Saratoga Trunk (23 page)

“Dear me!” tittered the pink Mrs. Porcelain. “You don’t think she’s strong-minded, do you? Walking!”

“I admire strong-minded women,” declared Bartholomew Van Steed somewhat to his own surprise. “Excuse me. I must speak to Maroon.” But Maroon had turned the clarence on one wheel and was even now driving away from Congress Spring toward the United States Hotel. But the spirited bays had been slowed down to a walk. They stepped high and daintily so as not to overpace the woman walking. It was as though the equipage and its occupant were guarding her.

XI

Though for two weeks they ran as fast as they could, feminine Saratoga
could never quite catch up with Mrs. De Chanfret. Clio Dulaine’s instinct as a showman was sound; and if it had not been for the arrival of old Madam Van Steed, Clio’s success might actually have been assured at the end of a fortnight. Certain sly letters of warning must have been dispatched to the matriarch watching over her female progeny in Newport. Torn between fear and duty, she must have convinced herself that while nature, even lacking her supervision, must inevitably pursue its course with her daughter, the enceinte Mrs. Schermerhorn of Newport, it could be thwarted if it threatened her son Bartholomew, weakest of her offspring and the most cherished. “Your dear son,” the letters had said, “seems to be really interested in a charming widow, a Mrs. De Chanfret. . . . Bart has at last. . . they say she is the Countess de Trenaunay de Chanfret ... no one seems to know exactly . . .” Like a lioness scenting danger to her young, Madam Van Steed descended upon Saratoga, claws unsheathed, fangs bared.

But those two weeks before the arrival of the iron woman had been sufficiently dramatic to last Saratoga the season.

You never knew. You never knew what that Mrs. De Chanfret was going to do or wear or say next. By the time they had copied her Marquise Catogan coiffure, she had discarded it for a madonna arrangement, her black hair parted in the middle and drawn down to frame the white face with the great liquid dark eyes. She had attended the first Saturday night hop escorted by that rich Texan Clint Maroon and wearing a breath-taking black satin
merveilleux
trimmed with flounce after flounce of cobweb fine black Chantilly lace as a background for a fabulous
parure
of diamond necklace, bracelets, rings, brooch, earrings. The Mrs. Porcelains, the Guilia Forosinis, the Peabody sisters of Philadelphia, the feminine Lispenards and Rhinelanders and Keenes, the Denards, the Willoughbys appeared at the following Wednesday hop in such panoply of satins, passementerie, galloons and garnitures as to call for a hysterical outburst of verbiage from Miss Sophie Sparkle, the local society correspondent for the New York newspapers. Into this blaze of splendor there entered on the somewhat unsteady arm of Bartholomew Van Steed a slim figure in girlish white china silk, the front of the skirt veiled by two deep flounces of Valenciennes lace, the modest square-cut corsage edged with lace, the sleeves mere puffs like a baby’s. A single strand of pearls. Every woman in the room felt overdressed and, somehow, brazen.

Everything she did seemed unconventional because it was unexpected. The women found it most exasperating. The men thought it piquant.

On that first morning at Congress Spring she had returned to the hotel at a serene and leisurely gait and had waved demurely once to the dashing Texan, Clint Maroon, as he kept pace with her in his turnout. Arrived at the hotel, she had again encountered the full battery of the piazza barrage and had crossed the vast lobby to the dining room.

“Oh, no!” she cried at the door ofthat stupendous cavern. “I couldn’t! I could never breakfast here!”

The headwaiter, black, majestic, with the assurance of one who has been patronized by presidents and millionaires and visiting nobility, surveyed the vast acreage of his domain and bestowed a reassuring smile upon his new client.

“No call for you to feel scairt, Madam. Ah’ll escort you personally to your table.”

Startled, she recovered herself and bestowed upon him her most poignant smile. “I so love to breakfast out of doors. It is a European custom. I would so like to have my breakfast out there under the trees in the garden. Or perhaps on the gallery just outside.”

“We are not in the habit of serving meals out of doors, Madam. Our dining room is—” But his eye had caught the verdant promise of a crisp bill as her fingers dipped into her purse. “It might be arranged, though, Madam. It might be arranged.”

Clio turned her head ever so slightly. “Kaka.” Kaka advanced to take charge, fixing the man with her terrible eye. “Kaka, an American breakfast, just this once. Enormous. Everything.
Je meurs de faim.”

As she turned away she heard Kaka’s most scathing tones.
“Canaille!
You know who that was you talking to! La Comtesse de Trenaunay de—”

I could almost believe it myself, Clio thought, strolling toward the garden, Cupide strutting in her wake. “Cupide, run, find Mr. Maroon, tell him I am breakfasting in the garden.”

