Balance Wheel

  Then he heard her voice from upstairs: “Charles! I’ll be down at once.”

  He went into the parlor and sat down, breathing unevenly. Disaster had passed him by this time. Was he always to feel like this, when something did not happen as he had expected? How could a man go on living, under the shadow of such fear?

  Phyllis came running down the stairway, and he heard the starched rustling of her gray cotton dress. She came into the parlor, and saw him sitting there, spent and drained. The first day at the office had been too much for him, she thought. She saw that he had to make a powerful effort to get up. She kissed him and said: “I didn’t notice the time.” There was something in her voice, troubled and constrained, which made him loosen her arms and put her away from him. Disaster, then, had not gone by. What form would it take this time?

  She was, indeed, very pale and tense. “What’s the matter, Phyllis?” he demanded. “Something’s wrong with you.”

  “Not with me, dear,” she said at once, understanding, and full of pity. “I’m splendid. And nothing wrong with you, I hope. Darling?”

  “I’m all right,” he answered, impatiently. “But there’s something you want to tell me, isn’t there?”

  She hesitated. Then she tried to smile, and took his hand. “Let’s go upstairs, Charles. There’s someone here who has been waiting an hour for you.” He let her lead him upstairs, flaccidly. He had no curiosity, only renewed dread. Jim’s door was open. A girl, Geraldine, was sitting in Jim’s chair, and she was crying silently.

  “Gerry!” exclaimed Charles. He had forgotten Geraldine, who loved Jimmy, who was engaged to Jimmy. He had never once thought of this child, who must have had her own suffering. Full of remorse, he went to her, saying over and over: “My poor dear, my poor dear, my poor little girl.”

  She did not stand up, even when he was close to her. She could only look at him with swollen eyes and terror and grief. She let him kiss her. She was so thin, so distraught, that Charles was deeply moved. He pulled up a chair to sit near her, while Phyllis stood beside them. “Oh, Gerry,” he said. He took her hand; it was trembling, and it was very cold. She regarded him with the wide pupils of distraction, and her lips shook.

  “Uncle Charlie,” she murmured, then burst into wild tears, bowing her head, her whole body shaking. Charles looked helplessly at Phyllis, who began to stroke the girl’s dark, hair.

  “She told me she had to see you. She wouldn’t tell me why, poor little thing,” said Phyllis. “But, of course, I understand.”

  “You mustn’t cry like that, Gerry. You’ll make yourself ill,” said Charles, putting his arm about Geraldine. “It won’t bring Jim back.” And then he thought of an old story he had heard one time. A man was weeping inconsolably for his dead son. He had wept for days. And then his friends, kindly but impatiently, said to him: “Why do you weep? Nothing will bring your son back to you.” The man replied: “That is why I weep.”

  He forgot Geraldine again, and thought of Jim. Why had he ever thought that he might be able to isolate his despair and his sorrow, and go on living naturally? It was impossible. There were Jim’s best pair of military brushes on the dresser; there was Jim’s Harvard banner on the wall. There was Jim’s bookcase, with a pair of shoes still standing under it. There was Jim’s old globe of the world in the corner, and Jim’s desk, with the useless school papers piled neatly upon it. The door of the clothes closet was slightly open: Charles could see the rack of Jim’s ties, and the row of Jim’s suits, and the silly walking-stick he had bought, with the silver knob, and the bat and tennis-racket which he had cherished. He had once belonged to the “Andersburg Devils,” a youthful baseball club; his red-and-yellow cap hung on a hook within plain sight.

  He heard Geraldine cry: “What shall I do, Uncle Charlie! What shall I do?”

  Charles stared at the baseball cap. “There’s nothing else to do, Gerry, except bear it. You’re young. You’ll forget. In a year, two years, you’ll have forgotten.” He did not know how bitterly he was speaking.

  “But how can I forget?” Geraldine was sobbing. “I can’t, ever. And I’m so afraid.”

  Charles shook his head, and repeated: “You’ll forget You’re young.”

  She grasped his arm. “Uncle Charlie! I’ll never forget Jimmy, never. I know that. But now I’ve got to think of me, and the baby.”

