competence, but his life was simple. Ah! Blynn had a swift thought
of comprehension. Leopold was to furnish the salary! That was it.
Wise little Gorgas had thought to dissipate a man’s pride in being
self-supporting by shifting the source of income from a stock-company
to a person! Women will never understand that side of man, he mused;
the fierce hatred of leaning upon another. In illness women are
meek and saintly; when men become sick and incapacitated they grow
unbearable, their maimed spirits cry out against the very charity that
would make them whole. Women live in dependence without shame. They
take furs and carriages and spending money from their fathers. Even
a boy of sixteen begins to rebel. He cannot take things, even from
fathers; he must earn.
Over the sprightly little fire Blynn told them of Diccon.
“You know how mean I felt because I had to leave him in the lurch,” he
said. “Well! Diccon was just fine about it. He said he suspected that
turn of affairs all along and had prepared for it.
“What a loyal chap that Diccon is! He said his only interest was in
having the post officially tendered me; he really didn’t care what I
did with it. He said just what you remarked the other day, that the
election would make my name valuable anywhere else I went. I told him
about ‘Top-o’-the-Hill.’ He said, ‘Bully! It’ll be a great go. Put me
on the trustees, will you?’”
“Let’s!” suggested Gorgas. “I like Diccon. He’s got sense. We haven’t.”
“What!” they shouted.
“We’re dreaming,” she nodded wisely. “We need his kind to prevent us
soaring right up in the air like a balloon and--”
“And go bust, eh?” continued Bardek.
“Just that,” said Gorgas. “We need ballast badly.”
They could hardly eat, these dreamers, until the new idea had been
incorporated. A board of advisers was drawn up to give ballast: it
included Diccon, and the rector of Grace Church, the butter-and-egg
man, others of the tennis-court group, and three influential “mothers.”
“We’ll get out a second edition of the prospectus,” Kate smiled her
satisfaction. “That front page will look slick! We’ll charge ’em two
hundred next year.”
Bardek brought the Italian laborers to the picnic supper. They demurred
mightily at first, but Gorgas won them by a neat speech of invitation
in Italian. How their eyes glistened, not for the good things to eat,
although that must have touched them, but for the sound of that rich
Italian speech.
“They are so hungry for words,” laughed Bardek; “the sound of your own
language in a strange land--ah! that is sweet. One day I pass an ol’
woman wit’ bundle of sticks and she say, ‘Dam t’ose t’ings; t’ey won’t
stay on my ol’ head’; but she say it in Czech, the clicking-clacking
Czech which my mother spoke to me.” He burst into a strange rattle of
exclamations. “That is the sweet Czech, my friends. It sounds not so
sweet to you, eh? No? Your ear it is not right. Suppose you was in the
middle of China and could never go to your home and, quick, you hear
little children wit’ high American voice sing in the evening,
‘Here we go ’round the mulberry bush,
Mulberry bush, mulberry bush,
Here we go ’round the mulberry bush,
So early in the morning.’
“Ach! Gott, would you not cry?
“I did cry and hug that ol’ woman and tell her in her own Czech that
I be long-gone son. And she believe me! I make her say, ‘Dam t’ose
sticks,’ five, ten times and give her silver dollar for each time she
speak. Ach! if she do not go mad after that! Somewhere in America is
a crazy woman, all her life-time singing and shouting, ‘Dam t’ose
sticks!’”
“We’ve caught you at last, Bardek,” Gorgas cried. “You are Czech!
That’s what you are!”
“Oh, no!” he protested. “I am cosmopolitan. My mother, she was Czech
when I was boy; but before t’at she was many t’ings; and after, many
t’ings. I am cosmopolitan,” he claimed again. To Leopold and to Gorgas
he spoke in French, to Blynn he made his remarks in German, and to the
Italians he talked in their own tongue. The very _timbre_ and rhythm of
his voice changed with each language; he had the music of each in his
head.
“Ask Caproni, here,” he boasted, “if I am not Italian.”
Gorgas inquired in their language.
“Him?” their eyes opened in surprise at the question. “Oh, but, yes,
milady. He is grand signor, Italian gentleman. He has lived in Milan,
Napoli, everywhere, even in our own Sicily. Italian? Oh, but yes.
French? You would make fun, milady? He speak French as we in Sicily
speak French; ah! he talk Italian from the heart.”
While Gorgas translated, Bardek sat transfigured.
“You see!” he shook his great, round head in pride.
“And I would take oath you are French,” Leopold remarked quietly. “You
have tones and nuances of the Loire--”
“Oh, yes, I have lived on the Loire,” he admitted, “and also in
Brittany.” For example, he shifted back and forth between the patois of
the north and south of France.
