XIXTOBOGGANING
NED MORRIS’ behavior toward Gorgas underwent a decided change. His tone grew discreet and secretive and intimate; he seemed forever smirking, as if charged with unexpressed humor, the possessor of a private joke.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” he would whisper his greeting, although it might be evening.
And she would look up from her work with equal appreciation of the common jest and remark, “Merry Christmas, pretty boy,” but go on with her work.
When others were present he gave no sign, but so soon as the two were alone he hovered near, playing the open swain, but purely a dramatic rôle. It was very amusing. Gorgas liked the drama and the spirit in which it was played.
As she hammered he would sing an air from the new Robin Hood, “Churning, churning, churning, all the live-long day,” and act beautifully the tipsy sheriff of Nottingham. Or he would plead with mock mournfulness, “Oh, promise me that some day you and I will take our love together ’neath some sky,” and so forth.
Dangerous topics kept coming to the fore in their conversation, dangerous with stirring April in thepulse of things, and two healthy youngsters alone together. Ned seemed to have ample afternoons to give. He was third year medical school, which should have meant work, but he claimed to have everything “stowed away” for the May finals. At any rate, the spring recess was near at hand; he could “plug up” then.
They tried out the courts on fine days. The ground was still soft, but by dint of much rolling they managed to get some practice; most of the time, however, they sat on the bench in the sun, and, warmly wrapped in woolens, breathed the exquisite air and talked. He grew dexterous in putting sleeves into coats, playing gentleman-in-waiting, and while ordinarily she resented anyone touching her, she found herself enjoying these little signs of fond care of her.
He had been smoothing out a collar and tucking a “sweater” snugly back of her ears, carefully brushing away the hair, and tapping each little ear jokingly. Meanwhile he had drawn out a log for her feet and with the aid of a steamer-rug had tucked her in comfortably.
“I feel like a mummy,” she laughed, and bathed contentedly in the warm sun.
“You look like a seraph,” he eyed her critically.
“Seraphs don’t have feet,” she corrected.
“What!” he exclaimed. “Don’t tell me that! Nor little, fat, brown ears, either?”
“Nope.”
“Nor crinkly, brown hair what won’t stay fixed?” he deftly put back a fluttering strand.
“Nope.”
“Nor soft, mellow voices what sez ‘nope’?”
“Nope; they always toot through trumpets—or is it shawms?”
“Well, I’ll be dinged!” he swore.
“You’re quite likely to be.”
“All right,” cheerfully, “let’s be dinged together? Eh? What y’say?”
“Mebbe; how do you begin?”
“Facilis descensus Averni,” he suggested.
“Talk a language I understand,” but she quite understood that stale Latin quotation, “Easy is the road down.”
“That is to say,” Morris cast about for a translation. “‘Let her go, Gallagher, and boomp! you’re at the bottom!’ Let’s—uh—let’s toboggan?”
He slipped a hand under the steamer-rug and grasped her wrist.
She considered for a moment or two, but she gave no answering touch.
“You’re dead cold,” he withdrew and chirped gaily. “No blood in you. You couldn’tdescensusfor a cent. What you need is a series of stiff lessons.”
“Isn’t this just jim-dandy,” she murmured, ignoring his talk. “Golly! It’s good sometimes to be just alive.” He grew quiet. “I heard all you said, Neddie. I’m not inattentive. Go on and talk. I like to hear you prattle. But I’m so comforty. I don’t want to think.... And it’s so nice to be taken care of,tucked in, and all that.” She kicked out a foot. “There! It’s out again. Be a good boy and fix the mummy’s legs.”
“And he fixed them up so care-ful-ee,” he sang as he worked, “That now he’s the ruler of the Queen’s nav-ee.”
He smoked and they both lapsed into silence, while his eyes watched her with frank approval.
“Women like to be helpless,” she spoke out the summing up of her thinking. “I always thought I despised those frail beseeching-looking things that hang around like dolls and let men fetch and carry for them. I always did for myself—usually could do it better than any man; but lately, I’ve got a case of the ‘delicates.’ You’re responsible, Neddie; you’ve been taking such delicious care of me that I have succumbed. ‘Let her go, Gallagher and boomp! I’m at the bottom.’ Just tuck in that flapping hair, won’t you? I don’t want to move.”
A dutiful and faithful squire Morris became; and no one thought anything of it. Mrs. Levering frequently came to the “smitty” to watch the work or to chat with Gorgas about little teas and small receptions that kept an informal atmosphere moving in the neighborhood; Gorgas was clever in thinking up original things, decorations and so on. Ned’s presence was accepted as a matter of course. Had he not grown up in the neighborhood, and were not he and Gorgas perpetual tennis partners? But it is doubtful if she ever asked herself even so much as that; her serene assumption ofthe careful mother had annihilated all thinking on the subject.
