1936-12-09 — Page 16

CHINA MAIL CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT

MANHATTAN

CAROL

(By Stephen Vincent Benet)

E-red-flannel-clad Santa Clauses were ringing their bells- Fenton, standing at the high window of the hotel. . if he could hear them over all the other noises of New York. It wasn't true. of course. But as the taxi roared out of its rabbit-hole under the Grand Central, he had seen one, wearily shaking his bell on a cor- ner-and that had been enough. They had moved General Sher- man, and built huge, new shafts toward the sky. They had changed the colours of the cabs, and the traffe-lights on the Avenue were different. The girls like Diana Corey would go dancing on other dance-flours than the dance-floors of 1923, and the young men just out of college would have a different patter, But New York was still New York-the mammoth and gilded apple; and he, Dan Fen-- ton, after ten years of exile, was back in it at last.

Incidentally, it was his and Trina's honeymoon; and he must re- member that. They hadn't had a real honeymoon when they were married in 26. Just five days in Chicago-then he'd had to get back to the new job. And then there had been the children and the responsibilities, the boom and the slump and the rebuilding. Twice before., they had had their bags packed for New York and once for Europe-but always something had happened to keep them in Range City. And oddly enough. he'd never been as disappoint- ed as Trina thought. But now, here they were in the Plaza: He'd always meant to have a suite in the Plaza-a suite on the Avenue side.

It was Trina wasn't scared, but she was a little self-conscious. odd to be self-conscious with each other, when you'd been married nine years. But he'd talked so much about New York, especially when they first met--when he was the young new superintendent from the East, and she was Judge Bursch's daughter, and as dif- A ferent from Diana Corey as Range City was from New York, swift child, straight as an Indian, with a queer Indian shyness, and He'd felt very much older and wiser a mind as direct as a man's.

be business conferences for him and shopping for her, and theatres in the evening for both of them. But after that, there would be Christmas. And Christmas was, or should be, a family feast.

glittering wraith from the past. But they'd fallen in love and

-how he wasn't quite so sure. married. And it was love, thought Dan Fenton defiantly-or why should Trina be happy? And Scotty and Janice were swell kids. and the business was going well enough for people like Levinson to be seriously interested, and if things broke right, he'd have. Trina's portrait painted next year. She wanted a young American painter he'd never heard of it was queer how much she knew about things like that. Like her knowing about the old highboy And when that had come from the Fenton house in Vermont. stray celebrities, from governors to lecturing English novelists, arrived in Range City, it was Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Fenton who en- tertained them, by right. And they'd written Dan Fenton's name in on quite a lot of ballots in the last mayoralty election—and he'd twice had his picture in Time... And ten years ago, on a gray, winter day in Christmas week much like this, he had said good-by to Diana Corey in the green-and-silver living-room of a certain apartment on Park Avenue, and walked blindly across town after- ward, with his life, as he thought, in ruins, and all the red-flannel Santa Clauses ringing their bells And Trina must never know. But once you had bitten the gilded apple, you did not forget it in life.

That was why, up to the very last moment, he had hoped that it had prevented others. something would prevent this trip as Yes, even to measles for the children, and his having to go alone. He could have stood it alone-he'd have gone to his college club. and called up people like Hig Avery and Julian Abbott, and never have cared if they remembered him or not. He'd have looked for Angelo's or Maria's, and found them gone with prohibition, and the ghost would have been laid. But with Trina, it was different. For his whole life in New York-the three years he had spent there after college-was bound up with his tempestuous courtship of Diana Corey.

