The radio was playing in the library and George and Gladys were waiting.
“And now you can hear for yourself,” a voice was saying, “how Aunt Mamie makes those fluffy cookies that are all full of good rich crunchiness.”
“Turn that thing off,” I said. “We’re going to lunch.”
“Well, it’s about time,” George said.
“Can I have a quarter?” Gladys asked.
“And what do you want a quarter for?” I asked her.
“She wants to buy doll’s didies,” George said.
“No, I don’t,” Gladys said. “Shut up!”
Both of them were getting cross and I did not blame them.
“Everybody stop,” I said. “Come on.”
I was getting cross myself. It was after two o’clock. Ellen was still working in the dining room.
“Ellen,” I said, “wasn’t Mrs. Pulham here last night?”
Ellen rubbed her hands on her apron.
“No,” Ellen said, “she wasn’t here, Mr. Pulham. There was so much cleaning going on. She has been spending the nights out in Brookline.”
“In Brookline?” I said. “Oh, that’s it—she must have been staying with Mr. Guy.”
The children were standing behind me with their coats on.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s go!”
I was glad that Kay had been staying with Guy. She would have been lonely by herself, with only Ellen in the house. Then, as I was opening the door, I saw Kay’s suitcase with its canvas cover and with her initials, C. M. P. She had left it under the hall table that morning and had not had time to bring it upstairs. Kay had been awfully busy.
XXXII
Pale Hands I Love
The only place available for luncheon in our neighborhood was the Bob Cratchit Tea Roome and Coffee House, an establishment run by a group of dour-looking ladies who also sold cakes and cookies at the change desk—tea thirty-five cents, luncheon fifty-five cents and dinner seventy-five cents. On the whole, it always seemed to me that the Bob Cratchit Tea Roome was a sensible, nice place, patronized by people who did not care to pay any more for simple wholesome food, and by people like me who were driven there when there was no food at home. In the years since Kay and I had bought our house in town I may have been there four or five times—especially just after George and Gladys had been born—when the house was so filled with trained nurses that either the cook must leave or I must; and once Kay and I had gone there when the boiler at home had exploded. Every time we went, we always remarked that the blue and orange tables were most attractive and that the food was tremendously good, but we never became regular customers.
The girl who took our order said that they were out of beets and out of spinach, that the chicken pie was out, and that the luncheon hour was pretty well over. This was obvious enough, since George and Gladys and I were the only customers, with the exception of a mouse-colored man, who was reading a book on The Measurements of the Great Pyramid, and he got up and left by the time our beef stew appeared.
“Gee,” George said, “this food is worse than school!”
Gladys did not say anything, but she did not each much. I told George that it was time for him to cultivate a few thoughtful manners. This was one of the days, I told him, when we all were out of luck. When he grew older, I said, he would find there were lots and lots of times when things did not go right, when you must take them in your stride, making the best of them cheerfully, without griping and bellyaching. I asked him what he would have thought of me and what his mother and everyone else in the house would have thought, if I had begun whining and complaining when I had to unload the car and could not go to the Ritz with Mother and Uncle Bill, because I had to take two little brats out to lunch instead. I thought this example might hold them for a while, but Gladys asked:
“Why couldn’t we all have gone to the Ritz?”
For some reason, this was hard to answer, but soon I began to think of a great many very good reasons why we couldn’t have, and I pointed them out to Gladys and George while the waitress brought me a pot of stale coffee and brought each of the children a glass of milk flavored with chocolate. In the first place, I said, we could not have gone to the Ritz because Uncle Bill had asked Mother and had not asked us.
“Why didn’t he ask us?” George said. “We were all there before they went out, weren’t we?”
“He didn’t ask us,” I said, “because grown people like to be together sometimes and because he didn’t want to have lunch with a lot of little brats who make noises with their soup.”
“You make noises with your soup. Mother says so,” Gladys said.
George began to laugh so loudly and immoderately that the ladies behind the cake counter frowned.
“Listen to the boss,” George said. “He’s making noises with his stew!”
I told George to shut up and behave himself, but Gladys had not lost her train of thought.
“Why couldn’t you have taken us to the Ritz?” she asked.
“Oh!” I said. “Why couldn’t I have taken you to the Ritz?”
Then I explained to them that it was time for them to learn that most people can not afford to do silly, extravagant things. This lunch here would cost fifty-five cents, whereas lunch at the Ritz would cost two dollars and fifty cents apiece and there would be no large tip here for the service, either, because gratuities were not allowed in the Bob Cratchit Tea Roome. I told them they might as well get it into their heads now as any other time that neither their mother nor I was made of money. We were doing the best we could to keep them dressed and to give them the advantages of an expensive education and this meant that their mother and I had to do without a great many things which we really wanted. They did not seem interested; they ate their stew slowly, but I kept on telling them. I told them they might not know it, but that they were mighty lucky—luckier than ninety-four out of a hundred other children. Here they were, with a comfortable home and comfortable beds, eating a good meal of wholesome stew with lots of fresh milk and bread and butter, when lots of other children right here in town were cold and hungry. Lots of other parents were on the WPA because they could not get a job. They were lucky and instead of knowing it, they wanted to go to the Ritz.
