True to her word, Constance arranged a reception in the Byrds' honor, at which they were to meet Felicity Berber. The promise of this encounter reconciled Stefan to the affair, and he was moreover enthusiastically looking forward to Mary's appearance in her new gown. This had arrived, and lay swathed in tissue paper in its box. In view of their change of fortune they had, in paying the account of seventy-five dollars, concocted a little note to Miss Berber, hoping she would now reconsider her offer, and render them a bill for her design. This note, written and signed by Mary in her upright English hand, brought forth a characteristic reply. On black paper and in vermilion ink arrived two lines of what Mary at first took to be Egyptian hieroglyphics. Studied from different angles, these yielded at last a single sentence: “A gift is a gift, and repays itself.” This was followed by a signature traveling perpendicularly down the page in Chinese fashion. It was outlined in an oblong of red ink, but was itself written in green, the capitals being supplied with tap-roots extending to the base of each name. Mary tossed the letter over to Stefan with a smile. He looked at it judicially.
“There's draughtsmanship in that,” he said; “she might have made an etcher. It's drawing, but it's certainly not handwriting.”
On the evening of the party Stefan insisted on helping Mary to dress. Together they opened the great green box and spread its contents on the bed. The Creator of Raiment had not done things by halves. In addition to the gown, she had supplied a wreath of pale white and gold metals, representing two ears of wheat arranged to meet in a point over the brow, and a pair of gilded shoes made on the sandal plan, with silver-white buckles. Pinned to the gown was a printed green slip, reading “No corsets, petticoats or jewelry may be worn with this garb.”
The dress was of heavy gold tissue, magnificently draped in generous classic folds. It left the arms bare, the drapery being fastened on either shoulder with great brooches of white metal, reproduced, as Stefan at once recognized, from Greek models. Along all the edges of the drapery ran a border of ears of wheat, embroidered in deep gold and pale silver. Mary, who had hitherto only peeped at the gown, felt quite excited when she saw it flung across the bed.
“Oh, Stefan, I do think it will be becoming,” she cried, her cheeks bright pink. She had never dreamed of owning such a dress.
He was enchanted. “It's a work of art. Very few women could wear it, but on you—! Well, it's worthy of you, Beautiful.”
During the dressing he made her quite nervous by his exact attention to every detail. The arrangement of her hair and the precise position of the wreath had to be tried and tried again, but the result justified him.
“Olympian Deity,” he cried, “I must kneel to you!” And so he did, gaily adoring, with a kiss for the hem of her robe. They started in the highest spirits, Stefan correct this time in an immaculate evening suit which Mary had persuaded him to order. As they prepared to enter the drawing room he whispered, “You'll be a sensation. I'm dying to see their faces.”
“Don't make me nervous,” she whispered back.
By nature entirely without self-consciousness, she had become very sensitive since the Danaë publicity. But her nervousness only heightened her color, and as with her beautiful walk she advanced into the room there was an audible gasp from every side. Constance pounced upon her.
“You perfectly superb creature! You ought to have clouds rolling under your feet. There, I can't express myself. Come and receive homage. Mr. Byrd, you're the luckiest man on earth—I hope you deserve it all—but then of course no man could. Mary, here are two friends of yours—Mr. Byrd, come and be presented to Felicity.”
Farraday and McEwan had advanced toward them and immediately formed the nucleus of a group which gathered about Mary. Stefan followed his hostess across the room to a green sofa, on which, cigarette in hand, reclined Miss Berber, surrounded by a knot of interested admirers.
“Yes, Connie,” that lady murmured, with the ghost of a smile, “I've met Mr. Byrd. He brought his wife to the Studio.” She extended a languid hand to Stefan, who bowed over it.
“Ah! I might have known you had a hand in that effect,” Constance exclaimed, looking across the room toward Mary.
“Of course you might,” the other sighed, following her friend's eyes. “It's perfect, I think; don't you agree, Mr. Byrd?” and she actually rose from the sofa to obtain a better view.
“Absolutely,” answered Stefan, riveted in his turn upon her.
Miss Berber was clad in black tulle, so transparent as barely to obscure her form. Sleeves she had none. A trifle of gauze traveled over one shoulder, leaving the other bare save for a supporting strap of tiny scarlet beads. Her triple skirt was serrated like the petals of a black carnation, and outlined with the same minute beads. Her bodice could scarcely be said to exist, so deep was its V. From her ears long ornaments of jet depended, and a comb in scarlet bead-work ran wholly across one side of her head. A flower of the same hue and workmanship trembled from the point of her corsage. She wore no rings, but her nails were reddened, and her sleek black hair and scarlet lips completed the chromatic harmony. The whole effect was seductive, but so crisp as to escape vulgarity.
“I must paint you, Miss Berber,” was Stefan's comment.
“All the artists say that.” She waved a faint expostulation.
Her hands, he thought, had the whiteness and consistency of a camelia.
“All the artists are not I, however,” he answered with a smiling shrug.
“Greek meets Greek,” thought Constance, amused, turning away to other guests.
“I admit that.” Miss Berber lit another cigarette. “I have seen your Danaë. The people who have painted me have been fools. Obvious—treating me like an advertisement for cold cream.”
She breathed a sigh, and sank again to the sofa. Her lids drooped as if in weariness of such banalities. Stefan sat beside her, the manner of both eliminating the surrounding group.
“One must have subtlety, must one not?” she murmured.
How subtle she was, he thought; how mysterious, in spite of her obvious posing! He could not even tell whether she was interested in him.
“I shall paint you, Miss Berber,” he said, watching her, “as a Nixie. Water creatures, you know, without souls.”
“No soul?” she reflected, lingering on a puff of smoke. “How chic!”
Stefan was delighted. Hopefully, he broke into French. She replied with fluent ease, but with a strange, though charming, accent. The exotic French fitted her whole personality, he felt, as English could not do. He was pricked by curiosity as to her origin, and did not hesitate to ask it, but she gave her shadow of a smile, and waved her cigarette vaguely. “Quién sabe?” she shrugged.
“Do you know Spanish?” he asked in French, seeking a clue.
“Only what one picks up in California.” He was no nearer a solution.
“Were you out there long?”
She looked at him vaguely. “I should like some coffee, please.”
Defeated, he was obliged to fetch a cup. When he returned, it was to find her talking monosyllabic English to a group of men.