“My daughters,” she confessed to a caller who was interested in seeing the “smitty,” “are pretty much about what I planned. It is almost wholly a question of management, I think. For instance, I decided that Keyser should like music. She rebelled, naturally; but I held her to it—my will was the stronger. Now she plays rather nicely, I think; and she’s very grateful, I can tell, for my insistence. Gorgas has been a trial, I must say; but look how she has come around! There was a time when we could hardly have a decent conversation together,” she laughed, “but now we’re quite chums.
“And then there’s that awful question of boys. I have never had the question. For us it just doesn’t exist. My scheme is very simple. I keep a lot of social things going on right at home; the girls have a good time, and I know everything that is happening.”
While Mrs. Levering talked, Ned Morris was saying pretty nothings in Gorgas’ ear.
“It seems to me, young man,” Gorgas told him in a secretive undertone, “that you are making the right speech to the wrong party. Bea Wilcox is the young lady who should have patent rights on that kind of talk. Or have you broken off?”
Ned made a wry face. “Friday nights,” he said, “I pay my addresses to the lady. Mother’s an awful stickler. You have to go home at ten o’clock, the time they unchain the mastiff. Broken off? Not exactly.Sort of mangled. Bea’s nasty lately. Can’t make her out. But this isn’t Bea’s party; I’m talking to your right ear.”
“The right ear is heartily ashamed of you,” she turned completely around. “Try the left ear; it’s not used to you yet.”
So they chatted nonsense and—drifted.
When the mother had gone she brushed him aside and took up a mallet.
“You are keeping me from my work,” she protested, but not with much force.
“Aw; you don’t want to work. You’re just bluffing. How can you pretend to work on days like these?”
Nevertheless, she began a gentle rhythmic tapping.
“‘Churning, churning, churning all the live-long day,’” Ned sang, keeping time to the beats. Leaning over he took hold of the handle, closed his hand over hers, and continued the singing. She joined in the second part, and laughingly enacted the rôle of the milk-maid where the sheriff aims to instruct Guy of Gisbond into the mysteries of courting. The scene ends with the sheriff drawing closer and closer until he turns to implant a kiss on the dairy-maid.
Gorgas ducked half-successfully, and gave the timidest imitation of a slap. In the wrestling that ensued she became somewhat flushed and disheveled, and Ned’s soft collar was wrenched quite buttonless; so that, although the warning of Mrs. Levering and her guest returning gave ample time for a quick recovery of the mallet, it allowed no opportunity for anything else.
“My dear,” the mother’s voice was solicitous, “I’m afraid you’re working too hard this morning. Don’t overdo it. You look positively done up. Don’t you think you had better lie down and rest, dear?”
Gorgas held herself in check and answered properly and dutifully, but volumes of pent-up laughter threatened to explode. The situation was made especially tense by the comic expression of sadness assumed by Morris—it seemed to convey a mountain of sympathy for the hard lot of the workwoman—and by the idiotic smile of sympathy from the stupid guest. Any person with half an eye could have seen that these two young persons had been tussling together.
Only the severest restraint held them in check until Mrs. Levering had piloted her visitor out of the “smitty” and into the front garden. Then the two culprits sprawled on the work-bench and laughed themselves into hiccoughs.
“What fools these elderly mortals be,” was Morris’ comment, on partial recovery. “They don’t know a hawk from a hand organ. ‘Oh, Gorgie, deah,’” he mimicked. “‘Are you suah you are not working too hahd?’”
When Bardek came in an hour later he found Gorgas and Ned sitting together on the big settle. Gorgas had her sleeve turned back and a handkerchief bound to her arm. He gave one careful look at them, walked quickly over to Gorgas’ bench, inspected the progress made, and softly whistled.
“We’re discussing important matters, Bardek,” Gorgasexplained. The sly twinkle in his eye was not to be endured passively. “Ned’s telling me about his medical courses.”
Bardek whistled a strange, unfinished bar.
“Tell it to t’e marines,” he nodded significantly.
“Honest, Bardek,” Ned assured him. “I was showing her how we bandage in emergencies without proper material at hand.”
“Rats!” Bardek exulted at his ability to use the prevailing lingo. A moment later, he added, “If Miss Gorgas ever finish zat order,” jerking his arm toward her bench, “Neddie must soon make ’not’er home-run, eh?”
“Hug the bag; pitcher’s got the ball!” Morris retorted.
“Look out for a steal!” put in Gorgas over her shoulder.
“There he goes!” shouted Ned. “Slide! slide!... Safe by a mile!”
“Somebody coach third,” called Gorgas.
“Vairy good,” agreed Bardek, who was quite aware that all this nonsense was aimed at him. “Vairy good. That talk I do not know; but I know some t’ings.” He marched toward the door. “I not sobeega fool to stand around and stop nice little boy-girl love-making.Je n’aime pas à faire le fâcheux troisieme.I know when three is one too many!Au revoir, les enfants!” and he was gone.
