Wheels within Wheels

by Alec Waugh

“Messrs. Renter and Co. Good evening.”

  “This is Miss Caroline Summers. The other day I bought a diamond bracelet on Mr. Bauer’s order. I wonder if I could speak to the salesman? He brought round a number of bracelets for me to choose from.”

  “I’ll try and find him.”

  There was a long pause: then a voice so formal that she scarcely recognized it.

  “I hope that you’ve no complaint about the bracelet?”

  “No. It isn’t that.” She paused. She was a self-possessed young woman, but all the same she did not find it easy to make personal a conversation that had started so officially.

  “It was you, wasn’t it. You came round to see me? “

  “It certainly was.”

  “I was wondering, if you hadn’t a date this evening, whether you’d come to a theatre with me. I’ve had two seats given me unexpectedly.”

  “Why….”

  There was a pause. Quite clearly the young man was astonished out of speech.

  “That’s certainly very kind of you,” he went on. “I’d love it.” There was another pause. “Won’t you have some dinner with me first?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t manage that.”

  She didn’t want him to spend his money on her. He had not too much, and as it was a first time he’d make an occasion of it: go somewhere beyond his means. Besides, there wasn’t any point in it.

  She made excuses. She had to go to a tea. It might last a long time. She didn’t want to be hurried. It would be best if he were to call for her at about eight. That would give them time for a drink before they started. From the relief in his voice she suspected that his first delay had been caused by the thought: “Can I afford to give her the kind of dinner that she’d expect?”

  He asked if he were to put on a tuxedo.

  “You might as well.”

  Probably he had a good tuxedo and few opportunities of wearing it; so that it would be new and smart. He would like to cut a dash in front of her. Besides, she would like to wear an evening frock herself, nothing elaborate; nothing that would make him self-conscious; something that would make him proud to be seen with her. She would choose a play that would be light and gay, with music and bright dresses; something to laugh over, that would put them in a good humour.

  As she lay three hours later in her bath, pleasantly warm and pleasantly lazy, she decided that she had not felt so happy as this in weeks. It was the first time she had been out with anyone but Roy for seven months; the first time she had felt excited and curious about anything for a great deal longer. She did not know when she had felt that way last: with that breathless feeling of expectation; wondering; not quite certain what was to come.

  She hadn’t felt that way at Bergheim’s parties. She had enjoyed herself, but in the way you enjoy a good dinner. You sit down rather hungry and you get up no longer hungry. You enjoy the taste of food and the assuagement that it brings, but there isn’t the feeling of wondering when you sit down at the table whether you are going to get a meal at all; or whether you are going to be given just one flimsy dish that will whet but not satisfy your appetite. Meals would be far more exciting if you went to them that way. It was not that way she had felt when she crossed the park and took the elevator to that apartment in the West Eighties. And it was that way that she was feeling now, as she sat listening to the radio, waiting for the ring at the door which would announce the young man’s arrival.

  • • • • •

  His arrival was different from what she had expected. She had been right in thinking he had few opportunities of wearing a tuxedo, but she had not realized how as a corollary to that, he would be extremely self-conscious when he did. His thoughts were exclusively concentrated upon his own appearance. He was carrying a darkish overcoat across his arm. His dinner-jacket was so new that the cloth had a metallic sheen; so recently pressed that the creases on the sleeves stood out like razor blades. He gave the general effect of being encaged in metal. An effect that was increased by the way he moved his shoulders under the coat and felt for his shirt cuffs with his fingers. He was very different from the easy, masterful young man who had spread his collection of plush-lined cases on her glass modernistic table. He had been then filling a familiar rôle. Now he was on new ground. Caroline rather liked his embarrassment. She had her fill of self-assurance from Roy Bauer.

  She set him the invariable New Yorker’s question: “Did he prefer white rock or ginger ale?” There was ice in the chest, she told him.

  She filled the highball glasses.

  “Do you know I don’t know your name,” she said.

  “It’s Lester Marshall.”

  “Were you surprised when I rang you up?”

  “Yes.”

  “It should have been the other way about.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I gave you a week’s grace. You didn’t take it.”

  They laughed at that, and the laugh put them at ease again.

  “He’s nice,” she thought, “and young and shy. He hasn’t been places yet. I know more than he does about most things.” She wished that he were the kind of boy into whose pocket she could slip a ten-dollar bill and say: “Let’s try the St. Regis Roof.”

  “I could show him such a good time,” she thought. All the same, it was nice he wasn’t.

  “We’re going to see Eddie Cantor,” she said.

  Herself she had already seen the show. She had seen most things within a few nights of their opening. She had chosen it because she thought he’d like it best. She watched not the show but the show’s effect on him. It was good to see anyone laugh like that. Every now and again he would turn round to her with a broad grin on his face. “Gee, but that’s funny, isn’t it?” She watched the way, as a joke dawned upon his comprehension, his forehead would pucker into lines, then his eyes would twinkle, smooth the wrinkled forehead; then suddenly he would burst into laughter. Everything came fresh to him. “I wonder if he’s in love with anyone,” she thought. “I wonder what she’s like.” She looked closely at him, through the dark of the auditorium. He could not be more than twenty-five. Roy was twenty-eight, he had told her, when he had his first affair. She would be glad when the show was over.

