Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  He was weary of talent, and he wished that he might never have to listen again about it from people who could not know what it meant. He wanted to be alone, but he could not be alone. Alfred was refilling his glass, and after all, there was nothing like good champagne. It was occasionally called the beverage of the parvenu, an artificially charged wine that had none of the subtle strength of a fine Burgundy—but neither had Burgundy the gaiety, the power of partially restoring youth or of resurrecting memory. It was the champagne, of course, that made him say what he did, although he did not feel the slightest trace of intoxication.

  “I don’t know whether you’re right or not,” he said, “but I do know I always wanted Rhoda.”

  Immediately he realized that it was a gauche piece of self-revelation, and the Bramhalls, on their drive back home, would analyze that true confession. The first love was always the best love, that happily adjusted couple would be saying—and it could be they were right.

  “Let’s skip it, Marion,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that, and please remember I was speaking in the past tense. I said I wanted Rhoda; that doesn’t mean I want her now.”

  She smiled at him with an old friend’s understanding.

  “Of course you don’t,” she said, “not with Emily. Dick and I were just saying, driving over, how beautifully things had worked out with you and Emily. We were concerned at first, not knowing Emily. We didn’t realize that she has just the restful charm you need and that lovely, buoyant good-nature that makes her so good for you.”

  He glanced toward Emily at the end of the table at just the moment that Emily looked toward him, and she smiled timidly and he raised his glass to her.

  “We’re saying very wonderful things about you, my dear,” he said, and turned back to Marion Bramhall. “I think you’re right,” he said. “On the whole, Emily has been good for me. You can tell these things, can’t you, just by looking? For instance, it’s obvious that you’ve been good for Dick.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said, “I hope I have, but not all that Dick deserves.”

  “No one ever does get all he deserves,” he said. “The game isn’t rigged that way.”

  “Oh, Tom,” she said, “don’t be ironical.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I don’t know whether anybody is meant to get back all he gives, and maybe it isn’t right to expect it. It’s fine if it happens, of course.”

  “But, Tom,” she said. He had forgotten how much she loved earnest, interesting conversation. “What about casting your bread upon the waters?”

  He laughed. He did not feel in the least like a serious conversation, not on the surface, anyway; but underneath his thoughts were somber and it was necessary to keep on with the champagne in order to be good company.

  “In my experience,” he said, “every time I have tried to cast it on the water, some girl has got in the way. Come to think of it, my whole life has been devoted to casting bread upon the girls.”

  “Oh, Tom,” she said, “you say such incorrigible, naughty things! I hope that Rhoda—oh dear, I mean Emily of course—I hope that Emily keeps a notebook and jots them down.”

  “If she did,” he said, “it might be very good for Emily.”

  Marion called across the table. It was obviously time for her to talk to Walter Price before she and Emily moved into the other room.

  “Dick,” she called, “did you hear what Tom said? He said that he’s spent all his life casting bread upon the girls.”

  For a split second Dick Bramhall’s face was a blank, but then he laughed as uproariously as though it had been a Shavian line out of My Fair Lady.

  “He says every time he tries to cast his bread upon the water, some gal gets in the way,” Marion Bramhall said, but Dick had already got it.

  As a matter of fact, it was possible to go on with it, now that the conversation was general.

  “It’s like Marineland in Florida,” Tom said. “Did I ever take you there in your childhood, Hal? Or maybe it wasn’t built in your childhood?”

  “All right,” Dick Bramhall said, “why is it like Marineland?”

  “At feeding time,” Tom said, “you can’t see the loaves for the fishes. There’s a man who comes up with a pailful of food and every time he tries to throw it on the water, a dolphin jumps up, or maybe it’s a porpoise. The point is, nothing ever gets cast upon the water.”

  “Don’t you think you’re getting a little mixed up, darling?” Emily said.

  “No, my sweet,” he called to her down the table. “I mix my drinks, but never metaphors.”

  Hal was on his left and now all effort was over, because he could talk to Hal.

