The Golden Cage Read online

  Author’s Note

  The competition of the Ocean Liners from the 1870s onwards resulted in revolutionary changes that astonished the world.

  The Dynamic of 1883, built by Harland and Wolff for the Belfast Steamship Company, was one of the first vessels to be lit throughout by electricity.

  Passenger vessels were well ahead of the shore in the matter of electric lighting. It was not until 1887 that The Savoy was the first theatre to be lit by electricity and the first electric street lamps did not appear until 1891.

  It was a Cunarder, the Lucania, who became the first vessel to be in wireless touch with both sides of the Atlantic at once.

  The French Line’s La Touraine was slower but more beautiful and was the first Liner to offer cabins en suite. Their food was better, although not quite so prolific as the Lucania, who advertised that ten meals a day would be provided, which included a pint cup of bouillon, sandwiches carried about the deck and trays of ices at 3 p.m. and toffee and sweets at 5 p.m.

  Macy’s, one of the oldest of the great American stores, added to their building in 1881 by putting up a six storey addition extending Eastward of the existing headquarters on 14th Street and completing the building during the first part of 1892.

  Incorporated in it was a new ladies’ waiting room, which they described as ‘the most beautiful and luxurious department devoted to the comfort of ladies to be found in a mercantile establishment in the City. The style of decoration is Louis XV and no expense has been spared.’

  chapter one ~ 1896

  Crisa went to the window and looked out onto Fifth Avenue.

  She did not see the traffic trotting by beneath her or the huge ugly brownstone houses that faced the enormous creamy limestone mansion built in imitation of the lilting grace of the châteaux of the Loire Valley by Silas P. Vanderhault when he married his first wife.

  Instead she was seeing the ancient Manor House, where the Roydens had lived in Huntingdonshire since James I had created the first Baronet.

  Although it had been badly in need of restoration, the red bricks in need of painting, the wood of the gables rotten and many panes missing from the windows, she thought then, as she did now, that it was the most beautiful place on earth.

  She longed for it with a yearning that was like an aching wound in her heart.

  Now she had lost both The Manor and her father, who had been the last Baronet and, she thought dismally, her youth.

  Sometimes she had thought that in the over-luxuriant atmosphere, the crowded streets and the eternal bustling of New York, she had grown old overnight, although it was only last week that she had celebrated her nineteenth birthday.

  Only nineteen! And yet she felt that she had lived nineteen centuries since she had married Silas P. Vanderhault and become the third wife of one of the richest men in America.

  Even now she could hardly believe it and that he too like her father was dead.

  She could remember so well the day it had all happened.

  She had been out riding alone because ever since her mother’s death her father, as if he could not bear to remain in the house where they had been so happy, had been continually going to London.

  She had known each time he returned that he had not only spent his time drinking and eating too much, which was bad for his health, but he had also spent more money than they could possibly afford.

  He would then come home because, as he himself had said often enough, he was ‘completely and absolutely broke’.

  This time he had been away for nearly two weeks and Crisa was not expecting him, when she saw, as she neared the house, a smart travelling carriage outside the front door.

  Her heart leapt with delight, although, as she drew nearer to it, she had a feeling of dismay that her father should have been so extravagant in hiring such an expensive carriage drawn by what she recognised as fine and extremely well bred horses.

  ‘How can he be so foolish as to come home in such style,’ she asked herself, ‘when we already owe Lovett’s an astronomical amount?’

  Lovett’s was the nearest livery stables from which her father usually hired a post chaise to take him to London and which he invariably complained was uncomfortable and slow, although the trains were worse.

  This was a quite different turn-out and, as Crisa walked into the stables to hand her horse over to old Hodges, who moved very slowly because of his rheumatism, she decided that she would talk to her father very seriously about their financial affairs now that he was home.

  Last week she had found it embarrassing to go down to the village because she thought that the small shopkeepers, even though they loved her, would look at her reproachfully when she ordered more goods.

  They knew that she was unable to pay as much as a few pence for a pound of the flour, sugar or the butter that Nanny required.

  Nanny was far more voluble on the subject than anyone else.

  “What’s your father goin’ to do about us, I’d like to know?” she had said only last night. “Twas with great difficulty I managed to persuade Mr. Goodgson up at the farm to kill a cockerel for us to eat. The Lord knows the poor bird was so old it could hardly walk, but even so he was asking two shillings for it and, when I tells him to put it on our account, he almost threw it at me!”

  Crisa sighed, knowing that she had no answer to this and Nanny knew it too.

  “If only your father understood that we can’t live on grass and, if I’ve to go through another winter without any coal, it’s doubtful if I’ll survive and when I’m dead he’ll be that sorry!”

  Crisa had given a choked little laugh and put her arms around Nanny to say,

  “Don’t dare talk of dying, Nanny! You know perfectly well you have to stay alive and look after me.”

