The Nest Builder Part 36

"You lovely creature, here I am at last! Theodore hadn't been up for a week, so I came down, to find Mr. Gunther thundering like Odin because I had promised to help him arrange sittings with you, and had forgotten it. I had to bring him at once. He says his group is all done but the two heads, and he must have yours and the baby's. But he'll tell you all about it. Where is he? Elliston, I mean. I've brought him some short frocks. Where are they, Mr. Gunther? If he's put them in his pockets, he'll never find them--they are feet long--the pockets, I mean. Bless you, Mary Byrd, how good it is to see you! Come into the house, every one, and let me rest."

Mary was bubbling with laughter.

"Constance, you human dynamo, we'll go in by all means, and hold our breaths listening to your 'resting'!"

"Don't sa.s.s your elders, naughty girl. Oh, my heavens, I've been five months in New England, and have behaved like a perfect gentlewoman all the time! Now I'm due for an attack of New Yorkitis!" Constance rushed into the sitting room, pulled off her hat and patted her hair into shape, ran to the kitchen door to say h.e.l.lo to Lily, and was back in her chair by the time the others had found theirs. Her quick glance traveled from one to the other.

"Now I shall listen," she said. "Mary, tell your news. Mr. Gunther, explain your ideas."

Mary laughed again. "Visitors first," she nodded to the Norwegian who, as always, was staring at her with a perfectly civil fixity.

He placed a great hand on either knee and prepared to state his case.

With his red-gold beard and piercing eyes, he was, Mary thought, quite the handsomest, and, after Stefan, the most attractive man she had ever seen.

"Mrs. Byrd," he began, "I am doing, among other things, a large group called 'Pioneers' for the Frisco exhibition. It is finished in the clay--as Mrs. Elliot said--all but two heads, and is already roughly blocked in marble. I want your head, with your son's--I must have them.

Six sittings will be enough. If you cannot, as I imagine, come to the city, I will bring my clay here, and we will work in your husband's studio. These figures, of whom the man is modeled from myself, do not represent pioneers in the ordinary sense. They embody my idea of those who will lead the race to future greatness. That is why I feel it essential to have you as a model."

He spoke quite simply, without a trace of flattery, as if he were merely putting into words a self-evident truth. A compliment of such staggering dimensions, however, left Mary abashed.

"You may wonder," he went on, seeing her silent, "why I so regard you.

It is not merely your beauty, Mrs. Byrd, of which as an artist I can speak without offense, it is because to my mind you combine strong mentality and morale with simplicity of temperament. You are an Apollonian, rather than a Dionysian. Of such, in my judgment, will the super-race be made." Gunther folded his arms and leaned back.

He was sufficiently distinguished to be able to carry off a p.r.o.nouncement which in a lesser man would have been an impertinence, and he knew it.

Constance threw up her hands. "There, Mary, your niche is carved. I don't quite know what Mr. Gunther means, but he sounds right."

Mary found her voice. "Mr. Gunther honors me very much, and, although of course I do not deserve his praise, I shall certainly not refuse his request."

Gunther bowed gravely from the hips in the Continental manner, without rising.

"When may I come," he asked; "to-morrow? Good! I will bring the clay out by auto."

"You lucky woman," exclaimed Constance. "To think of being immortalized by two great artists in one year!"

"Her type is very rare," said Gunther in explanation. "When does one see the cla.s.sic face with expression added? Almost always, it is dull."

"Now, Mary, produce the infant!" Constance did not intend the whole morning to be devoted to the Olympian discourse of the sculptor.

The baby was brought down, and the rest of the visit pivoted about him. Mary glowed at the praises he received; she looked immeasurably brighter, Constance thought, than when they arrived.

On the way home Gunther unbosomed himself of a final p.r.o.nouncement. "She does not look too happy, but her beauty is richer and its meaning deeper than before. She is what the mothers of men should be. I am sorry," he concluded simply, "that I did not meet her more than a year ago."

Constance almost gasped. What an advantage, she thought, great physical gifts bring. Even without this man's distinction in his art, it was obvious that he had some right to a.s.sume his ability to mate with whomever he might choose.

Early the next morning the sculptor drove up to the barn, his tonneau loaded with impedimenta. Mary was ready for him, and watched with interest while he lifted out first a great wooden box of clay, then a small model throne, then two turntables, and finally, two tin buckets.

These baffled her, till, having installed the clay-box, which she doubted if an ordinary man could lift, he made for the garden pump and watered his clay with the contents of the buckets.

He set up his three-legged turntables, each of which bore an angle-iron supporting a twisted length of lead pipe, stood a bucket of water beneath one, and explained that in a few minutes he would be ready to begin. Donning a linen blouse, he attacked the ma.s.s of damp clay powerfully, throwing great pieces onto the skeleton lead-pipe, which he explained had been bent to the exact angle of the head in his group.

"The woman's figure I modeled from ideal proportions, Mrs. Byrd, and this head will be set upon its shoulders. My statue will then be a living thing instead of a mere symbol."

When Mary was posed she became absorbed in watching Gunther's work grow.

