The Nest Builder by Hale, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson

In memory Stefan followed himself home. The word was used to denote the house in which he and his father lived. A portrait of his mother hung over the parlor stove. It was a chalk drawing from a photograph, crudely done, but beautiful by reason of the subject. The face was young and very round, the forehead beautifully low and broad under black waves of hair. The nose was short and proud, the chin small but square, the mouth gaily curving around little, even teeth. But the eyes were deep and somber; there was passion in them, and romance. Stefan had not seen that face for years, he barely remembered the original, but he could have drawn it now in every detail. If the house in which it hung could be called home at all, it was by virtue of that picture, the only thing of beauty in it.

Behind the portrait lay a few memories of joy and heartache, and one final one of horror. Stefan probed them, still with his nervous hand across his eyes. He listened while his mother sang gay or mournful little songs with haunting tunes in a tongue only a word or two of which he understood. He watched while she drew from her bureau drawer a box of paints and some paper. She painted for long hours, day after day through the winter, while he played beside her with longing eyes on her brushes. She painted always one thing--flowers--using no pencil, drawing their shapes with the brush. Her flowers were of many kinds, nearly all strange to him, but most were roses--pink, yellow, crimson, almost black. Sometimes their petals flared like wings; sometimes they were close- furled. Of these paintings he remembered much, but of her speech little, for she was silent as she worked.

One day his mother put a brush into his hand. The rapture of it was as sharp and near as to-day's misery. He sat beside her after that for many days and painted. First he tried to paint a rose, but he had never seen such roses as her brush drew, and he tired quickly. Then he drew a bird. His mother nodded and smiled--it was good. After that his memory showed him the two sitting side by side for weeks, or was it months?--while the snow lay piled beyond the window--she with her flowers, he with his birds.

First he drew birds singly, hopping on a branch, or simply standing, claws and beaks defined. Then he began to make them fly, alone, and again in groups. Their wings spread across the paper, wider and more sweepingly. They pointed upward sharply, or lay flat across the page. Flights of tiny birds careened from corner to corner. They were blue, gold, scarlet, and white. He left off drawing birds on branches and drew them only in flight, smudging in a blue background for the sky.

One day by accident he made a dark smudge in the lower left-hand corner of his page.

"What is that?" asked his mother.

The little boy looked at it doubtfully for a moment, unwilling to admit it a blot. Then he laughed.