The Nest Builder Part 6

At the Pennsylvania Station they took a taxicab, telling the driver they wanted a hotel near Was.h.i.+ngton Square. The amount registered on the meter gave Mary an apprehensive chill, but Stefan paid it carelessly.

A moment later he was in raptures, for, quite unexpectedly, they found themselves in a French hotel.

"What wonderful luck--what a good omen!" he cried. "Mary, it's almost like Paris!" and he broke into rapid gesticulating talk with the desk clerk. Soon they were installed in a bright little room with French prints on the walls, a gay old-fas.h.i.+oned wall paper and patterned curtains. Stefan a.s.sured her it was extraordinarily cheap for New York.

While she freshened her face and hair he dashed downstairs, ignoring the elevator--which seemed to exist there only as an American afterthought--in search of a packet of French cigarettes. Finding them, he was completely in his element, and leant over the desk puffing luxuriously, to engage the clerk in further talk. From him he obtained advice as to the possibilities of the neighborhood in respect of studios, and armed with this, bounded up the stairs again to Mary.

Presently, fortified by a pot of tea and delicious French rolls, they sallied out on their quest.

That afternoon they discovered two vacant studios. One was on a top floor on Was.h.i.+ngton Square South, a big room with bathroom and kitchenette attached and a small bedroom opening into it. The other was an attic just off the Square. It had water, but no bathroom, was heated only by an open fire, and consisted of one large room with sufficient light, and a large closet in which was a single pane of gla.s.s high up.

The studio contained an abandoned model throne, the closet a gas ring and a sink. The rent of the first apartment was sixty dollars a month; of the second, twenty-five. Both were approached by a dark staircase, but in one case there was a carpet, in the other the stairs were bare, dirty, and creaking, while from depths below was wafted an unmistakable odor of onions and cats.

Mary, whose father's rambling sunny house in Lindum with its Elizabethan paneling and carvings had been considered dear at ninety pounds a year, was staggered at the price of these mean garrets, the better of which she felt to be quite beyond their reach. Even Stefan was a little dashed, but was confident that after his interview with Adolph's brother sixty dollars would appear less formidable.

"You should have seen my attic in Paris, Mary--absolutely falling to pieces--but then I didn't mind, not having a G.o.ddess to house," and he pressed her arm. "For you there should be something s.p.a.cious and bright enough to be a fitting background." He glanced up a little ruefully at the squalid house they had just left.

But she was quick to rea.s.sure him, her courage mounting to sustain his. "We could manage perfectly well in the smaller place for a time, dearest, and how lucky we don't have to take a lease, as we should in England." Her mind jumped to perceive any practical advantage. Already, mentally, she was arranging furniture in the cheaper place, planning for a screen, a tin tub, painting the dingy woodwork. They asked for the refusal of both studios till the next day, and for that evening left matters suspended.

In the morning, Stefan, retrieving his canvases from Miss Mason's flat, sought out the dealer, Jensen. Walking from Fifth Avenue, he was surprised at the cheap appearance of the houses on Fourth, only one block away. He had expected to find Adolph's brother in such a great stone building as those he had just pa.s.sed, with their show windows empty save for one piece of tapestry or sculpture, or a fine painting brilliant against its background of dull velvet. Instead, the number on Fourth Avenue proved a tumbledown house of two stories, with tattered awnings flapping above its shop-window, which was almost too grimy to disclose the wares within. These were a jumble of bric-a-brac, old furniture of doubtful value, stained prints, and one or two blackened oil paintings in tarnished frames. With ominous misgivings, Stefan entered the half-opened door. The place was a confused medley of the flotsam and jetsam of dwelling houses, and appeared to him much more like a p.a.w.nbroker's than the business place of an art dealer. From its dusty shadows a stooped figure emerged, gray-haired and spectacled, which waited for Stefan to speak with an air of patient humbleness.

"This isn't Mr. Jensen's, is it?" Stefan asked, feeling he had mistaken the number.

"My name is Jensen. What can I do for you?" replied the man in a toneless voice.

"You are Adolph's brother?" incredulously.

