Theophilus North (5 page)

“But he wouldn't understand it, Mr. North!”

“What has understanding got to do with it, Mrs. Cowperthwaite? Mr. Craig has already heard it eleven times. Hearing it in Hebrew he would be hearing God's own words as He dictated them to Moses and the prophets. Moreover I could read the New Testament in Greek. Greek is full of silent digammas and enclitics and prolegomena. Not a word would be lost and my price would be reduced to one hundred and forty dollars.”

“But my father—”

“Moreover in the New Testament I could read Our Lord's words in His own language, Aramaic! Very terse, very condensed. I've been able to read the Sermon on the Mount in four minutes, sixty-one seconds, and nothing over.”

“But would it count in making a record?”

“I'm sorry you don't see it as I do, Mrs. Cowperthwaite. Your respected father's intention is to please his maker. I am offering you a budget plan:
one hundred and forty dollars
!”

“I must close this conversation, Mr. North.”

“Let's say
ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY
!”

Click.

So before long I was cycling up and down the Avenue like a delivery boy. Lessons. Readings. I enjoyed the work (the
Fables
of La Fontaine at “Deer Park,” the works of Bishop Berkeley at “Nine Gables”), but I soon ran up against the well-known truth that the rich never pay—or only occasionally. I sent bills every two weeks, but even the friendliest employers somehow overlooked them. I drew on my capital and waited; but my dream of renting my own apartment (a dream fostering other dreams, of course) seemed indefinitely postponed. Except for a few engagements to read aloud after dark, my evenings were free and I became restless. I looked into the taverns on Thames Street and on the Long Wharf, but I had no wish to join those dim-lit and boisterous gatherings. Card-playing was permitted in the social rooms at the “Y” on condition that no money changed hands and I lose interest in card games without the incentive of gain. Finally I came upon Herman's Billiard Parlor—two long rooms containing seven tables under powerful hanging lights and a bar dispensing licit beverages, for these were “Prohibition” days. Any strong liquor you brought in your own pocket was winked at, but most of the players and myself were contented with orders of Bevo. It was a congenial place. The walls were lined with benches on two levels for onlookers and for players awaiting their turn. The game principally played at that time was pool. Pool is a concentrated rather than a convivial sport, conducted in grunts, muted oaths, and prayers, intermittently punctuated by cries of triumph or despair. The habitués at Herman's were handymen on the estates, chauffeurs, a few store clerks, but mostly servants of one kind or another. I was occasionally invited to take a cue. I established my identity as one who taught tennis to the beginners at the Casino. I play fairly well (long hours—in Alpha Delta Phi), but I became aware of an increasing coolness toward me. I was about to go seek another poolroom when I was rescued from ostracism by being adopted by Henry Simmons.

What a lot I came to owe to Henry : his friendship, the introductions to his fiancée, to Edweena, the incomparable Edweena, and to Mrs. Cranston and her boardinghouse; and to all that followed from that. Henry was a lean English valet of forty. His face—long, red, and pockmarked—was brightened by dark observant eyes. His speech had been chastened by seven years in this country, but often reverted in high spirits to that of his earlier years—a speech which delighted me with its evocation of those characters of a similar background in the pages of Dickens and Thackeray. He served a well-known yachtsman and racing enthusiast whom he much admired and whom I shall call Timothy Forrester. Mr. Forrester, like others of his class and generation, lent his boat to scientific expeditions and explorations (and participated in them) where the presence of a “gentleman's gentleman” would have seemed frivolous. So Henry was left behind in Newport for months at a time. This arrangement agreed well with him because the woman he planned to marry spent the greater part of the year there. Henry was always dressed in beautifully cut black suits; only his brightly colored vests expressed his individual taste. He was a favorite at Herman's, to which his low-voiced banter brought an element of extravagant and exotic fancy.

He must have been observing me for some time and connecting me with my advertisement in the newspaper, because one evening when I had been sitting overlong on the sidelines he suddenly approached me and said, “You there, professor! How about three sets at two bits each, eh? . . . What's your name, cully? . . . Ted North? Mine's Henry Simmons.”

