H. M. Pulham, Esquire

by John P. Marquand

  “Then snap out of it,” Bo-jo said. “I can’t keep going around and seeing the printer about that book. I can’t write come-on letters and go over the details. Are you going to do what you promised, or aren’t you?”

  “Why, if you really think I promised, Bo-jo.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Bo-jo said. “Come over to the office at four o’clock and we’ll go over it, and get Cynthia stirred up. Attaboy! You can have him now, Jack. Get in and shake him up.”

  Jack Purcell pulled some papers out of an envelope. Bo-jo sat down and I sat down and Jack pulled a chair close to mine.

  “This problem of raising money,” Jack said, “for the usual gift and the entertainment—I don’t suppose you’ve read my letters?”

  “No, Jack, not very carefully.”

  “That’s all right, Harry,” Jack said. “Well, here’s your pledge all filled out and ready for you to sign.”

  Jack passed me a slip of paper and handed me a fountain pen.

  “Attaboy,” Bo-jo said. “Shake it out of him.”

  “Now, wait a minute, Jack,” I said, and I laughed feebly. “You’ve got exaggerated ideas. I hadn’t planned to give nearly that much.”

  “It’s what you’re down for, Harry,” Jack said. “Out of the fifteen I’ve seen already fourteen of them have signed in full. You can take it off your income tax.”

  “All right, Jack—but I’ll have to pay it gradually.”

  “Attaboy,” Bo-jo said. “Harry always comes across.”

  Jack Purcell put the paper carefully back in the envelope and drew out another paper.

  “I know Bo-jo’s got you sewed up for the Reports,” Jack said, “but I wonder if you could help me out a little on the Special Gifts Committee. What we want now are three or four gifts of over five thousand dollars. Have you heard of a man in our class named Ransome, John Ransome? Maybe you have, Bo-jo.”

  Bo-jo clenched his fist and beat his forehead softly.

  “I never heard of him,” he said. “Ransome? And you’ve got him on the first list? All right, Jack. We’ve got to shake it out of him.”

  “It’s a little hard if you don’t know them,” Jack said. “I don’t think this man Ransome has ever been much interested in the Class.”

  “That’s all right,” Bo-jo said. “We’ll write him. We’ll give a little dinner for him after the Yale game. That’ll sweeten him up. What’s his first name?”

  “John,” Jack said, “John Ransome. He lived in Dunster and specialized in Economics.”

  “What’s his nickname?” Bo-jo asked.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Jack answered.

  “All right,” Bo-jo said. “It doesn’t make any difference. Call him Johnny. Just write him something like this.” Bo-jo beat his fist softly on his forehead. “‘Dear Johnny, I haven’t heard of you for a long while and we ought to get together. You’ll be coming up to the Yale game of course and Bo-jo Brown (you remember Bo-jo?) and I want to have you beside us down in front of the cheering section and after that just four or five of us, some of the old football crowd, are going to have a little dinner, to talk about old times and the Class, and we want you to come along. It will be swell to see you again, Johnny.’”

  Bo-jo paused and looked at us.

  “Naturally, I’m putting it a little roughly,” he added, “but nothing shakes them up like football and some of the old songs. Maybe he’s a pansy, but he’ll like it all the better.”

  “Yes,” Jack said, “maybe. Harry, did you ever hear of Ransome?”

  “I never did know Ransome,” I answered, “but I know his wife.” Jack Purcell looked interested. Bo-jo hitched himself forward in his chair.

  “Well, why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place? How well do you know his wife?”

  “I don’t know her now, Bo-jo,” I answered. “I used to know her quite a while ago—pretty well.”

  “What was her name?” Bo-jo asked. “Did I ever know her?”

  “No,” I answered, “I don’t believe you did. She comes from New York.”

  “All right,” Bo-jo said, “all right. Now we’re getting somewhere. Was she an old girl of yours?”

  “Now, wait a minute, Bo-jo.”

  “Listen,” Bo-jo said. “I’m not going into your private life, but we can’t pass up a contact. Haven’t you seen her since she was married?”

