Sincerely, Willis Wayde (35 page)

It had sounded rather like one of Mr. Henry Harcourt's invitations long ago.

“It's very kind of you, sir,” Willis said. “Thank you very much.”

“Mrs. Jacoby wants especially to meet you,” Mr. Jacoby said, “and I want her to sit in on the conference.”

Willis knew by then that Mrs. Jacoby was the daughter of the late Mr. Seth Wilfred, a financier whose name was still very well known around the Oranges, and that she had inherited a very considerable sum of money at her father's death, so much in fact that Mr. Jacoby could have retired at any time he wanted during the last few years. Willis also knew that the Jacobys had two married daughters, one living in Chicago and the other in Philadelphia. There was no reason for Mr. Jacoby to make any explanations but it was like him to have done so.

Promptly at half past twelve Mr. Jacoby put on his black alpaca coat and climbed behind the wheel of his old Buick.

“Get in, Willis,” he said. “Mrs. Jacoby thinks I ought to have a chauffeur, but I guess I'm independent in some ways. You have to be with anybody like Mrs. Jacoby. I suppose you've heard she's pretty rich.”

“Yes, sir,” Willis said. “You can't help hearing things like that.”

“That's right,” Mr. Jacoby said. “I suppose that Jack Meister or Peters told you, and since we're going home to lunch I'd just as soon you'd call me Manley.”

It was hard for Willis to call old men by their first names, and to stay respectful and at the same time familiar.

“Mrs. Jacoby—Edie, that is—makes me pretty comfortable,” Mr. Jacoby said. “We live in the old Wilfred house, you know, built in 1900 out of field stone sort of like a pudding. Maybe you can guess what it's named.”

Willis tried to laugh easily. There was a purpose, he knew, behind Mr. Jacoby's confidence, and he wanted to be particularly careful.

“You'd better tell me, Manley,” he said. The first name sounded so awkward that he was afraid he had used it too soon. “I'm no good at guessing.”

“The name is Rock Crest,” Mr. Jacoby said, and he laughed, too.

“The great thing about a stone house is that it's always warm in winter and cool in summer,” Willis said.

“Yes, that's a fact,” Mr. Jacoby answered, “and we have quite a view from it.”

It was a grim house, standing on a lawn decorated by canna lilies on the ridge of basalt that rose behind the Oranges. Even its porte-cochere was built of lumpy field stone, but the view was magnificent. It was a warm hazy day in mid-September, and you could see the buildings of downtown New York miles away across the marshes, rising dreamily through the mist.

“It rolls out like an Axminster carpet, doesn't it?” Mr. Jacoby said as he climbed out of the car. “I told you it was a view.”

It was all different from anything that Willis had imagined. After the plainness of Rahway Belt, he could not help but be surprised when a manservant opened the door.

“Hello,” Mr. Jacoby said, and he looked like a small-town visitor in his black alpaca coat. “Is Mrs. Jacoby downstairs yet?”

“Madam is in the east room,” the houseman said.

Willis saw many other houses like Rock Crest later. They were too large to live in now but so firmly built that they withstood destruction. They were survivals of the hopeful income-taxless age at the turn of the century, an age which apparently had produced thousands of successful individuals who thought that the mode of life they knew would remain unchanged for centuries. It was startling now to observe the remnants of their culture, now that no one was sure how long he would live anywhere.

The past and the ambitions of the late Mr. Seth Wilfred were preserved with embarrassing clarity in the rooms and furnishings of Rock Crest. His desire for display must have exceeded that of most of his contemporaries. He must have been an arrogant, self-made man of a species which could not exist today, for no self-made man that Willis had ever met would have dared to express his personality so flamboyantly. The east room, as it was called, took up two stories and must have been intended to represent a baronial hall. There was a balcony at one end which was occupied by musicians, as Mrs. Jacoby told him once, when her father had receptions for the directors of the Erie Railroad. There was also an immense pipe organ that no longer worked and a huge field-stone fireplace. There were some heads of African animals on the walls and some sentimental pictures of cows and sheep and another of French aristocrats going to the guillotine. The floors were covered with Oriental carpets and the furniture was imitation French.

