Lawless (31 page)

Julia paused and drew a breath. “I sat in that lecture hall with my spine prickling and my head spinning—and I felt I had to have a part in changing such ideas, too. Because I had lived through a similar proof that a woman’s lot is still a pretty miserable one. We’re a long way from being as free as the black people, Gideon. At least there were a good many clergymen fighting for abolition. We have almost none on our side.”

“That much I know,” he said, and added with a wry smile, “Book of Genesis, chapter three.”

“Yes!” Julia cried, jumping up and pacing. “The weapon they use against us all the time. ‘And thy desire shall be thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’ Lucy says she nearly fell into an apoplectic fit the first time she read that. The Scripture’s full of similar remarks. Lucy’s learned Greek and Hebrew just so she can examine the original texts and see whether the translators were faithful to them, or only to their male prejudices—oh, but here I am chattering on and on—”

“I find it very interesting,” he told her, meaning it. “When did you move to Chicago?”

“In the spring of 1868. I was happy to come. Lucy wanted me to cover the central part of the country, and the East Coast had a lot of unpleasant memories. The contractors finished this house exactly two weeks before Louis died—” With a pitying look, she gazed into the fireplace where she’d thrown the cheroot a bit earlier. “Poor Louis. In a topsy-turvy way, I owe him a great deal. I would never have found my real calling if he hadn’t been such a bastard.”

She drew another deep breath, managed a smile. “But I’ve said entirely too much—and haven’t even had the courtesy to ask about your business in the city.”

“Basically, it’s my little newspaper that brought me here.”

“Labor’s Beacon.”

He blinked his good right eye. “You know it?”

“Certainly. The Association keeps track of all liberal-thinking publications. I never knew you had journalistic inclinations, Gideon.”

“Inclinations, perhaps, but not much talent. I’ve had to teach myself to write. Hasn’t been easy—”

“When Louis was buried, you were doing organizing work.”

“I decided I could reach more workingmen, and do it more effectively, as a writer and editor. You know my father bought the
Union
from Louis’ estate—” She nodded. “I now have a quarter interest in it. I could join the staff tomorrow. But I don’t think the other three owners would care for me airing my views in the paper. You know how unpopular the movement is.”

“Indeed I do. On a par with mine. Go on.”

“The
Union
would lose circulation if it took labor’s part too openly or too often. I hate to see that kind of compromise, but I know it’s a fact of economic life. That’s why I’ve continued on my own. As to Chicago, I was invited to write up an organizational effort by men who work for one of the rail lines headquartered here.”

She leaned forward, the green gown pulling taut across the bodice of her corset. “Which line?”

“The Wisconsin and Prairie.”

“What? Tom Courtleigh’s railroad?”

“You sound surprised. Do you know him?”

She walked to the window. “I most certainly do. He’s a dreadful prig, and a hypocrite as well. Prays at the Episcopal church on Sunday and steals right and left Monday through Saturday.” She pointed across to the huge mansion brilliant with light. “I have the misfortune to be his neighbor.”

Gideon gaped. “That’s Courtleigh’s place?”

“I’m afraid so.”

He rushed to her side so excitedly, he collided with her. His leg touched hers for an instant and he jumped back as if stung. He gazed down at the sweet-smelling luster of her dark hair, experiencing a sharp physical reaction. Julia was gracious enough to keep from looking at him, as if she sensed his embarrassment and didn’t want to add to it.

“I really don’t know Courtleigh well,” she said. “Undoubtedly that’s a blessing. When I first moved into this house, I tried to call on him and his mother. She lives with him, you understand. I did the same with all my neighbors—a social courtesy—but Courtleigh’s was the only house in which my cards were returned without a reply. In other words, no one in there would speak to me. I understand it’s because Courtleigh and his mother are violently opposed to the movement, and consider me no better than a whore.”

Gideon almost gasped aloud; the word was never spoken in polite mixed company. Julia went on.

“I’ve even heard Courtleigh refers to this house as the Lucy Stone Brothel, West.” She laughed. “I’ve considered hanging red lanterns in the windows some evening, to convince Tom and his mama the joke’s come true.”

