VEE STUCK THE SIXTH red candle into the birthday cake and stood back to survey it.
Six looked skimpy, inadequate, as though she had run out of candles. But thirty-six—you wouldn’t see the forest for the trees, and the forest in this case was the most important part of the cake, the special Jasperish design she had ordered for the top of it. No, thirty-six, wouldn’t do. Six wouldn’t do either. A fine dilemma for a grown woman, she told herself. But she only smiled and kept on pondering it.
It was Jasper’s birthday, and that evening they would celebrate it together, just the two of them. Jasper’s own wish had limited the personnel. A week ago she had said she wanted to give a birthday party for him. He had unknowingly pleased her by looking startled, and then touched, and then by saying, “All the women should be named Vee—let’s just have a party ourselves.”
They would have the birthday dinner alone at her house, and then improvise a gala evening afterward.
Now she was happy in the fussing over final details. She had left the office at four, because she needed time to do the candles, arrange the flowers, decide where to put his birthday present, and exactly when in the evening to give it to him. Just before dinner might be best, or during dinner or perhaps not until coffee and brandy.
Another dilemma. “Can you call a three-pronged business like this a dilemma,” she asked herself cheerily, “or do you have to be a purist and call it a trilemma?”
That made her chuckle, and Dora looked up from her cooking with an inquiring glance. “That picture on that cake,” Dora said, “reminds me, postcards of that tower in Paris.”
“The Eiffel Tower,” Vee answered. “It does, doesn’t it? This is supposed to be a radio tower, one of those transmitters—see, that’s why these jagged lines are coming out on each side up here.”
“It’s real pretty.” She studied it. “Looks like for a man, all right.”
“Something wrong with the candles, though.” Vee lit a cigarette, and studied it again. “Oh, I know, Dora. I’m going to add nine more. Would you just run out to the newspaper store and get me another dozen?”
Fifteen candles was the perfect answer. Twenty-one, plus fifteen. “Fifteen years of man’s estate,” she could explain to him when he puzzled over the number. “The growing-up part doesn’t count.”
Dora looked displeased.
“I ain’t got too much time, Mrs. Stamford. All these special things you ordered for this dinner—”
“I know, but please do. We’ll take more time over cocktails. It looks so skimpy this way, don’t you think so?”
Dora looked unsympathetically at the gleaming cake. “Yes, I guess so,” she said. She took off her apron energetically. “She’ll do anything to please that man,” she thought to herself, “makes me sick to see her.”
But even Dora admitted that the cake looked really right when the other nine candles were added around the rim.
Vee admired it too, and then went into the living room to arrange gladioli in two tall vases. She checked the cigarette boxes herself; it irritated Jasper to reach into a cigarette box and find it empty. She went around the room, stopping at each small table, rearranging the small objects there, taking them out of the precise, neat placing that was Dora’s way of introducing rigidity into any room. Now she shoved them about into a more carefree pattern, and did the same thing with the neat, hard row of magazines on the coffee table. She liked a room to look lived in, and easy, not as if it were an army standing for inspection. Jasper liked it, too.
She put the package on the dining-room table, to try it there. It looked festive in its silver wrapping and crisp cellophane bows. She could imagine his face, as he walked into the room, and saw it, waiting for him, the bland, indecipherable face of a done-up package piquing his curiosity. She decided to leave it there.
Suppose when he opened it, he didn’t truly like it? Two months ago she had begun to think and puzzle about what to give him. She had discarded a dozen conventional ideas; it had to be something Jasperish. It was fortunate she had begun on it so long ago. It had taken nearly two months to get this made to order.
She went in to rest before bathing and dressing. She undressed partly and lay down in a happy sprawl, waiting for six-thirty when she would get ready. Something had changed between them since that night three months ago when Jas had told her his tormenting secret. He didn’t like to reopen the subject, and yet he seemed to be glad he had told her about it.
“You don’t think differently about me now, do you, Vee?” he had said a week or so later. “Now that you know the worst?” He struck the attitude of a lawyer pleading before the bar. “The worst, the whole worst, and nothing but the worst?”
“Don’t let’s ever joke about it, Jas.”
“I wasn’t. I just meant do you maybe feel—”
“The only thing I feel is what a shame it is that you don’t go to somebody and see if perhaps now—”
“No, let’s don’t go into that.”
