BOOK THREE (continued 2)

It was difficult to know when Bardek spoke out of his serious opinions or through a desire to stir up his listeners. In English, especially, was he hard to fathom. Sometimes his auditors had laughed at the wrong spot, had taken his most earnest talk as if intended for droll humor. It was not prudent so to do; for then Bardek called on his heavy artillery of irony and satire, and woe betide the weakling who stood before him: the personal blemish of his opponent, moral or physical, which society had agreed to ignore, was trotted out for inspection, caparisoned with many unique beauties of language. To Gorgas, Ned Morris had seemed quite a man; but she deferred questioning Bardek too closely on that point.

Instead, she seemed to shift the subject.

“I envy you your freedom, Bardek,” she sighed. “When you want a thing, you just go and take it. If you want to cut loose you can say, ‘Let her go, Gallagher’ and boomp! you’re at the bottom. It takes courage, I tell you. One has to just stop caring for everybody and what everybody thinks. I can’t. I can’t be free. I’d like to break away and, if I wanted to, eat my breakfast in the middle of Main street—in my bare feet, too; but I couldn’t do it. Not that I care an awful lot about what folks say. It isn’t exactly that; but I’d be scared stiff. I might get as far as Main street with my oatmeal and roll, but my teeth would be chattering so much from fright that I couldn’t get the breakfast down.”

Bardek thought the matter over carefully. Then he eyed her seriously and asked:

“Something in your mind, it troubles you, eh?”

“Oh, no.”

He was not convinced.

“When you have great troubles, tell somebody. Confession is good. That what makes ol’ Mac such a fine man. He is always clean, is ol’ Mac. Every Saturday night he stand in line and think of the bad in him—it is not much, but no matter—then he soon be on his knees to tell the father and when he come out he is all w’ite-wash inside. Ol’ Mac, his mind is not always full of dead matters and ferments and things that go bad. His mind is like my house after Mrs. Mac have come to slop hot soap-water over everyt’ing. I know. Sometimes I, too, go to father and tell him everything.... No troubles, eh?”

“Oh, nothing’s the matter with me, Bardek; that is, nothing worth telling.”

“Very well,” he nodded. “When you make confession you must want to do it. Your inside will tell you it is time when.”

“That’s just what I want to know, Bardek,” she brought him back. “You listen to what the ‘inside’ bids you do, and you never question what the ‘outside’ would say. That’s freedom. I wish I had it.”

He worked for some time at his designing, as if he did not care to discuss the matter further. Occasionally, he looked over his shoulder at her, staring into her eyes as if to see what was within.

“So you would be free?” he asked quietly. “Well, it is easy. But first, you must know what freedom is—and that is hard. I have had many thoughts about freedom and have changed my mind many, many times; and just now I am not so sure as I was three, five, ten year ago. Once I t’ink freedom is ‘do as you please.’ In America you say that so much, ‘I do as I please.’ It is vairy nice. But ‘as I please’ is sometime not nice. For one, two, three minutes, yes. When you jump into nice, cold water and swim when it is yet April, ‘Oh!’ you say, ‘it is fine!’ but the next day you sneeze and for two weeks you have bad cold. That not vairy nice, eh? Now, I think you have not freedom then. You put great chains on you which keep you in house for two weeks when you would please go out. Sometimes it is freedom to be wise and not do ‘as I please.’

“You t’ink to sit in Main street and eat breakfast is freedom. You are right, quite right, if that is what you do want. But also, you want peoples to like you and not to laugh and touch the head and say, ‘What a crazy, silly child!’ You must choose. Well, you find you didn’t want to sit in Main street; not at all. It give you just what you don’t want.

“Life is full of jus’ that. ‘To do as you please,’ yes, that is to be free. But it is so hard to know what will please. You want swim in April spring water? You do not want cold in head? You cannot have both, my child. Freedom is to know what one to take. And who is to tell? It is hard, vairy hard.

“Then there are the other peoples—the great crowd, of them I do not think much—but of vairy few, my wife and those big boys, and you, Miss Gorgas, and of ol’ Mac—well, of them I do care. To keep them happy I must not have somet’ings. I please not to have them. I want them vairy much—oh, vairy much I want them—but so do I want to see the good friends with smiling face. I have freedom—yes—but I lose much. And it is good to lose.”

Gorgas was thinking how similar were the philosophies of Bardek and Allen Blynn, although each expressed his point of view in different ways. Here was an essential agreement on the mystic puzzle of human conduct, and by men who looked upon life from nearly opposite angles. It was as if Puritan and Cavalier, Stoic and Epicurean, Spartan and Athenian had for once settled their eternal quarrel.

