XV

It Lingers Still, Thy Infinite Variety

There had once been a time when he had resented, though he had always artistically admired, the inevitability of Greek tragedy. From the opening scene onward, it never required an interpretive chorus to make it clear that the hero, gifted though he might be by the gods, would never extricate himself from the difficulties into which the Fates had cast him. Aeschylus had often seemed to him to insult the dignity of human will, and yet he had to admit that there were times in any life when Aeschylus and Euripides were doubtless right. There were times when, lik a swimmer in the surf off a Long Island beach, one would inadvertently be caught in an ebbing current and before one knew what was happening, be carried out to sea. An experienced swimmer had told him once that it was better to let the current take you until its force died down, because man could never beat the sea in an outright test of strength, and Aeschylus would have added that man could never beat the Fates.

His experience with Rhoda Browne thirty years ago was something the Greeks might have understood better than the moderns. There was coincidence in his having met her on Dock Street just when he had left New York and Betty Howland forever; but coincidence, a Greek would say, was furnished by the gods, and after he had met her, the ending was inevitable. He was conscious of the efforts that Rhoda’s parents and Rhoda herself were making. He could be amused by them, but he never resented them and never would have wanted them different. There had been many sides to Rhoda that delighted him without his ever wanting them to change, and in spite of those sides and those eager calculations, no one could erase the truth that he and Rhoda were in love.

You could debate with yourself exactly what the phrase “in love” might mean, and undoubtedly it never had meant the same thing to any two individuals. From his point of view it was not infatuation, because he had always seen her in clear perspective. He loved her humor and her honesty and he must have also loved her for the things that he could give her that she wanted, but why had she loved him?

“I don’t know why,” she said once that summer. “I don’t understand you half the time. Maybe because you’re so different. You’re always new and strange—but I can tell you when I started loving you—in the kitchen eating cupcakes, when you said it would be ridiculous to go away; and it would have been ridiculous.”

It would have been ridiculous, although common sense must have told him at some point that going away was the wiser thing to do. It would have been ridiculous after she had whispered that she would see him in the cemetery next afternoon, and his Aunt Edith had been pathetically delighted when he had suggested that he might stay on for a month or two and finish up his writing. As of now, if he could have done it over again, he would not have changed a minute of that time, for all of it was refreshing and most of it was comedy, and one of the most delightful things about that summer was that Rhoda and the Brownes had been impressed by his financial capabilities.

It was obvious, that next day, that Rhoda had given her parents some sort of balance sheet.

“Mother wonders whether you wouldn’t care to come to supper tomorrow night,” Rhoda said, “and Pa’s going to buy some lobsters, in case you want to know.”

There was another thing that he could not forget. He had been among the first to appreciate Rhoda’s potential charm.

“Would you like to have me?” he asked her.

When he asked the question, he could remember that he had been trying to analyze her charm.

“Don’t ask silly questions to get compliments,” she said. “Or maybe you don’t like lobsters?”

“I always like them,” he said, “in the company of a pretty girl.”

“That’s a silly thing to say, too, because lobsters always taste the same. You remember what you said yesterday about silk stockings?”

“Yes,” he said, “I remember.”

“Well, look,” she said, and she pointed at her ankle, “you can get me a pair and bring them around tomorrow night.”

“I’ll get you a dozen so you won’t have to remind me any more,” he said.

“A dozen?” she said. “Well, all right, if you’ll help so I can get them upstairs without Mother seeing them, because Mother might think …”

He laughed; she could always make him laugh.

“Oh, no,” he said, “not for a dozen pairs, and I’ll tell you another thing I’ll do. I’ll buy a new Ford from your father.”

There was still some money in the account.

“You mean you’ll buy it on account of me?” she said.

She could always make him laugh, even when he knew that the current was taking him far away from the beach.

“That’s right,” he said, “and you won’t get your stockings torn in the brambles any more.”

He had learned one useful thing about the town long before he had met Rhoda, and this was that everyone’s life there was an open book, whether one wanted it to be or not. Sin and sorrow, sex and continence were always written more clearly than the words on a wayside pulpit or the words on a poster advertising the latest Hollywood production. Thus he was not astonished to find when he had arrived at Harrison Street that evening that Mr. and Mrs. Browne had been able to learn a good deal about him. Mrs. Browne was alone in the overstuffed parlor with a faded framed photograph on her lap.

