The Golden Cage

by Barbara Cartland

  Abigail looked astonished.

  “I had no idea, Mrs. Vanderhault, that your mother was a Roman Catholic!”

  Crisa smiled.

  “She was not, but, as she travelled a great deal in France and other countries in Europe, she always visited the ancient beautiful Churches. She told me when I was a little girl how she used to light a candle and then pray and she believed that her prayer was carried up to Heaven as long as it went on burning.”

  She thought Abigail, who was a staunch Nonconformist, looked sceptical and she continued,

  “As I loved my mother very dearly and miss her so very much, that is what I want to do today, so kindly order the carriage and, of course, come with me.”

  She sensed that Abigail would have liked to argue, but instead she did as she was told and ten minutes later they were driving towards St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

  When they reached the bottom of the steps that led up to the West Door, Crisa said,

  “You will understand, Abigail, that I want to go into the Church alone.”

  “I think I ought to come with you, Mrs. Vanderhault,” Abigail replied stiffly.

  “No, that would worry me, knowing you are an unbeliever.” Crisa smiled. “I want to pray for a long time in front of my candle, which will be a very big one, so wait here for me until I return.”

  Before Abigail could protest any more, Crisa stepped out of the carriage and went quickly up the steps.

  As she walked up the aisle, conscious as she did so of the flickering candles in front of the statues of the Saints and the Sacristy light hanging in front of the altar, she prayed fervently that her mother would help her and that Abigail would not come in search of her too quickly.

  There was another door, which she had already ascertained was kept open on the South side of the Cathedral.

  She slipped out through it and into the busy street, being fortunate enough to find a Hackney carriage after she had walked only a few yards.

  She asked the driver to take her to Macy’s and, when she reached the department store she told him to wait outside while she hurried to the gown department and asked for the Manageress.

  “I am afraid I am in a great hurry,” she said, “because my friend has arrived and has to catch a train that leaves in an hour for Washington. Are the things I bought ready?”

  “I will fetch them immediately, Mrs. Vanderhault,” the Manageress said, “and I do hope that your friend will be pleased with them.”

  “I know she will be,” Crisa replied, “and thank you so much for all your kindness and help.”

  The Manageress had packed the gowns in the trunk that Crisa had asked her to include in the order and the bonnets were in two hatboxes.

  As soon as they had been piled onto the Hackney carriage, Crisa ordered the man to drive to the Docks as quickly as possible.

  “I am travelling on the French Liner La Touraine,” she said. “I expect you know where that Liner will be.”

  The driver nodded and she sat back, feeling a wild excitement seep through her because she had succeeded so far in escaping from the gilded cage, the bars of which at first she had thought she could never break.

  Then she remembered that she had something essential to do and that was to dispose of her veil.

  She pulled it off her hat, rolled it into a ball and thrust it down behind the seat at the back of the cab, where she suspected it would not be found for some time.

  Taking from her bag a mauve silk scarf that she had bought several days previously on the pretext that it would be a present for one of Silas’s daughters, she tucked it neatly into the bodice of her gown, pinning it with a diamond brooch. It made her look less like a widow.

  Although she did not realise it, with her fair hair and blue eyes she looked very attractive and at the same time obviously a lady.

  *

  La Touraine, which was one of the most beautiful Liners afloat, had two funnels and three masts.

  It had been, when launched, extolled as having the most exquisite lines of any ship afloat and was called, jokingly, ‘the Greyhound of the Atlantic’.

  As Crisa went up the gangway, she knew that this was her last hurdle and, if La Touraine refused to take her or was unexpectedly full, then she could only return ignominiously.

  In that event she was sure that she would never again have an opportunity of escaping from the Vanderhaults.

  ‘Help me, Mama, please help me,’ she prayed anxiously as she made her way to the Purser’s desk.

  There was when he saw her a glint of admiration in the eyes of the middle-aged, rather good-looking Frenchman.

  Crisa addressed him in her excellent Parisian French, owing this accomplishment to her mother’s insistence ever since her childhood.

  “I have no booking, monsieur,” she said, “but I am hoping you will be kind enough to accommodate me, as I wish to leave immediately for England, having received some bad news from a member of my family.”

  “You are English, madame?” the Purser asked.

  The way he was looking at her made it a compliment.

  “Yes, I am English,” Crisa replied, “and my name is ‘Christina Wayne’.”

  She produced her passport, which the Purser took from her and noted down the particulars it contained.

  Then he said unexpectedly,

  “May I ask why you are in the United States of America, mademoiselle?”

  Without thinking, although she thought afterwards it was unnecessary, Crisa gave the explanation that she had given to Mr. Krissam.

  “I have been acting as secretary to an author who is travelling about the country. Unfortunately, as I have already told you, I have to return home for family reasons and he will therefore have to manage without me.”

  “I am sure, mademoiselle, that will be very distressing for him,” the Purser remarked gallantly. “Luckily we can accommodate you in what I hope you will find a comfortable cabin.”

