By the last day of September, a new phenomenon of success had been recorded in the phenomenal history of radio.
From the moment the nine-o’clock signal had sounded on Friday, the sixteenth, from the moment the words came forth from receiving sets, “This is JCN—the Jasper Crown Network,” from then onward in time there had been only a mounting, flaring recognition of something big and new and good on the air.
By the end of the month, “The Crown Network calling from London”—from Paris, from Berlin, from Prague—was a phrase familiar to millions of radio listeners. JCN was a new password in radio stations throughout the land, in the radio departments of all advertising agencies, and in the advertising departments of all radio’s commercial sponsors.
To Jasper and his executives and stockholders came the quick. reports, “listening” surveys, audience polls that told the heady story. The thing was a miracle—its success was clear, solid, dazzling.
When the whole network was in operation, by the middle of October, scarcely a quarter hour of sellable time would remain to be sold. It looked as if they couldn’t miss a gross of ten million dollars in their very first year; if they grossed eleven million, they would be paying interest on the debentures, and dividends on the preferred. And if the skyrocketing luck of the first weeks should by some chance continue to flare for them, they might even gross fifteen—which would also leave a million for the common stock, and a net profit of over three million for the company in its first year.
Wherever Jasper went, people thumped congratulations no his shoulder, shook them, into his willing hand. They looked into his face while they praised him, as if they would read his secret in the very lines of his features. Overnight, he had become a national figure, a “name” to every owner of a radio.
He was dazed with lack of sleep, yet he never had known so strong and vigorous a current flow through him. This was good. This was food and drink to him, to that something inside which had always driven him on, looking, searching out the road that should prove to be the one right road for him.
Almost, his life was at its peak. The exultant thought came to him as he walked up Madison Avenue in the late afternoon of the last day of September. There was to be no war, not yet, and so one could again think of one’s own triumphs without any flick of guilt. And this was triumph on the grand scale. “He’s a great man, this Crown.” He had heard Frank Terson say that this afternoon, and he felt that through the network he could live up to that over-enthusiastic praise. Yes, almost at its peak. Not quite. Not until—
He frowned. Time went on, and on, he never missed his appointments with Dr. Gontlen, and still it remained just a theory, a conviction. It was not a fact. He hadn’t thought much about it these past two weeks, he hadn’t thought of anything personal these past two weeks. When he had seen Vee, even then he had talked about nothing but the network. She seemed as absorbed in it as he, as hilariously happy over the first reports of the unpredictable success as he. “She’s a good girl.” The words welled up in him suddenly, and he found himself moved by her understanding of what things meant to him. Most women—
And then he thought of Beth. Beth who was still in New York. Beth from whom he had heard not a word since that day early this month when he’d gone to force a showdown. He snorted. Everything else he could do, everything else he could manage, succeed at. But not this. “Great man,” indeed.
He stopped at a corner and stood thinking. This would have to be ended now, once and for all. Beth’s face came before him, the soft listlessness of it. He brushed it impatiently away from his mind. Cruel, ruthless—no matter what she thought about him, this nonsense of delay must stop. Today was the day. Now, while he felt this current, this torrent roaring through him which told him there was nothing he could not do.
He began to walk again, he could get there in ten minutes. He would not telephone. Better to take his chances on finding her in; even a few minutes’ warning would only serve to stiffen her resistance, that fibrous growth of inertia and indecision. He felt anger stir in him. And in the next moment a sense of just indignation. This had to be—for Vee’s sake, if for nothing else.
Vee must have thought often how it would be if the thing actually happened before—before Beth had gone to Nevada. He had thought of it himself, and always shoved it aside as too unlikely. But time had passed; three months now since that day he’d gone to Gontlen for the first time.
No, by God, it was enough. Even Beth, if she knew, could see that.
He pressed hard on the bell, and waited impatiently for the clicking that would assure him she was there. When it came, he went upstairs with his face set.
“Beth, this time, everything’s different,” he began almost at once.
She nodded. He had received her congratulations about the network with obvious impatience to get on to his real subject.
“Has something happened, Jas?”
He opened his mouth to answer her, and then closed it abruptly.
In one gleaming flash, he saw the way. In one second, the plan leaped into his mind. This was the way he had decided to start the network a month early; this was his particular flare, this, the split second decision, the bold leap into action.
“Yes, something has happened, something big.”
It would not even be a lie, in principle. It was going to happen, just as the network had been going to happen a few weeks before it actually did. “My network is this or that”—had anyone thought him a liar for saying the words back in August or July?
Beth was waiting for him to tell her. Her right hand had gone up to her throat; the left was spraddled over her breast.
“I’m—I’m in love with a woman, Beth—and—and she’s going to have a baby.” Going to have—that was true even in the phrasing.
“Oh—I—oh, God—” She stood up suddenly. “Jas—but you can’t—”
“I’ve been to doctors again. I’m all right now.”
