Of course they would have taken Tom in if the step had been advisable. They had only waited until they could consult with his Aunt Edith. After all, his mother’s older sister’s feelings might have been very much hurt if she had not been given a chance to help. When his dear Aunt Edith offered to have him come live with her, Tom would have been very touched if he could have known how carefully his Uncle George had weighed the pros and cons before making an affirmative decision. He kept saying, often in the middle of the night, that he wanted to do what was best for Tom, and she was sure that Tom had known it even though Tom had been quite neglectful of his uncle; but she knew very well that this was attributable to the carelessness of the young and not due to any small-minded resentment.
Living in New York admittedly had its benefits and advantages, but Tom had already been brought up in New York in a manner which was much more extravagant than it should have been, and change was always wholesome for a growing boy, and that quaint house of his Aunt Edith’s would give him lots of room. Also to be considered was the uniform excellence of New England public schools. The money which would be saved there could be put back in the Fund so that a sum would finally be available to pay his expenses through college, with perhaps a tiny bit left over for him to do what he wished with when he was twenty-one and the trust had expired. His uncle had been right; there had been a tiny bit left over. It had been very generous of his Aunt Edith not to ask payment for his board but his Aunt Edith had been very lonely in a big house and was much more comfortably off than she appeared to be. You could never tell about people in small towns who did not have to maintain standards according to conventions. She might in the very end leave Tom a little something that was considerably more than anyone might expect; and if his uncle had taken the usual commission for administering the fund, she was sure Tom would have wanted it that way for his own self-respect.
Tom had heard this rationalization from his Aunt Mabel more often than he cared to recollect. There had always been a musty monotony about it derived doubtless from his aunt’s having been a musty, monotonous old woman whose thoughts had been concentrated for years on trying to maintain what she called a position. His Aunt Mabel was one of that small army of the insecure upper middle class who had honestly thought that complete disaster would shower down if the rug were pulled out from under their positions. Well, it was different now. Even the Cadillacs were not so secure as they used to be. When it came to his Aunt Mabel, he knew her apologia by heart and he could remember distinctly the last time he had heard her recite it.
It had been in the winter of 1933, the year when his third play was running on Broadway and when serious evaluations were beginning to be made regarding his Contribution to the American Theatre. It was a Sunday in February, at the time when the banks were crashing but before citizens had learned, as they did in the Roosevelt March inaugural, that the only thing to fear was fear itself. Because of ignorance Tom had not been afraid, that Sunday morning, and Rhoda wore the new mink coat he had bought her for Christmas. He was not afraid, but he had sense enough to be disturbed at the way things were going—and beyond being disturbed, he was intensely interested. At least the Great Depression had not been a dull time through which to live.
He had not wanted to go to his aunt’s for Sunday luncheon, but Rhoda had made him go. She had said that he had not been to see his Aunt Mabel for over a year. He had answered that his aunt had begun asking him to Sunday luncheons only after a piece had been written about him by Mr. Brooks Atkinson in the theatre section of the Sunday Times.
“I don’t see why you want to go,” he said to Rhoda. “I don’t owe her anything. She was always dull and now she’s beginning to be sorry for herself. I don’t know why Uncle George ever married her.”
“Oh, Tom,” Rhoda said, “she isn’t nearly as bad as you think. She’s rather sweet, really. At least I think she’s sweet.”
“Exactly why?” he asked her. Rhoda pursed her lips for a moment, but it never took her long to find an answer.
“Well, she’s always reassuring,” she said. “I guess because she makes me realize that you have a conventional background. There aren’t ever any sword-swallowers or gag artists or nymphomaniacs or anything at your Aunt Mabel’s.”
“You mean she isn’t Bohemian,” Tom said, “and you’re afraid we’re going to get Bohemian?”
“I’m not afraid,” Rhoda said. “I suppose I’m a little stuffy, myself, and you do have a sense of order, yourself. You don’t like cigarette ashes sprayed all over the rugs and whites circles all over the tables.”
“You mean show business keeps coming into the home. Is that what you mean?” he asked her.
“Well,” she said, “sort of, sometimes. And now that we have Hal—well, you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know partly,” he said. “But I wish you wouldn’t keep lumping everybody into one category. Do you think I’m Bohemian?”
“Oh, darling,” Rhoda said, “no, no, and promise me you won’t be.”
She could never seem to understand, and perhaps no woman could, that people do not readily change from one personality to another.
“I’ll work on it,” he told her, “as long as you don’t forget you’re a pretty extravagant girl and want a lot of things.”
“I know it, dear,” she said. “I know I’m extravagant and I suppose I’m always worrying about Hal.”
He was very seldom annoyed with her—because he was in love with her.
“What makes you worry about Hal?” he asked.
“I wish he had a bigger nursery,” Rhoda said, “and we ought to think seriously about renting a place in the country.”
Child rearing was a subject that he had never been fully able to understand. It was always just beyond his horizon of comprehension, never to be grasped any more than he could grasp the theory of integral calculus.
