MOSTLY EGGS
Oh, but it was clean, and sweet, and wonderfully still, that
rose-and-white room at Norah’s! No street cars to tear at one’s nerves
with grinding brakes and clanging bells; no tramping of restless feet
on the concrete all through the long, noisy hours; no shrieking
midnight joy-riders; not one of the hundred sounds which make night
hideous in the city. What bliss to lie there, hour after hour, in a
delicious half-waking, half-sleeping, wholly exquisite stupor, only
rousing myself to swallow egg-nogg No. 426, and then to flop back again
on the big, cool pillow!
New York, with its lights, its clangor, its millions, was only a
far-away, jumbled nightmare. The office, with its clacking typewriters,
its insistent, nerve-racking telephone bells, its systematic rush, its
smoke-dimmed city room, was but an ugly part of the dream.
Back to that inferno of haste and scramble and clatter? Never! Never! I
resolved, drowsily. And dropped off to sleep again.
And the sheets. Oh, those sheets of Norah’s! Why, they were white,
instead of gray! And they actually smelled of flowers. For that matter,
there were rosebuds on the silken coverlet. It took me a week to get
chummy with that rosebud-and-down quilt. I had to explain carefully to
Norah that after a half-dozen years of sleeping under doubtful
boarding-house blankets one does not so soon get rid of a shuddering
disgust for coverings which are haunted by the ghosts of a hundred
unknown sleepers. Those years had taught me to draw up the sheet with
scrupulous care, to turn it down, and smooth it over, so that no
contaminating and woolly blanket should touch my skin. The habit stuck
even after Norah had tucked me in between her fragrant sheets.
Automatically my hands groped about, arranging the old protecting
barrier.
“What’s the matter, Fuss-fuss?” inquired Norah, looking on. “That down
quilt won’t bite you; what an old maid you are!”
“Don’t like blankets next to my face,” I elucidated, sleepily, “never
can tell who slept under ’em last—”
“You cat!” exclaimed Norah, making a little rush at me. “If you weren’t
supposed to be ill I’d shake you! Comparing my darling rosebud quilt to
your miserable gray blankets! Just for that I’ll make you eat an extra
pair of eggs.”
There never was a sister like Norah. But then, who ever heard of a
brother-in-law like Max? No woman—not even a frazzled-out newspaper
woman—could receive the love and care that they gave me, and fail to
flourish under it. They had been Dad and Mother to me since the day
when Norah had tucked me under her arm and carried me away from New
York. Sis was an angel; a comforting, twentieth-century angel, with
white apron strings for wings, and a tempting tray in her hands in
place of the hymn books and palm leaves that the picture-book angels
carry. She coaxed the inevitable eggs and beef into more tempting forms
than Mrs. Rorer ever guessed at. She could disguise those two plain,
nourishing articles of diet so effectually that neither hen nor cow
would have suspected either of having once been part of her anatomy.
Once I ate halfway through a melting, fluffy, peach-bedecked plate of
something before I discovered that it was only another egg in disguise.
“Feel like eating a great big dinner to-day, Kidlet?” Norah would ask
in the morning as she stood at my bedside (with a glass of
egg-something in her hand, of course).
“Eat!”—horror and disgust shuddering through my voice—“Eat! Ugh! Don’t
s-s-speak of it to me. And for pity’s sake tell Frieda to shut the
kitchen door when you go down, will you? I can smell something like
ugh!—like pot roast, with gravy!” And I would turn my face to the wall.
Three hours later I would hear Sis coming softly up the stairs,
accompanied by a tinkling of china and glass. I would face her, all
protest.
“Didn’t I tell you, Sis, that I couldn’t eat a mouthful? Not a
mouthf—um-m-m-m! How perfectly scrumptious that looks! What’s that
affair in the lettuce leaf? Oh, can’t I begin on that divine-looking
pinky stuff in the tall glass? H’m? Oh, please!”
“I thought—” Norah would begin; and then she would snigger softly.
“Oh, well, that was hours ago,” I would explain, loftily. “Perhaps I
could manage a bite or two now.”
Whereupon I would demolish everything except the china and doilies.
