XIV
Having dealt for most of his life with thoughts and motivations, he was not bad at constructing an imaginary scene. Over the years he had often diverted himself at odd moments by making a construction of what the Brownes had said when Rhoda had told them that he was coming to call to take her to the pictures the evening after he and she had met on Dock Street. He knew not only Rhoda but the Brownes so well that he hardly needed to draw upon imagination. As his Aunt Edith had said, when he had mentioned Rhoda Browne, she knew nothing whatsoever about them except that they attended the South Church and were strangers to everybody, and that Mr. Browne had come to town to manage the agency for the Ford Motor Company. She was sure that they amounted to nothing or she would have heard more about them.
“After all,” she had said, “he’s little more than an automobile salesman, and I think I know as well as you what automobile salesmen must be like, having read the way they talk in automobile advertisements. I am sure that the Judge would not have allowed an automobile salesman in his house, not that I believe he had to deal with them in his day.”
There were many occasions on which he had wished that Mrs. Hudson Browne could have overheard his aunt’s remark, but it was just as well she had not because each had always been frigidly patronizing to the other. His Aunt Edith, being the Judge’s daughter, was descended from an old family which included in its tree a Colonial governor. In fact, if she had wanted, Aunt Edith could have been a Colonial Dame of America—not that this made any impression on Mrs. Browne.
As Mrs. Browne would have said, his Aunt Edith was not a Rhyelle of Baltimore, and Mrs. Browne had been Estelle Rhyelle of Baltimore, and even if you were only mildly interested, she could show you the photograph of the old Rhyelle mansion in whose ballroom she had been introduced to Baltimore society—a house which unfortunately had been torn down due to the enlargement of the city, and was now, like the Rhyelle fortune, a mere memory—the fortune having been dissipated by her careless brother at the horse races. Her brother had blown out his brains shortly after the dissipation and thus except for Mrs. Browne and Rhoda and the photograph, the Rhyelles of Baltimore were extinct.
Tom had never, in his saddest moments, derided Mrs. Browne. On the contrary, he had always listened with rapt attention to the histories of the Rhyelles of Baltimore, and had often asked questions to encourage Mrs. Browne, until on one occasion he had found Rhoda in tears. He had never intended to be unkind to Mrs. Browne, and, in fact, he had been fond of her and there was no doubt she had come from Baltimore; and there was no doubt she had married Hudson Browne, the son of a successful farmer in the vicinity of Salisbury, Maryland, who had received a college education and finally a legacy of fifty thousand dollars. There was no doubt about the legacy because Rhoda had once heard of it, but it had pretty well run out.
“Father,” as Rhoda had often said, “should never have tried to be a businessman. It would have been so much better, wouldn’t it, if he had tried harder and harder to do nothing?”
It was a good line and he had laughed at it.
“Don’t,” she said. “I’m not trying to be funny. You just don’t understand. You never kept trying to be something and then failing, and trying and failing.”
But, knowing Rhoda, he had understood enough to guess what the Brownes must have said before he came to call for her that first evening. The Brownes, when he had met Rhoda, had been living in one of those small and rundown houses on Harrison Street which now were rediscovered, their primitive quaintness fully restored by repainting and synthetic remodeling. However, Harrison Street did not amount to much in the days when Tom had met Rhoda, and the furnishings of the Brownes, battered from frequent movings, did not fit well into the small front parlor; the tapestried upholstered suite and the Brussels carpet clashed with the old woodwork and the wallpaper of the previous tenant. Still, the setting was perfect for what must have taken place. It would be late afternoon and Mr. Browne would have returned from the Ford agency, a florid, balding man in his late forties, in a sharply pressed brown double-breasted suit.
“What’s there for supper tonight, Estelle?” he would have asked.
Mrs. Browne had been very pretty once and Tom was reasonably sure that Mr. Browne had married her because of beauty and not the Rhyelle name.
“He just thought I was another friend of Cynthia Ellis,” Mrs. Browne had told Tom once. “Hudson never realized until later that I was Estelle Rhyelle.”
She still had beautiful hands, and she still sat up very straight, and she still put on an afternoon dress of faded purplish silk that had the same faded quality as her hair, which she still wore in an outmoded pompadour.
“We’re having soup and canned salmon and peas, Hudson,” she must have said. “It’s Friday, you know.”
“Can’t we have fresh fish, now we’re near the ocean?” Mr. Browne asked. “Estie, do you remember those soft-shell crabs back in Baltimore?”
“Hudson,” she said, “you have grime around your fingernails.”
