These events will inevitably recall to many readers, I am certain, Immanuel Kant’s important distinction between arbitrium sensitivum and arbitrium brutum in his inquiry into the possibility of free will and moral responsibility. This philosopher’s belief that the human will, while influenced by sensuous circumstance, is not coerced by it, places the blame for what is happening squarely on our hero. Determinists, however, would hold that Andrew Reale was but a helpless tennis ball, batted out of moral bounds by the racket of Causality. The essence of Determinism in the field of morality is contained in the phrase, “I’m only human, after all.” Readers who have availed themselves of the maxim will be pleased to know that, like the Bourgeois Gentleman, they have been speaking philosophy all their lives without knowing it. But neither Determinists nor Kantians, surely, can be quite comfortable about leaving Andrew forever in Carol Marquis’s arms. Back to our tale.
The hansom cab and the old horse were now making no sound at all, so thick was the snow on the road, and the strange carriage glided slowly like a black ghost through the white night. At last, the diffused radiance of Columbus Circle could be dimly seen through the cloud of snowflakes, heralding the end of the circuit, and the driver rapped twice, discreetly, on the roof of the cab. Carol opened her eyes and looked over Andrew’s shoulder out of the window; then she loosened her arms, leaned back, and regarded him quizzically.
“This has been very crazy,” she said softly.
“It has,” agreed Andrew.
“But fun,” said the girl, with a small laugh.
“Yes,” said our hero.
“I won’t tell Honey Beaton on you,” Carol promised, and, disengaging herself, she produced a cosmetic kit and proceeded to restore the ravaged paint on her face with remarkable speed and deftness, while Andrew removed remnants of her earlier effort from his ears, nose, cheeks, mouth, collar, and shoulders as best he could.
Thus it was that, a half hour later, they presented a reasonable similitude of casual innocence when they spun through the revolving door of the Café Armand, near the park, in search of drinks to warm them, and ran head-on into Laura Beaton and Stephen English, just gathering their coats to leave. Really, Andy’s demeanor was especially decorous, and should have deceived any eyes, even those of a fiancée.
Readers must now contemplate a picture that will strain credulity, particularly if the readers are modern young ladies. It is Laura, our heroine, having just said good-by to Stephen English in the hallway of her apartment house, riding up in the elevator with a fixed expression, and, as soon as she steps inside her door, bursting into violent sobs and flinging herself on the living-room couch face downward, in an attitude of entire misery. I say that the celebrated Honey Beaton, the transcendentally gorgeous model, is crying bitterly and muffling her cries in a cushion to avoid waking her mother, for all the world like any plain, fat girl who grieves her unlucky fate; as though she had never come to New York, as though she did not make two hundred dollars a week, as though her face and form did not bloom on paper from one end of the land to the other like a pretty, rampant weed, and, most improbable of all, as though she had not just returned from a date with a handsome millionaire who was in love with her. Where is happiness, where is fulfillment if not with Honey Beaton? What mean these tears?
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.
CHAPTER 11
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.
EACH 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 wh
o 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.
–Life “as it really is,” according to modern inspiration–
Fifteen hundred people filling the wide, bleak studio barked with laughter all at once. A sinner in sackcloth, a little, thin, weary-looking farmer, admitted he had given another man’s spouse a hug and squeeze in the vestry of the Tabernacle the previous Sunday. Upon being asked who his partner in guilt was, he indicated a burly housewife on a penitential stool nearby, whereupon Father Stanfield asked whether he was confessing to coveting his neighbor’s wife or laboring on the Sabbath. As Carol Marquis leaned back her head and laughed, throwing her hair in a black shower on the gold stuff of her gown, her eyes chanced to look full into Andrew’
s, and in that exchange of glances, for reasons of the human spirit which could not be fathomed by ten empiric psychologists running a hundred rats through a thousand mazes for ten thousand days, Andrew felt that this girl was his for the taking. Since the famous night of the snowstorm he had seen her only once, on a Friday evening when she had suddenly telephoned and spoken thus: “Hello, Teeth, I’m in from school and I want to rhumba tonight. Take me to the Krypton Room or I’ll tell everything.” But the tête-à-tête had proved decorous in the extreme, and he had returned the willful maiden to her doorstep without so much as brushing her lips with his. All the more curious, then, was the unmistakable content of this historic glance. The girl’s dark brown eyes had laughed into his; then become fixed; then flickered for the merest instant to Laura; then looked profoundly into his eyes again, for perhaps five full seconds; and then, with a laugh and a toss of her head, she was regarding the stage once more. Our hero, stirred to his toes, gazed thoughtfully at her small white ear, and the artful tumble of thick hair pulled back to expose it, and from some gloomy crypt of his soul he heard a slow, clever voice say, “Maybe I could marry the Marquis girl”; at which precise moment the exquisite hand of Laura softly closed over his with quiet affection.