Chapter XII: Book FOUR: Canaan (2)

“Because it is life,” Blynn spoke warmly. “Ignorance is the only sin. You remember your Socrates. If we really knew all, he said, we would never embrace evil. Ignorance makes our criminals, it makes our slums, it brings into the world cripple-minded children, it separates mothers and fathers, breeds disease, and corrupts the best of us. We don’t take evil into our lives because we believe it to be evil, but because we ignorantly think it good.”

“Phew!” Leopold affected concern. “You _are_ a Puritan! Scratch a Puritan and find a preacher!... Well; you’ve made her half a Puritan--you and your ghastly leper--and it is a good thing.” Leopold nodded sagely. “At first, I did not like it. It seemed inconsistent with her strong sense of individual freedom. I am not much of a Puritan myself. I obey my will. I do not let it be balked by creed or dictum made by others. And I have always believed in giving the same freedom to everyone. That is my idea of tolerance. But she is not that way--and, strange, I am glad!”

They talked for a desultory moment on freedom and restrictions, but Leopold came back to Gorgas.

“She is not wholly Puritan,” he explained. “At times--no; at other times--tonight, for instance--she takes fright, calls on her little gods, and fights. You it is, I gather, who have planted that in her--”

“Oh, no!” Blynn protested grimly. The generalities of Leopold began to assume horrid, specific meanings. His slow mind was racing to catch up with the events. The “bee-line,” the angry, disheveled Gorgas mounting the stairs, the cravat so accusingly awry--what did they mean? Suddenly his memory began to piece data together, material that had been observed by his eyes, that had been recorded on the phonographic-disk of a brain, but which never before had been summoned into consciousness. The pictures that he conjured made him ill, and as he walked he drew in deep breaths to steady himself. “Oh, no!” he repeated, while his mind throbbed, “I taught her nothing. She has her own character, predestined to grow into its own as an oak from an acorn. You can’t spread morals on children like stucco on a wall. Character is the self revealed. You can only bring it out. But with Gorgas I didn’t even bring it out. It was always there.”

“I believe you,” Leopold answered. “You are quite right. And I am glad. Strange that I should want in a woman the qualities that I do not respect myself.”

“You want--Gorgas?”

“Yes.”

Leopold went on calmly, but Allen only half heeded him; through the dark they strode, the biologist pursuing serenely his theory, the other hearing only the turmoil of his own wild thoughts. Finally the pleasant voice at his side caught Allen’s attention. Leopold was saying:

“There is something, after all, in that old worship of chastity in women--the ‘double-standard,’ as we call it today--something more than merely the echo of the age of chivalry or the offshoot of the worship of the Virgin. It is an ingrained necessity, I am finding. A man must be sure of his woman. Faithfulness, constancy, unconquerability--those are the qualities that hold us. If the woman surrenders easily, we men suspect that the next comer will have the same victory. Then the Othello-Desdemona business! The ideal method, I fancy, is savage seizure, like the Sabines. The longer they struggle, the longer they’ll stay contented in captivity. I’m a biologist. In biology all mating is war of sex. Gorgas--well--let me give you an added confidence--tonight I took her in my arms forcibly--”

“Leopold!” Blynn clutched him by the arm.

“Don’t be alarmed, my Puritan friend,” Leopold laughed pleasantly. “I am simply courting that young lady--”

“She is only a child!” Blynn gasped.

“She is seventeen--will be eighteen shortly. Biology calls that quite old enough.”

Blynn dropped his grasp. “She is only a child,” he repeated firmly.

“My mother was married and had children at seventeen,” Leopold considered for a moment. The agitation of his companion was hid by the darkness. “Child? Oh, no, my dear Allen--she is a full-grown woman--charged with womanhood. Well, she broke away tonight.... At first, I was angry--then I was glad. Her resistance is the measure of her constancy.... You don’t mind my talking out this way, old fellow.”

“No! no! Go on!”

But he did not go on. Leopold’s sensitiveness was slowly taking account of the long stride of the man by his side. As they passed a street-lamp he saw the white face staring ahead into the night, and caught the firm lips and the long, deep breathing.

“You are fond of her?” Leopold asked mildly.

No answer; but in that vibrating moment words were not essential.

Unconscious of direction, the two men had been marching on across the city-line, and were now pacing through a deeply wooded lane in Montgomery county.

“I always fancied it was a purely pedagogic interest,” Leopold remarked, as if to the trees lined thick along the road.

Again there was no answer.

“So!” Leopold spoke with sympathy. “I did not know. Forgive me.”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

They tramped along sturdily.

“Have you told her that you--”

“Merciful heavens!” Blynn broke forth; but restrained further speech.

“Why not?” Leopold asked kindly.

“She is a child. Oh, yes! yes! yes!” he struck down the attempted interruption. “I have taken her by the hand and led her as an older brother might take his little sister. I have watched over her ... talked to her of books, of life, of God.... I have been the confidant of her little troubles and have--have--tried to give her courage and--understanding. She has opened the door of her life to me. I have stepped within and have broken bread with her. Now ... how could I desecrate ... how could I sully ... I don’t mean that. It is hard for me to say, Leopold. I can’t explain it to you. To me she is still a serious-eyed, fearless child, who has come to me in the perfect faith of innocence.... My reason doesn’t tell me that. My reason tells me to go and seize her, fight you for her, and carry her off. But there’s something else.... You call it Puritan.... Maybe it is racial, or an inheritance. Maybe it is only superstition. Whatever it is, it holds me fast. I am chained, bound absolutely. I cannot speak. I cannot go to that child and--and--unmask.... Let’s go back.”

