XX

To Put It Very Frankly, He Was Feeling Fine

His first play opened at the Empire, a large house for a play by an unknown. It was the name of Arthur Higgins that had filled it in the beginning, but when the Empire was finally closed, most newspapers mentioned Hero’s Return in their lists of outstanding plays that had been produced there, and his own name alone had always carried him after that. He was glad to remember that he had asked his Aunt Edith to the opening, and he was quite sure that he had not felt relieved when she had refused, saying that the journey would be too much for her. He had never regretted, either, that he had insisted that Rhoda ask her parents, although they were a further complication in the midst of the final hysteria.

“Darling,” Rhoda said, “I don’t want to hear about Baltimore right now. And whether it’s a boy or a girl, Mother will want it named Rhyelle.”

“It does fit either sex, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Don’t,” Rhoda said. “You always joke about things that are serious, and it always makes me feel unstable.”

“All right,” he said, “things may be tottering, but I don’t see what we can do to help it.”

“Well, it doesn’t help to get Mother and Pa right here in the Bulwer with us,” she said, “and you know Pa will expect you to pay for everything.”

“All right, Rhoda,” he said, “if the play’s a hit the bill won’t hurt me, and if it’s a flop it won’t make any difference.”

“Oh, Tom,” Rhoda said, “what are we going to do? Just answer me that—what can we possibly do?”

“Listen, Rhoda,” he said, “I’ve got a lot of more immediate things on my mind. Just remember that no matter what happens, everybody ends up by doing something.”

“Oh, my God,” Rhoda said. “We’ll even have to move out of the Bulwer.”

He never could grasp the exact meaning of Rhoda’s worries. He could not comprehend why Rhoda, who had never liked the Hotel Bulwer, began to clutch at it as a life preserver in the last days before the opening.

“That’s right,” he said, “no matter what happens, we’re going to get out of here.”

“Don’t laugh,” she said. “We may end up in a rooming house in Brooklyn or the Bronx or somewhere.”

“Not necessarily,” he said, “but if we do, we can hang the diapers on a fire escape, and I haven’t the remotest idea where we could hang them in the Plaza.”

“Don’t laugh about the baby, either,” she said. “As if everything wasn’t bad enough without it. I never dreamed, even for a single minute, that we’d begin having a baby in almost no time flat.”

“Well, anyway,” he said, “we’re not having it in minus no time flat.”

It was a relief to see that the set expression around her lips relaxed.

“I suppose I should have thought,” she said, “but then, it wasn’t all my fault.”

“Why don’t you admit you enjoyed it when you didn’t think?” he said. “I did, personally.”

She laughed. It had not been so difficult in those days to make her laugh.

“I’ve always liked the things I shouldn’t do,” she said.

“You should,” he said, “and anyway, you don’t look as though you’d done anything.”

“Don’t I at all?” she asked.

“Not the slightest,” he said.

“Well then, we won’t have to think about it yet,” she said, “and maybe we won’t have to tell Mother yet. I wish you hadn’t bought those clothes for me. Tom, have we any money in the bank?”

“Almost none,” he said. “But don’t worry, we’ll get some, Rhoda.”

“Besides,” she said, “these clothes won’t be any use for months and months.”

“They’re all right now,” he said. “You’ll look wonderful when the show opens.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “I wish I felt wonderful.”

He frequently wished the same thing for himself in those last few days, but he doubted if anyone ever had felt good before an opening in New York. In spite of the telegrams, the flowers, the reassuring speeches of confidence, the last hours had a quality that nothing could relieve. Having a baby was not wholly one’s own fault, but having a play was. He had never been as worried about Rhoda as he had been about the play. He must have begun to realize that Rhoda was less vulnerable than the play, and then there were the actors and the Higgins money. Everything was on his shoulders as everything always was before a Broadway opening.

“Well, well,” Mr. Browne said, “I never thought I’d have a real live playwright for a son-in law.

“You can’t tell how things are going to turn out, can you?” Tom answered. “I feel alive at the moment but I can’t say I feel real.”

“You look real, Tom dear,” Mrs. Browne said, “and very handsome in your tuxedo, and isn’t Rhoda lovely? I wish her grandfather could have seen her.”

“Yes,” he said, “she’s looking lovely.”

“And happy, too,” Mrs. Browne said.

“I’m not happy,” Rhoda said. “I’m absolutely sick with worry.”

