New York - The Novel

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 agreed that there would be a rendezvous at her house on the day of the Carnegie Hall meeting.
    For a ninety-year-old woman to host an event like this was quite a social coup. It wasn’t too often these days that she had a chance to be in the thick of things, and who knew if such a chance would occur again?
    She might be ninety, but Hetty believed in moving with the times. She’d seen so much change. She’d seen canals come, then railroads, gaslights, then electricity, steamboats and now the motor car. She’d seen the old crowd at the Academy of Music yield to the rich crowd at the Metropolitan Opera, and families you’d never heard of, like the Vanderbilts, get into Mrs. Astor’s Four Hundred. If Rose wanted life to be a bit more decorous, Hetty in the last years of her life wished she had a bit more excitement. In fact, just for once, she thought she’d like to be in the forefront of fashion.
    And the garment strike was the fashion just now. She had every sympathy with those poor girls in the factories, though she wasn’t going to pretend that she knew all the issues. But today’s lunch would be remembered. However small, Hetty Master was going to see if she couldn’t get herself in as a footnote in New York’s history.
    So she surveyed the guests at her table with great satisfaction.
    Inviting Edmund Keller had been an afterthought. She’d seen him at his father’s the week before, and asked him to come along, as it was always nice to have a man around. As for Rose, she really hadn’t meant to invite her at all. Indeed, she’d been surprised when her grandson’s wife had got wind of the event and said she wanted to come. “There’s no need, dear,” she’d told her. But Rose had been so insistent, it would have been awkward to refuse. And now she’d turned up with two young people from the Lower East Side, and insisted they sit with her. Had she suddenly been converted to the cause?
    The conversation was all about the meeting that evening. Important union people would be there. Samuel Gompers, the labor leader, and his lieutenants were moderate; they wanted better pay and conditions, if they could get them. Others, with a political agenda, might be more strident. Nobody knew what was