The Withdrawing Room

by Charlotte MacLeod

  After dinner when Sarah was too worn out to work any longer, she would put on high heels to raise her five feet three inches to a more imposing stature, don a black crepe dress of her mother’s that was old enough to be back in style had any true Boston lady ever given more than a passing hoot for the vagaries of fashion, sweep her light brown hair into a twist that lent a few years and an air of dignity to her small, pale, squarish face, and grant interviews to prospective tenants.

  Jeremy Kelling had been right about applicants. Once the news got around that the same Sarah Kelling who’d made headlines a month ago was now opening her home to paying guests, she had them camping three deep on her doorstep. Her chief problem was to weed out the insolvent, the impossible, and the sensation seekers who didn’t really want to move in but couldn’t resist a chance to gawk. For this she relied heavily on the superior worldly wisdom of her household staff. About 80 percent of the hopefuls never got past the vestibule. Those who did got a shrewd going-over from the apparently impassive maid and butler. A muttered, “Honey, this baby’s for the birds,” from Mariposa wiped out a beautifully dressed lady who was an ardent volunteer for one of Dolph’s inherited charities. The merest flicker of Charles’s eyelids turned away several others whose references and manners appeared impeccable.

  Her assistants themselves were impeccable and then some. The pair had insisted on providing themselves out of Charles’ paycheck from the plastics factory with uniforms suited to their positions as they conceived them. Mariposa had elected to set off her trim figure and vivid coloring in bright orange topped by a frilly white cap with long orange velvet streamers. Charles was the epitome of what the well-dressed Eaton Place butler should wear, up to and including the white cotton gloves, though his were in fact drip-dry nylon which he felt Mr. Hudson would have pardoned since Mariposa made him wash them himself. His dress suit had come from the costumer’s with certain embellishments, but Sarah had persuaded him to save the red ribbon and the row of medals until he was either made ambassador to somewhere or offered a bit part in The Merry Widow.

  Indisputably the uniforms lent cachet to the establishment. The mere sight of Charles in full panoply was enough to discourage most of the inéligibles. Those who did manage to run the barricade, having been formally announced by Charles and then served a minuscule glass of sherry on a silver tray proffered by Mariposa in her beribboned cap, were far less apt to quail at the rates Sarah quoted.

  The three had decided together that it would be easier and what Charles referred to as better theater to assemble the cast of boarders all on the same day rather than have them trickle along one by one. Since it was fiscally vital to set the day as soon as possible, the Tulip Street house began to look like the setting for a Keystone Cops movie with people flying in all directions at impossible speeds.

  Sarah developed quite a talent as a nagger. When she flagged, Jeremy Kelling was ready to take over. Either because of his expert chivvying or because they couldn’t endure to stay and hear any more of his reminiscences, the plumbers, carpenters, electricians, and decorators made well-nigh superhuman efforts to meet their deadlines.

  Cousin Dolph was as expeditious and no doubt a good deal more obnoxious in getting the required license. Thanks to the plethora of applicants, Sarah had her boarders all chosen well before the last nail was driven and the last curtain hung.

  Mrs. Theonia Sorpende was to have Sarah’s old room. Mrs. Sorpende was a stately, handsome, middle-aged lady of brunette complexion, almost overpowering refinement, ineffably gracious manner, and a surprising streak of dry humor. She said she wouldn’t mind the two flights of stairs a bit, and added with a ruefully amused glance down over her Junoesque contours that she could use the exercise. She was a widow and dressed the part in a simple black dress and coat, though she had relieved the somber costume with a wine-colored velvet turban and matching handbag and gloves. She had few acquaintances in Boston and would be living very quietly. The name she gave as a reference was Mrs. G. Thackford Bodkin, a friend of Aunt Marguerite’s in Newport. With Mariposa making thumbs-up signs behind the lady’s back and Charles so far forgetting himself as to mouth a fervent, “Hubba, hubba!” Sarah dispensed with Mrs. Bodkin and accepted Mrs. Sorpende on the spot.

