Sincerely, Willis Wayde (47 page)

It was an improvement over old times, but Willis had not forgotten Sylvia for a single minute. When Bess had suggested that he stay for dinner, he had refused at once, because he had promised to go to the Hodgeses' for supper. He had to bring Sylvia the news about her family.

After an early breakfast in the Grand Central Station Willis began to look for something to bring home, and it was a real pleasure to be thinking of Sylvia. It was so early that the gift would have to come from the Liggett's, and fortunately this store contained a large selection of articles which had nothing to do with drugs. When one of the salesladies asked if she might help him, Willis smiled at her disarmingly.

“Frankly,” Willis said, “I can't go home without some little gift for my wife and the two babies.” It always paid to take someone into your confidence. In half a minute he had bought a Teddy bear for Al and a rattle for little Paul.

“We've got some cut-price electric hair dryers,” the saleslady said.

“Oh, no,” Willis said, “not a hair dryer.”

“Bath salts?” the saleslady said. “We have some very nice geranium bubble-bath salts.”

It was close to half past nine o'clock, and he could only stay at home for a few minutes, but there was nothing like that sense of homecoming. Little Al was in his play pen and he was very glad to get the Teddy bear.

“Yoo hoo,” Willis called at the foot of the stairs. “Are you up there, honey?” He felt an indescribable sense of relief when he heard Sylvia call back. Of course he knew that she would be up there but, at the same time, there was a shade of doubt, which perhaps other husbands shared.

“Come on up,” Sylvia called. “I'm giving Paul his breakfast.”

Willis knew enough about child rearing to understand perfectly that a breast-fed baby had a far better chance in later life than a bottle-fed baby. Breast-fed babies were less subject to adenoids; their teeth came in straighter because their jaws were better developed. There was no real substitute for mothers' milk.

“Maybe I'd better wait until Paul is finished, honey,” Willis said.

It did not help the situation any to have both Sylvia and the trained nurse laugh.

“Now, Willis,” Sylvia said, “it's time you learned the facts of life. Sit down and tell me everything.”

It was not the time or place to tell Sylvia everything and besides he had to get to the office.

“I brought you a little present, honey,” Willis said.

“Oh, Willis,” Sylvia said, “how sweet. What is it?”

“Bath salts. Geranium effervescent tablets.”

“Oh, God,” Sylvia said, “not geranium!”

Sylvia was putting Paul through a process technically known to young mothers as bubbling. The resultant digestive sounds from Paul interrupted Willis's train of thought.

“How's Mother?” Sylvia asked.

“She's wonderful,” Willis said. “And so is your father. It is always a real pleasure to have a talk with him. Laura was away, of course.” Willis glanced nervously at Paul. “You're not going to keep on feeding him, are you?”

“Why, he's only started,” Sylvia said. “What else?”

“Well,” Willis said, “everything is going even better than I hoped.”

“Oh, I don't mean that,” Sylvia said. “I mean about Father and Mother and Laura and Tom and everybody.”

“Oh, Willis said. “Well, frankly I wasn't there long enough to learn everything—but I did gather from your mother that Laura has an admirer.”

“Did Mother call him an admirer?” Sylvia asked. “What's he like? Who is he? Please try to remember.”

It went to show how far women were removed from reality, that Sylvia should have expected him to remember details about a young man whom he'd never seen.

“His name just came up for a minute in the conversation, honey,” Willis said. “The only thing I can remember is that he goes to the Harvard Business School.”

“Oh, no,” Sylvia said, “not the Harvard Business School!” She began to laugh; and until she did the connection had never occurred to Willis.

“Honey,” he said, “I'm sorry if you look down on the Harvard Business School.”

“I don't, dear,” Sylvia answered, “but you must admit it's a coincidence.”

“Honey,” he said, “I know this house is sort of tacky and it is a little small for two babies. I don't honestly blame you if it makes you restless, and certainly a Harvard Business School graduate ought to do better. I promise to do something better as soon as I can.”