Farraday and McEwan had temporarily resigned Mary to a stream of newcomers, and stood watching the scene from the inner drawing room.
“James,” said McEwan, “get on to the makeup of the crowd round our lady, and compare it with the specimens rubbering the little Berber.”
Farraday smiled in his grave, slow way.
“You're right, Mac, the substance and the shadow.”
Many of the women seated about the room were covertly staring at Felicity, but so far none had joined her group. This consisted, besides Stefan, of two callow and obviously enthralled youths, a heavy semi-bald man with paunched eyes and a gluttonous mouth, and a tall languid person wearing tufts of hair on unexpected parts of his face, and showing the hands of a musician.
Round Mary stood half a dozen women, their host, the kindly and practical Mr. Elliot, a white-haired man of distinguished bearing, and a gigantic young viking with tawny hair and beard and powerful hands.
“That's Gunther, an A1 sculptor,” said McEwan, indicating the viking, who was looking at Mary as his ancestors might have looked at a vision of Freia.
“They're well matched, eh, James?”
“As well as she could be,” the other answered gravely. McEwan looked at his friend. “Mon,” he said, relapsing to his native speech, “come and hae a drop o' the guid Scotch.”
Constance had determined that Felicity should dance, in spite of her well-known laziness. At this point she crossed the room to attack her, expecting a difficult task, but, to her surprise, Felicity hardly demurred. After a moment of sphinx-like communing, she dropped her cigarette and rose.
“Mr. Byrd is going to paint me as something without a soul—I think I will dance,” she cryptically vouchsafed.
“Shall I play?” offered Constance, delighted.
Miss Berber turned to the languid musician.
“Have you your ocarina, Marchmont?” she breathed.
“I always carry it, Felicity,” he replied, with a reproachful look, drawing from his pocket what appeared to be a somewhat contorted meerschaum pipe.
“Then no piano to-night, Connie. A little banal, the piano, perhaps.” Her hands waved vaguely.
A space was cleared; chairs were arranged.
Miss Berber vanished behind a portiere. The languid Marchmont draped himself in a corner, and put the fat little meerschaum to his lips. A clear, jocund sound, a mere thread of music, as from the pipe of some hidden faun, penetrated the room. The notes trembled, paused, and fell to the minor. Felicity, feet bare, toes touched with scarlet, wafted into the room. Her dancing was incredibly light; she looked like some exotic poppy swaying to an imperceptible breeze. The dance was languorously sad, palely gay, a thing half asleep, veiled. It seemed always about to break into fierce life, yet did not. The scent of mandragora hung over it—it was as if the dancer, drugged, were dreaming of the sunlight.
When, waving a negligent hand to the applause, Felicity passed Stefan at the end of her dance, he caught a murmured phrase from her.
“Not soulless, perhaps, but sleeping.” Whether she meant this as an explanation of her dance or of herself he was not sure.
Mary watched the dance with admiration, and wished to compare her impressions of it with her husband's. She tried to catch his eye across the room at the end, but he had drifted away toward the dining room. Momentarily disappointed, she turned to find Farraday at her elbow, and gladly let him lead her, also, in search of refreshments. There was a general movement in that direction, and the drawing room was almost empty as McEwan, purpose in his eye, strode across it to Constance. He spoke to her in an undertone.
“Sing? Does she? I had no idea! She never tells one such things,” his hostess replied. “Do you think she would? But she has no music. You could play for her? How splendid, Mr. McEwan. How perfectly lovely of you. I'll arrange it.” She hurried out, leaving McEwan smiling at nothing in visible contentment. In a few minutes she returned with Mary.
“Of course I will if you wish it,” the latter was saying, “but I've no music, and only know foolish little ballads.”
“Mr. McEwan says he can vamp them all, and it will be too delightful to have something from each of my women stars,” Constance urged. “Now I'll leave you two to arrange it, and in a few minutes I'll get every one back from the dining room,” she nodded, slipping away again.
“Cruel man, you've given me away,” Mary smiled.
“I always brag about my friends,” grinned McEwan. They went over to the piano.
“What price the Bard! Do you know this?” His fingers ran into the old air for “Sigh No More, Ladies.” She nodded.
“Yes, I like that.”
“And for a second,” he spun round on his stool, “what do you say to a duet?” His candid blue eyes twinkled at her.
“A duet!” she exclaimed in genuine surprise. “Do you sing, Mr. McEwan?”
“Once in a while,” and, soft pedal down, he played a few bars of Marzials' “My True Love Hath My Heart,” humming the words in an easy barytone.
“Oh, what fun!” exclaimed Mary. “I love that.” They tried it over, below their breaths.
The room was filling again. People began to settle down expectantly; McEwan struck his opening chords.
Just as Mary's first note sounded, Stefan and Felicity entered the room. He started in surprise; then Mary saw him smile delightedly, and they both settled themselves well in front.
“'Men were deceivers ever,'” sang Mary, with simple ease, and “'Hey nonny, nonny.'” The notes fell gaily; her lips and eyes smiled.
There was generous applause at the end of the little song. Then McEwan struck the first chords of the duet.
“'My true love hath my heart,'” Mary sang clearly, head up, eyes shining. “'My true love hath my heart,'” replied McEwan, in his cheery barytone.
“'—And I have his,'” Mary's bell tones announced.
“'—And I have his,'” trolled McEwan.
“'There never was a better bargain driven,'” the notes came, confident and glad, from the golden figure with its clear-eyed, glowing face. They ended in a burst of almost defiant optimism.
Applause was hearty and prolonged. McEwan slipped from his stool and sought a cigarette in the adjoining room. There was a general congratulatory movement toward Mary, in which both Stefan and Felicity joined. Then people again began to break into groups. Felicity found her sofa, Mary a chair. McEwan discovered Farraday under the arch between the two drawing-rooms, and stood beside him to watch the crowd. Stefan had moved with Felicity toward her sofa, and, as she disposed herself, she seemed to be talking to him in French. McEwan and Farraday continued their survey. Mary was surrounded by people, but her eyes strayed across the room. Felicity appeared almost animated, but Stefan seemed inattentive; he fidgeted, and looked vague.
A moment more, and quite abruptly he crossed the room, and planted himself down beside Mary.
“Ah,” sighed McEwan, apparently à propos of nothing, and with a trace of Scotch, “James, I'll now hae another whusky.”
