H. M. Pulham, Esquire

by John P. Marquand

  The animation had left Bill’s face. It looked tired and drawn again.

  “I never coveted anybody’s ox,” he said, “nor anybody’s ass either, but a good many rather decent people commit adultery. You know the rules and you break them. Boy, you’d be surprised.”

  Bill’s voice sounded patiently incredulous as though he were talking to someone who was not grown up, and I did not like it.

  “That isn’t what I meant,” I said. “Of course there are all sorts of exceptional circumstances. I simply mean that you and I, Bill, we have rules.”

  Bill whistled softly.

  “I don’t know whether you’re being serious or not,” he said, “but, honestly, you’d be surprised! You ought to get out and travel around more. How did we get on this subject anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It is a sort of funny subject.”

  “You’re wrong there. Nothing about it is funny,” Bill said. “You know, there’s one thing about you, Harry—”

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “You’re the only man I know who isn’t afraid to say what he thinks. Sometimes I think you’re a damned fool and sometimes I don’t. I’m just not man enough to handle you.”

  “I make an awful fool of myself sometimes,” I said.

  “Now and then,” Bill said. “Not always.” His face lighted up. He was thinking of something else. “What sort of seats have you got for the game?”

  I told him that they were somewhere down in the bowl. Ever since I left college, they had been in the bowl or in the wooden stands. I always had rotten seats. Bill seemed still more cheerful.

  “Well, that’s the way they break,” he said. “I got a good single seat—never mind how—and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You can have it and I’ll take Kay to the game and we’ll sit in the bowl.”

  “That’s awfully nice of you, Bill,” I said, “but I don’t think Kay would like it.”

  “How do you mean, she wouldn’t like it?”

  “Well, it’s silly,” I said. “It’s just a sort of piece of sentiment. Kay and I go to the game together. We always have.”

  And then Kay came in. Her cheeks were flushed and she was out of breath from running up the stairs.

  “Oh, Bill,” she said, “I’ve been awfully busy. I’m trying to get the table worked out right. Harry, you’d better go down and see about the cocktail glasses. That extra woman doesn’t understand them.” She looked from me toward Bill. “What have you two been talking about?”

  “About Life,” Bill said.

  “Oh,” Kay said, and they kept on looking at each other. “Well, we’ve all got to go and get dressed. Dinner’s at seven-thirty.”

  While I dressed my mind was absorbed with all those intricacies which always come with a dinner party at one’s house, and I wished that it were all over and that we had never started it. I was trying to recollect the people that Kay had asked, and as usual I could not remember all of them and I knew that as usual she would have asked too many.

  But Bill King remained in the back of my mind, because he had looked so entirely alone and so deathly sick of himself. It did not seem right to be feeling so happy myself, interested in all the details of the house, proud of the way Kay had fixed the table. After that talk with Bill all sorts of small nonessentials made me happy and all the mechanics of existence became significant. Bill King had said that life was made up of loving and making money, but it was a good deal more than that. Life was made up of letting the dog out, of hitting your thumb with the hammer when you were driving nails, of getting someone to fix the washer in the laundry faucet, of Christmas and friends to dinner—of thousands of things like that, all added up together.

  “Bill looks awfully tired,” I told Kay while we were getting dressed.

  “Oh,” said Kay, “does he?”

  “Kay, I don’t believe Bill’s happy,” I said.

  “That isn’t remarkable,” Kay answered. “Maybe no one’s happy.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We’re happy quite often.”

  “Don’t let’s talk,” Kay said. “Hurry and get your studs in.”

  It was ten minutes past seven, and our guests were asked for half-past. I would have to get dressed and mix the cocktails.

  “What do you suppose Ellen did with my studs?” I asked.

  Kay did not answer, nor did I expect her to. She was sitting at her dressing table working on her hair. Her arms and shoulders were bare and I noticed the right hand strap of her slip was secured with a safety pin. She had spilled powder over her silver-backed brush and over the framed photographs of her father and mother and George and Gladys and me, which she always kept on the dressing table. She had opened one of the side drawers, displaying the box which contained all the artificial flowers and synthetic birds that she occasionally put in her hair. It made me think of all the different things that Kay had done to her hair since we were married. First it had been long, almost down to her waist, and then she had bobbed it, and then she had let it grow long again, and then she had cut it and curled it, and then she had let it grow half-long with just a curl on the end. Then she had thinned it all out, and after that she had “upped” it and had worked on it with hairpins, and now it was down again in some sort of bob with a fresh new permanent.

  “Are you nearly dressed?” Kay asked.

  I was working at the neckband of my shirt. The hole for the collar stud gave way and I pulled the shirt off and threw it into the wastebasket.

  Kay was pinning a red bird in her hair. I was looking for my studs in a box that was half-full of laundry pins.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with Bill,” I said.

  “Harry,” Kay said, “be sure to hang up all your clothes in the closet and close the door. The girls will have to leave their things here.”

  “Who’s going to sit next to me?” I asked. Kay leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling.

