The Vinegar Saint

by Hughes Mearns

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
She stood watching	[ Frontispiece]
“It looks almost finished”	[ 67]
“I am loafing my life away”	[ 161]
“Top-o’-the-Hill”	[ 343]

BOOK ONE
The Golden Child

“Are you a child or a teetotum?” the Sheep asked.

The Vinegar Saint

I
LEGS

THE young man of twenty-three was not a clever tennis player, but his partner and his opponents, men of forty, were obviously less clever. The Mount Airy Club courts were sought chiefly by two sorts of players, boys too uncourageous for baseball, and men of impending girth; secluded by fine old ragged trees and off an unused road, it had no gallery of experts to disturb the timid.

The young man belonged to neither class, but he found his Saturday afternoon game of tennis with perspiring business-men just the thing to put him in tone for his own week’s business of research among revered but defunct Elizabethans. Besides, he often had the joys of victory hard won.

At present, he was fighting it out with a butter-and-egg middleman. Years of handling a fragile and perishable commodity had made the middleman self-conscious in the presence of so egg-like an object as a tennis ball. He puzzled his opponents, therefore, as the inexperienced whist player so often does, by unaccountable delicacy when one naturally expected a smashing drive, and at other times by reckless lobbing—as if he had just condemned a bad shipment!—when the safe return was a gentle touch.

A wife or two sat sewing in the lee of a cherry tree. They often stopped their mild chatter to watch some contested point—sometimes the ball stayed in play unaccountably long; a quarter of the returns was accidental!—at such times the repartee on the courts was equally compelling. A “professor” is by instinct talkative, and the enforced reticence of butter-and-egg middlemen unloosens sudden outbursts of speech—the figure has an unfortunate but truthful suggestion—like dammed things.

All this was a generation ago—June 17, 1888, to be exact—a period when tennis in America was an exclusive sport like lacrosse or cricket. But the game had already made great headway toward being an American thing. Mount Airy players had long ago dug out the English “lawn” to make a “skin court”; they had twisted the English “thank you” into a technical and not always polite order to return stray balls, and had adopted the usual American system of “badgering.” Anyone could see that the young chap was trying to “talk” his opponent into error. In the American code, the man loses caste who cannot stand the steady grind of talk directed persistently at every weakness.

An accidental shot to the middleman’s left hand, and an apt remark about left-handedness in general, had unnerved the professor’s opponent for the moment, causing a deposit of several easy balls in the net. Further well-placed banter encouraged the irritated middleman to take out a little private revenge on the ball; result, a walloping “three-bagger” over toward the Mount Airy sky line.

“Hard luck!” the young man murmured in mock politeness, gazing satirically after the ball, but the middleman seemed to view that terrific flight with deep satisfaction. His partner, however, scolded and advised him to be “steady.”

The game stood “four all.” It was the middleman’s service. That looked like a sure win for the young professor’s side; that is, unless the middleman grew cautious and canny. Tennis is a game requiring great strength and equally great delicacy. The middleman had been brought up in the produce business. For ten years he had assisted, between two o’clock in the morning and sunrise, in the transportation of hundreds of cases of eggs, than which there are few occupations requiring more combined strength and delicacy.

The middleman settled down to business. Balls were served with the wizard-like dexterity of a juggler. There was absolutely no “breakage”—a clean, fine shipment; score, 5-4.

At the same time the professor suddenly slumped.

He missed easy shots and fouled his partner. A young person sitting cross-legged on the side-lines—it was one of the many Levering girls, although one could not be sure without one’s glasses—had been for some time deliberately making fun of him, and in a very stealthy fashion, too. His private and original twists of chin, arm, head, even the crinkling of the eyes to avoid the glare, these had been sedulously imitated. The professor put the left palm to his chin—a thoroughly characteristic attitude; the young lady, squatting like a tailor, put her left palm to her chin and wiggled the fingers in some subtle token of derision. The professor played with a twisted lock at the very crown of his head; the young lady elevated a gorgeous bunch of her own brown hair.

This mirror-like mimicry got on his mind and caused some extraordinary tennis. Yes, she was one of the “Leverings”—a familiar name in that locality—but for a time he could not precisely place her. Ah! Those Leverings with the outlandish names, Regina?—Juanita?—

“Hard luck!” grunted the middleman, with a sharp tinge of vengeance in his tone. The professor had served a monstrous “out.”

What was the name? He cocked an eye aloft and sucked in both cheeks—an attitude of cogitation; the Levering young lady twisted her head and neck into a Pre-Raphaelite Pièta. He had danced with her many times. He had played tennis with her at—ah! Manheim! Manheim Levering! That was it. No! Manheim was the name of a street.... Some absurd family name. What was it? A bad return threw the game into deuce. He clapped his hand over his mouth as a sign of apology; the Levering person—first name not yet recalled—immediately hid her face with a spread-out palm and peeped out between the fingers, a sign of utter shame over the bad play. Keyser! That was it! Keyser Levering. Of all the absurd names to give a girl! The Keysers had come over with Pastorius; that was enough to justify the maltreating of a young woman who—gracious!—she was pulling her nose, stroking it gently! Extraordinary conduct! Perhaps the name had affected her in some way. Names do react upon the owners; few Percys ever become valiant; Percy Hotspur was only a glorious exception. Pulling the nose was one of the young professor’s really bad habits; he had struggled all his life to stop it; the very thought of stopping gave him an uncontrollable itching. There! he was doing it again. And she? She was polishing vigorously with little finger upraised. The minx!

The professor suddenly doubled-up and rubbed his belt. He had caught a stabbing blow “in the wind,” as they say in boxing.

“Game and set!” exulted the middleman, and then offered satiric apologies for the knock-out; but the young man heard not; he was busy getting his breath and watching Miss Levering mimicking a gentleman doubled-up with a tennis ball in his stomach. A man may do some things, he thought as he pressed his lips and tried not to wince, that a lady should under no circumstances do. The young woman was certainly not herself that morning. Besides, he had borne the blow like a soldier, and had only passed a hand lightly over the burning spot, while she—she was pantomiming like a child with the colic.

His memory of her conduct on other occasions gave no hint of this. He recalled a quiet, lady-like person, mature, solicitous of the latest news of Elizabethan playwrights. The miss before him, sitting tailor-fashion on the grass, was carrying on—why, she was puckering her lips like a—but so was he!

And now she was flirting with him, one eye deliberately closed, the other looking up mischievously. Could it be the heat?

Finally he marched over and accused her of losing his game.

“You sat there telling me all my faults in sign language,” he told her. “I got so interested I forgot how to play.”

“Just when did you learn?” she inquired mildly.

“Well!” he looked at her. Without doubt he was an erratic player, brilliant and simply bad alternately, the sort that never improves; but he had not the least ambition to do better, so the satire had no sting for him. “Well!” he retorted. “It wasn’t yesterday.”

“No!” she speculated. “No! It couldn’t have been yesterday; it must have been this morning—after luncheon.”

Her right hand made a vigorous swish through the air; her eyes followed an imaginary ball which obviously sailed high out of bounds; her left had come clap over the mouth in clear chagrin. In a flash the professor had himself dramatically presented at his worst, but her cheerful laughter saved the mimicry from anything but good-natured raillery.

Then she told him how to hold his racket for certain plays, and instructed him in the theory of the angles of incidence and refraction upon which both tennis and billiards are founded.

“Yes!” he would say, and “Really, now!”; or “Why, we learned all that in physics, but I never saw any use for it!” But his main interest was in watching the bright, eager face, the frank, brown eyes which looked straight into him steadily and explored him; and without the slightest gleam of—well, there is no word for it—the sort of mature awareness that is rarely absent when a woman looks steadily into the eyes of a man. There was health in her face and a dominant egoism like a man’s. The last time he had talked with her she had been timid, and clinging, and feminine; a thing that had frightened him off. He remembered that he had likened her to a young aunt—visited rarely—who used to throw her arms about him without notice and kiss him back of the ear. After much practice he had learned finally to sense the beginning of the aunt’s attack and so, in a measure, defend himself. A pathetic lookup of the eyes, dog-like and reverent, was the unfailing sign; just so, at their last meeting, this Levering lady had regarded him as they walked together. Unconsciously he had kept one arm ready to ward off a possible pounce.

Miss Levering had not the shadow of a pounce about her now. She was talking tennis like a sporting editor. Somehow, the professor felt sorry. His strongest wish at that moment was to be attacked.

And he wasn’t listening at all to her harangue.

“You must watch the other fellow’s swing. If he ‘cuts’ up you mustn’t ‘cut’ down. The ball is turning round and round, this way,” she illustrated by swinging circles. “If you spin it the way it’s going it will drop dead.”

The professor was watching her animated face with the most open delight; and he followed her minute instructions absolutely not at all. Simple admiration beamed from him.

“My dear young lady! My dear young lady!” he was saying over and over to himself. “I will never call you ‘Keyser.’ It is the name of an emperor and a dog, but not of a bit of humanity like your delightful self. Wonder of wonders! Cosmos and chaos! Who can understand, O Lord, thy marvelous doings.... Male and female created He them.... Eyes, smiles, voice, gestures inimitable; soul, being, essence—what are they?... I don’t know anything.... Saw her for hours at a time and never noticed her till now.... Could we live on $600 salary and the rent of six small dwellings, not always rented, and the income of the D. & W. R. R., if it ever pays dividends? Glory be to Peter, what are eyes made of? And flesh and blood? Marvelous!... The Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep Thy law!... Talk on!... I’m not listening! It’s great! Oh, what a wonderful—”

Then he spoke aloud, ejaculating as if he had been stung by a green fly.

“Great Jupiter!” he shouted, and “Bless my soul!”

She had stood to show him how to swing his racket for a “Lawford,” in those days a rare stroke among amateurs.

“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed, staring at her feet.

The young lady’s dresses stopped at her knees! As she swung about, a long braid of hair became visible for the first time, tipped with a dainty bow of crimson ribbon.

“Say!” he clutched her by the arm. “How old are you?”

“Thirteen,” she replied, wondering at his excitement.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Gorgas Levering. Same as it always was.”

“Thirteen! Jupiter Pluvius! Arrest me, somebody! Are you sure your name isn’t Keyser?”

“Keyser is my sister.”

“Thank goodness for that. Gorgas! Bad enough. But Keyser—ugh!—Are you named after a street?”

“No; family. What’s the matter? What are you looking at me that way for? Counting my freckles? Anything wrong with my feet?”

The professor dropped on the grass and laughed himself into exhaustion.

“Your—legs,” he got forth finally, but quietly, so the wives on the benches could not hear. “Legs—gave me—fright. They saved you, though. Hadn’t been—for—legs, I might have asked—you to—marry me.... Thirteen!... Gracious!...” He sobered up suddenly and remarked to the spirits of the air, as it were, “There ought to be a law against me.”

Miss Gorgas Levering sat down again cross-legged. She pulled her short skirts over her knees. Then she wound her long braid about her head and fastened it with a sharp twig. Demurely she looked at him, as her elder sister might have done.

“As you were saying, Professeh Blynn,” she mimicked one of her sister’s college friends. “Don’t let me interrupt a pro-po-sal. Small offehs of marriage cheerfully received. First come, first served.”

“Your face is quite old enough,” Professor Blynn speculated.

Her features were as womanly as they ever would be. Some young girls achieve that sort of maturity early; it is only a question of lengthened skirts and twisted hair and they grow up over night. Her vocabulary was strikingly mature, too; sure sign of much reading; and it was streaked with dashes of vigorous young thinking. Her strong coloring heightened the illusion.

“I’m an out-of-doors girl,” she explained. “I play tennis, you know—really play,” she laughed; “and I skate and climb trees and ride.” Then she told him, with comical gravity, that she was the beginning of a new species, and asked if he had read Gardiner’s “The Femine?” “It’s an English book; sort of pamphlet. It tells about the coming woman. She will be strong, first of all. He didn’t convert me. I was always that.”

The instinctive teacher in him brought him quickly to her level. He did not make fun of her, nor patronize. Just the right word or two he said, as he lolled on the grass and deliberately stuffed a brier pipe, enough to take her off the defensive, a position which every intelligent child must assume in the presence of superior elders, and led her to communicate naturally. He talked to her of modern ideas about woman; although his own ideas on the subject were not at all formed. “A Doll’s House” had just been translated into English and was already creating no end of stir. He told her about it. The story of Nora and her vain sacrifice caught hold of her active young mind. He promised her some books, forgetting completely her years as he had done in the beginning; and recommended a lot of German “new thought” just emerging into translations, rather shocking reading in those days, even for males.

Without any self-consciousness they explored each other’s faces as they talked. Certain of his little twists of mouth and eye—he had a habit of screwing up the left side of his face as he propounded, it seemed to assist him as he dug the idea up out of his mind and threw it from him—these she stored away without meaning to, along with his sudden wrinkling of brow, and the odd cock of the neck. Something dramatic in her had always been at work, seizing the high peculiarities of folks for the sake of later caricature. She did not miss that sly rubbing of the hand along the nose, nor his sudden display of white teeth when he smiled.

As a rule, he lost sight of his auditors when he spoke. His classes were always a blur, or rather, they merged into a single personality, which attended, squirmed, laughed as a complete organism. And in his successful dealings with very little children—they always received him into their intimacies without reserve—he had soon discovered that the best results were obtained when one does not in the beginning stare into their faces. You must look far off down the street as you parley with them, or they will catch the assumed interest or the lurking irony in your eye, and shy off.

So at first he only glanced up at her occasionally. The picture flashed upon his mind was not at all that of a child, but of a young woman of his own age, yet infinitely more self-absorbed and independent than any he could recall. The chin, grasped firmly in her hand as she leaned forward, the strong, searching eyes and the coiling braid and the absence of legs had their effect gradually of making him forget that he was dealing with a merely precocious youngster; so, as he warmed up to the tale of Helmer and Doctor Rank and Nora, he shifted about and watched her animated brown face.

The sun and the wind and the rain had toned her in shades of brown. The hair was black-brown, the eyes sepia but lustrous and alive, the skin ruddy-brown like a young Indian. The fat, short-fingered hand that supported the chin was almost cedar.

The illusion of maturity was enhanced by a flashing interpolation or two.

“Women mustn’t imitate men,” she asserted. “That’s silly. Men have some fine things that don’t belong just to them; that’s all. Why shouldn’t I ride a bicycle? Why shouldn’t I play tennis and get tanned? Why shouldn’t I work hard, too, and get all there is out of the sport? I’m no jelly fish. Chinese women can walk; can’t they? Well, why shouldn’t they? I found that in Gardiner, but I thought of it myself, long before that.”

They discussed a possible Chinese woman who had revolted, and the consequences in community and family persecution. Then she hinted guardedly of some personal persecutions. The mother had misgivings. There was talk in the family of corralling and branding and fitting for market.

She had never been to school. She had fought against it; and they had given in. A nursery maid had taught her to read and figure, the rest had taken care of itself.

He admired her immensely then, she was so careful not to show a partisan spirit in a matter that so much concerned her happiness. The mother was quite right to wish her daughters to be alike, she admitted; but it is not given even loving mothers to understand all about their children. Sacrifice must be made by the children, she knew, for mothers must not suffer too much, even when they were unwisely restrictive or made laws just for the sake of making them. As she spoke thus soberly, the little lady seemed really older than the man before her.

Then the spell was shattered.

“I will never wear a boned waist!” she broke in frankly.

In Mount Airy, twenty-five years ago, one did not speak openly of invisible clothing. In school one was taught to say limb, and not leg; and no young lady ever admitted any public knowledge of petticoats or stockings.

Then Miss Gorgas Levering yanked the twig from her braid, stood up, displayed two lithe young legs, shedding at once ten years of maturity.

He stood up, too. “Gorgas,” he began, and then stopped to look at her quizzically. “I can’t get used to that name,” he smiled. “With ‘Gorgas Lane’ just beyond the Unruh farm—” he waved a hand jokingly.

“But you!” she cried in defense—she knew all about him; he was “the professor” and a marked man. “‘Allen Blynn’—that’s a lane, too—Allen’s Lane! And that’s not so far away, either!”

Evidently the little lady was sensitive about her odd name.

“But Allen is a regular name,” he protested.

“So’s Gorgas!... And you’re ‘Allen L. Blynn,’ too; why, you’re a real ‘lane’!”

“Oh, I dropped the ‘L’ long ago—when grandmother died.”

“I never had it!” she exulted.

“But the ‘L’ isn’t for ‘lane,’” he shook his head sadly. “It’s much worse—it’s for ‘Lafayette.’”

“Oh!” she gasped her delight.

“Much worse, eh?”

“I should say so!”

“I take it all back, Gorgas,” he dropped his bantering tone, and shook his head so humbly, and smiled so pleasantly that she was soon mollified. “We’re both named after families, I see—the kind of families that have streets named for them; but that ‘Lafayette’ of mine is worse than—worse than even ‘Keyser’!” Gorgas laughed; one’s own name is never funny, but how comic are other persons’! “When Lafayette paid Mount Airy the great visit in 1825,” he explained, “he made a very formal call on my grandmother—kissed her hand, I believe—well, she gave up the remainder of her life to bragging about it, and she hoped to perpetuate the event by naming me ‘Lafayette.’ Wasn’t that a dreadful calamity to put upon a young infant?”

“Awful!” she agreed heartily.

“While she lived I had to be ‘Allen L. Blynn,’” he smiled ruefully, “But ‘Lafayette’ died with her, bless her good old soul. At college when they asked me what the ‘L’ stood for, I used to say, ‘Just L.’ You don’t know how scared I was lest that crowd should discover all about that kiss-the-hand business!”

The middleman and his group came up just then and joked obviously about their prowess as players.

“Getting points from Gorgas?” inquired the middleman. “She took the junior cup, you know, and against some smart boys, too. At least they thought they were smart.”

The middleman had won both sets that afternoon, and could afford to expand. “You know, you tutors ought to be tutored before you take us on again. That might make you—”

“Astuter?” suggested the professor.

His grin was not at the jest. He was thinking of Gorgas, standing erect and brown as young Pocahontas, and looking very like that famous lady. The frown had not yet gone from her eyes. She would not wear—! Bless her! He could see her years later in all the tortures and disguises that women permit themselves to indulge in, including the ugly balloon sleeves, which were already enveloping very young girls; and pyramidal high-heeled shoes; perhaps even a “bustle.”

Someone asked the time.

“Jee-ru-salem!” whispered Gorgas. “I’ve got to cut it home.”

“Tell your mother I’m coming by on Wednesday afternoon. At about three. I’m looking over that Williams boy at two. It’s near you, you know.”

“Very good, Professor Blynn.”

“Mr. Blynn, if you don’t mind.”

“Very good, Mr. Blynn.”

“Stay around Wednesday, will you? I want to talk some more.”

“Very good, Mr. Blynn.”

“Come around; you’ll find me in.”

The frown was entirely gone. She was smiling at her own “poetry” as she moved off.

“I’ll find you out, too, if I kin,” he threw back.

She walked two or three swift steps down the path before she retorted, without looking around:

“No, you won’t. You’ll simply ‘chin.’”

This was a pleasant blow at his profession. He was a talker. Only that very morning he had written in an “album”—it was a day of albums—answers to questions that bared him to the core.

What is your occupation? Deliverer of addresses.

What would you rather be? Maker of speeches.

What is your favorite game? Conversation.

What game do you most dislike? Conversation of others.

He watched her as she walked swiftly down the path. Good-looking youngsters do hold the eye! The suggestion of young Indian persisted, the ideal Indian maiden of Hiawatha: she was so brown; the hair fell in an enormous black braid; her form was almost curveless; and she strode along with all the motion in her gliding feet, her lithe body as steady and as straight as a young poplar.

She disappeared for a moment in the dip of a gully, then rose again and dwindled slowly down the long path across a field. With folded arms he stared after her, thinking of many things: of the beauty of young childhood, a wondrous, vanishing thing; of her active, mature mind, caged up in that child’s frame; of—at the end of the path she turned swiftly, as if she knew he was there, and shot a hand high in the air as a parting salute. He waved back instantaneously. He could watch her for two minutes longer, until she crossed the railroad. But she trudged sturdily on and did not look back again.

II
GYPSIES!

THE Williams boy, a well-built little man of eleven, was a healthy, riotous animal, keen, fluent and right-minded—but he had not been “promoted.” Blynn had found this out in an accidental meeting with the lad. The result was a regular Wednesday afternoon visit at the boy’s home with a new sort of “lessons,” and many tramps down Cresheim creek and up the Wissahickon—the core of the method—where instruction was part of the game.

Blynn had the teacher’s gift of presenting unknown regions of knowledge with all the allurements of advertisement of seaside estates. He aroused interest, a desire to explore, a proper pride in achievement; and, above all, hope. He never complained of stupidity, nor expressed the least impatience with slowness; so in this way he ever stirred up latent or lost personal faiths. Within a few months the Williams boy was ready to pass into the next grade and do himself credit; unless the well-intentioned but narrow school dames of the Hall should petrify his interest and with daily croakings cut off all communication.

Gorgas was standing in the fine old doorway of her home when he came out of the Williams’ gate. He waved to her cheerfully; she saluted gravely in return, one lift of the hand, as the Roman stage-senators do. When he came forward eagerly, his severe face alight with interest, she stood watching him without motion. That was a characteristic of Gorgas which she had possessed as a baby and which she maintained all her life; it gave charming dignity to her later years; active at one moment as the famous imps below, the next moment rigid as a wax-work, yet thunderingly alive, a fawn struck into silence, listening.

Not until he stood beside her did she move. Then abruptly she thrust out a hand.

“How do you do, Mr. Blynn,” she smiled an absurd, artificial smile, the perfect mask of a hostess. “Won’t you sit down? It’s awful good of you to call.”

“Wie geht’s, milady?” he bowed in perfect understanding of the game. “Excuse! I haff been talking zee Cherman Sprache mit dot Wilhelm’s poy und I cannot get back to English for several minuten after-varts, afterwarts—afterwards—there! My tongue’s free. ’Raus mit ihm! Gesundheit! How are you? Schreckliches Wetter—I mean, sticky weather, isn’t it?”

They had reached the living room by this time. A glance about had not revealed Mrs. Levering or the older daughter. No doubt, they would be forthcoming later.

“The weather is rather depressing,” she drawled. The tone struck him as decidedly familiar; but when she opened her large eyes and blinked deliberately at him twice, and then drew a languid hand across one cheek and fidgeted a moment in her chair, as if to distribute an imaginary “bustle,” it came to him with a rush that she was picturing Mrs. Williams, whom he had just left.

Blynn squeezed down into his chair, thrust his head into his neck, puffed out his cheek, a recognizable portrait of Mr. Williams, and growled.

“I don’t like it! I don’t like it! I don’t like it at all!”

In a moment or two they were caricaturing the neighborhood and making guesses as to the portrait.

He didn’t say, “That isn’t fair,” or “You shouldn’t mimic your elders that way”; nor did he begin any sentence with, “It isn’t nice for young girls to—” Instead, he joined in, became particeps criminis, and at once was initiated into the secretest of fraternities, the brotherhood of children. In a little while he had won the right to ask her any personal question he wished without once being suspected of school-teachering.

He wanted to know what she was reading.

“‘Man and Wife,’” she told him.

Wilkie Collins wrote it, and Professor Blynn did not know that! It was about a Scotch marriage, she explained: two persons had unwittingly acknowledged themselves man and wife before witnesses; that was enough to bind them in irrevocable marriage.

Her explanations were clear—evidently she knew what she was reading—and she talked of marriage and children with extraordinary frankness.

“At the same time I am reading ‘La Peau de Chagrin’ par Honoré Balzac,” this with a breathless kind of mystery.

The change of timbre as the French name floated out musically brought Blynn to sudden attention.

“You speak French?” he inquired incredulously. He knew that she had never gone to school, and that among Mount Airy families it was not then customary to have governesses.

“Assez pour m’ faire comprendre,” she came back quickly. “Et vous, m’sieur? Vous l’parlez aussi?”

“Where on earth did you learn the language?” he showed his admiration for her glib prowess. “I read easily enough. It cost me the hardest kind of grubbing, too. But I couldn’t talk it two minutes.”

She grew suddenly statuesque.

“Who taught you?” he persisted.

“Bardek,” she whispered. “You must not tell. You will not tell?”

He crossed his heart.

“It’s a great secret. Mother must not know. Bardek is Bohemian; he speaks all languages.”

“Who is Bardek?”

She lowered her voice.

“Promise you won’t tell.”

He promised readily.

“Bardek is a gypsy, I think; but he doesn’t travel. He lives in the old mill in Cresheim Valley. I ride in the mornings, you know, very often alone. He talks to me in French and tells me how to say things.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Three years.”

“Since you were ten?”

“Yes; that’s when I got ‘Gyp.’”

“‘Gyp’ is a horse?”

“Yes.”

“Cresheim Valley in the mornings is a rather lonely spot, eh?”

“Yes; that makes it fine! There’s absolutely not a soul about between seven and eight. If anyone comes, I step into the old mill.”

“Merciful heavens!” said Blynn, but not aloud. Nothing in his manner betrayed the slightest hint of anything but entire acquiescence in the policy of meeting gypsies in an unfrequented valley between seven and eight in the morning.

“He teaches me other things, too,” she went on. “I’ve never told this to anyone but you; not a person. We seem so well acquainted—after yesterday. Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you. It’s been a terrible thing to keep to myself. They think—” motioning toward the house—“I pick up French out of books, the way I get most things. I do hammered copper and silver inlay, too; Bardek taught me. But I don’t get practice enough. Bardek says one must give a life to it. He makes beautiful things, and sells them to rich people.”

“Do you pay him?”

“Oh, no!” she smiled in a superior way. “Bardek is above money.”

“Ugh!” thought Blynn. He seemed to remember a dirty, fat man, pounding away on something at the mouth of the ruined paper-mill. He had rings in his ears, and a pair of huge mustachios gave him a villainous air.

“I have tried to give him money. But he stopped all that in no time. He took me inside and showed me a cunning box set in a stone in the mill. It was full of gold—oh!”

The “oh” was uttered with quick anguish. Blynn came swiftly to her chair and raised her head. Tears were flooding her eyes, and her face was screwed up into a horrid attempt to suppress the noise of weeping.

“What is the matter, my dear child?” he asked again and again.

Several times she tried to speak. Evidently from her glances toward the door she feared someone would be aware of a break in her voice; so with heroic efforts she shut back the sobs.

“I have—told! I—have—told! I promised not—to tell. I have told—you. It is—all right—I—know. You would keep—it—a—secret. But it hurts—that—I—have told. Bardek has been—so—good to me. It was—wicked.”

It was simply an accident, he assured her. Quietly he soothed her. “We are pals now,” he told her. This would make them into a league of secrecy. She could trust him. All his life he had been a father-confessor to children. He was tested. Keeping a secret like that was hard for her. Now it would be easier. Some things are almost too much to hold. She nodded. One must have outlets. Mothers were made for that purpose. She looked worried at that, so he took a quick turn. Sometimes even mothers couldn’t just understand; then one must have a pal or “bust.” Her eyes showed approval. A pal must know everything. No secrets from pals. That seemed to be agreed. He would go with her to Bardek some day soon—she showed half-frightened wonder at the plan—well, they would talk it over like good comrades later. Someone was coming.

“My name is Mum,” he nodded, “second-cousin to Dumb.”

She gave him a look of wild approval as Mrs. Levering appeared from the rear of the house; she was dressed for travel and hurrying.

“Why, Professor Blynn, I declare!” the good lady was obviously surprised at his presence. “I am particularly pleased to see you. Harold Williams has been praising you to me and telling all about you. You’ve done wonders with that boy—”

“Oh, no! no! God and his good mother are responsible for all the wonders. A fine little fellow, he is. Somebody got on the wrong side of him; that’s all.”

“But why didn’t I know you were here?” She looked mildly at Gorgas.

Blynn hastened to explain.

“I was talking with Gorgas last Saturday afternoon at the tennis-courts—”

“Ah! You came to talk about Gorgas. Good! The very thing I have been thinking of myself. I wish I had known you were coming, for I must be off to our little literary club. We’re fined if we don’t come on time,” she smiled as if the matter were unimportant. “Don’t let me seem abrupt, but I have only a half-minute. So let me come out bluntly. I want you to take Gorgas’ education in charge; look her over; find out where she needs patching and repainting. I declare she has grown up out of babyhood before I am ready. It is almost ungracious of her. I must blame somebody. She is thirteen years old, and doesn’t know anything. My fault, I know; but you’re a wonder—everybody says so. You’ll do it; won’t you?... Oh, yes. I must be practical. Everybody is poor nowadays—the Democrats are in, you know!—I must inquire about prices. What do you charge by the hour? I must ask for wholesale rates, for Mr. Levering’s wholesale, you know, and always gets discounts!”

Generations of Pennsylvania-German thrift beamed coldly from her eyes, although the rest of her ample person actually smiled.

“Absolutely nothing an hour, Mrs. Levering.”

“Oh, no!” she protested, but she looked relieved. “I will not hear of that. The Democrats haven’t brought us that low—yet. Although goodness only knows what’s to happen next. I really believe they caused that blizzard last March! Well! We’ll talk it over later. But you’ll have to charge something. It’s your business, man, and a tough job you’ll have,” twitching Gorgas’ ears affectionately. “Reading novels and riding Gyp—that’s this little girl’s idea of getting an education!”

