Mistress Suffragette

by Diana Forbes

  “Sam’s coming to the meeting, isn’t he?” I asked.

  “But of course he is.”

  “Then let’s be sure to say hello to him. Right now. Before the meeting even starts!”

  I pulled on her arm, and together we ran the few dusty blocks to the hotel. We clattered through the stately pillars at the entranceway, across the wooden floors of the reception area, through the vaulted arches, and into a small room where a haze of toasted cigarette smoke made our eyes tear.

  Fifteen women were seated, puffing on their Duke of Durham cigarettes, along with Sam. He waved his hand in front of his face, and gingerly pivoted his body away from the smokers. It was the first time since arriving in this strange, mixed-up city that I was genuinely pleased to see him for, if nothing else, he would divert Verdana’s attention away from me.

  Some of the women approached Verdana for her signature as even more women followed us in from the lobby. She moved away from me and plunged headlong into the bubble of her new celebrity, signing scrap after scrap of paper from her adoring public.

  “Oh, Miss?” A large male hand pushed a fragment of paper into my hand with a fountain pen. “Can you sign this please? It’s for my sister.”

  I felt my jaw flop open. Verdana was the main attraction; I was merely her sidekick. Why would anyone want me to sign anything?

  I looked up to see Mr. Daggers standing before me. His dark eyes glistened, a smile playing across them.

  “Mr.—”

  “And she is my sister,” he said. “Beatrice Daggers.”

  “Wh-what would you have me write?”

  “How about, ‘I’m terribly sorry I was jealous for no reason,’” he said with a chuckle. Then he took the unsigned piece of paper and pen from my hand and slipped them back in his jacket pocket. He threw back his head and laughed.

  Mr. Daggers turned on his heel and walked away, blowing me a kiss with his hand as he left. I tried not to smile, but strangely I was happy to see him.

  It wasn’t right, but there it was.

  Chapter 21

  The Bonnet Brigade

  Thursday, July 13, 1893

  Now everyone around us lived and breathed the Movement. Women popped into Verdana’s flat on a continual basis and tried to persuade her to export the message to different cities, with Newport and New York mentioned most often. Newport, they said, because they knew I had grown up there, and New York was simply the epicenter of everything. It was almost as if the Movement didn’t exist unless New York was included on the circuit.

  All meetings took place in Verdana’s parlor, now permanently set up in the lecture house manner, with two aisles of wooden chairs on either side of the cozy room. There were factions; and in general, I could tell where someone’s loyalty lay by her dress code.

  Members of the New England Dress Reform Committee donned looser-fitting garments. Some of the women wore pantaloons. Other women wore pants under dresses. Still other Dress Reformers wore traditional attire that simply wasn’t pulled in as tightly.

  Members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union draped themselves in black, from their dresses to their shoes. Sometimes, these women carried Bibles with them in honor of their wacky heroine, Carry Nation.

  The members of the American Women Suffrage Association also sported traditional dress, albeit in lighter colors. These women believed in “wearing the flag,” and it was commonplace to see their clothes decorated with buttons and sashes in suffrage colors—yellow and purple.

  All of the women, regardless of sect, wore bonnets, bonnets, and more bonnets. Even indoors.

  The air in Verdana’s parlor reeked of roses, orchids, hydrangeas, and other perfumed scents that were popular on the market. But underneath it all lurked a strange, sweaty smell. I couldn’t decide if the women just didn’t bathe often or if it was because their mission took them down to the poorer sections of Boston whose residents rarely bathed, and somehow the smell just followed. These women are not like me, I reminded myself. They didn’t grow up with servants who drew baths for them and helped wash their hair.

  The Bonnet Brigade stopped by, unannounced, at all hours. And perhaps sensing our differences, the women would try to confer only with Verdana. But, to her credit, Verdana recognized that organizing rallies wasn’t her strong point, and she’d often invite me into the meetings to pinpoint where and when our next speeches would occur.

