by Herman Wouk
CHAPTER 16
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.
GOOD 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.
CHAPTER 17
In which nuptials are rushed by one couple
and deferred by another, and Carol Marquis
takes a lesson from the queen of Persia.
READERS 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, an
d 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.
The mother dismisses the seamstresses and, while Laura changes her dress, reviews the details of the wedding with her son-in-law, in the conviction that she is attending to the affair as a bride’s mother must, with the convenient help, as it happens, of English’s domestic staff. When Laura reappears, the loving couple proceed to an earnest discussion of honeymoon projects, the mother busying herself to serve tea. The visit passes in a bright description by the millionaire of the pleasure places of the globe–for he proposes nothing less than a trip around the world to ensure the happiness of his bride–to all of which Laura gives her respectful approval. The world has been toured in talk horn Antibes to Zanzibar, English has just risen to leave, and Laura is accompanying him to the door, when the telephone jangles a summons.–It would certainly be breaking literary ground here to insert a sublime apostrophe to the telephone; modernists would scoff at the manner, and classicists at the matter; but I put it to my readers to grant, in the teeth of pedants of all stripes, that the ringing of the telephone has filled human hearts with more intense emotions in our time than any of the accepted objects of rhapsody, such as windswept hills, the ocean, flowers, music, kisses, and such stuff. Nevertheless, to avoid controversy the tribute shall die in the inkwell.–For no dear reason, I say, the sound of that telephone set up a tumult in the breasts of the three people who heard it. English looked sharply at Laura; Laura stopped moving and stood like a statue. Mrs. Beaton, nearest the instrument, picked it up, listened briefly, glanced at the other two, and then, saying “I’m sorry, but you have the wrong number,” hung up. There was the slightest silence, broken by English, as he courteously bade them farewell, kissed Laura, and left.
The girl walked back into the apartment and said, with no perceptible shade of feeling, “That was Andy, wasn’t it, Mother?” Mother and daughter being females, there were certain matters in which deception was impractical. “Yes, it was,” said Mrs. Beaten. “I’m sorry, but it seemed the best thing. Did I do wrong, dear?”
Our heroine moved to the window and looked down at the street. Twelve stories below her she saw English’s limousine, parked on the very spot where the Yellow Cab 774 had stood, somewhat more than a hundred hours ago.
“You were quite right,” she said, in a voice a little fainter than usual. “Thank you, Mother.” She kept her face turned to the street for some time, but it was not to hide the bright tears starting out of her eyes and rolling down her cheeks, for she was not aware of them.
In this rude way did Andrew Reale discover that his relationship with the Beaton household had changed. Having jilted the daughter, he might have anticipated a cooling of sentiment toward him in that quarter; but, such is the lag between action and understanding in a rising young man, he was surprised not to encounter the same generous forgiveness and forgetfulness which he had wanted to express to Honey concerning her forthcoming marriage. He hung up the telephone slowly, baffled in his desire to do a kind deed; and, as he returned to the table at which Carol–
But in order to bring the reader up to the moment in our hero’s own marital fortunes, we must briefly retrace our steps.
The decisive breakfast with Carol on Sunday morning, following the unfortunate but necessary occurrence in the yellow taxicab Saturday night, proved to be less than decisive, after all. Andrew arrived at the Marquis home at what he hoped was a logical breakfast hour–eleven o’clock–groomed to the tips of his ears, excellently dressed in a soft blue English cashmere suit which had cost him two hundred and twenty dollars, with a snowy white shirt and a happy choice of maroon knitted tie, truly the complete wooing male, his plumage as attractive as the taste of the time permitted. The world looked clean and golden and the air smelled sweet as he marched to the Marquis threshold, and his pulses quickened painfully as the door opened and he stepped in past the butler and the geometrical horse to claim his bride. Almost instantly, however, his pulses slowed, for it was obvious that the supreme moment would have to be delayed. He could hear from the living room the voices of Carol, Talmadge Marquis, and Michael Wilde.
Scampering out to meet him came the soap heiress, her hair carelessly pinned back, her eyes shining, her face aglow, looking oddly wholesome in a smeared white painter’s smock. “Hello, Teeth, you darling,” she whispered, kissing him and pressing his hand for a moment against her soft side, “I talked Mike Wilde into staying overnight to look at my paintings this morning. He’s ripping them apart. What fun! Come on.” She tugged him into the living room, saying, “Look, here’s Andy Reale. Go on, Mike. What’s the matter with that red one?”
The artist sat in a deep chair, holding at arm’s length a painting about two feet square representing, all in tints and shades of red, a rolled up piece of carpet, a chair, a box of strawberries, and a shawl. Around on the Boor, or leaning against Wilde’s chair or propped up on other pieces of furniture, were more specimens of Carol’s inspiration: oils, water colors, pastels, and pencil sketches, crudely mounted and very much the worse for careless handling. Wilde was regarding the red picture with a pained expression, while Talmadge Marquis watched his face like a hound striving to fathom human speech.
