House Party

by Patrick Dennis

  House Party

  By Patrick Dennis

  (Written as Virginia Rowans)

  By the author

  Oh, What a Wonderful Wedding

  House Party

  Original Copyright Page

  VIRGINIA ROWAN

  THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY

  NEW YORK

  Copyright 1954 by Virginia Rowans

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER, WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 54-6893

  Manufactured in the United States of America by the Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, New York

  To M & O:

  an additional 90 per cent

  1. Preparations

  "No, Miss Vandel," Mrs. Ames shouted into the mouthpiece, "I want Murray Hill 9-1050 in New York . . . Yes, that's old Mr. Pruttt . . . Well, I believe he's perfectly splendid, thank you. You might ask him when you connect us." Mrs. Ames was always especially polite to the telephone operators in Pruitt's Landing. Only townspeople and the new arrivals called them Operator or Central. Members of the old landed families always referred to them by name.

  The hot July sun streaming through the pantry window struck Mrs. Ames painfully on her back. She shifted her weight uncomfortably and wondered why she was standing up at the old-fashioned wall telephone in the pantry with the servants listening to her when she might have used the modern handset in the morning room. Out of the corner of her eye, Mrs. Ames caught a fleeting glimpse of the colored couple who worked for her. Although they looked like old retainers, they had only been with her for a month and Mrs. Ames's intuition told her that there were already signs of mutiny.

  "Can you think of anything else I ought to order from town, Lutie?" Mrs. Ames asked the cook with artificial brightness.

  "No ma'am, Ah cain't, unless that ole Nazi nurse wants more Lehkuchen. Seem lak she's fat enough, already though."

  Mrs. Ames chose not to dignify her cook's remark with any sort of reply. Then after a minute there was a dreadful buzzing and clicking and she could hear the Long Island operator twanging out numbers to her more nasal counterpart in Manhattan.

  "Here's your par-tee, Miz Ames," the operator called victoriously.

  "Thank you, Miss Vandel. Hello! Hello, Sturgis. Is Mr. Pruitt in? . . . Yes, Sturgis, this is Mrs. Ames . . . Yes, Sturgis, and I'm looking forward to having you with us again . . . Thank you, Sturgis."

  Mrs. Ames shifted her weight again and groped at the long list labelled Things to Do. It ran to two pages and began:

  Plan meals

  Call Unc. Ned—car—pick up Kathy & Mr. Stone

  Paul & Miss Divine (?) Devine

  Call Kathy—buy marrons

  Chantilly cheese

  brioche (Duvernoy)—2 doz.

  rolled anchovies

  Angos. bitters—N.Y.C.

  Pay bills

  Pay insurance

  Rooms—open East wing?

  Flowers

  Blue chiff. dress—cleaners

  Then there was a rather complicated word which Mrs. Ames couldn't make out. She was puzzling over it when the exuberant voice of her ancient uncle came fluting over the wire.

  "Good morning, Uncle Ned, it's Lily . . . No, Lily. I hope I haven't got you out of bed, but with all these people descending on me for the weekend I thought . . . No, Uncle Ned, just you and Violet and me and the children and their young friends and Felicia and a young man she's met . . . Yes, that's right, Uncle Ned. Just like the old days when dear Papa was alive . . . Yes . . . Well, what I called for, Uncle Ned, was . . . Yes, Uncle Ned, you're going to have your same old rooms, although the dressing room had to be repainted when the roof leaked there last winter. Now Uncle Ned, what I called for was to ask if you could just possibly squeeze one or two extra passengers into your car . . . Well, four actually . . . But Uncle Ned, it's such a big car, and you have those strapontin seats or whatever the word is for them and one of the young people could sit up front with Sturgis."

  Mr. Edward Pruitt was sputtering from his bachelor quarters in Now York. Gregarious as he was, he did not like being crowded—especially on a sixty-mile motor trip.

