by Edna Ferber
As for the blatant bronzes and flowered carpets and the writhing figures carved in every defenseless inch of wood, Clio, after one look, said, “Isn’t it frightful! I adore it! And that portrait! His coat of arms should be over the door. A cuspidor couchant, with two cigars and a plug of tobacco rampant.”
This got about and caused mingled resentment and hilarity.
But even Clio’s fastidious palate, accustomed to the most artful French and Creole cookery, could not deny the flavor and variety of the gaudy Club House restaurant. On cool evenings it was pleasant to dine where wines actually were known by name and age and where caviar and crêpes suzette were recognized as the alpha and omega of a good meal. It was pleasant, too, to be squired by the flamboyant Colonel Maroon or the shy but equally sensational Bart Van Steed.
She had been accompanied by Maroon on that first night when she entered the gaming rooms in defiance of the house rules. There were women in the parlors, in the lounge, but certainly they were not the cream of Saratoga summer society. They were adventurous nobodies who derived a vicarious sense of sin from being so near its portals; all the more ddlladng because it was forbidden them.
Clio had by now had quite enough of the hotel parlors with their shrill feminine chatter; she had had enough and to spare of the restaurants, of the drives, of the gargantuan hotel dining room. At the Club House she had eaten her dinner with enormous gusto, had mopped up the last drop of fragrant Cointreau and orange sauce with a little pillow of pancake.
“That was heavenly! Now I am going to play a little roulette. I’m always lucky at roulette.”
“Womenfolks not allowed in the gaming room. You know that, honey.”
“Ridicule! Provincial nonsense. Tell me about the owner of this Club House. Who is he?”
“There’s two of them. They bought it after Morrissey died. Charley Reed, he killed a man back in New Orleans in 1862 and they sentenced him to death but there was a lot of hocus-pocus and they got him pardoned. The Federal troops were in there by that time and the head of the gambling outfit was a fellow named Butler, brother of Major General Benjamin Butler. So Reed he got off and went right on with his gambling place. Well, say, now he’s all for society here in Saratoga; built himself a fifty-thousand-dollar house on Union Avenue, goes to the Episcopal church every Sunday. At the races every day, but you don’t see him around the Club House much.”
“And the other?”
“A Spencer, he’s the quietest spoken fellow you’d ever meet, stingy as all get-out. He’s got a hobby of collecting paintings but it isn’t just for fun. He buys ‘em cheap and sells at a profit.”
“What a country! A convicted murderer and an art dealer conduct a gambling house in the most famous watering-place in America.”
“That’s so. But look at us!”
“Look at all of them,” Clio interrupted. “I only marvel more and more that any country could be so rich and so vital as to survive the plundering of these past years. We are all thieves together, the lot of us.”
She actually entered the gaming room, a thing unheard of in the history of Saratoga. Followed by the protesting and rather sheepish Maroon, she had swept past the doorman before he could recover from his surprise and was strolling past the faro and roulette tables with a professionally interested eye.
“Madam,” an attendant protested. “Ladies are not allowed in the gaming rooms.”
“Nonsense. Send for Mr. Reed. Send for Mr. Spencer.” The pious ex-murderer was not to be found, but Spencer, resembling a shabby clerk in a lawyer’s office rather than the owner of the most notorious and gaudy gambling house in America, glided in and surveyed Mrs. De Chanfret with a fishy eye before he turned his reproachful gaze on Clint Maroon.
“Now, Colonel Maroon, after all the money you’ve taken out of this place—”
“It isn’t his fault, Mr. Spencer,” Clio interrupted quickly. “I am Mrs. De Chanfret. I have begged Mr. Van Steed and Mr. Maroon to escort me into your beautiful gaming rooms but they said it was forbidden. I couldn’t believe it. I have been everywhere in Europe— Monte Carlo, Aix, Nice, Cannes—and never have I heard of such a thing.”
“Hear of it now,” replied the laconic Spencer.
“Think of all the money you’re losing. Women are bad gamblers they say.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s just it. Hystericky. Get to screechin’.”