“How did you learn all this?” Gorgas asked.

“By much troubles and much pains,” he shook his head. “You get one little cold in head. Ah! That is nothing. You learn so cheap! But I? I have walked in blood.... Nom d’une pipe! how I pay to know so little!”

Whatever were the experiences that Bardek conjured up, it prevented further speech. So they hammered away for the remainder of that morning without further discussion. Occasionally in the pauses she would hear Bardek muttering his nom d’une pipe!—a sign of great perturbation.

And she was glad. Clearness had come into her thinking. In her mind now she was certain of the track for a little way ahead. She had asked about freedom because she meant to liberate herself from a great thralldom, but she had feared the consequences; now that she had been taught to face all the choices, all the possible results, she had chosen and was content.

XXI EVE’S CHOICE

MEANWHILE Allen Blynn, packing up his belongings at the end of the term, was far from either decision or content. The faculty of Holden College had divided bitterly on the question of the introduction of “electives.” Nowadays electives are accepted so serenely that one forgets how sinful they were some twenty or more years ago; but we shall not here touch the terrible battle which waged over the contention of the conservatives that a college senior could not hope to be a gentleman unless he had read the “Pseudolus” of Maccius Plautus. It is enough to know that, led by the example of Eliot of Harvard, Blynn had joined the sinful radicals and was openly preaching the “new education.”

This young man, who could be so eloquent with Gorgas Levering on the subject of Conservatism in Private Conduct, found himself an unwilling Public Reformer in Education. In his private thoughts he bound the law rigorously upon himself, but in public he was an impatient radical demanding that Holden College should cease weeping sentimentally over its eighteenth century past and begin to do its duty toward the children of the present year of grace. He did not know that that sort of inconsistency is alarmingly common. A man may be in favor of freedom as regards his country, but not as regards the goings and comings of his wife; a man may love his neighbor as himself on Sundays, yet unmercifully send promissory notes to protest on Mondays.

Naturally the students were solid for the electives and against Maccius Plautus and all his tribe, and with bonfires and shoutings they lauded their spokesman on the faculty. But it was the newspapers that shot the controversy out of its local setting and made it semi-national and glaringly notorious. And it was not all due to the managing of Diccon. Some men are naturally dramatic; all that they do is already good “news”; and once in the headlines it is almost impossible to keep out. Let a lawyer win a scandalous case or a clergyman defy his bishop; for the remainder of his days he cannot so much as visit the zoological garden without having the matter publicly heralded. The papers gave space to the Holden reforms because Blynn was back of them. Blynn could be counted on for spectacular things. “The Lady of the Interruption” had made him a perpetual headliner!

It was a heavy-hearted young man, therefore, who travelled toward Mount Airy the next morning, unable to escape some of the congratulations or to avoid seeing his picture flaring on the inside page of newspapers held by fellow passengers. He assumed the guilty skulk of an embezzling cashier, fearful lest he should find some casual eye comparing him with the photograph. He wondered what dreadful things they had said about him, but dared not read. The newspaper “boys” liked him—all boys did; they showed their affection by writing him up as if he were a pedagogic Luther, and it made him almost ill. “Rumors” of the resignation of President Galt and the election of President Blynn had been heard by the astute scribe. Dear old Rumor, patron saint of reporters!

Diccon did his share in the home town; he wrote beautiful imitation telegrams to his paper, briefly summing up the essential matter in dispute and making out a clear victory for their fellow-townsman, whose call to an important post in another city had been thus so thoroughly justified.

Blynn protested, but Diccon claimed to be powerless. “You’re ‘news’ now, old man,” he explained. “Nothing on earth could keep you from publicity. When newspapers begin to give you four or five thousand dollars’ worth of free advertising, it is because they think it pays. Once they have made you famous—”

“Infamous!” suggested Blynn.

“Same thing”; Diccon was undisturbed; “they’d do the same by you if you scuttled a hospital and got off with the job. When they go in to make you known to thousands of readers they have created customers for that sort of news. Every time you’re mentioned after that, they are assured of satisfied nods from their patrons. You are a continued story, a never-ending serial.... And you can’t expect me to howl, can you? You have made good, as I knew you would. Well, that cleans my slate. No one can say I pulled for a friend. You happened to be my friend, but also you happened to be the best man for the job.”

“Accident! accident!” cried Blynn; “accident and the absurdity of news values.”

In that frame of mind he dropped in on the Leverings. Mrs. Levering and Kate were sewing on the lawn at the rear in the shade of their huge chestnut trees. Gorgas was in town purchasing materials for the “smitty.”

