by Gwen Bristow
Chapter Seven
The Valcours were Louisiana French, descendants of a marriage made in the year 1794 between the Widow Gervaise Purcell, née Durand, native of New Orleans, and Louis Valcour, bachelor from the same town. Nearly a hundred years later one of their posterity, Mr. Pierre Valcour, became captivated late in life by a golden beauty from Memphis, who survived their marriage long enough to bequeath him a small income based on a cotton comeback after the Civil War, and a daughter whom the cross-breeding between the Latin and Anglo-Saxon strains had endowed with provocative charm. Mr. Valcour was not dubious about how to dispose of either legacy. You enjoyed money and you sent beautiful daughters to schools distinguished for their success in turning out well-bred young ladies.
At the age of eighteen Isabel graduated. She was gentle, gracile and soft-voiced, with a lovely face, golden hair a yard long and large, innocent eyes.
But under its abundance of waves and velvet fillets Isabel’s head contained a brain that was clever, calculating and productive of ambition. Convinced that a girl’s life was determined by the kind of marriage she made, Isabel had channeled all her talents toward making a very superior marriage indeed. Her upbringing had been exactly what she needed. She could dance beautifully, listen ardently, tinkle tunes on the piano, and dress in such a fashion as to make everybody look in admiration when she entered a room. Her teachers had taught her French and English, so that she read both with equal ease; that they had failed to convince her of the desirability of reading anything in either language was the fault not of her teachers but of Isabel, who privately disdained them, for if they had known as much as she intended to know they would not have had to teach school for a living. They were obviously not as wise as she, and they were downright simpletons compared to what she intended to become.
Isabel graduated in a fluffy white dress with a blue sash and everybody said she looked quite like an angel. This remark gave Isabel some amusement, for did not the Bible say that among the angels there was neither marriage nor giving in marriage? But she went docilely home with her gray-haired father, made her debut and attended the parties, assiduously studying her chosen vocation. For while she had no intention of spending her life as a giver of teas and fondler of babies in a river town, the young gentlemen she met in Dalroy were typical specimens of manhood and what she learned from them now could doubtless be applied advantageously as the horizon of her opportunities widened.
She learned that while her face and figure were invaluable assets, looks alone were not sufficient working capital; for the best results one must also use one’s mind. Recalling that somewhere in her school-books she had seen a line about speech being given to man to conceal his thoughts, she reflected very soon that cleverness was given to woman to conceal her intellect: simply, that if a girl wished to captivate young gentlemen the best use she could make of her intelligence would be to employ it in devising means to prevent their suspecting that she had any. For Isabel to pose as less gifted than some of the young beaus she met that winter required mental agility of a very high order. But she did it, walking through the first weeks of the social season in a flutter of helpless loveliness.
Then, gradually, she became wiser. She discovered that the more brilliant of her male acquaintances did not admire such an utterly brainless beauty as she was pretending to be. She observed then that the cleverer a man was, the more he liked a clever woman, his only requirement being that she be just a trifle less clever than himself; he wanted her to look up to him, but the higher the pinnacle on which she could convince him she must stand in order to be just beneath him, the more he would be flattered by her adoration. And while she had not yet come across a young gentleman whom she sincerely considered wiser than herself, none of them suspected it.
Before Christmas Isabel was rewarded by becoming the most popular girl in town. Her date-book had no blank pages. When a cotillion was given her card was full weeks in advance, with many of the dances split to make room for all her admirers. Her room was piled with trophies consisting of flowers, chocolates, and handsomely bound copies of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. She had declined three proposals of marriage.
All these she looked upon as a candidate for the Legion of Honor might have regarded preliminary medals. Very gratifying, they proved she was on the right path, but this was still far short of her goal, and she moved carefully toward the extremely desirable man somewhere ahead of her. Popular as she was, she kept her reputation immaculate. Granting kisses, permitting too close an embrace in a waltz, staying out late without a chaperone—from these one gained nothing. Anything that commands a high price, she knew, does so because it is hard to get.
