THE BUILDER
I
It was spring once more. In the garden of the Byrdsnest flowering shrubs
were in bloom; the beds were studded with daffodils; the scent of lilac
filled the air. Birds flashed and sang, for it was May, high May, and
the nests were built. Mary, warm-cheeked in the sun, and wearing a
broad-brimmed hat and a pair of gardening gloves, was thinning out a
clump of cornflowers. At one corner of the lawn, shaded by a flowering
dog-wood, was a small sand-pit, and in this a yellow-haired two-year-old
boy diligently poured sand through a wire sieve. In a white perambulator
lay a pink, brown-haired, baby girl, soundly sleeping, a tiny thumb held
comfortably in her mouth. Now and then Mary straightened from her task
and tiptoed over to the baby, to see that she was still in the shade, or
that no flies disturbed her.
Mary's face was not that of a happy woman, but it was the face of one
who has found peace. It was graver than of old, but lightened whenever
she looked at her children with an expression of proud tenderness. She
was dressed in the simplest of white cotton gowns, beneath which the
lines of her figure showed a little fuller, but strong and graceful
as ever. She looked very womanly, very desirable, as she bent over the
baby's carriage.
Lily emerged from the front door, and set a tea-tray upon the low porch
table. She lingered for a moment, glancing with pride at the verandah
with its green rocking chairs, hammock, and white creeping-rug.
“My, Mrs. Byrd, don't our new porch look nice, now it's all done?” she
exclaimed, beaming.
“Yes,” said Mary, dropping into a rocking-chair to drink her tea,
and throwing off her hat to loosen the warm waves of hair about her
forehead, “isn't it awfully pretty? I don't know how we should have
managed without it on damp mornings, now that Baby wants to crawl
all the time. Ah, here is Miss Mason!” she exclaimed, smiling as that
spinster, in white shirtwaist and alpaca skirt, dismounted from a smart
bicycle at the gate.
“Any letters, Sparrow?”
Miss Mason, extracting several parcels from her carrier, flopped
gratefully into a rocker, and drew off her gloves.
“One or two,” she said. “Here, Lily; here's your marmalade, and here's
the soap, and a letter for you. There are a few bills, Mary, and a
couple of notes--” she passed them across--“and here's an afternoon
paper one of the Haven youngsters handed me as I passed him on the road.
He called out something about another atrocity. I haven't looked at it.
I hate to open the things these days.”
“I know,” nodded Mary, busy with her letters, “so do I. This is from Mr.
Gunther, from California. He's been there all the winter, you know.
Oh, how nice; he's coming back! Says we are to expect a visit from
him soon,” Mary exclaimed, with a pleased smile. “Here's a line from
Constance,” she went on. “Everything is doing splendidly in her garden,
she says. She wants us all to go up in June, before she begins her auto
speaking trip. Don't you think it would be nice!”
“Perfectly elegant,” said the Sparrow. “I'm glad she's taking a little
rest. I thought she looked real tired this spring.”
“She works so frightfully hard.”
“Land sakes, work agrees with _you_, Mary! You look simply great.
If your new book does as well as the old one I suppose porches won't
satisfy you--you'll be wanting to build an ell on the house?”
“That's just what I do want,” said Mary, smiling. “I want to have a
spare room, and proper place for the babies. We're awfully crowded. Did
I tell you Mr. Farraday had some lovely plans that he had made years
ago, for a wing?”
“You don't say!”
“Yes, but I'm afraid we'll have to wait another year for that, till I
can increase my short story output.”
“My, it seems to me you write them like a streak.”
Mary shook her head. “No, after Baby is weaned I expect to work faster,
and ever so much better.”
“Well, if you do any better than you are doing, Frances Hodgson Burnett
won't be in it; that's all I can say.”
“Oh, Sparrow!” smiled Mary, “she writes real grown-up novels, too, and I
can only do silly little children's things.”
“They're not silly, Mary Byrd, I can tell you that,” sniffed Miss Mason,
shaking out her paper.
“My gracious!” She turned a shocked face to Mary. “What do you suppose
those Germans have done now? Sunk the Lusitania!”
“The Lusitania?” exclaimed Mary, incredulously.
“Yes, my dear; torpedoed her without warning. My, ain't that terrible?
It says they hope most of the passengers are saved--but they don't know
yet.”
“Let me see!” Mary bent over her shoulder. “The Lusitania gone!” she
whispered, awed.
“No, no!” exclaimed the Sparrow suddenly, hurrying off the porch. “Ellie
not pour sand over his head! No, naughty!”
