Sincerely, Willis Wayde

by John P. Marquand

  “I suppose it is, from your point of view, but these things are always relative,” Mr. Harcourt said. “Will you do it, Willis?”

  It was the first decision that Willis Wayde had ever been obliged to make, and he liked to think that he did it rather well.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, “I’ll do it, and thank you very much,” and then he cleared his throat again, “and I’ll always try to do the best I can, Mr. Harcourt.”

  He meant every word of it, and it was easier to be nice in those days than it was later. Mr. Harcourt laughed softly.

  “You’d be a damn fool if you didn’t,” he said, “and I’ve never set you down as one. Well, that finishes our conversation. Let’s go out and join the ladies, Willis.”

  His first instinct was to thank Mr. Harcourt and to say he should be going home, but instead Willis followed him down the hall to the living room. Even on that short walk he began to be vaguely aware that he had lost some sort of freedom which he could not name exactly and which he had not valued until he lost it.

  He was not surprised when he saw Mrs. Harcourt and Bess seated on the living-room sofa, and it was a suitable ending for that evening.

  “Well, Harriet,” Mr. Harcourt said, “Willis is going to the Harvard Business School.”

  He was surprised, although it did not seem unnatural, that Mrs. Harcourt took his hand in both of hers.

  “Oh, Willis,” she said, “I’m so glad for you, and I’m glad for us. I know you’re going to be a great help to Mr. Harcourt.”

  There was a great deal more to her words than met the ear. She seemed relieved and happy, and Bess seemed happy too.

  “I’m glad too,” Bess said, “but you certainly took an awfully long time talking about it.”

  “Not so long,” Mr. Harcourt said. “There’ll be some more details tomorrow, Willis. I want to see you and Bill at the office at ten o’clock.”

  “I’d better be going home now,” Bess said, and she smiled in a quick way like her grandfather. “You’ll walk home with me, won’t you, Willis?”

  It was more like an order than a question.

  “Yes, of course, Bess,” Willis said.

  “He says it just like a yes man, doesn’t he?” Bess said, and everybody laughed.

  “Willis, dear,” Mrs. Harcourt said, and he was startled. It was the first time she had ever called him “dear.” “We want you to feel that you are a part of the family now, don’t we, Henry?”

  Mr. Harcourt put his hand on Willis’s arm.

  “He knows that already,” he said, “or he ought to, Harriet.”

  Willis knew that it was true. In some way, without the words being spoken, he had sworn some sort of allegiance in Mr. Harcourt’s study. He had traveled a long way since he had stepped off the train with his suitcases and his Stetson hat one summer afternoon, and he was sure that Mr. Harcourt had planned it. Mr. Harcourt had always planned everything.

  VII

  What had the world been like when Willis had attended the Harvard Business School? He could explain it in terms of graphs and curves. He knew on paper many pertinent details of that time, but when he had lived it he had, of course, been too young for any balanced appreciation. He had only lived through it emotionally and it was still a part of his youth.

  What had he been like in those days? He could not tell exactly, any more than he could recall the facts and theories he had absorbed under the famous Case System. He could only recall a sense of general excitement and well-being. He had suddenly become a bright boy at the Harvard Business School. He had begun to absorb a picture there which he had never lost of the broad forces behind trade and organization. He had even gained, perhaps, the beginnings of a philosophy, yet he could not for the life of him remember much about himself. He had begun to gain an assurance with the high marks they gave him. He was brighter than most of the young men around him, and he had ceased to be afraid of money and he had begun to learn its uses. There was no wonder that he had a warm spot in his heart for the Harvard School of Business Administration in spite of some of the confusions of its theories.

  This was the only picture he could give of himself or of his attitudes when Bill Harcourt had introduced him to a girl named Sylvia Hodges and her family in his final year at the Business School. He was not impressed by this event at the time, which indicated, of course, that he had developed a rudimentary sort of social life. There were not only the usual smokers and get-together teas, but several members of the faculty had asked him to tea or supper. After all, he was presentable. He had learned to return hospitality in a small way by taking several girls to tea dances at the Copley-Plaza in Boston and occasionally to the theater. Also, Mr. Harcourt had asked him to dinner several times and so had the Bryson Harcourts, and he saw Bess occasionally, but never as often as he saw her in the summer. Thus he was not surprised when Bill asked him to go with him to see the Hodgeses on Craigie Street.

