Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  Without anything having been said specifically, nothing more was necessary. As an older generation would have put it, the young people were interested in each other, but he never could agree with his Aunt Edith that Rhoda had thrown herself at him. The action had been simultaneous, and from the moment they had first seen each other, it was for better or for worse, and Rhoda had been right about the violet talcum powder.

  His Aunt Edith was reading by the gas lamp in the front parlor when he returned to the Judge’s house.

  “Tom,” she said, “I am not mistaken, am I, that you are covered with violet perfume?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I had dusted it off.”

  “It does not matter,” she said, “the odor is not disagreeable. Did it come from that young girl on whom you were calling, Rhoda Browne?”

  “Well, yes,” he said, “now you mention it, Aunt Edith.”

  “I recognize that conventions have changed since I was young,” his aunt said. “It must mean, then, that she has been embracing you on the first night you called on her formally. I’m sorry if I disapprove.”

  “I wouldn’t say that she was embracing me, Aunt Edith,” he said. “It would be more correct to say that I was embracing her.”

  She sniffed and he, also, was aware of the scent of violets.

  “It is what a gentlemen would say,” she said. “But your admission cannot conceal the fact that the young girl was willing to be embraced.”

  She had put down her book and sat with folded hands, her ankles carefully crossed, though only partially visible beneath the hem of her long dress, in an attitude exactly like Rhoda’s when Rhoda had said that a girl always had to wait for someone to ask her.

  “How do you know she consented?” he said. “Perhaps she resisted my advances.”

  “No,” she said, “no. It would have been more correct if she had done so, but if she had, there would have been less perfume.”

  “Well,” he said, “the Judge’s grandson doesn’t kiss and tell, Aunt Edith. Let’s say that a friendly embrace is almost conventional now among unmarried members of opposite sexes of a certain age. It doesn’t mean what it used to. In fact, it’s only a form of politeness.”

  “I understand,” his aunt said. “I am glad that you have been polite, and I realize that things have changed greatly. Your father, for example, was a very impetuous man in what I might term an amorous way regarding my sister, your mother, after his automobile collided with the tree. But it was at least ten days before my sister and Mr. Harrow reached anything approaching what you seem to have arrived at much sooner. Yes, I know that times have changed.”

  “It might have happened sooner, too, if my father hadn’t been hurt in the accident,” Tom said.

  “That is true,” his aunt said. “He sustained a broken arm and a fractured collarbone. I had forgotten. This Browne girl, I suppose, must be pretty.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I think she is, Aunt Edith.”

  “I can understand that you might think so,” his aunt said. “What I should have said is that I hope she is pretty from the standpoint of my generation.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I see what you mean. That’s just the way she is pretty. In fact, you might say she looks distinguished.”

  His aunt sniffed again. “I am glad, although it hardly seems possible,” she said.

  “Well, that’s the way it is,” he told her. “Her mother comes from Baltimore. She was a Miss Rhyelle.”

  “It is strange,” his aunt said, “even when I was young, people of a certain sort always seemed to come from Baltimore. She’s not a Catholic, I hope. So many people are Catholics who come from Baltimore.”

  “I didn’t see any sacred pictures on the wall,” Tom said, “but the Brownes may have sold their Fra Lippo Lippi’s.”

  “The judge, your grandfather,” his aunt said, “prided himself on his religous tolerance. He associated on the bench with many Irish Catholics, some of whom were judges also. But the Judge was never in favor of a Protestant-Catholic marriage, although he always added, as I add, too, that this opionion was intended as no reflection upon the Church of Rome.”

  “But, Aunt Edith,” he said, “I don’t think they’re Catholics, and because I have violet talcum on my coat doesn’t mean I’m going to marry Rhoda. I don’t have to make an honest woman of her on acount of it, do I?”

  “There can be no reason for going to any such lengths immediately,” his aunt said, “since the acquaintance has been so brief, but you must understand that everyone is talking.”

  All that surprised him was that everyone should have been talking already.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “Mr. Gorman has said so, and so has Marie,” his aunt said. “You were seen together in the cemetery after the 6:30 motion pictures and again the next day, and this afternoon on the way back from the post office from the last mail, which contained a letter for you from New York in a young lady’s handwriting, you were seen waiting for several minutes outside the typing school.”

  There were some places where you never could get away with anything, and he was glad that never in all their association had he attempted to conceal anything from his aunt.

  “It looks as though you have me dead to rights,” he said. “Yes, we have been meeting in the cemetery.”

  “I’m glad to know,” his aunt said, “that cemeteries can serve a dual purpose, but I think perhaps I should go and call on Mrs. Browne myself if things have gone so far.”

  “But Aunt Edith,” he said, “things haven’t gone anywhere.” And the strange thing was that, when he told her, he believed it. He should have realized that what was nowhere in New York was far in some places.

  “Don’t let us labor the point,” his aunt said. “The Judge, your grandfather, taught me as a young girl about weighing circumstantial evidence.”