Mary sank into her chair with the paper. There was the staring black
headline, but she could hardly believe it. The Lusitania gone? The great
ship she knew so well, on which she and Stefan had met, gone! Lying in
the ooze, with fish darting above the decks where she had walked with
Stefan. Those hundreds of cabins a labyrinth for fish to lose their way
in--all rotting in the black sea currents. The possible loss of life had
not yet come home to her. It was inconceivable that there would not have
been ample time for every one to escape. But the ship, the great English
ship! So swift--so proud!
Dropping the paper, she walked slowly across the garden and the lane,
and found her way to a little seat she had made on the side of the bluff
overlooking the water. Here, her back to a tree trunk, she sat immobile,
trying to still the turmoil of memories that rose within her.
The Lusitania gone!
It seemed like the breaking of the last link that bound her to the past.
All the belief, all the wonder of that time were already gone, and now
the ship, her loveship, was gone, too, lost forever to the sight of men.
She saw again its crowded decks, saw the lithe, picturesque figure of
the young artist with the eager face bending over her--
“Won't you be perfectly kind, and come for a walk?”
She saw the saloon on her engagement night when she sang at the ship's
concert. What were the last words she had sung?
“Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty--
Love's a stuff will not endure.”
Alas, how unconsciously prophetic she had been. Nothing had endured,
neither love, nor faith, nor the great ship of their pilgrimage herself.
Other memories crowded. Their honeymoon at Shadeham, the sweet early
days of their studio life, her glorious pride in his great painting
of love exalted.... The night of Constance's party, when, after her
singing, her husband had left his place by Miss Berber and crossed the
room so eagerly to her side. Their first weeks at the Byrdsnest--how
happy they had been then, and how worshipfully he had looked at her the
morning their son was born. All gone. She had another baby now, but he
had never seen it--never would see it, she supposed. Her memory traveled
on, flitting over the dark places and lingering at every sunny peak of
their marriage journey. Their week in Vermont! How they had skated and
danced together; how much he seemed to love her then! Even the day he
sailed for France he seemed to care for her. “Why are we parting?”
he had cried, kissing her. Yes, even then their marriage, for all the
clouds upon it, had seemed real--she had never doubted in her inmost
heart that they were each other's.
With a stab of the old agony, Mary remembered the day she got his letter
admitting his relations with Felicity. The unbelievable breakdown of her
whole life! His easy, lightly made excuses. He, in whose arms she had
lain a hundred times, with whom she had first learnt the sacrament of
love, had given himself to another woman, had given all that most close
and sacred intimacy of love, and had written, “I cannot say with truth
that I regret it.” How she had lived through the reading of those words
she did not know. Grief does not kill, or surely she would have died
that hour. Her own strength, and the miracle of life within her, alone
stayed her longing for death. It was ten months ago; she had lived down
much since then, had schooled herself daily to forgetfulness; yet now
again the unutterable pang swept over her--the desolation of loss, and
the incapacity to believe that such loss could be.
She rebelled against the needlessness of it all now, as she had
done then, in those bitter days before her little Rosamond came to
half-assuage her pain.
Well, he had redeemed himself in a way. The day James Farraday came to
tell her that Stefan had enlisted, some part of her load was eased. The
father of her children was not all ignoble.
Mary mused on. How would it end? Would Stefan live? Should she--could
she--ever see him again? She thanked God he was there, serving the
country he loved. “The only thing he ever really loved, perhaps,” she
thought. She supposed he would be killed--all that genius lost like
so much more of value that the world was scrapping to-day--and then it
would all be quite gone--
Through the trees dropped the insistent sound of a baby's cry to its
mother. She rose; the heavy clouds of memory fell away. The past was
gone; she lived for the future, and the future was in her children.
* * * * *
The next morning Mary had just bathed the baby, and was settling her in
her carriage, when the Sparrow, who, seated on the porch with Elliston,
was engaged in cutting war maps from the papers and pasting them in an
enormous scrapbook, gave a warning cough.
“Here comes Mr. McEwan,” she whispered, in the hushed voice reserved by
her simple type for allusions to the afflicted.
“Oh, poor dear,” said Mary, hurrying across the lawn to meet him. She
felt more than ever sympathetic toward him, for Mac's wife had died in
a New Hampshire sanitarium only a few weeks before, and all his hopes
of mending her poor broken spirit were at an end. Reaching the gate, she
gave an involuntary cry.
McEwan was stumbling toward her almost like a drunken man. His face was
red, his eyes bloodshot; a morning paper trailed loosely from his hand.
“Mary,” he cried, “I came back from the station to see ye--hae ye heard,
my girl?”
“Wallace!” she exclaimed, frightened, “what is it? What has happened?”
She led him to a seat on the porch; he sank into it unresisting. Miss
Mason pushed away her scrapbook, white-faced.
