Sincerely, Willis Wayde

by John P. Marquand

  “Yes, indeed, sir,” the driver said, in a confidential undertone. “It would be better if I did, because I know the way.”

  He was relieved that there was no need to press a furtive bill into the driver’s hand in front of the Harcourt house and Selwyn, but this was only a transient worry. Now he was able to give his full attention to Sylvia, holding her elbow solicitously for a moment after she had stepped from the car. Her gabardine suit looked just as attractive as it had at the Ritz.

  “You have your purse and everything, have you, sweetness?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Sylvia said, “everything, thanks.”

  He stood for a moment, as a good traveler should, checking the pieces of baggage.

  “Five pieces, weren’t there, sir?” the driver asked.

  Five pieces sounded like a good deal for overnight but one was his attaché case, and the three small matched pieces belonged to Sylvia.

  “That’s right—five,” Willis said, and he nodded smilingly to the driver.

  He was sure that Selwyn was glad to see him. Willis had always had a warm spot in his heart for Selwyn.

  “Well, Selwyn,” he said. “It’s wonderful to lay eyes on you, and it’s been much too long a time,” and Willis shook hands at once with Selwyn, “and this is my wife,” he went on. “Selwyn, dear, was my guide, philosopher and friend for many years.”

  “I’m ever so glad to meet you,” Sylvia said. “I think you did very well with him on the whole.”

  Willis could not help being proud of Sylvia.

  “It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Wayde,” Selwyn said. “We tried to do our best with Mr. Willis, and I’m glad if you approve.”

  It was time to laugh and to move toward the veranda.

  “Things all look very well, Selwyn,” Willis said, and then he remembered Sylvia’s remark about county gentry, but what else could one say?

  “Yes, the place looks well,” Selwyn said, “but of course there have been changes.”

  Willis nodded. Selwyn was obviously referring to the deaths of Mr. Beane and Patrick and the retirement of Mr. MacDonald.

  “Yes,” he said, “we can’t set the clock back, can we? No matter how much we wish we might.”

  He was thinking that he did not wish the clock set back a single instant and that he was quite happy with things as they were. As he reached the front door he had a queer thought that Mr. Henry Harcourt would be inside waiting to receive him, and the thought made him square his shoulders.

  Mrs. Harcourt stood, as they entered the hall, in the exact spot where she and Mr. Harcourt had greeted the guests at that stockholders’ luncheon years ago. She looked almost as Willis had remembered her. After all, there came a time in the lives of women when decline was much less marked than in the lives of men. She stood there, white-haired, plump-faced, and durable in a handsome purple-brocade dress.

  “My dear, I’m so glad to see you,” she said to Sylvia, and she kissed her. “And I’m going to kiss Willis too.”

  She laughed and turned her cheek to him.

  “Now let me have a good look at you,” she said, and she still held his hands. “I do wish Henry were here. He would be so pleased.”

  “It makes me very proud to have you say that,” Willis answered. “I was just hoping this moment that I hadn’t altogether let him down.”

  His glance traveled beyond the staircase to the shadowy corridor that ran under the upper landing; he was already sure that nothing in the house had been changed since he had seen it last.

  “You must be exhausted, dear,” Mrs. Harcourt said to Sylvia. “The tea things are in the library, but perhaps you’d rather go right upstairs and have a bath and get ready for dinner.”

  Sylvia looked at Willis questioningly, and at that very moment the hall clock struck six, and it was followed by the chiming of the clocks in the corridor and in the library.

  “I’m afraid time rather speaks for itself,” Willis said, “if you still have dinner at a quarter before seven.”

  The whole house was cool and smelled of flowers, as it always had.

  “Yes, dinner’s still at a quarter of seven,” Mrs. Harcourt said, “and only the family are coming—Bryson and Mildred—and Bryson wants to have an hour with you in the library afterwards to go over all the final meeting details.”

  “I suppose we should have a talk,” Willis said, “but I’d much rather have a talk with you, Mrs. Harcourt.”

  “Have you noticed,” Mrs. Harcourt said to Sylvia, “that Willis is always sweet to old ladies? They’ll all be going home early, and then I do hope we can have a quiet visit and that I can see the photographs of your babies, Sylvia. I do wish you could stay tomorrow night.”

