American Duchess

by Karen Harper

  I thought she was in England, but now she stood right in front of me.

  She came closer, still holding the revolver pointed directly at my chest. Surely she would not shoot me, I reminded myself, but then again my own son had called her unstable. Despite my instant feeling of drowning despair and panic, I decided I had to remain calm. I must humor her but seize hold of this situation. I found my voice before she spoke.

  “Gladys, I did not know you were in Paris. You should have rung at the front door, and I would have invited you inside. Won’t you please come and sit down? However did you get inside?”

  “Through the back—the man putting things out in your dustbin—I waited until he turned away and just walked in.”

  “Anyway, welcome. Come, sit down and rest.”

  As she came closer, I could see with horror that her attempt to perfect her beauty with the wax injection was worse than ever before. The implant had slipped down beneath her skin, making her now look as if she had a huge lump on her chin. It unbalanced her once classic, stunning appearance—unbalanced her indeed, so why had she come here? I had to humor her, call for help, but how?

  “Come in and sit down, won’t you?” I repeated with a nod toward the open door I had just come through. I was afraid to make a quick, strong move, even to gesture. Was that loaded and would she shoot me? And why? That is what I must learn to really disarm her. What would happen if my maid came in? Jacques would not be home for several hours.

  She gestured with the gun that I should go in. I thought about slamming the door in her face, but the pull of a trigger could be faster than that. I must not startle her. I went in sideways, afraid to turn my back to her.

  “Sit down, please,” I said yet again, risking a slight gesture, but all the time I kept thinking about what I could use to knock the gun away and run for help.

  I sat in the chair I had been in. To my dismay, when I had hoped to put the table between us, she pulled the other chair closer, facing me, the gun now propped on her knee, still pointing at me. The black pinpoint of the barrel seemed as big as a rain barrel.

  “Sunny hired detectives to evict me from Blenheim, the bastard,” she said. “He fired my staff. He tried to turn out my dogs. Then he cut off the gas and electricity as if I were some intruder, but I fixed him, cooking by candlelight and smuggling food in.”

  Poor Blenheim, I thought. The glory of the palace reduced to unlit and stinking dog kennels.

  “He threw me out, but not you,” she went on. “You left of your own accord. Tell me, did he ever hit you? He blacked my eye once right before a party, so I showed everyone what he did. More than once, I shouted at him in front of guests.”

  “Well, I guess that served him right.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “No, he did not strike me, but there were times I could tell he wanted to. But Gladys, he married you. He wanted you.”

  “I think a child between us would have kept him calm, but I couldn’t. God knows, I—we—tried, really for years. But you had two sons, bang, bang, just like that.”

  I nearly dry-heaved at her saying bang, bang—just like that. I recalled in that moment her father had shot her mother’s lover dead. That horrible heritage must still haunt her. Was she this upset at me because she had no children, or was it because the duke threw her out while I managed to leave on my own?

  The telephone rang, so shrill. Again. Again. I dared not answer it, though perhaps the staff had for it stopped.

  She glanced at it then went on, “If that is a reporter after you like they dog me, do what I did. I dumped a bucket of water on one and screamed at him to go away.”

  Ordinarily, I would have laughed at that, cheered that, but I just nodded, staring at her, trying to get control of this deadly danger.

  “I hear you raised dogs,” I said lamely as my frenzied mind darted about for something calming or distracting to say.

  “Which he hated—hated, that is, once there were quite a few of them. I think he wanted me for my beauty and body—but then neither of those suited him. Or my trust fund, which was ravaged by the stock market mess at home. Or he wanted me to get back at you because you did not want him at all. And I had wanted him for years. I knew I was destined to be the Duchess of Marlborough.”

  Her hand holding the revolver shook. How many bullets would that hold?

  “Gladys, listen to me,” I dared, sounding a bit stronger. “We have both been the Duchess of Marlb—”

  “I still am, of course.”

  “Yes, and—”

  “My goal in life was to be something you threw away, but I am glad you did.”

