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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dawn O’Hara, by Edna Ferber
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Dawn O’Hara
+       The Girl Who Laughed
+
+Author: Edna Ferber
+
+Release Date: January, 1999 [eBook #1602]
+[Most recently updated: April 20, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAWN O’HARA ***
+
+
+
+
+Dawn O’Hara
+
+THE GIRL WHO LAUGHED
+
+By Edna Ferber
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DEAR MOTHER
+WHO FREQUENTLY INTERRUPTS
+AND TO
+MY SISTER FANNIE
+WHO SAYS “SH-SH-SH!” OUTSIDE MY DOOR
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ CHAPTER I. THE SMASH-UP
+ CHAPTER II. MOSTLY EGGS
+ CHAPTER III. GOOD AS NEW
+ CHAPTER IV. DAWN DEVELOPS A HEIMWEH
+ CHAPTER V. THE ABSURD BECOMES SERIOUS
+ CHAPTER VI. STEEPED IN GERMAN
+ CHAPTER VII. BLACKIE’S PHILOSOPHY
+ CHAPTER VIII. KAFFEE AND KAFFEEKUCHEN
+ CHAPTER IX. THE LADY FROM VIENNA
+ CHAPTER X. A TRAGEDY OF GOWNS
+ CHAPTER XI. VON GERHARD SPEAKS
+ CHAPTER XII. BENNIE THE CONSOLER
+ CHAPTER XIII. THE TEST
+ CHAPTER XIV. BENNIE AND THE CHARMING OLD MAID
+ CHAPTER XV. FAREWELL TO KNAPFS
+ CHAPTER XVI. JUNE MOONLIGHT, AND A NEW BOARDINGHOUSE
+ CHAPTER XVII. THE SHADOW OF TERROR
+ CHAPTER XVIII. PETER ORME
+ CHAPTER XIX. A TURN OF THE WHEEL
+ CHAPTER XX. BLACKIE’S VACATION COMES
+ CHAPTER XXI. HAPPINESS
+
+
+
+
+DAWN O’HARA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+THE SMASH-UP
+
+
+There are a number of things that are pleasanter than being sick in a
+New York boarding-house when one’s nearest dearest is a married sister
+up in far-away Michigan.
+
+Some one must have been very kind, for there were doctors, and a
+blue-and-white striped nurse, and bottles and things. There was even a
+vase of perky carnations—scarlet ones. I discovered that they had a
+trick of nodding their heads, saucily. The discovery did not appear to
+surprise me.
+
+“Howdy-do!” said I aloud to the fattest and reddest carnation that
+overtopped all the rest. “How in the world did you get in here?”
+
+The striped nurse (I hadn’t noticed her before) rose from some corner
+and came swiftly over to my bedside, taking my wrist between her
+fingers.
+
+“I’m very well, thank you,” she said, smiling, “and I came in at the
+door, of course.”
+
+“I wasn’t talking to you,” I snapped, crossly, “I was speaking to the
+carnations; particularly to that elderly one at the top—the fat one who
+keeps bowing and wagging his head at me.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” answered the striped nurse, politely, “of course. That one
+is very lively, isn’t he? But suppose we take them out for a little
+while now.”
+
+She picked up the vase and carried it into the corridor, and the
+carnations nodded their heads more vigorously than ever over her
+shoulder.
+
+I heard her call softly to some one. The some one answered with a sharp
+little cry that sounded like, “Conscious!”
+
+The next moment my own sister Norah came quietly into the room, and
+knelt at the side of my bed and took me in her arms. It did not seem at
+all surprising that she should be there, patting me with reassuring
+little love pats, murmuring over me with her lips against my cheek,
+calling me a hundred half-forgotten pet names that I had not heard for
+years. But then, nothing seemed to surprise me that surprising day. Not
+even the sight of a great, red-haired, red-faced, scrubbed looking man
+who strolled into the room just as Norah was in the midst of denouncing
+newspapers in general, and my newspaper in particular, and calling the
+city editor a slave-driver and a beast. The big, red-haired man stood
+regarding us tolerantly.
+
+“Better, eh?” said he, not as one who asks a question, but as though in
+confirmation of a thought. Then he too took my wrist between his
+fingers. His touch was very firm and cool. After that he pulled down my
+eyelids and said, “H’m.” Then he patted my cheek smartly once or twice.
+“You’ll do,” he pronounced. He picked up a sheet of paper from the
+table and looked it over, keen-eyed. There followed a clinking of
+bottles and glasses, a few low-spoken words to the nurse, and then, as
+she left the room the big red-haired man seated himself heavily in the
+chair near the bedside and rested his great hands on his fat knees. He
+stared down at me in much the same way that a huge mastiff looks at a
+terrier. Finally his glance rested on my limp left hand.
+
+“Married, h’m?”
+
+For a moment the word would not come. I could hear Norah catch her
+breath quickly. Then—“Yes,” answered I.
+
+“Husband living?” I could see suspicion dawning in his cold gray eye.
+
+Again the catch in Norah’s throat and a little half warning, half
+supplicating gesture. And again, “Yes,” said I.
+
+The dawn of suspicion burst into full glow.
+
+“Where is he?” growled the red-haired doctor. “At a time like this?”
+
+I shut my eyes for a moment, too sick at heart to resent his manner. I
+could feel, more than see, that Sis was signaling him frantically. I
+moistened my lips and answered him, bitterly.
+
+“He is in the Starkweather Hospital for the insane.”
+
+When the red-haired man spoke again the growl was quite gone from his
+voice.
+
+“And your home is—where?”
+
+“Nowhere,” I replied meekly, from my pillow. But at that Sis put her
+hand out quickly, as though she had been struck, and said:
+
+“My home is her home.”
+
+“Well then, take her there,” he ordered, frowning, “and keep her there
+as long as you can. Newspaper reporting, h’m? In New York? That’s a
+devil of a job for a woman. And a husband who... Well, you’ll have to
+take a six months’ course in loafing, young woman. And at the end of
+that time, if you are still determined to work, can’t you pick out
+something easier—like taking in scrubbing, for instance?”
+
+I managed a feeble smile, wishing that he would go away quickly, so
+that I might sleep. He seemed to divine my thoughts, for he disappeared
+into the corridor, taking Norah with him. Their voices, low-pitched and
+carefully guarded, could be heard as they conversed outside my door.
+
+Norah was telling him the whole miserable business. I wished, savagely,
+that she would let me tell it, if it must be told. How could she paint
+the fascination of the man who was my husband? She had never known the
+charm of him as I had known it in those few brief months before our
+marriage. She had never felt the caress of his voice, or the magnetism
+of his strange, smoldering eyes glowing across the smoke-dimmed city
+room as I had felt them fixed on me. No one had ever known what he had
+meant to the girl of twenty, with her brain full of unspoken
+dreams—dreams which were all to become glorious realities in that
+wonder-place, New York.
+
+How he had fired my country-girl imagination! He had been the most
+brilliant writer on the big, brilliant sheet—and the most dissolute.
+How my heart had pounded on that first lonely day when this
+Wonder-Being looked up from his desk, saw me, and strolled over to
+where I sat before my typewriter! He smiled down at me, companionably.
+I’m quite sure that my mouth must have been wide open with surprise. He
+had been smoking a cigarette—an expensive-looking, gold-tipped one. Now
+he removed it from between his lips with that hand that always shook a
+little, and dropped it to the floor, crushing it lightly with the toe
+of his boot. He threw back his handsome head and sent out the last
+mouthful of smoke in a thin, lazy spiral. I remember thinking what a
+pity it was that he should have crushed that costly-looking cigarette,
+just for me.
+
+“My name’s Orme,” he said, gravely. “Peter Orme. And if yours isn’t
+Shaughnessy or Burke at least, then I’m no judge of what black hair and
+gray eyes stand for.”
+
+“Then you’re not,” retorted I, laughing up at him, “for it happens to
+be O’Hara—Dawn O’Hara, if ye plaze.”
+
+He picked up a trifle that lay on my desk—a pencil, perhaps, or a bit
+of paper—and toyed with it, absently, as though I had not spoken. I
+thought he had not heard, and I was conscious of feeling a bit
+embarrassed, and very young. Suddenly he raised his smoldering eyes to
+mine, and I saw that they had taken on a deeper glow. His white, even
+teeth showed in a half smile.
+
+“Dawn O’Hara,” said he, slowly, and the name had never sounded in the
+least like music before, “Dawn O’Hara. It sounds like a rose—a pink
+blush rose that is deeper pink at its heart, and very sweet.”
+
+He picked up the trifle with which he had been toying and eyed it
+intently for a moment, as though his whole mind were absorbed in it.
+Then he put it down, turned, and walked slowly away. I sat staring
+after him like a little simpleton, puzzled, bewildered, stunned. That
+had been the beginning of it all.
+
+He had what we Irish call “a way wid him.” I wonder now why I did not
+go mad with the joy, and the pain, and the uncertainty of it all. Never
+was a girl so dazzled, so humbled, so worshiped, so neglected, so
+courted. He was a creature of a thousand moods to torture one. What
+guise would he wear to-day? Would he be gay, or dour, or sullen, or
+teasing or passionate, or cold, or tender or scintillating? I know that
+my hands were always cold, and my cheeks were always hot, those days.
+
+He wrote like a modern Demosthenes, with all political New York to
+quiver under his philippics. The managing editor used to send him out
+on wonderful assignments, and they used to hold the paper for his stuff
+when it was late. Sometimes he would be gone for days at a time, and
+when he returned the men would look at him with a sort of admiring awe.
+And the city editor would glance up from beneath his green eye-shade
+and call out:
+
+“Say, Orme, for a man who has just wired in about a million dollars’
+worth of stuff seems to me you don’t look very crisp and jaunty.”
+
+“Haven’t slept for a week,” Peter Orme would growl, and then he would
+brush past the men who were crowded around him, and turn in my
+direction. And the old hot-and-cold, happy, frightened, laughing,
+sobbing sensation would have me by the throat again.
+
+Well, we were married. Love cast a glamour over his very vices. His
+love of drink? A weakness which I would transform into strength. His
+white hot flashes of uncontrollable temper? Surely they would die down
+at my cool, tender touch. His fits of abstraction and irritability?
+Mere evidences of the genius within. Oh, my worshiping soul was always
+alert with an excuse.
+
+And so we were married. He had quite tired of me in less than a year,
+and the hand that had always shaken a little shook a great deal now,
+and the fits of abstraction and temper could be counted upon to appear
+oftener than any other moods. I used to laugh, sometimes, when I was
+alone, at the bitter humor of it all. It was like a Duchess novel come
+to life.
+
+His work began to show slipshod in spots. They talked to him about it
+and he laughed at them. Then, one day, he left them in the ditch on the
+big story of the McManus indictment, and the whole town scooped him,
+and the managing editor told him that he must go. His lapses had become
+too frequent. They would have to replace him with a man not so
+brilliant, perhaps, but more reliable.
+
+I daren’t think of his face as it looked when he came home to the
+little apartment and told me. The smoldering eyes were flaming now. His
+lips were flecked with a sort of foam. I stared at him in horror. He
+strode over to me, clasped his fingers about my throat and shook me as
+a dog shakes a mouse.
+
+“Why don’t you cry, eh?” he snarled. “Why don’t you cry!”
+
+And then I did cry out at what I saw in his eyes. I wrenched myself
+free, fled to my room, and locked the door and stood against it with my
+hand pressed over my heart until I heard the outer door slam and the
+echo of his footsteps die away.
+
+Divorce! That was my only salvation. No, that would be cowardly now. I
+would wait until he was on his feet again, and then I would demand my
+old free life back once more. This existence that was dragging me into
+the gutter—this was not life! Life was a glorious, beautiful thing, and
+I would have it yet. I laid my plans, feverishly, and waited. He did
+not come back that night, or the next, or the next, or the next. In
+desperation I went to see the men at the office. No, they had not seen
+him. Was there anything that they could do? they asked. I smiled, and
+thanked them, and said, oh, Peter was so absent-minded! No doubt he had
+misdirected his letters, or something of the sort. And then I went back
+to the flat to resume the horrible waiting.
+
+One week later he turned up at the old office which had cast him off.
+He sat down at his former desk and began to write, breathlessly, as he
+used to in the days when all the big stories fell to him. One of the
+men reporters strolled up to him and touched him on the shoulder,
+man-fashion. Peter Orme raised his head and stared at him, and the man
+sprang back in terror. The smoldering eyes had burned down to an ash.
+Peter Orme was quite bereft of all reason. They took him away that
+night, and I kept telling myself that it wasn’t true; that it was all a
+nasty dream, and I would wake up pretty soon, and laugh about it, and
+tell it at the breakfast table.
+
+Well, one does not seek a divorce from a husband who is insane. The
+busy men on the great paper were very kind. They would take me back on
+the staff. Did I think that I still could write those amusing little
+human interest stories? Funny ones, you know, with a punch in ’em.
+
+Oh, plenty of good stories left in me yet, I assured them. They must
+remember that I was only twenty-one, after all, and at twenty-one one
+does not lose the sense of humor.
+
+And so I went back to my old desk, and wrote bright, chatty letters
+home to Norah, and ground out very funny stories with a punch in ’em,
+that the husband in the insane asylum might be kept in comforts. With
+both hands I hung on like grim death to that saving sense of humor,
+resolved to make something of that miserable mess which was my life—to
+make something of it yet. And now—
+
+At this point in my musings there was an end of the low-voiced
+conversation in the hall. Sis tiptoed in and looked her disapproval at
+finding me sleepless.
+
+“Dawn, old girlie, this will never do. Shut your eyes now, like a good
+child, and go to sleep. Guess what that great brute of a doctor said! I
+may take you home with me next week! Dawn dear, you will come, won’t
+you? You must! This is killing you. Don’t make me go away leaving you
+here. I couldn’t stand it.”
+
+She leaned over my pillow and closed my eyelids gently with her sweet,
+cool fingers. “You are coming home with me, and you shall sleep and
+eat, and sleep and eat, until you are as lively as the Widow Malone,
+ohone, and twice as fat. Home, Dawnie dear, where we’ll forget all
+about New York. Home, with me.”
+
+I reached up uncertainly, and brought her hand down to my lips and a
+great peace descended upon my sick soul. “Home—with you,” I said, like
+a child, and fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+MOSTLY EGGS
+
+
+Oh, but it was clean, and sweet, and wonderfully still, that
+rose-and-white room at Norah’s! No street cars to tear at one’s nerves
+with grinding brakes and clanging bells; no tramping of restless feet
+on the concrete all through the long, noisy hours; no shrieking
+midnight joy-riders; not one of the hundred sounds which make night
+hideous in the city. What bliss to lie there, hour after hour, in a
+delicious half-waking, half-sleeping, wholly exquisite stupor, only
+rousing myself to swallow egg-nogg No. 426, and then to flop back again
+on the big, cool pillow!
+
+New York, with its lights, its clangor, its millions, was only a
+far-away, jumbled nightmare. The office, with its clacking typewriters,
+its insistent, nerve-racking telephone bells, its systematic rush, its
+smoke-dimmed city room, was but an ugly part of the dream.
+
+Back to that inferno of haste and scramble and clatter? Never! Never! I
+resolved, drowsily. And dropped off to sleep again.
+
+And the sheets. Oh, those sheets of Norah’s! Why, they were white,
+instead of gray! And they actually smelled of flowers. For that matter,
+there were rosebuds on the silken coverlet. It took me a week to get
+chummy with that rosebud-and-down quilt. I had to explain carefully to
+Norah that after a half-dozen years of sleeping under doubtful
+boarding-house blankets one does not so soon get rid of a shuddering
+disgust for coverings which are haunted by the ghosts of a hundred
+unknown sleepers. Those years had taught me to draw up the sheet with
+scrupulous care, to turn it down, and smooth it over, so that no
+contaminating and woolly blanket should touch my skin. The habit stuck
+even after Norah had tucked me in between her fragrant sheets.
+Automatically my hands groped about, arranging the old protecting
+barrier.
+
+“What’s the matter, Fuss-fuss?” inquired Norah, looking on. “That down
+quilt won’t bite you; what an old maid you are!”
+
+“Don’t like blankets next to my face,” I elucidated, sleepily, “never
+can tell who slept under ’em last—”
+
+“You cat!” exclaimed Norah, making a little rush at me. “If you weren’t
+supposed to be ill I’d shake you! Comparing my darling rosebud quilt to
+your miserable gray blankets! Just for that I’ll make you eat an extra
+pair of eggs.”
+
+There never was a sister like Norah. But then, who ever heard of a
+brother-in-law like Max? No woman—not even a frazzled-out newspaper
+woman—could receive the love and care that they gave me, and fail to
+flourish under it. They had been Dad and Mother to me since the day
+when Norah had tucked me under her arm and carried me away from New
+York. Sis was an angel; a comforting, twentieth-century angel, with
+white apron strings for wings, and a tempting tray in her hands in
+place of the hymn books and palm leaves that the picture-book angels
+carry. She coaxed the inevitable eggs and beef into more tempting forms
+than Mrs. Rorer ever guessed at. She could disguise those two plain,
+nourishing articles of diet so effectually that neither hen nor cow
+would have suspected either of having once been part of her anatomy.
+Once I ate halfway through a melting, fluffy, peach-bedecked plate of
+something before I discovered that it was only another egg in disguise.
+
+“Feel like eating a great big dinner to-day, Kidlet?” Norah would ask
+in the morning as she stood at my bedside (with a glass of
+egg-something in her hand, of course).
+
+“Eat!”—horror and disgust shuddering through my voice—“Eat! Ugh! Don’t
+s-s-speak of it to me. And for pity’s sake tell Frieda to shut the
+kitchen door when you go down, will you? I can smell something like
+ugh!—like pot roast, with gravy!” And I would turn my face to the wall.
+
+Three hours later I would hear Sis coming softly up the stairs,
+accompanied by a tinkling of china and glass. I would face her, all
+protest.
+
+“Didn’t I tell you, Sis, that I couldn’t eat a mouthful? Not a
+mouthf—um-m-m-m! How perfectly scrumptious that looks! What’s that
+affair in the lettuce leaf? Oh, can’t I begin on that divine-looking
+pinky stuff in the tall glass? H’m? Oh, please!”
+
+“I thought—” Norah would begin; and then she would snigger softly.
+
+“Oh, well, that was hours ago,” I would explain, loftily. “Perhaps I
+could manage a bite or two now.”
+
+Whereupon I would demolish everything except the china and doilies.
+
+It was at this point on the road to recovery, just halfway between
+illness and health, that Norah and Max brought the great and unsmiling
+Von Gerhard on the scene. It appeared that even New York was
+respectfully aware of Von Gerhard, the nerve specialist, in spite of
+the fact that he lived in Milwaukee. The idea of bringing him up to
+look at me occurred to Max quite suddenly. I think it was on the
+evening that I burst into tears when Max entered the room wearing a
+squeaky shoe. The Weeping Walrus was a self-contained and tranquil
+creature compared to me at that time. The sight of a fly on the wall
+was enough to make me burst into a passion of sobs.
+
+“I know the boy to steady those shaky nerves of yours, Dawn,” said Max,
+after I had made a shamefaced apology for my hysterical weeping, “I’m
+going to have Von Gerhard up here to look at you. He can run up Sunday,
+eh, Norah?”
+
+“Who’s Von Gerhard?” I inquired, out of the depths of my ignorance.
+“Anyway, I won’t have him. I’ll bet he wears a Vandyke and spectacles.”
+
+“Von Gerhard!” exclaimed Norah, indignantly. “You ought to be thankful
+to have him look at you, even if he wears goggles and a flowing beard.
+Why, even that red-haired New York doctor of yours cringed and looked
+impressed when I told him that Von Gerhard was a friend of my
+husband’s, and that they had been comrades at Heidelberg. I must have
+mentioned him dozens of times in my letters.”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Queer,” commented Max, “he runs up here every now and then to spend a
+quiet Sunday with Norah and me and the Spalpeens. Says it rests him.
+The kids swarm all over him, and tear him limb from limb. It doesn’t
+look restful, but he says it’s great. I think he came here from Berlin
+just after you left for New York, Dawn. Milwaukee fits him as if it had
+been made for him.”
+
+“But you’re not going to drag this wonderful being up here just for
+me!” I protested, aghast.
+
+Max pointed an accusing finger at me from the doorway. “Aren’t you what
+the bromides call a bundle of nerves? And isn’t Von Gerhard’s specialty
+untying just those knots? I’ll write to him to-night.”
+
+And he did. And Von Gerhard came. The Spalpeens watched for him, their
+noses flattened against the window-pane, for it was raining. As he came
+up the path they burst out of the door to meet him. From my bedroom
+window I saw him come prancing up the walk like a boy, with the two
+children clinging to his coat-tails, all three quite unmindful of the
+rain, and yelling like Comanches.
+
+Ten minutes later he had donned his professional dignity, entered my
+room, and beheld me in all my limp and pea-green beauty. I noted
+approvingly that he had to stoop a bit as he entered the low doorway,
+and that the Vandyke of my prophecy was missing.
+
+He took my hand in his own steady, reassuring clasp. Then he began to
+talk. Half an hour sped away while we discussed New
+York—books—music—theatres—everything and anything but Dawn O’Hara. I
+learned later that as we chatted he was getting his story, bit by bit,
+from every twitch of the eyelids, from every gesture of the hands that
+had grown too thin to wear the hateful ring; from every motion of the
+lips; from the color of my nails; from each convulsive muscle; from
+every shadow, and wrinkle and curve and line of my face.
+
+Suddenly he asked: “Are you making the proper effort to get well? You
+try to conquer those jumping nerfs, yes?”
+
+I glared at him. “Try! I do everything. I’d eat woolly worms if I
+thought they might benefit me. If ever a girl has minded her big sister
+and her doctor, that girl is I. I’ve eaten everything from pâté de foie
+gras to raw beef, and I’ve drunk everything from blood to champagne.”
+
+“Eggs?” queried Von Gerhard, as though making a happy suggestion.
+
+“Eggs!” I snorted. “Eggs! Thousands of ’em! Eggs hard and soft boiled,
+poached and fried, scrambled and shirred, eggs in beer and egg-noggs,
+egg lemonades and egg orangeades, eggs in wine and eggs in milk, and
+eggs au naturel. I’ve lapped up iron-and-wine, and whole rivers of
+milk, and I’ve devoured rare porterhouse and roast beef day after day
+for weeks. So! Eggs!”
+
+“Mein Himmel!” ejaculated he, fervently, “And you still live!” A
+suspicion of a smile dawned in his eyes. I wondered if he ever laughed.
+I would experiment.
+
+“Don’t breathe it to a soul,” I whispered, tragically, “but eggs, and
+eggs alone, are turning my love for my sister into bitterest hate. She
+stalks me the whole day long, forcing egg mixtures down my unwilling
+throat. She bullies me. I daren’t put out my hand suddenly without
+knocking over liquid refreshment in some form, but certainly with an
+egg lurking in its depths. I am so expert that I can tell an egg
+orangeade from an egg lemonade at a distance of twenty yards, with my
+left hand tied behind me, and one eye shut, and my feet in a sack.”
+
+“You can laugh, eh? Well, that iss good,” commented the grave and
+unsmiling one.
+
+“Sure,” answered I, made more flippant by his solemnity. “Surely I can
+laugh. For what else was my father Irish? Dad used to say that a sense
+of humor was like a shillaly—an iligent thing to have around handy,
+especially when the joke’s on you.”
+
+The ghost of a twinkle appeared again in the corners of the German blue
+eyes. Some fiend of rudeness seized me.
+
+“Laugh!” I commanded.
+
+Dr. Ernst von Gerhard stiffened. “Pardon?” inquired he, as one who is
+sure that he has misunderstood.
+
+“Laugh!” I snapped again. “I’ll dare you to do it. I’ll double dare
+you! You dassen’t!”
+
+But he did. After a moment’s bewildered surprise he threw back his
+handsome blond head and gave vent to a great, deep infectious roar of
+mirth that brought the Spalpeens tumbling up the stairs in defiance of
+their mother’s strict instructions.
+
+After that we got along beautifully. He turned out to be quite human,
+beneath the outer crust of reserve. He continued his examination only
+after bribing the Spalpeens shamefully, so that even their rapacious
+demands were satisfied, and they trotted off contentedly.
+
+There followed a process which reduced me to a giggling heap but which
+Von Gerhard carried out ceremoniously. It consisted of certain raps at
+my knees, and shins, and elbows, and fingers, and certain commands
+to—“look at my finger! Look at the wall! Look at my finger! Look at the
+wall!”
+
+“So!” said Von Gerhard at last, in a tone of finality. I sank my
+battered frame into the nearest chair. “This—this newspaper work—it
+must cease.” He dismissed it with a wave of the hand.
+
+“Certainly,” I said, with elaborate sarcasm. “How should you advise me
+to earn my living in the future? In the stories they paint dinner
+cards, don’t they? or bake angel cakes?”
+
+“Are you then never serious?” asked Von Gerhard, in disapproval.
+
+“Never,” said I. “An old, worn-out, worked-out newspaper reporter, with
+a husband in the mad-house, can’t afford to be serious for a minute,
+because if she were she’d go mad, too, with the hopelessness of it
+all.” And I buried my face in my hands.
+
+The room was very still for a moment. Then the great Von Gerhard came
+over, and took my hands gently from my face. “I—I do beg your pardon,”
+he said. He looked strangely boyish and uncomfortable as he said it. “I
+was thinking only of your good. We do that, sometimes, forgetting that
+circumstances may make our wishes impossible of execution. So. You will
+forgive me?”
+
+“Forgive you? Yes, indeed,” I assured him. And we shook hands, gravely.
+“But that doesn’t help matters much, after all, does it?”
+
+“Yes, it helps. For now we understand one another, is it not so? You
+say you can only write for a living. Then why not write here at home?
+Surely these years of newspaper work have given you a great knowledge
+of human nature. Then too, there is your gift of humor. Surely that is
+a combination which should make your work acceptable to the magazines.
+Never in my life have I seen so many magazines as here in the United
+States. But hundreds! Thousands!”
+
+“Me!” I exploded—“A real writer lady! No more interviews with
+actresses! No more slushy Sunday specials! No more teary tales! Oh, my!
+When may I begin? To-morrow? You know I brought my typewriter with me.
+I’ve almost forgotten where the letters are on the keyboard.”
+
+“Wait, wait; not so fast! In a month or two, perhaps. But first must
+come other things—outdoor things. Also housework.”
+
+“Housework!” I echoed, feebly.
+
+“Naturlich. A little dusting, a little scrubbing, a little sweeping, a
+little cooking. The finest kind of indoor exercise. Later you may write
+a little—but very little. Run and play out of doors with the children.
+When I see you again you will have roses in your cheeks like the German
+girls, yes?”
+
+“Yes,” I echoed, meekly, “I wonder how Frieda will like my elephantine
+efforts at assisting with the housework. If she gives notice, Norah
+will be lost to you.”
+
+But Frieda did not give notice. After I had helped her clean the
+kitchen and the pantry I noticed an expression of deepest pity
+overspreading her lumpy features. The expression became almost one of
+agony as she watched me roll out some noodles for soup, and delve into
+the sticky mysteries of a new kind of cake.
+
+Max says that for a poor working girl who hasn’t had time to cultivate
+the domestic graces, my cakes are a distinct triumph. Sis sniffs at
+that, and mutters something about cups of raisins and nuts and citron
+hiding a multitude of batter sins. She never allows the Spalpeens to
+eat my cakes, and on my baking days they are usually sent from the
+table howling. Norah declares, severely, that she is going to hide the
+Green Cook Book. The Green Cook Book is a German one. Norah bought it
+in deference to Max’s love of German cookery. It is called Aunt
+Julchen’s cook book, and the author, between hints as to flour and
+butter, gets delightfully chummy with her pupil. Her cakes are proud,
+rich cakes. She orders grandly:
+
+“Now throw in the yolks of twelve eggs; one-fourth of a pound of
+almonds; two pounds of raisins; a pound of citron; a pound of
+orange-peel.”
+
+As if that were not enough, there follow minor instructions as to
+trifles like ounces of walnut meats, pounds of confectioner’s sugar,
+and pints of very rich cream. When cold, to be frosted with an icing
+made up of more eggs, more nuts, more cream, more everything.
+
+The children have appointed themselves official lickers and scrapers of
+the spoons and icing pans, also official guides on their auntie’s
+walks. They regard their Aunt Dawn as a quite ridiculous but altogether
+delightful old thing.
+
+And Norah—bless her! looks up when I come in from a romp with the
+Spalpeens and says: “Your cheeks are pink! Actually! And you’re losing
+a puff there at the back of your ear, and your hat’s on crooked. Oh,
+you are beginning to look your old self, Dawn dear!”
+
+At which doubtful compliment I retort, recklessly: “Pooh! What’s a puff
+more or less, in a worthy cause? And if you think my cheeks are pink
+now, just wait until your mighty Von Gerhard comes again. By that time
+they shall be so red and bursting that Frieda’s, on wash day, will look
+anemic by comparison. Say, Norah, how red are German red cheeks,
+anyway?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+GOOD AS NEW
+
+
+So Spring danced away, and Summer sauntered in. My pillows looked less
+and less tempting. The wine of the northern air imparted a cocky
+assurance. One blue-and-gold day followed the other, and I spent hours
+together out of doors in the sunshine, lying full length on the warm,
+sweet ground, to the horror of the entire neighborhood. To be sure, I
+was sufficiently discreet to choose the lawn at the rear of the house.
+There I drank in the atmosphere, as per doctor’s instructions, while
+the genial sun warmed the watery blood in my veins and burned the skin
+off the end of my nose.
+
+All my life I had envied the loungers in the parks—those silent, inert
+figures that lie under the trees all the long summer day, their shabby
+hats over their faces, their hands clasped above their heads, legs
+sprawled in uncouth comfort, while the sun dapples down between the
+leaves and, like a good fairy godmother, touches their frayed and
+wrinkled garments with flickering figures of golden splendor, while
+they sleep. They always seemed so blissfully care-free and at
+ease—those sprawling men figures—and I, to whom such simple joys were
+forbidden, being a woman, had envied them.
+
+Now I was reveling in that very joy, stretched prone upon the ground,
+blinking sleepily up at the sun and the cobalt sky, feeling my very
+hair grow, and health returning in warm, electric waves. I even dared
+to cross one leg over the other and to swing the pendant member with
+nonchalant air, first taking a cautious survey of the neighboring back
+windows to see if any one peeked. Doubtless they did, behind those
+ruffled curtains, but I grew splendidly indifferent.
+
+Even the crawling things—and there were myriads of them—added to the
+enjoyment of my ease. With my ear so close to the ground the grass
+seemed fairly to buzz with them. Everywhere there were crazily busy
+ants, and I, patently a sluggard and therefore one of those for whom
+the ancient warning was intended, considered them lazily. How they
+plunged about, weaving in and out, rushing here and there,
+helter-skelter, like bargain-hunting women darting wildly from counter
+to counter!
+
+“O, foolish, foolish antics!” I chided them, “stop wearing yourselves
+out this way. Don’t you know that the game isn’t worth the candle, and
+that you’ll give yourselves nervous jim-jams and then you’ll have to go
+home to be patched up? Look at me! I’m a horrible example.”
+
+But they only bustled on, heedless of my advice, and showed their
+contempt by crawling over me as I lay there like a lady Gulliver.
+
+Oh, I played what they call a heavy thinking part. It was not only the
+ants that came in for lectures. I preached sternly to myself.
+
+“Well, Dawn old girl, you’ve made a beautiful mess of it. A smashed-up
+wreck at twenty-eight! And what have you to show for it? Nothing!
+You’re a useless pulp, like a lemon that has been squeezed dry. Von
+Gerhard was right. There must be no more newspaper work for you, me
+girl. Not if you can keep away from the fascination of it, which I
+don’t think you can.”
+
+Then I would fall to thinking of those years of newspapering—of the
+thrills of them, and the ills of them. It had been exhilarating, and
+educating, but scarcely remunerative. Mother had never approved. Dad
+had chuckled and said that it was a curse descended upon me from the
+terrible old Kitty O’Hara, the only old maid in the history of the
+O’Haras, and famed in her day for a caustic tongue and a venomed pen.
+Dad and Mother—what a pair of children they had been! The very
+dissimilarity of their natures had been a bond between them. Dad,
+light-hearted, whimsical, care-free, improvident; Mother, gravely
+sweet, anxious-browed, trying to teach economy to the handsome Irish
+husband who, descendant of a long and royal line of spendthrift
+ancestors, would have none of it.
+
+It was Dad who had insisted that they name me Dawn. Dawn O’Hara! His
+sense of humor must have been sleeping. “You were such a rosy, pinky,
+soft baby thing,” Mother had once told me, “that you looked just like
+the first flush of light at sunrise. That is why your father insisted
+on calling you Dawn.”
+
+Poor Dad! How could he know that at twenty-eight I would be a yellow
+wreck of a newspaper reporter—with a wrinkle between my eyes. If he
+could see me now he would say:
+
+“Sure, you look like the dawn yet, me girl—but a Pittsburgh dawn.”
+
+At that, Mother, if she were here, would pat my check where the hollow
+place is, and murmur: “Never mind, Dawnie dearie, Mother thinks you are
+beautiful just the same.” Of such blessed stuff are mothers made.
+
+At this stage of the memory game I would bury my face in the warm grass
+and thank my God for having taken Mother before Peter Orme came into my
+life. And then I would fall asleep there on the soft, sweet grass, with
+my head snuggled in my arms, and the ants wriggling, unchided, into my
+ears.
+
+On the last of these sylvan occasions I awoke, not with a graceful
+start, like the story-book ladies, but with a grunt. Sis was digging me
+in the ribs with her toe. I looked up to see her standing over me, a
+foaming tumbler of something in her hand. I felt that it was eggy and
+eyed it disgustedly.
+
+“Get up,” said she, “you lazy scribbler, and drink this.”
+
+I sat up, eyeing her severely and picking grass and ants out of my
+hair.
+
+“D’ you mean to tell me that you woke me out of that babe-like slumber
+to make me drink that goo? What is it, anyway? I’ll bet it’s another
+egg-nogg.”
+
+“Egg-nogg it is; and swallow it right away, because there are guests to
+see you.”
+
+I emerged from the first dip into the yellow mixture and fixed on her
+as stern and terrible a look at any one can whose mouth is encircled by
+a mustache of yellow foam.
+
+“Guests!” I roared, “not for me! Don’t you dare to say that they came
+to see me!”
+
+“Did too,” insists Norah, with firmness, “they came especially to see
+you. Asked for you, right from the jump.”
+
+I finished the egg-nogg in four gulps, returned the empty tumbler with
+an air of decision, and sank upon the grass.
+
+“Tell ’em I rave. Tell ’em that I’m unconscious, and that for weeks I
+have recognized no one, not even my dear sister. Say that in my present
+nerve-shattered condition I—”
+
+“That wouldn’t satisfy them,” Norah calmly interrupts, “they know
+you’re crazy because they saw you out here from their second story back
+windows. That’s why they came. So you may as well get up and face them.
+I promised them I’d bring you in. You can’t go on forever refusing to
+see people, and you know the Whalens are—”
+
+“Whalens!” I gasped. “How many of them? Not—not the entire fiendish
+three?”
+
+“All three. I left them champing with impatience.”
+
+The Whalens live just around the corner. The Whalens are omniscient.
+They have a system of news gathering which would make the efforts of a
+New York daily appear antiquated. They know that Jenny Laffin feeds the
+family on soup meat and oat-meal when Mr. Laffin is on the road; they
+know that Mrs. Pearson only shakes out her rugs once in four weeks;
+they can tell you the number of times a week that Sam Dempster comes
+home drunk; they know that the Merkles never have cream with their
+coffee because little Lizzie Merkle goes to the creamery every day with
+just one pail and three cents; they gloat over the knowledge that
+Professor Grimes, who is a married man, is sweet on Gertie Ashe, who
+teaches second reader in his school; they can tell you where Mrs. Black
+got her seal coat, and her husband only earning two thousand a year;
+they know who is going to run for mayor, and how long poor Angela Sims
+has to live, and what Guy Donnelly said to Min when he asked her to
+marry him.
+
+The three Whalens—mother and daughters—hunt in a group. They send
+meaning glances to one another across the room, and at parties they get
+together and exchange bulletins in a corner. On passing the Whalen
+house one is uncomfortably aware of shadowy forms lurking in the
+windows, and of parlor curtains that are agitated for no apparent
+cause.
+
+Therefore it was with a groan that I rose and prepared to follow Norah
+into the house. Something in my eye caused her to turn at the very
+door. “Don’t you dare!” she hissed; then, banishing the warning scowl
+from her face, and assuming a near-smile, she entered the room and I
+followed miserably at her heels.
+
+The Whalens rose and came forward effusively; Mrs. Whalen, plump, dark,
+voluble; Sally, lean, swarthy, vindictive; Flossie, pudgy, powdered,
+over-dressed. They eyed me hungrily. I felt that they were searching my
+features for signs of incipient insanity.
+
+“Dear, DEAR girl!” bubbled the billowy Flossie, kissing the end of my
+nose and fastening her eye on my ringless left hand.
+
+Sally contented herself with a limp and fishy handshake. She and I were
+sworn enemies in our school-girl days, and a baleful gleam still lurked
+in Sally’s eye. Mrs. Whalen bestowed on me a motherly hug that
+enveloped me in an atmosphere of liquid face-wash, strong perfumery and
+fried lard. Mrs. Whalen is a famous cook. Said she:
+
+“We’ve been thinking of calling ever since you were brought home, but
+dear me! you’ve been looking so poorly I just said to the girls, wait
+till the poor thing feels more like seeing her old friends. Tell me,
+how are you feeling now?”
+
+The three sat forward in their chairs in attitudes of tense waiting.
+
+I resolved that if err I must it should be on the side of safety. I
+turned to sister Norah.
+
+“How am I feeling anyway, Norah?” I guardedly inquired.
+
+Norah’s face was a study. “Why Dawn dear,” she said, sugar-sweet, “no
+doubt you know better than I. But I’m sure that you are wonderfully
+improved—almost your old self, in fact. Don’t you think she looks
+splendid, Mrs. Whalen?”
+
+The three Whalens tore their gaze from my blank countenance to exchange
+a series of meaning looks.
+
+“I suppose,” purred Mrs. Whalen, “that your awful trouble was the real
+cause of your—a-a-a-sickness, worrying about it and grieving as you
+must have.”
+
+She pronounces it with a capital T, and I know she means Peter. I hate
+her for it.
+
+“Trouble!” I chirped. “Trouble never troubles me. I just worked too
+hard, that’s all, and acquired an awful ‘tired.’ All work and no play
+makes Jill a nervous wreck, you know.”
+
+At that the elephantine Flossie wagged a playful finger at me. “Oh,
+now, you can’t make us believe that, just because we’re from the
+country! We know all about you gay New Yorkers, with your Bohemian ways
+and your midnight studio suppers, and your cigarettes, and cocktails
+and high jinks!”
+
+Memory painted a swift mental picture of Dawn O’Hara as she used to
+tumble into bed after a whirlwind day at the office, too dog-tired to
+give her hair even one half of the prescribed one hundred strokes of
+the brush. But in turn I shook a reproving forefinger at Flossie.
+
+“You’ve been reading some naughty society novel! One of those
+millionaire-divorce-actress-automobile novels. Dear, dear! Shall I ever
+forget the first New York actress I ever met; or what she said!”
