But there was a way out. There was the one sure way. All right, so it was selfish. So it was abusing a great and mysterious power for private ends. But the custodian of that power had some privileges, didn’t he? And if he had one and only one prayer on earth—
After the seventh whiskey he went back to the office. It took him three tries to turn out legible copy. He hadn’t written a word for the Social Notes since Molly had joined the staff, and besides, the machine seemed to resent the drunken pawing of his fingers.
But he made it at last, and it appeared in the next day’s Sentinel, and H. A. Hitchcock said to his daughter, “Wish you’d told me, first, Laura. But I must say I think it’s a fine idea. He’s a comer, that boy. And maybe if you can use a little influence with him— Useful thing, having a newspaper editor in the family. You can keep him in hand.”
What came next is more plateau that we don’t need to examine in detail. At least, apparently plateau; a discerning eye might see the start of the fall already. Because lives don’t make nice, clear graphs. The rise and the fall can be going on at once, and neither of them noticeable.
So we can accept as read all the inevitable preparations for such an event as the wedding of H. A. Hitchcock’s daughter to the most promising young man in Grover. We can pass over the account of the white splendor of the wedding day and the curiously anticlimactic night that followed.
That was the night, too, when Molly, who never drank anything but beer, brought two fifths of whiskey to Luke Sellers’ boardinghouse and sat up all night discussing them and other aspects of life. But the scene would be difficult to record. Most of what she said wouldn’t make any sense to a reader. It didn’t make much sense to Luke, nor to Molly herself the next morning.
We can skip by the details of how Grover solved the manpower shortage in the adjacent farming territory, and of how liberalism triumphed in the council election. We can go on to a Saturday night three months after Whalen Smith departed, leaving a wish behind him.
John MacVeagh had been seeing quite a bit of Ingve Johansen since the Hitchcock dinner party. He was a man you kept running into at the luncheons you had to attend, and as your father-in-law’s general manager he was a man you had to have to dinner occasionally.
And MacVeagh’s first impression was confirmed: he was a good guy, this Johansen. A guy you’d be happy to have in a cracker-barrel session, only those sessions never seemed to come off any more. Running a daily was a very different job from being editor of the old weekly Sentinel. And when so much responsibility rested on your slightest word—you didn’t have time for a good bull session any more.
But Johansen would have belonged, just as Mr. Hasenberg would. Sometime he must get the two of them together away from the plant. For an executive like Johansen no more deserved to be judged by H. A. than Mr. Hasenberg did to be rated like Bricker.
Besides all the lines of race or religion or country or class, MacVeagh was beginning to feel, there was another basic dividing line among men: There are the good guys, the Men of Good Will, if you want to be fancy about it, and there are—others.
Ingve Johansen was of the first; and that’s why it hurt MacVeagh, when he dropped in that Saturday at his good, plain, honest bar for a quick one, to find Johansen reduced to telling the bartender the story of his life.
MacVeagh stayed in the bar longer than he’d intended. He steered the manager over to the corner table and tried gently to find out what was eating him. For this was no ordinary drinking, but some compelling obsession.
“Look,” MacVeagh said finally, “I know it’s none of my business, and if you want to tell me to go jump in a lake I’ll try and find one. But you’ve got something gnawing inside you, and if there’s anything I can do to help you—” You can’t tell men that you have the power to ease their troubles, but if you can once learn the troubles . . .
Johansen laughed. His heavy shock of blond hair hobbled with his laughter. He said, “How do you expect me to feel after you stole my girl?”
MacVeagh sat up straight. “Your girl? You mean you’re the one that she—”
“We were going to be married. Hadn’t sounded out H. A. yet, but it was all set. And first thing I know I read that piece in your paper—”
There was nothing to say. MacVeagh just sat there. He’d been sure it was the contemptible Phil Rogers. His conscience had felt clear. But now, watching the man she should have married . . .
“The worst thing,” Johansen added, “is that I like you, MacVeagh. I don’t even want to wring your neck for you. But Laura’d better be happy.”
“She will be,” said MacVeagh flatly. He rose from the table stiffly, made arrangements with the bartender about getting Johansen home, and walked out. There was nothing he could do.
No, he couldn’t even be generous and give her back. The scandal of a divorce . . . Magic doesn’t work backward. Was this the catch that Molly talked about?
The second thing that happened that night was unimportant. But it makes a good sample of a kind of minor incident that cropped up occasionally on the plateau.
On his way to the office, MacVeagh went past the Lyric. He absently read the marquee and saw that the theater was playing Rio Rhythm, Metropolis Pictures’ latest well-intentioned contribution to the Good Neighbor Policy. There were no patrons lined up at the box office—no one
