The Nest Builder Part 30

Stefan rose rather dizzily from his unfinished meal.

"Please take my room," he said, "I couldn't stay in the house--I'm going out." He found the atmosphere of alert efficiency created by these women utterly insupportable. The house stifled him with its teeming feminine life. In it he felt superfluous, futile. Hurrying out, he stumbled down the slope and, stripping, dived into the water. Its cold touch robbed him of thought; he became at once merely one of Nature's straying children returned again to her arms.

Swimming back, he drew on his clothes, and mounting to the garden, threw himself face down upon the gra.s.s, and fell asleep under the morning sun.

He dreamed that a drum was calling him. Its beat, m.u.f.fled and irregular, yet urged him forward. A flag waved dazzlingly before his eyes; its folds stifled him. He tried to move, yet could not--the drum called ever more urgently. He started awake, to find himself on his back, the sun beating into his face, and the doctor's machine chugging down the lane.

VII

The little June baby at the Byrdsnest was very popular with the neighborhood. During the summer it seemed to Stefan that the house was never free of visitors who came to admire the child, guess his weight, and exclaim at his mother's health.

As a convalescent, Mary was, according to Constance Elliot, a complete fraud. Except for her hair, which had temporarily lost some of its elasticity, she had never looked so radiant. She was out of bed on the ninth day, and walking in the garden on the twelfth. The behavior of the baby--who was a stranger to artificial food--was exemplary; he never fretted, and cried only when he was hungry. But as his appet.i.te troubled him every three hours during the day, and every four at night, he appeared to Stefan to cry incessantly, and his strenuous wail would drive his father from house to barn, and from barn to woods. Lured from one of these retreats by an interval of silence, Stefan was as likely as not to find an auto at the gate and hear exclamatory voices proceeding from the nursery, when he would fade into the woods again like a wild thing fearful of the trap.

His old dislike of his kind rea.s.serted itself. It is one thing to be surrounded by pretty women proclaiming you the greatest artist of your day, and quite another to listen while they exclaim on the perfections of your offspring and the health of your wife. For the first type of conversation Stefan had still an appet.i.te; with the second he was quickly surfeited.

Nor were women his only tormentors. The baby spent much of its time in the garden, and every Sunday Stefan would find McEwan planted on the lawn, prodding the infant with a huge forefinger, and exploding into fatuous mirth whenever he deluded himself into believing he had made it smile. Of late Stefan had begun to tolerate this man, but after three such exhibitions decided to blacklist him permanently as an insufferable idiot. Even Farraday lost ground in his esteem, for, though guilty of no ba.n.a.lities, he had a way of silently hovering over the baby-carriage which Stefan found mysteriously irritating. Jamie alone of their masculine friends seemed to adopt a comprehensible att.i.tude, for he backed away in hasty alarm whenever the infant, in arms or carriage, bore down upon him. On several occasions when the Farraday household invaded the Byrdsnest Stefan and Jamie together sneaked away in search of an environment more seemly for their s.e.x.

"You are the only creature I know just now, Jamie," Stefan said, "with any sense of proportion;" and these two outcasts from notice would tramp moodily through the woods, the boy faithfully imitating Stefan's slouch and his despondent way of carrying his hands thrust in his pockets.

There were no more tales of Scotland for Jamie in these days, and as for Stefan he hardly saw his wife. True, she always brightened when he came in and mutely evinced her desire that he should remain, but she was never his. While he talked her eye would wander to the cradle, or if they were in another room her ear would be constantly strained to catch a cry. In the midst of a pleasant interlude she would jump to her feet with a murmured "Dinner time," or "He must have some water now," and be gone.

Stefan did not sleep with her--as he could not endure being disturbed at night--and she took a long nap every afternoon, so that at best the hours available for him were few. Any visitor, he thought morosely, won more attention from her than he did, and this was in a sense true, for the visitors openly admired the baby--the heart of Mary's life--and he did not.

He did not know how intensely she longed for this, how she ached to see Stefan jab his finger at the baby as McEwan did, or watch it with the tender smile of Farraday. She tried a thousand simple wiles to bring to life the father in him. About to nurse the baby, she would call Stefan to see his eager search for the comfort of her breast, looking up in proud joy as the tiny mouth was satisfied.

At the very first, when the baby was newborn, Stefan had watched this rite with some interest, but now he only fidgeted, exclaiming, "You are looking wonderfully fit, Mary," or "Greedy little beggar, isn't he?" He never spoke of his old idea of painting her as a Madonna. If she drew his attention to the baby's tiny hands or feet, he would glance carelessly at them, with a "They're all right," or "I'll like them better when they're bigger."

Once, as they were going to bed, she showed Stefan the baby lying on his chest, one fist balled on either side of the pillow, the downy back of his head s.h.i.+ning in the candle-light. She stooped and kissed it.

"His head is too deliciously soft and warm, Stefan; do kiss it good-night."

His face contracted into an expression of distaste. "No," he said, "I can't kiss babies," and left the room.

She felt terribly, unnecessarily hurt. It was so difficult for her to make advances, so fatally easy for him to rebuff them.