  “There, you see. A gift to you, for we have so much in common.”

  “No, you still are rich, and I am not. He has cut me out of his will, so I am glad he is ill—sick of me too, so that is rich!” She began to laugh in little, jerking breaths, and then stopped cold. “But he still wants you, and he does not want me!”

  “The duke—Sunny—does not want me. He hates me, so—”

  “No, he called me by your name when he was making love to me! Well, not love really. Pinned down, riding me like a horse, he called me Consuelo. I am sick to death of it all and just want it to end. My father beat my mother,” she gasped out, sobbing now. “Everyone knew I had such scandal in my past, and I am a scandal now, just like you, but he still wanted you when I—”

  The door to the room opened. We both jerked our heads in that direction. Rosemary, my maid stood there. She could not see the gun.

  “Oh, madame, I did not know of your guest,” she said and started to back away. “The master, he called and said he would telephone you soon and could not wait to see you and—”

  I stood. Gladys did too, raising the gun. “Does he call here?” she screamed at me. “Is that why I was beaten and hated and sent away? Is Sunny still seeing you and comes here after he cast me out?”

  “No, that was my husband on the tele—” I got out before she straightened the arm that held the gun.

  Ducking low, I threw myself at her, my shoulder butting into her knees. The gun went off, but I felt no pain. I knocked the gun from her hand, and it slid away. We both went down in a crash of china from the small side table. Rosemary screamed, or was that me?

  “Get help!” I cried. “The butler, not the gendarmes!”

  Gladys only struggled for a moment, then went limp, wracked with sobs. “I want to shoot him!” she gasped out. “He’s ill, in pain, but I want to shoot him anyway! It was your fault, too, that he said your name after years, after all I did and wanted and . . .”

  Her words became garbled, gasping sobs. I held her arms down at her sides, so she would not attack me further, but I found her clinging to me, hysterical, so I hugged her back, silently cursing the father of my children. I had often wanted to comfort and help poor, desperate women, but I wanted this woman to be helped by someone else—now.

  JACQUES HELD ME very close when he came rushing in while the butler and his valet guarded Gladys, who kept sobbing on the floor. I had carefully put the revolver in a drawer. Jacques set me back in his arms, mussed from my struggle with her and ashen-faced from grief. Ironically, I sported a black eye like the one she claimed the duke had given her. Jacques hugged me hard, then tended to the demented woman, who finally lay silent. We did not make a formal report with the police, for her sake and ours, too. We were sick to death of newspaper notoriety.

  My maid and the butler sat with Gladys until Jacques phoned a doctor he knew at a maison de sante, a facility for the mentally ill. The doctor came and took Gladys away. Jacques asked him to phone the duke to inform him of what happened. Then Jacques had unloaded the revolver and buried it and six bullets somewhere in the backyard, as if he was burying the terrible past for me. So, despite her demented attempt to murder me, we had pity on her. Our hope was that she would be kept from the world for as long as it took to help her.

  I was still stunned, silent, cuddled close to him when we finally relaxed a bit in bed.

&nbs
p; “I just pray the so-called press never gets wind of this,” I told him. I can see their headlines now: CURRENT DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH TRIES TO MURDER PREVIOUS ONE. But she did say something I admired—it is even funny.”

  “What?” he asked as his warm breath stirred my hair.

  “She said she dumped a bucket of water on a reporter once. Not a bad idea.”

  “I never heard about that one.”

  “He was probably too embarrassed to report it or file charges. Well, we shall keep them away as best we can when we invite our fellow villagers into the château, especially if I can pull off this annual fete.”

  “You will, my love. We will together.”

  “And Mother. She insists on helping, of course, but I am worried about her health again. And you know something else I picked up from Gladys’s tirade today? She said the duke is ill, even in pain.”

  “Can you trust anything she says?”

  “Who knows? She hates him, so perhaps she is making it up. I only know you keep me safe, and I love you and . . .”

  I am not certain what else I said, for I was so emotionally spent that I think I fell asleep in that thought and in his arms.

