The Last Supper: And Other Stories (3 page)

“Until September of 1935. That was when my first play was produced on Broadway—the first bit of success I ever had. It brought me to my senses, I suppose.”

“All right—now the thing is this, Harvey. When you were a member of the party, you met with a group. We have to have a list of the people in that group, and when the time comes, you have to be prepared to name them.”

“Name them?”

“That's right, Harvey.”

Crane's face fell. “The truth is, Jack—and you've got to believe me—the truth is I don't remember but one of them. There were only seven or eight in that group, and it is almost twenty years—and I can't for the life of me recall their names——”

Henderson's face hardened. “You said you were leveling with me, Harvey. Do you mean to tell me that you met with a group of people for over a year, and you don't remember their names?”

“Jack, look, I told you I'm talking to you as a friend, and I am. These people were Communists—and none of them except the one I remember are important people today. They were just names, and they faded away. Of course, there were others in the theatre group who are people of some reputation today, but of the Communists, I only remember the name of one of them.”

“And what was his name?”

“Grant Summerson.”

Henderson raised his brows. “You mean the Hollywood star?”

“That's right.”

“Well, I'll be damned! Grant Summerson a commie! You never know, do you, Harvey. Well, that doesn't help us one bit. You can't name Summerson. It's out of the question.”

“Why?”

“Isn't it obvious why? There's maybe six million dollars invested in Summerson. He's Joe Lunck's biggest property, and two of his pictures are on Broadway right this minute. As a matter of fact, Lunck is represented by
Stillman, Levy and Smith
, and this is just something you don't do. It's not playing the game, Harvey. We're not wreckers. We may face some rough situations, but we're still Americans, and we have to behave like Americans, don't we?”

“Of course we do,” Crane agreed, secretly relieved. “I have no desire to ruin Summerson.”

“None of us do. Nevertheless, they're going to want names and you're going to have to produce names. How about the others in the theatre group?”

“But they weren't Communists, Jack.”

“What difference does that make? A subversive is a subversive. It's just a technicality as to whether he's a commie and pays dues. Anyway, how can you be sure they weren't commies? How can you be sure they didn't join after you had left? Isn't it a little arrogant to set yourself up as a judge in these cases, Harvey? You were talking about humility yourself just a moment ago.”

“That's true, I was,” Crane admitted.

“Then you have to be consistent. You're still friendly with Joseph Friedman, aren't you. Wasn't he with that group?”

“He was,” Crane nodded.

“Then suppose we use him as a starting point.”

It occurred to Crane that it was Friedman who had first read something he had written, Friedman who had gotten him to join the group, and Friedman who had encouraged him constantly while he was writing
Let the Sun Shine.
As a matter of fact, if not for Friedman, he would never have been in the spot he was in now, and Friedman was a television director now, well-paid, without a care in the world, while he, Harvey Crane, faced the “inquisition.” Well, the mills of the Gods did grind, no matter how you looked at it. “Yes, Friedman,” he said, Friedman and Pat Macintosh, both of them feeding him that same line about a man who wrote for the people and of the people. “Start with Friedman and add Pat Macintosh.”

“Macintosh? The old character actor?”

“That's right. They did it to me—now I do it to them!” He felt firm and righteous in his anger. They did it to him when he was just a kid, too green and innocent to know what the score was—taking him, twisting him, using him. Now he was returning the favor.…

When they had eighteen names on the list, four of them deceased, six more already named several times over, and eight bright fresh ones, never spoken before in the august halls of Congress, Jack Henderson felt that they were sufficiently armed. He called in his secretary to make copies of the list, and then he lit a fresh cigar and smiled at Crane with the satisfaction of a job well done. “And don't think,” he told Crane, “that it's a small thing to come down there with eight fresh, clean names. God damn it, at this point there just aren't enough pinkos working to satisfy those wolves in Washington. Now it's up to you, Harvey, to know these names backwards and forward. Don't worry about calling a spade a spade. You saw them at commie meetings. What the hell—if you talk about anything but the weather these days, it's a commie meeting. The point is—and this must always be in your mind—that you're doing a service for your country. You're exposing a group of subversives, and the sooner they put their hands on all of them, the better you and I will be able to sleep nights. Now I want you to put your own past out of your mind. Let me worry about it. Today you're a firm, true part of the American way of life, the way of life that means so much to all of us—yes, to the whole free world.”

“But for God's sake, Jack, I can't just go down there and testify off the cuff. I hardly know some of those people.”

“Let me worry about that. We'll have four and a half hours on the train tomorrow morning. I'll get a compartment, and by the time we hit Washington, there won't be any loose ends. I'll have a dossier on every one of them before I leave here tonight. But that's what I'm paid for, Harvey. You just memorize those names and forget about everything else for the moment. And above all, don't worry. Tomorrow night, you'll have the respect and admiration of everyone in this city.”

There was no resisting Jack Henderson when he put on this warm and hearty manner, and Crane could not help absorbing some of that warm, glowing confidence. All day, he had been in a process of fighting through this, the deepest and most terrifying crisis in his life. Now, as he left the offices of
Henderson, Hoke, Baily and Cohen
, he felt a new lightness of heart, and added sense of benignity. It remained with him all the way home, and such was his mood of compassion that he withheld the tirade he had planned to launch against the manager of the building for allowing a process server to come to the door of his apartment. “After all,” he said to himself, “we all serve in our own way. Like me, he simply had the best interests of his country at heart. For all he knows, I might be a Bolshevik with a bomb in each hand.”

He also felt a twinge of conscience at the way he had treated Madaline Briggs, breaking a luncheon date without a word of explanation. It wasn't only that she was the lead in his show; she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever known, and he had gone so far that she had every right to expect a certain sense of responsibility from him. He had always been proud of a decent and forthright manner toward women. With these thoughts in mind, he telephoned Miss Briggs, and asked her to dine with him before the show.

