The Magnolia Palace

Chapter Fifteen

1919

Lillian replayed the meeting with Mr. Broderick in her mind as she hurried up Fifth Avenue. How stupid to think that a film producer could solve all of her problems, save her from ruin. The hours she’d spent in the sculptors’ studios had been for the sake of art; this was something else entirely. What Mr. Broderick had in mind for Angelica the actress was far from the comedic genius of former model Mabel Normand or the spunky sweetness of Mary Pickford. He wanted her to debase herself for a chance at stardom.

Back at the Frick mansion, Lillian tucked herself into the ladies’ dressing room just off the foyer to collect herself. It was tiny, a place for female visitors to shed their coats and hats and check their reflection in the mirror before being received by the hosts. The family had hardly seen any guests since Mr. Frick had fallen ill, so the room was a forgotten hideaway for Lillian to recover her composure. She needed time to think before having to transform from failed starlet into Miss Helen’s private secretary.

She took the pins out of her hat and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her makeup looked garish in the afternoon light, and she pulled a handkerchief out of her handbag and wiped it off, cleaning herself up as best she could.

Lillian had no one but herself to blame. She’d burned both bridges, with Mr. Danforth—no longer “Richard,” not after he’d received her note of rejection—and with Mr. Broderick. Which only left her job as private secretary, and the threat of exposure if anyone recognized her. An avalanche of tears threatened, but she swallowed hard. There was no time to mourn her lost dream.

She walked out of the room to find Mr. Graham setting up at the organ.

“Good day, Miss Lilly.” She hoped he would turn back to his music, but instead, he paused and studied her. “Is everything all right?”

To her horror, her face crumpled.

“Please, sit down, take a moment.” He gestured to the organ bench.

It was imperative she collect herself, fast.

Lillian slid onto the bench, grateful to not have to make eye contact. She placed her hands gently on the lower keyboard and let her breathing settle down. How soothing it must be, to run one’s fingers over the keys and become the conduit of beautiful music.

“Is it Mr. Frick?” Mr. Graham asked.

She shook her head. In the span of one hour, she’d turned down a marriage offer as well as a chance to be in the motion pictures. Now it was back to placating Miss Helen. The ludicrousness of her morning made her laugh out loud, the sound echoing under the arched niche, and she didn’t care that she came across like a madwoman.

“Do you love your job, Mr. Graham?” she asked. “Playing music all day?”

“There are aspects I love, yes. Some not so much. But it’s a privilege to live a life that’s full of music. I try to remember that when things get difficult.”

“I live a life of menial tasks performed to please others.”

“I suppose that must be difficult, even in a home that’s brimming with beautiful art around every corner.”

She thought of the Vermeer hanging not twenty feet away in the hall, the one of the laughing girl that she loved so much. “That does help. And I admit not all of my work is menial.”

“What is it you like about it?”

“When Miss Helen allows me to help out with her library research, I’m in my element.”

Mr. Graham’s eyes lit up. “A library?”

“An art reference library,” she said. “The Frick Art Reference Library.” Miss Helen had settled on that name just a few days ago.

“Now, that’s a surprise.” Mr. Graham tapped his chin. “Miss Helen, never to be underestimated, that one. What a splendid idea.”

A tiny barb of jealousy rose up in Lillian. “It was my idea, actually.”

“A brilliant one, Miss Lilly. Nothing like that exists in the States, as far as I know. A library for art.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. Say, my cousin works at the art and architecture division at the New York Public Library, and this would be right up her alley. When Miss Helen starts looking for head librarians, do let me know.”

Head librarian. A distinguished title. What did one have to do to become a head librarian? Or any sort of librarian? If Lillian was going to be stuck working for the Fricks, she might as well aim for a more professional role than head toilet-paper-orderer. Before she could ask Mr. Graham more about his cousin’s job, Miss Winnie’s voice rang out, calling her name.

Lillian slid off the organ bench and looked up to find her leaning over the banister.

“Where on earth have you been? Miss Helen needs you at once. She’s with Mr. Frick in his bedroom.”

“On my way.”

