Sincerely, Willis Wayde

by John P. Marquand

  “Did you have a good dinner at the club, dear?” Sylvia asked.

  “Oh, a fine dinner, honey,” Willis said—“er—sweetness.”

  “Call me honey, if you like,” she said. “I’m used to it by now.”

  She looked at him shyly, and all at once he felt absolutely happy.

  “Listen, honey,” he said, “I know I’m crude in spots, but I want to do the best I can for you and the babies.”

  “Oh, Willis,” Sylvia said, “please don’t think I’m ever laughing at you seriously. I believe in you all the time.”

  “It makes me feel good to hear you say that, honey,” Willis said. “It gives me a chance to dedicate myself.”

  “I wish you’d kiss me, dear,” Sylvia said.

  “Why, certainly,” Willis said. “It will be a pleasure, honey.”

  All that scene seemed relatively unimportant, but something had changed between him and Sylvia. It seemed to him that she had put a different value on him. Once when he had pronounced Botticelli wrong and Sylvia had given the artist’s name the right pronunciation, she actually had blushed.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she said, “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “Honey,” he told her, “I know I can’t play every instrument in the band.”

  As a matter of fact, the sooner you learned this homely truth, the better. Back there in Orange, before Pearl Harbor, before Louise was born, back there when he had started Harcourt Associates, he and Sylvia had struck a balance, and you had to strike one somewhere in a marriage. On the whole it had been a very good balance.

  XXIII

  The war years, conferences with government bureaus, interminable trips to Washington, labor disputes and the renegotiation of contracts, were already approaching rapidly. Compared with the constant shift of scene and nervous tension which had already begun mounting, the days that marked the fall of France and the Battle of Britain always seemed peaceful to Willis. It had not occurred to him yet that his country might be in danger, but he had realized that business was on the threshold of great industrial expansion.

  The stockholders’ meeting of Harcourt Associates was called in late June that year, and Mrs. Henry Harcourt, in keeping with the old tradition, had invited the stockholders to luncheon at the big house on the Harcourt place. The stockholders’ meeting turned into a bright and significant event for Willis Wayde because the whole occasion tied the present to the past in a very welcome way. It touched Willis especially that Mrs. Henry Harcourt wrote asking him and Sylvia to stop at the big house during the meeting.

  “Honey,” he said to Sylvia the evening he had received the note, “I have a very gracious letter from Mrs. Henry Harcourt, asking us to be her guests at the big house. I hadn’t thought of bringing you up there, honey, but I do think it would be a very nice idea, both personally and businesswise.”

  “I think it would be lovely,” Sylvia said. “I’d love to see the place. Let’s see, Mrs. Henry Harcourt is the old Mrs. Harcourt, isn’t she?”

  “Good for you, honey,” Willis said. “Yes, Mrs. Henry Harcourt lives in the big house. She used to be mighty kind to me when I was a kid.”

  “The more I think of it, the better I like the idea of going,” Sylvia said. “Oh, by the way, a man called you up just before you got home. He said his name was Mr. Lever.”

  “He did, did he?” Willis said. “Well, that’s another story we’ll have to go into later, sweetness.”

  “He wanted to talk to you about a house, I think,” Sylvia said.

  The whole thing was meant to be a surprise, and it was annoying of Ted Lever almost to have spoiled it.

  “Oh, I’ve only had a vague idea,” Willis said, “but let’s schedule our visit to the Harcourt place. I hope we can manage to get Miss Farquahr.”

  As a matter of fact, Sylvia called up Miss Farquahr right away, and luckily Miss Farquahr was both able and glad to come.

  “Now, honey,” Willis said, “I’m going to be pretty proud of you up there, and I want everybody to see how beautiful you are. So I’m going to write you out a check and send you into town tomorrow to Bergdorf Goodman’s.”

  “But I’ve plenty of clothes, Willis,” Sylvia said.

