The Lancel women held their glasses high. “To Maddy!” they said.
“Whoever she is,” Annie added, as she raised her glass.
1
EVE Coudert held out her five-franc note to the ticket seller. She gave him a nonchalant smile as she paid for a ride in the hot-air balloon that lay tethered on the huge field of La Maladière, outside of Dijon, where the great Air Show of 1910 was in its last day.
“You’re alone, Mademoiselle?” he asked in surprise. It was rare to see such a young woman unaccompanied, particularly one so appetizing. He eyed her with interest, taking a rapid, knowing inventory of her charms. Under the brim of her straw hat, she looked up at him with gray eyes, dark enough to snare the devil, under brows that flew upward, as slanted as a pair of wings. Her heavy chignon revealed hair that was some unnamable but intoxicating shade between red and gold, and her full, smiling mouth was as naturally rosy as her cheeks.
“My husband is afraid of heights, Monsieur,” she said, and added a delicate shade of meaning to her smile which told the ticket seller that she understood full well that he himself wasn’t afraid of heights and that she admired him for his courage.
Oh ho, he thought with pleasure, this bewitchingly young bride of the provinces isn’t as nearly innocent as she’s supposed to be, and with a longing look, but without further question, he gave Eve the ticket that entitled her to a ride. Taking her gloved hand, he gallantly helped her step up into the basketlike woven wicker gondola that was big enough to hold five people.
She gathered her narrow white piqué skirt in one hand and, with the other, held on tightly to her fashionably wide-brimmed hat trimmed with floppy pink silk cabbage roses. Eve’s pointed, laced-up low boots tapped nervously as she waited for the removal of dozens of sand bags that kept the huge red balloon on the ground. She took care not to look around at her fellow passengers. Eve turned her back on them, leaned against the waist-high rim of the gondola, and tucked her chin tightly into her high boned collar, so that its lace petals were articulated clearly against her delicate skin and almost hid her face.
It was Sunday, the twenty-fifth of August, a particularly hot afternoon, but Eve shivered with repressed impatience while the workmen ran about, shouting at each other. Suddenly the enormous red balloon rose in the air with utterly unexpected speed and silence.
Stunned by the magical upward soaring, Eve ignored the city below, the lovely old capital of Burgundy, about which King François the First had exclaimed, “Ah! The beautiful city of a hundred church towers.” She looked directly toward the distant blue horizon, astonished by her first glimpse of the far line of green and yellow fields that grew wider by the second.
But the world is so endless, she thought, overwhelmed by the same childlike wonder felt by everyone in the gondola. Forgetting the caution with which she had resolutely held herself apart from the three men who had also bought tickets for the ride, Eve turned around and gazed enraptured at the panorama in which she was so miraculously encompassed.
Unconsciously, she opened her arms to try to embrace the sky. In that moment of irrepressible impulse, the balloon was caught in a sudden strong gust of wind. Her hat was torn free from the pin that held it on her head and was sent sailing away.
“Oh, no!” Eve exclaimed, and as she cried out in an incredulous tone, the men all looked at her. They saw a horrified girl whose inexpertly constructed chignon had been taken by the wind, so that her hair was now blowing about in as many directions as there are on a compass. The sight of her face and of her waist-length hair betrayed her age just as the hat had disguised it.
“Mademoiselle Coudert!”
“Eve!”
“Good day, Monsieur Blondel, good day, Monsieur Martineux,” Eve said with trembling lips, attempting the polite smile with which she usually greeted these friends of her father’s on those rare occasions when she encountered them, for Eve Coudert was only fourteen and had not even reached the age at which her mother would allow her to help pass the pastries at an afternoon tea party. “Is this not thrilling?” she added, reaching for composure in her most adult voice.
“Never mind that nonsense, Eve,” Blondel sputtered indignantly. “What are you doing here? Where is your governess? Do your parents have any idea … no, of course they don’t!”
