There Was a Time

  He found the building in which Thomas Ingham’s Sons had their offices. He was surprised at the narrow hall, at the creaking, iron-filigreed elevator. He had expected pomp and circumstance, and this unassuming dignity dismayed him. This was no port of entrance to dreams and triumph. There should have been marble halls and attendants arrayed in livery; there should have been polished doors and thick rugs, and perhaps the smell of incense. But there was nothing save this elevator and an ancient operator with a winged collar and a brooding, disillusioned expression, and the slow drop of teeming, most ordinary, offices as the cage rose upwards.

  He was ejected from the elevator onto the fifth floor, and looked about him, dazed with disappointment. He saw a quiet corridor, a desk or two at which girls’ fingers scampered over clacking typewriters, and he heard a hushed voice, a footstep on a bare wooden floor. No slumbrous-eyed odalisque floated to greet him, to herald his arrival with a clap of jeweled hands; no scarlet curtains parted to admit him into a vast cathedral room. A young girl with a pert face, glasses and a touselled head approached him briskly, asked him what he wanted, and took his name. He stood, hat in hand, before a rack of books, and looked at the busy girls, and saw an elderly man or two moving silently in and out of a dim room that vaguely resembled a library.

  The girl came back, led him down a narrow corridor past small offices, and into the office of Mr. Hawkins. It was a large, dusty office, with blurred sun glinting on window panes. Frank had a confused impression of a big littered desk, an old swivel chair or two grouped about, and a thin tall man with a felt hat perched on the back of his head. The man rose and smiled, and Frank thought instantly of February, a pale and silent February with a cold blue sky and snow on the ground.

  Frank’s naïve disappointment sharpened in him, and with it came his old painful muteness, his old morbid self-consciousness, his old fear of the stranger. He looked into Mr. Hawkins’ still and frosty eyes, and saw his faint, enigmatic smile, and instantly he was frightened. This man held the power of life and death over him! On his word, he, Frank, would be delivered, or forever imprisoned and lost. If Mr. Hawkins did not like his English voice, if he felt an aversion for him personally, then there was no hope for him!

  Mr. Hawkins had extended his lean hand, but Frank was so overwhelmed with his old fears, his old sense of inferiority and nothingness, that he did not at first see the hand. Then he took it, his own chill and damp. Mr. Hawkins was murmuring something in his quiet voice. Frank opened his mouth. Then dumbness seized his vocal cords, and to his terror he knew that even if he did speak his voice would emerge as a stammering blur of incoherent sounds. Terror-stricken, hating himself, sweating with wild nervousness, he sat down near Mr. Hawkins, his hat on his knees.

  And February sat and contemplated him, and knew more than Frank would ever guess he knew. February waited in his reserved aristocracy, one long leg crossed over the other, and the thin patrician face betrayed nothing. But as Frank sat, numb and voiceless in his fear, a faint recognition came to him, a faint sense of familiarity. He knew, confusedly, that this man would not despise him for his haunting English accent, that he would not smile in contempt at his stammer, that he would not turn from him in brute prejudice. This man was of his own blood. This was a man of understanding, who saw and did not detest. He contemplated Frank, and smiled faintly and coldly, and there was no disdain in the pale blue eyes. It almost seemed that he was searching for something, and perhaps hoping for something. This was a gentleman like Wade O’Leary, one of the mature ones, a man who was truly a man, and Frank’s tense muscles relaxed, and, in relaxing, ached.

  February had no animosity towards this stranger, and this fact alone would have been enough to ease the terrible tightness in the younger man. There had been so few who had looked at Frank with real interest and thoughtful detachment, who saw him as one of their own species. For so long had Frank been the victim of derision, malicious curiosity and stupidity that he could hardly accustom himself to an atmosphere where he was accepted as a man, a man who might be significant and an equal.

  Mr. Hawkins said: “I was glad to hear you were coming to New York, Mr. Clair. We can settle things now. I wrote you about certain changes?”

