YOUNG AMERICA
I
The days passed; and one of them rang a bell in the soul of Cornelia
Thornwell. She had kept her vow, she had won the wager with herself.
For a whole year she had taken care of herself, asking no advice and no
favors from any one. She had got a job as a manual worker, and held it
for a year, and lived on her earnings, and had twenty-five dollars put
away. Now she might go home if she wanted to.
Did she want to? It was hard to be sure; at one time she would find
herself thinking about this one and that, and what had happened to them
all this time. But then she would remember the desperate determination
of everybody to dominate her life; all those highly disciplined and
rigid people who knew what she ought to do at every moment of her life,
and would never cease from telling her! Well, she would have a way to
escape, a city of refuge!
She had made up her mind to tell no one where she had been; it would
be a scandal, a mystery with which they might torment themselves for
the rest of her life; a skeleton in the family closet--the bones of a
runaway grandmother! The imp of mischief kicked up his heels in the
depths of Cornelia’s soul; she thought of each person she knew, and
what that person would make of the problem. The secret would be a club
she would hold over their heads, to make them behave. “Let me alone, or
I’ll disappear again!” Like her daughter Alice’s hysterics, which had
developed at the age of three, in a lovely and much petted child who
wanted to have her own way, and which continued in a social queen of
forty, who had to have a platonic lover in addition to a husband.
Now Alice’s mother would also have a platonic romance! Cornelia, aged
sixty-one, would have an adopted son, an Italian ditch-digger, aged
twenty-eight--agnostic, anarchist, and “Dago Red!” She might be sure
of its being safe and innocent, for she had watched him a year, and
never seen him look at a woman, nor heard him voice such an idea. Also
she had the word of Alfonsina: “He never t’ink woman, he joosta t’ink
joostice.”
Such was Cornelia’s tangle of moods, when, on an evening in July
she was coming home from work with another woman, and down the main
street they saw, walking toward them, two girls of the leisure class.
There was nothing unusual in this, for the summer-hotels were open,
the “season” at Plymouth was in full swing. To be sure, the daughters
of the rich did not prefer this part of the town for walking; their
part lay to the south, where the shore-road was lined with villas
and splendid estates. The workers would see them roaring by in fast
motor-cars, radiant, exquisite, with veils floating; snatches of
laughter and song would be wafted back, reminding you of the paradise
of freedom and happiness you had lost by being born in the wrong half
of Plymouth.
The two girls came on; one in pink chiffon, one in white, both lovely
and gay, chatting, not heeding the swarm of tired laborers, drab
and dusty. Cornelia saw them coming, and her eyes rested on them
carelessly--until suddenly she started, and the blood leaped into her
face. That one in pink, with the lovely little round face framed in
soft brown hair and crowned with a pink chiffon hat with flowers--that
was her grandchild, Betty Alvin! Little Betty, grown two or three
inches taller, and miraculously blossomed into womanhood, rounded and
ripe.
Cornelia was in a panic. What must she do? Look straight ahead--no,
she must turn to the other woman and talk--about anything, the first
words that came into her head--“That foreman is too bad-tempered, he’s
not fit for such a job, there’ll be trouble in our wrapping-room if he
stays, there ought to be some way we could make a protest--” and so
on, while the girls came nearer. And suddenly--Cornelia must not look,
but out of the corner of her eye she saw Betty stop and stare. The two
working women passed by, and went on quickly, Cornelia chattering about
anything, anything.
Betty had recognized her grandmother! Would she turn and follow?
Cornelia ventured a swift glance behind, and saw that the two girls
were going on. It was the Thornwell training; Betty, assuming she were
sure of the recognition, would understand that Cornelia might not want
to be recognized, might not want the truth to be known to Cornelia’s
companion or to Betty’s. But what a tumult must be in the child’s young
heart! Her long-lost and prayed-for “Grannie,” in the shape of a poor
old working-woman in a faded calico dress, with a pitiful remnant of
a black straw hat stuck on her head. No, it couldn’t be true! Yet it
could not be doubted!
Betty would come back, Cornelia felt certain. She thought it over and
decided to take the child into her secret. Betty was the one for whom
she cared most; it would be like a visit home. So next evening Cornelia
lingered on the way from work, and walked by herself; and presently
here came Betty, in the same pink dress, but with no companion. Seeing
her coming, Cornelia turned off the main street, up a more or less
deserted lane, and presently she stopped, and turned and met her
grand-daughter.
II
“Grannie! It’s you!” And then, “Oh, Grannie! How could you?” And then,
“Grannie! What on earth have you been doing?”
“I’ve been taking care of myself, dear.”
“Oh, Grannie, but how!” And then, “Oh, you poor dear! Why, your
shoulders are bowed! And your poor hands, your fingers! Who ever saw
such things?” Betty became speechless; but the tears gushed into her
eyes and ran down her cheeks.
“Don’t worry about me, dear. I’ve been having a very good time; and
I’ve learned a lot.”
“What have you been doing?”
“I’ve been working for Mr. J. Lawrence Perry. Don’t you remember that
nice old gentleman who comes to dinner?”
“Does he know it?”
“No, of course not; I’m just a cordage worker.”
“But, Grannie, what ever put such an idea into your head?”
“I wanted to know that I could take care of myself, and I wanted others
to know it, so they would let me alone. I wanted to be independent.”
There came a flash of fire behind the rainclouds in Betty’s eyes. “Oh,
Grannie, I know exactly how you feel! Sometimes I’ve thought I’d do the
same thing! If I’d known where you were, I think I’d have come to you.”
Cornelia dodged that suggestion. “How is everybody at home, dear?”
“Why, they’re all right, I guess--the same as they always are. They’re
very much worried about you, of course.”
“Are they really that, or do they just have to pretend it?”
“They have to pretend not to be; because it is supposed to be all
right, you know.”
“Everything is always supposed to be all right,” said Cornelia. “What
am I doing?”
“You went to California for the winter; and you’ve been ordered to a
rest-cure.”
“I see. The neighbors will take that to mean that I’m in an asylum.”
“Well, Grannie, that wouldn’t shock them any more than this. Oh! I
never heard of such a thing in my life. How do you _stand_ it?”
“Well, it hasn’t always been easy, but it’s been good for me. I’ll be
myself from now on, and not what any one else wants me to be.”
“How are you living?”
“I’m boarding with an Italian family, very good kind people. I’m
comfortable there, and I’ve learned all sorts of things. I went through
the strike last winter.”
“Grannie, how perfectly thrilling! I never heard anything so romantic!”
The girl was aglow with excitement, and Cornelia would have liked to
take her in her arms and hug her. But what would the neighbors think,
seeing a working-woman on such terms of intimacy with a young lady of
fashion? Even in North Plymouth, one must remember the neighbors!
“Betty, I’m taking you into my secret, and you must keep it for me. I’m
not going to tell anybody where I have been.”
“Of course, Grannie, whatever you say. But are you going to live here
always?”
“No, I shall come back; but I don’t think I’ll live with the family.”
Then, after a moment: “What did they do about their quarrel?”
“You mean about the cradle and the rug? Well, you see, they forgot
it when they found you had gone; they were so shocked, and ashamed of
themselves. Now they don’t speak about it--in fact, they’ve persuaded
themselves it didn’t happen. Aunt Alice took the Mayflower cradle out
of the house because she knew that grandfather had left it to her in
the will.”
“Did he really do that?”
“Yes, and he left the Shah of Persia’s rug to Mother; and so they
didn’t have to have a row, and they didn’t; it’s the sort of thing that
couldn’t happen in Boston, so it never did. If anybody mentioned it,
they’d deny it--and they’d be very angry about the denial.”
Cornelia laughed. “You little monkey! Are they teaching you psychology
at Miss Wilson’s?”
“No, but naturally I listen and think. They’ve got another quarrel now,
that I’m not supposed to know about; but I can’t help hearing--and then
Priscilla tells me a lot.”
“What is it?”
“Well, it’s Aunt Alice; there’s a gentleman who admires her very much,
and it’s all right, of course, only she drove somewhere with this
gentleman, and somebody else saw them, and there was a lot of gossip
about it, and mother had to lie for Aunt Alice at her Sewing Circle,
and she vows she will never do it again. And Aunt Alice cried, and they
haven’t been to each other’s house for several months.”
Cornelia thought for a space. “I don’t believe I’m ready to go home
yet, Betty!”
III
They strolled to the edge of the woods, where they found a seat covered
with pine-needles, and Betty told more gossip of the Thornwell clan.
