XVI

Life and Love Moved Faster Then

Though trite, the remark was still significant, that the happiest time in a man’s or a nation’s life occurs usually during those periods in which no historian can think of much on which to comment. He had not intended, before he met Rhoda Browne, to spend his summer out of New York while writing his play, Little Liar. But the happiest things in life often occurred by accident. Nothing that came to him later in professional and other ways could compare with the days he spent that summer; but he could recall very little about that time that was definite. He could remember only a few of the things he had said to Rhoda Browne and not much about the hours they had spent together, for these had finally fallen into a sequence. But at the same time, he had never worked so hard. If the fantasy Little Liar were finally to give him a place, as many reviewers agreed, in future histories of drama, he could thank Rhoda. The best in art was born only of incentive, which might be fear, hunger, jealousy or cupidity, but the incentive that made him spend hours on Little Liar that summer was solely the drive to show Rhoda that he could earn another cash advance. He had often wished that he could turn the clock back and experience again the drives that had urged him, but drives, he now knew, intensify and diminish, but could never repeat. There was nothing again like the period when he had worked on Little Liar, never the same anguish or ecstasy, or sense of living, or the same total competence. A woman seldom understood that a man’s work always existed in a world beyond her own, but there was no doubt that Rhoda showed interest in those days.

“Do you think they are going to give you another thousand dollars?” she asked. “I love it, when you read it to me, but maybe that’s only because I love you.”

“Rhoda,” he told her, “let’s leave ourselves out. Essentially it’s a good play.”

“I don’t see how we can leave ourselves out,” Rhoda said, “when we need more money if Mother and Pa are going to let us get married.”

Although he had faced the fact of marriage many times when he had been working on Little Liar, the word still sent a shiver of finality up his spine.

“All right,” he said, “if your father’s making so much in his Ford agency, you can go and marry a millionnaire.”

“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I want you. I think you’re going to do better than Father, honestly I do.”

Aside from Rhoda and Little Liar, he had other things on his mind, including a constant correspondence with the Higgins office. It had finally been decided that Hero’s Return was to be put into rehearsal toward the middle of September.

This meant that he, being the author, should return to New York the first of September for the casting, and thus the time for finishing Little Liar was briefer than he had thought.

When he received this communication from the Higgins office, it was the end of July and he was not satisfied with Little Liar yet. A difficulty with any play was that no one connected with it was ever finally satisfied. In any drama there was always a well-constructed turning point, but in life you were always too involved in living to make a successful analysis. Now he could see that he had still had command of the situation when the news reached him that his play would go into rehearsal. The sensible thing to do was to pack up and go to New York to finish Little Liar without any further interruptions. If he had wanted to, he could have left that morning, simply sending a note to Rhoda. Would he have missed her in New York, enmeshed in the novelty that faced him there? He might have temporarily, although the chances were that he would never have married Rhoda Browne; but when he was actually living through that period of decision, the possibility never occurred to him. No one in love could be a cynic, and he was in love with Rhoda, and consequently without the capability of judgment. He was beguiled, and he never blamed himself.

He had developed a habit that summer of parking his Ford roadster on Dock Street opposite the typing school, knowing very well that concealment was impossible. He sat waiting for her that afternoon after the news came, mentally revising some of the final speeches of Little Liar, oblivious of the people and the sounds on Dock Street. He was happy without knowing that he had been happy until years later. In his preoccupation with his last lines, he was not conscious of contentment until he saw Rhoda walk out of the old brick building whose second floor housed the typing school. They each expected the other and each took it for granted that the other would be there. She was wearing a plain cotton print dress and she was carrying her shorthand notebook. As she had often told him, she never did care how she looked at typing school, and now that her father was making enough money to give her a dress allowance, she was not going to spend it on looking nice when she was learning things like shorthand and double entry bookkeeping. But her intentions made no difference. She could not change the radiance of her hair or the grace of her walk, nor could she conceal her pleasure that he should have been waiting patiently for her there.

“I’m glad you’ve put the top down,” she said. “Let’s go for quite a long ride, shall we?”

