Chapter VIII: Book THREE: The Call to be Free (1)

It was all very well to say, “Drink Me,” but the wise little Alice was not going to do _that_ in a hurry: “No, I’ll look first,” she said, “and see whether it’s marked _poison_ or not.”... She had never forgotten that if you drink much from a bottle marked “poison,” it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

XVI

RATS!

The Levering spring-house had long ago gone to pieces to furnish part of the masonry of a new workshop, designed by Bardek and built by Mac, with everybody assisting. They picked a spot at the north of the orchard, where the light was right, and distant enough from habitation to allow for the most riotous hammering. A great chimney with both hand- and foot-bellows forge was the center about which the one-story, roomy structure spread.

The Leverings hardly knew what was going on. They had this satisfaction, however: Gorgas was on her own grounds, Mac was always within hail and Bardek, his wife, and the two shining-eyed youngsters had so won the affection of everyone that they were added as theoretic protectors. When young men called, they sauntered around to the cozy shop, looked on, smoked at their ease and drank continuous tea and ate toasted muffins. Kate often spent mornings there, pottering over punched brass, and thinking, to the pantomimic disgust of Bardek, that she was a workman, too. But no one seemed quite aware that a serious art was being studied in that busy quarter.

Mrs. Levering began to get inklings of the deep nature of the undertaking when a big order for a complete hand-wrought silver service was finished, dispatched, and the check forwarded. Bardek had been the business manager in securing that and other orders which followed, and he had overseen the designing and had plotted out the work; but the labor and the return were placed entirely to Gorgas’ account.

“My dear child,” the mother’s eyes focused agreeably upon the amount. “This is dreadful! You’re actually making money! Are you sure you are not taking advantage of someone? How could a little girl like you earn so much?”

But she soon accustomed herself to that sort of thing, and promptly let Gorgas take out a separate bank account, and thriftily watched the amount swell. It was quite proper, she assured herself, for a girl to make money, provided she stayed at home, and provided, too, it was something respectable, like--uh--art. Of course, this metal business was art; at least, the silver part was--she was somewhat dubious over the copper, really, the most artistic accomplishment of the shop; and the settings of copper and semi-precious stones, the hand-wrought gold rings--that was art and respectable. She wished, of course, that there were no necessity for the ugly forge and for the heavy malleting; but then, that was all done in the secluded shop away from the street. To think that all this silly pottering had turned out to be worth something! What a wonderful adviser was Allen Blynn! When she thought of the pleasant checks, she was grateful that she had been too busy at the time to oppose the building of the shop.

But in spite of the obvious fact that Gorgas was able to earn her own way, the mother continued to keep a controlling hand, as if the child were still a toddler needing protection, and not an independent young woman of seventeen: her letters had still to be O. K.’d, the hours of retiring were not to be changed, and the other claims of womanhood, the style of gown and hat and the mode of wearing the hair--these were still matters of maternal jurisdiction. And being the younger daughter she had more mothering--as is often the case--than Kate, who had long ago secured her rights to do as she pleased.

There were suggestions of rebellion and occasional flurries of attack and retreat. At seventeen, Gorgas had gained her right to give all her mornings to the “smitty,” as the shop was locally dubbed; she had won out in her right to play tennis and hockey, to bicycle and--an ability discovered by Bardek--to fence.

“Why can’t you just ride or drive and take walks?” the mother had complained. “These other games are so boyish and ‘tough,’ my dear. They give you a color like a hoyden--positively I was ashamed of you last Wednesday at dinner--and you have a stride like a young rowdy. Of course, I can’t tell you it’s not ladylike. I see that has no effect upon you; but you might consider how I feel when you walk through the streets in that tennis costume--I suppose one might call it a costume. In a boy it is all right; young Morris is quite attractive; but you, you look positively unsexed, Gorgas--I’m almost ashamed to use the word. And really, my dear, I must object to your putting off stays. You will never come around if you don’t begin early. Your figure is--well, is there no proper womanly argument that can reach you?”

“Health, first, mother,” Gorgas would say firmly. “I work hard all morning, I practice at music, to please you, and I must keep up my reading. Then, open air for me and a stiff fight and a shower. That makes me sing; makes me fit to do things. I wouldn’t have an original design in my head if I cooped up like most women. They are talking about voting! I’m with them there, but good Heavens! they could be enfranchised tomorrow if they could only break loose and live a decent, wholesome life.”

The severest quarrel was over clothes. Gorgas’ artistic sense was a deep-rooted thing. She protested, but without result, against the slave-like selection of “what everybody was wearing.” Women seemed to be uniformed like a squad of infantry, irrespective of individual build or personal taste. That repelled her. Not that she wanted to do anything eccentric; it was just her desire to be inconspicuous that led to a wish to study herself and, within the restrictions of the prevailing vogue, to clothe herself true to her own personal note.

Blynn had walked with her on one of his rare holidays home--lecturing usually kept him busy in vacation time--when she was driven out of herself and into stolidity by the mere fact of an outrageous puffed-sleeve affair, over which her mother had spent hours of selecting. To Gorgas, it was like wearing some other person’s clothing. She had gawked about, submerged in self-consciousness; and her chagrin she expressed in vindictive attacks on the unoffending Allen.

Gorgas resolved to end it then and there. One afternoon in February, 1893--Gorgas was seventeen and a half, but felt tremendously older--she interviewed the chief cutter of a smart Walnut street tailoring establishment and outlined to him her plans for a series of frocks and coats that made his eyes glisten. She produced a check for part-payment, and made it peremptorily clear that her own ideas were to prevail or no sale.

