Chapter One 1892-1
2025 Words
Chapter One 1892“Emmeline Nevada Holtz! You will do as I say!”
There was a little laugh and a girl’s voice answered,
“Now I know, Mama, that you are annoyed with me, because you call me ‘Emmeline’ only when you are angry!”
“Very well then – Vada!” was the concession, “although I cannot imagine why your father should have permitted you to use such a ridiculous nickname!”
“My real names are ridiculous!” Vada replied. “But I had the good sense at the age of two or whatever I was when I first began to talk to shorten one to Vada.”
“The names we chose for you are very American!”
“Of course, Mama. Who would want to be anything else?”
The girl speaking rose to her feet and walked across the elaborate, luxuriously furnished New York drawing room to look out onto Central Park.
The trees were just beginning to show green and the tulips were brilliant in the flowerbeds.
“I am happy here with you,” Vada said after a moment. “I have no wish to go to England.”
“But I want you to go, my dear, and what is more I am determined that you shall do as I say, in this instance if in nothing else!”
Vada turned from the window to look at her mother. Mrs. Holtz was sitting on a sofa by the fire and her legs were covered with an ermine rug edged with sable.
A week ago, after their plans had been made to visit England, she had wrenched her back severely whilst descending from her carriage and the doctor had said it was essential that she should remain immobile for at least two months.
Very attractive with fair hair that was just fading into grey, Mrs. Holtz had been a ‘Southern Belle’ when her husband had married her.
But her beauty had never equalled that of their only child. Emmeline, or rather ‘Vada’, as she preferred to be called in the home circle, was stunningly beautiful.
Her mother watched her with an appreciative eye as she crossed the room, her feet making no sound on the thick carpet.
Reaching the sofa, she knelt down beside her mother.
Her hair, so fair that it was the colour of spring corn not yet ripened by the sun, was swept back from a perfect oval forehead below which were two very large dark blue eyes, naturally fringed with dark lashes.
They were, Mrs. Holtz had always averred, inherited from some not too distant Irish ancestor who had crossed the Atlantic to seek freedom and perhaps a fortune in the New World.
Vada’s eyes certainly seemed to dominate her face, but she had beneath a perfectly curved mouth a strong, determined little chin, which gave her face the character that was lacking in many beautiful women.
“Let me stay with you, Mama!” she pleaded.
But, if Vada was determined, her mother was more so. It was Mrs. Holtz who had always been the driving force in the family.
Her husband might have been one of the richest oil-kings in America who ruled his considerable Empire with an iron hand, but at home he was very much under the thumb of his lovely self-willed wife.
“No, Vada,” Mrs. Holtz said now. “I have made my plans and I do not intend for them to be interrupted by anything so infuriating as a strained back.”
“We can go when you are better, Mama. After all, how could I manage in England without you?”
“Perhaps it is all meant,” Mrs. Holtz said philosophically. “I often feel that you might be more assertive when I am not there. Pretty mothers often tend to eclipse their daughters!”
Vada laughed.
“But I like being eclipsed, Mama! Besides, what would I have to say to the Duke without you putting the right words into my mouth?”
“That is just the whole point, Vada,” her mother said sharply. “You have to stand on your own feet. It is you who are going to marry the Duke. Not me!”
Vada rose from her knees to sit down on a stool facing the fire.
The flames glinted with gold lights on her fair hair and her face was very serious as she said quietly, so quietly that her mother had difficulty in hearing,
“I cannot do it, Mama! I am sorry, but I cannot marry anyone I don’t love!”
Mrs. Holtz made an exclamation of annoyance.
“Now really, Vada, it is far too late for you to be thinking of such nonsense! As I told you before, there is no one in America whom you can marry, but no one!”
There was a hint of mischief in Vada’s eyes that swept away her serious expression.
“We are a very large country, Mama, and there are an awful lot of men in it.”
“You know exactly what I mean,” Mrs. Holtz said sharply. “In the Social world in which we live I can think of no young man at this particular moment who is your equal financially.”
“That is the real answer, Mama,” Vada said. “There are plenty of young men, as you well know, who honour the debutantes’ balls with their presence and who would be prepared to offer for me.”
“Do you think for one moment that if you accepted one of those callow youths you are speaking about,” Mrs. Holtz asked, “you would ever believe that they were more interested in you than in your millions?”
Vada was silent and her mother went on in a quieter voice,
“I have explained to you before, Vada, that it is impossible, quite impossible, ever to separate a person from his or her possessions. How can a man for instance say, ‘would you love me if I was not the President, not the Prince of Wales and not Caruso?’”
She paused.
“You will admit it is impossible to think of them without the frame in which you see them, without the trappings with which they are embellished! And it is the same for you.”
“Are you saying,” Vada asked, “that no man will ever love me for myself?”
“Of course not!” Mrs. Holtz replied. “You will, I hope, be loved by many people in your life, but, when it comes to marriage, how can you be confident after a few meetings with a man at balls or receptions that he loves you for yourself alone?”
“You mean that he sees me through a golden haze?” Vada asked.
“Exactly!” her mother agreed. “It’s a very good simile. You are haloed, encircled, framed with the glamour of being a millionairess – the richest girl in America!”
There was silence and then Mrs. Holtz said coaxingly,
“I love you, Vada, and that is why I am trying to do what is best for you now and for the future.”
