Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  He felt the same about lawyers. These fellows had often been ribbed by dramatists. Shakespeare had begun the fashion, and if he had not been mistaken, Molière had continued. Mr. Galsworthy, an admirable playwright in his way, had a milk-sipping lawyer in his drama concerning the gentleman card-cheat and the Jew. You could laugh at them, but like the doctor, they were there when you needed them, full of cool compassion, imbued with an intricate wisdom drawn from books in the law library which he had never seen them enter.

  More than in the doctor’s office, in the office of a good sound law firm (and thank God his law firm was a good sound one) you were in the shadow of tradition. You could feel it in the sure, academic quietness, the confidential secrecy of the partners’ rooms, a little quaint, a trifle out of date, but with that aged-in-the-wood quality that denoted considered judgment. It had seemed to Tom from the beginning that he had required lawyers for one thing and another, and the firm, to which Dick Bramhall had sent him long ago, could handle anything. It was a firm, as Dick had said, that had deliberately not allowed itself to grow like many of the others, but it was as good as any in town, or better. For years he had gone there as trustingly as a little child with problems of plagiarism, contracts, drunken cooks, his income tax and his will, and they had never failed him. There was a friendship between a lawyer and client of a different depth and quality from the friendship existing between doctor and patient. It was a mellower and a wittier friendship, but when one came to grips with things, one always knew when the maestro was talking. The name of the firm had its own rocklike appeal to confidence: Cathcart, Brewis and Balch. It made no difference that the grasses had been growing on the graves of these three partners shortly after the turn of the century. The validity of the names was still there. Mingling with their office furniture and their moldering calfskin tomes, their ghosts walked with the pay envelopes into the back rooms where girls were typing out the briefs. Their ghosts appeared at the partners’ annual dinner when Jack Scheaffer, now senior partner, arose, helped by two junior partners because of arthritis, and raised his glass of Burgundy to drink to the Loved and the Absent. There was probity in that old firm name, just as there was probity in the bills sent to its clients. For instance, when Harry Bleek, who was handling his affairs twenty years ago and was still handling them, sent him a bill for so many conferences, for so much study and for the preparation of this and that, he always also sent a covering letter of explanation.

  There was a saying that one’s lawyer ought to be a part of one’s self. This may have been a sound idea, but in spite of their long association, Tom Harrow could not consider Harry Bleek as his alter ego, and on the June day when he came from Washington and climbed up the subway steps into the sunlight of Bowling Green, he still felt uneasy as he considered their approaching meeting.

  He should have known there was no reason for concern, because the firm could handle anything and, as Harry had often said playfully, one learned more about human nature trying cases in the probate court than most analysts discovered by stretching patients out on couches. However, human nature as seen through the steel-rimmed spectacles of Harry Bleek, a homespun affectation, was different from life as Tom Harrow had observed it, more sharply defined, more governed by a compilation of rules, and also more naïve.

  There were no new lines on the face of the middle-aged receptionist. The only thing new in the comfortable outer office was a freshly fashioned plaque entitled “Roll of Honor,” placed beside the other two plaques, for the Spanish War and World War I—still entitled “The Great War”—plaques that bore the names of employees and a few of the more junior partners who had shouldered muskets.

  “Good morning, Miss Prothero,” he said to the receptionist. “Is Mr. Bleek ready to see me, do you think?”

  Miss Prothero looked at him with a kindness that was almost maternal, although he was sure that she had never been a mother, on or off the record.

  “Oh yes,” she said, “I am almost sure that Mr. Bleek is waiting for you.” That was the legal way—never stick your neck out until you had to lay it on the line. “I’ll check to be certain. Are you back for good, Mr. Harrow?”

  “No,” he said, “I’m over from London carrying a few papers, a kind of office boy, Miss Prothero. I’ll be going back as soon as they find some other papers for me to carry.”

  “I’ll tell Mr. Bleek you are here,” she said. “In the meanwhile, in case he’s busy, wouldn’t you like a cup of tea?”

  “No,” he said, “but thank you just as much. Even in London I never drink it until the sun is over the yardarm.”

  The remark echoed with tinny banality from the yellowing photographs of New York in the Great Blizzard that hung in the reception room.

  “Mr. Bleek wants you to come in right away,” Miss Prothero said. “He’s not in his old office—in the next one up the hall to the left. Mr. Hotchkiss died last year, you know.”

  He sounded insincere when he said that he was sorry that Mr. Hotchkiss had died; he had never met Mr. Hotchkiss. The character of the Hotchkiss office, which smacked of early Americana and hooked rugs, showed that partners did not move everything with them as they moved up the hall, but Harry fitted into it.

  Harry had said over the telephone that they had been understaffed during the war and thus he had been compelled to pull more weight in the boat than previously. Still, he did not look tired.

  “Well, well,” Harry Bleek said. “So the hero’s returned again.”

  When you considered his uniform and the ribbons, of the sort that were passed about like popcorn, the comment was apt and perhaps ironical, but it was impossible to tell whether irony had been intended.

