Sincerely, Willis Wayde (10 page)

“Gosh,” she said. “You're twice as strong as Bill. I know a place where we can hide and see them through the banisters, at the head of the stairs. I did it last year.”

He was sure he would not have gone if she had not said that he was twice as strong as Bill.

The front door stood open but there was no one in the hall, and there were flowers at the foot of the staircase, banks of flowers, and not a sound except in the kitchen and the dining room. Willis could almost believe they were invisible as they tiptoed through the house.

“Look at the drinks in the library,” Bess whispered, “but those are only Grandfather's second-best cigars. He never has his best ones for Cousin Roger and the Haywards. Look at the dining room. All the cut glass is out. When they start eating we can stand here and watch.”

The dining-room table was stretched its full length and there were turkeys and whole hams on the serving table beside the pantry door and heavy lace tablecloths and the green Chinese place plates, but the cut glass was what Willis recalled most clearly—that heavy, ornate glass of another age, a tumbler and three wine glasses beside each plate, glittering like ice in that silent room.

“It's handsome,” Willis whispered.

“They always have it for the meeting,” Bess whispered back. “I was going to have it some day, before he got married again.”

Then Bess drew a quick sharp breath.

“Hurry,” she whispered. “They're coming,” and she reached for his hand. “Hurry.”

Then he heard the sound of wheels on the gravel driveway, and he and Bess seemed to be like people in a dream. She was still holding his hand as they ran on tiptoe down the hall.

“The wisteria never looked better,” he heard a man's voice say.

“Hurry,” Bess whispered. “Upstairs, hurry!”

In a second they reached the balustrade of the upstairs passageway that looked down on the hall below. There was a casement window on the left and a small niche beside the window which gave access to the window and nothing more.

“Here,” Bess whispered.

It was not a bad place to hide, affording just room for them to sit close together on the floor and to peer through the banisters.

“This is it,” Bess whispered, and she still held his hand.

The whole house had suddenly become alive. Mr. Henry Harcourt had appeared, and Mrs. Harcourt was with him. They were standing near the foot of the staircase, and Willis never knew how they had arrived there so quickly. He could hear Mr. Harcourt's voice.

“Roger,” he was saying, “I'm not sure whether you have met your Aunt Harriet.”

He was speaking to a stout middle-aged man whose hair was so closely cropped that you could see the pink of his scalp beneath. He was so fat that he should have had the conventional jolly expression, but instead his round face had a petulant look and his voice had a precise and fluty quality.

“No, Uncle Henry,” the fat man answered, “I haven't had the pleasure. Welcome to the family, Aunt Harriet.”

“That's Cousin Roger,” Bess whispered in his ear. “He owns a lot of stock.”

“Didn't Catherine come with you?” Mr. Harcourt said. “Oh, here she is. I don't believe you've met your new Aunt Harriet, Catherine. This is Roger's wife, my dear.”

A tall lady with bony wrists and gaunt rangy shoulders came into Willis's line of vision.

“I've been looking forward to it,” she said, “dear Uncle Henry.”

“That's Cousin Catherine,” Bess whispered. “She's nasty, and their children are nasty.”

“And here's Will Burnham,” Mr. Harcourt said. “But you remember Will, don't you, Harriet?”

“He's the president of Grandfather's bank,” Bess whispered. “So he doesn't count, and there's old Decker, with spots all over his coat. He doesn't count much either.”

The hall was filled with people now, shaking hands with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Harcourt and then moving toward the living room.

“Selwyn has cocktails for us in the library,” Mr. Harcourt was saying.

“There come Mummy and Daddy,” Bess whispered. “There must have been a fight at the meeting. You can tell because Daddy's laughing too much. And here come the Haywards, sticking together as usual. Grandfather bought most of their stock anyway, but Daddy says they never miss a free meal. Everybody hates the Haywards.”

“Doesn't anybody like anybody else?” Willis whispered.

“Of course not,” Bess whispered back, “except when they take sides in a fight.”

“Hello, Ruth,” Mr. Harcourt said, smiling at Mrs. Blood.

“Will there be green-turtle soup for lunch as usual?” Mrs. Blood asked.

