Sincerely, Willis Wayde Page 14

  “Where under the sun are you going, Willis?” his mother asked.

  “Oh,” he said, “just over to the Harcourts’ to play tennis and have a swim.”

  “Well,” his mother said, “why don’t you wear your old gray trousers and not use up your new white ones?”

  Afterwards whenever Willis saw a tennis court, he used the court on the Harcourt place as a standard of comparison, and when he finally built a court of his own, he wanted a grass terrace, with chairs and tables near the net exactly like the Harcourts’ that were always put away at night in the small house behind the court, and he wanted honeysuckle on the back and side fences. Only honeysuckle would do, because he could still remember the smell of the blossoms on that hot, still afternoon.

  A young man Willis had never seen before was sitting in one of the wicker chairs close beside Bess. The visitor must have been saying something that amused her, because he heard Bess laugh her lightest, gayest laugh. She was wearing a cotton print dress with little flowers on it—simple but not so simple as it looked. Her hair, which always had a spun-gold look, was tied back with a ribbon.

  “Oh, hello, Willis,” she said, and she held out her hand. “This is Willis Wayde, Ed. I don’t believe you’ve ever met Edward Ewing, have you, Willis?”

  She was right. Willis’s memory, already cultivated for names and faces, told him that the young man, who had arisen quickly, had not been among the friends of Bill’s and Bess’s whom he had met occasionally, although he had the same qualities that Willis associated with the others. From the interested way he looked at Willis, it was clear that Bess had been discussing him, but his look was not inquisitive, simply the look of someone who was meeting a stranger from another group to which he was not entirely accustomed.

  “How do you do?” he said to Willis.

  “How do you do?” Willis said. “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Ewing.” Willis had already learned the trick of mentioning a name so you would not forget it. “It’s a nice day for loafing around a tennis court, isn’t it?”

  The name was Ewing, not difficult to remember. He was dark with a longish face, brown eyes and closely cropped brown hair, a Harvard man, a club man, and an athletic type, like all those fellows who went to prep school and had learned to play all sorts of games. He was shorter than Willis and more delicately made, but not a student type. He was likable, with a nice smile. He was wearing white duck trousers, not flannels. He had a heavy coat of tan. The name was Edward Ewing, and he wore a ribbon belt with stripes on it.

  Somehow the tan made Willis conscious of his own yellow hair and comparative paleness, inescapably indicating that he had been working indoors. He found himself wishing for a frantic second that he had brought his pocket comb with him in case his hair got mussed up playing. Then he told himself that this worry was ridiculous. He was bigger and stronger than Ewing and he was well set up too. Frankly, Willis knew that he looked just as well as Ewing and that his manners were just as good and that he was much better equipped to get ahead in the world.

  “I’m sorry if I’m late, Bess,” Willis said, “but things are pretty hectic these days at the office.”

  “Willis works at the mill,” Bess said to Edward Ewing. “Everything here revolves around the mill—even me.”

  “You haven’t been revolving here much lately,” Willis said, and he laughed easily, “but whatever you’ve been doing seems to have done you good.”

  “Why, Willis,” Bess said, “I didn’t know you’d been developing a line. Willis goes with Bill to the Harvard Business School, Ed.”

  “Oh, do you?” Edward Ewing said. “I hear it’s quite a place.”

  Willis laughed again easily.

  “Quite an institution,” he said.

  “You see, he even has a briefcase,” Bess said. “What have you got in it, Willis?”

  “Oh, just a change,” Willis said, “in case we play tennis, if we do play tennis.”

  “You certainly look as though you wanted a game,” Bess said. “It’s too hot and I won’t play. You go ahead and play, Ed, but hurry so we can have a swim.”

  “Well, just one set,” Ed Ewing said, and he picked up a racquet from the wicker table. “It’s pretty late and I’ve got to get back to the shore, Bess.”

  “I’m not much good,” Willis said.

