She looked at me without expression. “I don’t like big dogs.”
“I was lying to you. I haven’t any dog at all. But I have a pretty nice little present for you.” I had three younger sisters. Girls love presents, especially surprise presents.
“What is it?”
“I won’t tell.”
“Where did you get it?”
“At Atlantic City.”
“Will you give me a hint?”
“It glows at night like a big glowworm. So when you’re lonesome at night it’ll be a comfort to you.”
“Is it a Baby Jesus picture?”
“No.”
“Oh!—It’s one of those wrist-watches.”
“I couldn’t afford to give anyone a radium wrist-watch. . . . It’s about the size of a pin-cushion. It’s friendly.”
“It’s one of those things that keep papers from blowing away.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t wear a wedding ring.”
“In the part of the country I come from men don’t wear them—only Catholic men wear them. I’ve never been married anyway.”
“If I go to your apartment you won’t act fresh or anything?”
It was my turn to look hard and blank. “Not unless someone scratches my ankles.”
“I was just tired of sitting on the floor.”
“Well, you could have said your prayers.”
She was staring before her in deep thought. You could “hear the wheels go round.” She leaned up against my shoulder and asked, “Is there a roundabout way to your house?”
“Yes. First, I’ll pay the bill. Then you follow me.”
We got there and crept up the outside staircase. I opened the door and turned on the light, saying, “Come in, Alice.”
“Oh, it’s big!”
I put the paperweight on the center table and sat down. Like a cat she circled the room inspecting everything within reach. Talking to herself in short admiring phrases. Finally she took up the paperweight—a view of the Atlantic City boardwalk, picked out with bits of mica, under an isinglass dome.
“Is this what you said I could have?” I nodded. “It doesn’t . . . glow.”
“It can’t glow as long as there is one bit of sunlight or electric light around. Go into the bathroom, shut the door, turn out the light, keep your eyes closed for two minutes and then open them.”
I waited. She came out, threw herself on my lap, and put her arms around my neck. “I’ll never be lonesome any more.” She put her lips against my ear and said something. I thought I heard what she said but I couldn’t be certain. Her lips were too close; perhaps shyness muffled her speech. I thought I heard her say, “I want a baby.” But I had to be sure. Holding her chin with one hand I moved my ears two inches from her lips and asked “What did you say?”
At that moment she heard something. Just as dogs hear sounds that we cannot hear, just as chickens (I had worked on farms as a boy) could see hawks approaching from a great distance, just so Alice heard something. She slid off my lap and pretended to be busy straightening her hair; she picked up her hat and—resourceful actress that she was—said sweetly, “Well, I’d better be going. It’s getting late. . . . Did you really mean that I could keep this picture for my own?”
I sat motionless watching her play the scene.
Had I said anything to offend her? No.
Made a gesture? No.
A harbor sound? A street quarrel? My neighbors at Mrs. Keefe’s?
In 1926 the invention known in my part of town as the “raddy-o” was present in an increasing number of homes. On a warm evening through open windows it diffused a web of music, oratory, and dramatic and comic dialogue. I had become habituated and deaf to this, and certainly Alice on the Base had become so also.
“You’ve been very sweet. I love your apartment. I love your kitchen.”
I rose. “Well, if you must go, Alice, I’ll follow you as far as the Square and pay your taxi-man to drop you at the gate. You don’t want to meet any more of the thousand people you know.”
“Don’t you move one inch. The streetcars are still running. If I meet anybody I’ll tell them I’ve been to the telegraph office.”
“I could walk with you perfectly safely along Spring Street. It’s darker and the Shore Patrol will have swept it up pretty well by now. Here, I’ll wrap up the paperweight.”
Mrs. Keefe had furnished my room according to her own taste which called for a wide selection of table runners, lace doilies, and silk table covers to support vases and so on. I picked up one of the latter and wrapped it around the gift. I opened the door. Alice was now very subdued and preceded me down the stairs.
Then I heard it—another music that had escaped my ears, but not hers. During the summer a small frame house near Mrs. Keefe’s had been turned into “The Mission of the Holy Spirit,” a fervent revivalist sect. A meeting was in progress. While working on farms in Kentucky and Southern California I had attended many camp-meetings of a similar kind and knew well some of their hymns, seldom heard in urban churches. Surely these hymns had been built into the lives of boys and girls growing up in rural West Virginia where the camp-meeting was the powerful center of the religious, social, and even “entertainment” life of the community. What Alice had heard was the hymn that precedes the “offering of one’s life to Jesus”: “Yield not to temptation; Jesus is near.”
We turned up the hill to Spring Street. It was deserted and I stepped forward and walked beside her. She was weeping. I enclosed her tiny hand in mine.
“Life is hard, dear Alice.”
“Teddie?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in hell?”
“What do you mean by hell, Alice?”
“That we go to hell when we do bad things? When I was a girl I did a lot of bad things. When I was in Norfolk I had to do a lot of bad things. I had a baby but I haven’t got it any more. It was before I knew George but I told him about it. Since I married George I haven’t done a bad thing at all. Really, I haven’t, Teddie. Like I told you, George saved my life.”
“Has George ever struck you, Alice?”
