“That’s one way of putting it,” he said. “We smiled at each other at almost the same time, and then we said hello.”
His aunt was silent for a moment.
“Did she tell you her name?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “her name is Rhoda, Rhoda Browne.”
His aunt had always possessed impeccable sources of local information. There was Marie, who was still in the kitchen, and who perhaps still loved him, and there was Mr. Gorman, who tended the grounds of four houses on Locust Street, and then there was the Monday Club.
“Where does she live?” she asked.
“On Harrison Street, at least I hope that’s where,” he said, “because I’m going there to call for her.”
His aunt nodded slowly.
“That would be the daughter of Mr. Hudson Browne, who is the new manager of the Ford agency,” she said. “A motor-car salesman’s daughter … Did you say she was pretty, Thomas?”
“I don’t remember if I said,” he answered. “At any rate, she is.”
“Well,” his aunt said, “I hope she does not get you into trouble, Thomas.”
Of course she should have hoped. To the end she had implied that Rhoda had made the play for him, and it was impressive to recall on how many occasions his aunt had been correct, when by all the laws of averages she had no business to be correct about anything at all.
It was broad daylight still at 6:15 on Harrison Street, what with the institution of daylight saving and with June owning the longest day in the year, but at the same time you could feel the eventual approach of dusk, although this was a long way off. Voices of children playing in the yards of Harrison Street had a different quality from early morning voices, and there was a quiet and a peace that could no longer be recaptured. The streets were not full of traffic and strangers. The day, as occasionally happened in June, had been perfect, and the air around him was cleaner than that in any modern air-conditioned room. The fresh leaves of the trees were hanging motionless, and the sky had assumed a deeper hue, but it was still far from sunset. Harrison Street was for once like a Winslow Homer painting, with a charm that came from spirit as well as fact. In the next few months, while he was writing the draft of his second play, his thoughts were on Harrison Street for hours and hours. He could amuse himself when alone by picturing the houses in the row where Rhoda lived, house by house, down to the peonies and Oriental poppies in the yards, but nothing was ever the same as it had been that evening.
The house, like his aunt’s, had a wire pull-bell with a glass knob, that could have been an item in a modern antique store. Doubt assailed him when he pulled the bell and listened to its nervous jangling in the hall, because it could have been that he was making a fool of himself and that things weren’t what they seemed on Dock Street, but Rhoda had been waiting and he had been right about her.
“Oh, hello,” she said, “won’t you come in for a minute and meet my father and mother?” And then her voice dropped to a whisper, “And tell me your name again. I knew I was going to forget it, and now I have.”
“Harrow,” he said, “and see you remember it next time.”
When she was most nervous, Rhoda appeared at her calmest, so that he had no way of knowing that she was afraid of what he might think of Mr. and Mrs. Browne. She had no way of knowing, either, that she was beautiful enough as she stood by the door to cancel out any other impression. At any rate, she had to invite him into the house because Mr. Browne had wanted to add him up. It was a very useful experience to him later when he realized that the meeting had a universal quality, and he had used it once nearly verbatim in Flagpole for Two. The crowded room, the imitation tapestry upholstery, the Brussels carpet, everything told mutely that the Brownes had moved and moved. Mr. and Mrs. Browne reminded him later of middle-aged actors and actresses making the best of things when a play was on the road. They were gazing at him with a sharp, pathetic interest that a parent is never able to conceal. It was a long way, he was thinking, from Betty Howland and the apartment that overlooked the Reservoir in Central Park. It was like stepping into another set before another audience and still being able to be himself. It was something to remember that through most of his life he had usually been himself.
“Well, this is a real pleasure, meeting you, Mr. Harrow,” Mr. Browne said, “and it’s kind of you to take our little girl out. Rhoda’s always popular wherever she goes, but she hasn’t had much time to meet any boy friends here yet. The name is Harrow, isn’t it? I don’t recall any Harrows in the local phone directory.”
“What Mr. Browne means,” Mrs. Browne said, “is that he is trying to get acquainted with all the names of persons in this locality. Mr. Browne, you see, has recently assumed the management of the Ford Motor Agency, but perhaps Rhoda told you, Mr. Harrow.”
The whole story, with all its implied pathos, was told by Mr. Browne’s overpressed, double-breasted suit and in Mrs. Browne’s antiquated pompadour. It was only necessary to take one look at Mr. Browne to perceive that he would not be assuming the management of the Ford Motor Agency for an indefinite period; but there was nothing sharp or unkind about these thoughts because Rhoda stood beside him, and they were Rhoda’s parents. He did not mind their sudden eagerness and the avid way they looked at his gray suit and his straw hat. A parent had every right to make an estimate and he did not mind if they were thinking that there must be money somewhere, because Rhoda was beside him.
“No, I don’t believe that Miss Browne had time to tell me,” he said. “I hope you enjoy it here, Mr. Browne.”
He did not blame Mrs. Browne for watching him. There was no reason why she should not have faced the possibility that he was up to no good, and at the time perhaps she was right.
“You don’t live here, do you, Mr. Harrow?”