“I say again that I am cosmopolitan,” he averred. “The Bohemian belongs
to all countries. In New York city is a Bohemia which New York city
does not know. There we talk all languages and listen to the pulses
of the world. New York is a little place, full of the small thinkings
of little places. It has great pride and wonderful industry--just
like little places--but of the doings of the great world, it knows
everything too late. Long before the big wars the Bohemia of New York
city knows what is to be, and prepares; one day New York city wake up
and scream the stale news. So wit’ everyt’ing.
“But I should not so talk,” he shook his head sadly. “I am no longer
cosmopolitan.”
They tried for some time to get him to tell them why. At first he would
not speak. Sadness enveloped him. After a while he laughed.
“I am not sorry; it is good,” he said, with characteristic optimism.
“In America one cannot be cosmopolitan, I see. America is too strong,
it sucks t’ blood out. In Europe I could change my skin and still
be--deep--myself, Bardek, Citizen of No Place. Always I could be French
and still look on like foreign; or German or Dutch or Spanish or Polish
or Italian or anyt’ing. Jus’ so I be in America for long time. Zen
somet’ing happen to me. I eat poison grass, or somet’ing. My skin, it
does not change; it gets tough.
“Sometimes when I talk French or Italian to my boys or to Miss Gorgas,
I must stop and t’ink for the word. Me, Bardek, stop to think! It is
terrible, my friend, to have big things bubbling inside and no word at
the mout’! And always the English word, it come. And such English! Ach!
My boys, dey laugh and make fun--when they t’ink I do not look--and
they say, ‘Dago.’ Oof! Sometimes I beat t’em in six languages; but,
sometimes, too, I laugh.... ‘Dago!’ It is so.”
A chorus of protests told him how well he spoke English.
Leopold scolded him for his desponding. “It is thinking that counts, my
dear Bardek,” he said, “not words. Greek is a wonderful language, but
without Plato or Homer and Aesculus or Sophocles and Aristophanes, it
would be a dead instrument. You _think_, my dear Bardek. If you spoke
in Pennsylvania-Dutch you would be worth listening to.”
“And your English is better than English,” spoke up the loyal Gorgas.
“It is softer and lovelier and beautifully strange.”
“Thank you,” he smiled. “I like you to say zat. A good lie, you owe it
to a friend, to make him happy. What! You laugh? But it is not sin to
lie. You do not read your Bible, my friend. To kill? steal? yes. To
bear false witness? yes. But the good Moses was too wise to say, ‘Thou
shalt not lie.’... Yet I am ‘Dago,’ jus’ like dese Italian ol’ men.
“Oh, I know; it is right,” he continued. “The Italian, oh, he will
come to America and he say, ‘I will live like pig and make much money
and go back to my country and live like prince. Yah! He stay wit’ his
own people and talk, talk, talk his own speech. He laugh at funny
Americans. Yah! Soon he must hide his fine clothes of colors and put
on grease-pants and ol’ hat. It is not good to make money when peoples
laugh. Yah! And zen he must learn little English, and he speak ‘Dago,’
jus’ like me. Or how can he make the much money, eh? Yah! To his little
boys and girls he talk ze good language of his own land; but zey? Ach!
Zey will not. In ze house, yes; so not to get ze beatings. But in ze
street, là! là! _là!_ là! Gabble, gabble, gabble. Some day zey make
fun of daddy and wink and say, ‘Dago!’
“And he is ‘Dago.’ Soon he find himself talking ‘Dago’ in house, even
wit’ his wife. Once he fight and beat her and all cry curses--in his
own speech? Ah, no; in ‘Dago.’ He call her ‘Dam dog’ and she say to him
‘Go t’ ’ell!’ and zen he is done. His skin cannot change. All his life
he is not’ing--he is American.”
It was the strong America seizing on the immigrant and twisting him
into a new mold. The children would be Americans, but the old ones,
they were wrecked in the process. The Germans became “Dutchmen”; the
Irish became “Micks”; the Poles became “Hunkies,” and the Italians
“Dagos.”
“But sometimes they go back,” ventured Blynn.
Bardek laughed at the picture his mind conjured.
“Oh, yes, they go back. Là! là! _là!_ là! What a comic! The people of
their own land rush out of t’ house to see t’ funny t’ing. Là! là!
_là!_ là! The dead clot’es of ragman! The gol’ watch-chain for t’ tie
big dog! Zen they talk! It is no language. Perhaps they stay to be
comic all their lives? Ah, no. For they get sick for America, where the
little boys and girls go to school. They do not rest till zey go back
and be once more ‘Dago.’”
