The Nest Builder Part 5

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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs--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 G.o.ds. 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 pa.s.sionately 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 r.e.t.a.r.ding 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 a.s.sistance 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 a.s.sured 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 endors.e.m.e.nt of Miss Mason's views. The man of G.o.d, 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 grat.i.tude 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 munic.i.p.al 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 s.h.i.+pboard, 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 trans.m.u.ted 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 att.i.tude, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton Square, but that even there rents are fearfully high.

It's at the foot of Fifth Avenue, he says, which sounds very fas.h.i.+onable 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 rea.s.surance. "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 s.h.i.+mmering 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 antic.i.p.ations 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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.