“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.