On March 2, 1931—a date that Willis never forgot—he found a letter from Bess Harcourt on his desk with the other morning mail. He remembered that he had wished to open it at once but he had no opportunity to open it until a quarter before nine, and he remembered glancing into Mr. Harcourt’s office first, to see whether Mr. Bryson had arrived yet, but Mr. Bryson had not come in. Willis was pleased to see that it was a longish letter.
Dear Willis,
It’s been quite a long while since we’ve seen each other, hasn’t it? So much has been happening that I want to talk to you about, and Mother has been so busy with plans that we haven’t been down to the country for ages. Willis, dear, I know I ought to say this to you instead of writing but I do want you to hear my news first instead of learning it from someone else. This is a sort of a hard letter to write, Willis, dear. I don’t seem to understand how this all happened myself, because it happened so suddenly that it’s left me all of a heap. I keep trying to think how to say it. Well, I guess I’ll have to say it in any old way.
Willis, dear, I’m going to get married, and there it is. Edward Ewing asked me to marry him yesterday. I wonder whether this surprises you as much as it did me. Of course I’ve seen a lot of Edward but somehow I never really expected it. If I had, I promise you I would have told you. I never knew until he asked me that it must have been what I always wanted. Anyway, it’s the answer to everything for me. I never thought that I could be so happy.
I’m so happy that I want everybody else to be, particularly you. I seem to care more about you than I ever did, but in a different way. I know nothing would have worked with you and me, and maybe you’ll understand what I mean. I want us both to be happy. It isn’t going to be announced until next week. Edward and I are coming down then and we both want to see you. Edward likes you very much—he really does.…
Willis put the letter in his pocket, meaning to read the rest of it later, but he never got around to it. He felt no immediate sense of shock; he felt perfectly cool and self-possessed but at the same time he was no longer a part of the Harcourt Mill, and he did not seem to feel either glad or sorry. He was aware of no particular resentment. He only knew that he was not the same person that he had been before he read that letter.
It was strange how everything sometimes happened all at once. What occurred was sheer coincidence but the result would have been the same in any case. Willis had put Bess Harcourt’s letter in his pocket, and just then his desk telephone rang. It was his father calling.
“Say, Willis,” his father said, “has Bryson come in yet?”
“No, not yet,” Willis said.
“Have you got his engagement calendar? I’d like to have ten minutes with him. Maybe I won’t need as much as that.”
“Yes,” Willis said, “I’ve got it here. You can see him at ten-fifteen.”
“That’ll do,” Alfred Wayde said. “Have you got a minute, Willis?”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve got plenty of time.”
“Then come up here,” Alfred Wayde said. “I want to see you.”
His father was sitting in his office in the engineering department, which, except for a draftsman, was empty, since the bright young engineers from Technology had been discharged several months ago because of declining business. Alfred Wayde had never wanted a private office, but Mr. Henry Harcourt had insisted on it, and he was sitting alone in it now in front of his bare drawing table, gazing at a projection he had drawn of Building 3 that was tacked on the wall in front of him. He was in his shirt sleeves as usual, smoking his briar pipe.
“Well, sit down, boy,” Alfred Wayde said, “but before you do, open the upper lefthand drawer of my desk. You’ll find a bottle of prescription rye in there. I keep it for visitors usually, but I’ll have a little myself right now.”
The bottle was nearly full, and Willis handed it to his father without speaking.
“Willis,” he said, “when I see you in your God-damned pressed pants, it makes me pleased that I haven’t always lived right. I don’t suppose you’d like a pull off of this, would you? Bryson might smell it on your breath.”
Willis laughed without his ever having intended to.
“I don’t mind if I do right now,” he said.
“Why, God Almighty, boy!” Alfred Wayde said. “Somebody might come in.”
“Oh, I doubt it,” Willis said, and he picked up the bottle and pulled out the cork. It was one of the most surprising and pleasantest things he had ever done, to take a pull of straight rye whisky at nine o’clock in the morning. He was certainly not the same person that he had been before he received Bess Harcourt’s letter. There was no compulsion to be careful any longer with his manners or his speech, no compulsion any longer to try to model himself after other people. The truth was that he did not give a damn that morning. He could not say that he was happy, but he did have a sense of intense relief and self-assurance that he had never felt before.