“Mother, I’ve ordered some spring clothes,” she let the news out bluntly. “I won’t stand being dressed and undressed and being put to bed any longer. You’d better get used to the idea, for it’s to be the thing. I’m paying my way now and I’ve got to go it on my own.”

And then she left immediately for the “smitty.”

Those were stormy days in the Levering family, but the disturbance was all from the elders. Gorgas was serene and calm. They were sure Gorgas would adopt some reckless fashion that would put them down before everybody, probably a bifurcated skirt or an out-and-out Dr. Mary Walker attire. There was much talk in the air at that period of boldly abolishing the dress distinction of sex. But when Gorgas appeared before them one afternoon in a neat, inconspicuous, tailor-made gown, right as to style, but with a mysterious wonder in it of something just beyond the style, the family capitulated. Capitulated? They broke ranks and rushed over one another to cheer the enemy.

Mount Airy, after all, had always been a country village. Its main charm, in spite of its nearness to a large city, was not its suburbanity, but its rurality. And it was well-known that the most careful copying by Mount Airyites of the designs in Godey’s “Lady Book,” would always be crude and home-made when compared with exactly the same pattern worn by the city ladies who could be seen any day moving in and out of certain exclusive in-town shops. The distinguishing difference is not so much one of material as of art.

In that apparel Gorgas could have argued the family out of its house and grounds. Oh, the subtle overpowering authority of the right gown! It will give strength to weakness, add courage to the natural craven, and overawe even Lizzie-in-the-kitchen. If I were a physician I would make most of my prescriptions on the blanks of proper tailors. Most women are not ill, they are simply inadequately gowned; their strength is oozing away through the terrible struggle to feel better than they look. And it is not primarily a question of money; it is a matter of taste and intelligence.

The young men responded instantly to the new touch. They didn’t know how it had happened, but the news passed quickly along that Gorgas Levering was “all right.” Callers, formal and informal, of all ages from sixteen to thirty-five, dropped in or begged permission, according to the type. The “smitty,” on Thursday afternoons, became a sort of rendezvous for all this fluttering group. Work and play were declared off, and the reception of guests was in order. Mrs. Levering occasionally dropped in, in her capacity as overseer, but Kate was always present, the mother’s viceroy; and Bea Wilcox and a few of Gorgas’ intimates; and, of course, Bardek.

Here they sang, chatted and danced as the mood seized. And on clear, summer afternoons there was always the tennis-court and the shadowy orchard; in winter there was hockey and skating on the Wissahickon at Valley Green, or, more often, roastings and toastings before the huge log fire in the “smitty.”

Gorgas’ permanent exhibition of unsold work brought other visitors. These came at all times. Usually, it was Bardek’s business to do the explaining and the selling, a duty he loved, and some of the customers became regular visitors and eventually slipped over into the Thursday afternoon group. Not that the Thursday afternoon group could be kept away at other times. Gorgas rather welcomed the opportunity to chat while she worked, but she always worked--except once.

One Thursday in April Morris took Gorgas aside and asked if he couldn’t come the next day in the morning and have a private talk with her.

She looked him over suspiciously.

“We’ve been partners for a long while, Neddie,” she summed up her look. “This sounds mighty strange and mysterious. Give me a hint beforehand. What’s up?”

“Can’t do it here,” he scowled at the crowd. “I’ll be in at about eleven. What d’y’ say?”

“How absurd you are,” she held him off to search his face. “You know anyone may see me at any time.”

“I know,” he hastened to explain awkwardly in the midst of the chatter and movement. “This is different. This is something--I can’t tell you here.”

“Well,” she patted him on the arm, “come along, sonny. You’ll have to talk loud. I’ve got a special fine lot of hammering to do that won’t wait.”

That night she tossed about and brought herself to book.

Morris had been behaving lately in a way they do before they begin to go to pieces and become temporary asses in the presence of their Titania. He had lost his fine spirit of _camaraderie_. He had been glaring at his fraternity pin, which Gorgas used, like a dozen other such articles, to adorn the dress it best suited. He had been moody and listless--the usual symptoms; and he had been hanging about like a stupid.

Try as she might she couldn’t get a thrill out of the thought. Ned Morris was a brother; that was all; a splendid chum, the sort at fellow you get terribly used to and wouldn’t give up without a fight. But anything else-- Horrors! It was profanation of friendship to think it.

Nevertheless, she enjoyed the prospect of an adorer. It gave her the most unaccountable feeling of elation and self-pity and yearning and depression--all enjoyable sensations, every one. It attacked her so hard that she arose at sun-up, ate no breakfast, and let the metal work slide.

“You do not work today?” Bardek looked up from his bench, where he was inlaying a hair-like design of silver in the softest copper.

“Nope.”

“You are sick, may be?”

“Goodness, no!”

Hammer, hammer, hammer.

“Goin’ to jus’--loaf, eh?”

“Rather.”

Hammer, hammer.

“Ah! you fight the French revolution all over again with the mother?” he guessed. “_Bome! bome!_ Down will go t’e Bastile. Huzza! Out come the prisoners--little ladies who t’eir mutters have boxed up! _Vive la révolution des jeunes filles!_”

Hammer, hammer, hammer.

“What?” he looked up.

“Wrong tack, Bardek. Take in a reef.”

“Eh? What?”

“And let down your jib.”

“_Nom du nom!_ What language you talk?” Tap, tap, tap. “Somebody come, eh?”

“Yes; Morris.”

“Ho-ho-o-o!” softly, as much as to say, “So that’s the way the wind blows.” “Ho-ho-o-o!” louder, meaning, “I’ve been suspecting that boy.” “Ho-ho-o-o!” very wisely, with a glance that said, “I understand what’s in your little head, missy!”