“Rhoda is working in the kitchen,” she said. “She’s much more of a homebody than I ever used to be. Mr. Browne will be here in a few minutes; it’s wonderful that things are so busy at the agency.”

“It does seem as though everybody’s buying a Ford these days,” he said. “Would Rhoda like me to help her in the kitchen?”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Browne said. “Rhoda always calls the kitchen a woman’s world. I hope you like lobsters, Mr. Harrow.”

“I’ve always been devoted to them,” he said, “and I only hope they won’t frighten Rhoda.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you to think of them in that way,” Mrs. Browne said, “but Rhoda isn’t easily frightened. I hadn’t realized that your aunt was the Miss Fowler who lives in that delightful old gingerbread house near Johnson Street, Mr. Harrow.”

Her intentions were obvious, but from the very first they had never alarmed or irritated him. On the contrary, his interest was stimulated, as it always was when he encountered something new. He had never been considered a desirable match before, and the feeling was agreeable. He could understand at last the reactions of a hero in a Jane Austen novel or of the Rockefeller or the Whitney boys, even though he and Mrs. Browne were a long way from the Whitneys. Still, as Tolstoy had said, if one had once seen a street fight, one could write about a battle; and besides, someone had to marry Rhoda someday; someday her knight would come riding. He had never minded in the least being cast as the Little Colonel’s knight. He had always sympathized from the very beginning with the eagerness of Mr. and Mrs. Browne. It resembled the anxiety of shipwrecked passengers on a foundering raft, and yet the fact remained that the Brownes had hit the jackpot in the end, and had landed safely in a bungalow at Daytona Beach.

“It’s known around here as the old Judge Fowler house,” he said. “I have never been enthusiastic about my grandfather’s taste in architecture, but perhaps you’re right, that it is delightful in a way.”

His motto had always been to try everything once. It was easier than he had thought, being a Count of Monte Cristo.

Mrs. Browne sighed, lightly and not lugubriously.

“The home where one has spent happy hours of childhood and youth must always be delightful in its way,” she said. “Now, when you came in, Mr. Harrow, you surprised me poring over a photograph of my old home.” She held the framed picture out to him, and he found himself examining the awkward outlines of a huge house with a bulbous front and a columned portico. “It’s my dear mother’s photograph of the old Rhyelle mansion in Baltimore, now unfortunately torn down to make room for a real estate development.”

When Mrs. Browne became one of the Baltimore Rhyelles, she assumed a south of Mason and Dixon accent, a soft almost imperceptible slurring of intonation which was never a part of her ordinary speech.

“The ballroom was in the large wing in the back, just yonder,” she said. “I was presented there to Baltimore society, and I met Mr. Browne at that year’s cotillion, not that he’d been invited. He had come with some other young men from the University of Maryland, not that he could not have been invited. The Brownes of Maryland are well known in the state.” It put Mr. Browne in his place. Although she never admitted it outright, it had always been clear that the Rhyelle-Browne marriage had been a misalliance, and there was an intimation, also never put into words, that due to it, the doors of the Rhyelle mansion had closed on Estelle Rhyelle forever. Mrs. Browne sighed when she had finished her speech, and he could not blame her. Everyone had his own Rhyelle mansion somewhere.

“It’s an interesting house,” he said. “No wonder you like to look at it.”

“I only like to at odd moments,” Mrs. Browne said. “I don’t believe in stepping backwards into the past, but I do wish you might have seen it. It would have made such a background for a play, and Rhoda says you’re a playwright, Mr. Harrow. It must be fascinating being a playwright.”

“Maybe she has it a little wrong,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I am a playwright exactly, but only trying to get to be one.”

“But Rhoda says you’ve written and sold a play?”

A note of dismay in Mrs. Browne’s voice made him answer her reassuringly; he had never understood why he had always been anxious never to let down Mrs. Browne.

“That’s true,” he said, “I have written one and the producer has paid me an advance on it, and he’s planning to put it in rehearsal sometime this autumn, and I am writing another while I’m waiting to see what’s going to happen.”

Mrs. Browne sighed, but it was a sigh of relief.

“It must be wonderful to be so successful so young,” she said.

“You’re right about my being young,” he said, “but I wouldn’t say that I’m successful yet—only hoping to be.”

