December 11, 1911
Father remains in New York, on business, as we continue to prepare for the holidays. Christian is staying north to study and so it will be lonely and gray here. I miss him, I miss him, I miss him terribly, but still I will do what I must to maintain the gay facade. While searching for the ornaments for our tree, I found myself in Father’s library. I remembered then the secret hideaway in the paneling he showed us when we were girls and Father had just bought the house from the Ritters after they had lost all their money. I seemed to recall it was on one side or the other of the cast-iron fireplace. On a spur, I wondered if I could find it again. Behind which of the dark sheets of mahogany did the secret place lurk? It took almost an hour of rapping my knuckles on the wood and looking for imperfections in the lines, but I found it at last. My heart leaped when I slipped up the piece of wood trim and spun open the panel. Inside was not the ornaments I had sought, or even private treasures, only books, ledgers, old accounting journals. How very boring a discovery for such a secret place. Someday maybe I will look inside these books and see why Father has hidden them away, but for now I am still wondering about the ornaments.
January 12, 1912
My love’s letters become more desperate. All our hopes seem on the verge of collapse. He talks of using his engineering training and joining Mr. Goethals’s endeavor in Panama, hoping somehow to find in the wilds of Central America the fortune that will save his family. They are dying in droves from malaria and other foul diseases in Panama. The thought of my love suffering in that far-off wilderness drives a stake of fear through my heart. It is time, somehow, to bring to fruition the plans I made last fall and to forestall the coming tragedy. I don’t know if I am capable of doing what must be done, but what I have learned in the past weeks provides a peculiar strength that I had never felt before. I must keep reminding myself that I am my father’s daughter and whatever power it was he could muster in pursuit of his deepest desire, I can muster the same dark power in pursuit of my own.
January 20, 1912
My father was at his desk in the library, working on his figures, when I approached with my crucial errand. A fire was blazing in the cast-iron fireplace off to the side, but still the room was cold. All my life I had come into that room with the low bookshelves and mahogany paneling and the red flock wallpaper and asked him for things and always he had granted my requests, a new toy, a new dress, a party to liven up the spring. He had spoiled us, never denied us a thing, and I had always thought of that room as a generous place where dreams were fulfilled, but I realized now, for perhaps the first time, that in this room of business, where so many of my own shallow dreams had been made reality, others’ dreams had been crushed by the power of my father’s wealth. For the first time, this day, I knew what it was to fear my father. But from necessity I pushed that fear far from my heart and twisted my lips into a smile. I stopped perhaps ten feet from his desk and waited for him to raise his head and acknowledge me. Those few seconds seemed to me then to be an eternity. “Come here, daughter,” he said when he noticed me there. “How can I please you this evening?”
“I’ve come today, Father,” I said, “to talk of business.”
It did not take long to explain the dire situation facing the Shaw Brothers Company and when I finished my father stared out at me with eyes I had never seen in him before. They were cold, and black, and full of ugly calculation. Looking at those eyes, the business eyes of my father, and comparing them to the sweet blue lenses of my Christian, I fell, for the moment, though I am loath to admit it, out of love with my father. But we are blood and bone, my father and I, a match for one another. I know now all he was capable of in pursuit of his fortune; I am still learning the depths of my own formidable capabilities.
He didn’t reject the proposition right off. Instead he had questions, questions about the books, the assets and liabilities, the market and the market share, the equity positions of the varying parties, all questions I wouldn’t and couldn’t answer. Those questions, I told him, would have to be taken up with the principals. Finally, my father asked the last, most important, question.
“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” I responded.
My father’s cold ugly eyes didn’t so much as flinch.
“And without this money the banks will close the company and sell the store?” asked my father.
“That is what I have been told,” I said.
“And you want me to provide this company with the capital needed to survive its most current crises?” asked my father.
“You must,” I said. “You simply must.”
“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a substantial sum of money, daughter,” he said.
“Consider it,” I said, “my dowry.”
My father stared at me for a moment more and then dropped his head back to the figures in the ledgers before him. I didn’t know whether to stay or to flee, but this was too important to leave without an answer and so, despite my faltering heart, I waited, shivering, while he wrote in the ledgers. Finally he said, without an ounce of warmth, as if he were addressing an employee, “You may go.”
“Not without an answer,” I said, my voice trembling as I said it.
Without looking up from his ledgers, my father said, “I will make appropriate arrangements to provide the capital.”
Oh happy happy happy day! The fondest plans of my soul have been realized. I am in awe of the Lord’s grand designs, that something so base and awful, something derived by such means, can be used to purchase an unearthly paradise. Just as Jesus turned water to wine He has turned my father’s black wealth into a love so pure and a happiness so deep that it acts as praise itself for His beneficence. That my father made me beg and wait I shan’t hold against him; I understand him completely, we are of the same coin. But today is a day for happiness, for joy, for love. My Christian, my Christian, my Christian, forever, my love, we drink together from the cup of joy held in the very hand of grace.