+
+I felt, more than saw, a warning movement from Sis. But the three
+Whalens had hitched forward in their chairs.
+
+“What did she say?” gurgled Flossie. “Was it something real reezk?”
+
+“Well, it was at a late supper—a studio supper given in her honor,” I
+confessed.
+
+“Yes-s-s-s,” hissed the Whalens.
+
+“And this actress—she was one of those musical comedy actresses, you
+know; I remember her part called for a good deal of kicking about in a
+short Dutch costume—came in rather late, after the performance. She was
+wearing a regal-looking fur-edged evening wrap, and she still wore all
+her make-up”—out of the corner of my eye I saw Sis sink back with an
+air of resignation—“and she threw open the door and said—
+
+“Yes-s-s-s!” hissed the Whalens again, wetting their lips.
+
+“—said: ‘Folks, I just had a wire from mother, up in Maine. The boy has
+the croup. I’m scared green. I hate to spoil the party, but don’t ask
+me to stay. I want to go home to the flat and blubber. I didn’t even
+stop to take my make-up off. My God! If anything should happen to the
+boy!—Well, have a good time without me. Jim’s waiting outside.’” A
+silence.
+
+Then—“Who was Jim?” asked Flossie, hopefully.
+
+“Jim was her husband, of course. He was in the same company.”
+
+Another silence.
+
+“Is that all?” demanded Sally from the corner in which she had been
+glowering.
+
+“All! You unnatural girl! Isn’t one husband enough?”
+
+Mrs. Whalen smiled an uncertain, wavering smile. There passed among the
+three a series of cabalistic signs. They rose simultaneously.
+
+“How quaint you are!” exclaimed Mrs. Whalen, “and so amusing! Come
+girls, we mustn’t tire Miss—ah—Mrs.—er—” with another meaning look at
+my bare left hand.
+
+“My husband’s name is still Orme,” I prompted, quite, quite pleasantly.
+
+“Oh, certainly. I’m so forgetful. And one reads such queer things in
+the newspapers now-a-days. Divorces, and separations, and soul-mates
+and things.” There was a note of gentle insinuation in her voice.
+
+Norah stepped firmly into the fray. “Yes, doesn’t one? What a comfort
+it must be to you to know that your dear girls are safe at home with
+you, and no doubt will be secure, for years to come, from the buffeting
+winds of matrimony.”
+
+There was a tinge of purple in Mrs. Whalen’s face as she moved toward
+the door, gathering her brood about her. “Now that dear Dawn is almost
+normal again I shall send my little girlies over real often. She must
+find it very dull here after her—ah—life in New York.”
+
+“Not at all,” I said, hurriedly, “not at all. You see I’m—I’m writing a
+book. My entire day is occupied.”
+
+“A book!” screeched the three. “How interesting! What is it? When will
+it be published?”
+
+I avoided Norah’s baleful eye as I answered their questions and
+performed the final adieux.
+
+As the door closed, Norah and I faced each other, glaring.
+
+“Hussies!” hissed Norah. Whereupon it struck us funny and we fell, a
+shrieking heap, into the nearest chair. Finally Sis dabbed at her eyes
+with her handkerchief, drew a long breath, and asked, with elaborate
+sarcasm, why I hadn’t made it a play instead of a book, while I was
+about it.
+
+“But I mean it,” I declared. “I’ve had enough of loafing. Max must
+unpack my typewriter to-night. I’m homesick for a look at the keys. And
+to-morrow I’m to be installed in the cubbyhole off the dining-room and
+I defy any one to enter it on peril of their lives. If you value the
+lives of your offspring, warn them away from that door. Von Gerhard
+said that there was writing in my system, and by the Great Horn Spoon
+and the Beard of the Prophet, I’ll have it out! Besides, I need the
+money. Norah dear, how does one set about writing a book? It seems like
+such a large order.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+DAWN DEVELOPS A HEIMWEH
+
+
+It’s hard trying to develop into a real Writer Lady in the bosom of
+one’s family, especially when the family refuses to take one seriously.
+Seven years of newspaper grind have taught me the fallacy of trying to
+write by the inspiration method. But there is such a thing as a train
+of thought, and mine is constantly being derailed, and wrecked and
+pitched about.
+
+Scarcely am I settled in my cubby-hole, typewriter before me, the
+working plan of a story buzzing about in my brain, when I hear my name
+called in muffled tones, as though the speaker were laboring with a
+mouthful of hairpins. I pay no attention. I have just given my heroine
+a pair of calm gray eyes, shaded with black lashes and hair to match. A
+voice floats down from the upstairs regions.
+
+“Dawn! Oh, Dawn! Just run and rescue the cucumbers out of the top of
+the ice-box, will you? The iceman’s coming, and he’ll squash ’em.”
+
+A parting jab at my heroine’s hair and eyes, and I’m off to save the
+cucumbers.
+
+Back at my typewriter once more. Shall I make my heroine petite or
+grande? I decide that stateliness and Gibsonesque height should
+accompany the calm gray eyes. I rattle away happily, the plot unfolding
+itself in some mysterious way. Sis opens the door a little and peers
+in. She is dressed for the street.
+
+“Dawn dear, I’m going to the dressmaker’s. Frieda’s upstairs cleaning
+the bathroom, so take a little squint at the roast now and then, will
+you? See that it doesn’t burn, and that there’s plenty of gravy. Oh,
+and Dawn—tell the milkman we want an extra half-pint of cream to-day.
+The tickets are on the kitchen shelf, back of the clock. I’ll be back
+in an hour.”
+
+“Mhmph,” I reply.
+
+Sis shuts the door, but opens it again almost immediately.
+
+“Don’t let the Infants bother you. But if Frieda’s upstairs and they
+come to you for something to eat, don’t let them have any cookies
+before dinner. If they’re really hungry they’ll eat bread and butter.”
+
+I promise, dreamily, my last typewritten sentence still running through
+my head. The gravy seems to have got into the heroine’s calm gray eyes.
+What heroine could remain calm-eyed when her creator’s mind is filled
+with roast beef? A half-hour elapses before I get back on the track.
+Then appears the hero—a tall blond youth, fair to behold. I make him
+two yards high, and endow him with a pair of clothing-advertisement
+shoulders.
+
+There assails my nostrils a fearful smell of scorching. The roast! A
+wild rush into the kitchen. I fling open the oven door. The roast is
+mahogany-colored, and gravyless. It takes fifteen minutes of the most
+desperate first-aid-to-the-injured measures before the roast is
+revived.
+
+Back to the writing. It has lost its charm. The gray-eyed heroine is a
+stick; she moves like an Indian lady outside a cigar shop. The hero is
+a milk-and-water sissy, without a vital spark in him. What’s the use of
+trying to write, anyway? Nobody wants my stuff. Good for nothing except
+dubbing on a newspaper!
+
+Rap! Rap! Rappity-rap-rap! Bing! Milk!
+
+I dash into the kitchen. No milk! No milkman! I fly to the door. He is
+disappearing around the corner of the house.
+
+“Hi! Mr. Milkman! Say, Mr. Milkman!” with frantic beckonings.
+
+He turns. He lifts up his voice. “The screen door was locked so I left
+youse yer milk on top of the ice-box on the back porch. Thought like
+the hired girl was upstairs an’ I could git the tickets to-morra.”
+
+I explain about the cream, adding that it is wanted for short-cake. The
+explanation does not seem to cheer him. He appears to be a very gloomy
+and reserved milkman. I fancy that he is in the habit of indulging in a
+little airy persiflage with Frieda o’ mornings, and he finds me a poor
+substitute for her red-cheeked comeliness.
+
+The milk safely stowed away in the ice-box, I have another look at the
+roast. I am dipping up spoonfuls of brown gravy and pouring them over
+the surface of the roast in approved basting style, when there is a
+rush, a scramble, and two hard bodies precipitate themselves upon my
+legs so suddenly that for a moment my head pitches forward into the
+oven. I withdraw my head from the oven, hastily. The basting spoon is
+immersed in the bottom of the pan. I turn, indignant. The Spalpeens
+look up at me with innocent eyes.
+
+“You little divils, what do you mean by shoving your old aunt into the
+oven! It’s cannibals you are!”
+
+The idea pleases them. They release my legs and execute a savage war
+dance around me. The Spalpeens are firm in the belief that I was
+brought to their home for their sole amusement, and they refuse to take
+me seriously. The Spalpeens themselves are two of the finest examples
+of real humor that ever were perpetrated upon parents. Sheila is the
+first-born. Norah decided that she should be an Irish beauty, and
+bestowed upon her a name that reeks of the bogs. Whereupon Sheila, at
+the age of six, is as flaxen-haired and blue-eyed and stolid a little
+German madchen as ever fooled her parents, and she is a feminine
+reproduction of her German Dad. Two years later came a sturdy boy, and
+they named him Hans, in a flaunt of defiance. Hans is black-haired,
+gray-eyed and Irish as Killarny.
+
+“We’re awful hungry,” announces Sheila.
+
+“Can’t you wait until dinner time? Such a grand dinner!”
+
+Sheila and Hans roll their eyes to convey to me that, were they to wait
+until dinner for sustenance we should find but their lifeless forms.
+
+“Well then, Auntie will get a nice piece of bread and butter for each
+of you.”
+
+“Don’t want bread an’ butty!” shrieks Hans. “Want tooky!”
+
+“Cooky!” echoes Sheila, pounding on the kitchen table with the rescued
+basting spoon.
+
+“You can’t have cookies before dinner. They’re bad for your insides.”
+
+“Can too,” disputes Hans. “Fwieda dives us tookies. Want tooky!”
+wailingly.
+
+“Please, ple-e-e-ease, Auntie Dawnie dearie,” wheedles Sheila,
+wriggling her soft little fingers in my hand.
+
+“But Mother never lets you have cookies before dinner,” I retort
+severely. “She knows they are bad for you.”
+
+“Pooh, she does too! She always says, ‘No, not a cooky!’ And then we
+beg and screech, and then she says, ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Frieda, give
+’em a cooky and send ’em out. One cooky can’t kill ’em.’” Sheila’s
+imitation is delicious.
+
+Hans catches the word screech and takes it as his cue. He begins a
+series of ear-piercing wails. Sheila surveys him with pride and then
+takes the wail up in a minor key. Their teamwork is marvelous. I fly to
+the cooky jar and extract two round and sugary confections. I thrust
+them into the pink, eager palms. The wails cease. Solemnly they place
+one cooky atop the other, measuring the circlets with grave eyes.
+
+“Mine’s a weeny bit bigger’n yours this time,” decides Sheila, and
+holds her cooky heroically while Hans takes a just and lawful bite out
+of his sister’s larger share.
+
+“The blessed little angels!” I say to myself, melting. “The dear,
+unselfish little sweeties!” and give each of them another cooky.
+
+Back to my typewriter. But the words flatly refuse to come now. I make
+six false starts, bite all my best finger-nails, screw my hair into a
+wilderness of cork-screws and give it up. No doubt a real Lady Writer
+could write on, unruffled and unhearing, while the iceman squashed the
+cucumbers, and the roast burned to a frazzle, and the Spalpeens
+perished of hunger. Possessed of the real spark of genius, trivialities
+like milkmen and cucumbers could not dim its glow. Perhaps all
+successful Lady Writers with real live sparks have cooks and scullery
+maids, and need not worry about basting, and gravy, and milkmen.
+
+This book writing is all very well for those who have a large faith in
+the future and an equally large bank account. But my future will have
+to be hand-carved, and my bank account has always been an all too small
+pay envelope at the end of each week. It will be months before the book
+is shaped and finished. And my pocketbook is empty. Last week Max sent
+money for the care of Peter. He and Norah think that I do not know.
+
+Von Gerhard was here in August. I told him that all my firm resolutions
+to forsake newspaperdom forever were slipping away, one by one.
+
+“I have heard of the fascination of the newspaper office,” he said, in
+his understanding way. “I believe you have a heimweh for it, not?”
+
+“Heimweh! That’s the word,” I had agreed. “After you have been a
+newspaper writer for seven years—and loved it—you will be a newspaper
+writer, at heart and by instinct at least, until you die. There’s no
+getting away from it. It’s in the blood. Newspaper men have been known
+to inherit fortunes, to enter politics, to write books and become
+famous, to degenerate into press agents and become infamous, to blossom
+into personages, to sink into nonentities, but their news-nose remained
+a part of them, and the inky, smoky, stuffy smell of a newspaper office
+was ever sweet in their nostrils.”
+
+But, “Not yet,” Von Gerhard had said, “It unless you want to have again
+this miserable business of the sick nerfs. Wait yet a few months.”
+
+And so I have waited, saying nothing to Norah and Max. But I want to be
+in the midst of things. I miss the sensation of having my fingers at
+the pulse of the big old world. I’m lonely for the noise and the rush
+and the hard work; for a glimpse of the busy local room just before
+press time, when the lights are swimming in a smoky haze, and the big
+presses downstairs are thundering their warning to hurry, and the men
+are breezing in from their runs with the grist of news that will be
+ground finer and finer as it passes through the mill of copy-readers’
+and editors’ hands. I want to be there in the thick of the confusion
+that is, after all, so orderly. I want to be there when the telephone
+bells are zinging, and the typewriters are snapping, and the messenger
+boys are shuffling in and out, and the office kids are scuffling in a
+corner, and the big city editor, collar off, sleeves rolled up from his
+great arms, hair bristling wildly above his green eye-shade, is
+swearing gently and smoking cigarette after cigarette, lighting each
+fresh one at the dying glow of the last. I would give a year of my life
+to hear him say:
+
+“I don’t mind tellin’ you, Beatrice Fairfax, that that was a darn good
+story you got on the Millhaupt divorce. The other fellows haven’t a
+word that isn’t re-hash.”
+
+All of which is most unwomanly; for is not marriage woman’s highest
+aim, and home her true sphere? Haven’t I tried both? I ought to know. I
+merely have been miscast in this life’s drama. My part should have been
+that of one who makes her way alone. Peter, with his thin, cruel lips,
+and his shaking hands, and his haggard face and his smoldering eyes, is
+a shadow forever blotting out the sunny places in my path. I was meant
+to be an old maid, like the terrible old Kitty O’Hara. Not one of the
+tatting-and-tea kind, but an impressive, bustling old girl, with a
+double chin. The sharp-tongued Kitty O’Hara used to say that being an
+old maid was a great deal like death by drowning—a really delightful
+sensation when you ceased struggling.
+
+Norah has pleaded with me to be more like other women of my age, and
+for her sake I’ve tried. She has led me about to bridge parties and tea
+fights, and I have tried to act as though I were enjoying it all, but I
+knew that I wasn’t getting on a bit. I have come to the conclusion that
+one year of newspapering counts for two years of ordinary existence,
+and that while I’m twenty-eight in the family Bible I’m fully forty
+inside. When one day may bring under one’s pen a priest, a pauper, a
+prostitute, a philanthropist, each with a story to tell, and each
+requiring to be bullied, or cajoled, or bribed, or threatened, or
+tricked into telling it; then the end of that day’s work finds one
+looking out at the world with eyes that are very tired and as old as
+the world itself.
+
+I’m spoiled for sewing bees and church sociables and afternoon bridges.
+A hunger for the city is upon me. The long, lazy summer days have
+slipped by. There is an autumn tang in the air. The breeze has a touch
+that is sharp.
+
+Winter in a little northern town! I should go mad. But winter in the
+city! The streets at dusk on a frosty evening; the shop windows
+arranged by artist hands for the beauty-loving eyes of women; the rows
+of lights like jewels strung on an invisible chain; the glitter of
+brass and enamel as the endless procession of motors flashes past; the
+smartly-gowned women; the keen-eyed, nervous men; the shrill note of
+the crossing policeman’s whistle; every smoke-grimed wall and pillar
+taking on a mysterious shadowy beauty in the purple dusk, every
+unsightly blot obscured by the kindly night. But best of all, the
+fascination of the People I’d Like to Know. They pop up now and then in
+the shifting crowds, and are gone the next moment, leaving behind them
+a vague regret. Sometimes I call them the People I’d Like to Know and
+sometimes I call them the People I Know I’d Like, but it means much the
+same. Their faces flash by in the crowd, and are gone, but I recognize
+them instantly as belonging to my beloved circle of unknown friends.
+
+Once it was a girl opposite me in a car—a girl with a wide, humorous
+mouth, and tragic eyes, and a hole in her shoe. Once it was a big,
+homely, red-headed giant of a man with an engineering magazine sticking
+out of his coat pocket. He was standing at a book counter reading
+Dickens like a schoolboy and laughing in all the right places, I know,
+because I peaked over his shoulder to see. Another time it was a
+sprightly little, grizzled old woman, staring into a dazzling shop
+window in which was displayed a wonderful collection of fashionably
+impossible hats and gowns. She was dressed all in rusty black, was the
+little old lady, and she had a quaint cast in her left eye that gave
+her the oddest, most sporting look. The cast was working overtime as
+she gazed at the gowns, and the ridiculous old sprigs on her rusty
+black bonnet trembled with her silent mirth. She looked like one of
+those clever, epigrammatic, dowdy old duchesses that one reads about in
+English novels. I’m sure she had cardamon seeds in her shabby bag, and
+a carriage with a crest on it waiting for her just around the corner. I
+ached to slip my hand through her arm and ask her what she thought of
+it all. I know that her reply would have been exquisitely witty and
+audacious, and I did so long to hear her say it.
+
+No doubt some good angel tugs at my common sense, restraining me from
+doing these things that I am tempted to do. Of course it would be
+madness for a woman to address unknown red-headed men with the look of
+an engineer about them and a book of Dickens in their hands; or perky
+old women with nutcracker faces; or girls with wide humorous mouths.
+Oh, it couldn’t be done, I suppose. They would clap me in a padded cell
+in no time if I were to say:
+
+“Mister Red-headed Man, I’m so glad your heart is young enough for
+Dickens. I love him too—enough to read him standing at a book counter
+in a busy shop. And do you know, I like the squareness of your jaw, and
+the way your eyes crinkle up when you laugh; and as for your being an
+engineer—why one of the very first men I ever loved was the engineer in
+‘Soldiers of Fortune.’”
+
+I wonder what the girl in the car would have said if I had crossed over
+to her, and put my hand on her arm and spoken, thus:
+
+“Girl with the wide, humorous mouth, and the tragic eyes, and the hole
+in your shoe, I think you must be an awfully good sort. I’ll wager you
+paint, or write, or act, or do something clever like that for a living.
+But from that hole in your shoe which you have inked so carefully,
+although it persists in showing white at the seams, I fancy you are
+stumbling over a rather stony bit of Life’s road just now. And from the
+look in your eyes, girl, I’m afraid the stones have cut and bruised
+rather cruelly. But when I look at your smiling, humorous mouth I know
+that you are trying to laugh at the hurts. I think that this morning,
+when you inked your shoe for the dozenth time, you hesitated between
+tears and laughter, and the laugh won, thank God! Please keep right on
+laughing, and don’t you dare stop for a minute! Because pretty soon
+you’ll come to a smooth easy place, and then won’t you be glad that you
+didn’t give up to lie down by the roadside, weary of your hurts?”
+
+Oh, it would never do. Never. And yet no charm possessed by the people
+I know and like can compare with the fascination of those People I’d
+Like to Know, and Know I Would Like.
+
+Here at home with Norah there are no faces in the crowds. There are no
+crowds. When you turn the corner at Main street you are quite sure that
+you will see the same people in the same places. You know that Mamie
+Hayes will be flapping her duster just outside the door of the jewelry
+store where she clerks. She gazes up and down Main street as she flaps
+the cloth, her bright eyes keeping a sharp watch for stray traveling
+men that may chance to be passing. You know that there will be the same
+lounging group of white-faced, vacant-eyed youths outside the
+pool-room. Dr. Briggs’s patient runabout will be standing at his office
+doorway. Outside his butcher shop Assemblyman Schenck will be holding
+forth on the subject of county politics to a group of red-faced, badly
+dressed, prosperous looking farmers and townsmen, and as he talks the
+circle of brown tobacco juice which surrounds the group closes in upon
+them, nearer and nearer. And there, in a roomy chair in a corner of the
+public library reference room, facing the big front window, you will
+see Old Man Randall. His white hair forms a halo above his pitiful
+drink-marred face. He was to have been a great lawyer, was Old Man
+Randall. But on the road to fame he met Drink, and she grasped his arm,
+and led him down by-ways, and into crooked lanes, and finally into
+ditches, and he never arrived at his goal. There in that library window
+nook it is cool in summer, and warm in winter. So he sits and dreams,
+holding an open volume, unread, on his knees. Sometimes he writes,
+hunched up in his corner, feverishly scribbling at ridiculous plays,
+short stories, and novels which later he will insist on reading to the
+tittering schoolboys and girls who come into the library to do their
+courting and reference work. Presently, when it grows dusk, Old Man
+Randall will put away his book, throw his coat over his shoulders,
+sleeves dangling, flowing white locks sweeping the frayed velvet
+collar. He will march out with his soldierly tread, humming a bit of a
+tune, down the street and into Vandermeister’s saloon, where he will
+beg a drink and a lunch, and some man will give it to him for the sake
+of what Old Man Randall might have been.
+
+All these things you know. And knowing them, what is left for the
+imagination? How can one dream dreams about people when one knows how
+much they pay their hired girl, and what they have for dinner on
+Wednesdays?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+THE ABSURD BECOMES SERIOUS
+
+
+I can understand the emotions of a broken-down war horse that is
+hitched to a vegetable wagon. I am going to Milwaukee to work! It is a
+thing to make the gods hold their sides and roll down from their
+mountain peaks with laughter. After New York—Milwaukee!
+
+Of course Von Gerhard is to blame. But I think even he sees the humor
+of it. It happened in this way, on a day when I was indulging in a
+particularly greenery-yallery fit of gloom. Norah rushed into my room.
+I think I was mooning over some old papers, or letters, or ribbons, or
+some such truck in the charming, knife-turning way that women have when
+they are blue.
+
+“Out wid yez!” cried Norah. “On with your hat and coat! I’ve just had a
+wire from Ernst von Gerhard. He’s coming, and you look like an
+under-done dill pickle. You aren’t half as blooming as when he was here
+in August, and this is October. Get out and walk until your cheeks are
+so red that Von Gerhard will refuse to believe that this fiery-faced
+puffing, bouncing creature is the green and limp thing that huddled in
+a chair a few months ago. Out ye go!”
+
+And out I went. Hatless, I strode countrywards, leaving paved streets
+and concrete walks far behind. There were drifts of fallen leaves all
+about, and I scuffled through them drearily, trying to feel gloomy, and
+old, and useless, and failing because of the tang in the air, and the
+red-and-gold wonder of the frost-kissed leaves, and the regular
+pump-pump of good red blood that was coursing through my body as per
+Norah’s request.
+
+In a field at the edge of the town, just where city and country begin
+to have a bowing acquaintance, the college boys were at football
+practice. Their scarlet sweaters made gay patches of color against the
+dull gray-brown of the autumn grass.
+
+“Seven-eighteen-two-four!” called a voice. There followed a scuffle, a
+creaking of leather on leather, a thud. I watched them, a bit
+enviously, walking backwards until a twist in the road hid them from
+view. That same twist transformed my path into a real country road—a
+brown, dusty, monotonous Michigan country road that went severely about
+its business, never once stopping to flirt with the blushing autumn
+woodland at its left, or to dally with the dimpling ravine at its
+right.
+
+“Now if that were an English country road,” thought I, “a sociably
+inclined, happy-go-lucky, out-for-pleasure English country road, one
+might expect something of it. On an English country road this would be
+the psychological moment for the appearance of a blond god, in gray
+tweed. What a delightful time of it Richard Le Gallienne’s hero had on
+his quest! He could not stroll down the most innocent looking lane, he
+might not loiter along the most out-of-the-way path, he never ambled
+over the barest piece of country road, that he did not come face to
+face with some witty and lovely woman creature, also in search of
+things unconventional, and able to quote charming lines from Chaucer to
+him.”
+
+Ah, but that was England, and this is America. I realize it sadly as I
+step out of the road to allow a yellow milk wagon to rattle past. The
+red letters on the yellow milk cart inform the reader that it is the
+property of August Schimmelpfennig, of Hickory Grove. The
+Schimmelpfennig eye may be seen staring down upon me from the bit of
+glass in the rear as the cart rattles ahead, doubtless being suspicious
+of hatless young women wandering along country roads at dusk, alone.
+There was that in the staring eye to which I took exception. It wore an
+expression which made me feel sure that the mouth below it was all
+a-grin, if I could but have seen it. It was bad enough to be stared at
+by the fishy Schimmelpfennig eye, but to be grinned at by the
+Schimmelpfennig mouth!—I resented it. In order to show my resentment I
+turned my back on the Schimmelpfennig cart and pretended to look up the
+road which I had just traveled.
+
+I pretended to look up the road, and then I did look in earnest. No
+wonder the Schimmelpfennig eye and mouth had worn the leering
+expression. The blond god in gray tweed was swinging along toward me! I
+knew that he was blond because he wore no hat and the last rays of the
+October sun were making a little halo effect about his head. I knew
+that his gray clothes were tweed because every well regulated hero on a
+country road wears tweed. It’s almost a religion with them. He was not
+near enough to make a glance at his features possible. I turned around
+and continued my walk. The yellow cart, with its impudent
+Schimmelpfennig leer, was disappearing in a cloud of dust. Shades of
+the “Duchess” and Bertha M. Clay! How does one greet a blond god in
+gray tweed on a country road, when one has him!
+
+The blond god solved the problem for me.
+
+“Hi!” he called. I did not turn. There was a moment’s silence. Then
+there came a shrill, insistent whistle, of the kind that is made by
+placing four fingers between the teeth. It is a favorite with the
+gallery gods. I would not have believed that gray tweed gods stooped to
+it.
+
+“Hi!” called the voice again, very near now. “Lieber Gott! Never have I
+seen so proud a young woman!”
+
+I whirled about to face Von Gerhard; a strangely boyish and
+unprofessional looking Von Gerhard.
+
+“Young man,” I said severely, “have you been a-follerin’ of me?”
+
+“For miles,” groaned he, as we shook hands. “You walk like a grenadier.
+I am sent by the charming Norah to tell you that you are to come home
+to mix the salad dressing, for there is company for supper. I am the
+company.”
+
+I was still a bit dazed. “But how did you know which road to take? And
+when—”
+
+“Wunderbar, nicht wahr?” laughed Von Gerhard. “But really quite simple.
+I come in on an earlier train than I had expected, chat a moment with
+sister Norah, inquire after the health of my patient, and am told that
+she is running away from a horde of blue devils!—quote your charming
+sister—that have swarmed about her all day. What direction did her
+flight take? I ask. Sister Norah shrugs her shoulders and presumes that
+it is the road which shows the reddest and yellowest autumn colors.
+That road will be your road. So!”
+
+“Pooh! How simple! That is the second disappointment you have given me
+to-day.”
+
+“But how is that possible? The first has not had time to happen.”
+
+“The first was yourself,” I replied, rudely.
+
+“I had been longing for an adventure. And when I saw you ’way up the
+road, such an unusual figure for our Michigan country roads, I forgot
+that I was a disappointed old grass widder with a history, and I grew
+young again, and my heart jumped up into my throat, and I sez to
+mesilf, sez I: ‘Enter the hero!’ And it was only you.”
+
+Von Gerhard stared a moment, a curious look on his face. Then he
+laughed one of those rare laughs of his, and I joined him because I was
+strangely young, light, and happy to be alive.
+
+“You walk and enjoy walking, yes?” asked Von Gerhard, scanning my face.
+“Your cheeks they are like—well, as unlike the cheeks of the German
+girls as Diana’s are unlike a dairy maid’s. And the nerfs? They no
+longer jump, eh?”
+
+“Oh, they jump, but not with weariness. They jump to get into action
+again. From a life of too much excitement I have gone to the other
+extreme. I shall be dead of ennui in another six months.”
+
+“Ennui?” mused he, “and you are—how is it?—twenty-eight years, yes?
+H’m!”
+
+There was a world of exasperation in the last exclamation.
+
+“I am a thousand years old,” it made me exclaim, “a million!”
+
+“I will prove to you that you are sixteen,” declared Von Gerhard,
+calmly.
+
+We had come to a fork in the road. At the right the narrower road ran
+between two rows of great maples that made an arch of golden splendor.
+The frost had kissed them into a gorgeous radiance.
+
+“Sunshine Avenue,” announced Von Gerhard. “It beckons us away from
+home, and supper and salad dressing and duty, but who knows what we
+shall find at the end of it!”
+
+“Let’s explore,” I suggested. “It is splendidly golden enough to be
+enchanted.”
+
+We entered the yellow canopied pathway.
+
+“Let us pretend this is Germany, yes?” pleaded Von Gerhard. “This
+golden pathway will end in a neat little glass-roofed restaurant, with
+tables and chairs outside, and comfortable German papas and mammas and
+pig-tailed children sitting at the tables, drinking coffee or beer.
+There will be stout waiters, and a red-faced host. And we will seat
+ourselves at one of the tables, and I will wave my hand, and one of the
+stout waiters will come flying. ‘Will you have coffee, _Fraulein_, or
+beer?’ It sounds prosaic, but it is very, very good, as you will see.
+Pathways in Germany always end in coffee and Kuchen and waiters in
+white aprons.”
+
+But, “Oh, no!” I exclaimed, for his mood was infectious. “This is
+France. Please! The golden pathway will end in a picturesque little
+French farm, with a dairy. And in the doorway of the farmhouse there
+will be a red-skirted peasant woman, with a white cap! and a baby on
+her arm! and sabots! Oh, surely she will wear sabots!”
+
+“Most certainly she will wear sabots,” Von Gerhard said, heatedly, “and
+blue knitted stockings. And the baby’s name is Mimi!”
+
+We had taken hands and were skipping down the pathway now, like two
+excited children.
+
+“Let’s run,” I suggested. And run we did, like two mad creatures, until
+we rounded a gentle curve and brought up, panting, within a foot of a
+decrepit rail fence. The rail fence enclosed a stubbly, lumpy field.
+The field was inhabited by an inquiring cow. Von Gerhard and I stood
+quite still, hand in hand, gazing at the cow. Then we turned slowly and
+looked at each other.
+
+“This pathway of glorified maples ends in a cow,” I said, solemnly. At
+which we both shrieked with mirth, leaning on the decrepit fence and
+mopping our eyes with our handkerchiefs.
+
+“Did I not say you were sixteen?” taunted Von Gerhard. We were getting
+surprisingly well acquainted.
+
+“Such a scolding as we shall get! It will be quite dark before we are
+home. Norah will be tearing her hair.”
+
+It was a true prophecy. As we stampeded up the steps the door was flung
+open, disclosing a tragic figure.
+
+“Such a steak!” wailed Norah, “and it has been done for hours and
+hours, and now it looks like a piece of fried ear. Where have you two
+driveling idiots been? And mushrooms too.”
+
+“She means that the ruined steak was further enhanced by mushrooms,” I
+explained in response to Von Gerhard’s bewildered look. We marched into
+the house, trying not to appear like sneak thieves. Max, pipe in mouth,
+surveyed us blandly.
+
+“Fine color you’ve got, Dawn,” he remarked.
+
+“There is such a thing as overdoing this health business,” snapped
+Norah, with a great deal of acidity for her. “I didn’t tell you to make
+them purple, you know.”
+
+Max turned to Von Gerhard. “Now what does she mean by that do you
+suppose, eh Ernst?”
+
+“Softly, brother, softly!” whispered Von Gerhard. “When women exchange
+remarks that apparently are simple, and yet that you, a man, cannot
+understand, then know there is a woman’s war going on, and step softly,
+and hold your peace. Aber ruhig!”
+
+Calm was restored with the appearance of the steak, which was found to
+have survived the period of waiting, and to be incredibly juicy and
+tender. Presently we were all settled once more in the great beamed
+living room, Sis at the piano, the two men smoking their after-dinner
+cigars with that idiotic expression of contentment which always adorns
+the masculine face on such occasions.
+
+I looked at them—at those three who had done so much for my happiness
+and well being, and something within me said: “Now! Speak now!” Norah
+was playing very softly, so that the Spalpeens upstairs might not be
+disturbed. I took a long breath and made the plunge.
+
+“Norah, if you’ll continue the slow music, I’ll be much obliged. ‘The
+time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things.’”
+
+“Don’t be absurd,” said Norah, over her shoulder, and went on playing.
+
+“I never was more serious in my life, good folkses all. I’ve got to be.
+This butterfly existence has gone on long enough. Norah, and Max, and
+Mr. Doctor Man, I am going away.”
+
+Norah’s hands crashed down on the piano keys with a jangling discord.
+She swung about to face me.
+
+“Not New York again, Dawn! Not New York!”
+
+“I am afraid so,” I answered.
+
+Max—bless his great, brotherly heart—rose and came over to me and put a
+hand on my shoulder.
+
+“Don’t you like it here, girlie? Want to be hauled home on a shutter
+again, do you? You know that as long as we have a home, you have one.
+We need you here.”
+
+But I shook my head. From his chair at the other side of the room I
+could feel Von Gerhard’s gaze fixed upon us. He had said nothing.
+
+“Need me! No one needs me. Don’t worry; I’m not going to become maudlin
+about it. But I don’t belong here, and you know, it. I have my work to
+do. Norah is the best sister that a woman ever had. And Max, you’re an
+angel brother-in-law. But how can I stay on here and keep my
+self-respect?” I took Max’s big hand in mine and gathered courage from
+it.
+
+“But you have been working,” wailed Norah, “every morning. And I
+thought the book was coming on beautifully. And I’m sure it will be a
+wonderful book, Dawn dear. You are so clever.”
+
+“Oh, the book—it is too uncertain. Perhaps it will go, but perhaps it
+won’t. And then—what? It will be months before the book is properly
+polished off. And then I may peddle it around for more months. No; I
+can’t afford to trifle with uncertainties. Every newspaper man or woman
+writes a book. It’s like having the measles. There is not a newspaper
+man living who does not believe, in his heart, that if he could only
+take a month or two away from the telegraph desk or the police run, he
+could write the book of the year, not to speak of the great American
+Play. Why, just look at me! I’ve only been writing seriously for a few
+weeks, and already the best magazines in the country are refusing my
+manuscripts daily.”
+
+“Don’t joke,” said Norah, coming over to me, “I can’t stand it.”
+
+“Why not? Much better than weeping, isn’t it? And anyway, I’m no
+subject for tears any more. Dr. von Gerhard will tell you how well and
+strong I am. Won’t you, Herr Doktor?”
+
+“Well,” said Von Gerhard, in his careful, deliberate English, “since
+you ask me, I should say that you might last about one year, in New
+York.”
+
+“There! What did I tell you!” cried Norah.
+
+“What utter blither!” I scoffed, turning to glare at Von Gerhard.
+
+“Gently,” warned Max. “Such disrespect to the man who pulled you back
+from the edge of the yawning grave only six months ago!”
+
+“Yawning fiddlesticks!” snapped I, elegantly. “There was nothing wrong
+with me except that I wanted to be fussed over. And I have been. And
+I’ve loved it. But it must stop now.” I rose and walked over to the
+table and faced Von Gerhard, sitting there in the depths of a great
+chair. “You do not seem to realize that I am not free to come and go,
+and work and play, and laugh and live like other women. There is my
+living to make. And there is—Peter Orme. Do you think that I could stay
+on here like this? Oh, I know that Max is not a poor man. But he is not
+a rich man, either. And there are the children to be educated, and
+besides, Max married Norah O’Hara, not the whole O’Hara tribe. I want
+to go to work. I am not a free woman, but when I am working, I forget,
+and am almost happy. I tell you I must be well again! I will be well! I
+am well!”
+
+At the end of which dramatic period I spoiled the whole effect by
+bowing my head on the table and giving way to a fit of weeping such as
+I had not had since the days of my illness.
+
+“Looks like it,” said Max, at which I decided to laugh, and the
+situation was saved.
+
+It was then that Von Gerhard proposed the thing that set us staring at
+him in amused wonder. He came over and stood looking down at us, his
+hands outspread upon the big library table, his body bent forward in an
+attitude of eager intentness. I remember thinking what wonderful hands
+they were, true indexes of the man’s character; broad, white, surgeonly
+hands; the fingers almost square at the tips. They were hands as
+different from those slender, nervous, unsteady, womanly hands of Peter
+Orme as any hands could be, I thought. They were hands made for work
+that called for delicate strength, if such a paradox could be; hands to
+cling to; to gain courage from; hands that spelled power and reserve. I
+looked at them, fascinated, as I often had done before, and thought
+that I never had seen such SANE hands.
+
+“You have done me the honor to include me in this little family
+conclave,” began Ernst von Gerhard. “I am going to take advantage of
+your trust. I shall give you some advice—a thing I usually keep for
+unpleasant professional occasions. Do not go back to New York.”
+
+“But I know New York. And New York—the newspaper part of it—knows me.
+Where else can I go?”
+
+“You have your book to finish. You could never finish it there, is it
+not so?”
+
+I’m afraid I shrugged my shoulders. It was all so much harder than I
+had expected. What did they want me to do? I asked myself, bitterly.
+
+Von Gerhard went on. “Why not go where the newspaper work will not be
+so nerve-racking? where you still might find time for this other work
+that is dear to you, and that may bring its reward in time.” He reached
+out and took my hand, into his great, steady clasp. “Come to the happy,
+healthy, German town called Milwaukee, yes? Ach, you may laugh. But
+newspaper work is newspaper work the world over, because men and women
+are just men and women the world over. But there you could live sanely,
+and work not too hard, and there would be spare hours for the book that
+is near your heart. And I—I will speak of you to Norberg, of the Post.
+And on Sundays, if you are good, I may take you along the marvelous
+lake drives in my little red runabout, yes? Aber wunderbar, those
+drives are! So.”
+
+Then—“Milwaukee!” shrieked Max and Norah and I, together. “After New
+York—Milwaukee!”
+
+“Laugh,” said Von Gerhard, quite composedly. “I give you until
+to-morrow morning to stop laughing. At the end of that time it will not
+seem quite so amusing. No joke is so funny after one has contemplated
+it for twelve hours.”
+
+The voice of Norah, the temptress, sounded close to my ear. “Dawn dear,
+just think how many million miles nearer you would be to Max, and me,
+and home.”
+
+“Oh, you have all gone mad! The thing is impossible. I shan’t go back
+to a country sheet in my old age. I suppose that in two more years I
+shall be editing a mothers’ column on an agricultural weekly.”
+
+“Norberg would be delighted to get you,” mused Von Gerhard, “and it
+would be day work instead of night work.”
+
+“And you would send me a weekly bulletin on Dawn’s health, wouldn’t
+you, Ernst?” pleaded Norah. “And you’d teach her to drink beer and she
+shall grow so fat that the Spalpeens won’t know their auntie.”
+
+At last—“How much do they pay?” I asked, in desperation. And the thing
+that had appeared so absurd at first began to take on the shape of
+reality.
