Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  It was not the Heather Dew, or whatever the whiskey was called, but her voice that made him feel happy again.

  “It’s sweet of you to say that,” he said, “and to know that I’m consistent, and now we’re on the subject, I want to tell you something else. Yesterday morning when I went to get the mail, a new, young minister in front of the Congregational Church asked me to step inside. Frankly, I’d never been there since we were married, Rhoda, although I’ve read a good deal of the Bible and I do believe in God—but that isn’t the point I’m arriving at.”

  “Well,” she said, “it ought to be.”

  “I know,” he said, “that’s a difficulty with everything. Everything ought to be, and very little is. I know it and I’m sure God knows it, but what I want to mention is a thought that came over me while I was there.”

  “What thought?” she asked.

  “Well,” he said, “it was a simple thought, and I’d be glad to tell you if you could get me some gin to mix with this tonic here, because I can’t stand the skirl of the bagpipes in your husband’s Scotch, Rhoda, and the bell captain has left me the opener in case I want to open the tonic bottle. I paid him a dollar for it. He didn’t have any silver. How about some gin?”

  She did not smile, but she still had a way of laughing when she did not laugh.

  “It’s a rare kind of gin,” she said, “not ordinary gin.”

  “All right,” he said, “even if it comes from the Tower of London.”

  “All right,” she said, “but tell me first what you thought of in the church. I loved it, the church. I’ve always loved to think of it.”

  “Yes,” he said, “brides are always beautiful. How about the gin?”

  “You can have it,” she said, “if you tell me what you thought of.”

  “All right,” he said, “but artistically I’ve always tried to avoid corn, except occasionally in a movie. There wasn’t any background music and the place was so dead-quiet Calvinist it startled me. I don’t know why it is lately that quiet places do; maybe they make me feel afraid of God, not that I honestly feel afraid. It may be only the thought of an impending conversation.”

  “Go ahead,” she said, “tell what you thought. You’ve always been afraid of telling what you think.”

  “I’m not afraid,” he said. “Only when you tell what you think, it’s so simple that there isn’t much to say. All right, I thought I loved you when you were walking up the aisle, and I thought I loved you still. It’s as simple as that, and don’t let me ask you again—go out and get me the gin.”

  It only went to prove that unrehearsed lines in real life left a great deal to be desired. On the stage the mood could be perfect enough to give a writer and an audience artistic satisfaction; and he had written plenty of such scenes, so many that they confused themselves with everyday living. He knew that the things that he had said were artistically clumsy.

  She stared at him and the lines of her face moved into a ludicrous, clumsy pattern, and then she sobbed discordantly.

  “Darling,” she said, “God, it’s been dull without you. I don’t know how I’ve stood it.”

  “Well, well,” he said, but the pace was bad again, and she stopped him before he could make any obvious reply.

  “Don’t say what you’re going to,” she said, “because it might be true. Just stand here, don’t say anything, and I’ll go get your goddam gin.”

  “You don’t have to,” he said, “I can take it or leave it alone, Rhoda.”

  “Stop talking,” she said, “until I come back, but I’ll give you something to think about while I’m gone. I always loved you, too, only I didn’t know it until he made an honest woman of me. Now don’t ask me why. Please don’t say anything.”

  Fortunately there was a moment’s pause, while he listened to her unlocking her suitcase and blowing her nose and running water in the bathroom; and those offstage noises were intensely melancholy. He stood looking out the window at Birnam Wood and in those few minutes the trees seemed to have moved nearer. At least, he thought, the last thing he had said was both significant and terrible. It was true that he could take it or leave it alone, but instead of its being consoling, the fact was utter devastation.

  “God,” he said, without knowing he was speaking until he heard his voice, “it takes a lot of living before you can take it or leave it alone.”

  His awareness of what went on around him was disturbed by what had previously gone on. He did not know she was back in the room until he heard her voice near him.