“Well, anyway, you look happy, dear,” Mrs. Browne said, “and lovely, with the gardenia that Tom gave you—and thank you again for my gardenia, Tom. That’s the way a wife ought always to look—happy—and that’s why Tom looks so happy and cheerful, because you do, dear.”

“He isn’t,” Rhoda said. “He’s only pretending. People are always pretending around a theatre.”

“That’s right,” Tom said. “I’ve got to be going now. Here are the tickets. I’ll meet you at the theatre, Rhoda.”

“You mean you’re not going to have dinner with us, or anything?” Rhoda asked.

“I’ll eat afterwards,” he answered. “I’ve got to go to the Empire.”

“But you’ve just come back from there.”

An uneasiness that he never lost on future occasions had returned to him. He had never been able to eat on an opening night and there was always a conviction, stronger than any call of conscience, that he must be back at the theatre. His reason might tell him there was nothing further he could do, but his responsibility toward the players was closer than any family tie. It was hardly fair to call the theatre a dedicated life, when you knew how undedicated many of its greatest figures were—but when it called, you answered. You left wife and children and the real world, when it called.

“But Tom,” Rhoda said, “aren’t you going to be with me when the play begins? I can’t stand it by myself.”

Here was an example of the divided loyalty that had ruined nearly all his life. He never had been able to be two things at once or to develop the requisite split of personality, and neither had most of his contemporaries, but at least he had seldom been ruthless. He had been glad to give Rhoda anything unless the theatre intervened, and Rhoda had never understood that the theatre, not he, gave her everything.

“I’ll be with you,” he said. “I’ve got to see the show out front.”

He had to see the show out front. He had to get the feel of the audience, and nothing mattered but the show. Rhoda, on such nights afterwards, was pure abstraction, and he could not help it if she was jealous of the theatre. Sultans could make adjustments in a harem, but it was always hard to have two mistresses, even if one was only figurative, in New York.

“I’ll be with you before the curtain goes up,” he said, and he took his wallet from his pocket. He remembered that the wallet had looked juvenile, dating from his days in college and that it did not go well with his dinner coat which was almost new. He drew out two ten-dollar bills, his last large bills, but he handled them carelessly. He still could not regret that he had always handled money carelessly.

“Go somewhere and have a good dinner,” he said. “You tell her where, Mr. Browne, some very nice hotel. I’ll be with you at curtaintime.”

Then he kissed her. He remembered the scent of her hair and the scent of the gardenia. Her dress was beautiful and she did look very happy, although her hands were cold as ice.

If there was one thing he had learned in the course of his career, it was how to estimate an audience. As of the present, he could walk into a theatre before the house lights dimmed, and tell from the murmur of voices whether the audience would be intellectual or stupid in its mass reaction. One must never forget that an audience was as essential to any play as its lines. An audience, that variable cross-section of individuals of diverse attainments and backgrounds, must be collectively as well as individually intrigued, amused and educated, but education could be achieved only by subtle indirection. An audience could be shocked, but not too much; or frightened, but not too much; it could be charmed by whimsy, but not too much; it could be made to laugh, but it was worth remembering that people could not move indefinitely from one laugh to another. A good audience might have appreciation, but it was never constantly intellectual. Its attention in the mass was childish in its vacillation and it disliked holding a thought too long. If you lectured to it unduly, it would squirm and cough, and an audience never had to be polite since it had paid to be present and had a right to be critical of its investment. There was no wonder that everyone, down to the ushers in the aisle and the soft drink venders in the lobby, feared and respected any audience; but in the main, an everyday audience was predictable. It was only a first-night audience that was not. Attention constantly wandered. Distinguished individuals in the front rows could become more important than the actors or the lines, and a critic’s facial expression more intriguing than a love scene. Applause, though violent, was so lacking in validity that one could seldom honestly be sure what the score was until the papers with the reviews were on the street.

He was more conscious, when he found his seat beside Rhoda in the orchestra, than he had ever been before of the beat of voices and of a cruel undercurrent of curiosity. He remembered that Rhoda’s vivid interest had disturbed him, but, after all, she could not share his sentiments, and now that he had written a play he would never be amused by a first night again.

“Where’s Arthur Higgins?” Rhoda asked. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

“He’s at the back of the house somewhere,” he said. “He’s restless; he likes to move around.”

Curtaintime was deliberately late, but still near enough so that there was nothing more that anyone could do. Now and then the voices around him would move into definition, like voices in a stream of consciousness.

