The lamps in the gallery had been lighted. Wilhelm closed the door behind him and Charles before he saw that Phyllis was there, waiting, her hands clasped together. She came towards her husband and Charles.
“Phyllis,” said Wilhelm.
“Don’t send me away, dear,” she begged. “Let me stay. Charles and I have been talking about—things—for a long time tonight. I want to be here to help him—”
Wilhelm stood and looked at her. It was true, then. They wanted to tell him, together. He moved away, near to a group of pictures on the wall. He said: “No.”
“You’ve got to listen,” said Charles. “It’s desperately important.”
“You’ve been avoiding Charles so long,” pleaded Phyllis, her voice breaking. “It’s been too long. For all of us.”
Wilhelm leaned against the wall. Phyllis cried: “Oh, poor Wilhelm! You look so ill.”
“I’ll be as brief as I can,” said Charles. “I’m so damned tired of talking, and thinking, and waiting. You’ll have to hear me out, Willie. Then, do what you want to do. I’ll have done my best to make you understand.”
Wilhelm’s slight black shoulders pressed the wall; he dropped his head. It wasn’t possible to stand it; he couldn’t give up Phyllis. If everyone would only go away for a while he might be able to think more clearly, to fight down this pain.
Phyllis ran to him, and caught him by the arm. “You wouldn’t talk to Charles, before we went away, darling. Before that, he asked me for my help, in getting you alone. But then we went to Philadelphia. I wrote him from there and told him I’d call him immediately when we returned, so he could come up at once. And so, I called him this afternoon.”
Wilhelm moved his head slightly, and looked at his wife. “You called him, Phyllis?”
“Yes, yes!” she exclaimed, pressing his arm. “I told you. I kept my promise, which I had written to him from Philadelphia. I’m sorry it had to be so underhand, but when you hear what he has to say you’ll understand. I—”
“You wrote from Philadelphia?” repeated Wilhelm.
“Yes! Dear, do try to listen. I know you’re very tired, but you must listen. I had to write Charles, just as I had to call him today. And then you went out. Charles arrived shortly after you left. He was so sick with disappointment that he wanted to leave, but I kept him here in hopes you’d return shortly. And then you came back with Jochen!”
Charles came closer to his brother. “Yes, it had to be Joe, didn’t it? It had to be that liar and scoundrel. You couldn’t have called me, of course. I’m only the president of the company, to be conspired against behind my back, and libelled. I always thought you were with me, Willie. But Joe’s gotten to you at last, hasn’t he?”
“Oh, no,” said Phyllis, turning to Charles. “Wilhelm would never betray you or plot against you with Jochen. You must believe me, Charles. You can’t wrong Wilhelm that way.”
Charles said: “The time’s come when I can’t afford to be
Charles was puzzled. There was something going on here too ‘nice,’ Phyllis. Everything I have has got to be laid out on the table for Willie to see. I don’t know what Joe’s been saying to him, all these weeks, and now I don’t care. I’m going to give him facts. If he’s juvenile enough not to listen, then we’ll all go down to hell, together.”
Wilhelm could not speak. They waited for him, Phyllis almost crying. His shoulders slipped on the wall. Then he saw the deep concern of his wife and Charles for him, the affection in their eyes, and the dismayed glance they gave each other. They moved nearer to him, watching him anxiously.
“Oh, darling,” said Phyllis, and took her husband’s hand and held it tightly.
“Will you give me, say, ten minutes?” Charles asked. “Then I’ll go away and you can talk it all out cozily with Joe, and destroy everything I’ve worked for all my life.”
It was all a lie, thought Wilhelm. All a filthy lie. There was nothing to it, ever. Jochen’s brought me to this, and lied about my wife and my brother, and I’ve listened. What can I say to them? How can I even look at them?
His head swam with his passionate relief, and with his self-disgust, and his anger and humiliation. He pushed his shoulders away from the wall. He tried to speak, and then could only put his arm around Phyllis, and stand there.
Charles was puzzled. There was something going on here which he could not understand. A moment ago Willie had looked as if he was about to collapse. Now he was standing upright, holding Phyllis, and there was some color coming back into his cheeks. Charles said to Phyllis: “When you wrote me you didn’t say anything about Willie being ill or anything in Philadelphia.”