+
+Von Gerhard did speak to Norberg of the Post. And I am to go to
+Milwaukee next week. The skeleton of the book manuscript is stowed
+safely away in the bottom of my trunk and Norah has filled in the
+remaining space with sundry flannels, and hot water bags and medicine
+flasks, so that I feel like a schoolgirl on her way to boarding-school,
+instead of like a seasoned old newspaper woman with a capital PAST and
+a shaky future. I wish that I were chummier with the Irish saints. I
+need them now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+STEEPED IN GERMAN
+
+
+I am living at a little private hotel just across from the court house
+square with its scarlet geraniums and its pretty fountain. The house is
+filled with German civil engineers, mechanical engineers, and Herr
+Professors from the German academy. On Sunday mornings we have
+Pfannkuchen with currant jelly, and the Herr Professors come down to
+breakfast in fearful flappy German slippers. I’m the only creature in
+the place that isn’t just over from Germany. Even the dog is a
+dachshund. It is so unbelievable that every day or two I go down to
+Wisconsin Street and gaze at the stars and stripes floating from the
+government building, in order to convince myself that this is America.
+It needs only a Kaiser or so, and a bit of Unter den Linden to be quite
+complete.
+
+The little private hotel is kept by Herr and Frau Knapf. After one has
+seen them, one quite understands why the place is steeped in a German
+atmosphere up to its eyebrows.
+
+I never would have found it myself. It was Doctor von Gerhard who had
+suggested Knapf’s, and who had paved the way for my coming here.
+
+“You will find it quite unlike anything you have ever tried before,” he
+warned me. “Very German it is, and very, very clean, and most
+inexpensive. Also I think you will find material there—how is it you
+call it?—copy, yes? Well, there should be copy in plenty; and types!
+But you shall see.”
+
+From the moment I rang the Knapf doorbell I saw. The dapper, cheerful
+Herr Knapf, wearing a disappointed Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, opened the
+door. I scarcely had begun to make my wishes known when he interrupted
+with a large wave of the hand, and an elaborate German bow.
+
+“Ach yes! You would be the lady of whom the Herr Doktor has spoken.
+Gewiss! Frau Orme, not? But so a young lady I did not expect to see. A
+room we have saved for you—aber wunderhubsch! It makes me much pleasure
+to show. Folgen Sie mir, bitte.”
+
+“You—you speak English?” I faltered, with visions of my evenings spent
+in expressing myself in the sign language.
+
+“Englisch? But yes. Here in Milwaukee it gives aber mostly German. And
+then too, I have been only twenty years in this country. And always in
+Milwaukee. Here is it gemutlich—and mostly it gives German.”
+
+I tried not to look frightened, and followed him up to the “but
+wonderfully beautiful” room. To my joy I found it high-ceilinged, airy,
+and huge, with a great vault of a clothes closet bristling with hooks,
+and boasting an unbelievable number of shelves. My trunk was swallowed
+up in it. Never in all my boarding-house experience have I seen such a
+room, or such a closet. The closet must have been built for a bride’s
+trousseau in the days of hoop-skirts and scuttle bonnets. There was a
+separate and distinct hook for each and every one of my most obscure
+garments. I tried to spread them out. I used two hooks to every
+petticoat, and three for my kimono, and when I had finished there were
+rows of hooks to spare. Tiers of shelves yawned for hat-boxes which I
+possessed not. Bluebeard’s wives could have held a family reunion in
+that closet and invited all of Solomon’s spouses. Finally, in
+desperation, I gathered all my poor garments together and hung them in
+a sociable bunch on the hooks nearest the door. How I should have loved
+to have shown that closet to a select circle of New York boarding-house
+landladies!
+
+After wrestling in vain with the forest of hooks, I turned my attention
+to my room. I yanked a towel thing off the center table and replaced it
+with a scarf that Peter had picked up in the Orient. I set up my
+typewriter in a corner near a window and dug a gay cushion or two and a
+chafing-dish out of my trunk. I distributed photographs of Norah and
+Max and the Spalpeens separately, in couples, and in groups. Then I
+bounced up and down in a huge yellow brocade chair and found it
+unbelievably soft and comfortable. Of course, I reflected, after the
+big veranda, and the apple tree at Norah’s, and the leather-cushioned
+comfort of her library, and the charming tones of her Oriental rugs and
+hangings—
+
+“Oh, stop your carping, Dawn!” I told myself. “You can’t expect
+charming tones, and Oriental do-dads and apple trees in a German
+boarding-house. Anyhow there’s running water in the room. For general
+utility purposes that’s better than a pink prayer rug.”
+
+There was a time when I thought that it was the luxuries that made life
+worth living. That was in the old Bohemian days.
+
+“Necessities!” I used to laugh, “Pooh! Who cares about the necessities!
+What if the dishpan does leak? It is the luxuries that count.”
+
+Bohemia and luxuries! Half a dozen lean boarding-house years have
+steered me safely past that. After such a course in common sense you
+don’t stand back and examine the pictures of a pink Moses in a nest of
+purple bullrushes, or complain because the bureau does not harmonize
+with the wall paper. Neither do you criticize the blue and saffron
+roses that form the rug pattern. ’Deedy not! Instead you warily punch
+the mattress to see if it is rock-stuffed, and you snoop into the
+clothes closet; you inquire the distance to the nearest bath room, and
+whether the payments are weekly or monthly, and if there is a baby in
+the room next door. Oh, there’s nothing like living in a boarding-house
+for cultivating the materialistic side.
+
+But I was to find that here at Knapf’s things were quite different. Not
+only was Ernst von Gerhard right in saying that it was “very German,
+and very, very clean;” he recognized good copy when he saw it. Types! I
+never dreamed that such faces existed outside of the old German
+woodcuts that one sees illustrating time-yellowed books.
+
+I had thought myself hardened to strange boarding-house dining rooms,
+with their batteries of cold, critical women’s eyes. I had learned to
+walk unruffled in the face of the most carping, suspicious and the
+fishiest of these batteries. Therefore on my first day at Knapf’s I
+went down to dinner in the evening, quite composed and secure in the
+knowledge that my collar was clean and that there was no flaw to find
+in the fit of my skirt in the back.
+
+As I opened the door of my room I heard sounds as of a violent
+altercation in progress downstairs. I leaned over the balusters and
+listened. The sounds rose and fell and swelled and boomed. They were
+German sounds that started in the throat, gutturally, and spluttered
+their way up. They were sounds such as I had not heard since the night
+I was sent to cover a Socialist meeting in New York. I tip-toed down
+the stairs, although I might have fallen down and landed with a thud
+without having been heard. The din came from the direction of the
+dining room. Well, come what might, I would not falter. After all, it
+could not be worse than that awful time when I had helped cover the
+teamsters’ strike. I peered into the dining room.
+
+The thunder of conversation went on as before. But there was no
+bloodshed. Nothing but men and women sitting at small tables, eating
+and talking. When I say eating and talking I do not mean that those
+acts were carried on separately. Not at all. The eating and the talking
+went on simultaneously, neither interrupting the other. A fork full of
+food and a mouthful of ten-syllabled German words met, wrestled, and
+passed one another, unscathed. I stood in the doorway, fascinated,
+until Herr Knapf spied me, took a nimble skip in my direction, twisted
+the discouraged mustaches into temporary sprightliness, and waved me
+toward a table in the center of the room.
+
+Then a frightful thing happened. When I think of it now I turn cold.
+The battery was not that of women’s eyes, but of men’s. And
+conversation ceased! The uproar and the booming of vowels was hushed.
+The silence was appalling. I looked up in horror to find that what
+seemed to be millions of staring blue eyes were fixed on me. The
+stillness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. Such men!
+Immediately I dubbed them the aborigines, and prayed that I might find
+adjectives with which to describe their foreheads.
+
+It appeared that the aborigines were especially favored in that they
+were all placed at one long, untidy table at the head of the room. The
+rest of us sat at small tables. Later I learned that they were all
+engineers. At meals they discuss engineering problems in the most
+awe-inspiring German. After supper they smoke impossible German pipes
+and dozens of cigarettes. They have bulging, knobby foreheads and
+bristling pompadours, and some of the rawest of them wear wild-looking
+beards, and thick spectacles, and cravats and trousers that Lew Fields
+never even dreamed of. They are all graduates of high-sounding foreign
+universities and are horribly learned and brilliant, but they are the
+worst mannered lot I ever saw.
+
+In the silence that followed my entrance a red-cheeked maid approached
+me and asked what I would have for supper. Supper? I asked. Was not
+dinner served in the evening? The aborigines nudged each other and
+sniggered like fiendish little school-boys.
+
+The red-cheeked maid looked at me pityingly. Dinner was served in the
+middle of the day, naturlich. For supper there was Wienerschnitzel, and
+kalter Aufschnitt, also Kartoffel Salat, and fresh Kaffeekuchen.
+
+The room hung breathless on my decision. I wrestled with a horrible
+desire to shriek and run. Instead I managed to mumble an order. The
+aborigines turned to one another inquiringly.
+
+“Was hat sie gesagt?” they asked. “What did she say?” Whereupon they
+fell to discussing my hair and teeth and eyes and complexion in German
+as crammed with adjectives as was the rye bread over which I was
+choking with caraway. The entire table watched me with wide-eyed,
+unabashed interest while I ate, and I advanced by quick stages from
+red-faced confusion to purple mirth. It appeared that my presence was
+the ground for a heavy German joke in connection with the youngest of
+the aborigines. He was a very plump and greasy looking aborigine with a
+doll-like rosiness of cheek and a scared and bristling pompadour and
+very small pig-eyes. The other aborigines clapped him on the back and
+roared:
+
+“Ai Fritz! Jetzt brauchst du nicht zu weinen! Deine Lena war aber nicht
+so huebsch, eh?”
+
+Later I learned that Fritz was the newest arrival and that since coming
+to this country he had been rather low in spirits in consequence of a
+certain flaxen-haired Lena whom he had left behind in the fatherland.
+
+An examination of the dining room and its other occupants served to
+keep my mind off the hateful long table. The dining room was a double
+one, the floor carpetless and clean. There was a little platform at one
+end with hardy-looking plants in pots near the windows. The wall was
+ornamented with very German pictures of very plump, bare-armed German
+girls being chucked under the chin by very dashing, mustachioed German
+lieutenants. It was all very bare, and strange and foreign to my eyes,
+and yet there was something bright and comfortable about it. I felt
+that I was going to like it, aborigines and all. The men drink beer
+with their supper and read the Staats-Zeitung and the Germania and
+foreign papers that I never heard of. It is uncanny, in these United
+States. But it is going to be bully for my German.
+
+After my first letter home Norah wrote frantically, demanding to know
+if I was the only woman in the house. I calmed her fears by assuring
+her that, while the men were interesting and ugly with the fascinating
+ugliness of a bulldog, the women were crushed looking and uninteresting
+and wore hopeless hats. I have written Norah and Max reams about this
+household, from the aborigines to Minna, who tidies my room and serves
+my meals, and admires my clothes. Minna is related to Frau Knapf, whom
+I have never seen. Minna is inordinately fond of dress, and her remarks
+anent my own garments are apt to be a trifle disconcerting, especially
+when she intersperses her recital of dinner dishes with admiring
+adjectives directed at my blouse or hat. Thus:
+
+“Wir haben roast beef, und spareribs mit Sauerkraut, und schicken—ach,
+wie schon, Frau Orme! Aber ganz prachtvoll!” Her eyes and hands are
+raised toward heaven.
+
+“What’s prachtful?” I ask, startled. “The chicken?”
+
+“Nein; your waist. Selbst gemacht?”
+
+I am even becoming hardened to the manners of the aborigines. It used
+to fuss me to death to meet one of them in the halls. They always
+stopped short, brought heels together with a click, bent stiffly from
+the waist, and thundered: “Nabben’, Fraulein!”
+
+I have learned to take the salutation quite calmly, and even the
+wildest, most spectacled and knobby-browed aborigine cannot startle me.
+Nonchalantly I reply, “Nabben’,” and wish that Norah could but see me
+in the act.
+
+When I told Ernst von Gerhard about them, he laughed a little and
+shrugged his shoulders and said:
+
+“Na, you should not look so young, and so pretty, and so unmarried. In
+Germany a married woman brushes her hair quite smoothly back, and pins
+it in a hard knob. And she knows nothing of such bewildering collars
+and fluffy frilled things in the front of the blouse. How do you call
+them—jabots?”
+
+Von Gerhard has not behaved at all nicely. I did not see him until two
+weeks after my arrival in Milwaukee, although he telephoned twice to
+ask if there was anything that he could do to make me comfortable.
+
+“Yes,” I had answered the last time that I heard his voice over the
+telephone. “It would be a whole heap of comfort to me just to see you.
+You are the nearest thing to Norah that there is in this whole German
+town, and goodness knows you’re far from Irish.”
+
+He came. The weather had turned suddenly cold and he was wearing a
+fur-lined coat with a collar of fur. He looked most amazingly handsome
+and blond and splendidly healthy. The clasp of his hands was just as
+big and sure as ever.
+
+“You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” I told him. “If you had,
+you would have been here days ago. Aren’t you rather ill-mannered and
+neglectful, considering that you are responsible for my being here?”
+
+“I did not know whether you, a married woman, would care to have me
+here,” he said, in his composed way. “In a place like this people are
+not always kind enough to take the trouble to understand. And I would
+not have them raise their eyebrows at you, not for—”
+
+“Married!” I laughed, some imp of willfulness seizing me, “I’m not
+married. What mockery to say that I am married simply because I must
+write madam before my name! I am not married, and I shall talk to whom
+I please.”
+
+And then Von Gerhard did a surprising thing. He took two great steps
+over to my chair, and grasped my hands and pulled me to my feet. I
+stared up at him like a silly creature. His face was suffused with a
+dull red, and his eyes were unbelievably blue and bright. He had my
+hands in his great grip, but his voice was very quiet and contained.
+
+“You are married,” he said. “Never forget that for a moment. You are
+bound, hard and fast and tight. And you are for no man. You are married
+as much as though that poor creature in the mad house were here working
+for you, instead of the case being reversed as it is. So.”
+
+“What do you mean!” I cried, wrenching myself away indignantly. “What
+right have you to talk to me like this? You know what my life has been,
+and how I have tried to smile with my lips and stay young in my heart!
+I thought you understood. Norah thought so too, and Max—”
+
+“I do understand. I understand so well that I would not have you talk
+as you did a moment ago. And I said what I said not so much for your
+sake, as for mine. For see, I too must remember that you write madam
+before your name. And sometimes it is hard for me to remember.”
+
+“Oh,” I said, like a simpleton, and stood staring after him as he
+quietly gathered up his hat and gloves and left me standing there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+BLACKIE’S PHILOSOPHY
+
+
+I did not write Norah about Von Gerhard. After all, I told myself,
+there was nothing to write. And so I was the first to break the solemn
+pact that we had made.
+
+“You will write everything, won’t you, Dawn dear?” Norah had pleaded,
+with tears in her pretty eyes. “Promise me. We’ve been nearer to each
+other in these last few months than we have been since we were girls.
+And I’ve loved it so. Please don’t do as you did during those miserable
+years in New York, when you were fighting your troubles alone and we
+knew nothing of it. You wrote only the happy things. Promise me you’ll
+write the unhappy ones too—though the saints forbid that there should
+be any to write! And Dawn, don’t you dare to forget your heavy
+underwear in November. Those lake breezes!—Well, some one has to tell
+you, and I can’t leave those to Von Gerhard. He has promised to act as
+monitor over your health.”
+
+And so I promised. I crammed my letters with descriptions of the Knapf
+household. I assured her that I was putting on so much weight that the
+skirts which formerly hung about me in limp, dejected folds now refused
+to meet in the back, and all the hooks and eyes were making faces at
+each other. My cheeks, I told her, looked as if I were wearing
+plumpers, and I was beginning to waddle and puff as I walked.
+
+Norah made frantic answer:
+
+“For mercy’s sake child, be careful or you’ll be FAT!”
+
+To which I replied: “Don’t care if I am. Rather be hunky and healthy
+than skinny and sick. Have tried both.”
+
+It is impossible to avoid becoming round-cheeked when one is working on
+a paper that allows one to shut one’s desk and amble comfortably home
+for dinner at least five days in the week. Everybody is at least plump
+in this comfortable, gemutlich town, where everybody placidly locks his
+shop or office and goes home at noon to dine heavily on soup and meat
+and vegetables and pudding, washed down by the inevitable beer and
+followed by forty winks on the dining room sofa with the German Zeitung
+spread comfortably over the head as protection against the flies.
+
+There is a fascination about the bright little city. There is about it
+something quaint and foreign, as though a cross-section of the old
+world had been dumped bodily into the lap of Wisconsin. It does not
+seem at all strange to hear German spoken everywhere—in the streets, in
+the shops, in the theaters, in the street cars. One day I chanced upon
+a sign hung above the doorway of a little German bakery over on the
+north side. There were Hornchen and Kaffeekuchen in the windows, and a
+brood of flaxen-haired and sticky children in the back of the shop. I
+stopped, open-mouthed, to stare at the worn sign tacked over the door.
+
+“Hier wird Englisch gesprochen,” it announced.
+
+I blinked. Then I read it again. I shut my eyes, and opened them again
+suddenly. The fat German letters spoke their message as before—“English
+spoken here.”
+
+On reaching the office I told Norberg, the city editor, about my find.
+He was not impressed. Norberg never is impressed. He is the most
+soul-satisfying and theatrical city editor that I have ever met. He is
+fat, and unbelievably nimble, and keen-eyed, and untiring. He says,
+“Hell!” when things go wrong; he smokes innumerable cigarettes,
+inhaling the fumes and sending out the thin wraith of smoke with little
+explosive sounds between tongue and lips; he wears blue shirts, and no
+collar to speak of, and his trousers are kept in place only by a
+miracle and an inefficient looking leather belt.
+
+When he refused to see the story in the little German bakery sign I
+began to argue.
+
+“But man alive, this is America! I think I know a story when I see it.
+Suppose you were traveling in Germany, and should come across a sign
+over a shop, saying: ‘Hier wird Deutsch gesprochen.’ Wouldn’t you think
+you were dreaming?”
+
+Norberg waved an explanatory hand. “This isn’t America. This is
+Milwaukee. After you’ve lived here a year or so you’ll understand what
+I mean. If we should run a story of that sign, with a two-column cut,
+Milwaukee wouldn’t even see the joke.”
+
+But it was not necessary that I live in Milwaukee a year or so in order
+to understand its peculiarities, for I had a personal conductor and
+efficient guide in the new friend that had come into my life with the
+first day of my work on the Post. Surely no woman ever had a stronger
+friend than little “Blackie” Griffith, sporting editor of the Milwaukee
+Post. We became friends, not step by step, but in one gigantic leap
+such as sometimes triumphs over the gap between acquaintance and
+liking.
+
+I never shall forget my first glimpse of him. He strolled into the city
+room from his little domicile across the hall. A shabby, disreputable,
+out-at-elbows office coat was worn over his ultra-smart street clothes,
+and he was puffing at a freakish little pipe in the shape of a
+miniature automobile. He eyed me a moment from the doorway, a
+fantastic, elfin little figure. I thought that I had never seen so
+strange and so ugly a face as that of this little brown Welshman with
+his lank, black hair and his deep-set, uncanny black eyes. Suddenly he
+trotted over to me with a quick little step. In the doorway he had
+looked forty. Now a smile illumined the many lines of his dark
+countenance, and in some miraculous way he looked twenty.
+
+“Are you the New York importation?” he, asked, his great black eyes
+searching my face.
+
+“I’m what’s left of it,” I replied, meekly.
+
+“I understand you’ve been in for repairs. Must of met up with somethin’
+on the road. They say the goin’ is full of bumps in N’ York.”
+
+“Bumps!” I laughed, “it’s uphill every bit of the road, and yet you’ve
+got to go full speed to get anywhere. But I’m running easily again,
+thank you.”
+
+He waved away a cloud of pipe-smoke, and knowingly squinted through the
+haze. “We don’t speed up much here. And they ain’t no hill climbin’ t’
+speak of. But say, if you ever should hit a nasty place on the route,
+toot your siren for me and I’ll come. I’m a regular little human garage
+when it comes to patchin’ up those aggravatin’ screws that need oilin’.
+And, say, don’t let Norberg bully you. My name’s Blackie. I’m goin’ t’
+like you. Come on over t’ my sanctum once in a while and I’ll show you
+my scrapbook and let you play with the office revolver.”
+
+And so it happened that I had not been in Milwaukee a month before
+Blackie and I were friends.
+
+Norah was horrified. My letters were full of him. I told her that she
+might get a more complete mental picture of him if she knew that he
+wore the pinkest shirts, and the purplest neckties, and the blackest
+and whitest of black-and-white checked vests that ever aroused the envy
+of an office boy, and beneath them all, the gentlest of hearts. And
+therefore one loves him. There is a sort of spell about the illiterate
+little slangy, brown Welshman. He is the presiding genius of the place.
+The office boys adore him. The Old Man takes his advice in selecting a
+new motor car; the managing editor arranges his lunch hour to suit
+Blackie’s and they go off to the Press club together, arm in arm. It is
+Blackie who lends a sympathetic ear to the society editor’s tale of
+woe. He hires and fires the office boys; boldly he criticizes the news
+editor’s makeup; he receives delegations of tan-coated, red-faced
+prizefighting-looking persons; he gently explains to the photographer
+why that last batch of cuts make their subjects look as if afflicted
+with the German measles; he arbitrates any row that the newspaper may
+have with such dignitaries as the mayor or the chief of police; he
+manages boxing shows; he skims about in a smart little roadster; he
+edits the best sporting page in the city; and at four o’clock of an
+afternoon he likes to send around the corner for a chunk of devil’s
+food cake with butter filling from the Woman’s Exchange. Blackie never
+went to school to speak of. He doesn’t know was from were. But he can
+“see” a story quicker, and farther and clearer than any newspaper man I
+ever knew—excepting Peter Orme.
+
+There is a legend about to the effect that one day the managing editor,
+who is Scotch and without a sense of humor, ordered that Blackie should
+henceforth be addressed by his surname of Griffith, as being a more
+dignified appellation for the use of fellow reporters, hangers-on, copy
+kids, office boys and others about the big building.
+
+The day after the order was issued the managing editor summoned a
+freckled youth and thrust a sheaf of galley proofs into his hand.
+
+“Take those to Mr. Griffith,” he ordered without looking up.
+
+“T’ who?”
+
+“To Mr. Griffith,” said the managing editor, laboriously, and scowling
+a bit.
+
+The boy took three unwilling steps toward the door. Then he turned a
+puzzled face toward the managing editor.
+
+“Say, honest, I ain’t never heard of dat guy. He must be a new one.
+W’ere’ll I find him?”
+
+“Oh, damn! Take those proofs to Blackie!” roared the managing editor.
+And thus ended Blackie’s enforced flight into the realms of dignity.
+
+All these things, and more, I wrote to the scandalized Norah. I
+informed her that he wore more diamond rings and scarf pins and watch
+fobs than a railroad conductor, and that his checked top-coat shrieked
+to Heaven.
+
+There came back a letter in which every third word was underlined, and
+which ended by asking what the morals of such a man could be.
+
+Then I tried to make Blackie more real to Norah who, in all her
+sheltered life, had never come in contact with a man like this.
+
+“... As for his morals—or what you would consider his morals, Sis—they
+probably are a deep crimson; but I’ll swear there is no yellow streak.
+I never have heard anything more pathetic than his story. Blackie sold
+papers on a down-town corner when he was a baby six years old. Then he
+got a job as office boy here, and he used to sharpen pencils, and run
+errands, and carry copy. After office hours he took care of some horses
+in an alley barn near by, and after that work was done he was employed
+about the pressroom of one of the old German newspaper offices.
+Sometimes he would be too weary to crawl home after working half the
+night, and so he would fall asleep, a worn, tragic little figure, on a
+pile of old papers and sacks in a warm corner near the presses. He was
+the head of a household, and every penny counted. And all the time he
+was watching things, and learning. Nothing escaped those keen black
+eyes. He used to help the photographer when there was a pile of plates
+to develop, and presently he knew more about photography than the man
+himself. So they made him staff photographer. In some marvelous way he
+knew more ball players, and fighters and horsemen than the sporting
+editor. He had a nose for news that was nothing short of wonderful. He
+never went out of the office without coming back with a story. They
+used to use him in the sporting department when a rush was on. Then he
+became one of the sporting staff; then assistant sporting editor; then
+sporting editor. He knows this paper from the basement up. He could
+operate a linotype or act as managing editor with equal ease.
+
+“No, I’m afraid that Blackie hasn’t had much time for morals. But,
+Norah dear, I wish that you could hear him when he talks about his
+mother. He may follow doubtful paths, and associate with questionable
+people, and wear restless clothes, but I wouldn’t exchange his
+friendship for that of a dozen of your ordinary so-called good men. All
+these years of work and suffering have made an old man of little
+Blackie, although he is young in years. But they haven’t spoiled his
+heart any. He is able to distinguish between sham and truth because he
+has been obliged to do it ever since he was a child selling papers on
+the corner. But he still clings to the office that gave him his start,
+although he makes more money in a single week outside the office than
+his salary would amount to in half a year. He says that this is a job
+that does not interfere with his work.”
+
+Such is Blackie. Surely the oddest friend a woman ever had. He
+possesses a genius for friendship, and a wonderful understanding of
+suffering, born of those years of hardship and privation. Each learned
+the other’s story, bit by bit, in a series of confidences exchanged
+during that peaceful, beatific period that follows just after the last
+edition has gone down. Blackie’s little cubby-hole of an office is
+always blue with smoke, and cluttered with a thousand odds and
+ends—photographs, souvenirs, boxing-gloves, a litter of pipes and
+tobacco, a wardrobe of dust-covered discarded coats and hats, and
+Blackie in the midst of it all, sunk in the depths of his swivel chair,
+and looking like an amiable brown gnome, or a cheerful little
+joss-house god come to life. There is in him an uncanny wisdom which
+only the streets can teach. He is one of those born newspaper men who
+could not live out of sight of the ticker-tape, and the copy-hook and
+the proof-sheet.
+
+“Y’ see, girl, it’s like this here,” Blackie explained one day. “W’re
+all workin’ for some good reason. A few of us are workin’ for the glory
+of it, and most of us are workin’ t’ eat, and lots of us are pluggin’
+an’ savin’ in the hopes that some day we’ll have money enough to get
+back at some people we know; but there is some few workin’ for the pure
+love of the work—and I guess I’m one of them fools. Y’ see, I started
+in at this game when I was such a little runt that now it’s a ingrowing
+habit, though it is comfortin’ t’ know you got a place where you c’n
+always come in out of the rain, and where you c’n have your mail sent.”
+
+“This newspaper work is a curse,” I remarked. “Show me a clever
+newspaper man and I’ll show you a failure. There is nothing in it but
+the glory—and little of that. We contrive and scheme and run about all
+day getting a story. And then we write it at fever heat, searching our
+souls for words that are cleancut and virile. And then we turn it in,
+and what is it? What have we to show for our day’s work? An ephemeral
+thing, lacking the first breath of life; a thing that is dead before it
+is born. Why, any cub reporter, if he were to put into some other
+profession the same amount of nerve, and tact, and ingenuity and
+finesse, and stick-to-it-iveness that he expends in prying a single
+story out of some unwilling victim, could retire with a fortune in no
+time.”
+
+Blackie blew down the stem of his pipe, preparatory to re-filling the
+bowl. There was a quizzical light in his black eyes. The little heap of
+burned matches at his elbow was growing to kindling wood proportions.
+It was common knowledge that Blackie’s trick of lighting pipe or
+cigarette and then forgetting to puff at it caused his bill for matches
+to exceed his tobacco expense account.
+
+“You talk,” chuckled Blackie, “like you meant it. But sa-a-ay, girl,
+it’s a lonesome game, this retirin’ with a fortune. I’ve noticed that
+them guys who retire with a barrel of money usually dies at the end of
+the first year, of a kind of a lingerin’ homesickness. You c’n see
+their pictures in th’ papers, with a pathetic story of how they was
+just beginnin’ t’ enjoy life when along comes the grim reaper an’
+claims ’em.”
+
+Blackie slid down in his chair and blew a column of smoke ceilingward.
+
+“I knew a guy once—newspaper man, too—who retired with a fortune. He
+used to do the city hall for us. Well, he got in soft with the new
+administration before election, and made quite a pile in stocks that
+was tipped off to him by his political friends. His wife was crazy for
+him to quit the newspaper game. He done it. An’ say, that guy kept on
+gettin’ richer and richer till even his wife was almost satisfied. But
+sa-a-ay, girl, was that chap lonesome! One day he come up here looking
+like a dog that’s run off with the steak. He was just dyin’ for a kind
+word, an’ he sniffed the smell of the ink and the hot metal like it was
+June roses. He kind of wanders over to his old desk and slumps down in
+the chair, and tips it back, and puts his feet on the desk, with his
+hat tipped back, and a bum stogie in his mouth. And along came a kid
+with a bunch of papers wet from the presses and sticks one in his hand,
+and—well, girl, that fellow, he just wriggled he was so happy. You know
+as well as I do that every man on a morning paper spends his day off
+hanging around the office wishin’ that a mob or a fire or somethin’ big
+would tear lose so he could get back into the game. I guess I told you
+about the time Von Gerhard sent me abroad, didn’t I?”
+
+“Von Gerhard!” I repeated, startled. “Do you know him?”
+
+“Well, he ain’t braggin’ about it none,” Blackie admitted. “Von
+Gerhard, he told me I had about five years or so t’ live, about two,
+three years ago. He don’t approve of me. Pried into my private life,
+old Von Gerhard did, somethin’ scand’lous. I had sort of went to pieces
+about that time, and I went t’ him to be patched up. He thumps me fore
+‘an’ aft, firing a volley of questions, lookin’ up the roof of m’
+mouth, and squintin’ at m’ finger nails an’ teeth like I was a prize
+horse for sale. Then he sits still, lookin’ at me for about half a
+minute, till I begin t’ feel uncomfortable. Then he says, slow: ‘Young
+man, how old are you?’
+
+“‘O, twenty-eight or so,’ I says, airy.
+
+“‘My Gawd!’ said he. ‘You’ve crammed twice those years into your life,
+and you’ll have to pay for it. Now you listen t’ me. You got t’ quit
+workin’, an’ smokin’, and get away from this. Take a ocean voyage,’ he
+says, ’an’ try to get four hours sleep a night, anyway.’
+
+“Well say, mother she was scared green. So I tucked her under m’ arm,
+and we hit it up across the ocean. Went t’ Germany, knowin’ that it
+would feel homelike there, an’ we took in all the swell baden, and
+chased up the Jungfrau—sa-a-ay, that’s a classy little mountain, that
+Jungfrau. Mother, she had some swell time I guess. She never set down
+except for meals, and she wrote picture postals like mad. But sa-a-ay,
+girl, was I lonesome! Maybe that trip done me good. Anyway, I’m livin’
+yet. I stuck it out for four months, an’ that ain’t so rotten for a guy
+who just grew up on printer’s ink ever since he was old enough to hold
+a bunch of papers under his arm. Well, one day mother an’ me was
+sittin’ out on one of them veranda cafes they run to over there, w’en
+somebody hits me a crack on the shoulder, an’ there stands old Ryan who
+used t’ do A. P. here. He was foreign correspondent for some big New
+York syndicate papers over there.
+
+“‘Well if it ain’t Blackie!’ he says. ‘What in Sam Hill are you doing
+out of your own cell when Milwaukee’s just got four more games t’ win
+the pennant?’
+
+“Sa-a-a-ay, girl, w’en I got through huggin’ him around the neck an’
+buyin’ him drinks I knew it was me for the big ship. ‘Mother,’ I says,
+‘if you got anybody on your mind that you neglected t’ send picture
+postals to, now’s’ your last chance. ’F I got to die I’m going out with
+m’ scissors in one mitt, and m’ trusty paste-pot by m’ side!’ An’ we
+hits it up for old Milwaukee. I ain’t been away since, except w’en I
+was out with the ball team, sending in sportin’ extry dope for the pink
+sheet. The last time I was in at Baumbach’s in comes Von Gerhard an’—”
+
+“Who are Baumbach’s?” I interrupted.
+
+Blackie regarded me pityingly. “You ain’t never been to Baumbach’s? Why
+girl, if you don’t know Baumbach’s, you ain’t never been properly
+introduced to Milwaukee. No wonder you ain’t hep to the ways of this
+little community. There ain’t what the s’ciety editor would call the
+proper ontong cordyal between you and the natives if you haven’t had
+coffee at Baumbach’s. It ain’t hardly legal t’ live in Milwaukee all
+this time without ever having been inside of B—”
+
+“Stop! If you do not tell me at once just where this wonderful place
+may be found, and what one does when one finds it, and how I happened
+to miss it, and why it is so necessary to the proper understanding of
+the city—”
+
+“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Blackie, grinning, “I’ll romp you
+over there to-morrow afternoon at four o’clock. Ach Himmel! What will
+that for a grand time be, no?”
+
+“Blackie, you’re a dear to be so polite to an old married cratur’ like
+me. Did you notice—that is, does Ernst von Gerhard drop in often at
+Baumbach’s?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+KAFFEE AND KAFFEEKUCHEN
+
+
+I have visited Baumbach’s. I have heard Milwaukee drinking its
+afternoon Kaffee.
+
+O Baumbach’s, with your deliciously crumbling butter cookies and your
+kaffee kuchen, and your thick cream, and your thicker waitresses and
+your cockroaches, and your dinginess and your dowdy German ladies and
+your black, black Kaffee, where in this country is there another like
+you!
+
+Blackie, true to his promise, had hailed me from the doorway on the
+afternoon of the following day. In the rush of the day’s work I had
+quite forgotten about Blackie and Baumbach’s.
+
+“Come, Kindchen!” he called. “Get your bonnet on. We will by Baumbach’s
+go, no?”
+
+Ruefully I gazed at the grimy cuffs of my blouse, and felt of my
+dishevelled hair. “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t go. I look so mussy. Haven’t
+had time to brush up.”
+
+“Brush up!” scoffed Blackie, “the only thing about you that will need
+brushin’ up is your German. I was goin’ t’ warn you to rumple up your
+hair a little so you wouldn’t feel overdressed w’en you got there. Come
+on, girl.”
+
+And so I came. And oh, I’m so glad I came!
+
+I must have passed it a dozen times without once noticing it—just a
+dingy little black shop nestling between two taller buildings, almost
+within the shadow of the city hall. Over the sidewalk swung a shabby
+black sign with gilt letters that spelled, “Franz Baumbach.”
+
+Blackie waved an introductory hand in the direction of the sign. “There
+he is. That’s all you’ll ever see of him.”
+
+“Dead?” asked I, regretfully, as we entered the narrow doorway.
+
+“No; down in the basement baking Kaffeekuchen.”
+
+Two tiny show-windows faced the street—such queer, old-fashioned
+windows in these days of plate glass. At the back they were quite open
+to the shop, and in one of them reposed a huge, white, immovable
+structure—a majestic, heavy, nutty, surely indigestible birthday cake.
+Around its edge were flutings and scrolls of white icing, and on its
+broad breast reposed cherries, and stout butterflies of jelly, and
+cunning traceries of colored sugar. It was quite the dressiest cake I
+had ever beheld. Surely no human hand could be wanton enough to guide a
+knife through all that magnificence. But in the center of all this
+splendor was an inscription in heavy white letters of icing:
+“Charlottens Geburtstag.”
+
+Reluctantly I tore my gaze from this imposing example of the German
+confectioner’s art, for Blackie was tugging impatiently at my sleeve.
+
+“But Blackie,” I marveled, “do you honestly suppose that that structure
+is intended for some Charlotte’s birthday?”
+
+“In Milwaukee,” explained Blackie, “w’en you got a birthday you got t’
+have a geburtstag cake, with your name on it, and all the cousins and
+aunts and members of the North Side Frauen Turner Verein Gesellchaft,
+in for the day. It ain’t considered decent if you don’t. Are you ready
+to fight your way into the main tent?”
+
+It was holiday time, and the single narrow aisle of the front shop was
+crowded. It was not easy to elbow one’s way through the packed little
+space. Men and women were ordering recklessly of the cakes of every
+description that were heaped in cases and on shelves.
+
+Cakes! What a pale; dry name to apply to those crumbling, melting,
+indigestible German confections! Blackie grinned with enjoyment while I
+gazed. There were cakes the like of which I had never seen and of which
+I did not even know the names. There were little round cup cakes made
+of almond paste that melts in the mouth; there were Schnecken glazed
+with a delicious candied brown sugar; there were Bismarcks composed of
+layer upon layer of flaky crust inlaid with an oozy custard that evades
+the eager consumer at the first bite, and that slides down one’s collar
+when chased with a pursuing tongue. There were Pfeffernusse; there,
+were Lebkuchen; there were cheese-kuchen; plum-kuchen, peach-kuchen,
+Apfelkuchen, the juicy fruit stuck thickly into the crust, the whole
+dusted over with powdered sugar. There were Torten, and Hornchen, and
+butter cookies.
+
+Blackie touched my arm, and I tore my gaze from a cherry-studded
+Schaumtorte that was being reverently packed for delivery.
+
+“My, what a greedy girl! Now get your mind all made up. This is your
+chance. You know you’re supposed t’ take a slant at th’ things an’ make
+up your mind w’at you want before you go back w’ere th’ tables are.
+Don’t fumble this thing. When Olga or Minna comes waddlin’ up t’ you
+an’ says: ‘Nu, Fraulein?’ you gotta tell her whether your heart says
+plum-kuchen oder Nusstorte, or both, see? Just like that. Now make up
+your mind. I’d hate t’ have you blunder. Have you decided?”
+
+“Decided! How can I?” I moaned, watching a black-haired, black-eyed
+Alsatian girl behind the counter as she rolled a piece of white paper
+into a cone and dipped a spoonful of whipped cream from a great brown
+bowl heaped high with the snowy stuff. She filled the paper cone,
+inserted the point of it into one end of a hollow pastry horn, and
+gently squeezed. Presto! A cream-filled Hornchen!
+
+“Oh, Blackie!” I gasped. “Come on. I want to go in and eat.”
+
+As we elbowed our way to the rear room separated from the front shop
+only by a flimsy wooden partition, I expected I know not what.
+
+But surely this was not Blackie’s much-vaunted Baumbach’s! This long,
+narrow, dingy room, with its bare floor and its iron-legged tables
+whose bare marble tops were yellow with age and use! I said nothing as
+we seated ourselves. Blackie was watching me out of the tail of his
+eye. My glance wandered about the shabby, smoke-filled room, and slowly
+and surely the charm of that fusty, dingy little cafe came upon me.
+
+A huge stove glowed red in one corner. On the wall behind the stove was
+suspended a wooden rack, black with age, its compartments holding
+German, Austrian and Hungarian newspapers. Against the opposite wall
+stood an ancient walnut mirror, and above it hung a colored print of
+Bismarck, helmeted, uniformed, and fiercely mustached. The clumsy
+iron-legged tables stood in two solemn rows down the length of the
+narrow room. Three or four stout, blond girls plodded back and forth,
+from tables to front shop, bearing trays of cakes and steaming cups of
+coffee. There was a rumble and clatter of German. Every one seemed to
+know every one else. A game of chess was in progress at one table, and
+between moves each contestant would refresh himself with a long-drawn,
+sibilant mouthful of coffee. There was nothing about the place or its
+occupants to remind one of America. This dim, smoky, cake-scented cafe
+was Germany.
+
+“Time!” said Blackie. “Here comes Rosie to take our order. You can take
+your choice of coffee or chocolate. That’s as fancy as they get here.”
+
+An expansive blond girl paused at our table smiling a broad welcome at
+Blackie.
