Nest Builder | Page 2

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 cafés, 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