Upstairs in the hallway, she gently knocked on Mr. Frick’s door before entering.

Mr. Frick was asleep in his bed, snoring slightly. Miss Helen sat beside him, a folder in her lap.

“How is he?” asked Lillian, quietly.

“He’s finally sleeping. I’m thinking of finding another doctor to see him. I don’t like the new one.”

Lillian doubted a third doctor would be able to give them a more hopeful prognosis, but she knew better than to say so. “Would you like me to call for one?”

“Yes. No. I’m not sure.”

Lillian waited. “Can I take those papers for you?” she asked.

Miss Helen looked down at the folder, as if she didn’t recognize it. “These are some old debts my father wanted taken care of. He thinks it’s the end. I told him he’s a silly goose, that he’s perfectly fine. I mean, he’s not yet seventy. It’s simply indigestion, right?”

“I’m sure that’s all it is.” Lillian laid a hand on Miss Helen’s shoulder. At that, Miss Helen burst into tears, much in the way that Lillian almost had with Mr. Graham. Neither of them was used to kindness, to gentleness. Which meant when someone reached out, softly and with care, it was enough to bring the walls of defiance and defensiveness crashing down.

She stood there, rubbing Miss Helen’s bony shoulder for a couple of minutes until she had composed herself.

“Thank you, Miss Lilly.” Miss Helen took a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her nose. “I can count on you, like no one else.”

If she only knew. A knock sounded on the door, and Miss Winnie stuck her head in. “Mr. Danforth is here to see you, Miss Helen.”

“Goodness, no. I can’t see him at the moment.” She looked up at Lillian. “Will you go down and explain, tell him about Papsie? I can’t leave his side.”

“Perhaps it’s better if I stay with you,” countered Lillian. “Miss Winnie can relay the message.”

“No. Better it come from you. Go on. Tell him I shall reach out when I’m ready to receive visitors.”

As Lillian descended the stairs, Mr. Graham was in the midst of a dangerous-sounding fugue. Mr. Danforth had his hat in his hands and looked up at her. His face was pale.

“Miss Helen can’t see you right now.” Lillian found herself speaking too loudly, both to compensate for the music and as a warning to Mr. Danforth to be careful what he said. “Her father is ill. She’ll send word when she’s receiving visitors again.”

He moved closer to her. “What happened?” He wasn’t referring to Miss Helen.

“Not here.”

Lillian led the way outside, where a slight rain fell. They stood in a corner of the porte-cochère farthest from the front door, out of sight of anyone lurking in the foyer.

“Why did you send that note, breaking it off?” he said.

“I couldn’t do that to Miss Helen. She doesn’t deserve to be mistreated in that way.”

“I went to the castle hoping you’d changed your mind and would come anyway.”

“It wouldn’t have been fair to elope with you, and I’m sorry for misleading you earlier. I’m not who you think I am.”

He shook his head. “I know we may not come from the same social circles, but times are different. It doesn’t matter to me one whit that you’re not New York high society. Heck, I’m not New York high society anymore.”

“That’s not it. You don’t know me.”

“Whoever it is you are, or you think you are, I want that. Nothing can dissuade me, and I promise to take care of you. From what I can see, Miss Helen treats you unkindly, is changeable and irritating. I guess I don’t understand why you want to protect her.”

“She is all of that, but right now it would be hurting her when she’s most vulnerable.”

“She treats her dogs better than you.”

The remark was cutting, but at the same time, partly true. Only last week, Miss Helen had plucked Lillian’s sandwich from the lunch tray that had been brought up to them in the sitting room and fed it to Wrigley.

In spite of the fraught tension with Mr. Danforth, she let out a rueful laugh. “You’ve got a point.”

A footman came out of the doorway, and Lillian and Mr. Danforth stepped apart, waiting until he’d passed by and turned onto the street. Mr. Danforth’s face softened. “I know the way we came together is unorthodox, to say the least. I think we both deserve a fresh start.”

“What do you mean?”

