“You have spring fever? You? Yah!” Bardek ejaculated his disgust in unspellable exclamations. “Ah, non! non! non! non! non! You are lazy? Yess. You like comfortable seat at small fire? Yess. But you still froze up like dead tree. The sap, it not yet run up. I tell you, ‘Miss Gorgas is in orchard.’ You say, ‘Oh, vairy well,’ and fix nice cushions to sit. I say, ‘She is one, two, t’ree step away.’ You roll cigarette and read book. Nom d’une pipe! How you sit and smoke when live woman wait for you, eh? One, two, t’ree step at the big cherry, eh? Name of a pipe! Your blood, it is water! Me, I go out!” He seized his hat. “I, I am yet young, alive, and sprout green things. I ’fraid I stay and catch your fever. Spring fever? Peste! Nom du nom! It is a disease of the winter, you have, my friend.”
In a trice Bardek was plunging down the lane, which led to Montgomery county. “Ah! que je suis un petit oiseau,” he was singing gloriously.
Gorgas sat in the sun on a bench under the bursting cherry tree, her hands clasping her knees and her eyes wide awake and staring. Somehow, that morning, her mind would not advance to conclusions; it remained dead-locked between the thought of Morris and all that he would probably say, and the answer that she knew she must make. But she would not let herself decide; she liked to play with the idea, to toss it about among the possibilities, view it from strange angles. Marriage was probably just this sort of thing—a little talk with a man, an agreement, dresses, the march up the aisle, and years together. Anything else was just romance, the stuff one makes fiction out of. Fiction! How well named!
But it was not the way she dreamed the event would happen. Her notion of felicity was much more strenuous and fearsome. At any time she wanted she could walk into the “smitty,” say “Hello, Neddie,” and end the whole business. There was nothing daring about that. But shouldn’t there be something to be afraid of?
Her man should surprise her—she thought out her best theory; she had several, depending on the mood!—come upon her at, say, twilight. She would like to see his staring, laughing face peer suddenly over her shoulder, and in a moment find herself in his mad grip. She should become weak with positive fright, and be a little afraid of him all her life. “I should probably scratch and bite,” she thought, “but he must laugh, and perhaps pinch my ear, till I yelped and let go.”
There was nothing frightening about Neddie Morris. Well; one had better go in and have it over. She would offer him tea.... If he drank it she would hate him. Pshaw! Life is just tea drinking, after all. It spoils one to dream of the impossible.... Oh, this spring weather! Ha-ho-hum!... Let him wait.... This thing has to be thought out. Let’s see; where were we?... But her mind hung motionless.
From her bench she could see Morris lighting a cigarette; but she remained and basked in her own dreams. Some things are better the longer they are postponed. Those cherry buds were just straining to get out. Look at that wise, silly robin tugging away at a tuft of string tangled on a stick! Everything was unfolding and getting ready for new life—even Gorgas.
Thundering mallet blows came from the “smitty.” It did not sound like Bardek. Certainly if he threw that sort of reckless force upon the frail lace-like silver upon which he should be working, there would be something annihilated. Perhaps Morris was growing impatient. Well—she hugged her knees—he would have to wait. She couldn’t go in to him until she had made up her mind about him.
Why should one ever decide? The joy of living is expecting. Who ever wants anything he gets? Possession is the beginning of dissatisfaction. Even if exactly the right man ... exactly the right man! ... should be waiting in the “smitty” it would be better to let him wait. The right man! Her eyes closed as she pictured that man, sitting expectant in the “smitty,” never dreaming she was so near; oh, the shivering ecstasy of holding him there forever with all his story yet to tell. Into her memory came lines from “The Grecian Urn,” which she and Allen Blynn had learned together; with eyes still closed she spoke them reverently aloud: