Women and Thomas Harrow (1961) by John P. Marquand

Author:John P. Marquand [Marquand, John P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Family Life, General, Psychological
ISBN: 9781504015745
Google: tXqrCQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-01-01T22:00:00+00:00

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.

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