“I—oh, this is—I just never expected anything like this. I—”
“I had to come here today, Beth, I can’t just be patient any longer. I’m sorry if it’s shocking, but don’t you see it couldn’t have gone on—being put off and put off?”
“Is it—is she anyone I know?”
“No.”
She lowered her head and covered her face with both hands. For perhaps three minutes neither spoke.
“I’ll pack and leave on the first plane,” she said. “I—it’s—this does make everything different. Now if—if there’s going to be a baby and I knew I just waited until—”
Her voice dangled like a limp ribbon. A gnarled, knotted resentment formed somewhere within him. Damn her months of quiet resistance—it drove a man to desperate measures and then it was he who felt the guilt. But this was in essence true; he could not wait and wait on Beth’s reluctance until the essential truth was a technical truth.
She stood up uncertainly, looked about her, and then went to the telephone. She dialed Information and said in a cottoned voice, “Can you give me the number of United Airlines, please?”
While she waited, she half turned to him.
“Would you—please, just go now, Jas? I’ll take a plane in the morning.”
It was good to have Jas in this easy mood again. Vee watched him as one watches a convalescent child, with a rushing gratitude and relief that the dark hours are done and the danger over. He was pouring himself a drink, and every move had the lazy sluggishness of relaxation.
These last weeks had been feverish as a sickness. When he’d returned from Cleveland, he had come at once to beg her to forgive his “irrational outburst” in the country. He had pleaded, with a kind of straining humility, for patience until the network was finally launched and he free of this constant tension. There had been abandon in his very pleading, and it bewildered her.
Then came the days and nights of the past two weeks; from the moment he had telephoned her his decision until tonight, he had been like a man possessed. The responsibili
ty, the thousand strands that he held in his hand, the waiting—and then the unbelievable overnight success.
Now he was calmer again. They had dined together at his apartment, his radio tuned in to WJCN and turned low so that they could ignore it when they chose. It was nearly ten o‘clock; he had loosened his tie and taken his coat off, for the night was hot though it was October.
He came back with his drink, and stretched out on the sofa.
“Beth left this morning,” he said somberly. “I guess you’d want to know that.”
“Oh.” She set down her own drink.
“She’s going to Reno.” His eyelids closed, and without his eyes, his face looked whitely exhausted. “I saw her that Sunday I left for Cleveland, and then again yesterday. It couldn’t just go on with her vague agreement to do it. It wasn’t fair to you or Beth or me.”
“Is—was it all right for her? I mean—”
He moved uneasily, but he did not raise his eyelids.
“It’s always hard for everybody,” he said. “But, after all, the main thing happened over two years ago when we separated, so it shouldn’t make you feel—involved. I sent her flowers and a note at the airport this morning.”
Within his closed eyes, he saw the words his pencil had written, crossed out, written more warmly. “You’ll soon find it better this way, Beth. I’m deeply sorry my news last night distressed you. Not on my behalf, but for the baby, I am asking one last favor of you. Please keep what I told you secret—if you can still be as generous as I know you are. Jas.”
Vee waited for him to go on. He did not. She sat quietly thinking about what he had told her, remembering snatches of her own feelings during the tired, dragging first hours of getting her own divorce.
But it was senseless to go off into long, Russian-novel thoughts about the pain and failure that lay like secret worms at the core of people’s lives. Even sheltered and protected lives. And so many lives were neither sheltered nor protected.
Her mind went to the Vederles and to Bronya’s mother. Bronya had been watching hourly for a cable and it had not come. She herself had wondered a hundred times why she had heard nothing from Dr. Vederle.
She looked at Jas. His eyes were still closed, and the quieter rhythm in his breathing told her he was half asleep. This time, she felt no astonishment or rebuke. He had scarcely found four hours of sleep in any twenty-four for the past two weeks.
She sat thinking for another ten minutes. Then she tiptoed into his bedroom and closed the door softly behind her. She went to the telephone and called the apartment of her friends, the Martins. They were always up late, and they were so delighted with Bronya as a governess for their two children that they would not mind this late call for her.
“I’m cabling the refugee organization, Bronya, just to be sure there were no new delays since the Nazis—” She hesitated: “I want to be sure you hadn’t heard anything.”
“No. I—but they informed here at the branch is still all right for everybody with visa and tickets.”
“I’m sure it is all right. Don’t worry, Bronya. You’ve been so splendid.”
She dialed Western Union and sent two cables. The one about Rosie Tupchik she sent to the main office in London, asking for a report direct to her. The other went to Switzerland:
WHY DELAY? WHY SILENCE? CAN I HELP FURTHER?
The operator intoned them both back to her, and she felt an odd relief, even at this much action. She had been patient too long—telling herself that tomorrow or next week a letter from Switzerland must surely come.
She went back into the living-room. Jasper stirred and opened his eyes wide.
“Hello, you darling,” he said sleepily. He swung his legs around and sat up. “I’m not a very exciting fellow to spend time with these days.” She laughed and he grinned in response.
