Sincerely, Willis Wayde Read online

  “Hello, Willis,” he called. “Have you heard from your examinations yet?”

  “Yes, sir,” Willis said. “The marks came in the other day. I passed but they weren’t much good. Maybe I’m just dumb.”

  Mr. Harcourt glanced at him in a quick, hard way.

  “Oh no, Willis,” he said, “you’re not dumb.”

  Willis often thought that this was the kindest thing Mr. Harcourt ever said to him. His voice was soft and casual, as it always was, but the words had a complete validity.

  Willis knew very little about colleges. The question that mattered most was how you could buy a college education on the most reasonable terms, because the Waydes had not been able to lay aside much in the way of savings. There was Technology, but Willis had no head for mathematics. There was Mass. Aggy, where Granville Beane was going. Then there was Harvard, where Bill and Steve Decker were going. The other schools, like Amherst and Brown and Dartmouth, were only names, and they were too far away, his mother said. She wanted Willis somewhere near so that he could come home for Sunday. That was how Boston University entered into the discussion, being a good school, as she said, right in the middle of Boston, without too many rich boys going to it. Willis had no fixed idea one way or the other, and the chances were he might not have gone to B.U. at all if Mr. Harcourt had not called from the big house on the telephone the Sunday morning after Willis had told him about his marks.

  Mr. Harcourt called to ask if he might drop in after church to talk over a matter to which he had been giving some thought. They were having a boiled dinner that day, and the living room was filled with the aroma of cabbages and turnips, but Mr. Harcourt had said there was nothing so good as a good boiled dinner. As he sat in the living room, his church clothes—his striped trousers, his black coat, his stiff collar, and his severe gray tie—made all the rest of them look very simple.

  “Say, Mr. Harcourt,” Alfred Wayde said, “how about a little rye and ginger ale?”

  “Not at the moment, thank you, Alfred,” Mr. Harcourt said, “but don’t let me stop you.”

  “You sit down, Alf,” Mrs. Wayde said. “Mr. Harcourt says he wants to talk to us about something.”

  Alfred Wayde sat down heavily, and Mr. Harcourt smiled.

  “It won’t take more than a minute, Alf,” he said. “I only wanted to say a few words about Willis.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Wayde said, “has Willis done anything?”

  “No, no,” Mr. Harcourt said. “This isn’t anything about what Willis has done. I hope you’re planning to send Willis to college.”

  Willis saw his mother straighten herself in her stiff-backed chair, and he was thinking that she never leaned against anything when she was talking to Mr. Harcourt.

  “Why, yes,” she said, “we are hoping to, Mr. Harcourt.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” Mr. Harcourt said. “I hope you’re going to send him to Harvard. Bill’s going there next year.”

  “Well,” Mrs. Wayde said, “Alfred and I think it’s too expensive a school for Willis.”

  “Oh, I would hardly say that,” Mr. Harcourt said. “There will be expense anywhere.” He touched his lower lip with his forefinger. “It occurred to me last night that I might be of some help along those lines. I’m sending Granville Beane to Massachusetts State. It would give me great pleasure—a selfish sort of pleasure—to help send Willis to Harvard, Mrs. Wayde.”

  There was a moment’s silence and Alfred Wayde pulled a bag of tobacco and some cigarette papers out of his coat pocket, but he did not speak. He and Willis both looked at Mrs. Wayde.

  “That’s very kind and thoughtful of you, Mr. Harcourt,” she said, and she folded her hands carefully in her lap. “I guess Alfred and I are independent people. It will mean more to us if we can do this without help, and more to Willis, I’m very, very sure, and Willis has his own savings, working summers.”

  Mr. Harcourt nodded.

  “Well,” he said, “I respect your point of view. As long as Willis is going somewhere to college. Where are you thinking of sending him, Mrs. Wayde?”

  “We haven’t made up our minds yet,” Mrs. Wayde said, “but we’re thinking about Boston University.”

  “My God, Cynthia,” his father said, after Mr. Harcourt had gone, “why shouldn’t old Harcourt have sent the boy to college?”

