Aurora Dawn (31 page)

Andrew issued a stream of polite reassurances on Grovill’s health which seemed to cheer the wilted fat man no little. While
Andy’s tongue was thus occupied with routine work, his mind weighed the advisibility of telling Grovill about the Stanfield
statement, but found sufficient reason to break silence wanting.

“Well, thanks, Andy,” replied Grovill to the words of comfort, “but I’m not as young as I look, and heart trouble isn’t like
a cold in the head, you know. You might find yourself—” he interjected a giggle in a sufficiently minor mode, almost, to pass
as a sob—“Andrew Reale, Incorporated, sooner than both of us think.”

Scoffing away the lugubrious suggestion, Andrew accompanied the plump dignitary to the elevator door with repeated phrases
of gratitude, and promised an early answer to the flattering offer. His guest safely off, he returned to his rooms and sank
giddily into the chair at his desk.

Now was the glorious summer of his content at mid-June, according to all his schemes and dreams. Carol was won; Marquis would
surely remain in power; and rule of an advertising agency was his for the asking. The climb was over. Andrew Reale stood at
the summit of life.

To what must we compare the vista before him? Reach into childhood memory, reader, and blow the dust off the picture of Jack,
having climbed up through the very clouds to the top of the Beanstalk, looking around at the strange Giants’ land into which
he had come: a flat new landscape having no relation at all to the world below, and conveying no impression of altitude attained.
Andrew seemed now to find himself in a swampy vastness under a sky of gray, facing a long road which lost itself far off among
bleak hills. There appeared no way to turn, left or right or backward, that offered surprise, interest or pleasure, and it
was evident that he must simply plod along this road until, somewhere in the distance, he died. Nothing in his life seemed
green, nothing purposeful. His imagination painted in a new detail to the dismal picture: Marquis, springing like the Old
Man of the Sea from the back of the tottering Grovill on to this new Sinbad, himself: a burden to be carried along the road
for ever.

And now, in the exaltation brought on by the thin atmosphere of the peak of success, a tremendous event took place in Andrew
Reale’s life. He philosophized.

The things that Michael Wilde and Father Stanfield had said about his way of life rose in his consciousness with the regality
of wisdom, except that he somehow forgot he had heard them before, and they seemed profound new perceptions of his aroused
intellect. “Why,” he concluded to himself, “what are we but a crowd of well-kept slaves in golden chains, wearing out our
lives in a devil-dance of lying, throat-cutting, sensuality, luxury, cheating, conniving, and fooling the public?” He loathed
himself and his life. He felt a desperate urge to write a book. The many pleasant and comfortable years he had known, the
agreeable times that the career had given him, the boon of care-lightening amusement that he had helped to bring his countrymen
by taxing his nerves in the tasks of radio: all these were erased from his memory. In this great awakening of conscience (which
the moral reader may ascribe to the influence of Father Stanfield, and the practical reader to lack of sleep: here only the
facts are given), he felt only the single quickening urge of the reforming enthusiast: Destroy! O for two pillars to tug down,
and bring the Philistine temple of radio and advertising tumbling to ruin!

“Why,” he sneered, “no wonder we are paid so much. We do the dirtiest work in the land. What self-respecting street sweeper
would change places with me if he knew what I had to do for my pay?”

Bent under this admirable self-scourging, he threw his head on his hands and leaned his elbows forward upon the desk in an
attitude of despair. Thus directed downward, his eyes fell on the letters he had not yet read—and on top of these he now noticed
a thick envelope addressed in the hand of Carol Marquis. He picked it up, turned it over and was startled to read the following
message on the sealed flap: “
Take a deep breath, Teeth dear
.”

