IV

Clyde as a town had a self-consciousness peculiar to all small towns that have been settled for several centuries. New arrivals were always set apart from everyone else in Clyde. They might live there for years, die there, and leave their children there, but they were never an integral part of the town itself.

When Willis’s mother joined the Ladies’ Alliance of the Congregational Church, she was always known as Mrs. Wayde from the Harcourt Mill; and his father, when he joined the Clyde Men’s Club at Mr. Hewett’s invitation, was always known as the Wayde who worked at Harcourt’s. It seemed curious to Willis that his own position was slightly different from that of his parents. The difference must have started with high school, where he was always known by the boys as “the guy,” and by the girls as “the fellow,” who lived at the Harcourt place. He was never the smartest boy in his class or the dullest one either, and he had entered school too late to be identified with any particular group. Yet it was amazing how much people remembered about him when it became worthwhile to remember.

Several of Willis’s schoolmates had exchanged photographs with him at graduation time, and were happy to exhibit these pictures in later years. Willis was younger then, of course, but who wasn’t? Still, in the school picture he had all the makings of what he was later—fine broad shoulders and a handsome face, in a manly way. It seemed strange, come to think of it, that he hadn’t been voted the handsomest boy in the graduating class, instead of its president, Howard Twining. The reason probably was that Willis was still a little gawky and hadn’t grown up to himself. He hadn’t broadened up to his tallness, and he still was outgrowing his clothes. Even so he was very neat and eagerly agreeable-looking. His hair, though a mite long, was all slicked down and neatly parted, making one recollect that Willis was one of those boys in high school who was careful to carry a pocket comb. The nice thing about that picture was the straight, reliable way in which Willis looked at you—an honest look and no smirking. His was a face you could trust, a sincere, honest, unpretentious face.

Mr. Bertram Lewis, who retired as principal of the Clyde High School in 1927, even at the age of eighty, distinctly remembered Willis Wayde. It seemed that Mr. Lewis, called Gumshoe Lewis by generations of his pupils, had realized the instant he set eyes on Willis that the young man had a future ahead of him, although Mr. Lewis did not announce his discovery for many, many years. It seemed only yesterday, he used to say, that Willis and his mother had called at the old high-school building on the day before school opened in September, 1922. He was struck immediately by the young man’s fine, upstanding appearance. He could tell right away that Willis was exceptional. Often when the winter twilight fell and Mr. Lewis made a final tour before going home, he would find Willis still studying at his desk, and he remembered what Willis said, just as though it were yesterday. “When I work something out by myself,” he said, “then I know it, Mr. Lewis.”

It was strange when Willis once heard this anecdote repeated that he could not remember a single occasion when he had stayed after school, except once when Miss Minnie Wilson had kept him there after she had caught him passing a note across the aisle to Susan Brown, and it was not his note either. It was a note that Bill Ross, now owner of the Ross Garage, wanted delivered to Susan Brown.

Miss Minnie Wilson, who had taught English and kept Room 3, remembered Willis too. Willis wrote beautiful compositions, the best of which was entitled “The First Snowstorm of Winter.” There was one thing about Willis that was very sweet. She thought he was just a little bit in love with her—you know how boys were sometimes. When she kept him after school once for passing the note to that little blond girl, Susan Brown—who was a flirt, if Miss Wilson did say so—she never forgot what Willis had said after they had been alone for a whole hour.

“You won’t do it again, will you, Willis?” she had asked him.

“No, Miss Wilson,” he had answered.

He had said it looking straight into her eyes. He was really saying that he had no use for any little flirt like Susan Brown and he cared for someone else, and she could tell who that someone was.

