Aurora Dawn (14 page)

The house telephone rings. Startled, for it is one o’clock in the morning, Laura goes to the instrument and speaks into it
a hollow, mournful “Hello?” Then her expression changes wildly. “Andy! But it’s so terribly late!” Pleading sounds from the
diaphragm. “I’m not sure there’s any point to explanations–and anyway, can’t they wait until tomorrow?” Tones of emphatic
protest vibrate the receiver. “Yes, I suppose so. Come on up.” She puts away the telephone and glances at the mirror. One
hand darts professionally to her hair and another to her eyes; but, in a moment’s pause, she evidently decides that tear-stained
disorder is not inappropriate to the occasion, for she refrains from changing it. As a matter of fact–such is the grace of
these blessed damsels–it
is
rather becoming than otherwise.

Must we record exactly what Andrew says to her in this interview? Is it not enough to observe that, approximately fifteen
minutes after his arrival, she places herself in his arms and permits him to console her with kisses? Andrew finds her kiss
inexpressibly gratifying, as always, but there is tonight a taste he has never known in it before. It is the faintest touch
of salt.

Let young men who envy our hero his culling of the sweetness of two such mouths in one evening observe the sequel with attention.

In which a great deal of history is compressed

into a very little ink, and the author indulges

in a short digression into a theory of literature

—fair warning to impatient readers.

E
ACH OF US
, manifesting himself as an entity on the earth, is given a corporeal frame which can be expected to be serviceable while
the terrestrial globe makes twenty thousand turns on its axis. It is rather unfortunate that some three thousand spins are
reeled off before we know this, and perhaps ten or fifteen thousand more before we believe it. It is even more unlucky, and
very odd, that the last five thousand spins are whirled away at what seems to be a highly accelerating speed. Formerly this
was considered an illusion, but the march of science is treading under even that small comfort, since it now appears that
there is no absolute standard for measuring time, that all quantities are relative to the observer’s “system,” and that, consequently,
when a spurned young lover thinks the days crawl, while an ageing author finishing his masterpiece imagines that the very
same days are whizzing, both may be perfectly correct. One person, whose identity is perhaps obvious, is the only figure in
this tale who actually counted spins as they were expended. The rest went about their concerns as though the world were a
flat, immovable platform lighted, with pleasing alternation, dimly and brightly, and as though their bodies were as permanent
as a true philosophical idea.

Our story has all taken place, thus far, in the space of three spins; truly, no more, good friend–Saturday, Sunday, and Monday,
Permit the author to make amends now for his leaden pace, by whirling his spherical stage through sixty complete revolutions
in a single paragraph. Whrrrrrrrr. The snow melts. The wind dies. Days lengthen. The air warms. Grass comes. Trees sprout.
Flowers open. Insects wake. Food grows. Animals leap. Young ladies become demure. Young men become urgent. Every breathing
human being has paid sixty spins out of his allotment and has bought with this odd coinage the privilege of being alive in
the green, pleasant month of May.

The appearance of Father Stanfield and his Fold of the Faithful Shepherd on a broadcast under the sponsorship of a soap company
was the wonder of the radio business, but his success was a marvel that exhausted the adjectives of even this fecund environment.
There existed an enterprise, the Hooley Institute of Public Sentiment, devoted to compiling information on the popularity
of programs and stating the results as numbers; an idea calculated to appeal to business people who were bewildered by the
intangible standards of entertainment, but who worked under the rule of numbers, struggled for numbers, schemed and lied for
numbers, were rewarded with numbers, judged each other by the size of their numbers, and left to their children when they
died, as the fruit of their lives, numbers. This Hooley Institute, four weeks after the start of the Stanfield program, announced
to the gasping industry that the Faithful Shepherd’s “Hooley” was fifty-one. An idea of the astronomical size of this figure
will be suggested by the fact that the President’s annual message to Congress usually achieved a Hooley of thirty-nine. All
established principles were confuted. Successful advertising executives, who held as an article of faith that the radio world
rested on the four pillars of laughter, light music, notoriety, and sex, were staggered to observe that religion was more
popular than any of them. Many argued that it was a sign of unhealthy times. Others were aghast at the sacrilege of demeaning
Holy Writ to sell soap, and none exhibited this commendable taste more than executives who were producing programs for other
soap companies.

The first two broadcasts were made directly from the Tabernacle in the remote West Virginia valley, but when an electrical
storm caused a local power failure, blotting out most of the third, it was decided to avoid such risks in the future by bringing
the Father and his followers to a large studio in Radio City each weekend. The expense was ponderable, but the program remained
much the cheapest evening show on the air, and even if it had not, no expense would have been considered excessive for the
maintenance of the majestic, the incomparable Hooley of fifty-one.

It soon appeared that Father Stanfield, like the machine gun or any other remarkable new thing which at first promises to
upset all tradition in this old world, had his drawbacks. He was impervious to direction or management, and, although he acquiesced
readily to the shift to New York, he was as much his own master among the great towers as he had been among his native gentle
hills. In one of his first New York broadcasts he launched an extemporaneous attack on the city styles of feminine clothing,
which he found too provocative. “Don’t see how I kin go on bringin’ the Fold up here,” he said, “less’n I put blinders on
the married men and check reins on the single ones. Dunno what they got theayters fer. Seems a feller’d pay to get out of
the theayter and look at what’s goin’ on in the streets. First night I come up here I thought some big hotel was on fire and
a lot of ladies got turned out of bed in a hurry–but no, seems they was wearin’ evenin’ gowns. I ain’t no authority on the
subject, but seems like the only difference between evenin’ gowns and nightgowns in New York is, you don’t have to marry the
ladies to see ’em in evenin’ gowns. When I say
in
’em, I mean
out
of ’em. The Good Book don’t say how much of her bodily temple a woman can reveal and still be decent, but I say, the less
room she leaves fer doubt that she’s a female, the more room she creates fer doubt that she’s a lady.” There was much more
in this vein, culminating in an admonition to the women of the Fold to remember that “Babylon was much bigger than Jerusalem,
but the Almighty allus has had sorta small-town ideas.”