“The name of the man who wrote this play,” he heard someone behind him saying, “is Harrow, Thomas Harrow. I’ve never heard of him, have you?”

“No,” he heard someone else answer, “but Arthur always has a penchant for young men.”

“In what way do you mean?” the first voice asked.

There was an interval of quiet laughter, a bit of dialogue which was typically first-night.

“Do you want to move around with Arthur Higgins?” Rhoda asked.

“No,” he said, “I’d rather take it here beside you, darling.”

“I think it’s fun seeing everybody,” Rhoda said. “It’s much more exciting than Wilmington. There are so many more people with jewelry and everything, and lots of them must be really rich. I don’t see what you mean about taking it. You ought not to be acting as though you were going to the dentist.”

A dental chair and a first night were not so far apart except that on a first night there was never any novocaine. There was nothing to relieve the reality of complete exposure.

“Where are the critics?” Rhoda asked.

“Don’t shout,” he said. “They’re ahead of us in the aisle seats so they can rush out quickly to write the good news.”

“Is that one over there a critic?” Rhoda asked. “If he is, he can’t be very good, because his shirt is dirty and his coat isn’t pressed.”

“Linen is no criterion,” he said.

“Darling,” Rhoda said, “you ought to be excited. It’s all your party, isn’t it?”

“Christ, yes,” he said.

“Don’t say that,” she said, “you’ll shock Mother.”

“All right,” he said, “I wish it weren’t my party.”

“Don’t say that, either,” she said. “It’s the first time I’ve really liked anything since I saw Niagara Falls.”

“Baby,” he said, “we’re going over it now in a barrel.”

“Don’t mention baby, either,” she said. “You ought to be dreadfully proud.”

“Jesus,” he said.

“Don’t say that, darling,” she told him. “Mother’s right beside you. Aren’t you excited at all?”

“Yes,” he said, “hold tight to the inside of the barrel.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “What barrel?”

“Any barrel,” he said, “and we’re inside it, not outside it.”

“Darling,” she said, “think of all these people coming to see your play. I wish I’d written it.”

“All right,” he said, “you can do the next one. I’d rather have a baby.”

“Don’t keep saying ‘baby,’” she said, “just when I start feeling happy. Oh, my God, Tom, what are we going to do if all these people don’t like it?”

“It’s companionate of you to get around to that point,” he said.

“Anyway,” she said, “of course they’re going to like it. Please don’t get me frightened, Tom.”

He held her hand and it was still cold as ice.

“Look,” he said, “there could be a lot worse things than this, Rhoda.”

He did not believe what he was saying. There could be death, destruction and ruin—but nothing could be worse than the first night of one’s first play on Broadway.

There were some writers he knew with such a resilient enthusiasm and with such poignant narcissism that they never seemingly tired of any line they had written. Unfortunately he had always found that once he was finished with anything, he was finished. He could polish and revise, but there eventually came a point when perspective would depart, and when finally every word would be stale and distasteful. When he heard the opening speeches of his play that night, his anxiety grew because of his deathly weariness at their repetition. He knew by heart each lilt of voice, each gesture, but his uneasiness was worse between the acts.

“Wouldn’t you like to walk outside and listen to what people are saying?” Rhoda asked, when the first act ended.

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t make any difference what they’re saying.”

That was correct. A play was done when it opened and curiosity regarding its reception was fruitless.

“Tom,” she asked him, “do you think it’s terrible?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t do any good to be frightened.”

But he could feel a cold paralysis of a theatrical fear that was different from any other in its physical and mental elements. It was more than fear of failure or disgrace. There were minglings of self-pity and dread of the future, and he had never subsequently been able to analyze the mixture.

“They seem to be listening, don’t they?” she said. “And I haven’t heard anybody cough.”

He did not answer and she tugged at his sleeve.

“Tom,” she whispered, “what’s the matter?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have taken a chance on me,” he said.

“Tom,” she said, and her voice broke, “don’t say that. When are we going to know?”

“When the reviews come out,” he said. “When we see the New York Times. We’ll have to go to Arthur Higgins’s party and just wait.”

“Oh,” she said. “All we do is wait and wait.”

His nerves were on edge.

“Stop being a goddam little bellyacher,” he whispered. “I’m the one who’s taking the beating, not you.”

“No,” she said, “me too.”