Gideon chuckled. “You should hire some shopgirls to parade up and down in their shifts.”

“The very thing! I can just see him contemplating a brothel next door. He’d think plunging property values and have a heart seizure—” She giggled uncontrollably for several moments. “Dear me, I haven’t laughed so hard in months.”

“Nor I,” Gideon said, wiping his eye.

She smoothed a palm over her bosom and drew a deep breath. “You say Courtleigh’s employees are trying to organize the line?”

“That’s right, starting with the switchmen who work in the W and P yards.”

She thought a moment, then clapped her hands together. “Do you know, Gideon—I’ve never attended a labor meeting. I think it would be fascinating. A furtherance of my education, you might say. You’ll take me to your meeting, won’t you?”

Coming as it did on the heels of her use of a forbidden word, the new request left him speechless again. What an unsettling creature she was! Perhaps that was part of the suffragist strategy—to disarm opponents by addling them with behavior even the most liberal of men didn’t expect from a woman.

His hesitation produced the same glint in her eye he’d seen when she got rid of banker Robbins.

“Of course you will!”

“No, I don’t believe I should.”

She was a shade prickly when she said, “Pray tell me why not.”

“Courtleigh has threatened trouble.”

In a few brief sentences he described Florian’s warnings. He was again surprised by her reaction. He’d expected alarm at a mention of danger. It only seemed to exhilarate her.

“I insist you take me. And no arguments. I assure you I’ll come to no harm. I can take care of myself—why, I’ve been mobbed off more platforms than I can remember. Hit with spoiled fruit and rocks a dozen times—it’s settled.”

“Now just a damn—”

The library doors opened. The butler looked in—but not at Gideon.

“Dinner, madam.”

“Thank you. We’ll be right along.” She smiled up at Gideon, slipped her arm in his and held it tight, as though they were longtime friends, even intimates. She was like some natural force, he thought with mingled irritation and amazement. She was like a hurricane that blew away whatever resistance it encountered. He’d never met a woman like her.

She was laughing as she led him out of the library.

“Yes, indeed, we shall go to that meeting. Two scandalous, outrageous, thoroughly immoral thorns in the side of Mr. Tom Courtleigh. We’re two of a kind, Gideon.”

Her blue eyes shone as she looked up at him and squeezed his arm. “I’m so glad you came by tonight!”

They had a splendid dinner, and the longer he was in her presence, the easier it became to carry on a conversation. She had definite opinions on most issues of the day, from Grant’s abilities as a chief executive to the debate over greenbacks versus gold. But her willfulness showed only occasionally, and she could listen to conflicting opinions without interrupting—though not without demonstrating impatience with a definite pink cast in her cheeks. By the end of the meal, she’d so charmed him that, in spite of his better judgment, he agreed to take her to Ericsson’s the following evening. As she was showing him out, she said softly, “Thank you, Gideon. I knew you would.”

He was able to laugh at his own expense. “You knew I would because I’m just a mere man, eh? No match for the Lucy Stoner juggernaut—”

“Nonsense. That isn’t it at all.” She was smiling, but her eyes seemed full of a peculiarly intense emotion as she gazed at him. Then she glanced away and murmured, “It’s because you’re very nice.”

She reddened again, realizing she’d grown too personal. He was flattered yet uncomfortable: glad to have spent such a delightful evening in the company of a woman who was bright yet feminine; glad at the same time to be starting for the door.

Suddenly a sonorous ringing drifted through open windows. She frowned. “That’s the courthouse bell.”

She listened to the tolling a moment longer. “It’s the fire signal again. I don’t know how many more days we can go without rain—well, good evening, Gideon.” For the second time she grasped his hand and shook it. “I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

Those frank blue eyes continued to disconcert him, and he knew why. Because she was lovely, and when they’d been talking, Margaret had been forgotten. All too easily.

It made him feel guilty, made him let go of her hand very fast.

“Yes, certainly. Good night.”

Her coachman drove him downtown to the Dorset and let him off. The streets around the hotel were packed with people streaming toward the south branch of the river.

Some were frightened, some merely curious. Directly to the west, a bright red glare filled the sky.

