The Gilded Cage Read Online Free PDF

listening intently at the top of the stairs, smiled. Bell put her hand against her mouth. Her body shook. “No,” she whispered. “No, Horatio.”
    He sank down on the sofa. His head dropped into his hands. For long moments, they both said nothing.
    â€œI don’t know what to do,” he said raggedly at last. “I want you to confide in me, Bell. Tell me. Is it the act that you fear? Don’t be ashamed. We’ve talked of free love in the abstract many times. Surely you know you can say anything to me.”
    Bell walked away. She pressed her forehead against the cold glass of the window fronting the street. Words were on her tongue, and again she clamped her jaw, this time to prevent them escaping.
    She could never tell Horatio of her shame. Of the uncle who had visited her nightly when she was twelve, sliding into her bed and pressing himself inside her. Of the mother who had looked the other way, up to the heavens to God to protect them all. Bell’s father had died when she was ten, a factory worker worn out at forty. His brother had moved in with them, seeming their salvation. Her mother had wept, she was so grateful. And then Uncle Jack sent Bell’s brother Sam up to Massachusetts for factory work and had taken to Bell’s bed. And then when she was fourteen he had sold her to a “friend” he owed a gambling debt. Archie Taft had been no gentleman.
    Bell would never forget the day she had sneaked into a lecture hall to see the famous Columbine Nash speak. Columbine was only a few years older than Bell, and she was on her first lecture tour in America. She’d been brutalized in a marriage and her father had thrown her briefly into an asylum when she’d run away with her lover. The charge was insanity due to “over-education.” Columbine had escaped with the aid of her lover and then promptly left him when he’d forbidden her to discuss her experience publicly, saying that it would be unladylike to do so. She lectured and wrote and became instantly notorious in London, a scandalous woman who laughed at her critics and exhorted women to cross class lines and organize for their rights.
    Bell had been shocked. Columbine was of the upper classes, her father was titled. And she had been brutalized too! Bell had listened hungrily. For the first time in her life she’d seen that ideas could be a form of comfort. Of strength. Columbine was right; women’s problems were unique, and they crossed class lines. Bell drew the ideas she heard around her like a cloak; it held protection as well as warmth. Even while Archie did vile things to her she could think of all women, all the downtrodden of the world and feel comforted. She was trapped in a machine not of her making. But according to Columbine Nash she did not have to be a victim. The only one who could make her a victim was herself. And that was when she began to change. That was when she began to hope. That was when she began to act.
    Secretly, she’d written to Columbine, and Columbine had answered. She’d found work for Bell in an office of women working in Columbine’s New Women Society. Bell had quit her job at the collar factory that very day. The office was a place of hard work and laughter. Columbine was there every day, fundraising, writing, planning lectures. And when Archie Taft had found out and beaten Bell so badly she could not walk, Columbine had taken her in to her own home. “You will never have to lie with a man again if you don’t choose to,” Columbine had said to her fiercely, standing over her bed.
    But what if I never choose to again? Bell cried out silently now, her lips against the glass. Over ten years had passed, and she was still chaste. She knew she was missing something essential. She could see it between Columbine and Ned, satisfaction and laughter and a closeness not measurable to outsiders. Ease and contentment. Passion.
    Bell couldn’t bear the