This document requires to be reproduced in full, and the historian himself is impatient as our hero fumbles with the envelope
in his anxiety to tear it open, and finally strips it off the letter like a fruit peeling to read—what you will now peruse:

Darling Teeth:

I don’t know how to tell you this, but straight is good enuf, I guess. By the time you read this I will probably be married
to Mike Wilde. We’re taking the midnite plane to Mexico …I know I owe you all kinds of apologies, specially for last nite
… Honestly, I’m sorry.…

You’ll surely think I’m the worst female alive, and you may be rite, but really, Andy dear, I do like you a terrific lot.
If Mike hadn’t happened, who knows what mite have been … but what’s the use … I hope I won’t lose your friendship, because
I admire you and I know you have a splendid future in the advertising business. All your dreams you told me about will come
true soon enuf, I feel sure … I wish I deserved to be the one to share them with you, but that’s out, I suppose. I’ll always
be proud of you, tho.…

Teeth, I’m writing this in an awful hurry and I’m also trying not to hurt you but I want you to know the truth.… I was just
a silly kid when we met. I played up to you because I wanted to see whether I could get you away from Honey Beaton. But I
was really beginning to be terribly, terribly fond of you, and then … Mike happened. You mean a whole lot to me, Andy, tho,
don’t think you don’t. You sort of woke me up. After knowing you I was able to really appreciate Mike—that isn’t exactly what
I mean … You understand, tho …

Mike says he’s marrying me for my money … he’s a beast, and I wish I weren’t so absolutely mad over him … but he says that
that’s all you were trying to do, too, and so I shouldn’t feel bad about you, I’m too conceited to believe that about either
of you … anyway, I know you liked me … and I want to thank you for your loyalty to my Dad. You won’t be sorry for that, tho
…

There’s something on my conscience that you must know, but don’t ever, ever tell Dad. Teeth, I’m responsible for the whole
Aurora Dawn riot … Mike’s been coming up to the house to see me every nite, usually very late, for the past few weeks. Well,
the day Stanfield’s sermon came in the mail—you know, the day you left me at lunch and flew down to West Virginia—Dad came
home roaring mad and showed the sermon to me at dinner, and then stuck it into his inside pocket. He was fast asleep when
Mike came … I told Mike the story and he rolled around laughing and insisted that I get him the sermon. I know it wasn’t rite,
but I sneaked into Dad’s room, got the envelope out of his pocket and brought it to Mike. He read it over and said it was
too rich, he’d have to show it to Milton Jaeckel … I can’t stop him from doing anything, Andy …he rushed out and came back
with it an hour later, and I stuck it back in Dad’s coat. Now what do you think of little Carol? You’re probably glad you’re
not marrying such a friteful little fool. I mean well, tho … and I really like me at heart … I know me best.…

Forgive me for everything, Andy, and wish me luck. You’ll come across another girl like Honey who’s really rite for you, and
then you’ll be happy that this happened.… You still have the nicest smile I’ve ever seen or hope to see, and how I wish Mike
could dance the rhumba like you … I guess we can’t have everything, tho … you see, I’m growing up already. Good-by now. We’re
honeymooning in Taxco, and then … whatever Mike says …

Always,

Carol.

P.S.—I’ll never forget the snowstorm and the rose garden.

C.

The author must intervene, before permitting the hero to react to this vital document, to state that, although it is extremely
unlikely that any description of posterity will read this account, the remotest risk must not be taken at this point; and
it must here be declared plainly in defense of the American educational system of the first part of the twentieth century
that young ladies like Carol Marquis were all very well versed in spelling, grammar and punctuation; and that the departures
from good usage in the above epistle were deliberate misdemeanors. The reader will please consider the plight of a young lady
compelled to transfer her fascination to the baldness of ink on paper in a time when the literature on which she is fed boasts
emaciation of vocabulary and either flippant or burly attitudes toward romance, thus excluding her from a knowledge of the
graceful ways of language suitable to her purpose. One does not expect a young lady to spend her winged days rooting in libraries.
As a consequence, striving for some measure of femininity at any cost, she may be driven to bizarre violation of the rules
of composition, causing the male correspondent to puzzle his head over her reasons for mutilating the mother tongue. Mystery,
at least, is thereby achieved, and mystery is no small element of feminine charm, they say. All this is no explanation, but
a humble guess, put forth with the utmost lack of confidence, for we are here contemplating a black riddle from which we shrank
in the opening chapter, the workings of a young lady’s mind.