  I took issue with bringing our talk to both of the suggested tour stops. Newport was a ghastly idea. I could not foresee the Ladies Bridge and Mahjong Society welcoming Verdana and me with open arms. And Manhattan was the island of temptation, best avoided due to Mr. Daggers’s proximity.

  I suggested Chicago, but a contingent was already en route to the Columbia World Exposition in a month’s time to speak on Rational Dress. Savannah was declared “too prone to hurricanes;” San Francisco, “too far away.” Detroit was deemed “too intoxicated:” several breweries had recently opened in the city, which upset the Temperance proponents to no end. In short, the leaders disapproved of every idea I proposed. But at least I made some headway on a different front: money. My savings were not depleted yet. But looking toward another rent payment in a few weeks, I had to face the fact: at this rate, my income and expenses were not going to even out. I felt like my father with his olive-green ledger, now worried about accounting for every expense. With the pay from the speech still clinking in my pocket, I became eager to earn more and spend less.

  I sat down with two hardboiled leaders and convinced them to increase our pay to $2 per speech. But it was difficult to persuade Verdana privately that $2 still wasn’t enough to cover expenses. Bankrolled by her father, her grasp of financial matters was flimsy at best, and her newfound fame seemed to have addled her brain. She was incapable of entertaining a coherent mathematical thought. We were both seated on the hard chairs in the front row of her parlor the day I attempted to introduce her to simple subtraction.

  “$2? Why that’s wonderful,” she said vaguely. “That’s why you are my most brilliant recruit.” She crossed her bloomered knees, leaned over, and planted a kiss on my forehead.

  I pushed her away. “Stop accosting me, and try listening,” I said with a steely voice. “$2 isn’t enough money. Isn’t that the same amount we’ve been spending to rent bicycles?”

  “Oops. I hadn’t thought of that.” She bit her lip, as she stood up and retreated to a different room.

  As I studied an old, framed presidential ballot for Belva Lockwood and Marietta Stow hanging on the parlor wall, Stone’s words came ringing back to me. You have to fight for what’s right. It’s called leadership.

  Chapter 22

  The White Plague

  Friday, July 14, 1893

  I was staring up at the ceiling, counting the number of buckles in the paint due to water damage, when Mother’s face passed before my eyes. She glowered at me from above, eyes aflame. What had I done to deserve her reproach this early in the morning? Aside from breathing.

  “We have a terrible problem,” she announced. “Yet you didn’t arrive home until the wee hours last night. You should be here more often, dear, to forestall problems, and not go traipsing off to Vermicilli’s…”

  “Spot of tea?” Lucinda asked, joining us in the parlor. She sported huge purple circles under her eyes. This did not bode well.

  “Thank you,” I said, rousing myself to an upright position on the tattered couch. “Good morning, Mother. The sun is out; the birds chirp; it’s such a pleasure to see you.”

  “Your sister’s ill.” She waved a yellow piece of paper in front of my nose as if Lydia’s infirmity were my fault. “We must take a carriage home. Immediately.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with her—you failed to mention that part.”

  “Pneumonia.” Mother shook her head back and forth. “You could try to look a bit more sympathetic,” she chided.

  She whipped out her face powder compact and, staring at herself in the small, round mirror, start
ed to apply a pasty-colored cosmetic with a brush. I thought the white face powders that had recently come into fashion made women look like they were wasting away. As if illness could ever be becoming. Mother appeared ghoulish—white cake everywhere, punctuated by her bright eyes.

  “What?” she asked, regarding me with whimpering eyes through her voluntary Death mask. “Your father says your sister’s skin looks quite blue. We have to get home. Now.”

  Lucinda carefully set down the tray on the scratched wooden table by the couch. She was a reassuring presence, and I’d missed her during these last weeks. She’d finally secured a teaching position at the Girls’ Latin School, but the headmaster had insisted she receive private tutoring to become more proficient in the language. Known for his passionate insistence on accuracy, he kept Lucinda in the classroom during all hours, testing her on declensions and Latinate verbs. She came; she saw; but she had not yet conquered.

