She stood watching

The
VINEGAR
SAINT

By
HUGHES MEARNS
Author of “Richard Richard”

Illustrated by
Ralph L. Boyer

THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA
1919

COPYRIGHT
1919 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY

The Vinegar Saint

TO
FAGLEY
“Someone must keep watch lest the Heavens fall!”
—The Vinegar Saint.

POSTSCRIPT

(For aren’t all prefaces really postscripts?)

THIS chronicle of Gorgas and her friends was within sight of the end when out of Germany came the incredible news of war. Twenty-five years earlier Bardek had fought “the big Austrian” because “he had spoke against the French”; all of which the present scribe had duly writ down, but only as one tells of ancient passions or historic loves and hates. Who, outside of unspeakable Germany, was prepared for the shock of the world war? Then, when our own boys were moving across the seas—just because one had “spoke against the French”—the history of Gorgas and the Vinegar Saint was put aside, along with other matter that we once thought important; and the present historian was standing reveille, watch and guard on a scrubby hill leagues from home. Finally comes the collapse of the mad German dream, as abruptly as it began, and things of peace and sanity emerge, including this story of the Vinegar Saint.

Well, good is good, and evil is evil; and there is to be no compromise nor confusion of the two. Such is the conclusion of the victory just accomplished—which is only what the Vinegar Saint had contended all along! It did not seem to need a world war to prove so true a truth.

The chronicler cannot resist giving Captain “Chuck” Williams’ account of a late meeting with Bardek. Slim and spruce he was; clean shaven—to prevent the white stubble from giving his years away; a major in the brilliant full dress of the French, one of that gay band, veterans all, who visited America during the early days of our entrance into the conflict. It was a leaden, characterless April day—a perfect “Deutschertag”—but he was spluttering French like a Roman candle. “Chuck” burst into the group, clicked heels and saluted profoundly. “Bardek!” he shouted, grasping his hands. “You old grandfather! What in the name of poetry are you doing in uniform!” The rogue! He was sixty years old if a day, but had got himself up like a youngster of thirty.

He wrung “Chuck’s” hands with the old-time fervor, rattling a half-dozen medals on his breast, but his face remained a pantomime of inquiry, puzzledom and willingness to please any lunatic in the uniform of the U.S.A. Turning limply to a brother he begged a translation; then replied gravely, in French, “One is never too old to fight for France”; and added, “I am sorry that in my youth I did not pay attention to my teachers and thus learn to speak your beautiful English. Alas!”—a delectable shrug—“I know but French.”

“You are Bardek—” “Chuck” began. “Bardek!” echoed the major. “You know me, then?” The shoulders lifted slightly. “Bardek, c’est vraiment moi! Bardek! C’est ça! Commandant! Soixante-dixsept régiment!!” The shoulders went higher and prouder with each phrase, his whole suite following him in exact imitation. “Tr-r-oisième bataillon!!! Chasseur a pied!!!!” But the proud picture soon dissolved in swift laughter. “At the service of m’sieu’ le capitaine,” he bowed. “Le commandant is complimented that m’sieu’ le capitaine should remember his acquaintance. We have perhaps met in France?”

“It was in America, Bardek!” Captain Williams insisted. “Don’t try any of your infernal jokes on me. It was in Cresheim Valley! At Mount Airy! And what’s all this nonsense about not knowing English!”

Bardek waited patiently for the interpreter to make the speech into French. “It was perhaps my grandfather,” he shrugged politely. “America I do not know. Always,” he touched his heart lightly, “always I have lived in France.” And from that he could not be budged.

Nevertheless, he ate the captain’s luncheon, he and his gay “devils”—“Chuck” was the envy of the whole restaurant—meanwhile telling him, in a French which was painfully slowed up for foreign ears, all the news of all the world. There were staccato, rapid-fire asides, to be sure, which drew roars from his companions; but he would not step out of the rôle of Frenchman. Many times he repeated, with varying grades of fervor, “Always I have lived in France!”

At “Chuck’s” final handshake, however, he relented. “Vive la France!” said “Chuck,” gripping him hard. “La Fr-r-rance!” growled Bardek. They shook hands ferociously. Then the major leaned over—“Chuck” thought he was about to be kissed!—to whisper solemnly in his ear, “And you will give my loave to ol’ Mack, if he be still alive, an’ to the Professor, and to the good Goargass, and you will tell her to be vair-r-y care-ful of herself. She is now too ol’ a woman to go splashing in rivers when it is yet April!”

He left in a storm of basso laughter.

H. M.

Fort McHenry,
Maryland, U. S. A.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

BOOK ONE
The Golden Child

“Are you a child or a teetotum?” the Sheep asked.

The Vinegar Saint

I
LEGS

THE young man of twenty-three was not a clever tennis player, but his partner and his opponents, men of forty, were obviously less clever. The Mount Airy Club courts were sought chiefly by two sorts of players, boys too uncourageous for baseball, and men of impending girth; secluded by fine old ragged trees and off an unused road, it had no gallery of experts to disturb the timid.

The young man belonged to neither class, but he found his Saturday afternoon game of tennis with perspiring business-men just the thing to put him in tone for his own week’s business of research among revered but defunct Elizabethans. Besides, he often had the joys of victory hard won.

At present, he was fighting it out with a butter-and-egg middleman. Years of handling a fragile and perishable commodity had made the middleman self-conscious in the presence of so egg-like an object as a tennis ball. He puzzled his opponents, therefore, as the inexperienced whist player so often does, by unaccountable delicacy when one naturally expected a smashing drive, and at other times by reckless lobbing—as if he had just condemned a bad shipment!—when the safe return was a gentle touch.

A wife or two sat sewing in the lee of a cherry tree. They often stopped their mild chatter to watch some contested point—sometimes the ball stayed in play unaccountably long; a quarter of the returns was accidental!—at such times the repartee on the courts was equally compelling. A “professor” is by instinct talkative, and the enforced reticence of butter-and-egg middlemen unloosens sudden outbursts of speech—the figure has an unfortunate but truthful suggestion—like dammed things.

All this was a generation ago—June 17, 1888, to be exact—a period when tennis in America was an exclusive sport like lacrosse or cricket. But the game had already made great headway toward being an American thing. Mount Airy players had long ago dug out the English “lawn” to make a “skin court”; they had twisted the English “thank you” into a technical and not always polite order to return stray balls, and had adopted the usual American system of “badgering.” Anyone could see that the young chap was trying to “talk” his opponent into error. In the American code, the man loses caste who cannot stand the steady grind of talk directed persistently at every weakness.

An accidental shot to the middleman’s left hand, and an apt remark about left-handedness in general, had unnerved the professor’s opponent for the moment, causing a deposit of several easy balls in the net. Further well-placed banter encouraged the irritated middleman to take out a little private revenge on the ball; result, a walloping “three-bagger” over toward the Mount Airy sky line.

