“Yes,” she said. “I’ve been trained carefully by my mother.”
“I didn’t know mothers made daughters read The Count of Monte Cristo,” he said.
“I didn’t say that,” she answered. “I read it when she wasn’t looking.”
“All right,” he said, “suppose I were the Count of Monte Cristo and I could give you everything you wanted.”
She shook her head.
“It’s just as well you’re not,” she said. “I’d be terrible if I had everything I wanted, but the main thing would be to be sure you’d always be the Count of Monte Cristo. Do you think you always would?”
It was colder now the sun was down, and she stood up, but he knew what he would have said if she had given him the time to answer. He would have said of course he would always be Mr. Dantes, and he would have believed it, too.
“I suppose I’ll have to go,” she said. “There are cupcakes and lemonade in the kitchen. You’re not going to go away, are you?”
“No,” he said, “not if there are cupcakes.”
“I mean,” she said “I know you’re only visiting your aunt or someone, but—after all of this—I hope you’re going to be here for a while.”
He had never thought until then that he might just as well write his second play in the Judge’s house.
“Oh, I’ll be here for quite a while,” he said.
“I don’t see how you can be, if you have anything to do,” she said.
Every thought and speech projected its pattern afterwards, and this one in particular.
“I haven’t got anything to do at the moment because I’m out of a job, but at the same time I’m doing a little work,” he told her.
Right there they reached the roadblock, the roadblock of the years.
“You mean you’re working, and you’re out of a job, and you don’t have to work?” she asked him.
“That’s right,” he said. “Roughly that’s what I mean. I mean, I don’t exactly know what I’m doing myself.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing yourself?” she said.
“That doesn’t sound right. That isn’t accurate,” he answered. “I know roughly what I’m doing, but I don’t know how it’s going to come out.”
Rhoda laughed uncertainly, but her laughter sounded like the temple bells of Mandalay, disturbed by an unexpected breeze.
“That sounds queer,” she said. “I like you, but I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”
There was always a gap between them, but they were walking side by side down Dock Street then, and everything seemed possible.
“You see, I’m writing a play,” he said.
“You mean like Ibsen?” she said.
“I wouldn’t call it straight Ibsen,” he said, “not The Wild Duck or anything like that, but at the same time, it’s a play.”
“You mean you’re so rich that you really don’t have to work at anything?” she asked him.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You see, I’ve written another play and they hope to produce it on Broadway, and they’ve paid me a thousand dollars.”
That was before inflation, but still, the sum had a different meaning for each of them.
“You’re not just telling stories,” she said, “that you write plays, and they pay you a thousand dollars?”
“No,” he said, “that’s accurate. I’ve written one and now I’m writing another.”
“How long does it take?” she asked.
“You can’t make any rigid estimate,” he said, “but I’d say, if you have a clear idea, you ought to get something in shape in about three months.”
“Four thousand dollars a year,” she said. “That isn’t much, is it?”
They were walking down Harrison Street, and the stars were out, but the elm trees obscured the stars.
“That’s only the advance,” he said. “If the plays are good enough, they’ll run into a great deal more.”
“How do you mean?” she asked. “If they give you a thousand dollars, isn’t that all?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “If a play’s a hit on Broadway, it can be worth a good deal more than a hundred thousand dollars.”
She did not answer for a minute.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she said, “but you did tell me, didn’t you, that you have a play that may go on to Broadway? Could that one be worth more than a hundred thousand dollars?”
“Yes,” he said, “perhaps.”
“And they’ve given you a thousand dollars for it anyway?” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s what they call an advance.”
They were silent for almost a minute.
“I still don’t understand what you’re talking about” she said, “and I suppose you’re exaggerating, but I’ve had a wonderful time.”
“I’ve had a wonderful time, too,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but you can have a cupcake now.”
They had reached the door of the Browne house, and now the dark was falling, but the sky was clear and it was possible to see the stars.
“I’d like a cupcake very much,” he told her.
“And when you’re eating it,” she said, “after I’ve told my mother I’ve come home, I wish you’d tell me what you are. What does you father do?”
“He didn’t do anything but lose money,” he said. “He died of flu after the war, but he did take me to Jack’s.”
“What’s Jack’s?” she asked.
“In New York,” he said. “It used to be a restaurant on Sixth Avenue before Prohibition. He took me there when he was drunk one night, and he sang me a little song.”
“What song?” she asked.
Another thing about Rhoda, she was always avid for small detail.
“Oh,” he said, “it was a silly song:
“Stay in there punching, sonny,
Don’t let your heart fall plop,
Someday the nation will honor you, too,
As it’s honored your dear old pop.”
They were in the Brownes’ kitchen, with its coal-burning stove and soapstone sink, and the lemonade and the cupcakes were on the table, just as Mrs. Browne had said they would be.
“I still don’t understand you,” Rhoda said, “but I do hope the nation will honor you, too—and you’re not going to leave town, are you?”
“No,” he said. “The idea would be ridiculous.”
