Sincerely, Willis Wayde

by John P. Marquand

  “Actually I’ve given the service angle some real serious thought,” Willis told her, “and I’ve noticed, sweetness, that it is an occasional habit of yours to exaggerate difficulties. If we temporarily close off some of the rooms in the third story, I believe that two maids will be able to look out for things, considering the kitchen’s all electric. That only means one more maid than we have already.”

  “But what about the children?” Sylvia asked, and her voice rose in a plaintive way.

  “Now that’s a very reasonable question, honey,” Willis told her. “It will be just as easy to take care of the children here as it would be anywhere else, and we can start budgeting right away for a nurse.”

  “But you don’t get a nurse by budgeting,” Sylvia said.

  “Oh yes you do,” Willis said. “You wait and see, sweetness. You’re going to be surprised. If I was able to get Rahway Belt on its feet, I guess I can manage this house all right, just so long as I have your cooperation. Wait till you see the washing machines in the basement and the electric dryer. As far as the lawn goes, there’s a honey of a motor lawn mower out in the garage. Just for a starter I can do the lawns personally.”

  When Sylvia listened, she was always reasonable.

  “But, Willis,” she said, “what about furniture?”

  That was what convinced Sylvia eventually. He had entirely forgotten to tell her about the furniture.

  “Sweetness,” he said, and he put his arm around her, “you wait and see. All the essential furniture comes with the house. There are rugs and drapes and beds and sofas. We will now visit the living room.” He stopped and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Honey, I will have your cooperation, won’t I?”

  “I’ll do the best I can,” Sylvia said, and she sighed, “but it’s all so ostentatious, Willis.”

  Right from the very beginning Sylvia always worried about ostentation, and yet in certain ways Willis knew she loved it, as soon as she became accustomed to an ostentatious phase.

  “Sylvia, dear,” he said, and he did not realize until he had started that he was going to state a clause or two of his personal philosophy, “if there’s any ostentation, we’ll outgrow it mighty quickly. Some day, maybe before too long, this house is going to look small to you and me.”

  “I don’t see how you can say that, Willis,” Sylvia told him.

  It showed she did not have his vision, but it was rather a cute remark, and he kissed her cheek again.

  “Let’s consider this home as a symbol, dear,” Willis said.

  “What sort of a symbol?” she asked him.

  What he answered might have been unduly sentimental, but he meant every word he said then and he meant it still.

  “A symbol of faith, dear,” he told her, and when he saw that she looked startled, he enlarged upon his thought. “Maybe you think I’m going overboard, sweetness, but I mean our faith in each other, and our faith in the future and the children and everything. Maybe it’s fantastic, as you say, sweetness, but let’s look upon this whole home venture as a dream we want to make come true.”

  Maybe he had said it in a corny way, but he was expressing in his own personal terms the thoughts and wishes of any man who tries to build a home, and Sylvia understood him.

  “Darling,” she said, “I wish I didn’t keep forgetting how generous and sweet you are. I see what you mean, dear. Of course I’ll help you make it all come true.”

  Essentially Waydeholm did turn into a dream come true. Willis was not there much during the war and he was pretty busy afterwards, but it was always a place of happy memories. As P. L. Nagel said when they walked around the grounds once, it was a sound, efficient home and a good place for showing off antiques, but it was a whole lot more than that. It was where the children learned to walk and talk and play. It was where Sylvia and he cemented many friendships and it was where he bought Sylvia her first mink coat—if you wanted to think of anniversaries. All sorts of birthdays and Christmases and happy sentimental times transpired at Waydeholm, and furthermore servants always liked it. Willis had a real lump in his throat when he parted with Waydeholm finally, dividing up its five acres into lots and selling the main house as a convalescent home, all for double the original investment. It was sad to pack up and go away, but as he told Sylvia at the time, that was America. Life and progress always meant moving into something new—and better. In life and in business you couldn’t stand still in America.