He modeled with extraordinary speed, yet his movements had none of the lightning swoops and darts of Stefan's method. Each motion of his powerful hands might have been preordained; they seemed to move with a deliberate and effortless precision, so that she would hardly have realized their speed had the head and face not leaped under them into being. He was a silent worker, yet she felt companioned; the man's presence seemed to fill the little building.

"After to-day I shall ask you to hold the child, for as long as it will not disturb him. I shall then have the expression on your face which I desire, and I will work at a study of the boy's head at those moments when he is awake."

Mary sincerely enjoyed her sittings, which came as a welcome change in her even days. Gunther usually stayed to lunch, Constance joining them on one occasion, and Mrs. Farraday on another. Both these came to watch the work, Gunther, unlike Stefan, being oblivious of an audience; and once McEwan came, his st.u.r.dy form appearing insignificant beside the giant Norseman. Wallace hung about smoking a pipe for half an hour or more. He was at his most Scotch, appeared well pleased, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed "Aye, aye," several times, nodding a ponderous head.

"Wallace, what are you so solemnly aye-ayeing about? Why so mysterious?"

enquired Mary.

"I'm haeing a few thochts," responded the Scot, his expression divided between an irritating smile and a kindly twinkle.

"Well, don't be annoying, and stay to lunch," said Mary, dispensing even justice to both expressions.

Stefan, returning home one afternoon half way through the sittings, expressed a mild interest in the news of them, and, going out to the barn, unwrapped the wet cloths from the head.

"He's an artist," said he; "this has power and beauty. Never sit to a second-rater, Mary, you've had the best now." And he covered the head again with a craftsman's thoroughness.

Mary was sorry when the sittings came to an end. On the last day the sculptor brought two men with him, who made the return journey in the tonneau, each guarding a carefully swathed bust against the inequalities of the road. Gunther bowed low over her hand with a word of thanks at parting, and she watched his car out of sight regretfully.

V

The week's interlude over, Mary's days reverted to their monotonous tenor. As November drew to a close, she began to think of Christmas, remembering how happy her last had been, and wondering if she could summon enough courage for an attempt to engage Stefan's interest in some kind of celebration. She now admitted to herself that she was actively worried about her relations with him. He was quite agreeable to her when in the house, but she felt this was only because she made no demands on him. Let her reach out ever so little for his love, and he instantly became vague or restless. Their intercourse was friendly, but he appeared absolutely indifferent to her as a woman; she might have been a well-liked sister. Under the grueling strain of self-repression Mary was growing nervous, and the baby began to feel the effects. His weekly gains were smaller, and he had his first symptoms of indigestion.

She redoubled the care of her diet, and lengthened her daily walks, but he became fretful, and at last, early in December, she found on weighing him that he had made no gain for a week. Terrified, she telephoned for Dr. Hillyard, and received her at the door with a white face. It was a Sunday morning, and McEwan had just dropped in with some chrysanthemums from the Farradays' greenhouse. Finding Mary disturbed he had not remained, and was leaving the house as the doctor drove up.

Dr. Hillyard's first words were rea.s.suring. There was absolutely nothing to fear in a week's failure to gain, she explained. "It always happens at some stage or other, and many babies don't gain for weeks."

Still, the outcome of her visit was that Mary, with an aching heart, added a daily bottle to Elliston's regime. In a week the doctor came again, gave Mary a food tonic, and advised the introduction of a second bottle. Elliston immediately responded, palpably preferring his bottle feedings to the others. His fretfulness after these continued, he turned with increased eagerness to his bottle, and with tears of disappointment Mary yielded to his loudly voiced demands. By Christmas time he was weaned. His mother felt she could never forgive herself for failing him so soon, and a tinge of real resentment colored for the first time her att.i.tude toward Stefan, whom she knew to be the indirect cause of her failure.

The somewhat abrupt deterioration of Mary's magnificent nervous system would have been unaccountable to Dr. Hillyard had it not been for a chance encounter with McEwan after her first visit. The Scotchman had hailed her in the lane, asking for a lift to a house beyond the village, where he had some small errand. During a flow of discursive remarks he elicited from the doctor, without her knowledge, her opinion that Mary was nervously run down, after which he rambled at some length about the value of art, allowing the doctor to pa.s.s his destination by a mile or more.

With profuse thanks for her kindness in turning back, he continued his ramblings, and she gathered the impression that he was a dull, inconsequential talker, that he considered young couples "kittle cattle," that artists were always absorbed in their work, that females had a habit of needless worrying, and that commuting in winter was distracting to a man's labors. She only half listened to him, and dropped him with relief, wondering if he was an anti-suffragist. Some memory of his remarks must, however, have remained with her, for after her next visit to Mary she found herself thinking that Mr. McEwan was probably neither an anti-suffragist, nor dull.

A little before Christmas McEwan called on Constance, and found her immersed in preparations for a Suffrage bazaar and fete.

"I can't talk to any one," she announced, receiving him in a chaos of boxes, banners, paper flowers, and stenographers, in the midst of which she appeared to be working with two voices and six hands. "Didn't the maid warn you off the premises?"

"She did, but I sang 'Take back the lime that thou gavest' in such honey tones that she complied," said Mac.

"Just for that, you can give the fete a two-inch free ad in The Household Magazine," Constance implacably replied.