At the name the gray face flushed pathetically. Jensen came forward, pressing his hands together, and peered into Stefan's face.

"Yes, I am," he answered, "and you are Mr. Byrd that he wrote to me about. I'd hoped you weren't coming, after all. Well," and he waved his hand, "you see how it is."

Stefan was completely dismayed. "Why," he stammered, "I thought you were so successful--"

"I'm sorry." Jensen dropped his eyes, picking nervously at his coat.

"You see, I am the eldest brother; a man does not like to admit failure. I may be sold up any time now. I wanted Adolph not to guess, so I--wrote--him--differently." He flushed painfully again. Stefan was silent, too taken aback for speech.

"I tell you, Mr. Byrd," Jensen stammered on, striking his hands together impotently, "for all its wealth, this is a city of dead hopes. It's been a long fight, but it's over now.... Yes, you are Adolph's friend, and I can't so much as buy a sketch from you. It's quite, quite over." And suddenly he sank his head in his hands, while Stefan stood, infinitely embarra.s.sed, clutching his roll of canvases. After a moment Jensen, mastering himself, lifted his head. His lined, prematurely old face showed an expression at once pleading and dignified.

"I didn't dream what I wrote would do any harm, Mr. Byrd, but now of course you will have to explain to Adolph--?"

Stefan, moved to sympathy, held out his hand.

"Look here, Jensen, you've put me in an awful hole, worse than you know. But why should I say anything? Let Adolph think we're both millionaires," and he grinned ruefully.

Jensen straightened and took the proffered hand in one that trembled.

"Thank you," he said, and his eyes glistened. "I'm grateful. If there were only something I could do--"

"Well, give me the names of some dealers," said Stefan, to whom scenes were exquisitely embarra.s.sing, anxious to be gone.

Jensen wrote several names on a smudged half sheet of paper. "These are the best. Try them. My introduction wouldn't help, I'm afraid,"

bitterly.

On that Stefan left him, hurrying with relief from the musty atmosphere of failure into the busy street. Though half dazed by the sudden subsidence of his plans, unable to face as yet the possible consequences, he had his pictures, and the names of the real dealers; confidence still buoyed him.

II

Three hours later Mary, anxiously waiting, heard Stefan's step approach their bedroom door. Instantly her heart dropped like lead. She did not need his voice to tell her what those dragging feet announced.

She sprang to the door and had her arms round his neck before he could speak. She took the heavy roll of canvases from him and half pushed him into the room's one comfortable arm-chair. Kneeling beside him, she pressed her cheek to his, stroking back his heat-damped hair. "Darling,"

she said, "you are tired to death. Don't tell me about your day till you've rested a little."

He closed his eyes, leaning back. He looked exhausted; every line of his face drooped. In spite of his tan, it was pale, with hollows under the eyes. It was extraordinary that a few hours should make such a change, she thought, and held him close, comfortingly.

He did not speak for a long time, but at last, "Mary," he said, in a flat voice, "I've had a complete failure. n.o.body wants my things. This is what I've let you in for." His tone had the indifferent quality of extreme fatigue, but Mary was not deceived. She knew that his whole being craved rea.s.surance, rehabilitation in its own eyes.

"Why, you old foolish darling, you're too tired to know what you're talking about," she cried, kissing him. "Wait till you've had something to eat." She rang the bell--four times for the waiter, as the card over it instructed her. "Failure indeed!" she went on, clearing a small table, "there's no such word! One doesn't grow rich in a day, you know." She moved silently and quickly about, hung up his hat, stood the canvases in a corner, ordered coffee, rolls and eggs, and finally unlaced Stefan's shoes in spite of his rather horrified if feeble protest.

Not until she had watched him drink two cups of coffee and devour the food--she guessed he had had no lunch--did she allow him to talk, first lighting his cigarette and finding a place for herself on the arm of his chair. By this time Stefan's extreme la.s.situde, and with it his despair, had vanished. He brightened perceptibly. "You wonder," he exclaimed, catching her hand and kissing it, "now I can tell you about it." With his arm about her he described all his experiences, the fiasco of the Jensen affair and his subsequent interviews with Fifth Avenue dealers.

