Episode 33: Agnes and Fettles Conspire to Bring Christmas to Vera's Home

Chapter 64

Fettles was sulking for the third straight day, and Agnes did not think she could bear one more hour of it. She had expressly asked him to be at tea that afternoon, but he stayed away once more. Agnes was able to drink only half a cup before making a quick apology to Vera and going in search of him. She found him in his room reading Augustine, which he only did in his blackest moods. Napoleon and Empress both lay at his feet with their noses on their paws, the scene feebly lit by the room’s only window. Fettles looked at her testily above his reading glasses.

            “Why are you closeting yourself like this?” she demanded, clutching the sides of her gray silk skirt with both hands. “We’ve hardly seen you for the better part of three days.”

            “I don’t see why that would pose a problem,” he returned. “The household is fully staffed—I’m not needed as far as I can tell.”

            Agnes dropped onto the edge of the perfectly made bed. Within three feet was a second bed, whose covers were casually tossed over it, partially covering a dented pillow. Vera’s house was modest, and Fettles was sharing a room with Ned.

            “You know this is temporary,” said his mistress. “It’s hard for all of us.”

            “Is it?” he replied archly. “You are reunited with your delightful aunt, with whom you spend happy hours each day, and I am indeed glad for that, Agnes.” Things were truly out of kilter—he was calling her by her Christian name. “Marie continues to attend you as your personal maid, as she should. Ned busies himself fixing hinges and repairing cellar walls. But no home needs two butlers.”

            Fettles adjusted the pillow behind his back and set his glasses on a small table at his elbow.

            “You know, I tried to be helpful,” he continued. “I understand my reduced position as a guest. Several times I offered to organize the wines or dust chandeliers, or whatever that drudge of a butler might want my assistance with, but every time I open my mouth he seems to suffer some affront as though I am criticizing his abilities. So I’ve concluded that this is the safest place for me, where I cannot offend anyone or get in the way.”

            Agnes slid closer. Fettles was right—of all of them he was the most out of place at Vera’s house, largely due to the ungraciousness of Vera’s butler, a young man her aunt had employed out of sympathy for his mother. Sullen and insecure, the young butler had indeed rejected all of Fettles’ overtures to help, and a man of Fettles’ constitution found the keenest torment in sitting idle. In addition, the topsy-turvy character of Vera’s home, where coats were as often thrown over chairs as hung on hooks, and dirty plates cluttered the table long after meals concluded, made Fettles’ little room the only refuge for the man’s delicate nerves. And even in that space, he had to contend with his roommate’s casual habits. Agnes decided to repeat what they already knew.

            “The wedding is in early January. That’s only two weeks away. Then they shall be in Mr. Schmidt’s house and we shall have this one to ourselves. Besides, in three days it’s Christmas. You don’t want to spoil my Christmas with a sour spirit, do you?” A smile played around her lips.

            In any other year, Fettles would have been in his glory at this time of year. Christmas lit him up with a perennial excitement the whole household looked forward to seeing. Every year he applied himself with gusto to choosing the perfect tree and improving on the previous year’s decorations, with the result that Brookside had become famous for its sumptuous displays of evergreen garlands and complicated nativity scenes. People used to find excuses to visit the Somersets just to gawk at the glorious testimony to Christmas that Fettles put on exhibit each December.

            “I’ve talked to Vera about the need for a tree in the front parlor,” Agnes continued. “She puts up little more than a wreath each year, as you’ve seen. It’s all right by her if we go get one, so why don’t you and I go out tomorrow and select the best fir we can find and hang it with some of our decorations?” 

            Fettles looked fixedly at Agnes. Conflicting feelings seemed to contend within him, and after a moment he asked pointedly, “Why doesn’t she decorate?” 

            “Oh, you see that she decorates the house handsomely in general. But she says she cannot be bothered with seasonal decoration, mostly because it saddens her when it must be taken down. Still, she said she won’t mind provided we do it.” 

            “Well that’s something, at least,” said Fettles, sitting up and closing his book. “I know where the trimmings are, at least, so we’ll have no trouble there. This house is badly in need of some yuletide cheer!” 

            Agnes clapped her hands and rose. “I’ll want to go early. With Christmas almost here we must get the best of what’s left. I saw some trees for sale two blocks from here—” 

            “Yes, on Grand, next to the cab stand!”

            “That’s the place. They don’t have many, but you can work magic with whatever we bring home.”

            Fettles stood, passed a hand over his rebellious hair, and straightened his jacket. “I’ll bring up the decorations. We could use with a few more candleholders; some are old and don’t clamp anymore.”

            “Do we still have tinsel?”

            “Plenty left from last year.”

            As evening fell, the two friends sat before the parlor fire sorting through the decorations and deciding which they would use on the one tree. (In its heyday, Brookside had up to three glittering trees gracing the foyer, main parlor, and dining room.) Agnes pulled out the garlands of glass beads and the tatted snowflakes. Fettles found the tinsel and a sampling of his favorite ornaments from across the years. He also brought out the carved nativity scene Mr. Somerset had brought home from Portugal when Agnes was a tiny girl. After all this time, the only signs of wear were one broken shepherd’s hook and a three-legged donkey.

