XV

The Columbia sociologist for whom Sylvia was working left for a six weeks’ trip on the first of July to study the burial, marriage, and other habits of the Zuni Indians, and Sylvia went to stay with her parents at Lake Sunapee until he should return. Although she wrote Willis three or four times a week, letters were not the same as Sylvia. It was fortunate for Willis that complications at Rahway occupied nearly all his waking hours.

There were many later periods of crisis and negotiation in his career which were as arduous and crucial, but he had gained confidence by then so that he never again worked under such strain and pressure as he had in those six weeks. He had to show an external confidence and a serene belief in his judgments which he often did not feel. He had to demonstrate that he knew the belting business, and his comparative youth rendered this most difficult. He had to be a salesman and a promoter and a technical expert all in one, and after he had succeeded in selling the Rahway crowd, he had to go to New York and begin all over again with Beakney-Graham. He always admitted that he could never have handled the Rahway situation without the fine support that Beakney-Graham had given him, especially Joe McKitterick, and there was no wonder he always had a warm spot in his heart for that fine group. Nevertheless, as he once said facetiously later, he was like someone in the circus all that summer, riding a bicycle on a wire and carrying chairs and tables upon both shoulders.

It was all very well to think of Sylvia near a cool lake in New Hampshire, but Willis could not seem to make her understand that he could not dash away for a visit with things going as they were. Nevertheless toward the end of July Willis finally did take three days off, making reservations on the night train Thursday, with return reservations on Sunday. Without ever having been to Lake Sunapee, he had a good idea what it would be like, because he had spent a vacation at Lake Placid once and another near the base of Mt. Washington. He took his golf clubs with him, in case there was an opportunity to shoot a little golf, and his black evening trousers, a cummerbund, and one of those white linen mess jackets which were popular at the time, in case there should be a dance at the country club. He also packed his tennis clothes, because you never knew what you would run into on a three days’ vacation. It was a pleasure to watch the porter carrying his golf clubs, his tennis racquet and his new pigskin suitcase when he boarded the evening train.

He arrived at the junction bright and early the next morning, and Sylvia was there to meet him in the Hodgeses’ four-year-old Ford runabout. When you were away from someone for some time, perhaps you always built pictures, and somehow Willis had thought that Sylvia would be wearing some sort of print dress. Instead she had on slacks, a man’s shirt with a frayed soft collar, and sneakers, and he never forgot her expression when she saw the golf clubs.

“Oh, Willis,” she said, “there isn’t any golf.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I just brought the clubs along in case.”

“And there isn’t any tennis either,” she said. “I don’t know why I should have thought you’d know.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I’m not any good at tennis anyway.”

But she still looked at him doubtfully as he put his suitcase and golf clubs into the rumble seat of the old Ford.

“I don’t know why I never described things to you,” she said. “We’re just here camping out, you know, doing our own work, and I’m afraid you thought there would be a butler.”

Of course he had not thought there would be a butler but Sylvia made him feel out of place, even at the junction.

“Well, that’s fine,” he said. “I’ve always liked camping out.” He did like camping out, although he had never done any of it since he was fifteen, and he was used to housework too, and Sylvia should have known it.

“Willis,” she asked, “didn’t you bring any old clothes?”

If she had only told him, he could have bought some khaki trousers and sneakers at Abercrombie & Fitch. He could have bought a pocket flashlight too, which he found he needed badly after he discovered that the Hodgeses had no plumbing.

“Well, I haven’t got anything exactly old,” he said, “just some tennis clothes and bathing trunks, but I’ll get along all right.”

Sylvia looked relieved when he mentioned bathing trunks.

“You can wear those most of the time and a shirt on top,” she said. “Mother always insists on a shirt when we’re on the porch.”

“Well, that’s fine, if it isn’t cold,” he said.

“It won’t be too cold except at night,” she told him, “but there are gnats sometimes. Maybe you’d better buy a pair of khaki trousers before we start.”

It was a fine idea, and he told her so.

“You pick them out, Sylvia,” he told her. “I really do like camping out.”

Then in a helpless way she said, “Oh dear, I don’t mean to laugh but you keep wanting to buy me ball gowns, and I’m going to buy you a pair of khaki trousers—a present from me to you. Don’t you see it’s funny?”

It had been a long time since he had seen a small-town men’s toggery, but he was able to get into the spirit of it, and it annoyed him that Sylvia seemed to think he couldn’t. He was just as good at camping out as she was, he told her, and he liked to fish, he told her. Nothing was more fun than going fishing.

