 Chapter 7 of Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed. Chapter 7. Blackie's Philosophy. I did not write Nora about Von Gerhard. After all, I told myself, there was nothing to write, and so I was the first to break the solemn pact that we had made. You will write everything, won't you, Don dear? Nora had pleaded with tears in her pretty eyes. Promise me, we've been nearer to each other in these last few months than we have been since we were girls, and I've loved it so. Please don't do as you did during those miserable years in New York when you were fighting your troubles alone and we knew nothing of it. You wrote only the happy things. Promise me you'll write the unhappy ones too, though the saints forbid that there should be any to write. And, Don, don't you dare to forget your heavy underwear in November, those lake breezes. Well, someone has to tell you, and I can't leave those to Von Gerhard. He is promised to act as monitor over your health. And so I promised. I crammed my letters with descriptions of the canop household. I assured her that I was putting on so much weight that the skirts which formerly hung about me in limp, dejected folds now refused to meet in the back and all the hooks and eyes were making faces at each other. My cheeks, I told her, looked as if I were wearing plumpers, and I was beginning to waddle and puff as I walked. Nora made frantic answer. For mercy's sake, child, be careful or you'll be fat. To which I replied, Don't care if I am, rather be hunky and healthy than skinny and sick, have tried both. It is impossible to avoid becoming round cheeked when one is working on a paper that allows one to shut one's desk and amble comfortably home for dinner at least five days in the week. Everybody is at least plump in this comfortable, get-moth-like town where everybody placidly locks his shop or office and goes home at noon to dine heavily on soup and meat and vegetables and pudding, washed down by the inevitable beer and followed by forty winks on the dining room sofa where the German Zeitung spread comfortably over the head as protection against the flies. There is a fascination about the bright little city. There is about it something quaint and foreign as though a cross-section of the old world had been dumped bodily into the lap of Wisconsin. It does not seem at all strange to hear Germans spoken everywhere, in the streets, in the shops, in the theaters, in the streetcars. Today I chanced upon a sign hung above the doorway of a little German bakery over on the north side. There were hornken and coffee-cooking in the windows and a brood of flaxen-haired and sticky children in the back of the shop. I stopped open-mouth to stare at the worn sign tacked over the door. Here word English is spoken, it announced. I blinked. Then I read it again. I shut my eyes and opened them again suddenly. The fat German letters spoke their message as before. English spoken here. On reaching the office I told Norberg the city editor about my find. He was not impressed. Norberg never is impressed. He is the most soul-satisfying and theatrical city editor that I have ever met. He is fat and unbelievably nimble and keen-eyed and untiring. He says, hell, when things go wrong, he smokes innumerable cigarettes, inhaling the fumes and sending out the thin wraith of smoke with little explosive sounds between tongue and lips. He wears blue shirts and no collar to speak of, and his trousers are kept in place only by a miracle and an inefficient-looking leather belt. I refused to see the story in the little German bakery sign I began to argue. But man alive, this is America. I think I know a story when I see it. Suppose you were traveling in Germany and should come across a sign over a shop saying, here word Deutsche gespoken. Wouldn't you think you were dreaming? Norberg waved an explanatory hand. This isn't America, this is Milwaukee. After you've lived here a year or so you'll understand what I mean. If I should run a story of that sign with a two-column cut, Milwaukee wouldn't even see the joke. But it was not necessary that I live in Milwaukee a year or so in order to understand its peculiarities, for I had a personal conductor and efficient guide in the new friend that had come into my life with the first day of my work on the post. Surely no woman ever had a stronger friend than little Blackie Griffith, sporting amateur of the Milwaukee Post. We became friends, not step by step, but in one gigantic leap such as sometimes triumphs over the gap between acquaintance and liking. I never shall forget my first glimpse of him. He strolled into the city room from his little domicile across the hall. A shabby, disreputable, out-of-elbow's office coat was worn over his ultra-smart street clothes, and he was puffing at a freakish little pipe in the shape of a miniature automobile. He eyed me a moment from the doorway, a fantastic, elfin little figure. I thought that I'd never seen so strange and so ugly a face as that of this little brown Welshman with his lank, black hair, and his deep-set, uncanny black eyes. Suddenly he trotted over to me with a quick little step, and the doorway he had looked forty. Now a smile illumined the many lines of his dark countenance, and in some miraculous way he looked twenty. Are you the New York importation? he asked, his great black eyes searching my face. I'm what's left of it, I replied meekly. I understand you've been in for repairs, must've met up with something on the road. They say the go-in is full of bumps in New York. Bumps, I laughed. It's uphill every bit of the road, and yet you've got to go full speed to get anywhere, but I'm running easily again, thank you. He waved away a cloud of pipe smoke and knowingly squinted through the haze. We don't speed up much here, and there ain't no hill-climbing to speak of. But say, if you ever should hit a nasty place on the route, tut your siren for me, and I'll come. I'm a regular little human garage when it comes to patching up those aggravating screws that need oiling, and say, don't let Norberg bully you. My name's Blackie. I'm going to like you. Come over to my sanctum once in a while and I'll show you my scrapbook and let you play with the office revolver. And so it happened that I had not been in Milwaukee a month before Blackie and I were friends. Nora was horrified. My letters were full of him. I told her that she might get a more complete mental picture of him if she knew that he wore the pinkish shirts and the purplish neckties, and the blackest and whitest of black-and-white checked vests that ever aroused the envy of an office boy, and beneath them all, the gentlest of hearts. And therefore one loves him. There is a sort of spell about the illiterate little slangy brown Welshman. He is a presiding genius of the place. The office boys adore him. The old man takes his advice in selecting a new motor car. The managing editor arranges his lunch hour to suit Blackie's and they go off to the press club together arm in arm. It is Blackie who lends a sympathetic ear to the society editor's tale of woe. He hires and fires the office boys. Boldly he criticizes the news editor's makeup. He receives delegations of tan-coated, red-faced, prize-fighting-looking persons. He gently explains to the photographer why that last batch of cuts make their subjects look as if afflicted with the German measles. He arbitrates any row that the newspaper may have with such dignitaries as the mayor or the chief of police. He manages boxing shows. He skims about in a smart little roadster. He edits the best sporting page in the city. And at four o'clock of an afternoon, he likes to send around the corner for a chunk of devil's food cake with butter filling from the woman's exchange. Blackie never went to school to speak of. He doesn't know was from where. But he can see a story quicker and farther and clearer than any newspaper man I ever knew, accepting Peter Orm. There is a legend about to the effect that one day the managing editor, who is scotch and without a sense of humor, ordered that Blackie should henceforth be addressed by his surname of Griffith as being a more dignified appellation for the use of fellow reporters, hangers on, copy kids, office boys, and others about the big building. The day after the order was issued, the managing editor summoned a freckled youth and thrust a sheaf of galley-proofs into his hand. Take those to Mr. Griffith, he ordered, without looking up. To who? To Mr. Griffith, said the managing editor, laboriously and scowling a bit. The boy took three unwilling steps toward the door. Then he turned a puzzled face toward the managing editor. Say, honest, I ain't never here to that guy. He must be a new one. Where'll I find him? Oh, damn, take those proofs to Blackie, wrote the managing editor, and thus ended Blackie's enforced flight into the realms of dignity. All these things and more, I wrote to the scandalized Nora. I informed her that he wore more diamond rings and scarf pens and watch fobs than a railroad conductor, and that his checked topcoat shrieked to heaven. There came back a letter in which every third word was underlined, in which ended by asking what the morals of such a man could be. Then I tried to make Blackie more real to Nora, who, in all her sheltered life, had never come in contact with a man like this. As for his morals, or what you would consider his morals, sis, they probably are a deep crimson, but I'll swear there is no yellow streak. I never have heard anything more pathetic than his story. Blackie sold papers on a downtown corner when he was a baby, six years old. Then he got a job as office boy here, and he used to sharpen pencils and run errands and carry copy. After office hours, he took care of some horses in an alley bar nearby, and after that work was done, he was employed about the press room of one of the old German newspaper offices. Sometimes he would be too weary to crawl home after working half the night, and so he would fall asleep, a worn, tragic little figure, on a pile of old papers and sacks on a warm corner near the presses. He was the head of a household, and every penny counted, and all the time he was watching things and learning. Nothing escaped those keen black eyes. He used to help the photographer when there was a pile of plates to develop, and presently he knew more about photography than the man himself, so they made him staff photographer. In some marvelous way, he knew more ball players and fighters and horsemen than the sporting editor. He had a nose for news that was nothing short of wonderful. He never went out of the office without coming back with a story. They used to use him in the sporting department when a rush was on. Then he became one of the sporting staff, then assistant sporting editor, then sporting editor. He knows this paper from the basement up. He could operate a lannotype or act as managing editor with equal ease. No, I'm afraid that Blackie hasn't had much time for morals. But Nora, dear, I wish that you could hear him when he talks about his mother. He may follow doubtful paths and associate with questionable people and wear restless clothes, but I wouldn't exchange his friendship for that of a dozen of your ordinary so-called good men. All these years of work and suffering have made an old man of little Blackie, although he is young in years. But they haven't spoiled his heart any. He is able to distinguish between sham and truth because he has been obliged to do it ever since he was a child selling papers on the corner. But he still clings to the office that gave him his start, although he makes more money in a single week outside the office than his salary would amount to in half a year. He says that this is a job that does not interfere with his work. Such is Blackie. Surely the oddest friend a woman ever had. Blackie is a genius for friendship and a wonderful understanding of suffering, born of those years of hardship and probation. Each learned the other story bit by bit in a series of confidences exchanged during that peaceful, beatific period that follows just after the last edition has gone down. Blackie's little cubby-hole of an office is always blue with smoke and cluttered by the thousand odds and ends, photographs, souvenirs, boxing gloves, a litter of pipes and tobacco, a wardrobe of dust-covered discarded coats and hats, and Blackie in the midst of it all, sunken the depths of his swivel chair and looking like an amiable brown gnome or a cheerful little Joss House god come to life. There is in him an uncanny wisdom which only the streets can teach. He is one of those born newspaper men who could not live out of sight of the ticker tape and the copyhook and the proof sheet. You see, girl, it's like this here, Blackie explained one day. We're all working for some good reason. A few of us are working for the glory of it, and most of us are working to eat, and lots of us are plugging and saving in the hopes that someday we'll have money enough to get back at some people we know. But