They turned and trudged along the uneven road without speaking until a stray light or two along the Chestnut Hill Pike told them they were coming back into the village.

“I have been wondering,” Leopold spoke thoughtfully, “what it is that draws us to our mates. Nobody knows. It is the greatest mystery in creation. Let us face the facts: Gorgas is a remarkable girl; she thinks; she has unusual abilities. Good! But that is not what draws us. I know dozens of women who are her superior--women whose conversation is--well!--shall I say more congenial? The truth is, Gorgas is not ready to enter on an intellectual level with either of us. In fact--well!--her education must be kept up--uh--afterwards. You are right; in many respects she is yet a child. I see things as a biologist: I fancy that her charm, after all, is her youth and her astonishing health. That is the mating cry--health.”

“If you don’t mind, Leopold,” Blynn stopped, “I’ll leave you here and cut off across this field alone.”

Leopold laughed pleasantly.

“I shock your good old Puritan soul, I see. Nothing shocks me. God made all, and there is no high nor low--that’s my simple creed. And don’t forget that in biology man is not different from the rest of creation; we are only _vertebrata_, my good friend, subject all to the same law of life; biology knows no Chosen Species. Good night, old Allen.... I am sorry we did not have this talk earlier. I am not strong for self-sacrifice, but, really, I believe, if I had known, I--well, I would not have let things go so far.”

Blynn looked hard at him, in his eyes the fire of a zealot.

“Things have--have--gone far; have they?”

“Quite,” said Leopold. “Quite far.”

After that night Blynn withdrew abruptly from the daily councils at “Top-o’-the-Hill.” The preparation of the lectures seemed to be taking all his time. He dropped in on the group once or twice for a moment’s chat, and to see the progress, but his mind seemed ever hard at work, selecting and rejecting material. That series must be a great go, he explained; he would put his best into it, and give them the worth of their money. In two weeks he was off to Rochester.

XXVII

TZOO-OOM!

When Allen left for his lecture tour, Gorgas immediately knocked off work and gave herself up to gloomy thoughts. She began to discover what a lonely child she had always been; she who had had parents, but no real mother and father; and now _mon capitaine_ (_mon duc, mon prince!_) was busy with his own affairs. Bardek, too, had been in the depths--it was Leopold’s doleful song that had set him off. “One should not sing of ‘For-r-ty year-r on,’” he growled, “not when one is for-r-ty year-r on!” The “smitty” was therefore deserted. And Leopold had been absolutely debarred from the Leverings; Gorgas would send for him when she wanted him.

There comes a night when lights go up in Bardek’s “white-wash house.” Gorgas is gloomily swinging in a hammock in the orchard. She listens to the clatter and to the singing, and knows that Bardek has recovered his spirits. Are they dancing? She can hear the thump of the children’s heavy shoes, and she can see forms flash back and forth between the light and the window. Bardek’s voice is roaring; and an occasional squeal from the inexpressive little wife is a certain sign of good times.

Hey ho! She, too, could be happy if she chose. Off there in the dark, Leopold was waiting; waiting with fearful, confident patience, she thought and shuddered. If she chose--but she could not will to choose. Not yet, at any rate; she would wait a while.

After a time the noise subsided in Bardek’s cottage. The lamp moved into the kitchen, and finally it travelled up the stairs and into the children’s room. It was the putting-to-bed hour, a happy sky-larking time in the Bardek household.

So much happiness near at hand was almost too much for Gorgas. The shrill voices of the children especially were painful as they came clear on the night air; it made her feel more motherless and deserted than is quite bearable. She turned her back to the joyous windows and strove fiercely to keep down the desire to give way to tears. But they would come; little trickling ones first; then huge, coursing ones; and, finally, a very deluge.

The man who had been her “lord and master” all her life--all the life that counted--had gone gravely away without so much as a smiling goodby. For days she had been watching him hungrily as he talked with seriousness--to everybody but to her--of his dates, cities, halls, subjects; and she could glean nothing from his sober face but an alarming interest in lectures. All her life she had given him the first place in her heart and was content; with an absurd faith, as the days of her childhood flitted by, that all would surely be right in the end; and now she was telling herself that she had been deceived by a dream. He was not for her; to him she was a child, an interesting child, to be sure, capable in many ways above other children, but only one of a hundred or more of his “cases,” one which he had probably card-catalogued under the “L’s,” with penciled notes--a pedagogic specimen!

It was hateful, and she cried aloud her protest; it was unfair; and it was not to be endured. But even as she protested wildly in the dark of the orchard, she felt the pitiless certainty of the facts; for once more she had written him a letter--to be sure, it was only a funny little request for an “interview with the great man,” written under his very nose, and put in his own hand to mail; with characteristic disregard of her he had posted the letter without once looking at it--and he had neglected to answer it.

On the day before he left Mount Airy, she had seen the small gray note among a bundle that he had sorted out in public; and the sight of it had sent her face flaming, as if it would shout its contents to all the world; but he had given it one frowning stare and passed it over without a touch of recognition, so intent was he on his own affairs.

No better proof, she thought, of the gulf that separated them. Morris had taught her to be a “sport,” and all her instinct bade her bear without flinching. She would face the facts, be they or be they not to her hurt--but, oh, the bitterness of the reality. Her childhood’s dream was far better, picturing something always off in the future, always a possible event.... If--

No. His face was “on the outside” as Bardek had said; and during those last few days could there be any mistaking of the calm, self-absorbed Allen? If it had been hers to choose, would she have elected a public lecture tour as against the partner of her soul?

