Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Charles Franks, Juliet
Sutherland, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE NEST-BUILDER
_A NOVEL_
By Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
Author Of “What Women Want”
_With A Frontispiece By J. Henry_
CONTENTS
PART I
MATE-SONG
PART II
MATED
PART III
THE NESTLING
PART IV
WINGS
PART V
THE BUILDER
PART I
MATE-SONG
I
Outbound from Liverpool, the Lusitania bucked down the Irish Sea against
a September gale. Aft in her second-class quarters each shouldering from
the waves brought a sickening vibration as one or another of the ship's
great propellers raced out of water. The gong had sounded for the second
sitting, and trails of hungry and weary travelers, trooping down the
companionway, met files of still more uneasy diners emerging from the
saloon. The grinding jar of the vessel, the heavy smell of food, and
the pound of ragtime combined to produce an effect as of some sordid
and demoniac orgy--an effect derided by the smug respectability of the
saloon's furnishings.
Stefan Byrd, taking in the scene as he balanced a precarious way to his
seat, felt every hypercritical sense rising in revolt. Even the prosaic
but admirably efficient table utensils repelled him. “They are so
useful, so abominably enduring,” he thought. The mahogany trimmings of
doors and columns seemed to announce from every overpolished surface a
pompous self-sufficiency. Each table proclaimed the aesthetic level of
the second class through the lifeless leaves of a rubber plant and
two imitation cut-glass dishes of tough fruit. The stewards, casually
hovering, lacked the democracy which might have humanized the steerage
as much as the civility which would have oiled the workings of the first
cabin. Byrd resented their ministrations as he did the heavy English
dishes of the bill of fare. There were no Continental passengers near
him. He had left the dear French tongue behind, and his ears, homesick
already, shrank equally from the see-saw Lancashire of the stewards and
the monotonous rasp of returning Americans.
Byrd's left hand neighbor, a clergyman of uncertain denomination, had
tried vainly for several minutes to attract his attention by clearing
his throat, passing the salt, and making measured requests for water,
bread, and the like.
“I presume, sir,” he at last inquired loudly, “that you are an American,
and as glad as I am to be returning to our country?”
“No, sir,” retorted Byrd, favoring his questioner with a withering
stare, “I am a Bohemian, and damnably sorry that I ever have to see
America again.”
The man of God turned away, pale to the temples with offense--a
high-bosomed matron opposite emitted a shocked “Oh!”--the faces of
the surrounding listeners assumed expressions either dismayed or
deprecating. Budding conversationalists were temporarily frost-bitten,
and the watery helpings of fish were eaten in a constrained silence. But
with the inevitable roast beef a Scot of unshakeable manner, decorated
with a yellow forehead-lock as erect as a striking cobra, turned
to follow up what he apparently conceived to be an opportunity for
discussion.
“I'm not so strongly partial to the States mysel', ye ken, but I'll
confess it's a grand place to mak' money. Ye would be going there,
perhaps, to improve your fortunes?”
Byrd was silent.
“Also,” continued the Scot, quite unrebuffed, “it would be interesting
to know what exactly ye mean when ye call yoursel' a Bohemian. Would ye
be referring to your tastes, now, or to your nationality?”
His hand trembling with nervous temper, Byrd laid down his napkin, and
rose with an attempt at dignity somewhat marred by the viselike clutch
of the swivel chair upon his emerging legs.
“My mother was a Bohemian, my father an American. Neither, happily,
was Scotch,” said he, almost stammering in his attempt to control his
extreme distaste of his surroundings--and hurried out of the saloon,
leaving a table of dropped jaws behind him.
“The young man is nairvous,” contentedly boomed the Scot. “I'm thinking
he'll be feeling the sea already. What kind of a place would Bohemia,
be, d'ye think, to have a mother from?” turning to the clergyman.
“A place of evil life, seemingly,” answered that worthy in his
high-pitched, carrying voice. “I shall certainly ask to have my seat
changed. I cannot subject myself for the voyage to the neighborhood of a
man of profane speech.”
The table nodded approval.
“A traitor to his country, too,” said a pursy little man opposite,
snapping his jaws shut like a turtle.
A bony New England spinster turned deprecating eyes to him. “My,” she
whispered shrilly, “he was just terrible, wasn't he? But so handsome!
I can't help but think it was more seasickness with him than an evil
nature.”
Meanwhile the subject of discussion, who would have writhed far more at
the spinster's palliation of his offense than at the men's disdain,
lay in his tiny cabin, a prey to an attack of that nervous misery which
overtakes an artist out of his element as surely and speedily as air
suffocates a fish.
Stefan Byrd's table companions were guilty in his eyes of the one
unforgivable sin--they were ugly. Ugly alike in feature, dress, and
bearing, they had for him absolutely no excuse for existence. He felt no
bond of common humanity with them. In his lexicon what was not beautiful
was not human, and he recognized no more obligation of good fellowship
toward them than he would have done toward a company of ground-hogs.
He lay back, one fine and nervous hand across his eyes, trying to
obliterate the image of the saloon and all its inmates by conjuring up a
vision of the world he had left, the winsome young cosmopolitan Paris of
the art student. The streets, the cafés, the studios; his few men, his
many women, friends--Adolph Jensen, the kindly Swede who loved him;
Louise, Nanette, the little Polish Yanina, who had said they loved him;
the slanting-glanced Turkish students, the grave Syrians, the democratic
un-British Londoners--the smell, the glamour of Paris, returned to him
with the nostalgia of despair.
These he had left. To what did he go?
II
In his shivering, creaking little cabin, suspended, as it were, by the
uncertain waters between two lives, Byrd forced himself to remember
the America he had known before his Paris days. He recalled his
birthplace--a village in upper Michigan--and his mental eyes bored
across the pictures that came with the running speed of a cinematograph
to his memory.
The place was a village, but it called itself a city. The last he had
seen of it was the “depot,” a wooden shed surrounded by a waste of
rutted snow, and backed by grimy coal yards. He could see the broken
shades of the town's one hotel, which faced the tracks, drooping across
their dirty windows, and the lopsided sign which proclaimed from the
porch roof in faded gilt on black the name of “C. E. Trench, Prop.” He
could see the swing-doors of the bar, and hear the click of balls from
the poolroom advertising the second of the town's distractions. He could
smell the composite odor of varnish, stale air, and boots, which made
the overheated station waiting-room hideous. Heavy farmers in ear-mitts,
peaked caps, and fur collars spat upon the hissing stove round which
their great hide boots sprawled. They were his last memory of his fellow
citizens.
