Episode 3: Tea on the Terrace and Bedlam in the Foyer

Chapter 4

Agnes found Vera stretched on the terrace, her small feet clad only in white stockings and propped on a chair. Two cast-off yellow boots lay on their sides, as their owner leaned back with a smile on her lips, surveying the splashing fountain, the riot of pink roses around its basin, and the crisp, green fields beyond. Mr. Schmidt stood examining the foliage of a caladium in a nearby urn. The pink-and-white Newport teapot sat on the table flanked by half-finished cups of tea with a rose petal floating in each.

            “So, am I keeping up the old place to your liking?” smiled Agnes as she stepped up behind her aunt and kissed her warmly on the cheek.

            With a small shriek, Vera leapt to her feet, clasping her niece in an embrace whose strength belied Vera’s small size.

            “My dear! How impossibly beautiful everything is! And you don’t know how desperately I needed this refreshment, away from that infernal city. I swear it’s twenty degrees cooler here. And just look at your roses! They were babies the last time I was here, and that was only a year ago. What have you been feeding them? But how are you, my dear? You look irresistible, as ever. What a wonderful dress, and it suits you perfectly—Paris?”

            “New York.”

            “Good girl! I very much support buying from our own. And our designers have gotten so good at copying what’s being done on the Continent, why buy foreign merchandise?”

            “Your aunt has become quite the patriot these days,” Mr. Schmidt put in, walking forward with his hands behind his back—a posture that had grown more difficult in recent years with his increasing circumference.

            “What do you mean, ‘these days’?” frowned Vera. “You forget whom you’re talking about.”

            Agnes put out her hand. “Frederick, how lovely to see you again.” Agnes had looked forward to seeing Frederick Schmidt almost as much as seeing her aunt. His quiet firmness and simple wisdom acted like an anchor, steadying any situation and balancing Vera’s flights of feeling. Even when he sat and said nothing, his generous frame and settled gaze made people feel they could relax into his good hands.

            “And you, Agnes. I will reinforce your aunt’s admiration with my own: your gardens look sumptuous. I congratulate you and your gardener.”

            “The praise goes entirely to Ned,” smiled Agnes, sitting and pouring herself a cup of tea. The two visitors resumed their seats. “He is a genius with a spade. I give him some sketchy ideas about what I like and what I don’t like, and he makes our landscape bloom like a magician. Also, this spring has given us a perfect balance of sun and rain. But it is mostly Ned. Do you see that patch of purple bells there? They are supposed to flower only every other year, but Ned has somehow managed to make them bloom every summer for the past three years. And speaking of Ned, he is probably at work inside the house now, trying to bag the snake that slipped in this morning.”

“Oh, my!” exclaimed Vera. “Do you know what kind?”

“The quiet, hard-to-catch kind. And it’s black.”

“How large?” asked Frederick.

“Bigger than a garter snake. I was so foolish to leave the doors open. And not only that, but Claudia decided to drop in this morning, of all times.”

“Ah, speaking of serpents . . .” said Vera.

“Do you know, she said the most remarkable thing. She asked if Brookside were for sale!”

“What?” cried Vera.

“Yes, she said she had ‘heard’ that I might be selling. Then she called the house old-fashioned and invited me to drop by Beaujour to see all the wondrous changes she has made there. As though I would ever be caught on her property!”

            Fettles appeared between the open French doors. “Madam, lunch will be ready in fifteen minutes. Would you like to take it in the dining room?”

            Vera interceded. “Oh, I can’t possibly leave this terrace! Can we eat right here, Agnes?”

            “Fettles, my aunt has spoken. We shall enjoy lunch where we are. Any news on finding . . . ?”

            “Not yet, madam,” Fettles confessed as he noiselessly gathered up the extra tea things. “But Ned and Isaiah have it cornered in the kitchen.” After brushing the crumbs from the table, he retreated into the darkness of the house.