Aunt Clara had had another baby; that made eight, and Aunt Alice called
it a positive indecency--if they were looking for scandals, there was
a real one. And Great-uncle Abner had had a bad attack of the gout;
and his son, Uncle Quincy--you must pronounce it as if it were another
disease--had won a chess cup. And Uncle Henry Winters and Uncle James
Scatterbridge had made no one could say how many millions buying ships
and things and selling them to the allies; and Betty’s father had made
a speech at a banquet of the bankers, declaring that the interests
of civilization required that America should enter the war. “On which
side?” asked Cornelia; and the girl looked at first puzzled and then
shocked. “Oh, the allies, of course.”
So Cornelia told the decision which had been forming in her mind during
her year of independence. She was a pacifist. She believed that the
interests of civilization required that men should stop killing one
another. When Betty said, “Oh, but if the Kaiser should win!” Cornelia
answered that it didn’t matter who won, the interests of civilization
would lose. She quoted one of the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin,
to the effect that there never was a good war nor a bad peace.
This was a subject they might have discussed for quite a while; but
Betty’s conscience began to trouble her. “It is time I was dressing for
dinner, and I mustn’t be late. Mrs. Walker has to be so careful with
me.”
“Mrs. Walker?” said Cornelia; and the other explained that she was
spending a couple of weeks with the Jerry Walkers. Cornelia could
hardly believe her ears. “How does that happen?”
“I know, it sounds funny; but you see, Lucile Walker, the oldest
daughter, is at Miss Wilson’s, and I like her better than any other
girl in the school--in fact we just adore each other. She really
knows more than six of me, Grannie, and why does one always have to
be thinking about family and ancestors? The way it seems to me, we
Thornwells have got so much pride and money that we don’t really need
to amount to anything or to know anything. Honestly, I get bored with
it; and Lucile interests me, so why shouldn’t we be friends?”
“Certainly; only I’m surprised that Deborah would let you visit them.”
“Well, we had a time, of course. Mother says she simply cannot
understand my vulgar tastes. She couldn’t figure out where I got them,
but now she’s decided that it’s from you, Grannie!” And Cornelia
spread out her knobby knuckles, and said that she had gone back to her
ancestors; and Betty caught those knobby knuckles and cried over them,
and they had a fine sentimental time.
Betty told more about the people she was visiting; she knew the whole
shameful story from her mother--how Jerry Walker had been employed as
an errand boy in St. Andrew’s hospital, of which Cornelia had been
one of the supporters; and later he had worked as a felt-salesman, and
Grandfather Thornwell had helped to put up the money so that he might
buy his first plant. Now he owned about all the felt-plants there were
in New England, and was getting to be as rich as anybody. But he could
never be forgiven for being a nobody, and it was preposterous that his
daughter should have been admitted to a fashionable school with the
daughters of the Thornwells.
“You can see how it is,” said Betty. “If anything were to go wrong
with me while I’m at Mrs. Walker’s, she would never be forgiven;
so I mustn’t cause her any worry. If I could tell her about you,
Grannie--but then I don’t know”--and again laughter lighted up the
eager face of the girl--“I’m afraid maybe you are not respectable any
more!”
Cornelia replied, “I’m lost forever. The people I’ve been living with
are far worse than the Walkers. They are called Dago Reds.”
“Dago Red?” said Betty, puzzled. “I thought that was what the college
boys call wine.”
“Yes, but this is another kind of Red, those who don’t believe in
religion, or in government; they are anarchists, in short.”
This time Miss Betty was really shocked, and all the laughter died out
of her eyes. “Oh, Grannie, but you’re joking!”
“No. But they’re really quite charming people. I’ll introduce you to
them, maybe, and you can see. One of them is called Bart, and he is a
saint.”
“A saint?” echoed Betty, still more puzzled. “But you said they didn’t
believe in religion!”
“It appears that many saints don’t, any more,” was Cornelia’s reply.
“There are what you might call secular saints.”
IV
They walked towards Betty’s dinner, and on the way discussed the
problem of how she was to meet these dangerous and thrilling friends of
Grannie’s. Betty could not be absent from the Walkers’ without giving
some excuse, and she did not want to tell any fibs to a hostess who
carried such a grave responsibility. It would not do to tell Lucile,
because secrets didn’t last long with her, and anyhow, she was not
old enough to be a chaperon. Betty bethought herself of Miss Mehitabel
Smith, the unmarried sister of Mrs. Walker. Miss Mehitabel was very,
very upright; “almost as good as Mother,” said Betty. She did a great
deal of visiting among the poor, and if Betty were to be seized with a
desire to go visiting with her, that would be perfectly proper; Miss
Mehitabel could visit her own poor, while Betty visited Betty’s--and
it would be no fib, because anybody had only to look at that frightful
get-up that Grannie wore--“How on earth do you stand it?”
It would be necessary to take Miss Mehitabel into the secret; but Betty
was sure it would be safe, for no one could be more conscientious.
Cornelia said all right, but of course Betty must not give any hint
of the reason why Cornelia had left home; family quarrels were family
skeletons, never taken out in public; and Betty said, “Oh, of course!”
She would say that her grandmother was engaged in sociological
research, and her secret must be kept because otherwise her conclusions
would be invalidated. Miss Mehitabel would be thrilled to death by
that, and it would be such a very, very little fib, it would hardly
count at all. It was agreed that Betty was to pay a call in Suosso’s
Lane on the following evening.
And meantime, what must the little mischief do but arrange with
Miss Mehitabel to inspect the cordage plant! Miss Mehitabel was a
stockholder in the company, so it was easy for her, and at 10 o’clock
in the morning the two of them suddenly appeared in Cornelia’s
wrapping-room. They did not speak, but stood for a long time and
watched the work, and Cornelia stole glances at them out of the corner
of her eyes. The other women workers did the same, the young ones
especially; for Betty was as good as a fashionplate or a visit to the
movies. As for Miss Mehitabel--well, Cornelia tried to imagine what an
Italian or Portuguese worker would make of her solid Norfolk jacket
fastened with a belt, and her plain tweed skirt without a pleat or
fold, and her plain brown stockings and “ground gripper” shoes. Miss
Mehitabel wore her hair short--this in the days when it was an act of
heroism--and parted in the middle and covered by a Swiss guide hat with
a small feather in it--the only ornamental thing in the whole costume.
Miss Mehitabel’s face was serious, even stern, and her eyes looked
out through large horn-rimmed spectacles. In short, she was a perfect
imitation of a certain very common type of Beacon Hill lady who has
got through with nonsense once for all, especially the nonsense of
men, and wishes to advertise the fact, especially to the men. In
the case of Miss Mehitabel, who was a rank outsider, it was a very
bold, even presumptuous thing to do; but that, of course, would be
something beyond the comprehension of a cordage worker, who would take
Miss Mehitabel to be the real thing, and have enough to do trying to
imagine what that thing might be. After the two ladies had walked on,
Cornelia heard the foreman of the department standing behind her seat,
discussing the problem with the subforeman. “Now what do you suppose a
woman gets herself up like that for?”
“Search me,” said the subforeman.
“Well, they tell you the reason there is so many old maids in New
England, because the men goes west. But what I say is, if the women
tried hard enough, they could get the men to come fetch them.” It was
what is known as “Yankee humor.”
V
Cornelia had decided not to give the Brinis any explanation of Betty.
She would just say that one of her grand-daughters was visiting in
Plymouth, and wanted to meet them. There was a mystery anyhow, and the
presence of a grand-daughter would neither add to it nor take away.
Betty put on her least fashionable costume for the occasion; but the
gulf between the lowest of Betty’s and the highest of an Italian
cordage worker’s was not to be bridged at one day’s notice. Alfonsina
had barely time after supper to put clean clothes on the children, and
to smooth her own hair and put on her necklace of beads. Papa Brini
came in from the garden and washed his hands and put on his coat. As
for poor old Bart, his clothes hung on him as if they had come from
a pawnbroker’s, and he didn’t even know enough to trim his walrus
mustaches when a young lady was coming to call.
But all the stiffness and embarrassment was soon forgotten; because
Betty set out to be loved, and there was no resisting her. “Nonna?” she
said, when she heard Cornelia’s name. “What does that mean?” When they
told her it was the Italian word for grandma, she said, “Oh, how cute!
Nonna. I’ll make it my pet name for her,” and she began to do it right
away.
She got one arm about Trando, and said, “You will teach me lots
of lovely Italian words. And Nonna tells me you are going to be a
violinist. I play the piano a little, and you can come to see me and
we’ll play duets; only you are going to be famous, and you won’t waste
your time with me.” So then, of course, Alfonsina beamed, and Vincenzo
was so touched that he got out one of the last of his precious bottles
of “Dago Red,” and they all had a glass--even Bart drank a little when
it was a matter of courtesy. They made the jokes about “Dago Red,” and
the one about “divino da vino,” and explained it to Betty. And then she
turned to Bart and said, “Mr. Vanzetti, Nonna tells me that you have
made her into a pacifist.”
