Sincerely, Willis Wayde (70 page)

Sylvia raised her eyebrows slightly.

“Why, you're having lunch with those textile people, Willis, and there's a dinner for you in the evening.”

“That's right,” Willis said. “I'd completely forgotten about that, and then we're off for Switzerland, and I haven't had a chance to say a word to Mrs. Decker.”

He pushed back his chair and stood up, gently smoothing out the folds in his double-breasted coat, smiling, looking like someone who had been asked by the toastmaster to say a few words. He had that same professional assurance, and May had been right—his suit had undoubtedly been made in London by a tailor accustomed to American whims. For a second Willis dominated the scene, modestly and sincerely. His ease was the best thing about him. You could not tell, Steve was thinking, how much of his cordiality was real. There was no way of gauging the depth of his sincerity. It might very well have been that he did have a soft spot in his heart, and that he had honestly meant what he had said about loyalty, and about being deeply sorry. On the other hand he might have had no heart at all. Authority and success had made him strangely impervious, since success had smoothed down all his rough edges, turning him into a type interchangeable with any photograph on the financial page of the
New York Times
. It was hard to tell about those people, who had all been processed in the same way, but he was essentially an American type.

“Well,” Willis said, “good-by, and many thanks. This has been perfectly wonderful.”

If that was all there had been to the incident, it never would have been worth repeating. It was what happened next that gave it value and suspense. You never could tell, as May often said, whom you would run into in Paris, and you always ran into the most unlikely people, purely through coincidence. They were all standing up when Steve Decker felt May's hand on his arm.

“My God, Steve,” she said, “look who's coming.”

There was an aisle between the closely grouped tables leading from the street, since after all there had to be a passage for patrons and waiters, and there, moving straight toward them, were Bess Harcourt and her husband, Edward Ewing. To anyone who knew her she would always be Bess Harcourt, and you thought of her still as young Bess Harcourt, although her yellow hair was much darker and her face more florid, and even in Paris she seemed to bring something of the Harcourts with her. There was something arrogantly provincial in the way she walked. At least she was not trying to be a Continental woman. They must have been shopping, because Edward was carrying an armful of packages. Whenever you saw Ed Ewing, he seemed to be carrying packages for Bess.

There was no way of avoiding the encounter, because the Waydes were only a few feet away from them. They were bound to meet head on. Willis Wayde stepped forward immediately. He had put on his gray felt hat, and now he took it off in a quick, courtly way which was not like him, and all his measured reserve had left him. For once there was no need to guess what he was thinking. He was meeting an old friend. He was obviously perfectly delighted to see Bess Harcourt there.

“Well, if this isn't like Old Home Week,” he said. “Why, Bess, fancy seeing you in Paris! And Edward! Hello, Ed.”

Willis held out his hand and for a moment you could not tell what might happen. Bess had a pleasant way of looking at people, and the upward tilt of her mouth was always good-natured, and when she spoke her voice was good-natured too.

“You're in my way, Willis,” she said. “Get out.”

“Now, Bess,” Willis said, “please. I haven't the least idea—”

He could not have looked more completely shaken if Bess had slapped him across the face.

“You're in my way,” Bess said again, and then she laughed in that bright malicious way of hers. “Get out, Uriah Heep.”

Steve Decker said that you could not help but admire Willis Wayde. Willis had gone a long way since he had lived at the Harcourt place. It was plain that that jibe of Bess's about the Dickensian crook had made a very deep impression on Willis, because his face flushed so darkly that he looked as though he had spent the day at the seashore. Nevertheless his manner was composed and his voice was polite, gentle and considerate. Success had certainly worn the rough edges from Willis Wayde.

“Certainly, if that's the way you want it,” he said, “but I'm truly very sorry, Bess. Come, sweetness, or we'll be late for dinner.” And then the Waydes walked slowly to the street. Willis's shoulders were held back, and his coat did fit him to perfection.