“It’s the grease,” Mr. Browne said. “The cars are greasy even in the showroom.”
“That’s all the more reason for you to keep clean,” Mrs. Browne said. “The first thing I notice whenever I buy anything at the grocery is whether the man’s hands are clean.”
“My God, Estie,” Mr. Browne said, “I’m not in the grocery business.”
“Hudson,” Mrs. Browne said, “please go upstairs—there’s plenty of hot water—and scrub your hands with a nailbrush. Don’t make me do everything about appearances, Hudson.”
It must have been at just such a moment that Rhoda came into the room. He knew exactly how she was dressed because he had never forgotten the clothes she wore in those first days, and it was strange when he cast his mind back to realize how peculiar they would have looked in a later era. Their entertainment value was already being recognized in modern comedies that dealt with the roaring twenties. This was only a little later than the era of the skirt above the knee and the rolled stocking, and though skirts were a trifle longer, the spirit of exposure still prevailed. It could be said without danger of contradiction that women had never been more awkwardly or farcically dressed than they had been at the end of the Twenties, but when you were living in the age itself the impression was wholly different. There was also the vitality of youth, and anyone like Rhoda, looking like Rhoda, and being nineteen as Rhoda was then, would have looked wonderfully dressed in anything, or, for that matter, out of anything. He could still remember her pepper-and-salt ready-made coat and skirt, and her lisle stockings. She had no money for a silk pair then, except for evening and Sunday, and nylons lay unknown beyond the furthest horizons of the foreseeable future. She would have been wearing a bell-shaped hat, jammed like an inverted bucket over the boyish bob that the town’s first hairdresser, who did not bother to call herself “Annette” or “Chez Marie” in those days, was currently offering the local youth. Aesthetically the effect must have been agonizing, and yet the whole effect had been more full of allure for him than anything he had seen since; but then, no woman had ever worn a hat with more verve than Rhoda in those days when hats were still part of a convention. She could rip off her hat in a seemingly slovenly manner and toss it on a chair or table, but her hair would seldom be rumpled in the process, or if it was, a shake of her head would bring it back in place. No one could put on a hat like Rhoda; there was no trouble, no standing in front of a mirror for feminine adjustments. She simply jammed it on and there it was, its angle perfect, setting forth her features in just the way its creator had planned. Yet perhaps hats had never mattered, because there was Rhoda’s hair, reminiscent of Hepburn, but of course it was not Hepburn’s, and the gloss and the vitality of the last years of her teens eventually left it. Its color was something he never could describe, not red, not gold, not auburn, and after all, when you saw it, description made no difference. When you first saw a girl you loved, she created an impression that nothing could ever change.
“How did you know right away that I had a good figure?” she asked him once.
And that was a difficult one to answer. With those clothes of hers, there had been no way of making an estimate regarding her figure visually except that her legs were long and spectacular; but somehow you knew all the answers without knowing how.
It was easy to imagine how she must have looked among the overstuffed upholstery, and fortunately he had given the Brownes better furniture later for their bungalow at Daytona Beach.
“Hello, Mother,” Rhoda must have said, and there was a bell-like quality in her voice, reminding one of the Tennysonian line about echoes dying, dying. “Hello, Pa.”
Often when he thought of the American male as a figure of fun, in the days before he was finalized by Lindsay and Crouse, Tom would picture Mr. Browne as ideal for the role.
“Back so soon, dear?” Mrs. Browne might have asked. “I thought you were going to do some typing practice after the school had closed.”
“Well, I didn’t,” Rhoda said. “Some of the girls went out to get a soda, Mother.”
“Rhoda, dear,” Mrs. Browne must have said, “I do hope you’re taking your shorthand and typing seriously,” and she sighed in a repressed way that was always poignant. “I wish my own dear mother had thought of giving me typing and shorthand lessons, instead of harp lessons, and then I might be more useful than I am now. A girl can never tell, Rhoda, when it may be necessary for her to earn her own living honorably. Hudson, please put your paper down. Isn’t it true what I’ve been telling Rhoda?”
“Yes,” Mr. Browne said, “I think your mother’s put it accurately, Rhoda. There are ups and downs in life.”
Mrs. Browne would then have looked brighter. There was always a silver lining and no one could say that she had not always searched for it in a very gallant way.
“Besides, dear,” she said, “your typing is only for this summer, because the agency for the Ford Company is bound to be a success and you’ll be going to Wellesley College in the fall. Hudson, please put down your paper. Won’t Rhoda be going to Wellesley in the fall?”
“Rhoda can go anywhere she wants in the fall.”