  FOR SEVERAL SUMMERS in Saint-Georges-Motel, Jacques, Mother, and I welcomed our neighbors to the château and its spacious grounds. Mother, to the amazement of the local folk, had even widened the river along her property nearby. It might have shocked people, but it hardly surprised me. Even nature couldn’t stop Alva Belmont from getting what she wanted!

  Besides our many summertime garden parties, our annual September party, which came to be known as “Madame Balsan’s fete,” was eagerly attended by all. Villagers came in all their costumed finery to mingle with our Parisian and English guests. Each year, we sent out open invitations giving the time—from four to seven in the evening—for the villagers to celebrate with us and were rewarded with a procession to open the festivities.

  Promptly at four, up the avenue to our open gate, came a parade of people, many of whom we came to know by name, especially the children. I gave gifts to each one of the young ones, something for school or just for play, a book, crayons, mittens for the coming autumn winds.

  We erected a dancing platform on the east lawn next to a pavilion decorated with flags where our staff served many kinds of cakes washed down by choices of champagne or cider. When the children ate ices and tortes at long tables on the lawn, I came to know the ones who were ill or somehow troubled. Katrine, a darling, pretty girl of six, had contracted tuberculosis, but was supposed to be “better.” I seated her away from the others and pretended I just wanted to spend time with her myself, which I did.

  Later that day I asked her mother, “Are you certain Katrine is cured?” The woman had three other young children and such a disease could be terribly contagious, though I was not certain that was the child’s problem. I hoped it was only chronic bronchitis. I determined to somehow have her diagnosed and treated locally—if I could find a good place in this area.

  “We are not certain, but there is no place else for us to go,” she told me. “Well . . . clear to Paris, but we cannot afford or do that with us tied here. Cannot keep a sick child in the one local doctor’s office, that’s for a certain.”

  Twin boys with the name Marchand also had wracking coughs. All that gave me an idea that I filed away for now as we ourselves were feted and blessed by the children singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in English for me and in French “La Marseillaise” for Jacques. Since we had donated items to the school, we realized their teacher had planned that in gratitude for us. I was so deeply touched—and damned determined now on what I must do for these dear children and their families.

  IT WAS AT our home in Paris a few days later that I decided to tell my mother what I planned and how she could help. But she sat just staring at me, not reacting nor speaking. I thought she did not hear me or was thinking my proposal over.

  “So, don’t you think that our area could use a hospital for children, including a tuberculosis sanatorium attached or even separate but nearby?” I asked her again, still writing a letter to a magistrate about that very subject. “You know, for ill children, even some with communicable diseases. I can fund it, oversee it near the château, but if you want to help, that would be lovely. That region has nothing of the sort, so . . . Mother?”

  I turned around to look at her. She just stared past me and began to drool. I jumped up and knelt before her, put my hands on her slumped shoulders, then took her hands. Thank God, she was not dead, but her left side seemed like stone. Her body was so heavy when I tried to sit her up. She must be partly paralyzed.

  I lay her back on the couch and rang for my maid. I kneeled beside Mother again and held her hands. When Rosemary came in, I cried, “Ring the doctor at once! I think she’s had another stroke!”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  My brothers came to visit Mother as they had at her previous stroke, but when she neither improved nor faded, of necessity, they went back home to family and duty. I visited her often, usually with Jacques, sometimes alone, as she lay in the bedroom of her Paris home—as ever, not far from us. Did she think that close proximity would patch up our broken past? Over the years, I had grown to admire the woman who became Alva Belmont, but I’d never quite let her be “Mama” in my heart again.

  One cold January day in 1933, as I sat alone with her, I realized she could not last much longer. She usually lay silent, so I was surprised when she opened her eyes and began to mutter. I leaned close to see if I could hear what she was saying. She had her earthly goods in order, and I thought she had made her peace with God, but she seemed suddenly so troubled.

  “I knew it was wrong,” she said, looking straight up at the ceiling.

