The Wedding Dress

by Danielle Steel

  When they got back from dinner, he had a telegram from Charles, and several others. He read the one from Charles first.

  “It’s worse than you’ve been told. I am ruined. Many are. Banks are failing. Entire fortunes have been lost. The country is on its ear. We won’t recover from this in our lifetimes, mine anyway. Disastrous situation. Sixteen million shares traded today. Billions lost. The country is wiped out. Economic crisis of Olympian proportions. Charles.” The country’s overspending had finally caught up with it and the stock market bubble had burst with disastrous results. Banks that had been overextended would go under.

  Alex said nothing to Eleanor that night. The other telegrams he had received said pretty much the same as Charles’s, some worse. The manager of his bank said that, too heavily invested, they had been wiped out. They had also extended too much credit. Alex needed to know if it was true. He couldn’t imagine that Charles was really ruined, with a fortune that size. He went downstairs to read the newspapers in the morning before Eleanor woke up. He got the Italian, British, and international American newspapers. It was the headline on every paper. The crisis had reached Europe and the world, although for now, the most severe losses were in the United States. The stock market crash was front page news in every language, and the clerk at the reception desk looked concerned, as Alex wrote out more telegrams. When he went back upstairs, he told Eleanor that there appeared to be a stock market crisis in New York, but not that it had crashed and the country was wiped out. He didn’t believe that himself yet, and still thought they must be exaggerating. But sixteen million shares traded the day before could not be denied. He told her he wanted to stay close to the hotel and see the responses to his telegrams when they arrived. She went for a walk on her own, and when she returned, she could see the seriousness of it by how Alex looked. Every mention was the same. The country was in extremis and entire fortunes had evaporated in a day. He wondered if his had too. It was beginning to seem likely, and he told Eleanor with regret that he thought they should get home and cut the trip short. She looked disappointed but said she understood.

  “Is Papa all right?” she asked him, worried, and he remembered the telegram he’d received from Charles that said he was ruined.

  “I’m not sure anyone knows yet. I think we need to go home and find out.”

  The reception desk helped them to book passage on the Aquitania almost two weeks earlier than the passage they’d planned to be on for their return, before they shortened the trip. Alex and Eleanor spent a quiet night at the hotel, discussing what had happened, and how bad it really was, and the next morning they left Venice by train to reach Cherbourg in time to sail. She put her arms around his neck before they left the hotel.

  “I had a fantastic honeymoon, Alex. And I want you to know that whatever happens when we go back, we’ll deal with it together. There are two of us now.” She sounded strong and sure and unafraid. He was beginning to believe the dire messages he had received, and fear had corroded his confidence that reports had been exaggerated. From what the newspapers were saying, the entire American economy had collapsed. It seemed impossible, but he had begun to fear it was true, and he was anxious to get back.

  Their return to New York on the luxurious Aquitania was stressful for Alex and filled with anxiety. He no longer felt like celebrating or dancing at night. The more he heard, the more desperate he was to return to the States. He was planning to spend a day in New York when he arrived, to see people he trusted who were involved with the stock exchange and the bond and commodities markets. He wanted real information, not the voices of panic. The last telegram he got before he boarded the ship was from his manager at the bank, informing him that their largest bank client, a man with an enormous fortune, faced with ruin, had committed suicide the night before. Matters were indeed grave and Alex was no longer sure of his own holdings. In fact he was almost certain he had lost the bulk of his fortune if what they were saying was true, and he was concerned about Charles Deveraux’s situation too. If what Charles had said in his telegram about being ruined was true, it meant that the two most solid banks in San Francisco would be obliged to close. It was a terrifying thought. He shared as little as possible with Eleanor on the trip back on the ship. He didn’t want to worry her unduly, or panic her unnecessarily. He wanted hard facts, not rumors, but she could sense that he was worried and the situation was serious. She said very little, and didn’t question him on the trip. She instinctively sensed that interrogating him would only heighten his anxiety, so she remained silent most of the time and kept their exchanges light.

  Alex got the hard facts he was seeking when they reached New York. He met with his stockbroker friends and several bankers. They and their clients had been wiped out. Some fortunes had vanished entirely in a matter of hours, others were left with some small remnant of what they had had. Banks had closed, businesses were cleaned out. Houses would have to be sold. Rich men had become paupers overnight, and possibly he among them.

  It was a tense train ride back to San Francisco, and he tried to prepare Eleanor for bad news when they arrived. But even he wasn’t prepared for how dire it was. He dropped Eleanor off at his home, and went straight to his bank. There was no question according to the manager he had left in charge. Heavily invested, the bank had lost everything and had to close. The clients’ fortunes had been lost. Their own funds were gone. Panic had led to mass withdrawals, loans had to be liquidated. And when Alex checked his own personal situation, he had lost everything. Everything! He was penniless as a result of the crash. Everything he owned would have to be sold. He would have to find a job. And he had a wife now, and was going to drag her into the abyss with him. He couldn’t bear the thought.