“All right,” he said.

“I’m tired,” she said. “It was an awful bore up there today doing speed tests. Every girl should learn to support herself if necessary, but I don’t want anybody to tell me so again.”

“I won’t,” he said. “I don’t want you to support yourself.”

“Well, just keep thinking along those lines,” she said. “How are you doing with the play?”

“It’s all there,” he said, “but it needs some going over.”

“You keep fussing with it,” she said. “Maybe you’re doing it too much.”

“There are one or two things that I want to make better,” he said, “but the main part of the fussing is over.”

“It makes me nervous the way you keep going over it,” she said. “I don’t believe anything you’re doing will affect it now. Why don’t you send it the way it is, and start on something new?”

“So I’ll get another advance, you mean?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s what I mean. You ought to keep doing it without wasting so much time. You said you could do four of them a year. I’ll bet if you put your mind on it, you could do six.”

“I don’t seem to be able to explain,” he said, “that I’m not selling these plays for a thousand dollars. That is the advance they are giving me against royalties.”

“Well, it’s something, anyway,” Rhoda said.

“But the point is,” he said, “as I’ve told you, if the play’s a success, I may get a good deal more.”

“But you can’t tell,” Rhoda said. “I still think what you have now is the point.”

“You’re a funny girl,” he said. “An awfully funny girl.”

“I don’t feel so funny,” she said. “How much money have you got in your pocket right now? Is it quite a lot?”

“Quite,” he said, “comparatively speaking. I think a little over fifty dollars.”

“You think? Don’t you know?” she asked.

“Not down to the last nickel,” he said. “Would you like me to stop and count it?”

“No,” she said, “but as long as you have fifty dollars, why don’t you take me to a roadhouse somewhere and get me some dinner and a bootleg cocktail? I’ve never been to a roadhouse.”

“I don’t know whether there are any around here,” he said.

“There must be some,” she said. “We saw one in the movie last night, that part of the double feature called She Stoops to Folly—I mean that place where there was a dance floor, and there were drinks and waiters and sizzling steaks. You remember that roadhouse, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, “vaguely.”

“Vaguely,” she repeated. “Why is it you always keep remembering things vaguely?”

“I must have been thinking how to get another advance,” he said. “The picture didn’t hold me.”

“Maybe because you were holding me,” Rhoda said, and she giggled, “but there must be some sort of roadhouse.”

“You mustn’t believe everything you see at the pictures,” he said.

“That’s what you keep saying,” she answered, “but it seems to me a lot of the things I see are coming true. You look better than Douglas Fairbanks, in a different way.”

“And you look better than Pickford,” he said. “Besides you’re my sweetheart, not America’s sweetheart.”

“Maybe it would be better to be America’s sweetheart,” she said. “Why not ask somebody at a filling station where a roadhouse is?”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll ask.”

The place they went to was called the Kozy Kottage Diner. He could remember the uncomfortable booth, the man in the spotted tuxedo playing the piano and the violent taste of the gin and ginger ale at one dollar a drink.

“Gosh,” Rhoda said, “so this is really it? This must be like New York.”

“Don’t drink too fast,” he said, “or you may go blind. This isn’t a roadhouse; this is called a ‘speak-easy.’ They have bigger, better and busier ones in New York. Why, there’s one where writers go in the afternoon, where if the police make a raid, they can press a button and they can have the bar go right back into the wall. And anyway, there are always people in the front room just waiting to get arrested. They’re paid to get arrested.”

“You remember queer things,” she said. “I can’t imagine being interested in a lot of poor people sitting around waiting to get arrested.”

“I suppose it’s how you look at it,” he said. “I like to imagine what they’re thinking while they’re waiting. It could almost be an opening scene for something. They have broken noses and wear dinner clothes so the police can pick them from the regular patrons. And that reminds me, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I got a letter this morning saying that the play’s going into rehearsal in September, and they’ll be casting it before that. I’ve got to think about getting back to New York.”

