There was a printing plant in the town, and the owner was a much-worried small businessman, who thought this was going to become a ghost town. He would do their work cheaply, just to keep going; or he would sell them the plant and run it for them. He was sure that a panic and a big bust were coming, and he was indiscreet enough to reveal his fears. It was astonishing how many people, big and little, had that conviction; they lived with a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. The respectable newspapers and magazines rebuked this state of mind severely, but the pessimists took it for granted that this was propaganda.
The two places would do, the friends decided—ethics winning out over esthetics, at least for a time. The essentials were here in both places: water, electricity, gas, telephones. There was a post office and mail delivery; telegrams would be delivered by phone, and there were a couple of cafés in the town, not elegant but clean. Their guests could come on the train and be met at the station, or they could motor if they wished. The four could do their work here and have their chance at success. There was labor in the town, and so long as they had money to spend they would be welcomed with open arms.
Lanny made his offers and his deals; they were put into escrow at the local bank, and that was as good as ownership. Freddi Robin was all over the town, digging up people to do the various jobs; some who had been on the point of moving back to New York were happy to learn that the town wasn’t going to die after all. The girls who had made bomb fuses would now learn to make stencils and mail papers.
The legman for the town’s newspaper came running; what was it all about? They told him they were going to set up a literary bureau and publish a small paper, but not a newspaper, so he didn’t have to worry. He wanted the story, of course, and an agreeable gentleman named Billy Budd gave it to him; there was a big-name novelist, Mary Morrow, and a real English baronet and his lady—oh, my goodness! You could see the reporter’s eyes pop and you could be sure that the town would take fire. They had been mourning the demise of an incinerator-bomb plant and a fuse factory, and here they were going to be made famous. Actually, there was to be a radio studio right in the fuse building, and Edgemere, N. J., would be put on the map!
VIII
It was flat country, bleak and desolate in winter, with snow everywhere, and nothing green but a few straggly pines. But that wouldn’t worry them, they knew that spring would come, and a gardener would plant flowers at both places. “The Willows” was the name of the mansion, and the big trees would make shade when it was needed. Freddi moved in and saw that the furnace was kept going—otherwise the water pipes might have burst. Some of the lodgers hadn’t moved out yet, but a few ten-dollar bills brought action, and then the scrubwomen came—they had already cleaned up the office building. The decorators started work, and in the office the carpenters began hammering; lumber was almost unobtainable, but by good fortune they found some plasterboard for partitions. The tinsmiths came, but they didn’t have any pipe, and you couldn’t get any gas heaters, unless it was in junkshops, so Freddi drove to Newark and looked up such places. So many things to think of and to oversee, and so many shortages—you might have to drive miles to get a few pounds of nails.
Freddi’s mother heard about what was going on. Lanny had met her for the first time when he had been a guest on Johannes Robin’s yacht, cruising in the Mediterranean. Rahel had then been a gentle and conscientious girl, with a sweet contralto voice; her husband had played the clarinet, and as Hansi and Bess had been along it had been a musical voyage. The future had been mercifully hidden from them, and they had had no idea of the horrors it contained. When the Nazis seized Rahel’s husband and shut him up in Dachau, Lanny had been the one who possessed the magic to get him out, and for that he would be forever a hero in Rahel’s eyes. Now she had a new husband and a new family, but she could leave them for a few days in care of Mama—that was the grandmother, Johannes’s wife.
They wanted furniture for both the home and the office, and the prices the stores were asking were simply scandalous. Rahel, now a plump, middle-aged woman, had her own car, and she took over the job. She put up in a near-by hotel, and she hunted up all the secondhand shops in Newark and near-by towns; she argued and scolded, and went from one to the next, and by the time the painters had got out of The Willows and the carpenters had got out of the fuse plant she had accumulated two vanloads of new and used furniture at about half what Lanny or Laurel would have had to pay.
And not only that, she took care of having the well-chosen stuff unloaded and put in place. She interviewed cooks and housemaids and got one of each, and saw to the arrangements for electricity and telephone and water and gas and coal and garbage and trash disposal—so many things does it take to keep alive in a civilized world! Those literary folk in New York could go on working on their plans to save the world, and meantime Rahel and her son would see that they had a home to move into, one that was warm and clean, and had groceries in the pantry, and sheets and blankets on the beds, and coffee or orange juice ready for them when they woke up in the morning.
What was more, Rahel would come once a week, she promised, and see that the servants were not neglecting them and the trades-people not cheating them, and that all their bills were properly checked before they were paid. The world was full of people who were ready to take advantage of any weakness they found; they would assume that people who were trying to save the world were easy marks. Let Rahel be the one to deal with them, and they would find out the difference!