The old familiarity was there in their greetings and something of warmth due to the natural joy in another’s success; but there was also a deferential treatment due to his newspaper fame, which made him uncomfortable.

“My dear Professor Blynn,” Mrs. Levering beamed toward him, “I do wish I could get courage to ask you to glance over the literary program of our little club. We’re not at all satisfied with the plans for next year; of course, we are all amateurs without taste or knowledge. But I’m afraid you are so busy with—”

“Not at all!” Blynn broke in. “Do let me work with you. I should be delighted. I have bushels of time and I’ll dig for you like a good gardener, provided—you don’t call me ‘professor.’”

“Oh, you’re too modest.”

“Not at all; I’m too proud!” he laughed. “In America ‘professor’ and ‘doctor’ are the inferior titles; ‘Mr.’ is really the mark of distinction. I like the way they say ‘Mr.’ Eliot in Cambridge. Fancy saying ‘Professor’ Eliot or even ‘Dr.’ Eliot! It would be like referring to Dr. George Washington! And he was an LL. D., too; both Harvard and U. of P.; but who remembers that? I have been ‘professored’ all my life. You don’t know how I yearn—like a small boy—to be called ‘Mr.’”

“Mr.” was agreed upon by Mrs. Levering, although Kate demurred.

“We always call you ‘Allen Blynn’ when we talk of you here at home,” she remarked thoughtfully. “I always say ‘Allen.’ You call me Kate; perhaps I had better dub you—”

“‘Pete’—for Petruchio,” he joked. “You can’t tell, you know. Fine weather like this, the germ is everywhere.” He was reminding her of his theory that love was a contagion.

“I fear you are immune,” she looked up from her embroidery frame and searched his face comically.

His eyes had the far-off stare of men who dream much. Your thinker is no great lover, she thought. He is too busy with the affections of his brain, the little loves of his own creation; even in their most animated conversations they seem only to half attend to what is going on about them.

“Please don’t say that,” Blynn protested. “Why, vaccination takes on me terribly. I am awfully susceptible. You don’t know how I want to be—uh—quarantined and posted as a dangerous case.”

Mrs. Levering arose. “Of all nasty talk!” she smiled. “Germs and disease! I fear I don’t quite follow you two young persons. And, besides, there is a garden in the back of the house that demands my inspection. Ugh! How can you laugh in the same breath with germs!” She moved off toward her garden.

“Where’s the child?” Blynn looked toward the “smitty.”

“What child?” Kate followed his gaze. “Oh, Gorgas? Child! You haven’t seen her since spring, have you? That child is sprouting, I tell you. She’s taller than I, by an inch or two. And her gowns! She’s been spreading herself lately! Gracious! You won’t dare to call her child—”

“Why, she’s only seventeen!”

“In years, yes; but in experience and general get-up she is twenty-five. Really, she’s quite stunning. It’s made me spruce up, I can tell you.... But, I’m not sorry, you know.... I say, I’m not sorry.”

“Why?” coming back abruptly to the lady before him.

“If Bianca has enough swains Katherina may have a chance with the left-overs.”

“Do you recall the advice I gave you the last time we were talking on this subject!” Blynn leaned forward and grew earnest.

She nodded and exhibited her embroidery.

“This is all I’m fit for.”

“Don’t say that. It isn’t fair to yourself, and it isn’t true. I wish you would let me take you in hand. I have had boys who have felt just as you do, until I enticed them really to get started at something.”

She agreed that it sounded exciting, but Petruchio might come along; one was never without hope; and then, smash! would go all the toil.

He pondered over that, and questioned why a woman’s occupation should go smash! just because she married.

“Women don’t want any other occupation,” she confessed. “I don’t.”

“I bet a dollar it’s pure use and wont!” he exclaimed. “Nobody can tell what is just custom and what is not, until after we’re dead a thousand years. Women don’t throw themselves into careers with the same daring energy as men, because they have to keep such a terrible look-out for marriage. At any moment, from around the corner, as you once said, their future may assail them. It’s almost as if a young man got up in the morning a barrel-maker and by night found himself a deep-sea diver! That’s disconcerting. I should think the excitement of guessing what might happen would play havoc with that cooperage business.”

They speculated on the uncertainty of a girl’s life; uncertain until some man decided for her.

“You see,” Kate explained. “A boy has his fortune to make and knows it depends upon a lot of acquired qualities; and unless he’s exceptional he can predict pretty well what that fortune is going to be. All that he has to do is to look at his father. Now a girl, no matter what her father or mother may be, has every chance in the world. A prince might choose her—haven’t royal dukes married chorus girls?—or the grocer’s apprentice, or the next governor of the State, or—the head of the division of English.”

