Sincerely, Willis Wayde

by John P. Marquand

  There was a proper interlude of small talk, when Bill said that he would like a Martini cocktail and that he would make it, and Bess said she would like a bourbon on the rocks. Who was it he had seen last who drank bourbon on the rocks? Willis remembered that it had been Mr. P. L. Nagel.

  “I hope you noticed the flowers on the desk,” Willis said. “I want to tell you who thought of that little touch, because I think it’s rather moving—Nellie Bailey.”

  “Why, that’s sweet of her,” Bess said.

  “I think so too,” Willis answered. “Fresh flowers every day.” He paused and cleared his throat. “You know, I’m glad I called at Beacon Street before I saw you, because now I’m pretty sure that what I have to say will relieve you, Bill, and you too, Bess, of a lot of worry. I may as well be terse about it. One of the largest belting companies in the country wants to buy Harcourt Associates—the Simcoe Company to be exact. It’s located in the Midwest, in case you don’t remember. The offer’s in the neighborhood of twenty-five million dollars. I know what you’re thinking, Bess, but don’t interrupt me. I think we ought to sell to them and I want to tell you why.”

  The art of persuasion, Willis believed, was the very keystone of American business and the basis of American industrial prestige, and he was never more convinced of its importance than during his talk with Bill and Bess. Without exaggeration, never in his life had he so keenly wanted two people to understand and sympathize with his point of view and to agree with his conclusions. It would have been unthinkable to have quarreled after so many years. It was a time for a sincere interchange of reaction, a time when every question must be answered.

  The strength of his approach, as he talked to Bill and Bess, lay in his sincere sympathy. No one knew better than he how genuinely the Harcourts had regarded the conduct of the Harcourt Mill as a family obligation. In his own small way, he told them, he shared that obligation. He knew that Bess and Bill looked upon the workers of the Harcourt Mill, as he did too, almost as members of the family, and why not? There were dozens he could name—because he never liked to regard labor as a commodity—whose families had worked there for three generations. This was a proud record and Willis shared in the Harcourts’ pride—just a little. He shared this fine tradition, having been brought up in it like Bess and Bill, and he was as loyal to it as any Harcourt. And yet—and yet they were all old enough now to see how times were changing, and even traditions had to be reactivated—sometimes.

  Without delving into the history of American industry, they were all aware of the almost explosive expansion of business that was going on around them. He hated to say it, but they would have to face a painful fact. The day of family ownership in business was disappearing. Within a radius of fifty miles of where they were sitting, there were hundreds of factories that had been in family hands for over a century now being merged into larger groups. There was nothing to be ashamed of in this situation, for merging, very frankly, set new blood and new ambition coursing through fine old arteries. This was not exactly a happy simile, as he could tell from Bess Ewing’s changed expression.

  “Sorry, Bess,” he said, “I didn’t mean to get poetic, but believe me, basically the thought is sound.”

  And it was—so sound that Willis was carried away on the wings of it. There was no use standing against change. One had to accept it as one accepted old age and death—not that he meant for a single moment that the Harcourt Mill or the Harcourt tradition would dissolve if it merged with Simcoe Rubber Hose and Belting. Eventually the time was bound to come when they would have to sell the Harcourt Mill because, very frankly, it could not stand alone as an isolated unit. Frankly—because they were all talking almost like brothers and sisters now—in his opinion the Harcourt Mill would have closed its doors long ago because of competition if he had not happened to think of integrating the Planeroid patents with Harcourt when he was at Rahway Belt. Fortunately at the moment Harcourt Associates was in a fine position. They had many assets which might never be so valuable again, which explained why P. L. Nagel, whom he hoped Bill and Bess would get to meet and love as much as he did, had made this generous offer. All change was painful, but very conceivably there might never be such a chance again. Willis was reluctant, being humanly proud of Harcourt’s achievement, but—to encapsulate all his thought—he must recommend that the stockholders accept this offer, and he knew that Bill and Bess, when they thought it over, would stand right there with him to be counted.

