It made Steve Decker laugh.
“I guess you’re confusing me again with that Mr. Jerrod in Akron,” he said.
Willis shook his head and his expression was almost serious. He looked at Steve Decker steadily for a moment with a bright and slightly glassy alertness. There seemed to be something both watchful and pleading in Willis’s look, and Steve had the idea that Willis wanted to be liked.
“I’m not confusing you with anyone,” he said. “Frankly, I always used to envy you, and you’re the same old Steve Decker still.”
He made it sound sincere. Willis had learned how to make people listen to everything he said.
“Well,” Steve said, “times have certainly changed since then.”
Willis was silent for a minute, as though he were thinking of changing times, comparing then with now.
“If you mean I’m not what I used to be,” he said, “you’re right, but partially everyone stays what he used to be. There were two people I used to envy—you and Bill Harcourt, frankly.”
“Me and Bill?” Steve said. He looked at Willis’s right hand, beating on the marble top of the café table, and Steve was sure that Willis’s nails were professionally manicured.
“To put it simply,” Willis said, “I envied you two boys because you never had to worry. Me, I always had to.”
“I don’t see you have to worry now,” Steve said.
“Not about myself now,” Willis said, “but about a lot of other people. One thing always leads to another.”
For a moment the thread of conversation was broken, but May and Sylvia were still talking.
“Steve wouldn’t go to the château country,” May said. “He said if he went he would just sit in the car.”
“There’s one thing about Willis,” Sylvia said. “He makes a most fearful effort, but we’re not doing much serious sightseeing. He needed to get away from things.”
Willis took a small sip of his champagne.
“That’s right,” he said. “You’ve got to get away now and then and recharge your batteries—at least I do. It gets your mind on another tack. How’s Bill Harcourt, Steve?”
It occurred to Steve that it was the second time that Willis had asked the question.
“Bill’s pretty well,” he said. “He’s living in Marion, you know. He likes the sailing and the golf.”
“How’s his game?”
“Not much,” Steve told him. “Somewhere in the nineties.”
“That means I could beat him,” Willis said. “I’ve got to look up old Bill sometime. I’ve always had a warm spot—that is, a deep affection for Bill.” Steve did not answer, but Willis was going on. “He’s the nicest person in the world, with all the right instincts, and generosity and integrity, and a lovely sense of humor, but Bill never had what it takes in a business way.”
“Well, he doesn’t have to,” Steve said.
“That’s right,” Willis answered. “Other people have done it for him. Why, I’m working for Bill right now.”
“Yes,” Steve said, “and I own a few shares of Simcoe myself.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Willis said. “I’m glad you’re a member of the Simcoe family. I wish you’d come out sometime and see what we’re doing.”
“Why, thanks,” Steve said, “I’d like to sometime.” Willis was looking across the table at Sylvia, but Sylvia paid no attention to his signal.
“I’m always loyal to the Harcourt family,” Willis said. “I guess you know what I owe them. They don’t make families like that any more. How does the old house look now?”
“It looks pretty well,” Steve said. “Bess gives a lot of thought to it, keeping up the grounds and everything.”
Willis stared at the traffic moving down the avenue.
“That’s fine,” he said. “I’m glad it’s all in order. It’s sort of a shrine to me in a way, frankly. Sometimes before I go to sleep I can shut my eyes and walk right up the drive.”
The definition was aesthetically disturbing, but the tribute was entirely honest.
“Lovely lawn planting,” Willis said. “Those groups of rhododendrons by the gates. It’s time that does it, time. Now at my own home I’ve tried to get that same effect with rhododendrons. Sylvia and I put in a lot of fifty-year-old specimens. They are lovely but they don’t give the same effect. It’s time.”
“It isn’t such an old house,” Steve said. “It isn’t as old as parts of the mill.”
“Maybe,” Willis said. “But in a home obsolescence has a wholly different meaning. You can have sentiment about a home but not about a factory. I wish some people would see that.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Steve said.
Willis moved his hand and drummed his fingers on the table.