She looked up at me quickly. “Do I have to tell the truth? Well, I will. He gets very drunk after he comes back from a long tour of duty and he does strike me. But I don’t hate him for it. He has a reason. He knows that he . . . he can’t make babies. He makes love, but no babies get to be born. Wouldn’t that make you kind of upset?”
“Go on.”
“Every now and then I thought I’d get a baby with another man without George’s knowing about it. I don’t think going to bed with another man once in a while is very important. . . . Even though it was a lie, it would make George very happy. He’s a good man. If it made him feel good to be a father, that wouldn’t be a very bad sin, would it? Like what they call in the Bible adult’ary. Sometimes, I think I’d go to hell for a long time if it would make George happy.”
I turned her hand over and over in mine. We reached Washington Square. We crossed the street and sat down on a bench farthest from the street lights.
I said, “Alice, I’m ashamed of you.”
She said quickly, “Why are you ashamed of me?”
“That you—who know that the heart of Jesus is as big as the whole world—you think that Jesus would send you to hell for a little sin that would make George happy or a little sin that you had to do to keep alive in a cruel city like Norfolk.”
She put her head against my shoulder. “Don’t be ashamed of me, Teddie. . . . Talk to me. . . . When I ran away from home my father wrote me that he never wanted to see me until I had a wedding ring on my finger. When I wrote him that I was married he changed his mind. He said he never wanted to see a hoor in his house.”
I’m not going to put down here what I said to Alice almost fifty years ago. I reminded her of some words that Jesus said and maybe I invented some. And then I said, “I’m not going to say any more.” Her hand in mine had become calmer. I could
hear “the wheels going round.”
She said, “Let’s go over nearer to the street lights. I want to show you something.”
We moved to another bench. She had taken something out of her handbag, but kept it hidden from me.
“Teddie, I always wear a chain and locket around my neck, but when I came out tonight with Delia I took it off. You can guess who gave it to me.”
I looked at the picture in the locket. It had been taken several years before. A sailor about eighteen years old—the sailor who could have sat for any recruiting poster—was laughing into the camera; his arm was about Alice. I could imagine the occasion: “Step up, ladies and gentlemen! Just twenty cents for the picture and a dollar for the locket and chain. You two there—you’re only young once. Don’t miss this opportunity.”
I looked at it.
She looked at it.
Again she whispered in my ear. “I want a baby—for George.”
We rose and walked back to my apartment. As we got near the stairs I said, “It’s very important that George doesn’t know. That’s the whole point. Will Delia talk?”
“No.”
“Can you be sure?”
“Yes. Delia knows how important that is. She’s said so over and over again.”
“Alice, I don’t know your last name and you don’t know mine. We must never meet again.” She nodded. “Twice tonight you’ve had narrow escapes. You can go to ‘Mama Carlotta’s’; I’ll never be there again.”
Two hours later we returned to the Square. She peered around the corner as though we’d robbed a bank. She whispered, “The movie’s over.” She giggled.
I left her in a doorway and went up to a taxi. I asked the driver how much it cost to go to One Mile Corner.
“Fifty cents,” he said.
I went back and put half a dollar and two dimes in her hand. “Where will you say you’ve been?”
“What do they call that place where they were singing hymns?”
I told her. “I’ll stay here at this corner and see you off.”
She kissed her finger tips and put them on my cheek. “I’d better not keep that picture of Atlantic City.”
She gave it back to me. She took some steps toward the taxi, then returned to me and said, “I won’t be lonesome at night any more, will I?”
Off she drove.
I thought suddenly, “Of course, all those twenty years Penelope had Telemachus growing up beside her.”
“The Deer Park”
This chapter might also be called “The Shaman or Le Médecin malgré lui.”
One day I found a note in my mailbox at the Post Office asking me to telephone a Mrs. Jens Skeel, such and such a number, on any day between three and four.
“Mrs. Skeel, this is Mr. North speaking.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. North. Thank you for calling. Friends have spoken to me with much appreciation of your reading with students and adults. I was hoping that you could find time to read French with my daughter Elspeth and my son Arthur. Elspeth is a dear sweet intelligent girl of seventeen. We have had to take her out of school because she suffers from migraine. She misses school and particularly misses her courses in French literature. Both my children have been to school in Normandy and in Geneva. They speak and read French well. Both of them adore the Fables of La Fontaine and wish to read all of them with you. . . . Yes, we have several copies of them here. . . . The late morning would suit us very well. . . . Eleven to twelve-thirty, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays—yes. May I send a car for you? . . . Oh, you prefer to come by bicycle. . . . We live at ‘The Deer Park’—do you know it? . . . Good! May I tell the children that you will be here tomorrow? . . . Thank you so much.”
Everyone knew “The Deer Park.” The father of the present Mr. Skeel had been a Dane engaged in international shipping. He had built this “Deer Park” not in imitation of the famous park in Copenhagen, but in affectionate allusion to it. I had often dismounted before the high iron grille enclosing a vast lawn that ended in a low cliff above the sea. Under the glorious trees of Newport I could catch glimpses of deer, rabbits, peacocks—alas, for La Fontaine, no foxes, no wolves, not even a donkey.