It was at this point on the road to recovery, just halfway between
illness and health, that Norah and Max brought the great and unsmiling
Von Gerhard on the scene. It appeared that even New York was
respectfully aware of Von Gerhard, the nerve specialist, in spite of
the fact that he lived in Milwaukee. The idea of bringing him up to
look at me occurred to Max quite suddenly. I think it was on the
evening that I burst into tears when Max entered the room wearing a
squeaky shoe. The Weeping Walrus was a self-contained and tranquil
creature compared to me at that time. The sight of a fly on the wall
was enough to make me burst into a passion of sobs.
“I know the boy to steady those shaky nerves of yours, Dawn,” said Max,
after I had made a shamefaced apology for my hysterical weeping, “I’m
going to have Von Gerhard up here to look at you. He can run up Sunday,
eh, Norah?”
“Who’s Von Gerhard?” I inquired, out of the depths of my ignorance.
“Anyway, I won’t have him. I’ll bet he wears a Vandyke and spectacles.”
“Von Gerhard!” exclaimed Norah, indignantly. “You ought to be thankful
to have him look at you, even if he wears goggles and a flowing beard.
Why, even that red-haired New York doctor of yours cringed and looked
impressed when I told him that Von Gerhard was a friend of my
husband’s, and that they had been comrades at Heidelberg. I must have
mentioned him dozens of times in my letters.”
“Never.”
“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 to-night.”
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 pâté 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!”
“Me!” I exploded—“A real writer lady! No more interviews with
actresses! No more slushy Sunday specials! No more teary tales! Oh, my!
When may I begin? To-morrow? You know I brought my typewriter with me.
I’ve almost forgotten where the letters are on the keyboard.”
“Wait, wait; not so fast! In a month or two, perhaps. But first must
come other things—outdoor things. Also housework.”
“Housework!” I echoed, feebly.
“Naturlich. A little dusting, a little scrubbing, a little sweeping, a
little cooking. The finest kind of indoor exercise. Later you may write
a little—but very little. Run and play out of doors with the children.
When I see you again you will have roses in your cheeks like the German
girls, yes?”
“Yes,” I echoed, meekly, “I wonder how Frieda will like my elephantine
efforts at assisting with the housework. If she gives notice, Norah
will be lost to you.”
But Frieda did not give notice. After I had helped her clean the
kitchen and the pantry I noticed an expression of deepest pity
overspreading her lumpy features. The expression became almost one of
agony as she watched me roll out some noodles for soup, and delve into
the sticky mysteries of a new kind of cake.
Max says that for a poor working girl who hasn’t had time to cultivate
the domestic graces, my cakes are a distinct triumph. Sis sniffs at
that, and mutters something about cups of raisins and nuts and citron
hiding a multitude of batter sins. She never allows the Spalpeens to
eat my cakes, and on my baking days they are usually sent from the
table howling. Norah declares, severely, that she is going to hide the
Green Cook Book. The Green Cook Book is a German one. Norah bought it
in deference to Max’s love of German cookery. It is called Aunt
Julchen’s cook book, and the author, between hints as to flour and
butter, gets delightfully chummy with her pupil. Her cakes are proud,
rich cakes. She orders grandly:
“Now throw in the yolks of twelve eggs; one-fourth of a pound of
almonds; two pounds of raisins; a pound of citron; a pound of
orange-peel.”
As if that were not enough, there follow minor instructions as to
trifles like ounces of walnut meats, pounds of confectioner’s sugar,
and pints of very rich cream. When cold, to be frosted with an icing
made up of more eggs, more nuts, more cream, more everything.
The children have appointed themselves official lickers and scrapers of
the spoons and icing pans, also official guides on their auntie’s
walks. They regard their Aunt Dawn as a quite ridiculous but altogether
delightful old thing.
And Norah—bless her! looks up when I come in from a romp with the
Spalpeens and says: “Your cheeks are pink! Actually! And you’re losing
a puff there at the back of your ear, and your hat’s on crooked. Oh,
you are beginning to look your old self, Dawn dear!”
At which doubtful compliment I retort, recklessly: “Pooh! What’s a puff
more or less, in a worthy cause? And if you think my cheeks are pink
now, just wait until your mighty Von Gerhard comes again. By that time
they shall be so red and bursting that Frieda’s, on wash day, will look
anemic by comparison. Say, Norah, how red are German red cheeks,
anyway?”