XXVIITZOO-OOM!
WHEN Allen left for his lecture tour, Gorgas immediately knocked off work and gave herself up to gloomy thoughts. She began to discover what a lonely child she had always been; she who had had parents, but no real mother and father; and nowmon capitaine(mon duc, mon prince!) was busy with his own affairs. Bardek, too, had been in the depths—it was Leopold’s doleful song that had set him off. “One should not sing of ‘For-r-ty year-r on,’” he growled, “not when one is for-r-ty year-r on!” The “smitty” was therefore deserted. And Leopold had been absolutely debarred from the Leverings; Gorgas would send for him when she wanted him.
There comes a night when lights go up in Bardek’s “white-wash house.” Gorgas is gloomily swinging in a hammock in the orchard. She listens to the clatter and to the singing, and knows that Bardek has recovered his spirits. Are they dancing? She can hear the thump of the children’s heavy shoes, and she can see forms flash back and forth between the light and the window. Bardek’s voice is roaring; and an occasional squeal from the inexpressive little wife is a certain sign of good times.
Hey ho! She, too, could be happy if she chose. Off there in the dark, Leopold was waiting; waiting with fearful, confident patience, she thought and shuddered. If she chose—but she could not will to choose. Not yet, at any rate; she would wait a while.
After a time the noise subsided in Bardek’s cottage. The lamp moved into the kitchen, and finally it travelled up the stairs and into the children’s room. It was the putting-to-bed hour, a happy sky-larking time in the Bardek household.
So much happiness near at hand was almost too much for Gorgas. The shrill voices of the children especially were painful as they came clear on the night air; it made her feel more motherless and deserted than is quite bearable. She turned her back to the joyous windows and strove fiercely to keep down the desire to give way to tears. But they would come; little trickling ones first; then huge, coursing ones; and, finally, a very deluge.
The man who had been her “lord and master” all her life—all the life that counted—had gone gravely away without so much as a smiling goodby. For days she had been watching him hungrily as he talked with seriousness—to everybody but to her—of his dates, cities, halls, subjects; and she could glean nothing from his sober face but an alarming interest in lectures. All her life she had given him the first place in her heart and was content; with an absurd faith, as the days of her childhood flitted by, that all would surely be right in the end; and now she was telling herself that she hadbeen deceived by a dream. He was not for her; to him she was a child, an interesting child, to be sure, capable in many ways above other children, but only one of a hundred or more of his “cases,” one which he had probably card-catalogued under the “L’s,” with penciled notes—a pedagogic specimen!
It was hateful, and she cried aloud her protest; it was unfair; and it was not to be endured. But even as she protested wildly in the dark of the orchard, she felt the pitiless certainty of the facts; for once more she had written him a letter—to be sure, it was only a funny little request for an “interview with the great man,” written under his very nose, and put in his own hand to mail; with characteristic disregard of her he had posted the letter without once looking at it—and he had neglected to answer it.
On the day before he left Mount Airy, she had seen the small gray note among a bundle that he had sorted out in public; and the sight of it had sent her face flaming, as if it would shout its contents to all the world; but he had given it one frowning stare and passed it over without a touch of recognition, so intent was he on his own affairs.
No better proof, she thought, of the gulf that separated them. Morris had taught her to be a “sport,” and all her instinct bade her bear without flinching. She would face the facts, be they or be they not to her hurt—but, oh, the bitterness of the reality. Her childhood’s dream was far better, picturing somethingalways off in the future, always a possible event.... If—
No. His face was “on the outside” as Bardek had said; and during those last few days could there be any mistaking of the calm, self-absorbed Allen? If it had been hers to choose, would she have elected a public lecture tour as against the partner of her soul?
Oh, no! Though Boston and New York and all the cities of Christendom called in dulcet tones! Oh, no!
The lamp had come down in the Bardek house. In the Levering home a low light burned in the library. Her mother and father were there, she knew; but the thought of meeting them and talking of everyday matters was too repellent. How far away they were from her now, and always had been! And how much, just now, she needed the comfort of communion. She gazed wistfully at Bardek’s gay light. His great laugh came through the trees and cheered her wonderfully. Dear old Bardek, mother and sister and father-confessor, all rolled into one! She would go to Bardek and lay her little troubles in his huge palm.