The only trouble was that he had never camped out with any people like the Hodgeses, and that place at Lake Sunapee was different from anything he had ever known. The Hodgeses lived in a shingled cottage on the edge of the lake in a pine grove a long way from anywhere.

“Father bought it for almost nothing during the depression,” Sylvia told him, when she tried to explain things while the Ford jolted over a very rough country road.

“Oh dear,” Sylvia said, “there’s something else I should have told you. Father’s against drinking at the cottage, but we could have bought a bottle of something. Maybe Tom has some. He does sometimes.”

“You know I don’t drink much, Sylvia,” Willis said. “It doesn’t matter at all.” But frequently that week end he would have been less nervous if he could have had a drink.

Once, shortly after Willis had met Lydia Hembird, Lydia had invited him to visit her family in Montclair for a week end, and this had been Willis’s only previous experience as an eligible young man. He had not forgotten the embarrassment caused him by the covert watchfulness and elaborately careless questions of Lydia’s parents. Yet somehow it had never occurred to Willis until his arrival at Sunapee that his visit to the Hodgeses would offer a similar ordeal. He should have known, of course, from Sylvia’s nervousness, and from the moment he saw the family all waiting for him on the front porch, that his visit had an obvious implication. They were a welcoming delegation there to meet him, and he was sure they had been discussing him ever since Sylvia had driven to the station, and, since there were only board partitions between the rooms, Willis heard his name coupled with Sylvia’s frequently during his stay, although in tactful whispers.

“They won’t be around after supper,” he heard them whisper. “Sylvia will want to take him out in the canoe.”

“He’s really very nice,” he heard them whisper. “It isn’t his fault that he thought we were living on a golf course.”

This last remark had been made by Mr. Hodges, hardly in a whisper. No matter what you might say, Mr. Hodges was a broad-gauged man who knew his way around, even if he seldom went anywhere.

As Willis told Sylvia later, he had been there on approval, like a new vacuum cleaner that could be sent back if it didn’t work, not that there were any electric outlets in the cottage. In fact they cooked on a wood stove and went to bed by lamplight, and as Mrs. Hodges said right away, he was a member of the family. Mrs. Hodges, who looked more like a frontierswoman than a professor’s wife, shook hands with him warmly and understandingly.

“Of course I remember Willis, dear,” she said to Sylvia, “and now you’d better go and peel the potatoes for lunch. You can bring them out on the porch here, dear, and perhaps Willis would like to help you after he puts on some camp clothes, and we can all go on talking about Hitler and the Rhineland and whatever is going to become of it.”

“Yes, yes, Sylvia,” Mr. Hodges said, “my memory isn’t so dim that I don’t recall your young gentleman.” Mr. Hodges had not shaved that morning, and he wore khaki shorts and a sleeveless undershirt. “There’s only one rule around here, Wayde. We wear shirts when we’re on the porch. For some reason Mrs. Hodges objects to bare torsos. You’d better strip down, Wayde, and excuse my legs. I admit I have varicose veins.”

“I understand they have something they can inject into them now, sir,” Willis said.

“Yes,” Mr. Hodges said, “silicate, I believe, but I’ll leave mine just the way they are. You remember Laura, don’t you?”

Of course Willis remembered Laura. Laura was wearing slacks like Sylvia and she looked frankly and adjustedly ugly.

“I choose you for my team if we play games tonight,” she said. It touched Willis that Laura remembered that he had been good at pencil-and-paper games.

“Mary, dear,” Mrs. Hodges said, “I don’t believe you’ve ever met Sylvia’s young man, have you? This is Tom’s wife, Willis.”

Mary Hodges was a stocky, red-faced girl in shorts. It seemed to Willis that girls with ugly legs always wanted to show them off.

“Hi,” she said, and she shook hands aggressively. “You’re sleeping in the guest coop.”

The guest coop, Willis found out later, was a remodeled brooder house that Tom had purchased from a nearby farm. Tom was always working on what he called “improvement projects.”

“Hi, Willis,” Tom said. His shirt and bathing trunks and bare arms were caked with clay. “You look as though you’ve been battening off the workers down there in New York.”

Willis felt his face redden. Sylvia had told him that Tom was interested in the CIO, and he certainly did not want to get into a labor argument.

“The way I feel, Tom,” he said, “is that the workers are feeding off management just at present. At least that’s the way it is down at my belting company.”

He should not theoretically have called it his company, but he felt that he had to make some sort of impression.

