“If Horace could ever have been in a canoe, he would have liked it,” Mr. Hodges said.
“Horace, sir?” Willis said. He thought that he must have missed a name somewhere and that perhaps Mr. Hodges had a brother named Horace.
“The Latin poet,” Mr. Hodges said.
“Oh yes,” Willis said, “Horace. I don’t know much about him, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be,” Mr. Hodges said. “Never be afraid of Horace. Sylvia tells me you’re making ten thousand dollars a year. Do you hope to make some more?”
“Yes, sir,” Willis said. “And I think I will, if what I’m doing turns out right.”
“Sylvia says you have something to do with machine belts.”
Seated as he was in the bow of the canoe, Willis could only hear Mr. Hodges without seeing him.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “it’s the only thing I really know about. At least I hope I do.”
“I don’t,” Mr. Hodges said. “My mind’s a blank when it comes to belts.”
“Well, sir,” Willis said, “frankly mine’s a blank when it comes to Horace.”
“Dear me,” Mr. Hodges said, “there have to be zeros somewhere. Four zeros in ten thousand dollars, and more in a million. That’s the trouble with money, there must be a lot of zeros.”
Willis wished he knew whether Mr. Hodges was being funny or serious, but it was a good remark and one Willis always remembered. Mr. Hodges had been right. You had to sacrifice a lot of things if you made money.
“Last May, sir,” he said, “I met a friend of yours in New York—Mr. Hawley, president of the Hawley Pneumatic Tool.”
“Hawley,” Mr. Hodges said, “Hawley—oh yes. I didn’t like him very much.”
“I didn’t like him much either,” Willis said, “but I wouldn’t like to have him know it.”
“Well,” Mr. Hodges said, “I’m glad you didn’t. Sylvia tells me you’re reading the Five-Foot Shelf of Books—fifteen minutes a day. Why?”
Willis could not turn around. He hoped that he would never again have a serious conversation with anyone when he paddled bow in a canoe.
“I wonder,” Mr. Hodges said before Willis could answer, “if you’re doing that to please Sylvia. I wouldn’t if I were you. Women are intellectual snobs, but I wouldn’t let that worry me.”
“No, sir,” Willis answered, “I’m doing it for myself.”
“Well,” Mr. Hodges said, “I confess it shows initiative.”
Neither of them spoke for a while, and Willis was glad to listen to the dipping of the paddles in the water.
“I’m afraid,” Mr. Hodges said, “you’ve taken quite a beating this week end. Do you still like Sylvia?”
“Yes, sir,” Willis said. “It’s been very interesting here.”
“I’ve been interested too,” Mr. Hodges said, “but then you’d expect me to be, wouldn’t you, in my position? Sylvia’s always been an independent girl, and perhaps she needs some zeros.” He laughed so unexpectedly that Willis missed a stroke. “Perhaps I could do with a few myself. I wouldn’t mind some electric light and some water here, within limits. If I may say so, if I were you I wouldn’t try too hard to be something that I’m not. Perhaps we’d better turn back now, or Sylvia will be wondering where you are.”
That was almost the only serious conversation that Willis ever had with Mr. Hodges, and he always felt that Mr. Hodges had learned more about him than most people did—too much, perhaps. He was glad that he had been able to fix up that camp for the Hodgeses eventually, with electricity and running water, with an electric stove, a refrigerator and a dishwasher and even with a small inboard motorboat, and chairs that you could sit on without pain; yet Willis was never positive that Mr. Hodges had liked these improvements. The last time that Willis ever saw the lake was when he went there with Sylvia, who was settling the estate. It had seemed to him that Mr. Hodges had been watching, and Willis remembered his short laugh when he had spoken about zeros.
The last time Willis Wayde had seen the Hodgeses’ house on Craigie Street was when he took Sylvia and their eldest son, Alfred, to the Harvard-Yale game in late November, 1950. The idea had been Sylvia’s more than his. He had a business meeting in New York about five days ahead of the game date, and since he was in New York he had planned to stop in Boston to talk over some refinancing ideas with his friend Jerry Harwood, president of the Shawmut Insurance and Accident. They might say he was crazy in Chicago, but he still liked doing business with the Boston crowd.
