tin-type’ is slang for--for, well, for ‘_Gar nichts._’”
“Not on his tin-type,” Bardek rolled his eyes, to the great amusement
of “Chuck.” “_Nicht auf seiner Photographie!_ It is the language for
peddlers.”
They chatted in mixed English and German for several minutes; at least,
Bardek did; that is, when he wasn’t singing, or teaching “Chuck” some
good colloquial German.
“Uh! _Schweinerei!_” he grunted in smiling disgust. “Chuck” had spat,
American style, at a passing bee. “‘_Schweinerei_,’ my boy, means
‘piggy.’ But the pigs, they do not spit. Only the Americans spit.
Everywhere in America is the sign, ‘Pray, do not spit _here_!’ ‘Pray,
do not spit _there_!’ _Ach, Schweinerei! Vierte Klasse!_ That’s a good
word for you, ‘_Vierte Klasse_!’ I, I am of the _Vierte Klasse_, but I,
I do not yet spit!”
Blynn studied the man before him. The frank, open manner, the voluble
utterance, the great healthy laughter stole into his prejudice and
substituted liking. This is a chap one had to be friends with; yet
Blynn knew that good fellows are not always harmless. There was
something coarse about the man that repelled, the very thing, too, that
attracted: his unspoken egoism, his quiet, outspoken self-satisfaction.
Unconventionality beamed from him; too frequently, Blynn knew, a sign
of selfishness. Would this fellow continue agreeable and jolly under
provocation? It did not seem so. Or if his strong desires met with
obstacle? Law, order, the rules of decent society, these he probably
scoffed at; anything, indeed, that demanded restraint or curbing.
“I tried to talk to you yesterday,” Blynn remarked, “but the horse
wouldn’t have it.”
“Yesterday?” Bardek raised his eyes in inquiry. “The horse would
not?--_Ach!_” he roared, “you it was who--Ho!” he laughed at the
memory. “You say, ‘I cannot _under_stand’ and then you cannot
_up_-stand!” Bardek imitated by a pretence of flopping to the ground at
the syllable “stand.” “I see very well that you could not ‘stand.’ You
could not but sit. And it was something hard, _nicht wahr_, when you
did sit!”
His laughter died out suddenly. “Wait,” he raised a hand. “It was the
Miss Levering you were with? Yes? Excuse. I must see about something.”
He really said, “Som’t’ing,” with just the suggestion of a studied
“th,” but one could never indicate his speech phonetically. Sometimes,
the “th” was clear, sometimes it was a “t,” sometimes a “z” or “d.” His
English varied from right speech to a broken jargon, but always it was
rich and clear. “Wait! I come back, _auf der Stelle_, in one moment.”
The bushes closed in about him. It was as if he had vanished, a fat
satyr of the woods.
After a brief moment of silence his face appeared, and it was eloquent
with welcome.
“You will come into my cave in the woods?” he beckoned, spreading out
the bushes with his high hobnailed boots. “It is not to everyone that
I give the invitation. You have come well recommended--by your faces
and your good talk. You talk German--Dutch, you called it, you little
_Schweinerei_!--Dutch it is not. Dutch is good. I can Dutch, but--this
is my German day. Today, I welcome you as compatriots. Tomorrow,
br-r-r,” scowling beautifully at “Chuck” Williams, “I may be French,”
he glanced quizzically at the sky. “Then, you shall be my national
enemy and I would--‘_Vive la belle France! A bas les All’mands!_’” he
roared, making mimic charges at the delighted “Chuck.”
They were tramping through the thicket as they talked, shouted, and
pantomimed. In a few steps they came upon a cosy clearing.
“_Wilkommen alle!_ Sit down, please!” Bardek pointed to comfortable
rocks.
A small portable tent stretched out before them. At the side, smoke
curled from a rock-oven, which was at the same time a tiny forge.
Bowing before the visitors was an unkempt Frau. She looked forty at
first glance; in a little while she seemed not more than twenty-five.
