The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  “Seen what turn out well?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Olive marched to the nearest stovetop, where the enamel coffeepot sat on a round back burner, keeping hot. “I don’t have the faintest idea.”

  “You and Master Harry. I’ve seen the way the two of you look at each other. Like I said, I’ve been in service me whole life, and I knows a look when I sees it.” Under moments of emotion, Mrs. Jackins’s original accent slipped out, a relic of her upbringing an ocean away. She had moved to America when she was eight or nine, she’d once told Olive over tea one evening, and had started as a scullery maid in a house off Washington Square, moving both upward and uptown as she grew apace with Manhattan itself. While Olive couldn’t guess how old the woman was—her hair was still dark, but her face was red and wrinkled—she could well imagine that no aspect of downstairs life hid for long from Mrs. Jackins’s experienced eye.

  Still, Olive had no choice but to brazen it out. She poured hot coffee into the elegant porcelain pot, replaced the lid, and set it carefully on the tray, without so much as glancing in Mrs. Jackins’s direction. “You’re imagining things. I wouldn’t dream of looking at Master Harry, and as for him, why—”

  A hand closed gently around her arm. “Now, Olive. You just listen to me one minute. One single minute; that’s all. I’m not casting no stones. I’m not after tattling on you to herself. But I seen all this before, masters and servants, and trust me, my dear, no good can come of it. No good, do you hear me?”

  “It’s not like that,” Olive whispered.

  Mrs. Jackins removed her hand and sighed. “And there it is. All you girls think it’s different for you, that you’re the special one. It’ll all work out for you, won’t it? But listen to me, dearie. Listen good.” She leaned toward Olive’s ear. “It never does. You ain’t special. The world don’t work that way. Masters and servants, mixing together. Never did, never will. Take my advice, Olive dearie. If you want to be happy, set those sights of yours a wee bit lower. A fine man like Master Harry might fancy a pretty housemaid like you, but curse me if he ever marries her. Why, we had a housemaid just last summer, didn’t we, who set her cap for Master August and wound up in a right fix—”

  Olive pulled away and picked up the tray. Her face was hot and tight. “Thanks very much for your advice, Mrs. Jackins. I’ll just run this coffee upstairs, now, won’t I?”

  Mrs. Jackins rolled her eyes upward and turned away. “Have it your way, dearie. But Master Harry leaves for college in less than a fortnight, and where will you be? Right here on Sixty-ninth Street, ironing them tablecloths, hoping you ain’t in a fix of your own.”

  The tray was heavy, but Olive was strong. She bore Harry’s coffee up the five long flights of stairs until she arrived at his door, which was closed. Propping the tray against one arm, she knocked with the other. “Coffee, sir!” she said, into the paneled wood.

  “Come in!” called Harry’s familiar voice.

  She turned the knob awkwardly and backed her way in.

  She had entered Harry’s room before, of course. Many times, in fact, since he had returned home from college. Dusting and polishing the family’s rooms was part of the ordinary course of her duties, and while one of the more senior housemaids usually attended the boys’ rooms—or so they were called, anyway, though both Harry and August had long lost any resemblance to their innocent younger selves—she often filled in. She knew the details intimately. There was Harry’s bed, still unmade, probably still warm, hung in green damask and plump with white pillows. There was his desk, covered with sketches and half-finished letters. His wardrobe stood open, in need of a thorough thinning out, or perhaps the services of a professional valet. The bookshelves at one end were crammed full in a comfortable, messy-scholar way that Olive found endearing. She set down the tray and turned to the chair, where she expected to find Harry himself, dressed and smiling, but it was empty.

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  Olive spun around and gasped, filling her eyes with the sight of Harry’s bare chest, which gleamed a beautiful pale gold between the open edges of the dressing gown that hung from his shoulders. His face was half-spread with shaving soap, and the wicked edge of a razor hovered above the other side, ready to strike. He grinned and turned back to the mirror above the sink, framed by the open doorway of his private bathroom. (Her father’s own design, naturally.) “I was hoping they’d send you up. I don’t suppose you have a moment or two before you have to go back?”

