This Side of Glory (19 page)

Were they really, said Isabel. That evening there was dancing, and though Herr Schimmelpfeng was a trifle heavy-footed, Isabel’s beautiful courtesy became as warm as was congruous with what she believed a Continental millionaire’s ideas of young ladyhood to be. By midnight it was evident that Herr Schimmelpfeng was enchanted with the beautiful American. In his thick English he regretted that she was returning to the South so soon, and was delighted when she told him she planned to come to New York in November and spend the winter with her aunt. Did she indeed? Herr Schimmelpfeng had planned to cross the great West this fall and have a look at the magical California, but if Miss Valcour was certain she was coming to New York in November—?

Miss Valcour lowered her sweet hazel eyes demurely.

Again in her own room she sat down to think. Herr Schimmelpfeng was not so very young. He was in his thirties and looked older, a serious business man whose property, you might be sure, would at his death be worth double what it had been at his birth. Not like Kester, who would spend everything he owned and run up as many debts as he could persuade the tradesmen to allow him. Not like Kester, oh no, not like Kester with his sparkling conversation, his eternal good humor, his beautiful sunburnt body, his air of timeless and indestructible youth. Again Isabel remembered Kester’s arms around her, and the morning was turning red when she finally dropped off to sleep after a night of balancing Kester’s charm against Schimmelpfeng’s millions.

Shortly afterward, it was time to go home. She said goodbye to Schimmelpfeng, who every morning for a week had sent her a gardenia and now sent another for her to wear when she took the train. But as the train pulled into Dalroy, there with his carriage was Kester, like a light in the dusty little depot. Kester was glad to have her back. The town had been dull without her, and he had pestered her father to find out when she was coming home. “Now tell me about Westchester,” he urged. “And your conquests.”

“Conquests?” she echoed. Then, slyly, “You won’t be jealous?”

“Certainly not. I like knowing my best girl has been a success. I don’t want something nobody else wants.”

Isabel prattled, telling him about everything but Herr Schimmelpfeng. They sat down in her parlor with coffee and biscuits and were talking merrily when there was a noise outside and up rumbled a mule-drawn truck. A boy came to the door asking for Miss Valcour. He bore a telegram from Herr Schimmelpfeng, and behind him, there by the front steps, stood the truck piled to overflowing with gardenias.

Having sent her a gardenia every morning in Westchester, Herr Schimmelpfeng had thought that upon her return to Louisiana he would demonstrate his regard by increasing the gesture, so he had sent the Dalroy florist twenty dollars with orders to deliver gardenias to Miss Valcour upon her arrival. And thinking he was some wag who meant it as a joke, the florist had taken him at his word. As this was midsummer and gardenias were scenting the air of the country lanes throughout Louisiana, the florist simply sent several little darkies out to gather them, piled the result into a truck, and gave orders that they were to be dumped on Isabel’s front porch.

By the time Kester and Isabel reached the doorway the flowers were all over the floor of the porch and two Negro boys, agrin with glee, were dropping armfuls more on top of them. The consequence was rather horrible. For while the odor of one gardenia is pleasant the odor of a wagon load of gardenias is enough to make one quite sick.

Kester gave the Negroes a stare of amazement and then looked at Isabel. She had turned scarlet. He exclaimed, “May I see?” and without waiting for permission glanced over her shoulder at what he thought was going to be a teasing telegram. He read, “A very small tribute to convey a very great admiration. Hermann Schimmelpfeng.”

Looking again from Isabel’s red face to the gardenias, Kester gave a war-whoop. He laughed and laughed, he shouted, he all but rolled among the flowers. She was ordering, “You boys take those things away at once! Do you hear me?” and meanwhile Kester leaned against the wall, weak with laughter. And still came the gardenias.

Old Mr. Valcour appeared, shouting that he had smelt a nauseating smell upstairs in his room and what on earth did this mean? Isabel tried to explain, stammered, and Mr. Valcour demanded of Kester, “Please tell me, sir, are you responsible for this insulting performance? There’s no excuse for this but a funeral over a stale nigger corpse!”

Between explosions of mirth Kester replied, “One of Miss Isabel’s Northern admirers, sir. Gardenias don’t grow in ditches up there.”