Oh, no! Though Boston and New York and all the cities of Christendom called in dulcet tones! Oh, no!

The lamp had come down in the Bardek house. In the Levering home a low light burned in the library. Her mother and father were there, she knew; but the thought of meeting them and talking of everyday matters was too repellent. How far away they were from her now, and always had been! And how much, just now, she needed the comfort of communion. She gazed wistfully at Bardek’s gay light. His great laugh came through the trees and cheered her wonderfully. Dear old Bardek, mother and sister and father-confessor, all rolled into one! She would go to Bardek and lay her little troubles in his huge palm.

The Bardek house was without corridors. One opened the front door and stood within. And who would dream of knocking at that democratic portal! So she slipped noiselessly along the grass, which grew to the very edge of the house, turned the knob quietly and entered.

Bardek was facing her, standing like a statue in the middle of the low room. The light was behind him, so that Gorgas, coming in out of the darkness, was not able instantly to comprehend that the little wife, clad in the gayest of garments, deep reds and greens, with a glorious scarf of gold about her head, was folded snugly in the Bohemian’s sturdy arms.

“Oh!” cried Gorgas, and started back.

“Come in!” welcomed Bardek, without moving the fraction of an inch, save the necessary tightening of his hold on the shy wife.

“Oh, no! No!” cried Gorgas, shocked at her intrusion.

“Come in, I say!” roared Bardek. “We jus’ celebr-r-rate our marriage--zat is all. Come in, and see how it is done.... Be still, Bit-of-my-heart,” he called to the struggling wife, but in some staccato dialect of Hungary. “We must be the teacher of the beautiful Gorgas in all things, and this is what she should learn to do; and it must be done well, or life itself is spilled to the wind.” This he translated gayly to Gorgas. “Come in, _Liebschen_! This is our marriage day. It is the day I take the wonderful woman when she is but wonderful girl, take her right out of the street where she squat beside the orange cart wit’ her peddling mother; and I do not know her name; and I will not know it, so I can call her love names all her life--I take her from her oranges, and quick into the biggest cathedral in all Hungary, and kneel before the altar, and call upon the priest to come marry us before I cut him open to see what make him so fat and slow.”

The invitation in their eyes was so real that Gorgas slipped weakly to a chair near the door.

“He say to wait five, six, seven week or it not a marriage,” Bardek went on. “‘Five, six, seven week!’ I cry; ‘in that time she be grow up and ol’ woman! And I? Every day of zose week I die of waiting. Five, six, seven week? Not five, six, seven minute!’; and I scare zat priest by the things I say. And when I show him gold, he not so scared, but raise up the hands and make the language which I give him to make.

“And when all is done, ‘_Tzoom!_’ I cry, and explain: ‘Zat is the big bell up in Heaven which bring all the angels to the Gates of Earth, through which they now look down; and _Tzoo-oom!_’--he nearly drop dead for think I be madman!--‘zat is the bell which break open the Gates of Earth and fling the glad angels toward this good world of love; and _Tzoo-oo-oom!_’ I roar like the roar of Saint Peters in Rome when they make the new Pope, ‘_zat_ is the bell which make this woman _of_ my blood and _of_ my flesh, and carry us together, up straight up, up, up with the singing angels to the Heaven itself.’ And zen I take her in my arms, and lift her to her little toes, and hug her till she forget for little while to live!... Ah! But she nevair forget _zat_ marriage! Nevair!”

As he talked he interrupted himself often to utter weird sayings to the happy wife, so that she half turned in his arms, and seemed to understand that he was telling Gorgas of the wonderful wedding day. And Gorgas contemplated their happiness with the greatest sympathy and with a longing that was akin to pain.

“So!” Bardek went on jubilantly. “On zat wonderful day in May, which we now celebr-r-ate--ah. May is in Hungary of all months the--”

“But Bardek,” Gorgas interrupted, for a moment forgetting her personal grief. “This is not May, it is September.” She could not be mistaken about this, for in three days it would be the tenth, her birthday, and Allen had promised her a mysterious gift on that day.

“Of course!” smiled Bardek. “So we celebr-r-ate our marriage.”

“But if it was May when you--”

“You would wait until it come May again?” he inquired mildly.

By this time he had sat himself in a big chair, and the wife had dropped to the floor, draping herself about his knee. The scarf of gold spread out in a brilliant streamer; the greens and reds of her Hungarian costume tumbled over one another in a riot of unpremeditated folds. The blood was afire in her gypsy face, and her eyes were two dark lights. By the magic of adoration this peasant woman was transformed into a thing of rare delight.

“But if you were married in May,” Gorgas was saying, “you could not have an anniversary until--”

“Ho!” cried Bardek in great glee, and then communicated exultant things to the gay wife, patting her on the head the while, and tweaking her brown ears. “Ho!” he turned to Gorgas. “You would wait until it come May again! You are like the priest who I scare all the Latin out of! You would wait five, six, seven week! You would wait until the earth go about the sun just _so_!--until the constellations of the heavens be just _so_! You cannot praise God until it be Sunday; you cannot be married when Nature cries out it is time, and you would let the calendar make you slave when you would have anniversary! Ho! It is superstitious you are! Sometimes I have celebr-r-ated zat marriage three times in one month! Here is my calendar of days!” he slapped his heart right lustily.