The effect was sobering.
“The blithering fool!” ejaculated Gorgas.
Off in the distance they could hear Bardek singing lustily.
“Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!“Quel bon petit roi c’était là! là! là!”
“Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!“Quel bon petit roi c’était là! là! là!”
“Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
“Quel bon petit roi c’était là! là! là!”
“Oh, he’s a wise boy, all right,” commented Ned. “Heknows a hawk from a hand organ, O. K.”
“Hush!” Gorgas shook a finger under his nose. “That’s not the proper way to talk. We’re not—”
“Aren’t we?... Then let’s!”
She tried to gather her thoughts together. If this had been almost any other man, some chap she didn’t know like a brother, she would have sent him about his business instanter. But Ned was such a familiar figure, like a bit of accustomed furniture. One was so thoroughly used to him and his nonsense that much could be allowed without offence. Her mind would not face the real situation, however; it fought away from it for fear of stopping things.
Love-making? Nonsense.... What was it, then?... Oh, bother! Don’t think about it. Just let things go. “Let her go, Gallagher! and boomp! we’re at the bottom.”
There was nothing wrong in just drifting comfortably through new experiences. Ned didn’t mean anything. He was as good as engaged to Bea. But was this fair to Bea?... Oh, shucks! Why take up disagreeable topics?... Hang Bardek, anyway.... He spoilt all the fun.... It made them both self-conscious.
Ned was sitting on the arm of the settle, affectingto smooth out the bandage on her arm, but she knew he was not doing that at all. She was leaning against him. Perhaps she ought to get up and clear him out. But she did no such thing. It was very comforty, there.
It was more than comforty; of that she became aware when his head leaned over quietly and his face pressed against her temples. She could feel his hand tremble, and she knew that her face was burning with the touch of his.
She did not move away, but she said quietly, “Why do you do this, Ned? It isn’t right, and you know it.”
“Why?” his voice shook.
“There’s Bea.”
“Oh, Bea’s all right,” he parried.
“Are you going to marry Bea?”
“Oh, I guess so; forget it. Let’s—let’s just toboggan.”
She closed her eyes and let the thrill of the contact suffuse her.
“But you don’t care—” she struggled to see the thing straight.
“Don’tI?”
“And neither do I. We’re just good friends, like brother and sister. And we’re letting something get hold of us and make us wild.”
“All right. Let her go, Gallagher—” he chuckled.
“But how can we? It isn’t—love-making at all!... What is it?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I didn’t invent this thing.... 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.
“Suppose mother should walk in that door!” she whispered. “That’s the way she always comes—from the house.”
“It’s locked,” he whispered back. There was no cause for the lower voice, save sheer excitement.
After a moment she asked, “How do you know?”
“I locked it myself.”
“When?”
“When she went out.... I slipped the bolt.... Let’s forget about it.”
From her silence he caught the need of making some defense.
“Maybe it isn’t love-making,” he argued. “I think it isn’t, myself. It’s a fair exchange, and therefore robs nobody.”
She did not move away, but she had not surrendered. Off in the depths of her mind something was striving to be heard. It seemed like long strings of sentences, toofar off to be deciphered, marching, marching, in an undulating line over hill and valley, hurrying to her aid. She smiled as she recalled Mark Twain’s picture of the German language sprawling in that same fashion with a separable verb tacked on the end.
“I didn’t mean to do this,” he poured in her ear. “It was not in my thoughts until you put it there that day you and I talked about the ‘frat’ pin. Since then I have been aching to—do this. It’s nature. It’s just instinct, I suppose.”
Instinct! That was it. The marching line of words came clearly into view now. “There are good instincts and bad instincts,” it shouted at her. “Which will you have? Take your choice. The archangel of the Lord offers you one; Lucifer and his demons offer you another. Choose; and be exalted or forever damned.”
She twisted his arms from around her and got up.
“We’re both a little mad, I think.” She steadied herself and looked away from his eager eyes. “This won’t do. No!” She faced him and pushed him away. “Stop it, I tell you. I’m awake now. For a minute or two I was drunk.... What a storm you raised in me, Neddie Morris!... Oof! Let’s get out of here and breathe some air. I’m suffocated.”
For the remainder of that day she was obdurate. He was not permitted to touch her. Eventually he became bitter, tried unsuccessfully to quarrel with her, and finally left her in a huff.
And she was not ashamed. That was the oddestconsequence, she thought. There was nothing, then, to tell her whether this instinct was a good or a bad one. It had seemed so right and natural, and—this she reluctantly confessed—it had been absolutely satisfactory.
She recalled the eager people who begged of the pale stranger to sojourn with them. How beautiful he must have appeared to them, just as this first experience was beautiful. Ignorance of the obvious had blinded their eyes as it now blinded hers. Leprosy! Hideous! But the “tobogganing,” what else did it lead to? She knew enough of her sisterhood to be aware of the wages eventually paid.
