The Gilded Cage

by Susannah Bamford

  “That’s fine, that’s all right.”

  “Please sit down, Miss Moffat,” Columbine said, coming around the desk. She pushed out the armchair reserved for nervous guests.

  “Oh, Mrs. Nash, thank you. I knew you first thing, when I came in. I wasn’t allowed to go to your lectures, my mam said … well, I wasn’t allowed. But I read about the New Women Society, and I didn’t know where else to go, so—”

  “Sit down, please, Miss Moffat.”

  “I’d rather stand, ma’am, my sister’s waiting out by the door, so I can’t be long.”

  “Let’s bring her in,” Bell said, starting toward the door.

  “No!” Ivy Moffat’s voice suddenly had strength, and it stopped Bell in her tracks. “I’d like to explain first, you see,” she went in her normal soft tone. “Sally is embarrassed, and … well.”

  “Perhaps you should start at the beginning, Ivy,” Columbine said kindly.

  The young woman nodded several times, as if to go over her story again before launching into it. “Sally is a bit older than me, two years. She married John Hoover over a year ago. He had a good job, a foreman in a shirtwaist factory. But he got laid off.” Ivy ground to a halt. She gripped her umbrella more tightly and stared at them, as if asking them to complete her story themselves to spare her the embarrassment.

  Bell was used to that look. “You need a little to tide the family over,” she said gently. “Just tell me exactly what you think you’ll—”

  “No.” The strong voice came back, the indication that little Ivy Moffat had a backbone of steel. She paused again, but this time, Bell and Columbine waited. “At first Sally wouldn’t tell me nothing,” she said, her voice very low. “She said she fell down the stairs, or tripped and the pot full of soup fell on her, scalding her. But she’d never been clumsy. Our dad used to say she could be a dancer on the stage, she was so graceful…” A solitary tear welled up in Ivy’s left eye. She shook her head as though to send it flying.

  Columbine exchanged glances with Bell. Sick at heart, they knew now why Ivy Moffat had come.

  “He was beating her, you see. I guess I didn’t want to know, at first. And she wouldn’t admit it, either. But then finally she did.”

  “Did she try to leave?”

  Ivy nodded. “Six months ago. She came home, but our dad sent her back. She went back, and John threw her down the stairs. She was in the hospital then. So I told her that I’d find a way. I tried to save, and I have a little. But our dad won’t take her in, so I have to find a place for us. My mam has a stepsister. She’s a hard woman, but she’ll do. She never liked my dad, so she doesn’t care what he says. She says she’ll take me and Sal if we pay rent and expenses. But I don’t have enough, and Sal is in bad shape, so … I come here.”

  Columbine went and placed her hand on Ivy Moffat’s arm. “You’ve done right,” she said. “You tell us what you need, and we’ll give it to you. We’ll give you something today to tide you over, and you can have the rest next week.”

  Ivy’s face collapsed in relief, and a smile lit up her plain, fierce face. “I’ll tell Sal.” She ran out and they could hear a whispered colloquy in the hall. Then two pairs of footsteps returned.

  Sally Hoover looked very much like her sister, sandy-haired and freckled. Under any other circumstances one could see that she’d probably once had an amiable, friendly face. But now her face was closed, her eyes flat. Along one cheek ran a livid, yellow-green bruise, and one eye was swollen shut.

  Columbine gasped and started forward, but Bell held her back with a quick, light touch on her arm. “I’m glad you came to us, Sally,” Bell said.

  Sally looked at the floor. “I wanted to thank you,” she mumbled.

  “We’re here to help,” Columbine said.

  “I’ll pay you back,” Sally added.

  “If you wish the money to be a loan,” Bell said, “you can pay us back a little at a time when you and your sister are back on your feet. Otherwise, it’s a gift. You can think about it, and let us know.”

  Sally said nothing. Ivy looked at her. “We’ll be going now,” she said.

  Columbine dug into her purse and gave Ivy all the money she had. “Come back next week and I’ll give you more,” she said. If only the emergency fund was available, she could give Ivy what she needed today. “This probably isn’t enough for rent, but maybe if your step-aunt knows more will be coming, she’ll accept a down payment.”

