Hughes Mearns

“ He swung her around and kissed her hair and cried over her like a veteran of the war returning safe to his children. Before she could recover, the boys had grabbed her knees, and the ordinarily stolid Lady Bardek had swooped upon her with much bubbling of Hungarian and weepings and wet kissings.
Bardek pulsated language. One would never, never go away again! Oh, it was so good to be home! Never, never, would one go away again; not until the next time—eh, what?—until the soul grew sick with sameness and ran away for the pleasure of coming back. ”

“ He told how all his talk on Elizabethan love with Kate as they drove along the Wissahickon was only the outward voice speaking; within were throbbing anxious cries for a little child off in the woods with—what sort of a man? The Lord only knew. Elizabethan love—contagion, infection, plague and what not—he had them all, a virulent case. With wide eyes Gorgas read of his tramp back into the dark of Cresheim Valley and how he had seen her forlorn little figure pacing thoughtfully beside “Gyp.” Only vigorous conscience withheld his hands from touching her as she passed by. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the day I take the wonderful woman when she is but wonderful girl, take her right out of the street where she squat beside the orange cart wit’ her peddling mother; and I do not know her name; and I will not know it, so I can call her love names all her life—I take her from her oranges, and quick into the biggest cathedral in all Hungary, and kneel before the altar, and call upon the priest to come marry us before I cut him open to see what make him so fat and slow. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Dear Gorgas Levering: You have given me a psychological shock: you have unhinged my reason, let loose my emotions, and upset my moral apple cart! You did all that, and you know nothing about it. When you grow up—say, at twenty or twenty-one—I shall present you with this document of evidence, and if you have any sense of decency at that age you will be shocked too. No little girl of thirteen with a face like a madonna should be allowed to tuck her legs under her pinafore and impose upon a grown up man what shaves every day. ”

“ That night Blynn and Leopold walked home together. They talked of Gorgas as if the theme had been set in advance. She came abruptly into their conversation, but so intent was each upon his own thought that neither considered the need of apology or explanation. Without introduction, Leopold began:
“She is beautifully unschooled. It is a rare thing nowadays to meet a natural woman—and with the beginnings of a mind.” ”

“ Ah! Nature is a great sweetener and cleaner. Ach! It is good to sit on hard chair! And how strong and fine smell the boards!”
And Mrs. Mac would lean in the doorway and listen to his sighs of satisfaction; and her eyes and her red cheeks would glow with pride.
Bardek would come back with something more than a nostalgia for boards and plaster; splendid orders he would bring for his own special work, and enough for Gorgas to keep her busy and prosperous. After one of these journeys there would be much excitement in the “smitty.” The lamp would burn at night. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ AN UNEXPECTED BINGLE FOR awhile Bardek tapped away and struggled with the slang of the ’90’s. “‘Bingle,’” he murmured and shook his head. “‘Bunt,’ ‘Soup,’ I have lost the art of taking in languages. I grow old. My cerebellum turns to that same ‘soup.’”
Bardek sighed, a genuine old-fashioned sigh, full of undefined longing. Uncomfortable feelings swept over him, whose source he knew not.
“Nom de la manne céleste!” he ejaculated, putting down his hammer. Wide-eyed, he gazed out of the window toward the fast budding maples. It was a French day, sans doute. “Spring!” ”

“ Blynn seized the idea. “Oh, I don’t mean the regular kind; normal training, public school and all that sort of thing. That’s fine, too; but it’s overcrowded with women, and the whole business is set like a plaster cast. I almost despair of seeing any development there; routine and habit have fastened themselves upon the institution. I have dreams of another kind of teacher, something like Pestalozzi, gathering his little ones about him and teaching them without ever their being aware.” ”

“ Levering, although Kate demurred.
“We always call you ‘Allen Blynn’ when we talk of you here at home,” she remarked thoughtfully. “I always say ‘Allen.’ You call me Kate; perhaps I had better dub you—”
“‘Pete’—for Petruchio,” he joked. “You can’t tell, you know. Fine weather like this, the germ is everywhere.” He was reminding her of his theory that love was a contagion.
“I fear you are immune,” she looked up from her embroidery frame and searched his face comically.
His eyes had the far-off stare of men who dream much. Your thinker is no great lover, she thought. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We’re just human, I suppose.”
Mrs. Levering’s voice could be heard calling for Mac. The two riotous young hearts beat violently at the sudden thought of detection; but they did not stir.
Fear shook her; if the mother had quietly opened the door before them and stared, in combined astonishment and indignation, Gorgas felt that she should be unable to get up. It was the sensation of dreams where we are about to be devoured by some hideous beast, yet can neither cry out nor move. ”

