Theophilus North Read online

  There was a silence.

  “Thank you, Miss Bell. Can I ask Mr. Jones to speak now?”

  “I guess that you don’t know I’m a divorced man. My wife’s Italian. Her lawyer told her to tell the judge that we weren’t compatible, but I still think she’s a very fine woman. . . . She works in a bank now and . . . she says she’s happy. We both contribute from our salaries to pay Linda’s hospital bills. When I met Diana she was in a sort of blue-striped uniform. When I saw her leaning over Linda’s bed, I thought she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. I didn’t know that she came from one of the big families. For lunch hours we used to meet in a corner table at the Scottish Tea Room. . . . I wanted to call on her father and mother, like most men would, but Diana thought that that wouldn’t do any good . . . that the only thing to do is what we’re doing tonight.”

  Silence. It was my turn.

  “Miss Bell, I’m going to say something. I have no intention of offending you. And I’m not trying to put any obstacles in the way of your marrying Mr. Jones. I’m still talking in the name of common sense. There’s no need for you to elope. You are a very conspicuous young’ woman. Everything you do stirs up a lot of publicity. You’ve run out of your allowance of elopements. I hate to say it, but do you know that you have a nickname known in millions of homes where they read those Sunday papers?”

  She stared at me furiously. “What is it?”

  “I’m not going to tell you. . . . It’s not nasty or vulgar, but it’s undignified.”

  “What is it?”

  “I beg your pardon, but I’m not going to be part of cheap journalists’ chatter.”

  I was lying. It was maybe half-true. Besides, I wasn’t breaking any bones.

  “Hilary, I didn’t come here to be insulted!”

  She rose from her chair. She walked about the room. She clutched her throat as though she were strangling. But she got the point. Again she cried, “Why can’t I live as other people live?” Finally, she returned to the table and said scornfully, “Well, what have you got to suggest, Doctor Nosey Commonsense?”

  “I suggest that when we reach Narragansett Pier we return to Newport by the same ferries. You return to your home as though you’d merely been out for an evening ride. Later, I shall have some suggestions as to how you may marry Mr. Jones in simplicity and dignity. Your father will give you away and your mother will sit duly weeping in the front pew. As many as possible of the children you have befriended will be brought to the church. Dozens of Mr. Jones’s young athletic teams will also be there. The newspapers will say, ‘Newport’s most beloved friend of children has married Newport’s most popular teacher.’ ”

  There was no doubt that she was dazzled by this picture, but she had had a hard life. “How could that be done?”

  “You fight bad publicity with good publicity. I have some newspaper friends there, and in Providence and in New Bedford. The world we live in swims in publicity. Articles will appear about the remarkable Mr. Jones. He will be proposed for ‘TEACHER OF THE YEAR IN RHODE ISLAND.’ The Mayor will have to take notice of it. ‘WHO IS DOING MOST TO BUILD THE NEWPORT OF THE FUTURE?’ There’ll be a medal. Who would be most suitable to present the medal? Why, Mr. Augustus Bell, Chairman of the Board of the Newport Casino. Bellevue Avenue loves to think that it’s democratic, patriotic, philanthropic, big-hearted. That’ll break the ice.”

  I knew this was just folderol, but I had a job to do for Bill Wentworth, and I knew that a marriage between these two would be disastrous. My low strategy worked.

  They looked at one another.

  “I don’t want my name in the papers,” said Hilary Jones.

  I looked Diana straight in the eye and said, “Mr. Jones doesn’t want his name in the papers.” She got it. She looked me straight in the eye and murmured, “You devil!”

  Hilary had gained assurance. “Diana,” he said, “don’t you think it’s best that we go back?”

  “Just as you wish, Hilary,” she answered and burst into tears.

  Arriving at the ferry slip we learned that the boat tied up there for the night. If we wished to return to Newport, we must drive the forty miles to Providence and then the thirty miles to Newport. It was Hilary’s suggestion and mine that we drive in one car and that we send for the other in the morning. Diana was still weeping profusely—she saw her life as one spiteful frustration after another—and mumbled that she couldn’t drive, she didn’t want to drive. So they transferred their luggage into mine. I took my place at the wheel. She pointed at me saying, “I don’t want to sit by that man.” She sat by the window and fell asleep, or seemed to.

