H. M. Pulham, Esquire Read online

  No one replied, and it was hard to tell whether the silence meant agreement or not.

  “And there’s one thing more,” Bo-jo said, “that I know you’ll agree with. Our Class is the best damned class that ever came out of Harvard, and the reason is that we’ve always pulled together. Now, it’s been suggested that someone in the class write a show. Well, that’s a good suggestion, and that’s what we’re here for. Well, who can write it—someone who was in the Lampoon or the Pudding or something? We had one of the best damned Pudding shows I ever saw. Do you remember Spotty Graves doing the tightrope act? We’ve got to have Spotty in the show.”

  “Spotty Graves has passed on,” Bob Ridge said.

  “Passed on where?” said Bo-jo.

  “He passed on the year before last,” Bob Ridge said. “He left a wife and four children, and only five thousand dollars in insurance. Not enough to clean up with.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Bo-jo. “That’s right. I remember now, but that’s beside the point. Now, we certainly have a lot of literary birds in the Class if we try to think of them, a lot of quiet birds who didn’t distinguish themselves much. That’s one of the things that gripes me about Yale. The Elis are always wheeling out the Yale poets and the Yale literary group. Why, hell, we have a lot of the same thing in the Class, except we don’t shout about them. Now, who is there who can write a show?”

  “There’s Bill King,” I said. “Bill always has a lot of ideas.”

  “It’s my personal opinion,” Bo-jo said, “that Bill King’s a bastard. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were a Communist, and we don’t want any smart, unconstructive cracks. What we want is something full of pep and good nature. Who else is there?”

  Bo-jo looked around the table.

  “Well,” he said, “can’t anybody think of anybody else? All right. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll let Chris think about it for us. Chris, you think up the names of five people who can write a show and let me know the first of the week.”

  “All right,” said Chris.

  “And now we’ve got to keep our minds open,” said Bo-jo. “Are there any other suggestions?”

  “How about getting one of those professionals,” Curtis Cole asked, “who organize song and dance shows?”

  “All right,” said Bo-jo. “Now we’re talking. You make it a business to look it up, Curt. Send me in a memorandum of five of those professionals the first of the week. And now I’ve got an idea.”

  “Go ahead,” said Charley. “It must be good.”

  Bo-jo glanced at the ceiling and flicked his cigar ash into his coffee cup.

  “The main problem as I see it,” he said, “is to get everyone in the proper spirit. Now, I don’t know anything that makes people more happy than a good fight.”

  “A fight?” Bob Ridge asked. “What sort of a fight?”

  “Boxing,” said Bo-jo. “Two good game, fast lightweights, to fight ten exhibition rounds. We ought to get them cheap just for the publicity.”

  Charley Roberts looked at Bo-jo with interest. “Are you serious about that?” he asked.

  “It surprises you, doesn’t it?” Bo-jo inquired. “Well, it did me too when I thought of it first, but the more you think of it the better you’ll like it. Two good game boys, right on a platform in the Harvard Yard, pasting each other. Why, it’ll drive everybody crazy! It’ll take them out of themselves. They won’t remember where they are.”

  “But I thought the whole object of this thing was for everyone to remember where he was,” Chris Evans said.

  “That’s beside the point,” said Bo-jo.

  “If you’re going to get them,” Charley Roberts said, “why not pick heavyweights?”

  “Now you’ve got the spirit,” said Bo-jo. “I’ve thought of that. They’re too expensive, Charley.”

  “Well, why not get ten niggers in a battle royal?” Charley asked. “That ought to take the boys and girls out of themselves.”

  Bo-jo Brown wrinkled up his forehead.

  “Now, look here, boys,” he said, “we didn’t come here to throw water on good ideas. There’s nothing easier than knocking. Bob, I want you to go down to Mike’s Gymnasium on Scollay Square. Just go and see Mike personally and ask Mike for the names of some good boys who want publicity, and let me know what you find first thing next week. Got it, Bob?”

