A TURN OF THE WHEEL
“You who were ever alert to befriend a man
You who were ever the first to defend a man,
You who had always the money to lend a man
Down on his luck and hard up for a V,
Sure you’ll be playing a harp in beatitude
(And a quare sight you will be in that attitude)
Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude,
You’ll find your latitude.”
From my desk I could see Peter standing in the doorway of the news
editor’s room. I shut my eyes for a moment. Then I opened them again,
quickly. No, it was not a dream. He was there, a slender, graceful,
hateful figure, with the inevitable cigarette in his unsteady
fingers—the expensive-looking, gold-tipped cigarette of the old days.
Peter was Peter. Ten years had made little difference. There were queer
little hollow places in his cheeks, and under the jaw-bone, and at the
base of the head, and a flabby, parchment-like appearance about the
skin. That was all that made him different from the Peter of the old
days.
The thing had adjusted itself, as Norah had said it would. The
situation that had filled me with loathing and terror the night of
Peter’s return had been transformed into quite a matter-of-fact and
commonplace affair under Norah’s deft management. And now I was back in
harness again, and Peter was turning out brilliant political stuff at
spasmodic intervals. He was not capable of any sustained effort. He
never would be again; that was plain. He was growing restless and
dissatisfied. He spoke of New York as though it were Valhalla. He said
that he hadn’t seen a pretty girl since he left Forty-second street. He
laughed at Milwaukee’s quaint German atmosphere. He sneered at our
journalistic methods, and called the newspapers “country sheets,” and
was forever talking of the World, and the Herald, and the Sun, until
the men at the Press Club fought shy of him. Norah had found quiet and
comfortable quarters for Peter in a boarding-house near the lake, and
just a square or two distant from my own boarding-house. He hated it
cordially, as only the luxury-loving can hate a boarding-house, and
threatened to leave daily.
“Let’s go back to the big town, Dawn, old girl,” he would say. “We’re
buried alive in this overgrown Dutch village. I came here in the first
place on your account. Now it’s up to you to get me out of it. Think of
what New York means! Think of what I’ve been! And I can write as well
as ever.”
But I always shook my head. “We would not last a month in New York,
Peter. New York has hurried on and left us behind. We’re just two
pieces of discard. We’ll have to be content where we are.”
“Content! In this silly hole! You must be mad!” Then, with one of his
unaccountable changes of tone and topic, “Dawn, let me have some money.
I’m strapped. If I had the time I’d get out some magazine stuff.
Anything to get a little extra coin. Tell me, how does that little
sport you call Blackie happen to have so much ready cash? I’ve never
yet struck him for a loan that he hasn’t obliged me. I think he’s sweet
on you, perhaps, and thinks he’s doing you a sort of second-hand
favor.”
At times such as these all the old spirit that I had thought dead
within me would rise up in revolt against this creature who was taking
from me my pride, my sense of honor, my friends. I never saw Von
Gerhard now. Peter had refused outright to go to him for treatment,
saying that he wasn’t going to be poisoned by any cursed doctor,
particularly not by one who had wanted to run away with his wife before
his very eyes.
Sometimes I wondered how long this could go on. I thought of the old
days with the Nirlangers; of Alma Pflugel’s rose-encircled cottage; of
Bennie; of the Knapfs; of the good-natured, uncouth aborigines, and
their many kindnesses. I saw these dear people rarely now. Frau
Nirlanger’s resignation to her unhappiness only made me rebel more
keenly against my own.
If only Peter could become well and strong again, I told myself,
bitterly. If it were not for those blue shadows under his eyes, and the
shrunken muscles, and the withered skin, I could leave him to live his
life as he saw fit. But he was as dependent as a child, and as
capricious. What was the end to be? I asked myself. Where was it all
leading me?
And then, in a fearful and wonderful manner, my question was answered.
There came to my desk one day an envelope bearing the letter-head of
the publishing house to which I had sent my story. I balanced it for a
moment in my fingers, woman-fashion, wondering, hoping, surmising.
“Of course they can’t want it,” I told myself, in preparation for any
disappointment that was in store for me. “They’re sending it back. This
is the letter that will tell me so.”
And then I opened it. The words jumped out at me from the typewritten
page. I crushed the paper in my hands, and rushed into Blackie’s little
office as I had been used to doing in the old days. He was at his desk,
pipe in mouth. I shook his shoulder and flourished the letter wildly,
and did a crazy little dance about his chair.
“They want it! They like it! Not only that, they want another, as soon
as I can get it out. Think of it!”
Blackie removed his pipe from between his teeth and wiped his lips with
the back of his hand. “I’m thinkin’,” he said. “Anything t’ oblige you.
When you’re through shovin’ that paper into my face would you mind
explainin’ who wants what?”