            “I wouldn’t worry about Mrs. Thorne,” Vera resumed. “She is probably bored and just wants to stir something up—anything to occupy her tiny mind. But Fettles is looking well. Is the tremor any worse?”

            “No, thank heavens, and I can’t bear to think that one day it might be. He is simply indispensable. And you, Vera, you grow more glamorous every time I see you. You must share your secret with me—I am going to need it very soon. For now, tell me how was your trip. You must have left the city early or made exceptionally good time?”

            “Your aunt has been so excited at the prospect of seeing you that she decided yesterday that we should leave on an earlier train,” Mr. Schmidt explained, casting a restrained look upon his traveling companion. “It took a little doing on my part to finish things up in time, but I was happy to oblige. You know how she is. Once she decides something can be done she must do it.”

            “I hoped you wouldn’t mind too much,” said Vera, leaning forward, “but look how well it’s turned out—here we are, about to dine together on this glorious afternoon!”

            “I couldn’t be happier,” Agnes reassured.

            “Well, everything went as well as you can ever expect,” Vera recounted, “except that we nearly forgot your gift on the train. I was so excited that I left it on the seat beside me, being distracted by two nettlesome women who kept asking directions of us and then ignoring the answers. We’d gotten to the carriage stand when I remembered. Luckily, Frederick was able to run back and get it just before the train moved on. My heart would have simply broken if we’d lost it; you’ll know why when you see it. When I laid eyes on it, I said to myself, that’s for Agnes, she must have it.”

            Vera’s enthusiasm on any subject outstripped that of any woman Agnes had ever known. Both small and large delights thrilled her equally. While easily angered and even more easily hurt, she bounced back quickly and forgave easily. She was the younger sister of Agnes’s mother and some 15 years older than Agnes. Vera’s hair had kept its color, a light brown that bordered on orange around her face. Her eyes displayed an intriguing mix of green and brown, and from their corners a set of fine lines radiated, marking a generosity of smiles across the years.

            “I can’t wait to see it,” said Agnes. “Now bring me up to date. How are things going in your ‘infernal city’?”

            “Oh, please don’t say it as though I had any responsibility for it,” protested Vera. “Of course, electrifying the city is the latest cause célèbre, which will be fine if it can be made to work reliably. Everyone will be happy except the gas companies, who are already complaining that they will starve to death as casualties of progress. Of course, now we’re tearing up all the streets to put in conduits to carry the current to every mouse hole in the city—no telling how much that’s costing Mr. Edison! That’s probably why he’s charging a dollar for every one of his silly light bulbs. I don’t think I’m ready to pay that.”

            “You may not have a choice before long,” warned Mr. Schmidt.

            “They’ll have to drop the price—people just won’t buy them. Let’s see. My neighbor has joined the cause of temperance and wants me to go to meetings with her. I certainly agree that alcohol is a wicked thing when it destroys a household, but I so enjoy a glass of champagne now and then that I don’t feel I can endorse the cause wholeheartedly. Fannie has a personal interest in the subject, with a husband who has to be carried home three nights out of seven. If it weren’t for her money, which she has very wisely protected from him, she and the children would be sewing aprons for pennies a day.”

            “Poor woman!” sighed Agnes. “I rather feel the way she does about alcohol. So many lives ruined . . .  Besides, I usually get a headache five minutes after taking a sip. And I won’t keep it in the house. It’s just a temptation for the servants.”

            “So you’re having a gala without spirits of any kind?” asked Vera.

            “Oh, heavens, no,” cried Agnes. “Can you imagine Grandma Brown without her sherry? Or worse—Wilbur and Eleanor without their after-dinner brandy? I’ve ordered in enough for the week and then some, but when it runs out, that’s that.”

            “Very wise,” Mr. Schmidt complimented her. “My physician tells me it’s poison, plain and simple. I gave up spirits myself several years ago. I found my memory and my energy both improved accordingly.”

            “Oh, Agnes, are Wilbur and Eleanor coming?” moaned Vera. “They are such a caustic couple. I feel positively pitted after the shortest conversation with them.”