“I came here to tell Miss Helen that I will not be proposing. I want to start a life with you cleanly, honorably. I’ll accept the place offered me at Harvard Medical School in Boston. I’ll sell my parents’ brownstone, and we’ll find rooms up there while I study, far away from the Fricks. Imagine, picnics on the Common, strolling along the Charles River. I’ll come home after seeing patients all day and walk straight into your arms.”

No matter what tempting tableaus he conjured, there was always Angelica, lurking in the background. The trial in January would only mean an increase in newspaper articles, an increase in press coverage, which could easily reach Boston. She tried again. “You don’t know everything about me.”

“I know that you see everything that’s going on around you, that you’re able to sit still and observe in a way that few others do. I know that you miss your mother dearly, as I do my mother and father. I know that you’re able to mold yourself to please other people, like Miss Helen, but that isn’t the entirety of you. I know you like your coffee with milk but no sugar, and I’d be proud to have you by my side as my wife. I won’t stop until you say ‘yes.’ ”

What was missing in his romantic narrative was that she wasn’t truly herself with him. She’d molded herself to fit his perception of her, just as she had for Miss Helen. “That’s not the half of it.”

“Where’s the other half? Please, Lillian, you are the sweetest, purest woman I know. If you like, I will break the news to Miss Helen about us today, so you can be free. I will go down on one knee right here, right now. Say you’ll marry me.”

He couldn’t do that. Someone would see. “Please, Mr. Danforth. That’s enough.”

“My dear Miss Lilly. Lillian.” He began to kneel, holding both hands over his heart. “Please marry me.”

This simply would not do. It was time he knew the truth. How he reacted would prove whether he truly loved her, or only loved the idea of her. She grabbed one arm and pulled him up to his feet. “Come with me.”

She brought him halfway down the driveway and turned back around, pointing up at the reclining figure carved in stone at the top of the porte-cochère. “Do you see that?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

“That’s me.”

She was taking a risk—he might go right to the police and turn her in. But she didn’t think it was in his nature.

He looked at the carving, then back at Lillian, and laughed. “Right.”

“Before I worked for Miss Helen, I was a model for artists. A successful one. For this particular piece, I was hired to pose as Truth for the sculptor Sherry Fry. Not my favorite, I’ll confess. That statue of Pomona you admired in front of the Plaza? Me as well. You were correct when you noticed the similar profile.”

“What? Why?” He seemed bewildered.

“Because I had to make money so my mother and I could afford to eat and pay rent.”

He looked up at the figure, back at her, studying her differently, objectively. Comparing the noses, the chins. “You were a model?”

“Yes. That was me. I was Angelica. I am Angelica.”

His face went slack with shock.

“Miss Lilly?”

Mr. Graham had appeared under the archway. He hadn’t been there a second ago. Had he been hiding in the shadows, listening in?

“Yes?” Panic rose like bile in her throat.

“Miss Helen is calling for you. Quite loudly, I might add. I’m sorry for interrupting.”

He had been listening; she was sure of it. He’d been there when Mrs. Whitney identified her, and now this. But she had more pressing matters to deal with.

She answered sharply. “I’ll be there in a moment. Thank you.”

After he disappeared, she turned to Mr. Danforth, who had been staring up at her stone image the entire time. “I’m sorry if you’re shocked, but I’m not sorry for having done it. Posing, I mean. I was a muse, you see.”

Mr. Danforth had turned bright red. “You would take off your clothes so men could paint you?”

“I worked mainly for sculptors. Not painters.”

“Your mother made you do it?” He was struggling for an excuse, a way to accommodate the new information. She almost felt sorry for him.

“Not really. We did it together. It was a successful business, you might say.”

“You did it, and you liked it.” A statement, not a question. A test.

“I made good money, and was the inspiration for great art. So yes, I liked it. I’m not ashamed.”

With that, he stepped back, clumsily. “I must go.”

As she’d feared, his interest in her had evaporated. If Mr. Danforth truly loved her, he wouldn’t judge her so harshly. He liked to think he wasn’t part of the New York elite, but deep down, he was. That would never change. He could never stoop to marrying a woman like Lillian.

Her first kiss, her first fleeting experience with love, had been crushed by the truth.