  It was only afterwards that Crisa thought perhaps it was rather strange that he had automatically assumed that she would be travelling First Class, whereas as a secretary she might more likely have been on the Second Class deck.

  Perhaps he was aware of the air of opulence that she had already acquired and perhaps her looks too had prevented him from expecting her to travel in any other way.

  She paid off the Hackney carriage, her luggage was brought aboard and, as the Purser had promised, she was allocated a comfortable outside cabin with the new arrangement that enabled the bunk to be shut up in the daytime, so that the cabin became a sitting room.

  Only when Crisa had been looked after by a very attentive Steward, who had left her to unpack, telling her that, when she had done so, he would make up her bunk for the night, did she sit down.

  Then she told herself that incredibly she had done it!

  She had got away, she had escaped and unless Mr. Krissam or the Vanderhaults were clairvoyant, they could hardly imagine that she might be on one of the Liners leaving New York that night until it would be too late to stop her.

  ‘Thank you, Mama, thank you!’ she said in her heart.

  In a natural reaction to her anxiety and her fear that she would never succeed in getting away, she found that tears were running down her cheeks.

  chapter four

  Crisa walked around the deck the first morning after they had sailed from New York and was glad of the warm cloak that she had bought at Macy’s.

  When she went down to luncheon rather shyly, she asked the Chief Steward if she could have a table for herself and, although he suggested that she would find it more amusing to be at one of the larger tables, she insisted that she sit alone.

  She not only felt rather timid, but she was also afraid, although she told herself it was ridiculous, that if she had much conversation with anybody, she might somehow give herself away so that they would suspect that she was travelling under a false name.

  There was no reason, of course, for anyone to be suspicious and yet, b
ecause she had been so frightened that she would not get away, she did not wish to take any chances.

  She therefore ate alone, but she could, between the excellent courses of delicious food, which was far superior to anything they had eaten on the Liner going out to New York, watch the other passengers.

  The French women were very smart and, although not exactly beautiful, they had a fascination and a charm that made Crisa understand why the men appeared to fawn upon them in a way she was sure that no Englishman would have done.

  She was uncomfortably aware that some of the younger male passengers looked at her with admiration, so fearing that she might be spoken to, as soon as luncheon was over she hurried back to the safety of her cabin.

  ‘Perhaps I am being silly,’ she told herself. ‘This might be an opportunity to meet people as I was never able to do at home and certainly to improve my French.’

  Equally she shrank from becoming involved with the other passengers, knowing that most of them would think it very strange that she was travelling alone and perhaps in consequence the men might become overfamiliar.

  ‘Soon I shall be back with Nanny,’ Crisa consoled herself, ‘and then I can just revert to being as I was before I married Silas P Vanderhault.’

  She knew, however, if she was honest, that her home would never be the same without her father and she also shrank from all she would have to do when she arrived.

  First she would have to talk to her Solicitors, then go over her father’s will and finally, which she knew was inevitable, sooner or later she would have to notify the Vanderhaults that she would not be returning to America.

  She was well aware that they would do everything to keep her and her fortune in their hands.

  Now that she was free of Thomas Bamburger, she knew, although she had hardly dared face it when she was in New York, that she was really terrified in case she would be in some way obliged to marry him and no one would listen to any refusal on her part.

  ‘I am free! I am free!’ she told herself.

  Then she wondered what she could do for the rest of the day.

  The obvious answer was to read, but it had not occurred to her when she was shopping for her clothes that it might be a good idea to buy some books for Christina Wayne to read.

  Then she remembered that all the Transatlantic Liners had libraries on board, one in particular being advertised as having nine hundred books available for its passengers.

  Leaving her cabin, Crisa went to the Purser’s office, where she knew that she could receive any information she required.

  The Purser smiled at her welcomingly.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he said, “I hope that you are comfortable and have everything you need.”

  “Yes, thank you, monsieur,” Crisa replied. “What I want to ask you is where the library is on this beautiful ship.”

  “I thought you would appreciate it, mademoiselle,” the Purser smiled.

  He came out of his office and took her along the deck to where in a very elegantly furnished writing room there was a large number of books protected from falling out in rough weather by being sheltered behind glass.

  “Thank you very much,” Crisa said to the Purser.

  She saw with delight that there were a number of novels by modern French authors that she had always longed to have the chance of reading.

  Having selected several of them, she returned to her cabin and had just opened the pages of one of them when there was a knock on her door.

  When she called out “come in!” she was surprised to see that it was the Purser.

  “Pardon, mademoiselle, for troubling you,” he said, “but I have a problem and I wondered if you would be kind enough to help me.”

  “But of course I will, if I can,” Crisa replied.

  “We have on board an English gentleman,” the Purser explained, “whom I understand has been involved in an accident that has affected his eyes. As he has some urgent correspondence to attend to, he has asked me if I can find him a secretary who will take it down at his dictation.”