“Have you got a cold or something coming on, Willis?” his father asked.
“No,” he said, “I’m feeling fine,” and in a way he was. “What do you want to see the boss about?”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” Alfred Wayde said. “I’m fed to the teeth with all this and I’m going to put your mother and me and the suitcases in the car and light out for the West Coast. God damn, I never could stand Bryson. I’ve had enough of him and that horse’s ass Roger monkeying with my department.”
“Is that so?” Willis said. “When did this come over you?”
“It’s been growing on me, boy,” Alfred Wayde said. “God damn, I don’t know why I’ve hung around here so long.”
“I suppose you did on account of me,” Willis said.
“Oh, yes,” Alfred Wayde said, “I had to go steady so you could get an education. Well, by God, you’ve got it, son.”
Alfred Wayde filled his pipe and lighted it.
“Of course there was old H.H.,” Alfred Wayde said. “He could always talk me around whenever I got ready to quit. God knows why I worked for him so long, except that he got attached to my back like a sheep tick. Every God-damned invention of mine is owned by this company. I don’t mind. I like ideas, but what the hell has it got me?—no more than five or six thousand dollars in the bank and a secondhand jalopy. By God, old Harcourt’s rolled me like a drunken sailor, son.”
“How do you mean, he’s rolled you?” Willis asked.
Alfred Wayde’s voice grew louder, and an hour ago Willis would have been afraid that someone might overhear him.
“Just who the hell was old Harcourt?” Alfred Wayde was saying. “What the hell did he ever do except make use of other people, and by God, that’s what he’s taught you to do. Frankly I’d rather use a monkey wrench and a book of logarithms. To hell with it! That’s all I’m saying.”
“Yes, Pa,” Willis said, “you certainly are saying it.”
“And you act as though you understood me for once,” Alfred Wayde said. “Maybe you haven’t had all the sense sucked out of you. I don’t owe these Harcourts a God-damned thing, and you don’t either. And just who the hell is Bryson Harcourt?”
“All right, Pa,” Willis said, “just who the hell is he?”
“I rather like your attitude today, son,” Alfred Wayde said. “Maybe you’d amount to something if you could play around with the boys. I’ll tell you what Bryson Harcourt is.”
“Maybe you don’t have to,” Willis said.
“No, no,” Alfred Wayde said, “I want to tell you. He’s only a bastard without his father’s brains. I always liked his father’s brains. Well, anyway, I’m getting through. There’ll be something on the West Coast.”
“Are you sure you are?” Willis asked him.
“Yes,” Alfred Wayde said, “God-damn right I’m sure.”
You could usually listen to people talk, and agree with them intellectually, without having a single word they said change your preconceived opinion. Willis’s father, that morning, was one of tho
se rare exceptions. Somehow Willis believed what he was saying as implicitly as though he had thought of those words himself, and they evoked an instantaneous picture of his past, a slavish undignified picture of assiduity and worry. What had he been doing all those years, he was thinking? Nothing but trying to make himself into something he never was, and he knew he would never again be just the same as he had been. He had stepped across a line, and life was a series of lines, like cracks in a pavement.
“Well, Pa,” he said, “I guess I’m quitting too.”
“By God,” Alfred Wayde said, “I thought they’d sucked the guts right out of you.”
“Well,” Willis said, “I guess they haven’t.”
It was a moment in his life of which he was always proud, because he had learned something about the quality of decision then which he had never forgotten. It was advisable to weigh the consequences before you made a decision, but once you were going to act, to hell with compunction and consequence.
“Do you mind if I use your telephone a minute?” he asked.
Miss Ballou, who ran the mill switchboard, answered as soon as he picked up the receiver, and he knew that she would listen, but he did not give a damn.
“Good morning, Miss Ballou,” he said. “This is Willis Wayde.”