Lillian gave a tiny sigh as she let herself into Miss Helen’s sitting room. Although Mr. Danforth had pushed her into it, she’d done the right thing by telling him about her past, as it made it clear exactly where she stood with him. There would be no running away to Boston, no long walks along the Charles River. She’d forgotten all of Kitty’s words of warning when it came to men and been carried away with visions of love. Lillian’s naïveté when it came to courtship was about equal to Miss Helen’s, if she was being honest.

“Are you listening to me at all?” Miss Helen sat at her desk, the folder she’d been clutching in her father’s bedroom open to reveal several bright white envelopes, sealed with red wax. “I’ve been going through my father’s things, since he’s been indisposed.”

“Sorry, what can I help you with? And how is your father feeling?”

“Much better. Even the doctor says he’s improved.”

That was good news.

Miss Helen shifted in the chair, her eyes narrowing. “Did you talk to Mr. Danforth?”

“Yes. He knows your father is ill.” Lillian doubted he’d ever be back, but Miss Helen didn’t have to know that right now.

A shard of worry cut into her. Maybe she’d made a mistake. What if Mr. Danforth told the Fricks the truth? No. He wouldn’t. Rumors of the engagement had already shown up in the gossip columns, and his association with the family was a matter of public record. Anything he did to bring them down would tar his reputation as well. The information she’d unexpectedly divulged was hopefully enough to put him off, but not take them all down.

“I know what you did.”

Only now did she notice that Miss Helen’s fists were clenched. A vein in her forehead throbbed.

Lillian glanced at the window. Could Miss Helen have seen the argument, Mr. Danforth trying to kneel before her private secretary, and recognized it as a lovers’ quarrel? Lillian was sure they’d been hidden from view. But perhaps the sound had traveled up. The window was closed, but if she’d opened it—

“Don’t lie to me. I know everything.”

Lillian tried to stay calm, focus on Miss Helen. “What is this ‘everything’?”

“You have a horse in this race. One that you didn’t let on about.”

“Please, Miss Helen, I really don’t understand.”

Miss Helen snatched one of the envelopes off the desk. Unlike the others, the seal on it was broken. “Papsie said that he wanted to take care of his debts, and the correspondence that I was to distribute included his art dealer, his tailor, his barber.” She held the envelope at its very corner with her index finger and thumb, as if it were infectious. “This one had your name on it, which made no sense. I pay you from the household accounts, not his professional one. Why was he settling a debt with you?”

Lillian knew better than to answer.

“I opened it and read the note. It appears you and Papsie had some kind of arrangement to do with me and Mr. Danforth.” She pulled out the note and unfolded it. “He wrote that he was certain you’d be able to see the marriage through even if he wasn’t around to be there himself, and so he was enclosing a check for the one thousand dollars he’d promised, as he wanted to be remembered as a man of his word.”

Lillian raced to come up with an excuse. At least Miss Helen didn’t know about Mr. Danforth’s interest in her. There was that to be thankful for. Still, this note struck at the very core of Miss Helen’s vulnerability: That her father would control her every move, even beyond the grave. That she was always to be a daddy’s girl with no independence, even after he was gone. No wonder she was angry. Lillian didn’t blame her. “It wasn’t like that.”

“You both thought that I couldn’t handle it on my own? How could you?”

“Please, let me explain.”

Lillian took a seat in one of the chairs near the fireplace, an attempt to de-escalate the tension in the room. For a moment, it seemed that Miss Helen wouldn’t budge, but then she finally relented and joined her, avoiding Lillian’s eyes, instead glaring up at the stern portrait of Mr. Frick on the far wall, as if he were present in the room as well.

“When I first started working here,” Lillian began, “your father mentioned his desire that you and Mr. Danforth get married. He asked that I facilitate the arrangement.”

“Facilitate?”

“It was nothing more than what I was already doing. Remember the letters? How I helped you write them when you asked?”

“But he promised you money. A thousand dollars. That’s an enormous sum.”

“Your father is a generous man. I didn’t want to do it, but he insisted. I couldn’t say no without offending him.”