Her lips trembled and her hands shook as she endeavored to pick up her gin and ginger ale in a sophisticated manner.

“Well, you’re not going to go to New York and associate with a lot of actors and actresses and chorus girls unless I go with you,” she said. “How soon are you going?”

“I don’t see how it can be arranged very well for you to go with me,” he said. “I’ll come right back as soon as the play starts going.”

She shook her head.

“They never come back in the movies,” she said, “when they go to the city and leave the small-town girl. Anyway, I won’t take a chance. I’ll go with you. You don’t think I’m going to let you go, do you?”

She always made him laugh at unexpected moments.

“You needn’t laugh,” she said, “I’ll never have a chance at anyone like you again. All right, you’ve got to marry me.”

“But I can’t, Rhoda,” he told her, “until I know whether I have enough money to support a wife.”

He could still remember the exact tune being beaten out on the piano. It was “Smiles,” not quite so dated then as it was at present.

“I know,” she said. “It’s awfully dangerous, but I’ve got to take a chance, that’s all. I can’t let you go without me. What are you laughing at?”

“Only smiling,” he said. “There are smiles that make me happy. I never thought you’d propose to me in quite this way. All right, I’ll take a chance if you will.”

“All right,” she said. “You’d better tell Mother and Pa tonight, even if we have to wake them up, and we’ll go to Niagara Falls.”

“Niagara Falls?” he repeated. “Why Niagara Falls?”

“Because it’s where people go to get used to each other.”

“Not necessarily,” he said.

“Well, anyway,” she told him, “I’ve always dreamed of going to Niagara Falls. Is it expensive at Niagara Falls?”

He never had occasion to go to Niagara Falls again, nor had he afterwards any desire because he knew that he would suffer disappointment if anything had changed, and doubtless everything had, including the Falls themselves. He did not care to be introduced to the new Niagara Falls. He wanted the old Niagara of September 1928, where he and Rhoda spent those fleeting days, after their single night at the Wellington Manor House—before it became necessary to go back to New York in order to sit in the Higgins office listening to people reading parts for Hero’s Return. The Falls of that vintage had been packed long ago among the flatcars of the great caravan of change, and now were locked forever in time’s warehouse.

Was the Romanesque red brick depot still standing, he wondered, with its colored porters grown kindly from consistent encounters with happy young couples who had all of life ahead of them and who seldom cared about the cost of things? Were the souvenir shops still carrying on, that had once made Rhoda gasp with wonder at their machine-made moccasins and tomahawks? He still could not understand why Rhoda had immediately wanted him to purchase a pair of moccasins with a picture of the Falls upon them, American side. And what about the Canadian side, that swift transition from American to foreign soil, with customs and immigration inspectors?

“Do you know what I think?” Rhoda had said. “I don’t believe that customs man thought we are married.”

“He was only looking for liquor,” he told her, “not making a moral research.”

“Well, it’s lucky he wasn’t making an immoral research,” Rhoda said, “or he might have found the pint.”

“No, he wouldn’t have, he said. “American officials seldom molest American women.”

“There might have been a matron,” she said. “They have them in the movies.”

“Not for a pint of Scotch,” he said. “Only to break up rings of diamond smugglers.”

“Will you get me some diamonds that I can smuggle sometime?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “of course. It wouldn’t look right if I didn’t.”

“That’s one nice thing about being married,” she said. “All sorts of things all at once look right,” and she laughed. “All the things I’ve always been told a nice girl shouldn’t do suddenly look right—I mean, as long as people know we’re married—as long as I have a wedding ring. It’s a whole new sort of life.”

“Maybe anyone’s life is,” he said, “when he’s suffering from euphoria.”

“I wish you wouldn’t use long words,” she said, “and you mustn’t use up all your father’s money, and maybe we ought not to keep walking across that bridge so you can have a drink.”

“It’s like marriage,” he said. “It’s all right to drink in Canada.”

