Saratoga Trunk (13 page)

He replied in the wooing dovelike tones he reserved for all females of whatever age, color or class.

“What’s in it, Mammy? Is it something lickin’ good?”

“Uh, puff paste, first thing, and filling of striped vanilla and chocolate cream with liddy dabs of puff paste on top.”

“Yes ma’am!”

She rolled a bawdy old eye at him. “It is good to have a man in the house to cook for. To cook only for women all these years, it make
un feu triste.’’’’

“Whatever that is, Mammy.”

“ Un feu triste
—oh, it mean a dull fire. To cook for women,
cela m’ennuia à la mort.
Though she eat well, my little Clio.” She clutched his arm with one clawlike hand. “Only one thing I ask you. Do not call me that.”

“What?”

“This—mammy.” She drew herself up very tall. “It is a thing I hate. Out of the slave days.”

“Why, sure. Name your own name. She calls you—”

“Me, I am Angélique Pluton. If you like you call me Kaka.”

He eyed her with a measuring look that was a blend of amusement and resentment. “They sure ruined you in Paris, nigger.”

Curiously enough, she laughed at this, her high cackling laugh. “Sure nuff, Mr. Clint. But don’t you pay me no never mind. Half time I’m play-acting jess like Miss Clio.”

VII

“Taire du scandale, “ said Clio, as though thinking aloud.

“How’s that?”

“I shall make a scandal. Not a great scandal. Just a little one, enough to cause them some worry.”

“Now just what are you figuring on doing? You fixing up some sorry mischief in that little head of yours?”

The jalousies were three-quarters drawn, they were sitting in the cool dimness of the dining room facing the garden. It was too hot now that May was well on its way to sit at midday in the courtyard. Not even a vagrant breeze stirred the listiess leaves, the air was heavy with moist heat. They had finished their delicate breakfast-lunch of trout and asparagus and pale golden pineapple dashed with kirsch. Clio’s face had a luminous pear-like quality in the gray-green shadow of the sheltered room. She wore one of her lace-frilled white
gabrielles;
her eyes, her hair seemed blacker, more vital in contrast.

“You put me in mind of a spring I used to come on out on the Great Plains near the Brazos. You’d come on it, unexpected, and there it was, cool-looking and fresh, you’d kneel to touch it and you’d find it was a hot spring, so hot it like to burn your fingers.”

She laughed her slow indolent laugh that was so at variance with her real character. “Some day we will go to Texas, Cleent. Before I am settled for life with my rich and respectable husband.”

“Trying to tease me?”

“No. Haven’t I told you from the beginning?”

“Honey, sometimes you talk Frenchified and now and again you talk just as American as I do. Are you putting on, or what?”

She shrugged her shoulders, her smile was mischievous. “Great-Grand’mère Bonnevie was an actress, you know. And if I am the Comtesse de Trenaunay de Chanfret, why then “

“Shucks! I keep forgetting you’re nothing but a little girl dressed up in her ma’s long skirts.”

She sat up briskly. “I am not! I am very grown up. I have planned everything. I am an adventuress like my grandmother and my mother, only I shall be more shrewd. I am going to have a fine time and I am going to fool the world.”

“You don’t say!” he drawled as one would talk to an amusing child.

“Ecoute!
There is nothing for us here in New Orleans, for you or for me. To stay, I mean. But I have a plan. Will you listen very carefully?”

“I sure would admire for to hear it. You look downright wicked.”

“Not wicked, Clint. Worldly. They were worldly women—my dear Mama, and Aunt Belle. And Kaka is a witch. And Cupide is a dear little monster. And I have been with these all my life. And so—”

“I love you the way you are. I wouldn’t change a hair of your head.”

“Listen, then. I have sent Cupide out through the town, and Kaka, too, and they have listened and learned. They can find out anything, those two. All the gossip, all the scandal. Well, there is a daughter. Charlotte Thérèse.”

“Daughter?” he repeated, bewildered. “Now, wait a minute. Who? What daughter?”

She explained with the virtuous patience of the unreasonable. “The daughter of my father, Nicolas Dulaine, and his wife. Charlotte Thérèse she is called. My half-sister she is. Isn’t she?”

“We-e-ell—”

“But of course. Now then. She is fifteen, she is Creole—
chacalâta
—very stiff they are and clannish and everything
de rigueur.
She is to be introduced into society next winter, at sixteen. All very formal and proper, you see. But not so proper if there pops up an old scandal in the family.”

He had been lolling in his chair, interested but relaxed. Now he sat up, tense. “Hold on! You’re not fixing to try blackmail!”

