Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  “I wish you wouldn’t call it a snort, Hudson,” Mrs. Browne said. “And Rhoda never said that Mr. Harrow was on the stage. He’s not an actor, he’s a playwright, Hudson.”

  “Well, it’s still stage,” Mr. Browne said, “and I guess this young fellow will excuse me if I call it a snort. He looks like he might be kind to a poor old man.”

  Then they were interrupted by a scream from the kitchen.

  “Mother,” Rhoda screamed.

  “What is it, dear?” Mrs. Browne called.

  “The lobsters, Mother,” Rhoda screamed, “one of them’s got away, and he’s lost the plug out of his claw and the others whistle when you put them in the pot!”

  “Please let me help her, Mrs. Browne,” Tom said. “I’m wonderful with lobsters.”

  It was a prediction, not an established fact. He had never before thought of trying to be wonderful with lobsters. Rhoda was wearing an apron over her green dress with the red spots. Her sleeves were rolled up, and her hair was rumpled.

  “That’s what comes of trying to show you what a good cook I am,” she said. “I told Mother it wouldn’t work. I’ve always hated housework. I hate everything except riding in a limousine.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “Where’s the lobster who lost his plug?”

  “He’s under the sink,” she said. “Let’s leave him there.”

  “It might be a good idea,” he said, “but I told your mother I was wonderful with lobsters.”

  “All right,” Rhoda answered, “go ahead and be honored just like your dear old pop.”

  “You look beautiful, now that you’re all aglow,” he said.

  “Never mind,” Rhoda said, “here’s the broom. Get the broom in front of him, and when he bites it, grab him.”

  It worked, like many of Rhoda’s suggestions.

  “If you know so much about it, why did you scream?” he asked.

  “Don’t be a dumbbell,” Rhoda said. “To get you out here, naturally. I don’t like the going-over they’re giving you in the parlor.”

  “It’s no going-over. Your father was going to give me a snort of hooch,” he said.

  “Well,” she answered, “I can handle you without their help, and besides, I’d rather.”

  “So would I rather have you,” he said.

  “I bet you didn’t bring the stockings,” she said.

  “You’re wrong,” he answered. “I brought them.”

  “Oh,” she said, “where are they?”

  “On a chair in the hall,” he said. “I don’t think anybody noticed the package.”

  “I’d better get it upstairs quick,” she said. “You can watch the lobsters and I’ll run up and wash my face and brush my hair. Do you approve of lipstick?”

  The picture of Betty Howland returned to him, but the vision disappeared almost immediately, and after all, lipstick was not mandatory in 1928.

  “On occasions,” he said.

  “Well, I’ll try you out with it after supper,” she said. “Pa’s taking Mother out riding after supper in the demonstrator Ford. Mother arranged it.” She giggled. “The young people alone—I wish I could be allowed to handle you without help. Don’t you think I’m able to?”

  “I think so up to date,” he said.

  “So do I,” she answered. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you, about buying a Ford?”

  “No,” he said, “I’ll take it up with your father at supper.”

  “I don’t mean to be grasping or pushing, or anything like that,” she said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but you do like people who live up to their promises, don’t you?”

  “You know,” she said, “I wonder whether you aren’t laughing at me half the time.”

  “Not half the time,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, “promise you’ll never make me cook.”

  “All right,” he said.

  The moment was more solemn than it should have been. They stood in the kitchen shyly, as though each had said something more than was intended. He had an impulse to draw her toward him, but she shook her head quickly.

  “No,” she said, “after supper. Watch the lobsters, Monte Cristo.”

  It was curious that since that night he had never learned much more about Rhoda’s family, but at the same time he had discovered almost all that was necessary for a son-in-law to know; and there were points beyond which curiosity should not go about a girl’s parents if one were in love with her, and Rhoda was vague about them herself. She did not know what had happened to her mother’s family, the Rhyelles, and frankly she did not care. Mr. Browne sometimes spoke of his boyhood days on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, but Rhoda had never cared about this either, or his business ventures—the chicken farm, the orange ranch in California, the hardware store in New Jersey, the insurance agency in Rhode Island. She knew only that none of them had worked. He might have pried further into the difficulties of the Brownes, but he had always had the grace not to do it. All that was necessary was to take Rhoda’s family as they were, and they were not so hard to take. Mrs. Browne had been sweet and thoughtful, and Mr. Browne basically was a good old guy, and both of them had gratitude, which was something one did not always get from in-laws. He had never been able to blame Rhoda for her desire to escape from them because every child in the world always wanted something that childhood had not given, and Rhoda’s had never given her security.

  “You were kind to them,” she told him that evening, “and they were awfully silly, weren’t they?”

  “I don’t know that you’d call them silly exactly,” he said.

  “Of course you would,” she answered, “throwing you and me together, and it’s only a wonder they didn’t make you run away.”

  “I don’t want to run away,” he said. “I wanted you and me to be thrown together. That’s what I came here hoping.”

  “It would have scared off a lot of boys,” she said. “Maybe you’re dumb in some ways.”

  “I don’t feel dumb right now,” he said.