there is some few working for the pure love of the work, and I guess I'm one of them fools. You see, I started in it at this game when I was such a little runt that now it's an ingrowing habit, though it is comforting to know you got a place where you can always come in out of the rain and where you can have your mail sent. This newspaper work is a curse, I remarked. Show me a clever newspaper man and I'll show you a failure. There is nothing in it but the glory and little of that. We can thrive and scheme and run about all day getting a story, and then we write it at fever heat, searching our souls for words that are clean cut and virile, and then we turn it in, and what is it? What have we to show for our day's work? An ephemeral thing lacking the first breath of life, a thing that is dead before it is born. Why, any cub reporter, if he were to put into some other profession the same amount of nerve and tact, an ingenuity and finesse and stick-to-itiveness that he expends in prying a single story out of some unwilling victim could retire with a fortune in no time. Blackie blew down the stem of his pipe preparatory to refilling the bowl. There was a quizzical light in his black eyes. The little heap of burned matches at his elbow was growing to kindling wood proportions. It was common knowledge that Blackie's trick of lighting pipe or cigarette getting to puff at it caused his bill for matches to exceed his tobacco expense account. You talk, chuckled Blackie, like you meant it. But say, girl, it's a lonesome game, this retiring with a fortune. I've noticed that them guys who retire with a barrel of money usually dies at the end of the first year of a kind of a lingering homesickness. You can see their pictures in the papers with a pathetic story of how they was just beginning to enjoy life when along comes the grim reaper and claims them. Blackie slid down in his chair and blew a column of smoke ceilingward. I knew a guy once, Newspaper Man 2, who'd retired with a fortune. He used to do the city hall for us. Well, he got in soft for the administration before election and made quite a pile in stocks that was tipped off to him by his political friends. His wife was crazy for him to quit the newspaper game. He'd done it, and say that guy kept on getting richer and richer till even his wife was almost satisfied. But say, girl, was that chap lonesome? One day he come up here looking like a dog that's run off with a steak. He was just dying for a kind word, and he sniffed the smell of the ink in the hot metal like it was June roses. He kind of wanders over to his old desk and slumps down in the chair and tips it back and puts his feet on the desk with his hat tipped back and a bum stogie in his mouth. And along came a kid with a bunch of papers, wet from the presses and sticks one in his hand, and, well, girl, that fellow he just wriggled he was so happy. You know as well as I do that every man on a morning paper spends his day off hanging around the office wishing that a mob or a fire or something big would tear loose so he could get back into the game. I guess I told you about the time Von Gerhard sent me abroad, didn't I? Von Gerhard, I repeated, startled. Do you know him? Well, he ain't bragging about it none, Blacky admitted. Von Gerhard, he told me I had about five years or so to live about two, three years ago. He don't approve of me. Pride into my private life, old Von Gerhard did. Something scandalous. I had sort of went to pieces about that time and I went to him to be patched up. He thumps me for and aft, firing a volley of questions, looking up the roof of my mouth and squinting at my fingernails and teeth like I was a prize horse for sale. Then he sits still, looking at me for about half a minute till I begin to feel uncomfortable. Then he says, slow. Young man, how old are you? Oh, 28 or so, I says, airy. My God, said he, you've crammed twice those years into your life and you'll have to pay for it. Now you listen to me. You've got to quit working and smoking and get away from this. Take the ocean voyage, he says, and try to get four hours sleep a night anyway. Well, say, mother she was scared green, so I tucked her under my arm and we hit it up across the ocean. Went to Germany knowing that it would feel home like there and we took in all the swell bottom and chased up the young frow. Say, that's a classy little mountain, that young frow. Mother, she had some swell time, I guess. She never sat down except for meals and she wrote picture postals like mad. But say, girl, was I lonesome. Maybe that trip done me good. Anyway, I'm living yet. I stuck it out for four months and that ain't so rotten for a guy who just grew up on printer's ink ever since he was old enough to hold a bunch of papers under his arm. Well, one day mother and me was sitting out on one of them veranda cafes they run to over there when somebody hits me a crack on the shoulder and there stands old Ryan who used to do AP here. He was foreign correspondent for some big New York syndicate papers over there. Well, if it ain't blackie, he says, what in Sam Hill are you doing out of your own cell when Milwaukee's just got four more games to win the pennant? Say, girl, when I got through hugging him around the neck and buying him drinks, I knew it was me for the big ship. Mother, I says, if you got anybody on your mind that you neglected to send picture postals to, now's your last chance. If I got to die, I'm going out with my scissors in one mitt and my trusty-paste pot by my side. And we hit set up for old Milwaukee. I ain't been away since except when I was out with the ball team sending in sport and X-Redoat for the pink sheet. The last time I was in a bomb box in comes Von Gerhard and, who are bomb box I interrupted? Blackie regarded me pityingly. You ain't never been to bomb box? Why, girl, if you don't know bomb box, you ain't never been properly introduced to Milwaukee. No wonder you ain't hip to the ways of this little community. There ain't what the society editor would call the proper aunt and cordial between you and the natives if you haven't had coffee at bomb box. It ain't hardly legal to live in Milwaukee all this time without ever having been inside of, but stop. If you do not tell me at once just where this wonderful place is found and what one does when one finds it and how I happen to miss it and why it is so necessary to the proper understanding of the city, I'll tell you what I'll do, said Blackie, grinning. I'll romp you over there tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock. Ock, Hemel, what will that for a grand time be, you know? Blackie, you're a deer to be so polite to an old merry creature like me. Did you notice, that is, does Ernst von Gerhard drop in often at bomb box? End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Leanne Howlett. Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber Chapter 8 Caffee and Caffee Cookin I have visited bomb box. I have heard Milwaukee drinking its afternoon coffee. O bomb box, with your deliciously crumbling butter cookies and your coffee cookin, and your thick cream and your thicker waitresses and your cockroaches and your dinginess and your dowdy German ladies and your black black coffee, where in this country is there another like you? Blackie, true to his promise, had hailed me from the doorway on the afternoon of the following day. In the rush of the day's work, I have quite forgotten about Blackie and bomb box. Come, Kenjin, he called. Get your bonnet on. We will buy bomb box go, no? Roofily I gazed at the grimy cuffs of my blouse and felt of my disheveled hair. Oh, I'm afraid I can't go. I look so mussy. Haven't had time to brush up. Brush up, scoffed Blackie. The only thing about you that will need brushing up is your German. I was going to warn you to rumple up your hair a little so you wouldn't feel overdressed when you got there. Come on, girl. And so I came. And oh, I'm so glad I came. I must have passed a dozen times without once noticing it. Just a dingy little black shop nestling between two taller buildings, almost within the shadow of the city hall. Over the sidewalk swung a shabby black sign with gilt letters that spelled Franz Bombock. Blackie waved an introductory hand in the direction of the sign. There he is. That's all you'll ever see of him. Dead? Asked I regretfully as we entered the narrow doorway. No. Down in the basement, baking coffee-cooking. Two tiny show windows face the street, such queer old-fashioned windows in these days of plate glass. At the back, they were quite open to the shop, and in one of them reposed a huge white immovable structure, a majestic, heavy, nutty, surely indigestible birthday cake. Around its edge were flutings and scrolls of white icing, and its broad breasts reposed cherries and stout butterflies of jelly and cunning traceries of colored sugar. It was quite the dressiest cake I'd ever beheld. Surely no human hand could be wanton enough to guide a knife through all that magnificence. But in the center of all this splendor was an inscription in heavy white letters of icing. Carlottens? Gubbert's dog. Reluctantly, I tore my gaze from this imposing example of the German confectioner's art, and Blackie was tugging impatiently at my sleeve. But Blackie, I marveled. Do you honestly suppose that that structure is intended for some Charlotte's birthday? In Milwaukee, explained Blackie, when you got a birthday you got to have a Gubbert's dog cake with your name on it, and all the cousins and aunts and members of the Northside Frouen-Törner Varen-Gieselsaft end for the day. It ain't considered decent if you don't. Are you ready to fight your way into the main tent? It was holiday time when the single narrow aisle of the front shop was crowded. It was not easy to elbow one's way through the packed little space. Men and women were ordering recklessly of the cakes of every description that were heaped in cases and on shelves. Cakes? What a pale, dry name to apply to those crumbling, melting, indigestible German confections. Blackie grinned with enjoyment while I gazed. There were cakes the like of which I had never seen and of which I did not even know the names. There were little round cupcakes made of almond paste that melts in the mouth. There were Schnecken glazed with a delicious candy-brown sugar. There were bismarcks composed of layer upon layer of flaky crust inlaid with an oozy custard that evades the eager consumer at the first bite and that slides down one's collar when chased with a pursuing tongue. There were Phefernus. There were Lebkuchen. There were Cheesekuchen. Plumkuchen. Peachkuchen. Apfelkuchen. The juicy fruit stuck thickly into the crust. The whole dusted over with powdered sugar. There were Torten and Hornken and Butter Cookies. Blackie touched my arm and I tore my gaze from a cherry-studded Schaum tort that was being reverently packed for delivery. My, what a greedy girl. Now get your mind all made up. This is your chance. You know you're supposed to take a slant at the things and make up your mind what you want before you go back where the tables are. Don't fumble this thing. When Olga or Mina comes waddling up to you and says, Newfrawline? You got to tell her whether your heart says Plumkuchen-Order-Notestort. Or both. See? Just like that. Now make up your mind. I'd hate to have you blunder. Have you decided? Decided? How can I? I moaned, watching a black-haired, black-eyed, Alsatian girl behind the counter as she rolled a piece of white paper into a cone and dipped a spoonful of whipped cream from a great brown bowl heaped high with a snowy stuff. She filled the paper cone, inserted the point of it into one end of a hollow pastry horn and gently squeezed. Presto. A cream-filled hornkin. Oh, blacky, I gasped. Come on. I want to go in and eat. As we elbowed our way to the rear room separated from the front shop only by a flimsy wooden partition, I expected, I know not what. But surely this was not blacky's much-vaunted bomb-box. This long, narrow, dingy room with its bare floor and its iron-legged tables whose bare marble tops were yellow with age and use. I said nothing as we seated ourselves. Blacky was watching me out of the tail of his eye. My glance wandered about the shabby, smoke-filled room and slowly and surely the charm of that fusty, dingy little cafe came upon me. A huge stove glowed red in one corner. On the wall behind the stove was suspended a wooden rack, black with age, its compartments holding German, Austrian and Hungarian newspapers. Against the opposite wall stood an ancient walnut mirror and above it hung a colored print of Bismarck helmeted, uniformed and fiercely moustached. The clumsy iron-legged tables stood in two solemn rows down the length of the narrow room. Three or four stout blonde girls plotted back and forth from tables to front shop bearing trays of cakes and steaming cups of coffee. There was a rumble and clatter of German. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. A game of chess was in progress at one table and between moves each contestant would refresh himself with a long-drawn sibilant mouthful of coffee. There was nothing about the place or its occupants to remind one of America. This dim, smoky, cake-scented café was Germany. Time, said Blackie. Here comes Rosie to take our order. You can take your choice of coffee or chocolate. That's as fancy as they get here. An expansive blonde girl paused at our table smiling a broad welcome at Blackie. Vigette's Roshan, he greeted her. Roshan's smile became still more pervasive so that her blue eyes disappeared in creases of good humor. She wiped the marble tabletop with a large and careless gesture that precipitated stray crumbs into our laps. Kutt murmured she coyly and leaned one hand on a portly hip in an attitude of waiting. Coffee, asked Blackie, turning to me, I nodded. Swimel-Café, beamed Roshan. Grasping the idea. Now is your time to speak up, urge Blackie. Go ahead and order all the cream gefilta things that look good to you out in front. But I leaned forward, lowering my voice discreetly. Blackie, before I plunge into recklessly, tell me, are their prices very... Say, child, you just can't spend half a dollar here if you try. The flossiest kind of thing they got will smother you in whipped cream for a quarter. You can come in here and eat and eat and put away piles of cakes until you feel like a combination of little Jack Horner and old Doc Johnson. And when you're all through, they hand you your check and say it says 45 cents. You can't beat it, so wade right in and spoil your complexion. With enthusiasm, I turned upon the patient Rosie. Oh, bring me some of those cunning little round things with the cream on them. You know, two of those, eh, Blackie? And a couple of those with the flaky crust in the custard between and a slice of that fluffy-looking cake and some of those funny, cocked, hat-shaped cookies. But a pall of bewilderment was slowly settling over Rosie's erstwhile smiling face. Her plump shoulders went up in a helpless shrug, and she turned her round blue eyes appealingly to Blackie. Was might see else, she asked. So I began all over again with the assistance of Blackie. We went into minute detail. We made elaborate gestures. We drew pictures of our desired goodies on the marble-top table using a soft-lead pencil. Rosie's countenance wore a distracted look. In desperation I was about to accompany her to the crowded shop, there to point out my chosen dainties when suddenly, as they would put it here, a light went over her. Ah, yes! Sie Wohltenweilechtgaberguter-Gugelhoff-Aben und Akschamthort und Bismarcks und Horken mit Creme Gepholt, Nick! Certainly I murmured, quite crushed. Roshan waddled merrily off to the shop. Blackie was rolling a cigarette. He ran his funny little red tongue along the edge of the paper and glanced up at me in glee. Don't bother about me, he generously observed. Just set still and let the atmosphere soak in. But already I was lost in contemplation of a red-faced pompadour German who was drinking coffee and reading the flagonbladder at a table just across the way. There were counterparts of my aborigines at Knopf's. Thick spectacle to engineers with high foreheads, actors and actresses from the German stock company, reporters from the English and German newspapers, businessmen with comfortable German consciences, long-haired musicians, dapper young lawyers, a giggling group of college girls and boys, a couple of smartly dressed women nibbling appreciatively at slices of Neustort, low-voiced lovers whose coffee cups stood untouched at their elbows while no fragrant cloud of steam rose to indicate that there was warmth within. Their glances grow warmer as the neglected coffee grows colder. The color comes and goes in the girl's face and I watch it, a bit enviously, marveling that the old story still should be so new. At a large square table near the doorway, a group of eight men were absorbed in an animated political discussion, accompanied by much waving of arms and thundering of gutter rolls. It appeared to be a table of importance for the high-backed bench that ran along one side was upholstered in worn red velvet, and every newcomer paused a moment to nod or to say a word in greeting. It was not of American politics that they talked, but of the politics of Austria and Hungary. Finally, the argument resolved itself into a duel of words between a handsome red-faced German whose rosy skin seemed to take on a deeper tone in contrast to the whiteness of his hair and mustache, and a swore-the-young fellow whose thick spectacles and heavy mane of black hair gave him the look of a caricature out of an illustrated German weekly. The red-faced man argued loudly with much wrapping of bare knuckles on the tabletop, but the dark man spoke seldom and softly with a little twisted half-smile on his lips, and whenever he spoke the red-faced man grew redder and there came a huge laugh from the others who sat listening. Say, wouldn't it curdle your English? Blackie laughed. Solemnly I turned to him. Blackie Griffith, these people do not even realize that there is anything unusual about this. Sure not. That's the beauty of it. They don't need to make new artificial atmosphere for this place. It just grows wild like dandelions. Everybody comes here for their coffee because their aunts and uncles and gross mutters and gross papa's used to come, and come yet if they're living. And after all, what is it but a little German bakery? But oh, wise hair bomb-bock down in the kitchen. Oh, subtle frow bomb-back of the desk, said I. Others may fit their shops with mirrors and cut glass chandeliers and oriental rugs and mahogany, but you sit serenely by and you smile and you change nothing. You let the brown walls grow dimmer with age, you see the marble-top tables turning yellow, you leave bare your wooden floor and you smile and smile and smile. Fine, applauded Blackie, you're on. And here comes Rosie. Rosie, the radiant, placed on the table cups and saucers of an unbelievable thickness. She set them down on the marble surface with a crash, as one who knows well that no mirror marble or granite could shatter the solidity of those stout earthenware receptacles. Napkins there were none. I was to learn that fingers were rid of any clinging remnants of cream or crumb by the simple expedient of licking them. Blackie emptied his pitcher of cream into his cup of black black coffee, sugared it, stirred, tasted, and then, with a wicked gleam in his black eyes, he lifted the heavy cup to his lips and took a long gurgling mouthful. Blackie, I hissed, if you do that again I shall refuse to speak to you. Do what, demanded he, all injured innocents. Snuffle up your coffee like that. Why, girl, that's the proper way to drink coffee here. Listen to everybody else. And while I glared, he wrapped his hand lovingly about his cup, holding the spoon in prison between first and second fingers, and took another sibilant mouthful. Any more of your back talk, and I'll drink it out of my saucer and blow on it like the hefty party over there in the earrings is doing. Calm yourself and try a Bismarck. I picked up one of the flaky confections and I ate it in despair. There were no plates except that on which the cakes were posed. How does one eat them, I inquired. You don't really eat them. The motion is more like inhaling. To eat them successful you really ought to get a bathtub half filled with water, because as soon as you bite in at one end, while the custard stuff slides out at the other, and no human mouth can be two places at onset. Shut your eyes, girl, and just wait in. I waited. In silence I took a deep delicious bite, nimbly chasing the koi filling around a corner with my tongue, devoured every bit down to the last crumb and licked the stickiness off my fingers. Then I investigated the interior of the next cake. I'm coming here every day, I announced. Better not. Roin your complexion and turn all your lines into bumps. Look at the dame with the earrings. I've been keeping count and I've seen her eat three Schnecken, two cream puffs, a Nuss Hornken, and a slice of tort with two cups of coffee. Ain't she a horrible example? And yet she's got the nerve to wear a princess gown. I don't care, I replied recklessly. My voice choked with whipped cream and butteriness. I can just feel myself getting greasy. Haven't I done beautifully for a new hand? Now tell me about some of these people. Who is the funny little man in the Czech suit with the black braid trimming and the green cravat and the white spats and the tan hats and the eyeglasses? Ain't them the dizzy habiliments? A note of envy crept into Blackie's voice. His name is Hugo Looters. Used to be a reporter on the Germania, but he's reformed and gone into advertising where there's real money. Some say he wears them clothes on a bet and some say his taste in dress is a curse to send it upon him from Joseph, the guy with the fancy coat, but I think he wears them because he fancies them. He's been coming here ever afternoon for twelve years, has a cup of coffee, game of chess, and a powwow with a bunch of cronies. If bomb box ever decide to paint the front of their shop or put in cut glass fixtures and hand-painted china, Hugo Looters would serve an injunction on him. Next. Who's the woman with the leathery complexion and the belt to match and the untidy hair and the big feet? I like her face. And why does she sit at a table with all those strange-looking men? And who are all the men? And who is the fur-lined grand opera-tenor just coming in? Oh! Blackie glanced over his shoulder just as the tall man in the doorway turned his face toward us. That? Why, girl, that's Von Gerhard, the man who gives me one more year to live. Look at everybody count-towing to him. He don't favor bomb box often. Too busy patching up the nervous wrecks and doors. The tall figure in the doorway was glancing from table to table nodding here and there to an acquaintance. His eyes traveled the length of the room. Now they were nearing us. I felt a sudden inexplicable tightening at heart and throat as though fingers were clutching there. Then his eyes met mine, and I felt the blood rushing to my face as he came swiftly over to our table and took my hand in his. So you have discovered bomb box, he said. May I have my coffee and cigar here with you? Blackie here is responsible for my being initiated into the sticky mysteries of bomb box. I never should have discovered it if he had not offered to act as personal conductor. You know one another, I believe. The two men shook hands across the table. There was something forced and graceless about the act. Blackie eyed Von Gerhard through a misty curtain of cigarette smoke. Von Gerhard gazed at Blackie through narrowed lids as he lighted his cigar. I'm the gink you killed off to a three years back. Blackie explained. I remember you perfectly, Von Gerhard returned courteously. I rejoiced to see that I was mistaken. Well, drawn Blackie, a wicked gleam in his black eyes. I'm some rejoiced myself, old top. Angel wings and a white kimono, warm barefooty, would go some rotten with my Spanish style of beauty, what? Didn't know that you and Madame friend here was acquainted. Known each other long? I felt myself flushing again. I knew Dr. Von Gerhard back home. I've scarcely seen him since I have been here. Famous specialists can't be bothered with middle-aged relatives of their college friends. Can they, Herr Doctor? And now it was Von Gerhard's face that flushed a deep and painful crimson. He looked at me in silence, and I felt very little and insignificant, and much like an impudent child who has stuck out its tongue at its elders. Silent men always affect talkative women in that way. You know that what you say is not true, he said slowly. Well, we won't quibble. We—we were just about to leave, weren't we, Blackie? Just, said Blackie, rising, sorry to see you drinking bomb-box coffee-dock. It ain't fair to your patience. Quite right, replied Von Gerhard, and rose with us. I shall not drink it. I shall walk home with Mrs. Orm instead, as she will allow me. More stimulating than coffee, and twice as dangerous, perhaps, but— You know how I hate that sort of thing, I said coldly, as we passed from the warmth of the little front shop where the plump girls were still filling paste-board boxes with the holiday cakes to the brisk chill of the winter street. The little black-and-guilt signs swung and creaked in the wind. Whimsically, and with the memory of that last cream-filled cake fresh in my mind, I saluted the letters it spelled, Franz Bombach. Blackie chuckled impishly. Just the same, try a pinch of soda by carbonate when you get home, Don, he advised. Well, I'm off to the factory again, got to make up for time-waist that I'm a lady-friend, off feedersen. And the little figure in the check-top coat trotted off. But he called you Don, broke from Von Gerhard. Mm-hmm, I agreed. My name's Don. Surely not to him. You have known him but a few weeks. I would not have presumed. Blackie