Stories from Suffragette City

by M. J. Rose

  “I happened to see my wife wearing her brooch this morning.”

  Kunz smiled. “Yes, I’m quite fond of it. We created more than a dozen butterflies with some lovely amethysts and peridots. The insect is a perfect symbol for these strong women and this brave fight.”

  The store’s elder statesman had traveled all over the world, dug for gems, discovered new minerals, staved off robbers and thugs. He’d carried a gun hunting amethysts in Siberia. He’d written the definitive book on the folklore and magic of gems, of Shakespeare’s use of precious stones, on the history of talismans. And he was a sentimentalist. Just a few months ago, Charles had been to the Riverside Park ceremony where a twenty-foot-tall equestrian statue of Joan of Arc had been unveiled. Along with five other men, Dr. Kunz had been responsible for raising twenty thousand dollars to have the piece sculpted, cast, and installed. The artist they chose was a woman, no less, Anna Vaughan Hyatt. An avant-garde decision. But then, Dr. Kunz was a liberal progressive. He believed mightily in democracy and equality. He often spoke about how poorly the African diamond miners were treated, of the squalor and illness he encountered in China during his searches for jade, of the terrible poverty he witnessed in India. He’d become a staunch advocate for labor and women’s rights. So when Joan of Arc had come back into popularity in France and been named a saint, Dr. Kunz, along with steel fortune heir J. Sanford Saltus, decided to adopt her as a symbol of what women could accomplish.

  To honor Saint Joan, Dr. Kunz had traveled to France to collect stones to include in the statue’s granite base. In Rouen, he’d picked up pebbles from the castle where Joan of Arc had been imprisoned. From Reims Cathedral, he’d obtained masonry fragments from the room where she’d watched Charles VII’s coronation. He’d collected rocks from Domrémy, where she was born, and some from Orléans, where she so valiantly led the troops.

  Kunz had also buried a time capsule inside the base: a box made of copper that held souvenirs from her recent canonization—commemorative medals, copies of the speeches, and some American and French coins. But of all the things Charles had taken note of, the staurolite crystal that Kunz had included was the most moving. Fairy stone, as it was called, was meant to symbolize the tears shed for the saint.

  “The butterfly brooches are lovely, but I’d prefer to keep politics out of the store,” Charles said.

  “They were not put on display for exactly that reason. They were a private transaction between me and several of the leading ladies of the movement.” He cleared his throat. “Including your wife.”

  “Yes, yes … as I mentioned, she’s wearing it today for the march.”

  “What is it that bothers you, Charles? That Katrina is wearing the pin, or that she’s marching?”

  Charles felt that same frustration he’d experienced at breakfast, that he’d felt for the last few years whenever he and Katrina butted heads over suffrage.

  “Damn it, it all bothers me. It bothers me that I can’t convince her to give up this fight.”

  “But, Charles, it’s not you or me that they’re fighting. They are standing up to be treated as equals. We trust women with our love, our health and happiness, to take care of our home, to raise our children. We ask them to work with us in our factories and offices and often do the same jobs we do. Why shouldn’t they be equal and vote for the politicians who will make decisions about their lives?”

  “I imagine your daughter is marching?”

  “Ruby is a grown woman with a daughter of her own. She doesn’t clear her activities with me. But, yes, of course she is. And with her daughter.”

  “And I imagine Ruby has one of these pins, too?”

  “Charles, this conversation is—”

  “I know, I know,” he interrupted. “I’m being old-fashioned. I don’t like all this uproar and change. I worry about Katrina.”

  Dr. Kunz nodded. “You know what is one of the most wonderful things about gemstones? In this world that is constantly changing, you can count on a sapphire always being royal blue and a ruby always being bloodred. We appreciate the permanence of jewelry, you and I, and your father and grandfather. How a stone is passed down from generation to generation, enduring through time. But you can’t apply that to people and customs and desires and politics. They will never be as constant as a hundred-thousand-year-old diamond. Life is what our thoughts make it, Charles. Joy is born of gratified desire. Be it a woman putting on a bracelet adorned with precious emeralds, or standing up and fighting to be treated as an equal. Both make her heart beat faster. As will the heart of the man who gives her the bracelet or stands by her side in the fight.”