  “No,” I said. “It was all a long time ago, Bo-jo. I don’t want to be mixed up in it.”

  “Come on. Snap into it.”

  “No,” I said. “Get all the money you want out of Ransome, but you needn’t think I’m going to use my friendship with her to do it.”

  “Haven’t you got any class spirit?” Bo-jo asked.

  Then Jack Purcell interrupted us.

  “Harry’s perfectly right,” he said. “The other way’s the best.”

  I had not seen much of him for years, but I had always liked Jack Purcell.

  Now, Bill and I had always been awfully good friends and he had done a lot for me, but even so, I did not see why Kay should make quite all the preparations she did for his coming up to the Yale game. I had known Bill a good deal longer than Kay had and I had seen a lot more of him, but Kay seemed to set herself up as an authority on what Bill would like and what he wouldn’t like—whether he liked gin cocktails or rum cocktails, whether he liked soft bath towels or scratchy ones. I ought to have been pleased that Kay was so interested, and inside myself I suppose I was, yet at the same time it began to look as though I were going to have nothing to do with Bill, although I had always felt that Bill was my responsibility. I don’t mean to imply in any way that I was jealous, because nothing was too good for him as far as I was concerned. Yet I wished that Kay had ever given as much thought to my personal comforts and conveniences as she seemed to be giving to Bill’s. I even joked with her about it.

  “Bill isn’t so soft,” I said, “that he’s going to mind Gladys’ china animals on the mantelpiece in his room. He won’t mind her microscope either.”

  “You don’t understand,” Kay said. “Bill mustn’t be made to feel that he’s driving Gladys out.”

  We didn’t have any regular guest room, because we usually did all that sort of entertaining at North Harbor. Gladys had the room and the bath next to ours; George had the small back room on the third floor during his school vacations; and when we did have a guest, Gladys had to move into George’s room, or into the old nursery, which we never had got around to fixing over. It was all informal at best, and there was no reason for anyone staying there over Friday and Saturday to be worried about Gladys’ china animals, or her Maxfield Parrish pictures, for that matter.

  “There are a lot of buttons off my shirts,” I told Kay. “I wish you’d give me a little service instead of using it all up on Bill.”

  I just said it as a joke, and I expected her to laugh, but lately Kay had been awfully touchy.

  “Why don’t you ever say something when your buttons come off,” she asked, “instead of making a grievance of it?”

  “Oh, that’s all right, Kay,” I said. “I’m just being funny.”

  “If you didn’t want Bill to come,” Kay said, “why didn’t you tell me frankly?”

  “But I do want Bill,” I said.

  “Then don’t criticize me when I’m doing the best I can. There’s Bill and the dinner party, and then there’s that damned tea.”

  “I know, Kay,” I said. “You’re awfully nice about the tea.”

  On Thursday morning Kay got in the cleaning women. They went all over the dining room, the parlor and Gladys’ room and her bathroom. They cleaned everything out of Gladys’ closet and out of her bureau and Kay unearthed some long-lost Japanese prints of shaven-headed men carrying things over bridges in the snow. They were valuable, but we had never found any place to put them and they had gradually disappeared. When Kay and the women were finished, I must say you wouldn’t have known that Gladys had ever slept there.

  “Thos
e prints are awfully attractive, aren’t they?” Kay said. I had to admit that they were; and after the chore-man and I had carried Gladys’ writing desk temporarily down into the cellar I had to admit that Kay had done a good job.

  “We ought to keep this as the spare room and do the nursery over,” she said.

  Although it was a perfectly sensible suggestion, I hated the idea of doing the nursery over, but I suppose Kay was right.

  On Friday, when we were half-through breakfast, Kay found out the size of my gift to the Class. Kay was planning the dinner party that we were going to give for Bill. She said there was only one bottle of champagne left down cellar and she wanted to know if I would order another case. It was not that I was not perfectly glad to give Bill champagne, but I did not want to get a reputation for having champagne at dinner. It was obviously the sort of gesture which would imply that we were in a financial bracket in which we did not belong.