As years passed Susan Brown, too, became able to recall more and more about Willis Wayde at school. She had left high school abruptly in the middle of her senior year to marry Gerald Holtz, who was learning to compound prescriptions in Wilson’s Drugstore. Since she had been going with a lot of other fellows, including Bill Ross, various individuals began counting on their fingers when their first child was born, but information as to the date of birth was vague, because Susan had been visiting cousins in Keene, New Hampshire, when this happened. By the time the last of the five Holtz children had reached school age, Susan remembered so much about Willis Wayde that she was finally able to reveal that she could have started going with Willis Wayde instead of with Gerald Holtz any time when they were at high school. Her desk was just across the aisle from his in old Minnie Wilson’s room, and Willis Wayde was always leaving mash notes in her desk. She could have married Willis just as easily as not, and if she only had, as she frequently told Gerald, she wouldn’t be living in any two-family house on Center Street doing all the work, and she would have known all those stuck-up Harcourts too. In fact, Willis had proposed to her four times.

Gerald Holtz only said, that was Susy for you. You got to know who was going with who if you jerked sodas at Wilson’s. Willis Wayde never bought a soda for a girl, let alone Susy, except once when he treated Winnie Decker, Steve Decker’s sister, to a strawberry nut sundae.

Steve Decker had been in Room 3 with Willis too. They had studied plane geometry and Latin together, taught by old Gumshoe Lewis, and old Gumshoe was always bawling Willis out because Willis was pretty slow. Willis’s old man knew his old man out there at Harcourt’s. That was why he had Willis over to the house sometimes, and once they were on the debating team together. The subject was “Should Capital Punishment Be Abolished?” Steve also remembered the time when Willis had treated Winnie to a strawberry sundae. Willis had been asked to supper, and after supper Willis had said suddenly:

“How would it be, Winnie, if we went down to the drugstore and I was to buy you a soda?” It was a fact that Willis said “was,” not “were,” in those days.

Howard Twining, who later started Twining, Inc., Real Estate and Insurance, with offices in the Purdy Block on Dock Street, was president and valedictorian of the high-school class of 1924, and of course he remembered Willis Wayde. He and Willis and Steve Decker were almost inseparable, and Howard Twining himself had seen that Willis was on the committee of the senior-class dance, and Willis had walked in the grand march with Patricia Ryan, who was voted prettiest girl in the class. Frankly, he knew for a fact that Willis was sweet on Winnie Decker, who was in the sophomore class. Willis used to take her to Wilson’s Drugstore constantly and buy her sodas. Howard always knew that Willis was the most likely to succeed in the class of ’24.

Other people whose names and identities Willis had entirely forgotten began to remember the youth of Willis Wayde. Their insignificant reminiscences were like the calcified remains of coral animalcula, building up the reef of Wayde legend until it rose above the surface of fact and became impervious to the dashing waves of truth.

The truth was that his school career in Clyde left only a vague impression on Willis. He never had the time to appreciate the town or the acquaintances he made there. He must have felt that he was only passing through, like the drummers who spent a night at the hotel. Every morning he would meet Granville Beane at the gate of the Harcourt place and would walk to the car stop at Sudley Road and take the trolley car to town. The personality of Granville was more definite to Willis than that of any other of his schoolmates, because Granville and he took those trips together, walking through the autumn leaves, and through the snow, and later through the slush and mud of early spring.

All his other schoolmates were abstractions to him. The debating tests and the senior dance, and the social evenings in the parish hall of the Congregational Church which his mother made him attend, were only half-remembered interludes which had none of the validity of other aspects of his life. The high school supplied him with no love object, any more than the London streets had supplied one for Kipling’s soldier fresh from Mandalay, because he was on a plane far above that of Patricia Ryan or Susy Brown or Winnie Decker. The plane, of course, was Bess Harcourt.

During all the years that his parents lived on the Harcourt place, his mother was always cheerful when October came.

“They’ll be going to the city any day now,” she used to say, “and we can have everything all to ourselves.”

This was what she always said in the autumn, but she must have known that they would never have the place to themselves—except Alfred Wayde, whose obliviousness to surroundings made everything belong to him. In good weather on Saturdays or Sundays when he worked on the engine of the Ford or in the winter when he set up a bench and a metal lathe in the cellar or brought his drawing board into the living room, Alfred Wayde did not care where he was. It was different with Willis’s mother, and Willis understood her moods much more clearly than his father’s.