Was Goat Island still there, with the swirling eddies of water and the conclusive roar of the Falls behind it? He had heard of second honeymoons, but he would never have dreamed of returning there for such a purpose. He never thought as he stood by Rhoda, watching in a stupefied way that constant swirl of water, that they were both about to go over the falls of change.

“I wish you wouldn’t keep tipping the headwaiter a dollar,” Rhoda said, “every time we have dinner in the main dining room. There’s no use our acting richer than we are.”

Could you still hear the Falls at night from the third-floor suite of the Iroquois—which he had insisted on taking because he had never previously occupied a hotel suite—always provided the Iroquois House still existed? Doubtless the sound of the Falls was there, but it would be drumming a different tune from the one he and Rhoda had heard in the middle of the night.

“It makes me feel as though I had never paid attention to anything before,” she told him once, “and the noise is trying to tell us something, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, “it’s trying.”

“But we don’t know what.” She shivered when she said it. “I hate not knowing. I always hate to guess.”

“Everything’s trying to tell you something, and no one ever quite understands what,” he said. “That’s why no one can ever be sure of anything.”

“Well, I’m sure of one thing,” she said. “I’m happy right now. I never dreamed I could be so happy.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s something, and the same goes with me, in case you want to know.”

“You’re happy in a different way,” she said. “You can’t be as happy as I am because everything isn’t so new.”

“You’re new,” he said. “You always will be.”

He had never made a truer remark. Every time he had ever seen her, there had never been the repetitions that threw most human relationships into lines of boredom. There was always something different with her in the same way that the month of May was different every year, in spite of how well you thought you knew it.

“There’s another thing I’m sure of,” he said. “I love you. Do you love me? You’re like a water nymph,” he said. “I keep thinking if I chase you, you may turn into a tree.”

“You do think of the dumbest things,” she said, “and don’t you worry, I’m not going to turn into a tree or anything and I don’t think water nymphs ever do. I’m going to be right around where you can take care of me. Of course I love you. Why shouldn’t I?”

“All right,” he said, “why should you?”

“Don’t be dumb,” she said. “Look at yourself in the mirror. Cinderella was grateful to the Prince when he chased after her with a slipper, and you’re a prince—in a nice way. I mean. There’s only one thing I worry about. I don’t want to go back to mice and pumpkins. Please don’t do something so that I have to go back. Please don’t let the clock strike twelve.”

“All right, I won’t,” he said.

“Maybe you can’t stop it,” she said. “Maybe you won’t be able to think up ideas all the time. Please keep trying to think up good ideas.”

“How do you know they’re good when you say you can’t understand them?” he asked her.

“When I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, “I know you’re being a genius. Whenever I get to understand what you’re saying without thinking it over twice, it shows you’re losing your grip.”

“Well,” he said, “I love you. There’s nothing subtle about that, is there?”

“Of course there is,” she said. “I don’t see how I was lucky enough to find you. Gosh, I’m a lucky girl.”

“At the moment,” he said.

“Don’t start saying things like that,” she said. “It’s got to be a permanent moment.”

“It sounded permanent when I said those things in church, and I meant them, Rhoda.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “you’ve got me and I’ve got you, and now what? You never seem to want to keep your mind on the now what.”

“But I’ve told you, I don’t know what,” he said, “so I can’t put my mind on it.”

“I don’t mean the big what,” she said, “I mean the little whats. What are we going to do when we get to New York? That’s what I mean. Where are we going to live?”

“In a hotel, I guess,” he said, “some low-priced one.”

“Just a cheap hotel,” she said, “and not go apartment hunting, the way they do in books? I want an apartment with a very soft, gray carpet in the bedroom and a chaise longue, and a dressing table with flounces.”

“But we don’t know what kind of apartment,” he said, “or what I can afford. I won’t know until we see what happens to the play.”

She was silent and their thought were lost in the roar of Niagara.

“All right,” she said, “maybe I was crazy to marry you, but I still think I was right.”

“That’s nice to know,” he said.

“Oh, darling, I didn’t mean it in that way at all,” she said. “Being right has nothing to do with loving someone, and I fell in love with you right away, and being in love and common sense don’t mix; but a girl has to make them go together. It’s difficult being a girl, darling. I’ve told you and I’ve told you, she has to take a chance on something, and she doesn’t have too many chances.”

“All right, you put your bet down,” he said.

“I know the way it must sound to you,” she said, “but please don’t forget I’m in love with you.”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll hold that thought.”

“Darling, I do really love you, but I’ll tell you one thing, I won’t have a baby in a hotel.”

“People don’t as a rule,” he said, “they usually have them in hospitals.”

“Don’t laugh,” she said, “please, because I’d like to have a baby, and it could happen, couldn’t it?”

“It might very well,” he said. “I shouldn’t want to bet on its not.”

“Well, then, I know what I’ll do,” she said. “When we get to New York, I’ll start looking at all the very best apartments, duplexes with swimming pools and things like that, just in case we might be able to afford one.”

“All right,” he said, “it wouldn’t hurt to look.”

The time had not yet arrived when Arthur Higgins was customarily called old-fashioned by a younger Broadway generation, and he doubtless did end by being overcareful and conventional; but up to his last days, when he had attempted to the utmost of his ability to turn Emily into an actress, Tom had still looked on Arthur Higgins as the best producer he had ever known. Customarily, authors quarreled with producers, accusing them of rapaciousness and of cutting corners, and at the best of times there were misunderstandings over contracts, but Tom had seldom been through such difficulties with Arthur Higgins. After all, producers had to come from somewhere; they had to have capital or to know where to find it. Some producers had risen from the ranks of vaudeville managers; others had started as stock promoters. Others had been actors who had saved their earnings; others had started as stage-struck playboys. They had only one thing in common—what they liked to call “love of the theatre.” You could take your pick of managers; some of them were stupid with a gambler’s flair for hits; some were ruthless; a lot were maladjusted; and most, like actors, were obliged to be egocentric.

Arthur Higgins, as far as Tom Harrow could remember, fell into none of these categories. It was true that he liked to hear the sound of his own voice and in later years he was garrulous, but he always had discerning taste, intelligence, a good education, and impeccable manners. He was a graduate of the Harvard Law School, and had been a junior partner in a large downtown firm, and had been commissioned a major in World War I. He had become interested in the theatre when he had married an English actress named Helen Adair, who had come to New York with a Shakespeare company; but he had not fallen in love with Miss Adair in a theatrical way. He had met her at a house party on Long Island, and had not discovered for several weeks that she was on the stage, and when he did, as he himself had said, he had never held it against her. Helen was one of the few actresses he had ever known who did not try to act, and he would sometimes add over the champagne at dinner, all Helen needed was to be herself. She made a convincing Ophelia without making the slightest effort to go crazy, and no one had a better speaking voice or a better judgment for a play script.

After marrying Helen Adair, his interest in the theatre had grown, but he was comfortably established in the law. He would doubtless have ended as a senior law partner if he had not acquired a client who was a playwright, Burton Millis, who had just finished The Last Long Walk, and had been unable to interest anyone in it. As Arthur had said once, himself, he had not cared much for the Millis play, which began with a meeting of a millionaire’s son with a taxi driver on the curb outside a nightclub. Helen had seen the lure of its improbabilities, and Arthur’s aunt, who had died at just that time, had left him a considerable legacy. It was Helen who got him interested in The Last Long Walk, and there must have always been another side to Arthur Higgins which he had never known existed until his wife brought it out.

“It was,” as Helen Adair used to say at the Higgins Sunday-night suppers, “right there in Arthur all the time, and he never knew it—his love of the theatre.”

When Tom called at the Higgins office one afternoon around the first of September, Arthur Higgins was easily one of the leading producers in New York, although there was a rumor that Mrs. Higgins made the decisions—but there were always such rumors. He had visited the outer office often in the past as an employee of the Sullivan agency, but this was different. The people seated in the waiting room, all trying to look happy and all assuming a nervous watchfulness only apparent in people applying for a theatre job, were waiting to try out for the play he had written; and the knowledge gave him a feeling of responsibility more than elation. He saw them wondering who he was, examining his clothes and his walk, and before he was halfway across the waiting room he knew they had already recognized that he was not a competitor. You were an actor or you weren’t, but neither did they know he was the author. This was the only time he had ever been able to wear the cloak of anonymity. The curious thing about the recollection was that he was piqued by the waiting room’s lack of recognition when he should have been grateful.

