The Eternal Wonder (13 page)

“Would you please—,” he began.

Instantly the old man woke. “What do you want, boy?” he asked, his voice quavering with age.

“My grandfather lives here—Dr. James Harcourt.”

“Does he expect you? He don’t usually get up until afternoon.”

“Will you tell him his grandson, Randolph Colfax, is here from Ohio?”

The old man heaved himself stiffly from his chair and went to the house telephone. In a few minutes he was back.

“He says he’s still eatin’ his breakfast but you can come up. Top floor, to the right, third door. I’ll run you up. The elevator’s over here.”

The vehicle conveyed him to the top floor, and he turned to the right and knocked on the third door. There was an old-fashioned brass knocker and a small engraved card was fastened to the center panel of the mahogany door—
JAMES HARCOURT, PHD, MD
. And now the door opened and his grandfather stood before him, a white linen napkin in his hand.

“Come in, Randolph,” he said, his voice surprisingly deep and strong. “I’ve been expecting you. Your mother wrote me you were coming. Have you had your breakfast?”

“Yes, sir. I got up early and walked.”

“Then sit down and call it luncheon. I’ll have some eggs scrambled freshly.”

He followed the tall, very thin old figure into a small dining room. The oldest man he had ever seen, wearing a spotless white jacket over black trousers, came into the room.

“This is my grandson,” his grandfather said. “And Randolph, this is my faithful manservant, Sung. He attached himself to me some years ago because I was able to—ah, do him a small favor. Now Sung takes good care of me. Eggs, Sung, scrambled, and fresh coffee and toast.”

The old man bowed deeply and went away. Still standing, he met his grandfather’s electric blue eyes.

“And why have you waited so long to come to me?” his grandfather demanded. “Sit down.”

“I really don’t know,” he answered. “I think,” he continued after a few seconds of thought, “I think I wanted to see everything—the city, the people—first for myself, so that I could always keep them, you know, inside me, as they are … to me, I mean. As one does with pictures, you know—laid away for what purpose I don’t know, but that’s my way of learning: first I see, then I wonder, then I know.”

His grandfather listened attentively. “Very sound,” he said. “An analytical mind—good! Well, here you are now. Where are your bags?”

“At the hotel, sir.”

“You must fetch them at once. Of course we must live together. I have plenty of extra room, especially since my wife died. I live in her room, not my own. We believed in separate rooms, but after she went on her way I moved into her room, thinking it would be easier for her to visit me then—as seems to be the case. Not that she comes often—she’s independent, always was—but when she feels the need, or understands my need, she comes quite promptly. We arranged for all that before she went.”

He listened to this in amazement and with puzzlement. Was his grandmother dead or was she not? His grandfather was still talking.

“I would send Sung with you to get your bags, Randolph, but he is afraid to go to Manhattan. Ten years ago he was wanted by the police for jumping ship. Serena—that’s my wife—and I were shopping on Fifth Avenue. I believe we were looking for a white mink stole for her Christmas gift that year, and he came dashing in, obviously escaping from someone. He couldn’t speak a word of English, but luckily I’d been in Peking for some years doing research at the great Rockefeller Hospital there. I’m a medical doctor as well as a demographer—and my Chinese is fluent enough that I was able to ask him what was wrong. I am entirely out of sympathy with our immigration policies toward Asians, so I told him not to be afraid, for I’d take him as my servant. I gave him my overcoat to carry and took him at once to the men’s department and bought him a decent black suit and had him put it on, and when the police came into the store, I was very angry with them for interfering with my manservant. He came home with us but he is still afraid to go to Manhattan, with which I have every sympathy, not because I am afraid, but because it is a hell hole. So leave it at once, my dear boy, and come here.”

“But Grandfather, I hadn’t planned—”

“Never plan, please. Just do the next thing that happens. You can always go your way. But it would please me to know my only grandson, even briefly.”

How could he refuse? The old gentleman was charming. Sung brought in eggs scrambled with a dash of something delicious—

“Soy sauce,” his grandfather explained.

