The Maid's Quarters (3 page)

“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 had 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.

Chapter Two

“I’m going to Mrs. McKinnell’s as
soon as I am dressed,” Alice said to her mother, who was busy heating
        
up
a frying pan to brown leftover ham.

“I’ll be down with Jimmy as soon as he’s eaten. Maybe Bet
will have some boxes for us to pack some things, or should we send one of her
boys to the grocer for a box?”

“But where are we going to put everything?” Alice asked, as
she brushed her hair and wound it in a tight bun.

“Your da was here last night. He said there’s a shed behind
the boardinghouse that is dry and we can stack some of the furniture inside.”

All Alice could think of was that he would probably sell it
all before they were settled somewhere else, but it mattered little if it was
sold or if she had nowhere to store it. Their things would be ruined or in some
other home, and not in their possession either way. But she had promised
herself to try and think the best rather than the worst, and to give her da a
chance, if only when talking to her ma about him.

“How is he feeling? Did he eat anything?”

Maeve turned to her. “Oh yes, Alice. He ate and said he was
feeling a bit better because of it. He asked me to particularly thank you for
the meals.”

“We played three games of checkers, we did, Alice,” Jimmy added
from his bed. “I won every time!”

“Did you now, Jimmy?” Alice said, and looked at her ma,
whose eyes were shimmering with unshed tears as she stared down at her boy in
his bed. Alice buttoned her coat and drank down the coffee her mother handed
her. “I want to be at Mrs. McKinnell’s when Mr. Nyturn comes with the key.”

Maeve nodded. “Yes. And hopefully Bet will keep Mr.
McKinnell in the house until the agent is gone. We don’t need to be the cause
of misery for that family as they’ve been good to us all these years.”

“Mr. McKinnell?”

“He was nigh on furious when we were put out. He told Bet
he’d be happy to find Nyturn in the middle of the night and make him see reason.”

“There’ll be no fisticuffs today, Ma.”

“You’re a good girl, Alice. I am ever so glad you’re here.”

Alice hurried down the street, pulling her coat close around
her. When she rounded the corner to Cherry Street, she saw a crowd gathered in
front of her house and Devon McKinnell running to her.

“Miss Alice! The men are tearing up your house! Hurry!”

“What?” she shouted, and looked past the boy to her home.
“Tearing up the house?”

Alice ran the last half block, one hand holding up her
skirts and the other on her hat. Mr. and Mrs. McKinnell were there and other
neighbors had gathered round, all shouting as the front door banged open and
dishes hit the porch atop clothes and pots and books and furniture. Alice could
not believe her eyes.

“Stop!” she shouted, and ran up the steps and into her home.
“Stop! What are you doing?”

Nyturn turned to her from directing men as they ransacked
the kitchen. “Maybe learn to keep your mouth shut and stay away from your
betters, you mouthy piece of baggage.”

“Stop these men this instant!”

“Or you’re going to see my fists coming at you, Nyturn,” Mr.
McKinnell said from beside her.

“You’ve no right to do this! I’ll send for the police!”
Alice cried.

“Go ahead girl!” Nyturn said, as he directed men to the
second floor. “Go ahead. We’ll see what the coppers say about moochers trying
to steal out of one of Mr. Donahue’s houses.”

“We’re not moochers! And Mr. Donahue told me yesterday that
you were to come here and give me the key so I could get our things.”

“But Mr. Donahue ain’t here now, is he, girl?” Nyturn said,
and looked about at the burly men that he’d brought with him. “What are you
standing here staring for? Get the sledgehammer and break up this furniture!”

Mr. McKinnell charged Nyturn full on, and the two men
tumbled to the floor. Another neighbor, young Robbie Duff, heard McKinnell’s
shouts and ran in, taking on two of Nyturn’s men. Mrs. McKinnell smacked the
third man in the head with a pot. She called to Alice.

“Help me, Alice. We’ll drag this no good, worthless bit of a
man out on to the street.” Bet McKinnell straightened when Alice’s ma passed
them. “Get any valuables you have, Maeve. They’re aiming to tear it all apart,
and Bert and Robbie can only hold them off so long.”

