He took her hand. It was pudgy and her fingers were blunt and soft, but he thought of these aspects only later. He took her hand and he raised it to his lips.
“Gosh,” she said, “you did that like someone in a book or somewhere. Gosh, I bet you read more books than any boy in school.”
She drew closer to him. It was the first time that he had ever thought of converting desire into creation.
“I guess it’s all right to neck here,” she said. “Let’s go to it, Tom.”
She sighed in a noisy, unliterary way after their first clumsy embrace.
“Now won’t that stop you reading books?” she asked. “Gee, it’s great to kiss a boy—not just any boy like in post office, but a boy you feel about the way I’ve been feeling about you across the room all winter. Let’s do it again, and now it’s May, we can go necking all the time.”
“Malvina,” he asked her, “do I neck better than Jack Dodd?”
It was not a question that any man should have asked, but at least it did not come out of George Eliot.
“To hell with him,” Malvina said. “You’re the handsomest and the smartest and the best-necking boy in school.”
He could see now that he had been different from all the others. He could see now why Malvina herself, with all her wiles and wishes, could not wholly erase that difference in a close embrace. Both of them had tried, and everybody had recognized that Malvina was his best girl all through his senior year in high school. All through life he had been prone to kiss the wrong girl and to say the wrong thing to her at the wrong time and place. He could only add that he was used to being wrong by now, and it was time to get out of the stream of consciousness and walk on the solid shore. In his opinion, streams of consciousness never did get anybody to any place where they ever should have gone.
VII
After All, He Couldn’t Take It with Him
He had walked downtown to get the mail and not to discuss abstractions beneath the pulpit of the First Congregational Church with Mr. Godfrey. He wished that events and people were not constantly overlapping, because there should be a time and a place for everything. There should be; but somehow he had never found it.
“It’s been a real pleasure,” Mr. Godfrey said, “sitting here, kicking ideas around.”
Mr. Godfrey had opened the door and the church with its cool white silence was over them.
“God bless you, Thomas,” Mr. Naughton had said the last time that he had passed through that door to face the church, and that had been quite a while ago. There was still that gateway to remembrance. He was walking again over the reddish carpet toward the low raised platform in front of the pulpit, and beneath the carpet the same pine boards that had complained before creaked beneath his weight. The noise again brought back a sensation of apprehension. That was one of the things that his art or profession, or whatever it was you chose to call it, had taught him: the ambivalent curse of being able to be a part of things, and yet to stand away from them untouched.
He knew as soon as he stood on the brick sidewalk of Bay Street that he had emerged from the stream of consciousness. He stood there feeling a little like a swimmer on a river’s bank with the water still moist about him. The post office, an oversized gift from the Roosevelt administration, stood diagonally across the street. He was back in the present, where Providence had placed him, and he was, thank heaven, still able to live in and appreciate it. He was acutely aware of everything around him, yet he was still outside it. He had to be, because he had been born to live and look.
Why was it that post offices always smelled the same and always put one in the same anticipatory mood, which could not be conveyed across the footlights, as he knew, because he had attempted it? It was the sense of the unknown that did the trick, of course—the unknown that lurked behind the glass façades of the private boxes and behind the bars of the delivery windows.
“There’s a registered special delivery waiting for you, Mr. Harrow,” the clerk said. “We telephoned the house and they said you were walking down for the mail.”
“Well, thanks,” Tom Harrow said.
A registered special delivery meant that someone wanted something, but then, everyone was always wanting something. The exquisite bond of the envelope seemed like a violent effort to compensate for the undistinguished names of the law partners printed on its surface.
“Thank you very much,” he said to the clerk, and he dropped the letter into the side pocket of his coat. He had a very good idea of what it would say, and there was no reason whatsoever for him to read it.
He realized, as he was walking up the drive again to his office in the carriage house, that he had gone through a good deal of experience since he had left the drive, in a purely vicarious way. In fact, he had gone through so much that it was harder than usual to know what he really felt or what he pretended to feel. He was sure that the letter in his pocket was no surprise because it was like the second shoe dropping, and he was glad that it had dropped. He was sure that the house was less substantial than it had been.
He found himself thinking of an evening he had once spent at the Casino in Monte Carlo. Once when he and Rhoda had spent a winter on the Riviera, when a winter on the Riviera was almost a must for intelligentsia, they had gone to Monte Carlo, and for once he had been as hot as a pistol. For a while there was no wrong in him as far as the columns and numbers went, and he had a complete awareness of his temporary power; and he knew that the croupiers themselves must have witnessed the same phenomenon before. It came from the unknown, something just beyond the borderline of fact. It did not last long, that run of his, but ever afterwards he knew how a confirmed gambler felt. He had never forgotten the impression that those minutes had made on Rhoda. She was wearing her green dress and the emerald he had bought her at Cartier’s, solitary and beautifully conspicuous on its delicate gold chain. When that heap of counters was passed to him, so fast and in such quantity across the table, she could not understand what under the sun had happened to him, and he was sure that she had not shared his sense of temporary power. It was not only the gaming table, either, that exhilarated him. It was being married to the best-dressed and prettiest woman in that overdecorated room. He could also believe that the size of his winnings had made Rhoda forget some of her inhibitions, but he was wrong about that. Whether on the Corniche drive or the Saw Mill River Parkway, Rhoda hardly ever lost her balance.
