He went on in this strain for some time. «You are perfectly right,» said Edna. «But you need not go on so long. I've said I was a fool, and I'm sorry. Now it's late: we shan't see the garden. You must get your tram.»
«It is your fault,» said he, «for taking the child to a damned film studio. The garden must wait. Goodbye, I'm off.»
Henry caught his train, and vastly enjoyed the landscape all the way to the edge of the city, where the spring haze had thickened and greyed a little, and the day had lost its bloom. The park, outside Henry's office in the museum building, looked pinched and mean and dull compared with the neighbourhood of Tarrytown. The morning was rather tedious, lunch was dull; after lunch, Henry's telephone rang. «Mr. Sanford? This is the New York office of Cosmos Films.»
«Yes. Go on.»
«Mr. Sanford, you heard of your lovely little girl's screen test? Well, I've been calling your home, Mr. Sanford. Seemed like nobody was in. Finally we located you at your office.»
«So I observe. But why?»
«Very good news, Mr. Sanford. In fact, my very heartiest congratulations. I wonder if we could get together for a little chat.»
«Better tell me about it right away,» said Henry, seeing what was coming. «I'm afraid I'm having a very busy spell.»
«The fact is,» said the other, «our Hollywood end is mighty interested in the results of your little girl's screen test. I think if we can get together I can tell you something that would interest you a lot.»
«I don't think you could,» said Henry, luxuriously sadistic. «Thanks very much. Goodbye.»
«Mr. Sanford. Mr. Sanford,» came the voice at the other end. «You don't understand. Please don't hang up.»
«I take it you are offering my child a … a screen contract?» said Henry.
«Well, yes, Mr. Sanford. I think I can go as far as that.»
«And I think I can go so far as to refuse,» said Henry.
«But, Mr. Sanford, do you realize? Do you realize what sort of money's involved in this, what it can build up to? The fame. The world-wide prestige … Mr. Sanford, I'm just asking you to think, to consider.»
«My dear sir,» said Henry, «I consider it all a very bad joke.»
«Oh, no,» said the other voice in a positive anguish of earnestness. «This is Cosmos Films all right. Call me back if you doubt it. Maurice Werner. Just call me back.»
«I mean,» said Henry, «I think the fame, prestige, and all that is a bad joke. I should not like my child to have anything whatever to do with your industry. I dislike theatrical children. Now I must say goodbye.»
So saying, he hung up, cutting off a squeal of protest
He turned to his work, which, it so happened, had to do with tenders for the electric wiring of showcases. The relish with which he had rebuked the powers of spiritual darkness abated a little in face of these figures on cultural light He fondled the flake from a stone cheek that served him as a paper-weight. All winter it had exuded a little of its stored four thousand years of sunshine into the grey of his office. Today, however, it seemed just a lump of stone. Yet somewhere in the general greyness there was something — it was very vague, very elusive — a mere memory of a golden gleam.
Suddenly, he found himself thinking of the yellow waistcoat. Or rather, he just saw it. He saw the waistcoat, and he saw himself inside that waistcoat, on the steps of a small but solid country house; a man of leisure, a scholar, a gentleman.
This vivid but very secret waistcoat, of a colour strong as corn colour, but bright as canary, was not wholly imaginary. Seven years ago, on their honeymoon, Henry and Edna had been to Europe, including England, and, in England, to the races. In the paddock Henry had noticed an old man with a red face and white hair. Even as he looked at him he overheard someone saying, «See the old man with the red face and white hair. That's Lord Lonsdale. The one in the yellow waistcoat»
Henry had had a good look at him; he found his red-faced lordship more interesting than the horses. He noted the unusual amplitude of the whitey-grey tweeds, which gave the old boy, with his side whiskers and apple cheeks, the appearance of a bluff old farmer as he stood among the fashionable crowd. Henry, whose taste was of the best, recognized this bucolic touch as the mark of the true prince.
The yellow waistcoat was unquestionably the key and signature to this masterpiece. «For a fat man,» thought Henry, «it is certainly necessary to be a prince to wear a waistcoat of that colour. But a dark, slim man, if he was very rich, and lived the right way …»
«Who is it you are staring at so hard?» Edna had asked.
«No one in particular,» he had said. «Do you see that old man with the red face? I think they said he was Lord Lonsdale.»
«He looks an old darling,» she had said.
Since then, when in vacant and in pensive mood, Henry had found this glorious waistcoat flash upon his inner eye with an effect much like that of Wordsworth's daffodils. When he read of Lord Lonsdale's death, he felt almost like a missing heir.
He once saw a waistcoat, not quite so arrogantly unwearable, but nearly, in the window of Abercrombie & Fitch. He thought of the long history of man, and his own poor seventy years of it. And in that — no yellow waistcoat.
Who else was to wear it? Henry reviewed the trivial lives and unsatisfactory appearances of the very rich. One could hardly imagine Mr. Ford in a waistcoat of that description. His soul cried out to the waistcoat, and the waistcoat cried out to him. They needed one another. A sliver of plate glass and a paltry million or two utterly divided them.
«That man, the slim one with the shining dark hair, is Henry Sanford, the millionaire archeologist»
«He looks a darling.»
Never had the yellow waistcoat gleamed so persistently in the dark recesses of Henry's thoughts, never had all it symbolized of leisure, and position, and the good life, and being a darling, been so clear as this afternoon. A full hour had passed, and the reports were almost where they were. Then Henry's telephone rang again.
«Is that Mr. Sanford? Will you hold the wire, please? This is Cosmos, Hollywood. Mr. Fishbein wishes to speak to you.»
«Oh, hell!» said Henry to himself.
«Mr. Sanford, I've called up personally to make you a very, very humble apology.»
«What's that? Oh, no.»
«I gather our New York branch has been wasting your time, bothering you.»
«Oh, no. Really. They just called up.»
«We know what the museum stands for, Mr. Sanford. Several of our stars make it their first port of call just as soon as ever they hit New York. Here in Hollywood we've come to realize what a museum means in the way of background, authenticity. I'm afraid our New York office was a little brash.»
«Not at all,» said Henry. «Not in the least.»
«I've often wondered what the people thought when the first Greek produced the first statue,» pursued the imperturbable voice, smooth and irresistible as that of an after-dinner speaker reading from notes. «I guess maybe they put it down as just a phase, something that hadn't come to stay. I don't expect a Greek aristocrat would have liked the idea of his child sitting for a nymph or cherub. Mr. Sanford, there's a very great deal of difference between the spoiled prodigy of the Victorian theatre phase, and the natural, simple, thoroughly wholesome and normal child genius of motion pictures, who is to all intents and purposes unconscious of the lens.»
«Oh, quite, quite,» said Henry.
«I wish you had met up with one or two of our principal Hollywood children,» continued Mr. Fishbein. «I mean the top one or two, raised under parental control, with a qualified psychiatrist in the background. You would enjoy a romp with these unspoiled youngsters. Has it ever struck you, Mr. Sanford, that in any up-to-date school your daughter will be called upon to take part in little playlets, calculated to foster the instinct for dramatic art?»