Although the hundred days of the New Deal had not quite yet occurred, one had a very definite sense that events were moving into a period of drastic change, but he could say one thing for his Aunt Mabel Harrow. She was still maintaining her position. At Uncle George’s death, dear though all associations had been to her, she had known enough not to continue in the brownstone house in the Sixties, where she would have rattled around now that both her children were married and so, naturally, engrossed in lives of their own. His dear Uncle George had always said that she had possessed an excellent head for business. She had sold the house before the market break in 1929, just when there was a heavy demand for New York real estate, and she had rented her present apartment in one of those new buildings on Park Avenue, in the upper Fifties, which was not a cooperative. The apartment did not have the atmosphere of the dear old brownstone house, but she still had the things she loved the best around her—her portraits of the Morton family, for instance. (She had been born a Morton, one of the Poughkeepsie Mortons.) She had also kept the furniture from the drawing room and from his dear uncle’s library, and also some of his dear uncle’s more important first editions. As Uncle George had always said, sound and seasoned first editions held their value. Thus the apartment, though it was so high up that it made her a little dizzy to look out of the windows, had the original family atmosphere. It still gave her a sense of keeping up her position, and a part of the position was a solid family luncheon of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. She supposed that Tom and dear Rhoda, being very gay, would have preferred pheasant and champagne, but still, Tom would remember his Uncle George’s old roast-beef custom.
He was in the aura of the custom when he and Rhoda entered Apartment 10 B and stepped into the area poetically termed “a foyer.” The maid was new, but she wore the same frilled apron that his aunt had always insisted that a parlormaid should wear. The apron and the pedestrian odor of roast beef made him momentarily adolescent. It was a pity that only sights and sounds could be translated to the stage. Today the aroma of a roast was no longer pedestrian. This Sunday luncheon was in the days before World War II was fo
llowed by an era of national abundance, days which had made standing rib roasts rare and almost strange. His Aunt Mabel and, to his surprise, his cousin Louise were in the living room. Louise’s husband, Guthrie Hyde, was away in Chicago on business. His aunt had put on weight, which did not convey the same rebuke among the elderly that it does today, and a five-pound box of caramels was still a suitable gift to bring one’s hostess. Her dress was new and beautiful but it was the same beige-colored satin that Tom had always associated with his Sundays at Uncle George’s—almost the color of the caramel sauce you could pour on your Sunday vanilla ice cream if you did not like chocolate.
“Dear children,” his Aunt Mabel said, “how delightful of you to come, and so promptly, too. It shows you remember what your uncle always said, don’t you, Tom, that time, tide and rare roast beef wait for no man.”
He wanted to say that the same was also true with death and taxes but Rhoda would not have liked it.
“Please don’t get up, Aunt Mabel,” Rhoda said, and she kissed her aunt-in-law’s cheek.
“Thank you, dear,” his aunt said, “my chair is somewhat cushiony for popping up and down as I should. It is a present from Louise and Guthrie.”
Tom moved toward her with dignified respect. He had watched enough actors to know how to cross from L to R in a drawing room as though it were a stage, and he knew also how to kiss a cheek with gay and debonair aplomb.
“Dear Tom,” his aunt said, “you look so distinguished, more and more like your Uncle George each year, but still a little …”
Her voice died into a pregnant sort of silence.
“You don’t mean dissipated, do you?” Tom said, and he was immediately sorry he had said it because Rhoda did not like it.
“Oh, Tom,” Rhoda said, “I wish you wouldn’t keep having the idea on your mind that you’re an old roué. I know what you mean, Aunt Mabel, it’s the theatre. Theatre people never go to bed—that is, at times.”
“I’m glad you made that qualification, dear,” Tom Harrow said, “because they do go to bed, and often with the most unexpected people—especially in summer stock.”
That had been quite a line for the pre-Repeal and the pre-Roosevelt era, and he would have enjoyed it more if Rhoda had not been there.
“Oh, Tom,” Rhoda said, “don’t always try to be too funny! It’s the drawing room dialogue he keeps writing, Aunt Mabel—dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, and always changing lines.”
At any rate, Louise laughed, reminding him that she was beginning to look more and more like her mother, confirming that old-fashioned maxim that before proposing to a beautiful girl one should take a good look at her mother.
“Now I know why that play of yours is so killing,” she said. “Does he always think of such excruciating things to say every minute, Rhoda?”
“Only every other minute,” Tom said.
“Anyway, I just loved the play,” Louise said, “and it was so cute of you, Tom, to give us first-night tickets. I told Guthrie that you wouldn’t mind at all if I were to ask you. It’s so hard to get Guthrie to take the initiative. Anyway, Tom, it was cute.”
“It was wonderful having you there,” Tom said, “as long as you didn’t sit on your hands.”
“What do you mean by that, Tom?” his Aunt Mabel said. “Louise never sits on her hands.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t,” he said, “no nice girl should, ever, and Louise has always been a nice girl.”
There was no reason why he should not enjoy himself even though Rhoda might have something to say about it later, and Louise laughed and. laughed.