  She kissed the old woman on the cheek before she went on,

  “I will talk to Papa when he comes back, I really will. But you know how unhappy he has been since Mama died and I know by the look in his eyes how much he misses her. He feels he cannot stay here and not see her come smiling into a room – so happy to be with him.”

  Crisa’s voice broke on the words because she had loved her mother deeply and found it just as hard to live without her as her father did.

  But she had not the solace of being able to go away and spend money they did not have.

  “It be sinful,” Nanny had once said scathingly, “goin’ with those Gaiety Girls and riff-raff of that sort!”

  “They are supposed to be very beautiful and very unusual – at least that is what the newspapers say,” Crisa argued.

  “Now, don’t you go puttin’ more ideas into your father’s head than he’s got there already,” Nanny admonished her.

  Crisa had thought it tactful not to question her father too closely as to what he did when he went to London.

  At the same time she knew that every day he was there added to their pile of debts and every time he returned it seemed to make him more depressed and more restless than he had been the time before.

  At least, she thought as she walked up to the house, she could see him, she could talk to him and, when he was not there, she was very lonely without him.

  There was only Nanny grumbling, old Hodges complaining about his rheumatism and her only consolation was the horses she could ride.

  As she entered the hall with its pictures of the Royden ancestors on the walls and the carpet that had grown so threadbare that it was impossible to see the pattern, she wondered where her father would be.

  Then she heard voices in the drawing room, which meant that he had brought somebody with him.

  She wondered whether she should go upstairs and change or go in to join them just as she was in her old faded riding skirt with which, as it was warm, she was wea
ring only a white blouse that had been darned in a number of places and patched at the elbows.

  Then she told herself that whoever had returned with her father would not notice her.

  She had pushed open the drawing room door and saw him at the far end of the room talking to another man.

  With a cry of joy that he was back, she ran towards him, flinging her arms around his neck.

  “You are home, Papa!” she exclaimed. “Why did you not let me know you were coming? I would have been here waiting for you.”

  “I only decided at the last moment, my Poppet,” he answered, “and when I arrived, Nanny told us, as I expected, that you had gone riding.”

  “I was wishing you were with me,” Crisa said, taking her arms from around his neck and looking enquiringly at the man standing beside him.

  He was shorter than her father and she thought he looked old and not very interesting.

  His hair, what was left of it, was grey, his face was deeply lined and his clothes seemed a little odd and not exactly what she expected a gentleman to wear.

  “Let me introduce you,” Sir Robert Royden was saying. “Mr. Vanderhault – this is my daughter, Crisa.”

  “And a very beautiful possession too!” Mr. Vanderhault said as Crisa held out her hand.

  He had a strong nasal accent and even if her father had not explained where he came from, Crisa would have known that he was an American.

  “Mr. Vanderhault has come down with me from London in order to see our Van Dycks,” her father explained.

  Crisa drew in her breath and with the greatest difficulty prevented herself from giving a cry of horror.

  She knew exactly what her father meant by bringing the American to their home.

  After all his promises, after all he had said, he intended to sell the only two valuable possessions they had left, the Van Dyck portraits of the first Roydens, who had graced the Court of Charles I and taken the Royden name into the history books.

  Her mother had loved both the pictures and she had often said to her husband,

  “Whatever else we may sell, darling, we must never part with our Van Dycks. They are so much a part of our lives that I always feel I know them.”

  “I feel the same,” Sir Robert had said, “and you are quite right, darling. Even if we do not have a son to inherit the Baronetcy, Crisa will carry on the family name and perhaps when she has a son she will call him Royden.”

  “I will certainly do that,” Crisa had promised.

  At the same time she was well aware how bitterly her father regretted that with him the Baronetcy, which had passed so many times from father to son, would come to an end.

  When her mother died, although she had never dared to say it aloud, she had wondered whether her father would marry again, hoping to get the longed-for heir that her mother had been unable to give him.

  She knew how much it had hurt her mother to feel that she had failed somebody she loved as passionately as she loved her husband.

  When she had been unaware that Crisa was listening, her mother had said,

  “I wonder if you will ever forgive me, darling, for not giving you a son.”

  Her father had laughed and it had been a genuine sound.

  “You have given me a happiness that is far more important than anything else a man could ask for,” he had replied, “and I love our precious daughter because she looks so much like you.”

  Yet, Crisa had known as the years went by that he would often look at the family portraits, none of which were in the least valuable except for the Van Dycks and pain filled his eyes because he knew that there was nobody else except herself to inherit them and, if she married, her name would not be Royden.

  Yet now, after all his promises to her mother and to her, she knew without being told that the Van Dycks had to go.

  “I have been telling Mr. Vanderhault as we came down here,” her father was saying, “the story of the Royden family and how my ancestors fought with Marlborough and at the Battle of Waterloo, besides providing at the beginning of the century one of the Statesmen in Queen Victoria’s first Cabinet.”

  If she had not been so horrified at what he was going to do, Crisa would have been amused at knowing that her father had picked out for the American periods of history that he was likely to have heard about.