“By marrying me to a man I have never seen and whose only interest in me we know to be my riches?” Vada asked and her voice was sarcastic.
“Exactly!” Mrs. Holtz said positively. “And that is why I have chosen a man who has something to give in return! What have American men got that is better than or even equal to what you can offer them?”
Vada was silent and after a moment her mother went on,
“But an English Duke can offer you a position that is superior to any other in the world with the exception of Royalty.”
“I am only surprised,” Vada said, “that you don’t aspire to a Prince!”
“I certainly would if there was one available!” Mrs. Holtz retorted. “But real Royalty, if they are worthy of the name, marry someone who is Royal. Others who call themselves Princes, like the Italians, are usually extremely bogus.”
“I know you have studied the subject very carefully, Mama,” Vada said in a voice that made it sound far from a compliment.
“I have studied it,” Mrs. Holtz replied, “because I want for my only child the best that the world can give. Although you don’t think so, I want nothing but your happiness.”
Vada rose from the stool to stand at the end of the sofa.
“What you are forgetting in all this, Mama,” she said, “are my own feelings. I have a heart and, whilst like other girls of my age I want to be married, I also want to fall in love!”
Mrs. Holtz sighed.
“It is only the very young,” she said, “who are so insatiably greedy that they forget to be grateful.”
“What do you mean by that?” Vada enquired.
“I mean,” her mother answered, “that you ask too much of life. Nothing is perfect. No one’s existence is without some penalties and some discomforts attached to it.”
She paused to note that her daughter was listening intently.
“You have so much you should be grateful for,” she went on. “A happy home, many comforts, great beauty, a huge fortune, and yet you want more! You want the love of an outsider. A man you have not yet seen and a Fairytale romance such as only exists in novelettes.”
“But that is natural!” Vada asserted. “It must be natural!”
“What will be natural,” her mother said, “will be for you to fall in love with your husband and he with you after you are married. That is what happens in millions of marriages all over the world.”
Vada was silent and Mrs. Holtz continued,
“Marriages are always arranged in France and I understand that they are extremely successful. Marriages have been arranged in England since the Norman Conquest usually because a bride could bring her husband a dowry of land that fitted in with his.”
“Or money to buy more,” Vada murmured beneath her breath.
“In the East,” Mrs. Holtz continued, warming to her theme, “the bride and bridegroom never meet until the actual Wedding Ceremony. Everything is arranged by the matchmakers, astrologers and soothsayers and yet in India there is no question of divorce.”
“Let’s go back to England!” Vada said. “You cannot pretend that there are not many scandals among the aristocracy, because I have read about them.”
“Then you had no right to do so.” Mrs. Holtz said sharply. “I have always tried to keep the vulgar and sensational newspapers from you.”
“But there are scandals, are there not?” Vada enquired.
“If there are scandals, they occur after marriage.” Mrs. Holtz replied. “I am not pretending that there is not a great deal of gossip about the Prince of Wales and his associations with certain beautiful ladies.”
She paused and added,
“But he always behaves in a most circumspect manner towards his wife, Princess Alexandra, and officially they are very happy.”
“Is that the sort of marriage you are suggesting for me?” Vada asked.
“I am suggesting nothing of the sort.” her mother replied coldly. “If you are clever with your husband, Vada, as I was with your father, it is very unlikely that he will look at another woman.”
“And if he does?” Vada insisted.
Mrs. Holtz spread out her white hands, which glittered with several diamond rings.
“Would you be very much worse off with an English Duke, who strayed from your side, than an American who could leave you nothing but unhappy memories?”
“You mean being a Duchess and having a coronet on my head should compensate for everything?”
“It will compensate for a great deal,” Mrs. Holtz answered. “At least you will start your marriage knowing that you will not feel every time your husband is nice to you that he is wondering how soon he can ask you to write a cheque for which you will obtain nothing in return.”
“It’s all so sordid! So horrible!” Vada exclaimed almost violently.
“Dearest, do believe that what I am doing is the best for you. There is no happiness here for you in America. Of that I am sure.”
“I like America – I love America! It’s my country!” Vada declared.
“And there are no women in the world who transplant better than American women,” Mrs. Holtz answered. “They have an adaptability, Vada, that no other country has managed to achieve.”
“I don’t wish to be adaptable!” Vada murmured sulkily.
Mrs. Holtz did not speak and after a moment her daughter went on,
“I don’t believe that Papa would have wanted me to marry someone from abroad, least of all an English Nobleman!”
“That is where you are wrong!” Mrs. Holtz replied. “Your father agreed with me, as he always did, that when you were old enough we would have to choose your husband for you.”
Vada made an impatient gesture but she did not interrupt and her mother continued,
“Your father knew from the very moment you were born that you were different from other children. That was why you were brought up as you were, quietly in the country, away from newspaper reporters and all the vulgarity and publicity that surrounds the children of other rich men.”
“Papa was afraid of my being kidnapped!”
“Of course,” Mrs. Holtz agreed. “Need I say that is why you have never been photographed, Vada? And you have never had your portrait painted.”
She looked at her daughter for a moment and added a little wistfully,
“I would have loved to have a big portrait of you looking as you do now or even a sketch by that clever young man whose drawings I admire. What’s his name?”
- Writer