Of course she had to place him, poor bewildered Mrs. Browne, and it was doubly difficult for her then when he was having his own difficulties in trying to place himself.
“No, I don’t live here exactly,” he said. “I don’t truthfully know where I’m living at the moment. New York as much as any place, I suppose, but right now I’m rather at loose ends.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Browne said, “I remember now. Rhoda told me you were here visiting a relative.”
“Yes,” he said, “my aunt. I’m very fond of my aunt.”
“Mother,” Rhoda said, “there isn’t any reason to cross-question Mr. Harrow, or perhaps he’ll be afraid to come again.”
“Why, Rhoda,” Mrs. Browne said, “what an idea. It’s just the way I am, Mr. Harrow, interested in everyone.”
“Well, Mrs. Browne,” he said, and he laughed, “that’s just the way I am, too.”
“Besides, Mother,” Rhoda said, “he hasn’t asked for my hand in marriage,” and she smiled, “and if he has any designs on me, I’ll tell you later.”
“Rhoda,” Mr. Browne said, “I think that will be quite enough.”
“And don’t be ridiculous, Rhoda,” Mrs. Browne said. “It’s very kind of you to want to take such a bad-mannered girl to the pictures, Mr. Harrow. And you will have her back shortly after nine o’clock won’t you? There’ll be lemonade and cupcakes waiting in the kitchen, dear.”
Rhoda referred to the incident when they were outside, walking up Harrison Street.
“You were nice to them,” she said. “I guess parents are all that way.” It was nearly the only explanation that she ever gave of them, except to tell him once later that she knew he understood them.
“Why shouldn’t I have been nice to them?” he had said. “They let me take you out, and it’s true that they don’t know much about me.”
“Well,” she said, “I guess you know all about us now. What did you say your first name was?”
“It’s Tom,” he said, “and your first name’s Rhoda. I haven’t forgotten that.”
“You can call me by it,” she said, “and I’ll call you Tom if it isn’t on too short acquaintance. Have you got designs on me?”
“I daresay,” he said. “Don’t blame me. Anyone would, you know.”
She laughed, and her laugh fitted with the mellow light of six o’clock.
“Well,” she said, “I’m glad you’ve come right out with it. I don’t care, up to a point, and you like me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “considerably.”
She laughed again more softly.
“Well, of course I like you or none of this would have happened,” she said. “I used to be frightened, and then nothing was fun, and then I told myself I would have to get over it if I was going to get anywhere. Talking to you is like reading a brand-new book, and I’ve never seen anyone just like you, and I don’t understand you at all.”
The first lines were always drawn at a first meeting. He must have been like a book to her and she had tried and tried for years, but she had never understood much of the book. Then she added another thought. One of the reasons that he had loved her was that she was almost always partially but never brutally frank.
“Tom,” she said, “since you’ve been so truthful, I think that I should be, and I want to tell you, unless I change my mind, that I have designs on you, and also want to tell you my mother and father have.” Then she giggled.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Nothing. It’s only exciting,” she said. “No young man wearing sort of tailor-made city clothes has ever taken me to the pictures. That was why Mother was so frightened. You can understand, can’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “but don’t you be frightened.”
She laughed, and as they were walking to the Bijou Theatre, which was an unpleasant name but true even in those days, the sun had reminded him of Milton—“the gilded car of day, his glowing axle doth allay.”
“I’m not,” she said, “and besides, I want to know more about what you’re like.”
“I’d rather know more about you,” he said.
“You will,” she said, “I hope, and you mustn’t worry about Father and Mother. You knew Pa was a failure, didn’t you, the moment you looked at him? I love him, but he’s a failure.”
“Why, Rhoda,” he said, “I don’t mind. I like it if you love a failure.”
“I love lots of the things you say,” she said, “and I think you’re very nice, but I don’t understand you at all.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, “as long as I understand you, Rhoda.”
“Well,” she said, “then let’s not get complexes and things, because we’re only going to the pictures.”
The word “complex” then was almost as new as the new model Ford that Mr. Browne was selling, and where had she picked up the word? He could guess that not the girls at the typing school or Mr. and Mrs. Browne had used it, but Rhoda had always been in tune with the latest note of time.
“I don’t know what you’re about at all,” she said, “but I do think you’re more apt to get me out of everything than anyone I’ve ever known before.”
“How do you define ‘out of everything’?” he asked her.
“That’s silly of you to ask me,” she said, “because of course you know that every girl my age, even a rich one, always wants to get out of everything.”
There was no one else who had quite the same answers to things as Rhoda.
