VII

After All, He Couldn’t Take It with Him

He had walked downtown to get the mail and not to discuss abstractions beneath the pulpit of the First Congregational Church with Mr. Godfrey. He wished that events and people were not constantly overlapping, because there should be a time and a place for everything. There should be; but somehow he had never found it.

“It’s been a real pleasure,” Mr. Godfrey said, “sitting here, kicking ideas around.”

Mr. Godfrey had opened the door and the church with its cool white silence was over them.

“God bless you, Thomas,” Mr. Naughton had said the last time that he had passed through that door to face the church, and that had been quite a while ago. There was still that gateway to remembrance. He was walking again over the reddish carpet toward the low raised platform in front of the pulpit, and beneath the carpet the same pine boards that had complained before creaked beneath his weight. The noise again brought back a sensation of apprehension. That was one of the things that his art or profession, or whatever it was you chose to call it, had taught him: the ambivalent curse of being able to be a part of things, and yet to stand away from them untouched.

He knew as soon as he stood on the brick sidewalk of Bay Street that he had emerged from the stream of consciousness. He stood there feeling a little like a swimmer on a river’s bank with the water still moist about him. The post office, an oversized gift from the Roosevelt administration, stood diagonally across the street. He was back in the present, where Providence had placed him, and he was, thank heaven, still able to live in and appreciate it. He was acutely aware of everything around him, yet he was still outside it. He had to be, because he had been born to live and look.

Why was it that post offices always smelled the same and always put one in the same anticipatory mood, which could not be conveyed across the footlights, as he knew, because he had attempted it? It was the sense of the unknown that did the trick, of course—the unknown that lurked behind the glass façades of the private boxes and behind the bars of the delivery windows.

“There’s a registered special delivery waiting for you, Mr. Harrow,” the clerk said. “We telephoned the house and they said you were walking down for the mail.”

“Well, thanks,” Tom Harrow said.

A registered special delivery meant that someone wanted something, but then, everyone was always wanting something. The exquisite bond of the envelope seemed like a violent effort to compensate for the undistinguished names of the law partners printed on its surface.

“Thank you very much,” he said to the clerk, and he dropped the letter into the side pocket of his coat. He had a very good idea of what it would say, and there was no reason whatsoever for him to read it.

He realized, as he was walking up the drive again to his office in the carriage house, that he had gone through a good deal of experience since he had left the drive, in a purely vicarious way. In fact, he had gone through so much that it was harder than usual to know what he really felt or what he pretended to feel. He was sure that the letter in his pocket was no surprise because it was like the second shoe dropping, and he was glad that it had dropped. He was sure that the house was less substantial than it had been.

He found himself thinking of an evening he had once spent at the Casino in Monte Carlo. Once when he and Rhoda had spent a winter on the Riviera, when a winter on the Riviera was almost a must for intelligentsia, they had gone to Monte Carlo, and for once he had been as hot as a pistol. For a while there was no wrong in him as far as the columns and numbers went, and he had a complete awareness of his temporary power; and he knew that the croupiers themselves must have witnessed the same phenomenon before. It came from the unknown, something just beyond the borderline of fact. It did not last long, that run of his, but ever afterwards he knew how a confirmed gambler felt. He had never forgotten the impression that those minutes had made on Rhoda. She was wearing her green dress and the emerald he had bought her at Cartier’s, solitary and beautifully conspicuous on its delicate gold chain. When that heap of counters was passed to him, so fast and in such quantity across the table, she could not understand what under the sun had happened to him, and he was sure that she had not shared his sense of temporary power. It was not only the gaming table, either, that exhilarated him. It was being married to the best-dressed and prettiest woman in that overdecorated room. He could also believe that the size of his winnings had made Rhoda forget some of her inhibitions, but he was wrong about that. Whether on the Corniche drive or the Saw Mill River Parkway, Rhoda hardly ever lost her balance.

“Tom,” she said, and there was beautiful incredulity in her voice, “pick it all up and take it to the cashier. You know you can’t go on like this forever.”

