“They’re stopping at the Wellington Manor House,” Hal said. “They’re going to stay for three days because Presley likes the golf course there.”
The thing was too true to life to seem completely real. There was a sort of inartistic coincidence in it that was associated only with the ineptitudes of daily life and never with the stage. Only that morning he had stood by the pulpit facing the aisle of the First Congregational Church with the ghostly music of the wedding march ringing in his ears and tomorrow Rhoda would be at the Wellington Manor House where they had spent the first night of their honeymoon because it had been too late to get train connections to Niagara Falls.
“It’s funny,” he said, “why they should pick the Wellington Manor House. It’s one of those places that I understand has been running down lately.”
“It’s because Presley likes the golf,” Hal said. “It seems the course is very well kept up and they have a colored pro.”
“A colored pro?” Tom Harrow said. “How does he fit into the picture?”
“It’s the way Presley is,” Hal said. “He’s very serious about taking a liberal stand. He admits the service in the hotel is not what it used to be, but it does have a golf course with a colored pro.”
“That’s an interesting point,” Tom Harrow said. “I shouldn’t dare to quarrel with it. Well, I hope your mother enjoys it there.”
In spite of himself he was thinking of that first time. Both he and Rhoda had been very nervous then, but the situation had been different.
“Rhoda,” he had said, “why don’t you go up and get ready for bed and I’ll stay down here and play billiards for a while?”
“You never told me that you knew how to play billiards,” Rhoda said.
“Oh, I’ve played a little now and then,” he said.
“But whom do you know to play billiards with here?” Rhoda asked. “You said you haven’t seen anybody you know.”
“I’ll play billiards with the marker, Rhoda,” he said. “There’s always a man in every billiard room in every hotel who is called the marker.”
“Oh,” Rhoda said, “as long as you know how to play billiards well enough to play with the marker, Tom.”
As a matter of fact, he had not played billiards that evening.
“By the way,” Hal said, “my mother sent you a message.”
The words moved him out of his reverie and suddenly reminded him vividly of a song:
Don’t change a barrel on Niagara Fall,
Stick to one girl or no girl at all.
“Oh,” he said, “she sent me a message?”
“Yes,” Hal said. “That’s what I came out to tell you. My mother wonders if you would motor up alone—she emphasized the word ‘alone’—to the Wellington Manor House tomorrow afternoon to see her.”
“Good God,” Tom Harrow said, “what for?”
“She didn’t say. She just said it was important.”
“But not at the Wellington Manor House,” he said. “She certainly couldn’t have wanted to see me there.”
He saw that Hal looked puzzled, which showed that Rhoda had not indulged in any reminiscences regarding the first night of their honeymoon any more than he had.
“She wants me to call her back,” Hal said. “She says it’s very important or she wouldn’t dream of asking you.”
“Didn’t she say why?” Tom asked.
“She only said she couldn’t say why over the telephone,” Hal said.
“My God,” he said, “that’s queer after what she used to say over the telephone.”
“She wants me to call her back,” Hal said, “and tell her whether you’ll go up there. You’ll tell her ‘Yes,’ won’t you? You’ve got to be civilized.”
“Oh, yes, tell her ‘yes,’” he said.
He tried to say it easily. In fact, he had always tried to be what Rhoda had liked to call “civilized” about the whole divorce. It was the fashion in those days to be civilized about such matters, and he had been influenced for years by tolerance. He had heard it said so often that he was sure that he believed it—that the artistic demands made on creative or interpretive artists caused them to be different in their private lives from brokers, bankers, wool merchants and lawyers. It was necessary to live more fully and love more freely than might be customary on a more humdrum plateau, and this was confirmed by statistics supplied by his professional associates. Tolerance was the watchword, and how could one create the illusion of reality or interpret life unless one lived? Nevertheless, he could not avoid a sense of uneasiness.
“Why don’t you drive up with me?” he asked. “It would make it a whole lot easier.”
He was aware, as soon as he spoke, of the implied cowardice in his request. After all, he had never been afraid of Rhoda, and it could not be that he was afraid of reality.
“No,” Hal said. “She specifically said that she wanted to see you alone.”
“All right,” he said, “all right.” And then Alfred came in with a tray.
“Say,” Hal said, “why all that food? Are you having lunch out here with Nance?”
“Yes,” he said, “I want to be quiet. I’m trying to finish the third act of this play.”
“Gosh,” Hal said, “does that mean I’ve got to go back there by myself and listen to Emily and that cornball?”
This new word from the bright lexicon of youth was a suitable way of describing Walter Price in the eyes of youth, but at the same time, it demonstrated a lack of charity that could be overcome only by living.
“I suppose he is a cornball,” Tom said, “but perhaps your base of judgment is not broad enough to enable you to condone cornballs like Walter.”
His remark was not reproof. Actually he felt somewhat sorry that his own base was so broad that he knew he was telling the truth. There was something wrong perhaps in being able to have a kindly thought for everyone.