  Olive was too astonished to speak. Harry stroked the blade in confident lines across the foam that adorned his cheek, while the soap-fragrant steam from his recent bath billowed around him. He looked radiant and well rested, lean and marvelously built: each contour immaculate, like an Italian marble touched by God’s finger and brought to life. Her eyes dragged helplessly along the width of his shoulders, the lines of his waist, the curves of his calves beneath the edge of the robe, and she felt as if someone had doused her in kerosene and set her quietly alight. Her mouth watered and her insides melted. He was too much. He was too exalted, too magnificent. He was unreal, a different species altogether.

  Mrs. Jackins’s voice echoed in her head: Masters and servants. Masters and servants, mixing together. A right fix.

  Harry set down his razor, patted his cheeks with a towel, and turned toward her. “Why, what’s the matter?” he said, stepping forward.

  Olive stumbled back. “I should leave.”

  “No, you shouldn’t.” Harry grinned his most charmingly piratical grin and strode toward her, robe swinging dangerously. He lifted his arms and spread his palms as if to grasp her by the cheeks, to pin her to his lips like a butterfly in a collection, and Olive turned and flew out the door, out of Harry’s comfortable room, out of sight of that bed that had only just been vacated, that bookshelf full of volumes a mere housemaid would never, ever have time to read.

  By the time the multitude of Pratt clocks struck a united eleven o’clock, the glorious Christmas Eve dinner had been served and cleared, the coffee had been drunk, and the family had gathered together in the drawing room, trimming the tree under the imperious direction of Mrs. Pratt. (Christmas trees, apparently, must be trimmed just so for the proper effect, which, according to Mrs. Pratt’s taste, might best be described as baroque.)

  Not that Olive cared. She was worn to pieces. She had just brought down the last tray of coffee cups and saucers and been dismissed by Mrs. Jackins, who thought she looked a little peaked. Peaked! She could hardly stand, and her mood was not improved by a glimpse of the Pratt family as she dragged herself past the open double doors of the magnificent second-floor drawing room (ballroom might be a better word, and indeed Miss Prunella’s engagement party was due to take place there next week), richly dressed, laughing and making merry. Well, Harry was laughing, anyway, balancing on a stepladder to light a few more candles on that twenty-foot tree brought down from the Adirondacks on a special railroad car. The tip nearly brushed the ceiling plasterwork. A nearby phonograph played a tinny Christmas carol, and the air swelled with the scent of pine and cigar smoke and prosperity.

  As Olive paused, heart bursting, Harry glanced inevitably toward the doorway from his perch, and his eyes met hers. His smile widened, and he winked—yes, actually winked!—as if it were all a great joke, and Olive had also been celebrating her Christmas Eve amid ten-course meals and the loving rituals of her gathered family, instead of dragging her weary body about a mansion that was not hers, seeing to the comfort of people she did not especially like.

  She turned and hurried down the landing and up the stairs, away from the ring of tipsy Pratt laughter and tinny Pratt phonographs, and as she arrived at the third-floor landing she came face-to-face with the closed door of Mr. Pratt’s study.

  Closed, but not locked.

  She rested her hand on the newel post and stared at the door, and for an instant she almost thoug
ht she saw her father’s face, gazing at her in reproach. A line of Shakespeare drifted through her head—Oh, Shakespeare! she thought with a pang—like a passing ghost: Do not forget. This visitation / Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

  Thy almost blunted purpose.

  She had always scorned Hamlet, just a little. Five acts of vacillation, scene after scene of contemplation instead of action, putting on silly plays instead of simply confronting the usurper that was Claudius: man-to-man, face-to-face. But she was worse, wasn’t she? One smile from Harry Pratt, and she had forgotten almost entirely what she was here to do. She was willing to labor all day, to iron Pratt linens and scrub Pratt boot prints from the floor, and for what? For the chance to meet Harry in the hidden room at the top of the house? To bare herself before him, to serve Harry’s needs the way her father had served those of Mr. Pratt?