  “Nobody ever does,” she said, “when they’re being dumb. All that Baltimore business—whenever a boy comes to call, Mother gets to Baltimore.”

  “You can’t blame her,” he said, “that was quite a house in Baltimore.”

  “Oh,” she said, “the mansion. Do you believe it?”

  “That’s not a good question,” he said. “You ought not to ask me that.”

  “Well, anyway, you were sweet,” she said, “and of course I love them, I suppose. Oh, dear! I wish I could keep on believing.”

  “Believing what?” he asked.

  “In their amounting to anything,” she said. “Oh, dear, it’s awful to wake up and start seeing things. I wish I didn’t see so much.”

  “I don’t see why you wish that,” he said. “I like to see as much as I can. Maybe that’s what we’re here for.”

  “If I see too much, I get frightened,” she said.

  “Why, what’s there to be frightened of?” he asked.

  He remembered Rhoda’s mother saying that Rhoda was not easily frightened,–and now she looked worried rather than afraid, or perhaps exasperation would have been a better word. She scowled and her lips grew thin with impatience, but at the same time, there was a smile at the corner of them, and her eyes were bright. She still looked attractive, but then she always had at any time and in any place, and the dingy parlor only made a romantically contrasting background for what he saw in Rhoda.

  “It’s the same old record,” she said. “Maybe every girl in the world gets frightened who isn’t rich and who has a little sense.”

  “Frightened of what?” he asked.

  “Why, frightened at what’s going to happen to her,” she said. “A girl’s life is always a horrid, unfair dancing party. That’s true, you know. It is a sort of dancing party.”

  She disengaged her hand from his, did a quick dance turn in the middle of the Brussels carpet and sat
down opposite him in a straight-backed chair with her ankles carefully crossed, and her hands neatly folded on her lap.

  “A girl’s got to sit and wait for some man to ask her to do anything at all,” she said, “and you don’t know who he’s going to be or what, and if he’s awful you don’t know whether you ought to say ‘No’ to him or not because then there may not be anyone else, ever, to ask you anything, but there’s one thing you always know. You can’t keep sitting here, pretending that you like the music. Somebody’s got to take you away, but the frightening thing is, no one may ever ask you, or worse than that, no one you want.”

  She stopped and smiled, her sudden swift smile.

  “Don’t pretend that you’re a wallflower,” he said, “and it isn’t hospitable of you to be away off across the room.”

  “Well, if you’re asking me to join you,” she said, “come over here and make the proposition and lead me back. Someone’s got to ask me sometime.”

  He could never tell when they had reached an understanding. There were no perceptible stages, except for the beginning at Dock Street. Everything between them had been inevitable, but gradual. That night he had not asked her anything, and yet he must have known as sure as fate that he was going to, and just as surely that she would agree.

  “I know,” she said, “it isn’t polite for me to talk about myself. People always say in advice to the lovelorn that you should draw your gentleman caller out. Ask him tactful questions. Get him to talk about himself. Do you want to talk about yourself?”

  “Why, not especially,” he said.

  “And I don’t know whether I want you to, either,” she said, “because you make me feel how dumb I am. But, anyway, what’s the name of this play you’re writing now?”

  “It’s called Little Liar,” he said.

  “That’s a queer name,” she said. “Where did you get it from?”

  “I got it from Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales,” he said, “from a poem about a girl named Matilda who screamed for the firemen when the house wasn’t burning down, and finally when it was, and she shouted fire, they only answered, ‘Little liar!’”

  “Do you think I’m a little liar?” she asked.

  “Not any more than most girls,” he said. “Girls at some point have to be little liars.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way,” she said. “What’s your play about?”

  “It’s about a man who falls in love with his conscience,” he said.

  “Are you trying to be funny?” she asked. “How can anyone fall in love with his conscience?”

  “Well,” he said, “in this play, the man’s conscience is a beautiful girl, and the man is in bed in his bedroom in the first act, after having done something that disturbs his conscience; and his conscience, the beautiful girl, keeps knocking and knocking, and finally she comes in because she is so tired of knocking. She’s always been knocking on doors for years trying to get to him, she says, and he’s never listened.”

  She was listening to him carefully, but she still looked puzzled.

  “She comes right into his bedroom?” she said. “I wouldn’t dare do that, but it isn’t a bad idea. But how does he know that she’s his conscience?”

  “Because she tells him so,” he said, “and he apologizes for never having listened to her before. He didn’t know she was so beautiful, and he falls in love with her.”

  “He falls in love with her right in the bedroom?” she said.

  “He has to in the bedroom,” he said, “because it’s too expensive changing scenes nowadays.”

  “What is she wearing,” she asked, “when she comes into the bedroom?”

  “Negligee,” he said, “she’s thinly clad. After all, consciences don’t need many clothes.”

  “Gosh,” she said, “I don’t see how you thought any of this up. What happens then?”

  “The curtain goes down,” he said. “It’s the end of the first act.”

  “You mean the curtain goes down right then,” she said, “and you don’t see anything happen? I don’t think that’s fair.”

  “It’s better to imagine some things,” he said, “and I don’t think it’s a bad first act.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s fair,” she said. “What happens then?”