“All right, Mrs. Levering, we’ll talk it over later. But I make it a rule never to charge for this sort of out-of-school work. I like to do it. It’s my fun. But you may give me a dinner occasionally. We teachers do get hungry for good food—and good company!”

“A bargain!” the lady called out happily. “But I’m off. I’ll be late. You’ve cost me a quarter-dollar fine, young man. Dinners? If you do anything with Gorgas I’ll take you in as a permanent boarder. Day-day, child. Goodby, Mr. Blynn. Sorry I couldn’t stay. Gorgas,” she was at the door now, “get Louisa to make a nice cool drink. And give the Professor something to eat. Don’t ever let him get hungry!” Her laugh carried her down the steps.

As they picnicked on the back-lawn, his instinct told him to keep away from the Bardek story, to act as if it were a thing to be forgotten. Only when he was ready to go, and she seemed to have an unwonted appearance of depression, he repeated his promise to keep the matter secret until she would wish him to tell. This seemed to brighten her tremendously; for she was terribly downcast at the thought of her failure. Now she seemed to be almost her buoyant self.

“You did not tell your mother I was coming,” he remarked.

“No.” But she did not seem troubled.

“Nor your sister?”

“No,” very seriously, “they were both going out. I was afraid if I told them they might stay home.”

Then the comical side of her statement struck her. They both laughed over it as they shook hands.

“Goodby, pupil,” he waved, “see you later.”

“If you don’t forget the date-r,” she rhymed.

“I’ll sure be there, I beg to state-r,” he returned as he moved off.

“Wednesday next at this here gate-r,” she called after him, gleeful to get the last rhyme.

He shook his head and threw up his hands as if she had scored heavily against him. That was an instinctive trick of his, to make children feel the keen joy of a mental victory. It gave her a little glow for hours afterward, as he knew it would, and quite saved her from a far-off conscience which told her she had not been faithful to Bardek.

III
THE OLD PAPER MILL

BLYNN found himself tremendously interested in the business of teaching young persons, but he always discounted that enthusiasm. Scholarship, he felt, was his predestined occupation. Not that he really knew any good reason why the work of a delver in past documents should be especially worthy; nor did he ever inquire whether a life given to Elizabethan dramatists could be a life well spent. He enjoyed that sort of thing, but he had the collector’s instinct, not the scholar’s, although he did not know that; he carried on his readings and note-takings and classifyings as an amateur might collect butterflies. The figure fails in one important respect: all butterflies are beautiful. Better, he was like certain dealers in antique: ugly old furniture and bric-a-brac were sorted out with the same reverent care as the really beautiful. Six hundred a year—the beginner’s salary—seemed a magnificent return for tasks that he would willingly have performed, if he could have afforded it, without money and without price.

He did not know until much later that he was an exceptional teacher. Youngsters got the habit of confiding their academic troubles to him; and whether it were algebra or English grammar or poetry, he had the gift of making straight roads through the difficulties, and of charging his young friends with desire to go ahead.

A so-called stupid child or “bad” boys who wouldn’t study, these always seized his interest. Before he knew it, he had a dozen young folks on his list whose whole educational life he had surreptitiously taken possession of. The Williams boy was one; and now Gorgas had been added.

Gorgas Levering was an interesting “case” to Blynn. Through unwitting neglect, the child was out of touch with her parents and possibly in danger. Evidently she had a magnificent will, almost the only thing needful with the right sort of teacher, but perilous if it is coerced or left to drive its own unaided bent. The thought of her three years’ intimacy with the Bohemian Bardek gave Blynn a physical chill.

Bardek had done wonderful things with her, the French, for instance; she had the very tang of a native, even the shrugs and almost inimitable twists of hand and head. Blynn recognized the method; it was his own; and he respected Bardek’s results as a fellow-craftsman would; but he was not sure that he should respect Bardek’s morals.

She was the most interesting of all the children he had semi-officially under his charge, but she was something else. The memory of that illusion of maturity he could not dissipate by any amount of concentration upon the sum of her actual years. She had come at him first as a young woman challenging him to meet her on equal terms, and had stirred him as Olivia had been stirred by the disguised Viola. Some of the suggestion of that mistake continued to stay with him. The grave brown eyes searched him as he talked, and threw him into the half-belief that some witch had taken a woman and had given her the shape and habiliments of a child.

As he walked along the unfrequented streets of Mount Airy he scolded himself aloud for his shameful imaginings; but he could not shake them off. He reminded himself of Olivia fancying herself in love with Viola, and laughed. “Perhaps it is not Gorgas, but her sister. It really was brother Sebastian in the play. I’ll look her up. Keyser will—Keyser!—Bolts and shackles! What a name!”

One day he contrived, therefore, to chat with Miss Keyser, and so they arranged to spend an afternoon driving together. But on the way to “look Keyser up” he lapsed into a contemplation of the first meeting with Gorgas at the tennis-courts. “If this were Italy,” he grinned, “the thing would be simple enough; or even ‘Little Italy,’”—the near-by city’s Italian colony—“Thirteen, I hear, is rather the proper age there. At fifteen the little Italians either have bambinos or they are on the shelf. Wasn’t Lady Devereaux, Sidney’s famous Stella, about that age? I’ll have to look up precedents. Beatrice? Dante’s Beatrice? She was a ‘fourteener,’ wasn’t she? And Juliet! Ah! Juliet was just thirteen!” He quoted humorously from the play, “‘On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen; that shall she, marry.’... Guess Shakespeare knew what he was about!... I’ve had a sad jar. Those legs! And the braid, and the silly ribbon!... I haven’t felt so cheap since—”

He laughed aloud suddenly and set a frightened little spaniel barking with fury.

“Go it, old boy,” he called. “You aren’t half so startled as I was.... Well,” he nodded his head vigorously. “She gave me a little insight into myself and into what’s coming to me some day, I expect. The next time, I hope it will be a real woman. Just the same, I’m going to be always grateful to the little witch for the deception; and I’ll pay, too.”... He closed his lips with determination. “That Bardek fellow will be looked into—migh-ty care-ful-ly, I tell you, boy.... He’s been putting things in her head, I warrant.... Thought all that wise talk was second-handed.... Where did she ever come across Gardiner’s ‘Femine’? Heavens! Why, it’s full of rot, just the sort of thing to upset a girl and persuade her that wrong is right.... But I must be careful. If we drive her sort—” He threw up his hands.

Miss Keyser Levering was already waiting in the little two-seated family carriage.

“Am I late?” he asked cheerfully.

“No; I’m early,” she responded, digging under the seat for a rug. “That shows that you don’t know me as well as you should. Some people are always two minutes late. My specialty is being two minutes early. Jump in; I’m going to drive. This ‘off’ animal is ‘Sorry,’ not ‘Gyp’; ‘Sorry’ has to be handled by one of the family. ‘Gyp’ is never in the stable days like this.”

At the mention of “Gyp,” Blynn’s mental ears stood up, but he got into the carriage with much irrelevant jesting over the relation between horses and horse-sense.

“Where is Gorgas?” he asked casually.

“Off with ‘Gyp,’ as always.” The sister was not concerned.

“‘Gyp’ is mild, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes; stupid.”

“Which way did she go?”

“Her usual—down Cresheim Valley.”

They trotted off toward Chestnut Hill. Blynn broke into a chatty strain until they had turned into the pike which marks the county line.

“Let’s go up the Wissahickon,” he suggested. “You can turn off here and go through Cresheim.”

After leaving Main Street they plunged into the Cresheim Valley, which in the eighteenth century was a thriving industrial center, with prosperous mills—three or four of them—busy at the manufacture of hosiery and paper. One has only to recall the conspicuous masculine leg of that century to know the demand for proper hose, and when one is reminded that Cresheim Valley produced the paper for the printing of the Declaration of Independence, the historic setting is made; but steam, trousers, and a less rebellious time had passed the hand of oblivion over the once busy vale.

As a result, the old road was ragged and rocky, and the only sign that broke the effect of forest primeval was the ruins of two of the old mills, a half-broken dam, and a dangerous looking mill race.

Blynn kept to the safe rôle of talker; but inwardly he chafed and worried. Somewhere down in those leafy depths an unknown foreigner was enticing a young girl to come to him....

He scrutinized both sides of the road as he neared the ruined paper-mill. Tethered among the bushes he knew “Gyp” was peacefully cropping. He listened and watched, but at no time lost his cue in the small talk; and was repaid by a slight movement of the bushes and the sight of a long nose reaching for green branches.

“Sorry” neighed in greeting and stretched his head to look; but “Gyp” withdrew directly to munch his bunch of leaves.

“Has ‘Gyp’ a white star on his nose?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Do you see her?”

“No,” he looked the other way. “I just guessed. Most horses do.”

Below the mill he claimed to have dropped a glove, got out, and ran swiftly back.

Only one dilapidated corner of the ancient paper-mill was still standing, and that had to be reached via a bridge of logs. Canvas was fastened over holes in the roof, and odds and ends of boards made a patch-work flooring, through which the rushing mill race could be clearly seen. The waters below swirled noisily over rocks and fallen masonry.

Save for an old stool, some rag rugs and a mass of copper odds and ends, the mill was quite empty.

IV
“THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE”

ALMOST as Blynn surveyed the empty mill he knew he had made a mistake in coming at all, and was instantly eager to get out unobserved. He knew what a child would think of this sort of spying and how it would take weeks of building up to get back the lost confidence. Particularly was it important just now to maintain the genuine intimacy which had miraculously grown up between them in so short a time. As he stumbled up the rocky Valley road he was apprehensive of seeing and being seen.

Perhaps Bardek and she had been watching from near-by bushes. That thought chilled him. Mixed with the fear of losing the child’s faith in him as trusty pal was the quick antagonism against that other pal, who was no doubt with her now in this wild spot.

It was a case for slow treatment. Hurry would spoil all. To come near the rendezvous at all was a grave mistake, he told himself; he had obeyed an impulse, purely a personal one, too, and it was an impulse which his mind should have resolutely checked. It shamed him a little to think how amateurishly he had acted, after all his knowledge of the mind of children.

Gorgas must take him to Bardek in her own good time. One must play a waiting game and trust mightily that all would be well.

He regained the carriage, exhibited a glove and took up the dropped conversation.

“I don’t agree with you about the Duke,” he continued. Miss Levering had seen “Twelfth Night” recently and had read it over to prepare herself for a conversation with a university instructor. “The Duke behaves quite properly, if you will agree with my theory.”

“He was a goose,” commented the lady, “groaning over his countess and not having the gumption to go up to her and talk it out. And in the last act he whisks over to Viola just because she puts on dresses. Shakespeare nodded when he made the Duke; that’s my theory.”

“Let me tell you mine,” said Blynn. “To the Elizabethan, love was an infection, a kind of pestilence, like the plague, which one caught from another. Once you have it you are ill. You become moody, put on gay clothes, wash your face, and demand sad songs. They sold medicines, love philters to give the disease, and hate potions to cure it. A chap usually knew when he had caught the pesky thing, but he was not always sure of the source. Well, the Duke had a bad case. He got it from the boy Cesario, who was really, as you know, a charming young lady disguised. Now the very salt of the play is the Duke’s blunders in guessing who played the trick on him. The Elizabethan audience understood that joke and enjoyed every one of his false moves toward the conquest of the Countess. It’s as if a fellow had the influenza and began to treat himself as if he had sunburn. Every application of cold cream and every sneeze would be comedy to the onlooker. So in the end, when the Duke discovers the cause of his trouble he promptly marries it; as most of us do. Oh, he isn’t a bit inconsistent, if you understand Elizabethan love.”

“Well, that only proves the play is founded on an error,” she persisted. “If you must have a lot of historic learning to appreciate a play, it is not great drama. I insist, Shakespeare nodded.”

“What makes you so certain that love is not a plague?”

“It may be, for all I know,” she parried. “But I should think two modern young people would know when they—”

“But do they, always? A man may behave exactly like the Duke, have all the symptoms, and not guess for the longest while what really is the matter with him. Frequently he blames it on the wrong lady. Sometimes somebody has to take him aside and speak roundly to him—the girl’s father, for instance. And there are enough bad marriages to make me believe that lovers often make a wrong diagnosis. It’s still a mystery to me. Cupid and his arrows was not a bad theory. He was a wretched shot, you know; frightfully bad. That would explain a lot of mismating.”

“But the Countess?” she persisted. “She wanted to marry a woman just because she found her dressed in man’s clothing; and what did she do later? Promptly switched off to the lady’s brother, Sebastian. There! I have settled your theory. She had never seen Sebastian before. She couldn’t get any—any pestilence or plague from a man who wasn’t about.”

Blynn laughed. “I didn’t want to lecture to you; but the theory is rather complicated and you have hit upon a fine illustration. How far can love carry? We say, as far as one can see distinctly. The Elizabethans put no limit—as far as the ends of the earth, to the very stars and back again.

“Beatrice and Benedict are in love long before they know it. Petruchio has picked out his Katharine before he sees her. Viola is in love with the Duke the moment she hears his name. You see, they took their cue from the carrying power of the mysterious plague. Look the way La Grippe is ravaging us; and we think it has travelled from the Far East. Besides, they believed the stars arranged all this sort of thing. We don’t believe in fate. Therefore we make ourselves too wise. I incline toward the Elizabethan theory. Do you know Crashaw’s lines ‘To His Supposed Mistress’?

‘Who’er she be

That not impossible She

That shall command my heart and me;

Wher’er she lie,

Locked up from mortal eye

In shady leaves of destiny.’

“I’m content to believe in ‘the shady leaves of destiny.’”

Miss Levering was busy managing “Sorry,” who seemed restive. His ears were perked ahead, and he tossed his head nervously.

“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry, boy,” she soothed. “He sees something strange. There’s a man sitting on the roadside with a lot of pails around him. Trust ‘Sorry’ for picking out anything unusual.”

Blynn looked forward, but from his side of the carriage could see nothing.

“It’s a tramp, I suppose,” she conjectured. “They roost in here. Looks like a travelling tinker. ‘Whoa, Sorry! It’s all right, boy!’ If I talk to him he calms down. ‘Whoa, Sorry! Keep your head down, boy!’”

The man came into view; he was seated on a log hammering at a copper disk, a swarthy, stoutish fellow. A huge gold watch-chain stared out from his waistcoat. He wore no collar. A faded soft hat was decorated with a long turkey-feather. The costume, plus a large mustachio and much unshaved stubble, gave him an air of vagabondia.

“Sorry” slowed down and dug into the ground; the man looked up with smiling face.

“Bon jour, la compagnie!” he saluted, flourishing his hammer. Broad rings flashed from his fat hands.

Blynn searched about for traces of companions. The tall bushes gave no sign.

“Bon jour, Bardek,” returned Miss Levering. “Whoa, Sorry, you fool. It’s only Bardek. Bardek won’t eat you; whoa, boy!”

“Mais, oui!” laughed Bardek. “Il sait bien qu’ j’en ai souvent mangé du ch’val! The horse-flesh is vairy good.”

Blynn leaned forward to talk to him. Here was a fine chance to get acquainted.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted. “My French isn’t good enough to expose to the open air. I’ll have to talk English. Do you understand—”

But “Sorry” had evidently comprehended Bardek’s cannibalistic reference to the joy of eating horse-flesh, for he jolted Blynn down hard on the seat. At the syllable “—stand” Allen Blynn had abruptly sat. As they shot briskly up the drive, Blynn looked back to see the round face of Bardek extended in malevolent laughter.

When they had settled down into a normal pace, Blynn inquired,

“Who is this Bardek? Seems to me I have seen him often hanging about this region.”

“He’s a Frenchman—at least, I think he is French. Sort of a vagabond mender of kettles. I don’t know how he gets his living. He seems always well-fed and contented. He has a wife off there somewhere, and a couple of babes-in-the-woods. He comes and goes. Sometimes he is away for weeks on his rounds. We often stop to chat with him, Gorgas and I. Drat that animal. He ought to know Bardek. I’m ashamed of him. It was that big vase-like thing that scared him. He’d jump at a new tin-cup.”

They talked of the horses, then, as they emerged from a side-road, of the beauty of the Wissahickon Valley, a lovely unchronicled spot in American scenery, Miss Levering steering the conversation by gentle steps back to “Twelfth Night.”

“I’m almost converted to the Elizabethan view,” she admitted. “I’ve been going over in my mind a number of girls I know who have confessed how the man came, saw, and conquered. Girls do gabble, if it is dark enough, especially just after the marriage. They all talk like your Elizabethans, claim to have been destined for each other from the beginning, and so on; yet they all fought the man off at first; all except one girl—the man tried to get away from her, but something—your ‘shady destiny’—what was it?—got him at last.... It’s a horrid thought.”

“Why?”

“Well, it takes all choice away. Heavens! You might be destined to marry the lamp-lighter! I shouldn’t want to catch anything from ‘Aurora.’”

“Aurora,” the lamp-lighter, was one-armed and weather-beaten and gnarled like an ancient mariner; his classical name was a Levering invention.

The winding Wissahickon curled over its rocks far below, and thick trees covered every hill. An occasional carriage passed, mostly elegant broughams with liveried footmen and milady taking her afternoon drive; bicycles whizzed by with much churning of warning bells. Near the “Hill” Miss Levering cut off into a secluded side-road roofed by old trees.

Keyser Levering was twenty-two, and had been grown up and more or less her own master since she was fifteen; yet she felt just a little self-conscious on two counts. First she was alone in the secluded woodland with a young man. Of course, a chaperone would have been absurd; America had adopted the European chaperone for only very official affairs. In the ’80’s she would not have thought of going to the theater with him without elderly assistance, but she was permitted by the code to take him driving up the Wissahickon.

Secondly, she had dared openly to discuss with him the awful topic of love. To be sure, they had done it in an academic setting. Who could object to a learned consideration of Elizabethan literature? Nevertheless, she was not unmindful of the personal modern application of Elizabethan “theory.”

She did not want to become personally involved. Her instincts would have fought off any attempt on the young man’s part to bring the topic up to date; yet she found herself, mothlike, desiring him to do just that. His Elizabethan theory of maidens disturbed by unknown forces, holding out willing hands to nameless gentlemen, and hardly sure of recognizing the rescuer when he appeared—that was not only a startling idea to her, but it struck surprisingly near a description of her own state.

For a year or more she had been in a stupor of daydreams over that “not impossible He” that should command her heart and her. He took no visible shape in her mind, but remained near and yet disappointingly aloof and shadowy. Sometimes she had the palpitating feeling that he was just around the corner, that his nearing foot-falls could be heard. At other times she was sure she was dancing with him or talking to him over a dinner table. Many a young man was flattered by her searching gaze or by the subtle intimacy which she contrived to throw into a simple personal question.

Once during the previous winter Blynn had been frightened off by one of these moods of hers, and she knew it and was ashamed. The last thing she meant to do was to apprise this young man of her quest. He was being probed and cross-questioned; that was all; but he had not understood, and had misnamed her, coquette.

This pleasant jog among the leafy bowers of the Wissahickon, charged as it was by thoughts of Gorgas and her perilous rendezvous with Bardek, caused the professor to recast his idea of Keyser Levering. They had talked of love, to be sure, and she had held to the topic deliberately; yet with her eye and a considerable part of her attention necessarily on the horses, she had carried on the chat strictly like a graduate student. Of course, she knew the man. One flashing side-long glance from her fine, brown eyes would have sent him flying to cover and to silence.

Along the shaded road they stopped to admire the wonder of the place, and to allow the horses to drink at a spring. While “Sorry” and “Ned” cropped the bushes the two humans nibbled sandwiches and talked.

Miss Levering’s questions showed intelligence; that is, they showed that she knew how to stir up the lecturer in him. She wanted to consider him carefully; so she prodded him gently with artful interrogations; and kept him to his “theory.”

“What brought Petruchio from Verona to Padua?” Blynn asked, as he might have questioned a student.

“I have forgotten the details of the play,” she replied, “I think he said he had come to marry a rich wife.”

“Exactly,” Blynn nodded. “He was drawn to Padua as I have seen a butterfly drawn unerringly to its mate across miles of country. Of course, Petruchio didn’t know what was sending him forth; any more than he knew why his diaphragm was pumping air into his lungs, or why invisible Neptune influences our tides, or why a green weed will suddenly spring into a gold and white daisy. Life is so crowded with intelligent mysterious design that it is difficult to believe that anything happens haphazard.”

“I wonder if my young man has left Verona,” the lady commented with a comic sigh. “I’m getting on! Twenty-two, you know.” She shook her head with grotesque sadness. “He’ll have to hurry or—I’ll be travelling out to meet him.”

“He may be nearer than Verona,” Blynn essayed, still in the seriousness of his exposition. “He may be right here,” waving his hand.

The outright smile on her face caught his eye and brought him to earth. “All right,” he assented cheerfully. “I’ll swallow my theory whole—he may be right here beside you, for all either of us knows. I knew a chap who lived next door to his future wife and never guessed it until one summer he went abroad. He used to tell her all about his girls, too, and get her help and advice. Out on the ocean somewhere it came to him suddenly. Then he wanted to stop the boat! He came back on the next steamer. Fact! Fortunately his wire got in ahead of him, which gave her time to think things over. She was most surprised, but she had to acknowledge that he was right! They figured out that they had been in love a dozen years without once being aware of it. Frightful waste, eh? They’re the happiest couple I know.”

They sat in silence for a moment or two, each thinking a separate train of thought.

“Petruchio,” she turned to him quietly, “would you be so kind as to get out, put the check-rein back on ‘Ned’ and ‘Sorry’, and then hop in and drive with me back to Padua?”

“Ah, Kate!” he cried, springing out of the carriage. “Mad Kate, merry Kate, the daintiest Kate of all the Kates, and sometimes the curst, that right merrily I will.”

On the way home he induced her to talk of Gorgas, and as an elder sister she entered readily into a discussion of her future education. She told of the child’s fondness for boyish sports. Did he know that Gorgas had won a huge silver cup in a tennis contest? Yes, indeed; she had carried it off matched against pretty stout boys. Quite a hoyden, she was. Of course, she was getting too old for that sort of thing now. Something had to be done. She agreed that whatever it should be, it should be done gradually. The child must not be driven. So Blynn very adroitly filled Miss Keyser’s mind with the right attitude toward Gorgas. He was sure of having an ally in the work he had before him, and one that would not in his absence set up wrong family currents.

Twilight was settling when they arrived home. From McAlley, stableman, errand-boy and gardener, he learned that Gorgas and “Gyp” had not come back.

“She’ll be ’long soon,” McAlley remarked without concern. “Mebbe ‘Gyp’ is playin’ lame. He’s a scamp, that he is, a scamp.”

Blynn could not share McAlley’s indifference. His heart beat horridly, and for no good reason that his mind could tell him. The family always dined late, and the household was run on a do-as-you-please system. Perhaps this child had been out at dusk many times before. All that he told himself; yet terrifying apprehension seized him.

In fifteen minutes he was plunging down Cresheim Valley, now quite shadowy. Up the hill before him came a slow figure walking beside a horse. He dove into the bushes and watched her pass him. In the deceptive gloom she seemed to him again a self-possessed little woman. Far enough back he followed, within him the sickening relief that comes after sudden fear.

“I’ll never get used to this,” he said to himself, as he lost sight of her in the dark, when she turned into her own lane. “If that lassie belonged to me I’d see that she’d come home in daylight. She has no idea of the risk she’s running.”

He could not discern figures any longer, but he could make out McAlley’s lantern and could hear the voices.

He was feeling quite peaceful until one-armed “Aurora,” the lamp-lighter, who always loped along half bent over, gave him a fright by suddenly bobbing around the corner and scuttling across the road to a crazy street-lamp.

V
BARDEK

Kuck-uck! Kuck-uck! Ruft aus dem Wald.

[[audio/mpeg]] [[MusicXML]]

THE opportunity of making the acquaintance of Bardek came sooner than Blynn had planned, and in a very natural manner.

The instruction of the Williams boy was carried on almost entirely in the open air. That youngster could no more enjoy himself cooped up in a house than a bear-cub. The moment he entered the shadowy door of the school-house his spirits congealed and his mind began to slow up. The rooms of the “Hall” had been planned entirely for adults—so had the discipline—and rather slow-blooded adults at that. The temperature and the ventilation were exactly right for elderly ladies and gentlemen. And they talked to children about draughts! They might just as well have worried them about sclerosis of the arteries.

In his adroit way Blynn had enticed the boy to play a “sort of game” with colloquial German. Call it a “game,” and the lad would play until he dropped; and by letting him shout at the top of his voice he was easily persuaded that it was not “study.”

In one of the wild paths in the Valley, where the sumac and the young poplar made a complete screen, Blynn and “Chuck” Williams, loudly reviewing German phrases, came upon a voice, rich and fine, carolling deutsche Lieder. It was quite near at hand among the tangle of blackberry vines and elderberry and came booming suddenly at them as if purposely to startle.

“Kuckuck! Kuckuck! Ruft aus dem Wald,

Lasset uns singen; tanzen und springen,

Frühling! Frühling! wird es nun bald!”

It was the song of the cuckoo, which every German child knows from the cradle. While it is yet winter the tremulous bird catches premonitions in the air and sings its eager song of spring. “Let us dance and sing,” it cries to all the woods; “Come out! Come out, into the blooming fields and among the budding trees!” Carried away by its own urging desire it flies from its haunts searching for the Spring.

The great voice softened and grew tenderly pathetic. Ah! brave little singer, your song is false, your throbbing heart has lied to you. Winter, stark, chilling winter is around you and within.

“Kuckuck! Kuckuck! Treflicher Held

Was du gesungen ist dir gelungen

Winter! Winter! räumet das Feld.”

At the end of the song the boy and the teacher applauded vigorously.

“Bravo!” called Blynn. “Once more! Encore!”

The bushes parted, disclosing the round face of Bardek.

“Grüss Gott!” he greeted jovially. “Have I not now heard the German speech? Die süsse Sprache meines Vaterlands?”

“Yes,” rejoined the astonished Blynn; “you did hear us talking German, a sort of German.”

“Och! it was a sort, yes,” the shoulders shrugged cynically; “but it was German, the speech of my country.”

“But you are not German, are you?” persisted Blynn. “Yesterday you were—”

“Ach! Must man be ever the same? Yesterday was I French; gut! Heute bin ich wirklich deutsch. Auch gut! Morgen, vielleicht, bin ich italienisch! Hora è sempre!”

“What does he say?” inquired “Chuck.”

“My good boy,” Bardek explained in clear English. “Yesterday I have been French. Good! It pleased me so to be. The day was French,” flourishing his hands about the sky, “quite French. Today it pleases me to be German. How could anyone be anything but German on a day like this?” waving again toward the thick, white clouds and indicating the cool Northern breeze. “Ein tousand ein hunderd ein und zwanzig! Was!... Now at this moment am I North-German; soon,” he squinted at a gathering darkness in the southwest, “I am becoming Bayrischer. It rains ever in München; nicht wahr? Ach! München is a heaven of earth—rain, rain, rain, warm himmlischer rain on the outside, and bier, bier, cool, dunkels Löwenbraü on the inside!”

His voice was heavy and deep, the bass singing quality always present, and his intonation noticeably distinct like that of the book-read foreigner. He struck his consonants hard, as if he enjoyed them, especially the final t’s and s’s; his l’s trolled along the roof of his mouth; and he breathed his vowels sonorously.

He laughed as he stepped into the path, and added, still addressing the boy,

“When the sky is all of blue and pink, so am I Italian. My skin changes. I am then a new beast. Oh! It is good to change the skin and the mind. Boy, don’t you get sick to be always the American beast?”

“Not on your tin-type!” “Chuck” spoke up promptly. “I don’t want to be a Dutchman. Rather be what I am. But it’s fun talking Dutch with Mr. Blynn.”

“‘Not on your tin-type,’” echoed Bardek, eyes extended in mock surprise. “Was für eine Sprache! What a language!”

Blynn explained. “A ‘tin-type’ is a cheap photograph. ‘Not on your tin-type’ is slang for—for, well, for ‘Gar nichts.’”

“Not on his tin-type,” Bardek rolled his eyes, to the great amusement of “Chuck.” “Nicht auf seiner Photographie! It is the language for peddlers.”

They chatted in mixed English and German for several minutes; at least, Bardek did; that is, when he wasn’t singing, or teaching “Chuck” some good colloquial German.

“Uh! Schweinerei!” he grunted in smiling disgust. “Chuck” had spat, American style, at a passing bee. “‘Schweinerei,’ my boy, means ‘piggy.’ But the pigs, they do not spit. Only the Americans spit. Everywhere in America is the sign, ‘Pray, do not spit here!’ ‘Pray, do not spit there!’ Ach, Schweinerei! Vierte Klasse! That’s a good word for you, ‘Vierte Klasse!’ I, I am of the Vierte Klasse, but I, I do not yet spit!”

Blynn studied the man before him. The frank, open manner, the voluble utterance, the great healthy laughter stole into his prejudice and substituted liking. This is a chap one had to be friends with; yet Blynn knew that good fellows are not always harmless. There was something coarse about the man that repelled, the very thing, too, that attracted: his unspoken egoism, his quiet, outspoken self-satisfaction. Unconventionality beamed from him; too frequently, Blynn knew, a sign of selfishness. Would this fellow continue agreeable and jolly under provocation? It did not seem so. Or if his strong desires met with obstacle? Law, order, the rules of decent society, these he probably scoffed at; anything, indeed, that demanded restraint or curbing.