“Hard luck!” the young man murmured in mock politeness, gazing satirically after the ball, but the middleman seemed to view that terrific flight with deep satisfaction. His partner, however, scolded and advised him to be “steady.”

The game stood “four all.” It was the middleman’s service. That looked like a sure win for the young professor’s side; that is, unless the middleman grew cautious and canny. Tennis is a game requiring great strength and equally great delicacy. The middleman had been brought up in the produce business. For ten years he had assisted, between two o’clock in the morning and sunrise, in the transportation of hundreds of cases of eggs, than which there are few occupations requiring more combined strength and delicacy.

The middleman settled down to business. Balls were served with the wizard-like dexterity of a juggler. There was absolutely no “breakage”—a clean, fine shipment; score, 5-4.

At the same time the professor suddenly slumped.

He missed easy shots and fouled his partner. A young person sitting cross-legged on the side-lines—it was one of the many Levering girls, although one could not be sure without one’s glasses—had been for some time deliberately making fun of him, and in a very stealthy fashion, too. His private and original twists of chin, arm, head, even the crinkling of the eyes to avoid the glare, these had been sedulously imitated. The professor put the left palm to his chin—a thoroughly characteristic attitude; the young lady, squatting like a tailor, put her left palm to her chin and wiggled the fingers in some subtle token of derision. The professor played with a twisted lock at the very crown of his head; the young lady elevated a gorgeous bunch of her own brown hair.

This mirror-like mimicry got on his mind and caused some extraordinary tennis. Yes, she was one of the “Leverings”—a familiar name in that locality—but for a time he could not precisely place her. Ah! Those Leverings with the outlandish names, Regina?—Juanita?—

“Hard luck!” grunted the middleman, with a sharp tinge of vengeance in his tone. The professor had served a monstrous “out.”

What was the name? He cocked an eye aloft and sucked in both cheeks—an attitude of cogitation; the Levering young lady twisted her head and neck into a Pre-Raphaelite Pièta. He had danced with her many times. He had played tennis with her at—ah! Manheim! Manheim Levering! That was it. No! Manheim was the name of a street.... Some absurd family name. What was it? A bad return threw the game into deuce. He clapped his hand over his mouth as a sign of apology; the Levering person—first name not yet recalled—immediately hid her face with a spread-out palm and peeped out between the fingers, a sign of utter shame over the bad play. Keyser! That was it! Keyser Levering. Of all the absurd names to give a girl! The Keysers had come over with Pastorius; that was enough to justify the maltreating of a young woman who—gracious!—she was pulling her nose, stroking it gently! Extraordinary conduct! Perhaps the name had affected her in some way. Names do react upon the owners; few Percys ever become valiant; Percy Hotspur was only a glorious exception. Pulling the nose was one of the young professor’s really bad habits; he had struggled all his life to stop it; the very thought of stopping gave him an uncontrollable itching. There! he was doing it again. And she? She was polishing vigorously with little finger upraised. The minx!

The professor suddenly doubled-up and rubbed his belt. He had caught a stabbing blow “in the wind,” as they say in boxing.

“Game and set!” exulted the middleman, and then offered satiric apologies for the knock-out; but the young man heard not; he was busy getting his breath and watching Miss Levering mimicking a gentleman doubled-up with a tennis ball in his stomach. A man may do some things, he thought as he pressed his lips and tried not to wince, that a lady should under no circumstances do. The young woman was certainly not herself that morning. Besides, he had borne the blow like a soldier, and had only passed a hand lightly over the burning spot, while she—she was pantomiming like a child with the colic.

His memory of her conduct on other occasions gave no hint of this. He recalled a quiet, lady-like person, mature, solicitous of the latest news of Elizabethan playwrights. The miss before him, sitting tailor-fashion on the grass, was carrying on—why, she was puckering her lips like a—but so was he!

And now she was flirting with him, one eye deliberately closed, the other looking up mischievously. Could it be the heat?

Finally he marched over and accused her of losing his game.

“You sat there telling me all my faults in sign language,” he told her. “I got so interested I forgot how to play.”

“Just when did you learn?” she inquired mildly.

“Well!” he looked at her. Without doubt he was an erratic player, brilliant and simply bad alternately, the sort that never improves; but he had not the least ambition to do better, so the satire had no sting for him. “Well!” he retorted. “It wasn’t yesterday.”

“No!” she speculated. “No! It couldn’t have been yesterday; it must have been this morning—after luncheon.”

Her right hand made a vigorous swish through the air; her eyes followed an imaginary ball which obviously sailed high out of bounds; her left had come clap over the mouth in clear chagrin. In a flash the professor had himself dramatically presented at his worst, but her cheerful laughter saved the mimicry from anything but good-natured raillery.

Then she told him how to hold his racket for certain plays, and instructed him in the theory of the angles of incidence and refraction upon which both tennis and billiards are founded.

“Yes!” he would say, and “Really, now!”; or “Why, we learned all that in physics, but I never saw any use for it!” But his main interest was in watching the bright, eager face, the frank, brown eyes which looked straight into him steadily and explored him; and without the slightest gleam of—well, there is no word for it—the sort of mature awareness that is rarely absent when a woman looks steadily into the eyes of a man. There was health in her face and a dominant egoism like a man’s. The last time he had talked with her she had been timid, and clinging, and feminine; a thing that had frightened him off. He remembered that he had likened her to a young aunt—visited rarely—who used to throw her arms about him without notice and kiss him back of the ear. After much practice he had learned finally to sense the beginning of the aunt’s attack and so, in a measure, defend himself. A pathetic lookup of the eyes, dog-like and reverent, was the unfailing sign; just so, at their last meeting, this Levering lady had regarded him as they walked together. Unconsciously he had kept one arm ready to ward off a possible pounce.

Miss Levering had not the shadow of a pounce about her now. She was talking tennis like a sporting editor. Somehow, the professor felt sorry. His strongest wish at that moment was to be attacked.

And he wasn’t listening at all to her harangue.

“You must watch the other fellow’s swing. If he ‘cuts’ up you mustn’t ‘cut’ down. The ball is turning round and round, this way,” she illustrated by swinging circles. “If you spin it the way it’s going it will drop dead.”

The professor was watching her animated face with the most open delight; and he followed her minute instructions absolutely not at all. Simple admiration beamed from him.

