Gilded Mountain, page 7
“Introduce yourself properly to the young lady,” Easter said.
“We have met once,” I said, the knife in my hand.
“But not properly,” he said, grinning. “I’m Jasper. People call me Jace.”
“Or they call you late again,” said Easter.
“Sylvie Pelletier,” I said, with the American pronunciation. Pell-tear.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, “despite how you’re threatening me with that knife.”
I put down the knife like it was on fire. My face was.
“You’re that Florence Nightingale of the quarry.” He held out his hand to show me the blister had healed. “See? Good as new.”
“She’s here for a job with your stepmother.”
“La Countess?” He drew back and blinked in exaggerated fashion.
It seemed he did not like Madame. She was his stepmother? “Susie Society” would relish the information. Would it cause a penalty if I revealed it? I was fascinated by the exotic lot of them, gathering details before I was rejected as a hayseed. Easter prepared a lunch basket while Jasper Padgett struggled with his necktie. When he smiled at me—had he?—his whiskerless cheeks went red again, as did mine.
“Go,” Easter told him. “Fix that tie. I’ll bring the sandwiches out front. Next time you’ll roll out of bed on time or I don’t feed you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted. “Thanks kindly, my dearest Easter. Might it be too much to ask for a jug of iced tea?” Another grin, in my direction, as if he knew he was charming, performing for an audience. “A slice of cake? Two slices?” He blew her a kiss on the way out, while I wondered at the banter between them, and how I was supposed to comport myself, with the whirlwind of Easter whipping through the kitchen, crossing to an icebox where she got out liverwurst, pickles, mustard. She slapped these together on the sliced bread, a tuneless tune on her breath.
“Shall I help you?” I asked, getting out of her way.
“Wrap those,” she said, and handed me the sandwiches with a roll of waxed paper. From under a tea towel, she exposed a tin of small yellow cakes, selected four, and handed me one. “Keep that for yourself.”
“You’re very kind.” I put it in my jacket pocket. “Thank you.”
“Well, at least someone was raised with manners.” She appeared surprised by me somehow. She took up the basket and pointed to a row of hooks where I was to leave my things. “Come with me. I’ll bring you to Mrs. Nugent.”
Through the swinging door, we entered a great dining room paneled in dark wood. My eyes went everywhere. Holy— The ceilings soared up, painted with clouds, cherubs. Here was a marble mantel sculpted with fruits and florets. Above it was a portrait of a solemn white man in a white suit, white walrus mustache. Animal heads gloomed between electric wall sconces, lit even in daylight. A long table was set with silver candelabra. Marble statuary posed in alcoves and nooks, busts of naked infants and nymphs. A vermilion carpet under our feet twined with patterns of flowers and vines, soft as a lawn. I was timid to cross it in my dusty boots.
Easter bustled past the displays and led me into a salon full of upholstery, chairs and sofas and tufted footstools. Here and there perched a fern, an ornamental stag cast in bronze, an ivory ashtray in the shape of a monkey head. Sunlight blasted in wide windows bracketed by draperies of blue velvet. The walls of the next room were upholstered in leather. Following, I sneaked a hand to touch it, the wrinkled soft gray. Easter saw me do it.
“Genuine elephant hide,” she said with a sniff. “Mr. Padgett shot them in Africa.”
Susie Society reports, I thought. Was wall covering a subject for privacy?
We emerged into the grand front entryway, where Jace Padgett waited, reading a book.
“Master Padgett,” Easter said.
He closed the book reluctantly and took the hamper. “Thanks. Gotta get going now, Ma.”
“Don’t you call me that.”
He blew her a kiss and was out the door. “I’m late! Tarbusch is gonna dock me.”
“Pphhh,” Easter said when he was gone. “He won’t get docked, no way.”
“My father got docked,” I said, “for taking more than fifteen minutes for lunch.”
“That’s how they do,” said Easter. “Unless your daddy owns the place. He works at the mill?”
“The quarry,” I said. “He’s a master machinist.”
“Huh.” She led me back toward the kitchen, branched through a side door, down a narrow passage running behind the rooms, a mouse warren for servants, and knocked at a door labeled Housekeeping. “You’ll see Mrs. Nugent,” she said, and left me there.