+
+“Wie geht’s, Roschen?” he greeted her. Roschen’s smile became still
+more pervasive, so that her blue eyes disappeared in creases of good
+humor. She wiped the marble table top with a large and careless gesture
+that precipitated stray crumbs into our laps. “Gut!” murmured she,
+coyly, and leaned one hand on a portly hip in an attitude of waiting.
+
+“Coffee?” asked Blackie, turning to me. I nodded.
+
+“Zweimal Kaffee?” beamed Roschen, grasping the idea.
+
+“Now’s your time to speak up,” urged Blackie. “Go ahead an’ order all
+the cream gefillte things that looked good to you out in front.”
+
+But I leaned forward, lowering my voice discreetly. “Blackie, before I
+plunge in too recklessly, tell me, are their prices very—”
+
+“Sa-a-ay, child, you just can’t spend half a dollar here if you try.
+The flossiest kind of thing they got is only ten cents a order. They’ll
+smother you in whipped cream f’r a quarter. You c’n come in here an’
+eat an’ eat an’ put away piles of cakes till you feel like a
+combination of Little Jack Horner an’ old Doc Johnson. An’ w’en you’re
+all through, they hand yuh your check, an’, say—it says forty-five
+cents. You can’t beat it, so wade right in an’ spoil your complexion.”
+
+With enthusiasm I turned upon the patient Rosie. “O, bring me some of
+those cunning little round things with the cream on ’em, you know—two
+of those, eh Blackie? And a couple of those with the flaky crust and
+the custard between, and a slice of that fluffy-looking cake and some
+of those funny cocked-hat shaped cookies—”
+
+But a pall of bewilderment was slowly settling over Rosie’s erstwhile
+smiling face. Her plump shoulders went up in a helpless shrug, and she
+turned her round blue eyes appealingly to Blackie.
+
+“Was meint sie alles?” she asked.
+
+So I began all over again, with the assistance of Blackie. We went into
+minute detail. We made elaborate gestures. We drew pictures of our
+desired goodies on the marble-topped table, using a soft-lead pencil.
+Rosie’s countenance wore a distracted look. In desperation I was about
+to accompany her to the crowded shop, there to point out my chosen
+dainties when suddenly, as they would put it here, a light went her
+over.
+
+“Ach, yes-s-s-s! Sie wollten vielleicht abgeruhrter Gugelhopf haben,
+und auch Schaumtorte, und Bismarcks, und Hornchen mit cream gefullt,
+nicht?”
+
+“Certainly,” I murmured, quite crushed. Roschen waddled merrily off to
+the shop.
+
+Blackie was rolling a cigarette. He ran his funny little red tongue
+along the edge of the paper and glanced up at me in glee. “Don’t bother
+about me,” he generously observed. “Just set still and let the
+atmosphere soak in.”
+
+But already I was lost in contemplation of a red-faced, pompadoured
+German who was drinking coffee and reading the Fliegende Blatter at a
+table just across the way. There were counterparts of my aborigines at
+Knapf’s—thick spectacled engineers with high foreheads—actors and
+actresses from the German stock company—reporters from the English and
+German newspapers—business men with comfortable German
+consciences—long-haired musicians—dapper young lawyers—a giggling group
+of college girls and boys—a couple of smartly dressed women nibbling
+appreciatively at slices of Nusstorte—low-voiced lovers whose coffee
+cups stood untouched at their elbows, while no fragrant cloud of steam
+rose to indicate that there was warmth within. Their glances grow
+warmer as the neglected Kaffee grows colder. The color comes and goes
+in the girl’s face and I watch it, a bit enviously, marveling that the
+old story still should be so new.
+
+At a large square table near the doorway a group of eight men were
+absorbed in an animated political discussion, accompanied by much
+waving of arms, and thundering of gutturals. It appeared to be a table
+of importance, for the high-backed bench that ran along one side was
+upholstered in worn red velvet, and every newcomer paused a moment to
+nod or to say a word in greeting. It was not of American politics that
+they talked, but of the politics of Austria and Hungary. Finally the
+argument resolved itself into a duel of words between a handsome,
+red-faced German whose rosy skin seemed to take on a deeper tone in
+contrast to the whiteness of his hair and mustache, and a swarthy young
+fellow whose thick spectacles and heavy mane of black hair gave him the
+look of a caricature out of an illustrated German weekly. The red-faced
+man argued loudly, with much rapping of bare knuckles on the table top.
+But the dark man spoke seldom, and softly, with a little twisted
+half-smile on his lips; and whenever he spoke the red-faced man grew
+redder, and there came a huge laugh from the others who sat listening.
+
+“Say, wouldn’t it curdle your English?” Blackie laughed.
+
+Solemnly I turned to him. “Blackie Griffith, these people do not even
+realize that there is anything unusual about this.”
+
+“Sure not; that’s the beauty of it. They don’t need to make no
+artificial atmosphere for this place; it just grows wild, like
+dandelions. Everybody comes here for their coffee because their aunts
+an’ uncles and Grossmutters and Grosspapas used t’ come, and come yet,
+if they’re livin’! An’, after all, what is it but a little German
+bakery?”
+
+“But O, wise Herr Baumbach down in the kitchen! O, subtle Frau Baumbach
+back of the desk!” said I. “Others may fit their shops with mirrors,
+and cut-glass chandeliers and Oriental rugs and mahogany, but you sit
+serenely by, and you smile, and you change nothing. You let the brown
+walls grow dimmer with age; you see the marble-topped tables turning
+yellow; you leave bare your wooden floor, and you smile, and smile, and
+smile.”
+
+“Fine!” applauded Blackie. “You’re on. And here comes Rosie.”
+
+Rosie, the radiant, placed on the table cups and saucers of an
+unbelievable thickness. She set them down on the marble surface with a
+crash as one who knows well that no mere marble or granite could
+shatter the solidity of those stout earthenware receptacles. Napkins
+there were none. I was to learn that fingers were rid of any clinging
+remnants of cream or crumb by the simple expedient of licking them.
+
+Blackie emptied his pitcher of cream into his cup of black, black
+coffee, sugared it, stirred, tasted, and then, with a wicked gleam in
+his black eyes he lifted the heavy cup to his lips and took a long,
+gurgling mouthful.
+
+“Blackie,” I hissed, “if you do that again I shall refuse to speak to
+you!”
+
+“Do what?” demanded he, all injured innocence.
+
+“Snuffle up your coffee like that.”
+
+“Why, girl, that’s th’ proper way t’ drink coffee here. Listen t’
+everybody else.” And while I glared he wrapped his hand lovingly about
+his cup, holding the spoon imprisoned between first and second fingers,
+and took another sibilant mouthful. “Any more of your back talk and
+I’ll drink it out of m’ saucer an’ blow on it like the hefty party over
+there in the earrings is doin’. Calm yerself an’ try a Bismarck.”
+
+I picked up one of the flaky confections and eyed it in despair. There
+were no plates except that on which the cakes reposed.
+
+“How does one eat them?” I inquired.
+
+“Yuh don’t really eat ’em. The motion is more like inhalin’. T’ eat ’em
+successful you really ought t’ get into a bath-tub half-filled with
+water, because as soon’s you bite in at one end w’y the custard stuff
+slides out at the other, an’ no human mouth c’n be two places at oncet.
+Shut your eyes girl, an’ just wade in.”
+
+I waded. In silence I took a deep delicious bite, nimbly chased the coy
+filling around a corner with my tongue, devoured every bit down to the
+last crumb and licked the stickiness off my fingers. Then I
+investigated the interior of the next cake.
+
+“I’m coming here every day,” I announced.
+
+“Better not. Ruin your complexion and turn all your lines into bumps.
+Look at the dame with the earrings. I’ve been keepin’ count an’ I’ve
+seen her eat three Schnecken, two cream puffs, a Nusshornchen and a
+slice of Torte with two cups of coffee. Ain’t she a horrible example!
+And yet she’s got th’ nerve t’ wear a princess gown!”
+
+“I don’t care,” I replied, recklessly, my voice choked with whipped
+cream and butteriness. “I can just feel myself getting greasy. Haven’t
+I done beautifully for a new hand? Now tell me about some of these
+people. Who is the funny little man in the checked suit with the black
+braid trimming, and the green cravat, and the white spats, and the tan
+hat and the eyeglasses?”
+
+“Ain’t them th’ dizzy habiliments?” A note of envy crept into Blackie’s
+voice. “His name is Hugo Luders. Used t’ be a reporter on the Germania,
+but he’s reformed and gone into advertisin’, where there’s real money.
+Some say he wears them clo’es on a bet, and some say his taste in dress
+is a curse descended upon him from Joseph, the guy with the fancy coat,
+but I think he wears ’em because he fancies ’em. He’s been coming here
+ever’ afternoon for twelve years, has a cup of coffee, game of chess,
+and a pow-wow with a bunch of cronies. If Baumbach’s ever decide to
+paint the front of their shop or put in cut glass fixtures and
+handpainted china, Hugo Luders would serve an injunction on ’em. Next!”
+
+“Who’s the woman with the leathery complexion and the belt to match,
+and the untidy hair and the big feet? I like her face. And why does she
+sit at a table with all those strange-looking men? And who are all the
+men? And who is the fur-lined grand opera tenor just coming in—Oh!”
+
+Blackie glanced over his shoulder just as the tall man in the doorway
+turned his face toward us. “That? Why, girl, that’s Von Gerhard, the
+man who gives me one more year t’ live. Look at everybody kowtowing to
+him. He don’t favor Baumbach’s often. Too busy patching up the nervous
+wrecks that are washed up on his shores.”
+
+The tall figure in the doorway was glancing from table to table,
+nodding here and there to an acquaintance. His eyes traveled the length
+of the room. Now they were nearing us. I felt a sudden, inexplicable
+tightening at heart and throat, as though fingers were clutching there.
+Then his eyes met mine, and I felt the blood rushing to my face as he
+came swiftly over to our table and took my hand in his.
+
+“So you have discovered Baumbach’s,” he said. “May I have my coffee and
+cigar here with you?”
+
+“Blackie here is responsible for my being initiated into the sticky
+mysteries of Baumbach’s. I never should have discovered it if he had
+not offered to act as personal conductor. You know one another, I
+believe?”
+
+The two men shook hands across the table. There was something forced
+and graceless about the act. Blackie eyed Von Gerhard through a misty
+curtain of cigarette smoke. Von Gerhard gazed at Blackie through
+narrowed lids as he lighted his cigar. “I’m th’ gink you killed off two
+or three years back,” Blackie explained.
+
+“I remember you perfectly,” Von Gerhard returned, courteously. “I
+rejoice to see that I was mistaken.”
+
+“Well,” drawled Blackie, a wicked gleam in his black eyes, “I’m some
+rejoiced m’self, old top. Angel wings and a white kimono, worn
+bare-footy, would go some rotten with my Spanish style of beauty, what?
+Didn’t know that you and m’dame friend here was acquainted. Known each
+other long?”
+
+I felt myself flushing again.
+
+“I knew Dr. von Gerhard back home. I’ve scarcely seen him since I have
+been here. Famous specialists can’t be bothered with middle-aged
+relatives of their college friends, can they, Herr Doktor?”
+
+And now it was Von Gerhard’s face that flushed a deep and painful
+crimson. He looked at me, in silence, and I felt very little, and
+insignificant, and much like an impudent child who has stuck out its
+tongue at its elders. Silent men always affect talkative women in that
+way.
+
+“You know that what you say is not true,” he said, slowly.
+
+“Well, we won’t quibble. We—we were just about to leave, weren’t we
+Blackie?”
+
+“Just,” said Blackie, rising. “Sorry t’ see you drinkin’ Baumbach’s
+coffee, Doc. It ain’t fair t’ your patients.”
+
+“Quite right,” replied Von Gerhard; and rose with us. “I shall not
+drink it. I shall walk home with Mrs. Orme instead, if she will allow
+me. That will be more stimulating than coffee, and twice as dangerous,
+perhaps, but—”
+
+“You know how I hate that sort of thing,” I said, coldly, as we passed
+from the warmth of the little front shop where the plump girls were
+still filling pasteboard boxes with holiday cakes, to the brisk chill
+of the winter street. The little black-and-gilt sign swung and creaked
+in the wind. Whimsically, and with the memory of that last cream-filled
+cake fresh in my mind, I saluted the letters that spelled “Franz
+Baumbach.”
+
+Blackie chuckled impishly. “Just the same, try a pinch of soda
+bicarb’nate when you get home, Dawn,” he advised. “Well, I’m off to the
+factory again. Got t’ make up for time wasted on m’ lady friend. Auf
+wiedersehen!”
+
+And the little figure in the checked top-coat trotted off.
+
+“But he called you—Dawn,” broke from Von Gerhard.
+
+“Mhum,” I agreed. “My name’s Dawn.”
+
+“Surely not to him. You have known him but a few weeks. I would not
+have presumed—”
+
+“Blackie never presumes,” I laughed. “Blackie’s just—Blackie. Imagine
+taking offense at him! He knows every one by their given name, from Jo,
+the boss of the pressroom, to the Chief, who imports his office coats
+from London. Besides, Blackie and I are newspaper men. And people don’t
+scrape and bow in a newspaper office—especially when they’re fond of
+one another. You wouldn’t understand.”
+
+As I looked at Von Gerhard in the light of the street lamp I saw a
+tense, drawn look about the little group of muscles which show when the
+teeth are set hard. When he spoke those muscles had relaxed but little.
+
+“One man does not talk ill of another. But this is different. I want to
+ask you—do you know what manner of man this—this Blackie is? I ask you
+because I would have you safe and sheltered always from such as
+he—because I—”
+
+“Safe! From Blackie? Now listen. There never was a safer, saner, truer,
+more generous friend. Oh, I know what his life has been. But what else
+could it have been, beginning as he did? I have no wish to reform him.
+I tried my hand at reforming one man, and made a glorious mess of it.
+So I’ll just take Blackie as he is, if you please—slang, wickedness,
+pink shirt, red necktie, diamond rings and all. If there’s any bad in
+him, we all know it, for it’s right down on the table, face up. You’re
+just angry because he called you Doc.”
+
+“Small one,” said Von Gerhard, in his quaint German idiom, “we will not
+quarrel, you and I. If I have been neglectful it was because edged
+tools were never a chosen plaything of mine. Perhaps your little
+Blackie realizes that he need have no fear of such things, for the
+Great Fear is upon him.”
+
+“The Great Fear! You mean!—”
+
+“I mean that there are too many fine little lines radiating from the
+corners of the sunken eyes, and that his hand-clasp leaves a moisture
+in the palm. Ach! you may laugh. Come, we will change the subject to
+something more cheerful, yes? Tell me, how grows the book?”
+
+“By inches. After working all day on a bulletin paper whose city editor
+is constantly shouting: ‘Boil it now, fellows! Keep it down! We’re
+crowded!’ it is too much of a wrench to find myself seated calmly
+before my own typewriter at night, privileged to write one hundred
+thousand words if I choose. I can’t get over the habit of crowding the
+story all into the first paragraph. Whenever I flower into a
+descriptive passage I glance nervously over my shoulder, expecting to
+find Norberg stationed behind me, scissors and blue pencil in hand.
+Consequently the book, thus far, sounds very much like a police
+reporter’s story of a fire four minutes before the paper is due to go
+to press.”
+
+Von Gerhard’s face was unsmiling. “So,” he said, slowly. “You burn the
+candle at both ends. All day you write, is it not so? And at night you
+come home to write still more? Ach, Kindchen!—Na, we shall change all
+that. We will be better comrades, we two, yes? You remember that gay
+little walk of last autumn, when we explored the Michigan country lane
+at dusk? I shall be your Sunday Schatz, and there shall be more rambles
+like that one, to bring the roses into your cheeks. We shall be good
+Kameraden, as you and this little Griffith are—what is it they say—good
+fellows? That is it—good fellows, yes? So, shall we shake hands on it?”
+
+But I snatched my hand away. “I don’t want to be a good fellow,” I
+cried. “I’m tired of being a good fellow. I’ve been a good fellow for
+years and years, while every other married woman in the world has been
+happy in her own home, bringing up her babies. When I am old I want
+some sons to worry me, too, and to stay awake nights for, and some
+daughters to keep me young, and to prevent me from doing my hair in a
+knob and wearing bonnets! I hate good-fellow women, and so do you, and
+so does every one else! I—I—”
+
+“Dawn!” cried Von Gerhard. But I ran up the steps and into the house
+and slammed the door behind me, leaving him standing there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+THE LADY FROM VIENNA
+
+
+Two more aborigines have appeared. One of them is a lady aborigine.
+They made their entrance at supper and I forgot to eat, watching them.
+The new-comers are from Vienna. He is an expert engineer and she is a
+woman of noble birth, with a history. Their combined appearance is
+calculated to strike terror to the heart. He is daringly ugly, with a
+chin that curves in under his lip and then out in a peak, like pictures
+of Punch. She wore a gray gown of a style I never had seen before and
+never expect to see again. It was fastened with huge black buttons all
+the way down the breathlessly tight front, and the upper part was
+composed of that pre-historic garment known as a basque. She curved in
+where she should have curved out, and she bulged where she should have
+had “lines.” About her neck was suspended a string of cannon-ball beads
+that clanked as she walked. On her forehead rested a sparse fringe.
+
+“Mein Himmel!” thought I. “Am I dreaming? This isn’t Wisconsin. This is
+Nurnberg, or Strassburg, with a dash of Heidelberg and Berlin thrown
+in. Dawn, old girl, it’s going to be more instructive than a Cook’s
+tour.”
+
+That turned out to be the truest prophecy I ever made.
+
+The first surprising thing that the new-comers did was to seat
+themselves at the long table with the other aborigines, the lady
+aborigine being the only woman among the twelve men. It was plain that
+they had known one another previous to this meeting, for they became
+very good friends at once, and the men grew heavily humorous about
+there being thirteen at table.
+
+At that the lady aborigine began to laugh. Straightway I forgot the
+outlandish gown, forgot the cannon-ball beads, forgot the sparse
+fringe, forgave the absence of “lines.” Such a voice! A lilting,
+melodious thing. She broke into a torrent of speech, with bewildering
+gestures, and I saw that her hands were exquisitely formed and as
+expressive as her voice. Her German was the musical tongue of the
+Viennese, possessing none of the gutturals and sputterings. When she
+crowned it with the gay little trilling laugh my views on the language
+underwent a lightning change. It seemed the most natural thing in the
+world to see her open the flat, silver case that dangled at the end of
+the cannon-ball chain, take out a cigarette, light it, and smoke it
+there in that little German dining room. She wore the most gracefully
+nonchalant air imaginable as she blew little rings and wreaths, and
+laughed and chatted brightly with her husband and the other men.
+Occasionally she broke into French, her accent as charmingly perfect as
+it had been in her native tongue. There was a moment of breathless
+staring on the part of the respectable middle-class Frauen at the other
+tables. Then they shrugged their shoulders and plunged into their meal
+again. There was a certain little high-born air of assurance about that
+cigarette-smoking that no amount of staring could ruffle.
+
+Watching the new aborigines grew to be a sort of game. The lady
+aborigine of the golden voice, and the ugly husband of the peaked chin
+had a strange fascination for me. I scrambled downstairs at meal time
+in order not to miss them, and I dawdled over the meal so that I need
+not leave before they. I discovered that when the lady aborigine was
+animated, her face was that of a young woman, possessing a certain
+high-bred charm, but that when in repose the face of the lady aborigine
+was that of a very old and tired woman indeed. Also that her husband
+bullied her, and that when he did that she looked at him worshipingly.
+
+Then one evening, a week or so after the appearance of the new
+aborigines, there came a clumping at my door. I was seated at my
+typewriter and the book was balkier than usual, and I wished that the
+clumper at the door would go away.
+
+“Come!” I called, ungraciously enough. Then, on second thought:
+“Herein!”
+
+The knob turned slowly, and the door opened just enough to admit the
+top of a head crowned with a tight, moist German knob of hair. I
+searched my memory to recognize the knob, failed utterly and said
+again, this time with mingled curiosity and hospitality:
+
+“Won’t you come in?”
+
+The apparently bodiless head thrust itself forward a bit, disclosing an
+apologetically smiling face, with high check bones that glistened with
+friendliness and scrubbing.
+
+“Nabben’, Fraulein,” said the head.
+
+“Nabben’,” I replied, more mystified than ever. “Howdy do! Is there
+anything—”
+
+The head thrust itself forward still more, showing a pair of plump
+shoulders as its support. Then the plump shoulders heaved into the
+room, disclosing a stout, starched gingham body.
+
+“Ich bin Frau Knapf,” announced the beaming vision.
+
+Now up to this time Frau Knapf had maintained a Mrs. Harris-like
+mysteriousness. I had heard rumors of her, and I had partaken of
+certain crispy dishes of German extraction, reported to have come from
+her deft hands, but I had not even caught a glimpse of her skirts
+whisking around a corner.
+
+Therefore: “Frau Knapf!” I repeated. “Nonsense! There ain’t no sich
+person—that is, I’m glad to see you. Won’t you come in and sit down?”
+
+“Ach, no!” smiled the substantial Frau Knapf, clinging tightly to the
+door knob. “I got no time. It gives much to do to-night yet. Kuchen
+dough I must set, und ich weiss nicht was. I got no time.”
+
+Bustling, red-cheeked Frau Knapf! This was why I had never had a
+glimpse of her. Always, she got no time. For while Herr Knapf, dapper
+and genial, welcomed new-comers, chatted with the diners, poured a
+glass of foaming Doppel-brau for Herr Weber or, dexterously carved fowl
+for the aborigines’ table, Frau Knapf was making the wheels go round. I
+discovered that it was she who bakes the melting, golden German
+Pfannkuchen on Sunday mornings; she it is who fries the crisp and
+hissing Wienerschnitzel; she it is who prepares the plump ducklings,
+and the thick gravies, and the steaming lentil soup and the rosy
+sausages nestling coyly in their bed of sauerkraut. All the week Frau
+Knapf bakes and broils and stews, her rosy cheeks taking on a twinkling
+crimson from the fire over which she bends. But on Sunday night Frau
+Knapf sheds her huge apron and rolls down the sleeves from her plump
+arms. On Sunday evening she leaves pots and pans and cooking, and is a
+transformed Frau Knapf. Then does she don a bright blue silk waist and
+a velvet coat that is dripping with jet, and a black bonnet on which
+are perched palpitating birds and weary-looking plumes. Then she and
+Herr Knapf walk comfortably down to the Pabst theater to see the German
+play by the German stock company. They applaud their favorite stout,
+blond, German comedienne as she romps through the acts of a sprightly
+German comedy, and after the play they go to their favorite Wein-stube
+around the corner. There they have sardellen and cheese sandwiches and
+a great deal of beer, and for one charmed evening Frau Knapf forgets
+all about the insides of geese and the thickening for gravies, and is
+happy.
+
+Many of these things Frau Knapf herself told me, standing there by the
+door with the Kuchen heavy on her mind. Some of them I got from Ernst
+von Gerhard when I told him about my visitor and her errand. The errand
+was not disclosed until Frau Knapf had caught me casting a despairing
+glance at my last typewritten page.
+
+“Ach, see! you got no time for talking to, ain’t it?” she apologized.
+
+“Heaps of time,” I politely assured her, “don’t hurry. But why not have
+a chair and be comfortable?”
+
+Frau Knapf was not to be deceived. “I go in a minute. But first it is
+something I like to ask you. You know maybe Frau Nirlanger?”
+
+I shook my head.
+
+“But sure you must know. From Vienna she is, with such a voice like a
+bird.”
+
+“And the beads, and the gray gown, and the fringe, and the cigarettes?”
+
+“And the oogly husband,” finished Frau Knapf, nodding.
+
+“Oogly,” I agreed, “isn’t the name for it. And so she is Frau
+Nirlanger? I thought there would be a Von at the very least.”
+
+Whereupon my visitor deserted the doorknob, took half a dozen stealthy
+steps in my direction and lowered her voice to a hissing whisper of
+confidence.
+
+“It is more as a Von. I will tell you. Today comes Frau Nirlanger by me
+and she says: ‘Frau Knapf, I wish to buy clothes, aber echt
+Amerikanische. Myself, I do not know what is modish, and I cannot go
+alone to buy.’”
+
+“That’s a grand idea,” said I, recalling the gray basque and the
+cannon-ball beads.
+
+“Ja, sure it is,” agreed Frau Knapf. “Soo-o-o, she asks me was it some
+lady who would come with her by the stores to help a hat and suit and
+dresses to buy. Stylish she likes they should be, and echt
+Amerikanisch. So-o-o-o, I say to her, I would go myself with you, only
+so awful stylish I ain’t, and anyway I got no time. But a lady I know
+who is got such stylish clothes!” Frau Knapf raised admiring hands and
+eyes toward heaven. “Such a nice lady she is, and stylish, like
+anything! And her name is Frau Orme.”
+
+“Oh, really, Frau Knapf—” I murmured in blushing confusion.
+
+“Sure, it is so,” insisted Frau Knapf, coming a step nearer, and
+sinking her, voice one hiss lower. “You shouldn’t say I said it, but
+Frau Nirlanger likes she should look young for her husband. He is much
+younger as she is—aber much. Anyhow ten years. Frau Nirlanger does not
+tell me this, but from other people I have found out.” Frau Knapf shook
+her head mysteriously a great many times. “But maybe you ain’t got such
+an interest in Frau Nirlanger, yes?”
+
+“Interest! I’m eaten up with curiosity. You shan’t leave this room
+alive until you’ve told me!”
+
+Frau Knapf shook with silent mirth. “Now you make jokings, ain’t? Well,
+I tell you. In Vienna, Frau Nirlanger was a widow, from a family aber
+hoch edel—very high born. From the court her family is, and friends
+from the Emperor, und alles. Sure! Frau Nirlanger, she is different
+from the rest. Books she likes, und meetings, und all such komisch
+things. And what you think!”
+
+“I don’t know,” I gasped, hanging on her words, “what DO I think?”
+
+“She meets this here Konrad Nirlanger, and falls with him in love. Und
+her family is mad! But schrecklich mad! Forty years old she is, and
+from a noble family, and Konrad Nirlanger is only a student from a
+university, and he comes from the Volk. Sehr gebildet he is, but not
+high born. So-o-o-o-o, she runs with him away and is married.”
+
+Shamelessly I drank it all in. “You don’t mean it! Well, then what
+happened? She ran away with him—with that chin! and then what?”
+
+Frau Knapf was enjoying it as much as I. She drew a long breath, felt
+of the knob of hair, and plunged once more into the story.
+
+“Like a story-book it is, nicht? Well, Frau Nirlanger, she has already
+a boy who is ten years old, and a fine sum of money that her first
+husband left her. Aber when she runs with this poor kerl away from her
+family, and her first husband’s family is so schrecklich mad that they
+try by law to take from her her boy and her money, because she has her
+highborn family disgraced, you see? For a year they fight in the
+courts, and then it stands that her money Frau Nirlanger can keep, but
+her boy she cannot have. He will be taken by her highborn family and
+educated, and he must forget all about his mamma. To cry it is, ain’t
+it? Das arme Kind! Well, she can stand it no longer to live where her
+boy is, and not to see him. So-o-o-o, Konrad Nirlanger he gets a chance
+to come by Amerika where there is a big engineering plant here in
+Milwaukee, and she begs her husband he should come, because this boy
+she loves very much—Oh, she loves her young husband too, but different,
+yes?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” I agreed, remembering the gay little trilling laugh, and the
+face that was so young when animated, and so old and worn in repose.
+“Oh, yes. Quite, quite different.”
+
+Frau Knapf smoothed her spotless skirt and shook her head slowly and
+sadly. “So-o-o-o, by Amerika they come. And Konrad Nirlanger he is
+maybe a little cross and so, because for a year they have been in the
+courts, and it might have been the money they would lose, and for money
+Konrad Nirlanger cares—well, you shall see. But Frau Nirlanger must not
+mourn and cry. She must laugh and sing, and be gay for her husband. But
+Frau Nirlanger has no grand clothes, for first she runs away with
+Konrad Nirlanger, and then her money is tied in the law. Now she has
+again her money, and she must be young—but young!”
+
+With a gesture that expressed a world of pathos and futility Frau Knapf
+flung out her arms. “He must not see that she looks different as the
+ladies in this country. So Frau Nirlanger wants she should buy here in
+the stores new dresses—echt Amerikanische. All new and beautiful things
+she would have, because she must look young, ain’t it? And perhaps her
+boy will remember her when he is a fine young man, if she is yet young
+when he grows up, you see? And too, there is the young husband. First,
+she gives up her old life, and her friends and her family for this man,
+and then she must do all things to keep him. Men, they are but
+children, after all,” spake the wise Frau Knapf in conclusion. “They
+war and cry and plead for that which they would have, and when they
+have won, then see! They are amused for a moment, and the new toy is
+thrown aside.”
+
+“Poor, plain, vivacious, fascinating little Frau Nirlanger!” I said. “I
+wonder just how much of pain and heartache that little musical laugh of
+hers conceals?”
+
+“Ja, that is so,” mused Frau Knapf. “Her eyes look like eyes that have
+wept much, not? And so you will be so kind and go maybe to select the
+so beautiful clothes?”
+
+“Clothes?” I repeated, remembering the original errand. “But dear lady!
+How, does one select clothes for a woman of forty who would not weary
+her husband? That is a task for a French modiste, a wizard, and a fairy
+godmother all rolled into one.”
+
+“But you will do it, yes?” urged Frau Knapf.
+
+“I’ll do it,” I agreed, a bit ruefully, “if only to see the face of the
+oogly husband when his bride is properly corseted and shod.”
+
+Whereupon Frau Knapf, in a panic, remembered the unset Kuchen dough and
+rushed away, with her hand on her lips and her eyes big with secrecy.
+And I sat staring at the last typewritten page stuck in my typewriter
+and I found that the little letters on the white page were swimming in
+a dim purple haze.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+A TRAGEDY OF GOWNS
+
+
+From husbands in general, and from oogly German husbands in particular
+may Hymen defend me! Never again will I attempt to select “echt
+Amerikanische” clothes for a woman who must not weary her young
+husband. But how was I to know that the harmless little shopping
+expedition would resolve itself into a domestic tragedy, with Herr
+Nirlanger as the villain, Frau Nirlanger as the persecuted heroine, and
+I as—what is it in tragedy that corresponds to the innocent bystander
+in real life? That would be my role.
+
+The purchasing of the clothes was a real joy. Next to buying pretty
+things for myself there is nothing I like better than choosing them for
+some one else. And when that some one else happens to be a fascinating
+little foreigner who coos over the silken stuffs in a delightful
+mixture of German and English; and especially when that some one else
+must be made to look so charming that she will astonish her oogly
+husband, then does the selecting of those pretty things cease to be a
+task, and become an art.
+
+It was to be a complete surprise to Herr Nirlanger. He was to know
+nothing of it until everything was finished and Frau Nirlanger, dressed
+in the prettiest of the pretty Amerikanisch gowns, was ready to astound
+him when he should come home from the office of the vast plant where he
+solved engineering problems.
+
+“From my own money I buy all this,” Frau Nirlanger confided to me, with
+a gay little laugh of excitement, as we started out. “From Vienna it
+comes. Always I have given it at once to my husband, as a wife should.
+Yesterday it came, but I said nothing, and when my husband said to me,
+‘Anna, did not the money come as usual to-day? It is time,’ I told a
+little lie—but a little one, is it not? Very amusing it was. Almost I
+did laugh. Na, he will not be cross when he see how his wife like the
+Amerikanische ladies will look. He admires very much the ladies of
+Amerika. Many times he has said so.”
+
+(“I’ll wager he has—the great, ugly boor!” I thought, in parenthesis.)
+“We’ll show him!” I said, aloud. “He won’t know you. Such a lot of
+beautiful clothes as we can buy with all this money. Oh, dear Frau
+Nirlanger, it’s going to be slathers of fun! I feel as excited about it
+as though it were a trousseau we were buying.”
+
+“So it is,” she replied, a little shadow of sadness falling across the
+brightness of her face. “I had no proper clothes when we were
+married—but nothing! You know perhaps my story. In America, everyone
+knows everything. It is wonderful. When I ran away to marry Konrad
+Nirlanger I had only the dress which I wore; even that I borrowed from
+one of the upper servants, on a pretext, so that no one should
+recognize me. Ach Gott! I need not have worried. So! You see, it will
+be after all a trousseau.”
+
+Why, oh, why should a woman with her graceful carriage and pretty
+vivacity have been cursed with such an ill-assorted lot of features!
+Especially when certain boorish young husbands have expressed an
+admiration for pink-and-white effects in femininity.
+
+“Never mind, Mr. Husband, I’ll show yez!” I resolved as the elevator
+left us at the floor where waxen ladies in shining glass cases smiled
+amiably all the day.
+
+There must be no violent pinks or blues. Brown was too old. She was not
+young enough for black. Violet was too trying. And so the gowns began
+to strew tables and chairs and racks, and still I shook my head, and
+Frau Nirlanger looked despairing, and the be-puffed and real
+Irish-crocheted saleswoman began to develop a baleful gleam about the
+eyes.
+
+And then we found it! It was a case of love at first sight. The
+unimaginative would have called it gray. The thoughtless would have
+pronounced it pink. It was neither, and both; a soft, rosily-gray
+mixture of the two, like the sky that one sometimes sees at winter
+twilight, the pink of the sunset veiled by the gray of the snow clouds.
+It was of a supple, shining cloth, simple in cut, graceful in lines.
+
+“There! We’ve found it. Let’s pray that it will not require too much
+altering.”
+
+But when it had been slipped over her head we groaned at the inadequacy
+of her old-fashioned stays. There followed a flying visit to the
+department where hips were whisked out of sight in a jiffy, and where
+lines miraculously took the place of curves. Then came the gown once
+more, over the new stays this time. The effect was magical. The
+Irish-crocheted saleswoman and I clasped hands and fell back in
+attitudes of admiration. Frau Nirlanger turned this way and that before
+the long mirror and chattered like a pleased child. Her adjectives grew
+into words of six syllables. She cooed over the soft-shining stuff in
+little broken exclamations in French and German.
+
+Then came a straight and simple street suit of blue cloth, a lingerie
+gown of white, hats, shoes and even a couple of limp satin petticoats.
+The day was gone before we could finish.
+
+I bullied them into promising the pinky-gray gown for the next
+afternoon.
+
+“Sooch funs!” giggled Frau Nirlanger, “and how it makes one tired. So
+kind you were, to take this trouble for me. Me, I could never have
+warred with that Fraulein who served us—so haughty she was, nicht? But
+it is good again pretty clothes to have. Pretty gowns I lofe—you also,
+not?”
+
+“Indeed I do lofe ’em. But my money comes to me in a yellow pay
+envelope, and it is spent before it reaches me, as a rule. It doesn’t
+leave much of a margin for general recklessness.”
+
+A tiny sigh came from Frau Nirlanger. “There will be little to give to
+Konrad this time. So much money they cost, those clothes! But Konrad,
+he will not care when he sees the so beautiful dresses, is it not so?”
+
+“Care!” I cried with a great deal of bravado, although a tiny inner
+voice spake in doubt. “Certainly not. How could he?”
+
+Next day the boxes came, and we smuggled them into my room. The
+unwrapping of the tissue paper folds was a ceremony. We reveled in the
+very crackle of it. I had scuttled home from the office as early as
+decency would permit, in order to have plenty of time for the dressing.
+It must be quite finished before Herr Nirlanger should arrive. Frau
+Nirlanger had purchased three tickets for the German theater, also as a
+surprise, and I was to accompany the happily surprised husband and the
+proud little wife of the new Amerikanische clothes.
+
+I coaxed her to let me do things to her hair. Usually she wore a stiff
+and ugly coiffure that could only be described as a chignon. I do not
+recollect ever having seen a chignon, but I know that it must look like
+that. I was thankful for my Irish deftness of fingers as I stepped back
+to view the result of my labors. The new arrangement of the hair gave
+her features a new softness and dignity.
+
+We came to the lacing of the stays, with their exaggerated length.
+“Aber!” exclaimed Frau Nirlanger, not daring to laugh because of the
+strange snugness. “Ach!” and again, “Aber to laugh it is!”
+
+We had decided the prettiest of the new gowns must do honor to the
+occasion. “This shade is called ashes of roses,” I explained, as I
+slipped it over her head.
+
+“Ashes of roses!” she echoed. “How pretty, yes? But a little sad too,
+is it not so? Like rosy hopes that have been withered. Ach, what a
+foolish talk! So, now you will fasten it please. A real trick it is to
+button such a dress—so sly they are, those fastenings.”
+
+When all the sly fastenings were secure I stood at gaze.
+
+“Nose is shiny,” I announced, searching in a drawer for chamois and
+powder.
+
+Frau Nirlanger raised an objecting hand. “But Konrad does not approve
+of such things. He has said so. He has—”
+
+“You tell your Konrad that a chamois skin isn’t half as objectionable
+as a shiny one. Come here and let me dust this over your nose and chin,
+while I breathe a prayer of thanks that I have no overzealous husband
+near to forbid me the use of a bit of powder. There! If I sez it mesilf
+as shouldn’t, yez ar-r-re a credit t’ me, me darlint.”
+
+“You are satisfied. There is not one small thing awry? Ach, how we
+shall laugh at Konrad’s face.”
+
+“Satisfied! I’d kiss you if I weren’t afraid that I should muss you up.
+You’re not the same woman. You look like a girl! And so pretty! Now
+skedaddle into your own rooms, but don’t you dare to sit down for a
+moment. I’m going down to get Frau Knapf before your husband arrives.”
+
+“But is there then time?” inquired Frau Nirlanger. “He should be here
+now.”
+
+“I’ll bring her up in a jiffy, just for one peep. She won’t know you!
+Her face will be a treat! Don’t touch your hair—it’s quite perfect. And
+f’r Jawn’s sake! Don’t twist around to look at yourself in the back or
+something will burst, I know it will. I’ll be back in a minute. Now
+run!”
+
+The slender, graceful figure disappeared with a gay little laugh, and I
+flew downstairs for Frau Knapf. She was discovered with a spoon in one
+hand and a spluttering saucepan in the other. I detached her from them,
+clasped her big, capable red hands and dragged her up the stairs,
+explaining as I went.
+
+“Now don’t fuss about that supper! Let ’em wait. You must see her
+before Herr Nirlanger comes home. He’s due any minute. She looks like a
+girl. So young! And actually pretty! And her figure—divine! Funny what
+a difference a decent pair of corsets, and a gown, and some puffs will
+make, h’m?”
+
+Frau Knapf was panting as I pulled her after me in swift eagerness.
+Between puffs she brought out exclamations of surprise and unbelief
+such as: “Unmoglich! (Puff! Puff!) Aber—wunderbar! (Puff! Puff!)”
+
+We stopped before Frau Nirlanger’s door. I struck a dramatic pose.
+“Prepare!” I cried grandly, and threw open the door with a bang.
+
+Crouched against the wall at a far corner of the room was Frau
+Nirlanger. Her hands were clasped over her breast and her eyes were
+dilated as though she had been running. In the center of the room stood
+Konrad Nirlanger, and on his oogly face was the very oogliest look that
+I have ever seen on a man. He glanced at us as we stood transfixed in
+the doorway, and laughed a short, sneering laugh that was like a
+stinging blow on the cheek.
+
+“So!” he said; and I would not have believed that men really said “So!”