“Oh, Mr. Wayde,” he heard her say, “I’ve been trying to reach you everywhere. Mr. Harcourt wants you right away.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Willis said. He remembered wondering what Mr. Harcourt would say, but anything that Mr. Harcourt might say would not be of importance. “I want you to make a call for me, Miss Ballou, and charge it to me because it’s personal—to New York City.” His words were distinct and unhurried. “To the Beakney-Graham Management Company. I want to speak to Mr. McKitterick personally. If he isn’t there, find out where I can reach him. Call me when you get him, please. I’ll be in the engineering office at Mr. Wayde’s extension.”
Willis never expected to see Bess Harcourt before he left, and it was only due to Bess that they did meet. He had written her a note on the same day he had received hers, which he tried very carefully to make agreeable, because any display of pique or bitterness would have made him appear ridiculous; and besides, there was a sense of finality in all his thoughts which he could not possibly escape. Curiously enough, this finality seemed to rob him of his indignation, for everything between Bess and him was like the ending of a book which never should have been written.
Dear Bess,
It was more than kind of you to have told me your good news so soon. I do not need to say that I am delighted in your happiness, and I shall, of course, write Edward Ewing to congratulate him. I hope you won’t mind my saying also that I shall always cherish the memory of the good times we have had together, and of the kindnesses that you and Bill and your father and mother have always shown me. I am particularly aware of these now since, as you may have heard, in the next two weeks we shall all be leaving the garden house where we have lived so happily for so long—my father and mother for the West Coast, and I for New York. But wherever I shall be, I shall always remember the Harcourt place, and the old mill, and all the Harcourts, with deep affection.
Again, with all best wishes for your happiness, most sincerely your friend,
Willis
He knew that everything was over as soon as he had mailed the letter—the Harcourt place, and his days at the Harcourt Mill, and every episode with Bess. They were already on one side of the line and he was on the other, when he saw Bess again, just the afternoon of the day before he left the Harcourt place for good. Willis had wanted that afternoon to walk around parts of the place again, in order to keep them firmly in his memory, since he was not in the least sure he would ever come back. There was a strange coincidence in his meeting Bess, because they met face to face, unexpectedly, on the same path by the brook where he had first seen her years before. The surroundings had changed so little that he and Bess were incongruously different, and of course there was no police dog named Benvenuto, nor was their interview any longer a scene suitable for the pages in a back number of the old St. Nicholas Magazine. He and Bess were both dressed for the city, Bess having come up just for the day from Boston, and he had packed nearly everything an hour or so before. Even though they knew each other very well there was the moment of surprise in their encounter, combined with a vivid sort of curiosity, but he was not embarrassed.
“Willis,” she said. And he was acutely aware of her greenish-blue eyes and of the windblown look of her tawny hair. “I was hoping I might meet you here.”
“Why, hello, Bess,” he said.
“Willis,” she asked. “Were you thinking of me, on this path?”
Her asking such a question was a good example of her arrogance. It annoyed him that she should still think she was the center of all his thoughts, but he knew it was no time to show annoyance. However, there was no reason not to be frank, now that he no longer owed the Harcourts anything.
“I don’t know what you want to see me for,” he said.
“Oh, Willis,” she said, “I wish there was something we could do about everything. I just wanted to have a talk with you.”
“I don’t know what you want to have a talk about,” Willis answered.
“Oh, I don’t know either,” Bess said, “except that I want you to have some sort of kind feeling about me, Willis, even if you think I’ve been rotten to you, and of course I have.”
“Why, Bess,” Willis said, “you needn’t worry about anything like that. I have the kindest feelings about you.”
“You know you haven’t,” Bess said. “You’re just trying to have. Oh, God—don’t you see I couldn’t help it, Willis?”
“Of course you can’t help it, Bess,” Willis said, “and I’m sure you’re doing the right thing.”
“Oh, Willis,” Bess said, “I wish you wouldn’t be so complacent, just as though you never liked me. That’s one of the things that put me off you—your complacency. Oh, Willis, let’s go up to the pine woods just this once.”