  “I’m sure she will,” Ivy said. “Thank you, Mrs. Nash.”

  Silently, Columbine and Bell watched the two sisters walk out.

  “I wish we could do more,” Columbine said.

  “What more can we do?” With a sigh, Bell turned away.

  Six

  EMMA GOLDMAN HAD a small, compact body that was dynamic even when at rest. Her eyes were soft behind her wire glasses, but her tongue was as sharp as a razor. Only twenty-one, impudent, passionate, and unafraid, she had found her feet in the radical circles of New York within months of her arrival in the city. Lawrence was rather afraid of her, though he didn’t like to admit this embarrassing fact to himself.

  He had hoped, when he’d invited Bell to this night’s informal anarchist meeting and found, to his surprise, that she accepted, that Emma Goldman would not be there. After sitting nursing a cup of tea or a glass of beer for hours at Schwab’s saloon, saying nothing, only watching, Lawrence was finally ready to speak. The person he feared most was Goldman. For a moment, Lawrence considered telling Bell the meeting was off.

  But when he had time to reflect, he decided it was good that Bell would be there. He always did better with a female audience. He remembered the respect he’d always received in Oakland and San Francisco when he spoke at meetings. New York was no more intellectual, no more fierce, than the West Coast had been.

  Bell was dressed in her usual somber brown and black, but she fit right in at this gathering. The men stirred as she entered, for even her drab clothes couldn’t hide her beauty. They looked at Lawrence with new respect, and he smiled to himself. He’d never overlooked that ridiculous quality in men that made them respect the ability to capture a beautiful woman. More than money, more than power, more than wisdom, such a prize commanded envy, even here.

  A man he knew only slightly, a German, came over and stood in front of them. He looked at Bell but spoke to Lawrence, and Bell stared him down until he dropped his eyes.

  “I know you’re looking for a room,” the man said gruffly to Lawrence while he tried not to look at Bell again. “There’s one free in my building on Fifth Street. You can come round tomorrow and look at it if you like.”

  “All right,” Lawrence said to get rid of him. What an unfortunate piece of luck, to have an offer of a place to stay in front of Bell. She would surely tell Columbine, and he might have to leave the house on Twenty-Third Street where he was so comfortable. Columbine had asked him politely several times if he’d heard of anything, but he’d managed to put her off.

  He took down the address of the man in such a rude fashion that he hoped the man would miss the appointment tomorrow. After standing a minute, the man walked away.

  “Why were you rude to your friend?” Bell whispered.

  “I didn’t like the way he looked at you,” Lawrence answered, and, still annoyed, rose. “I’ll get us some coffee.”

  He brought back the coffee and waited for someone to start. This was not an official meeting, but a general discussion about what position to take in the struggle for the newly formed cloakmaker’s union. Lawrence knew the discussion would also inevitably touch on the issue which now threatened to divide them: should anarchists support the struggle for an eight hour day?

  The few women who were there did not speak. They deferred to the men, who spoke one after the other, politely at first, then interrupting each other with apologies, then shouting, then standing, then pounding on the table.

  “We must never forget the Propoganda of the Deed,” one young man with a large droopi
ng mustache said quietly. The others seemed to swivel toward him as one. “We must go back and read Bakunin, we must listen to our esteemed comrade Johann Most. What can the individual act of revolt accomplish if the masses are lulled by promises and concessions? They will never respond to social evils if one by one, that sick tree that is society is pruned occasionally.” The man mimed a scissor in the air. “Snip, snip, a leaf here, a branch there. Snip, snip. The eight hour day. Snip. A ten minute break in the morning. Snip. And the masses relax, they are content, the tree still stands. But the root, the root is never nicked!” He raised his voice now. “We must chop out the root—we must not distract ourselves with pruning! The tree will never fall that way!”

  Some of the men pounded on the table to show their agreement. Above the din came the clear sound of Emma Goldman’s laugh. “Herr Schimmelman, I am exhausted,” she said. “All this gardening!”

  He gave her a look of pure dislike. “Perhaps that’s because women are not strong enough for such a task.”

