are surely not going to call that infant by my
name?”

Mary, her lap enveloped in aprons and towels, looked up from the bath in
which her son was practising tentative kicks.

“Why, yes, dear, I thought we’d christen him after you, as he’s the
eldest. Don’t you think that would be nice?” She looked puzzled.

“No, I do not!” Stefan snorted emphatically. “For heaven’s sake give the
child a name of his own, and let me keep mine. My God, one Stefan Byrd
is enough in the world, I should think!”

“Well, dear, what shall we call him, then?” she asked, lowering her head
over the baby to hide her hurt.

“Give him your own name if you want to. After all, he’s your child.
Elliston Byrd wouldn’t sound at all bad.”

“Very well,” said Mary slowly. “I think the Dad would have been pleased
by that.” In spite of herself, her voice trembled.

“Good Lord, Mary, I haven’t hurt you, have I?” He looked exasperated.

She shook her head, still bending over the baby.

“It’s all right, dear,” she whispered.

“You’re so soft nowadays, one hardly dare speak,” he muttered. “Sorry,
dear,” and with a penitent kiss for the back of her neck he hastened
downstairs again.

The christening was held two weeks later, in the small Episcopalian
church of Crab’s Bay. Stefan could see no reason for it, as neither he
nor Mary was orthodox, but when he suggested omitting the ceremony she
looked at him wide-eyed.

“Not christen him, Stefan? Oh, I don’t think that would be fair,” she
said. Her manner was simple, but there was finality in her tone--it made
him feel that wherever her child was concerned she would be adamant.

The baby’s godmother was, of course, Constance, and his godfathers,
equally obviously, Farraday and McEwan. Mary made the ceremony the
occasion of a small at-home, inviting the numerous friends from whom she
had received congratulations or gifts for the baby.

Miss Mason had insisted on herself baking the christening cake; Farraday
as usual supplied a sheaf of flowers. In the drawing room the little
Elliston’s presents were displayed, a beautiful old cup from Farraday,
a christening robe, and a spoon, “pusher,” and fork from Constance, a
silver bowl “For Elliston’s porridge from his friend Wallace McEwan,”
 and a Bible in stout leather binding from Mrs. Farraday, inscribed
in her delicate, slanting hand. There was even a napkin ring from the
baby’s aunt in England, who was much relieved that her too-independent
sister had married a successful artist and done her duty by the family
so promptly.

Mary was naively delighted with these offerings.

“He has got everything I should have liked him to have!” she exclaimed
as she arranged them.

Stefan, led to the font, showed all the nervousness he had omitted at
the altar, but looked very handsome in a suit of linen crash, while
Mary, in white muslin, was at her glowing best.

Constance was inevitably late, for, like most American women, she did
not carry her undeniable efficiency to the point of punctuality. At the
last moment, however, she dashed up to the church with the élan of a
triumphant general, bearing her husband captive in the tonneau, and
no less a person than Gunther, the distinguished sculptor, on the seat
beside her.

“I know you did not ask him, but he’s so handsome I thought he ought to
be here,” she whispered inconsequentially to Mary after the ceremony.

Of their many acquaintances few were unrepresented except Miss Berber,
to whom Mary had felt disinclined to send an invitation. She had sounded
Stefan on the subject, but had been answered by a “Certainly not!” so
emphatic as to surprise her.

At the house Gunther, with his great height and magnificent viking head,
was unquestionably the hit of the afternoon. Holding the baby, which lay
confidently in his powerful hands, he examined its head, arms and legs
with professional interest, while every woman in the room watched him
admiringly.

“This baby, Mrs. Byrd, is the finest for his age I have ever seen, and I
have modeled many of them,” he pronounced, handing it back to Mary, who
blushed to her forehead with pleasure. “Not that I am surprised,” he
went on, staring frankly at her, “when I look at his mother. I am doing
some groups for the Pan-American exhibition next year in San Francisco.
If you could give me any time, I should very much like to use your head
and the baby’s. I shall try and arrange it with you,” and he nodded as
if that settled the matter.

“Oh,” gasped Constance, “you have all the luck. Mary! Mr. Gunther has
known me for years, but have _I_ had a chance to sit for him? I
feel myself turning green, and as my gown is yellow it will be most
unbecoming!” And seizing Farraday as if for consolation, she bore him to
the dining room to find a drink.

Stefan, who was interested in Gunther, tried to get him to the barn to
see his pictures; but the sculptor would not move his eyes from Mary,
and Stefan, considerably bored, was obliged to content himself with
showing the studio to some of his prettiest neighbors.

Nor did his spirits improve when the party came to an end.

“Bon Dieu!” he cried, flinging himself fretfully into a chair. “Is our
house never to be free of chattering women? The only person here to-day
who speaks my language was Gunther, and you never gave me a chance at
him.”

Mary gasped, too astonished at this accusation to refute it.

“Ever since we came down here,” he went on irritably, “the place has
seethed with people, and overflowed with domesticity. I never hear one
word spoken except on the subject of furniture, gardening and babies!
I can’t work in such an environment; it stifles all imagination. As for
you, Mary--”

He looked up at her. She was standing, stricken motionless, in the
center of the room. Her hair, straighter than of old, seemed to droop
over her ears; her form under its loose muslin dress showed soft and
blurred, its clean-cut lines gone, while her face, almost as white as
the gown, was woe-begone, the eyes dark with tears. She stood there
like a hurt child, all her courageous gallantry eclipsed by this
unkind ending to her happy day. Stefan rose to his feet and faced her,
searching for some phrase that could express his sense of deprivation.
He had the instinct to stab her into a full realization of what she was
losing in his eyes.

“Mary,” he cried almost wildly, “your wings are gone!” and rushed out of
the room.



PART IV

WINGS

I


One evening early in October Mary telephoned Farraday to ask if she
could consult him with reference to the Byrdsnest. He walked over after
dinner, to find her alone in the sitting room, companioned by a wood
fire and the two sleeping lovebirds.

James had been very busy at the office for some time, and it was two
or three weeks since he had seen Mary. Now, as he sat opposite her, it
seemed to him that the leaping firelight showed unaccustomed shadows in
her cheeks and under her eyes, and that her color was less bright than
formerly. Was it merely the result of her care of her baby, he wondered,
or was there something more?

“I fear we’ve already outstayed our time here, Mr. Farraday,” Mary was
saying, “and yet I am going to ask you for an extension.”

Farraday lit a cigarette.

“My dear Mrs. Byrd, stay as long as you like.”

“But you don’t know the measure of my demands,” she went on, with a
hesitating smile. “They are so extensive that I’m ashamed. I love this
little place, Mr. Farraday; it’s the first real home I’ve ever had of
my own. And Baby does so splendidly here--I can’t bear the thought of
taking him to the city. How long might I really hope to stay without
inconveniencing you? I mean, of course, at a proper rent.”

“As far as I am concerned,” he smiled back at her, “I shall be overjoyed
to have you stay as long as the place attracts you. If you like, I will
give you a lease--a year, two, or three, as you will, so that you could
feel settled, or an option to renew after the first year.”

“But, Mr. Farraday, your mother told me that you used to use the place,
and in the face of that I don’t know how I have the selfishness to ask
you for any time at all, to say nothing of a lease!”

“Mrs. Byrd.” Farraday threw his cigarette into the fire, and, leaning
forward, stared at the flames, his hands clasped between his knees. “Let
me tell you a sentimental little story, which no one else knows except
our friend Mac.” He smiled whimsically.

“When I was a young man I was very much in love, and looked forward to
having a home of my own, and children. But I was unfortunate--I did not
succeed in winning the woman I loved, and as I am slow to change, I made
up my mind that my dream home would never come true. But I was very fond
of my ‘cottage in the air,’ and some years later, when this little house
became empty, I arranged it to look as nearly as I could as that other
might have done. I used to sit here sometimes and pretend that my
shadows were real. You will laugh at me, but I even have in my desk
plans for an addition, an ell, containing a play room and nurseries.”

Mary gave a little pitiful exclamation, and touched his clasped hands.
Meeting her eyes, he saw them dewy with sympathy.

“You are very gracious to a sentimental old bachelor,” he said, with
his winning smile. “But these ghosts were bad for me. I was in danger
of becoming absurdly self-centered, almost morbidly introspective. Mac,
whose heart is the biggest I know, and who laughs away more troubles
than I ever dreamed of, rallied me about it, and showed me that I ought
to turn my disappointment to some use. This was about ten years ago,
when his own life fell to pieces. I had been associated with magazines
for some time, and knew how little that was really good found its
way into the plainer people’s homes. At Mac’s suggestion I bought
an insolvent monthly, and began to remodel it. ‘You’ve got the
home-and-children bug; well, do something for other people’s’--was the
way Mac put it to me. Later we started the two other magazines, always
keeping before us our aim of giving the average home the best there is.
To-day, though I have no children of my own, I like to think I’m a sort
of uncle to thousands.”

He leant back, still staring into the fire. There was silence for
a minute; a log fell with a crash and a flight of sparks--Farraday
replaced it.

“Well, Mrs. Byrd,” he went on, “all this time the little ghost-house
stood empty. No one used it but myself. It was made for a woman and
for children, yet in my selfishness I locked its door against those who
should rightfully have enjoyed it. Mac urged me to use it as a holiday
house for poor mothers from the city, but, somehow, I could not bring
myself to evict its dream-mistress.”

“Oh, I feel more than ever a trespasser!” exclaimed Mary.

He shook his head. “No, you have redeemed the place from futility--you
are its justification.” He paused again, and continued in a lower tone,
“Mrs. Byrd, you won’t mind my saying this--you are so like that lady of
long ago that the house seems yours by natural right. I think I was only
waiting for someone who would love and understand it--some golden-haired
young mother, like yourself, to give the key to. I can’t tell you how
happy it makes me that the little house should at last fulfil itself.
Please keep it for as long as you need it--it will always need you.”

Mary was much moved: “I can’t thank you, Mr. Farraday, but I feel deeply
honored. Perhaps my best thanks lie just in loving the house, and I do
that, with all my heart. You don’t mind my foolish little name for it?”

“The Byrdsnest? I think it perfect.”

“And you don’t mind either the alterations I have made?”

“My dear friend, while you keep this house I want it to be yours. Should
you wish to take a long lease, and enlarge it, I shall be happy. In
fact, I will sell it to you, if in the future you would care to buy. My
only stipulation would be an option to repurchase should you decide
to give it up.” He took her hand. “The Byrdsnest belongs to Elliston’s
mother; let us both understand that.”

Her lips trembled. “You are good to me.”

“No, it is you who are good to the dreams of a sentimentalist. And
now--” he sat back smilingly--“that is settled. Tell me the news. How is
my godson, how is Mr. Byrd, how fares the sable Lily?”

“Baby weighs fourteen and a half pounds,” she said proudly; “he is
simply perfect. Lily is an angel.” She paused, and seemed to continue
almost with an effort. “Stefan is very busy. He does not care to paint
autumn landscapes, so he has begun work again in the city. He’s doing a
fantastic study of Miss Berber, and is very much pleased with it.”

“That’s good,” said Farraday, evenly.

“But I’ve got more news for you,” she went on, brightening. “I’ve had
a good deal more time lately, Stefan being so much in town, and Baby’s
habits so regular. Here’s the result.”

She fetched from the desk a pile of manuscript, neatly penned, and laid
it on her guest’s knee.

“This is the second thing I wanted to consult you about. It’s a
book-length story for children, called ‘The House in the Wood.’ I’ve
written the first third, and outlined the rest. Here’s the list of
chapters. It is supposed to be for children between eight and fourteen,
and was first suggested to me by this house. There is a family of four
children, and a regulation father and mother, nurse, governess, and
grandmother. They live in the country, and the children find a little
deserted cottage which they adopt to play in. The book is full of their
adventures in it. My idea is--” she sat beside him, her eyes brightening
with interest--“to suggest all kinds of games to the children who read
the story, which seem thrilling, but are really educational. It’s quite
a moral little book, I’m afraid,” she laughed, “but I think story books
should describe adventures which may be within the scope of the ordinary
child’s life, don’t you? I’m afraid it isn’t a work of art, but I
hope--if I can work out the scheme--it may give some practical ideas
to mothers who don’t know how to amuse their children.... There, Mr.
Editor, what is your verdict?”

Farraday was turning the pages in his rapid, absorbed way. He nodded and
smiled as he looked.

“I think it’s a good idea, Mrs. Byrd; just the sort of thing we are
always on the lookout for. The subject might be trite enough, but I
suspect you of having lent it charm and freshness. Of course the family
is English, which is a disadvantage, but I see you’ve mixed in a small
American visitor, and that he’s beginning to teach the others a thing or
two! Where did you learn such serpent wisdom, young lady?”

She laughed, amazed as she had been a year ago at his lightning-like
apprehension.

“It isn’t humbug. I do think an American child could teach ours at home
a lot about inventiveness, independence, and democracy--just as I think
ours might teach him something about manners,” she added, smiling.

“Admitted,” said he, laying down the manuscript, “and thank you for
letting me see this. I claim the first refusal. Finish it, have it
typed, and send it in, and if I can run it as a serial in The Child at
Home, I shall be tremendously pleased to do so. If it goes, it ought to
come out in book form, illustrated.”

“You really think the idea has something in it?”

“I certainly do, and you know how much I believe in your work.”

“Oh, I’m _so_ glad,” she exclaimed, looking far more cheerful than he
had seen her that evening.

He rose to go, and held her hand a moment in his friendly grasp.

“Good night, dear Mrs. Byrd; give my love to Elliston, and remember that
in him and your work you have two priceless treasures which, even alone,
will give you happiness.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, her eyes shining; “good night, and thank you for
the house.”

“Good night, and in the house’s name, thank you,” he answered from the
door.

As she closed it, the brightness slowly faded from Mary’s face. She
looked at the clock--it was past ten.

“Not to-night, either,” she said to herself. Her hand wandered to the
telephone in the hall, but she drew it back. “No, better not,” she
thought, and, putting out the lights, walked resolutely upstairs. As,
candle in hand, she passed the door of Stefan’s room, she looked in.
His bed was smooth; a few trifles lay in orderly array upon his dressing
table; boots, from which the country dust had been wiped days ago, stood
with toes turned meekly to the wall. They looked lonely, she thought.

With a sigh, she entered her own room, and passed through it to the
nursery. There lay her baby, soundly sleeping, his cheek on the pillow,
his little fists folded under his chin. How beautiful he looked, she
thought; how sweet his little room, how fresh and peaceful all the
house! It was the home of love--love lay all about her, in the kind
protection of the trees, in the nests of the squirrels, in the voices
and faces of her friends, and in her heart. Love was all about her, and
the sweetness of young life--and she was utterly lonely. One short year
ago she thought she would never know loneliness again--only a year ago.

The candle wavered in her hand; a drop of wax fell on the baby’s
spotless coverlet. Stooping, she blew upon it till it was cold, and
carefully broke it off. She sat down in a low rocking chair, and
lifting the baby, gave him his good-night nursing. He barely opened his
sleep-laden eyes. She kissed him, made him tidy for the night, and laid
him down, waiting while he cuddled luxuriously back to sleep.

“Little Stefan, little Stefan,” she whispered.

Then, leaving the nursery door ajar, she undressed noiselessly, and lay
down on the cool, empty bed.



II


The following afternoon about teatime Stefan bicycled up from the
station. Mary, who was in the sitting room, heard him calling from the
gate, but did not go to meet him. He hurried into the room and kissed
her half-turned cheek effusively.

“Well, dear, aren’t you glad to see me?” he asked rather nervously.

“Do you know that you’ve been away six days, Stefan, and have only
troubled to telephone me twice?” she answered, in a voice carefully
controlled.

“You don’t mean it!” he exclaimed. “I had no idea it was so long.”

“Hadn’t you?”

He fidgeted. “Well, dear, you know I’m frightfully keen on this new
picture, and the journeys back and forth waste so much time. But as
for the telephoning, I’m awfully sorry. I’ve been so absorbed I simply
didn’t remember. Why didn’t you ring me up?”

“I didn’t wish to interrupt a sitting. I rang twice in the evenings, but
you were out.”

“Yes; I’ve been trying to amuse myself a little.” He was rocking from
one foot to the other like a detected schoolboy.

“Hang it all, Mary,” he burst out, “don’t be so judicial. One must have
some pleasure--I can’t sit about this cottage all the time.”

“I don’t think I’ve asked you to do that.”

“You haven’t, but you seem to be implying the request now.”

She was chilled to silence, having no heart to reason him out of so
unreasonable a defense.

“Well, anyway,” he said, flinging himself on the sofa, “here I am, so
let’s make the best of it. Tea ready?”

“It’s just coming.”

“That’s good. When are you coming up to see the picture? It’s going to
be the best I’ve done. I shall get Constantine to exhibit it and that
stick of a Demeter together, and then the real people and the fools will
both have something to admire.”

“You say this will be your best?” asked Mary, whom the phrase had
stabbed.

“Well,” he said reflectively, lighting a cigarette, “perhaps not better
than the Danaë in one sense--it hasn’t as much feeling, but has more
originality. Miss Berber is such an unusual type--she’s quite an
inspiration.”

“And I’m not, any more,” Mary could not help adding in a muffled voice.

“Don’t be so literal, my dear; of course you are, but not for this sort
of picture.” The assurance sounded perfunctory.

“Thank goodness, here comes the tea,” he exclaimed as Lily entered with
the tray. “Hullo, Lily; how goes it?”

“Fine, Mr. Byrd, but we’ve shorely missed you,” she answered, with
something less than her usual wholehearted smile.

“Well, you must rejoice, now that the prodigal has returned,” he
grinned. “Mary, you haven’t answered my question yet--when are you
coming in to see the picture? Why not to-morrow? I’m dying to show it to
you.”

She flushed. “I can’t come, Stefan; it’s impossible to leave Baby so
long.”

“Well, bring him with you.”

“That wouldn’t be possible, either; it would disturb his sleep, and
upset him.”