  She knew that there were other ancestors who had always intrigued her father far more, one of whom had been an explorer acclaimed as one of the few men ever to find the source of the Amazon.

  Another had made a name for himself during the wars in India under Sir Arthur Wellesley.

  However, even an American, she thought scathingly, would have heard of the famous Duke of Marlborough and would know that the Battle of Waterloo had been the final defeat for Napoleon Bonaparte.

  “If there’s one thing I enjoy,” Mr. Vanderhault replied, “it’s taking back to America some of the fine old treasures that are available in this great little country of yours.”

  That was true enough, Crisa was to think later when she saw the Vanderhault house in New York and found that an inordinate amount of pictures and furniture had been grouped together without any artistic sense.

  There were Egyptian Mummy cases, rugs smothering rugs, bookcases, tables, vases, figurines and china, all of which packed closely one against another had a nightmare quality that was overwhelming.

  Now she found it impossible to say anything as her father led the way to the other end of the drawing room where the Van Dycks were hanging on either side of the mantelpiece.

  In the winter they sat at this end of the room, but in the summer at the other end, where a French window opened onto the Rose Garden that centred around an ancient sundial.

  The Van Dycks were, Crisa thought as she looked up at them, so exquisitely painted and so beautiful in themselves, that it seemed impossible that her father could even contemplate having them removed and taken out of the house.

  The walls of The Manor had been their background for centuries and it was as if they belonged there as much as her father did himself.

  Her eyes did not miss how Van Dyck with his genius had depicted the elegant drapery of Charlotte Royden’s gown and his inimitable touch in showing the long thin fingers of her husband.

  In the background of both pictures stood The Manor, looking just as it did today, but not in need of repair.

  “You can see how fine they are,” Sir Robert remarked, “no one before or since Van Dyck could paint portraits as well as he did.”

  Mr. Vanderhault nodded, but Crisa had the uncomfortable feeling that his eyes, old though they might be, did not miss the fact that both the pictures needed cleaning and there was a small tear in the canvas of Charlotte Royden’s portrait.

  “Of course, if you are not interested,” Sir Robert was saying, “I know the National Gallery will be, but I had not thought until a day or so ago of disposing of portraits that have been in my family for so many generations and have hung in this house for more than two hundred and fifty years.”

  Crisa drew in her breath.

  She could not bear to hear her father talking like a salesman, although she knew him well enough to know that he was hating what he had to do.

  He was being forced into it by circumstances that he had not yet admitted to her.

  Then she started, because she suddenly realised that Mr. Vanderhault was not looking at the portraits, but at her.

  “And what do you think. Miss Crisa?” he asked. “I would like to hear your opinion.”

  “I love both the portraits,” Crisa replied in a low voice, “and I think it will break my heart to lose them.”

  “I guessed that was what you would say.”

  He did not say anything more, but abruptly, which seemed rather strange, he walked back to the other side of the room, where he had put down the drink he had been holding in his hand when Sir Robert had taken him to view the portraits.

  Crisa was aware that her father gave her a frantic glance, as if he tho
ught that what she had said would upset the prospective buyer.

  Then to the astonishment of both Crisa and her father, Mr. Vanderhault said,

  “I wonder, Sir Robert, if it would inconvenience you if I stayed the night here? It has been a long journey from London and I would really appreciate staying in a real English home and having a chance while I am here of looking at your other pictures.”

  Crisa could still remember what a commotion it had caused.

  It was not only Mr. Vanderhault who had to be accommodated but also the coachman and what had appeared to be a footman on the box but turned out to be his secretary, who always travelled with him wherever he went.

  It meant that Nanny, who did the cooking, had to provide a dinner for three in the dining room, dinner for the secretary, Mr. Krissam, who ate alone, and supper for the coachman, who needless to say was far hungrier than anyone else.

  Only with Crisa’s help and with old Hodges having to dig the vegetables from the garden because she had no time and the coachman being sent to purchase food from the village, did they manage to have what Sir Robert thought privately was a somewhat scanty meal.

  Mr. Vanderhault, however, seemed quite content with everything that was put in front of him and to appreciate the excellent claret of which there were only a few bottles left and kept for very special occasions.

  All the time they were eating he talked incessantly of his possessions in America of his ownership of one of the great railways springing up in the West and his good fortune in striking oil on the land he owned in Texas.

  In fact it was difficult for anybody else to speak except Mr. Vanderhault, who had so much to say.

  Crisa was wondering how her father could have found an American like him in the theatres, the nightclubs and the restaurants where he enjoyed himself in London.

  She had been thankful when after dinner her father had suggested that she should go to bed early.

  “Mr. Vanderhault and I have a great deal of business to talk over, my dearest,” he had said. “So I suggest you pop off to bed and I will tell you all about it tomorrow.”

  Crisa guessed that he wished to haggle with Mr. Vanderhault about the price of the Van Dycks and would feel embarrassed if she was listening.