Eve shook her head. There was no point in trying to explain that she had to go up in the balloon at all costs, that she had waited during the first three deliriously exciting days of the Air Show in mounting anxiety, that she had seized the minute when her father was called to attend a sick patient and her mother was taking her usual afternoon nap, to elude her governess, Mademoiselle Helene—no, somehow none of that seemed useful to tell him.
“I am here,” she said calmly, now that she knew the inevitable price would have to be paid, “because everyone says that we French have finally conquered the atmosphere and I wanted to see it for myself.”
Blondel’s mouth fell open, the other two men didn’t bother to repress their laughter. Doctor Didier Coudert’s only child was unquestionably a pert minx, Martineux thought, but her presence added a particular charm to this extraordinary moment. He had an eye for a neat waist and a slender ankle, and these she already possessed, as well as the tentative but unmistakable outline of a young bosom under the short piqué bolero and tucked lace blouse of her very best costume.
“Blondel,” he said with authority, “Mademoiselle Coudert can come to no harm here. When we return to earth, I myself will escort her safely home.”
“Do you think, Monsieur, that first we could look for my mother’s—for my hat?” Eve asked.
“I think the hat is still flying under its own power, Mademoiselle. It was headed south toward Nuits-Saint-George, if I’m not mistaken. Still, we will try.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” Eve said, gratefully. If only they could find the hat, perhaps her mother wouldn’t be quite as angry as she anticipated. But even if it had been eaten by a goat, it was worth it, oh, so worth whatever happened to her, just to have floated in the air and seen, at last, the greatness of the world.
She couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be one of the pilots who had come from all over France to participate in Dijon’s great race meeting, pilots like Marcel Hanriot, just sixteen years old, who had already won most of the prizes. That national hero had actually flown faster than a kilometer a minute. Nevertheless, Eve reflected, as the balloon began its descent, and she looked down on the twenty-five thousand people who were milling about far beneath her, nevertheless, she too had mounted into the atmosphere, she too had seen beyond the familiar horizon of her childhood. She felt a link with all the buccaneers of the sky, if only for these minutes she would never forget.
Doctor Didier Coudert, Eve’s father, was a busy man. He specialized in diseases of the liver, a well-chosen field in a country in which liver problems were four times more frequent than in any other nation in the world, since good living is never without its day of reckoning. He loved Eve, although he regretted having no son, but he was far too occupied by his practice to pay any attention to her education. That was the province of his wife, and if, after Eve’s escapade at the Air Show, she felt it necessary to suppress Eve’s unsuitable curiosity about the world by keeping all the books in his library under lock and key during the girl’s next, dangerously impressionable years, he made no objection.
The Coudert family lived in a particularly handsome house on the Rue Buffon, a splendid street in the heart of the old city of Dijon. Doctor Coudert, a modern man, owned the first Dion-Bouton automobile in the city. However, he still kept a coachman and two fine horses so that his wife, Chantal, could pay her customary round of visits in the shining dark green coupé as she had since their marriage.
Chantal Coudert, heiress to a large fortune, ran her household with a strict hand. Long before Eve, at fourteen, became the subject of shocked gossip, it had been out of the question for her to go anywhere alone. Since her unthinkable adventure, her gover
ness had not allowed her to so much as drink an unchaperoned cup of afternoon chocolate with a friend, during a visit arranged by their mothers. She was accompanied when she walked with another girl in the Parc de la Colombière, or the gardens of the Arquebuse; she was watched closely as she played a rare game of lawn tennis; she was even chaperoned when she went to confession in the neighboring Cathedral of Saint Bènigne. Eve was considered to be in constant danger from the excesses of her nature.
Like most girls of her class, Eve lived in a world of women. It was deemed unnecessary for her to study seriously at school. Her teachers came to the house, chief among them a Dominican sister who taught French and a smattering of mathematics, history and geography. She had a dancing teacher, a music teacher and a painting teacher, who all gave her lessons under the eye of Mademoiselle Helene. Only her singing lessons, with venerable Professor Dutour of the Conservatory of Music, took place away from the house on the Rue Buffon.