  “Because it wouldn’t have been right, Alf,” she said. “I wish he wouldn’t always be trying to do things. We’re obligated enough to the Harcourts, living here, and I don’t want Willis to be weak.”

  During that summer, whenever Willis saw Bill and Bess, their relationships were the same as they always had been. The Bryson Harcourts asked him twice to supper, and he had been over to play tennis sometimes on Sunday afternoons. On Sundays after church he had fallen into the habit of walking by the brook, and it generally happened that he would meet Bess there, although neither of them had ever made open plans. Then, one Sunday in October, just after he had started college, everything changed.

  He saw Bess coming toward him, and in the distance she looked the same as she always had, but not when she came nearer. All of a sudden Bess was all grown-up, unapproachable and unattainable. Her tawny hair was pinned up in a knot, and she had powder on her nose, which looked more like the noses in the Harcourt portraits than it ever had before.

  “Why, Willis,” she said, “you look like someone else. You look all grown-up.”

  “Well, so do you,” he said.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she asked. “I’m going to the junior dances now.”

  “Are you really?” he asked.

  “Anyway,” she said, “you don’t say, ‘Is that a fact?’ any more. That’s something.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that’s something.”

  She stood looking at him critically.

  “You’ve got a new suit of clothes, haven’t you?” she said. “Where did you get it?”

  “Downtown,” he told her.

  “Well,” she said, “it looks it. Well, how do you like Boston University?”

  “It’s all right, I guess,” he said.

  She swayed slightly, from one foot to the other, moving her head as though she heard distant music.

  “You were an awful fool,” she said, “not to go to Harvard when Grandfather offered to send you.”

  “Harvard isn’t so hot,” he said.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Nobody goes to Boston University.”

  “That’s all you know about it,” Willis told her.

  “You wouldn’t look so bad if you had a different suit,” she said. “Do you remember when I used to let you kiss me? It seems ages ago, doesn’t it?”

  “You didn’t let me, you asked me to,” he said, “and you asked Steve Decker too.”

  “Oh, Willis,” she said, “don’t be perfectly ridiculous. Anyway, it was ages ago.”

  “It isn’t as long as that,” he said.

  “But it seems like ages ago. We must have been awful fools. If I did it now, you might think you’d want to marry me or something.”

  “I don’t want to marry anybody,” Willis said.

  She smiled and her body swayed to that inaudible music.

  “All you think about is working, don’t you?” she said. “Well, I suppose you have to. Well, you can work for us at the mill when you get through with Boston University.”

  “There are a lot of other places to work,” Willis told her.

  “We’d like to have you,” she said, “and Grandfather says we need new people.”

  “What about Bill?” he asked.

  “Oh, Bill,” she answered, and she laughed. “It has to be someone who has to work. Willis, you still look nice when you’re in the woods. You want to kiss me now, don’t you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Anyway,” she said, and she moved a step nearer to him, “you do. I can tell you do.”

  It made him angry that she could tell, and he put his arm around her roughly.

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bsp; “Oh, no,” she said. “Willis, no.” But she leaned close against him. It was different from those other times he had kissed her.

  “I don’t know why I’m such a fool,” she said, “but it’s all right here, as long as it’s only here.”

  He did not answer, but they stood there for a while close together.

  “You see we both belong in other places,” she said, “and we can’t help that, can we?”

  Perhaps this was the wisest thing that Bess Harcourt ever said to him. Bess always had a lot of common sense, more than he ever had, perhaps.

  Willis always had a warm spot in his heart for old B.U., as he often called it later, though he could not say that the personalized side of it had meant much to him. He had no time for extra-curricular activities, because he completed the requisite work for his degree in three years, and besides he had to be careful of every cent he spent. There was not much time, either, for outside intellectual enthusiasms, due to the number of courses he was taking, and because he lacked the solid groundwork of a consistent secondary education.