If they did not like each other Willis could see that there were bonds which held them together, so that, confronted by a common danger, they would stand together against a stranger. They were proud that they were Harcourts and proud of their dislikes.

The group in the hall was growing smaller.

“Only distant cousins are left now,” Bess whispered. “I don't know why Grandfather wastes his time with them.”

But Mr. Harcourt was always the same with everyone. He seemed to be having a delightful time. He seemed to be particularly pleased to see each one again.

Finally Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt stood alone near the foot of the stairs, and Mr. Harcourt's glance traveled slowly around the empty front hall.

“Well, my dear,” Mr. Harcourt said, “I think that's the lot—the white man's burden, you know—and we won't have to do it again for a year. By the way, Harriet, don't forget that I shall say grace.”

“Grace, Henry?” Mrs. Harcourt repeated.

“It's a custom my father started,” Mr. Harcourt said. “It won't hurt any of them to remember God and to thank Him that He has allowed me to look after their interests.”

“Don't be sacrilegious, Henry,” Mrs. Harcourt said.

“I'm not,” Mr. Harcourt answered. “There's a bonus check beneath every one of their plates, you know. They can't wait to get in to lunch to see how much it is.”

“Henry,” Mrs. Harcourt said, “you look tired.”

“It's always a strain handling damn fools,” Mr. Harcourt said, “particularly one's flesh and blood. Let's go and look at them, Harriet.”

They turned and walked away toward the living room, and Willis moved uneasily but Bess shook her head.

“Don't,” she whispered, “don't move. Here's Grandfather coming back.”

She had seen him before Willis had. He came walking across the empty hall with his quick, deliberate step, holding a cocktail glass. He paused near the open front door for a moment and then he began walking slowly up the stairs.

“He must be going to the bathroom,” Bess whispered.

Willis thought that it was a most indelicate remark. They could see him walking up the stairs, but when he reached the upper hall, they could only hear his footsteps moving nearer. Then they heard his voice right beside them.

“You can come out now,” he said. “The show is over.”

Willis heard Bess give a sharp gasp as he struggled to his feet. Mr. Harcourt was standing just in front of the niche that led to the window.

“It's all right,” he said. “I noticed you up there,” and then he laughed. “I wished several times that I could be up there with you. Come here and kiss me, Bess. You're getting big enough to kiss.”

“Oh, Grandfather, don't be silly,” Bess said, and she giggled.

“It was quite a show, wasn't it?” Mr. Harcourt said. “I used to watch it from here myself. In those days they had stovepipe hats and Prince Alberts. Now if I were you two, I'd sneak down to the kitchen and tell Mary to give you some food. If she's cross, tell her it's my orders, Bess.”

“Oh, Grandfather,” Bess said, “you're awfully sweet.”

“Sweet as sugar,” Mr. Harcourt said. “Well, Willis.”

Mr. Harcourt's lower lip was motionless.

“Yes, sir?” Willis said.

“Well, you've seen the family,” Mr. Harcourt said. “It may help you when you come to work for me next Monday. I'm putting you under old Bill Jackson in Building 1. Beginning Monday you and I will both be working for those people.”

He laughed and walked away.

“Gosh,” Bess said, “I thought that he'd be angry.”

Willis had half forgotten Bess, in his realization that he was no longer a stranger but a retainer of the great house. Mr. Harcourt had as good as told him so. He would have followed Mr. Harcourt anywhere, or died for him.

V

In later years, like any other successful man at the head of a growing organization, Willis was naturally sympathetic with people having problems similar to his, and he could hardly help but make all sorts of interesting contacts at conventions and business luncheons, which he cultivated as assiduously as a farmer cultivated his crop, with Christmas cards and notes at suitable intervals. If you had a good secretary, she would tell you, for instance, that it was about time to write to Mr. Charles Bottomly, the president of the Plywood and Binder Company in Wilmington, California.

“Dear Chuck,” you would write. “How's it on the Coast? Long time no see. Huey Jenks from the Guaranty was around here yesterday, and he says the job you're doing out there is terrific. Are you coming East to the NAM?