The Bardek house was without corridors. One opened the front door and stood within. And who would dream of knocking at that democratic portal! So she slipped noiselessly along the grass, which grew to the very edge of the house, turned the knob quietly and entered.
Bardek was facing her, standing like a statue in the middle of the low room. The light was behind him, sothat Gorgas, coming in out of the darkness, was not able instantly to comprehend that the little wife, clad in the gayest of garments, deep reds and greens, with a glorious scarf of gold about her head, was folded snugly in the Bohemian’s sturdy arms.
“Oh!” cried Gorgas, and started back.
“Come in!” welcomed Bardek, without moving the fraction of an inch, save the necessary tightening of his hold on the shy wife.
“Oh, no! No!” cried Gorgas, shocked at her intrusion.
“Come in, I say!” roared Bardek. “We jus’ celebr-r-rate our marriage—zat is all. Come in, and see how it is done.... Be still, Bit-of-my-heart,” he called to the struggling wife, but in some staccato dialect of Hungary. “We must be the teacher of the beautiful Gorgas in all things, and this is what she should learn to do; and it must be done well, or life itself is spilled to the wind.” This he translated gayly to Gorgas. “Come in,Liebschen! This is our marriage day. 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.”
The invitation in their eyes was so real that Gorgas slipped weakly to a chair near the door.
“He say to wait five, six, seven week or it not a marriage,” Bardek went on. “‘Five, six, seven week!’ I cry; ‘in that time she be grow up and ol’ woman! And I? Every day of zose week I die of waiting. Five, six, seven week? Not five, six, seven minute!’; and I scare zat priest by the things I say. And when I show him gold, he not so scared, but raise up the hands and make the language which I give him to make.
“And when all is done, ‘Tzoom!’ I cry, and explain: ‘Zat is the big bell up in Heaven which bring all the angels to the Gates of Earth, through which they now look down; andTzoo-oom!’—he nearly drop dead for think I be madman!—‘zat is the bell which break open the Gates of Earth and fling the glad angels toward this good world of love; andTzoo-oo-oom!’ I roar like the roar of Saint Peters in Rome when they make the new Pope, ‘zatis the bell which make this womanofmy blood andofmy flesh, and carry us together, up straight up, up, up with the singing angels to the Heaven itself.’ And zen I take her in my arms, and lift her to her little toes, and hug her till she forget for little while to live!... Ah! But she nevair forgetzatmarriage! Nevair!”
As he talked he interrupted himself often to utter weird sayings to the happy wife, so that she half turned in his arms, and seemed to understand that he was telling Gorgas of the wonderful wedding day. AndGorgas contemplated their happiness with the greatest sympathy and with a longing that was akin to pain.
“So!” Bardek went on jubilantly. “On zat wonderful day in May, which we now celebr-r-ate—ah. May is in Hungary of all months the—”
“But Bardek,” Gorgas interrupted, for a moment forgetting her personal grief. “This is not May, it is September.” She could not be mistaken about this, for in three days it would be the tenth, her birthday, and Allen had promised her a mysterious gift on that day.
“Of course!” smiled Bardek. “So we celebr-r-ate our marriage.”
“But if it was May when you—”
“You would wait until it come May again?” he inquired mildly.
By this time he had sat himself in a big chair, and the wife had dropped to the floor, draping herself about his knee. The scarf of gold spread out in a brilliant streamer; the greens and reds of her Hungarian costume tumbled over one another in a riot of unpremeditated folds. The blood was afire in her gypsy face, and her eyes were two dark lights. By the magic of adoration this peasant woman was transformed into a thing of rare delight.