  Lucinda sipped her tea, winced, and added a sugar block to it. Her dark eyes rested on my mother’s face. “Isn’t the disease highly contagious?” Lucinda asked. “Maybe Penelope should stay here.”

  Mother adjusted the hairpins in her high blonde bun. “I can’t see the wisdom in that.” She crossed her arms, gearing for a showdown. “Who will care for Lydia if Penelope and I both stay?”

  I groaned inwardly. Visiting my sister was the right thing to do. Unquestionably. But I didn’t want to do it. With rest and fluids, Lydia would likely convalesce by the time I reached home. Meanwhile she was taking me away from where I needed to be for my lifework. Each time I seemed to find my place in the world, the Tabriz was whisked out from under me. On the other hand, the prospect of having Mother reside with me in cramped quarters for weeks on end was almost too much to bear. I might even be willing to risk pneumonia—if it would help dislodge her from the flat.

  “Perhaps we should visit Lydia,” I said, softening.

  Perhaps spending time with Father would give me the chance to make amends with him whereas staying here reminded me only of Stone. He invaded my thoughts like a lover who wouldn’t take no for an answer. I had moved back into my bedchamber to sleep at night. The sheets and coverlets exuded his pine musk scent, though there was not an evergreen within miles of the flat. The sheets only yearned for a good washing; I required an exorcism. I needed time away—days—months—years!—and distance. I would survive this ordeal, I vowed. I knew that I would because, somehow, I always did. And for me, heartbreak was getting to be a habit.

  I started to pack. The only joy in it was watching Mother folding her clothing for the journey home. That augured well, making a return visit from her less likely. Lucinda believed she could persuade a teacher at the Girls’ Latin School to lease the spare bedroom, and so it was set. We were leaving Boston.

  Saturday, July 15, 1893

  Rosy-hued dawn beckoned. I loitered at the kitchen bay window, watching Boston resist her siren call. The sun skated across the sky. A gull fluttered by, searching for the harbor. The row of brick townhouses with their double-bowed fronts sparkled in the morning light. But the window shades remained closed. It was still too early for the city to be awake. Boston fancied itself a citadel of sophistication, which meant that its merchants, pedestrians, and businessmen were all late to rise.

  The giant white church spire slit the cloudless sky on this celestial morning, a reminder to stay optimistic. I’d return soon, I promised myself. My sister had a strong constitution. She’d inherited my mother’s stubbornness when it came to resisting obstacles, and what was illness if not a giant obstacle?

  I considered the obstacles holding me back. My perennial attraction to the wrong man was a hindrance. In spite of the Movement’s teachings and values, I still believed I needed a man to validate my very existence. Somehow I would need to press past this obstruction to move forward with my life.

  I crossed over to the drab metal kitchen table where a shabby vase held a few oxeye daisies that Mother must have found outside. I picked up a daisy and started plucking its petals in a silent version of “the decision of the flower,” the French game Father had taught me after one of his shipping expeditions to Paris.

  Stone loves me, he loves me not, I mouthed as I plucked white petal after petal. He loves…

  Crumpling the rest of the daisy into the palm of my hand, I stuffed the flower deep inside my dress pocket. Only an idiot would lay herself out this way for a man like him.

  Glancing around the downtrodden room, my eyes lit on a small volume of romantic poetry being used as a vertical wedge to prop up the kitchen windowsill. Were it not for the book’s support, one side of the sill would slant down farther than the other side, making the room look even more disheveled.

  I rolled my eyes to the ceiling where I noticed a horse fly buzzing. The sound distracted me. That insect had more power over its existence than I did. It could just fly away, whereas I had to do whatever Society instructed me to.

  Or did I? I stared at the bug as it traveled down to the open window and to its escape.

  I bolted over and closed the window so the fly could not find its way back into the kitchen to its certain entrapment. Looking through the glass, I watched the fly navigate its freedom. Perhaps one day I’d emulate it.