“My dear young lady! My dear young lady!” he was saying over and over to himself. “I will never call you ‘Keyser.’ It is the name of an emperor and a dog, but not of a bit of humanity like your delightful self. Wonder of wonders! Cosmos and chaos! Who can understand, O Lord, thy marvelous doings.... Male and female created He them.... Eyes, smiles, voice, gestures inimitable; soul, being, essence—what are they?... I don’t know anything.... Saw her for hours at a time and never noticed her till now.... Could we live on $600 salary and the rent of six small dwellings, not always rented, and the income of the D. & W. R. R., if it ever pays dividends? Glory be to Peter, what are eyes made of? And flesh and blood? Marvelous!... The Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep Thy law!... Talk on!... I’m not listening! It’s great! Oh, what a wonderful—”

Then he spoke aloud, ejaculating as if he had been stung by a green fly.

“Great Jupiter!” he shouted, and “Bless my soul!”

She had stood to show him how to swing his racket for a “Lawford,” in those days a rare stroke among amateurs.

“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed, staring at her feet.

The young lady’s dresses stopped at her knees! As she swung about, a long braid of hair became visible for the first time, tipped with a dainty bow of crimson ribbon.

“Say!” he clutched her by the arm. “How old are you?”

“Thirteen,” she replied, wondering at his excitement.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Gorgas Levering. Same as it always was.”

“Thirteen! Jupiter Pluvius! Arrest me, somebody! Are you sure your name isn’t Keyser?”

“Keyser is my sister.”

“Thank goodness for that. Gorgas! Bad enough. But Keyser—ugh!—Are you named after a street?”

“No; family. What’s the matter? What are you looking at me that way for? Counting my freckles? Anything wrong with my feet?”

The professor dropped on the grass and laughed himself into exhaustion.

“Your—legs,” he got forth finally, but quietly, so the wives on the benches could not hear. “Legs—gave me—fright. They saved you, though. Hadn’t been—for—legs, I might have asked—you to—marry me.... Thirteen!... Gracious!...” He sobered up suddenly and remarked to the spirits of the air, as it were, “There ought to be a law against me.”

Miss Gorgas Levering sat down again cross-legged. She pulled her short skirts over her knees. Then she wound her long braid about her head and fastened it with a sharp twig. Demurely she looked at him, as her elder sister might have done.

“As you were saying, Professeh Blynn,” she mimicked one of her sister’s college friends. “Don’t let me interrupt a pro-po-sal. Small offehs of marriage cheerfully received. First come, first served.”

“Your face is quite old enough,” Professor Blynn speculated.

Her features were as womanly as they ever would be. Some young girls achieve that sort of maturity early; it is only a question of lengthened skirts and twisted hair and they grow up over night. Her vocabulary was strikingly mature, too; sure sign of much reading; and it was streaked with dashes of vigorous young thinking. Her strong coloring heightened the illusion.

“I’m an out-of-doors girl,” she explained. “I play tennis, you know—really play,” she laughed; “and I skate and climb trees and ride.” Then she told him, with comical gravity, that she was the beginning of a new species, and asked if he had read Gardiner’s “The Femine?” “It’s an English book; sort of pamphlet. It tells about the coming woman. She will be strong, first of all. He didn’t convert me. I was always that.”

The instinctive teacher in him brought him quickly to her level. He did not make fun of her, nor patronize. Just the right word or two he said, as he lolled on the grass and deliberately stuffed a brier pipe, enough to take her off the defensive, a position which every intelligent child must assume in the presence of superior elders, and led her to communicate naturally. He talked to her of modern ideas about woman; although his own ideas on the subject were not at all formed. “A Doll’s House” had just been translated into English and was already creating no end of stir. He told her about it. The story of Nora and her vain sacrifice caught hold of her active young mind. He promised her some books, forgetting completely her years as he had done in the beginning; and recommended a lot of German “new thought” just emerging into translations, rather shocking reading in those days, even for males.

Without any self-consciousness they explored each other’s faces as they talked. Certain of his little twists of mouth and eye—he had a habit of screwing up the left side of his face as he propounded, it seemed to assist him as he dug the idea up out of his mind and threw it from him—these she stored away without meaning to, along with his sudden wrinkling of brow, and the odd cock of the neck. Something dramatic in her had always been at work, seizing the high peculiarities of folks for the sake of later caricature. She did not miss that sly rubbing of the hand along the nose, nor his sudden display of white teeth when he smiled.

As a rule, he lost sight of his auditors when he spoke. His classes were always a blur, or rather, they merged into a single personality, which attended, squirmed, laughed as a complete organism. And in his successful dealings with very little children—they always received him into their intimacies without reserve—he had soon discovered that the best results were obtained when one does not in the beginning stare into their faces. You must look far off down the street as you parley with them, or they will catch the assumed interest or the lurking irony in your eye, and shy off.

So at first he only glanced up at her occasionally. The picture flashed upon his mind was not at all that of a child, but of a young woman of his own age, yet infinitely more self-absorbed and independent than any he could recall. The chin, grasped firmly in her hand as she leaned forward, the strong, searching eyes and the coiling braid and the absence of legs had their effect gradually of making him forget that he was dealing with a merely precocious youngster; so, as he warmed up to the tale of Helmer and Doctor Rank and Nora, he shifted about and watched her animated brown face.

The sun and the wind and the rain had toned her in shades of brown. The hair was black-brown, the eyes sepia but lustrous and alive, the skin ruddy-brown like a young Indian. The fat, short-fingered hand that supported the chin was almost cedar.

The illusion of maturity was enhanced by a flashing interpolation or two.

“Women mustn’t imitate men,” she asserted. “That’s silly. Men have some fine things that don’t belong just to them; that’s all. Why shouldn’t I ride a bicycle? Why shouldn’t I play tennis and get tanned? Why shouldn’t I work hard, too, and get all there is out of the sport? I’m no jelly fish. Chinese women can walk; can’t they? Well, why shouldn’t they? I found that in Gardiner, but I thought of it myself, long before that.”

They discussed a possible Chinese woman who had revolted, and the consequences in community and family persecution. Then she hinted guardedly of some personal persecutions. The mother had misgivings. There was talk in the family of corralling and branding and fitting for market.

She had never been to school. She had fought against it; and they had given in. A nursery maid had taught her to read and figure, the rest had taken care of itself.

He admired her immensely then, she was so careful not to show a partisan spirit in a matter that so much concerned her happiness. The mother was quite right to wish her daughters to be alike, she admitted; but it is not given even loving mothers to understand all about their children. Sacrifice must be made by the children, she knew, for mothers must not suffer too much, even when they were unwisely restrictive or made laws just for the sake of making them. As she spoke thus soberly, the little lady seemed really older than the man before her.

Then the spell was shattered.

“I will never wear a boned waist!” she broke in frankly.

In Mount Airy, twenty-five years ago, one did not speak openly of invisible clothing. In school one was taught to say limb, and not leg; and no young lady ever admitted any public knowledge of petticoats or stockings.

Then Miss Gorgas Levering yanked the twig from her braid, stood up, displayed two lithe young legs, shedding at once ten years of maturity.

