by Edna Ferber
“Chéri, we didn’t come here to this Saratoga to fight railroads.”
“Oh, yes we did.”
“To fight them with tricks, yes, and to get some of their millions if we could. But not to fight with fists and boots, like savages. I am frightened. I am frightened—for you.”
But the surly mood was still on him. There had been a time when he would have melted at this evidence of her solicitude, but now he said sneeringly, “Say, that’s fine! I’ve got you to look after me, and little Bart, he’s got his mama, why, no boogy man can get us that-away.”
Clio had battles of her own in plenty by now, but these brutal tales of Clint Maroon’s adventures in railroading filled her with apprehension. Bewildered, she brought up the subject as casually as possible when next she saw Van Steed. It was interesting to see his struggles, buffeted as he now was between the filial habit of years and the powerful new emotion which this beautiful and unconventional woman had aroused in him. Inexperienced in love and wary of its unexplored dangers, he tried rather clumsily to be in her company when the maternal eye was not upon him.
“Uh—Mrs. De Chanfret—I—I hear you have a charming apartment in the cottages with your own beautiful—uh—bric-a-brac and ornaments and—uh—so forth. I never have had the privilege of seeing you surrounded by your—uh—own personal—that is—”
“Who told you this?”
“Why, Mrs. Bellop, I believe. That is, Mrs. Bellop.”
“What an amazing woman! What energy! She has been most friendly to me.”
“Would you—could I come to call some—some afternoon, perhaps, and have—that is—tea? You never have invited me, you know.” He felt very audacious.
“Tea! I never could understand tea—except as medicine, of course. At night, when I am weary, Kaka brews me a tisane to soothe me. But tea as tea!”
“Oh, well, I just meant—you know—tea as a—a—symbol—I mean—”
“Dear Mr. Van Steed, that is almost as if you meant to sound improper!”
“Oh, no, Mrs. De Chanfret. I assure you!” It was too easy to bring the deeper pink into the already roseate cheeks.
“I was only teasing. Do come—tomorrow afternoon? And perhaps your mama would like to come, too.” With innocent cordiality.
“I’m afraid not. She rarely goes anywhere; she isn’t well, you know. Rheumatism—her age—difficult.”
“So I have heard. It is difficult to believe. She is so very—alert.” Then the direct attack. “Your mama does not like me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Mrs. De Chanfret.”
“Oh, it’s quite natural. There are reasons, natural and unnatural. She wants to keep you by her—wait! I don’t mean to offend you. She herself probably would be the first to deny it. She fears—and hates— any young and attractive woman who may snatch you from her. Particularly one like myself who is not of her little world-—who is not chacalata.”
“Not what? What’s that mean?”
“Oh, that’s a word, a foreign sort of word, it means conventional—comme il faut. It’s a word out of my childhood. Well, she has nothing to fear from me, dear Mr. Van Steed. My heart lies buried in my beloved France.” She saw the stubborn look come into his face. I’ve almost got him, she thought, exultandy. And even as his conviction came to her she perversely put it away from her. How silly he looks simpering at me like that! “Tomorrow afternoon, then. And do bring your dear mama if she cares to come.”
He came alone, as she had known he would. She had set her stage. The heritage of Great-Grand’mère Bonnevie, the actress, always welled strong in her at times such as this. She wore simple white with the litde girlish strand of pearls as ornament; she looked young, cool, virginal. Bart Van Steed, staring at her in the dim seclusion of the sitting room, blurted his thoughts as always.
“You look—different.”
“Different?” She put one hand to her breast, posed fingers up like that portrait of the Empress Louise.
“Younger. That is, younger.”
“Oh dear Mr. Van Steed! Have I seemed so old!”
It was too easy to make him blush, stammer, fidget. “No! No! Only about the hotel and in the evening and at the races you always seemed so much more—that is—your clothes usually so sophisticated and now you look”— fatuously—”you are like a little girl.”
“Oh, Mr. Van Steed! How sweet! How sweet of you! After all, I was widowed at nineteen—”
Kaka and two black waiters crackling in stiffly starched linens now appeared with the tea-things. “Tea!” Van Steed cried in considerable dismay.
“You said tea,” Clio reminded him, gently.
