Chapter III: Book ONE: The Golden Child (2)

“_Bon jour_, Bardek,” returned Miss Levering. “Whoa, Sorry, you fool. It’s only Bardek. Bardek won’t eat you; whoa, boy!”

“_Mais, oui!_” laughed Bardek. “_Il sait bien qu’ j’en ai souvent mangé du ch’val!_ The horse-flesh is vairy good.”

Blynn leaned forward to talk to him. Here was a fine chance to get acquainted.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted. “My French isn’t good enough to expose to the open air. I’ll have to talk English. Do you under_stand_--”

But “Sorry” had evidently comprehended Bardek’s cannibalistic reference to the joy of eating horse-flesh, for he jolted Blynn down hard on the seat. At the syllable “--_stand_” Allen Blynn had abruptly sat. As they shot briskly up the drive, Blynn looked back to see the round face of Bardek extended in malevolent laughter.

When they had settled down into a normal pace, Blynn inquired,

“Who is this Bardek? Seems to me I have seen him often hanging about this region.”

“He’s a Frenchman--at least, I think he is French. Sort of a vagabond mender of kettles. I don’t know how he gets his living. He seems always well-fed and contented. He has a wife off there somewhere, and a couple of babes-in-the-woods. He comes and goes. Sometimes he is away for weeks on his rounds. We often stop to chat with him, Gorgas and I. Drat that animal. He ought to know Bardek. I’m ashamed of him. It was that big vase-like thing that scared him. He’d jump at a new tin-cup.”

They talked of the horses, then, as they emerged from a side-road, of the beauty of the Wissahickon Valley, a lovely unchronicled spot in American scenery, Miss Levering steering the conversation by gentle steps back to “Twelfth Night.”

“I’m almost converted to the Elizabethan view,” she admitted. “I’ve been going over in my mind a number of girls I know who have confessed how the man came, saw, and conquered. Girls do gabble, if it is dark enough, especially just after the marriage. They all talk like your Elizabethans, claim to have been destined for each other from the beginning, and so on; yet they all fought the man off at first; all except one girl--the man tried to get away from her, but something--your ‘shady destiny’--what was it?--got him at last.... It’s a horrid thought.”

“Why?”

“Well, it takes all choice away. Heavens! You might be destined to marry the lamp-lighter! I shouldn’t want to catch anything from ‘Aurora.’”

“Aurora,” the lamp-lighter, was one-armed and weather-beaten and gnarled like an ancient mariner; his classical name was a Levering invention.

The winding Wissahickon curled over its rocks far below, and thick trees covered every hill. An occasional carriage passed, mostly elegant broughams with liveried footmen and milady taking her afternoon drive; bicycles whizzed by with much churning of warning bells. Near the “Hill” Miss Levering cut off into a secluded side-road roofed by old trees.

Keyser Levering was twenty-two, and had been grown up and more or less her own master since she was fifteen; yet she felt just a little self-conscious on two counts. First she was alone in the secluded woodland with a young man. Of course, a chaperone would have been absurd; America had adopted the European chaperone for only very official affairs. In the ’80’s she would not have thought of going to the theater with him without elderly assistance, but she was permitted by the code to take him driving up the Wissahickon.

Secondly, she had dared openly to discuss with him the awful topic of love. To be sure, they had done it in an academic setting. Who could object to a learned consideration of Elizabethan literature? Nevertheless, she was not unmindful of the personal modern application of Elizabethan “theory.”

She did not want to become personally involved. Her instincts would have fought off any attempt on the young man’s part to bring the topic up to date; yet she found herself, mothlike, desiring him to do just that. His Elizabethan theory of maidens disturbed by unknown forces, holding out willing hands to nameless gentlemen, and hardly sure of recognizing the rescuer when he appeared--that was not only a startling idea to her, but it struck surprisingly near a description of her own state.

For a year or more she had been in a stupor of daydreams over that “not impossible He” that should command her heart and her. He took no visible shape in her mind, but remained near and yet disappointingly aloof and shadowy. Sometimes she had the palpitating feeling that he was just around the corner, that his nearing foot-falls could be heard. At other times she was sure she was dancing with him or talking to him over a dinner table. Many a young man was flattered by her searching gaze or by the subtle intimacy which she contrived to throw into a simple personal question.

Once during the previous winter Blynn had been frightened off by one of these moods of hers, and she knew it and was ashamed. The last thing she meant to do was to apprise this young man of her quest. He was being probed and cross-questioned; that was all; but he had not understood, and had misnamed her, coquette.

This pleasant jog among the leafy bowers of the Wissahickon, charged as it was by thoughts of Gorgas and her perilous rendezvous with Bardek, caused the professor to recast his idea of Keyser Levering. They had talked of love, to be sure, and she had held to the topic deliberately; yet with her eye and a considerable part of her attention necessarily on the horses, she had carried on the chat strictly like a graduate student. Of course, she knew the man. One flashing side-long glance from her fine, brown eyes would have sent him flying to cover and to silence.

Along the shaded road they stopped to admire the wonder of the place, and to allow the horses to drink at a spring. While “Sorry” and “Ned” cropped the bushes the two humans nibbled sandwiches and talked.

Miss Levering’s questions showed intelligence; that is, they showed that she knew how to stir up the lecturer in him. She wanted to consider him carefully; so she prodded him gently with artful interrogations; and kept him to his “theory.”

“What brought Petruchio from Verona to Padua?” Blynn asked, as he might have questioned a student.

“I have forgotten the details of the play,” she replied, “I think he said he had come to marry a rich wife.”

