Aurora Dawn (26 page)

The huge modern wall clock in the lobby of the Republic Broadcasting Building was slowly ticking off some of the most expensive
time of the week, Sunday afternoon and evening. Once every minute the long steel wand of the second hand made the circuit
of twelve jet balls, disposed around the face where numerals are in old-fashioned timepieces as though to indicate that for
the radio people who lived under the duress of Time the angle between the clock’s hands was information enough, and the vulgar
obviousness of numbers could be abandoned. Five-thirty, said a narrow angle in the lower right quadrant and the time belonged
to the Argonaut Cheese Corporation. Six, said the long vertical line of the two hands, and a small parcel of eternity was
doled to the Oakleaf Beer Company. Six-thirty, said the downward congruence of the hands, and the inheritance passed to Warwick
Cigarettes. Only two hours remained before the appointed rendezvous of the Fold of the Faithful Shepherd with the American
people, and Time was rolling toward the moment as it had rolled toward the death of David and the birth of Shakespeare, at
the same rate, with the same inflexibility and nobody in the living world knew as yet whether or not Father Stanfield would
go on the air.

Outside the Pennsylvania Railroad Station a turbulent mass of people, perhaps thirty or forty thousand souls, had gathered
to cheer the Faithful Shepherd’s expected arrival in New York. In the explicable way in which a dog tapped on a steeple or
a woman with her stomach where her heart should be can suddenly become the center of the burning attention of a hundred million
Americans, the case of Father Stanfield had grown in three days into a celebrated cause about which no citizen in the hills
or in the plains, by the great river valleys or along the coasts, had failed to form an aggressive opinion. The spark of interest
struck by Jaeckel’s monstrously popular column had been fanned by spontaneous editorial comment into a spreading blaze of
indignation. Jaeckel’s–that is to say, Wilde’s–one-sided view of the story: the throttling of a courageous pastor by a money-bagged
tyrant: had been swallowed everywhere in default of any reply from Talmadge Marquis, who had driven all reporters from his
doors. Letters and telegrams, ranging in style horn the elegant prose of college presidents to obscene threats of guttersnipes,
started to pile up in the offices of Marquis and the Republic Broadcasting Company. Ministers called special church meetings
and urged their flocks to cry out against the injustice; amateur crusaders talked on street corners; Congressmen ventured
bravely to add their august voices to the clamor. Chester Legrand, scared by the threat of an avalanche of public disfavor,
had gone to Marquis and urged him to reconsider, but the soap manufacturer was not to be moved. The only man with the power
to bend his will, Stephen English, lay enfeebled in a hospital, and nobody had dared further to mention the disasters looming
for the sales of Aurora Dawn soap, after pink little Martin Rousseau had been dismissed and kicked head first out of Marquis’s
inner chamber for bringing up the subject. Since most of the soap man’s unyielding reactions found their way at second hand
into the press, which was devoting as much space to the episode as it usually reserved for crimes of passion, the general
prejudice against him was more violently confirmed with each edition. He was universally excoriated as the type of irresponsible
money-autocracy, and it is safe to say that throughout the length and breadth of the land not a voice was lifted to plead
that he was merely suffering from an absence of Being where Being should be.

To all newspaper queries, Father Stanfield had given only one genial answer, “I’ll be there Sunday night”; and this widely
publicized utterance had called into existence the good-humored throng that now pressed around the railroad station waiting
to accompany him to the studio. Nobody could accurately state the composition of this mob. There were college clubs, young
people’s church groups, women’s leagues, veterans’ posts, fraternal lodges and the like in definite little clumps, but they
were submerged in a horde of undifferentiated human beings, many of them probably on hand mainly to watch the fun. It was
an unorganized demonstration. One inspired editor later called it “an exercise of the people’s sacred and seldom-invoked right
peaceably to assemble for the redress of a grievance.” The college boys had brought red torch flares with them, and a small
number of communists, overcoming their repugnance to Stanfield’s religion in their affinity for public commotion, had provided
big banners proclaiming Mr. Marquis’s shortcomings in satiric terms.

