A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies (19 page)

“Perspicacious,” said Miss Blanchette, “means you’re not silly. It means you’re astute.”

Well, she should have realized Miss Blanchette was someone to be trusted. Astute! No one had ever said that to her before. “Then I suppose it’s all right they had to hide me. Don’t you want to know why?”

“The business of next door has got to be kept to itself.”

“The man who came here with me, Arthur—do you know him well?”

“I don’t.”

“He’s very nice.”

Miss Blanchette gave Charlotte a long serious look. “May I give you advice?”

“Oh, yes, please.”

“It would be a very mistaken, very unsatisfactory thing for you if you were to develop an affection for any of Mr. Alcorn’s private staff. It has happened before and it’s never pleasant.”

“There’s no danger of that,” said Charlotte quickly. Then she said to herself, “Affection.” It sounded like having a disease. Affected, afflicted. Affliction. Bad! To change the subject she said, “Have you been here at Three-forty very long?”

“Years and years.”

“What did you do before?”

“I’ve lived in Boston all my life, in different areas.”

“But what did you do?”

“I was,” said Miss Blanchette, “unhappy.”

“How did you come to be here?”

“I answered an advertisement Mr. Alcorn had placed in the newspaper. He had wanted a housekeeper for next door, but when I came to discover what…”

There was a catch in her voice. In the pause, Charlotte said encouragingly, “What goes on there, you mean. You don’t like the Vice people but you disapprove.”

“I was going to say, when I came to discover the condition of Mr. Alcorn’s wife, I asked to be here at Three-forty.”

“Oh. Are you unhappy still?”

“I am,” said Miss Blanchette, “uncomplaining.”

“Mrs. Alcorn is so beautiful.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me the poem about the tree.”

“I’m not in a mood any longer.”

“Please.”

“I don’t remember the words.”

“I think you do.”

Miss Blanchette sighed and drew into herself for such a long time, Charlotte thought she’d need to press a little harder, but then up came that hushed, steady voice. “ ‘I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,’ ” said Miss Blanchette.

You could tell the tree poem was special to her. And it was easy to see why.

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,

All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,

Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,

And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,

But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,

And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,

And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight, in my room.

The words sounded so right, Charlotte felt that if she were to be invited into Miss Blanchette’s room, she would see that a leafy twig, with some moss tied around it, was in fact there, on a bureau, perhaps, in a glass of water to keep it alive. When Miss Blanchette turned away from the window, and said, “The detective is going away,” her eyes, as brown as the rest of her, were filling up with tears, which did not spill down her face, but just sat there, pool-like, unmoving, like something Miss Singleton drew, and it seemed they would stay there and stay there, just like that.

T
he little maid Eunice came to fetch her near dusk, with candles in both hands and two more in the pocket of her apron for Charlotte. She was terrified of the tunnel and made Charlotte go first, which she did, not bothering to light her two candles; she led the way as if she’d been through it every day of her life.

Every question she asked Eunice brought a negative response.

She wanted to speak to Mr. Alcorn, could she? No, he was out; he’d said he would go to a boxing match. Was he a follower of boxing? No, this seemed to be his first time. Had Mr. Pym come back? No, he hadn’t. Had Mr. Pym left word he would come back that evening? No, there was no word from Mr. Pym. Had the lady who came looking for her, Mrs. Gerson, been upset, been distraught, even, to know Charlotte wouldn’t see her? No, she was fine, she was happy to have talked with Mrs. Petty, and she was happy to be offered a drive back home in a hansom.

Was she being brought back to the same room? No. Had her aunt gone back to the hospital? No, not yet. Had Eunice seen her aunt, to speak to? No, but the managing housekeeper, Mrs. Fox, whom Charlotte hadn’t met, and was likely not to ever, had spoken to her briefly, and said to all the maids to leave the doctor alone, as she was down and low and was run off her feet.

Did the managing housekeeper have a standard of never wanting to meet guests? No, not particularly, it was only this time. Did the managing housekeeper say the reason? No, it would have to be inferred, it was maybe something to do with displeasure of the attention from the Law: that, and the irritating, stick-your-nose-in-private-business arrival of Mrs. Gerson, with her demands.

Oh! Did the managing housekeeper think the detective and Mrs. Gerson were Charlotte’s fault, on purpose, as if she’d brought in malevolent forces, as if she carried bad luck with her, bad luck and a world of trouble, which wasn’t a fair suspicion? No, well, not actually, not in so many words. Did everyone hate her, hate Charlotte, was there a poison-air cloud of resentment waiting for her at the other end of the tunnel? No, of course there wasn’t, no one ever hated a guest; it wasn’t allowed.

Was anyone with the doctor? Was that a question that could be answered? No. It couldn’t be answered; there were rules. What about Charlotte’s things, her coat, her satchel, would she be able to get her things from Moaxley? No, no need to; everything was in the new room already.

