Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  XXVIII

  Mr. Harrow Would Much Rather Not Wait for Half an Hour

  The light in the converted carriage house was too bright and too cheerful and it seemed to him that Nancy Mulford sitting at the table and sorting out the mail also looked too bright.

  “Walter Price is going away this morning,” he said, “up to Ogunquit to see about the summer theatre.”

  “He finally asked for a loan, then,” she said.

  He nodded. He was glad to be with someone who knew everything so well that there was no reason to explain.

  “There’s no reason for you to worry about the mail,” she said, “and I’ve done the new draft of the third act. You’ve got it pulled together.” She smiled faintly. “You always do better when you’re worried.”

  “You really think it’s better?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, “it’s good. It doesn’t need any more. You never help by working over things too much.”

  “So you don’t think I’m slipping?” he asked.

  “I always think you’re going to be sure of yourself sometime,” she said.

  She never had been able to sympathize with his perpetual uncertainty.

  “Well, anyway,” he said, “Walter says I’m not slipping.”

  “You asked him, didn’t you?” she said. “I don’t see why you do things like that. You don’t look as though you’d slept well.”

  “Not very well,” he said. “There was a little trouble at the house last night. The news, you know.”

  “It must have been bad,” she said, “but after all …”

  “After all, what?” he asked.

  “After all, you’re not going to the poorhouse,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, “I know. I told you not to be upset, and I’m not upset any longer. I’ve worked my way through it; it took me most of the night, but I’m not upset.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, “that makes me feel better.” Then she shook her head sharply. “I’m sorry I said that.”

  “I don’t see why,” he said.

  “Because it doesn’t belong in the script,” she said, “and speaking of the script, I hope you’re not going to pull it to pieces any more. You’d better run through it just once this morning and I’ll send it to New York. You’ll feel better when it’s over.”

  “Running through the script,” he said, “running through the script.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I know the rest of it. You do feel better this morning.”

  “Yes,” he said, “and I’ll tell you why if you want to know, because I have charm and no character.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said, “but it isn’t exactly so. You always have character when you’re running through the script.”

  “You mean I don’t fall down?” he said.

  “No,” she said, “not in the script you don’t.”

  “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said for quite a while,” he told her.

  “Don’t make me feel like a secretary,” she said. “And you can strike that out, too. It isn’t in the script.”

  “Now that I look at you,” he said, “you didn’t sleep so well last night yourself, did you?”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t know exactly what you were going to do. But never mind.”

  “I’m all right,” he said, “I really am. Now get me New York. I’ve got to speak to Mr. Bleek, and don’t go away and close your office door.”

  “You’re not afraid to talk to Mr. Bleek alone, are you?” she asked.

  “No, embarrassed,” he said. “He’s got to come up here and bail me out again. All charm, no character. God, I wish I had some character.”

  “If you had the kind you mean,” she said, “it wouldn’t go with the script.”

  “Running through the script,” he said, “running through the script.”

  “It’s there on the table,” she said, “and it’ll be better if you do something this morning.”

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll work on it until two. I’m having lunch sent out here. I don’t want to go back to the house. It’s got too much unresolved guilt. Honestly, it kept me up all night until I took three pills.”

  “All right,” she said, “and I’ll give you a drink before lunch. What are you doing the rest of the afternoon?”

  “Oh,” he said, “the rest of the afternoon. That’s right, I didn’t tell you. I wish you’d tell Alfred to have Michigan’s latest art triumph ready and brushed and polished by two. I particularly want the big car. Mrs. Harrow called up Hal, that is, I mean, Mrs. Brake called up Hal. They’re staying at the Wellington Manor House. It sounds like a college dorm, doesn’t it? She wants to see me privately. I don’t know what she wants, but I think I’d better go.”

  “If you’d like, I’ll drive up with you,” she said. “I mean, if you can’t tell what it’s going to be about, and I don’t think Mrs. Brake would mind.”

  He was sure that Rhoda would not mind. If she saw Miss Mulford in the new car, she would only say it was characteristic, that he could never face anything alone.

  “I think I’d better go by myself,” he said. “This is do-it-yourself day. I’m going to speak to Mr. Bleek myself and drive the car myself and fix the script myself and eat my lunch myself—but you can mix me a drink before lunch. And now get Mr. Bleek, and please don’t go away.”

  Her clear voice as she placed the call with the operator made him believe that everything was pulled together. It was suggestion more than fact when he heard her voice because she had always pulled things together and she had seen him in every mood. It had been years since he had thought it was necessary to hide his thoughts or feelings from her. It was one of those situations that they loved in Hollywood and one which was understood in America at least, the business relationship between a man and a woman, a strange mixture of the impersonal with a deeply personal understanding. Sex did not have to enter into it, and perhaps that was what made the thing for him unique. Nothing ever had to be resolved, except in Hollywood. The great thing about the co-existence was that it was not conjugal. There simply was no competition and no need to put a face on things. She had seen him in every possible mood, drunk and sober, elated or discouraged, sad or angry. She could make a sound prediction of his reactions; she knew his weaknesses without using this knowledge as a weapon; she knew them much better than he knew hers, and the beauty of it was that he did not have to know about hers. The only effort necessary for him was to do his work, and there would be no disturbançe, no extraneous detail. It was completely peaceful there as he heard her speaking.