“No, I'm not angry,” she said, “not at all, not even annoyed, Harvey. I knew something important had come up. Is it all straightened out now?”

“Just about.”

“But, darling, I already have a dinner date. Now, don't be jealous. As a matter of fact, I'd love it if you joined us. Please do. It will be just perfect, and I'm sure he'll want to meet you again. He said he knew you many years ago, and it would make your face burn, the nice things he said about you.”

“Who said about me?”

“Pat Macintosh.”

“The old man?”

“Yes—he's so sweet, Harvey. You know, he gave me my first job. So we're having dinner at Sardi's, and you will come, won't you?”

He hesitated at first, because his immediate instinct was to say no. But he wanted to see Madaline now as much as he had wanted to see Jane at noontime, and he thought to himself, “Why not? It's probably the last time I'll see the old man socially. Why shouldn't I show him that I have nothing against him personally—that this is bigger than both of us?” So he told Madaline, “Sure, sure—and you'll both be my guests. At Seven.”

“And you'll tell me all about whatever disturbed you?”

“After the show,” he said gently, “when there are just the two of us. God, Madaline, do you know what you mean to me, honey?”

“Not now—later,” she whispered.

Harvey Crane was smiling compassionately as he put down the telephone. He felt a pervading warmth, and he reflected that nothing made a man more conscious of a woman he cared for than the trials of sorrow and danger. Perhaps not everyone would understand his role and actions—but not everyone had the same opportunity offered to him to serve in humility and meekness. A little self-consciously, he thought of himself as
Harvey Crane, American.

The Ancestor

Y
OU WOULD HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORD
Puritan
to comprehend the ancestor. Later the word came to mean something else, something more specific, and in this land of ours something rigid and hard, shaped by the very stones that appeared to obscure the earth. But it had no defined and exact meaning at this time, which was in the fourth decade of the seventeenth century. It did not mean particularly a church or a sect—or even yet the rolling, indomitable ranks of Cromwell's men; it did not mean that you were either in or out of the established Church of England; it was a way of life being defined, a manner, a curse to some, a liberation to others.

It was the way young Henry Adams was, who held about seven acres of land from the Manor of Baarton St. David under its lord, George, Alvin, to begin his seven names, who was a fop and a fool, even in circles that were noted for neither morality nor brains. It was in the manner of Henry Adam's stance, which was erect, tight, and even arrogant, but in a new way to the Lord who, observing him once, asked of his overseer,

“Who is that who stands like that?”

“Adams who holds the Coldhill cottage.”

“Is he a king that he stands like a king?”

“He's no king, my lord, unless the devil crowns kings.”

“Which he does, I have no doubt. What is he then?”

“One of them.”

One of them
was something in England beginning, growing, spreading, shaking everything that had established castles and manor houses to be the way of life forever and forever. It wanted a new way, and it was ugly, threatening and inevitable.

“Is he? Then fetch him here,” the Lord said, and then watched the way Henry Adams came, the slow, reluctant spring of his steps, the back that stood like a ramrod held it, the dark, broad, sullen face, the close-cropped hair, banged at the top of the forehead. The sun shone over the wooded and lovely park and over the treeless hills beyond, but the, Lord shivered as if he was cold. The Lord tried to recall how he had not noticed this man before, being that he was born and brought up on the place, and then the Lord realized that there was much he had not noticed before this chill wind began to blow through England.

Then the man stood before him, and the Lord said,

“What do you do?”

“I plough the land,” was the slow, high-pitched nasal response.

“With no more courtesy than that?”

The man's dark eyes probed with neither courtesy nor fear.

“Have you no other address for your Lord?”

“I know of one Lord,” the farmer answered stolidly, unemotionally, “and he walketh by mine side.”

“What?”

“He walketh by mine side in everlasting glory,” the farmer repeated stolidly, the words contrasting oddly with his stone-like attitude.

“What does the clod mean?” the Lord addressed the overseer.

“He denies you and quotes book.”

“He denies me?”

“That is what he means, my Lord.”

“You deny me?” the Lord asked. “Am I not your liege?”

“Nay,” the farmer said simply.

“And how many lashes to make you say yea instead of nay?”

“I'll take no lashes unless they are ordered me in court,” the farmer answered, unperturbed.

“You are a proud man, and maybe too proud for a sod.”

“I am a humble man,” the farmer countered, “and I will bear no lashes unless they are ordered me in court.”

“They will be ordered you,” the Lord replied.

Twelve days later, he sat as magistrate and summoned Henry Adams before him. As a justice of the peace, the Lord felt inspired by the notion that a simple sequence of punishment would not only silence this stiff-necked man but might very well put down the whole curse of Puritanism that was sweeping the countryside, and might particularly influence a nearby squire, another of “God's chosen people,” who affected homespun dress, close-cropped hair, and a constant castigation of the Lord's morals and way of life. Whereby, the ruler of St. David heard three witnesses against Adams:

“I saw him poach.”

“He cut a hare and I found the entrails.”

“His wife cooked up the stew, which I heard from Miller, which he heard from Cooper.”

It was flimsy evidence at best, and the, dark face of Henry Adams clouded over with rage. “What have you to say?” the Justice asked him, and he answered, “They lie.”

“I think you be too stiff-necked in your words and too imprudent,” the Lord said. “You and your kind have a new way of making the lie out of anything that does not come from you. Soon you will want the whole of England.”

“I have done nothing in crime,” Henry Adams said. “I am a God-fearing man and I keep God's law. I do not poach; am I some dirty thief that you tell me I poach with the testimony of pimps and hirelings?”

“They only do their tithing,” the Lord said patiently, since he could well afford to be patient.