Every eye in the room was on them. She was wearing her dress of crème Beaupré veiling in the shade of Kioto porcelain and a blue surah vest bordered with red velvet. It was a costume in which she would have attracted attention under the most conventional circumstances. Now, in the midst of the men’s dark coats and snuffy midsummer seersuckers, she stood out like a flag in a breeze. Only the fish-eyed Spencer surveyed her unmoved.
“Thanks, Al,” Maroon said, uncomfortably. “Come on, CI— uh—Mrs. De Chanfret. We’d better mosey along now.”
But as always, opposition made her the more determined. “Mr. Spencer, I’ll make a confession to you. Colonel Maroon wagered me five hundred dollars that you wouldn’t let me play. I bet five hundred you would. If you’ll let me play just once I’ll put the five hundred on Number Five and, win or lose, I’ll go. Will you? Just this once?”
The chance to recoup something, if only five hundred dollars, from the lucky Texan proved too much for the avaricious Spencer.
“Win or lose. Promise?”
“Win or lose. Promise.”
Without a word Maroon peeled five one-hundred-dollar bills from the sheaf in his wallet and handed them to Spencer. Spencer in turn gave them to Clio. Wordlessly, without waiting to buy chips, she flung them down on the five.
Five won. She pointed to the winnings. “Thank you so much, dear Mr. Spencer. The original five please give to Mr. Maroon. The rest you will please give to your favorite charity in Saratoga”—in a definitely clear tone. The cream-and-blue Beaupré veiling floated out of the room followed by a fuming Maroon and leaving in its wake a buzz of talk that sounded like a badly directed mob scene in a pageant.
“Now what in tarnation did you do that for, Clio!”
“You’re not angry, are you Clint chéri? I had to play, once. It’s very bad for me to be forbidden things I want to do. Harmless things, I mean.”
“Suppose you’d lost the five?”
“I’d have paid you back. You know that.”
“God help any man who takes up with you for life. I wouldn’t be in his shoes, not for a million.”
“Oh, I’m hoping he’ll have more than a mere million.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“No. No, I’m not. Not sure of myself or of you or anything or of anyone—” Her voice trailed off into wistful nothingness.
“There you go! Hard as nails to begin with, and then you get to feeling sorry for yourself and next thing you’ve got me and Kaka and Cupide and everybody else babying you like you were two years old. Well, that’s about what you act like—two years old.”
They were walking toward the hotel in the soft midsummer darkness. “Do I? Yes, I suppose I do.” There was something disarming about her unexpected acquiescence. “But what chance had we here in a place like this unless we made a great fuss? My little plan with Van Steed—it has thrown you two together, hasn’t it? Everyone here knows you and me, they think we are rich and important. They suspect nothing.”
He put his hand over hers that lay on his arm as they walked. “Honey, this kind of game, you’ve got to work quick and get out before they find the pea under the walnut shell.”
“Then what have you done with Van Steed? I have done what I could. I’ve told him that he is wonderful. I’ve told him that you are wonderful. If I can have ten more days I think he would have the courage to be serious. You say you have a plan. Why don’t you tell me! I can see no chance for big money unless this plan of yours is one that he—What is it, this plan, anyway? I’ve no head for railroads. Railroads bore me. But tell me simply.”
“Same old plan we used to use when the sheep men tried to crowd the catde men off the range. The quickest draw and the hardest fist and the smartest one to outguess the other, he won.”
“Yes, but tell me. Tell me what is being done with this railroad. I’ll try to understand.”
“Anybody could understand. That’s the trouble. Did you ever hear of a fellow named Morgan—J. P. Morgan?”
“You once spoke of him.”
Strolling along in the soft darkness, his hand on hers, he told his story of ruthlessness, and his gende drawling voice that she so loved to hear made it seem stirring and almost romantic.
“Well sir, he’s a scrapper for you. New fellow. Banker. Smart as Gould and just as hard, but he ain’t rough. Not poor white trash with no bringing up, like Rockefeller and Huntington and Gould and Jim Hill, Carnegie and Vanderbilt and Astor. Morgan, his pa was a banker before him. I don’t mean he’s any sissy, even if his name is Pierpont. But he sits quiet; he’s as close-mouthed as an Indian. Matter of that, they’re all in the same kettle. Yellow-livered, wouldn’t fight in the Civil War, Pa said. Paid substitutes to fight for ‘em; they were too busy robbing the country, themselves. But this Morgan, he’s been to Europe, worked in a bank there; he’s had a college education.”
