CHAPTER XI. VON GERHARD SPEAKS
Of Von Gerhard I had not had a glimpse since that evening of myhysterical outburst. On Christmas day there had come a box of roses sohuge that I could not find vases enough to hold its contents, althoughI pressed into service everything from Mason jars from the kitchen tohand-painted atrocities from the parlor. After I had given posies toFrau Nirlanger, and fastened a rose in Frau Knapf's hard knob of hair,where it bobbed in ludicrous discomfort, I still had enough to fill thewashbowl. My room looked like a grand opera star's boudoir when she isexpecting the newspaper reporters. I reveled in the glowing fragranceof the blossoms and felt very eastern and luxurious and popular. It hadbeen a busy, happy, work-filled week, in which I had had to snatch oddmoments for the selecting of certain wonderful toys for the Spalpeens.There had been dolls and doll-clothes and a marvelous miniature kitchenfor the practical and stolid Sheila, and ingenious bits of mechanismthat did unbelievable things when wound up, for the clever, imaginativeHans. I was not to have the joy of seeing their wide-eyed delight, butI knew that there would follow certain laboriously scrawled letters,filled with topsy-turvy capitals and crazily leaning words of thanks tothe doting old auntie who had been such good fun the summer before.
Boarding-house Christmases had become an old story. I had learned toaccept them, even to those obscure and foreign parts of turkey whichare seen only on boarding-house plates, and which would be recognizednowhere else as belonging to that stately bird.
Christmas at Knapf's had been a happy surprise; a day of hearty goodcheer and kindness. There had even been a Christmas tree, hung withstodgy German angels and Pfeffernuesse and pink-frosted cakes. I foundmyself the bewildered recipient of gifts from everyone--from the Knapfs,and the aborigines and even from one of the crushed-looking wives.The aborigine whom they called Fritz had presented me with a huge andimposing Lebkuchen, reposing in a box with frilled border, ornamentedwith quaint little red-and-green German figures in sugar, and labeledNurnberg in stout letters, for it had come all the way from thatkuchen-famous city. The Lebkuchen I placed on my mantel shelf asbefitted so magnificent a work of art. It was quite too elaborate andimposing to be sent the way of ordinary food, although it had a certaintantalizingly spicy scent that tempted one to break off a corner hereand there.
On the afternoon of Christmas day I sat down to thank Dr. von Gerhardfor the flowers as prettily as might be. Also I asked his pardon, athing 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 thingscalled nerves, must know that it was only a mild hysteria that made mesay those most unladylike things. I have written Norah all about it.She has replied, advising me to stick to the good-fellow role but not todress the part. So when next you see me I shall be a perfectly safe andsane comrade in petticoats. And I promise you--no more outbursts."
So it happened that on the afternoon of New Year's day Von Gerhard andI gravely wished one another many happy and impossible things for thecoming year, looking fairly and squarely into each other's eyes as wedid so.
"So," said Von Gerhard, as one who is satisfied. "The nerfs are steadyto-day. What do you say to a brisk walk along the lake shore to put usin a New Year frame of mind, and then a supper down-town somewhere, witha toast to Max and Norah?"
"You've saved my life! Sit down here in the parlor and gaze at thecrepe-paper oranges while I powder my nose and get into some streetclothes. I have such a story to tell you! It has made me quite contentedwith my lot."
The story was that of the Nirlangers; and as we struggled against abrisk lake breeze I told it, and partly because of the breeze, andpartly because of the story, there were tears in my eyes when I hadfinished. Von Gerhard stared at me, aghast.
"But you are--crying!" he marveled, watching a tear slide down my nose.
"I'm not," I retorted. "Anyway I know it. I think I may blubber if Ichoose to, mayn't I, 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 didnot indulge in the luxury of tears."
"They don't--often. Haven't the time. If a woman reporter were to burstinto tears every time she saw something to weep over she'd be goingabout with a red nose and puffy eyelids half the time. Scarcely a daypasses that does not bring her face to face with human suffering in someform. Not only must she see these things, but she must write of themso that those who read can also see them. And just because she doesnot wail and tear her hair and faint she popularly is supposed to be aflinty, cigarette-smoking creature who rampages up and down the land,seeking whom she may rend with her pen and gazing, dry-eyed, upon scenesof horrid bloodshed."
"And yet the little domestic tragedy of the Nirlangers can bring tearsto your eyes?"
"Oh, that was quite different. The case of the Nirlangers had nothing todo with Dawn O'Hara, newspaper reporter. It was just plain Dawn O'Hara,woman, who witnessed that little tragedy. Mein Himmel! Are all Germanhusbands like that?"
"Not all. I have a very good friend named Max--"
"O, Max! Max is an angel husband. Fancy Max and Norah waxing tragic onthe subject of a gown! Now you--"
"I? Come, you are sworn to good-fellowship. As one comrade to another,tell me, what sort of husband do you think I should make, eh? Theboorish Nirlanger sort, or the charming Max variety. Come, tell me--youwho always have seemed so--so damnably 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 white-caps was piling upformidably only to break in futile wrath against the solid wall of theshore. And there came over me an equally futile wrath; that savage,unreasoning instinct in women which prompts them to hurt those whom theylove.
