Theophilus North

by Thornton Wilder

  “Try that,” he said finally. It was indeed rich and strange. He turned and sat down—with a plan in his head, as though conversation were also a totally occupying discipline.

  “Mr. North, why did you represent yourself as a friend of Dr. de Martel?”

  “I felt that it was urgent that I have a few minutes of your time. I felt that you should know one of the reasons for Miss Skeel’s migraines—a reason that no one in the family was in a position to tell you. I felt that a great doctor would want to know every aspect of the case. I have since learned that you had already recommended her removal from her home and that my call on you was unnecessary.”

  “No. It opened my eyes to the part that her father was playing in her depressed condition.” He passed his hand wearily over his eyes. “In my field of work we often tend to overlook the emotional elements that enter into a problem that faces us. We pride ourselves on being scientists and we do not see how science can come to grips with such things as emotions. . . . Apparently that is an aspect of these problems that you have interested yourself in.” I pretended not to have heard him, but there was no evading any step in the conversation that Dr. Bosco had planned to pursue. “You do engage in healing?”

  “No. No, Dr. Bosco. I have never made claim to any capacity for healing. Some children have talked some nonsense about my having ‘electric hands.’ I hate it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  He gazed at me fixedly for a moment. “I am told that you enabled Dr. Bosworth to leave his house for the first time in ten years.”

  “Please change the subject, Doctor. I just talked common sense to him.”

  He repeated thoughtfully, “Common sense, common sense.—And this story about a girl Ada—Ada somebody—who struck her head against a post?”

  “Doctor, I’m a fraud. I’m a quack. But when a person is suffering right under your eyes what do you do? You do what you can.”

  “And what is it that you do? You hypnotized her?”

  “I never saw a person hypnotized. I don’t know what it is. I merely talked soothingly to her and stroked the bruise. Then I carried her to the superintendent of the Casino who has a lot of experience in first-aid. There was no real concussion. She came back to class two days later.”

  “If I ask Mrs. Bosco to join us, will you tell us the full story of Dr. Bosworth’s recovery? There’s still half an hour before dinner.”

  “There are some homely vulgar details connected with it.”

  “Mrs. Bosco is used to such details from me.”

  “I am a guest in your house,” I said discouragedly. “I shall try to do what you wish me to do.”

  He refreshed my glass and left the room. I heard him calling, “Lucinda! Lucinda!” (It was not an invitation but an order.) Mrs. Bosco slipped into the room and sat by the door. The doctor sat at his desk.

  “All right,” I said to myself, “I’ll give him the works.” I gave him the background of the Death Watch, my first interview with Mrs. Bosworth, our readings in Bishop Berkeley, my increasing awareness of a “house of listening ears,” the family’s efforts to persuade him that he was condemned and going crazy, my trip to Providence disguised as a truck driver, the attempt on my life.

  Toward the end of the story Dr. Bosco had covered his face with his hands, but not in boredom. When I had finished, he said, “No one tells me anything. . . . I am the specialist who is called in at the end of the game.”

  A servant appeared at the door. Mrs. Bosco said, “Dinner is ready.”

  Dinner was delicious. The doctor was silent. Mrs. Bosco asked me, “Mr. North, would it bore you to tell us the story of your life and interests?”

  I spared them nothing—Wisconsin, China, California, Oberlin College, Yale, the American Academy in Rome, the school in New Jersey, then Newport. I mentioned some of my interests and ambitions (omitting the shaman).

  “Lucinda, I shall ask Mr. North to join me in my study for coffee.”

  It was a quarter before ten.

  “Mr. North, at the close of the summer I wish you to come to Boston. I am appointing you to be one of my secretaries. You will accompany me on my rounds. I shall tell each patient that I have full confidence in you. You will visit them regularly. You will report to me on each patient’s intimate life-story, and on any strains he or she may be living under. Get to know them by their first names. I have seldom known a patient by his or her Christian name. What is yours?”

