“You must have some money to live on, child,” he said, and left me enough for some time. Grandpa would have been glad to support us all — without Father. But Mother had that stubborn sense of loyalty. She would not do what Father disapproved, no matter how unreasonable he was.
Grandpa’s coming in that way made my work almost too easy, but I guess I needed some leeway, after all, for I was undertaking a good deal.
“May I do what I think necessary in the house, Mother?” I asked before they went.
“Yes indeed, child. Whatever you want to do will be wise, I’m sure,” she said. Mother had a high idea of my judgment — even from what little she knew of it.
“Now I am a housekeeper, Grandfather,” I boasted with pride. “You’ll trust me to manage right, won’t you?”
“I’ll back you as a housekeeper against all comers, Benigna. But you ought to have some older person with you.”
“I’m going to get Miss Ayres to come, if she will,” I said. “Or maybe Miss Arthur — some of the teachers. I shall have quite a boardinghouse to manage. May I run a boardinghouse, Mamma?”
“It’ll be all right if Miss Ayres will come — do get her,” she said.
And Grandpa said, “Go ahead with your boardinghouse, child. You’re equal to it.”
Peggy heard them, and Alison, who was putting in Mother’s bags and fussing around generally. So I had quite a cloud of witnesses. Of course they didn’t think I would, but what of that?
The carriage drove off, Mother quite rosy and hopeful-looking, Peggy as pretty as a whole bunch of fresh roses, and Grandpa happy enough to get his daughter back for a time.
Alison stood there for a while, her arms folded, watching them go. “’Tis a good thing,” she said. “A mighty good thing! It will make a well woman of her, belike.” Then she went back to her kitchen and I stood there by the gate alone.
Never in my life had I felt such a sense of hope and power. To have Father gone was like... well, did you ever hear one of those big city coal wagons unloading down an iron chute? It takes ever so long and all the neighborhood is scraped by that dull rasping roar. If you’re busy you don’t notice it, much, but when the thing stops, such a soft, cool, rested feeling comes over you —
And silence like a poultice came
To heal the wounds of sound.
Having Father gone was like that.
Having Mother gone was not a pleasure in that way, of course, but it was a relief of another sort not to have to worry about her. Nothing could be better for her, I was sure, than Grandpa’s big, shady house, and that lovely place of his with the certified milk and eggs, and the flowers.
Having Peggy gone was a loss — I did miss Peggy always. But then she too had been a care lately. Now she was off my hands for a while. There weren’t any young men at Grandpa’s farm, except the workmen, and when I remembered that man on the train struggling so when Grandpa collared him I didn’t worry about Peggy.
So there I was, eighteen years old, healthy and strong, quite a sum of money in my pocket, and A House, to do as I liked with. And it was only the last week in April.
I stood very tall and lifted my chest. I felt as if I was a Giant, a Giant let out from under something. Or the Jinni out of the Jar.
The first thing I did was to take Alison into my confidence. Into some of it, I mean. She was not so much a servant as a Retainer, a real friend of the family. Though not given to praising anybody, I knew she had a good opinion of me in some ways.
I waited a few days and took a favorable time — afternoon, the work all done and she pretty well rested anyway, there was so little to do now.
“Alison,” I said seriously, “how would you like to earn some extra money this summer?”
She looked at me suspiciously, but merely replied, “I’d like it fine.”
“Here’s a big house with a lot of empty bedrooms, all comfortably furnished, and two big parlors besides the library and dining room. Here’s a garden big enough to raise a lot of small vegetables, besides our berries and fruit. And here is a woman of exceptional ability and skill,” I bowed to her, “and a young woman who can make herself useful.”
She nodded noncommittally. “Aye,” she said.
“You know Mother wants me to get Miss Ayres or somebody to stay here while she’s away, and you heard her say — and Grandpa, too — that I might have a ‘houseful of boarders’ if I liked. Well now, I’m thinking of getting a few real nice people that Mother knows, friends of hers, to come and board here, for the summer anyway. I won’t charge them much, but if I can raise most of the vegetables it won’t cost much to feed them. And I was thinking of offering you half a dollar a week extra, for each of them. I can do all the bedroom work and wait on table.
“Then if you felt strong enough you could do some of their washing and make that much more. And besides that, if you can make real economical dishes — they’ve got to be fed well and plenty of it but it doesn’t need to be expensive — if you can make the cost come under what I’ve allowed for food, you shall have the difference.”
Alison’s little eyes sparkled. It was fun to watch her. The Scotchness of her came out so strong. Canny was no word for it. She asked no end of questions: Who was I going to get? How did I know they would come? How could I be sure they would pay their bills? And so on.
I told her they would have to pay in advance and that Dr. Bronson and Mr. Cutter were going to back me up. I had asked them.
She agreed after a while “The difficult point is the feeding,” I told her earnestly. “We’ve got to feed them well — very well — and have it look profuse. Yet at the same time we must have all we can — your extra profit comes in there. But if you skimp them they’ll not stay.”
She looked annoyed. “Do I not know that, child? Would I kill the goose that lays the golden eggs! Let me advise with you about the marketing, and do you fill your garden with the small things that count up so fast. Who’s going to do the work in that garden, by the way?”
