looked magnificently strong and able as she stood blocked out in dark
tints against his white door; and the weariness and the despondency had
gone from her; wavering uncertainty had made place for the mind made
up. She could not have her first wish; very well; she would accept the
next best, and it would not be done half-heartedly; and once accepted,
she would be loyal to the death. All this Bardek noted as he looked at
her.
“But it is another story zat I happen to know,” he began softly.
“Allen Blynn has not told me in words, for then I could not speak
wit’out being tattle-tale, but I have listened wit’ my eyes and wit’ my
heart--oh, a very good ear my heart has!--and so I know zat it is the
good Allen who prays on his knees every night zat some day he will have
courage to ask my Gorgas to try to like him--jus’ a leetle bit, mebbe!”
Slowly he drew her from the door. She protested. He argued subtly--it
was the fight, he said, against the Evil One for the life of a woman,
so it needs must be subtle. Slowly he drew her again to her place
beside him on the floor. And then he poured forth the eloquence that
only Bardek could summon. He made her cry and he made her laugh; and he
filled her with hope. Who could doubt Bardek when he rose to his best?
And when the theme is Love--ah! Bardek could have made great strides
toward converting the Evil One himself!
“But how do you know, Bardek?” Gorgas demanded.
Ah, he knew! He, Bardek, had been born with both of his two eyes open!
The ways of Allen Blynn were not hidden from him. And the little Gorgas
must not let despair and fear in at the heart, for they are the father
and mother of failure. Much he told her of Allen, evidence that piled
up against the absent swain, until some of the despair and fear fled at
his strong touch. The protestings of Gorgas grew weaker as Bardek plied
his argument.
Among other matters he related one of the many debates which he and
Allen had had together. Blynn had been standing for a reaction against
the type of freedom--free will, free love, free anything--which had
been pulsing from the “lunacy fringe” of the radicals for a generation
or more. “They do not seem to understand,” Blynn had argued, “that
there is something higher than individual will--or even the individual
nation’s will, as Alexander and Napoleon have long ago found
out--something which demands surrender, acquiescence.” Bardek had been
defending life as the expression of the individual right to live;
Blynn had taken the side of individual renunciation. “But there _is_ a
divine, far-off event to which the whole creation moves,” said Blynn;
“and while our irresistible part is that of free spirits, yet we are
most free when we bind the law upon ourselves.” That was the philosophy
of Allen Blynn.
“He is not one to seize the daughter of the orange woman,” laughed
Bardek, “and zen make a new service of marriage for himself! Ho! He
would beat his breast wit’ ze big stone and wait four, five, six week!
Now you! You are like me--it make you sick to wait. So! I say, do
not wait. Go to him. Tell him to hurry. Tell him you cannot wait for
God’s big universe to come to end, but it must come now! Go to him,
_Liebschen_! Go to him!”
“I have always wanted to,” agreed Gorgas. “Many times I started to--but
I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” asked the fearless man.
“Women do not do that, Bardek.”
He raged at her. “How often have I taught you not to be afraid of what
women do or do not! It is woman who will be the last slave on the free
earth; and it is because she _want_ to be slave. I will not have you,
my Gorgas, be like all ze others! Go, and _be_!”
“But he is in Boston,” she faltered. She knew his itinerary by heart.
“Go to him, _ma fleurie_. Lives have been lost through pride, through
not saying the word when it is time. Boston is not yet Babylon, but for
you, _mein Liebschen_, there it is zat ze tower to Heaven is. Go to
him.”
“I know just what I shall say,” she laughed. The natural tint of health
was back in her face. “I have said it so often to myself.”
“Of course you have!” he agreed heartily. “And you will say it over
again for many years. And the speeches he will say to you! _Himmel!_
_What_ a dam will burst and drown all the little valleys when one of
zese Puritans go loose! Zey try hard all the life to live like Saint
Acetum, the Vinegar Saint who is always repairing ze roof of ze Heaven;
and when zey topple over and fall, it is a great distance!... You will
be eaten alive, my Gorgas; and it is a very pleasant experience, vairy
pleasant and good!”
And that night a happy, exulting young woman, charged with uncalculable
joy, strode across the lawn and through the orchard, with never a fear
nor a despair, those sad parents of failure.
XXVIII
THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
At Boston Allen Blynn was preparing to loaf about the old town at his
ease until the door should open for his second lecture in that city. At
eleven o’clock he was on his knees at the bed; he could not quite make
up his mind which was the easiest pair of shoes for walking.
A knock at his door, the deferential tap of a well-feed “bell-hop”
brought his cheery, “Come!” but he did not look around.