“I tried to talk to you yesterday,” Blynn remarked, “but the horse wouldn’t have it.”

“Yesterday?” Bardek raised his eyes in inquiry. “The horse would not?—Ach!” he roared, “you it was who—Ho!” he laughed at the memory. “You say, ‘I cannot understand’ and then you cannot up-stand!” Bardek imitated by a pretence of flopping to the ground at the syllable “stand.” “I see very well that you could not ‘stand.’ You could not but sit. And it was something hard, nicht wahr, when you did sit!”

His laughter died out suddenly. “Wait,” he raised a hand. “It was the Miss Levering you were with? Yes? Excuse. I must see about something.” He really said, “Som’t’ing,” with just the suggestion of a studied “th,” but one could never indicate his speech phonetically. Sometimes, the “th” was clear, sometimes it was a “t,” sometimes a “z” or “d.” His English varied from right speech to a broken jargon, but always it was rich and clear. “Wait! I come back, auf der Stelle, in one moment.”

The bushes closed in about him. It was as if he had vanished, a fat satyr of the woods.

After a brief moment of silence his face appeared, and it was eloquent with welcome.

“You will come into my cave in the woods?” he beckoned, spreading out the bushes with his high hobnailed boots. “It is not to everyone that I give the invitation. You have come well recommended—by your faces and your good talk. You talk German—Dutch, you called it, you little Schweinerei!—Dutch it is not. Dutch is good. I can Dutch, but—this is my German day. Today, I welcome you as compatriots. Tomorrow, br-r-r,” scowling beautifully at “Chuck” Williams, “I may be French,” he glanced quizzically at the sky. “Then, you shall be my national enemy and I would—‘Vive la belle France! A bas les All’mands!’” he roared, making mimic charges at the delighted “Chuck.”

They were tramping through the thicket as they talked, shouted, and pantomimed. In a few steps they came upon a cosy clearing.

“Wilkommen alle! Sit down, please!” Bardek pointed to comfortable rocks.

A small portable tent stretched out before them. At the side, smoke curled from a rock-oven, which was at the same time a tiny forge. Bowing before the visitors was an unkempt Frau. She looked forty at first glance; in a little while she seemed not more than twenty-five. Twenty was probably nearer her right age. In her arms nestled a rather overgrown youngster; tugging at her skirts was another.

“My summer house; the lady of the summer house,” Bardek explained ironically. Then he looked expectantly toward the tent.

“Bist du noch nicht fertig, mein Kindschen?” he called eagerly. “Now you can come out. Two gentlemen—entschuldigen!—one gentleman and one Schweinerei would make call! Komm’, Liebschen!”

From within a familiar voice responded, but in German: “Just a minute, Bardek, please.... Now I am ready. Können die Herr’n raten wer ich bin?”

“She would know,” translated Bardek, “if the gentlemen can guess who she is.”

Without waiting for the guesses, he lifted the flap of the tent. Gorgas, enclosed head and body in a great green shawl, stepped calmly out and courtesied.

“Gee! This is great!” “Chuck” found voice for his glee. “It’s a dandy ‘hunky.’” “Hunky” is a boy’s secret hiding place. “I had a tent, once. Let’s have a tent out here, too, Mr. Blynn. We can live here and cook,” his greedy eye was devouring the perfect stone oven, “and study ’rithm’tic and things. Can’t we?”

The boy took Gorgas as a matter of course. She was thirteen and a girl; he was eleven and a boy—those differences represent leagues.

“I heard all you said,” Gorgas informed Blynn. “We often hear people going by on that path. Your German started Bardek after you. This is his German day. We—”

“Chuck” was examining things, with Bardek at his side explaining volubly.

“Do you speak German, too?” Blynn asked incredulously.

“Nur ein wenig,” she replied modestly, but her fine tones told much. “Besser sprech’ ich fransösisch und italienisch. Ich versteh’—I understand German, but much better than I speak it. The ‘German days’ don’t come as often as the French days. Bardek is all German today. Listen to him. His English gets German twists in it today.”

“It looks almost finished”

“Why, it’s quite jolly here.” Blynn seated himself on a comfortable stone, and assumed the air of a man who had done this sort of thing every day. “It’s quite a ‘hunky,’ as ‘Chuck’ would call it. I’d like to live this way myself. What man wouldn’t?”

“I’m so glad you like it,” Gorgas whispered. She leaned over and rested her arm on his knee. “Chuck” and Bardek were inside the tent. The wife was grinning at the strangers and singing a gentle lullaby. “We have fine times here. You’re the first person to come by on that path for over a week. We sing and talk languages and Bardek tells stories of his travels. He has been all over the world. Some of them are whoppers,” she dropped her voice still lower, “but you can tell by his eyes that he is making them up. And we—oh, wait till I show you my latest.”

She darted into the tent and returned with a disk of hammered copper, a dinner-plate, partly inlaid along the entire edge with a delicate silver tracery of a strange Byzantine design. “The holes had to be all cut out, and the silver filed and fitted. It must exactly fit, you know, exactly. Bardek scolds if it isn’t right to a millionth of an inch. It looks almost finished, but there are hours of pounding yet.”

“What is it when it is cooked?” he asked, but his tone showed his delight with the workmanship.

“Most anything—a cake plate, a serving tray, a card receiver, a fruit holder—lots of things. But, isn’t it beautiful! Bardek made the design. I couldn’t do that; but I did all the hammering and annealing and filed all the silver. Bardek says he may not throw this one away.”

“It’s a beauty!” admitted Blynn. “A jim-dandy! By George, Gorgas, I certainly do admire this. But how will you ever take it home?”

The shadow of disappointment rested for a moment on her face; then she seemed to shake it off resolutely.

“He will sell it. It is only practice for me. I am learning. He uses it to teach me hammer strokes. I made the Varri stroke on that,” pointing proudly to the hundreds of soft hammer marks, “with the big hammer. It is not so heavy when you learn how to swing it. If I ever get to know how—well, I’ll have it in me; no one can take it away. Then I can make beautiful things wherever I am.... It is mean to have to sell things, though—give them to people you never see.”

“Yes, indeed,” he touched her hand lightly in understanding. “I know just how you feel.”

“So!” Bardek pounced upon them. “You are showing it off, eh? It is good; very, very good.” He said “vairy,” but this word, like others of his English vocabulary, had many pronunciations. “I am vairy proud of my pupil. Gorgas—” he emphasized the last syllable as if it were Gorgasse—“Gorgas is a golden child. She has gifts. You will see, some day. I have put some of my art into her. That!—the little marks there!—is harder than it looks! It is the stroke of the best workman and the biggest miser in Milan, G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri. I stole it from him. Ho! I go to him and say, ‘Please, Messer G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri, I am poor, I will carry charcoal and blow your fire and sweep your place and make the beds and cook you good macaroni and cut up cheeses, if you will but give me a place to sleep.’

“G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri, he storm and curse; say he have no room for beggars, and that he will not pay, he will not pay; but his ugly eye watch me and then he say, ‘Blow that fire, you—’ I will not say what he have said I am. On my honor, gentlemen and ladies,” saluting, “I am not that thing that G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri say I have been.

“Ach, Himmelreiche! How I work! I sweat and pull and dig and carry and—I watch! Tip, tip, tappy, tappy, tap—oh, so soft he play music by his hammer, the great hammer he make those soft touches. And he fires much, burns and hammers, burns and hammers. In two day I try, and he near catch me. In t’ree day I say, ‘Goodby, G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri! Your bed, it is too hard. I will just—skeedaddle! and take with me, oh, yes, jus’ a leetle somet’ing of a idea in my head.

“Before I leave I make a little gift of farewell: I make his secret strokes and it comes out a design, a great goose, and the taps on the wings spell ‘Varri.’

“And now the beautiful Gorgas—I give it to her for what I pay G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri, which is t’ gr-r-eat not’ing. If I stole it, well—der Hehler ist so gut wie der Stehler: the second thief is cousin to t’ first thief.... Ah! she do good! Vairy, vairy good!” He held the work up and admired it. “Es gibt nicht schöneres, nicht wahr, Kindschen?”

“Oh, it could be better,” protested Gorgas.

“Wass hör’ ich?” he affected great sternness. “Englisch? Sprich’ Deutsch, bitte! Look at the heavens; it is today the heavens of Deutschland. Sprich’ nur Deutsch, bitte!”

“Oh, not German now, Bardek,” she laughingly begged. “Not before Mr. Blynn and ‘Chuck.’ I couldn’t.”

“So scheu!” murmured Bardek admiringly. “So shy and innocent. All right. We take holiday. We leave Deutschland for America and English. But,” sadly, “it is t’ one language I do not speak. Only in English am I foreigner.”

“Not at all,” protested Blynn. “Your English is splendid.”

“Ah!” the flattery touched home. “You are good to say it. But I know. In Europe I am in my home in every land. The Bohemian knows all speeches. They have the gift, as you would know many songs, glad ones and sorrowful. When we are still young we go to countries; it comes to us. But ah! I did go to England never; only by books did I know English, and look! Bah! I feel I must spit, like my little Schweinerei here. Books! They tell all lies. In France, in Germany, in Holland, in Hungary, in Italy, they would know me for compatriot. In America I am a barbarian, a pagan, a ‘Gypsy,’ a ‘Dago.’ Ach! English? Ich hab’ eine schlechte Aussprache. I know! I know!”

For an hour they debated genially. Before the meeting broke up Bardek dropped on the ground, stretched out full length, propped his head up with one hand, and lapsed into silence. Questions brought only short answers.

“It is time to go,” whispered Gorgas. “When he gets tired of people, he lets them know. Don’t talk to him any more; he has worn himself out with excitement.”

Gorgas led the way through overhanging branches without a word. “Chuck” followed. Blynn sought to soften the abrupt exodus by a simple wave of the hand before he bent low to avoid the briars.

“Kom’ bald wieder,” Bardek grunted. “Sobald als möglich. Come vairy soon again!” It was a sincere invitation, Gorgas assured them—Bardek was always himself—and it was a great tribute.

VI
LIBERTÉ, EGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ

THEY did come soon again. The air was gently from the southwest. There was a blue summer sky with high lazy clouds.

“Entrez, m’sieurs, mam’zelle!” called Bardek, and rattled on. “Je suis enchanté de vous voir! I am delighted to see you! Ah! when you were here last, the weather was gloomy and German—but today! Today the sky is beautiful and French. Voici!” spreading his hands to the heavens, “Voici, la France!”

“Hang up your hat on the hall-rack,” he went on gayly in French. “I am ravished to see you! Comment ça va, Chucks?”

Chucks grinned his lack of comprehension.

“Comment ça va, Chucks?” Bardek extended a hand of greeting. “Can you not speak, Chucks?” he dropped into English. “Can you only spit, eh? Pfui! ‘Comment ça va?’ my Chucks, it is ‘Howd’y.’ But have care! Prends attention! Pray do not spit. Ici c’est defendu! Here,” sweeping his hand in a short circle, “here it is beautiful France and here it is not permitted. Are you yet German, Chucks? Must I fight you?” he crooked an imaginary gun and stood ready to charge bayonets. His eyes glared; his bushy eyebrows quivered; his whole body strained for the word of command. “Conspuez les All’mands!” he muttered as only the French could think that phrase. In a second all that ferocity had vanished. “Non? You have not yet changed your skin? Eh bien! We shall keep l’entente cordiale. Vive l’Amérique! I shake the hand.”

“Chuck” and Bardek extended hands and wrung an international grip.

“Et mam’zelle?” he turned to Gorgas. “Que veutelle faire aujourd’ hui? Sit and talk, hein?”

“Let me work on my plate, Bardek,” she asked. “I’m excited about that plate.”

“Comment!” he bristled at her English. “The sky, it is all of French! Aujourd’hui,” flourishing terribly at the sky, “il s’agit de parler français!”

“Please, Bardek!” she begged. “Not French now; after while; not now. Please!”

“Comme tu voudras, petite,” he gave in finally. “She will not speak the French, which she speak like—oh!—like heaven. C’est très curieux! She is afraid, Mr. Blynn, that you be critic. Ho!” laughed Bardek frankly. “She need have not the fear. Pssst! Mr. Blynn, he can have no language but the English. And even so, the little English of a little town,” pointing off toward the village, “a little town which goes to sleep on Sundays. It is too late for him. Language, it comes to children when their ears are open wide to hear the voice of things. When we grow old, sixteen, twenty, thirty—malheureusement! Peau du diable!—it is too late. The bones in the head, they go thick. So with all things—after fourteen, fifteen, the mind est fermé, closed, shut up tight.”

Gorgas was searching in the tent for her materials.

“So, I take this child when she is child and teach her. You are professor, n’est-ce pas? Oh! You have my great admiration! You are—pardon!—so great a fool! You think you can teach old men and old girls who go to the university? How that is comic! Wooden-heads, they mumble words; they can repeat what you say, yes; but they can never do. To do, one must begin in the cradle. You would be contortionist, juggler, gymnast? Very well, wait until you are twenty-five! Sh! Non! You laugh? Zen why you try to teach old men of twenty how to think? It is a great fooling.... Oh, well,” he shrugged, “zey zink,” he stopped and tried again, “t’hey t’hink they do great zings—t’ings—bla!” he made a wry face. “I cannot say zat ‘th.’ It is one language for those who stutter, the English.”

Bardek was all French on that day. One could almost believe that he had really changed his skin. He seemed sleeker, cleaner, even thinner; and the great mustachios had a glisten to them and a slight waxiness in the ends. His bearing was more courteous and considerate than on the “Deutschertag.” A gay kerchief adorned his neck and his turkey-feather had a jaunty tilt. Even his English had the very flavor of French idiom and French accent.

While he talked Gorgas brought her plate to a great stone, set up a lead block, and began to swing a rather large coppersmith’s hammer. She barely touched the metal as she beat rhythmically back and forth; the weight of the hammer seemed to disappear, so cleverly did she keep it moving.

“V’là!” pointed Bardek. “That is the stroke of G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri. Parfaitment! C’est bon! ‘Tap, tap, tippity, tippity, tap, tap!’ It is music, is it not, m’sieur? She has the delicate muscle for that work. Two year, three year? Non! She will soon set—be woman and marry and have hundred t’ousand children. Ho!—”

Gorgas looked up at him in grave rebuke.

“Ho! see how she goes red and charming! The little maggots are running in her brain and making to wake all kind of wonder things and then—poof!—the school is done and life commence.”

“Chuck” was at her side watching seriously. He plied her with questions, eager to imitate and, boy-like, quite confident he could do as well.

“You must have known Gorgas for a long time,” Blynn began. “That work of hers is really wonderful. How did you find her?”

Bardek squatted on the ground, produced a file, and began to smooth off bits of sheet silver. He glanced up at Blynn through crinkling eyes.

“You look so stupid,” Bardek threw back his head; “and it is right. You do not know yet how much it is I know. You do it well, the look of the fool. Good! Gorgas has taken you for a friend. It is well that you play fool for her, speak for her, be dumb for her and if it need, lie for her, make ‘whoppers,’ as she calls t’em, for her. I like you for that, my friend.

“You would know how she came? Well, she jus’—came. Three year ago she ride by on ‘Gyp’ and I say ‘H’lo, missy,’ and she say, ‘What are you doing?’ and I say ‘I make beauty’ and show her something, a small vase, all of gold and copper. Her eye grow big, so! and she draw back and say, ‘Are you a gypsy?’ and I say, ‘Non! non! non! T’ousand times non! I am a Bohemian.’ And she get off her horse, tie him to a tree and say, ‘Then may I come with you and will you show me how to make beauty?’

“Zat is all, my friend, and she have been making beauty all the time. She herself makes beauty,” he looked back at her tenderly, “wherever she go. She is always serious, always in great thinking. Zey are ze most beautiful children, the quiet ones. Gigglers? Bah! Comics? Zey are ordinairy. Her eyes they always look at you like they were so old! Elle est très sympathique, my good friend.

“She learn—ah, how she learn!—vite! Comme ça!” he snapped his fingers. “She take languages like the singing sparrow drinks at spring water. She would be Bohemian perhaps; her grandfather or grandmother—who knows? In America everybody must come from Europe! See her brown face and black hair? Ah! that is often seen in my country. It is oriental.”

He stopped talking to gaze at her at work.

Blynn took the chance to tell of many things. He sketched in the mother and the Levering household. He told of schools and all the business of bringing up young girls to be gay, delicate do-nothings until some man should be attracted by their frailty and marry them.

Bardek exploded many times. His theories of education for girls were not the prevailing ones in America. Everybody should learn to work, he believed. The highest trade of all is that of a maker of beauty. Those few who can, should have material, tools and infinite leisure. They were the only aristocrats; and among them there should be no fakirs. The university doctor may be a fool; he usually is a fool, averred Bardek; but no one cares; he can do little harm. But with things of beauty there should be no such trifling. Learning was no great matter; no scholar has learning enough to reconstruct the broken wing of a beetle; the world wags very well when learning is asleep. But beauty is important; one must choose ever between beauty and death.

Those who could not minister to the esthetic needs should take their turn at the fetching, lifting and carrying, the portering of life. That is their happiness, their beauty.

“Look at my wife,” he illustrated, nudging toward the tent. “She has not the skill, the art. Good! But she work, and carry a pack, and do everything right for the babies; and she is happy, working, working, working all the day. When she work and I work, we sing songs of Hungary where she live. That is fine. Woman must not be waxworks! Sapristi! The good Lord has give them a job, my friend. Nom d’une pipe!” he sighed softly. “A big job! It needs zat zey get ready for it.”

In the spaces between Bardek’s speeches Blynn tried to hint of the trouble that would come to Gorgas if it were known at home how she had spent her time off in the Cresheim woods.

Bardek was not concerned; when a man is right he does not worry his head about what others will think. If he had bothered himself over the opinions of small minds he would have stayed in Hungary and sold tobacco and postage stamps. No! Liberty is worth paying much for; and when there is fear of criticism, liberty is dead.

Bah! The fat mother would not know a golden child from a salade de tomate. Doubtless she would scold a little. His wife, she scolds. It is nothing; it passes off and away like steam in the air. What one has, one has; all the scoldings of all the little people in the world cannot alter it; on earth there is no judge but oneself.

“Already,” he said, “the little Gorgas has more than all those copy-kittens who went to school and sat at wooden desks in the dark little rooms and listened as nice old ladies tell how to be jus’ waxworks. In her arm, in the ends of all her fingers, in her eye and on her tongue and in her brain, too, she has beauty, and the power to make beauty.

“You, you, my friend, have studied in the university. Try it out with the little Gorgas. What do you know that she does not know better? Do you know better how high is heaven and how wide are the angels’ wings? You have studied languages, and you know German—a sort of German, ho!—and French and Italian, perhaps; and you will always be foreigner there and a fool: but she, the little Gorgas that I teach, she is German and she is French and she is Italian.”

He stopped his work for a moment to show her how to smooth off the inlay without disturbing the fine surface of the beaten copper.

“Let us sing for them, my pretty one,” he coaxed in French. “You are some of the beauty that I have made. I want to show you off, exhibit you, prove my skill. What shall it be?” He ran through several simple songs of childhood. Reluctantly she agreed, only to please him as he knew, and together they sang a lively air. It was about life on the winding roads, and there was a chorus of jolly tappings which they did lightly with their hammers.

“That is liberty,” Bardek commented. “In France they have not liberty except painted on every sign-post. ‘Liberté, fraternité, equalité!’ Là, là, là, là, là! It is the great national joke! America? Non! ‘The land of the brave,’” he sang nasally in burlesque, “‘and the ho-o-me of the fre-e-e!’ Ho! that is vairy, vairy comic.” He wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes. “Very comic! I come to the land of liberty, ‘the ho-o-me of the free’ and I cannot sell my work without I get a permit for which I must pay; and in each spot I must have new one. I cannot live as I please. The people say, ‘Phieu! go away, ugly man. You have no soul, for you have no stiff white collar. Tie up the neck with white peekadilly and we give you liberty to live by us!’ I have not liberty to drink my beer or smoke when I please.

“And Miss Gorgas, she cannot learn to make beautiful things. She cannot tell her mother she come to me. She must sneak like a thief and lie. It is not good, that kind of liberty. Liberty is a great thing, my friend. You all go mad and have red-fire and elections and speeches and big ugly bands and Mr. Cleveland is made president, and hélas! millions of free Americans weep, weep, weep zet zeh must have Mr. Cleveland for president. America is not the land of liberty. It is the land of prohibition, yes; sobriety, yes; uniformity, yes; but here is not liberty. Of all peoples in Mount Airy only I perhaps have liberty. You would not want to live like me, eh? You look at me. Zut! I read you mind. You say, ‘Not on your tin-type!’ Then you do not much care for liberty.”

Many such days the little group had together. German days, French days, Italian days came in regular succession. “Chuck” disputed with him about the days, and Bardek took great joy in his wordy battles over the sort of weather that prevailed. To all but “Chuck” it was quite evident that his succession of days was a transparent device to give Gorgas constant exercise in the fluent, living language; but save for the laughing eyes and occasional wink, he stoutly stood for the theory that the weather made his skin change. Bohemians, he claimed, belonged to no country and to every country and were doomed all their lives to slip back and forth through various national personalities. The weather did it.

“You have only one country!” he told “Chuck” scornfully. “How sorry I am for you! So you hooray for the stars and stripes, and you make the grand racket on the Fourt’ of July, an’ you rage at Sout’ America, and Europe, an’ all the other little peoples. Poof!” he blew himself up into his own notion of the spread-eagle American orator. “You could fight the whole wor-r-ld, wit’ hands tied behind the back—and the whole wor-r-ld would laugh in zere sleeve, and make such pictures in the comic papers, about which you would know nothing. Oh, how sorry I am for you, Chucks, who have only one country, when I, Bardek, have so many! In France I sing the Marseillaise on the fourteen of July; in Germany I celebrate the eighteen of January, the birthday of the Empire; and in Poland, on the twelve of September, I drink to Sobieski, who saved Poland from the Turk—an’ at no time do I rage, and make boasts at any country. You are proud of only one land, Chucks; I, Bardek, am homesick for all the wor-r-ld!”

One day when they went back through the hidden path and under the arch of briers into the enclosure, not a vestige of Bardek and his belongings remained.

“He will come back when he wishes to be here again,” Gorgas explained, with just a shade of disappointment. But she did not wholly conceal her gratification. Lately she had been feeling terribly guilty over her clandestine meetings with the Bohemian. She could date the beginning of her worry over the matter. It had come suddenly in the night when she awoke trembling and weeping over she knew not what. Fires burned in her, and she discovered an intense longing to give up what had been heretofore the most helpful experience in her life: her solitude, her freedom from the necessity of communicating. Now she cried out for a brother or a sister or a mother to whom she could tell everything, even trivial things. Until now she had fared alone, self-sufficient as a tree, and had never spoken to anyone, even to Bardek, of what meant most to her. On this night, as she lay awake, she reveled in the despairs of loneliness.

At about that time Blynn had appeared and had satisfied her need. To him she had unburdened, and had come away pure and heightened as after confession.

All this had made her self-conscious in her visits to Bardek. He had remarked the change in her, and talked about it, as was his way; which made her, somehow, ashamed. When her cheeks flamed under his persistent candor, he would call to his wife in great delight. In some Hungarian dialect he would invite her to look at the bud bursting; the little, green leaves unfolding; the fresh, sweet petals stretching themselves. There never was any doubt as to his meaning.

After that when Gorgas parted the elder branches and looked into his bower she came with the face of a child-woman, full of subtle new dignity, an unstudied preoccupation, as if the mind within were very, very busy on its great affairs.

And guilt seized her, without giving a single reason. “It is wrong!” sang a humming in her ears. “What is wrong?” she would ask herself wildly. “It is wrong! It is wrong!” the voices would cry; and no one could tell her what was wrong.

With Blynn beside her she looked steadily at the blanched circle left by the tent.

“Well!” she gave a deep, healthy exhalation, and stepped back into the narrow path. “I’m both sorry and glad. I don’t know why I should be glad; but I am. It is all mixed—m-mixed u-up.” Her lips quivered though her eyes smiled gamely. “I don’t know whether I am going to cry or laugh.”

“Shall I toss a coin?” Blynn inquired.

“Chuck” was examining the “hunky” and speculating upon moving in as soon as he could wheedle a tent out of his father. Blynn and Gorgas stood close together facing each other in the path. Her eyes searched his steadily until they slowly brimmed and shut out all view.

“I guess I’m mo-mostly g-glad!” she put out her hands toward him and lightly touched his sleeve.

“If you cry now,” whispered the man, “you’ll splash me awfully. Let’s wait till we have more room.”

That decided the matter. It was a hearty burst of girlish laughter which cleared the air like the proverbial thunder. All the way home they sang and danced and played “tag” and raced.

“When will Bardek be back?” Blynn asked before he bade the children goodby.

“Perhaps next week; perhaps next month,” Gorgas conjectured. “Once he stayed away two months. Oh, he’ll be along again soon. A tout à l’heure, m’sieu’.” She stepped gaily up the walk toward her own door. “Auf wiedersehen und -hören und -sprechen. Until I see you and hear you and speak you again!”

Yet the month passed away, and another month and many months, but Cresheim Valley saw no trace of Bardek.

Along in November the mails brought a carefully wrapped package containing eighty-two dollars and six cents. A note in French said simply:

“It was a robber who bought your plate, but I will not ask too much for the art which I stole from Varri. I do penance by taking so little. The miser! For my silver and copper I charge you a trifle—which I have taken out. What is here is yours—well earned, golden child.

“Until we meet and talk again,

“Bardek.”

After a conference with Mr. Blynn, Gorgas forwarded the package anonymously to the treasurer of the Children’s Aid Society.

“It is an offering to propitiate the theft from G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri,” said Blynn; “let us hope it will count as a mass for the peace of Varri’s penurious soul.”

VII
A “FRENCH DAY” AT NIGHT

MRS. LEVERING did not mean to neglect her children; but her life was busy with the running of a big household, and with the claims of neighbors, the church, and charitable organizations. In her home life she was delightfully lax and unsystematic; but it was liberty for all, not a bad arrangement for domestic happiness, when it works.

Her two children had come along without making much demand upon her. If they had been frail or sickly she would have been the promptest of nurses, and perhaps she would have learned more about them; but they grew along sturdily without so much as a single call for help. As a result they instinctively repelled coddling. There were no effusive greetings between mother and daughter, no kissings at night time, and only the most casual peck at lengthy partings. It was a very sensible and practical environment; and, on the whole, satisfactory to the Levering family.

Mrs. Levering treated her daughters as if they were her own age. There was no “baby-talk” at any stage of their upbringing. Nearly everything was discussed openly, but that did not mean that the children had a vote in everything. Unconventional as the mother was in most things, she threw about the children a protective ring of unwritten rules, over which there was no debate—almost the same code that her own mother had used. Gorgas could fight against going to school and win. School was an expense, anyway; and Gorgas seemed to be doing very well by herself with such help as the mother fancied Keyser was giving her; and many children managed pretty well with a tutor or two. But acquaintances, especially male, were scrutinized and limited; late night prowlings were forbidden; there was no latch-key for any save the master-of-the-house—who never went out!—and all letters, outgoing and incoming, must pass inspection.

So, you see, Mrs. Levering had no tingle of conscience concerning her children; on the contrary, she had many exalted moments at the thought of all her prohibitory care over them.

Allen Blynn was O. K.’d as a matter of course. Everyone knew all about him. He was an honor man at college; his mother was of “good people,” descendants of somebody or other; and he was of the faculty of the University. Of course, his manners were right—he used a fork properly; he was charmingly considerate of ladies; children liked him; and he had a good, honest face; but the other qualifications, the college honors and the university degrees really made him “moral,” and therefore a free and unrestricted companion of her two girls. Besides, the mother was thrifty enough to see the advantage of securing so excellent and so inexpensive a tutor for Gorgas.

On the days when he and Gorgas studied together it grew to be the custom for the tutor to stay on for the informal family dinner, to get his “pay,” as he had bargained, of good food and good company. They were jolly affairs, full of gay chatter and serious discussion of men and things. Blynn radiated on these occasions, for the dinner was his natural habitat. On the tennis-courts he was an indifferent actor; but whenever the game was speech, he scored masterfully.

Guests seemed to drop in fortuitously on these evenings, while the dinner grew imperceptibly more elaborate. With a daughter aged twenty-two, Mrs. Levering’s instincts told her when to entertain young people, and Miss Keyser Levering was a more modern mental replica of her mother. Edwin Morris, the university tennis champion, still in his late ’teens, was a frequent visitor, as were “Sam” Davis, the “law-man”; Keyser’s chums, Mary Weston and Betty Sommers; Diccon, a newspaper-man, and a collegian of Blynn’s time; and Leopold, a distinguished-looking young English Jew, of the science department of the University.

Others came and went, but these gradually drifted together to form the core of a little social group.

On these occasions Gorgas seemed to disappear. She shrank visibly into the rôle of little girl invited to look on. Her animated and accomplished sister overpowered her and made her a speechless dependent. All the gaucheries of childhood came out to daunt her. She stumbled against things, spilled her salt, and walked about with ox-like grace. One mild, reproving look from her sister would make her trebly clumsy for the evening.

