Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  “Why, hello, Walter,” he said. “What happy chance has brought you back?”

  “Several combined chances,” Walter said. He still looked like a sergeant major in the big parade to oblivion, but there was warmth and friendliness in his reappearance, reminiscent of an earlier day before one was conscious that the big parade was starting. “The thought that you might still be here alone and in the need of company, for one thing, and then a habit of mine that I cultivated from my experiences as a brigade adjutant in World War I, a habit practiced by Napoleon.”

  “I never knew you were the adjutant of any brigade in World War I,” Tom Harrow said.

  “Dear boy,” Walter said, “in a life as full as mine, it is difficult to tell even one’s best friends everything. Now that I’m here, how about a little drinkie? That was another reason for descending the staircase,” he laughed softly, “not that I’m a nude. I never was a believer, nor was Mr. Ziegfield, in full exposure.”

  The band was striking up; the parade was marching on. Few young people in the unappreciated vigor of their youth would now understand that the allusion of Walter’s, so archly put, referred to a picture in a show of cubist art in New York in 1913—the Nude Descending a Staircase. The parade was moving on.

  “I’m very glad you’re down here, Walter,” Tom Harrow said, “in many different ways. The drinks are over there and your presence zips everything together like a zipper.”

  Walter Price succumbed to a falsetto burst of laughter.

  “Tom,” he said, “you’ve always had a delightfully macabre sense of imagery. There never has been anything exactly like your dialogue—the sudden moment, the sudden, unexpected turn. And we truly do need a zipper to pull together past and present.”

  The atmosphere was like the cold bathtub and gin days on Lexington Avenue. There was still a meeting of minds, the curious and useless rapport between them that Rhoda had often criticized.

  “Yes,” Tom Harrow said. “Are you all right? Have you found your little drinkie, Walter?”

  “Yes,” Walter Price said, “the bourbon, like the sands of time, is running low, but I’m unzipping it right now.”

  “Let’s not overlabor a good thing,” Tom said. “That’s the trouble with these comedians, Benny and the whole damn lot of them, but what was it you were saying you did that Napoleon did?”

  “Napoleon?” Walter Price said. “Napoleon? Don’t tell me, I’ll get the connection in a moment.”

  It was summer again on Lexington Avenue and Rhoda had gone to the Cape or Watch Hill or wherever it was she went when he had to be in town.

  “When you were a brigade adjutant in World War I,” Tom Harrow said, “you cultivated some habit from Napoleon.”

  Walter Price laughed again.

  “Dear Tom,” he said. “Now I’m here beside the bourbon and the Scotch, how about a drinkie for yourself?”

  “Not at the moment,” Tom said. “What about Napoleon?”

  “Oh, that,” Walter said. “Why, merely, Tom, that when I was in my salad days preparing for entrance examinations to West Point, I dabbled somewhat in Napoleonana.”

  “Now wait,” Tom Harrow said, “don’t tell me you went to the Point. It doesn’t fit in with Harrow, Walter.”

  “That is the trouble with the modern craft of playwriting,” Walter Price said, “everything has to fit in, or as dear old Arthur used to say, everything has to hold water.”

  “All right, as long as you hold your own,” Tom Harrow said.

  “Now just a minute,” Walter said, “when have I never not? Name me a single instance.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tom said, “as long as you carry it on both shoulders.”

  “Dear boy,” Walter said, and he wiped away a tear, “you always think of something new, but we were talking about Napoleon. Napoleon had a faculty for taking cat naps, in case you don’t remember.”

  “There weren’t any cats,” Tom Harrow said. “Josephine had a dog that bit Napoleon. He couldn’t take cat naps.”

  “Not on the nuptial couch,” Walter said. “Are you sure you don’t want a little drinkie? Like all great generals, Napoleon was able to doze off at odd moments and then to wake in a split second with the whole battle plan back in his head. I practiced this when I was adjutant of the old Third, and very useful it was when the Boches counterattacked in the Bois des Rappes—asleep one moment, leading my men the next. Did I ever tell you about that counterattack in the Bois?”

  “It must have been a great war,” Tom Harrow said, “World War I, I mean, simpler, more like the Civil War.”

  Walter sighed.

  “Tom,” he said, “your intuitive sense is a signature to everything you do. Yes, there was a Civil War quality with the caissons rolling along, a quality so apparent in the play Secret Service. Did you ever see Gillette in Secret Service?”

  “No,” Tom said, “but I saw him in my extreme youth in Sherlock Holmes.”

  “A pity,” Walter said. “He was better in Secret Service. By the way, I wonder whether you have met a young client of mine, a playwright named Vincent O’Keefe.”

  The aimlessness of Walter usually deserved attention. When you least expected it, after long locutions with footnotes and appendices, something would lead to something, and now the name of Vincent O’Keefe moved forward suddenly, solid and challenging.

  The name, intuition indicated, had appeared as the end result of a carefully woven fabric, and the real reason for Walter Price’s reappearance was now approaching. For as long as Tom had known Walter Price, Walter had been pulling promising young playwrights out of hats, and they had always possessed the insubstantial qualities of conjurers’ rabbits, and always disappeared in an ectoplasmic fashion.