  “All right,” Bob said, “if you really want me to, Bo-jo.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Bo-jo said. “Now, suppose we don’t have boxing. That gets us back to song and dance stuff, doesn’t it? Charley, you haven’t got a job yet. Suppose you get busy and ask around about talent in the class—boys, girls, everybody—tap dancers, saxophones, stunts—We’ve got to have a lot of stunts—people who can do card tricks or impersonations.”

  “I haven’t got much time,” said Charley.

  “You told us that before,” Bo-jo said. “Just get off your fanny and get busy.”

  Bo-jo pushed back his chair and rose.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ve got to be getting back to the office now. We’re all started—set to go. There’s nothing like a talk around a table to get ideas. I’ve had a swell time and I hope you all have, and we’ll get together sometime soon. Oh, Harry—”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Bo-jo slapped me on the back and took a firm hold on my arm.

  “Harry, here, thought he was going to get off easy. Well, I haven’t forgotten Harry. You’re coming right down to the office with me now.”

  “Now, listen, Bo-jo,” I said. “It’s three o’clock.”

  “Don’t I know it’s three o’clock?” Bo-jo asked me. “I’m not crabbing about the time, am I? Besides, it won’t take long—your job hasn’t really started yet. All right, boys, is everything all straight? All right. Let’s go.”

  The club was nearly deserted when Bo-jo and I got our hats from the checkroom. The only members left in the newspaper room were four old gentlemen who would have been my father’s age if my father had been living. They sat in black leather armchairs rustling the papers, and I heard one of them speaking querulously.

  “You can blame it all on Wilson,” he said, “and the League of Nations.”

  Outside on the sidewalk Bo-jo took me by the arm again.

  “Well,” Bo-jo said, “it’s a great life, isn’t it?”

  “How do you mean it’s a great life?” I asked.

  “Exactly what I say,” Bo-jo answered, “a great life. What’s the matter? Are you sore about something?”

  “I was just thinking,” I said. “I never realized that I’d been alive so long.”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Bo-jo asked. “What got that idea into your head?”

  “Up there at lunch,” I said. “I’d never realized that we were all so old.”

  “Now, that’s a hell of a way to talk,” Bo-jo said. “We’re not old.”

  “We’re in our middle forties,” I said.

  “That isn’t old,” Bo-jo said. “You’re just as old as you feel. I’m just as good as I ever was, and so are you, but I see what you mean. Those other people up there looked terrible. It’s because they don’t take care of themselves. Not enough exercise. Too much worry.”

  “Maybe they have to worry,” I said.

  “No one has to worry. Look at me. I never worry.”

  His grip on my arm tightened. He began walking faster with the swift, elastic step of youth, drawing deep breaths of the humid spring air. There was still a crowd in front of the subway station, sailors talking to girls in tight silk dresses, two or three newsboys, a blindman and the old lady feeding the pigeons bread crumbs out of a brown paper bag.

  “There’s one thing I can always do,” Bo-jo said. “I can always get people to work.”

  “I know you can,” I said. “It’s a gift, Bo-jo.”

  “It’s just knowing how to handle them,” Bo-jo went on. “Now, those boys are going to wear their fingers off. There’s nothing like class spirit. It
gets you out of yourself. If you want to be happy, get out of yourself.”

  On Washington Street in front of the news bulletins the paper boys were shouting. Their voices rose above the scuffling of shoe leather on the pavements.

  “London Cabinet in session,” they were shouting. “All about it. Braintree woman burned to death. All about it.”

  “It would be funny,” I said, “wouldn’t it, if it started all over again? It’s about the same time of year.”

  “Forget it,” Bo-jo said. “Get it out of your mind.”

  Bo-jo’s offices were large and newly decorated. There was a rail with a boy sitting behind a table. Bo-jo pushed me in front of him.

  “Come on,” he said. “Come on.”

  “All right,” I said, “but I can’t stay long, really.”

  “Come on,” said Bo-jo. “It won’t take a minute. It’s about the lives.”

  “You mean about the lives of the Class,” I asked, “the biographies?”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Bo-jo asked. “Do you think I’m talking French? Come inside here and look.”