  “The hero wishes to God he could stay returned,” Tom said. “This hero is tired of being a hero. Confidentially, I never should have gone to this war. I’m afraid the journey wasn’t worthwhile.”

  “Oh, don’t say that, Tom,” Harry said.

  “All right,” he said, “I won’t if that’s the advice of counsel. From over there in London, it seemed to me that things are moving pretty smoothly, Harry.”

  “Yes,” Harry said, “we honestly felt quite happy about the small newspaper reaction. Probably we have the war to thank. I was a little unhappy about the bitter tone in the Time announcement. Of course one couldn’t keep such VIP’s as you and Rhoda out of Time—but then, it did seem to me that Time was waspish about Rhoda—but then, you know how Time can be.”

  “I don’t remember,” he said. “How was Time waspish?”

  “Here it is in the folder,” Harry said, “from that section called ‘Milestones’: ‘Divorced. Soldier playwright, Thomas Harrow, by his wife Rhoda, the latter charging cruel and abusive treatment while he was with the Armed Forces overseas. In Reno, Nevada.’ Of course, as I told them over at Smythe and Harrigton, Rhoda should have braced herself for that sort of reaction.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tom said, “if people are waspish. I’m not, you know.”

  “I know you’re not, Tom,” Harry said. “Have you seen Harold yet?”

  It was an easy question that deserved an easy answer, and yet he found it difficult.

  “No,” he said. “I’m afraid I won’t, this trip. The school’s up in Massachusetts and I only have a day or two. Besides, from what you wrote, if I went up, I might disturb him.”

  “You don’t know how much he wants to see you,” Harry said. “You know he loves you, Tom.”

  “It’s good to know,” he said. “I wish he wouldn’t blame it on Rhoda. Do you remember the old song about, ‘Don’t blame it all on Broadway, you’ve got yourself to blame’?”

  “Tom,” Harry said, “it’s like old times seeing you, and of course I knew you’d take it like a soldier.”

  “Listen,” he said, “not soldier, office boy.”

  “What makes us all happy in here,” Harry said, “is that it hasn’t got you down. Yes, maybe you’d do better not to see Harold until things have blown over. One thing at a time isn’t such a
bad motto when dealing with children in anomalous situations. Maybe it’s wisdom to let new developments take their course.”

  Harry coughed involuntarily, which was the only sign of nervousness that he ever displayed, and it was time to ask the obvious question.

  “What new developments?” Tom asked.

  “Hasn’t Rhoda written you?”

  “Several times,” he said, “but I’ve returned her letters unopened, at least with the censor’s seals unopened. Wasn’t that advice of counsel?”

  Harry Bleek nodded and coughed again.

  “I’m very glad you did, Tom,” he said. “That’s what I’m here for, as insulation, so you will not get yourself needlessly disturbed.”

  In spite of the difference between a doctor’s and a lawyer’s office, both had a somewhat similar atmosphere of suspense and dread. It was clear from the cough and the shuffling of papers that the insulation was coming off.

  “Well,” Tom said, “the disturbance is over, isn’t it? I did what she wanted, didn’t I?”

  “Oh, yes,” Harry said, “absolutely, everything that is basic is done. We have a letter here from Rhoda, a nice letter. She’s a civilized girl, you know.”

  He wanted to say that he knew that she and the whole thing were civilized, but it was not civilized to lose one’s self-control.

  “All right,” he said, “what’s in the letter?”

  He could still remember the impersonality of his lawyer’s voice, demonstrating that a counselor could be at one moment personal and at another as aloof as the fates.

  “Well, the first thing you’ve probably guessed already, because talk’s been going around. I’ve warned you, haven’t I, that you must expect to be talked about? First, she gives the news that she’s marrying this man Brake, Presley Brake. It doesn’t surprise you, does it?”

  There was no way of hiding everything, and he felt indecently exposed.

  “I hadn’t heard,” he said. “When you write her, give her my best wishes, will you? Now, is there anything else?”

  “The else,” Harry said, and blinded justice, the scales, and the sword were gone, “is something that surprised and pleased me and I do hope you’re going to react in a similar way, Tom, because no matter how you construe it, it is a generous gesture.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said. “Go right ahead if it’s pleasant.”

  “As you know,” Harry said, “I’ve always thought you were quixotic in the separation agreement. Although it was a splendid piece of generosity, I would have objected more strenuously if she had not given you the custody of Hal.”

  It was a time to keep his mind carefully on the words, but instead he thought of Hal.

  “Considering the situation,” Tom’s mind was back on the words again, “none of us here felt there was any need of your giving her half your cash and securities, and now it seems that Rhoda agrees. The fact is, Tom, that this second husband of hers is very wealthy, and she wants to give the settlement back.”

  If there had been fewer things to think about at once, life always would have been happier, but usually it was impossible to get one thing separated from another.

  “She wants to give it back?” he said. “I don’t quite get it.”

  “That’s right,” Harry said. “She wants to return it.”

  “With those common stocks that were bought in the Thirties,” Tom said, “the whole thing must amount to pretty nearly five hundred thousand dollars on paper.”

  Harry Bleek nodded. “If they were sold, there would be an enormous capital gains tax,” he said.

