The Balance Wheel

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Nothing could be done until day after tomorrow, he reminded himself, as he took off his coat and shoes and lay down on the bed. Until then, there was no use in thinking. There was no use in remembering Willie, or in hating Joe. There were times when a man just had to stop his thoughts, until the time came for action. He closed his eyes and tried, by will power alone, to stop the bursting pain in his head. He heard a sound, and there was Jimmy with a glass in his hand. “Bromo-seltzer, Dad,” said the boy, hurriedly, as Charles sat up, annoyed. “For your headache. You never take care of yourself.”

  Charles drank the foaming liquid, while Jimmy pulled down the shades against the sunlight which streamed through the trees outside. Then Charles, having drained the glass, bellowed. Jimmy said, appeasingly: “It was just a double dose, Dad. To stop the headache and make you sleep for a while.”

  “If I never wake up you’ll have yourself to blame,” said Charles, wrathfully. “A double dose! Why, I never take more than half a single dose!” He glared at the glass. “What else was in it, too? The taste’s familiar.”

  “One of your sleeping powders,” said Jimmy, soothingly. “They don’t seem to help you, but I thought the bromo and the powder together might make you take a nap.”

  Charles could not help but laugh. “I ought to write a suicide note, so they won’t arrest you for my murder,” he remarked. “Now, will you please go away and let me die in peace?”

  Jimmy became master of the situation and was full of authority. “Not until you take off your shirt and your trousers and put on your cotton bathrobe,” he said. He brought the bathrobe from the closet. “You’ve got to be comfortable. Why, you’ve still got your collar on.”

  Charles allowed his son to take off his collar and help him remove his shirt and other clothing. He put on the bathrobe. He felt his son’s solicitude and love all about him. He lay down and watched Jimmy as the boy hung up his clothing neatly. Jimmy moved quietly and expertly, and all at once he was no longer a boy but a man of understanding. I, thought Charles, am the father of a man. The headache was beginning to subside; Charles’ inflamed thoughts were becoming softer and dimmer. He wanted to say something to Jimmy which would reach his son and tell him of his deep tenderness. Jimmy stood by the bed, now, watching him. “If you make a single move to feel my pulse, I’ll kick you out of the room,” said Charles.

  Jimmy said: “Things are awfully bad with you, aren’t they, Dad? Try not to think about them just now. Try to sleep. Once you told me that nothing looks so bad after a sleep. Remember?”

  “I remember,” said Charles. “Jimmy—”

  There was a silence between them. Then Jimmy nodded soberly. He hesitated. He put out his hand and felt Charles’ forehead, and Charles did not move. Jimmy lifted Charles’ head and turned the hot pillow over. What did a father say to his son, who was a man, to tell him of his love?

  The headache was gone; drowsiness was creeping over Charles like a deep twilit wave. “Jimmy,” he said. “I’ve had a blow today. But you know that, don’t you? It was pretty bad, for a while, and I’m afraid that it’s going to be worse before it’s better. But just so long as I have you there’ll be some comfort—”

  He closed his eyes. Jimmy tiptoed from the room, and softly closed the door. He went downstairs, and into the kitchen, where Mrs. Meyers was preparing dinner.

  “Dad’s sick,” said Jimmy. “I’ve given him something to make him rest. We won’t wake him to eat. Just put something aside, Mrs. Meyers, and when Dad wakes up I’ll fix it for him.”

  “What did you give him?” asked Mrs. Meyers, alarmed, shaking her floury hands. “Now, Jimmy, you know you killed my cat with that stuff you mixed up, and Tippy was a very good cat and kept the mice away.”

  “Tippy was dying, anyway,” said Jimmy with dignity. “She was too old. I didn’t kill her. It was just her age.”

  Charles slept under the dark-blue waves. The sun left the windows, and now the sky reddened and robins began to sing for rain, sweetly and purely. The hot room cooled pleasantly, and a breeze moved the curtains. Twilight filled the bedroom with shadows, and Charles slept. The first stars came out.