“Oh, rats! Bardek.”

She arose and tried a few strokes, but soon gave it up.

“Perhaps Morris he would take share in partnership?” Bardek inquired with grotesque sympathy.

“Rats!” she called back.

“R-rats!” Bardek laughed as he tapped. “Rats--it is the meaning of what? When I say, ‘How beautiful is Miss Gorgas, this morning,’ Miss Gorgas say, ‘Rats!’--that is to say, ‘Thank you so much for compliment.’ When I say, ‘She work too hard, she must play more,’ Miss Gorgas say, ‘Rats!’--that is to say, ‘Do you think I small child, eh?’ If I say, ‘When you going marry, Miss Gorgas?’ Miss Gorgas say, ‘Rats!’--which is to say, ‘Shut up, you ol’ fool, and mind own business.’ It is vairy convenient; one nice, little word do for everything. It mean, ‘I don’t believe you’; it mean, ‘Go bag your head’; it mean, ‘Not on your tin-type.’ Jus’ now it mean, ‘Mr. Morris will talk to Miss Gorgas on vairy important matter. Ol’ Bardek better take holiday and fix more w’ite-wash in his house.’”

“Rats! Bardek,” she stopped him. “Stay where you are. I don’t want to seem to be clearing everybody out for Ned Morris. If we want to talk privately, we’ll go into the orchard. It’s warm enough outside.”

Bardek grinned so openly that she was forced into some sort of explanation. She talked earnestly and Bardek affected to be perfectly guileless.

“Morris is just a good friend, Bardek; not a thing more. Not a thing more.”

“Rats!” roared Bardek, suddenly slipping from earnest solicitude into loud irony. “Oh, I love that nice, easy, little word. It saves so much breath. I say, ‘Rats!’ and I mean, oh, a whole lot. With one word I say, ‘Don’t you be telling me all that foolishness about friend business and all that. The friend business is all played out. It had one grand failure, long ago, when Adam thought he try. Mr. Morris, he just like Adam. He hang ’round ’while and watch animals and sleep in the sun. Then, one day he wake up and he say he want nice, long talk, all alone; and Eve, she dress up in nice clothes, she can’t work, can’t hammer, can’t sit down, can’t walk, can’t do one thing but look and look and look at not’ing at all, and say, ‘Rats!’ All that for one little word!”

“Double fault, Bardek; you’re putting too many in the net.”

That was one way thoroughly to mystify the earnest student of English. Bardek studied hard, but never succeeded in getting the hang of American sporting terms. “Get a good lead! Go down with his arm! Two out; play for the batter! 68-22, through left-guard!” These phrases seemed to have meaning to Americans, but not one spark of intelligence was in them for the many-languaged Bohemian.

“I put too many into the net?” he repeated. “T’e English cannot be one of my native speeches, but when I see all these nice--” he drawled it into something like “nah-ees”--“young boys flying so like butterfly ’round Miss Gorgas I zink she do not put _one_ into the net!”

Gorgas was busy sorting out some long branches of fresh willow for a corner decoration. She looked over sideways at Bardek, who tapped away with the air of a man who has made a hit. But she silenced him.

“Play in, boys; he’s going to bunt,” she remarked and watched with satisfaction the grin fade from Bardek’s face and in its place appear the rapt expression of a puzzled linguist.

“What is this--‘bunt’?” he asked at last, his mind completely off guard.

“It is an unexpected bingle, Bardek, that puts the infield in the soup,” she explained serenely as she left the “smitty” for more willow branches.

XVII

AN UNEXPECTED BINGLE

For awhile Bardek tapped away and struggled with the slang of the ’90’s. “‘Bingle,’” he murmured and shook his head. “‘Bunt,’ ‘Soup,’ I have lost the art of taking in languages. I grow old. My cerebellum turns to that same ‘soup.’”

Bardek sighed, a genuine old-fashioned sigh, full of undefined longing. Uncomfortable feelings swept over him, whose source he knew not.

“_Nom de la manne céleste!_” he ejaculated, putting down his hammer. Wide-eyed, he gazed out of the window toward the fast budding maples. It was a French day, _sans doute_. “Spring!” he exulted aloud in the appropriate language. “How it is ever beautiful, the spring. In France, best of all, but even here in Mount Airy it is good, the spring. In my old trunk the sap goes up, up, and spins my thoughts about. I am full of ideas in the spring, little shoots of thinking and buds and leaves of grand notions. How I can do things in the spring!” But he stood listlessly gazing. “Do? Bah! I can do nothing but dream of what I can never do; ... but it is good.”

Slowly his mind drifted to Gorgas and then back to the starting point of their conversation. His face lighted up, beamed with sympathy.

“So, that is what it is!” he chuckled. “He is a good fellow, Neddie. Nice, clean American fellow. But he is only boy wit’ face like girl. How young is all America! When I was twenty I was man. I had been in army. I had learned my work in life. I had seen the world. Now I am forty and old man. All the little American children of thirty, forty, fifty,--Professor Blynn, Miss Kate, Mrs. Levering, they all come to ask me what to do; me, Bardek! I have the wisdom of old gentleman about to sit down and die. Phoo-ee!” He puffed out a big breath and looked joyfully out of the window. “And I am ten t’ousand years younger than all of them put together.”

The flooding thoughts of spring were too much for Bardek. He doffed his apron, put his tools carefully in their racks and made ready to get out into the open. He hummed like a prowling bumble-bee as he tossed things about.

“Hello, Bardek. Where’s Gorgas?” Morris spoke from the doorway.