“What?” he said. “Right in the middle of the run?” He had not done what she had said, and he was glad he had not, but the chips only marked what was inside him, the measure of a hitherto unexperienced emotion. He could feel a new knowledge of life and he knew that it was something he would never lose, but the counters that evening had never even appeared like financial symbols, although they had been wholly real to Rhoda.

“Oh, Tom,” she said, when everything was over, “you could have given me my emerald for nothing if you had only stopped.”

The idea of this financial parallel had startled him, but no doubt she had been right.

“I never wanted to get that thing for you for nothing,” he said. “That isn’t the point at all. I wanted to give you something that meant something.”

“Oh, Tom,” she said, “why didn’t you stop?”

“Darling,” he said, “it wasn’t those chips on the table. Don’t you see it was the thing itself?”

The point was that he had had the thing for the moment, and that Rhoda had never understood.

His workroom was no different. He had been young, but not so young that he could not remember the peculiar phrase, “back to normalcy” coined by President Warren G. Harding. In all his adult life the room in which he worked had always been normalcy; and he did not realize, until he was back, how far he had deviated in his short walk.

Miss Mulford was sitting at his worktable as she did sometimes when he was out. Once long ago she had apologized for doing so and he had told her not to be silly. She was reading a typescript which he recognized immediately as the third draft of the third act of the play on which he was working. He was pleased that she was doing so, because it showed that the play might have interested her.

She put down the manuscript and stood up.

“Don’t start to apologize,” he said. “I’ve told you to sit there when I’m out. As a matter of fact, so long as you’re there, you’d better sit right down again.”

She laughed.

“I can’t get over the feeling that it is a deviation,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “And if you look in the upper right-hand drawer, you’ll find a case of my Egyptian cigarettes, and you may take one, because it will be more in character.”

She laughed again. “You mean that sergeant in the war play, who kept smoking the general’s cigars?”

“Yes,” he said. “You’re right on the beam this morning. Have a cigarette and keep up the old tradition.”

Occasionally it was startling to realize that Miss Mulford understood him better than any other woman ever had and that he had spent more time in her company than with any other woman, and the best part was that he did not know much about her. All he had to know was that he liked her and could trust her and he hoped that she liked him or at any rate the job.

“How do you like that new third act?” he asked. “Not that you have to stick your neck out if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, and she lighted one of the Egyptian cigarettes, and she looked more ageless than ever. “I’ve never known you to sulk or to hold it against me when I’ve been frank about anything you’ve written.”

“Why, thanks,” he said. “I’ve always tried to get along without a whipping boy.”

“Or girl,” Miss Mulford said.

He sat down in one of the armchairs.

“Toss me over a cigarette,” he said. “I wouldn’t be too sure about the girls. There must be at least two or three around who feel they have been severely flagellated on my account.”

“All I know,” she said, “is that I’ve never been one. It could be that you’re not very good at whipping.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But then, there is another angle. Maybe you’ve been a whipping girl for years and just don’t know it.”

“Oh, I’d know it,” she said.

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” he said. “The bright way of looking at things nowadays is that we—none of us—know what we’re doing really, because all of our motivations arise from unknown compulsions and even when we know what we are doing we do not know what we want.”

“If you mean that nobody knows everything, I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But I think the third act draft is all right now. I always like the way you can pull things together when you have to. Please don’t think I’m being loyal or trying to cheer you up. I know that’s what you always think.”

He had always disliked the highly developed ego of writers, but he had his own. In fact, in the end, it was all that any so-called creative artist possessed.

“You mean you think Old White-Fang is not going to be pulled down by the wolf pack, at least for this next season?”

“No,” she said, “not this time, especially if you could get your mind off other things and finish the third act. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours. The casting ought to start by August in this sort of play, I think.”

“Well, it’s good to know there’s someone left on the team,” he said. “Madame thinks I’m slipping.”

“She didn’t tell you that, did she?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I heard her telling Walter Price in the hall this morning.”

“You shouldn’t listen at doors,” she said. “When I first came here to work, the word was that you were on the way out. Besides, she hasn’t read it, has she?”

