XXIIIMY LORD AND EKE MY MASTER
BUT Gorgas did not hear from Allen Blynn, nor did he send couriers. For nearly a week he permitted himself to be led about by Diccon in the rôle of a “candidate,” growing each day more rebellious, and finally he had decamped. There was one important luncheon “to meet Professor Allen Blynn” which had to get along without its chief guest. The professor had seized his grip and fled. Rumor had it that he had buried himself in the University library, but Gorgas soon discovered that he had been seen under his own shade trees with his young pupils; and there she found him.
He looked older, she noted as she peered cautiously at him through a hedge. And what was that on the end of his chin which waggled as he talked? Mercy! It was the beginnings of a beard! That tuft was certainly the sign of a man absorbed in his affairs or worried beyond peradventure.
For some time she watched him through the hedge—“Getting used to the chin-thing,” she told him later. Howard Croft, the cripple boy, was reading aloud from a portentous history of philosophy; the two seemed tobe stopping at every sentence to talk it out. She had rarely seen Allen Blynn so terribly in earnest.
When she finally stepped through the hedge and came up to the studious pair, Allen gave her a nod, as much as to say, “Sit down and pretend to be busy or you’ll frighten this shy bird off.”
For an hour she sketched beards of all nations, from Belshazzarian curls to the latest French twist, adroitly arranging it so that the boy could not see her.
“You like to make folks suffer, Allen Blynn,” Gorgas scolded gently after the boy had gone. “How do you suppose the Leverings have stood all this waiting for you to come over and tell us the latest? I just couldn’t stand it any longer. If I don’t hear all about Holden and other things I’ll blow up. I’m to take you back with me for dinner. The old crowd—some of them—are to drop in. Oh, the papers have told everything, so you needn’t fear.”
And all the time her mirthful eyes were fastened on his chin.
“I cannot talk about it,” his lips closed firmly. “It makes me ill even to think of it. That’s why I have been working on the youngsters so solidly. It’s the only antidote.”
She broke into sudden laughter. “It waggles when you talk.” She imitated by thrusting her own chin up and down grotesquely. “Why—oh, why did you do it?”
“Oh!” he came out of his perplexity. “My Van Dyke? A barber persuaded me. My chin is allbristles, and it was too sensitive for shaving. He fixed it this way, and I have forgotten to remove it.”
“I thought maybe it was penance for sins,” she choked back her laughter.
“Don’t you like it?”
“Yes,” she steadied herself. “I like—anything that’s funny!... Wait.... I thought I was used to it, but I see it’ll take some time.... There! I’ll be good and won’t laugh at the big man. Come!” she tapped him cheerfully on the arm. “Come along with me. We’ve wasted loads of time already.... And trust that crowd for making you forget. When they see that—whisker! oh!” she held her handkerchief to her mouth. “You aretoofunny, Allen Blynn! They’ll want you to talk all night—to see—it go up and down!”
As they walked along the shaded streets, she ceased joking him, except for an occasional mischievous peer around at the tufted chin. His good humor was equal to hers; but they soon settled into a more serious chat.
The dinner had some of its old-time gaiety and irresponsibility. Morris and Bea Wilcox were at the announcement stage and therefore open to persistent raillery. Diccon was there to keep the topic away from Holden, and Betty and Mary had brought their young husbands. Far in the background, seated like an accustomed idol, Leopold smiled wisely over the whole.
One may be sure that Blynn’s beard was greeted with excess of emotion. Beards were a rarity then; they were restricted by tacit law to dentists, youngphysicians, returning European tourists, and war veterans.
Almost the only difference between these dinner-parties and the others of five years ago was that they broke up earlier. There were trains to catch; there was the next day’s work; and in some cases there had begun to be babies to go back to. By ten o’clock Allen Blynn was alone with the Leverings.
Everyone had avoided the topic of Holden with obvious premeditation. Diccon had passed the word along to “drop it,” but in the more intimate situation with the Leverings questions were bound to arise.
“Diccon will have to do without me,” Allen spoke up with sudden firmness. “I am a candidate, I suppose; but I refuse to campaign.”
Diccon had managed things with distressing brilliancy. Doubting members of the trustees had to be dined and talked into reason. And they had to be paid.
“Paid?” Kate and Gorgas asked together. Mrs. Levering had elected to keep out of the conversation; her instinctive interest was to pilot the boat, not to take part in the ship’s concert.
“Yes, paid,” nodded Blynn grimly. “Paid in blood.”
“Oh,” the girls gasped in relief. Blood was permitted; money, never.
“Yes,” he explained; “I had to entertain, tell sprightly stories, plunge into theories of education, and act all the while with sweeping smile and glittering eye—and voluble! as Tutivillus himself. And notjust to one person or to one group of persons, mind you; but to every Tom, Dick and Harry whom Diccon sicked on me. If they had come in battalions I could have done it, but they came in single file. When Diccon finally started to use me, we had dinners every night and luncheons every day, except one day, when we had two luncheons. Diccon said there was no other way out of it.”
“I wouldn’t have done that for a peck of presidents,” said Gorgas firmly. “I’d have been myself.”
“Myself!” echoed Allen. “Bless my soul! Myself during that whole trip was a silent, sullen, nasty-tongued person. If I had ever let myself out of the box he would have first lambasted the whole crew and then sunk back into a silent scowl. You know how it is. Haven’t you done the same thing when you were the charming hostess?” Blynn appealed to them.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” everyone chorused, including Mrs. Levering.
“There are times,” Kate remembered, “when I am strongly tempted to have fake hysterics in the middle of the dinner, just to drive them home.”
“Exactly!” he nodded firmly. “So I avoided a scene and drove myself home.” And therefore, one day he did not “meet” one fussy little member.
