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.