Of course, this sally called forth violent objections from the New York press and pulpit, varying from indignant defense of
the decorum and virtue of metropolitan females to excoriation of Stanfield as a fraud. On the other hand, press and pulpit
outside the great city chorused hallelujahs and amens to the rebuke. It was astonishing to observe that ministers of identical
denomination in New York and New Jersey, united in creed and divided only by the Hudson, could hold absolutely opposed views
on the topic–a reassuring evidence of lack of regimented narrowness in the church. On the whole, since there are more people
outside New York than there are in it (I refer skeptical Manhattanites to a late World Almanac), the episode was supposed
ultimately to have been a good thing for the sales of Aurora Dawn soap, at least so it was decided at a conference of his
executives hurriedly assembled by Marquis. At the same time, uneasiness was expressed by Grovill and Leach lest Stanfield’s
next bull-like charge carry him into a more dangerous china-shop of popular opinion. Accordingly, they determined to ask the
Faithful Shepherd to write out his sermons in advance of the program and forward them to the agency. Andrew Reale, who was
assigned the ungrateful task of bringing this about, approached the Father with some misgivings, but found him tractable.
“Dunno but what I might git some good suggestions that way,” said the Shepherd, and cheerfully agreed to comply. The incident
closed to the satisfaction of everybody (except a few million New York women) when the Institute of Public Sentiment disclosed,
a week later, that Father Stanfield’s volcanic Hooley had erupted to a new high mark of fifty-seven.

Of all the myriad events that occurred during the sixty days which we recently compressed into a paragraph, only one other
will interest the reader. Before setting it down, I must admit in passing that this old-fashioned tale is violating the accepted
literary rule of the day, Realism. To show life “as it really is” is considered the only significant task an author can perform.
It seems curious that life “as it really is,” according to modern inspiration, contains a surprising amount of fornication,
violence, vulgarity, unpleasant individuals, blasphemy, hatred, and ladies’ underclothes. A perverse observer might say that
these things had become conventions almost as strict as the shepherds, shepherdesses, flutes, fruits, and flowers of early
French poetry, but this would be carping; one must grant the sincerity of the authors and concede that their lives undoubtedly
are composed in large measure of these very ingredients. But that is not necessarily life “as it really is,” except for them.
I hold that only one author has ever succeeded in recreating life as it really is: the Author of all things: and that he recreates
life exactly as it is each day, to the wonderment of a few poets and philosophers, but without greatly impressing ordinary
folks, and that all other authors, both great and insignificant, merely select from His work a few fragments that have impinged
forcibly on their sensibilities. The true history of Andrew Reale underscores a very old moral truth that has impressed me,
and so, to the exclusion of his life “as it really was” during those sixty days, this chapter focuses only on an event or
two that bear along the line.

One more digression, the last for many pages, I promise. It will be noticed that I spoke of being struck by a moral, not a
historical truth. You may scent quibbling, but upon my word, in this distinction I see the reason for my work and the justification
for the breed of scribblers. For example: “The wicked are punished, and the good rewarded,” is a great moral truth, but, you
will all agree, a most indifferent historical one. In this life, the gap between moral and historic truth is only to be bridged
by faith, wine, or art. We who write books toil on everlastingly at this task, side by side with the vintners and the priests.
So much for theory. I might better have placed this effusion in a preface, but I wanted somebody to read it.

During the months of April and May, there germinated and blossomed in the mind of our forceful hero, Andrew Reale, the notion
that he might marry Carol Marquis, and thus realize all his dreams, except one, at a stroke. To be sure, this one exception
was the vision of holding the unadorned charms of Laura Beaton in a conjugal embrace, and the prospect of sacrificing such
bliss gave him great pause. Nevertheless, the young heiress, if less dazzling than the famous Honey, was a sweet, exciting
damsel, and much more attractive to Andy than he had supposed any other member of the sex could be, after the star-gemmed
night on the rocky promontory under the George Washington Bridge when he had given Laura his engagement ring and had received
in return, for the first time, the full surrender of her kiss. The interval between this excellent moment in his life and
the initial still, small whisper, “Maybe I could marry the Marquis girl,” was exactly four months and twenty days.

The thought crossed his mind under circumstances which made it exceptionally scoundrelly, for he was sitting by the side of
Laura at the time, and her pretty white forearm was, in fact, resting ever so lightly against his. The occasion was the first
performance in Radio City of Father Stanfield and his Fold. Watching this important event from a soundproof room through a
glass wall facing the studio stage, was a select company that included Talmadge Marquis, Carol, Andrew, Laura, Grovill, Leach,
Van Wirt–also about a dozen other people of the radio and advertising crafts who perpetually danced in Marquis’s wake like
scraps of paper behind a thundering subway train.