At this time of our first encounter Henry was a very unhappy man. His master was helping a team to photograph the birds of Tierra del Fuego and Henry hated idleness; his fiancée was away on another voyage and he missed her painfully. We played in relative silence. I had a run of luck or perhaps Henry disguised his greater proficiency. When the game came to an end the rooms were emptying. He invited me to a drink. The house reserved some cases of Bass's Ale for his use; I ordered the usual near-beer.

“Now who are you, Ted, and are you happy and well? I'll tell you who I am. I'm from London—I never went to school after I was twelve. I was a bootblack and swept the barber's shop. I raised my eyes a bit and learned the trade. Then I went into domestic service and became a ‘gentleman's gentleman.' ” He had accompanied his gentleman to this country and finally was engaged as Mr. Forrester's valet. He told me about his Edweena, absent as lady's maid to a group of ladies on a famous yacht. He showed me some bright postcards he had received from Jamaica and Trinidad and the Bahamas—meager consolations.

In turn I told him the story of my life—Wisconsin, China, California, schools and jobs, Europe, the War, ending up with my reasons for being in Newport. When I concluded my story we struck our glasses together and it was understood that we were friends. This was the first of many pool games and conversations. At the second or third of these I asked him why the players were so slow to invite me to join the game. Was it because I was a newcomer?

“Cully, there's a lot of suspicion of newcomers in Newport. Distrust, do you see what I mean? There are a number of types we don't want around here. Let's pretend that I didn't know that you're all right. See? I'll ask you some questions. Mr. North, were you planted in Newport?”

“How do you mean?”

“Do you belong to any organization? Were you sent here on a job?”

“I told you why I came here.”

“I'm asking you these questions, like it was a game. Are you a flicker?”

“A what?”

“Are you a detective?”

I take pleasure in the modifications that words undergo as they pass from country to country and descend from century to century. “Flicker” was a bird and in 1926 it was a motion-picture. But in France a
“flic”
is a police detective; the word must have crossed the Channel, entered the slang of the English underworld, and had probably been imported to Newport by Henry himself. I raised my hand as though I were taking an oath. “I swear to God, Henry, I've never had anything to do with such things.”

“When I saw in the newspaper that you were ready to teach Latin—that did it. There's no flicker ever been known that can handle Latin.—It's this way: there's nothing wrong with the job; there's lots of ways of earning a living. Once the season's begun there'll be scores of them here. Some weeks there's a big ball every night. For visiting celebrities and consumptive children, like that. Diamond necklaces. Insurance companies send up their men. Dress them up as waiters. Some hostesses even invite them as guests. Keep their eyes glued on the sparklers. Some families are so nervous, they have a flicker stay up all night sitting by the safe. Some jealous husbands have flickers watching their wives. A man like you comes to town—doesn't know anybody—no serious reason for being here. Maybe he's a flicker—or a thief. The first thing a regular flicker does is to call on the Chief of Police and get it straight with him. But many don't; they like to be very secret. You can be certain that you weren't three days in town before the Chief was fixing his eyes on you. It's a good thing you went to the Casino and found that old record about yourself—”

“It was about my brother, really.”

“Probably Bill Wentworth called up the Chief and told him he had confidence in you.”

“Thanks for telling me, Henry. But it's your confidence in me that's made all the difference here at Herman's.”

“There are some flickers in the crowd at Herman's, but what we can't have there is a flicker who pretends he isn't. Time after time flickers have been known to steal the emeralds.”

“What are some of the other types I was suspected of being?”

“I'll tell you about them, gradual. You talk for a while.”

I told about what I had found out and “put together” about the glorious trees of Newport. I told him about my theory of “The Nine Cities of Newport” (and of Schliemann's Troy).

“Oh, Edweena should hear this! Edweena loves facts and pulling ideas out of facts. She's always saying that the only thing people in Newport talk about is one another. Oh, she'd love that about the trees—and about the nine cities.”

“I've only made out five so far.”

“Well, maybe there are fifteen. You might talk it over with a friend of mine in town named Mrs. Cranston. I've told her about you. She's said she wants to meet you. That's a very special honor, professor, because she don't make many exceptions: she only likes to see servants in the house.”

