Of course we did not know this for twenty hours. When we got to the airport we told the purser that Mr. Schwartz was not continuing, and then forgot about him. The storm had wandered away into Eastern Tennessee and broken against the mountains, and we were taking off in less than an hour. Sleepy-eyed travellers appeared from the hotel, and I dozed a few minutes on one of those Iron Maidens they use for couches. Slowly the idea of a perilous journey was recreated out of the debris of our failure: a new stewardess, tall, handsome, flashing dark, exactly like the other except she wore seersucker instead of Frenchy red-and-blue,
went briskly past us with a suitcase. Wylie sat beside me as we waited.
Did you give the note to Mr. Smith? I asked, half asleep.
Yeah.
Who is Mr. Smith? I suspect he spoiled Mr. Schwartzs trip.
It was Schwartzs fault.
Im prejudiced against steam-rollers, I said. My father tries to be a steam-roller around the house, and I tell him to save it for the studio.
I wondered if I was being fair; words are the palest counters at that time in the morning. Still, he steamrollered me into Bennington and Ive always been grateful for that.
There would be quite a crash, Wylie said, if steamroller Brady met steam-roller Smith.
Is Mr. Smith a competitor of Fathers?
Not exactly. I should say no. But if he was a competitor, I know where my money would be .
On Father?
Im afraid not.
It was too early in the morning for family patriotism. The pilot was at the desk with the purser and he shook his head as they regarded a prospective passenger who had put two nickels in the electric phonograph and lay alcoholically on a bench fighting off sleep. The first song he had chosen, Lost, thundered through the room, followed, after a slight interval, by his other choice, Gone, which was equally dogmatic and final. The pilot shook his head emphatically and walked over to the passenger.
Afraid were not going to be able to carry you this time, old man.
Wha?
The drunk sat up, awful-looking, yet discernibly attractive, and I was sorry for him in spite of his passionately ill-chosen music.
Go back to the hotel and get some sleep. Therell be another plane tonight.
Only going up in the air.
Not this time, old man.
In his disappointment the drunk fell off the bench and above the phonograph, a loudspeaker summoned us respectable people outside. In the corridor of the plane I ran into Monroe Stahr and fell all over him, or wanted to. There was a man any girl would go for, with or without encouragement. I was emphatically without it, but he liked me and sat down opposite till the plane took off.
Lets all ask for our money back, he suggested. His dark eyes took me in, and I wondered what they would look like if he fell in love. They were kind, aloof and, though they often reasoned with you gently, somewhat superior. It was no fault of theirs if they saw so much. He darted in and out of the role of one of the boys with dexterity but on the whole I should say he wasnt one of them. But he knew how to shut up, how to draw into the background, how to listen. From where he stood (and though he was not a tall man, it always seemed high up) he watched the multitudinous practicalities of his world like a proud young shepherd to whom night and day had never mattered. He was born sleepless, without a talent for rest or the desire for it.
We sat in unembarrassed silence I had known him since he became Fathers partner a dozen years ago, when I was seven and Stahr was twenty-two. Wylie was across the aisle and I didnt know whether or not to introduce them, but Stahr kept turning his ring so abstractedly that he made me feel young and invisible, and I didnt dare. I never dared look quite away from him or quite at him, unless I had something important to say and I knew he affected many other people in the same manner.
Ill give you this ring, Cecilia.
I beg your pardon. I didnt realize that I was
Ive got half a dozen like it.
He handed it to me, a gold nugget with the letter S in bold relief. I had been thinking how oddly its bulk contrasted with his fingers, which were delicate and slender like the rest of his body, and like his slender face with the arched eyebrows and the dark curly hair.
He looked spiritual at times, but he was a fighter somebody out of his past knew him when he was one of a gang of kids in the Bronx, and gave me a description of how he walked always at the head of his gang, this rather frail boy, occasionally throwing a command backward out of the corner of his mouth.
Stahr folded my hand over the ring, stood up and addressed Wylie.
Come up to the bridal suite, he said. See you later, Cecilia.
Before they went out of hearing, I heard Wylies question: Did you open Schwartzs note?