Upshurr Street in Brooklyn is not very long, and the legend that it is easy to get lost in Brooklyn is, unfortunately, all too true. Perhaps that is why so much that is old and good still survives in Brooklyn—perhaps the wreckers have merely been unable to find their way, and, finally baffled, have given up and retreated to destroy yet more areas across the East River.
The two men who arrived at the house at the corner of Upshurr and Huyk Streets one winter afternoon surveyed it with interest, despite the cold. It was a well-kept building in the Georgian style, three stories high, and surrounded by garden. The smaller trees and bushes were carefully muffled in burlap. The two men mounted the steps.
“Where’s the bell?” one of them asked, after fumbling with his gloved hand.
The other man shifted a camera he was carrying, bent over, and looked. He straightened up and shrugged. “Ain’t none. Try that doojigger there,” he said.
The knocker—in the form of a lion’s head with a long tongue—was banged a few times. The two men waited, stamped their feet, blew out vapor, rubbed their noses. Then the door was opened by a short heavy old woman with long gray ringlets clustering around her broad pink face. “Come in,” she urged. “Come in.”
“Miss Vanderhooft?” the first man asked. The old woman nodded vigorously, setting the ringlets to bouncing like springs. “My name is—”
“Your name will still be the same if you come inside,” she said crisply. They entered, she shut the door. The house was warm, and well furnished in the style of the early nineteenth century.
“My name—” the man began again.
“My name is Sapphira Vanderhooft,” the old woman said. “My sister, being elder, ought properly to be addressed only as ‘Miss Vanderhooft,’ but since this fact seems to have passed out of all common knowledge, you may address her as Miss Isabella—come along, come along,” she urged, gesturing them to precede her; “and me, as Miss Sapphira.”
They found themselves in the living room, or parlor. A coal fire burned in the high basket grate. A few candles shed a soft light which melted into the ruddy glow from the fireplace. Seated in an upright chair was a second old woman, tall and spare, with her white hair parted in the center and drawn back.
“You will excuse me if I do not rise,” she said, nodding to them and making a slight gesture with an ivory-headed cane. Embroidery work, hooped and needled, lay in her lap.
“This is my sister,” said Miss Sapphira. “Isabella, these gentlemen are from the newspaper. That is, I hope that they are gentlemen,” she added.
“And I hope that they are from the press,” Miss Isabella said. “Have you seen identification, sister? If you are on another errand—soliciting contributions, for example—you won’t get any,” she went on, as the younger of the two men fumbled in his pocket. “Mr. Caldwell, at the Trust Company, takes care of all that for us. Hmm. What is this?” She examined the card offered her. “It has last year’s date on it; how is that?”
The man said that the card’s validity ran from April to April, and—as Miss Isabella nodded, and handed it back to him—he at last managed to get out the information that his name was Dandridge and that his photographer-companion was called Goltz.
“Let me have your greatcoats,” Miss Sapphira said. “There’s no need for you to stand, we aren’t royalty. Have whatever chairs you like, but the settle is mine.”
Mr. Dandridge, who was thirtyish and thin, and Mr. Goltz, who was fortyish and squat, looked around the cozy, quaintly furnished room.
Miss Isabella broke the momentary silence. “If you’ve come to do a sensational article for the penny press, young man, the point cannot be too strongly emphasized that we are not recluses,” she said.
“Certainly not,” agreed Miss Sapphira. “The fact that we receive you is—or should be—proof of that.”
Dandridge said, “Well—”
“After that unfortunate affair of the Collier brothers,” Miss Isabella swept on, “there was a reporter here from the Brooklyn Eagle, and he at once conceded that there was no similarity at all.”
“None whatsoever,” said Miss Sapphira. “We knew Homer and Langley when they were very young. The trouble with them was simply that they were spoiled. Aren’t you going to say anything for yourself?” she demanded of Mr. Dandridge.
He smiled. Goltz looked bored. “I might begin by saying that my paper isn’t a sensational one—and that it’s been many years since any newspaper sold for a penny.”
The older Miss Vanderhooft sniffed. “Well, it has been many years since we have cared to purchase one,” she said. “So your information is of no particular use.”
“Also,” Goltz growled, “the Eagle is outa business.”
For a moment the sisters were startled. Then they regained their aplomb. “Ah, well,” said Miss Isabella, “it doesn’t signify.”
