The Wild Cry of Love

Chapter One 1899-2

There was a moment’s silence before the Comte said,

“I have mentioned him to your mother.”

“But he is ghastly!” Valda exclaimed. “I danced with him and he sat next to me at dinner. I came to the conclusion that he had never read a book and, although he was interested in horses, he knew rather less about them than any of your stable boys!”

“You are very scathing!” the Comte remarked. “At the same time he has magnificent estates. His château is one of the oldest in France and his name evokes the respect of every Frenchman.”

He paused and added,

“Your position as the Marquise would socially be second only to the Bourbons themselves.”

“I would just as soon be married to a flatfish!” Valda said scornfully. “Indeed a fish might be more interesting!” The Comte sighed.

“Can you really make up your mind on such short acquaintance? Let me ask d’Artigny to stay. You can show him the beauties of Provence, introduce him to our friends and see if he does not improve upon closer acquaintance.”

Valda looked at her stepfather and said quietly,

“You may think I am a fool, Beau-père, but I am not as foolish as that! If the Marquis comes to stay here, you know as well as I do we shall become so deeply involved with his family that it will be almost impossible for me to say that after all I do not like him.”

“I think you will like him,” the Comte suggested.

“Never! Never! Never!” Valda exclaimed. “And because I know you are intriguing to marry me to such a man, I swear if he comes here as a guest I will retire to bed ill and nothing either you or Mama can say or do will make me rise!”

The Comte’s lips tightened.

He was a very patient man but sometimes his stepdaughter drove him hard.

“I have a feeling, Valda,” he said after a moment, “that your father would have coped with you far better than I can.”

Valda laughed.

“I expect Papa would have beaten me into submission,” she said. “He was very hot tempered, but you, dearest Beau-père, have always been very gentle and kind to me.”

She moved closer to him as she spoke and lifting up her face kissed his cheek.

“You cannot change yourself overnight into a tyrant just because you think I ought to be married. Forget the Marquis d’Artigny and all the other eligible bachelors who have an eye on my money rather than on me! Someone will turn up sooner or later!”

The Comte put his arms around Valda and held her close.

“You are making things very difficult for me, my dear,” he said. “I love you and, because I love you as if you were my own child, I have to do what I think is right. We will forget the Marquis d’Artigny. He is not the only young man in the world, but there are others amongst whom I am certain you will find someone to love.”

“You are an incurable optimist, beau-père!” Valda said lightly. “Let’s go and look at the horses. They are so much more attractive than any young men I have met so far. What a pity I cannot marry a horse!”

The Comte laughed, then good humouredly allowed her to lead him from The Château towards the well-appointed stables where he kept the horses with which both he and Valda spent a great deal of time.

*

When she went to bed that evening Valda, instead of reading as usual, lay in her bed thinking.

She was well aware that her stepfather must have reported their conversation to her mother and they both would be somewhat perturbed by her attitude.

At the same time she was quite certain they intended to find her a husband and it would not be long before a marriage was suggested which would be to all intents and purposes a fait accompli.

It was inevitable, Valda thought now, that they should concern themselves with her matrimonial future after her success in Paris during the winter.

It was usual amongst French families for a debutante to be quiet, unobtrusive and very much overshadowed by her elders and betters.

The girls of Valda’s age were extremely shy, in most cases positively gauche, and were dragged around as a duty by a sparkling, sophisticated, chic Mama without having any say in the matter.

Because, besides being beautiful, Valda had a distinct personality and was English, she stood out when she should have remained unnoticed.

She had plenty to say for herself and it was in fact impossible to ignore her.

Admittedly it had been mostly married or elderly men who made a fuss of her since the younger men were either firmly kept at the side of a possessive married woman or else were too nervous of the consequences of being seen paying attention to a debutante.

Nevertheless, Valda had been a definite success and she was aware that many of the older women who were used to having everything their own way had made acid comments about her and suggested to her mother that it was time she married.

“I always march my daughters up the aisle as soon as they leave the school room,” one Dowager had said to the Comtesse de Merlimont. “The less they see of the world before they have their first baby the better!”

Valda had not heard her mother’s reply to this remark, but she had made up her mind that she had no intention of having a baby almost before she was grown up.

‘I want to see the world,’ she had thought.

Now she remembered as she lay in the darkness of her beautifully furnished bedroom that she had always believed that growing up opened new gates and showed the way to new horizons.

It seemed that she was mistaken!

‘If Beau-père has his way,’ she told herself, ‘I shall be married to a man who will have all the fun of spending my money while I sit at home and produce children.’

