XVIIAN 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!” he exulted aloud in the appropriate language. “How it is ever beautiful, the spring. In France, best of all, but even here in Mount Airy it is good, the spring. In my old trunk the sap goes up, up, and spins my thoughts about. I am full of ideas in the spring, little shoots of thinking and buds and leaves of grand notions. How I can do things in the spring!” But he stood listlessly gazing. “Do? Bah! I can do nothing but dream of what I can never do; ... but it is good.”
Slowly his mind drifted to Gorgas and then back tothe starting point of their conversation. His face lighted up, beamed with sympathy.
“So, that is what it is!” he chuckled. “He is a good fellow, Neddie. Nice, clean American fellow. But he is only boy wit’ face like girl. How young is all America! When I was twenty I was man. I had been in army. I had learned my work in life. I had seen the world. Now I am forty and old man. All the little American children of thirty, forty, fifty,—Professor Blynn, Miss Kate, Mrs. Levering, they all come to ask me what to do; me, Bardek! I have the wisdom of old gentleman about to sit down and die. Phoo-ee!” He puffed out a big breath and looked joyfully out of the window. “And I am ten t’ousand years younger than all of them put together.”
The flooding thoughts of spring were too much for Bardek. He doffed his apron, put his tools carefully in their racks and made ready to get out into the open. He hummed like a prowling bumble-bee as he tossed things about.
“Hello, Bardek. Where’s Gorgas?” Morris spoke from the doorway.
“Ah!” Bardek turned jubilantly, came forward in great strides and shook the young man warmly by both hands. “She is here! She is here!” he exulted, looking the astonished Morris over joyfully. “Jus’ you sit yourself. The big easy chair? No!” He dragged forward a cushioned settle. “V’là!It is the best for littletête-à-tête. Oh, you lucky young man! To have Miss Gorgas to talk to all alone. See! I will jus’pull down this window thing, as— Where is she, that Eve who cannot work this morning—” He looked anxiously out of the door toward the orchard.
“Can’t work?” Morris inquired. “What’s the trouble, Bardek? Ill?”
“Ill?” Bardek exploded. “Oh, yes. She is—ho!—yes, it is a disease, vairy, vairy dangerous. It is good to get it early, like the chicken-poxes and measles. Hey!” looking at him curiously. “You, Neddie; don’t you ever feel like kicking out all the little life-businesses and rushing out into woods away from every one, to weep and laugh and sleep and swear and pray? Look inside. Close your eyes and look inside. Have you not got terrible voice in t’ere what say:Prenez la clef des champs! Faites l’école buissonnière!Take the key of the fields and play truant in the woods!... Day like dese! How can men stay in chicken-houses!”
He slipped out of a workman’s blouse and ruffled his hair excitedly.
“That’s spring fever, Bardek,” Morris explained. “Guess I’ve got a touch of it, too.” He yawned and began to make a cigarette. Then he turned the logs over in the grate.
“Miss Gorgas,” Bardek motioned eloquently toward the orchard, “is jus’ out in the trees, watching young leaves come.”
Bardek struck an expectant attitude.
Morris drew the settle up to the fire and picked up a book.
“The spring fever have made you dumb, perhaps? I say she is jus’ out! Two, t’ree steps,” he looked out of the window, “at the big cherry she is now ... eh?”
“Thanks, Bardek,” Morris yawned and stretched his legs. “I’ll just smoke and read a little.... She’ll be back presently, I suppose.”
The Bohemian stared. Then he seized a huge hammer and smote mightily, like Tubalcain himself.
“Holy mackerel, Bardek!” Morris turned, laughing. “This is only a stone hut, you know.... What y’ making, a battleship?”
“You have not put many in t’e net lately, eh?” Bardek stopped to inquire irrelevantly. He was experimenting with the new phrases.
“Oh, my full share, I fancy. What makes you ask?”
Bardek was bitterly indignant, but the emotion was lost on Morris’ back.
“I though’ you came here dis morning to, ah, bunt. What?”