He never had any adequate recollection of the performance as a whole, except that it had seemed ragged. The actors were uncertain of their timing, and seemed out of touch with the audience from start to finish, and in the third act Delia Duneen dropped two lines, and, even though Briggs improvised, the sequence was meaningless. The parts that he thought had depth and poetry only grated on his nerves. When the applause grew louder and the laughter sounded more natural, he listened in disbelief. He already knew that the stage had its own rules of behavior, one of which was to applaud excessively when a first-night curtain fell. He left Rhoda and Mrs. Browne as soon as the applause started, and reached the indescribable plainness and disorder of backstage which was to be part of his life. He stood for a minute in the wings watching the cast change order each time the curtain fell. There was a gloomy dusk in the wings created by the glare of the footlights, and an ugly businesslike reality that counteracted the unrealities of the stage set. He did not realize that Arthur Higgins was standing beside him until he heard his voice.

“It may be genuine applause,” Arthur Higgins said. “This has gone on two minutes longer than is conventionally necessary, and it still keeps up. Did you like the performance, Tom?”

“I couldn’t follow it,” he answered.

“Listen to the hand Briggs and Duneen are getting,” Arthur said. “It is more than is absolutely necessary. George—”

Then he saw that George Rosen, the assistant stage manager, was with them.

“George, tell Duneen to go out alone.”

It was instructive to watch Arthur Higgins gauge the reaction without excitement or emotion.

“They are sometimes kind to a new face,” Arthur said, “but this may mean more. It isn’t dying down. George, keep the curtain down ten seconds longer, and if it keeps up, send out Briggs.”

When the curtain was down the sound from the house was deadened, but the applause was still insistent.

“All right,” Arthur Higgins said, “send it up again. This really is longer than is conventional. It’s always very tricky; you never can be sure.”

His voice was drowned out as the curtain rose.

“It’s a smash hit, Mr. Higgins,” George Rosen said. “Listen to the lovely hand they’re giving Mr. Briggs.”

George Rosen was a young man then, with a great future ahead of him, and he was now out on the Coast—where, if he had wanted, he could have bought the rights of Porthos of Paris—but he had been assistant stage manager, then.

“You can’t trust them,” Arthur said. “When those people get in the right mood of mass hysteria, they will applaud their grandmother’s funeral. They may think better of it in the morning.”

“But still, sir,” George Rosen said, “they are going for Mr. Briggs in a very big way.”

“Yes,” Arthur said, “but the reviews will tell better. Send the curtain down, George, and tell Briggs and Duneen to go out and kiss each other lightly and then we’ll send it down for good. Nothing resembling a clinch, George. Sex must not enter into it, you understand, now the show is over.”

“It might be a lovely touch,” George said, “if you and Mr. Harrow, Mr. Higgins, went out to take a bow.”

“Never make such a suggestion again,” Arthur Higgins said. “If they saw Mr. Harrow and me, they wouldn’t believe the play. Excuse me, Tom, nothing personal intended.”

They were still applauding when the curtain rose on the chaste embrace.

“I think I can honestly detect an undertone of enthusiasm,” Arthur Higgins said. “Tom, would you like to go out alone? The new playwright—it won’t hurt, if the reviews are good.”

“No,” he said, “it’s bad enough right here.”

“You’re being debonair,” Arthur said. It was still difficult to hear him in the wings.

“The hardest trick is to be debonair when you take it on the chin,” Arthur Higgins said. “Keep the curtain down, George, and dim the footlights. Put on all lights on stage. Bring on the cast, and go and kiss Duneen, Tom, and tell her she was wonderful. Shake hands with Briggs, in a very manly way, and then kiss the other girls. Don’t kiss them too hard because you’ll have to do it all over again at the apartment. Yes, on the whole it might be wise to hoard the osculation, Tom.”

Tom wished that at the In Memoriam meeting held for Arthur Higgins he had remembered to quote that bit. He had said only that Arthur was the greatest trouper he had ever known, and who wasn’t the greatest known trouper when he died?

“You are all over queer perfume,” Rhoda said. She made the remark in the taxi when they were on the way with his family-in-law to Arthur Higgins’s apartment.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s mostly Duneen, I think. Arthur made me kiss them all. It’s etiquette.”

“I’d just as soon you didn’t kiss Duneen too often,” Rhoda said. “She’s too pretty for her own good.”