Looking farther back Stefan saw the town in summer. There were trees in
the street where he lived, but they were all upon the sidewalk-public
property. In their yards (the word garden, he recalled, was never used)
the neighbors kept, with unanimity, in the back, washing, and in the
front, a porch. Over these porches parched vines crept--the town's
enthusiasm for horticulture went as far as that--and upon them
concentrated the feminine social life of the place. Of this intercourse
the high tones seemed to be giggles, and the bass the wooden thuds of
rockers. Street after street he could recall, from the square about
the “depot” to the outskirts, and through them all the dusty heat, the
rockers, gigglers, the rustle of a shirt-sleeved father's newspaper, and
the shrill coo-ees of the younger children. Finally, the piano--for he
looked back farther than the all-conquering phonograph. He heard “Nita,
Juanita;” he heard “Sweet Genevieve.”
Beyond the village lay the open country, level, blindingly hot,
half-cultivated, with the scorched foliage of young trees showing in the
ruins of what had been forest land. Across it the roads ran straight as
rulers. In the winter wolves were not unknown there; in the summer there
were tramps of many strange nationalities, farm hands and men bound for
the copper mines. For the most part they walked the railroad ties, or
rode the freight cars; winter or summer, the roads were never wholly
safe, and children played only in the town.
There, on the outskirts, was a shallow, stony river, but deep enough at
one point for gingerly swimming. Stefan seemed never to have been cool
through the summer except when he was squatting or paddling in this
hole. He remembered only indistinctly the boys with whom he bathed;
he had no friends among them. But there had been a little girl with
starched white skirts, huge blue bows over blue eyes, and yellow hair,
whom he had admired to adoration. She wanted desperately to bathe in
the hole, and he demanded of her mother that this be permitted. Stefan
smiled grimly as he recalled the horror of that lady, who had boxed his
ears for trying to lead her girl into ungodliness, and to scandalize the
neighbors. The friendship had been kept up surreptitiously after this,
with interchange of pencils and candy, until the little girl--he
had forgotten her name--put her tongue out at him over a matter of
chewing-gum which he had insisted she should not use. Revolted, he
played alone again.
The Presbyterian Church Stefan remembered as a whitewashed praying box,
resounding to his father's high-pitched voice. It was filled with heat
and flies from without in summer, and heat and steam from within in
winter. The school, whitewashed again, he recalled as a succession
of banging desks, flying paper pellets, and the drone of undigested
lessons. Here the water bucket loomed as the alleviation in summer, or
the red hot oblong of the open stove in winter time. Through all these
scenes, by an egotistical trick of the brain, he saw himself moving,
a small brown-haired boy, with olive skin and queer, greenish eyes,
entirely alien, absolutely lonely, completely critical. He saw himself
in too large, ill-chosen clothes, the butt of his playfellows. He saw
the sidelong, interested glances of little girls change to curled lips
and tossed heads at the grinning nudge of their boy companions. He saw
the harassed eyes of an anaemic teacher stare uncomprehendingly at
him over the pages of an exercise book filled with colored drawings of
George III and the British flag, instead of a description of the battle
of Bunker Hill. He remembered the hatred he had felt even then for
the narrowness of the local patriotism which had prompted him to this
revenge. As a result, he saw himself backed against the schoolhouse
wall, facing with contempt a yelling, jumping tangle of boys who, from
a safe distance, called upon the “traitor” and the “Dago” to come and
be licked. He felt the rage mount in his head like a burning wave, saw
a change in the eyes and faces of his foes, felt himself spring with a
catlike leap, his lips tight above his teeth and his arms moving like
clawed wheels, saw boys run yelling and himself darting between them
down the road, to fall at last, a trembling, sobbing bundle of reaction,
into the grassy ditch.
In memory Stefan followed himself home. The word was used to denote the
house in which he and his father lived. A portrait of his mother hung
over the parlor stove. It was a chalk drawing from a photograph, crudely
done, but beautiful by reason of the subject. The face was young and
very round, the forehead beautifully low and broad under black waves of
hair. The nose was short and proud, the chin small but square, the mouth
gaily curving around little, even teeth. But the eyes were deep and
somber; there was passion in them, and romance. Stefan had not seen that
face for years, he barely remembered the original, but he could have
drawn it now in every detail. If the house in which it hung could be
called home at all, it was by virtue of that picture, the only thing of
beauty in it.
Behind the portrait lay a few memories of joy and heartache, and one
final one of horror. Stefan probed them, still with his nervous hand
across his eyes. He listened while his mother sang gay or mournful
little songs with haunting tunes in a tongue only a word or two of which
he understood. He watched while she drew from her bureau drawer a box of
paints and some paper. She painted for long hours, day after day through
the winter, while he played beside her with longing eyes on her brushes.
She painted always one thing--flowers--using no pencil, drawing their
shapes with the brush. Her flowers were of many kinds, nearly all
strange to him, but most were roses--pink, yellow, crimson, almost
black. Sometimes their petals flared like wings; sometimes they were
close-furled. Of these paintings he remembered much, but of her speech
little, for she was silent as she worked.
One day his mother put a brush into his hand. The rapture of it was as
sharp and near as to-day's misery. He sat beside her after that for many
days and painted. First he tried to paint a rose, but he had never seen
such roses as her brush drew, and he tired quickly. Then he drew a bird.
His mother nodded and smiled--it was good. After that his memory showed
him the two sitting side by side for weeks, or was it months?--while
the snow lay piled beyond the window--she with her flowers, he with his
birds.
First he drew birds singly, hopping on a branch, or simply standing,
claws and beaks defined. Then he began to make them fly, alone, and
again in groups. Their wings spread across the paper, wider and more
sweepingly. They pointed upward sharply, or lay flat across the page.
Flights of tiny birds careened from corner to corner. They were blue,
gold, scarlet, and white. He left off drawing birds on branches and drew
them only in flight, smudging in a blue background for the sky.
One day by accident he made a dark smudge in the lower left-hand corner
of his page.
“What is that?” asked his mother.
The little boy looked at it doubtfully for a moment, unwilling to admit
it a blot. Then he laughed.