  XXV

  Willis found himself telling that story about the Chinese Ambassador again in—of all places—the spacious glassed-in terrace of the Hotel Carolina in Pinehurst in May of 1948. He had just come in from a very happy afternoon of golf, and he was enjoying some good talk before going up to the suite to change before the cocktail hour and the banquet.

  They were serving tea, as was the custom at the Carolina, but not many were having any. Willis had been sitting with Jerry Bascomb, who had been his foursome partner and whom Willis had asked down with him for the Pinehurst convention because he thought that Jerry needed a little fun away from Helen and the children, and also because it was a great help to have Jerry at his elbow in case something came up of a technical or engineering nature. If anybody in the Associates deserved a good time at company expense, it was Jerry, and Willis made a mental note to send Jerry to some convention every year in the future. He was just telling Jerry that Pinehurst was an ideal place for business meetings—what with the mild dry air and the four golf courses—when Alec Bingkrampf came up and spoke to him. He was of course the Bingkrampf who was president of Swanee Power, and this year he was chairman in general charge of all arrangements for the Production Liners Convocation at Pinehurst. It was one of Alec Bingkrampf’s duties to mingle with everyone, and Willis had meant to help by coming up himself and shaking hands at an early opportunity and asking Bing if he remembered the good times they had had in Washington together during the war. There was no necessity for this, however, because Alec Bingkrampf came right over himself.

  “Well, well, Willis,” Bing said. “I’ve been looking for you ever since I saw your name down on the list.”

  “Well, well, Bing,” Willis said. “It’s been a long time no see, hasn’t it? By the way, I don’t know whether you remember my associate, Jerry Bascomb. He was down at Swanee on a little problem a year or two ago.”

  Evidently Bing did not remember Jerry Bascomb, but then, as Willis was beginning to learn himself, no one could ever remember everything.

  “So you were down at Swanee, were you, Mr. Bascomb?” Bing said. “I certainly hope the bunch treated you all right. Well, well, Willis. It’s quite a while since we fought the war down in Washington, isn’t it? Say, Bascomb, did the chief ever tell you what went on in Washington?”

  Jerry was not such a bad mixer, considering he was a graduate of Tech.

  “Not much,” Jerry said. “I gathered most of it was top secret down in Washington.”

  It was not a bad line and both Willis and Alec Bingkrampf indulged in a moment of reminiscent laughter.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Bing said. “We really did have some high old top-secret times down there—and don’t you give me that vague look, Willis.”

  There was nothing like a little good-natured kidding at the end of a long day.

  “Well, now, Bing,” Willis said, “I wasn’t like you. I was generally pretty tired at night.”

  “You old rascal,” Bing said, and he slapped Willis’s back affectionately. “Say, I wonder what’s happened to the old crowd. Do you remember—who was it—the fellow who kept playing the guitar? I’ve got it—Red Flyrood.”

  “Oh, yes,” Willis said. “He’s still down there on the National Labor Relations Board.”

  “And what about General Pottle?” Alec Bingkrampf asked. “Do you remember the bourbon he used to keep in his desk? I wonder where old Gus is now.”

  “We exchange Christmas cards each year,” Willis said. “And I’ll tell you whom I do correspond with sometime
s, and that’s old Charlie Spoonholm.”

  “By God, the admiral,” Alec Bingkrampf said. “I’m glad you brought him up. Now there was someone who could really put away the bourbon. I wonder what ever happened to old Charlie when he retired.”

  “I can answer that one for you, Bing,” Willis said. “He’s down in Florida and he owns a small alligator farm.”

  “Well, well,” Bing said. He was showing signs of restlessness, and it was kind of him to have stayed chatting so long. “Think of old Charlie wrestling with an alligator. Well, I’ve got to be thinking up some remarks for my speech tonight. Well, so long fellows, and bellyache to me if there’s anything wrong with your room or anything.” Then just as he was leaving he stopped, and his voice became mellow and vibrant. “Well, well, look who’s here. If it isn’t the old horse thief himself! If it isn’t old P.L.!”

  Alec Bingkrampf was referring, of course, to P. L. Nagel, and Willis had just been wondering what had happened to P.L. and whether P.L. remembered that they had made a cocktail date.

