breast. She cooed to him in a babble of French and German and English, calling him her lee-tel Oscar. Bennie seemed miraculously to understand. Perhaps he was becoming accustomed to having strange ladies snatch him to their breasts.
“So,” said Frau Nirlanger, looking up at us. “Is he not sweet? He shall be my lee-tel boy, nicht? For one small year he shall be my own boy. Ach, I am but lonely all the long day here in this strange land. You will let me care for him, nicht? And Konrad, he will be very angry, but that shall make no bit of difference. Eh, Oscar?”
And so the thing was settled, and an hour later three anxious-browed women were debating the weighty question of eggs or bread-and-milk for Bennie’s supper. Frau Nirlanger was for soft-boiled eggs as being none too heavy after orphan asylum fare; I was for bread-and-milk, that being the prescribed supper dish for all the orphans and waifs that I had ever read about, from “The Wide, Wide World” to “Helen’s Babies,” and back again. Frau Knapf was for both eggs and bread-and-milk with a dash of meat and potatoes thrown in for good measure, and a slice or so of Kuchen on the side. We compromised on one egg, one glass of milk, and a slice of lavishly buttered bread, and jelly. It was a clean, sweet, sleepy-eyed Bennie that we tucked between the sheets. We three women stood looking down at him as he lay there in the quaint old blue-painted bed that had once held the plump little Knapfs.
“You think anyway he had enough supper? mused the anxious-browed Frau Knapf.
“To school he will have to go, yes?” murmured Frau Nirlanger, regretfully.
I tucked in the covers at one side of the bed, not that they needed tucking, but because it was such a comfortable, satisfying thing to do.
“Just at this minute,” I said, as I tucked, “I’d rather be a newspaper reporter than anything else in the world. As a profession ‘tis so broadenin’, an’ at the same time, so chancey.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE TEST
Some day the marriageable age for women will be advanced from twenty to thirty, and the old maid line will be changed from thirty to forty. When that time comes there will be surprisingly few divorces. The husband of whom we dream at twenty is not at all the type of man who attracts us at thirty. The man I married at twenty was a brilliant, morbid, handsome, abnormal creature with magnificent eyes and very white teeth and no particular appetite at mealtime. The man whom I could care for at thirty would be the normal, safe and substantial sort who would come in at six o’clock, kiss me once, sniff the air twice and say: “Mm! What’s that smells so good, old girl? I’m as hungry as a bear. Trot it out. Where are the kids?”
These are dangerous things to think upon. So dangerous and disturbing to the peace of mind that I have decided not to see Ernst von Gerhard for a week or two. I find that seeing him is apt to make me forget Peter Orme; to forget that my duty begins with a capital D; to forget that I am dangerously near the thirty year old mark; to forget Norah, and Max, and the Spalpeens, and the world, and everything but the happiness of being near him, watching his eyes say one thing while his lips say another.
At such times I am apt to work myself up into rather a savage frame of mind, and to shut myself in my room evenings, paying no heed to Frau Nirlanger’s timid knocking, or Bennie’s goodnight message. I uncover my typewriter and set to work at the thing which may or may not be a book, and am extremely wretched and gloomy and pessimistic, after this fashion:
“He probably wouldn’t care anything about you if you were free. It is just a case of the fruit that is out of reach being the most desirable. Men don’t marry frumpy, snuffy old things of thirty, or thereabouts. Men aren’t marrying now-a-days, anyway. Certainly not for love. They marry for position, or power, or money, when they do marry. Think of all the glorious creatures he meets every day—women whose hair, and finger-nails and teeth and skin are a religion; women whose clothes are a fine art; women who are free to care only for themselves; to rest, to enjoy, to hear delightful music, and read charming books, and eat delicious food. He doesn’t really care about you, with your rumpled blouses, and your shabby gloves and shoes, and your somewhat doubtful linen collars. The last time you saw him you were just coming home from the office after a dickens of a day, and there was a smudge on the end of your nose, and he told you of it, laughing. But you didn’t laugh. You rubbed it off, furiously, and you wanted to cry. Cry! You, Dawn O’Hara! Begorra! ‘Tis losin’ your sense av humor you’re after doin’! Get to work.”
After which I would fall upon the book in a furious, futile fashion, writing many incoherent, irrelevant paragraphs which I knew would be cast aside as worthless on the sane and reasoning to-morrow.
Oh, it had been easy enough to talk of love in a lofty, superior impersonal way that New Year’s day. Just the luxury of speaking of it at all, after those weeks of repression, sufficed. But it is not so easy to be impersonal and lofty when the touch of a coat sleeve against your arm sends little prickling, tingling shivers racing madly through thousands of too taut nerves. It is not so easy to force the mind and tongue into safe, sane channels when they are forever threatening to rush together in an overwhelming torrent that will carry misery and destruction in its wake. Invariably we talk with feverish earnestness about the book; about my work at the office; about Ernst’s profession, with its wonderful growth; about Norah, and Max and the Spalpeens, and the home; about the latest news; about the weather; about Peter Orme—and then silence.
At our last meeting things took a new and startling turn. So startling, so full of temptation and happiness- that-must-not-be, that I resolved to forbid myself the pain and joy of being, near him until I could be quite sure that my grip on Dawn O’Hara was firm, unshakable and lasting.
Von Gerhard sports a motor-car, a rakish little craft, built long and low, with racing lines, and a green complexion, and a nose that cuts through the air like the prow of a swift boat through water. Von Gerhard had promised me a spin in it on the first mild day. Sunday turned out to be unexpectedly lamblike, as only a March day can be, with real sunshine that warmed the end of one’s nose instead of laughing as it tweaked it, as the lying February sunshine had done.
“But warmly you must dress yourself,” Von Gerhard warned me, “with no gauzy blouses or sleeveless gowns. The air cuts like a knife, but it feels good against the face. And a little road-house I know, where one is served great steaming plates of hot oyster stew. How will that be for a lark, yes?”
And so I had swathed myself in wrappings until I could scarcely clamber into the panting little car, and we had darted off along the smooth lake drives, while the wind whipped the scarlet into our cheeks, even while it brought the tears to our eyes. There was no chance for conversation, even if Von Gerhard had been in talkative mood, which he was not. He seemed more taciturn than usual, seated there at the wheel, looking straight ahead at the ribbon of road, his eyes narrowed down to mere keen blue slits. I realized, without alarm, that he was driving furiously and lawlessly, and I did not care. Von Gerhard was that sort of man. One could sit quite calmly beside him while he pulled at the reins of a pair of runaway horses, knowing that he would conquer them in the end.
Just when my face began to feel as stiff and glazed as a mummy’s, we swung off the roadway and up to the entrance of the road-house that was to revive us with things hot and soupy.
“Another minute,” I said, through stiff lips, as I extricated myself from my swathings, “and I should have been what Mr. Mantalini described as a demnition body. For pity’s sake, tell ‘em the soup can’t be too hot nor too steaming for your lady friend. I’ve had enough fresh air to last me the remainder of my life. May I timidly venture to
