Sincerely, Willis Wayde (25 page)

“Thank God,” he had said, “Aunt Ruth is here. She'll know where everybody ought to sit in the church.”

Fifteen minutes after Mr. Bryson had expressed his relief Miss Jackman came in to say that Mrs. Blood wanted him on the telephone and Mr. Bryson asked if she could not call later, because he had to deal with a number of immediate business matters; but Mrs. Blood wanted to speak to him at once, and Willis still remembered the telephone conversation.

“Yes, Aunt Ruth,” Mr. Bryson had said. “Yes, Aunt Ruth … Well, can't Mildred help you about that? … Then why don't you ask Bill? … Or Bess, or somebody else? … No, Aunt Ruth, I can't let you have Willis now. I'm very busy here. There are a great many things that Father hasn't told me.… I said I want Willis to help me here.… Well, all right, if you put it that way, Aunt Ruth, but I want him back in half an hour. There are some people coming from Providence.”

Mr. Bryson's face was red when he hung up the receiver.

“Mrs. Blood wants you at the house for a few minutes, Willis,” he said, “but don't stay any longer than necessary.”

Mr. Jethro, the undertaker from Clyde, and two younger assistants were waiting in the hall of the big house. One of them was Mr. Jethro's son, Cliff, who had attended high school with Willis.

“Do you know, Willis,” Mr. Jethro asked, “who is going to select the casket?”

Willis could only tell him that he would ask Mrs. Blood.

Mrs. Blood was in the library, sitting straight in a stiff-backed chair. In all the years Willis had known her he had never said much to Mrs. Blood, but at some point in their acquaintance Mrs. Blood must have made up her mind about him, and now she seemed to take him as much for granted as though he were Mr. Decker.

“Well, Willis,” she said, “how is Bryson doing?”

“I think he's rather upset, Mrs. Blood,” Willis answered.

“Confused, you mean,” Mrs. Blood said. “Bryson's always confused when anything unexpected happens. Henry always wanted to do everything about everything ever since he was a boy, and now see where we are. Henry should have sold the mill, of course, to that horrid man. What was his name?”

“His name was Mr. Nagel,” Willis said.

It was amazing to hear Mrs. Blood speak so freely, just as though they were relatives and contemporaries, but then everyone was unstrung that day.

“Yes,” she said, “Mr. Nagel. Henry always kept his hand on everything, but he might have realized he couldn't run his own funeral. Did he leave a list of pallbearers with Mr. Decker?”

“No,” Willis answered. “Mr. Decker was just speaking of it.”

Mrs. Blood sighed in an exasperated way.

“It isn't like Henry not to have expressed a few wishes, but then Henry always did ignore facts if they didn't interest him. Well, I've made out a list.” Mrs. Blood picked up a piece of note paper from the table beside her. “You'll find your name on it, Willis. Do you own a cutaway coat?”

“No, Mrs. Blood,” he said.

“Then that man Mr. Jethro will have to get one for you, and I want you to have this list typed and all the people notified.”

“Yes, Mrs. Blood.”

“Then I want you to call up the obituary editor of the
Boston Evening Transcript
. They will have an obituary of Henry already prepared, I'm sure. I want you to ask him to give the details to the Associated Press. Bryson would only forget about it if I were to ask him. That Mr. Jethro is waiting outside, isn't he?”

“Yes, he's outside, Mrs. Blood,” Willis said.

“I suppose Henry knew I'd be here,” Mrs. Blood said. “Well, I am, and Bill has gone to get the clergyman. Mr. Bowles, isn't it? I hate the way he reads the service. I want Mr. Swithin up from Boston. I want you to call Mr. Swithin.”

“Yes, Mrs. Blood,” Willis said, “I'll telephone him right away.”

“I don't know why Harriet should be so upset,” Mrs. Blood said. “She's buried one husband already, and these things have to happen. Mildred and Bess are upstairs with her now. Tell Selwyn I want to see Bess, please, and that will be all for the moment. You'd better get back to Bryson now, and I'll want you this afternoon to help me with the seating at the church.”

Then suddenly Mrs. Blood burst into tears, and it was the last thing that Willis would have expected. It was as though the whole Harcourt place were crumbling when Mrs. Blood began to cry.