“There you are!” he exclaimed, ruffling his hair. “I can’t work down
here, and you can’t come to town--how can I help seeming to neglect you?
Look here”--he had drunk his tea at a gulp, and now held out his cup for
more--“if you’re lonely, why not move back to the city--then you could
keep your eye on me!” and he grinned again.

For some time Mary had feared this suggestion--she had not yet discussed
with Stefan her desire to stay in the country. She pressed her hands
together nervously.

“Stefan, do you really want me to move back?”

“I want you to do whatever will make you happier,” he temporized.

“If you really needed me there I would come. But you are always so
absorbed when you’re working, and I am so busy with Baby, that I don’t
believe we should have much more time together than now.”

“Neither do I,” he agreed, in a tone suspiciously like relief, which she
was quick to catch.

“On the other hand,” she went on, “this place is far better for Baby,
and I am devoted to it. We couldn’t afford anything half as comfortable
in the city, and you like it, too, in the summer.”

“Of course I do,” he answered cheerfully. “I should hate to give it up,
and I’m sure it’s much more economical, and all that. Still, if you stay
here through the winter you mustn’t be angry if I am in town part of the
time--my work has got to come first, you know.”

“Yes, of course, dear,” said Mary, wistfully, “and I think it would be a
mistake for me to come unless you really wanted me.”

“Of course I want you, Beautiful.”

He spoke easily, but she was not deceived. She knew he was glad of the
arrangement, not for her sake, but for his own. She had watched him
fretting for weeks past, like a caged bird, and she had the wisdom to
see that her only hope of making him desire the nest again lay in giving
him freedom from it. Her pride fortified this perception. As she had
said long ago, Mary was no bargainer.

In spite of her comprehension, however, she warmed toward him. It was so
good to see him lounging on the sofa again, his green-gold eyes bright,
his brown face with its elfish smile radiant now that his point was
won. She knew he had been unkind to her both in word and act, but it was
impossible not to forgive him, now that she enjoyed again the comfort of
his presence.

Smiling, she poured out his third cup of tea, and was just passing it
when there was a knock, and McEwan entered the hall.

“Hello, Byrd,” he called, his broad shoulders blocking the sitting room
door as he came in; “down among the Rubes again? Madam Mary, I accept in
advance your offer of tea. Well, how goes the counterfeit presentment of
our friend Twinkle-Toes?”

Stefan’s eyebrows went up. “Do you mean Miss Berber?”

“Yes,” said McEwan, with an aggravating smile, as he devoured a slice of
cake. “We’re all expecting another ten-strike. Are you depicting her as
a toe-shaker or a sartorial artist?”

“Really, Wallace,” protested Mary, who had grown quite intimate with
McEwan, “you are utterly incorrigible in your Yankee vein--you respect
no one.”

“I respect the President of these United States,” said he solemnly,
raising an imaginary hat.

“That’s more than I do,” snorted Stefan; “a pompous Puritan!”

“For goodness’ sake, don’t start him on politics, Wallace,” said Mary;
“he has a contempt for every public man in America except Roosevelt and
Bill Heywood.”

“So I have,” replied Stefan; “they are the only two with a spark of the
picturesque, or one iota of originality.”

“You ought to paint their pictures arm in arm, with Taft floating on
a cloud crowning them with a sombrero and a sandbag, Bryan pouring
grape-juice libations, and Wilson watchfully waiting in the background.
Label it ‘Morituri salutamus’--I bet it would sell,” said McEwan
hopefully.

Mary laughed heartily, but Stefan did not conceal his boredom. “Why
don’t you go into vaudeville, McEwan?” he frowned.

“Solely out of consideration for the existing stars,” McEwan sighed,
putting down his cup and rising. “Well, chin music hath charms, but I
must toddle to the house, or I shall get in bad with Jamie. My love to
Elliston, Mary. Byrd, I warn you that my well-known critical faculty
needs stimulation; I mean to drop in at the studio ere long to slam the
latest masterpiece. So long,” and he grinned himself out before Stefan’s
rising irritation had a chance to explode.

“Why do you let that great tomfool call you by your first name, Mary?”
 he demanded, almost before the front door was shut.

“Wallace is one of the kindest men alive, and I’m quite devoted to him.
I admit, though, that he seems to enjoy teasing you.”

“Teasing me!” Stefan scoffed; “it’s like an elephant teasing a fly. He
obliterates me.”

“Well, don’t be an old crosspatch,” she smiled, determined now they were
alone again to make the most of him.

“You are a good sort, Mary,” he said, smiling in reply; “it’s restful
to be with you. Sing to me, won’t you?” He stretched luxuriously on the
sofa.

She obeyed, glad enough of the now rare opportunity of pleasing him.
Farraday had brought her some Norse ballads not long before; their sad
elfin cadences had charmed her. She sang these now, touching the piano
lightly for fear of waking the sleeping baby overhead. Turning to Stefan
at the end, she found him sound asleep, one arm drooping over the sofa,
the nervous lines of his face smoothed like a tired child’s. For some
reason she felt strangely pitiful toward him. “He must be very tired,
poor boy,” she thought.

Crossing to the kitchen, she warned Lily not to enter the sitting room,
and herself slipped upstairs to the baby. Stefan slept till dinner time,
and for the rest of the evening was unusually kind and quiet.

As they went up to bed Mary turned wistfully to him.

“Wouldn’t you like to look at Elliston? You haven’t seen him for a long
time.”

“Bless me, I suppose I haven’t--let’s take a peep at him.”

Together they bent over the cradle. “Why, he’s looking quite human. I
think he must have grown!” his father whispered, apparently surprised.
“Does he make much noise at night nowadays, Mary?”

“No, hardly any. He just whimpers at about two o’clock, and I get up and
nurse him. Then he sleeps till after six.”

“If you don’t mind, then,” said Stefan, “I think I will sleep with you
to-night. I feel as if it would rest me.”

“Of course, dearest.” She felt herself blushing. Was she really going to
be loved again? She smiled happily at him.

When they were in bed Stefan curled up childishly, and putting one arm
about her, fell asleep almost instantly, his head upon her shoulder.
Mary lay, too happy for sleep, listening to his quiet breathing, until
her shoulder ached and throbbed under his head. She would not move for
fear of waking him, and remained wide-eyed and motionless until her
baby’s voice called to her.

Then, with infinite care, she slipped away, her arm and shoulder numb,
but her heart lighter than it had been for many weeks.

She had forgotten to put out her dressing gown, and would not open the
closet door, because it creaked. Little Elliston was leisurely over his
repast, and she was stiff with cold when at last she stole back into
bed. Stefan lay upon his side. She crept close, and in her turn put an
arm about him. He was here again, her man, and her child was close at
hand, warm and comforted from her breast. Love was all about her, and
to-night she was not mocked. Warm again from his touch, she, too, fell
at last, with all the dreaming house, asleep.



III


Stefan stayed at home for several days, sleeping long hours, and
seemingly unusually subdued. He would lie reading on the sofa while Mary
wrote, and often she turned from her manuscript to find him dozing. They
took a few walks together, during which he rarely spoke, but seemed glad
of her silent company. Once he called with her on Mrs. Farraday, and
actually held an enormous skein of wool for the old lady while she,
busily winding, told them anecdotes of her son James, and of her
long dead husband. He made no effort to talk, seeming content to sit
receptive under the soothing flow of her reminiscences.

“Thee is a good boy,” said the little lady, patting his hand kindly as
the last shred of wool was wound.

“I’m afraid not, ma’am,” said he, dropping quaintly into the address
of his childhood. “I’m just a rudderless boat staggering under topheavy
sails.”

“Thee has a sure harbor, son,” she answered, turning her gentle eyes on
Mary.

He seemed about to say more, but checked himself. Instead he rose and
kissed the little lady’s hand.

“You are one of those who never lose their harbor, Mrs. Farraday. We’re
all glad to lower sail in yours.”

On the way home Mary linked her arm in his.

“You were so sweet to her, dear,” she said.

“You’re wondering why I can’t always be like that, eh, Mary!”

She laughed and nodded, pressing his arm.

“Well, I can’t, worse luck,” he answered, frowning.

That evening, while they sat in the dining room over their dessert, the
telephone bell rang. Stefan jumped hastily to answer it, as if he felt
sure it was for him, and he proved right.

“Yes, this is I,” he replied, after his first “hello,” in what seemed to
Mary an artificial voice.

There was a pause; then she heard him say, “You can?” delightedly,
followed by “To-morrow morning at ten? Hurrah! No more wasted time; we
shall really get on now.” Another pause, then, “Oh, what does it matter
about the store?” impatiently--and at last “Well, to-morrow, anyway.
Yes. Good-bye.” The receiver clicked into place, and Stefan came
skipping back into the room radiant, his languor of the last few days
completely gone.

Mary’s heart sank like a stone. It was too obvious that he had stayed
at home, not to be with her, but merely because his sitter was
unobtainable.

“Cheers, Mary; back to work to-morrow,” he exclaimed, attacking his
dessert with vigor. “I’ve been slacking shamefully, but Felicity is
so wrapped up in that store of hers I can’t get her half the time. Now
she’s contrite, and is going to sit to-morrow.”

Mary, remembering his remark about McEwan, longed to say, “Why do you
call that little vulgarian by her first name?” but retaliatory methods
were impossible to her. She contented herself with asking if he would be
home the next evening.

“Why, yes, I expect so,” he answered, looking vague, “but don’t
absolutely count on me, Mary. I’ve been very good this week.”

She saw that he was gone again. His return had been more in the body
than the spirit, after all. If that had been wooed a little back to her
it had winged away again at the first sound of the telephone. She told
herself that it was only his work calling him, that he would have been
equally eager over any other sitter. But she was not sure.

“Brace up, Mary,” he called across at her, “you’re not being deserted.
Good heavens, I must work!” His impatient frown was gathering. She
collected herself, smiled cheerfully, and rose, telling Lily they would
have coffee in the sitting room.

He spent the evening before the fire, smoking, and making thumbnail
sketches on a piece of notepaper. She sang for some time, but without
eliciting any comment from him. When they went up to bed he stopped at
his own door.

“I think I’ll sleep alone to-night, dear. I want to be fresh to-morrow.
Good night,” and he kissed her cheek.

When she came down in the morning he had already gone. Lying on the
sitting room table, where it had been placed by the careful Lily, lay
the scrap of notepaper he had been scribbling on the night before. It
was covered with tiny heads, and figures of mermaids, dancing nymphs,
and dryads. All in face or figure suggested Felicity Berber.

She laid it back on the table, dropping a heavy book over it. A little
later, while she was giving Elliston his bath, it suddenly occurred
to Mary that her husband had never once during his stay alluded to her
manuscript, and never looked at the baby except when she had asked him
to. She excused him to herself with the plea of his temperament, and his
absorption in his art, but nevertheless her heart was sore.

For the next few weeks Stefan came and went fitfully, announcing at one
point that Miss Berber had ceased to pose for his fantastic study of
her, called “The Nixie,” but had consented to sit for a portrait.

“She’s slippery--comes and goes, keeps me waiting interminably,” he
complained. “I can never be sure of her, but she’s a wonderful model.”

“What do you do while you’re waiting for her?” asked Mary, who could not
imagine Stefan enduring with equanimity such a tax upon his patience.

“Oh, there’s tremendous work to be done on the Nixie still,” he
answered. “It’s only her part in it that is finished.”

One evening he came home with a grievance.

“That fool McEwan came to the studio to-day,” he complained. “It was all
I could do not to shut the door in his face. Of all the chuckleheads!
What do you think he called the Nixie? ‘A tricky piece of work!’
Tricky!” Stefan kicked the fire disgustedly. “And it’s the best thing
I’ve done!”

“As for the portrait, he said it was ‘fine and dandy,’ the idiot. And
the maddening thing was,” he went on, turning to Mary, and uncovering
the real source of his offense, “that Felicity positively encouraged
him! Why, the man must have sat there talking with her for an hour.
I could not paint a stroke, and he didn’t go till I had said so three
times!” completed Stefan, looking positively ferocious. “What in the
fiend’s name, Mary, did she do it for?” He collapsed on the sofa beside
her, like a child bereft of a toy. Mary could not help laughing at his
tragic air.

“I suppose she did it to annoy, because she knew it teased,” she
suggested.

“How I loathe fooling and play-acting!” he exclaimed disgustedly. “Thank
God, Mary, you are sincere. One knows where one is with you!”

He seemed thoroughly upset. Miss Berber’s pin-prick must have been
severe, Mary thought, if it resulted in a compliment for her.

The next evening, Mary being alone, Wallace dropped in. For some time
they talked of Jamie and Elliston, and of Mary’s book.

He was Scotch to-night, as he usually was now when they were alone
together. Cheerful as ever, his cheer was yet slow and solid--the
comedian was not in evidence.

“Hae ye been up yet to see the new pictures?” he asked presently. She
shook her head.

“Ye should go, bairn, they’re a fine key. Clever as the devil, but
naething true about them. After the Danaë-piff!” and he snapped his
fingers. “Ye hae no call to worry, you’re the hub, Mary--let the wheel
spin a wee while!”

She blushed. “Wallace, I believe you’re a wizard--or a detective.”

“The Scottish Sherlock, eh?” he grinned. “Weel, it’s as I tell ye--tak
my word for’t. Hae ye seen Mrs. Elliot lately?”

“No, Constance went up to their place in Vermont in June, you know. She
came down purposely for Elliston’s christening, the dear. She writes me
she’ll be back in a few days now, but says she’s sick of New York, and
would stay where she is if it weren’t for suffrage.”

“But she would na’,” said McEwan emphatically.

“No, I don’t think so, either. But she sees more of Theodore while she
stays away, because he feels it his duty to run up every few days and
protect her against savage New England, whereas when she’s in town she
could drive her car into the subway excavations and he’d never know it.
I’m quoting verbatim,” Mary laughed.

McEwan nodded appreciatively. “She’s a grand card.”

“She pretends to be flippant about husbands,” Mary went on, “but as
a matter of fact she cares much more for hers than for her sons, or
anything in the world, except perhaps the Cause.”

“That’s as it should be,” the other nodded.

“I don’t know.” There was a puzzled note in Mary’s voice. “I can’t
understand the son’s taking such a distinctly second place.”

McEwan’s face expanded into one of his huge smiles. “It’s true, ye could
not. That’s the way God made ye, and I’ll tell ye about that, too, some
day,” he said, rising to go.

“Good-bye, Mr. Holmes,” she smiled, as she saw him out.

Before going to bed that night Mary examined her conscience. Why had
she not been to town to see Stefan’s work? She knew that the baby--whose
feeding times now came less frequently--was no longer an adequate
excuse. She had blamed Stefan in her heart for his indifference to her
work--was she not becoming guilty of the same neglect? Was she not in
danger of a worse fault, the mean and vulgar fault of jealousy? She felt
herself flushing at the thought.

Two days later Mary put on her last year’s suit, now a little shabby,
kissed the baby, importuned the beaming Lily to be careful of him, and
drove to the train in one of the village livery stable’s inconceivably
decrepit coupes.

It was about twelve o ‘clock when she arrived at the studio, and,
ringing the bell, mounted the well-known stairs with a heart which, in
spite of herself, beat anxiously. Stefan opened the door irritably, but
his frown changed to a look of astonishment, followed by an exuberant
smile, as he saw who it was.

“Here comes Demeter,” he cried, calling into the room behind him. “Why,
Mary, I’m honored. Has Elliston actually released his prisoner at last?”
 He drew her into the studio, and kissed her almost with ostentation.

“Let’s suspend the sitting, Felicity,” he cried, “and show our work.”

Mary looked about her. Her old home was almost unchanged. There was the
painted bureau, the divan, the big easel, the model throne where she
had posed as Danaë. It was unchanged, yet how different. From the
throne stepped down a small svelt figure-it rippled toward her, its
gown shimmering like a fire seen through water. It was Felicity, and her
dress was made from the great piece of oriental silk Stefan had bought
when they were first married, and which they had used as a cover for
their couch.

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?”

“No, I fancied I might go there to relax for a week after the fête.”

“A1 luck. You won’t relax, you’ll have a week’s house-party, sleighing,
skating, coasting, all that truck. The Byrds, Farraday (I’ll persuade
him he can leave the office), a couple of pretty skirts with no
brains--me if you like. Get me?”

Constance gasped, her mind racing. “But Mary’s baby?” she exclaimed,
clutching at the central difficulty.

“You’re the goods,” replied McEwan admiringly. “She couldn’t shine as
Queen of the Slide if she was tied to the offspring--granted. Now then.”
 He leant forward. “She’s had to wean him--you didn’t know that. Your
dope is to talk up the house-party, tell her she owes it to herself to
get a change, and make her leave the boy with a trained nurse. The Mary
lady’s no fool, she’ll be on.”

Constance’s eyes narrowed to slits, she fingered her beads, and nodded
once, twice.

“More trouble,” she said, “but it’s a go. Second week in January.”

He grasped her hand. “Votes for Women,” he beamed.

She looked at her watch. “Five minutes exactly. Three inches, Mr.
McEwan!”

“Three inches!” he called from the door.



VI


Christmas was a blank period for Mary that year. Stefan came home on
Christmas eve in a mood of somewhat forced conviviality, but Mary had
had no heart for festive preparations. Stefan had failed her and she had
failed her baby--these two ever present facts shadowed her world. She
had bought presents for Lily and the baby, a pair of links for Stefan,
books for Mrs. Farraday and Jamie, and trifles for Constance and Miss
Mason, but the holly and mistletoe, the tree, the new frock and the
Christmas fare which normally she would have planned with so much joy,
were missing. Stefan’s gift to her--a fur-lined coat--was so extravagant
that she could derive no pleasure from it, and she had the impression
that he had chosen it hurriedly, without much thought of what would
best please her. From Constance she received a white sweater of very
beautiful heavy silk, with a cap and scarf to match, but she thought
bitterly that pretty things to wear were of little use to her now.

It was obvious that Stefan’s conscience pricked him. He spent the
morning hanging about her, and even played a little with his son, who
now sat up, bounced, crowed with laughter, clutched every article within
reach, and had two teeth. Mary’s heart reached out achingly to Stefan,
but he seemed to her a strange man. The contrast between this and their
last Christmas smote her intolerably.