never presumes, I laughed. Blackie's just Blackie. Imagine taking offense at him. He knows everyone by their given name, from Joe, the boss of the press room, to the chief who imports his office coats from London. Besides Blackie and I are newspaper men, and people don't scrape and bow in our newspaper office, especially when they're fond of one another, you wouldn't understand. As I looked at Von Gerhard in the light of the streetlamp, I saw a tense drawn look about the little group of muscles which show when the teeth are set hard. When he spoke, those muscles had relaxed but little. One man does not talk ill of another, but this is different. I want to ask you, do you know what manner of man this Blackie is? I ask you because I would have you safe and sheltered always from such as he. Because I... safe? From Blackie? Now listen, there never was a safer, saner, truer, more generous friend. Oh, I know what his life has been, but what else could it have been, beginning as he did? I have no wish to reform him. I tried my hand at reforming one man and made a glorious mess of it. So I'll just take Blackie as he is, if you please. Slaying, wickedness, pink shirt, red necktie, diamond rings and all. If there's any bad in him we all know it, for it's right down on the table face up. You're just angry because he called you Doc. Small one, said von Gerhard and his quaint German idiom. We will not quarrel, you and I. If I have been neglectful it was because edge tools were never a chosen plaything of mine. Perhaps your little Blackie realizes that he need have no fear of such things, for the great fear is upon him. The great fear, you mean? I mean that there are too many fine little lines radiating from the corners of the sunken eyes and that his hand clasp leaves a moisture in the palm. Doc, you may laugh. Come, we will change the subject to something more cheerful, yes? Tell me, how grows the book? By inches. After working all day on a bulletin paper whose city editor is constantly shouting, boil it now, fellows, keep it down, we're crowded. It is too much of a wrench to find myself seated calmly before my own typewriter at night, privileged to write one hundred thousand words if I choose. I can't get over the habit of crowding the story all into the first paragraph. Whenever I flower into descriptive passage I glance nervously over my shoulder expecting to find Norberg, stationed behind me, scissors and blue pencil in hand. Consequently the book, thus far, sounds very much like a police reporter's story of a fire four minutes before the paper is due to go to press. Von Gerhard's face was unsmiling. So, he said slowly, you burn the candle at both ends. All day you write, is it not so? And at night you come home to write more? Ock, Kinjen, nah, we shall change all that. We will be better comrades, we too, yes? You remember that gay little walk of last autumn when we explored the Michigan country lane at dusk? I shall be your Sunday shots, and there shall be more rambles like that one to bring the roses into your cheeks. We shall be good comrades, as you and this little Griffith are. What is it they say? Good fellows. That is it. Good fellows, yes? We shake hands on it. But I snatched my hand away. I don't want to be a good fellow, I cried. I'm tired of being a good fellow. I've been a good fellow for years and years, while every other married woman in the world has been happy in her own home, bringing up her babies. When I am old I want some sons to worry me too, and to stay awake nights for, and some daughters to keep me young and to prevent me from doing my hair in a knob and wearing bonnets. I hate good fellow women, I—I— Don! cried Vaughn Gerhard. But I ran up the steps then into the house and slammed the door behind me, leaving him standing there. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Of Don O'Hara, the girl who laughed. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Don O'Hara, the girl who laughed, by Edna Ferber. Chapter 9 The Lady From Vienna Two more aborigines have appeared. One of them is a lady aborigine. They made their entrance at supper and I forgot to eat, watching them. The newcomers are from Vienna. He is an expert engineer and she is a woman of noble birth with a history. Their combined appearance is calculated to strike terror to the heart. He is daringly ugly with a chin that curves in under his lip and then out in a peak, like pictures of punch. She wore a grey gown of a style I never had seen before and never expected to see again. It was fastened with huge black buttons all the way down the breathlessly tight front and the upper part was composed of that prehistoric garment known as a basque. She curved in where she should have curved out and stretched where she should have had lines. About her neck was suspended a string of cannonball beads that clanked as she walked. On her forehead rested a sparse fringe. Mine himmel, thought I. Am I dreaming? This isn't Wisconsin. This is Nernberg or Strasburg with a dash of Heidelberg and Berlin thrown in. Don, old girl, it's going to be more instructive than a cook's tour. That turned out to be the truest prophecy I ever made. The first surprising thing that the newcomers did was to seat themselves at the long table with the other Aborigines the Lady Aborigines being the only woman among the twelve men. It was plain that they had known one another previous to this meeting for they became very good friends at once and the men grew heavily humorous about their being thirteen at table. At that the Lady Aborigines began to laugh. Straight way I forgot the outlandish gown forgot the cannonball beads and the sparse fringe forgave the absence of lines. Such a voice. A lilting melodious thing. She broke into a torrent of speech with bewildering gestures and I saw that her hands were exquisitely formed and as expressive as her voice. Her German was the musical tongue of the Viennese possessing none of the gutter-rolls and sputterings. When she crowned it with the gay little trilling laugh my views on the language underwent a lightning change. It seemed the most natural thing in the world a silver case that dangled at the end of the cannonball chain take out a cigarette, light it, and smoke it there in that little German dining room. She wore the most gracefully nonchalant air imaginable as she blew little rings and wreaths and laughed and chatted brightly with her husband and the other men. Occasionally she broke into French. Her accent is charmingly perfect as it had been in her native tongue. There was a moment of breathless staring on the part of the respectable middle class frown at the other tables. They shrugged their shoulders and plunged into their meal again. There was a certain little high-born air of assurance about that cigarette smoking that no amount of staring could ruffle. Watching the new Aborigines grew to be a sort of game. The Lady Aborigines of the golden voice and the ugly husband of the peak chin had a strange fascination for me. I scrambled downstairs at mealtime in order not to miss them and I doddled over the meal so that I need not leave before they. When Lady Aborigines was animated, her face was that of a young woman possessing a certain hybrid charm but that when in repose the face of the Lady Aborigines was that of a very old and tired woman indeed. Also that her husband bullied her and that when he did that she looked at him worshipingly. Then one evening, a week or so after the appearance of the new Aborigines there came a clumping at my door. I was seated at my typewriter and the book was balkier than usual and I heard that the door would go away. Come, I called ungraciously enough, then on second thought, herein the knob turned slowly and the door opened just enough to admit the top of a head crown with a tight, moist German knob of hair. I searched my memory to recognize the knob, failed utterly and said again this time with mingled curiosity and hospitality, won't you come in? The apparently bodyless head moved forward a bit, disclosing an apologetically smiling face with high cheekbones that glistened with friendliness and scrubbing. Nobbin Frowline said the head. Nobbin, I replied, more mystified than ever. How do you do? Is there anything? The head thrust itself forward still more showing a pair of plump shoulders as its support. Then the plump shoulders heaved into the room disclosing a stout, starched gingham body. The thick-beaned frau knopf announced the beaming vision. Now, up to this time, frau knopf had maintained a Mrs. Harris-like mysteriousness. I had heard rumors of her and I had partaken of certain crispy dishes of German extraction reported to have come from her deft hands, but I had not even caught a glimpse of her skirts whisking around a corner. Therefore, frau knopf, I repeated, nonsense, there ain't no such person. That is, I'm glad to see you. Won't you come in and sit down? Ock, no, smiled the substantial frau knopf clinging tightly to the doorknob. I got no time. It gives much to do tonight yet. Cook and dough I must set, and Ickweiss nicked us. I got no time. Bustling red-cheeked frau knopf. This was why I had never had a glimpse of her. Always she got no time. For while hair knopf, dapper and genial welcomed newcomers chatted with the diners, poured a glass of foaming doppelbrow for hairweber or dexterously carved fowl for the aborigines' table, frau knopf was making the wheels go round. I discovered that it was she who bakes the melting golden German von Kuchen on Sunday mornings, she it is who fries the crisp and hissing vener schnitzel, she it is who prepares the plump ducklings and the thick gravies and the steaming lentil soup and the rosy sausages nestling coily in their bed of sauerkraut. All the week frau knopf bakes and boils and stews, her rosy cheeks taking on a twinkling crimson from the fire over which she bends. But on Sunday night frau knopf sheds her huge apron and rolls down the sleeves from her plump arms. On Sunday evening she leaves pots and pans in cooking and is a transformed frau knopf. Then does she don a bright blue silk waist and a velvet coat that is dripping with jet and a black bonnet on which are perched palpitating birds and weary-looking birds. Then she and her knopf walk comfortably down to the pap's theater to see the German play by the German stock company. They applaud their favorite stout blond German comedian as she rops through the acts of a sprightly German comedy and after the play they go to their favorite vine-stube around the corner. There they have sardine and cheese sandwiches and a great deal of beer and for one charmed evening frau knopf forgets all about the insides of geese and the thickening for gravies and is happy. Many of these things frau knopf herself told me, standing there by the door with the cookin heavy on her mind. Some of them I got from Ernst von Gerhard when I told him about my visitor and her errand. The errand was not disclosed until frau knopf had caught me casting a despairing glance at my last type written page. Auxie! You got no time for talking too, ain't it? she apologized. Heaps of time I politely assured her. Don't hurry, but why not have a chair and be comfortable? Frau knopf was not to be deceived. I go in a minute but first it is something I like to ask you. You know maybe frau nirlanger? I shook my head. But sure you must know, from Vienna she is with such a voice like a bird. And the beads and the gray gown and the fringe and the cigarettes? And the ugly husband finished frau knopf, nodding. Ugly, I agreed, isn't the name for it. And so she is frau nirlanger? I thought there would be a vaun at the very least. Whereupon my visitor deserted the doorknob, took half a dozen stealthy steps in my direction and lowered her voice to a hissing whisper of confidence. It is more as a vaun, I will tell you. Today comes frau nirlanger by me and she says, frau knopf, I wish to buy clothes. Aber ekt a menarkanesh. Myself I do not know what is modest and I cannot go to buy. That's a grand idea, said I, recalling the gray mask and the cannonball beads. Ja, sure it is, agreed frau knopf. So she asked me, was it some lady who would come with her by the stores to help a hat and suit and dresses to buy? Stylish she likes they should be, an ekt a menarkanesh. So I say to her, I would go myself with you only so awful stylish I ain't in any way I got no time. But a lady I know who has got such stylish clothes. Frau knopf raised admiring hands and eyes toward heaven. Such a nice lady she is and stylish like anything, and her name is frau warm. Oh really frau knopf, I murmured in blushing confusion. Sure it is so, insisted frau knopf, coming a step nearer and sinking her voice one hiss lower. You shouldn't say I said it, but frau knopf, she should look young for her husband. He is much younger as she is, over much. Anyhow, ten years. Frau nurlonger does not tell me this, but from other people I have found out. Frau knopf shook her head mysteriously a great many times. But maybe you ain't got