The twilight came slowly about them while they lingered over the
camp-fire. Some of Bardek’s brooding spirit had infected them; but
it did not drive them home. Night began to make its claims for a
habitation, and the stars of a fine August evening shone clear, yet
they stayed to hear Leopold talk of his boyhood days at Harrow. Finally
they joined hands with him and formed the circle about the ebbing
fire--as Harrow “old boys” have done for generations--while they sang
the Harrow parting song:
Forty year on, when afar and asunder
Parted are those who are singing today,
When you look back, and forgetfully wonder
What you were like in your work and your play;
Then it may be, there will often come o’er you
Glimpses of notes, like the catch of a song--
Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,
Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along.
Follow up! Follow up! Follow up!
Till the field ring again and again
With the tramp of the twenty-two men.
Follow up! Follow up!
XXVI
THE BIOLOGIST AND THE PURITAN
The solemnity of the parting song had driven Bardek off alone. Allen
and Kate walked along ahead, but at the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, a
dark, forbidding place, Allen insisted upon stopping to wait for Gorgas
and Leopold, who were straggling far in the rear. Fumbling accidentally
in his pockets, Blynn produced his morning mail, two letters, still
unopened. They moved up to the lights of the station to see what it
would disclose. One was from Gorgas--she had a habit of jotting notes
to persons she met every day. He glanced at it hurriedly, but in the
bad light did not catch the full meaning. The other letter set him
dancing.
“Can you spare me for the remainder of the month, Madam Manager, and
part of September?” he asked. His eyes showed good news.
“Is it money?” the practical manager asked first.
“Bushels!” he cried. “Diccon has booked a series of lectures in a
string of cities,” he read, “Rochester, Ithaca, Albany, Providence and
Boston. I cover the route three times, fifteen lectures in five weeks,
at--what do you think? One hundred dollars each and expenses!”
“How much is that altogether?” Kate was figuring.
“I don’t know. I’m so excited, I can’t count. One hundred
apiece--child’s play! I’ve got ’em all done. Isn’t it great! and
isn’t it robbery! ‘Each local center pays three hundred dollars,’ he
read, ‘and expenses, which makes it one hundred dollars per lecture.
I hope this is not too slight an honorarium.’ Golly! Too slight?
Let me confess something, Kate. I don’t take any pennies out of the
cash-drawer of Top-o’-the-Hill. By George! you don’t know how splendid
I feel to be able to face those children like a man. That ‘salary’--oh,
you were managing it beautifully, I know--but that ‘salary’ was choking
me, even before I got any. I’m glad that’s all over and settled.”
* * * * *
They were strolling toward home through the wooded Seminary grounds, on
which site once stood the old “Classical and Military Lyceum,” where
Beauregarde, Meade and many another Northern and Southern officer
received preliminary training. Over these same grounds, in 1777, came
Sullivan’s men, driving the British advance post before them; and a
little later, on that October morning, General Washington rode down the
“Great Road” with his eager staff.
“I dug a cannon-ball out of my garden the other day,” Allen remarked
abruptly. The thrill of the evening was upon them and they had had
no need for speech; but if the man would talk, Kate would tuck her
hand in his arm and be content. “A little round, rusty thing, about
as big as your fist--it made me a little more reverent toward this
old battleground.... The Continentals came up out of the fog over
there,” he pointed earnestly, although it was almost too dark to see
him, “surprised the pickets in the Allen House and bayoneted every
one--poor devils!... They swept on over this ground, firing from behind
trees, for the Fifty-second British Light Infantry, who were tenting
over there in the fields beyond the New Street, were stirring out like
hornets--and such a bugling and banging there must have been!... The
Fifty-second put up a running fight and weren’t able to make a stand
for nearly a mile.... Think of it! Washington himself followed right
after Sullivan’s men--perhaps he rode over this very spot!... Doesn’t
it excite you?”
“Not a bit, Sentimental Sir,” she laughed coolly.
“You are standing, mebbe, on historic spots, madam!” he mocked
her laughter with assumed sternness. “That battle came near to
deciding everything--think of the historic persons who struggled
here--Washington and Wayne, and Lafayette, and--and--”
“And me,” she helped.
“Since when have you become an historic person, madam?”