Twenty was probably nearer her right age. In her arms nestled a rather
overgrown youngster; tugging at her skirts was another.
“My summer house; the lady of the summer house,” Bardek explained
ironically. Then he looked expectantly toward the tent.
“Bist du noch nicht fertig, mein Kindschen?” he called eagerly. “Now
you can come out. Two gentlemen--_entschuldigen!_--one gentleman and
one _Schweinerei_ would make call! Komm’, Liebschen!”
From within a familiar voice responded, but in German: “Just a minute,
Bardek, please.... Now I am ready. _Können die Herr’n raten wer ich
bin?_”
“She would know,” translated Bardek, “if the gentlemen can guess who
she is.”
Without waiting for the guesses, he lifted the flap of the tent.
Gorgas, enclosed head and body in a great green shawl, stepped calmly
out and courtesied.
“Gee! This is great!” “Chuck” found voice for his glee. “It’s a dandy
‘hunky.’” “Hunky” is a boy’s secret hiding place. “I had a tent, once.
Let’s have a tent out here, too, Mr. Blynn. We can live here and
cook,” his greedy eye was devouring the perfect stone oven, “and study
’rithm’tic and things. Can’t we?”
The boy took Gorgas as a matter of course. She was thirteen and a girl;
he was eleven and a boy--those differences represent leagues.
“I heard all you said,” Gorgas informed Blynn. “We often hear people
going by on that path. Your German started Bardek after you. This is
his German day. We--”
“Chuck” was examining things, with Bardek at his side explaining
volubly.
“Do you speak German, too?” Blynn asked incredulously.
“Nur ein wenig,” she replied modestly, but her fine tones told much.
“Besser sprech’ ich fransösisch und italienisch. Ich versteh’--I
understand German, but much better than I speak it. The ‘German days’
don’t come as often as the French days. Bardek is all German today.
Listen to him. His English gets German twists in it today.”
[Illustration: “_It looks almost finished_”]
“Why, it’s quite jolly here.” Blynn seated himself on a comfortable
stone, and assumed the air of a man who had done this sort of thing
every day. “It’s quite a ‘hunky,’ as ‘Chuck’ would call it. I’d like to
live this way myself. What man wouldn’t?”
“I’m so glad you like it,” Gorgas whispered. She leaned over and rested
her arm on his knee. “Chuck” and Bardek were inside the tent. The wife
was grinning at the strangers and singing a gentle lullaby. “We have
fine times here. You’re the first person to come by on that path for
over a week. We sing and talk languages and Bardek tells stories of his
travels. He has been all over the world. Some of them are whoppers,”
she dropped her voice still lower, “but you can tell by his eyes that
he is making them up. And we--oh, wait till I show you my latest.”
She darted into the tent and returned with a disk of hammered copper,
a dinner-plate, partly inlaid along the entire edge with a delicate
silver tracery of a strange Byzantine design. “The holes had to be all
cut out, and the silver filed and fitted. It must exactly fit, you
know, exactly. Bardek scolds if it isn’t right to a millionth of an
inch. It looks almost finished, but there are hours of pounding yet.”
“What is it when it is cooked?” he asked, but his tone showed his
delight with the workmanship.
“Most anything--a cake plate, a serving tray, a card receiver, a fruit
holder--lots of things. But, isn’t it beautiful! Bardek made the
design. I couldn’t do that; but I did all the hammering and annealing
and filed all the silver. Bardek says he may not throw this one away.”
“It’s a beauty!” admitted Blynn. “A jim-dandy! By George, Gorgas, I
certainly do admire this. But how will you ever take it home?”
The shadow of disappointment rested for a moment on her face; then she
seemed to shake it off resolutely.