+in that way outside of a melodrama. “So! You are in the little
+surprise, yes? You carry your meddling outside of your newspaper work,
+eh? I leave behind me an old wife in the morning and in the evening,
+presto! I find a young bride. Wonderful!—but wonderful!” He laughed an
+unmusical and mirthless laugh.
+
+“But—don’t you like it?” I asked, like a simpleton.
+
+Frau Nirlanger seemed to shrink before our very eyes, so that the
+pretty gown hung in limp folds about her.
+
+I stared, fascinated, at Konrad Nirlanger’s cruel face with its little
+eyes that were too close together and its chin that curved in below the
+mouth and out again so grotesquely.
+
+“Like it?” sneered Konrad Nirlanger. “For a young girl, yes. But how
+useless, this belated trousseau. What a waste of good money! For see, a
+young wife I do not want. Young women one can have in plenty, always.
+But I have an old woman married, and for an old woman the gowns need be
+few—eh, Frau Orme? And you too, Frau Knapf?”
+
+Frau Knapf, crimson and staring, was dumb. There came a little
+shivering moan from the figure crouched in the corner, and Frau
+Nirlanger, her face queerly withered and ashen, crumpled slowly in a
+little heap on the floor and buried her shamed head in her arms.
+
+Konrad Nirlanger turned to his wife, the black look on his face growing
+blacker.
+
+“Come, get up Anna,” he ordered, in German. “These heroics become not a
+woman of your years. And too, you must not ruin the so costly gown that
+will be returned to-morrow.”
+
+Frau Nirlanger’s white face was lifted from the shelter of her arms.
+The stricken look was still upon it, but there was no cowering in her
+attitude now. Slowly she rose to her feet. I had not realized that she
+was so tall.
+
+“The gown does not go back,” she said.
+
+“So?” he snarled, with a savage note in his voice. “Now hear me. There
+shall be no more buying of gowns and fripperies. You hear? It is for
+the wife to come to the husband for the money; not for her to waste it
+wantonly on gowns, like a creature of the streets. You,” his voice was
+an insult, “you, with your wrinkles and your faded eyes in a gown of—”
+he turned inquiringly toward me—“How does one call it, that color, Frau
+Orme?”
+
+There came a blur of tears to my eyes. “It is called ashes of roses,” I
+answered. “Ashes of roses.”
+
+Konrad Nirlanger threw back his head and laughed a laugh as stinging as
+a whip-lash. “Ashes of roses! So? It is well named. For my dear wife it
+is poetically fit, is it not so? For see, her roses are but withered
+ashes, eh Anna?”
+
+Deliberately and in silence Anna Nirlanger walked to the mirror and
+stood there, gazing at the woman in the glass. There was something
+dreadful and portentous about the calm and studied deliberation with
+which she critically viewed that reflection. She lifted her arms slowly
+and patted into place the locks that had become disarranged, turning
+her head from side to side to study the effect. Then she took from a
+drawer the bit of chamois skin that I had given her, and passed it
+lightly over her eyelids and cheeks, humming softly to herself the
+while. No music ever sounded so uncanny to my ears. The woman before
+the mirror looked at the woman in the mirror with a long, steady,
+measuring look. Then, slowly and deliberately, the long graceful folds
+of her lovely gown trailing behind her, she walked over to where her
+frowning husband stood. So might a queen have walked, head held high,
+gaze steady. She stopped within half a foot of him, her eyes level with
+his. For a long half-minute they stood thus, the faded blue eyes of the
+wife gazing into the sullen black eyes of the husband, and his were the
+first to drop, for all the noble blood in Anna Nirlanger’s veins, and
+all her long line of gently bred ancestors were coming to her aid in
+dealing with her middle-class husband.
+
+“You forget,” she said, very slowly and distinctly. “If this were
+Austria, instead of Amerika, you would not forget. In Austria people of
+your class do not speak in this manner to those of my caste.”
+
+“Unsinn!” laughed Konrad Nirlanger. “This is Amerika.”
+
+“Yes,” said Anna Nirlanger, “this is Amerika. And in Amerika all things
+are different. I see now that my people knew of what they spoke when
+they called me mad to think of wedding a clod of the people, such as
+you.”
+
+For a moment I thought that he was going to strike her. I think he
+would have, if she had flinched. But she did not. Her head was held
+high, and her eyes did not waver.
+
+“I married you for love. It is most comical, is it not? With you I
+thought I should find peace, and happiness and a re-birth of the
+intellect that was being smothered in the splendor and artificiality
+and the restrictions of my life there. Well, I was wrong. But wrong.
+Now hear me!” Her voice was tense with passion. “There will be gowns—as
+many and as rich as I choose. You have said many times that the ladies
+of Amerika you admire. And see! I shall be also one of those so-admired
+ladies. My money shall go for gowns! For hats! For trifles of lace and
+velvet and fur! You shall learn that it is not a peasant woman whom you
+have married. This is Amerika, the land of the free, my husband. And
+see! Who is more of Amerika than I? Who?”
+
+She laughed a high little laugh and came over to me, taking my hands in
+her own.
+
+“Dear girl, you must run quickly and dress. For this evening we go to
+the theater. Oh, but you must. There shall be no unpleasantness, that I
+promise. My husband accompanies us—with joy. Is it not so, Konrad? With
+joy? So!”
+
+Wildly I longed to decline, but I dared not. So I only nodded, for fear
+of the great lump in my throat, and taking Frau Knapf’s hand I turned
+and fled with her. Frau Knapf was muttering:
+
+“Du Hund! Du unverschamter Hund du!” in good Billingsgate German, and
+wiping her eyes with her apron. And I dressed with trembling fingers
+because I dared not otherwise face the brave little Austrian, the
+plucky little aborigine who, with the donning of the new Amerikanische
+gown had acquired some real Amerikanisch nerve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+VON GERHARD SPEAKS
+
+
+Of Von Gerhard I had not had a glimpse since that evening of my
+hysterical outburst. On Christmas day there had come a box of roses so
+huge that I could not find vases enough to hold its contents, although
+I pressed into service everything from Mason jars from the kitchen to
+hand-painted atrocities from the parlor. After I had given posies to
+Frau Nirlanger, and fastened a rose in Frau Knapf’s hard knob of hair,
+where it bobbed in ludicrous discomfort, I still had enough to fill the
+washbowl. My room looked like a grand opera star’s boudoir when she is
+expecting the newspaper reporters. I reveled in the glowing fragrance
+of the blossoms and felt very eastern and luxurious and popular. It had
+been a busy, happy, work-filled week, in which I had had to snatch odd
+moments for the selecting of certain wonderful toys for the Spalpeens.
+There had been dolls and doll-clothes and a marvelous miniature kitchen
+for the practical and stolid Sheila, and ingenious bits of mechanism
+that did unbelievable things when wound up, for the clever, imaginative
+Hans. I was not to have the joy of seeing their wide-eyed delight, but
+I knew that there would follow certain laboriously scrawled letters,
+filled with topsy-turvy capitals and crazily leaning words of thanks to
+the doting old auntie who had been such good fun the summer before.
+
+Boarding-house Christmases had become an old story. I had learned to
+accept them, even to those obscure and foreign parts of turkey which
+are seen only on boarding-house plates, and which would be recognized
+nowhere else as belonging to that stately bird.
+
+Christmas at Knapf’s had been a happy surprise; a day of hearty good
+cheer and kindness. There had even been a Christmas tree, hung with
+stodgy German angels and Pfeffernuesse and pink-frosted cakes. I found
+myself the bewildered recipient of gifts from everyone—from the Knapfs,
+and the aborigines and even from one of the crushed-looking wives. The
+aborigine whom they called Fritz had presented me with a huge and
+imposing Lebkuchen, reposing in a box with frilled border, ornamented
+with quaint little red-and-green German figures in sugar, and labeled
+Nurnberg in stout letters, for it had come all the way from that
+kuchen-famous city. The Lebkuchen I placed on my mantel shelf as
+befitted so magnificent a work of art. It was quite too elaborate and
+imposing to be sent the way of ordinary food, although it had a certain
+tantalizingly spicy scent that tempted one to break off a corner here
+and there.
+
+On the afternoon of Christmas day I sat down to thank Dr. von Gerhard
+for the flowers as prettily as might be. Also I asked his pardon, a
+thing not hard to do with the perfume of his roses filling the room.
+
+“For you,” I wrote, “who are so wise in the ways of those tricky things
+called nerves, must know that it was only a mild hysteria that made me
+say those most unladylike things. I have written Norah all about it.
+She has replied, advising me to stick to the good-fellow role but not
+to dress the part. So when next you see me I shall be a perfectly safe
+and sane comrade in petticoats. And I promise you—no more outbursts.”
+
+So it happened that on the afternoon of New Year’s day Von Gerhard and
+I gravely wished one another many happy and impossible things for the
+coming year, looking fairly and squarely into each other’s eyes as we
+did so.
+
+“So,” said Von Gerhard, as one who is satisfied. “The nerfs are steady
+to-day. What do you say to a brisk walk along the lake shore to put us
+in a New Year frame of mind, and then a supper down-town somewhere,
+with a toast to Max and Norah?”
+
+“You’ve saved my life! Sit down here in the parlor and gaze at the
+crepe-paper oranges while I powder my nose and get into some street
+clothes. I have such a story to tell you! It has made me quite
+contented with my lot.”
+
+The story was that of the Nirlangers; and as we struggled against a
+brisk lake breeze I told it, and partly because of the breeze, and
+partly because of the story, there were tears in my eyes when I had
+finished. Von Gerhard stared at me, aghast.
+
+“But you are—crying!” he marveled, watching a tear slide down my nose.
+
+“I’m not,” I retorted. “Anyway I know it. I think I may blubber if I
+choose to, mayn’t I, as well as other women?”
+
+“Blubber?” repeated Von Gerhard, he of the careful and cautious
+English. “But most certainly, if you wish. I had thought that newspaper
+women did not indulge in the luxury of tears.”
+
+“They don’t—often. Haven’t the time. If a woman reporter were to burst
+into tears every time she saw something to weep over she’d be going
+about with a red nose and puffy eyelids half the time. Scarcely a day
+passes that does not bring her face to face with human suffering in
+some form. Not only must she see these things, but she must write of
+them so that those who read can also see them. And just because she
+does not wail and tear her hair and faint she popularly is supposed to
+be a flinty, cigarette-smoking creature who rampages up and down the
+land, seeking whom she may rend with her pen and gazing, dry-eyed, upon
+scenes of horrid bloodshed.”
+
+“And yet the little domestic tragedy of the Nirlangers can bring tears
+to your eyes?”
+
+“Oh, that was quite different. The case of the Nirlangers had nothing
+to do with Dawn O’Hara, newspaper reporter. It was just plain Dawn
+O’Hara, woman, who witnessed that little tragedy. Mein Himmel! Are all
+German husbands like that?”
+
+“Not all. I have a very good friend named Max—”
+
+“O, Max! Max is an angel husband. Fancy Max and Norah waxing tragic on
+the subject of a gown! Now you—”
+
+“I? Come, you are sworn to good-fellowship. As one comrade to another,
+tell me, what sort of husband do you think I should make, eh? The
+boorish Nirlanger sort, or the charming Max variety. Come, tell me—you
+who always have seemed so—so damnably able to take care of yourself.”
+His eyes were twinkling in the maddening way they had.
+
+I looked out across the lake to where a line of white-caps was piling
+up formidably only to break in futile wrath against the solid wall of
+the shore. And there came over me an equally futile wrath; that savage,
+unreasoning instinct in women which prompts them to hurt those whom
+they love.
+
+“Oh, you!” I began, with Von Gerhard’s amused eyes laughing down upon
+me. “I should say that you would be more in the Nirlanger style, in
+your large, immovable, Germansure way. Not that you would stoop to
+wrangle about money or gowns, but that you would control those things.
+Your wife will be a placid, blond, rather plump German Fraulein, of
+excellent family and no imagination. Men of your type always select
+negative wives. Twenty years ago she would have run to bring you your
+Zeitung and your slippers. She would be that kind, if
+Zeitung-and-slipper husbands still were in existence. You will be fond
+of her, in a patronizing sort of way, and she will never know the
+difference between that and being loved, not having a great deal of
+imagination, as I have said before. And you will go on becoming more
+and more famous, and she will grow plumper and more placid, and less
+and less understanding of what those komisch medical journals have to
+say so often about her husband who is always discovering things. And
+you will live happily ever after—”
+
+A hand gripped my shoulder. I looked up, startled, into two blue eyes
+blazing down into mine. Von Gerhard’s face was a painful red. I think
+that the hand on my shoulder even shook me a little, there on that
+bleak and deserted lake drive. I tried to wrench my shoulder free with
+a jerk.
+
+“You are hurting me!” I cried.
+
+A quiver of pain passed over the face that I had thought so calmly
+unemotional. “You talk of hurts! You, who set out deliberately and
+maliciously to make me suffer! How dare you then talk to me like this!
+You stab with a hundred knives—you, who know how I—”
+
+“I’m sorry,” I put in, contritely. “Please don’t be so dreadful about
+it. After all, you asked me, didn’t you? Perhaps I’ve hurt your vanity.
+There, I didn’t mean that, either. Oh, dear, let’s talk about something
+impersonal. We get along wretchedly of late.”
+
+The angry red ebbed away from Von Gerhard’s face. The blaze of wrath in
+his eyes gave way to a deeper, brighter light that held me fascinated,
+and there came to his lips a smile of rare sweetness. The hand that had
+grasped my shoulder slipped down, down, until it met my hand and
+gripped it.
+
+“Na, ’s ist schon recht, Kindchen. Those that we most care for we would
+hurt always. When I have told you of my love for you, although already
+you know it, then you will tell me. Hush! Do not deny this thing. There
+shall be no more lies between us. There shall be only the truth, and no
+more about plump, blonde German wives who run with Zeitung and
+slippers. After all, it is no secret. Three months ago I told Norah. It
+was not news to her. But she trusted me.”
+
+I felt my face to be as white and as tense as his own. “Norah—knows!”
+
+“It is better to speak these things. Then there need be no shifting of
+the eyes, no evasive words, no tricks, no subterfuge.”
+
+We had faced about and were retracing our steps, past the rows of
+peculiarly home-like houses that line Milwaukee’s magnificent lake
+shore. Windows were hung with holiday scarlet and holly, and here and
+there a face was visible at a window, looking out at the man and woman
+walking swiftly along the wind-swept heights that rose far above the
+lake.
+
+A wretched revolt seized me as I gazed at the substantial comfort of
+those normal, happy homes.
+
+“Why did you tell me! What good can that do? At least we were
+make-believe friends before. Suppose I were to tell you that I care,
+then what.”
+
+“I do not ask you to tell me,” Von Gerhard replied, quietly.
+
+“You need not. You know. You knew long, long ago. You know I love the
+big quietness of you, and your sureness, and the German way you have of
+twisting your sentences about, and the steady grip of your great firm
+hands, and the rareness of your laugh, and the simplicity of you. Why I
+love the very cleanliness of your ruddy skin, and the way your hair
+grows away from your forehead, and your walk, and your voice and—Oh,
+what is the use of it all?”
+
+“Just this, Dawn. The light of day sweetens all things. We have dragged
+this thing out into the sunlight, where, if it grows, it will grow
+sanely and healthily. It was but an ugly, distorted, unsightly thing,
+sending out pale unhealthy shoots in the dark, unwholesome cellars of
+our inner consciences. Norah’s knowing was the cleanest, sweetest thing
+about it.”
+
+“How wonderfully you understand her, and how right you are! Her knowing
+seems to make it as it should be, doesn’t it? I am braver already, for
+the knowledge of it. It shall make no difference between us?”
+
+“There is no difference, Dawn,” said he.
+
+“No. It is only in the story-books that they sigh, and groan and utter
+silly nonsense. We are not like that. Perhaps, after a bit, you will
+meet some one you care for greatly—not plump, or blond, or German,
+perhaps, but still—”
+
+“Doch you are flippant?”
+
+“I must say those things to keep the tears back. You would not have me
+wailing here in the street. Tell me just one thing, and there shall be
+no more fluttering breaths and languishing looks. Tell me, when did you
+begin to care?”
+
+We had reached Knapfs’ door-step. The short winter day was already
+drawing to its close. In the half-light Von Gerhard’s eyes glowed
+luminous.
+
+“Since the day I first met you at Norah’s,” he said, simply.
+
+I stared at him, aghast, my ever-present sense of humor struggling to
+the surface. “Not—not on that day when you came into the room where I
+sat in the chair by the window, with a flowered quilt humped about my
+shoulders! And a fever-sore twisting my mouth! And my complexion the
+color of cheese, and my hair plastered back from my forehead, and my
+eyes like boiled onions!”
+
+“Thank God for your gift of laughter,” Von Gerhard said, and took my
+hand in his for one brief moment before he turned and walked away.
+
+Quite prosaically I opened the big front door at Knapfs’ to find Herr
+Knapf standing in the hallway with his:
+
+“Nabben’, Frau Orme.”
+
+And there was the sane and soothing scent of Wienerschnitzel and
+spluttering things in the air. And I ran upstairs to my room and turned
+on all the lights and looked at the starry-eyed creature in the mirror.
+Then I took the biggest, newest photograph of Norah from the mantel and
+looked at her for a long, long minute, while she looked back at me in
+her brave true way.
+
+“Thank you, dear,” I said to her. “Thank you. Would you think me stagey
+and silly if I were to kiss you, just once, on your beautiful trusting
+eyes?”
+
+A telephone bell tinkled downstairs and Herr Knapf stationed himself at
+the foot of the stairs and roared my name.
+
+When I had picked up the receiver: “This is Ernst,” said the voice at
+the other end of the wire. “I have just remembered that I had asked you
+down-town for supper.”
+
+“I would rather thank God fasting,” I replied, very softly, and hung
+the receiver on its hook.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+BENNIE THE CONSOLER
+
+
+In a corner of Frau Nirlanger’s bedroom, sheltered from draughts and
+glaring light, is a little wooden bed, painted blue and ornamented with
+stout red roses that are faded by time and much abuse. Every evening at
+eight o’clock three anxious-browed women hold low-spoken conclave about
+the quaint old bed, while its occupant sleeps and smiles as he sleeps,
+and clasps to his breast a chewed-looking woolly dog. For a new joy has
+come to the sad little Frau Nirlanger, and I, quite by accident, was
+the cause of bringing it to her. The queer little blue bed, with its
+faded roses, was brought down from the attic by Frau Knapf, for she is
+one of the three foster mothers of the small occupant of the bed. The
+occupant of the bed is named Bennie, and a corporation formed for the
+purpose of bringing him up in the way he should go is composed of: Dawn
+O’Hara Orme, President and Distracted Guardian; Mrs. Konrad Nirlanger,
+Cuddler-in-chief and Authority on the Subject of Bennie’s Bed-time; Mr.
+Blackie Griffith, Good Angel, General Cut-up and Monitor off’n Bennie’s
+Neckties and Toys; Dr. Ernst von Gerhard, Chief Medical Adviser, and
+Sweller of the Exchequer, with the Privilege of Selecting All Candies.
+Members of the corporation meet with great frequency evenings and
+Sundays, much to the detriment of a certain Book-in-the-making with
+which Dawn O’Hara Orme was wont to struggle o’ evenings.
+
+Bennie had been one of those little tragedies that find their way into
+juvenile court. Bennie’s story was common enough, but Bennie himself
+had been different. Ten minutes after his first appearance in the court
+room everyone, from the big, bald judge to the newest probation
+officer, had fallen in love with him. Somehow, you wanted to smooth the
+hair from his forehead, tip his pale little face upward, and very
+gently kiss his smooth, white brow. Which alone was enough to
+distinguish Bennie, for Juvenile court children, as a rule, are
+distinctly not kissable.
+
+Bennie’s mother was accused of being unfit to care for her boy, and
+Bennie was temporarily installed in the Detention Home. There the
+superintendent and his plump and kindly wife had fallen head over heels
+in love with him, and had dressed him in a smart little Norfolk suit
+and a frivolous plaid silk tie. There were delays in the case, and
+postponement after postponement, so that Bennie appeared in the court
+room every Tuesday for four weeks. The reporters, and the probation
+officers and policemen became very chummy with Bennie, and showered him
+with bright new pennies and certain wonderful candies. Superintendent
+Arnett of the Detention Home was as proud of the boy as though he were
+his own. And when Bennie would look shyly and questioningly into his
+face for permission to accept the proffered offerings, the big
+superintendent would chuckle delightedly. Bennie had a strangely mobile
+face for such a baby, and the whitest, smoothest brow I have ever seen.
+
+The comedy and tears and misery and laughter of the big, white-walled
+court room were too much for Bennie. He would gaze about with puzzled
+blue eyes; then, giving up the situation as something too vast for his
+comprehension, he would fall to drawing curly-cues on a bit of paper
+with a great yellow pencil presented him by one of the newspaper men.
+
+Every Tuesday the rows of benches were packed with a motley crowd of
+Poles, Russians, Slavs, Italians, Greeks, Lithuanians—a crowd made up
+of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, neighbors,
+friends, and enemies of the boys and girls whose fate was in the hands
+of the big man seated in the revolving chair up in front. But Bennie’s
+mother was not of this crowd; this pitiful, ludicrous crowd filling the
+great room with the stifling, rancid odor of the poor. Nor was Bennie.
+He sat, clear-eyed and unsmiling, in the depths of a great chair on the
+court side of the railing and gravely received the attentions of the
+lawyers, and reporters and court room attaches who had grown fond of
+the grave little figure.
+
+Then, on the fifth Tuesday, Bennie’s mother appeared. How she had come
+to be that child’s mother God only knows—or perhaps He had had nothing
+to do with it. She was terribly sober and frightened. Her face was
+swollen and bruised, and beneath one eye there was a puffy
+green-and-blue swelling. Her sordid story was common enough as the
+probation officer told it. The woman had been living in one wretched
+room with the boy. Her husband had deserted her. There was no food, and
+little furniture. The queer feature of it, said the probation officer,
+was that the woman managed to keep the boy fairly neat and clean,
+regardless of her own condition, and he generally had food of some
+sort, although the mother sometimes went without food for days. Through
+the squalor and misery and degradation of her own life Bennie had
+somehow been kept unsullied, a thing apart.
+
+“H’m!” said judge Wheeling, and looked at Bennie. Bennie was standing
+beside his mother. He was very quiet, and his eyes were smiling up into
+those of the battered creature who was fighting for him. “I guess we’ll
+have to take you out of this,” the judge decided, abruptly. “That boy
+is too good to go to waste.”
+
+The sodden, dazed woman before him did not immediately get the full
+meaning of his words. She still stood there, swaying a bit, and staring
+unintelligently at the judge. Then, quite suddenly, she realized it.
+She took a quick step forward. Her hand went up to her breast, to her
+throat, to her lips, with an odd, stifled gesture.
+
+“You ain’t going to take him away! From me! No, you wouldn’t do that,
+would you? Not for—not for always! You wouldn’t do that—you wouldn’t—”
+
+Judge Wheeling waved her away. But the woman dropped to her knees.
+
+“Judge, give me a chance! I’ll stop drinking. Only don’t take him away
+from me! Don’t, judge, don’t! He’s all I’ve got in the world. Give me a
+chance. Three months! Six months! A year!”
+
+“Get up!” ordered judge Wheeling, gruffly, “and stop that! It won’t do
+you a bit of good.”
+
+And then a wonderful thing happened. The woman rose to her feet. A new
+and strange dignity had come into her battered face. The lines of
+suffering and vice were erased as by magic, and she seemed to grow
+taller, younger, almost beautiful. When she spoke again it was slowly
+and distinctly, her words quite free from the blur of the barroom and
+street vernacular.
+
+“I tell you you must give me a chance. You cannot take a child from a
+mother in this way. I tell you, if you will only help me I can crawl
+back up the road that I’ve traveled. I was not always like this. There
+was another life, before—before—Oh, since then there have been years of
+blackness, and hunger, and cold and—worse! But I never dragged the boy
+into it. Look at him!”
+
+Our eyes traveled from the woman’s transfigured face to that of the
+boy. We could trace a wonderful likeness where before we had seen none.
+But the woman went on in her steady, even tone.
+
+“I can’t talk as I should, because my brain isn’t clear. It’s the
+drink. When you drink, you forget. But you must help me. I can’t do it
+alone. I can remember how to live straight, just as I can remember how
+to talk straight. Let me show you that I’m not all bad. Give me a
+chance. Take the boy and then give him back to me when you are
+satisfied. I’ll try—God only knows how I’ll try. Only don’t take him
+away forever, Judge! Don’t do that!”
+
+Judge Wheeling ran an uncomfortable finger around his collar’s edge.
+
+“Any friends living here?”
+
+“No! No!”
+
+“Sure about that?”
+
+“Quite sure.”
+
+“Now see here; I’m going to give you your chance. I shall take this boy
+away from you for a year. In that time you will stop drinking and
+become a decent, self-supporting woman. You will be given in charge of
+one of these probation officers. She will find work for you, and a good
+home, and she’ll stand by you, and you must report to her. If she is
+satisfied with you at the end of the year, the boy goes back to you.”
+
+“She will be satisfied,” the woman said, simply. She stooped and taking
+Bennie’s face between her hands kissed him once. Then she stepped aside
+and stood quite still, looking after the little figure that passed out
+of the court room with his hand in that of a big, kindly police
+officer. She looked until the big door had opened and closed upon them.
+
+Then—well, it was just another newspaper story. It made a good one.
+That evening I told Frau Nirlanger about it, and she wept, softly, and
+murmured: “Ach, das arme baby! Like my little Oscar he is, without a
+mother.” I told Ernst about him too, and Blackie, because I could not
+get his grave little face out of my mind. I wondered if those who had
+charge of him now would take the time to bathe the little body, and
+brush the soft hair until it shone, and tie the gay plaid silk tie as
+lovingly as “Daddy” Arnett of the Detention Home had done.
+
+Then it was that I, quite unwittingly, stepped into Bennie’s life.
+
+There was an anniversary, or a change in the board of directors, or a
+new coat of paint or something of the kind in one of the orphan homes,
+and the story fell to me. I found the orphan home to be typical of its
+kind—a big, dreary, prison-like structure. The woman at the door did
+not in the least care to let me in. She was a fish-mouthed woman with a
+hard eye, and as I told my errand her mouth grew fishier and the eye
+harder. Finally she led me down a long, dark, airless stretch of
+corridor and departed in search of the matron, leaving me seated in the
+unfriendly reception room, with its straight-backed chairs placed
+stonily against the walls, beneath rows of red and blue and yellow
+religious pictures.
+
+Just as I was wondering why it seemed impossible to be holy and
+cheerful at the same time, there came a pad-padding down the corridor.
+The next moment the matron stood in the doorway. She was a mountainous,
+red-faced woman, with warts on her nose.
+
+“Good-afternoon,” I said, sweetly. (“Ugh! What a brute!”) I thought.
+Then I began to explain my errand once more. Criticism of the Home? No
+indeed, I assured her. At last, convinced of my disinterestedness she
+reluctantly guided me about the big, gloomy building. There were
+endless flights of shiny stairs, and endless stuffy, airless rooms,
+until we came to a door which she flung open, disclosing the nursery.
+It seemed to me that there were a hundred babies—babies at every stage
+of development, of all sizes, and ages and types. They glanced up at
+the opening of the door, and then a dreadful thing happened.
+
+Every child that was able to walk or creep scuttled into the farthest
+corners and remained quite, quite still with a wide-eyed expression of
+fear and apprehension on every face.
+
+For a moment my heart stood still. I turned to look at the woman by my
+side. Her thin lips were compressed into a straight, hard line. She
+said a word to a nurse standing near, and began to walk about, eying
+the children sharply. She put out a hand to pat the head of one
+red-haired mite in a soiled pinafore; but before her hand could descend
+I saw the child dodge and the tiny hand flew up to the head, as though
+in defense.
+
+“They are afraid of her!” my sick heart told me. “Those babies are
+afraid of her! What does she do to them? I can’t stand this. I’m
+going.”
+
+I mumbled a hurried “Thank you,” to the fat matron as I turned to leave
+the big, bare room. At the head of the stairs there was a great, black
+door. I stopped before it—God knows why!—and pointed toward it.
+
+“What is in that room?” I asked. Since then I have wondered many times
+at the unseen power that prompted me to put the question.
+
+The stout matron bustled on, rattling her keys as she walked.
+
+“That—oh, that’s where we keep the incorrigibles.”
+
+“May I see them?” I asked, again prompted by that inner voice.
+
+“There is only one.” She grudgingly unlocked the door, using one of the
+great keys that swung from her waist. The heavy, black door swung open.
+I stepped into the bare room, lighted dimly by one small window. In the
+farthest corner crouched something that stirred and glanced up at our
+entrance. It peered at us with an ugly look of terror and defiance, and
+I stared back at it, in the dim light. During one dreadful, breathless
+second I remained staring, while my heart stood still. Then—“Bennie!” I
+cried. And stumbled toward him. “Bennie—boy!”
+
+The little unkempt figure, in its soiled knickerbocker suit, the sunny
+hair all uncared for, the gay plaid tie draggled and limp, rushed into
+my arms with a crazy, inarticulate cry.
+
+Down on my knees on the bare floor I held him close—close! and his arms
+were about my neck as though they never should unclasp.
+
+“Take me away! Take me away!” His wet cheek was pressed against my own
+streaming one. “I want my mother! I want Daddy Arnett! Take me away!”
+
+I wiped his cheeks with my notebook or something, picked him up in my
+arms, and started for the door. I had quite forgotten the fat matron.
+
+“What are you doing?” she asked, blocking the doorway with her huge
+bulk.
+
+“I’m going to take him back with me. Please let me! I’ll take care of
+him until the year is up. He shan’t bother you any more.”
+
+“That is impossible,” she said, coldly. “He has been sent here by the
+court, for a year, and he must stay here. Besides, he is a stubborn,
+uncontrollable child.”
+
+“Uncontrollable! He’s nothing of the kind! Why don’t you treat him as a
+child should be treated, instead of like a little animal? You don’t
+know him! Why, he’s the most lovable—! And he’s only a baby! Can’t you
+see that? A baby!”
+
+She only stared her dislike, her little pig eyes grown smaller and more
+glittering.
+
+“You great—big—thing!” I shrieked at her, like an infuriated child.
+With the tears streaming down my cheeks I unclasped Bennie’s cold hands
+from about my neck. He clung to me, frantically, until I had to push
+him away and run.
+
+The woman swung the door shut, and locked it. But for all its thickness
+I could hear Bennie’s helpless fists pounding on its panels as I
+stumbled down the stairs, and Bennie’s voice came faintly to my ears,
+muffled by the heavy door, as he shrieked to me to take him away to his
+mother, and to Daddy Arnett.
+
+I blubbered all the way back in the car, until everyone stared, but I
+didn’t care. When I reached the office I made straight for Blackie’s
+smoke-filled sanctum. When my tale was ended he let me cry all over his
+desk, with my head buried in a heap of galley-proofs and my tears
+watering his paste-pot. He sat calmly by, smoking. Finally he began
+gently to philosophize. “Now girl, he’s prob’ly better off there than
+he ever was at home with his mother soused all the time. Maybe he give
+that warty matron friend of yours all kinds of trouble, yellin’ for his
+ma.”
+
+I raised my head from the desk. “Oh, you can talk! You didn’t see him.
+What do you care! But if you could have seen him, crouched
+there—alone—like a little animal! He was so sweet—and
+lovable—and—and—he hadn’t been decently washed for weeks—and his arms
+clung to me—I can feel his hands about my neck!—”
+
+I buried my head in the papers again. Blackie went on smoking. There
+was no sound in the little room except the purr-purring of Blackie’s
+pipe. Then:
+
+“I done a favor for Wheeling once,” mused he.
+
+I glanced up, quickly. “Oh, Blackie, do you think—”
+
+“No, I don’t. But then again, you can’t never tell. That was four or
+five years ago, and the mem’ry of past favors grows dim fast. Still, if
+you’re through waterin’ the top of my desk, why I’d like t’ set down
+and do a little real brisk talkin’ over the phone. You’re excused.”
+
+Quite humbly I crept away, with hope in my heart.
+
+To this day I do not know what secret string the resourceful Blackie
+pulled. But the next afternoon I found a hastily scrawled note tucked
+into the roll of my typewriter. It sent me scuttling across the hall to
+the sporting editor’s smoke-filled room. And there on a chair beside
+the desk, surrounded by scrap-books, lead pencils, paste-pot and odds
+and ends of newspaper office paraphernalia, sat Bennie. His hair was
+parted very smoothly on one side, and under his dimpled chin bristled a
+very new and extremely lively green-and-red plaid silk tie.
+
+The next instant I had swept aside papers, brushes, pencils, books, and
+Bennie was gathered close in my arms. Blackie, with a strange glow in
+his deep-set black eyes regarded us with an assumed disgust.
+
+“Wimmin is all alike. Ain’t it th’ truth? I used t’ think you was
+different. But shucks! It ain’t so. Got t’ turn on the weeps the minute
+you’re tickled or mad. Why say, I ain’t goin’ t’ have you comin’ in
+here an’ dampenin’ up the whole place every little while! It’s
+unhealthy for me, sittin’ here in the wet.”
+
+“Oh, shut up, Blackie,” I said, happily. “How in the world did you do
+it?”
+
+“Never you mind. The question is, what you goin’ t’ do with him, now
+you’ve got him? Goin’ t’ have a French bunny for him, or fetch him up
+by hand? Wheeling appointed a probation skirt to look after the crowd
+of us, and we got t’ toe the mark.”
+
+“Glory be!” I ejaculated. “I don’t know what I shall do with him. I
+shall have to bring him down with me every morning, and perhaps you can
+make a sporting editor out of him.”
+
+“Nix. Not with that forehead. He’s a high-brow. We’ll make him dramatic
+critic. In the meantime, I’ll be little fairy godmother, an’ if you’ll
+get on your bonnet I’ll stake you and the young ’un to strawberry
+shortcake an’ chocolate ice cream.”
+
+So it happened that a wondering Frau Knapf and a sympathetic Frau
+Nirlanger were called in for consultation an hour later. Bennie was
+ensconced in my room, very wide-eyed and wondering, but quite content.
+With the entrance of Frau Nirlanger the consultation was somewhat
+disturbed. She made a quick rush at him and gathered him in her hungry
+arms.
+
+“Du baby du!” she cried. “Du Kleiner! And she was down on her knees,
+and somehow her figure had melted into delicious mother-curves, with
+Bennie’s head just fitting into that most gracious one between her
+shoulder and breast. She cooed to him in a babble of French and German
+and English, calling him her lee-tel Oscar. Bennie seemed miraculously
+to understand. Perhaps he was becoming accustomed to having strange
+ladies snatch him to their breasts.
+
+“So,” said Frau Nirlanger, looking up at us. “Is he not sweet? He shall
+be my lee-tel boy, nicht? For one small year he shall be my own boy.
+Ach, I am but lonely all the long day here in this strange land. You
+will let me care for him, nicht? And Konrad, he will be very angry, but
+that shall make no bit of difference. Eh, Oscar?”
+
+And so the thing was settled, and an hour later three anxious-browed
+women were debating the weighty question of eggs or bread-and-milk for
+Bennie’s supper. Frau Nirlanger was for soft-boiled eggs as being none
+too heavy after orphan asylum fare; I was for bread-and-milk, that
+being the prescribed supper dish for all the orphans and waifs that I
+had ever read about, from “The Wide, Wide World” to “Helen’s Babies,”
+and back again. Frau Knapf was for both eggs and bread-and-milk with a
+dash of meat and potatoes thrown in for good measure, and a slice or so
+of Kuchen on the side. We compromised on one egg, one glass of milk,
+and a slice of lavishly buttered bread, and jelly. It was a clean,
+sweet, sleepy-eyed Bennie that we tucked between the sheets. We three
+women stood looking down at him as he lay there in the quaint old
+blue-painted bed that had once held the plump little Knapfs.
+
+“You think anyway he had enough supper? mused the anxious-browed Frau
+Knapf.
+
+“To school he will have to go, yes?” murmured Frau Nirlanger,
+regretfully.
+
+I tucked in the covers at one side of the bed, not that they needed
+tucking, but because it was such a comfortable, satisfying thing to do.
+
+“Just at this minute,” I said, as I tucked, “I’d rather be a newspaper
+reporter than anything else in the world. As a profession ’tis so
+broadenin’, an’ at the same time, so chancey.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+THE TEST
+
+
+Some day the marriageable age for women will be advanced from twenty to
+thirty, and the old maid line will be changed from thirty to forty.
+When that time comes there will be surprisingly few divorces. The
+husband of whom we dream at twenty is not at all the type of man who
+attracts us at thirty. The man I married at twenty was a brilliant,
+morbid, handsome, abnormal creature with magnificent eyes and very
+white teeth and no particular appetite at mealtime. The man whom I
+could care for at thirty would be the normal, safe and substantial sort
+who would come in at six o’clock, kiss me once, sniff the air twice and
+say: “Mm! What’s that smells so good, old girl? I’m as hungry as a
+bear. Trot it out. Where are the kids?”
+
+These are dangerous things to think upon. So dangerous and disturbing
+to the peace of mind that I have decided not to see Ernst von Gerhard
+for a week or two. I find that seeing him is apt to make me forget
+Peter Orme; to forget that my duty begins with a capital D; to forget
+that I am dangerously near the thirty year old mark; to forget Norah,
+and Max, and the Spalpeens, and the world, and everything but the
+happiness of being near him, watching his eyes say one thing while his
+lips say another.
+
+At such times I am apt to work myself up into rather a savage frame of
+mind, and to shut myself in my room evenings, paying no heed to Frau
+Nirlanger’s timid knocking, or Bennie’s good-night message. I uncover
+my typewriter and set to work at the thing which may or may not be a
+book, and am extremely wretched and gloomy and pessimistic, after this
+fashion:
+
+“He probably wouldn’t care anything about you if you were free. It is
+just a case of the fruit that is out of reach being the most desirable.
+Men don’t marry frumpy, snuffy old things of thirty, or thereabouts.
+Men aren’t marrying now-a-days, anyway. Certainly not for love. They
+marry for position, or power, or money, when they do marry. Think of
+all the glorious creatures he meets every day—women whose hair, and
+finger-nails and teeth and skin are a religion; women whose clothes are
+a fine art; women who are free to care only for themselves; to rest, to
+enjoy, to hear delightful music, and read charming books, and eat
+delicious food. He doesn’t really care about you, with your rumpled
+blouses, and your shabby gloves and shoes, and your somewhat doubtful
+linen collars. The last time you saw him you were just coming home from
+the office after a dickens of a day, and there was a smudge on the end
+of your nose, and he told you of it, laughing. But you didn’t laugh.
+You rubbed it off, furiously, and you wanted to cry. Cry! You, Dawn
+O’Hara! Begorra! ’Tis losin’ your sense av humor you’re after doin’!
+Get to work.”
+
+After which I would fall upon the book in a furious, futile fashion,
+writing many incoherent, irrelevant paragraphs which I knew would be
+cast aside as worthless on the sane and reasoning to-morrow.
+
+Oh, it had been easy enough to talk of love in a lofty, superior
+impersonal way that New Year’s day. Just the luxury of speaking of it
+at all, after those weeks of repression, sufficed. But it is not so
+easy to be impersonal and lofty when the touch of a coat sleeve against
+your arm sends little prickling, tingling shivers racing madly through
+thousands of too taut nerves. It is not so easy to force the mind and
+tongue into safe, sane channels when they are forever threatening to
+rush together in an overwhelming torrent that will carry misery and
+destruction in its wake. Invariably we talk with feverish earnestness
+about the book; about my work at the office; about Ernst’s profession,
+with its wonderful growth; about Norah, and Max and the Spalpeens, and
+the home; about the latest news; about the weather; about Peter
+Orme—and then silence.