“Ah!” Bardek turned jubilantly, came forward in great strides and shook the young man warmly by both hands. “She is here! She is here!” he exulted, looking the astonished Morris over joyfully. “Jus’ you sit yourself. The big easy chair? No!” He dragged forward a cushioned settle. “_V’là!_ It is the best for little _tête-à-tête_. Oh, you lucky young man! To have Miss Gorgas to talk to all alone. See! I will jus’ pull down this window thing, as-- Where is she, that Eve who cannot work this morning--” He looked anxiously out of the door toward the orchard.

“Can’t work?” Morris inquired. “What’s the trouble, Bardek? Ill?”

“Ill?” Bardek exploded. “Oh, yes. She is--ho!--yes, it is a disease, vairy, vairy dangerous. It is good to get it early, like the chicken-poxes and measles. Hey!” looking at him curiously. “You, Neddie; don’t you ever feel like kicking out all the little life-businesses and rushing out into woods away from every one, to weep and laugh and sleep and swear and pray? Look inside. Close your eyes and look inside. Have you not got terrible voice in t’ere what say: _Prenez la clef des champs! Faites l’école buissonnière!_ Take the key of the fields and play truant in the woods!... Day like dese! How can men stay in chicken-houses!”

He slipped out of a workman’s blouse and ruffled his hair excitedly.

“That’s spring fever, Bardek,” Morris explained. “Guess I’ve got a touch of it, too.” He yawned and began to make a cigarette. Then he turned the logs over in the grate.

“Miss Gorgas,” Bardek motioned eloquently toward the orchard, “is jus’ out in the trees, watching young leaves come.”

Bardek struck an expectant attitude.

Morris drew the settle up to the fire and picked up a book.

“The spring fever have made you dumb, perhaps? I say she is jus’ out! Two, t’ree steps,” he looked out of the window, “at the big cherry she is now ... eh?”

“Thanks, Bardek,” Morris yawned and stretched his legs. “I’ll just smoke and read a little.... She’ll be back presently, I suppose.”

The Bohemian stared. Then he seized a huge hammer and smote mightily, like Tubalcain himself.

“Holy mackerel, Bardek!” Morris turned, laughing. “This is only a stone hut, you know.... What y’ making, a battleship?”

“You have not put many in t’e net lately, eh?” Bardek stopped to inquire irrelevantly. He was experimenting with the new phrases.

“Oh, my full share, I fancy. What makes you ask?”

Bardek was bitterly indignant, but the emotion was lost on Morris’ back.

“I though’ you came here dis morning to, ah, bunt. What?”

“Bunt?”

“Yess.... Bingle.”

“Bingle?”

“Yess, bingle.”

“It’s lost on me, old man. I came here to talk to Gorgas.”

He resumed his reading, smoked at leisure and turned over pages carelessly. Bardek smote one vicious blow and exclaimed:

“Then you don’t want to--ah--get in the soup wit’ Miss Gorgas, eh?”

“What?”

Morris swung completely around.

“You have spring fever? _You?_ Yah!” Bardek ejaculated his disgust in unspellable exclamations. “_Ah, non! non! non! non! non!_ You are lazy? Yess. You like comfortable seat at small fire? Yess. But you still froze up like dead tree. The sap, it not yet run up. I tell you, ‘Miss Gorgas is in orchard.’ You say, ‘Oh, vairy well,’ and fix nice cushions to sit. I say, ‘She is one, two, t’ree step away.’ You roll cigarette and read book. _Nom d’une pipe!_ How you sit and smoke when live woman wait for you, eh? One, two, t’ree step at the big cherry, eh? Name of a pipe! Your blood, it is water! Me, I go out!” He seized his hat. “I, I am yet young, alive, and sprout green things. I ’fraid I stay and catch your fever. Spring fever? _Peste! Nom du nom!_ It is a disease of the winter, you have, my friend.”

In a trice Bardek was plunging down the lane, which led to Montgomery county. “_Ah! que je suis un petit oiseau_,” he was singing gloriously.

* * * * *

Gorgas sat in the sun on a bench under the bursting cherry tree, her hands clasping her knees and her eyes wide awake and staring. Somehow, that morning, her mind would not advance to conclusions; it remained dead-locked between the thought of Morris and all that he would probably say, and the answer that she knew she must make. But she would not let herself decide; she liked to play with the idea, to toss it about among the possibilities, view it from strange angles. Marriage was probably just this sort of thing--a little talk with a man, an agreement, dresses, the march up the aisle, and years together. Anything else was just romance, the stuff one makes fiction out of. Fiction! How well named!

But it was not the way she dreamed the event would happen. Her notion of felicity was much more strenuous and fearsome. At any time she wanted she could walk into the “smitty,” say “Hello, Neddie,” and end the whole business. There was nothing daring about that. But shouldn’t there be something to be afraid of?

Her man should surprise her--she thought out her best theory; she had several, depending on the mood!--come upon her at, say, twilight. She would like to see his staring, laughing face peer suddenly over her shoulder, and in a moment find herself in his mad grip. She should become weak with positive fright, and be a little afraid of him all her life. “I should probably scratch and bite,” she thought, “but he must laugh, and perhaps pinch my ear, till I yelped and let go.”

There was nothing frightening about Neddie Morris. Well; one had better go in and have it over. She would offer him tea.... If he drank it she would hate him. Pshaw! Life is just tea drinking, after all. It spoils one to dream of the impossible.... Oh, this spring weather! Ha-ho-hum!... Let him wait.... This thing has to be thought out. Let’s see; where were we?... But her mind hung motionless.

