Chapter IX: Book THREE: The Call to be Free (2)

Men are the most artless creatures, she thought; women could take outrageous liberties with them and they never suspect anything. And of all artless men, Allen Blynn was the easiest. He was so chivalrous, so ready to serve. A woman had but to say, “Sit by me and talk,” or, “Spend Wednesday afternoon with me,” and Allen would drop his dearest interest to do the lady’s bidding; and with such flattering attention, too.

The “Lady of the Interruption” was going to needless lengths to capture the services of Allen Blynn, Gorgas thought. How easy to see through her ruse; although one had to admit that she was a daring creature, and intelligent, too. One could not help admiring her supreme nerve. Undoubtedly, she was “expressing herself,” and defying all that same code of society which forbids a young woman to debate in public.

A day or two later a typewritten letter, obviously for family reading, came to Gorgas, containing the simple statement that he thought the Leverings might be interested in the enclosed bit of writing.

A PARABLE OF IGNORANCE

His turban was a strange purple, and his gown was the orange of the
dust of the road; and in his hand he bore no staff but a branch of
wild grape. Although he had travelled far, yet was his face white;
white like those hermits that dwell apart in caves; white was he as
the live white of the growing lily, as the pallor of the moon in
daylight; and the men and women of the city marvelled, for they were
a dark people that worked in the furrows of the earth and lived daily
in the sun.

Now the stranger would have passed on, but they came out from the
gates of their city to gaze upon him. Some stood in the way and
hindered, some touched reverently the hem of his robe, and many
besought him to enter into their houses and stay with them.

But he said unto them, A wanderer have I been all the days of my
manhood and must fare alone; although best of all things I love
friends and companionship. And he would have turned back, even at
the gate of the city, but they pressed him to come among them, if
only for a little while. Friends, they cried, thou shalt have an
abundance; for here everyone worketh with his hands in the fields,
and each is neighbor to another. And he hearkened to them and said
no word, but looked upon them as one with great longing. So he
tarried with them.

And straightway some among them began to toil less in the heat of the
day, and some wove coverings of straw to keep their faces from the
light of the sun; and they said to one another in the market-place,
How beautiful is the whiteness of the face and the hands of him that
stooped to come among us. We are a rough people, dark of skin; from
of old have we toiled with our hands and have lifted up our faces
daily to the burning heavens, and see what it hath profited us. Would
that we were as the holy man is.

Then went some to him in the night and told of their great desire to
be as he. And one who was nearest him said unto him, Tell me, I pray
thee, wherein thy comeliness lieth and wherewith we might be as thou
art. And when they one and all pressed upon him to say wherewith they
might be as he, he smiled and regarded them with great tenderness.

Yet he passed his hands over the faces of those whom he loved, and
blessed them, and, behold, they lost their roughness and became
smooth and fair and of the whiteness of the clouds of heaven.

And one by one to each as he asked he laid his hands upon the brow
and upon the cheek and upon the lips and upon the strong limbs, and
blessed them, and they became as the Wanderer was, and went away
rejoicing at the miracle wrought upon their bodies.

Much honor, they offered him, even silver and jewels; but none of
these would he have save the daily bread and wine, claiming only
their friendliness.

And when the day came that he had set for his departure, there was
much sorrow, so that the Wanderer tarried longer. And again and
again was the day put off until he had sojourned with them a full
twelfth-month. The day of his coming they named for a holy day and
the year of that day they celebrated with feasting and thanksgiving,
for now few of them were not fair.

But on the evening of that day the Wanderer fell ill; and he called
about him those who had been chiefly his companions, and said, I am
to die. But they cried aloud that it could not be; that they whom he
had comforted would comfort him also; that as he had ministered unto
them so would they to him. Of a surety, they said, he would live to
be strong again and, in the fullness of time, see age come with honor.

But he answered, I am to die. I am to die, he said, and turned his
face quietly to the wall, quietly as of one who had finished a good
task and was content.

Thereupon they besought him to tell them what they might do to save
him, to which of his gods they might pray and offer sacrifice. And
he turned and answered. Of all earthly things, best loved I friends
and companionship. These ye have given me in abundance. Yet am I to
die; for surely ye have known all this while, as ye turned me from
my journey and led me through the gates of your city, as ye gave me
of the bread and wine, as ye visited me and comforted me daily with
friendliness; surely ye knew as ye begged the secret of my comeliness
and bade me lay my hands upon thy brow, thy cheek, your lips and your
strong limbs, surely ye knew: I am a leper.

XIX

TOBOGGANING

Ned Morris’ behavior toward Gorgas underwent a decided change. His tone grew discreet and secretive and intimate; he seemed forever smirking, as if charged with unexpressed humor, the possessor of a private joke.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” he would whisper his greeting, although it might be evening.

And she would look up from her work with equal appreciation of the common jest and remark, “Merry Christmas, pretty boy,” but go on with her work.

When others were present he gave no sign, but so soon as the two were alone he hovered near, playing the open swain, but purely a dramatic rôle. It was very amusing. Gorgas liked the drama and the spirit in which it was played.

As she hammered he would sing an air from the new Robin Hood, “Churning, churning, churning, all the live-long day,” and act beautifully the tipsy sheriff of Nottingham. Or he would plead with mock mournfulness, “Oh, promise me that some day you and I will take our love together ’neath some sky,” and so forth.