He acknowledged the point, but his mind was concentrated on something else.

“And nobody may choose her at all,” he added significantly.

“But she won’t know that till she’s dead,” Kate responded gaily. “And not even then, perhaps—‘There is hope beyond the grave,’ you know!”

“There’s my point,” he stuck out an argumentative finger, his earnest eye quite showing that he had missed her light pleasantry. “She ought to know it long before. She ought to face the fact of the million or so of unmarried women—good, fine women, too. She ought to presume from the very beginning—her mother should put it into her head—that in all probability she will not marry. The dreams should be deliberately shaken out of her; the years of pretty primping and ogling I would abolish without a qualm. The women on parade! Ugh! I fly from them and find shelter with the aged married ones.

“Now you,” he turned to her with such frankness as quite to disarm the direct speech. “You live in a village, revolving in an eddy; it would be a sheer accident if your mate found you.”

“I might take Eve’s choice,” she reflected. How amused she seemed!

“What was that?” he interrupted his argument. The phrase was new to him.

“The only man available.”

“Ah! Eve’s choice! The only man available and the man God created for her. That’s a wonderful choice and a rare combination in history, you must admit.”

No; she must face the facts. She was a member of the most unmarriageable class of women, those who are neither rich nor poor, yet who sit at home unknown.

Mrs. Levering could be seen occasionally hovering over her garden. Once or twice she stood erect, her ample figure surrounded by all the flowers of June, and surveyed with satisfaction the two earnest young persons. A few more such tête-à-têtes, that was all. Let them be together. Somehow, she felt that she had managed things excellently. Some persons would take credit for the laws of nature. If the sun should shine brightly on her lawn party she would accept congratulations as if it were a right tribute to her cleverness.

“You’ll do, Allen Blynn,” Mrs. Levering remarked to a drooping rose-bud. Allen was talking earnestly with head and hands. Kate seemed to be looking absently away. “But Keyser Levering will have to be spoken to,” she added. “I’m afraid she is too cold.”

Then she ordered Louisa to prepare a platter of sweet cakes and an iced lemon drink, carefully concocted to suit the warm weather.

She might have recalled the order if she had known at that moment Allen Blynn was proving to Keyser Levering that as marrying for her was probably out of the question it behooved her instantly to find a sensible life-job!

And she found it. By accident the work that she was destined to do unfolded to her. And by the same accident Allen Blynn found his own work.

XXII TOP-O’-THE-HILL

AS Mrs. Levering, flanked by Louisa and the refreshments, moved toward them, Kate shifted the subject.

“Did you know I have been coaching the Croft boy?”

“No!” he was surprised. “He hasn’t said anything to me about it. Since when?”

“Practically all winter.”

“Well! well!” he ejaculated. “I thought that chap was coming up strong. You quite take the wind out of my sails. I had been giving myself all sorts of kudos over that case. And here it’s you, all the time. How did it happen?”

“He brought me over one of your letters,” she explained as she helped with sugar. “Your stenographer by-the-hour had mixed up an important direction. He disliked to ask you about it—you know how shy he is—so he put it to me. I puzzled it out; we became very well acquainted and began to hold regular irregular sessions together.... I enjoyed your letters immensely. Once, you took him to task about a stupid error which was really mine. He had a good laugh at me, I can tell you. Isn’t he a pathetic little fellow?”

“He’ll be a great thinker some day,” Blynn avowed. “You’ll be proud of your share in the making of him.”

Mrs. Levering was pleased to hear them discussing methods of pedagogy so intimately.

“You’ll have Keyser turning school-mistress, yet,” she suggested. But her smile showed that she had no such fear.

“And why not!” Blynn seized the idea. “Oh, I don’t mean the regular kind; normal training, public school and all that sort of thing. That’s fine, too; but it’s overcrowded with women, and the whole business is set like a plaster cast. I almost despair of seeing any development there; routine and habit have fastened themselves upon the institution. I have dreams of another kind of teacher, something like Pestalozzi, gathering his little ones about him and teaching them without ever their being aware.”