“Exactly,” Blynn nodded. “He was drawn to Padua as I have seen a butterfly drawn unerringly to its mate across miles of country. Of course, Petruchio didn’t know what was sending him forth; any more than he knew why his diaphragm was pumping air into his lungs, or why invisible Neptune influences our tides, or why a green weed will suddenly spring into a gold and white daisy. Life is so crowded with intelligent mysterious design that it is difficult to believe that anything happens haphazard.”

“I wonder if my young man has left Verona,” the lady commented with a comic sigh. “I’m getting on! Twenty-two, you know.” She shook her head with grotesque sadness. “He’ll have to hurry or--I’ll be travelling out to meet him.”

“He may be nearer than Verona,” Blynn essayed, still in the seriousness of his exposition. “He may be right here,” waving his hand.

The outright smile on her face caught his eye and brought him to earth. “All right,” he assented cheerfully. “I’ll swallow my theory whole--he may be right here beside you, for all either of us knows. I knew a chap who lived next door to his future wife and never guessed it until one summer he went abroad. He used to tell her all about his girls, too, and get her help and advice. Out on the ocean somewhere it came to him suddenly. Then he wanted to stop the boat! He came back on the next steamer. Fact! Fortunately his wire got in ahead of him, which gave her time to think things over. She was most surprised, but she had to acknowledge that he was right! They figured out that they had been in love a dozen years without once being aware of it. Frightful waste, eh? They’re the happiest couple I know.”

They sat in silence for a moment or two, each thinking a separate train of thought.

“Petruchio,” she turned to him quietly, “would you be so kind as to get out, put the check-rein back on ‘Ned’ and ‘Sorry’, and then hop in and drive with me back to Padua?”

“Ah, Kate!” he cried, springing out of the carriage. “Mad Kate, merry Kate, the daintiest Kate of all the Kates, and sometimes the curst, that right merrily I will.”

On the way home he induced her to talk of Gorgas, and as an elder sister she entered readily into a discussion of her future education. She told of the child’s fondness for boyish sports. Did he know that Gorgas had won a huge silver cup in a tennis contest? Yes, indeed; she had carried it off matched against pretty stout boys. Quite a hoyden, she was. Of course, she was getting too old for that sort of thing now. Something had to be done. She agreed that whatever it should be, it should be done gradually. The child must not be driven. So Blynn very adroitly filled Miss Keyser’s mind with the right attitude toward Gorgas. He was sure of having an ally in the work he had before him, and one that would not in his absence set up wrong family currents.

Twilight was settling when they arrived home. From McAlley, stableman, errand-boy and gardener, he learned that Gorgas and “Gyp” had not come back.

“She’ll be ’long soon,” McAlley remarked without concern. “Mebbe ‘Gyp’ is playin’ lame. He’s a scamp, that he is, a scamp.”

Blynn could not share McAlley’s indifference. His heart beat horridly, and for no good reason that his mind could tell him. The family always dined late, and the household was run on a do-as-you-please system. Perhaps this child had been out at dusk many times before. All that he told himself; yet terrifying apprehension seized him.

In fifteen minutes he was plunging down Cresheim Valley, now quite shadowy. Up the hill before him came a slow figure walking beside a horse. He dove into the bushes and watched her pass him. In the deceptive gloom she seemed to him again a self-possessed little woman. Far enough back he followed, within him the sickening relief that comes after sudden fear.

“I’ll never get used to this,” he said to himself, as he lost sight of her in the dark, when she turned into her own lane. “If that lassie belonged to me I’d see that she’d come home in daylight. She has no idea of the risk she’s running.”

He could not discern figures any longer, but he could make out McAlley’s lantern and could hear the voices.

He was feeling quite peaceful until one-armed “Aurora,” the lamp-lighter, who always loped along half bent over, gave him a fright by suddenly bobbing around the corner and scuttling across the road to a crazy street-lamp.

V

BARDEK

The opportunity of making the acquaintance of Bardek came sooner than Blynn had planned, and in a very natural manner.

The instruction of the Williams boy was carried on almost entirely in the open air. That youngster could no more enjoy himself cooped up in a house than a bear-cub. The moment he entered the shadowy door of the school-house his spirits congealed and his mind began to slow up. The rooms of the “Hall” had been planned entirely for adults--so had the discipline--and rather slow-blooded adults at that. The temperature and the ventilation were exactly right for elderly ladies and gentlemen. And they talked to children about draughts! They might just as well have worried them about sclerosis of the arteries.

In his adroit way Blynn had enticed the boy to play a “sort of game” with colloquial German. Call it a “game,” and the lad would play until he dropped; and by letting him shout at the top of his voice he was easily persuaded that it was not “study.”

In one of the wild paths in the Valley, where the sumac and the young poplar made a complete screen, Blynn and “Chuck” Williams, loudly reviewing German phrases, came upon a voice, rich and fine, carolling _deutsche Lieder_. It was quite near at hand among the tangle of blackberry vines and elderberry and came booming suddenly at them as if purposely to startle.

“Kuckuck! Kuckuck! Ruft aus dem Wald,
Lasset uns singen; tanzen und springen,
Frühling! Frühling! wird es nun bald!”

It was the song of the cuckoo, which every German child knows from the cradle. While it is yet winter the tremulous bird catches premonitions in the air and sings its eager song of spring. “Let us dance and sing,” it cries to all the woods; “Come out! Come out, into the blooming fields and among the budding trees!” Carried away by its own urging desire it flies from its haunts searching for the Spring.

The great voice softened and grew tenderly pathetic. Ah! brave little singer, your song is false, your throbbing heart has lied to you. Winter, stark, chilling winter is around you and within.

“Kuckuck! Kuckuck! Treflicher Held
Was du gesungen ist dir gelungen
Winter! Winter! räumet das Feld.”

At the end of the song the boy and the teacher applauded vigorously.

“Bravo!” called Blynn. “Once more! _Encore!_”

The bushes parted, disclosing the round face of Bardek.

