All this made her speed up her plans to escape and, deciding that her next move should be to obtain clothes to return home in, she thought out very carefully what she should do.
She waited until Matilda and Anna and two of Silas’s daughters had gone to a large charity bazaar that was taking place two blocks away.
They had invited her to go with them, but Crisa had said quietly that she felt it was too soon after her husband’s death to be seen on such a public occasion.
Although they wanted to protest, they were obliged to go without her.
She waited until their carriages had left, then rang the bell and asked for a carriage for herself.
Then she went upstairs to her room and, while she was putting on one of her hats with its floating black widow’s weeds, there was a knock on the door and, as she expected, Abigail came in to tell her that Mr. Krissam wished to speak to her.
She went into the sitting room next door and found him looking somewhat anxious.
“I understand, Mrs. Vanderhault, that you require a carriage. I did not realise that you were going out this afternoon.”
“I did not know it myself until I opened all the letters that came this morning and found one from my friend, Miss Wayne, whose passport you are obtaining.”
She knew that she was quite safe in saying this, considering that letters of condolence were still pouring in from different parts of America.
Although she suspected that Mr. Krissam examined those she received, he would not, unless he steamed them open, be aware of who her correspondents were.
“Miss Wayne may be coming to New York,” Crisa said eagerly, as if she was looking forward to her visit, “and she has asked me to be very kind, in case she cannot stay long, to buy her a few clothes that she needs for her return to England.”
“I understand,” Mr. Krissam replied, “but would you not prefer to wait until tomorrow, when I am sure that Mrs. Anna would like to accompany you?”
“I don’t expect to complete all my shopping today,” Crisa replied, “and, of course, I will take Abigail with me.”
It was something she did not wish, but she was quite certain that Mr. Krissam would make a great many difficulties if she tried to go alone.
There was, however, nothing more to be said for the moment and he went away.
Ten minutes later Crisa, accompanied by Abigail, set off for Macy’s in West 14th Street.
On her arrival in the most prestigious department store in New York, she sent for the Manageress of the gown department with an authority, although she did not realise it, that she had not had before she was married.
“I am Mrs. Silas Vanderhault,” she said, “and I wish to buy some clothes for a friend of mine who will shortly be passing through New York. Unfortunately I have very little time this afternoon, but I would be grateful if you would show me some simple gowns and, as my friend may be travelling back to England, a warm cloak that she would obviously require at sea.”
The name Vanderhault worked wonders and a succession of assistants brought model gowns for her to see.
Crisa explained that her friend was about the same height and size as herself.
“She told me,” she said laughingly, “that, as she has been travelling all over America for so long, her clothes are not only in a terrible state but she has also lost quite a number of essential items, which have to be replaced, like shoes and underclothes.”
The Manageress threw up her hands and exclaimed,
“The thieving in some of the hotels in the West is, I am told, Mrs. Vanderhault, absolutely appalling! It’s something we very much deprecate and it gives our country a bad name, but what can we do about it?”
“What indeed?” Crisa sighed.
The Manageress was helpful as she ordered hats and bonnets for each gown to be worn in the daytime and shoes were brought from another department.
She tried them on, saying as she did so that she and her friend had always been able to exchange clothes and she did not expect that she had altered very much since she last saw her.
Finally, when she had ordered three gowns for the daytime, two simple evening gowns, and a travelling cloak of warm woollen material edged with fur, she told the Manageress to have everything packed up in a new trunk and bonnet box.
She asked her to have them ready to be collected at any time by a ‘Miss Christina Wayne’.
“I may come myself,” she said, “but if that is impossible, then Miss Wayne will identify herself to you, as I will give her a card to carry.”
The Manageress said that she understood and, having thanked her, Crisa added,
“Please have the account sent to Miss Christina Wayne care of my address.”
“I hope we may provide some gowns for you, madame,” the Manageress said.
“I will certainly come to you as soon as I am ready to go into half-mourning,” Crisa promised.
She was bowed to the door and drove home to find that Matilda and the rest of the Vanderhault family were still at the bazaar.
Because they had so much to talk about when they returned, they were not aware that she had left the house in their absence.
To Crisa’s surprise, Mr. Krissam obviously did not tell them that she had been daring enough to do something on her own.
*
The following day Mr. Krissam brought her the passport she had asked for and, when he handed her the single sheet, she saw that it was signed by the British Ambassador on behalf of the Foreign Secretary.
“I am so grateful, Mr. Krissam,” Crisa said. “I know Miss Wayne will thank you profusely. As I am sure you are aware, if she had had to get the passport herself, it might have meant waiting for hours at the Embassy or perhaps calling several times before it was available.”
“I am glad to have been of service, Mrs. Vanderhault,” Mr. Krissam said.
Crisa noticed that ever since he had received her present he had been far more affable to her than ever before.