In the autumn of 1912, Chantal Coudert sat drinking hot chocolate in her luxurious, gaslit boudoir, discussing the always absorbing problem of her daughter, with her sister, the Baronne Marie-France de Courtizot, who was visiting from Paris.
Why was it, Eves mother wondered in familiar vexation, that Marie-France, whose union had not been blessed with a single child, considered herself an authority on the care and upbringing of Eve, whom she referred to as her “favorite niece,” quite as if she had chosen her for this honor out of dozens of contestants? Of course Marie-France gave herself airs—that was normal for a daughter of the wealthy bourgeoisie, who had managed to marry a baron and elevate herself into the aristocracy—airs could be expected of Marie-France, she had, indeed, a perfect right to them, but mere marriage did not entitle her to become an expert on matters only a mother could speak on from experience.
“You worry unnecessarily, my dear Chantal,” the Baronne said, touching a fine linen napkin to her lips and reaching for another tiny cream puff. “Eve is a splendid girl and I trust that she has outgrown those ridiculously high spirits of her childhood.”
“I wish I were as sure as you are, particularly since neither of us really knows what goes on in her head,” Chantal Coudert replied with a sigh. “Did Maman know our thoughts, Marie-France? What a short memory you must possess.”
“Nonsense. Maman was far too strict with us. Naturally we told her nothing—not that there was anything to tell.”
“I have tried to raise Eve as we were brought up. One can’t be too careful.”
“Do you seriously mean, Chantal,” the Baronne exclaimed, “that all you have ever told Eve about her future as a married woman is ‘Do what your husband wishes you to do’?”
“Why should she know more? Was that not sufficient advice? You have become far too much of a Parisian, Marie-France.”
The Baronne raised her cup hastily to her lips. Her prim older sister never failed to delight her with her prudish ways.
“When Eve is eighteen, will you let me give a ball in Paris for her?” she proposed.
“Of course, Marie-France. But not until she has a ball in Dijon or people will be offended. I must consider the Amiots, the Bouchards, the Chauvots, the …”
“The Gauvins, the Clergets, the Courtois, the Morizots—my dear, I know exactly who will be at that ball, indeed I can see each face now. I can visualize all the freshly scrubbed young graduates of the school of St. François de Salles, forming a phalanx of newly mustached masculinity. Then a winter of outrageous gaiety, such as only Dijon can provide, will follow. The Red Cross ball! The Saint-Cyr ball! Such mad abandon! To say nothing of the charity sales, the concerts, and even—since Eve rides so well—an invitation to join the hunt in the forest of Chatillon. How will she be able to survive so much excitement?”
“Laugh all you like, Marie-France. Most girls would give anything for her prospects,” Madame Coudert said, feeling superior. Which of the two of them, after all, possessed a daughter?
“When should the child be home?” the Baronne asked, looking outside at the darkening sky.
“Any minute now. I told Mademoiselle Helene that Professor Dutour must allow them plenty of time to cross the city before nightfall.”
“Does he still maintain that she has a remarkable voice?”
“Yes indeed, but since she will never use it except at a musical evening, or to entertain herself at the piano, I wonder if these lessons aren’t just a waste of time. However, Didier insisted.” Madame Coudert spoke in the tone of voice of a woman married to a despot, one which both sisters enjoyed using when talking about their well-disciplined husbands.
“Aunt Marie-France!” Eve cried happily as she burst into the room. As she gave her aunt a series of enthusiastic kisses, the Parisian noted that her niece’s natural coloring was as high as that of any fashionable cocotte’s; that her thick curly hair, that still hung down her back, was an inimitable color of valuable color that would not fade like that of most redheads or grow dull like a brunette’s; the hair of a strawberry blond; lustrous, naturally burnished, hair that would make even a plain girl fascinating. And her eyes! Their darkness was like charcoal on fire.