From her bench she could see Morris lighting a cigarette; but she remained and basked in her own dreams. Some things are better the longer they are postponed. Those cherry buds were just straining to get out. Look at that wise, silly robin tugging away at a tuft of string tangled on a stick! Everything was unfolding and getting ready for new life--even Gorgas.

Thundering mallet blows came from the “smitty.” It did not sound like Bardek. Certainly if he threw that sort of reckless force upon the frail lace-like silver upon which he should be working, there would be something annihilated. Perhaps Morris was growing impatient. Well--she hugged her knees--he would have to wait. She couldn’t go in to him until she had made up her mind about him.

Why should one ever decide? The joy of living is expecting. Who ever wants anything he gets? Possession is the beginning of dissatisfaction. Even if exactly the right man ... exactly the right man! ... should be waiting in the “smitty” it would be better to let him wait. The right man! Her eyes closed as she pictured that man, sitting expectant in the “smitty,” never dreaming she was so near; oh, the shivering ecstasy of holding him there forever with all his story yet to tell. Into her memory came lines from “The Grecian Urn,” which she and Allen Blynn had learned together; with eyes still closed she spoke them reverently aloud:

“... happy love!
Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”

“Hello, Gorgas,” Morris blundered upon her. “What are you mumbling? Poetry? Sounded like something with jiggles in it. Are you warm enough out here? I’ve got the shivers. C-come on b-back in the ‘smitty.’ We can t-talk better there. C-come on.”

“Wait. Please!” she begged. “Let’s don’t go back just yet. The--uh--everything’s so wonderful and springy out here. Don’t let’s talk just yet. Just listen to the sparrows.”

“Ug-g-g!” he shivered. “W-w-onderful l-l-ittl-le p-p-pests. How do you s-s-tand it? Without your c-coat, too. I’m g-going in.”

He danced a clog and flapped his arms, while he sang:

“In Ireland I was a blithering lad,
Yit I niver had said I had more than I had,
But when I set sail for America, Gad!
My tongue, it started to wag!
When I got on the brig I lost my brogue,
And then I began to brag.”

“_Don’t do that!_” she snapped suddenly. He stopped. “You look ridiculous.” Then penitently, “I was thinking lovely thoughts, and you jarred the picture.... Let’s go in.”

The settle, arranged beautifully before the fire, made her thoughtful. He started for it and beckoned her to follow, but she let him take the huge seat alone.

“That fire is too warm for me this morning,” she excused herself for sitting on a near-by hassock, where she could hug her knees and look up at him. In that position, while he talked and smoked innumerable cigarettes, she watched him dreamily.

There were few finer fellows than Ned Morris, she told herself. He was not only good to look at but he was a good “pard” and an unequaled sportsman. He had a reputation, too, a name--of course, that was not a thing to consider, yet a woman likes her man to be known for right qualities. It would be a comfort to have folks say, “Oh, Ned Morris, the tennis Morris?” Rather vain, that; but there are a hundred kinds of vanity, and some are virtues.

“What I wanted to see you about, Gorgas,” he began finally, looking suddenly at the grandfather clock in the corner--

“Not just yet, Ned,” Gorgas protested quietly. “Tell me about the Boys’ Club dinner first. I understand it went off like a Bellevue spread.”

Goodness! It was almost out, and then it would be all over, a pretty little dream spoiled by waking. Why are men so straightforward and possessing? Of course, she liked them best when they came selfishly demanding things. Meek ones--well, they might inherit the earth, but they could not share her goods and chattels.... Perhaps they would have to give up being friends.... No ... that would never do.... She began to see ... decision was slowly coming ... rather than break with him altogether she would just take him over, have one everlasting final row with the mater and decamp for--

“But I must get down to business, Gorgas,” he suddenly changed the topic. “What I’m going to say to you is darned hard to get out, so I’m just going to plump it at you like--”

She leaned forward and laid two nervous hands upon his nearest arm.

“Couldn’t you--couldn’t you just not say anything, Ned?... Couldn’t you wait until--tomorrow or next month?”

He stopped a smoke-ring in the act of being launched and looked at her searchingly. She was staring up at him with distress in her brown eyes.

“Why, what’s the matter, old girl?” he inquired solicitously. “I don’t believe you’re feeling fit, today. If you say so, I’ll cut out.” He arose, but she still sat watching him. “Awfully sorry if I’ve blundered around here when--I might have noticed you were not working today. Of course, I wanted to talk this thing out with you. It’s got to be done--and mighty soon, I can tell you. But, if you think the other way, why, I’ll just drop it for awhile.... But gee! I did so hope I could get this thing settled....”

“I think I know what you are going to say, Ned,” she arose, too. “And I’m going to let you say it. I couldn’t make up my mind until this minute. You are right; it must be settled now. It wouldn’t be fair to you to wait another day.... Go on.”

“Don’t see how you knew,” he wondered, “unless Bea told you.”

“Bea? Bea Wilcox?”

“Yes,” he went on hurriedly. “It’s the fraternity pin. I’ve got to let the cat out of the bag, I suppose. It’s a dead secret yet. Bea and I have about agreed to--uh--make it up. Uh--you know what I mean. Been keeping it rather dark, of course. She hasn’t quite come over yet.... She doesn’t seem to understand about the ‘frat’ pin.... Thinks it means a lot of nonsense. I offered her another, but she won’t take it. Says a girl who wears a man’s ‘frat’ pin is as good as engaged to him, and all that sort of stuff. What I want to know is--oh, this is a rotten thing to have to say--what I thought was that you wouldn’t mind giving it back and sort o’ explain things to Bea. She got real nasty over it, flared up and--what’s the matter? By George! You _are_ ill; aren’t you? Shan’t I send for somebody or something?”

