Theophilus North (43 page)

“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?”

“Tante 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. . . .”

I followed Mrs. Grant upstairs. The women I passed on the landings and in the corridors lowered their eyes and shrank against the walls. On the third and fourth floors all wore identical “wrappers” in gray and white stripes. Mrs. Grant knocked at a half-open door and said, “Tante Liselotte, Mr. North has come to call on you,” then she sat down in a corner, folded her hands, and lowered her eyes.

“
Guten Abend, Fräulein Müller
.”

“
Guten Abend, Herr Doktor
.”

Tante Liselotte appeared to be a skeleton, but her large brown eyes were bright. She seemed barely able to turn her head. She wore a knitted cap and a comforter over her shoulders. The linen and the entire room were spotless. I continued in German. “I am neither a doctor nor a pastor—merely a friend of Mrs. Cranston and of Edweena.” I had no idea what I was going to say. I made my mind go blank. “May I ask where you were born, Tante Liselotte?”

“Near Stuttgart, sir.”

“Ah!” I said with delighted surprise. “A Swabian!” I knew nothing about the region except that Schiller was born there. “In a moment I want to look at all these photographs on the walls. Forgive me if I put my hands on yours.” I took her infinitely delicate right hand between mine and rested all three on the counterpane. I began to concentrate all the energy I could assemble.

“I speak German so badly, but what a wonderful language it is! Aren't
Leiden
and
Liebe
and
Sehnsucht
more beautiful words than ‘sufferings' and ‘love' and ‘longing'?” I repeated the German words slowly. Tremors were passing through her hand. “And your name
Liselotte
for Elizabeth-Charlotte! And the diminutives:
Mütterchen, Kindlein, Engelein
.” I felt prompted to push our three hands all but imperceptibly toward her knee. Her eyes were wide, staring at the wall opposite her. She was breathing deeply. Her chin was twitching. “I think of the German hymns I know through Bach's music: ‘
Ach, Gott, wie manches Herzeleid
' and
‘Halt' im Ged
ä
chtnis Jesum Christ.' ‘Gleich wie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt
. . .' They can translate the words, they cannot translate what we hear who love the language.” I remembered and recited others. I was trembling because I was recalling Bach's music which so often has something multitudinous about it—like waves and generations.

I was aware of much tiptoeing in the corridor but at first no whispering. A large group was gathering outside the door. I suspect that the custom of lowering lights at such a late hour had been set aside because of my visit. I gently withdrew my hands, rose, and started on a tour of the room; pausing before the pictures. I stood before two silhouettes—probably a hundred years old—her parents. I glanced at her and nodded. Her eyes were following me. A faded blue snapshot of Tante Liselotte seated beween two perambulators in Central Park. In every photograph—first as a happy young woman with a square plain face, then as a woman in middle age, inclining to stoutness—she was dressed in a uniform that resembles what we in this country know as the garb of a deaconess, surmounted by a bonnet tied under her chin with a wide muslin band. On her feet she wore stout “hygienic” shoes that had undoubtedly aroused discreet laughter throughout her long life:

Tante Liselotte in an old-world “bath chair” with children at her feet—in faded ink “Ostende, 1880”;

A large party on the deck of a yacht gathered about the German Kaiser and the Kaiserin; at the edge of the picture stood Tante Liselotte with a baby in her arms and her young charges beside her. As though talking to myself I said, “Their Imperial Majesties have graciously requested that I present to them Miss Liselotte Müller, a much valued member of our household”—“Kiel, 1890”;

Tante Liselotte on the Cliff Walk in Newport, always with children;

A wedding picture, bride and groom and Liselotte, “Love to Nana, from Bertie and Marianne—June, 1909.” I said aloud to myself in English, “You were present at my father's wedding too, weren't you, Tante Liselotte?”

Photographs in the nursery. “Nana, can we go hunting for shells today?” “Nana, I'm sorry I was naughty about the overshoes this morning. . . .” “Nana, when we go to bed will you tell us the story about the carpet that flies in the air?”

All my movements were slow. My eyes returned to hers at each improvisation. I went back to my chair and placed our three hands against her knee. She shut her eyes but suddenly opened them wide in great alarm or wonder.

The throng that had gathered in the corridor was filling the doorway. There was a sound now of sighing and groans and the chittering of bats. An old woman on crutches lost her balance and fell face downward on the floor. I paid no attention. Mrs. Grant came forward and lifted the woman from the floor and with the help of others led her from the room. During the disturbance another woman, not a patient, had entered the room and had sat down in Mrs. Grant's chair. Tante Liselotte drew her hand from between mine and beckoned me to lean nearer to her. In German she said, “I want to die. . . . Why does God not let me die?”