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t do much good to show Madame a script because she always reacts to it exactly like Higgins. He entirely molded her character long before I came along—not that maybe it was such a bad idea.”

“Then I wouldn’t worry as long as she hasn’t read it,” Miss Mulford said. “I wish you’d think about getting some time to finish it today.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Maybe I can finish with it this afternoon, but it’s too late this morning. I don’t know what happened to the morning.”

“Neither do I, now that you mention it,” Miss Mulford said.

“It seems as though I’ve been all over Robin Hood’s barn this morning,” he said. “It seems to me that one thing after another has happened. It’s been a world of fantasy this morning, like flying across the ocean against the sun. By the way, the sun isn’t over the yardarm, is it?”

“No,” Miss Mulford said. “It’s only a quarter to twelve. Besides, you won’t finish the third act if you have a drink before lunch.”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow,” he said.

“It does, usually, and besides, you’ve got to call up Mr. Beechley. He said it was very important, and he ought to be in his office now. And besides, I’ve got to go over the mail.”

“Have I forgotten anything else?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “but it’s been a long time since you’ve asked for a drink before twelve o’clock. Has anything serious happened?”

“Toss me another cigarette,” he said.

“You haven’t finished the one you’re smoking,” she said.

“You needn’t be so obvious at this time in the morning,” he answered. “I want a new cigarette because I’ve always found a new one is like a New Year’s resolution. It wipes the slate, moderately.”

“You might as well admit,” she said, “that something is the matter.”

“All right,” he said. He took the registered special delivery letter from his pocket. “Never mind the rest of the mail but just read this one and tell me what it says.” He stood up and handed it to her and sat down again.

There was an art in making a casual gesture interesting to an audience, but he was sick and tired of dramatization just then—real or artificial. And when you faced facts, you had to face them.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t read it yourself?” she asked. “It’s marked ‘personal.’”

“You read it,” he said. “You know I don’t like legal letters.”

She took the paper cutter from his table and slit the envelope.

“It isn’t good for you to pass on letters like this,” she said.

“Now please,” he said, “I know my behavior is immature. It used to be un-adult, and now it’s immature, and God knows what they’re going to pick out of Roget for next year. Of course I’m being immature. You know, when I was in the First Congregational Church this morning, I discovered that I knew quite a good deal about myself in bright, feverish flashes.”

She stopped opening the envelope.

“What were you doing in the First Congregational Church?” she asked.

“Just talking to the pastor,” he said. “Go ahead and read it and give me a synopsis.”

There was a moment’s pause after she had read the letter. There was no sex, but there was loyalty. She had always been a very nice girl.

“You’ve always said it’s just as well to brace yourself,” she said. “Well, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, about my giving you a drink. It might help you with the synopsis.”

“I’ll hear the synopsis first,” he said.

“All right,” she said, “but I hate to be the one who hurts you.”

“It’s kind of you to say that,” he said. “Remember I can take it, and go ahead.”

“All right,” she said. “They want three hundred and fifty thousand dollars ten days from yesterday or else they will sell out your securities—the collateral on the loan, you know, for that musical you produced, Porthos of Paris.”

The feeling in the pit of his stomach was not unknown to him. The last time he had experienced such a sensation was when he had climbed down the cargo net off a beach near Oran in North Africa, without previous combat training. He was too old for combat and he knew nothing about war except what he had learned from casual literary research. Yet he was a lieutenant colonel, not that lieutenant colonels weren’t worth a dime a dozen when they had first started passing around commissions.

It was ridiculous to feel the same way now because a New York bank was about to sell his collateral. He had been aware for several months that the market had been sliding off and his securities were mainly common stocks. It was ridiculous to feel so strongly, even when the sum represented four fifths of his savings. It was also ridiculous, at that moment, to allow his mind to dwell on how Emily would react to the news. There was no doubt that she would be furious and personally offended; but then, it was his money—not hers.

“All right,” he said. “Madame is the one who is going to be sorry, but you’re in the clear. Don’t forget you told me that musical would be a flop. Let’s neither of us mind it.”

“And there’s the other bank loan,” she said.