            “I wish I could say they weren’t. Grandma certainly cannot travel on her own, so their presence is required. She is such a dear. I can’t understand how she tolerates them. But we will just have to do our best, I suppose.”

            By now the sun was high, and Mr. Schmidt had begun mopping his glistening forehead and bald crown. Fettles announced lunch, and the party moved to a table at the other end of the terrace, still shaded by a house wall. Aunt Vera rejoiced at everything she was served, all the while recounting recent travels and bracing experiences. After finishing with cheese and fruit, the three friends adjourned, the guests to their rooms for a much-needed rest and Agnes to ensure that everything was ready for the next arrivals. As she crossed the foyer, a telegraph messenger stood in the front doorway. Marie came toward her with an envelope.

            “For you, ma’m.”

            Agnes took the thin envelope and opened it slowly. No bad news now, she prayed silently, not this week. The snake is quite enough. All I ask is seven days without another crisis.

Chapter 5

As she read, Agnes’s face brightened. “Oh, how wonderful!” She crossed quickly to the messenger. “Please send a return message: Delightful news. Come immediately. Signed Agnes.” The young man jotted the words quickly, took his payment, and was gone.

            “Stella is coming! I had a feeling that she would find a way. Oh, we must make sure she has a fine room. Marie, do you know where Mrs. Williams is?”

            “Upstairs, I believe.”

            Agnes looked at the clock—1:45. She flew up the stairs, clutching her skirts, and found Mrs. Williams in the peach room, setting down a fresh bouquet. The head housekeeper was a stocky, unflappable woman, whose steady eyes and gracious smile sometimes belied a thin streak of perversity. When she was in a mood, Mrs. Williams was known to withhold important bits of information unless you knew exactly the right question to ask. As far as Agnes could tell, this was the housekeeper’s only major fault, but more than once it had driven her to nearly throttle the woman. She hoped that Mrs. Williams was not in such a mood today.

            “Ah, Mrs. Williams, I found you. That’s a beautiful arrangement.” Mrs. Williams smiled, poking stems into their proper positions in a deep blue vase. She took pride in her skill at flower arranging and considered it a valuable bonus to her employer. “I just received news that Stella will be coming after all, arriving in two days.” Agnes paused cautiously for a reaction, but the housekeeper only smiled benignly. This often signaled, to the initiated, rough water ahead. “What rooms do we still have empty?”

            The housekeeper held her smile but stiffened almost imperceptibly. “I know of only two, Madam. The small room over the kitchen and the walnut room.”

            Agnes asked which one she would recommend, to which the housekeeper replied impassively that she was sure the mistress would know best, being better acquainted with her niece. Agnes made another sally. Which room was in better condition to receive a guest without a great deal of extra preparation by the already busy staff, to which the reply was that “they will both take work, Ma’m.”

            Agnes felt her temperature start to rise. There was no time for this parrying, with guests due any minute. Like a rescuing angel, Fettles appeared in the doorway. He opened his mouth, but Agnes plunged ahead. “Fettles, what do you think? Stella has decided to come after all, and we must put her in the best room possible without causing undue effort. Mrs. Williams—who is being very careful to make no recommendation— says our choices are the room above the kitchen and the walnut room, neither of which has been used in some time, I believe. What is your opinion?”

            Fettles looked at the housekeeper, whose look had gone from one of quiet power to undeserved injury, and back at Agnes. Extending his thin fingers one by one, he reviewed the other guests and their assigned rooms: Mrs. and Mrs. Bairnaught, the McMeeds, the Rockwells and their daughter, Aunt Vera and Mr. Schmidt, Grandma Brown, and the Wilbur Browns. With the names now penciled into his mental floor plan, Fettles explained that, in his opinion, the room over the kitchen could get too hot for a young lady to stay in comfortably, and he understood besides that it had been prepared in case cousin Wilbur decided to bring along his valet again. The walnut room was more commodious but somewhat gloomy, and a hinge on the window had never been fixed, making that window unsafe to open. “And the Bairnaughts have just arrived, ” he added.