“Why, Willis, I don't know what put that into your head,” Sylvia told him. “I love this house and I keep asking you not to do extravagant things. Just tell me everything that happened up in Boston.”

It was obviously neither the time nor place for giving any account of what had happened, and besides he had to get down to the plant. And he also wanted to call on Mrs. Jacoby at the earliest possible moment. Yet in spite of all his preoccupation, that talk with Sylvia had given him a new idea. It was time they moved into a home of their own, and if you kept your eyes open there were some pretty good real-estate buys around the Oranges.

Sylvia had asked him to tell her everything—a familiar but vague expression. Willis was only thirty-three, but his business experience was beginning to approximate, in many respects, that of someone close to forty, and he knew already that you never could tell anyone everything about anything, even yourself. For instance, there was one story which had to be prepared for the Rahway stockholders and another story for Mrs. Jacoby and still another one for the negotiating lawyers. These stories all differed in detail, not because concealment was advisable but because certain people were more interested in certain facts than in others.

When everything was over and the final agreements for the merger of Rahway Belt with the Harcourt Mill were signed, Willis had attended a small dinner that the new company—now called Harcourt Associates—tendered to the new officers, directors and to some of the key personnel; and the various negotiating lawyers were also present. Among the latter was Mr. F. Augustus Tremaine, who had always handled Mrs. Jacoby's affairs and who had negotiated in behalf of the Rahway interests. Then there had been Mr. Tom Bolsen, Sr., and his son T. Bolsen, Jr., of the Boston firm that represented the Harcourts. Mr. Earl Decker had also been present in his capacity as general counsel for the Harcourt Mill. It had been a happy and friendly dinner. Even Mr. Tremaine, who had never missed a trick that Willis could remember, had been in a pleasant glow and had referred to Mr. Decker handsomely in his after-dinner speech as his learned friend and advisor.

Willis, as first vice president of Harcourt Associates, had made one of the main speeches of the evening, speaking not only as an officer but as a stockholder, since he owned personally 15 per cent of the common shares of the new company. Willis had given much time and thought to its preparation, and had been assisted now and then by a bright young Harvard Law School graduate who had recently entered Mr. Tremaine's office. This assistance, however, was of a very minor nature, consisting of a little brushing up of paragraph and sentence structure—more of a clerical service than otherwise, and one which any executive expected from his organization when he had to make a speech. But all of the ideas the speech contained were original with Willis. It was highly gratifying that the speech made an even better impression than he had hoped. He had started slowly but he had built up to a real climax.

“What is an idea?” he asked in the beginning, adding facetiously, “I ought to know, after the last three months, when Mr. Tremaine and Mr. Bolsen and Mr. Decker have tossed around so many good ones.” It was a relief to feel that his dinner audience knew what he meant by tossing ideas around.

Willis was never quite sure whether he or the Harvard Law School graduate had set up these sentences, but it made no difference, because Willis was positive that the general conception was basically his own.

“I may as well face the fact,” he continued, “that I may have been responsible in the beginning for the idea of merging Rahway Belt with Harcourt into our new strong company. But seriously, gentlemen, let us never forget that no idea can stand by itself. It must be activated to have value. A team must be behind it, and I think tonight we all know we have a real team.

“Yes, gentlemen, an idea must be activated, and to achieve this end patience is necessary and an ability to understand what the other fellow has on his mind, but above all else, good fellowship and team play are the true ingredients of success.”

He had to stop at this point until the applause died down.

“Now I don't want to talk too lengthily,” Willis said, “but I would like to leave just one more thought before I close. As a good sailor steers by a star let us, too, keep our eyes on the main objective. And what is that objective? It is basically the joining of the Planeroid with the Hartex line—two complementary lines which will make a perfect unity of production. There is new competition in the belting industry tonight and new vigor. Let us all who have been responsible for this latest achievement rededicate ourselves anew to pushing forward a new sort of belting gospel. May I raise my glass in conclusion—and I wish it were a loving cup—to the unlimited future of Harcourt Associates.”