“Grüss Gott!” he greeted jovially. “Have I not now heard the German speech? Die süsse Sprache meines Vaterlands?”

“Yes,” rejoined the astonished Blynn; “you did hear us talking German, a sort of German.”

“Och! it was a sort, yes,” the shoulders shrugged cynically; “but it was German, the speech of my country.”

“But you are not German, are you?” persisted Blynn. “Yesterday you were--”

“_Ach!_ Must man be ever the same? Yesterday was I French; gut! Heute bin ich wirklich deutsch. Auch gut! Morgen, vielleicht, bin ich italienisch! _Hora è sempre!_”

“What does he say?” inquired “Chuck.”

“My good boy,” Bardek explained in clear English. “Yesterday I have been French. Good! It pleased me so to be. The day was French,” flourishing his hands about the sky, “quite French. Today it pleases me to be German. How could anyone be anything but German on a day like this?” waving again toward the thick, white clouds and indicating the cool Northern breeze. “_Ein tousand ein hunderd ein und zwanzig! Was!_... Now at this moment am I North-German; soon,” he squinted at a gathering darkness in the southwest, “I am becoming _Bayrischer_. It rains ever in München; _nicht wahr_? _Ach!_ _München_ is a heaven of earth--rain, rain, rain, warm _himmlischer_ rain on the outside, and _bier, bier_, cool, _dunkels Löwenbraü_ on the inside!”

His voice was heavy and deep, the bass singing quality always present, and his intonation noticeably distinct like that of the book-read foreigner. He struck his consonants hard, as if he enjoyed them, especially the final t’s and s’s; his l’s trolled along the roof of his mouth; and he breathed his vowels sonorously.

He laughed as he stepped into the path, and added, still addressing the boy,

“When the sky is all of blue and pink, so am I Italian. My skin changes. I am then a new beast. Oh! It is good to change the skin and the mind. Boy, don’t you get sick to be always the American beast?”

“Not on your tin-type!” “Chuck” spoke up promptly. “I don’t want to be a Dutchman. Rather be what I am. But it’s fun talking Dutch with Mr. Blynn.”

“‘Not on your tin-type,’” echoed Bardek, eyes extended in mock surprise. “_Was für eine Sprache!_ What a language!”

Blynn explained. “A ‘tin-type’ is a cheap photograph. ‘Not on your tin-type’ is slang for--for, well, for ‘_Gar nichts._’”

“Not on his tin-type,” Bardek rolled his eyes, to the great amusement of “Chuck.” “_Nicht auf seiner Photographie!_ It is the language for peddlers.”

They chatted in mixed English and German for several minutes; at least, Bardek did; that is, when he wasn’t singing, or teaching “Chuck” some good colloquial German.

“Uh! _Schweinerei!_” he grunted in smiling disgust. “Chuck” had spat, American style, at a passing bee. “‘_Schweinerei_,’ my boy, means ‘piggy.’ But the pigs, they do not spit. Only the Americans spit. Everywhere in America is the sign, ‘Pray, do not spit _here_!’ ‘Pray, do not spit _there_!’ _Ach, Schweinerei! Vierte Klasse!_ That’s a good word for you, ‘_Vierte Klasse_!’ I, I am of the _Vierte Klasse_, but I, I do not yet spit!”

Blynn studied the man before him. The frank, open manner, the voluble utterance, the great healthy laughter stole into his prejudice and substituted liking. This is a chap one had to be friends with; yet Blynn knew that good fellows are not always harmless. There was something coarse about the man that repelled, the very thing, too, that attracted: his unspoken egoism, his quiet, outspoken self-satisfaction. Unconventionality beamed from him; too frequently, Blynn knew, a sign of selfishness. Would this fellow continue agreeable and jolly under provocation? It did not seem so. Or if his strong desires met with obstacle? Law, order, the rules of decent society, these he probably scoffed at; anything, indeed, that demanded restraint or curbing.

“I tried to talk to you yesterday,” Blynn remarked, “but the horse wouldn’t have it.”

“Yesterday?” Bardek raised his eyes in inquiry. “The horse would not?--_Ach!_” he roared, “you it was who--Ho!” he laughed at the memory. “You say, ‘I cannot _under_stand’ and then you cannot _up_-stand!” Bardek imitated by a pretence of flopping to the ground at the syllable “stand.” “I see very well that you could not ‘stand.’ You could not but sit. And it was something hard, _nicht wahr_, when you did sit!”

His laughter died out suddenly. “Wait,” he raised a hand. “It was the Miss Levering you were with? Yes? Excuse. I must see about something.” He really said, “Som’t’ing,” with just the suggestion of a studied “th,” but one could never indicate his speech phonetically. Sometimes, the “th” was clear, sometimes it was a “t,” sometimes a “z” or “d.” His English varied from right speech to a broken jargon, but always it was rich and clear. “Wait! I come back, _auf der Stelle_, in one moment.”

The bushes closed in about him. It was as if he had vanished, a fat satyr of the woods.

After a brief moment of silence his face appeared, and it was eloquent with welcome.

“You will come into my cave in the woods?” he beckoned, spreading out the bushes with his high hobnailed boots. “It is not to everyone that I give the invitation. You have come well recommended--by your faces and your good talk. You talk German--Dutch, you called it, you little _Schweinerei_!--Dutch it is not. Dutch is good. I can Dutch, but--this is my German day. Today, I welcome you as compatriots. Tomorrow, br-r-r,” scowling beautifully at “Chuck” Williams, “I may be French,” he glanced quizzically at the sky. “Then, you shall be my national enemy and I would--‘_Vive la belle France! A bas les All’mands!_’” he roared, making mimic charges at the delighted “Chuck.”

They were tramping through the thicket as they talked, shouted, and pantomimed. In a few steps they came upon a cosy clearing.

