The Gilded Cage (52 page)

Politics had taken the place of religion in her life, but it had left a spiritual void. If Bell did not believe in God, for Lawrence had proven to her how such a belief contradicted her commitment, she nevertheless missed that belief. She found she still believed in the soul, and if she believed in the soul she believed in transcendence, but if she believed in transcendence she must believe in a higher force of some kind. It was all very puzzling. Next year, Bell decided, she would read philosophy. She felt a hunger for abstraction; she lived in a world of specificity, and she was discovering that it could, at times, be inadequate. Her mind was fed and her soul felt barren.

Bell was thinking these thoughts on Christmas Eve as she translated an extract from Zola into English and then Russian. It was difficult work, and though she tried to concentrate, her mind kept wandering. Outside her windows she could sense the quickening pulse of the city, as people finished up their work and looked forward to family and song and presents the next day. She would work on Christmas Day. Here at
Di Fraye Gezelshaft
it was like any other day, though Lev had delicately mentioned she could have the day off, if she wished. He confessed that though an atheist, he observed Yom Kippur in his own fashion. But what was the use of taking Christmas off when Lawrence would only disapprove, forbidding her to mention the holiday or buy him a little gift?

She heard low voices and laughter coming from Lev's tiny office, and she raised her head. Something about the laugh was familiar. Something from the past, something happy, warm with possibility. She couldn't place the feeling, and shrugging, Bell bent her head over her work again. Sentimentality was part of the season, she supposed.

But then Lev walked out of his office, and with him was Horatio Jones. “Look, Bell,” Lev said, with a broad smile, “an uptown journalist wants to do an article on us.”

Bell knew immediately that Horatio had known she worked here. His face did not show surprise, only a slight nervousness.

“Mrs. Birch, Mr. Jones.” Lev made the introduction, and Horatio put out his hand.

“Mrs. Birch, it's good to see you again.”

“Ah, you two know each other.”

“Yes,” Bell said. “In another life.”

“In another life,” Horatio echoed, smiling at her, and at the sight of his smile, Bell was suddenly very glad to see him.

Lev's quick dark eyes darted from Bell to Horatio. “Bell,” he said, “I know you don't observe the season, but why don't you leave early today? There's nothing that won't wait until tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Lev,” Bell said gratefully. She didn't think she'd be able to concentrate on Zola anyway. Lev went back to his office, and she looked back at Horatio, smiling. “It's good to see you, Horatio,” she said quietly. “You look well.”

“You're as lovely as ever,” Horatio lied, for Bell, though still beautiful, had lost something in the past years. Perhaps it was that serene, otherworldy look in her amber eyes. And she was much thinner, too. He could see her collarbones through her shirtwaist, and that swell of breast and hips that had been so alluring was gone. Her body seemed more angular. But she was still so womanly, with her long sweep of lashes and her abundant hair, her graceful hands.

“You're a terrible liar, Horatio,” Bell said. There was a sardonic twist to her smile he'd never seen before.

That smile was painful to him. “Yes,” he said softly, “I lied. You're even more beautiful to me.”

Confused, Bell looked away, blushing.

“If you're leaving,” Horatio said quickly, “would you let me buy you coffee, or tea? I know—a glass of sherry, to celebrate the season.”

“I don't celebrate Christmas anymore,” Bell said, taking her coat off the rack behind her.

“Well, I do,” Horatio said, his brown eyes dancing. “So come on.”

He took her to a small hotel on Broadway, near Astor Place. It was a respectable place, and Bell noted that there were other women there, drinking sherry with gentlemen friends or other women. She let Horatio press her into having one, and she was glad when she felt the warm, nutty taste slip down her throat. She hadn't had a glass of sherry since she'd lived with Columbine.

“This is lovely, Horatio,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Are you happy, Bell?” he asked suddenly. His gaze rested on her earnestly.

“Yes, of course,” she answered composedly. “I enjoy my work. And it's good to be out of jail,” she added with a laugh. “Every day I wake up relieved to find I'm free again.”

“It was a long sentence,” Horatio said. “And the attempt on Frick didn't help your parole any, I'm sure.”

