Sincerely, Willis Wayde (36 page)

“Thank you, Manley,” he said, as Mr. Jacoby handed him the glass. He had been right in calling Mr. Jacoby by his first name, as Mr. Jacoby had suggested, but he also had been right in speaking slowly and shyly.

“Would you mind telling us,” Mr. Jacoby asked, “what your salary is at present?”

“Why, no,” Willis said. “It's ten thousand dollars,” and he smiled at them. “Just at present.”

“That is the figure I guessed,” Mr. Jacoby said.

He paused. Somehow people always paused before they made an offer.

“You and I get on all right. You'll be executive vice president down there and I'll back you all the way. You'll get twelve thousand dollars a year and thirty-three per cent of the common stock.”

Although it was the percentage that Willis had planned to ask for, he had never thought that Mr. Jacoby would go so far immediately.

“That's quite a lot,” Willis said slowly—“the stock, I mean.”

“The idea,” Mr. Jacoby said, “is to fix it so you won't refuse.”

Willis waited a moment. It was no time to be too eager. In fact the size of the offer made him suspicious.

“I'm very much flattered of course,” he said. “I didn't know you thought so highly of me, Manley.”

He noticed that Mrs. Jacoby had taken off her glasses.

“It's my stock you're getting, not Manley's,” Mrs. Jacoby said, “it's never earned me one red cent, and I want Manley to be happy.”

It was no time to hurry, and Willis took a deliberate sip of his Scotch and water.

“I think it's very generous of you,” Willis said. “There's only one thing that makes me hesitate.” He smiled a little sadly. It was like saying he never took a drink in the middle of a business day, and he could see how closely they both were watching him. “Another firm sent me here, you know. I'm not sure it would be loyal, under the circumstances—”

He allowed his voice to trail into silence, and he had a momentary thought of Sylvia.

“Now just a minute,” Mr. Jacoby began, “just a minute.”

Willis raised his voice slightly, and as he did so he felt a glow of self-righteousness and a warm spot in his heart for Beakney-Graham.

“It may sound a little old-fashioned,” he said, “but I'd like to finish my thought, if you don't mind. There's a girl I want to marry. I wish she were here with us now, because I know you'd like her, Mrs. Jacoby. She's the daughter of a Harvard professor. I met her in Cambridge when I was at the Harvard School of Business Administration. She and I were talking about loyalty only the other night. I don't know whether Sylvia would think it was loyal of me if I were to leave Beakney-Graham.”

Willis had that quick feeling of triumph that comes of having said exactly the right things. Mrs. Jacoby was smiling at him.

“Manley always told me you were high-minded,” she said, “but he never told me you were thinking of getting married.”

“That's because he never told me either, Edie,” Mr. Jacoby said.

Willis laughed diffidently.

“It's been a secret up to now,” he answered. “You're the first people I've told, in fact. You're older than I am and I'd value your advice. I wouldn't want either of you to think I'm disloyal.”

He was glad that he had thought to ask their advice, because Mr. and Mrs. Jacoby began advising him simultaneously.

“You're not under any contract with them, are you?” Mrs. Jacoby asked.

“Oh no,” Willis said, “no contract, but just the same it bothers me.”

“And since when,” Mr. Jacoby asked, “can't anyone leave a job and take another?”

“I know,” Willis said. “But Mr. Beakney's been especially kind to me. You know what a fine straightshooter he is yourself, and I have some very close fine friends in the office. We're a pretty hand-picked crowd in Beakney-Graham.”

“Now listen, Willis,” Mr. Jacoby said. “It's time you thought about yourself and this girl you're going to marry. What is her name?”

“Sylvia,” Willis said.

“Sylvia,” Mrs. Jacoby repeated. “I want you to promise to bring her here, and I think fifteen thousand would be better than twelve, Manley.”

“It isn't the money,” Willis said. “I only wish I felt right, Mrs. Jacoby.”

“Now, Willis,” Mrs. Jacoby said, “this is common sense. It's time you thought of Sylvia and any little ones who may be coming along.”