“Many things might make me celebr-r-ate,” he went on. “This time it was your Leopold and his ugly song. ‘For-r-ty year-r on, when afar-r and asunder-r,’” he rolled his r’s vigorously. “It is a song that give me the blue devils of regret. ‘For-r-ty year-r on!’ it is no song to sing, when it is I, Bardek, who is ‘for-r-ty year-r on,’ and do not want to remember zat it is so! ‘For-r-ty year-r on!’ Heugh! It is a ol’ man’s song; and I must sing it over and over in my brain, till I cannot work, and grow sick wit’ thoughts of gray head and teeth falling out, and feel my bones go stiff, and--heugh! So I be ol’ man for two, three day, and zen I make celebr-r-ation and chase the bad thoughts out. To this little Bit-of-my-heart I say, ‘Quick, get into the beautiful clothes of Hungary, put on the scarf of gold, and the earrings and the spangles of gold, and we will have again our marriage day! _Tzoo-oom!_’” he boomed suddenly, and caressed the lady’s head with huge confidence. “And now I am young again!”

Even though he had seemed so absorbed in his own contemplations, Bardek’s quick eye had noted the droop in Gorgas’ shoulders, and the discouraging sadness in her mien.

“Zat song?” he asked her; “it make ugly thoughts for you, too; eh, my Gorgas?”

She tried to speak, but found it easier to shake her head. No; it was not the song that had taken the spring out of her life.

“U-m!” hummed Bardek sympathetically. And then, with characteristic abruptness, he asked, “When is it zat you go to the priest and make the bells of Heaven go, _tzoom!_--eh?”

This was too much for Gorgas. It brought with benumbing clearness the vision of her own forlorn place in the world. There would be for her no exulting Bardek to seize her out of the street beside her cart of oranges, carry her to the nearest altar, and start the very heavens a-tzooming for joy. But she was too brave a lass to weep in the presence of Bardek and his lady, although it was a glistening eye and a trembling lip which smiled gamely at them.

“Leopold--” she began, but words were too difficult; so she stopped pathetically, and seemed to beg Bardek to understand.

“H-m,” said he. “Leopold, eh?... He is very wonderful man.... Very smart.... He know--everything.” Bardek spread out his palms humbly. “You would celebr-r-ate wit’ Leopold, eh?” He watched her narrowly, but she did not answer. “Of course, you would know. You would not have to look in a book for to find out _zat_--or to ask the mother if it be so!... You would know.... And it is very important to know; for if you do not know whether you will want to smash the calendar and have two, three celebr-r-ation in one month, and all the times after which you do live together,” he spread his palms a trifle higher, “well, zen you should not begin--much better to die.... So it is Leopold, eh?”

“No!” she struggled to her feet. “No, Bardek, it is not Leopold. He wants me, but I won’t have him. I won’t! He frightens me, and always did, from the time he began to watch me, like a big, big--” She could not find the word. “It is not Leopold!”

Bardek’s sudden laugh drew her out of her tragic plane, and in some inexplicable way gave her a touch of gladness.

“I _know_ zat it is not Leopold!” he cried. “I could see it in your two eyes zat it is not! And I could see it in your two eyes who zat it is! Ah! Your eyes zey tell me whenever you do look at him!... And zat is _so_ right now! _So_ right!...”

His own two eyes beamed and sparkled upon her, and seemed to shout congratulations, and many happy returns of the day. To his wife he confided uproariously; so clearly, indeed, that Gorgas understood every word and gesture; and as he mounted to Hungarian eloquence, she began to catch some of the contagion of his confidence: the despairing thoughts born of reality began to clear out, vanish like a cloud rack before the west wind; and she revived her spirits with the vitality of Bardek’s optimism.

At his call she came over and sat down on the floor beside the wife, Bardek presiding above them like a patriarch of old. And the wife, so often smilingly mute in that household, broke forth in a musical chirping of congratulations, and stroked Gorgas’ hair, and patted her cheek, and welcomed her to the inner shrine of spouses! To Gorgas it was a very blessed ordination. For a little while she would pretend, she defended herself, and then--

But Bardek was in full flow: “With him, with the good Allen, you would celebr-r-ate; eh, _mein Liebschen, ma fleur du bois?_ Marriage? Ho! Zat is easy to do--it take five, six week; or it take five, six minute--but to celebr-r-ate, it must last all the life! There are many peoples who have had just marriage, with confetti, and bands and dancing and much wine, but zey will never, never celebr-r-ate! Ho! It would be comic to see zem even to try! Comic? It would be pain!... For to celebr-r-ate, it is to be two peoples wit’ body and bone and blood of one--See!--ze blood it go up my arm, and through my aor-r-ta, and _presto!_ it is humming along zis little woman’s pink ear and making the eyes to dance! And ze daughter of ze peddling mother must in dose times rise to be ze queen of all ze wor-r-ld--_regina dei gratia et potentissima et pulchrissima!_... Look at her, _mein Liebschen_. To you she is, I know not what strange child of Europa--”

“She is beautiful!” murmured Gorgas.

“Ah! I make you see a little wit’ my eyes,” his voice grew tender; “but you do not know. Even you, my Gorgas, are as nothing to her. You are good--_mais oui!_--but I would not walk wit’ you one, two, t’ree step when _she_ crook the finger and smile, ‘_Come!_’”

All this was very wonderful to Gorgas, this most intimate revelation of the deep privacy of domestic happiness; and because she believed that it was the true state of all right marriages, she reveled in its beauty; and then she shivered at the stark reality that was hers. For her there would be no “celebrations.”

