Chapter Four
Ellis directed the chauffeur to the Society Hill Hotel on Chestnut Street. On the surface it looked fine: the façade and public areas were up to par, but our suite was faded and shabby and had only one bedroom. However, it was what we could afford on Ellis’s reduced allowance.
Ellis bought a bottle of whiskey from the lobby bar while the clerk was checking us in and began downing it as soon as we got upstairs.
I understood his desperation. If the Colonel cut his allowance completely, we’d be destitute. Regrettably, it was a very real possibility.
Ellis’s crime against his father was twofold, and the parts were equally grievous. He had been caught railing against the Colonel behind his back, and then had accused him of fraud to his face. I didn’t think the Colonel was capable of forgiving either separately, but together they were exponentially worse.
As we waited for our things to arrive, Ellis paced and drank, analyzing and reanalyzing what had just happened and generally working himself into a lather. At one point, when he allowed as to how he wouldn’t have lost his temper if he hadn’t been driven to defend me, I thought he was unfairly trying to shift the blame to me and said so, pointing out that I hadn’t uttered a word throughout the entire fiasco.
He stopped and looked at me, both pained and surprised.
“My God,” he said. “That’s not what I meant at all. Of course it’s not your fault. You did absolutely nothing. Her attack on you was completely gratuitous.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “She didn’t say anything everyone else wasn’t already thinking.”
“It’s not all right, and I will never forgive her. Neither should you.”
I hoped he would change his mind, because his mother was currently our only hope of returning to grace. Although she demonstrated her affection in strange ways, her whole world revolved around Ellis and, to a lesser degree, in torturing me. Without us, her life would be a void. I was entirely sure that she was already attempting to intercede, but I’d never seen the Colonel in such a state and I wasn’t sanguine about her chances.
Appealing to my own father was pointless. When I wrote to tell him that Ellis and I had eloped, I’d expected him to be upset and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t respond right away. It was months before it dawned on me that he wasn’t going to. I’d seen him only once since, although we lived less than two miles apart. He was crossing the street, and when he saw me, he pretended he hadn’t and turned the other way. From overheard fragments of conversation, I gathered his activities revolved almost exclusively around the Corinthian Yacht Club, allowing him to avoid contact with the fairer sex altogether.
At some point after midnight, I managed to convince Ellis that our things weren’t on their way and we should just go to bed. Neither of us had so much as an overnight bag.
While the room was stuffy, it was also drafty. Ellis called me a “blanket hog,” accusing me of repeatedly rolling away with the covers, at which point he’d grab them back and leave me exposed. After a few rounds of tug-of-war, which started out in good fun but deteriorated quickly, we ended up facing opposite directions on the edges of the bed with neither one of us adequately covered.
I lay awake worrying. When Ellis finally fell asleep, he snored so loudly I had to hold a pillow over my head, pressing it against my ears. There was an odd smell, sort of earthy and minerally. For the rest of the night, all I could think about was how many heads had lain on those pillows before my own.
—
We were roused by an understated yet insistent rapping at the door.
“Dear God,” croaked Ellis. “What time is it?”
I peered at the radium-painted clock beside me. “Nearly seven.”
“The sun’s not even up,” he complained.
After a few more minutes of intermittent knocking, I mumbled, “You’d better get it. They’re not going away.”
He sighed irritably, then shouted, “Coming!”
He switched on the lamp and rolled out of bed, yanking the chenille bedspread off as though he were doing the tablecloth trick. He wrapped it around his shoulders and stomped away, slamming the bedroom door behind him.
I had a fair indication of what was going on because of the shuffles, bangs, and clunks. It went on for nearly ten minutes.
When Ellis returned, he wadded up the bedspread and tossed it onto my legs. As he flopped back into bed, I tried to straighten it.
“Our things, I presume?” I asked.
“Our every worldly belonging, from the looks of it. Six carts’ worth. We’re going to have to turn sideways to get to the door.”
I tried not to panic—the Colonel would have given the order before he retired for the night, when his anger was still fresh—but a queasy feeling settled in the pit of my stomach anyway.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea where your pills might have ended up?” Ellis asked.
“Would you like me to have a look?”
“Never mind,” he said miserably. “It’s all right.”
The lamp was still on, so I went to the front room.
The floor was almost entirely covered by trunks and suitcases. Emily, Pemberton, and the others must have been up all night packing.
I found my cosmetics case on a low table, along with my hatboxes. To my relief, it was organized immaculately, the pill bottle tucked discreetly under its tray. Poor Emily—we’d cost her at least two nights’ sleep, which my mother-in-law would certainly not consider an excuse if her daytime duties suffered.
I handed the bottle to Ellis and sat beside him. He propped himself up on an elbow, shook two pills into his hand, and swallowed them dry. Then he fell back onto his pillow.
“Thank you, darling. I’m a little on edge,” he said.
“I know. Me too.”
“Let’s try to get back to sleep. In the morning—in the real morning—I’m going to have the largest goddamned lobster in the city brought up to us, along with a mountain of potato salad. Caviar, too. They can skip the plates and just bring forks.”
I made my way back to my side of the bed. When I crawled under the covers, Ellis switched off the lamp. We found ourselves much closer together than we had been before. He rolled onto his side and threw an arm across my waist.
“Well, what do you know,” he said. “Maybe there are enough blankets after all.”