  Hilary was not only field-games director of the High School, but supervisor in all the public schools. I asked him about the prospects of the teams as we approached the crucial games of the year. He picked up animation.

  “Please call me Hill.”

  “All right. You call me Ted.”

  I heard about the teams’ hopes and fears—about promising pitchers who got strained tendons and great runners who got charley horses. About the possibility of winning the pennant from Fall River or the All Rhode Island School Cup. About the Rogers High School team. And the Cranston School’s. And the Calvert School’s. Very detailed. Very interesting. It began to rain, so it was necessary to awake Diana and to close the window. Nothing stopped Hill’s flow of information. As we reached the working-class periphery of Providence it was nearly midnight. Diana opened her handbag, pulled out a package of cigarettes, and lit one. Hill turned to stone: his bride-to-be smoked!

  A gas station was about to close. I drove up and filled the tank. To the attendant I said, “Joe, is there any place around here where you can get a cup of Irish tea at this hour?”

  “Well, there’s a club around the corner that sometimes stays open. If you see a green light over the side door, they’ll let you in.”

  The light was on. “There’s still an hour’s drive,” I said to my companions. “I need a little drink to keep me awake.”

  “Me too,” said Diana.

  “You don’t drink, do you, Hill? Well, you can come along and be our bodyguard, if we get into any trouble.”

  I forget now what club it was—“The Polish-American Friendship Society” or “Les Copains Canadiens” or the “Club Sportivo Vittorio Emanuele”—dark, cordial, and well-attended. Everybody shook hands all around. We weren’t even allowed to pay for our beverages.

  Diana came to life. She was surrounded.

  “Gee, lady, you’re gorgeous.”

  “You’re gorgeous yourself, brother.”

  She was invited to dance and consented. Hill and I sat at a remote table. He appeared stricken. We had to shout to be heard above the din.

  “Ted?”

  “Yes, Hill?”

  “Is that the way she was brought up?”

  “It’s all perfectly innocent, Hill.”

  “I never knew a girl that would smoke and drink—least of all with strangers.”

  We looked straight before us—into the future. At the next pause in the music I said, “Hill?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a contract with the Board of Education or the school system, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not running out on it, are you?”

  Our elbows were on the table, our heads were low over our folded hands. He turned scarlet. His teeth bit into the knuckles of his right hand.

  “Does Miss Bell know that?” Behind my question lay others. “Does she know that you couldn’t get another job like your own in the whole country? That the only jobs you could get would be in private athletic clubs—weight-reducing institutes for middle-aged men?”

  He slowly raised his eyes to mine in agony. “No.”

  “Have you sent in your letter of resignation yet?”

  “No.”

  He perhaps saw clearly for the first time that his honor was at stake. “Don’t you see? We loved each other so much. It all looked so
easy.”

  The loud music began again. We averted our eyes from the sight of the young woman being snatched from one dancing partner to another. Finally he struck my elbow sharply. “Ted, I want you to help me break this up.”

  “You mean tonight’s party?”

  “No, I mean the whole thing.”

  “I think it’s broken up already, Hill. Listen, on the way to Newport I want you to talk without stopping about your teams’ football chances. Tell us what you told us before and then tell us some more. Give every fellow’s weight and record. Don’t let anything stop you. If you run short, give us the college teams; you’ll be coaching a college team yourself one of these days.”

  I arose and approached Diana. “I guess we’d better get on the road, Miss Bell.”

  We made a big exit—renewed handshakes and thanks all round. It had stopped raining; the night air felt wonderful.

  “Gentlemen, I haven’t had such a good time in years. My shoes are ruined—the big brutes!”

  We drove off. Hilary couldn’t find his voice so I took over.

  “Hill, it seems to me that you must get home pretty late every afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll bet your wife used to complain that she didn’t see you from seven o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night.”

  “I felt terrible about that, but I couldn’t help it.”