  Willis smiled at her. He did not mean to be critical of Sylvia’s clothes, but without being too personal, dressing was difficult for Sylvia, having babies and moving from one dress to another.

  “I always think you look lovely, honey,” he said, “in whatever old thing you wear, but this is a sort of special occasion, and besides, you’ve just weaned Paul.” He did not want to hurt Sylvia’s feelings. He was very glad that he was beginning to make his point. “If you were in overalls, sweetness, you’d look beautiful. Just the same, you do like clothes, don’t you?” It was a rhetorical question which he did not mean her to answer. “How about getting a lot of new things—a suit, an afternoon-and-evening frock, and a light coat, and shoes and accessories?”

  “But, darling,” Sylvia said, “I don’t believe you have any idea what all those things will cost.”

  “Listen, honey,” Willis said, “you go get them. Here’s a blank check and you fill it in.”

  It was naturally important that Sylvia should make a good impression on the Harcourts and on other stockholders and officers at the luncheon, and it also was high time that she had a little pleasure. He felt deeply tender toward Sylvia when he pulled out his pocket checkbook and signed a check and handed it to her.

  “Don’t you think you ought to put on a limit, Willis?” she asked him. Basically Sylvia was always a wonderful girl.

  “Only a lower limit,” he told her. “I’ll feel hurt, sweetness, if that check is filled in for anything less than six hundred dollars.”

  There were a great many things he could not say, but he liked to think that he had implied most of them when he mentioned the minimum figure.

  “You’re awfully sweet, dear,” she said, “and you don’t have to explain. I’m not so dumb.”

  “Okay, honey,” Willis answered, “as long as you know I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she told him. “I used to think it was bad being a woman, but perhaps being a man is worse.”

  “Let’s put it this way,” Willis said. “Everyone has a rough time occasionally, regardless of sex.”

  It was not a tough time then; it was a rare moment when two people understood each other so well that they could talk without worrying what the other might be thinking.

  “Men have so many more loyalties,” she said. “It’s simpler for me, because I have only you and the children.”

  It had paid, he was thinking, to have had that quarrel with Sylvia. Each of them knew much better where the other was, and they could touch each other mentally, without either of them drawing away.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Willis said. “You were mighty sweet about Paul—I mean, weaning him, honey. I hope you didn’t do it because of the stockholders’ meeting or anything.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I did it because I was getting selfish. Maybe nursing mothers always are.”

  “Nursing mothers aren’t as good pals,” he told her, “as nonnursing mothers.”

  Both of them laughed, and it was the finest thing in the world when he said something that made Sylvia laugh with him and not at him.

  “Honey,” he said when they finished laughing, “there’s something else I maybe ought to tell you but I won’t right now except to say I think it’s something that you’re going to like.”

  He could see now that he should have discarded his romantic idea of giving her a big surprise. He should have realized that a home, even though located in a topflight development like Northfield Park in West Orange, was not like a diamond-and-sapphire clip. No one, he knew now, should ever flash a new home as a surprise on any wife, but Willis was still only thirty-three. After all he could not know everything.

  As long as they were going to make the trip, Sylvia had suggested very sensibly t
hat they might add a day or two more to it, so that she could have a chance to see her family in Cambridge, and Willis had concurred most cheerfully. There was only one thing upon which he insisted, and he hoped that Sylvia understood his point. He had insisted that before going up to Clyde they should occupy a small suite at the Ritz instead of staying with the Hodgeses at Craigie Street.

  They took the Merchants Limited to Boston, and Willis was pleased that the clerk and the assistant manager of the Ritz both knew who he was. As Willis said facetiously to the assistant manager, the Ritz was getting to be a home away from home. It was gratifying to have the assistant manager say that he hoped this would always be the case and that he wished to extend an especial welcome to Mrs. Wayde. Sylvia looked perfectly at home at the Ritz. He was very proud of Sylvia.

