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TITLE: THE NEST BUILDER
AUTHOR: BEATRICE FORBES-ROBERTSON HALE
EBOOK: E00656 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

THE NEST-BUILDER

_A NOVEL_

BY BEATRICE FORBES-ROBERTSON HALE

AUTHOR OF "WHAT WOMEN WANT"

_WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY J. HENRY_

       *       *       *       *       *

CONTENTS

PART I

  MATE-SONG

PART II

  MATED

PART III

  THE NESTLING

PART IV

  WINGS

PART V

  THE BUILDER

       *       *       *       *       *

PART I

MATE-SONG

I

Outbound from Liverpool, the Lusitania bucked down the Irish Sea against
a September gale. Aft in her second-class quarters each shouldering from
the waves brought a sickening vibration as one or another of the ship's
great propellers raced out of water. The gong had sounded for the second
sitting, and trails of hungry and weary travelers, trooping down the
companionway, met files of still more uneasy diners emerging from the
saloon. The grinding jar of the vessel, the heavy smell of food, and the
pound of ragtime combined to produce an effect as of some sordid and
demoniac orgy--an effect derided by the smug respectability of the
saloon's furnishings.

Stefan Byrd, taking in the scene as he balanced a precarious way to his
seat, felt every hypercritical sense rising in revolt. Even the prosaic
but admirably efficient table utensils repelled him. "They are so useful,
so abominably enduring," he thought. The mahogany trimmings of doors and
columns seemed to announce from every overpolished surface a pompous
self-sufficiency. Each table proclaimed the aesthetic level of the second
class through the lifeless leaves of a rubber plant and two imitation
cut-glass dishes of tough fruit. The stewards, casually hovering, lacked
the democracy which might have humanized the steerage as much as the
civility which would have oiled the workings of the first cabin. Byrd
resented their ministrations as he did the heavy English dishes of the
bill of fare. There were no Continental passengers near him. He had left
the dear French tongue behind, and his ears, homesick already, shrank
equally from the see-saw Lancashire of the stewards and the monotonous
rasp of returning Americans.

Byrd's left hand neighbor, a clergyman of uncertain denomination, had
tried vainly for several minutes to attract his attention by clearing his
throat, passing the salt, and making measured requests for water, bread,
and the like.

"I presume, sir," he at last inquired loudly, "that you are an American,
and as glad as I am to be returning to our country?"

"No, sir," retorted Byrd, favoring his questioner with a withering stare,
"I am a Bohemian, and damnably sorry that I ever have to see America
again."

The man of God turned away, pale to the temples with offense--a high-
bosomed matron opposite emitted a shocked "Oh!"--the faces of the
surrounding listeners assumed expressions either dismayed or deprecating.
Budding conversationalists were temporarily frost-bitten, and the watery
helpings of fish were eaten in a constrained silence. But with the
inevitable roast beef a Scot of unshakeable manner, decorated with a
yellow forehead-lock as erect as a striking cobra, turned to follow up
what he apparently conceived to be an opportunity for discussion.

"I'm not so strongly partial to the States mysel', ye ken, but I'll
confess it's a grand place to mak' money. Ye would be going there,
perhaps, to improve your fortunes?"

Byrd was silent.

"Also," continued the Scot, quite unrebuffed, "it would be interesting to
know what exactly ye mean when ye call yoursel' a Bohemian. Would ye be
referring to your tastes, now, or to your nationality?"

His hand trembling with nervous temper, Byrd laid down his napkin, and
rose with an attempt at dignity somewhat marred by the viselike clutch of
the swivel chair upon his emerging legs.

"My mother was a Bohemian, my father an American. Neither, happily, was
Scotch," said he, almost stammering in his attempt to control his extreme
distaste of his surroundings--and hurried out of the saloon, leaving a
table of dropped jaws behind him.

"The young man is nairvous," contentedly boomed the Scot. "I'm thinking
he'll be feeling the sea already. What kind of a place would Bohemia, be,
d'ye think, to have a mother from?" turning to the clergyman.