Then, just when his plans were shaping up, Sylvia had suggested the Harvard-Yale game. She had pointed out that Alfred had started in at Middlesex that autumn and that it would be nice for Willis to show him the Harvard buildings and to let him hear the songs and cheering. It was time for Alfred to get used to the idea that he might be going to Harvard. Also it might be that Tom and Mary and their children would be going to the game too, and Tom and Mary might be able to put them up in Brookline.
Willis had drawn the line at Brookline. At least he could be comfortable when he was making a business trip, and be able to relax between conferences. However, he did want to see Alfred, and he certainly understood how Sylvia felt about Cambridge. He was delighted to have Sylvia make the trip with him and he set up the schedule accordingly. He was able to get a suite for the week end at the Ritz in Boston, and Hank Knowlton, the New England representative, got three good seats on the Harvard side and a Cadillac with a good driver, even though Sylvia had suggested a Drive-Urself car.
The only complication was a small company cocktail party arranged by Hank in the sitting room for late Saturday afternoon so that he could meet a few people whom he really had to see. Otherwise his time belonged to Sylvia and Al, who would stay with them from Saturday noon on through Sunday. He had even agreed with Sylvia to have Sunday lunch with Tom and Mary and their children in Brookline, as long as they drove there comfortably in the rented Cadillac.
He had been in conference for two hours with Jerry Harwood on Saturday morning, and he was feeling pretty tired when he got back to the sitting room at the Ritz and found that Al had already arrived.
“Well, hello, Al,” he said. “How’s tricks?”
Al looked as neat as a pin, because Sylvia had given him a good going over in the bathroom. He wore gray slacks and a brown tweed jacket, and he looked like a miniature college boy already.
“Hey, Pops,” Al shouted—he could never keep his voice down when he was excited, “when do we eat?”
“Right here and now,” Willis said. “Lunch is coming right up, and we’ve got to eat it quick.”
“Jeepers creepers,” Al shouted, “do we have to eat in this dump? Can’t we grab a hot dog somewhere?”
“We’re going to eat right here,” Willis said, “and the car’s coming to take us to Cambridge in half an hour.”
“Jeepers creepers,” Al shouted, “you don’t mean we’re going to the game in some old Cadillac?”
“Don’t shout,” Willis said. “I can hear you perfectly. What other means of transportation would you suggest?”
“Can’t we go in the subway,” Al asked, “and push along with the crowd?”
“The subway would take us right to the Larz Anderson Bridge,” Sylvia said.
Willis sighed and sat down.
“Even if it’s a hardship we’re going in a car,” he said.
As a matter of fact, due to traffic congestion it was advisable to leave the car and to push along with the crowd down Boylston Street and over the Larz Anderson Bridge. Willis felt unusually happy being there with Sylvia and Al. He was particularly glad that Sylvia was wearing her coat of wild mink. It was better-looking than any other coat he observed in the crowd around them.
As they approached the Charles River the landmarks were partly familiar and partly new. On his left the magnificent blocks of brick houses, the gift of the late Mr. Harkness, had become an integral part of the scene. The buildings of the Harvard Business School across the river, which had bee
n aggressively new when he had been there, had been softened by the winters.
It looked as though it would rain during the second half of the Yale game, but fortunately the rain held off. Willis had not been caught by the contagion of the crowd. Instead he had been trying to follow his old footsteps made over twenty years ago. He was the Willis Wayde of the present, and it was time to find the Cadillac, which would be waiting for them on Massachusetts Avenue as near as possible to the subway station at Harvard Square. They could reach the Cadillac in ten minutes if they hurried, and fortunately all the football crowd was now in a hurry to get somewhere. There was that little gathering of a few associates for cocktails in the suite at the Ritz. You could not be casual about such things, and you were always judged by the way they were handled. Sylvia and Al would give it a pleasant homelike touch—people were always pleased when you introduced them to the family.