“Good morning, Professor,” greeted Gorgas, fresh and radiant.
“Gracious!” ejaculated the astonished Blynn.
“Don’t let me interrupt your rosary,” she laughed.
He jumped to his feet--still unadorned with shoes--and grasped both her
extended hands.
“Well! Well!” he looked at her from several angles. “If this doesn’t
beat the Pennsylvania-Dutch! How did you get here? Another ‘bee-line,’
eh? By the Great Horn Spoon, I’m glad to see you! Did the whole family
come up? Where is Kate?” he made a motion as if to look into the hall,
but quickly gave up because of the more overpowering desire to gaze at
his entrancing visitor. “And how did you know I was here?”
“Hold on!” she stopped him. “This is no blooming quiz. I’m alone, _mon
capitaine_. I just--came.”
His mind would not quite focus on the fact.
“I see!” he managed to say, but he did not see.
She produced a cardboard. “Thought I’d boost your little lecture by
buying a ticket,” she explained.
“Alone!” he exclaimed. “When did you come?”
“On the Federal express, night before last. I mixed up your dates.
Thought you were due in Boston yesterday. So I just naturally waited
over.” She walked toward the window. “Great view you have here; simply
great!” He seized the nearest pair of shoes and struggled into them.
Then he followed her to the window.
“Does Mrs. Levering know you have come?” he asked, full of the
proprieties.
She sang a bar of a popular hit.
“Do you know what you’re about?
Does your mother know you’re out?
“I didn’t say exactly where I was going; I don’t think I did,” she
turned reflectively. “Why should I?”
He tried to explain. She was still a child, seventeen years old, he
told her.
“I’m eighteen the tenth of this month, and that’s tomorrow,” she
corrected.
He knew that. Still--he argued further.
“Why _will_ you persist in looking down on me?” she stamped her foot,
just like a child. “I’ve been on my own since I was knee high to a
grasshopper. I’m making my own living; I do a man’s work and, by
your own Horn Spoon, I can take care of myself. Look here: yesterday
afternoon I sunned myself in the Common on a bench--”
“Heavens!” he muttered.
“You should use just the opposite word,” she commented complacently. “I
just sat there and counted the men who ogled me and the ones who sat
down and tried to talk.”
“Goodness!” said he.
“Opposite again,” she corrected. “They were just imps. Well, they
didn’t waste much time on me, I tell you! Superior disdain, that’s the
trick.”
The professor was flabbergasted. He told her so, and tried to make
clear the risks she was running.
She laughed at him. “Now don’t be preachy, Allen Blynn; I’m in Boston
to get ideas from the Jewelers’ Exposition--that, among other things.
I’m a business woman, you know. It’s a new species; get used to it.”
The Jewelers’ Exposition was a discovery of the day before. It would
not do to be too abrupt with Allen Blynn.
By the time he had gone with her to the Exposition and had heard her
wise talk to the exhibitors, he was almost used to it; and by the time
he had watched her taking notes and making sketches, he was quite
reconciled. Then they just prowled.
“Let’s go window-cracking?” she suggested.
“Not for a minute!” he pretended alarm.
“Don’t you know ‘window-cracking’?” she looked incredulously. “Where
_is_ your knowledge of English? That’s my private word for looking in
every window along one street and picking out the things you would buy,
and not buying a thing. It’s great fun, and awfully cheap.”
So they went “window-cracking,” like penniless children.
They lunched in style at the best hotel and lived many weeks together
in one afternoon. She gave him time to get his notes together for
the lecture, drove with him to the hall and sat in the middle of the
audience, an enraptured vision to stir him to his best.
At the close of the lecture he hurried to her.
“I have a surprise for you,” he whispered; “you are not the only lady
that takes long journeys to help out struggling lecturers. I want you
to meet ‘The Lady of the Interruption.’”
Her glance fell. “I hate her,” she said.
“S-sh!” he smiled and turned to a gracious matronly woman of about
fifty-five.
“Mrs. Fellows, here’s my little girl, Gorgas,” he said.
“No longer a little girl,” Mrs. Fellows extended a hand.
“You are the ‘Lady’?” Gorgas gasped.
“Yes,” the “Lady” responded pleasantly. “You thought I was young and
attractive, and you are happy to find I am not.”
“But you _are_ attractive--you are lovely!” Gorgas shot out impulsively.
“Ah! thank you,” the Lady bowed herself away; “that is a nice speech.
And I know you think you mean it.”
She was gone and others crowded around.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was old?” Gorgas inquired.