But he himself had broached the thing again, two or three times, tentatively, and always briefly. She was particularly careful never to introduce the subject. But in her own thoughts, it remained alive.
A few weeks back, she had come across a brief piece in Time magazine about new scientific data in the matter of childless couples, and she had suddenly found herself eager to learn whatever a layman could learn about the whole subject. Soon after that she came down with a strep throat and old Dr. Burton, who cared for her on the rare times when she was ill, came several times to see her. The last time she asked him if he had read the story in Time, and then asked question after question on the matter. Dr. Burton pointed out that he was not a specialist in the field, but everything he said confirmed her impression that researchers and specialists in it had learned much in the past years.
“It’s for two friends of mine that have been so unhappy,” Vee suddenly offered.
“Tell your friends to get to a specialist,” he said. “The wife probably has her own gynecologist, he can tell her who’s best for her. The husband might go to Dr. Martin Gontlen. I know him myself, he’s about the best there is.” He told her something of Dr. Gontlen’s work, and her mind blazed with excitement she tried to conceal.
“Thanks, Dr. Burton,” Vee said. “I’ll try to talk to them. They suffer so about the whole thing, but still they never do anything about it.”
“Well, maybe they don’t want to have children as much as they say they do,” he said comfortably.
“Maybe so. It’s pretty hard going, even talking about it to them.”
“Nonsense. Make them see that if they had sluggish livers or low hemoglobin, they’d go to doctors without embarrassment, so why not go and see if anything can be done to fix up their reproductive systems? Same old human body, you know.”
“Of course. Well, I’ll try.”
She had never reported any of this to Jasper. Now, as she rested, Vee unaccountably became absorbed in remembering it. Sometime when their moods were serious enough, she would tell Jas what Burton had said. It would not be easy.
She glanced at her watch. It was time to start her bath. The telephone rang on the bedside table, and lazily she reached for it.
“Yes?”
“Darling, I might be a bit late.” He always recognized her voice even if she spoke only one syllable.
“Hello, Jas, happy birthday to you. It doesn’t matter; don’t hurry too much.”
“It’s not so happy so far,” he said. “All hell’s bust loose on a big deal.”
“Oh, darling, not seriously, not that you can’t fix?” Anxiety was in her quick voice. Anxiety not only for him over whatever had gone wrong, but also that his mood would be ruffled, angry, and that therefore the birthday evening would be strained, disappointing. She wanted so much that nothing should mar it.
“I guess I can swing them around again,” he said. “The swinish opportunists. Never mind that now, though, I’ve only a minute. I left them just to phone you—might be half an hour late. That O.K.?”
“Oh, of course. Really, don’t rush yourself and be all frazzled.”
“Right. I’ll make it as fast as possible.”
He hung up; a moment later Vee did so too and then sank back onto the bed. She thought of the beribboned package and the flowers and the candles on the birthday cake, and a sudden wave of embarrassment went over her that she had spent so much care over getting them just so. As if Jasper Crown, busy with global networks, busy with raising the last three of his ten million capitalization, busy with interstation deals, with intercontinental contracts—as though that man could really care about a birthday cake’s perfection or whether his present was to be opened before dinner, or during dinner, or only, with delicious suspense a-building all the time, after dinner…
She went out to the kitchen and told Dora that dinner would not start until eight. Dora’s face twitched disapproval, but she only nodded.
“Has the paper come, Dora?”
“Yes, ma’am. Over there.” Vee took it in to her room, headline-reading. She was uninterested in everything—June 30, 1938, was an uneventful and unimportant day except that it was Jasper’s birthday and she wanted to make him feel planned for, and pleased and contented. She tried to read. The time passed heavily.
The telephone rang again. This time she reached for it quickly; her heart jumped a beat. Let it not be Jasper again, saying…
“Darling, listen, this is getting nowhere,” he began. His voice, always deep and big, was now fined down with exasperation. “I wondered if you’d mind if I stayed right with it till it was done.”
“Oh, Jas.” She simply could not keep the hurt tone out. He shouldn’t—he oughtn’t to have asked it.
“Wait a minute, I just thought I’d ask if you’d mind…”
“Well, you know, I’ve planned…o” She broke the sentence. The hurt or disappointed voices of women—how men hated them. How “married” they sounded, and so, how binding and possessive. Yet this was unfair, that she should have to guard her very voice from displeasing him when it was a situation of his own doing that—“It’s nothing, really. Of course, go ahead if it’s important.”
