Perhaps the best way to begin this is to introduce myself. My name is Mary Susan Begley. I was born in 1885 right here in Browns Crossing. I married Mr. Begley in 1905 and was widowed in 1915. That was five years ago. I was surprised to learn how quickly I got over that and how relieved I was. Mr. Begley and I were not in love, whatever that is, and I felt no guilt over his passing. He did that quite on his own.
I go by Mary Susan and not Mrs. Begley. I refuse to be chained to my dead husband's name for the rest of my life. Eventually, I may change my name legally back to my maiden name, but even when I do that I intend be called Mary Susan. I do not wish to be Miss Anybody any more than Mrs. Anybody.
I choose to be old-fashioned in dress. I keep my black hair long and up during business hours, and my dress invariably white over black usually with an apron, as is the fashion for boarding-house mistresses.
Combining the attributes of being both unmarried and of some property I have more male admirers than I care to know about. So far, I have been able to ignore them all, having no immediate desire to lose my independence a second time.
I acquired Begley House in the usual way, not at all by my own efforts. My unfortunate husband who widowed me at age 30 was a man of some property. After a suitable period of mourning, I took advantage of my new wealth and independence as a femme sole and sold out completely. I then purchased a former club house very near Holmes College.
The building originally housed a what was called a social club in the years before fraternities and sororities were permitted on campus. When the college authorized national fraternities and sororities in 1915, the social club became a fraternity and built a much grander fraternity house one street over.
Begley House is located on Jefferson Street 4 blocks from downtown Brown's Crossing and right across the street from the campus of Holmes College. It is a three-story rectangular stone house built in the year 1905 on a tree shaded corner lot. The building has electricity and steam heat, as do most in the town.
The ground floor contains a good sized common room with a fireplace, a large dining room, a kitchen, living quarters for the concierge, and bedrooms for a live-in cook and housekeeper. Neither of the bedrooms is occupied at the time our story begins.
The second and third floors have four bedrooms each. A common bathroom located at one end of the hall on each floor serves the occupants of that floor. A third bathroom serves the ground floor. It is directly below the two student bathrooms upstairs. Each bathroom is fully equipped with shower facilities as well as a bathing tub.
The second and third floor each have four bedrooms, two on each side of the corridor. The lounge area outside the bedrooms connecting the corridor to the staircase is furnished with three occasional chairs and two small tables with lamps. This is to support the idea that conversation, reading and study are encouraged outside of one's room. The second floor houses the lady students and the third floor houses the gentlemen.
I rent the eight rooms in my shockingly co-educational rooming house by the semester to eight carefully selected upper level students who, somewhat unusually for 1920, share a need for quiet, respectable lodgings, together with a certain freedom of expression not always offered by other lodgings off or on the campus. This attitude of quiet study in dignified surroundings is sometimes more a product of their parent's wishes than their own, but with my assistance it works well.
Students and guests are encouraged to converse with each other. The parlor is considered the common room and is furnished with that purpose in mind. It helps to keep the students from congregating in either the kitchen or the dining room, which would create conflict with the cook for one and me for another.
To this purpose, the parlor has 10 leather upholstered wooden chairs arranged in pairs and four rather small round tables. I selected wooden chairs for easy mobility and tables for lamps and tea cups. Students who wished to study or read outside their rooms but off campus are welcome in the parlor at all hours, day or night. I take no responsibility for their sleeping habits.
Once cook goes home, guests may make tea in the kitchen just across the hall, but are not encouraged to remain there to drink it. That is the purpose of the parlor. Over the years, the walls have taken on several pieces of art, all done by students at the college and all sold or donated to Begley House, depending on the financial situation of the artist at the time of the sale. One of the paintings was done by a former resident. I make sure all the visiting parents know that on the walk through which precedes the contract.
The long wall of the parlor, opposite the door to the hallway, has four large windows facing the college across Beverly Street. To the right of the windows is the door to a small library. When I bought Begley House it contained a large liquor cabinet and a bar, replaced immediately by floor to ceiling shelves for books. That, together with a table with lamp and two chairs is the principle indication that the room is a library.
I consider it to be my responsibility to support an environment at Begley House favorable for a serious attempt at a college education.
One may converse, or read in the parlor downstairs, or in pleasant surroundings on each of the landings, or in one's room. By convention, there are no conversations held in the library. There are books, acquired rather haphazardly over the years by clients and myself. They are on a variety of subjects including novels. A quite respectable dictionary may be consulted on one of the tables. It was the only sure purchase I made for the library.
The left wall of the parlor, as you enter by the hall door, has two windows opening onto the porch.
The front porch of Begley House has a cast iron railing and extends the entire width of the building, facing Jefferson Street. There are chairs and tables on the porch and flowers in pots at intervals. The chairs are almost never used.
The porch faces west and evenings are often too warm until sunset. Students occasionally talk privately on the porch into the late evening but not often. One never knows who will come down the street or out from the house and interrupt.
A street light at the corner of Beverly and Jefferson does a rather better job of illuminating the empty corner across the street than it does Begley House.
Jefferson Street crosses Beverly Street, one block removed and parallel to College Avenue. College Avenue bisects the college. Buildings line College Avenue, and there is a half-block wide and one block long open field owned by the college for future expansion just across Beverly street from Begley House.