At the same time she was taking no chances and, as she left him to go to her sitting room, she said,
“I will write to Miss Wayne and tell her that I have her passport, but, as she may have moved on from where she was last, I will keep it until her arrival. After all your trouble it would be a great mistake to lose it!”
“It would indeed,” Mr. Krissam agreed.
Accordingly, Crisa wrote a letter starting “Dearest Christina,” and explaining that the passport was waiting for her and also about the clothes she had asked her to buy.
She was sure that the letters coming into the house were not tampered with in any way.
Those going out, however, were stamped in Mr. Krissam’s office and a post-book recorded the cost and place of destination. She suspected that anything unusual would be opened and read.
She was careful, therefore, to write nothing that might give him the slightest inkling that Christina Wayne did not actually exist.
She then addressed the envelope to a hotel in San Francisco, the name of which she had found in a guidebook, putting on the left-hand corner of the envelope, “To await arrival”.
She was not sure, but she thought that it would be a long time before the reception desk thought that the addressee of the letter was overdue and they need keep it no longer.
They would then either throw it away or else open it and return it to the address inside.
‘By that time,’ she told herself confidently, ‘I shall be home!’
The next step was to decide when and on which day she would actually leave.
It was not difficult to discover when the Liners sailed, as the departures were listed each day in the newspapers.
Because Silas had been of so much importance, she ruled out the idea of travelling on an American Line.
Now ships could be contacted by wireless from shore, she was afraid, although it seemed absurd, that even after she had set sail it might be possible for the family to drag her back to New York.
She therefore decided
that her safest way to travel was in a French Liner.
La Touraine was, she knew, slower than the German Liners, but it was beautiful and the first Liner, the newspapers told her, to offer cabins en suite.
This innovation had, of course, been followed by a great number of other Liners since, but La Touraine sounded not only comfortable but also from Crisa’s point of view safer than any other Line.
She would have liked to travel by one of the new Cunarders, but she was quite certain that a British ship would be the first that the Vanderhaults would look for her in, thinking that she would instinctively feel safer with her own countrymen.
La Touraine was sailing to New York in two days’ time and she was aware that if she was to travel in it, she would have to choose the moment when she could escape from the family and also have enough money to pay for her fare.
That was the greatest problem of all, but once again she was unexpectedly guided and helped.
Matilda informed her that on the following Thursday she had planned that they would have luncheon outside New York with one of Silas’s daughters, whose husband had just bought a house in Connecticut.
“You will enjoy the drive, Crisa,” she said, “and I know that you would wish to take them a house-warming present.”
“But of course,” Crisa agreed.
Instead of sending for Mr. Krissam, she went to his office for the first time. It was on the ground floor of the great house and like every other room it was overcrowded.
In this case, however, it was with filing cabinets, desks and bookcases, besides a large number of maps on the walls, which Crisa realised, depicted the Vanderhault territory.
“I have to buy an expensive present,” she told him, “and I think it should be something unique and original.”
“You can put everything on account, Mrs. Vanderhault.”
“Not at the shops I wish to patronise,” Crisa answered. “I thought a Chinese vase or perhaps something exotic and strange from Japan.”
Mr. Krissam looked indecisive and she went on,
“Mr. Bamburger was saying only the other day that Oriental salesmen make a great deal of fuss about accounts because they don’t understand them. So give me some money, please. I have no time to argue over prices and actually, being English, I prefer to pay on the dot.”
Mr. Krissam laughed and, taking a key from a drawer in his desk, opened a large safe that took up a great deal of space on one side of the fireplace.
“What a huge safe!” Crisa exclaimed. “What can it possibly contain?”
“You would be surprised, Mrs. Vandeihault, how much money is required to keep this house running,” Mr. Krissam answered. “There are the servants’ wages, besides the tradesmen’s bills, a lot of whom are paid by cash rather than by cheque.”
“I don’t blame them,” Crisa laughed, “but it must keep you very busy.”
“As you know, I have very little time to myself,” Mr. Krissam replied.
He drew out a bundle of one hundred dollar notes as he spoke, and Crisa saw that lying beside them was a large wad of one thousand dollar notes.
She put out her hand saying,
“One thousand dollar bills! I had no idea they are as large as that!”
“Occasionally I use one thousand dollar notes,” Mr. Krissam answered.
“One of those,” Crisa remarked, “would certainly keep the average person very comfortably for a month or two.”
Mr. Krissam laughed.
He took several of the one hundred dollar bills from the bundle and as he did so Crisa, still holding the wad of one thousand dollar notes, put up her other hand and gave her pearl necklace a sharp tug.
The pearls scattered like a shower of dewdrops all over the floor and she gave a little cry saying,
“My pearls! Silas gave them to me on our Wedding day!”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Vanderhault,” Mr. Krissam said, putting back into the safe the notes he held and going down on his knees.
The pearls had rolled in every direction and, as he was picking them up, finding that some had slipped under the rugs or lodged in the wood of the parquet flooring,
Crisa managed to extract three one thousand dollar notes from the wad before she put it back into the safe.
