“Those were not my words. I was reporting to you what Henry James said.”
“In Wisconsin we don’t quibble. You said it and you meant it.”
“I don’t know Newport life well enough to make any judgment about it. I have been here only a few weeks. I have no part in Newport life. I come and go on a bicycle. Most of my students are children.”
“Don’t quibble with me. You must be twenty-eight years old. You’ve been to college. You’ve been in dozens of Newport cottages. You sit up half the night at ‘Nine Gables.’ You get drunk at the Muenchinger-King bar. Stop running away from my questions.”
“Mrs. Granberry—!”
“Don’t call me ‘ma’am’ again and don’t call me ‘Mrs. Granberry.’ Call me ‘Myra.’ ”
I raised my voice. “Mrs. Granberry, I make it a rule that in all the houses where I work I use only family names and I wish to be called by my own.”
“You and your rules! We’re from Wisconsin. Don’t be an Easterner. Don’t be a stuffed owl.”
We glared at each other.
Mrs. Cummings said, “Oh, Mr. North, I wish you would make an exception in this case—seeing”—and she gave me a significant glance—“that you are both Badgerers.”
“Of course, I shall obey any request from Mrs. Cummings—but in this room only and in her presence only. I have a great admiration for Mrs. Cummings. She is an Easterner and I wish you would apologize to her for having called her a stuffed owl.”
“Oh, Mr. North, Mrs. Granberry was just joking. I don’t mind at all.”
I looked sternly at Myra and waited.
“Cora, I admire you and am deeply indebted to you and I apologize if I have hurt your feelings in any way.”
Mrs. Cummings covered her face with her knitting.
“Theophilus, I promise not to interrupt you if you tell us about your life in Newport—your friends, your good times, your enemies, and if you’re making any money.”
“This is not in my contract and I don’t like it, but I shall obey. If I mention any names they will be ‘made up’ names. I live at the Young Men’s Christian Association and am saving up money to rent a small apartment. I do not make friends easily, but to my surprise I have already made several in Newport whom I highly value.” I told them about the superintendent at the Casino, about an unoccupied valet named “Eddie” (“who talks just like some of the characters in David Copperfield”), about some of my tennis pupils—including a girl named “Anemone” who was just like some of the girls in Shakespeare’s plays—and about “Mrs. Willoughby’s” boardinghouse for domestic servants. I did full justice to “Mrs. Willoughby’s” decorum and generosity. When I came to a close there were tears in Myra’s eyes. There was a pause.
“Oh, Cora, I wish I were a maid. I wish I lived at Mrs. Willoughby’s. I’d be happy. My baby would be born as simply and sweetly as a . . . as a lamb. Theophilus, couldn’t you take Cora and me to Mrs. Willoughby’s some night?”
“Oh, Mrs. Granberry,” said Cora righteously, “I’m a registered nurse. I’m not allowed to do anything like that.”
“You go out to dinner parties with me.”
“Yes, I sit upstairs until you are ready to go home.”
“Myra,” I said quietly, “it wouldn’t be possible. Everybody likes to be with his or her own kind.”
“I wouldn’t talk. I know that just to look at it would be good for my baby.”
I nodded and smiled and said, “Conversation time is up.”
At the following session’s conversation break I asked Myra to give me an account of her friends, her good times, and her enemies. She thought a moment. Her face took on a somber cast.
“Well, I grow older. I wait for my baby. I eat breakfast. Then the doctor calls and asks if I’ve been good. He gets ten dollars for that. Then if it’s a sunny day Cora and I go to Bailey’s Beach. We sit well wrapped up in a sheltered corner so as not to have to talk to people. We sit and watch the old boots and orange crates drift by.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My father owns hundreds of lakes. If any one were as dirty as Bailey’s Beach he’d drain it and plant it with trees. What do we do then, Cora?”
“You go to luncheon parties, Mrs. Granberry.”