Blynn tried often to bring her out, but it only increased her seeming stupidity. After all, she was a child, he reminded himself, but not without puzzled memories of the strange age she could put on when they were alone together.

Keyser, whom Blynn had rechristened “Kate,”—a name which everyone took up—was so charmingly at ease that in spite of his desire to befriend the little sister, he found his talk gravitating toward the elder.

And Gorgas was really content to look on, to listen and, above all, to remain completely unnoticed. She did not always succeed, much to her public confusion. With Morris, the tennis boy, she was more comfortable, save when he tried to draw her out into the circle. This he discovered early he must not do; so he contrived to sit beside her and tell her about his college pranks in undertones. When he discovered that she played tennis and had won the Junior cup, he took her in charge forthwith; and on other days met her on the courts and gave her an exceptional practice. Their “doubles” combination soon grew to be practically unbeatable.

One evening the conversation drifted to the culture-war over Latin and Greek. Blynn was trying to show how the absorption in these studies, which rarely got beyond the veriest elements, was keeping our generation from the marvelous literatures of Europe. Centuries from now, he claimed, the modern languages would be looked upon as even more classical than the ancients.

“I am handicapped in my work,” he admitted, “because I do not know Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, German, and French; I mean, really know them. A school child in any country of Europe would laugh at my attempts to speak or read the languages. No one ever hinted to me what were the real tools of scholarship.”

Leopold told of his classical training under tutors in England. He had begun to read Latin at eight, added Greek at nine, and he could not remember when he was unable to understand French and German.

“America is giving up foreign languages,” Leopold summed up. “The students will not put the time on them.”

“But I know they will,” Blynn returned firmly, “if the thing is taught reasonably. You began at eight and nine, Leopold; well, that’s the age to do it.”

The conversation threatened to become pedagogic and heavy, but the girls were interested, too. Mary Weston told of some phenomenal pianists who had been developed in just that way.

“The teacher told me she took them young, four to five years; visited them every day. There was no hateful ‘practice.’ ‘Mar-y! have you done your scales today?’ ‘No-m.’ ‘Then come right in this minute and do them!’ I can hear my mother calling me yet. Result: ‘Chapel in the Mountains’ with the left hand over,” she illustrated comically on the table, “‘Dum, dum, dum, twinkle-innkle-ink!’ That’s almost my repertoire.... This teacher got her youngsters over every difficulty without a single growl. Master Stewardson—you heard him, Kate,”—everyone had adopted Blynn’s “Kate”—“at the Willings’—he’s one of them. Wasn’t he slick?”

Mary drew an imaginary bow across her arm and whined the opening of the “Spring Song.”

“Bravo!” applauded Leopold, “that’s bully, you know. Sounds just like a violin—one with a bad throat.”

“I thought she fingered well,” added Davis.

Diccon insisted that he heard an open string. He always abominated the open string.

A burst of imitators overtook the table, violins, flageolets, bassoons, bass-viols. Morris took the prize with the sextette from “Lucia” as done by Sousa on a half-dozen interrupting muted trombones.

“All of which proves,” summed up Betty Sommers, when the fun had died down, “that none of us knows music.”

Davis, the law-man, protested—he had been a growling bass-viol: “Don’t say that. We have merely cultivated virtuosity at the expense of—”

“Skill,” “Music,” “Everything,” he was helped out.

“At the expense of—I demand the floor, Madam Chairman—at the expense of—”

“Our neighbors,” Gorgas put in quietly.

“Good!” cried Davis. “Amendment accepted. Ah! Somnolent and suspicious Mount Airy! This; night’s joy will be chronicled as dissipation, and tongues will wag. Here’s to our neighbors,” and he tossed off a handful of salted almonds.

“We don’t know music,” insisted Blynn, his mind not at all diverted by the clamor; “and we don’t know anything.”

“I arise to protest,” Mary Weston appealed to Mrs. Levering. “This male professor has cast aspersions upon the expensive education we girls have achieved via the instruction imparted at the ‘Misses Warren’s Select French and English School for Young Ladies.’”

Laughter from the girls showed how much they valued this expensive training.

“If I had a catalog here,” Mary persisted, “I could prove to you how thoroughly well we were brung up. ‘You must nevah say, “raised,” my deah young lady,’” Mary was in full swing imitating the elder Miss Warren. “‘Beets are “raised”; turnips and cabbages are “raised”; young ladies are “reahed,” ah! “reahed”!’”

“Kate” joined in with a mock quotation from the catalog. Interruptions were frequent. “‘The young ladies of this school are taught the French language according to the natural method. Conversation is encouraged. All the work of the French class is conducted entirely in the French language. A correct accent is insisted upon.’”

Imitation of the French teachers followed, along with samples of the kind of French that was “encouraged.”

“There’s my proof,” Blynn went on. “Everyone here has studied French for one or more years. Some of us have been abroad where each had a chance to test it out. Who really knows any French, except Leopold? I don’t mean ability to read. Anybody can guess what French means; but can anyone here really talk and think in French? I have met German boys, still in school, who could talk with me in English and could pass me many times in French. They got it all out of their schools. In other words, they gave their time, the most precious hours of their lives, and got something lasting.”

The conversation broke in two. The upper end of the table were agreeing with Blynn, the lower end were trying with much laughter to carry on a discussion in French.

“Je vous aime, je vous adore, que voulez-vous encore?” Betty remarked to Diccon. “It means, ‘I just dote on you, Dicky-boy.’”

“Je ne comprends pas,” replied Diccon. “Score a point for me. It’s all French, every bit of it guaranteed. Je ne comprends pas. ‘I don’t understand.’ I used it all over Paris. ‘I don’t understand’ fits anywhere.”

“J’ai un petit frère,” volunteered Davis. “It means, ‘I have a little brother.’ I haven’t any little brother, but that’s French, all right.”

“Adieu! Adieu! Adieu!” said Kate.

They were taking turns. Blynn saw a chance to surprise them.

“Here! children,” he rapped on the table. “I have a game for you. Each of us will show off his French. Leopold is debarred; he is French. No! We’ll let him in.... Let me see,” he glanced hurriedly about the table. “We’ll take partners, each talk to his vis-à-vis.” He produced his watch. “I’ll make it easy. One full minute speech and one full minute reply. Time out for all pauses. Repetitions not allowed. Get ready. Kate and Diccon will begin, the gentleman first.”

Gorgas leaned over eager-eyed to watch the fun, until swiftly it came to her that she and Leopold would be last. Toward Blynn she cast a terrified appeal.

While the first two were blundering joyfully through their minute he slipped around to her and whispered.

“Please carry this out for me! If you say the word, I’ll have them excuse you.... I’ll take all the blame. It’s only fun. Please!”

“All right,” she nodded. But her face, for a humming second, lost some of its ruddy tan.

Their ludicrous book sentences encouraged her, and made her feel suddenly strong and unabashed. Into her mind came pictures of clear, blue-sky days with Bardek gesticulating and spouting his vivid jargon.

Davis was telling about his brother. “I have a little brother. J’ai un petit frère,” he announced with great eagerness, and stopped. Betty had got through by cleverly remembering a conjugation: “I drink, you drink, he drinks, she drinks, it drinks, we drink,” etc. Mary claimed foul on the ground that conjugations didn’t make sense; but her own contribution was a familiar medley: “Monsieur, bureau, Lafayette, encore, dèpot, merci, madame, bon-bon.” Morris tried “Alice in Wonderland.” “’Twas brillig and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble on the wabe,” but was caught; although he insisted that it was as much French as anything.

To be sure, no one was really trying. Betty, no doubt, could have blundered along tolerably well, and Davis had taken part in a French play, much of which he probably remembered. The game was a frolic and was so played, until Leopold spoke.

“Ma chère amie,” he leaned over and gazed earnestly at Gorgas. He was a dark, grave looking man, the type of scholar Jew. Everyone, of course, could follow his carefully chosen phrases. “When I look into your eyes,” he said slowly, “I see treasure there; for you have that which the world, with all its seeming care for franc and sou, regards ever as above price. First, you have youth, with the future all to spend; and you have faithfulness, a vast store—I see it in your steady brown eyes; and you have beauty born of these two, youth and faithfulness. And besides, while you speak seldom, and sit serene apart, you have rare, rare thoughts. Would that I could share them.”

It seemed almost like a trick to play upon Gorgas, the unschooled. There was a little uneasiness. Mrs. Levering was about to give an appropriate excuse when Gorgas replied.

Her tones were deep and French to the very roots. Her features changed; turns and twists of eye and mouth, which she had caught unwittingly from Bardek, swept across the animated young face and gave a new charm to her words. Ah, how often lately had Bardek made much that same speech to her! And how often had she flamed in reply! Tonight she was swift to rebuke the man before her, first, for his open flattery—Gorgas was quite wrong, here, as she found out later; Leopold was never more honest—and secondly, for his attempt to make a public jest of her. Gorgas could never believe that she was good to look at; always she grew flustered at sudden praise, suspecting some hidden irony.

She came back with nervous, rapid-fire Gallic, a sudden contrast to his deliberate language. She told him that he should not have said that sort of thing to her, especially before all these people. It may be true. She would not deny that she had all the virtues, but her friends were those who did not gabble smart phrases about her eyes and her ears and her nose as if they were properties for sale. Why couldn’t he have talked of impersonal things as the others had? Well! He would be paid back in kind. Well! She would look into his eyes, and what does she see? Sapristi! Nothing; for his eyes are away. They are busy watching the faces of girls and reporting lies about them!

Leopold, astonished at the spirited attack, offered a most humble apology, and protested his sincerity, keeping steadily to the French, which was to him almost a second tongue. She tossed him aside with a swift change of mood. She knew that it was all fun; but that sort of personal praise always made her unhappy.

He had not thought she would understand, he offered in excuse.

That did not help his case a bit, she returned quickly, for then he had evidently sought deliberately to make her a laughing stock. “Vous voulez rire,” she said, “mais je n’aime pas qu’on se moque de moi!”

Their parley grew less warm. He forced her to laugh by pointing out the gaping crowd of elders. He told her that no one present could possibly give a translation of their conversation, for it had been carried on, not in the studied pace suitable for foreigners, but clipped and jammed into a swift colloquial clatter.

“Look at Diccon,” Leopold went on, still keeping away from English. “He is so surprised, his mouth won’t come shut for a week. And Betty, she—” and so on until nearly everyone in the company was tolled off.

Sensation! The discovery that the Prince really wanted Cinderella after all was nothing in comparison. Where did she get it? Had she lived abroad? No. Had she gone to school? No. Then she must have had tutors. Ah! There it was. Allen Blynn, by way of silly books, had done the trick. Marvelous! Hearty congratulations! It was a miracle of pedagogy.

Blynn denied everything; but they put it down to modesty. Needless to say, from that hour Gorgas was respected by the elder girls and was brought more into their circle. And from that hour, too, she lost the major part of her left-handedness in public. She began to move across the room without striking chairs or sliding ashamed into secluded corners.

Some of the same dignity of bearing, so natural in the open out-of-doors, began to appear within doors; her native comedy spirit, the gift of dramatic caricature, gradually unclosed, to the great surprise of her elder sister.

VIII
“MY THEORY IS ——”

Mon capitaine, ... mon colonel, ... que me demandez-vous?

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BLYNN visited his youngsters or had them on his own grounds with the regularity of a physician looking up his patients. Those that were out of reach he held by correspondence. Yet always his visits or his letters seemed the most casual thing. The youngsters looked for him because it meant a splendid sort of play, something organized and meaningful. When children play alone they get into ruts and they waste great time in small disputes; an umpire or a director keeps things moving.

About this time Blynn began to keep a card index of his “cases,” recording all available facts about character, and special abilities; and in addition, data to show the ground they had covered, with notes of suggestive treatment.

There was no difficulty over any of the cases save that of Gorgas. He had not the least notion what to do with her. On many counts she was entirely too wise for her teacher. He knew that she must have constant practice in German, French, and Italian, or she would lose much of her previous holdings; she must not neglect her work in copper; she should have other studies, science, history, literature, mathematics, music; and she should have opportunity to continue the development of her physical self.

A forge was constructed in a disused stone spring-house. No one interfered with any eccentric device that Blynn suggested; it began to be generally conceded that he could perform miracles with children—Gorgas’ French and, later, the discovery of her knowledge of German and Italian caused everyone to look upon him as a wizard—so there was no objection to the fitting-up of a complete coppersmith’s workshop in the old spring-house.

When he came to take stock of her mental furnishings he found some strange wares. Gardiner’s “The Femine” he had laid to the door of Bardek; but of all Bardek’s odd learning, “The Femine” was not a part; indeed, he would have scoffed at the contents. An aunt, a “Gorgas,” had left her namesake a few hundred dollars a year, the interest of which was to be spent in books. Ever since she could remember, Gorgas had been permitted to spend that small sum as she should choose. The effect of the responsibility was to give her a keen interest in the book-reviews of such magazines as came regularly to the house. And with the growth of the private collection, there came also a fine love for books.

Her little “den” was across the hall from the library. One afternoon Blynn found her there and spent many astonished minutes poring over her treasures.

“You have read all this?” he inquired incredulously.

She gave several pleased little nods. “Nearly all. Some were too much for me. I shall give them up until I grow into them. I get only a few every quarter; so it grows gradually,” she explained.

“Why, some of this is material I ought to know myself—and don’t; books I’ve promised myself to read.... How did you get to know there were such things? Bardek, again?”

Oh, no! The advertisements of the Atlantic Monthly; the book chat in Harper’s, and the Nation; and especially the remarks of wise persons—like Mr. Blynn!—who have no idea that “a chiel’s among ye takin’ notes.” There was really a note-book with publishers’ names and prices; one had to buy carefully so as to get the best for the money (Pennsylvania-German thrift cropping out here, thought Blynn).

“That one,” she touched a volume, “he’s too much for me. Everybody is talking about him. The magazines are full of it; and you and Mr. Leopold are always quoting. That made me buy. I got good binding, too. Don’t you just love fine bindings?” She stroked the leather cover gently. “But I suppose I’ll have to know more before I can understand.”

Browning was the big man in those days; he was receiving his belated hero-worship and, as usual, it was noisy and overdone.

Blynn ran the pages over and stopped at “Andrea del Sarto.” Then he read. It needed only a touch of explanation here and there to set the pathetic monologue and make clear the simple story of this great failure.

The poem was plain enough now, she said; and it was beautiful; but why did Andrea leave his great work, give up all that was really dear in life, and in his middle days suffer poverty and disgrace, all for that worthless Lucrezia?

Why, indeed! Blynn promised to show her reproductions of Sarto’s paintings, especially the fine figure of young John the Baptist; then she might understand; for Lucrezia was the model for that spiritual face. She must have had qualities to inspire a picture like that. A man would give up much for a woman who called him, even—this is the puzzle of life—even though he knew she were worthless.

“Do you suppose,” she asked, “that in the first years of their marriage they were—” She wanted to say “lovers,” but that’s a hard word to say aloud in English. Except on the stage or in novels, we avoid direct reference to love. We seem to be half ashamed of it. “Do you think,” she began again, “they really—cared?”

“I should think so,” he guessed. “Most folks do, for awhile. We can’t get into the private history of families; but from the outside it seems that—uh—affection,” he was also shying at the word, “soon dies out. It rather frightens one to look on the hundreds of indifferent or possibly discordant couples who, no doubt, were one time violently—uh—enamored of each other. It doesn’t seem possible to keep the thing up!”

“If that’s true, I’m sorry,” she said seriously.

“So am I.”

“Why should it be true?”

“I’ve often puzzled over it. My theory is—”

She laughed. “Do you know, you always begin that way? ‘My theory is.’ But go on, I’m interested.... I like your theories.... You don’t care if I say what I think; do you?”

“Oh, dear, no!” he smiled. “I was only thinking how full of theories I am. I haven’t breathed half of them aloud yet.... I wouldn’t dare.... Well, my theory is that two people who—uh—”

“Yes?” She was sitting cross-legged on the floor and looking steadily up at him.

He looked down at her a second or two, studying her frank eyes.

“Would you mind sitting on a chair?” he asked.

“Mais, oui,” yet she did not stir. “But I am quite comfy here, mon père.”

“Uh!” he grinned. “Don’t call me ‘father.’”

“You are ten years older,” she contended, “and—”

“How did you discover that?”

“I asked Edwin.”

“Edwin?”

“Edwin Morris.”

“Oh, your tennis chum. How old is he?”

“Eighteen; only five years older than I.”

“H’m!” he looked at her suspiciously; but she seemed quite guiltless.

“Why mustn’t I sit on the floor, mon p— mon duc, mon prince?”

She hummed the air of “La Tour, Prends Garde,” that old song which the French children sing and act so prettily in the summer evenings, reminding us of our own “London Bridge is Falling Down.” Gorgas touched the words softly,

“Mon duc, mon prince!

Mon duc, mon prince!

Je viens me plaindre à vous.”

“Duke and prince?” he shook his head. “I’m too American for that.”

Without further word she sang the next stanza,

“Mon capitaine,

Mon colonel!

Que me demandez-vous?”

“Ah, that’s better,” Blynn smiled.

“And why, mon capitaine,” she smiled back, “may I not sit on the floor?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he explained. “It’s—legs. I’ve discovered something about you.” He spoke with exaggerated jocularity. “When I see your underpinnings, I know I am talking to a child, aged thirteen, who looks upon me as a grandfather; but when you squat on the floor and look up at me like a little coquette”—his tone was that of pure banter—“I get the craziest notion possible into my head, that you have grown up and—that you are sitting there quietly laughing at all my tedious explanation, and well—you know, you fooled me completely that day on the tennis-courts. I could have sworn you were at least twenty-two.”

“Why do you need—to treat me—differently?”

Her eyes rested on him now with quiet gravity. They looked into him and seemed to explore his very mind. This child had been schooled all her life to mask her feelings until few suspected she was capable of any. In this confident hour she unmasked and let him see without shame that he was her capitaine, under whom she would serve right loyally. Youth and faithfulness! Blynn could see all that, too, in her eyes; and perhaps something else, which disturbed him and caused him to come to instant decision.

“Do you know, young lady,” he broke the spell of the silence abruptly, “that in October you are going to the Misses Warren’s Select French and English School for Young Ladies?”

“No!” she stood up. “I won’t go. Who said I must go? That hateful place? Why, everybody makes fun of it. It—it would be torture. I won’t go! Please, Mr. Blynn, don’t let them send me there.”

“But you must go somewhere,” he soothed. “I’ve been inquiring. They’ve made a number of changes since the death of the elder sister. It’s really quite a decent place now. What you need is not book education, but social education.”

“What!”

“I put that badly. I mean you should mix more with your own generation. There are girls who—”

“Girls! I don’t want to know any. Most of them are just simpletons, smirking at boys. Boys! boys! boys! That’s their whole talk. They aren’t interested in books or anything. I tell you, I couldn’t stand being all day with girls. I couldn’t breathe. I—”

“Now, steady,” he calmed her. “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. That’s a bargain; isn’t it? No Warren business, if you don’t like it. Remember, you’re going to do as you like.”

“Yes,” she said more calmly; but all the rebellion in her was stirring.

“To tell you the truth, I haven’t worked out the plan yet. The Warren school is—well, I’m thinking about it. I’ve been looking into the School of Applied Arts, too.”

“That’s more like it,” she was blinking hard.

“You see,” he showed her his perplexity. “You and I aren’t getting anywhere. We just sit around and talk and talk—at least, I do—”

“But that’s the joy of it,” she was astonished at his sudden dullness. “Don’t you like our—talks?”

“Bless my soul, yes! They’re great! You bring me out; make me think of things I didn’t know I knew. Enjoy it? Jerusalem! But your mother thinks I am teaching you things—”

“Why, you are,” her eyes grew wide. “Every day I learn lots from you. I can’t give you up, Mr. Blynn. Why, we have the most beautiful pow-wows. Nobody else really talks to me. Look,” she picked up the Browning, “you have given me Andrea today; I never could have gotten it myself. And I’m just nervous thinking of more you will give me. Don’t—don’t—send me off, just when we were—. It’s mean!” she quavered, stamping her foot in vexation, for she had prided herself on not being a weeping person, and lately the tears were swelling on the flimsiest provocation.

But he was firm about regular school and took pains to make his reasons clear to her. His scheme for her—which gradually began to form as he talked—was special hours at Miss Warren’s in German and French. They had a new Swiss teacher there who had a splendid bi-lingual training. She would also get music, mathematics and Latin. Once or twice a week she would take the metal classes in the School of Applied Arts. The Italian she would have to keep up by reading, for awhile at least.

“But English literature?” she protested. “Aren’t you going to keep on with your readings? Why, we’ve hardly begun!”

“Perhaps,” he held out. “Some of it I will surely do; perhaps I’ll arrange a little class with your sister and Betty Sommers.”

“That will not be so nice,” she admitted. “But,” with seeming understanding of the expression that swept across his face, “if you think it best, mon capitaine, I’ll give them a share.”

Youth and faithfulness shone in her eyes again; and the frankness of childhood.

He collected his belongings, borrowed a book from her shelf and prepared to go.

“There!” she said. “I knew we had forgotten something. That horrid school thing hopped in between and spoiled it all.” She held the Browning open to “Andrea del Sarto.” “You were telling me your theory about married people, and why they don’t—keep on—keep on—”

“Oh, yes,” he helped. “Well, my theory is a very simple one. There is no patent on it, but no one seems to want to use it.” He knitted his brows and looked afar off. “I think young people ought to prepare ahead of time for all that’s to follow. They get lost in the beginnings—for there are beginnings, and there are middles and ends, each is different. They ought to prepare themselves to go on from one stage of affection into another, without surprise or suspicion of each other. And better, they should study all the little paths that tend to take them apart. Therefore, they should cultivate many of the same interests, insist upon having many associations together, and refuse to let a separate set of occupations absorb them too much—like housekeeping or whist playing for the woman, and selling cheeses, let us say, for the man. Memory is the thing that binds one’s life together; married people should see to it that they have many, many beautiful memories in common. There! that’s a long speech; and it’s my theory. There must be a flaw in it somewhere, or more folks would have adopted it. I have faith in it—I have faith, you notice, in all my theories. One should. If ever I have the chance to try it out, I’ll do my best to make it work.”

“It will work,” she said simply.

“That’s encouraging, now,” he laughed. “What makes you think so?”

“My theory is that the woman is always willing to have memories, the kind you speak of. It is the man who flies off to his own affairs and leaves her to just dig along.”

“Ah! Amazonian,” he cried. “That’s out of Gardiner!”

“No,” quietly. “I have been watching my neighbors, that’s all. Men are awfully excited about men-things. I don’t blame them. They do have lots of fun, boys and men.... But you will make it work, all right.”

“Why?”

“Well,” she thought, “you will try; and then you aren’t at all interested in yourself—No! you aren’t—You are always thinking of somebody else. I’ve watched you—”

“Oh!” he cried, “you’ll make me self-conscious.”

“Often, I’ve watched you. I notice that your eye is always looking to see what other persons need. You get chairs before other men notice they are wanted, and you open doors, and pass things before they’re asked for, and all that sort of thing.... And, you understand—”

“Understand?”

“Yes; you understand ... you understand—me, for instance.”

They looked at each other a quiet second or two.

“I wonder if I do,” he said, trying to smile like a grandfather.

They walked across the hall into the library.

“Oh, you know all about little me,” she laughed, and shook her head as if it were a doleful burden.

IX
“BONG-JOUR”

THE winter was spent for Gorgas pretty much as Blynn had planned. She was entered as a pupil in the Misses Warren Select French and English School for Young Ladies; but the desertion from freedom was not made easily; nor was it ever entirely successful. Gorgas was the vagabond type. In literature Vagabondia has its charming unconventional men, but seldom if ever has the female of this species been put forward without shocking sensitive souls. The unconventional woman is—well, no better than she should be. Somehow the world has worshipped its men when they step forth from its fetters of use and wont, but it looks terribly askance at women of equal daring.

On the morning of the opening of school Gorgas rode solemnly on Gyp, without even the “shining morning face” of Shakespeare’s famous reluctant schoolboy. She was full of forebodings of coming disaster. Professor Blynn, her capitaine, had said, go; that was the sole impelling force. She knew that she could not turn back without distressing him; he it was who had taken the rebellious untamed forces of her little life and had bound them both with and against her will. It was terrible, this bowing to the decisions of another; terrible and unutterably satisfying! She pondered on this contradictory fact as she let Gyp trot forward; upon the convicting desires that found reasonable lodgment in her mind: the desire to turn Gyp’s head right about for a canter toward Bardek and Cresheim Valley, and the greater wish to obey the will of another, to plod straight forward and suffer the pangs of a strange schooldom. Her conscience had a fine glow of satisfaction with each step toward the disagreeable adventure.

Miss Warren saw her from the window.

“Surely that is not one of our new girls?” she exclaimed to the secretary.

Both drew aside the heavy lace curtains, discreetly keeping themselves at a polite distance in the shadows.

“It is Gorgas Levering,” the secretary replied.

“But she is riding astride!” Miss Warren looked helplessly about. “Like a man!” she added. “Mercy! Do go out and tell her—”

But Gorgas cut that command short by dismounting—like a man. She was leading Gyp toward the stables, one arm over the horse’s mane, her head erect, her eyes focused far away. At that moment she was enjoying a childlike delight in successful martyrdom. As she passed around the school—really a fine old Colonial mansion—she came face to face with Miss Warren framed in a massive side door.

“You are Miss Gorgas Levering, I presume?” Miss Warren made the statement with disarming graciousness.

“Miss Warren!” Gorgas ejaculated.

The child was startled by the apparition, conjuring up the photograph on Keyser’s dressing-table, that now spoke in the flesh, like an ancient figure in history suddenly come to life; and her spirits oozed. The regality of this distinguished-looking woman struck at her and took away her sense of equality. In the presence of Miss Warren one had always to struggle against an overwhelming feeling of personal inferiority.

“I am so glad you have come early,” Miss Warren ignored the exclamation. “Perhaps you would like to come in and freshen yourself after your ride.”

Miss Warren’s attire was spotless. Without a further word Gorgas realized that there was something vulgar and unclean in riding a horse. She became conscious of her dusty appearance and of Gyp’s warm, sweaty body.

“Home, Gyp,” she said, and turned his head about and patted him smartly on the flank. Gyp trotted off alone.

Miss Warren took in the unconventional attire.

“You are wearing—uh—bloomers; are you not?” she asked in a noncommittal tone.

Then Gorgas answered in a phrase she had never before used in speaking to her elders. It was the reply of servants and underlings; something she knew should not be said, but it came unbidden to her lips.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

Instantly she was aware of having surrendered her will completely to the overpowering superiority of the woman before her. Her face flamed; she would have given all she possessed to have recalled the expression; but it was out, and she was condemned. From afar she heard the quiet explanation from Miss Warren that young ladies should not say “yes, ma’am”; they should say, “Yes, Miss Warren.” All of which she knew by instinct, yet she could offer no explanation. She was suffused with shame.

“It is too late to ask you to go home and change,” Miss Warren spoke kindly as she ushered Gorgas into the house and showed her the way to the water-taps. “Fortunately we have a few proper skirts in the lockers that you may wear over your—uh—riding costume. While you are getting refreshed I will have Miss Lewis find one for you.”

Meekly Gorgas let herself be decked in a faded blue serge skirt, which bulged uncomfortably and succeeded in taking out of her the remaining grains of spirit. If she had entertained any thought of walking through the spacious doorway and bolting for Gyp and freedom, that inharmonious skirt tethered her to the spot like a chain anchor.

She sat on a bench under a window in the wide corridor. A teacher or two came in.

“Bon jour!” they greeted Miss Warren, who bon-joured them in return. “Old Bong-joor,” Gorgas remembered, was one of the private names for Miss Warren among the alumnæ. Other French phrases, mainly about the weather, were passed back and forward. Gorgas recognized them instantly as by-words among the Warren graduates, and she knew that they were not quite French. At least it was not Bardek’s way of greeting. That same type of mystic language was leveled at the first few early pupils. They replied in kind, and seemed to know what was expected of them.

“Bon jour, Harriet.”

“Bon jour, Ma-de-moi-selle Warren.”

“Tu est arrivé de bonne heure.”

“Oui, Ma-de-moi-selle Warren.”

“C’est bon, Harriet.”

“Oui, Ma-de-moi-selle Warren.”

There was something comic in the picture presented. The little girls stood at rigid attention and recited their trite phrases, keeping diplomatically to the plain oui or non, and so added to the glory of “The Misses Warren’s French and English School for Young Ladies.” Here was the echo far off in America of a one-time supremacy of French as the language of the upper classes of Europe. Tag-rags of the language lingered for awhile in novels, until it finally died out and was deposited in the back pages of the old Webster dictionary, where the proletariat may still find the meaning of such recondite phrases as “entre nous,” and “on dit.”

“I wish you to know one of our new girls,” Miss Warren would say occasionally after the French pass-words had been given and returned. “This is Miss Gorgas Levering.”

“We welcome you to our school,” the well drilled young ladies would recite, step two steps forward, shake hands like a drill sergeant, bow and retire to a room set apart for assembly.