When the girl at the reception desk looked up, he saw that her eyes were coldly gray and her face and figure were coolly beautiful. She had been cast exactly for the part a girl must play at that reception desk, and she did not know who he was, either, because she was a new reception girl.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Higgins at three o’clock,” he said.

She looked at him studiously, as she had to when anyone tried to see Mr. Higgins.

“Oh,” she said, “then you must be Mr. Harrow. Do you know your way to Mr. Higgins’s office?”

“I’m afraid not,” he answered.

“I’ll show you,” she said. “I’m rather new here myself.”

She was trimly, freshly beautiful, but his interest was entirely impersonal. There had seldom been so much on his mind. It was only a great many years later that he could occasionally wonder what might have happened if he had not been married to Rhoda and in love with Rhoda—probably nothing, and any such afterthought was immature.

“I read a copy of Hero’s Return yesterday,” she said. Her voice had changed now that she had left the waiting room. “I thought it was swell, Mr. Harrow, not that everybody hasn’t told you that.”

“Why, thanks,” he said, “too many people can’t tell me that.”

“I never thought you’d be so young,” she said. “You look as young as photographs of Scott Fitzgerald.”

“Now you mention it,” he said, “I’ve seldom felt as juvenile as I do this afternoon. Is this the maestro’s office?”

“Yes,” she said, “it’s Mr. Higgins’s office.”

Her voice was formal again; she was turning the bronze knob of a dark oak door. That was the first time he had seen Nancy Mulford, which only went to show that it was futile to make an intelligent guess about futures. He never guessed that he would end by being more dependent on Nancy Mulford than on any woman he had ever known. He knew only years later that another preview of his life had been shown him, if he had had the sense or the interest to perceive its outlines.

“I’ll keep your hat if you’d like,” she said.

It was thoughtful of her and it reminded him that he was entering a great man’s presence.

“Thanks,” he said, “and my gloves.”

The gray gloves he was holding even in September had been partly a Broadway affectation and partly an imitation of his Uncle George.

“Mr. Higgins,” Nancy Mulford said, “this is Mr. Harrow.”

The office was Jacobean. Its heavy tables, tapestry-backed chairs, dark oak woodwork and some tapestries—generally bad ones depicting the rape of Europa or some less dramatic scene in ancient mythology—were considered appropriate then for an office in which the dramatic arts were discussed. If the setting ceased to impress him in later years, even to the point of appearing to him like a contrived arrogance, he was impressed that afternoon; and in memory he could never evade the feeling that he had been face to face with greatness. Arthur Higgins behind his dark oak table was always impressive, with his thin, patrician head, lighted by a diamond-leaded window to his left; and Miss Helen Adair—she had an actress’s reluctance to adopt her husband’s name—seated at one end of the table, gracious, beautiful in a Shakespearean satin gown, added to the impressiveness. As he crossed the length of the long room to clasp Arthur Higgins’s genially extended hand, he could imagine he was a squire in a castle about to pay his devoir to the lord and the chatelaine.

“Well, my boy,” Arthur Higgins said, “well met, if I may use part of a great quotation. Tom, I don’t believe you’ve met my wife, who is especially here for this happy occasion.”

“How do you do, sir,” he said. “It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Higgins.”

“Indeed yes,” she said. “Dear boy, call me Miss Adair and later Helen, when we come to know and love each other as I’m sure we shall.”

“Indeed yes, Miss Adair,” he said. He had not meant to say “indeed yes” but it was always a temptation to deal in resounding phrases in the Higgins office.

“The play, …” Miss Adair said. “I adored every word of it, and all its crisp perfection; and so did my lord and master, didn’t you, Arthur?”