  “I wish we could,” Sylvia said, “but I’ve never left the children so long before.”

  “You must bring them with you the next time,” Mrs. Harcourt said. “You could stay in the garden house, where Willis’s father and mother used to live. Bill and Anne come there sometimes with their children.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Willis said, “but I’m afraid you’ll get tired of me before that. I’ll have to be making a lot of flying visits to the mill this summer.”

  “Bill and Anne will be here,” Mrs. Harcourt said. “Bill always comes for the stockholders’ meetings—and then of course Bess and Edward. I thought of asking Roger for dinner and the night. Since Catherine has the shingles and couldn’t have come anyway, it would have evened the table but I couldn’t bear to do it.”

  Willis laughed, remembering things that Mr. Henry Harcourt had said about Roger.

  “We’ll be seeing plenty of him tomorrow,” he said, “and now perhaps …” he looked at Sylvia and smiled at Mrs. Harcourt, “we’d better start to get ready, if dinner’s a quarter before seven.”

  “You’ll be in the east room,” Mrs. Harcourt said. “It has a sitting room so that you can have your breakfast quietly. Selwyn will take you up, and you know Selwyn well enough to ask him for anything you want.”

  “I certainly do,” Willis said. “Lead the way and we’ll follow, Selwyn.”

  Their footsteps were deadened by the thick stair carpet.

  “The upstairs maid’s name is Elsie,” Selwyn said, “if Mrs. Wayde should ring. There won’t be any need to dress, unless you care to, Mr. Willis.”

  Willis wanted to ask Selwyn whether he thought Mr. Bryson or Bill or Edward would be dressing, but then he remembered Mr. Henry Harcourt had liked as a rule to be the only one who dressed. It was curious, Willis thought, that he had never spent a night in the big house, in spite of his having been in it so often. Thus the east guest room was only vaguely familiar to him—cool, with its green glazed chintz, heavy mahogany furniture and a massive four-post bed. Selwyn coughed discreetly and opened a door, explaining that there was also a bed in Mr. Wayde’s dressing room.

  Willis and Sylvia were both silent for a while after Selwyn left them. Willis kept thinking that Sylvia would speak first, as she usually did, but instead she stood looking at the four-post bed and at her luggage. Then she looked at her own bathroom, at Willis’s dressing room and bath, and then at the sitting room with its open fireplace.

  “Well?” Willis said.

  Sylvia sighed.

  “I don’t know why you’ve never told me anything about all this,” she said. “It’s beautiful, but there’s one queer thing about it. I keep thinking there are lots of invisible people around.”

  Willis was startled, because from the very beginning he had always thought this same thing about the Harcourt house.

  “It’s what happens if one family lives in one place,” he said, “but don’t let it get you down.”

  “It doesn’t,” Sylvia told him. “I’m dreadfully glad I’m here.”

  The windows were open and the birds were still singing. It was the end of a cool June day. Willis turned on his bath and hung his coat on a hanger. He never knew what had prompted him to put on a dinner coat and a soft shirt, except that he h
ad a feeling that Mr. Henry Harcourt would have approved. He was glad to see that there was a desk in the sitting room on which he could sort over some papers after dinner, but when he thought of work he became conscious of a reluctance that was almost lassitude. It was exactly the same sense of peace that used to come over him when school was over. Then his mood changed abruptly. Mrs. Harcourt’s words of welcome, he was thinking, implied that he was still a dependent of the Harcourt world and that he owed a debt to the Harcourts which could not be repaid. He wished there might be some way of making it clear that this was contrary to fact. He was deeply obliged to Mr. Harcourt, but he had paid everything back and the slate was clear. He was responsible to the stockholders of Harcourt Associates and not to Mr. Henry Harcourt’s family.

  “Willis,” Sylvia called, “would you mind coming in and doing me up my back?”

  Sylvia wore the flowered silk that she had bought at Bergdorf’s, and he approved of the flare of the skirt. The back, he was glad to see, was secured by a series of hooks and snaps and not by a zipper.

  “It’s rather tight, isn’t it?” Willis asked.

