The Wild Cry of Love Read online

  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.

  He never lost his temper, he never stormed and raged as Valda remembered her father doing, but he was relentless and sooner or later the defences against him crumbled and without much apparent effort he was the winner.

  ‘He will wear me down,’ Valda told herself. ‘The man he chooses for a husband will be brought to the house. I will be persuaded to talk to him and almost before I realise what is happening I shall be married!’

  She felt herself shiver at the thought of the unknown eligible bachelor who began to loom as a menace, like an evil bird of prey, from whom she could not escape.

  She moved from the window and lit the candles that stood on a table by her bed.

  In Paris their house had electric light, but in Provence there were lamps and candles, which were somehow so much more appropriate to the ancient walls and the exquisite antique furnishings.

  Having lit the candles, Valda sat down on her bed trying to think.

  ‘What can I do? How can I persuade Beau-père?’

  Even as she spoke the words to herself she knew that she would fail to change his mind – he was determined where she was concerned.

  He genuinely thought he was doing what was right. He really did think that he would fail in his duty if he did not find her a husband and those were arguments that Valda knew were unassailable.

  She looked round her bedroom, as if she was asking for help from the objects that had been familiar to her ever since she had come to the Château Merlimont.

  There was the b
eautiful painted furniture that seemed so fitting for a young girl, the pieces of Sèvres china that her mother had given her for Christmas or on her birthday.

  There were pictures in their carved gilt frames, which her stepfather had allowed her to bring from other rooms in the house, because she liked them and wanted them in what was her own sanctum.

  On the Louis XIV sofa with its carved gilt frame, there sat the doll she had been given as a child in England.

  It had been dressed and re-dressed by various nurses and by her mother, until it possessed an exquisite layette, every garment trimmed with real lace.

  Beside the doll there was a box.

  It had been something Valda had bought for herself when she was in London last year and now it seemed to her that it was a key in her hand, opening a gate that might be the way to freedom!

  In the box was a Kodak camera.

  When Valda had been in London one of her English cousins had shown her a snapshot camera and had taken a picture of her.

  Seeing the result she had been astounded at how natural she had appeared and she persuaded him to let her use this camera to take some photographs of her mother, of the street and of the carriages outside their house.

  She had not been very successful at first, but then her cousin George had taken her to the Royal Photographic Society and she had seen the snapshots of a man called Paul Martin who, with a Facile, the first snapshot camera ever invented, had won their gold medal.

  These were so natural and so beautiful that Valda had become enthused by photography.

  She had wanted to buy a Facile camera for a guinea, but her cousin George had persuaded her to buy a Kodak, which had a flexible film marketed in rolls.

  “The first daylight loading film was made only eight years ago,” George explained, “and this is an improvement.” “How does the film work?” Valda asked him.

  “It is wound on a wooden cone inside a light-tight box and black cloth leaders are attached to each end of the film.”

  “And it’s not complicated?”

  “All you have to do is to take the exposures, then send the film to Kodak to be processed. It is much, much easier than trying to do it yourself!”

  Valda could understand that.

  However, the Kodak did not look very impressive and, when she brought it back to France, her stepfather laughed at it.

  But when he saw her first snapshots after they had been processed, he was more impressed and even posed with one of his favourite horses.

  Equally the camera weighed four pounds and was rather clumsy to carry, so that Valda’s enthusiasm gradually evaporated.

  Often when she was out riding, the beauty of the countryside would make her long to take a picture of it. But it was impossible to carry the heavy camera on horseback and, by the time she returned home, it was too much trouble to drive back to the same place by carriage and photograph what she had admired.

  Nevertheless she had a black leather case with a handle made to hold her camera and she told herself that sooner or later she would take good enough pictures of the peasants and places in Provence to show in an exhibition in Paris.

  It was a daring idea, which she had not mentioned to her mother or her stepfather, but it was always there at the back of her mind. Now she thought to herself that if she had such an achievement to her credit, her ideas about marriage might be considered more seriously.

  It was then she remembered that the gypsies would be camping on the estate.

  Every year at this time the gypsies passed through on their way to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, named for the three Saints, Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome and Mary Jacobe. They had to arrive at their destination in time for May 24th, when they celebrated the anniversary of their Saint Sara, believed to have been the ‘three Marys’ Egyptian servant.

  Because they were so colourful Valda had always been allowed to visit them with her Governess when they camped in one of the Comte’s fields.

  Their painted caravans, their picturesque appearance and their dark-haired, dark-eyed children fascinated her.

  All Provence was interested in the Festival of the Gypsies. At the same time they were wary of the caraques, as the gypsies were called.

  The tenants on the Comte’s estate sometimes complained that they lost their poultry or that their animals were infected by the ‘evil eye’ after the gypsies had passed.