  Frank opened his mouth, and to his extreme relief his voice came: “Yes.” Emboldened by his success in speaking without a stammer, he went on in a rush of words: “It doesn’t matter—Mr. Hawkins. I don’t care what changes you make—”

  His head was throbbing. The heat and the dazzle of the sun hurt his eyes. He continued eagerly: “I—I just want the book to be published—”

  Mr. Hawkins studied him thoughtfully and heard the panic in his voice. “You might not like the suggested changes,” he began.

  Not like them! Oh, let him take the whole damned book and twist it and change it and make of it what he would! If only the book was published!

  “I don’t care!” exclaimed Frank, leaning forward. “You—you know what would be best—” And then his voice stopped and he flushed in his agony of muteness.

  Mr. Hawkins averted his eyes considerately and waited. Frank struggled with his vibrating but soundless vocal cords. Then he burst out: “You don’t know—what—what—this means to me. I don’t care what is done with it.”

  Mr. Hawkins said softly: “It’s too long as it is. But it can be cut. Then we can go ahead with setting it up in galleys.”

  In galleys! Wonderful, magic galleys. The book would be in galleys—Frank’s jawbone sprang out under his skin. He swallowed, the lump hard and choking in his throat. His hands clenched on his hat. It was true. They would take the book and publish it.

  Mr. Hawkins leaned back in his chair, which creaked. He put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. His still face expressed nothing. He said: “We have to be careful of libel. You didn’t base this book on any actual family of bankers?”

  “No. Oh, no. It was all my imagination. A kind of—a kind of—composite. It is all imaginary. Just a story. About the people who cause wars—”

  Mr. Hawkins smiled suddenly, slightly, and briefly. Now a faint curiosity stood in his eyes, as they examined Frank. “You think they, all alone, cause wars, that sort of men? You think the people themselves have nothing to do with it at all?”

  Was he laughing at him, Frank? But there was no laughter on Mr. Hawkins’ face, only an intent interest.

  “We mustn’t overlook the fact that the Germans have always wanted power and domination over the rest of mankind,” said Mr. Hawkins, more in the voice of discussion than of argument or disagreement. “How do you explain Hitler? In terms of the international bankers?”

  Frank was silent. He forgot himself, his embarrassment, his stammering, his fear. He regarded Mr. Hawkins, and colored. He knows I don’t believe what I have written, or he wonders whether I believe it. I must make him believe it, or perhaps he won’t take the book! His voice shook as he protested feebly: “They—the bankers—financed Hitler. They supported him, the bankers of England, France and America.”

  Mr. Hawkins regarded his desk abstractedly. Then, after a long moment, he said: “Yes. I know. But there’s something else, too. If Hitler wants war—and he will want it, it’s inevitable—it will be the people who will fight. And it will be because the people, and not the German people only, will want it. There are some who talk of the ‘inevitability’ of wars. But the ‘inevitability’ lies in the people’s will to war, and, perhaps, in their desire for it. We all talk about man’s hatred of war, but the fact remains that wars occur, and will continue to occur, because man doesn’t really hate them. The peoples allow the conditions which lead to conflict to arise and to increase; they countenance them and nourish them. Out of this flows the inevitability of wars.”

  He waited for Frank’s comment, but Frank could not speak. Mr. Hawkins went on: “Either the peoples know it, or are too stupid to know it. We could all have made Hitler retreat from the Ruhr if we had wanted to, you know. But we didn’t.”

  Out of his fright, Fran
k exclaimed: “But the governments of the major powers encouraged Hitler! They didn’t want to restrain him! Why? Perhaps it’s because they fear Russia. I think that’s it. They’ll even permit wars because they’re afraid of Russia. Why are they afraid of Russia? Is it because they don’t want the masses to seize power? I—I think that’s it. I even think they are supporting and financing Hitler in the hope that he will attack and destroy Russia.”

  Mr. Hawkins said nothing. But now he regarded Frank with quickened interest.

