BOOK TWO The Hidden River (continued 2)

“The anonymity of the Lady distresses me,” he wrote once. “If I could put my whole case before her, I am sure she would give me a higher rating. For already one of my friends of the Public Square benches has found me out and successfully negotiated the loan of a dollar. Let someone try to get an unearned dollar out of any ‘newspaper.’”

And that was not all. His companion of the excursion steamer—the male—had caught him on the campus, where no doubt he had been lying in wait, and had sold him tickets for the annual Expressmen’s Ball.

“Perfes’r—” he began.

“But I am the janitor; am I not?” Blynn smiled.

“Am I not!” he mimicked, “‘Am-I-not’ ain’t never been no janitor.... ‘Am I not!’” he got a deal of amusement out of the phrase. “Knew y’ was a profess’r all the time. Wharf watchman tol’ me. Said you was a smart gab-fester, too. He’s heard you—a Socialist, he is.”

“Lately,” wrote Blynn, “he has been seeking my advice on a number of family matters, leading up to hints for loans. An unkempt, overgrown daughter came to my rooms yesterday with a note. I was stone-cold; but it almost made me ill.

“And now ‘Evil’ has found me out. He objects at the hospital because of my card on a bunch of roses; and threatens to sue me for personal assault; I presume he will complete the charge by adding alienation of his wife’s affections! A book I may have been, raised thence to a daily journal, but, Leverings all, I appeal to you for promotion; assault and alienation are right human qualities.

“Faithfully yours, “Allen Blynn.

“I am on the trail of the Lady.”

The Leverings agreed that the “Lady of the Interruption” was a delightful mystery—all except Gorgas; but she said little at home. She put the case to Bea Wilcox, and to Bardek.

“What do I think of her?” Bea echoed her inquiry. “I think she’s no lady at all.”

“That’s what I think. I—” Gorgas began eagerly.

“I think she’s a Brass Image,” said Bea.

“It is so!” Bardek agreed solemnly, who knew nothing of the subtile English meanings of “brass.” “And it is before such images that men do often bow in worship. If she is young, as you say, and if she come to the man and fight him, then it is the female hunting the male for herself.”

“What are you driving at, Bardek?” Bea broke in. “Females, as you call them, don’t hunt males. It’s the other way about.” She put her arm around Gorgas and rocked back and forth in a characteristic attitude. “We know—us girls know—don’t we, Browny?”

“Oh, yes!” Bardek had open contempt for Bea’s mind. “You talk like most peoples who do not see anything. Look at all the hats of women! Dead birds and painted flowers and rags and wires! Ugly? Phuh! But zey do not see zat zey are ugly. So! When you will want your man, you will go to him—like all t’others—and you cry out to him that you are here; and he will not come at first; and zen you will wear crazy clothes, and dance and beat a drum until he must see you. And all the time you will not know that you do that. You will not see.... But how you will beat zat drum!”

“Professor Blynn would not listen to her!” Gorgas announced irrelevantly. Her mind was on the Lady of the Interruption; there was defiance in her tone, a note of challenge to the unknown trespasser, none of which was lost on Bardek. He shaded his bushy brows a trifle, and he gazed thoughtfully into her flushed face as if he had suddenly discovered something new and interesting there; but he gave no other sign of what might be his own surmises.

“Do you think so, Bardek?” she persisted.

“No-o,” he hesitated; “not at the first.” A smile began to flutter across his face; then he roared in sudden laughter. “He is so far up—at the top of the Heaven! How she must beat her little drum for to make Saint Acetum to hear!”

“Who is Saint Acetum?” both girls asked.

Bardek sobered abruptly. “You do not know Saint Acetum?” he asked gravely.

No; they did not know. Saints were not in fashion any more. This is not the Middle Ages, Bardek. But they should be ashamed, nevertheless, he told them, and scolded beautifully. Then he explained:

“Saint Acetum it is who is forever repairing ze roof of ze Heaven. Can you not see him up there—far superior in altitude to all the angels of Heaven, and slowly feeling zat he is superior?”