Now Bart, of course, had never seen anything so lovely as this in all
his life; at least, never close at hand, and paying attention to _him_.
He who would walk a whole afternoon in the woods searching for the
first mayflower, now saw one come laughing and chatting into the parlor
where he boarded. Of course he was awe-stricken; but even so, not for a
moment must his proletarian conscience be drugged. “No, Meess Betty,”
said he. “Nonna is very good lady, mooch lovely lady; but if she is
made pacifista”--he pronounced it Italian fashion, “pachifeesta”--“if
she is pachifeesta, it is not by me. I am never sooch t’ing.”
“Oh, then what are you, Mr. Vanzetti?”
“I am anarchista.”
“And what is the difference?”
“Moocha differenza, Meess Betty. Anarchista is fighting man. He will
not fight in war for capitalista, for padrone, what you call master,
but he will fight for worker, for joostice, for make freedom of slave.”
“Oh! So then you and Nonna don’t agree!”
“I t’ink it is maybe good for Nonna be pachifeesta, she is olda lady,
no--cannot fight. She has got sooch kind heart--”
“But then you have a kind heart, too, Mr. Vanzetti. She told me how you
would not let the sick kitten be killed.”
“Seeck kitten not do harm, I not like for kill helpless t’ing. But
capitalista is not helpless, Meess Betty, he is fighting man, is most
fighting man in whole world. If you study, you onderstand what is
cause of great war. What for must million men go fight, be kill-èd,
miseramente, cruel? It is for get market for rich capitalista; it is
for get coal, iron--what you call it for burn in lamp?”
“Oil?”
“It is for sooch t’ing worker must die. It come go-vérnment, take
you per forza, like slave, put in uniform, say go kill. If you say
no--cannot kill, you go prigione--prison, you get torture, maybe shot.
I say, what for talka pachifeesmo for soocha men? No, worker must
fight, is never men get free wit’ out fight for freedom. Is it not
trut’, Nonna?”
“I wonder,” said Cornelia. “The Negro slaves were freed without having
to do much fighting--”
“Oh, but Grannie!” It was Betty who broke in. “Other people had to
fight for them; and if they aren’t really free yet, maybe that is the
reason, because they haven’t done their own fighting.”
So Cornelia confronted the problem of the younger generation. She
sat back and listened, while small talk and efforts at charm were
forgotten, and the idealist-dreamer set forth his vision of the better
world to be. She realized that Betty had come there, with her mind
made up to probe to the bottom this phenomenon of a “secular saint”;
to know exactly what he thought, and judge it, not according to what
Miss Wilson’s school was teaching, nor according to what the Back Bay
would approve, but according to the facts. “You can understand, Mr.
Vanzetti,” said she, “I don’t hear very much about these ideas, and
they are strange to me. But I’d like to know all I can. Maybe you would
let me come Saturday afternoon, and you and I and Nonna would take a
long walk in the woods, and you could explain to me.”
Never in the year that Cornelia had known Bart had she seen him so
happy as then! “Meess Betty,” said he, “is notting in whole world I
like so much as for explain.”
VI
It was a warm, still afternoon, and a hundred pleasure-boats made
holiday upon Plymouth Bay. Motor launches chugged here and there, and
fishermen drew their nets and set their lobster-pots; while on the top
of Castle Hill Bartolomeo Vanzetti sat under a wind-beaten tree and
with many gestures told the story of his life to Cornelia Thornwell and
her grand-daughter.
He had been born in a peasant home in the village of Villafalletto,
on the banks of the river Magra, in northern Italy. He had yearned
for an education, but as fate would have it, his father read in a
newspaper how forty-two lawyers had applied for a position in Turin
which paid only seven dollars a month; and that ended the hope of
culture for little Bart! At the age of thirteen he was put to work as
a pastry cook’s apprentice, and slaved for fifteen hours a day, from
seven in the morning till ten at night, seven days in the week, with
the exception of three hours on Sunday. Thus passed six years of his
pitiful youth, until at last his health broke under the strain, and he
was brought back to his village home. Through those years he had been
a devout Catholic, and had solaced himself with the faith that his
sufferings were God’s will. “I make fist-fight for church,” said he,
with a laugh. “Fellow he say somet’ing very bad, I make heem sorry.”
Then the will of God inflicted a still more dreadful sorrow upon him.
His mother fell ill. He had loved her more than he could find words to
tell, in either English or Italian. “It is why I so glad for have Nonna
come here. Always it make me memory my modder. It is story I not tell
her, sooch terrible story. She is so sick, sooch agonia, she screama,
long time no--cannot sleep; I must go ask men on street for not sing,
make noise. It is so bad, nobody in family can stand for see her, not
osband, not daughter. It is me must help her--must hold her in arm,
must--what you say, nurse--for two mont’ I not undress for sleep. One
day she die in my arm, she suffer so, not know me, not my tears. It is
me must put her in coffin, must walk to grave, must shovel dirt onto
my modder. Sooch miseria! You know what is Dante say, Nonna--‘nessun
maggior dolore’--it is no sooch greater grief in world as to remember
happy time in miseria. But for me it is no sooch grief as to remember
what my modder musta suffer. Always I see it, and each old lady in
world is my modder.”
There was a pause, while the ditch-digger blinked a tear out of his
eyes; then he went on. “Could no more be happy in home. No can ever
laugh. My fadder, he get gray, very old. I no can--cannot work, must go
walk in wood, stand by river on little bridge and look down in water,
t’ink maybe I fall in, not have so mooch sufferance. So I t’ink maybe
come America; is new country, great country, I start more life; is
what you say in song, ‘sweet land of liberty’--Fay she sing in school.
It is what you say, full dinner-pail. So I say, I come America, not
for get rich, get little money, no work so hard, have time for read
book. I joosta readed De Amicis, great writer, what you say ‘Cuore,’
it is story of his heart. I t’ink maybe I be socialist now, little bit
socialist, sentimentale, genteel, good, ever’body be kind, make new
world, ever’body be happy, maybe by vote. I come America for sooch
pretty--what you say, dream.”
Vanzetti paused, and closed his eyes in pain. “Next to lose modder,
next most badda t’ing in whole life is lose America. You ’Merican
lady cannot onderstand, no never, not if talk all day. Hear about
Statue Liberty--beautifool, wonderfool--paradiso. Come Ellis Island,
all sudden knock on head, like badda dream, inferno--brutale, treat
people lika beast--little ones cry, hide in modder’s dress. What for
is reason for treat poor people sooch way? Why make sooch fear, sooch
hate? I go on street, stand look, strange city, mooch automobile, big
train upstair--bang, bang, make fright. I go look for home; no got one
friend, ever’body try cheat, rob poor straniere--what you say, foreign.
Must go sleep in room, twenty people, is filt’ ever’where; must hunt
job, washa da deesh, must sleep wit’--you scusa me, Meess Betty, is not
gooda story for tell sweet young lady--”
“Go on,” said Betty. “If it’s not too bad to happen, it’s not too bad
to hear.”
“It is t’ing what bite in bed--it make you onhappy--cannot sleep. I
live in room upstair, top of house, mooch people, very hot. I go for
work restaurant--it is mooch famous place, you read about in book; all
time go artist, writer, take lady for supper. I not know what is now,
but eight year back I washa da deesh, mosta bad dirt, steam all time,
grease on roof drop on food, on clean deesh; all slop on floor, drain
get stop, you stand t’ree inch water all day washa deesh, like work in
sewer. I talk many men, it is same plenty big restaurant, all for show,
not care be clean. But worker he cannot tell story--who would hear
heem?
“I work fourteen hour one day, twelve hour next day. I get five, six
dollar week. Get food very bad, dirty, like dog. I no can stand, t’ink
maybe get seeck, I stop, go country, look for work outdoor. But is very
bad time--you know, Nonna, is what you call panic joost come, make
very bad for job. Must go hungry, beg job, get food out of garbage-can
maybe, someday starve, so weak cannot work more. It was farmer give
little job--two week--he not need me, but he sorry for poor wop--it is
first time I get kind word from any one American, I never forget that
farmer.
“It is long story, Meess Betty, you no want hear heem all. I get
work by brick furnace, shovel coal, it is job for kill man, sooch
heat. But I near die hungry, so I stay, ten mont’ I shovel coal. I go
Conecticut, get job by stone quarry, work a year. Is better so, meet
plenty Italian, got home, see people dance, play violin evening. I no
dance, but like see friend be happy. I read mooch book, I read paper,
t’ink about worker, hees life, I see is not land of liberty, is all
same, whole world is slavery for worker. It is few people own land,
own factory, is capitalista, sooch people maka da profitt, it is for
profitt musta be all industree. Worker is--I cannot say Eengleesh, is
what you buy and sell, comodità--is not human, is joost somet’ing for
be sold for profitt. You onderstand, Meess Betty.”