  “Vincent O’Keefe?” Tom Harrow said. “Why no, I’ve never heard of Vincent O’Keefe.”

  Walter sighed in a patient manner.

  “You will hear of him in a very resounding way,” he said. “In all my searches for talent I have never encountered talent of the same impact. The moment I read a line of his, I knew I was in the presence of greatness. I knew there was no time to be lost and I didn’t lose a minute.”

  “So that’s what you’ve been leading up to, is it?” Tom Harrow asked. “You don’t mean you’re taking on another play?”

  Walter raised his glass.

  “Only in a promotional way,” he said. “There will be no trouble getting any number of people to participate in the production costs. It’s a comedy, Tom, reminiscent of Once in a Lifetime, but with a gusto and a genius far exceeding Kaufman and Hart; a comedy about Hollywood.”

  It had always been hard to understand the enthusiasms of people like Walter Price, that flourished on disillusion and failure or, when they withered, were re-created immediately into something new.

  “Walter,” he said, “don’t you know that Hollywood’s been funny so long that it’s stopped being?”

  “Not under the magic of this new boy of mine,” Walter said. “Every line of this play is hilarious, and most of it is sidesplitting. All I ask you is wait till you read it.”

  “I’m going to die someday,” Tom Harrow said, “but I’m not going to die laughing at a total stranger named Vincent O’Keefe. Who is he? What did he ever do?”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” Walter said. “He’s never done anything.”

  “Where did he come from?” Tom asked.

  “He came from Harvard,” Walter said. “He wrote the play in his senior year in a creative writing course, produced very successfully by Harvard and Radcliffe students.”

  “That makes it a valuable piece of property,” Tom Harrow said. “Where did you find him, Walter?”

  Walter poured himself another drink.

  “I didn’t. He found me,” he said.

  “How did he do that?” Tom Harrow asked.

  “He was thumbing over the yellow pages of the telephone directory,” Walter said. “Don’t laugh, Tom. I put my name in the yellow pages last year as a h
appy sort of afterthought, with a small squib about myself, in a neat oblong box.”

  “And he came upon the squib?”

  “Yes,” Walter said. “He was discouraged, and he had been drinking.”

  “Look here,” Tom Harrow said, “you haven’t paid him an advance, have you?”

  He had not yet lost the faculty, and he hoped he never would, of growing interested in problems that were not his own. His curiosity was now attempting to construct this unknown Vincent O’Keefe. He could see him dressed in chino trousers, soiled buckskin shoes and a sweatshirt.

  “I shall pay him an advance,” Walter said, “the day after tomorrow, in accordance with the terms of our contract, and it will be the wisest of many wise investments I have made. Did I ever tell you of that flutter of mine on Wall Street back in ’28?”

  It was delicate of Walter not to approach the point too bluntly, but the ending was inevitable and Tom Harrow felt a keen compassion.

  “How much are you going to pay him, Walter?” he asked.

  “It may seem high to you,” Walter said, “but considering I’m introducing a new figure in the theatre, very little. Five thousand dollars, Tom.”

  “Good God,” Tom Harrow said, “five thousand dollars?”

  Walter raised his hand in a gesture that demanded patience.

  “Not all as an advance, of course,” he said. “I’m sorry I’ve not been clearer. Promotional costs, plus the advance will amount to five thousand dollars.”

  Walter had made himself very clear. He was short of money again. It was not necessary for him to go on, but circumstances forced him.

  “You wouldn’t mind, would you,” he said, “letting me have five thousand, Tom, until the promotional work is over?

  Now that Walter Price had asked the question, it was like moving from one element to another. He was facing reality again, at least as he understood reality, and his own experience that night was similar. He had been in the library, half asleep. The drinks he had taken had changed his point of view and the direction of his thoughts, but they had made nothing vague. His mind had been dallying with the past and the experience was much like swimming underwater. Nothing Walter had said had brought back the present until Walter had asked for five thousand dollars. Now he was on the surface again, no longer young or married to Rhoda Browne, no longer standing on the threshold of success in a brave and safe world. He was in his fifties, a very different age, and closer to being dead broke than he had been since he had lived in the Hotel Bulwer.

  “Why, Walter,” he said, “it’s natural for you to ask me. I want you to know I’m glad you have.” It hurt to see the relief on Walter’s face.

  “Dear Tom,” Walter Price began, and his voice choked, “no one ever had a better friend.”

  One of his troubles had always been that it hurt him to say “No,” and he had a moment’s clear vision of all the money he had loaned. This had been expected of him because openhandedness had been one of the attributes of the theatre, but still he had always been an easy mark. It was disconcerting to find himself automatically thinking where he could find five thousand dollars for Walter Price.

  “Walter,” he said, “it’s painful to recall right now that I had quite a lot of dough once, but I gave half of what I had to Rhoda and then there’s the Hopedale alimony.”

  “Dear Tom,” Walter Price said, “you don’t have to remind me what you did for Rhoda or the quixotic manner in which you have been providing for Hopedale. It makes me all the more vividly aware of your generosity. Of course, as I must have told you, if things had ever been straightened out regarding the Alabama claims, the shoe would be on the other foot and I would be begging you to ask some assistance from me.”