  “And, of course, Saturdays must have been the worst day of all. You’d come back from Woonsocket or Tiverton, dog-tired. You could go to the moving-pictures once in a while?”

  “There are no moving-pictures on Sunday.”

  We got back to the subject of football. I nudged him and he picked up animation a little. . . . “Wendell Fusco at Washington’s a real comer. You should see that boy lower his head and crash through the line. He’s going to Brown University year after next. Newport will be proud of him one of these days.”

  “Which sport do you like coaching most, Hill?”

  “Well, track, I guess. I was a track man myself.”

  “Which event do you like best?”

  “I’ll confess to you that for me the most exciting event of the year is the All-Newport relay race. You have no idea how different the men are from one another—I call them ‘men’; it does something for their morale. They’re all fifteen to seventeen. Each does three laps around the course, then passes on the stick to the next man. Take Bylinsky, he’s captain of the blue team. He’s not as fast as some of the others, but he’s the thinker. He likes to run second. He knows the good and bad points of each of his men and every inch of the course. Brains, see what I mean? Then there’s Bobby Neuthaler, son of a gardener up on Bellevue Avenue. Determined, dogged—kind of excitable, though. You know, he bursts into tears at the end of every race, win or lose. The other men respect it, though; they pretend they don’t see it. Ciccolino—lives down at the Point, not far from where I lived when I was married—he’s the clown of the red team. Very fast. Loves running, but he’s always laughing. Interesting thing, Ted; his mother and older sister go to the all-night chapel at Sacred Heart at midnight before the race and pray for him until they have to go home and make breakfast. Imagine that!”

  I didn’t need anyone to tell me to imagine that. I felt I was listening to Homer, blind and a beggar, singing his story at a banquet: “Then the fair-tressed Thetis raised her eyes to Zeus the thunderer and prayed for her son, even for Achilles, goodliest of men whom she bore to Peleus, King of the Myrmidons; grief filled her heart, for she knew that to him had been allotted a short life, yet she prayed that glory be his portion this day on the plains before wide-wayed Troy.”

  “Golly, I wish you could see Roger Thompson pick up that stick—just a little runt but he puts his whole soul into it. His father runs that ice-cream parlor down at the end of the public beach. Our doctor at the gym says he’s not going to let him run next year; he’s only just fourteen and it’s not good for his heart when he’s growing so fast. . . .”

  On went the catalogue. I glanced at Diana, neglected, forgotten. Her eyes were open, seemingly lost in deep thought. . . . What had they talked about during those rapturous hours at the Scottish Tea Room?

  Hill directed me to the door of his rooming house. While we extracted his suitcases from the back of the car Diana descended and looked about the deserted street in the Ninth City where she had so seldom put down her foot. It was well after one o’clock. Apparently Hill had not notified his landlady of his departure for he drew the front door key from his pocket.

  Diana approached him. “Hilary, I slapped your face. Will you please slap mine so that we’ll be quits, fair and even?”

  He stepped back, shaking his head. “No, Diana. No!”

  “Please.”

  “No . . . No, I want to thank you for the happy weeks we had. And for your kindness to Linda. Will you give me a kiss so that I can tell her you sent her a kiss?”

  Diana kissed him on the cheek and—uncertain of foot and hand—she took her place in the car. Hill and I shook hands in silence and I returned to the wheel. She directed me to her home. As we drove through the great gates we saw that there was some kind of party going on. There were cars drawn up before the house with chauffeurs sleeping at the wheel. She murmured, “Everybody’s mad about mahjong. It’s tournament night. Please drive around to the back door. I don’t want anyone to see me returning with luggage.”

  Even the back door had a great sandstone porte-cochère. I carried her suitcases up to the darkened entrance.

  She said, “Hold me a minute.”

  I put my arms around her. It was not an embrace; our faces did not touch. She wanted to cling for a moment to something less frozen than the lofty structure under which we stood; she was trembling after the freezing realization of the repetitions in her life.

  There were servants moving about in the kitchen. She had only to ring the bell and she rang it.

  “Good night,” she said.

  “Good night, Miss Bell.”

