“Thanks,” she said, “thanks very much,” and she handed me the glass.
“Kay,” I asked her, “did Bill get some bad news or something?”
“No,” she answered.
“Well, something must have happened,” I said. “Maybe I’d better go up and talk to him.”
“No,” she said quickly, “no, don’t do that. Harry, let’s stay here for a minute where it’s quiet.”
I sat down beside her and took her hand. It was as cold as ice.
“If you’ll go up to bed, Kay, I’ll get you a hot water bag,” I said.
“Anything,” she said, “anything but a hot water bag!”
“This is the way you always get when you do too much,” I said. “If your feet are like your hands, you need one.”
Kay did not answer and I thought of something else.
“Kay,” I asked her, “you and Bill haven’t been having a fight about anything, have you?”
“No,” she answered, “no. Please don’t talk, Harry. It’s just everything.”
“Kay,” I said, “you’d better go up to bed.”
“All right,” she said. “It’s the only thing you can really get back to, isn’t it? Bed, I mean. It’s funny—” And then she stopped. She always did have the most annoying way of stopping.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
Her eyes were closed and she did not answer for quite a while.
“How you have to keep going on,” she said, “and how you can’t go back.” Then she opened her eyes and looked at me. She certainly did not look well at all.
“Why, Kay,” I asked her, “how do you mean, you can’t go back? Back where?”
“Oh, back to anything,” Kay said. “You think you can, but you can’t. Oh, never mind it now. I’ll just go upstairs and I’ll be all right in the morning. Good night, dear. Help me up, will you?”
When I took her hands and helped her up she leaned toward me and kissed me. I thought it was very generous of her.
“Kay,” I said, “I shouldn’t have left you here tonight. I’m sorry about the tea.”
“The tea?” she answered and she looked as if she did not remember anything about it. “Oh, never mind that. It isn’t anything,” and then she put her hands on my shoulders and drew me toward her. “Harry—”
“What?” I asked.
“The only thing that matters is you and me.”
“Why, Kay,” I said, “that’s awfully sweet of you to say so.”
“No,” she answered, “no. It isn’t sweet. It’s just the truth, and it’s rather awful. We’re all alone. There’s only you and me.”
“I don’t think it’s awful,” I said, but she did not seem to have heard me, because she went right on speaking.
“Everything we’ve done together has made it that way—whether we’ve wanted it or not. Did you ever think of that?”
“Why, yes,” I answered, “I have sometimes.”
“So we have to be kind to each other,” she said, “always, don’t we?”
“Why, yes,” I said, “of course.”
“Don’t say ‘of course,’” she said, “but that’s what it is—of course. Kiss me good night. Don’t make me feel I’m all alone.”
“Why, Kay,” I said, “Kay, darling, I’m always here.”
It seemed to me that she looked a little better.
“I know,” she said, “but I like to hear you say it. Well, I’m going up to bed and you’d better come up too. Thank God, we’re going to have a quiet week. And, Harry—”
“Yes?” I said.
“I don’t think I’ll get up to see Bill off. You don’t mind, do you? He’ll understand.”
“Why, of course,” I said. “I’ll take Bitsey out. Just go to sleep.”
It was a curious coincidence—what Kay had said, that you can’t go back. I kept thinking of it as I turned on the light over my desk in the library, because it was just what Marvin Myles had said, almost the identical words, and even their voices had sounded alike. I did not know to what Kay was referring and probably she hardly knew herself, because she was so tired that she had just said whatever had come into her mind. Kay always did use up her strength when it came to entertaining. She had seen too much of Bill. He had so much vitality that he exhausted even me sometimes. But still it was a coincidence.
At any rate, she would be all right in the morning, and it was probably just my imagination that Kay and Bill had been getting on each other’s nerves.
I opened the desk drawer and got out some paper. The whole house was still, but I did not feel sleepy, with all the books and pictures looking down at me. This was a fine time to write that Class life of mine and get it over with. If I had to do that work for Bo-jo, the least I could do was to get my own life in on time. I picked up the blank which I had started, and looked at it.
NAME: Henry Moulton Pulham.
BORN: Brookline, Mass., December 15th, 1892.
PARENTS: John Grove Pulham, Mary Knowles Pulham.
MARRIED: June 15th, 1921; Cornelia Motford.
CHILDREN: George, May 29th, 1924; Gladys, January 16th, 1927.
DECREES: A.B.