“It was a stupid joke of mine not to,” he replied as they struggled
through the crowd. “I found her out long ago. She has had great
troubles--death in a very frightful form. She has considerable wealth
but gives her whole life to charity. Eccentric, a little; but her mind
is mighty keen, I can tell you. I am very fond of her; that is why I
did not like to discuss her with anyone after I found out.”
At half-past ten they were having supper in a gaudy grill-room,
thrilling with the strumming of an Hungarian “orchestra” and the
stirring air of city-bohemias.
Then Allen Blynn came partly to his senses. “You’re going home
tonight,” he said firmly.
“On the ‘Midnight,’” she agreed, and displayed her Pullman ticket.
“Good!” he exclaimed, relieved. “I’m half responsible, you know,” he
added. “It’s a great lark. I’m just chuck full of joy; but we must ship
you off tonight.”
“Let’s quarrel a little bit, first,” she smiled. “We have had some
dandy quarrels, haven’t we?”
He couldn’t remember any; then she would start one.
“First,” she began, “I want to know why you didn’t walk home with me
the night of the picnic at Top-o’-the-Hill--when Leopold sang ‘Forty
year on.’ I wrote you a little note asking you to go with me. You
trotted off with Kate and left me with Leopold. We had the deuce of a
time, I can tell you.”
Conscience-stricken, he remembered that half-read letter. The offer of
the lectures had swamped his mind.
The explanation satisfied.
“Leopold wants to marry me,” she blurted out next.
“I know,” he replied gravely. “He told me as much,--but at seventeen!
Think of it!”
“I wish you would not always be telling me that I am--” she began
indignantly.
“But you are, you know,” he told her quietly. “Leopold is as old as I,
but a man couldn’t possib--”
“Oh,” she laughed. “He couldn’t? _Couldn’t_ he! He’s been dogging me
for ever so long. You make a big mistake about years. Everybody does.
At thirteen, when I first talked with you, I was as much a woman as I
am now or ever will be. And I’ve been sitting back trying to behave
myself like a doll. At fifteen I had my height and--everything; and
now I’m eighteen. I can’t stay in the refrigerator any longer, I tell
you.... Leopold? Child? Let me tell you something, Allen Blynn. Leopold
and I had a fight that night. Not words, remember; but an ugly real
fight, with fists and hands.... He knows I’m no child.... Now wait!”
she held up her hand. “Leopold’s all right. He wants to marry me. He
did just what he ought to have done. It was all right, absolutely
right. It was my fault again. You went off and deserted me--and I just
didn’t care what happened to me. Then I had to fight my way out. _Nom
d’une pipe! Nom du nom d’une pipe!_... And that isn’t all. I must shock
your old professorial head a little. There was another.... But I woke
up and got out. Your letter did it--the one on morals and instincts,
and that terrible story of the leper; don’t you remember?”
Yes, he remembered. The little woman before him was opening up
astonishing vistas into her stirring life. But she was a child, he
insisted. The general appearance was that of a woman; but that was a
trick of hat and gown and hair, a disguise easily seen through. Her
face was womanly, and her voice; but in both were cries of very young
life. Her very wonderful health, the thing that gave her beauty--that
was youth; and her frankness was the innocence of youth.
“Do you know what Bardek means by Saint Acetum?” she asked him
suddenly. She had been studying his rather solemn-smiling face,
delighting in its fine seriousness--made fine, she thought, by the
light of a smile that hovered ever in the eyes and in and out the firm
lips.
“What does Bardek mean by anything!” Allen chuckled contentedly, the
solemnity quite fading from his face at the thought of the unfathomable
Bardek. “Saint Acetum? I never heard of the person.”
“Oh!” Gorgas laughed in her impulsive way. “Saint Acetum is you!--The
Vinegar Saint! Oh, Allen Blynn, that is _too_ funny!...” Allen frowned
at her inquiringly. “That’s just the way he would look, too--stern, and
wise, and worried--”
“Worried?”
“For fear the roof would fall in, you know.”
“Roof?” he glanced apprehensively at the ceiling.
“Saint Acetum, you know--” she tried to explain. His serious face was
delightfully comic; in a flash she saw how it would be immensely jolly,
and assuring, to have him gazing at her forever as if she needed the
firmest and sternest looking after.
“Saint Acetum?” he cogitated. “There ain’t no such animal.”
“Oh, yes,” she continued, “Bardek says--”
“Bardek invented him, then.”
“Of _course_, silly! That’s the fun of it. Saint Acetum is forever
repairing ‘ze roof of ze Heaven’; and there he is up there all alone,
patching and patching, and always looking for trouble; and he won’t
_ever_ come down and have a good time with the angels--not even once!