  It had been on a Friday, when he was helping Bill with a course on marketing, that Bill brought up the subject. Willis could still see Bill’s room with his photographs and his neckties and his framed club invitations from his undergraduate days and his evening clothes flung over a chair waiting for the valet service and the small wine keg in the closet in which Bill was endeavoring to manufacture claret. Willis could still see the papers on Bill’s desk, always in disorder, and he could see Bill himself in his gray slacks and his soft shirt.

  “You know I did the damnedest thing the other night,” Bill said. “I went to one of those dances in Brattle Hall. Honestly, I thought I’d outgrown that sort of thing.”

  “Why did you go if you didn’t want to?” Willis asked.

  “There was a dinner,” Bill said, “and the family wanted me to go. I haven’t any character. I’m always nice to everybody.”

  Bill stretched his arms above his head. Whenever he had to study, he always wanted to put the moment off.

  “Some day I’m going to stop being nice,” Bill said. “Now take the other night. I was introduced to a girl and I was stuck with her for about an hour. She’s somebody Steve Decker knows, and now she’s written me a note.”

  He rustled through the papers on his desk and handed Willis a letter written in a girl’s precise, small hand.

  Dear Mr. Harcourt,

  I remember your saying the other evening, though perhaps you have forgotten it, that you never can find much to do on Sundays. We always have a pickup supper every Sunday night and we play pencil-and-paper games, or something like that. Steve Decker, who says he knows you, is coming next Sunday, and I hope you can come too, at half past six o’clock, and bring a friend, if you would care to. It’s just an informal family pickup supper, but it will give you something to do on Sunday.

  Sincerely,

  Sylvia Hodges

  Sometimes it seemed to Willis that he had been born with an instinctive faculty for recognizing and respecting the motives of other people. When Bill Harcourt invited him to call on the Hodges family in Cambridge that Sunday afternoon, Willis knew very well that Bill would not have asked one of his closer friends to share in this ordeal, but it pleased him that Bill had asked him, because it indicated that Bill thought him adequate.

  In fact Bill was disarmingly grateful when they walked along the wintry sidewalks of Brattle Street. There was something about Cambridge people, especially professors, Bill said—and this girl’s father was a professor—that made him nervous. He had taken a course in geology under this Professor Hodges. It had been highly recommended as impossible to fail in and had consisted of a series of lectures supplemented by several trips to nearby places in the country to look at rocks. Old Man Hodges had given him a “C,” and the professor even had a sort of a sense of humor. Nevertheless, in Bill’s opinion professors and their families were hard to understand.

  Without ever having been to the Hodgeses’, Bill knew what it would be like. Mr. and Mrs. Hodges would be trying to have their daughters meet some nice young people, and he and Willis wer
e elected. The other guests would be Radcliffe girls and graduate students that no one had ever heard of.

  The Hodgeses lived in a beige-colored Victorian house that stood on a small lawn dotted with spindly bushes. It was cold inside because the hot-air furnace was giving trouble. There were a lot of young people in the large Victorian parlor and in the dining room behind it. As Mrs. Hodges said, the latchstring was always out on Sunday evening for the children’s friends, and Cambridge, if it was nothing else, was a town of young people. The hall was full of overshoes and rubbers, and the umbrella stand and the chairs beside it were piled with overcoats. Mr. and Mrs. Hodges seemed ill at ease with the young people. They stood in front of the parlor fireplace with Sylvia’s sister, Laura, a pale girl of about sixteen, who also looked uneasy.

  Sylvia had answered the doorbell herself. She wore an inexpensive dark-red velvet dress which gave the impression of being too large for her, and her straight dark hair was unbecomingly bobbed. Willis remembered that Bill had mentioned being stuck with Sylvia at a dance, and he could understand the reason. He had not the experience, in those days, to perceive what a well-cut dress and a more sympathetic hairdo might have done for her.

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Harcourt,” Sylvia said to Bill. “I was beginning to be afraid you’d found something better to do.”

