The Champagne Girls

by Tessa Barclay

  But for the moment he preferred not to think of that. He had had a pleasant visit with the Tramonts, was being escorted on his afternoon walk by an exceedingly beautiful young lady, and all was well with his world.

  ‘So, Mademoiselle Gaby,’ he said, tugging at his little Vandyke beard, ‘you didn’t have a “white ball” for your coming out.’

  ‘No, it would have been inappropriate, don’t you agree ‒ considering that we were still in deep mourning for Philip. And to tell the truth, I was pleased. I’ve never liked this idea of a big fuss.’

  ‘I can only say it’s a great shame, mademoiselle. You would have been a huge success.’

  She smiled and gave a little bow in acknowledgement of the compliment. ‘I shall have my small success, perhaps, next week. I’m having a little provincial coming-out party here at Calmady.’ She took off a glove, to run a hand along a vine branch, gently and with affection. ‘This is where we belong, after all. Paris has almost become a place where we go merely to do battle.’

  ‘Ah, you can say what you like, but Paris is the centre of the world,’ he replied with the conviction of a Parisian born and bred. ‘And the battles we do there are the cynosure of all eyes. No one can really be a success in France unless he captures Paris ‒ either figuratively or metaphorically.’

  ‘There’s truth in that, of course, m’sieu. Cousin Netta is good at that part of the fight. I try to be a help to her, but ‒’

  ‘You are too young and beautiful to spend your time on politics, mademoiselle.’ He took her hand and kissed it.

  She was amused at the clumsy compliment but hid the fact. It was important to keep Monsieur Zola in a good mood. They must persuade him to leave the country if the court condemned him. For what use was he to them if he was in prison? They needed him free and able to write, even if it had to be from abroad.

  After an early dinner that evening Gaby’s father escorted Zola and the other guests to the station. When he came back the family were awaiting him in the drawing room.

  ‘Well, Robert?’ Gavin demanded as his partner limped in and sat rather heavily in a corner of the sofa.

  Robert nodded. ‘Yes, he’s agreed. He had enough of prison when they shut him up after “I Accuse”. We’re making travel arrangements for him to go to England.’

  ‘Papa, maybe the judges will acquit him,’ David put in.

  Everyone turned to stare at the young man. ‘If you really believe that,’ his Aunt Alys said grimly, ‘you had better give up studying law at once ‒ you’re too naive to survive.’

  The family party broke up for the night. They were anxious yet determined. Things were moving at last. Although they were still not winning, the government was greatly on the defensive. In time, in time … In time there would be justice.

  Although the sentence against Zola of a year’s imprisonment was what they had expected, they were downcast next day when the news came through. But then friends in Paris telephoned to say that Zola was safely off across the Channel. He would go on with his campaigning in the friendly security of England. Alys had already written to dear old Grandpapa Gri-gri asking him to give hospitality to the writer and make sure he found a comfortable billet for his sojourn abroad.

  Now it was time to turn to family matters. Gaby’s coming-out ball was to be the following Thursday. It was an awkward time to be giving it, with work so pressing in the winefields. But it was the earliest date that Laura Fournier-Tramont had felt able to arrange.

  Her nephew Philip had been killed at the beginning of October. His parents and sister had been in deepest black ever since. At least six months had to be allowed to go by before the question of Gaby’s coming-out could be discussed, and then of course it was too late for Paris, even if they could have afforded the season.

  Now, nine months into the year’s mourning, it would be allowable to have a ball, nothing elaborate, and that was all to the good because there would be less expense. Alys Hopetown-Tramont had agreed to attend briefly and to wear colours ‒ perhaps grey or heliotrope. This hint to their friends and neighbours brought a good number of acceptances. All the same, there was an awkwardness. People didn’t like being too mixed up with a family who embraced the cause of Dreyfus so openly and fervently. And who actually invited that awful M. Zola to the house!