+
+At our last meeting things took a new and startling turn. So startling,
+so full of temptation and happiness-that-must-not-be, that I resolved
+to forbid myself the pain and joy of being near him until I could be
+quite sure that my grip on Dawn O’Hara was firm, unshakable and
+lasting.
+
+Von Gerhard sports a motor-car, a rakish little craft, built long and
+low, with racing lines, and a green complexion, and a nose that cuts
+through the air like the prow of a swift boat through water. Von
+Gerhard had promised me a spin in it on the first mild day. Sunday
+turned out to be unexpectedly lamblike, as only a March day can be,
+with real sunshine that warmed the end of one’s nose instead of
+laughing as it tweaked it, as the lying February sunshine had done.
+
+“But warmly you must dress yourself,” Von Gerhard warned me, “with no
+gauzy blouses or sleeveless gowns. The air cuts like a knife, but it
+feels good against the face. And a little road-house I know, where one
+is served great steaming plates of hot oyster stew. How will that be
+for a lark, yes?”
+
+And so I had swathed myself in wrappings until I could scarcely clamber
+into the panting little car, and we had darted off along the smooth
+lake drives, while the wind whipped the scarlet into our cheeks, even
+while it brought the tears to our eyes. There was no chance for
+conversation, even if Von Gerhard had been in talkative mood, which he
+was not. He seemed more taciturn than usual, seated there at the wheel,
+looking straight ahead at the ribbon of road, his eyes narrowed down to
+mere keen blue slits. I realized, without alarm, that he was driving
+furiously and lawlessly, and I did not care. Von Gerhard was that sort
+of man. One could sit quite calmly beside him while he pulled at the
+reins of a pair of runaway horses, knowing that he would conquer them
+in the end.
+
+Just when my face began to feel as stiff and glazed as a mummy’s, we
+swung off the roadway and up to the entrance of the road-house that was
+to revive us with things hot and soupy.
+
+“Another minute,” I said, through stiff lips, as I extricated myself
+from my swathings, “and I should have been what Mr. Mantalini described
+as a demnition body. For pity’s sake, tell ’em the soup can’t be too
+hot nor too steaming for your lady friend. I’ve had enough fresh air to
+last me the remainder of my life. May I timidly venture to suggest that
+a cheese sandwich follow the oyster stew? I am famished, and this place
+looks as though it might make a speciality of cheese sandwiches.”
+
+“By all means a cheese sandwich. Und was noch? That fresh air it has
+given you an appetite, nicht wahr?” But there was no sign of a smile on
+his face, nor was the kindly twinkle of amusement to be seen in his
+eyes—that twinkle that I had learned to look for.
+
+“Smile for the lady,” I mockingly begged when we had been served.
+“You’ve been owlish all the afternoon. Here, try a cheese sandwich.
+Now, why do you suppose that this mustard tastes so much better than
+the kind one gets at home?”
+
+Von Gerhard had been smoking a cigarette, the first that I had ever
+seen in his fingers. Now he tossed it into the fireplace that yawned
+black and empty at one side of the room. He swept aside the plates and
+glasses that stood before him, leaned his arms on the table and
+deliberately stared at me.
+
+“I sail for Europe in June, to be gone a year—probably more,” he said.
+
+“Sail!” I echoed, idiotically; and began blindly to dab clots of
+mustard on that ridiculous sandwich.
+
+“I go to study and work with Gluck. It is the opportunity of a
+lifetime. Gluck is to the world of medicine what Edison is to the world
+of electricity. He is a wizard, a man inspired. You should see him—a
+little, bent, grizzled, shabby old man who looks at you, and sees you
+not. It is a wonderful opportunity, a—”
+
+The mustard and the sandwich and the table and Von Gerhard’s face were
+very indistinct and uncertain to my eyes, but I managed to say: “So
+glad—congratulate you—very happy—no doubt fortunate—”
+
+Two strong hands grasped my wrists. “Drop that absurd mustard spoon and
+sandwich. Na, I did not mean to frighten you, Dawn. How your hands
+tremble. So, look at me. You would like Vienna, Kindchen. You would
+like the gayety, and the brightness of it, and the music, and the
+pretty women, and the incomparable gowns. Your sense of humor would
+discern the hollowness beneath all the pomp and ceremony and rigid
+lines of caste, and military glory; and your writer’s instinct would
+revel in the splendor, and color and romance and intrigue.”
+
+I shrugged my shoulders in assumed indifference. “Can’t you convey all
+this to me without grasping my wrists like a villain in a melodrama?
+Besides, it isn’t very generous or thoughtful of you to tell me all
+this, knowing that it is not for me. Vienna for you, and Milwaukee and
+cheese sandwiches for me. Please pass the mustard.”
+
+But the hold on my wrists grew firmer. Von Gerhard’s eyes were steady
+as they gazed into mine. “Dawn, Vienna, and the whole world is waiting
+for you, if you will but take it. Vienna—and happiness—with me—”
+
+I wrenched my wrists free with a dreadful effort and rose, sick,
+bewildered, stunned. My world—my refuge of truth, and honor, and safety
+and sanity that had lain in Ernst von Gerhard’s great, steady hands,
+was slipping away from me. I think the horror that I felt within must
+have leaped to my eyes, for in an instant Von Gerhard was beside me,
+steadying me with his clear blue eyes. He did not touch the tips of my
+fingers as he stood there very near me. From the look of pain on his
+face I knew that I had misunderstood, somehow.
+
+“Kleine, I see that you know me not,” he said, in German, and the
+saying it was as tender as is a mother when she reproves a child that
+she loves. “This fight against the world, those years of unhappiness
+and misery, they have made you suspicious and lacking in trust, is it
+not so? You do not yet know the perfect love that casts out all doubt.
+Dawn, I ask you in the name of all that is reasoning, and for the sake
+of your happiness and mine, to divorce this man Peter Orme—this man who
+for almost ten years has not been your husband—who never can be your
+husband. I ask you to do something which will bring suffering to no
+one, and which will mean happiness to many. Let me make you happy—you
+were born to be happy—you who can laugh like a girl in spite of your
+woman’s sorrows—”
+
+But I sank into a chair and hid my face in my hands so that I might be
+spared the beauty and the tenderness of his eyes. I tried to think of
+all the sane and commonplace things in life. Somewhere in my inner
+consciousness a cool little voice was saying, over and over again:
+
+“Now, Dawn, careful! You’ve come to the crossroads at last. Right or
+left? Choose! Now, Dawn, careful!” and the rest of it all over again.
+
+When I lifted my face from my hands at last it was to meet the
+tenderness of Von Gerhard’s gaze with scarcely a tremor.
+
+“You ought to know,” I said, very slowly and evenly, “that a divorce,
+under these circumstances, is almost impossible, even if I wished to do
+what you suggest. There are certain state laws—”
+
+An exclamation of impatience broke from him. “Laws! In some states,
+yes. In others, no. It is a mere technicality—a trifle! There is about
+it a bit of that which you call red tape. It amounts to nothing—to
+that!” He snapped his fingers. “A few months’ residence in another
+state, perhaps. These American laws, they are made to break.”
+
+“Yes; you are quite right,” I said, and I knew in my heart that the
+cool, insistent little voice within had not spoken in vain. “But there
+are other laws—laws of honor and decency, and right living and
+conscience—that cannot be broken with such ease. I cannot marry you. I
+have a husband.”
+
+“You can call that unfortunate wretch your husband! He does not know
+that he has a wife. He will not know that he has lost a wife. Come,
+Dawn—small one—be not so foolish. You do not know how happy I will make
+you. You have never seen me except when I was tortured with doubts and
+fears. You do not know what our life will be together. There shall be
+everything to make you forget—everything that thought and love and
+money can give you. The man there in the barred room—”
+
+At that I took his dear hands in mine and held them close as I
+miserably tried to make him hear what that small, still voice had told
+me.
+
+“There! That is it! If he were free, if he were able to stand before
+men that his actions might be judged fairly and justly, I should not
+hesitate for one single, precious moment. If he could fight for his
+rights, or relinquish them, as he saw fit, then this thing would not be
+so monstrous. But, Ernst, can’t you see? He is there, alone, in that
+dreadful place, quite helpless, quite incapable, quite at our mercy. I
+should as soon think of hurting a little child, or snatching the
+pennies from a blind man’s cup. The thing is inhuman! It is monstrous!
+No state laws, no red tape can dissolve such a union.”
+
+“You still care for him!”
+
+“Ernst!”
+
+His face was very white with the pallor of repressed emotion, and his
+eyes were like the blue flame that one sees flashing above a bed of
+white-hot coals.
+
+“You do care for him still. But yes! You can stand there, quite
+cool—but quite—and tell me that you would not hurt him, not for your
+happiness, not for mine. But me you can hurt again and again, without
+one twinge of regret.”
+
+There was silence for a moment in the little bare dining-room—a
+miserable silence on my part, a bitter one for Ernst. Then Von Gerhard
+seated himself again at the table opposite and smiled one of the rare
+smiles that illumined his face with such sweetness.
+
+“Come, Dawn, almost we are quarreling—we who were to have been so
+matter-of-fact and sensible. Let us make an end of this question. You
+will think of what I have said, will you not? Perhaps I was too abrupt,
+too brutal. Ach, Dawn, you know not how I—Very well, I will not.”
+
+With both hands I was clinging to my courage and praying for strength
+to endure this until I should be alone in my room again.
+
+“As for that poor creature who is bereft of reason, he shall lack no
+care, no attention. The burden you have borne so long I shall take now
+upon my shoulders.”
+
+He seemed so confident, so sure. I could bear it no longer. “Ernst, if
+you have any pity, any love for me, stop! I tell you I can never do
+this. Why do you make it so terribly hard for me! So pitilessly hard!
+You always have been so strong, so sure, such a staff of courage.”
+
+“I say again, and again, and again, you do not care.”
+
+It was then that I took my last vestige of strength and courage
+together and going over to him, put my two hands on his great
+shoulders, looking up into his drawn face as I spoke.
+
+“Ernst, look at me! You never can know how much I care. I care so much
+that I could not bear to have the shadow of wrong fall upon our
+happiness. There can be no lasting happiness upon a foundation of
+shameful deceit. I should hate myself, and you would grow to hate me.
+It always is so. Dear one, I care so much that I have the strength to
+do as I would do if I had to face my mother, and Norah tonight. I don’t
+ask you to understand. Men are not made to understand these things; not
+even a man such as you, who are so beautifully understanding. I only
+ask that you believe in me—and think of me sometimes—I shall feel it,
+and be helped. Will you take me home now, Dr. von Gerhard?”
+
+The ride home was made in silence. The wind was colder, sharper. I was
+chilled, miserable, sick. Von Gerhard’s face was quite expressionless
+as he guided the little car over the smooth road. When we had stopped
+before my door, still without a word, I thought that he was going to
+leave me with that barrier of silence unbroken. But as I stepped
+stiffly to the curbing his hands closed about mine with the old steady
+grip. I looked up quickly, to find a smile in the corners of the tired
+eyes.
+
+“You—you will let me see you—sometimes?”
+
+But wisdom came to my aid. “Not now. It is better that we go our
+separate ways for a few weeks, until our work has served to adjust the
+balance that has been disturbed. At the end of that time I shall write
+you, and from that time until you sail in June we shall be just good
+comrades again. And once in Vienna—who knows?—you may meet the plump
+blond Fraulein, of excellent family—”
+
+“And no particular imagination—”
+
+And then we both laughed, a bit hysterically, because laughter is,
+after all, akin to tears. And the little green car shot off with a whir
+as I turned to enter my new world of loneliness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+BENNIE AND THE CHARMING OLD MAID
+
+
+There followed a blessed week of work—a “human warious” week, with
+something piquant lurking at every turn. A week so busy, so
+kaleidoscopic in its quick succession of events that my own troubles
+and grievances were pushed into a neglected corner of my mind and made
+to languish there, unfed by tears or sighs.
+
+News comes in cycles. There are weeks when a city editor tears his hair
+in vain as he bellows for a first-page story. There follow days so
+bristling with real, live copy that perfectly good stuff which, in the
+ordinary course of events might be used to grace the front sheet, is
+sandwiched away between the marine intelligence and the Elgin butter
+reports.
+
+Such a week was this. I interviewed everything from a red-handed
+murderer to an incubator baby. The town seemed to be running over with
+celebrities. Norberg, the city editor, adores celebrities. He never
+allows one to escape uninterviewed. On Friday there fell to my lot a
+world-famous prima donna, an infamous prize-fighter, and a charming old
+maid. Norberg cared not whether the celebrity in question was noted for
+a magnificent high C, or a left half-scissors hook, so long as the
+interview was dished up hot and juicy, with plenty of quotation marks,
+a liberal sprinkling of adjectives and adverbs, and a cut of the victim
+gracing the top of the column.
+
+It was long past the lunch hour when the prima donna and the
+prize-fighter, properly embellished, were snapped on the copy hook. The
+prima donna had chattered in French; the prize-fighter had jabbered in
+slang; but the charming old maid, who spoke Milwaukee English, was to
+make better copy than a whole chorus of prima donnas, or a ring full of
+fighters. Copy! It was such wonderful stuff that I couldn’t use it.
+
+It was with the charming old maid in mind that Norberg summoned me.
+
+“Another special story for you,” he cheerfully announced.
+
+No answering cheer appeared upon my lunchless features. “A
+prize-fighter at ten-thirty, and a prima donna at twelve. What’s the
+next choice morsel? An aeronaut with another successful airship? or a
+cash girl who has inherited a million?”
+
+Norberg’s plump cheeks dimpled. “Neither. This time it is a nice German
+old maid.”
+
+“Eloped with the coachman, no doubt?”
+
+“I said a nice old maid. And she hasn’t done anything yet. You are to
+find out how she’ll feel when she does it.”
+
+“Charmingly lucid,” commented I, made savage by the pangs of hunger.
+
+Norberg proceeded to outline the story with characteristic vigor, a
+cigarette waggling from the corner of his mouth.
+
+“Name and address on this slip. Take a Greenfield car. Nice old maid
+has lived in nice old cottage all her life. Grandfather built it
+himself about a hundred years ago. Whole family was born in it, and
+married in it, and died in it, see? It’s crammed full of
+spinning-wheels and mahogany and stuff that’ll make your eyes stick
+out. See? Well, there’s no one left now but the nice old maid, all
+alone. She had a sister who ran away with a scamp some years ago. Nice
+old maid has never heard of her since, but she leaves the gate ajar or
+the latch-string open, or a lamp in the window, or something, so that
+if ever she wanders back to the old home she’ll know she’s welcome,
+see?”
+
+“Sounds like a moving picture play,” I remarked.
+
+“Wait a minute. Here’s the point. The city wants to build a branch
+library or something on her property, and the nice old party is so
+pinched for money that she’ll have to take their offer. So the time has
+come when she’ll have to leave that old cottage, with its romance, and
+its memories, and its lamp in the window, and go to live in a cheap
+little flat, see? Where the old four-poster will choke up the bedroom—”
+
+“And the parlor will be done in red and green,” I put in, eagerly, “and
+where there will be an ingrowing sideboard in the dining-room that
+won’t fit in with the quaint old dinner-set at all, and a kitchenette
+just off that, in which the great iron pots and kettles that used to
+hold the family dinners will be monstrously out of place—”
+
+“You’re on,” said Norberg.
+
+Half an hour later I stood before the cottage, set primly in the center
+of a great lot that extended for half a square on all sides. A
+winter-sodden, bare enough sight it was in the gray of that March day.
+But it was not long before Alma Pflugel, standing in the midst of it,
+the March winds flapping her neat skirts about her ankles, filled it
+with a blaze of color. As she talked, a row of stately hollyhocks,
+pink, and scarlet, and saffron, reared their heads against the cottage
+sides. The chill March air became sweet with the scent of heliotrope,
+and Sweet William, and pansies, and bridal wreath. The naked twigs of
+the rose bushes flowered into wondrous bloom so that they bent to the
+ground with their weight of crimson and yellow glory. The bare brick
+paths were overrun with the green of growing things. Gray mounds of
+dirt grew vivid with the fire of poppies. Even the rain-soaked wood of
+the pea-frames miraculously was hidden in a hedge of green, over which
+ran riot the butterfly beauty of the lavender, and pink, and cerise
+blossoms. Oh, she did marvelous things that dull March day, did plain
+German Alma Pflugel! And still more marvelous were the things that were
+to come.
+
+But of these things we knew nothing as the door was opened and Alma
+Pflugel and I gazed curiously at one another. Surprise was writ large
+on her honest face as I disclosed my errand. It was plain that the ways
+of newspaper reporters were foreign to the life of this plain German
+woman, but she bade me enter with a sweet graciousness of manner.
+
+Wondering, but silent, she led the way down the dim narrow hallway to
+the sitting-room beyond. And there I saw that Norberg had known whereof
+he spoke.
+
+A stout, red-faced stove glowed cheerfully in one corner of the room.
+Back of the stove a sleepy cat opened one indolent eye, yawned
+shamelessly, and rose to investigate, as is the way of cats. The
+windows were aglow with the sturdy potted plants that flower-loving
+German women coax into bloom. The low-ceilinged room twinkled and shone
+as the polished surfaces of tables and chairs reflected the rosy glow
+from the plethoric stove. I sank into the depths of a huge rocker that
+must have been built for Grosspapa Pflugel’s generous curves. Alma
+Pflugel, in a chair opposite, politely waited for this new process of
+interviewing to begin, but relaxed in the embrace of that great
+armchair I suddenly realized that I was very tired and hungry, and
+talk-weary, and that here; was a great peace. The prima donna, with her
+French, and her paint, and her pearls, and the prizefighter with his
+slang, and his cauliflower ear, and his diamonds, seemed creatures of
+another planet. My eyes closed. A delicious sensation of warmth and
+drowsy contentment stole over me.
+
+“Do listen to the purring of that cat!” I murmured. “Oh, newspapers
+have no place in this. This is peace and rest.”
+
+Alma Pflugel leaned forward in her chair. “You—you like it?”
+
+“Like it! This is home. I feel as though my mother were here in this
+room, seated in one of those deep chairs, with a bit of sewing in her
+hand; so near that I could touch her cheek with my fingers.”
+
+Alma Pflugel rose from her chair and came over to me. She timidly
+placed her hand on my arm. “Ah, I am so glad you are like that. You do
+not laugh at the low ceilings, and the sunken floors, and the
+old-fashioned rooms. You do not raise your eyes in horror and say: ‘No
+conveniences! And why don’t you try striped wall paper? It would make
+those dreadful ceilings seem higher.’ How nice you are to understand
+like that!”
+
+My hand crept over to cover her own that lay on my arm. “Indeed, indeed
+I do understand,” I whispered. Which, as the veriest cub reporter can
+testify, is no way to begin an interview.
+
+A hundred happy memories filled the little low room as Alma Pflugel
+showed me her treasures. The cat purred in great content, and the stove
+cast a rosy glow over the scene as the simple woman told the story of
+each precious relic, from the battered candle-dipper on the shelf, to
+the great mahogany folding table, and sewing stand, and carved bed.
+Then there was the old horn lantern that Jacob Pflugel had used a
+century before, and in one corner of the sitting-room stood Grossmutter
+Pflugel’s spinning-wheel. Behind cupboard doors were ranged the
+carefully preserved blue-and-white china dishes, and on the shelf below
+stood the clumsy earthen set that Grosspapa Pflugel himself had modeled
+for his young bride in those days of long ago. In the linen chest there
+still lay, in neat, fragrant folds, piles of the linen that had been
+spun on that time-yellowed spinning-wheel. And because of the tragedy
+in the honest face bent over these dear treasures, and because she
+tried so bravely to hide her tears, I knew in my heart that this could
+never be a newspaper story.
+
+“So,” said Alma Pflugel at last, and rose and walked slowly to the
+window and stood looking out at the wind-swept garden. That window,
+with its many tiny panes, once had looked out across a wilderness, with
+an Indian camp not far away. Grossmutter Pflugel had sat at that window
+many a bitter winter night, with her baby in her arms, watching and
+waiting for the young husband who was urging his ox-team across the ice
+of Lake Michigan in the teeth of a raging blizzard.
+
+The little, low-ceilinged room was very still. I looked at Alma Pflugel
+standing there at the window in her neat blue gown, and something about
+the face and figure—or was it the pose of the sorrowful head?—seemed
+strangely familiar. Somewhere in my mind the resemblance haunted me.
+Resemblance to—what? Whom?
+
+“Would you like to see my garden?” asked Alma Pflugel, turning from the
+window. For a moment I stared in wonderment. But the honest, kindly
+face was unsmiling. “These things that I have shown you, I can take
+with me when I—go. But there,” and she pointed out over the bare,
+wind-swept lot, “there is something that I cannot take. My flowers! You
+see that mound over there, covered so snug and warm with burlap and
+sacking? There my tulips and hyacinths sleep. In a few weeks, when the
+covering is whisked off—ah, you shall see! Then one can be quite sure
+that the spring is here. Who can look at a great bed of red and pink
+and lavender and yellow tulips and hyacinths, and doubt it? Come.”
+
+With a quick gesture she threw a shawl over her head, and beckoned me.
+Together we stepped out into the chill of the raw March afternoon. She
+stood a moment, silent, gazing over the sodden earth. Then she flitted
+swiftly down the narrow path, and halted before a queer little
+structure of brick, covered with the skeleton of a creeping vine.
+Stooping, Alma Pflugel pulled open the rusty iron door and smiled up at
+me.
+
+“This was my grandmother’s oven. All her bread she baked in this little
+brick stove. Black bread it was, with a great thick crust, and a bitter
+taste. But it was sweet, too. I have never tasted any so good. I like
+to think of Grossmutter, when she was a bride, baking her first batch
+of bread in this oven that Grossvater built for her. And because the
+old oven was so very difficult to manage, and because she was such a
+young thing—only sixteen!—I like to think that her first loaves were
+perhaps not so successful, and that Grosspapa joked about them, and
+that the little bride wept, so that the young husband had to kiss away
+the tears.”
+
+She shut the rusty, sagging door very slowly and gently. “No doubt the
+workmen who will come to prepare the ground for the new library will
+laugh and joke among themselves when they see the oven, and they will
+kick it with their heels, and wonder what the old brick mound could
+have been.”
+
+There was a little twisted smile on her face as she rose—a smile that
+brought a hot mist of tears to my eyes. There was tragedy itself in
+that spare, homely figure standing there in the garden, the wind
+twining her skirts about her.
+
+“You should but see the children peering over the fence to see my
+flowers in the summer,” she said. The blue eyes wore a wistful,
+far-away look. “All the children know my garden. It blooms from April
+to October. There I have my sweet peas; and here my roses—thousands of
+them! Some are as red as a drop of blood, and some as white as a bridal
+wreath. When they are blossoming it makes the heart ache, it is so
+beautiful.”
+
+She had quite forgotten me now. For her the garden was all abloom once
+more. It was as though the Spirit of the Flowers had touched the naked
+twigs with fairy fingers, waking them into glowing life for her who
+never again was to shower her love and care upon them.
+
+“These are my poppies. Did you ever come out in the morning to find a
+hundred poppy faces smiling at you, and swaying and glistening and
+rippling in the breeze? There they are, scarlet and pink, side by side
+as only God can place them. And near the poppies I planted my pansies,
+because each is a lesson to the other. I call my pansies little
+children with happy faces. See how this great purple one winks his
+yellow eye, and laughs!”
+
+Her gray shawl had slipped back from her face and lay about her
+shoulders, and the wind had tossed her hair into a soft fluff about her
+head.
+
+“We used to come out here in the early morning, my little Schwester and
+I, to see which rose had unfolded its petals overnight, or whether this
+great peony that had held its white head so high only yesterday, was
+humbled to the ground in a heap of ragged leaves. Oh, in the morning
+she loved it best. And so every summer I have made the garden bloom
+again, so that when she comes back she will see flowers greet her.
+
+“All the way up the path to the door she will walk in an aisle of
+fragrance, and when she turns the handle of the old door she will find
+it unlocked, summer and winter, day and night, so that she has only to
+turn the knob and enter.”
+
+She stopped, abruptly. The light died out of her face. She glanced at
+me, half defiantly, half timidly, as one who is not quite sure of what
+she has said. At that I went over to her, and took her work-worn hands
+in mine, and smiled down into the faded blue eyes grown dim with tears
+and watching.
+
+“Perhaps—who knows?—the little sister may come yet. I feel it. She will
+walk up the little path, and try the handle of the door, and it will
+turn beneath her fingers, and she will enter.”
+
+With my arm about her we walked down the path toward the old-fashioned
+arbor, bare now except for the tendrils that twined about the lattice.
+The arbor was fitted with a wooden floor, and there were rustic chairs,
+and a table. I could picture the sisters sitting there with their
+sewing during the long, peaceful summer afternoons. Alma Pflugel would
+be wearing one of her neat gingham gowns, very starched and stiff, with
+perhaps a snowy apron edged with a border of heavy crochet done by the
+wrinkled fingers of Grossmutter Pflugel. On the rustic table there
+would be a bowl of flowers, and a pot of delicious Kaffee, and a plate
+of German Kaffeekuchen, and through the leafy doorway the scent of the
+wonderful garden would come stealing.
+
+I thought of the cheap little flat, with the ugly sideboard, and the
+bit of weedy yard in the rear, and the alley beyond that, and the red
+and green wall paper in the parlor. The next moment, to my horror, Alma
+Pflugel had dropped to her knees before the table in the damp little
+arbor, her face in her hands, her spare shoulders shaking.
+
+“Ich kann’s nicht thun!” she moaned. “Ich kann nicht! Ach, kleine
+Schwester, wo bist du denn! Nachts und Morgens bete ich, aber doch
+kommst du nicht.”
+
+A great dry sob shook her. Her hand went to her breast, to her throat,
+to her lips, with an odd, stifled gesture.
+
+“Do that again!” I cried, and shook Alma Pflugel sharply by the
+shoulder. “Do that again!”
+
+Her startled blue eyes looked into mine. “What do you mean?” she asked.
+
+“That—that gesture. I’ve seen it—somewhere—that trick of pressing the
+hand to the breast, to the throat, to the lips—Oh!”
+
+Suddenly I knew. I lifted the drooping head and rumpled its neat
+braids, and laughed down into the startled face.
+
+“She’s here!” I shouted, and started a dance of triumph on the shaky
+floor of the old arbor. “I know her. From the moment I saw you the
+resemblance haunted me.” And then as Alma Pflugel continued to stare,
+while the stunned bewilderment grew in her eyes, “Why, I have
+one-fourth interest in your own nephew this very minute. And his name
+is Bennie!”
+
+Whereupon Alma Pflugel fainted quietly away in the chilly little grape
+arbor, with her head on my shoulder.
+
+I called myself savage names as I chafed her hands and did all the
+foolish, futile things that distracted humans think of at such times,
+wondering, meanwhile, if I had been quite mad to discern a resemblance
+between this simple, clear-eyed gentle German woman, and the battered,
+ragged, swaying figure that had stood at the judge’s bench.
+
+Suddenly Alma Pflugel opened her eyes. Recognition dawned in them
+slowly. Then, with a jerk, she sat upright, her trembling hands
+clinging to me.
+
+“Where is she? Take me to her. Ach, you are sure—sure?”
+
+“Lordy, I hope so! Come, you must let me help you into the house. And
+where is the nearest telephone? Never mind; I’ll find one.”
+
+When I had succeeded in finding the nearest drug store I spent a wild
+ten minutes telephoning the surprised little probation officer, then
+Frau Nirlanger, and finally Blackie, for no particular reason. I
+shrieked my story over the wire in disconnected, incoherent sentences.
+Then I rushed back to the little cottage where Alma Pflugel and I
+waited with what patience we could summon.
+
+Blackie was the first to arrive. He required few explanations. That is
+one of the nicest things about Blackie. He understands by leaps and
+bounds, while others crawl to comprehension. But when Frau Nirlanger
+came, with Bennie in tow, there were tears, and exclamations, followed
+by a little stricken silence on the part of Frau Nirlanger when she saw
+Bennie snatched to the breast of this weeping woman. So it was that in
+the midst of the confusion we did not hear the approach of the
+probation officer and her charge. They came up the path to the door,
+and there the little sister turned the knob, and it yielded under her
+fingers, and the old door swung open; and so she entered the house
+quite as Alma Pflugel had planned she should, except that the roses
+were not blooming along the edge of the sunken brick walk.
+
+She entered the room in silence, and no one could have recognized in
+this pretty, fragile creature the pitiful wreck of the juvenile court.
+And when Alma Pflugel saw the face of the little sister—the poor,
+marred, stricken face—her own face became terrible in its agony. She
+put Bennie down very gently, rose, and took the shaking little figure
+in her strong arms, and held it as though never to let it go again.
+There were little broken words of love and pity. She called her
+“Lammchen” and “little one,” and so Frau Nirlanger and Blackie and I
+stole away, after a whispered consultation with the little probation
+officer.
+
+Blackie had come in his red runabout, and now he tucked us into it,
+feigning a deep disgust.
+
+“I’d like to know where I enter into this little drayma,” he growled.
+“Ain’t I got nothin’ t’ do but run around town unitin’ long lost
+sisters an’ orphans!”
+
+“Now, Blackie, you know you would never have forgiven me if I had left
+you out of this. Besides, you must hustle around and see that they need
+not move out of that dear little cottage. Now don’t say a word! You’ll
+never have a greater chance to act the fairy godmother.”
+
+Frau Nirlanger’s hand sought mine and I squeezed it in silent sympathy.
+Poor little Frau Nirlanger, the happiness of another had brought her
+only sorrow. And she had kissed Bennie good-by with the knowledge that
+the little blue-painted bed, with its faded red roses, would again
+stand empty in the gloom of the Knapf attic.
+
+Norberg glanced up quickly as I entered the city room. “Get something
+good on that south side story?” he asked.
+
+“Why, no,” I answered. “You were mistaken about that. The—the nice old
+maid is not going to move, after all.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+FAREWELL TO KNAPFS
+
+
+Consternation has corrugated the brows of the aborigines. Consternation
+twice confounded had added a wrinkle or two to my collection. We are
+homeless. That is, we are Knapfless—we, to whom the Knapfs spelled
+home.
+
+Herr Knapf, mustache aquiver, and Frau Knapf, cheek bones glistening,
+broke the news to us one evening just a week after the exciting day
+which so changed Bennie’s life. “Es thut uns sehr, sehr leid,” Herr
+Knapf had begun. And before he had finished, protesting German groans
+mingled with voluble German explanations. The aborigines were stricken
+down. They clapped pudgy fists to knobby foreheads; they smote their
+breasts, and made wild gestures with their arms. If my protests were
+less frenzied than theirs, it was only because my knowledge of German
+stops at words of six syllables.
+
+Out of the chaos of ejaculations and interrogation the reason for our
+expulsion at last was made clear. The little German hotel had not been
+remunerative. Our host and hostess were too hospitable and too polite
+to state the true reason for this state of affairs. Perhaps rents were
+too high. Perhaps, thought I, Frau Knapf had been too liberal with the
+butter in the stewed chicken. Perhaps there had been too many golden
+Pfannkuchen with real eggs and milk stirred into them, and with
+toothsome little islands of ruddy currant jelly on top. Perhaps there
+had been too much honest, nourishing food, and not enough
+boarding-house victuals. At any rate, the enterprise would have to be
+abandoned.
+
+It was then that the bare, bright little dining room, with its queer
+prints of chin-chucking lieutenants, and its queerer faces, and its
+German cookery became very dear to me. I had grown to like Frau Knapf,
+of the shining cheek bones, and Herr Knapf, of the heavy geniality. A
+close bond of friendship had sprung up between Frau Nirlanger and me. I
+would miss her friendly visits, and her pretty ways, and her sparkling
+conversation. She and I had held many kimonoed pow-wows, and
+sometimes—not often—she had given me wonderful glimpses of that which
+she had left—of Vienna, the opera, the court, the life which had been
+hers. She talked marvelously well, for she had all the charm and
+vivacity of the true Viennese. Even the aborigines, bristling
+pompadours, thick spectacles, terrifying manner, and all, became as
+dear as old friends, now that I knew I must lose them.
+
+The great, high-ceilinged room upstairs had taken on the look of home.
+The Blue-beard closet no longer appalled me. The very purpleness of the
+purple roses in the rug had grown beautiful in my eyes because they
+were part of that little domain which spelled peace and comfort and
+kindness. How could I live without the stout yellow brocade armchair!
+Its plethoric curves were balm for my tired bones. Its great lap
+admitted of sitting with knees crossed, Turk-fashion. Its cushioned
+back stopped just at the point where the head found needed support. Its
+pudgy arms offered rest for tired elbows; its yielding bosom was made
+for tired backs. Given the padded comfort of that stout old chair—a
+friendly, time-tried book between my fingers—a dish of ruddy apples
+twinkling in the fire-light; my mundane soul snuggled in content. And
+then, too, the book-in-the-making had grown in that room. It had
+developed from a weak, wobbling uncertainty into a lusty full-blooded
+thing that grew and grew until it promised soon to become mansize.
+
+Now all this was to be changed. And I knew that I would miss the easy
+German atmosphere of the place; the kindness they had shown me; the
+chattering, admiring Minna; the taffy-colored dachshund; the aborigines
+with their ill-smelling pipes and flappy slippers; the Wienerschnitzel;
+the crushed-looking wives and the masterful German husbands; the very
+darns in the table-cloths and the very nicks in the china.
+
+We had a last family gathering in token of our appreciation of Herr and
+Frau Knapf. And because I had not seen him for almost three weeks; and
+because the time for his going was drawing so sickeningly near; and
+because I was quite sure that I had myself in hand; and because he knew
+the Knapfs, and was fond of them; and because-well, I invited Von
+Gerhard. He came, and I found myself dangerously glad to see him, so
+that I made my greeting as airy and frivolous as possible. Perhaps I
+overdid the airy business, for Von Gerhard looked at me for a long,
+silent minute, until the nonsense I had been chattering died on my
+lips, and I found myself staring up at him like a child that is
+apprehensive of being scolded for some naughtiness.
+
+“Not so much chatter, small one,” he said, unsmilingly. “This pretense,
+it is not necessary between you and me. So. You are ein bischen blasz,
+nicht? A little pale? You have not been ill, Dawn?”
+
+“Ill? Never felt more chipper in my life,” I made flippant answer, “and
+I adore these people who are forever telling one how unusually thin, or
+pale, or scrawny one is looking.”
+
+“Na, they are not to be satisfied, these women! If I were to tell you
+how lovely you look to me to-night you would draw yourself up with
+chill dignity and remind me that I am not privileged to say these
+things to you. So I discreetly mention that you are looking,
+interestingly pale, taking care to keep all tenderness out of my tones,
+and still you are not pleased.” He shrugged despairing shoulders.
+
+“Can’t you strike a happy medium between rudeness and tenderness? After
+all, I haven’t had a glimpse of your blond beauty for three weeks. And
+while I don’t ask you to whisper sweet nothings, still, after
+twenty-one days—”
+
+“You have been lonely? If only I thought that those weeks have been as
+wearisome to you—”
+
+“Not lonely exactly,” I hurriedly interrupted, “but sort of wishing
+that some one would pat me on the head and tell me that I was a good
+doggie. You know what I mean. It is so easy to become accustomed to
+thoughtfulness and devotion, and so dreadfully hard to be happy without
+it, once one has had it. This has been a sort of training for what I
+may expect when Vienna has swallowed you up.”
+
+“You are still obstinate? These three weeks have not changed you? Ach,
+Dawn! Kindchen!—”
+
+But I knew that these were thin spots marked “Danger!” in our
+conversational pond. So, “Come,” said I. “I have two new aborigines for
+you to meet. They are the very shiniest and wildest of all our
+shiny-faced and wild aborigines. And you should see their trousers and
+neckties! If you dare to come back from Vienna wearing trousers like
+these!—”
+
+“And is the party in honor of these new aborigines?” laughed Von
+Gerhard. “You did not explain in your note. Merely you asked me to
+come, knowing that I cared not if it were a lawn fete or a ball, so
+long as I might again be with you.”
+
+We were on our way to the dining room, where the festivities were to be
+held. I stopped and turned a look of surprise upon him.
+
+“Don’t you know that the Knapfs are leaving? Did I neglect to mention
+that this is a farewell party for Herr and Frau Knapf? We are losing
+our home, and we have just one week in which to find another.”
+
+“But where will you go? And why did you not tell me this before?”
+
+“I haven’t an idea where I shall lay my poor old head. In the lap of
+the gods, probably, for I don’t know how I shall find the time to
+interview landladies and pack my belongings in seven short days. The
+book will have to suffer for it. Just when it was getting along so
+beautifully, too.”
+
+There was a dangerous tenderness in Von Gerhard’s eyes as he said:
+“Again you are a wanderer, eh—small one? That you, with your love of
+beautiful things, and your fastidiousness, should have to live in this
+way—in these boarding-houses, alone, with not even the comforts that
+should be yours. Ach, Kindchen, you were not made for that. You were
+intended for the home, with a husband, and kinder, and all that is
+truly worth while.”
+
+I swallowed a lump in my throat as I shrugged my shoulders. “Pooh! Any
+woman can have a husband and babies,” I retorted, wickedly. “But mighty
+few women can write a book. It’s a special curse.”
+
+“And you prefer this life—this existence, to the things that I offer
+you! You would endure these hardships rather than give up the
+nonsensical views which you entertain toward your—”
+
+“Please. We were not to talk of that. I am enduring no hardships. Since
+I have lived in this pretty town I have become a worshiper of the
+goddess Gemutlichkeit. Perhaps I shan’t find another home as dear to my
+heart as this has been, but at least I shan’t have to sleep on a park
+bench, and any one can tell you that park benches have long been the
+favored resting place of genius. There is Frau Nirlanger beckoning us.
+Now do stop scowling, and smile for the lady. I know you will get on
+beautifully with the aborigines.”
+
+He did get on with them so beautifully that in less than half an hour
+they were swapping stories of Germany, of Austria, of the universities,
+of student life. Frau Knapf served a late supper, at which some one led
+in singing Auld Lang Syne, although the sounds emanating from the
+aborigines’ end of the table sounded suspiciously like Die Wacht am
+Rhein. Following that the aborigines rose en masse and roared out their
+German university songs, banging their glasses on the table when they
+came to the chorus until we all caught the spirit of it and banged our
+glasses like rathskeller veterans. Then the red-faced and amorous
+Fritz, he of the absent Lena, announced his intention of entertaining
+the company. Made bold by an injudicious mixture of Herr Knapf’s
+excellent beer, and a wonderful punch which Von Gerhard had concocted,
+Fritz mounted his chair, placed his plump hand over the spot where he
+supposed his heart to be, fastened his watery blue eyes upon my
+surprised and blushing countenance, and sang “Weh! Dass Wir Scheiden
+Mussen!” in an astonishingly beautiful barytone. I dared not look at
+Von Gerhard, for I knew that he was purple with suppressed mirth, so I
+stared stonily at the sardine sandwich and dill pickle on my plate, and
+felt myself growing hot and hysterical, and cold and tearful by turns.
