women--the ‘double-standard,’ as we call it today--something more than
merely the echo of the age of chivalry or the offshoot of the worship
of the Virgin. It is an ingrained necessity, I am finding. A man must
be sure of his woman. Faithfulness, constancy, unconquerability--those
are the qualities that hold us. If the woman surrenders easily, we
men suspect that the next comer will have the same victory. Then the
Othello-Desdemona business! The ideal method, I fancy, is savage
seizure, like the Sabines. The longer they struggle, the longer they’ll
stay contented in captivity. I’m a biologist. In biology all mating is
war of sex. Gorgas--well--let me give you an added confidence--tonight
I took her in my arms forcibly--”
“Leopold!” Blynn clutched him by the arm.
“Don’t be alarmed, my Puritan friend,” Leopold laughed pleasantly. “I
am simply courting that young lady--”
“She is only a child!” Blynn gasped.
“She is seventeen--will be eighteen shortly. Biology calls that quite
old enough.”
Blynn dropped his grasp. “She is only a child,” he repeated firmly.
“My mother was married and had children at seventeen,” Leopold
considered for a moment. The agitation of his companion was hid by
the darkness. “Child? Oh, no, my dear Allen--she is a full-grown
woman--charged with womanhood. Well, she broke away tonight.... At
first, I was angry--then I was glad. Her resistance is the measure of
her constancy.... You don’t mind my talking out this way, old fellow.”
“No! no! Go on!”
But he did not go on. Leopold’s sensitiveness was slowly taking account
of the long stride of the man by his side. As they passed a street-lamp
he saw the white face staring ahead into the night, and caught the firm
lips and the long, deep breathing.
“You are fond of her?” Leopold asked mildly.
No answer; but in that vibrating moment words were not essential.
Unconscious of direction, the two men had been marching on across
the city-line, and were now pacing through a deeply wooded lane in
Montgomery county.
“I always fancied it was a purely pedagogic interest,” Leopold
remarked, as if to the trees lined thick along the road.
Again there was no answer.
“So!” Leopold spoke with sympathy. “I did not know. Forgive me.”
“Oh, that’s all right.”
They tramped along sturdily.
“Have you told her that you--”
“Merciful heavens!” Blynn broke forth; but restrained further speech.
“Why not?” Leopold asked kindly.
“She is a child. Oh, yes! yes! yes!” he struck down the attempted
interruption. “I have taken her by the hand and led her as an older
brother might take his little sister. I have watched over her ...
talked to her of books, of life, of God.... I have been the confidant
of her little troubles and have--have--tried to give her courage
and--understanding. She has opened the door of her life to me. I have
stepped within and have broken bread with her. Now ... how could I
desecrate ... how could I sully ... I don’t mean that. It is hard for
me to say, Leopold. I can’t explain it to you. To me she is still a
serious-eyed, fearless child, who has come to me in the perfect faith
of innocence.... My reason doesn’t tell me that. My reason tells me to
go and seize her, fight you for her, and carry her off. But there’s
something else.... You call it Puritan.... Maybe it is racial, or an
inheritance. Maybe it is only superstition. Whatever it is, it holds me
fast. I am chained, bound absolutely. I cannot speak. I cannot go to
that child and--and--unmask.... Let’s go back.”
They turned and trudged along the uneven road without speaking until
a stray light or two along the Chestnut Hill Pike told them they were
coming back into the village.
“I have been wondering,” Leopold spoke thoughtfully, “what it is
that draws us to our mates. Nobody knows. It is the greatest mystery
in creation. Let us face the facts: Gorgas is a remarkable girl;
she thinks; she has unusual abilities. Good! But that is not what
draws us. I know dozens of women who are her superior--women whose
conversation is--well!--shall I say more congenial? The truth is,
Gorgas is not ready to enter on an intellectual level with either of
us. In fact--well!--her education must be kept up--uh--afterwards.
You are right; in many respects she is yet a child. I see things as
a biologist: I fancy that her charm, after all, is her youth and her
astonishing health. That is the mating cry--health.”
“If you don’t mind, Leopold,” Blynn stopped, “I’ll leave you here and
cut off across this field alone.”
Leopold laughed pleasantly.
“I shock your good old Puritan soul, I see. Nothing shocks me. God made
all, and there is no high nor low--that’s my simple creed. And don’t
forget that in biology man is not different from the rest of creation;
we are only _vertebrata_, my good friend, subject all to the same law
of life; biology knows no Chosen Species. Good night, old Allen....
