Sincerely, Willis Wayde

by John P. Marquand

  He had to stop at this point until the applause died down.

  “Now I don’t want to talk too lengthily,” Willis said, “but I would like to leave just one more thought before I close. As a good sailor steers by a star let us, too, keep our eyes on the main objective. And what is that objective? It is basically the joining of the Planeroid with the Hartex line—two complementary lines which will make a perfect unity of production. There is new competition in the belting industry tonight and new vigor. Let us all who have been responsible for this latest achievement rededicate ourselves anew to pushing forward a new sort of belting gospel. May I raise my glass in conclusion—and I wish it were a loving cup—to the unlimited future of Harcourt Associates.”

  The setting and the mood were exactly right for everything that Willis had said. They were obviously on the threshold of new and unpredictable demands for conveyor belting, and a new aggressive company like Harcourt Associates could compete for those demands.

  “Willis,” Mr. Bryson Harcourt said, “that was a magnificent speech.”

  “Why, thank you very much, sir,” Willis said. “I’m very glad indeed if you think it went all right.”

  He could be deferential to Mr. Bryson Harcourt still, but they were both perfectly aware of a new relationship. Even if Mr. Bryson or Mr. Roger wanted, neither of them could push him out of Harcourt Associates. Some such thoughts had been in back of Willis’s mind when he returned from Boston after that dinner. The Harcourts could not put him out of the new company, but still he would like to have a larger control of it. There was a chance of buying Mrs. Jacoby’s stock, if he only had the money. It would not hurt, he thought, to stop for a few hours in New York on his way home from Boston and talk things over with a bank—and on this trip Willis never thought of bringing Sylvia a present.

  During the Harcourt negotiations Willis had begun to learn the banking facts of life. Among other things, he learned that bankers could be more generous than otherwise with money, given the proper stimulus. Never be afraid to ask, and when you did, make it a substantial sum—the more the better, provided you came with a program of what you were going to accomplish in a business way. You had, of course, to develop a warm relationship with a banker first, so that he had a real belief in you and a keen personal interest.

  One of the best contacts along these lines that Willis had made was with a Yale graduate some ten years his senior named Gilbert Bakeliss. Gil, as Willis learned to call him, had sat in as one of the underwriters’ representatives on a lot of the Harcourt conferences. Willis admired the way Gil could keep facts in order, and he also admired Gil’s prematurely graying hair. He found that Gil, who was married and lived at Cos Cob, had a lot of good ideas about physical exercise and diet. When Willis had told Gil about sprinkling wheat germ over tomato juice Gil had been really interested, and several times Gil had asked Willis to lunch at the Yale Club. It had been a pleasure to be in a position that enabled him to return the compliment. At Mr. Jacoby’s suggestion, Willis had joined the New York Harvard Club, a move which he had never regretted, either in a social or in a business way. Willis had explained to Gil, without unduly underlining the fact, that he was not really a Harvard man but a graduate of Boston University. He had, however, attended the Harvard School of Business Administration, which rendered him eligible for the New York Harvard Club.

  Much as Willis would have enjoyed hurrying back to Orange to Sylvia and the children when he reached New York after the Harcourt dinner, he had determined to see Gilbert Bakeliss first. He had never felt so much like a Harvard man as when he arrived from dinner in Boston and had breakfast at the Harvard Club. He seemed to be more a part of the handsome dining room than he had ever been before. He knew better than to show undue eagerness by calling Gil Bakeliss at the stroke of ten, and ten-fifteen would look like a self-conscious delay. Willis actually did not call Gil until ten-twenty-three. It was pleasant to note that Gil sounded more than conventionally cordial.

  “Well, well,” Gil Bakeliss said, “so the Pilgrim has returned.”

  Willis laughed with real appreciation.

  “That’s right,” Willis said, “I missed you at that dinner, Gil.”

  “You know I’d have come,” Gil said, “if Geraldine and I hadn’t been in one of those duplicate bridge tournaments. It must have been quite a love feast.”