  He knew that he should tell Walter directly and get it over, but he eagerly grasped the opportunity to delay.

  “What Alabama claims?” he asked.

  Walter laughed comfortably. It was sad to hear him since the expansiveness of his mood reflected his deep relief.

  “Surely it’s the lateness of the hour,” Walter said, “that makes you forget the Confederate ship of war Alabama, built in England, that preyed so successfully on Yankee merchantmen. The British government, after the peace, agreed to reimburse Yankee shipowners for their sunken ships, and the Price shipping was badly hit by the Alabama.”

  “The Price shipping?” Tom said. “What Price shipping?”

  “Dear me,” Walter said, “I’ve surely mentioned the old Price packets that once plied so successfully between this continent and Liverpool until the Alabama swooped upon them.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Tom Harrow said, “I don’t see how the Alabama could swoop upon Price packets if your family fought for Dixie in the Civil War, and if they were almost burned out by General Sherman.”

  Walter sighed.

  “Oh dear,” he said, “I never realized that I had never told you. The packets belonged to my Great-uncle Walt, who stood for the Union and who quarreled bitterly with the Colonel, my grandfather. But in time, due to death and attrition, I found myself heir to Uncle Walt’s Alabama claims.”

  “What happened?” Tom asked.

  Walter Price sighed again.

  “What invariably happens,” he said. “The papers got lost somewhere in Washington, and now there are no Alabama claims.”

  It was like most of living; you started with something and suddenly it was gone. He was very young when the song was popular, “I’m forever blowing bubbles.” There was a silence in the room, now that the bubble of the Alabama claims was dissipated.

  “Walter,” he said, “I hate to say it, but I’m another Alabama claim.”

  The confidence of Walter Price and his serene belief in friendship remained unshaken.

  “Sometimes, Tom,” he said, “the obliquity of your wit leaves me a trifle in your wake. In exactly what respect are you an Alabama claim?”

  Tom no longer desired delay; he was the matador at the end of the bullfight. He was tired of facing reality and it might be that he could escape from it again if he could insert the sword at the proper point between the shoulder blades.

  “In every respect,” he said. “I haven’t got five thousand dollars, but I might let you have a hundred or two if you hurry and cash the check.”

  Walter’s expression gave him a sharp twinge of guilt, the widened eyes, the sudden sagging of the facial muscles.

  “Tom,” he said, “it’s hard for me to believe you’re serious.”

  It was easier now that the worst was over. He found himself speaking with less effort, like a runner who has gained his second wind. He was saying that it had been hard for him to realize the facts himself and that he was hardly adjusted to them yet. As Rhoda had often said, he had always been incredibly vague about money.

  “You remember Porthos of Paris,” he said—“that musical that was fixed up as a capital gains setup? The bank put up the cash and I put up my securities as collateral, all I hadn’t given Rhoda, and then my personal note for another seventy thousand. I let my enthusiasm run away with me, Walter, but you do remember Porthos of Paris, don’t you?”

  Walter Price nodded. It was impressive how quickly he had adjusted himself to a friend’s disaster, until one recollected that Walter had been living on intimate terms with crisis for many, many years.

  “Granted it did not have a run,” Walter said, “it was succès d’estime.”

  It was one way of putting it. The compassion of the theatre was around them both and the room was quiet with a midnight silence. Then Walter spoke again alertly, with an agent’s professional sharpness.

  “No sale of the picture rights?” he asked. “After all, it was a Broadway production and a deal could have been made for the costumes.”

  The costumes were the trouble. The public was tired of costumes.

  “You see,” Tom said, “the note falls due next month. I’m putting this place on the market and the furniture will be sent to Parke-Bernet. I’ve a new play, but still I’ve g
ot to raise the money.”

  “My God,” Walter said, “are you sure you don’t want another drinkie?”

  “No,” he answered, “not at the moment, thanks.”

  He was up from the bottom of the sea, right there with the actual—so much with it that he could see the unreality of Walter Price.

  “Does Emily know?” Walter said. “It will be very hard on Emily.”

  Walter, when he once got away from himself, could estimate a situation and Walter had always possessed a knowledge of character. Also, having been in the agency business, Walter had learned the value of warm, human interest. Tom Harrow had a brief vision of all the situations in which Walter must have participated, warped and distorted by the lenses and prisms of the Price imagination. Emily’s voice was back again as he had heard it in the hall that morning.

  “She knows,” he said. “She had what you might call a ‘racetrack reaction.’ She’s been stamping on her parimutuel tickets, and now maybe it’s too late for her to bet again. I can’t help feeling sorry for her. She’s very cross and she has no place to go.”

  “May I ask,” Walter asked, “if you wish she had some place to go?”

  It occurred to him that it had been a number of years since he had given any serious thought to his relationship with Emily. She was there and she was a part of the eternal problem, and he did not want to give his attention to Emily now.

  “All women become tiresome on occasions,” he said, “and occasions seem to increase the longer you know them. Even Rhoda was tiresome. I think perhaps I will have a drink, merely due to the power of your suggestion.”