  Bo-jo opened the door of a long room. There were two large tables against the walls heaped with papers and form letters and two girls were seated at desks typing.

  “Look here,” I said. “This anniversary of ours is more than a year off, isn’t it?”

  Bo-jo slapped me on the shoulder.

  “Now you’re talking,” he answered. “But we’re not going to get caught out. It’s time we began organizing.”

  I still could not understand him.

  “All these papers,” I said, “all these pictures—they haven’t got anything to do with our Class, have they?”

  “Now you’re getting it,” Bo-jo answered. “Of course it isn’t our Class. This is the year ahead of us, this year’s Twenty-fifth. Their Class Secretary works right in this office—you know him, Jake Meek—this is his staff and we’re using the same girls for our book. This is Miss Ferncroft, Mr. Pulham. This is Miss Josephs, Mr. Pulham.”

  The girls turned around in their swivel chairs and smiled.

  “Where do I come in?” I asked.

  Bo-jo slapped me on the shoulder again and nearly threw me off balance.

  “Why,” he answered, “you’re the one who’s going to chase everybody and get their lives. You’re going to have general oversight of the book—all the paper work, all the editing—someone’s got to do it.”

  “Why doesn’t our Class Secretary do it?” I asked. “That’s what he’s meant for.”

  Bo-jo frowned.

  “Now, that isn’t the right way to look at it, Harry,” he said. “You know Sam Green. Sam’s the best damned secretary any class has ever had, but he’s got to have help, hasn’t he? Now, let’s get this straight. Are you going to let the Class down, or aren’t you?”

  “But look here, Bo-jo,” I said. “I’m not accustomed to doing anything like this, and besides I haven’t got the time.”

  Bo-jo gave my chest a playful push, causing me to take two steps backward.

  “Now you’re talking,” he said. “I knew you’d get into the spirit of it. Time—why, the job doesn’t really begin until next autumn. All you have to do now is to go over the general organization with Miss Ferncroft.”

  “But look here,” I said. “This will take hours and hours.”

  “And when you take off your coat and start pitching in,” Bo-jo went on as though he had not heard me, “you’re going to be fascinated by it, and we’re all going to have a swell time working together. I’m busy now and I’ve got to duck out. It’s great to have seen you, Harry. I haven’t had such a good time in years.”

  “Wait a minute, Bo-jo,” I said.

  Bo-jo pulled the door open and waved his other hand.

  “It’s a big meeting down the street,” he said. “I’ll see you later, boy”—and then the door closed, and I was on one side of it and Bo-jo was on the other.

  I looked at the papers for a moment and then I looked at Miss Ferncroft. It was only right that someone should do this for the Class, but I did not see why it was up to me particularly; and yet I did not want to be disagreeable.

  I picked up some of the typewritten sheets which were clipped together. They began with a printed form, dealing with the life of someone in college just about my time.

  “And then there are the photographs,” Miss Ferncroft said. “We’re having a great deal of trouble collecting the photographs of before and after.”

  They would be the pictures of young men in high collars taken from the first Class Report, and then there would be the pictures of the way we were today, bald-headed, gray-headed, weary—and what had it all been about?

  “So you can see,” Miss Ferncroft said, “why Mr. Brown needs help.”

  “Yes, I can see,” I said.

  Then I began to read the manuscript which I was holding. It was written by someone whom I had never known. The name was Charles Mason Hilliard.

  BORN: Ridgely, Illinois, March 23rd, 1893; son of Joseph, Gertrude (Jessup) Hilliard.

  PREPARED AT: Ridgely High School and Brock Academy.

  COLLEGE DEGREES: A.B., LL.B.

  MARRIED: Martha Gooding, New York City.

  CHILDREN: Mary Gooding, Roger, Thomas.

  OCCUPATION: Lawyer.

  ADDRESS: (Business) Mortgage Building, New York.

  (Home) Mamaroneck, New York.

  “He doesn’t give any dates,” I said.

  “That’s the trouble,” said Miss Ferncroft. “No one ever follows instructions.”