“I’m deeply sorry about the Harcourt Mill decision,” he said. “It was like cutting off my arm to close that plant.”
Steve Decker did not answer, and Willis looked at him for a moment in a bright impersonal way.
“Naturally there were repercussions,” he said. “There always are, but things like that are happening all the time. There was no future in the plant—only past—not the slightest chance of its getting out of the red.”
“If you live there,” Steve said, “it’s harder to take an objective view.”
Willis coughed. “We had a dog a while ago,” he said—“a retriever. He almost brought up the children. Then he got blind and we had to call the vet to put him out of the way. You have to do things like that.”
“Yes,” said Steve, “I suppose so.”
“I’ll always have a warm—er—memory in my heart for that old factory,” Willis said. “It’s ironical, you might say, that I should have to be the one to take the step, but you have to do things like that.”
“Yes,” Steve said, “it must have been hard for you.”
The trouble was that Steve could always see two sides of a question at the same time. There was no use arguing with someone like Willis Wayde.
“Of course,” Willis said, “I can’t blame some people for not sharing my point of view. Well, it’s great to have had a glimpse of you, Steve, and I’m glad of the opportunity to have expressed a few of my thoughts on the subject. Sylvia, sweet, I’m afraid we ought to be going now.”
“Oh dear,” Sylvia said. “Must we? I’m so sorry.” She pushed back her chair and looked questioningly at Willis, obviously asking mutely whether he wanted her to do anything about the Deckers.
“I hope we can have a chance to return your kindness,” Willis said. “We really ought to start right in where we left off. Sylvia, sweet, what are we doing tomorrow?”
Sylvia raised her eyebrows slightly.
“Why, you’re having lunch with those textile people, Willis, and there’s a dinner for you in the evening.”
“That’s right,” Willis said. “I’d completely forgotten about that, and then we’re off for Switzerland, and I haven’t had a chance to say a word to Mrs. Decker.”
He pushed back his chair and stood up, gently smoothing out the folds in his double-breasted coat, smiling, looking like someone who had been asked by the toastmaster to say a few words. He had that same professional assurance, and May had been right—his suit had undoubtedly been made in London by a tailor accustomed to American whims. For a second Willis dominated the scene, modestly and sincerely. His ease was the best thing about him. You could not tell, Steve was thinking, how much of his cordiality was real. There was no way of gauging the depth of his sincerity. It might very well have been that he did have a soft spot in his heart, and that he had honestly meant what he had said about loyalty, and about being deeply sorry. On the other hand he might have had no heart at all. Authority and success had made him strangely impervious, since success had smoothed down all his rough edges, turning him into a type interchangeable with any photograph on the financial page of the New York Times. It was hard to tell about those people, who had all been processed in the same way, but he was essentially an Americ
an type.
“Well,” Willis said, “good-by, and many thanks. This has been perfectly wonderful.”
If that was all there had been to the incident, it never would have been worth repeating. It was what happened next that gave it value and suspense. You never could tell, as May often said, whom you would run into in Paris, and you always ran into the most unlikely people, purely through coincidence. They were all standing up when Steve Decker felt May’s hand on his arm.
“My God, Steve,” she said, “look who’s coming.”
There was an aisle between the closely grouped tables leading from the street, since after all there had to be a passage for patrons and waiters, and there, moving straight toward them, were Bess Harcourt and her husband, Edward Ewing. To anyone who knew her she would always be Bess Harcourt, and you thought of her still as young Bess Harcourt, although her yellow hair was much darker and her face more florid, and even in Paris she seemed to bring something of the Harcourts with her. There was something arrogantly provincial in the way she walked. At least she was not trying to be a Continental woman. They must have been shopping, because Edward was carrying an armful of packages. Whenever you saw Ed Ewing, he seemed to be carrying packages for Bess.
There was no way of avoiding the encounter, because the Waydes were only a few feet away from them. They were bound to meet head on. Willis Wayde stepped forward immediately. He had put on his gray felt hat, and now he took it off in a quick, courtly way which was not like him, and all his measured reserve had left him. For once there was no need to guess what he was thinking. He was meeting an old friend. He was obviously perfectly delighted to see Bess Harcourt there.
