New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [330]
At least she hadn’t brought her friend. She and Elsie de Wolfe, the designer, had been living together for years. Women lovers. The fashionable worlds of New York, Paris and London accepted them, but Rose didn’t approve. Elizabeth Marbury eyed Rose calmly.
“Who are your young friends?” she asked.
Rose smiled, but shepherded them past her without explaining. The other people in the room were mostly society ladies, and a few old friends of Hetty’s. Lily de Chantal was in bed with the flu, but Mary O’Donnell was there, faithful as ever, and Rose went to greet her.
“Are you going to Carnegie Hall tonight?” Mary asked. “I feel I ought to go with Hetty—she’s quite determined to be there. But if you or William took her,” she added hopefully, “I could stay at home.”
For this was what the luncheon was all about. A gathering, a social rally, before the huge event.
Tonight’s meeting at Carnegie Hall was going to be the climax of the last two months. It could even be the start of a general strike. It was actually a union meeting, but if anyone thought that was going to keep people like Alva out, then they didn’t know the rich and powerful women of New York. On behalf of her Votes for Women League, she had a private box.
“I’m sorry, Mary,” Rose said, and Mary looked disappointed.
“We’re only waiting for one more person now,” Mary said. Then, glancing toward the door, she added: “And here she is.”
Even as Rose turned to look, she had an instinct who it would be. Alva Belmont and Marbury were bad enough, but if there was one woman in New York whom she truly hated, one woman she couldn’t forgive … well, she was walking into the room now.
Anne Morgan. She was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a fur stole and, thought Rose, looking pleased with herself as usual. Rose had never liked her, but since she’d taken up with Marbury and de Wolfe, she’d become impossible. They’d all gone to live together in France for a time—in a villa in Versailles. Who did they think they were? Royalty? As for the nature of the relationship, Rose didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. And now Anne Morgan was busy donating huge sums to the garment workers’ cause, funding Russians and socialists, and making a nuisance of herself. God knows what her father thought of it all.
Who would ever have believed that the great Pierpont, J. P. Morgan himself, could have such a daughter? She was only carrying on like this because he gave her twenty thousand dollars a year. Rose couldn’t understand it. Why didn’t he just stop her allowance?
For this was Rose’s complaint. If she believed for one moment that these women really cared about the working conditions of people like the two young persons she’d brought with her, she mightn’t have minded; but for their own purposes, their own sense of power—their own vanity, in her opinion—these rich women, from old families, the very people who were supposed to take the lead in society and set a good example, were funding strikers and whipping up public support for a cause behind which, she was quite sure, were socialists, anarchists, people whose mission was to destroy the very society which gave them their wealth. These women were traitors, fools perhaps, but destroyers. She hated them.
And she could just see the articles in the newspapers. “Mrs. Master Hosts Luncheon for Mrs. Belmont and Miss Morgan before Carnegie Hall Meeting.” Or even worse: “Master Family Backs the Strike.”
Well, it just confirmed how right she’d been to bring these two young people here today.
As they all sat down to luncheon in the big dining room, old Hetty Master couldn’t help feeling pretty pleased with herself. She’d worked hard for this, and the timing had been perfect.
She’d taken an interest in the garment workers right from the start. She and Mary had toured the area, and attended some of the meetings. She’d talked to Alva Belmont and some of the others. And one way and another, it had been