“Come!” Inside, Mrs. Nugent sat behind a small desk. Her hair was a gray puff of spun cotton pulled tight behind her ears. By the drawstring scowl of her mouth, she showed she was displeased with me already. “I have enough untrained girls for the season, so don’t waste my time if that’s what you’re after.”
“Colonel Bowles sent me about the secretarial position. With Mrs. Padgett?”
“Tcch. Nobody tells me.” Mrs. Nugent pushed her chair back from the desk. “Follow me, and pay attention so you can find your way back.”
We went along the service halls through the endless house. “There are forty-two rooms at Elkhorne,” she said. “Fifteen on this floor.” She recited names as we passed: the Library, the Ballroom, the Salon Rouge, the Tearoom. Grumbling around a corner, Mrs. Nugent opened a door and we came into a vast hall, turned through an archway. “Here is the Greenery,” she sniffed. “Or should I say the Jar-din-air, as she calls it.”
“Jardinière,” I said, correcting her pronunciation. She glared and I kicked myself. Know-it-all.
It was a room made of glass. Feathery ferns grew from Grecian urns. Palm trees from the deserts of Araby sprouted from a bed of indoor earth. A fountain simmered in a pond where orange fish swam between lilies. A little black dog came at us, yapping.
Mrs. Nugent flinched. “Mrs. Padgett, a girl to see you,” she said.
The dog yapped ceaselessly.
“Bisou! Be quiet now.” This was the actual Countess, calling the dog from a chaise, smiling at me in beams of welcome. Was she twenty-one or thirty-three? Her pale summer dress had sleeves made from diaphanous gauze. Her face was a white pearl set with blue eyes, surprising as a wild iris in snow.
The little dog sat at her feet, looking up in adoration. I was enthralled as the dog.
“Bonjour,” she said. “Mademoiselle Sylvie Pelletier?”
“Oui, Madame.”
Mrs. Nugent fled. The goddess patted the chair next to her, where it seemed I was to roost my scuffed and nervous bones. “Reste ici, petite,” she said. “Permit me to introduce you to my little schipperke, Bisou.” She took the animal’s front paw and extended it toward me so I would shake it.
“Enchantée,” I said, and shook the paw.
The Countess laughed. “Dites-moi tout, Sylvie.”
Tell her everything? I sat tongue-tied in two languages but managed to say, “I have just received my high school diploma.”
“Monsieur Bowles says you’re the excellent student.” She spoke English in a French voice with flutes and warm notes of cello. “You are Canadienne?”
“Americaine. From Vermont. But—I mean to say, Québécoise. My parents are.”
“Ah, oui, Vermont,” she said. “Many French at Montpelier?”
“Yes. And Rutland. Winooski.”
This name was hilarious to her. “Winooski,” she laughed with a hand covering her mouth. “It’s funny, Winooski!”
“An Algonquin Indian name,” I told her, then feared again I’d overstepped and would be seen as Mademoiselle connaît-tout.
In French, she asked about my father. “He works in the quarry? Your husband does also?”
“My husband? No. I am not—”
Pealing laughter. “Perhaps, maybe, you have un petit-ami? A sweetheart?”
I shook my head.
“Enfin, then, soon!” She unfolded herself from her chair, a delicate willow, as tall as myself. “Stand up,” she commanded. “Turn this way and that.”
In mortification, I turned as she inspected me, the shab and scuff of my shoes, my sunburnt arms and peeling nose, the weight of my bones.
“Oui, très bien. You will capture many hearts, I am sure, when the gentlemen arrive for the hunt.”
Was I to be hunted? I suffered as she judged me, and stared at the floor, at her delicate beautiful shoes of yellow kid, a rosette of silk on the toes.
“Now,” she said, “tell me about your papa. It’s a terrible hard life, yes? You suffer very much?”
It seemed she wanted me to agree that it was a hard life, so I nodded, exposed as if naked in front of her.
“How are you to bathe? What is the condition of the toilettes at Quarrytown?”
“We bathe,” I said, defensive. What kind of question was this from a countess?
“But how?” she insisted. “Don’t be shamed.”
I was mortified. At her insistence, I explained our arrangements, the water flumes the Company rigged from the river, how we filled the buckets at the pump, hauled them home, heating the water on the stove, pouring it into the washtub on a Saturday. She listened as if fascinated, and I could not think why she pursued such a subject. I would’ve liked to ask how she herself bathed. But my place here was not to ask, only to answer. I talked in halting sentences, transfixed by the merriment of Madame’s eyes, the way the sun poured through the glass walls as if we were inside an aquarium.
“And you have a screen,” she asked, “for the privacy? And what facilities? The lavatory? Where do you…”
“Les béscosses. The chamber pot.” (Was it not normal?) I stammered under her bizarre smiling interrogation.
“Enfin, you’re so cold in the snow, yes? Poor petite rabbits.” Madame leaned toward me, excited. “You see, Sylvie, it is for the science. I’m interested to improve the village life. To build schools, install the plumbing for the health and hygiene, for la modernisation. You understand?”
“Oui, Madame.” She was called the angel of the camps, and here was evidence.
“I’m told you write French? Demonstrate, please, chérie.” She found a pen and a sheet of paper, and I wrote: “Sylvie Pelletier, Moonstone, Colorado, le 7 juillet 1907.”
She inspected my work with approval. “Bon,” she said. “I hire you as summer secretary. Tu as la main d’une artiste.”
I had the hand of an artist but the heart of an imposter. I was not a real secretary and resolved to speak French as little as possible so she would not disdain my so-called muskrat version of the mother tongue.
“Allons-y,” she said. “I will speak en français and also in my terrible English. You will write and translate to proper English, please. My spelling, bah, c’est une catastrophe.” She handed me a notebook. “You will take dictation.”
“I’ve never done it.”
“Whatever I say, you write. It will be fixed later. Tranquille, petite. Don’t worry.” She began, her eyes narrowed in concentration, petting the little dog.
My dear Colonel Bowles,
In the matter of the miners’ housing, it has come to my attention that the cottages at Quarrytown lack sufficient plumbing. They are still deprived of electricity. The poor workers tremble in their hovels like rabbits. With the scientific hygiene we can fight the sickness and disease. Please take all measures to remedy insupportable conditions before the beginning of winter.
Sincerely, Madame La Comtesse Ingeborg LaFollette deChassy Padgett The Sociological Department, Padgett Fuel & Stone Co.
“The company’s new philosophy,” she said, “is to operate a sociological department in all the towns where we have the business concern. With science, we will improve the lives of seventeen thousand employees across the West. Did you know?”
I didn’t.
“The Padgett Company have forty operations, not only here in Moonstone. Coal, copper, marble in the five different states. We are to make not only profit but the healthy society. You are familiar with le Départment Sociologique?”
“Non, Madame.”
“It will soon be very famous. A philosophy model for the West. For America. You passed through the town of Ruby? The pretty cottages? The social club? All thanks to our work. For the welfare of the people. We will make such improvements here too. We will build kinder-schools, the hospital, a library. Comprenez?”
I nodded, in thrall to her elegance, her fragrance. She talked about the Company the way the church talked about our Lord. My mother talked of the Company this way too, but in fear of godly wrath. By contrast, Madame’s idea of management was compassionate. I was ready to believe, to worship among her flock of sociologists.
“If we act in the kindness,” she said, “these agitators, these terrible malcontents, will go away. No one will listen to them. We will be all together, tous ensemble, to make the town, the state of Colorado, for the future. For the profits. You see?”
She offered me little pastilles from a lavender tin. They tasted of violets. The air around her was scented with rose water, her perfume like anesthetic. I forgot to observe with the sharp eyes of a printer’s devil because my sight was dulled by sugar and awe.
That morning, Madame dictated three letters to Colonel Bowles on the subjects of moral character, gymnastics classes, and the prevention of disease. “Typhoid fever is epidemic in the camps.” Instructing me, she was patient and showed me a stack of pamphlets—I was to include one in each envelope—titled “Hygiene for the Working Classes.” This caused me a flicker of shame, that she thought me uncouth because I’d told her about the outhouses and tin washtubs of our toilette.
“Now,” she announced, “we write the instructions to Mrs. Ménagère Nugent.”
I chose a new page of my notebook and held my pen ready.