  Entering the parlor, I noticed a small, ivory calling card on the coffee table with Stone’s name and New York address on the front. So, he wasn’t quite the coward I’d imagined. He had wanted to say goodbye after all. I picked up the card, and flipping it over, saw a printed sentiment there: When Friendship once is rooted fast, it is a plant no storm can blast.

  Mother emerged from Lucinda’s room carrying the painting of Manhattan. “Stone Aldrich left this for you, dear. You really should hold onto it. It could be very valuable one day.”

  Sam and Verdana stood in her parlor, staring up at the Lucretia Mott poster, which had found a home on her wall at last. Sam tipped the bottom corner of the frame up a half-inch, making it more lopsided than before. Verdana squeezed the frame back down.

  A delicate balance was finally achieved.

  “You poor darling,” Verdana said, upon hearing of Lydia’s infirmity. “But don’t worry. The Movement will move with you.”

  “Newport’s a mistake.” I picked up a ripe tomato from a bowl on the table and polished its skin against my sleeve. “We’ll be heckled.”

  “All the more reason to convert them,” declared Verdana.

  Her outrageous bloomers ballooned out from her hips, cinched with a checked man’s jacket. It was the identical outfit to one depicted in a humorous suffrage cartoon gracing one of her parlor walls. With a start, I realized that was probably where she had derived her strange fashion sensibility.

  She pointed her finger up in the air. “We must penetrate every territory—every nook and cranny, every…We’ll follow you to Newport,” she announced. “Won’t we, Sam, darling?”

  He winced.

  I held up my hand. “Father’s still angry with Sam on my account.”

  “We are family,” Sam growled. “Your father has forgiven me because he has no choice in the matter. I’m with Verdana now.”

  Yes—it seemed we both were.

  The carriage bumped and rattled along the muddy Boston roads with such determination that I worried I’d bang my head against the roof. The horses, flogged by an overzealous driver, trudged erratically. It was an excessively warm, humid day—the kind that made ladies don their parasols or stay inside. We had miles to travel before we reached my beloved Newport. With neither Lucinda nor Verdana to help distract her, the force of my mother’s personality was directed full-blast on me.

  “Being a suffragist is like being a nun,” she said.

  “But with better clothing,” I quipped.

  A vein popped from her head. Or perhaps, due to the intense heat, I had started to hallucinate. From her pocket, she removed a small beige fan that Father had brought back from Europe and started to wave it back and forth. Flurries of air moved wisps of blonde h
air up and away from her face. Fans like this were the only good inventions to come out of Spain, she had once told me.

  “You scared him away, Penelope.” She swatted at a fly with her fan but missed. “All this talk of freedom and the vote…. Pray tell, why do we need the vote?” She looked at her wedding ring and sighed. “The men go to college and are trained to understand weightier matters, such as politics and war. That’s not our task in life, dear. Men and women are different, you know. It’s a matter of biology, and therefore, indisputable.” She adjusted her sturdy frame against the hard carriage seat.

  “I didn’t push him away. He just loves Art more than me.”

  “That’s impossible. It’s inanimate.” She flashed me a skeptical look, then fiddled with her chignon.

  “Oh? He called Art his mistress.”

  “I told you men liked mistresses, not mothers!”

  I exhaled. My mother could try the patience of a saint and probably had.

  Characteristically, she changed her tack. “I’d certainly love to know the name of that blonde woman in his painting.” She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t tell me she was inanimate.”

  “I’m sure the fact that he’s Jewish would have no bearing on your high opinion of him.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  She pinned me with her violet eyes. “His name is Stone Ray Aldrich. His name sounds high Episcopalian. Very high.”

  “He’s not Episcopalian.”

  “He seems lovely, Penelope.”

  “He doesn’t eat camel.”

  “Camel?” Mother snorted. “No one eats camel. That’s one hump we don’t have to worry about. Or is it two?” she asked with a sly grin.

  “He’d want me to convert to his faith.”

  “Did he talk to you about such a proposal?” She rubbed her palms together with glee.

  “No.”

  Her face blushed as she wilted back in the seat. “Oh.”