Theophilus North

by Thornton Wilder

  “Thank you so much for coming to see me, Mr. North,” she said extending her hand; then turning to the maid, “Perhaps Mr. North will have a cup of tea before he must go. If anyone calls on the telephone, take the name and number; I shall call them back later.” When the maid had gone she whispered to me, “May I ask you to close the door? Thank you . . . I know you are busy so let us talk at once about my reason for asking you to call. My old friend Dr. Bosworth has spoken to me warmly in your favor.”

  A sign had been exchanged. The wealthy are like members of the Masonic Order; they pass commendations and disapprobations to one another by passwords and secret codes.

  “Moreover, I knew that I could trust you when I read that you were a Yale man. My dear father was a Yale man as was his father before him. My brother, had he lived, would have been a Yale man. I have always found that Yale men are honorable; they are truly Christian gentlemen!” She was moved; I was moved; Elihu Yale revolved in his grave. “Do you see those two ugly old trunks there? I have had them brought down from the attic. They are filled with family letters, some of them dating back sixty and seventy years. I am the last in my line, Mr. North. The greater number of these letters have lost their interest by now. I have long wished to make a rapid inspection of most of them . . . and destroy them. My eyesight is no longer able to read handwritten material, particularly in cases where the ink has begun to fade. Is your eyesight in good condition, Mr. North?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Often it will be merely necessary to glance at the beginning and the ending. My father’s serious correspondence—he was an eminent scientist, a conchologist—it has gone, with his collections, to Yale University where both are safe. Would you be willing to undertake this task with me?”

  “Yes, Miss Wyckoff.”

  “In reading old letters there is always the possibility that intimate matters might be revealed. May I ask your promise as a Yale man and a Christian that these matters will remain confidential between us?”

  “Yes, Miss Wyckoff.”

  “There is, however, another matter about which I must ask your confidence. Mr. North, my situation in Newport is very strange. Has anyone spoken to you about it—about me?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “A malediction rests upon this house.”

  “A malediction?”

  “Yes, this house is believed by many people to be haunted.”

  “I do not believe there are haunted houses, Miss Wyckoff.”

  “Nor do I!”

  From that moment we were friends. More than that, we were conspirators and fighters. She described the difficulty of engaging domestic servants who would stay in the house after dark. “It is humiliating to be unable to ask my friends to dinner although they continue to invite me to their homes. It is humiliating to be an object of pity . . . and to feel perhaps that they hold my dear parents in some sort of suspicion. Many a woman, I think, would give up and abandon the place altogether. But it is my childhood home, Mr. North! I was happy here! Besides, many people agree with me that it’s the most beautiful house in Newport. I shall never give it up. I shall fight for it as long as I live.”

  I was looking at her gravely. “How do you mean—fight for it?”

  “Clear its name! Lift its shadow!”

  “We are reading these letters, Miss Wyckoff, to find some clue to that unjust suspicion?”

  “Exactly!—Do you think you could help me?”

  Between one breath and another I became Chief Inspector North of Scotland Yard. “In what year did you first notice that domestic servants were refusing to work here after dark?”

  “My father and mother went away on long expeditions. I couldn’t go with them because the motion of the ship made me dreadfully ill. I stayed with cousins in New York and studied music. My father returned here in 1911. We meant to live here, but suddenly he changed his mind. He closed the house, dismissed the servants, and we all lived in New York. We went to Saratoga Springs for the summer. I begged him to return to Newport, but he didn’t wish to. He never explained why. During the War both my parents died. In 1919 I was alone in the world. I decided to return to Newport and live in this house the whole year round. It was then that I discovered that no servants would consent to live here.”

  Did Miss Wyckoff have any ideas that would throw light on the matter? None. Did her father have any enemies? Oh, none at all! Did the matter come to the attention of the police? What was there to bring except the reluctance of servants and the vague rumor about a house being haunted?

  “When your father was away on these expeditions who was left in charge of the house?”

  “Oh, it was left fully staffed. My father liked the idea that he could return to it at a moment’s notice. It was in charge of a butler or majordomo whom we’d had in the family for years.”

  “Miss Wyckoff, we shall begin reading the letters surrounding the years 1909 to 1912. When shall I come?”

  “Oh, come every day at three. My friends don’t drop in for tea before five.”

  “I can come alternate days at three. I shall be here tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, thank you. I shall sort out the letters covering those years.”

  The great man had the last word: “There are no haunted houses, Miss Wyckoff!—there are only excitable imaginations, perhaps malicious ones. We shall try to find out how this matter all started.”