“_Wilkommen alle!_ Sit down, please!” Bardek pointed to comfortable rocks.

A small portable tent stretched out before them. At the side, smoke curled from a rock-oven, which was at the same time a tiny forge. Bowing before the visitors was an unkempt Frau. She looked forty at first glance; in a little while she seemed not more than twenty-five. Twenty was probably nearer her right age. In her arms nestled a rather overgrown youngster; tugging at her skirts was another.

“My summer house; the lady of the summer house,” Bardek explained ironically. Then he looked expectantly toward the tent.

“Bist du noch nicht fertig, mein Kindschen?” he called eagerly. “Now you can come out. Two gentlemen--_entschuldigen!_--one gentleman and one _Schweinerei_ would make call! Komm’, Liebschen!”

From within a familiar voice responded, but in German: “Just a minute, Bardek, please.... Now I am ready. _Können die Herr’n raten wer ich bin?_”

“She would know,” translated Bardek, “if the gentlemen can guess who she is.”

Without waiting for the guesses, he lifted the flap of the tent. Gorgas, enclosed head and body in a great green shawl, stepped calmly out and courtesied.

“Gee! This is great!” “Chuck” found voice for his glee. “It’s a dandy ‘hunky.’” “Hunky” is a boy’s secret hiding place. “I had a tent, once. Let’s have a tent out here, too, Mr. Blynn. We can live here and cook,” his greedy eye was devouring the perfect stone oven, “and study ’rithm’tic and things. Can’t we?”

The boy took Gorgas as a matter of course. She was thirteen and a girl; he was eleven and a boy--those differences represent leagues.

“I heard all you said,” Gorgas informed Blynn. “We often hear people going by on that path. Your German started Bardek after you. This is his German day. We--”

“Chuck” was examining things, with Bardek at his side explaining volubly.

“Do you speak German, too?” Blynn asked incredulously.

“Nur ein wenig,” she replied modestly, but her fine tones told much. “Besser sprech’ ich fransösisch und italienisch. Ich versteh’--I understand German, but much better than I speak it. The ‘German days’ don’t come as often as the French days. Bardek is all German today. Listen to him. His English gets German twists in it today.”

“Why, it’s quite jolly here.” Blynn seated himself on a comfortable stone, and assumed the air of a man who had done this sort of thing every day. “It’s quite a ‘hunky,’ as ‘Chuck’ would call it. I’d like to live this way myself. What man wouldn’t?”

“I’m so glad you like it,” Gorgas whispered. She leaned over and rested her arm on his knee. “Chuck” and Bardek were inside the tent. The wife was grinning at the strangers and singing a gentle lullaby. “We have fine times here. You’re the first person to come by on that path for over a week. We sing and talk languages and Bardek tells stories of his travels. He has been all over the world. Some of them are whoppers,” she dropped her voice still lower, “but you can tell by his eyes that he is making them up. And we--oh, wait till I show you my latest.”

She darted into the tent and returned with a disk of hammered copper, a dinner-plate, partly inlaid along the entire edge with a delicate silver tracery of a strange Byzantine design. “The holes had to be all cut out, and the silver filed and fitted. It must exactly fit, you know, exactly. Bardek scolds if it isn’t right to a millionth of an inch. It looks almost finished, but there are hours of pounding yet.”

“What is it when it is cooked?” he asked, but his tone showed his delight with the workmanship.

“Most anything--a cake plate, a serving tray, a card receiver, a fruit holder--lots of things. But, isn’t it beautiful! Bardek made the design. I couldn’t do that; but I did all the hammering and annealing and filed all the silver. Bardek says he may not throw this one away.”

“It’s a beauty!” admitted Blynn. “A jim-dandy! By George, Gorgas, I certainly do admire this. But how will you ever take it home?”

The shadow of disappointment rested for a moment on her face; then she seemed to shake it off resolutely.

“He will sell it. It is only practice for me. I am learning. He uses it to teach me hammer strokes. I made the Varri stroke on that,” pointing proudly to the hundreds of soft hammer marks, “with the big hammer. It is not so heavy when you learn how to swing it. If I ever get to know how--well, I’ll have it in me; no one can take it away. Then I can make beautiful things wherever I am.... It is mean to have to sell things, though--give them to people you never see.”

“Yes, indeed,” he touched her hand lightly in understanding. “I know just how you feel.”

“So!” Bardek pounced upon them. “You are showing it off, eh? It is good; very, very good.” He said “vairy,” but this word, like others of his English vocabulary, had many pronunciations. “I am vairy proud of my pupil. Gorgas--” he emphasized the last syllable as if it were Gorgasse--“Gorgas is a golden child. She has gifts. You will see, some day. I have put some of my art into her. That!--the little marks there!--is harder than it looks! It is the stroke of the best workman and the biggest miser in Milan, G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri. I stole it from him. Ho! I go to him and say, ‘Please, Messer G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri, I am poor, I will carry charcoal and blow your fire and sweep your place and make the beds and cook you good macaroni and cut up cheeses, if you will but give me a place to sleep.’

“G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri, he storm and curse; say he have no room for beggars, and that he will not pay, he will not pay; but his ugly eye watch me and then he say, ‘Blow that fire, you--’ I will not say what he have said I am. On my honor, gentlemen and ladies,” saluting, “I am not that thing that G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri say I have been.

“_Ach, Himmelreiche!_ How I work! I sweat and pull and dig and carry and--_I watch_! Tip, tip, tappy, tappy, tap--oh, so soft he play music by his hammer, the great hammer he make those soft touches. And he fires much, burns and hammers, burns and hammers. In two day I try, and he near catch me. In t’ree day I say, ‘Goodby, G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri! Your bed, it is too hard. I will just--skeedaddle! and take with me, oh, yes, jus’ a leetle somet’ing of a idea in my head.