  “Beatrice Rodney is on your right.”

  “Does she have to be there?”

  “Are you dressed or aren’t you?” Kay asked.

  “I’m more dressed than you,” I said.

  “It’s getting the things fixed underneath that takes time,” Kay said. “Don’t just stand there.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  Kay sighed.

  “Pick up all your things,” she said, “and then go downstairs and ask Ellen to air out the dining room so that it doesn’t smell of fried chicken—and wait a minute. Where’s Bitsey? Did you take him out when you got home?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then go and find Gladys and tell her to take Bitsey around the block. Have you done anything about the champagne?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Wait a minute,” Kay called. “Has Bill got everything he wants?”

  “Bill always has everything,” I said.

  “Please, Harry,” Kay said, “don’t just stand there.”

  The dining room smelled of fried chicken and candied sweet potatoes, and I opened the windows. It was a relief to get upstairs to see Bill. His pigskin dressing case from London with all the gold-topped bottles in it was open on Gladys’ bureau. His wine-colored brocaded dressing gown was thrown over the foot of the bed.

  “Come on down when you’re ready,” I told him, “and help me with the cocktails.”

  When everything was finally in order, it seemed to me that we were going to have a good evening. When the doorbell rang I hurried down into the parlor. It was Mary and Jim. They were always early.

  “You can leave your clothes in our room,” I told Mary, and I kissed her.

  “I suppose Bill King’s here,” Mary said.

  “He’s going to sit next to you,” I said. “Try to cheer him up, won’t you?”

  “If he’s here,” Mary said, “he’ll cheer up without my helping.”

  From the way she glanced at Jim I imagined that they had been talking about Bill’s being with us, just
before they rang the bell.

  “Tell Kay to hurry up,” I told her. Then the doorbell was ringing again, and Ellen was bringing in the cocktails, and the doorbell was ringing again.

  “Well,” Jim said, “here’s looking at you.”

  “Happy days,” Bill said.

  Everyone was saying the same thing that everyone always said at dinners.

  It was all over at a quarter of one. Kay and I were alone again—just she and I—and Kay was yawning and taking the bird out of her hair. I don’t know of anything that draws two people together more closely than the end of a dinner party—at any rate, it always did that with Kay and me. It was like talking over one of those amateur plays in which everyone had tried to do his best.

  “Harry,” she asked, “do you think everything went all right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Everyone seemed to have a good time.” I was taking off my collar. It had been chafing my neck all the evening.

  “It was the champagne,” Kay said.

  “Maybe it was,” I answered.

  “Ellen got mixed up with the oysters.”

  “Yes,” I answered, “but I don’t think anybody noticed.”

  “And the soufflé fell,” Kay said.

  “Yes,” I answered, “but I don’t think anyone noticed.”

  We were like two children alone telling each other that this or that may have been wrong, but that really no one had noticed.

  “It’s awfully nice doing things together,” I said. “It makes everything worth while.” Kay turned away from the dressing table. “I hope Bill had a good time. I think he did, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Kay said, “I think he did.”

  “It’s sort of mean,” I said, “Bill’s going to the game all alone. He said he’d sit in the bowl with you. I told him we’d always gone together. Maybe I was selfish.”

  “Oh, no, you weren’t,” Kay said. “Harry—I’m a mixed-up sort of person. I’m all mixed up tonight.”

  “Why, Kay,” I said, “what are you mixed up about?”

  “About you,” Kay said, “and everything.”

  “Why, Kay,” I said, “did I do anything wrong tonight?”

  “No,” Kay said. “I just sort of hate myself tonight.”

  She rested her head on my shoulder for a moment and her arms tightened about my neck.

  “You’ve been so sweet all day,” she said, “and I’ve kept ordering you around.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s what I’m meant for.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Kay said. “Tell me that you love me.”

  I could not understand why she wanted to know.

  “Of course I love you,” I said.

  “No matter what?” and she clung to me again.

  “Yes,” I said, “no matter what.”

  I could not understand what was on her mind.

  “Harry.”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Do you suppose you can love two people at once?”

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Do you suppose you can love two people at once—in different ways, I mean?”

  “Now, Kay,” I said, “don’t worry about that letter any more. That was written twenty years ago.”

  “Oh, that,” she said. “It isn’t that, Harry.”

  I waited for her to go on, but she stopped.

  “Nothing, dear,” she said. “It’s awfully late. Everything’s locked up downstairs, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I told her.

  I did not know what it was she was going to tell me, but it disturbed me—that business of loving two people at once. I wished she had not brought it up, because now I had to forget Marvin Myles all over again.

  XXXVI

  Two in the Bowl

  The next day started like any other Saturday before a game. We went to Mary’s house for one of those early lunches, where everybody stood up and ate creamed chicken. Then there was the business of getting out to Cambridge and of finding some place to park the car and of arranging for Bill to meet us afterwards at Zangwell Hall where we were having the Class Tea. It all reminded me of the books I had once read by Ralph Henry Barbour: “The day of the big game,” the chapter always started, “dawned crisp and clear.”