  “They’ll all have cocktails, Kay,” I said, “and we’ll have brandy and Scotch-and-soda after dinner if they want it. Don’t you think a little Bordeaux would be all right at dinner?”

  Kay frowned at me across the table and put all the letters she had been reading into a careful pile.

  “I don’t see why we can’t ever do anything chic,” she said. “Besides, Bill loves champagne.”

  “For heaven’s sakes, Kay,” I said, “how do you know Bill loves champagne?”

  I was really curious, because I had never known Bill to drink it much.

  “Oh, never mind,” Kay said, “if you want to be stingy—but I don’t know why we can’t stop thinking about money sometimes.”

  “It’s simply a matter of proportion,” I told her. “It looks so obvious, having champagne.”

  “Obvious?” Kay looked startled. “How do you mean, obvious?”

  “We don’t have to make an impression on Bill,” I answered, “and there are the repairs at North Harbor and the children’s tuition.”

  “Well, if you’re so worried,” Kay said, “I’ll buy the champagne myself.”

  If Kay really wanted something she would always offer to get it herself, and then it would make me feel mean.

  “It isn’t that, Kay,” I said, “but there’s my contribution to the Class this year.”

  I stopped. I had not meant in the least to bring it up.

  “Harry,” Kay said, “how much did you give the Class?”

  “Well, it was more than I had planned to give,” I said. “You see we have to raise a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “What for?” Kay asked. “For paper caps and whistles? For all those little cakes we’re going to have at that tea tomorrow?”

  “If you’d been in the Class you’d understand. Jack Purcell’s raising the money and Jack’s having a pretty hard time.”

  “I’m glad he is,” Kay said. “I never liked him.”

  “That’s because you don’t know him, Kay,” I answered.

  “My dear,” Kay said, “you don’t really know him either. He came around and dunned you, didn’t he? And you were impressed. Why can’t you ever say no to anything? How much did you give? You’ve got to tell me, Harry.”

  I told her. I hadn’t meant to tell her, and there was no use trying to explain it either.

  “Why, Harry,” Kay said, and she laughed in that way of hers that was not funny, “and we can’t have a new stair-carpet, and I have to shop at the A and P! What’s the use in our trying to save?”

  Kay continued for quite a while. She had reacted just about the same way when I bought the Packard, and when I bought the gas stove with the refrigerator in the bottom of it. There wasn’t much for me to answer, because I knew she was right. I had given a good deal too much.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Go ahead and order the champagne.”

  I thought Kay might change her ground and say it was impossible, after what I had done, to have champagne, but instead she was awfully nice about it.

  “Darling,” she said, “I didn’t mean to go on so. You’re awfully kind to me—always.”

  I walked around the table to her chair. The day was going to be all right. It always was when Kay was like that. We were going to have a fine time all week end.

  “I’m awfully glad I told you, Kay,” I said. “It’s always better, no matter what fool thing I do, to tell you everything.”

  Her cheeks grew redder and she reached out and took my hand.

  “You make me feel awfully mean sometimes,” she said.

  “That’s the last thing you are,” I told her.

  “Oh, yes, I am,” she said. “I’m rotten to you, Harry.”

  “I’m going to send you some flowers to wear tonight,” I said, “gardenias—or yellow orchids if you wear your yellow dress.”

  “Oh, no,” Kay said. “Oh, please don’t, Harry.”

  XXXV

  He Was Certainly Low in His Mind

  It was a fine day outside, more like the middle of October than late November. The leaves were off the trees, but the sun was bright and warm, and the paper said that it would be a good day Saturday. Downtown everyone was talking about the game.

  I was glad our office was not like a New York office where everyone rushed around whether there was anything to do or not. There might be a war in Europe, but it hadn’t caught us yet. It made me think of college, the way everybody began dropping in from the other offices to talk about the game. I began to be glad we were having a dinner the night before, glad about the champagne.

  “Mr. Pulham,” Miss Rollo said, “Mr. Brown is on the telephone.”