Would she be put in a room on the same floor as Miss Singleton? No, she was going to the second floor, at the very end, number 6, and she was not to venture out, please, except to go and see Mrs. Petty, who wanted her, and please would she use the back stairs to get to the kitchen.

The children! She had promised Sophy and Momo she’d see them today. She’d forgotten all about them, and now she forgot about everything else.

She came out through the panel door in great haste, thrust the unlighted candles back at Eunice, found the correct door, and went down to the kitchen right away, running down the stairs as if her feet barely touched them, so that it felt as if she were flying. It was only when she got to the bottom that she realized this was the first time she’d run down a staircase—or that she’d done any running at all—in a very, very long time. It seemed amazing that her legs still knew how to do it.

She paused in self-absorption to wait for the trembling, angered response of her thighs and lower muscles, which she assumed would come: trembling and unreliability, with cramps and then a general cave-in. This did not happen. It was as if the muscles were saying to her, “More, please; do it again,” as if they were just getting primed. She hadn’t felt this way since she was back at Miss Georgeson’s.

The kitchen was enormous, with sweaty stone walls; a high, long, smooth-wood preparation table; pots dangling from the ceiling on hooks; a pair of storage bureaus, multidrawered and massive; a sink that was almost as large as a tub; an open back door to the washroom that let in hot, soapy steam; another open door, of the drying room, showing sheets on lines in ghostly stillness; a gigantic black cooking stove in full operation; an open hearth with brick inner side shelves for baking, and cooking pots on a bar above the fire; two maids scurrying about; and Mrs. Petty and another, unfamiliar woman, near the table.

“I ran!” Charlotte expected Mrs. Petty to drop everything she was doing to register, and appreciate, this news. There was only the slightest look, the slightest cognizance of her, as if her appearance were nothing more than a distraction, an unwelcome one. What was she doing, anyway?

Mrs. Petty had her coat on. She was stuffing things into a wooden box: knives, pans, mixing bowls, aprons, cloths, long-handled spoons. Charlotte recognized them all from the kitchen back at the household.

Now the box was passed over to a maid, who took it and rushed to the outer door. She opened it to the dusky cold, and some snow blew in, with the sound of a whinnying, restless horse. Mrs. Petty busied herself going through drawers of the storage bureaus and putting things into her coat pockets and into the quilted bag that hung off her arm, the same one she had when she’d left the household. The maid returned empty-handed, leaving the outside door partly open, but not through irresponsibility. It was a door left open because someone was about to hurry through it.

“Where are you going? What is happening?” cried Charlotte.

“She’s leaving,” said the other woman, who all the while just stood there placidly: a small, slightly stout, matronly pillar of calmness and strength, in a dark wool coat. Her neck was bundled with a scarf; her hands were gloved; her hat was a dark, wide-rimmed, felt turban, oversized and pulled down low on her head, shieldlike. Even though this was a woman, you thought right away of a soldier, a commander.

“Are you Mrs. Fox?”

“I am Fannie Farmer,” the woman answered. “Mrs. Petty’s friend.”

“But I’m her friend, too, and I want to know what is happening.”

Miss Farmer smiled at Charlotte sadly, as if she felt sorry for her. There was another set of stairs to the kitchen, which led from the hotel’s front hall, the same stairs Mrs. Petty had hurried on the night—so very long ago, it now seemed—when Charlotte was deposited at the Beechmont by Everett Gerson. The treads of these stairs were partly obscured by half walls, on which hung more cooking implements; it was possible for someone, in the act of coming down, to pause out of sight and peer into the kitchen below.

Down those stairs came a young man dressed up most elegantly, like someone going to an opera, in a fancy English suit, with a very tight coat and handsome striped trousers. A beautiful winter coat was on his shoulders with the arms dangling; he was wearing it like a cape, and Charlotte knew it was sealskin because her father-in-law had one just like it.

This was the man she’d seen that night with Aunt Lily, and in the heat and closeness of the kitchen, appearing as suddenly as he did, he looked even more splendid than he had looked in feeble gaslight, in his nightshirt.

The math tutor who looked like an angel! He barely took note of Charlotte and went straight to Miss Farmer, offering her his arm, and a slight sound of scuffled feet above on the stairs made Charlotte look up.

Arthur was there, peering down, ready to duck out of sight. Charlotte saw him nose-first, then his chin, then the rest of his face; she knew by the way he glanced about that the only person he wanted to see was herself, and he looked
worried
.

Her eyes met his. The worry went away. His lips formed soundless words which she understood as clearly as if he said them, as if he shouted them. “I’ll be waiting for you upstairs. Second floor.”