Rhoda must have smiled. Unlike most girls her own age, she was not continually grinning and showing her even white teeth; she never had been a smily girl, which may have given her smile its value.
“Thanks, Pa,” she said, “thanks a million.”
When Mr. Browne smiled back at her, you could have seen from whom she had inherited the smile. In fact, smiling was about the only graceful thing the old man ever did. “Thanks a million” was a new phrase then and Mrs. Browne would have been quick to catch it.
“Where did you learn that expression, Rhoda dear?”
“Oh, from some of the girls at typing school, I guess.”
“I wish so many common girls didn’t take up typewriting,” Mrs. Browne would have said.
“Mother, what time’s supper? Can we have supper early?”
“Why, yes, dear, as long as this is Friday, but why do you want supper early, Rhoda?”
“Because a boy’s going to call for me to take me to the 6:30 movie,” Rhoda must have said. “It has to be 6:30 because you don’t like me to go to the 8:30 show.”
“A boy?”
“Why, yes, Mother, I guess you’d call him a boy.”
“But I thought you were saying only yesterday that you hadn’t met any boys around here that you’d be seen with,” Mrs. Browne said.
“That was yesterday,” Rhoda said. “I’ve met one now, and he’s coming to take me to the half-past-six picture. I’ll start helping with the supper, Mother, but I want to put on my green silk dress with the red dots on it.”
At this point Mr. Browne must have put down his newspaper.
“Say,” he said, “who is this boy, Rhoda?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Rhoda said. “I never saw him around here until today, but he says he has an aunt who lives here or something.”
“Rhoda,” her mother asked, “are you sure that he’s a nice boy?”
“I don’t know yet,” Rhoda said, and she smiled again, “but maybe I will, after the picture show.”
There was always one thing about Rhoda, she always told the truth when she was asked a question. Mr. Browne must have laughed, and it was hard to blame him because it was always difficult not to laugh when Rhoda wished it.
“I don’t think that’s humorous, Hudson,” Mrs. Browne must have said. “Of course if he’s a nice young man, I think it’s very nice, but at the same time, dear, you are different from the girls at the typing school, and if he’s a friend of theirs, I don’t know. Where did you meet him, Rhoda?”
“Out on the main street,” Rhoda said, “the one that’s called Dock Street, just after I had that soda and was going back to do more typing.”
“But how did you meet him, dear?” Mrs. Browne asked.
Rhoda must have smiled again.
“Why, I guess he picked me up. I guess that’s what they call it, Mother.”
“Hudson,” Mrs. Browne said, “please let me speak. How could he have picked you up there in the street if you hadn’t wanted him to?”
“Well, maybe I did want him to,” Rhoda said.
Rhoda always did tell the truth when she was asked a question.
“But what did he do?” Mrs. Browne asked.
“Well, it was in front of the drugstore,” Rhoda must have said, “when I was just coming out, and he smiled at me and took off his hat, a sort of city hat, and then he said hello. He didn’t do anything else.”
“Well, I’d say he did plenty,” Mr. Browne could have said, “and I don’t know as I like it, either.”
“Hudson,” Mrs. Browne said, “please. When he did that, what did you do, Rhoda?”
“Why, I smiled back and said hello, too,” Rhoda said.
“Rhoda dear,” Mrs. Browne said, “why did you do that?”
“I guess I sort of liked him,” Rhoda said. “He’s the only worthwhile-looking boy I’ve seen in this town, and besides, with all the other girls around, I didn’t want them to think he was trying to pick me up. It would have been embarrassing, Mother.”
“But Rhoda, your father and I don’t know anything about him.”
“Well, we don’t know anything about anyone else, either,” Rhoda said. “Mother, please don’t go and spoil it all, and nothing ever happens at a half-past-six o’clock picture show. At least nothing has ever happened to me before, much, and I’ve been out to lots of places at three different high schools.”
“Oh, Rhoda!” her mother said. “As though your father and I haven’t wanted to give you everything! But you do say he’s attractive?”
Mrs. Browne still could look for a silver lining.
“He’s the only boy in this town who doesn’t look like a crumb,” Rhoda said.
(Out of all the imaginary dialogue this speech was certainly correct, because Rhoda herself had repeated it to him that same evening.)
“I wish you wouldn’t use slang,” Mrs. Browne said, “when I’ve tried so hard to teach you good vocabulary. I don’t know the word, but I hope you mean he’s nicely dressed and nice appearing.”
“I wouldn’t have said hello if he was a crumb,” Rhoda said, “and he says he comes from New York City, and I think he’s a college man.”
