Dawn O'Hara: The Girl Who Laughed Read online

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  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

  I THE SMASH-UP II MOSTLY EGGS III GOOD As NEW IV DAWN DEVELOPS A HEIMWEH V THE ABSURD BECOMES SERIOUS VI STEEPED IN GERMAN VII BLACKIE'S PHILOSOPHY VIII KAFFEE AND KAFFEEKUCHEN IX THE LADY FROM VIENNA X A TRAGEDY OF GOWNS XI VON GERHARD SPEAKS XII BENNIE THE CONSOLER XIII THE TEST XIV BENNIE AND THE CHARMING OLD MAID XV FAREWELL TO KNAPFS' XVI JUNE MOONLIGHT, AND A NEW BOARDING HOUSE XVII THE SHADOW OF TERROR XVIII PETER ORME XIX A TURN OF THE WHEEL XX BLACKIE'S VACATION COMES XXI HAPPINESS

  DAWN O'HARA

  CHAPTER I. THE SMASH-UP

  There are a number of things that are pleasanter than being sick in aNew York boarding-house when one's nearest dearest is a married sisterup in far-away Michigan.

  Some one must have been very kind, for there were doctors, and ablue-and-white striped nurse, and bottles and things. There was evena vase of perky carnations--scarlet ones. I discovered that they had atrick of nodding their heads, saucily. The discovery did not appear tosurprise me.

  "Howdy-do!" said I aloud to the fattest and reddest carnation thatovertopped all the rest. "How in the world did you get in here?"

  The striped nurse (I hadn't noticed her before) rose from some cornerand came swiftly over to my bedside, taking my wrist between herfingers.

  "I'm very well, thank you," she said, smiling, "and I came in at thedoor, of course."

  "I wasn't talking to you," I snapped, crossly, "I was speaking to thecarnations; particularly to that elderly one at the top--the fat one whokeeps bowing and wagging his head at me."

  "Oh, yes," answered the striped nurse, politely, "of course. That one isvery lively, isn't he? But suppose we take them out for a little whilenow."

  She picked up the vase and carried it into the corridor, and thecarnations nodded their heads more vigorously than ever over hershoulder.

  I heard her call softly to some one. The some one answered with a sharplittle cry that sounded like, "Conscious!"

  The next moment my own sister Norah came quietly into the room, andknelt at the side of my bed and took me in her arms. It did not seemat all surprising that she should be there, patting me with reassuringlittle love pats, murmuring over me with her lips against my check,calling me a hundred half-forgotten pet names that I had not heard foryears. But then, nothing seemed to surprise me that surprising day. Noteven the sight of a great, red-haired, red-faced, scrubbed looking manwho strolled into the room just as Norah was in the midst of denouncingnewspapers in general, and my newspaper in particular, and calling thecity editor a slave-driver and a beast. The big, red-haired man stoodregarding us tolerantly.

  "Better, eh?" said he, not as one who asks a question, but as thoughin confirmation of a thought. Then he too took my wrist between hisfingers. His touch was very firm and cool. After that he pulled down myeyelids 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 tableand looked it over, keen-eyed. There followed a clinking of bottles andglasses, a few low-spoken words to the nurse, and then, as she left theroom the big red-haired man seated himself heavily in the chair near thebedside and rested his great hands on his fat knees. He stared down atme in much the same way that a huge mastiff looks at a terrier. Finallyhis glance rested on my limp left hand.

  "Married, h'm?"

  For a moment the word would not come. I could hear Norah catch herbreath 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, halfsupplicating 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. Imoistened 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 hisvoice.

  "And your home is--where?"

  "Nowhere," I replied meekly, from my pillow. But at that Sis put herhand 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 thereas long as you can. Newspaper reporting, h'm? In New York? That's adevil of a job for a woman. And a husband who... Well, you'll have totake a six months' course in loafing, young woman. And at the end ofthat time, if you are still determined to work, can't you pick outsomething easier--like taking in scrubbing, for instance?"

  I managed a feeble smile, wishing that he would go away quickly, so thatI might sleep. He seemed to divine my thoughts, for he disappearedinto the corridor, taking Norah with him. Their voices, low-pitched andcarefully 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 paintthe fascination of the man who was my husband? She had never known thecharm of him as I had known it in those few brief months before ourmarriage. She had never felt the caress of his voice, or the magnetismof his strange, smoldering eyes glowing across the smoke-dimmed cityroom as I had felt them fixed on me. No one had ever known what hehad meant to the girl of twenty, with her brain full of unspokendreams--dreams which were all to become glorious realities in thatwonder-place, New York.

  How he had fired my country-girl imagination! He had been the mostbrilliant writer on the big, brilliant sheet--and the most dissolute.How my heart had pounded on that first lonely day when this Wonder-Beinglooked up from his desk, saw me, and strolled over to where I sat beforemy typewriter! He smiled down at me, companionably. I'm quite sure thatmy mouth must have been wide open with surprise. He had been smoking acigarette an expensive-looking, gold-tipped one. Now he removed it frombetween his lips with that hand that always shook a little, and droppedit to the floor, crushing it lightly with the toe of his boot. He threwback his handsome head and sent out the last mouthful of smoke in athin, lazy spiral. I remember thinking what a pity it was that he shouldhave crushed that costly-looking cigarette, just for me.

