Saratoga Trunk

by Edna Ferber

  This morning, as Clio ascended the steps of the United States Hotel with Clint Maroon at her side, her quick eye noted the staring group in the center of the piazza, her dramatic instinct sensed a tense moment impending. A bevy of sycophantic mamas and daughters clustered round the chair of an imperious old woman; the captive Bart leaned over her, offering filial attentions.

  Clio had walked to Congress Spring, she had taken a glass of the water, she was conscious of a feeling of unusual alertness and excitement. Maroon, having breakfasted at the stables, had driven swiftly to Congress Park and had picked her up and driven her to the hotel in spite of her halfhearted protests. Kaka and Cupide, who had accompanied her as always, had been tucked into the back seat of the high cart. It was this picturesque company upon which Madam Van Steed’s eye now fell—fell, flickered and widened in astonishment. Cupide leaped down to hold the horses, Maroon in white hat, white full-skirted coat, Texas boots and fawn trousers, handed down a Clio all cream and black in cool India silk and a lush leghorn hat trimmed with lace and yellow roses. Cream lace and leghorn enhanced the black of her smooth hair, her creamy skin, accented the dark eyes, the cream-colored India silk was set off by black velvet bows. A lace-ruffled parasol made perfect the whole.

  Up the piazza steps, Maroon’s eyes warm upon her. The statuesque Kakaracou walked behind. Cupide scrambled up to the driver’s seat to await Maroon’s return.

  “Bless my soul!” came the trumpet tones of Madam Van Steed. “What’s this? We’ve not only a circus but a sideshow!”

  There was a murmur of remonstrance from the wretched Bart and a snicker of amusement from the piazza collection.

  Clio heard a murmur of French from Kaka in the rear. “The old devil has arrived, then, to protect her imp.”

  Clio nodded coolly in the direction of Van Steed, Maroon swept off the white sombrero in salute, the little group entered the hotel, but not before they heard the beldame’s next words shrilled from her nook and evidently addressed to her son. “Who? De Chanfret? What’s the world coming to! Well, run along, run after them, fetch her over to me, and the cowboy too. I want to see them.”

  Another murmur of remonstrance from the wretched Bart; another titter from the group. Hurried footsteps behind them; Bartholomew Van Steed caught up with them. He stood before them, his cheeks were very pink, his amber eyes held a look of pleading.

  “Mrs. De Chanfret, my mother arrived unexpectedly last evening—she wants so much to meet you—uh—you, too, Maroon—if you’d—do you mind—she’s out on the piazza—not very well, you know—heard so much about you—”

  “But I’d be enchanted to meet your dear mother,” Clio said; and tossing her parasol to Kaka she gaily tucked one hand in Bart’s limp and unresponsive arm, the other in Maroon’s, and so through the screened doorway and down the piazza’s length, a radiant smiling figure squired by two devoted swains. Now Clio saw that the stout black-clad Bellop was among the group and yet apart from it. She was leaning against one of the piazza pillars, her hands on her broad hips, her mocking eyes regarding the scene before her with anticipatory relish.

  She called out to Clio in her deep hearty voice, “Good morning, Countess! Comment ça va!” A. look of friendly warning in her eye, a something in her tone.

  Clio grinned. “C’est ce que nous verrons.” That remains to be seen.

  Stumblingly Van Steed began the introduction. “Mother, this is Mrs. De Chanfret—Colonel Maroon—my—”

  “Howdy do! I hear you call yourself a countess.”

  “I call myself Mrs. De Chanfret.”

  “Touché!” boomed Mrs. Coventry Bellop.

  “Colonel Maroon, eh?” the rasping voice went on. “What war was that? You look a bit young to have been a colonel in the Civil War, young man.”

  The Texan looked down at her, the sunburned face crinkled in laughter, the drawling voice had in it a note of amused admiration.

  “Shucks, Ma’am, I’m no Colonel, any more than old Vanderbilt was a Commodore. You know how it is, Ma’am. Vanderbilt, he ran a Staten Island ferry and some scows loaded with cow manure, and that’s all the Commodore he ever was.”

  In the little ripple of laughter that followed this the cold gray eyes shifted to Clio’s lovely face. “That ninny, Bean, the head usher, couldn’t find your husband’s signature in the old hotel register. Isn’t that odd!”