  Charles did not understand what she was saying for a moment, and then he was stunned.

  “The baby!”

  Geraldine was crying again. “Jim’s baby, and mine. I’m so afraid. Mama and Papa—And Papa is so worried, now. This will just kill them. Oh, Uncle Charlie, I wish I were dead!”

  Charles could only look at her, shocked and desperate. He turned to Phyllis, dumbly, and she put her hand on his shoulder. Charles tried to speak, but his throat was too dry. He shook his head, again and again, and his body dropped once more into the lines of sorrow and agony.

  “How could—I didn’t know—why should Jimmy do this to you, Gerry?” he stammered at last. “I didn’t think Jimmy would do a thing like that—it isn’t like Jimmy—”

  Geraldine’s eyes opened wide; her mouth fell open, also. She regarded Charles, stunned also.

  “Why—why, Uncle Charlie! What are you saying about Jimmy? He told me he told you—he wrote me a letter from England—he said he’d told you just before his train pulled out of the station—he said he’d asked you to take care of me, and then he wrote I should go to you immediately. But I didn’t. I was afraid of hurting poor Mama and Papa. I didn’t know, then, that I was going to have a baby—”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Gerry?” asked Charles. He took the girl’s shoulders in his hands and shook her. “Tell me!”

  “Charles,” said Phyllis, urgently. “You’re hurting her.”

  But Charles, as if he could not help it, continued to shake the girl. In the meantime, she was fumbling in her purse, and her face was blank. She found a slip of paper, wrenched herself from Charles’ grasp, and pushed the paper in his hand. “Uncle Charlie, how could you think anything wrong of Jimmy? How terrible of you! We were married in Weston, the next to the last day he was here.” Her voice rose clear and loud, with horrified indignation. Her eyes fixed themselves with brilliant repulsion on him. “Jimmy wrote he’d told you. On the train. And he wrote me that he’d written you from England, and said that he’d asked you to take care of me, and that I was to take care of you, too—for him—”

  Charles looked at the narrow piece of paper, stupefied.

  “And then we drove back home,” said Geraldine, simply. “But before we got into Andersburg, we stopped in a woods. It was so beautiful. Jimmy and I had no time. No time at all.” She did not color or look ashamed or embarrassed. She lifted her young head with pride. “And I’m glad I’m going to have something of Jimmy’s forever. It’s just that I feel so sorry for Mama and Papa.”

  Charles was now remembering Jim’s letters. Jim had thought his father had understood. He thought that Geraldine had told him, also. He had left this girl to his father. He must have known, somehow, that he was not coming home. He had begged his father to take care of this young girl, and protect her. It was all so plain, now. And Charles thought of this terrified child, alone with her grief, and then alone with her knowledge that she was to have a baby. There had been no one to comfort her, or to know. He, Charles, had Phyllis, and his friends. This girl had had nothing but her fear and her sorrow, in silence, and there had been no consolation for her.

  “Oh, my God,” said Charles, with compassion. “Oh, my poor little girl.”

  He smoothed the slip of paper in his hands. It was dated in June. He had told Jim to take the automobile and spend a day with Gerry. A day of secret and impulsive marriage, and an innocent mating in a wood. “No time at all.” No time for youth and joy. There never was. There was only time for age and regret and death.

  Charles lifted the crying girl from her chair, and sat her down on his knee. He held her to him almost f
iercely. He pressed her head against his own. He rocked with her in his arms. He wiped her eyes, and kissed her. It was frightful. It was not to be stood. And then Charles stopped rocking. His hand stroked Geraldine’s head slower and slower.

  Jim’s child. Jim’s son! In a few months—Jim’s son! Jim had not died completely, after all. Jim was not dead. Something of Jim’s would live, was living now. A Wittmann would be born. It would be part of him, Charles. His life had not stopped with Jim’s death. It would go on, full and strong again, after this brief pause. Jim would go on. Jim was alive, in this new child.

