Sincerely, Willis Wayde (34 page)

It looked as though it would rain during the second half of the Yale game, but fortunately the rain held off. Willis had not been caught by the contagion of the crowd. Instead he had been trying to follow his old footsteps made over twenty years ago. He was the Willis Wayde of the present, and it was time to find the Cadillac, which would be waiting for them on Massachusetts Avenue as near as possible to the subway station at Harvard Square. They could reach the Cadillac in ten minutes if they hurried, and fortunately all the football crowd was now in a hurry to get somewhere. There was that little gathering of a few associates for cocktails in the suite at the Ritz. You could not be casual about such things, and you were always judged by the way they were handled. Sylvia and Al would give it a pleasant homelike touch—people were always pleased when you introduced them to the family.

It was later than he thought by the time they found their Cadillac, and it was a great relief to be sitting beside Sylvia and Al, out of the crowd at last.

“Willis,” Sylvia said, “before we go back can't we drive down Craigie Street?”

“Now, Sylvia,” he told her, and he found himself speaking carefully, “it's in just the opposite direction and we really should be at the Ritz on time.”

“It's only a few minutes out of the way,” Sylvia said, “and Al has never seen it.”

“Hasn't he?” Willis asked.

“Come on,” Al said, “let's go, Pops.”

“All right,” Willis said. “I thought of course he'd seen it at some time or other.” And he told the driver to drive slowly when they finally reached Craigie Street. Except for the traffic, Brattle and Craigie Streets had not changed much.

“There used to be a drinking fountain for horses here,” Sylvia said. “Do you remember?”

“No,” Willis answered. “What drinking fountain?”

“Perhaps it wasn't here when you were,” Sylvia said.

Somehow you always thought of Cambridge in autumn and winter without leaves on the trees. The street lights were on and the early dark of late autumn was beginning to obscure the outlines, but Craigie Street looked about the same and the old Hodges house had not changed at all. It seemed to Willis, when he saw it through the plate glass of the Cadillac side-window, that he was gazing at an exhibit in a museum case. It was still that durable beige color, the same sodden tint as the dead grass on its little square of lawn, and the same bare syringa bushes grew by the front steps.

“Well,” Willis said, “there it is, Al. That's where your mother used to live.”

“Gosh,” Alfred said, “did Mommy used to live in that old shack?”

His young voice startled Willis.

“That's no way to talk, son,” he said. “That's where your grandfather wrote his book. You've seen it in the library, haven't you?”

“I'll bet you've never read it, Pops,” Al said. “It's all about old sandstone.”

“I haven't read it all, son,” Willis said, “but that's because I'm not bright enough.” The car was moving down Craigie Street. They would reach Concord Avenue in a moment, but the memory of the house seen through the plate glass was still there.

“Well, I guess he didn't make much money,” Alfred said, “or he wouldn't have lived in a shack like that.”

Willis wished that Sylvia were not there.

“Money isn't everything, son,” Willis said. “Your grandfather was a professor. Professors aren't expected to make money.”

“I guess he wasn't as much of a success as you, Pops,” Alfred said.

Willis felt his cheeks grow hot.

“That isn't so, son,” he said. “Your grandfather was more of a success than I'll ever be. Maybe I've made more money, but money isn't everything.”

It was curious to be facing truth on Craigie Street and to be telling it to his and Sylvia's son. All at once Sylvia put her hand over his and he was very glad she did not speak.

“Sylvia,” he said, “I wish we could have done more for them.”

“You did all you could, dear,” Sylvia said, and this was true.

“Sylvia,” he said, “is my mother's photograph in my suitcase?”

“Yes, dear,” Sylvia said.

“That's fine,” Willis said. “I was afraid that maybe I'd left it in the St. Regis. We've got to get it out as soon as we get back.” He pressed the button that automatically opened the window behind the driver. “And now take us to the Ritz,” Willis said.