  Crisa looked surprised and the Purser added hastily,

  “I know I have no right to impose upon you in this way, but there is no one in my office who is good enough at English, even though they can speak it, to be able to write it down correctly. In any case, we are, in fact, very busy and would find it difficult to accommodate Monsieur Thorpe.”

  “Is that his name?” Crisa asked, thinking that she had not heard of him.

  “Monsieur Adrian Thorpe,” the Purser said slowly, “who I understand is of some standing in England. I was told to reserve for him the best and most comfortable suite in the whole ship.”

  Crisa knew that this meant that the Purser was sure he was rich, for it was unusual for a single man to take a suite, which on the Liners was intended for two people.

  Her first impulse was to refuse the Purser’s request because she thought that she would not be an adequate secretary for anybody.

  Then she remembered how often her father had asked her to write letters for him, mostly regarding horses, which he would dictate at great speed.

  If she did not get it down exactly as he had dictated it, she was clever enough to improvise where necessary so that he was quite satisfied with the finished result.

  “Please help me, mademoiselle,” the Purser said pleadingly, seeing her hesitation. “If it is too arduous a task, then I must tell Monsieur so and he will have to wait until we reach England before his requirements can be met.”

  Crisa knew that meant eight days or more, as the French ships travelled only at twenty knots and she thought that it would be selfish of her not to try to help both Mr. Thorpe and the Purser.

  She gave the Frenchman a smile as she said,

  “You may tell Mr. Thorpe that I will do my best to help him, but the work I have been doing before I came aboard may be very different to his requirements.”

  “I feel sure, mademoiselle, you could not fail to please him,” the Purser said. “Will you come with me now to meet Monsieur Thorpe?”

  Reluctantly Crisa put down her novel and rose to her feet.

  She felt as she walked along the corridor beside the Purser that Nanny had been right when she so often said, ‘one lie leads to another’.

  Too late, she thought, it had been quite unnecessary for her to say to the Purser when she came aboard that she had been acting as a secretary.

  But she had been so busy concentrating on her characterisation of Christina Wayne that what she had said about her to Mr. Krissam automatically came again to her mind.

  Mr. Thorpe’s suite was not far from her own cabin and, when the Purser knocked on the door of the State room, it was opened by a small, wiry little man of middle-age, whom Crisa knew at once was a valet.

  “I have brought the lady who will assist Monsieur Thorpe,” the Purser said.

  “That’s good news!” the valet replied.

  She was aware that as he looked at her, his shrewd eyes sized her up immediately as a lady and his voice was more respectful than it had been to the Purser as he said,

  “It’s very kind of you, ma’am, and the Master’ll be ever so grateful.”

  With an air of relief the Purser declared,

  “I will leave you, mademoiselle, and thank you very much indeed for being so accommodating.”

  He bowed politely before he walked away and Crisa moved into the State room.

  She found to her surprise that it was empty and then she remembered that the Purser had said that Mr. Thorpe had had an accident.

  She was not expecting, however, that he would be in bed.

  Almost as if he sensed what she was thinking, the valet said,

  “If you’ll sit down, miss, I’ll go and fetch the Master, who I expect you’ve been told has had an accident and his sight’s been temporarily affected. Anyway the doctors say he’s not to use his eyes, so he keeps in the dark as much as possible.”

  The valet did not wait for an answer, but,
as he finished speaking, disappeared into the cabin next door.

  Crisa looked around her and thought how interesting it was to see in how much better taste this State room was furnished than those in the American Liner that had brought her and Silas to New York.

  Even to think of it was to remember the profusion of flowers and fruit, the caviar and champagne with which the rooms had been stacked.

  The champagne had proved disastrous where Silas was concerned, for she had always been convinced that it was his excessive drinking, combined with the excitement of his Wedding, that had caused him to have the stroke which had killed him.

  No one had dared to say it out loud, but she was sure when she first reached New York and Silas was in a coma that his family blamed her entirely for his condition.

  They thought that if he had not married her, he would doubtless still have been alive and would have returned to them as the same hard-headed businessman whose only hobby was collecting antiques.

  Even to think of the voyage after she had married was to remember her unhappiness and fear of the first night, while she waited for her bridegroom to join her.

  She was so deep in her thoughts that she started when the valet’s voice broke in to say,

  “The Master hopes you’ll excuse him, miss, if he stays where he is. He’s comfortable there and it’d be an effort for him to move.”

  “Yes, of course – I understand,” Crisa said.

  She rose from the chair and walked across the cabin and the valet preceded her.

  There was the inevitable large, elaborate brass bedstead that was considered the last word in luxury in all the Atlantic Liners, but the decorations were very elegant, at the same time having an undeniable French air that made them, Crisa thought, particularly attractive.

  Mr. Thorpe was not in bed, but sitting in an armchair near a porthole over which the curtain was half-drawn to leave his face in shadow.

  She saw as he looked towards her that he was wearing dark spectacles and also that a large plaster covered part of his forehead.