In the afternoon they walked over to the Farradays’, where there was
a tree for Jamie and a few friends, including the chauffeur’s and
gardener’s children. Here Stefan prowled into the picture gallery,
while Mary, surrounded by children, was in her element. Returning to the
drawing room, Stefan watched her playing with them as he had watched her
on the Lusitania fifteen months before. She was less radiant now, and
her figure was fuller, but as she smiled and laughed with the children,
her cheeks pink and her hair all a-glitter under the lights, she looked
very lovely, he thought. Why did the sight of her no longer thrill him?
Why did he enjoy more the society of Felicity Berber, whom he knew to be
affected and egotistic, and suspected of being insincere, than that of
this beautiful, golden woman of whose truth he could never conceive a
doubt?

A feeling of deep sadness, of unutterable regret, swept through him.
Better never to have married than to have outlived so soon the magic of
romance. Which of them had lost the key? When Mary had furled her wings
to brood over her nest he had thought it was she; now he was not so
sure.

Walking home through the dark woods he stopped suddenly, and drew her to
him.

“Mary, my Beautiful, I’m drifting, hold me close,” he whispered. Her
breath caught, she clung to him, he felt her face wet with tears. No
more words were spoken, but they walked on comforted, groping their way
under the damp fingers of the trees. Stefan felt no passion, but his
tenderness for his wife had reawakened. For her part, tears had thawed
her bitterness, without washing it away.

The next morning Constance drove over.

“Children,” she said, hurrying in from the cold air, “what a delicious
scene! I invite myself to lunch.”

Mary was playing with Elliston on a blanket by the fire, Stefan
sketching them, the room full of sun and firelight. The two greeted her
delightedly.

“Now,” she said, settling herself on the couch, “let me tell you why
I came,” and she proceeded to unfold her plans for a house-party
at Burlington. “You’ve never seen our winter sports, Mary, they’re
glorious, and you need a change from so much domesticity. As for
you, Mr. Byrd, it will give you a chance to learn that America can be
attractive even outside New York.”

Both the Byrds were looking interested, Stefan unreservedly, Mary with a
pucker of doubt.

“Now, don’t begin about Elliston,” exclaimed Constance, forestalling
objections. “We’ve heaps of room, but it would spoil your fun to bring
him. I want you to get a trained nurse for the week--finest thing in the
world to take a holiday from maternity once in a while.” She turned to
Stefan as a sure ally. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Byrd?”

“Emphatically,” beamed he, seizing her hand and kissing it. “A glorious
idea! Away with domesticity! A real breath of freedom, eh, Mary?”

Constance again forestalled difficulties.

“We are all going to travel up by night, ten of us, and Theodore is
engaging a compartment car with rooms for every one, so there won’t
be any expense about that part of it, Mary, my dear. Does it seem too
extravagant to ask you to get a trained nurse? I’ve set my heart on
having you free to be the life of the party. All your admirers are
coming, that gorgeous Gunther, my beloved James, and Wallace McEwan.
I baited my hooks with you, so you simply _can’t_ disappoint me!” she
concluded triumphantly.

Stefan pricked up his ears. Here was Mary in a new guise; he had not
thought of her for some time as having “admirers.” Yet he had always
known Farraday for one; and certainly Gunther, who modeled her, and
McEwan, who dogged her footsteps, could admire her no less than the
editor. The thought that his wife was sought after, that he was probably
envied by other men, warmed Stefan’s heart pleasantly, just as Constance
intended it should.

“It sounds fascinating, and I certainly think we must come,” Mary was
saying, “though I don’t know how I shall bring myself to part with
Elliston,” and she hugged the baby close.

“You born Mother!” said Constance. “I adored my boys, but I was always
enchanted to escape from them.” She laughed like a girl. “Now you grasp
the inwardness of my Christmas present--it is a coasting outfit. Won’t
she look lovely in it, Mr. Byrd?”

“Glorious!” said Stefan, boyishly aglow; and “I don’t believe two and
two do make four, after all,” thought Constance.

All through luncheon they discussed the plan with animation, Constance
enlisting Mary’s help at the Suffrage Fête the first week in January
in advance payment, as she said, for the house-party. “Why not get your
nurse a few days earlier to break her in, and be free to give me as much
time as possible?” she urged.

“Good idea, Mary,” Stefan chimed in. “I’ll stay in town that week and
lunch with you at the bazaar, and you could sleep a night or two at the
studio.”

“We’ll see,” said Mary, a little non-committal. She knew she should
enjoy the Fête immensely, but somehow, she did not feel she could bring
herself to sleep in the little studio, with Felicity the Nixie sneering
down at her from one wall, and Felicity the Dancer challenging from the
other.

But it was a much cheered couple that Constance left behind, and Stefan
came home every afternoon during the week that remained till the opening
of the bazaar.

Being in the city for this event, Mary, in addition to engaging a nurse,
indulged in some rather extravagant shopping. She had made up her mind
to look her best at Burlington, and though Mary was slow to move,
when she did take action her methods were thorough. She realized with
gratitude that Constance, whom she suspected of knowing more than she
indicated, had given her a wonderful opportunity of renewing her
appeal to her husband, and she was determined to use it to the full.
Incapable--as are all women of her type--of coquetry, Mary yet knew the
value of her beauty, and was too intelligent not to see that both it and
she had been at a grave disadvantage of late. She understood dimly that
she was confronted by one of the fundamental problems of marriage, the
difficulty of making an equal success of love and motherhood. She could
not put her husband permanently before her child, as Constance had done,
and as she knew most Englishwomen did, but she meant to do it completely
for this one week of holiday, at least.

Meanwhile, amidst the color and music of the great drill-hall where the
suffragists held their yearly Fête, Mary, dispensing tea and cakes in
a flower-garlanded tent, enjoyed herself with simple whole-heartedness.
All Constance’s waitresses were dressed as daffodils, and the high cap,
representing the inverted cup of the flower, with the tight-sheathed
yellow and green of the gown, was particularly becoming to Mary. She
knew again the pleasure, which no one is too modest to enjoy, of being
a center of admiration. Stefan dropped in once or twice, and waxed
enthusiastic over Constance’s arrangements and Mary’s looks.

On one of these occasions Miss Berber suddenly appeared in the tent,
dressed wonderfully in white panne, with a barbaric mottle of black and
white civet-skins flung over one shoulder, and a tight-drawn cap of the
fur, apparently held in place by the great claws of some feline mounted
in heavy gold. She wore circles of fretted gold in her ears, and carried
a tall ebony stick with a gold handle, Louis Quatorze fashion. From
her huge civet muff a gold purse dangled. She looked at once more
conventional and more dynamic than Mary had seen her, and her rich dress
made the simple effects of the tent seem amateurish.

Neither Mary nor she attempted more than a formal salutation, but she
discoursed languidly with Constance for some minutes. Stefan, who had
been eating ice cream like a schoolboy with two pretty girls at the
other side of the tent, came forward on seeing the new arrival, and
after a good deal of undecided fidgeting, and a “See you later” to
Mary, wandered off with Miss Berber and disappeared for the rest of the
afternoon. In spite of her best efforts, Mary’s spirits were completely
dashed by this episode, but they rose again when Stefan met her at the
Pennsylvania Station and traveled home with her. As they emerged from
the speech-deadening roar of the tunnel he said casually, “Felicity
Berber is an amusing creature, but she’s a good deal of a bore at
times.” Mary took his hand under the folds of their newspaper.



VII


On the evening of their departure Mary parted from her baby with a pang,
but she knew him to be in the best of hands, and felt no anxiety as
to his welfare. The nurse she had obtained was a friend of Miss
McCullock’s, and a most efficient and kindly young woman.

Their journey up to town reminded Mary of their first journey from
Shadeham, so full of spirits and enthusiasm was Stefan. The whole
party met at the Grand Central, and boarded the train amid laughter,
introductions, and much gay talk. Constance scintillated. The solid Mr.
Elliot was quite shaken out of his sobriety, McEwan’s grin was at its
broadest, Farraday’s smile its pleasantest, and the three young women
whom Constance had collected bubbled and shrilled merrily.

Only Gunther appeared untouched by the holiday atmosphere. He towered
over the rest of the party calm and direct, disposing of porters and
hand-baggage with an unruffled perfection of address. Mary, watching
him, pulled Stefan’s sleeve.

“Look,” she said, pointing to two long ribbons of narrow wood lashed to
some other impedimenta of Gunther’s. “Skis, Stefan, how thrilling! I’ve
never seen them used.”

Stefan nodded. “I’d like to get a drawing of that chap in action. His
lines are magnificent,” Mary had never been in a sleeping car before,
and was fascinated to see the sloping ceilings of the state-rooms change
like pantomime trick into beds under the deft handling of the porter.
She liked the white coat of this autocrat of the road, and the smart,
muslin trimmings of the colored maid. She and Stefan had the compartment
next their host’s; Farraday and McEwan shared one beyond; Gunther and
his skis and Walter, the Elliot’s younger son, completely filled the
next; Mrs. Thayer, a cheerful young widow, and Miss Baxter and Miss Van
Sittart, the two girls of the party, occupied the remaining three. The
drawing room had been left empty to serve as a general overflow. To
this high-balls, coffee, milk and sandwiches were borne by white-draped
waiters from the buffet, and set upon a magically installed table. Mrs.
Thayer, Constance, and the men fell upon the stronger beverages, while
Mary and the girls divided the milk.

Under cover of the general chatter McEwan raised his glass to Constance.

“I take off my hat to you, Mrs. Elliot, for a stage manager,” he
whispered, glancing at the other women. “A black-haired soubrette, a
brown pony, and a redheaded slip; no rivals to the leading lady in this
show!”

Their train reached Burlington in a flurry of snow, and they were
bundled into big, two-seated sleighs for the drive out of the city.

Mary, wrapped in her fur-lined coat and covered with a huge bearskin,
watched with interest the tidy, dignified little town speed by. Even
Stefan was willing to admit it had some claims to the picturesque, but a
little way beyond, when they came to the open country, he gave almost a
whoop of satisfaction. Before them stretched tumbled hills, converging
on an icebound lake. Their snowy sides glittered pink in the sun and
purple in the shadows; they reared their frosted crests as if in welcome
of the morning; behind them the sky gleamed opalescent. Stefan leant
forward in the speeding sleigh as if to urge it with the sway of his
body, the frosty air stung his nostrils, the breath of the horses
trailed like smoke, the road seemed leading up to the threshold of the
world. The speed of their cold flight was in tune with the frozen dance
of the hills--Stefan whooped again, intoxicated, the others laughed
back at him and cheered, Mary’s face glowed with delight, they were like
children in their joy.

The Elliot house lay in a high fold of the hills, overlooking the lake,
and almost out of sight of other buildings. Within, all was spacious
warmth and the crackle of great wood fires; on every side the icy view,
seen through wide windows, contrasted with the glowing colors of the
rooms. A steaming breakfast waited to fortify the hastily drunk coffee
of the train. After it, when the Byrds found themselves in their cozy
bedroom with its old New England furniture and blue-tiled bathroom,
Stefan, waltzing round the room, fairly hugged Mary in excited glee.

“What fun, Beautiful, what a lovely place, what air, what snow!” She
laughed with him, her own heart bounding with unwonted excitement.

The six-day party was a marked success throughout. Even the two young
girls were satisfied, for Constance contrived the appearance of several
stalwart youths of the neighborhood to help her son leaven the group
of older men. Mrs. Thayer flirted pleasantly and wittily with whoever
chanced to be at hand, Mr. Elliot hobnobbed with Farraday and made
touchingly laborious efforts to be frivolous, and McEwan kept the
household laughing at his gambols, heavy as those of a St. Bernard pup.

Constance darted from group to group like a purposeful humming-bird, but
did not lack the supreme gift of a hostess--that of leaving her guests
reasonably alone. All the women were inclined to hover about Byrd, who,
with Gunther, represented the most attractive male element. As the women
were sufficiently pretty and intelligent, Stefan enjoyed their notice,
but Gunther stalked away from them like a great hound surrounded by
lap-dogs. He was invariably courteous to his hostess, but had eyes only
for Mary. Never seeming to follow her, and rarely talking to her
alone, he was yet always to be found within a few yards of the spot she
happened to occupy. Farraday would watch her from another room, or talk
with her in his slow, kind way, and Wallace always drew her into his
absurd games or his sessions at the piano. But Gunther neither watched
nor chattered, he simply _was_, seeming to draw a silent and complete
satisfaction from her nearness. Of the men he took only cursory notice,
talking sometimes with Stefan on art, or with Farraday on life, but
never seeking their society.

Indoors Gunther seemed negative, outdoors he became godlike. The Elliots
possessed a little Norwegian sleigh they had brought from Europe. It was
swan-shaped, stood on low wooden runners, and was brightly painted
in the Norse manner. This Gunther found in the stable, and, promptly
harnessing to it the fastest horse, drove round to the house. Striding
into the hall, where the party was discussing plans for the day, he
planted himself before Mary, and invited her to drive. The others,
looking out of the window, exclaimed with pleasure at the pretty little
sleigh, and Mary gladly threw on her cap and coat. Gunther tucked her
in and started without a word. They were a mile from the house before he
broke silence.

“This sleigh comes from my country, Mrs. Byrd; I wish I could drive you
there in it.”

He did not speak again, and Mary was glad to enjoy the exhilarating air
in silence. By several roads they had gradually climbed a hillside. Now
from below they could see the house at some distance to their right, and
another road running in one long slope almost straight to it from where
they sat. Gunther suddenly stood up in the sleigh, braced his feet, and
wrapped a rein round each arm.

“Now we will drive,” said he. They started, they gathered speed, they
flew, the horse threw himself into a stretching gallop, the sleigh
rocked, it leapt like a dashing wave. Gunther half crouched, swaying
with it. The horse raced, his flanks stretched to the snow. Mary clung
to her seat breathless and tense with excitement--she looked up at the
driver. His blue eyes blazed, his lips smiled above a tight-set jaw, he
looked down, and meeting her eyes laughed triumphantly. Expanding his
great chest he uttered a wild, exultant cry--they seemed to be rushing
off the world’s rim. She could see nothing but the blinding fume of the
upflung snow. She, too, wanted to cry aloud. Then their pace slackened,
she could see the road, black trees, a wall, a house. They drove into
the courtyard and stopped.

The hall door was flung open. They were met by a group of faces excited
and alarmed. Gunther, his eyes still blazing, helped her down and,
throwing the reins to a waiting stable-boy, strode silently past the
guests and up to his room.

“Good heavens! you might have been killed,” fussed Mr. Elliot. Farraday
looked pale, the women laughed excitedly.

“Mary,” cried Stefan, his face flashing with eagerness, “you weren’t
frightened, were you?”

She shook her head, still breathless.

“It was glorious, you were like storm gods. I’ve never seen anything so
inspiring.” And he embraced her before them all.

After this episode Gunther resumed his impassive manner, nor did any
other of their outdoor sports draw from him the strange, exultant look
he had given Mary in the sleigh. But his feats on the toboggan slide and
with his skis were sufficiently daring to supply the party with liberal
thrills. His obvious skill gained him the captaincy of the toboggan, but
after his exhibition of driving, most of the women hesitated at first
to form one of his crew. Mary, however, who was quite fearless and
fascinated by this new sport, dashed down with him and the other men
again and again, and was, with her white wraps and brilliant pink
cheeks, as McEwan had prophesied, “the queen of the slide.”

Stefan was intoxicated by the tobogganing, and though he was only less
new to it than Mary he soon became expert. But on his skis the great
Norwegian was alone, the whole party turning out to watch whenever
he strapped them to his feet. His daring leaps were, Stefan said,
the nearest thing to flying he had ever seen. “For I don’t count
aeroplanes--they are mere machinery.”

“Ah, if the lake were frozen enough for ice-boating,” replied Gunther,
“I could show you something nearer still. But they tell me there is
little chance till February for more than in-shore skating.”

Only in this last named sport had Gunther a rival, Stefan making up in
grace what he lacked in practice. Beside his, the Norwegian’s skating
was powerful, but too unbending.

Mary, owing to the open English winters, had had less experience than
any one there, but she was so much more graceful and athletic than the
other women that she soon outstripped them. She skated almost entirely
with Stefan, only once with Gunther, who, since his strange look in the
sleigh, a little troubled her. On that one occasion he tore round the
clear ice at breakneck speed, halting her dramatically, by sheer weight,
a few inches from the bank, where she arrived breathless and thrilled.

Seeing her thus at her best, happy and admired, and full of vigorous
life, Stefan found himself almost as much in love as in the early weeks
of their marriage.

“You are more beautiful than ever, Mary,” he exclaimed; “there is an
added life and strength in you; you are triumphant.”

It was a joy again to feel her in his arms, to know that they were each
other’s. After his troubled flights he came back to her love with a
feeling of deep spiritual peace. The night, when he could be alone with
her, became the happy climax of the day.

The amusements of the week ended in an impromptu dance which Constance
arranged by a morning at the telephone. For this, Mary donned her main
extravagance, a dress of rainbow colored silk gauze, cut short to the
ankle, and worn with pale pink slippers. She had found it “marked
down” at a Fifth Avenue house, and had been told it was a model dubbed
“Aurora.” With it she wore her mother’s pearl ornaments. Stefan was
entranced by the result, and Constance almost wept with satisfaction.

“Oh, Mary Byrd,” she cried, hugging her daintily to avoid crushing the
frock; “you are the best thing that has happened in my family since my
mother-in-law quit living with me.”

That night Stefan was at his best. Delighted with all his surroundings,
he let his faunlike spirits have full play, and his keen, brown face and
green-gold eyes flashed apparently simultaneously from every corner
of the room. Gunther did not dance; Farraday’s method was correct but
quiet, and none of the men could rival Stefan in light-footed grace.
Both he and Mary were ignorant of any of the new dances, but Constance
had given Mary a lesson earlier in the day, and Stefan grasped the
general scheme with his usual lightning rapidity. Then he began to
embroider, inventing steps of his own which, in turn, Mary was quick
to catch. No couple on the floor compared with them in distinction
and grace, and they danced, to the chagrin of the other men and girls,
almost entirely together.

