The Jewel Cage

by Jane Steen

  “I should have rested more,” was the only expression I could give to the knowledge this was all my fault.

  “Don’t say that.” Martin squeezed my shoulder. “You did rest. I’ve never seen you so idle. It worried me, you know. It didn’t seem right that you should be so exhausted.” He kissed the top of my eyebrow. “Dr. Walter agreed with me. He suspects there was something wrong from the start. Perhaps it’s even a blessing that you lost her so early. Maybe your own life would have been in danger.”

  “Maybe.” I paused, trying to read my body. “Do you know, I believe I’m already better somehow. Lighter.” I scrubbed at my eyes with my free hand. “How is it possible to be lighter and yet so heavy in heart? You wanted a child so much, and I’ve let you down.”

  “If you imagine it was the baby I was afraid for when Mrs. Hartfield came to tell me what was happening—” Martin stopped and drew breath. “When I saw you with your face as white as your petticoat and saw the blood—all I thought of was you. When the doctor told me the baby was almost certainly lost but he had little reason to worry about you, I wanted to kiss his feet. I would pass up any number of sons to have you beside me, Nellie.” He chuckled. “Dr. Walter said I didn’t even really need him there, except for reassurance. He implied that I was being a fussy old hen. I expect he’ll regale his friends with the story of the man who wouldn’t leave his wife’s side.”

  I turned so I could see him better. “I’m a lucky woman to have such a husband.”

  “The luck is all mine, my darling.” Martin wriggled around so he too lay on his side, his face close to mine. The lamp burned so low that I was only aware of him as a vague shape, blurred by proximity.

  “Do you think Sarah will be all right?” I asked. “She was so frightened when she noticed the blood. I didn’t scream at all, did I? I don’t think I did. Thank heaven I was never in enough pain to scream.”

  “I promise the first thing I’ll do when I wake up is go find her and bring her to visit you. They put her to bed after she fell asleep on the settee. Miss Baker is sleeping in her room.”

  “Where’s Ruth?”

  Martin pushed himself up on one arm and reached over me to turn off the lamp. In the darkness, I detected the soft breeze from the open window, cooling at last, heard the distant clank of the railroad and the sleepy chirp of a bird in one of Calumet Avenue’s young trees.

  “Mrs. Hartfield sent for the undertaker. He’ll make her comfortable in her little casket.” Martin’s fingers explored my face, brushed my heavy hair away so it didn’t encroach upon my cheeks so much. “Mrs. Hartfield thinks the baby shouldn’t be alone tonight. She’s going to watch over her and go to bed once there’s somebody else to replace her in the morning. Everyone else is asleep.” He kissed me gently on the lips. “We should sleep too.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re still going to Lake Forest, you understand?” He yawned. “I want you to have a good long rest.”

  “Yes, Martin.”

  Rest. Yes, I needed it. Martin’s breathing was deepening; perhaps I could sleep with him beside me. I fumbled for his hand and smiled as his fingers curled around mine.

  “I love you, Martin,” I murmured into the darkness. But if he made a reply, I was asleep before I heard it.

  I woke to find Alice bending over me, her sensible face sympathetic but smiling. Martin had been as good as his word, appearing downstairs in robe and slippers to fetch Sarah—but he had sent Alice up first to ensure I was, as he put it, “properly disposed to receive visitors.”

  Some practical steps had to be accomplished, but twenty-five minutes later I sat propped up amid fresh bed linen, my unruly hair braided, my face and hands washed. Freshly arranged flowers scented the air. A glance in my hand mirror showed me that my face was pale but reasonably like its usual appearance.

  Sarah entered the room quietly, holding Martin’s hand, but she let go of it when she realized I was sitting up and smiling at her. She climbed onto the bed in a fluid movement and gave me a careful hug, placing a soft kiss on one cheek and then the other with none of the boisterousness she occasionally displayed. She then sat back on her heels and gave me a long, thoughtful look while Martin made himself comfortable in an armchair.