+
+At the end of the last verse I rose hastily and brought from their
+hiding-place the gifts which we of Knapfs’ had purchased as
+remembrances for Herr and Frau Knapf. I had been delegated to make the
+presentation speech, so I grasped in one hand the too elaborate pipe
+that was to make Herr Knapf unhappy, and the too fashionable silk
+umbrella that was to appall Frau Knapf, and ascended the little
+platform at the end of the dining room, and began to speak in what I
+fondly thought to be fluent and highsounding German. Immediately the
+aborigines went off into paroxysms of laughter. They threw back their
+heads and roared, and slapped their thighs, and spluttered. It appeared
+that they thought I was making a humorous speech. At that discovery I
+cast dignity aside and continued my speech in the language of a German
+vaudeville comedian, with a dash of Weber and Field here and there.
+With the presentation of the silk umbrella Frau Knapf burst into tears,
+groped about helplessly for her apron, realized that it was missing
+from its accustomed place, and wiped her tears upon her cherished blue
+silk sleeve in the utter abandon of her sorrow. We drank to the future
+health and prosperity of our tearful host and hostess, and some one
+suggested drei mal drei, to which we responded in a manner to make the
+chin-chucking lieutenant tremble in his frame on the wall.
+
+When it was all over Frau Nirlanger beckoned me, and she, Dr. von
+Gerhard and I stole out into the hall and stood at the foot of the
+stairway, discussing our plans for the future, and trying to smile as
+we talked of this plan and that. Frau Nirlanger, in the pretty white
+gown, was looking haggard and distrait. The oogly husband was still in
+the dining room, finishing the beer and punch, of which he had already
+taken too much.
+
+“A tiny apartment we have taken,” said Frau Nirlanger, softly. “It is
+better so. Then I shall have a little housework, a little cooking, a
+little marketing to keep me busy and perhaps happy.” Her hand closed
+over mine. “But that shall us not separate,” she pleaded. “Without you
+to make me sometimes laugh what should I then do? You will bring her
+often to our little apartment, not?” she went on, turning appealingly
+to Von Gerhard.
+
+“As often as Mrs. Orme will allow me,” he answered.
+
+“Ach, yes. So lonely I shall be. You do not know what she has been to
+me, this Dawn. She is brave for two. Always laughing she is, and merry,
+nicht wahr? Meine kleine Soldatin, I call her.
+
+“Soldatin, eh?” mused Von Gerhard. “Our little soldier. She is well
+named. And her battles she fights alone. But quite alone.” His eyes, as
+they looked down on me from his great height had that in them which
+sent the blood rushing and tingling to my finger-tips. I brought my
+hand to my head in stiff military salute.
+
+“Inspection satisfactory, sir?”
+
+He laughed a rueful little laugh. “Eminently. Aber ganz befriedigend.”
+
+He was very tall, and straight and good to look at as he stood there in
+the hall with the light from the newel-post illuminating his features
+and emphasizing his blondness. Frau Nirlanger’s face wore a drawn
+little look of pain as she gazed at him, and from him to the figure of
+her husband who had just emerged from the dining room, and was making
+unsteady progress toward us. Herr Nirlanger’s face was flushed and his
+damp, dark hair was awry so that one lock straggled limply down over
+his forehead. As he approached he surveyed us with a surly frown that
+changed slowly into a leering grin. He lurched over and placed a hand
+familiarly on my shoulder.
+
+“We mus’ part,” he announced, dramatically. “O, weh! The bes’ of
+frien’s m’z part. Well, g’by, li’l interfering Teufel. F’give you,
+though, b’cause you’re such a pretty li’l Teufel.” He raised one hand
+as though to pat my check and because of the horror which I saw on the
+face of the woman beside me I tried to smile, and did not shrink from
+him. But with a quick movement Von Gerhard clutched the swaying figure
+and turned it so that it faced the stairs.
+
+“Come Nirlanger! Time for hard-working men like you and me to be in
+bed. Mrs. Orme must not nod over her desk to-morrow, either. So
+good-night. Schlafen Sie wohl.”
+
+Konrad Nirlanger turned a scowling face over his shoulder. Then he
+forgot what he was scowling for, and smiled a leering smile.
+
+“Pretty good frien’s, you an’ the li’l Teufel, yes? Guess we’ll have to
+watch you, huh, Anna? We’ll watch ’em, won’t we?”
+
+He began to climb the stairs laboriously, with Frau Nirlanger’s light
+figure flitting just ahead of him. At the bend in the stairway she
+turned and looked down on us a moment, her eyes very bright and big.
+She pressed her fingers to her lips and wafted a little kiss toward us
+with a gesture indescribably graceful and pathetic. She viewed her
+husband’s laborious progress, not daring to offer help. Then the turn
+in the stair hid her from sight.
+
+In the dim quiet of the little hallway Von Gerhard held out his
+hands—those deft, manual hands—those steady, sure, surgeonly
+hands—hands to cling to, to steady oneself by, and because I needed
+them most just then, and because I longed with my whole soul to place
+both my weary hands in those strong capable ones and to bring those
+dear, cool, sane fingers up to my burning cheeks, I put one foot on the
+first stair and held out two chilly fingertips. “Good-night, Herr
+Doktor,” I said, “and thank you, not only for myself, but for her. I
+have felt what she feels to-night. It is not a pleasant thing to be
+ashamed of one’s husband.”
+
+Von Gerhard’s two hands closed over that one of mine. “Dawn, you will
+let me help you to find comfortable quarters? You cannot tramp about
+from place to place all the week. Let us get a list of addresses, and
+then, with the machine, we can drive from one to the other in an hour.
+It will at least save you time and strength.”
+
+“Go boarding-house hunting in a stunning green automobile!” I
+exclaimed. From my vantage point on the steps I could look down on him,
+and there came over me a great longing to run my fingers gently through
+that crisp blond hair, and to bring his head down close against my
+breast for one exquisite moment. So—“Landladies and oitermobiles!” I
+laughed. “Never! Don’t you know that if they got one glimpse, through
+the front parlor windows, of me stepping grand-like out of your green
+motor car, they would promptly over-charge me for any room in the
+house? I shall go room-hunting in my oldest hat, with one finger
+sticking out of my glove.”
+
+Von Gerhard shrugged despairing shoulders.
+
+“Na, of what use is it to plead with you. Sometimes I wonder if, after
+all, you are not merely amusing yourself. Getting copy, perhaps, for
+the book, or a new experience to add to your already varied store.”
+
+Abruptly I turned to hide my pain, and began to ascend the stairs. With
+a bound Von Gerhard was beside me, his face drawn and contrite.
+
+“Forgive me, Dawn! I know that you are wisest. It is only that I become
+a little mad, I think, when I see you battling alone like this, among
+strangers, and know that I have not the right to help you. I knew not
+what I was saying. Come, raise your eyes and smile, like the little
+Soldatin that you are. So. Now I am forgiven, yes?”
+
+I smiled cheerily enough into his blue eyes. “Quite forgiven. And now
+you must run along. This is scandalously late. The aborigines will be
+along saying ‘Morgen!’ instead of ‘Nabben’!’ if we stay here much
+longer. Good-night.”
+
+“You will give me your new address as soon as you have found a
+satisfactory home?”
+
+“Never fear! I probably shall be pestering you with telephone calls,
+urging you to have pity upon me in my loneliness. Now goodnight again.
+I’m as full of farewells as a Bernhardt.” And to end it I ran up the
+stairs. At the bend, just where Frau Nirlanger had turned, I too
+stopped and looked over my shoulder. Von Gerhard was standing as I had
+left him, looking up at me. And like Frau Nirlanger, I wafted a little
+kiss in his direction, before I allowed the bend in the stairs to cut
+off my view. But Von Gerhard did not signify by look or word that he
+had seen it, as he stood looking up at me, one strong white hand
+resting on the broad baluster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+JUNE MOONLIGHT, AND A NEW BOARDINGHOUSE
+
+
+There was a week in which to scurry about for a new home. The days
+scampered by, tripping over one another in their haste. My sleeping
+hours were haunted by nightmares of landladies and impossible
+boarding-house bedrooms. Columns of “To Let, Furnished or Unfurnished”
+ads filed, advanced, and retreated before my dizzy eyes. My time after
+office hours was spent in climbing dim stairways, interviewing
+unenthusiastic females in kimonos, and peering into ugly bedrooms
+papered with sprawly and impossible patterns and filled with the odors
+of dead-and-gone dinners. I found one room less impossible than the
+rest, only to be told that the preference was to be given to a man who
+had “looked” the day before.
+
+“I d’ruther take gents only,” explained the ample person who carried
+the keys to the mansion. “Gents goes early in the morning and comes in
+late at night, and that’s all you ever see of ’em, half the time. I’ve
+tried ladies, an’ they get me wild, always yellin’ for hot water to
+wash their hair, or pastin’ handkerchiefs up on the mirr’r or wantin’
+to butt into the kitchen to press this or that. I’ll let you know if
+the gent don’t take it, but I got an idea he will.”
+
+He did. At any rate, no voice summoned me to that haven for gents only.
+There were other landladies—landladies fat and German; landladies lean
+and Irish; landladies loquacious (regardless of nationality);
+landladies reserved; landladies husbandless, wedded, widowed, divorced,
+and willing; landladies slatternly; landladies prim; and all hinting of
+past estates wherein there had been much grandeur.
+
+At last, when despair gripped me, and I had horrid visions of my trunk,
+hat-box and typewriter reposing on the sidewalk while I, homeless, sat
+perched in the midst of them, I chanced upon a room which commanded a
+glorious view of the lake. True, it was too expensive for my slim
+purse; true, the owner of it was sour of feature; true, the room itself
+was cavernous and unfriendly and cold-looking, but the view of the
+great, blue lake triumphed over all these, although a cautious inner
+voice warned me that that lake view would cover a multitude of sins. I
+remembered, later, how she of the sour visage had dilated upon the
+subject of the sunrise over the water. I told her at the time that
+while I was passionately fond of sunrises myself, still I should like
+them just as well did they not occur so early in the morning. Whereupon
+she of the vinegar countenance had sniffed. I loathe landladies who
+sniff.
+
+My trunk and trusty typewriter were sent on to my new home at noon,
+unchaperoned, for I had no time to spare at that hour of the day. Later
+I followed them, laden with umbrella, boxes, brown-paper parcels, and
+other unfashionable moving-day paraphernalia. I bumped and banged my
+way up the two flights of stairs that led to my lake view and my bed,
+and my heart went down as my feet went up. By the time the cavernous
+bedroom was gained I felt decidedly quivery-mouthed, so that I dumped
+my belongings on the floor in a heap and went to the window to gaze on
+the lake until my spirits should rise. But it was a gray day, and the
+lake looked large, and wet and unsociable. You couldn’t get chummy with
+it. I turned to my great barn of a room. You couldn’t get chummy with
+that, either. I began to unpack, with furious energy. In vain I turned
+every gas jet blazing high. They only cast dim shadows in the murky
+vastness of that awful chamber. A whole Fourth of July fireworks
+display, Roman candles, sky-rockets, pin-wheels, set pieces and all,
+could not have made that room take on a festive air.
+
+As I unpacked I thought of my cosy room at Knapfs’, and as I thought I
+took my head out of my trunk and sank down on the floor with a satin
+blouse in one hand, and a walking boot in the other, and wanted to
+bellow with loneliness. There came to me dear visions of the friendly
+old yellow brocade chair, and the lamplight, and the fireplace, and
+Frau Nirlanger, and the Pfannkuchen. I thought of the aborigines. In my
+homesick mind their bumpy faces became things of transcendent beauty. I
+could have put my head on their combined shoulders and wept down their
+blue satin neckties. In my memory of Frau Knapf it seemed to me that I
+could discern a dim, misty halo hovering above her tightly wadded hair.
+My soul went out to her as I recalled the shining cheek-bones, and the
+apron, and the chickens stewed in butter. I would have given a year out
+of my life to have heard that good-natured, “Nabben’.” One aborigine
+had been wont to emphasize his after-dinner arguments with a toothpick
+brandished fiercely between thumb and finger. The brandisher had always
+annoyed me. Now I thought of him with tenderness in my heart and
+reproached myself for my fastidiousness. I should have wept if I had
+not had a walking boot in one hand, and a satin blouse in the other. A
+walking boot is but a cold comfort. And my thriftiness denied my tears
+the soiling of the blouse. So I sat up on my knees and finished the
+unpacking.
+
+Just before dinner time I donned a becoming gown to chirk up my
+courage, groped my way down the long, dim stairs, and telephoned to Von
+Gerhard. It seemed to me that just to hear his voice would instill in
+me new courage and hope. I gave the number, and waited.
+
+“Dr. von Gerhard?” repeated a woman’s voice at the other end of the
+wire. “He is very busy. Will you leave your name?”
+
+“No,” I snapped. “I’ll hold the wire. Tell him that Mrs. Orme is
+waiting to speak to him.”
+
+“I’ll see.” The voice was grudging.
+
+Another wait; then—“Dawn!” came his voice in glad surprise.
+
+“Hello!” I cried, hysterically. “Hello! Oh, talk! Say something nice,
+for pity’s sake! I’m sorry that I’ve taken you away from whatever you
+were doing, but I couldn’t help it. Just talk please! I’m dying of
+loneliness.”
+
+“Child, are you ill?” Von Gerhard’s voice was so satisfyingly
+solicitous. “Is anything wrong? Your voice is trembling. I can hear it
+quite plainly. What has happened? Has Norah written—”
+
+“Norah? No. There was nothing in her letter to upset me. It is only the
+strangeness of this place. I shall be all right in a day or so.”
+
+“The new home—it is satisfactory? You have found what you wanted? Your
+room is comfortable?”
+
+“It’s—it’s a large room,” I faltered. “And there’s a—a large view of
+the lake, too.”
+
+There was a smothered sound at the other end of the wire. Then—“I want
+you to meet me down-town at seven o’clock. We will have dinner
+together,” Von Gerhard said, “I cannot have you moping up there all
+alone all evening.”
+
+“I can’t come.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I want to so very much. And anyway, I’m much more cheerful
+now. I am going in to dinner. And after dinner I shall get acquainted
+with my room. There are six corners and all the space under the bed
+that I haven’t explored yet.”
+
+“Dawn!”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“If you were free to-night, would you marry me? If you knew that the
+next month would find you mistress of yourself would you—”
+
+“Ernst!”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“If the gates of Heaven were opened wide to you, and they had
+‘Welcome!’ done in diamonds over the door, and all the loveliest angel
+ladies grouped about the doorway to receive you, and just beyond you
+could see awaiting you all that was beautiful, and most exquisite, and
+most desirable, would you enter?”
+
+And then I hung up the receiver and went in to dinner. I went in to
+dinner, but not to dine. Oh, shades of those who have suffered in
+boarding-houses—that dining room! It must have been patterned after the
+dining room at Dotheboys’ hall. It was bare, and cheerless, and
+fearfully undressed looking. The diners were seated at two long,
+unsociable, boarding-housey tables that ran the length of the room, and
+all the women folks came down to dine with white wool shawls wrapped
+snugly about their susceptible black silk shoulders. The general effect
+was that of an Old People’s Home. I found seat after seat at table was
+filled, and myself the youngest thing present. I felt so criminally
+young that I wondered they did not strap me in a high chair and ram
+bread and milk down my throat. Now and then the door would open to
+admit another snuffly, ancient, and be-shawled member of the company. I
+learned that Mrs. Schwartz, on my right, did not care mooch for shteak
+for breakfast, aber a leedle l’mb ch’p she likes. Also that the elderly
+party on my left and the elderly party on my right resented being
+separated by my person. Conversation between E. P. on right, and E. P.
+on left scintillated across my soup, thus:
+
+“How you feel this evening Mis’ Maurer, h’m?”
+
+“Don’t ask me.”
+
+“No wonder you got rheumatism. My room was like a ice-house all day.
+Yours too?”
+
+“I don’t complain any more. Much good it does. Barley soup again? In my
+own home I never ate it, and here I pay my good money and get four time
+a week barley soup. Are those fresh cucumbers? M-m-m-m. They haven’t
+stood long enough. Look at Mis’ Miller. She feels good this evening.
+She should feel good. Twenty-five cents she won at bridge. I never seen
+how that woman is got luck.”
+
+I choked, gasped, and fled.
+
+Back in my own mausoleum once more I put things in order, dragged my
+typewriter stand into the least murky corner under the bravest gas jet
+and rescued my tottering reason by turning out a long letter to Norah.
+That finished, my spirits rose. I dived into the bottom of my trunk for
+the loose sheets of the book-in-the-making, glanced over the last three
+or four, discovered that they did not sound so maudlin as I had feared,
+and straightway forgot my gloomy surroundings in the fascination of
+weaving the tale.
+
+In the midst of my fine frenzy there came a knock at the door. In the
+hall stood the anemic little serving maid who had attended me at
+dinner. She was almost eclipsed by a huge green pasteboard box.
+
+“You’re Mis’ Orme, ain’t you? This here’s for you.”
+
+The little white-cheeked maid hovered at the threshold while I lifted
+the box cover and revealed the perfection of the American beauty buds
+that lay there, all dewy and fragrant. The eyes of the little maid were
+wide with wonder as she gazed, and because I had known flower-hunger I
+separated two stately blossoms from the glowing cluster and held them
+out to her.
+
+“For me!” she gasped, and brought her lips down to them, gently.
+Then—“There’s a high green jar downstairs you can have to stick your
+flowers in. You ain’t got nothin’ big enough in here, except your water
+pitcher. An’ putting these grand flowers in a water pitcher—why, it’d
+be like wearing a silk dress over a flannel petticoat, wouldn’t it?”
+
+When the anemic little boarding-house slavey with the beauty-loving
+soul had fetched the green jar, I placed the shining stems in it with
+gentle fingers. At the bottom of the box I found a card that read: “For
+it is impossible to live in a room with red roses and still be
+traurig.”
+
+How well he knew! And how truly impossible to be sad when red roses are
+glowing for one, and filling the air with their fragrance!
+
+The interruption was fatal to book-writing. My thoughts were a chaos of
+red roses, and anemic little maids with glowing eyes, and thoughtful
+young doctors with a marvelous understanding of feminine moods. So I
+turned out all the lights, undressed by moonlight, and, throwing a
+kimono about me, carried my jar of roses to the window and sat down
+beside them so that their exquisite scent caressed me.
+
+The moonlight had put a spell of white magic upon the lake. It was a
+light-flooded world that lay below my window. Summer, finger on lip,
+had stolen in upon the heels of spring. Dim, shadowy figures dotted the
+benches of the park across the way. Just beyond lay the silver lake, a
+dazzling bar of moonlight on its breast. Motors rushed along the
+roadway with a roar and a whir and were gone, leaving a trail of
+laughter behind them. From the open window of the room below came the
+slip-slap of cards on the polished table surface, and the low buzz of
+occasional conversation as the players held postmortems. Under the
+street light the popcorn vender’s cart made a blot on the mystic beauty
+of the scene below. But the perfume of my red roses came to me, and
+their velvet caressed my check, and beyond the noise and lights of the
+street lay that glorious lake with the bar of moonlight on its soft
+breast. I gazed and forgave the sour-faced landlady her dining room;
+forgave the elderly parties their shawls and barley soup; forgot for a
+moment my weary thoughts of Peter Orme; forgot everything except that
+it was June, and moonlight and good to be alive.
+
+All the changes and events of that strange, eventful year came crowding
+to my mind as I crouched there at the window. Four new friends, tried
+and true! I conned them over joyously in my heart. What a strange
+contrast they made! Blackie, of the elastic morals, and the still more
+elastic heart; Frau Nirlanger, of the smiling lips and the lilting
+voice and the tragic eyes—she who had stooped from a great height to
+pluck the flower of love blooming below, only to find a worthless weed
+sullying her hand; Alma Pflugel, with the unquenchable light of
+gratefulness in her honest face; Von Gerhard, ready to act as buffer
+between myself and the world, tender as a woman, gravely thoughtful,
+with the light of devotion glowing in his steady eyes.
+
+“Here’s richness,” said I, like the fat boy in Pickwick Papers. And I
+thanked God for the new energy which had sent me to this lovely city by
+the lake. I thanked Him that I had not been content to remain a burden
+to Max and Norah, growing sour and crabbed with the years. Those years
+of work and buffeting had made of me a broader, finer, truer type of
+womanhood—had caused me to forget my own little tragedy in
+contemplating the great human comedy. And so I made a little prayer
+there in the moon-flooded room.
+
+“O dear Lord,” I prayed, and I did not mean that it should sound
+irreverent. “O dear Lord, don’t bother about my ambitions! Just let me
+remain strong and well enough to do the work that is my portion from
+day to day. Keep me faithful to my standards of right and wrong. Let
+this new and wonderful love which has come into my life be a staff of
+strength and comfort instead of a burden of weariness. Let me not grow
+careless and slangy as the years go by. Let me keep my hair and
+complexion and teeth, and deliver me from wearing soiled blouses and
+doing my hair in a knob. Amen.”
+
+I felt quite cheerful after that—so cheerful that the strange bumps in
+the new bed did not bother me as unfamiliar beds usually did. The roses
+I put to sleep in their jar of green, keeping one to hold against my
+cheek as I slipped into dreamland. I thought drowsily, just before
+sleep claimed me:
+
+“To-morrow, after office hours, I’ll tuck up my skirt, and wrap my head
+in a towel and have a housecleaning bee. I’ll move the bed where the
+wash-stand is now, and I’ll make the chiffonnier swap places with the
+couch. One feels on friendlier terms with furniture that one has shoved
+about a little. How brilliant the moonlight is! The room is flooded
+with it. Those roses—sweet!—sweet!—”
+
+When I awoke it was morning. During the days that followed I looked
+back gratefully upon that night, with its moonlight, and its roses, and
+its great peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+THE SHADOW OF TERROR
+
+
+Two days before the date set for Von Gerhard’s departure the book was
+finished, typed, re-read, packed, and sent away. Half an hour after it
+was gone all its most glaring faults seemed to marshall themselves
+before my mind’s eye. Whole paragraphs, that had read quite reasonably
+before, now loomed ludicrous in perspective. I longed to snatch it
+back; to tidy it here, to take it in there, to smooth certain rough
+places neglected in my haste. For almost a year I had lived with this
+thing, so close that its faults and its virtues had become
+indistinguishable to me. Day and night, for many months, it had been in
+my mind. Of late some instinct had prompted me to finish it. I had
+worked at it far into the night, until I marveled that the ancient
+occupants of the surrounding rooms did not enter a combined protest
+against the clack-clacking of my typewriter keys. And now that it was
+gone I wondered, dully, if I could feel Von Gerhard’s departure more
+keenly.
+
+No one knew of the existence of the book except Norah, Von Gerhard,
+Blackie and me. Blackie had a way of inquiring after its progress in
+hushed tones of mock awe. Also he delighted in getting down on hands
+and knees and guiding a yard-stick carefully about my desk with a view
+to having a fence built around it, bearing an inscription which would
+inform admiring tourists that here was the desk at which the brilliant
+author had been wont to sit when grinding out heart-throb stories for
+the humble Post. He took an impish delight in my struggles with my hero
+and heroine, and his inquiries after the health of both were of such a
+nature as to make any earnest writer person rise in wrath and slay him.
+I had seen little of Blackie of late. My spare hours had been devoted
+to the work in hand. On the day after the book was sent away I was
+conscious of a little shock as I strolled into Blackie’s sanctum and
+took my accustomed seat beside his big desk. There was an oddly pinched
+look about Blackie’s nostrils and lips, I thought. And the deep-set
+black eyes appeared deeper and blacker than ever in his thin little
+face.
+
+A week of unseasonable weather had come upon the city. June was going
+out in a wave of torrid heat such as August might have boasted. The day
+had seemed endless and intolerably close. I was feeling very limp and
+languid. Perhaps, thought I, it was the heat which had wilted Blackie’s
+debonair spirits.
+
+“It has been a long time since we’ve had a talk-talk, Blackie. I’ve
+missed you. Also you look just a wee bit green around the edges. I’m
+thinking a vacation wouldn’t hurt you.”
+
+Blackie’s lean brown forefinger caressed the bowl of his favorite pipe.
+His eyes, that had been gazing out across the roofs beyond his window,
+came back to me, and there was in them a curious and quizzical
+expression as of one who is inwardly amused.
+
+“I’ve been thinkin’ about a vacation. None of your measly little two
+weeks’ affairs, with one week on salary, and th’ other without. I ain’t
+goin’ t’ take my vacation for a while—not till fall, p’raps, or maybe
+winter. But w’en I do take it, sa-a-ay, girl, it’s goin’ t’ be a real
+one.”
+
+“But why wait so long?” I asked. “You need it now. Who ever heard of
+putting off a vacation until winter!”
+
+“Well, I dunno,” mused Blackie. “I just made my arrangements for that
+time, and I hate t’ muss ’em up. You’ll say, w’en the time comes, that
+my plans are reasonable.”
+
+There was a sharp ring from the telephone at Blackie’s elbow. He
+answered it, then thrust the receiver into my hand. “For you,” he said.
+
+It was Von Gerhard’s voice that came to me. “I have something to tell
+you,” he said. “Something most important. If I call for you at six we
+can drive out to the bay for supper, yes? I must talk to you.”
+
+“You have saved my life,” I called back. “It has been a beast of a day.
+You may talk as much and as importantly as you like, so long as I am
+kept cool.”
+
+“That was Von Gerhard,” said I to Blackie, and tried not to look
+uncomfortable.
+
+“Mm,” grunted Blackie, pulling at his pipe. “Thoughtful, ain’t he?”
+
+I turned at the door. “He—he’s going away day after to-morrow,
+Blackie,” I explained, although no explanation had been asked for, “to
+Vienna. He expects to stay a year—or two—or three—”
+
+Blackie looked up quickly. “Goin’ away, is he? Well, maybe it’s best,
+all around, girl. I see his name’s been mentioned in all the medical
+papers, and the big magazines, and all that, lately. Gettin’ t’ be a
+big bug, Von Gerhard is. Sorry he’s goin’, though. I was plannin’ t’
+consult him just before I go on my—vacation. But some other guy’ll do.
+He don’t approve of me, Von Gerhard don’t.”
+
+For some reason which I could never explain I went back into the room
+and held out both my hands to Blackie. His nervous brown fingers closed
+over them. “That doesn’t make one bit of difference to us, does it,
+Blackie?” I said, gravely. “We’re—we’re not caring so long as we
+approve of one another, are we?”
+
+“Not a bit, girl,” smiled Blackie, “not a bit.”
+
+When the green car stopped before the Old Folks’ Home I was in seraphic
+mood. I had bathed, donned clean linen and a Dutch-necked gown. The
+result was most soul-satisfying. My spirits rose unaccountably. Even
+the sight of Von Gerhard, looking troubled and distrait, did not quiet
+them. We darted away, out along the lake front, past the toll gate, to
+the bay road stretching its flawless length along the water’s side. It
+was alive with swift-moving motor cars swarming like twentieth-century
+pilgrims toward the mecca of cool breezes and comfort. There were proud
+limousines; comfortable family cars; trim little roadsters; noisy
+runabouts. Not a hoof-beat was to be heard. It was as though the
+horseless age had indeed descended upon the world. There was only a
+hum, a rush, a roar, as car after car swept on.
+
+Summer homes nestled among the trees near the lake. Through the
+branches one caught occasional gleams of silvery water. The rush of
+cool air fanned my hot forehead, tousled my hair, slid down between my
+collar and the back of my neck, and I was grandly content.
+
+“Even though you are going to sail away, and even though you have the
+grumps, and refuse to talk, and scowl like a jabberwock, this is an
+extremely nice world. You can’t spoil it.”
+
+“Behute!” Von Gerhard’s tone was solemn.
+
+“Would you be faintly interested in knowing that the book is finished?”
+
+“So? That is well. You were wearing yourself thin over it. It was then
+quickly perfected.”
+
+“Perfected!” I groaned. “I turn cold when I think of it. The last
+chapters got away from me completely. They lacked the punch.”
+
+Von Gerhard considered that a moment, as I wickedly had intended that
+he should. Then—“The punch? What is that then—the punch?”
+
+Obligingly I elucidated. “A book may be written in flawless style, with
+a plot, and a climax, and a lot of little side surprises. But if it
+lacks that peculiar and convincing quality poetically known as the
+punch, it might as well never have been written. It can never be a
+six-best-seller, neither will it live as a classic. You will never see
+it advertised on the book review page of the Saturday papers, nor will
+the man across the aisle in the street car be so absorbed in its
+contents that he will be taken past his corner.”
+
+Von Gerhard looked troubled. “But the literary value? Does that not
+enter—”
+
+“I don’t aim to contribute to the literary uplift,” I assured him. “All
+my life I have cherished two ambitions. One of them is to write a
+successful book, and the other to learn to whistle through my
+teeth—this way, you know, as the gallery gods do it. I am almost
+despairing of the whistle, but I still have hopes of the book.”
+
+Whereupon Von Gerhard, after a moment’s stiff surprise, gave vent to
+one of his heartwarming roars.
+
+“Thanks,” said I. “Now tell me the important news.”
+
+His face grew serious in an instant. “Not yet, Dawn. Later. Let us hear
+more about the book. Not so flippant, however, small one. The time is
+past when you can deceive me with your nonsense.”
+
+“Surely you would not have me take myself seriously! That’s another
+debt I owe my Irish forefathers. They could laugh—bless ’em!—in the
+very teeth of a potato crop failure. And let me tell you, that takes
+some sense of humor. The book is my potato crop. If it fails it will
+mean that I must keep on drudging, with a knot or two taken in my belt.
+But I’ll squeeze a smile out of the corner of my mouth, somehow. And if
+it succeeds! Oh, Ernst, if it succeeds!”
+
+“Then, Kindchen?”
+
+“Then it means that I may have a little thin layer of jam on my bread
+and butter. It won’t mean money—at least, I don’t think it will. A
+first book never does. But it will mean a future. It will mean that I
+will have something solid to stand on. It will be a real beginning—a
+breathing spell—time in which to accomplish something really worth
+while—independence—freedom from this tread-mill—”
+
+“Stop!” cried Von Gerhard, sharply. Then, as I stared in surprise—“I do
+ask your pardon. I was again rude, nicht wahr? But in me there is a
+queer vein of German superstition that disapproves of air castles. Sich
+einbilden, we call it.”
+
+The lights of the bay pavilion twinkled just ahead. The green car poked
+its nose up the path between rows of empty machines. At last it drew
+up, panting, before a vacant space between an imposing, scarlet touring
+car and a smart, cream-colored runabout. We left it there and walked up
+the light-flooded path.
+
+Inside the great, barn-like structure that did duty as pavilion glasses
+clinked, chairs scraped on the wooden floor; a burst of music followed
+a sharp fusillade of applause. Through the open doorway could be seen a
+company of Tyrolese singers in picturesque costumes of scarlet and
+green and black. The scene was very noisy, and very bright, and very
+German.
+
+“Not in there, eh?” said Von Gerhard, as though divining my wish. “It
+is too brightly lighted, and too noisy. We will find a table out here
+under the trees, where the music is softened by the distance, and our
+eyes are not offended by the ugliness of the singers. But inexcusably
+ugly they are, these Tyrolese women.”
+
+We found a table within the glow of the pavilion’s lights, but still so
+near the lake that we could hear the water lapping the shore. A
+cadaverous, sandy-haired waiter brought things to eat, and we made
+brave efforts to appear hungry and hearty, but my high spirits were
+ebbing fast, and Von Gerhard was frankly distraught. One of the women
+singers appeared suddenly in the doorway of the pavilion, then stole
+down the steps, and disappeared in the shadow of the trees beyond our
+table. The voices of the singers ceased abruptly. There was a moment’s
+hushed silence. Then, from the shadow of the trees came a woman’s
+voice, clear, strong, flexible, flooding the night with the bird-like
+trill of the mountain yodel. The sound rose and fell, and swelled and
+soared. A silence. Then, in a great burst of melody the chorus of
+voices within the pavilion answered the call. Again a silence. Again
+the wonder of the woman’s voice flooded the stillness, ending in a note
+higher, clearer, sweeter than any that had gone before. Then the little
+Tyrolese, her moment of glory ended, sped into the light of the noisy
+pavilion again.
+
+When I turned to Von Gerhard my eyes were wet. “I shall have that to
+remember, when you are gone.”
+
+Von Gerhard beckoned the hovering waiter. “Take these things away. And
+you need not return.” He placed something in the man’s palm—something
+that caused a sudden whisking away of empty dishes, and many obsequious
+bows.
+
+Von Gerhard’s face was turned away from me, toward the beauty of the
+lake and sky. Now, as the last flirt of the waiter’s apron vanished
+around the corner he turned his head slowly, and I saw that in his eyes
+which made me catch my breath with apprehension.
+
+“What is it?” I cried. “Norah? Max? The children?”
+
+He shook his head. “They are well, so far as I know. I—perhaps first I
+should tell you—although this is not the thing which I have to say to
+you—”
+
+“Yes?” I urged him on, impatiently. I had never seen him like this.
+
+“I do not sail this week. I shall not be with Gluck in Vienna this
+year. I shall stay here.”
+
+“Here! Why? Surely—”
+
+“Because I shall be needed here, Dawn. Because I cannot leave you now.
+You will need—some one—a friend—”
+
+I stared at him with eyes that were wide with terror, waiting for I
+knew not what.
+
+“Need—some one—for—what?” I stammered. “Why should you—”
+
+In the kindly shadow of the trees Von Gerhard’s hands took my icy ones,
+and held them in a close clasp of encouragement.
+
+“Norah is coming to be with you—”
+
+“Norah! Why? Tell me at once! At once!”
+
+“Because Peter Orme has been sent home—cured,” said he.
+
+The lights of the pavilion fell away, and advanced, and swung about in
+a great sickening circle. I shut my eyes. The lights still swung before
+my eyes. Von Gerhard leaned toward me with a word of alarm. I clung to
+his hands with all my strength.
+
+“No!” I said, and the savage voice was not my own. “No! No! No! It
+isn’t true! It isn’t—Oh, it’s some joke, isn’t it? Tell me, it’s—it’s
+something funny, isn’t it? And after a bit we’ll laugh—we’ll laugh—of
+course—see! I am smiling already—”
+
+“Dawn—dear one—it is true. God knows I wish that I could be happy to
+know it. The hospital authorities pronounce him cured. He has been
+quite sane for weeks.”
+
+“You knew it—how long?”
+
+“You know that Max has attended to all communications from the doctors
+there. A few weeks ago they wrote that Orme had shown evidences of
+recovery. He spoke of you, of the people he had known in New York, of
+his work on the paper, all quite rationally and calmly. But they must
+first be sure. Max went to New York a week ago. Peter was gone. The
+hospital authorities were frightened and apologetic. Peter had walked
+away quite coolly one day. He had gone into the city, borrowed money of
+some old newspaper cronies, and vanished. He may be there still. He may
+be—”
+
+“Here! Ernst! Take me home! O God; I can’t do it! I can’t! I ought to
+be happy, but I’m not. I ought to be thankful, but I’m not, I’m not!
+The horror of having him there was great enough, but it was nothing
+compared to the horror of having him here. I used to dream that he was
+well again, and that he was searching for me, and the dreadful realness
+of it used to waken me, and I would find myself shivering with terror.
+Once I dreamed that I looked up from my desk to find him standing in
+the doorway, smiling that mirthless smile of his, and I heard him say,
+in his mocking way: ‘Hello, Dawn my love; looking wonderfully well.
+Grass widowhood agrees with you, eh?’”
+
+“Dawn, you must not laugh like that. Come, we will go. You are
+shivering! Don’t, dear, don’t. See, you have Norah, and Max, and me to
+help you. We will put him on his feet. Physically he is not what he
+should be. I can do much for him.”
+
+“You!” I cried, and the humor of it was too exquisite for laughter.
+
+“For that I gave up Vienna,” said Von Gerhard, simply. “You, too, must
+do your share.”
+
+“My share! I have done my share. He was in the gutter, and he was
+dragging me with him. When his insanity came upon him I thanked God for
+it, and struggled up again. Even Norah never knew what that struggle
+was. Whatever I am, I am in spite of him. I tell you I could hug my
+widow’s weeds. Ten years ago he showed me how horrible and unclean a
+thing can be made of this beautiful life. I was a despairing, cowering
+girl of twenty then—I am a woman now, happy in her work, her friends;
+growing broader and saner in thought, quicker to appreciate the finer
+things in life. And now—what?”
+
+They were dashing off a rollicking folk-song indoors. When it was
+finished there came a burst of laughter and the sharp spat of
+applauding hands, and shouts of approbation. The sounds seemed seared
+upon my brain. I rose and ran down the path toward the waiting machine.
+There in the darkness I buried my shamed face in my hands and prayed
+for the tears that would not come.
+
+It seemed hours before I heard Von Gerhard’s firm, quick tread upon the
+gravel path. He moved about the machine, adjusting this and that, then
+took his place at the wheel without a word. We glided out upon the
+smooth white road. All the loveliness of the night seemed to have
+vanished. Only the ugly, distorted shadows remained. The terror of
+uncertainty gripped me. I could not endure the sight of Von Gerhard’s
+stern, set face. I grasped his arm suddenly so that the machine veered
+and darted across the road. With a mighty wrench Von Gerhard righted
+it. He stopped the machine at the road-side.
+
+“Careful, Kindchen,” he said, gravely.
+
+“Ernst,” I said, and my breath came quickly, chokingly, as though I had
+been running fast, “Ernst, I can’t do it. I’m not big enough. I can’t.
+I hate him, I tell you, I hate him! My life is my own. I’ve made it
+what it is, in the face of a hundred temptations; in spite of a hundred
+pitfalls. I can’t lay it down again for Peter Orme to trample. Ernst,
+if you love me, take me away now. To Vienna—anywhere—only don’t ask me
+to take up my life with him again. I can’t—I can’t—”
+
+“Love you?” repeated Ernst, slowly, “yes. Too well—”
+
+“Too well—”
+
+“Yes, too well for that, Gott sei dank, small one. Too well for that.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+PETER ORME
+
+
+A man’s figure rose from the shadows of the porch and came forward to
+meet us as we swung up to the curbing. I stifled a scream in my throat.
+As I shrank back into the seat I heard the quick intake of Von
+Gerhard’s breath as he leaned forward to peer into the darkness. A sick
+dread came upon me.
+
+“Sa-a-ay, girl,” drawled the man’s voice, with a familiar little
+cackling laugh in it, “sa-a-ay, girl, the policeman on th’ beat’s got
+me spotted for a suspicious character. I been hoofin’ it up an’ down
+this block like a distracted mamma waitin’ for her daughter t’ come
+home from a boat ride.”
+
+“Blackie! It’s only you!”
+
+“Thanks, flatterer,” simpered Blackie, coming to the edge of the walk
+as I stepped from the automobile. “Was you expectin’ the landlady?”
+
+“I don’t know just whom I expected. I—I’m nervous, I think, and you
+startled me. Dr. Von Gerhard was taken back for a moment, weren’t you,
+Doctor?”
+
+Von Gerhard laughed ruefully. “Frankly, yes. It is not early. And
+visitors at this hour—”
+
+“What in the world is it, Blackie?” I put in. “Don’t tell me that
+Norberg has been seized with one of his fiendish inspirations at this
+time of night.”