  “Well, it frankly wasn’t so bad, Gil,” Willis said. “I mustn’t take up all your time, but if you’ve nothing to do for lunch I’ll be right here at the Harvard Club.”

  “Let’s see. You mean lunch today?”

  Willis laughed again.

  “I know there’s not much chance with anyone as popular as you, Gil. I just thought something might have broken in your schedule, and it isn’t often that I can get to town from Rahway.”

  “There isn’t anything I can’t put off,” Gil said. “Will twelve-thirty be all right?”

  If Willis had not known many bankers, it had been his privilege to meet and chat on friendly terms with many top executives in other lines of business. A proven knowledge of his own ability and worth gave him an ease more genuine than that possessed by the usual bright young man. He was beginning at last to achieve naturalness, because there were not so many things about himself which now demanded his attention.

  When Gilbert Bakeliss entered the Harvard Club at twelve-thirty precisely, Willis was able to meet him with this new naturalness. Gil Bakeliss was in his middle forties, and his business suit—a dark gray flannel—though correct in every detail, hung in a studied careless manner. The wear and tear of competition had only sharpened Gil’s aquiline features, making them more alert and intelligent. He could afford, like Willis, to be natural and the bridge of years between them was not disturbing.

  This is a nice thought of yours to ask me here,” Gil Bakeliss said. “Frequently when I enter this place I wish I had been a Harvard man.”

  “I always have the same wish myself, Gil,” Willis said. “Would you care to visit the bar before we go to the dining room?”

  Willis asked this last question in a most tentative manner, because he never dreamed that Gil would touch a drop of anything in the middle of the day.

  “Let’s see,” Gil said. “The meeting I was to attend this afternoon was called off. Under the circumstances I should like a Martini, just in the nature of a celebration after what you and I have been through together.”

  This was a compliment and Willis knew it. A man like Gil Bakeliss would never have taken a Martini on a business day without a very good reason.

  “I’m awfully glad to hear you say that, Gil,” Willis said. “And it will be great fun to join you.”

  Willis smiled at the barkeeper.

  “Two Martinis, please, very dry,” he said. “That is, if that’s all right with you, Gil? I’m somewhat of a fanatic on the subject of dry Martinis.”

  Neither of them spoke as they watched the barman fill the glasses.

  “Well, here’s to Harcourt Associates,” Gil said.

  “Thank you, Gil,” Willis answered. “That is something I can drink to with genuine enthusiasm.”

  “How was Mr. Roger Harcourt last evening?” Gil Bakeliss asked.

  Willis was listening carefully for any change of tone.

  “He was very mellow last night, for Mr. Roger,” Willis said.

  Gil Bakeliss took a small sip of his Martini.

  “I suppose it’s lèse-majesté to speak disparagingly of one of your substantial stockholders,” Gil said, “but I have very seldom seen anyone whose personality was so annoying.”

  They were obviously on a very pleasant and friendly basis, and they said a few words about everyone else—Mr. Tremaine, Mr. Bolsen, Mr. Decker, Mr. Bryson Harcourt—before they reached the dining room.

  “It isn’t every day I entertain a banker,” Willis said, and he laughed. “I need hardly say we’ll sit at a table and have the food passed to us, shall we? Instead of getting it ourselves?”

  At the beg
inning of lunch talk turned to the war in Europe. It was surprising to Willis that people like Gil Bakeliss should worry about the war, not for business but for purely personal reasons. One explanation of this, Willis supposed, was that many men in the Bakeliss age group had participated in the last war, and memories and old reactions clouded their perspective.

  “The trouble seems to be,” Willis said, “that the Allies don’t seem to have many tanks.”

  He was sure he was on firm ground when he advanced this idea because he had read it that very morning in the New York Times.

  “I don’t know whether that’s so or not,” Gil Bakeliss said, “but you can’t tell me that the French haven’t made as good a study of this so-called mechanized warfare as the Boche. But don’t discount the French.”

  “That’s what my wife keeps saying,” Willis said. “Sylvia’s crazy about France. She spent a winter in Paris once.”