  Bell sat up. Her amber eyes were fixed on little Emma Goldman, who casually took a sip of coffee in the silence. How calm she was after such an insult!

  “Perhaps they are too busy marching after working twelve or fourteen hours to think of such poetic reasons to justify doing nothing at all,” Emma Goldman said. She looked at Herr Schimmelman, and her brown eyes were no longer soft. “I know I am. Perhaps they know, as you do not, Herr Schimmelman, that for us to ignore the struggle of the workers to better their lives means only this: that we will lose them. All the things they accuse us of being will be true—scholars and thinkers, dreamers. Not part of them, but apart from them.”

  Bell’s eyes shone, and she smiled. “Bravo,” she called into the silence. Emma Goldman looked over the tops of the male heads and caught Bell’s eye. She winked.

  Annoyed at Bell, Lawrence nevertheless saw his chance. “But Miss Goldman,” he said, “if we distract ourselves from the true struggle, as Herr Most said, we will be corrupted. And while we sit here arguing about cloakmakers we have something right under our noses which if we exploit could set the fuse burning on the ticking bomb that is the discontent of the masses!”

  Emma Goldman made a shocked gesture. “Oh, my, another metaphor!” she said, but with a smile.

  Lawrence’s face flushed, and saw that all faces were turned toward him, including Bell’s.

  One of Emma Goldman’s eyebrows lifted. “And can you tell us what this something is, Mr.—”

  “Birch. It was a story in the Century magazine.”

  She shrugged, and looked around at the others, as if to say, and why would I pay attention to that capitalist rag?

  “All the city is talking about it,” Lawrence went on. “A stable worker for one of the richest and oldest families in the city was forced to set off fireworks that were known to be unsafe. For the amusement of the guests at a party,” he said contemptuously. “A big party, with fancy gowns and a big orchestra. And while the man lay bleeding the host resumed the dancing. The rich literally danced over the body of the dying man!”

  “And did the man die?”

  “No. But he is in danger of losing his arm. The host of the party, the rich man, also fired the man’s wife, who was working in the kitchens. They have nothing.”

  Herr Schimmelman shrugged and said something in Yiddish which Lawrence didn’t understand.

  “For once we agree, Herr Schimmelman,” Emma Goldman said. “Such is life, Mr. Birch. It is a sad story; I’m sorry for the people you mention. In the better world we are working for, such things will not happen. But I do not see how this one event will serve to wake up the masses to the true struggle. You should go back and read your literature, read about the attentat,” she said, using the word that for the anarchists meant the one blow that, once struck, would illuminate oppression so dramatically that all would rise and demolish the oppressive state. “This is not what Bakunin was talking about. There are thousands of stories like this one, some even sadder. And still nothing is done. No,” she said, with a slight, patronizing smile, “I’m afraid such an event will not serve your purpose.”

  “But all New York has read this!”

  “And,” she said, “they have gone on to other things.” She turned her back on him and addressed a slender man with a high forehead at another table. “What do you think, Sasha?”

  The man made a tired gesture with one hand. “Not worth discussing. I’d even prefer to have Schimmelman discuss trees again.”

  The crowd laughed, and Lawrence’s ears burned. He felt acutely uncomfortable with Bell here beside him. Dismissed, ridiculed—and why? Because his idea cut to the heart of things. He was right, damnit. If he had been a Jew, a foreigner, they would have listened.

  He waited until the topic had swung back to anarchist support for unions, and when the argument grew heated, he touched Bell’s arm and led her out of the saloon.

  They walked through the dark streets in silence. Lawrence jammed his hat on his head and then caught a glimpse of himself in a shop window. There was no excuse for an awkwardly tilted hat, no matter how angry he was. He adjusted it.

  Bell saw Lawrence’s discomfort, and for the first time, her heart went out to him. She had come out of curiosity only, and a desire to prove to herself that she could control this strange tug for this man. But his vulnerability touched her. She wanted to say something, but she knew it would not be welcome. They had been too hard on him, too impatient, she felt. No wonder Columbine had laughingly said that anarchists had no time for manners.