Whatever disappointment this caused, however, was not shared by their
hostess and McEwan. After enduring several rounds of Mac’s punishing
dancing, Constance was thankful to sit out with him and watch the
others. She was glad to be silent after her strenuous efforts as a
hostess, and McEwan was apparently too filled with satisfaction to have
room left for speech. His red face beamed, his big teeth glistened,
pleasure radiated from him.

“Aye, aye,” he chuckled, nodding his ponderous head, and again “Aye,
aye,” in tones of fat content, as the two Byrds swung lightly by.

“Aye, aye, Mr. McEwan,” smiled Constance, tapping his knee with her fan.
“All this was your idea, and you are a good fellow. From this moment, I
intend to call you by your first name.”

“Aye, aye,” beamed McEwan, more broadly than before, extending a huge
hand; “that’ll be grand.”

The dance was the climax of the week. The next day was their last,
leave-takings were in the air, and toward afternoon a bustle of packing.
Stefan was in a mood of slight reaction from his excitement of the night
before. While Mary packed for them both he prowled uncertainly about the
house, and, finding the men in the library, whiled away the time in an
utterly impossible attempt to quarrel with McEwan on some theory of art.

They all left for the train with lamentations, and arrived in New York
the next morning in a cheerless storm of wet snow.

But by this time Mary’s regret at the ending of their holiday was lost
in joy at the prospect of seeing her baby. She urged the stiff and tired
Stefan to speed, and, by cutting short their farewells and jumping for a
street car, managed to make the next train out for Crab’s Bay. She could
hardly sit still in the decrepit cab, and it had barely stopped at their
gate before she was out and tearing up the stairs.

Stefan paid the cab, carried in their suitcase, and wandered, cold
and lonely, to the sitting room. For him their home-coming offered no
alleviating thrill. Already, he felt, Mary’s bright wings were folding
again above her nest.



VIII


Refreshed, in spite of his natural reaction of spirits, by the week’s
holiday, Stefan turned to his work with greater content in it than he
had felt for some time. His content was, to his own surprise, rather
increased than lessened by the discovery that Felicity Berber had left
New York for the South. Arriving at his studio the day after their
return from Vermont, he found one of her characteristic notes, in
crimson ink this time, upon snowy paper.

“Stefan,” it read, “the winter has found his strength at last in storms.
But our friendship dallies with the various moods of spring. It leaves
me restless. The snow chills without calming me. My designing is beauty
wasted on the blindness of the city’s overfed. A need of warmth and
stillness is upon me--the south claims me. The time of my return is
unrevealed as yet. Felicity.”

Stefan read this epistle twice, the first time with irritation, the
second with relief. “Affected creature,” he said to himself, “it’s a
good job she’s gone. I’ve frittered away too much time with her as it
is.”

At home that evening he told Mary. His devotion during their holiday
had already obscured her memory of the autumn’s unhappiness, and his
carefree manner of imparting his tidings laid any ghost of doubt that
still remained with her. Secure once more in his love, she was as
uncloudedly happy as she had ever been.

In his newly acquired mood of sanity, Stefan faced the fact that he had
less work to show for the last nine months than in any similar period of
his career, and that he was still living on his last winter’s success.
What had these months brought him? An expensive and inconclusive
flirtation at the cost of his wife’s happiness, a few disturbing
memories, and two unfinished pictures. Out of patience with himself,
he plunged into his work. In two weeks of concentrated effort he had
finished the Nixie, and had arranged with Constantine to exhibit it
and the Demeter immediately. This last the dealer appeared to admire,
pronouncing it a fine canvas, though inferior to the Danaë. About the
Nixie he seemed in two minds.

“We shall have a newspaper story with that one, Mr. Byrd, the lady being
so well known, and the subject so dramatic, but if you ask me will it
sell--” he shrugged his fat shoulders--“that’s another thing.”

Stefan stared at him. “I could sell that picture in France five times
over.”

Constantine waved his pudgy fingers.

“Ah, France! V’là c’ qui est autre chose, ’s pas? But if we fail in New
York for this one I think we try Chicago.”

The reception of the pictures proved Constantine a shrewd prophet.
The academic Demeter was applauded by the average critic as a piece of
decorative work in the grand manner, and a fit rebuke to all Cubists,
Futurists, and other anarchists. It was bought by a committee from a
western agricultural college, which had come east with a check from the
state’s leading politician to purchase suitable mural enrichments for
the college’s new building. Constantine persuaded these worthies that
one suitable painting by a distinguished artist would enrich their
institution more than the half dozen canvases “to fit the auditorium”
 which they had been inclined to order. Moreover, he mulcted them of two
thousand dollars for Demeter, which, in his private estimation, was more
than she was worth. He achieved the sale more readily because of the
newspaper controversy aroused by the Nixie. Was this picture a satire
on life, or on the celebrated Miss Berber? Was it great art, or merely
melodrama? Were Byrd’s effects of river-light obtained in the old
impressionist manner, or by a subtler method of his own? Was he a master
or a poseur?

These and other questions brought his name into fresh prominence,
but failed to sell their object. Just, however, as Constantine was
considering a journey for the Nixie to Chicago, a purchaser appeared
in the shape of a certain Mr. Einsbacher. Stefan happened to be in the
gallery when this gentleman, piloted by Constantine himself, came in,
and recognized him as the elderly satyr of the pouched eyes who had been
so attentive to Felicity on the night of Constance’s reception. When,
later, the dealer informed him that this individual had bought the Nixie
for three thousand, Stefan made no attempt to conceal his disgust.

“Thousand devils, Constantine, I don’t paint for swine of that type,”
 said he, scowling.

The dealer’s hands wagged. “His check is good,” he replied, “and who
knows, he may die soon and leave the picture to the Metropolitan.”

But Stefan was not to be mollified, and went home that afternoon in a
state of high rebellion against all commercialism. Mary tried to console
him by pointing out that even with the dealer’s commission deducted,
he had made more than a year’s income from the two sales, and could now
work again free from all anxiety.

“What’s the good,” he exclaimed, “of producing beauty for sheep to bleat
and monkeys to leer at! What’s the good of producing it in America at
all? Who wants, or understands it!”

“Oh, Stefan, heaps of people. Doesn’t Mr. Farraday understand art, for
instance?”

“Farraday,” he snorted, “yes!--landscapes and women with children. What
does he know of the radiance of beauty, its mystery, the hot soul of
it? Oh, Mary,” he flung himself down beside her, and clutched her hand
eagerly, “don’t be wise; don’t be sensible, darling. It’s March, spring
is beginning in Europe. It’s a year and a half since I became an exile.
Let’s go, beloved. You say yourself we have plenty of money; let’s take
ship for the land where beauty is understood, where it is put first,
above all things. Let’s go back to France, Mary!”

His face was fired with eagerness; he almost trembled with the passion
to be gone. Mary flushed, and then grew pale with apprehension. “Do you
mean break up our home, Stefan, for good?”

“Yes, darling. You know I’ve counted the days of bondage. We couldn’t
travel last spring, and since then we’ve been too poor. What have these
last months brought us? Only disharmony. We are free now, there is
nothing to hold us back. We can leave Elliston in Paris, and follow the
spring south to the vineyards. A progress a-foot through France, each
day finding colors richer, the sun nearer--think of it, Beautiful!” He
kissed her joyously.

Her hands were quite cold now, “But, Stefan,” she temporized, “our
little house, our friends, my work, the--the _place_ we’ve been making?”

“Dearest, all these we can find far better there.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t speak French properly, I don’t
understand French people. I couldn’t sell my stories there or--or
anything,” she finished weakly.

He jumped up, his eyes blank, hands thrust in his pockets.

“I don’t get you, Mary. You don’t mean--you surely can’t mean, that you
don’t want to go to France _at all_? That you want to _live_ here?”

She floundered. “I don’t know, Stefan. Of course you’ve always talked
about France, and I should love to go there and see it, and so on, but
somehow I’ve come to think of the Byrdsnest as home--we’ve been so happy
here--”

“Happy?” he interrupted her. “You say we’ve been happy?” His tone was
utterly confounded.

“Yes, dear, except--except when you were so--so busy last autumn--”

He dropped down by the table, squaring himself as if to get to the
bottom of a riddle.

“What is your idea of happiness, Mary, of _life_ in fact?” he asked,
in an unusually quiet voice. She felt glad that he seemed so willing to
talk things over, and to concede her a point of view of her own.

“Well,” she began, feeling for her words, “my idea of life is to have a
person and work that you love, and then to build--both of you--a place,
a position; to have friends--be part of the community--so that your
children--the immortal part of you--may grow up in a more and more
enriching atmosphere.” She paused, while he watched her, motionless. “I
can’t imagine,” she went on, “greater happiness for two people than to
see their children growing up strong and useful--tall sons and daughters
to be proud of, such as all the generations before us have had.
Something to hand our life on to--as it was in the beginning--you know,
Stefan--” She flushed with the effort to express.

“Then,”--his voice was quieter still; she did not see that his hands
were clenched under the flap of the table--“in this scheme of life of
yours, how many children--how many servants, rooms, all that sort of
thing--should you consider necessary?”

She smiled. “As for houses, servants and things, that just depends on
one’s income. I hate ostentation, but I do like a beautifully run house,
and I adore horses and dogs and things. But the children--” she flushed
again--“why, dearest, I think any couple ought to be simply too thankful
for all the children they can have. Unless, perhaps,” she added naïvely,
“they’re frightfully poor.”

“Where should people live to be happy in this way?” he asked, still in
those carefully quiet tones.

She was looking out of the window, trying to formulate her thoughts.
“I don’t think it matters very much _where_ one lives,” she said in her
soft, clear tones, “as long as one has friends, and is not too much in
the city. But to own one’s house, and the ground under one, to be able
to leave it to one’s son, to think of _his_ son being born in it--that
I think would add enormously to one’s happiness. To belong to the place
one lives in, whether it’s an old country, or one of the colonies, or
anywhere.”

“I see,” said Stefan slowly, in a voice low and almost harsh. Startled,
she looked at him. His face was knotted in a white mask; it was like the
face of some creature upon which an iron door has been shut. “Stefan,”
 she exclaimed, “what--?”

“Wait a minute,” he said, still slowly. “I suppose it’s time we talked
this thing out. I’ve been a fool, and judged, like a fool, by myself.
It’s time we knew each other, Mary. All that you have said is horrible
to me--it’s like a trap.” She gave an exclamation. “Wait, let me do
something I’ve never done, let me _think_ about it.” He was silent, his
face still a hard, knotted mask. Mary waited, her heart trembling.

“You, Mary, told me something about families in England who live as you
describe--you said your mother belonged to one of them. I remember that
now.” He nodded shortly, as if conceding her a point. “My father was a
New Englander. He was narrow and self-righteous, and I hated him, but
he came of people who had faced a hundred forms of death to live
primitively, in a strange land.”

“I’m willing to live in a strange country, Stefan,” she almost cried to
him.

“Don’t, Mary--I’m still trying to understand. I’m not my father’s son,
I’m my mother’s. I don’t know what she was, but she was beautiful and
passionate--she came of a mixed race, she may have had gipsy blood--I
don’t know--but I do know she had genius. She loved only color and
movement. Mary--” he looked straight at her for the first time, his eyes
were tortured--“I loved you because you were beautiful and free. When
your child bound you, and you began to collect so many things and people
about you, I loved you less. I met some one else who had the beauty of
color and movement, and I almost loved her. She told me the name Berber
wasn’t her own, that she had taken it because it belonged to a tribe
of wanderers--Arabs. I almost loved her for that alone. But, Mary, you
still held me. I was faithful to you because of your beauty and the
love that had been between us. Then you rose from your petty little
surroundings”--he cast a look of contempt at the pretty furnishings of
the room--“I saw you like a storm-spirit, I saw you moving among other
women like a goddess, adored of men. I felt your beautiful body yield to
me in the joy of wild movement, in the rhythm of the dance. You were my
bride, alive, gloriously free--once more, you were the Desired. I loved
you, Mary.” He rose and put his hands on her shoulders. Her face was as
white as his now. His hands dropped, he almost leapt away from her, the
muscles of his face writhed. “My God, Mary, I’ve never wanted to _think_
about you, only to feel and see you! Now I must think. This--this
existence that you have described! Is that all you ask of life? Are you
sure?”

“What more could one ask!” she uttered, dazed.

“What _more?_” he cried out, throwing up his arms. “What _more,_ Mary!
Why, it isn’t life at all, this deadly, petty intricate day by day,
surrounded by things, and more things. The hopeless, unalterable
tameness of it!” He began to pace the room.

“But, my dear, I don’t understand you. We have love, and work, and if
some part of our life is petty, why, every one’s always has been, hasn’t
it?”

She was deeply moved by his distress, afraid again for their happiness,
longing to comfort him. Yet, under and apart from all these emotions,
some cool little faculty of criticism wondered if he was not making
rather a theatrical scene. “Daily life must be a little monotonous,
mustn’t it?” she urged again, trying to help him.

“No!” he almost shouted, with a gesture of fierce repudiation. “Was
Angelo’s life petty? Was da Vinci’s? Did Columbus live monotonously,
did Scott or Peary? Does any explorer or traveler? Did Thoreau surround
himself with _things_--to hamper--did George Borrow, or Whitman, or
Stevenson? Do you suppose Rodin, or de Musset, or Rousseau, or Millet,
or any one else who has ever _lived_, cared whether they had a position,
a house, horses, old furniture? All the world’s wanderers, from Ulysses
down to the last tramp who knocked at this door, have known more of life
than all your generations of staid conventional county families!
Oh, Mary”--he leant across the table toward her, and his voice
pleaded--“think of what life _should_ be. Think of the peasants in
France treading out the wine. Think of ships, and rivers, and all the
beauty of the forests. Think of dancing, of music, of that old viking
who first found America. Think of those tribes who wander with their
tents over the desert and pitch them under stars as big as lamps--all
the things we’ve never seen, Mary, the songs we’ve never heard. The
colors, the scents, and the cruel tang of life! All these I want to
see and feel, and translate into pictures. I want you with me,
Mary--beautiful and free--I want us to drink life eagerly together, as
if it were heady wine.” He took her hand across the table. “You’ll come,
Beloved, you’ll give all the little things up, and come?”

She rose, her face pitifully white. They stood with hands clasped, the
table between them.

“The boy, Stefan?”

He laughed, thinking he had won her. “Bring him, too, as the Arab women
carry theirs, in a shawl. We’ll leave him here and there, and have him
with us whenever we stay long in one place.”

She pulled her hand away, her eyes filled with tears. “I love you,
Stefan, but I can’t bring my child up like a gipsy. I’ll live in France,
or anywhere you say, but I must have a home--I can’t be a wanderer.”

“You shall have a home, sweetheart, to keep coming back to.” His face
was brightening to eagerness.

“Oh, you don’t understand. I can’t leave my child; I can’t be with him
only sometimes. I want him always. And it isn’t only him. Oh, Stefan,
dear”--her voice in its turn was pleading--“I don’t believe I can
come to France just now. I think, I’m almost sure, we’re going to have
another baby.”

He straightened, they faced each other in silence. After a moment
she spoke again, looking down, her hands tremblingly picking at her
handkerchief.

“I was so happy about it. It was the sign of your renewed love. I
thought we could build a little wing on the cottage, and have a nurse.”
 Her voice fell to a whisper. “I thought it might be a little girl, and
that you would love her better than the boy. I’ll come later, dear, if
you say so, but I can’t come now.” She sank into her chair, her head
drooping. He, too, sat down, too dazed by this new development to find
his way for a minute through its implications.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” he said at last, dully. “I don’t want a little girl.
If she could be put away somewhere till she were grown, I should not
mind. But to live like this all through one’s youth, with a house, and
servants, and people calling, and the place cluttered up with babies--I
don’t think I can do that, possibly.”

She was frankly crying now. “But, dear one, can’t we compromise? After
this baby is born, I’ll give up the house. We’ll live in France--I’ll
travel with you a little. That will help, won’t it?”

He sighed. “I suppose so. We shall have to think out some scheme. But
the ghastly part is that we shall both have to be content with half
measures. You want one thing of life, Mary, I another. No amount of
self-sacrifice on either side alters that fact. We married, strangers,
and it’s taken us a year and a half to find it out. My fault, of course.
I wanted love and beauty, and I got it--I didn’t think of the cost,
and I didn’t think of _you_. I was just a damned egotistical male, I
suppose.” He laughed bitterly. “My father wanted a wife, and he got the
burning heart of a rose. I--I never wanted a wife, I see that now, I
wanted to snare the very spirit of life and make it my own--you looked
a vessel fit to carry it. But you were just a woman like the rest. We’ve
failed each other, that’s all.”

“Oh, Stefan,” she cried through her tears, “I’ve tried so hard. But
I was always the same--just a woman. Only--” her tears broke out
afresh--“when you married me, I thought you loved me as I was.”

He looked at her, transfixed. “My God,” he whispered, “that’s what I
heard my mother say more than twenty years ago. What a mockery--each
generation a scorn and plaything for the high Gods! Well, we’ll do the
best we can, Mary. I’m utterly a pagan, so I’m not quite the inhuman
granite my Christian father was. Don’t cry, dear.” He stooped and kissed
her, and she heard his light, wild steps pass through the room and out
into the night. She sat silent, amid the ruins of her nest.



IX


For a month Stefan brooded. He hung about the house, dabbled at a little
work, and returned, all without signs of life or interest. He was kind
to Mary, more considerate than he used to be, but she would have given
all his inanimate, painstaking politeness for an hour of his old, gay
thoughtlessness. They had reached the stage of marriage in which, all
being explained and understood, there seems nothing to hope for. Alone
together they were silent, for there was nothing to say. Each condoned
but could not comfort the other. Stefan felt that his marriage had been
a mistake, that he, a living thing, had tied about his neck a dead mass
of institutions, customs and obligations which would slowly crush his
life out. “I am twenty-seven,” he said to himself, “and my life is
over.” He did not blame Mary, but himself.