  “Hal,” he said, “you’ve been a good boy tonight. Thanks for mixing the drinks, and thanks for not going out.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Hal said. “My mother wouldn’t have liked it if I’d walked out on the Bramhalls. Of course I had to miss tossing a French roll at your old schoolmate’s daughter.”

  “That makes a rather nice rhyme, doesn’t it?” Tom said. “Cast your bread upon the water, you’re bound to hit a schoolmate’s daughter.”

  “I don’t see how you do it,” Hal said.

  “Do what?”

  “Get along with everybody,” Hal said, “and seem to have a damn good time. Get along with Mrs. Bramhall, for instance.”

  “It just takes time, boy,” Tom said, “and intestinal fortitude. Maybe she’ll ask you to call her Aunt Marion before they take off for home. I wonder why Emily doesn’t move. Damn it, she always talks and never ends these things.”

  “Well, my mother does like Mrs. Bramhall,” Hal said.

  “Of course your mother likes her,” Tom said. “Marion’s the securest woman I know.”

  He glanced at Marion. Her tanned shoulder was now turned toward him and she was talking securely with Walter Price. Tom had a twinge of conscience about what he had said, for criticizing a guest broke a law of hospitality that was as old as the conventions in Frazer’s Golden Bough.

  “I don’t seem to get anywhere with her,” Hal said. “There doesn’t seem to be any place to start. Maybe it’s my extreme youth.”

  “I wouldn’t let it worry you,” Tom said. On the surface he was feeling cheerful and the somber mood had retired further into the background. “It saves an enormous lot of trouble if you don’t get anywhere with married women, and the worst of it is, it’s usually pretty easy to get somewhere.”

  “Say,” Hal said, “you’re in pretty good form tonight. The play must have gone well or something.”

  “Boy,” Tom said, “you can only do the best you can. Even when you’re running out of the chips, you’d better toss in as many as you can. I wish Emily would get up. By God, she did it! There she goes.”

  “Tom,” Emily called in her merry voice, “shall we all go in together, or do you want your brandy and coffee here?”

  “We’ll stay here for a little while,” Tom said, “only to maintain a shred of convention.”

  “Well, don’t drink brandy indefinitely,” Emily said, and he saw that she was looking at him pleadingly. “Just bear in mind that women are people.”

  “My dear,” Tom said, “I have given that proposition a lot of thought for years and years, and there’s a chance that you may be right.”

  He could tell that he had hurt her by the way her eyes widened, but no one else had noticed. Everyone laughed and Emily joined the laughter.

  “Emily,” Marion Bramhall said, “is he always like a walking play?”

  “Always,” Tom said, “when he isn’t flat on his face and when it isn’t a musical.”

  It stung him, the expression “a walking play,” because it was not such a bad summing-up. He thought, as the men sat down again and drew their chairs nearer, that all that was left to him might very well be a few light lines; that all of what critics called significance was gone, if there had been any. He felt like an empty glass, which, when hit, might give forth a melodious note, but which
still held nothing. But then, what was significance? He was tired of the word. He was thinking of a statement attributed to O’Neill, that all drama must be tragic. O’Neill probably never would have been so didactic, but Tom could understand what was meant, and now he was playing tragedy.

  “Brandy, sir?” Alfred asked.

  “Yes, thanks,” he said. “You’d better change your mind and try some, Dick. It’s London Dock, 1906. I bought four cases of it once. It’s the only intelligent thing I’ve ever done with money.”

  “Dear old Tommy,” Walter said.

  It annoyed him when Walter called him “dear old Tommy,” but he smiled, and there was no need to answer, because Walter was talking to Dick Bramhall.

  “Tommy’s and my friendship is not quite so old as this brandy,” Walter was saying, “but I love to think it is as sound, mellow, and honest. I don’t know whether I told you, Mr. Bramhall, how I first encountered Tom. It was at a summer stock theatre, just at the very dawn of the movement, and Tommy was just a college boy, but I’ve always had an eye for stature. It has always given me pleasure to recall that I was one of the first to recognize greatness in dear old Eugene. I had casually stopped off for the night in Provincetown, and there was dear old Eugene.”