“Mother, Mother, that is America.” (Stefan heard himself.) “Look!” And
rapidly he drew a bird flying high above the blot, with its head pointed
to the right, away from it.
His mother laughed and hugged him quickly. “Yes, eastward,” she said.
After that all his birds flew one way, and in the left-hand lower corner
there was usually a blob of dark brown or black. Once it was a square,
red, white, and blue.
On her table his mother had a little globe which revolved above a
brass base. Because of this he knew the relative position of two
places--America and Bohemia. Of this country he thought his mother was
unwilling to speak, but its name fell from her lips with sighs, with--as
it now seemed to him--a wild longing. Knowing nothing of it, he had
pictured it a paradise, a land of roses. He seemed to have no knowledge
of why she had left it; but years later his father spoke of finding her
in Boston in the days when he preached there, penniless, searching for
work as a teacher of singing. How she became jettisoned in that--to
her--cold and inhospitable port, Stefan did not know, nor how soon
after their marriage the two moved to the still more alien peninsula of
Michigan.
Into his memories of the room where they painted a shadow constantly
intruded, chilling them, such a shadow, deep and cold, as is cast by an
iceberg. The door would open, and his father's face, high and white with
ice-blue eyes, would hang above them. Instantly, the man remembered, the
boy would cower like a fledgling beneath the sparrow-hawk, but with as
much distaste as fear in his cringing. The words that followed always
seemed the same--he could reconstruct the scene clearly, but whether it
had occurred once or many times he could not tell. His father's voice
would snap across the silence like a high, tight-drawn string--
“Still wasting time? Have you nothing better to do? Where is your
sewing? And the boy--why is he not outside playing?”
“This helps me, Henry,” his mother answered, hesitating and low. “Surely
it does no harm. I cannot sew all the time.”
“It is a childish and vain occupation, however, and I disapprove of
the boy being encouraged in it. This of course you know perfectly well.
Under ordinary circumstances I should absolutely forbid it; as it is, I
condemn it.”
“Henry,” his mother's voice trembled, “don't ask me to give up his
companionship. It is too cold for me to be outdoors, and perhaps after
the spring I might not be with him.”
This sentence terrified Stefan, who did not know the meaning of it. He
was glad, for once, of his father's ridicule.
“That is perfectly absurd, the shallow excuse women always make their
husbands for self-indulgence,” said the man, turning to go. “You are a
healthy woman, and would be more so but for idleness.”
His wife called him back, pleadingly. “Please don't be angry with me,
I'm doing the best I can, Henry--the very best I can.” There was a sweet
foreign blur in her speech, Stefan remembered.
His father paused at the door. “I have shown you your duty, my dear. I
am a minister, and you cannot expect me to condone in my wife habits of
frivolity and idleness which I should be the first to reprimand in my
flock. I expect you to set an example.”
“Oh,” the woman wailed, “when you married me you loved me as I was--”
With a look of controlled annoyance her husband closed the door. Whether
the memory of his father's words was exact or not, Stefan knew their
effect by heart. The door shut, his mother would begin to cry, quietly
at first, then with deep, catching sobs that seemed to stifle her, so
that she rose and paced the room breathlessly. Then she would hold the
boy to her breast, and slowly the storm would change again to gentle
tears. That day there would be no more painting.
These, his earliest memories, culminated in tragedy. A spring day of
driving rain witnessed the arrival of a gray, plain-faced woman, who
mounted to his mother's room. The house seemed full of mysterious
bustle. Presently he heard moans, and rushed upstairs thinking his
mother was crying and needed him. The gray-haired woman thrust him from
the bedroom door, but he returned again and again, calling his mother,
until his father emerged from the study downstairs, and, seizing him in
his cold grip, pushed him into the sanctum and turned the key upon him.
Much later, a man whom Stefan knew as their doctor entered the room
with his father. A strange new word passed between them, and, in his
high-strung state, impressed the boy's memory. It was “chloroform.” The
doctor used the word several times, and his father shook his head.
“No, doctor,” he heard him saying, “we neither of us approve of it.
It is contrary to the intention of God. Besides, you say the case is
normal.”
The doctor seemed to be repeating something about nerves and hysteria.
“Exactly,” his father replied, “and for that, self-control is needed,
and not a drug that reverses the dispensation of the Almighty.”
Both men left the room. Presently the boy heard shrieks. Lying, a grown
man, in his berth, Stefan trembled at the memory of them. He fled
in spirit as he had fled then--out of the window, down the roaring,
swimming street, where he knew not, pursued by a writhing horror. Hours
later, as it seemed, he returned. The shades were pulled down across the
windows of his house. His mother was dead.
Looking back, the man hardly knew how the conviction had come to the
child that his father had killed his mother. A vague comprehension
perhaps of the doctor's urgings and his father's denials--a head-shaking
mutter from the nurse--the memory of all his mother's tears. He was
hardly more than a baby, but he had always feared and disliked his
father--now he hated him, blindly and intensely. He saw him as the cause
not only of his mother's tears and death, but of all the ugliness in the
life about him. “Bohemia,” he thought, would have been theirs but for
this man. He even blamed him, in a sullen way, for the presence in their
house of a tiny little red and wizened object, singularly ugly, which
the gray-haired woman referred to as his “brother.” Obviously, the thing
was not a brother, and his father must be at the bottom of a conspiracy
to deceive him. The creature made a great deal of noise, and when, by
and by, it went away, and they told him his brother too was dead, he
felt nothing but relief.
So darkened the one bright room in his childhood's mansion. Obscured, it
left the other chambers dingier than before, and filled with the ache of
loss. Slowly he forgot his mother's companionship, but not her beauty,
nor her roses, nor “Bohemia,” nor his hatred of the “America” which was
his father's. To get away from his native town, to leave America, became
the steadfast purpose of his otherwise unstable nature.
The man watched himself through high school. He saw himself still hating
his surroundings and ignoring his schoolfellows--save for an occasional
girl whose face or hair showed beauty. At this time the first step in
his plan of escape shaped itself--he must work hard enough to get to
college, to Ann Arbor, where he had heard there was an art course. For
the boy painted now, in all his spare time, not merely birds, but dogs
and horses, boys and girls, all creatures that had speed, that he could
draw in action, leaping, flying, or running against the wind. Even now
Stefan could warm to the triumph he felt the day he discovered the old
barn where he could summon these shapes undetected. His triumph was over
the arch-enemy, his father--who had forbidden him paint and brushes and
confiscated the poor little fragments of his mother's work that he had
hoarded. His father destined him for a “fitting” profession--the man
smiled to remember it--and with an impressive air of generosity gave him
the choice of three--the Church, the Law, or Medicine. Hate had given
him too keen a comprehension of his father to permit him the mistake of
argument. He temporized. Let him be sent to college, and there he would
discover where his aptitude lay.
