A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies (17 page)

The thrill in her heart from having given the horses free rein. The snow-covered branches. The cold. The feel of the runners of her sleigh beneath her, like extensions of her own two legs, which were working again, which could hold her as legs were supposed to, not just be weirdly attached to her like two dead heavy things.

Hays’s hat on his head, black, about to fall off. His head bending down. His hands on the sides of the woman’s coat, one hand at each hip.

His body leaning toward hers, like a dancing partner. You could always tell, Charlotte’s mother-in-law said, when you see two people on a dance floor, even if they’re strangers to you, which category of relationship they belong to: married a long time; married recently; engaged to be married; on the verge of being engaged; unromantic friends who want to dance with each other because they want to be close to the people they wish they were with, who were dancing with someone else; first- or second-timers; and a man and a woman who should not have been dancing together, but did it anyway.

Hays’s hands were on the woman in the manner of the last of the categories.

Arthur didn’t have a coat on, just the green jacket, and no hat, and she didn’t need to lean toward him to kiss him; he was taller than she was, although not by much, just a couple of inches.

She put her hands at the sides of Arthur’s waist, at his hips. Then she kissed him, and he kissed her back, and she kissed him again, and he did, too. The pale white of the walls, and the feeble gray light from the rooftop windows—they’d just passed another shaft, where the glass was covered with snow—were very nice, she decided, very ethereal, like the look and the light of a made-up place in a story or a picture, probably not even on earth.

“The roof windows are very snowy,” she said, as if that were the reason she didn’t want to let go of him.

M
rs. Alcorn had her own housekeeper, Miss Blanchette. The dominant impression one had of Miss Blanchette was that she was as sturdy and hardy as a tree.

She was as solid as a trunk, and her skin had a coarse, barklike texture. Her hair was tightly pulled back. The knot of it at the back of her neck was like a tree knot. Her simple, high-collared wool dress—without a bustle, although she seemed to be the age for it—had no seam or fold that wasn’t absolutely necessary. It was so long that it not only covered her ankles but her shoes as well, so that it seemed she had no feet, but moved about in a rolling, sliding way, as if the hem of the dress propelled her. The dress was exactly the shade of her hair: dull bronze-brown, like an oak leaf.

She was a very large woman. She was so broad and so muscular, and so simply big, it would seem that she suffered from a glandular problem; or it would seem that her parents must have both been giants. Her body had no excess flesh. You had the idea that every part of her was designed for practicality, and for low, no-fuss maintenance.

Maybe she was to Mrs. Alcorn what Moaxley was to her husband, but it was hard to tell what her functions were. She didn’t appear to be doing anything at all. The meals at 340 Eustis—that was how Miss Blanchette referred to it—were sent over from the hotel kitchen; the hotel maids took care of the cleaning, the fires and coal supply, and whatever rough work needed doing. That much was evident, as two maids went scurrying past Charlotte, as soon as she’d come, to go back to the hotel through the maze, with empty coal buckets in their hands and canvas bags of dirty laundry.

Being quiet seemed to be the one thing Miss Blanchette was interested in, as in, “We live quietly here at Three-forty Eustis, Mrs. Heath, singularly quietly.” And, “Three-forty Eustis has already had lunch, but we can quietly ring for something for you.” She said the address as if it were a person, and Mrs. Alcorn’s second-floor rooms were the only ones in the building, and perhaps in all of Boston; but then of course, to Miss Blanchette, they were.

Charlotte liked her immediately, but she could understand why Arthur hadn’t mentioned her existence, and why he’d physically shrunk from any contact with her. She was definitely an intimidating lady. Arthur was quick about leaving, and never looked twice at Charlotte, and acted as though she really were a package and he’d delivered it.

There was no sign of Lucy Alcorn. “Three-forty Eustis is in the act of resting,” said Miss Blanchette by way of explanation, as if Charlotte should rest, too, while Miss Blanchette kept up a sort of vigil. That seemed to be her job, Charlotte decided: to stand vigil between the hush and heat of this apartment and all the chaos of the outside world.

You had the idea that the slightest provocation was the same as an assault to the senses—a sleigh going by in the road, with a driver’s muffled shouts to his horse; the din of exuberant schoolboys heading to the Common with sleds; a boy hawking newspapers; the ringing of church bells; piano music coming over through the walls from the hotel, as the lady pianist was practicing; sounds of clattering and thumping from below, in kitchens and sculleries, rising up through the shafts, as if the pulleyed dumbwaiter mechanisms for sending and receiving things from the depths of the building were only there to carry noise.