  ‘Well, my dear, I’m sure we’ve done all we can,’ Laura observed as they sat in her little boudoir ticking names on lists. ‘The menus will arrive tomorrow I wish the printer had been more prompt but there are always these little hitches …’

  ‘Oh, Mama, people can see what’s on the buffet table! We don’t need menus!’

  ‘Gaby, dear, people like to take them home as keepsakes. And this is a rather special occasion so they’ll want them all the more.’

  ‘You mean they’ll want them as mementoes of actually sitting on the same chair as that firebrand Zola, or eating off the same dish as the singer Netta de la Sebiq-Tramont.’

  Laura smiled. Gaby’s outspoken style always amused her. There had been a time when she’d worried about it ‒ because her friends used to shake their heads and say it would drive away prospective husbands. But everything was different these days. Her outlook on life had changed completely. Little things didn’t trouble her any more.

  Not that a husband for Gaby was exactly a little thing. But Laura had come to the conclusion that her daughter wouldn’t settle easily into matrimony and that it would be better to let her stretch her wings a little first. After all, Gaby’s cousin Netta had taken her time about making a match, and look how well that had turned out.

  The ball on Thursday was a slight bow of recognition to convention, Laura felt. The rest was up to Gaby ‒ if she didn’t wish to launch herself into the marriage market, well and good. The death of her nephew Philip had made the elder Tramonts realise how precious were their children ‒ to be loved and valued rather than forced into some mould that the rest of society respected.

  Events at the Tramont ball turned out quite differently from all expectations, however.

  There were eighty guests, about half of whom were expected to dance. The mothers of the young ladies had been at work for some days ensuring that their daughters’ carnets were suitably full of partners. Young men weren’t so plentiful as might have been the case in a Paris ballroom and so Laura had accepted two or three strangers ‒ all of course vouched for by families well-known to her.

  There was a six-piece orchestra, locally recruited, to play the required waltzes, gallops and two-steps. They were rendering a country-dance, allowable since this was a provincial ball, when noises from outside began to drown them out. There was the sound of wagon-wheels, men’s voices raised in shouts.

  The dancers faltered, the music began to die. Now the guests could make out the words of the shout.

  ‘Down with Tramonts! Down with the dirty Dreyfusards!’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ gasped Laura, putting out a hand blindly for her husband.

  He grasped it. ‘Don’t be afraid, Laura. It’s just some bunch of hooligans.’

  ‘But how did they get in?’

  Only too easily, of course. None of the estate staff would have expected interlopers.

  A wagon trundling along the road to the mansion ‒ who could have expected it to bring trouble-makers?

  Grooms and gardeners came running. They found a flat-bed wagon pulled up on the terrace outside the house. To get there it had ploughed through the shrubbery. Two heavy horses had been set free from their harness and, cut across the rear with whips, had gone galloping off in fright through the flower-beds.

  A band of men were standing on the wagon, holding banners and bawling. The grooms grabbed at them, to haul them down. One man was kicked in the head and went down, blood streaming from a bad scalp wound.

  The male guests had reacted after their fashion. Some had run to the windows to order the hooligans off, others had retreated to the far side of the room.

  Robert put his wife into a high-backed chair. ‘Stay
there, dear.’ He moved towards the windows. Some of the older men fell in beside him. Among them he noticed Marc Auduron, junior partner in the law firm who handled his affairs in Rheims, and Grossard, the head of the bottle-making firm.

  The scuffle on the terrace was turning into a big fight. Worse yet, when they got out there the guests found there were reinforcements coming through the shrubbery ‒ at least another dozen men, silhouetted against the summer sky.

  The gamekeeper of the estate happened to be near the house, on his rounds ‒ he’d really come to peep in through the windows and see Mademoiselle in her pretty white ballgown. Lasalle understood the problem at once. He brought up his shotgun, slapped it closed. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Clear out or I fire!’

  ‘Yah! Traitors! Rotten bastards ‒’

  Lasalle fired one barrel into the air. ‘The second barrel goes through you lot! Now clear off!’

  The men retreated, leaving the injured groom on the flagstones. Lasalle ran after them, with others of the estate staff.

