VIII

Don’t Change a Barrel on Niagara Fall

Ever since Harold as a little boy was brought down at cocktail time by one of a series of governesses to say good night to Mummy and Daddy, everybody including Rhoda had always said that Harold was the image of his father, It was sidesplitting to see him assume the postures and expressions of his father; and when it came to features, they had the same florid skin that tanned beautifully, the same eyes and forehead, and the same left-sided way of smiling. All of this may have been true, and it was natural that little boys should attempt to imitate their fathers; but still it had always seemed to Tom, when he had seen his son running toward him across the beach or across the drive at boarding school, that Rhoda was the one who had left her mark. Harold’s sudden brightening of expression that was never time-worn was Rhoda’s. And so was the color of the eyes—or a series of colors that could vacillate according to mood like flames in an open fire. And there were other subtle resemblances, each small in itself, but together capable of making him remember Rhoda through a glass seen darkly.

“Hi, Nance,” he heard Harold say.

He had never dreamed of calling Miss Mulford by her first name, but if he had done so, he would certainly have called her Nancy and not Nance; but it sounded correct coming from Harold.

“Your father was saying he’d like to have a drink with you,” Miss Mulford said, “but don’t let him have too much. He wants to work this afternoon.”

“Well, well,” Harold said, “so that’s what you’ve been doing with him, drinking Scotch while Madame and that old Price are waiting for him on the terrace. Jesus, Nance, have you seriously ever listened to Price?”

Harold was a man now, and there was no reason not to feel a sense of achievement. There might be points about him that were better changed, but things had not gone so badly, in spite of the maladjustments that came from a severed home. He was a man, and it was possible not only to take pride in him but to envy him. He had passed the mark of maladroitnesses and he was nearly past the age of arrogance and conceit. There were aspects in the trying present that produced certain latent advantages. The boy had completed his years as a Naval officer only a week or so before, finishing one of those Dr. Faustus-like compacts that youth made with the armed services, and the hitch had done him good. In fact, Tom Harrow found himself wishing that the opportunity had existed for him also. It might have stopped his precocity when he was Harold’s age. When he was Harold’s age, he had finished the play that Arthur Higgins had taken. It was better to let success like that come later; but then, perhaps if you waited too long it might never arrive at all.

The Navy had left its own peculiar young officer’s stamp on Harold—a combination of authority and respect, watchfulness and patience. It was an attitude with which Tom Harrow had never been entirely at home, which he had respected ever since North Africa. Harold was almost Annapolis—almost, but there was no subsititute for the Annapolis patina.

“Sit down and pour yourself a drink,” Tom Harrow said, “and make me a very small one. Please sit down. When you stand up you make me think I’ve joined a Joint Civilian Orientation Course.”

Harold laughed. It was the laugh he had inherited from Rhoda.

“Is it really still as bad as that?” he asked.

“Yes,” Tom Harrow said, “but I rather enjoy it. It’s nice to see you on board, Harold, to use a nautical expression, if time-worn.”

“Maybe I haven’t made it clear enough to you,” Harold said, “how glad I am to be on board.” His hand that held his glass was large and competent. He had inherited his mother’s rather long fingers. His voice was easy and, thank heaven, it was not an actor’s voice. “You know, I’m beginning to like this place. When you bought it I thought you were out of your head. You weren’t. It’s the first time I ever felt that you and I belonged anywhere.”

There were times when it was rewarding to have a son and their very unexpectedness made such occasions stand out in a jewel-like way. Now and then you felt such a keen gratitude having had a son that instead of counting costs and interruptions, conscience would bring up the question of whether the reward was not too great for the casual hours expended in parenthood. This was one of those moments. He knew that it would not last and that it would be succeeded by grief or exasperation, but the moment was still there.

“I appreciate your saying that,” Tom said. “It means quite a lot when your child understands what you’re doing, and tells you so. You’ll know what I mean someday.”

He was watching for that Annapolis manner that both flattered and implicitly acknowledged the correctness of a commanding officer, but instead, Harold (and it was Rhoda’s idea, not his, to name him Harold) had a shy, embarrassed look. He picked up his glass and rotated the scotch and water in it in an annoyingly expert manner. There was no ice in the glass and the rotation could not cool the drink.

“You know,” Hal said, “there’s another thing about this place. I hope you won’t get mad if I mention it. Promise me you won’t get mad.”