I am sorry we did not have this talk earlier. I am not strong for
self-sacrifice, but, really, I believe, if I had known, I--well, I
would not have let things go so far.”
Blynn looked hard at him, in his eyes the fire of a zealot.
“Things have--have--gone far; have they?”
“Quite,” said Leopold. “Quite far.”
After that night Blynn withdrew abruptly from the daily councils at
“Top-o’-the-Hill.” The preparation of the lectures seemed to be taking
all his time. He dropped in on the group once or twice for a moment’s
chat, and to see the progress, but his mind seemed ever hard at work,
selecting and rejecting material. That series must be a great go, he
explained; he would put his best into it, and give them the worth of
their money. In two weeks he was off to Rochester.
XXVII
TZOO-OOM!
When Allen left for his lecture tour, Gorgas immediately knocked off
work and gave herself up to gloomy thoughts. She began to discover
what a lonely child she had always been; she who had had parents, but
no real mother and father; and now _mon capitaine_ (_mon duc, mon
prince!_) was busy with his own affairs. Bardek, too, had been in
the depths--it was Leopold’s doleful song that had set him off. “One
should not sing of ‘For-r-ty year-r on,’” he growled, “not when one is
for-r-ty year-r on!” The “smitty” was therefore deserted. And Leopold
had been absolutely debarred from the Leverings; Gorgas would send for
him when she wanted him.
There comes a night when lights go up in Bardek’s “white-wash house.”
Gorgas is gloomily swinging in a hammock in the orchard. She listens
to the clatter and to the singing, and knows that Bardek has recovered
his spirits. Are they dancing? She can hear the thump of the children’s
heavy shoes, and she can see forms flash back and forth between the
light and the window. Bardek’s voice is roaring; and an occasional
squeal from the inexpressive little wife is a certain sign of good
times.
Hey ho! She, too, could be happy if she chose. Off there in the dark,
Leopold was waiting; waiting with fearful, confident patience, she
thought and shuddered. If she chose--but she could not will to choose.
Not yet, at any rate; she would wait a while.
After a time the noise subsided in Bardek’s cottage. The lamp moved
into the kitchen, and finally it travelled up the stairs and into the
children’s room. It was the putting-to-bed hour, a happy sky-larking
time in the Bardek household.
So much happiness near at hand was almost too much for Gorgas. The
shrill voices of the children especially were painful as they came
clear on the night air; it made her feel more motherless and deserted
than is quite bearable. She turned her back to the joyous windows and
strove fiercely to keep down the desire to give way to tears. But they
would come; little trickling ones first; then huge, coursing ones; and,
finally, a very deluge.
The man who had been her “lord and master” all her life--all the life
that counted--had gone gravely away without so much as a smiling
goodby. For days she had been watching him hungrily as he talked with
seriousness--to everybody but to her--of his dates, cities, halls,
subjects; and she could glean nothing from his sober face but an
alarming interest in lectures. All her life she had given him the first
place in her heart and was content; with an absurd faith, as the days
of her childhood flitted by, that all would surely be right in the
end; and now she was telling herself that she had been deceived by
a dream. He was not for her; to him she was a child, an interesting
child, to be sure, capable in many ways above other children, but only
one of a hundred or more of his “cases,” one which he had probably
card-catalogued under the “L’s,” with penciled notes--a pedagogic
specimen!
It was hateful, and she cried aloud her protest; it was unfair; and it
was not to be endured. But even as she protested wildly in the dark of
the orchard, she felt the pitiless certainty of the facts; for once
more she had written him a letter--to be sure, it was only a funny
little request for an “interview with the great man,” written under
his very nose, and put in his own hand to mail; with characteristic
disregard of her he had posted the letter without once looking at
it--and he had neglected to answer it.
On the day before he left Mount Airy, she had seen the small gray note
among a bundle that he had sorted out in public; and the sight of it
had sent her face flaming, as if it would shout its contents to all
the world; but he had given it one frowning stare and passed it over
without a touch of recognition, so intent was he on his own affairs.
No better proof, she thought, of the gulf that separated them. Morris
had taught her to be a “sport,” and all her instinct bade her bear
without flinching. She would face the facts, be they or be they not to
her hurt--but, oh, the bitterness of the reality. Her childhood’s dream
was far better, picturing something always off in the future, always a
possible event.... If--
No. His face was “on the outside” as Bardek had said; and during those
last few days could there be any mistaking of the calm, self-absorbed
Allen? If it had been hers to choose, would she have elected a public
lecture tour as against the partner of her soul?
