A group of schoolchildren stopped to stare at the Burnhams’ bright carriage. I drew back from the window so as not to be seen—and barely in time. A cluster of Friends clad in grays and browns poured from a building and turned our way. At their lead was the beloved headmaster of the Meeting school, a man so long and lean that his head seemed to pierce the clouds and his feet barely to trod the earth. Once he told me that a letter I’d written to my colleagues—which recommended that our students write and deliver more speeches on subjects of vital interest to them—was worthy of being carved in stone. How worthy would he find my occupations now?
Then I spied my cleverest student, Louella Lynes. How confident she looked, her head raised in its chaste bonnet, her carriage upright; how untrammeled by the world, with her arms swinging wide, her clear-skinned cheeks raised in a smile, her mouth opened to emit a pronouncement. She’d taken me as her model. I flattened my body against the seat and covered my head and face with a shawl.
I released myself from the shawl’s steamy tunnel only after the carriage turned left onto Walnut Lane. My family and I rarely visited this stately district. Its inhabitants seemed to occupy a separate world of cricket clubs, churches with hired priests, fashionable clothing, and parties meant to bring on gaiety and inebriation. Grocers and other vendors delivered goods directly to their doors, so that even their servants had little cause to take part in village life. The farther we traveled into this realm of estates, fields, and woods, the safer I felt from discovery.
Margaret began to chatter about the house, which belongs to Clementina’s parents, and about the summer cook, Miss Baker—extolling her delectable food, especially her cakes and pies, and her thorough preparation of the place. Margaret said we could expect everything to be spotless and lemon-scented. She caught her breath and fairly shivered as our carriages and wagons careened onto a curving driveway and toward a stone mansion that was as frivolous as a stone house can be, festooned with painted woodwork and garnished with turrets and gables.
The horses halted, lathered with sweat. A coachman ran up to tend them. We disembarked, and then began a time of puzzlement.
The mansion’s windows were shuttered, and its ornate double doors were locked. A sputtering Clementina located a key in her bag and used it. First the Burnhams, then Margaret and I stepped onto the foyer’s thick carpet, encountering musty air and darkness.
“What’s happened here?” Clementina fanned her sweating face. Her pin curls lay wet against her forehead.
Albert stepped to her side and placed his hand on her forearm. “I’m sure there’s an explanation.”
She shook his hand off. “I don’t want an explanation. I want a meal and a clean house. But whatever the explanation, it needn’t concern you, need it? The tedious work to remedy it won’t be yours.”
Her husband flushed. The comment was true enough—and I took her statement to mean that she would put herself to work upon the remedy, alongside her servants. But Margaret gave me a baleful look that dissuaded me from this notion. Then a deep voice called through the opened doorway.
“Hallo there!” A gray-haired, brown-skinned man bobbed across the grass, poking his cane into the ground ahead and pulling himself forward by it.
Margaret whispered, “It’s Mr. Pemberton. He’s the caretaker of this house and the neighbor’s.”
The tall man climbed the stoop and crossed into the foyer, pausing to recover his breath. Removing his hat, he nodded in greeting.
“How are you, sir?” asked Albert, bowing his head.
Mr. Pemberton replied in a rumbling baritone. “I’m right as rain, but Miss Baker took ill last week. Her fever’s high. Doctor says it’s ague. Ordered five days’ more of rest at least.”
“Five days?” Clementina said.
Even Albert looked put out. Margaret sagged visibly. Clementina huffed. “She could have arranged for others to come.”
Mr. Pemberton nodded, acknowledging the point. “She’s been too sick to see to that,” he said. “She sends sincere regrets, madam.”
Clementina winced at his use of the title that she said makes her feel like her mother. Then the elderly man spied Henry in my arms and gave a broad smile, showing teeth yellowed by tobacco. “The newest family member! Let Mr. Pemberton have a look.”
I moved the sleepy boy forward. The caretaker patted Henry’s scalp and radiated goodwill toward the baby and me. I basked in his kindness.
“That’s enough,” snapped Clementina. “We’ll be needing to begin the work Miss Baker hasn’t done.”
I flinched, but Mr. Pemberton didn’t. He let her attitude roll off him like water from a duck’s feathers. He turned toward Margaret and I, giving a wink that recognized us as his compatriots in service to this challenging woman. Then he used his cane to propel himself out the door.
Albert sighed. “Well, it can’t be helped.” He removed his straw hat and hung it on the elaborate wood and cast-iron hat stand. Leaning toward its oblong mirror, he gave his hair a few strokes with a comb.
His wife snatched the ivory comb and banged it down on the stand. “Yes it can be helped. You get our drivers busy unloading. You’ll have to join in, Albert.”
Albert pulled his head back on his neck and stared, about to speak. Then he looked to Margaret and me, sighed once more, and stepped out toward the wagons.
Clementina turned to us, her slender form vibrating with irritation. “Already we had nowhere near the help my parents had to keep this place in order. Now this! You’ll have to set up the kitchen and prepare our meal, girls. Next you’ll make this house habitable, which will take no slight effort, I tell you.” She ran a finger along the mahogany banister that curves up the stairs to the second story, examined the depth of dust on her fingertip, and shuddered.
For several days, we did little but vanquish dust and unpleasant odors while Clementina lay on a divan in the parlor, complaining of a toothache. To any who came near, she bemoaned the absence of the kitchen helper, butler, and two more chambermaids that her parents had employed when she’d been a child in this very house, not to mention the inconvenience of Miss Baker’s absence. She fretted over the inadequacy of our work as we shook out and aired feather beds and pillows, curtains, rugs, and mats; scrubbed floors and polished them; wiped and dusted every surface; kept the kitchen stove fueled; cooked and washed up after meals; brought water in and waste out; unloaded deliveries from the grocer’s buggy; hauled ice from the ice wagon; and on and on and on—with me stepping away to care for Henry.
Eventually Clementina moved to a stuffed chair in her bedroom and pored over every theater and musical review in every paper she’d had delivered, opining on the shortcomings of this reviewer and that. Then she turned to the Ladies’ Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper, a new publication she’d subscribed to under pressure from a visitor. She addressed herself as ferociously to those pages as she did to us. Later she critiqued the publication to Albert in the dining room, telling him she didn’t care what substances worked better at removing grease stains from the collars of men’s shirts or vomit from a child’s bedclothes. (Luckily, Margaret and I mostly needn’t concern ourselves with stain removal either, for the laundry is sent out.)