  When I arrived the next afternoon the letters that might concern us were laid out in packets bound in red cord: her letters to her parents 1909 to 1912; her parents’ letters to her; six letters of her father to her mother (they were seldom apart for a day); her father’s letters to his brother (returned to him) and his brother’s replies; letters from the majordomo at Newport (Mr. Harland) to her father; letters to and from her father’s lawyers in New York and Newport; letters from friends and relatives to Mrs. Wyckoff. The reading of the domestic letters was a painful experience for Miss Wyckoff, but she stout-heartedly set many aside for destruction. Weather, storms off Borneo, blizzards in New York; health (excellent); marriages and death of Wyckoffs and relatives; plans for the following year and alterations to plans; “love and kisses to our darling girl.” Miss Wyckoff and I had begun to divide the task. She found that her eyesight was able to sustain reading letters written to her by her parents and she preferred to read those to herself. So we were soon working on separate lots. I read those from Mr. Harland: leak in the roof repaired; requests from strangers to “view the house” rejected; damage to conservatory by Halloween merrymakers repaired, and so on. I began reading the letters from Mr. Wyckoff to his brother: discovery of rare shells, sent to the Smithsonian for identification, narrow escape in the Sunda Strait, financial transactions agreed upon, “delighted with news of our Norine’s progress in music.” .. . Finally I came upon a clue to the whole unhappy matter. The letter was written from Newport on March 11, 1911:

  I trust that you have destroyed the letter written to you yesterday. I wish the whole thing to be forgotten and never mentioned again. It was fortunate that I left Milly and Norine in New York. I wish them to retain only happy memories of this house. I have dismissed the entire staff, paid their wages and given each a generous bonus. I did not even bring the matter to the attention of Mr. Mullins [his lawyer in Newport]. I have engaged a new caretaker and some helpers who come in by the day. We shall perhaps return and reopen the house after a number of years when I shall have begun to forget the whole wretched business.

  I slipped this letter into an envelope that I had prepared “For later rereading.”

  I had an idea of what probably took place.

  While I was an undergraduate at college I had written and printed in the Yale Literary Magazine a callow play called The Trumpet Shall Sound. It was based upon a theme borrowed from Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: Master departs on a journey of indefinite length, leaving his house in charge of faithful servants; servants gradually assume the mentality of masters; liberty leads to license; Maste
r returns unannounced and puts an end to their riotous existence. Lively writer, Ben Jonson.

  Mr. Wyckoff had returned to discover filth and disorder, perhaps had broken in on some kind of orgy.

  But how could that have given rise to a reputation of being “haunted”—a word associated with murder? I decided that I must break my oath to Miss Wyckoff and make inquiries in another quarter. Besides, I did not want our readings to come to an end too soon; I needed the money. At the end of each week her maid, showing me out of the house, placed in my hand an envelope containing a check for twelve dollars.

  I called on Mrs. Cranston soon after ten-thirty when the ladies gathered about her were beginning to withdraw for the night. I bowed to her, murmuring that there was a matter which I wished to discuss with her. Until the field was clear I sat in a corner of the bar over a glass of near-beer. In due time I received a signal to approach and I drew up a chair beside her. We temporized for a few minutes, discussing our state of health, the weather, my plan to rent a small apartment, the increasing number of my engagements, and so on. Then I said, “Mrs. Cranston, I want your advice and guidance on a very confidential matter that has come up.”

  I told her about the project at Wyckoff House, but made no mention of the significant letter I had discovered.

  “A sad story! A sad story!” she said with ill-disguised relish, striking a handbell on the table before us. In the late evening she often partook of a tall glass of what I took to be white wine. When Jerry had served her and retired she repeated, “A sad story. One of the oldest and most respected families. Did Miss Wyckoff tell you anything?”

  “Oh, not everything, Mrs. Cranston. She did not tell me what had happened to give the house a bad reputation. She assured me solemnly that she didn’t know what it could be.”

  “She doesn’t know, Mr. North. You’re reading all those family letters up to the years just before the War?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Have you come upon anything . . . sensational yet?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You may.”

  The word “sensational” is a very sensitive word in Newport. The Sixth City lived under the white light—I should say the “yellow” light—of an immense publicity. It was bad enough to be thought frivolous, even scandalous, but it also dreaded being regarded as ridiculous.

  Mrs. Cranston deliberated a moment, then picked up the telephone before her and called a number—that of the Chief of Police.

  “Good evening, Mr. Diefendorf. This is Amelia Cranston . . . good evening. How’s Bertha? . . . How are the children? . . . I’m very well, thank you. Thursday’s my hard night, as you know. . . . Mr. Diefendorf, there is a young man here who has been engaged by a certain very respected lady in the city to make inquiries into some unhappy events in her family history. . . . No, oh, no! He has no connection with anything like that. He’s merely been asked to read aloud to her from old family letters that have been stored in the attic. I think it’s something that you’d like to know about. It’s something that has officially never come to your attention, that needs very confidential handling. There’s always the possibility that he might run across something that might get into the papers. I have full confidence in this young man, but of course he hasn’t got your experience and your judgment. . . . Is there some evening when you could drop in here and see him or should I ask him to call on you in your office? . . . Oh! That would be very kind of you. Yes, he’s here now. His name is North. . . . Yes, the same.” (Probably the “same” who was involved in the Diana Bell elopement matter. )

  It is evidence of the congeniality of our relationship that Mrs. Cranston (who seldom permitted herself to make a caustic remark about anyone) glanced at me and said dryly: “I have noticed that the Chief never refuses an excuse to leave the bosom of his family.”