The setting and the mood were exactly right for everything that Willis had said. They were obviously on the threshold of new and unpredictable demands for conveyor belting, and a new aggressive company like Harcourt Associates could compete for those demands.

“Willis,” Mr. Bryson Harcourt said, “that was a magnificent speech.”

“Why, thank you very much, sir,” Willis said. “I'm very glad indeed if you think it went all right.”

He could be deferential to Mr. Bryson Harcourt still, but they were both perfectly aware of a new relationship. Even if Mr. Bryson or Mr. Roger wanted, neither of them could push him out of Harcourt Associates. Some such thoughts had been in back of Willis's mind when he returned from Boston after that dinner. The Harcourts could not put him out of the new company, but still he would like to have a larger control of it. There was a chance of buying Mrs. Jacoby's stock, if he only had the money. It would not hurt, he thought, to stop for a few hours in New York on his way home from Boston and talk things over with a bank—and on this trip Willis never thought of bringing Sylvia a present.

During the Harcourt negotiations Willis had begun to learn the banking facts of life. Among other things, he learned that bankers could be more generous than otherwise with money, given the proper stimulus. Never be afraid to ask, and when you did, make it a substantial sum—the more the better, provided you came with a program of what you were going to accomplish in a business way. You had, of course, to develop a warm relationship with a banker first, so that he had a real belief in you and a keen personal interest.

One of the best contacts along these lines that Willis had made was with a Yale graduate some ten years his senior named Gilbert Bakeliss. Gil, as Willis learned to call him, had sat in as one of the underwriters' representatives on a lot of the Harcourt conferences. Willis admired the way Gil could keep facts in order, and he also admired Gil's prematurely graying hair. He found that Gil, who was married and lived at Cos Cob, had a lot of good ideas about physical exercise and diet. When Willis had told Gil about sprinkling wheat germ over tomato juice Gil had been really interested, and several times Gil had asked Willis to lunch at the Yale Club. It had been a pleasure to be in a position that enabled him to return the compliment. At Mr. Jacoby's suggestion, Willis had joined the New York Harvard Club, a move which he had never regretted, either in a social or in a business way. Willis had explained to Gil, without unduly underlining the fact, that he was not really a Harvard man but a graduate of Boston University. He had, however, attended the Harvard School of Business Administration, which rendered him eligible for the New York Harvard Club.

Much as Willis would have enjoyed hurrying back to Orange to Sylvia and the children when he reached New York after the Harcourt dinner, he had determined to see Gilbert Bakeliss first. He had never felt so much like a Harvard man as when he arrived from dinner in Boston and had breakfast at the Harvard Club. He seemed to be more a part of the handsome dining room than he had ever been before. He knew better than to show undue eagerness by calling Gil Bakeliss at the stroke of ten, and ten-fifteen would look like a self-conscious delay. Willis actually did not call Gil until ten-twenty-three. It was pleasant to note that Gil sounded more than conventionally cordial.

“Well, well,” Gil Bakeliss said, “so the Pilgrim has returned.”

Willis laughed with real appreciation.

“That's right,” Willis said, “I missed you at that dinner, Gil.”

“You know I'd have come,” Gil said, “if Geraldine and I hadn't been in one of those duplicate bridge tournaments. It must have been quite a love feast.”

“Well, it frankly wasn't so bad, Gil,” Willis said. “I mustn't take up all your time, but if you've nothing to do for lunch I'll be right here at the Harvard Club.”

“Let's see. You mean lunch today?”

Willis laughed again.

“I know there's not much chance with anyone as popular as you, Gil. I just thought something might have broken in your schedule, and it isn't often that I can get to town from Rahway.”

“There isn't anything I can't put off,” Gil said. “Will twelve-thirty be all right?”

If Willis had not known many bankers, it had been his privilege to meet and chat on friendly terms with many top executives in other lines of business. A proven knowledge of his own ability and worth gave him an ease more genuine than that possessed by the usual bright young man. He was beginning at last to achieve naturalness, because there were not so many things about himself which now demanded his attention.