When the trees were bare and the gardens were mulched for the winter or when the snow on the lawns made the fir trees and the rhododendrons cold and dark, there were always a few lights in the big house and someone was always waiting there in case Mr. Harcourt should arrive suddenly from town. You never could tell exactly when he might arrive, and the same was true with the Bryson Harcourts, who came to their own house for the school holidays and often unexpectedly for week ends. The place would be watchful and silent one day and on the next you might hear the voices of strangers everywhere—friends of Mr. and Mrs. Bryson Harcourt’s and school friends of Bill’s and Bess’s. If you walked through the woods by the brook, you never knew exactly whom you might meet on week ends. Sometimes Willis would meet Bess with some other girls from her Boston school, and on these occasions Bess would pass by quickly, simply saying, “Hello, Willis,” and he would sometimes hear Bess explaining him to the company.

“He lives on the place,” he would hear her say, “in the garden house.”

It was different when he met Bill or some of Bill’s friends. Bill would often stop and introduce Willis to the company, and sometimes he would ask Willis to join them in whatever they were doing. Willis was never worried that he did not fit into these groups, because when they were by themselves he and Bess and Bill were friends in their own especial way, and they all knew that it was no one’s fault that they were separated by circumstances beyond their joint control.

Bess explained the situation to him once that winter in the frank way that a girl of her age would—not that Bess was not always frank. Willis met her one Saturday morning when he had gone to look at the hothouse grapes, which Mr. MacDonald had said he could visit any time as long as he went in and out quickly and always closed the greenhouse door. On that sharp cold morning a fresh fall of powdery snow made everything dazzlingly white under a sunny cloudless sky. He came face to face with Bess just as he left the greenhouse. She was wearing a pleated blue serge skirt, a gray sweater, gray mittens, and a toboggan cap to match.

“Hello,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking at the hothouse grapes,” Willis said.

“Well, don’t eat any,” she said. “MacDonald can always tell. Where are you going now?”

“Home,” he said.

“I’m going up to the pine woods to look for animal tracks in the snow,” she said. “Would you like to come along?”

“All right, if you want me to,” he said.

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t ask you,” Bess answered. “Hurry up. I’m cold standing still.”

It was hard to find the paths through the woods beneath the snow, but Bess knew them all by heart.

“I always like going places with you, Willis,” she said, “when there isn’t anyone else around.”

“Is that a fact?” Willis said.

“Don’t be silly,” Bess said. “When I have friends it isn’t the same. They wouldn’t like you and you wouldn’t like them.”

“Is that a fact?” Willis said.

He said it because it was an easy thing to say, and he could afford to be amused. He was older and his age put him in a superior position.

“Don’t be silly,” Bess said. “I like you when I’m alone.”

“All right,” Willis said. “I’ve got my own friends.”

It was pleasant in the pine woods. Beneath the trees the snow looked almost blue.

“Have you ever kissed a girl?” Bess asked him.

“Yes, I have,” Willis answered.

“Oh,” Bess said. “Where was that?”

“Back in Colorado.”

“Oh, was she prettier than me?”

“Yes,” Willis said, “and she was more grown-up.”

“Well,” Bess said, “a lot of girls in my class have kissed boys.”

“Is that a fact?” Willis said.

“I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that thing,” Bess said. “I’ve never kissed a boy. I suppose I’ll have to sometime.”

“Is that a fact?” Willis said.

“I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that thing,” Bess said again. “Would you like to kiss me?”

“No,” Willis said, “not especially.”

“Well,” Bess said, “go ahead anyway. I’ve got to kiss a boy sometime, and I may as well get it over with. Go ahead.”

She shut her eyes tight and clenched her fists and turned her face up toward him.