  You could always tell from the feel of things around you whether or not a presentation had moved toward success. It gave Willis a fine glow of pride that he had been sincere and had used the straightforward approach without dialectic tricks. He had not lost their attention for an instant, but it might have been dangerous to have gone on further.

  “Well,” he said, “I’m afraid that was a pretty tough sermon, and I really did feel a couple of times that I was sort of in the pulpit, but I do think that’s about the picture as it looks to me, and now I know you’ll have a lot of things to ask.”

  Bill was the first one to speak. He rose from the captain’s chair in which he had been sitting, walked to the portable bar, and poured the ice water from the Martini shaker.

  “That was quite a speech,” he said. “I never knew you could lay it on the line like that. I’m always convinced by the last person who talks to me but that’s because I’m said by little sister here to have a weak character. Maybe Bess had better pick up the thread of the discourse while I mix another round of drinks. Will you have one now, Willis?”

  “Er—well, no thank you, Bill, not at the moment,” Willis said. “Not that I won’t have one later.”

  Bess was the one, of course, whom Willis was watching, because he valued her reaction as much as he valued her opinion. He was too well aware of her devastating observation and her capacities of derision not to feel uneasy. There flashed unexpectedly across his mind the occasion when she had compared him to Uriah Heep, and he dismissed this from his thoughts as abruptly as he could. It had never struck Willis that Bess’s lower lip was so nearly a replica of Mr. Henry Harcourt’s, or that her eyes, though of a different color, had the same qualities of contemplation he remembered in old H.H. Willis was happy to observe that Bess looked intensely serious. At least she was not in the mood to ask some frivolous or disconcerting question.

  “I’m glad you’ve been so frank, Willis,” she said. “I know you have been.”

  “Why, Bess,” Willis answered, “I couldn’t possibly be anything else.”

  “And I’m glad you feel the way Father and all the rest of us do about the mill,” Bess said. “I know it’s old-fashioned, and I suppose we’ll have to face the inevitable, but there is one thing I’m sure we will all want to know. That offer will make us quite rich, but I’d like to know, if we’re bought out, what assurance there is that those people won’t close the mill. There is still our obligation to the people working there.”

  Of course he had known that the question was coming, just as he had known previously that Sylvia would ask it.

  “Bess, dear,” Willis said, “of course I knew you’d bring that matter up, and it is the sixty-four-dollar question, isn’t it, as they say? Frankly it’s been bothering me from the first moment that P. L. Nagel approached me with this proposition. Believe me, I’ve been right to the mat with P.L. on this subject, and in that connection I think I can deliver some reassuring news—not, mind you, that anyone can ever promise anything beyond the foreseeable future—you know that, don’t you, Bess?”

  He never forgot that he had made this proviso and he saw Bess nod her assent to it.

  “Bill,” he said, “since you are being barkeep maybe I would like just a rather small one after all.” He must not be tense, he was telling himself. It looked better to appear relaxed.

  “Thanks, Bill,” he said, “and as one Martini authority to another, my heartiest congratulations. Well, I hesitate to obtrude my personal problems at this time but here’s the news
I was speaking of. It seems they’ve been looking for a new president at Simcoe, and well, to make matters brief, they’ve offered it to me—first vice president to start with, and president when Mr. Nagel becomes chairman of the board. It’s a pretty hard matter to turn down when I remember Sylvia and the kids.”

  He raised his hand quickly when he saw that Bess was about to speak.

  “Please, Bess,” he said, “just let me make my point.” He leaned slightly forward in his chair to emphasize his point and allowed his voice to drop to a lower scale. “If we should sell out to them and if I should take that position, you know and I know, Bess, that the Harcourt Mill and all your feelings about it will be one of my first cares. In fact, Bess, P. L. Nagel and I have had some discussion about integrating Harcourt Associates and we’ve pretty well decided to leave it where it is and call it the Harcourt Division, so the name will still be there.”

  He should have realized long ago that the very fact that he would be the president of that larger company was a favorable argument.

