Lawless (40 page)

“I can learn whatever I need to learn.”
Even if I don’t have Margaret’s help and support any longer,
he thought with sadness.

She smiled. “Yes, I’m sure you can.”

They looked up as a servant entered carrying a salver with a calling card on it. Julia picked up the card, gave it a casual glance, then sat absolutely motionless. Gideon set his cup on the silver tea cart as she said in a small voice, “Courtleigh.”

“Here? I don’t believe it.”

She showed him the card. Tension tightened his throat suddenly. To the servant Julia said, “Ask him to come up, please.”

They exchanged anxious glances during the seemingly interminable time it took the servant to usher their visitor to the glass-enclosed room where October sunlight fell on potted plants, comfortable furniture and the bright surfaces of the tea set.

Julia pulled her lace kerchief from her sleeve, twisted it in her fingers. He knew she was probably thinking thoughts much like his. Suppose Courtleigh considered Gideon’s behavior such a gross insult that it could only be repaid with an act of personal revenge. Suppose he’d come calling with a small hideaway pistol.

He rose, patted Julia’s arm to reassure her and moved to a place near the expanse of glass overlooking open country to the south. The October light was pale because it was late in the day. A thin haze filled the sky, partly the result of the season, partly of the fire.

Gideon fixed his eye on the solarium entrance. He heard Courtleigh approaching long before the man himself became visible. His tread had a measured, almost sinister steadiness. Finally he appeared.

“Mr. Courtleigh.” Julia nodded. She rose and smoothed her skirt. Extended her hand.

Courtleigh made no such effort at courtesy. His hazel eyes flicked over the outstretched hand. “Good afternoon,” he said in a curt way. Gideon went rigid.

The railroad president was elegantly turned out in a beige tailcoat, waistcoat and trousers, and a maroon-banded hat and gloves of the same soft shade. He touched one glove to an errant lock of wavy auburn hair.

“I’ll stay only a moment. I find merely being in this house extremely distasteful.”

Gideon thought he could see Julia’s spine stiffen. “Hardly an auspicious start for a social call,” she said.

“Not a social call, Miss Sedgwick. An unappealing but necessary visit.” For the first time his attention shifted to Gideon, who had rarely seen such hatred in a human gaze. The eyes reminded him of Tillotson, the sadistic Yankee jailer who had blinded him during his wartime imprisonment. “No matter what you term it,” Courtleigh went on, “I trust my manners will be better than this gentleman’s last evening. He gave a performance worthy of a stage melodrama.”

Courtleigh’s lips compressed. His gloved fingers closed on the brim of his hat, crushing the rolled edge. “But my house is not a theater, and those at the ball were relatives and personal friends, not gallery hooligans. What you did, Mr. Kent, was insulting, disgusting, and unforgivable.”

Gideon had trouble controlling his temper. “Shall we compare it to the murder of a ten-year-old boy?”

Julia could sense the hate crackling between the two men. Perhaps out of instinct, she fell back on the stratagems of the good hostess.

“Here, gentlemen! A little more politeness on both sides. Sit down, Mr. Courtleigh. Let me pour you a cup of—”

“No, thank you. I want nothing from the hand of a woman of your questionable morals.”

“You arrogant bastard!” Gideon strode forward. Julia stepped in front of him.

“Let’s get this over, Gideon. Clearly it isn’t going to be pleasant.”

Courtleigh slapped his hat against his trouser leg, squinting into the sunlight suffusing the room. “No, it isn’t. I might even manage to overlook your bizarre performance, Mr. Kent—overlook it and chalk it up to the lunatic zeal which affects all those of the Communard persuasion—” Gideon reddened. “I might, that is, except for the unfortunate condition of my fiancée. Your behavior had a most deleterious effect upon her.” Every trace of sarcasm was gone now. “Miss Strother has always had a rather delicate, even nervous temperament—”

Just what Julia had said, Gideon recalled. The hazel eyes continued to accuse him.

“And your threatening manner quite undid her. The sight of that rag purporting to be the shirt of some dead boy sent her into a state of complete nervous collapse.”

The shrieks he’d heard when the music resumed? he wondered.