“Bunt?”
“Yess.... Bingle.”
“Bingle?”
“Yess, bingle.”
“It’s lost on me, old man. I came here to talk to Gorgas.”
He resumed his reading, smoked at leisure and turned over pages carelessly. Bardek smote one vicious blow and exclaimed:
“Then you don’t want to—ah—get in the soup wit’ Miss Gorgas, eh?”
“What?”
Morris swung completely around.
“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 knewshe 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:
“... happy love!Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed,Forever panting and forever young;All breathing human passion far above,That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”
“... happy love!Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed,Forever panting and forever young;All breathing human passion far above,That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”
“... happy love!
Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”
“Hello, Gorgas,” Morris blundered upon her. “What are you mumbling? Poetry? Sounded like something with jiggles in it. Are you warm enough out here? I’ve got the shivers. C-come on b-back in the ‘smitty.’ We can t-talk better there. C-come on.”
“Wait. Please!” she begged. “Let’s don’t go back just yet. The—uh—everything’s so wonderful and springy out here. Don’t let’s talk just yet. Just listen to the sparrows.”
“Ug-g-g!” he shivered. “W-w-onderful l-l-ittl-le p-p-pests. How do you s-s-tand it? Without your c-coat, too. I’m g-going in.”
He danced a clog and flapped his arms, while he sang:
“In Ireland I was a blithering lad,Yit I niver had said I had more than I had,But when I set sail for America, Gad!My tongue, it started to wag!When I got on the brig I lost my brogue,And then I began to brag.”
“In Ireland I was a blithering lad,Yit I niver had said I had more than I had,But when I set sail for America, Gad!My tongue, it started to wag!When I got on the brig I lost my brogue,And then I began to brag.”
“In Ireland I was a blithering lad,
Yit I niver had said I had more than I had,
But when I set sail for America, Gad!
My tongue, it started to wag!
When I got on the brig I lost my brogue,
And then I began to brag.”
“Don’t do that!” she snapped suddenly. He stopped. “You look ridiculous.” Then penitently, “I was thinking lovely thoughts, and you jarred the picture.... Let’s go in.”
The settle, arranged beautifully before the fire, made her thoughtful. He started for it and beckoned her to follow, but she let him take the huge seat alone.
“That fire is too warm for me this morning,” she excused herself for sitting on a near-by hassock, where she could hug her knees and look up at him. In that position, while he talked and smoked innumerable cigarettes, she watched him dreamily.
There were few finer fellows than Ned Morris, she told herself. He was not only good to look at but he was a good “pard” and an unequaled sportsman. He had a reputation, too, a name—of course, that was not a thing to consider, yet a woman likes her man to be known for right qualities. It would be a comfort to have folks say, “Oh, Ned Morris, the tennis Morris?” Rather vain, that; but there are a hundred kinds of vanity, and some are virtues.
“What I wanted to see you about, Gorgas,” he began finally, looking suddenly at the grandfather clock in the corner—
“Not just yet, Ned,” Gorgas protested quietly. “Tell me about the Boys’ Club dinner first. I understand it went off like a Bellevue spread.”
Goodness! It was almost out, and then it would be all over, a pretty little dream spoiled by waking. Why are men so straightforward and possessing? Of course, she liked them best when they came selfishly demanding things. Meek ones—well, they might inherit the earth, but they could not share her goods and chattels.... Perhaps they would have to give up beingfriends.... No ... that would never do.... She began to see ... decision was slowly coming ... rather than break with him altogether she would just take him over, have one everlasting final row with the mater and decamp for—
“But I must get down to business, Gorgas,” he suddenly changed the topic. “What I’m going to say to you is darned hard to get out, so I’m just going to plump it at you like—”
She leaned forward and laid two nervous hands upon his nearest arm.
“Couldn’t you—couldn’t you just not say anything, Ned?... Couldn’t you wait until—tomorrow or next month?”
He stopped a smoke-ring in the act of being launched and looked at her searchingly. She was staring up at him with distress in her brown eyes.
