Dawn O'Hara the Girl Who Laughed

by Edna Ferber

  “I would rather thank God fasting,” I replied, very softly, and hung the receiver on its hook.

  CHAPTER XII

  BENNIE THE CONSOLER

  In a corner of Frau Nirlanger’s bedroom, sheltered from draughts and glaring light, is a little wooden bed, painted blue and ornamented with stout red roses that are 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 Frau Nirlanger, and I, quite by accident, was the cause of bringing it to her. The queer little blue bed, with its faded roses, was brought down from the attic by Frau Knapf, for she is one of the three foster mothers of the small occupant of the bed. The occupant of the bed is named Bennie, and a corporation formed for the purpose of bringing him up in the way he should go is composed of: Dawn O’Hara Orme, President and Distracted Guardian; Mrs. Konrad Nirlanger, Cuddler-in-chief and Authority on the Subject of Bennie’s Bed-time; Mr. Blackie Griffith, Good Angel, General Cut-up and Monitor off’n Bennie’s Neckties and Toys; Dr. Ernst von Gerhard, Chief Medical Adviser, and Sweller of the Exchequer, 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 Dawn O’Hara Orme was wont to struggle o’ evenings.

  Bennie had been one of those little tragedies that find their way into juvenile court. Bennie’s story was common enough, but Bennie himself had been different. Ten minutes after his first appearance in the court room everyone, from the big, bald 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 Bennie, for Juvenile court children, as a rule, are distinctly not kissable.

  Bennie’s mother was accused of being unfit to care for her boy, and Bennie 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 had dressed him in a smart little Norfolk suit and a frivolous plaid silk tie. There were delays in the case, and postponement after postponement, so that Bennie appeared in the court room every Tuesday for four weeks. The reporters, and the probation officers and policemen became very chummy with Bennie, and showered him with bright new pennies and certain wonderful candies. Superintendent Arnett of the Detention Home was as proud of the boy as though he were his own. And when Bennie would look shyly and questioningly into his face for permission to accept the proffered offerings, the big superintendent would chuckle delightedly. Bennie 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 court room were too much for Bennie. He would gaze about with puzzled blue eyes; then, giving up the situation as something too vast for his comprehension, he would fall to drawing curly-cues 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 Bennie’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 Bennie. 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 and court room attaches who had grown fond of the grave little figure.

  Then, on the fifth Tuesday, Bennie’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. There was no food, and little furniture. 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 Bennie had somehow been kept unsullied, a thing apart.

  “H’m! ” said judge Wheeling, and looked at Bennie. Bennie 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. But 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 stop 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 quite free from the blur of the barroom 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. Give me a chance. 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 shall 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 and taking Bennie’s face between her hands kissed him once. Then she stepped aside and stood quite still, looking after the little figure that passed out of the court room with his hand in that of a big, kindly police officer. Sh
e 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 Frau Nirlanger about it, and she wept, softly, and murmured: “Ach, das arme baby! Like my little Oscar he is, without a mother.” I told Ernst about him too, and Blackie, 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 Bennie’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 fish-mouthed woman with a hard eye, and as I told my errand her mouth grew fishier 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-backed chairs placed stonily 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. (“Ugh! 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, eying 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 are 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, bare 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 bare 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— “Bennie!” I cried. And stumbled toward him. “Bennie— boy!”

  The little unkempt figure, in its soiled knickerbocker suit, the sunny hair all uncared for, the gay plaid tie draggled and limp, rushed into my arms with a crazy, inarticulate 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 Bennie’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 Bennie’s helpless fists pounding on its panels as I stumbled down the stairs, and Bennie’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 prob’ly 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, yellin’ 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, crouched there—alone—like a little animal! He was so sweet—and lovable—and—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,” mused 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 mem’ry of past favors grows dim fast. Still, if you’re through waterin’ the top of my desk, why I’d like t’ set down and do a little real brisk talkin’ 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 Bennie. 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 Bennie was gathered close in my arms. Blackie, with a strange glow in his deep-set black eyes regarded us with an assumed disgust.

  “Wimmin is all alike. Ain’t it th’ truth? I used t’ thin
k you was different. But shucks! It ain’t so. Got t’ turn on the weeps the minute you’re tickled or mad. Why say, I ain’t goin’ t’ have you comin’ in here an’ dampenin’ up the whole place every little while! It’s unhealthy for me, sittin’ 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 goin’ t’ do with him, now you’ve got him? Goin’ t’ 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 t’ 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 high-brow. We’ll make him dramatic critic. In the meantime, I’ll be little fairy godmother, an’ if you’ll get on your bonnet I’ll stake you and the young ‘un to strawberry shortcake an’ chocolate ice cream.”

  So it happened that a wondering Frau Knapf and a sympathetic Frau Nirlanger were called in for consultation an hour later. Bennie was ensconced in my room, very wide-eyed and wondering, but quite content. With the entrance of Frau Nirlanger the consultation was somewhat disturbed. She made a quick rush at him and gathered him in her hungry arms.

  “Du baby du!” she cried. “Du Kleiner! And she was down on her knees, and somehow her figure had melted into delicious mother-curves, with Bennie’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 lee-tel Oscar. Bennie seemed miraculously to understand. Perhaps he was becoming accustomed to having strange ladies snatch him to their breasts.

  “So,” said Frau Nirlanger, looking up at us. “Is he not sweet? He shall be my lee-tel boy, nicht? For one small year he shall be my own boy. Ach, I am but lonely all the long day here in this strange land. You will let me care for him, nicht? And Konrad, he will be very angry, but that shall make no bit of difference. Eh, Oscar?”