  “Is there nothing I can say that would cause you to at least consider my way of thinking?” Charles asked.

  “Consider this. Stop thinking of women as objets d’art made of glass, son. Think of them instead as gems. Yes, the diamond is king, but the pearl is queen—with that touch of feminine frailty that is part of a woman’s charm. Yes, the pearl is slightly less impermeable. Yet, like a woman, it has endurance. Every bit as much as the masculine gems. You see that, yes?”

  No, Charles didn’t see it. Nothing was as hard as a diamond. A pearl could be smashed with a hammer. The gemologist was romanticizing. Charles drained his coffee cup.

  “I wanted to ask you to please not sell any more of those butterflies, even privately.”

  “I can’t agree to that. They’re not stamped with the Tiffany and Co. seal. I used my own gem stock and paid the jewelers out of my own pocket. You’ll never see them in the store, that I can guarantee. But never create more of them?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Charles, but I cannot give you my word on that.”

  * * *

  A few hours later, Charles’s office door burst open, and with impish delight, Grace came skipping in, Tribly a few steps behind her.

  “There are so many people in the street!” Grace said breathlessly.

  She was wearing her white coat, her Miss Suffragette City sash, and holding the Brownie camera like her little life depended on it. Tribly had done up her hair in perfect ringlets, with purple and green intertwined ribbons, and had pinned a suffrage ribbon on her own coat.

  Mr. Tiffany frowned at it, but Tribly seemed to ignore him. The nanny didn’t work for him, after all, but for Grace’s parents. It wasn’t his place, but he wanted to ask her to remove it. He was sick of the whole thing. It seemed everyone around him had fallen victim to the madness of this movement. He even suspected Inez Goddard had one of those ribbons tucked underneath her collar, but he was too much of a gentleman to ask.

  “Yes, yes, it’s going to be a very grand parade,” Charles said to Grace. “Now come see your perch.” He stood and took her hand.

  He smiled as he felt the small, warm fingers curl into his. Of his six sisters, five were younger. Grace reminded him of them—especially the youngest, Dorothy, who had married the year before. There was a time when she used to put her little hand in his, the way Grace was doing now, whenever he took her down to the beach at Laurelton for a swim or a sailboat ride.

  Charles indicated the navy-blue cushioned window seat. “Now, if you sit here, you can look out and take pictures of the people as they pass by. I’ve figured out that your aunt Katrina will be passing by in about thirty to forty-five minutes if the parade is on time.”

  It was, in fact, precisely forty minutes later when Charles, who’d gotten up to watch the marchers with his niece, saw his wife. She was at the head of the parade carrying a large American flag, marching to the sound of the big brass band. As they watched her come closer, the wind whipped up, and the flag wrapped around Katrina’s face, obstructing her from view.

  “Oh, no, I can’t see Aunt Katrina to take her picture!” said Grace with a note of panic.

  Grace had been snapping photos for the last half hour, taking so many, Charles had had to change her film twice.

  “Just wait, sweetheart, the flag will blow off in a second.”

  “But I can’t take her picture
if I can’t see her face!” Grace was distraught.

  “Any minute the wind will die down,” Charles reassured her as he watched the scene. The wind held the flag to his wife like an embrace. How fitting that was, he thought. She was as married to her causes as much as she was married to him. But that’s exactly why he’d found her so fascinating when he met her. Her determination and her enthusiasm, along with her ready smile and spirit of adventure, defined her.

  How he wished they could see eye to eye on this one subject, though. That they didn’t have to argue about it so often.

  Charles continued watching the flag. Finally, it blew open for a moment, and he caught a glimpse of Katrina laughing as she struggled against the folds of fabric.

  “Now, Grace,” he said. Then the wind whipped up again, and Katrina was gone once more.