“Well, if this isn’t like Old Home Week,” he said. “Why, Bess, fancy seeing you in Paris! And Edward! Hello, Ed.”
Willis held out his hand and for a moment you could not tell what might happen. Bess had a pleasant way of looking at people, and the upward tilt of her mouth was always good-natured, and when she spoke her voice was good-natured too.
“You’re in my way, Willis,” she said. “Get out.”
“Now, Bess,” Willis said, “please. I haven’t the least idea—”
He could not have looked more completely shaken if Bess had slapped him across the face.
“You’re in my way,” Bess said again, and then she laughed in that bright malicious way of hers. “Get out, Uriah Heep.”
Steve Decker said that you could not help but admire Willis Wayde. Willis had gone a long way since he had lived at the Harcourt place. It was plain that that jibe of Bess’s about the Dickensian crook had made a very deep impression on Willis, because his face flushed so darkly that he looked as though he had spent the day at the seashore. Nevertheless his manner was composed and his voice was polite, gentle and considerate. Success had certainly worn the rough edges from Willis Wayde.
“Certainly, if that’s the way you want it,” he said, “but I’m truly very sorry, Bess. Come, sweetness, or we’ll be late for dinner.” And then the Waydes walked slowly to the street. Willis’s shoulders were held back, and his coat did fit him to perfection.
Steve had a final glimpse of them, before they disappeared among the pedestrians on the sidewalk. Willis had put on his hat, and Sylvia was asking him some question. Willis appeared to be listening to her very carefully, and then he shook his head. That was all there was to it, but if you knew something about the component parts and personalities of the individuals involved it made quite a story, and one that could only have happened in America. Steve Decker often wondered what Willis Wayde had thought about it, and how much or how little that brief encounter had affected him. It was the ending of a story that Steve had witnessed, which made no particular sense without knowing the beginning.
XXXI
Willis, whenever he had occasion to exchange ideas with acquaintances about life in Paris, always said he had fallen in love with the Ritz at first sight. It was exactly what he had dreamed it would be, and none of the theatrical magnificence of his suite overlooking the Place Vendôme had ever made him ill at ease. When Sylvia, on first seeing it, had said that the whole thing was ostentatious and expensive, he could not help but remind her that her reaction had been just the same when they went honeymooning at Chieftain Manor. The idea was the same, though their sitting room, all gold and old rose, bore not the slightest resemblance aesthetically or ideologically to The Old Chief. It did not take long, however, for Sylvia to get into the mood of the Ritz, and finally she admitted that the Ritz and its surroundings were magnificent, in an old-regime manner. In fact, the atmosphere was so old-regime that Sylvia was surprised both by the rather peculiar people she occasionally saw at the Ritz and by the excellent plumbing. From the very first minute in their suite, Willis had loved looking out on the Place Vendôme, and he knew now that he would never tire of the prospect. There was no security in France any longer, and yet the Place Vendôme epitomized security. The whole thing was in order. There was balance and reason in the expansive façades surrounding that fine square, all paying constant tribute to the victory column of Napoleon in its center. The calmness of age only added to the enclosed security. Once, sipping cocktails in the June dusk and watching that lovely place, Willis had said jokingly to Sylvia that he supposed she thought Napoleon’s column was ostentatious. She had replied, to his dismay, that, except for Napoleon’s tomb, it was the most ostentatious thing in Paris. Perhaps she was right technically, for the idea of copying Trajan’s column in Rome may have been egocentric, but the bronze décor made from the cannons of Austerlitz was a concept as magnificent as the Ritz itself. The column belonged right where it was, in the middle of the Place Vendôme, even if the buildings around the place were very much older.
The atmosphere of the Place Vendôme was reassuring to Willis when he and Sylvia finally arrived at the Ritz after the painful incident at the Champs Elysées café. The sight of the column reminded Willis that there had been a good many people who had not liked Napoleon, and Napoleon himself had been obliged to make decisions.