“Before I leave I make a little gift of farewell: I make his secret strokes and it comes out a design, a great goose, and the taps on the wings spell ‘Varri.’

“And now the beautiful Gorgas--I give it to her for what I pay G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri, which is t’ gr-r-eat not’ing. If I stole it, well--der Hehler ist so gut wie der Stehler: the second thief is cousin to t’ first thief.... Ah! she do good! Vairy, vairy good!” He held the work up and admired it. “Es gibt nicht schöneres, nicht wahr, Kindschen?”

“Oh, it could be better,” protested Gorgas.

“_Wass hör’ ich?_” he affected great sternness. “_Englisch? Sprich’ Deutsch, bitte!_ Look at the heavens; it is today the heavens of Deutschland. Sprich’ nur Deutsch, bitte!”

“Oh, not German now, Bardek,” she laughingly begged. “Not before Mr. Blynn and ‘Chuck.’ I couldn’t.”

“_So scheu!_” murmured Bardek admiringly. “So shy and innocent. All right. We take holiday. We leave Deutschland for America and English. But,” sadly, “it is t’ one language I do not speak. Only in English am I foreigner.”

“Not at all,” protested Blynn. “Your English is splendid.”

“Ah!” the flattery touched home. “You are good to say it. But I know. In Europe I am in my home in every land. The Bohemian knows all speeches. They have the gift, as you would know many songs, glad ones and sorrowful. When we are still young we go to countries; it comes to us. But ah! I did go to England never; only by books did I know English, and look! Bah! I feel I must spit, like my little Schweinerei here. Books! They tell all lies. In France, in Germany, in Holland, in Hungary, in Italy, they would know me for compatriot. In America I am a barbarian, a pagan, a ‘Gypsy,’ a ‘Dago.’ Ach! English? Ich hab’ eine schlechte Aussprache. I know! I know!”

For an hour they debated genially. Before the meeting broke up Bardek dropped on the ground, stretched out full length, propped his head up with one hand, and lapsed into silence. Questions brought only short answers.

“It is time to go,” whispered Gorgas. “When he gets tired of people, he lets them know. Don’t talk to him any more; he has worn himself out with excitement.”

Gorgas led the way through overhanging branches without a word. “Chuck” followed. Blynn sought to soften the abrupt exodus by a simple wave of the hand before he bent low to avoid the briars.

“Kom’ bald wieder,” Bardek grunted. “Sobald als möglich. Come vairy soon again!” It was a sincere invitation, Gorgas assured them--Bardek was always himself--and it was a great tribute.

VI

LIBERTÉ, EGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ

They did come soon again. The air was gently from the southwest. There was a blue summer sky with high lazy clouds.

“Entrez, m’sieurs, mam’zelle!” called Bardek, and rattled on. “Je suis enchanté de vous voir! I am delighted to see you! Ah! when you were here last, the weather was gloomy and German--but today! Today the sky is beautiful and French. _Voici!_” spreading his hands to the heavens, “_Voici, la France!_”

“Hang up your hat on the hall-rack,” he went on gayly in French. “I am ravished to see you! _Comment ça va_, Chucks?”

Chucks grinned his lack of comprehension.

“_Comment ça va_, Chucks?” Bardek extended a hand of greeting. “Can you not speak, Chucks?” he dropped into English. “Can you only spit, eh? _Pfui!_ ‘_Comment ça va?_’ my Chucks, it is ‘Howd’y.’ But have care! _Prends attention!_ Pray do not spit. _Ici c’est defendu!_ Here,” sweeping his hand in a short circle, “here it is beautiful France and here it is not permitted. Are you yet German, Chucks? Must I fight you?” he crooked an imaginary gun and stood ready to charge bayonets. His eyes glared; his bushy eyebrows quivered; his whole body strained for the word of command. “_Conspuez les All’mands!_” he muttered as only the French could think that phrase. In a second all that ferocity had vanished. “_Non?_ You have not yet changed your skin? _Eh bien!_ We shall keep _l’entente cordiale_. _Vive l’Amérique!_ I shake the hand.”

“Chuck” and Bardek extended hands and wrung an international grip.

“Et mam’zelle?” he turned to Gorgas. “Que veutelle faire aujourd’ hui? Sit and talk, _hein_?”

“Let me work on my plate, Bardek,” she asked. “I’m excited about that plate.”

“_Comment!_” he bristled at her English. “The sky, it is all of French! Aujourd’hui,” flourishing terribly at the sky, “il s’agit de parler français!”

“Please, Bardek!” she begged. “Not French now; after while; not now. Please!”

“Comme tu voudras, petite,” he gave in finally. “She will not speak the French, which she speak like--oh!--like heaven. C’est très curieux! She is afraid, Mr. Blynn, that you be critic. Ho!” laughed Bardek frankly. “She need have not the fear. _Pssst!_ Mr. Blynn, he can have no language but the English. And even so, the little English of a little town,” pointing off toward the village, “a little town which goes to sleep on Sundays. It is too late for him. Language, it comes to children when their ears are open wide to hear the voice of things. When we grow old, sixteen, twenty, thirty--_malheureusement! Peau du diable!_--it is too late. The bones in the head, they go thick. So with all things--after fourteen, fifteen, the mind _est fermé_, closed, shut up tight.”

Gorgas was searching in the tent for her materials.