Into the streets had also come a large number of blue-coated patrolmen, who, with a sensible intuition of what was afoot,
confined their watchfulness to the thwarting of vandalism and fist-fighting; and they had so little to do that most of them
caught the hilarious air of the crowd and wore broad smiles as they moved to and fro. What with blazing red lights, swaying
banners, plenty of police, and a restless crowd of high-spirited people, the whole scene outside the Pennsylvania Station
on this fateful Sunday evening was as picturesque and stirring as any the usually cold city had ever provided.

In one corner of this pleasing panorama of spontaneity there was an inharmonious detail of planning. Directly in front of
the station stood three busses, evidently waiting to take the people of the Fold to the studio. This transportation had always
been furnished by the Marquis Company in special busses festooned with Aurora Dawn slogans, as these machines clearly were
not; and the one clue to the identity of the thoughtful provider of them was the presence in front of them of a small sound-truck
displaying the trademark of Republic’s bitter rival, the United States Broadcasting System. The reader will gain special insight
into the mystery on learning that there sat beside the driver of this truck a little, pale, sour-visaged man who surveyed
the mob with satisfaction while he flicked a ring round and round the third finger of his left hand.

Round and round went Tom Leach’s ring; and round and round the circle of twelve jet balls went the second hand of the Republic
Broadcasting Company’s clock. Quarter past seven, proclaimed the generous angle of the hands. The tall masts atop the building
silently poured into the void a series of electric waves that were translated by receiving sets into the Lily Maid Cold Cream
Serenade. Now there were left only the Claridge Balloon Tire Circus and Aurora Dawn’s own Bob Steele Frolic in the crumbling
barrier of time between the present moment and Father Stanfleld’s scheduled appearance; and in Chester Legrand’s offices directly
under the great masts, an eleventh-hour council grimly sat. The
dramatis personae
were those of Thursday, less the Messrs. Stanfield, Pennington, and Leach, who were elsewhere engaged. Andrew Reale, hurriedly
called from the last rehearsal of Marquis’s substitute musical program, sat in his shirt sleeves, looking young, overfatigued
and miserable; having learned through the newspapers of the startling misfortune of the Englishes, he had been making regular,
useless efforts to ascertain their condition, and had, indeed, been at a telephone vainly trying to reach Mrs. Beaton when
the page boy came with the instruction to conduct him to Legrand’s office. Seldom had Andrew responded to a summons and sat
down to a crucial task with less heart. Beside him the loyal Grovill slouched in his chair, head in hands, clothes drooping
around his bulk as though he had lost twenty pounds. Van Wirt and the lawyer, Morphee, sat stiffly and silently opposite them.
At either end of the table, Legrand and Marquis confronted each other. Legrand’s face was drawn into sharp business lines,
and his gray hair was unkempt. Marquis had clasped his hands before him to still a trembling, and he was glowering out from
under his eyebrows. The air of the room was heavy with the staleness of cigars and smoke.

“I will not retreat one inch,” the soap maker was saying in a voice muffled with passion and raised almost to soprano pitch.
“I am the master of Aurora Dawn’s policy and I have to apologize to nobody for what I have done. Furthermore, I consider that
I have made no mistakes and done nothing unjust or ill-considered, and if I had it to do over again I would proceed exactly
as I have done up to the present. My decision regarding Stanfleld stands.”

“At the risk of repeating myself let me point out to you,” said Legrand, running his fingers through his hair, “that your
decision involves not only your own policy but that of the Republic Broadcasting Company. We, as well as you, will have to
answer to the public for barring the preacher from the air. You are forcing on us the necessity of deciding whether to back
you or back him–”

“I don’t agree that any such choice exists for you,” Marquis interrupted. “Under a legal contract I have paid you your stated
price for this radio time and it is mine to do with as I will. Your action is limited to carrying out my desires with your
technical facilities. If the public is stupid enough to blame you for what I do, well, that’s a risk you run in the broadcasting
business.”