He was always hungry; he ate heartily, drank three cups of coffee with sugar and thick, sweet cream, ate his way through a mound of buttered toast spread with English marmalade, and in an hour was on his way—“in a taxi,” his grandfather said, stuffing a bill into his coat pocket. “I’m a poor one at waiting.”

IT WAS NEARLY TWO HOURS
before he was back with his bags, for the day’s traffic had thickened and the streets, absurdly narrow for so huge a city, were crowded with every sort of vehicle. But he was back at last, excited by the adventure of an unknown grandfather—not permanent adventure, of course, for nothing was permanent except what he stored away in his deepest subconscious self, but something new and someone different from anyone he had ever known. Why had his mother never told him that his grandfather had lived in China, and in Peking, a city of which he had read with a perception of magic? And what was this about his grandfather’s wife? Was she his grandmother? Serena! He could remember having heard that name at home. A beautiful name for a woman, he thought. And, his whole being alive with wonder, he was in the house again and Sung took his bags and began unpacking them and his grandfather led him to a huge window in the room which was to be his.

“This is the only room from which we can see the Statue of Liberty,” his grandfather said. “For that reason Serena would not have this room. She said she simply could not argue with that great stone woman. ‘Ha—Liberty!’ That’s the way she’d talk—Serena, I mean. She was always embroiled in other people’s troubles. Just to read the newspaper would send her to Washington to protest or some such thing … Ellis Island! She was there day after day, trying to help some poor wretch or another. So I took this room. But she was right, you know. By the way, she wasn’t your grandmother. Your mother’s mother was my first wife, a sweet woman, gentle, perhaps ignorant—I was never quite sure how much she knew about anything. My poor Sarah! She’s dead too, but she never comes back to visit me, even though I am now alone—I daresay Serena sees to that!”

He laughed high laughter and then was suddenly grave. “Of course, now that you’re here, Serena may relent. I’ll speak to her—no, I won’t. There’s no use in upsetting one’s true love.”

“My mother never told me anything about your wife, sir,” he murmured, not knowing what to say.

“Oh, she wouldn’t,” his grandfather said cheerfully. “No need to, you know. Each of us has an independent life. Now you must amuse yourself for a while lad. I always sleep an hour before dinner, which is at seven. You see those shelves of books? From what your mother writes, I’m sure you can amuse yourself.”

His grandfather left the room and he went to the bookshelves. There was a biography of Henry James there and he took it down and began to read.

“I SUPPOSE,” HIS GRANDFATHER SAID CHEERFULLY
at the dinner table, “that I ought to explain to you about Serena. To tell you the truth, your mother knows nothing about her. When her mother died—my first wife, Sarah—I was in Peking. Sarah had not wanted to go to China with me. She thought of it as a heathen country, instead of what it was, the oldest and most civilized country in the world. So I went alone. Your mother was then about three years old. Sarah went back to her own family. As a matter of fact, we never lived together again though we were not legally separated, but as I said, she died while I was in Peking. When I returned from China, I was a very different man from the brash young fellow I was when I went there, thinking I had so much to teach the Chinese. Instead, they taught me.”

“How long were you there?” he asked.

“I went to stay a year and stayed seven,” his grandfather replied. “When I came home again, I moved here. I had a job in a private foundation—a very wealthy man in Wall Street, who was interested in vital statistics and world population. My office was there, just across the bridge, on the forty-fourth floor of a skyscraper. I met Serena there—matter of fact, she was his daughter, a brilliant, beautiful, willful creature. She fell in love with me first. I hadn’t thought of love. It embarrassed me—she was much younger than I. I went to him about it. He laughed, but he sent her to the Sorbonne for a couple of years. Then suddenly she was back again, standing there at my desk. ‘Well, here I am,’ she said, ‘and I’m just the same.’”

He laughed that high old laughter. “Well, I said, ‘I’ll have to take you seriously.’ Which I did, with the result that I married Serena in due course—or rather, she married me.”

“My mother never told me,” he said.