He stood up, too. “Gorgas,” he began, and then stopped to look at her quizzically. “I can’t get used to that name,” he smiled. “With ‘Gorgas Lane’ just beyond the Unruh farm—” he waved a hand jokingly.

“But you!” she cried in defense—she knew all about him; he was “the professor” and a marked man. “‘Allen Blynn’—that’s a lane, too—Allen’s Lane! And that’s not so far away, either!”

Evidently the little lady was sensitive about her odd name.

“But Allen is a regular name,” he protested.

“So’s Gorgas!... And you’re ‘Allen L. Blynn,’ too; why, you’re a real ‘lane’!”

“Oh, I dropped the ‘L’ long ago—when grandmother died.”

“I never had it!” she exulted.

“But the ‘L’ isn’t for ‘lane,’” he shook his head sadly. “It’s much worse—it’s for ‘Lafayette.’”

“Oh!” she gasped her delight.

“Much worse, eh?”

“I should say so!”

“I take it all back, Gorgas,” he dropped his bantering tone, and shook his head so humbly, and smiled so pleasantly that she was soon mollified. “We’re both named after families, I see—the kind of families that have streets named for them; but that ‘Lafayette’ of mine is worse than—worse than even ‘Keyser’!” Gorgas laughed; one’s own name is never funny, but how comic are other persons’! “When Lafayette paid Mount Airy the great visit in 1825,” he explained, “he made a very formal call on my grandmother—kissed her hand, I believe—well, she gave up the remainder of her life to bragging about it, and she hoped to perpetuate the event by naming me ‘Lafayette.’ Wasn’t that a dreadful calamity to put upon a young infant?”

“Awful!” she agreed heartily.

“While she lived I had to be ‘Allen L. Blynn,’” he smiled ruefully, “But ‘Lafayette’ died with her, bless her good old soul. At college when they asked me what the ‘L’ stood for, I used to say, ‘Just L.’ You don’t know how scared I was lest that crowd should discover all about that kiss-the-hand business!”

The middleman and his group came up just then and joked obviously about their prowess as players.

“Getting points from Gorgas?” inquired the middleman. “She took the junior cup, you know, and against some smart boys, too. At least they thought they were smart.”

The middleman had won both sets that afternoon, and could afford to expand. “You know, you tutors ought to be tutored before you take us on again. That might make you—”

“Astuter?” suggested the professor.

His grin was not at the jest. He was thinking of Gorgas, standing erect and brown as young Pocahontas, and looking very like that famous lady. The frown had not yet gone from her eyes. She would not wear—! Bless her! He could see her years later in all the tortures and disguises that women permit themselves to indulge in, including the ugly balloon sleeves, which were already enveloping very young girls; and pyramidal high-heeled shoes; perhaps even a “bustle.”

Someone asked the time.

“Jee-ru-salem!” whispered Gorgas. “I’ve got to cut it home.”

“Tell your mother I’m coming by on Wednesday afternoon. At about three. I’m looking over that Williams boy at two. It’s near you, you know.”

“Very good, Professor Blynn.”

“Mr. Blynn, if you don’t mind.”

“Very good, Mr. Blynn.”

“Stay around Wednesday, will you? I want to talk some more.”

“Very good, Mr. Blynn.”

“Come around; you’ll find me in.”

The frown was entirely gone. She was smiling at her own “poetry” as she moved off.

“I’ll find you out, too, if I kin,” he threw back.

She walked two or three swift steps down the path before she retorted, without looking around:

“No, you won’t. You’ll simply ‘chin.’”

This was a pleasant blow at his profession. He was a talker. Only that very morning he had written in an “album”—it was a day of albums—answers to questions that bared him to the core.

What is your occupation? Deliverer of addresses.

What would you rather be? Maker of speeches.

What is your favorite game? Conversation.

What game do you most dislike? Conversation of others.

He watched her as she walked swiftly down the path. Good-looking youngsters do hold the eye! The suggestion of young Indian persisted, the ideal Indian maiden of Hiawatha: she was so brown; the hair fell in an enormous black braid; her form was almost curveless; and she strode along with all the motion in her gliding feet, her lithe body as steady and as straight as a young poplar.

She disappeared for a moment in the dip of a gully, then rose again and dwindled slowly down the long path across a field. With folded arms he stared after her, thinking of many things: of the beauty of young childhood, a wondrous, vanishing thing; of her active, mature mind, caged up in that child’s frame; of—at the end of the path she turned swiftly, as if she knew he was there, and shot a hand high in the air as a parting salute. He waved back instantaneously. He could watch her for two minutes longer, until she crossed the railroad. But she trudged sturdily on and did not look back again.

II
GYPSIES!

THE Williams boy, a well-built little man of eleven, was a healthy, riotous animal, keen, fluent and right-minded—but he had not been “promoted.” Blynn had found this out in an accidental meeting with the lad. The result was a regular Wednesday afternoon visit at the boy’s home with a new sort of “lessons,” and many tramps down Cresheim creek and up the Wissahickon—the core of the method—where instruction was part of the game.

Blynn had the teacher’s gift of presenting unknown regions of knowledge with all the allurements of advertisement of seaside estates. He aroused interest, a desire to explore, a proper pride in achievement; and, above all, hope. He never complained of stupidity, nor expressed the least impatience with slowness; so in this way he ever stirred up latent or lost personal faiths. Within a few months the Williams boy was ready to pass into the next grade and do himself credit; unless the well-intentioned but narrow school dames of the Hall should petrify his interest and with daily croakings cut off all communication.

Gorgas was standing in the fine old doorway of her home when he came out of the Williams’ gate. He waved to her cheerfully; she saluted gravely in return, one lift of the hand, as the Roman stage-senators do. When he came forward eagerly, his severe face alight with interest, she stood watching him without motion. That was a characteristic of Gorgas which she had possessed as a baby and which she maintained all her life; it gave charming dignity to her later years; active at one moment as the famous imps below, the next moment rigid as a wax-work, yet thunderingly alive, a fawn struck into silence, listening.

Not until he stood beside her did she move. Then abruptly she thrust out a hand.

“How do you do, Mr. Blynn,” she smiled an absurd, artificial smile, the perfect mask of a hostess. “Won’t you sit down? It’s awful good of you to call.”

“Wie geht’s, milady?” he bowed in perfect understanding of the game. “Excuse! I haff been talking zee Cherman Sprache mit dot Wilhelm’s poy und I cannot get back to English for several minuten after-varts, afterwarts—afterwards—there! My tongue’s free. ’Raus mit ihm! Gesundheit! How are you? Schreckliches Wetter—I mean, sticky weather, isn’t it?”

They had reached the living room by this time. A glance about had not revealed Mrs. Levering or the older daughter. No doubt, they would be forthcoming later.

