The House (10 page)

By then, they were ready to move upstairs. Sarah knew there was an elevator in the house, but Stanley had never used it. It had long since been sealed off, as even he acknowledged that it would be far too dangerous for current use. Until his legs had finally failed him completely, he had valiantly marched up and down the back stairs. And once he could no longer walk, he never came downstairs.

Marjorie and Sarah made their way cautiously toward the grand staircase that ran up the center of the house, admiring every inch and detail around them as they went, floors, marquetry, boiseries, moldings, windows, and chandeliers. The ceiling over the grand staircase was three stories high. It ran up the main body of the house. Above it was the attic where Stanley had lived, and below it the basement. But the staircase itself, in all its grandeur and elegance, took up a vast amount of space in the central part of the house.

The carpeting on it was faded and threadbare but looked as though it was Persian, and the fittings holding the carpet in place were exquisite antique bronze, with small cast antique lion's heads at the end of each rod. Every detail of the house was exquisite.

On the second floor, they found two more splendid living rooms, a day parlor facing the garden, a card room, a conservatory, where the grand piano had once been, and finally the ballroom they had both heard about. It was in fact an exact replica of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, and utterly beyond belief. As Sarah pulled the curtains back yet again, as she had in almost every room, she nearly cried. She had never seen anything so beautiful in her life. She couldn't even imagine now why Stanley had never used the house. It was much too beautiful to stand empty all these years, unloved. But grandeur on that scale, and elegance of the kind they were seeing, had clearly not been his thing. Only money was, which suddenly struck her as sad. She finally understood now what he had been saying to her. Stanley Perlman had not wasted his life, but in so many important ways, it had passed him by. He hadn't wanted the same thing to happen to her, and now she could see why. This house was the symbol of everything he had owned but never really had. He had never loved it or enjoyed it, or allowed himself to expand into a bigger life. The maid's room where he had spent three-quarters of a century was the symbol of his life, and everything he'd never had, neither companionship, nor beauty, nor love. Thinking about it made Sarah sad. She understood it better now.

As they reached the third floor, they were faced with enormous double doors at the head of the grand staircase. Sarah thought they were locked at first. She and Marjorie pulled and tugged and nearly gave up, when they suddenly sprang open, and revealed a suite of rooms so beautiful and welcoming, they had obviously been the master suite. Here the walls were painted a faded, barely discernible pale powder pink. The bedroom was a confection worthy of Marie Antoinette. It looked down onto the garden. There was a sitting room, a series of dressing rooms, and two extraordinary marble bathrooms, each one larger than Sarah's apartment, that had obviously been built for Lilli and Alexandre. The fixtures were exquisite, the floor in hers pink marble, and in his beige marble, of a quality worthy of the Uffizi in Florence.

There were once again two small sitting rooms on the same floor, flanking the entrance to the master suite, and on the opposite side of the house what must have been the nursery for their two children, obviously one for a girl and the other a boy. There were beautiful painted tiles in their dressing rooms and bathrooms, with flowers and sailboats on them. Each child had had a large bedroom, with big, sunny windows. There was an enormous playroom for both of them, and several smaller rooms that must have been for the governesses and maids who tended to their every need. And as she looked around with tender amazement, something occurred to Sarah. She turned and asked Marjorie a question.

“When Lilli vanished, did she take her children with her? If she did, no wonder it broke Alexandre's heart.” The poor man must have lost not only his beautiful young wife but the boy and girl who had lived here, and on top of it, his money. It would have been enough to destroy anyone, particularly a man, to lose so much and have to give all this up.

“I don't think she took the children with her,” Marjorie said pensively, wondering the same thing herself. “The story I read about them, and the house, didn't say much about it. It said that she ‘vanished.’ I didn't get the impression they vanished with her.”

“What do you suppose happened to them, and to him?”

“God knows. Apparently, he died relatively young, of grief, they implied. It said nothing about his family. And I think the family died out. There is no prominent family in San Francisco by that name anymore. Maybe they went back to their roots in France.”

