Sincerely, Willis Wayde

by John P. Marquand

  “What makes you think he did?” Willis asked.

  “Because he wouldn’t have done anything else,” Mr. Beane said. “By God, Mr. Harcourt’s a grand old man.”

  Then Willis understood that Mr. Beane had only called him over so that all three of them might share the warmth and loyalty they felt. It was a June morning. He could hear the robins and the orioles singing, and the air was being warmed by the summer-morning sun. Though they never mentioned it, they must have all known that Mr. Harcourt’s sun was setting, but there was no doubt that Mr. Harcourt was a grand old man.

  That morning Mr. Harcourt went over his investment list. He was planning to sell his common stocks, Willis remembered, and to convert into Government bonds, and Willis had been with him when he had called his brokers in Boston. Then in the afternoon there had been some problem in Building 2, the details of which Willis had forgotten, but Mr. Harcourt had visited Building 2 himself and he had asked Willis to go with him. Building 2 was always noisy. When they stepped inside and began walking down the broad center aisle, somebody raised a cheer that rose above the sound of the machinery and that made Mr. Harcourt stop for an instant. Then he walked straight on, as though he had not noticed, and he did not speak until they were out of the building and in the yard.

  “That was peculiar, wasn’t it?” he said. “Some people in there must have heard the news.”

  When a salesman in Chicago was taken ill with appendicitis, Willis was sent to call on the Haverford people there, a milling firm that was one of Harcourt’s best accounts; Mr. Harcourt had insisted that Willis should go out to finish the sale. Mr. Briggs had objected, and Willis had not blamed him much, seeing that Willis had never sold anything in his life, but Mr. Harcourt had insisted. It was time that Willis began to move around, he said, and see the country. It was something to remember—your first trip for any firm, and your first expense account. He was to stop at the Hotel Blackstone, Mr. Harcourt had said, and Willis always had a warm spot in his heart for the Hotel Blackstone.

  You could never tell, until you tried, whether you could sell or not, and Willis immediately enjoyed the arts of logical persuasion and the elation that finally came with writing down an order and finishing a deal. It was always a new adventure—the contacts with new people and the feeling that the firm’s reputation depended on your judgment and behavior. Any executive, he always thought, should have sales ability, because you could never tell when an emergency might arise when this ability might be required. Things were moving very fast, although Willis did not know it then.

  Later Willis realized that Mr. Harcourt knew very well that his time was short, and Willis saw others who faced that same eventuality. You only had to read the papers to realize that the business world was full of sudden death. After you had reached a certain age, and even though you were still young and active, you had to face the unpleasant fact that extermination might catch up with you at home or in the office, on the golf links or in the street, and if you were a good executive you were always ready for it, because things would have to run without you.

  Mr. Harcourt was one of the best long-term planners Willis had ever met. There was no dramatic sense of haste and no small farewell speeches. In fact there was no appreciable change in Mr. Harcourt, who acted to all outward appearances as though he had years ahead of him, and all his decisions reflected this belief. If he had more conferences than usual with Mr. Decker and his Boston lawyers, the times were uncertain. He had been ready for the crash of October, 1929. He had even begun cutting down the mill inventory that summer in case there should be a business slump. The truth was that anyone of Mr. Harcourt’s ability was able to face anything, and death was no exception.

  Willis believed that he was one of the few people who knew that Mr. Harcourt was facing it, not that Mr. Harcourt had ever mentioned the prospect. Willis had only a single glimpse of Mr. Harcourt’s thoughts, and this occurred on the day he returned from that trip to Chicago, and it was only a glimpse, a veiled reference and nothing more. Willis arrived in Clyde from Chicago at a quarter before two, and the station looked exactly as it had when he had seen it first, except that it seemed dingier and smaller. He reached the mill office at half past two, carrying his new leather suitcase. Perhaps he should have reported to Mr. Briggs first, since Mr. Briggs was the head of sales, but instead he stopped in to see Mr. Harcourt. His office door was open, as it always was, and Mr. Harcourt sat at his battered desk with a pile of legal papers in front of him.

