He raised his eyebrows at Marguerite.
“It’s Mr. Van Cormandt,” she said. “Perhaps you should return some other time.”
“Perhaps I should,” Lawrence said mechanically, but he stayed rooted to the carpet, listening intently. Then, when Marguerite looked at him quizzically, he said, retreating to the back of the hall, “I’ll just wait a moment and see if Mr. Van Cormandt goes.”
Marguerite gave him a shrewd glance underneath spiky black lashes. Then she shrugged and retreated back up the stairs. Whatever was not directly connected with her, she didn’t bother with. And she had to pack.
As soon as she’d passed the landing, Lawrence went to the parlor door. He didn’t have to press his ear to the crack. The voice came through clearly. He’d never heard Columbine angry before.
“You should know me better than this, Ned,” she said. “To come to me with accusations! With hearsay, innuendo. Do you expect me to adjust my behavior according to this?”
“Yes!” Lawrence heard quick footsteps cross the room. “Yes. You don’t have to bar the house to him, but yes, you should be wary.”
A chill passed over Lawrence. They were discussing him, of course. What had Ned found out? Had he gathered information from California?
“And Mr. Reed, too,” Columbine stormed on. “I would think a journalist had some objectivity. A few doubts, a few hesitations from a few anarchists downtown, and he makes the charge of informer—how ludicrous!”
Reed! He had spoken to people downtown. No wonder everyone was distant with him! Reed had poisoned their minds. He had probably gotten through to Most, as well! Lawrence felt rage overtake him. He began to shake. Always, people were against him. Again and again he found that basic human fear of a superior mind. Columbine understood that.
“There are other things,” Ned said. “I have more—”
“No! I will not listen to any more. I cannot. Ned, Ned, can’t you remember what I was called? Mad. Adulteress. Prostitute. Wanton. Spy. You name it, I was called it!”
Yes, she understood him. He should have known she would.
Now, Ned sounded angry as well. “And so, because you were called these things once, for the rest of your life you will turn away from any gossip or hearsay of any kind, even if it indicates that a person is not trustworthy? Columbine, surely you can see that at least you must listen, must not completely turn your back—”
“No, Ned, I do not agree. I must trust myself. And I will not listen to any more slander. I think you should go. Take these with you.”
“Don’t give me those keys, Columbine. They have nothing to do with this. Here, I’m leaving them on the desk.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry if I pained you.”
Lawrence scuttled backward, for footsteps were approaching. He found the door to the kitchen and quickly stepped into the small pantry. He heard Ned hesitate in the hall, then take his coat from the rack, open the door, and go.
Lawrence stayed a few seconds to compose himself, for he was still shaking with rage. Columbine mustn’t know he’d been here, that he’d heard.
He walked into the parlor. She was standing in the middle of the room, her hands clasped before her. She hadn’t lit the gas, so dusky shadows filled the room, and the only light came from the fire. She jumped when she saw him enter.
“Lawrence!” She gave a short laugh, a half-gasp. “I thought you were a ghost.”
Closing the door firmly behind him, he hurried toward her. “What is it, my dear? You look upset.”
“No, no, not upset. Oh, Lawrence, people can be so horrid!” She looked at him earnestly. Was she now looking for a trace of dishonesty, of moral baseness? Damn Ned Van Cormandt!
“Let’s sit down,” he said, guiding her toward the sofa. He sat down with her and chafed her cold hands. “I saw Mr. Van Cormandt leaving,” he said. “Did he upset you?”
“He didn’t mean to,” Columbine said in a low tone. She looked down at Lawrence’s bent head. The fire picked out strands of gold. Ned had to be wrong, she thought. Lawrence was so kind.
“He didn’t seem upset,” Lawrence said. “He looked … triumphant.”
“Did he?”
She kept her hand in his, but it was inert. Lawrence leaned down and kissed it. Then he looked up at her and kissed her mouth softly.
Her lips smiled underneath the kiss, and when he pulled away, she said, “Lawrence, you mustn’t do that again.”