It was not a time to lose his dignity, at least not in front of Miss Mulford.

“That’s right,” he said, “but that one is only seventy grand, on my personal note. Don’t bring up trivia at the moment—not that I won’t hear about that note as soon as they sell me out down the Street.”

Truthfully, he had forgotten about the other note. It required all his self-control not to get a scratch pad and juggle with figures. If it was called, the house would have to go, and so would the apartment in town. He could see the auction booklet in front of him already, “including the collection of Mr. Thomas Harrow.”

Just as the full picture was impinging upon his consciousness, Miss Mulford began to cry. He had known her to do so only once before, when she had skipped a whole page of a play script and had discovered it only after she had put it in the mail; and the rarity of her weeping, compared to that of other women in his life, made him unduly sensitive. The only thing to do, he told himself, was to go out of the room and let them cry, because crying was a bid for attention—except that there was no reason for Miss Mulford to make that bid.

“Stop it,” he said. “It’s my funeral, not yours.”

While he watched her, she gave what is known in directions as a stifled sob.

“It was so needless,” she said, “to take such a big piece of it.”

“Yes, my dear,” he said. “I should have realized that musicals are more expensive than they used to be. This is no longer the day for what they used to call an extravaganza. Madame is going to cry—but honestly, you don’t have to.”

Miss Mulford rose and went into her own room. He hoped and expected that she would close the door until she could control herself, but he was wrong. She had only gone to get some Kleenex.

“To think a Louis Treize soldier could do that to you!” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s just so unnecessary, that’s all.”

“If you’re referring to dear old Porthos, he was a turkey,” he said, “but I still think Bethel did a good job setting the ballads to music.”

“Oh, no, he didn’t,” she said. “And I told you no one living would care about any of the Three Musketeers.”

“Please don’t go on telling me,” he said, “because Madame will tell me, too, as soon as she gets the news.… No one can be always right.”

He could still believe, even if the show had closed at the end of two weeks, that it was the customers’ fault, not his.

“You know what the idea was—a Beggar’s Opera satire on life today; and I still say it had sound dramatic values—Paris, the Louvre, inn courtyards, whores, thieves, rags and tatters, the noblesse, the clergy, and then the voice of a great man running all through it. The loves of a great man to exciting music, and Porthos actually was a great bighearted man.”

“He wasn’t, at the Winter Garden,” she said.

“I know,” he answered. “I know very well that I’m not a Hammerstein now, and I know it wasn’t South Pacific, and I know I shouldn’t have tried to make a million dollars. Besides, we’re not finished yet.” He smiled. He had talked himself into feeling better. “Don’t forget the picture rights. It will make a better film than stage show. They’re screaming for musicals around Culver City, and don’t forget Ed Beechley wants me to call him and he’s just in from the Coast.”

He smiled again. He had succeeded in talking himself out of disbelief, and there was no reason why he should not have, because he had become expert over the last twenty years at maintaining confidence. He had always had to stand by himself in all that period, when all the chips were down. He did not have to be infallible, but he had to have confidence, and once one lost it, one was gone. He believed for the moment that it was not the fault of the book but of the composer, together with bad direction, that his effort at a musical comedy was ruined. The idea had been basically sound.

“Get me the Beechley office. He’ll be there now,” he said.

He believed, as he watched her call Long Distance, that she had forgotten about the picture rights—a silly thing to do, because picture rights had averted a lot of wrecks in his experience.

“I want to make a call to New York City, please,” he heard her saying.

It was her cool, polite and precise telephone voice, but it had a different timbre. It never paid to depend too much on anyone, because in the end you were always out there alone. If you depended, you became suspicious. You listened for details.… There was not the conviction that there should have been in her voice when she made that call.… A few sentences from the reviews passed through his mind. The production had been “pretentious” and “perfunctory.” The badinage, which had amused him at the time he had written it, had been “bad Rostand.” But in Cyrano there had been room for pretentiousness and mechanized slapstick, because there had been warmth and humor and sentiment. It had never occurred to him until that instant that he might really have been imitating Rostand. In the end you always began repeating yourself, or repeating someone else. In the end the sands in the hourglass ran out, depositing themselves in a small and undramatic heap of rubble, and in the end there was absolutely nothing left on top.

