Aurora Dawn (19 page)

“Andy,” said Honey, after a pause in which she ascertained beyond a doubt that his peroration was done, “do you love Carol
Marquis?”

(For he had not said so. In the sad moment of disclosure he had told her only that he was going to marry the Marquis girl.)

To this question our hero, peculiarly enough, found nothing to say immediately.

… Come, Andy, speak up! To think on your feet, to answer on the spur of the moment–the ready reply, the quick and pleasant
phrase–it’s the heart of the game, man, and you’re going to the top of the game! Speak, Andy, and meet the challenge of this
sentimental question. You’ve parried thousands of harder thrusts before! What, not a word? Do you open your mouth and stupidly
close it again without a sound? Do you stare helplessly at Laura as though she had knocked out your breath, and–oh, no, man–do
your eyes drop before hers? You can’t lose countenance, man, or you lose the sale!

Andy, Andy, look up and say something quickly! Tell her that love is just a word, that you can’t make lifelong decisions out
of blind passion, that all women are alike in the dark, that there are things more important than love, that love dies but
money remains, that you can’t live on love, that any two young people can come to love each other in time, or that sensible
marriage will always outlast a love marriage. Or tell her that you love Carol Marquis! What is love? Who cares what love is,
or whether it is anything? Honey is prettier than Carol, but Carol is richer than Honey. The older Honey gets the less pretty
she will become. The older Carol gets the more rich she will become. Put it logically, Andy, and how can any reasonable person
fail to see it, particularly with your selling power behind it?

But man, whatever you’re going to say, say it quickly. That’s the game, you know, and you’re the most promising young man
in the game.
Talk!
…

Andrew’s eyes were still on his hands and his silence was still unbroken when he heard Laura say, in tones of a timbre unlike
any he had ever heard issuing from her throat–as though she were addressing an unattractive strange man–“I think that what
you’re doing is contemptible.” He heard a metallic click, and when he looked up the door was open and she was stepping out
into the street.

This chapter and this first volume do not end, as they might, with the picture of our hero, free at last of the burden of
commitment to a moneyless girl, gazing, presumably with relief, at the high corner of the building where Laura’s apartment
is, his eyes fixed on the yellow square of light in her remembered bedroom, glowing against the dusky violet dawn of the New
York sky. Nor does it end with the snapping out of that bright square, leaving him looking at the gray face of a cliff full
of sleeping people for a moment, and then turning and walking slowly up the brightening avenue, as the pallid street lamps
go out unnoticed in the morning light.

No. Our end comes the next evening when Laura Beaton stands with Stephen English on the green terrace of his majestic apartment
overlooking the East River, and when, with the most curiously positive sensation that her body is somebody else’s, she feels
it quietly embraced, and feels the strange lips of the banker on a pair of strange lips which are, to outward appearances,
her own. It is at this pleasant moment that the first book closes–in her life, in our hero’s life, and in this true and moral
tale.

The Hog in the House

Consisting of a digression about Heroes,

which the reader may find helpful, but which he

need not peruse if Andrew Reale seems to him

a thoroughly agreeable and lovable person.

G
OOD FRIEND
, having come thus far in the amazing true history of Aurora Dawn, you may find yourself disturbed by the author’s application
of the term “hero” to young Andrew Reale, who seems nothing but a cunning simpleton; one of a swarm that can be found in the
administrative and executive offices of the land in all fields of work, narrowly shrewd in self-seeking, blind to God and
goodness. How can such poor English usage be explained? Setting aside the tempting answer, always available as a last recourse,
that the author is an ignoramus, please examine the suggestion that you have a mock-heroic chronicle here, a literary form
in which the hero may be a madman, a thief, a scoundrel, a scamp, a coxcomb, a busybody, in fact anything but a hero in the
received sense of the word.

The mock hero is interesting for his deficiencies, as the true hero for his virtues. Don Quixote turned sane, Gil Blas turned
honest, Pickwick turned sociologist by imprisonment, are dull as spinach. Should Andrew Reale ever see his errors for what
they are (whether he will or not is still the author’s business, if you please) the story would at once be over. Meantime
he has a redeeming quality, which should enable you to read on with forgiveness, and which distinguishes him from the parcel
of cads and Doll Tearsheets who hold the center of the stage in current romance: he knows not what he does, and is acting
vigorously but innocently according to the values which he has breathed in with the atmosphere of his times.

This aside to the reader would have been unnecessary, by the way, had this work made use of “the stream of consciousness.”
An inspection of the acts of modern heroes to whom this avenue of expression is available shows that, while they may and generally
do commit all the grosser sins in the arsenal of wickedness, such as infidelity, stealing, blasphemy, disrespect to parents,
violation of the Sabbath, envy, false witness, killing and the like, the events are so obscured by the heroes’ protracted
maundering to themselves, usually rendered by the artistic machinery of broken phrases, bad grammar and no punctuation, that
the reader comes to sympathize with the rascals, or at least to overlook their garish misdeeds. Poor Andy, however, is never
permitted to drivel in this way; his faults are set forth in straightforward storytelling, and by his acts you must judge
him. Remember this, and when the tale is told, think back and decide whether he really deserves less sympathy than the pack
of adulterers, adulteresses, and arrant law-breakers of every description who swish and swash and talk to themselves in the
popular reading of the day, and pass for heroes and heroines.