Willis could not remember whether he had been shocked by this suggestion or surprised, but it was exactly like Bess Harcourt to have made it.
“And don’t say it wouldn’t be right,” Bess said. “To hell with its being right.”
“Bess,” Willis said, and he was able to laugh at her for once, “it would not only not be right, but it wouldn’t do any good.”
“At least we’d feel more kindly toward each other,” Bess said, “and more human, and it would be a good way of saying good-by. I wish you were more human, Willis.”
“Now, Bess,” Willis told her, “I still don’t think it would be a good idea—and you won’t have to worry about my personality defects any longer.”
“I don’t want to get into an argument,” Bess said. “I just feel miserable about everything. Willis, do you really have to go away?”
“Oh now, Bess,” Willis said, “of course I ought to go away, and you know it. Besides, from a purely personal point of view it’s time I had some new business experience. You always get in a rut, you know, if you work in the same place too long.”
“You know Father doesn’t want you to leave, don’t you?” Bess said. “He feels very upset about it. In fact he wants me to try to dissuade you, Willis.”
“Your father said a great many very kind things to me,” Willis said, “but you know it’s better that I leave.” And then for just a second he was angry. “What can you expect? What do you think I’m made of, Bess?”
“I know,” Bess said, “but I don’t see what we’re going to do without you.”
It was like them all, he was thinking, to expect him to stay because they couldn’t do without him.
“The mill’s going to get along,” Willis said. “No one’s indispensable, particularly me.” And then he was able to laugh again. “You haven’t found me indispensable.”
“Oh God,” Bess said, “the trouble is I don’t know what I’ve ever found in you.”
Then she must have known just as he did that nothing could be gained by talking any further.
“Well,” she said, “good-by, Willis.”
“Good-by, Bess,” he said, “and once again, all sorts of good luck.”
“Oh, Willis,” she said, “aren’t you going to kiss me good-by—after—after everything?”
He could always think of that moment as belonging entirely to Bess and him, and it never was anybody else’s business.
“Why, yes, Bess,” he said, “if you want me to.”
“Damn it,” Bess said, “why should I have asked you to, if I didn’t?”
But he was no longer a follower of the Harcourts when he kissed her.
“Oh God,” Bess said, “I wish we’d gone up into the pine woods.” And then she began to cry.
“Now, Bess,” he told her, and her tears did not move him very much, “there’s nothing to cry about. You’ll forget me an hour from now, and you know it.”
But still, it was always something to remember, that Bess Harcourt had cried when he had said good-by to her.
XIII
One Saturday afternoon in mid-May, 1936, Willis Wayde met Sylvia Hodges on Fifth Avenue in New York near the southwest corner of Fifty-fifth Street. He had not seen her since he had left Cambridge about seven years previously, and they would have passed each other without speaking at all, if he had not possessed an excellent memory for names and faces.
Mr. Beakney had been giving a private luncheon at the University Club for Mr. Nat Hawley of the Hawley Pneumatic Tool Company of Cleveland and two others of the Hawley crowd. Mr. Beakney had asked Joe McKitterick and Willis Wayde to attend this small get-together, because Mr. McKitterick and Willis would probably end up by going to Cleveland to survey the setup there, and Willis’s special task was to make the stay of Mr. Hawley and the Hawley crowd a happy one while they were in New York. Willis had checked up that morning on their accommodations at the Waldorf, and that evening it was his duty to take the whole Hawley bunch to a dinner at Twenty-one and then to the theater to see the musical comedy Red, Hot and Blue, which Willis had already seen seven times with other clients. Afterwards they would make the rounds of three or four night clubs. Mr. Beakney was too old for that sort of thing and so was Mr. Joe McKitterick, but Willis was to see that they all had a happy time. Then on Sunday morning he was to accompany the Hawley crowd by motor to Mr. Beakney’s home on the Sound near Darien, Connecticut, where they could relax and exchange a few more general thoughts before the Monday conference.
Sincerely, Willis Wayde Page 20