She gave her head one quick nod, and Mrs. Petty found it within herself to speak to Charlotte. “Who are you looking at?”

“No one,” said Charlotte.

Mrs. Petty’s back was to the stairs, and when she wheeled around, Arthur was gone.

The way Charlotte’s heart fisted up in her chest, as if it would burst, was exactly the way it behaved when she was riding, or driving a sleigh or a carriage, with the wind at her face and in her hair,
fast
.

It was all she could do to keep herself where she was and not go dashing after him. She felt she had absolutely no say in the matter of wanting to be with him, not in a logical, thinking-apparatus way. She reminded herself of her horses, who would glare at her with resentment, the mare especially, as if she were the stupidest, cruelest creature on earth, when they were dying to run and she held them back; and they’d shake their heads and try to bite at the reins to be free of her. “Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,” thought Charlotte. Miss Blanchette’s voice was in her head.
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground, eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.

“Come with us, Charlotte,” said Mrs. Petty.

She was buttoning up her coat. The elegant, beautiful tutor was going out with Miss Farmer, and they looked at Charlotte over their shoulders and smiled at her as though Mrs. Petty’s invitation needed their corroboration. Charlotte remembered Arthur and Mrs. Petty talking about the fact that Miss Farmer had suffered from a stroke, or was it polio? She looked in excellent health, although she did drag one leg a little bit, and she leaned on her escort a bit more forcefully than a fully able-bodied woman would have done.

“My mother-in-law says your cookbook is a work of genius, and she never says anything nice about anyone, or anything at all, unless she absolutely has to,” called out Charlotte.

“Why, thank you,” said Miss Farmer.

Charlotte turned to Mrs. Petty. “Going! Where?”

“We’re taking the steamboat to New Hampshire. Miss Farmer has a friend from the cooking school with an inn that’s got a very successful public kitchen she wants help with.”

“It’ll be freezing cold on a boat, Mrs. Petty.”

“They have a heated cabin.”

“There’ll be icebergs!”

“There are no icebergs on the New England coast.”

“It’s getting dark!”

“There are lanterns. Charlotte, come. The children have left for the boat already, with Georgina. What’s happened with you and your husband, I’m not asking about, but I can see where it’s deep. And I am not surprised. You’ll not be the first woman to leave a husband she’s got the need of being away from.”

“Not surprised why?”

Mrs. Petty sighed heavily and spoke in a tone that implied she thought of Charlotte as an imbecilic child. “Not surprised because I’m not surprised. You can have your own room at Miss Farmer’s friend’s inn for as long as you like. And an ordinary inn it is, not like here. A normal, normal inn. I’m told it’s a pretty town, Portsmouth, on the sea, and you love the sea. Don’t deny it.”

“But you’re not saying why this is happening.”

“The children were expelled from their school.”

“Arthur said Terence knows of another one.”

“It only takes girls. My girl and my boy won’t be separated.”

There was something Mrs. Petty wasn’t saying. Charlotte eyed her warily and said, “And what else?”

“That’s all you need to know.”

“And what else!”

“All right. The Vice people. Miss Farmer had a letter—an anonymous one, I have to add—from someone who was one of her helpers on the cookbook, and feels an allegiance to the school, but had to be careful of her position. She’s in a house where a Vice lady lives. There’s talk of taking the children away from me, taking them into the Children’s Benevolent Association.”

“And what’s that?”

“Another society. If there’s a mother gone to the drink, or, shall we say, to loose morality, that’s a mother that’s having her children seized up by the Benevolents. It seems that they feel a hotel is not a nice place to have them, and also, Charlotte, not that you ever asked me, which I appreciate, I do not, as you’re sure to have noticed, have a husband.”

Charlotte made a move to postpone the inevitable. “You wouldn’t have told me anything if I’d asked.”

“Perhaps not, not before you came here. It was comfortable when I was with the Heaths to seem I’d not had an eventful life before, in spite of having three children with me.”

“What about Mr. Alcorn?”

“I’ve given notice, effective right now. He went with them to the boat to say goodbye. He’s fond of them, you know. And you’ll see him again, for he’ll be coming to visit soon enough.”

Charlotte’s ears picked up a different tone in Mrs. Petty’s voice. She’d had the impression all along that Harry Alcorn and Mrs. Petty detested each other personally, while respecting each other professionally. Wrong! And there was no mistaking her look.

“How fond of the children is he exactly?”

“I have to go now, Charlotte.”

“And what about his wife?”

“Lucy,” said Mrs. Petty, “has days and days when she would not know if her husband is beside her in a chair, or if he’s gone over the other side of the moon.”

“I met her.”

“Well, then you know.”

They were calling to her from outside. “Mrs. Petty! Come! Come!”

“Mrs. Petty,” said Charlotte. “Before you came to the Heaths, where were you?”