Her voice pitched up into a little girl’s whine. “But I made Mr. Danforth fall in love with me, didn’t I?”

Lillian didn’t know how to answer that. “You did all the right things.”

Miss Helen reached into the envelope and pulled out the check. “Here you go, then. Take it.”

“I don’t want it.”

Miss Helen waved it at Lillian, the image of Martha dancing in the air. “He wants you to have it. Your matchmaking fee.” She tossed it in Lillian’s lap.

Lillian studied it. One thousand dollars. The signature was shaky, weak. She didn’t need the extra money anymore. She would never be a starlet. She would never need a wardrobe of fancy clothes, or acting lessons, or an automobile to drive around Los Angeles in.

Before she could say a word, Miss Helen grabbed the check back and ripped it in half. Lillian let out a soft cry at her ferocity.

“I changed my mind. You can’t have it,” said Miss Helen with a wicked smile.

“I don’t want it. I told you, it was before I knew you well. Just as you were worried about success in love, I was worried about the same with my duties, that I couldn’t do the job well, that I’d be a failure. To you, not to your father. I’m sorry you learned about it at this awful time, but you must know that I want what’s best for you.”

“Which is what?” Miss Helen asked.

“You want the truth?”

“Yes. You owe me that.”

Mr. Danforth was never going to propose. Not after the way Lillian had mucked it all up. The least she could do was to let Miss Helen think that it was all her idea. “Maybe Mr. Danforth isn’t the best match for you. You are from similar circles, but you have your library and your dogs, you’ve constructed a wonderful life for yourself around your interests, and I worry that by marrying you’d have to give some of those things up.”

“What do you mean? You’ve seen his letters. We share exactly the same interests, in art, in hounds. He’s said nice things about the library.”

How to explain? “What one writes during courtship isn’t necessarily what one truly believes.”

Miss Helen considered that for a moment, then gave a slight shake of her head. “Perhaps you don’t think I’m the marrying kind.”

“No.” She paused. “Even if that’s what your father wanted, I don’t think you are.”

Miss Helen lifted Wrigley up into her lap and scratched his head. It was a moment before she spoke. “You may be right. I might have been the marrying kind before the war. But for now, I prefer uncomplicated relationships, like those with my furry beasts. What about you? Are you the marrying kind?”

Lillian considered her answer carefully. “No, I don’t think I am, either. I want to make my own way in the world.”

“So we’ll be doddering spinsters together?” There was a whiff of excitement in Miss Helen’s question. Her connection to Mr. Danforth had been tenuous at best, and deep down, she knew that. “We shall be companions until the end of days?”

Mr. Graham’s enthusiastic response to the library idea drifted back to Lillian. If they could get the Frick Art Reference Library launched, it would be the first of its kind in America, and that was something of an achievement, wasn’t it? The work would be fulfilling, demanding. Miss Helen didn’t have the temperament to interact with architects and scholars without coming off as bossy and brusque. Lillian could help smooth the way, as she had with Mr. Danforth. As she had with Mr. Frick. She could make a decent wage, maybe even become head librarian. It wasn’t the life Lillian had intended for herself, but perhaps it would do.

“If that’s what you need,” she finally answered.

Very early the next morning, Lillian was woken by a pounding on the door to her room. She sat up, confused, thinking she was back in the apartment with her mother and had overslept, that she was late for a session and about to be scolded. The sun hadn’t yet risen.

But no, she was in her room at the top of the Frick mansion. Surrounded by all the food she could eat, and walls filled with the finest works of art for her to pass by and appreciate every day. She was safe.

The pounding grew louder.

“What is it?” she called out, swinging her legs off the side of the bed.

“Miss Lilly?” The voice was Miss Winnie’s.

Lillian opened the door. Down the hallway, Bertha was just coming out of the bathroom, looking confused and sleepy. “What’s going on?” Bertha asked.

Miss Winnie was panting from the stair climb. “Never you mind, go back to bed. I came for Miss Lilly.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Lillian, grabbing her dressing gown from the hook where it hung on the back of the door.

“Miss Helen needs you, in her father’s bedroom. Now.”