  He was full of grateful enthusiasm as they walked out towards the bright, wind-swept cold of Broadway.

  “I’ve certainly enjoyed that. Did I laugh? Boy, I’ll say I did! What shall we do now? Too early to say good night. Couldn’t we dance somewhere?”

  She shook her head.

  “We’ve had enough noise for this evening. Let’s get a couple of sandwiches, then go back and have a drink.”

  They took a taxi. She would let him treat her to that. At Liggett’s they bought four toasted chicken sandwiches. She was hungry and suspected that he was, too.

  “We’ll make a picnic of it.”

  Her heart was beating quickly as she turned the key of the front door. A single light was burning at the writing-desk. It flung a stream of shadow over the bright furniture: the metal chairs, the gay cushions. It was warm and soft and quiet after the cold and noise of Broadway. Through the high studio window the tall towers were glittering like giant lilies: with the great domed flame-lit crown of the Grand Central building blazing down the length of Park.

  “You might fix the drinks,” she said. “You know where they are. I’ll take mine straight.”

  She always took her liquor straight. She drank less that way. She would just sip at the rye, leaving most of it untouched, quenching her thirst with the chaser of white rock. She wasn’t risking her figure and complexion with hard liquor.

  Lazily she stretched her arms sideways and upwards above her head. It was nice to have a place like this to bring some one back to. She settled herself among the cushions, putting her feet up on the divan.

  As he came out of the kitchenette with the ice rattling against the highball glasses, she patted the place beside her. He joined her. There was a thoughtful look upon his face. The excitement that th
e show had roused in him was gone. He looked worried. “Trying to screw his courage up,” she thought.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said.

  It was a question that landed most men upon an interminable autobiography. They told her about their business to show that they were well off: about their love-affairs, explaining how their hearts having once been broken, they lived in the moment now: to show that matrimony was not included in their programme. Later—a lot later, they talked about their childhood, their mother and their grandparents, to show that they were innocent at heart.

  But Lester Marshall had no apparent wish to embark on any such a voyage of explanation. She asked what State he came from. Minnesota, he answered her. He left it there. Was he German? she asked. Originally; on his mother’s side. His father, further interrogation elicited, was a Philadelphian who had moved west in the first year of the century. Himself he had only been in New York two years. He had been in Renter’s Chicago branch. He had asked to be moved. He didn’t intend to stay in New York for long. The world was wide. He meant to see as much of it as he could, while he was still young; to find out what was what. He had in his veins the blood of those who had crossed the Atlantic in search of something they were uncertain what.

  But these admissions were dragged from him. He was as clearly uninterested in the answers and on the effect of his answers on her as he was worried about something else. It puzzled her. Men always wanted to talk about themselves. That was why they sought women’s company. That was the first thing she had learnt about them. If a man when he is with you, can be what he calls himself, but actually what he imagines himself to be, you’ve got him. She looked intently at Lester. What was it that was worrying him? It could not, surely, it could not be that? He did not look that kind. Surely, it could not.

  She wondered if she were employing the wrong tactics. Would it be better if she’d played the radio and they’d danced? It might be. But it would be so obvious. She’d met him a good deal more than quarter way. If he couldn’t make his own opening now, he wasn’t worth the trouble. She wasn’t putting herself out to that extent for any man. All the same it piqued her. What was the matter? Surely, it “could not be that?

  It was not.

  In a rush the explanation came. She had asked him a question. He had begun to answer it, then stopped. He had opened his mouth, closed it, hesitated, knitted his brows. “It’s coming now,” she thought.

  It came.

  “You’ve told me nothing about yourself,” he said. “Do you do anything?”

  “Plenty.”

  “I mean work of any kind.”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Not on the stage or anything?”

  “No.”

  There was a pause. He looked slowly round the room, as though he were taking in for the first time its size and comfort; its new furnishings; its proof of money.

  “Do you see anything of your parents?”

  “A card at Christmas.”

  “You aren’t married, are you?”

  She laughed at that.

  “Nor likely to be?”

  He’s trying to place me, she thought. He’s remembering that a man gave me a thousand dollar bracelet. He’s wondering what that man means to me. What other men mean to me. Well, what is it to him? Whatever happened yesterday and may be happening to-morrow, he is the man here now. She felt angry and resentful. What right had he to question her? She prepared herself for future cross examination: prickly and defiant: ready to give blow for blow. It never came, however. He finished his highball with a slow, long swallow: then rose to his feet.

  “That’s grand,” he said. “It’s been a grand evening. I must be going now.”

  “Going?”

  “If I’m to be fit for work to-morrow.”

  She stared at him incredulously. In her short but concentrated experience of men she had not met anything like this. She was not going to argue about it. If he was as flabby as that, as irresolute as all that….