“You mean you’ve planned anything that won’t keep till later? I thought we were going to be alone, so it wouldn’t matter if—”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just—oh, you know, a special sort of dinner and a gadget for a present and—but never mind. About when do you think…?”
There was silence. Maybe he would understand that she wasn’t just lacking in sympathy for the pressure he was under, but that any woman, indeed any human, who had planned a special evening would feel a wound of disappointment if at the last moment…
The silence continued. “Jas, are you still there?” she asked at last.
“Yes, sure.” His voice had changed; it was deeper again. “Look, darling, I’m a thoughtless pig, I guess. I get so damn wound up, you know. Of course I’ll quit this and be along right off.”
“Darling, oh, how nice.” Warmth rushed back into her voice. He didn’t mean to hurt her, probably he never meant to.
“Well, don’t think I wanted to sit around with these three babies.” He laughed coldly. “I’ve been nursing them for weeks, anyway. But if they come through with a million, it’s over the hump and I could practically forget the rest of the financing.”
“A million? Oh—well maybe—”
“No, no—it’s out. Tell you what—Vee, maybe we could meet them again about eleven. You might like to sit in on one of these sessions I have.”
“Yes, I would, I’ve never seen you in action, Jas. It’d be excit—”
“O.K., that’s the way. We’ll have all the birthday stuff, and we can maybe wind this up, too. I’m on my way.”
In less than an hour he was there, shaved and changed. He came in to her in the living room, not looking about him, seeking only her face. He took her into his arms, wordless, held her so long without kissing her, held her so near to him, his face down against her hair, that she was moved by the strangeness and silence of him.
“Happy birthday again,” she finally said.
“Thank you, Veery.” He called her that when he was most drawn to her. Did he, secretly know that he loved her, too? Was this thing between them deeper than either of them would or could confess to the other?
“Come, have a birthday drink,” she said, and she pointed to the coffee table.
“I want thirty-six in a row,” he answered. “Hey, look at it.”
In a silver bucket, ice-filled, stood Moët et Chandon ’28. It was his favorite champagne, and she had remembered that. One handle of the bucket had an exaggerated large red satin bow; to the other was fastened, with a small length of picture wire, a single large red rose.
“You darling,” he said. “It looks like a party, all right.”
“It is a party,” she said happily.
He opened the champagne.
“ ‘Pling’ is what it says,” he told her, “not ‘pop.’ ”
She laughed. He poured the wine into the two crystal glasses, offered her one, raised his own. He made a swift gesture to the silver bucket.
“My love is like a red, red rose,” he said gravely.
“Oh, Jas. How sweet of you, how unexpected—to—to drink to me on your birthday…”
“You’re my love, aren’t you?” he replied.
He put his glass down, took hers, and set it down beside his own. He kissed her, softly, lightly. She felt that he was trying to say something and waited. But he remained silent.
At last he emptied his glass of champagne, set it down satisfiedly on the table, and looked all about the room.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “Who you looking for?”
“Whom.”
She laughed. This was one of their small jokes, intimate, confident. Whenever either of them made any grammatical gaffe, no matter how knowingly, the other coldly corrected it, like an ever-watchful schoolteacher.
Now Jas began prowling about the room, ostentatiously hunting, lifting magazines, opening cigarette boxes, even raising the piano lid and peering in at the strings.
“Where is it?” he said. “The gadget. I want it now; I can’t wait.”
This delighted her. He was acting up to the situation, to please her. He was making the business of his birthday gift loom larger than it would have normally; he was a playwright putting his minor characters through unimportant lines over the teacups to prepare for the entrance of the star. He knew there would be “the star” presently, and he was contriving extra importance for its appearance.
“You can’t have it, not now,” she said severely. “You mustn’t be so rude, either, asking for your present. You’re supposed to wait politely and see if there is one.”
‘Want it now.”
“Can’t have it. Here’s another glass of champagne instead.”
This raillery, this lightness, was the nearest he ever came to offering her an inner understanding, apart from the primitive understanding of passion. When she needed tenderness, warmth, when she reached toward him for the sustaining quality of deep emotion, she was always balked by the essential coolness of him—the tranquil eye, the calm voice. Then she knew loneliness, even lying at his side, then she was clutching for something that was not there to take.