She slipped the notes into the front of her gown and then, joining Mr. Krissam on the floor, she spread out her handkerchief on which they could put the pearls one by one as they found them.
When finally there appeared to be no more loose pearls, she rose to her feet and, holding out the handkerchief at the comers, said as she did so,
“May I leave this with you, Mr. Krissam, to have them restrung? It was owing to my carelessness that they broke. But also, what a blessing it was it happened here and not in some public place!”
“That would indeed have been unfortunate,” Mr. Krissam agreed.
He took the handkerchief and the pearls from her and put them on his desk.
Then he went back to the safe, locked it and, as Crisa turned to leave his office, he was putting the key away in his drawer.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “You are always very kind and helpful and I am very thrilled to see that you are using my present.”
She looked at the inkpot as she spoke and Mr. Krissam replied,
“I am very proud of it, Mrs. Vanderhault.”
Crisa smiled at him.
Then she was running upstairs, praying that he would not realise until Friday, when he paid the servants, that he was short of three one thousand dollar notes.
She went out that afternoon to buy something for Silas’s granddaughters and spent, in fact, quite a lot of money, all of which she charged to the account, knowing that the bills would not be in for at least a week.
Then after dinner at which Thomas Bamburger was, she thought, particularly attentive, she said she must retire to bed.
“I have a slight headache,” she said, “and I do want to be well for tomorrow.”
“Yes, of course,” Matilda agreed. “At the same time Thomas is very eager for you to see some new orchids that have just come into bloom in the conservatory. He was saying only this afternoon before dinner how attractive they were and I know, Crisa, that you will appreciate them.”
It was then the red light appeared in front of Crisa’s eyes and she knew that the one thing she must not do was to go into the conservatory alone with Thomas Bamburger.
She smiled and seemed about to acquiesce and then put her hand up to her head and said,
“I would like to see the orchids, of course, Matilda, and it is very stupid, I know, but I do feel a little giddy and I really must lie down.”
Everybody started fussing over her immediately and she was helped up to her bedroom.
Then Abigail was sent for and there was no further question of her going into the conservatory with Thomas Bamburger.
Crisa went to bed after she had prayed for a long time that everything would go off exactly as she hoped.
It was not going to be easy, although it certainly was a piece of good luck that the family would have left the house to go to Connecticut.
That meant she would have time after they left to recover from the indisposition that would prevent her from going with them and somehow to get down to the dock in plenty of time to board La Touraine.
She would have been anxious in case she would not be able to secure a cabin at the last minute, if she had not read in the newspapers that all the Liners were passing through a rather slack time at the moment and most of them arrived without being full and left the same way.
She played with the idea of booking a passage in Christina’s name, but that meant she would have to go to a booking office or to the dock.
To do so, however, was too dangerous, because either one of the Vanderhaults or Mr. Krissam was certain to learn from the coachman who drove her where she had been and would ask questions.
‘The only risk I have to take,’ she told herself, ‘is that the Liner will refuse to c
arry me.’
*
In the morning everything went according to plan.
As soon as Abigail called her, she sent a message to Matilda to say that she was unwell and had far too severe a headache to think of going all the way to Connecticut.
As she expected, half-an-hour later Matilda was beside her bed, commiserating with her.
“Do you think you ought to see a doctor?” she asked.
Crisa shook her head.
“No,” she said, “I have had these headaches before and it will go if I rest and don’t eat very much.”
“I know how disappointed Susan will be at not seeing you,” Matilda declared.
“Will you take her the presents I bought and those for the children?” Crisa asked. “And please tell her I hope to come and see her new house next week. Perhaps you and I could go there together?”
“I am sure we could,” Matilda agreed. “Now, you take care of yourself, Crisa. I don’t like leaving you alone in the house, but I am sure the servants will look after you and we will come back as early as possible.”
“No, don’t do that!” Crisa protested. “Otherwise I shall feel I am spoiling your party. I shall be quite all right. All I want to do is to sleep.”
She frowned, as if it was an effort to talk and Matilda went away after giving instructions to Abigail to take Crisa a cool drink and make sure that she had something very light for luncheon.
It was after luncheon that Crisa got up and dressed herself.
She put on one of the plainest of her black gowns and carefully removed the stitches that held her long crêpe veil in place on her widow’s black bonnet.
Having done that, she put what jewellery she intended to take with her into her handbag together with all the money she had accumulated.
Only when she was ready did she ring for Abigail.
The maid came in answer to the summons and looked in astonishment to see that she was dressed.
“What are you doing, Mrs. Vanderhault?” she exclaimed. “You know you should be resting!”
“I know,” Crisa said, “but I have just remembered, and it was very remiss of me to have forgotten, that today is my mother’s birthday and since always in the past I have gone to Church to pray for her, I must now go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”
The Golden Cage Page 5