“Yes,” Bell said distantly, “I was due for parole, and the country went crazy about anarchists, so I didn't get out.” She still couldn't speak of her disappointment without feeling that agony. She had lived for the day of her release, and it had been snatched away from her. She couldn't think of it now. She remembered turning her face to the wall, lying on her cot, not able to speak for days.

She looked around at the pleasant, warm room, as if for reassurance. “I'm here, however,” she said. “It's behind me now.”

“What about now?” Horatio asked. “Are you happy with him?”

The smile left her eyes. “Yes, of course I am. He's a brilliant man.”

Horatio nodded; he did not point out that Lawrence Birch's brilliance had managed to escape every major figure in the anarchist movement. “Tell me,” he said briskly in his reporter's voice, “is it discouraging to be an anarchist these days? After Berkman's attentat, the movement really slid into a decline in America. Especially since
Fraye Arbeter Shtime
closed,” he said, naming the former foremost anarchist weekly.

“Only temporarily, we hope,” Bell said. “But yes, it is somewhat discouraging. With the depression of '94, people's minds are on surviving, not ideology. But the seeds for renewal are planted, nonetheless. How can the people fail to see that the capitalist system is crushing them? That cooperation based on love is the only way economics makes sense for the many, and not the few?”

“You sound like a Nationalist, not an anarchist,” Horatio observed. “Actually, you sound like Columbine.”

“I take Edward Bellamy's ideas and push them a necessary step further. That's the anarchist ideal—cooperation, harmony, and peace. You're smiling, Horatio, and I find it extremely annoying.”

“I can't help it—I find utopias pleasant dreams, not achievable realities. Besides, I'm a newspaperman. That's practically synonomous with cynic.”

Horatio smiled so charmingly she had to laugh. “Well, we'll never agree on politics,” Bell said, “but I'm glad that we're still friends.”

“As am I.” Her hand was on the table, and he wanted to cover it with his own. Horatio forced his attention back to her face. “When did you marry?” he asked. “I didn't know about it. I suppose I should congratulate you.”

“We married last year,” Bell said quickly. She couldn't tell Horatio that she wasn't legally married to Lawrence. “And thank you.”

An awkwardness passed between them. Horatio drained his tiny sherry glass, and Bell sipped at hers. “Another?” he asked, though hers was still half full.

“No, thank you. I should be going—”

“Of course. Can I find you a cab?”

“No, I'll just walk over to the El.”

Glad to be moving, Bell gathered her coat and scarf. The cold air hit them as they left the hotel, and a few flakes of snow fluttered down against the white sky.

“Have you made any plans for Christmas?” Horatio asked, pulling on his gloves.

“No, no. I told you, I don't celebrate it any longer.”

“Of course.” They turned toward Cooper Square and began to walk. Two women walked by them, bags full of packages in their arms. The packages were wrapped and beribboned, and the women were murmuring excitedly. One of them said something, and the other laughed, a high, clear sound. “Do you remember Christmas at Columbine's?” Horatio asked in a meditative tone. “I don't think I've spent such a happy Christmas since. She always overdid the decorating, remember? That little parlor smelled like a pine forest. And all the food! I suppose it was her English Christmases. Oranges with cloves, apples, figs, gingerbread … and the three of you, Marguerite, you, Columbine—even in the lean years, giving such wonderful presents. Remember the year Columbine gave Marguerite that mauve cashmere shawl? She burst into tears.”

“That was the last year we were together,” Bell said.

“Was it? I suppose it was. How strange, I remember it as a happy time, and I was miserable, if I recall.”

“Yes, I made you miserable,” Bell said. “And it still pains me to think of it.”

“Does it, Bell? But you were only honest with me.”

“It pains me,” Bell said with difficulty, “because had I taken what you offered, I think somehow I would be a happier person today.”

He fumbled for her hand and pressed it quickly, then dropped it. “We can't choose who we love,” he said. “I learned that.”

“Yes,” Bell said. “We can't choose who we love. We can only choose our friends.”

“Perhaps we can be friends now,” Horatio said.

“Perhaps we can,” Bell said softly, knowing that it was impossible. Lawrence wouldn't hear of it.

They came up to the steps of the El, and they stopped. Bell turned to him. She looked young and pretty, with color in her cheeks from the wind, some wisps of brandy-colored hair escaping her black hat, snow falling around her. The expression in her eyes was very sad when she looked at Horatio. He knew that he had never known, would never know, what really drove her. And he still loved her just the same.