It was later than he thought by the time they found their Cadillac, and it was a great relief to be sitting beside Sylvia and Al, out of the crowd at last.
“Willis,” Sylvia said, “before we go back can’t we drive down Craigie Street?”
“Now, Sylvia,” he told her, and he found himself speaking carefully, “it’s in just the opposite direction and we really should be at the Ritz on time.”
“It’s only a few minutes out of the way,” Sylvia said, “and Al has never seen it.”
“Hasn’t he?” Willis asked.
“Come on,” Al said, “let’s go, Pops.”
“All right,” Willis said. “I thought of course he’d seen it at some time or other.” And he told the driver to drive slowly when they finally reached Craigie Street. Except for the traffic, Brattle and Craigie Streets had not changed much.
“There used to be a drinking fountain for horses here,” Sylvia said. “Do you remember?”
“No,” Willis answered. “What drinking fountain?”
“Perhaps it wasn’t here when you were,” Sylvia said.
Somehow you always thought of Cambridge in autumn and winter without leaves on the trees. The street lights were on and the early dark of late autumn was beginning to obscure the outlines, but Craigie Street looked about the same and the old Hodges house had not changed at all. It seemed to Willis, when he saw it through the plate glass of the Cadillac side-window, that he was gazing at an exhibit in a museum case. It was still that durable beige color, the same sodden tint as the dead grass on its little square of lawn, and the same bare syringa bushes grew by the front steps.
“Well,” Willis said, “there it is, Al. That’s where your mother used to live.”
“Gosh,” Alfred said, “did Mommy used to live in that old shack?”
His young voice startled Willis.
“That’s no way to talk, son,” he said. “That’s where your grandfather wrote his book. You’ve seen it in the library, haven’t you?”
“I’ll bet you’ve never read it, Pops,” Al said. “It’s all about old sandstone.”
“I haven’t read it all, son,” Willis said, “but that’s because I’m not bright enough.” The car was moving down Craigie Street. They would reach Concord Avenue in a moment, but the memory of the house seen through the plate glass was still there.
“Well, I guess he didn’t make much money,” Alfred said, “or he wouldn’t have lived in a shack like that.”
Willis wished that Sylvia were not there.
“Money isn’t everything, son,” Willis said. “Your grandfather was a professor. Professors aren’t expected to make money.”
“I guess he wasn’t as much of a success as you, Pops,” Alfred said.
Willis felt his cheeks grow hot.
“That isn’t so, son,” he said. “Your grandfather was more of a success than I’ll ever be. Maybe I’ve made more money, but money isn’t everything.”
It was curious to be facing truth on Craigie Street and to be telling it to his and Sylvia’s son. All at once Sylvia put her hand over his and he was very glad she did not speak.
“Sylvia,” he said, “I wish we could have done more for them.”
“You did all you could, dear,” Sylvia said, and this was true.
“Sylvia,” he said, “is my mother’s photograph in my suitcase?”
“Yes, dear,” Sylvia said.
“That’s fine,” Willis said. “I was afraid that maybe I’d left it in the St. Regis. We’ve got to get it out as soon as we get back.” He pressed the button that automatically opened the window behind the driver. “And now take us to the Ritz,” Willis said.
It was almost impossible to believe that Sylvia and Al and he had driven down Craigie Street in a Cadillac, even if it was not his own, and he had a sense of uneasiness. He could not call it discontent. There were too many things to think about that had nothing to do with the Ritz.
“Sylvia,” he said, “Jerry Harwood’s dropping in. I don’t think you’ve ever met old Jerry, but he isn’t hard to talk to. He has a son in Harvard, and he’s president of the Shawmut Insurance and Accident. We had a very interesting talk this morning.”
Exactly what was success, he was wondering. Perhaps it was nothing tangible but rather a state of mind that made you content within the frame where life had placed you.