It was a conversational gambit that disturbed Tom Harrow more than any other. It was another of those vestiges of the nursery that must have come from the time when Rhoda used to tell Hal he must not do that or he would make his father angry.

“Listen,” Tom said, “you ought to know by now that I don’t get mad without a reason. You’re two inches taller than I am and if I started anything, you could throw me out the window. Well, just get it through your head that I’m not anything to be afraid of, physically, mentally or morally.”

When he saw that Hal was smiling it meant the chances still were that Hal had grown up after all.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Hal said. “Let’s get this straight, Pops. You know you’ve got a quick temper. Everybody says so.”

“I suppose you picked up that Pops business overseas,” Tom Harrow said. “Who says I have a bad temper?”

“Why, everybody says so, Pops,” Hal said.

Tom Harrow nodded toward Miss Mulford’s closed door.

“Suppose you step in there and ask Miss Mulford,” he said. “She’s the one who ought to know.”

Hal laughed. It was a relaxed laugh that seemed to diminish their age differential.

“Who? Nance?” he said. “Why, Nance wouldn’t be reliable.”

“What was it you were going to say,” Tom said, “that you thought might make me mad?”

“Oh, that,” Hal said. “I was just going to say that when you bought this place, Pops, and began fixing it up like a Jo Mielziner stage set, I was afraid it was going to be a sort of literary shrine or something. And the funny thing about it—it ought to be, but it isn’t. I don’t know how it is, but everyone around town is natural about you. There isn’t any of this Mr. Harrow, the playwright, business. I’m not a great man’s son here, and boy do I enjoy it!”

In spite of experience, one never could tell exactly how one would react to any remark. He should have been pleased by what Hal had said, but instead he was disturbed.

“You ought to get over the vestiges of childhood,” he said. “Don’t let them cling to you in a Wordsworthian way. You ought to have sense enough to know by this time that you’re not a great man’s son. You ought to know I’m not as good as that.”

“The hell you’re not,” Hal said. “Just because that musical was a flop doesn’t mean a thing.”

For a moment it was like playing over the reel again in a lonely projection room.

“Let’s face it, Hal,” he said, “there was a time when I might have been good, but I’ve never been, not really.”

It was pleasant to observe that Hal was a loyal boy.

“Say, you’re in a sort of a low mood this morning, aren’t you?” Hal said.

“I wouldn’t call it low exactly,” Tom Harrow said. “I’ve just been facing a few home truths this morning and I have never known them to give anyone euphoria. Don’t let me give you an inferiority complex. I repeat: I might have been good once, but I never have been really.”

“That isn’t what they say in drama courses,” Hal said. “You’re the great American playwright, now that O’Neill is dead. That’s what they say in the drama courses. As a matter of fact, they even say it in the Navy.”

“In the Navy?” Tom repeated. “Not really in the Navy.”

He was thinking of Walter Price and of the value of a psychological lie. It was better to feel that you were good instead of facing facts. It was the only true road to survival, and he was following it instinctively; but he did wish that he could make Harold understand.

“Everybody knows who you are,” Hal said.

Tom Harrow wished that the conversation did not disturb him.

“Everybody knows how famous he feels inside himself,” he said. “As a matter of fact, that’s going to be the subject of next Sunday’s sermon at the First Congregational Church. The topic is going to be, ‘How Happy Are You Inside?’”

“How do you get around and find out things like that?” Hal asked. “I never do.”

It was the way your mind worked and if Hal’s mind worked on different lines, it was probably just as well. It was simple enough to say that he happened to see Mr. Godfrey when he was going for the mail.

“He took me inside the church,” he said, “to the little room beneath the pulpit where he customarily sits and thinks. I hadn’t been there for a long while. I hadn’t been there, as a matter of fact, since I married your mother and I couldn’t notice very much change.”

He made the last remark only to make things sound easier. As always, there was an air of restraint when Rhoda came into their conversation.

“Say,” Hal said, “that reminds me why I’m here. My mother called up this morning.” His voice was elaborately careless, as it always was when he spoke of Rhoda, and it was impossible to tell, when he referred to her as “my mother,” whether he was being thoughtful or intended a mild reproof. “She called up when you were down there in the church, I guess, learning how you felt inside.”

He felt the muscles of his shoulders tauten. The reaction was purely instinctive and so was the new care with which he spoke.

“She didn’t want to speak to me, did she?”

“Oh, no,” Hal said, and his voice was elaborately carefree, “nothing like that, Pops. She wanted to speak to me, and Emily answered the telephone. They still don’t get on well, do they?”