“You come with me,” Tom said, “and you’ll see what labor means. Mary and I are laying a new pipe from the spring to the kitchen.”

Willis must have looked startled. Sylvia might have warned him about the absence of plumbing, and Tom burst into a roar of laughter.

“There’s no private bath, no telephone—and no water if we don’t get busy. Come on, Mary, or we’ll have to haul it in buckets.”

Willis did not mind about the plumbing, but he had never dreamed there would not be a telephone, and he had some notes in his pocket for a call he wished to make to Rahway.

“Don’t worry, Willis,” Sylvia said, “there’s a telephone half a mile down the road and I can run you there any time.”

“No you can’t,” Laura said. “It’s my turn for the Ford.”

“Then we can walk,” Sylvia said. “Willis likes to walk.”

“The thing for you to remember, Wayde,” Mr. Hodges said, “is that we are only living for a split second geologically. This present interglacial epoch is only fifteen or twenty minutes old geologically. I often find comfort in this fact, and maybe you will too before you return to city life.”

“Don’t discourage him, Father,” Sylvia said. “I’ll take him to the guest coop now.”

Willis had never thought of Sylvia in this environment; she seemed surprisingly adjusted to it. When they were in the guest coop, she kissed him. It was not much of a kiss because he struck his head against a two-by-four on the roof.

“Just remember,” Sylvia whispered, “it’s only a split second geologically.”

Willis always prided himself on being able to get along with people even if their interests were quite different from his own. He liked to think that he had succeeded with the Hodgeses in a measure. But he had never been in a group in which he had felt so inadequate. He would not have minded the simple life if it had been simple, but the Hodgeses neglected the advantages of simplicity and the small creature comforts understood by practical campers. Not one of them knew how to split kindling for the stove properly or how to keep the stove going once it was lighted, and what was more, they honestly did not care. Hardly a breath of air stirred in the pine grove, the sun’s reflection glared at them from the glassy surface of the lake, but the Hodgeses did not heed the heat or the gnats.

All the Hodgeses cared about were ideas and talk. One minute they were telling jokes in French and next they were lapsing into German. Then suddenly they would be discussing the immoralities of the Emperor Tiberius and early Christianity in the Roman Empire, which led to the subject of Byzantine influence. The minds of the Hodgeses darted from point to point, like the dragonflies above the lake. They all talked at once—Mrs. Hodges, Sylvia, Mary, Laura, and Tom. It seemed to Willis that Mr. Hodges was the only one who listened, but he too enjoyed every minute of it, and he too would occasionally leap into the discussion. Admitting it was all worthwhile, Willis could find no ending and no beginning.

It seemed that Laura and Tom and Mary had just returned from Europe and they had stayed, as the Hodgeses always had, at a small pension in the rue de l’Université. Remembering what Sylvia had said about this place, Willis glanced at her sympathetically, but Sylvia seemed to have forgotten that she had complained of it. She was listening to Tom give what she called a “free lecture.” Instead of being bored by it, Sylvia exhibited a deep respect for Tom.

The inevitable conflict was starting already, Tom was saying, between Nazism and Communism. A decadent capitalistic system inevitably turned to Nazism as a last resort, like the Franco forces in Spain and the Hitler rule in Germany.

“You agree with that, Willis,” Tom said, “don’t you? Intellectually if not emotionally?”

It was very hot, and Willis kept wishing they would go for a swim but no one suggested it.

“I guess this is all a little over my head,” Willis said. “I only know what I read in the papers, like Will Rogers.” He laughed and everyone laughed too, briefly and sympathetically.

It was a great relief when Sylvia finally asked him to go for a walk. It had suddenly dawned on her that Willis had not seen anything of the lake, and this fact seemed to dawn on everyone else too at the same instant.

“Why, Willis has just been sitting here, hasn’t he?” Mrs. Hodges said.

“I hate to miss any of this wonderful talk,” Willis said, “but I would like to take a walk.”

Almost the only time the Hodgeses were silent during his visit was when he and Sylvia walked down to the lake path. It was very hot and he stumbled occasionally over pine roots.

“You have to watch where you’re going,” Sylvia said. “This is an awfully rough path.”

“You get a beautiful view from it,” Willis said.

“Willis, dear, I’m so proud of you,” Sylvia said. “Everyone thinks you’re wonderful. Mother and Laura have said so already, and Mary wishes Tom could be more like you. You’re having a good time, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Willis said, “it’s great to get away from the city and get some new ideas.”