“Young fellows are always showing off,” Mr. Browne said, “and pretending to be something they’re not in order to make a good impression.”
“Did he tell you the name of his aunt or whoever it is he says he’s visiting?” Mrs. Browne asked.
“Oh, Mother,” Rhoda said, “I have to change my dress, and I can’t stay answering questions.”
“We’re only being careful of our little girl,” Mrs. Browne said, “aren’t we, Hudson?”
“Yes, but let’s not worry until we see him,” Mr. Browne said. “If he doesn’t add up, Rhoda will stay home.”
Rhoda must have been annoyed, but it was always hard to gauge the degree because annoyance always made her cool instead of flustered.
“I’ve added him,” Rhoda said. “Any girl’s got to watch herself with a boy.”
Her feet beat a swift clatter up the stairs, and Mrs. Browne sighed her eloquent, stifled sigh.
“Right in front of the drugstore,” Mrs. Browne said, “and she smiled and said hello.”
That June night was still a time of fantasy, and now it was impossible to discover where things began or where they ended. It was a relief to recall that Shakespeare himself had been confused under similar circumstances.
“Tell me, where is fancy bred,” he had asked, “in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourished?”
Nothing could be wholly accurate about that time, but his Aunt Edith had been unaffected by it, and his interview with his aunt was one he could draw from memory instead of imagination.
“I hope we’re having supper early, Aunt Edith,” he had said. “I’m taking a girl to the 6:30 picture show. She wouldn’t go to the 8:30 one.”
“Is she one of your old schoolmates, Thomas?” his aunt asked.
“No,” he said, “they all seem to be married now—all the good ones.”
“I’m very glad you outgrew so many,” his aunt said. “But then, I’ve always trusted the Fowler heritage, in spite of your poor father’s frivolity. If she isn’t a schoolmate, who is she?”
“She’s a new girl, I think,” he said. “I happened to run into her on Dock Street when you sent me down for the afternoon mail.”
“Were you introduced to her by running into her?” hire talking abouts aunt asked.
She was one of the few women he had known who was able to understand nearly everything from the basis of almost no appreciable experience.
“That’s one way of putting it,” he said. “We smiled at each other at almost the same time, and then we said hello.”
His aunt was silent for a moment.
“Did she tell you her name?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “her name is Rhoda, Rhoda Browne.”
His aunt had always possessed impeccable sources of local information. There was Marie, who was still in the kitchen, and who perhaps still loved him, and there was Mr. Gorman, who tended the grounds of four houses on Locust Street, and then there was the Monday Club.
“Where does she live?” she asked.
“On Harrison Street, at least I hope that’s where,” he said, “because I’m going there to call for her.”
His aunt nodded slowly.
“That would be the daughter of Mr. Hudson Browne, who is the new manager of the Ford agency,” she said. “A motor-car salesman’s daughter … Did you say she was pretty, Thomas?”
“I don’t remember if I said,” he answered. “At any rate, she is.”
“Well,” his aunt said, “I hope she does not get you into trouble, Thomas.”
Of course she should have hoped. To the end she had implied that Rhoda had made the play for him, and it was impressive to recall on how many occasions his aunt had been correct, when by all the laws of averages she had no business to be correct about anything at all.
It was broad daylight still at 6:15 on Harrison Street, what with the institution of daylight saving and with June owning the longest day in the year, but at the same time you could feel the eventual approach of dusk, although this was a long way off. Voices of children playing in the yards of Harrison Street had a different quality from early morning voices, and there was a quiet and a peace that could no longer be recaptured. The streets were not full of traffic and strangers. The day, as occasionally happened in June, had been perfect, and the air around him was cleaner than that in any modern air-conditioned room. The fresh leaves of the trees were hanging motionless, and the sky had assumed a deeper hue, but it was still far from sunset. Harrison Street was for once like a Winslow Homer painting, with a charm that came from spirit as well as fact. In the next few months, while he was writing the draft of his second play, his thoughts were on Harrison Street for hours and hours. He could amuse himself when alone by picturing the houses in the row where Rhoda lived, house by house, down to the peonies and Oriental poppies in the yards, but nothing was ever the same as it had been that evening.
The house, like his aunt’s, had a wire pull-bell with a glass knob, that could have been an item in a modern antique store. Doubt assailed him when he pulled the bell and listened to its nervous jangling in the hall, because it could have been that he was making a fool of himself and that things weren’t what they seemed on Dock Street, but Rhoda had been waiting and he had been right about her.
“Oh, hello,” she said, “won’t you come in for a minute and meet my father and mother?” And then her voice dropped to a whisper, “And tell me your name again. I knew I was going to forget it, and now I have.”
