Aurora Dawn (29 page)

Readily the girl confided to him what the reader will remember from the early sketch of the soap magnate: that the Marquis
Company was not truly her father’s since his inspiration regarding the “Snow White, Snow Pure’ campaign, when English’s bank
had taken a controlling interest as the price of rescuing the tottering finances, and had also compelled Marquis to give sizable
portions of voting stock to his managers; that part of the bargain had been retention by Marquis of the presidency; but that
English could topple him, and the managers devoutly wished for such a consummation. Carol outlined this state of things rapidly
and nervously, with mounting disturbance of spirit. Her tense little hands made a thousand quick flutterings as she talked,
and her eyes wandered about distractedly, shifting often to the large studio clock which Was nearing the hour of nine. Suddenly
she jumped up, pressed the button which turned off the soft indirect lights of the booth, and pulled Andrew by the hand to
the darkest corner, out of sight of the studio audience.

“Oh, Andy darling,” she cried softly, pressing him in her arms, “I do appreciate everything you’ve done and tied to do for
me. I wish things didn’t look so hopelessly messed.”

Our hero felt singularly puissant at this moment. “Give me a little time, Carol, dear,” he said, “and I may pull your dad
out of this. Don’t despair.”

The girl hid her face against his chest for a moment; then she drew away from him and said, “I must go. Call me tomorrow at
noon. Good-by.”

“If you’re going to join your dad, let me come with you,” said Andrew, but Carol shook her black locks vehemently, gave him
a swift kiss on the mouth, and slipped out through the door, leaving him alone in the gloomy, hushed, glass booth.

Graveled by the new shadows on his fortune, Andrew Reale dropped into an armchair and considered the situation. Was the fruit
of scheme and sacrifice, he wondered, to prove a Dead Sea apple, crumbling to an ash when he touched it? Deposed, Marquis
was hardly an advantageous father-in-law; on the contrary, to be linked to a fallen tyrant meant to acquire the odor of his
disrepute, and who could say how rich or poor the unstable soap man might prove to be, once deprived of his shaky power as
the head of a large corporation? His handsome city and country homes, his lavish style of living; might these not be the shell
of a rotted credit? Andrew decided dourly that in his present plight, shorn of his job and his beloved–his former beloved–only
one role remained to him, the least tasteful he had ever acted: that of bellows to the dimming fire of Marquis. His hopes
turned on the preservation of the sponsor’s authority. Let his friends in radio, artists, technicians, and executives alike,
rejoice at the nearing downfall! Andrew Reale must whip his brains for a way to rescue his future father-in-law.

As he sat in the darkness and thought over the pass he was at, our hero suddenly felt as though a bulwark in his mind had
given way, and through the breach came pouring a turbid torrent of thoughts, memories, scents, sounds, images, and sensations
relating wholly to his old sweetheart, Honey Beaton–a flood which clogged his brain and halted all rational traffic through
it. In vain did he try to stem the intrusion, and focus his faculties again on the ugly problem at hand. Motions of her hands
and head, forgotten dresses she had worn but once long ago, strange dishes they had tasted together, little phrases of hers
which when uttered had seemed to disappear into the air like light smoke–such things presented themselves to him in a luridly
colored vividness and in dizzying succession. He groaned and pressed his hand to his forehead, and, looking out through the
glass, he saw the studio audience with their heads bent in the customary thirty seconds of silent prayer before Father Stanfield’s
benediction.

“Oh, Lord,” said Andrew Reale aloud in the gloom, “You don’t owe me a thing, and I suppose I don’t really believe in You,
but I’m in this business deep and I’m in it for good, and I need help. If ever I’m to get a favor from You, this is the time.
Send me a way to save Marquis from his just punishment! That’s all Andy Reale has left to pray for.”