Dangerous topics kept coming to the fore in their conversation, dangerous with stirring April in the pulse of things, and two healthy youngsters alone together. Ned seemed to have ample afternoons to give. He was third year medical school, which should have meant work, but he claimed to have everything “stowed away” for the May finals. At any rate, the spring recess was near at hand; he could “plug up” then.

They tried out the courts on fine days. The ground was still soft, but by dint of much rolling they managed to get some practice; most of the time, however, they sat on the bench in the sun, and, warmly wrapped in woolens, breathed the exquisite air and talked. He grew dexterous in putting sleeves into coats, playing gentleman-in-waiting, and while ordinarily she resented anyone touching her, she found herself enjoying these little signs of fond care of her.

He had been smoothing out a collar and tucking a “sweater” snugly back of her ears, carefully brushing away the hair, and tapping each little ear jokingly. Meanwhile he had drawn out a log for her feet and with the aid of a steamer-rug had tucked her in comfortably.

“I feel like a mummy,” she laughed, and bathed contentedly in the warm sun.

“You look like a seraph,” he eyed her critically.

“Seraphs don’t have feet,” she corrected.

“What!” he exclaimed. “Don’t tell me that! Nor little, fat, brown ears, either?”

“Nope.”

“Nor crinkly, brown hair what won’t stay fixed?” he deftly put back a fluttering strand.

“Nope.”

“Nor soft, mellow voices what sez ‘nope’?”

“Nope; they always toot through trumpets--or is it shawms?”

“Well, I’ll be dinged!” he swore.

“You’re quite likely to be.”

“All right,” cheerfully, “let’s be dinged together? Eh? What y’say?”

“Mebbe; how do you begin?”

“_Facilis descensus Averni_,” he suggested.

“Talk a language I understand,” but she quite understood that stale Latin quotation, “Easy is the road down.”

“That is to say,” Morris cast about for a translation. “‘Let her go, Gallagher, and boomp! you’re at the bottom!’ Let’s--uh--let’s toboggan?”

He slipped a hand under the steamer-rug and grasped her wrist.

She considered for a moment or two, but she gave no answering touch.

“You’re dead cold,” he withdrew and chirped gaily. “No blood in you. You couldn’t _descensus_ for a cent. What you need is a series of stiff lessons.”

“Isn’t this just jim-dandy,” she murmured, ignoring his talk. “Golly! It’s good sometimes to be just alive.” He grew quiet. “I heard all you said, Neddie. I’m not inattentive. Go on and talk. I like to hear you prattle. But I’m so comforty. I don’t want to think.... And it’s so nice to be taken care of, tucked in, and all that.” She kicked out a foot. “There! It’s out again. Be a good boy and fix the mummy’s legs.”

“And he fixed them up so care-ful-ee,” he sang as he worked, “That now he’s the ruler of the Queen’s nav-ee.”

He smoked and they both lapsed into silence, while his eyes watched her with frank approval.

“Women like to be helpless,” she spoke out the summing up of her thinking. “I always thought I despised those frail beseeching-looking things that hang around like dolls and let men fetch and carry for them. I always did for myself--usually could do it better than any man; but lately, I’ve got a case of the ‘delicates.’ You’re responsible, Neddie; you’ve been taking such delicious care of me that I have succumbed. ‘Let her go, Gallagher and boomp! I’m at the bottom.’ Just tuck in that flapping hair, won’t you? I don’t want to move.”

A dutiful and faithful squire Morris became; and no one thought anything of it. Mrs. Levering frequently came to the “smitty” to watch the work or to chat with Gorgas about little teas and small receptions that kept an informal atmosphere moving in the neighborhood; Gorgas was clever in thinking up original things, decorations and so on. Ned’s presence was accepted as a matter of course. Had he not grown up in the neighborhood, and were not he and Gorgas perpetual tennis partners? But it is doubtful if she ever asked herself even so much as that; her serene assumption of the careful mother had annihilated all thinking on the subject.

“My daughters,” she confessed to a caller who was interested in seeing the “smitty,” “are pretty much about what I planned. It is almost wholly a question of management, I think. For instance, I decided that Keyser should like music. She rebelled, naturally; but I held her to it--my will was the stronger. Now she plays rather nicely, I think; and she’s very grateful, I can tell, for my insistence. Gorgas has been a trial, I must say; but look how she has come around! There was a time when we could hardly have a decent conversation together,” she laughed, “but now we’re quite chums.

“And then there’s that awful question of boys. I have never had the question. For us it just doesn’t exist. My scheme is very simple. I keep a lot of social things going on right at home; the girls have a good time, and I know everything that is happening.”

While Mrs. Levering talked, Ned Morris was saying pretty nothings in Gorgas’ ear.

“It seems to me, young man,” Gorgas told him in a secretive undertone, “that you are making the right speech to the wrong party. Bea Wilcox is the young lady who should have patent rights on that kind of talk. Or have you broken off?”

Ned made a wry face. “Friday nights,” he said, “I pay my addresses to the lady. Mother’s an awful stickler. You have to go home at ten o’clock, the time they unchain the mastiff. Broken off? Not exactly. Sort of mangled. Bea’s nasty lately. Can’t make her out. But this isn’t Bea’s party; I’m talking to your right ear.”

“The right ear is heartily ashamed of you,” she turned completely around. “Try the left ear; it’s not used to you yet.”

So they chatted nonsense and--drifted.

When the mother had gone she brushed him aside and took up a mallet.

“You are keeping me from my work,” she protested, but not with much force.