“Harrow,” he said, “and see you remember it next time.”
When she was most nervous, Rhoda appeared at her calmest, so that he had no way of knowing that she was afraid of what he might think of Mr. and Mrs. Browne. She had no way of knowing, either, that she was beautiful enough as she stood by the door to cancel out any other impression. At any rate, she had to invite him into the house because Mr. Browne had wanted to add him up. It was a very useful experience to him later when he realized that the meeting had a universal quality, and he had used it once nearly verbatim in Flagpole for Two. The crowded room, the imitation tapestry upholstery, the Brussels carpet, everything told mutely that the Brownes had moved and moved. Mr. and Mrs. Browne reminded him later of middle-aged actors and actresses making the best of things when a play was on the road. They were gazing at him with a sharp, pathetic interest that a parent is never able to conceal. It was a long way, he was thinking, from Betty Howland and the apartment that overlooked the Reservoir in Central Park. It was like stepping into another set before another audience and still being able to be himself. It was something to remember that through most of his life he had usually been himself.
“Well, this is a real pleasure, meeting you, Mr. Harrow,” Mr. Browne said, “and it’s kind of you to take our little girl out. Rhoda’s always popular wherever she goes, but she hasn’t had much time to meet any boy friends here yet. The name is Harrow, isn’t it? I don’t recall any Harrows in the local phone directory.”
“What Mr. Browne means,” Mrs. Browne said, “is that he is trying to get acquainted with all the names of persons in this locality. Mr. Browne, you see, has recently assumed the management of the Ford Motor Agency, but perhaps Rhoda told you, Mr. Harrow.”
The whole story, with all its implied pathos, was told by Mr. Browne’s overpressed, double-breasted suit and in Mrs. Browne’s antiquated pompadour. It was only necessary to take one look at Mr. Browne to perceive that he would not be assuming the management of the Ford Motor Agency for an indefinite period; but there was nothing sharp or unkind about these thoughts because Rhoda stood beside him, and they were Rhoda’s parents. He did not mind their sudden eagerness and the avid way they looked at his gray suit and his straw hat. A parent had every right to make an estimate and he did not mind if they were thinking that there must be money somewhere, because Rhoda was beside him.
“No, I don’t believe that Miss Browne had time to tell me,” he said. “I hope you enjoy it here, Mr. Browne.”
He did not blame Mrs. Browne for watching him. There was no reason why she should not have faced the possibility that he was up to no good, and at the time perhaps she was right.
“You don’t live here, do you, Mr. Harrow?”
Of course she had to place him, poor bewildered Mrs. Browne, and it was doubly difficult for her then when he was having his own difficulties in trying to place himself.
“No, I don’t live here exactly,” he said. “I don’t truthfully know where I’m living at the moment. New York as much as any place, I suppose, but right now I’m rather at loose ends.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Browne said, “I remember now. Rhoda told me you were here visiting a relative.”
“Yes,” he said, “my aunt. I’m very fond of my aunt.”
“Mother,” Rhoda said, “there isn’t any reason to cross-question Mr. Harrow, or perhaps he’ll be afraid to come again.”
“Why, Rhoda,” Mrs. Browne said, “what an idea. It’s just the way I am, Mr. Harrow, interested in everyone.”
“Well, Mrs. Browne,” he said, and he laughed, “that’s just the way I am, too.”
“Besides, Mother,” Rhoda said, “he hasn’t asked for my hand in marriage,” and she smiled, “and if he has any designs on me, I’ll tell you later.”
“Rhoda,” Mr. Browne said, “I think that will be quite enough.”
“And don’t be ridiculous, Rhoda,” Mrs. Browne said. “It’s very kind of you to want to take such a bad-mannered girl to the pictures, Mr. Harrow. And you will have her back shortly after nine o’clock won’t you? There’ll be lemonade and cupcakes waiting in the kitchen, dear.”
Rhoda referred to the incident when they were outside, walking up Harrison Street.
“You were nice to them,” she said. “I guess parents are all that way.” It was nearly the only explanation that she ever gave of them, except to tell him once later that she knew he understood them.
“Why shouldn’t I have been nice to them?” he had said. “They let me take you out, and it’s true that they don’t know much about me.”
“Well,” she said, “I guess you know all about us now. What did you say your first name was?”
“It’s Tom,” he said, “and your first name’s Rhoda. I haven’t forgotten that.”
“You can call me by it,” she said, “and I’ll call you Tom if it isn’t on too short acquaintance. Have you got designs on me?”
