Refreshed, in spite of his natural reaction of spirits, by the week's holiday, Stefan turned to his work with greater content in it than he had felt for some time. His content was, to his own surprise, rather increased than lessened by the discovery that Felicity Berber had left New York for the South. Arriving at his studio the day after their return from Vermont, he found one of her characteristic notes, in crimson ink this time, upon snowy paper.
“Stefan,” it read, “the winter has found his strength at last in storms. But our friendship dallies with the various moods of spring. It leaves me restless. The snow chills without calming me. My designing is beauty wasted on the blindness of the city's overfed. A need of warmth and stillness is upon me—the south claims me. The time of my return is unrevealed as yet. Felicity.”
Stefan read this epistle twice, the first time with irritation, the second with relief. “Affected creature,” he said to himself, “it's a good job she's gone. I've frittered away too much time with her as it is.”
At home that evening he told Mary. His devotion during their holiday had already obscured her memory of the autumn's unhappiness, and his carefree manner of imparting his tidings laid any ghost of doubt that still remained with her. Secure once more in his love, she was as uncloudedly happy as she had ever been.
In his newly acquired mood of sanity, Stefan faced the fact that he had less work to show for the last nine months than in any similar period of his career, and that he was still living on his last winter's success. What had these months brought him? An expensive and inconclusive flirtation at the cost of his wife's happiness, a few disturbing memories, and two unfinished pictures. Out of patience with himself, he plunged into his work. In two weeks of concentrated effort he had finished the Nixie, and had arranged with Constantine to exhibit it and the Demeter immediately. This last the dealer appeared to admire, pronouncing it a fine canvas, though inferior to the Danaë. About the Nixie he seemed in two minds.
“We shall have a newspaper story with that one, Mr. Byrd, the lady being so well known, and the subject so dramatic, but if you ask me will it sell—” he shrugged his fat shoulders—“that's another thing.”
Stefan stared at him. “I could sell that picture in France five times over.”
Constantine waved his pudgy fingers.
“Ah, France! V'là c' qui est autre chose, 's pas? But if we fail in New York for this one I think we try Chicago.”
The reception of the pictures proved Constantine a shrewd prophet. The academic Demeter was applauded by the average critic as a piece of decorative work in the grand manner, and a fit rebuke to all Cubists, Futurists, and other anarchists. It was bought by a committee from a western agricultural college, which had come east with a check from the state's leading politician to purchase suitable mural enrichments for the college's new building. Constantine persuaded these worthies that one suitable painting by a distinguished artist would enrich their institution more than the half dozen canvases “to fit the auditorium” which they had been inclined to order. Moreover, he mulcted them of two thousand dollars for Demeter, which, in his private estimation, was more than she was worth. He achieved the sale more readily because of the newspaper controversy aroused by the Nixie. Was this picture a satire on life, or on the celebrated Miss Berber? Was it great art, or merely melodrama? Were Byrd's effects of river-light obtained in the old impressionist manner, or by a subtler method of his own? Was he a master or a poseur?
These and other questions brought his name into fresh prominence, but failed to sell their object. Just, however, as Constantine was considering a journey for the Nixie to Chicago, a purchaser appeared in the shape of a certain Mr. Einsbacher. Stefan happened to be in the gallery when this gentleman, piloted by Constantine himself, came in, and recognized him as the elderly satyr of the pouched eyes who had been so attentive to Felicity on the night of Constance's reception. When, later, the dealer informed him that this individual had bought the Nixie for three thousand, Stefan made no attempt to conceal his disgust.
“Thousand devils, Constantine, I don't paint for swine of that type,” said he, scowling.
The dealer's hands wagged. “His check is good,” he replied, “and who knows, he may die soon and leave the picture to the Metropolitan.”
But Stefan was not to be mollified, and went home that afternoon in a state of high rebellion against all commercialism. Mary tried to console him by pointing out that even with the dealer's commission deducted, he had made more than a year's income from the two sales, and could now work again free from all anxiety.
“What's the good,” he exclaimed, “of producing beauty for sheep to bleat and monkeys to leer at! What's the good of producing it in America at all? Who wants, or understands it!”
“Oh, Stefan, heaps of people. Doesn't Mr. Farraday understand art, for instance?”