“Can’t you stay for a day or two more and not go back Sunday night?”

“I wish I could,” Willis said, and he stumbled over another pine root. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve been walking in the woods.”

“You have to get used to it,” Sylvia said. “Father’s very interested in you.”

“I suppose he is,” Willis said. “I guess I can’t blame him much.”

“Oh, dear,” Sylvia said, “I didn’t mean it in that way, but he probably will try to draw you out. You don’t mind if he draws you out, do you?”

Of course he and Mr. Hodges would have to have a little talk sometime, but Mr. Hodges did nothing about it until Sunday afternoon, and then it happened unexpectedly.

“Say, Wayde,” Mr. Hodges said, “are you any good in a canoe?”

Willis’s father had taught him to paddle, one summer when he had been working for paper interests in Ontario, but once you learned a thing like that, you never wholly forgot it. There was another of those silences while Willis and Mr. Hodges stepped off the porch and pushed the Hodgeses’ canoe into the water. Willis was feeling tired by then, because he had not slept well in the guest coop, and his muscles were stiff from walking and swimming. You could tell from the moment anyone picked up a paddle whether or not he knew about canoes, and Mr. Hodges must have learned somewhere besides Lake Sunapee.

“You’ve been with Indians sometime, haven’t you?” Mr. Hodges said.

“Yes, sir,” Willis answered, “with my father once in Ontario.”

“You must have watched them,” Mr. Hodges said. “You can always tell. I made quite a study of Indian paddling in Minnesota once.”

Willis was not surprised, because it seemed to him that Mr. Hodges knew something of everything.

“If Horace could ever have been in a canoe, he would have liked it,” Mr. Hodges said.

“Horace, sir?” Willis said. He thought that he must have missed a name somewhere and that perhaps Mr. Hodges had a brother named Horace.

“The Latin poet,” Mr. Hodges said.

“Oh yes,” Willis said, “Horace. I don’t know much about him, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be,” Mr. Hodges said. “Never be afraid of Horace. Sylvia tells me you’re making ten thousand dollars a year. Do you hope to make some more?”

“Yes, sir,” Willis said. “And I think I will, if what I’m doing turns out right.”

“Sylvia says you have something to do with machine belts.”

Seated as he was in the bow of the canoe, Willis could only hear Mr. Hodges without seeing him.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “it’s the only thing I really know about. At least I hope I do.”

“I don’t,” Mr. Hodges said. “My mind’s a blank when it comes to belts.”

“Well, sir,” Willis said, “frankly mine’s a blank when it comes to Horace.”

“Dear me,” Mr. Hodges said, “there have to be zeros somewhere. Four zeros in ten thousand dollars, and more in a million. That’s the trouble with money, there must be a lot of zeros.”

Willis wished he knew whether Mr. Hodges was being funny or serious, but it was a good remark and one Willis always remembered. Mr. Hodges had been right. You had to sacrifice a lot of things if you made money.

“Last May, sir,” he said, “I met a friend of yours in New York—Mr. Hawley, president of the Hawley Pneumatic Tool.”

“Hawley,” Mr. Hodges said, “Hawley—oh yes. I didn’t like him very much.”

“I didn’t like him much either,” Willis said, “but I wouldn’t like to have him know it.”

“Well,” Mr. Hodges said, “I’m glad you didn’t. Sylvia tells me you’re reading the Five-Foot Shelf of Books—fifteen minutes a day. Why?”

Willis could not turn around. He hoped that he would never again have a serious conversation with anyone when he paddled bow in a canoe.

“I wonder,” Mr. Hodges said before Willis could answer, “if you’re doing that to please Sylvia. I wouldn’t if I were you. Women are intellectual snobs, but I wouldn’t let that worry me.”

“No, sir,” Willis answered, “I’m doing it for myself.”

“Well,” Mr. Hodges said, “I confess it shows initiative.”

Neither of them spoke for a while, and Willis was glad to listen to the dipping of the paddles in the water.

“I’m afraid,” Mr. Hodges said, “you’ve taken quite a beating this week end. Do you still like Sylvia?”

“Yes, sir,” Willis said. “It’s been very interesting here.”

“I’ve been interested too,” Mr. Hodges said, “but then you’d expect me to be, wouldn’t you, in my position? Sylvia’s always been an independent girl, and perhaps she needs some zeros.” He laughed so unexpectedly that Willis missed a stroke. “Perhaps I could do with a few myself. I wouldn’t mind some electric light and some water here, within limits. If I may say so, if I were you I wouldn’t try too hard to be something that I’m not. Perhaps we’d better turn back now, or Sylvia will be wondering where you are.”

