Aurora Dawn (12 page)

(“I was twelve years old ten years ago,” said Laura demurely, “and the ballet didn’t stop in Albuquerque.”)

At any rate Mike found himself and his work suddenly in demand. He had the pleasure of selling to dealers who had snubbed
him, the very pieces they had dismissed. The newspapers also came after him, and Mike, realizing that they were looking for
bizarre behavior and ideas, just gave rein to himself and furnished them with all the copy they could use.

You’ve seen his Bible. He did most of it before the ballet, as an exercise in dramatic sketching and coloring, and I’ve always
thought the pictures ordinary; they bear many traces of his advertising drudgery, in fact. When he came to America with the
ballet, he was approached by one of those enterprising publishers who make a business of exploiting a new genius or a new
word game each year. He promptly hauled out his portfolio of Bible pictures, to the ecstasy of the publisher. Mike won’t admit
it, but I’m sure he put in the controversial pieces that brought all the bishops and ministers down on him–Ruth at Boaz’ feet,
Judah and Tamar, that scandalous Magdalene, and so forth–
after
he’d sold the portfolio to the publisher. He did once tell me that he inserted the portrait of himself in Old Testament dress
as Bezalel, the divine artist of the Tabernacle, because he thought “the excitement would make the book go better.” Of course,
you know what happened. It sold more than half a million copies, and it still goes into a new edition each year–all at eight
dollars a copy.

(“My father preached a sermon in favor of the Wilde Bible and we had a copy at home,” said Laura. “Mother came after it with
the scissors to cut out Judah and Tamar and some of the others, but Dad fought her off. They compromised by locking it up
until I was seventeen.”)

The very worst time to let you look at it, but you seem to have survived the exposure.–Well, there you have Mike Wilde, Laura.
He does have a bent for perverse flamboyance, but instead of checking it, he exploits it. He takes horrid themes because they
cause talk; he uses long, pointless titles for the same reason. He blathers about goodness and beauty and his own genius for
the same reason. To bring the thing off as well as Mike has done requires address, I grant you, and a gift for mountebanking;
but it must be great fun, once he overcomes the loss of face involved in making an ass of himself in public. Nobody can commit
the impropriety of public self-praise without losing personal dignity and integrity, but, in the field of the arts, it’s a
common sacrifice. You see the pattern repeat itself two or three times in each generation. A man of moderate talent proclaims,
“I am a genius,” and backs his assertion with colorful social and artistic eccentricities. These have nothing to do with genius,
but the crowd thinks they do, and so his claim is improved. Shakespeare, Bach, and Blake didn’t find it necessary to use the
technique. Mike’s an excellent painter, and his work will last his time and keep him well-to-do, but his mouth long ago outsped
his brush. I’ve said these things to him, so I’m not violating our friendship in telling you the truth about him. It’s nothing
you wouldn’t have seen for yourself, anyway, in a year or two.

* * *

The fire was dying. Stephen English rose, poked it up, threw two small logs on it, and, as the flames snarled gratefully around
the dry wood, he sat again near the girl and gazed at the brightening blaze in silence. The sunlight now slanted above the
fireplace, and for the first time Laura noticed the painting hung there. It was a portrait of her companion. Beneath it was
a medallion reading: “Stephen Allworth English, President of the New Art Foundation–Portrait by Michael Wilde.” The likeness
was vital, and, as Laura looked at the face, she felt again an unaccountable, sympathetic condescension toward the subject.
She glanced at him, sitting beside her, absorbed in the pleasant spell of the flames.

“Stephen,” she said. He turned his head toward her, a slight lift in the eyebrows that were faintly tinged with gray. Laura
hesitated for a moment, conscious of a great impulse to say something kind. “I think you’re very decent and wise.”