  Something was beginning to pound in Charles’ body, triumphant and vital. His pale face flushed. He began to smile. “Well, now, Gerry,” he said. “It’s not so awful. Try to stop crying. You’ll have Jim, again. A baby, yours and Jim’s. It—why, it’s wonderful! If only you’d told me before. I didn’t understand Jim’s letters. And the train drowned out what he was trying to tell me at the last minute. I wasn’t thinking of anybody but Jim. And now I can’t tell you how happy I am, and how glad I am.”

  Phyllis sighed, and smiled. “Affirm nothing.” Charles had told her. And here he was, affirming life once more, with vigor and strength. She smiled even more. Dear Charles!

  Charles was looking at Phyllis with life in his eyes, and joy. “Isn’t it wonderful, Phyllis? Just when I was beginning to think I couldn’t go on, after all.”

  Phyllis hid her own sudden hurt, and said: “Yes, darling, it’s wonderful.”

  Then Charles was no longer smiling. His eyes took on a remote expression. “Phyllis,” he said. “There was something I was trying to remember. I thought it was a dream. Tell me, did Joe come to see me? When I was ill?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He did. Not once, but several times. And he stayed with you for two whole nights, taking care of you. And Isabel was here, too. She relieved me one afternoon. They wouldn’t listen to Dr. Metzger’s suggestion of getting a nurse.”

  “So,” said Charles. He got up, vigorous and decisive. He put Geraldine into Phyllis’ arms. He went out of the room, not slowly, but with firmness and determination. He went downstairs, and called Jochen’s number.

  “Joe,” he said, and he had a hard time keeping his voice down to a normal level. “Charlie. Can you and Isabel come home, at once?”

  EPILOGUE

  July 15, 1919

  “You’re an obstinate devil,” said Jochen, to Charles, angrily. “Everyone says this is the time to expand, to prepare for a boom.”

  “No,” said Charles. “This is the time to retrench. We’re in for a depression, short or long, I don’t know. This is the time to mend our fences, economize. I don’t care what the rest of the country is doing. I’m not that optimistic, and I won’t be until the inflation is deflated, and things settle down. The world’s out of equilibrium, lop-sided. As after an earthquake. I prefer to be cautious, and watch how the wind is going to blow.”

  “I agree with Karl,” said Friederich. “Things have changed. It’s wiser to see what permanent pattern will emerge—”

  “There’ll never be any permanent pattern,” insisted Jochen. “Never again. It’ll be a constant process of improvising, adjusting. If we just sit, we’ll find ourselves sitting alone—flat broke.”

  “Now,” said Charles, patiently. “I don’t expect the world’ll be the same as it was. I expect we’ll see constant changes. But I don’t expect chaos. There’ll be some sort of a pattern underneath all the superficial running back and forth—”

  It was like old times—almost. Charles and Phyllis, Isabel and Jochen, Friederich and Helen, and Geraldine Wittmann, were sitting in the old garden of Charles’ house, under the apple trees. They sat on wooden chairs and iron settees, heaped with pillows. The hot July sunshine was blurred, greened, and softened here. The haphazard rose-bed and other flower-beds brightened the shadowed grass. Nearby played Geraldine and Jim’s son, Jochen Charles, and Charles and Phyllis’ son, Jimmy, and Friederich and Helen’s son, Emil. The children were busily inspecting everything in the garden, running about, screaming, chasing each other, crying momentarily, laughing, shouting.

  Now everyone stopped talking to watch the children contentedly. Helen rocked her little daughter, one year old, Greta Louise, in her arms, and she smiled at her son, Emil, who was some months past his third birthday. The boy had her light hair, big square frame, and blue eyes. “Emil!” she called to him, affectionately, when he fell on his knees and howled.

  The two other little boys stopped to look scornfully at Emil. “Cry-baby,” said little Jimmy, Charles’ son. “Cry-baby,” repeated Jochen Charles (little Joe). Emil looked at them savagely, jumped up and pursued the others with a cry of vengeance. The adults under the trees laughed.

  It was the occasion of little Jimmy’s third birthday. He might be Jim, at three, thought Charles. His boy was dark and tall and slender, with a thick mop of curls. But he had Phyllis’ blue eyes and Phyllis’ smile. However, he had Jim’s ways, eager yet thoughtful. It was kind of Joe and Isabel, who had understood, and had not insisted that their grandson be christened until Charles’ son had been born. It had been agreed that if Charles’ child were a girl, Geraldine and Jim’s son would be christened James. When Phyllis had given birth to a boy, Charles was quite willing that his grandson be named after the two grandfathers. And so his second son had been named after the child’s dead brother.