  “It’s the pusillanimity of governments, and their greed and suspicion, which will lead to conflict with Hitler,” said Frank, with fear-filled emphasis. Then he paused. “But none of us will fight Germany. We don’t hate Germany. We never did.” And then his face twisted unconsciously with bitterness, and the faces of the German children he had known in his childhood rose up before him, and he tasted hatred in his mouth. “We don’t hate Hitler now, because he’s made himself too popular in America, among the cattle, with his anti-Semitism. Cattle must always hate something, and Hitler has given them a defenseless victim.”

  “It is almost impossible to imagine persecution in these days,” murmured Mr. Hawkins abstractedly. “Perhaps we, in America, can’t really take it in.”

  Persecution. I was persecuted in America almost as much as the Jews are now persecuted in Germany! I was persecuted because, among the children of European serfs, I was British, because, among the alien voices of the Near East, of Germany and of Southern Europe, I dared speak in the true language of America! I was an exile in the land of my own people. I was hunted and hounded, tormented and despised, by those for whom my people had fought, by those whom my people had liberated and fed and helped to survive. If the Jewish children run in terror through the streets of Berlin, I ran in terror through the streets which my people had built, past the houses my people had erected to shelter the litter and the scum of Europe. I know persecution!

  “We won’t go to war with Hitler, because we don’t hate him and because Americans don’t want to fight Germans.” Frank added: “Even if our bankers, all over the world, now finance and arm Hitler secretly.”

  He had forgotten himself so much by now that in speaking he had hardly stammered at all. The memory of his persecutions and his sufferings, though deliberately smothered a moment ago, still left some trace of itself, so that his face lost its pale fear and his eyes sparkled with suppressed rage. Now Mr. Hawkins studied him with even greater interest, and Frank became aware that the great editor’s eyes had taken on a focussed and piercing quality, searching and waiting. For some nameless reason, he was not alarmed but strengthened rather. He became aware, too, of being in the presence of the cool and lofty climate of the mind, tempered and subtle, frostily kind and penetrating. He saw Mr. Hawkins’ face, perceived its cryptic and melancholy fatalism, its bleak humor. In spite of his age, Frank was, in many ways, naively young, and an impulsive emotion rushed from him to Mr. Hawkins, a blind and artless trust. He wanted to cry out to this strange man: “I want to know you! You look at me, and don’t see the grotesque image others see. You see me as I am, and I can trust only those who really know me.”

  Frank could not know how much Mr. Hawkins saw of this. The editor glanced away with deep thoughtfulness and the sympathetic consideration he had shown when Frank had stammered incoherently. Frank saw this, and he said hurriedly, and with what he later cursed as naïveté: “Have you read the book all through, Mr. Hawkins?”

  Mr. Hawkins said abstractedly: “Yes. I think you are a fine storyteller. Your characters live and have vitality. After all, that is the most important thing in a novel. I don’t think the subject matter is so important—”

  Frank was passionately relieved. It did not matter so much, then, whether or not Mr. Hawkins wondered if Frank believed what he had written. And again, Frank felt the surge of strong emotion. He wanted to hear something else, and now he spoke more diffidently, out of some impulse he could not define: “Thank you. I—I’m glad. But do you think I write well? I mean,” he added, coloring again, “do you think I am a—a writer?”

  Mr. Hawkins glanced at him swiftly, and said: “Why, yes, of course.” He smiled somewhat wryly.

  But a gnawing something in Frank was dissatisfied, though he could not tell why. He said: “You see, it’s important to me to believe I am a writer.” He paused. What did he want? What did he want Mr. Hawkins to say? He did not know, but the urgency to hear it was on him almost desperately.

  Mr. Hawkins repeated: “You are a fine storyteller.” Why did he look at him, Frank, so curiously, and with the air of one who has been disappointed not only in this young man but in so many others before him?

  A “storyteller.” The woods were full of storytellers, all the magazines, all the libraries. Just a storyteller. Well, that was enough, wasn’t it, if the storytelling brought in enough money? What was more important than money?

  “You think I write as well as most—most modern writers?”

  Again Mr. Hawkins smiled, as if he knew so much more than Frank knew. “Yes. I should say, yes.”