  The stockholders’ meeting had been called for a Friday, and they had arrived in Boston on a Monday evening. Consequently Willis wrote to Mrs. Harcourt that they would motor from Boston, arriving at the Harcourt place in time for dinner on Thursday, staying through the stockholders’ lunch Friday and returning to Boston directly afterwards. This would be quite enough, Willis thought, for both himself and Sylvia, because any stockholders’ meeting, with its inevitable encounters and minor crises, was always more of a strain than one expected.

  Willis had not anticipated how busy he would be in Boston. The telephone began ringing almost the moment they got to the suite, and by breakfast time next morning his schedule was almost entirely filled for the two ensuing days, and would have been for the nights, too, if he had not insisted on some leisure. Yet in the midst of those crowded hours, each packed with its own problems, Willis frequently found himself worrying about the trip to Clyde. Instead of its being something that he could look forward to with pleasure, it began to loom up like an ordeal. If they were motoring to Clyde, they should leave Boston at four o’clock, to avoid commuter traffic, but if they left then, they would reach the Harcourt place too early. He compromised on four-thirty.

  “Willis,” Sylvia said, “isn’t everything going all right?”

  He was startled by the question, because everything up in Boston had been going very well indeed. The sales organization was in fine shape and already beginning to deliver. Production was being stepped up as much as possible, both at the Harcourt Mill and at Rahway, because, with existing world conditions, he could see no danger in piling up an inventory. The quicker you got the rubber into the carcasses of conveyor belts, where the Government couldn’t get it out, the better; and he explained this carefully to Sylvia.

  “So you’re asking a very silly question, honey,” he told her. “What made you ask if everything wasn’t going all right?”

  “You just seem tense,” Sylvia said, “but then I suppose you’re worried about the meeting.”

  “Oh, no,” Willis said. “The meeting’s going to be a real love feast to which I’m frankly looking forward, honey, and I have a sort of selfish feeling that I want to show you off to all those people. I sort of hate to wait.”

  “Then why don’t we leave at four instead of four-thirty?” Sylvia asked.

  “Because it’s a sort of waste of time sitting talking,” Willis told her.

  “I hoped we could see the place before dark,” Sylvia said. “You’ve always told me so much about it—the walk by the brook, and the greenhouse with the hothouse grapes. Do you suppose the grapevine is still there?”

  Willis was mildy shocked by the question, because he passionately wanted to believe that everything was still exactly as it had been when he had first seen the Harcourt place years ago late on an August afternoon. In spite of the depression, he was sure that Mrs. Harcourt had the money to keep it up. He wanted everything to be the way it had been.

  “It won’t be dark when we get there, sweetness,” Willis said. “We’re right around the longest day of the year, and that reminds me, I’ve completely forgotten to call up a Cadillac renting service. I must make a memo to do it in the morning.”

  “What kind of a renting service?” Sylvia asked.

  It was high time that he took Sylvia on a few business trips. She had been cooped up in Orange too long with the children, even if she did look at home in the Ritz; but once they got moved into a new home they would have to get adequate help so that Sylvia would be able to move around.

  “It’s one of those services that supplies a Cadillac and a liveried chauffeur,” Willis told her. “Now, I know what you’re going to say, sweetness. Sure we could go up on the train, but this is going to give me a chance to relax.”

  “But what are people going to say,” Sylvia said, “when we drive up that way? It’s going to look awfully queer.”

  “Just exactly why is it going to look queer?” Willis asked her.

  “Oh, well,” Sylvia said, “it looks so ostentatious, Willis.”

  He understood what Sylvia meant by ostentation, but he could not see why Sylvia should always be afraid of it.

  “There’s a whale of a lot of difference between ostentation and intelligence,” Willis told her. “It’s just being plain intelligent to go up there with a car and a driver. “Also, sweetness, I’d rather have people up there think I can afford it than have them think I can’t.”

  He was sure this was what old P. L. Nagel would have said. He could remember old P.L. driving up there in a Cadillac, but of course this had no influence on his judgment.