Each student's room is equipped for comfortable college living with an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers with mirror, a desk and chair, and a table fitted with an electric kettle where one can make tea. Each room is also fitted with a small cabinet in the wall vented to the outside through wire screening where items can be kept cool in all but the hottest summer months. Each room has a small lavatory with a mirror.
One is not expected to entertain in one's room after hours. The rooms lock but the keys are all largely interchangeable, and locking one's room merely signifies that one wishes privacy, either for oneself or for one's belongings. When one's door is unlocked, anyone may enter to leave notes, return items, locate items, and so on. Each room is provided with an inside deadbolt, seldom used.
House rules are not written down and there are no nasty nice signs reminding guests to behave in such and such a manner. This is my own conscious decision. I once spent entirely too much time in a boarding house where every possible misbehavior was noted and expressly forbidden on tacky paper signs posted at several locations. Everywhere my eyes went I was greeted with warnings and threats. I didn't like that, and will not have it in Begley House.
One is expected to understand the rules of good breeding and conduct oneself accordingly without being specifically told how to do so. There are just about eight students who choose to live this way, or whose parents choose for them to live this way out of a student body of some 2,000. It works out well for me usually. I am supported and respected by the school and the community.
In addition to the students, a lecturer from France lives in one of the bedrooms on the third floor. His name is M. Durand.
Now on to cases, I believe my boarders should be in early on school nights and should be allowed to think and say what they please at all times. I keep very closely what I am told and what I learn without being told. There is a very good reason for this.
The Red Scare is at its height in 1920. The bombing of the J. P. Morgan Bank having taken place in mid September, it is unwise to express or even think left-leaning ideas these days in many quarters. I keep Begley House a quiet and largely unrecognized sanctuary for free thinkers of the left.
That said, I very much wish to fill the empty room on the third floor by Thanksgiving. I am almost certain to do so once word gets out that there is a vacancy. By college policy, only juniors and seniors are permitted to live off-campus. I am not prepared to deal with persons not yet of legal age.
I employ a cook and a housekeeper, and spend some time each day as their respective assistant. The cook is a true professional who serves more for the pleasure of being around the young people than for the money I pay her.
The housekeeper has been temporary in the past, but as this season arrives, I do not have one. I hope that changes soon, but as of this moment I have no prospects.
Morning and evening meals are included in the contract, and served in the dining room. The dining room is really quite lovely, with a sideboard running along one wall for buffet dishes and a long table in the center of the room under a rather ornate crystal chandelier. A large formal photograph of my father in his Sunday best watches over the table from the opposite wall. He seems stern, as one should in a photograph, but not particularly unkind for all that.
Breakfast is a come and go affair, with dishes provided on the sideboard. Everyone is to serve themselves, European style, and generally speaking one does not spend much time at breakfast, being usually late and in a hurry to get to class.
Everyone is expected to have somewhere to go in the morning and again after lunch. Lunch is not provided, but sometimes one or another of the students will come home briefly during the day. Raiding the refrigerator is a popular pastime, especially towards the end of the month when allowances are almost exhausted. There are usually left-overs in the icebox along with bread and milk. The cook will let you know immediately if something was planned for dinner.
Dinner is served by Cook and I suppose myself, there being no housekeeper to help, promptly at half past five. This early time allows after dinner social conversation and the possibility of attending concerts, lectures, and meetings in the evening.
The students currently in residence, and occasionally M. Durand retire to the parlor after dinner, and generally spend a half hour or so having tea, small cakes, cookies, and conversation. Tea in the parlor after diner is not mandatory, but I make sure it is considered to be the correct thing to do. During this half hour, possibly extended, suitable after-dinner discussion is encouraged, and each person is expected to participate at least somewhat.
After the social period, one or another of the group may beg leave pleading a necessity for study, and all present may then depart for their respective evening activities. This can be estimated pretty closely by observing the plate of cookies or cakes. No further group social contact is required until the next morning.
Going "out" after tea is also a possibility, although frowned upon on week days. Any attempt at social contact after dark is usually referred to as group study or research in the college library.
Remaining out after half past ten may be arranged for by asking me for the spare front door key. I lock the front door at that time.
On weekends, curfew is not enforced, but anyone coming home very late, say past midnight, had better have a stated destination and the spare key. Pounding on the front door and waking up the concierge is not a good idea. The rules forbidding unchaperoned automobile rides and travel off-campus are known, but not rigorously enforced. They are however noted from time to time.
I explain all of this very carefully to the candidate's family when the contract for the room is made, and I intend to be true to my word. Letters beginning "It has come to my attention..." and "I thought you ought to become aware..." are seldom written, but no one doubts that I will do it if the first few admonishments are ineffective. I would feel it an ethical if not a moral duty. I have an implied contractual obligation to the parents if nothing else.
Fathers generally pay for their student's room and board by the month, including whatever spending money they feel appropriate. This can vary from month to month, and serves to keep the letters flowing home with news from school.
Once established, I find I can maintain the quiet decorum of Begley House almost effortlessly. I simply expect the behavior, model the behavior myself at all times, and never quite give the impression of requiring it. Begley House, despite its young and free-thinking clientele is therefore a very unlikely environment for anything as unconventional and ill-mannered as a vampire.