  “Why, hello, Willis,” Mr. Harcourt said. He spoke just as though Willis had never been away, but at the same time Willis had a feeling that Mr. Harcourt was very glad to see him. “I’m glad to be here to see you back.”

  Willis only remembered this remark later. It did not strike him as peculiar at the time.

  “Put down your bag and sit down,” Mr. Harcourt told him. “That’s a very nice suit you have, Willis. You always wear clothes well. I was talking to Jess Haverford on the telephone this morning. You seem to have made a happy impression.”

  “I’m glad if things went all right, sir,” Willis said.

  “I thought you’d like traveling,” Mr. Harcourt told him. “When I was young there was nothing I liked better than moving around and going places, but now I hate the idea of moving. I hear you took Mr. Judson from the purchasing department out to dinner. And you gave him that bottle of Scotch from me, I hope.”

  “Yes, sir,” Willis said. “He’s going to write you a note. We had a drink of it up in my room before dinner.”

  “It’s funny, this drinking in a hotel bedroom,” Mr. Harcourt said. “I’ve never been able to get used to it. You gave Jess Haverford those cigars, I hope.”

  “Yes, sir,” Willis said.

  “Jess is a good judge of cigars,” Mr. Harcourt said.

  “He asked particularly how you were, sir,” Willis said.

  “I hope you told him I’m feeling fine.” Mr. Harcourt spoke more rapidly than usual. “I always liked Chicago.” The springs in his chair creaked as he leaned back. “It’s always living in the future, something I’m less and less inclined to, I’m afraid. I’m getting surprisingly fond of the present. Well, I mustn’t keep you, Willis. You ought to be seeing Mr. Briggs now.”

  Willis rose but Mr. Harcourt raised his hand.

  “I want to hear more about Chicago. I’d like you for dinner at the house tonight.” He paused a moment. “Bess is coming, and no one else. Make it half past six, so we’ll have time to sit on the west veranda. I thought you’d like it if I asked Bess for you.”

  Of course he liked it, but he was surprised that Mr. Harcourt should have mentioned Bess.

  “She’s looking very pretty these days, isn’t she?” Mr. Harcourt said. “And she’s getting very direct. She said she’d love to come over if you were there.”

  You were always living in some fool’s paradise or other when you were twenty-two. Although he liked to think that he had discounted a great deal, he could not blame himself for the things he thought that day. When he was talking to Mr. Briggs in the sales department about the Hartex conveyor belting that Haverford had ordered, a part of his mind was still concentrated on what Mr. Harcourt had just said. Why, Willis kept asking himself, had Mr. Harcourt said that Bess was looking very pretty? Why had he mentioned that Bess was glad to come that evening if he would be there too? Then his mind moved further, on the supposition that what he thought was true. He could see himself married to Bess Harcourt, living in a house of their own on the Harcourt place, a part of the Harcourt family, as Mr. Bryson’s son-in-law, assisting Mr. Bryson at the plant. He could never blame himself for indulging in this fantasy. You always lived in some sort of fool’s paradise or other when you were twenty-two.

  There was something down to earth about driving back with his father to the garden house and washing up before dinner.

  “I do think, Willis,” his mother said, “that Mr. Harcourt might not have invited you tonight, the very first moment that you g
ot back home.”

  “Now listen, Cynthia,” his father said, “Willis is a big boy now. He’s a management boy. Look at the crease in his pants.”

  “I don’t mind if he looks nice, Alf,” his mother said, “but I do wish Mr. Harcourt wouldn’t act as if he owned Willis. I think he might have asked us too. Don’t you think so, Alf?”

  “It’s a hot night, Cynthia,” Alfred Wayde said, “and I’d rather get up a sweat at home. I wish we were in the mountains. Say, Cynthia, we haven’t been away from here for years. Remember how cool it used to be at the mine?”

  “Don’t start getting restless, Alf,” she said. “Who else is going to be there, Willis?”

