When she was done she went down to the lobby again and wandered among the tables and chairs, which were rather like the furniture in somebody’s drawing room, if not in a style she’d care to have in a house, and she sat at an empty table and again ordered tea.
She was halfway through her first cup when a shrunken yet fat woman came hobbling toward her on two canes. The woman was old, her face doughy, her clothes expensive but far too young for her. Louisa thought, Oh, don’t come here, but on the old woman came, even though half the tables were empty, until she was standing next to Louisa’s chair, breathing like a blown horse.
“You’re sitting at my table,” the old woman said. “You’re the wife of Arthur Conan Doyle.”
“Yes, I…” Louisa was flustered and embarrassed; she tried to get up, sending Arthur’s shirts cascading to the floor, half angry because no one had told her it was the woman’s table — whatever that meant.
“Don’t get up, dear; I’ll sit down. I hate to sit alone.” Her voice was very American, the consonants hard and the vowels nasal. The woman clattered her canes together in one hand and pulled a chair out. Louisa was already on her feet, so tried to help her. “I can manage alone, thanks very much; it’s easier if I do for myself, you see?” The woman fell backward into a leather chair, her face red from the exertion, panting. She said, “I’m Mrs. Amos Simmons.”
Louisa murmured something apologetic, but it was ignored because a servant had put a dish of ice cream and a plate of biscuits in front of the old woman without, so far as Louisa could see, any order’s having been placed. The old woman said, “I live here.” She started spooning up vanilla ice cream. “I’ve lived here since the New Britannic was built. In fact, I was here before it was finished. They were still painting the rooms on the second floor when I moved in. I was the first guest, and I’ve been here ever since. Mr. Simmons and I lived in Syracuse for years and years, I’d hate to tell you how many. He was in salt, that’s why Syracuse. Why don’t you sit down?”
The business about salt meant nothing to Louisa.
“Then we went into chemicals. Still in Syracuse. We made a pile of money and then my husband died and I came back home. Sit down, dear!”
Louisa picked up the shirts. “My husband will be wondering where I am. I didn’t know that this is your table.”
“I’ve sat here every morning for ten years, so I’ve staked a claim, but I like company, if it’s the right kind, if you know what I mean.” She grabbed Louisa’s wrist with a surprisingly strong grip and pulled her down. “Now sit down and tell me who you are.”
“Well, really…” Louisa wanted to be angry but found she was laughing. The old woman was like somebody out of Tocqueville or Vigne, whose books she’d read to prepare for America. She said, “You know who I am.”
“I know who you’re the wife of but I don’t know you.” She was spooning ice cream into her tiny mouth all the time she talked. “Have a chocolate cookie. But don’t eat them all; they’re my favorite.” She swallowed. “There’s Henry Irving, the actor. He always bows.” And indeed Irving, heading for the front door, was bowing, then giving a smile to Louisa, who waved. “And there’s that man who calls himself Buffalo Bill, which is about as asinine a name as I ever heard — like calling yourself Cow Willie. Oh! And her.”
Louisa turned her head to see.
“Don’t look! Every day, she waves at me and I don’t wave back and she goes right on! You see?”
Louisa saw an impressively buxom woman, corseted to within an inch of asphyxiation, who looked fairly harmless to her. Becoming aware that Louisa was looking at her, she cocked her head and smiled the sort of smile that shows interest but also restraint, and Louisa smiled back. “Who is she?”
Mrs. Simmons dropped her voice to a whisper. “That’s Marie Corelli!”
“Oh, my husband mentioned her. She’s a novelist.”
“She’s a Roman Catholic, is what she is, if you ask me!”
Louisa decided to be wicked. “Have you read her books?”
“Certainly not! I don’t read fiction, anyway, except for dear Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Fiction is usually unpleasant. Life is unpleasant enough without reading about it. There’s that nephew of mine. He thinks he’s English.” To Louisa’s surprise, she began to recite: “Little Boy Blue, Come blow your horn, The cow’s in the meadow, The sheep’s in the corn.” She put the empty spoon in her mouth, licked, and then began to scrape the inside of the glass for anything she’d missed. “Well, here you are, Alexander.”
“Indeed, Aunt.” A very handsome man removed his bowler and smiled at Louisa. He was wearing a very blue suit — hence the poetry, Louisa decided.
As soon as he had been pointed out, Louisa had looked at him and agreed about his seeming English — the clothes, maybe, and his thinness — but what really rang in her head was a word that hadn’t been spoken—“safe.” Safe! What did that mean? What was a safe man? Especially such a good-looking one?
“This is Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle, Alexander. Her husband writes. My nephew, Alexander Newcome. He was born here but he chooses to live in London, so he’s got to be more English than the English.” She eyed him. “That suit’s too tight.”
He smiled and bowed. “Mrs. Doyle. I am honored.”
“Alexander, I want you to take me to Macy’s,” Mrs. Simmons said while he was still talking. “Mrs. Doyle, I’ll say goodbye for now. They’ll put all this on my bill. No, I insist; I’m sure I have lots more money than the wife of an author.” She laughed again. “Anyways, I ate all the ice cream. And the cookies.” She tried to struggle out of the chair and managed to do so only with the help of both Newcome and Louisa. Panting, she stood there and stared at the bronze doors. “Alexander, ring upstairs for my maid and tell her to bring me the winter cloak with the fur hood. I’m sure it’s as cold as your stepmother’s breath out there.”
Newcome smiled at Louisa over his aunt’s head, making her his fellow-conspirator in tolerating the old woman. Again, he bowed, said, “Mrs. Doyle, I hope we meet again,” and he went off. She tried to say, But we’re leaving soon, but the old woman was rattling on about the house detective, whom she seemed to dislike as much as Marie Corelli. Louisa excused herself and hurried toward the lift.
Arthur, a little to her disappointment, hadn’t missed her; he was happily reading his lecture on the future of the English novel, with which he was going to entertain people all over America. He looked up when she came in, grunted, and went back to admiring his own work.
She didn’t quite dare take the Gazette out of the wastebasket right then, but she did as soon as he’d gone off to visit his publishers. His American publishers, that is. He was published first in London, then in America. He’d never met the Americans and wanted to get on with them; as he’d reminded her before he went off, they were paying the expenses of his lecture tour. “But not mine,” she’d said, and he’d delighted her by saying, “Not yours, but those I gladly pay because I can’t do it without you. If you weren’t with me, Louisa, I’d…I don’t know what I’d do.”