“He will sell it. It is only practice for me. I am learning. He uses it
to teach me hammer strokes. I made the Varri stroke on that,” pointing
proudly to the hundreds of soft hammer marks, “with the big hammer. It
is not so heavy when you learn how to swing it. If I ever get to know
how--well, I’ll have it in me; no one can take it away. Then I can make
beautiful things wherever I am.... It is mean to have to sell things,
though--give them to people you never see.”
“Yes, indeed,” he touched her hand lightly in understanding. “I know
just how you feel.”
“So!” Bardek pounced upon them. “You are showing it off, eh? It is
good; very, very good.” He said “vairy,” but this word, like others
of his English vocabulary, had many pronunciations. “I am vairy proud
of my pupil. Gorgas--” he emphasized the last syllable as if it were
Gorgasse--“Gorgas is a golden child. She has gifts. You will see,
some day. I have put some of my art into her. That!--the little marks
there!--is harder than it looks! It is the stroke of the best workman
and the biggest miser in Milan, G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri. I stole it from
him. Ho! I go to him and say, ‘Please, Messer G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri, I
am poor, I will carry charcoal and blow your fire and sweep your place
and make the beds and cook you good macaroni and cut up cheeses, if you
will but give me a place to sleep.’
“G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri, he storm and curse; say he have no room for
beggars, and that he will not pay, he will not pay; but his ugly eye
watch me and then he say, ‘Blow that fire, you--’ I will not say what
he have said I am. On my honor, gentlemen and ladies,” saluting, “I am
not that thing that G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri say I have been.
“_Ach, Himmelreiche!_ How I work! I sweat and pull and dig and carry
and--_I watch_! Tip, tip, tappy, tappy, tap--oh, so soft he play music
by his hammer, the great hammer he make those soft touches. And he
fires much, burns and hammers, burns and hammers. In two day I try, and
he near catch me. In t’ree day I say, ‘Goodby, G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri!
Your bed, it is too hard. I will just--skeedaddle! and take with me,
oh, yes, jus’ a leetle somet’ing of a idea in my head.
“Before I leave I make a little gift of farewell: I make his secret
strokes and it comes out a design, a great goose, and the taps on the
wings spell ‘Varri.’
“And now the beautiful Gorgas--I give it to her for what I pay G’sepp’
G’ovan’ Varri, which is t’ gr-r-eat not’ing. If I stole it, well--der
Hehler ist so gut wie der Stehler: the second thief is cousin to t’
first thief.... Ah! she do good! Vairy, vairy good!” He held the work
up and admired it. “Es gibt nicht schöneres, nicht wahr, Kindschen?”
“Oh, it could be better,” protested Gorgas.
“_Wass hör’ ich?_” he affected great sternness. “_Englisch? Sprich’
Deutsch, bitte!_ Look at the heavens; it is today the heavens of
Deutschland. Sprich’ nur Deutsch, bitte!”
“Oh, not German now, Bardek,” she laughingly begged. “Not before Mr.
Blynn and ‘Chuck.’ I couldn’t.”
“_So scheu!_” murmured Bardek admiringly. “So shy and innocent. All
right. We take holiday. We leave Deutschland for America and English.
But,” sadly, “it is t’ one language I do not speak. Only in English am
I foreigner.”
“Not at all,” protested Blynn. “Your English is splendid.”
“Ah!” the flattery touched home. “You are good to say it. But I know.
In Europe I am in my home in every land. The Bohemian knows all
speeches. They have the gift, as you would know many songs, glad ones
and sorrowful. When we are still young we go to countries; it comes
to us. But ah! I did go to England never; only by books did I know
English, and look! Bah! I feel I must spit, like my little Schweinerei
here. Books! They tell all lies. In France, in Germany, in Holland, in
Hungary, in Italy, they would know me for compatriot. In America I am
a barbarian, a pagan, a ‘Gypsy,’ a ‘Dago.’ Ach! English? Ich hab’ eine
schlechte Aussprache. I know! I know!”
For an hour they debated genially. Before the meeting broke up Bardek
dropped on the ground, stretched out full length, propped his head up
with one hand, and lapsed into silence. Questions brought only short
answers.