“Aw; you don’t want to work. You’re just bluffing. How can you pretend to work on days like these?”

Nevertheless, she began a gentle rhythmic tapping.

“‘Churning, churning, churning all the live-long day,’” Ned sang, keeping time to the beats. Leaning over he took hold of the handle, closed his hand over hers, and continued the singing. She joined in the second part, and laughingly enacted the rôle of the milk-maid where the sheriff aims to instruct Guy of Gisbond into the mysteries of courting. The scene ends with the sheriff drawing closer and closer until he turns to implant a kiss on the dairy-maid.

Gorgas ducked half-successfully, and gave the timidest imitation of a slap. In the wrestling that ensued she became somewhat flushed and disheveled, and Ned’s soft collar was wrenched quite buttonless; so that, although the warning of Mrs. Levering and her guest returning gave ample time for a quick recovery of the mallet, it allowed no opportunity for anything else.

“My dear,” the mother’s voice was solicitous, “I’m afraid you’re working too hard this morning. Don’t overdo it. You look positively done up. Don’t you think you had better lie down and rest, dear?”

Gorgas held herself in check and answered properly and dutifully, but volumes of pent-up laughter threatened to explode. The situation was made especially tense by the comic expression of sadness assumed by Morris--it seemed to convey a mountain of sympathy for the hard lot of the workwoman--and by the idiotic smile of sympathy from the stupid guest. Any person with half an eye could have seen that these two young persons had been tussling together.

Only the severest restraint held them in check until Mrs. Levering had piloted her visitor out of the “smitty” and into the front garden. Then the two culprits sprawled on the work-bench and laughed themselves into hiccoughs.

“What fools these elderly mortals be,” was Morris’ comment, on partial recovery. “They don’t know a hawk from a hand organ. ‘Oh, Gorgie, deah,’” he mimicked. “‘Are you suah you are not working too hahd?’”

When Bardek came in an hour later he found Gorgas and Ned sitting together on the big settle. Gorgas had her sleeve turned back and a handkerchief bound to her arm. He gave one careful look at them, walked quickly over to Gorgas’ bench, inspected the progress made, and softly whistled.

“We’re discussing important matters, Bardek,” Gorgas explained. The sly twinkle in his eye was not to be endured passively. “Ned’s telling me about his medical courses.”

Bardek whistled a strange, unfinished bar.

“Tell it to t’e marines,” he nodded significantly.

“Honest, Bardek,” Ned assured him. “I was showing her how we bandage in emergencies without proper material at hand.”

“Rats!” Bardek exulted at his ability to use the prevailing lingo. A moment later, he added, “If Miss Gorgas ever finish zat order,” jerking his arm toward her bench, “Neddie must soon make ’not’er home-run, eh?”

“Hug the bag; pitcher’s got the ball!” Morris retorted.

“Look out for a steal!” put in Gorgas over her shoulder.

“There he goes!” shouted Ned. “Slide! slide!... Safe by a mile!”

“Somebody coach third,” called Gorgas.

“Vairy good,” agreed Bardek, who was quite aware that all this nonsense was aimed at him. “Vairy good. That talk I do not know; but I know some t’ings.” He marched toward the door. “I not so _beeg_ a fool to stand around and stop nice little boy-girl love-making. _Je n’aime pas à faire le fâcheux troisieme._ I know when three is one too many! _Au revoir, les enfants!_” and he was gone.

The effect was sobering.

“The blithering fool!” ejaculated Gorgas.

Off in the distance they could hear Bardek singing lustily.

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

“Oh, he’s a wise boy, all right,” commented Ned. “_He_ knows a hawk from a hand organ, O. K.”

“Hush!” Gorgas shook a finger under his nose. “That’s not the proper way to talk. We’re not--”

“Aren’t we?... Then let’s!”

She tried to gather her thoughts together. If this had been almost any other man, some chap she didn’t know like a brother, she would have sent him about his business instanter. But Ned was such a familiar figure, like a bit of accustomed furniture. One was so thoroughly used to him and his nonsense that much could be allowed without offence. Her mind would not face the real situation, however; it fought away from it for fear of stopping things.

Love-making? Nonsense.... What was it, then?... Oh, bother! Don’t think about it. Just let things go. “Let her go, Gallagher! and boomp! we’re at the bottom.”

There was nothing wrong in just drifting comfortably through new experiences. Ned didn’t mean anything. He was as good as engaged to Bea. But was this fair to Bea?... Oh, shucks! Why take up disagreeable topics?... Hang Bardek, anyway.... He spoilt all the fun.... It made them both self-conscious.

Ned was sitting on the arm of the settle, affecting to smooth out the bandage on her arm, but she knew he was not doing that at all. She was leaning against him. Perhaps she ought to get up and clear him out. But she did no such thing. It was very comforty, there.

It was more than comforty; of that she became aware when his head leaned over quietly and his face pressed against her temples. She could feel his hand tremble, and she knew that her face was burning with the touch of his.

She did not move away, but she said quietly, “Why do you do this, Ned? It isn’t right, and you know it.”

“Why?” his voice shook.

“There’s Bea.”

“Oh, Bea’s all right,” he parried.

“Are you going to marry Bea?”

“Oh, I guess so; forget it. Let’s--let’s just toboggan.”

She closed her eyes and let the thrill of the contact suffuse her.

“But you don’t care--” she struggled to see the thing straight.

“_Don’t_ I?”

