Our arrival at the gates of the Rimbauer mansion (for it is nothing less!) left me breathless. All these months of reviewing plans, moving walls, changing windows, even the photos delivered in New York, did nothing to prepare me for this moment! She is spectacular! Pretentious! Gorgeous!
The front of our stone and brick home stretches hundreds of feet, north to south, presenting one with a formidable wall of brick, roof, glass and chimney. If impression is what John was after, impression he accomplished. I could go on and on in my description—and perhaps I will when I am less tired—but for now, I wish to describe just one or two rooms, rooms that as wife to this man will be forever important to me.
The dining room, to be called the Banquet Hall, is magnificent, with the gleaming walnut table occupying its center. I estimate this table can accommodate roughly seventy or eighty dinner guests. Cabinets are built into two sides of the room, all with glass doors, and are soon to contain our vast collection of china. I envision the north wall holding John’s family’s collection of teapots, representing over sixty countries around the world. Fine paintings from the European masters adorn the walls: landscapes mostly, many of which we acquired on our honeymoon, so our guests can sit and dream of places far away while six-foot logs burn furiously in the fireplace. I can hardly wait for our homecoming party! We will fill this table and more with our dinner guests—what an occasion it is to be!
John’s and my chambers occupy the entire West Wing of the second floor, each of us having six or seven rooms to ourselves when including parlors, dressing rooms and our studies and libraries. My bedroom, the Lady’s Chambers, is everything I dreamed it to be! It has a big bay window facing the courtyard and overlooking the glassed-in Solarium off the Kitchen, where botanical varieties of every sort are currently being planted. The windows of the room are hung with white silk curtains with overdrapes of heavy green brocade. The bed itself rises up three steps, and I can already imagine the staff making comments about my “throne.” No matter—I love the look! The woodwork in the room is decorated with hand carvings, most of which are from the small town of Opede in the south of France, where John and I visited not six months ago. Installed into my bedroom, the craftsmanship looks sumptuous, ornate and quite rich! To the right of the bed, and down the steps, is a three-panel Oriental screen, behind which I can quickly undress. The doors of this screen carry full-length mirrors so that I might view all sides before joining my husband in bed for his husbandly visits. (I must say that sight of this house has erased so much of our ugly past. John is so proud of it, and I of him, for this magnificent accomplishment.) The opposite sides of the screen, those facing into the room, are of a dark green plush reminiscent of the forest behind our home. There are four area rugs, all from Persia, a green velvet recliner, two Louis XIV armchairs and a dresser from the Loire. I am fit to be a queen!
16 JANUARY 1909
I must report, Dear Diary, on the inaugural of the grand house and the night of divine romance that followed.
First, to the weather. We must be being punished for our year away to mostly tropical locations. The heat of Kenya and Cairo is being more than made up for in the most bitter cold Seattle has suffered in memory. The freeze that gripped this city just days ago with a temperature of only twelve degrees above zero, and allowed skating on Lake Union for the first time I can recall, was reversed less than a day later with temperatures in the mid-twenties. The cold-weather fun continued for all of that day, and into the night. And then tragedy as the thermometer soared to well into the forties—a more typical temperature. By early the next morning, the paper reported that over twenty thousand pipes had burst across the city. Miraculously, our new home, perched high on the hill, was somehow spared. We suffered not a single burst pipe—a fact that quickly made the social circles. John claims it is the result of good planning on his and the engineers’ part, having insulated the pipes and run them on interior walls. It didn’t hurt, I suppose, that the staff has had fires raging in every room, and the steam heat on as well, preparing the home for our party. No matter! Our guests, many without running water in their homes, were delighted to join us that evening!