“Why don’t you believe in the WPA?” George asked.
It surprised me sometimes, that George was old enough to read the papers.
“Whether I do or not,” I said, “the WPA is here, and never mind about it!”
Gladys stared at us with wide, dreamy eyes.
“I thought you didn’t like Mr. Roosevelt,” she said.
“A lot of people don’t like Mr. Roosevelt,” I answered, “for a lot of different reasons, but Mr. Roosevelt’s here, like the WPA.”
“If I wrote Mr. Roosevelt, would he write me?” Gladys asked.
The conversation was making me confused, and convincing me that I had been with George and Gladys for altogether too long a time.
“You write him,” I said. “You write him and tell him you’re a big girl who still collects spiders, and misspell it, the way you’ve been taught to misspell at your school, and either Mr. Roosevelt will answer it or Mrs. Roosevelt will. Now both of you shut up! I want to eat.”
George and Gladys did not shut up, but they changed the subject. They began to play what is known among progressive educators as “a game of the imagination.” It had been amusing when they were younger, but now they were too old for it. Gladys was Mrs. Brown and George was Mr. Brown, and Mrs. Brown was telling Mr. Brown how to pack things in the car and Mr. Brown was complaining. It was a clumsy and humorless parody of Kay and me which made me wonder whether we really appeared that way through our children’s eyes. It made me see that they did not know what we were like at all. I could hear their voices going on around me while I sat and ate, and my mind moved away from them.
Since the war had started all over again, I was more conscious than I had ever been of the misery around us. Yet most people I k
now were removed from it, insulated from all understanding of it, like figures under glass. The awful thing was that there did not seem to be anything much that a person like me could do. I had a feeling, which I had known when I was younger, that I had never really seen the world. I was closer to it there with George and Gladys than I was at the office. It occurred to me that I had been leading two lives—my business life and my private life, which I suppose must be true with everyone. Your business life, your activities and Clubs were what you talked about and put down in a Harvard Class Report.
After leaving Harvard, I was employed by the firm of Smith and Wilding. At the conclusion of the war, I spent a year in New York in the advertising agency of J. T. Bullard. I then returned, rejoined the firm of Smith and Wilding, where I stayed until shortly before its dissolution in 1933. I then formed, with an associate, my own investment counsel service, where I am today.
What was really important were the human contacts I had made. There was my life with Kay and the children, and what did it amount to? As I finished my vanilla ice cream with maple walnut sauce over it and listened to the rain lashing against the windows of Bob Cratchit’s Tea Roome, I could not give a very encouraging answer. I began thinking about Dickens’ Christmas Carol. That work of fiction was read annually to Mary and me from the time we were old enough to listen—and now I had been reading it ever since George and Gladys could listen. I would read it again this Christmas, as a duty, like writing checks for charity appeals, but I could not say that I had ever really appreciated the Cratchit family and Tiny Tim’s thin voice joining in the chorus—“God bless us every one.” The way the world was going now, Tiny Tim should have been saying, “God help us, every one!”
“Say, boss,” George said, “do we have to sit here all afternoon?”
“No,” I said. “Let’s go.”
It was nearly four o’clock and I was arranging books in the library when Kay and Bill got home. They called to me from the hall downstairs and I called back, telling them to come on up. They came in, and sat on the library couch as I worked, and once again, Bill offered to help me, but Kay said he mustn’t bother, because there was nothing that I loved better than puttering around arranging books. I told Bill I was sorry that everything was all upset here, but that it would be quieted down by dinnertime.
“You’re staying to dinner, aren’t you?” I asked.
“No,” Bill said, “I’m taking the five o’clock. There’s a big conference in the morning. I’ve got to get some sleep.”
That meant he was going away in half an hour and I had hardly seen him at all. If he had only told me that he was leaving so early, I should have let the children have lunch alone and I should have gone with them to the Ritz.
“Go ahead and take the midnight,” I said. “I’ve hardly seen you, Bill.”
“You’ll see plenty of me,” Bill said. “I’ll be up for the Yale game. That isn’t so far off now.”
“You’ll stay with us, won’t you, Bill?” I asked.
“That would be swell,” Bill said, and he looked at his wrist watch. He was worrying about the train already.
He seemed preoccupied as he sat in the library beside Kay. That conference must have been on his mind, and somehow it kept us from reaching the common basis that we always had before.
“Come on,” I said again, “and go on the midnight, Bill.”
“No,” Bill said. “But I’ll be up for the game. It was just an accident that I came this time, anyway. I thought you were still up in Maine.”
“Yes,” Kay said. “He just happened to call up and the telephone was just connected.”
“It’s good luck you called before Kay went out to Brookline,” I said.
It seemed to me like a perfectly casual remark, but from the way Kay looked, I must have been tactless again. Just for a second I wondered if she had not wanted me to know, for some reason, that she had been in Brookline. Then I knew that this was absurd.
“Brookline?” Kay said. “Oh, yes, I meant to tell you. The house was all torn up; the beds weren’t made.”
