“Norah!” I cried, “Norah! Norah! Norah!” And as her blessed arms closed about me the tears that had been denied me before came in a torrent of joy.
“There, there!” murmured she, patting my shoulder with those comforting mother-pats. “What’s all this about? And why didn’t somebody meet me? I telegraphed. You didn’t get it? Well, I forgive you. Howdy-do, Peter? I suppose you are Peter. I hope you haven’t been acting devilish again. That seems to be your specialty. Now don’t smile that Mephistophelian smile at me. It doesn’t frighten me. Von Gerhard, take him down to his hotel. I’m dying for my kimono and bed. And this child is trembling like a race-horse. Now run along, all of you. Things that look greenery-yallery at night always turn pink in the morning. Great Heavens! There’s somebody calling down from the second-floor landing. It sounds like a landlady. Run, Dawn, and tell her your perfectly respectable sister has come. Peter! Von Gerhard! Mr. Blackie! Shoo!”
CHAPTER XIX
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