“And neither do I. We’re just good friends, like brother and sister. And we’re letting something get hold of us and make us wild.”

“All right. Let her go, Gallagher--” he chuckled.

“But how can we? It isn’t--love-making at all!... What is it?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. I didn’t invent this thing.... We’re just human, I suppose.”

Mrs. Levering’s voice could be heard calling for Mac. The two riotous young hearts beat violently at the sudden thought of detection; but they did not stir.

Fear shook her; if the mother had quietly opened the door before them and stared, in combined astonishment and indignation, Gorgas felt that she should be unable to get up. It was the sensation of dreams where we are about to be devoured by some hideous beast, yet can neither cry out nor move.

“Suppose mother should walk in that door!” she whispered. “That’s the way she always comes--from the house.”

“It’s locked,” he whispered back. There was no cause for the lower voice, save sheer excitement.

After a moment she asked, “How do you know?”

“I locked it myself.”

“When?”

“When she went out.... I slipped the bolt.... Let’s forget about it.”

From her silence he caught the need of making some defense.

“Maybe it isn’t love-making,” he argued. “I think it isn’t, myself. It’s a fair exchange, and therefore robs nobody.”

She did not move away, but she had not surrendered. Off in the depths of her mind something was striving to be heard. It seemed like long strings of sentences, too far off to be deciphered, marching, marching, in an undulating line over hill and valley, hurrying to her aid. She smiled as she recalled Mark Twain’s picture of the German language sprawling in that same fashion with a separable verb tacked on the end.

“I didn’t mean to do this,” he poured in her ear. “It was not in my thoughts until you put it there that day you and I talked about the ‘frat’ pin. Since then I have been aching to--do this. It’s nature. It’s just instinct, I suppose.”

Instinct! That was it. The marching line of words came clearly into view now. “There are good instincts and bad instincts,” it shouted at her. “Which will you have? Take your choice. The archangel of the Lord offers you one; Lucifer and his demons offer you another. Choose; and be exalted or forever damned.”

She twisted his arms from around her and got up.

“We’re both a little mad, I think.” She steadied herself and looked away from his eager eyes. “This won’t do. No!” She faced him and pushed him away. “Stop it, I tell you. I’m awake now. For a minute or two I was drunk.... What a storm you raised in me, Neddie Morris!... Oof! Let’s get out of here and breathe some air. I’m suffocated.”

For the remainder of that day she was obdurate. He was not permitted to touch her. Eventually he became bitter, tried unsuccessfully to quarrel with her, and finally left her in a huff.

And she was not ashamed. That was the oddest consequence, she thought. There was nothing, then, to tell her whether this instinct was a good or a bad one. It had seemed so right and natural, and--this she reluctantly confessed--it had been absolutely satisfactory.

She recalled the eager people who begged of the pale stranger to sojourn with them. How beautiful he must have appeared to them, just as this first experience was beautiful. Ignorance of the obvious had blinded their eyes as it now blinded hers. Leprosy! Hideous! But the “tobogganing,” what else did it lead to? She knew enough of her sisterhood to be aware of the wages eventually paid.

Almost the last touch of girlhood went from her that hour. Maturity lurked in her eyes as never before; in her step and carriage, even in the tones of her voice. The last trace of awkwardness in gait and speech disappeared, vanished suddenly. The ship had found herself and was surging through the tossing seas. Slight as the experience had been, it had not been slight in its effects. It gave her a kind of pride, as of one who had achieved something; and,--what strange thoughts go packed together!--it filled her with understanding sympathy for all wayward women. From that hour, another odd result, she became her mother’s intimate and friend. There were no more “rows”; and, so inconsistent a thing is memory, no one seemed to remember that Gorgas had ever been a difficult problem in the family.

And Ned? After a few days he adjusted himself to the changed situation; and, man-like, forgot that it had occurred. His medical studies began to pull him--when one interest is out, others always take its place--and the old jollity of manner came racing back.

Almost at their next encounter, over which Gorgas had been a little fearful, he met her eagerly with:

“Say, old girl, Bea treats me like a civilized compatriot now. Don’t see what she ever went on a strike for. I hadn’t done anything. Honest! Nothing that I know of. Well, she’s forgiven me for doing nothing and all’s hunky-dory.... She thinks you know. Say, be a good girl and make her tell you. She’s dying to talk it out with you; but she’s afraid. Sort of nervous and shy, you know.... Oh, she’s O. K. and A1, that little girl.”

What comic animals we are, she thought as she searched his eyes and saw there nothing but loyalty to the other woman. Do not the high gods sometimes hold their hands to their faces and smile?...

Let her go, Gallagher, and, boomp! we’re at the bottom....

Surely ye knew.... _I am a leper!_...

What a topic of conversation for Allen Blynn when he comes down for the Easter holidays. How much should she tell? It depended much on what sort of a debate they could manage to have together. Several apocryphal versions she thought out and discarded. The best of them was a hypothetical case of a girl who had confessed. Certainly she would not have the courage to talk the affair out boldly with Allen Blynn. Not that she felt the least guilt, but any telling would, somehow, be unfair to the facts. Who could transmute into puffed vocables the rich data of life? It would be like transposing a cumulus cloud-bank into a major chord. The life and the autobiography are never the same.

When Allen Blynn came she managed to secure a large share of his time; but even the third cousin of the topic was not broached. Her voice fled from all suggestion of anything so personal; possibly because he looked so much older and stronger: his forehead seemed to bulge more, his voice had grown heavier, and new little muscles began to show about his mouth, signs of much public speaking. Instead, she plied him with questions about Holden, with which she felt only a remote interest.

