Nevertheless, it all gave me a strange sense of frustration and failure. That table full of papers made me think of my own life, which would appear in our Class Book. As I thought of what I should write, the effort of Charles Mason Hilliard returned to me. His words seemed to keep time with my footsteps along the sunny street.
Nothing much had changed in the office when I got back, but in some way I had changed. I was recalling all sorts of things which must have lain dormant in my mind, odd details of childhood, of New York and of the war, of faces and names which I had almost forgotten. For some reason, I remembered the fence which used to be behind the stable at Westwood. I could remember exactly the way the sun looked on the white paint, and the game my sister Mary and I used to play of walking on the top of that fence and of pausing at each corner, pretending that we were stopping in a foreign country on our way around the world. I could remember the horse stalls in the stable, trimmed with neatly braided straw, and the harness room with its glass cases and the smell of oil. It was so clear that if I had wished, I could have sprung off that forgotten fence; I could have run through the vegetable garden and the cutting garden, over the terraces and across the lawn to the house, remembering every detail.
“I was detained at a meeting,” I said to Miss Rollo. “I hope everything is all right.”
“Yes,” Miss Rollo said. “Mr. Maxwell has gone home.”
“Did he say why?” I asked. “He isn’t sick, is he?”
“He said he wanted to stop at the vaults on the way.”
“Oh,” I said. “Get me the broker’s on the telephone. Get me Mr. Eldridge.”
Sitting at my desk I could still remember. I could remember the flags on Fifth Avenue in New York after the war and the plaster arch near Twenty-third Street.
“Mr. Eldridge is ready,” Miss Rollo said.
“Hello, Nat,” I called. “How are you?”
“Just the same as I was this morning.”
“How’s the market?”
“Closed strong,” Nat said.
“What’s Atchison?” I asked.
“Up a quarter. No, wait a minute. Up three-eighths.”
“We’ve been talking it over here, Nat,” I said. “You can sell seventeen hundred and fifty shares at the opening tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” said Nat. “Anything else, Harry?”
“Have you got your name down for the bumping tournament?”
“Why, no,” said Nat. “I haven’t got time.”
“What the hell do you mean, you haven’t got time?” I said. “I’ve got to get names down for the bumping tournament.”
“All right,” said Nat. “Put my name down if you want to. Good-by.”
“Miss Rollo,” I said, “put Mr. Eldridge down for the bumping tournament and send him out a bill for his entrance fee.”
“Yes,” Miss Rollo said. “And Mr. Pulham, Mrs. Pulham called up fifteen minutes ago. She wants you to call her back.”
“All right,” I said. “See if you can get her.”
It was curious, if you were in the right state of mind, the things that came back without any effort and without any reason. There was the billiard room at Westwood after dinner. My father was chalking his cue. I remembered how the blue chalk powdered his slightly bent, arthritic fingers. I could not have been more than sixteen, but I remembered the exact position of the balls, and my father was asking me to get him the bridge.
“Here’s Mrs. Pulham,” Miss Rollo said.
“Hello, Kay,” I said.
“Harry,” Kay said, “don’t forget we’re going out to dinner.”
“Where?” I asked.
“The Rodneys’,” Kay said.
“The Rodneys’?” I said. “Do we have to go out there again?”
“You remember very well how it happened,” Kay said. “When Beatrice asked us you said yourself there wasn’t any way of getting out of it. Be sure to get home early.”
“Mr. Pulham,” Miss Rollo said, “there’s something else. A Mrs. Ransome called you up. She wants you to call her at the Hadley.”
The name came out of nowhere and meant nothing. It seemed to jump off a springboard and to plunge into a sea of other names. I tried to recall anyone I had ever known named Ransome. There was a Ransome once who had tried to sell me an oil-burning furnace. There was also a Ransome who had been a golf professional, and another whom I had met once on the way to Europe, and one who had once given me figures for laying a tiled drainage bed around a septic tank.
