The door connecting with Emily’s bedroom was open. Emily enjoyed calling through open doors while dressing for dinner and she always said there was no reason why dinner dressing should not be a companionate act. She wanted advice regarding what to wear and some of her best thoughts came to her when she was pulling on stockings and picking out proper shoes.
“Where under the sun have you been, Tom?” she called.
“Just downstairs,” he answered, “having a drink with Walter.”
He saw that his dinner coat, socks, evening shoes, pleated shirt—everything—were all laid out upon his bed, proving that Alfred, among his other skills, was an excellent valet.
“You should have waited until the Bramhalls came,” she said. “Please hurry, Tom. You know how rude it is to keep people waiting.”
Then he thought of Harold.
“Where’s Harold?” he asked. “Harold’s coming to dinner, isn’t he?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Harold’s in his room, I think. Please hurry, Tom.”
Her voice had a curiously muffled sound.
“Tom,” she called, “please come here a minute. I’m stuck, and I don’t want to rip anything.”
Many of Emily’s most attractive dresses had become too tight for her, but she never would have them let out because of her inherent vein of stubbornness. She believed that they were an incentive to diet, and she was sure that eventually she would work into them again, as she was working into one now, her green and gold taffeta, which was too elaborate for the Bramhalls.
As she stood in the middle of her room, her helplessness had a pathos that aroused his protective instinct. Her head was covered by the upper part of the taffeta dress. Its flaring skirt was only midway to where it should be, and her arms still waved above her head while she wriggled carefully so as not to rip anything.
“Pull it down slowly Tom,” she said. “It isn’t really funny.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’d try something else. It’s beautiful, but it’s too small, Emily.”
“It isn’t when it gets on,” Emily said, “and it’s the way Dior makes these things. He makes them like a strait jacket. Now zip it slowly, Tom, and let me draw my breath in, and don’t get it caught on the slip. I don’t know why Dior is so careless with his zippers.”
She was out of breath when the dress was zipped, but this time her breathlessness gave the illusion that she was a young girl at her first dance. There was every reason when he saw her then, to know why he should have been as attracted to her as he had been when he had first met her.
“Darling,” she said, “would you be a perfect saint and open the slipper closet and get me my gold sandals on the third shelf? At least my feet haven’t got a middle-aged spread.”
As a matter of fact, her feet had only recently begun to look too small for the rest of her.
“I’m going to wear the gold necklace with the little diamonds—the one you gave me on our last anniversary, in case you’ve forgotten, darling.”
He had not forgotten the necklace, or the bill from Cartier’s, and now that she had mentioned it, the bill from Cartier’s reminded him that neither of them would be around Cartier’s so much as formerly.
“Tom,” she said, “please hurry. Why, you haven’t started to shave or anything.”
Would it, after all, not be better to await another opportunity, to cultivate a more propitious, more sentimental moment? Emily was right, time was marching on, and he must dress very hurriedly indeed if he were to be down in time to meet the Bramhalls. The morning might be better, or later in the evening when the company was gone—but he knew the reason behind his hesitation. There was a contemptible species of fear inside him. There had been too many scenes with too many women, the gentlest of whom were usually the worst fishwives when aroused. Emily was putting on the necklace, seated in front of her dressing-table mirror, looking rather like a Renoir. It was always hard to tell what drove one to a decision. It might have been the necklace, or it might have been the way she applied her lipstick, or one of a dozen other reasons that made him believe that his manhood and his self-respect hung in the balance if he did not tell her.
“Emily,” he said, “I guess there’s something I ought to tell you, and I’d better tell you now.”
Things were always easier when you walked up the line. Her face staring into the mirror showed him that she had recognized that something was serious, and she had never been able to cultivate the guile to hide her thoughts or emotions. He believed that her first reaction was fear, but she had never been a timid girl. She wheeled around immediately and her eyes met his for a moment, the same beautiful eyes that could not fail to hold any man’s attention. Her voice changed, like his own. It was high and steady, without dramatic affectation.
“Is this so tough,” she asked, “that you have to tell it now?”
“Yes,” he said, “and I’m afraid it’s going to be hard on you, Emily. I got a pretty tough piece of news this morning.”
She had never been a good actress, but in real life she was eloquently convincing. There was stillness in Emily’s disorderly bedroom. She was always leaving her shoes and mules exactly where she had stepped out of them, and tossing her clothes indiscriminately over bed and chairs; and at dinner dressing time, there was always a snarl of nylons on the floor. This disorder added to the suspense and drama that they both were facing.
“All right,” she said, “what is the news, Tom?”
He knew her so well that he recognized that she never had been the girl to pick up the pieces.
“Well,” he said, “it’s about that musical I tried to put on. The one about Porthos and the Musketeers, in case you don’t remember.”