Oh, no! Though Boston and New York and all the cities of Christendom
called in dulcet tones! Oh, no!
The lamp had come down in the Bardek house. In the Levering home a low
light burned in the library. Her mother and father were there, she
knew; but the thought of meeting them and talking of everyday matters
was too repellent. How far away they were from her now, and always had
been! And how much, just now, she needed the comfort of communion. She
gazed wistfully at Bardek’s gay light. His great laugh came through the
trees and cheered her wonderfully. Dear old Bardek, mother and sister
and father-confessor, all rolled into one! She would go to Bardek and
lay her little troubles in his huge palm.
The Bardek house was without corridors. One opened the front door
and stood within. And who would dream of knocking at that democratic
portal! So she slipped noiselessly along the grass, which grew to the
very edge of the house, turned the knob quietly and entered.
Bardek was facing her, standing like a statue in the middle of the low
room. The light was behind him, so that Gorgas, coming in out of the
darkness, was not able instantly to comprehend that the little wife,
clad in the gayest of garments, deep reds and greens, with a glorious
scarf of gold about her head, was folded snugly in the Bohemian’s
sturdy arms.
“Oh!” cried Gorgas, and started back.
“Come in!” welcomed Bardek, without moving the fraction of an inch,
save the necessary tightening of his hold on the shy wife.
“Oh, no! No!” cried Gorgas, shocked at her intrusion.
“Come in, I say!” roared Bardek. “We jus’ celebr-r-rate our
marriage--zat is all. Come in, and see how it is done.... Be still,
Bit-of-my-heart,” he called to the struggling wife, but in some
staccato dialect of Hungary. “We must be the teacher of the beautiful
Gorgas in all things, and this is what she should learn to do; and it
must be done well, or life itself is spilled to the wind.” This he
translated gayly to Gorgas. “Come in, _Liebschen_! This is our marriage
day. It is the day I take the wonderful woman when she is but wonderful
girl, take her right out of the street where she squat beside the
orange cart wit’ her peddling mother; and I do not know her name; and I
will not know it, so I can call her love names all her life--I take her
from her oranges, and quick into the biggest cathedral in all Hungary,
and kneel before the altar, and call upon the priest to come marry us
before I cut him open to see what make him so fat and slow.”
The invitation in their eyes was so real that Gorgas slipped weakly to
a chair near the door.
“He say to wait five, six, seven week or it not a marriage,” Bardek
went on. “‘Five, six, seven week!’ I cry; ‘in that time she be grow up
and ol’ woman! And I? Every day of zose week I die of waiting. Five,
six, seven week? Not five, six, seven minute!’; and I scare zat priest
by the things I say. And when I show him gold, he not so scared, but
raise up the hands and make the language which I give him to make.
“And when all is done, ‘_Tzoom!_’ I cry, and explain: ‘Zat is the big
bell up in Heaven which bring all the angels to the Gates of Earth,
through which they now look down; and _Tzoo-oom!_’--he nearly drop dead
for think I be madman!--‘zat is the bell which break open the Gates of
Earth and fling the glad angels toward this good world of love; and
_Tzoo-oo-oom!_’ I roar like the roar of Saint Peters in Rome when they
make the new Pope, ‘_zat_ is the bell which make this woman _of_ my
blood and _of_ my flesh, and carry us together, up straight up, up, up
with the singing angels to the Heaven itself.’ And zen I take her in
my arms, and lift her to her little toes, and hug her till she forget
for little while to live!... Ah! But she nevair forget _zat_ marriage!
Nevair!”
As he talked he interrupted himself often to utter weird sayings to
the happy wife, so that she half turned in his arms, and seemed to
understand that he was telling Gorgas of the wonderful wedding day.
And Gorgas contemplated their happiness with the greatest sympathy and
with a longing that was akin to pain.
“So!” Bardek went on jubilantly. “On zat wonderful day in May, which we
now celebr-r-ate--ah. May is in Hungary of all months the--”
“But Bardek,” Gorgas interrupted, for a moment forgetting her personal
grief. “This is not May, it is September.” She could not be mistaken
about this, for in three days it would be the tenth, her birthday, and
Allen had promised her a mysterious gift on that day.
“Of course!” smiled Bardek. “So we celebr-r-ate our marriage.”
“But if it was May when you--”
“You would wait until it come May again?” he inquired mildly.