  Because she hadn’t taken a single step toward justice, had she? Not since she had sunk herself a week ago into the lavender-scented cushions in the attic room and taken off her dressing gown for Harry Pratt.

  Harry and his wink.

  Master Harry leaves for college in less than a fortnight, and where will you be?

  She was weak, wasn’t she? A weak, deluded little fool: extracting Harry’s tender little notes from the hole in the brick wall as if they were jewels, leaving one or two in return. Stealing upstairs when she should be sleeping, dreaming about Harry when she should be planning his family’s just deserts.

  Atop the newel post, her hand curled into a fist. She stepped forward with determination and opened the study door.

  She was not entirely unprepared for this moment. Around her neck, on a simple silver chain, hung the key that fit the lock on Mr. Pratt’s desk: a key obtained at great effort, from a wax imprint of the original during one of Mrs. Keane’s rare inattentive moments. Every morning she had looped it over her head; every day it had dangled on her chest, beneath her neat starched uniform, waiting for the opportunity to strike. That opportunity hadn’t arrived, of course. She was always too busy, or the family too close by, or her body too enervated. Or an appointment upstairs with Harry too imminent.

  But now. Now the family was busy trimming the Christmas tree in the drawing room, while the phonograph drowned out any untoward noises with its hollow rendition of “The Bottom of the Punchbowl.” Harry was trapped on a stepladder, doing his mother’s bidding. There was no question of anyone wandering into Mr. Pratt’s study, tonight of all nights.

  She was familiar with the room now and needed no light to find her way to the massive desk. Her hands shook. She was doing this, actually doing this. She drew the key out from beneath her collar, and the metal warmed her skin. Where was the drawer? There it was, the lock solid beneath her fingertips. She guided the key inside, holding one hand with the other to keep it steady, moving quickly so she wouldn’t have time to think about it, wouldn’t have time to lose her nerve.

  The lock turned; the drawer slid obediently open. Now she needed a light. She straightened and found the lamp on the desk and switched it on, hoping the thin bar of light beneath the door would go unnoticed, should someone—a maid, the housekeeper—pass by the landing.

  The drawer was full of leather portfolios, each one labeled at the top by a small rectangle of cardboard set in a thin metal frame. She flipped through them all—BAKER, HANSBOROUGH CO., KEYSTONE STEEL, NEW YORK CENTRAL—and closed the drawer again.

  The next drawer yielded nothing, nor did the next. Her pulse knocked furiously in her neck. The reek of leather was beginning to make her feel ill. She stuck the key into the lock of the final drawer and yanked it open.

  AMES, HARDING CO., NORTHERN PACIFIC. Another railroad; railroads were all the rage on Wall Street, weren’t they? PHILADELPHIA & READING, STRATHCOTE & HARPER.

  And then: VAN ALAN.

  Olive fell back on her heels. She hadn’t really expected to find it; she had even, in her heart, perhaps been hoping she wouldn’t. Finding something meant . . . well, finding something. Discovering the true story, forcing herself to act. She had spent the past year in righteous fury, trembling with the need to destroy the man who had destroyed her father and her family. And now the whole affair lay before her in a plain leather portfolio, the documented scale of Mr. Pratt’s perfidy, and all of a sudden she didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to bring the poisoned chalice to her lips.

  Didn’t want this at all.

  But you have to, she told herself, staring at the leather, the black block letters spelling out her own name, her own lost family. She could still hear the phonograph, straining through the floor below. Somebody broke out in hearty male laughter.

  Thy almost blunted purpose.

  She reached into the drawer and set her hands on either side of the portfolio.

  The doorknob rattled.

  In a flash, she slammed the drawer shut and turned the lock. From above the desk came the faint creak of hinges, a wedge of light from the hallway beyond. Olive swallowed back her heart and pressed her fingers into the floor, to keep her body from shaking.

  “Olive? Is that you?”

  Harry.

  She let out a long column of air, the full contents of her lungs.

  “Olive, darling. It’s just me.” The click of the door closing again. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get away. I had to make up an excuse about too much eggnog. I’m not sure if anyone believed me.” A chuckle. “You’re not hiding, are you?”