Stephen English laughed aloud, and Laura realized that she had not heard him do so until now. It was the kind of short, reluctant
mirth with which someone joins in a joke at his own expense. He took her hand; Laura did not protest, nor did she wrest her
hand away from him. They sat thus in a new unspeaking intimacy looking at the fire, and thus they were still fifteen minutes
later when Mrs. Brennan rustled starchily into the room, decorated with the broadest of all possible smiles and bearing an
exquisite service of tea.

It will be very hard, surely, to justify to the gentle reader what must seem a looseness in our heroine’s behavior. Remember,
then, that even Noah, the only man deemed worthy of being saved from a world’s destruction, was described as being merely
“righteous in his generation.” The manners of the time and place in which Laura lived took an exceedingly frivolous view of
the importance of holding hands, and indeed of other, somewhat more searching liberties. Morality is eternal, but its modes
fluctuate. A Japanese, they say, thinks nothing of bathing naked in the same tub with a stranger of the opposite sex, but
a clasp of hands between the two would be a turning point. We ourselves observe with great calm our young ladies walking on
beaches with all but a half-dozen crucial square inches of their skins exposed; an hour later, we are shocked to see one of
them come in to dinner wearing a skirt which ends an inch above the knee. Laura was, beyond doubt, righteous in her generation;
yet, betrothed though she was, she permitted Stephen English to hold her hand. That this was an inadvisable kindness will
perhaps be seen in the sequel.

When Laura returned to her apartment at sundown, she observed with surprise that her mother was setting the dinner table for
two. “I telephoned you that Andy was coming,” she protested.

“Andy telephoned at three o’clock and said he was sorry, but he suddenly found that he had to take someone to dinner for business
reasons,” said Mrs. Beaton, smoothing the tablecloth daintily. “How was lunch with Mr. English and that famous artist? My,
you’re moving in high company nowadays. You’d have been right at home with your uncle Woodrow in the White House.”

“Lunch was very pleasant,” said Laura, with a sinking at her heart which she could have in no way explained. “Did Andy say
he would be here later in the evening?”

“No, he said he was afraid he was going to have to make a night of it. Strange that a millionaire finds time for you and a
young fellow like Andy is so occupied,” said the mother, and was about to continue when she observed a dangerous gleam in
her daughter’s eye, whereupon she prudently disappeared into the kitchen.

The telephone rang. Laura leaped at it; the radiance on her face as she put the device to her ear was the expression the old
masters were always struggling for when they painted angels. The disappointment that quickly succeeded it was like the dropping
of a curtain. “Hello, Stephen,” she said. “You’re much too kind to me. Thank you, but I’m having dinner at home.” A silence
followed during which she was clearly being subjected to persuasion. “Stephen, I don’t like to be serious over the telephone,
but don’t you think that it’s not proper for me to see you so often?” Another silence. Laura’s expression changed to one of
resignation. “Yes, of course I’d enjoy that,” she said at last. “Do come up for a while after dinner. You can’t stay long
because I have to work early in the morning. Good-by.”

As she put down the instrument her mother came out of the kitchen, carrying plates of bread and butter. “Who was that?” she
inquired with the elaborate innocence of the eavesdropper. Laura told her wearily that Stephen English had asked permission
to pay a call after dinner, and that she had been unable to think quickly of a gracious way to refuse him. Mrs. Beaton observed
with gravity that she was sure it was perfectly proper, otherwise a fine gentleman like Mr. English would not suggest it,
and furthermore, she was confident it would be a short, pleasant and
very
harmless little visit, and much nicer than sitting alone, wondering what Andy was doing. She returned to the kitchen as she
said this, and no sooner had she passed out of her daughter’s sight than she executed a caper that was slightly at variance
with her remarks and quite singular in a lady of advancing years.

No heroine, surely, should consider entertaining in her home a man other than the one to whom she is betrothed, but there’s
such a majesty doth hedge a millionaire that one must deal lightly with a maiden whose sense of propriety falters before him.
Yet I fear that this apology may be misplaced, and that all too many of my readers, even as Mrs. Beaton, only feel that Laura
is at long last beginning to use her head.

