The Withdrawing Room (13 page)

“Yes, yes. I’m a dreadful old man and I do apologize, Mrs. Kelling. I give you too much trouble, too much trouble. Please come this way, Mrs.—er—”

The woman was sputtering, “Well, I must say!” and Mr. Hartler was soothing her with, “Yes, yes, all my fault. Terrible misunderstanding,” as he led her into the hall and courteously shut the door behind them.

Counting the family treasures was no doubt a hollow gesture at this point, but Sarah and Mariposa did it anyway. Nothing appeared to be missing, but it was clear that the Coalport vase wasn’t the only thing Mr. Hartler’s errant visitor had handled. Sarah worked as fast as she could, not being at all sure whether she was in fact within her rights in keeping the woman locked in the hall, and having no desire to find herself in the papers again, this time charged with kidnapping. It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes before she went out and released the lock.

“Well,” snapped the woman as she flounced out, “I’m certainly never coming here again!”

“Splendid,” Sarah replied. “I shall look forward to not seeing you.”

That was about the rudest she’d ever been in her life. She’d thought an explosion might relieve her feelings, but it didn’t. By six o’clock she had a raging headache. When Max Bittersohn phoned to say he wouldn’t be in to dinner, she almost burst into tears.

“But I was going to give you the carrot pudding,” she wailed, then realized what a fool she was making of herself and felt even worse.

“Save me a piece,” he replied. “I’ll be in sometime or other. I wish I could have given you more notice, but I just checked with my answering service and they tell me I’ve got to see a man about a Matisse.”

“That’s quite all right.”

It wasn’t all right. Sarah was appalled to realize how much she’d been counting on Mr. Bittersohn for moral support. Now what was she going to do?

I
T WAS A MERCY
she’d done all that cooking the previous afternoon. Otherwise, Sarah might never have got through dinner. She set things in motion as best she could, then went upstairs for a couple of aspirin and half an hour’s rest before having to begin the evening performance. The prospect of having to make polite conversation in particular with Mr. Hartler after the dressing-down she’d had to give him was almost more than she could face.

Maybe she ought to have gone in and apologized after his obstreperous visitor was gone; but, damn it, why should she? This was her house, not his.

With the help of Uncle Jem, Sarah had drawn up a tough, practical set of house rules. Mr. Hartler had got a copy as had everybody else. Guests were to be received publicly in the library or privately in the tenants’ own rooms. They were to come and go at reasonable hours, and to behave in a seemly enough fashion so that they wouldn’t be a nuisance to anybody else. They were to enter the dining room only if proper arrangements had been made and the extra fee had been paid.

Under no circumstances whatever did any outsider have the right to wander unescorted through the house handling the landlady’s personal possessions as if they were trinkets in a gift shop. If Mr. Hartler couldn’t abide by the rules, then Mr. Hartler would have to leave. And if Mrs. Sorpende had to be ejected for nonpayment of rent, then she could go and housekeep for him and he could buy her some new underwear.

Feeling a trifle better for her rest, Sarah took a shower, put on more make-up than she was accustomed to and a gray satin dress Aunt Emma had owned in younger, slimmer days, and went downstairs to be gracious if it killed her.

As she was crossing the hall into the library, Mr. Hartler burst through the front door, still in his daytime outerwear: tweed hat askew on his tumble of white hair, tweed-lined poplin storm coat buttoned awry, arms laden with bundles. “For you, Mrs. Kelling,” he panted. “Apologies. Horrible old man. Now I’m late. Must change at once. Shopping impossible this time of day. Should have realized. Wicked old man. Happy old man!”

He bounded into his room, leaving Sarah to open her presents. There were a dozen voluptuous white roses, a lavish flask of benedictine, a three-pound box of expensive chocolates. As an apology, she had to admit, this was no mean effort.

Once he’d rejoined the company in his usual evening attire, though, self-abasement was forgotten. His afternoon caller—not that unfortunate woman who had, as he put it, behaved so naughtily, but the other one—had brought in photographs of what purported to be no fewer than seven out of a set of sixty-two dining room chairs King Kalakaua had commissioned from a Boston firm in 1882 and never collected. Paeans of joy, Mr. Hartler was going to see them that very evening! He was so excited he didn’t think he’d be able to eat his dinner and he fervently hoped Mrs. Kelling would forgive him if he didn’t

Before they’d even got to the table, Sarah’s head was throbbing. Everybody was thoroughly fed up with Mr. Hartler and his sixty-two chairs. Miss LaValliere, who’d got her hair done that afternoon in an even more grotesque fashion than usual, went into sulks when she learned Mr. Bittersohn wasn’t there to be impressed. Mr. Porter-Smith became morose in consequence since he was, after all, a good deal closer to Jennifer’s age than Bittersohn was and besides, he’d seen her first.