But when she herself was festive and light, and when he, by some luck of timing, was also in the same mood, then she found Jas everything she could hope for. Like now. This boyish act of impatience for his gift, her prim scolding to subdue him—how light-hearted, how merry, it made her feel.
He accepted the second glass of champagne and for a moment seemed docile about waiting. Then he was off again. This time he went to the door of the dining room, poked his head inside.
“Whee. There it is. And it’s mine.”
“Jas, now really. Not till dinner.”
“Not a chance. It’s mine, isn’t it?” He lifted it. “Hey, it’s heavy as hell.”
She gave up. His impatience delighted her. He brought the package back into the living room with him, set it respectfully down on the low table, examined its wrappings minutely. Vee watched him. All her dilemmas and trilemmas were useless, as they always, with Jas, would be. In the end, it would be he and he alone who would decide the outcome of any problem that ever rose in their lives.
In a moment he looked at her questioningly, began tentatively undoing the package as he watched her. He looked young, relaxed, responsive. He could be such a happy person, if he could let himself—
He was taking the wrappings off carefully, handling the heavy package with gingerly regard for its unknown contents. She watched his face eagerly. Now he could see it under the sheets of tissue, could see the simple lines, the plain fine leathers…
He took one look at it, set it down, looked at her.
“Vee, no one but you would have understood how it would please me.”
“Oh, Jas, really? Honestly, do you—I couldn’t help feeling it was a foolish idea, but it made everything seem so real.”
‘That’s what it does—you darling, you very darling, to make the network come alive right this moment.”
It was only a clock, but within the large dial of it were four smaller dials. Under one, small gold letters said, LONDON—5 hours forward. Under another, BERLIN—6 hours forward. The third, Moscow—8 hours forward; and the fourth, HAWAII—51/2 hours backward.
Jasper had it in his hands again, examining it, fondling it.
Just now the large dial showed it was nearly eight o‘clock in New York. The smaller dials showed nearly one in London, nearly two in Berlin, nearly four in Moscow, nearly two-thirty in Hawaii.
“Vee, you said ‘a gadget.’ This is—this—”
“Oh, Jas, I’m so happy. I thought and thought—”
“But how ever—what made you decide on those cities? How right—”
“Well, they said one dial would do for London and Paris—the time’s the same there. And another for Berlin and Rome—it’s the same there, too.”
He laughed delightedly at this explanation. “Yes, darling, it is.”
“Then Moscow seemed essential, and Pacific time, too.”
“You darling, you brilliant darling. Christ, it makes me feel like a radio network, just to look at it. It makes me feel that maybe tomorrow we’ll, be on the air. What a birthday you thought up!”
“It’s wonderful that you really want it.”
“Where’d you ever find it? I’ve never seen a desk one like this. I—”
“I had a grand old clockmaker make it for you. It took a long time.”
He turned to her, took her into his arms again, kissed her his thanks. But this time, as though he were ashamed to seem moved, his mouth upon hers was violent, driving, almost angry.
Then in another moment, his mood again changed. He began to whisper to her threats of the physical, sexual violence he would do to her. This was one of the faces of their relationship, too, and she was too at ease with sex to feel or to pretend that she was embarrassed or offended. This half-felt, half-feigned bawdiness had its place, too.
After a moment, Vee shoved away from him.
“Dinner must be ready,” she said.
“The hell with dinner—let’s go to bed—”
“Jasper Crown, you are impossible. Let’s do nothing of the kind.”
“Vee—”
“No, absolutely, definitely no.”
“But I can’t help—”
There was a stir behind them.
“Dinner is served.”
Vee laughed in his face. “Thank you, Dora,” she said over her shoulder.
“O.K., O.K.,” Jasper said cheerily.
Dinner was superb. He praised everything, he exclaimed over the birthday cake, he was at once the most grateful of guests and, curiously, the most watchful of hosts as he kept her wineglass full, her cigarettes instantly lighted.
Over their coffee and brandy, they each were quite suddenly silent. They sat near each other on the sofa. Jasper stared at the face of the clock. Occasionally he took it into his hands, winding it, listening to it. Vee felt at peace. Her planning and searching and fussing over details had been worth while. The evening had pleased him, and she had arranged the evening.