“No, she wouldn’t, for, as I told you, she never saw Serena,” his grandfather replied. “She continued to live with her aunt, and I went regularly twice a year to see her while she was growing up, but Serena felt she would be happier not to see my child. She always said emotions should never be confused. But little Sue always knew where I was and that she could depend on me, if needed. Nevertheless, I did not ask her to bring you here and live with me when your father died. I felt Serena would be confused, even after death. And I wasn’t sure that Serena wouldn’t come back now and then. I don’t think she’ll mind you—but two women—”

His grandfather shook his head doubtfully. Silence fell and neither of them broke it for several minutes. Then he spoke, his curiosity overwhelming him.

“Grandfather, do you mean she—Serena, your wife—really comes back to you … now?”

His grandfather, placidly eating an ice dessert, wiped his lips with his huge old-fashioned linen napkin before he spoke.

“Oh yes, indeed, dear boy,” he said cheerfully. “I never know when, of course, any more than I knew when she’d come into my room at night when she was alive. And she didn’t come at all for nearly four years after she died. I suppose it takes a certain length of time to become accustomed after the shock of death. It must be a shock to die, just as it is to be born. It takes time—it takes time. That’s a very delicious sweet, Sung. I’ll have a bit more.”

His grandfather ate heartily and with enjoyment. He appeared so sane, so healthy, so alive in spite of his age, that Rann could not believe his mind was deranged. Indeed, he was sure it was not. Then, his grandfather must have experiences not common to ordinary folk. But he himself was not ordinary either, and his sense of wonder would not let him rest.

“What I am trying now to discover,” his grandfather continued, “strictly through the science of parapsychology, is just how she does it, or how I do it. It is probably a combination, which as yet with me is accidental. But in time, as I do more study, I shall discover the proper technique. I am a scientist, Randolph. I learned that in China. I don’t know how much you know of my work. It began with my interest in the heart as the center of life.”

“Nothing, I’m afraid, Grandfather.”

“Ah well, that doesn’t surprise me. My first wife was a dear, good woman, as your mother is, but she had an ordinary, though intelligent mind. I never knew your mother, my daughter, well enough to discuss my work with her. But you have an extraordinary mind. I can see that—indeed, I saw it the moment you walked in the door.”

He was infused, inspired, impelled by his sense of wonder, his insatiable curiosity. “How did you know, Grandfather?”

His grandfather pushed away the plate from which he had been eating with such enjoyment, and Sung removed it and disappeared. They were alone.

“I will tell you what I have told no one since Serena died,” his grandfather replied. “I was born with a rare ability. Serena had it to some degree, and I was able to discuss it with her frankly, as I did everything else. It may be you have some of the same ability, though possibly expressed in a different way. You may want to tell me. With me it is expressed in color.”

“Color, Grandfather?”

“Yes, I don’t like to use the word ‘aura,’ for that is the jargon of mediums and fraudulent people who make their living through a false mysticism and suchlike nonsense. I am a scientist, trained first in medicine then in electronics. I understand—to some extent—the interplay of electrical waves. We are all a part of such interplay. Given the right combination of forces, a human being is the result—a crystallization, if you like. Or a dog or fish or insect, or any manifestation. When we ‘die,’ as we call it, the combination is merely moving from that form to make another.
Change
is the word. There is constant movement in the universe, and we are part of that change. Nothing is destroyed, only changed. What the change is, which we call death, interests me very much at my age, naturally. I doubt I can find the real explanation until I undergo the change myself, which will not be soon, because I inherit longevity and health—as you do, too, through me.”

Oh, his persistent mind! He was half-ashamed of it. “But color, Grandfather?”

“Ah yes,” his grandfather said. “But I hadn’t forgotten, dear boy! I never forget anything, any more than you do. I had to give the preliminary explanation. Well, all my life I have seen color about living creatures and most strongly, of course, about the concentrations we call human beings.”

“Do you see color about me?”

“Oh, very strongly.”

“What color, Grandfather?”

“More than one.”

His grandfather studied his head, and was silent for a minute. “Green is predominant—in what I see in your emanation—a living, vital green, signifying that the life force in you is very strong. This shades off into a rich blue—nothing pallid about you! And the blue fringes off into yellow. Yellow denotes intelligence, and blue denotes integrity. You won’t have an easy life. Everything in you—your feelings, your determination, your idealism—all very strong. You’ll suffer on all counts. But you know that, you’re a creator.”