  He went to see Charles. The bank was closed and he found him at home. His situation was the same, though not quite as desperate as Alex’s. The bulk of Charles’s fortune was gone, however he had some small funds that had plummeted, but weren’t entirely gone. But most of his holdings had been swept away by a tidal wave. By the time Alex returned to San Francisco ten days after Black Tuesday, several of their more important bank clients, and three of his friends, had committed suicide, unable to face the fact that they had nothing left and no way to live. A number of those who had killed themselves had left widows and children, who were destitute now. Alex couldn’t imagine it. The country had been plunged into a depression.

  “What are you going to do?” Alex asked Charles, closeted in the library with him, as they both drank straight scotch and looked like desperate men.

  “We have a pittance left. I’m too old to get a job. I’m fifty-two years old and no one will hire me,” Charles said bluntly. “We have to sell everything, this house, Tahoe, jewels, cars, art, furs. It’s all selling for nothing now, but we’ll have to take what we can get. We’re going to keep a corner of the Tahoe property where the servants’ quarters are and a small cottage. Louise and I can live there. The servants will have to go of course, we’ve already given them notice, but they’re in a bad spot too. No one can afford to hire them now, after years in service, faithful to their employers in many cases, their jobs no longer exist. We’ll have to become servants now,” he said, giving Alex a black look. “What about you?”

  “Nothing left. I’m going to tell Eleanor tonight. I’m going to give her the opportunity to annul the marriage, if she wishes to. I’m not the man she thought she married. I’ll be lucky if I get a job as a janitor somewhere, and live in a shanty. I can’t do that to her. At least she could go to Tahoe with you.”

  “So can you,” Charles said in a hoarse voice.

  “I need a job. I can’t find one at Lake Tahoe, except as a gardener, and there’ll be no one to hire any of us. We’re a nation of ruined men and paupers now.”

  “If I know my daughter, she won’t leave you. Louise has been wonderful about it. She’s been contacting auction houses to sell the jewelry. We’re putting the city hou
se on the market next week. We’ll sell it with everything in it, if someone will buy it. I had some money in the safe. We’ll live on that for a while, but it won’t last long.” Alex couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and he was half drunk by the time he went home to talk to his wife.

  He told her where things stood without dressing it up, and he made her the offer he told her father he would. She looked baffled when he said it, as though she didn’t understand. There was a lot to absorb right now. Their whole world had crumbled around them, and their way of life. An entire element of society had suddenly crashed to the ground, like a ship that had sunk. Their lives and their fortunes, their lifestyle and everything they knew had disappeared in the blink of an eye and a single day, and not through any fault of theirs.

  “What are you saying to me?” Eleanor asked him, squinting as she looked at him, as though she couldn’t see him clearly. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m offering to have our marriage annulled, or to let you divorce me, to free you, Eleanor. You married a rich man who was going to be able to take care of you and our children for the rest of your days, as your father had until then. I have nothing now. There’s nothing left. It’s all gone. I have some cash in my vault here at the house. When that’s gone, I can’t buy food for you. We’ll starve. I have to find a job if I can. I have to sell everything. You don’t have to be part of this. I don’t want to drag you into it, to live in squalor somewhere, and take in laundry or scrub floors. You need to jump ship, Eleanor. I love you. I won’t take you down with me. Your father says he’ll have enough to live on carefully in Tahoe, after he sells everything. You should go with them. I can’t provide for you, or do any of the things I promised when I married you. I won’t do this to you. You need to go back to your parents and forget me.” There were tears in his eyes when he said it, but his voice was strong. He loved her too much to take her down with him, and her father’s situation was slightly better than theirs, although not much. Alex would have something after he sold everything, but it wouldn’t last forever. And there was no telling how long the country would take to crawl out of the biggest depression that had ever hit it. America was on its knees, and millions of people along with it, and Alex was one of them.

  “What happened to better or worse? Didn’t you mean that? I did,” she said angrily. “It’s very nice living in a house like this with servants and fancy cars and jewels and nice clothes. But that’s not why I married you. I married you because I love you ‘for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, for better or worse.’ I meant it, Alex Allen. Didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course, but this is different,” he tried to ignore what she said.

  “Why is it different?”

  “Because it’s so extreme. I have nothing left.”

  “I heard that. So now that you’re poor, you’re abandoning me?” She made him sound worse than he was, when he was trying to be noble, for her sake, not his own.

  “I won’t take you down with me!”

  “From what I understand, everyone’s down. So what difference will it make?”

  “A big difference. Your father has a little something left. You’ll starve with me.”

  “Then we’ll both starve. Besides, I can get a job if I have to,” she said bravely, squaring her shoulders and meeting his gaze.

  “What kind of job? You have no training for anything.”

  “I can be a lady’s maid,” she said, jutting her chin out, and he smiled.

  “There won’t be any lady’s maids. The people who could afford them no longer can.”

  “I’ll become a nurse, or a doctor, or a teacher,” she said, refusing to give up. She loved him, and was not going to lose their marriage because he’d lost his money. “What will you do?”