And they talked of the mysterious lady. Blynn grew gay at the thought of her.

“I’m hot on her trail,” he assured her. “When I go for her at the close of the lecture, she slips out. She is always at the end of the hall. And no one knows her. I have questioned dozens of persons who have been sitting near.”

“She watches you, I suppose, while you talk?” Gorgas asked.

“Tremendously! She leans forward and fixes me with her eyes. I think they must be black. Even across a big hall they burn at me.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Shouldn’t you expect it to? But it doesn’t. I get positive strength from her. She is the most attentive person I ever address. Every twist of her head is eloquent; I can catch the register of the value of everything I say. But I must get to know her better. She has ideas; no doubt of that; or I dream she has. And perhaps I am under some obligation to her. Someone has recently presented me with a mighty valuable book. It is a first edition, in good condition, too, of the second series of Bacon’s essays. Of course, I only guess that she sent it. It had my name on the cover, in a script that resembles hers. It was left in my room, too. Someone must have walked in and placed it on the table.... Which reminds me that I have a book for you.”

“Let’s see it.”

“Not until September 10th.”

“My birthday!”

“Yes. It is a first edition, and the only copy made.”

“It must be very valuable,” her eyes opened.

“It is to me. I hope it may be to you. I can tell you this much, I wrote it myself--”

“Oh, splendid! The MS. of a book! I shall be delighted. What a nice kind of present.”

“I hope you will think so,” he rumpled his hair comically. “I’ve put a lot into it--five years. But that’s all I’m going to tell you,” he foresaw her question. “Birthday gifts are secrets.... You won’t tell anybody about it, will you?”

She agreed. What girl does not hug a secret?

“But oh, Allen Blynn, why did you tell me in April? I shall wear myself out thinking-- Is it fiction?” beaming.

“Bless my soul, no!”

“Oh, a book on literature!” mildly enthusiastic.

“No-o.”

“Pedagogy?” mournfully.

“Certainly not!”

“Essays?” brightening up.

“Here, stop this; I’ll be giving it away in a minute. I won’t say another word. Wait.”

May, June, July, August, September; five months of guessing. How delightful--and how wicked!

XX

A CONNOISSEUR OF JOY

Bardek and his family had done astonishingly well with the “boards and plaster” of their white-washed cottage. It had been something more than a novel experience; genuine domestic roots had sprouted and held him. Assisted in emergencies by Mrs. Mac, the young wife fell into the ways of other women with remarkable instinctiveness, and the two babies flourished into rugged boyhood, went to bed like other lads, swam, quarreled and played miniature baseball with the neighbors’ children.

Perhaps the workshop held Bardek more than anything else; but he never ceased to marvel at his own surrender.

“I let myself, I, Bardek,” he would exclaim with comic seriousness, “be tied up like dog with chain.”

But he broke loose many times. Without notice he would be off; the little white cottage would give forth no sounds of singing or scrubbing; the children’s shrill voices would cease. One need not then bother further about Bardek for many days. Perhaps the doors would be closed, but the windows rarely; and often the wash was left flapping on the line. It was Mrs. Mac’s eye that saw that everything was put shipshape after one of these abrupt exoduses.

“It is good to be away,” on his return Bardek would say as he dropped his pack before the door and sniffed at the well-scrubbed pine floors and took in the general clean-up which Mrs. Mac could not refuse to an untidy dwelling. “The kennel gets in the nose; then one must gnaw the rope and be off and get new scents, and so to come back glad to the old. Ah! Nature is a great sweetener and cleaner. Ach! It is good to sit on hard chair! And how strong and fine smell the boards!”

And Mrs. Mac would lean in the doorway and listen to his sighs of satisfaction; and her eyes and her red cheeks would glow with pride.

Bardek would come back with something more than a nostalgia for boards and plaster; splendid orders he would bring for his own special work, and enough for Gorgas to keep her busy and prosperous. After one of these journeys there would be much excitement in the “smitty.” The lamp would burn at night. A clean spot would be cleared, the drawing boards would come down, and design would flourish.

* * * * *

And now once more had Bardek quietly decamped, silently stole away like the Arabs.

His pilgrimage was prolonged far beyond the usual hegira. April became May and May gave place to June, but no intimation came of the Bohemians. Mrs. Mac had time to give the cottage a complete house-cleaning, and Mac put new whitewash everywhere, on the broad boards that made the frame and on all the posts, and on the chicken-houses, and on the long, low fence which encircled the garden. Backed by a perfect mass of green shrubs and trees, and with a mighty Norway maple sheltering all, the little cottage cried out with welcome, but remained vacant.

Gorgas found herself almost helpless without the daily consultations with the master. At first she put things aside unfinished, hoping against an early return, but as the days lengthened into summer and the white cottage remained tenantless, she was forced to work out her problems alone. It was a dreary task, lacking the companionship of that bubbling cosmopolitan. How much he meant to her! Hardly had she realized that before. Just before he left, he had seemed moody and disappointed. She resolved to be kinder to him; to cease having jokes at his expense. Their baseball slang seemed to annoy him; or was he joking, too? One never could tell.

He was rarely angry, but once she had seen the inner ferocity of the man. A group of Italian railway laborers, sauntering by the “smitty” where they had no right to be, had stopped to peer in at the odd spectacle of a girl blowing a forge.

