Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  He had been to Delphi once, with Rhoda, on a cruise they had taken to the Aegean during their last year at Antibes. He could remember his walk through the shattered ruins of the Periclean Age. He could remember the eagle circling over the distant mountaintop, and the bright glare of the sun, and the columns of the temple, gilded with age and sunlight. “Know thyself,” was the command—not that he could read the Greek—and an excellent piece of advice it was. The only difficulty with it was that, like all advice, it was hard to follow. He had honestly tried to know himself, again and again and again. Indeed, there had even been occasions when he thought he had known himself, but self, at least insofar as he was acquainted with it, was forever changing; something new was always being added. Possibly all that anyone could do, in spite of the help of religion and of healers of the mind, was to have a polite, respectful bowing acquaintance with the ego, a sort of relationship that did not permit heart-to-heart discussions or true confessions.

  It was disconcerting, while standing there looking at his image, which might not even be a true one due to the eccentricities of reflected light and to the fallibility of human vision, that he did not honestly know what sort of man he was. He only knew that he was there and that he could not escape. He thought; therefore he was. But even thinking was eccentric, depending on liquor or the liver or desire. Still, he thought, and therefore he was, and he had to do the best he could with being. At any rate, he had had enough of it. The title of it was like one of those plays of O’Neill’s, A Long Day’s Journey into Night, and it was time to go to sleep.

  XXVII

  Emily Wasn’t Feeling Very Well That Morning

  Before he was aware of a disturbance in his room, he knew that it was morning. Artificially induced drowsiness was still with him, combined, unfortunately, with the aftereffects of Scotch and water. Conscience told him even before he was awake that he was not in the nonsmoking, nonalcoholic, nonbarbiturate state of a model man. This did not mean that he suffered any specific physical malaise, but he was still coping with a lethal blankness that was not natural, and through this veil of discomfort, he heard Emily’s voice. It was morning and it could only be Emily. Arthur should have known better than to have been infatuated so long by Emily. Arthur, too, had fallen while running through the script.

  “Tom,” Emily was saying, “Tom, dear, are you awake?”

  He had learned from experience that it was never wise in an offhand way to underestimate the power of Emily. She had asked him that same question many times before in the period of their marriage, and once he had considered it indicative of Emily’s scatterbrained quality until he eventually found that Emily’s brains were seldom scattered. On its face the question was foolsih, since she had asked it when he was asleep, but it had a purpose. It was a means of awaking him because she wanted to talk to him and it was more graceful than telling him in so many words to wake up. He gave his usual answer before opening his eyes.

  “I was asleep,” he said, “but now I’m awake.”

  Emily, too, gave her conventional answer with the same remorseful surprise she always used.

  “Oh, darling,” she said, “it was stupid of me and selfish not to have noticed. I thought you were cat-napping—I didn’t know you were really asleep.”

  “Well,” he said, “I imagine no irreparable harm has been done, Emily.”

  When he opened his eyes, he was aware that it was later than he thought, another sunny day with a hint of the beginning of summer in it. Then he saw that the door between their rooms was open and the half-opened door made him wonder idly how long she had stood waiting before she had ventured to speak to him. Without being able to explain how he knew, he was conscious of an atmosphere of studied preparation, an atmosphere that made him wish his mind were clearer, and Emily’s appearance did not deceive him. She looked as though she had just jumped out of bed and thrown something over her, but that was the way Emily always appeared when she wished to have a serious morning’s conversation. She undoubtedly remembered that he had once been charmed by this early-morning look, and occasionally Emily would forget that there could be too much of a good thing. Her beautiful ash-blond hair that amazingly was no darker than he first remembered it would not have been so négligé unless she had deliberately rumpled it; and her face would never have been so attractively unmade if she had not already passed a damp washcloth over it, and the tossed-over quality of her kimono was overdone. It was a lacquer-red kimono that Emily had purchased at the Royal Hawaiian on a trip they had taken to Honolulu. There was a white Fujiyama against the red background. But combined with this landscape, for no good reason except that the Japanese were an unpredictable people, were a number of white cranes, some in flight and some standing on one leg. He remembered, and something told him that Emily herself was quite sure he would remember, that he had once called it her “expectancy coverall.” The kimono was draped about her in a careless way that would have shocked Madame Butterfly, but it had been made for Western consumption. And there was one more thing that was too deliberate to be real. Emily was in her bare feet, and, unlike some other women he could mention, she had always been attractive when barefoot, with straight, almost Grecian toes that always sprang back promptly after being cramped in pointed slippers. If Emily had really popped half-thinking out of bed, the first thing she would have done would have been to pop into her mules, much as an aroused fireman would pop into his breeches before sliding down the brass pole. She had come in barefoot because she had wanted to have a good look at him before asking him her question and the tapping of the mules might have disturbed him.