  “Oh no,” Bill said, “and I’ve brought a friend from Business School—Willis Wayde.”

  “That’s awfully nice,” Sylvia said. “Mother was hoping you’d bring someone. How do you do, Mr. Wayde. Is Business School fun?”

  Sylvia spoke so rapidly that she gave Willis no time to tell her whether Business School was fun or not.

  “Leave your galoshes and coats anywhere,” she said. “It’s funny I’ve never met anyone from Business School except Mr. Harcourt, but, oh—” Sylvia pivoted around nervously—“here’s someone who says he knows you. You know Steve Decker, don’t you? He’s second-year Law, you know.”

  Then Willis saw that Steve Decker was standing behind Sylvia, and they must have been talking together in the hall when the doorbell had rung.

  “Hello, Bill,” Steve said. “Hi, Willis.”

  “Oh,” Sylvia said, “do you know Mr. Wayde too?”

  There had to be a time when you first became interested in someone. Though Willis could not say that he was interested in Sylvia at the moment, he felt sorry for her, because she was trying so hard to make things go, as her mother would have expressed it.

  “Yes,” Steve Decker said. “Willis and I are schoolmates. We wear the old school tie.”

  “That’s right,” Willis said, but he resented the way Steve smiled at him.

  “Then you must tell me all about Steve,” Sylvia said. “Steve and I took a long walk this afternoon. Steve was hard to keep up with but it was fun slopping through the slush, wasn’t it, Steve?”

  “Yes,” Steve Decker said, “there was a lot of slush.”

  It was strange how one could sometimes guess things immediately. Nothing more needed to be said for Willis to be absolutely sure that Sylvia Hodges was crazy about Steve Decker.

  “And now come in and meet the family,” Sylvia said. “I’ll be back in just a minute, Steve, and maybe you won’t mind helping me bring the salad from the kitchen.”

  “All right,” Steve Decker said, “I’ll be right there, Sylvia.”

  Steve Decker’s words were polite, but there was something patient in them, something condescending.

  Willis was not personally impressed by Sylvia Hodges. She was too thin and too intense for his taste. It never occurred to him that she was the sort of girl who might grow prettier as she grew older. But suddenly he wanted to be kind to her if only because Steve Decker was not. He found himself hoping that he was the only one who could tell what was happening.

  He remembered that he spoke to Sylvia as he walked with her to the parlor.

  “My mother says I’m pretty handy around the house,” he said, “if there’s anything I could do to help.”

  “Oh no,” Sylvia said, “you’re company. Mother, this is Mr. Harcourt and this is Mr. Wayde.”

  If Mrs. Hodges had thought more about her clothes, she would have been handsome in her middle age. Her face and figure were fuller than Sylvia’s. Her eyes were deep brown like Sylvia’s and her features were composed. If he had looked more closely at Mrs. Hodges he might have seen that Sylvia possessed many possibilities.

  “Homer,” Mrs. Hodges said, “this is a friend of Sylvia’s. Oh dear, I’m very bad at names.”

  “It’s Wayde,” Mr. Hodges said. “In my classes I always begin to forget when I get down to the W’s myself.”

  Mr. Hodges looked at Willis with the expression of someone who has seen too many young male faces. He was a thin man, and his gray mustache, slightly stained by tobacco, concealed the corners of his mouth.

  “Did you ever take my introductory course, Mr. Wayde?”

  “No sir,” Willis answered, “I went to Boston University.”

  “Dear, dear,” Mr. Hodges said, “I attended the University of Chicago myself once, but I finally contrived to live it down. Don’t you think so, Martha?”

  “No, Homer,” Mrs. Hodges said. “You’ve never lived down anything.”

  “You see,” Mr. Hodges said, “Mrs. Hodges is a Cambridge girl herself. What are you doing now, Mr. Wayde?”

  “I’m at the Harvard Business School, sir,” Willis said.

  “Dear, dear,” Mr. Hodges said, “that model village across the river that has the answer to everything?”

  “Oh, Father!” Sylvia said. “Here’s Mr. Harcourt, Father. He says he was in your course.”

  “Well, well,” Mr. Hodges said, and his expression brightened. “If it isn’t my old friend Harcourt. Fancy meeting you here, with your taste for geology.”