“Yes, I go to luncheon parties. Ladies. There are men there only on Sundays, all named Granberry. During the week the ladies stay on and play cards. I’m allowed to go home early for my nap because I’m in an ‘interesting condition,’ as the lady in Jane Eyre was. Then my tutors arrive. Several evenings a week I go out to dinner and see the same people—as your Henry James said. Again I come home early and I read as long as Cora lets me. And I can’t think of anything else to tell you.”
I turned to Mrs. Cummings. “May we ask what you do in your free time?”
She glanced at me for reassurance. I nodded and maybe I winked at her.
“Well, I have an old friend in Newport. She went through training with me—Miss O’Shaughnessy. She’s assistant director of nursing at the hospital. At six o’clock on Thursdays Mrs. Granberry kindly has me driven to the hospital in her car. And Miss O’Shaughnessy and I—and sometimes some friends of hers—go to dinner at a restaurant near the beginning of the Cliff Walk. We tell stories of our training days and, Mr. North—being off duty—we have a little bit of the Old Irish and we laugh. I don’t know why it is but mostly nurses laugh when they’re off duty. And Sunday mornings four of us go to Mass together. Rain or shine—we like the walk too. But I’m always glad to get back to this house, Mrs. Granberry.”
Myra was staring at her. “I know Miss O’Shaughnessy. During my second summer here George let me join the Ladies Volunteer Workers at the hospital. I loved it. I couldn’t do it the other summers because the doctor wouldn’t let me. I hope Miss O’Shaughnessy remembers me; I hope she liked me. Couldn’t I come with you some Thursday night?” There was a silence. “I never see anybody that’s fun. I never see anybody I like. I never laugh, do I, Cora?”
“Oh, Mrs. Granberry, you forget! You laugh and you make me laugh. When I go to the kitchen they sometimes ask me, “What do Mrs. Granberry and you laugh about all the time?’ ”
“Myra,” I said, with a shade of severity, “it wouldn’t be any holiday for Mrs. Cummings to have dinner with you on Thursday nights. You have dinner together on many evenings.”
“It doesn’t have to be Thursday nights. I still have my Volunteer’s uniform. Mr. North, will you be so kind as to ring that bell?” A servant appeared. “Please ask Madeleine to bring down my Hospital Volunteer’s uniform—and to lay it out in the dressing room down here. I won’t want the shoes and stockings, but tell her not to forget the cap. Thank you. You’ve never seen me in my uniform, Cora.—It wouldn’t have to be on a Thursday night. We could go on some other night and have a bit of the Old Irish and laugh. The doctor says that a little whiskey wouldn’t be bad for me at all.—Besides, I love being in disguise. Cora, you could call me ‘Mrs. Nielson.’ Can’t we go? Maybe Miss O’Shaughnessy could get an extra leave on another night. My husband’s on the Hospital Board; he can do anything.”
We talked reassuringly about the project. Myra murmured meditatively, “When you’re in disguise you feel more free.”
There was a knock at the inner door and a voice said, “The uniform is ready, Mrs. Granberry.”
Myra rose saying “I’ll only be a minute,” and left the room.
Mrs. Cummings confided to me. “The doctor says we’re to let her do anything she wants within reason. Poor child! Poor child!”
We waited. Presently she returned smiling, downright radiant, free, in that uniform, in that cap. We clapped our hands.
“I am Miss Nielson,” she said. She leaned over Mrs. Cummings and asked soothingly, “Where does it hurt, dear? . . . Oh, that’s just wind. You must expect that after an operation. It’s a sign that all’s going well. Your appendix will never trouble you again.” She resumed her place on the chaise-longue. “I’d have been hap
py as a nurse, I know I would.—Mr. North, let’s not read any more today. Let’s just talk.”
“Very well. What shall we talk about?”
“Anything.”
“Myra, why do you never make any comment on these novels we’ve been reading?”
She blushed slightly. “Because . . . you’d make fun of me. You wouldn’t understand. They’re all so new to me—those lives, those people. Sometimes they’re more real than life. I don’t want to talk about them. Please talk about something else.”
“Very well. Are you fond of music, Myra?”
“Concerts? Heaven help us! In New York we go Thursday nights to the opera. The German ones are the longest.”