  “Theophilus.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember. That is a beautiful name. It carries connotations that were once real to me; I wish they were today. Are you returning to Newport tonight?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “I have arranged that Fred Spence will drive you there.” (It was an order.) “Here is a five-dollar bill you will give him at the end of the journey. It will make you feel more comfortable about the trip. Do not answer now about the proposal I have laid before you. Think it over. Let me hear from you by a week from today. Thank you for coming to dinner.”

  I said good night to Mrs. Bosco in the hall. “Thank you for coming and for bringing those soothing hands with you. The doctor’s not often as patient as he’s been tonight.”

  I slept all the way home. At Mrs. Keefe’s door I gave Fred Spence the honorarium and climbed up my stairs. Three days later I wrote Dr. Bosco—with many expressions of regard—that my return to Europe in the autumn would prevent my accepting the position that he had offered me. I thought the whole damnable shaman business was at an end, but ten days later I found myself in a mess of trouble.

  I rejoiced in my apartment, but I was seldom there. My daily work became more and more difficult and I spent many evenings at the People’s Library preparing for my classes. At midnight I found notes under my door from my good landlady: “Three ladies and a gentleman called for you. I let them wait for you until ten in my sitting-room, but I had to ask them to go home at ten. They did not wish to leave their names and addresses. Mrs. Doris Keefe.” On another night, the same message speaking of eight people. “I cannot have more than five strangers waiting in my sitting-room. I told them they must go away. Mrs. Doris Keefe.”

  Finally on a Thursday evening I was at home and received a telephone call from Joe (“Holy Joe”), the supervisor at the Y.M.C.A. “Ted, what’s going on? There are twelve people—mostly old women—waiting for you in the visitors’ room. I told them you didn’t live here any more. I couldn’t tell them your new address because you never gave it to me. . . . There are some more coming in the door now. What are you doing—running an employment agency? Please come over and send them away and tell them not to come back again. There’ve been a few every night, but tonight beats everything. This is a young men’s Christian association, not an old ladies’ home. Come on over and drive the cattle out.”

  I hurried over. The crowd now overflowed the visitors’ room. I recognized some of the faces—servants from “Nine Gables” and from “The Deer Park” and even from “Mrs. Cranston’s.” I started shaking hands.

  “Oh, Mr. North, I suffer from rheumatism something terrible.”

  “Oh, Mr. North, my back hurts so I can’t sleep nights, not what you’d call sleep.”

  “Mr. North, look at my hand! It takes me an hour to open it in the morning.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a doctor. I don’t know the first thing about medicine. I must ask you to consult a regular practicing physician.”

  The wails mounted:

  “Oh, sir, they take your money and do nothing for you.”

  “Mr. North, put your hand on my knee. God will reward you.”

  “Sir, my feet. It’s agony to go a step.”

  I had spent a part of my childhood in China and was no stranger to the unfathomable misery in the world. What could I do? First, I must clear the lobby. I rested my hand here and there; I grasped an ankle or two; I drew my hand firmly down some spines. I gave particular attention to the napes of necks. I made a point of hurting my patients (they
yelped, but were instantly convinced that that was the “real thing”). Gently propelling them to the front door, I planted the heels of my hands on some foreheads, murmuring the opening lines of the Aeneid. Then I said, “This is the last time I can see you. Do not come back again. You must see your own doctors. Good night, and God bless you all.”

  I returned to my own address and dispersed a group that had gathered there.

  I dreaded the following Sunday night and had reason to. I made my way to the “Y” and from afar I could see that they had all come back and brought others; a line extended from lobby to sidewalk. I called them all together and held a meeting in the middle of the street. “Ladies and gentlemen, there’s nothing I can do for you. I’m as ill as you are. Every bone in my body aches. Let us shake hands and say good night.” I hurried back to Mrs. Keefe’s house where another crowd had gathered. I dismissed them with the same words. Mrs. Keefe was watching us from a window. When the strangers had gone she unlocked the front door to me.