  Alexander’s room would be occupied by a Miss Jennifer LaValliere, who probably would not be living very quietly. She was another who needed no investigating since her grandmother lived just around the corner and had served on committees with Aunt Caroline. She was perhaps attractive, if one could have seen beyond the frizzy hair and the assortment of garments awful enough to be no doubt the ultra chic of the moment. Sarah hoped the moment would soon pass.

  Miss LaValliere had caught the career bug and was doing a business course at Katy Gibbs, which had also given her a plausible excuse to get away from her vigilant parents in Lincoln. What she’d wanted, of course, was an apartment of her own in town. Mrs. Kelling’s boarding-house was a family-approved compromise that couldn’t have been wholly acceptable to a nineteen-year-old with advanced ideas, but the girl was taking it well enough. She seemed to be an agreeable little thing on the whole. Sarah couldn’t recall that she herself had ever alternated with such blinding rapidity between ultramundane sophistication and fits of the giggles, but at Jennifer’s age she’d already become a married woman with two big places to keep and a blind, deaf tyrant of a mother-in-law to cope with.

  On the top floor she was putting Mr. Eugene Porter-Smith, an elderly gentleman of about twenty-seven. He put Sarah in mind of W. S. Gilbert’s ballad of the precocious baby although he was by no means a fast little cad like that disreputable infant and certainly not about to die an enfeebled old dotard at an impossibly early age. He worked for Sarah’s third cousin Percival as an accountant. Percival vouched for him as a model of rectitude and what Percy didn’t know about rectitude wasn’t worth knowing. Moreover, Mr. Porter-Smith was into, as he said, mountain climbing and proved it by taking the three flights in high gear without a single puff.

  Mr. Porter-Smith looked decorous enough, at any rate, with his neat three-piece suit and his sand-colored hair slicked back from a thinnish face that was neither attractive nor ugly but merely present in the usual place. His frame was spare and wiry, his height perhaps five feet nine or ten, his pale blue eyes sharp and inquiring. Mr. Porter-Smith was obviously a man who liked to know things; in fact he spouted information on any given subject at such a rate that Sarah suspected him of reading the encyclopedia in his spare time, which was surely a habit no landlady could disapprove.

  Her other attic room was assigned to Professor Oscar Ormsby, a burly, hirsute man of fifty or so who wore hairy tweed suits and brown turtleneck jerseys and taught aerodynamics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, just across the river. When Sarah apologized for the room’s being so high up, he grunted, “Hadn’t noticed.”

  That was about all Professor Ormsby did say except to grunt again as he wrote the check for the first month’s rent in advance, which Charles and Mariposa had drilled Sarah always to insist on, and ask what happened if he didn’t show up for meals.

  Sarah and Mariposa had that one all worked out. “If you call the house sometime during the day and let us know you’re going to be late, we’ll keep something hot for you. If you don’t call, you’ll be free to go to the kitchen when you come in and help yourself to a snack from the refrigerator. If you choose to eat out, we can’t give you a refund but we do allow you to bring a guest free of charge any time within the month. With proper notice, of course. If you haven’t missed a meal but still want to bring a guest, there is a ten-dollar charge. In advance,” she added, responding to the frenzied pantomime Charles was going through behind the professor’s back.

  Uncle Jem had set the fees, and while they were indeed far from cheap they were still lower than the cost of maintaining an apartment and much less than living at a hotel and eating in restaurants. Costs of food, salaries, utilities, and maintenance would have to be deducted from the gross
, but Sarah figured that with careful management and her monthly allowance from the trust, she’d clear enough to stay afloat until she knew where she stood with the bank.

  Her basement room was the only one not yet ready to let. Sarah was still in a quandry about whom to put there. She’d abandoned the idea of students. They might not mind sharing a meager bath with the maid and butler or object to their occasionally somewhat rowdy behavior offstage since Charles could hardly be Mr. Hudson all the time. However, they might intensify the rowdyism and that would never do. Her upstairs tenants were paying for class, and class they were going to get. She’d just have to wait for the right sort of applicant, whoever that might be. If she didn’t, Mr. Quiffen would be sure to raise a stink.

