Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  “Oh, Roger,” she said, “you’re rumpling everything.” But then, it was never going to happen again.

  “And now,” he said, “I shall continue with my thought. There was only one time when you have looked more adorable than now and that was when I first saw you on the sidewalk of that God-damned town, when you were standing in front of your God-damned house and when I rammed that old Olds of mine into the elm tree instead of getting to Bar Harbor.”

  “Roger,” she said, “don’t swear in front of Tommy.”

  Roger Harrow smiled. There were smiles and smiles, and Tom had seen them all. His father’s had a genuine, outgiving quality, a smile that made headwaiters love him and captains ask about him years after his demise.

  “My sweet,” he said, “I stand corrected.”

  If he had been an actor, he might have been good. He had that measured quality which veterans mentioned when speaking of Gillette, and his charm might have projected itself out front like the charm of Arliss.

  “Let us say that very odd town,” he said, “and that fantastical house, my sweet. If it had not been built of wood, it could have come right out of Malory.”

  She smiled and the tension in the room was gone.

  “You didn’t think it was fantastical after you hit that tree,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows and touched the adhesive on his forehead.

  “There was the concussion and you were there,” he said. “Anyway, you were glad to get away.”

  “Even after what happened to it, it was a beautiful motor car,” she said.

  “But it wasn’t the same afterwards,” he answered, “neither it nor I, and it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been looking at you. Your hat was almost a sunbonnet.”

  Then he smiled at Tom, and, after all, anxiety to appear well and to win admiration was an integral part of parenthood.

  “Mary,” he said, “I have a strangely virtuous feeling from sole to scalp and it’s Saturday night and I don’t think it would do a bit of harm if Tom and I were to step out to the Avenue and hail a taxi. I don’t believe Tom’s ever seen Broadway after dark.”

  Then he went on at once, not waiting for an answer.

  “I’d like to take him out to see the lights just once. How about it, Tom? I could do with a bite to eat and we might go to Jack’s and I promise to be back by eleven, dear. It’s time Tom and I did something together. He’s growing up, you know.”

  It was curious to remember that his mother answered promptly.

  “Why, I think it would be lovely, dear,” she said. “Tom, run and get your hat and coat.”

  It was another age, of course. The pre-twentieth-century flavor was there; but looking backwards one saw there was a more significant and pronounced cleavage from the present than any question of manners. It may have been that gaiety was harder to come by now, even in New York. The bright lights, the neon signs, the meretricious marble of motion-picture houses, and the dime-a-dance pavilions had not spread like a tide over every country town. There was only one place then like Broadway. “Don’t blame it all on Broadway,” they used to sing, “you’ve got yourself to blame.” There were the great hotels, the Astor and the Knickerbocker. The street was an American symbol and there were still white ties and tails and opera hats, and there was also another quality that had disappeared long ago, the quality of a frontier town, on Broadway. There was generous spending and there was vulgarity on a large scale. It was a braver street, or perhaps it only looked so to a boy.

  It was hard to remember that everything had been new once. There was a time when hansom cabs must have been novel to a particular generation, and it would have been hard to imagine that anything would ever be more modern than the taxi which stopped for them on the Avenue when Mr. Harrow raised his Malacca walking stick. The taxicab which they entered that night was painted a dignified black, and it was not necessary to bend double in order to climb inside or to hurl oneself in backwards as one did at present. The roof was high enough to accommodate Mr. Harrow’s black bowler hat and the eager pulsation of the engine gave an anticipation of coming speed long before the gears began grinding jovially. There was no doubt any longer that motor cars were there to stay on that balmy April night. There were even self-starters instead of cranks.

  “Drive us through the Park,” his father said, “and then down to Broadway, slowly, so that we can see the lights, and then please stop at Jack’s.”