OCCUPATION: Investment counsel.
It still looked a good deal like something on a tombstone, but I should have to get on with it. The main thing was not to give the impression of writing a lot in the book and of showing off. It was easy enough to think about my life, but now that I was face to face with a piece of paper it was quite a puzzle. I never did like writing. I turned on the radio for a while just to get myself in the proper mood.
The war didn’t seem to be getting on any further. The French were still sitting behind the Maginot Line and seemed to have given up any idea of an offensive, but they must have had plans because Gamelin was a great general. There were no better military men in the world than the French. I thought of that single poilu marching alone under the Arc de Triomphe where the flame burned over the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. You couldn’t beat the French, once they started moving. They would get organized and going in the spring, but there was no use twiddling with that radio. I had to get out my pen and write.
After graduating from Harvard [I wrote], I started by selling bonds in the firm of Smith and Wilding, where I continued until the declaration of war in 1917. During the war I was a second lieutenant of Infantry, serving with the American Expeditionary Force in France. It was a very interesting experience.
I wondered if I ought to say anything about being decorated, but I decided to let it go, because there is nothing worse than showing off.
After being honorably discharged, I worked for a year in New York in the firm of J. T. Bullard—advertising. Family affairs brought me home and I was very kindly allowed to continue with the firm of Smith and Wilding, where I remained until 1933, when I started my own investment counsel office, Maxwell and Pulham. This on the whole has been a fortunate venture. It has enabled me to make a lot of interesting contacts through the years.
On June 15th, 1921, I married Cornelia Motford, a step which I have never regretted for a moment, since our life together has always been happy and rewarding. With the children growing up it seems impossible to think that we could have been happily marrried for so long.
I thought that I had put it rather neatly and nicely and I thought that Kay would like it when I read it to her.
My life outside the usual routine of business must be the same as that of my other classmates—devoted to my family and friends and to everyday activities. Mrs. Pulham and I have had the good fortune to go abroad three times—once to England, once to France, and once to Rome, where I was deeply interested in the foundations and passages on the Palatine Hill, a puzzle which Mrs. Pulham and I were not able to work out.
In religion I am an Episcopalian; in politics, Republican. For recreation I play tennis in the summer and squash in the winter and I have been a runner-up in our local bumping tournament for the last three years.
I stopped and thought f
or a while, because it seemed to me that I had said almost everything, but it would have to be a little longer. It would look as if I were being disagreeable to have it as short as that.
Like all my other classmates, I look back upon my years at School and college as the happiest of my life. Among the activities the one I enjoy the most is being on the Alumni Board of St. Swithin’s School. Being thus intimately thrown with the youth of today, I can not share with my classmates the discouragement and pessimism which has been engendered by the New Deal. It seems to me only a phase and that matters will be better soon in business and in national life. I do not believe that either Mr. Roosevelt or Germany can hold out much longer and I confidently look forward to seeing a sensible Republican in the White House. We spend our winters in town and our summers in North Harbor, Maine. In either place the latchstring is always out for any member of our Class.
About the Author
John P. Marquand (1893–1960) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, proclaimed “the most successful novelist in the United States” by Life magazine in 1944. A descendant of governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, shipping magnates Daniel Marquand and Samuel Curzon, and famed nineteenth-century writer Margaret Fuller, Marquand always had one foot inside the blue-blooded New England establishment, the focus of his social satire. But he grew up on the outside, sent to live with maiden aunts in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the setting of many of his novels, after his father lost the once-considerable family fortune in the crash of 1907. From this dual perspective, Marquand crafted stories and novels that were applauded for their keen observation of cultural detail and social mores.
By the 1930s, Marquand was a regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, where he debuted the character of Mr. Moto, a Japanese secret agent. No Hero, the first in a series of bestselling spy novels featuring Mr. Moto, was published in 1935. Three years later, Marquand won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Late George Apley, a subtle lampoon of Boston’s upper classes. The novels that followed, including H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), So Little Time (1943), B.F.’s Daughter (1946), Point of No Return (1949), Melvin Goodwin, USA (1952), Sincerely, Willis Wayde (1955), and Women and Thomas Harrow (1959), cemented his reputation as the preeminent chronicler of contemporary New England society and one of America’s finest writers.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1940, 1941 by John P. Marquand and Adelaide H. Marquand
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1570-7
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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H. M. Pulham, Esquire Page 45