He felt ashamed of the outburst as soon as it was uttered, for a strict upbringing had given him a sense of decorum, if nothing
more positive, in the presence of the Unknown. All at once it appeared to him that he could not put off for another ten minutes
his visit to Laura’s bedside–for no other purpose, of course, than to express his sympathy and give her his good wishes for
recovery. Jumping up from his armchair, he strode out of the sponsor’s booth and stood in the brightly illuminated green hallway,
somewhat dazed by the light.

An old proverb says, “Beware of what you ask of Heaven, lest it be granted,” but readers who incline to see more in what follows
than a remarkable coincidence, are warned that they will incur the odium of being regarded as superstitious. Your own minister
will tell you that requests for temporal aid are a misuse of prayer and that only spiritual gifts can properly be asked for.
When Andrew Reale told these things to the historian many years later, he remembered this curious twist of sequence, the prayer
and the accidental meeting with Mrs. Smollett immediately thereafter; and as he narrated it, so is it faithfully set down;
by no means as a proof, however, of what a well-known agnostic coldly terms, “the animistic idea of an extra-causal propensity
in events.”

There came walking up to Andrew, at any rate, as he stood outside the door of the sponsor’s box, a plump little brown-haired
lady, bright of eye and nimble of gait, wearing an elaborately made brown silk-and-velvet dress several inches too long to
pass as fashionable, a queerly shaped feather-topped hat, rings and bracelets with big stones, and a double string of coral
beads which hung to her waist. More than anything she resembled a fortyish female servant dressed up for a family holiday,
except that she had an erect, merry bearing that did not argue a lifetime of drudgery. Her first words did much to explain
the outlandish picture, for her accent was British, indeed not unlike the standard comic Cockney which Andrew had heard to
weariness at auditions of hopeful actors.

“There’s a good lad,” she said as she approached, “and could you tell me if I might see Father Stanfield back ’ere somewhere
after the shaow? I don’t want to get lost in the mob again like I did before. ’E knaows I’m comin’–’E’s expectin’ me.”

The workers in radio studios are numb to surprise at the nature of visitors, no matter how strange; it will soon be acknowledged
by geographers that the lobbies of American broadcasting companies have replaced the streets of Constantinople as the world’s
crossroads, Said Andrew politely, “Madam, the public is not permitted to use this hallway, and I’m afraid there may be trouble–”

“I’m
not
the public,” said the little lady firmly, taking an envelope from her pocket. “I’ve a naote from Cal right ’ere askin’ me
to meet ’im tonight ’ere at the shaow. ’E wraote it three weeks agao. I’m a very special friend, I am. Look ’ere, you can
read it.”

Andrew took the letter and glanced at it. The writing was Stanfield’s, the salutation was “Dearest Gracie,” the signature
was, “Faithfully always, Cal”; it consisted of affectionate greetings and brief directions telling “Gracie” to meet Stanfield
at the studio on this night, before the program. Andrew perceived that Stanfield had planned the appointment before the tempest
over the advertising sermon; small wonder that the rendezvous had failed, He glanced sharply at the British lady, who returned
the look with a beam of pride at the contents of the note. A thrill of interest shot through Andrew Reale.

“Did you say that you were a
special
friend of Father Stanfield’s?” he asked, handing back the envelope.

“A
very
special friend,” said the Englishwoman with an expression almost roguish enough to be a wink. “I’m Gracie Smollett– Mrs.
Gracie Smollett. When Cal knew me, I was Gracie Kenny. I ’aven’t seen nor written to ’im for nineteen years, but, as you can
see, ’e’s glad to ’ear from me. I tried to meet ’im by the revolving door, like it says in the naote, but dear me, what a
mob! I couldn’t do it.”

“My dear Mrs. Smollett,” said Andy, taking her arm and beginning to talk rapidly and easily, “I’m happy to be of service to
you. My name is Andrew Reale, and I am in charge of Father Stanfield’s radio arrangements. I’m afraid you won’t be able to
see him now, because the crowd will overwhelm him after the show; but if you’ll let me take charge of you, I promise to arrange
for you to meet him later tonight, or first thing in the morning.”