  The Wyckoff Place

  Among the first replies to my advertisement was a note in a delicate old-world penmanship from a Miss Norine Wyckoff, such and such a number on Bellevue Avenue, asking me to call between three and four on any day at my convenience. She wished to discuss arrangements for my reading aloud to her. I might find the work tedious, and in addition she would be obliged to submit to me certain conditions which I might feel free to accept or reject.

  The next evening I met Henry Simmons for a game of pool. Toward the end of the game I asked him offhandedly, “Henry, do you know anything about the Wyckoff family?” He stopped in mid-aim, stood up, and looked at me hard.

  “Funny, your asking me that.”

  Then he bent over and completed his shot. We finished the set. At a wink from him we hung up our cues, ordered something to drink, and strolled over to the remotest table in the bar. When Tom had placed our steins before us and departed, Henry looked about him, lowered his voice, and said, “The ’ouse is ’aunted. Skeletons going up and down the chimneys like bloody butterflies.”

  I had learned never to hurry Henry.

  “To my knowledge, cully, there have been four haunted houses among the big places in Newport. Very bad situation. Maids won’t take service there; refuse to spend the night. They see things in corridors. They hear things in cupboards. There’s nothing contagious like hysterics. Twelve guests to dinner. Maids drop trays. Fainting all over the place. Cook puts on her hat and coat and leaves the house. Gives the house a bad name—see what I mean? Can’t even get a night watchman who’ll swear to do the rounds of the whole house at night. . . . The Hepworth place—sold it to the Coast Guard. The Chivers cottage—it was said that the master strangled the French maid—nothing proved. They got in a procession of priests, candles and incense, the whole works . . . drove the spirits out and sold it to a convent school. The Colby cottage—deserted for years, burned down one night in December. You can go out and see the place yourself—only thistles
grow there. Used to be famous for wild roses.

  “Now your Wyckoff place, beautiful house—nobody knows what happened. No body, no trial, nobody disappeared, nothing, just rumors, just talk—but it got a bad name. Old family, most respected family. Rich!—Like Edweena says, could buy and sell the State of Texas without noticing it. In the old days before the War—great dinner parties, concerts, Paderewski; very musical they were—then the rumors started. Miss Wyckoff’s father and mother used to charter ships and go off on scientific expeditions—collector, he was—shells and heathen idols. Be gone for half a year at a time. Then in about 1911 he came back and closed the whole place up. Went to live in their New York house. During the War both Mr. Wyckoff and his wife died decently in New York hospitals leaving Miss Norine alone—the last of the line. What can she do? She’s got a lot of spirit. She comes back to Newport to open her family house—her girlhood home; but she can’t get any help after dark. For eight years she’s taken an apartment at the La Forge Cottages, but she goes every day to the Wyckoff place, gives lunches, asks people in to tea—but when the sun starts to set her maids and butler and housemen say, ‘We’ve got to go now, Miss Wyckoff,’ and they go. And she and her personal maid drive off in their carriage to the La Forge Cottages, leaving lights on all over the house.”

  Silence.

  “Henry, you swear you don’t know of anything that might have started the rumors? Mrs. Cranston knows everything. Do you suppose she has a theory?”

  “Never heard her say so; and Edweena, who’s the sharpest girl on Aquidneck Island—she don’t know anything.”

  I arrived at the Wyckoff place the next day at three-thirty. I had long admired the house. I used to dismount from my bicycle just to rest my eyes on it, the most beautiful cottage in Newport. I had never been in or near Venice, but I recognized it as being “Palladian,” as resembling those famous villas on the Brenta. Later I came to know the ground floor well. The central hall was large without being ponderous. The ceiling was supported by columns and arches decorated in fresco. The wide doorways, framed in marble, opened in all directions—noble, but airy and hospitable. An elderly maid opened the great bronze front door to me and led me to the library where Miss Wyckoff was sitting at a tea-table before an open fire. The table was set for a considerable company but the urn was still unlit. Miss Wyckoff, whom I judged to be about sixty, was dressed in black lace; it fell from a cap about her ears and continued in flounces and panels to the floor. Her face was still that of an unusually pretty woman and her expression was candid and gracious and—as Henry said—“spirited.”