  “No one,” Willis told her, “only Mrs. Harcourt and Bess.”

  “Oh dear,” Mrs. Wayde said, “I thought you weren’t seeing so much of Bess.”

  “I’m not seeing much of her,” Willis said. “She’s just going to be there.”

  “Oh dear,” she said. “I don’t mean she isn’t a very nice girl, but she isn’t your kind of girl, Willis.”

  He wished his mother would not keep saying that Bess was not his kind of girl. The repetition always broke the continuity of his thoughts.

  The Harcourts were all on the west veranda.

  “Oh, Willis, dear,” Mrs. Harcourt said, “we’re all so glad you’re back, aren’t we, Bess?”

  “Yes,” Bess said, “we’re pretty glad right now.”

  Bess was looking very pretty. It was a sort of beauty that had nothing to do with her features, and made you forget their irregularity. There was a glow in her tan cheeks, and the tan made her yellow hair seem lighter and brought out the greenish-blue color of her eyes.

  “Willis,” Mr. Harcourt said, “when you come here there isn’t any need for you always to ring the front doorbell. Bess and Bill don’t and you needn’t either. It only bothers Selwyn.”

  “I can’t see Willis not ringing a bell,” Bess said. “I always think of him as ringing bells.”

  “It’s all right,” Willis said, “as long as I ring a bell with you, Bess.”

  “Well,” Bess said, “this must be what comes of going to Chicago.”

  There was no sharpness at all in the way she said it. She seemed to know as well as Willis that Mr. Harcourt was watching them, but she did not appear to mind, and when Willis drank the Martini that Mr. Harcourt gave him, anything seemed possible.

  It was the same at dinner—anything seemed possible—and Mr. Harcourt had asked Selwyn for champagne.

  “Well, Willis,” Mr. Harcourt said, “tell us about your trip.”

  “Well,” Willis began, “it’s quite a place, Chicago. You know, I hadn’t been there since my mother and I passed through it when we first came here.”

  Then curiously, without his having intended to do so, he began talking about the only other time he had been in Chicago and not about this trip at all. He told about visiting the farm in Kansas on the way to Chicago, and then about the mine and the luncheon in Denver at the home of Mr. Harrod Cash. He had never realized that he could recall those details so clearly, although he had a feeling that he was talking about someone else.

  “Why haven’t you ever told us any of this before, Willis?” Mr. Harcourt asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It was quite a while ago.”

  It was quite a while ago. He had not realized how far he had traveled from those memories or how little they mingled with the present, and he never forgot one thing that Bess said to him after dinner.

  “When you were talking,” Bess said, “you sounded like what you’re really like. You made me feel I knew you.”

  He could not blame himself for being puzzled, but it still struck him as a strange remark.

  “You ought to know me by now,” he said.

  “I guess I do,” she told him, “but you sounded natural.”

  At half past nine o’clock Mr. Harcourt said he was sorry to break up such a pleasant evening but it was time for him to go upstairs.

  “Harriet’s been signaling to me,” he said. “All right, I’ll go to bed now, Harriet, and we might bring Gulliver’s Travels up with us. It’s queer, my mother used to read it to me when I was a child, and now Harriet’s reading it to me. Eventually everything ends up in a sort of circle. Good night, Bess dear. You’ll see her home, won’t you, Willis?”

  There was only starlight, but both of them knew the place by heart, and if it had been pitch dark they could have found their way to any part of it. They walked down the drive to the third large beech tree, which rose in front of them like a still cloud, and then diagonally across the lawn toward the woods and the path by the brook.

  “Willis,” Bess said, “I do wish I understood you better. I want to try. I really do.”

  “I’m not much of a puzzle,” he told her. “You ought to know that by now.”

  “Then put your arm around me,” she said. “It always helps when you do that.”

  When he put his arm around her, he remembered the other times when they had been alone at night together, but they had never seemed to be so alone as they were then.

  “Willis, tell me what you want,” she said. “Everybody must want something and you’ve never told me—never.”