  Little Joe was not like his young parents at all. He “favored” Isabel remarkably, which did not reduce Isabel’s affection for him. In fact, she and Jochen regarded their grandson as their own direct son, they who had had only girls. They were in the process, at this time, of being rather stately and cool to Geraldine, who was insisting that when she married young Albert Hadden (Helen’s cousin) in September, she and her new husband would move to a new little fieldstone house on Elm Tree Road, thus taking her son with her. Jochen and Isabel, who had argued incessantly that their own home was more than large enough to house the young married couple and Geraldine’s son, especially as May and Ethel were preparing for their own coming weddings, had finally begged Geraldine to allow little Joe to remain with his grandparents. A compromise had been reached: Geraldine and Albert would permit little Joe to stay with Jochen and Isabel for at least six months, until the honeymoon was over and routine established in the new house.

  However, Jochen and Isabel were quite convinced that they would have little trouble in keeping their grandson. Doubtless, there would be a new child on the way in six months. Geraldine would be grateful to her parents for their care of Jim’s son. At the very worst, he would be with his grandparents very often. Elm Tree Road was only five streets away. Besides, little Joe called his mother by her nickname, and he called his grandparents “Mama and Papa.” Geraldine had been annoyed at first. Now she thought it very touching.

  Wounds don’t heal as fast as superficial people think, Charles reflected, as he watched little Jim stop to inspect, very gravely, a brilliant red rose. In fact, they never really heal at all. Scar tissue forms, but it keeps on breaking. To the end of your life. Look at the little feller, now: he was bending his head for a closer inspection of the rose, and he had a way of tilting his head which was exactly like Jim’s, at his age. The scar tissue throbbed, and broke. Charles called out: “Jim!” The little boy looked at him alertly and smiled. “Jim,” repeated Charles, more gently. The throbbing stopped.

  He looked at his grandson, little Joe—Jim’s son. He was deeply devoted to the child, whom he visited very often. Geraldine also brought the boy to Charles on every possible occasion, when she could remove him from the jealous possessiveness of her own parents. Then there were two boys in the house, quarreling, playing together, racing up and down the stairs, clamoring, demanding, rushing to Charles to settle disputes. He would take them both on his knees, with contentment. He called them indiscriminately: “My boys.” In four months, Phyllis would have another child. Charles hoped for a girl this time. He rocked slowly in the grass, watched the
children, and smiled.

  The war was over. The “plotters” hadn’t succeeded after all. The Kaiser had run away to exile, in Holland. Germany was apparently settling down in the slow process of accepting a truly democratic government. She would never tolerate tyranny again. Russia—well, the Bolsheviks were trying to destroy what small middle class they had, and were apparently succeeding, too, according to the fitful reports which came intermittently from that mysterious country. But the Russians had had their little taste of freedom, and the Bolsheviks would pass as the Czar had passed. Once give a nation a sharp vision of liberty, and she would never be content with anything else again. Bolshevism was a temporary nightmare in medieval Russia.

  The war had shattered the old systems of Europe, had destroyed the ancient concept of “the divine right of kings.” It had cost Europe and America billions of dollars, millions of lives. A frightful thing. But perhaps not too high a cost for the new enfranchisement and liberation of mankind. No, there’d never be tyranny in Germany again, no more despots, no more deified autocrats. The people who had given Kant, Goethe, Beethoven, and Brahms to the world were on their way, at last, into the free family of nations. In two years, three years, Russia, too, would eliminate her new, raving enslavers. And America—it would take a little time until America realized that she should belong to the League of Nations.

  The mighty blow struck at the universal freedom of man had failed. Now, the process of deliverance would go on, surely and steadily. There would be no more wars, no more agony, no more despair, no more fathers and mothers crying in the nights. The long terrors which had gripped the centuries had passed in a bloody cloud. No more war. No more enslavement. Perhaps it had been a “famous victory” after all.