  This is going to be bad, after all, Clio thought. Aloud she said, “Signature?”

  “I’ve been coming to the United States Hotel for years. Before it was burned down and after it was rebuilt. I’ve met every well-known person that ever stopped here—in my day, that is. They saved the old registers from the big fire, you know. You’d be interested to see the signatures. There’s the Marquis de Lafayette and General Burnside and General Grant and Washington Irving and even Joseph Bonaparte, the late King of Spain. But no Count de Trenaunay de Chanfret. You say he stayed here?”

  “Incognito.” Serenely. “When a French diplomat is in America on affairs of state connected with his country, it is sometimes wise to discard titles.”

  “Mother doesn’t mean—” stammered Bart Van Steed, miserably.

  Mrs. Coventry Bellop’s hearty voice cut in. “She doesn’t mean a thing—do you, Clarissa? It doesn’t pay to inquire too closely into the background of us Saratoga summer folks. Now you, Clarissa, you call yourself a lady. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you are one, does it! Come on, Mrs. De Chanfret. Let’s take a turn in the garden along with this handsome Texan. It’s too hot out here in the sun for a woman of my girth.”

  “Good day to you, Ma’am,” said Maroon to Madam Van Steed; and bowed, the white sombrero held over his heart.

  Clio looked into Sophie Bellop’s steady eyes, and her own were warm with gratitude for this new ally. “The garden? That will be charming, dear Mrs. Bellop. . . . Enchanted to have met you, Madam Van Steed. You are all that your dear son had led me to expect.”

  Into the grateful coolness of the hotel lobby. “Phew!” exclaimed Mrs. Coventry Bellop inelegantly and wiped her flushed face. “The old hell-cat!” Then, as Clint Maroon stared at her with new eyes, she proceeded to take charge. “Look, Colonel, I want to talk to this young lady. You’re probably off, anyway, to the track. By the way, that little jockey of yours—where did he ever race before?”

  “Why—uh—” floundered Clint.

  “He rode Sans Nom at Longchamp two years ago,” Clio snapped, for she was by now cross, tired, hot. “What a curious custom you Americans have of asking questions!”

  Mrs. Bellop’s round white cheeks crinkled in a grin. “You’re a wonderful girl,” she boomed. “Run along, Colonel. Mrs. De Chanfret and I, we’re going to have a little chat, just us girls.”

  He looked at Clio. “Would you care to go to the races at eleven?”

  “I am weary of the races.”

  “We’ll drive at three.”

  “I am bored with the parade of carriages, like a funeral procession, up and down this Broadway.”

  “What do you say to dinner out at the Lake?”

  “I am sick to death of black bass—corn on the cob—red raspberries—ugh!”

  “Why—honey—!”

  Sophie Bellop’s comfortable laugh cut the little silence. “That’s Saratoga sickness. Everybody feels that way after two weeks. If you can stand it after two weeks of it you can stand it for two months, and like it.” She waved him away with a flirt of her strangely small, lean hand. “She’ll be all right by this evening. You run along, Colonel Maroon.”

  He looked at Clio. She nodded. He was off, his Texas boots tapping smartly on the flagstones, the broad shoulders straightening in relief at being out of this feminine pother.

  Clio thought, I must be rid of this woman. There is a reason for this sudden friendliness. She held out her hand. “I hope you weren’t too sharp, after all, with that very provincial old lady. But thank you. Good-by.”

  “Nonsense. I want to talk to you. It’s important.
Don’t be silly, child.”

  “The garden?”

  “No. Your room. We can talk there.”

  With a shrug Clio turned toward the cottages. Kakaracou was accustomed to surprises. Her face, as she opened the door, remained impassive. Only the eyes narrowed a little in suspicion.

  “Make me some coffee, Kaka. Will you have some, Mrs. Bellop? I’ve had no breakfast. But these huge trays of heavy food—I can’t face them any more. How I should love a crisp croissant with sweet butter! Ah, well.” She took off the broad-brimmed leghorn with its heavy trimming of blond lace and roses and ribbons, she flung it on the table among a litter of books and trinkets and bibelots. The grim litde hotel sitting room had, with her occupancy, taken on a luxurious and feminine air. Sophie Bellop’s eyes, intelligent, materialistic, encompassed the room and its contents, stared openly, without obliqueness, into the bedroom beyond with its lacy pink pillows, its scent bottles, its flowers and yellow-backed French books and its froth of furbelows.

