“I knew the first time I saw you, Mr. Harrow,” he said, “that you would have the lovely sense of humor which sparkles in your plays. Well, I wanted to look up the word ‘minister,’ not the noun, but the intransitive verb. Wait, I can give you the direct quote.”
The black book came out again, confirming the old rule that you could always successfully do the same thing about twice.
“Here it is. Definition number seven, verb intransitive. ‘To give service, care or aid. Attend, as to wants, necessities, etc.’ Well, there I am, and that’s what I’m here for, Mr. Harrow.”
Tom Harrow thought of the last time he was in this room, and the associations were so vivid that it was difficult to give his whole attention to Mr. Godfrey. He was not really listening; instead, his attention was focused on the silence of the church outside, and subconsciously at least he was waiting for the organ to strike up its commanding notes.
“Say,” Mr. Godfrey said, “I’ve been so intrigued by our conversation that I must have forgot to ask you to sit down. Pardon the inhospitality and have a seat. Or maybe in my position I ought to say, have a pew. I suggest the rocker instead of the horsehair ones.”
“Why, thanks,” Tom Harrow said.
The Boston rocker groaned arthritically and its instability fitted with his mood. Mr. Godfrey, carefully pulling up his gray slacks to preserve the creases, perched himself on one of the Gothic chairs. It was as though Mr. Godfrey were not quite sitting down and not quite standing up and at any moment he might do one or the other. As it was, he was almost doing both. He was a long way from the aging and gentle Mr. Naughton who, as Tom Harrow recalled, had entertained him in that room with nothing but earnest silence. The room had been so still, in fact, that you could hear the rustling of the wedding guests above the muted organ notes. Perhaps Mr. Naughton had believed that those last minutes should best be spent in meditation, although he might have known that meditation was too late.
“Now my idea,” Mr. Godfrey said, “is that the modern church ought to be a sort of spiritual service station where people can get the impetus to dedicate themselves anew.”
Tom pushed out his legs hastily to catch his balance.
“Do you really think it’s possible, Mr. Godfrey, to dedicate yourself anew?”
Mr. Godfrey laughed and rubbed his hands together.
“Why, say,” he said, “if it weren’t so, I wouldn’t be out here in my coveralls with First Congregational embroidered on the back. You ought to drive up to the pumps sometime and try my octane, Mr. Harrow—some of Godfrey’s special. But, seriously, you’ve got to be on your toes these days to service all the new models of psychological cars coming to the pumps.”
Tom Harrow was only half listening. He was thinking that his image of Mr. Naughton had never been so clear, but there was no doubt that Mr. Godfrey had a point. The spirit which had raised the spire of the First Congregational had been militant and not gently somnolent like Mr. Naughton, and yet he would have preferred Mr. Naughton’s company.
Now that Mr. Godfrey was started, it was like listening to Emily in that little further effort was required. Mr. Godfrey, perched on the Gothic chair, had rested his elbows on his knees, cupped his chin in the palms of his hands and stared bemused across the small room.
“This ministry business is more of an eye-opener than you’d think,” he said. “Say, I wish I could write, and of course I could if I ever had the leisure. I owe a little time to Mrs. Godfrey and our children, but if I could write, believe me, I could tell a mouthful about psychological interrelationships. That line of mine about new modern psychological cars driving into the filling station has more significance than I thought when I first turned it off. I wish I had more time to write and more time for quiet meditation. Frankly, the way things are going, there’s no place I can get away by myself, what with Mrs. Godfrey and the children. Actually, when I put on my thinking cap, I like to crawl in here below the pulpit, but it’s mighty cold in winter, that is, weekdays.”
Tom experienced a faint surge of relief. A second or so before he had been almost positive that Mr. Godfrey was going to come up with an idea for a play or an offer of collaboration.
“Isn’t there any way of heating this room?” he asked.
“Not unless you heat the whole church along with it,” Mr. Godfrey said. “I’m an idealist; but I’m practical, and I couldn’t ask for that.”
Tom Harrow smiled his most sympathetic smile and half closed his eyes. He was enjoying this conversation with Mr. Godfrey, partially, and the best of it was he could think his own thoughts. It may have been that Mr. Godfrey’s prof on campus had taught him to phrase things simply. You simply could not make too many points at once, and the filling station and the new model cars represented an effort that impinged upon everyone’s daily life. He had a vision, himself, of two-toned cars with blended upholstery and plastic instrument panels to match—shocking pinks and baby blues and chartreuse and violets.
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Godfrey said, “this stress and strain of modern civilization creates some pretty mixed-up people. It’s a wonder to me sometimes how some men and women in this town can put up with each other the way they do, but a lot of them can’t afford not to. No wonder that a lot of folks need a new spark plug or a turn or two on their distributors now and then, or a realignment of the wheels. No wonder the treads don’t wear the same on everybody’s tires. We were speaking of that sermon topic, weren’t we? ‘How Happy Are You Inside?’ It gave me a real thrill when I discovered it caught your attention, Mr. Harrow.”
Mr. Godfrey’s voice had broken his train of thought and Tom Harrow moved uneasily.
“Now that you mention it,” he said, “I don’t know exactly why it did attract my attention. Maybe because it was such an obvious question.”
“You got that, did you?” Mr. Godfrey said. “Well, that makes me feel happy inside myself, because I deliberately wanted it to be obvious.”
Mr. Godfrey nodded brightly and sat up straighter.
“You’ve got to hit them where they belong. That’s another thing my prof said when we were back on campus. I wanted to hit on something that everyone thinks about at some point. Don’t you think about how happy you are inside, Mr. Harrow?”
“I used to,” Tom Harrow said, “but lately I’ve put the question out of my mind. I seem to have learned pretty well to know exactly how I’m going to feel inside each day without thinking about it.”
Mr. Godfrey’s forehead wrinkled.
“Now that sounds fine,” he said, “but I don’t quite get it. You mean by what you say that you are always happy inside?”
“No, no,” Tom Harrow answered. “I only said I know how I’m going to feel. If you want my opinion, I have a deep suspicion of anyone who always feels happy inside, as you put it.”
“You mean there must be something wrong with him?” Mr. Godfrey asked.
“Either that,” Tom Harrow said, “or he hasn’t learned much from living. And if we want to get personal, let me ask you the topic question: How happy are you inside?”
Mr. Godfrey was silent for a moment.
“Pardon me,” he said, “while I do a little soul-searching.”
The small room was beautifully quiet, and once again Tom had the impression of the silent church outside, and then the illusion of people waiting, and then he had the memory again of the muted organ.
“No,” Mr. Godfrey said. “Naturally I am not always. And you’re right, it would be euphoria or something like that, wouldn’t it? I am not recommending feeling happy inside all the time. I am merely recommending making the effort. I am merely recommending being at peace, at peace with the world and God.”
It had taken a very long time, but there He was and Tom Harrow was very glad of it. The mention of God had brought back the memory of Mr. Naughton. It was safe to assume that Mr. Naughton had not studied social anthropology at the Harvard Summer School; but at the same time, Mr. Naughton had mentioned the name of the Divinity more
frequently and more convincingly than Mr. Godfrey. On that day when he and Mr. Naughton had sat in silence, prosperity had reached a new plateau similar to the more fantastic one which was unwinding itself now outside on Bay Street. It had seemed that automobiles would never be brighter or larger, that electronics and automation had reached an acme of perfection, that girls could never conveniently show more of themselves than in those days, but how wrong those convictions had been. In retrospect, times were quiet before the crash and before Roosevelt and it was easier to mention God.
Mr. Naughton was looking in the mirror above the writing table, adjusting his academic gown.
“God bless you and keep you, Thomas,” he said. “I shall go first, then you and your friend.” He was referring, of course, to Mort Sullivan. Then music had entered the pulpit room. The organ was playing the wedding march.
V
And Some Day the Nation May Honor You, Too—Just Like Your Dear Old Pop
In recent years, Emily had become more and more frequently right until she was rapidly reaching the situation, which Tom Harrow had observed in several other women, of knowing she was right even when proved wrong. Of the other women he had known who had developed this propensity, three had played leading parts on Broadway and one was the only daughter of the senior partner of a New York law firm who had inherited a very large fortune under her father’s will. Though all these people were very different, this single character trait gave them all a serene expression which was almost a family resemblance. In the last few years Emily herself was becoming noticeably serene, even to the point of occasionally delivering homilies, and Tom Harrow had observed that lately her lips were habitually bent into the same half smile that he had observed on contented psychiatrists.
This, however, was somewhat beside the point. The point was that Emily had been partially correct regarding several of the things he had overheard her say that morning. She had been almost right when she had said that he did not have enough association with the town to make such a production of it. She had been right, although he did not know where Emily had picked up the facts of his family history because he was sure that he had not told Emily any of them. Emily had always said frankly that she was bored by stale reminiscence about people whom she had never known and would not have understood; and when he came right down to it, he did not know much about his mother’s family, the Fowlers, either, except that it was respectable and that his grandfather, Thomas Fowler, had once been a judge in the district court and that his Aunt Edith Fowler had lived in a Victorian house on Locust Street, an aggressive-looking house of the late Currier and Ives vintage which had been sold and demolished long ago.
He could not forget its draftiness or the golden oak staircase or the bronze Nubian slave on the newel post holding a taper designed for gas light. He could remember the other gas fixtures, too, and the gas lamp that stood on the flat mission desk in the library, a room which still bore faint imprints of his vanished grandfather. It was strange how firmly insignificant detail could persist when so much that was vital could evaporate, or perhaps no detail was insignificant when handled artistically. At any rate, one of the eccentrically useless things he could remember most clearly was the tube that connected the gas desk lamp with the small gas spigot projecting from the library baseboard. The flexible tube covered with green cloth had twisted in a sinuous, tropical way across the Brussels carpet.
Only a year or so ago while they were motoring through Florida, Emily had insisted that they stop the Cadillac at a snake farm because she had seen a sign advertising kumquat jam. She did not mind if there were snakes. She had been looking and looking all the way up from Fort Lauderdale for kumquat jam, and while she was buying it, Tom Harrow watched the snake pit. The rattlers, relieved of their venom, had been resting in postures of extreme lassitude, curved like that gas hose in his Grandfather Fowler’s library. Aunt Edith had always referred to him as “Grandfather Fowler” or “the Judge,” and there was veneration in both titles.
“If your Grandfather Fowler were alive,” his Aunt Edith had told him once, “I think he would offer you a gold watch if you were to promise not to smoke until you were twenty-one.”
And perhaps—who knows?—Aunt Edith might have been right, although there was no present way of telling.
“The Judge had that sofa upholstered the year before he died,” his Aunt Edith had said once. “That is why I drape the shawl over it, so the fabric won’t wear down.”
Why had he never asked more about the Fowlers? The answer was that the problems of puberty were enough in themselves so that one accepted one’s parents’ parents as static facts until it was too late. It was too late now to learn anything about the Fowlers, too late to learn anything about Aunt Edith, too, or why she disapproved of his mother. The Fowlers, all except his Aunt Edith, had vanished with gaslight and the hand-cranked Locomobiles before he was sixteen. Save for a voice or a gesture, they were academic now—except for his father. Tom’s self-consciousness regarding his father was with him still. His father was a drunkard and one might as well let it go at that, except his father had been a valuable influence in a purely negative way. The memory, vague though it was, had always made him careful about liquor; but then, there were plenty of other examples from which to profit on Park Avenue, Broadway or points west.
“Your Grandfather Fowler, the Judge,” his Aunt Edith once said, “never permitted anything in the house, and I hope you won’t, either.”