“I am, of course.”
“You’ll be busy, I’m thinking.”
“I like to be busy.” Alison hadn’t any idea of how strong I was, nor how ambitious. How should she have?
“It’s only women you’re planning for?” she asked suddenly. “If you have men they want a big joint fresh every day, but women like little made dishes.”
“Only women so far,” I said.
So we started in.
First I engaged a man to plow and harrow, and I planted ever so many things. I spent a lot of time working in that garden besides what I spent in reading up about it. It looked like a Chinese one before long, so neat and thoroughly filled, and as soon as one thing was out, in went something else. We had young radishes and lettuce and peas all summer long.
We began with Miss Ayres. She came within a week, and she thought her two sisters might come if they liked it. I told her to ask them to visit us for a week, and see.
Mr. Cutter was very much interested in my plan. I told him it was good practise for me, would keep Alison busy, and that I hoped to have a nice little sum for Mother when she got back. He sent us two nice women from his church, friends of Mother’s.
But Dr. Bronson was the best. He was Mrs. Gale’s star boarder and had two rooms on the ground floor. He looked me up and down with those twinkling little eyes of his.
“You’re a young schemer, Benigna,” he said. “But I think this is a good scheme. You want to surprise your mother with a fat little nest egg, do you? Well, you must have people who stay in town all summer. With Miss Ayres for a chaperon you might have a man or two.”
I told him what Alison said about hot joints.
“One that I have in mind is a vegetarian,” he said. “And the other is a patient of mine on a diet — I prescribe the diet, my dear. He’s fussy, but will pay anything for what he wants. Then I’ve another patient or two. How many do you want?”
I told him I thought we might accommodate ten, but that one thing was absol
utely necessary: they must be the kind of people Mother would like.
“What’s that to do with this summer?” he asked.
Then I looked as ingenuous as one of Wordsworth’s cottage maidens. I said that if anything should delay Father’s return I thought it might be possible that Mother would like to keep on with some of them, that perhaps it would interest her and keep her from worrying.
“You know she likes company,” I told him.
He nodded sagaciously. “You’ve a good head, child. I’ve always said so.” And then he fell to thinking.
The house was as fresh as paint and everything was clean.
Alison wore the air of a mighty general. Miss Ayres sat at the head of the table. She was as interested as could be. What Grandpa left me was enough for all I had done, and some extra linen and table things.
By the middle of May we began with eight people, averaging $10.00 a week — that’s $80.00.
No rent, no extra fires, being summer; no extra service — except the $4.00 to Alison, and the $1.00 a week for a woman to help her on washing day. I allowed $2.50 a week apiece for their food. And, if you’ll believe me, Alison saved off that. You see our garden gave us a lot of green vegetables and fruit, and we had the preserves and pickles already made to fall back on. Alison’s soups were a wonder, and they cost practically nothing — just the bones we had left over — and we had our onions and carrots and parsley. Then she made “rechaufees” that melted on the tongue, and her tricks with rice and potatoes were beyond praise.
We used to plan menus a week ahead, dovetailing in. It was a wonder how good things were, and another wonder how little they cost. That culinary magician actually cleaned up another half-dollar a week apiece of herself, and she earned it. It takes brains and hard work to make a liberal, attractive, varied bill of fare of inexpensive materials.
There are some things that everybody likes. Cleanliness and quiet and no flies, for instance. Nice china and table linen. Long sheets, light blankets in summer — not those uncomfortable “comfortables” — and light bedspreads too, for hot weather. Plenty of towels, and good-sized ones. And wastebaskets.
Fortunately we had two bathrooms, and I was in and out of them all day keeping them clean. I had some of those small hand towels in there too.
The food business has necessities: one is enough to eat, real substantial good food. Whatever else was on the table I always saw to it that there was at least one copious dish — rice or potatoes or gingerbread — but lots of it, so as to make them feel they could eat freely. And good quality of course. The next thing is looks — most everybody likes to have their food look nice. I made quite a specialty of table decoration. The third is variety. Now there’s fruit. I used to have a great piled-up dish for breakfast, many kinds. Perhaps bananas and apples most, but five or six kinds. It looked lavish, but didn’t cost any more than the same amount of one. And I made long lists of odd things out of books and magazines, and saw to it that there was something new almost every day.
They talked about our table all over town, those boarders did, and I don’t suppose one of them ever figured out the relative cost of those delicacies. Hash is a horror, but croquettes and ramekins and hot stuff in scallop shells, that’s different.
I allowed myself $5.00 a week for my work — and I earned it!
I worked an hour before breakfast in the garden, waited on eight people, had eight beds to attend to, and the downstairs work. I was always busy enough to suit my ambitions.
And there was $40.00 a week over, clear splendid profit, to astonish Mother with and show her what she could do.
I wrote Mother about it, little by little; that Miss Ayres had come, that she had brought sisters, that Dr. Bronson had asked me to try a patient of his, a dear soul who needed careful diet. I wrote that he’d sent another patient who was a vegetarian, and then one more. I dare say Mother thought they were women, but I didn’t say so, I said “patients.”