Now that the play was over, he was able to think of Rhoda and of how she would adjust herself to everything.

“I do think Miss Duneen is lovely,” Mrs. Browne said, “with fine features, but she is not distinguée. She has not the patrician look.”

“Yes,” he said, “you’re very right”—and he noticed that his voice had assumed the inflections of Arthur Higgins—“she isn’t and Rhoda is. The thought crossed my mind the first moment I saw her.”

He was glad to hear Rhoda laugh.

“Don’t you believe him, Mother,” she said. “It didn’t cross his mind at first that you came from Baltimore.”

“I’m sure it crossed his mind that you were a lady, dear,” Mrs. Browne said.

“There used to be a race-track man down in Maryland I used to know,” Mr. Browne said, “who once said he could always guess the blood lines from looking at a filly.”

“Hudson,” Mrs. Browne said. “What are you giggling at, dear? I don’t think your father’s very funny.”

“I’m nervous, Mother,” Rhoda said. “I can’t help it until I know what’s happened to the play.”

“What’s happened, dear?” Mrs. Browne said. “Why, it was marvelous from start to finish, and everyone clapped and clapped except some men in the row in front of us who left in a very rude way right in the middle of everything.”

“Mother,” Rhoda said, and the weary patience of her voice showed how quickly she could move to another way of life, “those were the critics. They had to leave to meet their deadline.”

“I still think they might have done it more politely,” Mrs. Browne said. “Everything was perfectly lovely. I’ll never forget how everyone else clapped.”

“I know, Mother,” Rhoda said, “but applause doesn’t mean anything on a first night, and I’m not sure the play or the audience became alive.”

Rhoda never forgot words or phrases; she was quoting Arthur Higgins.

“Why Rhoda, it was magnificent,” Mrs. Browne said. “Wasn’t it wonderful, Hudson?”

“Yes, Estelle,” Mr. Browne said, “it was a hundred per cent, and I don’t think we’ve thanked Tom enough for asking us down to see it. It’s the finest time I’ve had in years.”

He was glad that he had asked the Brownes and that at least someone had derived some happiness from the ordeal.

“There’s only one thing …” Mr. Browne said.

“You’re the one who always picks holes, Hudson,” Mrs. Browne said. “What thing?”

“I didn’t know Rhoda would marry a famous man,” Mr. Browne said. “It’s going to be tough for me to get on with a famous man.”

It was easy enough to laugh, and to suggest that they wait to see the papers, but at the same time the house at Daytona Beach might have been much farther inland if it had not been for that remark of Mr. Browne’s.

That ride in the dark uptown on Park Avenue, past the glittering windows of the apartment buildings, was a last link between a past and a future that he was hardly beginning to discern. He was approaching a set of values unknown to him except in an academic way, and no one in the world could explain any human value academically. It was not Rhoda’s fault that she had failed to grasp that future in the same way that he had. He was leading and she was following. Besides, no two people ever reacted in the same manner to any given situation, and the complexities of that future were with him still. The complexity of the creative urge and the riddle of artistic integrity were all intermingled with tenets of love and marriage. He could see, now, that he was inevitably more involved in that future than Rhoda ever had been.

For example, that party at the Higgins apartment was bound to have more overtones for him than for her. Beautiful as she had looked, light and easy as she had seemed, she was bound to be less aware than he of the significance of that party. In spite of the strangers gathered in the Higgins living room, the party had a tribal quality. They all were waiting for the word; the livelihood of many guests depended on it. Like hundreds of similar gatherings he had attended later, theatrical democracy was behind it. The Higgins office force was waiting to express a word of hope and cheer; there was champagne and there were cold filings to eat. The sight of the table in the Higgins dining room made Tom suddenly hungry. Arthur Higgins, even in his last days, had always insisted on champagne.

In the Higgins apartment, defiant loyalty temporarily overcame petty jealousies. There was a murmur that seemed rehearsed when the Brownes, Tom, and Rhoda entered. He had never been as much the center of anything before, walking in with Rhoda. Perhaps he already had a premonition that he would be the center of similar gatherings for years to come, that voices ever afterwards when he entered a New York drawing room or restaurant would drop for an appreciable moment, that ever afterwards he would be the center of critical likes and dislikes, enthusiasms and enmities.

“Here he is,” Arthur Higgins said, crossing the room to meet him. “Here’s the hero.”

It was solid corn, but the speech also had a sort of authentic old-school quality in the Higgins apartment. The room, with its tapestries, its dark woodwork and its upstairs gallery, was a larger, more gracious projection of the office. There was nothing that exactly resembled its spirit any more unless some odd corner of the Cloisters up the river, but the late Charles Dana Gibson would have been entirely conversant with the background. A moment’s pause after Arthur Higgins’s courtly speech made Tom aware that everyone was waiting for a bon mot in return, and that he had to be right out there with Arthur Higgins.

“Good evening, Arthur,” he said, and he waved his hand to the office and theatre personnel and other guests with whom he was only half familiar. “Let’s not cheer yet. The poor devil may be dying.”

It was nearly his first experience in delivering an apt, informal line. Arthur understood such grace and waited until a ripple of mirth subsided.

“But you could still do with some champagne, couldn’t you?” Arthur said.

“Yes,” he said, “I really could.”

A waiter arrived who looked like a Gibson waiter, with a tray of glasses.

“One moment,” Arthur Higgins said, “before we lapse into easy conversation.” He was made to be a master of ceremonies, and he had always loved that sort of thing. “The last few years have been a bright period for the American stage. I predict that everyone will know this news tomorrow, but in the meanwhile, I am proud to propose the health of one of our newest and finest playwrights.”

It was a time to be quiet and to touch glasses with Arthur Higgins, and to face the fact that Arthur might be right.

“Darling,” Helen Adair said, “the interesting thing is that Arthur means it.”

He was able to tell himself that everyone meant things when caught in a theatrical emotion, and that such an outgiving was like the bubbles of champagne. Then he was shaking hands with everyone and their faces still returned to him with his memories of the Higgins apartment. He saw Mort Sullivan and the girls from the Sullivan office; and Walter Price, thin and handsome in those days; and Waldo Francis, who handled the publicity; and Dick Brogan, his assistant; and Curt Winternitz from the box office; and Nancy Mulford; and Bess Moriarty, who ran the switchboard; and Celestine Guin, who was wardrobe mistress; and Marie, whose last name he never did remember, who was Duneen’s maid; and Gus, the call boy; and Lou Achir, the stage manager; and George Rosen, his assistant; and Bob Solomon, the assistant business manager.

Then he was meeting the Higginses’ special guests and friends, and the financial backers, and shaking hands with Mr. and Mrs. Paul J. Merriman, Mr. Higgins’s lawyer; and Mr. Benjamin F. Chew, Mr. Higgins’s financial adviser; and Mrs. Chew, who lived in a charming estate in Bronxville. He was meeting Spike J. Maxwell, who had roomed with Arthur Higgins at Harvard; and General G. Wesley Jones and Mrs. Jones, now at Governors Island, who were deeply interested in the play because General Jones, then Colonel Jones, had distinguished himself in the Bois des Rappes, mentioned in the play. The general lost interest on learning that Tom had not served in World War I.

“I wanted to go, sir,” Tom had told him, “but I was not in the age group.”

He could remember the lines in the general’s face and he was sure the general had understood and applauded the psychology of heroes. Then Arthur Higgins introduced him to Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Twining Hertime.

“Tom,” he said, “these are special friends and they are especially anxious to meet you because they are sharing some of our financial burdens.”

Mr. Hertime laughed in a very jocular way.

“Don’t tell tales out of school, Art,” he said. “We are very pedestrian people, Mr. Harrow, but may I call you Tom, and may I call your gorgeous wife Rhoda? We are so pedestrian that Mrs. Hertime and I enjoy a change sometimes, don’t we, my sweet? And we have certainly enjoyed this evening.”

“And I am certainly sure after this evening,” Arthur Higgins said, “that you are going to make some change out of it, Art.”

Mr. Hertime laughed again.

“Whether I do or not,” he said, “it’s been more fun than a barrel of monkeys, meaning nothing personal. Hasn’t it been more fun than a barrel of monkeys, Angela?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Hertime said, “but you mustn’t mind him, Mr. Harrow, and neither must your ravishing wife. What did you say your first name was, dear?”

“Rhoda,” Tom Harrow said.

“Rhoda. It’s one of my favorite names,” Mrs. Hertime said. “Haven’t I met you somewhere, dear, at Palm Beach or somewhere?”

“Palm Beach?” Rhoda said. “No, but I wish you had.”