It was almost impossible to believe that Sylvia and Al and he had driven down Craigie Street in a Cadillac, even if it was not his own, and he had a sense of uneasiness. He could not call it discontent. There were too many things to think about that had nothing to do with the Ritz.

“Sylvia,” he said, “Jerry Harwood's dropping in. I don't think you've ever met old Jerry, but he isn't hard to talk to. He has a son in Harvard, and he's president of the Shawmut Insurance and Accident. We had a very interesting talk this morning.”

Exactly what was success, he was wondering. Perhaps it was nothing tangible but rather a state of mind that made you content within the frame where life had placed you.

XVI

The years immediately preceding the entry of the United States into the Second World War formed the most critical and important period in the entire business career of Willis Wayde. Willis became increasingly aware that he had traveled during all that time along the narrow line that always divides business success from failure, and the wavering thinness of that demarcation still filled him with amazement. He could think of a dozen separate occasions when any deviation from his course would have led him to disaster, and a number of individuals would have rejoiced at his defeat. You could not be loved by everybody when you reorganized a firm like Rahway Belt. All you could do was recognize your enemies without being influenced by emotion and select them with thoughtful care, because it was important to select enemies as carefully as friends.

It was strange, when Willis looked backward, that the business turmoil of those years—the reorganizing of Rahway Belt, his leaving Beakney-Graham, the new plant construction with its financial problems, and the promotion of the Planeroid line—all frequently seemed simpler than many aspects of his private life. It was all very well to say, as so many men he knew kept saying, that business and home should never mix. They invariably did. They always ran together blurring outlines, no matter how carefully you might try to separate them. Although nothing was really settled after that week end at Lake Sunapee, Willis discovered that Sylvia thought a great deal had been. Shortly after this visit she bought several books on cooking and began making out his laundry list and going over his shirts and his socks whenever she visited his apartment. Thus the idea of imminent marriage came over them by degrees, making another problem on top of all his others.

There was also the problem of Lydia Hembird, who finally telephoned one evening when Sylvia was at Tenth Street. There was nothing serious about Lydia at all, which explained why Willis had never mentioned her to Sylvia. Sylvia had come up with him to the apartment after dining at Tony's, and she had been reading a cook book to herself. He had told her that he had to go over the refinancing report on Rahway Belt. He was right in the middle of the proposed common-stock setup, which demanded more close thinking than anything else (because even if the common stock had never paid a dividend, it was the key point in any future situation), when the telephone on the writing table rang, and it was Lydia Hembird.

“Hello, Willis, darling,” Lydia said, “are you up there all alone?”

“Oh, hello,” he said, “hello.”

“Why have you gone completely out of my life, darling?” Lydia said.

“Well,” he said, “I've been pretty busy lately.”

He saw that Sylvia had closed the cook book, and he smiled at her reassuringly, but Lydia was still speaking.

“Darling, why don't you come up here right now?” she said.

“I've got to hang up,” Willis said. “I can't talk to you right now.”

There was a frigid silence when he set down the telephone.

“I'm sorry, Sylvia,” he said. “It was only someone I used to know before I knew you were in New York.”

Sylvia was white and tense and her voice was lightly brittle.

“Why didn't you ever tell me about her?” she asked. “I'm sure I don't want to interfere with anything.”

“Listen, Sylvia,” he said. “There isn't anything to tell about her. She's just someone I used to know.”

Sylvia drew a sharp, quick breath.

“Willis,” she said, “I wish you'd tell me when you think we can get married.”

Willis squared his shoulders. The subject was up again and he knew that he had been avoiding it unconsciously.

“Now, Sylvia, dear,” he said, “I'm glad you brought this up, because it's been on my mind as much as yours.”

He could not understand why he felt so nervous, except that he was dealing with a long-term future and life and love and all sorts of other things that were hard to express.

“I'm glad I brought it up too,” Sylvia said. “It's awfully hard for a girl to be so indefinite. You do love me, don't you, Willis?”

“Of course I love you,” Willis said.

