But they only bustled on, heedless of my advice, and showed their contempt by crawling over me as I lay there like a lady Gulliver.
Oh, I played what they call a heavy thinking part. It was not only the ants that came in for lectures. I preached sternly to myself.
“Well, Dawn old girl, you’ve made a beautiful mess of it. A smashed-up wreck at twenty-eight! And what have you to show for it? Nothing! You’re a useless pulp, like a lemon that has been squeezed dry. Von Gerhard was right. There must be no more newspaper work for you, me girl. Not if you can keep away from the fascination of it, which I don’t think you can.”
Then I would fall to thinking of those years of newspapering—of the thrills of them, and the ills of them. It had been exhilarating, and educating, but scarcely remunerative. Mother had never approved. Dad had chuckled and said that it was a curse descended upon me from the terrible old Kitty O’Hara, the only old maid in the history of the O’Haras, and famed in her day for a caustic tongue and a venomed pen. Dad and Mother—what a pair of children they had been! The very dissimilarity of their natures had been a bond between them. Dad, light-hearted, whimsical, care-free, improvident; Mother, gravely sweet, anxious-browed, trying to teach economy to the handsome Irish husband who, descendant of a long and royal line of spendthrift ancestors, would have none of it.
It was Dad who had insisted that they name me Dawn. Dawn O’Hara! His sense of humor must have been sleeping. “You were such a rosy, pinky, soft baby thing,” Mother had once told me, “that you looked just like the first flush of light at sunrise. That is why your father insisted on calling you Dawn.”
Poor Dad! How could he know that at twenty-eight I would be a yellow wreck of a newspaper reporter—with a wrinkle between my eyes. If he could see me now he would say:
“Sure, you look like the dawn yet, me girl but a Pittsburgh dawn.”
At that, Mother, if she were here, would pat my check where the hollow place is, and murmur: “Never mind, Dawnie dearie, Mother thinks you are beautiful just the same.” Of such blessed stuff are mothers made.
At this stage of the memory game I would bury my face in the warm grass and thank my God for having taken Mother before Peter Orme came into my life. And then I would fall asleep there on the soft, sweet grass, with my head snuggled in my arms, and the ants wriggling, unchided, into my ears.
On the last of these sylvan occasions I awoke, not with a graceful start, like the story-book ladies, but with a grunt. Sis was digging me in the ribs with her toe. I looked up to see her standing over me, a foaming tumbler of something in her hand. I felt that it was eggy and eyed it disgustedly.
“Get up,” said she, “you lazy scribbler, and drink this.”
I sat up, eyeing her severely and picking grass and ants out of my hair.
“D’ you mean to tell me that you woke me out of that babe-like slumber to make me drink that goo? What is it, anyway? I’ll bet it’s another egg-nogg.”
“Egg-nogg it is; and swallow it right away, because there are guests to see you.”
I emerged from the first dip into the yellow mixture and fixed on her as stern and terrible a look at any one can whose mouth is encircled by a mustache of yellow foam.
“Guests!” I roared, “not for me! Don’t you dare to say that they came to see me!”
“Did too,” insists Norah, with firmness, “they came especially to see you. Asked for you, right from the jump.”
I finished the egg-nogg in four gulps, returned the empty tumbler with an air of decision, and sank upon the grass.
“Tell ‘em I rave. Tell ‘em that I’m unconscious, and that for weeks I have recognized no one, not even my dear sister. Say that in my present nerve-shattered condition I—”
“That wouldn’t satisfy them,” Norah calmly. interrupts, “they know you’re crazy because they saw you out here from their second story back windows. That’s why they came. So you may as well get up and face them. I promised them I’d bring you in. You can’t go on forever refusing to see people, and you know the Whalens are—”
“Whalens!” I gasped. “How many of them? Not—not the entire fiendish three?”
“All three. I left them champing with impatience.”
The Whalens live just around the corner. The Whalens are omniscient. They have a system of news gathering which would make the efforts of a New York daily appear antiquated. They know that Jenny Laffin feeds the family on soup meat and oat-meal when Mr. Laffin is on the road; they know that Mrs. Pearson only shakes out her rugs once in four weeks; they can tell you the number of times a week that Sam Dempster comes home drunk; they know that the Merkles never have cream with their coffee because little Lizzie Merkle goes to the creamery every day with just one pail and three cents; they gloat over the knowledge that Professor Grimes, who is a married man, is sweet on Gertie Ashe, who teaches second reader in his school; they can tell you where Mrs. Black got her seal coat, and her husband only earning two thousand a year; they know who is going to run for mayor, and how long poor Angela Sims has to live, and what Guy Donnelly said to Min when he asked her to marry him.
The three Whalens—mother and daughters—hunt in a group. They send meaning glances to one another across the room, and at parties they get together and exchange bulletins in a corner. On passing the Whalen house one is uncomfortably aware of shadowy forms lurking in the windows, and of parlor curtains that are agitated for no apparent cause.
Therefore it was with a groan that I rose and prepared to follow Norah into the house. Something in my eye caused her to turn at the very door. “Don’t you dare!” she hissed; then, banishing the warning scowl from her face, and assuming a near-smile, she entered the room and I followed miserably at her heels.
The Whalens rose and came forward effusively; Mrs. Whalen, plump, dark, voluble; Sally, lean, swarthy, vindictive; Flossie, pudgy, powdered, overdressed. They eyed me hungrily. I felt that they were searching my features for signs of incipient insanity.
“Dear, DEAR girl!” bubbled the billowy Flossie, kissing the end of my nose and fastening her eye on my ringless left hand.
Sally contented herself with a limp and fishy handshake. She and I were sworn enemies in our schoolgirl days, and a baleful gleam still lurked in Sally’s eye. Mrs. Whalen bestowed on me a motherly hug that enveloped me in an atmosphere of liquid face-wash, strong perfumery and fried lard. Mrs. Whalen is a famous cook. Said she:
“We’ve been thinking of calling ever since you were brought home, but dear me! you’ve been looking so poorly I just said to the girls, wait till the poor thing feels more like seeing her old friends. Tell me, how are you feeling now?”
The three sat forward in their chairs in attitudes of tense waiting.
I resolved that if err I must it should be on the side of safety. I turned to sister Norah.
“How am I feeling anyway, Norah?” I guardedly inquired.
Norah’s face was a study. “Why Dawn dear,” she said, sugar-sweet, “no doubt you know better than I. But I’m sure that you are wonderfully improved—almost your old self, in fact. Don’t you think she looks splendid, Mrs. Whalen?”
The three Whalens tore their gaze from my blank countenance to exchange a series of meaning looks.
“I suppose,” purred Mrs. Whalen, ” that your awful trouble was the real cause of your—a-a-a-sickness, worrying about it and grieving as you must have.”
She pronounces it with a capital T, and I know she means Peter. I hate her for it.
“Trouble!” I chirped. “Trouble never troubles me. I just worked too hard, that’s all, and acquired an awful `tired.’ All work and no play makes Jill a nervous wreck, you know.”
At that the elephantine Flossie wagged a playful finger at me. “Oh, now, you can’t make us believe that, just because we’re from the country! We know all about you gay New Yorkers, with your Bohemian ways and your midnight studio suppers, and your cigarettes, and cocktails and high jinks!”