  Gaby Fournier-Tramont sped to the dais on which the orchestra was sitting, instruments loose in their grasp.

  ‘Play!’ she commanded. ‘Play, boys!’

  The ‘boys’, most of them old enough to be her father, tucked violins under chins, put trumpets to lips. The leader banged with his foot ‒ one, two. The band broke out into the tune they’d been playing when they were interrupted: ‘High the summer garland raise, Round our village take your ways …’ Gaby wheeled to the room. She threw out her hands. ‘Let’s dance, my friends!’

  A broken cheer rang out. Men offered their hands to ladies. The ladies, a little pale, tottered back into the double line of the country dance. The men, looking determined, made hands-across and partners-swing. Gaby’s partner took her by the elbow and led her down the middle of the rows.

  His name was Lucas Vourville, unknown to her until that evening, friend of a friend in Épernay but from a family owning engineering works in Lille. He was tall, very fair, and about twenty-two years old. He was also greatly smitten by the extraordinary good looks of the girl who now remet him in the turns of the country dance ‒ her flashing dark eyes, her minute waist in its finely-boned gown of white tulle and pale pink rosebuds …

  If he hadn’t admired her before, he certainly would now, after her bravery. How wonderful, to lead them back into the dance without caring for the intruders!

  There came a smashing of glass as they danced to the end of the row. The terrace window came in, sending smithereens towards them that sparkled like ice crystals. Lucas clasped her in his arms bodily and swung her round so that his broad-cloth-covered back caught the shower.

  The trespassers had been driven back out of the garden. But in the dark, and taken by surprise, the servants couldn’t get rid of them. There was easily-found ammunition among the bricks for the rebuilding of the loading-shed. Now they came hurtling through the windows, lobbed from beyond the terrace.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Lucas asked Gaby, taking the excuse to hold her close.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, making no attempt to release herself. She was trembling, and quite frightened, but she was also elated in some strange way.

  All her life Gaby had been surrounded by handsome men. Her father’s sombre good looks, Uncle Gavin’s open English features, Cousin Frederic’s almost Latin charm, even her brother David’s dreamy goodness … But Lucas Vourville was different. She thought he looked like some young sun-god from a Greek temple.

  She had been educated at a strict girls’ school. There, her schoolmates went through the usual romantic dreams and crushes on such males as were available ‒ but in actual fact there had been few opportunities to be in close contact with a man.

  Now she found herself held close against the fast-beating heart of a tall, handsome stranger. And she felt her own heart melting away within her breast.

  ‘Well, sweetheart,’ Robert said next day to his wife, ‘despite all the interruptions, it seems to have been a successful ball.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can say that!’ mourned Laura. ‘Madame Auduron’s gown was ruined by flying glass. And as far as I can see, the police are quite unable to say who was responsible.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that, Laura. Of course we suffered some damage, and I suppose we ought to offer to pay for Madame Auduron’s gown. What I meant was, did you see our daughter as she said goodbye to Lucas Vourville?’

  ‘Oh, that … Well, of course … They were brought unexpectedly close together by the incident of the stone-throwing.’

  ‘You mean you think it was just the mood of the moment?’

  ‘Whatever it was, Robert, we mustn’t let it run away with us. Who is Monsieur Vourville, actually?’

  ‘Well, his invitation was obtained and vouched for by the Rollins, wasn’t it? The Rollins are very respectable people, dear.’

  ‘We shall see what comes of it. If he’s visiting with them and goes elsewhere soon, we may not see him again.’

  ‘Oh … Do you really think that?’

  Laura nodded her dark head. But then she added with a faint smile, ‘It might be as well to make a few inquiries about him, all the same.’

  Messages as to the family’s welfare poured in as soon as a reasonable mid-morning hour arrived. The telephone never stopped ringing with regards and good wishes. Although not all the neighbours approved of the Tramonts’ involvement with the Dreyfus affair, they had a wholesome landowners’ respect for property ‒ the thought that strangers could surge in and wreck a social occasion was abominable.