So at last it was decided. A trunk was found, a moth-eaten bag. His
cheap, ill-cut clothes were packed. On a day of late summer he stepped
for the first time upon a train--beautiful to him because it moved--and
was borne southward.
At Ann Arbor he found many new things, rules, and people, but he brushed
them aside like flies, hardly perceiving them; for there, for the first
time, he saw photographs and casts of the world's great art. The
first sight, even in a poor copy, of the two Discoboli--Diana with her
swinging knee-high tunic--the winged Victory of Samothrace--to see them
first at seventeen, without warning, without a glimmering knowledge
of their existence! And the pictures! Portfolios of Angelo, of the
voluptuous Titian, of the swaying forms of Botticelli's maidens--trite
enough now--but then!
How long he could have deceived his father as to the real nature of
his interests he did not know. Already there had been complaints of
cut lectures, reprimands, and letters from home. Evading mathematics,
science, and divinity, he read only the English and classic
subjects--because they contained beauty--and drew, copying and creating,
in every odd moment. The storm began to threaten, but it never broke;
for in his second year in college the unbelievable, the miracle,
happened--his father died. They said he had died of pneumonia,
contracted while visiting the sick in the winter blizzards, and they
praised him; but Stefan hardly listened.
One fact alone stood out amid the ugly affairs of death, so that he
regarded and remembered nothing else. He was free--and he had wings!
His father left insurance, and a couple of savings-bank accounts, but
through some fissure of vanity or carelessness in the granite of his
propriety, he left no will. The sums, amounting in all to something over
three thousand dollars, came to Stefan without conditions, guardians,
or other hindrances. The rapture of that discovery, he thought, almost
wiped out his father's debt to him.
He knew now that not Bohemia, but Paris, was his El Dorado. In wild
haste he made ready for his journey, leaving the rigid trappings of his
home to be sold after him. But his dead father was to give him one more
pang--the scales were to swing uneven at the last. For when he would
have packed the only possession, other than a few necessities, he
planned to carry with him, he found his mother's picture gone. Dying,
his father, it appeared, had wandered from his bed, detached the
portrait, and with his own hands burnt it in the stove. The motive of
the act Stefan could not comprehend. He only knew that this man had
robbed him of his mother twice. All that remained of her was her wedding
ring, which, drawn from his father's cash-box, he wore on his little
finger. With bitterness amid his joy he took the train once more,
and saw the lights of the town's shabby inn blink good-bye behind its
frazzled shades.
III
Byrd had lived for seven years in Paris, wandering on foot in summer
through much of France and Italy. His little patrimony, stretched to the
last sou, and supplemented in later years by the occasional sale of his
work to small dealers, had sufficed him so long. His headquarters were
in a high windowed attic facing north along the rue des Quatre Ermites.
His work had been much admired in the ateliers, but his personal
unpopularity with, the majority of the students had prevented their
admiration changing to a friendship whose demands would have drained his
small resources. “Ninety-nine per cent of the Quarter dislikes Stefan
Byrd,” an Englishman had said, “but one per cent adores him.” Repeated
to Byrd, this utterance was accepted by him with much complacence, for,
even more than the average man, he prided himself upon his faults of
character. His adoration of Paris had not prevented him from criticizing
its denizens; the habits of mental withdrawal and reservation developed
in his boyhood did not desert him in the city of friendship, but he
became more deeply aware of the loneliness which they involved. He
searched eagerly for the few whose qualities of mind or person lifted
them beyond reach of his demon of disparagement, and he found them,
especially among women.
To a minority of that sex he was unusually attractive, and he became a
lover of women, but as subjects for enthusiasm rather than desire. In
passion he was curious but capricious, seldom rapidly roused, nor
long held. In his relations with women emotion came second to mental
stimulation, so that he never sought one whose mere sex was her main
attraction. This saved him from much--he was experienced, but not
degraded. Of love, however, in the fused sense of body, mind, and
spirit, he knew nothing. Perhaps his work claimed too much from him;
at any rate he was too egotistical, too critical and self-sufficient
to give easily. Whether he had received such love he did not
ask himself--it is probable that he had, without knowing it, or
understanding that he had not himself given full measure in return. The
heart of France is practical; with all her ardor Paris had given Byrd
desire and friendship, but not romance.
In his last year, with only a few francs of his inheritance remaining,
Stefan had three pictures in the Beaux Arts. One of these was sold,
but the other two importuned vainly from their hanging places. Enormous
numbers of pictures had been exhibited that year. Every gallery, public
and private, was crowded; Paris was glutted with works of art. Stefan
faced the prospect of speedy starvation if he could not dispose of
another canvas. He had enough for a summer in Brittany, after which, if
the dealers could do nothing for him, he was stranded. Nevertheless,
he enjoyed his holiday light-heartedly, confident that his two large
pictures could not long fail to be appreciated. Returning to Paris
in September, however, he was dismayed to find his favorite dealers
uninterested in his canvases, and disinclined to harbor them longer.
Portraits and landscapes, they told him, were in much demand, but
fantasies, no. His sweeping groups of running, flying figures against
stormy skies, or shoals of mermaids hurrying down lanes of the deep
sea, did not appeal to the fashionable taste of the year. Something
more languorous, more subdued, or, on the other hand, more “chic,” was
demanded.
In a high rage of disgust, Stefan hired a fiacre, and bore his children
defiantly home to their birthplace. Sitting in his studio like a ruffled
bird upon a spoiled hatching, he reviewed the fact that he had 325
francs in the world, that the rent of his attic was overdue, and that
his pictures had never been so unmarketable as now.
At this point his one intimate man friend, Adolph Jensen, a Swede,
appeared as the deus ex machine. He had, he declared, an elder
brother in New York, an art dealer. This brother had just written him,
describing the millionaires who bought his pictures and bric-a-brac.