  “Goddammit,” Tom said, “she always wanted security.”

  Lawyers always had their own professional way of dealing with human values.”

  “But don’t you see,” Harry said, “no doubt he’s making a settlement on her. Believe me, he can afford it, even with the gift tax.”

  The impulses that made one act were never the logical ones. Given perspective, he could not tell whether he had been still in love with Rhoda at the time or whether his main feeling had been jealousy.

  “All right,” he said, “thank her and tell her I still don’t want it. Don’t forget we’ve been over all this before I ever consented to the divorce. She accepted that money because I told her I would not consent unless she did. The agreement’s signed and sealed and she can’t give it back now unless I agree. I don’t agree. Let her keep the money. Money’s been the main basis of our difficulties and I can get along with what I’ve got left.”

  There was a cold, disapproving silence.

  “I wish you’d think that over,” Harry said.

  “All right,” he said, “consider it thought over. Just tell her I refuse.”

  There was another silence.

  “Tom,” Harry said, “do you mind if I ask you a somewhat personal question? I wouldn’t if it were not germane to your situation, and if we had not been friends so long.”

  “Why, no, of course not, Harry,” he said. “Go ahead and ask it.”

  “Are you planning to marry Miss Hopedale? It’s been in the Hollywood gossip columns, you know.”

  It was not a bad maxim to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. The only difficulty was that one never knew exactly what the truth might be, because truth very seldom precipitated out of thought in a true, crystal form, and all sorts of extraneous half-truths had a way of mingling with it.

  “The thought has crossed my mind, but not seriously,” he said. “I’ve not taken the matter up with Miss Hopedale even off the record. Does that answer your question?”

  He had never seen Bleek in court, but he could believe that his persistence might be something in the nature of an achievement.

  “Then there is a possibility?”

  “Oh yes. I take it you disapprove?” he said.

  In the last analysis, how much did he know about Harry Bleek, in spite of their years of relationship as lawyer and client? Harry was another of those façades behind which there was not much reason to look, except from intellectual curiosity, and Tom had never ventured to look very far.

  “Both as a lawyer and as a friend,” Harry said, “I cannot say that I either approve or disapprove. I have not had the pleasure of meeting Miss Hopedale, only of reading about her and seeing some most alluring photographs. Maida and I never go to the theatre much because the commute to West Redding is pretty hard at night. Besides, Tom, I have given up long ago advising friends or clients about their private lives, save as regards the possibilities of potential legal entanglements, which I am sure you, and Miss Hopedale also, will have the good taste to avoid. I can only venture one remark. I suppose you will—and I believe you should—marry someone. The position is more normal than single blessedness.”

  His mind had moved automatically to the Bleeks’ faithfully treated salt-box house in West Redding.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said, “but I do feel goddamn lonely.”

  Sleep did not cut it off. As he lay there sleepless, everything moved on and there was too much of everything. Confessedly he had handled life as clumsily as alcoholics handled liquor. He had not built up a calmness or a tolerance to life. He had not possessed the patience to take the good with the bad, nor had he absorbed the knowledge that one had to take them both. There were all sorts of less gifted people than he who had made a success of living, and now that it was too late he believed he had the reason. He had been too concerned with other things to live. He had been too busy with illusion to worry over reality.

  If he had been in another mood, less worried with introspection, he might have brought up that shopworn excuse that had served him many times before the one which people in the theatre were forever using: loyalty to one’s art, a form of dedication that condoned mundane irregularities. But living, as far as he knew it, was mainly made up of half loyalties, and often in his professional life he had only been half loyal. There were the trips to Hollywood which one could shrug off as useful technical experience, but they wer
e there, and he had gone for money. He had to admit that it was his fault that others had driven him to produce a number of shallow plays for money that had diverted him from his own work. There was only one thing he could say. He had never trespassed against his own work and he could believe that it was one of the few trusts that he had kept, but was the trust worthwhile?

  He turned on the bedside light and got to his feet, and the light that pushed the darkness back from the room and from the blackness of the windows made things better.

  The solution to the problem was, of course, the sleeping pills behind the mirrored door of the medicine chest in his bathroom. He had never started taking them until he had met Laura Hopedale, and they were not a habit with him even now. They were something to use in an emergency and not as a means of escape, but he knew the exact dosage. Given three of the yellow ones, and there were plently in the bottle, he should be sound asleep in half an hour. Before he opened the medicine chest, he saw his face in the mirror. Time, of course, had marked his face; his hair was graying, but thank heaven he was not bald and thank heaven his face had not grown flabby. Standing there, seemingly looking at someone else, he could see that his face was handsome still and, thank heaven again, it was not immature. It even reflected traces of intelligence, and his eyes, in spite of the drinking, were bright and steady. It was the face he had known from day to day ever since he had watched it when he had started shaving at the Judge’s house. But now there was something, that disturbed him: it was both his own and a stranger’s face. It was another façade, and now he was frank to admit that he did not know what went on behind it. He could only make a guess, which may have been all that mortal man could ever do, in spite of that command that still was inscribed on what was left of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.