“I wouldn’t mind him so much,” Hal said, “if he didn’t think he was fooling me when he isn’t telling the truth—which is practically all the time.”
It was not fair to Walter Price and it was beyond the dictates of convention to discuss him in front of Alfred, who was arranging the dishes on the worktable, but he was rather sure that Alfred would have been intelligent about Walter Price.
“You see, Hal,” Tom said, “I don’t believe anybody ever tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth about anything, because the process is very painful. We start with a few basic facts and we shift them around and minimize or exaggerate them in our own different ways. Alfred, will you tell Miss Mulford, please, that our lunch is ready?”
“Yes, sir,” Alfred said, “and Mrs. Harrow wanted me to tell you that Mr. and Mrs. Bramhall are coming to dinner, so that you’ll be back in time to dress.”
“Well, well,” Tom said, “just exactly when did this news break?”
In spite of all his seekings, he had very seldom discovered anything approaching continuity. There was no doubt that Emily understood how he felt about the Bramhalls, because he had told her definitely on several occasions, and thus he was almost positive that Emily’s asking the Bramhalls to dinner could not be construed as a friendly act. It did not help the situation, either, to feel that Alfred understood what was passing through his mind.
“Mrs. Bramhall, she called up,” Alfred said, “and asked you and Mrs. Harrow there to dinner, I guess.” Alfred smiled in the sympathetic manner of man talking to man. “Mrs. Harrow thought you’d prefer it better this way. She said you never liked the cooking there, sir.”
It invariably happened that any servants he employed became too interested and too familiar after a term of years, and this was what was happening to Alfred—and there was no use blaming Emily, who would only say that he was the one who spoiled servants.
“All right,” he said, “Don’t forget to lay out my evening clothes, Alfred, and a starched shirt and my pearl studs, not a soft shirt, and please tell Miss Mulford lunch is here.”
“Say,
” Hal said, “you’re getting pretty shirty, aren’t you?”
There was still a moment when Tom could be himself and he availed himself of the moment.
“God,” he said, “the Bramhalls.” And then he thought of something else. “I hear you took Irene Dodd to the movies last night.”
It was pleasant to observe that someone besides himself could be startled.
“You hear everything, don’t you?” Hal said. “How did you hear about that one?”
“You can’t do anything here that doesn’t get around,” Tom said. “Everybody knows whom you took to the movies last night and everybody knows what time you took her home. Don’t let it worry you—you were saying this is a friendly town.”
“Well, it isn’t anybody’s business,” Hal said, “not basically.”
The thing to do was to think about other people and then you did not have to think about yourself.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, “how everything gradually gets to be everybody’s business, including the things you don’t think ought to be.”
“Well, I don’t see how it matters if I go out to the movies with a girl,” Hal said.
“Listen,” Tom said, “Irene’s a pretty girl. She was pointed out to me down on Dock Street this morning, and it only squares the circle.”
“Squares what circle?” Hal asked.
There were times when everything fitted into place and it was about time now that something did.
“You see, I was deeply devoted to Irene’s mother when I was about sixteen,” he said. “Her name was Malvina Frith and she used to know exactly what she wanted back in those days.”
“Gosh,” Hal said, “you never told me that.”
“The occasion never arose,” he said, “and I never was a kiss-and-tell boy, and now you’d better go to lunch or else Emily will think that you and I have been talking about her. You know how Emily is.”
It was like closing a lid. Miss Mulford was back, and the show was over.
He had learned the discipline of writing in the school of practical theatre. Once upon a time, when he was very young, he had labored under the delusion that a play script, when submitted to the producer, was a product demanding only minor changes. This may have been so once on an older Broadway. According to the reminiscences of older playwrights, there was a time when shows had their first nights in New York without having been previously dragged for weeks through a series of tryout towns, but things were different now.
The truth was that a play was now written on the road much more completely than in a playwright’s study. In fact, plays were getting to be as malleable as a sculptor’s art wax. Why, indeed, attempt a final draft when you knew what was bound to happen in New Haven or Wilmington or Boston? In the end, after you got to the hotel suite, not Scotch or bourbon or aspirin or benzedrine or tomato juice could wholly drown the question of why anyone had ever thought the play would be any good in the first place. Something would have to be done immediately because, in polite language, the play needed working over. If you could keep your head when all about you—that was the essence of modern playwriting when the show was on the road getting pulled together and set for Broadway. It was no longer necessary for Tom Harrow to write when the spirit moved him, having been obliged too often to write any time, anywhere, sick or well, sad or happy, when the show was on the road; and in the process he had developed concentration.
After lunch his mind moved immediately from one compartment to another, shutting out thoughts of investment lists and lawyers. His draft of the third act was more complete than he had remembered and he was no longer worried about the second act curtain. In fact, his judgment assured him that the second act was a skillful piece of work. He realized by now that no other form of writing was so irrevocably framed by limits of time and space. With the third act, it was necessary to remember the weariness of the audience, and besides the artistic limitations, there were costs and the stagehands’ union.
