New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [333]
“I think so.”
“Why do you not stand in the picket line?”
Anna hesitated. She remembered the day the woman from the WTU had accosted her as she went into work, demanding to know why she was betraying all the other girls. She had felt so guilty. But when she had talked to her parents about it that night, her father had ordered her never to raise the subject again.
“My family does not wish it, sir.”
There was a murmur round the room. Keller turned to Rose Master.
“I think we need to be careful here,” he said. “The factory owners would no doubt like us to think that this is entirely a Jewish strike, a socialist strike perhaps. But they may be misleading us.” He didn’t mean to be rude. He just wanted to be accurate.
Old Hetty was beaming. Rose’s face was a mask.
But it was then that Edmund Keller made a great mistake.
He wasn’t a fool, but he wasn’t worldly. He was still an academic. He did not entirely grasp that for the powerful ladies of New York—or London or Paris for that matter—politics was a social game, to demonstrate who had the most influence. He supposed that, behind all these activities, there was actually a search for truth. So he didn’t realize that in setting the record straight, he was humiliating Rose.
“Of course,” he continued casually, “one can see why this girl’s family wouldn’t want her to join the WTU. But in fairness, European history shows that factory workers were nearly always exploited until a powerful union or a government intervened.”
If the ladies had been holding a historical seminar, a balancing argument like this might have been a point to raise. But they weren’t. And he had just given Rose her opening to strike back.
“European history? You’d know all about that, Mr. Keller, I’m sure. And isn’t it true Europe is full of socialists? And don’t you know that when innocent Italian girls are bullied or deceived into supporting the unions, they’re being used by Russian socialists? But you know all about socialists, Mr. Keller, from what I hear. Since you, Mr. Keller, I have it upon good authority, are a socialist.”
Keller hadn’t particularly studied the socialist question. Nor had he the least idea that the president of Columbia, disliking his somewhat liberal views, had told Rose that he was a socialist. He stared at her in great surprise, therefore, which she, naturally, took to be guilt.
“Aha,” she said, triumphantly.
“Well,” said Hetty, seeing that things weren’t going at all as they should, “this is all very interesting, I must say.” Which even Edmund Keller realized was a signal, in these circles, that the discussion should end at once.
Anna was very nervous. “I hope she’ll take us away now,” she whispered to Salvatore when the meal ended. But Rose Master was busy talking, and so they were left standing alone.
Had she said the wrong thing about the Italian girls on the picket line? Would the lady tell Mr. Harris at the factory, and get her into trouble?
They had been standing together for a minute or two when the old lady who owned the house came across. She was with another lady, not quite so old.
“I’m Mrs. Master,” the old lady said. “I just wanted to thank you for coming.” She was very polite. “This is my friend Miss O’Donnell,” she added.
You could see the other old lady was very rich, but she seemed kindly, and asked where they lived.
“I used to live not far from you, just the other side of the Bowery,” she said. Anna looked at her in disbelief. She couldn’t imagine the rich lady had ever lived anywhere near the Lower East Side in her life, but she didn’t like to say so. The old lady saw the look on her face and smiled. “I used to have to walk past Five Points every day.”
“You mean you lived in a tenement like us?” Anna finally ventured.
“I did.” Mary O’Donnell paused, as if remembering. Then she glanced at Hetty Master and smiled. “Actually, my father was drunk most of the time, and didn’t even work. As for our lodgings …” She shook her head at the memory. “I had to walk out in the end.” She turned back to Anna and Salvatore. “Your father sounds a