Both Laurel and Nina thought this a gift from heaven. Laurel liked housekeeping as little as anything in this world, and Nina, who had had to do it for many years, now wanted to put her mind on a radio studio. By all means let Rahel feed them and warm them, and be forever blessed; when it was necessary to have a party or a reception, let her be caterer and hostess. No cocktail parties, they were at one about that; they would have coffee and fruit punch, and those who didn’t like it could wear their hip-pocket flasks and retire to the lavatory for a nip.
IX
Nina had made the discovery that they didn’t have to go in to the radio station in the crowded city. They could install a microphone at very small expense in one of the rooms in their office; at the appointed hour the telephone company would give them a connection, and they would speak by remote control. That way they could avoid travel and have everything in one place. A stenographer could take down an ad lib program and type it off for the paper. They would give Edgemere as their address for fan mail and orders, and the post office in the town gave them an imaginary number—Box 1000, Edgemere, New Jersey. The slowest mind could remember that.
Mr. Huebsch had recommended Station WYZ as one that was likely to be interested in their project. This station went in for what is called “class,” or “side,” or “swank,” or “tone”—there were” many fancy words for it; the rich catering to the rich, trying to make themselves feel important. The publisher said, “The rich are, bored and are looking for something new. Be very elegant and impressive.”
Nina and Laurel had an argument as to which of them could make a better deal for the radio time. Laurel insisted that a genuine baroness was a far more imposing personality than an author, of whom there were thousands in the city. Nina, on the other hand, argued that this was a professional and not a social matter, and that a foreign accent might awaken distrust. Rick agreed with her, so Laurel took up the duty.
She wrote, being careful to use fashionable stationery; she introduced herself as the author of novels and magazine stories, desiring to talk to them about a program series. She gave her telephone number, and her phone rang at eleven the next morning—that being the hour when fashionable business begins. A cultivated voice explained that this was Mr. Archibald, the program manager; he would be delighted if she would call that afternoon and let him show her the studio.
The place was on the top floor of a hotel facing Central Park. It had a private elevator, and you were whisked up swiftly. There were all the appurtenance
s of luxury: velvet rugs, overstuffed sofas, a lady receptionist with the voice of a Hollywood duchess. Everybody was dressed to kill—and you may be sure the visitor also had on her glad rags. The manager came, morning coat and pin-stripe trousers and a boutonniere—you might have thought you were in the queer old State Department building opposite the White House. He led her along a marble corridor with a crimson carpet and canaries singing in sunlit windows, and showed her the studios and the control rooms and the machinery, of which she understood nothing. They operated by remote control, their sending station being in Jersey.
In Mr. Archibald’s private office Laurel made a tactful approach to the subject she had in mind. She had lived in Germany before the war and had been back there immediately in the wake of the Army; she had seen horrible sights and had resolved to help prevent such things in the future. She had ample backing, and her idea was to take a quarter-hour, once a week at the outset, and invite competent authorities in all branches of thought to come and be questioned as to the causes of war and what could be done to remove them.
“A most interesting idea,” agreed Mr. Archibald cordially. The skeptical lady couldn’t help wondering what his expression would have been if she had been asking him to donate the time.
“What I am in doubt about,” she said, “is whether your special audience would be interested in a program of that sort.”
“We have a highly intellectual clientele, Miss Morrow. We have accustomed them to hearing ideas discussed from every point of view.”
“We should want a period when we could expect to find both men and women in their homes; somewhere between six and nine in the evening.”
“Those are the very choice hours, you understand; they are rather expensive.”
“What would they cost us?”
“Somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred dollars for the fifteen minutes. Of course if you had a sponsor—”
“No, we don’t want a sponsor. It is our idea to reprint the program in a little weekly paper, along with other material bearing on the subject, and we would tell our listeners about this paper and invite them to subscribe to it.”
“That is something we look upon with great hesitation, Miss Morrow. We try to maintain a high-class atmosphere, as you know if you have listened to our programs.”
“I understand, and I assure you we would handle the matter in a dignified manner. We would never try to high-pressure people. We would simply say, ‘If you are interested in what you have just been hearing and would like to have it in print, you may subscribe to our weekly paper which contains it.’ Our idea would not be to cover the cost of the programs but merely of the paper. Surely it is as dignified to sell ideas in print as it is to sell perfumes or cigarettes.”
“I suppose that would be all right,” admitted Mr. Archibald. This was a keen-witted lady, and he knew that a smart magazine was among the sponsors of his programs and that it solicited subscriptions quite shamelessly. Said he, “If you have doubt about our clientele taking an interest in your idea, why not make a try and find out. Let me give you a microphone now, and you tell them about it.”
“Now?” exclaimed Laurel in sudden panic.
“We have music periods which we can always displace in favor of anything of special interest. We have one beginning in the next few minutes.”