Since Professor Ormsby never bothered to talk anyway, dinner could have become a total disaster were it not for the consummate tact and skill of the puzzling Mrs. Sorpende. She complimented Miss LaValliere on her coiffure and Mr. Porter-Smith on his erudition until she got them both to act civil. She jollied Professor Ormsby into telling a genuinely funny anecdote about something that had happened at a faculty meeting. She couldn’t get Mr. Hartler out of the clouds long enough to eat his dinner, but she did manage to tone down his raptures to endurable level.

By the time they got back to the library they were all in reasonably good humor with themselves and each other. Charles had presence of mind enough to serve the benedictine with the coffee even though Sarah forgot to tell him. That reminded her to open her opulent box of candy and pass it around. Bonhomie was restored, at least on the surface, and that was enough for her.

Nevertheless, Sarah made; her escape as soon as she decently could, and the party broke up with her. Professor Ormsby had another paper to read. Mr. Hartler got Charles to call him a taxi and charged off in hot pursuit of King Kalakaua’s chairs. Mr. Porter-Smith failed to interest Miss LaValliere in scaling the outside of the Bunker Hill Monument by moonlight, but she consented to display her new hairdo at the coffee house. Mrs. Sorpende was the only one not going anywhere, so Sarah left the chocolates conveniently close to her on the coffee table, as a tacit acknowledgment of her magnificent performance.

Either the sweets were too tempting, though, or not tempting enough. Sarah had barely got into a robe and done her face when she heard deliberate, stately footsteps on the stairs. Though she couldn’t have been less in the mood for company, she was impelled to open her bedroom door.

“Mrs. Sorpende, would you mind coming in for a moment?”

“Why, certainly.” With her usual serene courtesy but a tiny pucker between her well-plucked eyebrows, the older woman stepped into the room. “Was there something—”

“I simply wanted to thank you for taking over so marvelously this evening. I’m sure none of the others noticed because you did it so gracefully, but I can’t tell you what it meant to me.”

The tears Sarah had felt like shedding ever since Max Bittersohn’s anxiety-provoking phone call spilled over at last. She groped on her dressing table for a tissue and tried to stem the flow.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffled. “I didn’t mean to do this. It’s just that ever since I lost my husband—”

“Dear Mrs. Kelling, I do understand. Only I did most of my crying before mine went,” said Mrs. Sorpende in an unusual burst of self-revelation. “Believe me, if I was of any help to you at all this evening, I can only say that I’m grateful for the opportunity.”

What a darling she was! “Do sit down a moment if you have nothing better to do,” Sarah urged. “This slipper chair is quite comfortable, unless you think it’s too low. My mother-in-law often used it, and she was even taller than you.”

‘That beautiful, tragic woman,” said Mrs. Sorpende. “It’s strange to realize that I’m sitting where she sat. When I read in the papers—but I’m sure you’d rather talk of something else. Mr. Hartler’s new chairs, for instance?” She laughed in her gentle, pleasant way. “He is a real enthusiast, isn’t he? Though one does sometimes get the impression that his enthusiasm isn’t universally shared.”

“It certainly isn’t by me! As you may have gathered from all that largesse he was showering on me tonight, we had a bit of a set-to this afternoon; I had to straighten him out in no uncertain terms about the string of visitors he’s been having. They’ve been creating such a nuisance that I completely lost my temper. Now, of course, I wish I hadn’t.”

“I expect we all wish that sort of thing now and then, but think what a dull world this would be if everyone were perfect. You must find it difficult, having your lovely home filled with a motley collection of strangers like us.”

“Once in a while I do,” Sarah admitted, “but on the whole it’s far less difficult than trying to stay here by myself. I’d be lonely and worried about how to manage, and nervous about being alone in this big place. Now I’m so busy all the time that I don’t have a spare, moment to worry in. Anyway, this was never my home.”