            After dinner the sorting continued, as Vera and Frederick sat with them drinking warm punch and commenting on Christmases past. As Fettles inventoried the working candle clips, Vera asked if they intended to light the tree, to which Agnes said it would not really be a Christmas tree without lights. This brought from Frederick a full account of Mr. Johnson’s all-electric tree that appeared in the papers last Christmas to the wonderment of all. Vera said she supposed that candles would be all right if they kept the usual bucket of sand close by and spread an old rug under the tree to catch any wax. As the clock’s hands hovered near midnight, Mr. Schmidt took his leave. The remaining three decided to rearrange the parlor furniture to make way for the tree, then went to their separate rooms in delightful anticipation of the next day’s activities so peculiar to that cheerful season.

        The following morning, in a slicing wind, Agnes and Fettles repaired after breakfast to the tree seller and picked out a respectable spruce nearly nine feet tall whose only fault was an undeniable bald spot on one side. The two determined that the flaw could be turned to the corner and hidden, so they happily ordered it tied to the roof of the cab and brought it home. Ned sawed off a piece from the bottom of the sticky trunk, trimmed up the lower boughs, and set it in the space cleared the previous night. To everyone’s surprise, it took up an entire corner of the parlor, proving again that Christmas trees become twice as large when brought inside the house. It proudly stood where passersby would see it from the street (something Agnes insisted upon, as she loved riding down the street herself and seeing the glittering trees in people’s homes). Marie arrived with two boxes of candles and new candleholders, and the three—Ned excused himself as one not gifted in the art of embellishment—set to work transforming the plain but rich-smelling tree into a wonder of white lace, red glass, gold, and silver.

            When they had finished, everyone stood back and admired the effect. Outside the wind had slacked, and snow had begun falling in large flakes past the front window. Fettles finished setting up the Nativity figures on a small round table draped in white and turned to Agnes. “I think I shall go to Mass on Christmas Eve,” he announced.

            “Really!”

            He cleared his throat and looked back to the tree. “I have hardly gone since leaving home as a boy. There was no Catholic church in Chesterton, you know.”

            “I never realized it mattered to you.”

            “It didn’t.” He looked at her bravely. “I am wondering now if it should have.”

            Agnes felt the depth of his words and a sense of slow but certain turning, like that of a great vessel whose captain has realized that they have sailed fully half their route several degrees off course.

            “I noticed one just down the block,” she observed.

            “Yes, St. Monica’s. I thought I might go.”

            “Well, you should,” Agnes agreed. “You’re overdue.”

            Fettles nodded and applied himself to removing the empty boxes and tissue paper to the cellar. Napoleon trotted after him, leaving Empress to guard the wondrous tree before falling asleep, curled in a semicircle on the old red rug beneath it.

Chapter 65

The holidays came and went at Vera’s house as pleasantly as could be hoped under the circumstances. Then, in the first frosty days of January, Vera and Frederick Schmidt took each other as man and wife at a simple ceremony in the old First Presbyterian Church. Vera took up her place as Mrs. Schmidt at Frederick’s handsome townhouse, losing no time in transforming the bachelor’s dark interiors into a vibrant landscape that he hardly recognized as home. His library, however, remained his, all deep red leather and green, and served as a comfortable refuge from the unexpected intensity of conjugal living. Having taken in the better part of Agnes’s cherished books from the shelves of Brookside, he spent many a glad hour pouring over the old volumes, taking particular delight in studying Mr. Audubon’s spectacular feathered subjects while Vera flew about the city on her many missions.

            Agnes and her small staff made Vera’s old house their own, arranging the few pieces of furniture and decorative bits of art they had kept from Brookside so that, little by little, the house began to feel like theirs. The sale of Brookside provided Agnes sufficient funds to run the household for some time, and Mr. Rockwell had invested part of the proceeds to afford her a small but steady income.

            Agnes was wise enough to be grateful for the simplified life required by her narrowed circumstances. With no gardens of her own, she learned the practical pleasure of strolling through public parks obligingly maintained by the City of New York. Without stable or carriage house, she employed public cabs and found they did the job admirably. She knew she was fortunate to have her duties reduced since she had still not recovered the strength, either of body or spirit, that she enjoyed before her illness. When she pictured managing the estate once more, with all that it entailed, her heart failed her, and she could not imagine governing again such broad affairs.

            However, the loss of Brookside created a hole in Agnes that could not be denied. Life on the estate was all she had known from her birth, and that life constituted the measure of everything she would later meet with. The home of our youth becomes the archetypal home—its feel, its furnishings and customs—and every other home is an odd thing that sits, as at a strange angle, and must be analyzed and studied to be understood. And as much as Agnes studied this city life and applied herself to taking advantage of its good features, still she longed for the green view out her bedroom windows and wet grass in the morning, for breakfast on the terrace where early sparrows jumped forward for fallen crumbs, and for a thousand other pleasures and unexamined details that were exactly what should be but were no more.