Alice took hold of the man’s pant leg, while Mrs. McKinnell
took the other and began dragging him out the door. She saw her mother
frantically pulling drawers out of the china cabinet lying on its side. She
hurried back into the house to help her mother, carrying an empty box Mrs.
Spretz had handed her, intending to help her gather any valuables that were
still unbroken. She stopped suddenly, seeing her ma kneeling on the floor,
sobbing, and piecing together a cream pitcher and its handle.

Maeve Porterman looked up at her daughter. “All of my ma’s
furniture and linens in pieces. This came from the old country, too, you see.
It was the last of her china,” Maeve said between the shouts and gasps of men
fighting with fists.

“Come, Ma,” Alice said. “Bring it with you then, put it in
here. Where is Jimmy’s medicine?”

“I’ve got it,” Maeve said, as she struggled to her feet.

Alice wrapped an arm around her mother as they hurried out,
stepping over and around debris on the floor. Once outside, Maeve went to Jimmy,
who was crying and being comforted by Mrs. Spretz as he sat in the cart he was
being wheeled in. Alice turned around, went inside, and called to Mr. McKinnell
and Robbie Duff.

“Come out now,” she said to them. “There is nothing more to
be done here, and I don’t want to see you hurt on our account. Come along now.”

The men contented themselves with shouting obscenities at
each other as they tumbled out of the house. Nyturn was telling one of his men,
now holding his jaw, to hurry to the police station.

“This rabble’s got to learn their lesson! Hurry now and get
there and back with a copper before these ruffians run off.”

Mr. McKinnell pointed to his house. “I live right there.
Tell him to come see me and I’ll tell him what happened, I will.”

Maeve was crying as she held Jimmy in her arms, a blanket
tucked around the boy. Jimmy was staring at their house and patting his
mother’s arm. Mrs. Spretz and Mrs. McKinnell were shouting at the men while
wielding rolling pins and frying pans. Other neighbors were calling out their
dissatisfaction with hisses and boos. Nyturn and his men were pointing fingers
and hollering back at the crowd, threatening to find out which of them rented
from Mr. Donahue, so that they could be thrown from their houses, too.

“Stop!” Alice cried, and the crowd quieted and looked at her.
“Stop and settle your tempers. It is over, and there is nothing to be done
about it. Go back to your homes.”

“Go ahead and leave! The police will find you!” Nyturn
shouted.

“The police?” a voice said. “What is going on here?”

Alice turned and saw Mr. Donahue. He tipped his hat to her
and to the other women standing nearby. She was struck, as she was yesterday
but refused to think on it at the time, that this Albert Donahue was a gentle
man. Tall and lean, but with broad shoulders, he towered over most of the men,
all but Mr. McKinnell, who was eyeing him now with distrust as were most of her
neighbors. Donahue was staring at her and walking toward her, as if she were
the only person on the street and there were not pots and pans and bits of
chairs strewn about his feet and the yard. She wanted to look away, away from
the intensity of his gaze, but she could not.

“They’ve ransacked the property, Mr. Donahue,” Nyturn said
then. “We couldn’t stop them, and they turned on us. Wild animals they are.
Look at poor Williams over there with his teeth near gone.”

“They’re gone,” Robbie Duff called out, and held up a fist
full of teeth. “He’s got a soft mouth.”

“What malarkey!” Mr. McKinnell shouted. “Alice stopped to
tell us last night that the agent would be dropping off a key here so she’s
able to get her brother’s medicine. I’ve been on the lookout, staying back from
Mass, but no one knocked at my door and I didn’t know nothing till I heard
crashing and shouting from the Porterman house. Is
your
men that done this with no provocation!”

“No provocation? They’re squatters! Behind on their rent and
only here as long as they were because of your good graces,” Nyturn said. “We
came to salvage what furniture and wares we could to sell to make up for the
lost revenue and found them inside tearing the place to pieces.”

The crowd groaned and shouted their indignation. Mr. Donahue
turned to Nyturn. “They were inside ahead of your arrival making this mess?”

“They were!” Nyturn said, and looked at his crew of men.

“Throwing furniture out the door as we got here, sir!” one
of the men said. “We just tried to stop them.”

Donahue nodded and looked around the yard and at Alice as
she knelt beside her ma and Jimmy. Her ma stood, wiping her face of dirt and
tears with the edge of her apron as she did.

“Are you Mr. Donahue?” Maeve asked.

“Let it go, Ma,” Alice said, and rose to hold her arm.