Legrand drew out of his breast pocket a rumpled yellow envelope. “Immediately before I called you,” he said, “I received among
the thousands of protests that have been jamming our office activities, this wire from Bill Wing, chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission. Let me read it to you.” He smoothed the message reverently before him on the table and read aloud:
“
Receiving demands from high officials to take action in Stan-field case. Urge you persuade Marquis allow him broadcast as
only way to quell newspaper talk. If he is barred we may be compelled conduct inquiry. Wing.
”

Marquis emitted a sound like that of a seal clearing its nostrils upon emerging from water. “Naturally,” he added in elaboration
of the sound, “the radicals in the government want this radical Stanfield to be given a chance to spread his propaganda. That
radical mob at Penn Station has the same idea. I’m not impressed by anything that radicals in or out of the government may
care to say about my business.”

“It would be a happy day for the radicals,” said Legrand, “if you were correct in enrolling under their banner everyone who
disagrees with you. Bill Wing, however, is state treasurer of the New Jersey Republican Committee.”

“It wouldn’t matter to me,” shouted Marquis, waving a shaking hand at Legrand, “if he were Herbert Hoover. Neither he nor
anybody else but myself can dictate policy to the company of which I am president.”

(The reader is reminded that all quotations of Mr. Marquis’s conversation are inaccurate in so far as they have been pruned
of certain interjections which ladies and children could not possibly understand. Color and emphasis are lessened thereby.
On the other hand, this volume may be safely left in parlors frequented by youngsters who have learned to read but not to
discriminate– a recommendation not lightly made for all modern novels. But to go on:)

“Public opinion dictates to all of us who are in business,” said Legrand. “Our firms exist by public favor. Public opinion
can force this company to act against the wishes of a client.”

“Grovill!” said Marquis sharply. The fat man started as though coming out of slumber and turned a white, sagging face to his
employer, who proceeded, “Please go to your office now and prepare the necessary papers to transfer the three Aurora Dawn
shows with Republic to the United States Broadcasting System.”

“Yes, sir,” said Grovill, looking around in bewilderment and not moving.

“One moment,” interposed Morphee, the tall old lawyer, in church-organ tones. “I’m quite certain that Mr. Legrand was not
suggesting that his company would fail to meet its contractual obligations. He was merely advising a client, as I’m sure you
will agree he should, what he considers the wisest course to be followed in a situation which is, I’m sure you will confess,
both unprecedented and delicate–”

The telephone beside Legrand interrupted this memorable dialogue. Legrand picked up the receiver. As he listened, his eyes
widened, and he stared fearfully at his desk clock, which showed seven-thirty-five. Properly to convey to the reader the shocking
news he was hearing, we must shift scenes again in mid-chapter, and return to the Pennsylvania Station; grant the writer the
latitude of the moving pictures and come along.

Some ten minutes before this instant (it is impossible, almost, to tell a tale of radio without the aid of a chronometer,
such is the terrible urgency of Time in that queer new trade), Father Stanfield and his Fold had arrived by train and had
emerged into the tumultuous, torch-lit, good-natured riot on Seventh Avenue. At once Tom Leach leaped to the roof of his sound
truck with a portable microphone, and shouted in a voice amplified to the strength of thunder, “He’s here, folks!” at which
the host sent up a shout that tore the concave of the night. While the farm people were filing through the crowd to the busses,
Leach danced around on top of the truck howling, “Your attention,
please!
” As the jubilation subsided, he spoke thus, every syllable booming out in a Niagara of sound:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am speaking for the United States Broadcasting System. In order to prove that American free-enterprise
radio does not endorse the suppression of freedom of speech and religion, USBS proudly announces that if Father Stanfield
is still barred from the Aurora Dawn hour at 8:30, he can broadcast his sermon through this very microphone over our nationwide
facilities, by courtesy of Lustro-Dent Toothpaste, which has gladly yielded its time!”

The outburst of joy which followed this announcement has never been forgotten by those who saw it. The college boys snakedanced,
the women wept, the men cheered, the children ran about screaming, the communists tore their banners to shreds, cascades of
paper poured down from the windows of the surrounding hotels, and a small brass band (which Leach had judiciously provided)
blared out a blood-curdling martial tune. Father Stanfield climbed to the top of the truck and clasped hands with the pale
little man, setting off fresh paroxysms of happiness in the throng.