The Jewel Cage

by Jane Steen

  Up close, Mr. Canavan’s appearance was arresting.

  “He is a striking man,” I breathed into Elizabeth’s ear. “Such strong features. Made for the stage, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Quite overwhelming, close up.” Elizabeth turned toward me so we would not be seen whispering at each other like schoolgirls. “I don’t mean he’s unnatural-looking, of course—‘artificial’ might be a better word. But my goodness, he does draw the eyes.” She pulled me a little to one side; the rest of our party was caught up in the general movement toward the actor. “Miss Dardenne’s his mistress, you know.”

  “She is? Rather insipid, in my opinion.”

  “You’ve said that already. I was trying to tell you earlier—there’s a rumor that he arranges parties for the more exalted patrons of his theater late at night. Where they can spend more time with the actresses.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “In an immoral sense?”

  “I have no idea. Aren’t all actresses supposed to be immoral?”

  “Miss Dardenne doesn’t appear as if she has the wit to be immoral.”

  “Isn’t that Thea whose hand he’s kissing? Come on, we should get closer.”

  Elizabeth skillfully worked her way through the bystanders to Victor Canavan, who was indeed holding Thea’s hand. Our guest was gazing up at him, not with the expression she used for Martin, but with the serious concentration one might expend on a perfectly executed painting.

  “I think I’m too young to be called beautiful,” she was saying.

  “My dear lady, youth is always beautiful.” The actor’s voice was more intimate than the ringing instrument he had employed on stage, but the English accent—underlain with something else, a slight hint of a different origin—was no less pleasing to listen to. “It is the first freshness of life that never returns, and we who have eyes for beauty are drawn to it as a flower to the sun.” He smiled, his wide, mobile mouth parting to show white teeth. “And yet I swear I have been ungenerous with my compliment. You are exquisite; one of nature’s finest works. A setting must be found and the gem polished—but the potential is there for a masterwork.”

  “Oh, really.” I turned back to Elizabeth, annoyed. “He’ll turn her head, and she’s vain enough already.”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed how much she likes mirrors.” Elizabeth had a wonderful talent for breathing words so that nobody else could hear them except for their intended recipient. “Still, is there any harm in it? Look how thrilled she is.”

  She was correct. There was no real outward change in Thea’s demeanor, but she seemed somehow to glow.

  “I suppose you’re right.” I felt myself soften. “The child has had little enough excitement in the last few years. Perhaps this will help her feel more at home in Chicago.”

  “That’s the spirit. Oh, look at Tess—I think she will burst.”

  Mr. Canavan had bent down to salute Tess with a kiss on the forehead, murmuring, “Thank you, little lady.” I hadn’t heard what Tess had said—but I wondered if she had, despite Thea’s admonitions, applied the word “beautiful” to Mr. Canavan’s person in his presence.

  14

  Manners

  “The cats!”

  The door to our suite flew open, and Thea had barely entered the parlor before the cry burst from her. Beside me, Sarah flinched and moved a little closer.

  “What’s wrong, Thea?” I tried to keep my tone as even as possible, but the sound of Thea’s voice had set my heart racing. I was beginning to dread her homecomings, and this time she had returned much earlier than I’d expected.

  “Everything.” Thea plunked her reticule down on a low piece of furniture near the door and pulled the hatpin out of her straw hat. “I hate this stupid town.” Having removed the hat, she shoved the hatpin back into it with such force that I was sure she would ruin it. No doubt that would provide cause for complaint tomorrow.

  “I thought you were getting on with the Misses Thuringer.”

  “Oh, they behaved nicely enough in front of you.”

  Thea’s expression was one I was coming to know well and dreaded. Haughty anger, wounded feelings, discontent; it was a mixture of all of those. If I spoke to her, I would make things worse, no doubt, but to ignore the pain she was so clearly experiencing would be ignoble of me.

  “And the other young people? What about that boy, Jeremiah? He seemed rather nice.”

