Sincerely, Willis Wayde (64 page)

“He's asking if there's anything new at the office,” Mrs. Harcourt said.

“Nothing that isn't first-rate news,” Willis answered, and he found himself speaking loudly. “Everything is under control until you get back with us.”

Then Mr. Bryson's speech grew clearer, or perhaps Willis had become accustomed to it.

“How was the golf at Pinehurst?”

The question made a lump rise in Willis's throat.

“Pretty good, considering,” Willis answered.

He could not get Mr. Bryson's next question, but Mrs. Harcourt did.

“He wants to know what you went around in,” Mrs. Harcourt said. Though Mr. Bryson was lingering in the shadows, he still wanted to know about the golf.

“Well,” Willis said, “I got a ninety-one on Course Two but I took three strokes getting out of the trap on the tenth. That's a very tricky hole, the tenth.”

Half of Mr. Bryson's face was like a mask but the other half followed every word.

“Which trap?”

“The first on the right, sir,” Willis answered. “The deep one.” He laughed. “It was like being in the crater of a volcano, taking those three strokes.”

A minute or so later Mrs. Harcourt nodded meaningfully to Willis.

“It's great to see you, sir,” Willis said, “and I'll be looking in again sometime very shortly. Now don't worry about the office. Everything's all right.”

Mrs. Harcourt walked down with him to the front door.

“Oh, Willis,” she said, “we all thank God that you're here looking after everything.” He had never felt so close to Mrs. Harcourt.

“Believe me,” Willis told her, “I'll always do the best I can, the very best for everyone.”

He was always glad that he had made this promise to Mrs. Harcourt, and he believed that he had kept it. All anyone could do was do one's best.

All that day left an impression of hurry, but there was plenty of time between appointments. It was only his mind that was hurried. There were fifteen minutes to spare, when he reached the office, before Bill and Bess could possibly arrive, plenty of time to compose his thoughts, but there was still that sense of haste.

“Hank,” he said to Hank Knowlton, “when Mrs. Ewing and Mr. Bill Harcourt are here, keep me off the telephone. And I wish you'd find out where I can reach Mr. P. L. Nagel in Chicago, because I may want to speak to him after they are gone.”

It was almost like letting the cat out of the bag to mention P. L. Nagel, but then Hank Knowlton was reliable.

“If it gets to be after five o'clock,” Willis said, “send everybody home except Nancy at the switchboard, and I wish you'd stay too, Hank. There may be something I want to take up with you.”

There was no use telling him what it was, because Hank was pretty good at educated guessing.

Actually the meeting with Bill and Bess had not been nearly as difficult as Willis had anticipated. Although of course there had been the emotional strain and the sentiment about the Harcourt Mill, it had been a warm and friendly meeting, with kindness and sympathy on every side, a sympathy which was intensified by his call on Mr. Bryson, because Willis was still distressed when he saw Bill and Bess.

“Well, well, Bess,” he said, “how lovely you look this afternoon.”

There was always something fresh and out-of-doors about her, although she never had the taste for clothes that Sylvia had, and Bess was not careful of her weight like Sylvia.

“Oh, Willis,” Bess said, and she kissed him and clung to him for a moment and he was as touched as he was surprised, “isn't it dreadfully sad?”

“Yes, Bess, dear, it is,” Willis said, “but your mother's wonderful.”

“She is wonderful,” Bill said, “and so is Father. He shows a lot of sportsmanship, I think.”

“That's very true, Bill,” Willis said. “You know, he asked about my golf score down at Pinehurst.”

“Did he?” Bill said. “Well, that's just like him.”

Everything they had said was simple, but taken together their words wove themselves into a fabric of genuine affection.

“Your mother,” Willis said, and he was aware of a catch in his voice, “said a very sweet thing to me just as I was leaving, something I shall never forget—‘We all thank God,' she said, ‘that you're looking out for everything.'”

“We do, Willis,” Bess said. “We really do.”

It was the real Bess speaking, without mockery, that afternoon. In fact they all of them were at their very best.

