by Edna Ferber
“Then it is blackmail, after all?”
“No, child. I tell you I like you. And I hate Clarissa Van Steed and everything she stands for. She and women like her have kept America back fifty years. Hard and rigid and provincial. And mean. She’s got the ugliest house in New York; the curtains at her front windows amount to a drawbridge moat and basdon. What’s a bastion, anyway?”
Clio laughed again. “You came here just to talk. But I think you are really wonderful. The one amusing person I have met in America.”
“That’s right. Keep up that French accent. Your natural theater sense is one of your most valuable assets—though sometimes you overdo it. . . . So you’re set on marrying litde Bart Van Steed, eh?”
“I do not think that concerns you.”
“You can’t do it without me. He hasn’t asked you yet, and he never will, now that the old devil’s here, unless he’s properly managed.”
Suddenly, “I do not think I care to go on with this conversation.”
But Sophie Bellop blithely waved aside this blunt statement which Clio had followed by rising as though to end the visit. Brighdy, chattily, she went on, her attitude more relaxed now, her big body leaning comfortably against the chair back.
“Sit down, child, and stop fussing. Now then. Bart’s really rich. I don’t mean just rich—he’s got seventy, eighty millions if he’s got a cent and even if the Gould crowd trick him out of the trunk line—”
Clio sat down then. “You know about that, too?”
“Of course. I’m coming to that later. Maroon. Let’s see—what was I saying? Oh, yes. Well, I’ve watched you like a hawk, you’re a smart girl, you’ve got the jaw of success, and if you manage that big handsome brute right, even if he isn’t as smart as you are—oh, I forgot, you’re set on marrying Van Steed instead. Well, perhaps you’re right, but I suppose if I had it to do I’d be a fool and marry the Texan though he hasn’t a penny. I never could resist a magnificent specimen like that. Those shoulders, and small through the hips, and the way he looks at you. Ah, me! Well, lucky I haven’t turned silly in my old age. I play the piano like an angel, I never forget a face, I’m healthy, I don’t nip away at a bottle the way some women do, my age, poor things.”
She had not yet put her cards on the table. Her handsome shrewd eyes were on Clio; she was talking now in order to give the girl time in which to digest what she had heard. “They’ll be after you now; they’ve only been waiting for a leader; they’ll tear you to pieces if you try to go it alone from now on. But they’re afraid of me. It was I who fixed on the number Four Hundred for the Centennial Ball in ‘76. You probably don’t know about that. Most of the world thinks that Ward McAllister and Mrs. William Astor picked the Four Hundred. But the inner circle knows I did it. More heads fell that winter than at the dme of the Bastille. Those daughters and granddaughters of peddlers and butchers and fur dealers and land grabbers are afraid of me because I’m not scared of them. And I give them a good time, poor dears, and show them how to have fun with their money.”
Now that Clio Dulaine understood thoroughly, she put her question bluntly. “How much do you want?”
“Understand,” parried Mrs. Coventry Bellop, “you don’t need anyone to manage you; you’ve been clever as can be from the very first. That spectacular entrance and then disappearing for two days. They nearly died. I see you’ve got a crest on almost everything. Can’t make it out, though.”
“Kaka embroiders so beautifully. My name is Clio. She combined that with the crest of the Duc de Chaulnes and part of the coat-of-arms of the Dulaines. Sometimes I use just the plain letter C, with a vine or a wreath.”
Sophie Bellop burst into laughter. “That’s what I mean. You’re a natural success. You have the right instinct. Nothing can stop you— with me behind you.”
“How much do you want?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Bellop rattled on, “you’ve got the right to help yourself to a couple of crests and titles. Look at the people who’ve come over this land like vultures. Not only Americans. Lord Dunmore’s got a hundred thousand acres of good American land if he’s got a grain. Dunraven’s got sixty thousand up in Colorado. We’re fools. We’re fools. We think it can go on forever. Too much of everything. I’ll bet in another hundred years or even less we’ll find out. We’ll be a ruined country unless they stop this grabbing. We’ll be so soft that anybody can come and take us like picking a ripe plum. It’s something to scare you, this country, I always say. There’s never been anything like it. Floods, grasshoppers, snowstorms—never anything in moderation. Too hot or too cold or too high or too big. The whole West from North Dakota on buried in snow last winter. You can’t begin to—”
“How much do you want?”