“It is time to go,” whispered Gorgas. “When he gets tired of people,
he lets them know. Don’t talk to him any more; he has worn himself out
with excitement.”
Gorgas led the way through overhanging branches without a word. “Chuck”
followed. Blynn sought to soften the abrupt exodus by a simple wave of
the hand before he bent low to avoid the briars.
“Kom’ bald wieder,” Bardek grunted. “Sobald als möglich. Come vairy
soon again!” It was a sincere invitation, Gorgas assured them--Bardek
was always himself--and it was a great tribute.
VI
LIBERTÉ, EGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ
They did come soon again. The air was gently from the southwest. There
was a blue summer sky with high lazy clouds.
“Entrez, m’sieurs, mam’zelle!” called Bardek, and rattled on. “Je suis
enchanté de vous voir! I am delighted to see you! Ah! when you were
here last, the weather was gloomy and German--but today! Today the sky
is beautiful and French. _Voici!_” spreading his hands to the heavens,
“_Voici, la France!_”
“Hang up your hat on the hall-rack,” he went on gayly in French. “I am
ravished to see you! _Comment ça va_, Chucks?”
Chucks grinned his lack of comprehension.
“_Comment ça va_, Chucks?” Bardek extended a hand of greeting. “Can
you not speak, Chucks?” he dropped into English. “Can you only spit,
eh? _Pfui!_ ‘_Comment ça va?_’ my Chucks, it is ‘Howd’y.’ But have
care! _Prends attention!_ Pray do not spit. _Ici c’est defendu!_ Here,”
sweeping his hand in a short circle, “here it is beautiful France and
here it is not permitted. Are you yet German, Chucks? Must I fight
you?” he crooked an imaginary gun and stood ready to charge bayonets.
His eyes glared; his bushy eyebrows quivered; his whole body strained
for the word of command. “_Conspuez les All’mands!_” he muttered as
only the French could think that phrase. In a second all that ferocity
had vanished. “_Non?_ You have not yet changed your skin? _Eh bien!_ We
shall keep _l’entente cordiale_. _Vive l’Amérique!_ I shake the hand.”
“Chuck” and Bardek extended hands and wrung an international grip.
“Et mam’zelle?” he turned to Gorgas. “Que veutelle faire aujourd’ hui?
Sit and talk, _hein_?”
“Let me work on my plate, Bardek,” she asked. “I’m excited about that
plate.”
“_Comment!_” he bristled at her English. “The sky, it is all of French!
Aujourd’hui,” flourishing terribly at the sky, “il s’agit de parler
français!”
“Please, Bardek!” she begged. “Not French now; after while; not now.
Please!”
“Comme tu voudras, petite,” he gave in finally. “She will not speak the
French, which she speak like--oh!--like heaven. C’est très curieux!
She is afraid, Mr. Blynn, that you be critic. Ho!” laughed Bardek
frankly. “She need have not the fear. _Pssst!_ Mr. Blynn, he can have
no language but the English. And even so, the little English of a
little town,” pointing off toward the village, “a little town which
goes to sleep on Sundays. It is too late for him. Language, it comes
to children when their ears are open wide to hear the voice of things.
When we grow old, sixteen, twenty, thirty--_malheureusement! Peau du
diable!_--it is too late. The bones in the head, they go thick. So
with all things--after fourteen, fifteen, the mind _est fermé_, closed,
shut up tight.”
Gorgas was searching in the tent for her materials.
“So, I take this child when she _is_ child and teach her. You are
professor, _n’est-ce pas_? Oh! You have my great admiration! You
are--_pardon!_--so great a fool! You think you can teach old men and
old girls who go to the university? How that is comic! Wooden-heads,
they mumble words; they can repeat what you say, yes; but they
can never _do_. To _do_, one must begin in the cradle. You would
be contortionist, juggler, gymnast? Very well, wait until you are
twenty-five! Sh! _Non!_ You laugh? Zen why you try to teach old men of
twenty how to think? It is a great fooling.... Oh, well,” he shrugged,
“zey zink,” he stopped and tried again, “t’hey t’hink they do great
zings--t’ings--_bla!_” he made a wry face. “I cannot say zat ‘th.’ It
is one language for those who stutter, the English.”
