A LADY NAMED ROSE
Chapter Thirty-Four
NOTE: The following chapter contains
scenes that some readers may find offensive. My intent is not to shock or
insult, but rather to provoke thought. This was, after all, a time in history
when people of color were often treated as less than human.
They stared each other down for what seemed
like minutes. Bill was the first to look away, casting guilty eyes to the
ground. Around them the scuffle escalated to a brawl. Police officers who'd
been waiting on alert nearby, smirking at the protesters, suddenly came to
attention.
"Bill, what on earth are you doing
here?"
Mere feet away, a whistle blew angrily and a
swarm of men in blue were upon the crowd. Sebastian grabbed Rose's arm,
attempting to drag her into the safety of the theater. She didn't take her eyes
off Bill.
"It's dangerous!" she yelled over
the noise. "Come inside with us."
At last he raised his eyes and spoke, softly
yet firmly. "No."
"Bill, you could get hurt! Please!"
Sebastian implored, "Come now, both of
you!" Rose finally succumbed to his tugging. She, in turn, snatched a
sleeve of Bill's coat as Sebastian pulled her toward the building.
"Let go of me!" Bill was suddenly a
recalcitrant child trying to escape the clutches of his nanny. It was behavior
more fitting of his brother or sisters. Rose lost all patience.
"William Scott, you will come with me
right now!" She gave him one more pull, right into a police officer who
was attempting to arrest one of the protesters.
"Watch where you're going! " the
cop snapped, then squinted and took a good hard look at Rose. "It is
you!" His freckled face broke into a toothy grin, a bizarre sight under
the circumstances.
"Hello, Teddy," Rose muttered. This
night was getting better and better.
"What're you--hey!" The arrestee
had broken free of his grip and was now fleeing down the street.
"Fargin' nigger!" Teddy cried, and
giving Rose one last, desperate glance, sprinted after the man.
Something about Teddy's behavior disturbed
Rose deeply, but before she could quite put a finger on what it was, a cry of
pain nearby caught her attention. She spun around just in time to see another
cop lower his baton on the shoulders of another black man.
"Rose!" Sebastian shouted in her
ear. "Rose, don't just stand there!"
His words were lost on her; the panic around
her had muddled her thinking. Those screams...
Without another word, Sebastian lifted her
into his arms and carried her into the vestibule of the theater. The ticket
taker, who'd shut his booth and retreated there in terror, held the door for
them and locked it swiftly in their wake.
Rose was by no means comforted in the
cavernous silence of the theater. She rushed to the glass doors and peered into
the melee outside. "Sebastian, we have to go look for Bill."
"He's gone. He took off as soon as that
policeman showed up. Say, who is that copper to you anyway?"
Rose, ignoring him, fumbled with the locks on
the doors. The anxious ticket taker snatched her hands away. "You mustn't
do that!" he warned. "You'll let them in."
"Rose," Sebastian said, "he's
seventeen years old. He'll be fine. I'm sure he's on his way home as we
speak."
"He's sixteen, and he could be
out there, getting beaten like those poor people."
"Those 'poor people' started this whole
mess. I'm sure Bill's head is on straight. We can go to his school and check on
him after the movie, if you like."
Rose shook her head furiously. "How can
you even think about a movie at a time like this?"
"Theater's closed," offered the
manager, a nervous little man whose eyes darted back and forth between them and
the riot outside. "But you can wait here until that--" and he waved a
hand in the direction of the street "--is over with."
He got no argument from them.
*****
"WILLIAM!!!"
Rose heard her employer's bellow all the way
in the attic, and it chilled her to the bone.
"William, get down here!"
She'd seen the article in the NY Times.
Sebastian had driven all the way to the Scotts' early that morning to show it
to her. The calamity at the movie house was front page news.
"My goodness, what's going on out
here?" Belinda, cranky as usual. "Your daughter is taking a
nap," she admonished.
"Is everyone in this house taking a nap?
Where is my son?"
Rose heard Victoria's voice next, calm,
almost serene. She tuned out the Scotts and turned again to the newspaper in
her lap. On page A1, above the fold, was the photograph. Bill, along with two
Negro men, attempting to wrench a picket sign from the hands of another white
man.
And on the edge of the scene, a frightened
Rose watched.
She'd studied it for more than an hour. Even
in the dim light from the attic window, there could be no mistaking her
profile.
There were footsteps leading to her door at
the base of the stairs, then the inevitable knock. "Rose?" Victoria
called. "Could you come down here, please?"
It was just a matter of time before Bill's
parents saw it. Mr. Scott read the Times cover to cover every Sunday
after breakfast--when he was home, at least. Rose wasn't sure she would have
escaped his wrath under any circumstances, but things would have been much
easier for Bill had he not decided, for reasons unknown, to come home the night
before.
She stood on shaky legs and descended the
stairs.
William had already begun tearing into his
son by the time Rose and Victoria entered the parlor. But rather than show the
respect he ordinarily would, Bill regarded his father with contempt.
"It wasn't a school day, Father,"
he was saying. "I didn't disobey any rules."
"You disobeyed my rules!"
William roared. "You brought shame on this family with your actions."
Bill jumped from his seat and met his
father's glare. "I was using my First Amendment rights to free speech, as
all of us were. We didn't go there to pick a fight."
William waved the newspaper in response.
"That's not what this looks like."
He noticed his wife and Rose for the first
time. "Well, Rose, what do you have to say for yourself? Were you
exercising your First Amendment rights, too?"
"I--Sebastian and I just went to see a
movie."
"And you couldn't tell us what
happened?" Victoria asked.
Rose looked pointedly at Bill. "I didn't
feel it was my place to do so."
"Has the whole world gone mad?"
William ranted. "My son cavorts with coloreds and damn near gets himself
arrested and his governess thinks nothing of it?"
"That's not what she said, Will,"
Victoria said tiredly. Rose wondered if she'd already been at the bottle that
morning.
"Well, I expect more from you,"
William lectured Rose. "You don't lose your common sense when you're with
a man, especially the likes of that theater director. You need to be with
someone more stable, a businessman, or a physician, perhaps."
Rose couldn't believe she was on the
receiving end of fatherly advice at this stage in her life, but she listened
politely until he excused her.
The remainder of the afternoon was quiet.
Lucy was away at school, and Richard and Josephine were hard at work on
spelling and arithmetic assignments for the next day. When it was time for her
to go back to Vassar, Bill met Rose at the foot of the attic stairs and offered
to help her with her suitcase.
"Where are your parents?" Rose
inquired, glancing from one end of the corridor to another.
"Behind closed doors in the study,"
Bill said. "They're trying to decide what to do about me."
"I see. Well, this too shall pass, won't
it?"
"'Fraid it's not that simple. The
headmaster of my school saw the paper. He phoned."
"Oh."
They'd reached the front entryway and she
hesitated, needing to satisfy her curiosity. "Bill, why did you go to the
theater?"
He looked at her, hard, dark eyes filled with
a sudden mistrust. "I suppose you're going to tell me how I brought shame
on my family, too?"
"No," Rose said quickly. "It's
just that...you must've known that there would be trouble. And yet you went
anyway."
"There's more to school than book
learning, Rose," he responded. "You know that. And I've learned a lot
that might upset my parents. That they're part of a status quo that keeps those
less fortunate in the gutter. That movie you were going to see, that was
propaganda designed to help maintain that status quo."
Rose frowned; Bill was compelled to explain.
"That movie presents mistruths about the Negro people. One of my friends
at school, he introduced me to the Reverend Griffiths, and he really opened my
eyes--"
Then the door to the study opened a hair and
the conversation was over, just like that. Bill went to face the music, and
Rose headed in search of Randolph.
She knew that her main concern should be Bill,
that it was selfish to put her worries first in this matter, but all she could
think about on the ride to the train station, and then on the way to
Poughkeepsie, was her own grainy image gracing the front page of one of the
most widely read newspapers in the world.
Cal read the Times.
He's probably married by now, she consoled
herself, avoiding the view of the river with its deceptively still waters. He
can't still be looking for me after three years.
But yet didn't he search for her on board the
Carpathia, even after he'd seen her get back on the Titanic to be with Jack?
And even if he'd given up on ever seeing her
again, had her mother done the same?