And that was something you couldn't explain to your wife. You couldn't stop at a certain remembered street-corner and say: "At this historic spot, just eleven years and a half ago, a young lady named Diana Corey and I became engaged. We were riding in a Checker cab at the time, and the engagement was It was re- broken three weeks later at a dance at Southampton. newed, oddly enough, the following November in the Harvard Stadium, and broken again, if I remember correctly, at a ball in the Ritz I was making thirty dollars a week, but they'd thought rather well of me at college, and I meant to conquer New York. Miss. Corey was extremely beautiful, and one of the four really celebrated debutantes of her year. She has since married a mil- She lionaire and divorced him, a polo-player and divorced him, and is at present married to an Englishman named Nigel Ridley. has been presented at Court, danced with the Prince of Wales, shot lions in Africa, ridden an aquaplane in full evening dress at An- tibes and been photographed in colour smoking Mammal cigarettes. on the back covers of all the best American magazines. She sounds, I admit, quite poisonous. She has gray eyes, honey-colour- ed hair, a crooked left little finger, and the smallest mouth in the And if she had whistled to me any time up to and includ- world. ing our wedding-day, I would have come to her from the ends of the earth. So Merry Christmas, darling-I can't help it if every- thing in New York reminds me of her! but I shall try to be as much of a gentleman about it as I can.":

No, that could hardly be said. And yet that was what was go- ing to happen he had felt it begin as the train pulled out of Chicago. Fortunately, Trina had been too excited to notice, so far. And to-morrow would be all right, and the next day-there would

They could call up the children on Christmas morning - eat restaurant turkey and solemnly go to a movie or a night-club. But the spirit wouldn't be in it, and a wraith would sit beside them-a 'And Trina's self-consciousness would harden, and he would smoke too many cigarettes. He could- n't share New York with her as she'd shared the West with him- And yet, coming back to it now, the wraith stood between them.

he felt the old urge, the old passion, the fantastic hunger for con- They quest that had crowded the tall towers toward the sky. should have accepted the Levinsons invitation and eaten a decor- ous dinner at the great house at Still Brook among strangers. They should never have come at all.

He turned and saw Trina methodically and skillfully unpacking. There was excited colour in her cheeks, but her square white hands the hands of a capable little girl-moved deftly and precisely. "You haven't even looked out the window!" he said half-angrily. "Come on-let's go out and see the town!”

She gave him a quick smile and shook her head.

"I know you're aching to. "You go ahead, Dan." she said.

I

just want to get a few things straight first-and my head's still going up and down with the train. And I want a bath and a finger- wave and my black dress pressed and--oh, dozens of things: 'Range City Matron Faces New York with a Smile.'" she added unexpect¬ edly. "And I wish I hadn't bought those shoes in Chicago. They're just a big mistake."

“Oh, you look fine." said Dan Fenton, "You look swell." "Uh-huh." said Trina. "1 must! Well, I'll look better this even- ning. I told you I'd be scared of this damn place, Dan Fenton, and I am. Just a girl from the Great Open Spaces. I should have. brought my faithful horse. Oh, Dan-we should have gone to the "Levinsons".

Her

"Oh, that's all right," said Dan Fenton uncomfortably. voice was nervous, for Trina's voice, and she only talked that way. when she was trying to hide that Indian shyness of hers. There was, somehow, an invisible wall between them-a wall that had Well, if she wanted it grown with the last hours on the train. that way, it would have to be that way.

"They're only business acquaintances." he said. we can stir up a Christmas turkey here."

"And I guess

"Oh, it'll be fun," she said dutifully. She went on unpacking "Well" said Dan Fenton, after a minute, "if you're really going to do all that. I suppose the old man might as well"

As he turned down the Avenue, Dan Fenton drew a deep breath If Trina was in one of her odd moods, --a breath of exhilaration. she'd feel better after dinner-and during the theatre, they'd hard- ly have to talk at all. Meanwhile there were the gray sky and the It was all very long princely street and the hurrying crowds. different and was all the same-the rich, glowing windows and the frantic braying of horns, the tall Irish policemen and the women in the rich furs, the desperate last-minute shoppers and the red- ribboned wreaths in the florists. The ten years slipped from his shoulders he walked in a dream. He had never been married - he had never had children. He was Dan Fenton again-one of a thousand young men newly hatched from the colleges, come down to the tallest city to Jook for the gilded apple, each one of them utterly sure that it lay within his grasp.

He sauntered southward in a leisurely manner--it was hard to saunter, when the street was so alive; but even the jostlings and the noise seemed familiar and pleasant. The St. Regis was still He disapproved, there, and the Cathedral with its wide steps. jealously, a little, of Radio City-it had not been built in his time. But one mustn't be an old-timer about things-and it couldn't have been built anywhere but in New York. A sudden view, in a shop-