She, on the other hand, felt she had married a man outside the pale of
ordinary humanity, and that though she still loved him, she could no
longer expect happiness through him. “I am twenty-five,” she thought,
“and my personal life is over. I can be happy now only in my children.”
 As those were assured her, she never thought of regretting her marriage,
but only deplored the loss of her dream. Nor did she judge Stefan. She
understood the wild risk she had run in marrying a man of whom she knew
nothing. “He is as he is,” she thought; “neither of us is to blame.”
 Lonely and grieved, she turned for companionship to her writing, and
began a series of fairy tales which she had long planned for very
young children. The first instalment of her serial was out, charmingly
illustrated; she had felt rather proud on seeing her name, for the first
time, on the cover of a magazine. She engaged a young girl from the
village to take Elliston for his daily outings, and settled down to a
routine of work, small social relaxations, and morning and evening care
of the baby. The daily facts of life were pleasant to Mary; if some hurt
or disappointed, her balanced nature swung readily to assuage itself
with others. She honestly believed she felt more deeply than her
husband, and perhaps she did, but she was not of the kind whom life
can break. Stefan might dash himself to exhaustion against a rock round
which Mary would find a smooth channel.

While her work progressed, Stefan’s remained at a standstill.
Disillusioned with his marriage and with his whole way of life he
fretted himself from his old sure confidence to a mood of despair. Their
friends bored him, his studio like his house became a cage. New York
appeared in her old guise of mammoth materialist, but now he had no
heart to satirize her dishonor. He wanted only to be gone, but told
himself that in common decency he must remain with Mary till her child
was born. He longed for even the superficial thrill of Felicity’s
presence, but she still lingered in the South. So fretting, he tossed
himself against the bars through the long snows of an unusually severe
March, until April broke the frost, and the road to the Byrdsnest became
a morass of running mud.

In the last two weeks Stefan had begun a portrait of Constance, but
without enthusiasm. She was a fidgety sitter, and was moreover so busy
with her suffrage work that she could never be relied on for more than
an hour at a time. After a few of these fragmentary sittings his ragged
nerves gave out completely.

“It’s utterly useless, Constance!” he exclaimed, throwing down his
pallette and brushes, as the telephone interrupted them for the third
time in less than an hour. “I can’t paint in a suffrage office. This is
a studio, not the Club’s headquarters. If you can’t shut these people
off and sit rationally, please don’t trouble to come again.”

“I know, my dear boy, it’s abominable, but what can I do? Our bill has
passed the Legislature; until it is submitted next year I can’t be my
own or Theodore’s, much less yours. As for you, you look a rag. This
winter has about made me hate my country. I don’t wonder you long for
France.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, she dangled her beads reflectively, and
perched on the throne again without attempting to resume her pose. “My
dear boy,” she said suddenly, “why stay here and be eaten by devils--why
not fly from them?”

“I wish to God I could,” he groaned.

“You can. Mary was in to see our shop yesterday; she looked dragged. You
are both nervous. Do what I have always done--take a holiday from each
other. There’s nothing like it as a tonic for love.”

“Do you really think she wouldn’t mind?” he exclaimed eagerly. “You know
she--she isn’t very well.”

“Chtt,” shrugged Constance, “_that’s_ only being more than usually well.
You don’t think Mary needs coddling, do you? She’s worried because
you are bored. If you aren’t there, she won’t worry. I shall take
your advice--I shan’t come here again--” and she settled her hat
briskly--“and you take mine. Go away--” Constance threw on her coat--“go
anywhere you like, my dear Stefan--” she was at the door--“except
south,” she added with a mischievous twinkle, closing it.

Stefan, grinning appreciatively at this parting shot, unscrewed his
sketch of Constance from the easel, set it face to the wall in a corner,
cleaned his brushes, with the meticulous care he always gave to his
tools, and ran for the elevated, just in time to catch the next train
for Crab’s Bay. At the station he jumped into a hack, and, splashing
home as quickly as the liquid road bed would allow, burst into the house
to find Mary still lingering over her lunch.

“What has happened, Stefan?” she exclaimed, startled at his excited
face.

“Nothing. I’ve got an idea, that’s all. Let me have something to eat and
I’ll tell you about it.”

She rang for Lily, and he made a hasty meal, asking her unwonted
questions meantime about her work, her amusements, whether many of the
neighbors were down yet, and if she felt lonely.

“No, I’m not lonely, dear. There are only a few people here, but they
are awfully decent to me, and I’m very busy at home.”

“You are sure you are not lonely?” he asked anxiously, drinking his
coffee, and lighting a cigarette.

“Yes, quite sure. I’m not exactly gay--” and she smiled a little
sadly--“but I’m really never lonely.”

“Then,” he asked nervously, “what would you say if I suggested going off
by myself for two or three months, to Paris.” He watched her intently,
fearful of the effect of his words. To his unbounded relief, she
appeared neither surprised nor hurt, but, after twisting her coffee cup
thoughtfully for a minute, looked up with a frank smile.

“I think it would be an awfully good thing, Stefan dear. I’ve been
thinking so for a month, but I didn’t like to say anything in case you
might feel--after our talk--” her voice faltered for a moment--“that
I was trying to--that I didn’t care for you so much. It isn’t that,
dear--” she looked honestly at him--“but I know you’re not happy, and it
doesn’t help me to feel I am holding you back from something you want. I
think we shall be happier afterwards if you go now.”

“I do, too,” said he, “but I was so afraid it would seem cruel in me to
suggest it. I don’t want to grow callous like my father.” He shuddered.
“I want to do the decent thing, Mary.” His eyes were pleading.

“I know, dearest, you’ve been very kind. But for both our sakes, it will
be far better if you go for a time.” She rose, and, coming round
the table, kissed his rough hair. He caught her hand, and pressed it
gratefully. “You are good to me, Mary.”

The matter settled, Stefan’s spirit soared. He rang up the French Line
and secured one of the few remaining berths for their next sailing,
which was in three days. He telephoned an ecstatic cable to Adolph.
Then, hurrying to the attic, he brought down his friend’s old Gladstone,
and his own suitcase, and began to sort out his clothes. Mary, anxious
to quell her heartache by action, came up to help him, and vetoed his
idea of taking only the barest necessities.

“I know,” she said, “you want to get back to your old Bohemia. But
remember you are a well-known artist now--the celebrated Stefan Byrd,”
 and she courtesied to him. “Suppose you were to meet some charming
people whom you wanted to see something of? Do take a dinner-jacket at
least.”

He grinned at her. “I shall live in a blouse and sleep in my old attic
with Adolph. That’s the only thing I could possibly want to do. But I
won’t be fractious, Mary. If it will please you to have me take dress
clothes I’ll do it--only you must pack them yourself!”

She nodded smilingly. “All right, I shall love to.” She had failed to
make her husband happy in their home, she thought; at least she would
succeed in her manner of speeding him from it. It was her tragedy that
he should want to go. That once faced, she would not make a second
tragedy of his going.

She spent the next morning, while he went to town to buy his ticket, in
a thorough overhauling of his clothes. She found linen bags to hold
his shoes and a linen folder for his shirts. She pressed his ties and
brushed his coats, packed lavender bags in his underwear, and slipped
a framed snapshot of herself and Elliston into the bottom of the
Gladstone. With it, in a box, she put the ring she had given him, with
the winged head, which he had ceased to wear of late. She found some new
poems and a novel he had not read, and packed those. She gave him her
own soapbox and toothbrush case. She cleaned his two bags with shoe
polish. Everything she could think of was done to show that she sent him
away willingly, and she worked so hard that she forgot to notice how her
heart ached. In the afternoon she met him in town and they had dinner
together. He suggested their old hotel, but she shook her head. “No
dear, not there,” she said, smiling a little tremulously. They went to a
theatre, and got home so late that she was too tired to be wakeful.

“By the by,” she said next morning at breakfast, “don’t worry about
my being alone after you’ve gone. I thought it might be triste for the
first few days, so I’ve rung up the Sparrow, and she’s coming to occupy
your room for a couple of weeks. She’s off for her yearly trip abroad at
the end of the month. Says she can’t abide the Dutch, but means to see
what there is to their old Rhine, and come back by way of Tuscany and
France.” Mary gurgled. “Can’t you see her in Paris, poor dear, ‘doing’
the Louvre, with her nose in a guidebook. Why! Perhaps you may!”

“The gods forbid,” said Stefan devoutly.

He had brought his paints and brushes home the night before, and after
breakfast Mary helped him stow them away in the Gladstone, showing
him smilingly how well she had done his packing. While he admired, she
remembered to ask him if he had obtained a letter of credit. He burst
out laughing.

“Mary, you wonder! I have about fifty dollars in my pocket, and should
have entirely forgotten to take more if you hadn’t spoken of it. What a
bore! Can’t I get it to-morrow?”

“You might not have time before sailing. I think you’d better go up
to-day, and then you could call on Constance to say good-bye.”

“I don’t like to leave you on our last day,” he said uneasily,

“Oh, that will be all right, dear,” she smiled, patting his hand. “I
have oceans to do, and I think you ought to see Constance. Get your
letter of credit for a thousand dollars, then you’ll be sure to have
enough.”

“A thousand! Great Scott, Adolph would think I’d robbed a bank if I had
all that.”

“You don’t need to spend it, silly, but you ought to have it behind you.
You never know what might happen.”

“Would there be plenty left for you?”

“Bless me, yes,” she laughed; “we’re quite rich.”

While he was gone Mary arranged an impromptu farewell party for him, so
that instead of spending a rather depressing evening alone with her,
as he had expected, he found himself surrounded by cheerful
friends--McEwan, the Farradays, their next neighbors, the Havens, and
one or two others. McEwan was the last to leave, at nearly midnight, and
pleading fatigue, Mary kissed Stefan good night at the door of her room.
She dared not linger with him lest the stifled pain at her heart should
clamor for expression too urgently to be denied. But by this time
he himself began to feel the impending separation. Ready for bed, he
slipped into her room and found her lying wide-eyed in a swathe of
moonlight. Without a word he lay down beside her and drew her close.
Like children lost in the dark, they slept all night in each other’s
arms.

Next day Mary saw him off. New York ended at the gangway. Across it,
they were in France. French decorations, French faces, French gaiety,
the beloved French tongue, were everywhere.

“Listen to it, Mary,” he cried exultingly, and she smiled a cheerful
response.

When the warning bell sounded he suddenly became grave.

“Say good-bye again to Elliston for me, dear,” he said, holding her hand
close. “I hope he grows up like you.”

Her eyes were swimming now, in spite of herself. “Mary,” he went on,
“this separation makes or mars us. I hope, dear, I believe, it will make
us. God bless you.” He kissed her, pressed her to him. Suddenly they
were both trembling.

“Why are we parting?” he cried, in a revulsion of feeling.

She smiled at him, wiping away her tears. “It’s better, dearest,” she
whispered; “let me go now.” They kissed again; she turned hurriedly
away. He watched her cross the gangway--she waved to him from the
dock--then the crowd swallowed her.

For a moment he felt bitterly bereaved. “How ironic life is,” he
thought. Then a snatch of French chatter and a gay laugh reached him.
The gangway lifted, water widened between the bulwarks and the dock.
As the ship swung out he caught the sea breeze--a flight of gulls swept
by--he was outbound!

With a deep breath Stefan turned a brilliant smile upon the deck ...
Freedom!

Mary, hurrying home with aching heart and throat, let the slow tears
run unheeded down her cheeks. From the train she watched the city’s
outskirts stream by, formless and ugly. She was very desolate. But when,
tired out, she entered her house, peace enfolded her. Here were her
child, the things she loved, her birds, her pleasant, smiling servant.
Here were white walls and gracious calm. Her mate had flown, but the
nest remained. Her heart ached still, but it was no longer torn.



X


The day after Stefan sailed Felicity Berber returned from Louisiana. The
South had bored her, without curing her weariness of New York. She drove
from the Pennsylvania Station to her studio, looked through the books,
overhauled the stock, and realized with indifference that her business
had suffered heavily through her absence. She listened lazily while her
lieutenants, emphasizing this fact, implored her to take up the work
again.

“What does it matter,” she murmured through her smoke. “The place still
pays. Your salaries are all secure, and I have plenty of money. I may
come back, I may not. In any event, I am bored.” She rippled out to
her landaulette, and drove home. At her apartment, her Chinese maid was
already unpacking her trunks.

“Don’t unpack any more, Yo San. I may decide to go away again--abroad
perhaps. I am still very bored--give me a white kirtle and telephone Mr.
Marchmont to call in an hour.”

With her maid’s help she undressed, pinned her hair high, and slipped
on a knee-high tunic of heavy chiffon. Barefooted, she entered a large
room, walled in white and dull silver--the end opposite the windows
filled by a single mirror. Between the windows stood a great tank of
gold and silver fish swimming among water lilies.

Two enormous vases of dull glass, stacked with lilies against her
homecoming, stood on marble pedestals. The floor was covered with a
carpeting of dead black. A divan draped in yellow silk, a single ebony
chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a low table in teakwood were the
sole furniture. Here, quite alone, Felicity danced away the stiffness
of her journey, danced away the drumming of the train from her ears, and
its dust from her lungs. Then she bathed, and Yo San dressed her in
a loose robe of silver mesh, and fastened her hair with an ivory comb
carved and tinted to the model of a water lily. These rites complete,
Felicity slowly partook of fruit, coffee and toast. Only then did
she re-enter the dance room, where, on his ebony chair, the dangling
Marchmont had been uncomfortably waiting for half an hour.

She gave him her hand dreamily, and sank full length on the divan.

“You are more marvelous than ever, Felicity,” said he, with an adoring
sigh.

She waved her hand. “For all that I am not in the mood. Tell me the
news, my dear Marchmont--plays, pictures, scandals, which of my clients
are richer, which are bankrupt, who has gone abroad, and all about my
friends.”

Marchmont leant forward, and prepared to light a cigarette, his thin
mouth twisted to an eager smile, his loose hair wagging.

“Wait,” she breathed, “I weary of smoke. Give me a lily, Marchmont.” He
fetched one of the great Easter lilies from its vase. Placing this on
her bosom, she folded her supple hands over it, closed her eyes, and lay
still, looking like a Bakst version of the Maid of Astolat. Felicity’s
hints were usually sufficient for her slaves. Marchmont put away his
cigarette, and proceeded with relish to recount the gossip with which,
to his long finger-tips, he was charged.

“Well,” said he, after an hour’s general survey of New York as they both
knew it, “I think that about covers the ground. There is, as I said,
no question that Einsbacher is still devoted. My own opinion is he will
present you with the Nixie. I suppose you received the clippings I sent
about the picture? Constance Elliot has only ordered two gowns from the
studio since you left--but you will have seen that by the books. She
says she is saving her money for the Cause.” He snickered. “The fact is,
she grows dowdy as she grows older. Gunther has gone to Frisco with
his group. Polly Thayer tells me his adoration of the beautiful Byrd
is pathetic. So much in love he nearly broke her neck showing off his
driving for her benefit.” Marchmont snickered again. “As for your friend
Mr. Byrd--” he smiled with a touch of sly pleasure--“you won’t see him,
he sailed for France yesterday, alone. His name is in this morning’s
list of departures.” And he drew a folded and marked newspaper from his
pocket.

A shade of displeasure had crept over the immobile features of Miss
Berber. She opened her eyes and regarded the lank Marchmont with
distaste. Her finger pressed a button on the divan. Slowly she raised
herself to her elbow, while he watched, his pale eyes fixed on her with
the expression of a ratting dog waiting its master’s thanks after a
catch.

“All that you have told me,” said Felicity at last, a slight edge to her
zephyr-like voice, “is interesting, but I wish you would remember that
while you are free to ridicule my clients, you are not free as regards
my friends. Your comment on Connie was in poor taste. I am not in
the mood for more conversation this morning. I am fatigued. Good-day,
Marchmont.” She sank to her pillows again--her eyes closed.

“Oh, I say, Felicity, is that all the thanks I get?” whined her visitor.

“Good-day, Marchmont,” she breathed again. The door opened, disclosing
Yo San. Marchmont’s aesthetic veneer cracked.

“Oh, shucks,” he said, “how mean of you!” and trailed out, his cutaway
seeming to hang limp like the dejected tail of a dog.

The door closed, Felicity bounded up and, running across the room,
invoked her own loveliness in the mirror.

“Alone,” she whispered to herself, “alone.” She danced a few steps,
swayingly. “You’ve never lived, lovely creature, you’ve never lived
yet,” she apostrophized the dancing vision in the glass.

Still swaying and posturing to some inward melody, she fluttered down
the passage to her bedroom. “Yo San,” she called, her voice almost full,
“we shall go to Europe.” The stolid little maid nodded acquiescence.

For the next three days Felicity Berber, creator of raiment, shut in
her pastoral fitting room and surrounded by her chief acolytes, sat at
a table opposite Stefan’s dancing faun, and designed spring gowns.
Felicity the idle, the somnolent, the alluring, gave place to Felicity
the inventor, and again to Felicity the woman of business. Scissors
clipped, typewriters clicked, colored chalks covered dozens of sheets
with drawings.

The staff became first relieved, then enthusiastic. What a spring
display they were to have! On the third day hundreds of primrose-yellow
envelopes, inscribed in green ink to the studio’s clients, poured into
the letter-chute. Within them an announcement printed in flowing green
script read, under Felicity’s letterhead, “I offer twenty-one original
designs for spring raiment, created by me under the inspiration of a
sojourn in the South. Each will be modified to the wearer’s personality,
and none will be duplicated. I am about to travel in Europe, there
to gain atmosphere for my fall creations.” After her signature, was
stamped, by way of seal, a tiny woodcut of Stefan’s faun.

The last design was complete by Friday, and on Saturday Felicity sailed
on the Mauretania, her suite of three rooms a wilderness of flowers.
Marchmont, calling at the apartment to escort her to the boat, found the
dance-room swathed in sheeting, its heavy carpet rolled into a corner.
Evidently, this was to be no brief “sojourn.” The heavy Einsbacher was
at the dock to see her off, together with a small pack of nondescript
young men. Constance was not there, and Marchmont guessed that she had
not been told of her friend’s departure.