“Farraday,” he snorted, “yes!—landscapes and women with children. What does he know of the radiance of beauty, its mystery, the hot soul of it? Oh, Mary,” he flung himself down beside her, and clutched her hand eagerly, “don't be wise; don't be sensible, darling. It's March, spring is beginning in Europe. It's a year and a half since I became an exile. Let's go, beloved. You say yourself we have plenty of money; let's take ship for the land where beauty is understood, where it is put first, above all things. Let's go back to France, Mary!”
His face was fired with eagerness; he almost trembled with the passion to be gone. Mary flushed, and then grew pale with apprehension. “Do you mean break up our home, Stefan, for good?”
“Yes, darling. You know I've counted the days of bondage. We couldn't travel last spring, and since then we've been too poor. What have these last months brought us? Only disharmony. We are free now, there is nothing to hold us back. We can leave Elliston in Paris, and follow the spring south to the vineyards. A progress a-foot through France, each day finding colors richer, the sun nearer—think of it, Beautiful!” He kissed her joyously.
Her hands were quite cold now, “But, Stefan,” she temporized, “our little house, our friends, my work, the—theplacewe've been making?”
“Dearest, all these we can find far better there.”
She shook her head. “I can't. I don't speak French properly, I don't understand French people. I couldn't sell my stories there or—or anything,” she finished weakly.
He jumped up, his eyes blank, hands thrust in his pockets.
“I don't get you, Mary. You don't mean—you surely can't mean, that you don't want to go to Franceat all? That you want tolivehere?”
She floundered. “I don't know, Stefan. Of course you've always talked about France, and I should love to go there and see it, and so on, but somehow I've come to think of the Byrdsnest as home—we've been so happy here—”
“Happy?” he interrupted her. “You say we've been happy?” His tone was utterly confounded.
“Yes, dear, except—except when you were so—so busy last autumn—”
He dropped down by the table, squaring himself as if to get to the bottom of a riddle.
“What is your idea of happiness, Mary, oflifein fact?” he asked, in an unusually quiet voice. She felt glad that he seemed so willing to talk things over, and to concede her a point of view of her own.
“Well,” she began, feeling for her words, “my idea of life is to have a person and work that you love, and then to build—both of you—a place, a position; to have friends—be part of the community—so that your children—the immortal part of you—may grow up in a more and more enriching atmosphere.” She paused, while he watched her, motionless. “I can't imagine,” she went on, “greater happiness for two people than to see their children growing up strong and useful—tall sons and daughters to be proud of, such as all the generations before us have had. Something to hand our life on to—as it was in the beginning—you know, Stefan—” She flushed with the effort to express.
“Then,”—his voice was quieter still; she did not see that his hands were clenched under the flap of the table—“in this scheme of life of yours, how many children—how many servants, rooms, all that sort of thing—should you consider necessary?”
She smiled. “As for houses, servants and things, that just depends on one's income. I hate ostentation, but I do like a beautifully run house, and I adore horses and dogs and things. But the children—” she flushed again—“why, dearest, I think any couple ought to be simply too thankful for all the children they can have. Unless, perhaps,” she added naïvely, “they're frightfully poor.”
“Where should people live to be happy in this way?” he asked, still in those carefully quiet tones.
She was looking out of the window, trying to formulate her thoughts. “I don't think it matters very muchwhereone lives,” she said in her soft, clear tones, “as long as one has friends, and is not too much in the city. But to own one's house, and the ground under one, to be able to leave it to one's son, to think ofhisson being born in it—that I think would add enormously to one's happiness. To belong to the place one lives in, whether it's an old country, or one of the colonies, or anywhere.”
“I see,” said Stefan slowly, in a voice low and almost harsh. Startled, she looked at him. His face was knotted in a white mask; it was like the face of some creature upon which an iron door has been shut. “Stefan,” she exclaimed, “what—?”
“Wait a minute,” he said, still slowly. “I suppose it's time we talked this thing out. I've been a fool, and judged, like a fool, by myself. It's time we knew each other, Mary. All that you have said is horrible to me—it's like a trap.” She gave an exclamation. “Wait, let me do something I've never done, let methinkabout it.” He was silent, his face still a hard, knotted mask. Mary waited, her heart trembling.
“You, Mary, told me something about families in England who live as you describe—you said your mother belonged to one of them. I remember that now.” He nodded shortly, as if conceding her a point. “My father was a New Englander. He was narrow and self-righteous, and I hated him, but he came of people who had faced a hundred forms of death to live primitively, in a strange land.”
“I'm willing to live in a strange country, Stefan,” she almost cried to him.
