The Nest Builder Part 43

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 Sat.u.r.day 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 sc.r.a.p--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 a.s.sa.s.sination o' the Grand Duke now?" He c.o.c.ked 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sailed 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sed 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.