  “I’m planning to lose five pounds,” Sylvia said, “and then it will be all right, but don’t pull so hard. Willis?”

  “Yes, honey?” Willis said.

  “I want to see all the place before I leave.”

  “You certainly must,” Willis said. “Someone will take you around while we’re having the meeting at the mill. I wish I had time but Mr. Bryson wants to see me after dinner.”

  “I wish you could,” Sylvia said. “The grounds are so beautiful. I keep thinking of England.”

  “I know, honey,” Willis said. “I’ve told you, haven’t I, that the house and grounds were planned by a British architect?”

  “Why, no,” Sylvia said. “You never told me that. Of course that explains everything.”

  “That’s funny,” Willis said. “I must have told you.”

  “You never did, Willis,” Sylvia said. “It’s so queer that you’ve always spoken of the Harcourts so casually, because it must have meant an enormous lot to you to have lived here. It would have to anyone.”

  “I suppose it did at one time,” Willis said. He had finished the back of her dress. “But you get accustomed to anything you see a lot of—I lived with Ma and Pa in the garden house way across the lawn. I must have told you that.”

  Sylvia frowned in a puzzled way.

  “You’ve never told me much of anything,” she said. “I don’t see why you have been so secretive.”

  The word secretive annoyed him, but he laughed.

  “Now listen to me, honey,” he said. “I never thought you’d be so interested in any of this, and besides, I’m not good at painting word pictures, and you couldn’t understand a layout like this unless you saw it.”

  “It makes me wonder what you’re really like,” Sylvia said, “to have kept this locked inside you all this time, when it couldn’t help but have an influence on you.”

  “Listen, Sylvia,” Willis said, “Lake Sunapee had an influence on you, didn’t it, and you don’t—thank God—always talk to me about Lake Sunapee.”

  “But you hardly even told me about Mrs. Henry Harcourt,” Sylvia said.

  “Oh, hell, honey,” Willis said, “please don’t keep saying I haven’t told you.”

  “But she loves you,” Sylvia said. “She’s devoted to you and you never told me.”

  “Now, Sylvia,” Willis said, “I’ve always had a warm spot in my heart for Mrs. Harcourt, but she isn’t devoted to me.”

  “I don’t see how you can be so oblivious,” Sylvia said. “She adores you, and so does that old butler, Wilson.”

  “Selwyn,” Willis said, and lowered his voice soothingly. “Just calm down, honey. This isn’t Buckingham Palace or anything, really. It just happened that old man Harcourt employed my father as an engineer at the mill, and I may also tell you confidentially if my father hadn’t induced Mr. Harcourt to buy the Klaus belting patents, maybe this estate might have turned into an insane asylum or something. I don’t see why I should have talked about it all the time. I like it out in Orange.”

  He stopped, surprised by his own vehemence, but Sylvia went right on.

  “I wish I could have seen Mr. Harcourt,” she said. “He must have been a remarkable man.”

  “I wouldn’t say he was remarkable,” Willis said, “but he was a nice old gentleman. I’ve certainly told you I have a warm spot in my heart for him. And now come on. You’ve fixed your face already, honey.”

  “I should think you would have a warm spot in your heart for him, as you put it,” Sylvia said, “seeing that he put you through the Harvard Business School.”

  It was upsetting, because Sylvia was simply not being factually correct.

  “Now listen, honey, let’s get this straight once and for all,” Willis said. “I don’t owe the Harcourts anything even if they try to give that impression. Mr. Harcourt did pay my way through the Harvard Business School, but it was also in his interest, and every cent he gave me was paid back at six per cent. I definitely don’t owe the Harcourts anything.”

  He had never said so much before, even to himself. It was the place, of course, that had compelled him, and the birds and the smell of the syringa bushes, and the voices downstairs of the surviving Harcourts. His mother had given him the money to pay Mr. Harcourt, but he had paid her back as soon as possible. Although he was talking to Sylvia, he seemed to be entirely alone.

  “Why, Willis,” Sylvia said, “I don’t know why you should get excited.”