Einsbacher had the last word with Felicity. “I hope you will like the
vlowers,” he whispered gutturally. “Let me know if I may make you a
present of the Nixie,” and he gave a thick smile.

“You know my rule,” she murmured, her lids heavy, a bored droop at the
corners of her mouth. “Nothing worth more than five dollars, except
flowers. Why should I break it--” her voice hovered--“for you?”--it
sank. She turned away, melting into the crowd. Marchmont, with malicious
pleasure, watched Einsbacher’s discomfited retreat.

In her cabin Felicity collected all the donors’ cards from her flowers
and, stepping outside, with a faint smile dropped them into the sea.



XI


It was the end of April, and Paris rustled gaily in her spring dress.
Stefan and Adolph, clad in disreputable baggy trousers topped in one
case by a painter’s blouse and in the other by an infinitely aged alpaca
jacket, strolled homeward in the early evening from their favorite café.

Adolph was in the highest spirits, as he had been ever since Stefan’s
arrival three weeks before, but the other’s face wore a rather moody
frown. He had begun to weary a little of his good friend’s ecstatic
pleasure in their reunion.

He was in Paris again, in his old attic; it was spring, and his beloved
city as beautiful as ever. He had expected a return of his old-time
gaiety, but somehow the charm lacked potency. He wanted to paint, but
his ideas were turgid and fragmentary. He wanted excitement, but the
city only seemed to offer memories. The lapse of a short eighteen months
had scattered his friends surprisingly. Adolph remained, but Nanette was
married. Louise had left Paris, and Giddens, the English painter, had
gone back to London. Perhaps it was the spring, perhaps it was merely
the law which decrees that the past can never be recaptured--whatever
the cause, Stefan’s flight had not wholly assuaged his restlessness.
Of adventures in the hackneyed sense he had not thought. He was too
fastidious for the vulgar sort, and had hitherto met no women who
stirred his imagination. Moreover, he harbored the delusion that the
failure of his great romance had killed his capacity for love. “I am
done with women,” he said to himself.

Mary seemed very distant. He thought of her with gratitude for her
generosity, with regret, but without longing.

“Never marry,” he said to Adolph for the twentieth time, as they turned
into the rue des Trois Ermites; “the wings of an artist must remain
unbound.”

“Ah, Stefan,” Adolph replied, sighing over his friend’s disillusionment,
“I am not like you. I should be grateful for a home, and children. I am
only a cricket scraping out my little music, not an eagle.”

Stefan snorted. “You are a great violinist, but you won’t realize it.
Look here, Adolph, chuck your job, and go on a walking tour with me.
Let’s travel through France and along the Riviera to Italy. I’m sick
of cities. There’s lots of money for us both, and if we run short, why,
bring your fiddle along and play it--why not?”

At their door the concierge handed Adolph some letters.

“My friend,” said he, holding up a couple of bills, “one cannot slip
away from life so easily. How should I pay my way when we returned?”

“Hang it,” said Stefan impatiently, “don’t you begin to talk
obligations. I came to France to get away from all that. Have a little
imagination, Adolph. It would be the best thing that could happen to you
to get shaken out of that groove at the Opera--be the making of you.”

They had reached the attic, and Adolph lit a lamp.

“We’ll talk of it to-morrow, my infant, now I must dress--see, here is a
letter for you.”

He handed Stefan a tinted envelope, and began leisurely to don his
conventional black. Holding the note under the lamp, Stefan saw with a
start that it was from Felicity, and had been left by hand. Excited,
he tore it open. It was written in ordinary ink, upon pale pink paper,
agreeably scented.

    “My dear friend,” he read in French, “I am in Paris, and
    chancing to remember your old address--(“I swear I never told
    her the number,” he thought)--send this in search of you.
    How pleasant it would be to see you, and to have a little converse
    in the sweet French tongue. You did not know that it
    was my own, did you? But yes, I have French-Creole blood.
    One is happy here among one’s own kind. This evening I shall
    be alone. Felicity.”

So, she was a Creole--of the race of Josephine! His pulses beat.
Cramming the note into his pocket he whirled excitedly upon his friend.

“Adolph,” he cried, “I’m going out--where are my clothes?” and began
hastily to rummage for his Gladstone amidst a pile of their joint
belongings. Throwing it open, he dragged out his dress suit--folded
still as Mary had packed it--and strewed a table with collars, ties,
shirts, and other accessories.

“Hot water, Adolph! Throw some sticks into the stove--I must shave,”
 he called, and Adolph, amazed at this sudden transformation, hastily
obeyed.

“Where do you go?” he asked, as he filled the kettle.

“I’m going to see a very attractive young woman,” Stefan grinned.
“Wow, what a mercy I brought some decent clothes, eh?” He was already
stripped, and shaking out a handful of silk socks. Something clicked to
the floor, but he did not notice it. The dressing proceeded in a whirl,
Adolph much impressed by the splendors of his friend’s toilet. A fine
shirt of tucked linen, immaculate pumps, links of dull gold--his comrade
in Bohemia had completely vanished.

“O là, là!” cried he, beaming, “now I see it is true about all your
riches!”

“I’m going to take a taxi,” Stefan announced as he slipped into his
coat; “can I drop you?”

He stood ready, having overtaken Adolph’s sketchy but leisured dressing.

“What speed, my child! One moment!” Adolph shook on his coat, found his
glasses, and was crossing to put out the lamp when his foot struck a
small object.

“What is this, something of yours?” He stooped and picked up a framed
snapshot of a girl playing with a baby. “How beautiful!” he exclaimed,
holding it under the lamp.

“Oh, yes,” said Stefan with a slight frown, “that’s Mary. I didn’t know
I had it with me. Come on, Adolph,” and he tossed the picture back into
the open Gladstone.

While Adolph found a taxi, Stefan paused a moment to question the
concierge. Yes, monsieur’s note had been left that afternoon, Madame
remembered, by une petite Chinoise, bien chic, who had asked if Monsieur
lived here. Madame’s aged eyes snapped with Gallic appreciation of a
possible intrigue.

Stefan was glad when he had dropped Adolph. He stretched at ease along
the cushions of his open taxi, breathing in the warm, audacious air of
spring, and watched the faces of the crowds as they emerged under the
lights to be lost again mysteriously in the dusk.

Paris, her day’s work done, was turning lightly, with her entrancing
smile, to the pursuit of friendship, adventure, and love. All through
the scented streets eyes sought eyes, voices rose in happy laughter or
drooped to soft allurement. Stefan thrilled to the magic in the air. He,
too, was seeking his adventure.

The taxi drew up in the courtyard of an apartment house. Giving his
name, Stefan entered a lift and was carried up one floor. A white door
opened, and the small Yo San, with a salutation, took his hat, and
lifted a curtain. He was in a long, low room, yellow with candlelight.
Facing him, open French windows giving upon a balcony showed the
purpling dusk above the river and the black shapes of trees. Lights
trickled their reflection in the water, the first stars shone, the scent
of flowers was heavy in the air.

All this he saw; then a curtain moved, and a slim form appeared from the
balcony as silently as a moth fluttering to the light.

“Ah, Stefan, welcome,” a voice murmured.

The setting was perfect. As Felicity moved toward him--her gown
fluttering and swaying in folds of golden pink as delicately tinted as
the petals of a rose--Stefan realized he had never seen her so alluring.
Her strange eyes shone, her lips curved soft and inviting, her cheeks
and throat were like warm, white velvet.

He took her outstretched hand--of the texture of a camelia--and it
pulsed as if a heart beat in it.

“Felicity,” he half whispered, holding her hand, “how wonderful you
are!”

“Am I?” she breathed, sighingly. “I have been asleep so long, Stefan.
perhaps I am awake a little now.”

Her eyes, wide and gleaming as he had never seen them, held him. A
mysterious perfume, subtle and poignant, hung about her. Her gauzy dress
fluttered as she breathed; she seemed barely poised on her slim feet.
He put out his arm as if to stay her from mothlike flight, and it fell
about her waist. He pressed her to him. Her lips met his--they were
incredibly soft and warm--they seemed to blossom under his kisses.

      *       *       *       *       *

Adolph, returning from the opera at midnight, donned his old jacket and
a pair of slippers and, lighting his pipe, settled himself with a paper
to await Stefan’s coming. Presently first the paper, then the burnt-out
pipe, fell from his hands--he dozed, started awake, and dozed again.

At last he roused himself and stretched stiffly. The lamp was burning
low--he looked at his watch--it was four o’clock. Stefan’s Gladstone bag
still yawned on a chair beside the table. In it, the dull glow of the
lamp was reflected from a small silver object lying among a litter of
ties and socks. Adolph picked it up, and looked for some moments at the
face of Mary, smiling above her little son. He shook his head.

“Tch, tch! Quel dommage-what a pity!” he sighed, and putting down the
picture undressed slowly, blew out the lamp, and went to bed.



XII


On a Saturday morning at the end of June, Mary stood by the gate of the
Byrdsnest, looking down the lane. McEwan, who was taking a whole holiday
from the office, had offered to fetch her mail from the village. Any
moment he might be back. It was quite likely, she told herself, that
there would be a letter from France this morning--a steamer had
docked on Thursday, another yesterday. Surely this time there would be
something for her. Mary’s eyes, as they strained down the lane, had lost
some of their radiant youth. A stranger might have guessed her older
than the twenty-six years she had just completed--she seemed grave and
matronly--her face had a bleak look. Mary’s last letter from France had
come more than a month ago, and a face can change much in a month of
waiting. She knew that last letter--a mere scrap--by heart.

    “Thank you for your sweet letters, dear,” it read. “I am
    well, and having a wonderful time. Not much painting yet;
    that is to come. Adolph admires your picture prodigiously.
    I have found some old friends in Paris, very agreeably. I may
    move about a bit, so don’t expect many letters. Take care of
    yourself. Stefan.”

No word of love, nothing about Elliston, or the child to come; just a
hasty word or two dashed off in answer to the long letters which she
had tried so hard to make amusing. Even this note had come after a two
weeks’ silence. “Don’t expect many letters--” she had not, but a month
was a long time.

There came Wallace! He had turned the corner--he had waved to her--but
it was a quiet wave. Somehow, if there had been a letter from France,
Mary thought he would have waved his hat round his head. She had never
spoken of her month-long wait, but Wallace always knew things without
being told. No, she was sure there was no letter. “It’s too hot here in
the sun,” she thought, and walked slowly into the house.

“Here we are,” called McEwan cheerily as he entered the sitting room.
“It’s a light mail to-day. Nothing but ‘Kindly remit’ for me, and one
letter for you--looks like the fist of a Yankee schoolma’am.”

He handed her the letter, holding it with a big thumb over the
right-hand corner, so that she recognized Miss Mason’s hand before she
saw the French stamp.

“Mind if I hang round on the stoop and smoke a pipe?” queried McEwan,
pulling a newspaper from his pocket.

“Do,” said Mary, opening her letter. It was a long, newsy sheet written
from Paris and filled with the Sparrow’s opinions on continental hotels,
manners, and morals. She read it listlessly, but at the fourth page
suddenly sat upright.

    “I thought as long as I was here I’d better see what there is
    to see,” Miss Mason’s pen chatted; “so I’ve been doing a play
    or the opera every night, and I can say that not understanding
    the language don’t make the plays seem any less immoral.
    However, that’s what people go abroad to get, so I guess we
    can’t complain. The night before last who was sitting in the
    orchestra but your husband with that queer Miss Berber? I
    saw them as plain as daylight, but they couldn’t see me away up
    in the circle. When I was looking for a bus at the end I
    saw them getting into an elegant electric. I must say she
    looked cute, all in old rose color with a pearl comb in her hair.
    I think your husband looked real well too--I suppose they
    were going to some party together. It’s about time that young
    man was home again with you, it seems to me, and so I should
    have told him if I could have got anywhere near him in the
    crowd. All I can say is, _I’ve_ had enough of Europe. I’m thinking
    of going through to London for a week, and then sailing.”

At the end of the letter Mary turned the last page back, and slowly
read this paragraph again. There was a dull drumming in her ears--a hand
seemed to be remorselessly pressing the blood from her heart. She sat
staring straight before her, afraid to think lest she should think too
much. At last she went to the window.

“Wallace,” she called. He jumped in, paper in hand, and saw her standing
dead white by her chair.

“Ye’ve no had ill news, Mary?” he asked with a burr.

She shook her head. “No, Wallace; no, of course not. But I feel rather
rotten this morning. Talk to me a little, will you?”

Obediently he sat down, and shook out the paper. “Hae ye been watching
the European news much lately, Mary?” he began.

“I always try to, but it’s difficult to find much in the American
papers.”

“It’s there, if ye know where to look. What would ye think o’ this
assassination o’ the Grand Duke now?” He cocked his head on one side, as
if eagerly waiting for her opinion. She began to rally.

“Why, it’s awful, of course, but somehow I can’t feel much sympathy for
the Austrians since they took Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

“What would ye think might come of it?”

“I don’t know, Wallace--what would you!”

“Weel,” he said gravely, “I think something’s brewing down
yonder--there’ll be trouble yet.”

“Those poor Balkans, always fighting,” she sighed.

“I’m feered it’ll be more than the Balkans this time. Watch the papers,
Mary--I dinna’ like the looks o’ it mesel’.”

They talked on, he expounding his views on the menace of Austria’s
near-east aspirations as opposed to Russia’s friendship for the Slavic
races. Mary tried to listen intelligently--the effort brought a little
color to her face.

“Wallace,” she said presently, “do you happen to know where Miss Berber
is this summer?”

“I do not,” he said, his blue eyes steadily watching her. “But Mrs.
Elliot would ken maybe--ye might ask her.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Mary. “I just wondered.”

When McEwan had gone Mary read Miss Mason’s letter for the third time,
and again the cold touch of fear assailed her. She took a camp stool and
sat by the edge of the bluff for a long time, watching the water. Then
she went indoors again to her desk.

    “Dear Stefan,” she wrote, “I have only had one note from
    you in six weeks, and am naturally anxious to know how you
    are getting on. I am very well, and expect our baby about
    the tenth of October. Elliston is beautiful; imagine, he is a
    year old now! I think he will have your eyes. I am sorry
    you are not getting on well with your work, but perhaps that
    has changed by now. Dear, I had a letter from Miss Mason
    this morning, and she writes of having seen you and Miss
    Berber together at the opera. You didn’t tell me she was in
    Paris, and I can’t help feeling it strange that you should not
    have done so, and should leave me without news for so long.
    I trust you, dear Stefan, and believe in our love in spite of the
    difficulties we have had. And I think you did rightly to take
    a holiday abroad. But you have been gone three months, and
    I have heard so little. Am I wrong still to believe in our love?
    Only six months ago we were so happy together. Do you wish
    our marriage to come to an end? Please write me, dear, and
    tell me what you really think, for, Stefan, I don’t know how
    I shall bear the suspense much longer. I’m trying to be brave,
    dear--and I _do_ believe still.

    “Your

    “Mary.”

Her hand was trembling as she finished writing. She longed to cry out,
“For God’s sake, come back to me, Stefan”--she longed to write of the
wild ache at her heart--but she could not. She could not plead with him.
If he did not feel the pain in her halting sentences it would be true
that he no longer loved her. She sealed and stamped the letter. “I must
still believe,” she kept repeating to herself. There was nothing to do
but wait.

In the weeks that followed it seemed to Mary that her friends were more
than ever kind to her. Not only did James Farraday continually send his
car to take her driving, and Mrs. Farraday appear in the pony carriage,
but not a day passed without McEwan, Jamie, the Havens, or other
neighbors dropping in for a chat, or planning a walk, a luncheon, or a
sail. Constance, too, immersed in work though she was, ran out several
times in her car and spent the night. Mary was grateful--it made her
waiting so much less hard--while her friends were with her the constant
ache at her heart was drugged asleep. Knowing Wallace, she suspected his
hand in this widespread activity, nor was she mistaken.

The day after the arrival of Miss Mason’s letter McEwan had dropped in
upon Constance in the evening, when he knew she would be resting after
her strenuous day’s work at headquarters. By way of a compliment on her
gown he led the conversation round to Felicity Berber, and elicited the
information that she was abroad.

“In Paris, perhaps?” he suggested.

“Now you mention it, I think they did say Paris when I was last in the
shop.”

“Byrd is in Paris, you know,” said McEwan, meeting her eyes.

“Ah!” said Constance, and she stared at him, her lids narrowing. “I
hadn’t thought of that possibility.” She fingered her jade beads.

“I wonder if you ever write her?” he asked.

“I never write any one, my dear man, and, besides, what could I say?”

“Well,” said he, “I had a hunch you might need a new rig for the summer
Votes campaign, or something. I thought maybe you’d want the very latest
Berber styles, and would ask her to send a tip over. Then I thought
you’d string her the local gossip, how Mrs. Byrd’s baby will be born in
October, and you don’t think her looking as fit as she might. You want a
cute rattle for it from Paris, or something. Get the idea?”

“You think she doesn’t know?”

“I think the kid’s about as harmless as a short-circuited wire, but I
think she’s a sport at bottom. My dope is, _if_ there’s anything to this
proposition, then she doesn’t know.” He rose to go.

“Wallace, you are certainly a bright boy,” said Constance, holding out
her hand. “The missive shall be despatched.”

“Moreover,” said Mac, turning at the door, “Mary’s worried--a little
cheering up won’t hurt her any.”

“I’ll come out,” said Constance’. “What a shame it is--I’m so fond of
them both.”

“Yes, it’s a mean world--but we have to keep right on smiling. Good
night,” said he.

“Good night,” called Constance. “You dear, good soul,” she added to
herself.



XIII


Adolph was practising some new Futurist music of Ravel’s. Its
dissonances fatigued and irritated him, but he was lured by its horrible
fascination, and grated away with an enraged persistence. Paris was hot,
the attic hotter, for it was July. Adolph wondered as he played how long
it would be before he could get away to the sea. He was out of love
with the city, and thought longingly of a possible trip to Sweden.
His reflections were interrupted by Stefan, who pushed the door open
listlessly, and instantly implored him to stop making a din.