“Clint! How can you think of such a thing!”

“There’s a look in your eyes, I’ve seen the same look on a wild Spanish mare just before she rares up on her hind legs and throws you.”

“How I should like to see that! The Wild West! Well, perhaps some day. But now we have work to do.”

“What kind of work? What’s going on in that head of yours? Sometimes I’m plumb scairt of you, especially when you look the way you do now, smooth as a pan of cream, but poison underneath if you was to skim it off.”

“But it is nothing wicked! I am only arranging a gay little time for you and for me. Now will you listen—but carefully.”

“Sure, honey. I like to hear your voice, it just goes over me like oil on a blister. I’m a-listening.”

She held herself very quiet; her eyes were not looking straight ahead but were turned a bit toward their corners in the way of a plotter whose scheme is being made orderly.

“When I came back to New Orleans—before I met you,
chéri—
I was much much younger than I am now. Don’t laugh! It is so. Only a few weeks ago, but it is so. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Like a child I came back to my childhood home. I cleaned this house, repaired it, made it as you see, quite lovely again. I was going to live here and be happy like someone in a storybook. How childish! How silly!”

“What’s silly about it?”

“Because I do not want to stay in this house. I do not even want the house to exist after I have finished with it. But now it is the house in which Nicolas Dulaine was k—died. I am now going to bring that sad accident to life again.”

“Hi, wait a minute!” He sat up with a jerk.

“No. You wait. It is very simple. I shall make New Orleans notice me. I shall go everywhere—to the restaurants, to the races, to the theater if it is not too late now, to the French Market; I shall ride in the Park, I shall wear my most extravagant frocks—and you will go everywhere with me in your great white hat, and your diamond shirt stud and your beautiful boots—”

“But what—”

“No. Wait. All these weeks I have been living quietly, quietly here in this house—I here, you at the St. Charles Hotel, all very proper and prim and decorous.”

A glint in his eye, an edge to his drawling voice. “Well, hold on, now. I wouldn’t say it was all so proper, exactiy.”

“Proper on the surface. And in my eyes because I am so fond of you, Clint. But now we must be different.”

“How d’you mean, different? What you fixing to do?”

“Only what I have said. We will go everywhere, and everywhere we must attract attention. Everything orderly, but bold—dashing— much
éclat
—everything conspicuous. People will say, ‘Who is that beautiful creature who goes always everywhere with the handsome Texan? Look at her clothes! They must come from Paris. Look at her jewels! See how she rides, so superbly. Who is she?’ Then another will answer, ‘Oh, don’t you know? . . . She is the daughter of Nicolas Dulaine who died. You remember? There was a great scandal—‘ “

“Why, say, Clio, you wouldn’t be as coldblooded as that, now, would you? What do you want to go and do that for? What’s the idea?”

“Because it will revive the old scandal. That would be very inconvenient for a family whose daughter will be of marriageable age next season—a family that is very conventional—in a word—
chacalata.
And the daughter—this Charlotte Thérèse—she is, I hear, quite plain. And thin.
Maigre comme un clou.”
Clio smiled a dreamily sweet smile. “She was not made with love.”

“They’ll run you out of town.”

“I’ll go—for a price.”

He stared at her while the meaning of this fully resolved itself in his mind. “You mean to say you came here to New Orleans knowing you could make these people pay—”

“No, Clint! I came because—well, where else could I go? All my life I had heard of nothing but New Orleans, New Orleans. It was home to them. That was because they were exiles. It isn’t home to me. It is nothing to me but a dim blurred copy of the city Mama and Aunt Belle loved.”

“That’s a fine speech, honey. But I’ve got so I’m not more than one jump behind that steel-trap mind of yours. Sometimes I’m even ahead of it. Come on, come on, Clio. I’m not just a big dumb cowboy from Texas. What’s in that head of yours, for all you’re looking so droopy about the dear old days in New Orleans—you little hell-cat, you!”

She looked at him with utter directness. She was no longer a woman and he a man; it was the cold, clear, purposeful look of the indomitable.

“One must be practical. Will you help me?”

“Likely they’ll have us both corraled. I’ll do it—just for the hell of it, and if it’s going to make you happier feeling. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“The idea was mine. The risk is mine, really. We can share the expenses—restaurants, races, theaters—it will not be cheap. Perhaps you should have more than one-third—”

He stood up then, his eyes were steel slots in the blank face, he pushed her roughly away from him so that she staggered backward and would have tripped over the flounced train of her
gabrielle
if she had not grasped a table for support.