  There was no point in pretending, was there? Olive rose slowly from behind the desk. Harry stood just outside the circle of light from the desk lamp, tall and reassuring in his black-and-white dinner dress, hair glinting gold.

  “I didn’t want anyone to catch me,” she said shakily.

  “Well, you chose the right spot. I never would have guessed if I didn’t see the light beneath the door.” He held out his hand. “Come along. I’ve got a special Christmas surprise for you upstairs.”

  “A surprise?”

  He came around the corner of the desk and took her hand. “Why, you’re shaking like a leaf. Poor Olive.” He kissed her hand. “You must be exhausted, and I’m keeping you up like a scoundrel. But don’t worry. That will all be over soon.”

  “Over?”

  Harry turned off the lamp, leaned down, and kissed the tip of her nose. “Just come with me, will you? I promise it will be worth your while.”

  She had no choice but to follow him as he led her by the hand toward the door. He opened it, peeked out, told her the coast was clear, and drew her out before him into the empty glamour of the third-floor landing.

  As he shut the door behind them, Harry gave a little shudder. “I never did like that room very much,” he whispered in her ear.

  Fifteen

  JULY 1920

  Lucy

  “Miss Young? Will you escort Mr. Ravenel to the elevator?”

  “Yes, of course.” Lucy hastily pushed back her chair as the door to Mr. Schuyler’s office opened and her employer motioned to Mr. Ravenel to precede him.

  The two were a study in contrasts, Mr. Schuyler fairer, thinner, taller; Mr. Ravenel with his velvety eyes and his rugby player’s muscles. He wore a suit in a lightweight fabric; the pale color brought out the sun on his skin, making Mr. Schuyler seem pale and office bound in comparison.

  “Thank you for your assistance in this matter, sir,” said Mr. Ravenel, holding out his hand to Mr. Schuyler.

  “Not at all, not at all.” Mr. Schuyler was smiling—smiling with his teeth, but not his eyes. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I have some answers to your questions. Miss Young?”

  “Yes, sir.” With brisk efficiency, Lucy handed Mr. Ravenel his hat. “If you would be so good as to follow me?”

  “With pleasure, Miss Young,” said Mr. Ravenel, and tipped his hat courteously to Mr. Schuyler. All very proper, all very correct. As the office door
closed, he said in a lower voice, a voice for Lucy’s ears only, “I enjoyed our outing on Saturday.”

  Lucy cast a quick, nervous look over her shoulder. Silly of her. It wasn’t as though there had been anything illicit about the outing. Not even her grandmother could find anything compromising about a walk in the park in broad daylight.

  They had stopped at a street cart for ice-cream sandwiches, Mr. Ravenel teasing Lucy for the dainty way she licked the ice cream from the sides first, so the melting treat wouldn’t drip on her gloves. He had taken great bites of his sandwich, the way it was meant to be eaten, he said provocatively, driving Lucy to a demonstration of her own highly superior technique. Mr. Ravenel nobly refrained from gloating when the ice cream dripped on her all the same.

  With sticky fingers, they had taken to the carousel, queuing behind girls in hats with long ribbons and boys in knickerbockers for their chance at two of the brightly painted horses. Rosinante, Mr. Ravenel had called his, with a grin that told Lucy that there was a joke she was meant to understand. They had raced their steeds all around the circle as the calliope played and small children squealed with excitement around them.

  Somewhere between the ice-cream sandwich and the carousel, Lucy had forgotten that Mr. Ravenel was a client, forgotten that she was meant to be entertaining him for Mr. Schuyler, and just tipped her head back to the bright summer sky and enjoyed the day as she hadn’t enjoyed anything since her father had died last fall, and, with him, the last sense of belonging she had.

  But now, back in the office, Lucy felt as though a shadow had been cast over their bright outing, as though there were something clandestine about it.

  Taking a deep breath, Lucy said primly, “All of us at the firm want to make sure that you enjoy your stay in New York.”

  Mr. Ravenel paused with her before the elevator, his dark eyes meeting hers with quiet amusement. “Is that so? How very public spirited.”