They sipped, stirred, munched. Years of this, Clio thought, grimly. Millions and security—but years of this.
Kaka in her best silk and best manner served them, shooing away the hotel waiters who had brought the tray.
“Wouldn’t you rather have something cold to drink, perhaps?” Clio suggested, for he had placed the cup, almost untouched, on the table beside his chair. “Lemonade, or one of Kaka’s delicious rum—”
“No. No, really, my digestion. Uh—”
“I have asked dear Mrs. Bellop to drop in, since your mama couldn’t chaperon us. Not that we need a chaperon. A poor old widow like myself.”
His pink face clouded with displeasure. “Mrs. Bellop!” Then hastily, “I wanted to ask you—could I fetch you for the ball tonight? I’d be delighted to call for you.”
“I should have loved it. But I’ve promised to go with Colonel Maroon.”
“Maroon’s away.” Blundy.
“Yes. Yes, I know. But he’ll be back. He assured me he would be back.” She leaned forward. Something in his face alarmed her. “He went only to Albany, he said. Tell me, isn’t this Albany very near Saratoga?”
“Why, yes. You passed it on your way traveling here in the train. Must have.”
“Colonel Maroon has told me it is the capital of the state of New York.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“But Mr. Van Steed! I am bewildered. I cannot understand! What manner of country is this! There is Albany, the capital of the state, I hear that hordes of—of roughs they fight like savages for a railroad. Where are the laws! Where are the police! The military!”
The tale of banditry had seemed fantastic enough coming from the lips of the big Texan; but now to hear it retold and augmented by the shy and pink-cheeked Van Steed had the effect of wild absurdity.
“Oh. Well. You see, they’ve bought up the town councilors and so on.” Very matter-of-factly. “We’ve met trick with trick and bribe with bribe. It’s a matter of—uh—force now, you know.” He patted her hand timidly. “You shouldn’t worry your pretty head about such matters, dear Mrs. De Chanfret. In fact, Colonel Maroon shouldn’t have told you. It’s—uh—man’s business.”
She looked at him scornfully. “Really! What are you doing about it? You yourself, I mean.”
He smiled tolerantly. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand. But I may tell you—in confidence—that we now have possession of the Albany end of the road. Briscoe and his crowd have retreated to the Binghamton end.” He looked about him, cautiously. He lowered his voice. “Traffic has stopped entirely. The people living along the line are terrified. We are planning to send down fully five hundred men by train and take the stations along the Binghamton route by force.”
“Whose plan is this?”
“Well, Colonel Maroon proposed it, really—”
Suddenly, like a madness, little darts of rage and hate shot through her body; she wanted to hurt this shy and nervous little man, she hated him, she hated Saratoga, she hated the hotel, Madam Van Steed, Congress Spring, the race track, the lake, the food, the piazza, the world. She felt her fingers tingling with the desire to strike him—to slap him across his delicate pink face.
In a fury of cruelty she said, “You are afraid. You are afraid to fight for your own railroad, you are afraid of your mother, you are afraid of me, you
are afraid of life, you are afraid of everything! Go away! Go away! I want to be alone.”
She saw the look in his amber eyes; she saw the color drain out of his face. Abruptiy she left him, flew to her room, fell to berating Kaka, and ended in a burst of tears, a thing in itself so rare in her that even Kakaracou was alarmed. The man in the front room stood a moment, his palms pressed to his eyes. Then he went, closing the front door gently.
In Kaka’s arms, her head against the bony breast, she sniffled, “I detest this place! I wish I had never come. I wish we had stayed in Paris. I wish we had stayed in New Orleans. At least we belonged there. After a fashion. Even he doesn’t care any more; he leaves me alone. Alone!”
Kaka rocked her to and fro. “Pauvre bébé! My pretty one, like my beautiful Rita! Aone.”
But at that Clio Dulaine sat up, dried her eyes. “Idiote! I am not Rita! I am Clio! And I shall make my life as I said. No whining and weeping for me. There! I’m strong again. I’ll show them, those devils who sit all day on the piazza brewing their witches’ brew! And what do you think, he goes to fight like a common Apache in railroads!”
Kaka sniffed her disdain. “That vacher! That gascon with his swagger!”