“Her parents have dispatched her to a private medical facility up in Lake County. A facility for the disturbed. Quite a fine place, I’m told. Excellent staff, the best physicians in attendance. With a spot of luck she’ll be herself in just a few days. But what you did to her—the unnecessary suffering you’ve caused, the hell you’ve put her through—that, Mr. Kent, I cannot and shall not forget. Your kind are scum. Rabble bent on destroying every shred of law and order in this country—and the very concept of private property rights!”

“Now see here—”

“No,
you
see here!” Courtleigh retorted. “You hurt the young woman I intend to marry. I pray to God the damage you did to her fragile nature is not permanent, but—”

“A man like you praying?” Gideon scoffed. “That’s laughable.”

Courtleigh went white, “It’s
you
who would be laughable if you weren’t so dangerous.” He started to draw something from the side pocket of his coat. Gideon tensed until he saw it was merely a piece of paper. He recognized a masthead torn from
Labor’s Beacon.

“You made a serious error in coming to Chicago on behalf of your gutter paper, Mr. Kent. You made an even more serious one when, for some reason I still cannot fathom, you chose me as the focus of your ill will. Not to mention your misguided crusade to see every foundation of society shattered—”

Gideon snorted. “That’s the argument you always use, isn’t it? You and the rest of the bosses. Anyone who asks for a decent wage, or injury benefits, or shorter hours, or a safe, healthy place to work is automatically out to overturn society. Out to trample the American flag and raise the red one the Communards waved—”

Courtleigh smiled in a frosty way. “Exactly.”

“I’ll grant it’s a fine diversionary tactic. And it does work. But it won’t work forever.”

The railroad man shrugged again. “I doubt you’ll be on the scene one way or another. I predict a very short life for you, Mr. Kent.”

Julia stepped to Gideon’s side and took his arm. If Courtleigh had raised his voice, or a fist, Gideon might have borne it somewhat better than he did. Instead, Courtleigh kept his tone temperate. Only the hazel eyes showed his loathing for the younger man as he held up the scrap from the
Beacon
and went on.

“But while you’re still with us, I am going to crush this rag out of existence.” He crumpled the paper and let it drift to the carpet. “I am going to crush your family, and your slut here, and I am going to crush you—though not necessarily in that particular order, and not necessarily at once. But I
will
do it, Mr. Kent. Before God, I will do it all. That I swear.”

Trembling but managing a smile, he tipped his fawn hat, about-faced as smartly as a soldier and walked out of the solarium.

Gideon and Julia listened to his footsteps clack down the main staircase. Then came the distant slam of the front door. The venomous hazel eyes lingered in Gideon’s mind as he moved slowly to Julia and put his arms around her, feeling her shiver.

Neither of them spoke. At last Gideon leaned down to retrieve the piece of the
Beacon.
He laid it on the tea cart, smoothed it almost as if it were a fragment of a priceless painting.

“Let him try,” he said, wanting to sound much more confident than he felt.

“I’m sure we won’t have to invite his wrath, Gideon.”

“You really think he—?”

She broke in. “I don’t think there’s any question of it.” And again Courtleigh’s presence seemed to hover near them, ruining their earlier enthusiasm for talk of his decision to join the New York
Union.

The eastbound express was arriving. The time had come.

A cold autumn rain poured down on the roofed platform at Englewood Junction south of the city. Wind whipped the rain beneath the eaves, and drove silver needles through the beam of the locomotive’s headlight. The locomotive was still a quarter mile from the platform, pouring out steam and wood smoke that added to the murk of an afternoon already dark and dreary. Fast-flying black clouds filled the sky.

Julia’s servants had managed to find a closed carriage for the trip. Many eastbound and westbound trains were using the country depot until those in the central city could be restored to full service. Riding through the rain with the wind-lashed lake on their left, Gideon had held Julia’s hand tightly and thought about the days just past. The discovery of his love for her was a wondrous experience, though it had now become a saddening one. He was taking the only sensible course, and he hated it.

Still, he knew he dared not prolong the affair. It was wrong. That seemed a dismal admission to make about something so filled with joy and love, but it was inescapable. What he and Julia had done was wrong in the traditional sense, and memories of his biblical upbringing would never let him forget it. But abstract morality wasn’t the most compelling reason for his decision. In his opinion there was a much more practical and important one. The affair was wrong because it carried the possibility of pain and injury for others. For Margaret. For his children, should the liaison ever come to light by accident. For Julia herself if Courtleigh fulfilled his vow.