She had pulled off her cloche hat. The electric bulb from the kitchen wall bracket made her hair glow, and cast perfect shadows on her photogenic face. She was prettier than anyone he had ever known or ever would again. He moved to touch her, and she did not move away.
“Not here,” she whispered. “Mother will be listening through the register upstairs.”
But she did kiss him, once, in the shadows just outside the front door. There was nothing spectacular about the embrace, since at that time the gesture was conventional, but he never forgot the touch of her lips nor her farewell whisper. No one ever again had whispered as merrily and beguilingly as Rhoda.
“Good night, Monte Cristo,” she said. “I’ll see you in the cemetery tomorrow afternoon.”
XV
It Lingers Still, Thy Infinite Variety
There had once been a time when he had resented, though he had always artistically admired, the inevitability of Greek tragedy. From the opening scene onward, it never required an interpretive chorus to make it clear that the hero, gifted though he might be by the gods, would never extricate himself from the difficulties into which the Fates had cast him. Aeschylus had often seemed to him to insult the dignity of human will, and yet he had to admit that there were times in any life when Aeschylus and Euripides were doubtless right. There were times when, lik a swimmer in the surf off a Long Island beach, one would inadvertently be caught in an ebbing current and before one knew what was happening, be carried out to sea. An experienced swimmer had told him once that i
t was better to let the current take you until its force died down, because man could never beat the sea in an outright test of strength, and Aeschylus would have added that man could never beat the Fates.
His experience with Rhoda Browne thirty years ago was something the Greeks might have understood better than the moderns. There was coincidence in his having met her on Dock Street just when he had left New York and Betty Howland forever; but coincidence, a Greek would say, was furnished by the gods, and after he had met her, the ending was inevitable. He was conscious of the efforts that Rhoda’s parents and Rhoda herself were making. He could be amused by them, but he never resented them and never would have wanted them different. There had been many sides to Rhoda that delighted him without his ever wanting them to change, and in spite of those sides and those eager calculations, no one could erase the truth that he and Rhoda were in love.
You could debate with yourself exactly what the phrase “in love” might mean, and undoubtedly it never had meant the same thing to any two individuals. From his point of view it was not infatuation, because he had always seen her in clear perspective. He loved her humor and her honesty and he must have also loved her for the things that he could give her that she wanted, but why had she loved him?
“I don’t know why,” she said once that summer. “I don’t understand you half the time. Maybe because you’re so different. You’re always new and strange—but I can tell you when I started loving you—in the kitchen eating cupcakes, when you said it would be ridiculous to go away; and it would have been ridiculous.”
It would have been ridiculous, although common sense must have told him at some point that going away was the wiser thing to do. It would have been ridiculous after she had whispered that she would see him in the cemetery next afternoon, and his Aunt Edith had been pathetically delighted when he had suggested that he might stay on for a month or two and finish up his writing. As of now, if he could have done it over again, he would not have changed a minute of that time, for all of it was refreshing and most of it was comedy, and one of the most delightful things about that summer was that Rhoda and the Brownes had been impressed by his financial capabilities.
It was obvious, that next day, that Rhoda had given her parents some sort of balance sheet.
“Mother wonders whether you wouldn’t care to come to supper tomorrow night,” Rhoda said, “and Pa’s going to buy some lobsters, in case you want to know.”
There was another thing that he could not forget. He had been among the first to appreciate Rhoda’s potential charm.
“Would you like to have me?” he asked her.
When he asked the question, he could remember that he had been trying to analyze her charm.
“Don’t ask silly questions to get compliments,” she said. “Or maybe you don’t like lobsters?”
“I always like them,” he said, “in the company of a pretty girl.”
“That’s a silly thing to say, too, because lobsters always taste the same. You remember what you said yesterday about silk stockings?”
“Yes,” he said, “I remember.”
“Well, look,” she said, and she pointed at her ankle, “you can get me a pair and bring them around tomorrow night.”
“I’ll get you a dozen so you won’t have to remind me any more,” he said.
“A dozen?” she said. “Well, all right, if you’ll help so I can get them upstairs without Mother seeing them, because Mother might think …”
He laughed; she could always make him laugh.
“Oh, no,” he said, “not for a dozen pairs, and I’ll tell you another thing I’ll do. I’ll buy a new Ford from your father.”
There was still some money in the account.
“You mean you’ll buy it on account of me?” she said.
She could always make him laugh, even when he knew that the current was taking him far away from the beach.
“That’s right,” he said, “and you won’t get your stockings torn in the brambles any more.”
He had learned one useful thing about the town long before he had met Rhoda, and this was that everyone’s life there was an open book, whether one wanted it to be or not. Sin and sorrow, sex and continence were always written more clearly than the words on a wayside pulpit or the words on a poster advertising the latest Hollywood production. Thus he was not astonished to find when he had arrived at Harrison Street that evening that Mr. and Mrs. Browne had been able to learn a good deal about him. Mrs. Browne was alone in the overstuffed parlor with a faded framed photograph on her lap.
“Rhoda is working in the kitchen,” she said. “She’s much more of a homebody than I ever used to be. Mr. Browne will be here in a few minutes; it’s wonderful that things are so busy at the agency.”