Now that his mind was on these variables, the problems on which he was working had become more real than the immediacy of his own life. For a while he was in a silent world, oblivious to the passage of time, forgetful of everything except the problems, but he was neither shocked nor annoyed when Miss Mulford interrupted him. He had learned on the road never to show impatience at interruption. Besides, Miss Mulford must have been standing by his worktable for an appreciable length of time without speaking.
“Yes,” he said, “what is it?”
“I hate to interrupt you,” she said, “but it’s half past four, Mr. Harrow.”
He could see as he looked out of the window that the light on the leaves of the trees had changed and that the sun was lower than it had been when he had first started working, but the time lapse did not upset him because he had grown accustomed to making such adjustments. When one’s mind was pulled suddenly from one place to another, the only way to manage things was to be relaxed.
“Half past four?” he said. “I’d forgotten I’d let myself in for anything.”
“It’s the high-school paper,” she said. “You made the appointment with them yesterday.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, I remember how.”
“I thought of sending them away,” she said, “but I was afraid you wouldn’t have liked it.”
“I am glad you didn’t,” he said. “I think I have it finished anyway.”
IX
I’m Glad You Asked That Question
It was not because he wanted publicity, in fact, he had always disliked it, but he was invariably kind to the press, and particularly to editors of school and college publications, having been a high-school editor once himself. In fact, a part of the reel was playing back again. When the three adolescents, two boys and a girl, came into the room, he could understand their desperate desire to appear casual, and the efforts that must have been made at dress, and the whispered conversation that must have taken place outside as to who was going to ask what questions.
“Hello,” he said. “Come in and sit down.”
He knew how to put them at their ease. The main thing was to be kind but never condescending.
“It’s nice you people want to interview me,” he said. “I’m pretty well through here for the day, so don’t feel in a hurry and I’ll try to tell you anything you want. But how about telling me who you are first.” He smiled, but it would not have done to smile too broadly. “That is, if it isn’t a secret.”
They laughed and at least he had learned to understand every gradation of mirth.
The sight of them gave him no sense of nostalgia. The feeling that he experienced was of complete relief that he would never be their age again. He would undoubtedly deteriorate physically, losing teeth, hair and money, but he would never be that age again. He had already lost his money and, as he had already confessed to himself that day, he was not as good as he might have been. Something had slipped somewhere, but he would never be that age again. He would never have to struggle for assurance or die a thousand microscopic deaths or live a hundred unrequited loves. He would never have to wonder again, gazing at his image in the bathroom mirror, whether or not he was growing to resemble a little more each day Van Johnson or Gregory Peck or whoever the moving picture stars were in his youth whom, at the moment, he was delighted he had forgotten. He would never have to worry again as to whether he would have acne forever. He would never have to go out for any teams again. He would never again have to fill out the coupon, enclose a dollar and wait anxiously for the postman to bring him a brochure on sex in an inconspicuous wrapping. He would never again have to debate whether the girls would like him better if he sprinkled himself with shaving lotion or if he compromised on glossy hair tonic.
He could experience no desire for repetition as he watched the young girl, barelegged in bobby socks, pleated skirt and deliberately taut sweater, and the boys in their loafers, plaid socks, dungarees and sport shirts, uneasily squirming in their chairs. The two boys looked at the girl.
Her orange-red lipstick made a clashing contrast with the sallowness of her complexion, and her hair needed washing. She would never be a front-row Rockette. She had to be an interesting girl.
“My name’s Evangeline Krumbough,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “it’s a great pleasure to meet you, Evangeline. Somehow I’ve always got on well with girls named Evangeline.”
It was the boys’ turn next. It was the freckled boy wearing steel-rimmed glasses who finally spoke.
“I am Ted Williams,” he said, “Chairman of the Editorial Board—no relation to the ballplayer.”
“Well, it’s nice you’re in here pitching,” Tom Harrow said, and everybody laughed.
“My name’s Tommy Scalponi,” the third boy said. “We deeply appreciate your kindness in allowing the Lectern to interview you, Mr. Harrow. We are planning this to be the feature article in the Lectern’s Commencement Number.”
It was possible to consider the scene on two levels, either guilelessly amusing or introspectively serious. It would have been easy enough to smile at the editorial delegation from the Lectern; he could remember things about himself which he had forgotten when he looked at their faces.
“I am very pleased you want to put an interview with me into the Commencement Number,” he said.
It was a fatuous remark which made him hope that they were too young to realize it. There had been too many interviews, too many questions, too many candid camera shots, but one of life’s mottos was to be always affable with the press.
“It was our idea, Mr. Harrow,” the freckle-faced boy named Ted Williams said, “that it would be kind of inspirational for the graduating class if you could just tell us something about your early theatrical career—what got you started doing it and sort of other junk like that. You see, I don’t suppose it would occur to you, but it’s kind of inspirational, Mr. Harrow, to think that you went to this same school yourself, and besides, we’re pretty theatre-minded back at school, aren’t we, Eva?”
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