He told them about Pestalozzi. When the scourge of war swept over Switzerland in 1798 neither men nor women were spared. It was a massacre. Pestalozzi’s heart went out to the children. In a ruined convent on the shores of Lake Lucerne, he gathered the deserted little ones about him and shared their sufferings. They had neither home nor parents, and they were hungry. “I cannot fight,” he said; “I cannot raise my hand against my brother; but the children of my brother, the fatherless children, these I can serve, their piteous little bodies I can save, and their starving desolate souls.” Blynn darted into the library and brought out a book and read them Pestalozzi’s own story. “‘My hand lay in their hand, my eye was their eye, my tears flowed with their tears, and my laughter mingled with their laughter. They were out of the raging world; they were with me, and I was with them. Their meat was mine, their drink was mine. I had nothing, no friends, no servants; I had them alone. When they were well I stood in their midst; when they were ill I was at their side. I was the last who went to bed at night, the first who rose in the morning. Even in bed I prayed and talked with them until they were asleep,—they wished it to be so.’”

Blynn closed the book reverently. “They say he was an unhandsome man, but that he had a wonderful transforming smile. He saw into the heart of children. I should be happy if I were that sort.

“My dream is to have just such a school,” Blynn continued. “I have even gone as far as to pick out the site—off in Cresheim Valley. We should have to select our teachers with the utmost care. They must be gifted to communicate freely with children. Communication is everything. I don’t care much about what they know, although we must have skill there, too, especially in art work and languages; but the main thing in teaching is not knowledge, but wisdom.”

Mrs. Levering voiced the discontent of parents with schools as they are and expressed the belief that there would be no difficulty in securing paying pupils.

“It would be a great joy to spend one’s life at that task,” he mused.

“Why don’t you?” Kate inquired quietly.

Well, he was a professor of English; that was the first reason. His studies had all been to prepare him for scholarship. One could not go against one’s life preparation. The main reason seemed to be the matter of expense. Elisha might begin such an undertaking, but not without the ravens. It costs money even to do good. To open such a school and keep it going would require a never-ending store of health and good cheer. The vitality of the staff would be absolutely essential to its life. Worry over money or, worse, the necessity of putting good energy into outside work—that would wear down the most courageous spirit and would mean slow failure.

But his mind was on the theme. He sketched the ideal environment for children as he saw it clear before him. There should be much out-of-doors, and glorious muscle-stretching play; health should come first, and then the searching discovery of individual aptitude. The world’s store of necessary information would be transferred as naturally and as imperceptibly as growth. The children would never once object; the enormous turbines of curiosity would actually drive them along; give a child half a chance and he will question himself into intelligence.

And what a pace these youngsters would travel! He had one boy—one of his “cases” whom he taught personally and by correspondence—who had done four years of grammar school work in eight months.

“He was not forced,” Blynn explained; “he was enticed to discover his speed. We dawdle mightily in our long years of preparation. Think of deciding before you were born that you must not study fractions until you are eleven years of age! You should see some of my six-year-old lads eat up fractions! They love ’em! Especially the vulgar and the improper ones!”

“Allen Blynn,” Kate remarked, “with all your gift for discovering the genius of others, you haven’t found out your own ability.”

“And what is that, pray?”

“At heart you’re not really a college professor—”

“I believe you,” earnestly. “I’m afraid I ‘profess’ for a livelihood and for the excitement that’s in it. The racket I’ve stirred up in Holden; phew! But what can I do?” he spread out his hands pathetically. “I am ‘professing’ because scholarship is not endowed. Scholarship and teaching! They are the antipodes! Scratch a fine scholar and you’ll probably find a wretched teacher.”

“I doubt if you are even a scholar,” she persisted.

“Please be more careful, Keyser,” Mrs. Levering looked up from her sewing. “You mustn’t be flippant, you know. That’s one of the things the Leverings do not do, whatever else they may be guilty of.”

“I’m very much in earnest, mother,” Kate continued. “Allen Blynn is a genius with little children. He should be a primary teacher, that’s—”

“Gracious!” Mrs. Levering stared. “Why not hire him as a coachman or gardener! Primary teacher! That’s a sort of public nursery governess, isn’t it?”

Blynn was regarding Kate in deep perplexity.

“Remember Pestalozzi,” she ignored her mother. “You have just his spirit and just his gift. You have something of his face, too. Oh, I know they say he was a plain man, but they called Lincoln that. Few people understand the beauty of ruggedness—”

“Thanks,” he bowed.

“Children always understand. And they thoroughly comprehend you, Allen Blynn. I have watched you at your work. It’s—it’s just great! That’s your job, sir!”

“Oh, I hope you’re right,” he glowed innocently. “Wouldn’t it be fine! You could help— There! That’s your job, madam!”

“And Gorgas could do the shop end—” Kate put in enthusiastically.

“And Bardek!” remembered Allen. “Wouldn’t he be a cracker-jack at the languages!—”

“And Mac,” remarked Mrs. Levering satirically. “He could teach horsemanship and stabling.”