  We did not have long to wait. I received permission to order another beer. The Chief was tall and wide. He gave the impression of being at once genial and uncomfortable. This, I was to learn, was the result of a long experience of being browbeaten by the wealthy who tend to assume that the less fortunate are unbelievably dim-witted. His defense was to assume an air of doubting the truth of any word spoken to him. He shook hands cordially with Mrs. Cranston and guardedly with me. She told him the whole story and again expressed her confidence in me.

  “Mr. Diefendorf, I think that while reading those old letters the story may come to light and that maybe it should come to light. After all, there’s nothing really damaging about it all; it doesn’t reflect on the character of anybody in the family. You told me all you knew about it and I’ve kept my promise: I haven’t breathed a word about it to a soul. If Mr. North finds something definite about it in a letter, I know he can be trusted to tell you about it first. Then you can decide whether Miss Wyckoff should be told.”

  The Chief’s eyes rested on me deliberatingly: “What brought you to Newport, Mr. North?”

  “Chief, I was stationed at Fort Adams during the last year of the War and I got to like it here.”

  “Who was the Commanding Officer then?”

  “General Kalb or DeKalb.”

  “Did you ever go to church in town here?”

  “Yes, to Emmanuel Church. Dr. Walter Lowrie was the rector.”

  “Did Mr. Augustus Bell pay you a large sum for handling that matter of his daughter’s elopement?”

  “I told him beforehand I only wanted reimbursement for the time I’d lost from my usual jobs. I’ve sent him a bill twice and he hasn’t paid it yet.”

  “What were you and your bicycle doing out at Brenton’s Point very early a few mornings ago?”

  “Chief, I’m crazy about sunrises. I saw one of the finest I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  This caused him a little difficulty. He examined the tabletop for a few moments. He probably put my behavior down to one of the idiosyncrasies consequent on a college education.

  “How much do you know about the Wyckoff House story?”

  “Only that it’s supposed to be haunted.”

  He outlined the situation as I already knew it—“Somehow the rumor had gotten round that there were ghosts in the house. . . . Now, Mr. North, just after the War our waterfront life used to be much more active than it is now. Many more yachts and pleasure boats, the Fall River Line, fishing business, a certain amount of merchant shipping. Sea-going men drink. We used to collect them every night—stark, staring mad, delirium tremens. Those taverns on Thames Street used to be out-of-bounds to the men at the Naval Training Station—too many fights. One night in 1918 we had to lock up a man named Bill Owens, a merchant seaman about twenty-one years old, born and raised in Newport. He’d get very drunk, night after night, and start telling stories about the awful things he’d seen at the Wyckoff place. We couldn’t have that. And we’d try to piece together what he was roaring and raving about in his cell.”

  Here the Chief made us wait while he lit a cigar. (There was no smoking in Mrs. Cranston’s front rooms.)

  “Mr. Wyckoff used to be away six and eight months at a time. He was a collector. What was it, Mrs. Cranston—sharks’ teeth?”

  “Shells and Chinese things, Chief. He left them to that big museum in New York.” (No information was ever accurate in Newport, a matter of intellectual climate.)

  “All that time he kept a kind of super-butler in charge, named Harland. Harland picked his own staff.”

  “Girls he found in New York, Chief. I never had anything to do with them.”

  “The front of the house was brightly lighted until midnight. Everything seemed to be in perfect order. Owens was a boy of about twelve, hired to empty the slops and carry the coals up to the fireplaces—odd jobs. I think Mrs. Cranston will agree with me that servants are like schoolchildren; they need a strict hand over them. When the teacher’s out of the classroom they begin to raise the Old Nick.”

  “I’m sorry to say there’s some truth in it, Chief,” said Mrs. Cranston, shaking her head. “I’ve se
en it over and over again.”

  “Mr. Wyckoff was a bad judge of men. His butler Harland was as crazy as they come. . . . Bill Owens said he was sent home every night at six o’clock when he’d finished his chores. But a few times he crept back to the house. The front rooms were brightly lighted, but the doors and windows of the dining room were hung with felt curtains—thick felt curtains. They couldn’t have their unholy goings-on down in the kitchen—oh, no! They were masters and had to use the master’s dining room. Owens said he used to hide in the cupboards and peek through the felt curtain. And he saw awful things. He’d been telling the crowds down on Thames Street that he’d seen banquets and people taking their clothes off and what he called ‘cannibals.’ ”

  “Chief! You never used that word before!”

  “Well, he said it. I’m sure he didn’t see it, but he thought he did.”

  “Oh, Lord in Heaven!” said Mrs. Cranston crossing herself.

  “When you see half-cooked meat eaten with their own hands, that’s what a boy of twelve would think he saw.”

  “God save us all!” said Mrs. Cranston.

  “I’ve no idea what Mr. Wyckoff saw, but he saw the felt curtains and the raw meat stains all over the floor and beastliness in the faces of the servants, very likely. . . . Now pardon my language, but rumor is like a stink. It took about three years for Bill Owens’s stories to pass from Thames Street to Mrs. Turberville’s Employment Agency. And rumor always gets blacker and blacker. What do you think of it, Mr. North?”