  “If you’d ask me,” boomed Sophie Bellop, “who I’d rather be than anyone in the world this minute, I’d say—you.”

  Clio had gone straight to the bedroom and, Southern fashion, she was unconcernedly getting out of her elaborate street clothes and into an airy ruffled wrapper. Thus she had seen Rita Dulaine and Belle Piquery do, thus she always would do. Kaka, on her knees, was unlacing her. Now, as Clio, in petticoats and corset cover, moved toward the door the better to gaze upon the astonishing Mrs. Bellop, Kaka too moved forward, still on her knees.

  “Me!” Bare-armed, her hands on her hips, Clio stared in unbelief. “But why?”

  Mrs. Bellop had discovered a dish of large meaty black cherries on the sitting-room table and was munching them and blowing the pits into her palm. “No reason. No reason, my girl, except that you’re young and beautiful and smart and brassy and have two dashing young men in love with you—at least, poor Bart would be dashing if that old harridan didn’t catch on to his coat-tails every time he tries to dash—and are going to be rich if you use some sense. That’s all.” She popped another cherry into her mouth.

  Clio said nothing. She moved back into her bedroom. Her corsets came off; you heard a little sigh of relief as lungs and muscles expanded. The cool flimsy gabrielle enveloped her. “The coffee, Kaka. Quickly. In there. A napkin and bowl for Mrs. Bellop’s hands.”

  She crossed the little sitting room then with her easy indolent stride and sank back against the lumpy couch whose bleakness was enlivened by the Spanish silk shawl of lemon yellow thrown over its back.

  Mrs. Bellop, relieved of the cherry pits, relaxed in her chair, belched a little and began to drum dreamily on the marble table top with her slim sensitive fingers. A silence fell between the two women—a silence of deliberate waiting, weighing, measuring.

  At last Clio spoke, deliberately. “Just what is it you want of me?”

  “Money.”

  “I have no money.”

  “You will have.”

  “How?”

  “By listening to me.”

  “You have no money. Why have you not listened to yourself?”

  “Because I’m not you. I explained that to you a minute ago. And I’ve been a fool most of my life.”

  Kaka brought the coffee, fragrant, steaming. Clio sugared it generously, drank it, creamless, in great grateful gulps. “Ah! That’s wonderful! Another cup, Kaka.” Kaka, in the bedroom, busied herself with the India silk, the froth of garments lately discarded.

  “Tell your woman to shut that door.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Kaka knows everything. She never talks. If you mean me harm she would be likely to kill you. She would make a little figure like you, out of soap or dough, and she would sdck pins in it through the place where the heart and the brain and the bowels would be if it were alive. Aid you’d sicken and die.”

  “Not I,” retorted Mrs. Coventry Bellop, briskly. “I’ve had pins stuck in me all my life, and knives, too. Clarissa Van Steed alone would have been the death of me if I hadn’t the hide of a rhinoceros.”

  Clio, sipping her second cup of coffee, set the cup down on the saucer now with a little decisive clack. “All my life, Mrs. Bellop, I have been very direct. If I wanted to do a thing, and it was possible to do it, I did it. I say what I want to say. That old woman on the piazza, she is a terrible old woman, she dislikes me, she makes no pretense. I rather admire her for it. I shall be grateful if you will be as honest.” She placed the cup and saucer on the tabouret at her side; she leaned back and regarded the woman before her with a level look.

  “You’re a babe,” Mrs. Bellop began, briskly, “if you think that old adder is honest. She isn’t. But that’s neither here nor there. You’re right, she hates you and she wants to run you out of Saratoga and she’ll do it unless—”

  “Unless?”

  Sophie Bellop spread her feet wide apart, leaned forward, rested her hands on her plump knees and looked Clio straight in the eye. “Look, my girl. I know you’re no more the Comtesse de Trumpery and Choo-Choo than I am Queen Victoria. But if I say you are, if I take you in hand, if I stand up for you against this old buzzard and her crew, the world will believe you are. I’ve watched you now for two weeks. And I’ll say this: you’ve been wonderful. Bold and dramatic and believable. But from now on you’ll need a strong arm behind you, and that handsome Texan’s arm won’t be enough. It’s got to be a woman who’s smarter than old lady Van Steed and who they’re scared of.”