But what had Saint Acetum to do with Mr. Blynn?

“Ho!” cried Bardek. “Mr. Blynn, he is so good! Like Saint Acetum he is worried zat ze roof of ze Heaven may fall down; so it is zat he is always fixing, fixing; and he will not listen even when ze good angels call to come down and be for a little time happy.... And you have not heard of Saint Acetum? Nom du nom! And you are not ashamed of zat?”

“Acetum?” repeated Bea. “What a funny name.”

“‘Acetum,’ it is ‘vinegar,’” Bardek explained. “Zat is Latin, Miss Bea, of which you know nothings, because you have gone to school—”

“Oh, we had Latin in school; didn’t we, Browny?”

“Zat is what I say,” nodded Bardek firmly. “You know nothings. What! You do not know about Saint Acetum, ze Vinegar Saint; you do not know—” Bardek burst suddenly into ironic laughter—“because it is I, Bardek, who have jus’ made him up out of my head!”

“Oh!” laughed Gorgas, somehow relieved at the thought that the Vinegar Saint was merely an invention of Bardek. “Allen Blynn, the Vinegar Saint! That is too funny!”

“So you see,” Bardek was exulting in his cleverness, “how she must beat her little drum, that Lady, to draw down Saint Acetum, who is always repairing ze roof of ze Heaven?”

Gorgas was sobered instantly. “Do you think that woman is trying to marry Mr. Blynn?” she asked anxiously.

“No,” Bardek replied, while he watched her out of half-closed eyes; “I do not say so much. I think she do not know what she do. But she is vairy interested—oh, vairy interested—in the nice young man. She do not like him? Oh, no! But she go, and go; and she talk and she write. In all the great big world there is but one reason for that. The little roots of the weeds, zey shove and push and work and zey do not know why, but one day zey come out where is water; and zen zey know why.”

“It is terrible!” the words escaped Gorgas involuntarily. It gave her an inexpressible sensation of illness to think of mon capitaine at the mercy of so irresistible a force.

“Oh, no!” laughed Bardek; “it is not terrible. No! It is vairy wonderful and le bon Dieu, he has made it so!”

Le bon Dieu! Ah, no! It could not be from heaven, or why should the very thought of it torment her?

She went home to nights of acute distress and days of smiling mockery. She listened to all sorts of inquiries about her health, parried the questions with vague fibbings; but she knew the cause of the storm that raged within.

Then came a night of resignation. She surprised herself—and blamed herself, too—at her easy recovery. What powers of adaptability we have! The deepest grief is, somehow, assuaged. If it was to be; it was to be. She found herself, one day, laughing at herself. A fortnight later, she was lost in the preparation for her graduation from The Misses Warren’s Select French and English School for Young Ladies. The sorrows of seventeen are not fatal. Yes; she was quite herself now, marvelling only occasionally at the turbulence that had shaken her.

And therein she deceived herself, as all of us continually do. She was quite her serene self—so she thought. We know so little about ourselves, about what we think, about what we want, even about what we are doing. We talk much—confidently; we declaim, make speeches, deny vehemently, or affirm with hand upraised: but deep within us, like a Hidden River, flows the unconscious life. When it wells to the surface we know it for the first time, cry out in fear, or exult. When it subsides we say, “It is not there!” We are poor witnesses, with all our boastings and modesties, poor witnesses either for or against ourselves.

“I wonder where my roots are going?” Gorgas asked herself. For answer she dropped the consideration of the width of ribbon she would wear on her graduation dress and sat down to write a letter to Allen Blynn. It was a burst of personal confession—the Hidden River was welling very, very near the surface!—and most particularly she told him about the “Brass Image,” and warned him. Then she read it over and destroyed it.

“Oh, I guess I’m not brassy enough,” she said and shook her head.