Cupide looked up into her face, all eagerness. “When we go to the stables he promised to teach me roping as they do it in the Wild West. The lariat. He can lasso anything that runs. Like this Z-z-zing!” He swung an imaginary rope round his head and let it fly.

“M-m-m,” said Clio absently. Then, “In the garden, while I am having my breakfast. I should like to see that. Tell Colonel Maroon that I should love to see an exhibition of this Wild West roping with the lariat. In the garden.”

So the guests of the United States Hotel, breakfasting sedately in the dining room or returning from the springs or emerging from their bedrooms, saw the beautiful Mrs. De Chanfret seated at breakfast on the garden piazza, polishing off what appeared to be a farm-hand meal of ham and eggs and waffles and marmalade and coffee, pausing now and then to applaud the performance evidently in progress for her benefit. On the neat lawn of the garden just below the piazza rail the dashing Texan, Colonel Clint Maroon, was throwing a lariat in the most intricate and expert way, now causing it to whirl round his booted feet, now around his sombreroed head, now unexpectedly snaking it out with a zing and a whining whistle so that it spun round the head of the entranced dwarf who was watching him and bound the little figure’s arms to its sides.

“Bravo!” Mrs. De Chanfret would cry from time to time, between bites of hot biscuit topped with strawberry jam. Maroon had supplied the little man with a shorter and lighter rope of his own, and with this he was valiantly striving to follow the wrist twists of his teacher. The front piazza was deserted now. Out of the tail of her eye Clio saw Van Steed’s astonished face; the nervous smile of Roscoe Bean as he peered over the shoulder of Hiram Tompkins, the hotel manager. Here was a situation outside the experience of the urbane Bean. He writhed with doubt. Was this good for the United States Hotel? Would the conservative guests object? Breakfast on the veranda! But now they’d all be demanding breakfast on the veranda. Black waiters, white-clad, skimming across the garden, were carrying breakfast trays to the cottage apartments, balancing them miraculously upon their heads in the famous Saratoga manner but threatening now at every step to send their burdens crashing as they gazed, pop-eyed, at the unprecedented goings-on in the sedate and cloistral confines of the elm-shaded garden. Now the hotel band was assembling in the stand for the ten o’clock morning concert under the trees. Instinct told Clio that the moment was over. Abruptly she motioned Cupide to her, she rose and leaned a little over the veranda rail, smiling down upon the gallant Maroon who now stood, hat in hand, idly twirling his lariat as he received her praises. “Oh, Colonel Maroon. Brilliant! As good as a circus.”

Very low, without moving her lips, she was saying, swiftly,
Moving into the cottages, chéri. I think it is better. I must talk to you. Van Steed.

“Will you honor me by driving to the races with me, Ma’am, at eleven!”

“I shall be delighted.”
Go quickly. Before he can talk to you. I’ll tell you then.

She turned to encounter a stout, plain woman in dowdy black standing direcdy in her path. Fiftyish. Formidable. “Mrs. De Chanfret!” she boomed. “I am Mrs. Coventry Bellop.” Remarkably beautiful eyes in that plain dumpling of a face. Gray eyes, purposeful, lively, penetrating.
En garde!
Clio thought.

“Ah, yes?” With the raising inflection indicating just the proper degree of well-bred surprise at being thus accosted by a stranger.

“I want to welcome you to Saratoga.”

“So kind.” Coolly.

“And to tell you that I had the great pleasure of knowing your late departed husband. Dear, dear Bimbi!”

The polite smile stiffened a little on Clio’s face, but she was equal to the occasion. “Is it possible!”

Clio was aghast to see Mrs. Coventry Bellop close one lively eye in a portentous wink. “Well, isn’t it?”

“Hardly. He was almost a recluse. Perhaps you are thinking of his younger brother the—the black sheep, I’m afraid. I believe he was known as—uh—Bimbi among his friends.”

To her relief Mrs. Coventry Bellop now patted her smartly on the shoulder. “I shouldn’t wonder. If you say so. Well, let me know if I can be of any—assistance. I really run Saratoga, you know,” she boomed. “Though old lady Van Steed thinks she does.”

“Indeed!” Vaguely.

“You’ll soon be in a position to judge, I should say.” With which astonishing prediction Mrs. Coventry Bellop again patted her arm and waddled off with surprising lightness and agility for one of her proportions.

