Sincerely, Willis Wayde (62 page)

“But, Willis, dear,” Sylvia said, “we're always changing. First there was that time when you resigned from Beakney-Graham because Mr. Jacoby wanted you at Rahway.”

“Yes, dear,” Willis said, “and shall we admit, in the light of the present, that I was quite correct in doing so?”

“Then after we were all getting on comfortably at Rahway Belt,” Sylvia said, “you started Harcourt Associates, and now just when we're all happy, this new thing comes along. Willis, can't we forget about it and let things stay the way they are?”

This was the last question Willis would have expected. Just when he thought that things were settled the argument had shifted ground.

“How do you mean, sweetness,” he asked, “leave things the way they are?” His voice betrayed an undercurrent of irritation which he had not intended, but then he was pretty tired after the Production Liners Convocation.

“I mean why do it?” Sylvia said. “Let's just let things go on the way they are, as though this offer never happened.”

While Willis was trying to pull his thoughts together, he was conscious of the silence that surrounded them, as though an unseen audience were waiting for his reply.

“I can't believe that you're serious about that suggestion,” Willis said, “when this is a chance for everything we want—leisure, trips to Europe. We're going to be in the big league, honey.”

“Oh dear,” Sylvia said, “I suppose men are different from women.”

Willis laughed briefly.

“In this case,” he said, “thank heaven, they are different.”

“Darling,” Sylvia said, “don't be angry with me, I really do appreciate you and all the things you do for us.”

Willis smiled and shook his head.

“That's the way you always are, sweetness,” he said—“objecting when I bring home a new antique, saying that the sapphire-and-diamond clip is ostentatious, but I know you. You like them in the end. And how about admitting it and giving me a kiss?”

He crossed the room and kissed her and held her hand for a moment.

“Oh, darling,” Sylvia said. “I suppose you're right. I do like money, and maybe I'm even beginning to like ostentation, but I'm getting tired of change. For instance, if you do become the president of this new company, we won't be able to live here, will we?”

“No, honey,” Willis said, and he laughed again, “we'll have to pack up the old covered wagon and move West, honey, right out to Chicago. That's where their main offices are.”

“Willis,” Sylvia said, “I suppose it sounds easy to you, but we've got all our roots here, all our friends and the children's friends. I really hate the prospect, darling.”

Willis put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly three times back and forth across the rug.

“I don't know why you haven't got any sense of adventure, sweetness,” he said. “It's going to be something new. We're going to build a home of our own, and Lake Forest, where we'll look for a building site, is a much more lovely and more gracious suburb than any I can think of around New York. We'll have new friends, honey, but we'll be coming to New York frequently.” He bent down again and kissed Sylvia. Then he patted her head gently, just as he patted Louise's. “And besides, I'll make you a little promise. The boys will go to school in New England, some fine school with high ideals, like Middlesex, and then of course they'll go to Harvard.”

He gave Sylvia's back a friendly slap.

“And I can. promise you we're going to have one whale of a fine time, honey,” he said, “from now on in. Europe, Claridge's in London, the Paris Ritz. Believe me, honey, you're going to love every minute of it—and now how about our going upstairs to bed? I'm feeling pretty tired, what with one thing and another.”

XXVII

Willis was rapidly learning that if you had to do a thing, no matter how difficult, delay only made it more difficult, and in the case of the Simcoe proposal time was of the essence. As P.L. himself had said, there was nothing to be gained by horsing around on such a proposition, and consequently the day after Willis arrived in Orange he took the Merchants up to Boston in order to present the situation promptly, and also to have a night's sleep at the Ritz without his mind's being disturbed by any further questioning by Sylvia.

He was relieved when he showed up at the Boston office the next morning to observe no trace of undue curiosity or restlessness. As a matter of fact some new orders had come in and there was a prospect of still more in the near future. Although Willis reminded himself that the whole Harcourt picture was fluid, he already found himself viewing it like an artist who had finished a canvas and was able to put down his brushes with a clear conscience. When he smiled at the people already working at the central desks and shook hands with Sol Bradley of promotion and Dana Britchbury of sales and Hank Knowlton, the general manager, who would have been tops in any organization, Willis felt a warm spot in his heart for everyone.

