by Holly Bush
Alice swept by him and seated herself on a settee inside the door. “I will wait here until Mr. Vickers arrives, unless you would prefer me to wait in his office.”
“Certainly not. I can’t just let a complete stranger make herself at home in Mr. Vickers’s office.”
“Then I will be satisfied to wait here,” Alice said, as she noticed a young man hovering near the staircase. She nodded toward him. “Someone is looking for you.”
The butler turned and looked back at her openmouthed. But he did not call to someone to have her removed. Alice studied the fine artwork on the walls and the marble floors and the beautiful wooden staircase to avoid looking at him. The butler took another look at her and walked to where the young man stood. After a long hour, the front door opened again, letting in a cold breeze and a tall, thin man.
The man looked at her and walked directly to the butler. They conferred and turned and stared at her for a moment. The man walked off toward the back portion of the house, and the butler came to her.
“That is Mr. Vickers,” he said. “He will see you at three o’clock.”
“Three o’clock? That is four hours from now!”
The butler opened the door. “That is the only available time he has.”
“Then I will stay here and wait for my appointment.” Alice lifted her chin and folded her hands in her lap.
“You cannot sit in Mr. Donahue’s foyer until then,” the butler said. “Come back when it is time for your appointment.”
Alice looked up at him. “It took me two streetcars to get here. By the time I got home, I would need to turn around and come back and would have wasted four fares in doing so. Thank you, but I prefer to stay here.”
The butler opened his mouth and then closed it and walked away. Alice watched the comings and goings of the house, and it seemed as routine as she was accustomed to. Young men on ladders wiping the gas lamp globes and young women dusting, all while one woman was arranging a massive display of flowers on a large round, marble table in the center of the foyer, its intricately carved wooden legs shining from polish.
Alice nodded off briefly, jerked awake, and looked around hurriedly to see if anyone had seen her head bob and her chin hit her chest. Then a young maid in a black uniform with a stiff white apron over it came toward her.
“Mr. Higgins said I was to offer you a glass of water and see if you needed the necessary, miss,” she said with a smile.
Alice took the water from the maid. “Mr. Higgins is the butler?”
“Yes, miss.”
“This is very kind of him. Please tell him I said thank you.”
At fifty-eight minutes past two o’clock, Mr. Higgins came for her. “Miss? If you will follow me.”
Alice followed the butler down a long corridor until he opened a door and allowed her to precede him inside. “Miss Porterman to see you, Mr. Vickers.”
“Thank you, Higgins,” the man said, without looking up.
Alice stood still at the doorway waiting for some acknowledgment that she was to come in the room. Finally, Mr. Vickers spoke.
“Do you intend to stand there for the next four hours as you have sat in the entranceway for the last four?”
Alice knew his type. Men who took satisfaction in making those beneath them squirm, especially women. She took a moment considering him, and making him wait for her to speak. “I am here to make an appointment with Mr. Donahue. Mr. Higgins said you make the schedule.”
“What is this about?”
“I would prefer to speak to Mr. Donahue,” she said.
“If you don’t tell me, you’re never going to speak to Mr. Donahue, and I’m a very busy man.”
“Maeve Porterman is my ma and has lived at 604 Cherry Street for nigh on twenty years. First renting from Mr. Jenkins and most recently—”
“I am well aware that Mr. Donahue owns 604 Cherry Street. Get on with it.”
Alice gritted her teeth to keep from screaming. “She was two dollars short on the rent for this month and told Mr. Nyturn she would pay him one dollar a week before months’ end, and he threw her and my sickly brother out. Out into the cold winter! I went to pay Mr. Nyturn and he said the house has already been rented. All of my ma’s things are still there and the locks have been changed!”
“Whatever misconceptions you have concerning the contract your mother signed when Mr. Donahue purchased the house is not my problem. Mr. Donahue is a business person. Not a church or a charity. Apply there if you are unable to meet your obligations.”
“She has lived there and paid rent faithfully and on time for all those years,” Alice said. “Fourteen days late in twenty years is hardly a failure to meet obligations.”