Stefan's initial and astonishing success was not to be repeated that winter. The great Constantine, anxious to benefit by the flood tide of his client's popularity, had indeed called at the studio in search of more material, but after a careful survey, had decided against exhibiting “Tempest” and “Pursuit.” Before these pictures he had stood wrapped in speculation for some time, pursing his lips and fingering the over-heavy seals of his fob. Mary had watched him eagerly, deeply curious as to the effect of the paintings. But Stefan had been careless to the point of rudeness; he had long since lost interest in his old work. When at last the swarthy little dealer, who was a Greek Jew, and had the keen, perceptions of both races, had shaken his head, Mary was not surprised, was indeed almost glad.
“Mr. Byrd,” Constantine had pronounced, in his heavy, imperfect English, “I think we would make a bad mistake to exhibit these paintings now. Technically they are clever, oh, very clever indeed, but they would be unpopular; and this once,” he smiled shrewdly, “the public would be right about it. Your Danaë was a big conception as well as fine painting; it had inspiration—feeling—” his thick but supple hands circled in emphasis—“we don't want to go back simply to cleverness. When you paint me something as big again as that one I exhibit it; otherwise,” with a shrug, “I think we spoil our market.”
After this visit Stefan, quite unperturbed, had turned the two fantasies to the wall.
“I dare say Constantine is right about them,” he said; “they are rather crazy things, and anyhow, I'm sick of them.”
Mary was quite relieved to have them hidden. The merman in particular had got upon her nerves of late.
As the winter advanced, the Byrds' circle of acquaintances grew, and many visitors dropped into the studio for tea. These showed much interest in Stefan's new picture, a large study of Mary in the guise of Demeter, for which she was posing seated, robed in her Berber gown. Miss Mason in particular was delighted with the painting, which she dubbed a “companion piece” to the Danaë. The story of Constantine's decision against the two salon canvases got about and, amusingly enough, heightened the Byrds' popularity. The Anglo-Saxon public is both to take its art neat, preferring it coated with a little sentiment. It now became accepted that Stefan's genius was due to his wife, whose love had lighted the torch of inspiration.
“Ah, Mr. Byrd,” Miss Mason had summed up the popular view, in one of her rare romantic moments, “the love of a good woman—!” Stefan had looked completely vague at this remark, and Mary had burst out laughing.
“Why, Sparrow,” for so, to Miss Mason's delight, she had named her, “don't be Tennysonian, as Stefan would say. It was Stefan's power to feel love, and not mine to call it out, that painted the Danaë,” and she looked at him with proud tenderness.
But the Sparrow was unconvinced. “You can't tell me. If 'twas all in him, why didn't some other girl over in Paris call it out long ago?”
“Lots tried,” grinned Stefan, with his cheeky-boy expression.
“Ain't he terrible,” Miss Mason sighed, smiling. She adored Mary's husband, but consistently disapproved of him.
Try as she would, Mary failed to shake her friends' estimate of her share in the family success. It became the fashion to regard her as a muse, and she, who had felt oppressed by Stefan's lover-like deification, now found her friends, too, conspiring to place her on a pedestal. Essentially simple and modest, she suffered real discomfort from the cult of adoration that surrounded her. Coming from a British community which she felt had underestimated her, she now found herself made too much of. A smaller woman would have grown vain amid so much admiration; Mary only became inwardly more humble, while outwardly carrying her honors with laughing deprecation.
For some time after the night of Constance's reception, Stefan had shown every evidence of contentment, but as the winter dragged into a cold and slushy March he began to have recurrent moods of his restless irritability. By this time Mary was moving heavily; she could no longer keep brisk pace with him in his tramps up the Avenue, but walked more slowly and for shorter distances. She no longer sprang swiftly from her chair or ran to fetch him a needed tool; her every movement was matronly. But she was so well, so entirely normal, as practically to be unconscious of a change to which her husband was increasingly alive.
Another source of Stefan's dissatisfaction lay in the progress of his Demeter. This picture showed the Goddess enthroned under the shade of a tree, beyond which spread harvest fields in brilliant sunlight. At her feet a naked boy, brown from the sun, played with a pile of red and golden fruits. In the distance maids and youths were dancing. The Goddess sat back drowsily, her eyelids drooping, her hands and arms relaxed over her chair. She had called all this richness into being, and now in the heat of the day she rested, brooding over the fecund earth. So far, the composition was masterly, but the tones lacked the necessary depth; they were vivid where they should have been warm, and he felt the deficiency without yet having been able to remedy it.
“Oh, damn!” said Stefan one morning, throwing down his brush. “This picture is architectural, absolutely. What possessed me to try such a conception? I can only do movement. I can't be static. Earth! I don't understand it—everything good I've done has been made of air and fire, or water.” He turned an irritable face to Mary.
“Why did you encourage me in this?”
She looked up in frank astonishment, about to reply, but he forestalled her.
“Oh, yes, I know I was pleased with the idea—it isn't your fault, of course, and yet—Oh, what's the use!” He slapped down his pallette and made for the door. “I'm off to get some air,” he called.
Mary felt hurt and uneasy. The nameless doubts of the autumn again assailed her. What would be the end, she wondered, of her great adventure? The distant prospect vaguely troubled her, but she turned easily from it to the immediate future, which held a blaze of joy sufficient to obliterate all else.
The thought of her baby was to Mary like the opening of the gates of paradise to Christian the Pilgrim. Her heart shook with joy of it. She passed through her days now only half conscious of the world about her. She had, together with her joy, an extraordinary sense of physical well-being, of the actual value of the body. For the first time she became actively interested in her beauty. Even on her honeymoon she had never dressed to please her husband with the care she now gave to the donning of her loose pink and white negligées and the little boudoir caps she had bought to wear with them. That Stefan paid her fewer compliments, that he often failed to notice small additions to her wardrobe, affected her not at all. “Afterwards he will be pleased; afterwards he will love me more than ever,” she thought, but, even so, knew that it was not for him she was now fair, but for that other. She did not love Stefan less, but her love was to be made flesh, and it was that incarnation she now adored. If she had been given to self-analysis she might have asked what it boded that she had never—save for that one moment's adoration of his genius the day he completed the Danaë—felt for Stefan the abandonment of love she felt for his coming child. She might have wondered, but she did not, for she felt too intensely in these days to have much need of thought. She loved her husband—he was a great man—they were to have a child. The sense of those three facts made up her cosmos.