  “Look for a job in a bank, not like the one I had. Bank presidents will be a dime a dozen, I mean like a bank teller or a clerk.”

  “Fine, then I’ll be a secretary or a maid or something, or a waitress.” He came to put his arms around her then.

  “Eleanor, I love you. I can’t support you now. I have nothing. I have to sell everything. I’d rather know that you’re safe with your parents in Tahoe, and eating, than starving with me.”

  “I’d rather starve with you,” she said, her voice quavering. “I’m not afraid to work. I won’t leave you. I love you.” He hesitated for a moment and looked at her.

  “You’re a stubborn woman, Eleanor Deveraux Allen.”

  “I’ll sell my wedding dress,” she said gamely, although it gave her a twinge to say it. It was a symbol of the best day of her life, but now hard times had come, and she wanted to prove to him that she was equal to them.

  “Don’t do that,” he said seriously, “you won’t get anything for it. Save it for your daughter one day.” He meant it. It broke his heart that she had offered to sell it for them.

  “If you divorce me, I won’t have a daughter,” she said sadly, and he held her tight.

  “I have to sell everything, this house as soon as I can get rid of it. Everything we have. I have to close the doors at the bank. We’re bankrupt.”

  “It’s all right. We’ll manage,” she said. The way she said it told him she meant it, and her dogged determination gave him hope that they would figure out something. But there were hard times ahead for the whole country. People with immense fortunes would be starving now, and living on the streets, and he and Eleanor might be among them, if he let her stay with him. But he didn’t have the heart to turn her away. She was so young and innocent and loving and her love for him was so pure. She went to the kitchen then to rummage for something for them to eat, and came back with fried eggs, some ham, and slices of toast. It was all they had in the house at the moment, and she put a familiar leather box down next to him on the table. He recognized it immediately. It was the diamond necklace of his mother’s that he had given her as a wedding present. “If we’re selling jewelry, you should sell that.” She smiled at him, and he kissed her.

  “Some husband I am, selling your wedding present.”

  “I have you. I don’t need diamonds. It was fun wearing it, but you should get a lot for it.”

  “Probably not. Everyone will be selling their jewels now. I’ll see what I can get for it.” He sighed and picked at his dinner, and she did too. But he didn’t mention annulling their marriage again, or divorcing her. She had made herself clear. She was going down with the ship if she had to, but she was not getting in a lifeboat. She was not leaving him, and she was willing to do whatever she had to, to stand by him. He had never loved her more in his life.

  They clung to each other that night in bed, like two frightened children, and he had a dream that they were drowning and he couldn’t save her. He woke up in a sweat in a tangle of sheets as she slept peacefully beside him, unaffected by his dream. He wondered if they would survive the changes that were happening to them. He wanted to protect her and take care of her, but how would he be able to do that now? He held her as she slept, and tears rolled down his cheeks. The future looked very bleak. He thought of the vow they made only a month ago. For richer or poorer…little did he know then that it would come to this, and how true it would be.

  Chapter 6

  The early days of November were surreal, for the entire country. No one was untouched by what had happened. Fortunes evaporated, jobs disappeared. Businesses collapsed, unemployment was skyrocketing. People didn’t trust their banks not to fail and withdrew whatever they had left. People in the Deveraux and Allen strata became indigent at a moment’s notice. Both the Deveraux mansion and Alex’s home were on the market, along with other stately homes, at absurdly low prices. There were dozens of important homes for sale, none as grand as theirs, but some quite beautiful and luxurious. For those who had a little money left, there were incredible deals to be made. Louise had sacrificed all of her jewelry to be sold at auction, even family heir
looms, and all that Charles had given her over the years. They had no other choice. They had stripped their walls of valuable paintings, and sent them to auction houses in New York too. The auction houses were flooded with art from well-known families and sellers. Prices had plummeted, and once the auctions began, priceless art and extraordinary jewelry were selling for a fraction of what they were worth, which was small consolation to the sellers who needed the money desperately. Alex had sent all of his mother’s jewelry to auction too, including Eleanor’s wedding necklace.

  The Deveraux family had given all of their servants notice. They were only keeping two or three for the moment, which was all they could afford, and they could barely pay them for much longer. They didn’t want to turn the others out into the street with no job market for them, so they allowed them to live at the house for free until it sold, but they could no longer pay them. Once they moved to Tahoe, the last of them would have to go. They would hire a local girl in Tahoe to help Louise clean the houses they kept there. They were selling their thousands of acres in Tahoe, and the main houses. Charles had carved out a small slice of the property for them to keep, where they would live. They were going to live in the main servants’ house, which was small and rudimentary, and a tiny cottage, which they thought Alex and Eleanor could use when they came to visit them. There was an enormous barn they were going to use for storage of whatever they kept. The boathouse would go with the main house for the new owner. And Charles had put their boats up for sale. He had already sold his horses to a neighbor. They could no longer afford their upkeep, the grooms, or their feed.