  “You never forget it if you’ve lived there,” Gil said. “Well, let’s talk about something more cheerful.” He glanced at Willis and his expression changed. “It seems to me you ought to be pretty well pleased about this Harcourt Associates thing, Willis.”

  It was a time to display restraint, because anyone who was too pleased about anything aroused opposition.

  “Well, it was my baby in the beginning,” Willis said, “so maybe I’m prejudiced. I hope this is just a start, that’s all.”

  When Gil Bakeliss glanced at him again, Willis was sure he had said the right thing.

  “Well,” Gil said, “maybe they don’t know it yet, but you’re running the whole show.”

  “Oh, come now, Gil,” Willis said, “I wouldn’t say that exactly.”

  “Perhaps not exactly,” Gil Bakeliss said. “And you made a nice deal in the common stock.”

  “Well,” Willis said, “neither Harcourt nor Rahway common has paid a dividend for years. It’s just a gamble, Gil.”

  Gil Bakeliss smiled.

  “If there’s any more lying around loose, I should think you’d want to buy it,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind owning a bit myself.”

  It was clever of Gil to put his finger on the stock, because it was the heart of the situation. Gil Bakeliss must have been wondering why Willis had asked him to lunch.

  “I’m glad you brought that point up,” Willis said.

  Gil Bakeliss did not laugh, but his expression was amused.

  “I had an idea you might be,” he said, and he put the tips of his fingers together and looked at Willis. “Do you know if there is any common stock floating around for sale?”

  “Well, frankly,” Willis said, “I think I know where there is quite a little. You remember Mrs. Jacoby’s interest, don’t you, Gil? Of course she relinquished some of her shares, as others did, to induce me to remain with the management. Everybody was most kind that way, but I think she has some more.”

  It was beautiful to see how accurately Gil Bakeliss did business.

  “If you think she’ll sell I’d buy,” Gil said. “I don’t know what she’d want for them, but you ought to be able to figure some sort of price.”

  A time for frankness always arrived in any sort of interview, and there was no doubt any longer that the time was there; and yet one could be frank without being flat-footed.

  “Mrs. Jacoby’s not interested in things at Rahway any longer,” Willis said, “not since the death of her husband. I wish you could have known Mr. Jacoby, Gil. He was quite a character. I think she would rather like me to have those shares. There’s only one great difficulty.”

  He paused, and Gil Bakeliss smiled again.

  “How much money do you think it would take, Willis?” he asked.

  The way that bankers spoke of money was always interesting. They made it seem like any available commodity, and after all it was.

  “I don’t exactly know, Gil,” Willis said, “and the question’s merely academic for anyone in my position. I only wish …”

  He paused and shook his head in a defeated way.

  “It’s funny how people begin wishing as soon as they get near a bank,” Gil said. “How much do you wish?”

  Willis’s instinct told him it was not the time to set a figure. He smiled and shook his head again.

  “That isn’t the point, Gil,” he said. “I was wishing that Harcourt Associates’ common stock would be decent collateral for a bank loan, but of course it isn’t.”

  The cards were on the table now, and there was one of those indecisive moments when everything was in balance, but in a second it was over.

  “Now, Willis,” Gil Bakeliss said. “It happens that we’re interested—in a small academic way, of course—in Harcourt Associates. Why else do you think I came over here for lunch?”

  XXII

  Sylvia, as she sometimes told Willis, had graduated with honors from Radcliffe, and therefore she could add, subtract, and multiply without his having to tell her how to do it. Willis was the first to admit the agility of Sylvia’s mind, and yet sometimes he was not sure whether Sylvia had ever understood fully what had happened to them both when Harcourt Associates was formed. Once he had spent a whole evening explaining to her the complementary qualities of Planeroid and Hartex belting. Willis knew that he was eloquent and accurate whenever he preached the union of Planeroid and Hartex, but when he had presented his thoughts to Sylvia, his words fell like twigs upon a passive pool, leaving scarcely a sympathetic ripple. Sylvia must have known, because he had told her again and again, that the 15 per cent of the common stock which had been allotted to him when the Harcourt Mill absorbed the Rahway Belt had only a nominal value at present. If, however, the stock eventually increased in value, they might finally have quite a lot of money. She must have understood this, but even when she saw Harcourt Associates Common grow in years to come until it paid dividends and split itself into parts like the amoeba, she showed no marked elation. The truth was that Sylvia, like everybody else, had certain intellectual blind spots. In this regard Willis had to admit that he felt a twinge of disappointment in Sylvia’s reaction when he returned late in the afternoon to Orange after his luncheon with Gil Bakeliss at the New York Harvard Club.