Willis was always glad that he had threshed out the matter of loyalty with Mr. and Mrs. Jacoby, because it had started them off on the right foot, and he had Sylvia to thank for it, although she had only seen the picture in a rather schoolgirlish way; and what he had done was for her future as much as his. Nevertheless, sometimes when he had a sleepless night, he would recall his final conversation with Mr. Beakney. He was still sorry that things had ended there with a certain amount of ill-feeling. His interview the next morning was frankly tough, among the worst he had ever encountered up to that date, but, if you had to go through with something, you had to go right through.

Willis had done his morning setting-up exercises as usual, the “Daily Dozen” designed by the late Walter Camp which he had found long ago in a popular magazine, and he had always liked the title—“Take a Tip from the Tiger and Stay Young.” Willis had recently been through an optional annual physical examination, which he had passed with an A rating. His eyesight was 20/20, his weight was right, his arches had not fallen, and his heart, blood pressure, and muscle tone were excellent. After a cold shower he had put on his new gray flannel suit, because he wanted to look as smart as possible. He had even taken fifteen minutes before he had gone out for his breakfast of orange juice, a three-minute boiled egg, and raisin bran, to read from William Penn in the Harvard Classics. It had been difficult to concentrate, with half his mind on what he was going to say to Mr. Beakney, but there was no reason to break routine.

He had exchanged pleasant greetings with everyone at Beakney-Graham just as though it were only another September day, and had all his thoughts well organized when Mr. Beakney was ready to see him.

“I thought you were out at Rahway,” Mr. Beakney said. “Is anything wrong out there?”

Everything was fine at Rahway, Willis had told him. Then he had given Mr. Beakney the whole picture concisely, without pulling any punches, and he had ended on a note of how grateful he would always feel to Mr. Beakney and everyone in the office. He would never forget what they had done for him but he hoped that Mr. Beakney would put himself in his position and understand his situation. He was always very sorry that Mr. Beakney had not understood.

“Well,” Mr. Beakney said, “so that's it. You've been sucking up to a silly old man and his silly old wife while you were on our payroll.”

“I'm sorry you look at it that way, sir,” Willis had told him. “They've made me an offer and I've accepted it.”

Then Mr. Beakney had talked about loyalty, but he could not get away from the basic single fact that Willis was under no contract to stay with Beakney-Graham.

“Let me ask you just one question, sir,” Willis said. “Haven't you ever done what I'm doing yourself, in your own career, Mr. Beakney?”

He did not like the look that Mr. Beakney gave him, but it was better than any answer.

“I never thought you'd do this to me,” Mr. Beakney said. “I had other ideas about you.”

“I'm sorry, sir,” Willis said. “I've given it a lot of thought, but I guess this is something that everyone has to do sometime.”

“Maybe,” Mr. Beakney said. “I fear it would be a waste of time for you and me to argue over ethics, Willis.”

“I'm sorry you don't approve, sir,” Willis said.

“That's neither here nor there,” Mr. Beakney said. “I fear you've grown up to be too much for us to handle. Well, that's the way things go.”

“I wish you wouldn't put it that way, sir,” Willis said, “because I've always enjoyed working for you.”

“All right,” Mr. Beakney said, “let's not have any more last words. I'll only say you're graduating, and I'll make just one more remark which maybe is a compliment. I'd hate to run up against you in a controversy ten years from now.”

This meant a lot coming from someone like Mr. Beakney. There was no wonder Willis always had a warm spot in his heart for Beakney-Graham.

The next few months of his life were among the busiest and happiest that Willis had ever known, since there was nothing as exhilarating as one's first taste of tangible success and achievement. He only realized later that success had its dangerous aspects, especially early success. Class presidents and football heroes, he had finally come to learn, required careful and suspicious watching. They were like the potted hyacinths and daffodils that he sometimes bought for Sylvia in midwinter—spectacular, but they often yellowed around the edges once you brought them home. The same was true with bright young men who had come along too fast. They were tired because of premature effort, or else over-confidence had made them arrogant. At best the cards were stacked against someone who made good too young. Willis could see now that he had once been in this same dubious category. He could no longer wonder, as he once had, that Mr. Beakney had made no effort to keep him. In fact Mr. Beakney must have been relieved to have let him go—gray suit, trimmed hair, polished Oxfords, sharp mind and everything—because he had come along too fast for the age of twenty-nine.