“The theater?”
“No. I went a few times. It’s all ‘made up.’ It’s not at all like the novels; they’re real. Why are you asking me these questions?”
I paused a moment. What was I doing in that house? I told myself that I was earning twelve dollars a week (though my fortnightly bills had not yet been paid) ; that I derived some satisfaction from introducing a bright but inadequately educated young woman to good reading—a pastime to render less painful her husband’s neglect. But I was discouraged—as I was with others I worked with on the Avenue—by association with those who had more than their share of the disadvantages of their advantages.
She had asked me why I asked her those questions.
“Because, Myra, there is a theory that expectant mothers can prepare themselves to bear beautiful well-conditioned children by listening to beautiful music and gazing at beautiful objects.”
“Who says that?”
“It’s widely held. Italian mothers believe it especially, and everyone can see that their boys and girls look as though they had stepped out of those famous Italian paintings.”
“Are there any in Newport—those paintings?”
“Not that I know of—except in books.”
She was sitting up straight and looking at me fixedly. “Cora, have you ever heard of such an idea?”
“Oh, Mrs. Granberry! Doctors are always urging ladies in this condition to have lovely thoughts—oh, yes.”
Myra continued to stare at me almost angrily. “Well, don’t just sit there like a stick. Tell me what I can do.”
“Please lie down and shut your eyes and let me talk to you.” She looked about her as though annoyed and then did as I requested. “Myra, Newport is often said to be one of the most beautiful towns in this country. You drive up and down Bellevue Avenue and pay visits in the cottages of your friends. You go to Bailey’s Beach and you have told me what you think of it. Do you often take the ten-mile drive?”
“It’s too long. If you’ve seen one mile you’ve seen them all.”
“The architecture of the so-called cottages is the laughing-stock of the nation. They are preposterous. There are only three that can be said to be truly beautiful. . . . Now let me tell you my idea of Newport.” So I told her about the trees and—at considerable length—about the Nine Cities of Troy and the Nine Cities of Newport. Mrs. Cummings let her knitting fall to her lap, motionless. “Moreover, the view of the sea and the bay from the Budlong place, five miles from here, is one of which you could never grow tired—at dawn, at noon, at dusk, under the stars, and not least, in wind and rain. There you can see the circling beams of six lighthouses that give security to sailors and hear the voice of many buoys saying, ‘Steer clear of these rocks and you will have a safe journey.’ All of Newport is interesting in one way or another; the least so is the Sixth City.”
“You mean here?”
“And the most interesting and beautiful is the Second.”
“I forget which that is.”
“That of the eighteenth century. I’ll leave a marked map for your driver. Now can we go back to Walden?”
She put her hand to her forehead. “I’m tired today. Will you excuse me, if I ask you to leave now? I want to think. We’ll pay you just the same. . . . But stop! Before you go write down the names of those painters in Italy that help make beautiful children, and some pieces of music that are good for that too.”
I wrote down: “Raphael. Da Vinci. Fra Angelico,” and added an address in New York where the best prints could be obtained. Then: “Gramophone records by Mozart: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Ave, verum corpus.”
There was a knock at the door. Mr. Granberry entered. Greetings.
“How’s my dear little squirrel today?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“What are you reading now?”
“Walden.”
“Walden, oh, yes—Walden. Well, that wouldn’t interest us much, I think.”
“Why not, George?”
He pinched her cheek. “We wouldn’t be happy on thirty cents a day.”
“I like it. It’s the first book I want to read all through in class. George, this is a list of all the books I’ve read. I want you to buy every one of them for me. Mr. North has to go and get them at the People’s Library. They’re not very clean and people have written silly things in the margins. I want my own books so that I can write my own silly things in the margins.”
“I’ll see to that, Myra. My secretary will send for them tomorrow morning. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Here are the names of some painters who lived in Italy. If you want to be an angel, you can buy me some pictures by them.”