“Well,” she said, “that wasn’t much.”

“No,” Willis answered, “it certainly wasn’t.”

“It’s silly, isn’t it?” Bess said. “But we can try it again sometime.”

The next time he saw Bess was an evening two weeks later, when he and his father and mother were asked quite suddenly by Mr. Harcourt to come to supper at the big house—informally, Mr. Harcourt said—and he apologized for the abruptness of the invitation. Bryson and Mildred and Bill and Bess would be there, he said, and he would appreciate having someone outside the family, if Mrs. Wayde would agree on such short notice. He had seen a great deal of the family lately in Boston, and perhaps there was such a thing as too much unadulterated family.

The big house was always wonderful in winter. Once you were in the hall, with the heavy-framed pictures and Selwyn, there was no sign at all of winter, and there was a summer smell of hothouse flowers. The Bryson Harcourts had arrived already, and everyone was in the drawing room.

“Mr. Harcourt’s expecting you, sir,” Selwyn said to Mr. Wayde. “Would you mind finding your way to the drawing room yourself while I hang up the wraps?”

It was Selwyn’s way of saying that they were welcome guests. As usual the rugs deadened the sound of footsteps so that no one heard the Waydes when they arrived at the open door of the drawing room, and thus they had an unanticipated glimpse of the Harcourts around the open fire. Mr. Harcourt in his dinner coat was facing the marble mantel, and Mr. Bryson Harcourt, in a brown tweed jacket, stood beside him. Mrs. Harcourt was seated in a light armchair looking up at them with the firelight making an attractive sort of halo around her head. Whatever they had been saying seemed to have caught her full attention and had given her good-natured florid face an anxious look. Bill and Bess were seated side by side on a sofa like two bored spectators who wished they were somewhere else—Bill in a dark blue suit, and Bess in a young girl’s dress of English silk.

“I don’t mind in the least your being frank, Bryson,” Mr. Harcourt was saying.

His voice sounded light and untroubled. It was one of those moments when one did not know whether to interrupt or to stand there listening, and the Waydes paused indecisively at the door of the drawing room.

“I think you should give more consideration to the family point of view, Father,” Bryson Harcourt said. “The business is going beautifully and no one sees any need for turning everything inside out.”

“No doubt I’ll hear all about it at the June meeting,” Mr. Harcourt said. “I’m customarily blamed for something there. But just remember this.” Mr. Harcourt touched his lip with his forefinger. “The whole lot of you together can’t outvote me, can you? I suppose I sound arrogant. I dare say I am.”

Then he stopped. His glance had traveled to the drawing-room door. The façade was up again, and the Harcourts were again a united family. Bryson Harcourt hurried across the room to shake hands with Mrs. Wayde, and Mrs. Bryson Harcourt had risen and was smiling. Mr. Harcourt patted Willis on the shoulder.

“Willis,” he said, “you’re growing all the time. You’ll have a Martini, won’t you, Alfred?”

“I certainly will,” Mr. Wayde answered.

“Hello, Willis,” Bill said. “How have you been?” And then Willis shook hands with Bess.

“Hello,” she said, and she drew her hand away quickly, looking as though she had never seen him before.

One afternoon in March, in that tedious time of year when you became uncertain whether winter would ever end or not, the word came from Mr. Beane that no one would be on the place for the week end, and there was also a rumor that Mr. Harcourt had gone suddenly to Florida. On Saturday afternoon Willis’s father had asked him to get a good hot fire going in the kitchen stove and then to come down cellar to help while he attached an electric motor to a centrifugal machine that he had been working on for several weeks.

“It’s about time you learned to use your hands, Willis,” his father had said. “My God, I’ve never seen a boy so clumsy with his hands.”

Some time before, Alfred Wayde had brought home a bag of potato chips, of which he was very fond, and, while eating them, he had begun to wonder whether it would not be possible to slice and fry bananas in the same manner. He had found that he could slice bananas and cook them in deep fat and the immediate result was satisfactory, but an hour later the banana chips became limp and spongy. Banana chips, Alfred Wayde had discovered, were deliquescent, and now he was thinking of some way to get the water out of them, and he had put together a centrifugal machine.