“Oh, you’re so stupid! So slow! Can’t you see that I’ve written a real
live book, and had it accepted, and that I am going to write another if
I have to run away from a whole regiment of husbands to do it properly?
Blackie, can’t you see what it means! Oh, Blackie, I know I’m maudlin
in my joy, but forgive me. It’s been so long since I’ve had the taste
of it.”
“Well, take a good chew while you got th’chance an’ don’t count too
high on this first book business. I knew a guy who wrote a book once,
an’ he planned to take a trip to Europe on it, and build a house when
he got home, and maybe a yacht or so, if he wasn’t too rushed. Sa-a-ay,
girl, w’en he got through gettin’ those royalties for that book they’d
dwindled down to fresh wall paper for the dinin’-room, and a new gas
stove for his wife, an’ not enough left over to take a trolley trip to
Oshkosh on. Don’t count too high.”
“I’m not counting at all, Blackie, and you can’t discourage me.”
“Don’t want to. But I’d hate to see you come down with a thud.”
Suddenly he sat up and a grin overspread his thin face. “Tell you what
we’ll do, girlie. We’ll celebrate. Maybe it’ll be the last time. Let’s
pretend this is six months ago, and everything’s serene. You get your
bonnet. I’ll get the machine. It’s too hot to work, anyway. We’ll take
a spin out to somewhere that’s cool, and we’ll order cold things to
eat, and cold things to drink, and you can talk about yourself till
you’re tired. You’ll have to take it out on somebody, an’ it might as
well be me.”
Five minutes later, with my hat in my hand, I turned to find Peter at
my elbow.
“Want to talk to you,” he said, frowning.
“Sorry, Peter, but I can’t stop. Won’t it do later?”
“No. Got an assignment? I’ll go with you.”
“N-not exactly, Peter. The truth is, Blackie has taken pity on me and
has promised to take me out for a spin, just to cool off. It has been
so insufferably hot.”
Peter turned away. “Count me in on that,” he said, over his shoulder.
“But I can’t, Peter,” I cried. “It isn’t my party. And anyway—”
Peter turned around, and there was an ugly glow in his eyes and an ugly
look on his face, and a little red ridge that I had not noticed before
seemed to burn itself across his forehead. “And anyway, you don’t want
me, eh? Well, I’m going. I’m not going to have my wife chasing all over
the country with strange men. Remember, you’re not the giddy grass
widdy you used to be. You can take me, or stay at home, understand?”
His voice was high-pitched and quavering. Something in his manner
struck a vague terror to my heart. “Why, Peter, if you care that much I
shall be glad to have you go. So will Blackie, I am sure. Come, we’ll
go down now. He’ll be waiting for us.”
Blackie’s keen, clever mind grasped the situation as soon as he saw us
together. His dark face was illumined by one of his rare smiles.
“Coming with us, Orme? Do you good. Pile into the tonneau, you two, and
hang on to your hair. I’m going to smash the law.”
Peter sauntered up to the steering-wheel. “Let me drive,” he said. “I’m
not bad at it.”
“Nix with the artless amateur,” returned Blackie. “This ain’t no
demonstration car. I drive my own little wagon when I go riding, and I
intend to until I take my last ride, feet first.”
Peter muttered something surly and climbed into the front seat next to
Blackie, leaving me to occupy the tonneau in solitary state.
Peter began to ask questions—dozens of them, which Blackie answered,
patiently and fully. I could not hear all that they said, but I saw
that Peter was urging Blackie to greater speed, and that Blackie was
explaining that he must first leave the crowded streets behind.
Suddenly Peter made a gesture in the direction of the wheel, and said
something in a high, sharp voice. Blackie’s answer was quick and
decidedly in the negative. The next instant Peter Orme rose in his
place and leaning forward and upward, grasped the wheel that was in
Blackie’s hands. The car swerved sickeningly. I noticed, dully, that
Blackie did not go white as novelists say men do in moments of horror.
A dull red flush crept to the very base of his neck. With a twist of
his frail body he tried to throw off Peter’s hands. I remember leaning
over the back of the seat and trying to pull Peter back as I realized
that it was a madman with whom we were dealing. Nothing seemed real. It
was ridiculously like the things one sees in the moving picture
theaters. I felt no fear.
“Sit down, Orme!” Blackie yelled. “You’ll ditch us! Dawn! God!—”
We shot down a little hill. Two wheels were lifted from the ground. The
machine was poised in the air for a second before it crashed into the
ditch and turned over completely, throwing me clear, but burying
Blackie and Peter under its weight of steel and wood and whirring
wheels.
I remember rising from the ground, and sinking back again and rising
once more to run forward to where the car lay in the ditch, and tugging
at that great frame of steel with crazy, futile fingers. Then I ran
screaming down the road toward a man who was tranquilly working in a
field nearby.