“Certainly.”
“It shock you, maybe--”
“Not at all. I’ve thought about it a lot. What do we do for all this
money we have? We young people, especially--we can work if we want to,
and that’s very kind of us; but if we prefer we can lie back and loaf
the rest of our lives. No, Mr. Vanzetti, don’t be afraid to talk to me!”
“You must onderstand, I not have sooch idea when I come America, no
what you call foreign red. I learn heem here, I see wit’ eye, I talk
wit’ worker, I t’ink what is way for freedom. I am anarchista long time
before to see anarchista paper, hear anarchista speaker. When I hear
heem, I t’ink, it is olda story, it is my word from mout’ of odder man!”
And Betty, sitting with her eyes riveted upon him, remarked, “That is a
little the way I find it, listening to you!”
VII
There was more to this talk; a discussion of Vanzetti’s ideas, and his
answers to many questions. When it was over, Cornelia walked part of
the way home with her grand-daughter, taking one of the back streets.
“Oh, Grannie, what a wonderful man! Grannie, I never dreamed of such
a thing--why don’t they tell us there are men like that among the
working-people? Do you suppose there are many?”
“He says there are; but maybe he is being modest.”
“So polite and so kind--he really is a gentleman, Grannie, and without
any family, or any one to teach him.”
“He is a gentleman if the word is worth using, dear.”
“And think what that man has read, stealing all the time from his
sleep! Grannie, I was never so ashamed in my life! I’m going to get
that book by Kropotkin--I’m going to read and understand for myself.
I’ve known it was all wrong, I’ve been saying it to myself for a year
or two. What am I doing--except to show how to wear clothes?”
“You’re supposed to be studying, dear. I thought you had to work hard
at Miss Wilson’s.”
“Oh, yes, we’re Spartan enough, but it’s all so remote from reality,
so academic and so tiresome. We listen to Miss Wilson talk a lot, and
it’s not good form to ask questions, because she is deaf, and we don’t
want to reveal the fact. I’m bored with it, Grannie--and I’m bored with
society before I get in! Does that sound like a prig?”
“No, dear, of course not.”
“Well, you can’t imagine such idle boys! I suppose when I’m a deb,
and meet older men, it won’t be so bad; but I was invited to one of
the Brattle Hall dances--and you talk about the Dickie and who made
it and who didn’t, and about football, and last year’s scores and
this year’s prospects; and after that it’s time to stroll out into
the moonlight and get sentimental. Down here you go sailing and you
go to garden parties, and you never hear anything worthwhile. The
one serious thing in Plymouth is the pulling and hauling between the
descendants of the Pilgrims and the descendants of the Puritans. One
claims social precedence, and the other won’t grant it, and they gossip
dreadfully. Mrs. Walker doesn’t belong to either set, and she ought to
be glad--but she isn’t.” They walked on, until suddenly the girl burst
out, “Do you know what I’d really like to do, Grannie?”
“What, dear?”
“Stay right here the rest of the summer, and get a job in the cordage
plant with you, and prove that I’m some use.”
“No, dear, you can’t do that, it would make your mother and father too
unhappy. And besides, it would be giving away my secret.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But anyhow, I am going to do something worthwhile
before I get through.”
“Where you going the rest of the summer?”
“Camp Putnam for August; and of course that’s exciting, in a way. Did
they have Camp Putnam when you were a girl?”
“No, people didn’t go as far as the Adirondacks; and besides, I wasn’t
a fashionable person.”
“Well, anyhow, they found some way to get you married off to an
eligible man!” And Betty laughed. “Oh, yes, we know what Camp Putnam is
for! The old people think they are being so sly, they get together and
plan the list every summer, and rule out the least desirable ones--it’s
as select as if it was God we were visiting. They even try to arrange
the partners, but it doesn’t work out to oblige them. I know Mother
wants to put me off on Ebenezer Cabot, but Grannie, he’s an out-and-out
moron.”
“Don’t say that, dear!”
“But it’s true! You know perfectly well that most of us old families
have feeble-minded ones, and regular lunatics, with keepers watching
them, somewhere off in a remote wing of the house. Isn’t it true that
Great-uncle Ahab was that way for years?”
“Yes, dear, but you mustn’t speak of it.”
“Only to you, Grannie. But I’m telling you there’ll be no Ebenezer in
my young life. But I think before this summer’s over I’m going to have
to deal with a proposal.”
“Who from?”
“Roger Lowell. He was there last year, and he almost did it, but it
wouldn’t have been proper, because he was only a sophomore then, and
they’re not supposed to be engaged; but this year he’s a junior, and so
it’ll be all right.”
“Do you like him?”
“Well, I do and I don’t, Grannie. He’s a dear, in a way, and very good,
but so awfully stiff and prim, so conscious of his great family, and
what it’s correct for him to do. If I were to marry him, I think I’d be
like you and Grandfather Thornwell, I’d hardly dare crack a smile the
rest of my life. I’ve already shocked him by some of the things I’ve
said. I told him a woman should promise to stay with a man so long as
she loved him, not any more. He said she ought to promise to love him
forever, but I said that would be silly, because how could you tell?
Did you ever meet him, Grannie?”
“The first time I met him, he had his pink toes up in the air.”
“Oh, I’ll tell him that, and humiliate him to death! No Lowell should
be seen in such a position!”
“And the second time he had a bib around his neck, and porridge running
down it. The last time I met him, he was in evening dress, and his
collar was stiff and his tie was puffy, and his sober round face looked
over the top like a big pink chrysanthemum.”
“Oh, Grannie, that’s Roger exactly! And I’m his ideal of womanhood--if
only I wouldn’t make jokes! Now I’m going to read Vanzetti’s books, and
be really serious, but I’m not sure if he will like me as an anarchist.
And Grannie, I’m supposed to go home to-morrow, but I hate to leave you
like this--honestly, I’m ashamed of the food I eat.”
“I’m having a very happy time, dear.”
“How long do you plan to stay?”
“I’m not sure--I keep changing my mind. When I read in the paper about
that speech your father made, trying to get us into the war--then all
of a sudden I think I’ll come back and take up a pacifist campaign.”
“Oh, Grannie! How perfectly appalling! You’d be like old Mrs. Abigail
Webster Adams--she made a speech at a socialist meeting, and Father
said she ought to be locked up in an asylum.”
“No doubt he’ll say that about me,” said Cornelia. It was a prophecy.
VIII
Betty went away, and the rest of Cornelia’s stay was enlivened by
letters, addressed to Mrs. Nonna Cornell--it was Betty’s little joke.
They were highly confidential letters, full of family information.
“Uncle Quincy has found the perfect chess player, a man who can foresee
all possible combinations. Uncle James is building a whole new house
on the back of ‘Hillview.’ And Father says the Boston banks have got
a hundred million dollars of British and French bonds. They sold them
to the public, but had to take them as collateral, and if the allies
should lose, not a bank in Boston could keep open. So you had better
come on up and make that pacifist speech.”
And then: “I have been to the book-store that Mr. Vanzetti told me
about. It is kept by a nice dark-eyed young Russian who was eager to
undertake my education. I have a number of books which I keep hidden
in the bottom of a trunk, they are lots worse than the ‘Cosmo’ with
Robert W. Chambers. One is called ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women,’
by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. The preface says it is a hundred and
twenty-five years old. The world has not caught up with her yet. I am
very much excited about this book, because it is just what I had been
thinking. But Roger will not like it.”
Then: “I am at Camp Putnam, ready to be paired off for life, with no
possibility of its not being good family. It really is the loveliest
country, and impossible not to have a good time. It is so nice to wear
sensible camping clothes; how I wish that women might wear short skirts
all the time. But if I were to walk down Tremont street this way, I
suppose I’d have a crowd of boys hooting me. There is much in the world
to be changed. I think the Mary Wollstonecraft book has made me into a
suffragette. Would that shock you?
“I am going out now to climb a mountain. We shall all spend the night
on top and see the sunrise, and come home to-morrow, and then we shall
eat most tremendous quantities of cakes and syrup. We seem to be hungry
all the time. Aunt Betty, who runs the camp and us, has put a big block
of chocolate in the pantry, and a little hatchet with which we knock
off pieces. Mother says it was exactly the same in her day--the same
hatchet, but I don’t suppose the same block of chocolate. At least, we
shall not leave much for our children.”
And then: “We have climbed many mountains, and are having our good
time in a sober, conscientious way. We are really very serious young
people. Did I tell you that we have a way of testing any newcomer? We
have a funny story that we tell him; at least it is said to be funny,
but really it has no point, and we watch to see if he laughs. If he
does, we know that he is not sincere. It is very ingenious, but after
you have watched the procedure two or three times it strikes you as a
little self-conscious. I suppose it is our Puritan blood that makes it
necessary for us to be always consciously and deliberately righteous.