“I just couldn’t stand that fellow,” Blynn grew rigid. “He is a puffy-looking, self-assertive sort of nobody. Everybody knows that he was appointed on the board because he is a relative of a man who has a friend who was able to influence somebody who knewsomebody who could get him the appointment—one of those absurd selections that happen every now and then in America, due to the hysteric ambition of some small person, helped out by the easy-going American character. Well, this Nobody presumes to busy himself with the affairs of Holden, talks about it, bothers everybody as if he really had judgment. I couldn’t trust myself near him. If he had got off any of those loud-mouthed advices of his, before others, too, I’d have shut him up with his own history. So I concluded that the best thing I could do for Diccon was to vanish. I came home and locked myself up in the University library and hit on a fine trail—I analyzed pretty much all the ways in which the Elizabethan courtier complimented his lady. There’s little in it for subtle minds, but it will make a splendid popular lecture.”
Then, to avoid what was obviously to him a distressing remembrance, he dropped Holden and its affairs and told them about the gallant Elizabethan gentlemen.
“I wonder what the Elizabethan women thought about all that stuff,” the practical Gorgas summed up.
“It isn’t all stuff,” protested the professor.
“Didn’t the ladies ever reply?” questioned Kate.
“Not a word,” said Allen. “Their silence is profound. Every mother’s son was busy writing sonnets to his mistress’ eyebrow, but the ladies stood pat. The secret of high diplomacy is, Never divulge; keep ’em guessing. And they did!”
“I wish they had written,” Gorgas was thoughtful.
“No doubt they felt things as keenly as the men.... All the men wore beards, I suppose?” she continued irrelevantly.
“Undoubtedly,” Blynn’s mind was rarely personal. The merry face of Gorgas, he did not note at all; nor her attempts, with hand at mouth, to hold back a volume of laughter; nor Kate’s furtive, elderly signal of rebuke to the grinning sister. With eye mostly upon Kate, who was presenting a polite face of assumed interest, the young professor poured forth a dissertation on Elizabethan tonsorial fashions. He was summing up his conclusions when his attention was attracted by a badly suppressed squeak of laughter from Gorgas. “The beard,” he was saying, “was the sign of the gentleman, and the sign of the man. Of course they—what are you grinning at, you Cheshire kitten? Oh! see here, I’ll pluck this thing off tomorrow. I didn’t mean to wear it, anyway. It was forced on me by a villainous barber.”
Everyone protested except Gorgas.
“I think you had better take it off,” she shook her head. “I’ve been bubbling with shut-in laughter all evening. I like fun, but this—is—carrying things a little—too far.” She pushed her laughter back with her handkerchief. “I don’t wonder the Elizabethan ladies didn’t reply. Poems praising men’s eyes and noses and beards! Là! là!là!là! That would betoofunny!”
It was a relief to get away from Holden and its small politics. Elizabethan lyrics were such a remove. Sohe left them in a cheerful mood and promised to come back soon, with his notes, and let them have his amorous studies, that substitute for fussy little trustees.
The next morning his mail brought him an unsigned communication in the sprawling hand of Gorgas Levering. Evidently she had penned it after he had gone the night before. It read:
To My Lord and Eke My Master
Thy beard is waggling in my thoughts, I find,Oh, lord and master, chosen of my heart;Thy loving prattle have I heard but part,The waggling beard distracted all my mind.And those gray eyes—or are they slightly green?—I did not see, nor either freckled cheek,Nor teeth, nor ear, nor bald spot on the peak:The waggle, waggle, waggle held the scene.I like thee, master, for thy forehead searedBy crash of pewters foaming to the brink;I like thee, master, for thy fingers pinkThat never once hath honest labor smeared;I like thee for thy nose’s Roman kink,But Zooks! Ilovethat waggle, waggle beard.
Thy beard is waggling in my thoughts, I find,Oh, lord and master, chosen of my heart;Thy loving prattle have I heard but part,The waggling beard distracted all my mind.And those gray eyes—or are they slightly green?—I did not see, nor either freckled cheek,Nor teeth, nor ear, nor bald spot on the peak:The waggle, waggle, waggle held the scene.I like thee, master, for thy forehead searedBy crash of pewters foaming to the brink;I like thee, master, for thy fingers pinkThat never once hath honest labor smeared;I like thee for thy nose’s Roman kink,But Zooks! Ilovethat waggle, waggle beard.
Thy beard is waggling in my thoughts, I find,Oh, lord and master, chosen of my heart;Thy loving prattle have I heard but part,The waggling beard distracted all my mind.And those gray eyes—or are they slightly green?—I did not see, nor either freckled cheek,Nor teeth, nor ear, nor bald spot on the peak:The waggle, waggle, waggle held the scene.
Thy beard is waggling in my thoughts, I find,
Oh, lord and master, chosen of my heart;
Thy loving prattle have I heard but part,
The waggling beard distracted all my mind.
And those gray eyes—or are they slightly green?—
I did not see, nor either freckled cheek,
Nor teeth, nor ear, nor bald spot on the peak:
The waggle, waggle, waggle held the scene.
I like thee, master, for thy forehead searedBy crash of pewters foaming to the brink;I like thee, master, for thy fingers pinkThat never once hath honest labor smeared;I like thee for thy nose’s Roman kink,But Zooks! Ilovethat waggle, waggle beard.
I like thee, master, for thy forehead seared
By crash of pewters foaming to the brink;
I like thee, master, for thy fingers pink
That never once hath honest labor smeared;
I like thee for thy nose’s Roman kink,
But Zooks! Ilovethat waggle, waggle beard.
To which was added,
P.S. But I don’t. I hate it.