The device, which roughly resembled a windmill, and which was to be turned by a small electric motor, was going to get every bit of water and excess grease from the bananas.

“What are you going to do next if it does?” Willis asked his father.

Alfred Wayde looked at Willis impatiently.

“How’s that again, son?” he asked.

“What are you going to do if it does work?” Willis asked.

“It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference,” Alfred Wayde answered. “I only want to see whether it will. What made you ask such a fool question, son?”

“I thought maybe you could patent it and sell it,” Willis said.

“Well,” Alfred Wayde said, “why should I? I’m only doing this for my personal enjoyment.”

“But there might be money in banana chips,” Willis said.

“Money in banana chips?” Alfred Wayde answered. “My God, I don’t want to go into the banana business. Now hand me the small wrench and the box of nuts, and don’t spill them all over the floor.”

“If they keep absorbing water out of the air,” Willis said, “why does it do any good to get the water out of them?”

“Listen, son,” his father said, “I don’t give a damn what happens to them later if I can get the water out of them just once, and now you’d better go for a walk and not ask any more fool questions.”

It was half past five in the afternoon. The sky outside was leaden gray, but there was still plenty of light because the days were certainly getting longer. There were icicles on the eaves of the big house, which looked more solid than ever behind the swaying limbs of the bare trees around it. The snow along the wood path by the brook was slippery and wet, and as Willis walked along he began thinking what the woods must have been like a hundred years ago, before there was any Harcourt place. Some of the larger trees had been growing then, and he could imagine that they were speaking among themselves of the past, as the wind moved through their tops. He could imagine, too, that he heard voices. He thought that he heard Mr. Harcourt’s voice—which he knew was impossible, since Mr. Harcourt was in Florida. He was very much astonished when he suddenly saw Mr. Harcourt walking toward him.

Mr. Harcourt was dressed in the black broadcloth coat with the fur collar that he usually wore when he motored from the city. He was accompanied by a slender, middle-aged lady whose hat and whose fur cape looked more like the city than the country. She was holding Mr. Harcourt’s arm.

“Why, hello,” Mr. Harcourt said. “I never expected to see anyone out here. Why aren’t you in the house like sensible people, Willis?”

“I’ve been working down cellar with Pa, sir,” Willis said. “He’s making a machine to get water out of bananas. He’s just doing it for fun.”

“Well,” Mr. Harcourt said, “everyone to his own taste, I suppose. I suppose we’re out here for fun ourselves, aren’t we, Harriet? This is Willis Wayde, the son of my plant engineer. They’re living in the garden house, you know.”

“Oh yes, of course,” Mrs. James said, and she smiled at Willis and held out a gray-gloved hand.

“Mrs. James and I have been motoring,” Mr. Harcourt said, “and I suggested that we might stop for a cup of tea before returning to Boston.”

“Yes, sir,” Willis said.

Mr. Harcourt touched his lower lip, and suddenly he began to laugh at some private joke of his own.

“I really thought I’d never see anyone at this time of day, but you never can tell, can you? Won’t you join Mrs. James and me in a cup of tea?”

“I guess I ought to be getting home, sir,” Willis said.

They were acting as though the whole thing were perfectly natural, but Willis was sure it was not.

“Please come with us, Willis,” Mrs. James said. “You look as though you need a cup of tea.”

“And you can tell us why your father wants to get water out of bananas, Willis,” Mr. Harcourt said.

Patrick’s wife, who always helped out in the winters, served tea in the library. The ornate silver service, which Willis had seen in the dining room, had been placed on a low table in front of the black marble fireplace, where three lumps of cannel coal were burning. Almost as soon as they arrived, Patrick’s wife, in her black dress and stiff starched apron, brought in the silver hot-water kettle, placed it on the rack above the spirit lamp and lighted the wick. It was the first time that Willis had ever seen the conventional serving of tea.