“The weather is rather depressing,” she drawled. The tone struck him as decidedly familiar; but when she opened her large eyes and blinked deliberately at him twice, and then drew a languid hand across one cheek and fidgeted a moment in her chair, as if to distribute an imaginary “bustle,” it came to him with a rush that she was picturing Mrs. Williams, whom he had just left.

Blynn squeezed down into his chair, thrust his head into his neck, puffed out his cheek, a recognizable portrait of Mr. Williams, and growled.

“I don’t like it! I don’t like it! I don’t like it at all!”

In a moment or two they were caricaturing the neighborhood and making guesses as to the portrait.

He didn’t say, “That isn’t fair,” or “You shouldn’t mimic your elders that way”; nor did he begin any sentence with, “It isn’t nice for young girls to—” Instead, he joined in, became particeps criminis, and at once was initiated into the secretest of fraternities, the brotherhood of children. In a little while he had won the right to ask her any personal question he wished without once being suspected of school-teachering.

He wanted to know what she was reading.

“‘Man and Wife,’” she told him.

Wilkie Collins wrote it, and Professor Blynn did not know that! It was about a Scotch marriage, she explained: two persons had unwittingly acknowledged themselves man and wife before witnesses; that was enough to bind them in irrevocable marriage.

Her explanations were clear—evidently she knew what she was reading—and she talked of marriage and children with extraordinary frankness.

“At the same time I am reading ‘La Peau de Chagrin’ par Honoré Balzac,” this with a breathless kind of mystery.

The change of timbre as the French name floated out musically brought Blynn to sudden attention.

“You speak French?” he inquired incredulously. He knew that she had never gone to school, and that among Mount Airy families it was not then customary to have governesses.

“Assez pour m’ faire comprendre,” she came back quickly. “Et vous, m’sieur? Vous l’parlez aussi?”

“Where on earth did you learn the language?” he showed his admiration for her glib prowess. “I read easily enough. It cost me the hardest kind of grubbing, too. But I couldn’t talk it two minutes.”

She grew suddenly statuesque.

“Who taught you?” he persisted.

“Bardek,” she whispered. “You must not tell. You will not tell?”

He crossed his heart.

“It’s a great secret. Mother must not know. Bardek is Bohemian; he speaks all languages.”

“Who is Bardek?”

She lowered her voice.

“Promise you won’t tell.”

He promised readily.

“Bardek is a gypsy, I think; but he doesn’t travel. He lives in the old mill in Cresheim Valley. I ride in the mornings, you know, very often alone. He talks to me in French and tells me how to say things.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Three years.”

“Since you were ten?”

“Yes; that’s when I got ‘Gyp.’”

“‘Gyp’ is a horse?”

“Yes.”

“Cresheim Valley in the mornings is a rather lonely spot, eh?”

“Yes; that makes it fine! There’s absolutely not a soul about between seven and eight. If anyone comes, I step into the old mill.”

“Merciful heavens!” said Blynn, but not aloud. Nothing in his manner betrayed the slightest hint of anything but entire acquiescence in the policy of meeting gypsies in an unfrequented valley between seven and eight in the morning.

“He teaches me other things, too,” she went on. “I’ve never told this to anyone but you; not a person. We seem so well acquainted—after yesterday. Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you. It’s been a terrible thing to keep to myself. They think—” motioning toward the house—“I pick up French out of books, the way I get most things. I do hammered copper and silver inlay, too; Bardek taught me. But I don’t get practice enough. Bardek says one must give a life to it. He makes beautiful things, and sells them to rich people.”

“Do you pay him?”

“Oh, no!” she smiled in a superior way. “Bardek is above money.”

“Ugh!” thought Blynn. He seemed to remember a dirty, fat man, pounding away on something at the mouth of the ruined paper-mill. He had rings in his ears, and a pair of huge mustachios gave him a villainous air.

“I have tried to give him money. But he stopped all that in no time. He took me inside and showed me a cunning box set in a stone in the mill. It was full of gold—oh!”

The “oh” was uttered with quick anguish. Blynn came swiftly to her chair and raised her head. Tears were flooding her eyes, and her face was screwed up into a horrid attempt to suppress the noise of weeping.

“What is the matter, my dear child?” he asked again and again.

Several times she tried to speak. Evidently from her glances toward the door she feared someone would be aware of a break in her voice; so with heroic efforts she shut back the sobs.

“I have—told! I—have—told! I promised not—to tell. I have told—you. It is—all right—I—know. You would keep—it—a—secret. But it hurts—that—I—have told. Bardek has been—so—good to me. It was—wicked.”

It was simply an accident, he assured her. Quietly he soothed her. “We are pals now,” he told her. This would make them into a league of secrecy. She could trust him. All his life he had been a father-confessor to children. He was tested. Keeping a secret like that was hard for her. Now it would be easier. Some things are almost too much to hold. She nodded. One must have outlets. Mothers were made for that purpose. She looked worried at that, so he took a quick turn. Sometimes even mothers couldn’t just understand; then one must have a pal or “bust.” Her eyes showed approval. A pal must know everything. No secrets from pals. That seemed to be agreed. He would go with her to Bardek some day soon—she showed half-frightened wonder at the plan—well, they would talk it over like good comrades later. Someone was coming.

“My name is Mum,” he nodded, “second-cousin to Dumb.”

She gave him a look of wild approval as Mrs. Levering appeared from the rear of the house; she was dressed for travel and hurrying.

“Why, Professor Blynn, I declare!” the good lady was obviously surprised at his presence. “I am particularly pleased to see you. Harold Williams has been praising you to me and telling all about you. You’ve done wonders with that boy—”

“Oh, no! no! God and his good mother are responsible for all the wonders. A fine little fellow, he is. Somebody got on the wrong side of him; that’s all.”

“But why didn’t I know you were here?” She looked mildly at Gorgas.

Blynn hastened to explain.

“I was talking with Gorgas last Saturday afternoon at the tennis-courts—”

“Ah! You came to talk about Gorgas. Good! The very thing I have been thinking of myself. I wish I had known you were coming, for I must be off to our little literary club. We’re fined if we don’t come on time,” she smiled as if the matter were unimportant. “Don’t let me seem abrupt, but I have only a half-minute. So let me come out bluntly. I want you to take Gorgas’ education in charge; look her over; find out where she needs patching and repainting. I declare she has grown up out of babyhood before I am ready. It is almost ungracious of her. I must blame somebody. She is thirteen years old, and doesn’t know anything. My fault, I know; but you’re a wonder—everybody says so. You’ll do it; won’t you?... Oh, yes. I must be practical. Everybody is poor nowadays—the Democrats are in, you know!—I must inquire about prices. What do you charge by the hour? I must ask for wholesale rates, for Mr. Levering’s wholesale, you know, and always gets discounts!”

Generations of Pennsylvania-German thrift beamed coldly from her eyes, although the rest of her ample person actually smiled.