“Why, what’s the matter, old girl?” he inquired solicitously. “I don’t believe you’re feeling fit, today. If you say so, I’ll cut out.” He arose, but she still sat watching him. “Awfully sorry if I’ve blundered around here when—I might have noticed you were not working today. Of course, I wanted to talk this thing out with you. It’s got to be done—and mighty soon, I can tell you. But, if you think the other way, why, I’ll just drop it for awhile.... But gee! I did so hope I could get this thing settled....”
“I think I know what you are going to say, Ned,” she arose, too. “And I’m going to let you say it. I couldn’t make up my mind until this minute. You areright; it must be settled now. It wouldn’t be fair to you to wait another day.... Go on.”
“Don’t see how you knew,” he wondered, “unless Bea told you.”
“Bea? Bea Wilcox?”
“Yes,” he went on hurriedly. “It’s the fraternity pin. I’ve got to let the cat out of the bag, I suppose. It’s a dead secret yet. Bea and I have about agreed to—uh—make it up. Uh—you know what I mean. Been keeping it rather dark, of course. She hasn’t quite come over yet.... She doesn’t seem to understand about the ‘frat’ pin.... Thinks it means a lot of nonsense. I offered her another, but she won’t take it. Says a girl who wears a man’s ‘frat’ pin is as good as engaged to him, and all that sort of stuff. What I want to know is—oh, this is a rotten thing to have to say—what I thought was that you wouldn’t mind giving it back and sort o’ explain things to Bea. She got real nasty over it, flared up and—what’s the matter? By George! Youareill; aren’t you? Shan’t I send for somebody or something?”
Gorgas was on the settle, her face buried in her hands, and laughing hysterically. Gasps and volleys of laughter followed in quick succession.
“Oh, Neddie!” she cried, “you’ve played a cracker-jack joke on me. Oh! oh!” she breathed hard in the endeavor to recover. “You’ve given me—a—pain on the inside.... I thought—good heavens, will I ever get over this!” She sat up with an effort and dried her laughing eyes. “I thought all the time it was me youwanted! You looked so silly ... and ... mooney ... and I was ready to give you the mitten.... I think I was. You got me so flabbergasted and sentimental, I don’t know what I’d have done. It made me so sorry for you I was almost ready to cry ... and now....” she went off again. “I’ll get a bad cold from this,” she sniffed at a ball of handkerchief. “Oh, boy, I haven’t been so upset and turned about for a dog’s age.... And how in the name of scandal have you kept this affair so dark? I see Bea every other day and she hasn’t blinked an eyelash. The she-fox! I’ll have her scalp for this.”
Morris did not join in the merriment. He grinned occasionally, but it was a forced grimace. He was looking at Gorgas and making contrasts. Gorgas had always seemed just a good chum, but suddenly she seemed to have put on sex. To add to the humor, he tried clumsily to make excuses for not thinking of her in a more complimentary way. Beawasrather stormy and unreasonable. And Gorgas was growing more stunning every day. Doubts began to assail him.
“Don’t look at me that way, Ned,” she expostulated, still shaken by flurries of merriment. “That’s what fooled me lately. That moonstruck gaze! Oh! You should save them for Bea. No! On second thought you had better shoot them all at me.... Beamightchange her mind.... Now! I feel better.”
She was touching her eyes quietly, and Morris was standing above her looking down thoughtfully, when Bardek poked a cautious head in the door. Seeing allquiet, he attempted to steal across the room to the corner where he kept a bludgeon of a stick, which he loved to carry with him on his walks.
Gorgas caught him in the act of skipping through the door.
“Come back here, you truant,” she called.
He looked in, smiling knowingly.
“All settled up?” he inquired mildly.
“Yes,” Gorgas smiled back. “Everything O. K.”
“O. K.,” he hummed. “So he bunt? Eh?”
Nobody answered.
“When you take you’ w’ite-wash house, eh?”
“But he didn’t bunt, Bardek,” she laughed mischievously.