Steve had a final glimpse of them, before they disappeared among the pedestrians on the sidewalk. Willis had put on his hat, and Sylvia was asking him some question. Willis appeared to be listening to her very carefully, and then he shook his head. That was all there was to it, but if you knew something about the component parts and personalities of the individuals involved it made quite a story, and one that could only have happened in America. Steve Decker often wondered what Willis Wayde had thought about it, and how much or how little that brief encounter had affected him. It was the ending of a story that Steve had witnessed, which made no particular sense without knowing the beginning.

XXXI

Willis, whenever he had occasion to exchange ideas with acquaintances about life in Paris, always said he had fallen in love with the Ritz at first sight. It was exactly what he had dreamed it would be, and none of the theatrical magnificence of his suite overlooking the Place Vendôme had ever made him ill at ease. When Sylvia, on first seeing it, had said that the whole thing was ostentatious and expensive, he could not help but remind her that her reaction had been just the same when they went honeymooning at Chieftain Manor. The idea was the same, though their sitting room, all gold and old rose, bore not the slightest resemblance aesthetically or ideologically to The Old Chief. It did not take long, however, for Sylvia to get into the mood of the Ritz, and finally she admitted that the Ritz and its surroundings were magnificent, in an old-regime manner. In fact, the atmosphere was so old-regime that Sylvia was surprised both by the rather peculiar people she occasionally saw at the Ritz and by the excellent plumbing. From the very first minute in their suite, Willis had loved looking out on the Place Vendôme, and he knew now that he would never tire of the prospect. There was no security in France any longer, and yet the Place Vendôme epitomized security. The whole thing was in order. There was balance and reason in the expansive façades surrounding that fine square, all paying constant tribute to the victory column of Napoleon in its center. The calmness of age only added to the enclosed security. Once, sipping cocktails in the June dusk and watching that lovely
place
, Willis had said jokingly to Sylvia that he supposed she thought Napoleon's column was ostentatious. She had replied, to his dismay, that, except for Napoleon's tomb, it was the most ostentatious thing in Paris. Perhaps she was right technically, for the idea of copying Trajan's column in Rome may have been egocentric, but the bronze décor made from the cannons of Austerlitz was a concept as magnificent as the Ritz itself. The column belonged right where it was, in the middle of the Place Vendôme, even if the buildings around the
place
were very much older.

The atmosphere of the Place Vendôme was reassuring to Willis when he and Sylvia finally arrived at the Ritz after the painful incident at the Champs Elysées café. The sight of the column reminded Willis that there had been a good many people who had not liked Napoleon, and Napoleon himself had been obliged to make decisions.

“Sweetness,” he said to Sylvia, “will you fix it up with the taxi driver? I don't feel much like doing mental arithmetic.”

“Why, yes, of course, dear,” Sylvia said. “I've got just the right change in my purse.”

He was grateful that Sylvia had not once alluded to his meeting with Bess during their taxi ride. He still felt sick and utterly defeated. He was still thinking that it was inconceivable that Bess Harcourt could retain such power to give him pain; but it would pass. He was sure of this now that he saw the Place Vendôme again. In fact he could come close to imagining that nothing untoward had happened, once they were inside the Ritz. The smiling doorman and the prodigious concierge, who knew everything there was to know about anything, were not unlike the personnel of his own office—efficiency-wise. The Ritz literally was a home away from home. The long Paris twilight was still enough illumination for the suite, more peaceful than the formal glitter of the Louis XVI chandeliers.

“Well, sweetness,” Willis said, “I'm going to ring for a couple of cocktails, because I feel a little tired, what with one thing and another. It's nice to be back here, isn't it—even if it's ostentatious?”

“Yes, dear,” Sylvia said. “I've almost forgotten now that it is ostentatious.” She sat down in the gilded armchair that Willis moved near the window for her so that they could both sit side by side and look at the Place Vendôme. “You know I eventually end by loving all the things you love, Willis.”

“That's a very lovely thing of you to say, darling,” Willis said. “Sweetness, I only wish you and I could be alone here tonight, just looking at the Place Vendôme.”