  “Well,” he said, “it’s pretty hard to say it all at once. I guess I want to get along. Maybe that’s what everybody wants, but you don’t have to want it as much as I do, I suppose.”

  “That’s a stupid thing to want.” Her voice was very low and so close to him that it sounded like his thoughts as her hair brushed against his cheek. “Do you ever think about me, Willis?” Her hair brushed against his cheek again.

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course I do.”

  “I think about you, too,” she said, “all sorts of times when I don’t expect it.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I wish I weren’t so afraid,” she said.

  He held her closer to him. “Afraid of what?” he asked.

  “Of what’s going to happen to all of us, but I’ve told you that before. You remember, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I remember, but there’s nothing to be afraid of, Bess.”

  “Willis”—her voice was almost a whisper—“did Grandfather say anything about me today?”

  “Yes,” he said, “a little.”

  “Well, what?” she asked him. “What?”

  “He said you were looking very pretty.”

  They did not speak for a while but their thoughts were very close together.

  “I think he’d like to have us get married,” she said. Everything inside Willis seemed to stop. “It would be awfully queer, wouldn’t it?”

  “Why would it be?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It just would be.… Willis?”

  “Yes?” he said. “What is it, Bess?”

  “I’m awfully glad you’re here, and I don’t want you to go away. You mustn’t go away.”

  “I won’t if you don’t want me to,” he told her. “I love you. Do you love me, Bess?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Oh, Willis, I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you know at all?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, “sometimes. I do right now, but let’s not talk about it now, as long as I know you’re here.”

  Then he saw the lights of the Bryson Harcourt house in front of him. There were cars on the driveway, and there were people. He could hear their voices on the terrace.

  “Willis,” she said, “let’s not go in right now.”

  He called up Bess the next morning from the mill and her mother answered the telephone. Bess had left that morning, she told him, to visit her school friend Mary Adams, at Seal Harbor. She would be away for a week. Hadn’t Bess told him she was going? He could almost believe that none of it had happened when he saw Bess again.

  “Willis,” she said when she saw him again, “let’s not talk about it now. You know there’s lots of time.”

  Of
course he thought there was, when summer changed to autumn in 1929. He was behind the bulwark of the Harcourts then, protected from the financial repercussions of that autumn, too young to understand their significance, just as Mr. Harcourt was perhaps too old. The Harcourt Mill had lived through other grim readjustments, beginning with the great depression that had followed the Civil War. Besides, there was an upturn after the initial market crash, and although there was a slackening of business, as Mr. Harcourt had foreseen, there was no demoralizing slide. Willis never realized until everything was over that he and the Harcourts and all the fabric of life around them had been moving through a period of catastrophic change, because everything had seemed to be going on a fixed and even course. Yet when everything around him had appeared most tangible, the Harcourt Mill and the Harcourt place had been losing substance. He was like someone in the cabin of a ship, absorbed in the immediacy of pressing business while the ship was leaving land. The Willis Wayde who had known Bess Harcourt was back there in the distance, and suddenly he was alone and the Harcourt place was gone.

  XII

  Mr. Henry Harcourt died on the eighth of April, 1930. Willis could never forget his incredulity when he heard the news, and he saw the reflection of his own surprise on the faces of everyone else. It was a surprise that rose in one slowly, like high tide. Selwyn had called the garden house at half past seven in the morning, and Willis had answered the telephone himself. Mr. Harcourt had passed away quietly in his sleep. Mr. Bryson and Mr. Bill were already at the house, and Mr. Bryson wanted Mr. Willis to come over as soon as possible.

  The weather that day was more like early March than April—damp and cold and misty. The mist had made his face wet and drops of water were falling from the bare wisteria vines on the porch of the big house. It was his imagination, of course, that there was an emptiness in the big house which had never been there before—something that was palpable and startlingly impressive. He rang the doorbell, but when he did so he remembered that Mr. Harcourt had told him that there was never any need to ring it, and a lump rose in his throat. It was a dark morning, and the hall lights were on, giving the impression that it was still night outside.