“‘On this spot,’” she quoted an imaginary stone, “‘one wonderful
evening late in August in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-two,
stood Keyser Levering, familiarly known as Kate, with her arm
linked comfortably in that of a poetic but pleasant person otherwise
unknown.’... Washington and Lafayette were nice boys,” said she, “and
that battle was their fun, but standing here very much alive and living
my little life is all the history I’ll ever have; so I’ve got to make
the most of it.... Sentimental Sir, aren’t you going to get all worked
up over historic me, standing here?--or do I have to be dead before it
is proper to become really stirred?”
She waited expectantly. Kate had told her story to this man in as many
veiled ways as is permitted to a lady; but each time he had looked at
her earnestly, as if she had propounded a serious riddle. And always it
amused her--at least she smiled gamely--to see how really obtuse this
clever man could be. This time, in the darkening night, she could not
see his eyes as he bent forward; but she felt his arm tighten and the
brotherly pat of his hand upon her own.
“You’re all right, Kate,” he said; and then, “Good old Kate!” which
he repeated with great satisfaction. A second later, he asked
irrelevantly, “Where are those children?” meaning Gorgas and Leopold.
They peered fruitlessly into the darkness, and even retraced their
steps a part of the way down the Valley, but there was no sign of them.
“They have felt the spell of the evening and have tracked off,” Kate
suggested. “Didn’t Leopold do that song well? ‘Forty year on when afar
and asunder,’” she sang. “It gave me a thrill, I tell you.”
“Me, too,” Blynn pressed his lips together. “And how he felt it! Did
you see him straining to keep the tears back? Think what it meant to
him, that old parting song of Harrow!”
The floating melody and the words of the song lingered. By association,
the thought of Gorgas came into their minds.
“They’ll be home before us,” Kate spoke out. “While we’ve been dawdling
along they have probably taken some short cut. It may be Gorgas has
dragged Leopold on one of her ‘bee-lines.’”
“Well, well!” Blynn laughed. “At night, too. Gorgas claims that’s to be
one of the studies in Top-o’-the-Hill. ‘Cut a straight path,’ she says,
‘like a bee, only bee-ier:
‘Through bush, through briar,
Ice, rain, water, fire;
Over river, up tree,
Bee-ier than a flying bee,
Through hedge and over gate,
Straight! straight! straight! straight!’
“She goes up one side of a tree and down the other like a squirrel! I
was on one last Wednesday. Phew! She chose a southeast ‘bee-line’ and
insisted upon fording the Schuylkill river, clothes and all! She said
her conscience wouldn’t let her back out. I just had to follow to keep
her from mischief.”
They were not at home, however, when Kate and Allen arrived, nor did
they come in for hours after. Then Gorgas walked in alone. She was
rather disheveled. With only a slight word of greeting, she went up
the stairs as if she were tired out.
“Another ‘bee-line,’ Gorgas?” Blynn asked cheerfully.
She stopped on the landing and looked back at him.
“You bet!” she nodded almost angrily and moved swiftly up the stairs.
“What is a ‘bee-line’?” Leopold, at the doorway, asked quietly. He was
spick and orderly as ever, save that his tie was completely off its
moorings and hanging over his left shoulder.
Blynn explained, quoting the verses of the game, and joked about the
tell-tale tie.
“Ah!” Leopold adjusted the cravat thoughtfully. “She did not give a
name to it.”
* * * * *
That night Blynn and Leopold walked home together. They talked of
Gorgas as if the theme had been set in advance. She came abruptly
into their conversation, but so intent was each upon his own thought
that neither considered the need of apology or explanation. Without
introduction, Leopold began:
“She is beautifully unschooled. It is a rare thing nowadays to meet a
natural woman--and with the beginnings of a mind.”
“Sometimes,” Blynn pondered as he talked, “I have taken pride in having
shaped that mind of hers. But--she is herself, and would have been
herself without any help or hindrance from me.”
“You have done much for her,” Leopold protested.
“Nonsense!”
“Much! I recognize it. Some of your Puritan conscience is in her.”
“How do you make that out?”
Leopold pondered in turn. “Tonight she--and on other nights,
too--she--but I can’t give illustrations.”
Blynn looked at him. “I think I understand,” he brightened up. “She is
just naturally moral.”
Leopold laughed quietly. “Moral! What a wretched word!”
“Oh, I don’t mean--”
“Don’t explain, friend Allen. I know you don’t mean the little
prudential codes of playing safe and getting on in life. You mean that
she has principles of conduct which she has thought out--”
“No,” explained Blynn. “I don’t mean that at all. She has principles of
conduct, all right, but they are not thought out; they are instinctive.