  Tom Harrow was a New York boy. He attended Gregory’s on East Sixty-fifth, a fashionable boys’ day school in those days, and he knew his way around areas of the city. He had been, like all his generation, to the circus at Madison Square Garden, and to see the mummies in the Metropolitan Museum, and to the Bronx Zoo. He had been to matinees and to luncheon at Delmonico’s and the Plaza. He had seen the lights of Broadway in the dusk, but never late at night. He had never noticed the glow that they made in the sky. The devices of the moving advertisements were as crude as the flickering silent films in the motion-picture houses, and yet he was sure that the lights were brighter than they ever had been since.

  “It’s about time,” his father said. “I should take you around a little, Tom. Only the other day I was talking to your Uncle George about you.”

  He felt a quiver of apprehension, but it was only slight; and, besides, his Uncle George had nothing to do with Broadway.

  “George says you should go to boarding school, and I suppose you should. Of course neither George nor I did, but George points out that nowadays coming from a good boarding school is a very considerable help when entering college, and your Uncle George, I must say, is a specialist in those things.”

  His father laughed without malice. “George knows how to do the right thing, and I must say he’s been very kind to me about furniture and finances and everything. I think George is right about boarding school—Groton, Pomfret, St. Mark’s.”

  But he had not been seriously interested in education. Tom knew instinctively that his father’s fall down the stairs had put them temporarily on an entirely equal basis.

  “Say,” he said, “I never knew you had an Oldsmobile, or that you ran it into a tree or that was how you met Ma.”

  His father’s laugh was an invitation to share in a store of jovial thoughts.

  “I had your same difficulty once,” he said. “Parents should be legally compelled to give at least antiseptic summary of their pasts to their children instead of taking it for granted that their lives are open books—but when should one begin? Certainly not when a child is mewling and puking in his nurse’s arms, as you did more than appeared necessary—not that I had any previous firsthand experience with infants.”

  Mr. Harrow laughed again. The taxi was threading its way through Central Park along the old carriage road that curved in a delightful contrast to Manhattan’s other streets. The taxi’s headlights, which might very well have been acetylene and not electric, unrolled a changing scroll of trees and shrubbery and rock. It was still a period when riding in an automobile presented delicious novelty.

  “In fact, I’ve finally grown so accustomed to you, Tom, that it amazes me that you do not know all about me, not to mention your dear mother and your Aunt Edith and that charming though provincial town from which they hail. Well, well, its umbrageous streets once formed, and doubtless do still, a quaint interlude in the thoroughfare that extends from New York City to Bar Harbor, Maine, and I trust that horses are not as startled now as they were by motor cars when I collided with the tree. It was a choice between the tree and a horse drawing a buggy driven by an unpleasant man who looked like General Grant, and then there was your beautiful mother on the sidewalk. Naturally I chose the tree and the damn Olds didn’t stop.”

  “But why were you going to Bar Harbor?” Tom Harrow asked.

  They were approaching Columbus Circle and the evening sky was aglow with the lights from Broadway.

  “Why was I going to Bar Harbor?” Mr. Harrow said. “What an amazing question—or is it?
I was going, of course, to visit my dear father, your grandfather, who was about to purchase me a junior partnership in the financial house downtown with which I still have the pleasure of working. Seasoned bonds. You must remind me to take you down there and introduce you around the office so that you may listen to the tickers, but don’t buy stocks, Tom, only seasoned bonds.”

  “I didn’t know you ever lived in Bar Harbor,” Tom said.

  “Well, well,” Mr. Harrow said, “I never did in actuality, but my father, your dear grandfather, used to rent a cottage there after my dear mother died. There was gossip, although as your Uncle George would say, entirely unsubstantiated, that he was interested in a Mrs. Coventry, who resided during summers in that quaint village known as Northeast Harbor. Well, well, this is a mere aside. We had more money then. We might have still if your dear grandfather had not become engrossed in mining stocks. Mrs. Coventry came from Colorado, but that is neither here nor there, except that seasoned bonds are generally more reliable. Well, here is Broadway. By gad, it’s always a magic street.”

  There was nothing like old Broadway any more. There had been a graciousness about the city that had vanished. The horses that were still not supplanted by motor trucks were less obtrusive than the automobiles of another generation. The street cleaners, with their brooms and shovels and their galvanized ash cans on wheels, kept the asphalt neat and there were no rows of cars to clog the streets. Litter was taken care of efficiently by the whitewings, since the day of packaged goods was only dawning. Tom could never remember in his youth swirls and eddies of newspapers, of cigarette cartons and chewing gum and candy wrappers. Even the noise of old New York had a magic quality that now was lost. It was an antique conglomeration of human voices, police whistles, the clanging bells of street cars and of motor horns operated by rubber bulbs, the clop-clop of horses and finally, the comfortable and solid roar of the elevated on Sixth Avenue. Broadway and its side streets were bright then with the golden light of old Edison incandescent lamps as yet unadulterated by colored glass, and not affected at all by neon signs. There was an expansive radiance that made everything like the Emerald City of Oz. All theatres had numbers that flashed above their marquees so that the proper vehicles might be promptly delivered to the carriage trade. The wonder of it all never left Tom’s mind. It was with him still as a sort of driving force, despite all later transmutations.

  Of course this New York, according to present standards, was as dated as a set of books by Richard Harding Davis and yet as handsome as the deckle-edged editions of the ephemeral novels that were turned out at the beginning of the century. Sociologists might say that the inequities of wealth were appalling, that the slums were beyond description, and that there was callous cruelty in place of social consciousness—but he had been too young to know. If not a better town, New York was more comprehensible and more magnificent. “Edwardian” might have been another way to put it—a word that had not been invented then. The food and hospitality at Jack’s were Edwardian, with its welcoming doors in the shadow of the Sixth Avenue elevated, and reminiscences of Jack’s existed in London still. Perhaps the ghosts of Jack’s had returned across the sea and still haunted Simpson’s on the Strand. The past was visible in London, never shouldered into oblivion by the present as hastily and remorselessly as was the New York past.

  There was a captain named Ben standing inside the door at Jack’s. From the pleasure he displayed, he obviously approved of Mr. Harrow.

  “Tom,” Mr. Harrow said. “I’m particularly glad that Ben is on duty tonight because I want you to shake Ben’s hand. Ben has been a great comfort to me on many occasions.”

  “And it’s always been a pleasure, Mr. Harrow,” the captain said. “And a pleasure to meet the young man. But we can’t have minors in the room with the bar.”

  “A pity,” Mr. Harrow said, “to be so far away from the source of supply, but any place will do.”

  It was quiet at Jack’s that night, since the hour was well before the theatre closings.

  “Some oysters, I think,” his father said, “as long as they are still in season; and, for myself, a double Manhattan cocktail, and follow it with another in ten minutes. We won’t be long here, I’m afraid. Tom must get his beauty sleep.”

  “Are you sure you ought to have one of those things again?” Tom asked.

  “Oh, certainly,” Mr. Harrow said. “Ben is really a delightful fellow. Don’t you think he has an honest face?”

  “He looked pretty tough to me,” Tom said.

  “It’s merely poor Ben’s nose,” he said. “You see, he forms the apex of the flying wedge.”

  “What’s the flying wedge?” Tom asked.

  “A mass formation of waiters,” his father said, “intended to evict unruly patrons. They move at a signal. Right out the door—no fuss or anything, but it sometimes is rough on the number-one man. Well, it’s delightful you’re here, Tom, and here’s looking at you.”

  Ben had come back with the double Manhattan. His father swallowed it quickly.

  “There,” he said. “Thank you, Ben. The tail of the dog that bit you. It’s delightful to have you with me, Tom. Your company reminds me of a little song. Wait, Ben, don’t go away yet. I wonder if you’ve ever heard it.”

  “What song is that, sir?” Ben asked.

  “Just a snatch, a jingle,” Mr. Harrow said. “Would you care to have me render it?”

  “As long as it’s not too loud and it isn’t too funny, sir,” Ben said. “As you know, singing often causes trouble because other patrons may want to sing.”

  “This will only take a minute,” Mr. Harrow said, “and I rather think you’ll enjoy it because it’s peculiarly apposite to the occasion.