Dandridge looked down from a portrait labeled “General J. Abram Garfield.” “Our editor thought it would be of interest to the readers to see how the calm and gracious life of another day is still being kept up amid the hustle and—and—” he stumbled, hesitated.
The sisters smiled. “We are, I suppose, old-fashioned, to be sure,” said Miss Isabella, “but we will not be shocked if you say the word ‘bustle.’ Silly fashion, we always thought. And our dear papa used always to say that the garments Mrs. Amelia Bloomer was condemned for wearing were not so very much sillier than the ones she was condemned for not wearing.”
Miss Sapphira said that she had put the kettle on. “It will sing, presently, and then we shall have tea. Would you like tea? Capital.”
Her sister picked up the hoop and took the needle in her fingers. She looked at the reporter, nodded to him encouragingly. Miss Sapphira, on the settle, slid her hand into her pocket, slipped out a tiny silver box, and—when she thought no one was looking—hurriedly took a pinch of snuff.
“Well, now that we are agreed that you are not recluses,” Dandridge said, “may I ask if it is true that you have no radio, telephone, or television?”
The younger sister said that it was true. Such devices, she explained, as she might to a child, exuded a malign magnetical influence. Indeed, if it were not for their dear brother’s insistence, they would never have allowed the electrical incandescent lamps to be installed. He was dead, poor Cornelius, and they now lived quite alone.
No servants? Ah, that was a problem, wasn’t it? Well, Emma came in thrice a week to clean—not today, being Monday, but on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. She did the shopping. The sisters would endorse the bills and send them to Mr. Caldwell at the Trust Company, who mailed checks to the merchants. In clement weather the two sisters often walked to the end of the block and back; no farther.
To church? No, no longer, but of course they always had evening prayers, and on Sundays they took turns reading sermons—one of Dr. Talmage’s or, sometimes, one of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher’s. They did not, they assured Dandridge, believe a word of that dreadful scandal.
“Was there a scandal about him?” asked Mr. Dandridge. “I didn’t know that.”
The sisters exchanged gratified glances. “You see, Sapphira,” Miss Isabella said. “I told you it would die down in time!”
“And have you no fears about living alone like this?”
Certainly not. Why should they have? It was a respectable neighborhood. The police always tried the doors at night—not that it was really necessary.
Dandridge cleared his throat. “Now—I don’t mean to ask personal questions—but there seems to be a sort of, ah, legend, to the effect that a large treasure is hidden on the premises … .” He tapered off with a chuckle.
“Treasure?” asked Miss Isabella, looking at Miss Sapphira.
“Treasure?” asked Miss Sapphira, looking at Miss Isabella.
“No,” they said simultaneously. Then, “Do you suppose, sister, that the young man could be referring to the gold”—the photographer, for the first time, looked interested—“which dear p
apa brought here following the panic of’seventy-three?” suggested Miss Isabella.
“Are you?” asked Miss Sapphira. The reporter nodded.
Miss Sapphira said, “Well, well. It isn’t here any longer. No. We have long since turned it over to the government. Now, when was it? Nineteen twenty-three? Nineteen thirty-three?”
“Usurpation!” cried Miss Isabella, thumping her stick on the floor. A faint pink suffused the pallor of her cheeks. “Usurpation and confiscation—though I suppose we could expect little better, with the Republicans in office.”
Miss Sapphira, for her part, brushed aside Dandridge’s comment that the Democrats were in office at the time privately owned gold was called in. Dear Grandpapa Vanderhooft, she told him, had said often enough that the nation’s fiscal policy had never been sound since the Whigs went out of power. And the two old women nodded soberly at this sage, though melancholy advice.
Miss Isabella poured the tea, Miss Sapphira passed around the cake. Mr. Dandridge brushed his lips with a heavy monogrammed linen napkin. “Why do you call it ‘usurpation and confiscation,’ ma’am—the government’s calling in your gold, I mean? After all, you received—they didn’t just take it—you got money for it, didn’t you?”
Miss Isabella waved her cane. “Only bank notes!” she said angrily. “Shinplasters! And to think they took our good northern gold to Kentucky—a nest of rebels!”
But Mr. Dandridge was no longer concerned with the gold. “And what did you do with all those shinplasters?” he asked. Miss Isabella was drinking tea, so her younger sister replied.