More “Bon jours” went on until about thirty girls, ranging from ten to eighteen, had assembled. Gorgas was ushered in with the others and given a seat. A bell was tapped somewhere in the house; the polite unnatural murmur hushed. Another bell tapped; the girls rose and stood waiting for the customary prayer, but a clatter in the hall turned heads and set very natural tongues a-wagging. Two or three smart taps on the bell brought only partial order. A heavy voice in the hallway caused smiles of recognition.

“Am I late again?” it cried impatiently.

The words of one of the teachers could not be heard, but the reply of the late-comer was quite clear.

“Darn it, I’m always late!” the heavy voice boomed out. “Your old clock’s wrong. I know I started in plenty of time this morning.”

“Bea Wilcox!” The name was uttered aloud by several excited girls. Miss Warren called the group smartly to attention and requested Miss Lewis to see that proper care was taken of the unruly late-comer, but while heads turned to the front dutifully and silence came, the joyful wreaths on the faces were not so easily ordered away. Bea Wilcox was the one rift in the morning’s respectable gloom.

“I’m sorry, Miss Warren,” Bea exclaimed comfortingly as she tore off her gloves and took her place in assembly. “I tried to get here, honest I did. Your clock’s awful fast.”

“If you please, Miss Wilcox,” the principal assumed her deadliest tones, “we prefer to hear your excuses in private. And I wish you would soften down your very—uh—heavy voice; and please do not say ‘awful?’”

A chill passed over the room, thawed instantly by Bea.

“Oh, all right,” she chirped in cheery basso. “But it ain’t my fault if the clock’s wrong; is it?”

“If you will be so good as not to speak. And pray remember that ‘ain’t’ is not good English.”

“Oh, ain’t it?” she inquired pleasantly, adding, as if to her compatriots, “but I bet the thingembob’s off the pendulum?”

“Miss Wilcox!” the command was peremptory.

“Yes’m?”

The “yes’m” was most deferential. It was meant to be. Miss Wilcox was the big, muscular type of girl that goes in for athletics, cares little for books, loving rather to strive muscle against muscle than to swaddle and grow prim and become self-conscious of nose and eyelash. These athletic girls are glorious at tennis and hockey—Bea Wilcox, at fifteen, was a wonder at both sports; she could even bat and play first-base like a man—but they are not usually considered refined. Delicate intellectual shadings they do not always perceive. Her “yes’m” was a rough attempt at respect, but it drew a titter from the precise young ladies.

The titter from the comic “yes’m” had hardly died out before a far-off bell, tolling lazily, proclaimed that in at least one church tower a belated nine-o’clock was being celebrated.

“There!” cried Miss Wilcox, striking a listening attitude. “Listen! D’y’ hear that! Ah! ha! Miss Warren! We always go by that bell. I told you you were fast.”

“You will kindly leave the room, Miss Wilcox,” Miss Warren spoke with dignified forbearance. “Pray, go to my office.”

“Now, what have I done!” The young lady moved belligerently toward the hallway. “Always getting jumped on for doin’ nothin’.”

What had she done? Gorgas asked herself. But she did not ask aloud. Nor did anyone else. Thirty youngsters watched the unlucky Wilcox girl flounce out of the room, each knowing that it would mean a long lecture, a detention after school, the punishment of much memorization of Bible verses, and perhaps the writing out of a thousand replicas of the sentence, “Children should be seen and not heard”; and certainly it would mean a letter to the elder Wilcoxes, in which Bea would not appear a heroine. There was no protest from her own mates, except the mute flash of understanding from one to the other which implied that here was one more irresistible victory of authority over justice.

Gorgas found herself marching in a silent line—silent save for some furtive whispering as they turned safe corners in hall or stairway—supervised by ferret-eyed teachers. She was tolled off to a group that met in one of the western rooms on the second floor. Trees—big chestnuts—shot above the windows and left a view of lawn and rising hill beyond; and some of their leaves brushed just beyond reach, so that they could be heard distinctly as they whisked back and forth against the house.

Teachers came and went. They heard lessons mainly, and gave marks in a book for every word spoken. While they were gracious in a sort of unbending way, they seemed ever alert, like a Trappist lady superior, to catch someone breaking the eternal vow of silence. Even as they relieved one another on guard, they would watch the class with worried, roving eyes, until the last reluctant moment. That vigilance crept into their faces; it labeled them wherever they went, even in their vacations!

Gorgas was mercifully permitted to look on during the long hours of that first day, although she was given detailed instructions for the lessons that were to be learned by the morrow. There was a long spelling list, including Cambodia, peristyle, ratiocination, caryatid, and other hard ones; a list of the mountains of the world with the exact height of each; a section of American history to be memorized—the story of John Smith and Pocahontas, which nobody believes nowadays—the conjugation of several French verbs, and some problem in arithmetic which aimed to discover that if fourteen men working six hours a day could dig a ditch four feet wide, six feet deep and ten feet long in three days, how many men working four days, seven hours a day, it would require to dig a ditch three feet wide, five feet deep and twelve feet long. And there was “literature”: the memorization of the dates of birth and death of Cotton Mather and his contemporaries.

The French class offered hope at first. Mlle. Schwartz—German-Swiss—looked French as she bobbed into the room, a vivacious, worried little woman. She said, “I hopp you do know the vairbs today.” It was a vain “hopp.” The pièce de resistance was a future perfect:

I shall have been regarded,

Thou shalt have been regarded,

He shall have been regarded.

Gorgas, who knew French, found the phrase new. She wondered if anyone would ever need to “have been regarded.” But to Mlle. Schwartz it was the open sesame to all of French; that and its even more bristling negative interrogative:

Shall I not have been regarded?

Shalt thou not have been regarded? etc.

The prize of Mlle. Schwartz’s praise went to a little be-spectacled girl on the front row who knew her “shall-have-been-regarded’s” backward and forwards.

“Ah! Bessie,” Mlle. Schwartz would pounce on her in despair of the others, “the past anterior!” Bessie knew the past anterior. “The pluperfect!” Bessie knew the pluperfect. And the subjunctive, and the indicative interrogative.

Gorgas felt ashamed. She knew no French, after all! In spite of all her chatter with Bardek, she was ignorant of the language. So she edged over to the Bessie girl at the fifteen minute recess, shyly, as one would toward a superior.

“It was beautiful,” Gorgas spoke quickly in French, a nervous tribute to the perfect scholar. “Ah! how it was beautiful, the conjugations which you know so well!”

“Huh?” Bessie looked across her spectacles. She was munching a bun, and spoke with difficulty.

“The French that you know so wonderfully!” Gorgas kept eagerly to the French. “I speak it and read it, but I never knew about the conjugations. Is it very hard? When I heard you speak I was ashamed not to know them. They all seemed so familiar, yet I did not know them.”

“Don’t she talk funny!” Bessie smiled weakly at the group beside her. Then she added, “I don’t understand her. Is it some foreign language?”

“But you know French!”

“Was that French what you just spoke?”

“Yes.”

“Gee! girls!” Bessie looked about her. “She can talk in French!”

“But you do, too,” Gorgas was fearful of being alone in this.

“Me?” inquired Bessie. “No. I don’t know any speakin’ French. I only know conjugations. Speakin’ French don’t come for years—not till you get to college.”

A heavy voice interrupted. It came from across the lawn.

“Whoo-oo!” it called joyfully and drew nearer. The owner was loping in ungainly bounds. “I’m let out!” Bea Wilcox shouted. Then she glanced at the office corridors and lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper which penetrated almost as far as her normal tones. “I’m loose! Don’t come too near, everybody.” She put her long arms around the nearest girls, one of whom was Gorgas, and hugged them to her. “I’m dangerous, I am! Old Bong-joor said I was—the sweet old Lavender-Box. She said I was to be par-tic-u-lar-ly careful”—old Bong-joor was being imitated now—“not to obflusticate the fiddlesticks of these deah innocent guhls, especially the young lady, Miss, uh, Brownface, who had just enrolled. Where’s Brownface?”

Brownface was being hugged gloriously by Bea’s strong right arm.

“Oh! Oh!” Bea cried as she loosed the other arm and hugged Gorgas to her. “Be careful, Browny. Don’t get too close to me. I’m dangerous!” Back and forth she rocked Gorgas. “I’m ketchin’. I’m the human colery morbus.”

“And she can talk in French,” piped up Bessie of the spectacles.

Bea thrust Gorgas at arms length.

“Can you?”

“Yes.”

“Honest?”

“Yes.”

“Is it ketchin’?” This with mock fear.

Only laughter answered this question.

“Well, I want it to be.” Bea nodded her head vindictively. “I want to ketch a whole lot of it. Old Bong-joor gave me ten pages of French exercises to write out. Browny, you’re my lucky stone. I’m going to love you.” She grabbed Gorgas once more and rocked her like a baby, “Will you do every one of them for me?”

Gorgas said she would be glad to help.

“Help?” croaked Bea. “I don’t want help. I just want you to do the whole biz for me. I can’t even punctuate in French. And see here, Bessie Four-eyes,” she reached forward with her foot and drew that lady nearer, “if anybody ‘spills’ this to Bong-joor—anybody, mind; I’m not sayin’ who—they’ll have their backbones taken out very carefully and dusted off—bone by bone.”

The good arm never left Gorgas. It protected her and warmed her and temporarily drove off the chill of the school-house.

X
HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS

BUT even the impetuous friendliness of Bea Wilcox could not quite dispel the chill of the school-house. Until some arrangements could be made for afternoon hours at the Applied Arts School Gorgas was to spend her whole day at the Warren School. They were hours of dreary inactivity, enforced silence, enforced immobility; and “lessons” that appealed to no normal healthy instinct.

In two weeks Gorgas rebelled. Every night she had memorized dutifully the odds and ends of unprofitable facts that had been detailed for home study. But they would not stay fixed in her mind. She knew the exact height in feet of Mt. Etna, the list of the counties of her native State with the name of the chief city, innumerable pages of a stupid political history of the United States, lists of births and deaths, and the population of a score of cities. Bessie and her tribe, weaklings physically, shone in the class-room. They “knew” everything. They were eager to display and greedy for book-facts; but they never questioned the usefulness of anything.

“The population of New York city, Miss Levering, please?” Miss Lewis, the geography teacher, was quizzing.

“May I ask, Miss Lewis,” Gorgas plucked up courage to inquire, “why anyone should have to know that?”

“Please do not be impertinent, Miss Levering.”

Miss Lewis was not a good disciplinarian and she knew it. A native graciousness and meekness prevented her from succeeding in quelling pupils; but she struggled hard to dominate.

“Oh, I don’t mean to be impertinent,” Gorgas went on eagerly. “But population is always changing. Our book tells us the number of people who lived in New York, but only for 1880. Why, that was eight years ago! With millions of immigrants and—uh—births, you know, it must be much bigger now. When you were a school girl you had to memorize populations, but, you see, they’re of no use now. We’ll have to do it all over again after the census of 1890; won’t we?”

“I—I—well, I suppose so; yes,” Miss Lewis had never questioned the traditional pabulum of the school course. She was not of courageous mould. “But I am afraid you will have to learn your lessons just the same. So kindly answer my question: what is the population of New York?”

“But, don’t you see,” Gorgas did not notice the eager movement among her classmates, who took sides instinctively in favor of every rebellion against authority; nor did she see the weak look of fear and determination in the eyes of her teacher. “But don’t you see, no one can tell? And what do you mean by New York city? All the people who live there? Or the people who visit New York—they say there are thousands and thousands of visitors. And what about Brooklyn and Jersey City—I’ve been looking at the map—it’s all one big city. I know a man who lives in New Jersey who has his business in New York, and he says there are thousands like him. How can you tell how many there are in New York city this minute? Nobody could possibly count them.”

“If you do not know your lesson, Miss Levering, I must ask you to be seated.”

“But you don’t understand,” Gorgas was enthusiastic in her childlike earnestness. “Nobody knows that lesson. Even you don’t know it, Miss Lewis.”

All might have been well, but, unfortunately, the class broke into an unpremeditated whoop. Tappings on the desk brought no respect for authority. The youngsters saw nothing but lovely audacious baiting in Gorgas’ innocent speech.

The tumult brought Miss Warren to the door. Gorgas was still standing, conscious now, as evidenced by her flushed face, that she had caused trouble. Silence fell like a blight on the group; one youngster tugged at Gorgas’ skirt, aiming to be helpful; and another risked punishment by boldly whispering that “Bong-joor” was at the door.

But Gorgas could not retreat. That would be to acknowledge wrongdoing. So she not only stood her ground, but continued speaking.

“I don’t see the use of it, Miss Lewis, really I don’t.”

“What is it that the young lady does not see the use of?” Miss Warren inquired majestically. Even Gorgas knew from the tone that she was already judged and destined for her first punishment. Miss Lewis lamely tried to put the case; she wanted to be fair, but her little four hundred dollars a year, her very life, in fact, was at issue; she could see failure hovering before her, so she plucked up a borrowed strength from the orderly class and threw the blame upon Gorgas.

Miss Warren was quite calm. “I have noticed that Miss Levering, unlike her sister, who was a great credit to our school, does not easily conform to rules. She does not keep a good ‘line,’ and I notice that she talks to others in the halls. I had meant to speak to her about this, and other matters that have come to my attention, but preferred to wait, hoping that as she was new to us she would eventually understand and submit to authority. But it seems that my forbearance was a mistake. We cannot have rebellious spirits in our school, Miss Lewis. It would not be fair to the parents who have entrusted to us the moral responsibility of training their children and who look upon our school as an environment free from contaminating influences. At recess time, Miss Lewis, will you be so good as to send the young lady to my office?”

“I have done nothing wrong, Miss Warren,” Gorgas stirred her nervous tongue to say.

Miss Warren fixed her with a smile.

“I can quite comprehend,” she said, “that you think you have done nothing wrong. However, your parents, wisely or not, have permitted us to be the sole judge in such matters. You will find us very fair and very just; and also very firm.”

The interview with Miss Warren was full of the same numbing type of monologue. But no other “punishment” followed. Gorgas was led to feel that she was on probation; that mercy had been shown to her ignorance of the rights of constituted authority; and that her future stay in the school would be entirely dependent on herself. In the whole interview Gorgas spoke not a single word.

But she raged, nevertheless, at the public humiliation. In the recess periods the girls hailed her with delight, but she got no joy from that. Mistily she thought of Bardek and the free play of thought that he allowed, by which she learned prodigiously every minute; and she thought of Allen Blynn, who treated her as a human being and opened up springs of intellectual delight for her thirsty soul; and even of Leopold, who talked science with her as if she were a colleague. And in none of her conversations with those men had there been aught of heights of mountains, and boundaries of counties, and populations of cities.

One evening, when she had been struggling to memorize a list of uses of the French subjunctive, she resolved to rebel. Leopold had dropped in and had wasted the best part of her study period by chattering with her in French. Together they had reviewed the French lesson for the morrow and agreed that for them the French subjunctive did not exist.

“Even the French do not know those rules,” he told her. “And many persons know them perfectly without knowing French at all.”

“Then I will not learn them,” Gorgas closed her book abruptly.

“I wouldn’t do that!” he laughed. “Miss Warren will send you kiting. And then what will you do?”

“I will leave school,” she decided. “I can’t breathe in that place.”

But she resolved to tell Allen Blynn first. It grieved her to disappoint him; so she would not take the decisive step until she had informed him of all the necessities of the case. He had certain rights, she admitted.

But Allen Blynn was hard to find. His visits to the Leverings had been most infrequent and casual. A suspicion had come to her sensitive soul that he had preferred not to see much of her. Her entrances had usually been the sign for his leave-takings.

She tried to get courage to go directly to him; she had even got so far as the house; but always she fled. So she took the weak course and wrote him:

Dear Mr. Blynn:

I am going to leave school immediately.

I remain,Very sincerely yours,
Gorgas Levering.

The next mail brought an answer.

Dear Miss Gorgas:

You are not going to do anything of the sort—at least not until we have had a good talk on Saturday afternoon, beginning promptly at three o’clock.

I also remain,

Very sincerely but very firmly yours,
Allen Blynn.

On Saturday afternoon she was waiting for him on the old-fashioned settle before the door of her home.

“Hello, missy!” he called to her from the gate. “When do you graduate?”

“S-sh!” she whispered, and nodded toward the house.

As he drew near he gave a mock whisper in return, “I’ve figured it out that they must have promoted you a class every two days and a half. So you’re to graduate immediately. Tell me about it.”

“We’ve got to walk,” she spoke low.

“Whither, fellow conspirator.”

“To the tennis-courts.”

“Ah!” he mimicked an actor, “’twas there we met.”

“This is no joke,” she declined to catch his spirit. “I’m going to quit.”

It was October and the tennis-courts were bare; so they had the field to themselves as they sat on the home-made judge’s bench.

“‘Begin at the beginning,’” said Blynn, “as the King said to the White Rabbit, ‘go on until you come to the end, and then stop.’”

The tale was unfolded, populations, scoldings, subjunctive and all.

Blynn laughed. “Is it as bad as that? I had no idea the school was such a dungeon. Why, it is supposed to be a first-class institution! I’ll never believe another prospectus.”

“Do you know, Mr. Blynn, how many people are in New York city at this minute?”

“Bless my soul, no!” he shook his head ruefully. “I shouldn’t want to have that on my conscience. It’s much easier to take the count of 1880.”

“But that wasn’t right, even in 1880,” she continued seriously.

“Yes,” he laughed; “New York has grown bigger even while we’ve been talking; or maybe smaller, for half the town may have gone to Coney Island for over Sunday.”

“What does it matter how many people live in New York?” she asked. “I want to know; really. Miss Warren thinks it very important—although she doesn’t know herself how many were there even in 1880.”

“Well, bless my soul, did you ask her?”

“Yes; she told me to come in and see her if ever I wanted to know anything. So one morning I asked her about New York. She made a guess, but she was thousands off. ‘Excuse me, Miss Warren,’ I said—I was sticky with politeness, ‘but I think that’s what it was in 1820. I’m sure it’s grown bigger every year since that time; but I suppose that was the correct answer when you went to school.’”

“Ha! And what did she say to that?”

“She looked me over very carefully, but decided that I didn’t look bright enough. I didn’t. I flattened my face out—this way.” Her face took on the appearance of a dull image; life went out of her eyes.

“Bless my soul, Gorgas, don’t! You look feeble-minded!” And Gorgas knew that Allen Blynn was paying the actress a stupendous compliment. “Go on!” he said. “Go on! This is great!”

“Then I told her the right number, but pretended to guess it—1,202,299—that’s what the book says, anyway. All the time she was hunting for a geography. ‘I’m sure that is not right, Miss Levering,’ but it was: 1,202,299. She hated me for knowing it, too; I could see it in her eye, and I just knew she wouldn’t let me stay right. ‘In 1880,’ I helped her. ‘Ah!’ she swallowed the bait. ‘Of course, Miss Levering, in 1880! But that was eight years ago. Since then, I have no doubt, it has increased considerably—considerably.’ ‘How much is it now, Miss Warren?’ I asked as if she knew everything; ‘how much exactly?’ She swelled up and said, ‘Well, we shan’t be able to tell that until the next census is completed. Of course, no one knows exactly.’”

“Treason!” cried Blynn. “She ought to have been scolded for that speech!”

“And in public!” Gorgas was still vibrating from that open rebuke. “That’s why I got my dressing down before the whole class, too. I’ll never forgive her for that. It was beastly. So I just said sweetly, ‘I am so glad you say that, Miss Warren. That’s what I told Miss Lewis, but she said it was still 1,202,299. It’s funny, too,’ I went on; ‘for that’s what you reprimanded me for before the class. Thank you so much. Goodby,’ and I shot out before she could recover.”

“That’s very subtle,” Blynn commented. “Do you really think she caught your jab?”

“Oh, yes indeedy! If you could see the beady look in old Bong-jour’s eye the next morning. She was ready for me, but so was I. When she bong-joured me I bong-joured her back. Bong-jour! Huh! She doesn’t know French, either.”

“Of course, she doesn’t,” Blynn chuckled. “Most of that school French is the woodenest stuff. How did you find out, Missy?”

“Oh, when she Bong-joured me that morning, I came back fast. It took her off her pins. I asked her questions in French, and then told her in English that she hadn’t answered ’em. I came later than the rest so as there’d be a crowd around. I made her own up that she couldn’t follow me. She tried to talk me down high-and-mighty-like, and pretend that my French was bad; but I jabbered right off to Mlle. Schwartz. Ma’m’selle isn’t very strong on the French herself—”

“What! Another fraud!”

“Well, she can do the French all right, but she’s really German and got her French mostly out of books. But she’s a demon on conjugations and rules.”

“Well, did Ma’m’selle stand by you?”

“You bet. I just went a little slower for her. She’s afraid of me—more afraid of me than she is of Bong-jour—so she always slams French back at me, to show she understands.”

“Well!” Blynn was delighted. “Did the old lady own up?”

“Partly, but everybody in school knows she’s an old fraud. She cried, ‘Slower! Oh, slower! ma cherie, s’il vouz plait,’ with a gasp after each word. But I never slower-ed a minute. I jabbered all the faster.”

“And so you’re going to chuck it?” he inquired mildly.

“Yes.”

He thought for awhile—to her a disconcerting thing; it made her feel in the wrong.

“Oh, I shouldn’t mind the fool lessons, perhaps,” she took new ground, “if it weren’t for the hours of silence, sitting at wooden desks without so much as a squirm. Some day I’ll break out and scream.... You don’t think I ought to stay, do you, Mr. Blynn?”

“Yes,” he nodded cheerfully. “Bad as it is, my advice is to stick.”

“Why?”

“It’s a part of my philosophy.”

“What’s philosophy?”

“Philosophy?” He dug his stick in the sod at the edge of the court. “It’s one’s theory of life.”

She hugged both knees and settled back on the bench.

“I like your theories. Tell me about it.”

“My theory is—”

They both laughed at the memory of the time they had talked over “Andrea del Sarto,” and he had been prolific of “theories.”

“It’s hard to put into words,” he mused. “You know, I’m what the Irish call a ‘spoiled priest.’”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a man who starts out to be a priest, but falters on the way and becomes a teacher. He’s a priest just the same; the religious strain is strong in him; he will preach on the slightest provocation. No matter what he does to earn a living, he will find his main interest in soul saving. There’s always something of the religious zealot in him.”

A look came into his eyes that explained better than words what he meant by zealot; it is the same sort of intense stare, a focusing on some distant ideal, that gives the mark to ascetics and martyrs and socialists, and certain types of reformers. It wasn’t a pleasant look, but it made one confident in the man; confident that he would drive himself, against his own interests, to fulfill the duty as he saw it.

“Well,” he made an attempt to begin, “it seems very unreasonable to you that teachers should ask you to know what they don’t know themselves; to learn things that are of no use; to walk ‘in line’ when you might saunter out your own way; to keep silent when it would do no harm to talk. It seems unreasonable, doesn’t it?”

“Well; it is!”

“I agree with you—absolutely senseless and unreasonable. At the same time, I would obey the rules.”

“Why?”

“Because I am afraid of sensible and reasonable things.”

“I’m not!”

“If it were the custom everywhere to walk into the schoolroom backwards, I should do just that.” His eyes narrowed, and the lines about his mouth grew tense.

“That would be silly.”

“So is the commandment, ‘Thou shall not kill.’”

“What!”

“The reasonable, sensible thing to do is to kill. That’s why we go to war. Killing is the most natural emotion, and it is the acme of reason. No murderer ever feels guilty. He has justified his act by the highest reasons of self-preservation and self-advancement. We live in the most rational age the world has ever known. We have reasoned away all restrictions. There is no such thing as authority any more. In some western states they have abolished the common law, and in the east certain classes of society have abolished even the common decencies. It is unreasonable, they say, to be true to one’s wife, to revere one’s mother, to obey parents, to pay debts, to stand by a friend, to vote for civic betterment. All the commandments are unreasonable, including the greatest, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ All that we call moral and right is unreasonable. And I believe they are unreasonable. Sin is as justifiable as righteousness—more so, perhaps. I believe that, but I also believe that ‘the wages of sin is death’; that’s why I am afraid of reason.”

“Isn’t it reasonable to be good to others?” Gorgas inquired wonderingly.

“I’m afraid not.” Blynn’s lips were compressed; his gaze was fixed on the farther trees. “Books have been written against it. Goodness is weakness, they tell us; and so it is. The only right is might, they tell us; and that is undoubtedly the law of survival. Deceit, the snare, devouring murder—that is the supreme law of Nature. I believe that; and yet.... I cannot take my side with evil, even though I perish.”

Suddenly he laughed. The slight hardness went out of his eyes—that hidden scourging priest deep within him—and mon capitaine took its place.

“Heigh-ho!” he whistled. “Don’t let me get started on that sort of speech. I’m a little mad on that side. I warn you. If ever I get going again like that, say, ‘Honorificabilitudinitatibus.’... It’s a charm out of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost.’ Shakespeare invented it.”

“I’ll never say it.”

“Say ‘Honorificabilitudinitatibus,’ and keep your fingers crossed.”

“I won’t. That would be most unreasonable. I want to hear more.”

But he did not go on. “Mother had a horse once who got into the oats,” she offered in illustration. “He foundered. I suppose he thought eating oats was reasonable enough.”

“Well, is it not?” Blynn looked at her. “There are things I want to do that are as reasonable as that. I have gone over every point of the argument and I can’t find a flaw in the reasoning. Every decent instinct I have says, Go ahead. But the unwritten code of my race, the summed up wisdom that we call custom, says, ‘No. Go ahead and you will repent in unforeseen miseries.’... ‘There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.’... So I obey. There are those who scoff at the candles on the altar, who grow pert at the expense of old mysterious faiths, who would jostle cheek and jowl with Deity. I can quite understand them; but I would hesitate to follow them in very deed.... Did I hear you say ‘Honorificabilitudinitatibus’?”

“No.”

“What are you puzzling over?”

“I was wondering what all this has to do with old Bong-jour. I know it means I’ll have to go back and stand it; but it isn’t—” she laughed—“it isn’t reasonable.”

“No; it isn’t,” he nodded, “and that’s the very reason you should go back. The wisdom that is older than either you or I, Gorgas, says that youth must submit; must endure; must bow to other wills. ‘A boy’s will’—and a girl’s will—‘is the wind’s will.’ The way toward strength and mastery is first to submit. In some respects you should be thankful that the way is hard. The more foolish your school exactions are, the wiser you will become in discovering them. Already you have grown enormously, due to the Warren School. It has brought out your wits to match their stupidity. Remember, I don’t say to submit ignorantly. There’s no growth in that. Give yourself up to the law; but keep your judgment ever on the alert. Extract every ounce of knowledge from your serfdom; but yourself be free. The essence of freedom is not rebellion, but intelligent surrender.”

The sun began to drop down behind Chestnut Hill. A pleasant crispness came into the October afternoon.

“It’s time to go back,” Blynn arose. “I’m afraid the ‘spoiled priest’ has bored you.”

“I like him.”

“He likes you; you are a splendid communicant. You never interrupt the service.”

“Service on the tennis-courts!” she laughed as they jogged down the hill together. “But you won your service,” she smiled up at him.

“Good girl!” he spoke quietly, a deep, congratulatory tone that gave her a joyous surge of delight. Troubles vanished. Her mind became clean-swept as if by magic; pure, sterilized of rebellious miseries. It was mental healing. “Good girl! I’ve won my service; yes; and I’m glad. But according to the rules it’s your turn to serve now. I’ll be watching every gain you make. It’s a great fight, the fight against oneself. Glorious! Don’t give in an inch!”

He was of only fair height, a spare youngish sort of chap; she was tall for fourteen; so they might have been taken at that darkened hour for a pair of loitering swains.

“Where will you be waiting?” Gorgas asked.

“From a near distance,” he answered.

“Why are you so stingy with your talks?” She darted the question with characteristic abruptness. “This is the first real good one we’ve had since ‘Andrea.’”

A group of friendly neighbors passed. The frank smiles on their faces showed that they appreciated the joke of twenty-four and fourteen promenading together. But it struck Blynn like a slap in the face. He glared and raised his hat energetically.

“I must not hover about you,” he spoke almost sharply. “The neighbors would be talking in no time.”

“Oh, they began that long ago,” she spoke without the least concern. “What do I care what people say! Don’t stalk like that. I can’t keep up with you.”

“Well, I do!”

“Do what?”

“Care what people say!” he was terribly in earnest. “I care mightily. You can’t ignore the mass of unseen thoughts and opinions about you. It’s a force like the sea that can rise and swallow you. Don’t set your own opinions up and ignore all that,” he waved his hand over Mount Airy. “You will be like a canoe in mid-ocean. ‘You don’t care what people say!’ Be careful. Sometimes the voice of the race is speaking. And the race is older and wiser than any single person in it. Buried instincts of the race come to the top, and, behold, you have ‘what people say.’ The voice of the people is sometimes the voice of the devil; and sometimes it is the voice of God.”

“What was that word I was to say—Honorifica—what?”

“‘Honorificabilitudinitatibus!’” he laughed heartily, like a good sportsman.

“Well, honorifica—whatever it is!” she said firmly. “What you said this afternoon may have been all right; but this is just stuff and nonsense. Do you think I’d care what anybody in Mount Airy said about me? They’re a pack of blithering fools.”

“Well, perhaps you’re right,” he said cheerfully as he bade her goodby at the gate. “‘Honorificabilitudinitatibus’ is a great charm. It always brings me to my senses! Goodby, Gorgas.”