“I daresay,” he said. “Don’t blame me. Anyone would, you know.”
She laughed, and her laugh fitted with the mellow light of six o’clock.
“Well,” she said, “I’m glad you’ve come right out with it. I don’t care, up to a point, and you like me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “considerably.”
She laughed again more softly.
“Well, of course I like you or none of this would have happened,” she said. “I used to be frightened, and then nothing was fun, and then I told myself I would have to get over it if I was going to get anywhere. Talking to you is like reading a brand-new book, and I’ve never seen anyone just like you, and I don’t understand you at all.”
The first lines were always drawn at a first meeting. He must have been like a book to her and she had tried and tried for years, but she had never understood much of the book. Then she added another thought. One of the reasons that he had loved her was that she was almost always partially but never brutally frank.
“Tom,” she said, “since you’ve been so truthful, I think that I should be, and I want to tell you, unless I change my mind, that I have designs on you, and also want to tell you my mother and father have.” Then she giggled.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Nothing. It’s only exciting,” she said. “No young man wearing sort of tailor-made city clothes has ever taken me to the pictures. That was why Mother was so frightened. You can understand, can’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “but don’t you be frightened.”
She laughed, and as they were walking to the Bijou Theatre, which was an unpleasant name but true even in those days, the sun had reminded him of Milton—“the gilded car of day, his glowing axle doth allay.”
“I’m not,” she said, “and besides, I want to know more about what you’re like.”
“I’d rather know more about you,” he said.
“You will,” she said, “I hope, and you mustn’t worry about Father and Mother. You knew Pa was a failure, didn’t you, the moment you looked at him? I love him, but he’s a failure.”
“Why, Rhoda,” he said, “I don’t mind. I like it if you love a failure.”
“I love lots of the things you say,” she said, “and I think you’re very nice, but I don’t understand you at all.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, “as long as I understand you, Rhoda.”
“Well,” she said, “then let’s not get complexes and things, because we’re only going to the pictures.”
The word “complex” then was almost as new as the new model Ford that Mr. Browne was selling, and where had she picked up the word? He could guess that not the girls at the typing school or Mr. and Mrs. Browne had used it, but Rhoda had always been in tune with the latest note of time.
“I don’t know what you’re about at all,” she said, “but I do think you’re more apt to get me out of everything than anyone I’ve ever known before.”
“How do you define ‘out of everything’?” he asked her.
“That’s silly of you to ask me,” she said, “because of course you know that every girl my age, even a rich one, always wants to get out of everything.”
There was no one else who had quite the same answers to things as Rhoda.
By the time America had reached the year 1928, sexual morals, according to certain experts, had broken down, and this disintegration had been assisted by Mr. Scott Fitzgerald, whom Walter Price for no good reason had always called “Fitzy,” and by the dim lights of those motion-picture halls where the almost silent films of those days—at least in the country—were accompanied by the piano. It could not have helped morals for young people in ill-lighted, badly ventilated halls to perceive the liberated actions of handsome actors and actresses moving in a more desirable world. Somehow, in the film world, the poor but honest girl always lived poor but honestly in a ten-thousand-dollar-a-year apartment which must have been confusing to other poor but honest girls. Somehow she always fell into the arms, to appropriate music, of the poor but honest boy, who drove a moving van and who never quite seemed to belong in the poor but honest girl’s apartment, which she paid for out of her meager stenographic salary. A generation before, young people sat side by side on love seats, looking through stereopticons at photographs of Niagara Falls and of the Spanish-American War, but in 1928 you could see dreams of wish-fulfillment move. You could sit with the girl of your choice in the darkened theatre in 1928, and observe conventional varieties of love play as far as was permitted by a confused National Board of Censorship, and at the same time project your imagination into the doings on the screen. There was no wonder that sex standards were disappearing under this erosion, and no wonder that he and Rhoda Browne trustingly and conventionally held hands the moment that the lights were dimmed, like babes in the wood—not that this was quite the right way to put it from either of their points of view—until the lights went on again. There was no wonder that he and Rhoda Browne felt closer emotionally then they had before, after the picture was ended.
He had tried and tried, while casting his mind back to those years, to recall what under the sun the picture had been about that they had witnessed that evening, and he never could remember. What was more, he never cared, because he had been sitting beside Rhoda, holding her delicate, firm hand, and even at odd moments allowing his hand to rest upon her knee, not more than that, even though he may have had designs. It was by sheer accident that he had met her there at Dock Street, and only kind coincidence had permitted them simultaneously to speak. The gods were very good to him that night, because he knew after his few words with her, reinforced by slight physical contact, that he would never in the world again meet anyone with her validity or appeal.