The way Miss Blanchette glided about was sentrylike. She didn’t seem to be waiting for anything. She wasn’t nervous or anxious. She was doing her job.

The maid Georgina—Mrs. Petty’s assistant—came over with a fresh warm meat pie for Charlotte’s lunch, and with Mrs. Petty’s Edith riding her hip. The baby was fast asleep, her head tucked into the hollow between the maid’s fleshy shoulder and her breast. One fat pink hand was splayed out on Georgina’s ample bosom. When Edith sighed and wiggled in sleep, her fingers worked at a breast as if it were bread dough, but the maid didn’t seem to notice.

“Mrs. Petty said you have sniffles,” said Charlotte, although in fact Georgina looked glowing with health. “I hope they don’t turn into something awful.”

“It wasn’t sniffles. It was me holding back my temper so as not to let loose in the kitchen at how sometimes she’s so…so…”

Charlotte finished the sentence. “Horrible,” she said. “A tyrant. You don’t have to tell me. I used to live with her.”

The meat pie was stupendous: chunks of roasted chicken and beef in a rich dark sauce, in a thick, buttery crust, with onions and celery and potatoes. Maybe Mrs. Petty was Charlotte’s friend after all. Back at the household it had been her favorite meal, and when she’d got sick, she was given pies whenever she asked, sometimes three times a day, ham, rabbit, lamb, whatever she wanted, all sized-down into tarts because she really hadn’t much of an appetite, and would often let Sophy and Momo have them, or her horses at the window.

There was enough of this meat pie for two or three people and Charlotte ate it all, at the oblong, highly polished table in the big front room of 340 Eustis. The maid had been careful to spread out a cloth to put Charlotte’s plate on, and she told Charlotte, with a look, to treat the surface of the table as if it would be destroyed forever if she dropped one crumb on it or left one mark or smear. Charlotte got the message. She knew how to eat like a lady.

The floor was carpeted extensively by a thick and subdued Oriental rug. The draperies, opened but not completely, were the same dark heavy stuff that hung at the hotel windows. There were six pictures on the walls and they were all Miss Singleton’s and not a one of them had anything it in that was breathing and alive: a glass of milk on a windowsill, and you knew from the color the milk was sour; a bunch of flowers well past their prime, scattered on a table that was much like the one where Charlotte sat; an ink drawing of a hand, just a hand, with the fingers curling as if to pick something up; another brown wagon in a grain field, harvested and cut to the stubble; a chalky, beige-and-black drawing of a tall, lean pine tree that didn’t have any branches; and a small oil of a man’s black overcoat on a hook on a dark-green wall, which was probably inspired by Moaxley.

“You like the pictures?” said Miss Blanchette. Even when she wasn’t whispering, the tone of her voice made you think she was, but the apartment was so quiet, it wasn’t necessary to strain to hear anything she said.

“I like them very much.”

“I find them,” said Miss Blanchette, “annoying.”

Charlotte wondered what Miss Singleton would think of that. She would probably agree. “Annoying because there’s no people?”

“No people I don’t get bothered about. They are just too plain. Too bare.”

Miss Singleton would agree with that, too, and she might add, “That’s the point.”

It was a comfortable room, if overly warm. There was a coal fireplace and two stoves, at maximum heat. The ceiling was high, and had been fitted with those panels of metal-lined wood that were said to be useful for insulation. Charlotte’s father-in-law had arranged to have them in the conservatory and in his study. There hung overhead such a heavy layer of risen, trapped heat, you had the sense it might burst, like a thundercloud, disastrously.

“I was wondering,” whispered Miss Blanchette, turning from the window that looked out on the street, “if that man outside, across the road, watching the hotel, is connected in any way to the fact that you are here at Three-forty.”

There was nothing to do but go and look.

Dickie! Even if you didn’t know he was a policeman, in his coat and boots and felt hat, you would know. “Policeman” was written all over him.

“That’s a detective inspector with the Boston Police,” Charlotte said. “I don’t know if he has anything to do with me, or not. I knew him a long time ago, when I was still at school. I only just saw him again accidentally, when Mr. Alcorn asked me to speak to him the other day, as a guest.”

“Oh, you’re the lady he put out against the Suppressionists. Nasty bunch, those. Full of bile and as narrow in their minds as a splinter. I’d give my teeth to have them marched off the face of the earth.”