“Goodby,” she repeated, and turned slowly up the walk. To herself she said, “The fools! The fools!” The memory of the smirking faces that passed them was full upon her. “The fools! Now they’ve scared him off; just when things were going nice!”

BOOK TWO
The Hidden River

“I wish you wouldn’t squeeze so,” said the Dormouse, who was sitting next to her. “I can hardly breathe.”

“I can’t help it,” said Alice very meekly. “I’m growing.”

XI
SIXTEEN

GORGAS was now fastened up to a schedule—her life became organized. Without a word she gave up her open fight against the unreasonableness of the traditional school customs; accepted the absurdities, and performed the mechanical tasks as if they were really worth doing; and she found, after a while, that, once the ritual was learned, the service was not very exacting either in brain or time.

The need for tutoring being eliminated, the regular weekly dinners at Levering’s gradually broke off. Readings in literature were tried once or twice with a small group, but they developed into rather tame and stilted affairs, and were dropped.

The winter of ’88 and ’89 drifted by before anyone was ready for it to go. The next year Blynn spent in Germany, where all good scholars went in those days, and during the winter that followed his return, the intimate connection with the Leverings seemed almost ready to break off naturally.

Several times Blynn and Gorgas took the afternoon to themselves and read poetry and talked. There was nothing tame nor stilted about these literary exercises; rather, they were warm with the glow of sincere feeling; but they never achieved the perfect freedom of the earlier meetings. Allen Blynn seemed to be growing aloof and pedagogic, and Gorgas was enveloped for good in the protective reserve of the young woman.

Leopold dropped in upon the Leverings with a semblance of regularity. In a crowd he was smilingly silent; but as an intimate guest he came out and talked. The latest news of the biological sciences—all the new mysteries and dramatic new discoveries—he put before them simply and clearly, although he made no concessions to Gorgas’ youth. She thrilled with gratitude because he never once spoke to her in a patronizing way or seemed to consider for one moment that she could not comprehend every discussion; and her acquisitive young soul expanded.

And Ned Morris went on playing tennis with Gorgas until a place had to be set for him regularly at the Levering luncheons and dinners, and on the days of five a. m. practice games, at breakfast, too.

She was sixteen in September—September 10, 1891—and gave a “party”—one of those affairs where everything is planned seriously, as if for excited children—a cake with candles, ice cream in animal moulds, snap bonbons, and guests in semi-masquerade—but where all the so-called children smile satirically and go through the ceremonies in exaggerated earnest. It is really a farewell to childhood.

Kate wrote Blynn his invitation. “Gorgas,” she said, “insists upon celebrating her sixteenth anniversary with due ceremonies of cake and candle and partner. At her suggestion and with the approval of myself I herewith invite you to come and be my partner. Take care before accepting. I have no idea of the duties of partners. Perhaps you may have to bob for apples in tubs; or you may have to play ‘Copenhagen’ and kiss the little girls. It will be outlandish and non compos and characteristic of the Levering Liberty Hall—that you may be assured. I fancy that we old folks will look on, (Gracious! I am twenty-five. O Petruchio, why stayest thou so long in Verona!) while the children cavort.

“The ladies will masquerade mildly. I shall wear my mother’s evening gown of 1861; so you must perforce keep a respectable distance.”

To the great satisfaction of everyone—they all were busy folks and had had a slight chill at the suggestion of children’s party—the guests were simply the old dinner group with the addition of Bea Wilcox. Diccon and Davis were wringing each other’s hands as Blynn entered; Leopold was gaily chatting with Gorgas in French; and Mary Weston and Betty Sommers were crowding around Ed Morris, shaking both hands at once.

“What has Ed been up to now?” inquired Blynn. “Graduated or something?”

Everyone laughed; Blynn looked so eager and so innocent of the world’s doings.

“Ed’s ’89,” Leopold reminded Blynn.

“You ought to know,” chirped Davis, “your marks probably pulled him through.”

Mary Weston took Blynn by the lapels. “Allen Blynn, don’t you really and honestly read the newspapers? Ed Morris has done gone and won the tennis singles championship of Philadelphia county.”

“By the Great Horn Spoon, boy!” Blynn gripped his hand. “I’m mighty glad to know that. Why, I did see an account of some Morris taking the trophy,” he defended himself, “but I didn’t connect you with the business. Why, man, I’d have been there to see you do it.”

“And you didn’t hear about the exhibition mixed doubles, either,” Bea tugged at his other lapel.

“Bless us all!” cried Allen, “don’t tell me you have taken in Montgomery and Lancaster counties, too?”

“It was only an exhibition, Bea,” Gorgas called out from across the room, “the others didn’t half try.”

“Hush, child,” retorted Bea, “when yo’ mammy’s talkin’! The fact is—the latest news is—that Gorgas Levering and Edwin Morris gave a jim-crickety exhibition against the champion ‘mixers’ of the East and—”

“Bless us again!” exclaimed Allen, “don’t tell me that they beat ’em; eh?”

“Yes!” said Bea, “they beat ’em.”

Chorus of protests followed; a babel of correction. Blynn stopped his ears, until Gorgas could be heard.

“No, Mr. Blynn,” she said, “we lost two sets of 10-8 each. We were nearly fagged, weren’t we, Ed? And they were fresh as daisies. They didn’t try; and Ed did all the work. What did you fib for, Bea, and drop us down so hard?”

“I repeat,” said Bea solemnly, “They beat ’em. Who’s to dispute that? The professor of English here asked, ‘Did they beat ’em,’ and I just wanted him to take more care and pains with his English and not go sp-pilling his p-pronouns p-promiscuously all over the p-place. So, I just said, ‘Yes; they did beat ’em.’ And so they did.”

“Aw! What’s pronouns between friends?” queried Diccon, the editor. “Here the girls get all togged out in their mothers’ clothes, and we’re talking ‘newspaper.’” That brought a fresh outburst, mainly an attack on Diccon.

“Sport’s ‘newspaper,’” he explained laconically. “I make ’em—’em here stands for both sports and newspaper. What’s in the newspaper is sport; the rest don’t happen. Blynn didn’t know anything about Morris because he forgets to read the newspapers—and I ran Ed in on the first page, too. Ah!” he sighed, “What is fame?”

At that moment Kate came slowly into the room and courtesied. She wore the small hoops of a young lady of ’61, a dainty costume, when it is not exaggerated; and some of the charm of that sedate attire found its way by contagion into the personality of the wearer. Gentleness and sweetness were her prevailing charms that evening.

Blynn watched her with open interest; an occupation which she did not miss, even when her back was toward him; but he was only thinking how that crinoline period had been much maligned, and was fancying that her mother must have been just such a shy, timorous creature a quarter of a century ago.

Mary and Betty had discovered ill-mated parts of gowns of the early ’80’s—skin-tight sleeves, lace shawl and enormous bustles. Bea Wilcox wore a genuine child’s dress, her younger sister’s, and, with her height, looked as scandalous as she intended.

Later, on the lantern-lighted porch, Blynn was aware of Gorgas standing beside him holding out a hand and asking:

“Weren’t you ever coming over to greet me and wish me congratulations?”

“By the Great Horn Spoon!” he ejaculated, looking her over open-eyed. “What’s happened to you?”

“I’ve growed up, M’sieu’.” Something had certainly happened to her. Her masquerade consisted simply of the gown her sister Keyser would have worn that evening if there had been no disguising. Besides, she had coiled her hair.

“This beats the tennis-court all hollow,” he murmured, patently dumbfounded by the change. “Retro, Sathanas! Get thee behind me, silk and satin!”

“Do you like it?” she asked; but staring admiration glowed from him.

“Ein tousand ein hundred ein und zwanzig!” he swore à la Bardek. “It’s uncanny, eerie, spooky!”

“I did it all for you,” she confided frankly. “Hid the—uh—underpinnings.”

“But good Scotland, girl!” he replied. “That’s not the way to please me! Oh, it’s glorious. Goodness! You are stunning! But you always upset me when you—uh—go without—uh—underpinnings, you know. Disconcerts me.” His tone was that of the older-man-joking-with-little-girl; but his eyes shone with admiration. “Makes me think I ought to treat you the way—eh—I ought to be ashamed of myself for wanting to. If you’d only giggle or simper—things you never do, thank Peter!—it would give me the cue, occasionally.”

“I see you are impressed,” she smiled and tapped him on the arm. “That’s what I did it for—just that.... You’ve got the wrong idea about fifteen and sixteen. Older persons always do. Fifteen and sixteen don’t feel at all childlike, I can tell you. I’ll never be any older than I am now. My mind’s grown up—”

“‘I do not wear motley in my brain, madonna,’” he quoted the wise clown, Feste.

“That’s just it,” comprehending; “and it’s insufferable to dress us the way they do—skirts that are neither long nor short, hair hanging or half brought up with ribbons. And,” she whispered, “you get positively ashamed of your—underpinnings. I’ve let out the hem of some of my skirts myself—on the quiet. You don’t know how comfortable and at home I feel in this.” She took several easy steps forward and back. “But mother won’t listen to me. I’d be grown up from now on if she’d let me.”

Others of the party were swarming out on the porch. Kate was coming forward to claim her partner.

“Listen, mon capitaine,” Gorgas spoke hurriedly. “I want to have a powwow with you. Stay a few moments after the others are gone; will you?”

He agreed, hardly comprehending what she had said. Her eyes were searching him as of old and her hand was ever so lightly touching his arm. All convention to the contrary, she was a woman, no doubt; but it was the delightful childlike quality about her that really thrilled him. He was thinking, now that she looked so stately and poised, how, after all, it was as a child that she appealed to him. A strong, painful desire swept him to have just such a brood of his own about him. His impulses were domestic and parental, and he was twenty-six and childless.

Kate was talking to him and he was answering with one-half of his mind. The other half was following Gorgas as she swept across the porch and onto the lawn to claim her partner, Ed Morris. Morris was offering an arm grotesquely in tribute to her long skirts. They marched off gaily.

That’s the way she would go, he tried to assure himself. Some chap of her own generation would take her away, and then she would be lost. It was the fate of parents to lose their offspring. Real fathers, however, had rights and claims. They could put their arms about their daughters, pat their cheeks and listen to their prattle, no matter who else owned them; and there would be no horrid suspicions about the matter. As he heard the ripples of laughter that came from their confidential talks out on the lawn, he had a little pang of regret. “Mon père,” he remembered how she had once dubbed him. “Mon père,” he nodded to himself, “is about to lose his enfant; and it isn’t at all a pleasant sensation.... It’s like pups,” he grinned. “There’s no use trying to own them. You get your affection all tied up and then they die and you have to begin all over with a new lot. The thing to do is to give ’em away quick and forget ’em.”

XII
MIXED RENDEZVOUS

EVERYWHERE at the “party” Morris and Gorgas were naturally together. They made such a perfect tennis team that each got to know instinctively what the other was thinking. Scraps of private pass-words and codes flashed back and forth, references to games and experiences they had in common. He was always being called upon to work at setting up chairs or untying ribbons or fastening up a fallen lantern.

“Edwin,” she would turn. “Take a look at my back hair, will you? Isn’t that hair-pin tumbling out?”

He would inspect critically and put the offending member into shape, like a familiar brother.

“Don’t forget the bonbons,” she would call after him, as he hurried about preparing things, like one of the family. “They’re where you put them—on the top shelf in the pantry, you know.”

At supper the cake was cut and each candle blown out with a rhymed wish. Gorgas had arranged the seating with Blynn on one side and Morris on the other. With Morris she squabbled playfully like a child, but to Blynn she turned an impish womanly mien.

“Take your elbows off the table, Eddie,” she pretended to give little sisterly slaps. “Where are your company manners?”

To Blynn she would turn the next minute, and mimic a lady dining out.

“The plans for this winter’s opera are stupid; don’t you think? Nothing but Wahgner—we’re getting our share of Wahgner—and the old Fausts and Carmens and Trovatores. That new opera of Puccini is already stale in Vienna, and we haven’t heard even excerpts in the orchestra. It’s like a stage given up to continuous Uncle Tom’s Cabins.”

Another time she came at him with the intonation of a gushing old lady. “How int’r’sting!” she beamed suddenly at one of his remarks about the Academy exhibition, a topic she had forced on him. “Have you seen the Cyclorahma of Gettysburg? They say it is re-ally thrill-ling. Quite the illusion of distance, you know. One ought to go.”

For some unexplainable reason Blynn’s humor failed him. He tried to talk with her on the strange themes she irrelevantly suggested, inwardly registering his protest at the changes of personality in people. Some of his best college chums had grown into impossible young-old men and the liveliest girls of his teens frequently developed into stupid matrons. Gorgas, he conjectured gloomily, was losing all her naturalness; her individual mind was being moulded in the common cast.

He turned his attention to Kate. She had not changed, save in so far as her delicate silk attire gave her a temporary flavor of blue china and tea roses.

“What is the good news out of Verona?” he inquired.

“Petruchio has not yet arrived,” she answered promptly.

“Ah! You are not shrewish enough. Katharina had a reputation for ugliness of temper.”

“Ask Gorgas,” she smiled. “She and I have some fearful fracases sometimes—not often, though.” She leaned back to get a good view of her sister. “Doesn’t she look lovely, tonight! It is so droll to see her in my gown. I hope I look as well in it. The child is growing up fast. Ah, me! She’s my age-warner. I shall be jealous of her soon.”

“I say, Allen,” Diccon called, “going to take that professorship at Holden?”

“Why, how under heaven did you know about that?” asked the astonished Blynn.

“Newspaper,” said Diccon. “We know everything; before it happens, too. Want me to run it in, front-page display?” he grinned.

“Bless my soul! Please don’t do anything like that, Diccon. It’s a small matter—big for me, of course—but of no public interest.”

A general chorus forced him to a more public explanation. Holden College had offered him the chair held by his old professor of English. It meant more money—an unimportant matter; but, it meant the head of things, even though they were small things, and the chance to work under his own lead. He had not decided, although as it stood now he believed he would not go. The big university had its own attraction; one might meet an intolerable narrowness in a small place; and there were his “children,” about whom he felt more or less responsibility. To be sure, they could be taken care of.

“Go!” said Diccon with almost a snap. “Get out of this. You’re just a trailer here. Never get anything in your home town. Go away. Be a mystery. They’ll want you back some day, when others find out you’re worth wanting. Band waiting for you, too. My advice is to clear out. That’s what I ought to’ve done—long ago.”

The company fell to a discussion of why prophets and professors were honored in all cities save their own. Under cover of the general talk, Gorgas tapped Allen on the sleeve, her characteristic way of getting his attention, and spoke in her proper rôle, as old-time “pal.”

“Does this mean something for you, mon capitaine?”

“I suppose it does,” he replied. “Somehow I don’t seem to have any judgment in my own affairs. Prudence tells me to go; it is an opportunity; but I have almost made up my mind to plod along where I am.”

“Just what do you mean by opportunity?” she asked.

He explained. As he talked, the really flattering offer began to have some meaning for him. It seemed now as if he had been careless in letting the letter from the President go for three or four days without so much as a reply. But that’s the way he had always neglected his personal advancement.

“I don’t know whether to let you go or not,” Gorgas speculated. “Of course, you would be down Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and vacations?”

“Sure to.”

“You might just as well go, for all I have seen of you lately,” she added. “Why did you suddenly give me up?”

“I think you have hit upon the one reason that made me think of declining the Holden offer,” he was thinking hard and did not seem to have heard her question. “I’m lazy, I suppose; I hate to make changes. Holden would mean boarding and no real home. It would mean giving up a mighty pleasant work here and a lot of good fellows,” looking about the table.

Her question seemed to come slowly to the front of his mind. He would have made some sort of rejoinder, but she was at the moment scolding Morris, who was pretending to eat ice cream from a knife.

They were rising and breaking up before she spoke to him again.

“Don’t forget, mon capitaine,” she plucked his sleeve. “You are to stay after the others.”

“Oh, yes,” his face lighted up. “Count on me.... It will be like old times.”

“How frightfully time flies,” she reverted suddenly to a burlesque of the bored lady-out-to-dinner. “Why it seems only yestehdee that we wuh children togetheh.”

Like a belated jest he began to see through her strange airs. “I’ve been frightfully stupid tonight,” he admitted. “Some of your fooling was too delicate for me; it got completely by—”

“I’m simply living up to my gown, sir,—in spots.”

His rather old-young face looked its honest admiration.

“What’s that thing-em-bob on your—oh! Do you belong to a sorority? Why, bless my soul! It’s a fraternity pin—eh? remade into a brooch.... Whose is it?”

“Edwin’s; he had it done for my birthday; nifty, isn’t it?... You didn’t give me anything, miser.”

“Little girls shouldn’t wear men’s fraternity pins,” he scolded gently.

“Oui, mon père.”

“‘Mon père’—ugh! That’s wicked of you, to remind me of my years.... But you know about the custom, don’t you?”

“Tell me.”

“Oh, perhaps it doesn’t always count. In my ‘frat’ it’s a pretty serious crime, punishable by drinking a quart of quashia-water, to give your emblem to anyone but the lady. It’s the old, ancient ‘token’ over again; love is blind and lovers are dumb; the token given and the token received is the time-honored language of a contract begun.... But there! That’s all nonsense.... Of course, you can wear it without any significance at all. You’re hardly old enough to contemplate an engagement.”

“Don’t you be too sure, Mr. Professor,” she hummed wisely as she strolled away to bid farewell to her guests.

Edwin was sauntering by. She whistled a private signal which brought him swiftly about with an “Aye! aye! sir!” “Don’t forget, you’re to stay till the rest have gone,” she whispered quite audibly.

“Not your Uncle Dudley,” Edwin responded cheerily.

---

Kate seemed to know that Blynn would remain later, for she piloted him to the library as a matter of course. Mr. and Mrs. Levering were reading in the alcove in the far end of the big room.

“Let’s ‘owl,’” she suggested. “Owl” was the family name for the family habit of staying up late. “Let’s ‘owl’ and talk. I’m broad awake. What kind of chairs did they have, mother, in ’61? I have the hardest time finding one that fits the hoop.”

She tried several chairs prettily. Certainly that style of apparel increased the helplessness of women, usually a beauty asset.

“Come over here, child,” called the mother, “and I’ll show you a trick.”

The trick consisted in slyly slipping out of the hoops—a kind of detachable understructure—and leaving them in the alcove.

While he waited, Blynn could hear little contagious, intimate laughters from the lawn. Gorgas and Morris were helping McAlley extinguish the Chinese lanterns and, youthlike, were taking their time about it.

“I’m the decoy,” thought Allen, rubbing one palm along the side of the face. “Oh, these children! They fascinate me with their nimble intelligence and their mysterious changes. It’s a great business, dealing in children. They give one an enormous amount of joy—I fancy it’s the best thing I do, after all; but they set me hungering for a pack of my own that won’t desert me when I’ve given them all my toys to play with.... I believe that little minx was flirting with both of us tonight. Trying out her new wings! The gown made her conscious of things. Ah, well,” he yawned.... “Hello! What did you do with the flare-bellows?”

Kate trailed in with a large quantity of subdued skirt.

“I took the machinery out.... Now! I can sit comfortably at last. Oh! I’m tired.”

She dropped among a lot of cushions in front of him.

“Any more interesting Elizabethan theories?” she began.

“Plenty,” he replied. “At present I am interested in Elizabethan devils.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Well,” he hesitated, and then went on, just like a professor! “King James claimed that flying devils tried to upset his boat in the North Sea, and he personally attended the trial of a lot of old bedlams, who confessed and were burned. But in some old documents in the University I have found something even more exciting. One of the genuinely thrilling things that I’ve come across is Dr. Dee’s diary, scribbled on the margins of old almanacs. He was an astrologer, alchemist, mathematician, spiritualist, physician, in other words, a 16th century scientist. Elizabeth consulted him for propitious days; that is, she had her fortune told.”

Kate snuggled up to listen. He went on thoughtfully.

“Dee records his cases. Susan G. came to see him about her devil. He tries to exorcise it by the laying on of hands and much imperative Latin. Then she goes away relieved. A servant in the house has an incorrigible evil spirit. There is much praying over her case and a deal of incantation without permanent cure. One day she slips by him on the stairs. His professional eye has seen symptoms of the inward struggle between imp and human. He follows quickly. She slides behind a door at the bottom of the stair. He hears a gurgling sound and the fall of a heavy body. Behind the door lies the poor maid. The devil had tempted her to cut her throat, he says, so that she could die in sin and be his in æternum.”

“I suppose you believe in the Elizabethan devil?”

“Doesn’t everybody? We’re coming back to witches and devils. The Psychological Research Society is only 19th century for Dr. Dee; and what with telepathic influence urging to crime, and multiple personalities, I don’t see anything in Elizabethan so-called superstition that we moderns haven’t improved upon.”

“So love is a contagious disease,” Kate ruminated, “and most of us are possessed of devils. Charming thoughts! At that rate, one might marry a devil.”

“Many do,” he laughed.

“I am loafing my life away”

“The devil might have me,” she mused, “if he came in some guises.”

“You think you’re joking, but you’re not,” he came back in his characteristic bluntness. “Beatrice jested in exactly the same tone. ‘I may sit in a corner,’ she sighed, ‘and cry heigh-ho for a husband!’—but gave herself mightily away then. And do you remember Margaret’s reply? ‘Methinks you look with your eyes as other women do,’ said she. Now you, Miss Levering, you want to marry; of course, you do. It’s as natural a desire as hunger. ‘You look with your eyes as other women do.’ Millions of women feel exactly as you do; and, alack, millions for some confounded civilized reason don’t get the chance; or they won’t take a chance when they get one. If I were you I’d learn to do something—fill your mind with an absorbing occupation, basket weaving, rug making, study, writing—something; act as if you were never to catch the infection, or whatever it is.... That’s what I’m doing.... Why don’t you be a librarian?”

“You are the frankest man I know,” she spoke after a moment’s contemplation of his earnest face. “I believe you are right.... I am loafing my life away. And I’m useless as—” she shut her lips together firmly. Tears glistened in the lamp-light.

He leaned forward with great brotherly sympathy.

“I did not mean to hurt—”

“Oh, no! no! no! You? You hurt? My dear, dear man! You haven’t the power to hurt—you are so transparent and sincere. It’s—it’s the devil in me, I suppose,” she laughed nervously, “that did the stabbing.... But what is a woman to do? Sit and wait for some accidental man to give her the only thing she has been made fit for? I wish I did have a job. But, lordy! wouldn’t there be a roar if I hired out! Father Levering would have a stroke!”

She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.

“Let’s go out in the air,” she suggested.

The lanterns had been extinguished, but in the September starlight the wide lawn was awake and glowing. There they talked familiarly until the Seminary tower spoke a heavy “one.”

Kate had unburdened, as women and children did to Blynn; and he had filled her with good, courageous thinking, his native gift. They seemed infinitely acquainted as they approached the cosy light of the library; and Kate was happy again. Her little laugh punctuated the conversation often.

Gorgas? Where had she gone? Blynn made a futile search. Ah, children! children! he thought grimly; the subtle September night had taken them off. He tried the bower at the end of the orchard, whistling first, as a precaution—Blynn was a good sportsman—but she was not on the grounds, nor in the house.

McAlley, with his lantern, came sleepily out into the light of the path.

“Mr. Blynn,” he beckoned; and then in great secrecy, “Gorgas—she’s went to bed. She gives me this letter for you. Faith! It’s a cat-nap I’ve been takin’, and almost forgot it all.... Good night, Mr. Blynn.”

“Good night, Mac.”

The little note said:

Mon Capitaine:

I waited for you ever so long, and then I peeked in at you, but you seemed so happy with Kate that I just waited a little longer and then went trotting off to sleep. I have so much to tell you. Edwin plays in the finals at Haverford, Wednesday. Come and take me, please do. You’re to get your own luncheon. We start promptly at twelve, because Mac is going to drive us over. We can watch the game from the carriage. Edwin will get the Club to serve tea. I’ve seen Bardek again. And I’m to have an exhibit at the Art School.

Comme toujours toute à toi,
G.

P. S’s. 1. Mother says I may go if you take me. She won’t listen to anybody else going along.

2. I gave Edwin back his frat. pin temp—would say temperarilly if I could spell it.

3. Kate looked happy, too. Wouldn’t that be fine!!

“The little matchmaker!” he chuckled at the stars; “concocted the rendezvous and all.... It’s young Bianca getting the elder Katherina out of the way, again!... Shrewd!... And her whole-hearted unselfish self, too.... Well, I feel decidedly better. Morris—dandy chap, clean, straight sort. I know ’em; true as—” His mind trailed off in search of a strong comparison. “Indecision is the vice of life.” He walked briskly and tried to shake off uncomfortable thoughts. “It’s fine to have things settled.... Oh, the luxurious sensation of a mind finally made up!” But he walked with a long stride, his hands thrust deep into pockets; and his eyes were staring ahead as if trying to pluck a new decision out of the darkness.

XIII
TOPIC NUMBER FOUR

WHERE are the landaus and barouches of yesteryear, overpowering symbols of upper caste? Gone with the calash, the chaise, the coach and the cabriolet. The formal vehicle of the Leverings was called “the carriage” to distinguish it from the informal surrey. The “carriage” was always driven by Mac, who donned for the purpose a special outfit—Mr. Levering’s minim of Quaker blood balked at anything suggesting livery—aimed to indicate that Mac was just a remove and a half from membership in the family. Mac’s name for them was “his blacks,” which the Leverings adopted as a private code.

“Oh, Mac!” Kate would haloo from the rear porch. “‘Blacks’ at three.”

“’Right, Mis’ Lev’ring.” Mac would quite comprehend that a call or a drive was on the program for the afternoon.

On the drive to Haverford, Mac was resplendent in new “blacks”; his white linen ascot shone beatifically from its dark setting, and his new square-blocked hat had a small cockade at the side—clearly contraband that had escaped the eye of Father Levering. The carriage was eloquent of labor.

Blynn remarked the added note of luxury.

“We just had to smart up a bit,” explained Gorgas. “We can’t look shabby and have those ‘main-liners’ elevating lorgnettes at us all the afternoon.... Oh, I’ve been preparing for this for months, getting a little new harness here and there, and some fresh paint, and working Dad for new ‘blacks’ for Mac. This is the first time I put them all together. Ain’t we stylish?... Come, get in; we must make the most of every minute—”

“But aren’t we frightfully early? The games aren’t until four o’clock, I understand,” Blynn stood stupidly contemplating his watch.

“In, mon capitaine!” she commanded, “before mother changes her mind and sends Kate along.... Do exactly what you’re told. I’m Pippa today,” parodying, “This is my one holiday in the whole year!... We’re off, Mac; Cresheim, you know.”

“I ought to have worn my store clothes,” Blynn remarked ruefully. “This is awful grand.... Ought to have been a band playing as we started off, flags waving, whistles blowing—”

“Hush!” she plucked his arm eagerly. “Don’t let’s waste time. I have so much to tell you.”

“Well,” he looked at her in his old rôle of father-confessor, “what has the naughty child been doing lately?”

“First, this is the longest skirt I ever owned.” She kicked out and showed just an inch or two above her high shoe-tops. “We had a big row over it. Kate says I’m rushing things too fast; want to be old before my time. Mother says the neighborhood wouldn’t hear of long skirts and hair completely up. I say, I’m as old as I dress. Nobody looks you up in the Bible as you walk along the street. I don’t wear ‘1874 September 10th’ on my forehead. And as for the neighbors—” she laughed. “Do you remember how Bardek bristled once when you spoke about something being all right, but dangerous because contrary to public opinion?”

“Oh, I want to know,” he interrupted; “you say you’ve seen Bardek.”

“We haven’t reached that topic yet, Mr. Professor;” she settled back comfortably. “That’s a subject we shall take up later in the course. At present, we are discussing clothes. You got me this long dress. Thank you.”

“I? Pray, how?”

“I put it to mother how you would feel taking care of a child all day. They had me all planned for a dotted Swiss, pink sash, and a floppy leghorn—ugh! and my hair down like Alice in Wonderland’s!... So, I stormed and used you for argument. Quoted you, too—things you would have said, if—if you had said ’em. I pictured the thing; made them see us walking hand-in-hand, before all that Main-line crowd, Father Rollo and daughter Rollo—me lost in that leghorn! Well, they compromised on this.”

“You did it mighty quick,” he remarked thoughtfully. His eye took in the satisfying effect of the close-fitting silk “basque,” with its soft, flaring sleeves drooping in mysterious folds from the shoulders, and the oldish dark hat with its snug cluster of blood-red roses.

“One whole month,” she told him. “The dressmaker comes only on Mondays, you know.”

“A month?” He was puzzled. “You didn’t know I was coming with you a month ago?”

“Oh, yes, I did, mon capitaine,” she chuckled. “You were all planned, too.”

“Bless my soul!” he ejaculated.

“Topic number two,” she announced, “is Holden. Of course, you are going to take that professorship?”

“No!” he spoke sharply. “I can’t possibly do it—The fact is—well, I’ll tell you—Diccon got it for me. He’s a member of the trustees. I didn’t know that. He just pulled for me—awfully fine of him; but he used the bludgeon of newspaper power and every trick he could lay hold of. There was an immense competition—I didn’t know that, either—and he won out by a big majority, against the President’s candidate, too. I wormed it out of him. He says it’s all right—says that’s the way it’s done.... Says he’ll make me President next.... Gross!... And I thought they had read my little studies—Pooh! There’s something humiliating in that sort of thing—even if it is customary. I told Diccon I couldn’t take it.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He said, ‘Think it over.’ I have thought it over. It’s no use.”