“Quite a little room, isn't it?” Mr. Jacoby said. “I thought it would surprise you. I guess you never pictured me coming home to anything like this.”

“It certainly is remarkable,” Willis told him.

“You get used to it,” Mr. Jacoby said. “But I remember the first time Edie brought me in here to meet the old man. He was in a wheel chair but I was scared. Edie—oh, there you are.”

Mrs. Jacoby was seated on a sofa by the fireplace, and her lacy beige dress gave her almost a protective coloring. Her face, which was pale and distinguished, reminded him more of an old man's than a woman's. Her hair was snow white, but her eyebrows were black and bushy, and her eyes were deep brown. She spoke in a precise, almost English way, because, as she told Willis later, she had been taught at a convent school in France.

“I'm delighted to meet you, Willis,” she said. “I'm calling you Willis because Manley has told me so much about you.”

“It's a great pleasure, Mrs. Jacoby,” Willis said, and he tried to act as though he were not astonished by anything around him. It all went to show that no matter how well you knew someone in business, you could not tell how he lived until he took you home.

“You mustn't blame Mr. Jacoby for any of this,” Mrs. Jacoby said. “He married into it quite late in life, and what could we have done except tear the whole thing down?”

“I see what you mean,” Willis said, “but everything's very interesting.”

“Manley,” Mrs. Jacoby said, “if I send Henry upstairs for something else, will you take off that black alpaca coat? Look how nice Willis looks.”

“He's a new model,” Mr. Jacoby said. “You know I like this coat.”

“Manley never wants to forget he's a small-town boy,” Mrs. Jacoby said, and she looked unblinkingly at Willis. “Perhaps you've noticed that Manley has an independent streak. That's why he insists on holding onto that one-horse factory. He doesn't need to, but he likes to be independent and he can't keep on being, with his arthritis. That's why I asked him to bring you up here—so I could look at you.”

Willis was partially adjusted to the surroundings by then. For a short while the experience had been like falling by mistake into cold water, but now he had reached the surface. He was thinking that Mrs. Jacoby reminded him of someone in the past. He could not remember who until he thought of Mrs. Blood, but Mrs. Jacoby was more masterful. He could not help wondering why she had ever married Mr. Jacoby, who, as she said, was a small-town boy, and what accident had brought them together or what spirit of revolt had made her seek him out, but then perhaps Mr. Jacoby had been young and attractive once.

“How would it be if we had cocktails, Edie?” Mr. Jacoby said. “It might help us all to break the ice and you'd get to know Willis better.”

“Not for me, thank you,” Willis said quickly. “I don't usually drink in the middle of a business day, Mrs. Jacoby.”

“Well, I'm going to ring for Henry, Edie,” Mr. Jacoby said. “I'm going to have a Scotch and soda.”

“As long as you take your medicine with it, Manley,” Mrs. Jacoby said. “Go ahead and have your Scotch and soda. I want to talk to Willis.”

Mrs. Jacoby walked over to a mother-of-pearl-inlaid table and picked up a sheaf of papers bound in a handsome morocco cover and Willis gave a slight start. It was the final report and recommendations by Beakney-Graham for the Rahway Belting Company.

“Now,” Mrs. Jacoby said. “We may as well sit down and we can start going over this before lunch is served. Manley tells me that you wrote most of it.”

“Yes, most of it,” Willis said, “but I was helped by other members of my company, and of course we had engineering and technical assistance.”

Mrs. Jacoby picked up a pair of heavy horn-rimmed glasses.

“I read this with great interest,” she said. “It's a well-organized report. I told Manley to employ Beakney-Graham.”

The light from Mrs. Jacoby's glasses glittered disconcertingly as Willis tried to think of a suitable answer.

“I had an idea that the bank had suggested our company,” he said.

Mr. Jacoby laughed in a brief and rather mournful way.

“They did,” he said, “but Edie suggested it to the bank. She wears the pants around here, or at least she tries to.”

“I wish you wouldn't get off these tiresome jokes, Manley,” Mrs. Jacoby said. “I've always let you play around with that factory of yours and I've never interfered, except when it's been absolutely necessary.”

Willis was glad to see that the houseman was walking toward them across that enormous room, carrying a silver tray and a decanter and tumblers, all of heavy cut glass, because the interruption gave him a moment to think over the situation.