“It certainly was torn up,” Bill said. “I’m afraid I’ve been an awful nuisance butting in.”
“No, you haven’t, Bill,” I said. “Everything’s organized now. I wish you’d take the midnight.”
Bill got up. He had a vague, distracted look.
“The midnight?” he said. “No, I couldn’t do that. I’ve got to go to the office and go over my mail. I have to digest a report.” Then he smiled. “That’s a funny way of putting it, isn’t it? Digesting a report? Well, I’ll see you soon, Harry. Good-by. Good-by, Kay.”
“Wait a minute, Bill,” I said. “I’ll take you to the station.”
“Oh, no,” Bill answered, “don’t do that. You’ve had enough of a beating today.”
“Oh, no, Bill,” Kay said, “Harry would love to take you to the station.” And Kay gave me a little push and a meaning glance.
“No, you don’t,” Bill said. “I’ll get a taxi on the corner. I’ve got to pick up my bags. Good-by, Harry. Good-by, Kay.”
I went down to the door with him.
“But you will be up for the game?” I said.
“Up for the game, or sooner,” Bill answered. “So long.”
When I came upstairs again, Kay was still sitting in the library, looking at the piles of books on the floor.
“Why didn’t you take Bill to the station?” she asked.
“Because he didn’t want me to,” I said. “Kay, that’s an awfully pretty dress you have. I’ve never seen it before.”
I had been afraid that we would have an argument about the station, but Kay looked pleased.
“It is pretty, isn’t it?” she said. “I’ve decided to take more trouble about my clothes and I’m going down to New York shopping the first of the month.”
“Well, that’s fine,” I told her.
All at once everything was better, now that the day was over and the house was nearly settled. We could have a quiet dinner, with nothing to do until tomorrow. I put my hands on Kay’s shoulders.
“It’s certainly swell to have the moving over,” I said, “and to be back here, just you and me.”
“Why, Harry!” Kay said, and she actually blushed. “Do you like it as much as that?”
“Yes,” I said, “of course.”
“Well,” Kay said, “don’t kiss me now. There isn’t time. Let’s pick up the books.”
I started arranging the Thackeray on the shelves.
“Can you hand me Volume II of Pendennis?” I asked. “We ought to read Pendennis aloud sometime.… You know there’s one thing I never thought about.”
“What?” Kay asked.
“How awful it must be sleeping in this place, when you’re moving in,” I said. “I’m awfully glad you went to Brookline. Who did you stay with, Kay?”
“Oh, Harry,” Kay said, “never mind about it now. I’ll tell you all about it, but let’s get the room picked up.”
And then the telephone rang and Kay ran into the parlor to answer it.
“There we go!” she called. “There’s the telephone! Everything’s starting all over.”
I have often wondered what life would be like without a telephone, or even a day without its steady and insistent interruption. I understood just what Kay meant when she said that everything was starting all over. There would be the same quick, heated conferences, held in an undertone while the receiver was off in the other room.
“It’s the Joneses. They want us to dinner.”
“Do we have to go?”
“They’re your friends and not my friends.”
“They’re not my friends any more than they are yours.”
“I thought you always liked it at the Joneses’.”
“Of course I do, but I don’t like to have to think of it all at once.”
It was necessary to make your mind up quickly when the telephone was ringing.
“It’s the man who wants to kill all
the mice in the house.”
“Which man?”
“I don’t know which. There aren’t two, are there, who kill mice?”
“Yes, there are. One does mice and cockroaches together and the other does just mice.”
“Well, I can’t help it, Harry. He wants to talk to you. He’s been calling up all day.”
“Well, tell him I’ve just gone out.”
“Harry, you’ve got to talk to him. You’ve got to get it over with.”
There was no way of getting away from the telephone, but perhaps it helped to keep your mind alert. Suddenly, without ever knowing when, you would have to shift from The Education of Henry Adams to chatting about clean, safe methods of killing vermin or the problem of whether you wanted a little life insurance, or whether you wanted a vacuum cleaner, or Virginia hams, or a case of Florida grapefruit, or whether you would like to be an end man in a minstrel show for the benefit of the Little Wanderers’ Settlement House.
On this occasion the call was no problem of mine. It was Susy Prohill, an old school friend of Kay’s, who wanted to know if Kay was going to join the Social Science class. It had always seemed to me that if Kay had read the Sunday supplements, she would have found out for herself everything that Miss Reisit gleaned from interesting books and contemporary periodicals, but Kay said that Miss Reisit had a vital and universal mind. I could hear her discussing the details as I kept on rearranging the books.
She sighed and slumped down heavily in a chair when she had finished.
“Oh, Lord,” she said, “it was the Social Science class.”
“But you’ve always said it was interesting,” I said.
“Oh?” Kay said. “Do you think it’s interesting to hear a lot of girls comment on a lot of things they don’t know anything about?”
“But they’re your friends,” I said.
“That’s just what you would say,” Kay answered. “I wish that sometimes, just once in a while, we could ever see people we haven’t always known.”
H. M. Pulham, Esquire Page 38