“I don’t know why they shouldn’t,” Tom said. “They both have been faced by the same tough problem. How is your mother?”

He laughed, although the laugh was unnecessary.

“Oh, she’s fine,” he said. “She’s motoring with Presley in his new Bentley—you know the way Presley is about motoring. If he gets a new car, nothing relaxes him more than driving it five or six hundred miles a day, and his new Bentley is quite a car if I do say so. Its instrument panel is made of real inlaid wood. The factory only turns out about a dozen of those Bentleys every year and you know how Presley reacts to a thing like that. You know Presley.”

Tom Harrow cleared his throat.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t know Presley so very well,” he said. “You see, he appeared in the picture very seldom and was kept away from me after one or two rather formal meetings. On the whole, I should almost say that I don’t know Presley, but I’m glad he can afford to have a good time with Bentleys.”

“I’ve often thought you’d get quite a laugh out of Presley,” Hal said. “I imagine you’d say he’s kind of naive, but at the same time, seriously, he means well.”

Tom Harrow laughed and the internal tension had left him.

“You’ve got to be simple and mean well,” he said, “to acquire that kind of money. And you’ve got to have something else, I don’t know what it is, but maybe you’ve come somewhere near it when you say it relaxes him to drive five or six hundred miles in a day. I wonder how your mother likes it. She always used to be exhausted when we drove from New York to Boston. But then, of course I never went in for Bentleys.”

“Gosh,” Hal said, “you have a funny way of putting things. Hearing you is almost as good as a show.”

He had to be as good as a show. Hal’s laughter all at once had the gratifying sound of an appreciative audience.

“What’s so funny now?” Tom asked.

“About my mother,” Hal said. “She says she doesn’t care how many miles she drives as long as it’s a Bentley and as long as Presley’s driving.”

It was better instead of answering to keep a straight face or to be only silently amused. That last remark of Hal’s was not a bad description of everything that Rhoda had wanted, and now Rhoda had it. There was Presley and there was the Bentley with a real wooden inlaid instrument panel. It was hard to think of a better picture of solidity in a changing world.

“They’re stopping at the Wellington Manor House,” Hal said. “They’re going to stay for three days because Presley likes the golf course there.”

The thing was too true to life to seem completely real. There was a sort of inartistic coincidence in it that was associated only with the ineptitudes of daily life and never with the stage. Only that morning he had stood by the pulpit facing the aisle of the First Congregational Church with the ghostly music of the wedding march ringing in his ears and tomorrow Rhoda would be at the Wellington Manor House where they had spent the first night of their honeymoon because it had been too late to get train connections to Niagara Falls.

“It’s funny,” he said, “why they should pick the Wellington Manor House. It’s one of those places that I understand has been running down lately.”

“It’s because Presley likes the golf,” Hal said. “It seems the course is very well kept up and they have a colored pro.”

“A colored pro?” Tom Harrow said. “How does he fit into the picture?”

“It’s the way Presley is,” Hal said. “He’s very serious about taking a liberal stand. He admits the service in the hotel is not what it used to be, but it does have a golf course with a colored pro.”

“That’s an interesting point,” Tom Harrow said. “I shouldn’t dare to quarrel with it. Well, I hope your mother enjoys it there.”

In spite of himself he was thinking of that first time. Both he and Rhoda had been very nervous then, but the situation had been different.

“Rhoda,” he had said, “why don’t you go up and get ready for bed and I’ll stay down here and play billiards for a while?”

“You never told me that you knew how to play billiards,” Rhoda said.

“Oh, I’ve played a little now and then,” he said.

“But whom do you know to play billiards with here?” Rhoda asked. “You said you haven’t seen anybody you know.”

“I’ll play billiards with the marker, Rhoda,” he said. “There’s always a man in every billiard room in every hotel who is called the marker.”

“Oh,” Rhoda said, “as long as you know how to play billiards well enough to play with the marker, Tom.”

As a matter of fact, he had not played billiards that evening.

“By the way,” Hal said, “my mother sent you a message.”

The words moved him out of his reverie and suddenly reminded him vividly of a song:

Don’t change a barrel on Niagara Fall,

Stick to one girl or no girl at all.

“Oh,” he said, “she sent me a message?”

“Yes,” Hal said. “That’s what I came out to tell you. My mother wonders if you would motor up alone—she emphasized the word ‘alone’—to the Wellington Manor House tomorrow afternoon to see her.”