Farraday had asked her in vain on more than one occasion for another manuscript. The last time she shook her head, with one of her rare attempts at explanation, made less rarely to him than to her other friends.
“No, Mr. Farraday, I can't think about imaginary children just now. There's a spell over me—all the world waits, and I'm holding my breath. Do you see?”
He took her hand between both his.
“Yes, my dear child, I do,” he answered, his mouth twisting into its sad and gentle smile. He had come bringing a sheaf of spring flowers, narcissus, and golden daffodils, which she was holding in her lap. He thought as he said good-bye that she looked much more like Persephone than the Demeter of Stefan's picture.
In spite of her deep-seated emotion, Mary was gay and practical enough in these late winter days, with her small household tasks, her occasional shopping, and her sewing. This last had begun vaguely to irritate Stefan, so incessant was it.
“Mary, do put down that sewing,” he would exclaim; or “Don't sing the song of the shirt any more to-day;” and she would laughingly fold her work, only to take it up instinctively again a few minutes later.
One evening he came upon her bending over a table in their sitting room, tracing a fine design on cambric with a pencil. Something in her pose and figure opened a forgotten door of memory; he watched her puzzled for a moment, then with a sudden exclamation ran upstairs, and returned with a pad of paper and a box of water-color paints. He was visibly excited. “Here, Mary,” he said, thrusting a brush into her hand and clearing a place on the table. “Do something for me. Make a drawing on this pad, anything you like, whatever first comes into your head.” His tone was eagerly importunate. She looked up in surprise, “Why, you funny boy! What shall I draw?”
“That's just it—I don't know. Please draw whatever you want to—it doesn't matter how badly—just draw something.”
Mystified, but acquiescent, Mary considered for a moment, looking from paper to brush, while Stefan watched eagerly.
“Can't I use a pencil?” she asked.
“No, a brush, please, I'll explain afterwards.”
“Very well.” She attacked the brown paint, then the red, then mixed some green. In a few minutes the paper showed a wobbly little house with a red roof and a smudged foreground of green grass with the suggestion of a shade-giving tree.
“There,” she laughed, handing him the pad, “I'm afraid I shall never be an artist,” and she looked up.
His face had dropped. He was staring at the drawing with an expression of almost comic disappointment.
“Why, Stefan,” she laughed, rather uncomfortably, “you didn't think I could draw, did you?”
“No, no, it isn't that, Mary. It's just—the house. I thought you might—perhaps draw birds—or flowers.”
“Birds?—or flowers?” She was at a loss.
“It doesn't matter; just an idea.”
He crumpled up the little house, and closed the paintbox. “I'm going out for awhile; good-bye, dearest”; and, with a kiss, he left the room.
Mary sat still, too surprised for remonstrance, and in a moment heard the bang of the flat door.
“Birds, or flowers?” Suddenly she remembered something Stefan had told her, on the night of their engagement, about his mother. So that was it. Tears came to her eyes. Rather lonely, she went to bed.
Meanwhile Stefan, his head bare in the cold wind, was speeding up the Avenue on the top of an omnibus.
“Houses are cages,” he said to himself. For some reason, he felt hideously depressed.
“I called on Miss Berber last evening,” Stefan announced casually at breakfast the next morning.
“Did you?” replied Mary, surprised, putting down her cup. “Well, did you have a nice time?”
“It was mildly amusing,” he said, opening the newspaper. The subject dropped.
Mary, who had lived all her life in a small town within sight of the open fields, was beginning to feel the confinement of city life. Even during her year in London she had joined other girls in weekend bicycling excursions out of town, or tubed to Golder's Green or Shepherd's Bush in search of country walks. Now that the late snows of March had cleared away, she began eagerly to watch for swelling buds in the Square, and was dismayed when Stefan told her that the spring, in this part of America, was barely perceptible before May.
“That's the first objection I've found to your country, Stefan,” she said.
He was scowling moodily out of the window. “The first? I see nothing but objections.”
“Oh, come!” she smiled at him; “it hasn't been so bad, has it?”
“Better than I had expected,” he conceded. “But it will soon be April, and I remember the leaves in the Luxembourg for so many Aprils back.”
She came and put her arm through his. “Do you want to go, dear?”
“Oh, hang it all, Mary, you don't suppose I want to leave you?” he answered brusquely, releasing his arm. “I want my own place, that's all.”
She had, in her quieter way, become just as homesick for England, though sharing none of his dislike of her adopted land.
“Well, shall we both go?” she suggested.
He laughed shortly. “Don't be absurd, dearest—what would your doctor say to such a notion? No, we've got to stick it out,” and he ruffled his hair impatiently.
With a suppressed sigh Mary changed the subject. “By the by, I want you to meet Dr. Hillyard; I have asked her to tea this afternoon.”
“Do you honestly mean it when you say she is not an elderly ironsides with spectacles?”
“I honestly assure you she is young and pretty. Moreover, I forbid you to talk like an anti-suffragist,” she laughed.
“Very well, then, I will be at home,” with an answering grin.
And so he was, and on his best behavior, when the little doctor arrived an hour later. She had been found by the omniscient Miss Mason, and after several visits Mary had more than endorsed the Sparrow's enthusiastic praise.
When the slight, well-tailored little figure entered the room Stefan found it hard to believe that this fresh-faced girl was the physician, already a specialist in her line, to whom Mary's fate had been entrusted. For the first time he wondered if he should not have shared with Mary some responsibility for her arrangements. But as, with an unwonted sense of duty, he questioned the little doctor, his doubts vanished. Without a trace of the much hated professional manner she gave him glimpses of wide experience, and at one point mentioned an operation she had just performed—which he knew by hearsay as one of grave difficulty—with the same enthusiastic pleasure another young woman might have shown in the description of a successful bargain-hunt. She was to Stefan a new type, and he was delighted with her. Mary, watching him, thought with affectionate irony that had the little surgeon been reported plain of face he would have denied himself in advance both the duty and the pleasure of meeting her.
Over their tea, Dr. Hillyard made a suggestion.
“Where are you planning to spend the summer?” she asked.
Stefan looked surprised. “We thought we ought to be here, near you,” he answered.
“Oh, no,” the doctor shook her head; “young couples are always martyrizing themselves for these events. By May it will be warm, and Mrs. Byrd isn't acclimatized to our American summers. Find a nice place not too far from the city—say on Long Island—and I can run out whenever necessary. You both like the country, I imagine?”