  Then Charles began to move restlessly. He dreamt that he was in some enormous darkness, and that some horrible pain was in him and all about him. It was everywhere. The darkness shook with it. It was not a complete darkness, for every now and then it was torn apart by an enormous slash of scarlet, like lightning, and terrible thunder followed it. Then the scarlet was gone, and the noise, and there was someone in his arms, crying over and over: “Charles! Charles! I’m here. I love you.”

  It was Phyllis’ voice, and he could feel her in his arms, but his arms were powerless and there was nothing in him but desolation and anguish. She continued to call to him, and he could not feel anything, though he knew that she was kissing his mouth, his hands, and his cheek. Then he heard himself say: “Oh, Phyllis, Phyllis.” The desolation was not strangling him so mercilessly, now, though it throbbed somewhere, off in the sightless night, as if it belonged to someone else. His arms tightened about Phyllis. There was the weight of her head on his shoulder.

  He awoke with a start, dazed and trembling. For a moment he believed he was still dreaming, because of the desolation and the darkness. Then he saw that it was night, and the house was very quiet. He sat up, weak, almost stunned. A horrible nightmare. He forced himself to get out of bed and light the gaslight over his head. He sat on the edge of the bed, and drew several slow deep breaths. He rose and looked at his watch, and saw that it was nine o’clock. That boy and his infernal mixtures! It’s a wonder I’m not dead, thought Charles. Then, Charles was at the door in one wild run, and he was shouting downstairs, clutching the banister: “Jimmy! Jimmy!”

  There was a light below, and Jimmy came at once from the parlor, calling in alarm: “Yes, Dad! Dad?”

  Charles did not know why the sound of his son’s voice should make him so weak and should cause his knees to bend, or why, an instant before Jimmy had answered, he should know such a terror, or why, now, he should feel this shattering sense of deliverance. He could only say to himself: That nightmare. That boy and his mixtures. He called down: “It’s a wonder I’m not dead, Jimmy.” His throat relaxed; it had been so dry and his voice had ripped through it.

  Jimmy was at the foot of the stairs, laughing. “Did you have a good sleep?”

  “A very good sleep. I’m hungry.”

  “Everything’s laid in the dining-room. I just have to heat up the coffee. Come on down, Dad.”

  But it was some moments before Charles’ legs could carry him down the stairs. And when he sat at the table he could not eat. He moved the food about on his plate, and Jimmy knew that this was for his benefit, and he made no comment. He only sat there and talked, and Charles watched him, and listened to the sound of his voice.

  In some way that dream was connected with Jimmy. Charles knew it. Jimmy talked on and looked at his father and saw the beads of sweat on his forehead. The day’s been too much for me, thought Charles.

  The telephone rang. Jimmy went to answer it, and returned, looking disappointed. “It’s for you, Dad,” said Jimmy, and Charles went to the telephone.

  “Oh, Charlie,” said Mrs. Holt. “Please come up here, to my house. I’ve already sent my chauffeur for you. He’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Charlie, it’s very important. I haven’t succeeded, and I need your help—and there’s someone here.”

  CHAPTER XLI

  The big Holt mansion was very quiet. Charles was led into the first enormous drawing-room by a maid, and there he found Mrs. Holt and. Phyllis, and no one else. Mrs. Holt came to him and kissed him affectionately, and tapped his shoulders, and said: “Well, what a pleasant surprise, Charlie! Phyllis and I are having such a dull time together, with Braydon talking over some new sculpture with one of his friends down in the city, and we were just about to have some nice cold lemonade, or something—Wonderful, Charlie! Scotch, Charlie?”

  Charles sat down and a
ccepted a glass of whiskey and soda, and Phyllis, so silent and preoccupied these wretched days, smiled at him. Her black dress accentuated her thinness and her white face. Her usually bright and springing hair lay flattened about her head, and her eyes were too large, too brilliant. The shock and grief of her husband’s death had given her a look of desperate illness. Yet, she could smile at Charles, and some color came into her pale mouth, and she commented on the weather. Mrs. Holt chattered as she passed about some wafers, and pretended to be utterly unaware of how Phyllis’ eyes were fixed on Charles as if she were finding in her brother-in-law some strength and surety. Poor Charlie, thought Mrs. Holt, while she talked of the opening of the Park the next day. Poor Phyllis. But it won’t be long, it can’t be long, now. It’s just that it’s too soon. And then, all this business, and the ugly stories, and that abominable Jochen, and that trailing Pauline and that really hateful, active Roger!

