Theophilus North (31 page)

Now go we in content
To liberty, and not to banishment.

I wish I'd heard Ellen Terry say that; and soon after Viola had lost her brother in that shipwreck someone asks her about her family and she—dressed as a boy and now called Cesario—says:

I am all the daughters of my father's house,
And all the brothers too.

I wish I'd heard Julia Marlowe say that.”

Myra asked me harshly, “What good does it do you—this famous ‘humorous mind'?”

“Shakespeare places these clear-eyed girls among a lot of people who are in an incorrect relation to the real. As a later author said, ‘Most of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.' A humorous mind enables us to accommodate ourselves to their folly—and to our own.—Do you think there's something in that, Mrs. Cummings?”

“Oh, Mr. North, I think that's why nurses laugh when they're off duty. It helps us—like you might say—to survive.”

Myra was staring at me without seeing me.

Mrs. Cummings asked, “Mrs. Granberry, can't we ask Mr. North to read to us a little out of Shakespeare?”

“Well . . . if it's not too long.”

I put my hand tentatively into the satchel. “My idea was that we all take parts. I've underlined Myra's part in red, and Mrs. Cummings's in blue, and I'll read the rest.”

“Oh,” cried Mrs. Cummings, “I can't read poetry-English. I couldn't do that. You've got to excuse me.”

“Cora, if that's the way Mr. North wants it, I suppose we must let him have his way.”

“God bless my soul!”

“Now slowly, everybody—
slowly!
”

Within the week we had done scenes from those plays—and repeated them, switching roles—and the balcony scene from
Romeo and Juliet
and the trial scene from
The Merchant of Venice
. Mrs. Cummings astonished herself as Shylock. It was Myra who, at the end of each scene, said, “Now let's do it again!”

One afternoon Myra greeted me at the door with an air of suppressed excitement. “Theophilus, I asked my husband to come here at four-thirty. We're going to do the trial scene from
The Merchant of Venice
and I'm going to make him play Shylock. You be Antonio, I'll be Portia, and Cora will be everybody else. Let's rehearse it once before he comes. Cora, I want you to be splendid as the Duke.”

“Oh, Mrs. Granberry!”

We put our hearts into it.
Myra had memorized her lines
.

A knock on the door: enter George F. Granberry II. Myra was silken. “George darling, we want you to help us. Please don't say no because it would make me very unhappy.”

“What can I do?”

She put the open book in his hands. “George, you must read Shylock. Go very slowly and be very bloodthirsty. Sharpen the knife on your shoe. Mr. North is going to lean backward over that desk with his chest exposed and his hands tied behind him.”

“Now, Myra, that's enough! I'm no actor.”

“Oh, George! It's just a game. We'll do it twice so you'll get the hang of it, and
go slowly
.”

We started off haltingly, groping for our words on the page. As Shylock leaned over me, an ivory paper-cutter in his hand, he said under his voice, “North, I'd like to cut out your gizzard. Something's going on here that I don't like. You've fouled up the whole air around here.”

“You engaged me to interest your wife in reading and especially in Shakespeare. I've done that and I'm ready to resign when you pay the three two-week bills I've sent you.”

That took his breath away.

During the first rehearsal Myra had made a show of reading indifferently and stumbling over her words. On the second time around we played for all we were worth. Myra laid aside her book; at first she represented the young lawyer Balthasar with a slight playful swagger, but she grew in authority speech after speech.

George was caught up into the spirit of the thing. He roared for his “bond” and his pound of flesh. Again he leaned over me, savagely, knife in hand. Then something extraordinary took place.

Here George felt a hand rest on his shoulder and heard behind him a voice saying—gravely, earnestly, from some realm of maturity that had been long absent from his life:

            It droppeth like the gentle rain . . .

            . . . We do pray for mercy;

            And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

            The deeds of mercy. . . .

George straightened up and threw down the ivory knife. He said confusedly, “Go on with your reading. I'll see you . . . another time,” and he left the room.

We looked at one another surprised and a little guilty. Mrs. Cummings took up her sewing. “Mr. North, play-acting is a little too exciting for us all. I haven't said much about it, but Mrs. Granberry always stands up and moves about the room. I don't think the doctor would like that. We haven't had a talk-time lately. You told Mrs. Granberry you'd tell her sometime what it was like when you went to school in China.”

I vowed that I'd send in my resignation that night—before I was fired—but I didn't and I wasn't. I was more than half in love with Myra. I was proud of her and proud of my work. A check arrived for me in Monday morning's mail. We began
Huckleberry Finn
. On Friday another surprising thing happened. I bicycled up to the portal of the house. I saw a young man of about twenty-four strolling on the lawn, smelling a long-stemmed rose. He was dressed in the height of fashion—straw hat, blazer of the Newport Yacht Club, flannels, and white shoes. He approached me and put out his hand.

“Mr. North, I believe. I am Caesar Nielson, the twin brother of Myra Granberry.
How
d'you do?”

Zounds! Holy cabooses! It was Myra.

God, how I hate transvestism! I shuddered; but never contradict a pregnant woman.

“Is your sister at home, Mr. Nielson?”

“We've ordered the car. We thought it would be nice to drive to Narragansett Pier and ask your friend Mademoiselle Desmoulins for a cup of tea.”

“Sir, you forget that I am employed here to read English literature with Mrs. Granberry. I am only here under the conditions of my contract. Will you excuse me? I don't wish to be late for my appointment.—Would you like to join us?”

I looked up at the house and saw Mrs. Cummings and Carel, stricken, watching us from the drawing-room windows. Faces were similarly framed in many windows of the upper floors.

Myra came nearer to me and murmured, “Badgers fight to defend what they've got.”