Stefan was overjoyed. He jumped up.
“Dr. Hillyard, you've saved us. We thought we had to be prisoners, and I've been eating my heart out for France. The country will be a compromise.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, smiling a little, “Mrs. Byrd has been longing for England for a month or more.”
“I never said so!” and “She never told me!” exclaimed Mary and Stefan simultaneously.
“No, you didn't,” the little doctor nodded wisely at her patient, “but I know.”
Stefan immediately began to plan an expedition in search of the ideal spot, as unspoiled if possible as Shadeham, but much nearer town. All through dinner he discussed it, his spirits hugely improved, and immediately after rang up Constance Elliot for advice.
“Hold the line,” the lady's voice replied, “while I consult.” In a minute or two she returned.
“Mr. Farraday is dining with us, and I've asked him. He lives at Crab's Bay, you know.”
“No, I don't,” objected Stefan.
“Well, he does,” her voice laughed back. “He was born there. He says if you like he will come over and talk to you about it, and I, like a self-sacrificing hostess, am willing to let him.”
“Splendid idea,” said Stefan, “ask him to come right over. Mary,” he called, hanging up the receiver, “Constance is sending Farraday across to advise us.”
“Oh, dear,” said she; “sometimes I feel almost overwhelmed by all the favors we receive from our friends.”
“Fiddlesticks! They are paid by the pleasure of our society. You don't seem to realize that we are unusually interesting and attractive people,” laughed he with a flourish.
“Vain boy!”
“So I am, and vain of being vain. I believe in being as conceited as possible, conceited enough to make one's conceit good.”
She smiled indulgently, knowing that, as he was talking nonsense, he felt happy.
Farraday appeared in a few minutes, and they settled in a group round the fire with coffee and cigarettes. Stefan offered Mary one. She shook her head.
“I'm not smoking now, you know.”
“Did Dr. Hillyard say so?” he asked quickly.
“No, but—”
“Then don't be poky, dearest.” He lit the cigarette and held it out to her, but she waved it back.
“Don't tease, dear,” she murmured, noticing that Farraday was watching them. Stefan with a shrug retained the cigarette in his left hand, and smoked it ostentatiously for some minutes, alternately with his own. Mary, hoping he was not going to be naughty, embarked on the Long Island topic.
“We want to be within an hour of the city,” she explained, “but in pretty country. We want to keep house, but not to pay too much. We should like to be near the sea. Does that sound wildly impossible?”
Farraday fingered his cigarette reflectively.
“I rather think,” he said at last, “that my neighborhood most nearly meets the requirements. I have several hundred acres at Crab's Bay, which belonged to my father, running from the shore halfway to the railroad station. The village itself is growing suburban, but the properties beyond mine are all large, and keep the country open. We are only an hour from the city—hardly more, by automobile.”
“Are there many tin cans?” enquired Stefan, flippantly. “In Michigan I remember them as the chief suburban decoration.”
“Yes?” said Farraday, in his invariably courteous tone, “I've never been there. It is a long way from New York.”
“Touché,” cried Stefan, grinning. “But you would think pessimism justified if you'd ever had my experience of rural life.”
“Was your father really American?” enquired his guest with apparent irrelevance.
“Yes, and a minister.”
“Oh, a minister. I see,” the other replied, quietly.
“Explains it, does it?” beamed Stefan, who was nothing if not quick. They all laughed, and the little duel was ended. Mary took up the broken discussion.
“Is there the slightest chance of our finding anything reasonably cheap in such a neighborhood?” she asked.
“I was just coming to that,” said Farraday. “You would not care to be in the village, and any houses that might be for rent there would be expensive, I'm afraid. But it so happens there is a cottage on the edge of my property where my father's old farmer used to live. After his death I put a little furniture in the place, and have occasionally used it. But it is entirely unnecessary to me, and you are welcome to it for the summer if it would suit you. The rent would be nominal. I don't regard it commercially, it's too near my own place.”
Mary flushed. “It's most awfully good of you,” she said, “but I don't know if we ought to accept. I'm afraid you may be making it convenient out of kindness.”
“Mary, how British!” Stefan interrupted. He had taken lately so to labeling her small conventionalities. “Why accuse Mr. Farraday of altruistic insincerity? I think his description sounds delightful. Let's go tomorrow and see the cottage.”
“If you will wait till Sunday,” Farraday smiled, “I shall be delighted to drive you out. It might be easier for Mrs. Byrd.”
Mary again demurred on the score of giving unnecessary trouble, but Stefan overrode her, and Farraday was obviously pleased with the plan. It was arranged that he should call for them in his car the following Sunday, and that they should lunch with him and his mother. When he had left Stefan performed a little pas seul around the room.
“Tra-la-la!” he sang; “birds, Mary, trees, water. No more chimney pots, no more walking up and down that tunnel of an avenue. See what it is to have admiring friends.”
Mary flushed again. “Why will you spoil everything by putting it like that?”
He stopped and patted her cheek teasingly.
“It's me they admire, Mary, the great artist, creator of the famous Danaë,” and he skipped again, impishly.
Mary was obliged to laugh. “You exasperating creature!” she said, and went to bed, while he ran up to the studio to pull out the folding easel and sketching-box of his old Brittany days.
When on the following Sunday morning Farraday drove up to the house, Mary was delighted to find Constance Elliot in the tonneau.
“Theodore has begun golfing again, now that the snow has gone,” she greeted her, “so that I am a grass widow on holidays as well as all the week.”
“Why don't you learn to play, too?” Mary asked, as they settled themselves, Stefan sitting in front with Farraday, who was driving.
“Oh, for your English feet, my dear!” sighed Constance. “They are bigger than mine—I dare say so, as I wear fours—but you can walk on them. I was brought up to be vain of my extremities, and have worn two-inch heels too long to be good for more than a mile. The links would kill me. Besides,” she sighed again prettily, “dear Theodore is so much happier without me.”
“How can you, Constance!” objected Mary.
“Yes, my dear,” went on the other, her beautiful little hands, which she seldom gloved, playing with the inevitable string of jade, “the result of modern specialization. Theodore is a darling, and in theory a Suffragist, but he has practised the matrimonial division of labor so long that he does not know what to do with the woman out of the home.”
“This is Queensborough Bridge,” she pointed out in a few minutes, as they sped up a huge iron-braced incline. “It looks like eight pepper-castors on a grid, surmounted by bayonets, but it is very convenient.”