“In case I don’t remember,” she said, and gave a mellow laugh. “In case I don’t remember the fortune you put into it, and then all the extra money when they changed the costumes and sets at the last minute. You never should have done it, and I’ve always told you so. And I told you right from the beginning that the thing had no future. I told you and I told you that no one ever goes to a costume musical. Did I or did I not tell you?”
Her voice was ironical, as it always was when she had been correct.
“Yes,” he said, “and you told me the same thing about The King and I.”
She laughed again.
“Well, this one wasn’t The King and I,” she said. “I always told you it was the kiss of death, didn’t I, when you started being the big producer instead of scribbling on your copy paper? I always told you that playwriting and business did not mix, and Arthur always said so, too. Did you ever hear of G.B.S. producing musicals about Paris?”
“All right,” he said, “just so long as you don’t start calling him dear old George.”
“There you go being flippant,” she said. “All right, you lost your shirt going into musical comedy, but we’ve known that already, haven’t we? Well, what about it now?”
“I suppose I should have been franker with you,” he said. “It’s the bank. I put up everything from the safe deposit box to secure a loan.”
He could see that finally she saw what was coming. He heard her draw a sharp breath as she pulled herself up from her seat before the dressing table.
“Do you mean,” she said, “that you underwrote that thing all yourself? Do you mean you didn’t get Hollywood to help you, or play safe selling pieces of it? Oh my God, Tom, I told you to sell pieces.”
“Emily,” he said, “you were absolutely right, but there’s no use going backwards, and I’m very, very sorry.”
It was time to get the thing over. He hated the humiliation of telling her, and she had been absolutely right.
“I guess you’d better get the rest of it,” he told her. “The market’s dropped. The bank is selling all the securities. There’s only about enough to pay the loan after taxes. There it is, Emily.”
There it really was. The reality had not struck him so forcibly when Miss Mulford had begun to cry, but stark
reality was on Emily’s frozen features.
“Oh, my God!” she said. “You mean you’re cleaned out?”
There was nothing to do, he was thinking, but take it. Humiliating and personally painful though the scene might be, he was still withdrawn from it. It was his instinct that still made him assess the values. He stood there both being and seeing himself.
“That’s the usual way of putting it,” he said: “cleaned out.”
“So that’s why you were going to sell this place,” Emily said. “Oh, my God!”
“That’s right,” he said, “and I’m afraid it isn’t all, Em.”
He did not know why he had called her “Em,” because he had not done so for years, except that he could not help feeling sorry for her.
“I don’t like this any more than you, my dear,” he said. “I also have an unsecured loan for seventy thousand dollars. They’ll be after me, too, and that will take the house and furniture here and the apartment in New York, I’m afraid.”
“Afraid?” she said. “Oh, my God, afraid! What about the picture rights?”
“I called up Ed this morning,” he said. “No one’s interested. I’m sorry, Em.”
“So that’s why you didn’t dare come to the house for lunch,” she said. “Don’t stand there with that smirk saying you’re sorry!”
“All right,” he said, “I guess that wraps it up, Em. I don’t blame your feeling the way you do, but we’d better pull ourselves together. After all, we’re not going to starve. There are royalties and some motion-picture payments, and I’ve about got the new play finished.”
There was no change in her expression. He heard her draw a deep breath.
“The new play …” she said. “Why don’t you be a man and face it? You know just as well as I do that it won’t get anywhere. Don’t you ever read the notices? You’ve been repeating yourself for the last five years.”
There was always instinct, including that of self-preservation. Writers and slack-wire artists eventually reached approximately the same ending. You were gone once you lost faith in skill, and writers and slack-wire artists, too, knew that they could not go on forever. The contempt in her face was what made him react at last more than anything she had said.
“All right, Em,” he said. “Here we are on the beach with the Bramhalls coming. I know it’s tough, but you shouldn’t have married me for my money.”
When he saw her face flush, he knew that he had dished out as much as he had taken.
“Now that’s funny,” she said. “Very, very funny—after Hopedale had just taken you to the cleaners. Very, very funny—when you used to say I was the only one who could help and understand you. I married you because I thought you were a man, with a career ahead of you. I thought you could be somebody I could admire, with a great name in the theatre—and what did I get?”
She laughed. It was a laugh straight from the old school, and there was no stopping Emily once she had started.
“And what did I get?” she said. “It’s about time someone told you—a conceited, washed-out, middle-aged has-been, and not even much of a lover. My God, why didn’t I see the fallacy in all the lousy plays you wrote? Why didn’t I know you were a conceited literary prostitute, who only cared about money? And don’t smirk at me! You’re the person who made me depend on money and ruin my ideals, simply by association. You and your limousines and your antique furniture, your trips abroad. You’re the one who made me soft and made me put on weight just out of sheer nervousness. Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t care for art and that you had the soul of a stockbroker?”