“It is somewhere around, I suppose,” she said. “It doesn’t really signify.”
Mr. Dandridge got up. “It signifies to us,” he said. He pointed to Mr. Goltz, who had put his camera to one side and had something else in his hand. “Now, ladies, you are going to show us to your money and we are going to take it. Everything will be done quickly and quietly, and no one will be hurt. Up, please.”
The two old women looked from him to the revolver in Mr. Goltz’s fist.
“And you a photographer!” said Miss Sapphira, her pink cheeks very pink indeed. “Why, poor Mr. Brady would turn in his grave if he knew.”
“Led’m,” said Goltz, briefly. “C’mon, where’s the money, ladies? Where ya goddit stashed away?”
Miss Isabella sighed and started to rise upon her cane. Dandridge reached to assist her, but she drew back with such an expression of disdain that he let his hand fall. “I suppose the quicker you have it, the quicker you’ll leave. And’tis only greenbacks, after all—no better than the credit of the government, and if the government allows banditti such as you to roam the peaceful streets of Brooklyn it has very little credit indeed … . I think they may be in the cedar chest.”
The cedar chest proved, after prolonged searching, to contain four bolts of linen and approximately one hundred copies of Godey’s Lady’s Book, all in perfect condition. While Goltz glowered, Miss Sapphira picked up a magazine and let out a little cry of pleasure. “Look, Sister! A story by dear grandpapa’s friend whom he so often told us about, poor Mr. Poe. I’m so glad I’ve found it. I shall read it tonight.”
For the first time Dandridge’s control slipped its mooring. “Quit this fooling around!” he shouted. “I want that money located in ten minutes—or—”
Miss Sapphira said that she wondered if he fully realized what effect this episode would have on the young people of the country if it became known. A most deleterious one, she was afraid.
Her sister stood in a pose of deep thought. “It’s been so many years—” she said. “Now, could it be in the mahogany press? That is in the next room. I have the keys on my chain, here, but one of you will have to bring the candles.”
The afternoon had grown late and dark and the candles, held by Dandridge, shed a scanty light in the cold room while Miss Isabella fumbled for her keys. Goltz said, “I had enough of this. Them candles are too spooky, and I like ta see what I’m doing.” He reached up and tugged the cord of the dusty electrolier overhead. The cord snapped off in his hand, but the lights went on. Miss Isabella and her sister clicked their tongues. Dandridge blew out the candles.
“Open it up,” he ordered. Miss Isabella complied. Two large cloth bags tumbled out, and—as the two men exclaimed—quantities of paper money poured from them. Dandridge fell on his knees, grinning. Then, as he examined the money, his grin faded. He waved one of the bills toward the Misses Vanderhooft. “Is this what the government gave you for your gold?” he demanded incredulously. “The Planters and Merchants Bank of Boggs County, Missouri?”
The sisters sighed, shook their heads.
“So that is where it was? Dear me.”
“An unfortunate speculation in wildcat currency on the part of Great-uncle Isaac—dear grandpapa’s brother. We never knew him. He fell at the Battle of Pittsburgh Landing in the year—”
A heavy hand beat loudly on the front-door knocker. A heavy voice called, “Is anything wrong, ladies? Hello, hello! Is anything—”
Miss Isabella, looking Goltz straight in the eye and without changing by a hair’s breadth the expression of calm disdain on her face, opened her mouth and called. “Help!” in a clear, level voice. Goltz went livid, raised the revolver, shook his head threateningly. “Help! Footpads!” Miss Isabella called out.
Miss Sapphira took the candelabra and, with an underhand pitch, threw it through the windowpane.
“Stop, thief!” she sang out. “Summon the watch!”
“I hope you don’t mind eating from the same cake as those two scant-soaps fed upon,” Miss Isabella said. This time she cut and passed, while Miss Sapphira poured the tea. Patrolmen Freitag and Johansson shook their heads, swallowed, accepted more. “This recipe comes down to us from the days of Abraham Vanderhooft’s second wife. They say that she was an indentured servant before he married her, but it doesn’t really signify, does it? And we ourselves descend from the first wife … . Dear me, what an afternoon!”