“Don't, Mary—I'm still trying to understand. I'm not my father's son, I'm my mother's. I don't know what she was, but she was beautiful and passionate—she came of a mixed race, she may have had gipsy blood—I don't know—but I do know she had genius. She loved only color and movement. Mary—” he looked straight at her for the first time, his eyes were tortured—“I loved you because you were beautiful and free. When your child bound you, and you began to collect so many things and people about you, I loved you less. I met some one else who had the beauty of color and movement, and I almost loved her. She told me the name Berber wasn't her own, that she had taken it because it belonged to a tribe of wanderers—Arabs. I almost loved her for that alone. But, Mary, you still held me. I was faithful to you because of your beauty and the love that had been between us. Then you rose from your petty little surroundings”—he cast a look of contempt at the pretty furnishings of the room—“I saw you like a storm-spirit, I saw you moving among other women like a goddess, adored of men. I felt your beautiful body yield to me in the joy of wild movement, in the rhythm of the dance. You were my bride, alive, gloriously free—once more, you were the Desired. I loved you, Mary.” He rose and put his hands on her shoulders. Her face was as white as his now. His hands dropped, he almost leapt away from her, the muscles of his face writhed. “My God, Mary, I've never wanted tothinkabout you, only to feel and see you! Now I must think. This—this existence that you have described! Is that all you ask of life? Are you sure?”
“What more could one ask!” she uttered, dazed.
“Whatmore?” he cried out, throwing up his arms. “Whatmore,Mary! Why, it isn't life at all, this deadly, petty intricate day by day, surrounded by things, and more things. The hopeless, unalterable tameness of it!” He began to pace the room.
“But, my dear, I don't understand you. We have love, and work, and if some part of our life is petty, why, every one's always has been, hasn't it?”
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 Thoreau surround himself withthings—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 everlived, 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 lifeshouldbe. Think of the peasants in France treading out the wine. Think of ships, 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 ofyou. I was just a damned 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 God,” 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 Gods! 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 pass through the room and out into the night. She sat silent, amid the ruins of her nest.
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 mass of institutions, 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 assured 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 companionship 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 illustrated; 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 assuage 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 morass 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 passed 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 God 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'sonly 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, splashing 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 amusements, 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 shirts. 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.
“By the by,” she said next morning at breakfast, “don't worry about my being alone after you've gone. I thought it might be triste for the first few days, so I've rung up the Sparrow, and she's coming to occupy your room for a couple of weeks. She's off for her yearly trip abroad at the end of the month. Says she can't abide the Dutch, but means to see what there is to their old Rhine, and come back by way of Tuscany and France.” Mary gurgled. “Can't you see her in Paris, poor dear, 'doing' the Louvre, with her nose in a guidebook. Why! Perhaps you may!”
“The gods forbid,” said Stefan devoutly.
He had brought his paints and brushes home the night before, and after breakfast Mary helped him stow them away in the Gladstone, showing him smilingly how well she had done his packing. While he admired, she remembered to ask him if he had obtained a letter of credit. He burst out laughing.
“Mary, you wonder! I have about fifty dollars in my pocket, and should have entirely forgotten to take more if you hadn't spoken of it. What a bore! Can't I get it to-morrow?”
“You might not have time before sailing. I think you'd better go up to-day, and then you could call on Constance to say good-bye.”
“I don't like to leave you on our last day,” he said uneasily,
“Oh, that will be all right, dear,” she smiled, patting his hand. “I have oceans to do, and I think you ought to see Constance. Get your letter of credit for a thousand dollars, then you'll be sure to have enough.”
“A thousand! Great Scott, Adolph would think I'd robbed a bank if I had all that.”
“You don't need to spend it, silly, but you ought to have it behind you. You never know what might happen.”
“Would there be plenty left for you?”
“Bless me, yes,” she laughed; “we're quite rich.”
While he was gone Mary arranged an impromptu farewell party for him, so that instead of spending a rather depressing evening alone with her, as he had expected, he found himself surrounded by cheerful friends—McEwan, the Farradays, their next neighbors, the Havens, and one or two others. McEwan was the last to leave, at nearly midnight, and pleading fatigue, Mary kissed Stefan good night at the door of her room. She dared not linger with him lest the stifled pain at her heart should clamor for expression too urgently to be denied. But by this time he himself began to feel the impending separation. Ready for bed, he slipped into her room and found her lying wide-eyed in a swathe of moonlight. Without a word he lay down beside her and drew her close. Like children lost in the dark, they slept all night in each other's arms.