  “Oh, I’m no good either,” Edward Ewing said.

  “All right,” Willis said, “if it doesn’t bore you, but I haven’t played all summer.”

  “Don’t talk so much about it,” Bess said. “Here’s Bill’s racquet, Willis.”

  Willis could still remember, particularly when he tried not to, each detail of that tennis set, and when he did, he always felt the weight of his humiliation. He could see himself in his tennis flannels—too white, too new—on one side of the net, and across from him Edward Ewing—careless, graceful, and oblivious. It did no good for Willis to tell himself again and again that it had only been a friendly game and that there was no reason to have been ashamed of his maladroitness. He could tell himself that he would have been the better player if he could have had the practice of his opponent across the net, since he had been taller, and stronger, with good coordination of hand and eye. Given the opportunity to have learned the strokes from childhood, he would have been the better player, but as it was he had come from another world. There was always a net between himself and anyone like that friend of Bess Harcourt’s. Sometimes the net might be invisible, but it had been there always.

  “Do you want to rally for a minute before we start?” Edward Ewing asked.

  “Well, thanks,” Willis answered, and he laughed. “Not that it will improve me any.”

  It was perfectly clear how the game would go, the moment Edward Ewing hit a ball to him. Willis could still remember the expert smacking sound of the racquet and his own clumsy stroke when he drove the ball into the net.

  “Oh,” he said, “sorry. Shoot me over another, will you?”

  He was desperately anxious to make a good appearance, but the painful thing about it was that the harder he tried the tenser he became. He was aware of a dull anger rising in him that was only anger at himself, since it was just a game. He served rather well, because his strength partially compensated for the awkward half-swing he had developed. He found himself fighting for every point in a desperate, breathless way.

  “Oh, nice,” he would hear Edward Ewing say. “Good shot!”

  Nevertheless none of his shots were good, and of course Edward Ewing knew it. The worst of it was that Willis was almost sure that his opponent across the net was growing so sorry for him that occasionally he returned the ball with deliberate easiness and even missed intentionally.

  “Oh, nice,” Ewing kept saying. “Good shot!”

  The worst of it was that he was sure that Edward Ewing threw away two games just to make things look better. The worst of it was that Willis was wringing wet with perspiration and half blinded by the sweat in his eyes when the set was over, but Edward Ewing looked as cool as he had when they had started.

  “Thanks a lot,” Willis said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a better game.”

  “It was fine,” Edward Ewing said, and there was something horrible about his forced enthusiasm. “It was exactly the sort of workout I needed.”

  Bess had not said a word, and Willis half hated her for her silence. She knew perfectly well how poor he was at tennis.

  “You ought not to have put me in there with a champ,” Willis told her, and he tried to laugh but his voice sounded hoarse and unnatural.

  “Why, Willis,” she said, “don’t be so serious. It was only a game.”

  The worst of it was he could not control his mood, or pass it off lightly, as he should have.

  “Well, let’s have a swim,” Bess said. “It will cool you off anyway, Willis.”

  Willis looked straight at her before he answered, and she gazed back at him innocently.

  “Yes,” he said, “I guess I need cooling off.�
��

  Bess ran ahead of them to the girls’ dressing room while Willis walked to the men’s bathhouse with Edward Ewing.

  “Nothing like a swim after tennis,” Edward Ewing said.

  “That’s right,” Willis answered. “Nothing like a plunge.”

  “Bess tells me you live on the place here,” Edward Ewing said.

  “That’s right,” Willis answered. “We live in the garden cottage.”

  “It’s quite a place, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Willis said. “It’s quite a place.”

  It was beautiful to see Edward Ewing do the Australian crawl up and down the pool and then do a swan and next a jackknife dive. When Bess asked him, Willis said that Edward Ewing certainly was a good swimmer. It was beautiful to see Edward Ewing when he stepped out of the bathhouse ready to leave, dressed in a neat gray flannel suit and carrying a tennis racquet and a small suitcase.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow evening, won’t I, Bess?” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” Bess said, “and I’ll see you off, Ed. Don’t hurry away, Willis. I’ll be right back.”