“But if you were married in May,” Gorgas was saying, “you could not have an anniversary until—”
“Ho!” cried Bardek in great glee, and then communicated exultant things to the gay wife, patting her on the head the while, and tweaking her brown ears.“Ho!” he turned to Gorgas. “You would wait until it come May again! You are like the priest who I scare all the Latin out of! You would wait five, six, seven week! You would wait until the earth go about the sun justso!—until the constellations of the heavens be justso! You cannot praise God until it be Sunday; you cannot be married when Nature cries out it is time, and you would let the calendar make you slave when you would have anniversary! Ho! It is superstitious you are! Sometimes I have celebr-r-ated zat marriage three times in one month! Here is my calendar of days!” he slapped his heart right lustily.
“Many things might make me celebr-r-ate,” he went on. “This time it was your Leopold and his ugly song. ‘For-r-ty year-r on, when afar-r and asunder-r,’” he rolled his r’s vigorously. “It is a song that give me the blue devils of regret. ‘For-r-ty year-r on!’ it is no song to sing, when it is I, Bardek, who is ‘for-r-ty year-r on,’ and do not want to remember zat it is so! ‘For-r-ty year-r on!’ Heugh! It is a ol’ man’s song; and I must sing it over and over in my brain, till I cannot work, and grow sick wit’ thoughts of gray head and teeth falling out, and feel my bones go stiff, and—heugh! So I be ol’ man for two, three day, and zen I make celebr-r-ation and chase the bad thoughts out. To this little Bit-of-my-heart I say, ‘Quick, get into the beautiful clothes of Hungary, put on the scarf of gold, and the earrings and the spangles of gold, and we will have again our marriage day!Tzoo-oom!’” he boomed suddenly, and caressedthe lady’s head with huge confidence. “And now I am young again!”
Even though he had seemed so absorbed in his own contemplations, Bardek’s quick eye had noted the droop in Gorgas’ shoulders, and the discouraging sadness in her mien.
“Zat song?” he asked her; “it make ugly thoughts for you, too; eh, my Gorgas?”
She tried to speak, but found it easier to shake her head. No; it was not the song that had taken the spring out of her life.
“U-m!” hummed Bardek sympathetically. And then, with characteristic abruptness, he asked, “When is it zat you go to the priest and make the bells of Heaven go,tzoom!—eh?”
This was too much for Gorgas. It brought with benumbing clearness the vision of her own forlorn place in the world. There would be for her no exulting Bardek to seize her out of the street beside her cart of oranges, carry her to the nearest altar, and start the very heavens a-tzooming for joy. But she was too brave a lass to weep in the presence of Bardek and his lady, although it was a glistening eye and a trembling lip which smiled gamely at them.
“Leopold—” she began, but words were too difficult; so she stopped pathetically, and seemed to beg Bardek to understand.
“H-m,” said he. “Leopold, eh?... He is very wonderful man.... Very smart.... He know—everything.” Bardek spread out his palms humbly.“You would celebr-r-ate wit’ Leopold, eh?” He watched her narrowly, but she did not answer. “Of course, you would know. You would not have to look in a book for to find outzat—or to ask the mother if it be so!... You would know.... And it is very important to know; for if you do not know whether you will want to smash the calendar and have two, three celebr-r-ation in one month, and all the times after which you do live together,” he spread his palms a trifle higher, “well, zen you should not begin—much better to die.... So it is Leopold, eh?”
“No!” she struggled to her feet. “No, Bardek, it is not Leopold. He wants me, but I won’t have him. I won’t! He frightens me, and always did, from the time he began to watch me, like a big, big—” She could not find the word. “It is not Leopold!”
Bardek’s sudden laugh drew her out of her tragic plane, and in some inexplicable way gave her a touch of gladness.
“Iknowzat it is not Leopold!” he cried. “I could see it in your two eyes zat it is not! And I could see it in your two eyes who zat it is! Ah! Your eyes zey tell me whenever you do look at him!... And zat issoright now!Soright!...”
His own two eyes beamed and sparkled upon her, and seemed to shout congratulations, and many happy returns of the day. To his wife he confided uproariously; so clearly, indeed, that Gorgas understood every word and gesture; and as he mounted to Hungarian eloquence, she began to catch some of the contagion ofhis confidence: the despairing thoughts born of reality began to clear out, vanish like a cloud rack before the west wind; and she revived her spirits with the vitality of Bardek’s optimism.