By the time America had reached the year 1928, sexual morals, according to certain experts, had broken down, and this disintegration had been assisted by Mr. Scott Fitzgerald, whom Walter Price for no good reason had always called “Fitzy,” and by the dim lights of those motion-picture halls where the almost silent films of those days—at least in the country—were accompanied by the piano. It could not have helped morals for young people in ill-lighted, badly ventilated halls to perceive the liberated actions of handsome actors and actresses moving in a more desirable world. Somehow, in the film world, the poor but honest girl always lived poor but honestly in a ten-thousand-dollar-a-year apartment which must have been confusing to other poor but honest girls. Somehow she always fell into the arms, to appropriate music, of the poor but honest boy, who drove a moving van and who never quite seemed to belong in the poor but honest girl’s apartment, which she paid for out of her meager stenographic salary. A generation before, young people sat side by side on love seats, looking through stereopticons at photographs of Niagara Falls and of the Spanish-American War, but in 1928 you could see dreams of wish-fulfillment move. You could sit with the girl of your choice in the darkened theatre in 1928, and observe conventional varieties of love play as far as was permitted by a confused National Board of Censorship, and at the same time project your imagination into the doings on the screen. There was no wonder that sex standards were disappearing under this erosion, and no wonder that he and Rhoda Browne trustingly and conventionally held hands the moment that the lights were dimmed, like babes in the wood—not that this was quite the right way to put it from either of their points of view—until the lights went on again. There was no wonder that he and Rhoda Browne felt closer emotionally then they had before, after the picture was ended.
He had tried and tried, while casting his mind back to those years, to recall what under the sun the picture had been about that they had witnessed that evening, and he never could remember. What was more, he never cared, because he had been sitting beside Rhoda, holding her delicate, firm hand, and even at odd moments allowing his hand to rest upon her knee, not more than that, even though he may have had designs. It was by sheer accident that he had met her there at Dock Street, and only kind coincidence had permitted them simultaneously to speak. The gods were very good to him that night, because he knew after his few words with her, reinforced by slight physical contact, that he would never in the world again meet anyone with her validity or appeal.
The 6:30 show was over by about half past eight, but instead of darkness, there was still the glow of sunset.
“It just goes to show,” Rhoda said, “that nothing much can happen at the 6:30 pictures on daylight saving time, and I think you’d better get me home by 9:15 this once.”
“Would you like an ice-cream soda first?” he asked.
“I’m tired of ice-cream sodas,” she said. “I wish it were dark enough so we could see the stars. I’d like to go some place and see the sky, but you can’t ever see much of it here with all the trees and houses.”
“There’s the burying ground by the common,” he said. “You can see a lot of the sky from there, if you’re not afraid of dead people.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said, “I’m only scared I’ll get briers in my silk stockings.”
“I’ll buy you another pair if you do,” he said.
“My mother always tells me,” she said, “not to accept gifts from men. Well, all right, but only if there are briers. You must be anxious for me to see the sky.”
“Not especially,” he said. “I’m only curious to know why you want to see it.”
She glanced at him sideways in the waning light.
“Because it makes me wish all sorts of things I want,” she said, “and I want a lot of things.”
“You mean the sky’s the limit,” he said.
She did not laugh or even smile.
“That’s what I do mean,” she said. “I never thought of it in just that way.”
“What sort of things does the sky make you want?” he asked, and she smiled her bright, quick smile.
“I’m afraid I want everything,” she said, “and I keep being afraid it will all keep on being the way it is.”
The burying ground by the common was a symbol of the past, perfunctorily maintained by the town and no longer employed for its original purpose. Instead, its slate stones and tombs were objects of curiosity and occasionally of vandalism; it had become part of the local custom, and it was considered correct for the local youth to walk there after the 6:30 show. He remembered that they sat side by side on a tomb belonging to a Captain Ezra Blood, a startling name, and the tomb was still there intact, as of the present.
“It’s awful to be afraid,” she said. “I wish I weren’t afraid of being poor, and wandering around and ending marrying someone who’s always going to be poor.” She glanced at him and their eyes met, and even in the half light, he could see that their gray-greenish tinge suited the color of her hair. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, because you don’t know what it’s like to want things and know you’ll never get them. Clothes, diamonds, and limousines and things like that. I don’t know if I’d care about having them—but it’s knowing I’ll never get them—”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I guess I want a lot of things I’ll never get, but the trouble with me is I never know just what I want.”
“That means you’ve never been poor,” she said, “or had to want things.”
“Maybe, but I’ve never been rich,” he said.
“It’s queer talking to you,” she said. “I don’t seem to know where I am with you, because I don’t know what you are, I guess.”
“I don’t know what I am myself,” he said, “but then, maybe no one knows exactly. Would you like it if I could get you clothes and jewels and limousines?”
“Yes,” she said, “of course; only, if you started doing that, you’d have to keep me in them. I wouldn’t want to start slipping back again.”
“Maybe I could try,” he said.
“I’d like it if you would,” she said, “but besides, I’d like it if I were an honest woman.”
“I don’t know whether you can make people honest women, but I might try,” he said.
The color was still in the sky and the clouds by the western horizon were still partly gold and partly purple. Whenever he saw clouds of that color afterwards, he always thought of fantasy. They were both dealing with a sort of make-believe that might possibly turn into reality, but even if the reality were possible, you did not have to face it unless you wished. There were few times in life as entirely agreeable.
“Suppose I were the Count of Monte Cristo,” he said. “You’ve read The Count of Monte Cristo, haven’t you?”
Women and Thomas Harrow Page 26