Gorgas was on the settle, her face buried in her hands, and laughing hysterically. Gasps and volleys of laughter followed in quick succession.

“Oh, Neddie!” she cried, “you’ve played a cracker-jack joke on me. Oh! oh!” she breathed hard in the endeavor to recover. “You’ve given me--a--pain on the inside.... I thought--good heavens, will I ever get over this!” She sat up with an effort and dried her laughing eyes. “I thought all the time it was me you wanted! You looked so silly ... and ... mooney ... and I was ready to give you the mitten.... I think I was. You got me so flabbergasted and sentimental, I don’t know what I’d have done. It made me so sorry for you I was almost ready to cry ... and now....” she went off again. “I’ll get a bad cold from this,” she sniffed at a ball of handkerchief. “Oh, boy, I haven’t been so upset and turned about for a dog’s age.... And how in the name of scandal have you kept this affair so dark? I see Bea every other day and she hasn’t blinked an eyelash. The she-fox! I’ll have her scalp for this.”

Morris did not join in the merriment. He grinned occasionally, but it was a forced grimace. He was looking at Gorgas and making contrasts. Gorgas had always seemed just a good chum, but suddenly she seemed to have put on sex. To add to the humor, he tried clumsily to make excuses for not thinking of her in a more complimentary way. Bea _was_ rather stormy and unreasonable. And Gorgas was growing more stunning every day. Doubts began to assail him.

“Don’t look at me that way, Ned,” she expostulated, still shaken by flurries of merriment. “That’s what fooled me lately. That moonstruck gaze! Oh! You should save them for Bea. No! On second thought you had better shoot them all at me.... Bea _might_ change her mind.... Now! I feel better.”

She was touching her eyes quietly, and Morris was standing above her looking down thoughtfully, when Bardek poked a cautious head in the door. Seeing all quiet, he attempted to steal across the room to the corner where he kept a bludgeon of a stick, which he loved to carry with him on his walks.

Gorgas caught him in the act of skipping through the door.

“Come back here, you truant,” she called.

He looked in, smiling knowingly.

“All settled up?” he inquired mildly.

“Yes,” Gorgas smiled back. “Everything O. K.”

“O. K.,” he hummed. “So he bunt? Eh?”

Nobody answered.

“When you take you’ w’ite-wash house, eh?”

“But he didn’t bunt, Bardek,” she laughed mischievously.

“Not bunt? Then why everyt’ing--O. K.?” he demanded.

“No, Bardek,” she explained. “You see, it was this way. I played in for a bunt--”

“You played in for a bunt? You! I see that--”

“But instead of bunting, he biffed one on the nose--”

“Biffed? On the nose? _Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?_”

“Yes, on the nose for a homer.”

Bardek’s face was blank.

“In other words, Bardek--”

“I _hope_ you have the other words,” he said helplessly.

“We can’t agree on that white-wash business, Neddie and I. So, it’s all off. Game postponed on account of previous engagement.”

“Phoo-ee! but how glad I am! Pos’pone!” Bardek stamped his stick on the floor. “How glad I am! First I thought I was happy, and then I found out when I walk through the woods that it was not happiness. I say, ‘It is not happiness, then what is it? Something like happiness; it make me laugh and jump and cry and feel hot and cold and glad and sick.’ Then I find out. It comes to me. It is not happiness I feel. It is misery. You--nice, clean you--to go off and give up to small boy like little Neddie here who don’t know nothing. I come back; I think, maybe if I see him first I can make him understand that he mus’ wait till he grow up and have mind. He smoke cigarette, vairy good. He sit down, nah-eese; he read book, oh, not bad--but he not real man wit’ arteries and muscles and hot forge-fires down inside. He jus’ littl’ puppy that play wit’ tail.... But I come back and all is lovely.... Now!” he seized his smudgy blouse, “I can work!”

He snatched his hammer and bent to his delicate task. Meanwhile, Gorgas was entering into the plot to satisfy the tyrannic Bea.

But Morris took a new tack. He wasn’t sure now that he wanted the old pin back. Girls shouldn’t be so domineering. They needed lessons, sometimes.

“You’ve upset me, Gorgas,” confessed Morris. “I’m just finding out what a lot I think of you.... Bea and I--well, we’re not so sure, either of us. I--perhaps--”

“Say!” called Bardek. “What you mean by zat ‘home-run’; eh?”

“Just you watch Ned Morris,” she replied, looking at Ned with the compelling face of a determined mother. “If he doesn’t make one without so much as another word I’ll call strikes on him.... One! Two--”

“I’m off,” laughed Ned, but he swung his hand and wafted a suspicious-looking salute at her.

* * * * *

“Now for work,” said Gorgas firmly, donning her apron.

But instead, she looked out of the window at the robins frantically building their nests. One set was at work just above in the eaves. Most interesting chaps; so energetic and serious. The silence in the shop caught her attention. She turned around. Bardek, too, was leaning over his bench and staring at the greening world outside.

He turned swiftly and met her gaze. One deprecatory glance he tossed toward the idle work-bench and then a meaningful sweep toward all of outdoors. They both stood silent, stirred by the invitation of the morning; and they laughed like guilty children about to slip away from school.

Suddenly he spread out his hands and broke into vehement Italian.

“The mother is calling all her little children,” he protested. “Wise old Demeter is leaning over the edge of the black pit of Hell-mouth, talking love talk to her daughter Proserpina, who comes forth with garlands and sprigs of little blossoming things and all the breezes of spring. Come, _Proserpina mia_! Let us do a bacchanal in the white sunlight, push through branch and briar, and loaf on the bare earth and sing the song of the hour!... Come!”