But she would not give way again. “That’s all very pretty and poetic, Bardek,” she sat up straight, and seemed to fling off the romantic spell which the Bohemian had set vibrating. “I’m better now. Had a good cry out there,” she jabbed a hand toward the orchard. “Lonesome, I guess. Came in here to get cheered up--and you did it! Sure did!” She searched the room with wondering eyes, as if trying to comprehend how a hut like this could be so charged with happiness. “But I’m different, Bardek.” That was her own answer to the survey she had just made. “I wanted something ... and wanted it ... more--well! why talk about it--” With a great effort she controlled a quavering voice. “I am not to have it--that’s all.”

Bardek watched her with deep sympathy. All the time, he stroked the head of the gypsy girl at his knee, and seemed to agree with Gorgas. But to himself he said, as he admitted later, “She must suffer first, because it is the demand of love that we suffer; in no other way can we give it its true value; and then she will believe better when she has plumbed the depths of doubt.”

She got a grip on herself and went on: “I must not fool myself any longer.... It is madness.... I’d soon be fit for nothing.... Leopold is all right. I’ve known him all my life. He likes me, and, in a way, I like him. We have had great times together. I’ll get over the shock of his liking me in the way--in the way he does.... Got sort of used to it already. I told him I’d let him know. He’s waiting. He said I didn’t know myself ... that I’d come to him ... ‘like the tides rise and follow the irresistible moon,’ he said.... I guess he was right.... He knows a lot about me! It seems a little bit unfair, but I suppose-- Suppose, nothing!” She got herself up suddenly from the comfortable floor, and, at the motion, seemed to bring her resolutions together. “I can’t stand this any longer,” she turned to Bardek. “Leopold it is and must be--I’d better get used to it--and all I’ve got to do is to walk down that road twenty steps and whistle.”

She moved resolutely toward the door. “There is one way to settle it once and for all,” she said, “a sure way to end all the suffering which comes of uncertainty--and it is better,” she insisted, “to stop forever the doubt and the pain.”

“Twenty paces down the road,” thought Bardek. “Why, then it would be all over for the little Gorgas, and settled for life--like two puffs of a cigarette!”

Her hand was on the knob before Bardek called softly to her.

“Yes, Bardek?” she asked, for he had not spoken more than her name. She looked magnificently strong and able as she stood blocked out in dark tints against his white door; and the weariness and the despondency had gone from her; wavering uncertainty had made place for the mind made up. She could not have her first wish; very well; she would accept the next best, and it would not be done half-heartedly; and once accepted, she would be loyal to the death. All this Bardek noted as he looked at her.

“But it is another story zat I happen to know,” he began softly. “Allen Blynn has not told me in words, for then I could not speak wit’out being tattle-tale, but I have listened wit’ my eyes and wit’ my heart--oh, a very good ear my heart has!--and so I know zat it is the good Allen who prays on his knees every night zat some day he will have courage to ask my Gorgas to try to like him--jus’ a leetle bit, mebbe!”

Slowly he drew her from the door. She protested. He argued subtly--it was the fight, he said, against the Evil One for the life of a woman, so it needs must be subtle. Slowly he drew her again to her place beside him on the floor. And then he poured forth the eloquence that only Bardek could summon. He made her cry and he made her laugh; and he filled her with hope. Who could doubt Bardek when he rose to his best? And when the theme is Love--ah! Bardek could have made great strides toward converting the Evil One himself!

“But how do you know, Bardek?” Gorgas demanded.

Ah, he knew! He, Bardek, had been born with both of his two eyes open! The ways of Allen Blynn were not hidden from him. And the little Gorgas must not let despair and fear in at the heart, for they are the father and mother of failure. Much he told her of Allen, evidence that piled up against the absent swain, until some of the despair and fear fled at his strong touch. The protestings of Gorgas grew weaker as Bardek plied his argument.

Among other matters he related one of the many debates which he and Allen had had together. Blynn had been standing for a reaction against the type of freedom--free will, free love, free anything--which had been pulsing from the “lunacy fringe” of the radicals for a generation or more. “They do not seem to understand,” Blynn had argued, “that there is something higher than individual will--or even the individual nation’s will, as Alexander and Napoleon have long ago found out--something which demands surrender, acquiescence.” Bardek had been defending life as the expression of the individual right to live; Blynn had taken the side of individual renunciation. “But there _is_ a divine, far-off event to which the whole creation moves,” said Blynn; “and while our irresistible part is that of free spirits, yet we are most free when we bind the law upon ourselves.” That was the philosophy of Allen Blynn.

“He is not one to seize the daughter of the orange woman,” laughed Bardek, “and zen make a new service of marriage for himself! Ho! He would beat his breast wit’ ze big stone and wait four, five, six week! Now you! You are like me--it make you sick to wait. So! I say, do not wait. Go to him. Tell him to hurry. Tell him you cannot wait for God’s big universe to come to end, but it must come now! Go to him, _Liebschen_! Go to him!”

“I have always wanted to,” agreed Gorgas. “Many times I started to--but I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” asked the fearless man.

“Women do not do that, Bardek.”

He raged at her. “How often have I taught you not to be afraid of what women do or do not! It is woman who will be the last slave on the free earth; and it is because she _want_ to be slave. I will not have you, my Gorgas, be like all ze others! Go, and _be_!”

“But he is in Boston,” she faltered. She knew his itinerary by heart.

“Go to him, _ma fleurie_. Lives have been lost through pride, through not saying the word when it is time. Boston is not yet Babylon, but for you, _mein Liebschen_, there it is zat ze tower to Heaven is. Go to him.”

“I know just what I shall say,” she laughed. The natural tint of health was back in her face. “I have said it so often to myself.”

