 20. Blackie's Vacation comes. The shabby blue office coat hangs on the hook in the little sporting room where Blackie placed it. No one dreams of moving it. There it dangles, out at elbows, disreputable, its pockets burn from many a hot pipe thrust carelessly into them, its cuffs frayed, its lapels bearing the marks of cigarette, paste pot, and pen. It is that faded old garment more than anything else which makes us fail to realize that its owner will never again slip into its comfortable folds. We cannot believe that a lifeless rag like that can triumph over the man of flesh and blood and nerves and sympathies. With what contempt do we look upon those garments during our lifetime, and how they live on, defying time, long, long after we have been gathered to our last rest? In some miraculous manner Blackie had lived on for two days after that ghastly ride. Later had been killed instantly, the doctors said. They gave no hope for Blackie. My escape with but a few ridiculous bruises and scratches was due, they said, to the fact that I had sat in the to-know. I heard them all in a stupor of horror and grief, and wondered what planned fate had in store for me that I alone should have been spared. Nora and Max came and took things in charge, and I saw von Gerhard, but all three appeared dim and shadowy, like figures in a mist. When I closed my eyes I could see Peter's tense figure bending over Blackie at the wheel, and heard his labored breathing as he struggled in his mad fury, and felt again the helpless horror that had come to me as we swerved off the road and into the ditch below, with Blackie, rigid and desperate, still clinging to the wheel. I lived it all over and over in my mind. In the midst of the blackness I heard a sentence that cleared the fog from my mind, and caused me to raise myself from my pillows. Someone, Nora, I think, had said that Blackie was conscious, and that he was asking for some of the men at the office, and for me. For me. I rose and dressed in spite of Nora's protests. I was quite well, I told them. I must see him. I shook them off with trembling fingers, and when they saw that I was quite determined, they gave in, and von Gerhard telephoned to the hospital to learn the hour at which I might meet the others who were to see Blackie for a brief moment. I met them in the stiff little waiting-room of the hospital, Norberg, Deming, Schmidt, Holt, men who had known him from the time when they had yelled, hey, boy, at him when they wanted their pencils sharpened. Awkwardly we followed the fleet-footed nurse who glided ahead of us down the wide hospital corridors, past doorways through which we caught glimpses of white beds that were no wider than the faces that lay on the pillows. We came at last into a very still and bright little room where Blackie lay. Had years passed over his head since I saw him last? The face that tried to smile at us from the pillow was strangely wizened and old. It was as though a withering blight had touched it. Only the eyes were the same. They glowed in the sunken face beneath the shock of black hair with a startling luster and brilliancy. I do not know what pain he suffered. I do not know what magic medicine gave him the strength to smile at us, dying as he was even then. Well, what do you know about little Paul Domby? He piped in a high, thin voice. The shock of relief was too much. We giggled hysterically, then stopped short and looked at each other, like scared and naughty children. Say, boys and girls, cut out the heavy thinking parts. Don't make me do all the social stunts. What's the news? What kind of a rotten cotton sporting sheet is that dubbed Callahan getting out? Who won today? Cubs or pirates? Norberg, you goat, who penned that purple tie on you? He was so like the Blackie we had always known that we were at our ease immediately. The sun shone in at the window and someone laughed a little laugh somewhere down the corridor, and Deming, who was Irish, plunged into a droll description of a brand new office boy who had arrived that day. To help me black, the kid wears spectacles in a Norfolk suit and low cut shoes with bows on him. On the square he does. Looks like one of those Boston infants you see in the comic papers. I don't believe he's real. We're saving him until you get back if the kids in the alley don't chew him up before that time. An almost imperceptible shade passed over Blackie's face. He closed his eyes for a moment. Without their light, his countenance was ashen and awful. A nurse in stripes and cap appeared in the doorway. She looked keenly at the little figure in the bed. Then she turned to us. You must go now, she said. You were just to see him for a minute or two, you know. Blackie summoned the wand ghost of a smile to his lips. Guess you guys ain't got the stimulate in effect that a bunch of live wires ought to have. Say Norberg, tell that fathead Callahan if he don't keep the third drawer to the right in my desk locked, the office kids will swipe all the roller rink passes surest thing you know. I'll tell him Black, stammered Norberg, and turned away. They said good-bye, awkwardly