  “Is everything all right, P.L.?” Alec Bingkrampf asked. “Did you get the suite you wanted?”

  “Yes, thanks, young fellow,” P.L. said. “I hope to welcome you to the suite and return your hospitality some time with a small libation.”

  “That will be swell, P.L.,” Alec Bingkrampf said, “and you got your locker at the club and everything?”

  “Never mind my locker,” P.L. said. “I don’t think I’ll enter in the Tombstone tomorrow. I’m just going to sit and bend my elbow and let the young fellows do the work.”

  That was the moment when Willis was reminded of the story of the Chinese Ambassador in Washington.

  “You know that reminds me of a story,” Willis said. “Stop me if you’ve heard it. It’s the one about the Chinese Ambassador in Washington.”

  It was always hard to tell whether someone was being polite or whether he really had not heard the story.

  “Well, it’s just a quickie,” Willis said, “but it might help Bing here at the banquet. It seems that this Chinese Ambassador was at a party in Washington, and when his hostess asked him if he would not like to dance, he said, Why should I when I can pay someone else to do it for me? That’s like P.L., isn’t it? Letting young fellows win the Tombstone for him.”

  It was gratifying that the story made a real hit, because P.L. and Alec Bingkrampf were by way of being connoisseurs of stories. Their laughter, Willis was sure, was genuine, and as he listened to it Willis thought that telling a story was an art in itself. Once he had been too quick and nervous with the Chinese Ambassador story, but now he had the timing right. Then he remembered the first time he had heard it. Roger Harcourt had told it to him eight years ago, before the stockholders’ luncheon at the Harcourt place. It did not seem possible that it was eight years ago, but it was.

  “Well,” Willis said, “I suppose we’ve all got to prepare to foregather for cocktails.”

  “As long as we foregather,” P.L. said, “let’s go easy on the preparing. Will you come to the suite, Willis?”

  “Come on over to my place, P.L.,” Willis said, “and try some of my stuff. It’s all pure, because it comes from the Alcoholic Beverage Control store.”

  Eight years ago, when Willis had first heard the ambassador story, he might have been hesitant about asking someone of P. L. Nagel’s stature around to the room to have a drink, but things were different now. Willis knew that people like P. L. Nagel liked to be treated by younger men in a spirit of equality. After all, Willis was forty-one, although he didn’t look it. At least Sylvia, and some of the boys at the office too, said he didn’t look it. Even though there was a touch of gray in his hair, Sylvia had pointed out that people who started out blond were apt to turn gray earlier. This indication of age, at any rate, did not look badly on the president of Harcourt Associates. Frankly, Willis was getting a little tired of youth.

  “All right,” P.L. said, “but don’t ask in a crowd.”

  It was a little sad to hear him, Willis thought, because once there was nothing P.L. had liked as much as a crowd. It never occurred to Willis for a moment, that afternoon at the Carolina, that P.L. could want a quiet conversation with him. He never realized until later that P.L. might very well have come to the Production Liners Convocation at Pinehurst exclusively for that purpose.

  They weren’t building monumental hotels like the old Carolina any more, and Willis was sorry. The enormous hallway stretching the length of the building afforded perpetual interest in leisure moments. Walking over the springy carpet of that corridor was like drifting down a Venetian canal—a fanciful simile, because Willis had not had time to get abroad as yet. On either side of the corridor was a shifting series of attractions. Shops full of sporting clothes for men and varicolored gowns for women were blossoming out like the late Carolina spring, and there were all sorts of unexpected consumer gadgets, now that the war was over. Then there were gift shops with novel souvenirs suitable for carrying home to wives, children, and sweethearts, and besides these attractions there were lounging alcoves and card and cocktail rooms, not to mention the ballroom. This vast caravansary, beautifully run despite the constant turnover of guests, reminded him of Chieftain Manor because, though somewhat smaller, The Old Chief had been a part of American hotel tradition, as practiced at the turn of the century—and what a tradition it had been, exemplifying the spaciousness and breadth of American belief, in the first flush of America’s industrial youth. It spoke of plenty and of a boundless opportunity inconceivable today, when one was hemmed in by socialistic restrictions. There would never again be a time similar to the era when the Carolina was brand new, but the Carolina was still far from being a mausoleum. Thousands of people who loved it were making it right now the background of a new America.