  Barnwell Augustus Quiffen, George’s old fraternity brother, had indeed taken the drawing room. Anora and George had brought him to look at it themselves. It was the first time they’d been in the house for ages, and Sarah couldn’t help thinking that away from their own ever-blazing fireside they looked like a couple of pigmy elephants gone astray. With both of them clad in baggy gray tweeds, with George’s soft rolls of flab and Anora’s short gray hair and white bristles about her mouth and chin, it would have been hard for a stranger to say which was the man and which the woman.

  Barnwell Quiffen was a perfect Tweedledee, ovoid in shape and about to have a battle. He glared around the beautifully proportioned, spacious room, sniffed at Anora’s exclamations over Sarah’s excellent redecorating job, and snapped, “Where’s the desk? I told you this would be a waste of time. Of course it won’t do! I can’t live here without a desk.”

  “Get him a desk, Sarah,” said George sleepily.

  “Quit fussing, Barney,” said Anora. “Sarah, Barney needs a desk to write his poison-pen letters on. What about that one in the library? You won’t want it there anyway, will you?”

  “No,” stammered Sarah. “I was wondering where to—”

  “Well, then, just move that little table out and move the desk in. Come on, Barney, Auntie Anora’s got a nice, big, gorgeous desk for you to feel important at. Show him, Sarah.”

  They trooped across the hall to the library and solemnly inspected the handsome burl walnut desk that Alexander’s father and his father before him had sat behind. Sarah didn’t much like the idea of this fussy little man’s taking their places, but obviously she wasn’t to have any say in the matter. At any rate, she’d have to put it somewhere or her lodgers wouldn’t have room enough to sit.

  Quiffen grudgingly admitted the desk would suit his purpose well enough, but where was the filing cabinet to go with it? He must have a filing cabinet to hold his important correspondence.

  “Get him a filing cabinet, Sarah,” droned George.

  “Here’s one right here,” said Anora. “What’s in it, Sarah? All that old committee nonsense of Caroline’s, I suppose. Chuck it out.”

  So Mr. Quiffen got his filing cabinet for his important correspondence, which Sarah vaguely recalled consisted mostly of writing letters to the papers about what was wrong with everybody and everything in and around Boston. If a light bulb flickered on the Cleveland Circle platform at Park Street Station, if a red tulip popped up in a bed in the Public Garden where only yellow tulips were supposed to grow, if (though this was unlikely to happen) a trombonist at Symphony hit a B-sharp where a B-natural was called for, Barnwell Augustus Quiffen would leap to take pen in hand and regret to inform.

  Mariposa then served tea, Charles being still at the factory, and Mr. Quiffen thawed sufficiently to recite excerpts from his family tree, at which Anora roared, “She’s not planning to use you for stud purposes, Barney. Drink your tea and leave the poor girl alone. She’ll get enough of you after you move in.”

  That, Sarah thought, was more than likely to be true. She’d had nearly enough of old Barnwell Augustus already. However, his readiness to make out a check in advance for the stipulated month’s rental, which amounted to a good deal thanks to Uncle Jem’s agile arithmetic, made her decide that perhaps, after all, she might be able to endure the man. Since the Protheroes had managed to stay friends with him all these years, he must have some redeeming features. If she failed to discover them, she could at least depend on Anora to shove him into line when he got too far out of hand.

  Chapter 3

  DESPITE EVERYBODY’S GOOD INTENTIONS, Sarah’s renovations didn’t get done overnight. Work that had started in late November was still incomplete when she realized that the holidays she’d been dreading, were actually upon her. This was all to the good. Whatever her many relatives might think of her scheme, and Dolph’s reaction had been among the politest, they couldn’t fault her for attending to business instead of accepting their sometimes well-meant invitations. Nobody expected cheery cards or gifts from a new-made widow. She ate a stodgy Christmas dinner with Aunt Appie and Uncle Samuel in Cambridge and spent a surprisingly riotous New Year’s Eve on Pinckney Street with Uncle Jem, Egbert, and Dolph, who got tiddly on champagne and recited all he could remember of “Gunga Din,” which fortunately was not much.