  “It certainly was nice of you to ask me. Perhaps you’ll come out with me one day?”

  “I’ll like that.”

  By which time, I suppose, you’ll have worked your courage up, she thought contemptuously. His next remark proved to her that she was wrong.

  “I get a good deal of time off in the morning sometimes. We might go to a film and lunch afterwards.”

  So he was not going to attempt love-making. He was going to arrange a meeting when there would be no chance of their being alone: properly alone. Perhaps he was already in love with some one. Perhaps she didn’t appeal to him that way.

  His good-bye showed her it was not that. He held her hand firmly. His voice became tender suddenly.

  “We mustn’t lose sight of one another. You’re a pretty sweet person, you know.”

  She stood staring at the door as it closed behind him; then turned and walked to the high studio window. So there were men like that: men who wouldn’t share you with another man: who if they couldn’t have you to themselves, would go without. She’d read of men like that, and not believed it. And now here was one. It was a pity. Yet she was rather glad he was like that: that he wasn’t like other men: that he didn’t class her with that other kind of woman. It was a pity, though. It was going to complicate things. And she had meant this to be straightforward: a relaxation: something that was fun, to be enjoyed and left. She didn’t want complications. Yet she was anxious to know what those complications were. She wondered what would happen next.

  “It’s up to him, anyhow,” she thought. “I’ve gone as far as I’m going.”

  VIII

  The cablegram that Maitland had sent from Santa Marta would, on the surface, have seemed to effect a greater and more beneficial change on John Shirley than on any other member of the syndicate. Shirley received, however, with far less enthusiasm than Newton and Bauer had received the authority to pay them, his signed counterpart of the agreement and covering cheque for a thousand dollars.

  Most men believe that they will be rich some day. Nearly all men believe that the advent of riches will alter their life completely. But for eight years Shirley had neither expected nor particularly wished for riches, so that the sudden news that he was likely to be a reasonably rich man affected him in a different degree both less and more than it would have affected the majority of men. He had something that he had never expected. But something he did not value much.

  The first news that there was a possibility of oil being discovered had given him the same kind of elation as a game won against long odds. But the aftermath of carnival had been chastening.

  Since that one night he had not seen Marian. It had been perfect, but it could not be repeated. There was nothing that they could share, in a city like New Orleans; come as they were from such different stock. They could only spoil what had been a lyric ecstasy. “So that’s that, too,” he had thought; and there had come that renewed conviction that not only his life but all life was the pouring of so much water through a sieve.

  He did not see how the decision of a few financiers to shower unearned dollars into his lap was going to alter what seemed to him the conditions under which all being moved. His own life, congenial, self-contained and self-constructed, was scarcely capable of drastic development. He had no wish to alter its main structure. In the same way that on the arrival of that first cheque he had thought, “Is there anything I want?” and decided to take an apartment in the Quarter, so now he thought, “Is there anything I miss?”

  Deliberating the point, there seemed to him one thing only that he needed: some daily excitement, some interest that would make him turn the pages of a paper more quickly in the afternoon, some equivalent for the football and racing and baseball that made each day for their followers a succession of anticipations, disappointments, thrills. Where else in this hour could that thrill be got more completely than upon the market?

  He had always felt a little envious when he had heard men talking of the tape: not
for the money they were making but for the suspense and excitement that those flickering figures gave to even their dullest days. It had been amusing to take an apartment in the old Quarter, to furnish it and invite his friends there, to make it a centre where people could meet and talk. That had been fun. But it would be more than fun; it would be excitement to walk into his broker’s office and ask advice as to what shares to buy.

  “I’ll go right down now,” he thought.

  He was no subscriber to the theory that one should eat bread and butter before one turned to cake. He held that you should take what you liked best when your appetite was at its keenest.

  • • • • •

  The office of John Shirley’s broker was in Canal Street, in the First National Bank Building, on the sixteenth floor.

  Tooley was a tall, strong, hearty, get-together person. He worked in his shirt-sleeves, his white linen shirt flapping over his wrists. He had three telephones in front of him; one for local, one for long distance, the third for office calls. He did not rise to his feet, or stretch out a hand. He leant back in his swivel chair, his hands upon its arms, his legs driven straight in front of him.

  “Hullo, John,” he said. “How’s your mother?” His voice was as hearty as his smile.

  “She’s grand.”

  “Saw Millicent yesterday.”

  “I haven’t seen her in weeks.”

  “She was talking about you: met her with Gary: quite a party: saw Lola too: asked her if she’d the low down on that case of Archie’s.”

  He rattled off the names so dexterously that a European would have imagined them to be great friends meeting after a three months’ separation. As a matter of fact, they scarcely knew each other. They would not have bothered to stop and talk had they passed each other in the street. They would not only never invite each other to their parties, but there was scarcely a house in New Orleans where they would be likely to meet. At the same time, so interknit is the life of New Orleans that they would not only be on Christian name terms, but know a great deal about each other, and quite often be speaking about each other to mutual friends. They had enough material for talk to last them for a couple of hours.