  Behind him he heard the child’s nanny call out in a concerned voice: “Grace?”

  Charles looked away from the parade and down at his side. His niece wasn’t there.

  “Grace?” Charles called as he spun around and looked over at Tribly. “Where is she?”

  “She must have run out,” Tribly said, heading to the door. “I was reading. I didn’t see…”

  Charles outran Tribly and raced out of his office. He sprinted down the hall and took the stairs, Tribly barely keeping up.

  They reached the first-floor landing.

  The store was crowded with patrons who’d been watching the parade and then had come inside for a look around. He and Tribly stood surveying the crowd.

  “Where could she be?” Charles asked. “Where would she go?

  “She was so concerned about not getting a photograph of her aunt marching. Maybe she went outside to see if she could get one that way?” Tribly suggested.

  “Into that mob? Oh, no!” Charles shouted as he pushed his way through the shoppers in the aisles of his store, panicked at the thought of the tiny child caught in the throng of people outside.

  Charles hurried to reach the doors to the street. For the first time in his life he forgot about where he was. He’d been taught since he was a little boy that he had to be careful in the store. There were precious objects in every cabinet, on every shelf. One always had to be mindful so as to avoid bumping into someone or knocking against a cabinet. But not today. Every second that he slowed down to let a woman pass or dodge a glass corner was a second that Grace was venturing deeper into the crowd.

  Had Katrina seen her? He hoped so. He prayed the little girl had run right up to her aunt. He imagined Katrina being surprised to see her, picking Grace up and laughing that she could walk with her after all. He pictured his wife taking Grace’s hand, as he had not an hour ago, and the two of them marching the rest of the way together to Fifty-Ninth Street.

  “Ouch!” a woman shouted, as Charles accidentally stepped on her foot. He mumbled an apology as he swerved to miss her and felt his shoulder hit something.

  He’d lived in dread of hearing the sound, that terrible sound, that meant he’d been careless and broken some precious object his father had made or collected. The sound that told him he’d be getting punished for his infraction.

  He’d never broken a lamp—not even as a boy playing hide-and-seek with his sisters in the house that was filled with dozens of stained glass lamps. Not even while throwing a ball on the lawn at Laurelton, outside the estate that boasted more than a hundred stained glass windows.

  Now he heard that sound. For one second he looked down. A table lamp—red tulips, emerald leaves, and orange butterflies—broken, ruined, in pieces, scattered on the floor and on the countertop. But Charles couldn’t waste any more time. He ran out of the store and into the street, looking for Grace. It appeared she had indeed been swallowed up by the damnable parade.

  For a moment he was swallowed up also. He turned around and around. He tried to shout over the sound of the marching band, but after the third time he’d hollered, “Grace—Grace—Grace…” he knew that it was fruitless. The band played on as more and more women marched by carrying their flags and banners.

  He turned around and around once more.

  And there she was. Grace, standing off to the side, petting the nose of a white horse. And Katrina, still holding her flag, by her side.

  Charles took a deep breath. He hadn’t lost her after all.

  He pushed through the crowd, making his way over to his wife and niece, both of whom were surprised to see him.

  “Grace!” he said, kneeling down in front of the little girl, taking her by the shoulders, wanting to hug her and shake her at the same time. “You can’t go running out like that. I couldn’t find you. You have to mind when someone tells you what to do.”

  Grace’s face threatened tears. Katrina looked at Charles and said, “She’s sorry.” Then she looked back at Grace. “You are, aren’t you, Grace? Apologize to your uncle.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “Why did you run off?” Charles asked.

  “I wanted to take a better picture of Aunt Katrina. I told you.”

  “Yes, you did.” Charles stood. “Let’s take the picture now, and then I’ll take you back upstairs.” He looked at his wife. “All right?”

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  Charles watched as Katrina posed and Grace lifted the Brownie to her eye and positioned the camera exactly how she wanted it.

  “You look like a soldier, Aunt Katrina,” she said. “A soldier in the parade.”