“Or maybe they all died,” Sarah said, sounding sad.

After they left the nursery, Sarah led Marjorie to the back stairs and the attic floor she was so familiar with from her many visits to Stanley. She stood in the hallway with her eyes cast down, while Marjorie inspected the rooms without her. She didn't want to see the room where Stanley had lived. Sarah knew it would make her too sad. All that had mattered to her, of him, was in her heart and her head. She didn't need to see his room, or the bed where he had died, and never wanted to again. What she had loved of him, she had taken with her. The rest was unimportant. She was reminded of the Saint-Exupéry book
The Little Prince
, which she had always loved. Her favorite quote from it was “What is essential in life is invisible to the eyes, and only seen by the heart.” She felt that way about Stanley. He was forever in her heart. He had been a great gift in her life during the three years of their friendship. She would never forget him.

Marjorie followed her back down the stairs to the third floor again, and reported that there were twenty small servants' rooms on the attic floor. She said that if several of the walls between them were knocked down, a new owner could get several good-size bedrooms out of them, and there were six working bathrooms, although the ceilings were much lower than on the three main floors below.

“Do you mind if I walk back through the house again and make some notes and sketches?” Marjorie asked politely. They were both in awe of what they'd seen. It was totally overwhelming. Neither of them had ever before seen such beauty, and exquisite detail and workmanship except in museums. The master craftsmen who had built the house had all come from Europe. Marjorie had read that in the story. “I'll send someone in to do official plans, and photographs of course, if you let us sell it for you. But I'd like to have a few quick sketches to remind myself of the shape of the rooms, and number of windows.”

“Go right ahead.” Sarah had set aside the entire morning to spend with her. They'd been there for two hours by then, but she didn't have any appointments in the office until three-thirty. And she was impressed by how serious and respectful Marjorie was. Sarah knew she had chosen the right woman to sell Stanley's house.

Marjorie took out a small sketch pad in the master suite, and worked quickly, walking off distances and making notes to herself, as Sarah looked at the bathrooms again, and wandered through the dressing rooms, opening a multitude of closets. She didn't think she'd find anything there, but it was fun to imagine the gowns that had hung in them when Lilli was in residence. She must have had a mountain of jewels, incredible furs, and even a tiara. Those had all been sold off, undoubtedly, nearly a century before. Thinking about it, and the grief that had come to them, financially and otherwise, made Sarah sad. In all her years of visiting Stanley there, she had never thought about the previous owners much before. Stanley never said anything about them, and seemed to have no interest in them himself. He had never even mentioned them to her by name. Suddenly the name de Beaumont seemed all-important to her. With the little Marjorie had shared with her, her imagination was full of the people they must have been, even their children. And the name did ring a bell even for her. She must have heard about them at some point. They had been an important family in the city's history at one time. She knew she had heard the name before, although she no longer remembered where, or in what context. Maybe during some field trip she had participated in as a child at school, visiting a museum.

As she opened the last closet, which had a musty smell to it but still the rich smell of cedar, she realized it had been one of the closets where Lilli kept her furs, probably ermines and sables. As Sarah glanced into the darker recesses of the closet, as though expecting to find one there, something on the floor of the closet caught her eye. She used the flashlight Marjorie had given her and saw that it was a photograph. She got down on all fours and reached for it. It was covered with dust and very brittle. It was a photograph of an exquisite young woman coming down the grand staircase in an evening gown. Looking at her, Sarah thought she was the loveliest creature she had ever seen. She was tall and statuesque, with the lithe body of a young goddess. Her hair was arranged in some sort of fashionable hairdo of the times, with a bun at the back, and waves framing her face. And just as Sarah would have expected her to, she was wearing an enormous diamond necklace and a tiara. She almost looked as though she were dancing down the stairs, pointing one foot in a silver sandal. She looked as though she were laughing, and she had the most piercing, mesmerizing, enormous eyes Sarah had ever seen. The photograph was haunting. She knew instantly it was Lilli.

