Dawn OHara, The Girl Who Laughed | Page 4

big red-haired man seated himself heavily in the
chair near the bedside and rested his great hands on his fat knees. He
stared down at me in much the same way that a huge mastiff looks at a
terrier. Finally his glance rested on my limp left hand.
"Married, h'm?"

For a moment the word would not come. I could hear Norah catch her
breath quickly. Then--"Yes," answered I.
"Husband living?" I could see suspicion dawning in his cold gray eye.
Again the catch in Norah's throat and a little half warning, half
supplicating gesture. And again, "Yes," said I.
The dawn of suspicion burst into full glow.
"Where is he?" growled the red-haired doctor. "At a time like this?"
I shut my eyes for a moment, too sick at heart to resent his manner. I
could feel, more than see, that Sis was signaling him frantically. I
moistened my lips and answered him, bitterly.
"He is in the Starkweather Hospital for the insane."
When the red-haired man spoke again the growl was quite gone from
his voice.
"And your home is--where?"
"Nowhere," I replied meekly, from my pillow. But at that Sis put her
hand out quickly, as though she had been struck, and said:
"My home is her home."
"Well then, take her there," he ordered, frowning, "and keep her there
as long as you can. Newspaper reporting, h'm? In New York? That's a
devil of a job for a woman. And a husband who . . . Well, you'll have to
take a six months' course in loafing, young woman. And at the end of
that time, if you are still determined to work, can't you pick out
something easier--like taking in scrubbing, for instance?"
I managed a feeble smile, wishing that he would go away quickly, so
that I might sleep. He seemed to divine my thoughts, for he disappeared
into the corridor, taking Norah with him. Their voices, low-pitched and
carefully guarded, could be heard as they conversed outside my door.

Norah was telling him the whole miserable business. I wished, savagely,
that she would let me tell it, if it must be told. How could she paint the
fascination of the man who was my husband? She had never known the
charm of him as I had known it in those few brief months before our
marriage. She had never felt the caress of his voice, or the magnetism
of his strange, smoldering eyes glowing across the smoke-dimmed city
room as I had felt them fixed on me. No one had ever known what he
had meant to the girl of twenty, with her brain full of unspoken
dreams--dreams which were all to become glorious realities in that
wonder-place, New York.
How he had fired my country-girl imagination! He had been the most
brilliant writer on the big, brilliant sheet--and the most dissolute. How
my heart had pounded on that first lonely day when this Wonder-Being
looked up from his desk, saw me, and strolled over to where I sat
before my typewriter! He smiled down at me, companionably. I'm quite
sure that my mouth must have been wide open with surprise. He had
been smoking a cigarette an expensive-looking, gold-tipped one. Now
he removed it from between his lips with that hand that always shook a
little, and dropped it to the floor, crushing it lightly with the toe of his
boot. He threw back his handsome head and sent out the last mouthful
of smoke in a thin, lazy spiral. I remember thinking what a pity it was
that he should have crushed that costly-looking cigarette, just for me.
"My name's Orme," he said, gravely. "Peter Orme. And if yours isn't
Shaughnessy or Burke at least, then I'm no judge of what black hair and
gray eyes stand for."
"Then you're not," retorted I, laughing up at him, "for it happens to be
O'Hara--Dawn O'Hara, if ye plaze."
He picked up a trifle that lay on my desk--a pencil, perhaps, or a bit of
paper--and toyed with it, absently, as though I had not spoken. I
thought he had not heard, and I was conscious of feeling a bit
embarrassed, and very young. Suddenly he raised his smoldering eyes
to mine, and I saw that they had taken on a deeper glow. His white,
even teeth showed in a half smile.

"Dawn O'Hara," said he, slowly, and the name had never sounded in
the least like music before, "Dawn O'Hara. It sounds like a rose--a pink
blush rose that is deeper pink at its heart, and very sweet."
He picked up the trifle with which he had been toying and eyed it
intently for a moment, as though his whole mind were absorbed in it.
Then he put it down, turned, and walked slowly away.