  “Yes,” she was saying, “but Mr. Harrow wants to speak to him.”

  She put her hand over the transmitter, efficiently and carefully in a way she had done for years. He could not understand why the gesture should make him wonder why she had never married.

  “He’s in conference now,” she said.

  “Oh, hell,” he said, and when she smiled he was certain she had known exactly what he would say.

  “He wants to know whether it’s important, or whether he can call you back in half an hour,” she said. “He would rather not leave the conference.”

  Doctors and lawyers invariably shared this common attribute which consisted in an annoying superevaluation of their time and the implication that they were different from other people. It had always exasperated him, that he was one of these artistic ne’er-do-wells to whom time meant nothing.

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” he said. “You know I wouldn’t call him at all if it wasn’t urgent. Go ahead, get him on the wire.”

  She smiled, but her voice had not lost its musical formality.

  “Mr. Harrow is sorry to bother Mr. Bleek,” she said, “but he does say it’s urgent. He would much rather not wait for half an hour.”

  She nodded to him and smiled again.

  “Mr. Harrow’s right here,” she said, “if you can put Mr. Bleek on. Good morning, Mr. Bleek, Mr. Harrow is right here.”<
br />
  It was a part of the game she had always played, the game of keeping him off the telephone until the other one was on. She had always welcomed his delaying slightly. He seated himself carefully before the writing table and put his own hand over the transmitter when she passed him the telephone.

  “Don’t go away,” he said, “please don’t go away.”

  He waited for a moment, counting a thousand and one, a thousand and two, a thousand and three because he knew it would make her happy.

  “Hello, Harry,” he said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I didn’t know I could get you so soon. I’ve just been at the doorway of my study here, watching the birds in my feeding station. There were two cedar waxwings this morning, and a grosbeak.”

  When a telephone connection was good, there was no need, give imagination, for a television.

  “Were you literally looking at birds,” Harry Bleek asked, “or were you saying that simply because Maida and I have a feeding station?”

  “Frankly, I was only speaking poetically, Harry,” he said.

  “Listen, Tom,” Harry said, “I’m just in the middle of an important meeting, and if you’ll excuse my saying so, I don’t care momentarily about birds, poetically or otherwise.”

  “All right,” he said, “never mind the birds for the moment. I very seldom do, even when they’re bathing.”

  “Tom,” Harry Bleek said, “not being a genius or an eccentric, and being seldom able to amuse other people by my whimsies, is it all right if you and I get down to the point? I was told that this was urgent. Is it?”

  He smiled at Nancy Mulford, hoping that she had heard the question.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’m afraid it is urgent, Harry, but I felt the very urgency demanded that I might set the scene.”

  “Very well,” Harry said, “I understand you now. I must apologize and say that I’ve temporarily overlooked my experiences with genius. From my observation, when you behave like this you’re usually in a jam. All right, what’s the jam this time?”

  Tom Harrow found himself shaking his head. In the end he was never able to compete with a legal mind.

  “Do you think you could take the night train up here?” he asked. “Or a plane? You’re right, I’m in a jam and I think maybe you’d better get up here, Harry.”

  “I’m calling for my schedule,” Harry said. “If it’s bad, I’ll take the night train, and you can send that colored professor of yours to meet me. How bad is it this time?”

  There was patience in the “this time,” a patience that showed the client was incorrigible, a patience without the charity to admit that anyone after his formative years was, to a certain extent, incorrigible.

  “Harry,” he said, “I don’t know how it is. I try and try in many very earnest and thoughtful ways, but I never do seem to be able to get back to normalcy. I have only one consolation, Harry, the United States of America, that great nation in which we live, has never got back to normalcy either, not since the late President Harding.”

  “Tom,” Harry said, “will you kindly be cooperative. What is it this time? Is it money this time, or women?”

  He found himself moving as uneasily as a Catholic in the confessional.

  “If it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I wish you’d take my word that this is serious. I can’t go into it over the telephone, but I will say this: in my experience and in the work we’ve done together hitherto, women and money are more or less synonymous.”

  “My God,” Harry said, “is it Emily?”

  He moved again uneasily. He had never believed in indulging in true confessions over the telephone.

  “Not Emily in particular,” he said. “It’s a mixture of everything, and all my fault, Harry, entirely my fault. But this time it’s mostly money.”

  “I think you’d better be more explicit,” Harry said. “Hopedale’s not bringing suit, is she? Not again?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, “it isn’t that. I’m only reaping my just deserts.”

