HAPPINESS
We laid Peter to rest in that noisy, careless, busy city that he had
loved so well, and I think his cynical lips would have curled in a
bitterly amused smile, and his somber eyes would have flamed into
sudden wrath if he could have seen how utterly and completely New York
had forgotten Peter Orme. He had been buried alive ten years before—and
Newspaper Row has no faith in resurrections. Peter Orme was not even a
memory. Ten years is an age in a city where epochs are counted by
hours.
Now, after two weeks of Norah’s loving care, I was back in the pretty
little city by the lake. I had come to say farewell to all those who
had filled my life so completely in that year. My days of newspaper
work were over. The autumn and winter would be spent at Norah’s,
occupied with hours of delightful, congenial work, for the second book
was to be written in the quiet peace of my own little Michigan town.
Von Gerhard was to take his deferred trip to Vienna in the spring, and
I knew that I was to go with him. The thought filled my heart with a
great flood of happiness.
Together Von Gerhard and I had visited Alma Pflugel’s cottage, and the
garden was blooming in all its wonder of color and scent as we opened
the little gate and walked up the worn path. We found them in the cool
shade of the arbor, the two women sewing, Bennie playing with the last
wonderful toy that Blackie had given him. They made a serene and
beautiful picture there against the green canopy of the leaves. We
spoke of Frau Nirlanger, and of Blackie, and of the strange snarl of
events which had at last been unwound to knit a close friendship
between us. And when I had kissed them and walked for the last time in
many months up the flower-bordered path, the scarlet and pink, and
green and gold of that wonderful garden swam in a mist before my eyes.
Frau Nirlanger was next. When we spoke of Vienna she caught her breath
sharply.
“Vienna!” she repeated, and the longing in her voice was an actual
pain. “Vienna! Gott! Shall I ever see it again? Vienna! My boy is
there. Perhaps—”
“Perhaps,” I said, gently. “Stranger things have happened. Perhaps if I
could see them, and talk to them—if I could tell them—they might be
made to understand. I haven’t been a newspaper reporter all these years
without acquiring a golden gift of persuasiveness. Perhaps—who
knows?—we may meet again in Vienna. Stranger things have happened.”
Frau Nirlanger shook her head with a little hopeless sigh. “You do not
know Vienna; you do not know the iron strength of caste, and custom and
stiff-necked pride. I am dead in Vienna. And the dead should rest in
peace.”
It was late in the afternoon when Von Gerhard and I turned the corner
which led to the building that held the Post. I had saved that for the
last.
“I hope that heaven is not a place of golden streets, and twanging
harps and angel choruses,” I said, softly. “Little, nervous, slangy,
restless Blackie, how bored and ill at ease he would be in such a
heaven! How lonely, without his old black pipe, and his checked
waistcoats, and his diamonds, and his sporting extra. Oh, I hope they
have all those comforting, everyday things up there, for Blackie’s
sake.”
“How you grew to understand him in that short year,” mused Von Gerhard.
“I sometimes used to resent the bond between you and this little
Blackie whose name was always on your tongue.”
“Ah, that was because you did not comprehend. It is given to very few
women to know the beauty of a man’s real friendship. That was the bond
between Blackie and me. To me he was a comrade, and to him I was a
good-fellow girl—one to whom he could talk without excusing his pipe or
cigarette. Love and love-making were things to bring a kindly, amused
chuckle from Blackie.”
Von Gerhard was silent. Something in his silence held a vague
irritation for me. I extracted a penny from my purse, and placed it in
his hand.
“I was thinking,” he said, “that none are so blind as those who will
not see.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, puzzled.
“That is well,” answered Von Gerhard, as we entered the building. “That
is as it should be.” And he would say nothing more.
The last edition of the paper had been run off for the day. I had
purposely waited until the footfalls of the last departing reporter
should have ceased to echo down the long corridor. The city room was
deserted except for one figure bent over a pile of papers and proofs.
Norberg, the city editor, was the last to leave, as always. His desk
light glowed in the darkness of the big room, and his typewriter alone
awoke the echoes.
As I stood in the doorway he peered up from beneath his green
eye-shade, and waved a cloud of smoke away with the palm of his hand.
“That you, Mrs. Orme?” he called out. “Lord, we’ve missed you! That new
woman can’t write an obituary, and her teary tales sound like they were
carved with a cold chisel. When are you coming back?”
“I’m not coming back,” I replied. “I’ve come to say good-by to you
and—Blackie.”
Norberg looked up quickly. “You feel that way, too? Funny. So do the
rest of us. Sometimes I think we are all half sure that it is only
another of his impish tricks, and that some morning he will pop open
the door of the city room here and call out, ‘Hello, slaves! Been
keepin’ m’ memory green?’”
I held out my hand to him, gratefully. He took it in his great palm,
and a smile dimpled his plump cheeks. “Going to blossom into a regular
little writer, h’m? Well, they say it’s a paying game when you get the
hang of it. And I guess you’ve got it. But if ever you feel that you
want a real thrill—a touch of the old satisfying newspaper feeling—a
sniff of wet ink—the music of some editorial cussing—why come up here
and I’ll give you the hottest assignment on my list, if I have to take
it away from Deming’s very notebook.”
When I had thanked him I crossed the hall and tried the door of the
sporting editor’s room. Von Gerhard was waiting for me far down at the
other end of the corridor. The door opened and I softly entered and
shut it again. The little room was dim, but in the half-light I could
see that Callahan had changed something—had shoved a desk nearer the
window, or swung the typewriter over to the other side. I resented it.
I glanced up at the corner where the shabby old office coat had been
wont to hang. There it dangled, untouched, just as he had left it.
Callahan had not dared to change that. I tip-toed over to the corner
and touched it gently with my fingers. A light pall of dust had settled
over the worn little garment, but I knew each worn place, each
ink-spot, each scorch or burn from pipe or cigarette. I passed my hands
over it reverently and gently, and then, in the dimness of that quiet
little room I laid my cheek against the rough cloth, so that the scent
of the old black pipe came back to me once more, and a new spot
appeared on the coat sleeve—a damp, salt spot. Blackie would have hated
my doing that. But he was not there to see, and one spot more or less
did not matter; it was such a grimy, disreputable old coat.
“Dawn!” called Von Gerhard softly, outside the door. “Dawn! Coming,
Kindchen?”
I gave the little coat a parting pat. “Goodby,” I whispered, under my
breath, and turned toward the door.
“Coming!” I called, aloud.