“I know you’re going to be,” Mrs. Browne said. “I can tell from looking at you. They used to say in Baltimore I was gifted in that way. Oh, here comes Mr. Browne.”

Mr. Browne, that evening, was dressed in a blue double-breasted suit, and you could see that he was too anxious ever to be a good salesman. That was one thing to remember—never fall on your face with eagerness.

“Hudson,” Mrs. Browne said, “perhaps it’s enough of an occasion so that Mr. Harrow would like to take a little something?”

“I guess you’ve got to come up with that again,” Mr. Browne said. “What little something?”

Mrs. Browne was sweet and patient.

“Some of the something, Hudson, that you brought home from the sales convention,” she said.

“Oh,” Mr. Browne said, “why, you bet. You could do with a snort of rye, couldn’t you, Mr. Harrow, seeing, as Rhoda says, you’ve been on the stage? It isn’t bad hooch. Our main distributor gave it to me, so it’s got to be good.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call it a snort, Hudson,” Mrs. Browne said. “And Rhoda never said that Mr. Harrow was on the stage. He’s not an actor, he’s a playwright, Hudson.”

“Well, it’s still stage,” Mr. Browne said, “and I guess this young fellow will excuse me if I call it a snort. He looks like he might be kind to a poor old man.”

Then they were interrupted by a scream from the kitchen.

“Mother,” Rhoda screamed.

“What is it, dear?” Mrs. Browne called.

“The lobsters, Mother,” Rhoda screamed, “one of them’s got away, and he’s lost the plug out of his claw and the others whistle when you put them in the pot!”

“Please let me help her, Mrs. Browne,” Tom said. “I’m wonderful with lobsters.”

It was a prediction, not an established fact. He had never before thought of trying to be wonderful with lobsters. Rhoda was wearing an apron over her green dress with the red spots. Her sleeves were rolled up, and her hair was rumpled.

“That’s what comes of trying to show you what a good cook I am,” she said. “I told Mother it wouldn’t work. I’ve always hated housework. I hate everything except riding in a limousine.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “Where’s the lobster who lost his plug?”

“He’s under the sink,” she said. “Let’s leave him there.”

“It might be a good idea,” he said, “but I told your mother I was wonderful with lobsters.”

“All right,” Rhoda answered, “go ahead and be honored just like your dear old pop.”

“You look beautiful, now that you’re all aglow,” he said.

“Never mind,” Rhoda said, “here’s the broom. Get the broom in front of him, and when he bites it, grab him.”

It worked, like many of Rhoda’s suggestions.

“If you know so much about it, why did you scream?” he asked.

“Don’t be a dumbbell,” Rhoda said. “To get you out here, naturally. I don’t like the going-over they’re giving you in the parlor.”

“It’s no going-over. Your father was going to give me a snort of hooch,” he said.

“Well,” she answered, “I can handle you without their help, and besides, I’d rather.”

“So would I rather have you,” he said.

“I bet you didn’t bring the stockings,” she said.

“You’re wrong,” he answered. “I brought them.”

“Oh,” she said, “where are they?”

“On a chair in the hall,” he said. “I don’t think anybody noticed the package.”

“I’d better get it upstairs quick,” she said. “You can watch the lobsters and I’ll run up and wash my face and brush my hair. Do you approve of lipstick?”

The picture of Betty Howland returned to him, but the vision disappeared almost immediately, and after all, lipstick was not mandatory in 1928.

“On occasions,” he said.

“Well, I’ll try you out with it after supper,” she said. “Pa’s taking Mother out riding after supper in the demonstrator Ford. Mother arranged it.” She giggled. “The young people alone—I wish I could be allowed to handle you without help. Don’t you think I’m able to?”

“I think so up to date,” he said.

“So do I,” she answered. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you, about buying a Ford?”

“No,” he said, “I’ll take it up with your father at supper.”

“I don’t mean to be grasping or pushing, or anything like that,” she said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, “but you do like people who live up to their promises, don’t you?”

“You know,” she said, “I wonder whether you aren’t laughing at me half the time.”

“Not half the time,” he said.

“Well,” she said, “promise you’ll never make me cook.”

“All right,” he said.

The moment was more solemn than it should have been. They stood in the kitchen shyly, as though each had said something more than was intended. He had an impulse to draw her toward him, but she shook her head quickly.