Mr. Valcour gave the florist’s boys five dollars apiece to remove the gardenias, ordered that the porch be scrubbed with strong soap, and retired upstairs still thundering his wrath. Kester had drawn Isabel back into the parlor, where the odor followed them through the open windows, persistent as the smell of moth balls. He was demanding to know who on earth was named Hermann Schimmelpfeng.

“He’s a German,” said Isabel. “And I think you’re horrid.”

“Oh, Herr Schimmelpfeng,” Kester apostrophized, “the fragrance of your memory will be in the curtains for days. Isabel, my dear Isabel, isn’t it enough for you to conquer every American you see without starting on Germany? Who is this fellow?”

“He is a very nice young man,” said Isabel, “and he has millions of dollars.”

She felt like a fool. Kester betrayed no jealousy. He merely thought Herr Schimmelpfeng ridiculous. And so, against her will, did Isabel. At last Kester asked if she would play tennis tomorrow afternoon. She did not like athletics, but glad to promise anything that would keep the conversation away from gardenias Isabel said yes.

For the rest of the summer, the contrast between Kester and Hermann Schimmelpfeng became clearer every day. Kester was merry, adorable, alluring. Kester was almost irresistible. Isabel felt that she was no longer falling in love, she had fallen in love beyond argument. Calling herself several kinds of a goose she was nevertheless unable to say no whenever Kester asked for a date.

She was frightened. Her life was dropping to pieces and she felt unable to resist. September that year was sultry, and the doctor advised Mr. Valcour to go to the Virginia Springs until cooler weather. Isabel, who had never felt or manifested much filial attachment, suddenly became a model daughter. Let her father go to a watering-place alone? Certainly not. She would go with him. She would read to him and bring him drinks of the healing waters. Though old Mr. Valcour, who was a gay soul and perfectly capable of taking care of himself, intimated that she would be a useless impediment to his holiday, Isabel turned deaf and accompanied him. Never dreaming that Isabel was fleeing to the springs as a drunkard desirous of reform would flee to a spot where liquor was unobtainable, Mr. Valcour was puzzled and somewhat annoyed by this excess of devotion. But Isabel adamantly established herself in the hotel among the invalids and elderly vacationers, thanking heaven that there were now five states between herself and Kester Larne.

She forgot that the trains were public conveyances. They had not been at the springs a week before Kester appeared, remarking that he thought the waters might be good for him too. Mr. Valcour mildly observed how nice it was for Isabel to have a youthful companion, and turned in for his nap.

Isabel was half joyful and half angry. It was flattering to be pursued for such a distance by the most attractive man she knew, but it was dreadful to think that he was destroying her future. But there was Kester, who beckoned her by merely being alive. Kester asked her to marry him.

Isabel twisted her hands together and said, “I don’t know. Please give me time to think, Kester!”

Instead of persisting with telling her how lovely she was and how he couldn’t live without her Kester stood up and looked down at her a moment, and then said coolly,

“Americans don’t marry foreigners for their money, Isabel. It’s the other way around.”

She sprang up furiously. “What do you—”

Kester said, “It’s bad form, honey, it might start international complications.”

Then, before she could bring out an angry retort Kester had his arms around her and his mouth on hers, and Isabel felt that in spite of herself the battle was over. After a long time she heard him whisper, “How many millions would you take for this, Isabel?”

At last she made herself let him go. But she hardly slept that night, for though her emotions were convinced her mind was not.

But the next day and the next evening Kester was still there.

The product of a generation that set a mystical value on virginity, Isabel knew it would wreck her fortunes if her reputation became smirched. But she was surrounded by a community of elderly hypochondriacs interested in nothing but their own ailments. Her father was paying her not the slightest attention. She and Kester might almost have been on an island. By evening she had decided that if she could not have a lifetime’s happiness she would at least have what she could. Her conscience, being virtually non-existent, gave her no qualms; the only question that disturbed her was whether or not she would be caught up with, and Kester was discreet.

For several weeks she was divinely happy. Then she and Kester began to quarrel.