“The Lusitania! They were na' saved, Mary. There's o'er a thousand
gone. O'er a hundred Americans--hundreds of women and little bairns,
Mary--like yours--Canadian mithers and bairns going to be near their
brave lads--babies, Mary.” And the big fellow dropped his rough head on
his arms and sobbed like a child.
“Oh, Wallace; oh, Wallace!” whispered Mary, fairly wringing her hands;
“it can't be! Over a thousand lost?”
“Aye,” he cried suddenly, bringing his heavy fist down with a crash on
the wicker table, “they drooned them like rats--God damn their bloody
souls.”
His face, crimson with rage and pity, worked uncontrollably. Mary
covered her eyes with her hands. The Sparrow sat petrified. The little
Elliston, terrified by their strange aspects, burst into loud wails.
“There, darling; there, mother's boy,” crooned Mary soothingly, pressing
her wet cheek to his.
“Little bairns like that, Mary,” McEwan repeated brokenly. Mary gathered
the child close into her arms. They sat in stunned horror.
“Weel,” said McEwan at last, more quietly. “I'll be going o'er to
enlist. I would ha' gone long sine, but that me poor girl would ha'
thocht I'd desairted her. She doesna' need me now, and there's eno' left
for the lad. Aye, this is me call. I was ay a slow man to wrath, Mary,
but now if I can but kill one German before I die--” His great fist
clenched again on the table.
“Oh, don't, dear man, don't,” whispered Mary, with trembling lips,
laying her cool hand over his. “You're right; you must go. But don't
feel so terribly.”
His grip relaxed; his big hand lay under hers quietly.
“I could envy you, Wallace, being able to go. It's hard for us who have
to stay here, just waiting. My poor sister has lost her husband already,
and I don't know whether mine is alive or dead. And now you're going!
Elliston's pet uncle!” She smiled at him affectionately through her
tears.
“I'll write you if I hear aught about the Foreign Legion, Mary,” he
said, under his breath.
She pressed his hand in gratitude. “When shall you go?” she asked.
“By the next boat.”
“Go by the American Line.”
His jaw set grimly. “Aye, I will. They shall no torpedo me till I've had
ae shot at them!”
Mary rose. “Now, Wallace, you are to stay and lunch with us. You must
let us make much of the latest family hero while we have him. Eh,
Sparrow?”
“Yes,” nodded Miss Mason emphatically, “I've hated the British ever
since the Revolution--I and my parents and my grandparents--but I guess
I'm with them, and those that fight for them, from now on.”
II
On the Monday following the sinking of the Lusitania, James Farraday
received a letter from the American Hospital in Paris, written in French
in a shaky hand, and signed Adolph Jensen.
New York was still strained and breathless from Saturday's horror. Men
sat idle in their offices reading edition after edition of the papers,
rage mounting in their hearts. Flags were at half mast. Little work was
being done anywhere save at the newspaper offices, which were keyed to
the highest pitch. Farraday's office was hushed. Those members of his
staff who were responsible for The Child at Home--largely women, all
picked for their knowledge of child life--were the worst demoralized.
How think of children's play-time stories when those little bodies were
being brought into Queenstown harbor? Farraday himself, the efficient,
the concentrated, sat absent-mindedly reading the papers, or drumming
a slow, ceaseless tap with his fingers upon the desk. The general gloom
was enhanced by their knowledge that Mac, their dear absurd Mac, was
going. But they were all proud of him.
By two o'clock Farraday had read all the news twice over, and Adolph's
letter three times.
Telephoning for his car to meet him, he left the office and caught an
early afternoon train home. He drove straight to the Byrdsnest and found
Mary alone in the sitting room.
She rose swiftly and pressed his hand:
“Oh, my dear friend,” she murmured, “isn't it terrible?”
He nodded. “Sit down, Mary, my dear girl.” He spoke very quietly,
unconsciously calling her by name for the first time. “I have something
to tell you.”
She turned white.
“No,” he said quickly, “he isn't dead.”
She sat down, trembling.
“I have a letter from Adolph Jensen. They are both wounded, and in the
American Hospital in Paris. The Foreign Legion has suffered heavily.
Jensen is convalescent, and returns to the front. He was beside your
husband in the trench. It was a shell. Byrd was hit in the back. My dear
child--” he stopped for a moment. “Mary--”
“Go on,” she whispered through stiff lips.
“He is paralyzed, my dear, from the hips down.”
She stared at him.
“Oh, no, James--oh, no, James--oh, no!” she whispered, over and over.
“Yes, my poor child. He is quite convalescent, and going about the wards
in a wheeled chair. But he will never be able to walk again.”
