GOOD AS NEW
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 antics!” 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 now-a-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.”