New York - The Novel

of public disloyalty. Her reaction was instant and natural. No doubt Rose knew the trust funds would flow down to William anyway, but if she thought that anything from this house was coming to her, she could forget it.
    Hetty looked round for someone to save the day. Her eye alighted on Edmund Keller. It was worth a chance.
    “Well, Mr. Keller,” she asked, “will you be our knight in shining armor?”
    Edmund Keller paused. He liked old Hetty Master, and he would be glad to oblige her. But even more important for him was the cause of truth. And truth was more complex than Rose was making it out to be.
    He understood the city well enough to know that the Russian immigrants, having suffered political and religious persecution, were determined to fight anything that looked like oppression in their new home. The Italians, on the other hand, were only fleeing poverty. They sent money back to Italy; many of them didn’t even plan to stay in America—sometimes at the docks there were more Italians returning home than arriving. They had less reason to cause trouble, or to enter the political process, therefore. And they might put up with bad treatment when they shouldn’t. But even having said that, the situation wasn’t straightforward. And if there was one thing, as an academic, that Edmund Keller hated, it was people who simplified evidence until it was misleading.
    “Are there picket lines outside the Triangle Factory?” he asked Anna.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Are there Jewish girls in the picket lines?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Are there also Italian girls in the picket lines?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Are, I don’t know, maybe a quarter of the picketing girls Italian?”
    “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. Hedid 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