  “I wouldn’t have dreamed of waking you,” she said. “You came up so late after everyone had gone. You must have been down there worrying, and ordinarily I would have come down and worried with you, except you were so cross last night—only to me. You were so sweet to everybody except me. You were just as cross as a bear with a sore head to me, last night.”

  He wished that he might think idly of the origins of a bear with a sore head, but there was not time.

  “Yes,” he said, “I was annoyed with you last night, in particular when we were dressing for dinner. That’s when family rows usually start in a good play, don’t they? There’s always a comedy value in a conjugal quarrel if the man is snapping his suspenders and the wife is snapping her garter.”

  But Emily was not listening. Her mind was on something else.

  “You’re not cross, are you, dear?” she asked. “I didn’t mean half what I said. I was awfully tired yesterday. Tom, you’re not really cross, are you?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “I haven’t pulled myself together yet.”

  “Tom,” she said, “you’re feeling all right, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “I guess I’m feeling all right.”

  “What you need,” she said, “is a good cup of coffee. How would it be if I asked Alfred to bring our breakfast upstairs and we had it in my room? And I won’t complain about crumbs in bed. Do you remember when you used to call me ‘the Princess and the Crumb’?”

  “Yes,” he said, “now you mention it. In fact, I’m rather sure my recollective faculties aren’t failing yet.”

  “Oh, darling,” she said, “who ever said anything about your faculties failing?”

  “At the moment I can’t recollect,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll be able to after I’ve had a shower, and don’t correct me—don’t say I should have said, ‘after I’ve showered.’”

  “Darling,” she said, “you do feel better than you did last night, don’t you?”

  “I won’t know,” he said, “until I’ve showered.”

  “Darling,” she said, “I’ll ring and have breakfast brought up. Don’t worry about anything until you’ve had your coffee.”

  “Thanks,” he said, “I’ll have breakfast downstairs. I’ve got a lot to do today.”

  The change that came over her ingenuous, early-morning face made him feel sharply sorry, even when he to
ld himself that his weakness had always been feeling sorry for people, in particular the girls. He had felt sorry for Emily when she spoke to him when he went to bed, and now his sorrow increased. He saw that she was desperately afraid, afraid of his displeasure and of her sudden lack of security. He wondered if she had been doing mental arithmetic. If so she would have known that she could not count on comfortable alimony. The cornucopia was growing empty. The goose was running out of golden eggs.

  “Tom,” she said, “couldn’t we go away somewhere for the day and talk about plans and things, just you and me, and we could take a picnic?”

  She had always hated picnics. The mere suggestion was a measure of her desperation. He felt sorry, but at the same time he did not care, and, with the sun outside and the morning moving on, that lack of caring was the worst of it. Nevertheless, it was still hard to explain specifically why Emily’s suggestion should have filled him at the moment with such irrational repugnance. It may have had something to do with that awkward reminiscence of the Princess and the Crumb, which not only brought his mind back to a younger time but made him wonder how he could even then have enjoyed eating breakfast in bed with Emily; and the suggested picnic was still worse. Emily had reached the age where any exertion caused a run in the nylons. Then there was a picture of Emily eating a sandwich. The only time they had ever tried such an experiment, insects of all kinds had begun attacking Emily; black ants, beetles, and caterpillars deliberately left their ordinary environments to crawl over her in a different and more aggressive manner from any they had practiced when crawling over him.

  “It’s awfully kind of you to suggest such an outing,” he said. “Some other time, but not today.”

  “But Tom,” she said, “I’m only trying to be helpful. I’m only trying to share your troubles.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Emily,” he said, “but not today.”

  “Tom,” she said, “that’s what a wife is for, isn’t it, to share her husband’s troubles?”

  The generality reminded him of Rhoda, but here the parallel ended.

  “I suppose that’s one of the things she’s for,” he said, “on paper.”

  “Tom, dear,” she said, “it doesn’t help to be cynical, and I don’t think either of us should adopt a don’t-look-now attitude if things are as bad as you say they are.”

  “That’s right,” he said, “we mustn’t sweep it under the rug. Don’t worry, I’m going to face facts fearlessly just as soon as I’ve showered.”

  “Tom,” she said, and there was a catch in her voice that was not the Higgins catch. The truth was that she was afraid of what he might do, and the relationship was new to him. She had never been afraid of him before. “Tom, please don’t be evasive. Can’t we face this together?”

  The worst of it, as he weighed those words, was the realization that they had never truly faced anything together. He had never wanted any such support from her, and now it was too late. The traveling clock on his bedside table showed that it was a quarter of ten, not an unusually advanced hour, since the theatre had made him an habitually late riser, but he had a sense of impending events. It was time to start moving.

  “There’s going to be plenty of time to talk about this, plenty of time,” he said, and he pushed back the bedclothes and got up.

  As he did so, Emily’s glance told him that he was not as attractive in disarray as she was, and anyway he did not feel in the least alluring. Once when he had been in a hospital for some reason or other, and he had rung and rung for the floor nurse, he had got out of bed, although he had been told he should not move. The nurse had come in the moment he was looking for his slippers and her expression had been very much like Emily’s.

