________________________________________________
_ 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 felt 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.
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, over-dressed. 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
school-girl 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 to-night. 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." _
Read next: CHAPTER IV - DAWN DEVELOPS A HEIMWEH
Read previous: CHAPTER II - MOSTLY EGGS
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