  “Why, Willis,” Bess said, and she smiled and not at all in a mocking way, “that makes everything sound much better. Why didn’t you tell us that before?”

  “Oh, it was only a personal matter, Bess,” he told her, “and, as I said, you and Bill have problems of your own.”

  Bess leaned forward and rested her hand on his knee for a moment.

  “Well, I’m awfully glad for your sake, Willis,” she said. “In fact, if things happen that way I guess I’m pretty glad for all of us.”

  Then Willis had the most glorious feeling that anyone can have, a conviction that everything was resolved, and this was due to Bess. There was no one in the world quite like Bess Harcourt. She had made him feel happy and at peace with himself for the first time since P. L. Nagel had passed the word. It was all due to Bess, to her generosity and her lovely understanding. It had not been necessary at all to bring up the subject of Roger Harcourt or Mrs. Henry Harcourt’s trustee. After all there was nothing like an old friendship.

  Yet Willis had learned long ago to conceal blatant feelings of triumph and elation. It was a part of office discipline always to be measured and controlled.

  “Good-by, Bill,” he said, when he escorted them around the glassy island of cubicles to the reception room. “Aside from everything else, it’s been swell seeing you and I hope we can repeat the process soon again.”

  He meant it, because he had always had a warm spot in his heart for Bill, and then he remembered that this was a hackneyed phrase. In all the years he had known Bill he never could help liking him.

  “Good-by, Bess, dear,” he said. “May I?”

  “Well,” Bess said, and she laughed, just as she had in the old days, “it wouldn’t be the first time, Willis.”

  She turned her cheek to him and he kissed it, in the most formal possible way, since Bill was there.

  “And it won’t be the first time I’ve thought you were a very wonderful person, Bess,” Willis said, “and I know furthermore that it won’t be the last.”

  It was a quarter before six when Bill and Bess left, and the office was deserted except for Nancy Sullivan at the switchboard and Hank Knowlton.

  “Thanks a lot for staying, Nancy,” Willis said. “I hope I haven’t made you stand your boy friend up.”

  “Oh no indeed,” she said. “It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Wayde.”

  “I won’t forget your kindness, Nancy,” Willis said, “and now before you go will you see if you can get me Mr. P. L. Nagel, please, in Chicago? And, Hank, will you come back with me to Mr. Bryson Harcourt’s office for a moment?”

  Willis rested his hand affectionately on Hank’s shoulder. There was nothing like loyalty, and when loyalty was obtained it should be nourished by appreciation.

  “I wouldn’t have kept you around here, Hank,” he said, “unless I had had something pretty big to say to you, and maybe if Elly wouldn’t mind at this short notice, you might call her up and say I’d like you to dine with me at the Ritz. You see, very confidentially, Simcoe Rubber has made an offer to buy Associates, Hank, and if it comes through I’ll want you to be the head of the Harcourt Division—temporarily, at any rate, until we solve the problem of integration. Of course, operationwise the Harcourt Mill may be something of a headache in the future—not that I haven’t got my fingers crossed in the hope that it won’t.…”

  It would mean a lot to Hank Knowlton, but that was the way the world was. You either moved down or up. As soon as Willis had invited Hank to dinner he was a little sorry, because he was so tired that it would be hard to make a further effort. His words and gestures already seemed to be spoken from a distance. He was moving away from everything inevitably, as though a tide were moving him faster and faster, now that he had seen Bill and Bess. He wondered for a moment how this thought had come to him of moving faster and faster, and then he remembered that it must have stemmed from his mother’s reading him Through the Looking Glass—a book which had always made him uncomfortable and which he had asked Sylvia as a great favor not to read to their own children. He was like a passenger on the observation platform of an outgoing train that was gaining in acceleration as it left the station. He was moving away from his years of contriving as head of Harcourt Associates. Memories and figures were growing smaller, losing their validity. He was moving out of one square into a larger one, and he was moving faster and faster.