  I continued reading Charles Mason Hilliard’s personal history.

  After leaving Law School I joined the firm of Jessup and Goodrich in New York. Five years later I was employed by the firm of Jones and Jones. I am now a partner in the firm of Watkins, Lord, Watkins, Bondage, Green, Smith and Hilliard. I have been very busy all this time practising corporation law and trying to raise a family. My work at Law School was interrupted by the war in which I served as a First Lieutenant, Engineer Corps. This seems to me a strange interlude, unrelated to my other activities. I still like to go to the football games and cheer for Harvard. My chief avocation is watching my children grow up. I am an Episcopalian, and I bowl occasionally and sometimes play golf. In politics I am a Republican, hoping that the day will come when Mr. Roosevelt leaves the White House. Ten years ago it was my good fortune to be sent on business to the Pacific Coast. I made the most of this opportunity for travel and still hope sometime, if I ever have a long enough vacation, to take the family to see the Grand Canyon. Harvard has always seemed to me the best educational institution in the world, and I can hope for nothing better than that my sons will follow my footsteps (which I trust they will do, if we can get Mr. Roosevelt out of the White House) and gain from our old Alma Mater what I have gained, both in experience and peace of mind. I have not had the time which I have wished for reading good books. On leaving college I started Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Nicolay and Hay’s Lincoln. I am still working on them in my spare time and hope to report to those who are interested at the reunion that I have finished this self-imposed stint.

  “Is this characteristic?” I asked Miss Ferncroft.

  “Well, they all seem to be pretty much like that,” Miss Ferncroft answered. “It’s funny. Most of them have been so busy working that they haven’t had time to do anything.”

  “Would you give me a sheet of note paper, please, Miss Ferncroft,” I asked her, “and have you a fountain pen?” She handed me a sheet of note paper, and I sat down in front of it. I did not like what I was going to do, because in a sense it was disloyal to the Class. Nevertheless, I had been making up my mind. It was an imposition.

  Dear Bo-jo [I wrote],

  It was perfectly swell seeing you at lunch, and as you say, the idea of working on our Class Book is fascinating. I can’t tell you how much I wish I could go ahead the way you ask me, but, as a matter of fact, I am going to be very busy, e
specially toward autumn, and I do not feel I am quite the person to undertake the responsibility. I can’t tell you how flattered I am that you feel I am up to it.

  What I had written sounded weak. I tore the paper up and put it in the wastebasket and started out again.

  Dear Bo-jo,

  You shoved this job off on me, because you thought I’d be flattered and because you think I am easily imposed upon. Though I accept you and eat your lunch, I can see that you are a fathead. What do I care what happens to the Class Report?

  This was more what I wanted to say, but somehow you can’t say things like that. I tore the paper up and tried another sheet.

  Dear Bo-jo,

  I forgot to tell you that it looks as though I shall have to take a long business trip to New York and Kay and I have been talking about going out to the Pacific Coast next autumn and next winter. Fascinating as all this work will be, I am sure you can see how I can’t readily undertake it, but thanks ever so much for asking me.

  I was aware that none of this was true. It might be possible that I could suggest to Kay that we go away somewhere, but if I did so it was doubtful whether she would do it, with bills coming in the way they were. I tore the letter up and threw it in the wastebasket.

  Dear Bo-jo [I wrote again],

  Before I really start out on this perhaps we’d better talk about it a little more.

  Yours,

  HARRY

  I folded the letter and placed it in an envelope and handed it to Miss Ferncroft.

  “Will you please give this to Mr. Brown?” I said. “Sometime when he isn’t too busy. And I’m afraid I’ll have to be going now.”

  “But you’ll be back, won’t you?” Miss Ferncroft asked.

  III

  The Thoughts of Youth Are Long, Long Thoughts

  I was preoccupied and not particularly pleased with myself when I was out on the street again. I had not faced Bo-jo Brown and told him what I thought—not because of any personal timidity, but rather because it was just as well not to have the reputation for being a sorehead, and besides there were certain traditions about friendship.