“No,” she said, “after supper. Watch the lobsters, Monte Cristo.”

It was curious that since that night he had never learned much more about Rhoda’s family, but at the same time he had discovered almost all that was necessary for a son-in-law to know; and there were points beyond which curiosity should not go about a girl’s parents if one were in love with her, and Rhoda was vague about them herself. She did not know what had happened to her mother’s family, the Rhyelles, and frankly she did not care. Mr. Browne sometimes spoke of his boyhood days on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, but Rhoda had never cared about this either, or his business ventures—the chicken farm, the orange ranch in California, the hardware store in New Jersey, the insurance agency in Rhode Island. She knew only that none of them had worked. He might have pried further into the difficulties of the Brownes, but he had always had the grace not to do it. All that was necessary was to take Rhoda’s family as they were, and they were not so hard to take. Mrs. Browne had been sweet and thoughtful, and Mr. Browne basically was a good old guy, and both of them had gratitude, which was something one did not always get from in-laws. He had never been able to blame Rhoda for her desire to escape from them because every child in the world always wanted something that childhood had not given, and Rhoda’s had never given her security.

“You were kind to them,” she told him that evening, “and they were awfully silly, weren’t they?”

“I don’t know that you’d call them silly exactly,” he said.

“Of course you would,” she answered, “throwing you and me together, and it’s only a wonder they didn’t make you run away.”

“I don’t want to run away,” he said. “I wanted you and me to be thrown together. That’s what I came here hoping.”

“It would have scared off a lot of boys,” she said. “Maybe you’re dumb in some ways.”

“I don’t feel dumb right now,” he said.

“Nobody ever does,” she said, “when they’re being dumb. All that Baltimore business—whenever a boy comes to call, Mother gets to Baltimore.”

“You can’t blame her,” he said, “that was quite a house in Baltimore.”

“Oh,” she said, “the mansion. Do you believe it?”

“That’s not a good question,” he said. “You ought not to ask me that.”

“Well, anyway, you were sweet,” she said, “and of course I love them, I suppose. Oh, dear! I wish I could keep on believing.”

“Believing what?” he asked.

“In their amounting to anything,” she said. “Oh, dear, it’s awful to wake up and start seeing things. I wish I didn’t see so much.”

“I don’t see why you wish that,” he said. “I like to see as much as I can. Maybe that’s what we’re here for.”

“If I see too much, I get frightened,” she said.

“Why, what’s there to be frightened of?” he asked.

He remembered Rhoda’s mother saying that Rhoda was not easily frightened,–and now she looked worried rather than afraid, or perhaps exasperation would have been a better word. She scowled and her lips grew thin with impatience, but at the same time, there was a smile at the corner of them, and her eyes were bright. She still looked attractive, but then she always had at any time and in any place, and the dingy parlor only made a romantically contrasting background for what he saw in Rhoda.

“It’s the same old record,” she said. “Maybe every girl in the world gets frightened who isn’t rich and who has a little sense.”

“Frightened of what?” he asked.

“Why, frightened at what’s going to happen to her,” she said. “A girl’s life is always a horrid, unfair dancing party. That’s true, you know. It is a sort of dancing party.”

She disengaged her hand from his, did a quick dance turn in the middle of the Brussels carpet and sat down opposite him in a straight-backed chair with her ankles carefully crossed, and her hands neatly folded on her lap.

“A girl’s got to sit and wait for some man to ask her to do anything at all,” she said, “and you don’t know who he’s going to be or what, and if he’s awful you don’t know whether you ought to say ‘No’ to him or not because then there may not be anyone else, ever, to ask you anything, but there’s one thing you always know. You can’t keep sitting here, pretending that you like the music. Somebody’s got to take you away, but the frightening thing is, no one may ever ask you, or worse than that, no one you want.”

She stopped and smiled, her sudden swift smile.

“Don’t pretend that you’re a wallflower,” he said, “and it isn’t hospitable of you to be away off across the room.”

“Well, if you’re asking me to join you,” she said, “come over here and make the proposition and lead me back. Someone’s got to ask me sometime.”

He could never tell when they had reached an understanding. There were no perceptible stages, except for the beginning at Dock Street. Everything between them had been inevitable, but gradual. That night he had not asked her anything, and yet he must have known as sure as fate that he was going to, and just as surely that she would agree.