“Come?” she echoed. “Let someone try to stop me. Wait! Just wait till I change this clumsy skirt.” Into a capacious closet she shut herself and in half a minute sprang forth. “_Comme ça!_” she fell into the familiar French. “We’re off! I feel so healthy and strong that I could run a dozen miles without taking a long breath.”

“And I,” cried Bardek, back into French. “I? With one little jump--so!--I could hop over the stars! Come!”

He tucked her arm in his and marched out, singing of _Le Roi D’ Yvetot_, that jolly old king who lived in a mud hut, went to bed early, and got up late, who didn’t care a fippence for fame or reputation; his crown was a cotton cap and his sole bodyguard a lazy hound.

Through the orchard they trudged, both joining in the laughing chorus,

Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
Quel bon petit roi c’était là là! là!
Oh! oh! oh! oh ah! ah! ah! ah!
Quel bon petit roi c’était là là! là!

XVIII

A PARABLE OF IGNORANCE

That night Gorgas wrote a long letter to Allen Blynn. It was so unlike the usual stilted newsletters that it made him wonder. The transition between childlike scraps of information and a flowing, spirited communication, was absolutely abrupt, as if she had been holding herself back all this while--as in reality she had done--assuming a naïveté not natural. This letter was a splendid personal outpouring; it did not contain a single reference to the doings of social Mount Airyites.

The theme was, Woman and her desire to be a free, untrammeled spirit, to express herself in work and play, to let develop whatever was within, not caring what happens. She wished she had the courage to give herself free rein, she told him, to be able not to care about the opinions of others, a crushing force, and so find out what were her possibilities. All personal development, all development of peoples, is a revolt and a demand for the right to grow. It is they who “give in” who eventually give up and become stamped with the mark of a caste. One must have room to expand, even if one smashes the receptacle which holds things together. In such broad generalization she summed up her view.

Her own character, she knew, had been made by her little rebellions. Bardek had taught her the meaning of freedom; but she lacked his courage to be really herself. “You don’t know what you have in there,” he would often say, tapping his heart and his head. “Only God knows, who gave you great forces to use.” She was seventeen and thoroughly matured, she admitted, yet custom hardly sanctioned even her apparel. What she had achieved in that department was won by fighting; and it was a fact, she bore witness in every daily movement, that until she had boldly adopted the costume of womanhood she had not been able to think the thoughts of woman. So small a thing as inches on a skirt influenced mightily one’s very thinking. How strange was that; but how much more powerful were other restrictions. Until one accepted freedom and moved forward, there was a stoppage of mental growth.

Many things she would like to do but dared not. At this moment, if she had the courage, she told him, she would slip into a travelling-gown, pack a bag, and take a sleeper for Holden. In the morning she would go straight to her _capitaine_, Allen Blynn, have breakfast with him and spend the day talking anything that chose to come into their heads, and read poetry, and let the world slip. The spring air had done this thing to her--she knew that; but why should one resist the call of spring. Cherry blossoms did not resist. Neither did the veriest worms. All night long Birchall’s dog had barked his delight. Why shouldn’t he? He didn’t consider, “Gorgas Levering is trying to sleep; I should not do this natural thing; I will resist the overpowering temptation to yowl.” If he did he would cease to be a dog. Next spring it would be easier for him to shut up; and in a few years he would move into a porch-house and be writing essays on the immorality of any barking whatever. By that time he would be wearing piccadilly collars and eye-glasses.

Some day she would break loose and express herself. She had done so in a number of small things. Phew! How the good mater would carry on if she knew!

For illustration, Gorgas gave a sketchy account of her holiday with Bardek. They had tramped across country to Chestnut Hill, and up the Whitemarsh Valley, where in a thick of young willows by the upper reaches of the Wissahickon they had struck camp. They built a fire and had luscious broiled chicken empaled on sticks--Bardek had negotiated for the chickens at a near-by farm house. For hours they lolled on the ground, Bardek’s thick coat serving as a protection from the damp earth, stirred the fire, and talked themselves out. They should have started for home, of course, but it was Gorgas who declined to go back, and Bardek had consoled himself with the sight of an occasional puffing train off beyond the trees; when they willed they could whisk back to Mount Airy in a half-hour or less.

Then, as the warm sun was slanting warningly toward the west, Gorgas, prowling among the willows, came upon an amateur spring-board disclosing a swimming-hole, shut in from all the world. The day was exceptionally warm, but when she shouted with delight and invited him to dare her to dive in, Bardek was wise enough to know the dangerous deception in the day and season, and ordered her most thunderously to do no such thing. And therein Bardek was not wise at all. She would not be ordered about by anyone, she had retorted angrily; she would do as she pleased; and when he strode forward, talking the while as if he were disciplining one of his youngsters, she plunged in. And just to show that she was master of herself, she had swum about deliberately in the tingling water until he changed his tone and pleaded with her to come out.

That, of course, put trains out of the question. The miles to Mount Airy must be walked, and at a good pace, too. The stimulating chill of that water she recorded as one of the most satisfying shocks of her young experience; and the swift tramp homeward on an exquisitely warm April night was altogether good.

Bardek, mindful of added trouble to Gorgas if the Leverings should glimpse him, discreetly dropped out at his white-washed cottage; so to Gorgas it was left to face the family alone. It was close to midnight. The Levering household was awake and watching, one might be sure, and full of silly speculation.

There was a row, of course; but not a word of explanation from Gorgas. She answered questions with tantalizing vagueness, foraged for food and ate hungrily, but only stared like Ophelia at their admonitory speeches.