"They are all Jews, Mary. Some are decent enough fellows, I suppose, though I hate the Israelites!" ("Silly boy!" she interposed.) "Others are horrors. None of them want the work of an American. Old masters, or well known foreigners, they say. I explained my success at the Beaux Arts. Two of them had seen my name in the Paris papers, but said it would mean nothing to their clients. Hopeless Philistines, all of them!

I do believe I should have had a better chance if I'd called myself Austrian, instead of American, and I only revived my American citizens.h.i.+p because I thought it would be an a.s.set!" He laughed, ironically. "They advised me to have a one-man show, late in the winter, so as to get publicity."

"So we will then," interposed Mary confidently.

"Good Lord, child," he exclaimed, half irritably, "you don't suppose I could have a gallery for nothing, do you? G.o.d knows what it would cost.

Besides, I haven't enough pictures--and think of the frames!" He sat up, fretfully.

She saw his nerves were on edge, and quickly offered a diversion.

"Stefan," she cried, jumping to her feet and throwing her arms back with a gesture the grace of which did not escape him even in his impatient mood, "I haven't even seen the pictures yet, you know, and can't wait any longer. Let me look at them now, and then I'll tell you just how idiotic those dealers were!" and she gave her bell-like laugh. "I'll undo them." Her fingers were busy at the knots.

"I hate the sight of that roll," said Stefan, frowning. "Still--" and he jumped up, "I do immensely want you to see them. I know _you'll_ understand them." Suddenly he was all eagerness again. He took the canvases from her, undid them and, casting aside the smaller ones, spread the two largest against the wall, propping their corners adroitly with chairs, an umbrella, and a walking stick. "Don't look yet,"

he called meanwhile. "Close your eyes." He moved with agile speed, instinctively finding the best light and thrusting back the furniture to secure a clearer view. "There!" he cried. "Wait a minute--stand here.

_Now_ look!" triumphantly.

Mary opened her eyes. "Why, Stefan, they're wonderful!" she exclaimed.

But even as she spoke, and amidst her sincere admiration, her heart, very slightly, sank. She knew enough of painting to see that here was genius. The two fantasies, one representing the spirits of a wind-storm, the other a mermaid fleeing a merman's grasp, were brilliant in color, line and conception. They were things of beauty, but it was a beauty strange, menacing, subhuman. The figures that tore through the clouds urged on the storm with a wicked and abandoned glee. The face of the merman almost frightened her; it was repellent in its likeness at once to a fish and a man. The mermaid's face was less inhuman, but it was stricken with a horrid terror. She was swimming straight out of the picture as if to fling herself, shrieking, into the safety of the spectator's arms. The pictures were imaginative, powerful, arresting, but they were not pleasing. Few people, she felt, would care to live with them. After a long scrutiny she turned to her husband, at once glorying in the strength of his talent and troubled by its quality.

"You are a genius, Stefan," she said.

"You really like them?" he asked eagerly.

"I think they are wonderful!" He was satisfied, for it was her heart, not her voice, that held a reservation.

Stefan showed her the smaller canvases, some unfinished. Most were of nymphs and winged elves, but there were three landscapes. One of these, a stream reflecting a high spring sky between banks of young meadow gra.s.s, showed a little faun skipping merrily in the distance. The atmosphere was indescribably light-hearted. Mary smiled as she looked at it. The other two were empty of figures; they were delicately graceful and alluring, but there was something lacking in them---what, she could not tell. She liked best a sketch of a baby boy, lost amid trees, behind which wood-nymphs and fauns peeped at him, roguish and inquisitive. The boy was seated on the ground, fat and solemn, with round, tear-wet eyes. He was so lonely that Mary wanted to hug him; instead, she kissed Stefan.

"What a duck of a baby, dearest!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, he was a nice kid--belonged to my concierge," he answered carelessly. "The picture is sentimental, though. This is better," and he pointed to another mermaid study.

"Yes, it's splendid," she answered, instinctively suppressing a sigh.