“Why,” said Mary, wonderingly, “he never used to be still--he always
ran, and skipped, like a child.” Her breast heaved. “He always ran,
James--” she began to cry--the tears rolled down her cheeks--she ran
quickly out of the room, sobbing.
James waited in silence, smoking a pipe, his face set in lines of
inexpressible sadness. In half an hour she returned. Her eyes were
swollen, but she was calm again.
“I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long,” she said, with a pitiful
attempt at a smile. “Please read me the letter, will you?”
James read the French text. Stefan had been so brave in the trenches,
always kept up a good heart. He used to sing to the others. A shell had
struck the trench; they were nearly all killed or wounded. Stefan knew
he would walk no more, but he was still so brave, with a smile for every
one. He was drawing, too, wonderful pencil drawings of the front. Adolph
thought they were much more wonderful than anything he had ever done.
All the nurses and wounded asked for them. Adolph would be going back in
a month. He ventured to ask Mr. Farraday to lay the affair before Mrs.
Byrd. Stefan had no money, and no one to take care of him when he left
the hospital. He, Adolph, would do all that was possible, but he was
sure that his friend should go home. Stefan often, very often, spoke of
his wife to Adolph. He wore a ring of hers. Would Mr. Farraday use his
good offices?
James folded the letter and looked at Mary.
“I must go and fetch him,” she said simply.
“Mrs. Byrd--Mary--I want you to let me go. Mac has offered to do it
before enlisting, but I don't think your husband cared for Mac, and he
always liked me. It wouldn't be fair to the baby for you to go, and it
would be very painful for you. But it will give me real happiness--the
first thing I've been able to do in this awful business.”
“Oh, no, James, I couldn't let you. Your work--it is too much
altogether.”
“The office can manage without me for three weeks. I want you to let me
do this for you both--it's such a small thing.”
“I feel I ought to go, James,” she reiterated, “I ought to be there.”
“You can't take the baby--and she mustn't suffer,” he urged. “There will
be any amount of red tape. You really must let me go.”
They discussed it for some time, and at last she agreed, for the sake of
the small Rosamond. She began to see, too, that there would be much
for her to do at this end. With her racial habit of being coolest in an
emergency, Mary found herself mentally reorganizing the régime of the
Byrdsnest, and rapidly reviewing one possible means after another of
ensuring Stefan's comfort. She talked over her plans with James, and
before he left that afternoon their arrangements were made. On one point
he was obliged to give way. Stefan's money, which he had returned to
Mary before enlisting, was still intact, and she insisted it should be
used for the expenses of the double journey. Enough would be left to
carry out her plans at this end, and Stefan would know that he was in no
sense an object of charity.
James, anxious as he was to help his friends in all ways, had to admit
that she was right. He was infinitely relieved that the necessity for
practical action had so completely steadied her. He knew now that she
would be almost too busy in the intervening weeks for distress.
The next day James engaged his passage, sent a long cable to Adolph, and
performed prodigies of work at the office. By means of some wire-pulling
he and Mac succeeded in securing a cabin together on the next American
liner out.
Meanwhile, Mary began her campaign. At breakfast she expounded her plans
to Miss Mason, who had received the news overnight.
“You see, Sparrow,” she said, “we don't know how much quiet he will
need, but we couldn't give him _any_ in this little cottage, with the
babies. So I shall fit up the studio--a big room for him, a small one
for the nurse, and a bath. The nurse will be the hardest part, for I'm
sure he would rather have a man. The terrible helplessness”--her voice
faltered for a second--“would humiliate him before a woman. But it must
be the right man, Sparrow, some one he can like--who won't jar him--and
some one we can afford to keep permanently. I've been thinking about it
all night and, do you know, I have an idea. Do you remember my telling
you about Adolph Jensen's brother?”
“The old one, who failed over here?”
“Yes. Stefan helped him, you know, and I'm sure he was awfully grateful.
When the Berber shop changed hands in January, I wondered what would
become of him; I believe Miss Berber was only using him out of kindness.
It seems to me he might be just the person, if we could find him.”
“You're a smart girl, Mary, and as plucky as they make 'em,” nodded the
spinster.
“Oh, Sparrow, when I think of his helplessness! He, who always wanted
wings!” Mary half choked.
“Now,” said Miss Mason, rising briskly, “we've got to act, not think.
Come along, child, and let's go over to the barn.” Gratefully Mary
followed her.
Enquiries at the now cheapened and popularized Berber studio elicited
Jensen's old address, and Mary drove there in a taxi, only to find that
he had moved to an even poorer quarter of the city. She discovered his
lodgings at last, in a slum on the lower east side. He was out, looking
for a job, the landlady thought, but Mary left a note for him, with a
bill inside it, asking him to come out to Crab's Bay the next morning.