II
March 29, 1912
I am puzzled by the reactions of my sisters to our glorious news. When father announced the engagement at dinner tonight I had worried that Hope would be distraught. I feared her reaction upon learning that her sister, two years younger than she, was to be married while she was still without a suitor, but Hope seemed genuinely pleased at my good fortune. I have forgiven her the earlier remarks about Christian, they were of course figments of a natural jealousy, and take her wishes for my future to be of the utmost sincerity. It is Charity whose face turned dark when she heard the announcement and unaccountably bolted from the room.
It was a rather gay dinner before that moment; I haven’t spent a less than gay moment since Christian’s arrival on the train from New Haven and his proposal. The last of the Shaw Brothers, after whom the store is named, Christian’s Uncle Sullivan, was at the dinner, as were Christians’ four cousins, with all assorted wives and children, a regular convocation of Shaws. It was a group that I don’t believe would have deigned to enter our house just a few years before, but all that now has changed. The dinner had been called to celebrate the resurrection of the fortunes of the Shaw Brothers Company, of which my father is to be a majority partner, once the lawyers finish the appropriate paperwork. A fire was burning in the blue and white marble fireplace and the squab was a crisp delight. Father brought his best wine from the cellar and there were generally good feelings all around at the new arrangement. I must say that Uncle Sullivan is more dour a man than I had been led to believe, though Christian attributed his mood to weariness at dealing with the difficulties that preceded this proud new venture. It is beyond my understanding how he could think my father is anything other than a saint for agreeing to provide the needed money and sign onto all their shaky notes in order to save the company, but the world of business, I have been taught, is by necessity rather cruel and ungrateful. It was during a speech toasting the new partnership that father announced our engagement. There were a fe
w exclamations of joy and then general applause and I felt the admiration flow about me like the waters of a joyous bath. And then it was that Charity fled the room.
Hope started to run after her but Christian, being the most generous of souls, volunteered to set things right, and himself followed her out to the portico. A few moments later he returned and sat down and straightened his napkin on his lap as if nothing had happened. I gave him a questioning look but he gestured me to remain calm and soon Charity herself reappeared. I don’t know what dilemma caused her alarm but Christian was able to solve it as I believe he will be able to solve all the problems that can hereafter arise in our family. A new era for the Reddmans, an era of light and fellowship, has been embarked upon and I am not being too immodest when I say I feel myself at its very center.
April 12, 1912
Our list keeps growing, as if it had a life of its own, and Mother continues to meet with the cook to ensure that the wedding dinner will be of the highest quality. Christian has been so busy preparing that he is almost a stranger at the house, but a future of infinite togetherness beckons. There are barely two months till the wedding and so much remains to be decided upon, flowers and invitations and table settings. I have not yet chosen my dress. So much still to be decided upon my head spins.
I already sense the change in attitudes to our family since my engagement was publicly announced. Even Naomi Scott, that pale cat, called on me the other day to say how excited she was about my coming nuptials. The Shaws have always been one of the most highly thought of families in the city and so, it appears, my marriage to Christian will break down the final barriers to our acceptance. Father has even been asked to join the board of the Art Museum, which pleases Mother immensely. It is as if the stain of our past has been removed entirely. I would breathe a little more easily if Father’s business arrangement with the Shaws was fully executed, but the lawyers continue to bicker and I am told that Christian’s Uncle Sullivan is making things difficult. Closing on the deal will have to take place sometime after the wedding, but Father has already paid money to the banks and they have developed a new patience, so Christian says. I believe Father is looking forward to running the store. It is so much more elegant than his briny-smelling pickle and canning factory on the river.
It is good to see Charity so happy these days. While I can’t say she has been warm to me as of late, I believe she is truly excited about the wedding. Much of her time is spent away from the house, so we have no idea what her newest interests are, she has always a keen interest in some subject or the other, but whatever it be it gives her a true joy. She won’t confess anything to me, but I believe she has a beau. She has filled out beautifully in the past few months and carries with her everywhere a smile that can denote only a woman who has found her place in the world through love. Just today she was wearing a gold ring with her initials. When I asked her where she had purchased it she blushed wildly and refused to say. I only hope she can find for herself someone as loving, as faithful, as generous with his spirit as my dear Christian.
May 23, 1912
Something is terribly wrong with Charity and she refuses to tell us what loss has befallen her. I pray that the wedding is not the cause of her difficulties, though it is not rare for sisters to fall into a melancholia when another sister marries. We have never been a competitive family but I’d be less than honest if I wrote that the natural rivalries have not existed among us. Hope has been marvelous, considering her age and my out-of-turn nuptials, and I would have expected Charity to feel none of the pressures, being still so young, but one never knows how youth will react. Charity has been testy, her wicked sense of humor gone. When she is home she sits and pouts and her eyes are often red. I am loath to admit it but I fear that whatever it is that is troubling her has driven her to overindulge and her waist is gaining girth by the day. I don’t believe she’ll be able to fit into the dress we bought her only last month.
June 5, 1912
This is so like her. Father has spoiled her terribly and now she has taken to ruining everything. They had a terrible row, Father and Charity, their voices spilled out of his library with a venom that I had never heretofore heard in this house. Father’s voice was deep and angry, like a furious owl, hooting with indignation, and Charity was crying out her false pain, punctuated by her crocodile tears. The thunder outside was monstrous, as was the force of the rain, and still we heard their angry voices, sharp as the bolts of light that crashed their way through our shuttered windows. I am to be married in less than a week and I have barely seen my love for all the preparations. I need not Charity’s histrionics to distract me from my plans.
We are having the ceremony before the statue of Aphrodite, where Christian and I shared our first, glorious kiss. At least some arrangements are proceeding well. Just yesterday we decided to add, in front of the statue for the ceremony, an oval of the richest, brightest flowers to help celebrate the day. The gardeners have dug and prepared the oval plot before this evening’s rain and we will plant the flowers shortly before the wedding so their blooms will be freshest when we take our vows and their color contrast most vividly with my white silk gown. And, gratefully, the Pooles will soon be leaving the property for a two-week sojourn to Atlantic City, financed by my father. I insisted he send them away and, finally, he agreed, so we won’t have their anger to poison our reception. My wedding stands to be the most glorious affair of the season if we can keep our sister from falling apart or eating a swath through the buffet with her newly revitalized appetite.
June 6, 1912
Charity is missing, she has fled. Her satchel is gone and so are some of her favorite clothes. After her argument with Father she packed her satchel and left the house for we know not where. Mother is distraught, Father is brooding silently but has determined not to summon the police to find her, though I know not why. With her missing it is as if the family is in mourning. How could she do this to me just five days before the most important day of my life? Whatever joy I was to feel about that day has been destroyed by her hateful behavior and poisonous attitude toward my future. I will go through the motions and smile at the guests and take my vows with my husband to be, but it can never be the same. Never shall I forgive her this complete disregard for my happiness. If only Christian were here to comfort me, but I have not seen him since she disappeared, as if he is avoiding to tread on our tender emotions while the wound of her disappearance is still fresh. Even in the most trying times his warmth and generosity cannot be overstated.
June 9, 1912
The pall of Charity’s disappearance remains with our family. The wedding rehearsal was a dispiriting affair which Christian, wisely, failed to attend. I have not seen him since the stormy night of Charity’s disappearance from the household with her satchel and her problems and I wonder how our family’s current instability is affecting him. At the rehearsal, the minister joked about whether the groom would make it on the grand day itself and there was an uncomfortable silence, but I have no doubt that Christian understands that despite my sister’s disappearance there is too much at stake for the two of us, and for his family’s fortunes, to allow her absence to affect in any way our future. Our marriage must go forward as a necessity of our undying love. Everything would have come apart except for Father’s strength. He has insisted that the wedding proceed as planned and he refuses to let our sorrows get in the way. I believe until now I never understood the truly glorious power of his will, his single-minded devotion to whatever cause he has made his own, damn the costs. It is a lesson I have well learned from him and one I shall never forget. I understand him now as I never did before and I forgive him everything.
The gardeners have finished planting the flowers in the oval plot before the statue and they are magnificent, whites and pinks and violets in ordered rows like a tiny guard of honor. No matter how morose our family may be over Charity’s selfishness, the wedding itself will be a triumphant reminder that the more responsible members of this family wi
ll carry on.
June 10, 1912
My nerves have gotten the best of me. I can’t stop crying. Even as I write this my tears blot the ink. So much joy, so much worry. Still no word from Christian, not for days and days. It is bad luck of course to see the bride too soon before the wedding so his absence is absolutely excusable, but still with Charity and Christian both absent from the house there is an abject loneliness that infects my joy with a strange sorrow. Hope has been a rock, staying with me at all hours, sleeping in my bed with me as I shake with worry. She is so good and pure and I think she is the best of us. Should anything happen to her I will be lost. I can only imagine what impossible difficulties will come my way tomorrow.
June 11, 1912
The most glorious day of my life has passed like a dream. Christian Shaw and I were married in the eyes of the Lord and the world at precisely 1:30 p.m. in the afternoon, under an unceasing sun, before my father’s statue of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. That it was a more somber affair than could be wished for was only to be expected, as my sister Charity remains among the missing.
I’ll always remember my dear Christian as he awaited my walk down the aisle. He was the most endearing sight, hesitant, uncertain as a boy, tottering from nerves. I can barely describe in words how much I adore him. He was late of course, what groom isn’t, and due to the difficulties we had faced in the previous week it is no wonder that he fortified himself with brandy before the ceremony, and continued on through the reception, so much so that he was later struck with sickness, the same sickness that has him lying in bed asleep as I write this in our New York hotel.
Bitter Truth Page 30