The Last Gentleman

something about his scientific theories. But instead he fell silent.
    â€œWhere did you go to college?”
    â€œPrinceton.”
    â€œWhat’s your religion?”
    â€œEpiscopalian,” said the engineer absently, though he had never given the matter a single thought in his entire life.
    â€œMan, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
    â€œNo sir.”
    But if there is nothing wrong with me, he thought, then there is something wrong with the world. And if there is nothing wrong with the world, then I have wasted my life and that is the worst mistake of all. “However, I do have a nervous condition—”
    â€œNervous! Hell, I’d be nervous too if I lived up here with all these folks.” He nodded down at the moraine of Washington Heights. “All huddled up in the Y in the daytime and way up under a store all night. And peeping at folks through a spyglass. Shoot, man!”
    The engineer had to laugh. Moreover, suggestible as he was, he began to think it mightn’t be a bad idea to return to the South and discover his identity, to use Dr. Gamow’s expression. “What would you want me to do, Mr. Vaught?”
    â€œAll right. Here’s what you do. You come on down with us. Spend a year with Jamie. This will give you time to finish school if that’s what you want to do, or look around for what kind of work you want. Whatever you want to do.”
    â€œI still don’t exactly know what it is you want—”
    â€œBill, I’m going to tell you something.” Mr. Vaught drew him close enough to smell his old man’s sourness and the ironing-board smell of seersucker. “I need somebody to help me out. I’m taking Jamie home ”—somebody didn’t want him to!—“and I want you to come down with me.”
    â€œYes sir. And then?”
    â€œJamie likes you. He dudn’t like anybody else at home but he likes you. (He likes Sutter, but that sapsucker—never mind.) He’s been up here four years and he’s smart as a whip about some things but he doesn’t know enough to come out of the rain about some others. He can’t drive a car or shoot a gun! You know what he and Kitty do at home? Nothing! Sit in the pantry and pick their noses.”
    â€œHow do you know I won’t do the same thing?” asked the engineer, smiling.
    â€œDo it! But also show him how folks act. I just saw what effect you had on him. That’s the first time I’ve seen that boy perk up since I been up here. Can you drive?”
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œDo you have a driver’s license?”
    â€œYes sir.” He got one to drive the Auchinclosses’ Continental.
    â€œWhat do you say?”
    â€œDo I understand that you would want me to be a kind of tutor or companion?”
    â€œDon’t have to be anything. Just be in the house.”
    â€œAs a matter of fact, I’ve had some experience along these lines,” said the engineer and told him about his tutoring stints with his young Jewish charges.
    â€œYou see there! We have some of the finest Jewish people at home you’ll ever find,” he added, as if the engineer were himself Jewish. “Right now the main thing we need is somebody to help me drive home.”
    The proposal was not quite as good as it sounded. Mr. Vaught, he early perceived, was the sort of man who likes to confide in strangers. And the farther he got from home, one somehow knew, the more confidential he became. He was the sort to hold long conversations with the porter on train trips, stand out with him on dark station platforms. “How much do you make, Sam?” he might ask the porter. “How would you like to work for me?”
    â€œI had this boy David drive us up, ahem,” said Mr. Vaught, clearing his throat diffidently. “I didn’t know we were going to be up here this long, so I sent him home on the bus. He couldn’t drive either. He like to have scared me to death.”
    The engineer nodded and asked no questions, since he understood that the “boy” was a Negro and Mr. Vaught was embarrassed lest it should appear that the engineer was being offered a Negro’s job.
    â€œMrs. Vaught is certain you’ll be comfortable in Sutter’s old apartment,” he added quickly (you see it’s not a Negro’s job). For the first time the engineer began to wonder if the proposal might not be serious.