“Why can't we, dear?” Sylvia asked.

He was still surprised when Sylvia did not conquer absent-mindedness.

“Don't you remember, honey?” Willis said. “We have to go out to dinner with those people at that place whose name you don't like me to pronounce.”

“I do like you to pronounce it,” Sylvia said. “Go ahead and say it. Please say it, Willis.”

Willis shook his head. The truth was he was not in the mood for French.

“Go ahead and say it, please,” Sylvia said again. “I really think you are doing very well with your French, dear.”

“Sweetness,” Willis told her, “you don't have to be as loyal to me as that, but I still wish you and I could sit here and not go to that place to dinner.”

Sylvia stood up and kissed the top of his head. It was a gesture that he could not recall her having made before.

“I really don't see why we have to go, dear,” she said. “They're only some of those people you met at the convention, and if a couple drops out they can always rearrange the table. If you'll give me your notebook, I'll get the concierge to call them for us. Here come the cocktails, dear. You take yours while I call.”

“Well, if you don't mind, sweetness,” Willis said, “I think perhaps I will start on mine right away.”

He was glad to be alone for the minutes while Sylvia was telephoning, and his gratitude toward her increased, now that she was getting them out of that dinner.

Willis did not want to face a crowd at the moment, let alone a foreign crowd. He wanted to be alone, but at the same time he did not want to think. He wanted to push the ceaseless repetition of the scene at that café from his mind, and stop imagining how he might have acted differently, and what he could have said but did not say. The strange truth, the inescapable fact, was that there was nothing different he could have said. The encounter was one of those things one simply had to take on the chin and absorb the way one absorbed any punishment. Willis could not forget the injustice. That was what hurt the most. After all his years of loyalty to the Harcourts, he could not conceive how Bess could ever have reacted to him in such a way; but then she had, and there was nothing to do but accept it. Given time, only a day or two perhaps, and he could adjust to the fact. The situation was a casualty which was perhaps inevitable, but he had not realized how much he valued the good opinion of the Harcourts. He could not see why the things that Bess said appeared to fall into the category of personal rebuke, which reflected on his own integrity. This was irrational, of course, because he had done absolutely nothing of which he was ashamed. The worst thing Willis had to face was that the whole thing had happened directly in front of Sylvia. Consequently he would have to take the whole thing up with Sylvia. There was no conceivable way of avoiding it.

He finished his cocktail, but it did not appreciably relax the tensions within him. If he were to order another and another—as many people he knew frequently did in times of distress—he had sense enough to know that this would not relieve his troubles. The buildings of the Place Vendôme, designed by architects for noblemen of whose lives Willis knew nothing save for a few facts from the pages of Nagel's
Paris
, were a greater consolation than alcohol. (He was thinking that he must tell old P.L., facetiously, that he had not known P.L. wrote guidebooks on the side.) Those façades surrounding the Place Vendôme reflected a point of view that got through to Willis. They assured him that the men who had lived behind those cornices had been as aware as Napoleon that there was no such thing as perfect justice. Something always went by the board. There was a real meeting of minds between Willis and the Place Vendôme.

“Sylvia,” Willis said, “that was a very lovely idea of yours, getting us out of that dinner, and just across there near Morgan and Cie in a jeweler's window is something I'm going to get you tomorrow just for thinking of it.”

“Oh, Willis,” Sylvia said. She was standing beside him, and he could not see her face, and at first he thought she was laughing, but he was not exactly sure. “You don't have to say it with jewelry, darling. You know you only have to say it.”

“That's a very sweet thing for you to say,” Willis said. “Somehow you've always been kind of allergic to jewelry.”

“Oh, darling,” Sylvia said, and she sat down in the gold-and-rose armchair near him, “don't you see it's only an act? Don't you know I always love everything you give me?”

Willis turned toward her, but the dusk made it hard for him to see her face.

“You don't have to be as kind to me as all that, sweetness,” he said. “Maybe I don't deserve it, basically.”