  “What’s that you were saying?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing much,” he said. “I was only quoting Edgar Guest, just saying I’d done a heap of living.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t keep on quoting people,” she said, “but maybe that’s what God put us here to do.”

  “How’s that again?” he asked. “Do what?”

  “Live,” she said, “live while you’re alive.”

  “Well, if that’s what He wants,” he said, “He ought to be pretty proud of me.”

  “You’d better put some ice in that,” she said. “You paid for it, you know.”

  “Don’t be so obvious, my dear,” he said. “Don’t you know by this time, for heaven’s sake, that you pay for everything?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I know by this time, I really do.”

  It occurred to him that in a surprisingly short time they had said nearly all they could ever say to each other, as things were now.

  “Well, that’s a real step forward,” he said, and he sat down and picked up his glass. “The years we’ve wasted, the tears we’ve wasted.”

  “Please,” she said, “stop quoting things. You and I don’t have to quote.”

  “Well,” he said, “all right. Instead I’ll ask you a personal question. If you loved me in this way, why did you walk out on me?”

  “I told you,” she said. “I didn’t know I loved you until I did it.”

  “Well, well,” he said, “that’s one way of reaching a conclusion.”

  “It was the uncertainty, Tom,” she said. “I couldn’t see what was going to happen to us.”

  “Well, we both know now,” he said, “and this is very highly scented gin. Full many a cup of this aristocratic gin shall drown the memory of this insolence. Pardon me for quoting, Rhoda.”

  It was what he had always done, he was thinking. He had run around end and quoted, and now there was no end to run around. He was in the age of the atom bomb, with no place to hide. He was more at ease because he was sure that the most traumatic part of their meeting was nearly over, and she must have felt it too, because when she sat down on the sofa with her back to the window, her hand and voice were steady.

  “I hated it when you married Hopedale,” she said.

  “That makes me happy, my dear,” he said, “it was an aggression, and now we’re being frank, I hated it after I married Hopedale.”

  “Then why did you marry Emily?” she asked.

  “Darling,” he said, “that’s a personal question and you’re lucky that at the moment I’m tired of being a gentleman. Still, let’s neither you nor me be too hard on Emily, because in many ways she has a heart of gold. I imagine I married her because Arthur Higgins hoped I would, and besides, she was a Hoosier girl at heart.”

  “Wasn’t I ever a Hoosier girl?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, “and let’s not get too personal or I’ll ask you why you married Brake.”

  “You know why,” she said, “but please don’t use the word. Tom, it’s like too much candy. Don’t use the word, but I’ll use it if you want me to. I’m awfully sick of security.”

  Unfortunately, he could take it or leave it now.

  “For instance,” she said, “Presley calls gin a charwoman’s drink.”

  “Darling,” he said, “I’m glad you told me, but let’s not go any further.”

  “Tom, dear, I’ve missed you so,” she said.

  The danger in any sort of s
cene, he had always found, was that of repetition, which crept up insidiously when one least expected it, and now Rhoda had repeated herself. It was time to cut and move forward and no longer time to be bejaped by a never-never-land. It was a time to think of the grimness of the present. It was no time to be escaping from it into Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and no time to be speculating upon the tragedy of living. In the end there was nothing you could do except repent, and repentance in itself was usually untherapeutic and unacceptable to Providence. What surprised him was that he had forgotten for so long to ask her why she had wanted to see him. It was possible that her real wish to see him lay in the scene they had acted, but there must have been an ostensible reason.

  “Rhoda,” he said, “I hope my reactions show, at least on paper, how glad I’ve been to see you. It has meant a great deal to me when combined with my other problems, but just why did you want to see me?”

  He was delighted that he did not anticipate her answer.

  “Tom,” she said, “I completely forgot as soon as we started talking. Presley wanted me to see you.”

  The name made a disagreeable interruption which brought a mental picture of intimacies and banalities and finally frustration.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s very bright of him,” he said.

  She shook her head in patient annoyance, showing he had not followed her train of thought.