After that, she did not draw the baby to his attention again.

Perhaps, had the child been a girl, Stefan would have felt more sentiment about it. A girl baby, lying like a pink bud among the roses of the garden, might have appealed to that elfin imagination which largely took the place in him of romance--but a boy! A boy was merely in his eyes another male, and Stefan considered the world far too full of men already.

He sealed his att.i.tude when the question of the child's name came up.

Mary had fallen into a habit of calling it "Little Stefan," or "Steve"

for short, and one morning, as the older Stefan crossed the lawn to his studio her voice floated down from the nursery in an improvised song to her "Stefan Baby." He bounded upstairs to her.

"Mary," he called, "you are surely not going to call that infant by my name?"

Mary, her lap enveloped in ap.r.o.ns and towels, looked up from the bath in which her son was practising tentative kicks.

"Why, yes, dear, I thought we'd christen him after you, as he's the eldest. Don't you think that would be nice?" She looked puzzled.

"No, I do not!" Stefan snorted emphatically. "For heaven's sake give the child a name of his own, and let me keep mine. My G.o.d, one Stefan Byrd is enough in the world, I should think!"

"Well, dear, what shall we call him, then?" she asked, lowering her head over the baby to hide her hurt.

"Give him your own name if you want to. After all, he's your child.

Elliston Byrd wouldn't sound at all bad."

"Very well," said Mary slowly. "I think the Dad would have been pleased by that." In spite of herself, her voice trembled.

"Good Lord, Mary, I haven't hurt you, have I?" He looked exasperated.

She shook her head, still bending over the baby.

"It's all right, dear," she whispered.

"You're so soft nowadays, one hardly dare speak," he muttered. "Sorry, dear," and with a penitent kiss for the back of her neck he hastened downstairs again.

The christening was held two weeks later, in the small Episcopalian church of Crab's Bay. Stefan could see no reason for it, as neither he nor Mary was orthodox, but when he suggested omitting the ceremony she looked at him wide-eyed.

"Not christen him, Stefan? Oh, I don't think that would be fair," she said. Her manner was simple, but there was finality in her tone--it made him feel that wherever her child was concerned she would be adamant.

The baby's G.o.dmother was, of course, Constance, and his G.o.dfathers, equally obviously, Farraday and McEwan. Mary made the ceremony the occasion of a small at-home, inviting the numerous friends from whom she had received congratulations or gifts for the baby.

Miss Mason had insisted on herself baking the christening cake; Farraday as usual supplied a sheaf of flowers. In the drawing room the little Elliston's presents were displayed, a beautiful old cup from Farraday, a christening robe, and a spoon, "pusher," and fork from Constance, a silver bowl "For Elliston's porridge from his friend Wallace McEwan,"

and a Bible in stout leather binding from Mrs. Farraday, inscribed in her delicate, slanting hand. There was even a napkin ring from the baby's aunt in England, who was much relieved that her too-independent sister had married a successful artist and done her duty by the family so promptly.

Mary was naively delighted with these offerings.

"He has got everything I should have liked him to have!" she exclaimed as she arranged them.

Stefan, led to the font, showed all the nervousness he had omitted at the altar, but looked very handsome in a suit of linen crash, while Mary, in white muslin, was at her glowing best.

Constance was inevitably late, for, like most American women, she did not carry her undeniable efficiency to the point of punctuality. At the last moment, however, she dashed up to the church with the elan of a triumphant general, bearing her husband captive in the tonneau, and no less a person than Gunther, the distinguished sculptor, on the seat beside her.

"I know you did not ask him, but he's so handsome I thought he ought to be here," she whispered inconsequentially to Mary after the ceremony.

Of their many acquaintances few were unrepresented except Miss Berber, to whom Mary had felt disinclined to send an invitation. She had sounded Stefan on the subject, but had been answered by a "Certainly not!" so emphatic as to surprise her.

At the house Gunther, with his great height and magnificent viking head, was unquestionably the hit of the afternoon. Holding the baby, which lay confidently in his powerful hands, he examined its head, arms and legs with professional interest, while every woman in the room watched him admiringly.

"This baby, Mrs. Byrd, is the finest for his age I have ever seen, and I have modeled many of them," he p.r.o.nounced, handing it back to Mary, who blushed to her forehead with pleasure. "Not that I am surprised," he went on, staring frankly at her, "when I look at his mother. I am doing some groups for the Pan-American exhibition next year in San Francisco.

If you could give me any time, I should very much like to use your head and the baby's. I shall try and arrange it with you," and he nodded as if that settled the matter.

"Oh," gasped Constance, "you have all the luck. Mary! Mr. Gunther has known me for years, but have _I_ had a chance to sit for him? I feel myself turning green, and as my gown is yellow it will be most unbecoming!" And seizing Farraday as if for consolation, she bore him to the dining room to find a drink.

Stefan, who was interested in Gunther, tried to get him to the barn to see his pictures; but the sculptor would not move his eyes from Mary, and Stefan, considerably bored, was obliged to content himself with showing the studio to some of his prettiest neighbors.