  “He’s a prig. And those fat-bottomed coarse girls played up to him from the moment we arrived at the park.” Thea affected a simpering expression. “Oh, do show us how you can run, Jeremiah!” She continued in falsetto. “You must be so good at lawn tennis. Do you play lawn tennis, Miss Lombardi? Oh, you must—it’s divine and so good for the figure. Do you play croquet? Oh, I suppose there wasn’t much call for it in Kansas.”

  Her imitation of the Thuringer twins was accurate enough that a grin tugged at the corners of my mouth, but I suppressed it ruthlessly.

  “Maybe they were trying to find something you could do together,” Sarah suggested. Her hand stole around my arm.

  “Maybe little girls shouldn’t have so many opinions,” Thea said, and Sarah’s hand clung tighter.

  “Thea, please don’t speak to Sarah like that,” I said softly.

  “Like what?” Thea picked up her hat and marched into her room before I could formulate a reply. She didn’t quite slam the door, but she didn’t shut it as quietly as a lady should.

  “I may have opinions, mayn’t I, Mama?” Sarah asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “Yes, you may.” I bit the inside of my lip to stop myself saying more. And then I bit it a little harder to stop myself from getting up, opening Thea’s door, and telling her exactly what I thought of her behavior.

  A soft knock sounded at the main door. With a sigh, I rose to answer it. I had been so looking forward to this Sunday afternoon—a chance to spend some time alone with my family. Perhaps, I had imagined, Thea would find something in common with the Thuringer girls, who were the daughters of a Joliet merchant and seemed reasonably free from airs and graces. When Mrs. Thuringer had invited Thea on an outing to the park, I had agreed with gratitude and some apprehension. Thea had been invited out before by three other families from church on three distinct occasions—and not only had she never been asked back, all my efforts to reciprocate the favor had been declined with protestations of another engagement.

  I accepted the small blue envelope from the page and opened it with the silver paper knife we kept for such purposes.

  “What does it say, Mama?” With Thea in her room, Sarah was recovering some of her spirits.

  “Oh, it’s merely a note from Mrs. Thuringer thanking us for Thea’s company.” I folded up the letter and put it in my pocket. At that moment, I knew just how a horse felt when a burr worked itself under its saddle. The words on the paper would irritate and vex me for hours to come, as much as I mentally bucked and kicked or pretended that they were not there. Mrs. Thuringer had been polite in her hope that Thea had arrived back at the Palmer House safely but had made it quite clear I should not entertain any hopes of a second invitation. I anticipated another night with little sleep as I racked my brain for someone of my acquaintance who could not only manage Thea but make her happy. I had tried hard, but she simply didn’t respond well to me.

  “When’s Tess coming home, Mama? She’s been staying out awful late.” The corners of Sarah’s rosebud mouth drooped.

  I fixed a smile on my face. “She’s merely trying to take advantage of the light evenings before fall comes to see as much of her family as she can. But Papa will be back soon, and we can go for our own little walk, can’t we?”

  “With Thea?”

  I put a hand on Sarah’s wavy hair. “I must ask her along, darling. She’s our guest.”

  “Perhaps she won’t want to go because she went for a walk already.” Sarah’s face lit up with hope.

  “Perhaps.” I looked toward Thea’s closed door and then at the cloc
k on the mantelpiece. Sunday afternoon suddenly seemed dreadfully long.

  Tess appeared in a low mood when she arrived home, but the hour was late, and I put her subdued answers to my questions down to tiredness. The dawning of Monday morning did not brighten her countenance, however.

  “Is something wrong?” I eventually asked. “You seem rather depressed in spirits. Was your visit not a good one?”

  Tess made a face at her oatmeal. “Where’s Sary?” she asked instead of answering my question.

  “She’s gone for a walk in the park with Donny. It’s such a lovely morning, and she seemed so full of energy that I planned to take her out, and then Donny turned up because he’d been talking with Martin about—something.” I bit my lip; the subject under discussion had been the landaulet, about which Tess was still unaware. “He took her for an outing, as they’d both already had breakfast and he knew I was waiting for you. He seemed as excited about going to the park as she was.”