“Young Marquis,” said the painter, not looking at Carol or Andrew, “there is no use in my spending any more time on this stuff. I would say you have not an atom of talent, except that the atom is no longer believed the smallest particle in the universe, and ‘not an electron of talent’ sounds forced. Your draughtsmanship is inferior to that of an advertising comic strip, and your sense of color, which you think is your main point, is banal, so that your effects are either oversweet or disgusting. Asking me to criticize these things is like asking Einstein to correct high-school algebra papers. Give me coffee and I shall go home.”
“You don’t think I should encourage her in her art courses, Mr. Wilde?” said Marquis.
“Don’t be an ass, Marquis,” said the painter. “Keep her at it until the day she marries. The Victorians, at whom we sneer, knew the value of wrapping a girl in the cotton wadding of aesthetic studies. It’s the only way to keep fresh the sparkle of her ignorance, virginity’s thief charm. A girls’ school today sullies and dulls young females to a middle-aged familiarity with sex machinery and domestic management before they have been authentically kissed. Let her paint or act or sing or write until she charms and weds a young man as rich and untalented as herself. Only, in all charity, never expose her products again to a man of taste. They are puppy yappings.”
Our hero, glancing around at the paintings, opened his mouth and spake on behalf of his loved one thus: “Well, I don’t know much about art, but–” whereupon Wilde interrupted him with, “It would be cruel of anyone to suggest that you do, Reale, and to ask you for an opinion on the subject. Join us in coffee.”
The breakfast which followed, served on the terrace of the rose garden, bore small resemblance to the lovers’ tryst that Andrew had planned, consisting as it did of a disquisition by the painter on the theme that flowers were higher in the evolutionary scale than man, a stand which he maintained with such arguments as, “We give flowers to each other as tributes, whereas, if it were possible, it would be ludicrous and offensive in a rose to present another rose with a nosegay of human beings.” Talmadge Marquis, stuffing himself with pancakes and sausages, hardly listened; Andrew sulked; Carol drank in his words with wide-eyed attention. Time for young Reale seemed shackled. He thought it took three hours before the painter left
and Marquis withdrew with a brief grunt, whereas the unreliable sun had changed its position by twelve degrees, exactly as though only fifty minutes had passed.
–The value of wrapping a girl in the cotton wadding–
Privacy brought no relief to his bursting bosom. The black-haired maiden chattered on about painting as though the great Bezalel were still present or, rather, she seemed to be venting all the conversation which had been dammed up by his loquacity. Andrew, with a heart strained by suspense, was forced to listen to an hour of enlightenment about “plastic form” and “color orchestration” and “space values” as much to his purpose as extracts from the Babylonian Talmud; and what was worse, the girl handed all her works to him one by one, compelling feeble, increasingly morose compliments from him.
It is bard to say that Carol Marquis habitually followed patterns of action found in the Bible, or that she had conned the Book of Esther before this breakfast. Certain it is, though, that in this case she adopted the Persian queen’s scheme for stretching male curiosity to the breaking point, by inviting a questing gentleman to one meal only to invite him to another. When Andrew finally, desperately, brushed two small oil paintings out of her hands with the surly exclamation, “Now look, Carol,” she hid her hand on his mouth and said, “Not a word about anything big. I have to drive out to our country place with Dad now. I’ll be back in town Tuesday. Meet me here at ten o’clock. We’ll ride horseback in the park and have lunch at the Tavern-on-the-Green, and then I’ll say what you want me to say–I think.” Her arms went around him; her lips were on his, off them, and vanishing into the house with the rest of her before the ambitious lover could gather his wits to pursue the tender topic. Evidently he was in a new, heady intimacy with her; she permitted him to find his own way to the door.
It was to a table at the Tavern-on-the-Green, therefore, to which Andrew Reale was returning to join Carol, three days later, following the unsuccessful telephone call to Honey which was described above, and which came about thus: The heiress, all during the horseback ride around the reservoir, had maintained an irrelevant vein of chatter until Andrew felt on the verge of a violent act; and as they sat down to lunch on the outdoor terrace, he had clenched both fists on the sides of the table, leaned forward with sparks in his eye and taken a deep breath to deliver an ultimatum when the girl suddenly produced a folded newspaper sheet from her wide purse and thrust it at him saying, “Haven’t you seen this yet?” It was a piece of the morning paper, with “Jaeckel’s Jottings” heavily outlined in Carol’s lip rouge. Staggered when he read it–for he had been too distraught to glance at the day’s news–Andrew brought out a broken sentence about his pleasure at the development and his desire to congratulate his former fiancée, and marched off to be rebuffed at the telephone.