  “Eugene who?” Richard Bramhall asked.

  “Oh, I beg pardon,” Walter Price said, “it was absent-minded of me. Eugene O’Neill, of course. Those were the days of brilliant, literate theatre. Tommy would be very angry were I to compare him with Eugene, and the divergence of their works makes comparison impossible, but one cannot avoid feeling the lion’s paw.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tom Harrow said, “what’s that again?”

  “The lion’s paw,” Walter Price said, “but maybe that is a bad word for it. Let me rather say sense for impact, and you do have a sense for impact, Tommy.”

  “Hal,” Tom Harrow said, “pass Mr. Price the brandy.”

  The brandy was unnecessary. When Walter was in a certain condition, he was apt to recount his experiences in discovering genius, and over the years there were several occasions when he had discovered Harrow, and the wording was always the same.

  “I sensed it,” Walter said, “the instant the curtain rose on that skit of Tommy’s in that horrible rustic theatre. The seats had been sheer torture, but when the curtain rose I might have been ensconced on foam rubber. I sensed stature and I turned to dear old Arthur Higgins. I have forgotten why Arthur was there, and it honestly does not matter, but I can remember what I said to Arthur as though it were yesterday. ‘Arthur,’ I said, ‘here is God’s latest gift.’”

  There was moisture in Walter’s eyes, and no doubt he believed that he had said it.

  “And I said the same thing to Eugene later in the week,” Walter said. “‘Eugene,’ I said, ‘I’m never going to lose sight of Tommy,’ and from that day to this, I haven’t ever, have I, Tommy?”

  Tom Harrow stood up.

  “You’re damned well right you haven’t,” he said. “Well, let’s go in and see the girls.”

  He led the way across the hall, opening the door to the large sitting room with its worn Oriental carpet, and stood while the others walked past him, wishing that he did not so frequently see life in terms of theatrical dimension. Granted that theatre, if it was good, was a distillation of life, the two were not interchangeable. There was always exaggeration in the theatre, and necessarily insincerities gave an illusion of truth. No living people were ever so good or so bad as those who spoke the lines.

  He had been dealing all his life with the delicate fabrics of make-believe. His mind could touch them as the fingers of a connoisseur could touch the glazes of Chinese porcelain and judge their weights and values, but he was weary of exaggeration. For years there was always someone to laugh dutifully when he exercised his wit, but in the end, unless you were a moron, you had to know yourself. There was always someone as fulsome as Walter Price and a few more intelligently so, but he could weigh the exaggeration, and it was as cloying that evening as the champagne. He had drunk too much of it, and yet, like the champagne, it was buoyant to the spirit.

  Never in the world had Walter Price said to Arthur Higgins that he saw stature in that summer theatre; but there had been stature of a sort. There was always the parable of the talents in authors he had known. Some buried them, some used them, but could anyone really help what he did about talent? Talent was a variable, merging on one side into skill and approaching genius on the other, changing from day to day, from year to year, in quality and content. You could not cultivate talent like hothouse lettuce or keep it sterile like a commercial orchid. Talent was one of the most indefinable things in the world, and closest in the world to God. There it was and there it wasn’t and there it was again.

  You could ask the same question about it that the county fair gambler used to pose when he placed the walnut shell over the pea in the shell game: “Where is the little joker now?” The little joker was not around at present. The Martinis and champagne and brandy had not conjured him up, but there had been something once. Then he heard Emily calling to him in the patient, cheery voice every good American wife must use when publicly addressing a recalcitrant husband, and he had the impression that this might be the second time she had called him.

  “Tom,” she called, “what are you thinking about, standing there all alone?”

  “I was thinking,” he said, “where’s the little joker now?”