“You know, Vee,” he said slowly. She looked up attentively. “I meant it when I said you are my love. I’ve never felt so right with anybody else.”
She said nothing. He reached for her hand, without looking, found it, took it in his own. He held it closely; from his tight-clasped fingers her own fingers learned that now again he was the fighter, the man of driving, restless energy. The boyish, easy happiness was gone from him now. She waited.
“I told you once that marriage isn’t really for me—what with the company—and—and especially since things are as they are about—about the other thing.”
“I know.”
“But I feel, you don’t realize it, but something in you makes me feel that you don’t really know—” He searched for words. She let him search. He turned his face so she could not see it.
“All I do feel is that you’d fight harder for anything else,” she said. “I can’t understand you when you’re beaten by something that may not even be true.”
“It is true. You’re unable to face it about me.”
“No. That’s not s. I’d face it, if it is true. I told you back in April, I’d heard vaguely that there’s a lot of new medical…”
“They’re quacks, half of them, and knaves.”
“Oh, Jas, that’s ridiculous, coming from a man like you. I’m not talking of quacks and villains, I’m talking of scientists. I asked Dr. Burton…”
He made a sharp gesture of impatience. He didn’t want to hear. Dr. Burton’s old, reasonable voice came back to her. “Well, maybe they don’t want children as much as they say they do.” She looked at Jas carefully.
“Jas, listen to me,” she said. “You have the courage to go through it again, and see whether or not it is true, or whether it was only true because ten years ago it seemed true. There’s a man named Gontlen, Dr. Martin Gontlen, he’s spent years on these things, he’s had terrific results with about thirty per cent of his cases.”
“Thirty per cent?”
“That’s a three-to-one chance against you; but that wouldn’t stop you if it was about the network.”
“Were.” But he said it absently; she knew he wasn’t joking now.
“Were. All right, don’t josh me off this. I’ve been wanting to talk to you, been holding myself back, telling myself that it’s your life and your problem—but oh, darling, when I know what torture it is for you to go on believing in this damn sterility that may not even be true? Can I just keep polite and silent? I don’t care, I have to try…”
“What’s this Dr. Gontlen’s theory, do you know?”
“It isn’t theorizing. He’s worked with thousands of actual cases. He’s found that sometimes when people can’t have children, it’s only that their systems are slowed down, sluggish, or else some minor block somewhere. And they’ve learned so much in ten years about things like thyroid and pituitary—oh, Jas, if you had low hemoglobin or a sluggish liver you’d go and get it stepped up, wouldn’t you?”
He began to pace the room. Under the strange, strong forehead, the heavy brows, his eyes were dead and cool. But the way he paced, the energy in his stride, in his closed hands, told her there was nothing remote and distant in his feelings.
“I can’t tell you how I hate all this,” he burst out at last. “The tests, the waiting, the hope, then the terrible, hideous answer, and the God-damned doctor smirking sympathy at you. I’ve been through it, and I’m not going to tear up that old wound again.”
“All right, Jas. I don’t see why you should, if it’s that tough.”
He looked at her quickly. Suspicion shone in his glance. But her face wore only a hurting because he suffered.
He came to her then, dropped down beside her, leaned his massive body over, and rested his head in her lap.
“I’ll go and see this God-damned Gontlen tomorrow,” he said. “It’s not too tough.” She made no comment.
“But that’s the end. If he says the same, and he will, that’s the end of it forever. I can’t stand this every five minutes—but once more can’t kill me.”
“At the worst, it can’t be any worse than it’s been these ten years, darling,” she said. She kept her voice level, forced it not to pounce on a new tone of exultation and relief. “And if the three-to- one shot should happen to work for you, it might make you very happy.”
“And you?”
“Oh, God…”
There was silence. He had promised to go tomorrow. He would go, and there would be the waiting.
Jasper stretched out his left arm, looked at his wrist watch, then at the clock. He stood up at once.
“We’re late,” he said, and the two words snipped off their talk and the birthday celebration without ado.
They took a cab to the Plaza. Jasper’s “three babies” were to meet them in the Oak Room. Vee was excited in a close, personal way at the notion of going along on so important a thing as a big meeting. It was another step of intimacy, somehow, that he should let her.