“Good day,” he said dismissively, and looked down at the open ledger on his desk. “Higgins will see you out.”
Angry tears formed in Alice’s eyes, and she marched forward and slammed her fist down on Vickers’s desk. “How dare you!” she shouted. “How dare you, you odious, selfish man! I demand to see Mr. Donahue.”
Vickers stood and pointed to the door. “Out! Get out before I call the police and have you removed!”
“I will not!” Alice cried, and leaned across the desk. “I demand to see Mr. Donahue and see for myself if he is as horrible a person as you say he is!”
Vickers went to the door and opened it. “Higgins! Get the police. I’ve an insane woman in my office who won’t leave. She may be dangerous.”
“I am not insane, Mr. Vickers! I am quite sane, but I am furious that you refuse even now to discuss the matter. How am I to get my ma’s things? My brother’s medicine is still in the house and it is very costly, and you will not let me have it?”
“What is the shouting all about?”
Alice turned to the corner of the room where a tall, younger man had appeared through a doorway behind Vickers’s desk that she had not noticed at first. He stood in the shadows and Vickers hurried toward him.
“Be very careful, sir. I have called for the police, but this woman is unstable and there is no predicting what she will do next.”
“I am not unstable!”
“Shhh,” the man said. “There is no need for either of you to shout.”
Vickers proceeded to tell the man that she was from a family of moochers who had come to badger him to allow them to live rent free and that he had told her that was impossible but now she refused to leave. Tears filled Alice’s eyes as Vickers continued to malign her. It was not true. None of it. The Portermans had always paid their way, even when it was difficult to do so. The tall man was listening to Vickers, and it occurred to her that no one was going to believe her. This was a fool’s errand she was on. She could make better use of her time looking for a new house for Ma and Jimmy and forget about their furniture and kitchen goods that had been passed down from Ma’s mother. Quilts and rockers could be bought or made, and Alice had better set her sights to the future and forget about the past and this blight on her family name. She wondered briefly if other landlords would refuse to rent to them because of this incident.
Alice opened her purse and pulled out two dollars. She laid the bills on Mr. Vickers’s desk and walked to the door. She was light-headed, she supposed from shouting and not having had anything to eat since early that morning. It was time to move on, although she dreaded telling her mother they would be unable to get in their house to get their belongings.
Mr. Vickers shouted at her. “You there. Stop! The police are coming for you.”
Alice turned back. “You wanted me to leave. I am leaving.”
“Now see here,” Vickers started.
Alice turned as a hand touched her elbow. It was the tall younger man.
“Please,” Alice said, and put a hand on the doorjamb to steady herself. “I am begging you. I have a sick brother and a ma who needs me. I came here to speak to Mr. Donahue, but it is clear that I will be unable to talk to him. Please. Just let me leave. It will be dark before I’m off the last streetcar.”
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br /> “I am Mr. Donahue, miss. What is it you would like to speak to me about?”
“You are Mr. Donahue?” Alice had in her mind a picture of an older man, fat as he was high, with a sweating bald head. This man looked nothing like what she’d imagined. He was tall, with neatly trimmed dark hair and brilliant blue eyes. He wore a black suit with a gray waistcoat and spoke softly.
“I am Mr. Donahue. Won’t you sit down, Miss . . .”
“Porterman. Miss Alice Porterman.”
“This is unwise, Mr. Donahue,” Vickers said. “Let me handle this. You are unaccustomed to dealing with riffraff.”
Mr. Donahue spoke but did not turn his face from Alice. “I think riffraff is an excessively strong word to use for a well-dressed young woman who is clearly not carrying off the silver, Mr. Vickers. I will speak to Miss Porterman in my office. Please ask Higgins to come there straightaway and Mrs. Erskine as well.”
Mr. Vickers stared at Alice as he left the room, and she felt a shiver trail down her back. Mr. Donahue motioned to her to follow him into the next room. She was seated in a chair near a roaring fire. Higgins arrived and was directed to have tea and coffee delivered. She was introduced to the head housekeeper, Mrs. Erskine, whom Mr. Donahue asked to stay for propriety’s sake as Miss Porterman was unescorted. Higgins returned with tea and coffee, and Mr. Donahue sat down opposite Alice’s chair.