“I know,” she said, “it isn’t polite for me to talk about myself. People always say in advice to the lovelorn that you should draw your gentleman caller out. Ask him tactful questions. Get him to talk about himself. Do you want to talk about yourself?”

“Why, not especially,” he said.

“And I don’t know whether I want you to, either,” she said, “because you make me feel how dumb I am. But, anyway, what’s the name of this play you’re writing now?”

“It’s called Little Liar,” he said.

“That’s a queer name,” she said. “Where did you get it from?”

“I got it from Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales,” he said, “from a poem about a girl named Matilda who screamed for the firemen when the house wasn’t burning down, and finally when it was, and she shouted fire, they only answered, ‘Little liar!’”

“Do you think I’m a little liar?” she asked.

“Not any more than most girls,” he said. “Girls at some point have to be little liars.”

“I’m glad you see it that way,” she said. “What’s your play about?”

“It’s about a man who falls in love with his conscience,” he said.

“Are you trying to be funny?” she asked. “How can anyone fall in love with his conscience?”

“Well,” he said, “in this play, the man’s conscience is a beautiful girl, and the man is in bed in his bedroom in the first act, after having done something that disturbs his conscience; and his conscience, the beautiful girl, keeps knocking and knocking, and finally she comes in because she is so tired of knocking. She’s always been knocking on doors for years trying to get to him, she says, and he’s never listened.”

She was listening to him carefully, but she still looked puzzled.

“She comes right into his bedroom?” she said. “I wouldn’t dare do that, but it isn’t a bad idea. But how does he know that she’s his conscience?”

“Because she tells him so,” he said, “and he apologizes for never having listened to her before. He didn’t know she was so beautiful, and he falls in love with her.”

“He falls in love with her right in the bedroom?” she said.

“He has to in the bedroom,” he said, “because it’s too expensive changing scenes nowadays.”

“What is she wearing,” she asked, “when she comes into the bedroom?”

“Negligee,” he said, “she’s thinly clad. After all, consciences don’t need many clothes.”

“Gosh,” she said, “I don’t see how you thought any of this up. What happens then?”

“The curtain goes down,” he said. “It’s the end of the first act.”

“You mean the curtain goes down right then,” she said, “and you don’t see anything happen? I don’t think that’s fair.”

“It’s better to imagine some things,” he said, “and I don’t think it’s a bad first act.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s fair,” she said. “What happens then?”

“Why, in the second act,” he said, “she falls in love with him and she loves him so much she lets him do almost anything he wants.”

“I wish I had a conscience like that,” she said, “only mine would have to be a boy. But what happens after that?”

“Well, that’s the third act,” he said, “and I’m working on it now. He quarrels with his conscience, and they get divorced, and he’s back in his bedroom again, entirely devoid of conscience, and that’s as far as I’ve gone, except that he’s going to ask her to come back.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because he finds it very lonely to have no conscience at all,” he said, “but just when he’s made up his mind to get along without one, there she is, knocking at his door. He is just getting out of his trousers—conscience is always knocking at the door at the wrong moment—and she tells him to behave himself. Divorced or not, you can’t get rid of conscience.”

“It sounds sort of peculiar,” she said. “But then, I’ve only seen a few stock companies act plays.”

“There’s nothing peculiar about having a conscience,” he said. “Everybody has one.”

“Have you got a conscience about me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “I think I have.”

“That’s nice if it’s true,” she said, “because most men don’t seem to have much of any about girls. That’s why you have to be on the lookout, always. It gets awfully tiresome being on the lookout.”

“That’s what he tells his conscience in the play,” he said. “No one has much conscience about his conscience.”

The house was very still, and he put his arm around her.

“Remember your conscience,” she said. “She may not like it.” But she did not move away.

“My conscience is getting on fine,” he said. “How’s yours?”

She laughed, one of those quick laughs whose echo always lingered in his memory.

“A girl doesn’t need one, usually, as long as she deals with facts,” she said, “and maybe you’re beginning to be a fact. I sort of hope you are.”

“I hope so, too,” he said, “but maybe we’d both know better if you’d let me kiss you.”

“That’s a silly thing to say,” she said. “You know very well I will. So stop talking and go ahead and do it.”

One thing about Rhoda had always been that her frankness never spoiled anything. It did not spoil anything to know that he had done what she had been expecting, and that she had wanted him to do it.