“Of course you have!” he agreed heartily. “And you will say it over again for many years. And the speeches he will say to you! _Himmel!_ _What_ a dam will burst and drown all the little valleys when one of zese Puritans go loose! Zey try hard all the life to live like Saint Acetum, the Vinegar Saint who is always repairing ze roof of ze Heaven; and when zey topple over and fall, it is a great distance!... You will be eaten alive, my Gorgas; and it is a very pleasant experience, vairy pleasant and good!”

And that night a happy, exulting young woman, charged with uncalculable joy, strode across the lawn and through the orchard, with never a fear nor a despair, those sad parents of failure.

XXVIII

THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS

At Boston Allen Blynn was preparing to loaf about the old town at his ease until the door should open for his second lecture in that city. At eleven o’clock he was on his knees at the bed; he could not quite make up his mind which was the easiest pair of shoes for walking.

A knock at his door, the deferential tap of a well-feed “bell-hop” brought his cheery, “Come!” but he did not look around.

“Good morning, Professor,” greeted Gorgas, fresh and radiant.

“Gracious!” ejaculated the astonished Blynn.

“Don’t let me interrupt your rosary,” she laughed.

He jumped to his feet--still unadorned with shoes--and grasped both her extended hands.

“Well! Well!” he looked at her from several angles. “If this doesn’t beat the Pennsylvania-Dutch! How did you get here? Another ‘bee-line,’ eh? By the Great Horn Spoon, I’m glad to see you! Did the whole family come up? Where is Kate?” he made a motion as if to look into the hall, but quickly gave up because of the more overpowering desire to gaze at his entrancing visitor. “And how did you know I was here?”

“Hold on!” she stopped him. “This is no blooming quiz. I’m alone, _mon capitaine_. I just--came.”

His mind would not quite focus on the fact.

“I see!” he managed to say, but he did not see.

She produced a cardboard. “Thought I’d boost your little lecture by buying a ticket,” she explained.

“Alone!” he exclaimed. “When did you come?”

“On the Federal express, night before last. I mixed up your dates. Thought you were due in Boston yesterday. So I just naturally waited over.” She walked toward the window. “Great view you have here; simply great!” He seized the nearest pair of shoes and struggled into them. Then he followed her to the window.

“Does Mrs. Levering know you have come?” he asked, full of the proprieties.

She sang a bar of a popular hit.

“Do you know what you’re about?
Does your mother know you’re out?

“I didn’t say exactly where I was going; I don’t think I did,” she turned reflectively. “Why should I?”

He tried to explain. She was still a child, seventeen years old, he told her.

“I’m eighteen the tenth of this month, and that’s tomorrow,” she corrected.

He knew that. Still--he argued further.

“Why _will_ you persist in looking down on me?” she stamped her foot, just like a child. “I’ve been on my own since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I’m making my own living; I do a man’s work and, by your own Horn Spoon, I can take care of myself. Look here: yesterday afternoon I sunned myself in the Common on a bench--”

“Heavens!” he muttered.

“You should use just the opposite word,” she commented complacently. “I just sat there and counted the men who ogled me and the ones who sat down and tried to talk.”

“Goodness!” said he.

“Opposite again,” she corrected. “They were just imps. Well, they didn’t waste much time on me, I tell you! Superior disdain, that’s the trick.”

The professor was flabbergasted. He told her so, and tried to make clear the risks she was running.

She laughed at him. “Now don’t be preachy, Allen Blynn; I’m in Boston to get ideas from the Jewelers’ Exposition--that, among other things. I’m a business woman, you know. It’s a new species; get used to it.”

The Jewelers’ Exposition was a discovery of the day before. It would not do to be too abrupt with Allen Blynn.

By the time he had gone with her to the Exposition and had heard her wise talk to the exhibitors, he was almost used to it; and by the time he had watched her taking notes and making sketches, he was quite reconciled. Then they just prowled.

“Let’s go window-cracking?” she suggested.

“Not for a minute!” he pretended alarm.

“Don’t you know ‘window-cracking’?” she looked incredulously. “Where _is_ your knowledge of English? That’s my private word for looking in every window along one street and picking out the things you would buy, and not buying a thing. It’s great fun, and awfully cheap.”

So they went “window-cracking,” like penniless children.

They lunched in style at the best hotel and lived many weeks together in one afternoon. She gave him time to get his notes together for the lecture, drove with him to the hall and sat in the middle of the audience, an enraptured vision to stir him to his best.

At the close of the lecture he hurried to her.

“I have a surprise for you,” he whispered; “you are not the only lady that takes long journeys to help out struggling lecturers. I want you to meet ‘The Lady of the Interruption.’”

Her glance fell. “I hate her,” she said.

“S-sh!” he smiled and turned to a gracious matronly woman of about fifty-five.

“Mrs. Fellows, here’s my little girl, Gorgas,” he said.

“No longer a little girl,” Mrs. Fellows extended a hand.

“You are the ‘Lady’?” Gorgas gasped.

“Yes,” the “Lady” responded pleasantly. “You thought I was young and attractive, and you are happy to find I am not.”

“But you _are_ attractive--you are lovely!” Gorgas shot out impulsively.

“Ah! thank you,” the Lady bowed herself away; “that is a nice speech. And I know you think you mean it.”

She was gone and others crowded around.

“Why didn’t you tell me she was old?” Gorgas inquired.

“It was a stupid joke of mine not to,” he replied as they struggled through the crowd. “I found her out long ago. She has had great troubles--death in a very frightful form. She has considerable wealth but gives her whole life to charity. Eccentric, a little; but her mind is mighty keen, I can tell you. I am very fond of her; that is why I did not like to discuss her with anyone after I found out.”