  They were both silent. Then, as Frank considered what the other man had said, his old malaise came back to him, dry with futility and undesire. He was frightened. Not now! It must not come back now, when he was about to succeed! What was it, this sickness, this sudden blank emptiness, this disintegration, this fainting weakness and tiredness? He had heard what he had wanted to hear, hadn’t he? But had he? And, if not, what was it? Unconsciously, his hands clenched his knees as his father’s had done. Mr. Hawkins saw this, and his gray brows drew together as if in anxious pity.

  I don’t want anything, thought Frank involuntarily. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Then his fright returned. He must care! His life depended upon it.

  His wandering eye fell on the pile of manuscript on Mr. Hawkins’ desk. It was his own. And beside it he saw a long document with the title of his novel at the head of it, and his name. A contract. The sickness left him, and he was excited again. Mr. Hawkins followed Frank’s eye, and his lean hand reached out and picked up the document.

  CHAPTER 68

  What had he wanted Mr. Hawkins to say to him? It had seemed terribly important. But now he could not remember what it was, or why the not saying of it had left him so bereft, so desolate.

  Frank walked endlessly up and down the streets of New York, an unquiet and uneasy figure, oblivious to all that moved around and beside him. He went over and over his conversation with the renowned editor. Mr. Hawkins had said he was an excellent storyteller. He had, with a little prompting, admitted that the tale of John Ainsworth had power, considerable beauty, passion and emotion. What more, then, did any writer want?

  The hunger devoured Frank Clair. Something was missing. It was certainly not missing from his pockets, wherin lay the contract and a check for a thousand dollars. Sometimes he would leave the rush of humanity that surged on the bright streets of the city, and find shelter in a doorway, where he would take out contract and check and gloat over them. Or, rather, he tried to gloat. There was an emptiness somewhere, however—a yearning, a hunger, a depression. He told himself it was because he had no one to rejoice with him.

  He remembered, then, what his teacher had told him about his writing. “Something is missing.” Was it that something which had restrained Mr. Hawkins from telling him, Frank, what he so passionately desired to hear, even though he could not remember it, or dredge it up from the dark depths of his mind? Even though he did not know what it was?

  He went back to his room in the hotel and walked restlessly up and down the thick carpets he no longer saw or heeded. He stood at the windows and looked down unseeing upon the great traffic. The magic and the excitement were gone. He said to himself: “It’s just the reaction. I’m numbed. It will all come back.” He heard his own voice saying this, and it returned to him like an ominous echo.

  He went down into the lobby and leafed through the telephone books of every city of considerable size in
New York State, searching for the name of Paul Hodge. It was nowhere. Nor were there any Edward or Gordon Hodges. He went back to his room and wrote a letter to Jessica Bailey.

  “I am here in New York, where I have just signed a contract for the publication of my novel The Golden Sword. I tried to reach you yesterday to tell you, but you were not at home. But when I return to Bison, I shall go to see you. I am excited just now, as this is the first important thing I have written which is to be published, and though I may be a little too hopeful, I have every reason to believe that the book will be a success. Then, of course, there are the movies to be considered. Mr. Cornell Hawkins, the editor of Thomas Ingham’s Sons, has cautioned me about being too optimistic about the sale of the book, but something tells me I don’t need to be cautioned, and that I’ll make a lot of money from it. That’s why I feel I can now go to you, as an equal, that I no longer need feel inferior.”

  And now, as he wrote, a wave of returning exultation ran over him, and he clenched the pen in his fingers and felt again the heavy lump in his throat. He jumped to his feet and, standing at the windows and clutching the russet draperies at each side, looked down at the traffic. All that below would be his! There was no need any longer to slink through the streets and feel the debasement of insignificance and futility, the hopelessness, the hunger for the things in the shop windows. Why, he could buy a car now, or anything else he wanted! In a very short time he would see his name in the book review sections of famous metropolitan newspapers. He would see the advertisements of his book. The world would know of him, and give him whatever he asked for—wherever he went he would be known!