enough, not one of them that did not owe him an unpayable debt of gratitude, not one that had not the memory of some secret kindness stored away in his heart. It was Blackie who had furnished the money that had sent Deming's sick wife West. It had been Blackie who had rescued Schmidt time and again when drink got a stranglehold. Blackie had always said, fair Schmidt, not much. Why Schmidt writes better stuff drunk than all the rest of the bunch sober and Schmidt would be granted another reprieve by the powers that were. Suddenly Blackie beckoned the nurse in the doorway. She came swiftly and bent over him. Give me two minutes more. That's a good nurse. There's something I want to say to this dame. It's day-rigged a handout last message is, ain't it? The nurse looked at me doubtfully, but you're not to excite yourself. Say, girl, this ain't going to be no scene from East Lynn. Be a good kid. The rest of the bunch can go. And so when the others had gone, I found myself seated at the side of his bed trying to smile down at him. I knew that there must be nothing to excite him, but the words on my lips would come. Blackie, I said, and I struggled to keep my voice calm and emotionless. Blackie, forgive me. It is all my fault, my wretched fault. Now cut that, interrupted Blackie. I thought that was your game. That's why I said I wanted to talk to you. Now listen, remember my telling you a few weeks ago about that vacation I was planning? This is it, only it's come sooner than I expected, that's all. I seen two, three doctor guys about it. Your friend Von Gerhard was one of them. They didn't tell me to take no ocean trip this time. Between them, they decided my vacation would come along about November maybe. Well, I beat him to it, that's all. Say, girl, I ain't kicking. You can't live on your nerves and expect to keep going. Sooner or later, you'll be suing those same nerves for non-support. But kid, ain't it a shame that I got to go out in a auto smash up and these days when even an airship exit don't make a splash on the front page? The nervous brown hand was moving restlessly over the covers. Finally, it met my hand and held it in a tense little grip. We've been good pals you and me, ain't we kid? Yes, Blackie. Ain't regretted it none? Regretted it, I'm a finer, truer, better woman for having known you, Blackie. He gave a little contented sigh at that and his eyes closed. When he opened them, the old whimsical smile wrinkled his face. This is where I get off at. It ain't been no long trip, but say, girl, I've enjoyed every mile of the road. All kinds of scenery, all kinds of landscape, plain, fancy, uphill, downhill. I leaned forward fearfully. Not yet, whispered Blackie. Say, Don, in the storybooks, they always are strong on the goodbye kiss, what? And as the nurse appeared in the doorway again, disapproval on her face, I stooped and gently pressed my lips to the pain-line cheek. End of Chapter 20. Chapter 21 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 21. Happiness. We laid Peter to rest in that noisy, careless, busy city that he had loved so well, and I think his cynical lips would have curled on a bitterly amused smile, and his somber eyes would have flamed in the sudden wrath if he could have seen how utterly and completely New York had forgotten Peter Orm. He had been buried alive ten years before, and newspaper row has no faith in resurrections. Peter Orm was not even a memory. Ten years is an age in a city where epochs are counted by hours. Now after two weeks of Nora's loving care, I was back in the pretty little city by the lake. I had come to say farewell to all those who had filled my life so completely in that year. My days of newspaper work were over. The autumn and winter would be spent at Nora's, occupied with hours of delightful congenial work for the second book was to be written in the quiet piece of my own little Michigan town. Von Gerhard was to take his deferred trip to Vienna in the spring, and I knew that I was to go with him. The thought filled my heart with a great flood of happiness. Together, Von Gerhard and I had visited Almelflugl's cottage, and the garden was blooming in all its wonder of color and scent as we opened the little gate and walked up the worn path. We found them in the cool shade of the arbor, the two women sewing, Benny playing with the last wonderful toy that Blackie had given him. They made a serene and beautiful picture there against the green canopy of the leaves. We spoke of Frau Neurlanger and of Blackie and of the strange snarl of events which had at last been unwound to knit a close friendship between us. And when I had kissed them and walked for the last time in many months up the flower-bordered path, the scarlet and pink and green and gold of that wonderful garden swam in a mist before my eyes. Frau Neurlanger was next. When we spoke of Vienna, she caught her breath sharply. Vienna, she repeated, and the longing in her voice was an actual pain. Vienna got. Shall I ever see it again? Vienna, my boy is there. Perhaps. Perhaps, I said gently, stranger things have happened. Perhaps if I could see them