"Oh, you!" I began, with Von Gerhard's amused eyes laughing down uponme. "I should say that you would be more in the Nirlanger style, in yourlarge, immovable, Germansure way. Not that you would stoop to wrangleabout money or gowns, but that you would control those things. Yourwife will be a placid, blond, rather plump German Fraulein, of excellentfamily and no imagination. Men of your type always select negativewives. Twenty years ago she would have run to bring you your Zeitung andyour slippers. She would be that kind, if Zeitung-and-slipper husbandsstill were in existence. You will be fond of her, in a patronizing sortof way, and she will never know the difference between that and beingloved, not having a great deal of imagination, as I have said before.And you will go on becoming more and more famous, and she will growplumper and more placid, and less and less understanding of what thosekomisch medical journals have to say so often about her husband who isalways discovering things. And you will live happily ever after--"
A hand gripped my shoulder. I looked up, startled, into two blue eyesblazing down into mine. Von Gerhard's face was a painful red. I thinkthat the hand on my shoulder even shook me a little, there on that bleakand 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 calmlyunemotional. "You talk of hurts! You, who set out deliberately andmaliciously 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 aboutit. 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 somethingimpersonal. We get along wretchedly of late."
The angry red ebbed away from Von Gerhard's face. The blaze of wrath inhis 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 hadgrasped my shoulder slipped down, down, until it met my hand and grippedit.
"Na, 's ist schon recht, Kindchen. Those that we most care for we wouldhurt always. When I have told you of my love for you, although alreadyyou know it, then you will tell me. Hush! Do
not deny this thing. Thereshall be no more lies between us. There shall be only the truth, and nomore about plump, blonde German wives who run with Zeitung and slippers.After all, it is no secret. Three months ago I told Norah. It was notnews to her. But she trusted me."
I felt my face to be as white and as tense as his own. "Norah--knows!"
"It is better to speak these things. Then there need be no shifting ofthe eyes, no evasive words, no tricks, no subterfuge."
We had faced about and were retracing our steps, past the rows ofpeculiarly home-like houses that line Milwaukee's magnificent lakeshore. Windows were hung with holiday scarlet and holly, and here andthere a face was visible at a window, looking out at the man and womanwalking swiftly along the wind-swept heights that rose far above thelake.
A wretched revolt seized me as I gazed at the substantial comfort ofthose normal, happy homes.
"Why did you tell me! What good can that do? At least we weremake-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 thebig quietness of you, and your sureness, and the German way you have oftwisting your sentences about, and the steady grip of your great firmhands, and the rareness of your laugh, and the simplicity of you. WhyI love the very cleanliness of your ruddy skin, and the way your hairgrows away from your forehead, and your walk, and your voice and--Oh,what is the use of it all?"
"Just this, Dawn. The light of day sweetens all things. We have draggedthis thing out into the sunlight, where, if it grows, it will growsanely and healthily. It was but an ugly, distorted, unsightly thing,sending out pale unhealthy shoots in the dark, unwholesome cellars ofour inner consciences. Norah's knowing was the cleanest, sweetest thingabout it."
"How wonderfully you understand her, and how right you are! Her knowingseems to make it as it should be, doesn't it? I am braver already, forthe knowledge of it. It shall make no difference between us?"
"There is no difference, Dawn," said he.
"No. It is only in the story-books that they sigh, and groan and uttersilly nonsense. We are not like that. Perhaps, after a bit, you willmeet some one you care for greatly--not plump, or blond, or German,perhaps, but still--"
"Doch you are flippant?"
"I must say those things to keep the tears back. You would not have mewailing here in the street. Tell me just one thing, and there shall beno more fluttering breaths and languishing looks. Tell me, when did youbegin to care?"
We had reached Knapfs' door-step. The short winter day was alreadydrawing to its close. In the half-light Von Gerhard's eyes glowedluminous.
"Since the day I first met you at Norah's," he said, simply.
I stared at him, aghast, my ever-present sense of humor struggling tothe surface. "Not--not on that day when you came into the room where Isat in the chair by the window, with a flowered quilt humped about myshoulders! And a fever-sore twisting my mouth! And my complexion thecolor of cheese, and my hair plastered back from my forehead, and myeyes like boiled onions!"
"Thank God for your gift of laughter," Von Gerhard said, and took myhand in his for one brief moment before he turned and walked away.
Quite prosaically I opened the big front door at Knapfs' to find HerrKnapf standing in the hallway with his:
"Nabben', Frau Orme."
And there was the sane and soothing scent of Wienerschnitzel andspluttering things in the air. And I ran upstairs to my room and turnedon all the lights and looked at the starry-eyed creature in the mirror.Then I took the biggest, newest photograph of Norah from the mantel andlooked at her for a long, long minute, while she looked back at me inher brave true way.
"Thank you, dear," I said to her. "Thank you. Would you think me stageyand silly if I were to kiss you, just once, on your beautiful trustingeyes?"
A telephone bell tinkled downstairs and Herr Knapf stationed himself atthe foot of the stairs and roared my name.
When I had picked up the receiver: "This is Ernst," said the voice atthe other end of the wire. "I have just remembered that I had asked youdown-town for supper."
"I would rather thank God fasting," I replied, very softly, and hung thereceiver on its hook.