“Then sit here and hold my hand,” Sylvia said, “and don't look so worried, Willis. You want us to get married, don't you?”

It was not the way, he was thinking, to conduct a serious conversation.

“Why, of course I want us to get married, honey,” he said, and he smiled at her and patted her hand, “but I do have a lot of other things on my mind right now.”

“But, Willis,” she said, “don't you think that this is more important?”

Willis found himself patting her hand again.

“Absolutely, honey,” he said. “It's the most important thing in the world, and because it is, I want things to be set.”

“But aren't they?” Sylvia said. “I don't see why we can't get married any time.”

“Well, naturally,” he said, “of course we could, Sylvia, but for example, I'd like to wait until we know whether I'll be working for Beakney-Graham or whether I'll end up out in Rahway.”

“Why, Willis,” Sylvia said, “I didn't know you were having any trouble with Beakney-Graham. Didn't they just give you a raise of two thousand dollars?”

“Sylvia, sweetness,” Willis said—it was always harder to explain business to a woman than to a man—“if the Rahway Belting Company would make me an offer and give me some common stock, I'd leave Beakney-Graham, because there would be a better future in Rahway.”

He could not understand why Sylvia should look troubled, but then perhaps a woman's mind always worked differently from a man's.

“But they sent you there to Rahway Belt,” she said.

“Of course they sent me there,” Willis answered, and he tried to keep any trace of impatience out of his voice, “but I want you and me to have a future, dear. I don't have to stay with Beakney-Graham.”

“But, Willis,” she asked him, “do you think that's being loyal?”

He did not intend to be impatient, but she should have seen that loyalty had nothing whatsoever to do with the situation. It simply showed that Sylvia did not know where loyalty began or ended.

“You wouldn't say that,” he said, “if you understood the picture, Sylvia. I'm earning every cent that Beakney-Graham is paying me, and more besides. I can't help it, can I, if I'm making a place for myself in Rahway? That's the way the world is, and it hasn't got anything to do with loyalty.”

He did not mean to get excited but her whole point of view was preposterous.

“You've got to let me attend to these things, dear,” he said, “and let me decide what's loyal and what isn't. What are you crying for, Sylvia?”

There was no reason whatsoever for Sylvia to sit sobbing, with tears rolling down her cheeks, when he was trying to carry on a sensible conversation.

“Oh, Willis,” she sobbed. “I didn't mean to make you angry. It's only that I'm so proud of you that I don't want—I don't want—”

“Now, there, Sylvia,” he said, and he took her in his arms. “Just let me do the worrying. Don't forget it's a pretty tough world, honey. Everything's going to be all right. Old Jacoby wants to have a talk with me. He's asked me to his house to lunch next week. Everything's going to be wonderful.”

“Oh, Willis,” she sobbed, “of course you're loyal.”

Loyalty was the damnedest thing. It was something that kept cropping up in business at eccentric intervals, and it kept requiring a different definition. At any rate, he had made his point and he had never had to argue in just that way with Sylvia about loyalty again. You had to do the best you could with loyalty. She had stopped crying, and he gave her a clean pocket handkerchief.

It was always significant when a business acquaintance asked you to his home instead of some restaurant. At the very least it meant that he considered you socially suitable to meet the family, and it might also be a gesture that marked the end of mere acquaintance. It signified a decline in watchfulness and a lowering of barriers. It was a time of trial and testing for both guest and host.

In spite of the months that Willis had been working closely in Rahway with Mr. Manley Jacoby, Mr. Jacoby had never invited him to his home. Mr. Jacoby had been slightly apologetic when he finally invited Willis. He had been meaning, Mr. Jacoby said, to ask Willis up to the house for quite a while, and he was sorry that he was asking him home for the first time in order to have a business talk, but things always got around the plant, and he had a few words to say to Willis which were confidential.

“I guess you know already what they are,” Mr. Jacoby said, “but at the same time I'm inviting you as a friend.”