  “That’s nice.” But Tess spoke listlessly, pushing her oatmeal around her bowl instead of covering it with sugar the way she usually did.

  I sighed, looking about me at the men and women—mostly women—who were, like us, partaking of breakfast in the echoing space of the Palmer House’s dining room. The smell of coffee wafted on the air, competing with the sweet aromas of baked goods and the salty tang of the kippers being consumed by a large, florid man who sat alone three tables from us, a copy of the Chicago Tribune propped up on his coffeepot.

  “I’m getting rather tired of hotel meals, aren’t you?” I watched Tess while pretending to be absorbed in the movements of the waiters. “I’ll be glad when we move.”

  “Mmmm.” Tess dumped her spoon into her oatmeal and sat back.

  “Would you prefer a pastry?” Giving up on my own breakfast, I put out a tentative hand, laying my long fingers on Tess’s short ones. “There is something wrong, isn’t there? Won’t you tell me what it is? While there’s just two of us?”

  Tess’s spectacles reflected the morning light from the windows as she looked up at me. “I didn’t have a good visit.” Her small lower lip protruded. “I told Mary there was a young man I liked, and she told Aileen, and Aileen told me I had no business liking young men, being feebleminded as I am.”

  “Aileen said that?” I could hear the shock in my voice. “That’s hardly sisterly.”

  “Then she asked if the young man was like me, and I said he wasn’t a bit because he’s much taller and stronger, and then she put on her cross voice and said of course she meant was he feebleminded too, and I said I didn’t think he was at all feebleminded, but then she went on and on and got me all confused, and I said I’d known him at the Poor Farm, and then she said that meant he was an imbecile, and did he look like me, and—” Tess stopped, her lips trembling, and fished into a pocket for a handkerchief to stem the large tears that had caught in the rim of her spectacles. “What does she mean, does he look like me? Why should he look like me?”

  “Oh dear.” I understood what Aileen meant. I had seen Tess’s almond eyes, short stature, round face, and fine, straight hair repeated on other men and women, at the Poor Farm but also on the streets of Chicago. I realized some of those individuals could not even talk and had never met another with Tess’s fine attributes of character and intelligence. She was no genius and needed help with many things, but she was shrewd, loyal, observant, and kind. As was Donny. If I’d had doubts about him at any point—and I didn’t believe I had—they were subsumed in the hot wave of anger that swept over me when I reflected on how Aileen was ready to reject the young man without even knowing him.

  “Aileen should be ashamed to say such words to her own sister.” I leaned forward to put a hand on Tess’s shoulder. “Why should you not want the same things as most women do? As for you being feebleminded, well, she must be soft in the head herself to think so.”

  To my relief, Tess’s small teeth showed in a faint grin. She sniffed and turned to the side to blow her nose and wipe her eyes.

  “You’re so funny, Nell,” she said when she turned back to me, but her expression became somber again. “Do you think Donny doesn’t like me because I look—like I do? Like an imbecile?” The last word came out in a hoarse whisper.

  “I don’t think he doesn’t like you.” I frowned. “When I said I’d noticed no sign of romantic attachment, I didn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate you as a friend.”

  “He probably only wants to be romantic with pretty girls.” The despair on Tess’s face was so theatrical that it might have been comical in other circumstances. “He’s so handsome, and I’m plain.”

  “You are not plain.” I did my best to smile at the dear face opposite me, the dearest woman I had ever known apart from my adored Mama. Yes, there were lines on Tess’s face that were not on mine, even though she was only three years older. She appeared older than her twenty-seven years, it was true. But nobody who loved her would call her plain. “You have the sweetest face, and everyone smiles when they look at you—including Donny.”

  Tess’s lips curled in a tremulous answering smile, and then she straightened in her chair. I turned to see Sarah proceeding toward us at the fastest pace she could manage and not disobey the frequently repeated instruction that children must not run indoors. She was towing Donny by two fingers of his left hand. The young man was wearing a decent enough jacket and trousers that his intrusion into the hallowed precincts of the Palmer House dining room did not cause anyone to frown; in his right hand, he clutched his cap.

