TESS MADE A GOOD FRIEND right away in Nan Collier, the young wife of a telegraph clerk, who attended suffragist meetings with her. Matt had insisted that she not go out at night unaccompanied. It was the only restriction he’d placed on her, and since she didn’t consider it demeaning, she abided by it. And Nan was good company, too. She wasn’t an educated woman, as Tess was, but she was intelligent and had a kind heart.
As they grew closer, it became obvious to Tess that Nan had problems at home. She never spoke of them, but she made little comments about having to be back at a certain time so that her husband wouldn’t be angry, or about having to be sure that her housework was done properly to keep him happy. It sounded as if any lapse in what her husband considered her most important duties would result in punishment.
It wasn’t until the end of her first month in Chicago that Tess discovered what Nan’s punishment was. She came to a suffragist meeting at a local matron’s house with a split lip and a black eye.
“Nan, what happened?” Tess exclaimed, her concern echoed by half a dozen fierce campaigners for women’s rights. “Did your husband strike you?”
“Oh, no!” Nan said quickly. “Why, this is nothing. I fell down the steps, is all.” She laughed nervously, putting a self-conscious hand to her eye. “I’m so clumsy sometimes.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Tess persisted.
“Yes, I’m sure. But you’re sweet to worry about me, Tess,” Nan said with genuine affection.
“Don’t ever let him start hitting you,” Tess cautioned. “It will only get worse. No man has the right to beat his wife, regardless of what she’s done.”
“I fell down the steps,” Nan repeated, but she didn’t quite meet Tess’s eyes. “Dennis gets impatient with me when I’m slow, especially when those rich friends of his come over, and he thinks I’m stupid sometimes, but he…he wouldn’t hit me.”
Tess had seen too many victims of brutality to be convinced by Nan’s story. Working as a nurse was very informative—too informative sometimes.
She patted the other woman’s shoulder gently. “Well, if you ever need help, I’ll do what I can for you. I promise.”
Nan smiled, wincing as the motion pulled the cut on her lower lip open. She dabbed at it with her handkerchief. “Thanks, Tess, but I’m okay.”
Tess sighed. “Very well, then.”
The meeting was boisterous, as often happened, and some of the opinions voiced seemed radical even to Tess. But the majority of the members wanted only the right to be treated, at least in the polling booth, as equal to men.
“The Quakers have always accepted women as equals,” one woman said angrily. “But our men are still living in the Dark Ages. Most of them look upon us as property. Even the best men think a woman is too ignorant to render an opinion on any matter of public interest.”
“Yes!” came cries of assent.
“Furthermore, we have no control over our own bodies and must bear children again and again, whether we’re able or not. Many of our sisters have died in childbirth. Many others are so overburdened by children that they have no energy for any other pursuit. But if we mention any sort of birth control, especially abstinence, men brand us heretics!”
There were more cries of support.
“We cannot even vote,” the woman continued. “Men treat us either as children or idiots. A woman is looked down upon if she even shops for her own groceries!”
“Or if she works away from the home!” another added.
“It is time, past time, that we demanded the rights to which any man is legally entitled at birth. We must not accept being second-class citizens any longer. We must act!”
“Yes, we must!”
“Yes!”
They were all in agreement that they should march on city hall as soon as possible. A date was set and leaders designated.
“I can’t go,” Nan said with a long sigh. “Dennis will be home all day.” She barely repressed a shudder. “I wouldn’t dare leave the house.”
“You could sneak away,” a woman standing nearby suggested.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Nan said quickly. “He doesn’t even like me coming to one of these meetings each week. I have to be so careful to make sure he doesn’t know how involved I am. So it’s best if he isn’t home when I creep off for a rally or an added meeting.” Her thin shoulders rose and fell as if they bore a heavy burden. “He works an extra job away from the telegraph office on Mondays and Thursdays, and he’s real late getting home, so I can get out and he doesn’t know.”
What a horrible way to have to live, Tess thought. She wondered, not for the first time, what sort of home life poor Nan had. Men could be such brutes!
TESS WAS STILL FUMING about Dennis’s treatment of Nan when she got home. Matt was on his way out, and she met him on the front steps. He looked gloriously handsome in his expensive vested suit. She remembered how his hair used to look hanging straight and clean almost to his waist, and wondered if it was still that long. Since he hid his braid these days, she couldn’t judge the length.
“You work all the time,” she accused gently, smiling.
“I’m addicted to fancy gear,” he teased. “I have to make enough to support my expensive tastes.” His large black eyes went over her, in her neat skirt and blouse under a long overcoat. “Another meeting?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the friend who goes with you?” he asked, frowning when he noted that she was on the street alone.
“On her way home in the carriage I hired,” she explained. “It lets me off first.”
He nodded. “You be careful,” he cautioned. “You’re a daisy back east.”
“I can still shoot a bow and arrow.” She winked. “Skin a deer. Track a cougar.” She leaned closer. “Use a bowie knife.”
“Stop that.”
“Sorry. It slipped out.”
He glowered. “I don’t use it. I threaten to use it.”
“There’s a difference?”
“There certainly is. A very big difference, miss.”
“I’ll reform,” she promised, smiling. There were deep lines around his mouth and nose, and dark circles under his eyes. “Poor Matt. You’re tired to death.”
“I spend long nights watching people I’m hired to watch.” He studied her face under the wide-brimmed felt hat she was wearing. “You don’t look much better.”
“Nursing is a tiring profession, too, Matt. I spent my day sitting with a patient who had a leg amputated. He was knocked down and run over by a carriage. He’s barely my age.”