Willis met Bess in the passageway just as he left the library, and they both stopped and looked at each other, and then she threw her arms around him.

“Oh, Willis,” she said, “thank God you're here.”

The funeral was held at two o'clock on Thursday at Saint John's Church in Clyde. Willis stood by the door with Mr. Roger Harcourt and Bill and two of the Haywards, in his rented cutaway that was tight underneath his arms. He had memorized the arrangements and he was the one who had whispered to the others where the family and friends should sit and pointed out the foremen from the mill and employees of over twenty years' standing. He had never before heard the words of the Episcopal service—“I am the resurrection and the life” and “In my father's house are many mansions”—words that were like a wave that finally covered Mr. Harcourt and all his life. He followed the casket again into the April daylight and finally stood by the open grave gazing at the granite stones of the other Harcourts. Afterwards he was asked with the other ushers and the family to the house, and he remembered the gathering in the living room, which Mr. Harcourt would have enjoyed, especially because everyone was obviously thinking of the provisions of the will.

Actually the will had been surprisingly simple, since Mr. Harcourt had made provision for his issue long ago, and had transferred large blocks of the mill stock to Mr. Bryson, Bill and Bess. After a series of bequests to charities and to the servants, the remainder of his estate, including his house on the Harcourt place, was left to his widow under trust for her lifetime. There was only one provision that was peculiar. Mr. Harcourt's remaining holdings in the mill were left to her outright.

Willis imagined that Mr. Bryson and the other members of the family must have been surprised by this, but Mr. Bryson never showed it. The mill, as Mr. Bryson stated in a letter to the stockholders, would continue under his direction in accordance with tradition and with his father's expressed wish.

“Willis,” he said, “I want you to be in the same position with me that you were with Father. I've been rather out of touch with things, but you'll back me up, won't you?”

“Yes, sir,” Willis said. “I'll do the best I can.”

“I'm going to try to induce Mr. Roger Harcourt to advise me with the management,” Mr. Bryson said. “Roger has a very good head for business.”

Willis knew even then that it was a ridiculous way to divide authority. If he had been thirty-five or even thirty, he could have told Mr. Bryson what he thought, but not when he was in his early twenties.

“You're the boss, Mr. Harcourt,” he said.

Mr. Bryson slapped him on the back.

“Don't say it that way, Willis,” he said. “You and I are old friends. If you were only older, I'd ask you instead of Roger to help me out, but you can help us both.”

“Yes, sir,” Willis said. “I'll do anything I can.”

That ensuing year at the Harcourt Mill was a history of confusion and diminishing profits, and all sense of security was gone. In June, the week before the stockholders' meeting, Mrs. Harcourt asked Willis up to tea.

“Willis,” she asked, “how do you think Bryson is doing?”

Of course Willis could not give her a true answer.

“I'm so confused,” she said. “Roger was here yesterday and he was so depressing about Bryson. He says we ought to sell the mill. Bryson won't hear of it, but Roger says with his stock and mine we can make him. What do you think, Willis?”

He told her that business was bad—not only at the mill but everywhere else—but the mill was a modern, well-coordinated plant which controlled patents whose value would increase rather than diminish. There might be a cut in the dividend this year, as a purely precautionary measure, but there was a large cash surplus, and ample working capital placed the mill in a strong position in case of future crises.

“Willis, dear,” Mrs. Harcourt had said, “it's such a comfort to hear you say this. It's just what Bryson told me.”

Of course it was what Mr. Bryson had told her, because it was what Willis had told Mr. Bryson, and it was just what Mr. Harcourt would have said if he had been alive.