“I agree with Diccon,” she spoke firmly. “You ought to go. You must take things the way they’re given. I got this dress by arguing the family out of their best judgment. I fibbed a little and put up an artificial storm—pure dramatics, every bit of it—all the time I was thinking how nice a chocolate soda water would taste—I just bulldozed them into giving in. I asked for more than I possibly could get and got what I really wanted. You’re too—too poetic. My advice is to go to Holden and be somebody. The other fellows were playing the same game—don’t forget that!—and they lost. Oh, it was not ideal, but it was perfectly fair. Your friends had the stronger pull, that’s all.”

“I abominate ‘pull,’” he muttered, “all I’ve ever—”

She put a hand squarely across his lips and held it there.

“Hush!” she warned. “That topic is overboard, for the present. Let’s be happy on this ‘one holiday of the whole year.’” She rolled her eyes, like an ingenuous Pippa. “Topic number three is very near. I can hear it.” She raised her hand to make a funnel of it. “Hoo-eeee!” she called across the ravine.

“Hoo-eee!” came a familiar bass, followed by a crashing of bushes. Mac stopped as if on signal.

“Grüss Gott! Herr Professor!” he greeted Blynn; “H’lo, Mac!” he dropped into colloquial English for the driver; but nothing but French would do for the lady, “Jolie à croquer, la petite gosse!”

Bardek, round-faced and smiling, held out gripping hands to all three. As if it had been arranged he clambered into the carriage and drove on with them.

“How fine it is to see you!” he looked affectionately at Blynn. “This is not a good French day—only half and half,” he swept the sky critically, “or I would kiss you on both cheek. Ha! How you would jump! Oh, but you are so cold in America! You shake the hand, sometimes—good!—but you miss much warmth, much flow of blood. The love of man for woman, you have so! so!” a shrug that showed our lack even there, “but the love of man for man you have not at all—a great thing.”

“Bardek,” Gorgas broke in, “I will not have you making speeches all over the place. You—”

“In Bohemia,” he went joyfully on, waving an apologetic hand at the interrupter, “we embrace and kiss and have hot feelings. Here, you bow or say, ‘H’lo’ or ‘So long, ol’ man.’ Ach! We are flesh and blood. We were made to tingle when we touch. You don’t half love what you don’t touch. I keep my hands off this little missy—she would not let me smooth her and pat her; she jump so! And you, Miester Bleen—là! là! là! là!—if I hold you in my arms—or the good Mac there, who I love, too—and kiss you on the ears and on the head! Cr-r-azy! What you say? Nut-ty! To ze Blockley Assylumm, queek! Before he run about and bite somebody else. Eh? It is so, is it not?”

“I often feel like that,” Blynn confessed, “with men, I mean.”

“Of course, you do,” Bardek arched his brows. “You are human being wit’ nerves,” he said “ner-r-ufs”—“and you have gr-reat power of affection bottled up, corked, inside of you. But, you are ashamed, eh? to show it?”

“Undoubtedly, quite ashamed. I often want to throw my arms over a good man friend—like Leopold, for instance—but—I’d die first.”

“There!” he turned to Gorgas. “He would die for that! For a little not’ing peoples die. In Turkey the lady would die if she show the lip; in America, the lady would die if she show the foot; in Paris, the lady would die if she not show the foot. In England, the lady and the man sneak away quiet and take the baths in boxes in the ocean; in America they dance together in the water and show the ladies how to float, so! And, oh! so little clothes. Poof! Bah! I would die but for only one thing—when I cannot longer get a good breath! All else is jus’ foolishness. I—”

“Bardek,” interrupted Gorgas, “if you talk any longer I’ll turn you over to the police as a public nuisance.”

“See!” he cried. “How queek I be still. Me voilà! Silencieux comme une carpe—still like fish!”

“This is strictly business, Mr. Blynn. Bardek has been helping me with my exhibition at the Applied Arts—”

“And it is won-derful, her work. I—ach! That is one thing I die for, if they pass law to make me to shut up.”

“They’re going to give me a special exhibition—‘One-man Show,’ they call it. Bardek came back in August, and we’ve been working together in my smithy—the old spring-house, you know. I couldn’t go down the Valley any longer; it wouldn’t look right—”

“Nom d’une pipe!” he blurted. “The land of liberty. Bah!... Excuse!—Toujours silencieux!”

“So, we worked him in as a friend of Mac’s. Dad actually hired him once to whitewash the palings!” she chuckled merrily at the thought, as did Bardek.

“Me! W’itewashes! Oop!” he clapped his hand across his ready mouth.

“Now I have a plan. Bardek is to take that little house back of us.”

“Take?” asked Bardek. “How do you take house?”

She shook a warning finger.

“The little white cottage, with the garden. You own it; don’t you? It is never rented. Well, Bardek is to live there, and do copper work. You come to see Mother Levering and pump her full of Bardek and have him hired for a teacher—to get ready for the exposition, you know. Say anything; make up something. Mother believes anything you tell her.”

“Wait!” exploded Bardek. “Please give me to speak. I to live in a house? W’ite house wit’ garden? and plumbing? and window sashes? and tables and chairs? and doors?”

To each article of the inventory Gorgas nodded.

“For me,” she added. “All for me.”

He turned energetically to Blynn. “I make mistake. There is one other t’ing I die for—to live like chicken in a house....” He looked at her curiously. “Nom d’une pipe!” he speculated. “I see I am going to do that t’ing.... Nom du nom d’une pipe! I am going to live in a house! Wah!” he laughed aloud, head thrown back. “You do not know w’at you ask. And I do not know w’at I do. I swear, ten, fifteen year ago, I take big oath that I nevair again live in house—some day I tell you zat story—and now,” he recovered and looked at Gorgas solemnly, “I do t’at t’ing.... All ri’—for you! Good! Bury me in your w’ite house.... Nom du nom du nom d’une pipe!”

“That’s settled,” she turned now to Blynn. “We think twelve dollars a month is a good price for the cottage—especially since you haven’t rented it for ever so long. Mac will get it put in good shape for you. Is it a go?... For me!”

“Take it for nothing,” said Blynn.

“Well, we’ll call it eight dollars, then,” she resumed.

“Ho!” cried Bardek, highly amused. “She is good at the bargain. In my country the woman get everything cheap.”

“Here’s where you get out, Bardek.”

“Ach, so soon! Well, I get in, I go housekeeping, I get out—comme tu voudras, mon enfant. Some day, she say, ‘Bardek, go jump in Schuylkill river, please,’ and I say, ‘Yes, miss, jus’ please wait till I put on my coat.’... Goodby, Mr. Blynn; Goodby, ol’ Mac; adieu, Madam Pompadour, who make kings of the earth go live in little w’ite closets. Adieu!”

Farewells were waved until Bardek could be seen no longer.

“Topic number four,” she took up the next part of her program abruptly. “I’m not going to let you drop me, Allen Blynn.... I just won’t stand it.”

She spoke hurriedly and nervously. Allen Blynn was quite taken by surprise.

“It isn’t fair. You said you would take charge of me, my education, I mean; you told mother you would; everybody thought so, too; and then, you just—walked out.... For the last year I’ve seen you only once or twice on the streets, and you’re always rushing somewhere.... What have I done?... We’ve got to settle this thing right here and now. I’ve been thinking and thinking and I can’t make it out. You just avoid me as if I weren’t fit to—” the storm began to subside. “Of course, I don’t mean that. But why can’t we be good pals, like we were? Why not, mon capitaine?”

The abruptness of the thing almost overwhelmed him. The contrast between her gaiety in dealing with Bardek and the almost bitter seriousness of the present mood was a shock.

His excuses she listened to without a word of interruption. He began by showing that when he found schools for her his business as educational agent was at an end. Then his university teaching, his studying, his writings, and the care of his little charges, who could not always go to expensive schools, all that had absorbed him. Besides, the old group had broken up of its own accord—one of those accidental, unplanned things that happen. His year in Germany, too, had made an unlooked for break. There he ended.

“When you were in Germany,” she spoke with great deliberation, “I wrote to you. Didn’t you get the letter?”

“Why, yes—to be sure, I did. Of course, I did—eh—Didn’t I answer it?”

“You know you did not.”

He knew, and showed it painfully.

“Why?” she kept to the point.

He couldn’t exactly say; he was always careless; wretched personal habits he had.

“I am asking you a question. Why did you not answer my letter?”

“Oh, how can I tell you, Gorgas,” he writhed, but she was merciless.

“That’s what I intend to find out. It’s got to be settled right now—this whole business.”

“Very well,” he concluded. “I’ll try to tell you. Your letter was all right—”

“No, it wasn’t. It was six, gushing, gloomy pages of homesickness for you. I had the blues awfully. Nobody around the house attempts to try to understand me or give me a fair show. You came along with a whole new world and called me ‘pal’ and let me in, and when you shipped off without ever giving me a hint that you were going, I was so flabbergasted I sat down and poured out. I posted it that night—in the rain—and cried the rest of the night because I had sent it. But I said, ‘Allen Blynn is the one man on earth who will understand a lonely child.’... But, it seems you didn’t.... Can’t you realize the—the—agony of every day that brought—nothing? If you had scolded me or something, I should have felt all right. But you just—shut up.”

She stared ahead of her in blurred indignation. The little, blood-red roses on her hat were trembling. He could see that she was striving to control her excited breathing.

“Little girl,” he spoke kindly, “that was a great blunder of mine. To think that I hurt you—is almost unbearable.... I thought I understood children, but, bless my soul!—I don’t know the beginnings. Let me tell you something. I am quite sure that every time I got hold of a pen or pencil, even to write so much as a postal card, I thought of your letter and wondered what I should do. I couldn’t decide. Several times I planned letters to you—”

“Honest! You really did?” she gasped.

“Yes, indeed. But, you see, I didn’t at all understand your letter. I’ve received loads of letters from children, but this one—why, child, it was—oh, now that I understand your ‘blues’ and all that sort of thing, it’s clear enough. But, you see, this was too—too—”

“Go on,” she spoke determinedly; “it was! I meant it to be!”

He made up his mind to speak plainly to her.

“You were a little child,” he began.

“I wish you wouldn’t forever harp on ‘child.’ I was no child. I was fifteen years old, and knew exactly what I was about. If I had been a fifteen-year-old puppy you’d have given me credit for something.”

“That’s just the point—the only point; you were not a puppy, but a girl-child of fifteen, writing a very sentimental letter to a man of twenty-five. The rules of the game are very clear, my dear. The man of twenty-five must not encourage sentiment, or he is a—a—foul thing. It’s the law of our civilization; and I was not free to break it.”

“‘America! Ze lant of Leeberty!’” she mimicked Bardek softly. “‘You couldn’t write what you thought.... No, I see that.... You’d have been ashamed, wouldn’t you?... It is one of t’ t’ings you would die for, eh? Wass?’”

“Absolutely!” he spoke with conviction. “Bless my soul!”

“All right,” she regarded him carefully. “You are forgiven—almost.... You made me so blamed mad, by just letting me slide that way, that I could have done things to you. Well, that’s all over and I feel better. I couldn’t quarrel with anybody very long today; this new dress fits too well; but I just had to have this thing out with you, Allen Blynn, or—or—” She could not think of an adequate figure of speech.

“Now,” she went on; “topic number—what number is it? Five, I think. Topic number five. Tell me all about Germany. That’s the last topic till we reach Haverford. Just go on, and on, and talk and talk, and I’ll snuggle up in this corner and listen.... Hurry!... Begin!”

She leaned back in the cushion with a rug tucked up and around her as warm and contented as a sleepy kitten.

He talked of Germany, and world politics, and literature and pedagogy. When he drooped, she stirred him on.

As they drew near Haverford he asked her a question about the games. She gave no answer. Propped in her corner, just beside the wrinkles made where the hood of the carriage is thrown back, she was having a contented, smiling slumber.

He watched her as she slept, mused on her calms and her storms, speculated as to what sort of character was emerging. As they drew into the Club gateway, he touched her gently.

“I have guarded thy couch, fair Titania,” he said; “I, Bottom, the weaver, have done that thing.”

“Where’s Peaseblossom?” he took her cue quickly.

Blynn jerked his thumb toward the diminutive Mac, who had now begun to stiffen up and look his smartest before the superior broughams in the lane about him.

“Peaseblossom in ‘blacks,’” she gurgled. “Oh! oh! That is too funny!”

“Topic number six,” he announced quietly. “I intend to take your advice about Holden. I’m going.”

“When?”

“October; next month.”

She pondered for a second or two and then nodded a determined head.

“Good boy!” she patted him on the arm. “Bully! Now you’re talking like a grown-up man.”

XIV
A MORRIS DAY

ONLY a small gallery followed the tennis tournament. Although there were some splendid outside entries and the match took on the flavor of a semi-official eastern championship, the newspapers—according to Diccon—had not yet made tennis a sport. A magnificent cup, with some good names already on it, was the trophy; and the finals in singles, between Morris and Clarke, would decide the year’s holder.

While Mac was engineering a good spot for the carriage, Gorgas scanned the players’ quarters for signs of Morris. Soon a white figure—“ducks,” white cap, open-throated shirt—waved in the distance and began to make toward them.

“Allen Blynn,” Gorgas spoke quietly, “don’t you back-pedal for one minute on that Holden job.” It was the day of the bicycle. “You’ve won it according to the rules. You’ve just got to go. I’m mighty glad you’re thinking sensibly about it. Now, that’s all the time I can give you—the rest of the day belongs to Edwin Morris. Wish it were baseball, so we could root for him. Hello, boy, how are you feeling?”

“Never better,” said the boy.

Morris tossed back a lock of hair as he came up smiling. Lithe, clean-looking suppleness he showed; shy almost; lounging; giving no sign of superior physical power; that unique creature, a new species, the American college-athlete.

“You’re going to win, of course,” Gorgas searched his face admiringly.

“The trouble is,” he drawled, “Clarke says he feels fit, too. We’ve agreed to let loose and give you a show for your penny.”

Blynn inquired, “Forgive me, Edwin, for not knowing who Clarke is. He’s your friend, the enemy; is he not?”

“Fancy not knowing Clarke, Hudson Clarke!” Gorgas looked at him in wonderment. “He’s the foxiest tenniser outside of dear old Lun’non. We’d be lucky to get his scalp, I tell you.”

Her loyalty was immense. She filled Morris with the glow of success, keyed him up with little whispers of faith, and gave him something to fight for.

On his white shirt the tiny fraternity brooch made a conspicuous mark. Gorgas reached over and carefully disengaged the patent fastening and, with equal care, pinned it upon her own proud new gown. Morris watched her without speaking. She gave it several little pats to see if it were secure and then talked into his right ear.

“That’s for good luck.”

“Going to keep it?” he grinned. He knew all about the significance of wearing a man’s fraternity pin.

“There’s never no telling. Mebbe; if you win.”

“She’s rather savage, don’t you think?” Blynn leaned forward and rallied her. “Think how all Clarke’s little girls will feel if he loses.”

“That’s their affair,” she shut her lips. “We’re after that cup, aren’t we, boy? When we play we go in hard; no quarter; divil take the hindmost. That’s the only way to play. Slash ’em, knock ’em over, go for ’em. I just hate the chap I’m playing against—until the game’s over.”

“Contrariwise?” Morris jested.

“Sans doute,” she patted him on the head, “until the game’s over.”

They chatted together like chums, until the call came for the finals.

To Blynn those two young persons seemed suddenly alien; it was his first sense of moving away from very young life. It comes to some men in the twenties and to others not until much later. One day you find yourself a stranger to the prattle about you; it may be you grow a little testy at its inanities, its silly repetitions and obvious repartee; or perhaps you try to join in, and find the youngsters combining to laugh at your clumsiness. Over there, smoking stolidly in the easy chairs, there is where you belong. You stare and figure out ages and discover to your consternation that you do belong over there. Then some old, old, lady to whom you feel like saying, “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am”—if that was the salutation of your own day—comes burbling forward to claim you as a contemporary. And with the laughter of the children still in your ears, and half claiming your attention, you begin lamely to talk life insurance or the present administration’s foreign policy.

After Morris had gone, Blynn felt very uncomfortable. He would have given much to be able to slip quietly out and get at his note-taking on Scot’s “Discoverie of Witchcraft”; or to have some member of his “contemporary club” stroll by and take a seat in the carriage. He didn’t know what to say to this strange young person before him; especially after he had witnessed the kind of prattle youth carries on nowadays. (Did he ever talk that way to girls? he wondered. He couldn’t remember—another sign of distance.)

But, Gorgas was true to her word. The remainder of that day was given over to Edwin Morris. After all, tennis was her trade; she was looking on with a craftsman’s eye, catching the meaning of every serve and return.

The first set was a battle. Both men kept to their agreement to wade in and give the small crowd an exhibition. Deuce games were frequent. After 4-3 in favor of Clarke, Morris’ serve evened it to 4-4. By a squeak it went to 5-4—Clarke had slipped to the ground in trying for an easy ball—and Morris took his own serve for the set: 6-4.

Gorgas could hardly contain her joy. She applauded with little, rapid slaps upon her kid gloves and called to Blynn to help with the noise. Her gloves came ripping off so that she could make her allegiance heard.

“Oh, that serve!” she chuckled. “It looks, oh, so easy; but it’s a fooler. He invented it and uses it only when he needs a point. It has hardly a bounce to it; just skims along the grass. Edwin! Edwin!” she talked but forebore calling. “We’re here!” When he glanced slowly over, grinning sheepishly as if he had done something wrong, she tugged at his fraternity brooch and made as if to wave it.

In the second set Morris maintained the lead until 5-4. It looked like both sets and the trophy, but Clarke let loose, as if mad, evened the score and tore through to 7-5 and set.

It still had the appearance of a Morris day. Clarke was evidently winded and worn. He was strangely pale; the good-natured smile was rather fixed; but he stood up gamely for the third and final set.

“You’ve got him, boy,” Gorgas murmured, just loud enough for Blynn. “Steady! Just keep her traveling.... That’s the way! Let him put ’em out!... Make him work! He’s going down! See him breathe!... That’s the way! Play safe!... Whoopee! Did you see that ‘Lawford’?” And so on, straining and pulling with every smack of the ball.

Clarke deliberately gave a game away, evidently to secure a rest. The score stood 4-2 in favor of Morris. They were changing courts, Morris with steady steps, Clarke with a drag. They said a few words as they passed the net. Clarke shook his head and dropped on one knee, ripped off the top lace of his shoe to adjust a white ankle brace. During the next game Clarke barely stirred from one spot on the court; naturally, the score was with Morris at 5-2.

Gorgas stopped her chatter. “Clarke put his ankle out when he slipped,” she told Blynn.

“How do you know?” Blynn was aware of something strange in the playing. “He isn’t moving much, but he’s doing rather well, just now.”

“Don’t you see?” she went on. “He’s all in. Look how white he is.... They ought to stop the game. It’s a pity!” She suffered in sympathy with every swing Clarke made to hold back defeat. “They oughtn’t to allow it.... Why doesn’t Edwin see he’s not trying for anything.”

Then followed the absurdest bit of tennis that two really good players ever put up before spectators. Double faults were common; wide balls; missed shots that Blynn himself could have handled. Clarke was plainly given three games. Score 5-5.

Once the men seemed to be disputing. Something that Morris said drove the smile from Clarke’s face, but not the pallor; and he came back for a few moments with his old-time form.

“Good work!” Morris called. The score was Clarke’s at 6-5. It began suddenly to grow dark from a threatening storm.

The men slackened again, each seeming to give way to the other. The shots were all going to the center of the court. No one seemed to be trying to get by the other. It was so amateurish that the men themselves occasionally laughed. Back and forth the ball sailed peacefully—neither man budged—until, in the nature of things, it dropped into the net or went out of bounds. Two automatons, fixed near the back line, with power to lean and swing arms, that was the picture they presented. Nevertheless, under these absurd conditions, the men were playing with dogged earnestness. The game was desperately disputed, Clarke finally winning the set at 7-5, and with it, the trophy.

“Tiddledywinks!” Gorgas summed up the game. “But glory be!” she turned a shining face to Blynn. “Wasn’t that the dandy thing to do? I’d not have spoken to him if he’d won that cup against a lame man. Look at Clarke. They’re carrying him off. He knows Ed let up. But, really, the way they played made it perfectly fair. It was anybody’s game. They might have spun a quarter for it.... And Neddie did so want to win.... He never said so; but I know. This is an awful swell cup, Allen Blynn. The winner always is somebody for a year, I tell you. Ed worked so hard to get in shape for this.... It’s a darn shame.... Here! get out and take a walk and tell me when Ed comes with the tea-things. I’m g-going to—stay in here a-lone for a-while.... Get out! I tell you.... Get out!”

While Blynn drew up the carriage hood as a precaution against the coming shower, he could hear her quietly having her disappointment out in little diminishing sobs. He looked at the sky; both storms threatened to be over soon.

Sprinkles of rain and Edwin with hot buttered muffins and a tray full of cups appeared at the same time.

“There’s plenty of tea and things,” he called merrily. “Everybody’s clearing out on account of the shower.... Wait till I gather in a few more hot muffins.”

Gorgas’ eyes followed him. He did not miss that; nor the whispered, “Fine work, old chap; we saw what you did.” But, characteristically, he said nothing about the game or its outcome.

“Good sport, Clarke,” Morris said later, the nearest he came to discussing it. “Must have been ready to flop.... Cleaned me up in that second set; with a cracked ankle, too. Only thing to do—bring it on the level as near as possible. Seems a shame. Clarke didn’t want to win that way. Neither of us did.”

During the brief shower, Gorgas mothered him, tucked the rug about him, fed him muffins, and decided just the proper color of tea for a hero. And then she insisted that he drive back with them.

As Blynn thought of the spectacle of those two youngsters picnicking together, facing him all the way home, and talking their private jargon, he decided for the seat beside Mac.

“Good work, Professor,” Morris laughed. “We don’t like to hurry you off, but—”

The children seemed carried away by some unguessable joke.

“What’s the matter?” Blynn beamed down on them benignly. “Is my tie jumping the track in back?” That was one of his constant fears. His right hand explored the neck.

“Oh, your back’s all right,” Morris could hardly hold his joy at Blynn’s obtuseness. “Back’s fine!” Then he began to chant a college song of the hour, keeping time by rapid pats on his knees.

“We were yachting and the chaperone

Was blind and deaf and dumb,

Why, she couldn’t hear the thump and crash

Of cymbal and of drum,

When we shot off three salutes

For the captain of the fleet

She remarked, ‘Oh hear the dicky birdie!

Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!’”

Blynn found Mac a contemporary. They talked of England’s treatment of Ireland, of the causes of immigration and what the world was coming to, anyway. It was good talk, grown-man’s fodder; while, back of them, the youngsters, tucked up in a rug, sang songs, comic and sentimental, flashed nonsense back and forth, recited absurd verse, and even hallooed to passersby. Bless our soul! Did we ever go through that stage? Perhaps. Then praise be to memory for forgetting all about it!

Twilight found them ambling along the Wissahickon drive. In the woodland it was almost dark.

“This ’ere Bardek,” Mac shook his head, “’e’s a funny feller.”

“You’ve come to know him pretty well, I suppose, Mac,” prodded Blynn.

“Ye-es,” Mac busied himself holding in the horses while they passed a returning “century run” of bicycles, each one with a different kind of bell and a different light. “Plagued bikes!—jes’ clutter up the road. No pleasure drivin’ no more.” After the main body had passed, the stragglers were easy to avoid. “Oh, he’s all right—I guess, but—well, he talks a lot, now; don’t he?”

“His talk is rich,” said Blynn. “It has the charm of straight thinking, unbiased thinking. He’s travelled a great deal and is naturally observant. I don’t always agree with him, but I like his talk.”

“Do y’ understan’ all he’s drivin’ at?” Mac seemed incredulous of anyone doing that. “An’ d’ y’ think he understan’s it ’isself?”

Without waiting for an answer to his question, Mac went on:

“Now, I don’t say I don’t like him, ’cause I do. He stands by Miss Gorgas, as if she might be his own daughter. That’s all right. But—” Mac glanced back furtively—“he gives me a lot o’ talk about marriage, which, as bein’ a respectable marri’d man, m’self, I’m not takin’ no stock in. Wimmen may be one thing, and wimmen may be another; but marri’d is marri’d—that’s my way o’ thinkin’. It’s the way I was brung up and I sticks to it. He’s got migh-ty funny notions about marriage—migh-ty funny. It’s my opinion, and it’s me wife’s opinion, that he ain’t never marri’d to th’t little woman in the glen. Mind, I’m not asayin’ it is nor it taint so. All that I know is ’e don’t believe much in marriage. Dangerous character, I call ’im; but, I do like to have ’im aroun’.... Why, he don’t believe in property, nor money, nor the church nor nothin’. He says he thinks God is interested in gnats and horseflies! Think o’ that, now!... I was pullin’ up weeds in the garden once, and he looked at me and laughed. ‘Why you change all God’s plans for, you ol’ Mac?’ he sez. ‘Takes a lot o’ time to make nice clean weed. You don’t like the way the Lord made the earth, eh? In six day,’ he sez, ‘the Lord created heaven and earth and all that therein is, and ol’ Mac he spend all his life pullin’ it up and makin’ it better. An’ w’at you grow?’ he sez. ‘Ugh! tomat! ugh! Gott,’ he sez, ‘spoil ni-ce fre-sh weed for ol’ tomat! ugh!’ and he makes faces and waves ’is hands.... Now, w’at you agoin’ to do with a feller like that?”

“Don’t do anything,” laughed Blynn. “Just enjoy him.”

“An’ he’s a anarchist, too,” Mac’s head shook very dolefully at that. “Sez he is, ’imself. Sez he’s as much anarchist as anything. That’s purt-ty bad, Mr. Blynn. Herr Most and all them Chicago fellers! Um! An’ y’ can’t help likin’ ’im! I’d do almost anything for Bardek—think o’ that, now!—most anything—I hev already lied for him!—think o’ that, now, him as good as an anarchist and me a respectable marri’d man!”

Out of the dark of Cresheim road came a sonorous voice. It was far off, moving toward them. The song was evidently improvised, both words and music. The refrain, which had been more carefully worked up, came clear across the night.

“Oh, boards and plaster!

Boards and plaster!

Nail me in the w’ite-wash house.

La porte fermée

Good air, adië

I live like mouse,

I live like cows.”

(“Cows” rhymed perfectly with “house.”)

The singer sighted the dull lamps of the carriage and shouted a mighty “Whoo-ee!” which was answered quickly by Gorgas.

“I haf moved from one t’ousand B. C. straight—plumpf!—into the nineteen century.” Bardek bobbed up before them, but Bardek with waving mustachio gone, Bardek shaved and hair-cutted, Bardek in new soft hat, rolling low collar and a roomy new suit of clothes! He was quite resplendent and stunning, but outwardly a brand new Bardek.

“Presto! I jump into respectables,” he bowed. “My family is moved. They have all said the prayers and skipped to sleep. Ah! Ol’ Mac, you are no more to be the on’y respectable married man in all America.”

With laughter they helped him into the carriage.

“I give my wife and kiddies one gran’ scare. They t’ink I am some strange feller, till I talk—ah! Who talk like Bardek! In six languages I prove myself. So! I gif up liberty an’ become American slave. In America all men are slave to women and children. Freiheit, adië!”

Questions brought out the fact that he had taken possession of the white cottage, moved his family in—to the great joy of the children—and had marched off to the nearest barber and then to the nearest clothing store.

“I say to the barber, ‘Make me like American!’ He say, ‘It cost you much—one-half dollar!’ I say, ‘Here is one whole dollar. This is a big job; don’t do it half!’ Then he clip, clip, clip, but I say nothings. ‘Americans wear the “clean face,”’ he stop and say. I say, ‘I talk vairy well myself; do!’ I t’ink with ‘clean face’ he means wash it; but hoh! he mean ‘cut it off!’ So I learn some new English and look like a fat, little, stupid priest, eh, Mac? We go to mass, Sunday, eh, ol’ Mac? But not confession! Ach, du lieber Gott! When I tell all my little sins it would be Sunday again! How you like me, eh?”

It was hard to get used to the new Bardek; the vagabond had made way for a distinguished foreigner. They discovered, in looking him over, that it was the sweeping mustachio which gave him the appearance of desperado. The broad forehead, the deep eyes, the great nose, the laughing lips and the huge chin were well worth exposing. It was like the transformation wrought when campers come out of the woods, quite undistinguishable from the native guides, and, after one hour’s refurbishing and barbering, become gentlemen. There would be no doubt, thought Blynn, of a welcome for Bardek at the Leverings.

