The Nest Builder

Excerpt

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....