  During the three winters he spent at old B.U., he lived throughout the week in a hall bedroom that his mother had found on Beacon Hill in a Pinckney Street lodging house. He ate his breakfast and his supper each weekday in a boardinghouse on Joy Street, patronized by office workers and a few law-school students. Boston was a fine old town with its historic monuments and its art museums, but he did not have the cash to buy a good meal at a restaurant or to attend the theater, except now and then in the second balcony. Anyway he was obliged to spend his evenings working.

  If he had learned any refinements of life from observing his surroundings, he had learned them at the Harcourt place and not at old B.U. Mr. Harcourt was a model worth copying, and Willis never forgot what Bess had said about his clothes the autumn he had started off to college. He observed the dress and behavior of Bill and his friends, and he hit upon the idea of going to Harvard Square in Cambridge and buying clothing secondhand. There was always a time before the holidays when students who were short of funds disposed of clothes that were almost new, and Willis found a tailor down on Anderson Street who made alterations cheaply. By the end of his third winter, he owned a tuxedo, two good suits, one shabby one, and two pairs of white flannel trousers. He also owned a few books from Everyman’s Library and a typewriter. He never forgot that B.U. gave him a college education, and he always had a warm spot in his heart for Boston University.

  He only realized later how much else he must have been learning. He knew a great deal about the mill and a lot about the Harcourts by the time he had finished college. He saw the Harcourts often during the week ends, and they always asked him at least once to some party during the holidays. He never blamed them if they seemed to forget in the winters that he was living in Boston too. It did not strike him as strange at all, until much later, that he had never been inside Mr. Henry Harcourt’s house on Commonwealth Avenue until March of his last year at B.U. Mr. Harcourt expressed some surprise about it one Sunday when the Waydes had been asked to lunch at the big house, as they were about once a month. Willis never forgot the pattern of those Sunday luncheons—the standing rib of roast beef and the vanilla ice cream made of real cream from the farm, with the chocolate sauce in the silver gravy boats, and the hot black coffee in the library in the small blue rice-pattern cups.

  “When do you go back to Boston, Willis?” Mr. Harcourt had asked.

  Willis took an early train every Monday morning, he said, in time to get to a nine o’clock lecture.

  “I don’t know why I’ve never thought of it before,” Mr. Harcourt said. “If you want a ride back on a Sunday evening, let me know any time, Willis. And there’s another curious thing. We never see you in Boston, do we? We’ll be at home on Tuesday night. Why don’t you come around at seven o’clock for dinner?”

  “Thank you, sir,” Willis said. “I’d like to very much.”

  “That’s a very nice suit of clothes you have on, Willis,” Mr. Harcourt said. “I always like a well-cut coat.” He hesitated for an instant. “Don’t bother to dress on Tuesday, Willis. I will because I always do.”

  Willis checked himself from saying that he owned a tuxedo now, but nothing could have stopped him from wearing it that evening.

  When Willis walked that Tuesday evening over melting snowbanks on his way to Commonwealth Avenue, the brick houses of Beacon Hill, with their curving Bulfinch fronts and the warm vague light from their shaded windows, spoke of a life around him of which he had no part. When he got on Commonwealth Avenue the street lights, cutting yellowish spheres in the dark, made all the houses seem unnaturally large, and Mr. Henry Harcourt’s was as large as any of them. Its glass doors, protected by an iron grill, opened into a vestibule paved with squares of marble. Through a second glass door he could see a broad marble-paved hallway and French mirrors.

  “Good evening, Mr. Willis,” Selwyn said. “I’m afraid Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt aren’t down yet, but if you’ll wait upstairs I’m sure they’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

  “Whereabouts upstairs?” Willis asked.

  “I’d forgotten you didn’t know your way,” Selwyn said. “Your tie is a trifle crooked. Would you care to have me straighten it?”

  “I guess I’m not very good at tying a bow tie,” Willis told him.

  “It will come with practice,” Selwyn said. “You look well in evening clothes. Not everybody does. May I make one suggestion, Mr. Willis?”

  “Is anything wrong?” Willis asked.

  “I wouldn’t say wrong,” Selwyn said. “But I wouldn’t wear a handkerchief jutting out of my breast pocket. Mr. Harcourt never does and neither does Mr. Bill. Mr. Bill and Miss Bess will be with us tonight—just the family. This way, Mr. Willis.”