“It would not be a very good test with Roger, for he might not laugh
even if the joke did have a point. We have had some long talks and I
thought I would break the news gently, so I said, ‘I have met several
radicals, and am much interested in their ideas.’ Roger said, ‘That
is all right, I am the same way, I had a prof last year who was quite
terribly radical.’ I asked, ‘What did he say?’ and Roger answered,
‘Oh, all sorts of things. He kept talking about the “lost books of the
Bible,” and he said that the substance of the ten commandments was
found in earlier writings, and the story of the flood was derived from
Babylonian sources.’ You might tell that to Mr. Vanzetti and shock him!”
The climax of the courtship: “Oh, Grannie dear, my dolly is stuffed
with sawdust! Roger and I have had a heart to heart talk and a most
terrible quarrel, and it is all over--my name is never going to be
Lowell. I told him I had come to realize that marriage was a form of
slavery for women; and he said he knew what I meant, it was the word
obey in the ceremony, but there were some clergymen who would leave
that out if you asked them to. And I said it wasn’t only that, it was
the idea of a woman’s parting with her autonomy; that every woman ought
to have the final say about the children she bore; she ought to be
free--especially if she were willing to earn her own way, as I meant to
do.
“So then he was much puzzled, and asked me what I thought we ought to
do, and I said I believed in a free union, with our own promise to
each other, to be true to our best selves, and to do our best to love
each other, but not stay together if we couldn’t. And Roger said,
‘You mean--you mean you wouldn’t really--you wouldn’t get married at
all?’ and he turned red to the tips of his ears, and I said, ‘You don’t
understand my feelings.’ But he couldn’t talk about it any more--he
said, ‘Betty Alvin, if I had made such a proposition to you, it would
have been a deadly insult.’ And I said, ‘Maybe so, but I am making it
to you, and that is something different.’ And he wanted to know where I
had got such outrageous ideas, but when I tried to tell him he didn’t
really want to know, and wouldn’t look at the book. He tried to talk
to me about my soul, and I laughed at him, and so now we are most
fearfully polite to each other when anybody else is present, because of
course we don’t want to have a scandal in the camp. Oh, Grannie, I wish
you would come back home, because I am going to be so lonely!”
IX
The “Gruppo Autonomo di Plymouth” gave a “picanic” that fall, and from
all the neighboring towns came swarms of Italians, by train and bus and
second-hand automobile. And then it was announced that the “Circolo
Drammatico Mario Papisardi” was going to give a play in Stoughton, a
“shoe-town” some thirty miles away. They had quite a fine dramatic
organization, and Bart laid off work for three days to travel round and
place tickets for them. Illness kept the Brinis from going, but some
neighbors, the Angelottis, invited Cornelia.
A young anarchist comrade called for them in his car; Mike Boda was
his name, and he told Cornelia that he was a macaroni salesman, and
raced about the country in his little Overland car, hopping in and out
at Italian homes. He was a chipper little fellow, about five feet two
inches high, and it was just as well that he was no heavier, because
when you had Bart on the front seat with a boy on his knee, and Mr. and
Mrs. Angelotti and Cornelia on the back seat, with another boy on the
father’s lap and another on the mother’s, you had about as much weight
as the springs of a low-priced car could be expected to stand.
But the roads were good, and they rolled along singing songs, and it
was a gay party that swept into the shoe-town. The children had been to
the movies, of course, and they had seen a play at school, but this
was their first grown-up play, and they could hardly contain their
excitement. They drove to the home of a comrade whom Vanzetti had
recently met at one of the East Boston gatherings. Nicola Sacco was his
name, and he lived in a fine cottage, which had formerly belonged to
his boss. “Great feller, Nick,” explained Bart. “He work shoe-factory,
is edge-trimmer, mooch skill work, he make so mooch fifty, sixty dollar
week, that boy--smart feller, got lovely wife, you see.”
Their host ran out to the gate to meet them, a chap of twenty-five,
with even, regular features and black hair and eyes; very active, like
a cat, a figure all of steel springs. He had come from the ankle of the
Italian boot, while his wife, Rosina, came from the north--young and
dainty, with vivid auburn hair and an eager face full of sunshine and
freckles. They had a little boy, about three years old. “Hello, Dante!”
called Bart. “Someday we have nodder poet!” But the new poet was shy,
and hid behind his mother’s skirts.
Nick and Rosina were to act in the play to-night, so the guests refused
to go into the house and disturb them. The visitors had their supper
all in a box, and would make a “picanic” on the Saccos’ front lawn.
But nothing could prevent the host from showing them his garden;
next to his family, it was the pride of his life, he worked at it
every night till it was too dark to see. He led them down the rows of
tomato plants, and lifted the branches and showed the big red globes
underneath. He knew only a few words of English, but Cornelia did not
need a translator, because for forty years she had seen her husband
showing off his flowers to visitors, and she knew every expression and
gesture that goes with the ceremony.
X
They went to the hall where the play was to be, and met most of the
Italians of New England, it seemed. There were Nick and Rosina on
the stage, magically transformed into peasants of the home country.
Cornelia had one of the young Angelottis on each side, and they were
supposed to whisper into her ear what was happening; but they became
so enthralled that they forgot there was anybody in the world but the
figures in the play. However, Cornelia knew many Italian words, and
all possible Italian gestures; and the story was so simple, and so full
of action, it was easy to follow.
Nick was a peasant, whose son had been taken from him and forced
to fight the Arabs in Tripoli. Meantime the father was in dire
straits--“Militarism and Misery” was the title of the drama. His
wife was ill of a fever, and he had no money, and the cruel landlord
threatened to turn them out. When Nick offered to work for the
landlord, his plea was refused, because, as an anarchist, he would lead
the other workers to revolt. A good doctor came to visit the wife,
and he and Nick had a debate, in which Nick set forth the principles
of his faith with most wonderful eloquence. His comrades brought
him money, and threw out the landlord, calling him “affamatore” and
“assassino”--starver and assassin: whereat the doctor was so much
impressed that he declared himself a convert to anarchism. “The new
comrade am I”--and the other comrades burst into cheers, and the
audience was not slow to follow.
Then came the soldier-boy, home from the wars. He boasted of the
Arab women and children he had slain, and his father, a true
internationalist, threw his pay into his face and ordered him from
the home. “Get out, get out of here, robber and assassin!”--a painful
scene. In the next act, the soldier-boy sat in the barracks, brooding
over his shame--to such good effect that when he discovered another
soldier with a load of antimilitarist literature, he let the guilty
one escape. And when in the last act he was ordered home, in charge
of a file of troops, to shoot down the striking peasants, he refused,
and went over to the side of his father, and died from a shot fired
by the mayor. It was a tragic and sensational ending, and Nick as
the revolutionary father rose to heights of eloquence. “Yes, to the
barricades! Farewell, my son--victim of bourgeois imperialism, repose
in peace! To-day is not the day to mourn the dead. It is the day of
battle and vengeance. Let us hasten, comrades, where the struggle
is more fierce, to avenge not only him, but all the obscure martyrs
fallen through capitalist greed.” And as the comrades rushed out
and the firing began off-stage, you would have thought you were in
La Scala--such storms of applause, such tears and raptures, so many
bouquets on the stage, so many “evvivas” and “bis!”
It was easy to smile at the naïveté of such a story. But when you saw
how deeply it moved the audience, then you had to stop and think, and
realize that it was the stuff of the lives of Italian peasants. If the
drama and its emotions were simple, it was because the reality was
the same. Even the conversion of the doctor might have happened--for,
after all, there were anarchist doctors, well known in Italy. And the
struggle against militarism--that was the religion and martyrdom of the
peasant all over Europe. Everything in the drama was true, except the
revolution--and what was needed to bring that, but the very fervor and
impulse of this peasant audience?
The family discussed all this as they drove home. It was late and the
children went sound asleep, but the grown-ups never wearied of talking,
and explaining matters to Cornelia. Vanzetti told more about that
wonderful fellow “Sacc’”--who was, in real life, exactly as he had been
on the stage. “He come America same year like me. Was young feller,
seventeen. Got brudder wit’, brudder no can stand, is too hard work,
musta go home Italy. Nick, he work water-boy, carry water for gang all
day. He work Hopedale, is beeg strike by foundry-shop--you read about
heem maybe. Police is rough, mooch bad. Nick he is on picket-line, get
hit plenty time. Is way for make red, make anarchista--you see, joosta
like dramma. Nick is not speaker, but gooda man for organize. Work now
by little shoe-factory, is good friend wit’ boss, do day-work, night
watchman too, make plenty money. But never he change, stand always by
worker. Some day it come odder beeg strike, Nonna, you see Nick Sacc’
be leader, he do joost what you see for make rivoluzione. He cannot
fear, is brave--like what you say--leone--lion.”