  “Oh, Mr. North, I can’t stand this much longer. When I lock the door they wander around the house knocking on the window-panes like beggars I’ve shut out in a snow storm. Here is a letter for you that was brought by hand.”

  “Dear Mr. North, it would give me much pleasure to see you this evening at ten-thirty, your sincere friend, Amelia Cranston.”

  At ten-thirty I hurried to Spring Street. The rooms were emptying quickly. Finally no one was there but Mrs. Cranston, Mr. Griffin, and Mrs. Grant, her principal assistant in running the house. I sat down by Mrs. Cranston who appeared to be unusually large, genial, and happily disposed.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. North.”

  “Forgive me for being absent so long. My schedule gets heavier every week.”

  “So I have been informed . . . bicycling up and down the Avenue at two in the morning and feeding the wild animals, I presume.” Mrs. Cranston enjoyed giving evidence that she knew everything. “Mrs. Grant, will you kindly tell Jimmy to bring the refreshments I set aside in the icebox.” We were served the gin-fizzes I had come to recognize as a mark of some special occasion. She lowered her voice. “You are in trouble, Mr. North?”

  “Yes, I am, ma’am. Thank you for your letter.”

  “Well, you have become a very famous man in certain quarters. My visitors Thursday night and tonight talked of little else. Somehow or other you put new life in Dr. Bosworth and now he’s bounding about the country like a lad of fifty. Somehow or other you brought relief to Miss Skeel’s headaches. Servants watch their employers very closely, Mr. North. How many patients were waiting for you tonight?”

  “Over twenty-five in one place and a dozen in the other.”

  “Next week the waiting line will stretch around the block.”

  “Help me, Mrs. Cranston. I love Newport. I want to stay until the end of the summer. I haven’t got “electric hands.’ I’m a fake and a fraud. That first night I couldn’t drive them out of the building. You should have seen their eyes: It’s better to be a fake and a fraud than to be . . . brutal. I didn’t do them any harm, did I?”

  “Put your hands down on the table, palms upward.”

  She passed five finger tips over them lightly, took a sip from her glass, and said, “I always knew you had something.”

  I hastily hid my hands under the table. She went on speaking evenly with her calm smile: “Mr. North, even the happiest and healthiest of women—and there are very few of us—have one corner of their mind that is filled with a constant dread of illness. Dread. Even when they’re not thinking about it, they’re thinking about it. This is not true of most men—you think you’ll live forever. Do you think you’ll live forever, Mr. North?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, smiling. “I’ll say, ‘I’ve warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks and I am ready to depart.’ But I’d like to have seen Edweena before I departed.”

  She looked at me in surprise. “It’s funny your saying that. Edweena’s back from her cruise. She’s been in New York a week, making arrangements for her fall season there. Henry Simmons has been to New York to bring her back here. I’m expecting them tonight. Edweena knows all about you.”

  “About me?!”

  “Oh, yes. I wrote her all about your problem a week ago. She answered at once. It’s Edweena who’s had the idea about how you can get free of this mess you’re in. It’s Henry Simmons and I who have arranged it at this end.” She took up an envelope from the table before her and waved it before my nose as you’d wave a bone before a dog.

  “Oh, Mrs. Cranston!”

  “But let’s say one more word about your new situation in Newport. Women never put their full confidence in doctors. Women are both religious and superstitious. They want nothing less than a miracle. You are the latest miracle man. There are many masseurs and manipulators and faith-healers in this town. They have licenses and they take money for their services. Your fame rests on the fact that you take no fees. That inspires a confidence that no doctor can inspire. If you pay a doctor you buy the right to criticize him as though he were any other huckster. But everybody knows that you can’t buy miracles and that’s why you are a miracle man. There is no sign that Dr. Bosworth or the Skeels gave you an automobile or even a gold watch—and yet look what you did for them! You still go about on a bicycle!”