“Tom,” she said, and there was beautiful incredulity in her voice, “pick it all up and take it to the cashier. You know you can’t go on like this forever.”
“What?” he said. “Right in the middle of the run?” He had not done what she had said, and he was glad he had not, but the chips only marked what was inside him, the measure of a hitherto unexperienced emotion. He could feel a new knowledge of life and he knew that it was something he would never lose, but the counters that evening had never even appeared like financial symbols, although they had been wholly real to Rhoda.
“Oh, Tom,” she said, when everything was over, “you could have given me my emerald for nothing if you had only stopped.”
The idea of this financial parallel had startled him, but no doubt she had been right.
“I never wanted to get that thing for you for nothing,” he said. “That isn’t the point at all. I wanted to give you something that meant something.”
“Oh, Tom,” she said, “why didn’t you stop?”
“Darling,” he said, “it wasn’t those chips on the table. Don’t you see it was the thing itself?”
The point was that he had had the thing for the moment, and that Rhoda had never understood.
His workroom was no different. He had been young, but not so young that he could not remember the peculiar phrase, “back to normalcy” coined by President Warren G. Harding. In all his adult life the room in which he worked had always been normalcy; and he did not realize, until he was back, how far he had deviated in his short walk.
Miss Mulford was sitting
at his worktable as she did sometimes when he was out. Once long ago she had apologized for doing so and he had told her not to be silly. She was reading a typescript which he recognized immediately as the third draft of the third act of the play on which he was working. He was pleased that she was doing so, because it showed that the play might have interested her.
She put down the manuscript and stood up.
“Don’t start to apologize,” he said. “I’ve told you to sit there when I’m out. As a matter of fact, so long as you’re there, you’d better sit right down again.”
She laughed.
“I can’t get over the feeling that it is a deviation,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “And if you look in the upper right-hand drawer, you’ll find a case of my Egyptian cigarettes, and you may take one, because it will be more in character.”
She laughed again. “You mean that sergeant in the war play, who kept smoking the general’s cigars?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’re right on the beam this morning. Have a cigarette and keep up the old tradition.”
Occasionally it was startling to realize that Miss Mulford understood him better than any other woman ever had and that he had spent more time in her company than with any other woman, and the best part was that he did not know much about her. All he had to know was that he liked her and could trust her and he hoped that she liked him or at any rate the job.
“How do you like that new third act?” he asked. “Not that you have to stick your neck out if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t mind,” she said, and she lighted one of the Egyptian cigarettes, and she looked more ageless than ever. “I’ve never known you to sulk or to hold it against me when I’ve been frank about anything you’ve written.”
“Why, thanks,” he said. “I’ve always tried to get along without a whipping boy.”
“Or girl,” Miss Mulford said.
He sat down in one of the armchairs.
“Toss me over a cigarette,” he said. “I wouldn’t be too sure about the girls. There must be at least two or three around who feel they have been severely flagellated on my account.”
“All I know,” she said, “is that I’ve never been one. It could be that you’re not very good at whipping.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But then, there is another angle. Maybe you’ve been a whipping girl for years and just don’t know it.”
“Oh, I’d know it,” she said.
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” he said. “The bright way of looking at things nowadays is that we—none of us—know what we’re doing really, because all of our motivations arise from unknown compulsions and even when we know what we are doing we do not know what we want.”
“If you mean that nobody knows everything, I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But I think the third act draft is all right now. I always like the way you can pull things together when you have to. Please don’t think I’m being loyal or trying to cheer you up. I know that’s what you always think.”
He had always disliked the highly developed ego of writers, but he had his own. In fact, in the end, it was all that any so-called creative artist possessed.
“You mean you think Old White-Fang is not going to be pulled down by the wolf pack, at least for this next season?”
“No,” she said, “not this time, especially if you could get your mind off other things and finish the third act. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours. The casting ought to start by August in this sort of play, I think.”
“Well, it’s good to know there’s someone left on the team,” he said. “Madame thinks I’m slipping.”
“She didn’t tell you that, did she?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I heard her telling Walter Price in the hall this morning.”
“You shouldn’t listen at doors,” she said. “When I first came here to work, the word was that you were on the way out. Besides, she hasn’t read it, has she?”
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t do much good to show Madame a script because she always reacts to it exactly like Higgins. He entirely molded her character long before I came along—not that maybe it was such a bad idea.”
