by Robyn Carr
“Is there nothing to change your mind?”
“Nothing! It breaks my heart to see you suffer, but as long as I help you, you will never help yourself. I know Wilson Montaine; I know that household. There are things you could do to turn it right. You must make an effort.”
“How in the world can anyone make anything out of--”
“By not becoming one of them! By giving your husband some encouragement to perform as a good son, good man. Put yourself to work! Do something with yourself!”
Patricia angrily stuffed the handkerchief in her purse. “You don’t understand,” she said.
“Yes, I do. More than you think.”
She returned to her monogrammed coach without another word. When she had left the suite Emily opened the door of her bedroom and looked at her mother. “I heard what you said to her,” she confessed.
“You certainly had to listen quite carefully to do so,” Amanda said without a hint of surprise.
“I’m so afraid for her. I’m so filled with pity for her.”
“Yes, I’m sure. So am I. Patricia will have to suffer a great deal more before she will change…and perhaps she never will.”
“You know exactly what I’m feeling, don’t you, Mother?”
Amanda laughed humorlessly. “Oh yes, darling. There is nothing to compare to the pain and fear involved in releasing a child into her own maturity. I envy you one thing, Emily. I had only one daughter…and the circumstances were far worse.”
“Mother, I could not have changed Ned. Do you really believe Patricia has a prayer of changing anyone in that household?”
Amanda shrugged. “You tried to make a marriage with that fraud. Although I always knew it was useless, I have to give you credit for the effort. My marriages were not always blissful--they all began as tense, burdensome liaisons. I had to work, compromise, struggle. Patricia has not tried anything but to force parties on Wilson. I’ll have a better answer for you if I ever see her do something for herself rather than asking people to make her happy.”
Patricia returned to the Montaine household at dusk. Wilson Montaine had finished his dinner and was having a provocative argument with his wife behind her closed bedroom door. The sound of bickering, shouting, ridicule, and whimpering often plagued the upstairs halls in the evenings. Dale’s coach was out. A young maid, one just as she had imagined so long ago, harried and worried, approached her. “Can I bring you a plate in your room, ma’am?”
“No. Just sherry and a biscuit,” Patricia replied.
She shrugged out of her afternoon toilette of heavy velvet, tossed her hat and gloves on the bed to be put away by someone else, and dressed comfortably in a satin dressing gown. She sipped her sherry at her writing desk. She remembered what had saved her from despair once before and sought that comfort again. She dated the top of her page and wrote:
“Dear John…”
Chapter Fifteen
Lilly returned to Philadelphia just before Christmas, making her tour nearly nine months long. She had done far more than examine hotels abroad; she had lived a lifetime of experiences in a few months.
Lilly had visited some of her grandmother’s acquaintances, attended social events, made purchases and placed orders. In London she viewed the Gilbert and Sullivan musical H.M.S. Pinafore, saw a lawn tennis championship played at Wimbledon, and ordered a huge crystal chandelier to be shipped to Philadelphia for the new hotel foyer.
In Paris she bought and shipped paintings, a Corot, a Delacroix. She visited Charles Frederick Worth on the Rue de la Paix and was measured for a complete wardrobe that would be shipped to the States as she continued her travels. She had her portrait done by Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran. It was there that Lilly met one of her grandmother’s oldest friends, the former Mary Newbold Singer, whose son, John Singer Sargent, promised to be one of the finest portrait painters of all time.
The hotel, slowly growing while she was away, was always foremost in her mind, and she selected crystal, china, silver, art, bric-a-brac, statuary, and linen. Furniture, carpet, draperies, tiles, and fixtures would be purchased at home, where they were less expensive while of higher quality. Items she ordered and had sent home were arriving before her journey was complete.
Lilly was noticed by a few gentlemen. She, however, never paid them much notice.
When she finally returned to Philadelphia, tired but full in experience and richer in knowledge, she could barely be still long enough to tell all she’d seen and done. She was desperate to see the new hotel. Although it was little more than a short foundation, to Lilly it seemed like the beginning of a castle.
