So it was that we did not hear the front door slam, or the sound of footsteps in the hall. Our overstrained nerves found relief in laughter, so that Peter Orme, a lean, ominous figure in the doorway looked in upon a merry scene.
I was the first to see him. And at the sight of the emaciated figure, with its hollow cheeks and its sunken eyes all terror and hatred left me, and I felt only a great pity for this wreck of manhood. Slowly I went up to him there in the doorway.
“Well, Peter?” I said.
“Well, Dawn old girl,” said he “you’re looking wonderfully fit. Grass widowhood seems to agree with you, eh?”
And I knew then that my dread dream had come true.
Peter advanced into the room with his old easy grace of manner. His eyes glowed as he looked at Blackie. Then he laughed, showing his even, white teeth. “Why, you little liar!” he said, in his crisp, clear English. “I’ve a notion to thwack you. What d’ you mean by telling me my wife’s gone? You’re not sweet on her yourself, eh?”
Von Gerhard stifled an exclamation, and Orme turned quickly in his direction. “Who are you?” he asked. “Still another admirer? Jolly time you were having when I interrupted.” He stared at Von Gerhard deliberately and coolly. A little frown of dislike came into his face. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you? I knew it. I can tell by the hands, and the eyes, and the skin, and the smell. Lived with ‘em for ten years, damn them! Dawn, tell these fellows they’re excused, will you? And by the way, you don’t seem very happy to see me?”
I went up to him then, and laid my hand on his arm. “Peter, you don’t understand. These two gentlemen have been all that is kind to me. I am happy to know that you are well again. Surely you do not expect me to be joyful at seeing you. All that pretense was left out of our lives long before your—illness. It hasn’t been all roses for me since then, Peter. I’ve worked until I wanted to die with weariness. You know what this newspaper game is for a woman. It doesn’t grow easier as she grows older and tireder.”
“Oh, cut out the melodrama, Dawn,” sneered Peter. “Have either of you fellows the makin’s about you? Thanks. I’m famished for a smoke.”
The worrying words of ten years ago rose automatically to my lips. “Aren’t you smoking too much, Peter?” The tone was that of a harassed wife.
Peter stared. Then he laughed his short, mirthless little laugh. “By Jove! Dawn, I believe you’re as much my wife now as you were ten years ago. I always said, you know, that you would have become a first-class nagger if you hadn’t had such a keen sense of humor. That saved you.” He turned his mocking eyes to Von Gerhard. “Doesn’t it beat the devil, how these good women stick to a man, once they’re married! There’s a certain dog-like devotion about it that’s touching.”
There was a dreadful little silence. For the first time in my knowledge of him I saw a hot, painful red dyeing Blackie’s sallow face. His eyes had a menace in their depths. Then, very quietly, Von Gerhard stepped forward and stopped directly before me.
“Dawn,” he said, very softly and gently, “I retract my statement of an hour ago. If you will give me another chance to do as you asked me, I shall thank God for it all my life. There is no degradation in that. To live with this man—that is degradation. And I say you shall not suffer it.”
I looked up into his face, and it had never seemed so dear to me. “The time for that is past,” I said, my tone as calm and even as his own. “A man like you cannot burden himself with a derelict like me—mast gone, sails gone, water-logged, drifting. Five years from now you’ll thank me for what I am saying now. My place is with this other wreck—tossed about by wind and weather until we both go down together.” There came a sharp, insistent ring at the doorbell. No answering sound came from the regions above stairs. The ringing sounded again, louder than before.
“I’ll be the Buttons,” said Blackie, and disappeared into the hallway.
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard about you,” came to our ears a moment later, in a high, clear voice—a dear, beloved voice that sent me flying to the door in an agony of hope.
“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.”