And Bart went on to tell about something which had happened a month
or two ago, when the young hero’s mettle had been tested. “He get
arrest--he musta go jail for hold meeting. It is protest for beeg
strike in copper country--you know maybe--Mesaba range--out West. Is
plenty rich people in Boston own copper-mine not like for have worker
hear how they beat people, t’row in jail. Try for stop meeting, shut-up
Nick and not let him tell about it.”
Cornelia said nothing: but a procession of “bluebloods” began to move
with stately dignity through her thoughts: the Paynes, the Shaws,
the Agassizs--yes, she knew “coppers,” and the owners thereof. She
remembered a scandal that had made awe-stricken whispers in the Sewing
Circle--an old man had died, and it appeared that for twenty years
or so he had been keeping eight thousand shares of his copper stocks
hidden under a dummy name in New York, signing the name of this dummy.
The executors of his estate failed to report these shares to the
government, to avoid paying taxes on them; they had been caught, and
some of the brightest legal lights of Boston were nearly disbarred.
Nobody had gone to jail, of course--only “Nick Sacc’,” who had tried to
tell the Italians of Massachusetts how the “copper kings” were beating
and killing their Michigan miners.
XI
The grapes on the Brini arbor had become dark purple globes, and had
been harvested and converted into “Dago red.” The leaves had turned,
first yellow and then brown, and had dropped off and been blown into
the corners of the garden. The cabbage and turnips were stored in the
cellar, and the tomato-vines grew mushy after frost, and then dry and
hard. All that beautiful garden was a wreck, and the sun was going
away on his long pilgrimage. Very soon Cornelia would be getting up by
lamplight, and shivering while she dressed, and being pinned up in her
shawl for the journey to the cordage-plant. Could she stand another of
these winters?
Betty was back at Miss Wilson’s school, and begging her grandmother
to come to Boston. Surely she ought to be taking part in the campaign
to reëlect Woodrow Wilson, who had kept us out of war, and said we
were too proud to fight. How Boston--the Boston of State Street and
fashionable society--loathed that phrase, and how they jeered and
raged in their _Transcript_! But there was another Boston, which had
crossed the seas a generation ago to escape the potato famine; it
had found an abundance of potatoes in New England, and had converted
them into a crop of young Irish voters, pledged to the worship of the
Virgin Mary and the extermination of the British lion. In vain did
“Pro Bono Publico” and “Hundred Percent American” write letters to the
_Transcript_, summoning the new world to the rescue of down-trodden
Belgium. Irish-Catholic Boston did not read the _Transcript_, and it
thronged to the polls and elected an Irish-Catholic mayor, who would
see to it that Irish and Germans and pacifists might hold all the
peace-meetings they wished, and parade through Park Street and spit
when they passed the Union Club.
Wilson was reëlected; and it seemed that the war-danger was over. He
would go on writing notes to the Germans, as he had been doing for
a year or two, and the Germans would go on ignoring them. Cornelia
decided that she would not be needed as a pacifist agitator, nor would
Vanzetti have to take refuge in Mexico, as he had made up his mind
to do in case America should enter the war. “Capitalist I will fight
some day,” said Bart, “but never will I kill German worker, Austrian
worker, for make good no banker bond.” Cornelia had not mentioned the
highly confidential subject of Boston high finance and its commitments
to the allied cause; but apparently the “reds” had their own sources
of information, for the “Cronaca Sovversiva” was full of talk on the
subject, and details of the intrigues of State Street and Wall Street.
XII
The first snow of the year was in the air, and Cornelia came hurrying
home in the darkness, with half an inch of snow melting upon her
shoulders. She was surprised to see a large limousine in front of
the Brini door, its two long streams of light making day in Suosso’s
Lane, and revealing the million-footed dance of the snowflakes. As she
came nearer, the door of the car opened and a bulky man stepped out;
Cornelia could not see his face, but his voice caused her to stop dead
in her white tracks. “Is that you, Mother?” It was Rupert Alvin!
In a certain musical comedy it is set forth how the founder of Columbus
Day landed in the new world, and the Indians came eagerly, inquiring,
“Are you Christopher Columbus?” When he admitted his identity, they
exclaimed, “At last we are discovered!” So now it was with Cornelia.
The jig was up, she knew--and took but a moment to get herself
together. “Hello, Rupert!” she said, with an air of nonchalance--there
are times when the Thornwell training comes in handy! She accepted
her son-in-law’s outstretched hand, and let him help her into the
limousine, where sat her eldest daughter, Deborah.
“Oh, Mother! Mother! How could you?” Yes, even the stately Mrs.
Rupert Alvin wept when she saw those bowed shoulders and that pitiful
working-woman’s shawl covered with a load of snow. She had snapped on
the light in the limousine; but Rupert snapped it off again quickly.
“Control yourself, Deborah,” he commanded--having in mind the
chauffeur, who would overhear, in spite of the glass partition.
“Mother, we want to have a private talk with you. Will you not please
come home with us--at least for a day or two?”
“I can’t, Rupert. I have a job.”
“Can’t you get excused temporarily?”
“One does not get excused from jobs, one gets fired.”
“But Mother, you have a little income from the estate!” It was Deborah,
breaking in.
“Wait, Deborah!” insisted the husband, again. “Mother, will you let us
take you to some hotel here in Plymouth, where we can discuss matters
quietly?”
“Certainly I will do that. But first I must tell my friends. They will
be expecting me to supper and will worry.”
“I will see to that,” said the man, quickly, and he got his majestic
bulk out of the car, and Cornelia wondered vaguely, was he afraid she
might make her escape? Was she being kidnaped? Inside her something
fluttered like a bird in a trap. “Don’t be caught! Don’t let them get
you!”
“Oh, Mother, you are all wet!” Deborah was lamenting. “Take off that
shawl!” She drew it off, and began to wrap Cornelia in a big fur robe.
Cornelia submitted, because it was easier than to argue. Her mind was
busy with another problem: how had they found her? Could it have been
Miss Mehitabel? Impossible to believe that Betty had revealed the
secret!
Rupert returned, and gave his orders to the chauffeur, and got into
the car, which began to sway on luxurious springs down the unpaved and
rutted lane. It turned onto the main street, and sped to a hotel, where
they got out, and Rupert engaged a room, and Deborah hurried her mother
through the lobby. Presently they were locked in a place where family
secrets might be safe--after Rupert had stepped to the door once or
twice and opened it, to make sure there were no eavesdroppers.
“I am perfectly all right,” said Cornelia, in answer to her daughter’s
clamor that she was wet and that she was cold and that she was
exhausted. “I have been very happy,” she declared, in answer to laments
about the state of her shoulders and her hands. And when Deborah had
got to the question of how her mother could have been so cruel as to
treat them this way, Cornelia broke in with the demand, “How did you
find me?” She had to repeat the question before Deborah answered, “We
got your address from Betty.”
“You mean she told you? I can’t believe such a thing, Deborah!”
“I don’t mean that. She wrote you a letter, and we got it.”
“Oh, I see.” A great load was lifted from Cornelia’s heart. After
a moment she said, “I would like to have the letter.” Seeing them
hesitate and look at each other, she said, “Give me my letter, please.”
So Rupert took from his pocket an envelope, which Cornelia could see at
a glance was very bulky.
Balancing the letter in his hand, the great man began, in his most
solemn tones, “Mother, I wish to explain that when we opened this
letter we did not know it was to you. If we had known that, we should
have brought it unopened. But you will see, it is addressed to Mrs.
Nonna Cornell, and that meant nothing to us, except that our unhappy
daughter was communicating secretly with some unknown woman. Only when
we opened the letter, did we discover that it was to you.”
“Neither of us read it, Mother,” added Deborah. “It may be we had a
right to, but we didn’t feel sure.”
“I will read it to you at once, my child.”
“I don’t think it will be necessary. We had a talk with Betty, and I
think we know the situation.”
Cornelia held the letter in her hands. How pathetic seemed the little
joke, “Mrs. Nonna!” She took the letter from the envelope, and saw why
Deborah had suggested not hearing it--the last page was numbered forty!
But Cornelia had to read only two sentences to know the whole story.
“Dear Grannie:
“I am in the most dreadful predicament you can imagine, because
Roger Lowell, the tenth descendant of a line of theocrats, spent
three months laboring with his conscience and finally made up his
mind that he must save my soul by telling father of the indecent
proposition I had made at Camp Putnam! So now here I am shut up
in my room and forbidden to go out, until I have promised to
reform--and so I am forced to smuggle this letter to you by one of
the maids.”
XIII
The antagonists squared off for battle--two against one. It would be
none the less deadly, because it would be carried on under the forms of
courtesy, even of love.