  As the woman talked, Clio was thinking, well, here it is. I wonder if she knows everything. I suppose I was foolish to think that America was so simple. It’s no good being grand and denying things and telling her to go.

  “What is it you want?”

  “I’m coming to that. Let me just rattie on a little, will you? I’m gabby, but what I’ve got to say to you is important to both of us. And I like you more than ever for not trying to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Now listen. I know my way around this world. I’ve known what it was to be very rich. I know what it is to be very poor; I’ve lived on nothing for years. In luxury.”

  “Blackmail?” inquired Clio, pleasantly, as one would say, for example—farming?

  “Give me credit for being smarter than that. Listen, my child. You’ve been shrewd, but you can’t beat this combination without inside help any more than you can beat the roulette and faro games at the Club House simply because you happen to win once or twice. You lose in the end unless you know how the wheel is fixed or can fix it yourself. Same with Saratoga; same way with everything. I know everybody. I’ve been everywhere. I know Europe. I know America. If I give a party that somebody else pays for, everybody comes because I’m giving it. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. I’m nearly sixty. I dress and look like a washwoman, so the women are never envious of me and the men never fall in love with me and I have a fine time. I’m afraid of nobody. If you know anything about America, which you probably don’t, you know that Coventry Bellop was one of the wealthiest of the really rich men of the 1860’s. He was in on Erie— maybe you don’t know what that meant and I won’t go into it now— but the New York Central crowd took it away from him, and then Astor and Drew and Van Steed and Fisk and Gould came in on Erie— well, when Covey died of a stroke in ‘69,1 was left: as bare as the day I was born and people began to call me not Sophie Bellop or Mrs. Coventry Bellop, but Poorsophiebellop, just like that, all in one word. Poorsophiebellop. The wives of the very men who’d ruined him. Not that I blame them. Covey’d have done the same to them if he’d been smart enough to beat them. Well, they thought Poorsophiebellop would take their old clothes and live in that fourth-floor back bedroom in a rich relation’s house and be glad to be asked in for tea. Right then I made it my motto to insult them before they could insult me. I was earning my living—and fairly honesdy, too—in a day when it wasn’t just downright common and vulgar for a woman to work for her living the way it is now—it was considered criminal. Not that I really worked
. I schemed. I planned. I tricked and contrived. I made certain hotels fashionable by touting for them. I put Saratoga on the map. I made Newport, though I must say I can’t bear the place. Remember, I’ve known the cream of two continents in my days— Daniel Webster, Washington Irving, Henry Clay, William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry James, for brains—not to speak of rich riffraff like the Astors, Drew, Jim Hill, the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, and plenty of dressed-up circus mountebanks like Jim Fish and his brawling crew. As for the gloating friends like Clarissa Van Steed and the rich relations—I threw their cast-off clothes back in their faces and I snapped my fingers at the hall bedrooms. If I’d been a beauty, like you, I could have had the world. I don’t know, though. There’s always been a soft streak in me that crops out when I least want it. Now Bellop. I knew he was weak when I married him. But his eyes were so blue and he cried when I refused him. I thought I could make him strong and self-reliant. But you can’t make iron out of lead. ... So then, there I was, a widow and a pauper; I had two black dresses, one for daydme, one for evening, and that’s been my uniform ever since. I don’t bother about clothes and it’s wonderful. Nobody cares how I look, anyway. I’m the life of the party. Most people don’t know how to have a good time, any more than spoiled children. I show them. I spend their money for them, and they’re grateful for it. I’ve got nothing to lose because I live by my wits. They can’t take that away from me. So I say and I do as I please. It’s a grand feeling.”

  Clio laughed suddenly, spontaneously, in sheer delight. “You’re like Aunt Belle. It’s wonderful!”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Mama’s sister. My Aunt Belle Piquery. Only she was more— well—légère. But she used a word—a Northern word. Spunky. She used to say she liked people with spunk.”

  “M’m. I know about your mama. I made it my business to find out. I’ve got connections in New Orleans.”