“I think you can get him if you want him. Mrs. Porcelain’s too Dolly Vardenish and pink for him. And the Forosini’s too common. I’m nearly sixty. I won’t live more than another ten or twelve years. I’ll take twenty-five thousand down on the day of your settlement and ten thousand a year for ten years. I don’t want to be grasping.”
“How do you know—how do I know—that I can’t do this alone?”
“Very well. Try it.”
“Or suppose, together, we don’t succeed. Then what?”
“Nothing. You’ll have learned from me and I from you. You can give me a present—something negotiable, I hope. Now then, I like everything in writing, black on white. It saves a lot of rumpus in the end.”
The sound of swift, light footsteps on the cottage veranda, the hall door opened and shut, a tap at the door of the little sitting room. Clio stood up, an unaccustomed scarlet suddenly showing beneath the cream-white skin.
“Come in!”
Maroon’s height and breadth seemed to fill the little room. He brought with him the smell of the stables and of barber’s ointment and cigars and leather.
The lusty Sophie sniffed the air. “You smell nice and masculine. It’s grand.”
His blue plainsman’s eyes looked from Clio to Sophie and back again. “You two plotting something? You look guilty as all hell.”
Clio trailed her laces over to him, she picked up his great hand, she looked at it intently as though examining it for the first time. Ai intimate gesture, childlike. “Mrs. Bellop is going to be my—my chaperon.”
He grinned. “Little late, I’d say.”
Mrs. Bellop stood up and shook herself like an amiable poodle. “Not too late. We hope.”
He eyed Clio straight. “Not too late for—what?”
Clio dropped his hand then and walked to the window that looked out on the sun-dappled garden. She shrugged her shoulders evasively.
Mrs. Bellop furnished a brisk answer. “For social success and a brilliant marriage—with someone who is really mad about her. You know who.” She came over to Maroon, the plump poodle looked saucily up at the mastiff. “Though I’ll say this: how any girl can look at any other man when you’re around is more than I can see. If I was twenty years younger—well—twenty-five, say—I’d snatch you off if I had to drug you to do it. Speaking of drugs, that horse of yours—well, we won’t go into that. Thanks for the dp, though. Comes in handy when a girl’s got her own way to make. . . . What was I saying—oh, yes. If she wants to marry money, why, that’s her business. I did. And now look at me. But don’t think I’m going to neglect you, dear boy. I’ve got a scheme I want you to present to Bart Van Steed—you can say you thought of it—and I’ll swear it will save that trunk line of the Albany and Tuscarora from falling into the clutches of—”
“Hold on there! Hold on! Just because Clio there has got me saddle broke don’t get the idea that you can gentle me. If Clio is hankering for social success and a brilliant marriage, and you’re the one to rope and tie the bridegroom, why here’s wishing you luck. But you got me wrong, sister. When it comes to riding my own range, why, I’m the one that wears the pants. That matter, Clio, I’d say— only I don’t want to get mixed up in any woman business—I’d say you’ve gone this
far alone, I’d go the rest of the way and play the game out.”
Slowly, as though emerging from a spell, Clio turned from the window. “You would?” she said, uncertainly. “You would?”
“Sure would. You’re smarter than any woman in this town. Go it alone. . . . Sa-a-ay, that coffee sure smells good. Kaka! How about rustling me a cup!”
Clio Dulaine walked over to Mrs. Bellop. She held out her hand. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Bellop. You have been so kind. Don’t think me ungrateful. I like you. But he is right.”
Mrs. Bellop looked from one to the other, she laughed a little discomfited laugh. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You are wonderful. So honest. And really good. Here. Please take this.” To her own surprise Clio took a ring from her finger, pressed it into Mrs. Bellop’s hand. “You are the only woman who has shown me kindness.”