The three, in business suits, were clearly surprised to see her with him. They sprang up in unison and seemed ill at ease. As Jasper introduced Mr. Stark, Mr. Friedman, Mr. Conerhan, Vee saw each of the three eye her with special interest. She was Jasper Crown’s girl, their eyes said, and a heady pride rose in her.
“Hope you’ll excuse the way we look, Mrs. Stamford,” one of the men said, rubbing his hand over his cheeks and looking down at his tweed suit.
“Hope you’ll excuse the way we do,” Vee said. “Bit overdressed for a business talk, aren’t we?”
They all laughed. They ordered drinks, chatting about nothing. Then Jasper said, “Well, look here, Stark—” and the four picked up from where they’d been all afternoon. Vee sat listening, and knew soon that they were almost unaware that she was there.
She had never seen Jasper in action. Now she watched him and listened to him in a nervous fascination. He gave off the aura of being complete master of these men and she did not even know by what means he did it.
“The five per cent debentures”…“thirty thousand shares of preferred at one hundred, paying six”…“twenty per cent of the common…”
The talk was already heated. The man called Stark seemed stubborn about something, though what it was precisely had not cleared through to Vee. Conerhan seemed to differ on some point, and kept shaking his head. They turned to Friedman and he seemed irritated at both of them. Jasper alone seemed perfectly calm.
“It’s the amount of common I stick at,” Mr. Stark said. He thumped the table. “It seems pretty arbitrary, this limitation you put on your own investors.”
“Yes, that’s the sticking point for all of us.”
“I simply can’t see why—”
Jasper sat forward, his head on one side, his strong lips pursing thoughtfully.
“Look here, gentlemen,” he began in a new voice. It was patient, pleasant. “Let’s go over this once more. Here’s what it looks like.” He reached for the menu, accepted the pencil that Stark offered him. He wrote the figure $10,000,000.
The three men and Vee watched him as he paused over it, watched his pencil as it stroked and restroked the dollar sign until it was very black, very perfect.
Underneath it he wrote $2—, $3—, $5.
“That’s how it breaks down. I know this is boring by now, but let’s do it all the way through.”
“Sure, that’s the way,” Mr. Friedman said.
Jasper smiled at him.
“So it’s two thousand debentures at a thousand each—that’s two million.” His pencil nicked the $2. “It’s thirty thousand shares of preferred at a hundred each—that’s three million.” His pencil nicked the $3. “And it’s five hundred thousand of the common at ten each—that’s five million.” His pencil pointed to the $5.
“Right,” said Mr. Conerhan.
“Now, here am I,” Jasper said, and he leaned back easily. “I have a desire to start my own network. I do start it. Naturally I must control it.”
“Nobody says—”
“I have one million dollars,” Jasper continued. “I put the whole one million into this, taking as much risk as I’ll let any other single investor take.”
“I thought Mandreth, Drake, and Niles—” This was Mr. Conerhan.
“No. Nobody has more than a million.”
“But if we’re willing to put it all in common—” Mr. Stark interjected.
Jasper held up a hand. Vee noticed that the palm was a little dirty. Cigarette ashes, probably.
“Let’s not get back to the confusion again,” he said, asking them for co-operation, for tidy minds, for rational methods, as if he were asking for a cigarette, with no possibility of refusal. Mr. Stark sank back and smiled.
“All right. So I have a million, and no other investor is permitted to have a bigger cut than mine. That’s certainly a reasonable position for me to take. Any of you would do the same thing.”
Friedman and Conerhan nodded. Stark retrieved the pencil and began to draw linking circles on some papers in front of him.
“So far, so good. Now, you hear about this project; you get interested; Fred Willis, your lawyer, brings us together. You listen to my plans. You decide I know what I’m doing. A year ago you might have doubted me when I said flatly that it was feasible to broadcast news every day from all the major cities of Europe. You would have called me impractical, visionary. Then the Vienna crisis proved I was right.”
He spread, out his hands in the pattern of helplessness. It was a heart-warming gesture, appealing and trustable.
“First I went crazy over the Austrian thing. I really suffered about it—felt beaten at the post, before I could start. But now I see I needn’t have been so upset. They’ve dropped it again. Just because that crisis ended, they’ve dropped it. NBC broadcast only twice from Austria in April—nothing in May or June. CBS followed through well until the fake plebiscite on April tenth, then they relaxed too. They’ll both pull it again at the next crisis—kind of emergency rabbit.”