Patrolman Freitag washed down his second slice of cake with half of his second cup of tea. “This guy Dandridge—the real one, I mean, the reporter—he better be careful what he does with his old press cards from now on, instead of throwing them away. I hope,” he said, rather anxiously, “that you ladies won’t mind too much having to go to court and all that? Because—I guess—well, we could maybe say you were sick and have them come here to take your testimony—maybe.”
Miss Sapphira shook her head, setting the long gray ringlets in motion around her pink face. “It is very kind of you young men to be so considerate—but I trust that my sister and I are sensible of our duty as citizens.”
Her sister nodded, then asked, as if the thought had just struck her, how it was that the attention of the two policemen had been drawn to the house so much earlier than usual. Johansson smiled. Freitag smiled. The former answered.
“It was the electric light,” he said. “We were just cruising down Huyk Street and we saw the electric light—I mean, the shade and the curtains were drawn, but we could see it was electric. So I says to Freitag, I says, ‘Oh-oh. I been living in this neighborhood for thirty years and I never saw no electric lights burning in the Vanderhooft house, not since Mr. Cornelius passed away.’ And he says, ‘Neither did I, Nels. Never anything but candles.’ So we figured we’d better investigate. I gotta give you both credit—what you did, it took courage.”
Miss Isabella said, “Poo.” Her sister said, “Pshaw. Hog-snatchers is all they were, trying to get above themselves.”
“It was not our idea at all, to install the incandescent lamps,” Miss Isabella explained. “It was our brother’s. But we have never used them since he died. Such devices exude a malign magnetical influence.”
“Isabella,” asked Miss Sapphira, “now that so much attention has been drawn to the matter I confess that I am mildly curious myself as to where those bank notes are.”
The older sister’s ivory forehead creased in thought. Then she
said, “Do you know, Sister—I wonder if we did not ask Mr. Caldwell to take them down to the Trust Company and purchase bonds or something with them during the war.”
Miss Sapphira considered. “Did we? Perhaps you are right. Perhaps we did.”
“Ah, well,” said Miss Isabella. “It doesn’t signify. More tea for the watch?” she asked.
AFTERWORD TO “SUMMON THE WATCH!”
“Summon the Watch!” is one of a number of Davidson’s stories set in New York City. Even more than he did in “Lord of Central Park,” Davidson has woven into the tale allusions to bygone events and customs that evoke a particular mood. Any one of these references—the Collier brothers, the “malign magnetical influence,” Mathew Brady, wildcat currency, or a story by Poe in Godey’s Lady’s Book (“The Cask of Amontillado,” most probably)—would require more than this brief paragraph by way of explication. You may be certain that Davidson could have supplied the details in a narrative meander (and in other instances he did so). In “Summon the Watch!” these little sparks of information are gold strands in a complex fabric: tantalizing evidence of the writer’s learning, inseparable from his narrative skill.
—Henry Wessells
DRAGON SKIN DRUM
When Corporal Bill Howard, USMCR, of Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, Fifth Marines (currently quartered in the old Austrian Legation), arranged with his friend, Gunnery Sergeant Jackson, to go on liberty together and have some roast duck, he had the exact restaurant in mind. The background was as follows: not long after the Regiment had arrived in Peiping from Okinawa he went sightseeing one afternoon in the Forbidden City. Howard did not spend his money on fast living as so many of the Marines unfortunately did, so he was able to hire an interpreter-guide and this man (considering the fact that his black robe was going green with age he was unreasonable in the fee he demanded, but Howard was able to beat him down without difficulty), in pointing out places of interest, had mentioned—several times—a certain class of Imperial officials. This aroused Howard’s interest. It was not a morbid or indecent interest, of course, it was just that, after all, this same class was mentioned in the Bible. So Howard had asked if it might be possible to meet one of these people, and the interpreter-guide had put on quite an act. He said it was impossible just to walk in on this particular one outright because he was very famous, and so forth and so on. Finally Howard agreed to give a dinner for him, and when he arrived at the restaurant he found he was entertaining, not just the interpreter and the ex-official (a Mr. Chen), but a supernumerary interpreter as well, also a man who had acted as go-between, and his small son. Although expensive ($6.00, gold—that was what they called U.S. money, “gold”), it was not without interest, and the interpreter told him he had gained much face by giving the dinner. That was why he picked the same restaurant to eat at with the Gunny.
The Other Nineteenth Century Page 24