“Nellie,” Mr. Harcourt said, “this is Mrs. James. I’m not sure whether you’ve ever met her before.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Patrick’s wife said, “and I hope the tea will be all right.”

“If you will bring in the bread and butter and toast, please, Nellie,” Mr. Harcourt said, “and some pound cake, if there is any. I’m sure Willis could do with some cake.”

No one spoke again until Nellie had left the room.

“Are these Ethel’s tea things?” Mrs. James asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Harcourt said, “a wedding present. That was quite a while ago. You can tell from looking at Nellie and me.”

“Do you want me to pour, Henry?” Mrs. James asked.

“I think so,” Mr. Harcourt said, “if you would be so kind, Harriet,” and suddenly he laughed.

“What are you laughing at?” Mrs. James asked.

“Only at the general situation,” Mr. Harcourt said. Mr. Harcourt looked handsome and younger when he laughed, and somehow Mrs. James looked younger too. Suddenly Willis was sure that she was kinder than Mrs. Blood.

“I wish you didn’t have such a sour sense of humor, Henry,” Mrs. James said.

“Not sour,” Mr. Harcourt answered, “mature, Harriet.”

When Patrick’s wife came back carrying a peculiar piece of furniture which Willis knew later was called a curate’s delight, Mrs. James was seated before the tea table, her hands moving gracefully and quickly, and she measured out tea into the silver pot and poured hot water into the fragile cups to warm them and then poured the water into a silver bowl. Willis never again saw anyone who could pour tea and move all those things about as beautifully as Mrs. James.

“Now just what is it that your father’s doing in the cellar?” Mr. Harcourt asked.

Something inexplicable had happened that had made Willis feel perfectly at home. They were interested when he described how he and his father had both fried and baked banana chips and then went on to the centrifugal machine.

“I guess Pa’s still down there working,” Willis said. “Maybe he won’t bother to come up for supper. When he gets working on something, he’s like that.”

“Yes,” Mr. Harcourt said, “the creative mind.”

“There’s one funny thing about Pa,” Willis said. “He doesn’t care what’s going to happen, if he works it out about those bananas. He just says he doesn’t want to be a banana king.”

“He’s not like me, Willis,” Mr. Harcourt said. “He doesn’t need to be a king of anything. What would you do if the bananas worked out right?”

“I guess I’d think about starting some kind of factory, sir,” Willis said.

“That’s what I’d do too,” Mr. Harcourt said, “exactly.” His head turned quickly to the window, and Willis saw the lights of the Locomobile coming up the drive.

“Dear me,” Mr. Harcourt said, and he pulled a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket. “There’s Patrick and it’s six o’clock. I suppose we’d better leave, Harriet.”

“It’s been ever so nice seeing you, Willis,” Mrs. James said, “and I hope we’ll meet again.”

“You’ll meet again,” Mr. Harcourt said. “Willis is going to work for me at the mill this summer, aren’t you, Willis?”

“Yes, sir,” Willis said.

He felt tremendously happy as he walked down the passage to the front hall. Mr. Harcourt had spoken previously of his working at the mill, but he had never said before that Willis would work for him. You had to have a hero when you were going on sixteen, and Willis would have gladly died for Mr. Harcourt.

Willis was to spend his life in a highly competitive arena in which, in spite of a surface geniality, there was a peculiar lack of mercy once the chips were down. All sorts of small things added themselves together in that competition so that microscopic errors of judgment and careless moments often became momentous in the end. The line that separated success from mediocrity was fascinatingly thin and wavering. That meeting with Mr. Harcourt and Mrs. James he could see later was one of those events which finally put him on a confidential basis with the Harcourt family.