“Emily,” he said, “that’s about enough for now.”
“Oh,” she said, “it is, is it? Who ever told you you could produce a play? Well, I suppose you had to, when you realized you were slipping artistically; but all you’ve ever been able to do successfully is spend money, money, money. I’ve watched your self-indulgence, your pouring money into this house, trying to bolster up your crumbling, pathetic ego. Well, it doesn’t make any difference now, because you’re on the beach, as you have said; and it isn’t even pathetic. Do you hear me? You’re absolutely through!”
“Yes,” he said, “I hear you, and you’re a ham actress if there ever was one. Now put some powder on your face and go downstairs.”
“And what do you know about acting?” she said. “Tom Harrow, the great director. Tom Harrow, the superannuated show-off, going to the war with a picture crew. Oh, my God! I don’t know how I’ve stood it. No wonder Rhoda walked out; no wonder Hopedale couldn’t take it!”
“Emily,” he said, “that will be enough for now.” And he walked into his own room and slammed the door, but even so he could still hear her voice dimly addressing the unseen audience.
He had not expected sympathy or commiseration from her, but neither had he thought she would be able to play so accurately on his emotions. The evidence of deterioration in their relationship shocked him, combined with his memories of having been drawn to her once. He had been a fool to marry her, of course, after the Hopedale episode, but there had been gaiety and good nature and forgiveness once. Now there was only débris, after that explosion. He could see her point of view and at that moment he could sympathize, but he was shocked to discover that he was more distressed than he should have been and it was no help to tell himself that the picture she had drawn of him was spitefully distorted. He could not get away from a new belief that there was nothing left.
XII
Bread upon the Girls
The reflection of his face in the bathroom mirror was blank and pale and there was a slight tremor to his hands when he fixed his shirt studs. Once there had been everything, he was thinking. The only thing to do was get such thoughts out of his mind. He was standing before the full-length mirror attached to the back of his wardrobe, straightening his tie and giving a final tug and a pat to the folds of his dinner coat, when he heard the inevitable voices downstairs, and then he opened his own door to the hallway. The thing to remember was that the show must go on. Even if you fell flat on your face, the show must go on. Then Emily’s voice in the hall told him that she realized it, too.
“Oh, you two dears,” he heard Emily say, “it’s so sweet of you to have come all this way! Tom is dying to see you, and he will be down in just a minute. We’re having cocktails in the library. Harold will barkeep until Tom comes down. You know how Tom is, absent-minded and always putting off dressing until the last moment.”
There was invariably a delayed action and aftermath to unpleasantness, and now he could feel it sweep over him. Emily’s voice had been responsible for it—her gay voice, full of cordial warmth that had been so appealing to him once. Her voice and the emanations of her personality down there in the hall aroused in him unreasoning anger, but then, the anger was a help. It flowed through him like a stimulating wonder drug, changing his attitude toward all that Emily had said. It aroused in him memories of the hero-worship of an earlier Emily that had touched him once so deeply, and with that worship there had been a helplessness continually appealing to his protection. There was nothing like helplessness and blond beauty to create appeal. Emily had seldom been right in those days, and there had never been a woman more anxious to marry an eligible older man, and by God, she had managed it. She had found him off balance and had kept him off balance. Anger was beneficial, given the proper time and place, and the beauty of it was that his wrath was cool and controlled. He smiled as brightly as Emily when he walked downstairs to the library.
Hal was at the table with the drinks and Alfred was passing appetizers, which the Bramhalls had refused, but it was different with Emily and Walter. In the first seconds of his entrance he saw that Harold had put on a dinner coat, presumably without having been told, and although the coat was tight for him because his shoulders had broadened during his time in the service, it fitted adequately, and Harold looked very well with the law-books from the Judge’s library behind him, startlingly like his mother. All the diverse thre
ads of personalities became wound together in a pre-dinner way when he entered. As he had often said, there were few greater ordeals than a conventional, semiformal dinner, demanding original conversation after you had been writing it all day. Emily gave him her most beaming smile, but her glance, he noticed, was worried. Her glance was telling him that she was already sorry for what had gone on upstairs, and Emily’s fits of anger often smoothed out rapidly—but this evening he did not give a damn, nor did he give a further damn whether or not the Bramhalls knew that he and Emily had been quarreling.
“Oh, there you are, dear,” Emily said, and if you wanted to analyze it, it was a hell of an obvious remark. Her glance was now pleading, but remembering what he had heard her say to Walter that morning, he ignored the overture. All he had to do was be himself.
Women and Thomas Harrow Page 19