Almost the last touch of girlhood went from her that hour. Maturity lurked in her eyes as never before; in her step and carriage, even in the tones of her voice. The last trace of awkwardness in gait and speech disappeared, vanished suddenly. The ship had found herself and was surging through the tossing seas. Slight as the experience had been, it had not been slight in its effects. It gave her a kind of pride, as of one who had achieved something; and,—what strange thoughts go packed together!—it filled her with understanding sympathy for all wayward women. From that hour, another odd result, she became her mother’s intimate and friend. There were no more “rows”; and, so inconsistent a thing is memory, no one seemed to remember that Gorgas had ever been a difficult problem in the family.
And Ned? After a few days he adjusted himselfto the changed situation; and, man-like, forgot that it had occurred. His medical studies began to pull him—when one interest is out, others always take its place—and the old jollity of manner came racing back.
Almost at their next encounter, over which Gorgas had been a little fearful, he met her eagerly with:
“Say, old girl, Bea treats me like a civilized compatriot now. Don’t see what she ever went on a strike for. I hadn’t done anything. Honest! Nothing that I know of. Well, she’s forgiven me for doing nothing and all’s hunky-dory.... She thinks you know. Say, be a good girl and make her tell you. She’s dying to talk it out with you; but she’s afraid. Sort of nervous and shy, you know.... Oh, she’s O. K. and A1, that little girl.”
What comic animals we are, she thought as she searched his eyes and saw there nothing but loyalty to the other woman. Do not the high gods sometimes hold their hands to their faces and smile?...
Let her go, Gallagher, and, boomp! we’re at the bottom....
Surely ye knew....I am a leper!...
What a topic of conversation for Allen Blynn when he comes down for the Easter holidays. How much should she tell? It depended much on what sort of a debate they could manage to have together. Several apocryphal versions she thought out and discarded. The best of them was a hypothetical case of a girl who had confessed. Certainly she would not havethe courage to talk the affair out boldly with Allen Blynn. Not that she felt the least guilt, but any telling would, somehow, be unfair to the facts. Who could transmute into puffed vocables the rich data of life? It would be like transposing a cumulus cloud-bank into a major chord. The life and the autobiography are never the same.
When Allen Blynn came she managed to secure a large share of his time; but even the third cousin of the topic was not broached. Her voice fled from all suggestion of anything so personal; possibly because he looked so much older and stronger: his forehead seemed to bulge more, his voice had grown heavier, and new little muscles began to show about his mouth, signs of much public speaking. Instead, she plied him with questions about Holden, with which she felt only a remote interest.
And they talked of the mysterious lady. Blynn grew gay at the thought of her.
“I’m hot on her trail,” he assured her. “When I go for her at the close of the lecture, she slips out. She is always at the end of the hall. And no one knows her. I have questioned dozens of persons who have been sitting near.”
“She watches you, I suppose, while you talk?” Gorgas asked.
“Tremendously! She leans forward and fixes me with her eyes. I think they must be black. Even across a big hall they burn at me.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Shouldn’t you expect it to? But it doesn’t. I get positive strength from her. She is the most attentive person I ever address. Every twist of her head is eloquent; I can catch the register of the value of everything I say. But I must get to know her better. She has ideas; no doubt of that; or I dream she has. And perhaps I am under some obligation to her. Someone has recently presented me with a mighty valuable book. It is a first edition, in good condition, too, of the second series of Bacon’s essays. Of course, I only guess that she sent it. It had my name on the cover, in a script that resembles hers. It was left in my room, too. Someone must have walked in and placed it on the table.... Which reminds me that I have a book for you.”
“Let’s see it.”
“Not until September 10th.”
“My birthday!”
“Yes. It is a first edition, and the only copy made.”
“It must be very valuable,” her eyes opened.
“It is to me. I hope it may be to you. I can tell you this much, I wrote it myself—”
“Oh, splendid! The MS. of a book! I shall be delighted. What a nice kind of present.”
“I hope you will think so,” he rumpled his hair comically. “I’ve put a lot into it—five years. But that’s all I’m going to tell you,” he foresaw her question. “Birthday gifts are secrets.... You won’t tell anybody about it, will you?”
She agreed. What girl does not hug a secret?
“But oh, Allen Blynn, why did you tell me in April? I shall wear myself out thinking— Is it fiction?” beaming.
“Bless my soul, no!”
“Oh, a book on literature!” mildly enthusiastic.
“No-o.”
“Pedagogy?” mournfully.
“Certainly not!”
“Essays?” brightening up.
“Here, stop this; I’ll be giving it away in a minute. I won’t say another word. Wait.”
May, June, July, August, September; five months of guessing. How delightful—and how wicked!