At his call she came over and sat down on the floor beside the wife, Bardek presiding above them like a patriarch of old. And the wife, so often smilingly mute in that household, broke forth in a musical chirping of congratulations, and stroked Gorgas’ hair, and patted her cheek, and welcomed her to the inner shrine of spouses! To Gorgas it was a very blessed ordination. For a little while she would pretend, she defended herself, and then—
But Bardek was in full flow: “With him, with the good Allen, you would celebr-r-ate; eh,mein Liebschen, ma fleur du bois?Marriage? Ho! Zat is easy to do—it take five, six week; or it take five, six minute—but to celebr-r-ate, it must last all the life! There are many peoples who have had just marriage, with confetti, and bands and dancing and much wine, but zey will never, never celebr-r-ate! Ho! It would be comic to see zem even to try! Comic? It would be pain!... For to celebr-r-ate, it is to be two peoples wit’ body and bone and blood of one—See!—ze blood it go up my arm, and through my aor-r-ta, andpresto!it is humming along zis little woman’s pink ear and making the eyes to dance! And ze daughter of ze peddling mother must in dose times rise to be ze queen of all ze wor-r-ld—regina dei gratia et potentissima et pulchrissima!... Look at her,mein Liebschen. Toyou she is, I know not what strange child of Europa—”
“She is beautiful!” murmured Gorgas.
“Ah! I make you see a little wit’ my eyes,” his voice grew tender; “but you do not know. Even you, my Gorgas, are as nothing to her. You are good—mais oui!—but I would not walk wit’ you one, two, t’ree step whenshecrook the finger and smile, ‘Come!’”
All this was very wonderful to Gorgas, this most intimate revelation of the deep privacy of domestic happiness; and because she believed that it was the true state of all right marriages, she reveled in its beauty; and then she shivered at the stark reality that was hers. For her there would be no “celebrations.”
But she would not give way again. “That’s all very pretty and poetic, Bardek,” she sat up straight, and seemed to fling off the romantic spell which the Bohemian had set vibrating. “I’m better now. Had a good cry out there,” she jabbed a hand toward the orchard. “Lonesome, I guess. Came in here to get cheered up—and you did it! Sure did!” She searched the room with wondering eyes, as if trying to comprehend how a hut like this could be so charged with happiness. “But I’m different, Bardek.” That was her own answer to the survey she had just made. “I wanted something ... and wanted it ... more—well! why talk about it—” With a great effort she controlled a quavering voice. “I am not to have it—that’s all.”
Bardek watched her with deep sympathy. All the time, he stroked the head of the gypsy girl at his knee,and seemed to agree with Gorgas. But to himself he said, as he admitted later, “She must suffer first, because it is the demand of love that we suffer; in no other way can we give it its true value; and then she will believe better when she has plumbed the depths of doubt.”
She got a grip on herself and went on: “I must not fool myself any longer.... It is madness.... I’d soon be fit for nothing.... Leopold is all right. I’ve known him all my life. He likes me, and, in a way, I like him. We have had great times together. I’ll get over the shock of his liking me in the way—in the way he does.... Got sort of used to it already. I told him I’d let him know. He’s waiting. He said I didn’t know myself ... that I’d come to him ... ‘like the tides rise and follow the irresistible moon,’ he said.... I guess he was right.... He knows a lot about me! It seems a little bit unfair, but I suppose— Suppose, nothing!” She got herself up suddenly from the comfortable floor, and, at the motion, seemed to bring her resolutions together. “I can’t stand this any longer,” she turned to Bardek. “Leopold it is and must be—I’d better get used to it—and all I’ve got to do is to walk down that road twenty steps and whistle.”
She moved resolutely toward the door. “There is one way to settle it once and for all,” she said, “a sure way to end all the suffering which comes of uncertainty—and it is better,” she insisted, “to stop forever the doubt and the pain.”
“Twenty paces down the road,” thought Bardek. “Why, then it would be all over for the little Gorgas, and settled for life—like two puffs of a cigarette!”
Her hand was on the knob before Bardek called softly to her.