  “Stay in there punching, sonny,

  Don’t let your heart fall plop,

  Some day the nation will honor you, too,

  As it’s honored your dear old pop.”

  He sang the snatch melodiously, and he might not have been bad in a vaudeville turn.

  “Thank you, Mr. Harrow,” Ben said. “That was a lovely song. Would the young man like a Welsh rarebit?”

  It was a lovely song as it was sung that night, and it was strange what an effect incongruity might occasionally have upon future resolves and actions. That night had always meant a great deal to Tom Harrow. He wanted to be in there punching, and the lights of Broadway were what made him wish the wish—but he never was fool enough to want to be like his dear old pop.

  You were surrounded by a dangerous sense of permanency when you were young, by a conviction that people and institutions would never change. He should have asked his father more questions that night when Mr. Harrow had brought up the subject on that ride along Broadway. That evening with his father back in 1916 was one of the few they had ever spent together. The influenza epidemic reached New York two years later. His father came down with it first and then his mother caught the virus. He was at boarding school in Massachussetts at the time and word had been sent that he was not to go home because of possible contagion. People died very swiftly in 1918. His parents were both gone before he knew they were ill. The Rector was the one who told him, in one of those sad set scenes once so popular with Victorian novelists. There was something strong and set about the Rector’s speeches, as though he were reciting a service from the Book of Common Prayer. Transportation had been arranged, and his uncle, Mr. George Harrow, would be waiting at the Grand Central Station, and Uncle George had been very kind. The meeting was mainly memorable through his uncle’s display of extra kindness. If his Uncle George had been the sort of person of whom one asked questions, Tom might have found out about his family from his Uncle George.

  “Tom,” he had said, “we’ll have to do the best we can together. Your father was a most delightful man.” And his Aunt Mabel had been very kind. He had only seen the house on Seventy-second Street once again. When he returned from school for the spring vacation, everything was gone—the shadow of his father and mother, the legen
d of his grandfather in Bar Harbor and the lady from Denver, Colorado. They were gone, all the familiar faces, except occasionally his Uncle George and his Aunt Mabel and his cousins. Everything, in fact, had evaporated into a small trust fund. It appeared that his father had never practiced what he preached about the seasoned bonds.

  It was impossible any longer to ascertain how much of a problem he may have been to his Aunt Mabel and his Uncle George, but he could not have been much trouble because the George Harrows were adroit at avoiding burdens. His Aunt Mabel had often pointed out to him what an enormous amount of thought and attention his uncle had given the trust fund and his educational future. There were some people, she often said, who did not understand his Uncle George, because of his uncle’s retiring modesty. There were even some people who felt that his uncle was financially selfish, whereas nothing could have been more wrong. The truth was that for years his Uncle George had been in failing health and under his doctor’s orders never to put himself under strain; but Uncle George was always doing kind little things for people. She could not imagine how gossip got around that she and his uncle were rich when the truth was that they were not even well-to-do. It had been necessary, obviously, to maintain a standard of living equal to that of his uncle’s law partners. They had to keep up a house in the East Sixties and the children had to go to the right schools, but they also had not wasted capital like some people she might mention.

  She knew very well that a number of people had said that they should have had Tom live with them after his tragic bereavement. His uncle had been deeply troubled for several weeks over just what was the right thing to do and no one had any right to say that financial aspects in any way affected his uncle’s ultimate decision. It was true that the income from the small sum that could be salvaged from a nearly bankrupt estate was not in the least sufficient to pay for an expensive private boarding school, and also the very large though hidden expenses that would have been incurred if Tom became a member of the George Harrow household. But absolutely no one had given the question of expense more than a passing thought. She wanted Tom to realize this, and she was certain that Tom did, although sometimes she did feel that he was just a little neglectful of his uncle after all his Uncle George had done for him. But then, the younger generation never could understand the difficulties of the old—the bringing-up of children, the struggle to make both ends meet, and finally, the effort to be a worthy example, because example always was more important than precept.