“Sweetness,” he said to Sylvia, “will you fix it up with the taxi driver? I don’t feel much like doing mental arithmetic.”
“Why, yes, of course, dear,” Sylvia said. “I’ve got just the right change in my purse.”
He was grateful that Sylvia had not once alluded to his meeting with Bess during their taxi ride. He still felt sick and utterly defeated. He was still thinking that it was inconceivable that Bess Harcourt could retain such power to give him pain; but it would pass. He was sure of this now that he saw the Place Vendôme again. In fact he could come close to imagining that nothing untoward had happened, once they were inside the Ritz. The smiling doorman and the prodigious concierge, who knew everything there was to know about anything, were not unlike the personnel of his own office—efficiency-wise. The Ritz literally was a home away from home. The long Paris twilight was still enough illumination for the suite, more peaceful than the formal glitter of the Louis XVI chandeliers.
“Well, sweetness,” Willis said, “I’m going to ring for a couple of cocktails, because I feel a little tired, what with one thing and another. It’s nice to be back here, isn’t it—even if it’s ostentatious?”
“Yes, dear,” Sylvia said. “I’ve almost forgotten now that it is ostentatious.” She sat down in the gilded armchair that Willis moved near the window for her so that they could both sit side by side and look at the Place Vendôme. “You know I eventually end by loving all the things you love, Willis.”
“That’s a very lovely thing of you to say, darling,” Willis said. “Sweetness, I only wish you and I could be alone here tonight, just looking at the Place Vendôme.”
“Why can’t we, dear?” Sylvia asked.
He was still surprised when Sylvia did not conquer absent-mindedness.
“Don’t you remember, honey?” Willis said. “We have to go out to dinner with those people at that place whose name you don’t like me to pronounce.”
“I do like you to
pronounce it,” Sylvia said. “Go ahead and say it. Please say it, Willis.”
Willis shook his head. The truth was he was not in the mood for French.
“Go ahead and say it, please,” Sylvia said again. “I really think you are doing very well with your French, dear.”
“Sweetness,” Willis told her, “you don’t have to be as loyal to me as that, but I still wish you and I could sit here and not go to that place to dinner.”
Sylvia stood up and kissed the top of his head. It was a gesture that he could not recall her having made before.
“I really don’t see why we have to go, dear,” she said. “They’re only some of those people you met at the convention, and if a couple drops out they can always rearrange the table. If you’ll give me your notebook, I’ll get the concierge to call them for us. Here come the cocktails, dear. You take yours while I call.”
“Well, if you don’t mind, sweetness,” Willis said, “I think perhaps I will start on mine right away.”
He was glad to be alone for the minutes while Sylvia was telephoning, and his gratitude toward her increased, now that she was getting them out of that dinner.
Willis did not want to face a crowd at the moment, let alone a foreign crowd. He wanted to be alone, but at the same time he did not want to think. He wanted to push the ceaseless repetition of the scene at that café from his mind, and stop imagining how he might have acted differently, and what he could have said but did not say. The strange truth, the inescapable fact, was that there was nothing different he could have said. The encounter was one of those things one simply had to take on the chin and absorb the way one absorbed any punishment. Willis could not forget the injustice. That was what hurt the most. After all his years of loyalty to the Harcourts, he could not conceive how Bess could ever have reacted to him in such a way; but then she had, and there was nothing to do but accept it. Given time, only a day or two perhaps, and he could adjust to the fact. The situation was a casualty which was perhaps inevitable, but he had not realized how much he valued the good opinion of the Harcourts. He could not see why the things that Bess said appeared to fall into the category of personal rebuke, which reflected on his own integrity. This was irrational, of course, because he had done absolutely nothing of which he was ashamed. The worst thing Willis had to face was that the whole thing had happened directly in front of Sylvia. Consequently he would have to take the whole thing up with Sylvia. There was no conceivable way of avoiding it.
Sincerely, Willis Wayde Page 54