“I’ve got on violet talcum powder,” she said. “I’m glad it didn’t make you sneeze.”

“It didn’t,” he said.

“Well, dust it off your shoulder,” she said, “it gets all over everything, doesn’t it? I wish I had some French perfume.”

“I’ll get you some,” he said.

“That would be nice,” she said, “if I could think of some way of using it so Mother wouldn’t notice, because I’m afraid she’d guess where it came from. Mother’s quick about things, sometimes, when she gets her mind off Baltimore.”

“Maybe I can find you some scentless perfume,” he said. “It’ll be in a clear, crystal bottle labeled ‘Hide and Seek’ or else ‘Camouflage.’ ‘Camouflage’ would be a better name, considering it’s French.”

“It’s hard for me to tell whether you’re ever serious,” she said, “because you’re always joking.”

“It’s a coincidence,” he said. “I’m pretty serious most of the time.”

“I wish I knew,” she said. “Is it true this new play is about all these things, or are you just making it up?”

“No, I’m not making it up,” he said.

“Do you think,” she said, and looked at him almost shyly, “anyone will give you another thousand dollars for a play like that?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “They may pay a lot more, if the first one goes all right.”

“I know you wouldn’t be surprised,” she said, “but still do you honestly think anybody will understand it?”

“Maybe,” he said. “I’ve shown the first part of it to Mort Sullivan, and he says it ought to act, and they’re looking around right now for fantasy.”

“Who’s Mort Sullivan?” she asked.

“My dramatic agent,” he said. “I used to work for him before I started writing plays.”

“Gosh,” she said, “I didn’t know you had a dramatic agent. When you get that Ford, we can go to the beach, and there’s a roller-skating pavilion there.”

“I can’t wait to roller-skate,” he said.

“Oh, don’t,” she said, and suddenly her voice broke. “Don’t keep on being funny, because—” her voice broke again—“it isn’t, for me. It isn’t funny at all.”

“Why, Rhoda,” he said, “I didn’t mean—”

But she spoke again before he had finished.

“Then kiss me and be serious,” she said. “I’ve got to get out of this. I want to be where I can use French perfume, and I don’t want it called ‘Camouflage.’ I don’t want anything to be camouflage. Oh, Tom, I’m so afraid I won’t.”

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m not joking, Rhoda.”

“I won’t be, if you don’t go away,” she said. “You’re the only person I’ve ever seen who—who—”

He waited, but she did not go on.

“Who what?” he asked.

“I don’t have to tell you what,” she said. “You know very well. Now kiss me good night again. I want to be asleep before Mother comes back, and I’ll see you again at the cemetery tomorrow at the same tombstone. Good night, Monte Cristo.”

“Why not be informal,” he said, “and simply call me ‘Monte.’ I honestly wouldn’t mind.”

“Don’t,” she said, “please. This honestly isn’t funny. But if you’d rather, I could call you ‘Count.’ Good night, Count—but I want to brush that talcum powder off you. That aunt of yours might not like it. Stand still where the light strikes you. You’re dreadfully handsome, Count.”

Without anything having been said specifically, nothing more was necessary. As an older generation would have put it, the young people were interested in each other, but he never could agree with his Aunt Edith that Rhoda had thrown herself at him. The action had been simultaneous, and from the moment they had first seen each other, it was for better or for worse, and Rhoda had been right about the violet talcum powder.

His Aunt Edith was reading by the gas lamp in the front parlor when he returned to the Judge’s house.

“Tom,” she said, “I am not mistaken, am I, that you are covered with violet perfume?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I had dusted it off.”

“It does not matter,” she said, “the odor is not disagreeable. Did it come from that young girl on whom you were calling, Rhoda Browne?”

“Well, yes,” he said, “now you mention it, Aunt Edith.”

“I recognize that conventions have changed since I was young,” his aunt said. “It must mean, then, that she has been embracing you on the first night you called on her formally. I’m sorry if I disapprove.”

“I wouldn’t say that she was embracing me, Aunt Edith,” he said. “It would be more correct to say that I was embracing her.”

She sniffed and he, also, was aware of the scent of violets.

“It is what a gentlemen would say,” she said. “But your admission cannot conceal the fact that the young girl was willing to be embraced.”