The first thing was for Deborah to weep some more. This was not easy,
for she was haughty, self-contained--the last word in aristocratic
reticence. But there was that pitiful figure--gray-haired, bowed and
bent, in wretched shapeless clothing wet with melted snow--that was
her mother! And even though she told herself that her mother had
become insane, it was none the less terrible. Also, impossible to
forget that certain scenes which Deborah forbade herself to remember
had had something to do with her mother’s mental disorder. So the
tears streamed down Deborah’s cheeks--and she had one of those long,
half-masculine faces, which are not improved by weeping.
In Cornelia’s own being the trapped bird was still fluttering. “Fight!
Fight! Don’t let them get you!” She had had a year and a half to think
matters over, and she knew all the devices of families to break people
down. She remembered Cousin Amelia Quincy, who had sought to marry the
wrong man, and how Cousin Amelia’s mother had fallen violently ill--a
complete nervous breakdown--which had lasted until the wrong man had
given up and married some other girl.
So now Cornelia made her voice stern, and said, “It is silly for you to
behave that way, Deborah. There is nothing the matter with me, and I
assure you my children are not going to get their way by tears.”
Then Deborah drew herself to her full height. “I will not annoy you any
further. I have of course no right to object to your living your own
life--”
“None whatever, my child.”
“But I have a right to object to your ruining the mind and character of
my young and impressionable daughter.”
“I hope I have not done that.”
“Unless our daughter tells us what is not true, you introduced her to a
band of anarchists and atheists--”
“Not atheists, Deborah, you have got the wrong word.”
“You mean that Italian man, whatever his name is, is not an atheist?”
“He has explained to me carefully his beliefs. He worships one God, the
God of nature, of love and justice. He worships only one, so perhaps
that constitutes him an infidel.”
Deborah declined this challenge to theological controversy. “And
free-lovers!”
“That is still less accurate. I doubt very much if Vanzetti has ever
been any kind of lover in his life. He is a saint who believes in free
love.”
“Is that one of your jokes, Mother?”
“It sounds like it, I know, but you will have to learn that there are
new ideas loose in the world, and it is not practicable to keep people
from knowing about them--not even by shutting them up in their rooms
and confiscating their mail.”
Rupert Alvin was silent, considering that free love is not a theme for
mixed conversation; and anyhow, in family disputes the less an “in-law”
has to say, the safer for him. When the two ladies began exchanging
views upon the efficacy of a church ceremony as a purifier of lust,
Rupert arose and went to the door and opened it and peered out. It was
a delicate hint, and the ladies took it, and discussed anarchism. Or
rather, Cornelia discussed anarchism, while Deborah discussed anarchy,
and refused to recognize the difference. Cornelia asserted that she
had lived among Italian anarchists for a year and a half, and had not
seen a single bomb--except those which Brini described as “bombe di
pistacchio.”
They were on the subject of foreigners and their alleged resemblance to
pigs, when Rupert decided that it was time for a man to interpose his
authority. “Mother,” he said--and went on, in spite of his wife’s angry
signals--“we are not getting anywhere by arguing over subjects like
this. The question is, what are we going to do. I know that our mutual
esteem and affection will bring us to an understanding in the end; so
what I am hoping is to persuade you to come home and stay with us a
while. I know you will be able to induce Betty to--well, to moderate
her expressions. That is all we ask, and I am sure you agree that we
do not want an open scandal in our family.”
“Certainly not, Rupert.”
“Well, then, come with us, and in time we can work it all out happily.”
“That is easy to say, Rupert, but it seems to me you are taking a
serious risk. Suppose that while I am your guest I should consider it
my duty to appear on some public platform and say that the effort to
bring America into the war is a crime against civilization, and that
the motive power behind it is our big bankers, who have loaned so
much money to England and France and Italy that they cannot face the
prospect of losing their investments?”
To Rupert Alvin, president of the Pilgrim National Bank of Boston, and
directing head of the most powerful financial group in State Street,
it was as if his mother-in-law had taken a sharp rapier and brought
the point of it close to one of his waistcoat buttons. The many large
bulges which composed Rupert’s face and neck became still larger,
the pink ones turning red, and the red ones purple. His large round
eyes opened wide, and the hands which clutched his large round knees
tightened until they showed the tendons. Either Rupert’s tongue refused
to make a sound, or else Rupert’s brain did not know what sound to tell
it to make.
XIV
“My children,” said Cornelia, “I want to be fair, and make myself
understood if it can possibly be done. For forty years I did what I
was told was my duty, and let other people guide my life. I was very
unhappy--how unhappy I did not realize until Josiah was dead, and I
had begun to do what I wanted to do. Now for the rest of my life I am
going to be an individual, and not a cog in the family machine. And
while that will seem terrible to you, you can comfort yourself with the
fact that it is real ‘Boston’--‘old Boston,’ the very best there is.
Everything that is glorious in our history has been made by people who
have ‘come out,’ and fought some prevailing sentiment. I never realized
that until I got alone and thought it over. Take Wendell Phillips--you
cannot say anything against his ancestry, there was never any one
more completely ‘Back Bay.’ Yet he turned into an abolitionist and
labor agitator, the same as a pacifist and ‘red’ at the present time.
It has always been that way, and the ones you honor now, the ones
whom the rest of the world knows about--Samuel Adams and John Quincy
Adams, Emerson and Thoreau and Phillips and Garrison and James Russell
Lowell--yes, there was even a Lowell, Deborah--and Thomas Wentworth
Higginson--even a Higginson, Rupert, tell that to State Street! Boston
history has been made by the ‘saving minority.’ You must know that is
true?”
“Yes, but Mother”--it was Deborah protesting--“that was all in the
past!”
“And now the world is perfect, and we don’t need any more changes!
Well, my dear, all I can tell you is, I have looked the world over and
made up my mind that it has never been worse than right now--with some
ten or twenty million men lined up on opposite sides, using all the
machinery and brains of civilization to slaughter one another. No, I
think we need changes, and there is going to be a Thornwell among the
‘come outers,’ and you will have to put up with the humiliation of it.
I don’t think I shall be lonely--I’ve been able to recollect the names
of a number of old ladies who have left their families and are living
in apartments and hotels, interesting themselves in one queer cause
or another. I never paid much attention, because Josiah wouldn’t have
approved of my associating with them. But now I shall look them up--I
suppose I shall join the Twentieth Century Club.”
“Oh, Mother! How horrible!”
“And the suffragettes, whatever they call their organization--there are
two, I believe. And the socialists have a local--I am not an anarchist,
Deborah, comfort yourself with that--and anyhow, the anarchists don’t
have any organizations. I suppose the pacifists have one; I hear that
Mrs. Abigail Webster Adams has come out for them, and that Rupert
thinks she ought to be locked up in an asylum. Well, Rupert, that has
been the idea of the comfortable people for a long way back--I remember
they accused Socrates for corrupting the youth. But even though you put
people in an asylum, their ideas get out--you cannot always be sure
that the maid will turn their letters over to you.”
Cornelia paused; and then, seeing the look on her daughter’s
face--“Yes, my dear, that was a mean one. But you must realize that
Mother is going to fight from now on; Mother holds her convictions with
just the same intensity that you hold yours, and something inside her
compels utterance. It is that stern terrible thing we call our Puritan
conscience. It is out of fashion at the moment, but it takes new forms,
it has a rebirth, and does not rest until it has made some impression
on the world--some change such as the independence of the colonies, or
the abolition of slavery, or the outlawing of war, or the setting free
of labor. And then the next generation forgets about the conflict, and
says how famous Boston is, what great people it has produced! And their
grandchildren become the aristocracy, and want everything to stay as it
is!”
XV
Cornelia had her own proposition, which she had been thinking
over for several months. “I will come up to town at once and get
a little apartment, and Betty can come live with me. That will be
respectable--it will even tend to make your runaway grandmother all
right. And I’m sure I can guide Betty and keep her from going to
extremes. It is what she herself has been begging me to do, and I know
she will be happy.”
“Thank you,” said Deborah, with a touch of sarcasm. “To make the
children happy is the one duty of parents under the new dispensation.
But some of us parents are old-fashioned, and think about our
children’s souls.”
“Yes, my dear, and it may be that the saving of Betty’s soul depends
upon her believing everything that is preached at Trinity--even
though, as I suspect, the preacher does not believe it himself. But
let us be practical about the matter. What will you do with the child?
Ordinarily, when daughters threaten to run wild you send them off to
Europe with an aunt, and they look at cathedrals and paintings for a
year, and that is cultural. But now your war is in the way, so the only
place to send her is out west, and she would see only rocks and rivers,
which are not so cultural. Of course you can keep her shut up--make a
prisoner of her by force--but that would only harden her spirit and
drive her to extremes. Also, it would mean an open scandal, because
your servants would know, and it would be all over the Back Bay in a
night, and everybody would be certain the child had done something far
worse than talk radicalism. Moreover, you can only keep her for a short
while--then she will be of age, and you will lose your hold on her.”
“We can disinherit her.”
“Yes, of course; but she would have my property--”
“I think, Mother, you ought to be informed about that.” It was Rupert
breaking in--since it was a banker’s affair. “You have no property,
only an income of five thousand a year from the estate.”
“Well, Rupert, I have lived upon four hundred a year for the past year
and a half--”
“Mother, you don’t mean it!” Impossible for the most reticent daughter
to encounter such a statement with silence!
“What else have I had? I have lived on it, and even saved a little. And
now if I come up to town and take my income of five thousand a year,
with what has been accumulating, Betty and I will be rich.”
“You would not be able to pay for the child’s clothes!”
“Well, Deborah, maybe you know your daughter better than I, but my
guess is Betty would learn to make her own clothes quite cheerfully.
Will you give me a chance to ask her?”
“Most certainly not! In spite of your ridicule, I believe in my
religion, and in a little decency and decorum. I shall not give up my
daughter to become an anarchist and atheist--nor even a socialist and
infidel--nor yet a saint who believes in free love.”
“Well put, Deborah--we are both of us developing what Broadway would
call the ‘punch.’ But put yourself in my place just a moment. I served
your father faithfully for forty years, and conscientiously refrained
from doing any of the things which made him angry. I gave life to
three of you girls, and helped to find you husbands of the sort I knew
your father wanted you to have. If you have any complaint as to your
share in husbands, you have been too proud to make it to me. Have you,
Deborah?” Cornelia paused, and looked at the solemn Rupert with a
twinkle in her eye. Then she continued, “You both have what you want.
But I have very little; I am old and lonely, and an object of sympathy.
There are eleven grandchildren--no one of whom would have been in the
world except for me. I put it to your sense of justice--may I not ask
for one of the eleven to keep me company in my old age?”
It was turning Deborah’s own weapons against her, and Deborah could not
help being disturbed. “I think you would have shown better judgment if
you had chosen one of Clara’s eight, rather than one of my two.”
“Perhaps that is so. But I did not choose Betty--she chose me; or
rather, some fate did it, there is an affinity between us. I assure
you, Deborah, upon my honor, I had no thought of causing this to
happen. But it has happened, and we have to admit it.”
“Never!” cried Deborah. Her lips were set in that expression which
Cornelia had seen ten thousand times upon the face of Josiah Quincy
Thornwell. It was recorded for all time in the paintings of four
governors in the music-room at “Hillview.”
Cornelia turned to her son-in-law. “Is that your decision also?”
Rupert hung on to that caution which is such an excellent thing in
“in-laws.” “Mother, I hope you will not go to any extreme--”
Cornelia laughed. “First I have to make sure what you and Deborah plan
to do to Betty.”
“We plan to do our duty as parents, to compel our child to behave
herself!” It was Deborah, with great vehemence.
“Do you mean that she must believe what you believe--even though she
doesn’t? Or do you mean that she must say that she believes what she
doesn’t believe? Or will you be content if she agrees to say nothing
about her beliefs?”
“That is what we commanded her to do, and she refused.”
“Are you sure you made the distinction? Are you sure you didn’t ask
her to stop believing? I suspect you were so horrified and angry,
you didn’t know exactly what you were demanding.” And Cornelia rose,
saying, “I will try to supply a little wisdom and good temper for you.
To-morrow I will go up to town and put up at a hotel, and get some
clothes, so as not to disgrace you, and in the evening I will call at
the house, and have a talk with my grandchild, and persuade her to be
more fair than her parents.”
“You must not feel that way about us, Mother!” It was Rupert, still
trying for a compromise.
“There is no sense in saying any more to-night, Rupert. We have argued
too much, for Thornwells. It is because I am not really ‘Boston,’ that
I do this vulgar thing of trying to talk things out. But I love Betty,
and cannot bear to see her spirit bruised. I will do the best I can,
and advise her to suppress her eager young ideas on marriage, and
private property, and war, and whatever else you object to--until she
is of age, and her own legal mistress.”
Cornelia took her shawl and started to put it on. “Mother! That thing
is all wet! Let me give you my coat!”
“It is quite all right, there will be a good hot stove where I am
going.”
“But Mother, you must have dinner with us!”
“My friends will give me something to eat when I get home. I could not
eat now.”
She saw tears start in Deborah’s eyes again, and that was as it should
be. When Rupert labored to persuade his mother-in-law to ride to Boston
with them, she answered that she had reasons for preferring the train;
then she started towards the door. “Good-by, my children.”
Rupert took up his coat and followed her. “At least you will let us
drive you to where you are living, Mother.”
“Thank you, but I am able to walk.”
“But Mother, that is absurd--it is storming!”
“I have walked to my work for a year and a half, through every sort of
storm--at six-thirty in the morning, and again in the evening--and have
not yet missed a day.”
So Cornelia unlocked the door and went out; Rupert and Deborah both
following, arguing and pleading with her in low, decorous tones, all
the way to the street. But she set her lips tight, and when Rupert
tried to take her hand and lead her to the car, she withheld it,
saying once more, “Good-by, my children,” and hurrying away into the
snow-haunted darkness.
XVI
The next evening, according to her promise, Cornelia called at the
Alvin mansion on Commonwealth Avenue, dressed like a nice, quiet
old lady of the social reform or “blue-stocking” type. She rang the
bell with some trepidation, not quite certain whether she would be
admitted; but she found an amazing situation--the family rows all
settled, Betty out of prison and back at Miss Wilson’s, and the entire
Thornwell clan assembled to welcome home the runaway grandmother! To
overwhelm her with kindness, with beauty, tact and charm, to afford her
a demonstration of respectability, and make her realize its advantages
over anarchism, atheism and free love!
There was Clara, in the radiance of her eighth maternity, and her
husband, James Scatterbridge, shining with the extra millions he had
made; and Alice, never more elegant, never more gracious, with no trace
of a scandal or a hysteric about her; her husband, Henry Winters,
jewel upon the finger of the legal profession; Deborah and Rupert, all
courtesy and smiles; Betty, a little pale after a cyclone of emotions,
but none the less lovely for that; Betty’s older sister, Priscilla;
Great-uncle Abner, and his son, Uncle Quincy--pronounced as if he
were a disease of the throat. All of them in their most honorable
costumes, all so amiable--not one hint of rebuke or complaint, not even
a tactless slip--unless you count Great-uncle Abner, whose deaf man’s
voice boomed through the drawing-room; “Well, well, Cornelia, they tell
me you’ve been making money!”
They had learned their lesson, that was the long and short of it; they
would return to dignity and reserve and good manners--to “old Boston”;
and Cornelia would return with them, and Betty also. There would be no
more quarrels, no more scenes, no more scandals and “talking out” of
things, no more anarchism, atheism, or free love!
There was a buzz of conversation, family news, compliments and
courtesies. When would Cornelia come to see her new grandson? Had she
heard of the fine record Alice’s son had made at St. Mark’s? Would she
hear about Uncle Quincy’s chess wonder? “How is your gout, Abner?” “How
is the new wing coming on, James?” So many polite and pleasant things
to talk about, that it was only near the end of the evening that she
got a few words alone with Betty.
“Oh, Grannie, how on earth did you do it?”
“I don’t know, dear--what did I do?”
“You completely tamed Mother and Father. They came back this morning as
nice as pie.”
“I guess they just had a little time to think things over, and realize
how much they loved you.” Cornelia was going to be tactful too!
“Well, yesterday Mother wouldn’t hear to reason at all: I must promise
to never believe anything she disapproved of, I must never talk about
such things to anybody, and must never look at such a book! Of course
I couldn’t promise all that, could I, Grannie? You can’t imagine how
dreadful I felt, to have to tell Mother and Father that I wouldn’t obey
them! So I thought I was going to have to stay in my room till I didn’t
know when. But after they had talked with you, all they wanted was for
me not to disgrace them publicly.”
Cornelia was tempted to say that Rupert and Deborah had found the older
generation so much worse than the younger, that it had frightened them.
But no, she was going to be tactful! “I plan to get a little apartment,
dear, and you can come see me, and we’ll keep our thoughts to
ourselves, and not give the family anything more to worry over.” Thus
Cornelia Thornwell, in December, 1916, while the German government was
preparing its new submarine policy, which was to rouse all the warlike
elements in America, and force all the pacifist ladies of Boston to
make public speeches, and break with their families, and be raided by
mobs and arrested by the police! With the Bolshevik revolution less
than a year in the future, and the “white terror” following close upon
its heels!