Sincerely, Willis Wayde (24 page)

There was only starlight, but both of them knew the place by heart, and if it had been pitch dark they could have found their way to any part of it. They walked down the drive to the third large beech tree, which rose in front of them like a still cloud, and then diagonally across the lawn toward the woods and the path by the brook.

“Willis,” Bess said, “I do wish I understood you better. I want to try. I really do.”

“I'm not much of a puzzle,” he told her. “You ought to know that by now.”

“Then put your arm around me,” she said. “It always helps when you do that.”

When he put his arm around her, he remembered the other times when they had been alone at night together, but they had never seemed to be so alone as they were then.

“Willis, tell me what you want,” she said. “Everybody must want something and you've never told me—never.”

“Well,” he said, “it's pretty hard to say it all at once. I guess I want to get along. Maybe that's what everybody wants, but you don't have to want it as much as I do, I suppose.”

“That's a stupid thing to want.” Her voice was very low and so close to him that it sounded like his thoughts as her hair brushed against his cheek. “Do you ever think about me, Willis?” Her hair brushed against his cheek again.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course I do.”

“I think about you, too,” she said, “all sorts of times when I don't expect it.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I wish I weren't so afraid,” she said.

He held her closer to him. “Afraid of what?” he asked.

“Of what's going to happen to all of us, but I've told you that before. You remember, don't you?”

“Yes,” he said, “I remember, but there's nothing to be afraid of, Bess.”

“Willis”—her voice was almost a whisper—“did Grandfather say anything about me today?”

“Yes,” he said, “a little.”

“Well, what?” she asked him. “What?”

“He said you were looking very pretty.”

They did not speak for a while but their thoughts were very close together.

“I think he'd like to have us get married,” she said. Everything inside Willis seemed to stop. “It would be awfully queer, wouldn't it?”

“Why would it be?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she said. “It just would be.… Willis?”

“Yes?” he said. “What is it, Bess?”

“I'm awfully glad you're here, and I don't want you to go away. You mustn't go away.”

“I won't if you don't want me to,” he told her. “I love you. Do you love me, Bess?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Oh, Willis, I don't know.”

“Don't you know at all?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “sometimes. I do right now, but let's not talk about it now, as long as I know you're here.”

Then he saw the lights of the Bryson Harcourt house in front of him. There were cars on the driveway, and there were people. He could hear their voices on the terrace.

“Willis,” she said, “let's not go in right now.”

He called up Bess the next morning from the mill and her mother answered the telephone. Bess had left that morning, she told him, to visit her school friend Mary Adams, at Seal Harbor. She would be away for a week. Hadn't Bess told him she was going? He could almost believe that none of it had happened when he saw Bess again.

“Willis,” she said when she saw him again, “let's not talk about it now. You know there's lots of time.”

Of course he thought there was, when summer changed to autumn in 1929. He was behind the bulwark of the Harcourts then, protected from the financial repercussions of that autumn, too young to understand their significance, just as Mr. Harcourt was perhaps too old. The Harcourt Mill had lived through other grim readjustments, beginning with the great depression that had followed the Civil War. Besides, there was an upturn after the initial market crash, and although there was a slackening of business, as Mr. Harcourt had foreseen, there was no demoralizing slide. Willis never realized until everything was over that he and the Harcourts and all the fabric of life around them had been moving through a period of catastrophic change, because everything had seemed to be going on a fixed and even course. Yet when everything around him had appeared most tangible, the Harcourt Mill and the Harcourt place had been losing substance. He was like someone in the cabin of a ship, absorbed in the immediacy of pressing business while the ship was leaving land. The Willis Wayde who had known Bess Harcourt was back there in the distance, and suddenly he was alone and the Harcourt place was gone.

XII

Mr. Henry Harcourt died on the eighth of April, 1930. Willis could never forget his incredulity when he heard the news, and he saw the reflection of his own surprise on the faces of everyone else. It was a surprise that rose in one slowly, like high tide. Selwyn had called the garden house at half past seven in the morning, and Willis had answered the telephone himself. Mr. Harcourt had passed away quietly in his sleep. Mr. Bryson and Mr. Bill were already at the house, and Mr. Bryson wanted Mr. Willis to come over as soon as possible.