She had put down her book and sat with folded hands, her ankles carefully crossed, though only partially visible beneath the hem of her long dress, in an attitude exactly like Rhoda’s when Rhoda had said that a girl always had to wait for someone to ask her.

“How do you know she consented?” he said. “Perhaps she resisted my advances.”

“No,” she said, “no. It would have been more correct if she had done so, but if she had, there would have been less perfume.”

“Well,” he said, “the Judge’s grandson doesn’t kiss and tell, Aunt Edith. Let’s say that a friendly embrace is almost conventional now among unmarried members of opposite sexes of a certain age. It doesn’t mean what it used to. In fact, it’s only a form of politeness.”

“I understand,” his aunt said. “I am glad that you have been polite, and I realize that things have changed greatly. Your father, for example, was a very impetuous man in what I might term an amorous way regarding my sister, your mother, after his automobile collided with the tree. But it was at least ten days before my sister and Mr. Harrow reached anything approaching what you seem to have arrived at much sooner. Yes, I know that times have changed.”

“It might have happened sooner, too, if my father hadn’t been hurt in the accident,” Tom said.

“That is true,” his aunt said. “He sustained a broken arm and a fractured collarbone. I had forgotten. This Browne girl, I suppose, must be pretty.”

“Yes,” he said, “I think she is, Aunt Edith.”

“I can understand that you might think so,” his aunt said. “What I should have said is that I hope she is pretty from the standpoint of my generation.”

“Yes,” he said. “I see what you mean. That’s just the way she is pretty. In fact, you might say she looks distinguished.”

His aunt sniffed again. “I am glad, although it hardly seems possible,” she said.

“Well, that’s the way it is,” he told her. “Her mother comes from Baltimore. She was a Miss Rhyelle.”

“It is strange,” his aunt said, “even when I was young, people of a certain sort always seemed to come from Baltimore. She’s not a Catholic, I hope. So many people are Catholics who come from Baltimore.”

“I didn’t see any sacred pictures on the wall,” Tom said, “but the Brownes may have sold their Fra Lippo Lippi’s.”

“The judge, your grandfather,” his aunt said, “prided himself on his religous tolerance. He associated on the bench with many Irish Catholics, some of whom were judges also. But the Judge was never in favor of a Protestant-Catholic marriage, although he always added, as I add, too, that this opionion was intended as no reflection upon the Church of Rome.”

“But, Aunt Edith,” he said, “I don’t think they’re Catholics, and because I have violet talcum on my coat doesn’t mean I’m going to marry Rhoda. I don’t have to make an honest woman of her on acount of it, do I?”

“There can be no reason for going to any such lengths immediately,” his aunt said, “since the acquaintance has been so brief, but you must understand that everyone is talking.”

All that surprised him was that everyone should have been talking already.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Mr. Gorman has said so, and so has Marie,” his aunt said. “You were seen together in the cemetery after the 6:30 motion pictures and again the next day, and this afternoon on the way back from the post office from the last mail, which contained a letter for you from New York in a young lady’s handwriting, you were seen waiting for several minutes outside the typing school.”

There were some places where you never could get away with anything, and he was glad that never in all their association had he attempted to conceal anything from his aunt.

“It looks as though you have me dead to rights,” he said. “Yes, we have been meeting in the cemetery.”

“I’m glad to know,” his aunt said, “that cemeteries can serve a dual purpose, but I think perhaps I should go and call on Mrs. Browne myself if things have gone so far.”

“But Aunt Edith,” he said, “things haven’t gone anywhere.” And the strange thing was that, when he told her, he believed it. He should have realized that what was nowhere in New York was far in some places.

“Don’t let us labor the point,” his aunt said. “The Judge, your grandfather, taught me as a young girl about weighing circumstantial evidence.”

“Listen, Aunt Edith,” he said, “I only kissed her. That’s all the circumstantial evidence. That and the cemetery.”

His aunt shook her head.

“I still think I shall call on Mrs. Browne,” she said. “It will look better in the eyes of everyone and will be fairer to Miss Browne since things have gone so far.”

It was only fair to admit that his Aunt Edith had been correct. Things had already gone so far that they would never be the same again, so far that the lines of success and failure were drawn in his career already. It was not too late for escape, but even if he could have looked into the future, seen himself as he was, alone and taking another drink to escape from the present, he still would not have changed a line. There had never been, and there would never be again, anyone in the world like Rhoda Browne.