In fact, she had long since made up her mind to be so hard to get that nobody in her present surroundings could get her. Some relatives of her mother’s lived in New York, and they had invited Isabel to spend the next winter with them. They were very well-to-do, and Isabel expected them to show her a whiter harvest. She was not impatient; she was young, and she had already learned enough to convince her that there must be a great deal more to be learned.
Then Kester Larne, having graduated from Tulane, came home.
In her plans, Isabel had not given Kester Larne five minutes’ thought. She and Kester and his brother and sister had played together as children, but school had divided their paths and she had hardly seen Kester for several years. Ardeith was a rundown plantation, riddled with debt and sharecroppers by Kester’s extravagant father, and Kester himself was a thoughtless young man who had narrowly missed being expelled from college for his escapades. He certainly had no place on the map of her destiny.
But here was Kester, of course invited to all the parties, here was Kester calling to ask for dances at the cotillions—to which she casually said yes, for he was a handsome young fellow of good family and she had set out to bewitch him as a matter of course—and then, suddenly, here was Kester, who though he might be an idle youth was the most fascinating idler she had ever beheld, not only good to look at and a winged-heeled dancer, but the only man she had ever seen who gave her the impression of knowing more about women than she knew about men.
As they began to waltz one evening, Isabel in a cloud of pale blue tulle, Kester asked abruptly, “You’re too young to wear black, aren’t you?”
“Why?” asked Isabel.
“You’re marvelous as you are, Miss Isabel,” he answered demurely, “but if you wore black satin your technique would be irresistible.”
Isabel felt herself floundering, not sure whether or not he meant to be as horrid as he sounded. He was smiling very slightly, a smile that was caressing and almost tender, but his eyes were on her in a fashion that made her feel like an arithmetic problem being reduced to its simplest terms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Oh yes you do,” Kester retorted. “However, I’m already fascinated, so you can relax now.”
She stopped dancing. “I’ll thank you to take me back to my chaperone,” she exclaimed.
As though he had not heard her, Kester exclaimed in a voice of inspiration, “I have it—black won’t do yet, but have you ever tried a really violent blue? I shouldn’t put many blondes into bright colors, but in a regal blue you’d be gorgeous, like a heathen idol.”
Isabel was so much interested that she forgot she was angry and let him lead her to the side of the room and sit down by her while the others went on dancing. He was still talking.
“Those pale colors you wear make you too remote. You look like Elaine, and you ought to look like Francesca.”
“Who was Francesca?” she asked.
“A lady who went to hell for love,” said Kester. “You’d never do that, would you ?—but you ought to look as if you were willing to.”
“Really!” she exclaimed, and she felt uncomfortable.
“Yes, really. You’ve mistaken your type, Miss Isabel. You’re lovely, as I suppose
you’ve been told a thousand times, but don’t go too far with being the daughter of a hundred earls—”
“Why not?”
“Oh, Miss Isabel, don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten your Tennyson, and you not a year removed from a young ladies’ academy.”
“But I have,” she admitted easily, this time on more familiar ground. “I’m not a bit clever with books.”
Kester’s eyes, brown and frosty as a mint julep, looked upon her keenly, and his mouth quivered at the corners. “You’re too charming to need that approach, Miss Isabel.”
Isabel stood up. Now she really was angry. “Thank you. I know exactly what you mean. The line is, ‘The daughter of a hundred earls, you are not one to be desired.’ Now will you please take me back to my Aunt Agnes?”
Kester, who had risen when she did, laughed approvingly. “That’s much better. Now I like you. Please ma’am, won’t you finish this dance with me?”
Later Isabel thought that if she had been strong-minded enough to say no, her whole life might have been different. But she laughed too, and consented. She and Kester were together that evening as much as her other engagements would permit, and as he was finally delivering her to her Aunt Agnes to be taken home he said in a low voice, “Thank you for a delightful time. And will you try a startling blue gown?”
Isabel smiled frankly. “Yes. But I really don’t know who Francesca was,”
“I’ll send you a book about her tomorrow morning,” Kester promised. He bent his head nearer lest the chaperones hear him. “By the way, did I tell you you’re the most devastatingly beautiful woman I ever saw?”