That was almost the only serious conversation that Willis ever had with Mr. Hodges, and he always felt that Mr. Hodges had learned more about him than most people did—too much, perhaps. He was glad that he had been able to fix up that camp for the Hodgeses eventually, with electricity and running water, with an electric stove, a refrigerator and a dishwasher and even with a small inboard motorboat, and chairs that you could sit on without pain; yet Willis was never positive that Mr. Hodges had liked these improvements. The last time that Willis ever saw the lake was when he went there with Sylvia, who was settling the estate. It had seemed to him that Mr. Hodges had been watching, and Willis remembered his short laugh when he had spoken about zeros.

The last time Willis Wayde had seen the Hodgeses’ house on Craigie Street was when he took Sylvia and their eldest son, Alfred, to the Harvard-Yale game in late November, 1950. The idea had been Sylvia’s more than his. He had a business meeting in New York about five days ahead of the game date, and since he was in New York he had planned to stop in Boston to talk over some refinancing ideas with his friend Jerry Harwood, president of the Shawmut Insurance and Accident. They might say he was crazy in Chicago, but he still liked doing business with the Boston crowd.

Then, just when his plans were shaping up, Sylvia had suggested the Harvard-Yale game. She had pointed out that Alfred had started in at Middlesex that autumn and that it would be nice for Willis to show him the Harvard buildings and to let him hear the songs and cheering. It was time for Alfred to get used to the idea that he might be going to Harvard. Also it might be that Tom and Mary and their children would be going to the game too, and Tom and Mary might be able to put them up in Brookline.

Willis had drawn the line at Brookline. At least he could be comfortable when he was making a business trip, and be able to relax between conferences. However, he did want to see Alfred, and he certainly understood how Sylvia felt about Cambridge. He was delighted to have Sylvia make the trip with him and he set up the schedule accordingly. He was able to get a suite for the week end at the Ritz in Boston, and Hank Knowlton, the New England representative, got three good seats on the Harvard side and a Cadillac with a good driver, even though Sylvia had suggested a Drive-Urself car.

The only complication was a small company cocktail party arranged by Hank in the sitting room for late Saturday afternoon so that he could meet a few people whom he really had to see. Otherwise his time belonged to Sylvia and Al, who would stay with them from Saturday noon on through Sunday. He had even agreed with Sylvia to have Sunday lunch with Tom and Mary and their children in Brookline, as long as they drove there comfortably in the rented Cadillac.

He had been in conference for two hours with Jerry Harwood on Saturday morning, and he was feeling pretty tired when he got back to the sitting room at the Ritz and found that Al had already arrived.

“Well, hello, Al,” he said. “How’s tricks?”

Al looked as neat as a pin, because Sylvia had given him a good going over in the bathroom. He wore gray slacks and a brown tweed jacket, and he looked like a miniature college boy already.

“Hey, Pops,” Al shouted—he could never keep his voice down when he was excited, “when do we eat?”

“Right here and now,” Willis said. “Lunch is coming right up, and we’ve got to eat it quick.”

“Jeepers creepers,” Al shouted, “do we have to eat in this dump? Can’t we grab a hot dog somewhere?”

“We’re going to eat right here,” Willis said, “and the car’s coming to take us to Cambridge in half an hour.”

“Jeepers creepers,” Al shouted, “you don’t mean we’re going to the game in some old Cadillac?”

“Don’t shout,” Willis said. “I can hear you perfectly. What other means of transportation would you suggest?”

“Can’t we go in the subway,” Al asked, “and push along with the crowd?”

“The subway would take us right to the Larz Anderson Bridge,” Sylvia said.

Willis sighed and sat down.

“Even if it’s a hardship we’re going in a car,” he said.

As a matter of fact, due to traffic congestion it was advisable to leave the car and to push along with the crowd down Boylston Street and over the Larz Anderson Bridge. Willis felt unusually happy being there with Sylvia and Al. He was particularly glad that Sylvia was wearing her coat of wild mink. It was better-looking than any other coat he observed in the crowd around them.

As they approached the Charles River the landmarks were partly familiar and partly new. On his left the magnificent blocks of brick houses, the gift of the late Mr. Harkness, had become an integral part of the scene. The buildings of the Harvard Business School across the river, which had been aggressively new when he had been there, had been softened by the winters.