“Is he rich?”
“Rich! Hell, yes!”
“Married?”
His laugh rang out. “No, honey, no. I mean, no for you. Seems he married young, and she died. But no, sugar.”
“Eh bien! One never knows. Do go on, chéri. I am fascinated.”
“Folks have a lot of respect for him. Scared ofhim, too, I reckon; because he keeps his mouth shut they don’t know what he’s thinking. I told him what I wanted to do—”
“When? Where?”
“Oh, last week, you were busy as a bird-dog hatching one of your plots with Kaka and Cupide, I guess, and off making little Bart think butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. I went to New York.”
“New York! Without me!”
“Honey, you can’t go traveling around with Colonel Maroon—a respectable widow like you. You got your work cut out, according to your own pattern.”
She jerked his arm, irritably for her. “Go on, then. Go on! Never mind about my plan. Yours.”
“You couldn’t call it a plan. It’s so dumb and simple nobody’s willing to believe it’ll work. That’s Easterners for you! Course, it is rough, maybe, a mite. But not any rougher than they were with Pa. Now, that hundred miles of road between Albany and Binghamton, it keeps on breaking down all the time. The other crowd sees to that. The trains go off the tracks. The trestles break down. There’s fights in the trains and people get hurt. It’s got so nobody’ll use the road for freight or passengers. Scairt to. It’s all done by Gould and his gang. They’re trying to make the trunk line worthless so little Bart will sell it to them cheap and good riddance. He’s tried law and order by calling on the citizens of the towns the road runs through. Well, the Gould gang gets them beaten up, and now he’s got agents going through the towns with bundles of cash buying up stock that’s held by the townships. They even tried to take over the books and the headquarters by force. That’s always been the system of men like Fisk and Gould and Drew—you don’t know about ‘em, but I’ve heard of ‘em all my life. Their scheme is, run it into the ground, make it worthless and you’ll get it for nothing. The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western crowd would help little Bart Van Steed—that’s a coal company—and back of it all that J. P. Morgan—if Van Steed would only fight. I mean, fight. I’d be willing to lead a gang down there. I’d get together a certain crowd I know. I’d put men in every office and railroad yard and station, and on every train and in every engine. I’d battie ‘em bloody. I’d run ‘em off the range.”
They had reached the hotel. She took her hand from his arm, she stopped dead in the light that streamed from the open windows facing the piazza. “But this is a civilized day. These are like stories of Indian fighters. It is savage. I can’t believe that business in America is conducted like this! You are laughing at me!”
“Nope. That’s the straight of it.”
She shook her head, she looked up at him. “Poor little Bartholomew Van Steed!”
“Honey, come on away from here with me.”
But now she shook her head again, and this time it was for him. “When I leave Saratoga I intend to be settled for life—settled and safe and sure. But sure.”
“I can always make enough for the two of us.”
“But you just said God help any man who takes up with me for life.”
“Who’s talking about a lifetime!”
“I am.”
Up the broad piazza steps and into the lobby. The cream-and-blue veiling, the white sombrero immediately were aware of an overtone of shrillness, an added quiver of excitement in the babble that issued from the hotel parlor.
Roscoe Bean skimmed by, his coat-tails vibrant. “What’s up?” drawled Maroon. “The cats seem to be miaouing louder than ordinary tonight.”
“Sh-sh!” Bean’s unctuous smile had in it a touch of apprehension. “Oh, Colonel Maroon, you kill me the way you put things.” He dropped his voice as though speaking of the sacred. “It’s Madam Van Steed. Madam Van Steed has arrived.”