  “I’m not excited, sweetness,” Willis said. “I only want you to get things in their proper perspective. Now I’ll tell you who’s going to be there, so you won’t get mixed up. First there’s Mr. and Mrs. Bryson Harcourt—he is Mr. Henry Harcourt’s only son and president of Harcourt Associates—and then there’s his son, Bill Harcourt, and Bill’s wife, Anne. You can’t help liking Bill …”

  Willis was still describing the Harcourts to Sylvia when he heard the dinner chimes in the hall. He had forgotten the dinner chimes. They rang now strongly and musically through the house with the good-natured authority of the ship’s bells struck by the watch at sea. Willis took a hasty glance at himself in the mirror. His dinner coat hung with a studied negligence that only a good tailor could accomplish. He had passed the stage where self-analysis and checking-up were necessary, until he was at last rather close to those people he most envied, who did not need to bother about appearance or behavior.

  “Do I look all right?” Sylvia asked.

  “Honey,” Willis said, “I’m mighty proud of you and you look just wonderful.”

  When they reached the door of the drawing room, Willis knew the Harcourts thought so too. The Harcourts could not help but have been wondering what Sylvia would be like, and now at the sight of her all of them looked relieved. As Willis had thought, none of the men had dressed, but he passed off the situation by simply saying that he had to change anyway, and he had smiled at Mrs. Henry Harcourt, implying, of course, that he had put on his dinner coat out of respect.

  “I’m not sure whether you have met all the family or not, my dear,” Mrs. Harcourt said to Sylvia.

  “Well, well, my boy,” Bryson Harcourt said to Willis. “It’s a sight for sore eyes seeing you here again.”

  There was no doubt that his contact with Mr. Bryson Harcourt had sweetened itself enormously. Even a few weeks ago Mr. Bryson would not have thought of calling Willis “my boy,” but now he exhibited a touching trust and dependence, and he lowered his voice to a confidential murmur.

  “The report is splendid, my boy,” he said. “I’ve been practicing reading it all afternoon.”

  Bill Harcourt was even gladder to see Willis. Some people would have forgotten old associations but Bill had never been that sort. He slapped Willis on the back and shook him playfully by the shoulders.

  “It’s good to see you, boy,” he said. “I was just telling Anne this evening
that I won’t have the mill on my conscience ever any more. And look at Sylvia. Don’t you forget who introduced you to her.”

  Momentarily Willis had forgotten, and now it seemed inappropriate to remember.

  “And here’s Anne,” Bill said. “I don’t think you’ve ever met Anne, have you, Willis?”

  “Why, no,” Willis said, “I’ve never had the pleasure. Good evening, Mrs. Harcourt.”

  “Call her Anne,” Bill said. “We’re all of us family here.”

  Bill’s wife was a dark, acidulous-looking girl with beady black eyes and too much lipstick.

  “It would be a great pleasure to call you Anne,” Willis said to her. “Bill may have told you that we used to see a good deal of each other at the Harvard School of Business Administration, and in fact Bill only just reminded me that he was the one who introduced Mrs. Wayde and me—or rather Sylvia.”

  “Bill’s told me all about it,” Anne said. “Bill’s very fond of you.”

  “I’ve always had a warm spot in my heart for Bill,” Willis said, “and I hope that you and I will be good friends always, Anne. I greatly admire your father. I had the pleasure of greeting him for just a moment at the last meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers, but of course he wouldn’t remember.” He laughed lightly. “Why should he?”

  Then he shook hands with Bess and Edward Ewing.

  “It’s always like pulling teeth to get Edward down to the meeting,” Bess said, “and it was particularly God-awful this year, because all Edward wants to do is sit and try to hear the war news. He can’t sleep, worrying about the war. Do you worry about it, Willis?”

  Willis laughed.

  “I’ve got more pressing worries right now,” he said—“the ordeal tomorrow, for example. The war’s only a sort of general worry like the weather.”

  “But you think we’re going to get into it, don’t you?” Edward asked. “You see it’s historically impossible to let England be defeated, don’t you?”

  “Please for God’s sake,” Bess said, “let’s not talk about a cross-Channel invasion—at least not until we get to bed—and ask Selwyn to come over here with the cocktails, Edward. Willis won’t get one for himself because he’s always so abstemious.”