  I didn’t like this talk. My eyes were fixed on the envelope. My tongue was hanging out of my mouth for that bone. I knew that Mrs. Cranston was teasing me, perhaps punishing me—for not having called on her for help earlier, for having been absent from “Mrs. Cranston’s” so long.

  I got down on one knee. “Please forgive me, Mrs. Cranston, for having been away so long. I’m indebted to you for so much.”

  She laughed and put her hand on mine for a moment. Well-conditioned women love to pardon when they’re asked. “In this envelope is a document. It’s not official, but it looks official. It has a ribbon and some sealing-wax and is on the stationery of a health organization that has long since been absorbed by others.” She took it out and laid it before me:

  To whom it may concern: Mr. T. Theophilus North, resident in Newport, Rhode Island, has no license to provide medical service of any kind or manner unless the patient appears before him with the written permission of a physician duly registered in this city. Office of the Superintendent of Health, this day the _________ of August, 1926.

  “Oh, Mrs. Cranston!”

  “Wait, there is another document in this envelope.”

  Mr. T. Theophilus North, resident in Newport, Rhode Island, is hereby given permission to make one visit, not lasting longer than thirty minutes, to Miss Liselotte Müller, resident at_________Spring Street, and to furnish her such aid and comfort as seems fitting to him.

  This was signed by an esteemed physician in the city and bore the date of the previous day.

  I stared at her.

  “Miss Müller lives here now?”

  “Could you see her now? This building is really three buildings. The third and fourth floors of the building on this side have been fitted out to be an infirmary for very old women. They have spent their lifetimes in domestic service and many of them have been well provided for by their former employers. Most of them cannot negotiate even one flight of stairs, but they have a terrace where they can sun themselves in good weather and social rooms for all weather. You will see sights and smell smells that will distress you, but you have told us of your experiences in China and you are prepared for such things.” Here I heard her short snort-like laugh. “You have accepted the truth that much of life is difficult and that the last years are particularly so. You are not a green boy, Mr. North. Few men pay calls in that infirmary—occasionally a doctor, a priest, a pastor, or a relative. It is a rule of the house that during such calls the door into the sickroom is left ajar. I am sending you upstairs with my assistant and friend, Mrs. Grant.”

  I asked in a low voice, “Will you tell me something about Miss Müller?”

  “Tan
te Liselotte was born in Germany. She was the eleventh child of a pastor and was brought to this country at the age of seventeen by an employment agency. She has been the nanny in one of the most respected houses here and in New York for three generations. She has bathed and dressed all those children, spent the entire day with them, paddled and powdered and wiped their little bottoms. I have selected her for your visit because she was kind and helpful to me when I was young, lonesome, and frightened. She has outlived all the members of her family abroad who would take any interest in her. She has been much loved in her station, but she is a strict rigid woman and has made few friends except myself. She is sound of mind; she can see and hear; but she is racked by rheumatic pains. I believe them to be excruciating because she is not a complaining woman.”

  “And if I fail, Mrs. Cranston?”

  She ignored the question. She went on: “I suspect that your fame has preceded you upstairs. The guests in this house have many friends in the infirmary. News of miracles travels fast. . . . Mrs. Grant, I should like you to meet Mr. North.”

  “How do you do, Mr. North?”

  “I think we shall be speaking German tonight, Mrs. Grant. Do you understand German?”

  “Oh, no. Not a word.”

  “Mrs. Cranston, after these meetings I am sometimes very weak. If Henry Simmons returns before I come down, will you ask him to wait for me and walk home with me?”

  “Oh, yes—I think both Edweena and Henry Simmons will be here. Your visit to Tante Liselotte is also Edweena’s wish.”

  I was staggered.

  Again I was to learn: happy is the man who is aided by what folklore calls “the wise women.” That is a lesson of the Odyssey. “Then the gray-eyed Athene appeared to Odysseus in the guise of a servant and he knew her not, and she spoke unto him. . . .”