It might rain, you see. And Bardek says, that’s just like you, Allen
Blynn--”
“Isn’t Bardek a wonder!” His eyes glowed with delight in the Bohemian’s
comic fantasy. “And isn’t that just like him!... The Vinegar Saint!...
Well!...” A strong flash of determination came into his face suddenly.
“And he is quite right!... _Someone_ must keep watch lest the Heavens
fall! And they might fall, you know,” he added whimsically. “You
believe that God is good, and all-wise, and all-powerful, don’t you?”
She nodded. “One must,” she said. “It would be terrible not to.”
“He is good, and wise; but perhaps not all-wise. And sometimes I think
He is not all-powerful. The Old One has won some of the battles--in
Eden, for instance. Sometimes I fancy--it is an ancient belief--that
the long battle between Good and Evil, begun aeons ago in chaos, is
still at its height, and that the outcome might even be in doubt; and
then I fancy that He needs us--some of us--on the firing line; or, like
your Vinegar Saint, guarding the outposts. Perhaps we are sometimes
a brake on progress, but often we are the ones who save liberty from
liberty’s self. You know, we Allens were Tories in the Revolution; we
were for the existing order then, and against the revolutionists. There
must be a drop or two of reactionary blood still in me!... Vinegar
Saint! Good! But don’t think that the poor old chap loves the endless
patching, or that the songs of the angels don’t tempt him mightily to
shirk his job.... And if he gets to looking too fierce and vinegary,
it’s because--”
“It’s because he is a dear old honest _capitaine_,” she cried; “and I’d
rather have him vinegary any day than--”
“Peppery?” he joked, determined not to be solemn.
“Yes, or even sugary. Ugh!” she affected a delightful shudder. “How I
hate the sweety ones!”
This was a pleasing savor to the Vinegar Saint, and for a moment or two
he forgot his patchings, and reveled in the unsaintly joy of flattery;
then he remembered abruptly.
“What are you going to do about Leopold?” he asked.
“It depends upon you, _mon capitaine_,” she replied calmly. “If you
don’t want me, Allen Blynn--_anybody_ can have me. There! It’s out!
I’ve made up my mind to say this to you for almost a year. Let me--”
A preposterous waiter had to be dealt with. He was recommending some
custard concoction with a dash of white wine, and inquiring about
such irrelevant matters as demi-tasses or full cups. Gorgas had to be
appealed to. She made selections deliberately, but her fingers were
nervously restless.
“So you will take the wine-sauce?” the waiter was most interested.
“Yes,” said Blynn.
“Or would you prefer it with cream?”
“Yes,” said Blynn.
“Perhaps M’sieu’ would rather have the sliced oranges?”
“Yes, yes,” said Blynn in great distress, “Anything, old man. You fix
it up. Anything. Just cut along like a good fellow, will you?”
“Don’t look so frowning, _mon capitaine_,” Gorgas smiled across the
table, but her eyes belied that smile. “Don’t speak yet. Let me show
you how I look at this thing. If I stop now, I’ll never begin again.
And I just can’t stand keeping it inside.... When you came to me at the
tennis-court five years ago and took me for a grown woman, the thing
was done; right there. I’ve never got over it. I’ve tried; but it was
no use; it got worse. I sent you to Holden to get rid of you.... You
scared me.... You saw it, I guess. My eyes must have shown, for you got
out of the way.... That’s why you suddenly fled to Holden; wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” dumbly.
“I knew.... It was beastly the way you cut me.... Don’t speak yet....
I don’t blame you.... Sometimes I’d catch you looking at me like a
hungry dog, afraid to come near for fear I’d beat you or something.
I know what was the matter. You were afraid of encouraging a child.
Mercy! Encourage? That was just the way to make me rabid! Well, I
resolved to grow up. I fought the family until I could dress the part,
and I fooled everybody but you.... And now I _am_ grown up.... It’s
no fooling now.... And there you are, as far away as ever. So I said
to myself, that man will have to be approached and stormed. He’ll
never marry anybody, unless somebody asks him. No, you wouldn’t, Allen
Blynn. You’re not a bit aggressive; you’re too courteous, too afraid
of hurting folks’ feelings. Well, I want to be hurt.... So I’m coming
right at you. Here’s your chance, Allen Blynn.... Wait!... I figured
it this way. It’s all mere custom, this woman-sitting-back-and-waiting
business. I’ve got the same desire for my man as any man has for his
woman. I want him. Shall I let him slip by? Not I. I’m going right
for him. He’ll be startled at first, just the way women are--oh! I’ve
talked with a lot of ’em!--but keeping right at it brings everything.
Half the women don’t want the men that come at them; but the thought
gets into their brains and grows until it bubbles over and swamps ’em.