“Why not!” exclaimed both Kate and Allen. “Mac cares for horses the way everybody should care for children,” said one. “He’s the sort of teacher I should want for myself,” said the other.

And so they chattered until Allen remembered that the lack of funds stood forever in the way.

“But I couldn’t finance it,” he concluded gloomily. “I’m no good at the money business. If a man owed me fifty dollars—there are several who do!—I’d never get it unless he volunteered to pay. That’s the reason I enjoy my ‘cases’ so much. If anyone forced me to accept money I would decamp. I have no financial ability.”

“Neither had Pestalozzi,” Kate reminded him.

“To be sure he hadn’t,” he mused. “But that’s why he failed.”

“But he didn’t have a manager.”

“Neither have I.”

“Let me take the post?”

For the first time Mrs. Levering saw some sense in their talk. A secret admiration for the daughter’s astuteness almost showed in her face.

“Just you let Keyser manage for you, Mr. Blynn,” the mother nodded her head significantly. “She runs this house—and everybody in it. When it comes to money Keyser can do wonders on nothing.”

“I can believe it,” laughed Blynn. “Pennsylvania-German thrift is notorious. But how could you ‘manage’? We haven’t a red cent.”

“Let us see,” Kate searched among her sewing things for paper and pencil. “What is your income outside of your salary at Holden?”

“How can you be so impertinent?” the mother interfered.

“Oh, no,” Blynn urged. “This is not impertinent, it’s important. She should ask that first. It will bring the school of cards down at the first shot. Outside of salary and lectures and writings, my sure income is exactly $96 per annum, the rental of Bardek’s house. I have a half-dozen other small properties. Sometimes I have had as much as $600 a year. It practically put me through college. Of course, mother has her own. Just at present I am pulling about $300. The reason I know is that I have just had an annual report from the agent. But Bardek is the only sure tenant. The dream’s up, my lady; oats is too high.”

“Do you think so?” she was calmly figuring. “Please let me do the managering, if I am to be manager.” After a moment or two of consideration she looked up satisfied. But first she asked questions. They included a complete list of his “cases.” Alongside of each one she checked those who could pay and those who could not.

“Here’s my scheme,” she showed him her paper. “I’ll rent you five acres of woodland for the grounds. There’s a good stone house there. It needs fixing up. I’ll attend to that. It’s just off the old mill above Cresheim Creek, where the road forks and goes up, you know, at the top of the hill.”

“‘Top-o’-the-Hill!’” he exclaimed. “We’ll call it ‘Top-o’-the-Hill.’ But,” ruefully, “where are we going to get the rent?”

“On the premises,” she continued. “I shall retain 51% of the stock and demand one wild rose paid to me every year with proper literary ceremonies.”

“A Pageant of the Wild Rose,” said he. “We shall crown you queen and I will recite. Listen! Wouldn’t this be nice and lugubrious. It’s old Dick Fanshawe’s fancy of complimenting his lady-love three hundred years ago.”

He began with, “Blown in the morning, thou shalt fade ere noon”—but she interrupted at the first line.

“I should particularly fancy that when I am growing aged and the petals begin to drop off. But to come down to business,” the manager referred to her paper; “would keeping up your outside lectures be too much for you?”

“Not at all,” he rejoined. “That is mere play. I figured out once that I could just about make a living by giving one or two series each year.”

“Well, then, that’s disposed of,” she resumed. “We could charge $100 a year to each pupil I have checked on this list, and let the others come in free. Bardek and Gorgas and I would serve without pay. I don’t need it and the other two are making lots of money. They really ought to contribute something. We can guarantee you, with your lectures and your rentals,” she verified carefully the totals in her memoranda, “two thousand a year at the least, which ought to be enough. When we can afford it we’ll take all your time. And we’ll see about those houses of yours, too; just put them in my hands and I’ll boost your cash account, I have some of that same sort of property myself and you bet your buttons I don’t let any agent monkey with them.”

Gorgas bounded in with a roseate greeting, and after her gown had been admired the project was gone over again.

“I’d love it,” she chirped. “Let me pay all the bills. I’ve got loads of money.”

They talked of the business and of the proposal for awhile and then drifted into an animated discussion of methods. The children must spend the whole day with them. There would be a fine midday dinner, a powerful educational instrument. They would teach the three r’s and all the informational necessities, but they would also cultivate the graces of cheerfulness, unselfishness, fair play, courage, restraint and table manners. There should be no scoldings and no punishments; and while they might talk and sing and even dance in languages, there should be no conjugations! And there would be tree climbing, and sledding, baseball and tennis and swimming and skating and riding, and dancing, all a part of the course of study. They even got so far as outlining a prospectus and selecting a name. Of a host of suggestions, “Top-o’-the-Hill” remained first choice.