“Ransome?” I said to Miss Rollo. “I don’t think I know any Mrs. Ransome.”
“Mrs. John Ransome,” Miss Rollo said. “She’s staying at the Hadley.”
“Well, what did she want?” I asked. “She must have wanted something.”
Miss Rollo adjusted her pince-nez.
“She just wanted you to call her up as soon as you came in.”
“Then get the Hadley and see if she’s there,” I told her, “and after that get me the page of the Herald with the cross-word puzzle on it.”
I walked to the window and looked out at the vacant lot and at the antiquated brick buildings beyond it. The shadows of the chimneys were growing longer and the blue of the sky was softer. It was late afternoon, after four o’clock.
“I have Mrs. John Ransome, Mr. Pulham,” Miss Rollo said, and I sat down again at the desk, and cleared my throat.
“Is this Mrs. Ransome?” I asked. “This is Mr. Henry Pulham. Did you want to speak to me?”
“I’m not really speaking, am I,” I heard her voice ask, “to H.M. Pulham, Esquire?”
“Yes,” I said, “this is Henry Pulham.”
“Don’t you know who I am?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s probably the telephone. Perhaps it’s a bad connection.”
“It isn’t bad,” she said. “It’s Marvin—Marvin Myles.”
“Marvin?” I repeated, and my voice must have had a queer sound. I had never heard that she was married.
“My God, Harry,” she said, “are you trying to pretend you don’t remember?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m up for overnight,” she said. “I’m up from New York. John is attending a directors’ meeting. You didn’t know me, did you?”
“It’s just that you came out of nowhere,” I said. And I wondered what directors’ meeting it could be, but I did not ask her. I sat listening for what she would say next and she waited so long that I thought she was off the wire. Then she said:
“Harry, I want to see you. Don’t you want to see what I look like?”
I could not believe that I would want to see her so much.
“Why, yes,” I said, “I’d like to, Marvin.”
“Come on,” she said. “Come right away. I’m in a place called the Pharaoh Room. I wish you’d hurry, Harry.”
“I’ve got to go out to dinner,” I said.
“Well,” she answered, “there’s lots of time. I know what you’re thinking.”
“What?” I asked.
“You’re thinking someone may see you,” she answered. “That’s what you would be thinking.”
“When did you get married?” I asked. “I didn’t know.”
And of course it was none of my business at all. It was a good thing that she was married.
“Didn’t Bill King tell you?” she asked. “A year ago. He was in your class at college.”
“Ransome?” I said, but the name didn’t mean anything. “Ransome?”
“Don’t sound like that,” she said. “He didn’t know you either.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I think it’s fine.”
“Remember,” she said. “The Pharaoh Room. Harry, are you happy?”
“Why, yes,” I said, “I’m fine. I’ll be right over.”
Then I hung up the telephone and I saw Miss Rollo standing near the desk. I certainly did not want anyone in the office to start talking, and I wondered if anything about me looked queer.
I stood up and straightened my coat and straightened my tie and put on my hat. I hoped Miss Rollo did not think anything out-of-the-way had happened, and I spoke perfectly naturally.
“We’ll go over the mail in the morning,” I told Miss Rollo. “I’m leaving for the day.”
The more I thought about it the more convinced I was that I had no business meeting Marvin Myles again, although of course it had all been over years ago, but it wouldn’t do any possible good, and you never could tell whom you might see in a place like the Pharaoh Room. There might be a daughter of someone I knew, for instance, going there to dance.
I had not been in the Hadley Hotel since my great-aunt Frederica Knowles had died there fifteen years before. Upstairs the Hadley was just what it had been, a place where you went to live if you were an old lady, because the Hadley was just like home. But downstairs in the basement it was all different and not meant for old ladies. Over the basement door, under the brownstone steps, was a neon sign “The Pharaoh Room,” and an awning, and a young black boy in buttons. The Hadley, I knew, was managed by the Coffin Real Estate Associates and I could not imagine how old Mr. Jacob Coffin could have thought of a place like the Pharaoh Room in a family hotel, but there it was. There was a checkroom and a carpeted hall with a frieze representing an Egyptian bas-relief, and down at the end of the hall were strains of jazz music and the sound of a great many voices.