She hurried back to Rosamond, and found that the excellent Sparrow had
already held lively conferences with the village builders and plumbers.
“I told 'em they'd get a bonus for finishing the job in three weeks, and
I guess I got the whole outfit on the jump,” said she with satisfaction.
“Though the dear Lord knows,” she added, “if the plumbers get through on
schedule it'll be the first time in history.”
When Henrik Jensen arrived next day Mary took an instant liking to him.
He was shabbier and more hopeless than ever, but his eyes were kind, his
mouth gentle, and when she spoke of Stefan his face lighted up.
She told him the story of the two friends, of his brother's wound and
Stefan's crippling, and saw that his eyes filled with tears.
“He was wonderful to me, Mrs. Byrd, he gave me a chance. I was making
good, too, till Miss Berber left and the whole scheme fell to pieces.
I'm glad Adolph is with him; it was very gracious of you to let me hear
about it.”
“Are you very busy now, Mr. Jensen?”
He smiled hopelessly.
“Yes, very busy--looking for work. I'm down and out, Mrs. Byrd.”
She unfolded her scheme to him. Stefan would need some one near him
night and day. He would be miserable with a servant; he would--she
knew--feel his helplessness more keenly in the presence of a woman. She
herself could help, but she had her work, and the children. Mr. Jensen
would be one of the family. She could offer him a home, and a salary
which she hoped would be sufficient for his needs--
“I have no needs, Mrs. Byrd,” he interrupted at this point, his eyes
shining with eagerness. “Enough clothes for decency, that's all. If
I could be of some use to your husband, to my friend and Adolph's, I
should ask no more of life. I'm a hopeless failure, ma'am, and getting
old--you don't know what it is like to feel utterly useless.”
Mary listened to his gentle voice and watched his fine hands--hands used
to appraising delicate, beautiful things. The longer they talked, the
more certain she felt that here was the ideal person, one bound to her
husband by ties of gratitude, and whose ministrations could not possibly
offend him.
She rang up Mrs. Farraday, put the case to her, and obtained her
offer of a room to house Mr. Jensen while the repairs were making. She
arranged with him to return next day with his belongings, and advanced
a part of his salary for immediate expenses. Mary wanted him to come to
her at once, both out of sympathy for his wretched circumstances, and
because she wished thoroughly to know him before Stefan's return.
Luckily, the Sparrow took to Jensen at once, so there was nothing to
fear on that score. For the Sparrow was now a permanent part of Mary's
life. She had a small independent income, but no home--her widowed
sister having gone west to live with a daughter--and she looked upon
herself as the appointed guardian of the Byrdsnest. Not only did she
relieve Mary of the housekeeping, and help Lily with the household
tasks, which she adored, but she had practically taken the place of
nurse to the children, leaving Mary hours of freedom for her work which
would otherwise have been unattainable.
The competency of the two friends achieved the impossible in the
next few weeks, as it had done on the memorable first day of Mary's
housekeeping. Mr. Jensen, with his trained taste, was invaluable for
shopping expeditions, going back and forth to the city with catalogues,
samples, and orders.
In a little over three weeks Stefan's old studio had been transformed
into a bed-sitting-room, with every comfort that an invalid could
desire, and the further end of it had been partitioned into a bathroom
and a small bedroom for Mr. Jensen, with a separate outside entrance.
“Oh, if only I had the new wing,” sighed Mary.
“This will be even quieter for him, Mrs. Byrd, and the chair can be
wheeled so quickly to the house,” replied Mr. Jensen.
The back window of Mary's sitting room had been enlarged to glass doors,
and from these a concrete path ran to the studio entrance. Mary planned
to make it a covered way after the summer.
The day the wheeled chair arrived it was hard for her to keep back the
tears. It was a beautifully made thing of springs, cushions, and rubber
tires. It could be pushed, or hand-propelled by the occupant. It could
be lowered, heightened, or tilted. It was all that a chair could be--but
how to picture Stefan in it, he of the lithe steps and quick, agile
movements, the sudden turns, and the swift, almost running walk? Her
heart trembled with pity at the thought.
They had already received an “all well” cable from Paris, and three
weeks after he had sailed, James telegraphed that they were starting. He
had waited for the American line--he would have been gone a month.
As the day of landing approached, Mary became intensely nervous. She
decided not to meet the boat, and sent James a wireless to that effect.
She could not see Stefan first among all those crowds; her instinct told
her that he, too, would not wish it.