Well, his grandfather was gone and so was the house on Locust Street, but academic questions remained which he could consider on a sleepless night. Which people were the more disagreeable, for instance—those who said at the drop of a hat that they never permitted anything in the house, or those who could not leave it alone? The couldn’t-leave-it-alones probably won the contest because sterling character was bound to command respect. That great Civil War cavalryman, for instance, the plumed and bearded Confederate general, J. E. B. Stuart, when dying of an abdominal wound, inflicted at a Virginia crossroad, had refused a shot of brandy to assuage his pain because he had promised his mother never to take a drop. It was seriously impossible not to respect and admire such consistency. At the age of twelve, when his father, in spite of opiates administered by Dr. Crocker, emerged early one evening from his bedroom and fell down the stairs in a brownstone house on Seventy-second Street, Tom, too, had promised his mother that he would never touch a drop. Unlike General Stuart, he had broken the vow in his freshman year at college. He could not recall what justification he gave himself, but his reason probably was included in one of that dashing general’s favorite songs, “If you want to have a good time, jine the Cavalry.” It was hard at the age of eighteen not to conform to environment. He had never experienced much free guilt about that promise, even the morning after, and he had never sworn again never to touch another drop. Nevertheless, the deterring memory was with him, including his father’s handsome, pale face, whose features he had inherited himself, and Dr. Crocker’s amber, goatee beard. The age of bearded doctors had been waning but had not wholly ceased when he had seen his father fall down the stairs in the house on Seventy-second Street.
Goodness knew, he had seen enough of the same thing since. If a fringe of useless ineffectuals was present in any area of endeavor, he often thought that there were more in entertainment fields than elsewhere. You were forever encountering them, forever feeling sorry and giving assistance when common sense told you it was money down the drain; but invariably these people had charm. Ironically enough, some of the most delightful individuals he had ever known had been gamblers, drunkards and liars. In general, it was advisable to beware of charm.
Later that evening, after Tom had made his transient promise to his mother, his father had never been so fascinating. As happened with most inebriates, the headlong plunge down the stairway—he confided to Tom later that he thought he was diving off the high board at the Lake Placid Club—did no great physical harm to Mr. Roger Harrow. He ended up wit
h only a slight cut over the temple, and the shake-up had a sobering effect. As Dr. Crocker, who had many human traits, said when he applied a piece of adhesive tape to the cut, complete relaxation had done it and that the Lord usually took care of drunken men and fools.
Roger Harrow, or Roggie, as the group who came to the house for Wednesday night poker used to call him, could snap back very quickly. Besides charm, those people generally possessed oxlike constitutions. No headache, no hangover, a cold shower and there he was; the color was back in his face and the adhesive patch made him look distinguished. He even looked well in those queer starched collars of the period exemplified by the drawings of Leyendecker. He had put on a short, dark coat, a pearl-gray waistcoat, and striped, diplomatic trousers, a costume not conspicuous at that time.
“Mary, dear,” he said to Tom’s mother as he bent and kissed her hand, and it was too late now to discover where he had discovered the trick of heel-clicking and hand-kissing which he always practiced when he was sorry, “what can I say? Absolutely nothing.”
“Oh, Roger,” she began, but he raised his hand and stopped her.
“One moment, my love, my sweet,” he said. “There is one thing I must add, merely as a grace note. It is what the telephone girls say when they give you a wrong number—Excuse it, please. And may I add, my only love, that I have never seen you look more adorable?”
“Oh, Roger,” she said again, but he raised his hand a second time.
“Please, sweet,” he said, “I am ready to receive the well-merited lecture, but first may I embroider on that final thought of mine for one more mere second? Can you guess what I’m going to say? One guess, and a kiss if you can’t.”
And then he kissed her gently.
A son’s loyalty to his mother was unnecessary to remind him that she was very pretty with her dark hair done in a psyche knot and her cheeks flushed and her brown eyes still shining from her tears. There was always that hope that it would never occur again.
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