“So, I take this child when she _is_ child and teach her. You are professor, _n’est-ce pas_? Oh! You have my great admiration! You are--_pardon!_--so great a fool! You think you can teach old men and old girls who go to the university? How that is comic! Wooden-heads, they mumble words; they can repeat what you say, yes; but they can never _do_. To _do_, one must begin in the cradle. You would be contortionist, juggler, gymnast? Very well, wait until you are twenty-five! Sh! _Non!_ You laugh? Zen why you try to teach old men of twenty how to think? It is a great fooling.... Oh, well,” he shrugged, “zey zink,” he stopped and tried again, “t’hey t’hink they do great zings--t’ings--_bla!_” he made a wry face. “I cannot say zat ‘th.’ It is one language for those who stutter, the English.”

Bardek was all French on that day. One could almost believe that he had really changed his skin. He seemed sleeker, cleaner, even thinner; and the great mustachios had a glisten to them and a slight waxiness in the ends. His bearing was more courteous and considerate than on the “Deutschertag.” A gay kerchief adorned his neck and his turkey-feather had a jaunty tilt. Even his English had the very flavor of French idiom and French accent.

While he talked Gorgas brought her plate to a great stone, set up a lead block, and began to swing a rather large coppersmith’s hammer. She barely touched the metal as she beat rhythmically back and forth; the weight of the hammer seemed to disappear, so cleverly did she keep it moving.

“_V’là!_” pointed Bardek. “That is the stroke of G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri. _Parfaitment!_ _C’est bon!_ ‘Tap, tap, tippity, tippity, tap, tap!’ It is music, is it not, _m’sieur_? She has the delicate muscle for that work. Two year, three year? _Non!_ She will soon set--be woman and marry and have hundred t’ousand children. Ho!--”

Gorgas looked up at him in grave rebuke.

“Ho! see how she goes red and charming! The little maggots are running in her brain and making to wake all kind of wonder things and then--poof!--the school is done and life commence.”

“Chuck” was at her side watching seriously. He plied her with questions, eager to imitate and, boy-like, quite confident he could do as well.

“You must have known Gorgas for a long time,” Blynn began. “That work of hers is really wonderful. How did you find her?”

Bardek squatted on the ground, produced a file, and began to smooth off bits of sheet silver. He glanced up at Blynn through crinkling eyes.

“You look so stupid,” Bardek threw back his head; “and it is right. You do not know yet how much it is I know. You do it well, the look of the fool. Good! Gorgas has taken you for a friend. It is well that you play fool for her, speak for her, be dumb for her and if it need, lie for her, make ‘whoppers,’ as she calls t’em, for her. I like you for that, my friend.

“You would know how she came? Well, she jus’--came. Three year ago she ride by on ‘Gyp’ and I say ‘H’lo, missy,’ and she say, ‘What are you doing?’ and I say ‘I make beauty’ and show her something, a small vase, all of gold and copper. Her eye grow big, so! and she draw back and say, ‘Are you a gypsy?’ and I say, ‘_Non! non! non!_ T’ousand times _non!_ I am a Bohemian.’ And she get off her horse, tie him to a tree and say, ‘Then may I come with you and will you show me how to make beauty?’

“Zat is all, my friend, and she have been making beauty all the time. She herself makes beauty,” he looked back at her tenderly, “wherever she go. She is always serious, always in great thinking. Zey are ze most beautiful children, the quiet ones. Gigglers? Bah! Comics? Zey are ordinairy. Her eyes they always look at you like they were so old! _Elle est très sympathique_, my good friend.

“She learn--ah, how she learn!--_vite!_ _Comme ça!_” he snapped his fingers. “She take languages like the singing sparrow drinks at spring water. She would be Bohemian perhaps; her grandfather or grandmother--who knows? In America everybody must come from Europe! See her brown face and black hair? Ah! that is often seen in my country. It is oriental.”

He stopped talking to gaze at her at work.

Blynn took the chance to tell of many things. He sketched in the mother and the Levering household. He told of schools and all the business of bringing up young girls to be gay, delicate do-nothings until some man should be attracted by their frailty and marry them.

Bardek exploded many times. His theories of education for girls were not the prevailing ones in America. Everybody should learn to work, he believed. The highest trade of all is that of a maker of beauty. Those few who can, should have material, tools and infinite leisure. They were the only aristocrats; and among them there should be no fakirs. The university doctor may be a fool; he usually is a fool, averred Bardek; but no one cares; he can do little harm. But with things of beauty there should be no such trifling. Learning was no great matter; no scholar has learning enough to reconstruct the broken wing of a beetle; the world wags very well when learning is asleep. But beauty is important; one must choose ever between beauty and death.

Those who could not minister to the esthetic needs should take their turn at the fetching, lifting and carrying, the portering of life. That is their happiness, their beauty.

“Look at my wife,” he illustrated, nudging toward the tent. “She has not the skill, the art. Good! But she work, and carry a pack, and do everything right for the babies; and she is happy, working, working, working all the day. When she work and I work, we sing songs of Hungary where she live. That is fine. Woman must not be waxworks! _Sapristi!_ The good Lord has give them a job, my friend. _Nom d’une pipe!_” he sighed softly. “A big job! It needs zat zey get ready for it.”

In the spaces between Bardek’s speeches Blynn tried to hint of the trouble that would come to Gorgas if it were known at home how she had spent her time off in the Cresheim woods.

Bardek was not concerned; when a man is right he does not worry his head about what others will think. If he had bothered himself over the opinions of small minds he would have stayed in Hungary and sold tobacco and postage stamps. No! Liberty is worth paying much for; and when there is fear of criticism, liberty is dead.

Bah! The fat mother would not know a golden child from a _salade de tomate_. Doubtless she would scold a little. His wife, she scolds. It is nothing; it passes off and away like steam in the air. What one has, one has; all the scoldings of all the little people in the world cannot alter it; on earth there is no judge but oneself.

“Already,” he said, “the little Gorgas has more than all those copy-kittens who went to school and sat at wooden desks in the dark little rooms and listened as nice old ladies tell how to be jus’ waxworks. In her arm, in the ends of all her fingers, in her eye and on her tongue and in her brain, too, she has beauty, and the power to make beauty.