She plays fair by instinct; she couldn’t want to take advantage: not
because she has reasoned the thing out, but because--because she just
knows it isn’t the square thing to do. And then she has a powerful lot
of self-respect without a trace of vanity. She--”
The two men interrupted each other continually. That was their
method--tossing the idea back and forth.
“Yes,” Leopold took it up, “she fights reason without any reason at
all, and won’t let herself go. She admits things with delicious candor;
she has wants and owns up to them, but she won’t let herself satisfy
them. She knows her instincts, but she holds them down.”
“Good!” Blynn commented. “She has character. Control--that’s the whole
of character. But we’re talking very vaguely. Wants! Instincts! What
sort? They may be friends or enemies.”
“Ha!” Leopold interjected gleefully. “That’s her very phrase! I can see
your coaching there, old boy! And you’ve done a good job--so far.”
“I’m glad,” said Blynn simply. The thoughts of the two men were
on totally different levels. For over an hour that night off in
Cresheim Valley, Leopold had been matching his instincts against
that very control which meant in Gorgas, character. All the rushing
events of that tremulous night were in his mind as he talked; but
Blynn, characteristically, considered only the general application
of his theory. “I’m glad,” he went on. “I wasn’t sure. Her mother is
practically useless to her--so is her sister, for that matter. I have
planted a few seed-ideas, that is all. If they’ve rooted, I’m glad.
But, gracious me! She’s had no chance to test herself. That may come;
but it will be later, when she’s older and better able to be her own
master. She’s quite sheltered here. No one will bother her here. What--”
Blynn stopped speaking. A self-satisfied exclamation from Leopold
arrested his thinking. Some of his own dormant instincts began to tug
at his mind--suspicion, among others and a swift, unreasoned touch of
jealousy; but he checked himself and went on. “Of course, I have been
able to do very little. A man must generalize, he must--”
“She understood all your generalizations,” Leopold interrupted.
“Did she say--but--how could you know?”
“She told me.”
“Told you what?”
“Well, among other things, she told me your story of the pale wanderer
who turned a whole city full of people into lepers. Ugh! That was an
ugly dose! It got into her, somehow, and sickened her. It has made her
afraid to let go. Leper! Ugh! How could you?”
“Because it is life,” Blynn spoke warmly. “Ignorance is the only sin.
You remember your Socrates. If we really knew all, he said, we would
never embrace evil. Ignorance makes our criminals, it makes our slums,
it brings into the world cripple-minded children, it separates mothers
and fathers, breeds disease, and corrupts the best of us. We don’t take
evil into our lives because we believe it to be evil, but because we
ignorantly think it good.”
“Phew!” Leopold affected concern. “You _are_ a Puritan! Scratch
a Puritan and find a preacher!... Well; you’ve made her half a
Puritan--you and your ghastly leper--and it is a good thing.” Leopold
nodded sagely. “At first, I did not like it. It seemed inconsistent
with her strong sense of individual freedom. I am not much of a
Puritan myself. I obey my will. I do not let it be balked by creed or
dictum made by others. And I have always believed in giving the same
freedom to everyone. That is my idea of tolerance. But she is not that
way--and, strange, I am glad!”
They talked for a desultory moment on freedom and restrictions, but
Leopold came back to Gorgas.
“She is not wholly Puritan,” he explained. “At times--no; at other
times--tonight, for instance--she takes fright, calls on her little
gods, and fights. You it is, I gather, who have planted that in her--”
“Oh, no!” Blynn protested grimly. The generalities of Leopold began
to assume horrid, specific meanings. His slow mind was racing to
catch up with the events. The “bee-line,” the angry, disheveled
Gorgas mounting the stairs, the cravat so accusingly awry--what did
they mean? Suddenly his memory began to piece data together, material
that had been observed by his eyes, that had been recorded on the
phonographic-disk of a brain, but which never before had been summoned
into consciousness. The pictures that he conjured made him ill, and
as he walked he drew in deep breaths to steady himself. “Oh, no!” he
repeated, while his mind throbbed, “I taught her nothing. She has
her own character, predestined to grow into its own as an oak from
an acorn. You can’t spread morals on children like stucco on a wall.
Character is the self revealed. You can only bring it out. But with
Gorgas I didn’t even bring it out. It was always there.”
“I believe you,” Leopold answered. “You are quite right. And I am glad.
Strange that I should want in a woman the qualities that I do not
respect myself.”
“You want--Gorgas?”
“Yes.”
Leopold went on calmly, but Allen only half heeded him; through the
dark they strode, the biologist pursuing serenely his theory, the other
hearing only the turmoil of his own wild thoughts. Finally the pleasant
voice at his side caught Allen’s attention. Leopold was saying: