still existed in England to some degree.
“Please write to us,” Louise said, hugging her again. They had been through so much together, Louise’s marriage to Charles, the birth of her two children, the death of one of them, Eleanor’s debut and marriage more recently, and her own debut in Boston when Wilson first came to work for Louise’s parents. They had shared an entire lifetime, and now they were all leaving. It was the end of an era.
Charles and Louise stood on the front steps and waved to them as they drove away in a cab with their valises with all their belongings packed up to take with them.
They walked back into their home after that, for their last day and night there. The house was silent and dark except for the few rooms they were occupying. They were sleeping on an old bed from one of the servants’ rooms, and leaving it behind. The rest was gone. The next morning when Charles packed their last bags into his last remaining car, they drove away from Nob Hill, and Louise looked back at the house for an instant, as tears streamed down her cheeks. Charles gently touched her cheek with one hand as he drove.
“We’ll be fine,” Charles said, not sounding convinced, and Louise wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“Yes, we will,” she said firmly, and smiled at her husband. “I know we will.” And whatever it took, she was determined to make it the truth. They had lost an entire world, but they had each other and a place to go, which was more than many people had these days. She had packed away all her fancy evening clothes, and Eleanor’s wedding dress, and debut dress. They were all in the barn too. An entire life was packed in the barn, waiting for them in Tahoe, as the Deveraux mansion faded from view.
Chapter 7
In the spring of 1930, the Tahoe property, with the exclusion of the small slice Charles kept, which was only twenty acres as compared to the rest, sold in an arrangement that was unexpected and worked well for them.
It was purchased by an English lord, an earl, who had visited Lake Tahoe several years before and had fallen in love with it. He had heard about the sale of the enormous Deveraux property in Tahoe by sheer coincidence from a friend. He had always said that he would buy land there one day, and hoped to retire there, which at forty-seven was still a long way away. He had other property in England, but he wanted to keep the Tahoe property for his old age, and the price was so reasonable for their many thousand acres that he could afford it, and knew it was a rare opportunity he couldn’t pass up. He understood what it took to run a property well. As an absentee landowner, he wanted someone he could trust to keep an eye on it for him. He offered Charles a very comfortable annual amount to watch over it, hire gardeners and groundskeepers, keep the houses in good repair, especially since they were never used. Charles managed it exactly as he had when he owned it, but without the army of domestic help which the new owner didn’t need since he had no plans to stay there or visit. He simply wanted to own it.
Charles hired two women from the nearest village to come and clean the house every week, and he oversaw the rest himself. The earl asked Charles to buy back two of the boats he had sold, if that was possible. He did, and he kept on one of the boatmen. There were no horses there anymore, so Charles bought one, so he could check out the parts of the property that weren’t accessible any other way. Charles still had the pleasure of living there and enjoying the land and the lake, and was paid handsomely to live there and care for the property, by an owner he had never met and never seen and who had no intention of coming over any time soon. Charles sent him a concise, intelligent written report once a month, and their dealings were pleasant. The sale of the property had been at a decent price. The new owner hadn’t been unreasonable and hadn’t driven a hard bargain, and he was satisfied just knowing that he owned the land and the main house and some outbuildings, and would retire there one day.