+
+Blackie struck a match and held it for an instant so that the flare of
+it illuminated his face as he lighted his cigarette. There was no
+laughter in the deep-set black eyes.
+
+“What is it Blackie?” I asked again. The horror of what Von Gerhard had
+told me made the prospect of any lesser trial a welcome relief.
+
+“I got t’ talk to you for a minute. P’raps Von Gerhard ’d better hear
+it, too. I telephoned you an hour ago. Tried to get you out to the bay.
+Waited here ever since. Got a parlor, or somethin’, where a guy can
+talk?”
+
+I led the way indoors. The first floor seemed deserted. The bare,
+unfriendly boarding-house parlor was unoccupied, and one dim gas jet
+did duty as illumination.
+
+“Bring in the set pieces,” muttered Blackie, as he turned two more gas
+jets flaring high. “This parlor just yells for a funeral.”
+
+Von Gerhard was frowning. “Mrs. Orme is not well,” he began. “She has
+had a shock—some startling news concerning—”
+
+“Her husband?” inquired Blackie, coolly. I started up with a cry. “How
+could you know?”
+
+A look of relief came into Blackie’s face. “That helps a little. Now
+listen, kid. An’ w’en I get through, remember I’m there with the little
+helpin’ mitt. Have a cigarette, Doc?”
+
+“No,” said Von Gerhard, shortly.
+
+Blackie’s strange black eyes were fastened on my face, and I saw an
+expression of pity in their depths as he began to talk.
+
+“I was up at the Press Club to-night. Dropped in for a minute or two,
+like I always do on the rounds. The place sounded kind of still when I
+come up the steps, and I wondered where all the boys was. Looked into
+the billiard room—nothin’ doin’. Poked my head in at the writin’
+room—same. Ambled into the readin’ room—empty. Well, I steered for the
+dining room, an’ there was the bunch. An’ just as I come in they give a
+roar, and I started to investigate. Up against the fireplace, with one
+hand in his pocket, and the other hanging careless like on the mantel,
+stood a man—stranger t’ me. He was talkin’ kind of low, and quick,
+bitin’ off his words like a Englishman. An’ the boys, they was starin’
+with their eyes, an’ their mouths, and forgettin’ t’ smoke, an’ lettin’
+their pipes an’ cigars go dead in their hands, while he talked. Talk!
+Sa-a-ay, girl, that guy, he could talk the leads right out of a ruled,
+locked form. I didn’t catch his name. Tall, thin, unearthly lookin’
+chap, with the whitest teeth you ever saw, an’ eyes—well, his eyes was
+somethin’ like a lighted pipe with a little fine ash over the red, just
+waitin’ for a sudden pull t’ make it glow.”
+
+“Peter!” I moaned, and buried my face in my hands. Von Gerhard put a
+quick hand on my arm. But I shook it off. “I’m not going to faint,” I
+said, through set teeth. “I’m not going to do anything silly. I want to
+think. I want to... Go on, Blackie.”
+
+“Just a minute,” interrupted Von Gerhard. “Does he know where Mrs. Orme
+is living?”
+
+“I’m coming t’ that,” returned Blackie, tranquilly. “Though for Dawn’s
+sake I’ll say right here he don’t know. I told him later, that she was
+takin’ a vacation up at her folks’ in Michigan.”
+
+“Thank God!” I breathed.
+
+“Wore a New York Press Club button, this guy did. I asked one of the
+boys standin’ on the outer edge of the circle what the fellow’s name
+was, but he only says: ‘Shut up Black! An’ listen. He’s seen every darn
+thing in the world.’ Well, I listened. He wasn’t braggin’. He wasn’t
+talkin’ big. He was just talkin’. Seems like he’d been war
+correspondent in the Boer war, and the Spanish-American, an’ Gawd knows
+where. He spoke low, not usin’ any big words, either, an’ I thought his
+eyes looked somethin’ like those of the Black Cat up on the mantel just
+over his head—you know what I mean, when the electric lights is turned
+on in-inside{sic} the ugly thing. Well, every time he showed signs of
+stoppin’, one of the boys would up with a question, and start him goin’
+again. He knew everybody, an’ everything, an’ everywhere. All of a
+sudden one of the boys points to the Roosevelt signature on the
+wall—the one he scrawled up there along with all the other celebrities
+first time he was entertained by the Press Club boys. Well this guy, he
+looked at the name for a minute. ‘Roosevelt?’ he says, slow. ‘Oh, yes.
+Seems t’ me I’ve heard of him.’ Well, at that the boys yelled. Thought
+it was a good joke, seein’ that Ted had been smeared all over the first
+page of everything for years. But kid, I seen th’ look in that man’s
+eyes when he said it, and he wasn’t jokin’, girl. An’ it came t’ me,
+all of a sudden, that all the things he’d been talkin’ about had
+happened almost ten years back. After he’d made that break about
+Roosevelt he kind of shut up, and strolled over to the piano and began
+t’ play. You know that bum old piano, with half a dozen dead keys, and
+no tune?”
+
+I looked up for a moment. “He could make you think that it was a
+concert grand, couldn’t he? He hasn’t forgotten even that?”
+
+“Forgotten? Girl, I don’t know what his accomplishments was when you
+knew him, but if he was any more fascinatin’ than he is now, then I’m
+glad I didn’t know him. He could charm the pay envelope away from a
+reporter that was Saturday broke. Somethin’ seemed t’ urge me t’ go up
+t’ him an’ say: ‘Have a game of billiards?’
+
+“‘Don’t care if I do,’ says he, and swung his long legs off the piano
+stool and we made for the billiard room, with the whole gang after us.
+Sa-a-ay, girl, I’m a modest violet, I am, but I don’t mind mentionin’
+that the general opinion up at the club is that I’m a little wizard
+with the cue. Well, w’en he got through with me I looked like little
+sister when big brother is tryin’ t’ teach her how to hold the cue in
+her fingers. He just sent them balls wherever he thought they’d look
+pretty. I bet if he’d held up his thumb and finger an’ said, ‘jump
+through this!’ them balls would of jumped.”
+
+Von Gerhard took a couple of quick steps in Blackie’s direction. His
+eyes were blue steel.
+
+“Is this then necessary?” he asked. “All this leads to what? Has not
+Mrs. Orme suffered enough, that she should undergo this idle chatter?
+It is sufficient that she knows this—this man is here. It is a time for
+action, not for words.”
+
+“Action’s comin’ later, Doc,” drawled Blackie, looking impish.
+“Monologuin’ ain’t my specialty. I gener’ly let the other gink talk.
+You never can learn nothin’ by talkin’. But I got somethin’ t’ say t’
+Dawn here. Now, in case you’re bored the least bit, w’y don’t hesitate
+one minnit t’—”
+
+“Na, you are quite right, and I was hasty,” said Von Gerhard, and his
+eyes, with the kindly gleam in them, smiled down upon the little man.
+“It is only that both you and I are over-anxious to be of assistance to
+this unhappy lady. Well, we shall see. You talked with this man at the
+Press Club?”
+
+“He talked. I listened.”
+
+“That would be Peter’s way,” I said, bitterly. “How he used to love to
+hold forth, and how I grew to long for blessed silence—for fewer words,
+and more of that reserve which means strength!”
+
+“All this time,” continued Blackie, “I didn’t know his name. When we’d
+finished our game of billiards he hung up his cue, and then he turned
+around like lightning, and faced the boys that were standing around
+with their hands in their pockets. He had a odd little smile on his
+face—a smile with no fun it, if you know what I mean. Guess you do,
+maybe, if you’ve seen it.
+
+“‘Boys,’ says he, smilin’ that twisted kind of smile, ‘boys, I’m
+lookin’ for a job. I’m not much of a talker, an’ I’m only a amateur at
+music, and my game of billiards is ragged. But there’s one thing I can
+do, fellows, from abc up to xyz, and that’s write. I can write, boys,
+in a way to make your pet little political scribe sound like a high
+school paper. I don’t promise to stick. As soon as I get on my feet
+again I’m going back to New York. But not just yet. Meanwhile, I’m
+going to the highest bidder.’
+
+“Well, you know since Merkle left us we haven’t had a day when we
+wasn’t scooped on some political guff. ‘I guess we can use you—some
+place,’ I says, tryin’ not t’ look too anxious. If your ideas on salary
+can take a slump be tween New York and Milwaukee. Our salaries around
+here is more what is elegantly known as a stipend. What’s your name,
+Bo?’
+
+“‘Name?’ says he, smiling again, ‘Maybe it’ll be familiar t’ you. That
+is, it will if my wife is usin’ it. Orme’s my name—Peter Orme. Know a
+lady of that name? Good.’
+
+“I hadn’t said I did, but those eyes of his had seen the look on my
+face.
+
+“‘Friends in New York told me she was here,’ he says. ‘Where is she
+now? Got her address?’ he says.
+
+“‘She expectin’ you?’ I asked.
+
+“‘N-not exactly,’ he says, with that crooked grin.
+
+“‘Thought not,’ I answered, before I knew what I was sayin’. ‘She’s up
+north with her folks on a vacation.’
+
+“‘The devil she is!’ he says. ‘Well, in that case can you let me have
+ten until Monday?’”
+
+Blackie came over to me as I sat cowering in my chair. He patted my
+shoulder with one lean brown hand. “Now kid, you dig, see? Beat it. Go
+home for a week. I’ll fix it up with Norberg. No tellin’ what a guy
+like that’s goin’ t’ do. Send your brother-in-law down here if you want
+to make it a family affair, and between us, we’ll see this thing
+through.”
+
+I looked up at Von Gerhard. He was nodding approval. It all seemed so
+easy, so temptingly easy. To run away! Not to face him until I was safe
+in the shelter of Norah’s arms! I stood up, resolve lending me new
+strength and courage.
+
+“I am going. I know it isn’t brave, but I can’t be brave any longer.
+I’m too tired—too old—”
+
+I grasped the hand of each of those men who had stood by me so
+staunchly in the year that was past. The words of thanks that I had on
+my lips ended in dry, helpless sobs. And because Blackie and Von
+Gerhard looked so pathetically concerned and so unhappy in my
+unhappiness my sobs changed to hysterical laughter, in which the two
+men joined, after one moment’s bewildered staring.
+
+So it was that we did not hear the front door slam, or the sound of
+footsteps in the hall. Our overstrained nerves found relief in
+laughter, so that Peter Orme, a lean, ominous figure in the doorway
+looked in upon a merry scene.
+
+I was the first to see him. And at the sight of the emaciated figure,
+with its hollow cheeks and its sunken eyes all terror and hatred left
+me, and I felt only a great pity for this wreck of manhood. Slowly I
+went up to him there in the doorway.
+
+“Well, Peter?” I said.
+
+“Well, Dawn old girl,” said he “you’re looking wonderfully fit. Grass
+widowhood seems to agree with you, eh?”
+
+And I knew then that my dread dream had come true.
+
+Peter advanced into the room with his old easy grace of manner. His
+eyes glowed as he looked at Blackie. Then he laughed, showing his even,
+white teeth. “Why, you little liar!” he said, in his crisp, clear
+English. “I’ve a notion to thwack you. What d’ you mean by telling me
+my wife’s gone? You’re not sweet on her yourself, eh?”
+
+Von Gerhard stifled an exclamation, and Orme turned quickly in his
+direction. “Who are you?” he asked. “Still another admirer? Jolly time
+you were having when I interrupted.” He stared at Von Gerhard
+deliberately and coolly. A little frown of dislike came into his face.
+“You’re a doctor, aren’t you? I knew it. I can tell by the hands, and
+the eyes, and the skin, and the smell. Lived with ’em for ten years,
+damn them! Dawn, tell these fellows they’re excused, will you? And by
+the way, you don’t seem very happy to see me?”
+
+I went up to him then, and laid my hand on his arm. “Peter, you don’t
+understand. These two gentlemen have been all that is kind to me. I am
+happy to know that you are well again. Surely you do not expect me to
+be joyful at seeing you. All that pretense was left out of our lives
+long before your—illness. It hasn’t been all roses for me since then,
+Peter. I’ve worked until I wanted to die with weariness. You know what
+this newspaper game is for a woman. It doesn’t grow easier as she grows
+older and tireder.”
+
+“Oh, cut out the melodrama, Dawn,” sneered Peter. “Have either of you
+fellows the makin’s about you? Thanks. I’m famished for a smoke.”
+
+The worrying words of ten years ago rose automatically to my lips.
+“Aren’t you smoking too much, Peter?” The tone was that of a harassed
+wife.
+
+Peter stared. Then he laughed his short, mirthless little laugh. “By
+Jove! Dawn, I believe you’re as much my wife now as you were ten years
+ago. I always said, you know, that you would have become a first-class
+nagger if you hadn’t had such a keen sense of humor. That saved you.”
+He turned his mocking eyes to Von Gerhard. “Doesn’t it beat the devil,
+how these good women stick to a man, once they’re married! There’s a
+certain dog-like devotion about it that’s touching.”
+
+There was a dreadful little silence. For the first time in my knowledge
+of him I saw a hot, painful red dyeing Blackie’s sallow face. His eyes
+had a menace in their depths. Then, very quietly, Von Gerhard stepped
+forward and stopped directly before me.
+
+“Dawn,” he said, very softly and gently, “I retract my statement of an
+hour ago. If you will give me another chance to do as you asked me, I
+shall thank God for it all my life. There is no degradation in that. To
+live with this man—that is degradation. And I say you shall not suffer
+it.”
+
+I looked up into his face, and it had never seemed so dear to me. “The
+time for that is past,” I said, my tone as calm and even as his own. “A
+man like you cannot burden himself with a derelict like me—mast gone,
+sails gone, water-logged, drifting. Five years from now you’ll thank me
+for what I am saying now. My place is with this other wreck—tossed
+about by wind and weather until we both go down together.” There came a
+sharp, insistent ring at the door-bell. No answering sound came from
+the regions above stairs. The ringing sounded again, louder than
+before.
+
+“I’ll be the Buttons,” said Blackie, and disappeared into the hallway.
+
+“Oh, yes, I’ve heard about you,” came to our ears a moment later, in a
+high, clear voice—a dear, beloved voice that sent me flying to the door
+in an agony of hope.
+
+“Norah!” I cried, “Norah! Norah! Norah!” And as her blessed arms closed
+about me the tears that had been denied me before came in a torrent of
+joy.
+
+“There, there!” murmured she, patting my shoulder with those comforting
+mother-pats. “What’s all this about? And why didn’t somebody meet me? I
+telegraphed. You didn’t get it? Well, I forgive you. Howdy-do, Peter? I
+suppose you are Peter. I hope you haven’t been acting devilish again.
+That seems to be your specialty. Now don’t smile that Mephistophelian
+smile at me. It doesn’t frighten me. Von Gerhard, take him down to his
+hotel. I’m dying for my kimono and bed. And this child is trembling
+like a race-horse. Now run along, all of you. Things that look
+greenery-yallery at night always turn pink in the morning. Great
+Heavens! There’s somebody calling down from the second-floor landing.
+It sounds like a landlady. Run, Dawn, and tell her your perfectly
+respectable sister has come. Peter! Von Gerhard! Mr. Blackie! Shoo!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+A TURN OF THE WHEEL
+
+
+“You who were ever alert to befriend a man
+You who were ever the first to defend a man,
+You who had always the money to lend a man
+Down on his luck and hard up for a V,
+Sure you’ll be playing a harp in beatitude
+(And a quare sight you will be in that attitude)
+Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude,
+You’ll find your latitude.”
+
+
+From my desk I could see Peter standing in the doorway of the news
+editor’s room. I shut my eyes for a moment. Then I opened them again,
+quickly. No, it was not a dream. He was there, a slender, graceful,
+hateful figure, with the inevitable cigarette in his unsteady
+fingers—the expensive-looking, gold-tipped cigarette of the old days.
+Peter was Peter. Ten years had made little difference. There were queer
+little hollow places in his cheeks, and under the jaw-bone, and at the
+base of the head, and a flabby, parchment-like appearance about the
+skin. That was all that made him different from the Peter of the old
+days.
+
+The thing had adjusted itself, as Norah had said it would. The
+situation that had filled me with loathing and terror the night of
+Peter’s return had been transformed into quite a matter-of-fact and
+commonplace affair under Norah’s deft management. And now I was back in
+harness again, and Peter was turning out brilliant political stuff at
+spasmodic intervals. He was not capable of any sustained effort. He
+never would be again; that was plain. He was growing restless and
+dissatisfied. He spoke of New York as though it were Valhalla. He said
+that he hadn’t seen a pretty girl since he left Forty-second street. He
+laughed at Milwaukee’s quaint German atmosphere. He sneered at our
+journalistic methods, and called the newspapers “country sheets,” and
+was forever talking of the World, and the Herald, and the Sun, until
+the men at the Press Club fought shy of him. Norah had found quiet and
+comfortable quarters for Peter in a boarding-house near the lake, and
+just a square or two distant from my own boarding-house. He hated it
+cordially, as only the luxury-loving can hate a boarding-house, and
+threatened to leave daily.
+
+“Let’s go back to the big town, Dawn, old girl,” he would say. “We’re
+buried alive in this overgrown Dutch village. I came here in the first
+place on your account. Now it’s up to you to get me out of it. Think of
+what New York means! Think of what I’ve been! And I can write as well
+as ever.”
+
+But I always shook my head. “We would not last a month in New York,
+Peter. New York has hurried on and left us behind. We’re just two
+pieces of discard. We’ll have to be content where we are.”
+
+“Content! In this silly hole! You must be mad!” Then, with one of his
+unaccountable changes of tone and topic, “Dawn, let me have some money.
+I’m strapped. If I had the time I’d get out some magazine stuff.
+Anything to get a little extra coin. Tell me, how does that little
+sport you call Blackie happen to have so much ready cash? I’ve never
+yet struck him for a loan that he hasn’t obliged me. I think he’s sweet
+on you, perhaps, and thinks he’s doing you a sort of second-hand
+favor.”
+
+At times such as these all the old spirit that I had thought dead
+within me would rise up in revolt against this creature who was taking
+from me my pride, my sense of honor, my friends. I never saw Von
+Gerhard now. Peter had refused outright to go to him for treatment,
+saying that he wasn’t going to be poisoned by any cursed doctor,
+particularly not by one who had wanted to run away with his wife before
+his very eyes.
+
+Sometimes I wondered how long this could go on. I thought of the old
+days with the Nirlangers; of Alma Pflugel’s rose-encircled cottage; of
+Bennie; of the Knapfs; of the good-natured, uncouth aborigines, and
+their many kindnesses. I saw these dear people rarely now. Frau
+Nirlanger’s resignation to her unhappiness only made me rebel more
+keenly against my own.
+
+If only Peter could become well and strong again, I told myself,
+bitterly. If it were not for those blue shadows under his eyes, and the
+shrunken muscles, and the withered skin, I could leave him to live his
+life as he saw fit. But he was as dependent as a child, and as
+capricious. What was the end to be? I asked myself. Where was it all
+leading me?
+
+And then, in a fearful and wonderful manner, my question was answered.
+
+There came to my desk one day an envelope bearing the letter-head of
+the publishing house to which I had sent my story. I balanced it for a
+moment in my fingers, woman-fashion, wondering, hoping, surmising.
+
+“Of course they can’t want it,” I told myself, in preparation for any
+disappointment that was in store for me. “They’re sending it back. This
+is the letter that will tell me so.”
+
+And then I opened it. The words jumped out at me from the typewritten
+page. I crushed the paper in my hands, and rushed into Blackie’s little
+office as I had been used to doing in the old days. He was at his desk,
+pipe in mouth. I shook his shoulder and flourished the letter wildly,
+and did a crazy little dance about his chair.
+
+“They want it! They like it! Not only that, they want another, as soon
+as I can get it out. Think of it!”
+
+Blackie removed his pipe from between his teeth and wiped his lips with
+the back of his hand. “I’m thinkin’,” he said. “Anything t’ oblige you.
+When you’re through shovin’ that paper into my face would you mind
+explainin’ who wants what?”
+
+“Oh, you’re so stupid! So slow! Can’t you see that I’ve written a real
+live book, and had it accepted, and that I am going to write another if
+I have to run away from a whole regiment of husbands to do it properly?
+Blackie, can’t you see what it means! Oh, Blackie, I know I’m maudlin
+in my joy, but forgive me. It’s been so long since I’ve had the taste
+of it.”
+
+“Well, take a good chew while you got th’chance an’ don’t count too
+high on this first book business. I knew a guy who wrote a book once,
+an’ he planned to take a trip to Europe on it, and build a house when
+he got home, and maybe a yacht or so, if he wasn’t too rushed. Sa-a-ay,
+girl, w’en he got through gettin’ those royalties for that book they’d
+dwindled down to fresh wall paper for the dinin’-room, and a new gas
+stove for his wife, an’ not enough left over to take a trolley trip to
+Oshkosh on. Don’t count too high.”
+
+“I’m not counting at all, Blackie, and you can’t discourage me.”
+
+“Don’t want to. But I’d hate to see you come down with a thud.”
+Suddenly he sat up and a grin overspread his thin face. “Tell you what
+we’ll do, girlie. We’ll celebrate. Maybe it’ll be the last time. Let’s
+pretend this is six months ago, and everything’s serene. You get your
+bonnet. I’ll get the machine. It’s too hot to work, anyway. We’ll take
+a spin out to somewhere that’s cool, and we’ll order cold things to
+eat, and cold things to drink, and you can talk about yourself till
+you’re tired. You’ll have to take it out on somebody, an’ it might as
+well be me.”
+
+Five minutes later, with my hat in my hand, I turned to find Peter at
+my elbow.
+
+“Want to talk to you,” he said, frowning.
+
+“Sorry, Peter, but I can’t stop. Won’t it do later?”
+
+“No. Got an assignment? I’ll go with you.”
+
+“N-not exactly, Peter. The truth is, Blackie has taken pity on me and
+has promised to take me out for a spin, just to cool off. It has been
+so insufferably hot.”
+
+Peter turned away. “Count me in on that,” he said, over his shoulder.
+
+“But I can’t, Peter,” I cried. “It isn’t my party. And anyway—”
+
+Peter turned around, and there was an ugly glow in his eyes and an ugly
+look on his face, and a little red ridge that I had not noticed before
+seemed to burn itself across his forehead. “And anyway, you don’t want
+me, eh? Well, I’m going. I’m not going to have my wife chasing all over
+the country with strange men. Remember, you’re not the giddy grass
+widdy you used to be. You can take me, or stay at home, understand?”
+
+His voice was high-pitched and quavering. Something in his manner
+struck a vague terror to my heart. “Why, Peter, if you care that much I
+shall be glad to have you go. So will Blackie, I am sure. Come, we’ll
+go down now. He’ll be waiting for us.”
+
+Blackie’s keen, clever mind grasped the situation as soon as he saw us
+together. His dark face was illumined by one of his rare smiles.
+“Coming with us, Orme? Do you good. Pile into the tonneau, you two, and
+hang on to your hair. I’m going to smash the law.”
+
+Peter sauntered up to the steering-wheel. “Let me drive,” he said. “I’m
+not bad at it.”
+
+“Nix with the artless amateur,” returned Blackie. “This ain’t no
+demonstration car. I drive my own little wagon when I go riding, and I
+intend to until I take my last ride, feet first.”
+
+Peter muttered something surly and climbed into the front seat next to
+Blackie, leaving me to occupy the tonneau in solitary state.
+
+Peter began to ask questions—dozens of them, which Blackie answered,
+patiently and fully. I could not hear all that they said, but I saw
+that Peter was urging Blackie to greater speed, and that Blackie was
+explaining that he must first leave the crowded streets behind.
+Suddenly Peter made a gesture in the direction of the wheel, and said
+something in a high, sharp voice. Blackie’s answer was quick and
+decidedly in the negative. The next instant Peter Orme rose in his
+place and leaning forward and upward, grasped the wheel that was in
+Blackie’s hands. The car swerved sickeningly. I noticed, dully, that
+Blackie did not go white as novelists say men do in moments of horror.
+A dull red flush crept to the very base of his neck. With a twist of
+his frail body he tried to throw off Peter’s hands. I remember leaning
+over the back of the seat and trying to pull Peter back as I realized
+that it was a madman with whom we were dealing. Nothing seemed real. It
+was ridiculously like the things one sees in the moving picture
+theaters. I felt no fear.
+
+“Sit down, Orme!” Blackie yelled. “You’ll ditch us! Dawn! God!—”
+
+We shot down a little hill. Two wheels were lifted from the ground. The
+machine was poised in the air for a second before it crashed into the
+ditch and turned over completely, throwing me clear, but burying
+Blackie and Peter under its weight of steel and wood and whirring
+wheels.
+
+I remember rising from the ground, and sinking back again and rising
+once more to run forward to where the car lay in the ditch, and tugging
+at that great frame of steel with crazy, futile fingers. Then I ran
+screaming down the road toward a man who was tranquilly working in a
+field nearby.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+BLACKIE’S VACATION COMES
+
+
+The shabby blue office coat hangs on the hook in the little sporting
+room where Blackie placed it. No one dreams of moving it. There it
+dangles, out at elbows, disreputable, its pockets burned from many a
+hot pipe thrust carelessly into them, its cuffs frayed, its lapels
+bearing the marks of cigarette, paste-pot and pen.
+
+It is that faded old garment, more than anything else, which makes us
+fail to realize that its owner will never again slip into its
+comfortable folds. We cannot believe that a lifeless rag like that can
+triumph over the man of flesh and blood and nerves and sympathies. With
+what contempt do we look upon those garments during our lifetime! And
+how they live on, defying time, long, long after we have been gathered
+to our last rest.
+
+In some miraculous manner Blackie had lived on for two days after that
+ghastly ride. Peter had been killed instantly, the doctors said. They
+gave no hope for Blackie. My escape with but a few ridiculous bruises
+and scratches was due, they said, to the fact that I had sat in the
+tonneau. I heard them all, in a stupor of horror and grief, and
+wondered what plan Fate had in store for me, that I alone should have
+been spared. Norah and Max came, and took things in charge, and I saw
+Von Gerhard, but all three appeared dim and shadowy, like figures in a
+mist. When I closed my eyes I could see Peter’s tense figure bending
+over Blackie at the wheel, and heard his labored breathing as he
+struggled in his mad fury, and felt again the helpless horror that had
+come to me as we swerved off the road and into the ditch below, with
+Blackie, rigid and desperate, still clinging to the wheel. I lived it
+all over and over in my mind. In the midst of the blackness I heard a
+sentence that cleared the fog from my mind, and caused me to raise
+myself from my pillows.
+
+Some one—Norah, I think—had said that Blackie was conscious, and that
+he was asking for some of the men at the office, and for me. For me! I
+rose and dressed, in spite of Norah’s protests. I was quite well, I
+told them. I must see him. I shook them off with trembling fingers and
+when they saw that I was quite determined they gave in, and Von Gerhard
+telephoned to the hospital to learn the hour at which I might meet the
+others who were to see Blackie for a brief moment.
+
+I met them in the stiff little waiting room of he hospital—Norberg,
+Deming, Schmidt, Holt—men who had known him from the time when they had
+yelled, “Heh, boy!” at him when they wanted their pencils sharpened.
+Awkwardly we followed the fleet-footed nurse who glided ahead of us
+down the wide hospital corridors, past doorways through which we caught
+glimpses of white beds that were no whiter than the faces that lay on
+the pillows. We came at last into a very still and bright little room
+where Blackie lay.
+
+Had years passed over his head since I saw him last? The face that
+tried to smile at us from the pillow was strangely wizened and old. It
+was as though a withering blight had touched it. Only the eyes were the
+same. They glowed in the sunken face, beneath the shock of black hair,
+with a startling luster and brilliancy.
+
+I do not know what pain he suffered. I do not know what magic medicine
+gave him the strength to smile at us, dying as he was even then.
+
+“Well, what do you know about little Paul Dombey?” he piped in a high,
+thin voice. The shock of relief was too much. We giggled hysterically,
+then stopped short and looked at each other, like scared and naughty
+children.
+
+“Sa-a-ay, boys and girls, cut out the heavy thinking parts. Don’t make
+me do all the social stunts. What’s the news? What kind of a rotten
+cotton sportin’ sheet is that dub Callahan gettin’ out? Who won
+to-day—Cubs or Pirates? Norberg, you goat, who pinned that purple tie
+on you?”
+
+He was so like the Blackie we had always known that we were at our ease
+immediately. The sun shone in at the window, and some one laughed a
+little laugh somewhere down the corridor, and Deming, who is Irish,
+plunged into a droll description of a brand-new office boy who had
+arrived that day.
+
+“S’elp me, Black, the kid wears spectacles and a Norfolk suit, and
+low-cut shoes with bows on ’em. On the square he does. Looks like one
+of those Boston infants you see in the comic papers. I don’t believe
+he’s real. We’re saving him until you get back, if the kids in the
+alley don’t chew him up before that time.”
+
+An almost imperceptible shade passed over Blackie’s face. He closed his
+eyes for a moment. Without their light his countenance was ashen, and
+awful.
+
+A nurse in stripes and cap appeared in the doorway. She looked keenly
+at the little figure in the bed. Then she turned to us.
+
+“You must go now,” she said. “You were just to see him for a minute or
+two, you know.”
+
+Blackie summoned the wan ghost of a smile to his lips. “Guess you guys
+ain’t got th’ stimulatin’ effect that a bunch of live wires ought to
+have. Say, Norberg, tell that fathead, Callahan, if he don’t keep the
+third drawer t’ the right in my desk locked, th’ office kids’ll swipe
+all the roller rink passes surest thing you know.”
+
+“I’ll—tell him, Black,” stammered Norberg, and turned away.
+
+They said good-by, awkwardly enough. Not one of them that did not owe
+him an unpayable debt of gratitude. Not one that had not the memory of
+some secret kindness stored away in his heart. It was Blackie who had
+furnished the money that had sent Deming’s sick wife west. It had been
+Blackie who had rescued Schmidt time and again when drink got a
+strangle-hold. Blackie had always said: “Fire Schmidt! Not much! Why,
+Schmidt writes better stuff drunk than all the rest of the bunch
+sober.” And Schmidt would be granted another reprieve by the Powers
+that Were.
+
+Suddenly Blackie beckoned the nurse in the doorway. She came swiftly
+and bent over him.
+
+“Gimme two minutes more, that’s a good nursie. There’s something I want
+to say t’ this dame. It’s de rigger t’ hand out last messages, ain’t
+it?”
+
+The nurse looked at me, doubtfully. “But you’re not to excite
+yourself.”
+
+“Sa-a-ay, girl, this ain’t goin’ t’ be no scene from East Lynne. Be a
+good kid. The rest of the bunch can go.”
+
+And so, when the others had gone, I found myself seated at the side of
+his bed, trying to smile down at him. I knew that there must be nothing
+to excite him. But the words on my lips would come.
+
+“Blackie,” I said, and I struggled to keep my voice calm and
+emotionless, “Blackie, forgive me. It is all my fault—my wretched
+fault.”
+
+“Now, cut that,” interrupted Blackie. “I thought that was your game.
+That’s why I said I wanted t’ talk t’ you. Now, listen. Remember my
+tellin’ you, a few weeks ago, ’bout that vacation I was plannin’? This
+is it, only it’s come sooner than I expected, that’s all. I seen two
+three doctor guys about it. Your friend Von Gerhard was one of ’em.
+They didn’t tell me t’ take no ocean trip this time. Between ’em, they
+decided my vacation would come along about November, maybe. Well, I
+beat ’em to it, that’s all. Sa-a-ay, girl, I ain’t kickin’. You can’t
+live on your nerves and expect t’ keep goin’. Sooner or later you’ll be
+suein’ those same nerves for non-support. But, kid, ain’t it a shame
+that I got to go out in a auto smashup, in these days when even a
+airship exit don’t make a splash on the front page!”
+
+The nervous brown hand was moving restlessly over the covers. Finally
+it met my hand, and held it in a tense little grip.
+
+“We’ve been good pals, you and me, ain’t we, kid?”
+
+“Yes, Blackie.”
+
+“Ain’t regretted it none?”
+
+“Regretted it! I am a finer, truer, better woman for having known you,
+Blackie.”
+
+He gave a little contented sigh at that, and his eyes closed. When he
+opened them the old, whimsical smile wrinkled his face.
+
+“This is where I get off at. It ain’t been no long trip, but sa-a-ay,
+girl, I’ve enjoyed every mile of the road. All kinds of scenery—all
+kinds of lan’scape—plain—fancy—uphill—downhill—”
+
+I leaned forward, fearfully.
+
+“Not—yet,” whispered Blackie. “Say Dawn—in the story
+books—they—always—are strong on the—good-by kiss, what?”
+
+And as the nurse appeared in the doorway again, disapproval on her
+face, I stooped and gently pressed my lips to the pain-lined cheek.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+HAPPINESS
+
+
+We laid Peter to rest in that noisy, careless, busy city that he had
+loved so well, and I think his cynical lips would have curled in a
+bitterly amused smile, and his somber eyes would have flamed into
+sudden wrath if he could have seen how utterly and completely New York
+had forgotten Peter Orme. He had been buried alive ten years before—and
+Newspaper Row has no faith in resurrections. Peter Orme was not even a
+memory. Ten years is an age in a city where epochs are counted by
+hours.
+
+Now, after two weeks of Norah’s loving care, I was back in the pretty
+little city by the lake. I had come to say farewell to all those who
+had filled my life so completely in that year. My days of newspaper
+work were over. The autumn and winter would be spent at Norah’s,
+occupied with hours of delightful, congenial work, for the second book
+was to be written in the quiet peace of my own little Michigan town.
+Von Gerhard was to take his deferred trip to Vienna in the spring, and
+I knew that I was to go with him. The thought filled my heart with a
+great flood of happiness.
+
+Together Von Gerhard and I had visited Alma Pflugel’s cottage, and the
+garden was blooming in all its wonder of color and scent as we opened
+the little gate and walked up the worn path. We found them in the cool
+shade of the arbor, the two women sewing, Bennie playing with the last
+wonderful toy that Blackie had given him. They made a serene and
+beautiful picture there against the green canopy of the leaves. We
+spoke of Frau Nirlanger, and of Blackie, and of the strange snarl of
+events which had at last been unwound to knit a close friendship
+between us. And when I had kissed them and walked for the last time in
+many months up the flower-bordered path, the scarlet and pink, and
+green and gold of that wonderful garden swam in a mist before my eyes.
+
+Frau Nirlanger was next. When we spoke of Vienna she caught her breath
+sharply.
+
+“Vienna!” she repeated, and the longing in her voice was an actual
+pain. “Vienna! Gott! Shall I ever see it again? Vienna! My boy is
+there. Perhaps—”
+
+“Perhaps,” I said, gently. “Stranger things have happened. Perhaps if I
+could see them, and talk to them—if I could tell them—they might be
+made to understand. I haven’t been a newspaper reporter all these years
+without acquiring a golden gift of persuasiveness. Perhaps—who
+knows?—we may meet again in Vienna. Stranger things have happened.”
+
+Frau Nirlanger shook her head with a little hopeless sigh. “You do not
+know Vienna; you do not know the iron strength of caste, and custom and
+stiff-necked pride. I am dead in Vienna. And the dead should rest in
+peace.”
+
+It was late in the afternoon when Von Gerhard and I turned the corner
+which led to the building that held the Post. I had saved that for the
+last.
+
+“I hope that heaven is not a place of golden streets, and twanging
+harps and angel choruses,” I said, softly. “Little, nervous, slangy,
+restless Blackie, how bored and ill at ease he would be in such a
+heaven! How lonely, without his old black pipe, and his checked
+waistcoats, and his diamonds, and his sporting extra. Oh, I hope they
+have all those comforting, everyday things up there, for Blackie’s
+sake.”
+
+“How you grew to understand him in that short year,” mused Von Gerhard.
+“I sometimes used to resent the bond between you and this little
+Blackie whose name was always on your tongue.”
+
+“Ah, that was because you did not comprehend. It is given to very few
+women to know the beauty of a man’s real friendship. That was the bond
+between Blackie and me. To me he was a comrade, and to him I was a
+good-fellow girl—one to whom he could talk without excusing his pipe or
+cigarette. Love and love-making were things to bring a kindly, amused
+chuckle from Blackie.”
+
+Von Gerhard was silent. Something in his silence held a vague
+irritation for me. I extracted a penny from my purse, and placed it in
+his hand.
+
+“I was thinking,” he said, “that none are so blind as those who will
+not see.”
+
+“I don’t understand,” I said, puzzled.
+
+“That is well,” answered Von Gerhard, as we entered the building. “That
+is as it should be.” And he would say nothing more.
+
+The last edition of the paper had been run off for the day. I had
+purposely waited until the footfalls of the last departing reporter
+should have ceased to echo down the long corridor. The city room was
+deserted except for one figure bent over a pile of papers and proofs.
+Norberg, the city editor, was the last to leave, as always. His desk
+light glowed in the darkness of the big room, and his typewriter alone
+awoke the echoes.
+
+As I stood in the doorway he peered up from beneath his green
+eye-shade, and waved a cloud of smoke away with the palm of his hand.
+
+“That you, Mrs. Orme?” he called out. “Lord, we’ve missed you! That new
+woman can’t write an obituary, and her teary tales sound like they were
+carved with a cold chisel. When are you coming back?”
+
+“I’m not coming back,” I replied. “I’ve come to say good-by to you
+and—Blackie.”
+
+Norberg looked up quickly. “You feel that way, too? Funny. So do the
+rest of us. Sometimes I think we are all half sure that it is only
+another of his impish tricks, and that some morning he will pop open
+the door of the city room here and call out, ‘Hello, slaves! Been
+keepin’ m’ memory green?’”
+
+I held out my hand to him, gratefully. He took it in his great palm,
+and a smile dimpled his plump cheeks. “Going to blossom into a regular
+little writer, h’m? Well, they say it’s a paying game when you get the
+hang of it. And I guess you’ve got it. But if ever you feel that you
+want a real thrill—a touch of the old satisfying newspaper feeling—a
+sniff of wet ink—the music of some editorial cussing—why come up here
+and I’ll give you the hottest assignment on my list, if I have to take
+it away from Deming’s very notebook.”
+
+When I had thanked him I crossed the hall and tried the door of the
+sporting editor’s room. Von Gerhard was waiting for me far down at the
+other end of the corridor. The door opened and I softly entered and
+shut it again. The little room was dim, but in the half-light I could
+see that Callahan had changed something—had shoved a desk nearer the
+window, or swung the typewriter over to the other side. I resented it.
+I glanced up at the corner where the shabby old office coat had been
+wont to hang. There it dangled, untouched, just as he had left it.
+Callahan had not dared to change that. I tip-toed over to the corner
+and touched it gently with my fingers. A light pall of dust had settled
+over the worn little garment, but I knew each worn place, each
+ink-spot, each scorch or burn from pipe or cigarette. I passed my hands
+over it reverently and gently, and then, in the dimness of that quiet
+little room I laid my cheek against the rough cloth, so that the scent
+of the old black pipe came back to me once more, and a new spot
+appeared on the coat sleeve—a damp, salt spot. Blackie would have hated
+my doing that. But he was not there to see, and one spot more or less
+did not matter; it was such a grimy, disreputable old coat.
+
+“Dawn!” called Von Gerhard softly, outside the door. “Dawn! Coming,
+Kindchen?”
+
+I gave the little coat a parting pat. “Goodby,” I whispered, under my
+breath, and turned toward the door.
+
+“Coming!” I called, aloud.
+
+
+
+
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