  “Tess is downstairs praying for Ruth,” she said eventually. “She says she’ll come up later, but it’s my turn now. Miss Baker will come up later too. She was on the trundle in my bedroom, isn’t that funny? I did laugh when I woke up. Miss Baker says I don’t have to do any schoolwork today, even though it’s Monday.” Her smooth brow furrowed. “Ruth is in a little white casket in the parlor like a casket for a doll, and Papa says she’s very tiny. I picked four flowers from the garden and put them on the casket for you and Papa and me and Tess, and I told Ruth all about her family. Alice said she was born much too soon. Miss Baker said the proper word is ‘miscarriage,’ but I mustn’t go chattering about it to everybody because it’s private. Did it hurt, Mama?”

  “Not very much.” I folded her left hand in mine, noting the ink stains on forefinger and middle finger. Sarah had been practicing with the pen again, schoolwork or no. I placed my other hand on my heart. “It hurts here, in the sense of feelings, because I’d rather have Ruth here with us than in heaven.” I swallowed to stop the easy tears welling. “I’m probably going to be sad for a while.”

  “Tess said God’s will is hard to understand sometimes. She’s sad too.”

  “And so is your Papa.” It was Martin who spoke. “But he’s grateful to have a beautiful daughter already. He’s counting his blessings this morning.”

  “And so am I.” I gathered Sarah into my arms. “It’s all right, sweetheart, you won’t hurt me by sitting on my lap. In a few days, I’ll be ready to go to Lake Forest with you, and I’ll soon be myself again.” I hugged her tighter. “We’ll all miss Ruth, but we’ll be a happy family, as we’ve always been.”

  37

  Recovery

  Eight years before, I had jumped into a river to save Sarah. Now, with nothing to do but rest and brood in the Parnells’ pleasant home in Lake Forest, I experienced the same sensation of my feet searching for some kind of solid ground but finding nothing but emptiness below me. I was lost; I was myself, but I was not myself. I didn’t belong.

  “It looks like Martin’s finally found his piece of land for our summer residence.”

  I put down the sheets of paper covered in Martin’s neat, sloping hand and reached for my glass of lemonade. The liquid was warm.

  There was no respite from the heat. The strident, metallic song of the cicadas leaped from tree to tree as one colony took over from the other in an endless concert. The shade of the immense oak tree, a survivor from long before the small town of Lake Forest had put down its roots between lake and prairie, was as welcome as the gentle breeze that blew in from the water.

  “His land? Your land, don’t you mean? I presume you intend to live here occasionally.” Elizabeth’s eyes remained half-closed, her flushed face shaded by the brim of a wide straw hat. Her position, reclining on a wicker divan, made her condition more obvious. She shifted, resting her hand on the swelling of her belly in a protective gesture that brought a lump to my throat. I changed position on my own divan, gazing out through the trees to the blue lake beyond the small park. Not looking at Elizabeth.

  “I mean, it’s Martin’s project, that’s all. He likes houses.”

  My voice sounded sharp to my own ears, but Elizabeth didn’t notice. I heard her muffled yawn and the creak of the divan as she sat up a little. I turned back to face her.

  “I’m so happy you’re really going to build a house in Lake Forest at last.” Elizabeth did look happy, as if life were quite normal. “Will you be on the bluff and have a beach? That’s what this place lacks. Father always says he wanted to be well back from the bluff’s edge in case it crumbled, but it would be so nice not to have to get the pony cart out every time we want to bathe, wouldn’t it? I hope you’ll have a grand estate and
invite us to stay every summer. Lots of room for the children to play.”

  After a few moments’ silence, she lifted the brim of her hat and looked hard at me. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be silly. You can hardly avoid the subject of children around me, and it’s unnecessary, anyhow. I’m merely refreshing my memory as to what Martin said.” I waved the letter I’d been staring at in illustration, then decided it would be most useful to cool my face and began agitating it vigorously. “Yes, we’ll be able to get down to the lake. It’s the three lots nearest to the cemetery, about fourteen acres. Martin says he’ll build the house on the southernmost lot and keep the acreage near the cemetery as wild as possible, with paths for riding and walking.”