“Don’t say that,” he said desperately, knowing that now it was time, it was finally time to force the moment. Now, when she had finished defending him, when she was just starting to realize that she was tied to him. “You must know how it pains my heart to think of him with you, to know that you once thought you loved him.”
“Why?” Columbine asked.
Lawrence looked surprised. “Because he is evil.”
Columbine laughed slightly, and pulled her hand away again. “Oh, Lawrence, no. Ned is a good man. And I did love him.”
Lawrence felt something tick inside him. She had patronized him. She must never, never patronize him. “It’s all right, Columbine. You didn’t know,” he said.
She seemed bemused. “Know what?” She leaned over to turn on the gas lamp on the table by the sofa.
He grabbed her by the waist, preventing her. “Please don’t,” he said. The softness of his voice belied the strong grip on her waist. “It’s easier to talk without the light.”
Columbine pulled back warily. “All right,” she conceded. “For a moment.”
“You didn’t know,” he continued, “what your true calling would be yet. You didn’t know that later it could hurt you, the fact that you’d been a rich man’s mistress.”
Columbine frowned. “Lawrence, I’m not following you.”
“That’s exactly what I want!” he cried ecstatically. “For you to follow me!”
A distant alarm bell sounded somewhere in Columbine’s brain. Lawrence’s pale blue eyes had a light in them she’d not seen before, and it was not a comforting light. She tried an easy laugh. “If you want me to follow you to the tea table, I agree. Why don’t I go prepare the tray? Mrs. Brodge left everything in the kitchen. I’ll just—”
His arm shot out and he captured her wrist. “Not yet,” he said. “Not yet. No jokes. I want to finish this.”
“Lawrence, let go of my wrist,” she said calmly, and was relieved when he did. “Finish what?”
“Finish telling you. Ned knew your body, but I know your mind, Columbine. You need my ideas. You need to experience the beauty of what I know. Your view of human nature is so false, so pessimistic. That is what is holding you back from a true philosophical commitment to anarchism. If you believed in the goodness of human nature, you’d see that only when the state is destroyed will we be able to live freely and well. The storehouses will open, and everyone will take what they need. We will live according to a social contract.”
“But Lawrence,” Columbine said reasonably, “this is all very noble and good. But I do not believe it will work. And even if I did believe it, I would never countenance violence to achieve it.”
“But violence is the most beautiful part of it!” Lawrence said. “Don’t you see? How else do we purify but through fire? How else do we build if we don’t destroy?”
Columbine tried to rise, but he took her wrist again. She tried not to be alarmed. He was just overcome with his ideas, with his emotion. He needed to calm down. “Let me get some tea, and we’ll continue the discussion,” she said.
“No. Now, now, it must be now.” Spittle formed on the corners of his mouth. “If you will only open your heart and accept it, just think what can be done! With your celebrity, and my ideas, you will be the most famous convert to anarchism in history!”
Now Columbine was beginning to get angry. “Lawrence,” she said with asperity, “my mind is not the tabula rasa you think it is. I have my own ideas. And they do not correspond with yours.”
He waved the hand not holding her wrist. “Y
ou think you have ideas. What you really need is to learn.”
“Lawrence, let go of me. Let go!” Her voice was higher-pitched now, and he looked at her with interest.
“Do I frighten you?”
“No,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. But she was frightened, a little. Ned’s warnings flew in her brain, and she sorely wished she had heard him out. He had left so abruptly. Perhaps he would come back! She would be very glad to see him. Lawrence was acting so strangely. “It’s just that you won’t let go of my arm,” she added. “Please let go, Lawrence.”
He ignored her. “It’s because you feel my power that you’re afraid. You sense my superiority. That’s good. That will make things good for us.” With his other hand, he reached out and stroked her cheek. “The time has come to be close, Columbine.”
She looked into Lawrence’s eyes, and she no longer saw the eyes of a friend. He looked angry; if he was trying to seduce her, he was doing a bad job of it. “No, Lawrence,” she said, as gently as she could.