“What awful stuff--it’s like the Cubist horrors,” said he, petulantly.

“Yes, my friend, yet I play the one, and you go to see the other,” said
Adolph, laying down his fiddle and mopping his head and hands.

“Not I,” contradicted Stefan, wandering over to his easel. On it was an
unfinished sketch of Felicity dancing--several other impressions of her
stood about the room.

“Rotten work,” he said, surveying them moodily. “All I have to show
for over three months here. Adolph,” he flung himself into a chair, and
rumpled his hair angrily, “I’m sick of my way of life. My marriage was a
mistake, but it was better than this. I did better work with Mary than I
do with Felicity, and I didn’t hate myself.”

“Well, my infant,” said Adolph, with a relieved sigh, “I’m glad to hear
you say it. You’ve told me nothing, but I am sure your marriage was a
better thing than you think. As for this little lady--” he shrugged his
shoulders--“I make nothing of this affair.”

Stefan’s frown was moodier still.

“Felicity is the most alluring woman I have ever known, and I believe
she is fond of me. But she is affected, capricious, and a perfect mass
of egotism.”

“For egotism you are not the man to blame her,” smiled his friend.

“I know that,” shrugged Stefan. “I’ve always believed in egotism, but I
confess Felicity is a little extreme.”

“Where is she?”

“Oh, she’s gone to Biarritz for a week with a party of Americans. I
wouldn’t go. I loathe mobs of dressed-up spendthrifts. We had planned to
go to Brittany, but she said she needed a change of companionship--that
her soul must change the color of its raiment, or some such piffle.” He
laughed shortly. “Here I am hanging about in the heat, most of my money
gone, and not able to do a stroke of work. It’s hell, Adolph.”

“My boy,” said his friend, “why don’t you go home?”

“I haven’t the face, and that’s a fact. Besides, hang it, I still want
Felicity. Oh, what a mess!” he growled, sinking lower into his chair.
Suddenly Adolph jumped up.

“I had forgotten; there is a letter for you,” and he tossed one into his
lap. “It’s from America.”

Stefan flushed, and Adolph watched him as he opened the letter. The
flush increased--he gave an exclamation, and, jumping up, began walking
feverishly about the room.

“My God, Adolph, she’s heard about Felicity!” Adolph exclaimed in his
turn. “She asks me about it--what am I to do?”

“What does she say; can you tell me?” enquired the Swede, distressed.

“Tiens, I’ll read it to you,” and Stefan opened the letter and hastily
translated it aloud. “She’s so generous, poor dear,” he groaned as he
finished. Adolph’s face had assumed a deeply shocked expression. He was
red to the roots of his blonde hair.

“Is your wife then enceinte, Stefan!”

“Yes, of course she is--she cares for nothing but having children.”

“_But_, Stefan!” Adolph’s hands waved helplessly--he stammered. “It
cannot be--it is impossible, _impossible_ that you desert a beautiful
and good wife who expects your child. I cannot believe it.”

“I _haven’t_ deserted her,” Stefan retorted angrily. “I only came away
for a holiday, and the rest just happened. I should have been home by
now if I hadn’t met Felicity. Oh, you don’t understand,” he groaned,
watching his friend’s grieved, embarrassed face. “I’m fond of
Mary--devoted to her--but you don’t know what the monotony of marriage
does to a man of my sort.”

“No, I don’t understand,” echoed his friend. “But now, Stefan,” and he
brought his fist down on the table, “now you will go home, will you not,
and try to make her happy?”

“I don’t think she will forgive this,” muttered Stefan.

“This!” Adolph almost shouted. “This you will explain away, deny, so
that it troubles her no more!”

“Oh, rot, Adolph, I can’t lie to Mary,” and Stefan began to pace the
room once more.

“For her sake, it seems to me you must,” his friend urged.

“Stop talking, Adolph; I want to think!” Stefan exclaimed. He walked in
silence for a minute.

“No,” he said at last, “if my marriage is to go on, it must be on a
basis of truth. I can’t go back to Mary and act and live a lie. If she
will have me back, she must know I’ve made some sacrifice to come,
I’ll go, if she says so, because I care for her, but I _can’t_ go as a
faithful, loving husband--it would be too grotesque.”

“Consider her health, my friend,” implored Adolph, still with his
bewildered, shocked air; “it might kill her!”

“Can’t! She’s as strong as a horse--she can face the truth like a man.”

“Then think of the other woman; you must protect her.”

“Pshaw! she doesn’t need protection! You don’t know Felicity; she’d be
just as likely as not to tell Mary herself.”

“I always thought you so honorable, so generous,” Adolph murmured,
dejectedly.

“Oh, cut it, Adolph. I’m being as honorable and generous as I know how.
I’ll write to Mary now, and offer to come back if she says the word, and
never see Felicity again. I can’t do more.”

He flung himself down at the desk, and snatched a pen.

    “My dearest girl:” he wrote rapidly, “your brave letter has
    come to me, and I can answer it only with the truth. All that
    you feared when you heard of F.’s being with me is true. I
    found her here two months ago, and we have been together
    most of the time since. It was not planned, Mary; it came to
    me wholly unexpectedly, when I thought myself cured of love.
    I care for you, my dear, I believe you the noblest and most
    beautiful of women, but from F. I have had something which
    a woman of your kind could never give, and in spite of the
    pain I feel for your grief, I cannot say with truth that I regret
    it. There are things--in life and love of which you, my
    beautiful and clear-eyed Goddess, can know nothing--there is
    a wild grape, the juice of which you will never drink, but which
    once tasted, must ever be desired. Because this draught is so
    different from your own milk and honey, because it leaves my
    tenderness for you all untouched, because drinking it has assuaged
    a thirst of which you can have no knowledge, I ask you
    not to judge it with high Olympian judgment. I ask you
    to forgive me, Mary, for I love you still--better now than when
    I left you--and I hold you above all women. The cup is still
    at my lips, but if you will grant me forgiveness I will drink
    no more. I agonize over your grief--if you will let me I will
    return and try to assuage it. Write me, Mary, and if the word
    is forgive, for your sake I will bid my friend farewell now and
    forever. I am still your husband if you will have me--there
    is no woman I would serve but you.

    “Stefan.”

He signed his name in a dashing scrawl, blotted and folded the letter
without rereading it, addressed and stamped it, and sprang hatless down
the stairs to post it.

An enormous weight seemed lifted from him. He had shifted his dilemma to
the shoulders of his wife, and had no conception that in so doing he was
guilty of an act of moral cowardice. Returning to the studio, he pulled
out a clean canvas and began a vigorous drawing of two fauns chasing
each other round a tree. Presently, as he drew, he began to hum.



XIV


It was the fourth of August.

Stefan and Felicity sat at premier déjeuner on the balcony of her
apartment. About them flowers grew in boxes, a green awning hung over
them, their meal of purple fruit, coffee, and hot brioches was served
from fantastic green china over which blue dragons sprawled. Felicity’s
negligée was of the clear green of a wave’s concavity--a butterfly of
blue enamel pinned her hair. A breeze, cool from the river, fluttered
under the awning.

It was an attractive scene, but Felicity’s face drooped listlessly, and
Stefan, hands deep in the pockets of his white trousers, lay back in his
wicker chair with an expression of nervous irritability. It was early,
for the night had been too hot for late sleeping, and Yo San had not
yet brought in the newspapers and letters. Paris was tense. Germany and
Russia had declared war. France was mobilizing. Perhaps already the axe
had fallen.

Held by the universal anxiety, Stefan and Felicity had lingered on in
Paris after her return from Biarritz, instead of traveling to Brittany
as they had planned.

Stefan had another reason for remaining, which he had not imparted to
Felicity. He was waiting for Mary’s letter. It was already overdue, and
now that any hour might bring it he was wretchedly nervous as to the
result. He did not yet wish to break with Felicity, but still less did
he wish to lose Mary. Without having analyzed it to himself, he would
have liked to keep the Byrdsnest and all that it contained as a warm and
safe haven to return to after his stormy flights. He neither wished to
be anchored nor free; he desired both advantages, and the knowledge
that he would be called upon to forego one frayed his nerves. Life was
various--why sacrifice its fluid beauty to frozen forms?

“Stefan,” murmured Felicity, from behind her drooping mask, “we have had
three golden months, but I think they are now over.”

“What do you mean?” he asked crossly.

“Disharmony”--she waved a white hand--“is in the air. Beauty--the
arts--are to give place to barbarity. In a world of war, how can we
taste life delicately? We cannot. Already, my friend, the blight has
fallen upon you. Your nerves are harsh and jangled. I think”--she
folded her hands and sank back on her green cushions--“I shall make a
pilgrimage to China.”

“All of which,” said Stefan with a short laugh, “is an elaborate way of
saying you are tired of me.”

Her eyebrows raised themselves a fraction.

“You are wonderfully attractive, Stefan; you fascinate me as a panther
fascinates by its lithe grace, and your mind has the light and shade of
running brooks.”

Stefan looked pleased.

“But,” she went on, her lids still drooping, “I must have harmony. In an
atmosphere of discords I cannot live. Of your present discordant mood,
my friend, I _am_ tired, and I could not permit myself to continue to
feel bored. When I am bored, I change my milieu.”

“You are no more bored than I am, I assure you,” he snapped rudely.

“It is such remarks as those,” breathed Felicity, “which make love
impossible.” Her eyes closed.

He pushed back his chair. “Oh, my dear girl, do have some sense of
humor,” he said, fumbling for a cigarette.

Yo San entered with a folded newspaper, and a plate of letters for
Felicity. She handed one to Stefan. “Monsieur Adolph leave this,” she
said.

Disregarding the paper, Felicity glanced through her mail, and
abstracted a thick envelope addressed in Constance’s sprightly hand.
Stefan’s letter was from Mary; he moved to the end of the balcony and
tore it open. A banker’s draft fell from it.

    “Good-bye, Stefan,” he read, “I can’t forgive you. What you
    have done shames me to the earth. You have broken our marriage.
    It was a sacred thing to me--now it is profaned. I ask
    nothing from you, and enclose you the balance of your own
    money. I can make my living and care for the children, whom
    you never wanted.”

The last three words scrawled slantingly down the page; they were
in large and heavier writing--they looked like a cry. The letter was
unsigned, and smudged. It might have been written by a dying person.
The sight of it struck him with unbearable pain. He stood, staring at it
stupidly.

Felicity called him three times before he noticed her--the last time she
had to raise her voice quite loudly. He turned then, and saw her sitting
with unwonted straightness at the table. Her eyes were wide open, and
fixed.

“I have a letter from Connie.” She spoke almost crisply. “Why did you
not tell me that your wife was enceinte?”

“Why should I tell you?” he asked, staring at her with indifference.

“Had I known it I should not have lived with you. I thought she had let
you come here alone through phlegmatic British coldness. If she lost
you, it was her affair. This is different. You have not played fair with
us.”

“Mary was never cold,” said Stefan dully, ignoring her accusation.

“That makes it worse.” She sat like a ramrod; her face might have been
ivory; her hands lay folded across the open letter.

“What do you know--or care--about Mary?” he said heavily; “you never
even liked her.”

“Your wife bored me, but I admired her. Women nearly always bore me, but
I believe in them far more than men, and wish to uphold them.”

“You chose a funny way of doing so this time,” he said, dropping into
his chair with a hopeless sigh.

She looked at him with distaste. “True, I mistook the situation.
Conventions are nothing to me. But I have a spiritual code to which I
adhere. This affair no longer harmonizes with it. I trust--” Felicity
relaxed into her cushions--“you will return to your wife immediately.”

“Thanks,” he said ironically. “But you’re too late. Mary knows, and has
thrown me over.”

There was silence for several minutes. Then Stefan rose, picked up the
draft from the floor, looked at it idly, refolded it into Mary’s letter,
and put both carefully away in his inside pocket. His face was very
pale.

“Adieu, Felicity,” he said quietly. “You are quite right about it.” And
he held out his hand.

“Adieu, Stefan,” she answered, waving her hand toward his, but not
touching it. “I am sorry about your wife.”

Turning, he went in through the French window.

Felicity waited until she heard the thud of the apartment door, then
struck her hands together. Yo San appeared.

“A kirtle, Yo San. I must dance away a wound. Afterwards I will think.
Be prepared for packing. We may leave Paris. It is time again for work.”

Stefan, walking listlessly toward his studio, found the streets filled
with crowds. Newsboys shrieked; men stood in groups gesticulating; there
were cries of “Vive la France!” and “A bas l’Allemagne!” Everywhere was
seething but suppressed excitement. As he passed a great hotel he found
the street, early as it was, blocked with departing cabs piled high with
baggage.

“War is declared,” he thought, but the knowledge conveyed nothing to his
senses. He crossed the Seine, and found himself in his own quarter. At
the corner of the rue des Trois Ermites a hand-organ, surrounded by
a cosmopolitan crowd of students, was shrilly grinding out the
Marseillaise. The students sang to it, cheering wildly.

“Who fights for France?” a voice yelled hoarsely, and among cheers a
score of hands went up.

“Who fights for France?” Stefan stood stock still, then hurried past the
crowd, and up the stairs to his attic.

There, in the midst of gaping drawers and fast emptying shelves, stood
Adolph in his shirt sleeves, methodically packing his possessions into
a hair trunk. He looked up as his friend entered; his mild face was
alight; tears of excitement stood in his eyes.

“Ah, my infant,” he exclaimed, “it has arrived! The Germans are across
the frontier. I go to fight for France.”

“Adolph!” cried Stefan, seizing and wringing his friend’s hand. “Thank
God there’s something great to be done in the world after all! I go with
you.”

“But your wife, Stefan?”

Stefan drew out Mary’s letter. For the first time his eyes were wet.

“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.

Luckily, the Sparrow took to Jensen at once, so there was nothing to
fear on that score. For the Sparrow was now a permanent part of Mary’s
life. She had a small independent income, but no home--her widowed
sister having gone west to live with a daughter--and she looked upon
herself as the appointed guardian of the Byrdsnest. Not only did she
relieve Mary of the housekeeping, and help Lily with the household
tasks, which she adored, but she had practically taken the place of
nurse to the children, leaving Mary hours of freedom for her work which
would otherwise have been unattainable.

The competency of the two friends achieved the impossible in the
next few weeks, as it had done on the memorable first day of Mary’s
housekeeping. Mr. Jensen, with his trained taste, was invaluable for
shopping expeditions, going back and forth to the city with catalogues,
samples, and orders.

In a little over three weeks Stefan’s old studio had been transformed
into a bed-sitting-room, with every comfort that an invalid could
desire, and the further end of it had been partitioned into a bathroom
and a small bedroom for Mr. Jensen, with a separate outside entrance.

“Oh, if only I had the new wing,” sighed Mary.

“This will be even quieter for him, Mrs. Byrd, and the chair can be
wheeled so quickly to the house,” replied Mr. Jensen.

The back window of Mary’s sitting room had been enlarged to glass doors,
and from these a concrete path ran to the studio entrance. Mary planned
to make it a covered way after the summer.

The day the wheeled chair arrived it was hard for her to keep back the
tears. It was a beautifully made thing of springs, cushions, and rubber
tires. It could be pushed, or hand-propelled by the occupant. It could
be lowered, heightened, or tilted. It was all that a chair could be--but
how to picture Stefan in it, he of the lithe steps and quick, agile
movements, the sudden turns, and the swift, almost running walk? Her
heart trembled with pity at the thought.

They had already received an “all well” cable from Paris, and three
weeks after he had sailed, James telegraphed that they were starting. He
had waited for the American line--he would have been gone a month.

As the day of landing approached, Mary became intensely nervous. She
decided not to meet the boat, and sent James a wireless to that effect.
She could not see Stefan first among all those crowds; her instinct told
her that he, too, would not wish it.

The ship docked on Saturday. The day before, the last touches had been
put to Stefan’s quarters. They were as perfect as care and taste could
make them. Early on Saturday morning Mr. Jensen started for the city,
carrying a big bunch of roses--Mary’s welcome to her husband. While the
Sparrow flew about the house gilding the lily of cleanliness, Mary, with
Elliston at her skirts, picked the flowers destined for Stefan’s room.
These she arranged in every available vase--the studio sang with
them. Every now and then she would think of some trifle to beautify it
further--a drawing from her sitting room--her oldest pewter plate for
another ashtray--a pine pillow from her bedroom. Elliston’s fat legs
became so tired with ceaselessly trotting back and forth behind her that
he began to cry with fatigue, and was put to bed for his nap. Rosamond
waked, demanding dinner and amusement.

The endless morning began to pass, and all this while Mary had not
thought!

At lunch time James telephoned. They would be out by three o’clock.
Stefan had stood the journey well, was delighted with the roses, and to
see Jensen. He was wonderfully brave and cheerful.

Mary was trembling as she hung up the receiver. He was here, he was on
the way; and still, she had not thought!

Both children asleep, the last conceivable preparation made, Mary
settled herself on the porch at last, to face what was coming.

The Sparrow peeped out at her.

“I guess you’d as soon be left alone, my dear,” she said, tactfully.

“Yes, please, Sparrow,” Mary replied, with a nervous smile. The little
spinster slipped away.

What did she feel for Stefan? Mary wondered. Pity, deep pity? Yes. But
that she would feel for any wounded soldier. Admiration for his courage?
That, too, any one of the war’s million heroes could call forth.
Determination to do her full duty by this stricken member of her family?
Of course, she would have done that for any relative. Love? No. Mary
felt no love for Stefan. That had died, nearly a year ago, died in agony
and humiliation. She could not feel that her lover, her husband, was
returning to her. She waited only for a wounded man to whom she owed the
duty of all kindness.

Suddenly, her heart shook with fear. What if she were unable to show
him more than pity, more than kindness? What if he, stricken, helpless,
should feel her lack of warmth, and tenderness, should feel himself a
stranger here in this his only refuge? Oh, no, no! She must do better
than that. She must act a part. He must feel himself cared for, wanted.
Surely he, who had lost everything, could ask so much for old love’s
sake? ... But if she could not give it? Terror assailed her, the terror
of giving pain; for she knew that of all women she was least capable of
insincerity. “I don’t know how to act,” she cried to herself, pitifully.