“But I was under the impression—” Mrs. Sorpende caught herself. She’d almost fallen prey to vulgar curiosity.

“Oh, I’ve lived here ever since I was married, if that’s what you mean, but this had been my mother-in-law’s home for a great many years by then. Since she was both blind and deaf, we had to keep everything exactly as she herself had arranged it, so that she could find her way around. It’s hard to feel you really belong in a place when you don’t feel free to so much as pull a chair out of line. If you’ll forgive my mentioning chairs again.” They both had a little laugh over that, then Sarah had a bright idea. “Would you excuse me for one second? I’m just going to run into the studio. It used to be Aunt Caroline’s—that is, my mother-in-law’s boudoir.”

She came back with a huge armload of lace, georgette, and crepe de Chine. “Would you be terribly offended if I were to offer you a few of her things? You’ve been so sweet and I—it would please me if you were to have something that belonged to the house. She was a famous beauty in her day, you know, and when her husband was alive she always dressed in the most exquisite clothes. You wouldn’t believe what I found when I cleaned out her closets. Everything was far too big for me, of course, so I passed most of it out among her friends and relatives.”

Cousin Mabel had managed to wind up with the lion’s share as always, and what she intended to do with all those beaded chiffon evening gowns, only the Lord in His infinite wisdom knew.

“But there are still some negligees and nightgowns and undies, camisoles and those floppy-legged step-ins and so-forth, that are quite lovely. You have such a charmingly imaginative way of dressing that I’ve been thinking you might find them rather fun to play around with.”

In fact, Sarah had thought no such thing until a moment ago. It was just that she’d happened to find the garments in the basement room where they’d been stuck and forgotten after Aunt Caroline’s death. Rushing to get the room ready for Mr. Bittersohn, she’d thrust them back upstairs in the former boudoir because she couldn’t think offhand what else to do with them. Now, watching Mrs. Sorpende’s face aglow at sight of the soft colors and rich fabrics, she was grateful for her oversight.

“Oh, Mrs. Kelling! I’m simply overwhelmed. Are you sure you care to part with these wonderful things?”

“Quite sure. I’d never use them myself, and they’re not the sort of stuff one cares to pass on to outsiders. I only hope some of them fit.”

“They will, I can assure you, one way or another. I’m very clever with my needle. Such lovely, lovely materials! I feel like the Queen of Sheba just touching them. Or should I say Queen Liliuokalani?”

“No, don’t. I used to think that was such a lovely name, but if Mr. Hartler says it one more time, I’m planning to throw a full-scale tantrum.”

They giggled again like two well-brought-up little girls who knew perfectly well they shouldn’t be making fun of nice, nutty old Mr. Hartler. Then Mrs. Sorpende said she must go along upstairs and let Mrs. Kelling get some rest. Knowing what she really meant was that she couldn’t wait to try on her new hole-free underwear, Sarah let her go.

Surprisingly, the headache was almost gone, too. Sarah finished her preparations for the night, got into bed, and had read less than a paragraph of Schopenhauer before she switched off the light and drifted into sleep.

S
ARAH WAS HAVING A
lovely dream of being in a public restaurant with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The Prince was singing along with the orchestra in an extempore serenade to the Queen, who was wearing a lovely frock and matching hat in moss green and looking quite lovely, terribly embarrassed, and tremendously gratified as who wouldn’t. Then Sarah realized the drumming noise she was hearing didn’t come from the orchestra accompanying His Royal Highness but from somebody’s loud tapping at her bedroom door.

She sat up, switched on the bed lamp, and snatched for her robe. The time, according to her alarm clock, was twenty-seven minutes past one.

“Who’s there? What’s the matter?”

“It’s me.” Charles must be badly shaken. “You better come. We got the fuzz downstairs.”

“The what? Oh, my God!”

Sarah couldn’t find the sleeves of her bathrobe, got her slippers on the wrong feet and had to change them, made an ineffectual sweep at her hair with a brush, then rushed downstairs. Police at this hour weren’t selling tickets to the Policemen’s Ball. Was it Uncle Jem? One of the boarders? Was he, or she, in jail, in the hospital, at the morgue?

By now Sarah was practically on first-name terms with everybody in the division. “Hello, Sergeant McNaughton,” she sighed. “What’s the matter now?”