The 6:30 show was over by about half past eight, but instead of darkness, there was still the glow of sunset.
“It just goes to show,” Rhoda said, “that nothing much can happen at the 6:30 pictures on daylight saving time, and I think you’d better get me home by 9:15 this once.”
“Would you like an ice-cream soda first?” he asked.
“I’m tired of ice-cream sodas,” she said. “I wish it were dark enough so we could see the stars. I’d like to go some place and see the sky, but you can’t ever see much of it here with all the trees and houses.”
“There’s the burying ground by the common,” he said. “You can see a lot of the sky from there, if you’re not afraid of dead people.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said, “I’m only scared I’ll get briers in my silk stockings.”
“I’ll buy you another pair if you do,” he said.
“My mother always tells me,” she said, “not to accept gifts from men. Well, all right, but only if there are briers. You must be anxious for me to see the sky.”
“Not especially,” he said. “I’m only curious to know why you want to see it.”
She glanced at him sideways in the waning light.
“Because it makes me wish all sorts of things I want,” she said, “and I want a lot of things.”
“You mean the sky’s the limit,” he said.
She did not laugh or even smile.
“That’s what I do mean,” she said. “I never thought of it in just that way.”
“What sort of things does the sky make you want?” he asked, and she smiled her bright, quick smile.
“I’m afraid I want everything,” she said, “and I keep being afraid it will all keep on being the way it is.”
The burying ground by the common was a symbol of the past, perfunctorily maintained by the town and no longer employed for its original purpose. Instead, its slate stones and tombs were objects of curiosity and occasionally of vandalism; it had become part of the local custom, and it was considered correct for the local youth to walk there after the 6:30 show. He remembered that they sat side by side on a tomb belonging to a Captain Ezra Blood, a startling name, and the tomb was still there intact, as of the present.
“It’s awful to be afraid,” she said. “I wish I weren’t afraid of being poor, and wandering around and ending marrying someone who’s always going to be poor.” She glanced at him and their eyes met, and even in the half light, he could see that their gray-greenish tinge suited the color of her hair. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, because you don’t know what it’s like to want things and know you’ll never get them. Clothes, diamonds, and limousines and things like that. I don’t know if I’d care about having them—but it’s knowing I’ll never get them—”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I guess I want a lot of things I’ll never get, but the trouble with me is I never know just what I want.”
“That means you’ve never been poor,” she said, “or had to want things.”
“Maybe, but I’ve never been rich,” he said.
“It’s queer talking to you,” she said. “I don’t seem to know where I am with you, because I don’t know what you are, I guess.”
“I don’t know what I am myself,” he said, “but then, maybe no one knows exactly. Would you like it if I could get you clothes and jewels and limousines?”
“Yes,” she said, “of course; only, if you started doing that, you’d have to keep me in them. I wouldn’t want to start slipping back again.”
“Maybe I could try,” he said.
“I’d like it if you would,” she said, “but besides, I’d like it if I were an honest woman.”
“I don’t know whether you can make people honest women, but I might try,” he said.
The color was still in the sky and the clouds by the western horizon were still partly gold and partly purple. Whenever he saw clouds of that color afterwards, he always thought of fantasy. They were both dealing with a sort of make-believe that might possibly turn into reality, but even if the reality were possible, you did not have to face it unless you wished. There were few times in life as entirely agreeable.
“Suppose I were the Count of Monte Cristo,” he said. “You’ve read The Count of Monte Cristo, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve been trained carefully by my mother.”
“I didn’t know mothers made daughters read The Count of Monte Cristo,” he said.
“I didn’t say that,” she answered. “I read it when she wasn’t looking.”
“All right,” he said, “suppose I were the Count of Monte Cristo and I could give you everything you wanted.”
She shook her head.
“It’s just as well you’re not,” she said. “I’d be terrible if I had everything I wanted, but the main thing would be to be sure you’d always be the Count of Monte Cristo. Do you think you always would?”
It was colder now the sun was down, and she stood up, but he knew what he would have said if she had given him the time to answer. He would have said of course he would always be Mr. Dantes, and he would have believed it, too.
“I suppose I’ll have to go,” she said. “There are cupcakes and lemonade in the kitchen. You’re not going to go away, are you?”
“No,” he said, “not if there are cupcakes.”
“I mean,” she said “I know you’re only visiting your aunt or someone, but—after all of this—I hope you’re going to be here for a while.”
He had never thought until then that he might just as well write his second play in the Judge’s house.