And now again, to the house itself, for I am smitten with her! Such splendor, such lavish expense has seldom been seen, certainly on these shores. Perhaps only Rockefeller, Vanderbilt or Carnegie has ever built an American home so grand as ours. It is still under construction as I write this (will it ever be completed? I wonder), and yet we were able to tour our guests through some twenty thousand square feet of living space. The front Entry Hall, gallery to John’s hunting trophies, is sixty feet long, a stunning foyer of rich, African mahogany that leads to the curving two-sided staircase ascending to the first of four floors. To stand at the base of the stairs, one faces a hallway both right and left, forward and back. Ahead is the Kitchen and Solarium. To the right is a picture gallery and several sitting rooms. To the left is the Banquet Hall, more hallways and parlors, the Breakfast Room. It has taken me days just to learn my way around this palace. One can get lost so quickly and easily.
Our inaugural was attended by over two hundred and fifty. All ate dinner in one of six rooms, and then there was dancing in the Grand Ballroom until well into the wee hours. We had a senator, the mayor, the great Broadway stage actress Marjorie Savoy, a baseball player whose name I cannot recall but is said to be quite famous, the soprano and stunning beauty Jeanine Sabino (with whom John spent a little too much time for my liking) and two Italians and Chinese, all three of whom are rumored to be gin runners or some other form of lowlife and were invited only because John’s importing of oil depends on their cooperation. (The more I learn of this business, the more horrified I am. One great advantage of our year abroad was that John took me into his confidence regarding his oil matters and I learned a great deal. He seems constantly involved in secret negotiations to bring refineries and minor oil companies together to extort the railroads for lower shipping costs, to affect supply, to negotiate better labor costs. So much secrecy is involved—I had no idea!)
I wore a white dress that was such a success with the men that I shall wear it each and every year from now on! The women were all dressed so beautifully, rich velvets, silks and wool. The men wore tuxedos—white tie, so elegant and refined. I tell you, we were the toast of the town and shall remain in high regard for years to come because of it. Few could believe the size of the grand house, as close to town as it is. I heard words like “museum” and “royal palace” on the lips of everyone who toured. The decorations are splendid—our long trip so justified now that I see all that we collected so beautifully coordinated. It is sumptuous without being gaudy, extravagant without being hideous. I am quite proud of both John and myself for what we’ve accomplished.
I share here a conversation I overheard while approaching the Library (6,000 volumes!) between two men—Tanner Longford, chancellor of the university, and Bradley Webster, head of a bank that competes with my father’s. I point out, Dear Diary, that these are not small-minded men—far from it!—and that to hear such talk (taken in confidence, I’m sure) adds a great deal of verisimilitude to the content of their exchange.
Tanner’s is a deep voice that reminds one of a storyteller. Bradley Webster is a small man with a choked, nasal exaggeration to his conversation. I heard Tanner first.
“You heard about the murder up here?”
“Yes, of course. Horrible, wasn’t it?” Bradley Webster is a bit full of himself.
“I hear the man—Corwin, wasn’t it?”
“Corbin, I believe.”
“Yes. That’s it. Well, the poor man went insane. Totally mad. Sentenced to twenty-five years. He clawed his eyes out in his cell claiming an Indian had made him do it. Said he came out of the hole like the Devil—the hole being the foundation to this house, you see—had handed him the shotgun.”
“His eyes, was it?”
“Yes. Died from it, I heard. Bled to death. The eyeless bastard running around his cell screaming ‘Go
away! Go away!’ Claimed that same Indian had visited his cell and told him his work wasn’t over.”
“An Indian.”
“Rimbauer knew, of course.”
“Knew what, Tanner?”
“You don’t know about this site?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Lisa told me,” Tanner Langford explained. (Lisa is Tanner’s sister, an influential woman and a member of our children’s hospital board.) “They uncovered Indian remains while digging the foundation. Goddamned cemetery is what it was. Skeletons by the wagon load, I heard. Some of the Chinamen quit. There was some illness blamed on the graves. Fevers, that sort of thing.”
“I haven’t heard any of this.”
“Lisa knows all the doctors. I think we can trust her reports.”
“I didn’t mean to imply …”
“Some relics were uncovered, I heard. A chief or some tribal head of state. There was looting. Rimbauer ordered several men fired. But word got out. The state was to send an expert. And then he burned the bones.”
“He what!?”
“Made a bonfire of them, as I understand it. Had them use a few barrels of his oil—I like that little touch—and burned them to ash. By the time the state’s man arrived, there was nothing left. They were going to shut him down, you see, but they couldn’t do that now. Rimbauer put it all off to rumor. A clever one, Rimbauer is. But then this man Corbin—what do you make of that? ‘An Indian,’ he said. Made him do it. Can you imagine?”
“A story is all. Nothing more than a story.”
“I agree. I agree! But still … an Indian!”
At this point in their conversation someone met me in the hall and greeted me, and my eavesdropping was interrupted. I don’t know what followed. What I do know is that John never mentioned a word to me about any Indian burial ground. I never heard the story about Corbin either. His eyes! Good God, I can’t imagine such a self-inflicted wound! I hope beyond measure that it’s purely sensational rumor—my but how people love to spin tales about the wealthy! John has been the subject of much discussion and rumor for years now. I am a part of that now, and I suppose it will continue as long as he wields the kind of power he does. He supplies this city with some eighty percent of its lighting oil, kerosene and gasoline. Portland as well. Forty percent of San Francisco. Ninety percent of Denver. The Japanese are buying, the British, French Indonesia. He has created an empire (having enlarged it during our honeymoon!), and any emperor suffers at the lips of his people.
I related what I had overheard to Sukeena, who is so perceptive about matters of the spirit. She tells me the house is “powerful” and like nothing she has ever felt before.
One matter of note: several of our guests at the inaugural related to me that they became frightfully lost while touring the house on their own. I found myself amused by this, actually, as I was myself lost just a day or so ago—for a moment I actually believed the hallway had looked entirely different just minutes earlier. Can you imagine? I paid little attention to these reports until Sukeena warned me to stay out of the Billiard Room. At first I thought she meant because John is so possessive about his private time spent there with his cigars and brandy. We did not speak further of it until this evening when I made a comment about how some of the guests could not find their way.
“The Billiard Room,” she said.
“I’m not sure,” I told her.
“Miss Ellen, I tell you—it is the Billiard Room they speak of. I seen things there. I feel them in here.” With that she clutched at her heart, a mannerism she uses only in the most engaging of expressions. (When I lost the baby she sat by my side, holding my hand, covering her bosom in this same way.)
“Feel what, my dear friend?”
She shook her head, not wanting to speak of it.
“What?” I repeated, perhaps a little desperately.
“Not what, Miss Ellen: who,” she said. “I feel them. The ones that take us. My parents. My nephew.”
I shuddered. Sukeena’s parents and nephew were dead. I knew this absolutely.
“The Indians,” I whispered.
Sukeena looked at me gravely, and she nodded. “We not alone in this house, Miss Ellen.”
As to the romance of this inaugural evening, suffice it to say here in these private pages that the champagne went to my head quite early in the evening, and that by the wee hours, when John and I finally retired, I was not quite myself, given to my desires and overcome by my husband’s passions. Our lovemaking was frantic, desperate even, John upon me before my undergarments were removed. His affections are so impossible to resist at moments like this. His strength, his intensity. Had I not had the wine, perhaps I could have found my strength, but as it was I succumbed with little resistance. And then I participated. And then I cried out my demands and drove him to a frenzy—a practice I have learned to time to meet my own needs. We fell to the floor of my dressing room in a tangle of white silk and a mutual hunger that did not abate until the silk was torn and my dear husband carried deep scratches down his back. (My gown will need much repair!) I fear I screamed so loudly that the maids must have heard. Perhaps the whole house. Sukeena gave me a look this morning that informed me at least she had heard. Then she made me to lie in bed with my rump elevated on pillows for nearly three hours, a twinkle in her eye.
“I will give you child, Miss Ellen.”
Sukeena knows how badly I want this, how much I fear losing another. But just those words filled me with excitement. John was off to his study early this morning (oh, how his head must throb!) in an effort to read a new contract with the Union Pacific. But before he left, he entered my bedroom and left a red rose on the pillow next to me, the thorns neatly removed with a penknife, the smell so luscious and filling me and my dreams with contentment.
“What color to-day, Miss Ellen?” Sukeena asked from my dressing room.
“Red,” I said back to her, naming the color of the flower. “Rose Red,” I repeated more strongly. It has a familiar ring to it, though I can’t recall from where. And then a realization: my husband and I had just named our grand house.
13 MARCH 1909—ROSE RED
I hesitate to put down into words my thoughts on this day, for I am vexed indeed by what happened here this afternoon. As I write, police are still searching the house. Somehow, by putting this down here on paper, it seems I am giving it power. And I have no intention to do such a thing, for I fear this power (if it exists at all) is formidable indeed. But where else can I express myself? Certainly John will hear none of it, and though I love Sukeena as a sister, her limited English rarely allows exchanges that go beyond the ordinary mechanics of living or the functions of a woman’s body.
I am now two months pregnant with child, and I have never been happier. John parades around the house as proud as a peacock, barking orders at the servants to take care of my every need. He stays home at night and reads to me in the Parlor (the site of our unfortunate incident to-day), all the while fretting over me and my every squirm. I have just now begun to show ever so slightly, and John comes to my rooms at night, lifts my nightgown up past my waist and gently rubs my stomach, sometimes with lotions, lays his head there and talks to the tiny child growing inside me. We have had relations quite often—he has never been more tender—and I feel closer to him now than at any point in our brief marriage.
My pregnancy—the news has spread quickly through society—was responsible for a teatime visit from my dear friend Melissa Ray and her friend, Connie Fauxmanteur. I am less personally acquainted with Mrs. Fauxmanteur, although well aware of her husband’s lumber fortune and their sizable contributions to city charity. She is five or more years my senior, and as such I never knew her in school as I did Melissa, with whom I have enjoyed a steady and steadfast companionship.
We discussed John’s and my year abroad, me carefully embellishing the journey to sound like the ideal honeymoon. There was also great discussion of children, both as infants and older, and the m
ood was quite elevated throughout the long afternoon.
The Parlor is a magnificent room, just to the left of the front door as one enters. Paneled in walnut, with carpets from the East, it houses a pipe organ I acquired in Germany during our European travels. It is home to landscapes of France, a portrait of John commissioned in England and various other minor treasures, such as a Chinese vase and a set of German marksman pistols. Although a poor cousin to our central Library, the Parlor nonetheless houses among the literature on its shelves five autographed works of Dickens and another half dozen autographed by Rudyard Kipling, a clever writer who has focused his works on India and is becoming quite popular both here and abroad. There is a leather-clad globe of the world, purchased in Oxford, England, in the far corner, guarding the door into the Central Hall West. Mrs. Fauxmanteur was regarding that globe when I last laid eyes on her. Melissa and I were engaged in some gossip at the time about rumors of Tina Coleman’s brother’s addiction to opium, and I only made a sideways glance in the direction of the visiting Mrs. Fauxmanteur. I felt an urgent need to warn her that Sukeena uses that very globe as a kind of prayer wheel and that she tells me this globe is since vested with extraordinary powers, including the ability to open a portal into the soul of Rose Red. (Sukeena claims the house is alive—that she can feel its presence—an opinion with which I have taken great issue and that has been the source of argument between us.) Sukeena also believes there are many such portals throughout the home and that one must be careful where one moves and to guard one’s thoughts in certain locations or suffer the consequences—although she has never relayed what these consequences might be. All this is communicated between us in such a clipped, uncertain way that I’m not even sure I have it right—although I do know, quite clearly, that Sukeena is afraid of Rose Red. Or perhaps cautious is a better word.
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer Page 7