  On Sunday, January 2, Mariposa swept up the last of the shavings. On Monday, the third day of a new year that couldn’t possibly be any worse than the one just past, Sarah found herself seated at the head of her own dining room table wearing her mother’s slate blue dinner gown and Granny Kay’s bluebird brooch, being served in her public role as mistress from a dish she’d prepared in her private capacity as cook, by Charles doing his impersonation of a perfect Scottish butler in a noble English household.

  Sarah herself had a sense of total unreality about the performance, but her lodgers appeared satisfied that they were getting the genuine article. All except Professor Ormsby, who stuck to his hairy tweeds and brown turtle-neck, had dressed for the occasion. Mr. Quiffen was correct in black tie. His clothes were probably even older than Sarah’s gown, since he also was of a caste that didn’t believe in discarding anything that still had good wear in it just because the garment happened to be a few decades out of style.

  Mr. Porter-Smith, on the other hand, had blossomed forth in a wine-colored suit with satin lapels wide enough and shiny enough to skate on. The ensemble was completed by a matching tie the size and shape of an Amazon butterfly, and a ruffled pink shirt.

  Even he, however, was outshone by Mrs. Sorpende. She was dressed in black as usual, a long-sleeved, long-skirted gown of dull black crepe beautifully fitted to her ample though by no means unpleasing figure. This she had artfully enhanced by an emerald green chiffon scarf that veiled but did not quite conceal the low-cut neckline. In her elaborately dressed black hair was set an aigrette of green ostrich tips and jewels which, had they been real, would have given Sarah cause for alarm about burglars.

  Charles was trying to remain correctly impassive, but Sarah could sense his inward rejoicing at having such a classy dame to pass the crackers to. Professor Ormsby happened to glance up from his soup and once having glanced continued to gaze. No doubt Mrs. Sorpende’s alluringly draped corsage was an agreeable change from wind tunnels.

  Poor Miss LaValliere, though a pretty enough child in spite of the fact that she had subdued her frizz into a sort of Early Andrews Sisters hairdo, was hopelessly outshone. She was wearing a conventionally indiscreet tubelike affair of some clinging substance, but not even Charles bothered to peek down, her unfettered décolletage since it was obviously not worth the bother. Perhaps she was trying to discourage the treatment of woman as a mere sex object, Sarah thought. If so, she could hardly have chosen a more effective way.

  Be that as it might, Jennifer LaValliere was pouring badly needed money into the Kelling coffers and it was Sarah’s job to keep the girl happy. She started being gracious, whereupon Mrs. Sorpende and Mr. Porter-Smith both followed her lead. Miss LaValliere’s suddenly becoming the focus of attention annoyed Mr. Quiffen, who started acting like a superannuated and very spoiled baby. This landlady business was going to be more complex than Sarah had bargained for.

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p; Luckily she’d had plenty of experience at sticky family gatherings. She placated the old man by letting him bore her to excruciation with a diatribe against the Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority. He rode the MBTA a good deal, it seemed, for the express purpose of finding fault with it. His tale of being trapped for half an hour outside Kenmore Station on the first hot day of summer with the air conditioning not on and the heat in the car going full blast might have had more punch if it had been told eight months earlier. However, Sarah endured his whinings and snarlings with a practiced look of keen attention, an occasional shake of the head, and a few murmurs which Mr. Quiffen might take for whatever he chose to take them for.

  In fact, she hadn’t the faintest notion what he was saying most of the time. She was wondering if the beef stroganoff would hold out until everybody had got a fair share. She hadn’t realized professors of aeronautics ate so much. Thanks to some fancy footwork on Charles’s part, though, disaster was averted. If Professor Ormsby wound up with a great many noodles and a very little beef the second time around, he didn’t appear to notice, but shoveled in the last forkful with the same gusto as the first.

  There was homemade apple pie for dessert. “The apples came from our trees at Ireson’s Landing,” Sarah told the company, and they made suitably reverent noises. Little did they ken that they’d be eating plenty more of these apples before the winter was over. As soon as she’d been able to think straight enough to start planning her boardinghouse, Sarah and Mr. Lomax had scooped up every one that was still salvageable.

  At the end of the meal, Mr. Porter-Smith touched his napkin to his lips with a gracefully Edwardian flourish and said, as Sarah had been betting with herself that he would, “My compliments to the cook.”