Hearing him attacked by another, Clio now sprang to his defense. “He is no gascon. He doesn’t swagger. He is too brave, that’s the trouble. He fights the batties of little men who are too weak and cowardly to fight their own.”
“You know what I think?” Kakaracou went on, maddeningly. “I think we have seen the last of him, that one. I hear he is to have a big lump of money for this work he is doing like a roustabout on the docks in New Orleans.”
Fortunately it was a powder puff that Clio was holding in her right hand. If it had been a paperweight, a knife, a lump of iron, it would have been the same. She threw it into Kaka’s face, she began to scream in French, English and Gombo, somewhat to her own surprise, epithets she had not known she knew. “Cochonne! Black devil! Carencro! Congo! Witch from hell! How dare you say he will not come back! He’ll be back for the ball tonight. He promised me. He is going in real cowboy costume—chaps and spurs and lariat—and Cupide is——”
“Cupide is—where?” Kaka interrupted, her voice ominous.
“Cupide? Why—I haven’t seen him today. I suppose he’s over at the stables again; he fancies himself since he stole that race. I’ll have a talk with him, that suppôt!”
“Cupide is with him.”
“He can’t be! How do you know?”
“For days now he has been pleading to go with him.”
“Yes, but he refused to take him. I heard him.”
“They have some big dangerous plan. I know that. Cupide knew it too. He listened. He must have hidden himself somewhere when the Maroon went off, and now he is with him. I know. I am sure.”
“I’ll whip him myself. I’ll take my riding crop and I’ll—What’s that plan? What dangerous plan? Tell me!”
“Something crazy. He is driving to this Albany, then a train, the lot of them, toward a town—”
“Binghamton?”
“Yes, that’s it. There are a lot of them, they are going to take each station along the way, Cupide said, as if they were fighting in a war—it is crazy I tell you—bizarre, like this place—this Saratoga—I tell you if anything happens to Cupide because of him, I’ll kill him, I’ll—”
Now it was Clio who was comforting the black woman, her arms about Kaka’s meager shoulders, her lovely cheek pressed against the withered one.
“What stupid talk, Kaka. Nothing will happen to them. We are simply not used to the way things arc done here. We’ve been gone so long. It is like that in America. It is quite the thing. If you want a thing—land—a railroad—you simply take it. Drôle, ça.”
The Negress shook her head. “I tell you it’s not good, I don’t like it. Railroads. And fights with engines. What has Cupide to do with railroads! I tell you—” Her high thin voice rose in a wail.
Brisk knuckles rapped at the door. A hearty voice boomed, “What’s going on here!”
Kaka jerked herself erect. “That great cow!” Miraculously she assumed her usual dignity like a garment as she opened the door. Sophie Bellop bounced in, a bombazine ball.
“What a to-do! I could hear you across the garden, screeching like a couple of fishwives. And Bart Van Steed looking up at your window as if he had seen a ghost. You can’t afford to do this, Clio.”
“I can afford to do what I please. What do I care for these old gossips? I spit on them. . . . Kaka, mix me a coquetier. I have been very upset. Will you have a coquetier, Mrs. Bellop?”
“What’s that?”
“That is a little drink to hearten and steady one. A coquetier it is called. Aunt Belle used to take one when she felt upset. She used to let me taste hers, and Mama would scold her, but I loved it.”
“Oh, no! Not for me. It’s a drink, is it? I take nothing. You know that.”
“No, no, it’s a medicine, really. Aunt Belle said it was brought to New Orleans from Santo Domingo by Peychaud, the apothecary. Bitters, and a dash of cognac, and a twist of lemon peel. He mixed it in an egg-shaped cup. That’s why it’s called a coquetier. Lovely. Do just sip it, to try.”
“Well, I’ll just taste it, that’s all, to please you.”
Kaka glimpsed a black waiter, white-coated, crossing the garden. “Ice!” she bawled, thrusting her head out of the window. “Ice! For coquetier!”
Sophie Bellop shook her head reproachfully. “You folks have oudandish manners. It’s all very well to be original, I think that’s very clever, but with everyone against you as they are now—”
“Pooh! What do I care!” Clio curled herself up on the hard little sofa, she kicked off her slippers, she rolled up the voluminous sleeves of her gown. “Phew! It is hot here in this miserable Saratoga. I shall be glad to go. I think I shall go to the mountains. Where are there mountains here? Like the Alps.”