  “Listen, Aunt Edith,” he said, “I only kissed her. That’s all the circumstantial evidence. That and the cemetery.”

  His aunt shook her head.

  “I still think I shall call on Mrs. Browne,” she said. “It will look better in the eyes of everyone and will be fairer to Miss Browne since things have gone so far.”

  It was only fair to admit that his Aunt Edith had been correct. Things had already gone so far that they would never be the same again, so far that the lines of success and failure were drawn in his career already. It was not too late for escape, but even if he could have looked into the future, seen himself as he was, alone and taking another drink to escape from the present, he still would not have changed a line. There had never been, and there would never be again, anyone in the world like Rhoda Browne.

  XVI

  Life and Love Moved Faster Then

  Though trite, the remark was still significant, that the happiest time in a man’s or a nation’s life occurs usually during those periods in which no historian can think of much on which to comment. He had not intended, before he met Rhoda Browne, to spend his summer out of New York while writing his play, Little Liar. But the happiest things in life often occurred by accident. Nothing that came to him later in professional and other ways could compare with the days he spent that summer; but he could recall very little about that time that was definite. He could remember only a few of the things he had said to Rhoda Browne and not much about the hours they had spent together, for these had finally fallen into a sequence. But at the same time, he had never worked so hard. If the fantasy Little Liar were finally to give him a place, as many reviewers agreed, in future histories of drama, he could thank Rhoda. The best in art was born only of incentive, which might be fear, hunger, jealousy or cupidity, but the incentive that made him spend hours on Little Liar that summer was solely the drive to show Rhoda that he could earn another cash advance. He had often wished that he could turn the clock back and experience again the drives that had urged him, but drives, he now knew, intensify and diminish, but could never repeat. There was nothing again like the perio
d when he had worked on Little Liar, never the same anguish or ecstasy, or sense of living, or the same total competence. A woman seldom understood that a man’s work always existed in a world beyond her own, but there was no doubt that Rhoda showed interest in those days.

  “Do you think they are going to give you another thousand dollars?” she asked. “I love it, when you read it to me, but maybe that’s only because I love you.”

  “Rhoda,” he told her, “let’s leave ourselves out. Essentially it’s a good play.”

  “I don’t see how we can leave ourselves out,” Rhoda said, “when we need more money if Mother and Pa are going to let us get married.”

  Although he had faced the fact of marriage many times when he had been working on Little Liar, the word still sent a shiver of finality up his spine.

  “All right,” he said, “if your father’s making so much in his Ford agency, you can go and marry a millionnaire.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I want you. I think you’re going to do better than Father, honestly I do.”

  Aside from Rhoda and Little Liar, he had other things on his mind, including a constant correspondence with the Higgins office. It had finally been decided that Hero’s Return was to be put into rehearsal toward the middle of September.

  This meant that he, being the author, should return to New York the first of September for the casting, and thus the time for finishing Little Liar was briefer than he had thought.

  When he received this communication from the Higgins office, it was the end of July and he was not satisfied with Little Liar yet. A difficulty with any play was that no one connected with it was ever finally satisfied. In any drama there was always a well-constructed turning point, but in life you were always too involved in living to make a successful analysis. Now he could see that he had still had command of the situation when the news reached him that his play would go into rehearsal. The sensible thing to do was to pack up and go to New York to finish Little Liar without any further interruptions. If he had wanted to, he could have left that morning, simply sending a note to Rhoda. Would he have missed her in New York, enmeshed in the novelty that faced him there? He might have temporarily, although the chances were that he would never have married Rhoda Browne; but when he was actually living through that period of decision, the possibility never occurred to him. No one in love could be a cynic, and he was in love with Rhoda, and consequently without the capability of judgment. He was beguiled, and he never blamed himself.

  He had developed a habit that summer of parking his Ford roadster on Dock Street opposite the typing school, knowing very well that concealment was impossible. He sat waiting for her that afternoon after the news came, mentally revising some of the final speeches of Little Liar, oblivious of the people and the sounds on Dock Street. He was happy without knowing that he had been happy until years later. In his preoccupation with his last lines, he was not conscious of contentment until he saw Rhoda walk out of the old brick building whose second floor housed the typing school. They each expected the other and each took it for granted that the other would be there. She was wearing a plain cotton print dress and she was carrying her shorthand notebook. As she had often told him, she never did care how she looked at typing school, and now that her father was making enough money to give her a dress allowance, she was not going to spend it on looking nice when she was learning things like shorthand and double entry bookkeeping. But her intentions made no difference. She could not change the radiance of her hair or the grace of her walk, nor could she conceal her pleasure that he should have been waiting patiently for her there.

  “I’m glad you’ve put the top down,” she said. “Let’s go for quite a long ride, shall we?”

  “All right,” he said.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “It was an awful bore up there today doing speed tests. Every girl should learn to support herself if necessary, but I don’t want anybody to tell me so again.”