“Check your hat, sir?” the girl in the cloakroom was saying.
And then I was sure it wasn’t right. Suppose I walked down the hall into the bar where Marvin would be waiting. It would not do any good, because it was all over. Suppose Kay ever heard about it. After all I was married and Marvin Myles was married. It was all over years ago.
“Check your hat, sir?” the girl asked again. And then another girl, quite pretty, with a tray full of gardenias and cigarettes, walked by and looked at me.
“No thanks,” I told the hatroom girl, “not now,” and then I was out on the street again, with all the brick buildings of the early development of Back Bay around me.
There was a drugstore half a block away. I found the telephone booth and called up the Pharaoh Room. After all it was a good deal better, much more sensible than seeing her.
“Will you please give a message to Mrs. John Ransome?” I said. “Tell her that Mr. Henry Pulham’s office called. Mr. Pulham has been unexpectedly detained. He is sorry he can not meet Mrs. Ransome.”
I was all right when I was out on the street. I had come near to making a fool of myself, but I hadn’t. There was nothing that I had to conceal from Kay, and besides it was better to get home early, better to walk home, because we were going out to dinner. She shouldn’t have called me up. I never had, not for years, in all the times I had been in New York; and she shouldn’t have asked me if I were happy.
The best thing for me to do was to go to the Club for a game of squash with Gus, the professional, even if I had to wait for a chance to play with him. A good game with Gus would put everything back in its place, even if it made me late.
IV
We Were Going Out to Dinner
When I got home and closed the door behind me there was a faint odor of gas in the front hall, not enough to make it necessary to open things, but enough to show that the new cook Kay had found still did not understand the leak in the pilot light. At the end of the front hall the dining room door was open, and I saw the silver on the Empire sideboard. Ellen was setting two places on the bare mahogany table, so I gathered that Gladys would probably be having her best friend, little Gertrude Counter with buck teeth, in for supper because we were going out. Bitsey, Gladys’ black cocker spaniel, ran down the stairs and barked at me. He was a fool with all the brains bred out of him, but then everyone always said that a cocker was the best dog for children. I was tired of having Bitsey bark, since Bitsey and I made our tour of the block together every morning before I went to the office, rain or shine, and again the last thing at night.
“Shut up,” I said.
Bitsey shut up and waddled into the dining room, and I walked upstairs.
Kay was in the parlor, sitting in the corner near her writing desk talking into the telephone.
“Harry,” she said, “you’d better hurry—hurry! You’re awfully late.”
“There’s plenty of time,” I said, “if my shirts are back from the laundry.”
“Ellen has been looking for your studs,” Kay said, “and we can’t find them anywhere.”
“Aren’t they in the little round box on the bureau?” I asked. “Not the square box, the round box.”
“No,” Kay said. “Hello, is that you, Gracie? My dear, I wish I hadn’t run away so early. How did it go?”
“Kay,” I said, “if that girl has sent my studs to the wash again—”
“You don’t mean she had those same crackers with fish on them?” Kay said.
“Kay,” I said, “did she put my studs in the wash or didn’t she?”
“Harry,” Kay whispered, “do be quiet! It’s just Harry, Gracie—the age-old hunt for studs. Well, if she’s so intelligent why do you suppose it is that she never says anything? She just moves around and rattles that Navajo jewelry. She moves around quietly, because she’s the Friend of the Indian.”
“Kay,” I said, “can’t you talk to Gracie some other time?”
