The Nest Builder Part 40

She was deeply moved by his distress, afraid again for their happiness, longing to comfort him. Yet, under and apart from all these emotions, some cool little faculty of criticism wondered if he was not making rather a theatrical scene. "Daily life must be a little monotonous, mustn't it?" she urged again, trying to help him.

"No!" he almost shouted, with a gesture of fierce repudiation. "Was Angelo's life petty? Was da Vinci's? Did Columbus live monotonously, did Scott or Peary? Does any explorer or traveler? Did Th.o.r.eau surround himself with _things_--to hamper--did George Borrow, or Whitman, or Stevenson? Do you suppose Rodin, or de Musset, or Rousseau, or Millet, or any one else who has ever _lived_, cared whether they had a position, a house, horses, old furniture? All the world's wanderers, from Ulysses down to the last tramp who knocked at this door, have known more of life than all your generations of staid conventional county families!

Oh, Mary"--he leant across the table toward her, and his voice pleaded--"think of what life _should_ be. Think of the peasants in France treading out the wine. Think of s.h.i.+ps, and rivers, and all the beauty of the forests. Think of dancing, of music, of that old viking who first found America. Think of those tribes who wander with their tents over the desert and pitch them under stars as big as lamps--all the things we've never seen, Mary, the songs we've never heard. The colors, the scents, and the cruel tang of life! All these I want to see and feel, and translate into pictures. I want you with me, Mary--beautiful and free--I want us to drink life eagerly together, as if it were heady wine." He took her hand across the table. "You'll come, Beloved, you'll give all the little things up, and come?"

She rose, her face pitifully white. They stood with hands clasped, the table between them.

"The boy, Stefan?"

He laughed, thinking he had won her. "Bring him, too, as the Arab women carry theirs, in a shawl. We'll leave him here and there, and have him with us whenever we stay long in one place."

She pulled her hand away, her eyes filled with tears. "I love you, Stefan, but I can't bring my child up like a gipsy. I'll live in France, or anywhere you say, but I must have a home--I can't be a wanderer."

"You shall have a home, sweetheart, to keep coming back to." His face was brightening to eagerness.

"Oh, you don't understand. I can't leave my child; I can't be with him only sometimes. I want him always. And it isn't only him. Oh, Stefan, dear"--her voice in its turn was pleading--"I don't believe I can come to France just now. I think, I'm almost sure, we're going to have another baby."

He straightened, they faced each other in silence. After a moment she spoke again, looking down, her hands tremblingly picking at her handkerchief.

"I was so happy about it. It was the sign of your renewed love. I thought we could build a little wing on the cottage, and have a nurse."

Her voice fell to a whisper. "I thought it might be a little girl, and that you would love her better than the boy. I'll come later, dear, if you say so, but I can't come now." She sank into her chair, her head drooping. He, too, sat down, too dazed by this new development to find his way for a minute through its implications.

"I'm sorry, Mary," he said at last, dully. "I don't want a little girl.

If she could be put away somewhere till she were grown, I should not mind. But to live like this all through one's youth, with a house, and servants, and people calling, and the place cluttered up with babies--I don't think I can do that, possibly."

She was frankly crying now. "But, dear one, can't we compromise? After this baby is born, I'll give up the house. We'll live in France--I'll travel with you a little. That will help, won't it?"

He sighed. "I suppose so. We shall have to think out some scheme. But the ghastly part is that we shall both have to be content with half measures. You want one thing of life, Mary, I another. No amount of self-sacrifice on either side alters that fact. We married, strangers, and it's taken us a year and a half to find it out. My fault, of course.

I wanted love and beauty, and I got it--I didn't think of the cost, and I didn't think of _you_. I was just a d.a.m.ned egotistical male, I suppose." He laughed bitterly. "My father wanted a wife, and he got the burning heart of a rose. I--I never wanted a wife, I see that now, I wanted to snare the very spirit of life and make it my own--you looked a vessel fit to carry it. But you were just a woman like the rest. We've failed each other, that's all."

"Oh, Stefan," she cried through her tears, "I've tried so hard. But I was always the same--just a woman. Only--" her tears broke out afresh--"when you married me, I thought you loved me as I was."