“Find something?” Marjorie asked as she hurried past with her tape measure and notebook. She didn't want to take up too much of Sarah's time, and was trying to do everything she needed to quickly. She stopped to glance at the photograph only for an instant. “Who is it? Does it say on the back?”

Sarah hadn't even thought to look, and turned it over. There, in long-faded but still legible ink and lacy ancient handwriting, was written, “My darling Alexandre, I will love you forever, your Lilli.” Tears sprang to Sarah's eyes as she read it. She felt the words go straight to her heart, almost as though she'd known her, and could feel her husband's sorrow when she left. The essence of their story tore at Sarah's heart.

“Keep it,” Marjorie said as she moved on, back to the master bedroom. “The heirs will never miss it. You were obviously meant to find it.” Sarah didn't argue with her, and looked at it repeatedly, fascinated by it, as she waited for Marjorie to finish. Sarah didn't want to put it in her purse, for fear that she would hurt it. Knowing what had happened to them, at a later date, the photograph and the inscription behind it were even more meaningful and poignant. Had Lilli forgotten the photograph in the closet when she vanished? Had Alexandre ever seen it? Had someone dropped it when they stripped the house, and he sold it to Stanley? The oddest thing about it was that Sarah had the overwhelming feeling that she had seen the photograph somewhere before, but she couldn't remember where she'd seen it. Maybe in a book or a magazine. Or maybe she had imagined it. But it was hauntingly familiar. She had not only seen the woman in the photograph, but she knew she had seen the actual photograph somewhere. She wished she could remember but didn't.

The two women made their way from floor to floor, as Marjorie made notes and sketches. An hour later they were back at the front door, with faint light streaming in from the large salon on the main floor toward the hallway. There was no longer a gloomy feeling or an aura of mystery to it. It was just an extremely beautiful house that had been long unloved and abandoned. For the right person, with enough money to bring it back to life, and a sensible use for it, it would be an extraordinary project to give this house back its life, and restore it to its rightful place as an important piece of history for the city.

They stepped outside into the November sunshine. Sarah locked the door carefully. They had made a quick tour of the basement and seen the ancient kitchen there, which was a relic from another century, the enormous servants' dining room, the butler and housekeeper's apartments, and twenty more maids' rooms, as well as the boiler, the wine cellars, the meat locker, the ice room, and a room for arranging flowers, with all the florist's tools still in it.

“Wow!” Marjorie said to Sarah as they stood looking at each other on the front steps. “I don't even know what to tell you about what I think of it. I've never seen anything like it, except in Europe, or Newport. Even the Vanderbilts' house isn't as beautiful as this. I hope we find the right buyer. It should be brought back to life and treated as a restoration project. I almost wish someone would turn it into a museum, but it would be even more wonderful if someone actually lived in it who loved it.” She had been shocked to discover that Stanley had lived upstairs all his life, in the attic, and realized that he must have been extremely eccentric. Sarah had just said quietly that he was unpretentious and very simple. Marjorie ventured no further comment, as she could see that the young attorney had been very fond of her ancient client, and spoke of him with awe.

“Do you want to talk about it now?” Sarah asked. It was noon, and she didn't want to go back to the office yet. She wanted to absorb what she'd seen of the house.

“I'd love to. I need to think about it though. Do you want to get a cup of coffee?” Sarah nodded, and Marjorie followed her in her own car to Starbucks. They took a quiet corner table, bought cappuccinos, and Marjorie glanced at her notes. Not only was the house itself remarkable, but it was on a huge lot, in a prime location, with an extraordinary garden, although nothing had been planted there in years. But there again, in the hands of the right person, both the house and garden could be a dream.

“What do you think the house is worth? Unofficially, obviously. I won't hold you to it.” She knew Marjorie had to make calculations and take official measurements. This had just been a reconnaissance mission, for them both. But they both felt as though they had found one of the greatest treasure troves ever seen.