Willis was not surprised at all when the news broke suddenly that Mr. Harcourt and Mrs. James had been married quietly and had gone for a while to Palm Beach in Florida. He could not understand in the least why everyone, including Mr. Beane and Mr. MacDonald, appeared surprised and unsettled. Except for himself, it seemed to Willis that Patrick was the only one who was not surprised, and he should not have been, having driven them in the Locomobile. Willis discovered that Patrick’s attitude toward him had changed after that tea party, and incidentally Patrick began to call him Master Willis.

Perhaps Patrick never kept his mouth as tightly shut as he said he did, or perhaps it was Nellie, his wife, who did the talking. At any rate the word must have got around that Willis had known all about Mr. Harcourt and Mrs. James before anyone else, and it gave Willis a new position on the Harcourt place.

He understood more clearly that he had been in the midst of an earth-shaking event the next time he saw Bess Harcourt.

“You say you saw her?” Bess said.

“Yes,” Willis answered. “She was at the big house.”

“She doesn’t look like much, does she?” Bess said. “Just an old lady without any money or anything. I don’t know why old people get married and make things hard for everybody.”

“I thought she was kind of nice,” Willis said.

“That shows how little you know,” Bess said. “She wasn’t nice to get Grandfather to marry her and get all the money that Daddy would have had, but we’re all going to be pleasant to her when she comes here. We mustn’t show the way we feel.”

“Well, I thought she was sort of nice,” Willis said.

“Don’t be silly, Willis,” Bess said. “You don’t understand because you haven’t got a single cent of money. Grandfather is a silly old man, and Mummy’s making me embroider a pincushion cover for her.”

“Maybe I’ll make some money some day,” Willis said.

“Don’t be silly, Willis,” Bess said again. “I don’t know why I like you when you talk that way.”

“I don’t care if you don’t,” Willis said.

“Well,” Bess said, “as long as we’re here and there’s no one else around, don’t you want to kiss me, Willis?”

“No, not much,” Willis said.

“Now, Willis,” Bess said. “We’re going to have a dance this spring in the vacation, and Mummy says she’s going to ask Steve Decker and Winnie Decker. We have to ask them because their father is the mill’s lawyer. And I’ll get Mummy to ask you too. I’m going to put my hair up for it. Please kiss me, Willis.”

Willis had a happy time at that party, and, in fact, he always did have a good time whenever he was invited to the Bryson Harcourt house. Both Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt had a way with young people, if you wanted to use the term, perhaps because they had remained young in so many ways themselves. Mrs. Harcourt always made an especial effort to talk to him, but her attention never made him self-conscious. Mr. Bryson was kind to him too. Mr. Bryson Harcourt was impulsive and generous, and Bill was very much like him. It made no difference if they remembered you only when they saw you.

It was a very informal party—just two or three girls who were friends of Bess’s from Boston and two or three school friends of Bill’s, and then Steve and Winnie Decker and Willis. After what Mrs. Harcourt called a pickup supper in the brightly lighted dining room—the Bryson Harcourt house always looked very new and cheerful—they rolled back all the rugs in the big front hall, and Mr. Bryson turned on the phonograph.

Willis always did have trouble learning steps, but Mrs. Bryson Harcourt went out of her way to say that he was doing very well, and those friends of Bess’s all tried to teach him, and Bess was very kind herself. She wore her hair up, as she had said she would. She had also, she told him, borrowed two kinds of perfume from her mother’s dressing table and, if he would promise not to tell, a little rouge from her best friend, Gertrude Fredericks. Mrs. Harcourt asked him in a low voice to try to be especially kind to Winnie Decker, who was a fattish frightened girl in those days. Willis was sure that he was having a much better time than Steve Decker, who looked tall and sallow and sour.

“Say,” Steve Decker said to him, “let’s step outside and smoke a cigarette.”

Willis had never smoked in his life, but he would have died rather than tell Steve Decker. He was very glad to step outside with him on the driveway.

“What are you coughing for?” Steve asked him. “Haven’t you ever smoked a cigarette?”