Mary laughed. Constance's flow of small talk always put her in good spirits. She looked about her with interest as the car emerged from the bridge into a strange waste land of automobile factories, new stone-faced business buildings, and tumbledown wooden cottages. The houses, in their disarray, lay as if cast like seeds from some titanic hand, to fall, wither or sprout as they listed, regardless of plan. The bridge seemed to divide a settled civilization from pioneer country, and as they left the factories behind and emerged into fields dotted with advertisements and wooden shacks Mary was reminded of stories she had read of the far West, or of Australia. Stefan leant back from the front seat, and waved at the view.
“Behold the tin can,” he cried, “emblem of American civilization!” She saw that he was right; the fields on either side were dotted with tins, bottles, and other husks of dinners past and gone. Gradually, however, this stage was left behind: they began to pass through villages of pleasant wooden houses painted white or cream, with green shutters, or groups of red-tiled stucco dwellings surrounded by gardens in the English manner. Soon these, too, were left, and real country appeared, prettily wooded, in which low-roofed homesteads clung timidly to the roadside as if in search of company.
“What dear little houses!” Mary exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Constance, “that is the Long Island farmhouse type, as good architecturally as anything America has produced, but abandoned in favor of Oriental bungalows, Italian palaces and French châteaux.”
“I should adore a little house like one of those.”
“Wait till you see Mr. Farraday's cottage; it's a lamb, and his home like it, only bigger. What can one call an augmented lamb? I can only think of sheep, which doesn't sound well.”
“I'm afraid we should say it was 'twee' in England,” Mary smiled, “which sounds worse.”
“Yes, I'd rather my house were a sheep than a 'twee,' because I do at least know that a sheep is useful, and I'm sure a 'twee' can't be.”
“It's not a noun, Constance, but an adjective, meaning sweet,” translated Mary, laughing. She loved Constance's nonsense because it was never more than that. Stefan's absurdities were always personal and, often, not without a hidden sting.
“Well,” Constance went on, “you must be particularly 'twee' then, to James' mother, who is a Quaker from Philadelphia, and an American gentlewoman of the old school. His father was a New Englander, and took his pleasures sadly, as I tell James he does; but his mother is as warm as a dear little toast, and as pleasant—well—as the dinner bell.”
“What culinary similes, Constance!”
“My dear, from sheep to mutton is only a step, and I'm so hungry I can think only in terms of a menu. And that,” she prattled on, “reminds me of Mr. McEwan, whose face is the shape of a mutton chop. He is sure to be there, for he spends half his time with James. Do you like him?”
“Yes, I do,” said Mary; “increasingly.”
“He's one of the best of souls. Have you heard his story?”
“No, has he one?”
“Indeed, yes,” replied Constance. “The poor creature, who, by the way, adores you, is a victim of Quixotism. When he first came to New York he married a young girl who lived in his boarding-house and was in trouble by another man. Mac found her trying to commit suicide, and, as the other man had disappeared, married her to keep her from it. She was pretty, I believe, and I think he was fond of her because of her terrible helplessness. The first baby died, luckily, but when his own was born a year or two later the poor girl was desperately ill, and lost most of what little mind she possessed. She developed two manias—the common spendthrift one, and the conviction that he was trying to divorce her. That was ten years ago. He has to keep her at sanitariums with a companion to check her extravagance, and he pays her weekly visits to reassure her as to the divorce. She costs him nearly all he makes, in doctors' bills and so forth—he never spends a penny on himself, except for a cheap trip to Scotland once a year. Yet, with it all, he is one of the most cheerful souls alive.”
“Poor fellow!” said Mary. “What about the child?”
“He's alive, but she takes very little notice of him. He spends most of his time with Mrs. Farraday, who is a saint. James, poor man, adores children, and is glad to have him.”
“Why hasn't Mr. Farraday married, I wonder?” Mary murmured under the covering purr of the car.
“Oh, what a waste,” groaned Constance. “An ideal husband thrown away! Nobody knows, my dear. I think he was hit very hard years ago, and never got over it. He won't say, but I tell him if I weren't ten years older, and Theodore in evidence, I should marry him myself out of hand.”
“I like him tremendously, but I don't think I should ever have felt attracted in that way,” said Mary, who was much too natural a woman not to be interested in matrimonial speculations.
“That's because you are two of a kind, simple and serious,” nodded Constance. “I could have adored him.”
They had been speeding along a country lane between tall oaks, and, breasting a hill, suddenly came upon the sea, half landlocked by curving bays and little promontories. Beyond these, on the horizon, the coast of Connecticut was softly visible. Mary breathed in great draughts of salt-tanged air.
“Oh, how good!” she exclaimed.
“Here we are,” cried Constance, as the machine swung past white posts into a wooded drive, which curved and curved again, losing and finding glimpses of the sea. No buds were out, but each twig bulged with nobbins of new life; and the ground, brown still, had the swept and garnished look which the March winds leave behind for the tempting of Spring. Persephone had not risen, but the earth listened for her step, and the air held the high purified quality that presages her coming.
“Lovely, lovely,” breathed Mary, her eyes and cheeks glowing.
The car stopped under a porte cochère, before a long brown house of heavy clapboards, with shingled roof and green blinds. Farraday jumped down and helped Mary out, and the front door opened to reveal the shining grin of McEwan, poised above the gray head of a little lady who advanced with outstretched hand to greet them.
“My mother—Mrs. Byrd,” Farraday introduced.
“I am very pleased to meet thee. My son has told me so much about thee and thy husband. Thee must make thyself at home here,” beamed the little lady, with one of the most engaging smiles Mary had ever beheld.
Stefan was introduced in his turn, and made his best continental bow. He liked old ladies, who almost invariably adored him. McEwan greeted him with a “Hello,” and shook hands warmly with the two women. They all moved into the hall, Mary under the wing of Mrs. Farraday, who presently took her upstairs to a bedroom.
“Thee must rest here before dinner,” said she, smoothing with a tiny hand the crocheted bedspread. “Ring this bell if there is anything thee wants. Shall I send Mr. Byrd up to thee?”
“Indeed, I'm not a bit tired,” said Mary, who had never felt better.
“All the same I would rest a little if I were thee,” Mrs. Farraday nodded wisely. Mary was fascinated by her grammar, never having met a Quaker before. The little lady, who barely reached her guest's shoulder, had such an air of mingled sweetness and dignity as to make Mary feel she must instinctively yield to her slightest wish. Obediently she lay down, and Mrs. Farraday covered her feet.