XVI
The years immediately preceding the entry of the United States into the Second World War formed the most critical and important period in the entire business career of Willis Wayde. Willis became increasingly aware that he had traveled during all that time along the narrow line that always divides business success from failure, and the wavering thinness of that demarcation still filled him with amazement. He could think of a dozen separate occasions when any deviation from his course would have led him to disaster, and a number of individuals would have rejoiced at his defeat. You could not be loved by everybody when you reorganized a firm like Rahway Belt. All you could do was recognize your enemies without being influenced by emotion and select them with thoughtful care, because it was important to select enemies as carefully as friends.
It was strange, when Willis looked backward, that the business turmoil of those years—the reorganizing of Rahway Belt, his leaving Beakney-Graham, the new plant construction with its financial problems, and the promotion of the Planeroid line—all frequently seemed simpler than many aspects of his private life. It was all very well to say, as so many men he knew kept saying, that business and home should never mix. They invariably did. They always ran together blurring outlines, no matter how carefully you might try to separate them. Although nothing was really settled after that week end at Lake Sunapee, Willis discovered that Sylvia thought a great deal had been. Shortly after this visit she bought several books on cooking and began making out his laundry list and going over his shirts and his socks whenever she visited his apartment. Thus the idea of imminent marriage came over them by degrees, making another problem on top of all his others.
There was also the problem of Lydia Hembird, who finally telephoned one evening when Sylvia was at Tenth Street. There was nothing serious about Lydia at all, which explained why Willis had never mentioned her to Sylvia. Sylvia had come up with him to the apartment after dining at Tony’s, and she had been reading a cook book to herself. He had told her that he had to go over the refinancing report on Rahway Belt. He was right in the middle of the proposed common-stock setup, which demanded more close thinking than anything else (because even if the common stock had never paid a dividend, it was the key point in any future situation), when the telephone on the writing table rang, and it was Lydia Hembird.
“Hello, Willis, darling,” Lydia said, “are you up there all alone?”
“Oh, hello,” he said, “hello.”
“Why have you gone completely out of my life, darling?” Lydia said.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve been pretty busy lately.”
He saw that Sylvia had closed the cook book, and he smiled at her reassuringly, but Lydia was still speaking.
“Darling, why d
on’t you come up here right now?” she said.
“I’ve got to hang up,” Willis said. “I can’t talk to you right now.”
There was a frigid silence when he set down the telephone.
“I’m sorry, Sylvia,” he said. “It was only someone I used to know before I knew you were in New York.”
Sylvia was white and tense and her voice was lightly brittle.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about her?” she asked. “I’m sure I don’t want to interfere with anything.”
“Listen, Sylvia,” he said. “There isn’t anything to tell about her. She’s just someone I used to know.”
Sylvia drew a sharp, quick breath.
“Willis,” she said, “I wish you’d tell me when you think we can get married.”
Willis squared his shoulders. The subject was up again and he knew that he had been avoiding it unconsciously.
“Now, Sylvia, dear,” he said, “I’m glad you brought this up, because it’s been on my mind as much as yours.”
He could not understand why he felt so nervous, except that he was dealing with a long-term future and life and love and all sorts of other things that were hard to express.
“I’m glad I brought it up too,” Sylvia said. “It’s awfully hard for a girl to be so indefinite. You do love me, don’t you, Willis?”
“Of course I love you,” Willis said.
“Then sit here and hold my hand,” Sylvia said, “and don’t look so worried, Willis. You want us to get married, don’t you?”
It was not the way, he was thinking, to conduct a serious conversation.
“Why, of course I want us to get married, honey,” he said, and he smiled at her and patted her hand, “but I do have a lot of other things on my mind right now.”
“But, Willis,” she said, “don’t you think that this is more important?”
Willis found himself patting her hand again.
“Absolutely, honey,” he said. “It’s the most important thing in the world, and because it is, I want things to be set.”
“But aren’t they?” Sylvia said. “I don’t see why we can’t get married any time.”
Sincerely, Willis Wayde Page 26