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.