His shop was crowded with them. Adolph's brother was shrewd and hard
to please, but let his cher Stefan go himself to New York with his
canvases, impress the brother with his brilliance and the beauty of his
work, and, undoubtedly, his fortune would at once be made. The season in
New York was in the winter. Let Stefan go at once, by the fastest boat,
and be first in the field--he, Adolph, who had a little laid by, would
lend him the necessary money, and would write his brother in advance of
the great opportunity he was sending him.
Ultimately, with a very ill grace on Stefan's part--who could hardly
be persuaded that even a temporary return to America was preferable to
starvation--it was so arranged. The second-class passage money was 250
francs; for this and incidentals, he had enough, and Adolph lent him
another 250 to tide him over his arrival. He felt unable to afford
adequate crating, so his canvases were unstretched and made into a
roll which he determined should never leave his hands. His clothing was
packed in two bags, one contributed by Adolph. Armed with his roll, and
followed by his enthusiastic friend carrying the bags, Stefan departed
from the Gare Saint-Lazare for Dieppe, Liverpool, and the Lusitania.
Reacting to his friend's optimism, Stefan had felt confident enough on
leaving Paris, but the discomforts of the journey had soon flattened
his spirits, and now, limp in his berth, he saw the whole adventure
mistaken, unreal, and menacing. In leaving the country of his adoption
for that of his birth, he now felt that he had put himself again in the
clutches of a chimera which had power to wither with its breath all that
was rare and beautiful in his life. Nursing a grievance against himself
and fate, he at last fell asleep, clothed as he was, and forgot himself
for a time in such uneasy slumber as the storm allowed.
IV
The second-class deck was rapidly filling. Chairs, running in a double
row about the deck-house were receiving bundles of women, rugs, and
babies. Energetic youths, in surprising ulsters and sweaters, tramped in
broken file between these chairs and the bulwarks. Older men, in woolen
waistcoats and checked caps, or in the aging black of the small clergy
and professional class, obstructed, with a rooted constancy, the few
clear corners of the deck. Elderly women, with the parchment skin and
dun tailored suit of the “personally conducted” tourist, tied their
heads in veils and ventured into sheltered corners. On the boat-deck a
game of shuffleboard was in progress. Above the main companion-way
the ship's bands condescended to a little dance music on behalf of the
second class. The Scotchman, clad in inch-thick heather mixture, was
already discussing with all whom he could buttonhole the possibilities
of a ship's concert. In a word, it was the third day out, the storm was
over, and the passengers were cognizant of life, and of each other.
The Scot had gravitated to a group of men near the smoking-room door,
and having received from his turtle-jawed neighbor of the dinner table,
who was among them, the gift of a cigar, interrogated him as to musical
gifts. “I shall recite mesel',” he explained complacently, sucking in
his smoke. “Might we hope for a song, now, from you? I've asked yon
artist chap, but he says he doesna' sing.”
His neighbor also disclaimed talents. “Sorry I can't oblige you. Who
wants to hear a man sing, anyway? Where are your girls?”
“There seems to be a singular absence of bonny girrls on board,” replied
the Scot, twisting his erect forelock reflectively.
“Have you asked the English girl?” suggested a tall, rawboned New
Englander.
“Which English girrl?” demanded the Scot.
“Listen to him--which! Why, that one over there, you owl.”
The Scotchman's eyes followed the gesture toward a group of children
surrounding a tall girl who stood by the rail on the leeward side. She
was facing into the wind toward the smoking-room door.
“Eh, mon,” said the Scot, “till now I'd only seen the back of yon young
woman,” and he promptly strode down the deck to ask, and receive, the
promise of a song.
Stefan Byrd, after a silent breakfast eaten late to avoid his table
companions, had just come on deck. It had been misty earlier, but now
the sun was beginning to break through in sudden glints of brightness.
The deck was still damp, however, and the whole prospect seemed to
the emerging Stefan cheerless in the extreme. His eyes swept the gray,
huddled shapes upon the chairs, the knots of gossiping men, the clumsy,
tramping youths, with the same loathing that the whole voyage had
hitherto inspired in him. The forelocked Scot, tweed cap in hand,
was crossing the deck. “There goes the brute, busy with his infernal
concert,” he thought, watching balefully. Then he actually seemed to
point, like a dog, limbs fixed, eyes set, his face, with its salient
nose, thrust forward.
The Scot was speaking to a tall, bareheaded girl, about whom half a
dozen nondescript children crowded. She was holding herself against
the wind, and from her long, clean limbs her woolen dress was whipped,
rippling. The sun had gleamed suddenly, and under the shaft of
brightness her hair shone back a golden answer. Her eyes, hardly raised
to those of the tall Scotchman, were wide, gray, and level--the eyes of
Pallas Athene; her features, too, were goddess-like. One hand upon the
bulwarks, she seemed, even as she listened, to be poised for flight,
balancing to the sway of the ship.
Stefan exhaled a great breath of joy. There was something beautiful
upon the ship, after all. He found and lit a cigarette, and squaring
his shoulders to the deckhouse wall, leaned back the more comfortably
to indulge what he took to be his chief mission--the art of perceiving
beauty.
The girl listened in silence till the Scotchman had finished speaking,
and replied briefly and quietly, inclining her head. The Scot, jotting
something in a pocket notebook, left her with an air of elation, and she
turned again to the children. One, a toddler, was picking at her
skirt. She bent toward him a smile which gave Stefan almost a stab of
satisfaction, it was so gravely sweet, so fitted to her person. She
stooped lower to speak to the baby, and the artist saw the free,
rhythmic motion which meant developed, and untrammeled muscles.
Presently the children, wriggling with joy, squatted in a circle,
and the girl sank to the deck in their midst with one quick and easy
movement, curling her feet under her. There proceeded an absurd game,
involving a slipper and much squealing, whose intricacies she directed
with unruffled ease.
Suddenly the wind puffed the hat of one of the small boys from his
head, carrying it high above their reach. In an instant the girl was up,
springing to her feet unaided by hand or knee. Reaching out, she caught
the hat as it descended slantingly over the bulwarks, and was down again
before the child's clutching hands had left his head.
A mother, none other than the prominently busted lady of Stefan's table,
blew forward with admiring cries of gratitude. Other matrons, vocative,
surrounded the circle, momentarily cutting off his view. He changed his
position to the bulwarks beside the group. There, a yard or two from the
gleaming head, he perched on the rail, feet laced into its supports, and
continued his concentrated observation.