“Bad one, looks like,” the coachman commented before he turned his rig around and started away. Gideon joined the crowds and walked all the way to the Adams Street bridge. In response to his questions, he was told that a planing mill on Canal Street had caught fire. The blaze had spread to a lumber yard. On the other side of the river, steam pumpers and hose carts went thundering along fire-reddened streets.

The wind had increased; it was blowing briskly out of the southwest. Finally the fire seemed to be contained. He returned to his room at the Dorset.

He found he couldn’t go to sleep. The fire might have been contained but it was still burning. The glare illuminated the ceiling and one wall. That kept him awake, and so did memories of Julia.

Her eyes.

Her provocative emerald-colored robe.

Her struggle to educate herself—a struggle much like his.

Her interest in affairs of the world—an interest much like Margaret’s before she had begun to change.

He felt guilty about the images of Julia in his mind. But somehow that guilt didn’t banish them.

He tried to shut out the firelight by closing the curtains. As he’d feared, that turned the room into an oven. He opened the curtains again, rolled onto his side with his back to the windows and the scarlet sky, and finally drifted off.

The fire burned well into Sunday. It razed a sixteen-acre, four-block area. Hotel guests in the Dorset’s dining room at noon spoke of nothing else. The waiters said Chicago absolutely could not tolerate one more such fire. As one put it, overheard by Gideon on his way out, “If Lucifer wanted to bring this town to grief an’ make it burn like a cauldron of kerosene, all he’d have to do is toss in one match. No, strike just one spark. That’s all. One spark in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

It was another hot day, but Gideon shivered as he left.

A
GAIN GIDEON WALKED
all the way to State and Twentieth. The meeting was scheduled for eight in the evening, but Julia had invited him for supper at five.

As he strode south, he began to perspire. The temperature had to be well over eighty, even though the sun was already setting in a scarlet haze on the prairie west of the city. A stiff wind blew from the southwest, raising whitecaps on the lake. The sun put red highlights on the water.

Dinner was elegant, with a game bird bisque, then a choice of Dover sole or a roast of Texas beef. Carter complained that he liked neither until Julia shushed him. She took the beef with a Bordeaux, Gideon the fish with a cool and delicious liebfraumilch. She had to spell the name for him twice. He wasn’t embarrassed; he wrote it down on a slip of paper so he’d remember it.

The hostess was as elegant as her table. She wore an expensive-looking summer frock of lavender foulard with long sleeves that flared at her wrists. Her overskirt bunched up in back over a French tournure, a device which the British termed a bustle. In another of the dizzying changes upsetting the modern world, a woman’s appearance from the rear had become more important than the way she looked from the front.

Again he was astonished by Julia’s grasp of political and social matters though the cause to which she was closest came up most often.

“I know it’s bad form to speak ill of the dead, but, Gideon, there’s just no denying Louis was an absolute rogue. Why, when I think of the calumnies about the movement he ordered published in the
Union
—” She was too exercised to continue.

“Ordered, that’s the key word,” he replied. “The editor, Theo Payne, had to print that sort of bilge or lose his job. Now that he’s running the paper without so much pressure, I hope you’ve noticed the attacks have stopped.”

“I haven’t. I quit reading the rag years ago. Along with James Gordon Bennett’s
Herald
—my God,
there’s
a male supremacist for you! Gordon Bennett, I mean. He once wrote about a member of the movement who—as he put it—formerly ran about to suffrage gatherings but now stays home because she finally got her rights in the shape of a baby. Pregnancy, that’s what he considers the proper cure for our mania!”

“Mother really does hate that man,” Carter said from his side of the table. He was eating the beef with buttermilk instead of Bordeaux. It was uncanny, the way he resembled his father yet lacked the petulance that had marred Louis’ good looks.

Influential publishers who opposed women’s rights weren’t the only ones who roused Julia’s ire. She could quote verbatim—and with scorn—from the British philosopher Herbert Spencer, whose Social Darwinism had become the exculpatory doctrine of the nation’s business moguls.

“‘Society is constantly excreting its unhealthy, imbecile, slow, vacillating, faithless members’—that is Spencer exactly, Gideon.”