No, unquestionably, he had to leave her. Perhaps breaking things off would have at least one benefit. He might spare her from Courtleigh’s reprisals.

But now, on the platform illuminated by the headlight of the arriving express, it was proving hard to do what was right and necessary. Hard because her mouth was so sweet and eager. Hard because his will wavered.

He lifted her off her feet, kissing her without embarrassment while waiting passengers gaped or made disapproving comments. Because the afternoon was chilly, Julia had worn a little fur-trimmed cape. The fur tickled his cheek as he pressed his face against hers.

“Sometimes I wish this week had never happened.”

“I know, dearest. It would be easier for both of us.” She drew back. “But what you must think about is—”

A quick glance to see if there were any listeners close by. She saw none. And the express was chugging in, trucks rattling, drivers squealing, steam hissing, bell clanging in a way that sounded mournful, somehow. She formed a word in silence:
“Courtleigh.”
Then, aloud, she added, “He’ll do what he threatened.”

“Yes, you’ve convinced me of that.”

“You must be very careful, darling. Very careful of your family, too.” A wistful smile as she wiped rain—or tears—from her face. “Some of my freethinking sisters would drum me out of the movement if they saw me carrying on this way. I—I don’t quite know what you’ve done to me, Gideon. I’ve fallen in love with you, but at the same time, you’ve got me fretting about the welfare of the”—she had difficulty saying it—“the woman who’s going to keep you away from me. Well, I can’t help that. She’s important to you and so she has to be important to me. I want her to be safe. Your children, too. You most of all.”

She rested her cheek against his chest as the locomotive roared by, shaking the platform. “I’m not so liberal and brave as I pretend. I want to be an independent woman, but all at once, a part of me doesn’t. The part that’s linked to you for good and all now—”

She was crying. A voice within him insisted,
You’ve got to say goodbye. Time’s running.

“I think I’d die if anything happened to you, Gideon, I do love you so very much—”

“I—”

Say goodbye. End it!

But the words that were torn out of him weren’t the ones conscience and good sense demanded.

“I love you too, Julia.”

Unashamed, she let the tears stream down her face. “Oh—dear heaven, that’s—the first time—you’ve told me—”

“I’d tell you a hundred times a day if I could. I love you, Julia. I love you.”

The pain of parting consumed them as they hugged each other on the noisy, rain-swept platform. The smeared and dirty windows of second-class cars rolled slowly by, lit from within by hanging oil lamps. Gideon felt dizzy for a moment. He didn’t want to plunge into a lifetime of deception, lies to Margaret, silent shame in front of his children. Those were things no decent, rational man wanted or sought.

And yet when he looked down into Julia’s blue eyes, so sad and lovely, he knew he couldn’t leave her.

Over the train’s roar, he exclaimed as he hugged her again, “I’ve got to see you.”

“But—you said—”

“I know what I said. I didn’t mean it. Do you want to end it?”

“Yes.” She was laughing and weeping at the same time. “Yes, but I can’t do it either. Oh, thank you, darling. Thank you, thank you—”

They kissed again, ignoring stares, ignoring mirthful faces behind the streaked windows. Almost out of breath, he said, “It will take me three or four months to close down the
Beacon.
And that’s assuming Molly and Theo Payne will have me on the
Union.
You can write me care of the
Beacon
till I send you another address.”

“I will, my darling. I’ll write you there once a week. Daily. Hourly! Oh, God, you’ve made me so happy, Gideon. I know we should stop it. But I don’t want to—I don’t want to!”

He picked her up by the waist and whirled her around. While the other passengers climbed aboard, Gideon and Julia talked blithely, saying the foolish things lovers say—things that should never be overheard. He was almost able to ignore the nagging voice of conscience.

You damn fool, you should have broken it off. You could have. This way, you’ll gain a little joy, and ten times the grief a quick parting would have caused.

Somehow he didn’t care. He loved her. That swept everything else aside. In his own way he had become as lawless as Tom Courtleigh. And if that was sinful, why was he so happy?