“Did you hear that one?” Arthur Hertime said. “She wishes she had! Tom, if I make take the liberty of saying so, your wife is as witty as she is beautiful. Waiter, bring me some more happy water. Here’s looking at you, Mrs. Harrow—but may I call you Rhoda?”

“Why, yes, if you’d like to, Mr. Hertime,” Rhoda said.

“It’s a deal if you call me Art,” Mr. Hertime said. “Angela, I’ve got an idea. These kids must be very, very tired. Do you get the idea? Why not take them down to the beach with us next week, after the show is set?”

“That would be a lovely idea, Art,” Mrs. Hertime said.

“Well, it’s a deal,” Mr. Hertime said. “We’ll get you a drawing room for Thursday night. How about it, Tom?”

As it happened, he had no real chance to answer because Arthur Higgins spoke immediately.

“Of course they’ll come, Art,” he said. “The play will be entirely set by then.”

Thinking of it in retrospect, there was always such a thing as a quid pro quo, and Arthur Higgins could not be blamed for using them as currency.

“But I haven’t any summer clothes,” Rhoda said.

The wine was working, wine and the excitement.

“It’s all right, Rhoda,” Tom said, “I’ll get you some tomorrow.”

“But Tom—” she began.

“It’s all right, Rhoda,” he said, “they’ll keep—you can use them later.”

“Besides, it’s off season,” Mrs. Hertime said. “We all of us just camp out off season.”

He did not know that a door to yet another world was opening, a fateful world for him and Rhoda, the unexplored land of the very rich. He could never see the glamour of that world as Rhoda had, and it was possible to ask what would have happened to him and Rhoda if the Hertimes had not asked them there. What if they had only stood at the gate looking in instead of stepping across the threshold? Yet they would have stepped across the threshold eventually. Rhoda might have hesitated, but his insatiable desire for new experience would have moved him.

“Thank you very much, sir,” he said to Mr. Hertime. “Rhoda and I would appreciate a rest, and we’ve never been to Florida.”

“Don’t call me ‘sir,’” Mr. Hertime said. “Call me Art. It will be an enormous pleasure to have you with us, Tom.”

Later, when from experience he could draw finer distinctions than he could then, he knew that the Hertimes, if they were not top-drawer in the way the Bramhalls were, were not in a lower echelon. Wealth, like good Burgundy, needed maturing, and a consciousness of inherited wealth could not be acquired in a single generation, and Mr. Hertime’s grandfather had founded the Hertime Smelting Company.

“They always know what they’re doing,” Rhoda had said, “and somehow you and I never know. I mean, we’re never sure.”

“That’s right,” he said, “we can’t afford to know.”

Rhoda had actually described the boundaries of that world. It cost a lot to afford to be sure, in money and in character, more indeed of either than he had ever possessed.

He might let his thoughts wander, but in memory he was still in the Higgins apartment recalling the sharp uncertainty that had possessed him. When young, you were always uncertain, and there were different uncertainties later, like those of a physical checkup in a hospital. There you could wait in an antiseptic room, reading an antiseptic book, knowing that in a little while you might be told in a nice way that your life span was drawing to an early close, but there was no vanity in life and death, no fear of artistic failure. It was only your fault in an academic way if your liver or gall bladder had gone wrong. On the contrary, you were entirely to blame if your play became a flop.

He had eaten one slice of Virginia ham and one slice of Tennessee smoked turkey and a little mixed green salad, and had drunk four cups of coffee, and a considerable amount of champagne, but he was thinking all the while of the tumbrels moving to the guillotine. They could all blame him, Higgins and the players, and the champagne did not help. He was the French aristocrat waiting for the knife to fall, but the end came somewhere around one in the morning. It was Simeon, from the accounting department, who brought the news. Simeon, who was pale, redheaded and aggressive, arrived unnoticed until he approached Arthur Higgins. Then there was a collective sigh because Simeon was carrying proofs from the New York Times and Herald-Tribune. Although Simeon must have read them earlier, it was not his place to register delight or disappointment. This was the function of Arthur Higgins, one which he had performed many times before.

It was possible still to re-create Arthur, who had put on his horn-rimmed spectacles, holding the limp strips of paper while Mort Sullivan read over his shoulder. Silence had spread over the apartment, like the voices of conscience. It was possible still to see the faces, but perhaps anyone else could recall as vividly as he the details of a first dramatic triumph. He could remember the choking dryness in his throat and his frantic effort to look composed. Arthur Higgins had raised his voice to draw everyone’s attention, but speaking skill was unnecessary at the time since everybody was waiting.