  It was half past five before Willis reached the house in Orange. Holding his suitcase, he paused on the front path and looked at the brown shingles and at the Indian pipe that was beginning to leaf on the porch. It was May, and the season in Orange was considerably more advanced than that in Boston. There was that note of promise, that note of hope, that always comes with spring. The house had never looked better and yet it had never seemed so impermanent. It was high time that they moved into a more spacious neighborhood, especially after his talk with Gil Bakeliss.

  Still he was fond of the old house because of the many pleasant memories that clustered around it, but everyone grew out of everything, particularly houses. When the front door closed behind him, Willis understood that the house was typically young-married, filled with little pretensions and hopes but not with real solidity. It was far too small. They needed a couple and a nurse. They were out of the one-maid bracket now.

  “Yoo hoo,” Willis called. “Yoo hoo, honey.”

  As it was half past five he shouted his greeting up the stairs, where Sylvia would be bathing Paul, and where Al would be playing in what was called the nursery. He was surprised when Sylvia answered him from the kitchen.

  “Oh,” she called, “is that you, Willis?”

  Willis had to laugh at her question.

  “No, honey,” he called, “it’s the president of the Aluminum Company of America.”

  He even made his voice sound like the imaginary voice of the president of the Aluminum Company of America, but Sylvia did not catch the spirit of it.

  “Well, now you’re home,” she called, “come here and help me, or we won’t get any supper.”

  Sylvia was in the kitchen looking hot and tired. Her sleeves were rolled up and she was wearing one of Margaret’s aprons, which did not give her the appealing look of the lit
tle housewife in the movies. The table was covered with mixing bowls and pans and there was a heap of dishes in the sink.

  “Why, honey,” he said, and he kissed her, “where under the sun is Margaret?”

  It was a natural question to ask and he was sorry that it made Sylvia impatient.

  “She left at three o’clock for good. She was cross about cutting up Al’s chop. She said it was Miss Farquahr’s work or my work, but not her work.”

  “But we haven’t got Miss Farquahr now, honey,” Willis said.

  “I called her, and we’ve got her for a day or two,” Sylvia answered. “Thank heavens she just left a case. She’s going to stay until we get someone new in the kitchen.”

  It was perfectly all right to have Miss Farquahr, but it did not seem fair to have all this happen on top of the good news he was bringing.

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, honey,” Willis said. “We’ll just leave everything, and you and I will hop in the car and go somewhere for a bite to eat. Frankly, I’m just bursting with a lot of things I want to tell you.”

  “Oh, Willis,” Sylvia said, “you know we can’t possibly go anywhere. I have to get supper for Miss Farquahr and Al.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Willis said. “Why can’t Miss Farquahr throw something together for herself and Al?”

  “Of course she can’t, Willis,” Sylvia said. “She’s a trained, not a practical, nurse, and besides she has to bathe Paul and Al and besides …”

  “Besides what?” Willis asked.

  “Besides, you know very well I have to give Paul his supper at seven o’clock.”

  “Well, anyway,” Willis said, and he laughed at the idea, “you and I won’t have to cook Paul’s supper.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t try to be so funny about Paul,” Sylvia said. “Really, a little goes a long way, Willis.”

  “Now, honey,” Willis said, “I won’t say anything more about Paul, and I’m going to help you with the dishes and everything. It was silly of me to think that we should go anywhere in the car, but I do have one suggestion.”