“ Although he had travelled far, yet was his face white; white like those hermits that dwell apart in caves; white was he as the live white of the growing lily, as the pallor of the moon in daylight; and the men and women of the city marvelled, for they were a dark people that worked in the furrows of the earth and lived daily in the sun. ”

“ Leopold had never ceased his subtle interest in Gorgas since the night of their first conversation in French. He was both French and English, and, back of that, the Oriental. He seemed ever ready to do two contradictory things; to leap into the breach and seize the enemy by the throat, or to stand, courageous as the day, and undisturbed take every shock. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While Gorgas translated, Bardek sat transfigured.
“You see!” he shook his great, round head in pride.
“And I would take oath you are French,” Leopold remarked quietly. “You have tones and nuances of the Loire—”
“Oh, yes, I have lived on the Loire,” he admitted, “and also in Brittany.” For example, he shifted back and forth between the patois of the north and south of France.
“I say again that I am cosmopolitan,” he averred. “The Bohemian belongs to all countries. In New York city is a Bohemia which New York city does not know. There we talk all languages and listen to the pulses of the world. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The world is writing its books against us. Every little novelist and every little playwright is hinting dark things against marriage. They sneer at all the habits of the race and cry, ‘Liberty for the emotions.’ ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they tempt, ‘and also thy neighbor’s wife. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There was much talk in the air at that period of boldly abolishing the dress distinction of sex. But when Gorgas appeared before them one afternoon in a neat, inconspicuous, tailor-made [226] gown, right as to style, but with a mysterious wonder in it of something just beyond the style, the family capitulated. Capitulated? They broke ranks and rushed over one another to cheer the enemy.
Mount Airy, after all, had always been a country village. Its main charm, in spite of its nearness to a large city, was not its suburbanity, but its rurality. ”

“ It has made her afraid to let go. Leper! Ugh! How could you?”
“Because it is life,” Blynn spoke warmly. “Ignorance is the only sin. You remember your Socrates. If we really knew all, he said, we would never embrace evil. Ignorance makes our criminals, it makes our slums, it brings into the world cripple-minded children, it separates mothers and fathers, breeds disease, and corrupts the best of us. We don’t take evil into our lives because we believe it to be evil, but because we ignorantly think it good.”
“Phew!” Leopold affected concern. ”

“ Of all earthly things, best loved I friends and companionship. These ye have given me in abundance. Yet am I to die; for surely ye have known all this while, as ye turned me from my journey and led me through the gates of your city, as ye gave me of the bread and wine, as ye visited me and comforted me daily with friendliness; surely ye knew as ye begged the secret of my comeliness and bade me lay my hands upon thy brow, thy cheek, your lips and your strong limbs, surely ye knew: I am a leper.
[261] XIX
TOBOGGANING NED MORRIS’ behavior toward Gorgas underwent a decided change. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Zen they talk! It is no language. Perhaps they stay to be comic all their lives? Ah, no. For they get sick for America, where the little boys and girls go to school. They do not rest till zey go back and be once more ‘Dago.’”
The twilight came slowly about them while they lingered over the camp-fire. Some of Bardek’s brooding spirit had infected them; but it did not drive them home. Night began to make its claims for a habitation, [352] and the stars of a fine August evening shone clear, yet they stayed to hear Leopold talk of his boyhood days at Harrow. ”

“ To tell the bare facts would be to tell a sort of untruth; certain persons—the plaster-of-paris sort—are incapable of receiving; preconceived notions of conduct have “set” them forever.
Even this long letter, now coming to an abrupt close, was helpful and right. Nature had not said, Sleep—although she was saying it now, and mighty strong, too—but she had said, Give; write; tell Allen Blynn. And if Allen Blynn would mail his letters before ten o’clock at night Gorgas Levering would be the first to claim them in the morning. ”