Summer moved into autumn and business still grew worse. Autumn moved into winter, and because of falling orders the mill was operating at half-time, and there was a cut in the office force in January. Any organization, as Willis knew now, should have its second team ready to take over in case of sudden change, but there were simply no substitutes at the Harcourt Mill ready to move in and close the ranks, because Mr. Harcourt's efforts to infuse new blood had come too late and Mr. Bryson and Mr. Roger had been utterly unprepared. There was only one thing that saved the situation. Mr. Henry Harcourt had always been conservative in paying dividends, and thus for years some of the earnings had gone into surplus. As the Harcourt Mill entered the depression, its cash reserve was so large that its directors could have voted dividends for several years if the mill had not earned a cent. The surplus had been large enough to carry subsequent loss, but watching Mr. Bryson in the office was like watching an unskilled artist endeavoring to finish the canvas of a master, and Willis winced at every bungling stroke. In February Mr. Bryson lost the Haverford account. In February Mr. Hewett announced that he was retiring, and a week later Mr. Briggs quarreled with Mr. Bryson and handed in his resignation. It was all right, Mr. Bryson said. He never could control Briggs, but the trouble was that Mr. Bryson never could assume leadership.

On March 2, 1931—a date that Willis never forgot—he found a letter from Bess Harcourt on his desk with the other morning mail. He remembered that he had wished to open it at once but he had no opportunity to open it until a quarter before nine, and he remembered glancing into Mr. Harcourt's office first, to see whether Mr. Bryson had arrived yet, but Mr. Bryson had not come in. Willis was pleased to see that it was a longish letter.

Dear Willis,

It's been quite a long while since we've seen each other, hasn't it? So much has been happening that I want to talk to you about, and Mother has been so busy with plans that we haven't been down to the country for ages. Willis, dear, I know I ought to say this to you instead of writing but I do want you to hear my news first instead of learning it from someone else. This is a sort of a hard letter to write, Willis, dear. I don't seem to understand how this all happened myself, because it happened so suddenly that it's left me all of a heap. I keep trying to think how to say it. Well, I guess I'll have to say it in any old way.

Willis, dear, I'm going to get married, and there it is. Edward Ewing asked me to marry him yesterday. I wonder whether this surprises you as much as it did me. Of course I've seen a lot of Edward but somehow I never really expected it. If I had, I promise you I would have told you. I never knew until he asked me that it must have been what I always wanted. Anyway, it's the answer to everything for me. I never thought that I could be so happy.

I'm so happy that I want everybody else to be, particularly you. I seem to care more about you than I ever did, but in a different way. I know nothing would have worked with you and me, and maybe you'll understand what I mean. I want us both to be happy. It isn't going to be announced until next week. Edward and I are coming down then and we both want to see you. Edward likes you very much—he really does.…

Willis put the letter in his pocket, meaning to read the rest of it later, but he never got around to it. He felt no immediate sense of shock; he felt perfectly cool and self-possessed but at the same time he was no longer a part of the Harcourt Mill, and he did not seem to feel either glad or sorry. He was aware of no particular resentment. He only knew that he was not the same person that he had been before he read that letter.

It was strange how everything sometimes happened all at once. What occurred was sheer coincidence but the result would have been the same in any case. Willis had put Bess Harcourt's letter in his pocket, and just then his desk telephone rang. It was his father calling.

“Say, Willis,” his father said, “has Bryson come in yet?”

“No, not yet,” Willis said.

“Have you got his engagement calendar? I'd like to have ten minutes with him. Maybe I won't need as much as that.”

“Yes,” Willis said, “I've got it here. You can see him at ten-fifteen.”

“That'll do,” Alfred Wayde said. “Have you got a minute, Willis?”

“Yes,” he said, “I've got plenty of time.”

“Then come up here,” Alfred Wayde said. “I want to see you.”

His father was sitting in his office in the engineering department, which, except for a draftsman, was empty, since the bright young engineers from Technology had been discharged several months ago because of declining business. Alfred Wayde had never wanted a private office, but Mr. Henry Harcourt had insisted on it, and he was sitting alone in it now in front of his bare drawing table, gazing at a projection he had drawn of Building 3 that was tacked on the wall in front of him. He was in his shirt sleeves as usual, smoking his briar pipe.

“Well, sit down, boy,” Alfred Wayde said, “but before you do, open the upper lefthand drawer of my desk. You'll find a bottle of prescription rye in there. I keep it for visitors usually, but I'll have a little myself right now.”

The bottle was nearly full, and Willis handed it to his father without speaking.

“Willis,” he said, “when I see you in your God-damned pressed pants, it makes me pleased that I haven't always lived right. I don't suppose you'd like a pull off of this, would you? Bryson might smell it on your breath.”