In which Andrew Reale improves an acquaintance,

and eats one Magic Dinner more than is supposed

to be healthy for a young man.

T
HE SNOW IS FALLING
in a whirling veil in Central Park tonight. It has been falling steadily and heavily since sunset, and the trees are laden
with a decorative burden, while the lawns and asphalt roads are blanketed in silent whiteness. The lamps are haloes around
which dance innumerable snowflakes, fluttering ever down and down like dying little white moths. So thick is the snowstorm
that beyond the lamps nothing can be seen of the artificial cliffs which march grimly to the four brinks of the park and halt
there, baffled by the charm of Municipal Ownership; and tonight the park might be a thousand square miles of whiteness instead
of a few besieged acres. Snow … snow … snow. The automobile traffic is all diverted to the straight avenues flanking the outside
of the park, where monstrous machines thrust the snow aside as fast as it settles to the wet stone. The winding roads inside
the park are deserted, and, as they gather the whiteness undisturbed, they are gradually merging into the lawns out of which
they were first gashed. It is with difficulty that the ancient driver atop the ancient hansom cab–which intensifies the solitude
by being the sole moving thing in it–can see his way through the sooty night and the milky storm, but the sense of the horse
is better than the cabman’s eye, and he plods surely along straightaways and around curves that are stamped into his muscles.
The noise of his hoofs is muffled to a padding such as might be made by a giant cat. The cabman utters no sound and thinks
no thought. Inside the cab, the young couple are as completely alone as they might be at either Pole. This is well, since
they are locked in most affectionate embrace.

It is with regret that I must identify the couple as Andrew Reale and Carol Marquis.

They remain thus, mouth to mouth, clinging to each other as the cab rocks them gently, for a length of time that is better
imagined than specified. At last Carol takes her burning mouth from his, and, leaning back in his arms, whispers, “I know
all about you. You’re engaged to Honey Beaton. Why are you doing this to me?” Andrew’s eyes are looking into hers. “I don’t
know why I’m doing it. Shall I stop?” he says. A little white hand steals into the plentiful fair hair on the back of his
head, and his mouth is softly pulled down on hers once more. The cabman blows snow-flakes out of his gray mustache and notices
mournfully, through a rift in the storm, the straight line of lights on One Hundred Tenth Street, which tells him he is only
half way around the park; and his slow mind, oscillating for a moment between wonder at the foolishness of his fares, and
gratitude for the twenty-dollar bill with which he was bribed to accommodate their eccentric impulse, settles into a numbness
matching that of his fingers and toes. Snowflakes drift inside the cab through a small opening of one window and settle unheeded
on the girl’s fur coat. And it is cold inside the little wooden box, but there is no numbness in here, no numbness at all.

Sweet friend, may Heaven preserve you from error and keep you safe in the good paths of life; but if you are fated to stray,
in order to learn the bitter lessons of straying, may one of your sins be a hansom cab ride through Central Park in a snowstorm,
wrapped in the arms of a young creature who is not yours.

The chain of circumstances that had brought Andrew Reale into such peccant activity was curious, in that each link but the
very last could be regarded as innocent–and probably was, to his best discernment. Confronted with the apparition of the girl
in Talmadge Marquis’s office at a moment when a word from her could have engulfed all his hopes, he had seen no other course
but to say to her, in a swift aside during introductions, “Mum’s the word, and I’ll take you to dinner at the Ferrara.” The
girl had given him a single mischievous glance and muttered, “Done!” and thereafter had feigned indifference to him, and had
made no mention of their encounter on the train. It developed that she had come to her father’s office to meet Michael Wilde
and obtain an interview with him for her college newspaper, and shortly after her arrival she left with the talkative painter
to visit his studio. The business meeting continued with a discussion of plans for the Stanfield program, and ended in an
atmosphere of hearty good feeling as rare in Marquis’s office as conversations in ancient Hebrew–a complete triumph for Andy.
In the spangled firmament of advertising, a new star was unmistakably beginning to glimmer.