By this time he had sat himself in a big chair, and the wife had
dropped to the floor, draping herself about his knee. The scarf of
gold spread out in a brilliant streamer; the greens and reds of her
Hungarian costume tumbled over one another in a riot of unpremeditated
folds. The blood was afire in her gypsy face, and her eyes were
two dark lights. By the magic of adoration this peasant woman was
transformed into a thing of rare delight.
“But if you were married in May,” Gorgas was saying, “you could not
have an anniversary until--”
“Ho!” cried Bardek in great glee, and then communicated exultant things
to the gay wife, patting her on the head the while, and tweaking her
brown ears. “Ho!” he turned to Gorgas. “You would wait until it come
May again! You are like the priest who I scare all the Latin out of!
You would wait five, six, seven week! You would wait until the earth
go about the sun just _so_!--until the constellations of the heavens
be just _so_! You cannot praise God until it be Sunday; you cannot
be married when Nature cries out it is time, and you would let the
calendar make you slave when you would have anniversary! Ho! It is
superstitious you are! Sometimes I have celebr-r-ated zat marriage
three times in one month! Here is my calendar of days!” he slapped his
heart right lustily.
“Many things might make me celebr-r-ate,” he went on. “This time it was
your Leopold and his ugly song. ‘For-r-ty year-r on, when afar-r and
asunder-r,’” he rolled his r’s vigorously. “It is a song that give me
the blue devils of regret. ‘For-r-ty year-r on!’ it is no song to sing,
when it is I, Bardek, who is ‘for-r-ty year-r on,’ and do not want to
remember zat it is so! ‘For-r-ty year-r on!’ Heugh! It is a ol’ man’s
song; and I must sing it over and over in my brain, till I cannot work,
and grow sick wit’ thoughts of gray head and teeth falling out, and
feel my bones go stiff, and--heugh! So I be ol’ man for two, three day,
and zen I make celebr-r-ation and chase the bad thoughts out. To this
little Bit-of-my-heart I say, ‘Quick, get into the beautiful clothes of
Hungary, put on the scarf of gold, and the earrings and the spangles of
gold, and we will have again our marriage day! _Tzoo-oom!_’” he boomed
suddenly, and caressed the lady’s head with huge confidence. “And now
I am young again!”
Even though he had seemed so absorbed in his own contemplations,
Bardek’s quick eye had noted the droop in Gorgas’ shoulders, and the
discouraging sadness in her mien.
“Zat song?” he asked her; “it make ugly thoughts for you, too; eh, my
Gorgas?”
She tried to speak, but found it easier to shake her head. No; it was
not the song that had taken the spring out of her life.
“U-m!” hummed Bardek sympathetically. And then, with characteristic
abruptness, he asked, “When is it zat you go to the priest and make the
bells of Heaven go, _tzoom!_--eh?”
This was too much for Gorgas. It brought with benumbing clearness the
vision of her own forlorn place in the world. There would be for her
no exulting Bardek to seize her out of the street beside her cart of
oranges, carry her to the nearest altar, and start the very heavens
a-tzooming for joy. But she was too brave a lass to weep in the
presence of Bardek and his lady, although it was a glistening eye and a
trembling lip which smiled gamely at them.
“Leopold--” she began, but words were too difficult; so she stopped
pathetically, and seemed to beg Bardek to understand.
“H-m,” said he. “Leopold, eh?... He is very wonderful man.... Very
smart.... He know--everything.” Bardek spread out his palms humbly.
“You would celebr-r-ate wit’ Leopold, eh?” He watched her narrowly,
but she did not answer. “Of course, you would know. You would not have
to look in a book for to find out _zat_--or to ask the mother if it be
so!... You would know.... And it is very important to know; for if you
do not know whether you will want to smash the calendar and have two,
three celebr-r-ation in one month, and all the times after which you
do live together,” he spread his palms a trifle higher, “well, zen you
should not begin--much better to die.... So it is Leopold, eh?”
“No!” she struggled to her feet. “No, Bardek, it is not Leopold. He
wants me, but I won’t have him. I won’t! He frightens me, and always
did, from the time he began to watch me, like a big, big--” She could
not find the word. “It is not Leopold!”
Bardek’s sudden laugh drew her out of her tragic plane, and in some
inexplicable way gave her a touch of gladness.
“I _know_ zat it is not Leopold!” he cried. “I could see it in your two
eyes zat it is not! And I could see it in your two eyes who zat it is!
Ah! Your eyes zey tell me whenever you do look at him!... And zat is
_so_ right now! _So_ right!...”
