The Nest Builder Part 4

"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, rea.s.sembling 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 b.u.t.ting 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 G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+ning.

"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 pa.s.senger 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 succes!" 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 const.i.tutional 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess elusive even in yielding. He aspired, and saw her, Cytheria-like, s.h.i.+ning 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 a.s.serted 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?"