  “What?” she asked, and the question made him aware that perhaps the drinks were catching up with him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “He must be up somebody else’s sleeve by now, not mine.”

  He saw Emily glance at the Bramhalls, soliciting their understanding, and there was no reason whatsoever for her to solicit anything from the Bramhalls.

  “Well, why don’t you join us?” Emily said. “We’re lonely over here.”

  “I’m just about to, my sweet,” he said. “I was just admiring the composition, and there’s only one thing lacking in the picture. Hal, ask Alfred to bring in the drinks. Maybe you’d better get out there and help, in case Alfred’s getting tired.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Hal said, and he sounded nearly like regular Navy.

  Then, while he was still standing in the doorway, he saw that Emily was crossing the room toward him, and her dress had the reproving swish of the evening dress of a good American wife who realized that it was just a little too late to keep on being tolerant.

  “Tom,” she whispered, and her whisper also had a reproving swish, “please come over here; we’ve all had enough to drink. Walter is sound asleep.”

  He put his hands in the side pockets of his dinner coat and gazed at Emily steadily.

  “Lucky Walter,” he said, “so long as he doesn’t snore.”

  He was thinking, poor Emily; she had bet wrong, and there was nowhere else to go.

  “Tom,” she whispered, “please.”

  “Yes,” he said, “yes, Emily.” After all, the Bramhalls were there, friends to both of them and friends to Rhoda and friends to Presley, and there was nothing so unpardonable as rudeness to a guest. “Yes, my dear,” he said.

  It was true; Walter was sound asleep in the same chair he had been sleeping in very late that afternoon. For a moment Walter looked like a preview of the brave world of tomorrow, and, in spite of all precautions, Tom felt a twinge of fear. Ten years from now, would he be like Walter? He smiled at Mrs. Bramhall in his most disarming way.

  “We were just having a domestic conversation about Walter,” he said. “My idea is not to chivvy him as long as he doesn’t snore.”

  “That’s perfect,” Marion answered. “Do you know what I was just whispering to Dick? I was just whispering that something delightful always happens at Tom’s.”

  “But Price was right,” Dick said, “you have got stature, Tom.”

  “Thanks for saying that, Dick,” he said.

  “Now, next time,” Dick said, “next time you and Emily have
positively got to come up to Bramma.”

  “We will,” Tom said, “we’d love to, Dick.” And he felt himself emerging from the world of make-believe.

  “Marion,” Dick Bramhall said, “I guess we’d better think about shoving off. Henry’s driving us, and you know how Henry gets when he stays out too late.”

  “Oh, dear,” Marion said, “yes, I’d forgotten about Henry. We’ve got to go. Tom, kiss me good night.”

  It was over, and, as he often felt at the end of a dinner party, he had been through a miniature life cycle, and, thank God, it was over.

  “I think they had a good time,” Emily said, “don’t you, Tom?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I think so.”

  “Well,” she said, “I’m going up to bed. Aren’t you, Tom?”

  “No,” he said. “Hal’s gone after drinks. I want another drink.”

  “Oh, Tom,” she said, “you know how you’ll feel in the morning. Tom, please stop being cross—and I’m sorry for what I said.”

  “Let’s not have a post-mortem,” he said. “Poor little Em. Now run upstairs to bed. Here comes Hal with the drinks.”

  “Good night, dear,” Emily said. “Good night, Hal, you’ve been a real lifesaver.”

  She was still walking up the stairs when Tom nodded to the library.

  “Bring the tray in there, Hal,” he said, “and let Walter sleep, and give me a Scotch-and-soda.”

  “Be careful, or you’ll tie one on,” Hal said.

  When he sat down in the leather armchair owned once by the Judge, the glass in his left hand felt heavy and he felt tired.

  “Never mix whiskey, gin, and champagne,” he said. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how I always do the wrong thing? But don’t you do it, boy. Never you mix whiskey, gin, and champagne; and now let’s skip it. Did you telephone your mother? Did you tell her I’d be over tomorrow afternoon?”