That same day began for Rarick with his usual habit of twisting
reluctantly out of the belated sleep that came to him just before dawn.
It was so good, this early morning drifting-down beneath the snows of
consciousness. It was more like a little death, he sometimes thought,
than the sleep which must come to most people. It was so absolutely
dreamless. So disembodied. It was as if Rarick shot off into space for
these sleeps. They bathed, they refreshed. They pumped him full of the
energy you would expect from an eight-hour instead of a three-hour
sleep. They were his air-tight retreats. Jenny was already up when
he awoke. Sun beat against the drawn curtains. The muffled sound of
the city came roaring softly, and he could hear Jenny moving about
in her boudoir, giving the nervous kind of staccato orders to her
maid that made her attitude toward her servants seem imperious. His
opening thought had to do with an idea that had boomed into his brain
during the night. Why not erect a concert-auditorium, vast, aërial,
dramatically sky-high, on the roof of the seventy-nine-story Rarick
Building? There must still be time to adapt construction plans to that
daring scheme. A Gothic auditorium of superb twilights. Three thousand
seats, each one a _fauteuil_. A cathedral organ, diapason pipes. If
only the roof space would permit. Increase cost by millions--better to
call in Yardsley the architect at once....
Rarick Auditorium!
There was a note on Jenny’s writing-pad for him:
Am using your Hispano this morning, as mine is up for repair. Have
given orders to send around Renault sedan for you. Body of French
car is here. Man will call to see Hellman. My O.K. will be on bill
for chinchilla coat. Do you care to present Avery with one of those
three-room portable camp sets? Nice for week-end camping-trips, in
which he should be encouraged.
Plans for Adirondack house annex are in your desk drawer, right.
Jennifer wishes to charter private car, Penn., for forty guests for
Navy football game, Nov. 18. Your office can arrange.
Saranac Hospital Committee will ask Hellman for an interview with
you. Please give generous check in my name. These people important to
me. Mrs. Carleton Murray, president. Do not snub. Not home to dinner.
Charity dance at Plaza tonight. Going alone.
He preferred Jenny up and out of the room first, and her memorandum,
even though so unusually verbose these days, by pad. He had no
intention of seeing Mrs. Murray, whose philanthropies were conspicuous
and obnoxious to him, or of presenting his son with some _deluxe_
camping paraphernalia, which he thought effete.
But how typical, this procedure! He had feigned sleep when Jenny
had come trailing in between two and three. Then she had taken the
opportunity of his morning sleep to tiptoe off to her dressing-room,
from where he could catch her quick spatter of words to her maid. Do.
Don’t. Don’t. Do. It was at least three days since they had met for
more than the briefest of periods. There was one of her letters from
Avery twisted and thrown on the night table beside the blue carafe. On
his way to his dressing-room, the temptation to smooth it out and read
it smote Rarick. The salutation, “Dearest of Mothers,” smote his eyes
from a corner that had not been caught in the twist.
He did not pause to pry into it.
At eight-thirty, an attorney came to sit beside him while he had his
breakfast in a small sun-room of superb walnut walls, inlaid with
Rarick’s collection of bronze medallions. The discussion was in regard
to a pending suit against Rarick Chain for infringement of copyright
law on a toy edition of a pocket dictionary they were about to
distribute in hundreds of thousands at five cents the copy.
At nine o’clock they rode downtown together in the Renault sedan as far
as Times Square, where Rarick dived into the subway.
He had been much headlined for that custom of his.