The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (10 page)

this man will be forever important to me.

The dining room, to be called the Banquet Hall, is magni?cent,

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 ?replace. I can hardly wait for our homecoming

party! We will ?ll 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 ?oor, 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

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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 fulllength

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 magni?cent 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 ?t to

be a queen!

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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 ?rst 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 ?res 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-

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sided staircase ascending to the ?rst of four ?oors. 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 ?fty. 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 horri?ed I am. One

great advantage of our year abroad was that John took me into his

con?dence regarding his oil matters and I learned a great deal.

He seems constantly involved in secret negotiations to bring

re?neries 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 re?ned. 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 justi?ed now that

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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 con?dence, 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 ?rst.

“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-?ve 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?”

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“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Lisa told me,” Tanner Langford explained. (Lisa is Tanner’s

sister, an in?uential 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

?red. But word got out. The state was to send an expert. And

then he burned the bones.”

“He what!?”

“Made a bon?re 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-in?icted 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 sup-

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pose 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

?rst 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 ?nd 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.”

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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, suf?ce 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

?nally 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