Page 25 of The Queen of Roses

Adele Pearce

October 26, 1903

Oleander House, Pasadena

Dear Miss Pearce,

I received your pretty note of apology, and now I must offer my own. After seeing you Saturday, I spent the entire day in my garden and, I am certain to the despair of some of my more religiously minded acquaintances, all of Sunday as well. I found myself so satisfyingly fatigued that it was not until this morning that I made myself sit down to read my correspondence and discovered your note.

Although I appreciate your apology, I can assure you that it is entirely unnecessary. I enjoy a lively conversation, and a respectful difference of opinions is often the best way to achieve this.

If you are otherwise unengaged tomorrow afternoon, perhaps you would care to join me for tea at four o’clock. I will send my carriage for you.

Yours respectfully,

Ellen Barnes

chapter ten ADELE

October 1903

Mrs. Barnes’s carriage shuddered to a stop in front of Oleander House. Adele took a moment to prepare herself as the driver jumped down and came around to open her door.

When she had told Mama of Mrs. Barnes’s invitation to tea, Mama had bestowed a smile upon her and asked what she intended to wear. After much deliberation, they had settled on her yellow-and-white-striped muslin dress worn with Mama’s straw hat trimmed in white silk orchids. Armed with her lace parasol and the string of pearls Papa had given her for her debut at eighteen, she looked sweet without being too girlish.

Mrs. Barnes’s driver helped her down from the carriage, and then Adele followed the redbrick path through the front garden. She twisted the enormous house’s doorbell key and waited as patiently as she could.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Guthrie, opened the door. “Good afternoon, Miss Pearce.”

As she crossed the threshold, Adele started to hand Mrs. Guthrie her parasol, but the housekeeper said, “You may wish to keep that with you, miss. If you will please follow me.”

With a frown, Adele fell into step next to the housekeeper. Rather than turn to the drawing room, where the card party had taken place, Mrs. Guthrie passed through a door to one side of the huge wood staircase that dominated the entryway. The room was smaller than the drawing room, but no less pretty, with wood wainscoting giving way to ivory walls. A circular table with four chairs drawn up around it sat in front of a pair of oak French doors with iron hardware. Mrs. Guthrie opened one of these and announced, “Madam is gardening.”

“Gardening?”

Mrs. Guthrie gave a grave nod.

“I must have confused the time,” Adele said, hesitating at the threshold of the French doors before following the housekeeper out onto a patio positively bursting with terra-cotta pots containing all manner of flower.

“Oh no, Miss Pearce. You are perfectly on time,” said Mrs. Guthrie in a manner that conveyed her great disapproval at something left unspoken.

That something, Adele discovered as they traversed the patio and followed another brick path deep into a lush garden, was Mrs. Barnes up to her elbows in dirt. The widow wore a faded blue cotton dress covered by a heavy, dark green canvas apron streaked with dirt. The toes of worn, mud-caked boots stuck out from underneath the hem of her dress, and next to her was a canvas bag of tools and a woven basket filled with spent roses.

“Madam, Miss Pearce has arrived,” said Mrs. Guthrie, coming to a stop with her hands folded over her stomach.

Mrs. Barnes looked up from under her enormous straw hat and smiled. “Ah, Miss Pearce. I must apologize. You have caught me at a disadvantage.”

Adele hardly knew what to think. Surely even in America it was considered most improper to be covered in dirt when invited guests arrived, but Mrs. Barnes seemed entirely unconcerned.

“Would you please lay tea for us on the patio, Mrs. Guthrie?” asked Mrs. Barnes.

“Yes, madam,” said Mrs. Guthrie with a stiff, almost impertinently shallow curtsey.

Mrs. Barnes sat back on her heels and watched the housekeeper go before sighing. “I suppose I shall be made to pay for this. Mrs. Guthrie did come out and remind me twice that you were due for tea soon, but I lost the time.”

Given that she was at Oleander House to apologize, Adele decided that graciousness was the best tack.

“I can imagine it would be easy to become distracted out here,” she said, looking about her at the spectacle that was Mrs. Barnes’s garden. She was used to the lush green borders of English country houses, but this was something different. Here everything seemed to burst forth with an exuberance, as though a painter had splattered tubes of red, orange, and yellow about the place, punctuating foliage of every shade of green Adele could imagine.