“See yon chap,” remarked the Scot from the smoking-room door to which
his talent-seeking round of the deck had again brought him. “He's fair
staring the eyes oot o'his head!”
“Exceedingly annoying to the young lady, I should imagine,” returned his
table neighbor, the prim minister, who had joined the group.
“Hoots, she willna' mind the likes of him,” scoffed the other, with his
booming laugh.
And indeed she did not. Oblivious equally of Byrd and of her more
distant watchers, the English girl passed from “Hunt the Slipper” to “A
Cold and Frosty Morning,” and from that to story-telling, as absorbed as
her small companions, or as her watcher-in-chief.
Gradually the sun broke out, the water danced, huddled shapes began to
rise in their chairs, disclosing unexpected spots of color--a bright tie
or a patterned blouse--animation increased on all sides, and the ring
about the storyteller became three deep.
After a time a couple of perky young stewards appeared with huge iron
trays, containing thick white cups half full of chicken broth, and piles
of biscuits. Upon this, the pouter-pigeon lady bore off her small son to
be fed, other mothers did the same, and the remaining children, at the
lure of food, sidled off of their own accord, or sped wildly, whooping
out promises to return. For the moment, the story-teller was alone.
Stefan, seeing the Scot bearing down upon her with two cups of broth
in his hand and purpose in his eye, wakened to the danger just in time.
Throwing his cigarette overboard, he sprang lightly between her and the
approaching menace.
“Won't you be perfectly kind, and come for a walk?” he asked, stooping
to where she sat. The girl looked up into a pair of green-gold eyes set
in a brown, eager face. The face was lighted with a smile of dazzling
friendliness, and surmounted by an uncovered head of thick, brown-black
hair. Slowly her own eyes showed an answering smile.
“Thank you, I should love to,” she said, and rising, swung off beside
him, just in time--as Stefan maneuvered it--to avoid seeing the Scot and
his carefully balanced offering. Discomfited, that individual consoled
himself with both cups of broth, and bided his time.
“My name is Stefan Byrd. I am a painter, going to America to sell some
pictures. I'm twenty-six. What is your name?” said Stefan, who never
wasted time in preliminaries and abhorred small talk--turning his
brilliant happy smile upon her.
“To answer by the book,” she replied, smiling too, “my name is Mary
Elliston. I'm twenty-five. I do odd jobs, and am going to America to try
to find one to live on.”
“What fun!” cried Stefan, with a faunlike skip of pleasure, as they
turned onto the emptier windward deck. “Then we're both seeking our
fortunes.”
“Living, rather than fortune, in my case, I'm afraid.”
“Well, of course you don't need a fortune, you carry so much gold with
you,” and he glanced at her shining hair.
“Not negotiable, unluckily,” she replied, taking his compliment as he
had paid it, without a trace of self-consciousness.
“Like the sunlight,” he answered. “In fact,”--confidentially--“I'm
afraid you're a thief; you've imprisoned a piece of the sun, which
should belong to us all. However, I'm not going to complain to the
authorities, I like the result too much. You don't mind my saying that,
do you?” he continued, sure that she did not. “You see, I'm a painter.
Color means everything to me--that and form.”
“One never minds hearing nice things, I think,” she replied, with a
frank smile. They were swinging up and down the windward deck, and as he
talked he was acutely aware of her free movements beside him, and of
the blow of her skirts to leeward. Her hair, too closely pinned to fly
loose, yet seemed to spring from her forehead with the urge of pinioned
wings. Life radiated from her, he thought, with a steady, upward
flame--not fitfully, as with most people.
“And one doesn't mind questions, does one--from real people?” he
continued. “I'm going to ask you lots more, and you may ask me as many
as you like. I never talk to people unless they are worth talking to,
and then I talk hard. Will you begin, or shall I? I have at least two
hundred things to ask.”
“It is my turn, though, I think.” She accepted him on his own ground,
with an open and natural friendliness.
“I have only one at the moment, which is, 'Why haven't we talked
before?'” and she glanced with a quiet humorousness at the few
unpromising samples of the second cabin who obstructed the windward
deck.
“Oh, good for you!” he applauded, “aren't they loathly!”
“Oh, no, all right, only not stimulating--”
“And we are,” he finished for her, “so that, obviously, your question
has only one answer. We haven't talked before because I haven't seen
you before, and I haven't seen you because I have been growling in my
cabin--voilà tout!”
“Oh, never growl--it's such a waste of time,” she answered. “You'll see,
the second cabin isn't bad.”
“It certainly isn't, _now_,” rejoiced Stefan. “My turn for a question.
Have you relatives, or are you, like myself, alone in the world?”
“Quite alone,” said Mary, “except for a married sister, who hardly
counts, as she's years older than I, and fearfully preoccupied with
husband, houses, and things.” She paused, then added, “She hasn't any
babies, or I might have stayed to look after them, but she has lots of
money and 'position to keep up,' and so forth.”
“I see her,” said Stefan. “Obviously, she takes after the _other_
parent. You are alone then. Next question--”
“Oh, isn't it my turn again?” Mary interposed, smilingly.
“It is, but I ask you to waive it. You see, questions about _me_ are so
comparatively trivial. What sort of work do you do?”
“Well, I write a little,” she replied, “and I've been a governess and
a companion. But I'm really a victim of the English method of
educating girls. That's my chief profession--being a monument to its
inefficiency,” and she laughed, low and bell-like.
“Tell me about that--I've never lived in England,” he questioned, with
eager interest. (“And oh, Pan and Apollo, her voice!” he thought.)
“Well,” she continued, “they bring us up so nicely that we can't do
anything--except _be_ nice. I was brought up in a cathedral town,
right in the Close, and my dear old Dad, who was a doctor, attended the
Bishop, the Dean, and all the Chapter. Mother would not let us go to
boarding-school, for fear of 'influences'--so we had governesses at
home, who taught us nothing we didn't choose to learn. My sister Isobel
married 'well,' as they say, while I was still in the schoolroom. Her
husband belongs to the county--”
“What's that?” interrupted Stefan.
“Don't you know what the county is? How delightful! The 'county' is
the county families--landed gentry--very ancient and swagger and all
that--much more so than the titled people often. It was very great
promotion for the daughter of one of the town to marry into the
county--or would have been except that Mother was county also.” She
spoke with mock solemnity.
“How delightfully picturesque and medieval!” exclaimed Stefan. “The
Guelphs and Ghibellines, eh?”