“He hasn’t been well since he had that influenza, Charles. I wrote you that, too.”
“Well,” said Charles, sighing. “Look here, sit down, Willie. Let’s all sit down. I’m not leaving here until I’ve had my say. Why didn’t you talk to me about it? Why did you have to hide? Because Joe was lying to you, and you believed it?”
“Yes, I believed him,” said Wilhelm. Now he could speak, and it was with enormous bitterness. “Never mind. Yes, let us sit down.”
There were some small chairs placed near the walls under the pictures. Phyllis sat beside her husband, and Charles perched on a chair and faced them. The gallery was cold; the lights were cold on the pictures. At the end of the room a bust of Socrates gravely stared down the long aisle.
“Before you begin,” said Wilhelm, “I’d like to ask you something, Charles. Jochen told me this afternoon you had threatened to ‘smash’ him and ‘drive’ him out of the company. Why?”
Charles laughed shortly. “Yes, I told him that, and I meant it. I still mean it. He’s not going to destroy what I’ve built up. No.”
“I see,” said Willie, thoughtfully. Phyllis’ hand was warm in his. She smiled at him with deep tenderness. “I see,” he repeated. Then he looked at Charles. “Go on. Tell me. Tell me as much as possible. You won’t tell me everything. I know, but do your discreet best.” And then he actually smiled.
They laughed a little, together. Charles said: “I’ve been talking to Phyllis about all this for months. I tried to talk to you, too, but you wouldn’t listen; that was the time you gave me the Picasso.”
“The first time you mentioned it was when we were in the woods that afternoon, last summer,” said Phyllis. “I was terribly frightened. You remember, Charles?”
“I remember,” said Charles. He had planted one hand on each spread knee, and sat there solidly, nodding.
“Go on,” said Wilhelm. “He’s waiting down there, and I have a few things to say to him. In private.”
So Charles began to talk, as he had talked to Phyllis that afternoon, and when he paused for a moment Phyllis quoted him to Wilhelm, and Charles nodded again. Wilhelm listened intently, holding his wife’s hand, and watching the lamplight in her earnest eyes.
Then Charles, gray with tiredness, stopped and mopped his face. He and Phyllis waited for Wilhelm to speak. But Wilhelm sat in silence.
“I’ve got Fred,” Charles repeated, when his brother remained silent. “For how long only God knows. You know Fred, Willie. He might bolt any day over to Joe again. In the meantime, he’s seeing Helen Hadden, and George and I are both working on her, and I think the poor devil’s in love with the girl. She seems to like him. If I can only keep him in hand for a while longer, and if I can be sure you’re with me, we’ll save our company. Even if Brinkwell does have his own machine-tool shops.”
“So, you think Brinkwell wants our patents?” said Wilhelm. “Yes, I see. And you’re determined, for perfectly good reasons of your own, not to let him have them. Naturally. You aren’t suspecting that if we comply with what he wants we’d soon be a Connington subsidiary, are you?”
Charles looked at him, and then he jumped to his feet with a savage exclamation. “What a damned fool I’ve been! Of course, that’s what would happen! That’s what’s behind it all! And I never saw it, never once! There it was, right before my eyes, and I never saw it!” He was stupefied.
Phyllis said to Wilhelm: “You see, now, how much Charles has needed you.”
Charles said, violently: “So, that’s what it is! You’re right, Phyllis, I’ve been spreading myself out, worrying about something I’ll never be able to help, and here was the company sliding down to hell behind my back!” He shouted at Wilhelm: “How could you have seen it at once, and I couldn’t?”
Wilhelm leaned back negligently in his chair. “My dear Charles, it’s obvious. Of course, it would take some little time, even if we leased or lent those patents to Brinkwell, but eventually there we’d be—a neat subsidiary of the Connington, Fred completely immobilized, myself impotent, and Jochen—Let us consider Jochen. The Wittmann Machine Tool Company is too small for our young brother. He has his eyes on something much bigger. What could that be? Assistant superintendent to Brinkwell, perhaps? Or—perhaps—general manager of our own shops. And you, Charles?”
Wilhelm held up his hand, and his ring flashed in the lamplight.
“Charles, please. Let’s be sensible. Let’s think this over quietly.”