  There was another broad hall upstairs, with the dining room to the left and a large sitting room to the right. The sitting-room walls and woodwork were freshly painted in dull green, and yellow curtains of heavy silk were drawn across the windows, and all the upholstery on the furniture was fresh and new.

  “They’ll be down in a minute, sir,” Selwyn said. “There’s the bell, I think. That will be Miss Bess and Mr. Bill.”

  Then Willis heard their voices in the downstairs hall.

  “Hi, Selwyn,” he heard Bill call. “How’s it going?”

  “Hello, Selwyn,” he heard Bess say.

  “Gosh,” Willis heard Bill say, “the old man’s done the whole place over.”

  Then he heard them running up the stairs.

  “Hi, Willis,” Bill said.

  “Oh, Willis,” Bess said, “let me look at you. You don’t look like yourself at all.”

  Neither did Bess, for that matter. Her dress was a brilliant blue, and her shoulders were bare and her face was fresh and warm from the cold outside.

  “I wouldn’t know you either,” Willis said. “That’s quite a dress.”

  “What there is of it,” Bill said, and he laughed.

  “Oh, stop it, Bill,” Bess said. “They’re coming downstairs.”

  Now that Willis was old enough himself to appreciate the beauties of youth, he could imagine that the three of them had delighted Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt. He and Bill and Bess had emerged from the chrysalis of adolescence, and the corrosion of time had not touched them yet. In Willis’s memory Bess Harcourt was never quite so beautiful again.

  “How nice you three young people look,” Mrs. Harcourt said, and Mr. Harcourt looked at them as though he were examining a newly acquired picture.

  “Yes,” Mr. Harcourt said, “you’re quite right, Harriet. Bess, will you kiss your old grandfather? Willis, it’s nice to see you in Boston, and, Bill, I was afraid they might need you at the club tonight.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to leave right after dinner, sir,” Bill said.

  “Well, well,” Mr. Harcourt said. “I haven’t told you I was delighted by the news, not that it was unexpected.”

  Willis did not know what they were talkin
g about, but Bess smiled at him as though of course he knew. Mr. Harcourt rubbed his hands together.

  “A pleasant ending for a busy day,” he said. “I went down to Cohasset to see your Cousin Eldridge this afternoon, Bess, and then I had a most rewarding tea party on the way home with your Cousin Lillian.”

  “I thought you didn’t like them,” Bess said.

  “Well,” Mr. Harcourt said. “Can’t you guess why I called on them then?”

  “Did you want to buy their stock?” Bill asked.

  Mr. Harcourt’s face wrinkled into one of his broadest smiles.

  “Exactly,” he said, “exactly.”

  “What do you want it for?” Bill asked. “Haven’t we got enough?”

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Harcourt said, “but your Cousin Roger wanted it, and if Roger wants something …” Mr. Harcourt left his thought unfinished. “Here’s Selwyn. You’re old enough to have sherry now, aren’t you, Bess?”

  Willis was surprised to find that Mr. Harcourt was looking at him and not at Bess when he asked the question, but almost immediately his glance moved on. Willis was proud that he had been allowed to hear this family gossip and he knew that he had been deliberately allowed. Mr. Henry Harcourt never forgot anything when he handled people.

  Bill excused himself directly after dinner, because he had to go back to Cambridge. He said that he was particularly glad to see Willis. Bill even went so far as to ask him to come out to Cambridge to see him some time. When Bill and he shook hands, Willis saw that Mr. Harcourt was watching them both with a half sad expression, and he did not speak until the front door closed.

  “Everything always comes easy for Bill,” he said. “It’s hard on anyone when everything comes easily.”

  “You mean we’ve been born with silver spoons?” Bess said. She moved her head impatiently, and Willis could see her profile, thin and eager, resembling Mr. Harcourt’s. “Well, don’t blame us. It isn’t our fault, is it?”

  “Oh no,” Mr. Harcourt answered, “it isn’t your fault, Bess.”