  Taken with the child’s description, Charles looked from Grace back to Katrina. She did look like a soldier. A soldier with a smile on her face.

  Grace took another photograph and then lowered the camera.

  “Thank you,” Katrina said to Grace.

  “For what?”

  “For saying I look like a soldier. For seeing me the way I want to be seen,” Katrina said.

  Charles saw the light shining in his wife’s eyes. What she’d said echoed in his mind. He repeated it to himself. Thought about it. He forgot about his niece for the moment. And the parade and the music. Charles closed the gap between them.

  “I haven’t changed my mind about the parade, Katrina, but…”

  Katrina was surprised by the softness in his eyes. “What is it, Charles?”

  “I haven’t been seeing you the way you want to be seen, have I?”

  She shook her head. “Not for a long while.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  She bowed her head for a moment, so he couldn’t see the tears in her eyes. So he wouldn’t know how much that mattered to her. She didn’t want to be weak like that, not here, not now.

  “Thank you for that. We’ll talk about this later. I need to get back to the parade.”

  Charles nodded. “I’ll get Grace and—”

  He looked from Katrina to his left, where Grace had been a moment ago.

  “Grace?” he yelled.

  She’d just been there. And now she was lost again.

  “Grace!” he called out again.

  “You look back that way,” Katrina said. “I’ll start looking ahead.”

  “She can’t have gotten far. We’ll find her,” he said.

  “Of course we will,” said Katrina.

  And they both ran off in opposite directions.

  Deeds Not Words

  STEVE BERRY

  Randall Wilson knew he should have refused doing the favor. Everything signaled that it was a bad idea. Nonetheless, he’d agreed.

  And he was, if nothing else, a man of his word.

  So he rolled out of bed at 4:45 a.m., a solid hour and fifteen minutes before his usual rising time. He’d barely slept, trying to figure out what he should do and, more important, in what order. Go to the police first? Maybe. Or go to the office and listen to the phonograph again to try to figure out just exactly what he’d stumbled upon. Spying on a fellow member of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage seemed, if not unethical, at least unchivalrous. Yet that was exactly what he’d done. And if what John
Charles Stuart had told him was true, then Timothy Brisbane deserved to be spied upon.

  Brisbane owned a prosperous insurance company that had, of late, been facing hard times. The fraud cases were mounting in the courts, and Brisbane’s name had been splashed across the newspapers, each story raising serious questions about his business practices and ethics.

  But that wasn’t why Stuart wanted Brisbane spied upon.

  “You know he’s my sister’s husband?” Stuart asked. “She’s pregnant with their fourth child and I think the scoundrel is seeing someone on the side. Not just that, but I think he’s planning on leaving her or doing something drastic. Before I confront him, I need proof. He’s reserved the lounge for a private six p.m. meeting. Please, can you help me?”

  Sure. Why not? What were friends for?

  But he was more than a friend.

  He was Randall C. Wilson, Esquire. A respectable lawyer with a thriving practice specializing in criminal defense. He had a reputation for honesty and integrity that he worked hard to maintain.

  And spying on other people didn’t seem consistent with either one of those.

  As a lawyer, he’d had the good luck of several times using a Dictograph machine, the absolute latest in covert surveillance. Sold by the General Acoustic Company of New York City. Lightweight. Compact. And quite useful. Police and private detectives had come to swear by it. Some lawyers, too, himself included. The device came packed in a simple wooden suitcase lined with leatherette. Inside were microphones, headphones, volume control, and a set of connecting wires with lugs, all able to accommodate different lengths and varied destinations. Everything needed to secretly record what other people were saying. He’d used it enough to know its quirks and, more important, how to maximize its advantages. So yesterday afternoon he’d set it up in a room below the men’s lounge of the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage. He ran the wires out the window and up to the lounge, secreting the microphone behind the curtains. Then, at 5:45 p.m., he’d sat down in the lounge, with a cigar and newspaper, and waited until Timothy Brisbane arrived.