As he waited for the drawings to be photographed, he began to fear that something had happened to them, something Vivograph was attempting to conceal. He saw his 32,416 drawings fluttering slowly to the floor, a snowstorm of spilled pages, each flake slightly different from the others; he saw a black footprint, like one of the footprints in a dance manual, stamped in the center of each clean white moonscape; and he saw, rising along the sides of high piles of crisp white paper, little red-and-yellow flames darting higher and higher.
The day came when his reels of film were ready. At once a new worry sprang up in him: suppose Kroll were to discover what he had done? The revelation of an immense secret life, of vast energies directed away from the World Citizen, could strike Kroll only as a criminal violation of their agreement; punishment would be harsh and swift. Caution was crucial. At Vivograph a man with a sharp chin and thin pink lips kept plying him with questions, but Franklin, slyly avoiding his gaze, said that he knew nothing about it, he was just there to pick up the cans of film and the boxes. At home he decided to make it a surprise for Stella. He had rented a projector earlier in the week and purchased a portable screen attached to a collapsible tripod. Mrs. Henneman served dinner and left at seven-thirty; she would return at seven-thirty in the morning. “A good night to you, Mr. Payne,” she said, and he was startled: surely she couldn’t know about the trip to Vivograph, the night’s screening? “That’s all right, Mrs. Henneman,” he said, waving. “I’ll be just fine. Don’t you worry about me.” In the kitchen he played a game of Parcheesi with Stella, who liked each of them to take two colors. At eight-thirty she went upstairs to get ready for bed and Franklin crept up to the study to set up the screen and load the first reel in the projector. By the time she had finished brushing her teeth he was back in the parlor, pacing. In Stella’s room he read to her a chapter of Anne of the Island, then closed the book and said, “I have a surprise for you: upstairs.” He placed a finger over his lips. Stella sat up at once, her dark hair falling over one shoulder, her lips parted slightly, her large, dark eyes grave in their excitement.
She followed him up the stairs and entered the tower room quietly, taking in the projector and screen without a word. On one side of the projector Franklin had placed his leather desk-chair, on the other Stella’s small wooden chair from her old worktable. She sat down quietly on the childish chair with her hands in her lap, then slid forward until her shoulders pressed against the chair-top. Raising a hand she began to wind her hair round and round a finger. Franklin turned out the light and started the projector. There was a flickering blankness on the screen, then a briefly flashed numeral J, a few scratchy lines, and suddenly the title, in carefully drawn black letters. Franklin shifted the projector slightly; the cartoon began. In the darkroom he had stared at the white paper, waiting. From the depths of whiteness black shapes had come. But the pictures had not moved. On the white screen the black pictures moved — the old mystery made new. Dark and light: night and moon: dark theater and bright screen. In the dark he could see the shaft of light thrown by the projector. It looked like a moonbeam in some old painting of a forest. It struck him that the projector beam was the true modern moonbeam, the ray of light from a new realm of mystery and enchantment that outmoded the poor old moon. And it was good: he saw that it was good, that he hadn’t lost his touch. Stella sat rigid, spellbound, tense with attention.
It was shortly after the landing on the moon that a deep excitement seized Franklin, for he realized that something extraordinary was going to happen — and yet, was it really so surprising, after all? The footsteps on the stairs were light but not to be mistaken. Stella, screen-enchanted, noticed nothing. The stairs creaked once, then were still; after a while the door opened. She was wearing a spring dress, one that he remembered, and a white flower in her hair. She looked at him questioningly, a little shyly; he was grateful that she said nothing. A flicker of light from the projector played on one sleeve and on her collarbone. She looked about for a moment or two, then stepped to the back of the room, not far from Stella, and silently watched the shimmering screen.
And he was touched that she had come: after all, she had never much cared for his cartoons. That was only proper, for she played Schubert on the piano and had once talked to him on the porch of her father’s house in Cincinnati about the difference between Ingres and Delacroix. He hoped she would like this one, for it was the best he was able to do.
And again he heard a footstep on the stair: he was not surprised. It was a firm step, a confident step — the step of someone who had no doubt about where he was going. After a while the door opened, and Max stood there with a hand in his pocket, the other hand gripping a suit jacket flung over his shoulder. His tie was loosely knotted and his top shirt button undone, and he looked at Franklin with affection and a touch of wryness. Then he removed the hand from his pocket and touched the fingertips lightly to his forehead in salute. He looked quietly about, then stepped to the back of the room, near Cora but not directly beside her.
The first reel came to an end; quickly Franklin removed it and put in the second reel. Max would like this one: he would understand what Franklin had done.
But hardly had the second reel begun when there was another sound on the stair. It was a heavier tread, the tread of someone not accustomed to climbing flights of stairs, and Franklin listened anxiously to the slow, relentless, gradually approaching steps. For although he had not expected anyone else, on this special occasion, still his little group seemed incomplete. Outside the closed door came the sound of labored breaths and a faint asthmatic wheeze. Then slowly the door opened, and in the doorway, wiping his forehead with a large pocket handkerchief, stood Kroll. Yes, it was Kroll — how could it be otherwise? — Kroll with his melancholy, intelligent eyes, Kroll with his chocolate-brown suit jacket stretched to the breaking point across his great shoulders and massive belly, Kroll with a big polka-dot bow tie, evidently purchased for the occasion, for it still had its price tag. It sat a little askew over a triangle of rumpled shirt. Kroll stepped into the room and closed the door softly behind him. And Franklin was grateful that he had come: he wanted Kroll to see what he could do. Kroll had brought with him a metal folding chair with a leather seat, and after a quick glance he set up his chair in the dark between Stella, seated in front of him, and Cora and Max, standing behind him at the back of the room.
Even as Kroll sat down on his chair, allowing his broad hands, with their little black hairs that looked as if they had been combed carefully to one side, to sink gradually into the dark, Franklin became aware of yet another sound on the stairs. It was a pair of footsteps this time, and Franklin felt a sharp tug of curiosity and excitement, for he had thought his little party complete. And although he was not entirely surprised, for nothing surprised him on this special occasion, even so he could not still the violence of his heart as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs. The door opened and the couple entered, first the woman and then the man, their figures a little more stooped than he had imagined, their faces unclear in the dark. But he recognized the bag of knitting with its faded pink flowers that the woman carried over one shoulder, and the old man’s darkroom apron was deeply familiar to him. Arm in arm they made their way to the back of the room, where they stood on the other side, apart from Cora and Max, though Cora, just for a moment, stepped over with a child’s wooden chair and helped the woman sit down. Once seated, she took out her knitting needles but watched the screen without looking away; and his father, standing bent beside her with the fingertips of his left hand resting on the back of the little chair, his cheeks waxy smooth and reddened with rouge, his father, giving off a sweet, disturbing odor of lilies, raised and lowered the extended index finger of his right hand, counting silently as he watched the screen.