“Yes,” Mary replied, “only there is no feud, and it doesn't seem so
romantic when you're in it. The man my sister married I thought was
frightfully boring except for his family place, and being in the army,
which is rather decent. He talks,” she smiled, “like a phonograph with
only one set of records.”
“Wondrous Being--Winged Goddess--” chanted Stefan, stopping before her
and apostrophizing the sky or the boat-deck--“a goddess with a sense of
humor!” And he positively glowed upon her.
“About the first point I know nothing,” she laughed, walking on again
beside him, “but for the second,” and her face became a little grave,
“you have to have some humor if you are a girl in Lindum, or you go
under.”
“Tell me, tell me all about it,” he urged. “I've never met an English
girl before, _nor_ a goddess, and I'm so interested!”
They rested for a time against the bulwarks. The wind was dropping, and
the spume seethed against the black side of the ship without force from
the waves to throw it up to them in spray. They looked down into deep
blue and green water glassing a sky warm now, and friendly, in which
high white cumuli sailed slowly, like full-rigged ships all but
becalmed.
“It is a very commonplace story with us,” Mary began. “Mother died a
little time after Isobel married, and Dad kept my governess on. I begged
to go to Girton, or any other college he liked, but he wouldn't hear of
it. Said he wanted a womanly daughter.” She smiled rather ruefully. “Dad
was doing well with his practice, for a small-town doctor, and had a
good deal saved, and a little of mother's money. He wanted to have more,
so he put it all into rubber. You've heard about rubber, haven't you?”
she asked, turning to Stefan.
“Not a thing,” he smiled.
“Well, every one in England was putting money into rubber last year, and
lots of people did well, but lots--didn't. Poor old Dad didn't--he lost
everything. It wouldn't have really mattered--he had his profession--but
the shock killed him, I think; that and being lonely without Mother.”
She paused a moment, looking into the water. “Anyhow, he died, and there
was nothing for me to do except to begin earning my living without any
of the necessary equipment.”
“What about the brother-in-law?” asked Stefan.
“Oh, yes, I could have gone to them--I wasn't in danger of starvation.
But,” she shook her head emphatically, “a poor relation! I couldn't have
stood that.”
“Well,” he turned squarely toward her, his elbow on the rail, “I can't
help asking this, you know; where were the bachelors of Lindum?”
She smiled, still in her friendly, unembarrassed way.
“I know what you mean, of course. The older men say it quite openly in
England.--'Why don't a nice gel like you get married?'--It's rather a
long story.” (“Has she been in love?” Stefan wondered.) “First of all,
there are very few young men of one's own sort in Lindum; most of them
are in the Colonies. Those there are--one or two lawyers, doctors, and
squires' sons--are frightfully sought after.” She made a wry face.
“Too much competition for them, altogether, and--” she seemed to take a
plunge before adding--“I've never been successful at bargain counters.”
He turned that over for a moment. “I see,” he said. “At least I should
do, if it weren't for it being you. Look here, Miss Elliston, honestly
now, fair and square--” he smiled confidingly at her--“you're not asking
me to believe that the competition in your ease didn't appear in the
other sex?”
“Mr. Byrd,” she answered straightly, “in my world girls have to
have more than a good appearance.” She shrugged her shoulders rather
disdainfully. “I had no money, and I had opinions.”
(“She's been in love--slightly,” he decided.) “Opinions,” he echoed,
“what kind? Mustn't one have any in Lindum?”
“Young girls mustn't--only those they are taught,” she replied. “I read
a good deal, I sympathized with the Liberals. I was even--” her voice
dropped to mock horror--“a Suffragist!”
“I've heard about that,” he interposed eagerly, “though the French women
don't seem to care much. You wanted to vote? Well, why ever not?”
She gave him the brightest smile he had yet received.
“Oh, how nice of you!” she cried. “You really mean that?”
“Couldn't see it any other way. I've always liked and believed in women
more than men. I learnt that in childhood,” he added, frowning.
“Splendid! I'm so glad,” she responded. “You see, with our men it's
usually the other way round. My ideas were a great handicap at home.”
“So you decided to leave?”
“Yes; I went to London and got a job teaching some children sums and
history--two hours every morning. In the afternoons I worked at stories
for the magazines, and placed a few, but they pay an unknown writer
horribly badly. I lived with an old lady as companion for two months,
but that was being a poor relation minus the relationship--I couldn't
stand it. I joined the Suffragists in London--not the Militants--I don't
quite see their point of view--and marched in a parade. Brother-in-law
heard of it, and wrote me I could not expect anything from them unless I
stopped it.” She laughed quietly.
Stefan flushed. He pronounced something--conclusively--in French.
Then--“Don't ask me to apologize, Miss Elliston.”
“I won't,” reassuringly. “I felt rather like that, too. I wrote that I
didn't expect anything as it was. Then I sat down and thought about the
whole question of women in England and their chances. I had a hundred
pounds and a few ornaments of Mother's. I love children, but I didn't
want to be a governess. I wanted to stand alone in some place where my
head wouldn't be pushed down every time I tried to raise it. I believed
in America people wouldn't say so often, 'Why doesn't a nice girl like
you get married?' so I came, and here I am. That's the whole story--a
very humdrum one.”
“Yes, here you are, thank God!” proclaimed Stefan devoutly. “What
magnificent pluck, and how divine of you to tell me it all! You've saved
me from suicide, almost. These people immolate me.”
“How delightfully he exaggerates!” she thought.
“What thousands of things we can talk about,” he went on in a burst of
enthusiasm. “What a perfectly splendid time we are going to have!” He
all but warbled.
“I hope so,” she answered, smilingly, “but there goes the gong, and I'm
ravenous.”
“Dinner!” he cried scornfully; “suet pudding, all those horrible
people--you want to leave this--?” He swept his arm over the glittering
water.
“I don't, but I want my dinner,” she maintained.
This checked his spirits for a moment; then enlightenment seemed to
burst upon him.
“Glorious creature!” he apostrophized her. “She must be fed, or she
would not glow with such divine health! That gong was for the first
table, and I'm not in the least hungry. Nevertheless, we will eat, here
and now.”