            This break with all she had known would have been enough to constrict Agnes’s heart, but her loss had taken on a more bitter taste still. Scarcely a month after moving out, Agnes heard from Chesterton friends that laborers and craftsmen were at work on the rooms of the old mansion, painting and wallpapering. Masons had been commissioned to build a showy portico onto the front, and carpenters were adding lavish details to transform the stately home into a model of the latest architectural fashion.

            These changes hurt and confused her; after all, Brookside was perfect just the way it was. But when Ned and Fettles (who together had the unhappy task of breaking the news) told Agnes that the new owner, the woman who pulled into the buzzing estate almost daily to check on the progress of its transformation, was none other than Mrs. Claudia Thorne, they confirmed what Agnes had long suspected but did not want to know.

            When finally able to speak, she asked, “Do you think that she was behind everything somehow, just to get Brookside?”

            “Very possible,” declared Fettles. “That woman is capable of anything. Satan himself takes lessons from her.”

            Ned stroked his thick moustache and thought. “No. What happened to Phillip—and also to you, ma’m, if I may say—bore her mark. But losing the family money was beyond her reach. That was surely all Wilbur’s doing.”

            Wilbur. Agnes liked to imagine that he and Eleanor were living meagerly in one of the dirtier European cities, getting by somehow on a mixture of lies and bravado and forever looking over their shoulders.

            Agnes believed that Ned must be right. Even the Thorne had her limits. She probably just took advantage of a situation she could only have dreamed of: The Somersets reduced to penury; all assets to be liquidated at sacrificial prices. Suddenly she remembered the piano, the grand family heirloom, now forced to provide music for Claudia’s garish parties. A sick feeling spread through her and remained the rest of the day. She spoke not another word until bedtime, and retired without her dinner. The household avoided speaking of Brookside again.

            As for her other great loss, a day did not pass without Phillip walking through Agnes’s mind. Now he was laughing at one of her stories over tea, now patting down Queen Anne after a galloping ride, now unfastening his damp necktie in the afternoon heat. They had not spoken since that ugly scene in the parlor, which felt like years ago, although barely five months had passed. She wondered how little Henri was getting on, whether Phillip was making a go of the farm, or whether he had already moved on to some other idea. Maybe farming did not suit him any better than all the other work he had tried. She wondered if she had been too hard on him in their last conversation. But his long silence told her no. He had not visited nor sent any letter since that last day (she felt that she was easy enough to find for anyone who wanted to), reinforcing her conviction that he was relieved to be shed of her.

            Winter dragged on well into April. But near the end of the month, Spring arrived like a mail train running late. It exploded onto the city as though atoning for its tardiness with a vigor that touched every corner of the metropolis. Green tips shot up from even the smallest patch of dirt, and leaves popped out on branches overnight. The sudden currents of warm air sent people diving into trunks for their summer clothes, and the city’s population of children, now running in shirtsleeves through the streets, seemed to have doubled in a season.

            Walking out one Saturday morning with the sun on her face, Agnes pulled in a deep helping of the mild air. She stood on the front stoop feeling for a moment a fraction of that old feeling that always came to her in spring, the wild sensation that anything was possible. These days, she knew better. Still, watching a troop of wispy clouds flowing by against the blue sky, hearing the frantic chatter all around of birds building nests, and stunned by the sudden color of daffodils and flowering crabapples, she was reminded that life must surely resume.

            She could not help imagining this same spring, of which she saw such a narrow wedge here in the city, washing lavishly over Brookside. The gardens were no doubt erupting in a jubilant show of blooms. The lawns would be turning green again and the fountain splashing in the dazzling way it did when first turned on. But these wonders now lay in Claudia’s grasping hands. Agnes shook herself and turned her attention back to the pavement beneath her feet as she headed for the Schmidt’s house. Today, with the weather so fine, she was walking rather than riding the six long blocks to her aunt’s home. Vera was taking her shopping for a spring dress—something bright, Vera said, just the thing to welcome a new season.

            Agnes knew her aunt referred to more than the weather. Vera, with her indomitable personality, seemed to be growing impatient with her niece’s subdued spirits. Agnes tried. She had accepted many of Vera’s invitations to concerts, operas, and charitable events around town, but nothing took root. She considered volunteering for a host of good causes that Vera proposed, but failed to pursue any. Even her attendance at church had grown spotty, something for which Fettles, with his renewed dedication to Rome, gently chastised her.

            Even the children dashing past Agnes on their way to the day’s adventures failed to lift her heart. They only reminded her of little Henri, who should be walking by now and beginning to talk. She prayed that the Thoroughgoods were loving him as least as much as she did. She was sure that if she saw him now she would hardly recognize him, nor he her, so quickly does Time work upon the body and mind of little children.

            And so spring gave way to summer, summer to fall, and fall to winter. All the while Agnes could only imagine the two greatest loves of her life moving in their own worlds, their memories of her dimming even into darkness, as their lives played out in places she would probably never set foot. Several times, when the memories became too much, she had almost written to Phillip. But then what? Wait every day in torment, looking for the postman to bring a reply? Better to leave it all alone and trust that another year might close the wounds, if that were even possible.

To be continued . . .