“Yes, Columbine,” he said, and he smoothly took her other wrist in his strong grip. He placed his mouth over hers, and it was wrong. His other kisses had been so gentle, the kisses of a young poet, almost shy but with a hint of the sensuality to come. But now his tongue thrust between her lips and into her mouth too eagerly, making her gag.
“Columbine,” he coaxed, “Feel the power of us together. You have to know I’m right.”
She tore her mouth away from his. “No!” she cried. Panic washed over her. Lawrence was holding her so tightly, and he wasn’t letting go. Marguerite was the only one home, and she was upstairs in her room, as she always was these days, her door closed, most likely napping.
“Don’t shout,” he said crossly. “Why are you shouting?”
“Lawrence,” she said desperately, “you’re forcing me. You don’t want to force me.”
“Of course I don’t want to force you,” he said. But he did not let go of her wrists, and he raised them above her head and maneuvered himself on top of her.
“Get off,” she said. “Get off now, or I’ll hurt you, Lawrence.”
He laughed, but his breath sucked in when her knee came up sharply. “Don’t do that again,” he said in a constricted voice. His grip didn’t loosen.
“Let me go,” she shouted. Her heart was thundering so she could barely hear her voice. It sounded so weak.
Now Lawrence realized that he did want to force her. Hadn’t she tantalized him? Hadn’t she kissed him, just a few minutes earlier? Wasn’t she waiting breathlessly for a strong man to push her, physically and mentally, into her potential? “You don’t realize what you can be,” he said with a smile that chilled Columbine’s blood. “I’m just showing you the way.”
This time, when she brought her knee up, she caught him enough so that he shifted his weight, and she pushed him with all her strength and jumped up. She ran for the door.
But he was behind her, forcing her against the door. Her chin banged against it, and the pain sent tears to her eyes. “Please, Lawrence,” she begged.
“Please,” he mimicked, tenderly tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
She relaxed for an instant, then tensed her muscles when his fingers moved against her neck. “You liked this once,” he said.
“Yes,” she said through a constricted throat. When she felt that he had relaxed his hold a bit, she pushed away slightly and hammered at the door. “Marguerite!” she screamed.
His hand clamped over her mouth, and he dragged her backward, away from the door, while she tried to hit him from behind. There was no talking now, no time for it and no breath, for they were locked in struggle. His grip on her arms was powerful, and it hurt. He twisted them behind her back, then held her wrists together with one hand. He seemed to do it so easily, even though she struggled.
Finally, he took her hair in one hand and tilted back her head. He spoke softly in her ear. “Columbine, you don’t understand. I don’t want to hurt you at all. Do you understand?” His tongue licked her ear, and she shuddered with revulsion.
“You see how you tremble?” he asked. He licked her ear again, and she sobbed a great sob that wrenched her belly.
He put a hand over her mouth. His knee came up and pushed between her legs. And she saw the door open, and Marguerite standing in the doorway. Lawrence’s hand dropped immediately.
“She was hysterical—” he started.
“Liar!” Marguerite screamed, and she was flying across the room, fragile, tiny Marguerite, launching herself at him in a flurry of teeth and nails.
He dropped his arms from around Columbine, who fell back, her knees crumpling underneath her. She pushed herself up and went after Lawrence, who was backing away toward the door underneath the fury of Marguerite’s attack. A long, bloody scratch went from his ear to the corner of his mouth, and his eyes were murderous.
“Bitches,” he spat.
“Get out!” Marguerite screeched, and Columbine picked up Lawrence’s coat and hat and shoved them at him, pushing him out into the hall. Together the women managed to open the front door and push him through it. He stumbled and fell to his knees on the stone stairs, and they banged the door closed and locked it, resting against it and taking deep shuddering breaths before Columbine burst into tears and hurled herself into Marguerite’s arms, arms she once thought so childish, so slender, and now felt so strong.
Eleven
WHEN MARGUERITE MOVED into the house Edwin found for her, she forgot everything she’d known before. She settled into luxury as though she’d been born for it. Now she rose languidly at ten, rather than seven. She did not leap out of bed to dress hurriedly in the cold. Her bedroom was warm as toast, and she merely stretched and burrowed further underneath her satin coverlet. Her maid carried in a tray that contained a silver coffeepot, rolls, jam, and fresh fruit. She would leave the tray on the bed and bring in a vase full of roses. Edwin sent them every morning.