“I have never read reviews out loud,” he said. “I can only say these do not surprise me in the least, and I will read a headline. ‘New Genius on Broadway’—and it is not ironical. You had better look at these yourself, Tom, and then let everybody see them.”

Actually, he never fully read those first reviews and afterwards he developed a mental block which prevented his carefully reading any reviews of his work, but the words and phrases still leaped at him. “Youthful yet mature.” “A finely faceted, dramatic diamond.” “Heart-rending in its sheer simplicity.” “Luminous and deep.” “A companion piece to They Knew What They Wanted, though told in its own brave style.” “Will take its place with the best of contemporary theatre.” The words in his memory sounded hackneyed now, like the quotes of all reviews, but in that moment a new assurance and a new power came over him that he never entirely lost.

“Here,” he said, “read them, Rhoda.”

Then Mort Sullivan spoke to him.

“Boy,” Mort said, “how does it feel?”

Tom was glad that he had told the simple truth.

“Frankly, it feels fine,” he said.

He never could believe in Mr. Kipling’s thought that triumph and disaster were two imposters that should be treated just the same. He preferred triumph to the other, and he still believed that anyone who was not a fool, including General Washington, had doubtless given triumph special treatment within limits. He had never been ashamed of feeling fine.

“Tom,” Rhoda said, and her voice was insistent above all the other voices, “Tom, they don’t say this about everybody, do they?”

“No,” he said, “not as far as I know, Rhoda.”

“Then it means,” she said, “that everything’s all right, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, “it looks that way.”

“Can’t you be sure?” Her voice had risen. “Is there any catch or anything to it? Does it really mean we won’t have to worry any more about this?”

“Yes,” he said. “I rather think it does.”

“Well,” Rhoda said. “Well!” He saw that the color had drained from her face and that her knees were sagging.

“Rhoda,” he said, “are you all right?”

“I will be in a minute,” she said. “Just put your arm around me. I don’t need smelling salts or anything, but I feel a little faint.”

“You mean—” he began.

“I don’t mean that at all,” Rhoda said. “Don’t be so silly. A baby doesn’t worry you to death. It really is all right, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said.

She looked better, and he doubted whether anybody had noticed.

“Here,” he said, “take a drink of this.”

“Darling,” she said, “it doesn’t seem possible, does it? I mean Palm Beach and everything.”

Then her voice was lost among other voices, since everyone was speaking. In the turn of a second hand he had become a Figure in the Theatre. Only the other day he had read on the dramatic page of the New York Sunday Times that he was a Figure in the Theatre, and he still did not know exactly what it meant, because he had never been able to cultivate an interest in the critical arts even when he had been a subject. He could see, intellectually, the value of criticism, but he never had felt at home with the men who wrote it, because their compulsions ran on different tangents from his own. Their ideas were to his mind inaccurate, even when they offered praise. Praise was old to him now, but it was new that night. In fact, so new that he allowed himself to take pleasure in it when he and Rhoda were riding alone in a taxi back to the Bulwer.

“Frankly,” he said, “I’m feeling fine. Are you feeling fine, Rhoda?”

“Yes,” she said, “but it’s awfully hard to stop worrying just in a single minute.”

“Anyway,” he said, “we’re going to have champagne for breakfast. We’ll give it to the room clerk to keep on ice.”

“Is that why you asked Arthur for those two bottles?” she asked. “Gosh, I never thought of having champagne for breakfast.”

“Then think about it now,” he said. “Rhoda, do you love me?”

He had nearly dropped a bottle getting out of the taxi, and he had twisted his ankle as he recovered himself. He was limping when he gave the bottles to the night clerk at the Bulwer.

“Well, Mr. Harrow,” the night clerk said, “how does it feel to have a real hit on your hands?”

That was what they always asked—how it felt.

“Boy,” he said, “it feels fine. Doesn’t it feel fine, Rhoda?”

“Yes,” she said, “it does, but I wish you could think of another way to say it.”

Later on he had tried to think of other graceful ways, but there was no other sensible way to say it. He had wished many times later that he could feel that way again, relaxed, which is why he had twisted his ankle getting out of the taxicab, free, so much in love with Rhoda, so elated and so sleepy, or so full of wit and humor, so shot through with good ideas—but then, that sort of thing could happen only once.