“What’s holding up the call?” he asked. “Are the circuits busy?”

“They’re ringing now,” she said.… “Mr. Beechley, please? Mr. Harrow calling for Mr. Beechley …” And she handed him the telephone.

He sat down in front of his worktable.

“Hello,” he said, “is that you, Ed?”

It could not have been anyone else, because he could hear the wheeze in Ed Beechley’s voice showing that Ed, who had never been careful with his weight, must have moved rapidly to get to the telephone.

“Well, well, Tommy,” Ed Beechley said. “How are things up there? Is there still any desire under the elms?”

Ed had been his agent ever since Mort Sullivan had died and they had been associated long enough so that he could judge Ed by his voice as accurately as he could Miss Mulford. He knew when Ed was going to be tactful by a certain clearing of the throat. He could tell when Ed was going to give hard advice by the slowing of the tempo. He could tell when Ed was going to prevaricate by a sudden gay spurt of humor, not that Ed was not always honest when you laid it on the line. As Ed put it, why throw emery dust into the gears? The truth was, there were a lot of people in the theatre who honestly did not want to know the truth and who lived on the belief that what you did not know would not hurt you. It was a world of diplomacy and implication, and Tom Harrow had moved through it so long that he had become as pliable as a willow wand. Rhoda had told him so once, after overhearing some statements he had made at a Sunday night party. She never had been able to understand that it was unpardonable to hurt anyone’s feelings in the theatre unless it was absolutely necessary.

“Frankly, Ed,” he said, “the elm trees up here are literally dripping with desire. It’s all I can do to remember my age up here. I wish O’Neill could have seen them.”

“Well,” Ed said, “Emily’s all right, isn’t she?”

“Oh, Emily’s fine,” he said, “uprooted but gallant, the way she always is when she moves out of Sutton Place.”

The mistake was that he had called up Ed. Ed should have been paying for the call, and it was time to get down to business.

“It was nice of you to want me to call you, Ed,” Tom said, “on your first day back from the coast. I had rather hoped to hear from you out there.”

There was a pause that would not have been perceptible to a stranger, but it registered accurately with Tom Harrow.

“You know how it is out there, Tommy. Talk about cats on a tin roof—what with the TV and everything, nobody can keep his mind calm out there any more. I’ve got quite a lot of thoughts for you, fella, but I know how you feel about the telephone.”

“I’m sorry I’ve never been able to get over how I feel about the telephone,” Tom said.

Ed gave an appreciative chuckle.

“There you go,” he said. “Everybody’s funny about money in some area, but what about business deductions? We’re talking business, aren’t we?”

“It would be nice to know,” Tom said. “Are we?”

There was an infinitesimal pause.

“And even if we weren’t,” Ed said, “you’re talking to your agent, and you’re in the eighty-five per cent bracket, aren’t you?”

“Not as far as I know,” Tom said. “Not after we went to the cleaners on that musical.”

“Oh,” Ed said, “do you mean to say you’re up there desiring under the elms and beating your head against the Porthos of Paris? Well, don’t worry.”

The title, which had seemed so merry once, made Tom wince, but Ed’s voice was running on. “I always loved that title, with its alliteration. And Doré has got it, too. You know, they’re gradually going nuts about the whole idea—that is, Doré and Egbert.”

“Who is Egbert?” Tom asked.

“I thought of course you knew him, Tommy. I’m referring to Egbert Rhinestein. Egbert’s the newest, most brilliant independent director and producer out there, with real Texas money behind him.”

“As long as it’s Texas money,” Tom said, “and not funny money.”

“It’s real, all right,” Ed said, “right out of the ground in barrels. It’s occurred to me, during my visits to the Coast, that Texans sometimes don’t know what to do with money. But Egbert knows. He has that De Mille sense of grandeur and he wants something big—crowds, streets, costumes and music. He’s all the time thinking widescreen.”

Tom could not help feeling more cheerful as he thought of Mr. De Mille.