“Not bunt? Then why everyt’ing—O. K.?” he demanded.
“No, Bardek,” she explained. “You see, it was this way. I played in for a bunt—”
“You played in for a bunt? You! I see that—”
“But instead of bunting, he biffed one on the nose—”
“Biffed? On the nose?Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?”
“Yes, on the nose for a homer.”
Bardek’s face was blank.
“In other words, Bardek—”
“Ihopeyou have the other words,” he said helplessly.
“We can’t agree on that white-wash business, Neddie and I. So, it’s all off. Game postponed on account of previous engagement.”
“Phoo-ee! but how glad I am! Pos’pone!” Bardek stamped his stick on the floor. “How glad I am! First I thought I was happy, and then I found out when I walk through the woods that it was not happiness. I say, ‘It is not happiness, then what is it? Something like happiness; it make me laugh and jump and cry and feel hot and cold and glad and sick.’ Then I find out. It comes to me. It is not happiness I feel. It is misery. You—nice, clean you—to go off and give up to small boy like little Neddie here who don’t know nothing. I come back; I think, maybe if I see him first I can make him understand that he mus’ wait till he grow up and have mind. He smoke cigarette, vairy good. He sit down, nah-eese; he read book, oh, not bad—but he not real man wit’ arteries and muscles and hot forge-fires down inside. He jus’ littl’ puppy that play wit’ tail.... But I come back and all is lovely.... Now!” he seized his smudgy blouse, “I can work!”
He snatched his hammer and bent to his delicate task. Meanwhile, Gorgas was entering into the plot to satisfy the tyrannic Bea.
But Morris took a new tack. He wasn’t sure now that he wanted the old pin back. Girls shouldn’t be so domineering. They needed lessons, sometimes.
“You’ve upset me, Gorgas,” confessed Morris. “I’m just finding out what a lot I think of you.... Bea and I—well, we’re not so sure, either of us. I—perhaps—”
“Say!” called Bardek. “What you mean by zat ‘home-run’; eh?”
“Just you watch Ned Morris,” she replied, looking at Ned with the compelling face of a determined mother. “If he doesn’t make one without so much as another word I’ll call strikes on him.... One! Two—”
“I’m off,” laughed Ned, but he swung his hand and wafted a suspicious-looking salute at her.
“Now for work,” said Gorgas firmly, donning her apron.
But instead, she looked out of the window at the robins frantically building their nests. One set was at work just above in the eaves. Most interesting chaps; so energetic and serious. The silence in the shop caught her attention. She turned around. Bardek, too, was leaning over his bench and staring at the greening world outside.
He turned swiftly and met her gaze. One deprecatory glance he tossed toward the idle work-bench and then a meaningful sweep toward all of outdoors. They both stood silent, stirred by the invitation of the morning; and they laughed like guilty children about to slip away from school.
Suddenly he spread out his hands and broke into vehement Italian.
“The mother is calling all her little children,” he protested. “Wise old Demeter is leaning over the edge of the black pit of Hell-mouth, talking love talk to herdaughter Proserpina, who comes forth with garlands and sprigs of little blossoming things and all the breezes of spring. Come,Proserpina mia! Let us do a bacchanal in the white sunlight, push through branch and briar, and loaf on the bare earth and sing the song of the hour!... Come!”
“Come?” she echoed. “Let someone try to stop me. Wait! Just wait till I change this clumsy skirt.” Into a capacious closet she shut herself and in half a minute sprang forth. “Comme ça!” she fell into the familiar French. “We’re off! I feel so healthy and strong that I could run a dozen miles without taking a long breath.”
“And I,” cried Bardek, back into French. “I? With one little jump—so!—I could hop over the stars! Come!”
He tucked her arm in his and marched out, singing ofLe Roi D’ Yvetot, that jolly old king who lived in a mud hut, went to bed early, and got up late, who didn’t care a fippence for fame or reputation; his crown was a cotton cap and his sole bodyguard a lazy hound.
Through the orchard they trudged, both joining in the laughing chorus,
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! 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!