  As Bill and Kay and I walked to the stadium I realized that I was doing most of the talking.

  “It always makes me feel like an undergraduate again,” I said, “walking to the game. I don’t care if I live to be a hundred, I’ll feel that way about it.”

  “Yes, Harry,” Kay said. “Yes, we know you do.”

  Kay and Bill both looked as though they belonged on the Yale side more than on ours. Bill had on a Homburg hat and a brand new coat lined with mink, and yellow kid gloves. Kay was dressed in a new tan broadcloth suit that made even the mink coat that she wore over it, the one that she had done over after she inherited it from her mother, look new. When it came to me, I looked pretty shopworn. I was wearing the old raccoon coat which Father had given me at college. The hair was getting thin in back, but I had never wanted to give it away. As I watched them, I wondered if Bill felt hurt because I was not taking his seat in the cheering section.

  “Do you still want to change seats, Bill?” I asked him.

  “Oh, no,” Bill said. “No, thanks.”

  “Bill doesn’t want to,” Kay said. “Don’t go on about it, Harry.”

  We were at the gate that led to the cheering section by then, and Bill waved his hand at us.

  “So long,” he said. “Take care of yourselves. I’ll see you later.” And Kay and I kept walking.

  Kay was not like herself, and she had not been last night. It made me a little impatient, because I wanted to have a good time. I tried to think whether I had ever seen her just that way, and I remembered once years before when I had gone to see her off with her father on a trip abroad, after George was born. When it was time for all to go ashore who were going Kay seemed to realize that I was going too, that she would be on the boat and I would be on the shore, and she had held onto me for a minute in just the way she had last night.

  “Kay,” I said, “what is it that’s wrong?”

  “What?” Kay said.

  She turned around when I spoke to her and she looked startled.

  “You’re unhappy. You weren’t happy last night.”

  “Oh, Harry,” she said, “never mind it. I can’t be happy all the time.”

  I forgot all about it when we were up in the stands. There were lots of people we knew and Kay looked interested, and football could take me out of any mood, away from anything, just as soon as the whistle blew. I do not know why it was that Kay, who was always athletic and who had been brought up on Harvard football since childhood, could never seem to keep her mind on the game, when I could live over so many of the games I had seen. The sound of everyone yelling was a little like the war. I found myself standing up and shouting.

  “Block that kick,” I shouted. “Block that kick!”

  Kay pulled at my coonskin coat.

  “Who is that over there, just in front?” she asked. “The man with the woman in the red hat.”

  “Never mind it now,” I shouted. “Block that kick!”

  “I wonder whatever happened to the little fat man in the red sweater with the white gloves,” said Kay, “who used to come out in the middle of the field and wave his arms.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Can’t you listen to me?” Kay asked. “The little man who used to wave his arms. What did he used to wave his arms for?”

  “He used to signal to the scoreboard,” I said. “Come on, Harvard!”

  I wished that someone like Bo-jo Brown were in there, or Sam Green. As usual, it was a rotten team. They were slow on their feet, slow at getting started, slow at seeing anything.

  “Hold ’em,” I shouted. “Hold ’em! Watch that pass!”

  “Harry,” Kay asked, “who is the man with the woman in the red hat?”

  “Oh, hell,” I shout
ed. “Hold ’em Harvard! Don’t stand there fiddling!”

  “You’re not listening to me,” Kay said. “If you didn’t want Bill to sit with me, at least you might listen.”

  “I did want Bill to sit with you,” I said. “I asked him.”

  I did not hear what she answered, because there was too much noise.

  “Somebody’s hurt,” Kay said. “They’re bringing all those little paper cups. They used to drink out of a bucket. I don’t suppose it was sanitary.”

  “To hell with the paper cups!”

  “Harry,” Kay said, “it doesn’t do any good to act like that.”

  I knew that it did not do any good, but it did make me feel better.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with the team,” I said. “I’m glad Percy Haughton can’t see them.”

  “Harry,” Kay asked, “where is Zangwell Hall?”

  “What?” I said. “Oh, look at that! Look out!”

  “Won’t you listen?” Kay said. “Where we’re going to that tea.”

  “Kay, I’m watching the game.”

  “Then what did you want me for?” Kay said. “You said you wanted me to come.”

  “Of course I wanted you to come—so we could see the game.”

  The team was not what it should have been, but it got better in the second half. It was growing dark when it was all over and we stood for a while watching them light red flares and watching the procession on the field and I threw my arm around Kay’s shoulders.

  “Well, that was quite a game,” I said.

  Her face was shadowy in the dusk, but I could see that her lips were half open the way they always were when she was thinking of something.

  “That was quite a game,” I said again.

  “Well, I might just as well not have been here,” Kay said. “I guess you don’t need me much.”

  Now that everyone was going home somehow the darkness and the crowd made me feel discouraged.

  “Kay,” I said, “I’m sorry. I forget when I watch them play.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” she said.

  It occurred to me that it was better for women not to go to football games.