Dawn O'Hara, the Girl Who Laughed Part 11

"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 gla.s.s 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 sh.o.r.es."

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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 flus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 k.n.o.b 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 n.o.ble 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 b.u.t.tons 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 spa.r.s.e fringe.

"Mein Himmel!" thought I. "Am I dreaming? This isn't Wisconsin. This is Nurnberg, or Stra.s.sburg, 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 spa.r.s.e 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-cla.s.s 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 a.s.surance 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 wors.h.i.+pingly.

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 k.n.o.b turned slowly, and the door opened just enough to admit the top of a head crowned with a tight, moist German k.n.o.b of hair. I searched my memory to recognize the k.n.o.b, failed utterly and said again, this time with mingled curiosity and hospitality:

"Won't you come in?"