Escorted by the ubiquitous Bean to her new quarters in the cottage section, Clio graciously expressed herself as pleased as she looked about the cool veranda-shaded apartment. It boasted its own outer entrance and hallway, its row of bells meant to summon chambermaid, waiter, valet (none of which functioned and none of which she needed, luckily, what with Kakaracou and Cupidon), its own cryptlike bathroom, a grim little sitting room, a black walnut bedroom. The garden greenery could be glimpsed just beyond the veranda.

“Now then,” Clio announced, briskly, as she looked about her after Bean’s departure. “This is more like it. Privacy. Here, Cupide! Take this note to Mr. Maroon quickly. Kaka, I can’t go to the races in flowered cretonne. I think the almond-shell
poult-de-soie.
The straw bonnet with the velvet ruche and the flower melange. My scarlet embroidered parasol for color. Brown silk stockings, brown shoes.”

“M’m.
Chic,
that,” Kaka murmured in approval. “I am happy to see the widow now vanishes.”

“While I am at the races unpack the scarves and shawls and ornaments. The clock put there on the mantel. The photographs on the table and the desk. The ornaments—the
bibelots
—those I’ll place about when I return. There will be fresh flowers sent by Mr. Van Steed and Mr. Maroon from the hotel florist. At least there should be. What horrible furniture! But it won’t be so bad and it won’t be so long—I hope. Though I like it, on the whole. Here I can receive—guests. With no maids poking about in the halls.”

Kaka sniffed maddeningly. “High-heeled Texas boots make a great deal of noise on a wooden veranda floor.”

“Oh, you old crow! Always croaking, croaking. A bundle of dried sticks! I tell you I like it here in Saratoga. I feel gay and young and light for the first time in my life.”

Panic distorted Kaka’s face. “Don’t say it! The
Zambi
will hear and be displeased. Here, quick! Touch the
gris-gris.”
She groped in her bosom and pulled out an amulet on a bit of string that hung around her scrawny neck. She snatched up Clio’s hand and forcibly rubbed her fingers over the dingy charm, muttering as she did so.

Clio slapped the woman’s hand smartly. “Stop it, you witch! I’ll send you back to New Orleans; you’ll live there in a wretched hovel the rest of your life.”

“Laissez-donc!
You know I speak the truth.” She thrust the gris-gris back into her bosom and went equably on fastening her mistress’s smart little brown shoes.

Cupide poked his head in at the door. “He’s at the curb with the carriage. What do you think! It’s a new one to surprise you!” His voice rose to a squeal. “It’s a four-in-hand! Everyone’s out to see it. Two bays and two blacks, and a regular coach to match, black with red wheels. And the harness trimmed with silver!” Unable to contain himself, he flung open the door that led to the veranda, and the next instant the two women saw the impish figure in its maroon livery turning an exultant series of handsprings past the veranda window.

Escorted by Cupidon, Clio was horrified to see, as she reached the street doorway, that the situation she had schemed to avoid had taken place. There at the curb was the splendid coach and four, like something out of a fairy tale. There in the driver’s seat in a white driving coat, fawn vest, fawn trousers and the now-famous white sombrero, was Clint Maroon, his expert hands holding the ribbons over the backs of the four horses whose satin-smooth coats glistened in the sun. Looking up at him, deep in earnest conversation, one foot on the step, was Bart Van Steed.

“Dieu!”
exclaimed Clio, aloud; skimmed across the piazza and down the steps at such speed that Cupide, having opened the scarlet parasol, was a frantic little figure pattering after her, his tiny arm stretched full length to hold the parasol high.

Her quick ear caught the Texan’s words as she came toward them. From his vantage, perched on the driver’s seat, he had seen her approach. Van Steed’s back was toward her.

“. . . Texas is a young state run by young men. You Easterners take no account of Texas. That’s where you make a mistake.”

“Oh, Mr. Maroon! I do hope I haven’t kept you waiting!” Van Steed spun on his heel. His pink cheeks flushed pinker, “What a glorious coach! And four—Oh, Mr. Van Steed. Oh, dear! You haven’t repeated my indiscreet conversation!” She put her palm prettily to her cheek as though she, too, were blushing, which she wasn’t.

His girlish skin now took on a definite rose tint as he handed her up to the seat beside Maroon and Cupide proffered her the crimson parasol. There was something anguished in the amber eyes of young Van Steed as from his position at the curb he looked up at these two resplendent figures, young, seemingly carefree, certainly beautiful. Clio’s crimson sunshade cast a roseate glow over them both. It was as if these two dwelt aloft in a glowing world of their own.