She leaned in to whisper, “I do not enjoy Mrs. Nugent. She is Mr. Padgett’s old favorite. Twenty years she works for the family. But elle me deteste, maybe even more than she detests petit Bisou. Nugent is like the guard of the prison. Is she not?”
“I do not know, Madame.”
“She needs to more, I think, make love!” The Countess giggled wickedly. “But Monsieur Nugent the husband is—” She sucked her cheeks in, to make fish lips. “Have you met Mr. Nugent? He is valet for my husband. A fish!” She kissed Bisou, a comedienne. “You try, Sylvie, to kiss a fish!” encouraging me.
I struggled in vain to remain serious but did not dare try the fish face.
“You are very politique, Sylvie,” she said, seeming disappointed. “You will bring Mrs. Fishy Nugent all the directifs domestiques. Here is the list. Ready? ‘Dear Mrs. Fish Poisson Nugent,’ ” she began, but leaned over and stopped my pen. “Please do not write poisson. Can you imagine if she read ‘Mrs. Fish’?” The Countess’s laughter bubbled over. “Enfin, continue: ‘For the Hunters’ Ball and royal visit the week of September the eighth, we require: rooms made up for thirty-six guests, twenty doubles and sixteen singles. The Bighorn Suite will be ready for His Majesty King Leopold II of Belgium…’ ”
“Majesté?” This could not be correct. Surely it was a missed translation. “Monsieur—King? Leopold… le roi?”
“Yes! The King is coming to hunt!” Madame whispered again: “And not just to hunt the animals. He seeks opportunities. The investments, etcetera. The Hunters’ Ball is the finale of the season. Majesté le roi des Belgiques. Leopold will be our guest.”
“The Queen too?”
“No, no. She rests at her castle in Laeken. Perhaps he brings his copine?”
I wrote on as she dictated: feather pillows only, sheets washed and ironed daily. “The King is very concerned of germs. So please note the staff to beware, to use the special gloves, the soap. But never ammonia!”
She held her nose with delicate horror and moved on to a recitation of menus: roasted capon. Truite à l’anglaise. Crown roast of pork. Then came paragraphs of procedure: tables set up for whist and backgammon after dinner; luncheon for the Grand Quarry Tour on Wednesday; another luncheon Thursday for the hunting party. “The musicians must arrive by noon on Saturday,” she dictated. “And Nugent must make a schedule for the carriages to bring the guests from the train depot.”
“The depot at Ruby?” I asked, to avoid a mistake.
“No! To here!” she said. “Our own new railroad will go direct to Moonstone Station, ready in time for His Majesty’s arrival.”
A king! In my fairy tale–addled mind, a king was not human but chosen by God or some anointing power to be above us lesser people. A royal visit would allow us to breathe the same air, would lift us as if we too had been anointed. What a lot of horse manure, I see now, but at the time I labored under notions of worthlessness that worked as a spell to disarm thinking.
I took down Madame’s words, distracted. All in one day I was secretary to a countess in a castle. I had talked to Negroes, to the son of a duke, and shaken the paw of a schipperke. With any luck, I’d soon observe a king in Colorado. All this fortune from writing an essay! A schoolgirl effort about the greatness of the U.S.A., our magnificent land of natural resources and freedom. At that moment, sucking on violet pastilles, I forgot the burros at the side of the road and saw that American greatness was vast as the land spreading out beneath our perch in the château, beyond to the high peaks, up even to Quarrytown hanging by threads off the rocks. Mrs. Luck was smiling at me now.
“C’est tout,” the Countess said at last. “Tomorrow when you have copied the correspondence to English, bring me the results.” She showed me to a little rolltop desk and gave me printed examples of schedules and letters “to copy from.” She left with a fluttery wave, Bisou trotting at her heels. “À tantôt! I’m going for my ride on the lake trail. How I love the mountains here, l’air pure.”
* * *
As she loved the air, I loved the little desk, the neat compartments for stamps, for ink and envelopes. The typewriter was there for my use, she’d said, pleased that I knew the keys already. I copied out her letters, careful not to smudge. Finished after two hours, I left the correspondence for her approval and went through the back halls to give the household lists to Mrs. Fishy Nugent.