She demurred, but he would have his way, demanding it in celebration of
their meeting. He found the deck steward, tipped him, and exacted the
immediate production of two dinners. He ensconced Miss Elliston in some
one else's chair, conveniently placed, settled her with some one else's
cushions, which he chose from the whole deck for their color--a clean
blue--and covered her feet with the best rug he could find. She accepted
his booty with only slight remonstrance, being too frankly engaged by
his spirits to attempt the role of extinguisher. He settled himself
beside her, and they lunched delightedly, like children, on chops and a
rice pudding.
V
It is not too easy to appropriate a pretty girl on board ship. There are
always young men who expect the voyage to offer a flirtation, and who
spend much ingenuity in heading each other off from the companionship
of the most attractive damsels. But the “English girl” was not in the
“pretty” class. She was a beauty, of the grave and pure type which
implies character. All the children knew her; all the women and men
watched her; but few of the latter had ventured to speak to her, even
before Stefan claimed her as his monopoly. For this he did, from the
moment of their first encounter. To him nobody on the ship existed but
her, and he assumed the right to show it.
He had trouble from only two people. One was the Scotchman, McEwan,
whose hide seemed impervious to rebuffs, and who would charge into
a conversation with the weight of a battering ram, planting himself
implacably in a chair beside Miss Elliston, and occasionally reducing
even Stefan to silence. The other was Miss Elliston herself. She was
kind, she was friendly, she was boyishly frank. But occasionally she
would withdraw into herself, and sometimes would disappear altogether
into her cabin, to be found again, after long search, telling stories
to some of the children. On such occasions Stefan roamed the decks and
saloons very like a hungry wolf, snapping with intolerable rudeness at
any one who spoke to him. This, however, few troubled to do, for he was
cordially disliked, both for his own sake and because of his success
with Miss Elliston. That success the ship could not doubt. Though she
was invariably polite to every one, she walked and talked only with
him or the children. She was, of course, above the social level of
the second-class; but this the English did not resent, because they
understood it, nor the Americans, because they were unaware of it. On
the other hand, English and Americans alike resented Byrd, whom
they could neither place nor understand. These two became the most
conspicuous people in the cabin, and their every movement was eagerly
watched and discussed, though both remained entirely oblivious to it.
Stefan was absorbed in the girl, that was clear; but how far she might
be in him the cabin could not be sure. She brightened when he appeared.
She liked him, smiled at him, and listened to him. She allowed him to
monopolize her. But she never sought him out, never snubbed McEwan for
his intrusions into their tête-à-têtes, seemed not to be “managing” the
affair in any way. Used to more obvious methods, most of the company
were puzzled. They did not understand that they were watching
the romance of a woman who added perfect breeding to her racial
self-control. Mary Elliston would never wear her feelings nakedly, nor
allow them to ride her out of hand.
Not so Stefan, who was, as yet unknowingly, experiencing romantic love
for the first time. This girl was the most glorious creature he had ever
known, and the most womanly. Her sex was the very essence of her; she
had no need to wear it like a furbelow. She was utterly different from
the feminine, adroit women he had known; there was something cool and
deep about her like a pool, and withal winged, like the birds that fly
over it. She was marvelous--marvelous! he thought. What a find!
His spirit flung itself, kneeling, to drink at the pool--his imagination
reached out to touch the wings. For the first time in his life he was
too deeply enthralled to question himself or her. He gloried in her
openly, conspicuously.
On the morning of the fifth day they had their first dispute. They
were sitting on the boat deck, aft, watching the wake of the ship as it
twisted like an uncertain white serpent. Stefan was sketching her, as he
had done already several times when he could get her apart from hovering
children--he could not endure being overlooked as he worked. “They chew
gum in my ear, and breathe down my neck,” he would explain.
He had almost completed an impression of her head against the sky, with
a flying veil lifting above it, when a shadow fell across the canvas,
and the voice of McEwan blared out a pleased greeting.
“Weel, here ye are!” exclaimed that mountain of tweed, lowering himself
onto a huge iron cleat between which and the bulwarks the two were
sitting cross-legged. “I was speerin' where ye'd both be.”
“Good Lord, McEwan, can't you speak English?” exclaimed Byrd, with quick
exasperation.
“I hae to speak the New York lingo when I get back there, ye ken,”
replied the Scot with imperturbable good humor, “so I like to use a wee
bit o' the guid Scotch while I hae the chance.”
“A wee bit!” snorted Stefan, and “Good morning, Mr. McEwan, isn't it
beautiful up here?” interposed Miss Elliston, pleasantly.
“It's grand,” replied the Scotchman, “and ye look bonnie i' the sun,” he
added simply.
“So Mr. Byrd thinks. You see he has just been painting me,” she answered
smilingly, indicating, with a touch of mischief, the drawing that Stefan
had hastily slipped between them.
The Scotchman stooped, and, before Stefan could stop him, had the sketch
in his hand.
“It's a guid likeness,” he pronounced, “though I dinna care mesel'
for yon new-fangled way o' slappin' on the color. I'll mak'ye a
suggestion--” But he got no further, for Stefan, incoherent with
irritation, snatched the sketch from his hands and broke out at him in
a stammering torrent of French of the Quarter, which neither of his
listeners, he was aware, could understand. Having safely consigned all
the McEwans of the universe to pig-sties and perdition, he walked off
to cool himself, the sketch under his arm, leaving both his hearers
incontinently dumb.
McEwan recovered first. “The puir young mon suffers wi' his temper,
there's nae dooting,” said he, addressing himself to the task of
entertaining his rather absent-minded companion.
His advantage lasted but a few moments, however. Byrd, repenting his
strategic error, returned, and in despair of other methods succeeded in
summoning a candid smile.
“Look here, McEwan,” said he, with the charm of manner he knew so well
how to assume, “don't mind my irritability; I'm always like that when
I'm painting and any one interrupts--it sends me crazy. The light's just
right, and it won't be for long. I can't possibly paint with anybody
round. Won't you, like a good fellow, get out and let me finish?”
His frankness was wonderfully disarming, but in any case, the Scot was
always good nature's self.
“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, reassembling 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 butting 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 God 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 shining.
“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 passenger 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 succès!” 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 constitutional 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, pushing 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 ship, 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 goddess 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 goddess elusive even in yielding. He aspired, and saw her,
Cytheria-like, shining 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 asserted 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?”
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
trimmings--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
gods. 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
passionately 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 retarding 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 assistance 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
assured 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 endorsement of Miss Mason's views. The
man of God, 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 gratitude 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 municipal 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.