“Well,” Willis said, “I'm glad it's that way, and I'm glad we all know each other well enough to trust each other—but let's all sit down, and, Bill, if anybody wants a drink, there's everything in that portable bar there. Do you remember how tickled your father was with that portable bar?”

There was a proper interlude of small talk, when Bill said that he would like a Martini cocktail and that he would make it, and Bess said she would like a bourbon on the rocks. Who was it he had seen last who drank bourbon on the rocks? Willis remembered that it had been Mr. P. L. Nagel.

“I hope you noticed the flowers on the desk,” Willis said. “I want to tell you who thought of that little touch, because I think it's rather moving—Nellie Bailey.”

“Why, that's sweet of her,” Bess said.

“I think so too,” Willis answered. “Fresh flowers every day.” He paused and cleared his throat. “You know, I'm glad I called at Beacon Street before I saw you, because now I'm pretty sure that what I have to say will relieve you, Bill, and you too, Bess, of a lot of worry. I may as well be terse about it. One of the largest belting companies in the country wants to buy Harcourt Associates—the Simcoe Company to be exact. It's located in the Midwest, in case you don't remember. The offer's in the neighborhood of twenty-five million dollars. I know what you're thinking, Bess, but don't interrupt me. I think we ought to sell to them and I want to tell you why.”

The art of persuasion, Willis believed, was the very keystone of American business and the basis of American industrial prestige, and he was never more convinced of its importance than during his talk with Bill and Bess. Without exaggeration, never in his life had he so keenly wanted two people to understand and sympathize with his point of view and to agree with his conclusions. It would have been unthinkable to have quarreled after so many years. It was a time for a sincere interchange of reaction, a time when every question must be answered.

The strength of his approach, as he talked to Bill and Bess, lay in his sincere sympathy. No one knew better than he how genuinely the Harcourts had regarded the conduct of the Harcourt Mill as a family obligation. In his own small way, he told them, he shared that obligation. He knew that Bess and Bill looked upon the workers of the Harcourt Mill, as he did too, almost as members of the family, and why not? There were dozens he could name—because he never liked to regard labor as a commodity—whose families had worked there for three generations. This was a proud record and Willis shared in the Harcourts' pride—just a little. He shared this fine tradition, having been brought up in it like Bess and Bill, and he was as loyal to it as any Harcourt. And yet—and yet they were all old enough now to see how times were changing, and even traditions had to be reactivated—sometimes.

Without delving into the history of American industry, they were all aware of the almost explosive expansion of business that was going on around them. He hated to say it, but they would have to face a painful fact. The day of family ownership in business was disappearing. Within a radius of fifty miles of where they were sitting, there were hundreds of factories that had been in family hands for over a century now being merged into larger groups. There was nothing to be ashamed of in this situation, for merging, very frankly, set new blood and new ambition coursing through fine old arteries. This was not exactly a happy simile, as he could tell from Bess Ewing's changed expression.

“Sorry, Bess,” he said, “I didn't mean to get poetic, but believe me, basically the thought is sound.”

And it was—so sound that Willis was carried away on the wings of it. There was no use standing against change. One had to accept it as one accepted old age and death—not that he meant for a single moment that the Harcourt Mill or the Harcourt tradition would dissolve if it merged with Simcoe Rubber Hose and Belting. Eventually the time was bound to come when they would have to sell the Harcourt Mill because, very frankly, it could not stand alone as an isolated unit. Frankly—because they were all talking almost like brothers and sisters now—in his opinion the Harcourt Mill would have closed its doors long ago because of competition if he had not happened to think of integrating the Planeroid patents with Harcourt when he was at Rahway Belt. Fortunately at the moment Harcourt Associates was in a fine position. They had many assets which might never be so valuable again, which explained why P. L. Nagel, whom he hoped Bill and Bess would get to meet and love as much as he did, had made this generous offer. All change was painful, but very conceivably there might never be such a chance again. Willis was reluctant, being humanly proud of Harcourt's achievement, but—to encapsulate all his thought—he must recommend that the stockholders accept this offer, and he knew that Bill and Bess, when they thought it over, would stand right there with him to be counted.