“Yes, but since nature made them small she made them clever. No well-conditioned badger or woman destroys her home to preserve it. Please precede me, Mr. Nielson.”

She entered the house disturbed, but chin up. As I followed her through the hall Carel said to me in a low voice, “Mr. Granberry has been in the house for half an hour, sir. He returned by the coachhouse drive.”

“Do you think he saw the show?”

“I'm sure he did, sir.”

“Thank you, Carel.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I followed Myra and Mrs. Cummings into the morning room. “Myra, please change your clothes quickly. Mr. Granberry is in the house and will probably be here in a few minutes. He will probably dismiss Mrs. Cummings and me, and your next few months will be very dreary indeed.”

“Shakespeare's girls did it.”

“Please leave the door of your dressing room open two inches so that I can talk to you while you are changing your clothes.—Can you hear me?”

But we were too late. Mr. Granberry entered the room without knocking. “Myra!” he called. She appeared at the door, still Caesar Nielson. She returned his angry gaze unabashed.

“Pants!” he said,
“PANTS!”

“I'm an emancipated woman like Miss Desmoulins.”

“Mrs. Cummings, you are leaving the house as soon as you can pack. Mr. North, will you follow me into the library?”

I bowed low to the ladies, opening my eyes wide in smiling admiration.

In the library Mr. Granberry was seated behind the desk like a judge. I sat down and crossed my legs composedly.

“You broke your promise to me. You told my wife about Narragansett Pier.”

“Your wife told me about Narragansett Pier. She had received two anonymous letters.”

He blanched. “You should have told me that.”

“I was engaged by you to be a reader of English literature, not a confidential friend of the family.”

Silence.

“You're the biggest nuisance in town. Everybody's talking about the hell you kicked up among the Bosworths at ‘Nine Gables.' And Heaven knows what's going on at the Wyckoff place. I'm sorry I called you in.—God, I hate Yale men!”

Silence.

“Mr. Granberry, I hate injustice and I think you do too.”

“What's that got to do with it?”

“If you dismiss Mrs. Cummings as incompetent in her profession, by God, I shall write a letter to the doctor or to whatever agency sent her telling them what I found here.”

“That's blackmail.”

“No, that is a deposition in a suit for slander. Mrs. Cummings is obviously a superior trained nurse. In addition—as far as I can see—she has been your wife's only friend and support in a difficult time.” I put a slight emphasis on the word “only.”

Another silence.

He looked at me somberly. “What do you suggest I do?”

“I seldom offer advice, Mr. Granberry. I don't know enough.”

“Stop hammering that ‘Mr. Granberry.' Since we hate each other I suggest we use first names. I'm told that you are called Teddie.”

“Thank you. I don't give advice, George, but I think it would help you if you just talked to me at random about the whole situation.”

“God damn it, I can't live like a monk half a year
again
, just because my wife's under doctor's care. I know a pack of men who have someone like Denise in the woods. What did I do wrong? Denise was a friend of a friend of mine; he passed her over to me. Denise is a nice girl. The only trouble with her is that she cries half the time. French people have to go back to France every two years or they expire like fish on ice. She misses her mother, she says. She misses the smell of the Paris streets—imagine that! . . . All right, I know what you're thinking. I'll give her a pack of Granberry stock and send her back to Paris. But what the hell will I do here?
Play Shakespeare all day? . . 
. Well, say something. Don't just sit there like an ox. Jesus!”

“I'm trying to get some ideas. Please go on talking a little longer, George.”

Silence.

“You think I neglect Myra. I do and I know I do. Do you know why? I . . . I . . . How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“Married? Ever been married?”

“No.”

“I can't stand being loved—loved?—worshiped! Overestimation freezes me. My mother overestimated me and I haven't said a sincere word to her since I was fifteen years old. And now Myra! She suffers and I know she suffers. I wasn't lying to you when I told you I loved her. Wasn't I right when I told you she was intelligent and all that?”

“Yes.”

“And suffers all the time . . . four years of suffering and I'm the only person she gives a damn about. I can't stand it. I can't stand the responsibility. When I come into her presence I freeze. Teddie, can you understand that?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead. I'm numb anyway.”

“George, what do you do in the laboratory all day?”

He rose, threw me an angry glance, sauntered about the room, then placed his hands on the lintel above the door into the hall and hung there—as boys with their excess energy do ( and to hide their faces).

“Well,” he said, “I'll tell you. The principal reason is to hide myself. To wait for something, to wait for things to get worse or to get better. ‘What I do' is to play war-games. Since I was a boy I've played with tin soldiers. I wasn't able to get into war service because of some malfunction of the heart. . . . I have dozens of books; I do the Battle of the Marne, and the whole lot. . . . I do Napoleon's and Caesar's battles. . . . You're famous around here for keeping secrets, so please keep that secret.”

Tears filled my eyes and I smiled. “And soon you'll have to face another ordeal. In about three years a little girl or a little boy is going to come into the room and say, ‘Papa, I fell down and hurt myself. Look't, Papa, look't!' and someone else will love you. All love is overestimation.”

“Make it a girl, professor; I couldn't stand a boy.”

“I see your next step, George. Learn to accept love—with a smile, with a grin.”

“Oh, God!”

“Can I be a fool and give a piece of advice?”

“Keep it short.”

“Go down the hall into the morning room. Stand up straight in the door and say, ‘I'm sending Mademoiselle Desmoulins back to France with a nice goodbye present.' Then go and get down on one knee by the chaise-longue and say, ‘Forgive me, Myra.' Then look Mrs. Cummings in the eye and say, ‘Forgive me, Mrs. Cummings.' Women won't forgive us for ever and ever, but they love to forgive us when we ask them to.”