“Manley,” Mrs. Jacoby said, “be sure to take your medicine first, and I'll have some Scotch too. Are you sure you won't change your mind, Mr. Wayde—I mean Willis?”

“If you'll forgive me, I'd rather not,” Willis said. “I'm afraid a lot of that report must have been dull reading, Mrs. Jacoby.”

He was interested to see that Mrs. Jacoby drank her Scotch neat, following it by a little water as a chaser.

“I wouldn't say that any reports are light reading,” Mrs. Jacoby said, “but my father trained me to manage my own affairs. Oh, I know what you're thinking.”

“I wasn't thinking anything, Mrs. Jacoby,” Willis said, and he tried to look through the reflection on her glasses.

“You needn't be polite,” Mrs. Jacoby answered. “I know just what men think when old women say they handle their own affairs. They think they're being silly. Well, I'm not silly.”

“I'm sure you're not, Mrs. Jacoby,” Willis said quickly. “I'm sorry you thought I was thinking any such thing.”

“Maybe you weren't, then,” Mrs. Jacoby said. “Manley says you're very quick.”

“That's right,” Mr. Jacoby said. “He's smart. Don't underrate him, Edie.”

“My father—that's Mr. Seth Wilfred, you know—always said never underrate anyone until you knew him,” Mrs. Jacoby said, “and I don't know you well enough to underrate you yet. I want this first meeting of ours to be frank. I've personally managed all my father's interests since his death. I got out of the market in August, 1929. I got back in again in the summer of '32. I have my own offices upstairs.”

“That's right,” Mr. Jacoby said. “Edie's a very able woman, Willis.”

“Now, Manley,” Mrs. Jacoby said, “I wish you'd step outside for a minute, but as long as you won't you'll have to let me do the talking.”

Mr. Jacoby laughed again, in a short, resigned way.

“I brought the young man here,” he said, “for you to talk to him, didn't I?”

Since his days at the Harcourt Mill, Willis had seen a good many rich men, and he was beginning to judge their abilities and weaknesses, but he was not so familiar with the wealthy and independent woman. These people, he had always supposed, were under the care and guidance of lawyers, bankers, and investment counselors, as Mrs. Blood and Mrs. Henry Harcourt had been. Although he could see that Mrs. Jacoby was different, he still could not define the difference. He could only listen carefully, but the difficulty was that she talked partly like a woman and partly like a man.

“Now you know as well as I do,” Mrs. Jacoby said, “that Manley here hasn't got much business sense.”

Willis found himself laughing nervously.

“Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that,” he said.

“I didn't say you would,” Mrs. Jacoby told him, “but you know it and Manley knows it too. You have ideas in your report that I've known all along. Manley has surrounded himself with second-rate people. He has vision but no business sense.”

Willis glanced at Mr. Jacoby and was surprised to discover that he was smiling.

“Now, Mrs. Jacoby,” Willis began, “I'm not in any position …” but Mr. Jacoby interrupted him.

“Now, you see, Edie,” he said. “I told you he was good.”

“You don't need to tell me anything,” Mrs. Jacoby said. “I want to get right down to facts. I'm worried about Manley, Mr. Wayde—I mean Willis. He's always liked that factory. He owned it when I married him. I want him to keep it if he likes it, but he's got to have someone to help him. I think it's time for you to make him our proposition, Manley.”

Mr. Jacoby coughed loudly.

“Edie's right,” he said, “and we've got to have her on our side. She's got the money, and it looks as though we're going to need some.”

“Never mind that,” Mrs. Jacoby said. “Make him the proposition, Manley.”

“All right,” Mr. Jacoby said. “Edie and I want you to be executive vice president of Rahway Belt. We want you to take over so that we can have time to go to Arizona and places like that. We're not getting any younger, and there aren't any young men in the family except our sons-in-law, both of whom are doctors. This may sound sudden to you but Edie and I have been all over it. We want to sort of take you into the family. Are you sure you don't want a drink?”

“Well, yes,” Willis said, “perhaps I wouldn't mind a small one.”

He had been right not to have refused that final proffer of a drink. His acceptance finally set the tone for everything.