“You, you, my friend, have studied in the university. Try it out with the little Gorgas. What do you know that she does not know better? Do you know better how high is heaven and how wide are the angels’ wings? You have studied languages, and you know German--a sort of German, ho!--and French and Italian, perhaps; and you will always be foreigner there and a fool: but she, the little Gorgas that I teach, she _is_ German and she _is_ French and she _is_ Italian.”

He stopped his work for a moment to show her how to smooth off the inlay without disturbing the fine surface of the beaten copper.

“Let us sing for them, my pretty one,” he coaxed in French. “You are some of the beauty that I have made. I want to show you off, exhibit you, prove my skill. What shall it be?” He ran through several simple songs of childhood. Reluctantly she agreed, only to please him as he knew, and together they sang a lively air. It was about life on the winding roads, and there was a chorus of jolly tappings which they did lightly with their hammers.

“That is liberty,” Bardek commented. “In France they have not liberty except painted on every sign-post. ‘_Liberté, fraternité, equalité!_’ _Là, là, là, là, là!_ It is the great national joke! America? _Non!_ ‘The land of the brave,’” he sang nasally in burlesque, “‘and the ho-o-me of the fre-e-e!’ Ho! that is vairy, vairy comic.” He wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes. “Very comic! I come to the land of liberty, ‘the ho-o-me of the free’ and I cannot sell my work without I get a permit for which I must pay; and in each spot I must have new one. I cannot live as I please. The people say, ‘_Phieu!_ go away, ugly man. You have no soul, for you have no stiff white collar. Tie up the neck with white peekadilly and we give you liberty to live by us!’ I have not liberty to drink my beer or smoke when I please.

“And Miss Gorgas, she cannot learn to make beautiful things. She cannot tell her mother she come to me. She must sneak like a thief and lie. It is not good, that kind of liberty. Liberty is a great thing, my friend. You all go mad and have red-fire and elections and speeches and big ugly bands and Mr. Cleveland is made president, and _hélas!_ millions of free Americans weep, weep, weep zet zeh must have Mr. Cleveland for president. America is not the land of liberty. It is the land of prohibition, yes; sobriety, yes; uniformity, yes; but here is not liberty. Of all peoples in Mount Airy only I perhaps have liberty. You would not want to live like me, eh? You look at me. _Zut!_ I read you mind. You say, ‘Not on your tin-type!’ Then you do not much care for liberty.”

Many such days the little group had together. German days, French days, Italian days came in regular succession. “Chuck” disputed with him about the days, and Bardek took great joy in his wordy battles over the sort of weather that prevailed. To all but “Chuck” it was quite evident that his succession of days was a transparent device to give Gorgas constant exercise in the fluent, living language; but save for the laughing eyes and occasional wink, he stoutly stood for the theory that the weather made his skin change. Bohemians, he claimed, belonged to no country and to every country and were doomed all their lives to slip back and forth through various national personalities. The weather did it.

“You have only one country!” he told “Chuck” scornfully. “How sorry I am for you! So you hooray for the stars and stripes, and you make the grand racket on the Fourt’ of July, an’ you rage at Sout’ America, and Europe, an’ all the other little peoples. Poof!” he blew himself up into his own notion of the spread-eagle American orator. “You could fight the whole wor-r-ld, wit’ hands tied behind the back--and the whole wor-r-ld would laugh in zere sleeve, and make such pictures in the comic papers, about which you would know nothing. Oh, how sorry I am for you, Chucks, who have only one country, when I, Bardek, have so many! In France I sing the Marseillaise on the fourteen of July; in Germany I celebrate the eighteen of January, the birthday of the Empire; and in Poland, on the twelve of September, I drink to Sobieski, who saved Poland from the Turk--an’ at no time do I rage, and make boasts at any country. You are proud of only one land, Chucks; I, Bardek, am homesick for all the wor-r-ld!”

One day when they went back through the hidden path and under the arch of briers into the enclosure, not a vestige of Bardek and his belongings remained.

“He will come back when he wishes to be here again,” Gorgas explained, with just a shade of disappointment. But she did not wholly conceal her gratification. Lately she had been feeling terribly guilty over her clandestine meetings with the Bohemian. She could date the beginning of her worry over the matter. It had come suddenly in the night when she awoke trembling and weeping over she knew not what. Fires burned in her, and she discovered an intense longing to give up what had been heretofore the most helpful experience in her life: her solitude, her freedom from the necessity of communicating. Now she cried out for a brother or a sister or a mother to whom she could tell everything, even trivial things. Until now she had fared alone, self-sufficient as a tree, and had never spoken to anyone, even to Bardek, of what meant most to her. On this night, as she lay awake, she reveled in the despairs of loneliness.

At about that time Blynn had appeared and had satisfied her need. To him she had unburdened, and had come away pure and heightened as after confession.

All this had made her self-conscious in her visits to Bardek. He had remarked the change in her, and talked about it, as was his way; which made her, somehow, ashamed. When her cheeks flamed under his persistent candor, he would call to his wife in great delight. In some Hungarian dialect he would invite her to look at the bud bursting; the little, green leaves unfolding; the fresh, sweet petals stretching themselves. There never was any doubt as to his meaning.

After that when Gorgas parted the elder branches and looked into his bower she came with the face of a child-woman, full of subtle new dignity, an unstudied preoccupation, as if the mind within were very, very busy on its great affairs.

And guilt seized her, without giving a single reason. “It is wrong!” sang a humming in her ears. “What is wrong?” she would ask herself wildly. “It is wrong! It is wrong!” the voices would cry; and no one could tell her _what_ was wrong.

With Blynn beside her she looked steadily at the blanched circle left by the tent.