  Willis had been absolutely right about the Cadillac, and he was very glad to be motoring through a green June country, instead of catching the train for Clyde. His mind went back to that first day he had gone to Clyde with his mother on that blistering-hot August afternoon. He could see his father at the station, and Patrick, and the old Locomobile. The country had seemed strange to him, and in spite of all the time he had lived in New England he still could not feel a part of it as Sylvia did, although Sylvia was seeing Clyde for the first time. It was strange that Sylvia saw a great many things that he had never noticed—gardens, and peculiarities of architecture.

  “I don’t see why you never told me it was so beautiful,” she said.

  It would have put him in a highly embarrassing position if he had confessed to Sylvia that he had never thought of the town as beautiful. Willis was still convinced that a lot of it was unnecessarily old and that more of it was run-down. The mellow brick of the Federalist buildings, and the fresh green sweep of the elm trees, superficially, he supposed, were beautiful, but none of it fitted his taste.

  “If you like this,” he said, “just wait until you see the Harcourt place.”

  He could not exclaim, as Sylvia did, at the farmhouses along the river or at the views of the river, because he had seen too much of them when he was younger. He was waiting for his first glimpse of the Harcourt Mill, with an odd feeling of suspense. He first saw the new chimney on Building 4 and then the bell tower on the old warehouse and then the newer construction. The sight of the buildings gave him a rather good idea for a piece of Harcourt Associates promotion—a pair of balanced pictures of the two plants: “Harcourt Mill, Home of Hartex; Rahway Belt, Home of Planeroid.” Then Sylvia’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

  “What’s that place?” she asked.

  Very few groups of industrial buildings made an aesthetically attractive picture, and the Harcourt Mill had grown in a purely functional manner.

  “Don’t be too hard on it,” Willis said, and he laughed. “That’s the Harcourt Mill. There wouldn’t be any Harcourts or you and me here if it weren’t right here with us.”

  He did not speak in a reproving manner, because he did not care what Sylvia’s opinion of it might be. Now that he had seen the mill, he felt better about everything. It relieved him to realize that there was no sentiment in his allegiance to the Harcourt Mill, and that environment had nothing to do with the problems which the mill presented, many of which, for example, were interchangeable with those of the Rahway Belting Company.

  Willis could not develop these thoughts because he had t
o direct the driver through the mill village.

  “You’ll see the stone walls and the gatehouse,” he said, “and when you see a pond on the right-hand side of the drive, bear to the right. It’s a large granite house.”

  The rhododendrons and the laurel were out, making, as always, a fine show, and the rose gardens were at their best.

  “You never told me it would look so English,” Sylvia said.

  The grounds looked as trim as they ever had. They were passing the pond, and Willis saw that there were still swans.

  “Didn’t I?” he said. “Well, it’s a real family place, but the Harcourts can explain it better than I can, sweetness.”

  There was no reason why he should have told Sylvia much about the Harcourt place. He had been in New York when they were engaged, and they had a lot of problems of their own without dragging in the Harcourt place.

  “What are you laughing at, honey?” he asked.

  “It’s so English, Willis, that it makes you English, too,” she said.

  “Frankly, I don’t quite get you,” Willis told her.

  “You take it for granted,” Sylvia said. “You act like a county family.”

  “I’ve been around here quite a lot,” Willis said, “but I still don’t get you about taking things for granted.”

  The car had stopped at the flagstone veranda with its Gothic columns, and there was no time to say anything more, but he was thinking that Sylvia might have been correct about the taking-it-for-granted aspect. As someone who controlled the destiny of the Harcourt Mill, he did have rights on the place which he could not entirely express. The driver had opened the door of the Cadillac, and Willis saw that Selwyn, who looked old and frail was stepping down from the veranda, followed by a younger man, who must have been a gardener.

  “Hello, Selwyn,” Willis called, and he turned quickly to the driver. “Please be sure to come back here at three-thirty tomorrow afternoon. I hope you can come personally.”