His own two eyes beamed and sparkled upon her, and seemed to shout
congratulations, and many happy returns of the day. To his wife he
confided uproariously; so clearly, indeed, that Gorgas understood every
word and gesture; and as he mounted to Hungarian eloquence, she began
to catch some of the contagion of his confidence: the despairing
thoughts born of reality began to clear out, vanish like a cloud rack
before the west wind; and she revived her spirits with the vitality of
Bardek’s optimism.
At his call she came over and sat down on the floor beside the wife,
Bardek presiding above them like a patriarch of old. And the wife,
so often smilingly mute in that household, broke forth in a musical
chirping of congratulations, and stroked Gorgas’ hair, and patted her
cheek, and welcomed her to the inner shrine of spouses! To Gorgas it
was a very blessed ordination. For a little while she would pretend,
she defended herself, and then--
But Bardek was in full flow: “With him, with the good Allen, you would
celebr-r-ate; eh, _mein Liebschen, ma fleur du bois?_ Marriage? Ho! Zat
is easy to do--it take five, six week; or it take five, six minute--but
to celebr-r-ate, it must last all the life! There are many peoples who
have had just marriage, with confetti, and bands and dancing and much
wine, but zey will never, never celebr-r-ate! Ho! It would be comic to
see zem even to try! Comic? It would be pain!... For to celebr-r-ate,
it is to be two peoples wit’ body and bone and blood of one--See!--ze
blood it go up my arm, and through my aor-r-ta, and _presto!_ it is
humming along zis little woman’s pink ear and making the eyes to dance!
And ze daughter of ze peddling mother must in dose times rise to be
ze queen of all ze wor-r-ld--_regina dei gratia et potentissima et
pulchrissima!_... Look at her, _mein Liebschen_. To you she is, I know
not what strange child of Europa--”
“She is beautiful!” murmured Gorgas.
“Ah! I make you see a little wit’ my eyes,” his voice grew tender; “but
you do not know. Even you, my Gorgas, are as nothing to her. You are
good--_mais oui!_--but I would not walk wit’ you one, two, t’ree step
when _she_ crook the finger and smile, ‘_Come!_’”
All this was very wonderful to Gorgas, this most intimate revelation
of the deep privacy of domestic happiness; and because she believed
that it was the true state of all right marriages, she reveled in its
beauty; and then she shivered at the stark reality that was hers. For
her there would be no “celebrations.”
But she would not give way again. “That’s all very pretty and poetic,
Bardek,” she sat up straight, and seemed to fling off the romantic
spell which the Bohemian had set vibrating. “I’m better now. Had a good
cry out there,” she jabbed a hand toward the orchard. “Lonesome, I
guess. Came in here to get cheered up--and you did it! Sure did!” She
searched the room with wondering eyes, as if trying to comprehend how a
hut like this could be so charged with happiness. “But I’m different,
Bardek.” That was her own answer to the survey she had just made. “I
wanted something ... and wanted it ... more--well! why talk about it--”
With a great effort she controlled a quavering voice. “I am not to have
it--that’s all.”
Bardek watched her with deep sympathy. All the time, he stroked the
head of the gypsy girl at his knee, and seemed to agree with Gorgas.
But to himself he said, as he admitted later, “She must suffer first,
because it is the demand of love that we suffer; in no other way can we
give it its true value; and then she will believe better when she has
plumbed the depths of doubt.”
She got a grip on herself and went on: “I must not fool myself any
longer.... It is madness.... I’d soon be fit for nothing.... Leopold
is all right. I’ve known him all my life. He likes me, and, in a way,
I like him. We have had great times together. I’ll get over the shock
of his liking me in the way--in the way he does.... Got sort of used
to it already. I told him I’d let him know. He’s waiting. He said I
didn’t know myself ... that I’d come to him ... ‘like the tides rise
and follow the irresistible moon,’ he said.... I guess he was right....
He knows a lot about me! It seems a little bit unfair, but I suppose--
Suppose, nothing!” She got herself up suddenly from the comfortable
floor, and, at the motion, seemed to bring her resolutions together. “I
can’t stand this any longer,” she turned to Bardek. “Leopold it is and
must be--I’d better get used to it--and all I’ve got to do is to walk
down that road twenty steps and whistle.”
She moved resolutely toward the door. “There is one way to settle it
once and for all,” she said, “a sure way to end all the suffering which
comes of uncertainty--and it is better,” she insisted, “to stop forever
the doubt and the pain.”
“Twenty paces down the road,” thought Bardek. “Why, then it would be
all over for the little Gorgas, and settled for life--like two puffs of
a cigarette!”
Her hand was on the knob before Bardek called softly to her.