With the upward business trend continuing, Willis had been quite right in moving everything from an obsolescent building on State Street, where the Harcourt Boston office had always been located, into the Tewkesbury Building near Park Square. Here he was able to start afresh with a preconceived floor plan of a great central room indirectly lighted, carpeted to avoid noise, and divided in an informal but effective way by glass partitions into cubicles. Then around the central room were the executives' offices, furnished by a firm of home, not office, decorators. It had been Willis's thought to keep something of the old simplicity of the original Harcourt Mill office, and to this end he had collected some captain's chairs and pine desks. He had personally bought three industrial oils by Sheeler which made a fine show in the reception room; and to carry out the same thought, he had made a collection of early industrial prints. His own office was small, although he had been president of Harcourt Associates for the past four years.

When Mr. Bryson Harcourt had retired from the presidency to become chairman of the board, he had instantly offered Willis the president's room, but Willis had immediately refused. Willis had even heard Mr. Bryson say that he was less disturbed in his office than he had ever been at home, and finally when Willis presented him with a discreet portable bar for purposes of business entertainment, Mr. Bryson had said the office was better than his club. Willis was glad to see that its door was open and that everything inside looked as though Mr. Bryson might appear at any moment.

“Hank,” Willis asked when the first-minute greetings were over, “what's the latest about Mr. Harcourt?”

He spoke in a low solicitous voice, and Hank Knowlton answered in the same manner.

“The picture, as we got it yesterday afternoon,” Hank said, “is about the same. His left side and his speech are still affected. We called up Mrs. Ewing personally instead of bothering Mrs. Harcourt.”

“You're right, I think,” Willis said, “to make inquiries through Mrs. Ewing. I'll call this afternoon. By the way, whose idea was it to have fresh flowers on his desk?”

“Oh, that was Miss Bailey's idea,” Hank said. “It takes a gal to think of a thing like that.”

“Well, it's a nice idea,” Willis said. “It's the sort of thing that highlights the spirit that you and I are trying to create. You might tell Nellie Bailey to get fresh flowers every day. You know, Nellie and I used to go to school together. Did I ever tell you that?”

“It seems to me that perhaps you did at one time or another,” Hank said, “but I'm not exactly sure.”

Willis set that answer down as a reminder not to reminisce too often.

“Well, Hank,” he said, “it might be a good idea if you were to get the department heads together in the conference room for a general briefing, say in half an hour. I'll be making a couple of telephone calls but interrupt me right away when you're ready.”

The windows of Willis's office looked over the Charles River toward Cambridge. The surface of his desk was clear, except for his group photograph of Sylvia and the children, and Willis sat down in the special posture chair he had ordered—not a thing of beauty, he had to admit, but effective for the purpose intended. Before starting the day, he had a pleasant word with the switchboard girl, because few things were more important in an office than a good switchboard operator who remembered customers' voices and who took an intelligent but not an intrusive interest in everyone.

“Hello, Nancy,” Willis said. “I hope everything's going all right with you, and I hope that asthma prescription I got for your mother was of some help.”

“It was a real help, Mr. Wayde,” Nancy said.

“I'm very glad to hear that, Nancy,” Willis said, “and please don't hesitate to let me know if I can do anything further. And now I wonder if you will get me Mrs. Edward Ewing, please.”

Until the telephone rang, he sat looking over the roofs of Commonwealth Avenue and Beacon Street, planning what he would say to Bess.

“Hello, Bess,” he said. “I hope I haven't waked you up or anything.”

“Oh,” she said, “is that you, Willis?” He would have known the slightly husky quality of her voice anywhere, and he was glad she remembered his. “Where are you? I hope you're somewhere where we can see you.”