  "But, Uncle Ned," Mrs. Ames said desperately, "of course Bryan was anxious to drive them all out, but he's leaving earlier than the rest could manage. Now you only have to pick up Paul and Kathy and they'll tell Sturgis where to call for their friends. I'm sure it won't be one bit inconvenient. As for Elly and her young man and Felicia's friend, they're coming out on the 5:01."

  Now Mrs. Ames tried the master thrust: "Besides, Uncle Ned, you know how attractive you are to young people and I should be perfectly lost without you here to act as host. . . . Oh, that is sweet of you, Uncle Ned. And I know the children will appreciate it.

  "Now is there anything special you'd like to eat this weekend? . . . Truffle ice cream? Oh, Uncle Ned, that sounds horrid and truffles are terribly expensive, I believe, and I'm sure you can't buy them out here. . . . Well, yes, strawberries and champagne are nice, but I just don't happen to have any champagne left . . . Chateaubriands? Isn't that that thing where you broil a thick slice of filet mignon between two steaks and then throw the steaks away? . . . Well, don't you think that would be a little dear for twelve people?"

  Mrs. Ames could sense, rather than hear, a deep growl rising in the throat of her new cook. She added hastily: "Well, Uncle Ned, I'm sure you'll love what we have planned—just simple American cooking and so appropriate for Independence Day. And you're just a love to drive all these people out. Call Paul and he'll call Kathy and if you all start about three I'm sure you can be here in plenty of time for cocktails. . . . All right, Uncle Ned, and we can't wait to see you, either. Goodb—yes, it is only au revoir, isn't it? Goodbye."

  "Yoo hoo, here I am! Good morning everyone!" It was the voice of Violet Clendenning. Mrs. Ames turned and saw her sister at the pantry door.

  "Good morning, Violet," Mrs. Ames said with restraint.

  "Oh, I am in luck. Up in time to breakfast with you, Lily!"

  "I had breakfast more than an hour ago, Violet."

  "Oh," Violet made a pretty pout. "And Felicia and the babies?"

  "Felicia is still in bed. Your grandchildren were up at the screech of dawn. They were making so much noise I sent them down to the beach with Fraulein."

  "La, the darlings. Carefree young hearts! 'Life goes a-Maying with something, something and happiness in days of youth! Who said that, Lily?"

  "Samuel Taylor Coleridge; a very tiresome poet."

  "Well, I’ll simply breakfast in the morning room, which will be much easier for everyone, and you and I can have a good old-fashioned heart-to-heart, Lily dear."

  "If you're going to talk you can't come into the morning room, Violet. I have to write a lot of checks and I don't want you throwing off my balance with your chatter.”

  "Ah, very well. I'll be as still as a mouse. Then I'm going to roll up my sleeves and pitch right in to help you, dear. Lutie,” Violet called, "just my usual—grapefruit, black coffee and Proto-Slim Toast sliced very thin."

  Except for the scratching of Mrs. Ames's pen, the rustle of Violet's newspaper and the buzzing of a fly, the morning room was still. Mrs. Ames disliked writing checks. Adding made her nervous and subtraction drove her into a frenzy. She blew a wisp of hair from her forehead and signed her name to the last check with a restrained flourish—Lily Pruitt Ames. "There," she sighed, and tore the check out of the book.

  Mrs. Ames shuddered at the size of this final check. It ran to four figures and was made payable to an insurance company whose very name was depressing—Home Owners Casualty. Even more depressing was what the balance in her checking account might or might not be
if her figures were accurate. Still it was too hot today to worry over the low sum which she knew must last her until the next quarterly payment from the Knickerbocker Trust Company. She cast a distracted glance at the long list headed "Things To Do" and scratched out the entries "Pay Bills" and "Pay Insurance."

  "Lily," her sister said, "did you see in the paper about Lucy Whitebait's girl?"

  "What, Violet?"

  "I said," Mrs. Clendenning repeated from behind the folds of the Herald Tribune, "that Caroline Whitebait is engaged. Very pretty picture. Flatters her."

  Mrs. Ames looked across the morning room to where her sister was sitting. "Well, isn't that nice. Is the young man anyone we . . . Violet Clendenning! What are you doing with that grapefruit?"