The weather that day was more like early March than April—damp and cold and misty. The mist had made his face wet and drops of water were falling from the bare wisteria vines on the porch of the big house. It was his imagination, of course, that there was an emptiness in the big house which had never been there before—something that was palpable and startlingly impressive. He rang the doorbell, but when he did so he remembered that Mr. Harcourt had told him that there was never any need to ring it, and a lump rose in his throat. It was a dark morning, and the hall lights were on, giving the impression that it was still night outside.

“Mrs. Harcourt is upstairs, sir,” Selwyn said. “It is a shock to Madam, and he was so well yesterday.”

Mr. Bryson and Bill were in the drawing room. Willis had never seen Bill look so pale and he had never seen Mr. Bryson so upset. When Mr. Bryson spoke, his voice choked and he had to stop and begin his speech again.

“I loved him,” he said, “and I know you loved him too. I don't know what we'll do without him.”

Mr. Bryson was the head of the family now, but he had a bewildered look.

“There's a lot we've got to do,” he said, “and I don't know where to begin. You've got to help us, Willis.”

He did not sound like Mr. Henry Harcourt, but then he never had, and Willis could not help thinking that Mr. Harcourt would have been amused. He could almost see Mr. Harcourt touching his lower lip when Mr. Bryson had said he did not know where to begin.

“Is the doctor here?” Willis asked.

“The doctor?” Mr. Bryson said. “Yes, Selwyn called Dr. Carter at once. I can't understand why he isn't here now.”

“He'll be here, Father,” Bill said. “He was out on a call and they're trying to reach him.”

“Yes, that's right,” Mr. Bryson said. “I remember now. I don't suppose there's much to do until he comes. Let me see. Where's your mother, Bill?”

“She's upstairs, Father,” Bill said, “with Grandmother Harriet.”

“Have you called Mr. Decker, sir?” Willis asked.

“Decker?” Mr. Bryson said. “Why, no, and of course I should have called him. Bill, go and call up Mr. Decker.”

“Yes, Father,” Bill said.

“Ask him to come as soon as he can. There'll be all the arrangements, and the press should be notified, shouldn't it? But Decker can help us with that. I'm sorry I can't seem to keep things straight at the moment. What else ought we to do?”

“Perhaps I ought to go down to the mill, sir,” Willis said. “Perhaps there ought to be some sort of notice posted.”

“That's true,” Mr. Bryson said. “Thank you, Willis. Tell Mr. Hewett, and wait for me in Father's office.”

“Yes, sir,” Willis said.

“My car's outside. Have it take you down,” Mr. Bryson said, “and then send it back. I'll join you there, Willis, with Mr. Decker.” He stopped and his voice choked. “I keep thinking how much better Father would do all this.”

The news had reached the mill before Willis arrived there. Old Pete Sullivan, the day watchman, was wiping his eyes with a blue bandanna handkerchief. Miss Minton, at the reception desk, was crying, and there was nothing that Willis could say to comfort her. Miss Jackman was in tears too, and her tears wilted her like a melting candle.

“And he was right here yesterday,” she kept saying. “He was so well yesterday.”

In fact Mr. Harcourt's office looked as though he might be arriving at any moment, with a coal fire burning in the grate, and all the papers on his desk in order, and his appointments for the day written on his calendar. For a moment Willis stood irresolutely in Mr. Harcourt's office, trying to face the facts, and he was aware that he was in a peculiar position. He was only Mr. Harcourt's assistant, but at the same time he represented the Harcourt family until Mr. Bryson should arrive, and until that time he was obliged to give directions in Mr. Bryson's name.

“Perhaps you'd better tell Mr. Hewett that Mr. Bryson will be here in a few minutes,” he said, “and ask him if he'd mind coming up here now. Then open the safe and bring in Mr. Harcourt's private files.”

It was the first time in his life that he had ever deliberately assumed authority. For a few minutes, at least, he was the head of the Harcourt Mill, and he knew better than Mr. Hewett what Mr. Harcourt would have wanted. He was glad that Mr. Hewett did not resent his being sent for.

“Mr. Bryson wanted us all to meet up here,” Willis said, “instead of in your office, sir.”