Eve had grown so rapidly that she was now a full head taller than her mother, Marie-France de Courtizot saw as she continued her observation. There was an intriguing immoderation, an unmistakable extravagance in the girl’s sense of self. Eve carried her ankle-length skirt and simple shirtwaist with such natural assurance and style that she might have been a very young duchess rather than a child of sixteen. She simply must get Eve to Paris before she reached eighteen. Paquin should dress her with the wit and fancifulness she merited, and Worth should make her ball gown. Why should not Eve make a splendid marriage? Yes, one even better than her own. Decidedly she would be wasted in the claustrophobic, conservative society of old Dijon.
“My treasure,” she murmured, returning the kisses. “You are such a pleasure to look at.”
“Don’t spoil her, Marie-France,” her sister said warningly. “Eve, you may join us for dinner tonight since your aunt is here, but only this one time.”
“Thank you, Maman,” Eve said demurely.
“Now, Eve, you may sing something for us,” Madame Coudert added, delighted to show off before her irritating sister.
Eve went to the little upright piano that her mother kept in the corner, sat down, thought for a minute, and then began to play and sing with a tiny, mischievous smile that she could not repress:
“Return to your Argentinian sky
Where all the women are divine
To the sound of your music so sly
Go, go dance your tango!”
“Eve! Is that what you learn from the Professor Dutour?” her aunt cried, as shocked at the throbbing, sensuous rhythm of Eve’s husky voice, a voice of raw silk and dark honey, as by the words themselves.
“Of course not. He wants me to sing arias from La Bohème. But this is so much more droll. I heard it in the street, coming home. Don’t you like it, Aunt?”
“No, not at all,” the Baronne answered. She hated to admit it but perhaps Chantal was not wrong to be concerned about Eve. For a virgin to hear a tango was bad enough, but to sing it! And in such a voice, such an … insinuating … voice!
“And a dozen dozen handkerchiefs in the finest linen, embroidered with her future initials,” Louise, the Couderts’ parlor maid, enumerated, gloating, as she and Eve walked in the old botanical garden behind the Cathedral on a Saturday afternoon early in the spring of 1913.
“What if she never sneezes?” Eve asked to interrupt the recital of the details of the trousseau of linen that had just been ordered for the soon-to-be-bride, Diane Gauvin, daughter of the Couderts’ neighbors.
Louise ignored her. She had been promoted to the post of Eve’s chaperone when Mademoiselle Helene had left the household four months earlier, to everyone’s surprise, in order to marry a widowed salesman from the Pauvre Diable, the largest department store in town.
“Six dozen dish towels, six
dozen towels just for drying crystal, four dozen aprons for the servants, and as for the tablecloths, you can’t begin to imagine …”
“I promise you I can,” Eve said patiently. Louise had been her favorite person in the household ever since she had arrived ten years before. At that time Louise had been as old as Eve was now, almost seventeen, but she had lied and said she was twenty-four in order to get the job. She had a weathered complexion, a sturdy body capable of working a sixteen-hour day without tiring, and a round face with a severe underbite.
Eve had immediately recognized the soft heart and warm nature of the new addition to the staff, and from Louise’s first days the two of them had fallen into the kind of friendship which was far from uncommon in a world in which children spent most of their time at home and saw little of their parents. They had become allies against the all-powerful Mademoiselle Helene, they had become confidantes in a house in which they were both constantly told what to do, and they had become intimate friends over the years, for each of them needed someone to whom she could speak her heart freely.
“I don’t understand why Diane is getting married,” Eve said, gently touching a switch of forsythia, which was the only bloom yet to be seen. “Her fiancé is so ugly.”
“She’s a sensible girl, Mademoiselle Diane, and she knows that the important thing is finding the right husband, not a handsome one.”
“You too! I can’t believe you said that, Louise. What makes him right except the size of his father’s fortune? Are you going to tell me that any man with both legs, both arms, no big warts, and wealth to come is a desirable husband?”
“I wish I’d found someone, even with warts,” Louise said, with a comic grimace, resigned to the fact that a poor parlor maid of twenty-seven had no possibility of marriage.
Judith Krantz Page 2