mood changed back to cheerfulness as soon as he turned away from the mirror and the black frame was out of sight. “. . . up to us to see that it is the era of achievement and promise—promise of a—” he proclaimed loudly on his way downstairs—“promise of a following era of even greater achievement. We can’t do all of it, ourselves, in our generation. But we have the tools at hand and the know-how in our minds and we can—— Damn!”
It was an old house, built for average Americans of the post-Revolution period, and since then average Americans had added several inches to their stature. When he wasn’t watching for it, Stanton invariably bumped his head against a beam halfway down the staircase. He often had determined to remove the beam and enlarge the shallow tunnel of the stairway, and after saying “Damn!” and rubbing his forehead he decided again to have the place ripped apart.
Then, as the pain in his forehead subsided, he studied the beam and thought: No, I can’t touch you or change you. I’ll let you be a reminder. You were right for the people who built this house and lived in it. They could walk under you, otherwise they wouldn’t have put you there. And when I bump my head, you remind me that people are bigger than they used to be. Not only bigger in body, but bigger—he paused—in mind. Perhaps not that even—bigger in hope and belief. . . . He stared at the wrinkled black slab, wondering whether his own words were true. . . . Hope and belief; hope for the future, and belief in the integrity and creativeness of man. As long as you remind me of those things, stay where you are.
“. . . promise of a following era of even greater achievement,” he said aloud. “. . . Not only for us, but for our children, the children of our children, and——” His brain soared; it would be a great speech, he decided—hope and belief, that would be the keynote. He would make them see, make them build, make them create, and he would go one better: he would build for hope and belief. He would build something white and shining and tall and triumphant which would dwarf even the ugly mushroom cloud which he had helped to slap across the face of heaven.
“. . . children of our children, privileged either to live in a world of beauty, striving and accomplishment,” he continued, ducking under the beam, “or foredoomed to hate, destroy and be destroyed. Because we are too stupid to appreciate our own cleverness. Because we are afraid of our own cleverness—afraid to let it work for us, to let us build and make and create what we should——”
At the foot of the stairs he was interrupted by the passage of a large, dark individual wearing a white apron and carrying a silver tray.
“Peace!” this personage cried, with an ivory smile. “Morning, Mist’ Wylie. Just toting your breakfast in for you.”
“Good morning, Supreme Love,” said Stanton. “Where’s Mrs. Wylie?”
“Mis’ Wylie? Why, I b’lieve—” she looked up at him, and for a moment—or did he imagine it?—the bland, black face wore a crafty, unfathomable expression—“she’s on the telephone. Now, you come on in and eat. I got that creamed chipped beef you been hollering for.”
She lumbered flat-footedly toward the breakfast room, calling back, “Now you come on, Mist’ Wylie. Don’t you let your food get cold.”
Stanton was about to follow Supreme Love when he heard Betsy’s voice around the corner from the living room. It was a rich, warm, husky voice, but now it sounded strained and urgent. “. . . Yes, yes, I’ll call you later, can’t talk now. Yes, later. Good-by.” He heard the hollow sound when she dropped the receiver back onto the base of the telephone, then the hurrying rustle of her moiré dressing gown. He called, “Betsy, I think I’ve got it. The speech is all set, and I want you to listen to this——”
Suddenly she appeared, saw him, and stopped as though she had run into an invisible barrier. “Why, Stan—I don’t know—how long have you been here?”
“Hope and belief, Betsy—that’s what I’ll tell them. To build, make, create—that’s the theme. We must believe, we must have hope, because otherwise we destroy ourselves. Do you see what I mean? Do you think it’s good?”
He paused, looking at her and waiting for her verdict, the way a dog might look at a man or a child at his mother.
Betsy took a deep breath and rustled toward Stanton. In the interval of those few feet he stretched his arms and hopes through the roof of his home, through the familiar atmosphere of his visible world, through the singing wilderness of space toward some undiscovered star sailing in pure seas of rightness and wonder.
As she approached him, Stanton thought, Everything I build is for her; she’s so lovely.
Actually the years were beginning to leave their imprint on Betsy. She was acquiring a matronly fullness around the bust, and though her legs were still youthful her ankles were perceptibly thicker. There was a prediction of sagging in the line of her jaw, and the corners of her mouth were starting to make a permanent downward curve which gave her an almost petulant expression.
But Stanton saw none of this. His indelible vision of Betsy was of the girl he married when she was two years out of Farmington, one of the notable beauties of the Eastern seaboard, and perhaps the most sought-after debutante in the entire platinum triangle between Cambridge, Hanover and Annapolis. Other girls maneuvered for Yale, Harvard and Princeton prom bids, and even bought them, one way or another. But Betsy was the kind of girl whose acceptance immediately conferred a social accolade, and for the really important parties she never had fewer than six or eight invitations to choose from. Those were the enchanted years when the music never stopped and the stag line stretched from the Meyer Davis orchestra playing “You’re the Cream in My Coffee” in the Boston Copley to the Meyer Davis orchestra playing “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” in the smilax bowers of the New York Ritz, and magnums of Heidsieck were presented to departing couples at dawn because the hostess had ordered too much and the waiters would drink it up if it wasn’t given to the guests, and that would be bad for the waiters. Everyone—including the waiters—talked about United Corporation, Commonwealth and Southern, and General Motors. It was the best of all possible worlds, although up in the balconies where the chaperons sat there was some indignant muttering about the radical policies of that fellow Hoover.
Whether Betsy had been created for this bright, tight little dream world or the world for Betsy would be hard to say; at any rate, they complemented each other perfectly. Betsy then was as slim and graceful as an arrow. She had a radiant halo of straw-blonde hair and the most extraordinary eyes—in color almost a true violet, with black lashes. Her dancing was just short of Broadway professional standards. When she had a good partner and decided to cut loose with him, it was something to see. In no time all the other dancers would stop and form a big circle around them; Meyer Davis would waggle his baton for something especially intricate; and at the end there would be general applause, with Betsy blushing prettily as though she hadn’t realized anyone was watching.
In addition, of course, she had a good deal of money—not a real wad, according to the peculiar yardstick of the times, but enough to interest any number of young men accustomed to using the Social Register and Dun & Brad-street the way a horse breeder uses the studbook.
The brightest picture Stanton carried of her was not Betsy surrounded by stags at a coming-out at the Ritz, or even Betsy at their wedding on the vast, sheep-cropped lawn of her family’s place in Southampton, where she again was surrounded by tipsy gallants sweating under their frock coats on that hot June afternoon. He remembered her best when he had her all to himself, during their honeymoon in Venice, and he never looked at her without at least one flashing recollection of that fantastic summer when Elsa Maxwell was stage-managing the Lido and the Brenner Pass was nothing but an obscure and barren spot of the Italian Alps. He remembered Betsy