  "Oh!" Mrs. Clendenning said, dropping the newspaper in confusion. "Oh, the grapefruit. Well, Lily, this is something my manicurist told me about. After you've finished with your breakfast grapefruit you simply sink your elbows into the empty shells and sit that way for half an hour. It tones the skin, softens and bleaches. And you know how prune-ish elbows get after a certain age. Why, Miss Jewel—that's her name—said to me . . ."

  "Did Miss Jewel also tell you how to get grapefruit stains off sofas? Just look at that slipcover and it only came back from the cleaner's last month! Really, Violet, if you'd just have a tray in bed every morning instead of . . ."

  "But Lily," Mrs. Clendenning said, "I wouldn't dream of causing all that trouble when you're so short of help. I told you when I came out here that I was going to pitch right in and do my share.”

  Since their husbands had died it had been the custom of the two Pruitt sisters to summer together in the house of their childhood. It was also Mrs. Clendenning's hopeful belief that she made life easier for a reduced domestic staff by refusing breakfast either in her bedroom or the dining room. Instead, she chose the morning room, which meant that it had to be dusted, aired and put to rights far earlier than usual; that flowers had to be arranged; a table set up; and food carried the entire length of the old Pruitt house in order to indulge this whim of cooperation.

  Mrs. Clendenning also embarked on other labor-saving schemes. She was firm about making her own bed, a task which she performed so ineptly that the bed had to be torn apart and remade each day. Her efforts at gardening had resulted in the uprooting of dozens of new chrysanthemum plants, which she had mistaken for weeds. A marketing trip into the village had stripped the gears on the station wagon. Still Violet was determined to do her bit.

  As the Boldini portrait above the mantel in the morning room proclaimed, Mrs. Ames and Mrs. Clendenning had once been great beauties—"the lovely Pruitt Sisters," they had been called by many a buck in 1913—and the portrait showed them in the ivory glory of their coming-out gowns from Worth. They were tall and willowy with long lovely legs (which did not show in the portrait) and with immense liquid black eyes (which did). Lily had been a stately brunette, Violet an ethereal redhead.

  They were still what is generally referred to as damned handsome women, but only the legs and the eyes remained as a sisterly link. The difference started at the ground and worked up. Today Violet crossed her knees; Lily her ankles. Violet's negligee was a tangle of silken skirts, puffed and pleated, gathered and gored, ruffled and rumpled, fluttering with marabou. Lily wore a sensible linen dress. Violet's nails were long and lacquered a liverish red, her fingers glittering with rings, her wrists a-clatter with bangles; Lily buffed her nails, wore a wedding band, the cabochon emerald that had been her engagement ring, and a wrist watch. Violet painted; Lily powdered.

  And finally, the heads: Lily had allowed nature to take its course with her hair—it was the color of polished pewter, braided into a tidy coronet around her neat skull. Violet's hair had been dyed an unlikely chestnut which shone with a green and purple fly's wing sheen in the sun; it was worn short, curled and crimped coquettishly until it covered her head like a helmet of Brillo.

  Marriage had led the lovely Pruitt sisters into quite different ways of life. But now widowhood had joined them once more and it was often possible for them to spend as long as two hours in each other's company without quarreling.

  All of her life Lily had done the right thing. She had married a proper young New York gentleman whose family had run the venerable Knickerbocker Trust Company since the year before the Revolutionary War. Mr. Ames was a catch, everyone said. They had spent winters in a big house in town and summers at the old Pruitt Place. Their marriage was blessed by four children, ideally spaced and ideally sexed—boy, girl, boy, girl. They had done all the things rich people are supposed to do, living well within their means on the iron-clad principle of never touching one's principal.

  But ten years ago Mr. Ames had died, after a long and ruinous illness, leaving Lily a comparatively poor woman with cautious but expensive habits, the principle of the principal, and the old Pruitt Place. Long ago she had sold the town house and now felt obliged to live twelve months of the year in the country.