  Charles told of the headache he had developed that afternoon, and how Jimmy had put him to sleep, and even Phyllis laughed a little, and said, with some warmth in her tired, faint voice, that Jimmy was such a marvelous boy. The talk went on and on, while occasionally Mrs. Holt would glance at Charles’ haggard face with concern and distress, and then at Phyllis, who always came to life when she met her dead husband’s brother. Charles sat and drank as casually as if he had in fact only dropped in on a friend. For some reason or other he told the two women of the story the priest had told him, and they listened with absorbed interest. Then Mrs. Holt nodded. “I think I know who the son is,” she said. “And he really is in Europe, now, on business. He’s written to Braydon a few times recently, about the oil.” Her red face became glazed and bland. “There seems such a call for oil, lately.”

  Charles heard the long booming of the monstrously large clock in the hall beyond. Half-past ten. “Such a lot of oil, all the wells working night and day,” Mrs. Holt went on. Charles’ head began to ache again, with that sullen throbbing, and then he thought of his nightmare, and his terror, and his shouting for his son. It was easy to understand the nightmare, now. He looked at Phyllis, and remembered how she had cried to him in his dream, and how she had kissed him, and how his arms had been about her. He could feel the weight of her head on his shoulder. He was not a superstitious man. There is nothing in precognition, he told himself. There doesn’t dare to be anything.

  He put down his glass; he was disgusted with himself when he saw that his hand was trembling. He looked at Phyllis again, and the light of the crystal chandelier hanging high above shone in those too-brilliant eyes. She was regarding him almost eagerly, her lips parted, as if she only wanted to hear his voice saying anything, anything at all.

  He said: “Let them buy oil, in Europe, if they want to. Even if they want it for a war. We are three thousand miles away, and we’ve never been embroiled in their damn wars, and never shall be.”

  “Certainly not,” said Mrs. Holt, cheerfully. “By the way, Charlie, I’ve been trying to persuade Phyllis, again, to go away for a while. I’ll go with her; she knows that. But not to Europe.” She paused. Charles stared down at his empty glass on the table beside him. A cooling mountain wind came through the tremendous arched windows. The chandelier swayed in it, and a frail glittering light swept over Phyllis’ face. Mrs. Holt continued, wondering why her handsome drawing-room should suddenly feel so lonely and abandoned. “We could go to California. All those interesting moving-picture studios. We met Charlie Chaplin once, at a party in New York, and Norma Talmadge. We became great friends. I’m sure they’ll remember me. California sounds so fascinating.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t go away,” said Phyllis, gently. “I’d be lost, dear Minnie.”

  “Not with me,” said Mrs. Holt, firmly. “We’d see the most incredible things.”

  Phyllis smiled, and shook her head. She held her glass of lemonade in her thin hands, and did not put it to her lips.

  “Charles,” she said, “would you come up to see me the day after tomorrow? There’s something about—about Wilhelm’s affairs—which I think you ought to know. I haven’t seen you lately.”

  Charles glanced at Mrs. Holt, and she jumped up with an exclamation. “I forgot. How very terrible of me! I promised Braydon to call him and tell him when I would send the automobile for him. You see, he gets so bored sometimes, and he’s so awfully polite, and he’d never let anyone know how much he wanted to come home and go to bed, and so we have this arrangement, and no one’s feelings are hurt.”

  Charles remained standing even when Mrs. Holt had been gone from the room several moments. Phyllis sat on a faded tapestried settee and looked up at him. She saw how drawn he was, and how there was a red flush on his forehead and about his eyes, like a fever. “Charles, what is wrong?” she asked. He went over to her and sat down beside her. Her hands gripped her glass, and very gently he took the glass away from her and put it on a table. Then he held her hand.

  “Phyllis,” he said, “there is something you must do for me. I can’t tell you the reason, but I want you to do what has to be done. I want you to go away with Mrs. Holt, either tomorrow night, or, at the latest, the next morning.”

  The hand stiffened in his, in protest, but he held it tighter. “Why, Charles?” she asked.