“Please find enclosed a little verse about Truman and the music critic that's going the rounds here, in case you haven't seen it yet. Well, long time no see, but give my regards to Clara and the kids, in which Mrs. Wayde joins me, even if she hasn't had the pleasure of meeting them. Sincerely, as always.”

You never could tell when a little bread cast upon the waters might pay off. It never hurt to have too many friends doing the same sort of thing you were. Willis had told many of them a lot about himself over drinks in hotel suites, in corners of clubs and on golf courses, and a lot of them had told Willis a lot about themselves in return—of what they thought about so-and-so, about their yachts, about their hobbies, and their tastes in women and liquor and automobiles. This sort of thing was the currency of business friendship.

There was one thing Willis always noticed about all these friends. When they touched on their own careers and their own adventures in free enterprise, they usually began to deal in vague generalities. It was not that these people had anything to conceal. It was only that the average business life—one's hours and years in plants and offices and conference rooms—was too personal to be explained fully. None of these events were dull to one who lived them but none had much value for anyone else. At least Willis knew that this was true with him.

He was almost seventeen the first summer he worked at the Harcourt Mill, and his days behind the fence had nothing much to do with his leisure time. He was only tired at night and very hungry. He was there to learn and he had learned better than the average. He worked with some others of his schoolmates that summer as a helper in Building 1, and then as an assistant checker in the warehouse. Steve Decker had started with him that summer, because Steve's father had wanted him to learn the business too, but Steve had developed a bad cough and had to quit after a month of it. Willis was never good with machinery but he learned how to work with the rest of the repair gang and by the end of summer he knew the whole process in Building 1 pretty thoroughly. The next summer, after he graduated from high school, he went through Buildings 2 and 3, and later, when Mr. Hewett put him in to help in the sales office, Willis had a good knowledge of the whole plant, or a base, at any rate, on which his experience could build. He always possessed an instinct which enabled him to see the whole in spite of all the complicated parts. He could even see that the finished product of the Harcourt Mill was itself only a part of something larger.

He had begun to learn, even when he was a worker in Building 1, that it was possible to hire someone to do almost anything, and that no one could do everything himself. The secret was to know enough to understand what specialists must do, and some people could never learn that secret. Mr. Hewett, for example, knew only part of it, and Mr. Edward Briggs, the sales manager, knew only another part, but someone like Mr. Harcourt could hold it all together. Very few people seemed to learn that the whole was greater than any of its parts. Minds stopped in the Harcourt Mill, lost at some stage in the process, and if your mind once stopped you stayed right where you were—in Building 1 or Building 2, or in the outer office. It may have been luck or it may have been ability that made Willis move further forward.

If his detailed knowledge of belting and the part that belting might play in an industrial plant finally impressed a good many other people, he knew now that he could thank his father for this familiarity. By the time that Willis began working summers at the Harcourt Mill, Alfred Wayde knew every shaft and machine by heart. Moreover he was able to put his finger on the basic problems and the critical spots. In fact the Harcourt plant had grown so simple to Alfred Wayde that he was beginning to become bored with it, and his mind was constantly occupied in theoretical devices for cutting down on labor. Men made mistakes, he used to say, but machinery never. He was ashamed that a boy of his was not as smart as he was with machinery. He used to say, by God, that he would ram a little practical sense into Willis if it took ten years. He didn't want the shop foremen to laugh at his son. He was always ready to go over and over with Willis the basic principles and the details of the machinery. Willis could still remember his father's voice shouting simple facts about cogs and gears above the noise of machines. There was a relentless pressure about Alfred Wayde that finally made it impossible not to learn something, and Willis felt deep gratitude after a lapse of years.

He never expressed this gratitude to his father until a long while afterwards, not until the year 1948, to be accurate, when Alfred Wayde was retired and living in Southern California. Willis had gone to the Coast on a quick business trip by air, and his friend Ralph Schultz, vice president of Hocking Aircraft, with whom Willis had been doing some business, had asked him up to his house for dinner. When Willis had told Ralph that he could not make it because he had arranged to have supper with his father and mother, who were living in one of those new developments near San Bernardino, Ralph had insisted that Willis take a company car and a driver. It was late afternoon when Willis got to the development, called Canyon del Oro.