  “Fourteen acres, my word. I suppose it’ll be a simply enormous house.”

  “I hope not.” Giving up on trying to cool the warm air by moving it around, I folded the letter and put it in my pocket. “Martin says he wants a country house rather than an estate. He says it’s a mistake to build too large or too grand. You have to think of the upkeep over your entire lifetime, and we can’t just assume we’re always going to have the same income.”

  Elizabeth grinned. “Cautious beast. Just like David.”

  “I’m glad of it.” I looked out at the lake again. “I don’t like the thought of the three of us—and Tess, of course—rattling around in another vast mansion.”

  Elizabeth remained silent for a long moment. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t have more children, Nell dear,” she said at last.

  “Of course there isn’t.”

  Of course there wasn’t. In the bodily sense, I was making a good recovery. I could walk for miles with ease in the cool of early morning and play with Sarah for hours without tiring. The reflected light of the lake had penetrated under my broad hat, bringing a little color to my usually pale skin, and the dark shadows under my eyes were almost gone.

  My spirits were low, as should be expected. I lacked the usual inner urgings to create sketches or to make something with my hands, but I’d been through this mood before and knew my energy and creative powers would return as they always did. I loved staying with the Parnells; Elizabeth was stimulating, pleasant company; Sarah and I seemed closer than ever and often sought out opportunities to be alone together, walking hand in hand around Lake Forest’s curving streets.

  Tess appeared a little distracted, to be sure, but that was because she had insisted we bring Donny with us on the pretext that the landaulet would be the most suitable conveyance for a summer by the lake. She was happy—mostly, it seemed, because of the times she and Donny, who always managed to find some work to do, would sit quietly talking after his day’s tasks were accomplished. All was peace and harmony in this household as the long summer days and balmy nights slipped by.

  In short, there was every hope I would make an excellent recovery. Yet the situation between Martin and me was . . . peculiar.

  The sweet intimacy of that night of grief had ebbed away like an outgoing tide on a quiet shore, a gradual fading that left bleakness behind it. It seemed natural, in the days following our loss, that Martin would sleep in the chamber adjoining his dressing room, which held a narrow bed and a small desk. He used that room when he worked late at night and didn’t want to disturb me when retiring. In the first days after Ruth’s too-early entry into the world, my nights had frequently been disturbed by troubled dreams and bodily discomforts. I had not been a good sleeping companion, so I didn’t blame Martin when he retreated to his single bed and left me to fidget.

  And then we’d come to Lake Forest, and Martin and I had once more been in the same bed for one night. Martin had kissed me good night, a swift peck on the forehead, as if I were once more his childhood friend, turned his back on me and gone to sleep immediately. He’d been tired, of course; we all were after a riotous dinner when Sarah, allowed to stay up late, had shown off with a determination that caused Mrs. Parnell’s generous mouth to tuck in at the corners.

  And yet my hostess had said nothing, either to me or to Sarah, and I knew she understood. We were all, Martin, Sarah, and I, trying too hard. We were trying to put our family back onto its normal footing, back where it had been since I married Martin: the three of us and Tess. But it had been the four of us and Tess for a while, and none of us succeeded in forgetting it.

  Martin had left me with the same gentle kiss, the jovial, affectionate cheerfulness that seemed so forced and unnatural. Left me with my guilt. Now he was writing to me in the most practical terms possible of the piece of land on which he intended to build us a summer home. It would keep him very busy, he said, and in those words, I saw a warning that he would be absent more often.

  I picked up my glass again and considered the sweet liquid into which two flies had strayed and drowned. I swirled the glass a little to detach the victims from its smooth sides and rose to tip the remains of my drink into the roots of the oak tree.

  “It’ll be time to bathe soon,” I said cheerfully to Elizabeth’s hat, which hid most of her face. She couldn’t see my face, so I didn’t have to try too hard to look cheerful.

  “Mmmm, cool water.” Elizabeth stretched; I heard another yawn from under the hat as she swung her legs to the ground and stood up in a flutter of gauzy flounces. She had lost her taste for sweet things again, and her glass contained plain unsweetened tea, far less likely to attract insects than my lemonade. She held out her hand for my glass, which she put on the small table that held the now-empty jugs.