“If you were any more exciting, I’d cave in.” She looked at him appraisingly. “And you’re about to. Suppose I take myself home right now and let you get some real sleep?”
“Suppose I take you out somewhere and give you some fun instead—we haven’t even been to a movie for a month.”
“Oh, Jas, don’t fret about things like that. Look what’s been happening in your life. How could you possibly bother with just fun?”
He didn’t say anything, and she added softly, “Just the same, I love it when you’re thoughtful about things.”
He came swiftly toward her, and took her into his arms. His mouth pushed her hair away from her ear and he spoke softly right over it.
“Never, never will I forget it, Vee—the way you’ve stood by me these last weeks. You are my darling—I never felt this way about you before.”
Her heart thudded about. She could think of nothing to say.
“I’m not cruel, I’m not a cold-blooded heel,” he said. “They drive at me, they force reactions that I hate as much as anybody. I get driven and driven until—”
He broke off. His arms dropped and he moved away from her. He caught her hand as he passed in front of her, and without any more words began, gently, to lead her into his room.
Half an hour later, he was asleep, this time for the night. It was about eleven, far too early for her to be sleepy. She lay quietly near him, thinking. They, had slipped into most of the ways of marriage, without the openness of marriage. Only a few people knew of their relationship; there was still the clandestine about it. Still, in six weeks, he would be free to marry. Or would he be free even then—free of that deep, dark conviction that there was only one valid reason for marrying? And if that never happened after all? Oh, but it would, it would, it must happen. For each of their sakes now, her own sake as much as his because she dreamed so of how it would be. Because these months of waiting had sprung alive her own instincts, which the circumstances of her marriage and divorce had previously subdued. Now she was fired with the primitive desire to be as other women the world over and give birth to a child.
She could imagine the moment when she knew. She could imagine Jasper’s face when she told him. She knew the very words.
“Jas, Jas, darling, it’s happened. I’m pregnant. Listen, do you hear?”
His face—the relief, the joy.
“Darling, oh, God, darling, are you sure?”
“Yes, oh, yes, I’m sure. I went to the doctor. It’s true.”
“When…oh, Christ, I’m happy.”
Always it went something like that in her fantasy. The radiance she’d feel, the wild, beautiful gratitude. It had to happen someday. If it didn’t, if it never happened—
She turned over with a sudden jerky movement. She turned on the small bedside light and began to read. When her watch pointed to midnight, she got up, dressed noiselessly, and went quietly to the door.
Downstairs, the doorman glanced behind her toward the elevator, and then accepted the fact that she was alone. He nodded to her gravely.
“Taxi, Miss, or are you walking?”
“Taxi, please.” She felt her cheeks flushing.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE DAYDREAM, THE FANTASY, the imagined words that would rush from the heart when the waiting should at last be over and the blessed goal achieved.
All over newly frightened Europe, a million men and women warmed their courage on the same embers that glowed for Vee as she lay in the dark telling herself that the desired thing would someday happen, must someday happen.
Your papers are not in order? Your visa is not yet issued? The quota is full? Ah, do not be beaten back, or you are lost forever. Keep up the dream, do not give up, do not give in to them, not you, not you…
In Switzerland, in Spain, in Poland and Hungary, everywhere wives exhorted husbands to keep trying, husbands pleaded with wives to hold fast to their hopes. And secretly in the restless night they could imagine how their own voices one day would exult, “It’s happened at last—we are safe, the children are safe, we leave tomorrow…”
Now there were 400,000 new ones in flight from Czechoslovakia. Now they wo
uld join the ranks of the earlier exiles, would take their places in the swelling lines at the consulates. At first, they would be buoyed up by quick hope, then they too would know the sagging faith, the savage despair.
Do not give in to them, any of you who seek to cross the borders, to leave the ports, to go up the gangplanks to freedom again, to decency again. Do not surrender to the laws, the immigration laws. There is to be no war, not now, for he has won again with no drop of angry or honorable blood spilled to halt him. But that does not mean that there can be peace for you.
So hold fast to the purpose. If South Africa is closed to you, if the United States is indifferent to you, then look further, twist about, turn elsewhere to find the open gate to some better future.
Do not, of course, turn to Argentina. Twelve days after the Evian Conference, she closed her Immigration Office, and less than a month later, she suspended the granting of landing permits to any new case.
Do not, either, turn to Brazil. Even in the year just past, she tightened her restrictions so much that the quotas were not filled. The new Immigration Law of 1938 is even sterner. Perhaps if you have relatives in Brazil, or if you are a farmer with capital…
Do not, indeed, waste many of your dreams on any of the other South American countries. They have all been busy with new Alien Bills, with new Immigration Acts, humanity’s newest barbed wire and pill boxes to halt you smartly in your tracks. If there is now no place for you in the four and a half million square miles of Argentina and Brazil, you surely will not cling to stubborn hope about the smaller countries. Surely not, for the barbed wire and the pill boxes show very clear now in this closing half of 1938:
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