  Lucas Vourville came himself with Adrien Rollin in the afternoon. Anxious inquiries were made as to the health of the ladies after such an upset to the nerves. Somehow it happened that Lucas Vourville spirited Gaby off to a shaded corner of a vine arbour, there to be unearthed when it was time and more than time for the afternoon call to end.

  ‘I really had better make some investigations into him,’ Robert said when he heard about it.

  The information obtained was quite acceptable. The Vourvilles had been ironmasters, had now gone over to heavy engineering. They weren’t extraordinarily rich, but then neither were the Tramonts in these hard times. There was a married sister, the alliance very suitable, a haut-bourgeois family in Belgium.

  ‘Well, if he comes asking for Gaby’s hand, I shan’t close the door on him,’ Robert said.

  But that was just the problem. The young couple seemed to be so wrapped up in each other that they were content to be swept along without looking about them. Robert, after a few weeks and at Gavin’s instigation, took the young man gently to task.

  ‘I must ask you, monsieur, whether you have any intentions other than a long friendship with my daughter?’

  Lucas was taken aback. ‘What? Oh ‒ I … I …’

  ‘I have no objection to the friendship, of course. Only it must not be so exclusive. Since you came to our ball in July, she has scarcely spoken to anyone else.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, monsieur … Yes, I suppose that’s true … Well, then … Yes, of course … I … I …’

  ‘Have you any reluctance to think of marriage?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Lucas. In fact, his family had been hinting that a good match would be gratefully received.

  ‘In that case, may I ask you to go home and speak to your father, and then if you wish to continue the relationship with my daughter, you might return with some proposals?’

  ‘Certainly, sir, of course. I’ll go to Lille in the morning.’

  Gaby moped and grizzled all through his interminable absence ‒ a whole four days. When he returned, he went straight to Robert with a formal proposal for Gaby’s hand.

  ‘So now we don’t have to keep trying to snatch moments alone together. We’re officially allowed!’ he said with a chuckle to Gaby.

  She rested her head against his shoulder. ‘I shouldn’t get too optimistic. Mama’s very kind-hearted, but she’ll keep an eye on us, you know.’

  Laura i
ntended to do just that, but things were happening again in the matter of Captain Dreyfus. Colonel Henry, long known to be implicated in the affair, had been forced to admit forging two letters used in evidence. Rather than face a court-martial, he committed suicide. And immediately after that the man whom the Dreyfus supporters considered to be the arch-enemy had fled to Belgium.

  Naturally the Dreyfus family had filed an appeal to the Minister of Justice for a reopening of the case. Laura was deeply involved in helping. And normally her little daughter would have been acting as helper, writing letters on her behalf on the newly bought typewriter. Well, let the child enjoy what was rightfully hers ‒ the joys of falling in love. Laura would manage without her.

  So, unsupervised, Gaby wandered about the grounds with Lucas. Kisses and caresses became more and more passionate. Gaby’s soul seemed to be unleashed when he touched her. And Lucas was a sexually knowledgeable young man, accustomed to having girls surrender to his charms. His career at university had been a succession of easy conquests among the midinettes and shopgirls.

  Soon he was begging Gaby for more. ‘Why not, dearest heart? We’ll be married soon, as soon as our families have sorted out the settlements. Why should we wait for someone else to tell us when we can belong to each other?’

  ‘No, darling … It would be wrong … Mama would be so upset …’

  ‘But she need never know! It’s so easy, Gaby. We can meet in Paris.’

  And it was indeed easy. Gaby had only to say that she was going to Paris to give some help to her Cousin Netta, who had a concert coming up soon. Laura, unsuspicious, gave her permission. Gaby took the train to Paris, her heart hammering at the thought of what she was about to do but full of yearning to give herself utterly to the man she loved.

  Lucas had told her he had a friend with a little apartment in the Rue de Rome. She took a cab, was set down at the door. The concierge knew better than to take any notice of this little beauty who, with cheeks flushed in love and apprehension, ran up the stairs.