You could always tell from the feel of things around you whether or not a presentation had moved toward success. It gave Willis a fine glow of pride that he had been sincere and had used the straightforward approach without dialectic tricks. He had not lost their attention for an instant, but it might have been dangerous to have gone on further.

“Well,” he said, “I'm afraid that was a pretty tough sermon, and I really did feel a couple of times that I was sort of in the pulpit, but I do think that's about the picture as it looks to me, and now I know you'll have a lot of things to ask.”

Bill was the first one to speak. He rose from the captain's chair in which he had been sitting, walked to the portable bar, and poured the ice water from the Martini shaker.

“That was quite a speech,” he said. “I never knew you could lay it on the line like that. I'm always convinced by the last person who talks to me but that's because I'm said by little sister here to have a weak character. Maybe Bess had better pick up the thread of the discourse while I mix another round of drinks. Will you have one now, Willis?”

“Er—well, no thank you, Bill, not at the moment,” Willis said. “Not that I won't have one later.”

Bess was the one, of course, whom Willis was watching, because he valued her reaction as much as he valued her opinion. He was too well aware of her devastating observation and her capacities of derision not to feel uneasy. There flashed unexpectedly across his mind the occasion when she had compared him to Uriah Heep, and he dismissed this from his thoughts as abruptly as he could. It had never struck Willis that Bess's lower lip was so nearly a replica of Mr. Henry Harcourt's, or that her eyes, though of a different color, had the same qualities of contemplation he remembered in old H.H. Willis was happy to observe that Bess looked intensely serious. At least she was not in the mood to ask some frivolous or disconcerting question.

“I'm glad you've been so frank, Willis,” she said. “I know you have been.”

“Why, Bess,” Willis answered, “I couldn't possibly be anything else.”

“And I'm glad you feel the way Father and all the rest of us do about the mill,” Bess said. “I know it's old-fashioned, and I suppose we'll have to face the inevitable, but there is one thing I'm sure we will all want to know. That offer will make us quite rich, but I'd like to know, if we're bought out, what assurance there is that those people won't close the mill. There is still our obligation to the people working there.”

Of course he had known that the question was coming, just as he had known previously that Sylvia would ask it.

“Bess, dear,” Willis said, “of course I knew you'd bring that matter up, and it is the sixty-four-dollar question, isn't it, as they say? Frankly it's been bothering me from the first moment that P. L. Nagel approached me with this proposition. Believe me, I've been right to the mat with P.L. on this subject, and in that connection I think I can deliver some reassuring news—not, mind you, that anyone can ever promise anything beyond the foreseeable future—you know that, don't you, Bess?”

He never forgot that he had made this proviso and he saw Bess nod her assent to it.

“Bill,” he said, “since you are being barkeep maybe I would like just a rather small one after all.” He must not be tense, he was telling himself. It looked better to appear relaxed.

“Thanks, Bill,” he said, “and as one Martini authority to another, my heartiest congratulations. Well, I hesitate to obtrude my personal problems at this time but here's the news I was speaking of. It seems they've been looking for a new president at Simcoe, and well, to make matters brief, they've offered it to me—first vice president to start with, and president when Mr. Nagel becomes chairman of the board. It's a pretty hard matter to turn down when I remember Sylvia and the kids.”

He raised his hand quickly when he saw that Bess was about to speak.

“Please, Bess,” he said, “just let me make my point.” He leaned slightly forward in his chair to emphasize his point and allowed his voice to drop to a lower scale. “If we should sell out to them and if I should take that position, you know and I know, Bess, that the Harcourt Mill and all your feelings about it will be one of my first cares. In fact, Bess, P. L. Nagel and I have had some discussion about integrating Harcourt Associates and we've pretty well decided to leave it where it is and call it the Harcourt Division, so the name will still be there.”

He should have realized long ago that the very fact that he would be the president of that larger company was a favorable argument.