  "My name's Orme," he said, gravely. "Peter Orme. And if yours isn'tShaughnessy or Burke at least, then I'm no judge of what black hair andgray eyes stand for."

  "Then you're not," retorted I, laughing up at him, "for it happens to beO'Hara--Dawn O'Hara, if ye plaze."

  He picked up a trifle that lay on my desk--a pencil, perhaps, or a bitof 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 bitembarrassed, and very young. Suddenly he raised his smoldering eyes tomine, and I saw that they had taken on a deeper glow. His white, eventeeth showed in a half smile.

  "Dawn O'Hara," said he, slowly, and the name had never sounded in theleast like music before, "Dawn O'Hara. It sounds like a rose--a pinkblush rose that is deeper pink at its heart, and very sweet."

  He picked up the trifle with which he had been toying and eyed itintently 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 aft
erhim like a little simpleton, puzzled, bewildered, stunned. That had beenthe beginning of it all.

  He had what we Irish call "a way wid him." I wonder now why I did not gomad with the joy, and the pain, and the uncertainty of it all. Never wasa girl so dazzled, so humbled, so worshiped, so neglected, so courted.He was a creature of a thousand moods to torture one. What guise wouldhe wear to-day? Would he be gay, or dour, or sullen, or teasing orpassionate, or cold, or tender or scintillating? I know that my handswere always cold, and my cheeks were always hot, those days.

  He wrote like a modern Demosthenes, with all political New York toquiver under his philippics. The managing editor used to send him outon wonderful assignments, and they used to hold the paper for his stuffwhen it was late. Sometimes he would be gone for days at a time, andwhen 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 andcall 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 hewould brush past the men who were crowded around him, and turn inmy 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 loveof drink? A weakness which I would transform into strength. His whitehot flashes of uncontrollable temper? Surely they would die down atmy cool, tender touch. His fits of abstraction and irritability? Mereevidences of the genius within. Oh, my worshiping soul was always alertwith 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 appearoftener than any other moods. I used to laugh, sometimes, when I wasalone, at the bitter humor of it all. It was like a Duchess novel cometo life.

  His work began to show slipshod in spots. They talked to him about itand he laughed at them. Then, one day, he left them in the ditch on thebig story of the McManus indictment, and the whole town scooped him, andthe managing editor told him that he must go. His lapses had become toofrequent. 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 littleapartment and told me. The smoldering eyes were flaming now. His lipswere flecked with a sort of foam. I stared at him in horror. He strodeover to me, clasped his fingers about my throat and shook me as a dogshakes 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 myselffree, fled to my room, and locked the door and stood against it withmy hand pressed over my heart until I heard the outer door slam and theecho of his footsteps die away.

  Divorce! That was my only salvation. No, that would be cowardly now. Iwould wait until he was on his feet again, and then I would demand myold free life back once more. This existence that was dragging me intothe gutter--this was not life! Life was a glorious, beautiful thing, andI would have it yet. I laid my plans, feverishly, and waited. He didnot come back that night, or the next, or the next, or the next. Indesperation I went to see the men at the office. No, they had not seenhim. Was there anything that they could do? they asked. I smiled, andthanked them, and said, oh, Peter was so absent-minded! No doubt he hadmisdirected his letters, or something of the sort. And then I went backto the flat to resume the horrible waiting.

  One week later he turned up at the old office which had cast him off. Hesat down at his former desk and began to write, breathlessly, as heused to in the days when all the big stories fell to him. One of themen reporters strolled up to him and touched him on the shoulder,man-fashion. Peter Orme raised his head and stared at him, and the mansprang back in terror. The smoldering eyes had burned down to an ash.Peter Orme was quite bereft of all reason. They took him away thatnight, and I kept telling myself that it wasn't true; that it was alla nasty dream, and I would wake up pretty soon, and laugh about it, andtell it at the breakfast table.

  Well, one does not seek a divorce from a husband who is insane. The busymen on the great paper were very kind. They would take me back on thestaff. Did I think that I still could write those amusing little humaninterest stories? Funny ones, you know, with a punch in 'em.

  Oh, plenty of good stories left in me yet, I assured them. They mustremember that I was only twenty-one, after all, and at twenty-one onedoes not lose the sense of humor.

  And so I went back to my old desk, and wrote bright, chatty letters hometo Norah, and ground out very funny stories with a punch in 'em, thatthe husband in the insane asylum might be kept in comforts. With bothhands I hung on like grim death to that saving sense of humor, resolvedto make something of that miserable mess which was my life--to makesomething of it yet. And now--

  At this point in my musings there was an end of the low-voicedconversation in the hall. Sis tiptoed in and looked her disapproval atfinding me sleepless.

  "Dawn, old girlie, this will never do. Shut your eyes now, like a goodchild, 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'tyou? You must! This is killing you. Don't make me go away leaving youhere. 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 NewYork. Home, with me."

  I reached up uncertainly, and brought her hand down to my lips and agreat peace descended upon my sick soul. "Home--with you," I said, likea child, and fell asleep.