“Women,” murmured Mrs. Bellop as she turned the ring this way and that to catch the light, “are a hundred years behind the rimes. They don’t know their own strength. Some day they’ll catch up with themselves and then this will be a different world. Look here, Clio, I’m going to stay behind you anyway, not being bossy but just in case. And just to prove to you I like you I’m going to keep your ring. Giving it to me is the first foolish thing you’ve done. Hang onto your jewelry, I always say. It’s a woman’s best friend.”
XV
Suddenly Clio Dulaine felt herself curiously alone in Saratoga; not alone merely, but neglected. She had arrived in an impasse. She knew she must break through this or devise another way. Her flouncings, her paradings, her dramatic entrances, her outrageous flouting of the conventions had begun to pall on her audience. Her sure dramatic sense warned her of this. At this crucial moment her two swains had grown distrait and even neglectful.
“Business,” Clint would say, when she reproached him. “I’d like to go along with you, honey, but I’ve got a little matter of business to tend to. Now, Bart, he’d come a-running if he knew you wanted to drive out. Why’n’t you send Cupide over with a note?”
“How dare you!” she would say, melodramatically.
Innocendy, almost absently, he would stare at her. “What’s up? Have I said something? I didn’t go to.”
“How dare you say to me that you’re busy! And suggest that I go about begging other men to take me here and there! Perhaps the kind of women you have—”
“Hold on! I didn’t say anything about other men. I said Bart. He’s the man you’re fixing to marry.”
“Oh, so that’s it. You’re jealous.”
“Oh. Yes. Uh-huh. Leastways, I would be if I had time. But I am busier than a sheep dog. Look, I’m seeing Van Steed right soon. Shall I tell him?”
“Get out! Get out of my sight!”
There was about him nothing of the chagrined suitor. On the contrary, he seemed elated and thoroughly the male pleased with himself. This in itself was sufficiently annoying to the high-handed Clio. But now, to her bewilderment, the dmorous Van Steed was sometimes guilty of similar conduct. Even in her company he actually seemed unconscious of her presence. It wasn’t a lessening of his devotion, she felt, nor of Clint’s. It was an intangible barrier that had come up between her and them. Her small personal plans seemed insignificant. From first place she sensed herself relegated to second position. Awaiting a reply to a question, she could find Van Steed’s face blank. A silence. Then, “Oh, I beg your pardon! What was that you said? I was thinking—” he would stammer.
Baffled, Clio turned waspishly on Kakaracou and Cupidon. But in Cupide she encountered the same maddening preoccupation with something beyond her ken. Do this, do that, she would snap at him. But his goggle gaze would be fixed dreamily on some inner vision. “Do you hear me, you suppôt!”
“Did you say something, Ma’m’selle?”
Kaka, brushing the girl’s hair and seeing the wrathful face in the mirror, attempted to offer her soothing solution.
“They cooking up something. Don’t you fuss your head. They doing business.”
“I don’t care what they’re doing. I’m bored with it here, anyway. Silly place, third-rate, provincial. Mama would have loathed it. I think I shall leave next week.”
At this Cupide set up a howl of protest. “No! I won’t go! I won’t go!”
Clio surveyed the dwarf through narrowed lids. “Oh, you won’t go, is that what I hear!” Then, in a surprising shout that topped his own, “Why not? Why not, petit drôle? Quick! Answer me!”
“Business,” said Cupide. “I have business.”
With practiced ease he dodged as she reached swiftly for the hairbrush and let fly at him.
The truth of it was that he had. Van Steed had business. Maroon had business. Cupidon, blessed by nature with keyhole height, had made their business his.
Even when they had no engagement, Clint had always rushed to her side at sight of her, whether in the garden, at the springs, in the lobby, or the piazza. Van Steed’s method had been less forthright, yet he too had seemed always somehow to be standing near, even if his mother’s hand clutched his arm as she leaned on him not only for support but to stay him. Yet now she could pass the two men as they stood in the lobby talking together earnestly, seriously, and her bewilderment mounted to fury as they bowed and held their hats aloft with the kind of exaggeration which comes of absentminded courtesy. They were thinking of something other than herself; they were so deeply interested in what they were saying that she, Clio Dulaine, was actually only another woman passing. She listened sharply as she undulated by. The Texan’s drawling voice:
“The government ought to get back of the railroads. Now, take Texas. It’s a young state run by young men. Neither I nor my father before me cared a hoot for public office but railroads—”
“In arriving at the cost of production less depreciation, why, the local conditions such as service required and maintenance—”
Then for three days he was gone. He had announced his going, casually, the night before his departure. A shade too casually.