Arthur Higgins gazed blandly through the Jacobean twilight, and then there was a faint flicker on his face, but not a smile.

“Indeed yes,” he said.

Tom understood after that that anyone was a fool who underrated Arthur Higgins, and you could never be sure exactly when he was laughing inside himself.

“I wonder how you hit on the theme,” Miss Adair said. “I suppose it came to you in a burst of inspiration, and the title captures it perfectly—Hero’s Return.”

“It sounds beautiful as you speak it, Miss Adair,” he said, and then he tried his best not to look at Mr. Higgins, but his curiosity was too great. “I got the title idea from Stevenson’s poem, of course.”

“Oh, yes,” Miss Adair said, “dear R.L.S. He did lay him down with a will.”

“We must find an actor,” Arthur Higgins said, “who can look like a soldier and talk like one, but I don’t want him What Price Glory?—this isn’t Stallings. I am thinking especially of the new boy, Albert Briggs. We’d better get him in to read, don’t you think so, darling?”

“Yes,” Miss Adair said, “although I love to talk to Mr. Harrow, dear. He’s so much more literate than I thought he would be.”

“It’s a literate play,” Arthur Higgins said, “and I think it’s an acting play, and you don’t so often get those two together, but there’s one thing I think you ought to cut, an incongruity in my opinion, but we need not mention it now.”

That was what they always did. They led up to it gradually, putting you off your guard by intelligent praise before they delivered the punch, but he was not aware of the technique then.

“What incongruity?” he asked.

“Where he sings that song,” Arthur Higgins said. “In a mood of deep seriousness that verges upon tragedy, he suddenly sings a musical comedy lyric. It seems to me an inartistic clash of contrast. Don’t you agree with me, dear?”

“Yes,” Miss Adair said, “I am afraid perhaps I do.”

He was to learn that the Higginses always stuck together and that Arthur Higgins was constantly looking for incongruities, but it was not an incongruity. It was dramatic contrast and in its place more tragic than any serious line.

“You mean,” he said, “someday the nation will honor you, too, as it’s honored your dear old pop?”

“That’s it,” Mr. Higgins said, “incongruous.”

“Not if it’s done right,” he said. If he had not stood up for his lines then, he would have been like all the others who ended by letting Mr. and Mrs. Higgins write their plays for them. As it was, he was one of the very few who could argue with Arthur Higgins.

“I can see no right way of doing it,” Arthur Higgins said.

There was a pause, and Tom Harrow realized that a new tension had crept into the room.

“You see, it’s this way,” he said, “he’s been drinking. He comes on after the automobile smashup and they tell him the girl is dead, and he knows he’s a hell of a hero. Well, he sings it and does a dance step—that’s the way he reacts, that’s all.”

“Does a dance step?” Arthur Higgins said. “Oh, no, not a dance step.”

“Yes,” Tom Harrow said, “like a song and dance man. He says, ‘Oh, she’s dead, is she?’ And then he goes right into it. I could show you what I meant if I had a hat and cane.”

Arthur Higgins picked up the telephone beside him, an antiquated, upright instrument whose receiver hung on a hook, but there was no way of knowing then that it would grow antiquated.

“Ask Miss Mulford to bring in a walking stick and a hat right away,” he said. “I didn’t know you were an actor.”

Tom had never been an actor except for being able to illustrate a line. He still remembered the business with the hat and cane, and he had often done it afterwards—people would ask him sometimes at Palm Beach and Antibes if he would mind doing that song routine in Hero’s Return. Miss Mulford handed him his hat and Arthur Higgins’s malacca cane.

“Well, it goes like this,” he said. “‘Oh, she’s dead, is she?’—and he gives a double shuffle, and then he repeats it: ‘Oh, she’s, dead, is she? All right, strike up the band!

“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.”

How am I doing, pals?’ … That’s all, and it fits if you do it right.”

Tom saw his father’s face, and he could hear his father’s voice again in Jack’s. It was inexplicable, what details stuck in memory. He was not an actor, but he had given them the idea, and he knew they were with him.

