Earlier that day, Alva made a point of telling Lady Paget and Ophelia and Penelope and Puss and anyone else she could find that she and Willie had been called out of town at the last minute. How convenient.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Alva
Alva inched down the hall, hands out in front, feeling her way through the darkness. She might as well have been blindfolded. She’d already turned too quickly coming out of her dressing room and stubbed her toe on the doorstop. She expected to make contact with the carved rounded banister any second, but it kept eluding her. She shuffled forward step-by-step, inch by inch, until finally, her fingertips found the baluster. She took the stairs slowly, with caution. Throughout the house she could hear her servants also bumbling about in the dark.
When she made it to the first floor, she called out, “Willie?”
“We’re back here. In the game room.”
Alva followed the direction of his voice, which led her to where he and the children were riding out the night. There was just a hint of moonlight coming through the windows, barely etching the four of them, sitting close together. Willie was in the middle of a ghost story, and when he let out a big, loud boo, little eight-year-old Harold screamed and burst into tears.
“Now look what you’ve done, Willie.” Alva couldn’t make out Harold’s face but she knew that scream, could picture his bottom lip quivering, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Me?” Willie snapped. “You’re the one making us all sit in the dark.”
“You’re going to give them all nightmares,” said Alva, pulling Harold onto her lap.
“Then turn up a lamp. Or light a candle for God’s sake.”
“No.”
“This is ridiculous. Just one lamp. One candle.”
“So help me, Willie K.,” she said, gritting her teeth, “if you reach for that lamp, I’ll break your fingers.”
It was eleven o’clock. A few blocks south, Mrs. Astor’s ball was already underway, and Alva had ordered all lights out at four o’clock, just before dusk. Not a single lamp or light remained on inside the whole mansion.
“But this is silly,” said Willie.
But it wasn’t silly to Alva. As soon as she saw that her name wasn’t on that list, she told everyone she could think of that she and Willie had been called out of town unexpectedly, some sort of emergency down in Mobile. They were catching the five o’clock train, otherwise of course they would have been attending Mrs. Astor’s ball.
“But they all know we weren’t on that list,” said Willie.
“That list is full of holes and errors.” Several of the names that Ward gave the New York Times were flat-out wrong. Mr. Stanley Dunn had died of a heart attack the year before, and Mr. Herbert Franklin had also passed away; Marjorie Blundt had been entered once under her maiden name and a second time with her married name. “Everyone knows it’s not accurate. They could still think we were supposed to be on it.”
“That’s absurd. And surely no one thinks all the servants have left town, too,” he reasoned. “They wouldn’t be in the house without any lights on.”
“We gave them the night off,” she growled.
“And how exactly are you going to explain your being back in town tomorrow?”
Oh, you do know how to provoke me, don’t you! “We’ll tell everyone we came back early,” she said, knowing she wouldn’t be able to show her face until evening.
“I will never understand you, Alva.”
“And I’ll never understand why you can’t understand that I would rather sit here in the dark all night than let Mrs. Astor humiliate me. Again.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Alva
Alva turned up the fur collar on her overcoat and stuffed her hands deep inside her muff. It had snowed earlier and now the skies were clear, the sun glinting off the new blanket of accumulation, tree branches etched in white. She had just come from Hunt’s office in the Village after reviewing the latest plans for the Newport cottage. As she was strolling by Washington Square Park, she came upon a crowd gathered near the arch; mostly women, young, old, some light-skinned, others dark. Some wearing babushkas, their faces lined, hands calloused. Others were dressed more like herself with fashionable furs and wide-brimmed hats. Alva noticed only a handful of men, mostly police officers. A marching band in formation beyond a snowbank broke into a rousing rendition of “Hallelujah.” Some of the women were wearing sashes over their coats and carrying signs and banners high: VOTES FOR WOMEN.
Standing before the crowd was a woman whose booming voice defied her petite stature. Alva was cold and hadn’t planned to stop until she heard her say, “We as women need to unite in order to change the laws that keep us under our husbands’ control.” Alva ended up spending the next twenty minutes listening. “. . . We challenge the laws that forbid a married woman to own her own land. We challenge the laws that say a woman cannot sign a legally binding contract. We challenge the laws that say a wife who does hold a job—who does earn her own money—be required to turn her wages over to her husband. We do not belong to the men of this world!” Alva marveled at the eruption of cheers and applause. The clapping was contagious, and she couldn’t help but remove her muff and join in.
“. . . Some say a woman’s highest calling is to be a wife and mother, to keep a home. We say ‘nonsense.’ Some say that if women get the vote, we’ll become masculine, we’ll sprout whiskers and beards. We say ‘utter nonsense.’ We will get the vote and we will show them what we’re capable of, what our highest calling truly is.”
Alva clapped so hard her palms stung. Wasn’t this what she’d been trying to prove ever since that day she’d found her father crying, asking God why he’d taken his only son and not one of his daughters? The band began playing again, and as Alva looked around at the women who’d come there from every corner of the city, she realized they were all the same. It didn’t matter if they were rich or poor, young or old, they were all women first and foremost. And all of them were being held back, held down. No amount of money or status could free them.
The crowd began to disperse, and Alva headed up Fifth Avenue, deciding to walk despite the cold. Even though her toes were numb, her fingers stiff, she was exhilarated, filled with a daring energy that she knew couldn’t be satisfied by the same old visits to Tiffany’s or taking her children ice-skating or sledding in the park. Even with the work she was doing with Hunt on the cottage, she was still restless. She’d been searching for something more, certain there was something out there—waiting for her to uncover. Perhaps the suffrage movement was it.