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He took both of her hands in his. “Merry Christmas, Bell. And the happiest of New Years.”

She gave the slow, gentle smile that he loved. “Merry Christmas, Horatio.”

Columbine waited while the chattering guests filtered out of the Hartley's second-floor salon toward the tables set with candies and sweets set up in the gallery amid the Rembrandts and the Courbets. She stood by the French doors, looking out at quiet Fifth Avenue. The sky was white; it had been threatening snow, and only a few stray flakes had fallen. The moon was a round yellow circle, slowly rising over the branches of the trees in Central Park. Something about the night reminded her of the last time she had stood in this room, so miserable on New Year's Eve, in her fine gown and in the midst of all her confusion about Ned.

That night had begun everything, she knew now; she'd met Lawrence that night, she'd fought with Ned, and Elijah had come the next day. That night had precipitated the crack in her relations with Ned that had turned into a chasm. Funny how things could change, on just one night.

Things had not turned out as she'd expected. She had married Ned after all, and was now entwined in this aggravating role of New York society matron. She'd never expected that. Now Maud Hartley still simpered at her, but without the same superiority. Columbine was married, and somehow respectable in Maud's eyes, and she would be polite, for all she did not like Columbine. She almost missed Maud's acidity now, the tartness that had told her she did not belong.

Impulsively, Columbine opened the latch and walked out on the terrace for a moment. She remembered the horror of that night so many years ago, when the explosion had moved against their skin, the first explosion that had changed her life. Was this what the next century would bring, she wondered, such sudden, careless violence in the middle of plenty? If the world didn't change, perhaps.

Now, standing on the terrace, Columbine remembered that night clearly for the first time. She remembered having a cashmere shawl around her shoulders, she remembered how Ned had tenderly kissed her fingers under the cover of darkness. And she remembered smoke, and an acrid smell in her nostrils, the panic when the explosion had happened, the screams of the women. A woman had run across the street, shrieking, and Columbine realized with a shock that of course the woman had been Fiona, her maid, running full tilt toward her husband. And then, for the first time since she'd thought about that night, Columbine suddenly remembered leaning over the railing and watching a tall man walk rapidly down Fifth. With a slow, rolling sense of shock, Columbine realized that the man had been Lawrence Birch.

It was impossible. It was a piece that didn't fit. She must be remembering wrong. But Columbine closed her eyes and remembered the walk, the way the head was held on the neck, even the hat, and she was almost certain.

“Columbine?” Olive poked her head around the door. “What are you doing? It's freezing out here. Come inside, Hawthorn is looking for you. She got a prize in the fruitcake.”

“Yes, Olive,” Columbine answered mechanically. She turned away, but she took one look back at the view of Fifth Avenue. The man she'd seen had been Lawrence Birch, she was sure of that now. But what she could do with such information, or what it meant, she had no idea.

Christmas Day was one of the few times Marguerite and Willie found themselves alone. Later, they would meet Toby at the Waldorf hotel, where they'd treat him to the most lavish Christmas dinner in the chefs power. There was always a slight edge of melancholy to Toby on Christmas Day, though Marguerite didn't know why.

Christmas morning was a time for Marguerite and Willie to be together, a family, sharing tender tokens of affection. It was a time that called for pure hearts and unstudied generosity, and so it was a time of awkwardness for them both. But what would the papers say if they knew Mr. and Mrs. Paradise could not bear to be alone together, even on Christmas Day?

Marguerite pulled out a house gown of patterned velvet in a deep shade of sapphire blue. The high collar of Valenciennes lace framed her pretty pointed chin, and worn over the dress as a sort of cape was a caftan of white satin which came over her shoulders in front on either side to the floor, like flowing scarves. In back, a train heightened the drama. Marguerite wove blue velvet roses through her hair, which she left loose. She left her ears and wrists bare in expectation of the new jewels which would soon adorn them. She was the picture of feminine grace, ready to graciously preside over the family Christmas. If only she was going out on stage instead of into the drawing room of a hotel suite she called a home, to meet a husband in the midst of a torrid affair, under a Christmas tree that had been bought and decorated by hotel staff.