by Robyn Carr
“If you cry, I’ll sell the cottage,” he threatened.
“I only want to stay forever,” she replied. “Don’t be hard on me now…after this wonderful, wonderful week.”
“You promised you could do this--take whatever time there is. Isn’t this more than we hoped for? Lilly, if the pain is worse than the--”
“No! When can we come again?”
“I don’t know. Don’t make Amanda suspicious. We’ll see each other. We’ll think about the next time.”
“Will you come to the hotel? Soon?”
“As soon as I can,” he promised.
She spent one night at the Astor with Elizabeth, and they took the Sunday afternoon train back to Philadelphia. Lilly watched the countryside move past her. “I have discovered something, Bethie.”
“Mm?”
“There is something more difficult than living without him.” Tears came to her eyes. “Leaving him.”
Lilly had always been strong, stronger than the fears that paralyzed ordinary women and bold enough to grasp desires that were treacherous for many. Her spirit perked the first time Andrew joined the family for dinner. She reminded herself that she had far more than she had dreamed of a few years ago. She had not known in the beginning that she would become desperate for Andrew, that the separations would stretch out for too long. For the first time in her life she struggled against greed. All the while she built the hotel that was fast becoming one of the most popular in the Northeast, she had been driven by ambition. But she was smart enough to know greed.
She had never before seen herself as susceptible, but she was greedy for her lover.
She sometimes thought she would faint from longing. It took every ounce of will, control, to keep from begging Andrew to take time, soon, for the cottage. Andrew came to dinner, and when the family had temporarily moved away from the dining room, he whispered across the table. When he admitted his own desire was as fierce, she was so relieved she laughed.
“I’ve taken a flat in the city,” he told her. “I can’t get away for long, I can’t leave work, but if I’m not alone with you soon--”
An almost wild laugh escaped her.
“Lilly!” he said, looking around.
“I had been berating myself for being so wanton!” she whispered back. She grinned, her eyes sparkling with devilish delight. “You’re insatiable!”
“I swore it would never come to this! A shabby flat in the city and disguises while--”
“Not a moment too soon!” she exclaimed.
The flat was not just a hideaway for illicit lovers, however. It was far more. They almost always made love there, but more important was the time they could be alone to talk, to touch without the danger of being seen. Almost twice a week, on the excuse of shopping, visiting the library, attending some lecture or tea, Lilly had enough of Andrew to build a very satisfactory love affair.
It seemed that she was not far wrong in seeing satisfaction all around her. Katherine had her second birthday and toddled about the apartments; Amanda entertained as frequently as she liked and enjoyed the hotel more every year; Mr. Padgett had returned to Philly from the end of May to mid-October; and guests came and went grateful for their treatment and the fine accommodations. Everyone, it seemed, was content. But Lilly had not looked far enough, for that small thing that remained a bristling irritant came into full rage in early December. Patricia. It was Dale Montaine who upset the tea cart.
It was on a quiet, late Sunday afternoon when the smell of roast beef permeated the apartments and all within were relaxed and happy that he burst upon them, waving a sheaf of pages in his hands.
“I’ve read it!” he announced, his face contorted. He stared across the sitting room at Patricia. “It’s you!”
“Dale, what is it?” Emily asked, picking up Katherine and looking worriedly at her son-in-law.
“Dale, come in and stop all the commotion,” Amanda said testily, dropping her newspaper on her lap.
“None of you has read it?” he asked.
Lilly was running figures up and down a tablet, a frequent obsession of hers, to determine the best charges for occupancy. She knew that Dale was holding John’s novel and looked at Patricia. Her sister did what she had always done. She lifted her chin in a dare.
“John Giddings’s book,” Dale said. “At first I wasn’t sure. Through four segments I suspected, but now I know for certain. Patricia is the heroine. Patricia, who has always been completely misunderstood. Patricia, the pure of heart and conscience who--”
“Dale! Come now, what are you saying?” Emily asked anxiously.
He threw the chapters that had been published monthly since the June before. “Read it for yourself!” he said. “Just have a look at what she’s done to us all!” He turned angrily away from them and slammed the door as he left.
Lilly felt fear stain her cheeks. John could not successfully publish anything like the letters he had written to Patricia. She put aside her tablet and went to pick up the pages that constituted John’s novel.
“Do you have any idea what he’s talking about, Patricia?” Emily asked.
“Yes, Mama,” she said sweetly. “The woman John used in his book was fashioned in appearance to look like me.”
“In appearance?” Amanda questioned suspiciously, removing her spectacles.
“There are a few other similarities.”
“Difficult ones for Dale to live with?”
“Perhaps,” Patricia said. “But what’s the difference? John’s novel is becoming extremely successful. It’s going to be published in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago. He’s had offers to publish bound copies from every publisher in the country. He will soon be more famous than Mark Twain. He’s becoming very rich”
Lilly ruffled the pages. “If there’s a hotel in this novel, Patricia,” she said, “you will soon be homeless.” And with that she excused herself to read.
And there she was: Patricia. Dale couldn’t possibly be more right, except about Patricia’s character. The hotel had not appeared, but still could as the chapters continued. Here was a young, virtuous, beautiful woman, the daughter of a shrewish seamstress who could barely serve a table to her two fatherless children--a son and daughter--who was trapped into marrying a rich, impotent drunkard just moments before it was discovered she was really the daughter of an aristocratic man--an unknown descendent of an important family. But this poor, trapped creature was too late in her fortune to claim the man she truly loved and wanted, a large, muscled, handsome journalist who had been very attracted to her, but had failed to get up the courage to speak of his intentions until--too late! She’d been given to the beast by her terrible, insensitive mother!
Lilly might have laughed had the poor likeness not disgusted her. Many of the characters were based on fact, the impotent drunkard was the son of a parvenu who made his unscrupulous rise to a financial empire by eavesdropping in the kitchens of the wealthy when he was a poor orphan who sharpened knives. He took advantage of conversations he had overheard and cleverly learned how to buy property not yet for sale, preying on the disadvantaged rich. There was Boss Tweed, fictionalized, who took so much money out the budget for building government buildings that he was said to be the richest man in the world. The president of the United States, though not named Ulysses S. Grant, was a large, bulky, mustachioed man, stupid in government, greedy in personal affairs, who used the secretary of the treasury to earn millions in a fraudulent gold scam. Familiar families, well-known tales. But the most interesting were the tales of the heroine, Chloe Tillets, a woman of tender heart and solid conscience who constantly had to fight her mother’s greed, her brother’s ambition, her grandfather’s control, and whose poor baby was taken from her. She was often described as a victim of her own glorious beauty and sweetness.
The novel itself was good reading; Lilly did not doubt the reasons for its popularity. There was a strong current of sexual titillation so that even Lilly began to hope that poor Ch
loe could one day have her desperate would-be lover. She almost longed to see how poor Chloe survived, taken for granted, abused, and misunderstood as she was. Now Lilly knew what had been in Patricia’s letters besides erotic passages and declarations of chaste longing--the story of her life as she saw it. The victim of a grasping family, the poor wretch was forced to make the best of her sad lot despite the cruelty that surrounded her. And of course this loving, kind, pure heroine was under constant threat of being homeless if she did not behave.
It was at breakfast the next morning that Lilly gave her review. “Besides Boss Tweed, our past president Mr. Grant, and Wilson Montaine, I can’t really say for sure which characters we are. It’s a rather remarkable story and very obvious that Patricia had shared her point of view with the author. You’d better read it yourselves and see what you decide. My opinion is that my sister’s illusions are intact and monstrous. And John is poisoned beyond recovery. I’m sorry. It could harm us. If a hotel is constructed in the novel, our reputation could be doomed.”
Chapter Twenty
The hotel in the novel was called the Belvedere Palace. It appeared in the January 1883 installment. A newspaper publisher in New York began to serialize the novel, following John’s home city of Philly in the publication. In February Boston and Chicago and San Fran Francisco newspapers began. St. Louis was interested. The novel would run for three years in thirty-six installments. Then it would be bound and sold. The most interesting and least known fact about the story was that John and his publishers agreed to make changes for the second publication in New York based on Philadelphian reactions; interest had lagged in the chapter following the villain’s death, and the character who strongly resembled Wilson Montaine was resurrected in New York, re-created in another similar type for Philly. In essence, different novels were appearing all over the country, and when John had determined the best version, it would be contained in the bound book. Chloe Tillets was adored.
Patricia’s resemblance to the heroine was noticed by strangers, people who had never suffered the piercing wound left by her selfish acts. When she was abroad shopping, people stared at her. Sometimes a man or woman would sheepishly approach her and tentatively ask, “Have you ever heard of a woman named Chloe Tillets?” She would smile demurely, the gentle, subdued smile of Chloe, and say, “Yes, of course.” They would then comment on the resemblance, and she would explain it was possible, as she was well acquainted with John Patrick, an old family friend and renowned writer.
This was much to her liking, of course, but all too often for Patricia that was where the personal questions stopped. The curious wanted only to know about the fascinating novelist. What was he like? Was he handsome and muscular? Why did he hide himself away, uncomfortable with fame? Where did he work? Was the story based on fact? Patricia became impatient the moment attention drifted away from her. Still, she was as close as ever she would be to fame and admiration for those precious moments she was confused with John’s heroine.
Those who knew her and were still much in evidence as her grandmother’s oldest and dearest friends, the Sinclairs, Lancasters, Biddies, et al., turned their backs when they saw her. They did not have starring roles in the novel, but what was said about their less than virtuous society had not settled very well. At the hotel she was forced to trade fame for solitude. Her family was not pleased with the whole event of the novel. And John, though he still wrote to her, was hard at work; he could not abandon the story. He had lessons in publishing that could not be learned in the simple writing--the important one being that Chloe did not get the sympathy she deserved when one of her chief abusers vanished. In order to fulfill his dreams of publishing a great novel, he was not at liberty to spend all his time in pursuit of Patricia. John was busily rewriting. And he was no longer welcome at the Arms.
Lilly was amused to be portrayed as a capitalistic man, Emily was upset that she was a villainous seamstress who wanted her daughter to marry into society, and Amanda was nothing less than enraged by her character--a blustering man who had plotted revenge against the society that had failed him, returned to take ruthless advantage of them all, and kept them in a merciless grip as the proprietor of the only fashionable luxury hotel in the country.
The installments came, twelve more in 1883. It reached its halfway mark. It was much talked about, and even newspapers reported on its popularity.
“Why should I bother to come up here for dinner if no one will pay the least attention to me?” Patricia had whined.
“Don’t you get enough attention imitating a virtuous young woman?” Amanda had coldly returned.
Thus, Patricia was seen less and less. She was sometimes on the grounds, parasol protecting her ivory skin from the sun, but she was seldom in the company of the women in her family. Many meals were served in her suite…sometimes there was a meal for two…but if it was John, he was sneaked in through the back stairs. Her treatment of Katherine was heartbreaking. The little girl talked all the time. When she saw Patricia, she would grin, clap her hands, and cry out, “Mama!” But Patricia tried to avoid her child.
The novel created a startling change. As it grew in popularity and the owners of the hotel in the story became more and more terrible in early 1884, Amanda braced herself for a lull in reservations. Lilly figured accounts more frantically with Fletcher, concerned that her grandmother, the foremost authority on society, could be right. Emily, still working hard and often relying on Sophia for companionship, seemed to be gazing West in anticipation of the predictable springtime return of Noel, who left every winter and returned every spring.
March arrived with a few premature blooms and a full house. More guests than ever before.
Along with all the questionable characterization in the novel, John had inadvertently drawn attention to the pleasures to be had in a great American hotel. His poor Chloe was often abused or mistreated at a fabulous ball, compromised at an outdoor spring concert, locked away in an incredible, luxurious prison-suite. For twenty-one chapters, twenty-one months.
The women might not have known of this phenomenon, but Amanda asked a new guest how he became aware of the Armstrong Arms and he informed her that it became his intention to spend his spring in a hotel in the States rather than Paris because of a story he had read. She asked a few more. She learned that many hotels were enjoying more than the usual number of guests. Quite a few of their new spring guests seemed to have had their curiosity about hotel living aroused by The Found Fortune, the most formidable among them a Mr. Mark Twain.
“Very damn few seemed to think of us in connection to the novel,” Lilly told her grandmother.
“And so your sister is damned lucky!”
“What would we have done had we been empty on account of it?” Lilly asked.
“Is murder still against the law?” the old dowager returned. “I should not have been surprised! It’s the Quaker heritage coming out again. Remember Leaves of Grass--banned by those shamed Puritans in Boston while these Quaker Philadelphians suffered embarrassment as they read every page, a condition I assure you we all loved!”
“Explain New York,” Lilly, intrigued, asked her grandmother.
“New York?” she asked, peering over her spectacles. “They’re a lot of pirates; nothing shames or embarrasses New York!”
Lilly pleaded overwork and begged the month of April away. She hoped to spend much of that month with Andrew, but there was more reason for her going away. The hotel was busy, full all the rime. Gone forever were the quiet evenings the women spent in their apartments while the hotel was being finished and the first few guests had begun to arrive. Their extended family had grown, and their seams bulged. Sophia was frequently at the Arms with Emily, Fletcher took many dinners every week with them, Andrew was a regular guest, Dale managed to drop in at least monthly, Wilson and Deanna came to see Katherine, and Katherine, a thriving four-year-old, created a daily havoc with happy noises and plentiful toys. Amanda had discovered that special guests with interesting li
ves provided great dinner conversation, and an invitation to dine at her private table was soon a greater compliment--more prestigious than her offer to provide a formal dinner in the hotel. Lilly, sometimes tired and in want of a deep bath and quiet evening, found herself listening to poets, writers, politicians, or foreign diplomats. With guests, friends, and family, quiet was impossible. And Lilly desperately needed some quiet.
Andrew had been her lover for two years. She had begun to take their time together for granted. There was not the least suspicion, not so much as a look askance. Becoming more brazen, she told her grandmother she was going to look for a house somewhere, a place where she could be alone and not be bothered to keep company with bachelors. She did not need to look, of course. She freed Elizabeth to travel or visit her family and went to the cottage.
This time it was she who arrived early, chopped the wood herself, and tidied the cottage for Andrew. He had business on Wall Street; he had opened his own brokerage house there. All that kept him in Philadelphia was Lilly. He was more sought after each year because of his brilliance with stocks.
Lilly had brought a large load of books to read that had nothing whatever to do with her. She discarded her shoes and pulled her skirt through her legs from the back and tucked it in her waist at the front. When he arrived, she was sitting on the beach, digging her toes into the sand. He still wore his jacket and tie; she had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders because the air at the ocean was still cold. He stood and looked at her, and she had the sudden urge to tell him the things she had discovered, things that had never before happened to her.
In her first days alone she had not known what to do with her time. Her work had filled so many hours, included so many people that solitude was something she had lost in the hotel. She hadn’t been able to sleep the first nights. She was cold, and the wood was difficult to chop; it chafed her hands and her cheeks were burned pink. Her lust for Andrew had been eased by their flat in the city, and her anticipation was more for her dearest friend and lover than for the physical pleasure she craved. After four days the solitude had settled within her and she began to feel her own mind and body; she become reacquainted with her dreams and stubborn beliefs. She read and ate at odd hours; she would light the lamp in the middle of the night and read on through the whole day without stopping or cook herself a hot beefsteak at seven in the morning. She napped and walked and lay on the sand at midnight to contemplate how strangely God had arranged the heavens. She had liked it then--no schedule, no commitments, no one to listen to but the voice of herself inside her own head. She wanted to tell him this: how the cottage was more than a place for her to escape convention and enjoy her forbidden man.