  “You don’t know Presley,” she said. “He doesn’t worry about things like this. He doesn’t worry any more about you in your way than you used to worry about him, but he wants to be fair. I must say I’m getting tired of men who always want to be fair. It’s so male, if you know what I mean. It’s so like Tom Brown’s School Days.”

  “Don’t quote,” he said. “Let’s try to stop telling each other about the good books we’ve read. What does Tom Brown want to be fair about? Had he been having a good talk with Matthew Arnold?”

  Rhoda shook her head patiently again.

  “Not with Matthew Arnold, with the bank,” she said, “and the Board, and it wasn’t his business, but he heard they had called your loan.”

  When she had finished speaking, he had no idea exactly how he felt, except that the silence in the room kept him silent and motionless for a very appreciable time.

  “It goes to show you shouldn’t ever trust banks,” he said. “Why the hell should he be concerned?”

  “Tom,” she said, and she moved her hand toward his, and he thought she was going to touch him, but she did not, “I was afraid you were going to act this way. You’re always so queer about common sense. He’s worried about the separation settlement you made—you know, the securities you gave me. I really don’t need them, Tom.”

  He did not answer because he could not think of any reply. The one thing that struck him was the incongruity of money with his mood, and he thought again that every individual differed from everyone else when it came to money.

  “He wants me to give you the settlement back,” she said. “I don’t need it at all, you know.”

  He wished that he could analyze his feelings. It would have been better if she had made the suggestion herself, but not much better.

  “Why, the son-of-a-bitch!” he said, and he found that he was on his feet when he said it, and now that the words were out and now that the impact of them made her draw her breath in sharply, he was sorry for his reaction, but not entirely sorry. One had to be consistent sometime and in the end pride and dignity had to exist occasionally; and for a moment, at any rate, he had forgotten conventional behavior and it was just as well to forget such things occasionally. He had taken her hands hi his, and he had bent and kissed them. It was only immediately after he had done so that the thought came over him that he was never bad at kissing hands.

  “Darling,” he said, “forgive me. I’m sorry to strike an attitude. It’s the rubbing shoulders with show business. Don’t make me explain it. I’m sorry I reacted. Put it down as involuntary ingratitude and remember that I love you, dear.”

  He was not in control of his emotions. For the first time in years he realized that he was on the verge of weeping, and the realization shook him because he was able to ask himself the question: Just what in hell was he weeping about? Was it proximity to Rhoda? Was it regret for the past, or apprehension of the future? Or a feeling that the show was almost over, that the customers were fidgeting and coughing, and it was time to get them off to Grand Central? There was one thing certain: tears were useless, even in a confessional.

  “Tom,” she said, “I thought that was what you’d do.”

  “Well, thanks,” he said. “I’m glad you thought it, Rhoda.”

  The clasp of her hands tightened over his for a moment, and she spoke very quickly, like a child at school, afraid she might forget a poem.

  “Tom, how would it be if I left him, and we tried it all again?”

  It was enough, when you came to balance it, and more than enough. He had been through enough thinking and through enough questions, and it was not fair to take on more without time for consideration. Ask a silly question, the saying was, and you get a silly answer.

  “Rhoda, dear,” he said, “that makes me very pleased because I know you mean it, dear, and I’m not dodging any issues. I’d enjoy it very much, but maybe it’s time to take away the dancing girls, to quote the late Walter De la Mare, if you’ll pardon me one more quote, darling, and if it was De la Mare. After all, Presley must be a good guy and he means well, even if he has a horrid taste in liquor. And Emily means well—and dammit all, it’s our fault, not their fault, Rhoda—but again, thanks a lot.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t always speak lines,” she said, “but I suppose you can’t help it. Anyway, under the circumstances, the least you can do is to kiss me good-by.”

  “Yes, Rhoda,” he said. “I can’t speak for Emily, but perhaps Presley wouldn’t mind.”