  There was no hotel, in Willis’s opinion, as suitable for housing a large-scale and active business convention. There was room to turn around at the Carolina and space to get away from the crowd if you wanted to discuss facts and figures. Then of course there was the country club and those great Pinehurst golf courses that siphoned off junior executives and their wives and left lots of opportunity for quiet, orderly discussion, if you wanted round-table or committee talks. The Carolina could handle a big crowd comfortably, and the Production Liners Convocation needed a lot of space.

  It had started as a casual group of Midwest industrialists with a common interest in promoting industrial efficiency. Once it had been an informal discussion group with a humorous angle which it had never quite lost, as was illustrated by the somewhat irreligious name “Convocation,” but then this was a word that distinguished the Production Liners from the ordinary convention. Now few people on the list could afford to miss the annual meeting, which the press itself rated as important as that of the National Association of Manufacturers. Now on the afternoon of the opening day tardy Production Liners were still streaming in with gigantic leather golf bags and other suitable pieces of luggage. Tables were still set up near the desk with a large banner emblazoned, “Welcome, Production Liners,” and smaller signs saying, “Get Your Badges Here.” As Willis saw the sign, he reached guiltily into the pocket of his windbreaker, pulled out his gold-framed badge and pinned it on his chest. “Willis Wayde,” it read, “Harcourt Associates, Pres.”

  “It’s funny,” he said to Jerry Bascomb, “how I keep forgetting to put on this thing.”

  “Oh hell,” Jerry said, “why don’t you forget it? Everybody here knows you anyway.”

  All Jerry’s reactions made Willis very glad that he had brought him along to the Convocation. It showed that you failed to notice people sometimes in the daily routine of a plant or office. Jerry had a fine appearance and a very easy, congenial manner, not to mention brains and ability. Given the proper driving force, he might very well be high-executive material.

  “I hope you enjoy being here as much as I enjoy having you, Jerry,” Willis said.

  “Why, thanks a lot, Chief,” Jerry answe
red. “I’m having a swell time. The impact of all this is terrific.”

  Although Willis knew the assistant manager of the Carolina personally, having been careful to keep up the contact he had made during his first stop there in 1945, the bedroom and sitting room that he and Jerry shared were smaller than he preferred, but then you couldn’t expect everything at a Production Liners Convocation, and it was all a whale of a lot better than what he had been able to secure for Will Freeman, Harcourt’s assistant sales manager, and his cute little wife, and for Mr. and Mrs. Fred Seagurt from the Rahway plant. Still, the Freemans and the Seagurts, though promising, were only kids who deserved the outing.

  “Personally, I showered at the country club, Jerry,” Willis said, “so the bathroom is yours.”

  It only took a short time to change into a fresh linen suit and white buckskin shoes, but still time was limited, because Willis wanted to have things right when P. L. Nagel got there, and suddenly Willis was worried about how Jerry would fit in. Willis was still considering the matter when he picked up the telephone.

  “Head bellman, please,” he said. “Jerry, when you get out of that tub, would you mind getting the liquor and setting it out here on the writing table?—all the bottles. P.L. likes to see lots of bottles.”

  “Hello, Mr. Wayde, sir,” the bell captain said.

  It was an amazing achievement, when you stopped to think of it, that the switchboard operator should have known his name and passed it on to the bell captain. It was something new in service.

  “Hello there, Archie,” Willis said. He always made a point of knowing bell captains. “Could you rush up some ice to my room and about four Martini and four old-fashioned and four highball glasses, and about six bottles of soda?”

  “Would you like some crackers and cheese and a few appetizers with it, Mr. Wayde?” Archie asked.

  “As long as you can get it all up in ten minutes,” Willis said, “and I won’t forget your cooperation, Archie.”