The Nest Builder Part 7

She began to realize a little what a strange being she had married. With an impulsive need of protection she held him close, hiding her face in his neck. The reality of his arms rea.s.sured her.

That day they decided, at Mary's urging, to take the smaller studio at once, abandoning the extravagance of hotel life. In practical manners she was already a.s.suming a leaders.h.i.+p which he was glad to follow. She suggested that in the morning he should take his smaller canvases, and try some of the less important dealers, while she made an expedition in search of necessary furniture. To this he eagerly agreed.

"It seems horrible to let you do it alone, but it would be sacrilegious to discuss the price of saucepans with a G.o.ddess," he explained. "Are you sure you can face the tedium?"

"Why, I shall love it!" she cried, astonished at such an expression.

He regarded her whimsically. "Genius of efficiency, then I shall leave it to you. Such things appal me. In Paris, my garret was furnished only with pictures. I inherited the bed from the last occupant, and I think Adolph insisted on finding a pillow and a frying-pan. He used to come up and cook for us both sometimes, when he thought I had been eating too often at restaurants. He approved of economy, did Adolph." Stefan was lounging on the bed, with his perpetual cigarette.

"He must be a dear," said Mary. She had begun to make a shopping list.

"Tell me, absurd creature, what you really need in the studio. There is a model throne, you will remember."

"Oh, I'll get my own easel and stool," he replied quickly. "There's nothing else, except of course a table for my paints. A good solid one,"

he added with emphasis. "I'll tell you what," and he sat up. "I go out early to-morrow on my dealer hunt. I force myself to stay out until late afternoon. When I return, behold! The G.o.ddess has waved her hand, and invisible minions--" he circled the air with his cigarette--"have transported her temple across the square. There she sits enthroned, waiting for her acolyte. How will that do?" He turned his radiant smile on her.

"Splendid," she answered, amused. "I only hope the G.o.ddess won't get chipped in the pa.s.sage."

She thought of the dusty studio, of brooms and scrubbing brushes, but she was already wise enough in wife-lore not to mention them. Mary came of a race whose women had always served their men. It did not seem strange to her, as it might have to an American, that the whole labor of their installation should devolve on her.

With her back turned to him, she counted over their resources, calculating what would be available when their hotel bill was paid.

Except for a dollar or two, Stefan had turned his small h.o.a.rd over to her. "It's all yours anyway, dearest," he had said, "and I don't want to spend a cent till I have made something." They had spent very little so far; she was relieved to realize that the five hundred dollars remained almost intact. While Stefan continued to smoke luxuriously on the bed, she jotted down figures, apportioning one hundred and fifty dollars for six months' rent, and trying to calculate a weekly basis for their living expenses. She knew that they were both equally ignorant of prices in New York, and determined to call in the a.s.sistance of Miss Mason.

"Stefan," she said, taking up the telephone, "I'm going to summon a minion." She explained to Miss Mason over the wire. "We are starting housekeeping to-morrow, and I know absolutely nothing about where to shop, or what things ought to cost. Would it be making too great demands on your kindness if I asked you to meet me here to-morrow morning and join me in a shopping expedition?"

The request, delivered in her civil English voice, enchanted Miss Mason, who had to obtain all her romance vicariously. "I should just love to!"

she exclaimed, and it was arranged.

Mary then telephoned that they would take the studio--a technicality which she knew Stefan had entirely forgotten--and notified the hotel office that their room would be given up next morning.

"O thou above rubies and precious pearls!" chanted Stefan from the bed.

After dinner they sat in Was.h.i.+ngton Square. Their marriage moon was waning, but still shone high and bright. Under her the trees appeared etherealized, and her light mingled in magic contest with the white beams of the arc lamps near the arch. Above each of these, a myriad tiny moths fluttered their desirous wings. Under the trees Italian couples wandered, the men with dark amorous glances, the girls laughing, their necks gay with colored shawls. Brightly ribboned children, black-haired, played about the benches where their mothers gossiped. There was enchantment in the tired but cooling air.