  Violet, on the other hand, had never done anything right. She had eloped with Tom Clendenning—who was Nobody, as Anybody could tell you—in the very teeth of dear Papa's veto. Dear Papa cut her off with only his hideous brownstone house on Fifth Avenue, which Violet sold a year later as an office building site for exactly one million dollars. Violet's husband invested her nest egg in a series of wildcat schemes which no fool would have touched and doubled and redoubled her money. It was said that if Violet Clendenning put a token in a subway turnstile she'd strike oil. She not only touched her principal, she mauled it. She lived outrageously in a number of hideous houses named Villa Violetta, each one more ostentatious than the last. Felicia, her only child, had been the most beautiful debutante of her season and had married—and divorced—the son of an earl.

  Even Tom Clendenning's death had been profitable, for he was swept off an ocean liner, thus saving all burial expenses. A smart lawyer had sued the line and collected a final million dollars to repay Violet for her loss. She lived now in a suite in Carlton House and spoke of herself as a "poor, lone widow."

  "Lily," Mrs. Clendenning cried, "would you just look at this! If you buy right now, you can get a mink coat for just two thousand dollars and they’ll store it free until autumn. Honestly, it does pay to read these ads. I don't know why you don't splurge a little and buy yourself a really decent coat. I always say there's nothing like mink to . . .”

  "The reason I don't, Violet, is that two thousand dollars is exactly what it's going to cost to have the roof replaced on this horrid old eyesore. I've had six estimates and that's the lowest. And what's more, they've all said that it's a miracle the old roof hasn't rotted away already. Now be still and let me plan the liquor order."

  "Lily, I don't know how you can say such things about the house where we were born. One of the real showplaces of Long Island and built on property that's been in the family since—well, since even before the United States was the United States."

  "How would you like to buy it, Violet?"

  "What?"

  "I said how would you like to buy it. I nearly managed to get rid of it last year to the Sisters of Charity. They were going to have a convent or a home for delinquent girls or something."

  "Oh, Lily!"

  "And just this spring a doctor—a psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever you call them—was thinking about taking it over as a retreat for alcoholics."

  "Lily Ames! Dear Papa's house turned into a home for drunks! I never heard of anything so . . ."

  "But you needn't worry, Violet. They've all turned the wretched old thing down because it's made of wood—it's termites or something they worry about."

  "Lily Ames! To think you'd even consider selling. Haven't you any feeling for your home?"

  "Did you when you sold the last Villa Violetta at the peak of the real-estate boom?" Mrs. Ames asked.

  "That's different, Lily, you can't ask a poor, lone widow to rattle around in twelve huge rooms."

  "But you can ask
this poor widow to rattle around in forty? I tell you what, Violet: If you're so sentimental about this place, I'll trade you even. You take the house, the furniture, the land—all six miles of it—and I'll just move into your little suite at Carlton House. Then we'll both be happy."

  "Lily! I wouldn't allow you to make such a sacrifice."

  "No sacrifice at all. Besides, you have air conditioning and television built into a Boulle chest."

  "Oh! Television's very vulgar. I only look at I Love Lucy."

  "Well, I only look at the roof caving in. Come now, if you want to be helpful you can give me some advice on where to put all these people for the weekend."

  "Oh, Lily, you know I love to plan parties.”

  "Then come.”

  2: Bedrooms

  The heels of Lily's pumps and Violet's mules echoed and reechoed through the vast empty rooms of the old Pruitt Place as they walked across the central hall. The house and its grounds were, indeed, one of the earliest showplaces on Long Island. Erected in 1885 by dear Papa, as a token of esteem for the woman he was about to marry, the house was an outstanding example of the work of Richard Morris Hunt in the white heat of his eclecticism. Mr. Hunt had said it was an adaptation of a real French chateau and dear Papa had seen no reason to doubt the master builder's word.

  But because of the current craze for summer cottages, Mr. Hunt had suggested that the house be built entirely of shingles and dear Papa, sensing that shingle would be far cheaper than limestone or marble—and far more stylish, too—happily agreed. The house was to be sizable, but not too large to be run by dear Papa's staff of ten, whose aggregate salaries came to just thirty-five dollars a week.