  “Hello,” Bo-jo called. I had to remove the receiver a little farther from my ear. “We got him. He’s coming.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “What’s the matter with your mind?” Bo-jo asked. “Ransome—we’ve got him.”

  “Oh,” I said, “well, that’s fine, Bo-jo.”

  “And there’s a little dinner,” Bo-jo said. “Just six or seven of the boys—and Ransome—up at my house after the game, seven o’clock and you don’t have to dress.”

  “That’s awfully nice of you to ask me, Bo-jo,” I said, “but I can’t come—really.”

  “You can’t?” Bo-jo shouted. “Why the hell can’t you?”

  “We have a guest,” I said. “Cornelia has some other plans.”

  “Then you come,” Bo-jo said.

  “I don’t think I possibly can, Bo-jo.”

  I never could understand why it was so hard to say no to Bo-jo. Perhaps it was because he never expected you to. At any rate I did not have the slightest intention of going to the dinner.

  Bill arrived at half-past five. Kay was in the kitchen and I carried his bag up to his room, and explained to him about turning on the hot water slowly in the bathroom, because, if you weren’t used to it, it had a way of bursting out with a rush. Then I showed him about opening the inner window and the storm window and where he could get extra covers for his bed if he should be cold, and finally I asked him if he had everything he wanted.

  “It’s awfully nice you could come, Bill,” I said.

  Bill seemed a little remote when he came down to the parlor, and I wondered whether I had said anything or done anything that had hurt his feelings. I could not put my fingers on it. He looked tired and drawn and his color was not good and I poured him a drink.

  “When we get through with this dinner,” I said, “we can all sleep late. There’s nothing to do until the game—unless you’d like to get up and go to the Club and play a little squash.”

  “Squash?” he said. “Good God, no! What I need is a rest. How’s Kay?”

  I told him that Kay was fine, that she was down in the kitchen, showing the extra waitress the right dishes and all that, and I began telling him how glad everyone was that he was taking an interest in the Class.

  “Yes,” Bill said, “one and all we must do what little we can—” and he lighted a cigarette.

  “You needn’t be so grim about it, Bill,” I sa
id.

  He got up and walked about the room.

  “Bill,” I said, “are you worried about anything?”

  “Who?” Bill asked. “Worried—me?”

  “Because if you are,” I said, “I wish you would tell me. There might be something I could do, Bill.”

  Bill looked down at me quickly and for a moment we were friends again.

  “It’s just Life,” he said. “That’s all,” and he poured himself another drink. “I’ve been thinking about Life quite a lot lately.”

  “So have I,” I said. “Have you written your Class life yet?”

  “Oh, hell,” Bill said. “Let’s not talk any more about that Reunion. What is it anyway but a lot of artificial, infantile stimulation?”

  “I know what you mean,” I said, “but it’s something to think of—all of us going through life together and here we are.”

  “If you’ll excuse my saying so,” Bill answered, “people can go through life together without being in any confounded college class. We all go through it and then we’re dead—and so what?”

  Bill was certainly low in his mind.

  “We’re not dead yet,” I said. I had never felt so much alive. I had never felt so little like giving up.

  “There you are,” said Bill. “You put your finger on it exactly. The trouble is that we’re not dead yet.”

  The great thing about Bill was that he was always interesting. He was almost the only man I knew who could talk on general subjects.

  “Well, life hasn’t messed you up much, Bill,” I told him. “Now look at the rest of our Class—”

  “Would you mind,” Bill asked, “not talking about that damned Class? Life is made up of working and living and loving, of women and money, and God knows what! But it hasn’t got anything to do with what you learned when you were a boy.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose you’ll think this is funny, but a good deal of life is playing the game.”

  Bill looked at me as though I had said something astonishing. He passed his hand softly over his hair and patted the back of his head.

  “My God,” he said gently, “like tennis?”

  “Well, not exactly,” I said, “but there are rules in it. You can take the Decalogue, for instance—about coveting your neighbor’s wife and his ox and his ass.”