“It is from the top of that hill,” said Blynn, “that I always see Whittier’s ‘dun files of Krisheim’s home-bound cows’ and hear them clanking their bells up the rough road. Do you know, milady,” he turned to Kate, “that John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a considerable poem on our little Valley?”

“Did he?” she asked, with a smiling lack of interest. “I am not very poetic, you know—just a practical person who owns some earth, the very spot for your school.”

A messenger-boy bicycled slowly along the road, peering here and there at houses on either side. He stopped to inquire at the Williams’ and came back to the Levering gate. Mrs. Levering walked forward. Gorgas, Kate, and Allen were lost in their discussion.

“It’s a telegram for you, Mr. Blynn,” Mrs. Levering handed him the envelope. “Your mother sent him over here. It is prepaid. I have signed for you.”

His face, after he had read the paper carefully, gave the three women a fright, but he hastened to reassure them.

“Perhaps it is good news,” he said; “I don’t know. It really frightens me.” He searched their faces hesitantly, then decided. “I am told to keep this information strictly to myself, but I’m sure it will not do harm to tell you, especially Gorgas and Kate, after all your beautiful plans. I’m afraid they’re knocked sky-high. It is from Diccon. He is at Holden now attending a special meeting of the trustees. Oh, it’s really dreadful.”

He read:

“Strictly private information not yet made public. President Galt will resign to take effect next term. He goes on retirement at full salary. Trustees to engineer a monster farewell dinner of alumni. He goes out covered with laurels. Says he recognizes time to make a climax of his life-work and will leave the working out of the new plans to younger hands. He is not unfavorable to you as his successor. Straw vote of board shows you to be the candidate of majority for presidency. Come to Holden immediately. Don’t see anybody; don’t decide anything. Above all, don’t talk. Remember you know nothing. Wire.

“Diccon.”

“How perfectly splendid!” exclaimed Mrs. Levering.

The other members of the group looked like a trio of sentenced convicts.

“How can you say that, mother!” Kate spoke sharply. “Everything was so lovely—and now there’ll be no Top-o’-the-Hill.”

“It’s beastly,” snapped Gorgas. “I hate Holden; always did. Squabbling, little, petty kid-factory.”

“It’s awful!” murmured the candidate of a majority of the trustees.

But eventually they talked off their disappointment and began to see things from a less personal point of view. Blynn showed them the absurdity of his own qualifications; there were other men in the faculty to whom the elevation would be not only welcome but deserving.

“I am an accident,” he went on. “I got into the limelight. I took other men’s ideas and had the spokesman rôle. Everybody understood; I made no secret of it. Some folks can talk and others can’t. That’s all there is to it.... I suppose I’m a dramatic sort of chap. Diccon says I am. I get heated up with enthusiasm, the preacher in me comes to the front, and I splutter figures of speech.... In my lectures it comes out, and when I get the most applause,” he bowed his head, “I am the most ashamed. I like to thrill ’em, work the stops, soft pedal, vox humana and all that. I don’t mean to play on their feelings. I am honest with my own feelings but—there’s the trouble!—I do have feelings; and I show ’em.

“It’s my running tongue that got me in this fix. Why does everybody put such foolish value on the talker! Talkers ought to be suppressed!”

Gorgas came to her senses first.

“I’m over my mad now,” she said. “Of course, you’ve got to go, whether you want to or not. They call it duty, I believe. That means something disagreeable that your insides won’t let you shirk. You can’t back out, Allen Blynn. I advised you to go to Holden. In fact, I had just this thing in mind. I wanted you to be big and famous and talked about. Well, you are. I’m not happy about it. This splendid idea of a school in Cresheim Valley where we could all work together and be somebodies ourselves—it’s an awful come-down to have to chuck it—”

“Gorgas!” mildly from Mrs. Levering. “That talk doesn’t go at all with your lady-like clothes. I wish you wouldn’t say ‘chuck it.’”

“Mother, I’m almost tempted to say ‘Rats!’”

“Horrors!” the mother flung up her hands. “Say ‘chuck it’ if you must. That other word is positively vulgar. I can’t see why so many nice young boys and girls use such slang. Slang of the right sort, Mr. Blynn, I don’t mind; but the latest corruptions of the language are just low. Don’t toss those gloves on the ground, Gorgas, even if you do pay for them yourself. You have no proper reverence for fine clothes.”

“I’m ready to swear, mother, at any moment. Look out!” Gorgas smiled grimly.