He gasped. “Why, Myra, any pictures by one of these men would cost a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Well, you pay more than that for those boats you never use, don’t you? You can buy me one and Papa will buy me another. Here’s the name of a man who wrote some good music. Please buy me the best gramophone that you can find and those records. . . . I’m a little tired today and I’ve just asked Mr. North to cut short the reading. I told him we’d pay him just the same . . . but don’t you go.”
Then something very painful happened.
Two days later I was met at the door, as usual, by the butler, Carel, a Czech—as distinguished in appearance as an ambassador but as self-effacing as an ambassador’s personal secretary. He bent his head and whispered, “Mrs. Cummings wishes to speak to you here, sir, before you enter the morning room.”
“I’ll wait here, Carel.”
Carel and Mrs. Cummings must have arranged some system of coded signals, for she appeared in the hall. She spoke hurriedly. “Mrs. Granberry received two letters this morning which have upset her badly. I think she wants to tell you about them. She wouldn’t go for a drive. She has scarcely said a dozen words to me. When you leave, please tell Carel anything I should know. Wait three minutes before you knock on the door.” She pressed my hand and returned to the morning room.
I waited three minutes and knocked on the door. It was opened by Mrs. Cummings.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” I said buoyantly.
Myra’s face was very stern. “Cora, I have something that I must discuss with Mr. North and I must ask you to leave the room for five minutes.”
“Oh, Mrs. Granberry, you mustn’t ask me to do that. I’m an R.N. and I must obey every word of the doctor’s orders.”
“All I ask is that you go out on the verandah. You can leave the door ajar, but you must not try to hear a single word.”
“I don’t like it at all; oh, I don’t like it at all.”
“Mrs. Cummings,” I said, “since this seems to be an important matter to Mrs. Granberry I shall stand by the verandah door where you can see me every minute. If any subject arises that has to do with medical matters I shall insist on repeating it to you.”
When Mrs. Cummings had withdrawn to a distance I stood waiting like a sentry.
“Theophilus, Badgers always tell the truth to Badgers.”
“Myra, I am my own judge of what truths I shall tell. The truth can do just as much harm as a lie.”
“I need help.”
“Ask me some questions and I shall try to help you so far as I am able.”
“Do yo
u know a woman named Flora Deland?”
“I have dined at her house at Narragansett Pier three times.”
“Do you know a woman named Desmoulins?”
“I have met her at dinner there once and I have met her by chance on the street in Newport once.”
“Is she a harlot and a strumpet and that other thing in Tom Jones—a doxy?”
“No, indeed. She is a woman of some refinement. She is what some people would call an ‘emancipated’ woman. I would never think of applying those ugly words to her.”
“ ‘Emancipate’ means to free the slaves. Was she a slave?”
I laughed as cheerily as I could. “Oh, no.—Now stop this nonsense and tell me what you are trying to get at.”
“Is she better-looking than I am?”
“No.”
“Badger?”
“Badger!”
“BADGER?”
“BADGER!—She is a very pretty woman. You are a very beautiful woman. I’ll go and call Mrs. Cummings.”
“Stop!—Have you had dinner almost every Thursday night with my husband and Miss Desmoulins at the Muenchinger-King?”
“No. Never. Please get to the point.”
“I have received two an-anonny-mous letters.”
“Myra! You tore them up at once.”
“No.” She lifted a book on the table and revealed two envelopes.
“I’m ashamed of you. . . . In the world—and especially in a place like Newport—we are surrounded by people whose heads are filled with hate and envy and nastiness. Once in a while one of them takes to writing anonymous letters. They say it comes and goes in epidemics, like influenza. You should have torn them into small pieces—unread—and put them out of your mind. Do they say that I had dinner with those two persons at the M-K?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s a sample of the lies that fill anonymous letters.”
“Read them. Please read them.”
I debated with myself: “Hell, I’m resigning from this job tonight anyway.”
I studied the envelopes carefully. Then I glanced through the contents; I can read fast. When I came to the end of the second I burst out laughing. “Myra, all anonymous letters are signed either by ‘A Friend’ or ‘Your Well-Wisher.’ ” She burst into tears. “Myra, no Badger cries after the age of eleven.”