Charles exclaimed: “It’s the humiliation of the thing that I can’t stand! ‘Be sensible,’ you say, and all the time he’s been plotting to ruin us!”
“He hasn’t been able to do it yet. And he never will,” said Wilhelm. “He’ll stoop to anything, believe me. I know it only too well. But now that we know, we can stop it. We must concentrate on keeping Friederich with us, though, as you said, it’s like holding a time bomb in your hand.”
For the first time in his life he felt securely strong, and even superior to Charles, who had not seen what was obvious. Poor Charles. Wilhelm felt his old affection for his brother return to him, deeper and warmer than ever. However, he held back an inclination to incite Charles to further rage with gentle ridicule, for he remembered what he had believed of him, and of Phyllis, only a little more than an hour ago. “I must talk to Jochen alone. Let us go downstairs. Please wait for me, Charles. When I’ve finished with Jochen I want you to join us.”
He stood up. “What do you think we should do to Jochen?”
“I don’t know,” said Charles, boiling. “I know what I’d like to do to him. Kick him out!”
Wilhelm smiled leniently. “We might be able to get to that, one of these days. Yes, I think we might. I have a small matter of my own I’d like to settle with him. No, I can’t tell you, Charles. It’s too mortifying—” Phyllis was standing beside him. “Too mortifying. Too shameful,” added Wilhelm. “And then, again, he might become so enraged, when he finds out that we know all about him, that he might, very possibly, say something so unpardonable that he couldn’t remain with the company.”
Wilhelm considered this, no longer smiling. “Come down with us, Phyllis. Stay with Charles, while I talk to Jochen. I think, in your presence, after we’ve had a talk, that Jochen will hold his tongue. I don’t think any of us is quite ready, just now, to ‘kick him out,’ as Charles says.”
“I am,” said Charles. They walked to the door, then Charles paused. “I don’t like mysteries, Willie. What has he been telling you? I’ve got to know.”
Wilhelm turned, and looked at his brother. “No,” he said. “No. That’s something I’ll never tell you, Charles. For if I did you could never be friends with me again. You’d despise me, and you’d be right. I don’t want that to happen.” He looked at Phyllis. “You’d despise me, too, my dear. That would be even worse for me.”
He quickly opened the door, and Charles and Phyllis followed him. Charles said: “And to think that all the time I was thinking that Brinkwell was just wanting to set up his shops in competition with us! And all the time—”
They reached the stairway together, then stopped. Jochen, having become uneasy at the long delay, and the silence upstairs, had come back into the hall. He was standing there below, squinting up at them in the subdued light.
“Well,” he said, trying to see.
Wilhelm drew back and let Phyllis precede him. She went down a few steps and Charles, near the banister, and Wilhelm, near the wall, followed her, side by side.
It was Wilhelm’s intention to be dignified, and not to make a scene before his wife. But as he went down the stairs with Charles his hatred and anger became too much for him, and his shame. He did not want Jochen to be near Phyllis, or even to look at her. It was too much! So, he began to hurry, to catch up with Phyllis. “Don’t—” he exclaimed.
It was then that he slipped on the glimmering marble stairs.
Charles instinctively threw out a hand to catch him, but it was too late. Wilhelm’s sleeve was torn from his fingers as Wilhelm went hurtling past him. Phyllis, hearing Wilhelm’s exclamation and Charles’ cry, turned just in time to see her husband flying headlong down the stairs. She drew back with a scream as he neared her, his arms flaying. Then a moment later he had crashed below her, on the last steps, almost at Jochen’s feet.
Charles stood paralyzed on the stairway. He heard Phyllis screaming, over and over. He saw his brother lying huddled together, motionless, face down, a broken body in rumpled black. He gripped the balustrade, for his legs were weakening with horror and disbelief. He could not move. Dazed, he watched Phyllis running down the stairs. He saw her kneeling beside Wilhelm, her violet gown spread all about her. She was still screaming. And he could not move.
Jochen looked at the man near his feet. Then, very slowly, he lifted his eyes to Charles.
“So, that’s how you settled it,” he said.
It was terrible, to hear Phyllis screaming like that. Charles wanted to go to her. But the stairs were wavering before him, and he had to sit down to save himself from falling, also.