such an interest in frau nurlonger, yes? Interest? I'm eaten up with curiosity. You shan't leave this room alive until you've told me. Frau knopf shook with silent mirth. Now you make jokings, ain't? Well I tell you, in Vienna frau nurlonger was a widow from a family Aber Ackhodel, very high-born. From the court her family is, and friends from the emperor and Alice. Sure, frau nurlonger she is different from the rest. Books she likes, and meetings, and all such comish things, and what you think. I don't know, I gasped, hanging on her words. What do I think? She meets this here con red nurlonger and falls with him in love, and her family is mad, but shreklik mad. Forty years old she is, and from a noble family, and con red nurlonger is only a student from a university, and he comes from the volk. Ser gibbled it he is, but not high-born. So she runs with him away and is married. Shamelessly I drank it all in. You don't mean it. Well then what happened? She ran away with him with that chin, and then what? Frau knop was enjoying it as much as I. She drew a long breath, felt at the knob of hair, and plunged once more into the story. Like a story-book it is. Nicked? Well, frau nurlonger she has already a boy who is ten years old, and finds some of money that her first husband left her. Uber when she runs with this poor girl away from her family, and her first husband's family is so shreklik mad that they try by law to take from her her boy and her money because she has her high-born family disgraced, you see. For a year they fight in the courts, and then it stands that her money frau nurlonger can keep but her boy she cannot have. He will be taken by her high-born family and educated, and he must forget all about his mama. To cry it is, ain't it? Dossarm king. Well, she can stand it no longer to live where her boy is and not to see him. So Conrad nurlonger he gets a chance to come by America where there is a big engineering plant here in Milwaukee, and he begs her husband he should come because this boy she loves very much. Oh, she loves her young husband too, but different, yes? Oh, yes, I agreed, remembering the gay little trilling laugh in the face that was so young when animated and so old and worn and repose. Oh, yes, quite, quite different. Frau knopp smoothed her spotless skirt and shook her head slowly and sadly. So, by America they come. And Conrad nurlonger he is maybe Doss and so because for a year they have been in the courts and it might have been the money they would lose and for money Conrad nurlonger cares. Well, you shall see. But Frau nurlonger must not mourn and cry. She must laugh and sing and be gay for her husband. But Frau nurlonger has no grand close. For first she runs away with Conrad nurlonger and then her money is tied in the law. Now she has again her money and she must be young, but young. With a gesture that expressed a world of pathos and futility Frau knopp flung out her arms. He must not see that she looks different as the ladies in this country. So Frau nurlonger wants she should buy here in the stores new dresses, ectamericanish. All new and beautiful things she would have because she must look young, ain't it? And perhaps her boy will remember her when he is a fine young man if she is yet young when he grows up, you see? And two, there is the young husband. First she gives up her old life and her friends and her family for this man and then she must do all things to keep him. Men they are but children after all, spake the wise Frau knopp in conclusion. They war and cry and plead for that which they would have and when they have won, then see. They are amused for a moment and the new toy is thrown aside. Poor, plain, vivacious, fascinating little Frau nurlonger, I said. I wonder just how much of pain and heartache that little musical laugh of hers conceals. Jah, that is so, used Frau knopp. Her eyes look like eyes that have wept much, not, and so you will be so kind and go maybe to select the so beautiful clothes. Clothes, I repeated remembering the original errand, but dear lady, how does one select clothes for a woman of forty who would not weary her husband? That is a task for a French modiste, a wizard and a fairy godmother all rolled into one. But you will do it, yes, urge Frau knopp. I'll do it, I agreed a bit roofily, if only to see the face of the ugly husband when his bride is properly corseted and shod. Whereupon Frau knopp in a panic remembered the unset cook-n-dough and rushed away with her hand on her lips and her eyes big with secrecy, and I sat staring at the last typewritten page stuck in my typewriter and I found that the little letters on the white page were swimming in a dim purple haze. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Leanne Howlett Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber Chapter 10 A Tragedy of Gowns From husbands in general and from ugly German husbands in particular, may Hyman defend me. Never again will I attempt to select ect-emeter-khanish clothes for a woman who must not weary her young husband. But how was I to know that the harmless little shopping expedition would resolve itself into a domestic tragedy with Herr Neurlanger as the villain, Frau Neurlanger as the persecuted heroine, and I as what is it in tragedy that corresponds to the innocent bystander in real life? That would be my role. The purchasing of the clothes was a real joy. Next to buying pretty things for myself, there is nothing I like better than choosing them for someone else. And when that someone else happens to be a fascinating little foreigner who coos over the silken stuffs in a delightful mixture of German and English and especially when that someone else must be made to look so charming that she will astonish her ugly husband then does a selecting of those pretty things cease to be a task and become an art. It was to be a complete surprise to Herr Neurlanger. He was to know nothing of it until everything was finished and Frau Neurlanger dressed in the prettiest of the pretty Americanish gowns was ready to astound him when he should come home from the office of the vast plant where he solved engineering problems. From my own money I buy all this Frau Neurlanger confided to me with a gay little laugh of excitement as we started out. From Vienna it comes. Always I have given it at once to my husband as a wife should. Yesterday it came but I said nothing and when my husband said to me Anna did not the money come as usual today it is time. I told a little lie but a little one is it not? Very amusing it was. Almost I did laugh. No, he will not be cross when he see how his wife like the Americanish ladies will look. He admires very much the ladies of America. Many times he has said so. I'll wager he has the great ugly boar I thought in parenthesis. We'll show him, I said aloud. He won't know you. Such a lot of beautiful clothes as we can buy with all this money. Oh dear Frau Neurlanger, it's going to be slather as a fun. I feel as excited about it as though it were a trousseau we were buying. So it is she replied a little shadow of sadness falling across the brightness of her face. I had no proper clothes when we were married but nothing. You know perhaps my story and America, everyone knows everything. It is wonderful. When I ran away to marry Conrad Neurlanger I had only the dress which I wore even that I borrowed from one of the upper servants on a pretext so that no one should recognize me. Ah gut, I need not have worried, so you see it will be after all a trousseau. Why oh why should a woman with her graceful carriage and pretty vivacity have been such an ill assorted lot of features especially when certain boorish young husbands have expressed an admiration for pink and white effects and femininity. Never mind Mr. Husband, I'll show you I resolved as the elevator left us at the floor where wax and ladies and shining glass cases smiled amily all the day. There must be no violent pinks or blues. Brown was too old she was not young enough for black. Violet was too trying and so the gowns began to screw tables and chairs and racks and still I shook my head and Frow Neurlanger looked despairing and the bepuffed and real Irish crocheted saleswoman began to develop a baleful gleam about the eyes. And then we found it. It was a case of love at first sight. The unimaginative would have called it gray. The thoughtless would have pronounced it pink. It was neither and both. A soft, rosely gray mixture of the two like the sky that one sometimes sees at winter twilight the pink of the sunset veiled by the gray of the snow clouds. It was of a supple shining cloth simple and cut graceful in lines. There we found it let's pray that it will not require too much altering. But when it had been slipped over her head we groaned at the inadequacy of her old fashioned stays. There followed a flying visit to the department where hips were whisked out of sight and a jiffy and where lines miraculously took the place Then came the gown once more over the new stays this time. The effect was magical. The Irish crocheted saleswoman and I clasped hands and fell back in attitudes of admiration. Fraun Neurlanger turned this way and that before the long mirror and chattered like a pleased child. Her adjectives grew into words of six syllables. She cooed over the soft shining stuff and little broken exclamations in French and German. Then came a straight and simple street suit cloth, a lingerie gown of white, hats, shoes, and even a couple of limp satin petticoats. The day was gone before we could finish. I bullied them into promising the pinky gray gown for the next afternoon. Such funds giggled Fraun Neurlanger and how it makes one tired so kind you were to take this trouble for me. Me I could never have warded with that Frauline who served us so hot she was, nicked. But it is good again pretty close to have pretty gowns I love. You also not? Indeed I do love them but my money comes to me in a yellow pay envelope and it is spent before it reaches me as a rule. It doesn't leave much of a margin for general recklessness. A tiny sigh came from Fraun Neurlanger. There will be little to give to Conrad this time so much money they cost those clothes but Conrad he will not care when he sees the so beautiful dresses is it not so? I don't care. I cried with a great deal of bravado although a tiny inner voice spake in doubt. Certainly not. How could he? Next day the boxes came and we smuggled them into my room. The unwrapping of the tissue paper fold was a ceremony. We reveled in the very crackle of it. I had scuttled home from the office as early as decency would permit in order to have plenty of time for the dressing. It must be quite finished before Hair Neurlanger should arrive. I had purchased three tickets for the German theater also as a surprise and I was to accompany the happily surprised husband and the proud little wife of the new Americanish clothes. I coaxed her to let me do things to her hair. Usually she wore a stiff and ugly coiffure that could only be described as a shignan. I do not recollect ever having seen a shignan but I know that it must look like that. I was thankful for my Irish deafness of fingers as I stepped back to you the result of my labors. The hair gave her features a new softness and dignity. We came to the lacing of the stays with their exaggerated length. I bear, exclaimed Fraun Neurlanger, not daring to laugh because of the strange snugness. Ock, and again, obber to laugh it is. We had decided the prettiest of the new gowns must do honor to the occasion. This shade is called Ashes of Roses I explained as I slipped it over her head. Ashes of Roses she echoed. How pretty, yes. But a little sad too, is it not so? Like rosy hopes that have been withered. Ock, what a foolish talk. So now you will fasten it, please. A real trick it is to button such a dress so sly they are, those fastenings. When all the sly fastenings were secure, I stood it gaze. Nose is shiny, I announced, searching in a drawer for chamois and powder. Fraun Neurlanger raised an objecting hand. But Conrad does not approve of such things. He has said so. He has said so. You tell your Conrad that a chamois skin isn't half as objectionable as a shiny one. Come here and let me dust this over your nose and chin while I breathe a prayer of thanks that I have no overzealous husband near to forbid me the use of a bit of powder. There, if I says it myself as shouldn't, ye as are a credit to me, my darlin'. You are satisfied? There is not one small thing awry? Ock, how we shall laugh at Conrad's face. Satisfied? I'd kiss you if I weren't afraid that I should mush you up. You're not the same woman. You look like a girl, and so pretty. Now skedaddle into your own rooms, but don't you dare to sit down for a moment. I'm going down to get Frau Knopf before your husband arrives. But is there then time, inquired Fraun Neurlanger? He should be here now. I'll bring her up in a jiffy just for one peep. She won't know you, her face will be a treat. Don't touch your hair, it's