“Well,” drawled Blackie, a wicked gleam in his black eyes, “I’m some rejoiced m’self, old top. Angel wings and a white kimono, worn bare-footy, would go some rotten with my Spanish style of beauty, what? Didn’t know that you and m’dame friend here was acquainted. Known each other long?
I felt myself flushing again.
“I knew Dr. von Gerhard back home. I’ve scarcely seen him since I have been here. Famous specialists can’t be bothered with middle-aged relatives of their college friends, can they, Herr Doktor?”
And now it was Von Gerhard’s face that flushed a deep and painful crimson. He looked at me, in silence, and I felt very little, and insignificant, and much like an impudent child who has stuck out its tongue at its elders. Silent men always affect talkative women in that way.
“You know that what you say is not true,” he said, slowly.
“Well, we won’t quibble. We—we were just about to leave, weren’t we Blackie?”
“Just,” said Blackie, rising. “Sorry t’ see you drinkin’ Baumbach’s coffee, Doc. It ain’t fair t’ your patients.”
“Quite right,” replied Von Gerhard; and rose with us. “I shall not drink it. I shall walk home with Mrs. Orme instead, if she will allow me. That will be more stimulating than coffee, and twice as dangerous, perhaps, but —”
“You know how I hate that sort of thing,” I said, coldly, as we passed from the warmth of the little front shop where the plump girls were still filling pasteboard boxes with holiday cakes, to the brisk chill of the winter street. The little black-and-gilt sign swung and creaked in the wind. Whimsically, and with the memory of that last cream- filled cake fresh in my mind, I saluted the letters that spelled “Franz Baumbach.”
Blackie chuckled impishly. “Just the, same, try a pinch of soda bicarb’nate when you get home, Dawn,” he advised. “Well, I’m off to the factory again. Got t’ make up for time wasted on m’ lady friend. Auf wiedersehen!”
And the little figure in the checked top-coat trotted off.
“But he called you—Dawn,” broke from Von Gerhard.
“Mhum,” I agreed. “My name’s Dawn.”
“Surely not to him. You have known him but a few weeks. I would not have presumed—”
“Blackie never presumes,” I laughed. “Blackie’s just—Blackie. Imagine taking offense at him! He knows every one by their given name, from Jo, the boss of the pressroom, to the Chief, who imports his office coats from London. Besides, Blackie and I are newspaper men. And people don’t scrape and bow in a newspaper office— especially when they’re fond of one another. You wouldn’t understand.”
As I looked at Von Gerhard in the light of the street lamp I saw a tense, drawn look about the little group of muscles which show when the teeth are set hard. When he spoke those muscles had relaxed but little.
“One man does not talk ill of another. But this is different. I want to ask you—do you know what manner of man this—this Blackie is? I ask you because I would have you safe and sheltered always from such as he— because I—”
“Safe! From Blackie? Now listen. There never was a safer, saner, truer, more generous friend. Oh, I know what his life has been. But what else could it have been, beginning as he did? I have no wish to reform him. I tried my hand at reforming one man, and made a glorious mess of it. So I’ll just take Blackie as he is, if you please—slang, wickedness, pink shirt, red necktie, diamond rings and all. If there’s any bad in him, we all know it, for it’s right down on the table, face up. You’re just angry because he called you Doc.”
“Small one,” said Von Gerhard, in his quaint German idiom, “we will not quarrel, you and I. If I have been neglectful it was because edged tools were never a chosen plaything of mine. Perhaps your little Blackie realizes that he need have no fear of such things, for the Great Fear is upon him.”
“The Great Fear! You mean!—”
“I mean that there are too many fine little lines radiating from the corners of the sunken eyes, and that his hand-clasp leaves a moisture in the palm. Ach! you may laugh. Come, we will change the subject to something more cheerful, yes? Tell me, how grows the book?”
“By inches. After working all day on a bulletin paper whose city editor is constantly shouting: `Boil it now, fellows! Keep it down! We’re crowded!’ it is too much of a wrench to find myself seated calmly before my own typewriter at night, privileged to write one hundred thousand words if I choose. I can’t get over the habit of crowding the story all into the first paragraph. Whenever I flower into a descriptive passage I glance nervously over my shoulder, expecting to find Norberg stationed behind me, scissors and blue pencil in hand. Consequently the book, thus far, sounds very much like a police reporter’s story of a fire four minutes before the paper is due to go to press.”
Von Gerhard’s face was unsmiling. “So,” he said, slowly. “You burn the candle at both ends. All day you write, is it not so? And at night you come home to write still more? Ach, Kindchen!—Na, we shall change all that. We will be better comrades, we two, yes? You remember that gay little walk of last autumn, when we explored the Michigan country lane at dusk? I shall be your Sunday Schatz, and there shall be more rambles like that one, to bring the roses into your cheeks. We shall be good Kameraden, as you and this little Griffith are— what is it they say—good fellows? That is it—good fellows, yes? So, shall we shake hands on it? ”
But I snatched my hand away. “I don’t want to be a good fellow,” I cried. “I’m tired of being a good fellow. I’ve been a good fellow for years and years, while every other married woman in the world has been happy in her own home, bringing up her babies. When I am old I want some sons to worry me, too, and to stay awake nights for, and some daughters to keep me young, and to prevent me from doing my hair in a knob and wearing bonnets! I hate good-fellow women, and so do you, and so does every one else! I—I—”
“Dawn!” cried Von Gerhard. But I ran up the steps and into the house and slammed the door behind me, leaving him standing there.
CHAPTER IX
THE LADY FROM VIENNA
Two more aborigines have appeared. One of them is a lady aborigine. They made their entrance at supper and I forgot to eat, watching them. The newcomers are from Vienna. He is an expert engineer and she is a woman of noble birth, with a history. Their combined appearance is calculated to strike terror to the heart. He is daringly ugly, with a chin that curves in under his lip and then out in a peak, like