“Why, you no-’count French rat, you! You offering to pay me— like a fast man, like I was a pander.”

“Clint! You a
paillard!
No! I did not mean—I only meant—we are partners, you and I—”

His slow venomous drawl cut under her passionate denial. “Yes, you’re right. The idea is yours, the risk is yours, the whole rotten outfit is yours, your murdering mother and those two freaks out there—”

“Clint! Don’t! Don’t talk like this to me. I only meant—I was only trying to be fair—businesslike and practical—not like Mama and Aunt Belle! Don’t you see?” She went to him, she clung to him, so that the thin white robe, the flowing sleeves, the perfumed lace ruffles hung from his shoulders, covered his face, swirled about his legs.

“Get away from me!”

“No! No! I will give it up. I only thought then we would be free. It was just a little plan—not bad, not wicked. Then we can go together to Saratoga, where it is gay and fresh with pine woods and the little lakes.”

He was listening now, he was holding her against him instead of pushing her away, his anger was less than half-hearted. “I don’t want any part of it.”

“But when you said you would help me I thought we would be partners.”

“Not in this. Maybe up North, if we hit on a scheme. But this here—this is different. This goes way back to—to something else. It ain’t a clean grudge. Maybe they owe you something—you and your ma. I’ll tote you around, like you said. You know I’m crazy about you. But I ain’t that crazy. Any money you get from throwing dirt at them, why, it’s yours to keep. I’ll have no part of it.”

“Clint, you are marvelous, ye
t’adore!”

“Listen, honey,” he said, plaintively. “You take things too hard. Why’n’t you just gende down and quit snorting and rarin’ and take it in your stride?”

“Now it is you who are trying to make me different.”

“No, not different. Only let’s be more ourselves if we’re going to run together. All this play acting. You being so French and me playing Texas cowboy.”

“But I am! I mean, I lived so long in France. And you—well, you are from Texas, you were a cowboy—-at least you said—”

“I sure am. But we both been working too hard at it. Let’s just take the world the way you would a ripe coconut down in the French Market. Crack the shell, drink the milk, eat what you want of the white meat and throw the rest away.”

New Orleans had a small-town quality in spite of its cosmopolitanism. No couple so handsome, so vital and so flamboyant could long escape nodce in any city. Her beauty, her Paris gowns, his white Texas sombrero, his diamond stud, the high-stepping bays and the glittering carriage—any of these would have served to attract attention. But added to these were the fantastic figures of Cupide and Kakaracou. The spectacular couple were seen everywhere, sometimes unattended, sometimes followed by the arrogant, richly dressed black woman and the dwarf in his uniform of maroon and gold.

It was late May, hot and humid, but the city had not yet taken on the indolent pace of summer. Summer or winter, New Orleans moved at a leisurely gait. It still closed its places of business at noon for a two-hour siesta, one of many old Spanish customs still obtaining here in this Spanish-French city. New Orleans deserted commerce for the races; it flocked to any one of a score of excellent restaurants there to lunch or dine lavishly; it gambled prodigally in Royal Street or in Southport or out at Jefferson Parish. New Orleans adored the theater, it was stagestruck en masse. As for the opera, that was almost a religion. Summer was close at hand. Now New Orleans, between the excesses of the Mardi Gras recendy passed and the simmering inertia of the summer approaching, was having a final mid-season fling.

Into this revelry Clio Dulaine and Clint Maroon pranced gaily. The long, lazy mornings in the cool shaded house, the tropical dreamlike evenings in the scented garden were abandoned. The bays and the clarence were seen daily on Canal Street or in the Park. Purposely Clio overdressed—lace parasols, silks, plumes, jewels. In France she had learned to ride, and frequently in Paris she had ridden in the Bois while Rita Dulaine and Belle Piquery had followed demurely in the carriage. Now she got out the dark blue riding habit with the very tight bodice, the long looped skirt, the high-heeled boots, the little hat with the flowing veil. Clint rode à la Texas; sombrero, boots, handkerchief knotted at the throat, tight pants, the high-horned Western saddle silver-trimmed. They tore along the bridle paths, her veil streaming behind her, he holding his reins with one hand while the other waved in the air, cowboy fashion. “Yip-eee! Eeeee-yow!” New Orleans, sedately taking the air in carriages or on horseback, stared, turned, gasped. Sometimes she rode without Maroon, Cupide as groom following, perched gnomelike on the big horse and handling his mount superbly. If possible, this bizarre escort attracted more attention than when she rode with the Texan.