“Harry,” Kay said, “do be quiet! If she goes back next year she’ll sit in a corner and beat a drum.” Kay began to giggle. I sat down and lighted a cigarette and looked at the Inness painting above the mantelpiece, and then at the hole that Bitsey had chewed in the corner of the rug, and then at the books on the table by the window. There had always been something wrong about the parlor. There were plenty of chairs, plenty of sofas, but we had never been able to get them grouped so that more than three people could sit in any one place. Now the room had an untidy, weary look, because we were going out to dinner.
“Why,” Kay was saying, “I never said any such thing. I couldn’t have said it, because I don’t know anything about them.”
“Kay,” I said, “won’t you please stop talking?”
“Harry,” Kay said, “do be quiet! They literally haven’t got a cent. The children are all on scholarships.”
I got up and walked to the library and opened the door. Kay’s voice still followed me. Gladys and Gertrude were in the library, listening to the radio.
“And now,” the voice was saying, “don’t forget that you can join the Magic Circle, too, and sit with the other lucky boys and girls on the Magic Robe of Big Chief Buffalo. You can join the Magic Band and learn the Magic Sign and the Password. Where is he going to take Billy and Lizzie next? We leave them now lost in the midst of a Central American jungle. But how can you get a snake’s eye ring—just like the one that Big Chief Buffalo gave to Lizzie just a minute ago? Why, you can get it before you say Jack Robinson. Just go right now and speak to Mummie. Tell her tomorrow when she goes to the Grocery Man to buy you a box of Tuffies. I’ll spell it for you. Write it down, so you won’t forget. All ready with the pencil and papers, kiddies? T-u-f-f-i-e-s spells Tuffies.”
Gladys and Gertrude looked up when they saw me, resentfully, I thought. I tried to remember what it was you thought about when you were twelve years old.
“Why, hello,” I said.
Gladys and Gertrude began to giggle.
“Who’s Big Chief Buffalo?” I asked.
“He’s a man,” said Gladys, and they both giggled.
“What’s the Magic Robe?” I asked.
“Buffalo skins,” said Gladys, and they giggled.
“What are Tuffies?” I asked.
“You eat them for breakfast,” Gertrude said. “They’re nasty,” and they giggled.
I thought when I was in the bathroom shaving that there was something wrong somewhere. There were French lessons and skating lessons and riding lesson
s and a school where everyone was supposed to be happy, and yet when Gladys got home she listened to Chief Buffalo. Then I remembered that when I got home from school I used to read about Nick Brady and the opium ring behind the barn.
“Harry,” Kay was calling, “hurry.”
Kay and I were going out to dinner. Now that I was in a hurry I did not have to think about Marvin Myles.
Kay was sitting in front of her mirror, upping her hair.
“We’re going to be late,” I said. “Has the garage sent the car over?”
“No,” Kay answered. “You’d better call them up. You’re the one who’s late.”
“I’m all ready,” I said.
“You haven’t got your trousers on.”
“It takes about ten seconds to get my trousers on,” I said. “Where are my pumps?”
“Where you put them.”
“I don’t see why Ellen can’t lay my things out on the bed,” I said.
“Because Ellen’s hip’s been hurting her,” Kay said.
“Well, why don’t we get somebody whose hip doesn’t hurt?” I asked.
“I would, if we could pay the servants enough, dear,” Kay answered.
We were saying the same things, just as we had said them a thousand times before we went out to dinner.
“What kept you so long?” Kay asked. “Were you working on the bumping tournament?”
The car was outside the door. I stood in the front hall smoking.
“Kay,” I called, “aren’t you nearly ready?”
“Yes,” Kay called. “I’m coming. Don’t keep shouting.”
I heard her running down the stairs. She had on her gray chiffon dress.
“Have you got the keys?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I always have the keys.”
“Did you tell Ellen to take Bitsey out?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “and I told her to keep him out of the parlor.”
The front door slammed behind us. My collar chafed against my neck. I started the motor. We were going out to dinner.
“Wait a minute,” Kay said. “My bag—I forgot my bag.”
H. M. Pulham, Esquire Page 4