The Armstrong Arms grew slowly through 1879, floor by agonizing floor. Construction was often abandoned during the winter months of 1879, beginning again in earnest in the spring. By the spring of 1880, after two years of construction, Lilly was able at long last to begin the decorating in the interior and the landscaping of the grounds. The construction of the building itself was a four-year project that had been pushed into a little over two years because Amanda was impatient, spent top dollar for the work, and hired the very best. Lilly celebrated her twenty-first birthday in a very special manner; she moved with her immediate family into the apartments on the top floor of the new, unfinished hotel. Although the hotel would not be able to accommodate guests for another year, she had gone to great pains to make their living quarters ready.
Except in their apartment, all the decorating, landscaping, furnishing, and hiring were still left to be done, but the shell of the hotel was complete, the elevators operational, and the spacious apartments that Lilly had overseen for months were livable, if not perfect.
The seven rooms at the Grafton Hotel had seemed luxurious, but the twenty-one rooms atop the Armstrong Arms were magnificent. The apartment resembled a house in itself. The family had access through their own elevator and two open staircases that reached from the foyer outside a grouping of fifth-floor offices. A locked door on the fifth floor insured their privacy. Their living quarters held a large, marble foyer that opened into a front parlor forty feet long and twenty feet wide.
Three private sections, each containing one or two large bedchambers, a dressing room, a water closet, a sitting room, and a study surrounded a central living area. Each of the three women would have her own spacious quarters for solitude and sleeping; to share there was a large formal sitting room, a formal dining room that could serve thirty seated guests, a gallery, the spacious parlor, a library--at Lilly’s insistence, a kitchen separate from the hotel cooking rooms, and a conservatory. Outside the quarters was the awesome width and breadth of what remained of the hotel’s roof, some of which Lilly envisioned she could decorate with vines, potted trees, garden furniture, and wooden boxes of flowers to resemble garden areas. For this reason Lilly, with the help of her mother and grandmother, had designed their rooftop home so that it was tucked into a corner of the roof. Each bedroom-sitting room area had a portion of rooftop and doors to the outside, which accounted for three sides of the apartment, each side with a good view of the countryside. The fourth side contained the staircase and windowless wall of the front parlor, because from there one could only view the rooftop devices such as water tank, pipes, and other necessary equipment.
A portion of the hotel’s first floor was finished into temporary quarters for those servants whom the women needed daily. Amanda found it necessary to hire a secretary, and there were a cook, two drivers, two maids, Elizabeth, and a new steward by the name of Cleaves. Sophia, Fletcher Drake, and John Giddings did not move with them. Sophia was well established in the Philadelphia hotel and needed there, John required the convenient location to his newspaper, and, although Amanda offered quarters to Fletcher, he had decided to purchase his own property in the city.
Lilly was too busy to be impatient about the opening. However, she often encouraged painters, carpenters, smelters, and gardeners to hire additional help to hurry her project, just as she offered more money to textile weavers, ironworks factories, and glass
blowers to get her orders filled ahead of others.
The work thrilled her. She was close enough to watch every drape hung, every pot polished, every blade of grass clipped.
Lilly interviewed many applicants to the hotel staff herself, often deferring to the wisdom of one of the other women or Fletcher. She had a long list from her travels and wrote to some experienced personnel, and she stole a few--stewards, chefs, domestics, a stable master. She routinely put on sturdy clothing and comfortable shoes to walk through the huge, vacant structure to inspect work that was being done. She could be found anywhere on the property--in the loading area to inspect furniture or building and decorating materials as they were delivered, in the stables where Armstrong Arms coaches and horsecars were being built, painted, polished, upholstered, and made generally ready, in the kitchen where large cooking stoves and ovens were being installed. She judged the hanging of every portiere, eighteen different woods were used in the mantels and wainscoting, and George Kemp himself supervised the installation of carpet from his factory. She chose delicate colors--primarily blue, silver, and muted rose--and observed the completion of frescoes and friezes.
When the hammering and sawing ended each day, Lilly did not stop. That was when she strained her eyes over long columns of numbers or read newspapers from all over the country.
“Everyone works,” Fletcher told Amanda, “but Lilly works too hard.”
“You try to stop her,” Amanda challenged.
“She’s only twenty-one. She should have a life apart from work,” he argued.
“I suppose you think that hasn’t been suggested? Poor Elizabeth! She hasn’t had time for Amelia or any other novel since that fateful day she visited the library!”
Lilly would accept only financial advice; the only suggestions she would hear had to do with menus or wallpaper or furniture. When it came to her personal life, she would not be distracted from work long enough to have one. “I have a very satisfactory life,” she said, sounding remarkably like Emily not many years before. “I have work, family, and never a moment without challenge.”
The hotel was taking shape beautifully, with remarkable speed. A large portico in front led into the hotel foyer. The chandelier Lilly had purchased in Europe dangled from the thirty-foot ceiling. The first floor held the dining room, ballroom, a large gallery, and several small parlors that could be used by guests for entertaining, plus the massive kitchens and wide hallways that led to the four corners of the enormous structure where elevators were conveniently situated. Although there were staircases throughout, the largest and most magnificent led from the second-floor balcony into the foyer: it was fourteen feet wide at its base and sported grand brass banisters.
Patricia was among the first to visit the new apartments above the unfinished hotel. The women had been in residence just a few months. The summer was growing warm and bright, and recently planted flowers were beginning to spread around walks and partially constructed gazebos. Amanda and Emily had gone to the city to make fabric selections for coverlets and upholstery, and so Lilly gave her sister a tour of the apartments. Patricia walked from room to room, observing the rich decor, the quality furnishings, the novel arrangement. Only the patio areas were still unfinished.
“I must admit, Lilly, you have fashioned quite a little kingdom for yourself.”
“It’s not very different from living above one’s shop,” Lilly replied, though she felt the differences, and the feeling of power it brought.
“And if the hotel is not a success? Will you have no home?”
“We always have the Grafton. The name will be changed now, however. The hotel will become known as the Nesbitt House, for Grandmother.”
“Is there a guest room?” Patricia asked.
Lilly smiled proudly. “Yes, Patsy. Five hundred at last count.”
“Oh, Lilly, how jealous I am. I wish I had a talent of any kind at all…but I--” She stopped abruptly. She looked away from Lilly, and Lilly reached out to touch Patricia’s arm.
“What is it, Patsy? Is something wrong?”
“Ah, there is always something wrong with me, isn’t there? Well, have you the means to serve tea?”
Lilly sent Elizabeth to get them tea and took Patricia into her own sitting room.
“Are you so unhappy?”
“Well, didn’t you expect I would be? It seems everyone knew how miserable I would be except me. You don’t have to pretend to be surprised.”
“Oh, Patricia, you have always been so determined about what you wanted.”
“So have you! Would that God had given me a yearning for a business rather than a marriage!”
Lilly knew that was the core of the problem: it wasn’t marriage
Patricia had wanted at all. Marriage was simply the only means Patricia could imagine that would make her rich and pampered. It had seemed for years that Patricia was the only person not clear about the terrible illusions she had created. She could never be made to understand that what she wanted didn’t exist. “Is he terrible to you? Does he…?” When Lilly couldn’t finish, she waited for Patricia to make some response.
“Beat me? Rape me? No. You’ll be glad to know he is not physically brutal. He calls me names--everyone in his family is good at that. They’re all so nasty to one another. He invites me to leave him. ‘Run away,’ he tempts. ‘I’ll give you a little pot of money and a divorce.’“
“Oh, Patsy.”
“Where would I go? Grandmother says I may not come home in disgrace, she won’t support me if I leave my husband.”
“You asked her? And she said she wouldn’t?”
“She said she tried to save me from this misery, and since I wouldn’t listen to her, I have to try to make something useful of my life in my present circumstances. She says no one has greater means than I. But Lilly, I haven’t had a useful idea in my life!”
“Patricia, why don’t you take Dale’s offer? Why not accept his little pot of money and--”
“And what? Live in some tiny house with chintz curtains and sew hems?”
“There’s more dignity in that than in your current situation. You could--”
“Stop it, Lilly. You know perfectly well how it would be. Everyone says it--you don’t have to pretend anymore. Everyone tells me I’m lazy and spoiled and not good at anything. I may as well be a failure in style! At least I don’t have to pull my tub out of the pantry!”
Lilly felt her cheeks grow hot. She had a sudden, pitying understanding. She had always hated Patricia’s laziness and self-indulgence. What if she couldn’t help it, no matter what? What if she hated having no interests, no discipline, no desires of any kind save the desire to be constantly attended to, but couldn’t change?
“Grandmother told me to try,” Patricia said. “Everyone has always been telling me to try harder. I have never understood how they’re all so sure I can!”
“Patricia,” Lilly said, “no matter what Grandmother says, I would have you home.”
“I’m afraid it’s a little too late for that now. Dale has finally been successful at something, you see. Just before Christmas, while you are all very busy with your hotel, I will be confined in childbirth.”
“Patricia! You’re pregnant!”
“I’m afraid I am,” she said, sitting back in her chair and looking a bit pale.
“You’re not happy? Even knowing you’re having a child of your own?”
“My own? Good Lord, Lilly! Can you imagine bringing a child into that dreadful family? Can you imagine what kind of father Dale is likely to be? I did everything I could think of to prevent it--I even found a doctor who would give me a pessary, though it was only a peach pit, but he swore it would prevent a baby.”
“A what?”
“Oh never mind. There are ways. I would have an abortion if it weren’t so dangerous and painful. But if I was found out, then I’d be in deep--”
“But you’ll be a mother! You could be a good one! Mama raised us without a father!”
/> Elizabethbrought a tray of tea and cakes, and Lilly dismissed her, serving Patricia herself.
“You could be a good mother, Lilly. You’re good at everything, but I simply dread it! I don’t feel well, I’m losing my figure, and I hate Dale for this!”
“You have to stop that!” Lilly said, suddenly desperate. “You have to make yourself try to be a good mother! You have to simply force yourself to make this one thing the best thing you’ve ever done!”
“That’s all fine and good, Lilly. What if I fail again? What if I’m simply not able to love this baby?”
When Patricia finally left, Lilly stayed in her sitting room. She had never had such a depressing afternoon. She told Elizabeth she was finished working for the day and didn’t want to be disturbed. The temporary quarters Elizabeth used were functional and little more, and she could have stayed in the apartments for the evening, but she was invited to borrow any books Lilly possessed and went happily to her little room downstairs, out of harm’s way, in case Lilly changed her mind and thought of a project.
It was not uncommon for Lilly to take a tray in her room or, for that matter, to have to be interrupted in order to be fed. When Emily and Amanda had returned from the city, neither wondered about Lilly’s whereabouts. Since Elizabeth was not in evidence, both assumed Lilly had duties outside or somewhere in the hotel and had her employee with her. A place was set for her in the dining room, but as was often the case, the place remained vacant. It was nearly nine in the evening when Amanda finally became concerned--it took considerable concern to pull her away from her card game with Bertie.
When she knocked at Lilly’s bedroom door, there was no answer. She opened the door and peered in, calling out Lilly’s name, but still there was no reply. A lamp, turned low, was lit in the room, so someone had been there. Amanda walked through to the adjoining sitting room. There she saw a figure sitting in the dark, the chair usually situated before the hearth had been dragged to the window, and the draperies were open, revealing the star-lit sky.