Stefan was enthusiastic. "Look at the types, Mary! The whole place is utterly foreign, full of ardor and color. I have cursed America without cause--here I can feel at home." To her it was all alien, but her heart responded to his happiness.

On the bench next them sat a group of Italian women. From this a tiny boy detached himself, plump and serious, and, urged by curiosity, gradually approached Mary, his velvet eyes fixed on her face. She lifted him, resistless, to her knee, and he sat there contentedly, sucking a colored stick of candy.

"Look, Stefan!" she cried; "isn't he a lamb?"

Stefan cast a critical glance at the baby. "He's paintable, but horribly sticky," he said. "Let's move on before he begins to yell. I want to see the effect from the roadway of these s.h.i.+fting groups under the trees. It might be worth doing, don't you think?" and he stood up.

His manner slightly rebuffed Mary, who would gladly have nursed the little boy longer. However, she gently lowered him and, rising, moved off in silence with Stefan, who was ignorant of any offense. The rest of their outing pa.s.sed sweetly enough, as they wandered, arm in arm, about the square.

III

The next morning Stefan started immediately after his premier dejeuner of rolls and coffee in quest of the less important dealers, taking with him only his smaller canvases. "I'll stay away till five o'clock, not a minute longer," he admonished. Mary, still seated in the dining-room over her English bacon and eggs--she had smilingly declined to adopt his French method of breakfasting--glowed acquiescence, and offered him a parting suggestion.

"Be sure to show them the baby in the wood."

"Why that one?" he questioned. "You admit it isn't the best."

"Perhaps, but neither are they the best connoisseurs. You'll see." She nodded wisely at him.

"The oracle has spoken--I will obey," he called from the door, kissing his fingers to her. She ventured an answering gesture, knowing the room empty save for waiters. She was almost as unselfconscious as he, but had her nation's shrinking from any public expression of emotion.

Hardly had he gone when the faithful Miss Mason arrived, her mild eyes almost youthful with enthusiasm. Prom a black satin reticule of dimensions beyond all proportion to her meager self she drew a list of names on which she discoursed volubly while Mary finished her breakfast.

"You'll get most everything at this first place," she said. "It's pretty near the biggest department store in the city, and only two blocks from here--ain't that convenient? You can deal there right along for everything in the way of dry goods."

Mary had no conception of what either a department store or dry goods might be, but determined not to confound her mentor by a display of such ignorance.

"Seemed to me, though, you might get some things second hand, so I got a list of likely places from my sister, who's lived in New York longer'n I have. I thought mebbe--" her tone was tactful--"you didn't want to waste your money any?"

Mary was impressed again, as she had been before her wedding, by the natural good manners of this simple and half educated woman. "Why is it," she wondered to herself, "that one would not dream of knowing people of her cla.s.s at home, but rather likes them here?" She did not realize as yet that for Miss Mason no cla.s.ses existed, and that consequently she was as much at ease with Mary, whose mother had been "county," as she would be with her own colored "help."

"You guessed quite rightly, Miss Mason," Mary smiled. "I want to spend as little as possible, and shall depend on you to prevent my making mistakes."

"I reckon I know all there is t' know 'bout economy," nodded Miss Mason, and, as if by way of ill.u.s.tration, drew from her bag a pair of cotton gloves, for which she exchanged her kid ones, rolling these carefully away. "They get real mussed shopping," she explained.

Within half an hour, Mary realized that she would have been lost indeed without her guide. First they inspected the studio. Mary had had a vague idea of cleaning it herself, but Miss Mason demanded to see the janitress, and ascended, after a ten minutes' emersion in the noisome gloom of the bas.e.m.e.nt, in high satisfaction. "She's a dago," she reported, "but not so dirty as some, and looks a husky worker. It's her business to clean the flats for new tenants, but I promised her fifty cents to get the place done by noon, windows and all. She seemed real pleased. She says her husband will carry your coal up from the cellar for a quarter a week; I guess it will be worth it to you. You don't want to give the money to him though," she admonished, "the woman runs everything. I shouldn't calc'late," she sniffed, "he does more'n a couple of real days' work a month. They mostly don't."