“Why, Bess, dear,” Willis said, and he laughed reassuringly, “of course I am. I'm right up here at the Boston office. Can you tell me how everything's going at Beacon Street?”

“I just finished talking to Mother a minute before you called,” Bess answered. “He's able to sit up for two hours in the afternoon now. He can get downstairs to the library, and he was asking for you only yesterday.”

“Well, that's the best news I've heard in a dog's age,” Willis said. “Maybe you wouldn't mind finding out whether I ought to see him or not. It would be good to see him if it wouldn't make him overtired.”

“I know he'd love to see you,” Bess said. “The doctor said only the family, but we'll let you in on the ground floor.”

“I've never felt more like family,” Willis said, “than I do right this minute, Bess. I don't suppose I could have a little visit with you sometime later this afternoon myself.”

“Why, Willis,” Bess said. “Alone?” and she laughed.

He was glad that he was still able to keep on a friendly, bantering basis with Bess.

“Yes,” he said, “alone, if you can stand it, Bess, but then we've been without chaperones before, haven't we?”

When she laughed, he could not help joining in with her.

“Why, Willis,” she said, “have you got something special and private to say to me?”

Willis waited a moment before he answered. A pause over the telephone had more dramatic value than in a conversation face to face.

“Well, to be serious for just a minute, Bess,” he said, “I frankly want to ask your advice about something that's been on my mind recently involving a decision I have to make. Ordinarily, of course, I'd ask your father, but in any case I'd value your reaction, Bess.”

“Oh, dear,” said Bess, “is it something about business? It isn't bad news, is it?”

“Oh, now, come,” Willis said, “I wouldn't be joshing with you over the telephone if I had bad news. Why, frankly I think it's pretty good news, both of a business and a personal nature. After I've seen your father, why don't we meet up here in the office?”

“In the office?” Bess said. “Why the office, Willis?”

“Only because it's a place where we can be quiet and undisturbed,” Willis said. “Maybe on second thought you'd better ask Bill to come up with you, Bess.”

“But what under the sun is it about, Willis?” she asked.

“Now, Bess,” he answered, “I can't explain it over the telephone, but as I say, I think it's pretty good news for all of us. The more I think it over the better I like the idea of Bill being with us. Let's make it half past four in your father's office.” Then he ended on a more playful note. “You know, there's a portable bar up there, or perhaps you didn't know.”

“Well,” Bess said—and she laughed but her laugh was still worried—“as long as there's a bar, that's something, and I know that will interest Bill.”

“That's fine then,” Willis said. “I'll have seen your father then and everything will have been squared away, and don't worry about anything, Bess, dear.”

Willis stood still for nearly half a minute after he had put down the telephone. The conversation had been more difficult than he had expected, because instead of keeping to the straight track, his thoughts kept running off on tangents, as they frequently did when he talked to Bess Ewing. They had known each other too long and sometimes too well, and long familiarity made impersonality impossible, but he had achieved his purpose. He would see Bess at half past four; and her brother Bill would be with her, if he knew Bess.

Yet instead of concentrating on what he must do next, Willis found his thoughts moving backwards. For a second he was with Bess that evening long ago when she had filched a bottle of her father's Scotch and brought it out to the swimming pool. It was a little pathetic how glad Bess had been to hear his voice. She could not be wholly happy with Edward Ewing, but it was too late now.

Willis pulled his wits together. In fifteen minutes he would have to be in the conference room going over sales and production figures, and he had another call to make.

“Oh, Nancy,” he said when he picked up the telephone, “will you get me Mr. Roger Harcourt, please.”

Roger Harcourt was in his office. Everything that day had run very smoothly.

“Hello, Roger,” Willis said, “it's good to hear your voice.… Yes, I'm up here for the day, and just parenthetically, Roger, before I forget it, while I was down in Carolina at the Production Liners Convocation, whom should I meet there but P. L. Nagel, but that's a point, Roger, that I wish to take up with you later. What I wanted to say over the telephone is that I told that story of yours about the Chinese Ambassador. I wish you had been there to see how well it was received.”