“Why, that’s lovely of you, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Smollett, following docilely as Andrew led her to a small private elevator.
“I knaow ’e’ll be lookin’ for me.”

“Meantime,” said Andrew, “a guest of the Faithful Shepherd deserves the best of everything. It’s a hot night. Permit me to
buy you a drink.”

“I am
saow
warm with standin’ and pushin’,” said the little lady gratefully, stepping with Reale into the car, “I’ll he aowbliged.”

The door closed, and the elevator whined softly toward the street.

It is not necessary to follow our hero in his descent; all too soon will we see what use he made of Mrs. Smollett. The reader
is again cautioned, however, against getting down on his knees, on the basis of evidence in this chapter, and praying for
some material good which he desperately needs. This life is evidently not arranged to operate that way, and nearly all theologians
agree that it better so. For my part, friend, would that each of us could have his heart’s tomorrow, and try the result for
himself, without having to take the word of theologians.

In which our hero believes he has reached bottom.

T
HE MIDDLE-AGED BACHELOR
of your acquaintance will tell you that one particular lost maiden of his youth dominates his dreams, and appears over and
over during his lonely slumbers to comfort him with the bright ghost of love. It must have been such a celibate thinker, in
the early days of psychological theory, who advanced the dogma that we sleep not because we need rest but because we require
the psychic fulfillment that comes from dreaming. This majestic proposition has now fallen into neglect, while others of its
sort have gained such wide currency as to pass for plain fact even among the educated; which only shows that fashion is not
absent from the chaste field of science; but the idea will yet have its day, and its handiest empirical proof will be found
in the dreams of middle-aged bachelors.

The fact that Father Stanfield dreamed about Gracie Kenny was no distinguished compliment to the lady, inasmuch as their three-week
romance in London in 1918 had been the solitary love-interlude in the Faithful Shepherd’s life. His efforts to trace her after
the war had been to no avail, and the years had insensibly stretched into decades, bringing him no warmer solace than the
persistence of a winsome young British phantom in the illusions of the night. Spectral sweethearts have this advantage over
too, too solidly fleshed wives, that they do not age; and for what it was worth, Calvin Stanfield in long, cold years had
earned the consolation so sweetly addressed to the swain on the urn: “For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.”

On the morning after his triumph over Marquis, the preacher lay asleep in a bedroom in his favorite mid-Manhattan hotel. Refreshed
by eight hours of deep sleep, Stanfield tossed now in the last moments of light dozing before waking, and dreamed of Gracie,
who had been more than ever in his thoughts since the brief, amazing telephone call from her three weeks before. As always,
he clasped her in his arms, but this time she did not dissolve in air, but turned into a big unfriendly white dog that squirmed
in his grasp and snarled and snarled at him with a snarl remarkably like the ring of a telephone … the Shepherd opened his
eyes, raised himself on an elbow and picked up the telephone by his bedside in a hand that made the instrument look toy-like.
“Hello,” he said. “Who? Andrew Reale? Where are you, son? Why, I reckon so, seein’ it’s urgent. Come right up.”

When our hero arrived at Stanfield’s suite of rooms a few moments later he found the outer door ajar and, stepping inside
hesitantly, he saw the Shepherd, dressed in trousers and a bathrobe, sitting in an armchair with his hand over his eyes. Andrew
stood silent, waiting. After a minute or two the preacher looked up, smiled apologetically, motioned Andrew to a chair, and
resumed his abstracted meditation for what seemed a tormentingly long time to the tense radio executive. Finally he sat back
and said cheerfully, “I like to git in a prayer or two afore startin’ the day’s business. Want some breakfast, son? You look
like you ain’t been sleepin’ or eatin’ a whole lot.”

Andrew declined the invitation nervously.

“Well,” said the Shepherd, “then let’s git the urgent business a-rollin’.”