“It does seem as though everybody’s buying a Ford these days,” he said. “Would Rhoda like me to help her in the kitchen?”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Browne said. “Rhoda always calls the kitchen a woman’s world. I hope you like lobsters, Mr. Harrow.”
“I’ve always been devoted to them,” he said, “and I only hope they won’t frighten Rhoda.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you to think of them in that way,” Mrs. Browne said, “but Rhoda isn’t easily frightened. I hadn’t realized that your aunt was the Miss Fowler who lives in that delightful old gingerbread house near Johnson Street, Mr. Harrow.”
Her intentions were obvious, but from the very first they had never alarmed or irritated him. On the contrary, his interest was stimulated, as it always was when he encountered something new. He had never been considered a desirable match before, and the feeling was agreeable. He could understand at last the reactions of a hero in a Jane Austen novel or of the Rockefeller or the Whitney boys, even though he and Mrs. Browne were a long way from the Whitneys. Still, as Tolstoy had said, if one had once seen a street fight, one could write about a battle; and besides, someone had to marry Rhoda someday; someday her knight would come riding. He had never minded in the least being cast as the Little Colonel’s knight. He had always sympathized from the very beginning with the eagerness of Mr. and Mrs. Browne. It resembled the anxiety of shipwrecked passengers on a foundering raft, and yet the fact remained that the Brownes had hit the jackpot in the end, and had landed safely in a bungalow at Daytona Beach.
“It’s known around here as the old Judge Fowler house,” he said. “I have never been enthusiastic about my grandfather’s taste in architecture, but perhaps you’re right, that it is delightful in a way.”
His motto had always been to try everything once. It was easier than he had thought, being a Count of Monte Cristo.
Mrs. Browne sighed, lightly and not lugubriously.
“The home where one has spent happy hours of childhood and youth must always be delightful in its way,” she said. “Now, when you came in, Mr. Harrow, you surprised me poring over a photograph of my old home.” She held the framed picture out to him, and he found himself examining the awkward outlines of a huge house with a bulbous front and a columned portico. “It’s my dear mother’s photograph of the old Rhyelle mansion in Baltimore, now unfortunately torn down to make room for a real estate development.”
When Mrs. Browne became one of the Baltimore Rhyelles, she assumed a south of Mason and Dixon accent, a soft almost imperceptible slurring of intonation which was never a part of her ordinary speech.
“The ballroom was in the large wing in the back, just yonder,” she said. “I was presented there to Baltimore society, and I met Mr. Browne at that year’s cotillion, not that he’d been invited. He had come with some other young men from the University of Maryland, not that he could not have been invited. The Brownes of Maryland are well known in the state.” It put Mr. Browne in his place. Although she never admitted it outright, it had always been clear that the Rhyelle-Browne marriage had been a misalliance, and there was an intimation, also never put into words, that due to it, the doors of the Rhyelle mansion had closed on Estelle Rhyelle forever. Mrs. Browne si
ghed when she had finished her speech, and he could not blame her. Everyone had his own Rhyelle mansion somewhere.
“It’s an interesting house,” he said. “No wonder you like to look at it.”
“I only like to at odd moments,” Mrs. Browne said. “I don’t believe in stepping backwards into the past, but I do wish you might have seen it. It would have made such a background for a play, and Rhoda says you’re a playwright, Mr. Harrow. It must be fascinating being a playwright.”
“Maybe she has it a little wrong,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I am a playwright exactly, but only trying to get to be one.”
“But Rhoda says you’ve written and sold a play?”
A note of dismay in Mrs. Browne’s voice made him answer her reassuringly; he had never understood why he had always been anxious never to let down Mrs. Browne.
“That’s true,” he said, “I have written one and the producer has paid me an advance on it, and he’s planning to put it in rehearsal sometime this autumn, and I am writing another while I’m waiting to see what’s going to happen.”
Mrs. Browne sighed, but it was a sigh of relief.
“It must be wonderful to be so successful so young,” she said.
“You’re right about my being young,” he said, “but I wouldn’t say that I’m successful yet—only hoping to be.”
“I know you’re going to be,” Mrs. Browne said. “I can tell from looking at you. They used to say in Baltimore I was gifted in that way. Oh, here comes Mr. Browne.”
Mr. Browne, that evening, was dressed in a blue double-breasted suit, and you could see that he was too anxious ever to be a good salesman. That was one thing to remember—never fall on your face with eagerness.
“Hudson,” Mrs. Browne said, “perhaps it’s enough of an occasion so that Mr. Harrow would like to take a little something?”
“I guess you’ve got to come up with that again,” Mr. Browne said. “What little something?”
Mrs. Browne was sweet and patient.
“Some of the something, Hudson, that you brought home from the sales convention,” she said.
“Oh,” Mr. Browne said, “why, you bet. You could do with a snort of rye, couldn’t you, Mr. Harrow, seeing, as Rhoda says, you’ve been on the stage? It isn’t bad hooch. Our main distributor gave it to me, so it’s got to be good.”
Women and Thomas Harrow Page 27