quite perfect. And for John's sake, don't twist around to look at yourself in the back or something will burst. I know it will. I'll be back in a minute. Now run. The slender, graceful figure disappeared with a gay little laugh, and I flew downstairs for Frau Knopf. She was discovered with a spoon in one hand and a spluttering saucepan in the other. I'd attached her from them, clapsed her big, capable red hands and dragged her up the stairs, explaining as I went. Now don't fuss about that supper. Let him wait. You must see her before her Neurlanger comes home. He's due any minute. She looks like a girl, so young and actually pretty. And her figure, divine. Funny what a difference, a decent pair of corsets and a gown and some puffs will make. Hmm? Frau Knopf was panting as I pulled her after me in swift eagerness. Between puffs, she brought out exclamations of surprise and unbelief such as omaglik, puff puff, abervunderbar, puff puff. We stopped before Frau Knorlanger's door. I struck a dramatic pose. Prepare, I cried grandly and threw open the door with a bang. Crouched against the wall at a far corner of the room was Frau Knorlanger. Her hands were clasped over her breast and her eyes were dilated as though she had been running. In the center of the room stood Conrad Knorlanger and on his ugly face was the very ugliest look that I have ever seen on a man. He glanced at us as we stood transfixed in the doorway and laughed a short, sneering laugh that was like a stinging blow on the cheek. So he said, and I would not have believed that men really said so in that way outside of a melodrama. So you're in the little surprise, yes, you carry your meddling outside of your newspaper work, eh? I leave behind me an old wife in the morning and in the evening, presto, I find a young bride. Wonderful, but wonderful. He laughed an unmusical and mirthless laugh. But don't you like it? I asked, like a simpleton. Fraun Knorlanger seemed to shrink before our very eyes so that the pretty gown hung in limp folds about her. I stared fascinated at Conrad Knorlanger's cruel face with his little eyes that were too close together and its chin that curved in below the mouth and out again so grotesquely. Like it, sneered Conrad Knorlanger, for a young girl, yes, but how useless this belated trousseau what a waste of good money. For, see, a young wife I do not want. Young women one can have in plenty always, but I have an old woman married and for an old woman the gowns need be few, eh, Fraun Arm? And you too, Fraun Knopf? Fraun Knopf, crimson and staring, was dumb. There came a little shivering moan from the figure crouched in the corner and Fraun Knorlanger, her face queerly withered and ashen, crumpled slowly in a little heap on the floor and buried her shamed head in her arms. Conrad Knorlanger turned to his wife, the black look on his face growing blacker. Come, get up Anna, he ordered in German. These heroics become not a woman of your years and, too, you must not ruin the socastle gown that will be returned tomorrow. Fraun Knorlanger's white face was lifted from the shelter of her arms. The stricken look was still upon it, but there was no cowering in her attitude now. Slowly she rose to her feet. She was so tall. The gown does not go back, she said. So he snarled with a savage note in his voice. Now hear me, there shall be no more buying of gowns and fripperies. You hear, it is for the wife to come to the husband for the money, not for her to waste it wantonly on gowns like a creature of the streets. You, his voice was an insult, you with your wrinkles and your faded eyes and a gown of, he turned inquirely toward me, how does one call it that color, Frau Arm? There came a blur of tears to my eyes. It is called Ashes of Roses, I answered. Ashes of Roses. Conrad Knorlanger threw back his head and laughed a laugh as stinging as a whiplash. Ashes of Roses. So it is well named. For my dear wife it is poetically fit, is it not so? For, see, her roses are but withered ashes. Eh, Anna? Deliberately and in silence Anna Knorlanger walked to the mirror and stood there, gazing at the woman in the glass. There was something dreadful and pretentious about the calm and studied deliberation with which she critically viewed that reflection. She lifted her arms slowly and padded into place the locks that had become disarranged, turning her head from side to side to study the effect. Then she took from a drawer the bit of chamois skin that I had given her and passed it lightly over her eyelids and cheeks, humming softly to herself the while. No music ever sounded so uncanny to my ears. The woman before the mirror looked at the woman in the mirror with a long, steady, measuring look. Then slowly and deliberately, the long graceful folds of her lovely gown trailing behind her, she walked over to where her frowning husband stood. So might a queen have walked, head held high, gaze steady. She stopped within half a foot of him, her eyes leveled with his. For a long half minute they stood thus, the faded blue eyes of the wife gazing into the solemn black eyes of the husband, and his were the first to drop, for all the noble blood and Anna Nirlanger's veins and all her long line of gently bred ancestors were coming to her aid in dealing with her middle-class husband. You forget, she said very slowly and distinctly, if this were Austria instead of America you would not forget. In Austria people of your class do not speak in this manner to those of my caste. Winston, laughed Conrad Nirlanger, this is America. Yes, said Anna Nirlanger, this is America, and in America all things are different. I see now that my people knew of what they spoke when they called me mad to think of wetting a clot of the people such as you. For a moment I thought that he was going to strike her. I think he would have if she had flinched, but she did not. Her head was held high and her eyes did not waver. I married you for love. It is most comical, is it not? With you I thought I should find peace and happiness and a rebirth of the intellect that was being smothered in the splendor and artificiality and the restrictions of my life there. While I was wrong, but wrong. Now hear me. Her voice was tense with passion. There will be gowns. As many and as rich as I choose you have said many times that the ladies of America you admire. And see, I shall be also one of those ladies who shall go for gowns, for hats, for trifles of lace and velvet and fur. You shall learn that it is not a peasant woman whom you have married. This is America, the land of the free, my husband. And see, who is more of America than I? Who? She laughed a high little laugh and came over to me, taking my hands in her own. Dear girl, you must run quickly and dress, for this evening we shall go to the theatre. Oh, but you must. There shall be no unpleasantness, that I promise. My husband accompanies us with joy. Is it not so, comrade, with joy? So. Wildly I longed to decline, but I dared not, so I only nodded for fear of the great lump in my throat and, taking Frau Knopf's hand, I churned and fled with her. Frau Knopf was muttering. Duhund! Du Amverstammerhundu! In good Billings gate German and wiping her eyes with her apron. And I dressed with trembling fingers because I dared not otherwise face the brave little Austrian, the plucky little aborigine who, with the donning of the new Americanish gown, had acquired some real Americanish nerve. End of chapter 10 Chapter 11 of Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Leanne Howlett Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber Chapter 11 Von Gerhard Speaks Of Von Gerhard I had not had a glimpse since that evening of my hysterical outburst. On Christmas Day there had come a box of roses so huge that I could not find vases enough to hold its contents, although I pressed into service everything from mason jars from the kitchen to hand-painted atrocities from the parlor. After I had given posies to Fraunerlanger and fastened a rose in Fraunknopp's hard knob of hair where it bobbed in ludicrous discomfort, I still had enough to fill the wash bowl. My room looked like a Grand Opera star's boudoir when she is expecting the newspaper reporters. I reveled in the glowing fragrance of the blossoms and felt very eastern and luxurious and popular. It had been a busy, happy, work-filled week in which I had to snatch odd moments for the selecting of certain wonderful toys and ball-penes. There had been dolls and doll clothes and a marvelous miniature kitchen for the practical installed Sheila and ingenious bits of mechanism that did unbelievable things when wound up for the clever imaginative Hans. I was not to have the joy of seeing their wide-eyed delight, but I knew that there would follow certain laboriously-scrawled letters filled with topsy-churvy capitals and crazily-leaning words of thanks to the doting old Auntie who had been such good fun the summer before. Boarding-house Christmases had become an old story. I had learned to accept them even to those obscure and foreign parts of Turkey which are seen only on boarding-house plates in which would be recognized nowhere else as belonging to that stately bird. Christmas at Knopf's had been a happy surprise, a day of hearty good cheer and kindness. There had even been a Christmas tree hung with stodgy German angels and Pfeffernuss and pink frosted cakes. I found myself the bewildered recipient of gifts from everyone, from the Knopf's and the Aborigines, and even from one of the crush-looking wives. The Aborigines whom they called Fritz had presented me with a huge and imposing Lebkuchen, reposing in a box with frilled border ornamented with quaint little red and green German figures and sugar and labeled Nuremberg in stout letters, for it had come all the way from that cooking-famous city. The Lebkuchen I placed on my mantel shelf as befitted so magnificent a work of art. It was quite too elaborate and imposing to be sent to a way of ordinary food, although it had a certain tantalizingly spicy scent that tempted one to break off a corner here and there. On the afternoon of Christmas Day I sat down to thank Dr. von Gerhard for the flowers as prettily as might be. Also I asked his pardon, a thing not hard to do with the perfume of his roses filling the room. For you, I wrote, who are so wise in the ways of those tricky things called nerves must know that it was only a mild hysteria that made me say those most un-lady-like things. I have written Nora all about it. She is replied, advising me to stick to the good fellow role but not to dress the part. So when next you see me I shall be a perfectly safe and sane comrade in petticoats. And I promise you, no more outbursts. So it happened that on the afternoon of New Year's Day von Gerhard and I gravely wished one another many happy and impossible things for the coming year, looking fairly and squarely into each other's eyes as we did so. So, said von Gerhard as one who was satisfied, the nerfs are steady today. What do you say to a brisk walk along the lakeshore to put us in a new year frame of mind and then a supper downtown somewhere with a toast to Max and Nora? You've saved my life. Sit down here in the parlor and gaze at the crepe paper oranges while I powder my nose and get into some street clothes. I have such a story to tell you, it has made me quite contented with my lot. The story was that of the Nurlangers and as we struggled against a brisk lake breeze I told it and partly because of the breeze and partly because of the story there were tears in my eyes when I had finished. von Gerhard stared at me aghast. But you are crying, he marvels, watching a tear slide down my nose. I'm not, I retorted. Anyway, I know it. I think I may blubber if I choose to, main tie as well as other women. Blubber? Repeated von Gerhard, he of the careful and cautious English. But most certainly, if you wish, I had thought that newspaper women did not indulge in the luxury of tears. They don't, often. Haven't the time. If a woman reporter were to burst into tears every time she saw something to weep over she'd be going about with a red nose and puffy eyelids half the time. Scarcely a day passes that does not bring her face to face with human suffering in some form. Not only must she see things, but she must write of them so that those who read can also see them. And just because she does not wail and tear her hair in faint, she popularly is supposed to be a flinty, cigarette-smoking creature who rampages up and down the land, seeking whom she may rend with her pen and gazing dry eye upon scenes of horrid bloodshed. And yet the little domestic tragedy of the Nirlangers can bring tears to your eyes. Oh, that was quite different. The case of the Nirlangers had nothing to do with Don O'Hara newspaper reporter. It was just plain Don O'Hara woman who witnessed that little tragedy. Mind himmel. Are all German husbands like that? Not all. I have a very good friend named Max. Oh, Max. Max is an angel husband. Fancy Max and Nora waxing tragic on the subject