The ship docked on Saturday. The day before, the last touches had been
put to Stefan's quarters. They were as perfect as care and taste could
make them. Early on Saturday morning Mr. Jensen started for the city,
carrying a big bunch of roses--Mary's welcome to her husband. While the
Sparrow flew about the house gilding the lily of cleanliness, Mary, with
Elliston at her skirts, picked the flowers destined for Stefan's room.
These she arranged in every available vase--the studio sang with
them. Every now and then she would think of some trifle to beautify it
further--a drawing from her sitting room--her oldest pewter plate for
another ashtray--a pine pillow from her bedroom. Elliston's fat legs
became so tired with ceaselessly trotting back and forth behind her that
he began to cry with fatigue, and was put to bed for his nap. Rosamond
waked, demanding dinner and amusement.
The endless morning began to pass, and all this while Mary had not
thought!
At lunch time James telephoned. They would be out by three o'clock.
Stefan had stood the journey well, was delighted with the roses, and to
see Jensen. He was wonderfully brave and cheerful.
Mary was trembling as she hung up the receiver. He was here, he was on
the way; and still, she had not thought!
Both children asleep, the last conceivable preparation made, Mary
settled herself on the porch at last, to face what was coming.
The Sparrow peeped out at her.
“I guess you'd as soon be left alone, my dear,” she said, tactfully.
“Yes, please, Sparrow,” Mary replied, with a nervous smile. The little
spinster slipped away.
What did she feel for Stefan? Mary wondered. Pity, deep pity? Yes. But
that she would feel for any wounded soldier. Admiration for his courage?
That, too, any one of the war's million heroes could call forth.
Determination to do her full duty by this stricken member of her family?
Of course, she would have done that for any relative. Love? No. Mary
felt no love for Stefan. That had died, nearly a year ago, died in agony
and humiliation. She could not feel that her lover, her husband, was
returning to her. She waited only for a wounded man to whom she owed the
duty of all kindness.
Suddenly, her heart shook with fear. What if she were unable to show
him more than pity, more than kindness? What if he, stricken, helpless,
should feel her lack of warmth, and tenderness, should feel himself a
stranger here in this his only refuge? Oh, no, no! She must do better
than that. She must act a part. He must feel himself cared for, wanted.
Surely he, who had lost everything, could ask so much for old love's
sake? ... But if she could not give it? Terror assailed her, the terror
of giving pain; for she knew that of all women she was least capable of
insincerity. “I don't know how to act,” she cried to herself, pitifully.
A car honked in the lane. They were here. She jumped up and ran to the
gate, wheeling the waiting chair outside it. Farraday's big car rounded
the bend--three men sat in the tonneau. Seeing them, Mary ran suddenly
back inside the gate; her eyes fell, she dared not look.
The car had stopped. Through half-raised lids she saw James alight. The
chauffeur ran to the chair. Jensen stood up in the car, and some one
was lifted from it. The chair wheeled about and came toward her. It was
through the gate--it was only a yard away.
“Mary,” said a voice. She looked up.
There was the well-known face, strangely young, the eyes large and
shadowed. There was his smile, eager, and very anxious now. There were
his hands, those finely nervous hands. They lay on a rug, beneath which
were the once swift limbs that could never move again. He was all hers
now. His wings were broken, and, broken, he was returning to the nest.
“Mary!”
She made one step forward. Stooping, she gathered his head to her
breast, that breast where, loverlike, it had lain a hundred times. Her
arms held him close, her tears ran down upon his hair.
“My boy!” she cried.
Here was no lover, no husband to be forgiven. Cradled upon her heart
there lay only her first, her most wayward, and her best loved child.
III
Mary never told Stefan of those nightmare moments before his arrival.
From the instant that her deepest passion, the maternal, had answered to
his need, she knew neither doubt nor unhappiness.
She settled down to the task of creating by her labor and love a home
where her three dependents and her three faithful helpmates could find
the maximum of happiness and peace.
The life of the Byrdsnest centered about Stefan; every one thought first
of him and his needs. Next in order of consideration came Ellie and
little Rosamond. Then Lily had to be remembered. She must not be
overworked; she must take enough time off. Henrik, too, must not be
over-conscientious. He must allow Mary to relieve him often enough.
As for the Sparrow, she must not wear herself out flying in three
directions at once. She must not tire her eyes learning typewriting. But
at this point Mary's commands were apt to be met with contempt.
“Now, Mary Byrd,” the Sparrow would chirp truculently, “you 'tend to
your business, and let me 'tend to mine. Anybody would think that we
were all to save ourselves in this house but you. As for my typing, it's
funny if I can't save you something on those miserable stenographers'
bills.”
Mary was wonderfully happy in these days--happier in a sense than she
had ever been, for she had found, beyond all question, the full work for
hands to do. And to her love for her children there was added not merely
her maternal tenderness for Stefan, but a deep and growing admiration.