It was strange to hear that from someone who looked like Miss Blanchette, the very embodiment, it would seem, of a person who was a member, a founding member, even, of the Boston Society for the Suppression of Vice, or whatever it was they called themselves. Charlotte’s respect for Miss Blanchette shot up a little higher. Miss Blanchette seemed to feel that a detective across the road, now stomping his feet and shaking himself from the cold, and putting his hands in his pockets—poor Dickie—was not something to be worried about.

“If the Suppressionists think they’ll get a case against Mr. Alcorn,” said Miss Blanchette, “they have another thing coming. It’s not as though the hotel is a book they can condemn from the stores, and the libraries, like something sinful, so no one reads it, when everyone should.”

“Like that poet Walter. Or, Walt.”

Miss Blanchette brightened. “Actually, and this is no important detail, it’s customary to speak of a poet by using the surname, that is, if one knows it.”

Charlotte didn’t feel embarrassed at the correction. “Like that poet Whitman,” she said.

“Yes. But I suppose if he were here with us, in spite of what’s standard, he would very much want us to call him Walt.
Leaves of Grass
.”

Charlotte didn’t know if that was the actual title of Walt’s book. It didn’t matter. She’d only seen it in French, but it made sense that Miss Blanchette would be familiar with anything ever written that had to do with leaves, not that Hays had said there were trees in those poems.

Miss Blanchette knew Walt well and began quoting, and her voice with its built-in hush made the words sound even more thrilling than they were. Had someone told her how Charlotte felt about horses? How could that be? Maybe she was one of those people who had the ability to sense things that are not said out loud, or maybe it was just a coincidence.

“ ‘A gigantic beauty of a stallion,’ ” said Miss Blanchette. “ ‘Fresh and responsive to my caresses.’ ”

“Oh!” said Charlotte, fixated.

Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,

Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,

Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.

His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,

His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around.

This was Walt? Why hadn’t she read those lines before? Why hadn’t Hays read them to her? He wouldn’t have done half so well as Miss Blanchette, but still. Charlotte wouldn’t have cared if a poem was in French: if it was about horses, she’d have got the meaning just fine.

“Oh!” said Charlotte again. “That was beautiful, and it doesn’t even rhyme.”

Miss Blanchette smiled. “Maybe that was why they banned it. Would you like to hear some more?”

“Did you memorize a lot of it?”

“It’s a very great favorite of Three-forty Eustis.”

“Yes, please.”

“Have you any particular favorite?”

“Are there any about trees?”

Miss Blanchette looked down for a moment, thinking, then said, “How about the one about the oak in Louisiana?”

“That would be lovely.”

She took a deep breath, as a singer would. And then the door at the other end of the room was slowly being opened, and the woman who was Lucy Alcorn appeared at last, and Miss Blanchette forgot about the poem.

The change in her was so vivid, and so instantaneous, it was like looking at a brown old tree-fallen leaf on the ground, which was being transformed to a spring-green one, and leaping back onto a branch. When she glided across the room to Mrs. Alcorn, which she did at once, it was as if a whole tree sprouted new leaves. It was as if that naked pine tree in Miss Singleton’s painting took on branches, and those poor wilted flowers sprang back to life, and the milk in that glass had just one second ago been poured, and that hand started moving, and that wagon went rolling down the field, and that coat jumped off the hook onto someone’s back.

“This is Mrs. Heath, who Harry told you about, dear,” said Miss Blanchette, and Charlotte, standing there, felt a silly urge to curtsy, as if she were being presented to some royal member of some European court.

Mrs. Alcorn was a beautiful woman, the way a beautiful actress or singer is, on a stage, but even more so, because it wasn’t a stage, she wasn’t made up for a part: she was beautiful in her bones and her skin the way a flower is, on a stem.

She stood lower in height than Charlotte, but it seemed she was much, much taller. She carried herself with her back straight up and held her own beside Miss Blanchette, when you’d think Miss Blanchette would have dwarfed her. Arthur had said she wasn’t all gauzy, and she wasn’t: she was luminous, in a white dress and a pale yellow shawl. Her hair was thin and white-blond, crinkly and curly, neither pulled back nor hanging freely, but tied loosely off her face with a ribbon at the back of her neck.

She had a china-cup delicacy and pale blue eyes, so pale they were almost gray, and her skin, what was showing of it—which was really only her face, for her dress was as high-collared, and as long on her, as Miss Blanchette’s was on her—had a pearly, moony translucence, without a line or a wrinkle, just purely smooth.