Bardek was all French on that day. One could almost believe that he had
really changed his skin. He seemed sleeker, cleaner, even thinner; and
the great mustachios had a glisten to them and a slight waxiness in
the ends. His bearing was more courteous and considerate than on the
“Deutschertag.” A gay kerchief adorned his neck and his turkey-feather
had a jaunty tilt. Even his English had the very flavor of French idiom
and French accent.
While he talked Gorgas brought her plate to a great stone, set up a
lead block, and began to swing a rather large coppersmith’s hammer. She
barely touched the metal as she beat rhythmically back and forth; the
weight of the hammer seemed to disappear, so cleverly did she keep it
moving.
“_V’là!_” pointed Bardek. “That is the stroke of G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri.
_Parfaitment!_ _C’est bon!_ ‘Tap, tap, tippity, tippity, tap, tap!’ It
is music, is it not, _m’sieur_? She has the delicate muscle for that
work. Two year, three year? _Non!_ She will soon set--be woman and
marry and have hundred t’ousand children. Ho!--”
Gorgas looked up at him in grave rebuke.
“Ho! see how she goes red and charming! The little maggots are
running in her brain and making to wake all kind of wonder things and
then--poof!--the school is done and life commence.”
“Chuck” was at her side watching seriously. He plied her with
questions, eager to imitate and, boy-like, quite confident he could do
as well.
“You must have known Gorgas for a long time,” Blynn began. “That work
of hers is really wonderful. How did you find her?”
Bardek squatted on the ground, produced a file, and began to smooth off
bits of sheet silver. He glanced up at Blynn through crinkling eyes.
“You look so stupid,” Bardek threw back his head; “and it is right. You
do not know yet how much it is I know. You do it well, the look of the
fool. Good! Gorgas has taken you for a friend. It is well that you
play fool for her, speak for her, be dumb for her and if it need, lie
for her, make ‘whoppers,’ as she calls t’em, for her. I like you for
that, my friend.
“You would know how she came? Well, she jus’--came. Three year ago she
ride by on ‘Gyp’ and I say ‘H’lo, missy,’ and she say, ‘What are you
doing?’ and I say ‘I make beauty’ and show her something, a small vase,
all of gold and copper. Her eye grow big, so! and she draw back and
say, ‘Are you a gypsy?’ and I say, ‘_Non! non! non!_ T’ousand times
_non!_ I am a Bohemian.’ And she get off her horse, tie him to a tree
and say, ‘Then may I come with you and will you show me how to make
beauty?’
“Zat is all, my friend, and she have been making beauty all the time.
She herself makes beauty,” he looked back at her tenderly, “wherever
she go. She is always serious, always in great thinking. Zey are ze
most beautiful children, the quiet ones. Gigglers? Bah! Comics? Zey
are ordinairy. Her eyes they always look at you like they were so old!
_Elle est très sympathique_, my good friend.
“She learn--ah, how she learn!--_vite!_ _Comme ça!_” he snapped
his fingers. “She take languages like the singing sparrow drinks
at spring water. She would be Bohemian perhaps; her grandfather or
grandmother--who knows? In America everybody must come from Europe! See
her brown face and black hair? Ah! that is often seen in my country. It
is oriental.”
He stopped talking to gaze at her at work.
Blynn took the chance to tell of many things. He sketched in the
mother and the Levering household. He told of schools and all the
business of bringing up young girls to be gay, delicate do-nothings
until some man should be attracted by their frailty and marry them.