“Good God,” Tom Harrow said, “what for?”

“She didn’t say. She just said it was important.”

“But not at the Wellington Manor House,” he said. “She certainly couldn’t have wanted to see me there.”

He saw that Hal looked puzzled, which showed that Rhoda had not indulged in any reminiscences regarding the first night of their honeymoon any more than he had.

“She wants me to call her back,” Hal said. “She says it’s very important or she wouldn’t dream of asking you.”

“Didn’t she say why?” Tom asked.

“She only said she couldn’t say why over the telephone,” Hal said.

“My God,” he said, “that’s queer after what she used to say over the telephone.”

“She wants me to call her back,” Hal said, “and tell her whether you’ll go up there. You’ll tell her ‘Yes,’ won’t you? You’ve got to be civilized.”

“Oh, yes, tell her ‘yes,’” he said.

He tried to say it easily. In fact, he had always tried to be what Rhoda had liked to call “civilized” about the whole divorce. It was the fashion in those days to be civilized about such matters, and he had been influenced for years by tolerance. He had heard it said so often that he was sure that he believed it—that the artistic demands made on creative or interpretive artists caused them to be different in their private lives from brokers, bankers, wool merchants and lawyers. It was necessary to live more fully and love more freely than might be customary on a more humdrum plateau, and this was confirmed by statistics supplied by his professional associates. Tolerance was the watchword, and how could one create the illusion of reality or interpret life unless one lived? Nevertheless, he could not avoid a sense of uneasiness.

“Why don’t you drive up with me?” he asked. “It would make it a whole lot easier.”

He was aware, as soon as he spoke, of the implied cowardice in his request. After all, he had never been afraid of Rhoda, and it could not be that he was afraid of reality.

“No,” Hal said. “She specifically said that she wanted to see you alone.”

“All right,” he said, “all right.” And then Alfred came in with a tray.

“Say,” Hal said, “why all that food? Are you having lunch out here with Nance?”

“Yes,” he said, “I want to be quiet. I’m trying to finish the third act of this play.”

“Gosh,” Hal said, “does that mean I’ve got to go back there by myself and listen to Emily and that cornball?”

This new word from the bright lexicon of youth was a suitable way of describing Walter Price in the eyes of youth, but at the same time, it demonstrated a lack of charity that could be overcome only by living.

“I suppose he is a cornball,” Tom said, “but perhaps your base of judgment is not broad enough to enable you to condone cornballs like Walter.”

His remark was not reproof. Actually he felt somewhat sorry that his own base was so broad that he knew he was telling the truth. There was something wrong perhaps in being able to have a kindly thought for everyone.

“I wouldn’t mind him so much,” Hal said, “if he didn’t think he was fooling me when he isn’t telling the truth—which is practically all the time.”

It was not fair to Walter Price and it was beyond the dictates of convention to discuss him in front of Alfred, who was arranging the dishes on the worktable, but he was rather sure that Alfred would have been intelligent about Walter Price.

“You see, Hal,” Tom said, “I don’t believe anybody ever tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth about anything, because the process is very painful. We start with a few basic facts and we shift them around and minimize or exaggerate them in our own different ways. Alfred, will you tell Miss Mulford, please, that our lunch is ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Alfred said, “and Mrs. Harrow wanted me to tell you that Mr. and Mrs. Bramhall are coming to dinner, so that you’ll be back in time to dress.”

“Well, well,” Tom said, “just exactly when did this news break?”

In spite of all his seekings, he had very seldom discovered anything approaching continuity. There was no doubt that Emily understood how he felt about the Bramhalls, because he had told her definitely on several occasions, and thus he was almost positive that Emily’s asking the Bramhalls to dinner could not be construed as a friendly act. It did not help the situation, either, to feel that Alfred understood what was passing through his mind.

“Mrs. Bramhall, she called up,” Alfred said, “and asked you and Mrs. Harrow there to dinner, I guess.” Alfred smiled in the sympathetic manner of man talking to man. “Mrs. Harrow thought you’d prefer it better this way. She said you never liked the cooking there, sir.”

It invariably happened that any servants he employed became too interested and too familiar after a term of years, and this was what was happening to Alfred—and there was no use blaming Emily, who would only say that he was the one who spoiled servants.