“It’s just a theatrical expression, Mother,” Louise said. “Isn’t it fun having someone famous in the family, let alone a playwright? Tom means he likes people to applaud, don’t you, Tom?”
“That’s exactly it,” Tom Harrow said. “Rhoda and I and Harold have to live entirely on applause.”
He had never said a truer word and he hoped that Rhoda was listening.
“And simply the most excruciating part of it all,” Louise said, “was when the butler came in with a tray of glasses in the third act and slipped on the rug. Honestly, Tom, I thought I was going to die, it was all so natural.”
“He slipped at just the right minute,” Tom said, “when people from Bernardsville were wondering whether they could catch the last train.”
“That’s true, you know,” Rhoda said. “Tom does think of things like that, even when everything seems natural.”
“I suppose every profession is exacting,” his Aunt Mabel said, “at least it was that way about the law. Your dear uncle never forgot anything, but he did say when he left the office he never took it home with him at night. But speaking of a butler and trays, I was telling Louise that I thought we might have a little something to celebrate our family reunion. There was quite a little something in the cellar at Sixty-second Street.”
When he was young and endowed with the ambition and self-confidence that came from lack of self-knowledge, he had never dreamed of using malice either as a weapon or a pain killer. Besides, he had been gay in those days and the delicious euphoria surrounded him that he had seen attack other three-hit playwrights. Uncle George had been able to leave a little something in every department, but he did not envy his uncle.
“Well,” he said, “thank goodness there was something in the cellar. I could do with a drink.”
It was not malicious to be amused by the look that his Aunt Mabel cast toward Louise. His aunt had always been waiting for dipsomania. For years she had a fixed belief that he would never turn out well; and now, glad though she doubtless was that he was being successful, even to the extent of making a position for himself among peculiar people, there was still his unstable background.
“I should like a rather large drink, Louise,” he said, and he smiled at his aunt. “The tail of the dog that bit me.”
“Oh, Tom,” Rhoda said. “He’s only trying to be funny again, Aunt Mabel. He hardly ever takes anything.”
Old people could never change their patterns. If that luncheon, which was one of the last of the sort he had attended, was different from those that preceded it, the fault was his and not his aunt’s. He was the one who had changed. Aunt Mabel was going into her old routine, as precise in her patter as a well-seasoned vaudeville actress—not that Aunt Mabel’s act was vaudeville. She was justifying herself again, and he preferred people who struggled silently with the pangs of conscience. It would have been much better if she had simply said that she and his uncle had always felt a qualm of guilt because they had done so little for him when he needed help. Yet Rhoda listened with apparent interest to that redundant tape-recording.
“Tom, dear,” Aunt Mabel said, “how has your dear Aunt Edith’s health been lately?”
The question was the opening gambit of the game that often started after Sunday lunch.
“I think she’s frailer than she was the last time you inquired,” he said.
He was not so ironically amused by the question as he had been previously. He was astonished that his voice had assumed a cutting edge, but Aunt Mabel had not noticed.
“I am sure you are doing everything for her comfort,” she said, “exactly as you should. I am sure you have not forgotten how much you owe her.”
“No,” he said. “Aunt Edith is in a class by herself. I don’t feel grateful to everybody.” He hoped that he had not been rude, but he wanted her to realize that she was not priority number one.
“I’m so happy,” she said, “that it all turned out happily, just as your dear uncle knew it would. It was so much better for you not to be competing with other children, just as your uncle said it would be.”
“Yes,” he said, “I might have fallen in love with Louise and that should not have happened.”
Louise tittered and he smiled at Rhoda.
“I was susceptible in those days,” he said, “but I am sure Louise and I would have handled ourselves correctly.”
His aunt had never
been able to understand lightness of touch.
“It’s so interesting that you should have mentioned that, Tom dear,” she said, “because your dear uncle mentioned the same possibility once. He always thought of everything.”
“Yes,” Tom said, “I think he did. You know, I’m afraid I never appreciated him as much as I should have.”
Rhoda looked at him again, but his aunt was very gracious.
“Don’t reproach yourself, dear,” she said. “We all always wish we could have done more after someone goes. And it was hard for many people to understand the real extent of your uncle’s kindness because he had innate modesty. He would be so proud of you if he were here now. Do you know what he said once, Tom?”
It was time to be grave and proper.
“No,” he said. “I’d have remembered if you’d told me, Aunt Mabel.”
“Well, it’s another thing to treasure,” his aunt said, “and to put in your memory box. Your dear uncle said, quite suddenly one evening—and it wasn’t like him to say anything suddenly—‘Mabel,’ he said, ‘I honestly think Tom has got a lot from living with his maiden aunt and enjoying the benefits of a free New England education. It’s the sort of experience that makes for quality.’ And then he made another remark that I’ve often pondered over.”
“I hope you’ll tell me what it was,” Tom said.
“Well, I’ve often pondered over it,” his aunt said. “He said quite suddenly, ‘I wish I might have had the privilege’—that was the word, ‘privilege’—‘of a New England boyhood.’ That’s another thing to remember, don’t you think so, Tom?”
Women and Thomas Harrow Page 9