Dawn O'Hara the Girl Who Laughed

by Edna Ferber

  “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 tonight.”

  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 pate 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 Unit
ed 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 anties!” 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 fel
t 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.