“Well, that sounds pretty good, and I’m glad he’s interested,” he said, “and I’d just as soon let Egbert do it all himself, and not go out there. I want to put on the new play.”

“Of course you want to, Tommy,” Ed Beechley said, “and there isn’t anything as immediate as all that.”

Tom Harrow straightened up and he saw Miss Mulford watching him.

“How do you mean, not immediate?” he asked.

“It’s only at the simmering stage,” Ed said. “You know it takes quite a while out there, Tommy, to get anything as subtle and, well—statuesque as Porthos of Paris to impinge.”

“You mean nobody gives a damn for it?” Tom Harrow asked.

“Oh, no,” Ed Beechley said. “Doré and Egbert are both slowly but surely going nuts over it.”

Tom Harrow spoke so quickly that he interrupted the even flow of Ed Beechley’s speech.

“Are they ready to bid against each other?”

There was a longer pause. It could only mean that Ed Beechley was being obliged to pull himself together.

“Frankly, it hasn’t reached the negotiation stage yet, Tommy,” he said, “but I know they’re basically both nuts about it. It’s only simmering, but haven’t I told you that it’s a real piece of property?”

Tom Harrow sighed. He felt like an explorer who, after struggling through the entangling vines of the jungle, has finally reached the hidden river.

“Good,” he said. “Now tell me this. Does anybody out there really seriously give a damn about that flop, or don’t they?”

Another pause reminded Tom Harrow that Ed Beechley was tenderhearted.

“Now you put it that way, Tommy,” Ed Beechley said, “I would say that the interest, at the moment, is negative.”

“Well, thanks, Ed,” Tom Harrow said. “That’s the information I wanted.”

There was concern in Ed Beechley’s voice. “I don’t quite understand what’s worrying you, Tommy,” he said. “Is it the bank loan?”

“Yes,” Tom said, “that’s what’s worrying me.”

Ed Beechley laughed.

“Tommy,” he said, “I love the way you always get mixed up about money. I was with you—remember?—when you put up five hundred thousand for collateral. Why should they be worried?”

He wished that he might see Ed’s expression. It always had a slapstick quality when Ed was wrong.

“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” Tom said, “the market’s been going down. And there’s an item I had forgotten myself. There are capital gains on all that stock. They’ve called it, Ed.”

“God,” Ed said. “You mean they’re cleaning you out?”

“Approximately,” he answered. “It’s a funny feeling, Ed.”

There was no doubt any longer that he and Ed were friends.

“I’ll get a plane this afternoon, Tommy, and you meet me at the airport,” Ed said.

“Oh, no,” Tom Harrow said. “Don’t bother about that, Ed. I suppose in the end I’ll need a lawyer to go over facts and figures, but never mind it now.”

“God, Tommy,” Ed said, “I know how you worked for that money.”

His arm was cramped. It was a relief to set down the telephone.

“Ed gets more and more long-winded all the time,” he said. “Don’t say anything. I guess you get the story, and I should say the sun is definitely over the yardarm. How about being a good girl and getting us each a drink?”

The Scotch-and-water she had given him was stronger than usual. It was surprising, after the first sinking feeling he had experienced, how little he seemed to care. There would be regrets and wonderings, later, why he had ever done this and that; but they would be like the backwash that followed any crisis; and he was not aware of them as yet. Instead, a feeling of relief centered around the idea that he had heard the worst.

“Thanks,” he said, and he took a careful swallow from his glass. “Let all this be a lesson to you, Miss Mulford.”

“Everything here has always been,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “sit down and take your drink. I don’t know whether that remark of yours was kind or not.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “I only meant that you’ve taught me a lot.”

He was alarmed to see that her eyes had filled with tears again, because his own self-pity was somewhere just around the corner.

“But still, I haven’t taught you all I might have,” he said. “But remember not to forget this lesson: Don’t start getting interested in large sums of money.”

He took another swallow of his drink, and as usual he could see pieces of his thought in dialogue.

