The Vinegar Saint
TO
FAGLEY
“Someone must keep watch lest the Heavens fall!”
—The Vinegar Saint.
POSTSCRIPT
(For aren’t all prefaces really postscripts?)
THIS chronicle of Gorgas and her friends was within sight of the end when out of Germany came the incredible news of war. Twenty-five years earlier Bardek had fought “the big Austrian” because “he had spoke against the French”; all of which the present scribe had duly writ down, but only as one tells of ancient passions or historic loves and hates. Who, outside of unspeakable Germany, was prepared for the shock of the world war? Then, when our own boys were moving across the seas—just because one had “spoke against the French”—the history of Gorgas and the Vinegar Saint was put aside, along with other matter that we once thought important; and the present historian was standing reveille, watch and guard on a scrubby hill leagues from home. Finally comes the collapse of the mad German dream, as abruptly as it began, and things of peace and sanity emerge, including this story of the Vinegar Saint.
Well, good is good, and evil is evil; and there is to be no compromise nor confusion of the two. Such is the conclusion of the victory just accomplished—which is only what the Vinegar Saint had contended all along! It did not seem to need a world war to prove so true a truth.
The chronicler cannot resist giving Captain “Chuck” Williams’ account of a late meeting with Bardek. Slim and spruce he was; clean shaven—to prevent the white stubble from giving his years away; a major in the brilliant full dress of the French, one of that gay band, veterans all, who visited America during the early days of our entrance into the conflict. It was a leaden, characterless April day—a perfect “Deutschertag”—but he was spluttering French like a Roman candle. “Chuck” burst into the group, clicked heels and saluted profoundly. “Bardek!” he shouted, grasping his hands. “You old grandfather! What in the name of poetry are you doing in uniform!” The rogue! He was sixty years old if a day, but had got himself up like a youngster of thirty.
He wrung “Chuck’s” hands with the old-time fervor, rattling a half-dozen medals on his breast, but his face remained a pantomime of inquiry, puzzledom and willingness to please any lunatic in the uniform of the U.S.A. Turning limply to a brother he begged a translation; then replied gravely, in French, “One is never too old to fight for France”; and added, “I am sorry that in my youth I did not pay attention to my teachers and thus learn to speak your beautiful English. Alas!”—a delectable shrug—“I know but French.”