Next day Mary saw him off. New York ended at the gangway. Across it, they were in France. French decorations, French faces, French gaiety, the beloved French tongue, were everywhere.
“Listen to it, Mary,” he cried exultingly, and she smiled a cheerful response.
When the warning bell sounded he suddenly became grave.
“Say good-bye again to Elliston for me, dear,” he said, holding her hand close. “I hope he grows up like you.”
Her eyes were swimming now, in spite of herself. “Mary,” he went on, “this separation makes or mars us. I hope, dear, I believe, it will make us. God bless you.” He kissed her, pressed her to him. Suddenly they were both trembling.
“Why are we parting?” he cried, in a revulsion of feeling.
She smiled at him, wiping away her tears. “It's better, dearest,” she whispered; “let me go now.” They kissed again; she turned hurriedly away. He watched her cross the gangway—she waved to him from the dock—then the crowd swallowed her.
For a moment he felt bitterly bereaved. “How ironic life is,” he thought. Then a snatch of French chatter and a gay laugh reached him. The gangway lifted, water widened between the bulwarks and the dock. As the ship swung out he caught the sea breeze—a flight of gulls swept by—he was outbound!
With a deep breath Stefan turned a brilliant smile upon the deck ... Freedom!
Mary, hurrying home with aching heart and throat, let the slow tears run unheeded down her cheeks. From the train she watched the city's outskirts stream by, formless and ugly. She was very desolate. But when, tired out, she entered her house, peace enfolded her. Here were her child, the things she loved, her birds, her pleasant, smiling servant. Here were white walls and gracious calm. Her mate had flown, but the nest remained. Her heart ached still, but it was no longer torn.
The day after Stefan sailed Felicity Berber returned from Louisiana. The South had bored her, without curing her weariness of New York. She drove from the Pennsylvania Station to her studio, looked through the books, overhauled the stock, and realized with indifference that her business had suffered heavily through her absence. She listened lazily while her lieutenants, emphasizing this fact, implored her to take up the work again.
“What does it matter,” she murmured through her smoke. “The place still pays. Your salaries are all secure, and I have plenty of money. I may come back, I may not. In any event, I am bored.” She rippled out to her landaulette, and drove home. At her apartment, her Chinese maid was already unpacking her trunks.
“Don't unpack any more, Yo San. I may decide to go away again—abroad perhaps. I am still very bored—give me a white kirtle and telephone Mr. Marchmont to call in an hour.”
With her maid's help she undressed, pinned her hair high, and slipped on a knee-high tunic of heavy chiffon. Barefooted, she entered a large room, walled in white and dull silver—the end opposite the windows filled by a single mirror. Between the windows stood a great tank of gold and silver fish swimming among water lilies.
Two enormous vases of dull glass, stacked with lilies against her homecoming, stood on marble pedestals. The floor was covered with a carpeting of dead black. A divan draped in yellow silk, a single ebony chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a low table in teakwood were the sole furniture. Here, quite alone, Felicity danced away the stiffness of her journey, danced away the drumming of the train from her ears, and its dust from her lungs. Then she bathed, and Yo San dressed her in a loose robe of silver mesh, and fastened her hair with an ivory comb carved and tinted to the model of a water lily. These rites complete, Felicity slowly partook of fruit, coffee and toast. Only then did she re-enter the dance room, where, on his ebony chair, the dangling Marchmont had been uncomfortably waiting for half an hour.
She gave him her hand dreamily, and sank full length on the divan.
“You are more marvelous than ever, Felicity,” said he, with an adoring sigh.
She waved her hand. “For all that I am not in the mood. Tell me the news, my dear Marchmont—plays, pictures, scandals, which of my clients are richer, which are bankrupt, who has gone abroad, and all about my friends.”
Marchmont leant forward, and prepared to light a cigarette, his thin mouth twisted to an eager smile, his loose hair wagging.
“Wait,” she breathed, “I weary of smoke. Give me a lily, Marchmont.” He fetched one of the great Easter lilies from its vase. Placing this on her bosom, she folded her supple hands over it, closed her eyes, and lay still, looking like a Bakst version of the Maid of Astolat. Felicity's hints were usually sufficient for her slaves. Marchmont put away his cigarette, and proceeded with relish to recount the gossip with which, to his long finger-tips, he was charged.
“Well,” said he, after an hour's general survey of New York as they both knew it, “I think that about covers the ground. There is, as I said, no question that Einsbacher is still devoted. My own opinion is he will present you with the Nixie. I suppose you received the clippings I sent about the picture? Constance Elliot has only ordered two gowns from the studio since you left—but you will have seen that by the books. She says she is saving her money for the Cause.” He snickered. “The fact is, she grows dowdy as she grows older. Gunther has gone to Frisco with his group. Polly Thayer tells me his adoration of the beautiful Byrd is pathetic. So much in love he nearly broke her neck showing off his driving for her benefit.” Marchmont snickered again. “As for your friend Mr. Byrd—” he smiled with a touch of sly pleasure—“you won't see him, he sailed for France yesterday, alone. His name is in this morning's list of departures.” And he drew a folded and marked newspaper from his pocket.
A shade of displeasure had crept over the immobile features of Miss Berber. She opened her eyes and regarded the lank Marchmont with distaste. Her finger pressed a button on the divan. Slowly she raised herself to her elbow, while he watched, his pale eyes fixed on her with the expression of a ratting dog waiting its master's thanks after a catch.
“All that you have told me,” said Felicity at last, a slight edge to her zephyr-like voice, “is interesting, but I wish you would remember that while you are free to ridicule my clients, you are not free as regards my friends. Your comment on Connie was in poor taste. I am not in the mood for more conversation this morning. I am fatigued. Good-day, Marchmont.” She sank to her pillows again—her eyes closed.
“Oh, I say, Felicity, is that all the thanks I get?” whined her visitor.
“Good-day, Marchmont,” she breathed again. The door opened, disclosing Yo San. Marchmont's aesthetic veneer cracked.
“Oh, shucks,” he said, “how mean of you!” and trailed out, his cutaway seeming to hang limp like the dejected tail of a dog.
The door closed, Felicity bounded up and, running across the room, invoked her own loveliness in the mirror.
“Alone,” she whispered to herself, “alone.” She danced a few steps, swayingly. “You've never lived, lovely creature, you've never lived yet,” she apostrophized the dancing vision in the glass.
Still swaying and posturing to some inward melody, she fluttered down the passage to her bedroom. “Yo San,” she called, her voice almost full, “we shall go to Europe.” The stolid little maid nodded acquiescence.
For the next three days Felicity Berber, creator of raiment, shut in her pastoral fitting room and surrounded by her chief acolytes, sat at a table opposite Stefan's dancing faun, and designed spring gowns. Felicity the idle, the somnolent, the alluring, gave place to Felicity the inventor, and again to Felicity the woman of business. Scissors clipped, typewriters clicked, colored chalks covered dozens of sheets with drawings.
The staff became first relieved, then enthusiastic. What a spring display they were to have! On the third day hundreds of primrose-yellow envelopes, inscribed in green ink to the studio's clients, poured into the letter-chute. Within them an announcement printed in flowing green script read, under Felicity's letterhead, “I offer twenty-one original designs for spring raiment, created by me under the inspiration of a sojourn in the South. Each will be modified to the wearer's personality, and none will be duplicated. I am about to travel in Europe, there to gain atmosphere for my fall creations.” After her signature, was stamped, by way of seal, a tiny woodcut of Stefan's faun.
The last design was complete by Friday, and on Saturday Felicity sailed on the Mauretania, her suite of three rooms a wilderness of flowers. Marchmont, calling at the apartment to escort her to the boat, found the dance-room swathed in sheeting, its heavy carpet rolled into a corner. Evidently, this was to be no brief “sojourn.” The heavy Einsbacher was at the dock to see her off, together with a small pack of nondescript young men. Constance was not there, and Marchmont guessed that she had not been told of her friend's departure.
Einsbacher had the last word with Felicity. “I hope you will like the vlowers,” he whispered gutturally. “Let me know if I may make you a present of the Nixie,” and he gave a thick smile.
“You know my rule,” she murmured, her lids heavy, a bored droop at the corners of her mouth. “Nothing worth more than five dollars, except flowers. Why should I break it—” her voice hovered—“for you?”—it sank. She turned away, melting into the crowd. Marchmont, with malicious pleasure, watched Einsbacher's discomfited retreat.
In her cabin Felicity collected all the donors' cards from her flowers and, stepping outside, with a faint smile dropped them into the sea.