“It is gratifying, isn’t it, to believe that our elected rulers and representatives in the last decade were as keenly alive to the danger of the rich as the late Karl Marx once was? They’re doing the best they can to stop new people from getting rich and occasionally they try, in halfhearted ways, to whittle down the ones who are. Now please don’t think I’m being bitter about this for a single moment, Miss Mulford. A wise and kind government has done its level best to keep me from the troubles in which I find myself involved. There is the graduated income tax, the justest form of tax ever imposed on man, in that he who earns the most pays the most, and I believe that there was a judge not so long ago who stated that it is every citizen’s duty to pay as high, not as low, an income tax as possible.”

“Did he? When?” Miss Mulford asked.

He was startled by her interruption.

“I don’t know when,” he said, “but the thought is in keeping with our times. Then there is the inheritance tax, and the state income tax, and the gift tax. Of course all of these things are beneficial in that they conspire more and more to prevent any wage or salary earner thinking of making money—and after all, why should we?”

“Would you like it if I sweetened your drink a little?” Miss Mulford asked.

Miss Mulford was the only person left with whom he could share his intellectual excursions. Rhoda had listened once, but she had not always been an intelligent listener. Laura Hopedale was never good at following abstract thought; and Emily, he had learned, seldom listened to anyone except herself. Miss Mulford listened because she was paid to do so, but at the same time, she might have learned rather to enjoy it.

“That’s thoughtful of you, as always,” he said. “Just a very little and I’ll be over being loquacious very soon. I don’t want you for a moment to think that I am criticizing our economic way of life, because I’ve learned very succinctly, only this morning, exactly how unhappy the profit motive can make one. There’s only one difficulty about these benign, restrictive measures. They tend to make you a little wistful when you come into contact with the rich—and you can’t avoid them always.”

He paused to taste his reinforced whiskey.

“You see,” he said, “I’ve had the misfortune to be thrown with a number of wealthy persons, not only in the theatre, but also in the area of what we might call established wealth. My first wife used to make friends with these people. You see, we were an interesting, intellectual couple who didn’t get drunk or disorderly, and they began asking us around to all sorts of places, like Palm Beach; but never mind. I’m not a Marxist, but occasionally they did elicit a spirit of social envy. Occasionally I would start thinking how such dull people could make money. I should have known that money-making has more to do with emotional stability than with intellect. Then another great misfortune befell me.”

He lowered his voice. Miss Mulford was listening; you had to have an audience.

“I had a Broadway hit in the autumn of 1928, and another in ’30 and another in ’33, and in ’34 I had a very big Hollywood contract. Granted these last were depression years, still they hadn’t got around to doing much about the income tax. I made quite a pile of money. And, as I say, some friends of my first wife’s took a friendly interest. You see, I was writing reasonably light comedy, but the main point was that I bought a sound list of stocks at the bottom of the market.… Don’t worry, I’m almost through.”

“I was only looking at the time,” she said, “because Alfred will be coming with the tray.”

“What? Is it as late as that?” he asked.

“It’s getting on toward half past twelve,” she said. “But what happened then?”

He would have to stop. Emily and Walter Price would be expecting him for lunch and a cocktail on the terrace.

“And I forgot to tell you,” Miss Mulford said, “that Harold wanted to see you, and I told him to come over any time after half past twelve—but I hope you’ll go on with what happened.”

He could guess Hal’s subject would be money and as long as Rhoda had given him custody, which was one of those unanticipated things that Rhoda did sometimes, he was financially responsible.

“I’m glad I’ve held your interest,” he said. “There isn’t much more except that I wish I had that money now—and it was well invested, too. It’s better for me not to think what it would be worth today, but most of it went into my settlement with Rhoda, which was perfectly correct. She was always afraid of being poor—and Hopedale of course still draws alimony.”

“I know,” she said.

“It’s a little ironical, under the circumstances,” he said, “to recall that both of them are now married to very wealthy men. But then, I have never cared much about money, even as a symbol. Unfortunately, it came so easily in the beginning that it gave me the bad habit of believing that I could get some more at any time.”