The next day, instead of the pale sweetheart roses he should correctly have sent, there arrived a magnificent copy of the Inferno of Dante, with a length of royal blue ribbon marking the place where she read about the lovers whose ardor Dante had thought should be chilled for all eternity by the blowing mists of the pit. The book also contained a note from Kester saying he would be calling that afternoon to take her for a drive. He didn’t ask if it would be convenient, and she decided that since he was so sure of himself it would be good for him if when he called she sent a servant to say she was out because of a previous engagement, but when he arrived she was ready and waiting.
None of her other admirers would have sent her a story about a lady who indulged in unhallowed love, but somehow it seemed all right for Kester to do so. For in the weeks that followed Kester coolly refused to deal with her according to the accepted system of formalities that prevented a young gentleman and a young lady from getting to know anything about each other. He treated her like a reasonable individual, which for Isabel was a new and fascinating experience. From seeing each other frequently they soon reached the place where they were seeing each other every day.
Isabel knew she was being reckless. If she kept this up everybody would be taking it for granted that she and Kester were engaged. They were not engaged; he had not mentioned it, and she had no intention of accepting him if he should. Kester had nothing of what she intended to have in a husband, but he was so delightful, so interesting to talk to, so pleasant to be with—and soon, Isabel, who was not given to praying, began to plead in the solitary hours of the night, “Oh Lord, please don’t let me fall in love with Kester Larne.”
She could feel it happening. She could feel that Kester, without any effort on his part, was knocking down the castles of her dreams. Much more of this and she would not be able to leave him in search of that brilliant marriage on which she had set her ambition. Over and over she resolved to be out the next time he called, and over and over her resolution went down at the sound of his footsteps on the porch. And finally, when one evening in her own parlor she let him kiss her, it first lifted her to ecstasy and then thrust her into a farsighted terror. She rushed away from him, and upstairs in her own room she stood trembling, and thought, “Those foolish women, those women I’ve laughed at, who have given up their lives for a short bright passion—this is what conquers them. This is love. Oh, Lord God in heaven, don’t let me give in to it! To spend my life on an old plantation, wearing stockings silk halfway up and embroidering a new shirtwaist to freshen up last year’s suit and pouring coffee for the ladies’ guild of the church—me, Isabel Valcour, with real golden hair a yard long and the whole world in front of me! I can’t. To be that kind of a fool because Kester Larne kissed me. But isn’t it strange, I never knew it before, this is what conquers them.”
She was so apprehensive that an unexpected invitation from her New York relatives to spend a few weeks at their summer place in Westchester was like a miraculous answer to prayer. She fled from Kester. He wrote her a jolly letter, saying he hoped she was having a fine vacation and he was lonesome without her, but not including a single ardent line. This increased Isabel’s determination to be done with him, for though she could not rid her thoughts of Kester neither could she rid herself of the conviction that she cared a good deal more for him than he did for her. She did not answer his letter.
Isabel’s aunt and uncle were delighted with her. Not having seen her since she was a little girl, they were unprepared for the beautiful young woman she had become. At their Westchester house Isabel met numerous young men, and was an immediate success. Here, away from Kester, she began to look around with her customary shrewdness. Among the guests was a young German named Schimmelpfeng who was touring America and had been invited to her uncle’s country house because her uncle’s export firm sold raw cotton to the textile company owned by the German’s father.
Aside from his baffling name young Schimmelpfeng was not unacceptable, but neither was he exciting. He was a negative sort of person, the sort of whom one says, “Haven’t I met that fellow somewhere?” and then discovers one has conversed with him a dozen times. But he evidently admired Isabel, and was so assiduous in his attentions that she began to ask questions about him. Why, didn’t she, her uncle asked, know who the Schimmelpfengs were? No, she didn’t. But Schimmelpfeng dyes, Schimmelpfeng textiles, in short, Schimmelpfeng millions? No, said Isabel, she hadn’t known. What else? Why, not only a fine old family, but a most desirable business connection for her uncle. They were happy that she had been so beautifully courteous to him.
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. Kest
er 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.”