“Yes, Bardek?” she asked, for he had not spoken more than her name. She looked magnificently strong and able as she stood blocked out in dark tints against his white door; and the weariness and the despondency had gone from her; wavering uncertainty had made place for the mind made up. She could not have her first wish; very well; she would accept the next best, and it would not be done half-heartedly; and once accepted, she would be loyal to the death. All this Bardek noted as he looked at her.
“But it is another story zat I happen to know,” he began softly. “Allen Blynn has not told me in words, for then I could not speak wit’out being tattle-tale, but I have listened wit’ my eyes and wit’ my heart—oh, a very good ear my heart has!—and so I know zat it is the good Allen who prays on his knees every night zat some day he will have courage to ask my Gorgas to try to like him—jus’ a leetle bit, mebbe!”
Slowly he drew her from the door. She protested. He argued subtly—it was the fight, he said, against the Evil One for the life of a woman, so it needs must be subtle. Slowly he drew her again to her place beside him on the floor. And then he poured forth the eloquence that only Bardek could summon. He made her cry and he made her laugh; and he filled her withhope. Who could doubt Bardek when he rose to his best? And when the theme is Love—ah! Bardek could have made great strides toward converting the Evil One himself!
“But how do you know, Bardek?” Gorgas demanded.
Ah, he knew! He, Bardek, had been born with both of his two eyes open! The ways of Allen Blynn were not hidden from him. And the little Gorgas must not let despair and fear in at the heart, for they are the father and mother of failure. Much he told her of Allen, evidence that piled up against the absent swain, until some of the despair and fear fled at his strong touch. The protestings of Gorgas grew weaker as Bardek plied his argument.
Among other matters he related one of the many debates which he and Allen had had together. Blynn had been standing for a reaction against the type of freedom—free will, free love, free anything—which had been pulsing from the “lunacy fringe” of the radicals for a generation or more. “They do not seem to understand,” Blynn had argued, “that there is something higher than individual will—or even the individual nation’s will, as Alexander and Napoleon have long ago found out—something which demands surrender, acquiescence.” Bardek had been defending life as the expression of the individual right to live; Blynn had taken the side of individual renunciation. “But thereisa divine, far-off event to which the whole creationmoves,” said Blynn; “and while our irresistible part is that of free spirits, yet we are most free when we bind the law upon ourselves.” That was the philosophy of Allen Blynn.
“He is not one to seize the daughter of the orange woman,” laughed Bardek, “and zen make a new service of marriage for himself! Ho! He would beat his breast wit’ ze big stone and wait four, five, six week! Now you! You are like me—it make you sick to wait. So! I say, do not wait. Go to him. Tell him to hurry. Tell him you cannot wait for God’s big universe to come to end, but it must come now! Go to him,Liebschen! Go to him!”
“I have always wanted to,” agreed Gorgas. “Many times I started to—but I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” asked the fearless man.
“Women do not do that, Bardek.”
He raged at her. “How often have I taught you not to be afraid of what women do or do not! It is woman who will be the last slave on the free earth; and it is because shewantto be slave. I will not have you, my Gorgas, be like all ze others! Go, andbe!”
“But he is in Boston,” she faltered. She knew his itinerary by heart.
“Go to him,ma fleurie. Lives have been lost through pride, through not saying the word when it is time. Boston is not yet Babylon, but for you,mein Liebschen, there it is zat ze tower to Heaven is. Go to him.”
“I know just what I shall say,” she laughed. The natural tint of health was back in her face. “I have said it so often to myself.”
“Of course you have!” he agreed heartily. “And you will say it over again for many years. And the speeches he will say to you!Himmel!Whata dam will burst and drown all the little valleys when one of zese Puritans go loose! Zey try hard all the life to live like Saint Acetum, the Vinegar Saint who is always repairing ze roof of ze Heaven; and when zey topple over and fall, it is a great distance!... You will be eaten alive, my Gorgas; and it is a very pleasant experience, vairy pleasant and good!”
And that night a happy, exulting young woman, charged with uncalculable joy, strode across the lawn and through the orchard, with never a fear nor a despair, those sad parents of failure.