“Almost forgot to tell you, honey, I’m taking a little trip on business.” This was the new Clint Maroon, in the saddle, and, as he phrased it, rarin’ to go.
“Where? Where are you going?”
“Oh, Albany. Albany and New York.”
“What for? You used to tell me everything. What are you keeping from me?”
“I’m showing your little friend Van Steed that he can’t go on trying to make agreements with these pirates. Next thing he knows they’re going to get more than that little trunk-line railroad away from him. Maybe his pa left him millions, but hanging on to ‘em is something different.”
“Oh, really! If you know so much about making millions why don’t you tell him this?”
“I did. I said, look, Van Steed, the way you’re going I reckon you’ll lose your piece of railroad and what goes with it. What’s it mean to you, losing that hundred miles of coal haul? In figures, I mean. You know how he is, him and his kind. Afraid to give you a straight answer to a straight question. Well, what do I know about railroads and so on? Nothing! I said, will you give me a share in the road if I save it for you? Save it how? he said. Fighting it out, I told him, the way we used to fight the sheep men to save the cattle range.”
Clio stared, aghast. “But Clint, you can’t do that! This isn’t the Wild West.”
“Worse. It’s the wild East. They’ve got the shareholdings deadlocked down there now. The board of directors are divided, half the Erie crowd, half the Morgan-Van Steed crowd. They actually wrestle for the stock books. I mean wrestle. Van Steed, he’s about ready to give up; he’s not much of a scrapper. But this J. P. Morgan, he’s the boy for my money. I never thought I’d be in a railroad fight, but say, honey, this last week I’ve had more fun than any time since I came up North from Texas. And they’re paying me for it. A fistful of shares if
She grasped his arm, she shook him as though to bring him to his senses. “This is a dangerous busin
ess. What do they care for you! What are you doing down there! What is it you have been doing this week away from me? Tell me!”
“Well, I got a gang together from here and around. Went away to New York for some of ‘em—there’s quite a bunch of Texas boys around, you’d be surprised. Hard times. Hard times. Look at the wealth in the country, and hundreds and thousands begging in the streets. Look at Frick, a millionaire at thirty! Look at Carnegie down at the Thompson Steel Works, getting a hundred and thirty percent for his money. Pirates. You can’t deal with ‘em. You have to fight ‘em, barehanded. That’s how I put it to Morgan, and I’ll say this for him, he was with me. There’s been scraps in every railroad station along the line, but last week—time I was away there—we got wind of the plan they had to take over the office headquarters at Albany by force. Sent up a bunch of brass-knuckle boys and mavericks, said they were deputies, with fake badges pinned on ‘em. Well, say, honey, force is what they got. I had the boys rounded up, so when Jim Briscoe and his gang of thugs stepped through the door expecting to find nobody but old Gid Fish with his eyeshade on and sleeve-protectors, why, Briscoe he yelled, ‘Rush in, boys, and take possession! Throw him out! Grab the books!’ That’s where we came in, yelling like Comanches and threw the whole crowd, Briscoe first of all, right down the stairs of the Tuscarora office. You never saw such a boiling or arms and legs there at the foot of the stairs. Nobody hurt serious—couple arms and legs and so on—but we were laughing so, seeing their faces, we like to fell down the stairs ourselves, on top of’em.”
Clio clasped her hands to her head, as nearly distraught as he had ever seen her. “I won’t listen. I won’t listen!”
“Why, Clio, honey, you asked me what I’d been up to, didn’t you?”
“But it’s savage! It’s disgusting!”
“Y-e-e-es,” he drawled. “Perfectly disgusting.” His tone, so quiet, so even, was venomous. “Almost as disgusting as what they did to my folks. A real delicate litde flower like you, brought up in Paris and so on, you wouldn’t understand. No! Van Steed, he’s more your kind. Ladylike, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Pay somebody, though, to swat the fly for him.”