“Absolutely nothing an hour, Mrs. Levering.”

“Oh, no!” she protested, but she looked relieved. “I will not hear of that. The Democrats haven’t brought us that low—yet. Although goodness only knows what’s to happen next. I really believe they caused that blizzard last March! Well! We’ll talk it over later. But you’ll have to charge something. It’s your business, man, and a tough job you’ll have,” twitching Gorgas’ ears affectionately. “Reading novels and riding Gyp—that’s this little girl’s idea of getting an education!”

“All right, Mrs. Levering, we’ll talk it over later. But I make it a rule never to charge for this sort of out-of-school work. I like to do it. It’s my fun. But you may give me a dinner occasionally. We teachers do get hungry for good food—and good company!”

“A bargain!” the lady called out happily. “But I’m off. I’ll be late. You’ve cost me a quarter-dollar fine, young man. Dinners? If you do anything with Gorgas I’ll take you in as a permanent boarder. Day-day, child. Goodby, Mr. Blynn. Sorry I couldn’t stay. Gorgas,” she was at the door now, “get Louisa to make a nice cool drink. And give the Professor something to eat. Don’t ever let him get hungry!” Her laugh carried her down the steps.

As they picnicked on the back-lawn, his instinct told him to keep away from the Bardek story, to act as if it were a thing to be forgotten. Only when he was ready to go, and she seemed to have an unwonted appearance of depression, he repeated his promise to keep the matter secret until she would wish him to tell. This seemed to brighten her tremendously; for she was terribly downcast at the thought of her failure. Now she seemed to be almost her buoyant self.

“You did not tell your mother I was coming,” he remarked.

“No.” But she did not seem troubled.

“Nor your sister?”

“No,” very seriously, “they were both going out. I was afraid if I told them they might stay home.”

Then the comical side of her statement struck her. They both laughed over it as they shook hands.

“Goodby, pupil,” he waved, “see you later.”

“If you don’t forget the date-r,” she rhymed.

“I’ll sure be there, I beg to state-r,” he returned as he moved off.

“Wednesday next at this here gate-r,” she called after him, gleeful to get the last rhyme.

He shook his head and threw up his hands as if she had scored heavily against him. That was an instinctive trick of his, to make children feel the keen joy of a mental victory. It gave her a little glow for hours afterward, as he knew it would, and quite saved her from a far-off conscience which told her she had not been faithful to Bardek.

III
THE OLD PAPER MILL

BLYNN found himself tremendously interested in the business of teaching young persons, but he always discounted that enthusiasm. Scholarship, he felt, was his predestined occupation. Not that he really knew any good reason why the work of a delver in past documents should be especially worthy; nor did he ever inquire whether a life given to Elizabethan dramatists could be a life well spent. He enjoyed that sort of thing, but he had the collector’s instinct, not the scholar’s, although he did not know that; he carried on his readings and note-takings and classifyings as an amateur might collect butterflies. The figure fails in one important respect: all butterflies are beautiful. Better, he was like certain dealers in antique: ugly old furniture and bric-a-brac were sorted out with the same reverent care as the really beautiful. Six hundred a year—the beginner’s salary—seemed a magnificent return for tasks that he would willingly have performed, if he could have afforded it, without money and without price.

He did not know until much later that he was an exceptional teacher. Youngsters got the habit of confiding their academic troubles to him; and whether it were algebra or English grammar or poetry, he had the gift of making straight roads through the difficulties, and of charging his young friends with desire to go ahead.

A so-called stupid child or “bad” boys who wouldn’t study, these always seized his interest. Before he knew it, he had a dozen young folks on his list whose whole educational life he had surreptitiously taken possession of. The Williams boy was one; and now Gorgas had been added.

Gorgas Levering was an interesting “case” to Blynn. Through unwitting neglect, the child was out of touch with her parents and possibly in danger. Evidently she had a magnificent will, almost the only thing needful with the right sort of teacher, but perilous if it is coerced or left to drive its own unaided bent. The thought of her three years’ intimacy with the Bohemian Bardek gave Blynn a physical chill.

Bardek had done wonderful things with her, the French, for instance; she had the very tang of a native, even the shrugs and almost inimitable twists of hand and head. Blynn recognized the method; it was his own; and he respected Bardek’s results as a fellow-craftsman would; but he was not sure that he should respect Bardek’s morals.

She was the most interesting of all the children he had semi-officially under his charge, but she was something else. The memory of that illusion of maturity he could not dissipate by any amount of concentration upon the sum of her actual years. She had come at him first as a young woman challenging him to meet her on equal terms, and had stirred him as Olivia had been stirred by the disguised Viola. Some of the suggestion of that mistake continued to stay with him. The grave brown eyes searched him as he talked, and threw him into the half-belief that some witch had taken a woman and had given her the shape and habiliments of a child.

As he walked along the unfrequented streets of Mount Airy he scolded himself aloud for his shameful imaginings; but he could not shake them off. He reminded himself of Olivia fancying herself in love with Viola, and laughed. “Perhaps it is not Gorgas, but her sister. It really was brother Sebastian in the play. I’ll look her up. Keyser will—Keyser!—Bolts and shackles! What a name!”

One day he contrived, therefore, to chat with Miss Keyser, and so they arranged to spend an afternoon driving together. But on the way to “look Keyser up” he lapsed into a contemplation of the first meeting with Gorgas at the tennis-courts. “If this were Italy,” he grinned, “the thing would be simple enough; or even ‘Little Italy,’”—the near-by city’s Italian colony—“Thirteen, I hear, is rather the proper age there. At fifteen the little Italians either have bambinos or they are on the shelf. Wasn’t Lady Devereaux, Sidney’s famous Stella, about that age? I’ll have to look up precedents. Beatrice? Dante’s Beatrice? She was a ‘fourteener,’ wasn’t she? And Juliet! Ah! Juliet was just thirteen!” He quoted humorously from the play, “‘On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen; that shall she, marry.’... Guess Shakespeare knew what he was about!... I’ve had a sad jar. Those legs! And the braid, and the silly ribbon!... I haven’t felt so cheap since—”

He laughed aloud suddenly and set a frightened little spaniel barking with fury.

“Go it, old boy,” he called. “You aren’t half so startled as I was.... Well,” he nodded his head vigorously. “She gave me a little insight into myself and into what’s coming to me some day, I expect. The next time, I hope it will be a real woman. Just the same, I’m going to be always grateful to the little witch for the deception; and I’ll pay, too.”... He closed his lips with determination. “That Bardek fellow will be looked into—migh-ty care-ful-ly, I tell you, boy.... He’s been putting things in her head, I warrant.... Thought all that wise talk was second-handed.... Where did she ever come across Gardiner’s ‘Femine’? Heavens! Why, it’s full of rot, just the sort of thing to upset a girl and persuade her that wrong is right.... But I must be careful. If we drive her sort—” He threw up his hands.