It looked as though it would rain during the second half of the Yale game, but fortunately the rain held off. Willis had not been caught by the contagion of the crowd. Instead he had been trying to follow his old footsteps made over twenty years ago. He was the Willis Wayde of the present, and it was time to find the Cadillac, which would be waiting for them on Massachusetts Avenue as near as possible to the subway station at Harvard Square. They could reach the Cadillac in ten minutes if they hurried, and fortunately all the football crowd was now in a hurry to get somewhere. There was that little gathering of a few associates for cocktails in the suite at the Ritz. You could not be casual about such things, and you were always judged by the way they were handled. Sylvia and Al would give it a pleasant homelike touch—people were always pleased when you introduced them to the family.

It was later than he thought by the time they found their Cadillac, and it was a great relief to be sitting beside Sylvia and Al, out of the crowd at last.

“Willis,” Sylvia said, “before we go back can’t we drive down Craigie Street?”

“Now, Sylvia,” he told her, and he found himself speaking carefully, “it’s in just the opposite direction and we really should be at the Ritz on time.”

“It’s only a few minutes out of the way,” Sylvia said, “and Al has never seen it.”

“Hasn’t he?” Willis asked.

“Come on,” Al said, “let’s go, Pops.”

“All right,” Willis said. “I thought of course he’d seen it at some time or other.” And he told the driver to drive slowly when they finally reached Craigie Street. Except for the traffic, Brattle and Craigie Streets had not changed much.

“There used to be a drinking fountain for horses here,” Sylvia said. “Do you remember?”

“No,” Willis answered. “What drinking fountain?”

“Perhaps it wasn’t here when you were,” Sylvia said.

Somehow you always thought of Cambridge in autumn and winter without leaves on the trees. The street lights were on and the early dark of late autumn was beginning to obscure the outlines, but Craigie Street looked about the same and the old Hodges house had not changed at all. It seemed to Willis, when he saw it through the plate glass of the Cadillac side-window, that he was gazing at an exhibit in a museum case. It was still that durable beige color, the same sodden tint as the dead grass on its little square of lawn, and the same bare syringa bushes grew by the front steps.

“Well,” Willis said, “there it is, Al. That’s where your mother used to live.”

“Gosh,” Alfred said, “did Mommy used to live in that old shack?”

His young voice startled Willis.

“That’s no way to talk, son,” he said. “That’s where your grandfather wrote his book. You’ve seen it in the library, haven’t you?”

“I’ll bet you’ve never read it, Pops,” Al said. “It’s all about old sandstone.”

“I haven’t read it all, son,” Willis said, “but that’s because I’m not bright enough.” The car was moving down Craigie Street. They would reach Concord Avenue in a moment, but the memory of the house seen through the plate glass was still there.

“Well, I guess he didn’t make much money,” Alfred said, “or he wouldn’t have lived in a shack like that.”

Willis wished that Sylvia were not there.

“Money isn’t everything, son,” Willis said. “Your grandfather was a professor. Professors aren’t expected to make money.”

“I guess he wasn’t as much of a success as you, Pops,” Alfred said.

Willis felt his cheeks grow hot.

“That isn’t so, son,” he said. “Your grandfather was more of a success than I’ll ever be. Maybe I’ve made more money, but money isn’t everything.”

It was curious to be facing truth on Craigie Street and to be telling it to his and Sylvia’s son. All at once Sylvia put her hand over his and he was very glad she did not speak.

“Sylvia,” he said, “I wish we could have done more for them.”

“You did all you could, dear,” Sylvia said, and this was true.

“Sylvia,” he said, “is my mother’s photograph in my suitcase?”

“Yes, dear,” Sylvia said.

“That’s fine,” Willis said. “I was afraid that maybe I’d left it in the St. Regis. We’ve got to get it out as soon as we get back.” He pressed the button that automatically opened the window behind the driver. “And now take us to the Ritz,” Willis said.

It was almost impossible to believe that Sylvia and Al and he had driven down Craigie Street in a Cadillac, even if it was not his own, and he had a sense of uneasiness. He could not call it discontent. There were too many things to think about that had nothing to do with the Ritz.

“Sylvia,” he said, “Jerry Harwood’s dropping in. I don’t think you’ve ever met old Jerry, but he isn’t hard to talk to. He has a son in Harvard, and he’s president of the Shawmut Insurance and Accident. We had a very interesting talk this morning.”

Exactly what was success, he was wondering. Perhaps it was nothing tangible but rather a state of mind that made you content within the frame where life had placed you.