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