  It seemed like hours before Bess came back, and somehow waiting for her did not help his mood. When he saw her walking toward him across the lawn to the pool, he noticed that she did not hurry.

  “Willis,” she asked him, “what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, Bess,” he said.

  “Willis,” she asked him, “are you cross about anything?”

  “Of course I’m not cross about anything,” he answered.

  “Oh, yes, you are,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d get cross about a game.”

  “I’m not cross about any game or anything,” he said.

  “I wish you wouldn’t try so hard about everything,” she said.

  “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re always trying to be so smart about everything lately.”

  “I don’t mean to try to be smart,” he said.

  “You’ve changed,” she said. “You’re not the way you used to be.”

  “Well, you’ve changed too,” he said.

  “Maybe we both have,” she said. “Would you like to walk up to the pine woods before supper? There’s still time.”

  “It’s pretty late now, isn’t it?” Willis asked her.

  “Oh, Willis,” she said, “I wish … well, never mind.”

  “What do you wish?” he asked her.

  “Oh never mind,” she said. “Wishing never gets you anywhere.”

  Willis could occasionally convince himself that there had never been anything serious between him and Bess Harcourt and that he had always possessed a strain of hard common sense which prevented his indulging, like a lot of young fellows, in impossible dreams about the future. He also took pride in thinking that he was not the type of man who married the boss’s daughter. In fact he always despised the men who did. These individuals—and he had to cope with plenty of them in his industrial career—were invariably either conceited or unsure. They were flies that had fallen into a pot of honey, and they were self-conscious always, acutely aware that they had not got where they were because of their own efforts. Willis was proud to think that he had paddled his own canoe, even when he had been up the creek with the paddle broken. He was not the type who married the boss’s daughter, and that was all there was to it.

  By the Monday after the tennis game, there were plenty of other things to think about. The mill was undergoing a thorough process of reorganization, too long delayed, perhaps, but it was remarkable how Mr. Harcourt had handled it, considering his age. Mr. Harcourt’s problem was primarily one of new personnel, and it was a liberal education to Willis, in view of his courses at the Business School, to observe the changes which were taking place. Mr. Hewett had a new assistant, for one thing, a man in his late thirties named Norman Percival, who came from Toledo and was being groomed for Mr. Hewett’s job. It was a good lesson to Willis to see how quickly someone like Percival could step into harness. Then there was Bill Sobol, a new assistant for Mr. Briggs in sales, and Tom Powderman from DuPont’s, who was made production manager, working under Norman Percival, a position hitherto unknown at Harcourt’s. And half a dozen new salesmen were on hand, not to mention the new engineers. The truth was that Harcourt’s, that summer, was ceasing to be a small-town New England mill.

  The changes were made under the advice of the Beakney-Graham Management Company, with head offices in New York, and Willis was never to lose his respect for the capacities of that organization. After they had made their preliminary survey, they had sent down one of their chief executives, Mr. Joe McKitterick, to stay awhile at the plant until the gears were meshed, and to recommend new personnel. McKitterick was a topflight man, as Willis knew even then. Somehow you got the feel of a topflight man just as soon as you saw him, and Willis could never forget the first time he saw Mr. McKitterick.

  About a week after Willis had begun his summer work at the mill Mr. Harcourt had called Willis to his office, on a fine clear morning, the sort that put you on your toes.

  “Come in, Willis,” Mr. Harcourt said, and Willis noticed that Mr. Harcourt was wearing a white carnation in his buttonhole. “I want you to meet Mr. McKitterick, who comes to us from Beakney-Graham.”