Presently they noticed her closer resemblance to Ophelia, the damp hair, and presented the theory that she had fallen into the water. The thought of swimming in April did not occur to them. As that drew sympathy and a cessation of fault-finding she affected a clever shiver or two and was put to bed with much solicitude and a comforting drink of hot lemonade. At this hour she was presumed to be sleeping.

What good would explanations have done? She asked Blynn. The net result had been good, physically, mentally and spiritually good. She had let loose struggling feeling and had the fine bounding recompense that always comes when mother nature says, Give. To tell the bare facts would be to tell a sort of untruth; certain persons--the plaster-of-paris sort--are incapable of receiving; preconceived notions of conduct have “set” them forever.

Even this long letter, now coming to an abrupt close, was helpful and right. Nature had not said, Sleep--although she was saying it now, and mighty strong, too--but she had said, Give; write; tell Allen Blynn. And if Allen Blynn would mail his letters before ten o’clock at night Gorgas Levering would be the first to claim them in the morning. Spying over one’s letters would be the next thing to take up with the family!

Allen Blynn’s reply was dispatched immediately and strictly according to mailing directions. It was in long-hand, a tacit sign hereafter of the distinction between public and private readings.

The theme of his letter was freedom. To be free--that was the history of all human conflict and the goal of civilization. He was with her so thoroughly in her attempt to be herself that she glowed with the spirit of vindicated right. Here was an “authority” giving her that necessary courage so much needed by those who fight alone.

That was distinctly Blynn’s way with children, to start with agreement, gain loyalty, divert the terrific force of opposition--a pedagogic jiu-jitsu which turned all the energies his way.

“But here we come to a puzzle,” he went on, “which nobody yet has satisfactorily solved. Obey your instincts? All right. It is a great principle. But which instincts? The instinct to assert the best that is in us? Oh, yes, indeed. The instinct to be strong, to produce worthily, to live without mental or physical pain? Undoubtedly. But should we give play to other instincts, too, equally natural and equally struggling to express themselves; the instinct to kill, for instance; to grovel; to run away; to save one’s skin at the expense of one’s ideas; to be unclean; to be slothful; diseased; to sneak and lie and bear false witness? I am not mentioning the worst ones, but if you were a man I could. No doubt you are old enough to have heard of some. In other words, there is a war among our most natural desires, and the game is to him who exercises the high, and atrophies the base in us. That’s the old quarrel over good and evil, the archangel of the Lord against Lucifer and his demons.

“Whenever I feel most the desire to ‘break loose,’ as you say, and have my momentary will, I think of certain creatures about me who have tried that game to the full,--the blear-eyed wretches who sun themselves in the parks or nod and drowse in the reading-rooms of the public libraries; and of that hunted-looking crew of hideous women who prowl the streets in ones and twos after nightfall. All of these were young and fair once, and laughed, and felt the call to be themselves. Think of it!

“How can you judge where your desire will lead? The child would eat nothing but ice cream and cake. Some forlorn little kiddies, whom I meet in my journeys through the city, have been allowed to have their will. I see them satisfying their natural hunger craving while mothers look on complacently and permit the growth of a brood of malnutritioned youngsters. We wiser folks, passing by, we know the end. We are like prophets foreseeing calamity.

“Well, what is to guide us? Wisdom. And how shall we know wisdom? That is hard, I admit; but some of it is found in the curbs and restrictions of society. The very repressions that gall you may be the law that keeps you from eventual destruction. Society is not always right, not by a jugful, and revolutionists there must be to amend and abolish. But one must have care. For the ancient régime one might unwittingly substitute The Terror.

“Your letter has inspired me to write a parable. Half the morning I have been toiling over it, shaping and reshaping the phrases--is there any exercise more delightful! I have added to my joy by trying to put it into the stately English of Elizabeth, which even at its worst is touched with subtle beauty. It doesn’t satisfy just yet, so I shall wait.

“The title is clear to me. ‘Ignorance.’ No one should feel hurt by the accusation of ignorance; it is the common mortal possession.

“Before I close I must tell you more of my great mystery, ‘The Lady of the Interruption.’”

After one has been very serious with children, he knew, it is always prudent to shift the topic abruptly, as if all that has been said has no personal application whatever.

“She is present quite often at my extension lectures. Once or twice I have seen her distinctly, and have learned to look for my cues by her nods of approval or her smiling disdain. So far, she has not ‘interrupted’; but I am ready any moment. After the lecture we open the question-box and have a fifteen minute rapid answering of queries. Lately she has been asking questions, which, needless to say, I do not read aloud. Here is one.

“‘Don’t you think that a professor of English should take as much
care in purchasing wearing apparel as he does in the selection of
his phrases? Or do you believe that a hump at the back of the coat
is essential to professional dignity; or that a white waistcoat for
evening wear would be too undemocratic in a republic?’

“She has been hinting several times that my personal appearance could be improved without loss of vocal delivery! Isn’t it the most eccentric thing you ever heard of? And the strangest part of it all is that I enjoy it. I find she is quite right in a number of points. I am a shabby beggar. The total effect has been to send me to a good tailor. Oh, we’re quite spruce, nowadays, I tell you! Her latest question was:

“‘You follow my suggestions, but you do not read my questions aloud.
Be careful, or I shall expose you again.’

“Is she simply odd-brained, or a great humorist? Pray, put your mind to it. I’m tremendously interested.”

It was not difficult for Gorgas to decide about the lady, but she did not write her full conclusions to Allen Blynn; if the lady were mad, there was method in it. What she did write was to inquire more about her appearance. Did she smile or look over-serious? Was she dark or light?