"A place of evil life, seemingly," answered that worthy in his high-
pitched, carrying voice. "I shall certainly ask to have my seat changed.
I cannot subject myself for the voyage to the neighborhood of a man of
profane speech."

The table nodded approval.

"A traitor to his country, too," said a pursy little man opposite,
snapping his jaws shut like a turtle.

A bony New England spinster turned deprecating eyes to him. "My," she
whispered shrilly, "he was just terrible, wasn't he? But so handsome! I
can't help but think it was more seasickness with him than an evil
nature."

Meanwhile the subject of discussion, who would have writhed far more at
the spinster's palliation of his offense than at the men's disdain, lay
in his tiny cabin, a prey to an attack of that nervous misery which
overtakes an artist out of his element as surely and speedily as air
suffocates a fish.

Stefan Byrd's table companions were guilty in his eyes of the one
unforgivable sin--they were ugly. Ugly alike in feature, dress, and
bearing, they had for him absolutely no excuse for existence. He felt no
bond of common humanity with them. In his lexicon what was not beautiful
was not human, and he recognized no more obligation of good fellowship
toward them than he would have done toward a company of ground-hogs. He
lay back, one fine and nervous hand across his eyes, trying to obliterate
the image of the saloon and all its inmates by conjuring up a vision of
the world he had left, the winsome young cosmopolitan Paris of the art
student. The streets, the cafes, the studios; his few men, his many
women, friends--Adolph Jensen, the kindly Swede who loved him; Louise,
Nanette, the little Polish Yanina, who had said they loved him; the
slanting-glanced Turkish students, the grave Syrians, the democratic
un-British Londoners--the smell, the glamour of Paris, returned to him
with the nostalgia of despair.

These he had left. To what did he go?

II

In his shivering, creaking little cabin, suspended, as it were, by the
uncertain waters between two lives, Byrd forced himself to remember the
America he had known before his Paris days. He recalled his birthplace
--a village in upper Michigan--and his mental eyes bored across the
pictures that came with the running speed of a cinematograph to his
memory.

The place was a village, but it called itself a city. The last he had
seen of it was the "depot," a wooden shed surrounded by a waste of rutted
snow, and backed by grimy coal yards. He could see the broken shades of
the town's one hotel, which faced the tracks, drooping across their dirty
windows, and the lopsided sign which proclaimed from the porch roof in
faded gilt on black the name of "C. E. Trench, Prop." He could see the
swing-doors of the bar, and hear the click of balls from the poolroom
advertising the second of the town's distractions. He could smell the
composite odor of varnish, stale air, and boots, which made the
overheated station waiting-room hideous. Heavy farmers in ear-mitts,
peaked caps, and fur collars spat upon the hissing stove round which
their great hide boots sprawled. They were his last memory of his fellow
citizens.

Looking farther back Stefan saw the town in summer. There were trees in
the street where he lived, but they were all upon the sidewalk-public
property. In their yards (the word garden, he recalled, was never used)
the neighbors kept, with unanimity, in the back, washing, and in the
front, a porch. Over these porches parched vines crept--the town's
enthusiasm for horticulture went as far as that--and upon them
concentrated the feminine social life of the place. Of this intercourse
the high tones seemed to be giggles, and the bass the wooden thuds of
rockers. Street after street he could recall, from the square about the
"depot" to the outskirts, and through them all the dusty heat, the
rockers, gigglers, the rustle of a shirt-sleeved father's newspaper, and
the shrill coo-ees of the younger children. Finally, the piano--for he
looked back farther than the all-conquering phonograph. He heard "Nita,
Juanita;" he heard "Sweet Genevieve."

Beyond the village lay the open country, level, blindingly hot, half-
cultivated, with the scorched foliage of young trees showing in the ruins
of what had been forest land. Across it the roads ran straight as rulers.
In the winter wolves were not unknown there; in the summer there were
tramps of many strange nationalities, farm hands and men bound for the
copper mines. For the most part they walked the railroad ties, or rode
the freight cars; winter or summer, the roads were never wholly safe, and

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