Mary noticed her fine white skin, soft as a baby's, the thousand tiny lines round her gentle eyes, her simple dress of brown silk with a cameo at the neck, her little, blue-veined hands. No wonder the son of such a woman impressed one with his extraordinary kindliness.
The little lady slipped away, and Mary, feeling unexpected pleasure in the quiet room and the soft bed, closed her eyes gratefully.
At luncheon, or rather dinner, for it was obvious that Mrs. Farraday kept to the old custom of Sunday meals, a silent, shock-headed boy of about ten appeared, whom McEwan with touching pride introduced as his son. He was dressed in a kilt and small deerskin sporran, with the regulation heavy stockings, tweed jacket and Eton collar.
“For Sundays only—we have to be Yankees on school days, eh, Jamie?” explained his father. The boy grinned in speechless assent, instantly looking a duplicate of McEwan.
Mary's heart warmed to him at once, he was so shy and clumsy; but Stefan, who detested the mere suspicion of loutishness, favored him with an absent-minded stare. Mary, who sat on Farraday's right, had the boy next her, with his father beyond, Stefan being between Mrs. Farraday and Constance. The meal was served by a gray-haired negro, of manners so perfect as to suggest the ideal southern servant, already familiar to Mary in American fiction. As if in answer to a cue, Mrs. Farraday explained across the table that Moses and his wife had come from Philadelphia with her on her marriage, and had been born in the South before the war. Mary's literary sense of fitness was completely satisfied by this remark, which was received by Moses with a smile of gentle pride.
“James,” said Constance, “I never get tired of your mother's house; it is so wonderful to have not one thing out of key.”
Farraday smiled. “Bless you, she wouldn't change a footstool. It is all just as when she married, and much of it, at that, belonged to her mother.”
This explained what, with Mary's keen eye for interiors, had puzzled her when they first arrived. She had expected to see more of the perfect taste and knowledge displayed in Farraday's office, instead of which the house, though dignified and hospitable, lacked all traces of the connoisseur. She noticed in particular the complete absence of any color sense. All the woodwork was varnished brown, the hangings were of dull brown velvet or dark tapestry, the carpets toneless. Her bedroom had been hung with white dimity, edged with crochet-work, but the furniture was of somber cherry, and the chintz of the couch-cover brown with yellow flowers. The library, into which she looked from where she sat, was furnished with high glass-doored bookcases, turned walnut tables, and stuffed chairs and couches with carved walnut rims. Down each window the shade was lowered half way, and the light was further obscured by lace curtains and heavy draperies of plain velvet. The pictures were mostly family portraits, with a few landscapes of doubtful merit. There were no flowers anywhere, except one small vase of daffodils upon the dinner table. According to all modern canons the house should have been hideous; but it was not. It held garnered with loving faith the memories of another day, as a bowl of potpourri still holds the sun of long dead summers. It fitted absolutely the quiet kindliness, the faded face and soft brown dress of its mistress. It was keyed to her, as Constance had understood, to the last detail.
“Yes,” said Farraday, smiling down the table at his mother, “she could hardly bring herself to let me build my picture gallery on the end of the house—nothing but Christian charity enabled her to yield.”
The old lady smiled back at her tall son almost like a sweetheart. “He humors me,” she said; “he knows I'm a foolish old woman who love, my nest as it was first prepared for me.”
“Oh, I can so well understand that,” said Mary.
“Do you mean to say, Mrs. Farraday,” interposed Stefan, “that you have lived in this one house, without changing it, all your married life?”
She turned to him in simple surprise. “Why, of course; my husband chose it for me.”
“Marvelous!” said Stefan, who felt that one week of those brown hangings would drive him to suicide.
“Nix on the home-sweet-home business for yours, eh, Byrd?” threw in McEwan with his glint of a twinkle.
“Boy,” interposed their little hostess, “why will thee always use such shocking slang? How can I teach Jamie English with his father's example before him?” She shook a tiny finger at the offender.
“Ma'am, if I didn't sling the lingo, begging your pardon, in my office, they would think I was a highbrow, and then—good night Mac!”
“Don't believe him, Mother,” said Farraday. “It isn't policy, but affection. He loves the magazine crowd, and likes to do as it does. Besides,” he smiled, “he's a linguistic specialist.”
“You think slang is an indication of local patriotism?” asked Mary.
“Certainly,” said Farraday. “If we love a place we adopt its customs.”
“That's quite true,” Stefan agreed. “In Paris I used the worst argot of the quarter, but I've always spoken straightforward English because the only slang I knew in my own tongue reminded me of a place I loathed.”
“Stefan used to be dreadfully unpatriotic, Mrs. Farraday,” explained Mary, “but he is outgrowing it.”
“Am I?” Stefan asked rather pointedly.
“Art,” said McEwan grandly, “is international; Byrd belongs to the world.” He raised his glass of lemonade, and ostentatiously drank Stefan's health. The others laughed at him, and the conversation veered. Mary absorbed herself in trying to draw out the bashful Jamie, and Stefan listened while his hostess talked on her favorite theme, that of her son, James Farraday.
They had coffee in the picture gallery, a beautiful room which Farraday had extended beyond the drawing-room, and furnished with perfect examples of the best Colonial period. It was hung almost entirely with the work of Americans, in particular landscapes by Inness, Homer Martin, and George Munn, while over the fireplace was a fine mother and child by Mary Cassatt. For the first time since their arrival Stefan showed real interest, and leaving the others, wandered round the room critically absorbing each painting.
“Well, Farraday,” he said at the end of his tour, “I must say you have the best of judgment. I should have been mighty glad to paint one or two of those myself.” His tone indicated that more could not be said.
Meanwhile, Mary could hardly wait for the real object of their expedition, the little house. When at last the car was announced, Mrs. Farraday's bonnet and cloak brought by a maid, and everybody, Jamie included, fitted into the machine, Mary felt her heart beating with excitement. Were they going to have a real little house for their baby? Was it to be born out here by the sea, instead of in the dusty, overcrowded city? She strained her eyes down the road. “It's only half a mile,” called Farraday from the wheel, “and a mile and a half from the station.” They swung down a hill, up again, round a bend, and there was a grassy plateau overlooking the water, backed by a tree-clad slope. Nestling under the trees, but facing the bay, was just such a little house as Mary had admired along the road, low and snug, shingled on walls and roof, painted white, with green shutters and a little columned porch at the front door. A small barn stood near; a little hedge divided house from lane; evidences of a flower garden showed under the windows. “Oh, what a duck!” Mary exclaimed. “Oh, Stefan!” She could almost have wept.