and talk to them, if I could tell them, they might be made to understand. I haven't been a newspaper reporter all these years without acquiring a golden gift of persuasiveness. Perhaps, who knows, we may meet again in Vienna. Stranger things have happened. Frau Neurlanger shook her head with a little hopeless sigh. You did not know Vienna. You did not know the iron strength of cast and custom and stiff-necked pride. I am dead in Vienna, and the dead should rest in peace. It was late in the afternoon when von Gerhard and I turned the cornerer which led to the building that held the post. I'd save that for the last. I hope that heaven is not a place of golden streets and twanging harps and angel choruses, I said softly. Little nervous, slangy, restless Blackie, how bored and ill it is he would be in such a heaven. How lonely without his old black pipe and his checked waistcoats and his diamonds and his sporting extra. Oh, I hope they have all those comforting everyday things up there for Blackie's sake. How you grew to understand him in that short year, used von Gerhard. I sometimes used to resent the bond between you and this little Blackie whose name was always on your tongue. Ah, that was because you did not comprehend. It is given to very few women to know the beauty of a man's real friendship. That was the bond between Blackie and me. To me he was a comrade and to him I was a good fellow girl, one to whom he could talk without excusing his pipe or cigarette. Love and lovemaking were things to bring a kindly amused chuckle from Blackie. Von Gerhard was silent. Something in his silence held a vague irritation for me. I extracted a penny from my purse and placed it in his hand. I was thinking, he said, that none are so blind as those who will not see. I don't understand, I said puzzled. That is well, answered von Gerhard as we entered the building. That is as it should be. And he would say nothing more. The last edition of the paper had been run off for the day. I had purposely waited until the footfalls of the last departing reporter should have ceased to echo down the long corridor. The city room was deserted except for one figure bent over a pile of papers and proofs. Norberg, the city editor, was the last to leave, as always. His desk light glowed in the darkness of the big room, and his typewriter alone awoke the echoes. As I stood in the doorway, he peered up from beneath his green eye shade and waved a cloud of smoke away with the palm of his hand. That you, Mrs. Orm, he called out. Lord, we've missed you. That new woman can't write an obituary, and her teary tail sound like they were carved with a cold chisel. When are you coming back? I'm not coming back, I replied. I've come to say goodbye to you and Blackie. Norberg looked up quickly. You feel that way, too? Funny, so do the rest of us. Sometimes I think we are all half-sure that it is only another of his impish tricks, and that some morning he will pop open the door of the city room here and call out, Hello, slaves, been keeping my memory green? I held out my hand to him, gratefully. He took it in his great palm and a smile dimpled his plump cheeks. Going to blossom into a regular little writer, hmm? Well, they say it's a paying game when you get the hang of it, and I guess you've got it. But if ever you feel that you want a real thrill, a touch of the old satisfying newspaper feeling, a sniff of wet ink, the music of some editorial cussing, well, I come up here and I'll give you the hottest assignment on my list if I have to take it away from Deming's very notebook. When I had thanked him, I crossed the hall and tried the door of the sporting editor's room. Von Gerhard was waiting for me far down at the other end of the corridor. The door opened, and I softly entered and shut it again. The little room was dim, but in the half light I could see that Callahan had changed something, had shoved a desk nearer the window or swung the typewriter over to the other side. I resented it. I glanced up at the corner where the shabby old office coat had been want to hang. There it dangled, untouched, just as he had left it. Callahan had not dared to change that. I tiptoed over to the corner and touched it gently with my fingers. A light pall of dust had settled over the worn little garment, but I knew each worn place, each ink spot, each scorcher burn from pipe or cigarette. I passed my hands over it reverently and gently, and then in the dimness of that quiet little room I laid my cheek against the rough cloth, so that the scent of the old black pipe came back to me once more, and a new spot appeared on the coat sleeve, a damp salt spot. Blackie would have hated my doing that, but he was not there to see, and one spot more or less did not matter. It was such a grimy disreputable old coat. Dawn, called Von Gerhard softly outside the door. Dawn, coming kinship, I gave the little coat a parting pat. Goodbye, I whispered under my breath and churned toward the door. Coming, I called, aloud. End of Chapter Twenty-One. End of Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Fuerber. Recording by Leanne Howlett.