Oh, I know. Neddie Morris nearly had me, and so did Leopold; if you
hadn’t been in my head one of ’em would have got me; it was just a
matter of sliding.... Now, Allen Blynn, you’re my man.” They were very
close together at their diminutive little table. She could have touched
his arms, almost without leaning forward. Her voice grew very soft and
tender as she added, “Aren’t I the brazen one!”
“Little woman,” he spoke with the greatest kindness. “Will you let me
think this out?”
She nodded. For a half-hour they watched the silly crowd and nibbled
at sweetish frothy desserts and sipped at cold coffees. Overbibulous
folks laughed in high keys, and the Hungarian orchestra, taking its cue
from the diners, grew noisier and noisier. At this moment the bandsmen
were working vigorously on the quietest of love themes; castanets and
cymbals clashed and tanged and told all the world about “long years
ago in old Madrid, where softly sighs of love the light guitar.” The
song had taken the country only a few years before, and had now reached
the stage of orchestral “variations.” The Hungarian leader was consumed
with passion and beer; he gesticulated and shouted to his workers, and
they bent to their task. Every child in America knew the absurd words.
Even Allen Blynn knew them!
Come, my love, the stars are shining,
Time is flying,
Love is sighing,
Come, my love, my heart is pining
Here alone I wait for thee.
Mischievously Gorgas accompanied with the words of the refrain, she
pianissimo, the orchestra thundering double forte to its climax. They
smiled guiltily as they thought of the smashing, gesticulating music
and the personal significance of the libretto.
“Well,” he turned to her.
“Well?” she rested her arms on the little table so that her two hands
almost touched him.
“This is the greatest experience of my life,” he said soberly,
“absolutely the greatest and the finest.” His face shone with
exultation. “It is the last thing I dreamed of. I thought it was
Leopold. The fact is--well, I was mortally sure. We talked together
just before I left. He didn’t tell me outright, but I knew, of course.
Naturally I couldn’t guess the details.... That _is_ a revelation!...”
Already she thought she had read his answer and withdrew her hands
ever so slightly. Except for a deeply flushed face and sparkling eyes
she gave no other sign; she was prepared for it to take time!
“Here alone I wait for thee!” the orchestra shouted.
“It’s hard to talk here. Come,” he looked earnestly at his watch as if
he had never seen one before. “We’ll cab it for my hotel, where I must
get your birthday gift--the manuscript book, you know.... Then I’ll see
you to your train.... We have barely a half-hour.”
St. Acetum had not tumbled from the roof of the Heaven as Bardek had
predicted; he seemed, rather, to be all too intent on his eternal
patching and repairing. It was very assuring; one felt safe and
protected; now, whatever else happened, the Heavens would not fall!
For in spite of Bardek’s jests at the expense of the Saint, Gorgas
knew that the good man would not so easily desert his high duties for
anything merely personal. Still, she wished that he might at least just
look down!
At her side of the cab she sat rigid; without a word she let him get
out at the hotel and return with the gift; but as they drew near the
railway terminal, she put a trembling hand on his shoulder.
“Won’t you even touch me?” she asked plaintively.
“Please! please!” he begged; and she withdrew to her place. _Nom d’une
pipe! Nom du nom d’une pipe!_
“I’m not a bit sorry I came,” she said finally.
“Nor am I! Nor am I!” he replied fervently. “I feel--glorified!”
They walked slowly, like two tired persons, to her car. He saw about
her tickets and bade her goodby at the steps.
“Is there--somebody else?” she asked quietly.
“Gracious, no!” he cried; but immediately he said, “Wait!” and looked
worried. “Yes,” he corrected, “there is--and there isn’t at all!”
His lips closed firmly, but his eyes seemed to be telling her not to
believe a word of it.
“This little book,” he put the package into her hand hastily, as if
he were eager to change the topic, “is five years of my life. It will
explain what I have not been able to say to you tonight. But you are
not to open it until your eighteenth birthday.”
“That is tomorrow--and tomorrow is almost here,” she told him. “In a
few moments I’ll be eighteen.”
“Yes, I know!” he agreed. “So you will be! Well! well! On your ride
home, then, you may read it. There is just one condition: you must
begin at the beginning, and go straight through--‘Through hedge and
over gate. Straight! straight! straight! straight!’” he quoted.
“Promise!”
She promised.
The porters began to take on the appearance of getting under way; the
Midnight Express was a punctual institution.
“All aboard!” someone called afar off. “Express for Philadelphia and
Washington! All aboard!”
She leaned up to him with flaming invitation in her face.
“No one will know,” she said. “Quick! They’ll think we’re brother and
sister!”