  Mr. McKitterick, seated in one of the old wooden chairs beside Mr. Harcourt’s desk, seemed to fit perfectly into the atmosphere. His hair was grizzled and a lock of it kept falling untidily over his forehead. He had on a wrinkled blue serge suit and a blue shirt with a soft collar, and he wore heavy horn-rimmed spectacles. His face was leathery and square and his eyebrows were very thick. When Mr. Harcourt introduced Willis, Mr. McKitterick pushed himself slowly out of his chair, and Willis saw that he was six feet tall, just about his own height.

  “This is Willis Wayde,” Mr. Harcourt said in his soft voice, which could always carry above the sounds of the machinery from the open windows. “Take Mr. McKitterick around the plant, Willis, and I want you to answer any questions he asks, no matter what—even about me, Willis.”

  Willis could not understand why he had been selected for this job. It did not occur to him until later that Mr. McKitterick had examined him as closely as the mill.

  “If you’re ready, let’s go,” Mr. McKitterick said, and they walked through the hallway of the office building, with its handsome antique furniture. They did not speak until Mr. McKitterick stopped in front of the tall clock.

  “That’s a nice piece,” he said. “Made by Godfrey in London, I take it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Willis answered. “It’s a Godfrey.”

  “How did you know?” Mr. McKitterick asked.

  Willis had learned it from the office inventory of the English furniture and he explained that Mr. Harcourt took a personal interest in the antique furniture of the office building.

  “How much did he pay for it?” Mr. McKitterick asked.

  “A hundred and seventy-five pounds, sir,” Willis said. “Mr. Harcourt says that antiques don’t depreciate like new furniture.”

  “That’s so,” Mr. McKitterick said. “If they’re good. How much did those chairs cost, I wonder?”

  “Two hundred and seventy-five pounds,” Willis said.

  “Say,” Mr. McKitterick said, “you’ve got a pretty good memory, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Willis answered. “I can remember figures pretty well.”

  “This whole plant is quite a period piece, when you come to think of it,” Mr. McKitterick said. “Do you know its history?”

  Until Willis had begun to answer those questions, he had not realized how thoroughly he knew the Harcourt Mill, because it was the sort of knowledge that had come to him gradually, and because for years the Harcourts and the mill had been the center of his interest.

  “Who’s the man over there by that compressor?” Mr. McKitterick asked. They were in Building 3 and he had to speak loudly. “He looks like a pretty good man.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wi
llis told him, “he’s good. He’s Wesley Bryan. He’s been here for twenty-five years.”

  “Do you know all these other people?” Mr. McKitterick asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Willis said, “of course I do.”

  “How do you get on with them?” Mr. McKitterick asked.

  “Why, I get on all right,” Willis said. “You see, I’ve known most of them ever since I was a kid.”

  “Well,” Mr. McKitterick said, “you certainly know this place. How much do you get paid a week?”

  “Thirty-five dollars, sir,” Willis answered.

  “You ought to get more,” Mr. McKitterick said, “but it’s not a bad place to start. What do you think of Mr. Harcourt?”

  Willis was not sure whether or not he ought to answer until he remembered Mr. Harcourt’s orders.

  “I think he’s twice as good as anyone else here,” Willis said.

  “What do you think’s wrong with him?” Mr. McKitterick asked. “There’s something wrong with everybody.”

  “There isn’t much wrong with him that I know of,” Willis said, “except that he never lets anything go.”

  “Well,” Mr. McKitterick said, “if he ever lets you go, I wish you’d let me know.”

  “Thanks,” Willis told him, “but I don’t want another job as long as Mr. Harcourt wants me.”

  “All right,” Mr. McKitterick said, “let’s get out of here now. I haven’t finished with you yet.”

  Mr. McKitterick had finished by four in the afternoon, and Mr. Harcourt called for Willis about half an hour later.

  “Well,” Mr. Harcourt asked, “did you show him everything?”

  “I showed him everything I could,” Willis said. “He certainly asked a lot of questions.”