After picking at her breakfast, Marguerite would bathe. Then she would choose one of her many new dresses—they were beautiful, but Edwin promised that next season they’d be from Paris—and take her carriage to Toby’s for her singing lesson. She was making great progress, he said. On days she had no lesson, she went for a walk up Madison Avenue. She thought about getting a dog. When she returned, she changed again, for Edwin usually arrived for lunch. If he did, they would usually eat in the dining room, a long luncheon with soup and lobster salad and turbot, sometimes a roast beef if Edwin instructed the cook the day before. Then they would go upstairs to her bedroom. And then Edwin would leave for his office again and Marguerite would perhaps bathe again, or read Harper’s Bazar to see the new fashions from Paris, or nap. Then she would begin to think about what to wear for dinner.
It was a perfect life. She reveled in her luxury. She licked jam off her fingers and luxuriated in bath water that was always the perfect temperature. She rubbed silk against her cheeks and opened long jewelers’ boxes and squealed at their contents. And she got to make love every day, sometimes twice a day. Even though Edwin was not as good a lover as Horatio, she still enjoyed it, very much.
Weeks passed, and Edwin still came, but he sometimes skipped lunch and only made love. In the evenings now, he often arrived after a dinner to which she had not been invited. Their evenings became the evenings of a domestic married couple; Marguerite did embroidery by the fire while Edwin finished a brandy and then looked at her meaningfully and rose to go upstairs. He claimed that now he knew what it was to be domestically inclined. There was nothing he liked better, he said, than to sit in the quiet parlor with her on his knee. Marguerite called him an old stick-in-the-mud. She had to use tears and pouts to get him to suggest a grand dinner out. He wanted to go to Rector’s, but Marguerite insisted on the more refined Delmonico’s. And no private room this time!
Marguerite swept into the fashionable restaurant, happily reminding herself how wonderful it was to always feel well-dressed. She though
t of her old blue velvet gown with disdain. Tonight she was in rose satin bordered with black fur. The godet pleated skirt had a beaded iris design, and the bodice was elaborately tucked and beaded as well. She wore a jeweled aigrette in her hair and carried a tulle fan appliqued with black lace and trimmed with deep pink roses.
Edwin seemed a little distracted, but Marguerite was so happy to be out she didn’t care. She hummed as she perused the menu. Pheasant would be nice. Or perhaps terrapin. Or both—of course, they could order both, she realized, her mouth already watering.
Edwin looked bored, or nervous, and she decided it was time to entertain him. “I think I should like a bicycle,” she said brightly, sipping a glass of wine. She smiled flirtatiously at him. “Would you like that, Edwin? We could be like Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell. We’ll ride through the Park on gold-plated bicycles studded with jewels.” She giggled. “And I would have a darling bicycling costume. I saw one in Harper’s Bazar just yesterday. It had Turkish trousers, can you imagine? Would you like me in trousers, Edwin?”
“Yes, of course,” Edwin said. But it was clear he hadn’t been listening to her at all. He was staring across the room.
Marguerite followed his gaze and saw that it was trained on the erect back of a woman in a black satin gown. Last year’s, Marguerite thought disdainfully. The silhouette for the nineties was already changing to an hourglass figure. Skirts were wider, and bustles not nearly so prominent. She wasn’t jealous, for the woman was older, and Marguerite could see, when she turned her head, that she was double-chinned.
“Who are you looking at, Edwin?” she asked, buttering a roll. “Do you know that lady?” she asked with her mouth full.
Edwin looked at her, and she saw distaste cross his delicate features for a moment. “Marguerite, never butter a whole roll. Break off a piece.”
She swallowed. “All right,” she snapped. She shouldn’t mind when Edwin corrected her; she wanted to learn. But she did mind. It was the way Edwin did it; Toby could tell her anything and she would nod and thank him. “But do you know her, or not?”
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