  “Let’s go over to the paddock,” she suggested. “Sarah might be there if she hasn’t gone off with the Ogilvie children. She’s running quite wild with Miss Baker away.”

  “She is.” I grinned, genuinely cheerful for a moment. “Those children seem to know a lot of other children. Do you know, this is the first time I’ve seen Sarah enjoying the company of other children in such an informal way. She seems to have learned not to boss them about and to hide her cleverness, and that’s helping her make friends.”

  “It’s also because they’re from all walks of life.” Turning her back on the cushion-strewn divans, the various journals with which she had been amusing herself, and the empty drinking vessels, Elizabeth reached out for my arm and steered me toward the small paddock at the rear of the Parnells’ two-acre plot. “The Ogilvie children are the most democratic little urchins I’ve ever encountered, and that despite their father bringing in a small fortune in meat-packing. They’ve picked up half the servants’ children in Lake Forest, to the despair of some of the mothers. But they—the mothers—shouldn’t be such snobbish cats. Do you know, I’ve already been lectured by some of Mother’s friends on not letting Mabel keep bad company, and she’s not even two.”

  “I hope you’ll be every bit as democratic as the Ogilvies,” I said.

  “Oh, I will. Feminism is all about equality. Once I’ve had this little one and hired a proper nursemaid, I intend to plunge back into the Cause. I’m sure I only have a short time before I’m having another, and I plan to make the most of my freedom.”

  It was so simple for Elizabeth, I thought. She had given in to David’s desire for children easily and without a fuss; and easily and without a fuss, she would take up her own neglected interests at the earliest opportunity. Why could I not have done that? Why had I fretted myself into ill-health and lost my baby as a consequence?

  “When is Martin coming to visit?” Elizabeth’s voice interrupted my sour thoughts.

  “He doesn’t say.” And I was determined not to ask him. If he needed time apart from me and the rest of his family, I wouldn’t stand in his way.

  “Men are always so casual about these things. How do they get away with it?”

  Elizabeth waved, and I looked toward the paddock. Sarah was there, talking to Tess and Donny. She saw me and ran toward me. I saw she wore her oldest, shortest dress, which was now rather too short.

  “Mama, I jumped a log!” Sarah wrapped her arms around me—she could reach higher and higher o
n my person every month. “Or at least Muffin jumped it, but the instructor says I’ve a good seat and I’m a fine horsewoman. When is Papa coming? I want to show him. One day I’ll be able to go hunting with him, won’t I? May I learn to play polo?”

  “Goodness, no.” Elizabeth laid a hand on my daughter’s hair, which was tangled and full of dirt. “Girls don’t play polo or hunt. You’ll have to wait for a far more enlightened society for that.”

  “When is Papa coming here?” Sarah asked me.

  “He doesn’t say, sweetheart.”

  “I want to see him.”

  For a child who rarely whined, there was definitely something of a grumble in her voice. Fortunately, Sarah thought of another question before I worked out how to respond.

  “Is it time to bathe in the lake?” She inspected the lines of dirt under her fingernails. “Can you come right into the water now, Mama?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you said—”

  Sarah stopped abruptly and bit her lip, looking up at me. I suppressed a sudden urge to snap at my child in a way I almost never did and counted to twenty before I bent down so that her face was closer to mine.

  “I said I would come in the water properly when I stopped bleeding, Sarah. I haven’t. Now please don’t embarrass me by asking again. There are things a lady doesn’t talk about in public. This is why we don’t normally tell children about such matters.”

  But Sarah had seen something children didn’t usually see, and in our times alone together I perhaps said more than I should. I was surrounded by adults—people I liked—yet I had succumbed to the temptation to make a confidante of my eight-and-a-half-year-old child, because she was the only person in my immediate vicinity who asked specific and intimate questions and allowed me to talk about everything, to repeat myself a hundredfold, to describe endlessly the way it felt to lose—