XXXI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why can’t we, dear?” Sylvia asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, I know what you do deserve, dear,” Sylvia told him. “You deserve another cocktail, and I think maybe I do, too. In fact, when you ordered them I told the waiter to bring two apiece, and here’s another now.”

“So that’s what you were saying to him?” Willis said. “It’s funny, I can read a French newspaper, but I don’t seem to understand the speech.”

“Darling,” Sylvia said, and she put her hand on his, “you’re awfully sweet. I know better than anyone else how basically sweet you are, and that’s one of your favorite words, isn’t it—basically?”

There was no use delaying any longer. He had to take the subject up with Sylvia, and the worst of it was he was not sure his reluctance to do so might not have had something to do with shame.

“Sweetness,” he said, “I’m dreadfully sorry about that scene this afternoon, and particularly that you should have been present.”

She put her hand over his again. He had not realized, until that talk at the Ritz, how dependent he had grown upon Sylvia. After all, perhaps two people always grew together if they had been through enough together, long enough.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Sylvia said. “If someone acts in a hysterical and unreasonable manner it isn’t your fault, Willis.”

“I know it, sweetness,” Willis said, and he did not look at her when he spoke, but out across the square, “but a thing like that sort of pulls the rug out from under you. I suppose it is irrational for my emotions to be so much involved; yet after what Bess said, I can’t help sort of wondering if anything I’ve done has been worthwhile.”

“Why, darling,” Sylvia said, “you don’t have to wonder anything like that, because you’ve always been wonderful. No one knows better than I do how wonderful you’ve been.”

Willis cleared his throat. Even though he liked what she said, it was a time to face facts; and perhaps his trouble, now that he thought of it, was that he was sometimes reluctant to face them absolutely squarely.

“That’s very sweet of you to say so, honey,” he said, “but occasionally it’s seemed to me you’ve had a few reservations. God knows I’ve tried to do a lot of things the right way, and God knows I’m not perfect.”

“Why, darling,” Sylvia said, “no one’s perfect. It’s what I’ve been telling you, dear. No one knows how wonderful you are as well as I do. I’m an authority.”

Willis heard what she said, but he was so involved in his own thoughts that he did not answer her directly.

“I’ve tried to be sincere, sweetness,” he said—“I really have—in all my dealings, but sometimes it’s a problem—how to be sincere.”

“I know you’ve always tried, dear,” Sylvia said. “Let’s ring for the waiter and have some supper. We can think this all through tomorrow, Willis.”

But Willis was very sure that the time to think of it was now.

“Of course you were right, sweetness,” he said. “I should have gone to Boston and seen them personally at the time. I would have, of course, if I’d had the remotest idea that Bess would react like this.”

“Of course you would have, dear,” Sylvia said, “but you were awfully busy right then, if you remember.”

Willis sighed and crossed his right knee over his left, and rotated his ankle nervously. He was relieved that it was growing darker—so dark that Sylvia could not see him clearly. He could still feel her presence, and he was glad that she was right beside him.

“What hurts me especially,” he said, “is that I don’t think they’ve been very loyal to me. They don’t seem to look on both sides of the ledger. They forget the years I’ve worked. They forget, sweetness, that I’ve worn my fingers to the bone for them. Apparently all they remember is that I closed up that mill.”

“I know,” Sylvia said. “It isn’t fair, but then I don’t suppose anybody ever looks on both sides of a ledger—even you or I—and they’d always lived with the mill.”

Willis turned his head toward her.

“You don’t mean,” he said, “that you’re taking their side in this? You can’t be Sylvia.”

He knew the minute that he said it that it was a petulant remark, and he was sorry.

“I was just saying, dear,” Sylvia said, “that none of us can see both sides of anything. I’m on your side always, dear, but let’s not go on about it now. How would it be if I rang for the waiter? And you have some eggs and some of those croissants you love so much, and some chocolate, and then I’m going to give you a Nembutal. You’ll see everything much more clearly after a good sleep.”

“I’d like that,” Willis said, “because, frankly, I do feel tired, and I’m sorry to elaborate on this subject, precious. I have a sort of suspicion that the Harcourts have the idea that I had always intended to close the mill. Maybe I’d better tell you something frankly, darling, because you’ve been very sweet to me, and I would like to be frank. I’m disturbed about this angle, because frankly, sweetness, I don’t know whether they are right or not. I honestly can’t remember.”

“Why, darling,” Sylvia said, “of course you couldn’t tell what you were going to do at a future time, and you’ve always done everything for the Harcourts, darling. Please don’t think about it any more.” And then she kissed him on the top of the head again, just as she had before. “Let’s think about what we’re going to do tomorrow.”

“That’s right,” Willis said. “You’re dead right. Let’s look forward, sweetness, and not back. You know, come to think of it, that’s exactly what I wrote to Bess.”

“Darling,” Sylvia said, “it’s all right. It really is all right. Let’s not worry about it any more. And when you’ve had your Nembutal, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll call up the children’s camps and talk to them. It’s wonderful that we’re both so crazy about the children. Willis, isn’t it queer to think it’s only early afternoon back there?”