They talked in their own tongue. It was an unfamiliar patois to Gorgas; although she could comprehend their general meaning. Their guttural interrogation changed to amusement; references to the young woman became pointed and finally personal. They saw, far off in the corner, the thick-set man tapping gently at his bench, but they rested secure in what they were accustomed to find an incomprehensible speech. One quiet utterance from a beady-eyed youth, who led the others in the doorway, set the company in gusts of laughter, which was followed by a clatter of attempts to imitate their bold companion.

From the depths of the “smitty” the roaring voice of Bardek was suddenly heard calling upon them in their own tongue to run for their lives. A flying mallet crashed against the door-post and rebounded off to the leader’s shoulder. Almost before they could comprehend the curses hurled at them, the flaming form of Bardek appeared in the doorway, breathing carefully chosen Italian. Blows he rained upon them and kicks, delivered with precision. In terrified rout they scattered, straight through Mac’s perfect garden and over the fence, carrying part of it with them. Had anyone faltered he would probably have been killed.

It was a half-hour before Bardek subsided; and all the while he had bubbled Italian. Finally, little chuckles of deep laughter came in flurries to the surface. The voluble cries and prayers of the retreating Italians he repeated, first with irony, then with full comprehension of their comic possibilities.

“I must have care,” he warned himself. “Inside I am the big, sacred, mad bull of the old Greek, Dionusos. It is foolishness. To roar and kill, and for hot words, little harmless words, puffs of silly wind. For just that a man may give up a great fine life which the good Lord has made.... When I was jus’ a man I bellow like that, in Wien it was, and the man was big, a great Austrian.... We fight, and all for words. He speak against the France, and I have jus’ come from the France, and inside am I all French.” Bardek considered for a moment. “It was a bad day for that big Austrian when he speak against the France.... _Eh bien_, for that I am here!... Well, _le bon Dieu_,” he shrugged, “he it is, not Bardek, who manages.”

But Bardek was not back, even to tease with American slang, Bardek who hovered over her with eloquent eye, who hungered to touch her, to smooth her forehead and grip her to him, but who ever remained aloof, a picture of magnificent restraint. Somehow, she hardly dared touch him herself, she who was so free with the others that came about the “smitty.” The mad bull of the old Greek, Dionusos, seemed sometimes as if it needed only a resting of the hand on the arm to give signal for a wild devouring.

“I am just like his child,” she mused, “and--I must be honest--he is more my father than my father. It is wretched that we can’t show our affection in some human way.... _Nom d’une pipe!_ Why does he not come back!... He must stop this gallivanting; I just can’t stand it.”

One splendid June morning, as she plodded listlessly over her bench, an answer came to her call. It was the familiar voice of two noisy children disputing in French over the possession of the drinking dipper. In the house they heard only German; outside, the speech was French; on the long pilgrimages and on daily prowlings with the father through Cresheim, the language was Italian. The back-yard being undisputed French territory the little Bohemians were “tutoyéing” most belligerently.

“Bardek!” shouted Gorgas. “Bardek!” she cried, and was out of the door and over the white fence.

“Là! là! _là!_ là! mon enfant!” he shouted in reply. “I come; like the _la grande vitesse_, quick I come!”

Into each other’s arms they rushed. He swung her around and kissed her hair and cried over her like a veteran of the war returning safe to his children. Before she could recover, the boys had grabbed her knees, and the ordinarily stolid Lady Bardek had swooped upon her with much bubbling of Hungarian and weepings and wet kissings.

Bardek pulsated language. One would never, never go away again! Oh, it was so good to be home! Never, never, would one go away again; not until the next time--eh, what?--until the soul grew sick with sameness and ran away for the pleasure of coming back. How could one get such joy without the suffering of absence? How do you know what you love until you try for one little while to give it up? The white-faced bald heads who keep, keep, keep; ah! what do they have--nothing. Life is rhythm, not stillness; back and forth, give up and take back, so swing the tides of earth and the bountiful blessings of heaven.

“I,” cried Bardek, striking a pose, “I am the connoisseur of joy. It is not given to the rich to be happy, nor to the poor; both can be very miserable. I have studied and know the secret of living. Here is one of my secrets: When you love most, make it a grand sacrifice; go away; desert; fly for your life from that which gives life, and some day when you are far away, you hear the cry for you, oh! such a pitiful tenderness, it make you weep--inside. Have you loved? Oh, you thought yes. But now you know; never have you believed to love so much. Inside you have been cleaned out, burned dry, made ready to receive the blessing.... Then you come back. Rush fast? Right away? Oh, _non! non! non!_ You wait. You suffer some little more. It is necessary. Soon you cannot rest where you are. But yet you do not rush; you hold fast and slip slow, slow, toward ‘home.’ Exquisite! The passion of going nearer, nearer! Each day the miles on the sign-post say littler and littler. Now it is sixty mile; now it is only forty-t’ree; now it is ten’s and five’s and two’s. You see all the home things, the skies and the grass and the cows and the--ach! _Gott im Himmel_, I cannot say it.... _Ein tousand ein hundred ein und zwanzig!_ I am full of the joy. It is too much!”

Everybody wept gloriously. It was the feast of tears, a celebration of the joy that cometh in the morning. And they laughed and they talked and they ran through the little house and admired and patted and loved and kissed even the clean white crockery.

“You have miss me, eh?” Bardek eyed her with confidence.

Gorgas nodded.