Maeve shook off her daughter’s hand. “I won’t be silent,
Alice. This man, all nice in his fancy clothes, will hear the truth from me, he
will, and not some fairy tale this villain is telling.”

“Mind your place in front of your betters, woman,” Nyturn
said.

Mr. Donahue turned and stared at his employee. “I’m willing
to listen to her, Mr. Nyturn. Thank you for your input.”

Maeve waited till he looked at her and reached down into her
apron pocket. “Here. Here is your two dollars. That is what I was behind on the
rent, and I won’t have you or your men calling me a moocher. I won’t!”

“Two dollars? Nothing compared to what she owes!” Nyturn
said. “The police should be here any minute, sir. Let them straighten this
lying thief out.”

“I am not a thief! And here are the receipts to prove it!”
Maeve said, as she dug into the box she’d carried out of her house. “Here!
Look! Here are the slips signed by him there.”

Maeve’s hands shook as she sorted through the small pieces
of paper. Alice sought to catch them before they landed on the frozen mucky
ground and straightened one out while her ma handed them to Mr. Donahue.

“This is what your agent gives me every month when I’ve paid
the rent. I have them all,” Maeve said.

Nyturn picked one off the ground, looked at it, and laughed.
“Why these only say the date. Not the amount given or who it was given to or
anything. Are you daft, woman?”

“You gave me one of these every month when I paid, don’t
deny it!”

Nyturn shrugged. “Then tell me what it says.”

“I can’t,” Maeve said quietly. “I can’t read and you know
it. You gave me one of these every time I paid and told me it was my receipt.”

“There’s nothing on this slip, ma’am, that indicates the
amount you paid,” Donahue said as he stared at the paper. “I’m sorry, but they
don’t mean anything.”

Alice was doing all she could to keep from screaming and
stomping her feet at the injustice of it all. But she would not give these men
the satisfaction of seeing her acting like she had yesterday when her temper
had got the best of her. She looked down at her brother, huddled under a thin
blanket, and thanked the dear Lord that she wasn’t in this situation
without
any money or means to get new
housing. It could have been so much worse. She would raise herself above that
behavior as there was little she could do about it anyway. She looked up to see
Mr. Donahue staring at her. Just then there was a loud crash on the path
between her house and the McKinnells’, and a head popped out of the second-story
window.

“Torn up all the sheets and clothes and chopped the little
bit of furniture there was, boss,” a man shouted from above.

All eyes were on Nyturn. “I don’t know the man! He must be
one of theirs,” he said, and sneered, but the agent must have felt the
attention turning to him and began to slowly back up to the street.

“Are we near done, Mr. Nyturn?” the man shouted from the
window. “I’ve not eaten since sunrise.”

Donahue walked to Nyturn and spoke low enough that no one
else could hear. From behind a carriage came a large man who took Nyturn by the
arm and led him away. His workers scattered. Mr. Donahue turned to her.

“Miss Porterman. Let us inspect the damage in your home and
see how I can go about making restitution,” Mr. Donahue said, and turned to the
crowd. “I don’t condone violence, especially when it is used against any of my
employees or in this case, former employees, however, I am glad to see that
someone was here to help these two women in view of this injustice.”

“What do you mean,
restitution
?”
Alice asked.

“I’ve given you your two dollars. Is there a penalty?” Maeve
asked.

Donahue shook his head. “No, ma’am. I intend to pay you for
the damage to your things or replace them. And unfortunately, you are not the
only ones whom Mr. Nyturn has swindled, which I discovered last night. Your
explanation and receipts confirmed what I’d thought. Won’t you allow me to come
inside with you and get you both out of the cold?”

“I’ll take your brother to my house while you go inside,
Alice,” Mrs. McKinnell said. “Carry him, Bert. He looks all tuckered out.”

“Thank you, Bet,” Maeve said. “This cold air isn’t good for
him.”

Alice went directly to the back stoop where the firewood and
some coal were stored. She’d have to get the broken windows covered quickly.

Donahue came outside and took the load of wood from her arms
“I’ll get it started, miss. Go inside with your mother.”

Alice found her ma, Mrs. McKinnell, and Mrs. Spretz,
righting furniture, sweeping and trying to piece together what was broken and
strewn across the floor. Mr. Donahue came in carrying the wood, and some coal,
and lit the stove. He pulled a small pad of paper from an inside pocket of his
jacket and the stub of a pencil.