When Denise left the hospital for the hotel where she would stay until the wedding, Steven was more gentle with her than ever, kinder and more loving. He made her very happy. He made love to her again, and it was like loving a ghost—no, it was like loving a fine beautiful body without the ghost, without the spirit. He returned to the HYM to lie sleepless amid the breathings and mutterings of the other young men, turning restlessly in his bed, feeling oppressed, tormented, strung on wires.
He rehearsed feverishly for the part of the Happy Clown, and because he was a fine craftsman and a conscientious artist he continued to give it all he had. The sponsors were pleased. A week before Christmas the current Happy Clown retired and hobbled off to a nursing home. There was no fanfare—the public was not to realize that the Happy Clown was mortal—and Steven took over with no visible change. For five days he played the part to perfection.
On the sixth day he performed as usual, perhaps a little better. His commercials had a special fervor, and the sponsors exchanged happy glances. Denise was sitting in the booth with them; she smiled at Steven lovingly through the glass.
Steven was running a little fast tonight. The engineer made stretching motions with his hands to slow him down, but he used up all his material, even the nugget, with three minutes to spare. Then he said, "All right, folks, now I have a special treat for you," and moved quickly to the center mike. Before the sponsors, or the engineers, or the studio audience, or anybody in the whole American nation knew what was happening, he began rapidly to talk.
He said, "Are you all happy? You are, aren't you?—everybody's happy, because you're all sheep! All sheep, in a nice safe pasture. All alike—you eat alike and dress alike and think alike. If any of you has an original thought you'd better suppress it, or they'll cut it out of you with a knife." He leaned forward and made a horrible face at the camera. Under the jolly makeup and the artful padding, his mouth was shockingly twisted, and tears were running out of his eyes. "A long sharp knife, folks!" He paused momentarily to recover his voice, which had begun to shake. "Go on being happy, go on being sheep. Wear the clothesies, and eat the foodsies, and don't dare think! Me—I'd rather be dead, and damned, and in hell!"
Fortunately nobody heard the last three sentences. The paralyzed engineer had recovered in time to cut him off during the pause, and had signalled the stagehand to draw the curtain and the sound man to play the Happy Clown sign-off record—loud. Steven finished himself thoroughly, however, by repeating the same sentiments, with some others he happened to think of, to Denise and the sponsors, when they all came pouring out of the booth. Then he collapsed.
Steven's Steyner was a complete success. He recovered from it a subdued, agreeable and thoroughly conventional young man, who had the impression that he had suffered a nervous breakdown. He was discharged from the Happy Hour at the end of January, innocently leaving behind him the broken hearts of three nurses and one female physician, and went home to his parents. During his convalescence they were patient with him and passionately kind. In spite of the disgrace they felt, a disgrace that would never be mentioned, they loved him even better than before, because now he was irrevocably like them.
Denise was lost to him. The outburst in the studio, and the Steyner, and the loss of the Happy Clown part were cumulatively too much for her. She broke the engagement and was heard to say that Stevie Russell had proved himself an absolute fool. He was miserable over it, though he had only a hazy idea of what he had done or why Denny should suddenly be so unkind to him.
The Happy Clown incident had passed off well—immediately after it occurred, a powerful battery of comedians, including the Jolly Kitten and the Dancing Dogsie, forgetting rivalries to rally 'round in a crisis, went on the air to insure that it passed off well. They made certain that every viewer should regard the whole thing as a tremendously funny if rather mystifying joke. The viewers fell in with this opinion easily and laughed about the sheep joke a good deal, admiring the Happy Clown's sense of humor—a little sharp, to be sure, not so folksy and down-to-earth as usual, but the Happy Clown could do no wrong. They said to each other, "He laughed till he cried, did you notice? So did I!" For a while teenagers addressed each other as, "Hi, sheep!" (girls were, "Hi, lamb!"), and a novelty company in Des Moines made a quick killing with scatter pins fashioned like sheep and/or lambs.