  Oh, I thought. Will this be a deathbed confession that she should not have forced me to marry the duke? But she went on, disturbed, almost raving.

  “My papa said it was not wrong—having slaves. I had my own slave, a little girl, Suley. But I knew it was wrong and I was angry.”

  I pulled my chair closer to her bed and took her right hand, for her left one was stiff from disuse. I told her, “That was long ago, Mother, before the North-South War. Slavery is long over. You never had any slaves once you grew up.”

  Even as I said that, I remembered when I was very angry in my youth, too, when she ordered me about like a slave.

  “I tried to make up for it,” she whispered, sounding so desperate. “Others hated me when I said women’s rights were pointless unless Negro rights came, too. It was wrong to have a slave.”

  “I understand, but you were just a child then. I agree, but—”

  “It ruined him. Papa. That terrible system ruined him. Our home gone, the cotton fields. Mama dead. So I had to find a way and then I found William K. Vanderbilt. He married me, saved us, but I was still angry, because it was wrong. Papa!” she cried loudly to the room, certainly not to me, for I do not think she even knew I was there. “It was wrong! I tried to earn money another way! Papa, I married money for you, used it for good, but it was all wrong!”

  I felt her relax. She had spent her energy and was surely going back to sleep. She did not quite sigh but exhaled. I waited, but she did not breathe again. Her hand went limp. Her eyes stayed open but looked far beyond me. Far beyond, forever now. Why had she never told me all this before? Perhaps she was pleading her case with God.

  I sucked in a sob and bowed my head.

  So much—so much!—had been wrong in her life, but she had boldly struggled to make some things right.

  ALVA SMITH VANDERBILT Belmont was eighty-three years and nine days old when she died. Jacques and I took her casket to New York on the SS Berengaria for a funeral and burial she had already planned. Everything went according to her wishes—except for one thing. She had asked for a female celebrant, but we had to settle for a man because the burial was in the same church where I had married the duke, and they did not permit women to officiate. However, her pallbearers were
all women, and what a buzz there was over that.

  The date was Sunday, February 12. The congregation numbered at least fifteen hundred, a fitting tribute. The choir sang a hymn she herself had composed. For the other songs, she had allowed traditional hymns.

  Forty elderly members of the National Woman’s Party, the NWP, wearing their traditional purple and gold, lined the way when the coffin was carried in, and many suffragettes passed in homage. They carried tattered, faded banners from their marches, but I stared at the one that seemed yet brand-spanking new and bold as ever: FAILURE IS IMPOSSIBLE, it read. That one was draped over her casket for the service.

  I looked around the crowded church, holding Jacques’s hand but remembering how young and frightened and, yes, how angry I was—because to quote my mother’s final words, “It was wrong!”—that I was forced to marry here. Marry a man I hardly knew and did not love, but at least my sons and Jacques had made up for that.

  The trip from the church to Woodlawn Cemetery was quite a parade: the family motorcars; three motorbuses with delegates from the NWP; policemen on motorized bicycles; and some classic, old-style limousines of her friends. A curious crowd, some with cameras, waiting there made me realize the newspapermen she had once manipulated were present. The family led the way into the tomb she had designed and had built—her last constructed, earthly edifice where her dear second husband, Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, already lay.

  Once again, she had planned a short service here in the French Gothic chapel. It reminded me of the Gothic Room at Marble House, with its collection of crucifixes, where the duke had proposed to me. And again, I decided as I had when Papa was buried in the elaborate Vanderbilt mausoleum that I would never be entombed here. I wanted something simple, something outside, not closed in or grand.

  A quartet sang two songs even here, then we heard the bugle call of “Taps” played off in the distance as if Mother were some departed, honored war hero. Finally, we left her casket in the tomb next to her beloved Oliver.

  As I exited the chapel holding on to Jacques on one side and my brother Harold, called Mike, on the other, I realized he, too, had a bit of Mother in him, for he could be overbearing and difficult to love even though he had a brilliant mind. Our other brother, named Willie for Papa, was like our father, all easygoing charm.