  “I won’t,” he said. “I don’t want you to support yourself.”

  “Well, just keep thinking along those lines,” she said. “How are you doing with the play?”

  “It’s all there,” he said, “but it needs some going over.”

  “You keep fussing with it,” she said. “Maybe you’re doing it too much.”

  “There are one or two things that I want to make better,” he said, “but the main part of the fussing is over.”

  “It makes me nervous the way you keep going over it,” she said. “I don’t believe anything you’re doing will affect it now. Why don’t you send it the way it is, and start on something new?”

  “So I’ll get another advance, you mean?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s what I mean. You ought to keep doing it without wasting so much time. You said you could do four of them a year. I’ll bet if you put your mind on it, you could do six.”

  “I don’t seem to be able to explain,” he said, “that I’m not selling these plays for a thousand dollars. That is the advance they are giving me against royalties.”

  “Well, it’s something, anyway,” Rhoda said.

  “But the point is,” he said, “as I’ve told you, if the play’s a success, I may get a good deal more.”

  “But you can’t tell,” Rhoda said. “I still think what you have now is the point.”

  “You’re a funny girl,” he said. “An awfully funny girl.”

  “I don’t feel so funny,” she said. “How much money have you got in your pocket right now? Is it quite a lot?”

  “Quite,” he said, “comparatively speaking. I think a little over fifty dollars.”

  “You think? Don’t you know?” she asked.

  “Not down to the last nickel,” he said. “Would you like me to stop and count it?”

  “No,” she said, “but as long as you have fifty dollars, why don’t you take me to a roadhouse somewhere and get me some dinner and a bootleg cocktail? I’ve never been to a roadhouse.”

  “I don’t know whether there are any around here,” he said.

  “There must be some,” she said. “We saw one in the movie last night, that part of the double feature called She Stoops to Folly—I mean that place where there was a dance floor, and there were drinks and waiters and sizzling steaks. You remember that roadhouse, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said, “vaguely.”

  “Vaguely,” she repeated. “Why is it you always keep remembering things vaguely?”

  “I must have been thinking how to get another advance,” he said. “The picture didn’t hold me.”

  “Maybe because you were holding me,” Rhoda said, and she giggled, “but there must be some sort of roadhouse.”

  “You mustn’t believe everything you see at the pictures,” he said.

  “That’s what you keep saying,” she answered, “but it seems to me a lot of the things I see are coming true. You look better than Douglas Fairbanks, in a different way.”

  “And you look better than Pickford,” he said. “Besides you’re my sweetheart, not America’s sweetheart.”

  “Maybe it would be better to be America’s sweetheart,” she said. “Why not ask somebody at a filling station where a roadhouse is?”

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll ask.”

  The place they went to was called the Kozy Kottage Diner. He could remember the uncomfortable booth, the man in the spotted tuxedo playing the piano and the violent taste of the gin and ginger ale at one dollar a drink.

  “Gosh,” Rhoda said, “so this is really it? This must be like New York.”

  “Don’t drink too fast,” he said, “or you may go blind. This isn’t a roadhouse; this is called a ‘speak-easy.’ They have bigger, better and busier ones in New York. Why, there’s one where writers go in the afternoon, where if the police make a raid, they can press a button and they can have the bar go right back into the wall. And anyway, there are always people in the front room just waiting to get arrested. They’re paid
to get arrested.”

  “You remember queer things,” she said. “I can’t imagine being interested in a lot of poor people sitting around waiting to get arrested.”

  “I suppose it’s how you look at it,” he said. “I like to imagine what they’re thinking while they’re waiting. It could almost be an opening scene for something. They have broken noses and wear dinner clothes so the police can pick them from the regular patrons. And that reminds me, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I got a letter this morning saying that the play’s going into rehearsal in September, and they’ll be casting it before that. I’ve got to think about getting back to New York.”

  Her lips trembled and her hands shook as she endeavored to pick up her gin and ginger ale in a sophisticated manner.

  “Well, you’re not going to go to New York and associate with a lot of actors and actresses and chorus girls unless I go with you,” she said. “How soon are you going?”

  “I don’t see how it can be arranged very well for you to go with me,” he said. “I’ll come right back as soon as the play starts going.”

  She shook her head.

  “They never come back in the movies,” she said, “when they go to the city and leave the small-town girl. Anyway, I won’t take a chance. I’ll go with you. You don’t think I’m going to let you go, do you?”

  She always made him laugh at unexpected moments.

  “You needn’t laugh,” she said, “I’ll never have a chance at anyone like you again. All right, you’ve got to marry me.”

  “But I can’t, Rhoda,” he told her, “until I know whether I have enough money to support a wife.”

  He could still remember the exact tune being beaten out on the piano. It was “Smiles,” not quite so dated then as it was at present.

  “I know,” she said. “It’s awfully dangerous, but I’ve got to take a chance, that’s all. I can’t let you go without me. What are you laughing at?”