“All right, Willis,” Mr. Hewett said. “This is a shock for everyone. Poor old H.H. I've never worked for anyone but old H.H.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment and both of them must have had a vision of Mr. Bryson sitting in Mr. Harcourt's chair.

“How's Bryson taking it?” Mr. Hewett asked.

“He's very much upset, sir,” Willis said. “Of course it was very sudden.”

“I wish this hadn't happened when business was sliding off,” Mr. Hewett said. “Bryson's pretty out of touch with things. Well, we've all got to help him.”

“Yes, sir,” Willis said.

“I've always told old H.H. that he ought to use Bryson more,” Mr. Hewett said, and he seemed to forget Willis's age at the moment. “There's no one to take over except me, and I've never been in the front office. We ought to get Briggs down, and we've got to get your father down. Miss Jackman, send for Mr. Briggs and Mr. Wayde. Let's see, what else ought we to do?”

Willis was not used to indecision, because it had not existed in Mr. Harcourt's time.

“Perhaps we'd better get a notice ready,” he said. “I'll try to dictate one, sir, and we should prepare telegrams to the stockholders and the family. Then Mr. Harcourt had customers coming up from Providence this morning.”

“You'd better see them,” Mr. Hewett said. “Bryson won't want to and he won't know anything about it. There ought to be some telegram signed by Bryson, and I suppose there'll have to be a stockholders' meeting.”

The mill's balance and equilibrium were lost already, and it seemed to Willis that he, and not Mr. Hewett, was doing the thinking. Mr. Briggs was of very little help.

“All right, boy wonder,” Mr. Briggs kept saying. “Let the boy wonder do it.”

Willis had never got on well with Mr. Briggs and he had never been so aware of Mr. Briggs's limitations. He was glad when his father intervened.

“Oh, shut up, Briggs,” he said. “The boy's doing the best he can. Maybe it's lucky we've got somebody—even a boy wonder.”

“Well, it's a damned funny situation,” Mr. Briggs said. “I always told H.H. he should have got somebody older.”

“Yes, it's a damned funny situation,” Alfred Wayde said, “but Hewett and I can run the works for the time being, and maybe you'd better try to sell belts for the time being. I haven't seen you selling any lately.”

“What do you mean ‘for the time being'?” Mr. Briggs asked.

“Exactly what I say,” Mr. Wayde answered. “I mean this is purely temporary.”

“Now, boys,” Mr. Hewett said. “Now, boys, we've got to pull together.”

Everything was under reasonable control when Mr. Bryson finally arrived with Mr. Decker. Mr. Hewett outlined the various steps they had been taking, and Mr. Bryson sat in his father's chair and gazed at the portraits on the wall.

“Alfred,” he said, “I'd just as soon you wouldn't smoke that pipe in here. Father always hated pipes.”

“I'm sorry,” Alfred Wayde said, “he never told me so. Well, I'd better be going now. The crane's broken down in Number Three.”

“We've all got to pull together,” Mr. Bryson said, “and I hope we'll make a good team, but I haven't got much mind for details today, what with all the—the arrangements.”

“That's all right, Bryson,” Mr. Decker said. “We'll take care of everything. I guess I'd better see your father's papers.”

Then Mr. Briggs said that he had better go upstairs, and Mr. Hewett said that he had better be going but he would be on hand when he was needed. Mr. Decker was the one who gave a final O.K. on the notices and telegrams while Mr. Bryson sat doing almost nothing.

“You know,” Mr. Bryson said, “I'm not good for much here today. Willis, you know better than anyone what Father was doing. I authorize you to run the office today just the way he would have run it. Just let me know if anything important comes up. Mr. Decker and I will be very busy.”

It was obviously a great relief to everyone when Mr. Harcourt's sister, Mrs. Blood, drove out from Boston. She had Mr. Harcourt's lightness of touch, and his air of arrogant indestructibility, but instead of his kindness she had a cold, impersonal compassion. She was like one of the Fates in Greek mythology, the lady with the shears who cut the thread, or she might have been like Penelope, who was always making a tapestry in the daytime and destroying it at night. At any rate Willis remembered what Mr. Bryson had said when he heard that Mrs. Blood was at the house.