  “Tom,” she said, “where did you get those pajamas? I never bought them for you.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, “nobody else did either. I bought them in Baltimore last winter when Alfred forgot to pack pajamas.”

  “They look dreadfully,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, “both they and I, but we’ll look better after we’ve showered.”

  “Tom,” she said, “don’t say ‘showered’ again. It drives me crazy the way you harp on a word, and it isn’t very funny. I noticed it the first time I met you. I think it’s a nervous habit.”

  “I guess it is,” he said, “I guess it’s a means of hiding inadequacy.”

  Emily sighed. It was her rehearsed sigh of exasperation, but there was also a wistful note of failure in it.

  “Tom,” she said, “please. We’ve got to mean something to each other. I simply can’t worry the way I have all night—worrying and doing nothing.”

  It was no time to talk and, looking at Emily, he knew she was willing to talk interminably.

  “Emily,” he said, “there isn’t anything to do right now. I’ll have a long talk with you later, but I’ve got to do some telephoning now and write some letters. I’ve got to call up Harry Bleek. I’m going to ask him to come down here. Harry will get us straightened out.”

  “Well, at least tell me what you are going to do today,” Emily said. “If I can’t do anything else, I can plan the meals.”

  He had to admit that she had a right to make the request.

  “After all, we are married,” she said, “in case you’ve forgotten, and Arthur Higgins advised me not to, in case I never told you.”

  “That’s all right,” he said, “you’ve told me, but Arthur never did.”

  “At least,” she said, “are you going to be in for lunch, or are you going to leave me again listening to Walter Price? He’s your guest, not mine, and I can’t take it indefinitely.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t think Walter will be here indefinitely, but I won’t be in for lunch. There’ll be telephone calls and going over accounts. I’ll have lunch sent out.”

  “Oh,” she said, “lunch with Mulford again, is it?”

  “Don’t,” he said. “Be big, be kind and generous, Emily.”

  “I am kind,” she said. “I’m very sorry for Mulford and for all the other people around here who have to assuage your ego. You’re getting to be more like Arthur Higgins every day, except dear Arthur was always sweet about it.” Then there was a change in her voice. “Tom, I gather you’re not going to be around this afternoon. Will you want the new car or the station wagon?”

  “How did you know I was going out?” he asked.

  “Oh, never mind,” she said, “but I suppose you’ll want the new car. Tom, we’ve got to have it out. We may as well face it.”

  She was standing up straighter and, with an adroit shift of her shoulders, she made the red kimono less like a peignoir and more like the draped gown of a Roman matron. He should have known that something unexpected was coming the moment she had asked him if he was awake.

  “Aren’t we facing enough right now,” he asked, “without bringing in something new?”

  “Tom,” she said, “why can’t you be frank? You’re going to see that woman.”

  From long experience he knew exactly what Emily meant. She had often referred to Rhoda as “that woman” and to Laura Hopedale as “that bitch.” Emily always kept things straight. It spoke well for Rhoda that the terms had never been interchangeable.

  “How did you find that out?” he asked. “Did Hal tell you?”

  She looked resignedly noble as she stood there gazing at a spot some inches above his head, noble and very gentle.

  “No, dear,” she said. “In case you’re apprehensive, Hal hardly ever tells me anything, but I heard you and Hal talking about it downstairs last night.”

  “Oh,” he said, “you mean you came down and listened?”

  “That’s what you always say about me,” Emily said. “You always think I’m listening, don’t you?” She laughed gently, “I would call it a bad conscience if I didn’t know you better, dear. Tom, I was worried about you, and I have a right to worry, haven’t I? I knew you hadn’t come upstairs and I knew that Hal was concerned
too, and I know how devoted he is to you. When he went downstairs, I knew he was afraid that something might have happened to you, and so I followed him as any real wife should do. Of course I heard you talking, but it was an accident, not eavesdropping, and don’t say it was.” Her voice broke. “Because I have enough without that to make me unhappy.”

  He found himself looking at her bare feet. If she had worn her mules, he would have heard them tapping on the stairs; but, in fairness, she might have been in such a hurry to be sure that nothing had happened to him that she had forgotten her mules.

  “You were asking Hal why that woman wanted to see you,” she said. “I couldn’t help but hear, dear, because the door was open and your voice was loud, the way peoples’ voices get with alcohol.”

  If one began talking with Emily, she talked and talked, and the morning was moving on, and, as Emily had said, he needed a cup of coffee.

  “I hadn’t meant to tell you,” he said. “I would have except it would only have been another complication.” He was annoyed to find himself speaking volubly and guiltily when there was nothing whatsoever to be guilty about. “Rhoda called up Hal yesterday and said that she wanted to see me. They’re staying up at the Wellington Manor House for a few days, and as long as she said it was very important, I told Hal I’d go.”

  “Tom,” she said, “does that woman want to see you about me?”