“Ein tousand ein hundred ein und zwanzig!” helped Blynn. He was beginning to recover from the shock.

“Name of the name of a pipe!” she added, and suggested, “Let’s talk it over with Bardek.”

“Good!” everyone agreed, and they were off to the white cottage.

Bardek was riding both children on his back, a French lancer charging flying Germans. The air was full of rippling French, fierce manifestations of ancient hatred. The children were echoing every annihilating threat.

“You see at once a lesson in patriotism and savagery and the French language,” he explained after he had dismissed the cavalry. “The professor has come back. Good!” He shook hands effusively. “Do not be afraid. I will not kiss you. See! I hold myself back. It is for me a lesson in courage; I subdue the flesh.” He beat his breast like St. Jerome. “Sit, children,” he pointed to the collection of large flat-topped rocks which flanked his door.

They talked all together and told him of “Top-o’-the-Hill” and the imminent presidency of Holden. The latter topic did not reach Bardek at all.

“That Top-o’-the-Hill,”—he called it “Tope-o-t’-Heel”—“it is grand! I would like that—oh, so much. The ‘smithy’ it is good—it keep me alive and it make me forget—but to teach the little children, zat, my friends,” tears came to his eyes and his English went to pieces, “is what I—it is what—in English I cannot,” he blurted in torrential French. “That is what I am, teacher of children. In École Nouvelle at Grenoble I taught the little ones the languages! I can do that; ah, how well I can do that!—I have the certificate of the University of Naples!” he roared, and struck an attitude. “And I am bachelier ès lettres de l’Université de Bordeaux!”

The group was tremendously impressed. They told him so noisily, and soothed his pride.

“But in my silliness,” he slipped into his normal self, “I fight the big Austrian and then I must go away. This I should not tell you, but—it is told.”

It was hard to break his enthusiasm. Little by little it came to him that Top-o’-the-Hill was a dream. He held himself in with great restraint while Holden and its presidency was put before him.

“You should go, my friend,” he advised quietly. “It is a great honor—to be president of a big university and you so young. These other little schools for little fellows, they can be made by anybody; but the university, it is vairy important. When the time comes to succeed, one must not go back of the gods who send things. I have always had my will; I have laughed at fortune and I have been happy. But I know what it is to have the great thought in the brain to go up, up, up and be a man famous. They tell me you have that already. They talk about you out in the great world there,” he seemed deeply thoughtful over such honors. “And it is right. You are good. And you should not turn away from the big world and be like ol’ Bardek, who has nothings but for you kind friends. It is not always happy to be exile and live like pig.... So we must not have the little school at the top o’ the hill? It is a great pity—for me, and for the little fellows. Nom d’une pipe!” he grew more and more agitated. “What a thing to choose between, honors and presidents—and the little fellows. Oh, it is nice to have your name in beeg preent and to have all the little men bow and look up at you—but nom du nom d’une pipe!” His agitation increased. “It would not do to make Bardek to choose. I would put in one hand all the great nothings of the universities and poof!” he blew savagely. “It is wort’ one good laugh—jus’ that.... But,” he recovered himself, “men are not the same. And it is good. A world full of Bardeks! Hoi, yoi! It would be the ol’ devil who would have to laugh.... I do not want to discourage you, my friend. Go to your little place. The world will call it with big name. Maybe you, after while, will believe it, too. That is the way wit’ man. Go on! Be busy all day at typewriter. Run! Hurry!... Smile and laugh when you would better cry! Go up! Be success! But I am so sorry that we not have zat Tope-o’-t’-Heel. Nom d’une pipe!”

Bardek turned abruptly and marched like a corporal of the guard straight into his white cottage. Kate stepped on ahead down the path and disappeared within the house. Gorgas pumped Allen’s hand at parting as if to assure him that although convicted and sentenced she would stand by him no matter what public opinion said.

“This spoils something else for me,” she said. “I can’t talk about it now. Don’t ask. When do you go up to Holden?”

“Tonight, I fear,” he confessed guiltily.

“You will write to me?”

“Oh, I shall be gone for only a day or two, a week at the most. But I’ll write anyway,” he read her face, “though you may have to be satisfied with a dictated family letter.”

“That’s better than silence.”

He could think of nothing to say, he the much heralded talker! Her rather heavy voice had given an intonation to the sentence which seemed to hold it in the air. “That’s better than silence.”

“It sounds like the ending of Hamlet,” he managed to be gay. “‘The rest is silence,’ you know. Goodby, child.”

“Aufwiederhören, mein guter Kamarade.”

“Aufwiederhören?” he repeated. “You shall hear from me if I have to send couriers!”