He was courtly and full of poetic gallantries, but Isabel was sure that secretly he despised her. Whatever his faults, Kester was not mercenary. He regarded life as a blessed gift to be enjoyed, but he would not have enjoyed selling his personal integrity. He knew Isabel loved him; her tumbling into his arms because she loved him Kester regarded as the most natural and delightful occurrence in the world, but he regarded her intention of marrying a millionaire for no reason except that he was a millionaire as calculated prostitution. She suspected that he felt an amused sense of triumph when he thought of Schimmelpfeng, and chuckled privately at the knowledge that the excellent German would not be getting all he was paying for.

Isabel could stand anything but being laughed at. There came to her the ego-crashing suspicion that instead of considering her with awe like other men Kester had been laughing at her since the first evening they had danced together. In this frame of mind she could hardly be sweet-tempered. She and Kester quarreled about every subject except the one she was constantly thinking of. Finally, in exasperation, Kester packed his grips and went back to Dalroy.

Isabel came home a week later, staying just long enough to get her clothes in order before going to New York. She saw Kester only once. He was riding horseback through town, and seeing her come out of a shop he dismounted and went over to speak to her. He only said, “I didn’t know you were home. I just wanted to tell you I’m frightfully sorry for losing my temper when you criticized my tennis stroke.”

She had forgotten that had been the start of their last quarrel. Wondering if he were merely being polite, Isabel answered, “I was pretty bad-mannered myself. I’m sorry too.”

He smiled. “When are you leaving for New York?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I hope you have a pleasant trip,” said Kester.

“Thank you,” said Isabel.

He mounted again, and as she watched him ride off Isabel saw him glance back at her regretfully, and she thought, “I believe he doesn’t want me to go. If I told him I’d given up the Schimmelpfeng idea I believe he’d marry me still.”

But she threw the idea out of her mind and went to New York. The next time her friends at home heard of her was when her picture appeared in the society section of the New Orleans
Picayune,
with the caption, “Miss Isabel Valcour, daughter of Mr. Pierre Valcour of Dalroy, whose engagement to Mr. Hermann Schimmelpfeng of Berlin, Germany, is announced today by her father. The wedding is expected to take place in the early spring.”

Isabel came home to get ready, and in Dalroy there was tremendous flurry about her brilliant marriage. Several of her girl friends observed, “We were so surprised, you know we’d always had an idea you were going to marry Kester Larne.” At such remarks Isabel laughed a little and answered, “Why for pity’s sake, I never thought of such a thing! And I’m sure Kester never did.” The girls gave her showers, the older ladies gave parties in her honor, everybody began sending her berry spoons and salad bowls that would cost more than they were worth to transport to Berlin, and the girls and their mammas were alike envious, wondering why heaven should equip some people with angelic faces and golden hair and the chance to meet millionaires from foreign parts. Herr Schimmelpfeng and his brother and his mother were all coming to Dalroy for the wedding, and Violet Purcell asked if Herr Schimmelpfeng traveled with a Man. “Because you can all entertain Mr. What’s-his-name if you want to, but as for me, I’m going to entertain the Man. I’ve seen a millionaire,” she said, “but I’ve never seen a Man.”

Kester’s sister Alice insisted on giving Isabel a boudoir shower. Unable to escape it, Isabel had to go play the guest of honor at Ardeith, where the parlor was strewn with bits of lingerie the girls had embroidered for her trousseau. Gentlemen had been invited to come in for the evening, and after the maidenly flutter of putting away the garments so they would not immodestly greet the gaze of the masculine guests, there was dancing. Of course Kester was there.

As brother of the hostess Kester could hardly avoid asking the guest of honor to dance, and as guest of honor Isabel could hardly refuse. They waltzed. Kester was impeccably courteous. But as she felt his arm around her waist Isabel thought that even now she might weaken if he gave her a chance to do so. She thought how cruel fate had been in giving her two chances to dispose of her future and so arranging circumstances that no matter which of the two she took she would spend her life wishing she had chosen the other. They had been dancing several minutes in silence when Kester said, “That ribbon around your hair is just the right color. Remember the time I told you to wear that shade of violent blue?”

“Yes,” said Isabel.

She bit her lip, afraid she was going to cry out, “Oh Kester, don’t let me go!” She thought of all she would have with her German marriage: a gorgeous house in Berlin, holidays on the Riviera, wealth, splendor, pleasure; for she knew Schimmelpfeng well enough to know he considered possession of her such a miracle he would give her anything his money could buy. She looked up at Kester, and down again, and in spite of herself she asked,