“CBS sure did a brilliant job while it lasted, though, didn’t they?” Conerhan asked admiringly.
Vee stirred. She knew how Jasper hated even to remember that. But now he only nodded graciously.
“They really did,” he said. “That first half-hour roundup was magnificent. Shirer from London, Murrow from Vienna, Huss from Berlin, Mowrer from Paris. I’m told they tried to get Gervasi from Rome, but it fell through—short-wave transmitter not available and their plans to route through Geneva flopped. I’m also told they got co-operation from everybody—PTT, EIAR, RRG—everybody.”
“What’s RRG and those others?” Vee put in, apologetically.
They all turned toward her at once. She smiled, deferring with her waiting eyes to their greater knowledge. She had listened carefully to everything, and at each moment she felt she understood perfectly. Yet the whole talk had a foreignness, as if she were listening to a political discussion in French, knowing each word but never quite sure of the whole drift or purpose of any sentence. It was actually pleasing to have one thing she could fasten on to ask a simple question about.
“RRG is the German company,” Mr. Stark explained. “Reichs Rundfunk Gesellschaft.”
Jasper nodded at Vee indulgently.
“And PTT is the French, and EIAR is Italian, and BBC the British. Anything else, ma’am?”
“I knew BBC,” she answered.
“You’ve been working out your own deals with all of them, I’m told?” Mr. Friedman asked.
“Oh, yes. I’ve closed with RRG already. PTT hasn’t a short-wave transmitter yet—it goes by phone out of Paris. But I’m closing with them next week. London will be lead-pipe easy. Moscow tough as nails. Later I’ll work out the Middle East, the Far East—and all the rest of it. Global network.”
There was a silence.
Vee noted that the talk had escaped the hard boundaries of the financial discussion that Jasper himself had laid down. Was that a point against Jasper’s control of the situation? She thought back. No. He had shifted it himself, by introducing the Vienna crisis—which another man would have wanted to slide over. He was using even that for his own purposes, the triumph of another company. How skillful he was.
Now the whole mood at the table had changed. There was excitement, looking ahead at what radio could one day become as the most powerful weapon of communication, steady, dependable, day-by-day dependable. Now they were in a conspiracy against the future, and Jasper leading them.
“To get back to the common-stock ruling—” Jasper said.
“Look here, Ted,” Mr. Friedman said. “What’s the use of kicking this around Robin Hood’s barn? Mr. Crown puts his whole million into common—he doesn’t want the notes, doesn’t want the preferred; he’d rather take the bigger gamble and sock it all into common. It shows his own faith in the future, anyway.”
“Yes, of course. But why can’t we also take the same gamble? It shows our faith, too.”
“It’s impossible, Stark,” said Jasper. “I set this company up so that I’m the only individual who’s allowed to hold twenty per cent of the common. I set it up so that no other individual investor or corporate investor can hold more than ten per cent of the common. My holding is one hundred thousand shares of the common. Yours can be fifty thousand shares with the balance in debentures and preferred on this two-three-five pattern.” He pointed to the menu. “That’s the way it is.”
His tone said discussion was childish. His eyes said, “Take it or leave it.” His smile said, “Now I know you won’t leave it.”
Conerhan cleared his throat importantly.
“We’ll talk it over in the morning, what say?” he said casually. But Jasper sat back a little further in his chair, called the waiter for new drinks, and Vee knew he knew he had won.
“Let me tell you a bit more about my principle of setting aside twenty-five per cent of the securities and offering it to the stations. It’s getting me practically every station I want, it’s so unheard of. It’s driving the big companies out of their heads already. They of course never dreamed of such a thing.”
“What’s the F.C.C. feel about it?”
“Oh, they love me in Washington. They think I’m dandy.”
“Breaking the monopoly picture for them, hey?”