  As he closed the door of the turret suite behind him, he realized he had never been so acutely aware before of the lateness of his time. In fact, it had never occurred to him that he would reach a stage of life at which he could no longer hopefully believe that a benevolent future could alter circumstances. Now he knew as sure as fate that never in this life would he encounter Rhoda Browne again.

  XXX

  The Right Thing Done and Over, and Night Was Drawing Nigh

  It was later than he thought, and again he disliked reminding himself of lateness. Standing on the hotel veranda, he saw that the late May sun was close to setting—a serious matter, since this would mean that he would be late for dinner, and Emily, being invariably tardy about everything herself, was beginning to take a malicious comfort in expressing annoyance whenever he was late. The main dinner dishes would be dried in the oven and this would be annoying to Alfred and his wife, who might, in spite of the wages they received, give notice. They probably would in any event, as soon as the household furniture came up for auction. Fictional loyalty could not be expected from anyone in Alfred’s position, but there was no use casting too far into the future. There was nothing over the horizon any longer to arouse the happy anticipations that had burgeoned in that region once. It was advisable to set one foot before the other, to live from day to day, or perhaps from hour to hour, or minute to minute. There was always happiness in strings of minutes, provided one had the sense to cut them into segments. And now the big dream motor car of wish-fulfillment was at the door. The moment the bell captain had seen him, that nice young man with his fresh crewcut had rushed out to fetch it.

  That fin-tailed car of distinction, beloved by those who really cared, was awaiting him at the door, though in a day or two it would go out the window. It soothed him to view its overinflated pretentiousness. There was a futility in the spectacle, now that the sun was growing low, that emphasized his changing mood. There were meaningless spaces in the car, reminiscent of blanks in his own life … too many glove compartments, too many buttons on the panel, too many gadgets each cynically calculated to arouse in the bos
om of a parvenu a desire to possess. It did not assist his mood to have the idea cross his mind that the whole streamlined, functional but overdeveloped body of the car was reminiscent of defects that existed in portions of his own dramatic work. In spite of his efforts at restraint, parts had been flamboyant and others had a tinny echo. He had always been tempted by the intellectual gadgets of technique and swayed by an inordinate, febrile desire to please—the affable Mr. Harrow. The phrase rang unpleasantly through his mind. The affable Mr. Harrow’s affluent car was waiting at the door and his compulsive desire to appear well in the eyes of others was still active.

  “Here, son,” he said, “and thanks.”

  He gave the boy another dollar, and now as he moved behind the wheel, he adjusted his tweed golf cap. There had been no earthly reason to have handed out another dollar, and yet the gesture pleased him in that it was a minor aggression against almost everything, and also there was a possibility that Rhoda might be watching, not that he looked in that direction. If you made an exit, there was no harm in keeping it in character.

  “Thank you, sir,” the captain said, “come back soon.”

  Those were the last words spoken to him as he left the Wellington Manor House, sad words, because he knew he would never go there again. They rang like a coin on a counter, more insistent than the soothing sound of the motor’s docilely alert cylinders. He had done the right thing and it would never be undone. This was the worst attribute of doing the right thing—one seldom, if ever, commented upon by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

  Doing the right thing, he now realized, was enough of a novelty in his life to hold his interest and attention. Now that he faced the fact, he could understand why he had not done the right thing more often, but he had done it this time. He had turned down money and a further offer by a woman he still loved. He had done it, and he had no great wish to consider why he had, except to admit that pride and responsibility had obtruded themselves, unexpectedly. He was returning now rapidly, because of the lateness of the hour, to the third woman he had married, and that was the right thing. It was not a fair shake that, after behaving in what, according to convention, was an admirable manner, he should be able to derive no happiness or even smug satisfaction from the act. It may have been his aunt, he was thinking, and not his mother who had first told him that virtue was its own reward, and this had sounded well at the time. He had never expected to learn that this piece of wisdom, like many others, had its undertone of mockery and would take its own place in the procession of thoughts in which he could take no pleasure.