Something rebellious rose within her at the thought and she found herself thinking of all the countries she would like to visit and all the famous people she would like to meet.

Yet this would be impossible unless she was prepared to travel behind a traditional husband, who would undoubtedly be as bored with her as she would be with him.

She thought of the elegant and sophisticated beautiful women who graced the ballrooms of Paris and who seemed to glitter both with their beauty and with their conversation as brightly as the jewels that encircled their long white necks.

Valda could see their charm and she could understand why young men found them far more amusing and alluring than the debutantes with their demure white gowns, their lack of animation and their shyness that made them tongue-tied and boring.

She had naturally never been allowed to visit the Folies Bergère or the Casino de Paris, but she had seen the posters that decorated the hoardings, showing women kicking their legs high above their heads or looking provocatively over a bare shoulder.

It was all very different from the idea of a quiet family life and a man who enjoyed such amusements would undoubtedly find her as dull as she found him.

“I will not do it!” Valda said aloud. “Whatever Beau-père and Mama may say I will not be married off in such a manner!”

She found herself remembering how her stepfather had said she was not even capable of choosing a gown for herself or of finding her own way to Paris.

It was true that she had been looked after, guarded and directed by an army of Governesses, teachers and servants ever since she could remember.

She was waited on from first thing in the morning until last thing at night and certainly, when they travelled, it was like a Royal progress.

‘But that is not to say that I could not manage by myself!’ Valda told herself defiantly.

She did not often think of her father. He had died on an expedition up the Andes when she was twelve and before that he had been abroad so much that she had only seen him at fleeting intervals.

Now she thought he would perhaps despise the manner in which she had been cosseted and the way she had accepted tamely the lack of adventure in her life.

He had been an adventurer and an explorer – a man who must always be seeking the unobtainable. He had discovered ruins in Persia that had excited the archaeological world.

He had spent some years in India and made himself a huge fortune while he was there, besides acquiring a unique knowledge of the various religions and hitherto unknown temples.

He had visited Babylon and Samarkand. He had reached China and had almost lost his life attempting to enter Mecca in disguise.

When she thought about her father, Valda could remember a vitality about him that she had never found in anyone else.

When he told her stories of his travels, she could clearly visualise what he had seen and where he had been, because he made everything he described so vivid.

It was Lady Burke who had found life difficult while her husband was away exploring the world.

She had every creature comfort, but she was the type of woman who needed a man to lean on and it was impossible to lean on Edward Burke when he was so seldom with her.

She had loved and admired him, but at the same time, Valda thought now, it must have been loneliness that had made her mother so eager and ready to marry the Comte de Merlimont less than a year after Edward Burke died.

Not that Valda had ever regretted it.

Beau-père, as she called her stepfather in the French manner, had been unfailingly kind to her and, as he said himself, she might well have been his own child for the affection he lavished on her.

Yet now she wanted her father as she had never wanted him before. She felt sure that he would not expect her to submit tamely to a marriage that might be a happy one or might quite easily be disastrous.

Valda told herself she could never tolerate the convention that her husband should attach himself to another woman or keep a mistress in some side street of Paris. It might be the French way of life, but she was English. She wanted the companionship of her husband. She wanted his love and she wanted him to be exclusively hers as she was prepared to be his.

Something idealistic within her shrank from the idea of having affaires de coeur after marriage, as apparently all smart Frenchwomen did.

The intrigues, the subterfuges involved, might be amusing to them, but to Valda they seemed sordid and very unlike the idealistic love she read about in the poems of the Troubadours, the Knights of Les Baux.

‘I cannot do what Beau-père wants,’ she told herself firmly and rising from her bed she walked to the window and pulled back the curtains to look out onto the night.

The sky was bright with stars and the country below The Château was dark and shadowy, yet very beautiful in the dim light.

‘Somewhere,’ Valda thought, ‘there must be a man who will love me for myself, not for my money.’

For the first time in her life, she hated the fortune her father had left her.

Until now she had always imagined it was an asset to be safe and secure against fear of poverty or of having to live in a different manner to the way in which she had been brought up.

Now it seemed a disadvantage.

As she had said to her stepfather, it was her money her suitors would be thinking about, not her as a person.

If they considered her attractive that would be a bonus, but it would not really matter if she were plain and dull, because her money would cover a multitude of shortcomings.

“I cannot bear it – I cannot!” Valda cried out to the night.

And yet there seemed to be little alternative but to do as her stepfather wanted.

Beneath his old-fashioned courtesy he had, she knew, a strong determination and a manner of getting his own way whatever the odds were against it.