“It is a good feeling,” Bardek stroked his newly shorn face. “My skin has changed into American. I cannot yet spit, but, if I try—mebbe.... The wife, oh, she run all t’rough the rooms, and the children, too; and they laugh and fall on the floor and laugh. They go out to breathe and come in and stay as long as they can—La porte fermée. Good air adië—like sea diver—till I open windows. We go to store and buy broom and bed and—everything. In little while, we fix things. Wife, she go to Mac’s house and peek in window to see where bed go—she on’y little girl when I take her. An’ good Mrs. Mac, she come over and laugh and they all laugh. We all so silly. Then, Mrs. Mac, she change everything different, while she near die laughing. We have bed in the kitchen, she say, and stoves in the yard with the pump. But, Mrs. Mac she fix all. And how we work! Ach! My bones hurt. We are vairy grand. Ma foi! My wife, she cry and say she afraid. The bed go c-r-r-eck, cr-r-eck, and go down, down, down. But she vairy tired and she sleep. Then I go out and pull door-bell. Là! là! là! là! I wait, holdin’ in big laugh. I think I see whole dam’ business come crying for the devils have come to get t’em. I wait. I hold my laugh back. I ring loud. So! Schwurunkl-angl-unkl-angl-angle! All so still. I go up the crooked steps—some day I break my neck, there!—V’là! Sleep like dead.... Me! Wah-oo-eep!” he yawned. “I sleep stan’ up.”

He began a second, healthy, out-in-the-woods yawn, which extended amid comfortable “ah’s” and “oh’s” and “ee’s” until it snapped back in ecstatic relief.

“Oh-wo-wo-wo!” imitated Gorgas. “You’ve ow! wow! got me go-ow-ing too, Bardek. I’m so-ow-oh slee-py.”

Everyone yawned. Bardek outdid himself. Mac nearly dislocated his jaw.

In a moment or two Bardek was put down at his “boards and plaster,” and Gorgas, Blynn and Morris were saying farewells.

“My pin,” Morris was holding out a hand.

“I think I’ll keep it,” she pushed his hand aside. “You deserve something for today’s work. You were great, boy; simply great!”

Morris said his goodbys quickly and was off to catch a town train.

“And, now, Mr. Professor,” Gorgas turned to Blynn, “I’m going to write to you when you arrive at Holden, and if you don’t answer within five days—I’ll—”

“What will you do, child?”

She looked at him steadily. Smiles and little frowns came and went, like gust ripples on a pond.

“Don’t ever put a girl through that sort of thing again. You don’t know what it is to be eaten up with shame—every day, too, for months and months. Well! We’ve dropped that; haven’t we? But I’m still a little hot about it.... Good night, Allen Blynn ... and good luck to you ... and remember; don’t back-pedal.”

“Good night, I’m on my mettle,” he tried her old rhyming game, as he walked away.

“And answer letters,” she retorted, and added, “or with Gorgas Levering you’ll have to settle.”

XV
THE LADY OF THE INTERRUPTION

SHE wrote to him at regular intervals, and he answered dutifully. To him they were the little letters of a lost child; not entirely lost, for much of the child was in her scrawling notes. With many persons the written word is much more intelligent than the oral; but with Gorgas Levering, who in a chat would easily give the impression of the grown woman, letter-writing exhibited a youngster still in the teens.

She did not seem to know what to say; one wonders why she wrote; indeed, half of the letter would be announcements of why she could not write. And the spelling! For a young lady who spoke and read fluently in four languages, that spelling was inexplicable.

Once Blynn sent back a letter with all the misspelled words underscored in red ink, and with the fatherly suggestion that she look them up and send him a re-written copy.

Her answer was a shocker; every word was purposely put out of gear.

“Deer Proffessorr,” it ran. “Eye kannott korresspponndd eney longerr wwithh U.

“Wun: U R 2 smarrt,

“Too: Ewer minde iz teecher-krazy an kant C anything butt lettres an semi-coalons.

“Thre: Eye kan beet U left handed inn tennes

“Ewers,
“Goargass.”

But she tried. Evidence was abundant enough. All suspicious words were left either totally blank or half-begun, to be finished out laboriously later via a small dictionary. The dictionary was not always employed immediately—her letters were regularly written at the sleepiest hour of the night; so that Blynn had the greatest joy in seeing dozens of hard words, like “disappoint” and “necessary,” flaring at him in two different kinds of ink, black for the first half and pale blue for the tails. His prize-letter—which he did not dare twit her about, for fear the supply would suddenly cease—was a mysterious thing, full of beginnings and no tails at all! Evidently sleep had overtaken the dictionary benediction.

In their correspondence during the first college terms at Holden, while she was growing from sixteen to almost eighteen, there was hardly a personal note struck. One would not suspect that they had ever been acquainted. Hers resembled school exercises more than anything else, full of incoherent announcements of local news. His, on the other hand, were short stories of Holden life; gathered together they might have been published as the personal impressions of Professor Blynn on the manners and customs of Holdonians. They were brisk, sprightly narratives, rather longish, for he dictated them to a by-the-hour stenographer, but rich in personal flavor and really interesting. The Levering family read them in turn as they might have passed on the numbers of a serial story.

From Gorgas, Allen knew that his letters were public property. That may have had some effect upon their construction and style; certainly, they grew in finished form and came to lend themselves easily to public family reading.

But none of the matters that troubled him, nor any of his pedagogic dreams or literary ambitions found their way into these chatty epistles. It was a selected, semi-impersonal college world that he sorted out and presented to the Levering family; but a real one, for all that.

Through these newsletters Gorgas knew that he had been lured by the siren of the lecture platform—always lying in wait for talkative young professors. Diccon saw to it that every public utterance of the distinguished young scholar who had been called to the chair of English in Holden College should be properly placed before the readers of the city newspapers. It worried Blynn, to be sure, to find his casual illustration made the subject of “small-heads”—there is nothing more frightful to sincere teachers than this sort of up-side-down publicity—but he solaced himself by hoping no one would see it.

In Mount Airy Gorgas Levering was searching every page for such notices and was happy to get even a three-line flyer just above the obituaries; and she cut them out and pasted them in a scrap-book. She felt responsible for his going to Holden, she assured herself, and she developed an I-told-you-so spirit with every discovery of what she believed to be proper fame. “Professor Allen Blynn, head of the division of English of Holden College, also spoke,” was often sufficient proof to her of her wisdom in advising him to go up to the larger work.

She learned, too, of other matters, his phenomenal success in teaching his young children by way of correspondence, his pedagogic reforms in the administration at Holden, all of which she mused over with something akin to maternal calm; but one day his letter broke forth with the discovery of a “lady,” and Gorgas grew apprehensive and suspicious and on guard.

“My dear Leverings,” he wrote. “Here’s Mystery for you! And a Lady! And local newspaper notoriety—not yet scandalous!”

He had been lecturing before the Alpha Women’s Club on “The Dull Pleasures of the Mob.” It was one of those defenses of the intellectual life which every enthusiastic scholar is prepared to utter at a moment’s notice. The intellectual audience were proud of him; they applauded every one of his clever shafts as justification for their life of charming indolence. Then he forgot himself and inquired:

“Is there any question on that point?”

That was an absent-minded schoolroom phrase.

“Yes; there is a question on that point,” came a strong pleasant voice from the extreme end of the hall. He could not at first discern the lady, for she did not rise. “Do you really believe all this twaddle you are giving us, or are you just ‘parroting’ from a book?”

The very young ladies laughed gayly. The rascals! They had been taking notes on all his golden utterances; yet they turned in glee to search out the rebellious questionist. The elders buzzed their horror; but they, too, squirmed about, curious to behold the cause of so inhospitable an interruption.

“Oh, never mind,” the voice boomed out patiently. “It’s a hopeless thing to ask anyone.”

She arose to go. Everyone could see the commanding figure and the perfect smile of good nature which half atoned for the rather shocking speech.

“Go on, little man,” she nodded. “You’re giving them what they want, I suppose”—waving an arm over the audience—“or what they are trained to believe they want. Perhaps they deserve it,” she laughed. “But I’m a little sorry for you”; she turned to the speaker directly, as she gathered up her belongings; “you look like the sort who could do better—with a little honest tutoring.”

“Don’t go, my dear lady, I beg of you,” Blynn called after her. Lecturers soon get used to eccentric debaters from the floor; although this one was decidedly of uncommon mould. She stopped at the door. “Please come back—let us reason together. If you don’t mind, I don’t. You can’t imagine what a great relief it is to get an interruption.”

She watched Blynn good naturedly, wavering between the desire to speak and the feeling of the futility of saying anything.

Blynn went on coaxingly.

“You stir my male curiosity deeply. All my life I have been respected and revered, treated like a special shipment of something valuable. You cannot know how lonely I have been. Why, even my students respect me.”

She wavered. Already she had dropped her muff into a rear seat.

“I can’t tell you how eager I am to be exposed,” Blynn smiled engagingly and waved a welcoming hand. “Do come back and let us dispute as did Plato and his friends; amicably, if possible, but always in the name of high truth.... You were saying, O Unknown One.”

“I was saying what was in my mind, O Knowing One,” she replied. “But I am sorry now that I spoke. Your question seemed to touch a spring—the spring of ‘high truth.’ High truth, I fear, is a rude, uncivilized thing—most of us keep it thoroughly well guarded—I apologize for employing it here. But—” she fastened him with her motherly smile, “please don’t talk so confidently of the dull pleasures of the mob. Perhaps, as you suggest, Browning and Swinburne touch only the ultra-violet mind; talk about that, it is within your sphere; but until you know more about people, let the mob alone. To know the secret you have to be a mob yourself.... Forgive me for talking straight out, Professor. It is an uncultivated thing to do, I know; but it is right in the spirit of the mob, one of its dull pleasures.... I must go.... If I stay I’ll break out, and then someone would have to read me the riot act.... You’re a first-rate book, Professor; I should enjoy you—on a shelf; but you have never really been. Goodby.”

Of course Blynn turned the event to account and made several quick epigrams out of the affair.

“The audience cheered my little sallies,” he wrote, “which I accepted as proof of their regard—a vote of confidence, as it were, after a thundering attack from the opposition. Everyone apologized and told me that I had handled the situation with proper urbanity. No one seems to know her. She is not a member of the Alpha Women’s Club. But I’m glad she spoke out; to tell the truth, my dull lecture was boring even me!”

The newspapers got a story out of the interruption; and for a nine-days the cartoonist played up professors and “the dull pleasures of the mob.” One of the hits in a touring musical comedy company had its source here.

“Are you happy, Mike?”

“Sure, perfesser, I’m happy; ain’t I got a headache!”

Gorgas wrote a single sentence of disapproval of the lady’s rudeness and in postscript inquired, “How old is she?”

And Blynn came back with an imitation of the laconic note.

“Dear Gorgas: She was not rude, but enchanting.

“P. S. She is as old as truth, which is ever young and beautiful.”

The “Lady” came in for occasional notice in nearly every letter. “The ‘Interruption,’” he wrote, “has had a disturbing effect on me. Somehow between my audiences and myself the phantom smile of the unknown mocks me, although I haven’t seen her again. When I speak confidently out of my store of book-knowledge the smile seems to broaden into a grin; but when I quote Aristotle or Plato, it positively laughs in derision.”

In public, he explained, he had come to be consciously on the defensive. He began to avoid book authorities and seek illustration from his slender personal experience of men and things. Occasionally she drove him to take off his glasses and look about him. In his off hours, instead of burrowing in the library, he walked about the streets and observed the throngs. He wandered along the aisles of department stores, chatted with policemen, and elbowed workmen in the trolley cars; sat in the public squares and talked with the old men who sun themselves there daily, and with the youngish tramps, down at the heel and beery.

Once he had wandered on a wharf where excursionists were about to embark for a brief trip down the river. A rosy mother was struggling with a huge picnic basket and a medley of children. She let him help her with the next youngest baby, while the husband with two toddlers was surging ahead to secure a good seat. Before Blynn had quite made up his mind what to do next, the boat had slid off into the stream and he was in for a first-hand experience of the “dull pleasures of the mob.”

It was pleasure, he had to admit some hours later, but by no means dull. He exhausted all the slot devices for chewing gum and chocolate, weighed the kiddies on all the machines, invested wholesale in lemonade and bananas, and actually waltzed to the strains of a harp and one violin. At Houston Park they swooped down upon the carrousel, captured places on the scenic railway by vulgar bribery, and eventually “set ’em up” to a dessert of “hoky-poky” ice cream, as part-payment for a share of the basket lunch.

The young husband permitted all this gallantry without surprise. Indeed, in the twilight trip homeward Blynn and he sat together in the stern of the boat and smoked out a fine friendship—one exhausted kiddie asleep content in the professor’s arms—and there it was he paid Blynn the fine compliment of inquiring where he “worked.”

“At Holden College,” Blynn replied, guiltily waving a hand in a vague professional manner, the which his companion seemed to take as the motions of mopping a floor.

“Purdy soft, hey?” he grinned.

“Tolerable,” said Blynn.

“Women do all the scrubbin’,” he volunteered.

“Aye, and they do it well,” Blynn told him.

“An’ all summer nothin’ to do at all!” he mused. “Purdy soft! Purdy soft!”

He looked at Blynn proudly, as if the securing of such a sinecure was in itself a worthy act.

“I express for Hamilton’s,” he confided. “Furniture vans,” he added in answer to an inquiring look. “Some days we jess ‘move,’ but most times we hussels pianos. Y’back feels it nights, I tell y’. But, y’ sleeps good.”

“Ah!” Blynn said. “I envy you there. I don’t ‘sleep good’ at all. Half the night I lie awake thinking of foolish unnecessary things.”

“Y’ ain’t got no work to do!” the expressman spoke with emphasis. “It’ll give any man the bug-eye. What you want is a reg-u-lar job. What you’re a-doin’, that’s a woman’s business. Oh, I’ve tried my hand at cinches—grass cutting, drivin’ a wagon, takin’ the dog out walkin’. Made me sick. I got to put guts in my job. That’s what you need—a job y’ got to put guts in.”

As the talk grew confidential at parting he let the professor lend him five dollars without the shadow of a protest. There was nothing squeamish, self-conscious or over-modest about the expressman. “Sure!” he said and pocketed the bill without more ado. He treated Blynn so like an equal that the university man stalked off elated as if he had just been admitted to an exclusive fraternity.

It was through such wild adventures that Blynn graduated to a deed of daring. One cool, spring Saturday night found him strolling along the badly lighted streets of a section known as “The Ditch.” The swinging doors of an odorous “saloon,” backed by a glaring warm light, which made the dark street a shade dimmer, seemed to bid a “Welcome All!” He went in.

The faces of the lounging drinkers at the bar were worth many times the small admission fee, the price of a strangling glass of ginger ale. They were like characters in a modern Morality Play, Blynn thought, as he named them in order: “Simple,” thin nose, hanging lip and lack-lustre eye; “Low-brow,” a rogue by right of inheritance; “Toothless,” a boy with the face of a crone; “Evil,” selfish to the point of cruelty; “Braggart,” serious and self-contemplative; “Sloth,” simply fat.

Speech was gone to a mumble; cackles of laughter arose over nothing at all; futile drivel slavered from the chin.

“’S my treat—godda drink ’th me!” fumbled “Simple,” displaying a bill.

The well-groomed barkeep and owner swept it off into his resplendent cash-register and began the swift passing out of the accustomed drinks. Blynn’s second ginger ale was slid beside him before he could guess the meaning of the action.

And so treating went the rounds. Here and there pay-envelopes were opened and tossed on the counter with bravado. To Blynn’s amazement the alert barkeep boldly kept the change of those who were too far gone to protest. When “Evil” called blasphemously for his money the barkeep roared with delight and spun the coins out from behind a concealed glass.

“Thought I’d got you that time, Pete!” he shouted gayly.

No one seemed to notice that Blynn’s pile of ginger ale was untouched. He had resolved not to be a party to the disgusting custom. So he was about to pay his little bill and depart, when an almost inarticulate soliloquy from “Evil,” the least sodden of the lot, stopped him short and sent his head aflaming.

“Wife’s sick ’gin, dam ’er. Tol’ ’er, break ’er head. Will break ’er head w’enna g’ home. Las’ night—las’ night—’noth’ dam brat.... Allus havin’ dam brats.... Locked ’er up; ’did. Tol’ ’er, break ’er head. Will break ’er head w’enna g’ home.”

He went on with this maudlin talk, to which no one attended. Ordinarily, Allen Blynn looked on the miseries of the poor with a mild professorial eye. The world is a horrible place for some folks, “a darkling plain where ignorant armies clash by night”; no remedy is nigh; we must sigh in pity and pass on to our own compelling tasks.

But this fellow’s story, which he enlarged upon until there was no doubt of his meaning, Blynn viewed in no spirit of philosophic calm. Perhaps the alcoholic air of the place had got into his vitals, and had stirred them; perhaps that hidden, scourging priest within him had broken forth to battle with the evil one; perhaps the Lady had made him realize that he lacked something of being a man: at any rate, he strode up back of that villainous beer-sop and spun him about so that his back leaned at an angle against the bar and his feet spread out in front of him.

“Where do you live?” Blynn darted the question at him so fiercely that he answered automatically.

“Twenty-six Hogan street,” he growled, then slid heavily and sat down in the gutter before the bar. From this posture he hurled weak curses.

The barkeep leaped adroitly across the bar, shoved Blynn aside with, “Here you! Get out o’ this. Tryin’ to start somethin’?” while he jerked his customer to normal human posture.

“Evil” reached for a glass and hurled it at random. The shot slid him down again into the gutter; the glass fell wide with a glorious crash. “Low-brow” seized a bottle, but was too weak to hold it. It slipped to the floor, almost an echo of the other smash. “Simple” came up behind, with only the friendliest intentions, no doubt, and put one beery arm about the professor’s shoulder. Blynn turned swiftly at the heavy touch and embraced him—without love, one may be sure—thereby projecting upon his shirtfront the full contents of that beer-mug, a cavernous vessel holding, at least, a quart. The vile odor was a lasting memory.

The embrace had been a clumsy thing, but the divorce was swift and artistic. As Blynn instinctively shoved “Simple” forward—the cold beer against the chest gave impetus to the push—the barkeep’s grip on “Simple’s” collar sent him spilling backward. On the way he carried “Toothless” with him. “Sloth” never even looked around; he leaned comfortably against the bar and mumbled in his beer.

All these movements Blynn watched with interested eyes, caught every sound as if it were data for a book. One-half of his mind was a spectator, cool, undisturbed, careless of the outcome, concerned only with the spectacle; the other was saying over and over again, “26 Hogan street! 26 Hogan street!” and it was throbbing with rage.

“Here’s my money for one glass of ginger ale,” Blynn confronted the barkeep. “And I want my change—all of it, do you hear! You’ve robbed every drunken sot in the room except that vile cur,” pointing to “Evil” still sprawling in the gutter before the bar. “I’ve seen you steal their money out of their pay-envelopes. Give me my change, you viper!” He slapped a twenty-five cent piece on the sopping counter. “Give me my change, you bloodsucker, you poisoner, you—”

“Git out!” the barkeep yelled as he rushed at him. “Git out!”

He yelled much more. He told Blynn things concerning his past that were biologically impossible and made prophetic assertions about the future. His speeches were wild enough but his actions were genuinely savage. Before Blynn could get into any proper pugilistic position the barkeep had welted him across the side of the head with a huge fist.

The Lady had called him a first-rate book! A book? Not much!

It would be a pleasant thing to say here that Allen Blynn had trained in his youth with a football team or that he had taken recent boxing lessons from Corbett’s sparring partner. The truth is that his physical condition was only that of an abstemious “professor” the spry side of thirty, who jogged daily about the gymnasium track, or pulled a few perfunctory chest-weights, just to give edge to the evening meal. But that unexpected blow on the side of the head maddened him and summoned triple strength.

In one spring he had that barkeep by the throat and had carried him to the floor over the sprawling legs of “Simple.” Seizing him by his flap ears he was fiercely pounding his head against the floor, when he found himself lifted in the air by two bluecoats, turned about and sent forward at a fearful angle, through the swing-doors, into the darkened alley of a street. As he went out someone smashed the side of his head with a bottle, and he always maintained the theory that an officer near the door had assisted accurately with a boot; but his greatest joy as he sprawled on the pavement was the feeling—later discovered to be an illusion—that he still held in his hands the remains of the barkeep’s ears.

On the way to 26 Hogan street he laughed and sang and exulted in strange words. Before his mind he summoned the barkeep and that Satan’s limb, “Evil,” and invited them to “Come on!” Names he called them, mouthfilling, rhythmic cadences; anathema that never had been in his vocabulary before, but which every man who has mingled with other men knows by instinct.

And she had called him a book!

By ’phone and messenger, help was brought to “26 Hogan street.” They broke in the locked door, conveyed the sick woman to the care of good nurses, clean linen and real food. Her little brood they kept with her, and so, in this one instance out of many, lightened the dark hours of the very poor. Blynn confessed with shame that before this experience he had not really known of their existence.

Soon after the groggery episode Professor Blynn was scheduled for a banquet speech at the annual meeting of a local Drama Club. The subject, selected long before, was “Realism in Modern Dramatic Art and the Decadence of True Fantasy.” Certain notes which he had put lovingly together for that evening were not at all consulted as he talked. The musty references to Freytag, Horace, and Boileau did not suit his mood. He could not get out of his mind some of the stirring realities of the life about him; so, casually, and without any deep professional manner, he talked of the material near at hand out of which great dramas might come. He drew on his most recent stores. For stage setting he proferred the blinking steamboats on the dark river, crowded with returning excursionists, and humming with harp and violin; for characters, “Simple,” “Low-brow,” “Evil,” “Toothless,” “Braggart,” “Sloth”; and for theme, The Birth of New Life in the Houses of Failure.

The newspaper boys were bent on putting him back on the first page—he grinned inwardly at the story he really could give them! That is why they condensed the remarks of really important speakers and put Allen Blynn forth almost verbatim.

Out of it all he got one dubious result, a letter.

“You are getting on, my dear Professor,” it began abruptly, without heading or date line. “You are no longer a book; you have developed into a newspaper. Eventually, you may become wholly human. Press on.”

It was signed, “The Lady of the Interruption,” a title he remembered he had given her when reporters had interviewed him about her on her first startling appearance.

At various times these and other exciting adventures were dictated to the impersonal stenographer-by-the-hour and mailed to the Levering family.

“The anonymity of the Lady distresses me,” he wrote once. “If I could put my whole case before her, I am sure she would give me a higher rating. For already one of my friends of the Public Square benches has found me out and successfully negotiated the loan of a dollar. Let someone try to get an unearned dollar out of any ‘newspaper.’”

And that was not all. His companion of the excursion steamer—the male—had caught him on the campus, where no doubt he had been lying in wait, and had sold him tickets for the annual Expressmen’s Ball.

“Perfes’r—” he began.

“But I am the janitor; am I not?” Blynn smiled.

“Am I not!” he mimicked, “‘Am-I-not’ ain’t never been no janitor.... ‘Am I not!’” he got a deal of amusement out of the phrase. “Knew y’ was a profess’r all the time. Wharf watchman tol’ me. Said you was a smart gab-fester, too. He’s heard you—a Socialist, he is.”

“Lately,” wrote Blynn, “he has been seeking my advice on a number of family matters, leading up to hints for loans. An unkempt, overgrown daughter came to my rooms yesterday with a note. I was stone-cold; but it almost made me ill.

“And now ‘Evil’ has found me out. He objects at the hospital because of my card on a bunch of roses; and threatens to sue me for personal assault; I presume he will complete the charge by adding alienation of his wife’s affections! A book I may have been, raised thence to a daily journal, but, Leverings all, I appeal to you for promotion; assault and alienation are right human qualities.

“Faithfully yours,
“Allen Blynn.

“I am on the trail of the Lady.”

The Leverings agreed that the “Lady of the Interruption” was a delightful mystery—all except Gorgas; but she said little at home. She put the case to Bea Wilcox, and to Bardek.

“What do I think of her?” Bea echoed her inquiry. “I think she’s no lady at all.”

“That’s what I think. I—” Gorgas began eagerly.

“I think she’s a Brass Image,” said Bea.

“It is so!” Bardek agreed solemnly, who knew nothing of the subtile English meanings of “brass.” “And it is before such images that men do often bow in worship. If she is young, as you say, and if she come to the man and fight him, then it is the female hunting the male for herself.”

“What are you driving at, Bardek?” Bea broke in. “Females, as you call them, don’t hunt males. It’s the other way about.” She put her arm around Gorgas and rocked back and forth in a characteristic attitude. “We know—us girls know—don’t we, Browny?”

“Oh, yes!” Bardek had open contempt for Bea’s mind. “You talk like most peoples who do not see anything. Look at all the hats of women! Dead birds and painted flowers and rags and wires! Ugly? Phuh! But zey do not see zat zey are ugly. So! When you will want your man, you will go to him—like all t’others—and you cry out to him that you are here; and he will not come at first; and zen you will wear crazy clothes, and dance and beat a drum until he must see you. And all the time you will not know that you do that. You will not see.... But how you will beat zat drum!”

“Professor Blynn would not listen to her!” Gorgas announced irrelevantly. Her mind was on the Lady of the Interruption; there was defiance in her tone, a note of challenge to the unknown trespasser, none of which was lost on Bardek. He shaded his bushy brows a trifle, and he gazed thoughtfully into her flushed face as if he had suddenly discovered something new and interesting there; but he gave no other sign of what might be his own surmises.

“Do you think so, Bardek?” she persisted.

“No-o,” he hesitated; “not at the first.” A smile began to flutter across his face; then he roared in sudden laughter. “He is so far up—at the top of the Heaven! How she must beat her little drum for to make Saint Acetum to hear!”

“Who is Saint Acetum?” both girls asked.

Bardek sobered abruptly. “You do not know Saint Acetum?” he asked gravely.

No; they did not know. Saints were not in fashion any more. This is not the Middle Ages, Bardek. But they should be ashamed, nevertheless, he told them, and scolded beautifully. Then he explained:

“Saint Acetum it is who is forever repairing ze roof of ze Heaven. Can you not see him up there—far superior in altitude to all the angels of Heaven, and slowly feeling zat he is superior?”

But what had Saint Acetum to do with Mr. Blynn?

“Ho!” cried Bardek. “Mr. Blynn, he is so good! Like Saint Acetum he is worried zat ze roof of ze Heaven may fall down; so it is zat he is always fixing, fixing; and he will not listen even when ze good angels call to come down and be for a little time happy.... And you have not heard of Saint Acetum? Nom du nom! And you are not ashamed of zat?”

“Acetum?” repeated Bea. “What a funny name.”

“‘Acetum,’ it is ‘vinegar,’” Bardek explained. “Zat is Latin, Miss Bea, of which you know nothings, because you have gone to school—”

“Oh, we had Latin in school; didn’t we, Browny?”

“Zat is what I say,” nodded Bardek firmly. “You know nothings. What! You do not know about Saint Acetum, ze Vinegar Saint; you do not know—” Bardek burst suddenly into ironic laughter—“because it is I, Bardek, who have jus’ made him up out of my head!”

“Oh!” laughed Gorgas, somehow relieved at the thought that the Vinegar Saint was merely an invention of Bardek. “Allen Blynn, the Vinegar Saint! That is too funny!”

“So you see,” Bardek was exulting in his cleverness, “how she must beat her little drum, that Lady, to draw down Saint Acetum, who is always repairing ze roof of ze Heaven?”

Gorgas was sobered instantly. “Do you think that woman is trying to marry Mr. Blynn?” she asked anxiously.

“No,” Bardek replied, while he watched her out of half-closed eyes; “I do not say so much. I think she do not know what she do. But she is vairy interested—oh, vairy interested—in the nice young man. She do not like him? Oh, no! But she go, and go; and she talk and she write. In all the great big world there is but one reason for that. The little roots of the weeds, zey shove and push and work and zey do not know why, but one day zey come out where is water; and zen zey know why.”

“It is terrible!” the words escaped Gorgas involuntarily. It gave her an inexpressible sensation of illness to think of mon capitaine at the mercy of so irresistible a force.

“Oh, no!” laughed Bardek; “it is not terrible. No! It is vairy wonderful and le bon Dieu, he has made it so!”

Le bon Dieu! Ah, no! It could not be from heaven, or why should the very thought of it torment her?

She went home to nights of acute distress and days of smiling mockery. She listened to all sorts of inquiries about her health, parried the questions with vague fibbings; but she knew the cause of the storm that raged within.

Then came a night of resignation. She surprised herself—and blamed herself, too—at her easy recovery. What powers of adaptability we have! The deepest grief is, somehow, assuaged. If it was to be; it was to be. She found herself, one day, laughing at herself. A fortnight later, she was lost in the preparation for her graduation from The Misses Warren’s Select French and English School for Young Ladies. The sorrows of seventeen are not fatal. Yes; she was quite herself now, marvelling only occasionally at the turbulence that had shaken her.

And therein she deceived herself, as all of us continually do. She was quite her serene self—so she thought. We know so little about ourselves, about what we think, about what we want, even about what we are doing. We talk much—confidently; we declaim, make speeches, deny vehemently, or affirm with hand upraised: but deep within us, like a Hidden River, flows the unconscious life. When it wells to the surface we know it for the first time, cry out in fear, or exult. When it subsides we say, “It is not there!” We are poor witnesses, with all our boastings and modesties, poor witnesses either for or against ourselves.

“I wonder where my roots are going?” Gorgas asked herself. For answer she dropped the consideration of the width of ribbon she would wear on her graduation dress and sat down to write a letter to Allen Blynn. It was a burst of personal confession—the Hidden River was welling very, very near the surface!—and most particularly she told him about the “Brass Image,” and warned him. Then she read it over and destroyed it.

“Oh, I guess I’m not brassy enough,” she said and shook her head.