The Nest Builder Part 26

"Stefan dear," she said, giving him rather a hara.s.sed 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 ap.r.o.n, 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 G.o.ddesses 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 s.p.a.cious."

"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 G.o.d 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 a.s.semblage 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 gra.s.s. 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.serby--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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 peac.o.c.k'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 fas.h.i.+on. Mary could not help wis.h.i.+ng 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.