He looked at her, transfixed. "My G.o.d," he whispered, "that's what I heard my mother say more than twenty years ago. What a mockery--each generation a scorn and plaything for the high G.o.ds! Well, we'll do the best we can, Mary. I'm utterly a pagan, so I'm not quite the inhuman granite my Christian father was. Don't cry, dear." He stooped and kissed her, and she heard his light, wild steps pa.s.s through the room and out into the night. She sat silent, amid the ruins of her nest.

IX

For a month Stefan brooded. He hung about the house, dabbled at a little work, and returned, all without signs of life or interest. He was kind to Mary, more considerate than he used to be, but she would have given all his inanimate, painstaking politeness for an hour of his old, gay thoughtlessness. They had reached the stage of marriage in which, all being explained and understood, there seems nothing to hope for. Alone together they were silent, for there was nothing to say. Each condoned but could not comfort the other. Stefan felt that his marriage had been a mistake, that he, a living thing, had tied about his neck a dead ma.s.s of inst.i.tutions, customs and obligations which would slowly crush his life out. "I am twenty-seven," he said to himself, "and my life is over." He did not blame Mary, but himself.

She, on the other hand, felt she had married a man outside the pale of ordinary humanity, and that though she still loved him, she could no longer expect happiness through him. "I am twenty-five," she thought, "and my personal life is over. I can be happy now only in my children."

As those were a.s.sured her, she never thought of regretting her marriage, but only deplored the loss of her dream. Nor did she judge Stefan. She understood the wild risk she had run in marrying a man of whom she knew nothing. "He is as he is," she thought; "neither of us is to blame."

Lonely and grieved, she turned for companions.h.i.+p to her writing, and began a series of fairy tales which she had long planned for very young children. The first instalment of her serial was out, charmingly ill.u.s.trated; she had felt rather proud on seeing her name, for the first time, on the cover of a magazine. She engaged a young girl from the village to take Elliston for his daily outings, and settled down to a routine of work, small social relaxations, and morning and evening care of the baby. The daily facts of life were pleasant to Mary; if some hurt or disappointed, her balanced nature swung readily to a.s.suage itself with others. She honestly believed she felt more deeply than her husband, and perhaps she did, but she was not of the kind whom life can break. Stefan might dash himself to exhaustion against a rock round which Mary would find a smooth channel.

While her work progressed, Stefan's remained at a standstill.

Disillusioned with his marriage and with his whole way of life he fretted himself from his old sure confidence to a mood of despair. Their friends bored him, his studio like his house became a cage. New York appeared in her old guise of mammoth materialist, but now he had no heart to satirize her dishonor. He wanted only to be gone, but told himself that in common decency he must remain with Mary till her child was born. He longed for even the superficial thrill of Felicity's presence, but she still lingered in the South. So fretting, he tossed himself against the bars through the long snows of an unusually severe March, until April broke the frost, and the road to the Byrdsnest became a mora.s.s of running mud.

In the last two weeks Stefan had begun a portrait of Constance, but without enthusiasm. She was a fidgety sitter, and was moreover so busy with her suffrage work that she could never be relied on for more than an hour at a time. After a few of these fragmentary sittings his ragged nerves gave out completely.

"It's utterly useless, Constance!" he exclaimed, throwing down his pallette and brushes, as the telephone interrupted them for the third time in less than an hour. "I can't paint in a suffrage office. This is a studio, not the Club's headquarters. If you can't shut these people off and sit rationally, please don't trouble to come again."

"I know, my dear boy, it's abominable, but what can I do? Our bill has pa.s.sed the Legislature; until it is submitted next year I can't be my own or Theodore's, much less yours. As for you, you look a rag. This winter has about made me hate my country. I don't wonder you long for France."

Her eyes narrowed at him, she dangled her beads reflectively, and perched on the throne again without attempting to resume her pose. "My dear boy," she said suddenly, "why stay here and be eaten by devils--why not fly from them?"

"I wish to G.o.d I could," he groaned.

"You can. Mary was in to see our shop yesterday; she looked dragged. You are both nervous. Do what I have always done--take a holiday from each other. There's nothing like it as a tonic for love."

"Do you really think she wouldn't mind?" he exclaimed eagerly. "You know she--she isn't very well."

"Chtt," shrugged Constance, "_that's_ only being more than usually well.