At half-past ten they were having supper in a gaudy grill-room, thrilling with the strumming of an Hungarian “orchestra” and the stirring air of city-bohemias.

Then Allen Blynn came partly to his senses. “You’re going home tonight,” he said firmly.

“On the ‘Midnight,’” she agreed, and displayed her Pullman ticket.

“Good!” he exclaimed, relieved. “I’m half responsible, you know,” he added. “It’s a great lark. I’m just chuck full of joy; but we must ship you off tonight.”

“Let’s quarrel a little bit, first,” she smiled. “We have had some dandy quarrels, haven’t we?”

He couldn’t remember any; then she would start one.

“First,” she began, “I want to know why you didn’t walk home with me the night of the picnic at Top-o’-the-Hill--when Leopold sang ‘Forty year on.’ I wrote you a little note asking you to go with me. You trotted off with Kate and left me with Leopold. We had the deuce of a time, I can tell you.”

Conscience-stricken, he remembered that half-read letter. The offer of the lectures had swamped his mind.

The explanation satisfied.

“Leopold wants to marry me,” she blurted out next.

“I know,” he replied gravely. “He told me as much,--but at seventeen! Think of it!”

“I wish you would not always be telling me that I am--” she began indignantly.

“But you are, you know,” he told her quietly. “Leopold is as old as I, but a man couldn’t possib--”

“Oh,” she laughed. “He couldn’t? _Couldn’t_ he! He’s been dogging me for ever so long. You make a big mistake about years. Everybody does. At thirteen, when I first talked with you, I was as much a woman as I am now or ever will be. And I’ve been sitting back trying to behave myself like a doll. At fifteen I had my height and--everything; and now I’m eighteen. I can’t stay in the refrigerator any longer, I tell you.... Leopold? Child? Let me tell you something, Allen Blynn. Leopold and I had a fight that night. Not words, remember; but an ugly real fight, with fists and hands.... He knows I’m no child.... Now wait!” she held up her hand. “Leopold’s all right. He wants to marry me. He did just what he ought to have done. It was all right, absolutely right. It was my fault again. You went off and deserted me--and I just didn’t care what happened to me. Then I had to fight my way out. _Nom d’une pipe! Nom du nom d’une pipe!_... And that isn’t all. I must shock your old professorial head a little. There was another.... But I woke up and got out. Your letter did it--the one on morals and instincts, and that terrible story of the leper; don’t you remember?”

Yes, he remembered. The little woman before him was opening up astonishing vistas into her stirring life. But she was a child, he insisted. The general appearance was that of a woman; but that was a trick of hat and gown and hair, a disguise easily seen through. Her face was womanly, and her voice; but in both were cries of very young life. Her very wonderful health, the thing that gave her beauty--that was youth; and her frankness was the innocence of youth.

“Do you know what Bardek means by Saint Acetum?” she asked him suddenly. She had been studying his rather solemn-smiling face, delighting in its fine seriousness--made fine, she thought, by the light of a smile that hovered ever in the eyes and in and out the firm lips.

“What does Bardek mean by anything!” Allen chuckled contentedly, the solemnity quite fading from his face at the thought of the unfathomable Bardek. “Saint Acetum? I never heard of the person.”

“Oh!” Gorgas laughed in her impulsive way. “Saint Acetum is you!--The Vinegar Saint! Oh, Allen Blynn, that is _too_ funny!...” Allen frowned at her inquiringly. “That’s just the way he would look, too--stern, and wise, and worried--”

“Worried?”

“For fear the roof would fall in, you know.”

“Roof?” he glanced apprehensively at the ceiling.

“Saint Acetum, you know--” she tried to explain. His serious face was delightfully comic; in a flash she saw how it would be immensely jolly, and assuring, to have him gazing at her forever as if she needed the firmest and sternest looking after.

“Saint Acetum?” he cogitated. “There ain’t no such animal.”

“Oh, yes,” she continued, “Bardek says--”

“Bardek invented him, then.”

“Of _course_, silly! That’s the fun of it. Saint Acetum is forever repairing ‘ze roof of ze Heaven’; and there he is up there all alone, patching and patching, and always looking for trouble; and he won’t _ever_ come down and have a good time with the angels--not even once! It might rain, you see. And Bardek says, that’s just like you, Allen Blynn--”

“Isn’t Bardek a wonder!” His eyes glowed with delight in the Bohemian’s comic fantasy. “And isn’t that just like him!... The Vinegar Saint!... Well!...” A strong flash of determination came into his face suddenly. “And he is quite right!... _Someone_ must keep watch lest the Heavens fall! And they might fall, you know,” he added whimsically. “You believe that God is good, and all-wise, and all-powerful, don’t you?”

She nodded. “One must,” she said. “It would be terrible not to.”

“He is good, and wise; but perhaps not all-wise. And sometimes I think He is not all-powerful. The Old One has won some of the battles--in Eden, for instance. Sometimes I fancy--it is an ancient belief--that the long battle between Good and Evil, begun aeons ago in chaos, is still at its height, and that the outcome might even be in doubt; and then I fancy that He needs us--some of us--on the firing line; or, like your Vinegar Saint, guarding the outposts. Perhaps we are sometimes a brake on progress, but often we are the ones who save liberty from liberty’s self. You know, we Allens were Tories in the Revolution; we were for the existing order then, and against the revolutionists. There must be a drop or two of reactionary blood still in me!... Vinegar Saint! Good! But don’t think that the poor old chap loves the endless patching, or that the songs of the angels don’t tempt him mightily to shirk his job.... And if he gets to looking too fierce and vinegary, it’s because--”

“It’s because he is a dear old honest _capitaine_,” she cried; “and I’d rather have him vinegary any day than--”

“Peppery?” he joked, determined not to be solemn.