“But I'm a servant, Henry!”

“Let me ask you a question: all these houses where you've got students—do you go in the front door?”

“Well, yes . . .”

“Do they ever ask you to lunch or dinner?”

“Twice, but I've never—”

“You're not a servant.” I was silent. “Mrs. Cranston knows a lot about you, but she says that she would be very happy, if I brought you to call.”

“Mrs. Cranston's” was a large establishment within the shadow of Trinity Church, consisting of three houses that had been so adjoined that it had required merely making openings in the walls to unite them into one. The summer colony at Newport was upborne by almost a thousand servants most of whom “lived in” at their places of employment; Mrs. Cranston's was a temporary boardinghouse for many and a permanent residence for a few. At the time of my first visit most of the great houses ( always referred to as “cottages”) had not yet been opened, but servants had been sent on in advance to prepare for the season. In a number of cases female domestics refused to pass the night “alone” in the remoter houses along the Ocean Drive. In addition Mrs. Cranston harbored a considerable number of “extra help,” a sort of labor pool for special occasions, though she made it perfectly clear that she did not run an employment agency. The house was indeed a blessing to the Seventh City—to the superannuated, to the temporarily idle, to the suddenly dismissed—justly or more often unjustly dismissed—to the convalescent. The large parlor and adjacent sitting rooms by the entrance hall furnished a sort of meeting place and were naturally filled to overflowing on Thursday and Sunday evenings. There was a smoking room off the front parlor where legalized beer and fruit drinks were served and where trusted friends of the house—men servants, coachmen, and even chefs—gathered. The dining room was reserved for residents only; even Henry had never entered it.

Mrs. Cranston ran her establishment with great decorum; no guest ever ventured to utter an inelegant word and even gossip about one's employers was kept within bounds. I was surprised to discover that stories of the legendary Newport—the flamboyant days before the War—were not often recalled—the wars between social leaders, the rudeness of celebrated hostesses, the Babylonian extravagance of fancy-dress balls; everyone had heard them. More recent summers had not been without great occasions, eccentricity, drama and melodrama, but such events were alluded to in confidence. Mrs. Cranston conveyed that it was unprofessional to discuss the private lives of those who fed us. She herself was present every evening, but she did not choose to sit enthroned governing the conversation. She sat at one or other of the many small tables preferring that her friends join her singly or by twos or threes. She had a handsome head, nobly coiffured, an impressive figure, perfect vision, and perfect hearing. She dressed in the manner of the ladies in whose service she had passed her younger days—corseted, jet-bugled, and rustling in half a dozen petticoats. Nothing gave her greater pleasure than to be consulted on some complicated problem requiring diplomacy and thoroughly disillusioned worldly wisdom. I can well believe that she had saved many a drowning soul. She had risen through the ranks from scullery maid and slop-carrier to upstairs maid and to downstairs maid. Rumor had it—I only venture to repeat it so many decades later—that there had never been a “Mr. Cranston” (Cranston is a town a mere crow's flight from Newport) and that she had been set up in business by a very well-known investment-banker. Mrs. Cranston's best friend was the incomparable Edweena who retained in perpetuity the first-floor “garden apartment.” Edweena was awaiting the long-overdue break-up and death of her alcoholic husband in distant London in order to celebrate her marriage to Henry Simmons. An advantage inherent in her possession of the “garden apartment” was apparent to a few observers; Henry could enter and depart as he chose without causing scandal.

It was a rule of the house that all the ladies—with the exception of Mrs. Cranston and Edweena—withdrew for the night at a quarter before eleven, either to their rooms upstairs or to their domiciles in the city. Gentlemen retired at midnight. Henry was a great favorite of the lady of the house to whom he paid an old-world deference. It was this last hour and a quarter that Henry (and our hostess) most enjoyed. The majority of the men remained in the bar, but occasionally, Mrs. Cranston was joined by a very old and cadaverous Mr. Danforth, also an Englishman, who had served—no doubt majestically—as butler in great houses in Baltimore and Newport. His memory was failing but he was still called in from time to time to grace a sideboard or an entrance hall.