Sophie Bellop’s usually placid face was serious. “In this country we’d consider the Alps as foothills. Anyway, you’re not going. Now look here. You’ve done wonderfully until now. All of a sudden you’re behaving like a ninny. What’s come over you?”
“Ennui. I am bored with Saratoga. With these railroad parvenus. I thought it would be wonderful to be very rich and secure and respectable for the rest of my life. Well, look at them. They’re afraid of one another, they’re afraid of me! Bart Van Steed is a lâche. The old one is a shrew and a devil. That Forosini and the Porcelain have the taste of vulgar provincials.”
“Yes, well, let’s stop all this fancy talk and be sensible.”
“Sensible! Sensible! Sensible about what?”
“About the way you’re behaving. It’s really kind of crazy.”
“Oh, zut! You have found out. You learn everything. Very well. I have done something wrong. I told litde Van Steed he is a coward. What do I care! I managed before I came to this Saratoga. I can manage again.”
“But it’s turned out right—or it may. Listen to me, child—”
But an imp of contrariness dominated the girl. “Ah, Kaka! There you are! Drink that, Mrs. Bellop, and then we shall be as sensible as sensible can be.” She took the litde glass from Kaka, she sniffed, she tasted, she nodded in approval, she quaffed it down. Potent, slighdy bitter, the coquetier seemed to leap like a tiny tongue of liquid flame from her throat down to her vitals. Mrs. Bellop sipped, said, “Ugh! Bitter as gall,” made a wry face, drank it down. “What’s that you called it?”
“Coquetier. “
“Oh, now I get it. Coquetier. Cocktail! Of course. What’s that in it? Brandy? Well, if that’s medicine, everybody in Saratoga is going to have the complaint it’s good for. I’ll tell the barman at the Club about it. No, I won’t have another, and neither will you. Give me the recipe, there’s a good girl. I’ll make old Spencer pay me for it.”
Clio’s lip curled a little, contemptuously. “Kaka, Mrs. Bellop would like the recipe for the coquetier. Tell Cupide
to write it out—” Suddenly she remembered, she sat up, she pushed her hair away from her brow with a fevered frandc gesture. “Cupide went with him. He ran away and went with him to that mad—that insane—place where they battle like savages for a piece of railroad track! I don’t understand this country! I don’t understand. And now Clint is gone and Cupide is gone and you”—she turned blazing eyes on Kakaracou—”you will go next, I suppose. Why don’t you go! Why don’t you—”
Calmly and majestically, Kaka gathered up the little glasses and the great tumbler in which she had mixed the drink. A portion of the red-brown concoction still remained. “Is too hot for coquetier,” she observed, and nonchalantiy emptied the contents of the tumbler into the hotel cuspidor. “Why’n’t you catch yourself a little nap, Miss Clio?” She shot a malignant glance at Sophie Bellop, patted a couch pillow invitingly, then pressed her strong withered hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Kaka is not going leave her Clio bébé.”
“Everybody can leave me! I don’t need anyone! I’m not like Mama and Aunt Belle. I’m strong, I’m clever, I’m free!” The tears were rolling down her cheeks.
“Well, good God!” exclaimed Mrs. Bellop. “What was in that cocktail thing, Kaka?”
Kaka shook her head. She was all deep-south Negress, the veneer of Paris, of Northern travel was gone. “He like this when he tired.”
“He! He who? Oh, my God, I never heard such talk. What’s wrong with you two! You’ve reverted right back to—to whatever it was you came from. Now you listen to me, Clio.”
“Go away,” Clio said, sleepily. “Go away.”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind. You’re right on the doorstep—or threshold or whatever they call it—of success, and I’m not going to let you stop now. So quit rolling your eyes and listen to me. You can make the match of the year. I know a man head over heels in love when I see one. And he is, even if you did screech at him like a fishwife. He’s used to being screeched at by a woman. He’d never marry anyone who wasn’t stronger than his ma. And you’re that. Besides, I need the money—and I like you. Are you listening?”