“Well!” she gave a deep, healthy exhalation, and stepped back into the narrow path. “I’m both sorry and glad. I don’t know why I should be glad; but I am. It is all mixed--m-mixed u-up.” Her lips quivered though her eyes smiled gamely. “I don’t know whether I am going to cry or laugh.”

“Shall I toss a coin?” Blynn inquired.

“Chuck” was examining the “hunky” and speculating upon moving in as soon as he could wheedle a tent out of his father. Blynn and Gorgas stood close together facing each other in the path. Her eyes searched his steadily until they slowly brimmed and shut out all view.

“I guess I’m mo-mostly g-glad!” she put out her hands toward him and lightly touched his sleeve.

“If you cry now,” whispered the man, “you’ll splash me awfully. Let’s wait till we have more room.”

That decided the matter. It was a hearty burst of girlish laughter which cleared the air like the proverbial thunder. All the way home they sang and danced and played “tag” and raced.

“When will Bardek be back?” Blynn asked before he bade the children goodby.

“Perhaps next week; perhaps next month,” Gorgas conjectured. “Once he stayed away two months. Oh, he’ll be along again soon. _A tout à l’heure, m’sieu’_.” She stepped gaily up the walk toward her own door. “_Auf wiedersehen und -hören und -sprechen._ Until I see you and hear you and speak you again!”

Yet the month passed away, and another month and many months, but Cresheim Valley saw no trace of Bardek.

Along in November the mails brought a carefully wrapped package containing eighty-two dollars and six cents. A note in French said simply:

“It was a robber who bought your plate, but I will not ask too
much for the art which I stole from Varri. I do penance by taking
so little. The miser! For my silver and copper I charge you a
trifle--which I have taken out. What is here is yours--well earned,
golden child.

“Until we meet and talk again,

“BARDEK.”

After a conference with Mr. Blynn, Gorgas forwarded the package anonymously to the treasurer of the Children’s Aid Society.

“It is an offering to propitiate the theft from G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri,” said Blynn; “let us hope it will count as a mass for the peace of Varri’s penurious soul.”

VII

A “FRENCH DAY” AT NIGHT

Mrs. Levering did not mean to neglect her children; but her life was busy with the running of a big household, and with the claims of neighbors, the church, and charitable organizations. In her home life she was delightfully lax and unsystematic; but it was liberty for all, not a bad arrangement for domestic happiness, when it works.

Her two children had come along without making much demand upon her. If they had been frail or sickly she would have been the promptest of nurses, and perhaps she would have learned more about them; but they grew along sturdily without so much as a single call for help. As a result they instinctively repelled coddling. There were no effusive greetings between mother and daughter, no kissings at night time, and only the most casual peck at lengthy partings. It was a very sensible and practical environment; and, on the whole, satisfactory to the Levering family.

Mrs. Levering treated her daughters as if they were her own age. There was no “baby-talk” at any stage of their upbringing. Nearly everything was discussed openly, but that did not mean that the children had a vote in everything. Unconventional as the mother was in most things, she threw about the children a protective ring of unwritten rules, over which there was no debate--almost the same code that her own mother had used. Gorgas could fight against going to school and win. School was an expense, anyway; and Gorgas seemed to be doing very well by herself with such help as the mother fancied Keyser was giving her; and many children managed pretty well with a tutor or two. But acquaintances, especially male, were scrutinized and limited; late night prowlings were forbidden; there was no latch-key for any save the master-of-the-house--who never went out!--and all letters, outgoing and incoming, must pass inspection.

So, you see, Mrs. Levering had no tingle of conscience concerning her children; on the contrary, she had many exalted moments at the thought of all her prohibitory care over them.

Allen Blynn was O. K.’d as a matter of course. Everyone knew all about him. He was an honor man at college; his mother was of “good people,” descendants of somebody or other; and he was of the faculty of the University. Of course, his manners were right--he used a fork properly; he was charmingly considerate of ladies; children liked him; and he had a good, honest face; but the other qualifications, the college honors and the university degrees really made him “moral,” and therefore a free and unrestricted companion of her two girls. Besides, the mother was thrifty enough to see the advantage of securing so excellent and so inexpensive a tutor for Gorgas.

On the days when he and Gorgas studied together it grew to be the custom for the tutor to stay on for the informal family dinner, to get his “pay,” as he had bargained, of good food and good company. They were jolly affairs, full of gay chatter and serious discussion of men and things. Blynn radiated on these occasions, for the dinner was his natural habitat. On the tennis-courts he was an indifferent actor; but whenever the game was speech, he scored masterfully.

Guests seemed to drop in fortuitously on these evenings, while the dinner grew imperceptibly more elaborate. With a daughter aged twenty-two, Mrs. Levering’s instincts told her when to entertain young people, and Miss Keyser Levering was a more modern mental replica of her mother. Edwin Morris, the university tennis champion, still in his late ’teens, was a frequent visitor, as were “Sam” Davis, the “law-man”; Keyser’s chums, Mary Weston and Betty Sommers; Diccon, a newspaper-man, and a collegian of Blynn’s time; and Leopold, a distinguished-looking young English Jew, of the science department of the University.

Others came and went, but these gradually drifted together to form the core of a little social group.

On these occasions Gorgas seemed to disappear. She shrank visibly into the rôle of little girl invited to look on. Her animated and accomplished sister overpowered her and made her a speechless dependent. All the gaucheries of childhood came out to daunt her. She stumbled against things, spilled her salt, and walked about with ox-like grace. One mild, reproving look from her sister would make her trebly clumsy for the evening.

Blynn tried often to bring her out, but it only increased her seeming stupidity. After all, she was a child, he reminded himself, but not without puzzled memories of the strange age she could put on when they were alone together.