  “I can’t tell you, Phyllis. I can only ask you to go away. When you come back, I can explain.” The beating in his head had become intense again. “Believe me, I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t have a grave and serious reason.”

  The tears had begun to run down her cheeks, one by one. “Don’t, Phyllis,” he said. “Don’t ever try to understand. Just trust me, as you’ve always trusted me.”

  “It’s something about Wilhelm’s will, then, isn’t it?” she whispered.

  “His will?” Charles frowned.

  “Yes. He really did change it, after all, didn’t he? Oh, Charles, you can tell me all about it. That’s why I wanted you to come up to see me very soon.”

  The beating had become a roar, and Charles moved his head from side to side so that he could hear, and so that he could see. “Tell me,” he said.

  “I was just going through his desk, to see if there were any papers we had forgotten,” said Phyllis. “And then I found these papers, in his own handwriting. Charles! I don’t understand! Why should he have written those things?”

  “Tell me.” His arm was about her shoulders, and he was almost shaking her.

  “They were drafts, I think, for there was a number of them, and he had crossed out some things, and added others.” Her white face became scarlet. “I couldn’t believe it. And then there was a note on top, a memorandum, for him to call his lawyer, and the date was—the date was for three days after he—”

  “Phyllis,” said Charles, “you’ll have to tell me, as quickly and clearly as you can.”

  “Charles, I couldn’t believe it. The will sounded as if he hated you, and hated me, in a way, too. His money, and all that he had, was to be placed in a trust fund, and Jochen was to set it up, and be his executor, and I was to receive only the income from the fund. Until I died. And then everything was to be settled on Geraldine, except for one-third, which was to go to Jochen. You, Charles,”—and her voice became fainter—“were not mentioned at all, as a beneficiary, and Wilhelm’s interest in the company, and in the patents, was to be assigned to Jochen. And there was something else added: ‘In order that my brother Jochen Wittmann might have controlling interest in the Wittmann Machine Tool Company.’”

  “In other words,” said Charles, “he had substituted Joe’s name for mine, in the original will which was probated.”

  He stood up, and began to walk about the room, and all the hatred and violence which he had repressed these last few hours came back to him. Phyllis watched him in fear and she murmured a few times: “Oh, Charles. Oh, Charles.”

  He stopped before her. “Phyllis, there was no signature? He hadn’t signed these drafts, any of them?”

  “No. I told you, Charles, he had made an app
ointment with his lawyer, and I suppose he was going to take the drafts with him.”

  “You’re certain there were no witnesses to this—this draft?”

  “No, Charles, there was nothing. Just drafts. But how could Wilhelm even think—”

  He sat down beside her and took her two hands in his and held them. “Where are those drafts? Are they locked up, safely?”

  She was frightened by his expression. “They are back in his desk, Charles, and I have the key.”

  He breathed slowly and heavily a few times. “Phyllis, they are only drafts. They aren’t legal. Even if anyone presented them, they’d not be considered by any court. But they’re a danger. To you. To me. So, when you go home tonight you must destroy them, piece by piece, burn them, do anything with them but see that not a single word remains.”

  “If you say so, then I will. It was just that I thought that perhaps you might think we ought to honor this draft, because he had wanted it that way. And Charles, I thought perhaps he had seen his lawyer earlier, or a lawyer in Philadelphia, and there was really another will.”

  Charles sat and thought, and he knew that he must tell Phyllis something. He said: “Think back, and remember, Phyllis, that night—You remember how we told Willie how Joe had been lying to him about me, for his own purposes, and how we convinced him, finally, about what Joe was trying to do to me, and to the company, in league with Brinkwell. But for months before that, he had believed Joe’s lies, and the drafts were written because of them. However, we convinced him, together, and he’d have destroyed the drafts the next day, if he had not died that night.”

  Phyllis was crying again, her head bent over her shoulder, her hands in Charles’ hands. “Yes, I see you are right,” she said. “And I’ll destroy those papers the very moment I get home.”

  Charles wiped her eyes with his own handkerchief, and she sat beside him like a forlorn but vaguely comforted child. Then Charles said: “My wanting you to go away, Phyllis, had nothing whatever to do with any will. I can only tell you that you must go, either tomorrow night, or the morning after.”