“Higgins has told me you waited in the foyer since this morning. Are you hungry?”
Alice hated to feel any kindness or show pleasant manners toward this man as he was the one who’d thrown out her brother and her ma from their home. But she was starved and had finished her tea in a hurry. And he was being solicitous, handing her into her seat, pouring her tea, fetching the housekeeper to avoid any impropriety, and she just a maid, and paying rapt attention to her when she spoke. He looked at her, even now, with a quiet, reserved intensity, matching the soothing sound of his deep, but soft, voice. Alice reminded herself that he was also the one who employed Mr. Nyturn and Mr. Vickers.
“I am hungry, sir, but I will be fine,” Alice replied.
“Then I will have Mrs. Erskine send for a tray of sandwiches,” he said, and turned in his seat.
Alice shook her head. “That is kind of you; however, I would prefer not to break bread with you. This is only business, as Mr. Vickers reminded me.”
He looked at her solemnly. “Then continue on, Miss Porterman.”
* * *
Albert Donahue could barely concentrate on what this woman, this Alice Porterman, was saying. When he’d heard shouting from Vickers’s office, he couldn’t imagine what was happening, and then when he heard a woman’s voice, he had to see for himself who would inspire Vickers to such theatrics. And then he saw her. She was pale-faced and shaking, and none too steady on her feet. Alice Porterman was beautiful, with full red lips, dark auburn hair, and a smattering of freckles across her nose. She had large brown eyes, expressive, and now pensive as she spoke.
“Pardon me, Miss Porterman?” he said.
“My ma,” she said. “Won’t you please allow my ma to get my brother’s medicine and our things out of our house at 604 Cherry Street before you move in the new tenants?”
“Well, of course you may,” he said. “Why ever wouldn’t you gather your things before you move, Miss Porterman?”
She was staring at him quizzically. “Because your Mr. Nyturn told me that I was not allowed back in.”
“I’m sure you misunderstood. There is no reason to keep you from retrieving your belongings.”
“There is a reason, Mr. Donahue. The locks have been changed,” she said.
“I’ll have Mr. Nyturn deliver a key to you. What is your new address?”
Alice Porterman hesitated and looked down at her hands. She looked up at him a few moments later. “Please have the key delivered to Mrs. McKinnell at 602 Cherry Street. Our current situation is . . . difficult to find.”
“First thing tomorrow.”
Miss Porterman stood, and he did as well. He did not know what to say to this lovely, troubled woman. But he did know that when he looked at her, he could not stop himself from imagining what it would be like if she would smile at him. If there were no worry lines across her forehead. If she would just let him help her, but he did not know the whole of her troubles, and he was uncertain as to how to ask. It would be terribly forward as well. He could talk easily to women in normal circumstances, but this was not one of those.
“Thank you, Mr. Donahue,” she said, and turned to leave. She stopped as he followed her to the door. “I have left the two dollars on Mr. Vickers’s desk.”
He could not imagine why she left two dollars on Vickers’s desk, but he hoped not for the tea. “Allow me to get it for you. It is unnecessary.”
She looked up at him then and there were tears in her eyes and her mouth was set in a grim line. “You have plied me with your good manners but I am not so silly or shallow as to not understand your meaning. You are as dastardly as your employees, Mr. Donahue. Perhaps someday you will need some small kindness. I hope there is no one, no one willing to bestow even a penny or a smile for your comfort!”
Albert watched her hurry across his foyer and through the door Higgins had opened. She was furious with him! He had no idea why. But he would find out.
“Mr. Vickers?” he said, as he went into his secretary’s office.
“Yes, sir?”
“That young woman, Miss Porterman, said I was dastardly. Is there something going on that I am unaware of?”
“You shouldn’t be bothered, sir. She’s trouble, even though she is right looking and dressed fancy. The Portermans are squatters, and while you have a soft heart to these sorts, you must rely on me to make the difficult, and sometimes unpleasant, decisions.”