  Lawrence was both grateful for and irritated by Bell’s silence. He didn’t want the woman to know him so well. He would have felt better if she had rushed to fill the silence, rushed to assure him that his point was well taken, that they had been sitting in the midst of fools. He could be angry at her then for her clumsiness.

  “That was lucky, to hear about a room,” she said finally.

  He wanted to strike her. The feeling felt good, and he nursed it.

  “Would you like to get a meal, or more coffee?” she asked with unusual timidity. “There’s a good place on Second Avenue.”

  “No. Let’s catch the horsecar up ahead.” Through the red haze of his irritation, Lawrence noticed how his anger had affected Bell. She was almost eager to please. She was scurrying beside him, her face taut with misery, with yearning. Even though she had no part in making him angry, she was apologetic. He filed the information away for later. Later, he could use this, and it could turn the key. Now, he just enjoyed the sensation of being rude to her.

  A few days later, Columbine was frowning over a letter when Elijah Reed tapped on her office door. She had been thinking about him, and when she looked up, there he was.

  “Forgive me if I’m intruding,” he said. “I found myself in the neighborhood, and I wanted to ask if you’d thought about your lecture.”

  “I’ve thought of little else,” Columbine said. She felt a mixture of feelings, absurd pleasure to see him, and irritation that he was pressuring her. “Please, come in.”

  “Thank you.” He sat down in the armchair and looked around her office with, Columbine felt, eyes that saw everything, but did not judge and would not even extend the energy to speculate. Her books, her clippings, her papers, were examined with the eye of an impartial God.

  Elijah cocked his head, listening to the noise from the street below. It was a cold day, and the cacophony of bells, whistles, and shouts could be heard as wagons, carriages, and horsecars swirled around Union Square. The El passed by, and the building shuddered.

  “How do you work in such noise?” he asked mildly.

  She looked vaguely out the window. “Oh, I don’t mind it. It’s always there, like a heartbeat. Except it’s wild and erratic, not steady. Fitting for a pulse of a city, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said, frowning. “So, are you going to speak, Mrs. Nash?”

  Columbine made a restless gesture. “I think not, Mr. Reed. I appreciate the offe
r very much, but—”

  She was interrupted by Bell, who walked into the office like a sleepwalker. She stood in the middle of the room, oblivious of Elijah, staring at Columbine.

  “Bell?”

  “Sally Hoover is dead.” She said the words flatly, but her forehead suddenly creased, as if she was about to cry but didn’t want to.

  Columbine half-rose, then sank down again. “Dead? How?”

  “Ivy told me,” Bell said. “He came to find her. There was nothing Ivy could do. Sally was admitted to the hospital last night. Ivy thought she’d recover. She had some broken bones, bruises. Nothing, Ivy said, that she hadn’t seen before. But something was broken inside, Ivy said.” Bell began to weep. “Something was broken inside,” she repeated.

  Columbine stood up quickly and went to her. They held each other and rocked slowly as Bell sobbed and tears slipped down Columbine’s cheeks.

  When they pulled apart quietly, Elijah rose. “You’ve had some tragic news, and I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll leave you alone now.” He started for the door.

  “Mr. Reed.” Columbine’s voice was thick, and it stopped Elijah in his tracks. “Mr. Reed, you may put me down for that lecture.” Gazing at him over Bell’s butterscotch hair, she added softly, “I have something to say now.”

  “I’m glad, Mrs. Nash,” he answered. He started to turn away again, but she stopped him.

  “Don’t go yet,” she said softly. Then, embarrassed, she added, “That is, if you can stay. Stay for tea.”

  “I can stay,” he said. And then he smiled at her, the first full smile he’d given her. He looked handsome; ten years fell away from his face.

  Then Lawrence was standing in the doorway, impossibly handsome, and young and demanding, “What’s happened?”

  He strode quickly to Columbine. “You’re crying,” he said. He looked from Bell to her. “What’s happened, for God’s sake?”

  “It’s all right, Mr. Birch,” Columbine said. “We’ve had some bad news, that’s all. A young woman who we tried to help is dead.” She looked over at Bell, who was now standing at the window, her back to the room. “We just found out.”