  “Good morning, my best Tess!” Sarah let go of Donny’s fingers to run around the table and salute our friend with a hearty kiss. “I wish you’d been awake to come with us. We saw an organ-grinder with a real live monkey, but he said he’d bite me if I put my hand out—I think he meant the monkey would bite me, not himself—and we saw a man in such funny clothes selling very long sausages, and an old man slipped on something nasty and sat down in it and said something very rude.” She grinned at me. “Good morning again, Mama.” She looked up at Donny with the air of an actor giving another player a cue.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Rutherford,” Donny said shyly, the beautiful smile spreading across his face. He turned to Tess. “Good morning, Miss O’Dugan. I hope I find you both well.”

  Tess’s face fell, just a fraction. We were usually “Miss Nell” and “Miss Tess” to Donny, and his sudden formality had not escaped either of us.

  I noticed Sarah nod at Donny, and my eyes narrowed. But she was speaking again.

  “Won’t you come upstairs with me?” she said to Donny and wrinkled her nose. “I have to go upstairs. Thea may be awake by now.”

  An expression of alarm crossed Donny’s face. “I can’t, Miss Sarah. I have to run to the stable and fetch Mr. Capell. I’m probably already late.” He looked apologetically at me—of course, he needed to fetch the carriage for me as I was due at the store. Alphonse Capell was the name of our new driver. He turned back to Tess, putting his cap back on his head and taking it off again. “I wish you a good day, Miss O’Dugan.”

  “Hasn’t he got nice manners?” said Sarah as she watched Donny’s tall, broad back disappear from view.

  “He’s certainly a tad more formal than he was,” I observed. “Did you have something to do with the change?”

  Sarah’s face assumed a self-conscious expression. “Well, I did say that you and Tess are rich ladies and he ought to call you by your last names.” She looked at me from under her straight copper eyebrows. “I was just trying to be proper.”

  “I’m going upstairs, Thea or no Thea.” Tess’s mouth set in a grim line with a hint of lower lip as she rose to her feet. “I hope Miss Baker arrives soon.”

  “Sarah Amelia Rutherford—” I began as soon as Tess disappeared out of sight.

  “Mama, I really, really have to use the ladies’ retiring room.” Sarah bounced on her toes to emphasize the point. “And I don’t want to go upstairs on my own because of Thea—and I guess now Tes
s is cross with me. It’d better be the one over there.” And she vanished before I could question her further. She knew I wouldn’t stop her; she was as familiar with the public areas of the hotel as with our own parlor and despite Martin’s fears about kidnappers had asserted her right to visit the ladies’ room on her own, like a big girl—when it suited her.

  “Poor Tess.” I massaged my temples, whispering the words under my breath and trying not to let my emotions show on my face in this busy, all-too-public space. Between my friend’s lovesickness, Sarah’s ongoing campaign to emphasize the social distance between Tess and Donny, and Thea’s overall unpleasantness, I might as well have said “poor me.” But at least I had my work to escape into.

  15

  Breakage

  The worse the situation with Thea became, the more I focused on my profession. When Martin came to find me one evening in October, I was so deep in my work that the store might have caught fire again and I wouldn’t have noticed.

  “Is it really that late?”

  I looked up at the clock that hung on the wall of my office.

  “The clock has no reason to lie to you.” Martin grinned, seating himself on a corner of my worktable. “You’ve been busy.” He indicated the pile of sketches in front of me.

  “Three ball gowns, five evening dresses, a fur-trimmed paletot, a silk day ensemble, three wool ditto. And a riding habit—isn’t it good that Mrs. Karak has entrusted that to us? So many ladies insist on a tailor. Everything a newly wealthy young bride needs for a prolonged stay in Boston.”

  “Be that as it may, it is very late.” Martin looked meaningfully at the clock. “Your husband is here to escort you home. I thought we could walk since we won’t get many chances once winter sets in.”