Bardek exploded many times. His theories of education for girls were
not the prevailing ones in America. Everybody should learn to work, he
believed. The highest trade of all is that of a maker of beauty. Those
few who can, should have material, tools and infinite leisure. They
were the only aristocrats; and among them there should be no fakirs.
The university doctor may be a fool; he usually is a fool, averred
Bardek; but no one cares; he can do little harm. But with things of
beauty there should be no such trifling. Learning was no great matter;
no scholar has learning enough to reconstruct the broken wing of a
beetle; the world wags very well when learning is asleep. But beauty is
important; one must choose ever between beauty and death.
Those who could not minister to the esthetic needs should take their
turn at the fetching, lifting and carrying, the portering of life. That
is their happiness, their beauty.
“Look at my wife,” he illustrated, nudging toward the tent. “She has
not the skill, the art. Good! But she work, and carry a pack, and do
everything right for the babies; and she is happy, working, working,
working all the day. When she work and I work, we sing songs of Hungary
where she live. That is fine. Woman must not be waxworks! _Sapristi!_
The good Lord has give them a job, my friend. _Nom d’une pipe!_” he
sighed softly. “A big job! It needs zat zey get ready for it.”
In the spaces between Bardek’s speeches Blynn tried to hint of the
trouble that would come to Gorgas if it were known at home how she had
spent her time off in the Cresheim woods.
Bardek was not concerned; when a man is right he does not worry his
head about what others will think. If he had bothered himself over
the opinions of small minds he would have stayed in Hungary and sold
tobacco and postage stamps. No! Liberty is worth paying much for; and
when there is fear of criticism, liberty is dead.
Bah! The fat mother would not know a golden child from a _salade de
tomate_. Doubtless she would scold a little. His wife, she scolds. It
is nothing; it passes off and away like steam in the air. What one has,
one has; all the scoldings of all the little people in the world cannot
alter it; on earth there is no judge but oneself.
“Already,” he said, “the little Gorgas has more than all those
copy-kittens who went to school and sat at wooden desks in the dark
little rooms and listened as nice old ladies tell how to be jus’
waxworks. In her arm, in the ends of all her fingers, in her eye and on
her tongue and in her brain, too, she has beauty, and the power to make
beauty.
“You, you, my friend, have studied in the university. Try it out with
the little Gorgas. What do you know that she does not know better? Do
you know better how high is heaven and how wide are the angels’ wings?
You have studied languages, and you know German--a sort of German,
ho!--and French and Italian, perhaps; and you will always be foreigner
there and a fool: but she, the little Gorgas that I teach, she _is_
German and she _is_ French and she _is_ Italian.”
He stopped his work for a moment to show her how to smooth off the
inlay without disturbing the fine surface of the beaten copper.
“Let us sing for them, my pretty one,” he coaxed in French. “You are
some of the beauty that I have made. I want to show you off, exhibit
you, prove my skill. What shall it be?” He ran through several simple
songs of childhood. Reluctantly she agreed, only to please him as he
knew, and together they sang a lively air. It was about life on the
winding roads, and there was a chorus of jolly tappings which they did
lightly with their hammers.
“That is liberty,” Bardek commented. “In France they have not liberty
except painted on every sign-post. ‘_Liberté, fraternité, equalité!_’
_Là, là, là, là, là!_ It is the great national joke! America? _Non!_
‘The land of the brave,’” he sang nasally in burlesque, “‘and the
ho-o-me of the fre-e-e!’ Ho! that is vairy, vairy comic.” He wiped the
tears of laughter from his eyes. “Very comic! I come to the land of
liberty, ‘the ho-o-me of the free’ and I cannot sell my work without
I get a permit for which I must pay; and in each spot I must have new
one. I cannot live as I please. The people say, ‘_Phieu!_ go away, ugly
man. You have no soul, for you have no stiff white collar. Tie up the
neck with white peekadilly and we give you liberty to live by us!’ I
have not liberty to drink my beer or smoke when I please.