  Bill Harcourt began to laugh.

  “I had a fine time, sir,” he said, “and anyway I got a ‘C.’”

  “Yes,” Mr. Hodges said. “I was going to give you a ‘D’ but I couldn’t when I remembered your necktie. You see, Mr. Wayde, mine is what is sometimes called a necktie course.”

  “Oh, Father,” Sylvia began.

  “Be at ease, Sylvia,” Mr. Hodges said. “In just a moment your mother and I will go to my study and eat our chicken salad. But we understand each other, don’t we, Harcourt?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bill said, “I guess we do.”

  “There’s nothing like a necktie course,” Mr. Hodges said, “or at least nothing exactly like it.”

  But Sylvia was speaking quickly again, because Steve Decker was in the hall.

  “I wish Father wouldn’t tease everyone,” she said. “Every boy—I mean man—I ever ask around here has to go through with it, but you really mustn’t mind him.”

  “I don’t,” Willis said, because he was anxious to say something pleasant. “I think he’s wonderful.”

  As Bill said afterwards, it was one of the damnedest evenings he had ever spent, what with old Hodges and the pencil-and-paper games. But Willis had meant what he said that night. He never did get to understand Mr. Hodges, because they were poles apart, but there really had been something wonderful about him. Whenever Willis thought about him, he always admitted that Mr. Hodges had something that he would never have, and he was sure that Sylvia understood this, although she very seldom mentioned it.

  “Laura,” Sylvia said to her younger sister, “will you please take Mr. Harcourt and Mr. Wayde around and see that they meet everybody?”

  Laura Hodges gave them a panic-stricken look.

  “Can’t you do it, Sylvia?” she asked. “You know everybody better than I do.”

  “No, I can’t,” Sylvia answered. “I have a lot of things I have to attend to.”

  “I know what you have to attend to,” Laura said.

  “Laura,” Sylvia said. “You do what I say or I’ll speak to Mother.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Bill said. “We’ll get along all right.”

  Sy
lvia had left them while Bill was still speaking, and Laura blushed unbecomingly.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said, “but Sylvia’s always bossy.”

  “That’s all right,” Bill Harcourt told her. “Big sisters always are.”

  “She knows I don’t like introducing people,” Laura said, “but we’ll have to do it now, or Sylvia will find out later.”

  It interested Willis to remember that it was Sylvia’s younger sister, and not Sylvia, who introduced him to that new world of Craigie Street. Though Willis became well acquainted with most of them later, he always thought that those people who came to Craigie Street on Sunday evenings were a peculiar crowd, but he was always grateful for the contacts, because it was an education to meet people out of the ordinary run. In memory, he could still hear Laura’s strained voice as she led them around the room.

  “This is my brother Tom,” Laura said, and there was Tom Hodges, who always did strange things, like voting for Henry Wallace.

  “This is Henry Halstead,” Laura said. She could never introduce people gracefully. Instead she pointed them out like books on a library shelf. And there was Henry Halstead, an instructor in one of Mr. Hodges’s courses who later became an oil geologist.

  “This is Norma Ritchie,” Laura was saying, and there was Sylvia’s Radcliffe classmate Norma, the girl with acne, who was studying social sciences and who later had something to do with the United Nations and who sent Christmas cards of little-known saints from odd corners of French cathedrals.

  “This is Hunter Baxter.” And there was Hunter Baxter, the poet, who never used rhymes and who later lectured to women’s clubs and was investigated by the Un-American Activities Committee.

  “This is Simeon Flyrood,” Laura was saying, and there was Tom’s Law School classmate Simeon Flyrood, who liked to have his friends call him “Red” because of his ginger hair and freckles. He was the same Simeon Flyrood who later had something to do with the National Labor Relations Board, until he got mixed up with Communism in China.

  “This is Elsie O’Donnell.” And there was Sylvia’s Radcliffe classmate Elsie O’Donnell, whose hair never looked washed, no matter how often she washed it, and who became a script girl in Hollywood and finally did very well writing the Jack and Josie Breakfast Series on the radio, a daily drama of married life—although Elsie never did marry anyone.