“But I have never spoken over the radio, Mr. Archibald!”
“There always has to be a first time. You won’t find it such a trial as you imagine. Just think of some friend whom you would like to inform about it and imagine you are talking to that person. Use your ordinary tone of voice and pretend that you are in your own drawing-room.”
X
Laurel picked out henna-haired Sophie Timmons, who had come from Cincinnati and married the Baron de la Tourette and been wretchedly unhappy with him. She had had a lovely villa on the Cap d’Antibes and been Beauty Budd’s playmate and partner in mischief for some forty years. The Germans had almost caught her during World War I, and she had fled from them again in World War II, and was now back in the land of her fathers. The Germans had built a gun emplacement on the grounds of her villa, and American battleships, trying to hit the emplacement, had knocked the villa to flinders. Yes, good old Sophie would surely want no more war, so Laurel would tell her about the plan.
Seated at a table with the mike in front of her, a foot or so away. Laurel had her voice tested and was told that it was all right. The announcer stood at another mike near by; to him it was all in a day’s work, but to her it was something that made her heart thump and the rest of her inwards sink. A little red light flashed, and they were on the air. The announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are setting aside our Cocktail Hour music in order to hear a very distinguished visitor who has honored us with her presence.” He went on to name Laurel’s books and articles and to tell of her visits abroad. “Miss Morrow tells us of a very interesting radio program which she has in mind, and we suggested that she might tell you about it and find out whether the audience of WYZ would like to have it become a permanent feature of this station. Miss Morrow tells us that she has never before spoken over the air; we mention that she is speaking quite impromptu and without any time to prepare. If you note signs of nervousness, you will make allowance, we are sure. Miss Morrow.”
The listeners noted no such signs. Laurel, in her mid-thirties, was a sedate and self-possessed person. The pretense of Sophie was needed only for a minute or two; after that she was launching the plan which she had been pondering and discussing for close to a year. The world had been devastated by wars, the like of which had never been known before. There must be some fundamental reason for such terrifying outbursts of destruction, and if there was anything in the idea of the democratic process, the people had the duty of finding out what caused world wars and what measures were needed to stop them. A group of friends had set themselves the task of conducting such an inquiry; it was their idea to have a regular period over the air and invite the wisest and best-informed men and women they could find to come and submit to questioning on the subject.
“As the announcer has just told you, ladies and gentlemen, I didn’t come here to make a speech. I just dropped in to inquire if time would be available and what it would cost. I asked whether it was likely that the audience of WYZ would be interested in such a program, and I was advised to, ask you and I am doing so. We have financial backing, so we are not asking for money. It is our idea to print a little paper containing the week’s program and other material bearing on the subject, and someday we may invite you to subscribe to this paper at a price so low that you may want to put all your friends down for a subscription.
“What I am hoping at the moment is that you will tell us if you would listen once a week to a program discussing the causes of war and its prevention. These wars seem to come about a generation apart, just in time to get our sons and then our grandsons. We take up the notion that the last one was too terrible ever to be repeated, and so we lull ourselves to sleep, and wake up only when it is too late. This time it is my hope that some of us will stay awake and will use the time to dig into the roots of this subject and find out exactly why the nations of the world cannot stay within their own borders and solve their own problems and let their neighbors alone. Will the United Nations be any more effective than the League of Nations was? Or is it true, as the late General Patton declared, that wars are inevitable and natural to us humans? ‘Mankind is war,’ he said; and is this so, or are there factors, psychological or pathological, political or economic, which can be discovered and remedied, so that it will be possible for nations to disarm without fear?
“I have some ideas on this subject, and no doubt you have some also; the question is, would you like to check your ideas by the opinions of the wisest and best persons we can manage to bring before you? I should like to know your answers to this question, and so would those who conduct this station. If you have something to tell us, please write at once to Mary Morrow, in care of this
station. I will read your letters and so will the others who have to help make the decision.”
XI
So that was that; Mr. Archibald beamed and said she had a very good radio voice, and would she be interested to hear how it sounded. She was surprised, and he told her that in course of nature no one ever hears his or her own voice; a speaker hears from inside the mouth more than by the cars. He took her into another room, where there was a phonograph, and he put a platter on and set it going. A strange experience—there was her speech, word for word and clear as a bell; but it was a different voice, and she would hardly have known it. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing another face there. “So that is the way I sound to the world!”
They gave her the record so that she could take it home and play it for her friends. “We always make two recordings,” said the elegant Mr. Archibald; “one for the speaker and one for our files.” Laurel thought of some lines of the English poet Clough which Lanny was fond of quoting—supposed to be spoken by the devil or some evil spirit: “How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho, How pleasant it is to have money!”