As a matter of fact, the story may be said to have a true hero, as well as a mock one, but the discerning reader has observed
this point, long ago.

And now, enough of this talk about the contents of the puppet box. Probably you care not a fig for all the analysis of art
in the world, so long as the play amuses you. Therein you are quite right. Music! Lights! The glorious epic of “The Hog in
the House” already seethes behind the curtain.

In which nuptials are rushed by one couple

and deferred by another, and Carol Marquis

takes a lesson from the queen of Persia.

R
EADERS WILL NOT
have forgotten the literary figure Who scurried briefly across our stage early in this history: Milton Jaeckel, the anecdotal
columnist. On the Wednesday morning following the events just related, the daily column of this respected craftsman opened
with the following paragraph:

“
Honey Beaton, noted glamorous model, will wed Stephen English, noted millionaire and philanthropist, some time this week.
This news will surprise many people, including young radio executive Andrew Reale, but it won’t surprise any of my followers
who read my columns of March 28 and May 19. Coming events cast their shadows before–in Jaeckel’s Jotings
.”

For historians who may find access to newspaper files of the period difficult, here are pertinent extracts, first, from the
column of March 28: “
Seen at Boeuf Gras–Stephen English, Honey Beaton, Andy Reale, and Mike Wilde, chumming together”
; second, from the creation of May 19: “
Seen at the Community Chest Ball–Stephen English and Honey Beaten
.” Since Mr. Jaeckel listed almost a hundred such pairings in the course of a week’s journalism, he could with all justice
claim to have predicted nearly every conspicuous marriage in New York. In fact, he did make such a claim, and, as nobody came
forth to dispute it, the distinction was his by default.

In this instance, his forecast was as accurate as a modern astronomer’s promise of an eclipse. Behold, reader, Laura Beaton,
dazzling as the sun in a white bridal gown, standing in the center of her living room while her mother and two seamstresses
fuss uselessly around the garment, which drapes her young form with Grecian perfection; dazzling as the sun, but languid,
as though sensing the approach of the dark disk of matrimony, soon to roll between her and the world. Inexorably as a cold
satellite, the event moves nearer and nearer to Now. What straining philosopher ever got as good an intuition of the onward
flow of time as does a hesitant bride while her sands of maidenhood run swiftly out?

The day is named, Friday. The elaborate clockwork has come to life, dancing the gay jig that ensues in our community upon
the utterance of the magic word “Wedding.” The printing press sighs and groans in stamping out the announcement as though
it were a disapproving cousin; the disapproving cousins spread the news as though they were printing presses; the dressmakers
descend, hard of eye and quick of tongue, to sell the virgin more dresses than she has ever owned, in honor of the occasion
of her casting the charms of dress aside; the pastrycook, proportioning the number of layers in the cake to the number of
digits in the bridegroom’s fortune, is at work on a terraced pyramid bearing an unfortunate resemblance to Purgatory; the
musicians are hired, the caterer instructed, the wine ordered, the flowers assembled, the ring selected, the minister informed,
the guests bidden; Stephen English has an efficient secretary, and were it possible formally to remind angels to be present
it would certainly be done. Nothing else essential to holy union has been left out.

Deferring to his bride’s wish, the banker has projected a quiet wedding: the ceremony in a small church, and a handful of
friends at his home afterward; but the handful has yeasted already, mainly under the warmth of Mrs. Beaton’s enthusiasm, to
more than a hundred people. The state of mind of Mrs. Beaton, With the prospect before her of the marriage of her daughter
to a New York millionaire, is not within reach of ordinary comparisons. Mothers with marriageable daughters will understand
her feelings, and all other readers are referred to the writings of Plotinus or any other Classic author who is reputed to
have caught in words the nature of the Mystic Vision. Observe Mrs. Beaton–a Plain little, round little woman in a shapeless
rusty dress–as she critically fingers the folds of her daughter’s bodice, and learn how a humble surface may hide a privileged
being; for here is a soul contemplating and soon to experience vicarious union with the One–followed, in this instance, by
at least six ciphers.

The doorbell rings. The happy mother trots to the door and opens it, and recoils with a little shriek of dismay. Breathlessly
choking “Excuse me,” she snatches a long blue velvet evening cloak from the hall closet, runs into the living room and throws
it around her daughter as though the girl were naked. Then she calls out, “You can come in now, Mr. English.” For it is the
bridegroom himself, and were he to see the wedding gown before the ceremony calamity would surely ensue. Mrs. Beaton is shielding
her daughter from this, as from all the profound mistakes one can make upon entering the married state.

Here comes the bridegroom, then, handsome and correct as before, but with a new air of stunned delight about him, though he
had just inherited a million dollars–or rather, as almost anybody else might look who had just inherited a million dollars.
The wonder and pleasure, the pride and hope with which he looks at Laura are nearly boyish, and combine so oddly with his
reserved deportment that a less busy hostess than Mrs. Beaton might wonder how a man who has so much can want anything so
deeply. But she is occupied in a flurried explanation of her gesture with the blue cloak, while English wordlessly walks up
to Laura, takes her hands in his and compliments her. The maiden’s demeanor lacks nothing in the way of modesty, propriety,
and shyness; in fact, her behavior toward her future husband is remarkably like what it was before their engagement, except
that she has lost the trick of smiling frankly at him–a logical change prior to the serious step of marriage.