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It was very shortly after Vernon’s death that Irene began keeping company with the man who would become her second husband—a handsome thirty -year-old scion of Ithaca society named Robert Treman. Some newspaper stories claimed that Irene and Treman had been childhood friends, that their fathers had known one another. But Irene had no reason to lie in her memoirs when she said that she first met Treman in February 98 when she advertised to sell Vernon’s car and he showed up to look it over. The two threw off sparks right away, and within days they were seen riding horseback together. The Tremans were among the “first families” of Ithaca, making their money in mills, banks, and the hardware business; Tremans also ran the town’s Water Works and Gas and Light Company at one point or another. Robert’s father, Robert Henry Treman, was a hardware merchant and served on the State Bankers’ Association and Federal Reserve Bank; the family owned nearly four hundred acres of land in and around Ithaca (the current-day Robert H.Treman State Park was once family property). Irene’s beau, Robert Elias Treman, had enlisted in the army as soon as the United States entered World War I, and as a major of field artillery, commanded the 368th Infantry Division, a troop of black soldiers. On his discharge, he took over his father’s hardware company in Ithaca (Irene’s later referring to him as “running a hardware store” hardly does justice to the size and scope of the business). One thing Irene did not find charming about Treman was that he was an avid hunter, with a den full of trophy heads: he once wrote, “I often think how rich is the man who can sit on a cold winter evening with the mounted head of some game animal hanging over his fireplace and in the sight of it live again those days when through the forest came crashing the “ROBERT WAS SWEET, SYMPATHETIC, AND BESIDES HE DID ALL OF MY BIDDING” CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR 207 great moose as he answered the call of the birch bark horn of the guides.” Irene must have disagreed, to put it mildly. Unlike Vernon Castle, Robert Treman was handsome in an Arrow Collar ad way: blond, clean-cut, athletic, “with a fine physique and a selfcon fidence that comes from knowing it,”as Irene recalled decades later. By all accounts, Treman was a pleasant, well-liked fellow; his obituary stated that “he had rare gifts of personality which he shared generously: warmth, sympathy,understanding,and a large capacity for friendship.”Certainly,he was active in a number of good causes (the Community Chest and the NAACP, among others). All through 98 and into 99, newspapers were speculating about Irene’s private life. She was reported to be engaged to stage and screen actor Tom Powers, recently out of the service (Powers is best known today as the murder victim in the 944 film noir classic Double Indemnity). What the papers didn’t know—what no one knew for a full year—was that Irene and Robert Treman had been married in Pickens, South Carolina , on May 2, 98, only three months after Vernon’s death. The certificate was signed by “Irene Blythe” and “R. E. Freeman” (that signature was admittedly nearly illegible,according to an employee of the probate judge); the mystery couple had been married by Rev. Paul A. Juhan. Irene’s ledgers show a gap between May 7 and May 23, with expenses on the 7th for “R.R. Fares” ($55.28) and “Expenses Wash. & return” ($24.93), which may have been for her wedding trip. The Treman family gifted the newlyweds with a large stone home tucked away on College Hill on the outskirts of Ithaca, reached by a winding road through the woods. “Easily worth $00,000,” according to one gossipy article, the house was improved with the addition of a saltwater swimming pool in the small back yard, of which Irene was hugely proud. The marriage started out happily enough: “Robert was sweet, sympathetic ,and besides he did all of my bidding,”said Irene.So why the secrecy? Irene, who was planning a trip to England, later claimed that she thought the U.S. government might not let her travel overseas as the wife of a military officer, a vague and improbable excuse. It seems more...

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