So the first problem was solved, and it was the same with all the rest.

Many dollars did Miss Mason save the Byrds that day. Mary would have bought a bedstead and screened it, but her companion pointed out the extravagance and inconvenience of such a course, and initiated her forthwith into the main secret of New York's apartment life.

"You'll want your divan new," she said, and led her in the great department store to a hideous object of gilded iron which opened into a double bed, and closed into a divan. At first Mary rejected this Ja.n.u.s-faced machine unequivocally, but became a convert when Miss Mason showed her how cretonne (she p.r.o.nounced it "_cree_ton") or rugs would soften its nakedness to dignity, and how bed-clothes and pillows were swallowed in its maw by day to be released when the studio became a sleeping room at night.

These trappings they purchased at first hand, and obliging salesmen promised Miss Mason with their lips, but Mary with their eyes, that they should go out on the noon delivery. For other things, however, the two searched the second-hand stores which stand in that district like logs in a stream, staying abandoned particles of the city's ever moving current. Here they bought a high, roomy chest of drawers of painted pine, a Morris chair, three single chairs, and a st.u.r.dy folding table in cherry, quite old, which Mary felt to be a "find," and which she destined for Stefan's paints. Miss Mason recommended a "rocker," and Mary, who had had visions of stuffed English easy chairs, acquiesced on finding in the rocker and Morris types the only available combinations of cheapness and comfort. A second smaller table of good design, two bra.s.s candlesticks, and a little looking-gla.s.s in faded greenish gilt, rejoiced Mary's heart, without unreasonably lightening her pocket.

During these purchases Miss Mason's authority paled, but she rea.s.serted herself on the question of iceboxes. One dealer's showroom was half full of them, and Miss Mason pounced on a small one, little used, marked six dollars. "That's real cheap--you couldn't do better--it's a good make, too." Mary had never seen an ice-box in her life, and said so, striking Miss Mason almost dumb.

"I'm sure we shouldn't need such a thing," she demurred.

Recovering speech, Miss Mason launched into the creed of the ice-box--its ubiquity, values and economies. Mary understood she was receiving her second initiation into flat life, and mentally bracketed this new cult with that of the divan.

"All right, Miss Mason. In Rome, et cetera," she capitulated, and paid for the ice-box.

Thanks to her friend, their shopping had been so expeditious that the day was still young. Mary was fired by the determination to have some sort of nest for her tired and probably disheartened husband to return to that evening, and Miss Mason entered whole-heartedly into the scheme.

The transportation of their scattered purchases was the main difficulty, but it yielded to the little spinster's inspiration. A list of their performances between noon and five o'clock would read like the description of a Presidential candidate's day. They dashed back to the studio and rea.s.sured themselves as to the labors of the janitress. Miss Mason unearthed the lurking husband, and demanded of him a friend and a hand-cart. These she galvanized him into producing on the spot, and sent the pair off armed with a list of goods to be retrieved. In the midst of this maneuver the department store's great van faithfully disgorged their bed and bedding. Hardly waiting to see these deposited, the two hurried out in quest of sandwiches and milk.

"I guess we're the lightning home-makers, all right," was Miss Mason's comment as they lunched.

Returning to the department store they bought and brought away with them a kettle, a china teapot ("Fifteen cents in the bas.e.m.e.nt," Miss Mason instructed), three cups and saucers, six plates, a tin of floor-polish and a few knives, forks, and spoons. Meanwhile they had telephoned the hotel to send over the baggage. When the street car dropped them near the studio they found the two Italians seated on the steps, the furniture and baggage in the room, and Mrs. Corriani wiping her last window pane. "I shall want your husband again for this floor," commanded the indefatigable Miss Mason, opening her tin of polish, "and his friend for errands." They fell upon their task.

An hour later the spinster dropped into the rocking chair. "Well, we've done it," she said, "and I don't mind telling you I'm tuckered out."

Mary's voice answered from the sink, where she was sluicing her face and arms.