  “I think you’d better be more explicit,” Harry said. “Is there any sort of threatened action? I ought to know before I take the train.”

  He was feeling tired.

  “Listen, Harry,” he said, “you’ll find out when you get up here. There’s quite a lot to do, but if you want to know any more, go down and see Myles Summerby at the bank. I’m afraid he’s going to tell you some things I haven’t told you about.”

  He had known that the conversation would take it out of him, and he had been correct. Such conversations always reminded him of the disorder of his life. They were always raising the question of what everything was about. As long as he could remember he had been moving from one thing to another so constantly that now he was afraid to be still.

  “Well,” he said to Miss Mulford, “here we go again. Mr. Bleek is taking the night train, so tell Alfred to get up early and go in to meet him in the new car. It won’t hurt Mr. Bleek to see it. We’ll have to sell it, I suppose. You know, this thing has taken it out of me. Maybe I’d better have that drink right now.”

  “No,” she said, “not now, not if you’re going to see …” There was a moment’s hesitation, as though she were seeking for the right word, “Mrs. Brake this afternoon. You know she wouldn’t be amused. Is Madame unhappy?”

  “I wouldn’t say she was cheerful,” he said, “and I don’t blame her. The truth is, Madame is getting on my nerves.”

  “Not again,” she said. “It doesn’t ever help you. Did you tell her there’s going to be plenty of money? You’ll always be able to earn enough.”

  “But no property,” he said. “I think she has a feeling that she might outlive me, and you know, she could be right. The moral is, don’t marry them so young. Do you know, I wish to God it weren’t just one thing after another? Peace in our time, that’s what I want.”

  “You wouldn’t like it,” she said.

  “I wish you wouldn’t make pronouncements,” he said. “How do you know I wouldn’t like it? I’ve never had it.”

  “You could have had it if you’d wanted it,” she said.

  He was tired of talking about himself and thinking about himself, but there was no way of getting his mind off the track.

  “You’re wrong there,” he said. “Anybody who has to use his head and pull things out of the air and go on the road with shows doesn’t have any peace, ever.”

  “You’ll feel better when that play is mailed to New York,” she said.

  “Do you really think it’s all right to go?” he asked her.

  It was a question which he would never have asked any woman to whom he was married because he would have suspected the answer, but it was different with her. She knew the theatre as well as he did, almost.

  “It’s set,” she said. “It ought to go down now so that they can start with casting. It won’t help to pull it around any more. You always pull things around too much. Sit down and read it through, without thinking how to make it different.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I ought to get over thinking that things or people can be made different when they reach a certain point. But I can’t read the play right now. As soon as I start, all sorts of things will start in my mind. I’ve been thinking too much lately.”

  “If you want, I’ll read it to you,” she said. “I’ll stop you if your mind moves off.”

  “You haven’t read this one aloud, have you?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t like to until they’re set.”

  “All right,” he said, “it might be a good idea. Did I ever tell you you read very well?”

  “You have,” she said, “but not for quite a while. Act I. The Baker living room on Long Island.”

  “Just a minute before you start,” he said. “You aren’t thinking of walking out of this job and leaving me, are you?”

  There was a pause, and she smiled. She looked almost as pretty as she had in the Higgins office.

  “No,” she said, �
��I may have had some ideas once, but it’s all too late now. There’s nowhere to go.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so,” he said, “it’s a great relief to me that you think it’s too late now, and I hope you’ll please hold that thought.”

  “I’m rather glad it is too late myself,” she said. “But, as we were saying—Act I. The Baker living room on Long Island.”

  “Oh dear,” he said, “it always starts in a living room, doesn’t it? But we might move it from Long Island to Connecticut, to show that civilization is moving north and time is marching on.”

  There were good and bad readers, and he had encountered all varieties. There were the overdramatic and over-emotional readers, and those who attempted in a most painful way to interpret the whole cast of characters. Then there were the mechanical and perfunctory readers, whose very monotony made you forget the lines. Mulford was somewhere between all these categories. Her interpretation was honest. She never attempted to give a play qualities it did not possess. She never even overworked herself to put it in its best light. Always, when she read a play of his, she could give him a feeling of perspective and the illusion that he was listening to a stranger’s work, and there could not have been a more valuable attribute. It was her voice that created the illusion, clear and cool as the voice of justice. Her voice had a transparent quality that never interfered with the lines. And yet it always held the attention.

  Now it erased the morning and the day and the night before, until he was back where he belonged, to the only thing that mattered. He had been careless with human relationships and with money, but never about his work, at least when he was working, and they could put it on his tombstone if they wanted. The only trouble was that he had worked only sporadically when it was necessary for him to extricate himself from the complications of living. Now he was emancipated, living in an environment of new problems and proportions which not only approximated life but were beyond life. There was only one thing about them about which he was certain—all those elements were better than the irrationalities and actions of the world of the flesh and the devil.