Sincerely, Willis Wayde (65 page)

“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 beautifully 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.

Mrs. Willis Wayde had seldom appeared in Clyde, but a number of readers in the periodical room of the Clyde Public Library had seen her picture in the Willis Wayde family group on the lawn in front of his house called “Waydeholm” that had appeared in
Fortune
magazine. In fact there had been complaints in the reading room when it was discovered that some reader had abstracted the picture from the pages. At any rate, those who saw the picture said that Mrs. Willis Wayde was very beautiful and quite a lot like Dorothy Lamour, and that she was wearing a diamond bracelet, a diamond clip, and an enormous diamond ring.

When the Wayde family moved to Chicago, and when finally an article appeared in
Town
&
Country
, handsomely illustrated, describing the new Wayde home at Lake Forest recently built by the Chicago architectural firm of Guthrie, Gompers, and Clutch, the myth of Willis Wayde assumed greater stature. In a sense this was a proof of the old adage that absence made the heart grow fonder, but other reasons also could be ascribed to the rise of Clyde interest. Now that no one saw Willis Wayde, it became necessary to draw his character with broader strokes, making still fuller use of the material at hand. Bowker's newsstand on Dock Street sold out its supply of
Town
&
Country
three times over, and might have sold even more if Mr. Bowker had not said he was tired of reordering. But there was also eyewitness evidence, because Howard Twining, the president of Willis's high-school class, who ran Twining's Real Estate and Insurance, had the energy and vision to make a business gamble. He had personally boarded a Chicago plane at Boston's Logan Airport, had flown to Chicago, and had personally called on Willis Wayde at the offices of Simcoe Rubber. The Twining version of the whole meeting may have become garbled but it was, at least, based on fact.

It seemed that Willis had a very large private office that looked out over Lake Michigan, and, believe it or not, Mazie Minton, a Clyde girl herself—and who did not remember Mazie?—was his head private secretary, right up there wearing a gold charm bracelet, with lots of other private secretaries under her. Mazie had received Howard Twining herself in the outer waiting room, it being her duty to screen visitors for Mr. Wayde. She had recognized Howard right away and said it was just like Old Home Week to see him. With a start like that it took almost no time before he was led right up to Willis Wayde's private office, and Willis was very glad to see him too. Willis had remembered Howard Twining very well, although he started in by calling him Harold. As Howard said at the outset, he did not want to take up too much of Willis's time but he had dropped in to have a little talk about life insurance. No matter how much insurance a man had, he could always do with some more, and how about remembering the good times they used to have together at the old Cylde High?

Nothing could have been more gratifying than the reaction of Willis Wayde to these remarks. It showed what everybody knew, that Willis was a man of high caliber who could take time out to be a human being. Willis said of course he remembered the good times they once had at the old Clyde High; and then he began asking about people, calling them all by name. He asked personally for Steve and Winnie Decker. He asked for any news about Miss Minnie Wilson, whom he remembered very well as their room teacher back in Clyde High. He would always have a warm spot—that is to say a lasting and genuine affection—for Miss Minnie Wilson. And he hoped that if she was retired she was comfortable on her pension.

Seriously, those had been great days at school; and he wished he were not so far away from Clyde, because he would have loved to have sweetened some of those old contacts. Unfortunately, the manifold responsibilities of running an organization the size of Simcoe contrived to keep him chained to the Chicago office. For the last few years, frankly, he was only able to keep in touch with the Harcourt Division in New England through correspondence, the telephone, and through memory, but he did know that Hank Knowlton was doing as fine a job as he could under the circumstances. Willis would always have a warm spot—that was to say, a very abiding sentiment, a weakness almost—for the old Harcourt Mill. Well, well, time moved on, didn't it?

When Willis made this remark about time, Howard took him right up on it, saying it was wonderful to have had this visit, but he knew that Willis had every minute occupied, so how about getting back to insurance? At this point, Howard had stated very categorically that he never did think that talking about insurance was an intrusion on friendship. In fact the most friendly thing a man could do was to talk insurance. It was warming to see how heartily Willis responded to that idea. His insurance schedule, he said, was pretty well filled up but he wouldn't mind considering a hundred thousand more in straight life, if only because Howard had come all the way to see him.