Read Online Hanno’s Doll by Evelyn Piper - Free Book Online Page A

help you now. What for?”
    She had promised to wipe him out.
    â€œVery well, we will go back to the office now.” Not until he had that snapshot and any other souvenir would he call the doctor. Because he hated that part. He had hated it with Puppchen; it was killing, but, as with Puppchen, when it was either the child’s life or the mother’s … And here,’ once again, it was Puppchen’s life. It was for Puppchen.
    He had gone up to Puppchen’s room to tell her he was returning to the college with Miss Mildred. She had been at her dressing table, brushing her hair. He had seen the scars on her wrists in the mirror. Yes, it was for Puppchen.
    He and Poor Miss Mildred had had a tussle about the snapshot. Why would it hurt to keep it? How could it hurt to keep a snapshot?
    â€œIt can hurt,” he said.
    Miss Mildred had given in and they had a ceremonial burning of the snapshot. (It was the boy, of course, but in the snapshot he looked so ordinary. In the snapshot there was no resemblance to the rat-hole boys of Berlin.)
    Yes, the picture was all she had. No, there was nothing in her room. She had kept the snapshot in the desk so Miss Metal wouldn’t see it and become curious. She had never told Miss Metal a word about …
    â€œNo name,” he said. “No name!” Because if he knew the name, the boy would be real. “I don’t want to hear his name.” He had refused to know Puppchen’s lover’s name for the same reason. He had not wanted him to be real, either. (Anni once asked him whether he thought if he closed his eyes and ears to a fact, it wasn’t. Anni didn’t miss much, did she?)
    He had laid his finger across Miss Mildred’s trembling lips for silence.
    â€œWe tell people I am giving you that chance at Broadway, that I have heard of a small part. Naturally, you leave tomorrow morning, parts wait for no man. Then, you attend to the bad part. (I will telephone the doctor immediately.) After that, you rest up in New York City awhile, and then you do get a chance at a part I will find something. Cheer up , Miss Mildred.”
    She had cheered up. There had appeared the most subtle shadow of a lift of her drooping lips. What it was to be stage-struck, dear God!
    â€œYou will tell people you asked me for a chance and I am giving it to you. If you make good at it, you go on, on your own. If you don’t, well, you are still ‘Miss’ Mildred, and some day you will make some good man a better wife because of all this.”
    He had then called the doctor and made an appointment for the next afternoon. Naturally, he had wanted Miss Mildred removed as quickly as possible from all temptation to talk.
    One half day of rest, and then Miss Mildred in tears again. The next morning when she was supposed to be leaving for New York, Miss Mildred at her desk in tears again.
    She could not. She could not. It was wrong, wrong, wrong.
    But he had made the arrangement with the doctor.
    No. No. No.
    He had not pressed her. (Could not.) She seemed as determined to keep her child as Puppchen had been not to keep hers.
    He had told Miss Mildred that he would have to think of something else, then. He would think of something else. Miss Mildred was to wait, only not to talk. To tell anyone was the one fatal thing. To tell anyone at all would make whatever he did think of useless. “Trust Hanno.”
    And he had thought of something else. It hadn’t taken much time. It hadn’t taken much doing, either. (And this, too, had seemed a sign that fate was trying to make up for what she had permitted to happen.) Leaving Miss Mildred sniffling at her desk, he had gone to Philip Scott’s office, taken a cigar from his case and lighted it. A prop cigar, he rarely smoked any more. Staring into the evil red eye of the prop cigar, he said, “Philip, have you a girl?”
    Philip blushing. No one girl in particular.
    The cigar. Pull, glow, pull.