I was met in the front hall by Mrs. Skeel. “Elegance” is too brilliant a word for such perfection of presence. She was dressed in gray silk; there were gray pearls about her neck and in her ears. All was distinction and charm and something else—anguish under high stoic control.
“You will find my daughter on the verandah. I think that she would prefer that you introduce yourself.—Mr. North, if at any time you see that she is suffering from fatigue, will you find an excuse to draw the lesson to a close? Arthur will help you.”
Like mother, like daughter—though the anguish was partially replaced by an extreme pallor. I addressed her in French.
“Mr. North, may I ask that we read in French? But it tires me to speak in it.” Her hand lightly indicated the left side of her forehead. “Look! Here comes my brother.”
I turned to see a boy of eleven scrambling up the cliff in the distance. I had seen him often on the tennis courts, though he had not been among my pupils. He was the lively freckled American boy so often pictured on grocers’ calendars to illustrate Whittier’s poem. He was called “Galloper,” because his middle name was Gallup and because he talked so rapidly and never walked when he might run. He sped toward us and came to an abrupt halt. We were introduced and shook hands gravely.
“Why, Galloper,” I said, “we’ve met before.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you called by that name here too?”
“Yes, sir. Elspeth calls me that.”
“I like it. May I call you so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you fond of the Fables also?”
“We’re both very interested in animals. Galloper spends many hours watching a tidal pool. He’s come to know some of the fish and shellfish and he’s given them names. We talk over everything together.”
“I’m very happy, Miss Skeel, that you wish to read the Fables. I haven’t read them for some time, but I remember my admiration for them. They are small but somehow great, modest but perfect. We shall try and find out how La Fontaine manages that. But before we begin, kindly let me have a moment to become accustomed to this beautiful place—and to those friends I see there. Would it tire you if we took a short walk?”
She turned to the nurse who came toward her. “Miss Chalmers, may I take my morning walk now?”
“Yes, Miss Elspeth.”
The deer enjoyed a pavilion at our right within a grove of trees; the rabbits resided in a village of hutches; the peacocks reigned in an aviary, a portion of which could protect them throughout the winter.
“Should we have some biscuits in our hands?”
“The caretaker feeds them several times a day. They don’t expect anything from us. It’s best that way.”
The deer watched us approach, then slowly drew nearer. “It’s best not to put out your hand until they’ve touched us first.” Presently the deer were beside us and between us and before us and behind us. We were taking a walk together. Even the fawns who had been lying in the shade of a tree struggled to their feet and joined the procession. The older deer began brushing us—bumping us, ever so slightly. “What they like most is to be talked to. I think they live most in their eyes and ears and muzzles. That’s the most beautiful baby, Jacqueline. I remember when you looked just like her. You must be careful that she doesn’t fall over the cliff, as you did. You remember the splints you had to wear and how you hated them. . . . Oh, Monsieur Bayard, your antlers are growing fast. They like it when you stroke their horns. I think their horns itch when the velvet is growing on them. The rabbits hope that we’ll come over and visit them too. They stay away from the deer. They don’t like hoofs. Oh, Figaro, how handsome you are! The deer will leave us soon; they find the company of humans exhausting. . . . See, they are drifting away already. . . . It’s terrible to see them on the Fourth of
July. Of course, no one has ever shot at them, but they carry some memory of hunters in their blood—do you think that’s possible? . . . It’s too early to see the rabbits play. When the moon’s come up they tear around as though they’d gone out of their mind.”
“Mademoiselle, why do the deer push against us that way?”
“I think, maybe . . . Will you excuse me if I sit down for a minute? Please sit down too. Galloper will tell you what we think about that.”
I had noticed that bamboo chairs with wide armrests, such as I had known in China as a boy, were placed, two by two, at intervals on the lawn. We sat down. Galloper answered for his sister. “We think that we must imagine their enemies. We have a picture in the hall—”
“I think it’s by Landseer.”
“—of stags and does huddled together in a mass surrounded by wolves. Before there were any men with guns on the earth, the deers’ enemies were wolves or maybe men with spears or bludgeons. The deers must have lost some, but they defended themselves that way—with a sort of wall of antlers. They don’t like to be patted or stroked; it’s nearness they like to feel. That’s different from the rabbits. The hare has been thumping the ground to warn the others that we are coming. But if there is no shelter near, they ‘freeze’ wherever they are; they ‘play dead.’ They have enemies on the ground too, but they mostly fear hawks. But hawks hunt singly. Either way, the deer and the rabbits lose a few of their kind—”
“What I call ‘hostages to fortune.’ ”
“But they do what they can for their kind.”
Elspeth looked at me. “Do you think that there is something in that idea?”
I looked at her with a smile. “I’m your pupil. I want to hear what you say.”
“Oh, I’m just beginning to try to think. I’m trying to understand why nature is so cruel and yet so wonderful. Galloper, tell Mr. North what you see in the tidal pool.”
Galloper answered reluctantly. “It’s a battle every day. It’s . . . it’s terrible.”
“Mr. North,” said Elspeth, “why must that be? Doesn’t God love the world?”
Theophilus North Page 29