“Yes, or even sugary. Ugh!” she affected a delightful shudder. “How I hate the sweety ones!”

This was a pleasing savor to the Vinegar Saint, and for a moment or two he forgot his patchings, and reveled in the unsaintly joy of flattery; then he remembered abruptly.

“What are you going to do about Leopold?” he asked.

“It depends upon you, _mon capitaine_,” she replied calmly. “If you don’t want me, Allen Blynn--_anybody_ can have me. There! It’s out! I’ve made up my mind to say this to you for almost a year. Let me--”

A preposterous waiter had to be dealt with. He was recommending some custard concoction with a dash of white wine, and inquiring about such irrelevant matters as demi-tasses or full cups. Gorgas had to be appealed to. She made selections deliberately, but her fingers were nervously restless.

“So you will take the wine-sauce?” the waiter was most interested.

“Yes,” said Blynn.

“Or would you prefer it with cream?”

“Yes,” said Blynn.

“Perhaps M’sieu’ would rather have the sliced oranges?”

“Yes, yes,” said Blynn in great distress, “Anything, old man. You fix it up. Anything. Just cut along like a good fellow, will you?”

“Don’t look so frowning, _mon capitaine_,” Gorgas smiled across the table, but her eyes belied that smile. “Don’t speak yet. Let me show you how I look at this thing. If I stop now, I’ll never begin again. And I just can’t stand keeping it inside.... When you came to me at the tennis-court five years ago and took me for a grown woman, the thing was done; right there. I’ve never got over it. I’ve tried; but it was no use; it got worse. I sent you to Holden to get rid of you.... You scared me.... You saw it, I guess. My eyes must have shown, for you got out of the way.... That’s why you suddenly fled to Holden; wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” dumbly.

“I knew.... It was beastly the way you cut me.... Don’t speak yet.... I don’t blame you.... Sometimes I’d catch you looking at me like a hungry dog, afraid to come near for fear I’d beat you or something. I know what was the matter. You were afraid of encouraging a child. Mercy! Encourage? That was just the way to make me rabid! Well, I resolved to grow up. I fought the family until I could dress the part, and I fooled everybody but you.... And now I _am_ grown up.... It’s no fooling now.... And there you are, as far away as ever. So I said to myself, that man will have to be approached and stormed. He’ll never marry anybody, unless somebody asks him. No, you wouldn’t, Allen Blynn. You’re not a bit aggressive; you’re too courteous, too afraid of hurting folks’ feelings. Well, I want to be hurt.... So I’m coming right at you. Here’s your chance, Allen Blynn.... Wait!... I figured it this way. It’s all mere custom, this woman-sitting-back-and-waiting business. I’ve got the same desire for my man as any man has for his woman. I want him. Shall I let him slip by? Not I. I’m going right for him. He’ll be startled at first, just the way women are--oh! I’ve talked with a lot of ’em!--but keeping right at it brings everything. Half the women don’t want the men that come at them; but the thought gets into their brains and grows until it bubbles over and swamps ’em. Oh, I know. Neddie Morris nearly had me, and so did Leopold; if you hadn’t been in my head one of ’em would have got me; it was just a matter of sliding.... Now, Allen Blynn, you’re my man.” They were very close together at their diminutive little table. She could have touched his arms, almost without leaning forward. Her voice grew very soft and tender as she added, “Aren’t I the brazen one!”

“Little woman,” he spoke with the greatest kindness. “Will you let me think this out?”

She nodded. For a half-hour they watched the silly crowd and nibbled at sweetish frothy desserts and sipped at cold coffees. Overbibulous folks laughed in high keys, and the Hungarian orchestra, taking its cue from the diners, grew noisier and noisier. At this moment the bandsmen were working vigorously on the quietest of love themes; castanets and cymbals clashed and tanged and told all the world about “long years ago in old Madrid, where softly sighs of love the light guitar.” The song had taken the country only a few years before, and had now reached the stage of orchestral “variations.” The Hungarian leader was consumed with passion and beer; he gesticulated and shouted to his workers, and they bent to their task. Every child in America knew the absurd words. Even Allen Blynn knew them!

Come, my love, the stars are shining,
Time is flying,
Love is sighing,
Come, my love, my heart is pining
Here alone I wait for thee.

Mischievously Gorgas accompanied with the words of the refrain, she pianissimo, the orchestra thundering double forte to its climax. They smiled guiltily as they thought of the smashing, gesticulating music and the personal significance of the libretto.

“Well,” he turned to her.

“Well?” she rested her arms on the little table so that her two hands almost touched him.

“This is the greatest experience of my life,” he said soberly, “absolutely the greatest and the finest.” His face shone with exultation. “It is the last thing I dreamed of. I thought it was Leopold. The fact is--well, I was mortally sure. We talked together just before I left. He didn’t tell me outright, but I knew, of course. Naturally I couldn’t guess the details.... That _is_ a revelation!...”

Already she thought she had read his answer and withdrew her hands ever so slightly. Except for a deeply flushed face and sparkling eyes she gave no other sign; she was prepared for it to take time!

“Here alone I wait for thee!” the orchestra shouted.

“It’s hard to talk here. Come,” he looked earnestly at his watch as if he had never seen one before. “We’ll cab it for my hotel, where I must get your birthday gift--the manuscript book, you know.... Then I’ll see you to your train.... We have barely a half-hour.”