Dawn O'Hara the Girl Who Laughed

by Edna Ferber

  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, overdressed. 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 schoolgirl 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 nowa-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 tonight. 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 cubbyhole, 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 shortcake. 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.