“Squatters? On one of my properties?”
Vickers nodded. “Yes, sir. I was just reviewing the account for 604 Cherry Street,” the man said, and turned a massive book around on his desk. “This line, right here, sir. They’ve not paid rent for going on three months. We cannot continue to turn a profit if tenants do not pay the agreed rent, sir.”
“She said she left two dollars on your desk. Why would she do that if she was behind three months?”
“I do not know, sir. You can never tell with the Scots. I deal with it every day,” Vickers said. “Now, do you have a moment to review what you’ll be doing at the bank tomorrow?”
Albert turned his attention to what Vickers was showing him, even knowing that his secretary used that tactic to distract him on occasion. He rarely delved into the everyday work of owning properties for rent, leaving the details to Vickers and those he paid to do the repairs and the advertisements and the collection of the rents. As he should, his grandfather had told him. When his parents died when he and his brother were just young boys, they’d been brought to live with their grandfather, Seamus Donahue, in Boston, coming all the way from Chicago by train.
He’d learned at the knee of his grandfather how to run a business and handle employees and customers alike. Seamus became a shoemaker in Ireland as a young man, and apprenticed at a fine shop in London, too. When he arrived in Boston with his new bride, he opened his store and had a long and successful career. Albert’s parents were both only children, and when they died within a year of each other, there were no aunts or uncles to go to, only a widowed grandfather they’d never met. But in short order, Albert, and his brother, Jack, adored Seamus, and he in turn loved the two spirited boys with every bit of his being. Jack had taken over Donahue’s and that business continued to prosper while Seamus oversaw the workings from a rocker in the front of the showroom. It was everything Albert could have wished for his brother.
Albert had never had an interest in shoes and stylish things, although he loved the leather workshops and their smell. Seamus sent Albert on to further his education in business when he was eighteen and financed his first real estate purchase when he was twenty. Ten years later, Albert ha
d accrued a small fortune, from his beginnings working side by side with the carpenters and plumbers and roofers he hired to fix his falling-down properties and make them habitable or sellable, to his current circumstances that took him to boardrooms and the highest echelons of business. That had kept him away from the day-to-day operations of his sixty-four rentals. And he wondered if it was time for him to check in.
Albert closely reviewed Mr. Vickers’s outlines for his bank meeting in the morning. He looked up at his secretary. “Everything looks very complete, Mr. Vickers. Thank you,” he said, and handed him an envelope. “Please have this delivered to Mr. Nyturn this evening yet.”
Vickers stared at the envelope. “Is this something that I can handle for you, sir?”
Albert shook his head. “No. I’m going to have Mr. Nyturn give Miss Porterman a key to 604 Cherry Street so that she may get her things.”
“That is not a good idea, sir,” Vickers said. “She may destroy it!”
“You have a very poor opinion of Miss Porterman, Mr. Vickers. What has she done to elicit such a response from you?”
“I suppose I was insulted, Mr. Donahue. That is a poor excuse for my behavior, however.”
“Insulted?”
“Miss Porterman was solicitous to you, sir, and knew her place. But the things she said to me before you came into my office, well, I shan’t repeat them, but I was insulted.”
“Really, Mr. Vickers? She just did not seem the type.”
“Of course not! She was a perfect lady to you and used pretty manners. I don’t believe for a moment that she did not know who you were as soon as you walked in the room. But she spoke to me in a contemptuous way and even threatened me. I am unaccustomed to such behavior!”
“She threatened you? Here in your offices? That is intolerable, Mr. Vickers, and I won’t allow it,” Albert said, and stood.
“I am humbled, Mr. Donahue. You are surely the best employer, as I have said many times.”
But Albert was not convinced. After Vickers had gone to his own home, Albert drew the account ledger down from the shelf it sat on and opened it. He began at the beginning, the first page, begun four years ago, when Vickers was hired. The entries were meticulously written. He was glad of it as the location listings increased with each year as he bought properties and his portfolio grew. He left his home on an errand to confirm his suspicions.