“All right,” he said, “Don’t forget to lay out my evening clothes, Alfred, and a starched shirt and my pearl studs, not a soft shirt, and please tell Miss Mulford lunch is here.”

“Say,” Hal said, “you’re getting pretty shirty, aren’t you?”

There was still a moment when Tom could be himself and he availed himself of the moment.

“God,” he said, “the Bramhalls.” And then he thought of something else. “I hear you took Irene Dodd to the movies last night.”

It was pleasant to observe that someone besides himself could be startled.

“You hear everything, don’t you?” Hal said. “How did you hear about that one?”

“You can’t do anything here that doesn’t get around,” Tom said. “Everybody knows whom you took to the movies last night and everybody knows what time you took her home. Don’t let it worry you—you were saying this is a friendly town.”

“Well, it isn’t anybody’s business,” Hal said, “not basically.”

The thing to do was to think about other people and then you did not have to think about yourself.

“You’d be surprised,” he said, “how everything gradually gets to be everybody’s business, including the things you don’t think ought to be.”

“Well, I don’t see how it matters if I go out to the movies with a girl,” Hal said.

“Listen,” Tom said, “Irene’s a pretty girl. She was pointed out to me down on Dock Street this morning, and it only squares the circle.”

“Squares what circle?” Hal asked.

There were times when everything fitted into place and it was about time now that something did.

“You see, I was deeply devoted to Irene’s mother when I was about sixteen,” he said. “Her name was Malvina Frith and she used to know exactly what she wanted back in those days.”

“Gosh,” Hal said, “you never told me that.”

“The occasion never arose,” he said, “and I never was a kiss-and-tell boy, and now you’d better go to lunch or else Emily will think that you and I have been talking about her. You know how Emily is.”

It was like closing a lid. Miss Mulford was back, and the show was over.

He had learned the discipline of writing in the school of practical theatre. Once upon a time, when he was very young, he had labored under the delusion that a play script, when submitted to the producer, was a product demanding only minor changes. This may have been so once on an older Broadway. According to the reminiscences of older playwrights, there was a time when shows had their first nights in New York without having been previously dragged for weeks through a series of tryout towns, but things were different now.

The truth was that a play was now written on the road much more completely than in a playwright’s study. In fact, plays were getting to be as malleable as a sculptor’s art wax. Why, indeed, attempt a final draft when you knew what was bound to happen in New Haven or Wilmington or Boston? In the end, after you got to the hotel suite, not Scotch or bourbon or aspirin or benzedrine or tomato juice could wholly drown the question of why anyone had ever thought the play would be any good in the first place. Something would have to be done immediately because, in polite language, the play needed working over. If you could keep your head when all about you—that was the essence of modern playwriting when the show was on the road getting pulled together and set for Broadway. It was no longer necessary for Tom Harrow to write when the spirit moved him, having been obliged too often to write any time, anywhere, sick or well, sad or happy, when the show was on the road; and in the process he had developed concentration.

After lunch his mind moved immediately from one compartment to another, shutting out thoughts of investment lists and lawyers. His draft of the third act was more complete than he had remembered and he was no longer worried about the second act curtain. In fact, his judgment assured him that the second act was a skillful piece of work. He realized by now that no other form of writing was so irrevocably framed by limits of time and space. With the third act, it was necessary to remember the weariness of the audience, and besides the artistic limitations, there were costs and the stagehands’ union.

Now that his mind was on these variables, the problems on which he was working had become more real than the immediacy of his own life. For a while he was in a silent world, oblivious to the passage of time, forgetful of everything except the problems, but he was neither shocked nor annoyed when Miss Mulford interrupted him. He had learned on the road never to show impatience at interruption. Besides, Miss Mulford must have been standing by his worktable for an appreciable length of time without speaking.

“Yes,” he said, “what is it?”

“I hate to interrupt you,” she said, “but it’s half past four, Mr. Harrow.”

He could see as he looked out of the window that the light on the leaves of the trees had changed and that the sun was lower than it had been when he had first started working, but the time lapse did not upset him because he had grown accustomed to making such adjustments. When one’s mind was pulled suddenly from one place to another, the only way to manage things was to be relaxed.

“Half past four?” he said. “I’d forgotten I’d let myself in for anything.”

“It’s the high-school paper,” she said. “You made the appointment with them yesterday.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, I remember how.”

“I thought of sending them away,” she said, “but I was afraid you wouldn’t have liked it.”

“I am glad you didn’t,” he said. “I think I have it finished anyway.”