Farraday helped her down.
“Mrs. Byrd,” said he with his most kindly smile, “here is the key. Would you like to unlock the door yourself?”
She blushed with pleasure. “Oh, yes!” she cried, and turned instinctively to look for Stefan. He was standing at the plateau's edge, scrutinizing the view. She called, but he did not hear. Then she took the key and, hurrying up the little walk, entered the house alone.
A moment later Stefan, hailed stentoriously by McEwan, followed her.
She was standing in a long sitting-room, low-ceilinged and white-walled, with window-seats, geraniums on the sills, brass andirons on the hearth, an eight-day clock, a small old fashioned piano, an oak desk, a chintz-covered grandmother's chair, a gate-legged table, and a braided rag hearth-rug. Her hands were clasped, her eyes shining.
“Oh, Stefan!” she exclaimed as she heard his step. “Isn't it a darling? Wouldn't it be simply ideal for us?”
“It seems just right, and the view is splendid. There's a good deal that's paintable here.”
“Is there? I'm so glad. That makes it perfect. Look at the furniture, Stefan, every bit right.”
“And the moldings,” he added. “All handcut, do you see? The whole place is actually old. What a lark!” He appeared almost as pleased as she.
“Here come the others. Let's go upstairs, dearest,” she whispered.
There were four bedrooms, and a bathroom. The main room had a four-post bed, and opening out of it was a smaller room, almost empty. In this Mary stood for some minutes, measuring with her eye the height of the window from the floor, mentally placing certain small furnishings. “It would be ideal, simply ideal,” she repeated to herself. Stefan was looking out of the window, again absorbed in the view. She would have liked so well to share with him her tenderness over the little room, but he was all unmindful of its meaning to her, and, as always, his heedlessness made expression hard for her. She was still communing with the future when he turned from the window.
“Come along, Mary, let's go downstairs again.”
They found the others waiting in the sitting-room, and Farraday detached Stefan to show him a couple of old prints, while Mrs. Farraday led Constance and Mary to an exploration of the kitchen. Chancing to look back from the hall, Mary saw that McEwan had seated himself in the grandmother's chair, and was holding the heavy shy Jamie at his knee, one arm thrown round him. The boy's eyes were fixed in dumb devotion on his father's face.
“The two poor lonely things,” she thought.
The little kitchen was spotless, tiled shoulder-high, and painted blue above. Against one wall a row of copper saucepans grinned their fat content, echoed by the pale shine of an opposing row of aluminum. Snowy larder shelves showed through one little door; through another, laundry tubs were visible. There was a modern coal stove, with a boiler. The quarters were small, but perfect to the last detail. Mrs. Farraday's little face fairly beamed with pride as they looked about them.
“He did it all, bought every pot and pan, arranged each detail. There were no modern conveniences until old Cotter died—hewould not let James put them in. My boy loves this cottage; he sometimes spends several days here all alone, when he is very tired. He doesn't even like me to send Moses down, but of course I won't hear of that.” She shook her head with smiling finality. There were some things, her manner suggested, that little boys could not be allowed.
“But, Mrs. Farraday,” Mary exclaimed, “how can we possibly take the house from him if he uses it?”
“My dear,” the little lady's hand lighted on Mary's arm, “when thee knows my James better, thee will know that his happiness lies in helping his friends find theirs. He would be deeply disappointed if thee did not take it,” and her hand squeezed Mary's reassuringly.
“We are too wonderfully lucky—I don't know how to express my gratitude,” Mary answered.
“I think the good Lord sends us what we deserve, my dear, whether of good or ill,” the little lady replied, smiling wisely.
Constance sighed contentedly. “Oh, Mrs. Farraday, you are so good for us all. I'm a modern backslider, and hardly ever go to church, but you always make me feel as if I had just been.”
“Backslider, Constance? 'Thy own works praise thee, and thy children rise up and call thee blessed—thy husband also,'” quoted their hostess.
“Well, I don't know if my boys and Theodore call me blessed, but I hope the Suffragists will one day. Goodness knows I work hard enough for them.”
“I've believed in suffrage all my life, like all Friends,” Mrs. Farraday answered, “but where thee has worked I have only prayed for it.”
“If prayers are heard, I am sure yours should count more than my work, dear lady,” said Constance, affectionately pressing the other's hand.
The little Quaker's eyes were bright as she looked at her friend.
“Ah, my dear, thee is too generous to an old woman.”
Mary loved this little dialogue, “What dears all my new friends are,” she thought; “how truly good.” All the world seemed full of love to her in these days; her heart blossomed out to these kind people; she folded them in the arms of her spirit. All about, in nature and in human kind, she felt the spring burgeoning, and within herself she felt it most of all. But of this Mary could express nothing, save through her face—she had never looked more beautiful.
Coming into the dining room she found Farraday watching her. He seemed tired. She put out her hand.
“May we really have it? You are sure?”
“You like it?” he smiled, holding the hand.
She flushed with the effort to express herself. “I adore it. I can't thank you.”
“Please don't,” he answered. “You don't know what pleasure this gives me. Come as soon as you can; everything is ready for you.”
“And about the rent?” she asked, hating to speak of money, but knowing Stefan would forget.
“Dear Mrs. Byrd, I had so much rather lend it, but I know you wouldn't like that. Pay me what you paid for your first home in New York.”
“Oh, but that would be absurd,” she demurred.
“Make that concession to my pride in our friendship,” he smiled back.
She saw that she could not refuse without ungraciousness. Stefan had disappeared, but now came quickly in from the kitchen door.
“Farraday,” he called, “I've been looking at the barn; you don't use it, I see. If we come, should you mind my having a north light cut in it? With that it would make an ideal workshop.”
“I should be delighted,” the other answered; “it's a good idea and will make the place more valuable. I had the barn cleaned out thinking some one might like it for a garage.”
“We shan't run to such an extravagance yet awhile,” laughed Mary.
“A bicycle for me and the station hack for Mary,” Stefan summed up. “I suppose there is such a thing at Crab's Bay?”
“She won't have to walk,” Farraday answered.