            Agnes twisted the fabric of her skirt in her fingers (a habit she had kept from childhood) while thinking. Suddenly she looked up at Mrs. Williams. “Where did you put the Wilbur Browns?”

            “In the mosaic room.” This was Agnes’s favorite guest room, a small, sunny chamber named for its fireplace done in hand-painted Italian tiles of blue and yellow.

            “I assume that’s because they have complained about every other room they’ve been given in the past?”

            “Yes, ma’m. It’s a bit small, but the décor is beyond reproach.”

            “We might think so. Wilbur and Eleanor will find something to object to. I propose, since we can’t make those two happy, let’s not waste the room. They don’t arrive until the day after tomorrow. Fettles, can you get that hinge repaired by then?”

            Fettles eyes twinkled. “Are you quite sure you want me to?”

            “I’m afraid so. Mrs. Williams, if you could, please prepare the walnut room for the Browns. It will suit them as well as any, and we shall put Stella in the mosaic room.”

            And so the afternoon proceeded with last-minute adjustments that kept the staff bustling throughout the great house. For the next two days carriages pulled up to the pillared entry and discharged their passengers and trunks were handed down and trundled upstairs to the various bedrooms and many hugs were exchanged and exclamations heard as people who had not laid eyes on one another for many months or even years got a look at how time had changed—by a little or a lot—everyone and everything.

            As for the Wilbur Browns, Agnes was very glad she had not squandered the mosaic room on them. The couple arrived in the late afternoon on Wednesday, a gray day without rain but thick with humidity. The guests had just gathered for tea in the main parlor, where the men had loosened their collars and the ladies fanned themselves in the oppressive air, but chatted nonetheless excitedly, as those newly drawn together always do.

            Above the bubbling flow of their own conversations, the sharp sounds of a commotion rose from the foyer, growing louder. Added to several raised voices came the barking of dogs. Agnes excused herself and left her guests with their teacups in mid-air. Entering the foyer, she stopped. Fettles was trying to lead two silk-jacketed greyhounds back out the front door without success. The nervous dogs, lean black-and-white brindles, darted this way and that, tangling their leashes and nearly toppling the delicate butler. At the same time, he was trying to convince the Browns that it was not customary to allow dogs, no matter how well dressed, into the house, and that they would be much better off in the kennel. Eleanor and Wilbur were loudly defending the sterling character of their animals and declaring they were no more suited to be kept in a damp kennel than Fettles was. Wilbur was trying to take the leashes from Fettles, who was not letting go.

            “Wilbur! Eleanor!” Agnes cried. “You’re here. And you’ve brought some unexpected companions, I see.”

            Wilbur drew himself up and forced a smile. He nodded curtly to Aunt Vera and the small crowd standing quietly in the parlor doorway. Putting off for another minute the confrontation that was about to unfold, Agnes asked Wilbur the whereabouts of Grandma Brown. Agnes’s grandmother, a tiny, cheerful woman of some 80 years, lived with her grandson Wilbur and his wife—or rather, they with her, in the mansion outside Philadelphia she had moved into many years before with her late second husband. Agnes wished Grandma Brown could get to Brookside under her own power and dispense with Wilbur and Eleanor, but her days of traveling alone were past. How Grandma stood the couple was a deep mystery.

            “Marie showed her to her room, ma’m,” Fettles spoke up. “She asked to be excused until dinner. And,” he added, with a “didn’t I tell you” look, “Isaiah is showing Mr. and Mrs. Brown’s man to his quarters.”

            “Well,” said Agnes, “why don’t we all step outside where we can talk? I’m afraid it’s a bit noisy for the guests if we stay here in the foyer.” Agnes led the way out, past the struggling Fettles, who grudgingly ceded the reins to Wilbur, and the small group gathered on the front drive. Agnes groaned silently at the prospect of an entire week ahead. This was just the beginning, and already she had a circus on her hands.

To be continued . . .