  XXVIII

  Clyde, like any self-sufficient New England town, had a long if inaccurate memory. In fact the better one came to know Clyde the more one grew impressed with the town’s inability ever wholly to forget anyone who had ever dwelt within its limits. Instead of forgetting, Clyde inhabitants, through their exaggerated powers of recollection, were able in each generation to elevate two or three of their fellow townsmen to a folk status that approached the myth. After all, memory and mythology go hand in hand, and on any afternoon, a dozen or so members of the Clyde Men’s Club could be found there working in the field of legend, and the same was true of the women’s clubs and the church alliances and sewing circles. From its earliest days, Clyde had always preferred legend to scientific history.

  Willis probably was never aware that Clyde was in the process of making him a Great Figure. Since he had never been obliged seriously to consider local town opinion businesswise, he was not aware of the great number of persons in Clyde who eagerly watched his every move.

  As president of Harcourt Associates Willis had made a few public appearances there for the benefit of good plant relations. He had once spoken at a Rotary Club luncheon to the largest attendance there had ever been in Clyde, although he had not been aware of this fact. Willis had been deeply flattered when Mr. Roderick Holhalter, Clyde superintendent of schools, had invited him to address the graduating class of Clyde High in June, 1944. He was delighted to do so because the stockholders’ meeting of Harcourt Associates came only two days later. He never knew, when he made some sound inspirational remarks on the subject of success, that the high-school auditorium was unduly crowded and that there was a large crowd in the corridor outside. Willis was also glad to accommodate the Reverend Morton J. Heatherby, who had been minister of the Congregational Church when he and his mother had attended there, by giving a talk during Young People’s Week. He had not realized that plans to hold the event in the parish hall had been canceled because of the turnout—not only of youths but of older people—and that the church had finally been opened for the meeting. Willis certainly never suspected that most of the people in Clyde who greeted him with courteous applause when he stood before a lectern were not gathered to hear what he had to say as much as to observe him.

  He was not a snappy dresser, according to Clyde standards. His double-breasted business suits disappointed many, and also the words he said were only what could be expected from someone in his position. Nevertheless his presence was impressive. He was tall and he had good features, and his manner conveyed earnestness and self-confidence. His shoes were b
eautifully shined and his trousers accurately creased, which may have been the basis for the rumor that a personal valet always traveled with him. Willis always came to town in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac, and there was some debate as to whether or not this was a Cadillac hired in Boston or one owned by Willis Wayde in Massachusetts. On the whole better-informed people were sure that the Cadillac was his own. He would have been ashamed to ride in a hired car. There was also some debate as to whether Willis Wayde’s chauffeur might not be a valet on the side, since one read about valet-chauffeurs in light fiction, but on the whole this theory was not accepted.

  When Willis became first vice president of Simcoe, and when the Harcourt Mill became the Harcourt Division of that corporation, nearly everyone in Clyde reacted with great pleasure to the news; for it meant that the small-town boy had risen higher, to a plateau far beyond Clyde experience. Simcoe, as everyone knew, was a multi-million-dollar corporation, or a billion-dollar corporation, now that a billion dollars had grown to be an ordinary unit of financial measure. There could not be the slightest doubt that Willis Wayde had acquired a great many million dollars through the deal. Even skeptics began to accept the Wayde legend when the Meltonian Publishing Company succeeded in selling to the Clyde Public Library a volume entitled Industrial Leaders of America, which contained a photograph and a biography of Willis Wayde. Willis must have been surprised, during his last visit to Clyde while he was still working on the integration of Harcourt Associates with Simcoe, to be approached by a committee of Clyde businessmen, including his friend John Sparks, vice president of the Dock Street Bank, who asked him, because of his well-known love of sport while at Clyde High, if he would not donate a football stadium to the town, suitably lighted for night games. No one could seriously have believed him when he said he could not afford the five hundred thousand dollars necessary for the project. Clyde was already drawing an idealized portrait of Willis Wadye, and everyone had already begun to scorn any homely truth that did not fit in with this ideal.