  But usually they were received good humouredly and the young girls hurried to have their fortunes told, to buy love charms and even potions by which they could attract the man of their choice.

  ‘Tomorrow I will photograph the gypsies,’ Valda told herself. ‘They will make beautiful snapshots!’

  She wished she could photograph the ceremony at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. She had been told how the gypsy pilgrims slept all night in the crypt of the ancient Church and how they believed great blessings came to them because they had made the pilgrimage.

  ‘Those pictures would be original!’ Valda thought and then suddenly she was very still.

  An idea had come to her, an idea that was revolutionary and so extraordinary that for a moment she could hardly grasp it.

  She sat staring at her camera and then rose to her feet to walk once again to the window.

  She looked out on the quiet silent beauty of the moonlit night.

  “That is what I will do,” she said aloud, “and because I am Papa’s daughter I will not be afraid!”

  It seemed to her as if for the moment there was no response to her words. Then somewhere far away in the distance she heard the hoot of an owl.

  ‘They are mating,’ she thought. ‘And the owl is singing his love song.’

  She had listened to it often enough, for there were many owls around The Château, but now it seemed to have a significant message for her and her problem.

  The owl was singing to his love! He was not forced to do so. He was free and the owl who replied was free too – free to respond or remain silent.

  ‘That is what I want,’ Valda told herself, ‘to be wooed, to be pursued but not for my money. If I don’t fight for my freedom to choose my husband, my whole life from now on will be arranged for me!’

  She gave a little sigh.

  ‘If I make a mistake, it will be my mistake, not someone else’s,’ she told herself. ‘And whatever Beau-père may say, I know there is an instinct within me which will tell me if a man loves me for myself or for my money.’

  It was all a question of having courage, she thought, and being brave enough to break away from the softness of the life that imprisoned her.

  She thought of her father exploring unknown lands, suffering discomfort and danger, even in the end to the point where he lost his life.

  ‘It was the way Papa would have wished to die,’ she thought. ‘He would have hated to sit about doing nothing, just spending his money.’

  Yet that was what they expected her to do because she was a girl.

  Had she been a boy, she could have followed in her father’s footsteps and roamed the world, but, because she was a girl, she must be put in a gilded cage and the key would be kept by a stranger, this eligible young man who would be chosen for her by her stepfather.

  “How could I possibly be happy in such circumstances?” Valda asked aloud.

  Once again she heard the owls hooting and now it seemed to her that they were nearer to each other.

  She looked up at the stars.

  Somewhere, she thought, they were shining on the man who would some day want her as she wanted him – the man who had been meant for her since the beginning of time.

  ‘But if I wait here,’ Valda reasoned, ‘he will not find me until it is too late and I am already married to someone else. There will be no chance then of us belonging to each other except perhaps by some clandestine intrigue.’

  She felt herself shudder at the idea. It seemed unclean, unpleasant, to be thinking about love affairs before she was even married.

  And what did they mean anyway except a
manner of passing the time? An escort to take her to parties? A man of whom other women would be jealous, a man who was like the cuckoo in somebody else’s nest?

  “I could not bear it! It is horrible!” Valda cried aloud to the night.

  Then she thought of the camera and the gypsies in the fields beyond the wood. How often had she seen them there with their pretty painted caravans!

  Because they interested her, she had read in some old books of her stepfather’s about the gypsies’ wanderings ever since they had come from Asia.

  They had been ill-treated, abused and persecuted in every European country, because people were afraid of them. They were thought of as heathen and outside the Christian faith, and some even believed they had magic powers.

  And yet the pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer was Christian, Valda thought. The Church where they slept for the night was sanctified and in the torchlight procession through the town they carried the images of Saints.

  ‘I must see it for myself!’ Valda thought.

  The idea was gradually taking place in her mind.

  If she went with the gypsies to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer it would be an effective answer to her stepfather, who had said she could not find her way alone to Paris.

  What was more, she would take photographs not only of the gypsies but also, because they passed through the Camargue to reach Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, of the wild horses, the beautiful white, long-tailed, long-maned Camargue horses which were famous in Provence.

  Photographs of them, Valda knew, would be prized and admired by all those who talked about the horses almost as if they came from another planet.

  Valda had seen tame Camargue horses, in fact her stepfather owned one, but she had never seen them wild, galloping over the flat still steppes and sandy dunes.

  “As beautiful,” someone had once said to her, “as if they were ridden by the Gods!”

  “I will bring back snapshots of them,” Valda told herself. ‘Then Beau-père will realise I am not just a pretty face, not just a girl who can be ordered into marriage without having a will of her own. I will show him that I am not only capable of looking after myself, but also of achieving something worthwhile.”