“Ah, my child,” he patted her cheek, “now you know, too.... It was pain, was it not? Ah, yes. It must be. _Qui sait aimer sait mourir._ But ah! what would you give for your suffering? Eh? Nothings! The pain is part of the joy!”

Bardek came back with something more than accumulative joy; he brought cash for work done and orders for more. New York city had evidently been on the route of his travels, for a famous firm of jewelers was on his list. One knew better than to question Bardek either about his journeys or about his past. “Only the old and the foolish chew over again the past,” he would say. “I have been; it is part of me; you see it all in my face, in my talk, in my ‘me’ which is thus transformed: or I have it not. When I grow too feeble to live in the present, then, perhaps, will I live in the past; but more likely will I take then the quick jump into the great future.”

He was eager to go at his planning. The designs were talked over; sketches made, discarded and approved; the material tested and sorted, and the benches cleaned for action.

For several days the “smitty” was too busy for talk, except such business-like conversation as was needed to push the work forward; all copper does not anneal with the same result, nor does all charcoal burn with the same intensity; but after the plate, candlestick, candelabrum or vase had begun to reach a half-recognizable shape, there would be a lull.

“How is that Neddie fellow?” Bardek inquired. “I don’t see him hanging about and making the smile of idleness. More ‘home-run,’ eh?”

She explained that he was busy with his medical courses and, further, that Bea Wilcox had laid claims upon all his surplus time.

“Now, that is so much better,” honest Bardek nodded approval. “He is nice boy; nice, clean boy. I like--when the day’s work is done--to take him on my knee and sing sweet, sleepy songs, _‘Schlaf’, Kindschen, schlaf’,’ und so weiter_.... But he smoke too many cigarette: so he will not grow.”

“He is twenty-two, Bardek,” Gorgas rejoined, but not disclosing in her tone any defense of Morris. “That is five years older than I.”

“You!” Bardek gazed at her. “Ha! You! Little Neddie will never be so old as Miss Gorgas. You take by years? Ah, that such wrong way to make measure. Today the whole world is one day older than yesterday, but is every man of the world just one day older? _Ach, gar nichts!_ There are some who have lived--ah! how they have lived while the slow hours of last night moved away!--and there are some who have made one jump from child to man, and there are some baby-women who have in that little day turned to be mothers of babies, and there are some who have stood just where they are, and others who have gone back from jus’ fool to imbecile. The day, the month, the year, it is nothing. When I would know the age I do not look in the calendar--_ach, nein!_--I look in the eyes. Back of eyes, sprawling out nicely on soft, gray stuff, is _you_! Jus’ there!” he tapped his forehead. “In little children, I have seen, back there, wise old folks--you were jus’ such a little wise one when you first came to me. Your Neddie is jus’ boy--nice, clean, fresh boy. Oh, he will make nice man some day--if he grow up.”

It was difficult to know when Bardek spoke out of his serious opinions or through a desire to stir up his listeners. In English, especially, was he hard to fathom. Sometimes his auditors had laughed at the wrong spot, had taken his most earnest talk as if intended for droll humor. It was not prudent so to do; for then Bardek called on his heavy artillery of irony and satire, and woe betide the weakling who stood before him: the personal blemish of his opponent, moral or physical, which society had agreed to ignore, was trotted out for inspection, caparisoned with many unique beauties of language. To Gorgas, Ned Morris had seemed quite a man; but she deferred questioning Bardek too closely on that point.

Instead, she seemed to shift the subject.

“I envy you your freedom, Bardek,” she sighed. “When you want a thing, you just go and take it. If you want to cut loose you can say, ‘Let her go, Gallagher’ and boomp! you’re at the bottom. It takes courage, I tell you. One has to just stop caring for everybody and what everybody thinks. I can’t. I can’t be free. I’d like to break away and, if I wanted to, eat my breakfast in the middle of Main street--in my bare feet, too; but I couldn’t do it. Not that I care an awful lot about what folks say. It isn’t exactly that; but I’d be scared stiff. I might get as far as Main street with my oatmeal and roll, but my teeth would be chattering so much from fright that I couldn’t get the breakfast down.”

Bardek thought the matter over carefully. Then he eyed her seriously and asked:

“Something in your mind, it troubles you, eh?”

“Oh, no.”

He was not convinced.

“When you have great troubles, tell somebody. Confession is good. That what makes ol’ Mac such a fine man. He is always clean, is ol’ Mac. Every Saturday night he stand in line and think of the bad in him--it is not much, but no matter--then he soon be on his knees to tell the father and when he come out he is all w’ite-wash inside. Ol’ Mac, his mind is not always full of dead matters and ferments and things that go bad. His mind is like my house after Mrs. Mac have come to slop hot soap-water over everyt’ing. I know. Sometimes I, too, go to father and tell him everything.... No troubles, eh?”

“Oh, nothing’s the matter with me, Bardek; that is, nothing worth telling.”

“Very well,” he nodded. “When you make confession you must want to do it. Your inside will tell you it is time when.”

“That’s just what I want to know, Bardek,” she brought him back. “You listen to what the ‘inside’ bids you do, and you never question what the ‘outside’ would say. That’s freedom. I wish I had it.”

He worked for some time at his designing, as if he did not care to discuss the matter further. Occasionally, he looked over his shoulder at her, staring into her eyes as if to see what was within.

