The Nest Builder Part 21

"Oh, d.a.m.n!" said Stefan one morning, throwing down his brush. "This picture is architectural, absolutely. What possessed me to try such a conception? I can only do movement. I can't be static. Earth! I don't understand it--everything good I've done has been made of air and fire, or water." He turned an irritable face to Mary.

"Why did you encourage me in this?"

She looked up in frank astonishment, about to reply, but he forestalled her.

"Oh, yes, I know I was pleased with the idea--it isn't your fault, of course, and yet--Oh, what's the use!" He slapped down his pallette and made for the door. "I'm off to get some air," he called.

Mary felt hurt and uneasy. The nameless doubts of the autumn again a.s.sailed her. What would be the end, she wondered, of her great adventure? The distant prospect vaguely troubled her, but she turned easily from it to the immediate future, which held a blaze of joy sufficient to obliterate all else.

The thought of her baby was to Mary like the opening of the gates of paradise to Christian the Pilgrim. Her heart shook with joy of it. She pa.s.sed through her days now only half conscious of the world about her. She had, together with her joy, an extraordinary sense of physical well-being, of the actual value of the body. For the first time she became actively interested in her beauty. Even on her honeymoon she had never dressed to please her husband with the care she now gave to the donning of her loose pink and white negligees and the little boudoir caps she had bought to wear with them. That Stefan paid her fewer compliments, that he often failed to notice small additions to her wardrobe, affected her not at all. "Afterwards he will be pleased; afterwards he will love me more than ever," she thought, but, even so, knew that it was not for him she was now fair, but for that other. She did not love Stefan less, but her love was to be made flesh, and it was that incarnation she now adored. If she had been given to self-a.n.a.lysis she might have asked what it boded that she had never--save for that one moment's adoration of his genius the day he completed the Danae--felt for Stefan the abandonment of love she felt for his coming child. She might have wondered, but she did not, for she felt too intensely in these days to have much need of thought. She loved her husband--he was a great man--they were to have a child. The sense of those three facts made up her cosmos.

Farraday had asked her in vain on more than one occasion for another ma.n.u.script. The last time she shook her head, with one of her rare attempts at explanation, made less rarely to him than to her other friends.

"No, Mr. Farraday, I can't think about imaginary children just now.

There's a spell over me--all the world waits, and I'm holding my breath.

Do you see?"

He took her hand between both his.

"Yes, my dear child, I do," he answered, his mouth twisting into its sad and gentle smile. He had come bringing a sheaf of spring flowers, narcissus, and golden daffodils, which she was holding in her lap. He thought as he said good-bye that she looked much more like Persephone than the Demeter of Stefan's picture.

In spite of her deep-seated emotion, Mary was gay and practical enough in these late winter days, with her small household tasks, her occasional shopping, and her sewing. This last had begun vaguely to irritate Stefan, so incessant was it.

"Mary, do put down that sewing," he would exclaim; or "Don't sing the song of the s.h.i.+rt any more to-day;" and she would laughingly fold her work, only to take it up instinctively again a few minutes later.

One evening he came upon her bending over a table in their sitting room, tracing a fine design on cambric with a pencil. Something in her pose and figure opened a forgotten door of memory; he watched her puzzled for a moment, then with a sudden exclamation ran upstairs, and returned with a pad of paper and a box of water-color paints. He was visibly excited.

"Here, Mary," he said, thrusting a brush into her hand and clearing a place on the table. "Do something for me. Make a drawing on this pad, anything you like, whatever first comes into your head." His tone was eagerly importunate. She looked up in surprise, "Why, you funny boy!

What shall I draw?"

"That's just it--I don't know. Please draw whatever you want to--it doesn't matter how badly--just draw something."

Mystified, but acquiescent, Mary considered for a moment, looking from paper to brush, while Stefan watched eagerly.

"Can't I use a pencil?" she asked.

"No, a brush, please, I'll explain afterwards."

"Very well." She attacked the brown paint, then the red, then mixed some green. In a few minutes the paper showed a wobbly little house with a red roof and a smudged foreground of green gra.s.s with the suggestion of a shade-giving tree.

"There," she laughed, handing him the pad, "I'm afraid I shall never be an artist," and she looked up.

His face had dropped. He was staring at the drawing with an expression of almost comic disappointment.

"Why, Stefan," she laughed, rather uncomfortably, "you didn't think I could draw, did you?"

"No, no, it isn't that, Mary. It's just--the house. I thought you might--perhaps draw birds--or flowers."

"Birds?--or flowers?" She was at a loss.

"It doesn't matter; just an idea."

He crumpled up the little house, and closed the paintbox. "I'm going out for awhile; good-bye, dearest"; and, with a kiss, he left the room.

Mary sat still, too surprised for remonstrance, and in a moment heard the bang of the flat door.

"Birds, or flowers?" Suddenly she remembered something Stefan had told her, on the night of their engagement, about his mother. So that was it.

Tears came to her eyes. Rather lonely, she went to bed.

Meanwhile Stefan, his head bare in the cold wind, was speeding up the Avenue on the top of an omnibus.

"Houses are cages," he said to himself. For some reason, he felt hideously depressed.

"I called on Miss Berber last evening," Stefan announced casually at breakfast the next morning.

"Did you?" replied Mary, surprised, putting down her cup. "Well, did you have a nice time?"

"It was mildly amusing," he said, opening the newspaper. The subject dropped.

II

Mary, who had lived all her life in a small town within sight of the open fields, was beginning to feel the confinement of city life.

Even during her year in London she had joined other girls in weekend bicycling excursions out of town, or tubed to Golder's Green or Shepherd's Bush in search of country walks. Now that the late snows of March had cleared away, she began eagerly to watch for swelling buds in the Square, and was dismayed when Stefan told her that the spring, in this part of America, was barely perceptible before May.

"That's the first objection I've found to your country, Stefan," she said.

He was scowling moodily out of the window. "The first? I see nothing but objections."

"Oh, come!" she smiled at him; "it hasn't been so bad, has it?"

"Better than I had expected," he conceded. "But it will soon be April, and I remember the leaves in the Luxembourg for so many Aprils back."

She came and put her arm through his. "Do you want to go, dear?"

"Oh, hang it all, Mary, you don't suppose I want to leave you?" he answered brusquely, releasing his arm. "I want my own place, that's all."

She had, in her quieter way, become just as homesick for England, though sharing none of his dislike of her adopted land.

"Well, shall we both go?" she suggested.

He laughed shortly. "Don't be absurd, dearest--what would your doctor say to such a notion? No, we've got to stick it out," and he ruffled his hair impatiently.

With a suppressed sigh Mary changed the subject. "By the by, I want you to meet Dr. Hillyard; I have asked her to tea this afternoon."