The Nest Builder Part 50

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 s.h.i.+ning.

"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 st.u.r.dy 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 pa.s.sed 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, n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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 carca.s.s; when, without life, it seemed so much better to die. He had days of pa.s.sionate 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 Danae, and in my judgment far surpa.s.ses 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 Danae--appeared to me to lack substance and insight. It was brilliant, but too spectacular. Even his Danae, 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.