Andrew Reale’s new philosophic detachment from the vanities of radio disappeared like a dream under the rude shaking of this
letter, and his first clear thought through the blood-mist of agony brought on by the thrust to the quick of his ego was,
“How do I stand now?” Even as he groaned and writhed, he calculated, and the result was not unfavorable. In no way did it
seem that Carol’s jilting of him could disturb his advantageous position with Marquis and Grovill, which depended on his demonstrated
cleverness alone; indeed, mutual chagrin might bring the soap man and himself closer, for he could not but believe that Marquis
would regard askance the alliance with Bohemia. All was not lost. Only Carol was lost. Speedily reaching this view of things,
our hero found it easier to breathe.

As, when the dentist, having firmly clasped his cruel forceps on the aching bicuspid, with a mighty pull wrenches it out of
the mouth, the moment of unendurable pain is the moment that cures, and the exhilaration of convalescence floods in on the
weary sufferer, rendering the after-pangs of the extraction a fading discomfort easily borne; so did Carol Marquis’s letter
bring to Andrew Reale’s spirit the sharpest anguish that young men are given to know, followed soon by a curious sense of
undefined relief and gladness. His first calculating thoughts had been reflexive, the cat tumbling through space and twisting
to land on its feet; now, sore but upright, he surveyed his situation with brightening eyes. He was glad to see that the single
misfortune had hardly damaged the pattern of his success, for, philosopher or no, he retained a workman’s pride in the smooth
clicking together of a plan, and a young man’s horror of being dumped into confusion by a faithless girl. The question rose
again: did he want what he had won?

As he paced around his room digesting these thoughts, an electric shock of remembrance coursed through his nerves. He suddenly
recalled the paper which Father Stanfield had signed, now either in Marquis’s hands or on its way to them. His meditation
went no further. Upon the instant his hat was on his head and the front door was closing on him with a vigorous slam.

In which this true tale comes to an end

—whether happily or not,

the reader can best determine.

E
VERY NOVEL NOWADAYS
is supposed to have a purpose, not the purpose of instructive entertainment which was the sole aim of literature for several
thousand years until it suddenly obsolesced a few decades ago, but the purpose of correcting a specific social disorder such
as capitalism, deforestation, inadequate city planning, war or (as some authors view it) religion. All this began, it is said,
when a great French realist, Zola, discovered at the start of the century that “Truth is on the march.” It is evidently still
marching, and will continue to march as far into the future as anyone can peer, and so it behooves literature to get into
step and move to the regulated cadence of Purpose, if it is not to be damned for dawdling by the wayside while Truth marches
away over the horizon. Truly, we live in a gay parading epoch, do we not? Time marches; Truth marches; Man marches; it is
hardly to be doubted that the very March hares march. Critics will justly scan this history with the question in their minds,
what is its purpose? Sifting the light stuff of which it is made, they may legitimately conclude that they have found the
tiny gritty nugget of a message in Michael Wilde’s strictures against the trade of modeling–therefore the author begs leave
to point out that this cannot possibly be the case.

Laura English lies injured in a hospital bed, true enough, but surely no one believes that every model, bruised of heart,
who marries a rich man, is forthwith struck down by a delivery truck. On the contrary, to develop the aforesaid Purpose artistically,
the historian would have first falsified the events so that Laura remained unharmed; he would then have portrayed her at a
moment when she was swimming in the luxuries bestowed on her by her opulent husband: an exquisite gown, a rich fur wrap, gleaming
silver, lush furniture, glowing jewels, rare perfumes, long, low, sleek, purring roadsters (see the fiction in any current
ladies’ magazine for the rest of the details); and then, by ironic touches, would have conveyed that all these treasures were
as dross to her and brought no true warmth to her frostbitten heart. The very acuteness of Honey Beaton’s misfortune makes
her atypical. Let it be taken as understood, then, that neither the brief scene that follows nor anything else in the book
is aimed to discredit the glamorous profession, modeling, or the honest agencies that buy and sell young ladies’ charms. What
the Purpose is comes out at the end of the chapter, and it is disappointingly simple.