“Queer,” commented Max, “he runs up here every now and then to spend a quiet Sunday with Norah and me and the Spalpeens. Says it rests him. The kids swarm all over him, and tear him limb from limb. It doesn’t look restful, but he says it’s great. I think he came here from Berlin just after you left for New York, Dawn. Milwaukee fits him as if it had been made for him.”
“But you’re not going to drag this wonderful being up here just for me!” I protested, aghast.
Max pointed an accusing finger at me from the doorway. “Aren’t you what the bromides call a bundle of nerves? And isn’t Von Gerhard’s specialty untying just those knots? I’ll write to him tonight.”
And he did. And Von Gerhard came. The Spalpeens watched for him, their noses flattened against the window-pane, for it was raining. As he came up the path they burst out of the door to meet him. From my bedroom window I saw him come prancing up the walk like a boy, with the two children clinging to his coat-tails, all three quite unmindful of the rain, and yelling like Comanches.
Ten minutes later he had donned his professional dignity, entered my room, and beheld me in all my limp and pea-green beauty. I noted approvingly that he had to stoop a bit as he entered the low doorway, and that the Vandyke of my prophecy was missing.
He took my hand in his own steady, reassuring clasp. Then he began to talk. Half an hour sped away while we discussed New York—books—music—theatres—everything and anything but Dawn O’Hara. I learned later that as we chatted he was getting his story, bit by bit, from every twitch of the eyelids, from every gesture of the hands that had grown too thin to wear the hateful ring; from every motion of the lips; from the color of my nails; from each convulsive muscle; from every shadow, and wrinkle and curve and line of my face.
Suddenly he asked: “Are you making the proper effort to get well? You try to conquer those jumping nerfs, yes?”
I glared at him. “Try! I do everything. I’d eat woolly worms if I thought they might benefit me. If ever a girl has minded her big sister and her doctor, that girl is I. I’ve eaten everything from pate de foie gras to raw beef, and I’ve drunk everything from blood to champagne.”
“Eggs? ” queried Von Gerhard, as though making a happy suggestion.
“Eggs!” I snorted. “Eggs! Thousands of ‘em! Eggs hard and soft boiled, poached and fried, scrambled and shirred, eggs in beer and egg-noggs, egg lemonades and egg orangeades, eggs in wine and eggs in milk, and eggs au naturel. I’ve lapped up iron-and-wine, and whole rivers of milk, and I’ve devoured rare porterhouse and roast beef day after day for weeks. So! Eggs!”
“Mein Himmel!” ejaculated he, fervently, “And you still live!” A suspicion of a smile dawned in his eyes. I wondered if he ever laughed. I would experiment.
“Don’t breathe it to a soul,” I whispered, tragically, “but eggs, and eggs alone, are turning my love for my sister into bitterest hate. She stalks me the whole day long, forcing egg mixtures down my unwilling throat. She bullies me. I daren’t put out my hand suddenly without knocking over liquid refreshment in some form, but certainly with an egg lurking in its depths. I am so expert that I can tell an egg orangeade from an egg lemonade at a distance of twenty yards, with my left hand tied behind me,and one eye shut, and my feet in a sack.”
“You can laugh, eh? Well, that iss good,” commented the grave and unsmiling one.
“Sure,” answered I, made more flippant by his solemnity. “Surely I can laugh. For what else was my father Irish? Dad used to say that a sense of humor was like a shillaly—an iligent thing to have around handy, especially when the joke’s on you.”
The ghost of a twinkle appeared again in the corners of the German blue eyes. Some fiend of rudeness seized me.
“Laugh!” I commanded.
Dr. Ernst von Gerhard stiffened. “Pardon?” inquired he, as one who is sure that he has misunderstood.
“Laugh!” I snapped again. “I’ll dare you to do it. I’ll double dare you! You dassen’t!”
But he did. After a moment’s bewildered surprise he threw back his handsome blond head and gave vent to a great, deep infectious roar of mirth that brought the Spalpeens tumbling up the stairs in defiance of their mother’s strict instructions.
After that we got along beautifully. He turned out to be quite human, beneath the outer crust of reserve. He continued his examination only after bribing the Spalpeens shamefully, so that even their rapacious demands were satisfied, and they trotted off contentedly.
There followed a process which reduced me to a giggling heap but which Von Gerhard carried out ceremoniously. It consisted of certain raps at my knees, and shins, and elbows, and fingers, and certain commands to—“look at my finger! Look at the wall! Look at my finger! Look at the wall!”
“So!” said Von Gerhard at last, in a tone of finality. I sank my battered frame into the nearest chair. “This—this newspaper work—it must cease.” He dismissed it with a wave of the hand.
“Certainly,” I said, with elaborate sarcasm. “How should you advise me to earn my living in the future? In the stories they paint dinner cards, don’t they? or bake angel cakes?”
“Are you then never serious?” asked Von Gerhard, in disapproval.
“Never,” said I. “An old, worn-out, worked-out newspaper reporter, with a husband in the mad-house, can’t afford to be serious for a minute, because if she were she’d go mad, too, with the hopelessness of it all.” And I buried my face in my hands.
The room was very still for a moment. Then the great Von Gerhard came over, and took my hands gently from my face. “I—I do beg your pardon,” he said. He looked strangely boyish and uncomfortable as he said it. “I was thinking only of your good. We do that, sometimes, forgetting that circumstances may make our wishes impossible of execution. So. You will forgive me?”
“Forgive you? Yes,indeed,” I assured him. And we shook hands, gravely. “But that doesn’t help matters much, after all, does it?”
“Yes, it helps. For now we understand one another, is it not so? You say you can only write for a living. Then why not write here at home? Surely these years of newspaper work have given you a great knowledge of human nature. Then too, there is your gift of humor. Surely that is a combination which should make your work acceptable to the magazines. Never in my life have I seen so many magazines as here in the United States. But hundreds! Thousands!”