XIV
Madam Van Steed sat on the piazza next morning, and her subjects paid her court. Frelinghuysens and Belmonts, Burnsides and Stewarts were reduced to their proper stations in the presence of royalty. Even Miss P. Vanderbilt, aunt of the fabulous William, whose first name no one seemed to know and wouldn’t have dared use if they had, paid her respects to the monolithic figure whose iron-gray hair and iron-gray eyes and iron-gray gown seemed hewn from the very material of which she was made. Miss P. Vanderbilt ruled her own Vanderbilt clan with a terrible and devastating sweetness, a wistful blue eye, a tremulous smile, a tiny childlike voice. She wore little white lisse caps beneath which her faded curls bobbed jauntily. In the hotel dining room the Vanderbilt table was fourth from the door but the Van Steed table was second from the door and on the garden side. Madam Van Steed conducted herself like a comedy duchess in a bad American play about a duchess. Yet, once explained, her foibles were legitimate enough. Her companion, Miss Diggs, was there to drape shawls, read aloud, fetch and carry, pat pillows, write letters. Her crook-handled walking stick was a necessary adjunct to one who was ridden by rheumatism. The temper was induced by pain, for the arthritic right hand was curled into a claw. Her possessiveness toward her son was the frustrated love which had been rejected by the philandering Van Steed père. Her arrogance, her spitefulness and her domineering habit were probably glandular, but added up to pure meanness, and could have existed only in one to whom the grace of humor had been completely denied.
This bulky and aged Borgia now sat enthroned in her corner of the United States Hotel piazza. Each subject received his meed of poison as he approached the presence. The strident, overbearing voice carried up and down half the length of the enormous promenade.
“Oh, it’s Miss Vanderbilt! Still wearing your little caps, I see.” Then, in a piercing aside to Miss Diggs: “Bald as a billiard ball. Those curls are stitched to the cap.”
Bart Van Steed hung over her chair, captive. “Well, I’ll just drive down to Congress Spring, Mother. Shall I bring you a fresh bottle of water?”
“Diggs fetched it early this morning. Stay here with me, Bartholomew. After all, I arrived only last night, I haven’t had a chance to talk to you. . . . Who’s this? Oh, Mrs. Porcelain. You are still Mrs. Porcelain, I suppose? What’s the matter with the men these days! They want nothing but young chits of sixteen. The sillies! As soon as a woman gets along toward her thirties and has some sense they count her as shopworn. ... Is there a circus in town? But then who’s that driving tandem with the white reins? Oh, the Forosini! No wonder. The old man himself looks like a ringmaster and now all the daughter needs is spangles and a hoop to make it perfect.”
Only Mrs. Coventry Bellop gave her dar
t for dart. For well over a decade these two had been coming to Saratoga to partake of the waters and to enjoy their ancient feud. Madam Van Steed had the money, Mrs. Coventry Bellop the blood. She regarded Madam Van Steed as a parvenu and the Goulds, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Belmonts as upstarts. She loathed stupidity and dullness, played poker with the men; it was said she had been seen to smoke a pipe. Madam Van Steed, the conventional, regarded her with horror mingled with a wholesome fear. Bellop made no secret of her poverty. She knew the characters and the scandals of the Club House since the day of Morrissey; every hotel register was an open book to her. She knew how much the faro dealers were paid; which actually were secretaries and which were not in the cottages of the lonely millionaires whose wives were in Europe; had the most terrific inside political information about the doings, past, present and future of the late Boss Tweed, and of Samuel Tilden, James G. Blaine, Sanford Church. The lives of the Lorillards, the Kips, the Lelands were not only an open book to her but one from whose pages she gave free and delightful readings. She boasted that she was helping General Ulysses S. Grant with his memoirs; she gossiped with Mark Twain when he came to near-by Mount McGregor to visit General Grant. She was the confidante of chambermaids, racetrack touts, millionaires, cooks, dowagers, bookies, debutantes, brokers, jockeys and, amazingly enough, she rarely betrayed a genuine confidence. Hers was the expansive, sympathetic and outgoing nature which attracts emotional confession. She was at once generous and grasping. She never had a penny long.
Clio had been conscious that this woman marked her comings and goings; suspected her plans; coolly appraised her jewelry and her exhibitionistic outbursts. The plump good-natured face, like the Cheshire Cat, seemed to materialize out of thin air. The humorous intelligent eyes seemed to be weighing her, evaluating her.