He stopped, arrested by recalling the phrase in that overheard conversation of Emily’s about his having “a little-boy quality.” He could not help it if he instinctively dressed well and still had a trace of the outmoded Scott Fitzgerald youthfulness, but he did not have a little-boy quality. He may have been a product of the Twenties, but his thinking had not stopped with bathtub gin or the American Mercury. It was true that he could not write a piece like Death of a Salesman or A Streetcar Named Desire, but by the same token, neither Miller nor Williams could have written his own last play which had closed a year before, after two years on Broadway.

“It’s impossible not to be spoiled,” he said, “if you achieve any sort of artistic success. You’re like a college freshman at his first cocktail party. It’s impossible to stop with one Martini unless you have character. It would have been better if I hadn’t had a success so young. Maybe there ought to be a law against college experimental theatres. Well, I had to talk to someone; and I know you’re paid to listen, but thanks.”

“I’d do it for nothing most of the time,” Miss Mulford said.

“Now listen,” he said, “let’s get this straight. I enjoy it, but you must get over this spirit of dedication.” He smiled at her and he was acutely conscious that his smile was theatrical. “There’s nothing really valid to be upset about. There isn’t any plot in it. An old man in his fifties, who has let himself get into a lot of unnecessary trouble, all at once discovers that he’s going to lose his lifetime savings. This doesn’t mean that he isn’t going to eat, or that the little wife will have to scrub floors to support him. It doesn’t mean that his earning power is gone. It doesn’t even mean that he’s going to be without a motor car. Who cares about an old guy in that situation? He isn’t Miller’s salesman. There’s nothing poignant about him except for just one small thing—and maybe you’d better give me one more small drink.”

“You won’t be able to work this afternoon,” she said.

“Thanks for reminding me,” he said. “And I am going to work this afternoon.”

He thought the conversation was over, and it should have been.

“What’s the one small thing?” she asked.

He stared into his glass before he answered.

“When you get a kick in the pants like this,” he said, “if you have any sense, you know you’ve deserved it, and you begin wondering what you could have done differently. You begin wishing you could have the whole film played back. You’d like to know what started the trouble that got you where you are, but you can never watch the reel again. You can see little pieces, but you can’t feel them as you did once. You can’t live life over, and for God’s sake, don’t ever try.”

He wondered why he had never spoken such thoughts out loud before. He was still wondering when Miss Mulford spoke again.

“I know what you mean,” she said, “about not being able to live life over.”

It was characteristic, in such a relationship, that in spite of all the years they had been together he should have known surprisingly little of her outside life. She had not wanted him to know, and if she had, the relationship would have changed. Her background was as good as his and her education, he had often thought, was considerably superior, but he could not have mixed successfully with her friends and family. He had always considered it his duty to respect her other life, but it had never worried him that she knew all about his. Her saying that she knew what he meant about not living life over marked one of those rare times in their years together when she was thinking of herself and not of him.

“Are you thinking of that boy friend you had ten years ago?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But as you would say, you can’t do it over again. I just wanted you to know I know exactly what you mean.”

He had only seen the man once, one evening in the city when her friend had called at the office to take her to the theatre. He had been an awkward man in his late thirties, with dark hair receding at the temples and very dark brown eyes. He had looked thin and nervous, probably because Miss Mulford had obviously instructed him to wait downstairs by the elevators. His blue serge suit did not fit him.

“You can’t live it over and I’m glad he didn’t take you away,” he said. “You see, I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’ve said that to a good many women, but I’ve never meant it so completely as I do when I say it to you. And now let’s change the subject, shall we?”

“Yes,” she said, “let’s.”

“And I’ve got another suggestion,” he said. “Suppose you call up the house and tell Alfred to say I’m busy and have him bring my lunch out here with yours.”

“Madame isn’t going to like it,” she said.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I just don’t feel like going in there for lunch.”

There was a knock on the door and she stood up quickly.

“Oh,” she said, “that’s Harold. I’ll let him in; and I’ll order lunch sent over in half an hour.”

“You’d better bring the Scotch and another glass,” he said.

The incident was over. The time lapse had not been so great, but he had been through a good deal, and he was right about one thing. It did not make a good script—even in synopsis form.