“Oh yes,” Willis answered, “lots of times.”

“These parties bore me,” Steve said. “Every time the Harcourt kids ask us to one, the old man makes us go. Bill Harcourt isn’t so hot either, do you think so?”

“No,” Willis said, “no, he isn’t so hot.”

“And Bess, she isn’t so hot either. Say, do you know what?”

“No, what?” Willis asked.

“She asked me to kiss her. She said it was time she learned how to kiss a boy. Say, what do you know about that?”

Willis coughed again.

“What do you know?” he said.

“Say,” Steve said, “when’s the old man getting back?”

“What old man?” Willis asked, as he coughed again.

“God Almighty,” Steve Decker said, and he laughed urbanely. “Old Harcourt and his new wife. Boy, I’d like to have been around when the family got that news. I bet it set old Bryson right on his ass.”

Willis could still feel the acrid sting of the cigarette smoke and recall his twinge of fascinated horror at that allusion to Mr. Bryson Harcourt. He could still feel the cool April air on his face with its message of early spring and growth. He could even remember the exact sound of a footstep behind him on the gravel drive. It was young Bill Harcourt, already taller than his father.

“Hello,” Bill said. “What are you two doing out here?”

“Just resting,” Steve Decker said, “and taking a drag on a cigarette.”

“Oh, boy,” Bill Harcourt said, “give me one, will you?”

Bill was always ready to try anything, and his enthusiasm never died. Willis always had a warm spot in his heart for Bill.

The annual meeting of the stockholders of the Harcourt Mill occurred just after high school had closed in June and just before Willis had started to work at the mill. Everybody was back on the place by then—the Henry Harcourts, the Bryson Harcourts, and Bill and Bess. The leaves were all out on the trees except for the catalpas. It was all a time of newness and hope when the stockholders gathered at the Harcourt Mill and then met for luncheon at the big house. The machinery, the offices and Harcourt belting were symbolized at the Harcourt place each June by the fresh edging of the turf along the drive and the flowers of the rhododendrons and the laurels, and by the swans floating on the still waters of their pond.

As the hour approached that marked the end of the meeting at the mill, everyone was too busy to think of Willis Wayde. He wanted to keep out of the way, but curiosity impelled him to stand in the corner of the rose garden, where he could see the automobiles as they came up the drive. That was where Bess Harcourt met him and asked him, as she often did, what he was doing.

“You can see,” he said, “I’m not doing anything.”

There was no doubt that Bess was growing up. She was no longer the middy-bloused girl that she had been the previous summer. Her braid was doubled up now and tied by a ribbon, and she wore a blue sweater and a red belt around her waist, but she still had her blue serge skirt and her sensible square-toed low shoes.

“Well, I’m not doing anything either,” Bess said. “I guess they’re fighting down at the mill. It always means they’re fighting when they’re late.”

Willis did not answer, but Bess was still young enough to talk freely.

“They all think Grandfather’s spending too much money,” Bess said. “Cousin Emily was awful cross this morning. She was in the den with Daddy before they went to the mill, and then Cousin Roger came, and then the Hayward cousins came. Mummy doesn’t like the Haywards and I hate them.”

The mill problems were all new to Willis then.

“When Cousin Emily’s mad her nose gets thin,” Bess said. “Do you think my nose looks like hers?”

“I’ve never seen her nose,” Willis answered.

“It’s shiny. She never puts on powder.”

“Is that a fact?” Willis said.

“Don’t keep saying that,” Bess told him. “Let’s go inside the big house and look around.”

“No,” Willis said, “we wouldn’t have any business being there.”

Bess looked at him thoughtfully. It seemed to Willis lately that she was always looking him up and down as though she had never seen him before.

“You haven’t but I have,” she said. “If anyone catches us I’ll say that I invited you, but no one’s going to notice.”

“I’ll stay here,” Willis said. “You go if you like.”

She took his hand and tried to pull him after her.

“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.