For Stefan was changed not only in the body, but in the spirit.
Everybody remarked it. The fierce fires of war seemed to have burnt away
his old confident egotism. In giving himself to France he had found more
than he had lost; for, by a strange paradox, in the midst of death he
had found belief in life.
“Mary, my beautiful,” he said to her one day in September, as he worked
at an adjustable drawing board which swung across his knees, “did you
ever wonder why all my old pictures used to be of rapid movement, nearly
all of running or flying?”
“Yes, dearest, I used to try often to think out the significance of it.”
They were in the studio. Mary had just dropped her pencil after a couple
of hours' work on a new serial she was writing. She often worked now in
Stefan's room. He was busy with a series of drawings of the war. He had
tried different media--pastel, ink, pencils, and chalks--to see which
were the easiest for sedentary work.
“It's good-bye to oils,” he had said, “I couldn't paint a foot from the
canvas.”
Now he was using a mixture of chalk and charcoal, and was in the act
of finishing the sixth drawing of his series. The big doors of the barn
were opened wide to the sunny lawn, gay with a riot of multicolored
dahlias.
“It's odd,” said Stefan, pushing away his board and turning the wheels
of his chair so that he faced the brilliant stillness of the garden,
“but I seem never to have understood my work till now. I used always
to paint flight partly because it was beautiful in itself but also, I
think, with some hazy notion that swift creatures could always escape
from the ugliness of life.”
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 shining.
“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 sturdy 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 passed 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, nobody 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 passed 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 carcass; when, without life, it seemed so much better to
die. He had days of passionate 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 rushing 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 Danaë, and in my judgment
far surpasses 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 Danaë--appeared
to me to lack substance and insight. It was brilliant,
but too spectacular. Even his Danaë, 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.
“I expect the fellow's right,” he said. “I don't think my soul was
as strong on wings in the old days as my brush was. Without joking,
though,” he went on, suddenly grave, “I don't know if there is such a
thing as a soul, but if there is, such splendid ones were being spilled
out there that I think, perhaps, Mary, I may have picked a bit of one
up.”
“Dearest,” said Mary, with a kiss of comprehension, “I'm so proud of
you. You are great, a great artist, and a great spirit.” And she kissed
him again, her eyes shining.
If the Byrdsnest was proud in November of its distinguished head,
it positively bristled with importance in December, when Constantine
telephoned that the trustees of the Metropolitan were negotiating for
Stefan's whole series. This possibility had already been spoken of
in the press, though the family had not dared hope too much from the
suggestion.
The Museum bought the drawings, and Stefan took his place as one of
America's great artists.
“Mary, I'm so glad I can be useful again, as well as ornamental,” he
grinned, presenting to her with a flourish a delightfully substantial
cheque.
His courage, and his happiness in his success, were an increasing joy to
Mary. She blossomed in her pride of him, and the old glowing look came
back to her face.
Only one thing--besides her anxiety for his health--troubled her. With
all his tenderness to her, and his renewed love, he still remained a
stranger to his children. He seemed proud of their healthy beauty, and
glad of Mary's happiness in them; but their nearness bored and tired
him, and they, quick to perceive this, became hopelessly unresponsive in
his presence. Ellie would back solemnly away from the approaching chair,
and Rosamond would hang mute upon her mother's shoulder. “It's strange,”
Mary said to the Sparrow, who was quick to notice any failure to
appreciate her adored charges; “they're his own, and yet he hasn't the
key to them. I suppose it's because he's a genius, and too far apart
from ordinary people to understand just little human babies.”
The thought stirred faintly the memory of her old wound.
V
That Christmas, for the first time in its history, the Byrdsnest held
high festival. House and studio were decorated, and in the afternoon
there was a Christmas-tree party for all the old friends and their
children.
The dining-room had been closed since the night before in order to
facilitate Santa Clans' midnight spiritings.
When all the guests had arrived, and Stefan had been wheeled in from the
studio, the mysterious door was at last thrown open, revealing the tree
in all its glory, rooted in a floor of glittering snow, with its topmost
star scraping the ceiling.
With shouts the older children surrounded it; Ellie followed more
slowly, awed by such splendor; and Rosamond crept after, drawn
irresistibly by a hundred glittering lures.
Crawling from guest to guest, her tiny hands clutching toys as big as
herself, her dark eyes brilliant, her small red mouth emitting coos of
rapture, she enchanted the men, and drew positive tears of delight from
Constance.
“Oh, Walter!” she cried, shaking her son with viciousness, “how could
you have been so monotonous as to be born a boy?”