Miss Keyser Levering was already waiting in the little two-seated family carriage.

“Am I late?” he asked cheerfully.

“No; I’m early,” she responded, digging under the seat for a rug. “That shows that you don’t know me as well as you should. Some people are always two minutes late. My specialty is being two minutes early. Jump in; I’m going to drive. This ‘off’ animal is ‘Sorry,’ not ‘Gyp’; ‘Sorry’ has to be handled by one of the family. ‘Gyp’ is never in the stable days like this.”

At the mention of “Gyp,” Blynn’s mental ears stood up, but he got into the carriage with much irrelevant jesting over the relation between horses and horse-sense.

“Where is Gorgas?” he asked casually.

“Off with ‘Gyp,’ as always.” The sister was not concerned.

“‘Gyp’ is mild, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes; stupid.”

“Which way did she go?”

“Her usual—down Cresheim Valley.”

They trotted off toward Chestnut Hill. Blynn broke into a chatty strain until they had turned into the pike which marks the county line.

“Let’s go up the Wissahickon,” he suggested. “You can turn off here and go through Cresheim.”

After leaving Main Street they plunged into the Cresheim Valley, which in the eighteenth century was a thriving industrial center, with prosperous mills—three or four of them—busy at the manufacture of hosiery and paper. One has only to recall the conspicuous masculine leg of that century to know the demand for proper hose, and when one is reminded that Cresheim Valley produced the paper for the printing of the Declaration of Independence, the historic setting is made; but steam, trousers, and a less rebellious time had passed the hand of oblivion over the once busy vale.

As a result, the old road was ragged and rocky, and the only sign that broke the effect of forest primeval was the ruins of two of the old mills, a half-broken dam, and a dangerous looking mill race.

Blynn kept to the safe rôle of talker; but inwardly he chafed and worried. Somewhere down in those leafy depths an unknown foreigner was enticing a young girl to come to him....

He scrutinized both sides of the road as he neared the ruined paper-mill. Tethered among the bushes he knew “Gyp” was peacefully cropping. He listened and watched, but at no time lost his cue in the small talk; and was repaid by a slight movement of the bushes and the sight of a long nose reaching for green branches.

“Sorry” neighed in greeting and stretched his head to look; but “Gyp” withdrew directly to munch his bunch of leaves.

“Has ‘Gyp’ a white star on his nose?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Do you see her?”

“No,” he looked the other way. “I just guessed. Most horses do.”

Below the mill he claimed to have dropped a glove, got out, and ran swiftly back.

Only one dilapidated corner of the ancient paper-mill was still standing, and that had to be reached via a bridge of logs. Canvas was fastened over holes in the roof, and odds and ends of boards made a patch-work flooring, through which the rushing mill race could be clearly seen. The waters below swirled noisily over rocks and fallen masonry.

Save for an old stool, some rag rugs and a mass of copper odds and ends, the mill was quite empty.

IV
“THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE”

ALMOST as Blynn surveyed the empty mill he knew he had made a mistake in coming at all, and was instantly eager to get out unobserved. He knew what a child would think of this sort of spying and how it would take weeks of building up to get back the lost confidence. Particularly was it important just now to maintain the genuine intimacy which had miraculously grown up between them in so short a time. As he stumbled up the rocky Valley road he was apprehensive of seeing and being seen.

Perhaps Bardek and she had been watching from near-by bushes. That thought chilled him. Mixed with the fear of losing the child’s faith in him as trusty pal was the quick antagonism against that other pal, who was no doubt with her now in this wild spot.

It was a case for slow treatment. Hurry would spoil all. To come near the rendezvous at all was a grave mistake, he told himself; he had obeyed an impulse, purely a personal one, too, and it was an impulse which his mind should have resolutely checked. It shamed him a little to think how amateurishly he had acted, after all his knowledge of the mind of children.

Gorgas must take him to Bardek in her own good time. One must play a waiting game and trust mightily that all would be well.

He regained the carriage, exhibited a glove and took up the dropped conversation.

“I don’t agree with you about the Duke,” he continued. Miss Levering had seen “Twelfth Night” recently and had read it over to prepare herself for a conversation with a university instructor. “The Duke behaves quite properly, if you will agree with my theory.”

“He was a goose,” commented the lady, “groaning over his countess and not having the gumption to go up to her and talk it out. And in the last act he whisks over to Viola just because she puts on dresses. Shakespeare nodded when he made the Duke; that’s my theory.”

“Let me tell you mine,” said Blynn. “To the Elizabethan, love was an infection, a kind of pestilence, like the plague, which one caught from another. Once you have it you are ill. You become moody, put on gay clothes, wash your face, and demand sad songs. They sold medicines, love philters to give the disease, and hate potions to cure it. A chap usually knew when he had caught the pesky thing, but he was not always sure of the source. Well, the Duke had a bad case. He got it from the boy Cesario, who was really, as you know, a charming young lady disguised. Now the very salt of the play is the Duke’s blunders in guessing who played the trick on him. The Elizabethan audience understood that joke and enjoyed every one of his false moves toward the conquest of the Countess. It’s as if a fellow had the influenza and began to treat himself as if he had sunburn. Every application of cold cream and every sneeze would be comedy to the onlooker. So in the end, when the Duke discovers the cause of his trouble he promptly marries it; as most of us do. Oh, he isn’t a bit inconsistent, if you understand Elizabethan love.”

“Well, that only proves the play is founded on an error,” she persisted. “If you must have a lot of historic learning to appreciate a play, it is not great drama. I insist, Shakespeare nodded.”

“What makes you so certain that love is not a plague?”

“It may be, for all I know,” she parried. “But I should think two modern young people would know when they—”

“But do they, always? A man may behave exactly like the Duke, have all the symptoms, and not guess for the longest while what really is the matter with him. Frequently he blames it on the wrong lady. Sometimes somebody has to take him aside and speak roundly to him—the girl’s father, for instance. And there are enough bad marriages to make me believe that lovers often make a wrong diagnosis. It’s still a mystery to me. Cupid and his arrows was not a bad theory. He was a wretched shot, you know; frightfully bad. That would explain a lot of mismating.”

“But the Countess?” she persisted. “She wanted to marry a woman just because she found her dressed in man’s clothing; and what did she do later? Promptly switched off to the lady’s brother, Sebastian. There! I have settled your theory. She had never seen Sebastian before. She couldn’t get any—any pestilence or plague from a man who wasn’t about.”

Blynn laughed. “I didn’t want to lecture to you; but the theory is rather complicated and you have hit upon a fine illustration. How far can love carry? We say, as far as one can see distinctly. The Elizabethans put no limit—as far as the ends of the earth, to the very stars and back again.