What really saved him was marrying Sylvia Hodges. It was the most fortunate thing that had ever happened to him, meeting and marrying a girl like Sylvia. Sylvia had better taste than he, better manners and a more cultivated mind. She knew so many things he did not know that he could not help but be very proud of her. Though he was aware of his inadequacies when he was with her, somehow she never made him jealous.

They were married in Cambridge in October, 1936. There was always a first time for everything. Willis had no idea of the immediate complications. He had not thought of his father and mother as traveling all the way from the West Coast to the wedding until Mrs. Hodges wrote him that she had asked them and that they were coming, and then he had to get them rooms and a room for himself at the Hotel Commander in Cambridge. Then Mrs. Hodges had posed another problem. He had envisioned a small house wedding with no one but the family, but Mrs. Hodges wanted them married in the Unitarian Church off Harvard Square. Laura would be the maid of honor, and Sylvia was selecting bridesmaids. Consequently Mrs. Hodges wanted to know at once whom Willis would invite to be best man and whom he would want for ushers.

Willis never realized until he read Mrs. Hodges's letter at Rahway Belt that in all his years in New York there had not been much time for friendship. Under other circumstances, he could have asked Joe McKitterick and one or two others from Beakney-Graham, but his having left rendered this impossible. This lack of friendship, which had never troubled him before, he felt was something he could not confess to Mrs. Hodges and least of all to Sylvia. He finally felt obliged to resort to bald misstatement when he answered Mrs. Hodges's letter. He simply had to say that the few people he most wanted were unable to leave New York in the middle of the business week, that his father could be best man but that he would have to dispense with ushers.

He had thought that getting married would involve only a day in Cambridge, but instead Mrs. Hodges wrote that he must be there several days ahead to see about the license and to attend a few small parties which her friends and Sylvia's were giving; and then there was the wedding trip, to which he had given no thought at all, but Sylvia had said that they must go somewhere. This was all very difficult, coming on top of everything he had to do at Rahway Belt, and yet as Mr. Jacoby pointed out, after all it might only happen once.

If Willis had no friends of his own, at least he wanted to appear in a proper light. His Ford runabout, which had seemed so desirable only that spring, was not what he wanted any longer and he turned it in for a new green Buick sedan before he motored up to Cambridge. He never forgot Sylvia's expression when she saw the car in front of the house on Craigie Street. Sylvia always did find it hard to understand that you were rated in a business way by the car you drove and by your golf score. People you met in a business way always had to measure you by something.

Sylvia ran down the path to meet him in the late afternoon when he arrived at Craigie Street. He remembered her brown skirt and her white shirtwaist and the rustling noise of her feet among the autumn leaves. Now that she was back in the family she did not look like the girl he had known in New York, and when she kissed him in a shy way, because everyone was watching them, he felt like a distant relative.

“Why, Willis,” she said, “where's the Ford?”

Where was the Ford indeed? He was very glad that he could surprise Sylvia at a time like that.

“Why, I turned in the Ford, dear,” he said. “This is an improvement, isn't it?”

After all, he did not want to say in so many words that a fifteen-thousand-dollar-a-year man did not drive a Ford.

“Oh, dear,” Sylvia said, “I loved the Ford.”

“You'll love this a lot better,” he told her, “once you get behind the wheel. I've been babying it along, but after two hundred miles more we can run it as fast as we like. I can't wait to knock off those two hundred miles.”

“Oh, darling,” she said, “I hope people won't think we're throwing our weight around when they see us driving it.”

“Why, sweetness,” he said, and he slammed the car door casually, “it's only a Buick. You wait till we get a Cadillac before you start to worry.”

“Oh, darling,” she said, and she linked her arm through his, “we've all been waiting for you all afternoon, and your father and mother are here, and you've got to go down right away to see about the marriage license. Tom will take you. And you've got to see the presents. What do you think Mr. and Mrs. Jacoby sent us?”