“So you would be free?” he asked quietly. “Well, it is easy. But first, you must know what freedom is--and that is hard. I have had many thoughts about freedom and have changed my mind many, many times; and just now I am not so sure as I was three, five, ten year ago. Once I t’ink freedom is ‘do as you please.’ In America you say that so much, ‘I do as I please.’ It is vairy nice. But ‘as I please’ is sometime not nice. For one, two, three minutes, yes. When you jump into nice, cold water and swim when it is yet April, ‘Oh!’ you say, ‘it is fine!’ but the next day you sneeze and for two weeks you have bad cold. That not vairy nice, eh? Now, I think you have not freedom then. You put great chains on you which keep you in house for two weeks when you would please go out. Sometimes it is freedom to be wise and not do ‘as I please.’

“You t’ink to sit in Main street and eat breakfast is freedom. You are right, quite right, if that is what you do want. But also, you want peoples to like you and not to laugh and touch the head and say, ‘What a crazy, silly child!’ You must choose. Well, you find you didn’t want to sit in Main street; not at all. It give you just what you don’t want.

“Life is full of jus’ that. ‘To do as you please,’ yes, that is to be free. But it is so hard to know what will please. You want swim in April spring water? You do not want cold in head? You cannot have both, my child. Freedom is to know what one to take. And who is to tell? It is hard, vairy hard.

“Then there are the other peoples--the great crowd, of them I do not think much--but of vairy few, my wife and those big boys, and you, Miss Gorgas, and of ol’ Mac--well, of them I do care. To keep them happy I must not have somet’ings. I _please_ not to have them. I want them vairy much--oh, vairy much I want them--but so do I want to see the good friends with smiling face. I have freedom--yes--but I lose much. And it is good to lose.”

Gorgas was thinking how similar were the philosophies of Bardek and Allen Blynn, although each expressed his point of view in different ways. Here was an essential agreement on the mystic puzzle of human conduct, and by men who looked upon life from nearly opposite angles. It was as if Puritan and Cavalier, Stoic and Epicurean, Spartan and Athenian had for once settled their eternal quarrel.

“How did you learn all this?” Gorgas asked.

“By much troubles and much pains,” he shook his head. “You get one little cold in head. Ah! That is nothing. You learn so cheap! But I? I have walked in blood.... _Nom d’une pipe!_ how I pay to know so little!”

Whatever were the experiences that Bardek conjured up, it prevented further speech. So they hammered away for the remainder of that morning without further discussion. Occasionally in the pauses she would hear Bardek muttering his _nom d’une pipe!_--a sign of great perturbation.

And she was glad. Clearness had come into her thinking. In her mind now she was certain of the track for a little way ahead. She had asked about freedom because she meant to liberate herself from a great thralldom, but she had feared the consequences; now that she had been taught to face all the choices, all the possible results, she had chosen and was content.

XXI

EVE’S CHOICE

Meanwhile Allen Blynn, packing up his belongings at the end of the term, was far from either decision or content. The faculty of Holden College had divided bitterly on the question of the introduction of “electives.” Nowadays electives are accepted so serenely that one forgets how sinful they were some twenty or more years ago; but we shall not here touch the terrible battle which waged over the contention of the conservatives that a college senior could not hope to be a gentleman unless he had read the “Pseudolus” of Maccius Plautus. It is enough to know that, led by the example of Eliot of Harvard, Blynn had joined the sinful radicals and was openly preaching the “new education.”

This young man, who could be so eloquent with Gorgas Levering on the subject of Conservatism in Private Conduct, found himself an unwilling Public Reformer in Education. In his private thoughts he bound the law rigorously upon himself, but in public he was an impatient radical demanding that Holden College should cease weeping sentimentally over its eighteenth century past and begin to do its duty toward the children of the present year of grace. He did not know that that sort of inconsistency is alarmingly common. A man may be in favor of freedom as regards his country, but not as regards the goings and comings of his wife; a man may love his neighbor as himself on Sundays, yet unmercifully send promissory notes to protest on Mondays.

Naturally the students were solid for the electives and against Maccius Plautus and all his tribe, and with bonfires and shoutings they lauded their spokesman on the faculty. But it was the newspapers that shot the controversy out of its local setting and made it semi-national and glaringly notorious. And it was not all due to the managing of Diccon. Some men are naturally dramatic; all that they do is already good “news”; and once in the headlines it is almost impossible to keep out. Let a lawyer win a scandalous case or a clergyman defy his bishop; for the remainder of his days he cannot so much as visit the zoological garden without having the matter publicly heralded. The papers gave space to the Holden reforms because Blynn was back of them. Blynn could be counted on for spectacular things. “The Lady of the Interruption” had made him a perpetual headliner!

It was a heavy-hearted young man, therefore, who travelled toward Mount Airy the next morning, unable to escape some of the congratulations or to avoid seeing his picture flaring on the inside page of newspapers held by fellow passengers. He assumed the guilty skulk of an embezzling cashier, fearful lest he should find some casual eye comparing him with the photograph. He wondered what dreadful things they had said about him, but dared not read. The newspaper “boys” liked him--all boys did; they showed their affection by writing him up as if he were a pedagogic Luther, and it made him almost ill. “Rumors” of the resignation of President Galt and the election of President Blynn had been heard by the astute scribe. Dear old Rumor, patron saint of reporters!

Diccon did his share in the home town; he wrote beautiful imitation telegrams to his paper, briefly summing up the essential matter in dispute and making out a clear victory for their fellow-townsman, whose call to an important post in another city had been thus so thoroughly justified.