of a gown. Now you I come your sworn to good fellowship as one comrade to another tell me what sort of husband do you think I should make? A. the borish Nirlangers sort or the charming Max variety. Come, tell me. You who always have seemed so, so damn will be able to take care of yourself. His eyes were twinkling in the maddening way they had. I looked out across the lake to where a line of whitecaps was piling up formidably only to break in feudal wrath against the solid wall of the shore and there came over me an equally feudal wrath, that savage unreasoning instinct in women which prompts them to hurt those whom they love. Oh, you. I began with von Gerhard's amused eyes laughing down upon me. I should say that you would be more in the Nirlanger style in your large immovable German sure way. Not that you would stoop to wrangle about money or gowns, but that you would control those things. Your wife will be a placid blonde rather plump German frailine of excellent family and no imagination. Men of your type always select negative wives. Twenty years ago she would have run to bring you your Zeitgung in your slippers. She would be that kind if Zeitgung and slipper husband still run existence. You will be fond of her in a patronizing sort of way and she will never know the difference between that and being loved not having a great deal of imagination as I've said before. And you will go on becoming more and more famous and she will grow plumper and more placid and less and less understanding of what those commission medical journals have to say about her husband who was always discovering things and you will live happily ever after. A hand gripped my shoulder. I looked up startled into two blue eyes blazing down into mine. Von Gerhard's face was a painful red. I think that the hand on my shoulder even shook me a little there on that bleak and deserted lake drive. I tried to wrench my shoulder free with a jerk. You are hurting me, I cried. A quiver of pain passed over the face that I had thought so calmly unemotional. You talk of hurts. You who set out deliberately and maliciously to make me suffer. How dare you then talk to me like this. You stab with a hundred knives. You who know how I... I'm sorry, I put in contritely. Please don't be so dreadful about it. After all, you asked me, didn't you? Perhaps I've hurt your vanity. There, I didn't mean that either. Oh, dear, let's talk about something impersonal. We get along wretchedly of late. The angry red ebbed away from Von Gerhard's face. The blaze of wrath in his eyes gave way to a deeper brighter light that held me fascinated and there came to his lips a smile of rare sweetness. The hand that had grasped my shoulder slipped down down until it met my hand and gripped it. Nah, is it shown wrecked kinship? Those that we most care for we would hurt always. When I have told you of my love for me, although already you know it, then you will tell me. Hush, do not deny this thing. There shall be no more lies between us. There shall be only the truth and no more about plump blonde German wives who run with Zeitung and slippers. After all, it is no secret. Three months ago, I told Nora, it was not news to her, but she trusted me. I thought my face to be as white in as tense as his own. Nora knows? It is better to speak these things. Then there need be no shifting of the eyes, no evasive words, no tricks, no subterfuge. We had faced about and were retracing our steps past the rows of peculiarly home-like houses that line Milwaukee's magnificent Lake Shore. Windows were hung with Holiday Scarlet and Holly and here and there a face was visible at a window, looking out at the man and woman walking swiftly along the windswept heights that rose far above the lake. A wretched revolt seized me as I gazed at the substantial comfort of those normal happy homes. Why did you tell me? What good can that do? At least we were make-believe friends before. Suppose I were to tell you that I care, then what? I do not ask you to tell me, von Gerhard replied quietly. You need not. You know. You knew long, long ago. You know I love the big quietness of you and your sureness and the German love twisting your sentences about and the steady grip of your great firm hands and the rareness of your laugh and the simplicity of you. Why, I love the very cleanliness of your ruddy skin and the way your hair grows away from your forehead and your walk and your voice and, oh, what is the use of it all? Just this, Don, the light of day sweetens all things. We have dragged this thing out into the sunlight where if it grows it will grow sanely and healthily. It was but an ugly thing, sending out pale unhealthy shoots in the dark unwholesome cellars of our inner consciences. Nora's knowing was the cleanest, sweetest thing about it. How wonderful you understand her and how right you are. Her knowing seems to make it as it should be, doesn't it? I am braver already for the knowledge of it. It shall make no difference between us. There is no difference, Don, said he. No. It is only in the story books that they sigh and groan and utter nonsense. We are not like that. Perhaps after a bit you will meet someone you care for greatly. Not plump or blond or German, perhaps, but still. Doc, you are flippant? I must say those things to keep the tears back. You would not have me wailing here in the street. Tell me just one thing and there shall be no more fluttering breaths and languishing looks. Tell me, when did you begin to care? We had reached Knauf's doorstep. The short winter day was already drawing to its close. In the half light, Von Gerhard's eyes glowed luminous. Since the day I first met you at Nora's, he said simply. I stared at him aghast, my ever-present sense of humor struggling to the surface. Not on that day when you came into the room where I sat in the chair by the window with a flowered quilt humped about my shoulders and a fever sore twisting my mouth and my complexion the color of cheese and my hair plastered back from my forehead and my eyes like boiled onions. Thank God for your gift of laughter, Von Gerhard said, and took my hand in his for one brief moment before he turned and walked away. Quite prosaically, I opened the big front door at Knauf's to find Herr Knauf standing in the hallway with his knob and frow arm and there was a sane and soothing scent of vener schnitzel and spluttering things in the air and I ran upstairs into my room and turned on all the lights and looked at the starry eyed creature in the mirror. Then I took the biggest, newest photograph of Nora from the mantel and looked at her for a long, long minute while she looked back at me in her brave, true way. Thank you, dear, I said to her. Thank you. Would you think me stagey and silly if I were to kiss you just once on your beautiful, trusting eyes? A telephone bell tinkled downstairs and Herr Knauf stationed himself at the foot of the stairs toward my name. When I had picked up the receiver this is Ernst, said the voice at the other end of the wire. I have just remembered that I had asked you downtown for supper. I would rather thank God fasting, I replied very softly and hung the receiver on its hook. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of Don O'Hara The Girl Who Laughed This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Leanne Howlett Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber Chapter 12 Benny the Consolar In a corner of Frauner Longer's bedroom, sheltered from droughts and glaring light, is a little wooden bed, painted blue and ornamented with stout red roses faded by time and much abuse. Every evening at eight o'clock three anxious-browed women hold low-spoken conclave about the quaint old bed, while its occupant sleeps and smiles as he sleeps and clasps to his breast a chewed-looking woolly dog. For a new joy has come to the sad little Frauner Longer, and I, quite by accident, was the cause of bringing it to her. The queer little blue bed, with its faded roses, was brought up, for she is one of the three foster-mothers of the small occupant of the bed. The occupant of the bed is named Benny, and a corporation formed for the purpose of bringing him up in the way he should go is composed of. Don O'Hara Orm, President and Distracted Guardian Mrs. Conradner Longer, Cuddler in Chief and Authority on the subject of Benny's bedtime, Mr. Blackie Griffith, Good Angel, General Cut-Up and Monitor with ties and toys, Dr. Ernst von Gerhard, Chief Medical Advisor and Swellher of the Ex-Checker with the privilege of selecting all candies. Members of the corporation meet with great frequency evenings and Sundays, much to the detriment of a certain book in the making with which Don O'Hara Orm was want to struggle o' evenings. Benny had been one of those little tragedies that find their way into juvenile court. Benny's story was common and different. Ten minutes after his first appearance in the courtroom, everyone from the big ball judge to the newest probation officer had fallen in love with him. Somehow you wanted to smooth the hair from his forehead, tip his pale little face upward, and very gently kiss his smooth white brow, which alone was enough to distinguish Benny for juvenile court children as a rule are distinctly not kissable. Benny's mother was accused of being unfit to care for her boy, and Benny was temporarily installed in the detention home. There the superintendent and his plump and kindly wife had fallen head over heels in love with him and addressed him in a smart little Norfolk suit in a frivolous plaid silk tie. There were delays in the case and postponement after postponement so that Benny appeared in the courtroom every Tuesday for four weeks. The reporters and the probation officers and policemen became very chummy with Benny and showered him with bright new pennies and colorful candies. Superintendent Arnett of the detention home was as proud of the boy as though he were his own. And when Benny would look shyly and questioningly into his face for permission to accept the proffered offerings, the big superintendent would chuckle delightedly. Benny had a strangely mobile face for such a baby, and the whitest, smoothest brow I have ever seen. The comedy and tears and misery and laughter of the big white-walled courtroom were too much for Benny. He was about with puzzled blue eyes, then giving up the situation as something too vast for his comprehension. He would fall to drawing curlicues on a bit of paper with a great yellow pencil presented him by one of the newspaper men. Every Tuesday the rows of benches were packed with a motley crowd of Poles, Russians, Slavs, Italians, Greeks, Lithuanians, a crowd made up of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, neighbors, friends, and enemies of the boys and girls whose fate was in the hands of the big man seated in the revolving chair up in front. But Benny's mother was not of this crowd, this pitiful ludicrous crowd filling the great room with the stifling rancid odor of the poor. Nor was Benny. He sat, clear-eyed and unsmiling, in the depths of a great chair on the court side of the railing, and gravely received the attentions of the lawyers and reporters in courtroom at a chaise who had grown fond of it. Then on the fifth Tuesday Benny's mother appeared. How she had come to be that child's mother, God only knows, or perhaps he had had nothing to do with it. She was terribly sober and frightened. Her face was swollen and bruised, and beneath one eye there was a puffy green and blue swelling. Her sordid story was common enough as the probation officer told it. The woman had been living in one wretched room with the boy. Her husband had deserted her. The queer feature of it, said the probation officer, was that the woman managed to keep the boy fairly neat and clean, regardless of her own condition, and he generally had food of some sort, although the mother sometimes went without food for days. Through the squalor and misery and degradation of her own life Benny had somehow been kept unsullied, a thing apart. Hmm! said Judge Wheeling and looked at Benny. Benny was standing beside his mother. He was very quiet, and his eyes were smiling up into those of the battered creature who was fighting for him. I guess we'll have to take you out of this, the judge decided abruptly. That boy is too good to go to waste. The sodden, dazed woman before him did not immediately get the full meaning of his words. She still stood there, swaying a bit, and staring unintelligently at the judge. Then quite suddenly she realized it. She took a quick step forward. Her hand went up to her breast, to her throat, to her lips, with an odd stifled gesture. You ain't going to take him away from me. No, you wouldn't do that, would you? Not for—not for always. You wouldn't do that, you wouldn't. Judge Wheeling waved her away, with the woman dropped to her knees. Judge, give me a chance. I'll stop drinking. Only don't take him away from me. Don't, Judge, don't. He's all I've got in the world. Give me a chance. Three