  “Why, in the second act,” he said, “she falls in love with him and she loves him so much she lets him do almost anything he wants.”

  “I wish I had a conscience like that,” she said, “only mine would have to be a boy. But what happens after that?”

  “Well, that’s the third act,” he said, “and I’m working on it now. He quarrels with his conscience, and they get divorced, and he’s back in his bedroom again, entirely devoid of conscience, and that’s as far as I’ve gone, except that he’s going to ask her to come back.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because he finds it very lonely to have no conscience at all,” he said, “but just when he’s made up his mind to get along without one, there she is, knocking at his door. He is just getting out of his trousers—conscience is always knocking at the door at the wrong moment—and she tells him to behave himself. Divorced or not, you can’t get rid of conscience.”

  “It sounds sort of peculiar,” she said. “But then, I’ve only seen a few stock companies act plays.”

  “There’s nothing peculiar about having a conscience,” he said. “Everybody has one.”

  “Have you got a conscience about me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think I have.”

  “That’s nice if it’s true,” she said, “because most men don’t seem to have much of any about girls. That’s why you have to be on the lookout, always. It gets awfully tiresome being on the lookout.”

  “That’s what he tells his conscience in the play,” he said. “No one has much conscience about his conscience.”

  The house was very still, and he put his arm around her.

  “Remember your conscience,” she said. “She may not like it.” But she did not move away.

  “My conscience is getting on fine,” he said. “How’s yours?”

  She laughed, one of those quick laughs whose echo always lingered in his memory.

  “A girl doesn’t need one, usually, as long as she deals with facts,” she said, “and maybe you’re beginning to be a fact. I sort of hope you are.”

  “I hope so, too,” he said, “but maybe we’d both know better if you’d let me kiss you.”

  “That’s a silly thing to say,” she said. “You know very well I will. So stop talking and go ahead and do it.”

  One thing about Rhoda had always been that her frankness never spoiled anything. It did not spoil anything to know that he had done what she had been expecting, and that she had wanted him to do it.

  “I’ve got on violet talcum powder,” she said. “I’m glad it didn’t make you sneeze.”

  “It didn’t,” he said.

  “Well, dust it off your shoulder,” she said, “it gets all over everything, doesn’t it? I wish I had some French perfume.”

  “I’ll get you some,” he said.

  “That would be nice,” she said, “if I could think of some way of using it so Mother wouldn’t notice, because I’m afraid she’d guess where it came from. Mother’s quick about things, sometimes, when she gets her mind off Baltimore.”

  “Maybe I can find you some scentless perfume,” he said. “It’ll be in a clear, crystal bottle labeled ‘Hide and Seek’ or else ‘Camouflage.’ ‘Camouflage’ would be a better name, considering it’s French.”

  “It’s hard for me to tell whether you’re ever serious,” she said, “because you’re always joking.”

  “It’s a coincidence,” he said. “I’m pretty serious most of the time.”

  “I wish I knew,” she said. “Is it true this new play is about all these things, or are you just making it up?”

  “No, I’m not making it up,” he said.

  “Do you think,” she said,
and looked at him almost shyly, “anyone will give you another thousand dollars for a play like that?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “They may pay a lot more, if the first one goes all right.”

  “I know you wouldn’t be surprised,” she said, “but still do you honestly think anybody will understand it?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I’ve shown the first part of it to Mort Sullivan, and he says it ought to act, and they’re looking around right now for fantasy.”

  “Who’s Mort Sullivan?” she asked.

  “My dramatic agent,” he said. “I used to work for him before I started writing plays.”

  “Gosh,” she said, “I didn’t know you had a dramatic agent. When you get that Ford, we can go to the beach, and there’s a roller-skating pavilion there.”

  “I can’t wait to roller-skate,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t,” she said, and suddenly her voice broke. “Don’t keep on being funny, because—” her voice broke again—“it isn’t, for me. It isn’t funny at all.”

  “Why, Rhoda,” he said, “I didn’t mean—”

  But she spoke again before he had finished.

  “Then kiss me and be serious,” she said. “I’ve got to get out of this. I want to be where I can use French perfume, and I don’t want it called ‘Camouflage.’ I don’t want anything to be camouflage. Oh, Tom, I’m so afraid I won’t.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m not joking, Rhoda.”

  “I won’t be, if you don’t go away,” she said. “You’re the only person I’ve ever seen who—who—”

  He waited, but she did not go on.

  “Who what?” he asked.

  “I don’t have to tell you what,” she said. “You know very well. Now kiss me good night again. I want to be asleep before Mother comes back, and I’ll see you again at the cemetery tomorrow at the same tombstone. Good night, Monte Cristo.”

  “Why not be informal,” he said, “and simply call me ‘Monte.’ I honestly wouldn’t mind.”

  “Don’t,” she said, “please. This honestly isn’t funny. But if you’d rather, I could call you ‘Count.’ Good night, Count—but I want to brush that talcum powder off you. That aunt of yours might not like it. Stand still where the light strikes you. You’re dreadfully handsome, Count.”