“Oh, I’ll be here for quite a while,” he said.
“I don’t see how you can be, if you have anything to do,” she said.
Every thought and speech projected its pattern afterwards, and this one in particular.
“I haven’t got anything to do at the moment because I’m out of a job, but at the same time I’m doing a little work,” he told her.
Right there they reached the roadblock, the roadblock of the years.
“You mean you’re working, and you’re out of a job, and you don’t have to work?” she asked him.
“That’s right,” he said. “Roughly that’s what I mean. I mean, I don’t exactly know what I’m doing myself.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing yourself?” she said.
“That doesn’t sound right. That isn’t accurate,” he answered. “I know roughly what I’m doing, but I don’t know how it’s going to come out.”
Rhoda laughed uncertainly, but her laughter sounded like the temple bells of Mandalay, disturbed by an unexpected breeze.
“That sounds queer,” she said. “I like you, but I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”
There was always a gap between them, but they were walking side by side down Dock Street then, and everything seemed possible.
“You see, I’m writing a play,” he said.
“You mean like Ibsen?” she said.
“I wouldn’t call it straight Ibsen,” he said, “not The Wild Duck or anything like that, but at the same time, it’s a play.”
“You mean you’re so rich that you really don’t have to work at anything?” she asked him.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You see, I’ve written another play and they hope to produce it on Broadway, and they’ve paid me a thousand dollars.”
That was before inflation, but still, the sum had a different meaning for each of them.
“You’re not just telling stories,” she said, “that you write plays, and they pay you a thousand dollars?”
“No,” he said, “that’s accurate. I’ve written one and now I’m writing another.”
“How long does it take?” she asked.
“You can’t make any rigid estimate,” he said, “but I’d say, if you have a clear idea, you ought to get something in shape in about three months.”
“Four thousand dollars a year,” she said. “That isn’t much, is it?”
They were walking down Harrison Street, and the stars were out, but the elm trees obscured the stars.
“That’s only the advance,” he said. “If the plays are good enough, they’ll run into a great deal more.”
“How do you mean?” she asked. “If they give you a thousand dollars, isn’t that all?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “If a play’s a hit on Broadway, it can be worth a good deal more than a hundred thousand dollars.”
She did not answer for a minute.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she said, “but you did tell me, didn’t you, that you have a play that may go on to Broadway? Could that one be worth more than a hundred thousand dollars?”
“Yes,” he said, “perhaps.”
“And they’ve given you a thousand dollars for it anyway?” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s what they call an advance.”
They were silent for almost a minute.
“I still don’t understand what you’re talking about” she said, “and I suppose you’re exaggerating, but I’ve had a wonderful time.”
“I’ve had a wonderful time, too,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but you can have a cupcake now.”
They had reached the door of the Browne house, and now the dark was falling, but the sky was clear and it was possible to see the stars.
“I’d like a cupcake very much,” he told her.
“And when you’re eating it,” she said, “after I’ve told my mother I’ve come home, I wish you’d tell me what you are. What does you father do?”
“He didn’t do anything but lose money,” he said. “He died of flu after the war, but he did take me to Jack’s.”
“What’s Jack’s?” she asked.
“In New York,” he said. “It used to be a restaurant on Sixth Avenue before Prohibition. He took me there when he was drunk one night, and he sang me a little song.”
“What song?” she asked.
Another thing about Rhoda, she was always avid for small detail.
“Oh,” he said, “it was a silly song:
“Stay in there punching, sonny,
Don’t let your heart fall plop,
Someday the nation will honor you, too,
As it’s honored your dear old pop.”
They were in the Brownes’ kitchen, with its coal-burning stove and soapstone sink, and the lemonade and the cupcakes were on the table, just as Mrs. Browne had said they would be.
“I still don’t understand you,” Rhoda said, “but I do hope the nation will honor you, too—and you’re not going to leave town, are you?”
“No,” he said. “The idea would be ridiculous.”
She had pulled off her cloche hat. The electric bulb from the kitchen wall bracket made her hair glow, and cast perfect shadows on her photogenic face. She was prettier than anyone he had ever known or ever would again. He moved to touch her, and she did not move away.
“Not here,” she whispered. “Mother will be listening through the register upstairs.”
But she did kiss him, once, in the shadows just outside the front door. There was nothing spectacular about the embrace, since at that time the gesture was conventional, but he never forgot the touch of her lips nor her farewell whisper. No one ever again had whispered as merrily and beguilingly as Rhoda.
“Good night, Monte Cristo,” she said. “I’ll see you in the cemetery tomorrow afternoon.”