The three laughed heartily. Jasper waited for the laugh to wear thin. The talk went on. Station relations, the new idea of a Station Advisory Board, the splitting of five per cent of net earnings before taxes for the entire staff of the network, allocated in proportion to salary…
Somewhere outside, chimes sounded. Vee glanced at the big clock over the door. Midnight. Jasper’s birthday and the thirtieth of June were done. “Midnight” was a dark, mad word to her, as “noon” was a sunny, expansive one. She supposed the overtones of words began in one’s childhood, to carry, forever after, the emotions and connotations that began then. Midnight was the fateful hour, the hour that strikes doom for the golden coach, the glass slippers; it was the witching hour of the night, the dreary hour for ravens to be born…She smiled to herself at her train of thought.
“You laughing at us?” Jasper asked. To her at least, his eyes revealed the comfortable triumph of the victor.
“No. I was off on another track for a moment.”
“We must be boring Mrs. Stamford with all this,” Mr. Stark apologized.
“Oh, not at all. I—oh, you know the silly things that cross your mind.” She waved her hand in a deprecating gesture. The men had already turned back to their talk.
She did not even try to follow the discussion again. She was contented just to be there, watching Jasper, remembering their own talk, the evening before it, the clock.
It was still at her house. On one of the dials the hour pointed to midnight. On another it pointed to five. It was already summer dawn in France and England and Switzerland. The Vederles were asleep, soon they would wake to another day. Perhaps to the day when her last letter would arrive, with all the new material that would tie up the loose ends at last. More likely the letter had already arrived; perhaps Dr. Vederle had already taken it to the Consulate, perhaps at this moment the visas were theirs.
And what time was it now in Czechoslovakia? She did not even know whether her other “affidavit case” was properly under way or not. Everything had been sent off to Rosie Tupchik in Karlsbad, sent within a week after she had promised Ann to undertake it. That was about three weeks ago. She had acted almost automatically on this second case. She had not even read the affidavits and other documents, since they were merely copies of the Vederle ones, with the names and details changed. She had signed her name wherever a penciled cross made by Meany told her to. She and Ann had put up steamship money between them. A few days later, a brief, self-conscious letter of thanks had come in the morning mail. The foreign writing with the New York postmark explained it before she had opened it. It was signed Bronya something.
With a flick of remorse, Vee realized she had not yet answered it. She had meant to take it to the office and reply at once, but she had laid it aside and forgotten it. It was still at home somewhere. If it were lost, she would have to get the girl’s name and address again from Ann, or Meany, and apologize at once for her silence. How callous people could be, not meaning callousness, but simply because they were preoccupied with other things.
But that was no excuse with an unfortunate like this Bornya, working over the toilets in a department store. She probably felt snubbed, angry, even though she knew that the very woman who now ignored her was the woman who had sent the affidavit off to Czechoslovakia a short while before.
Vee knew. She had some trick of projection into other people’s reactions that made her feel certain of what they were going through. She knew how the Vederles must feel over each new delay, each new demand from the Consulate, each new week that passed. Now she knew how this Bornya must feel, the mixture of gratitude at some unknown sending affidavits to her mother in Central Europe and the resentment that this person would receive words of tormented gratitude and stay silent, out of reach.
Vee never questioned the justice of her instinctive decision about how it must be with the other person: If she, in a like situation, would feel so and so, then surely other human beings must be experiencing the very same things. Otherwise there would be possible none of that common material in the minds of humanity that made a poem, a play, a song universally appealing. People were the same, in all the deep human ways the same, whether they were here or abroad, whether they were rich or poor, whether they were strong or weak.
Waiting was the same. Watching the mails for some vital letter was the same. Waiting for Jasper to come out of Dr. Gontlen’s office would be the same. Time could pass so slowly, could taunt nerves so sadistically.
Soon time would become significant in a new way to her and Jasper. From the hour he finally walked into Dr. Gontlen’s office, time would become a new personal equation in both their lives.. First a small piece of time, until the results of the first tests were known. Then if there were some hope, if treatments were begun, then a larger piece of time would begin for them both, until the weeks or months of treatment had gone by.
She knew, by another trick of projection into the future, that these two pieces of time would always have for her a special quality. If the results were happy, then she would forever look back upon them with the melting heart of gratitude. If the results were unhappy for Jasper, and thus for her, then she would always look back upon them with the stab of pain, the bitter taste of defeat.
Time. Jasper’s several-dialed clock reminding one of the slow passage of dawn or midnight across the boundaries of states and shore lines of great seas. Midnight passing, June 30 done and the first day of July sweeping in a slow, deliberate arc over all the countries of the earth.