“Beatrice and Benedict are in love long before they know it. Petruchio has picked out his Katharine before he sees her. Viola is in love with the Duke the moment she hears his name. You see, they took their cue from the carrying power of the mysterious plague. Look the way La Grippe is ravaging us; and we think it has travelled from the Far East. Besides, they believed the stars arranged all this sort of thing. We don’t believe in fate. Therefore we make ourselves too wise. I incline toward the Elizabethan theory. Do you know Crashaw’s lines ‘To His Supposed Mistress’?

‘Who’er she be

That not impossible She

That shall command my heart and me;

Wher’er she lie,

Locked up from mortal eye

In shady leaves of destiny.’

“I’m content to believe in ‘the shady leaves of destiny.’”

Miss Levering was busy managing “Sorry,” who seemed restive. His ears were perked ahead, and he tossed his head nervously.

“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry, boy,” she soothed. “He sees something strange. There’s a man sitting on the roadside with a lot of pails around him. Trust ‘Sorry’ for picking out anything unusual.”

Blynn looked forward, but from his side of the carriage could see nothing.

“It’s a tramp, I suppose,” she conjectured. “They roost in here. Looks like a travelling tinker. ‘Whoa, Sorry! It’s all right, boy!’ If I talk to him he calms down. ‘Whoa, Sorry! Keep your head down, boy!’”

The man came into view; he was seated on a log hammering at a copper disk, a swarthy, stoutish fellow. A huge gold watch-chain stared out from his waistcoat. He wore no collar. A faded soft hat was decorated with a long turkey-feather. The costume, plus a large mustachio and much unshaved stubble, gave him an air of vagabondia.

“Sorry” slowed down and dug into the ground; the man looked up with smiling face.

“Bon jour, la compagnie!” he saluted, flourishing his hammer. Broad rings flashed from his fat hands.

Blynn searched about for traces of companions. The tall bushes gave no sign.

“Bon jour, Bardek,” returned Miss Levering. “Whoa, Sorry, you fool. It’s only Bardek. Bardek won’t eat you; whoa, boy!”

“Mais, oui!” laughed Bardek. “Il sait bien qu’ j’en ai souvent mangé du ch’val! The horse-flesh is vairy good.”

Blynn leaned forward to talk to him. Here was a fine chance to get acquainted.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted. “My French isn’t good enough to expose to the open air. I’ll have to talk English. Do you understand—”

But “Sorry” had evidently comprehended Bardek’s cannibalistic reference to the joy of eating horse-flesh, for he jolted Blynn down hard on the seat. At the syllable “—stand” Allen Blynn had abruptly sat. As they shot briskly up the drive, Blynn looked back to see the round face of Bardek extended in malevolent laughter.

When they had settled down into a normal pace, Blynn inquired,

“Who is this Bardek? Seems to me I have seen him often hanging about this region.”

“He’s a Frenchman—at least, I think he is French. Sort of a vagabond mender of kettles. I don’t know how he gets his living. He seems always well-fed and contented. He has a wife off there somewhere, and a couple of babes-in-the-woods. He comes and goes. Sometimes he is away for weeks on his rounds. We often stop to chat with him, Gorgas and I. Drat that animal. He ought to know Bardek. I’m ashamed of him. It was that big vase-like thing that scared him. He’d jump at a new tin-cup.”

They talked of the horses, then, as they emerged from a side-road, of the beauty of the Wissahickon Valley, a lovely unchronicled spot in American scenery, Miss Levering steering the conversation by gentle steps back to “Twelfth Night.”

“I’m almost converted to the Elizabethan view,” she admitted. “I’ve been going over in my mind a number of girls I know who have confessed how the man came, saw, and conquered. Girls do gabble, if it is dark enough, especially just after the marriage. They all talk like your Elizabethans, claim to have been destined for each other from the beginning, and so on; yet they all fought the man off at first; all except one girl—the man tried to get away from her, but something—your ‘shady destiny’—what was it?—got him at last.... It’s a horrid thought.”

“Why?”

“Well, it takes all choice away. Heavens! You might be destined to marry the lamp-lighter! I shouldn’t want to catch anything from ‘Aurora.’”

“Aurora,” the lamp-lighter, was one-armed and weather-beaten and gnarled like an ancient mariner; his classical name was a Levering invention.

The winding Wissahickon curled over its rocks far below, and thick trees covered every hill. An occasional carriage passed, mostly elegant broughams with liveried footmen and milady taking her afternoon drive; bicycles whizzed by with much churning of warning bells. Near the “Hill” Miss Levering cut off into a secluded side-road roofed by old trees.

Keyser Levering was twenty-two, and had been grown up and more or less her own master since she was fifteen; yet she felt just a little self-conscious on two counts. First she was alone in the secluded woodland with a young man. Of course, a chaperone would have been absurd; America had adopted the European chaperone for only very official affairs. In the ’80’s she would not have thought of going to the theater with him without elderly assistance, but she was permitted by the code to take him driving up the Wissahickon.

Secondly, she had dared openly to discuss with him the awful topic of love. To be sure, they had done it in an academic setting. Who could object to a learned consideration of Elizabethan literature? Nevertheless, she was not unmindful of the personal modern application of Elizabethan “theory.”

She did not want to become personally involved. Her instincts would have fought off any attempt on the young man’s part to bring the topic up to date; yet she found herself, mothlike, desiring him to do just that. His Elizabethan theory of maidens disturbed by unknown forces, holding out willing hands to nameless gentlemen, and hardly sure of recognizing the rescuer when he appeared—that was not only a startling idea to her, but it struck surprisingly near a description of her own state.

For a year or more she had been in a stupor of daydreams over that “not impossible He” that should command her heart and her. He took no visible shape in her mind, but remained near and yet disappointingly aloof and shadowy. Sometimes she had the palpitating feeling that he was just around the corner, that his nearing foot-falls could be heard. At other times she was sure she was dancing with him or talking to him over a dinner table. Many a young man was flattered by her searching gaze or by the subtle intimacy which she contrived to throw into a simple personal question.

Once during the previous winter Blynn had been frightened off by one of these moods of hers, and she knew it and was ashamed. The last thing she meant to do was to apprise this young man of her quest. He was being probed and cross-questioned; that was all; but he had not understood, and had misnamed her, coquette.

This pleasant jog among the leafy bowers of the Wissahickon, charged as it was by thoughts of Gorgas and her perilous rendezvous with Bardek, caused the professor to recast his idea of Keyser Levering. They had talked of love, to be sure, and she had held to the topic deliberately; yet with her eye and a considerable part of her attention necessarily on the horses, she had carried on the chat strictly like a graduate student. Of course, she knew the man. One flashing side-long glance from her fine, brown eyes would have sent him flying to cover and to silence.