months. Six months. A year. Get up. Ordered Judge Wheeling gruffly, and stopped that. It won't do you a bit of good. And then a wonderful thing happened. The woman rose to her feet. A new and strange dignity had come into her battered face. The lines of suffering and vice were erased as by magic, and she seemed to grow taller, younger, almost beautiful. When she spoke again it was slowly and distinctly. Her words were a bit free from the blur of the bar room and street vernacular. I tell you, you must give me a chance. You cannot take a child from a mother in this way. I tell you, if you will only help me, I can crawl back up the road that I've traveled. I was not always like this. There was another life before—before— oh, since then there have been years of blackness and hunger and cold and worse, but I never dragged the boy into it. Look at him. Our eyes traveled from the woman's transfigured face to that of the boy. We could trace a wonderful likeness where before we had seen none. But the woman went on in her steady, even tone. I can't talk as I should because my brain isn't clear. It's the drink. When you drink you forget. But you must help me. I can't do it alone. I can remember how to live straight just as I can remember how to talk straight. Let me show you that I'm not all bad. Take the boy and then give him back to me when you are satisfied. I'll try. God only knows how I'll try. Only don't take him away forever, judge. Don't do that. Judge Wheeling ran an uncomfortable finger around his collar's edge. Any friends living here? No, no. Sure about that? Quite sure. Now see here. I'm going to give you your chance. I'll take this boy away from you for a year. In that time you will stop drinking and become a decent self-supporting woman. You will be given in charge of one of these probation officers. She will find work for you and a good home and she'll stand by you and you must report to her. If she is satisfied with you at the end of the year, the boy goes back to you. She will be satisfied, the woman said simply. She stooped in taking Benny's face between her hands, kissed him once. She stepped aside and stood quite still, looking after the little figure that passed out of the courtroom with his hand and that of a big, kindly police officer. She looked until the big door had opened and closed upon them. Then, well, it was just another newspaper story. It made a good one. That evening I told Fraun or Langer about it and she wept softly and murmured, Ack, thus armed baby, like my little Oscar he is without a mother. I told Ernst about him, too, and blacky, because I could not get his grave little face out of my mind. I wondered if those who had charge of him now would take the time to bathe the little body and brush the soft hair until it shone and tie the gay plaid silk tie as lovingly as Daddy Arnett of the detention home had done. Then it was that I, quite unwittingly, stepped into Benny's life. There was an anniversary or a change in the board of directors or a new coat of paint or something of the kind in one of the orphan homes and the story fell to me. I found the orphan home to be typical of its kind, a big dreary prison-like structure. The woman at the door did not in the least care to let me in. She was a fished-mouth woman with a hard eye and, as I told my errand, her mouth grew fissure and the eye harder. Finally she led me down a long, dark, airless stretch of corridor and departed in search of the matron, leaving me seated in the unfriendly reception room with its straight back chairs placed only against the walls beneath rows of red and blue and yellow religious pictures. Just as I was wondering why it seemed impossible to be holy and cheerful at the same time there came a pad padding down the corridor. The next moment the matron stood in the doorway. She was a mountainous red-faced woman with warts on her nose. Good afternoon, I said sweetly. Ooh, what a brute, I thought. Then I began to explain my errand once more. Criticism of the home? No, indeed, I assured her. At last, convinced of my disinterestedness, she reluctantly guided me about the big gloomy building. There were endless flights of shiny stairs and endless stuffy, airless rooms until we came to a door which she flung open, disclosing the nursery. It seemed to me that there were a hundred babies, babies at every stage of development of all sizes and ages and types. They glanced up at the opening of the door and then a dreadful thing happened. Every child that was able to walk or creep scuttled into the farthest corners and remained quite, quite still with a wide-eyed expression of fear and apprehension on every face. For a moment my heart stood still. I turned to look at the woman by my side. Her thin lips were compressed into a straight hard line. She said a word to a nurse standing near and began to walk about, eyeing the children sharply. She put out a hand to pat the head of one red-haired mite in a soiled pinafore, but before her hand could descend I saw the child dodge and the tiny hand flew up to the head as though in defense. They were afraid of her, my sick heart told me. Those babies are afraid of her. What does she do to them? I can't stand this. I'm going. I mumbled a hurried thank you to the fat matron as I turned to leave the big bear room. At the head of the stairs there was a great black door. I stopped before it, God knows why, and pointed toward it. What is in that room, I asked. Since then I have wondered many times at the unseen power that prompted me to put the question. The stout matron bustled on, rattling her keys as she walked. That, oh, that's where we keep the incorrigibles. May I see them, I asked, again prompted by that inner voice. There is only one. She grudgingly unlocked the door using one of the great keys that swung from her waist. The heavy black door swung open. I stepped into the bear room, lighted dimly by one small window. In the farthest corner crouched something that stirred and glanced up at our entrance. It peered at us with an ugly look of terror and defiance and I stared back at it in the dim light. During one dreadful breathless second I remained staring while my heart stood still. Then Benny, I cried and stumbled toward him. Benny, boy! The little unkempt figure in its soiled knickerbocker suit, the sunny hair all uncared for, the gay plaid tie draggled in limp, rushed into my arms with a crazy and articulate cry. Down on my knees on the bare floor I held him close, close, and his arms were about my neck as though they never should unclasp. Take me away, take me away. His wet cheek was pressed against my own streaming one. I want my mother. I want Daddy Arnett. Take me away. I wiped his cheeks with my notebook or something, picked him up in my arms and started for the door. I had quite forgotten the fat matron. What are you doing? She asked, blocking the doorway with her huge bulk. I'm going to take him back with me. Please let me. I'll take care of him until the year is up. He shan't bother you any more. That is impossible, she said coldly. He has been sent here by the court for a year and he must stay here. Besides, he is a stubborn, uncontrollable child. Uncontrollable? He's nothing of the kind. Why don't you treat him as a child should be treated instead of like a little animal? You don't know him. Why, he's the most lovable I—and he's only a baby. Can't you see that? A baby. She only stared her dislike. Her little pig eyes grown smaller and more glittering. You great big thing, I shrieked at her like an infuriated child. With the tears streaming down my cheeks I unclasped Benny's cold hands from about my neck. He clung to me frantically until I had to push him away and run. The woman swung the door shut and locked it. But for all its thickness I could hear Benny's helpless fists pounding on its panels as I stumbled down the stairs and Benny's voice came faintly to my ears, muffled by the heavy door, as he shrieked to me to take him away to his mother and to daddy Arnett. I blubbered all the way back in the car until everyone stared, but I didn't care. When I reached the office I made straight for Blackie's smoke-filled sanctum. When my tale was ended he let me cry all over his desk with my head buried in a heap of galley-proofs and my tears watering his paste-pot. He sat calmly by, smoking. Finally he began gently to philosophize. Now, girl, he's probably better off there than he ever was at home with his mother soused all the time. Maybe he give that warty matron friend of yours all kinds of trouble yelling for his ma. I raised my head from the desk. Oh, you can talk. You didn't see him. What do you care? But if you could have seen him crouch there alone like a little animal he was so sweet and lovable and he hadn't been decently washed for weeks and his arms clung to me I can feel his hands about my neck. I buried my head in the papers again. Blackie went on smoking. There was no sound in the little room except the purr purring of Blackie's pipe then. I done a favor for wheeling once, used he. I glanced up quickly. Oh, Blackie, do you think? No, I don't. But then again you can't never tell. That was four or five years ago and the memory of past favors grows dim fast still if you're through water in the top of my desk why I'd like to sit down and do a little real brisk talking over the phone you're excused. Quite humbly I crept away with hope in my heart. To this day I do not know what secret string the resourceful Blackie pulled but the next afternoon I found a hastily scrawled note tucked into the roll of my typewriter. It sent me scuttling across the hall to the sporting editor's smoke-filled room and there on a chair beside the desk surrounded by scrapbooks, lead pencils, paste-pot and odds and ends of newspaper office paraphernalia sat Benny. His hair was parted very smoothly on one side and under his dimpled chin bristled a very new and extremely lively green and red plaid silk tie. The next instant I had swept aside papers, brushes, pencils, books, and Benny was gathered close in my arms. Blackie, with a strange glow in his deep-set black eyes, gathered us with an assumed disgust. Women is all alike. Ain't it the truth? I used to think you was different, but shucks. It ain't so. Got to turn on the weeps, the miniature tickled or mad. Why, say, I ain't going to have you coming in here and dampening up the whole place every little while. It's unhealthy for me, sitting here in the wet. Oh, shut up, Blackie, I said happily. How in the world did you do it? Never you mind. The question is, what you're going to do with him now you've got him? Going to have a French bunny for him or fetch him up by hand? Wheeling appointed a probation skirt to look after the crowd of us and we got to toe the mark. Glory be, I ejaculated. I don't know what I shall do with him. I shall have to bring him down with me every morning and perhaps you can make a sporting editor out of him. Nix, not with that forehead. He's a highbrow. We'll make him dramatic critic. In the meantime, I'll be a little fairy godmother and if you'll get on your bonnet I'll stake you and the young into strawberry, shortcake, chocolate ice cream. So it happened that a wandering frau canop and a sympathetic frau norlanger were called in for consultation an hour later. Benny was ensconced in my room, very wide-eyed and wondering, but quite content. With the entrance of frau norlanger the consultation was somewhat disturbed. She made a quick rush at him and gathered him in her hungry arms. Do, baby, do, she cried, do, climb her. And she was down on her knees and somehow her figure resulted into delicious mother-curves with Benny's head just fitting into that most gracious one between her shoulder and breast. She cooed to him in a babble of French and German and English, calling him her little Oscar. Benny seemed miraculously to understand. Perhaps he was becoming accustomed to having strange ladies snatch him to their breasts. So, said frau norlanger, looking up at us, is he not sweet? He shall be my little boy, Nix. For one small year he shall be my little boy. Ock, I am but lonely all the long day here in this strange land. You will let me care for him, Nix? And Conrad, you will be very angry, but that shall make no bit of difference. Ay, 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 Benny's supper. Frau norlanger was for soft-boiled eggs as being none too heavy after orphan asylum to describe 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 canop 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 cooking 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 Benny that we tucked between the sheets. We three women stood looking down and lay there in the quaint, old blue-painted bed that had once held the plump little canops. You think any way he had enough supper used the anxious-browed Frau canop? To school he will have to go, yes, murmured Frau norlanger 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 to so broadening and at the same time so chancey. End of Chapter 12