Saratoga Trunk (20 page)

She got up then, trailing her long white draperies over the oddments and elegancies with which the floor was strewn. “I tell you I must know a thousand things before I can sleep. Then I shall sleep and sleep and sleep, hours and hours, a thousand miles deep, and when I wake up everything will be clear and right in my mind. Isn’t it so, Kaka! Tell him.”

A certain affirmation was in Kaka’s eyes, but she cackled derisively. “Heh-heh, yes, she think she a
mamaloi,
she go off in a spell and when she wake up everything come right like she want it.”

“That’s just dumb talk. All this milling around. What’s eatin’ on you, anyway! You don’t rightly know what you’re saying.”

“But I do. Or I will. This little fellow—this little Van Steed—do you imagine he is cleverer than you and I?”

“Clever! It’s money. They’ve got millions.”

“They didn’t always have millions.”

“Listen, honey, you just don’t understand. Why, the women around here, they’ll tear you to pieces if you step in their way. You pretending to be here alone—that’s bad medicine. A woman without a man here in Saratoga—they’ll make cold hash out of you in a week.”

“But I have a man. You. And in a week there will be two men— you and little Bartholomew.”

“He’s going to be too busy to bother about you, honey. I heard yesterday they’re out to get him.”

She whirled at this. “Who? How? Why?”

Restlessly he began to pace the littered room, stepping over piles of neatly stacked lingerie, trampling stray bits of tissue paper.

“I don’t rightly know yet. I pieced it together from what I picked up. Van Steed owns a hundred miles of road between Albany and Binghamton. Right up near Saratoga here. It’s what they call a trunk line. Only a hundred miles or thereabouts. Years ago his mama gave it to him to play with, his first little railroad. Now it’s turned up worth millions.”

“But why? Why? . . . Kaka, stop that rattling of paper! . . . Why is this—this Saratoga trunk worth millions? These—these are the things I want to know. How can I sleep when there are things like these I must know! Tell me—why millions?”

“Seems it’s the link between the new Pennsylvania hard-coal lands and New England. That little stretch of one hundred miles is what they want to get their claws into. It’s the coal has made all the difference. It’s a coal haul, direct, for all of New England. Sure thing it’s worth millions.”

“Does he know this—Van Steed?”

“Why wouldn’t he know it! He isn’t as dumb as he looks. Van Steed, he’s president of the Albany & Tuscarora, and this trunk line was just a kind of link—it didn’t mean anything until these new coal fields were opened up. They’ve been fighting it out for months now. Gould’s crowd have been buying up town councilors all along the line. The way they work it’s so simple it sounds kind of crazy—or I’d think it was crazy if I hadn’t heard the same kind of story all my life from the way Pa was treated. Honey, you wouldn’t believe it. I can’t even explain it to you. I won’t try. It’s everybody for himself and catch as catch can. Now Van Steed, he’s got a smart fella on his side, a friend named Morgan, a banker lives in New York—J. P. Morgan his name is. He’s a scrapper; they say he’s smarter than Gould or Fisk was or any of them. But he hasn’t started to fight the way the other crowd does, where anything goes. He’s being legal, everything open and aboveboard. And Van Steed, he’s the kind has got to have everything down on paper. Meantime, the Gould crowd, they’re hitting below the belt. Gouge and bite and kick—that’s their way. Talk about the East being civilized, why, say, it makes the West look like a church meeting. I have to laugh when I see these people here, dressed up in their silks and their swallow-tails, driving up and down, smirking and bowing.”

“But these men with their railroads, what are they doing, then? What are they doing? Tell me.”

“What they’re doing they’d be strung up for as outlaws, West. You wouldn’t believe. The Gould crowd, they hire gangs to go out and tear up tracks and chop down tresties. Folks won’t ride the railroad any more. It ain’t safe. That’s just what the old crowd is figuring on. Run it down to nothing.”

“But the government. Where is the government to stop these
apaches?”

“Sa-a-ay, they took care of that right early. They’ve got the government bought up, hair and hide, horns and tallow.”

Weary though she was, her mind persisted in its clear reasoning. “We will make ourselves valuable to this little Van Steed. He must be told that you are clever with railroads. I will tell him.”

“Look here, Clio, honey, we don’t aim to be any part of that crowd.”

She ignored this. “If it’s only a hundred miles—this road into the coal fields—why don’t they—the Gould crowd—build their own hundred miles of railroad?”

“Because they can’t get the land. Twenty years ago—even ten, maybe—they could have bought the land or stolen it from the government by going down to Washington and buying up Congress and so on. It’s not so easy now. These railroad men—”

Suddenly she yawned prodigiously. “Railroads, railroads! Railroads bore me. I have no mind for railroads.”

“But you said—”

“I know, I know. But you and I must do things very simply and directly, with our little minds. We have only a month, really.”

“Do? Do what? What things?”

“Oh—I don’t know,
chéri.
I think I shall marry this little Van Steed. Maybe—”

“Ha! Likely. I sure would like to know how you’re fixing to do that.”

“Oh, he is a simple fellow, really——”

“Don’t fool yourself.”

“Well—” She stretched luxuriously, then stopped abruptly, listening, in the midst of another yawn. “Cupide with my trunks. Kaka, quick, have them put in the hall and left there. My great new Saratoga trunk would hardly squeeze through the door, anyway. Quick, Kaka!”

Here Kaka rebelled. “How you going dress for dinner effen I don’t take out and press!”

“Because I’m not going down, stupid! Do as I say.”

“Not going down!” repeated Maroon. “Tonight!”

“Of course not. And probably not tomorrow. Where’s your dramatic sense, Clint? I made a superb entrance. You will admit that was a great stroke of luck—of course I’d planned it, but who would have thought it would work so magically!”

But he was by now thoroughly exasperated. “Look here, you stop this play-acting or I’ll light out. Hell’s bells, you can’t do this—”

“Wouldn’t it be won der-fill to have some champagne now— immediately—very very cold—so cold that a little mist stands outside the glass. Clint dearest, call Kaka—no, don’t let them see you, of course—Kaka! Kaka! Tell Cupide to order me a bottle of champagne in ice—they will bring it up. Sit down, Clint, sit down.” She picked up the pamphlet on the table by the sofa and flicked its leaves. “The waters, of course. Tell me, which one do you take?”

“Me! I wouldn’t touch the stuff, I can’t stomach it. Tastes worse than desert alky water.”

“But doesn’t everybody? Drink it, I mean. When I used to go to Aix with Mama and Aunt Belle everyone took the waters—there was a
regime
for the day—you took the waters, you walked, there were baths, you went to the Casino. Mama and Aunt Belle loved it— especially Aunt Belle. It made her thinner for a little while.”

“That’s the way they pass the time of day here. Out before breakfast, some of them over to the Springs. But mostly they don’t take it the way you say—not to say seriously.”

She was reading from the booklet, her pretty nose wrinkling a litde with distaste. “M-m-m, let me see—uh—Empire waters. Rheumatism, gout, irritated condition of the stomach, pimples, blotches, ulcers”—hastily she turned the page—”Columbia water. Possesses valuable di-diur—what is the meaning of that word, Clint? Well, anyway, I shall not drink Columbia water. Liver complaints— dyspepsia—erysipelas—gravel and vidated condition of the—mmmmmmmm—A pint mornings. Ugh! Excelsior Springs—kidney, bladder, gravel—Congress Spring—
Mon Dieu!”

“Congress is the one you want, honey. It’s the stylish one. That’s the place to go, mornings, before breakfast or after. Band plays. Everybody bowing and prancing.”

“I can’t imagine you—” She laughed deliciously at the picture of the Texan, booted, mincing, glass in hand, at Congress Spring.

“Me! No Ma’am! Mostly I’m over at the track, mornings, having my breakfast at the stables.”

“Oh, Clint, I’d love that! Could I—” She stopped abruptly. From the street below came the call of a fruit vendor.

“Peaches! Fresh ripe peaches! Raspberries! Red raspberries!”

She was off the couch and across the floor, her head at the window. “Heh! You! Peaches! Peaches here!”

He leaped to the window just ahead of the vigilant Kakaracou. “God A’mighty, Clio! You can’t do that.”

Unwillingly she turned away. “Well, send down, then. Cupide. Or you go. Fresh peaches bobbing in a glass of champagne. That is the way Mama used to eat them in Paris, and Aunt Belle. Delicious, and cool, cool. I am so hot and tired,
chéri.”

“Stupide
.’“ Kaka scolded, thrusting her back from the window. “A fine lady you are, screaming into the street. You think this is New Orleans!”

“Well, where’s Cupide? Kaka, see if he’s outside the door. I told him to stay there. Send him down before the peach man is gone. Tell him big ripe yellow ones, with pink cheeks, and the pits like great pigeon-blood rubies in a nest of yellow velvet.”

