said frequently that only another war would save them, which Alex thought was a dismal point of view.
At the end of the month, a purchaser appeared for the Deveraux mansion. A group of investors wanted to buy it to use as a school, and knew this was the ideal time to buy. It was an opportunity that would never come again at an absurdly low price. They walked through the house trying to figure out how they could use it, and it was painful listening to them. But they were the only buyers who had appeared. The price they offered was painfully small, but in the current market it was the best the Deveraux could hope for, and the house had to be sold. They could no longer afford to maintain it or staff it, and Charles needed to put some money back in their empty coffers to live on, since at fifty-two he couldn’t find a job. He discussed it with Louise and accepted their offer the next day. They gave him thirty days to move out, and Louise got busy packing immediately. Charles wanted to send the furniture to auction, but Louise insisted on keeping some of it. They had room for quite a bit in the barn in Tahoe, and furniture, and fine antiques like theirs were selling for pennies. She decided to keep as much as they could store in the barn, and sell it later if they needed to.
She and Wilson packed the entire house in a matter of weeks. Charles insisted that they sell some of the silver, that was selling for pennies too, but Louise held on to as much as they needed to turn the servants’ house in Tahoe into a decent home for them, with familiar objects around them. She seemed to have a plan as she sent furniture and many paintings to Tahoe, her favorite rugs, the china she loved which wasn’t worth selling, as many of their linens as she could take with them. She made several trips, with young men to drive the five hours from the city, and unload the truck they borrowed. And little by little she filled the house they were keeping, the cottage, and the barn with beautiful antiques and treasured objects from their home. There was no market for them now anyway, except at bargain prices, and they were making enough from the house sale not to be desperate for a while. They still had the main property at Lake Tahoe to sell, so Charles let Louise fill the barn with whatever she wanted. They could always sell it later if they needed to, and everyone was selling everything now. The market was flooded and Charles still had some minor investments which had dropped in value dramatically and he was hanging on to, convinced that they might revive again one day.
Their preparations to move to Lake Tahoe put Alex and Eleanor in a quandary about where they would live, once her parents turned the house over to the people who had bought it as a school. They had gotten it at a bargain price, and had been looking for a proper building for years, and the location on the top of Nob Hill would lend dignity to the institution they planned to establish, the Hamilton School. They were planning on opening an exclusive girls’ school, which would go from kindergarten through twelfth grade, which was a very progressive idea.
“We have to find an apartment before your parents leave,” Alex said to Eleanor one night. “We can’t stay here after that.” They’d been given thirty days by the new owners to vacate the house, and time was flying.
“Can we afford to move into an apartment?” Eleanor asked him. She liked her new job more than Alex liked his. She liked the girls she was teaching at Miss Benson’s, and the school was familiar to her since she had gone there herself. The headmistress was sympathetic with her situation. Her own family had lost their money when she was a young girl, and she knew how painful it was when life changed suddenly. Both their salaries were meager, but they had to live somewhere to keep their jobs, and Alex didn’t want to be a burden to Eleanor’s father.
“We don’t have any choice,” Alex said. “We can’t afford Pacific Heights. Maybe something downtown.” They combed the paper for apartments, and visited several of them that weekend. Many of the buildings were awful,