“I’m sorry you haven’t had experience,” Arthur Higgins said. “I’d like to have you direct the play; but at any rate, I want you at rehearsals regularly. Miss Mulford, find that place in the script and give a copy to Mr. Briggs. Let him study it for ten minutes. Send in the first girl out there who’s been reading those speeches in the living room scene. We’ll do the juveniles first because we’ll need Miss Adair’s reaction.”

There was never any trouble for him in the Higgins office. He knew his way around there instinctively after that.

“Let’s see,” Mr. Higgins said. “Helen, my dear, haven’t we dinner for Wednesday night open? If we have, how would it be if Tom Harrow and his beautiful wife—she must be beautiful—dined with us, informally, en famille?”

“Indeed yes,” Miss Adair said. “Will you tell us where you are living so that I can call her myself and extend the invitation? And I also am sure she must be beautiful.”

“She is,” Tom Harrow said, “and I know she would love to come to dinner, Miss Adair.”

“If I call you Tom,” Miss Adair said, “you may call me Helen, and what, pray, is your wife’s first name?”

“It’s Rhoda,” he said.

“Rhoda,” she said. “I might wish that my mother had called me Rhoda. And where is it I may reach her, Tom?”

“At the Hotel Bulwer, on West Thirty-fourth Street.”

“Oh,” she said, “I’ve never heard of the Hotel Bulwer, but it is a resounding name.”

She stopped. A girl was coming in, young and frightened, holding a typed copy of the play, and Tom knew how she felt. The mantle of majesty had descended on him by then. He was the author, and it was his first experience.

“My dear,” Miss Adair said, “try doing that again.”

“Doing what?” the young girl asked.

“Walking in again,” Miss Adair said, “and this time, my dear, please walk, don’t amble. Why is it no American girls learn to walk? Don’t look startled, try it again, my dear.”

“You are reading the part of Alice in the script, I believe,” Mr. Higgins said. “I’ll give you Stanley’s lines. I start in the middle of page twenty, Act I, beginning, ‘Well, well, look who we’ve got here, not that I give a damn,’ and you take it on. No, not now. Get yourself ready and I’ll repeat, ‘Well, well, look who we’ve got here, not that I give a damn.’ …”

The girl must have come straight from the Drama League. Who had sent her around, he wondered? Had she been obliged to sleep with anyone to get the chance, or had she been calling at the office day after day? The byplay and the speculation interested him more than the lines, and years later the incident came back to him when he was writing All Ashore. Her face and voice for no good reason stood out from all the others. Her hopelessness was touching. Her wish to be on the stage was fading into nothing. Where had she come from, and who was she? It was his persistent curiosity that had given his work vitality and his interest in people and motives was still as keen as ever.

“Thank you, my dear,” Arthur Higgins said. “You’ll hear from us. Thank you very much.”

They were all silent until the dark oak door had closed.

“My God!” Helen Adair said. “Do you agree with me?”

“Indeed yes,” Arthur Higgins said, “especially since she impresses you, darling, in such a fashion. I hope you agree too, Tom.”

“Indeed yes,” Tom Harrow said.

“Look here,” Miss Adair said, “I begin to think you boys are making fun of me.”

“Indeed yes,” Arthur Higgins said, “I think perhaps Mr. Harrow is pulling your leg, my dear.”

“Only figuratively,” Tom Harrow said.

“Sometime when Arthur’s out,” Miss Adair said, “perhaps you’ll venture to try it another way. I knew as soon as I saw that script we’d all get on. Call for the next poor thing, Arthur. Arthur always insists on cleaning up the bit parts first. What was the name of that hotel?”

“The Bulwer,” he said, “on West Thirty-fourth Street.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “the Bulwer, and the name is Rhoda. Do you frequently pull Rhoda’s leg?”

“Well,” he said, “I try.”

“I think we’d better get the next girl,” Mr. Higgins said. “I don’t want you falling in love with another playwright this year. Next year, but not this year, darling.”