After a time Mary noticed that Stefan was being tired by the hubbub,
and signaled an adjournment to the studio for tea and calm. The elders
trooped out; the children fell upon the viands; and Miss Mason caught
Rosamond by the petticoat as she endeavored to creep out after Gunther,
whose great size seemed to fascinate her.
The sculptor had given Mary a bronze miniature of his now famous
“Pioneers” group. It was a beautiful thing, and Constance and James were
anxious to know if other copies were to be obtained.
“No,” Gunther answered them laconically, “I have only had three cast.
One the President wished to have, the second is for myself, and Mrs.
Byrd, as the original of the woman, naturally has the third.”
“Couldn't you cast one or two more?” Constance pleaded.
“No,” he replied, “I should not care to do so.”
Stefan examined the bronze with interest, his keen eyes traveling from
the man's figure to the woman's.
“It's very good of you both,” he said, looking from Gunther to Mary,
with a trace of his old teasing smile. Mary blushed slightly. For some
reason which she did not analyze she was a trifle embarrassed at seeing
herself perpetuated in bronze as the companion of the sculptor.
When the guests began to leave, Mary urged the Farradays to remain a
little longer. “It's only five o'clock,” she reminded them.
Mrs. Farraday settled herself comfortably, and drew out her
khaki-colored knitting. James lit his pipe, and Stefan wheeled forward
to the glow of the fire, fitting a cigarette into his new amber holder.
“I have a letter from Wallace,” said James, “that I've been waiting to
read you. Shall I do so now?”
“Oh, do!” exclaimed Mary, “we shall love to hear it. Wait a moment,
though, while I fetch Rosamond--the Sparrow can't attend to them both at
once _and_ help Lily.”
She returned in a moment with the sleepy baby.
“I'll have to put her to bed soon,” she said, settling into a low
rocking chair, “but it isn't quite time yet. I suppose Jamie has heard
his father's letter?”
“Oh, yes,” said James, “and has dozens of his own, too.”
“He's such a dear boy,” Mary continued, “he's playing like an angel with
Ellie in there, while the Sparrow flits.”
James unfolded Mac's closely written sheets, and read his latest
accounts of the officers' training corps with which he had been for the
last six months, the gossip that filtered to them from the front, and
his expectation of being soon gazetted to a Highland Regiment.
“The waiting is hard, but when once I get with our own
lads in the trenches I'll be the happiest man alive,” wrote Mac.
“Meanwhile, I think a lot of all you dear people. I'm more
than happy in what you tell me of Byrd's success and of the
bairns' and Mary's well being. Give them all my love and
congratulations.”
James turned the last page, and paused. “I think that's about all,” he
said.
But it was not all. While the others sat silent for a minute, their
thoughts on the great struggle, Farraday's eyes ran again down that last
page.
“Poor Byrd,” Mac wrote, “so you say he'll not last many
years. Well, life would have broken him anyway, and it's
grand he's found himself before the end. He's not the lasting
kind, there's too much in him, and too little. She wins, after
all, James; life won't cheat her as it has him. She is here just
to be true to her instincts--to choose the finest mate for her
nest-building. She'll marry again, though the dear woman
doesn't know it, and would be horrified at the thought. But
she will, and it won't be either of us--we are too much her kind.
It will be some other brilliant egoist who will thrill her, grind
her heart, and give her wonderful children. She is an instrument.
As I think I once heard poor Byrd say, she is not merely
an expression of life, she is life.”
James folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket.
“Come, son, we must be going,” murmured Mrs. Farraday, putting up her
knitting.
“Rosamond is almost asleep,” smiled Mary.
“Don't rise, my dear,” said the little lady, “we'll find our own way.”
“Good-bye, Farraday,” said Stefan, “and thank you for everything.”
Mary held out her hand to them both, and they slipped quietly out.
“What a good day it has been, dearest. I hope you aren't too tired,” she
said, as she rocked the drowsy baby.
“No, Beautiful, only a little.”
He dropped his burnt-out cigarette into the ash-tray at his side. The
rocker creaked rhythmically.
“Mary, I want to draw Rosamond,” said Stefan thoughtfully.
“Oh, do you, dearest? That _will_ be nice!” she exclaimed, her face
breaking into a smile of pleasure.
“Yes. Do you know, I was watching the little thing this afternoon, when
Gunther and all the others were playing with her. It's very strange--I
never noticed it before--but it came to me quite suddenly. She's exactly
like my mother.”
“Is she really?” Mary murmured, touched.
“Yes, it's very wonderful. I felt suddenly, watching her eyes and smile,
that my mother is not dead after all. Will you--” he seemed a little
embarrassed--“could you, do you think, without disturbing her, let me
hold the baby for a little while?”
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Nest Builder, by Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale