The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (2 page)

warmth, the likes of which I’ve only read about in my novels.

Perhaps Mother is right!) I should like to relate here my recollection

of an exchange we had on the trip over.

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“John, dear,” I said, “do you suppose I should have offended

my mother by my refusal of a chaperone?”

“You’re a grown woman of nineteen, El.” (I love this nickname

for me he has chosen!) “Your mother was married and with

her second child by the time she was your age. I doubt very much

you could do anything to shock her.”

“You don’t know her as I do,” I said.

“I am twice your age. I should imagine that concerns your

parents. Especially as to my intentions.” He lowered his eyes to

me, running them down the full length of my dress to where I

felt faint. He understands full well this power he has over me,

uses it playfully, but on this occasion—and there have been others,

truth be told—it was not so much playful as provocative,

and he made no effort to disguise or conceal his lust. I felt certain

of it at the time. And what was I to do? I giggled, all

nerves, of course. Blushed no doubt. I felt the heat in my

cheeks. But I kept my chin high and my eyes on the muddy

road ahead.

“And what are your intentions?” I asked, suppressing a

smile.

“To ravish you, of course. To pluck your innocence from the

vine of youth and leave you for the next man to marry.”

“And my father will come after you with axe and rope.”

“And you? Will you refuse me?”

“Your so-called ravishing, of course. Until we are married.”

“Engaged or married?”

“We’ve had other . . . fun, John Rimbauer.” Certainly I

must have blushed again for I felt it in my face. We had

touched. We had kissed. His strong hands knew the shape of my

bosom (though never skin to skin!). Once, while dancing, he

had pressed himself to me and I had known of his arousal. But

he had yet to know of mine. Mother’s cautions of “a lady’s

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behavior” fall ?at on my ears. She lived in another time. All the

girls talk of touching their men—of pleasing them, if for no

other reason in an effort to quell their desires and protect their

own virginity, that most sacred of marriage rites. John’s age

perhaps has accounted for no such need on my part. He is

experienced. I treasure his worldliness, and believe it affords

me much opportunity.

“And more to come,” he said. “I trust we both will ?nd . . . ,”

he searched for his words, “great reward in marriage.”

“John!” I blurted out, like some sniveling twelve-year-old.

“Marriage?”

“Patience, my dear. Never push me. Never challenge my decisions.

If you hold to these two virtues, we will never have a single

quarrel, you and I. I am lord and master of my house. I have

worked long and hard to earn not only a small fortune but the

right to stake out my own territory, and that territory includes

opinion. You understand that, don’t you, dearest?”

“Yes, John.”

“No reservations.”

“None.”

“Because I am well aware of suffrage, and have no quarrel with

a person’s striving for individual freedoms. More power to them.

But not in my home, you understand? You will ?nd I can be a

most generous, most loving partner, my dear. But just ask Mr.

Posey what happens when my partners betray my trust or break

agreements. I am offering you many things in sharing a life with

me. Freedom is not necessarily one of them.”

“John Rimbauer, are you proposing marriage to me?” This, I

fear, is all I was thinking. All that I heard. Only now as I write

down my recollection of events, only now as I recall those words

of his clearly, do I feel their full import.

“Patience, my dear. Patience.” A smug smile. I felt for sure I

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knew what this day held in store. As it turned out, I couldn’t have

been more wrong. Neither John, nor I, could have possibly foreseen

events as they were about to unfold.

The property John purchased to hold his mansion, his grand

statement of achievement and success, is nothing short of spectacular.

It is crowned with a tall forest of cedar and pine, and

workers have cleared nearly six of the forty acres to hold the

house—if something so large can be called that! (I could not

believe the plans John showed me!) Though well out of the city,

the house sits at the muddy end of Spring Street. From this

location, one can see the entire city below. Spectacular! Just

west of the property is a tract that I’m told runs all the way to

Canada, and south as far as Mexico. How my imagination runs

wild with the thought: one road spanning the entire country.

Just think! The redwood forests. San Francisco. Los Angeles,

where they are now making ?lms. (Not quite two years ago,

when a traveling projectionist brought it to town, I saw Le Voyage

dans la Lune [A Trip to the Moon], adapted from the novel by Jules

Verne—I loved this book! The ?lm was ?fteen minutes long,

the longest ever made at the time, and was shown at Father’s

bank, of all places, because it had the largest white wall that

could be found.) I adore motion pictures, simply love actors

and actresses and hope that John and I will include them as our

guests when we make our home together—but I’m getting ahead

of myself! The property is accessed from the west. John parked

the Olds quite some distance from the construction—a gigantic

hole in the ground is all!—and, bless his heart, had had workers

lay a string of redwood planks, wide enough to walk upon, so I

might avoid the mud and ooze. Horse-drawn wagons came and

went, burdened and brimming with materials ordered by the

foreman, Williamson, a big, Irish-looking man with ?orid

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cheeks, a broad mustache and a surly disposition. He did not

appreciate a woman being on the premises, I can tell you that.

(He made several insinuations upon my arrival, that is until

dear John led him aside by the elbow and had words with him,

after which he ignored me with full contempt though was loath

to outwardly reveal his disapproval of me. I can only wonder

now if this brief altercation with my beloved, an altercation

that resulted from my attendance there, had something to do

with the events that would soon transpire. Oh, Good Lord,

pray let it not be so! Nay, do not curse me with the burden of

lost life!)

I am forced to wonder now about my musings put forth in my

?rst entry to these pages. Was what happened to-day at the grand

house the sense of foreboding danger that I felt so strongly? The

end of it, or just the beginning? The manifestation of some dark

power greater than can be imagined? Am I a part of this darkness,

or separate from it? Controlled by it, or instead by my prayers?

The pen trembles under my grasp as I search for these answers.

Am I, in fact, already possessed? Dare I think that? Dare I write

it? Dare I keep it to myself, for fear of spoiling the arrangements

already under way between my beloved and me? But oh, there I

go again. Back to the day, and the tragedy that befell us.

The cavernous hole cut into the earth on that forested slope so

far from the warmth of my family home forewarns of a structure,

in scope and size, that challenges even one’s imagination. I admit

fully that I had never visited any construction site prior to my

journey this day, and that perhaps because of this lacking I write

with what borders on ignorance, but I am no stranger to architecture.

I promise you that. Furthermore, I now intend to

immerse myself in the study of this science, along with that of

construction, so as to appreciate fully the efforts being undertaken

on our behalf. The sheer enormity of it! (I can only hope

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this does not match my future husband’s ego or conceit, for if so,

I am in for a formidable challenge in the years that lie ahead!) To

my eye, it rivals in size the university building that occupies the

hill to the south overlooking the city, that building that newcomers

nearly always mistakenly attribute to be the statehouse. I

believe John’s house—our house!—will dwarf this structure by

such proportion as to render it insigni?cant, will so dominate

that clearing where it will stand that it may be seen for miles.

Miles! I tell you! A landmark for generations to come. Why, the

hole in the ground, the foundation, is a marvel of excavation. I

watched as four-mule teams carved and cut the thick wet soil with

blades, followed by workers busy with shovels to ?ll wagons.

Wagon after wagon, hour after hour, and barely a dent in the

giant cavity. The scale of this project de?es description. I can

only say that nothing like it has ever been built. Perhaps even,

that nothing ever will be.

The event of the day, to which I wish to address myself, however,

was one of horri?c consequences, something no person,

certainly not a woman such as myself, should ever have to endure.

But ?rst to our arrival.

As we studied the magni?cent goings-on, the laborers with

their shovels, the teamsters with their wagons, the supervisors

working their crews with disciplined patience (for the hand

laborers are almost entirely Chinese or Negro and need much

supervision), I was struck by the militarylike organization of it all.

An easy analogy given the sharp tongue of Williamson.

This man Williamson was given to large bones and a massive

head; he had a commanding presence. Shouting and gesticulating,

he seemed to possess a language of hand signals known to all

who worked for him, but especially those supervisors immediately

his junior. He lorded from the porch of a rough-hewn

shanty, calling names and then waving his arms like a frantic

bird, directing deliveries, the removal of mud and dirt and the

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efforts of the teams. Perhaps John’s attendance contributed to

this man’s nerves, ?xing him in an agitated state. Having not met

Williamson previously, on this I cannot comment. However, I

must tell you, Dear Diary, that on no terms would I have wished

to be employed by Mr. Williamson on this day. His bilious, perfunctory

tone carried clear across the construction site, often

heard echoing right back at us, as if from the mouth of God.

(Not an insigni?cant reference, given the events to follow.)

Enough!

John and I made our way to the edge of the giant pit and

were witness to the ?rst of the stones being laid for the grand

home’s foundation. This, as it turned out, was the cause of our

delay these many weeks. John had wanted us to witness a

momentous occasion, not simply a hole being dug into the

earth (although I must confess here that the hole alone would

have surely impressed me as well). And there below us, a group

of ten or more Chinese ran—not walked—to and from a large

pile of stone, inspecting every angle before running—not walking

—that stone to a cutter who smacked it with a hammer and

chisel that rained stone chips in small showers all around him.

From there the stone was whisked to one of several Scottishlooking

gentlemen (it was dif?cult to discern ancestry, given

our perspective) who examined the rock, nodded his approval

and, applying mortar, positioned it in place. Stone by stone,

the ?rst of many of the grand home’s walls began to grow, as the

Scots worked as a team. (I am told seven thousand stones will be

used in the foundation alone!) I found myself mesmerized by

the sight. John, as I recall, had several conversations, but I

scarcely heard his words. What beauty. It seemed almost alive to

me, not as if it were being built, but instead, growing all of its

own. The thrill of witnessing this is hard to explain here in

these pages. I found it consumed me, awakened a heat in me,

not unlike what John Rimbauer is capable of with simply a touch

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or a whisper. Dare I say I was moved by this? The pleasing ?uidity.

The sweating Chinamen, some bare-chested, ?exing and

glistening as they bore their burden. I could not take my eyes

off of this activity. Not until, that is, Williamson’s voice arose

like an ill wind, cursing a string of profanities that forced such a

blush on my part my face must have looked like a ripened

cherry.

A large, overstocked wagon belonging to John stood in front

of the foreman’s shack, the driver equally as big as Mr.

Williamson, and equally verbose. It was clear, even from a great

distance, that Mr. Williamson did not approve of the quality of

the items being delivered. I cannot tell you exactly how I discerned

this, distracted, even repulsed as I was by the language

involved, but the conversation between them went something

like this:

“This is not what we ordered, Mr. Corbin.”

“This here is what I was told to deliver.”

“You should have checked your ***** load.”

“I loaded this ***** load, mister. I didn’t have to check it—I

loaded it.”

“Look at this quality. It’s horse***t. Pure horse***t, and