Theophilus North (39 page)

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?”

“Yes, He surely does. But we must talk that over later.”

“You won't forget?”

“No.—Mademoiselle, have you ever seen deer in their wild—I mean, their natural—state?”

“Oh, yes. My Aunt Benedikta has a camp in the Adirondacks. She's always asking us to visit her in the summer. There you can see deer and foxes and even bears. And there are no fences or cages at all. They're
free!
And so beautiful!”

“Are you going there this summer?”

“No . .. Father doesn't like us to go there. And besides, I'm not . . . I'm not very well.”

“What are some of the other things about animals that you talk about together?”

“Yesterday we had a long talk about why nature placed the eyes of birds on the sides of their heads.”

“And why,” added Galloper, “so many animals' heads are bent to the ground.”

“We love
WHYS
,” said his sister.

“And what did you decide?”

Galloper, after a glance at his sister, released her from the effort of answering. “We knew that herbivorous animals had to keep their eyes on the plants beneath them and that the birds had to be alert for enemies on all sides of them; but we wondered why nature couldn't have worked out a better way—like the eyes of the Crustacea in my tidal pool.”

“The difficulty of thinking,” murmured his sister, “is that you have to think of so many things at once.”

She had been carrying a copy of the
Fables
. It fell from the wide armrest of the chair. ( Had she pushed it? ) We both leaned over to pick it up from the ground. Our hands met and struggled for it a moment. She drew in her breath hastily and shut her eyes. When she opened them she looked into mine and said with unusual directness: “Galloper says that your pupils at the Casino say that you have electric hands.”

I think I blushed furiously and was furious at myself for blushing. “That's absurd, of course. That doesn't mean anything.”

Hell! Damnation!

Every once in a while it rains in Newport. Sometimes a shower would fall during those two early hours when I was coaching tennis at the Casino. I never had more than four pupils at a time; my other pupils would be playing against one another on courts nearby. And we would all run for shelter to one of the social rooms behind the spectators' gallery. My pupils, all between eight and fourteen, made a very pretty sight, dressed in spotless white, radiant with youth, delicately fostered, and expending their energy. They would gather about me, crying, “Mr. North, tell us some more about China!” or “Tell us some more stories like ‘The Necklace' ”—I had once held them hushed and dismayed by de Maupassant's story. The ever-watchful Bill Wentworth—himself a father and grandfather—knew well that children of that age love to sit on the floor. He would spread out some sail cloth about the “teacher's chair.” Galloper had not been among my pupils, but he joined the circle and even some older players hesitantly drew up their chairs. It was there that I had first beheld Eloise Fenwick and it was for her dear eyes and ears that I had first retold Chaucer's story of “The Falcon.” It was for Galloper that I told of Fabre's discovery of how a wasp paralyzes a grub or a caterpillar and then lays its egg upon it to nourish the future insect. Was it Rousseau who said the primary function of early education was to expand in children the faculty of wonder?