It was easier because Grandpa decided to take Peggy and her on an ocean trip — not to Scotland, mind you. He just bought the tickets and haled them away at a day’s notice, as it were. I wondered if Peggy had had any desperate admirers to start him off like that.
Anyway they went, and when Mother came back about the end of September she looked like a different woman.
CHAPTER NINE
The money part of keeping boarders is easy. You have to find out how many, and at what rate, will pay enough more than their food costs to enable you to provide room, labor, and a profit. Having established that, you then have only to make it so attractive to this number of people that they will come, and stay. That’s all very simple.
I found out before the summer was half over that there are always people wanting to be taken care of, people who only board where they do because they know of no better place.
My carefully selected few had friends and acquaintances, of course. They all talked about our table, and invited their friends to meals — 75c for dinner, 50c for lunch, 25c for breakfast — and presently we had a waiting list.
No, the difficulty about boarders is not getting them in, it’s getting them out!
I made one mistake, and had so much trouble on account of it that it has taught me the lesson of a lifetime. Fortunately Mother was not at home, or I should never have been able to set it right. She is so yielding.
This was another patient of Dr. Bronson’s, a rich, middle-aged, invalidish sort of person, willing to pay anything for what she wanted, he said. A Mrs. Miller — Mrs. Joseph Rawlings Miller, she insisted on, though Mr. Miller was dead, and Mr. Rawlings even more so, if possible. She’d had two of them.
She was so anxious to come, and willing to pay so much that I agreed to let her have one of the parlors downstairs. She said she would bring her own bed, she preferred to. If that had been all!
She brought a whole load of furniture, heavy overpowering sort of things, and a parrot! Dr. Bronson never said she had a parrot, and when I went with him to see her it was not in sight. She had been very gentle and polite when I called. I didn’t like her, but she offered to pay $15.00 a week, and I rapidly counted up how much extra that would be, and... well, I admit I was a fool — once.
It was not the furniture that made the trouble, nor the parrot, though that was bad enough. She turned out to be one of those people who have a natural gift for setting other people by their ears.
First she’d made violent friends with one of my nice boarders, and then with another. She’d invite them to matinees, make them presents, take them to ride — all sorts of attractions. And then, extracting as many confidences as she could from each one, she’d make use of her information with the others.
The way I knew this was because she tried it first on me. She thought I was so young and, well, ordinary, that I should be easy. Little did she imagine how I spelled my name — secretly.
It gave me quite a shock, really, when she began. It was the first time I had met an actively designing person, except for Grandpa’s housekeeper, and her designs were very limited.
But to have this large, beaming, cordial lady begin to ask delicate questions about my father and mother, and Peggy, and our circumstances generally, I had to put on all my armor at once. Even with my two handicaps, not telling lies and always keeping up my innocent, ingenuous aspect, I think I did pretty well.
Once she asked something about Father, and for the life of me I could not think of any way to get around it. So I just looked as girlish as I could and said that I didn’t think Mother’d be willing for me to talk about my father — even to her. This with a bright smile.
She liked the place, though I learned afterwards how she had criticized it to some of the others. But she made more trouble than any six of them, always wanting things just a little different, hotter, or colder, or something. Worst of all she would bustle out into the kitchen, absolutely giving orders to Alison. It was enough to break up our entire household.
The money she paid wasn’t a circumstance. Tw
o of my nice teachers, who had been bosom friends, quarrelled before two weeks were over, and left — both of them.
I filled the rooms, but there was a week between. And I saw more trouble brewing, a sort of coolness between Miss Ayres and her sister, a young music teacher getting tremendously affectionate with Mrs. Miller, and then beginning to make eyes at the Vegetarian Man, who didn’t like it.
“This’ll never do,” I said to myself. “She’s got to go, and quickly.” And I began to plan in earnest.
The Gales had a big brindled yellow tomcat, “Jerusalem, the Golden,” they called him, a real fierce one; dogs were afraid of him. That is, dogs who had made his acquaintance. He was a great friend of mine, Jerry was, and was used to the house. It was desperately careless of me to leave Mrs. Miller’s door open when she was out, and the front door too, and then go away upstairs. I apologized most amply, but what good did that do. She never knew whether someone stole the bird, or if he flew away of his own free will. There was a feather or two about, I believe, but she couldn’t prove anything by that.
Well, that was only the parrot, but it was some gain. I hope whoever caught him was nicer than she was. She used to tease the poor bird to distraction, and then be desperately affectionate.
Then I considered deeply, with this result: we were sitting in the front parlor one evening after dinner, and I asked if they had ever heard such and such a story — something I had read about — about premonitions and things. They were interested right off. Everybody always seems possessed to play with that subject — anything occult. Then one of them told of a telepathic communication her mother had had, and another boasted an aunt who was clairvoyant. I asked a few questions, and drew out the more quiet ones — everybody had something. Mrs. Miller, of course, had plenty to say. Her experiences were more surprising than any, and more thrilling.
Then all at once I asked to see her hand, walked across the room and looked at it carefully, without saying a word. Only I grew very quiet all at once.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 96