Cupide, stationed outside the door, was having a fine time. Already he had discovered that the exhilarating and speedy way to reach the ground floor was to slide down the banisters which curved from floor to floor around the stairwell. In Paris and in New Orleans he had had no fine slippery banisters. Now, cautioned by Kaka to make all haste in order to catch the fruit vendor, he nevertheless followed his usual procedure, which was to run up the stairs to the floor above in order to enjoy to the full his new and thrilling form of travel. Starting from these heights it was possible to attain sufficient momentum to swing round the polished curves and slide the entire distance down to the lobby itself, which was the end of the line. As he skimmed down from the third to the second floor a colored chambermaid, ascending the stairs with broom and pail, put out a horrified arm to stop him.

“You, litde boy! Don’t you know you ain’t allowed to slide down no banisters you kill youseff! I going tell you mammy on you you do that again.” His powerful arm jerked her hand that attempted to hold him, he leaped off the banister, the impish face confronted the girl, he scurried around and nipped her smartly behind and, amidst her shriek of surprise, leaped again to the rail, his gargoyle face grinning impishly up at her until he vanished round the curve.

Half an hour later Clio Dulaine was sipping from a tall dewy glass in whose bubbling contents a fat peach bobbed, fragrant and tempting.

“But won’t you just try it, Clint? A sip. It’s heavenly!”

“That’s no drink for a man,” Clint Maroon had said. “Champagne and peaches in the middle of the day. No Ma’am!” Then, as Clio sipped and purred contentedly, “Look, sugar. You put on one of your prettiest dresses and come down for supper tonight, won’t you? There’s a hop tonight. We were introduced downstairs, weren’t we, all regular and proper, by Bart Van Steed. I can talk to you, same as anybody else. No secret in that.”

“Oh, no. I must have my dinner up here.”

“You feel sick, Clio!”

“No, no! I feel so well and happy—happier than I’ve ever been.”

“Then why in tarnation do you want to mope up here?”

“Because they expect me to come down. Because they all saw me arrive and stood there gaping like a lot of peasants. Because they’ll be waiting for me to come down this evening and tomorrow morning and tomorrow noon and tomorrow night. And I shan’t. I shan’t come down until day after tomorrow, in the morning, on my way to the spring. And by that time they will be dying with eagerness to see me. Especially little Van Steed.”

“It sure sounds silly to me.”

She looked at him over the rim of her glass, round-eyed. “Sometimes, Clint, I wonder if it was a good thing or a bad thing, for both of us—that day we met in the French Market.”

“One thing’s sure. If we hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here in Saratoga, drinking champagne out of a big water tumbler with a peach floating around in it.”

She tapped the glass’s rim thoughtfully against her teeth. “You are right.” Suddenly she sat bolt upright, her eyes strained, her lips quivering. “What am I doing here!” she cried, wildly. “Mama is dead! Aunt Belle is dead! What am I doing here! Who are you! How do I know who you are! Kaka! Cupide!”

Swiftly, as before, the Negress ran to her, she took the hysterical girl in her arms. “Hush! Hush your mouth!” She turned to speak to Maroon over her shoulder, as she rocked the girl back and forth. “Champagne make her sad. My lil Rita was the same way, her mama.”

Even as Clint Maroon stared at this new manifestation of his unpredictable lady, the sitting-room door opened to admit a Cupide almost completely hidden by an ambush of very pink roses. The years with Rita Dulaine and Belle Piquery and Kakaracou had accustomed him to more dramatic bedroom scenes than this, with its welter of gowns, shoes, hats, hysteria; and a discomfited male standing by in the background. He now advanced behind the thicket of roses. Unceremoniously he dumped them in the lap of the distraught Clio, who stopped in the midst of a disconsolate wail, her mouth open.

“I could hear you way out in the hall,” Cupide announced, scrutinizing a thorn-pricked thumb and nursing it with his tongue. “There’s quite a crowd out there—chambermaids, waiting, and a woman to scrub and a boy with ice water, and a woman who says she’s the housekeeper. I told ‘em if anybody tried to come in they’d probably be killed. The roses are from that man who drove us from the station.”

“Dutch pink roses!” Clio exclaimed. “I loathe the color. No taste, that little man.” And threw them to the floor. “Kaka, tell them to go away, those people outside. I shall be changing anyway, tomorrow, to the cottage side. Maybe even this afternoon if I’m not too tired—”

Maroon flung his arms out in a gesture that encircled the littered room. “Look at this place! It’s enough to make anybody tired. You don’t even know what you’re saying. That champagne wine’s gone to your head, middle of the day. There you’ve been, cooped up in trains this long trip. No real air. A drive would do you good. A litde later, maybe, cool of the day.”