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_ 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. _
Read next: CHAPTER XII - BENNIE THE CONSOLER
Read previous: CHAPTER X - A TRAGEDY OF GOWNS
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