You don't think Mary needs coddling, do you? She's worried because you are bored. If you aren't there, she won't worry. I shall take your advice--I shan't come here again--" and she settled her hat briskly--"and you take mine. Go away--" Constance threw on her coat--"go anywhere you like, my dear Stefan--" she was at the door--"except south," she added with a mischievous twinkle, closing it.

Stefan, grinning appreciatively at this parting shot, unscrewed his sketch of Constance from the easel, set it face to the wall in a corner, cleaned his brushes, with the meticulous care he always gave to his tools, and ran for the elevated, just in time to catch the next train for Crab's Bay. At the station he jumped into a hack, and, splas.h.i.+ng home as quickly as the liquid road bed would allow, burst into the house to find Mary still lingering over her lunch.

"What has happened, Stefan?" she exclaimed, startled at his excited face.

"Nothing. I've got an idea, that's all. Let me have something to eat and I'll tell you about it."

She rang for Lily, and he made a hasty meal, asking her unwonted questions meantime about her work, her amus.e.m.e.nts, whether many of the neighbors were down yet, and if she felt lonely.

"No, I'm not lonely, dear. There are only a few people here, but they are awfully decent to me, and I'm very busy at home."

"You are sure you are not lonely?" he asked anxiously, drinking his coffee, and lighting a cigarette.

"Yes, quite sure. I'm not exactly gay--" and she smiled a little sadly--"but I'm really never lonely."

"Then," he asked nervously, "what would you say if I suggested going off by myself for two or three months, to Paris." He watched her intently, fearful of the effect of his words. To his unbounded relief, she appeared neither surprised nor hurt, but, after twisting her coffee cup thoughtfully for a minute, looked up with a frank smile.

"I think it would be an awfully good thing, Stefan dear. I've been thinking so for a month, but I didn't like to say anything in case you might feel--after our talk--" her voice faltered for a moment--"that I was trying to--that I didn't care for you so much. It isn't that, dear--" she looked honestly at him--"but I know you're not happy, and it doesn't help me to feel I am holding you back from something you want. I think we shall be happier afterwards if you go now."

"I do, too," said he, "but I was so afraid it would seem cruel in me to suggest it. I don't want to grow callous like my father." He shuddered.

"I want to do the decent thing, Mary." His eyes were pleading.

"I know, dearest, you've been very kind. But for both our sakes, it will be far better if you go for a time." She rose, and, coming round the table, kissed his rough hair. He caught her hand, and pressed it gratefully. "You are good to me, Mary."

The matter settled, Stefan's spirit soared. He rang up the French Line and secured one of the few remaining berths for their next sailing, which was in three days. He telephoned an ecstatic cable to Adolph.

Then, hurrying to the attic, he brought down his friend's old Gladstone, and his own suitcase, and began to sort out his clothes. Mary, anxious to quell her heartache by action, came up to help him, and vetoed his idea of taking only the barest necessities.

"I know," she said, "you want to get back to your old Bohemia. But remember you are a well-known artist now--the celebrated Stefan Byrd,"

and she courtesied to him. "Suppose you were to meet some charming people whom you wanted to see something of? Do take a dinner-jacket at least."

He grinned at her. "I shall live in a blouse and sleep in my old attic with Adolph. That's the only thing I could possibly want to do. But I won't be fractious, Mary. If it will please you to have me take dress clothes I'll do it--only you must pack them yourself!"

She nodded smilingly. "All right, I shall love to." She had failed to make her husband happy in their home, she thought; at least she would succeed in her manner of speeding him from it. It was her tragedy that he should want to go. That once faced, she would not make a second tragedy of his going.

She spent the next morning, while he went to town to buy his ticket, in a thorough overhauling of his clothes. She found linen bags to hold his shoes and a linen folder for his s.h.i.+rts. She pressed his ties and brushed his coats, packed lavender bags in his underwear, and slipped a framed snapshot of herself and Elliston into the bottom of the Gladstone. With it, in a box, she put the ring she had given him, with the winged head, which he had ceased to wear of late. She found some new poems and a novel he had not read, and packed those. She gave him her own soapbox and toothbrush case. She cleaned his two bags with shoe polish. Everything she could think of was done to show that she sent him away willingly, and she worked so hard that she forgot to notice how her heart ached. In the afternoon she met him in town and they had dinner together. He suggested their old hotel, but she shook her head. "No dear, not there," she said, smiling a little tremulously. They went to a theatre, and got home so late that she was too tired to be wakeful.