A car honked in the lane. They were here. She jumped up and ran to the
gate, wheeling the waiting chair outside it. Farraday’s big car rounded
the bend--three men sat in the tonneau. Seeing them, Mary ran suddenly
back inside the gate; her eyes fell, she dared not look.

The car had stopped. Through half-raised lids she saw James alight. The
chauffeur ran to the chair. Jensen stood up in the car, and some one
was lifted from it. The chair wheeled about and came toward her. It was
through the gate--it was only a yard away.

“Mary,” said a voice. She looked up.

There was the well-known face, strangely young, the eyes large and
shadowed. There was his smile, eager, and very anxious now. There were
his hands, those finely nervous hands. They lay on a rug, beneath which
were the once swift limbs that could never move again. He was all hers
now. His wings were broken, and, broken, he was returning to the nest.

“Mary!”

She made one step forward. Stooping, she gathered his head to her
breast, that breast where, loverlike, it had lain a hundred times. Her
arms held him close, her tears ran down upon his hair.

“My boy!” she cried.

Here was no lover, no husband to be forgiven. Cradled upon her heart
there lay only her first, her most wayward, and her best loved child.



III


Mary never told Stefan of those nightmare moments before his arrival.
From the instant that her deepest passion, the maternal, had answered to
his need, she knew neither doubt nor unhappiness.

She settled down to the task of creating by her labor and love a home
where her three dependents and her three faithful helpmates could find
the maximum of happiness and peace.

The life of the Byrdsnest centered about Stefan; every one thought first
of him and his needs. Next in order of consideration came Ellie and
little Rosamond. Then Lily had to be remembered. She must not be
overworked; she must take enough time off. Henrik, too, must not be
over-conscientious. He must allow Mary to relieve him often enough.
As for the Sparrow, she must not wear herself out flying in three
directions at once. She must not tire her eyes learning typewriting. But
at this point Mary’s commands were apt to be met with contempt.

“Now, Mary Byrd,” the Sparrow would chirp truculently, “you ‘tend to
your business, and let me ‘tend to mine. Anybody would think that we
were all to save ourselves in this house but you. As for my typing, it’s
funny if I can’t save you something on those miserable stenographers’
bills.”

Mary was wonderfully happy in these days--happier in a sense than she
had ever been, for she had found, beyond all question, the full work for
hands to do. And to her love for her children there was added not merely
her maternal tenderness for Stefan, but a deep and growing admiration.

For Stefan was changed not only in the body, but in the spirit.
Everybody remarked it. The fierce fires of war seemed to have burnt away
his old confident egotism. In giving himself to France he had found more
than he had lost; for, by a strange paradox, in the midst of death he
had found belief in life.

“Mary, my beautiful,” he said to her one day in September, as he worked
at an adjustable drawing board which swung across his knees, “did you
ever wonder why all my old pictures used to be of rapid movement, nearly
all of running or flying?”

“Yes, dearest, I used to try often to think out the significance of it.”

They were in the studio. Mary had just dropped her pencil after a couple
of hours’ work on a new serial she was writing. She often worked now in
Stefan’s room. He was busy with a series of drawings of the war. He had
tried different media--pastel, ink, pencils, and chalks--to see which
were the easiest for sedentary work.

“It’s good-bye to oils,” he had said, “I couldn’t paint a foot from the
canvas.”

Now he was using a mixture of chalk and charcoal, and was in the act
of finishing the sixth drawing of his series. The big doors of the barn
were opened wide to the sunny lawn, gay with a riot of multicolored
dahlias.

“It’s odd,” said Stefan, pushing away his board and turning the wheels
of his chair so that he faced the brilliant stillness of the garden,
“but I seem never to have understood my work till now. I used always
to paint flight partly because it was beautiful in itself but also, I
think, with some hazy notion that swift creatures could always escape
from the ugliness of life.”

Mary came and sat by him, taking his hand.

“It seems to me,” he went on, “that I spent my life flying from what I
thought was ugly. I always refused to face realities, Mary, unless
they were pleasant. I fled even from the great reality of our marriage
because it meant responsibilities and monotony, and they seemed ugly
things to me. And now, Mary,” he smiled, “now that I can never shoulder
responsibilities again, and am condemned to lifelong monotony”--she
pressed his hand--“neither seems ugly any more. The truth is, I thought
I fled to get away from things, and it was really to get away from
myself. Now that I’ve seen such horrors, such awful suffering, and such
unbelievable sacrifice, I have something to think about so much more
real than my vain, egotistical self. I know what my work is now,
something much better than just creating beauty. I gave my body to
France--that was nothing. But now I have to give her my soul--I have to
try and make it a voice to tell the world a little of what she has done.
Am I too vain, dearest, in thinking that these really say something
big?”

He nodded toward his first five drawings, which hung in a row on the
wall.

“Oh, Stefan, you know what I think of them,” she said, her eyes shining.

“Would you mind pinning up the new one, Mary, so that we can see them
all together?”

She rose and, unfastening the drawing from its board, pinned it beside
the others. Then she turned his chair to face them, and they both looked
silently at the pictures.

They were drawings of the French lines, and the peasant life behind
them. Dead soldiers, old women by a grave, young mothers following the
plow--men tense, just before action. The subjects were already familiar
enough through the work of war correspondents and photographers, but
the treatment was that of a great artist. The soul of a nation was
there--which is always so much greater than the soul of an individual.
The drawings were not of men and women, but of one of the world’s
greatest races at the moment of its transfiguration.

For the twentieth time Mary’s eyes moistened as she looked at them.

The shadows began to lengthen. Shouts came from the slope, and presently
Ellie’s sturdy form appeared through the trees, followed by the somewhat
disheveled Sparrow carrying Rosamond, who was smiting her shoulder and
crowing loudly.

“I’ll come and help you in a few minutes, Sparrow,” Mary called, as the
procession crossed the lawn, her face beaming love upon it.

“Can you spare the few minutes, dear?” Stefan asked, watching her.

“Yes, indeed, they won’t need me yet.”

The light was quite golden now; the dahlias seemed on fire under it.

“Mary,” said Stefan, “I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately.”

“Have you, dear?”

“Yes, I never tried to understand you in the old days. I had never met
your sort of woman before, and didn’t trouble to think about you except
as a beautiful being to love. I was too busy thinking about myself,”
 he smiled. “I wondered, without understanding it, where you got your
strength, why everything you touched seemed to turn to order and
helpfulness under your hands. I think now it is because you are always
so true to life--to the things life really means. Every one always
approves and upholds you, because in you the race itself is expressed,
not merely one of its sports, as with me.”

She looked a little puzzled. “Do you mean, dearest, because I have
children?”

“No, Beautiful, any one can do that. I mean because you have in perfect
balance and control all the qualities that should be passed on to
children, if the race is to be happy. You are so divinely normal, Mary,
that’s what it is, and yet you are not dull.”

“Oh, I’m afraid I am,” smiled Mary, “rather a bromide, in fact.”

He shook his head, with his old brilliant smile.

“No, dearest, nobody as beautiful and as vital as you can be dull to any
one who is not out of tune with life. I used to be that, so I’m afraid I
thought you so, now and then.”

“I know you did,” she laughed, “and I thought you fearfully erratic.”

He laughed back. They had both passed the stage in which the truth has
power to hurt.

“I remember Mr. Gunther talking to me a little as you have been doing,”
 she recalled, “when he came to model me. I don’t quite understand either
of you. I think you’re just foolishly prejudiced in my favor because you
admire me.”

“What about the Farradays, and Constance, and the Sparrow and Lily and
Henrik and McEwan and the Havens and Madame Corriani and--”

“Oh, stop!” she laughed, covering his mouth with her hand.

“And even in Paris,” he concluded, holding the hand, “Adolph, and--yes,
and Felicity Berber. Are they all ‘prejudiced in your favor’?”

“Why do you include the last named?” she asked, rather low. It was the
first time Felicity had been spoken of between them.

“She threw me over, Mary, the hour she discovered how it was with you,”
 he said quietly.

“That was rather decent of her. I’m glad you told me that,” she answered
after a pause.

“All this brings me to what I really want to say,” he continued, still
holding her hand in his. “You are so alive, you _are_ life; and yet
you’re chained to a half-dead man.”

“Oh, don’t, dearest,” she whispered, deeply distressed.

“Yes, let me finish. I shan’t last very long, my dear--two or three
years, perhaps--long enough to say what I must about France. I want you
to go on living to the full. I want you to marry again, Mary, and have
more beautiful, strong children.”

“Oh, darling, don’t! Don’t speak of such things,” she begged, her lips
trembling.

“I’ve finished, Beautiful. That’s all I wanted to say. Just for you to
remember,” he smiled.

Her arms went round him. “You’re bad,” she whispered, “I shan’t
remember.”

“Here comes Henrik,” he replied. “Run in to your babies.”

He watched her swinging steps as, after a farewell kiss, she sped down
the little path.



IV


Stefan’s moods were not always calm. He had his hours of fierce
rebellion, when he felt he could not endure another moment with his
deadened carcass; when, without life, it seemed so much better to
die. He had days of passionate longing for the world, for love, for
everything he had lost. Mary fell into the habit of borrowing the
Farradays’ car when she saw such a mood approaching, and sending Stefan
for long drives alone. The rushing flight seldom failed to carry him
beyond the reach of his black mood. Returning, he would plunge into
work, and the next day would find him calm and smiling once again.
He suffered much pain from his back, but this he bore with admirable
patience.

“It’s nothing,” he would say, “compared to the black devils.”

Stefan’s courage was enormously fortified by the success of his
drawings, which created little less than a sensation. Reproductions of
them appeared for some weeks in The Household Review, and were recopied
everywhere. The originals were exhibited by Constantine in November.

    “Here,” wrote one of the most distinguished critics in New
    York, himself a painter of repute, “we have work which outranks
    even Mr. Byrd’s celebrated Danaë, and in my judgment
    far surpasses any of the artist’s other achievements. I have
    watched the development of this young American genius with
    the keenest interest. I placed him in the first rank as a technichian,
    but his work--with the exception of the Danaë--appeared
    to me to lack substance and insight. It was brilliant,
    but too spectacular. Even his Danaë, though on a surprising
    inspirational plane, had a quality high rather than profound,
    I doubted if Mr. Byrd had the stuff of which great art is made,
    but after seeing his war drawings, I confess myself mistaken.
    If I were to sum up my impression of them I should say that
    on the battlefield Mr. Byrd has discovered the one thing his
    work lacked--soul.”

Stefan read this eulogy with a humorous grin.

“I expect the fellow’s right,” he said. “I don’t think my soul was
as strong on wings in the old days as my brush was. Without joking,
though,” he went on, suddenly grave, “I don’t know if there is such a
thing as a soul, but if there is, such splendid ones were being spilled
out there that I think, perhaps, Mary, I may have picked a bit of one
up.”

“Dearest,” said Mary, with a kiss of comprehension, “I’m so proud of
you. You are great, a great artist, and a great spirit.” And she kissed
him again, her eyes shining.

If the Byrdsnest was proud in November of its distinguished head,
it positively bristled with importance in December, when Constantine
telephoned that the trustees of the Metropolitan were negotiating for
Stefan’s whole series. This possibility had already been spoken of
in the press, though the family had not dared hope too much from the
suggestion.

The Museum bought the drawings, and Stefan took his place as one of
America’s great artists.

“Mary, I’m so glad I can be useful again, as well as ornamental,” he
grinned, presenting to her with a flourish a delightfully substantial
cheque.

His courage, and his happiness in his success, were an increasing joy to
Mary. She blossomed in her pride of him, and the old glowing look came
back to her face.

Only one thing--besides her anxiety for his health--troubled her. With
all his tenderness to her, and his renewed love, he still remained a
stranger to his children. He seemed proud of their healthy beauty, and
glad of Mary’s happiness in them; but their nearness bored and tired
him, and they, quick to perceive this, became hopelessly unresponsive in
his presence. Ellie would back solemnly away from the approaching chair,
and Rosamond would hang mute upon her mother’s shoulder. “It’s strange,”
 Mary said to the Sparrow, who was quick to notice any failure to
appreciate her adored charges; “they’re his own, and yet he hasn’t the
key to them. I suppose it’s because he’s a genius, and too far apart
from ordinary people to understand just little human babies.”

The thought stirred faintly the memory of her old wound.



V


That Christmas, for the first time in its history, the Byrdsnest held
high festival. House and studio were decorated, and in the afternoon
there was a Christmas-tree party for all the old friends and their
children.

The dining-room had been closed since the night before in order to
facilitate Santa Clans’ midnight spiritings.

When all the guests had arrived, and Stefan had been wheeled in from the
studio, the mysterious door was at last thrown open, revealing the tree
in all its glory, rooted in a floor of glittering snow, with its topmost
star scraping the ceiling.

With shouts the older children surrounded it; Ellie followed more
slowly, awed by such splendor; and Rosamond crept after, drawn
irresistibly by a hundred glittering lures.

Crawling from guest to guest, her tiny hands clutching toys as big as
herself, her dark eyes brilliant, her small red mouth emitting coos of
rapture, she enchanted the men, and drew positive tears of delight from
Constance.

“Oh, Walter!” she cried, shaking her son with viciousness, “how could
you have been so monotonous as to be born a boy?”

After a time Mary noticed that Stefan was being tired by the hubbub,
and signaled an adjournment to the studio for tea and calm. The elders
trooped out; the children fell upon the viands; and Miss Mason caught
Rosamond by the petticoat as she endeavored to creep out after Gunther,
whose great size seemed to fascinate her.

The sculptor had given Mary a bronze miniature of his now famous
“Pioneers” group. It was a beautiful thing, and Constance and James were
anxious to know if other copies were to be obtained.

“No,” Gunther answered them laconically, “I have only had three cast.
One the President wished to have, the second is for myself, and Mrs.
Byrd, as the original of the woman, naturally has the third.”

“Couldn’t you cast one or two more?” Constance pleaded.

“No,” he replied, “I should not care to do so.”

Stefan examined the bronze with interest, his keen eyes traveling from
the man’s figure to the woman’s.

“It’s very good of you both,” he said, looking from Gunther to Mary,
with a trace of his old teasing smile. Mary blushed slightly. For some
reason which she did not analyze she was a trifle embarrassed at seeing
herself perpetuated in bronze as the companion of the sculptor.

When the guests began to leave, Mary urged the Farradays to remain a
little longer. “It’s only five o’clock,” she reminded them.

Mrs. Farraday settled herself comfortably, and drew out her
khaki-colored knitting. James lit his pipe, and Stefan wheeled forward
to the glow of the fire, fitting a cigarette into his new amber holder.

“I have a letter from Wallace,” said James, “that I’ve been waiting to
read you. Shall I do so now?”

“Oh, do!” exclaimed Mary, “we shall love to hear it. Wait a moment,
though, while I fetch Rosamond--the Sparrow can’t attend to them both at
once _and_ help Lily.”

She returned in a moment with the sleepy baby.

“I’ll have to put her to bed soon,” she said, settling into a low
rocking chair, “but it isn’t quite time yet. I suppose Jamie has heard
his father’s letter?”

“Oh, yes,” said James, “and has dozens of his own, too.”

“He’s such a dear boy,” Mary continued, “he’s playing like an angel with
Ellie in there, while the Sparrow flits.”

James unfolded Mac’s closely written sheets, and read his latest
accounts of the officers’ training corps with which he had been for the
last six months, the gossip that filtered to them from the front, and
his expectation of being soon gazetted to a Highland Regiment.

    “The waiting is hard, but when once I get with our own
    lads in the trenches I’ll be the happiest man alive,” wrote Mac.
    “Meanwhile, I think a lot of all you dear people. I’m more
    than happy in what you tell me of Byrd’s success and of the
    bairns’ and Mary’s well being. Give them all my love and
    congratulations.”

James turned the last page, and paused. “I think that’s about all,” he
said.

But it was not all. While the others sat silent for a minute, their
thoughts on the great struggle, Farraday’s eyes ran again down that last
page.

    “Poor Byrd,” Mac wrote, “so you say he’ll not last many
    years. Well, life would have broken him anyway, and it’s
    grand he’s found himself before the end. He’s not the lasting
    kind, there’s too much in him, and too little. She wins, after
    all, James; life won’t cheat her as it has him. She is here just
    to be true to her instincts--to choose the finest mate for her
    nest-building. She’ll marry again, though the dear woman
    doesn’t know it, and would be horrified at the thought. But
    she will, and it won’t be either of us--we are too much her kind.
    It will be some other brilliant egoist who will thrill her, grind
    her heart, and give her wonderful children. She is an instrument.
    As I think I once heard poor Byrd say, she is not merely
    an expression of life, she is life.”

James folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket.

“Come, son, we must be going,” murmured Mrs. Farraday, putting up her
knitting.

“Rosamond is almost asleep,” smiled Mary.

“Don’t rise, my dear,” said the little lady, “we’ll find our own way.”

“Good-bye, Farraday,” said Stefan, “and thank you for everything.”

Mary held out her hand to them both, and they slipped quietly out.

“What a good day it has been, dearest. I hope you aren’t too tired,” she
said, as she rocked the drowsy baby.

“No, Beautiful, only a little.”

He dropped his burnt-out cigarette into the ash-tray at his side. The
rocker creaked rhythmically.

“Mary, I want to draw Rosamond,” said Stefan thoughtfully.

“Oh, do you, dearest? That _will_ be nice!” she exclaimed, her face
breaking into a smile of pleasure.

“Yes. Do you know, I was watching the little thing this afternoon, when
Gunther and all the others were playing with her. It’s very strange--I
never noticed it before--but it came to me quite suddenly. She’s exactly
like my mother.”

“Is she really?” Mary murmured, touched.

“Yes, it’s very wonderful. I felt suddenly, watching her eyes and smile,
that my mother is not dead after all. Will you--” he seemed a little
embarrassed--“could you, do you think, without disturbing her, let me
hold the baby for a little while?”

THE END





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