“Then I wouldn’t worry as long as she hasn’t read it,” Miss Mulford said. “I wish you’d think about getting some time to finish it today.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Maybe I can finish with it this afternoon, but it’s too late this morning. I don’t know what happened to the morning.”
“Neither do I, now that you mention it,” Miss Mulford said.
“It seems as though I’ve been all over Robin Hood’s barn this morning,” he said. “It seems to me that one thing after another has happened. It’s been a world of fantasy this morning, like flying across the ocean against the sun. By the way, the sun isn’t over the yardarm, is it?”
“No,” Miss Mulford said. “It’s only a quarter to twelve. Besides, you won’t finish the third act if you have a drink before lunch.”
“That doesn’t necessarily follow,” he said.
“It does, usually, and besides, you’ve got to call up Mr. Beechley. He said it was very important, and he ought to be in his office now. And besides, I’ve got to go over the mail.”
“Have I forgotten anything else?” he asked.
“No,” she said, “but it’s been a long time since you’ve asked for a drink before twelve o’clock. Has anything serious happened?”
“Toss me another cigarette,” he said.
“You haven’t finished the one you’re smoking,” she said.
“You needn’t be so obvious at this time in the morning,” he answered. “I want a new cigarette because I’ve always found a new one is like a New Year’s resolution. It wipes the slate, moderately.”
“You might as well admit,” she said, “that something is the matter.”
“All right,” he said. He took the registered special delivery letter from his pocket. “Never mind the rest of the mail but just read this one and tell me what it says.” He stood up and handed it to her and sat down again.
There was an art in making a casual gesture interesting to an audience, but he was sick and tired of dramatization just then—real or artificial. And when you faced facts, you had to face them.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t read it yourself?” she asked. “It’s marked ‘personal.’”
“You read it,” he said. “You know I don’t like legal letters.”
She took the paper cutter from his table and slit the envelope.
“It isn’t good for you to pass on letters like this,” she said.
“Now please,” he said, “I know my behavior is immature. It used to be un-adult, and now it’s immature, and God knows what they’re going to pick out of Roget for next year. Of course I’m being immature. You know, when I was in the First Congregational Church this morning, I discovered that I knew quite a good deal about myself in bright, feverish flashes.”
She stopped opening the envelope.
“What were you doing in the First Congregational Church?” she asked.
“Just talking to the pastor,” he said. “Go ahead and read it and give me a synopsis.”
There was a moment’s pause after she had read the letter. There was no sex, but there was loyalty. She had always been a very nice girl.
“You’ve always said it’s just as well to brace yourself,” she said. “Well, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, about my giving you a drink. It might help you with the synopsis.”
“I’ll hear the synopsis first,” he said.
“All right,” she said, “but I hate to be the one who hurts you.”
“It’s kind of you to say that,” he said. “Remember I can take it, and go ahead.”
“All right,” she said. “They want three hundred and fifty thousand dollars ten days from yesterday or else they will sell out your securities—the collateral on the loan, you know, for that musical you produced, Porthos of Pari
s.”
The feeling in the pit of his stomach was not unknown to him. The last time he had experienced such a sensation was when he had climbed down the cargo net off a beach near Oran in North Africa, without previous combat training. He was too old for combat and he knew nothing about war except what he had learned from casual literary research. Yet he was a lieutenant colonel, not that lieutenant colonels weren’t worth a dime a dozen when they had first started passing around commissions.
It was ridiculous to feel the same way now because a New York bank was about to sell his collateral. He had been aware for several months that the market had been sliding off and his securities were mainly common stocks. It was ridiculous to feel so strongly, even when the sum represented four fifths of his savings. It was also ridiculous, at that moment, to allow his mind to dwell on how Emily would react to the news. There was no doubt that she would be furious and personally offended; but then, it was his money—not hers.
“All right,” he said. “Madame is the one who is going to be sorry, but you’re in the clear. Don’t forget you told me that musical would be a flop. Let’s neither of us mind it.”
“And there’s the other bank loan,” she said.
It was not a time to lose his dignity, at least not in front of Miss Mulford.
“That’s right,” he said, “but that one is only seventy grand, on my personal note. Don’t bring up trivia at the moment—not that I won’t hear about that note as soon as they sell me out down the Street.”
Truthfully, he had forgotten about the other note. It required all his self-control not to get a scratch pad and juggle with figures. If it was called, the house would have to go, and so would the apartment in town. He could see the auction booklet in front of him already, “including the collection of Mr. Thomas Harrow.”
Just as the full picture was impinging upon his consciousness, Miss Mulford began to cry. He had known her to do so only once before, when she had skipped a whole page of a play script and had discovered it only after she had put it in the mail; and the rarity of her weeping, compared to that of other women in his life, made him unduly sensitive. The only thing to do, he told himself, was to go out of the room and let them cry, because crying was a bid for attention—except that there was no reason for Miss Mulford to make that bid.
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