THE SAVING MINORITY
I
Cornelia declined three invitations, to live in three different
mansions, and got herself an apartment on the north side of Beacon
Hill, where the poor live near enough to the rich to come as servants,
and to be visited as objects of charity. She had three rooms and a
tiny kitchen and bath; one room being planned for her grand-daughter,
in the hoped-for course of events. Cornelia did not mention this, but
announced that she was going to live alone, to the great dismay of her
family. Betty was in the secret, and helped fix up the little room,
which was a great joke, because it had perhaps the twentieth part of
the floor-space she enjoyed at home. But what is floor-space, compared
with adventure, romance, the tasting of forbidden fruit? “Oh Grannie,
it’s so cute! And it’s going to be such fun! Do you suppose they will
really ever let me come?”
“I don’t know, dear; if we’re both very good and proper--if you don’t
have any more love-affairs--”
“Oh, Grannie, I am off for life! That horrible little monster of
propriety, Roger Lowell--it makes me blush just to think of him!”
“The same effect that you had upon him,” said Cornelia.
They discussed the technique of self-suppression, so fundamental to
life in Boston. For forty years Cornelia had gone about her daily
affairs, thinking her own thoughts, and seldom even venturing to make
jokes about what the others did. Now Betty must learn the art. She must
say, “Yes, Mother,” and “Certainly, Father,” and let it go at that.
In an extreme case she might say, “I think, Mother, it would be wiser
if we did not discuss that question.” She might be firm and say, “I
really think, Mother, you ought to excuse me from saying any more.” If
she would do that, politely but persistently, her family would have
a great respect for her; and some day, she might remark casually,
“Mother, I think I will invite Grannie to go to the symphony to-morrow
afternoon.” Later she might phone and say, “Mother, I’m having supper
with Grannie, and spending the evening with her.” It would be hard for
a mother to say, “No, you must come home at once”; or even to ask, “Are
there going to be any anarchists present?”
Of course it all depended upon Cornelia’s “behaving herself.” But alas,
the imperial German government announced its new policy--the submarines
were going to sink passenger vessels without warning; and forthwith
the Back Bay declared war on Germany, while South Boston, the Irish
quarter, declared war on Britain. There was a symbolical insurrection
when the Irish paraded down Beacon Street; the Back Bay shut up its
houses and drew the blinds, but the cooks and dining-room girls and
parlors-maids and chambermaids threw wide open the basement doors and
windows, and stood in the area-ways and cheered themselves hoarse. For
a generation it had been one of the diversions of the “Sewing Circle,”
to whisper harrowing stories of the conduct of these Irish maids
with Irish policemen in the kitchen; but now it was even worse--the
policemen were replaced by German spies, and nobody was safe any more!
Among the activities of the Kaiser and his agents was to persuade
deluded sentimentalists into organizing groups with high-falutin names
to preach pacifism. There was a “Fellowship of Reconciliation,” and a
“Women’s League for Peace and Freedom,” and a “People’s Council for
Peace and Democracy,” and a “Jackasses’ Association for Flubdub and
Buncombe”--so Rupert Alvin described it in one of his purple-faced
rages. The _Transcript_ had been publishing atrocity stories in twelve
editions every week for a hundred and twenty weeks, and the Back Bay
had believed every word it read; so now imagine the sensation when one
of these organizations of long-haired men and short-haired women listed
among its abettors a former “first lady” of the Commonwealth!
And Mrs. Josiah Quincy Thornwell was going to make a public speech
in favor of America’s taking it lying down! When that announcement
appeared, the entire family came, one at a time or in groups, to argue
and plead and scold. Clara wept, in the name of her whole precious
brood; if the Germans took Boston, they would cut off all sixteen of
those sweet chubby hands. Alice used the arts which she had practiced
for forty years, ever since she had made the discovery that her
beautiful face would cause others to yield their will to hers. Deborah
had never had a beautiful face, so she had gone in for character, and
now declared that she must consider her duty to her children, and
protect Betty from the contagion of German and anarchist propaganda.
II
Also Henry Cabot Winters gave his mother-in-law an entire evening of
his socially precious time. She was pleased at that, because Henry had
a sense of fun, and would talk about realities. She got in a Negro
maid, and prepared him a good dinner, and he came in full regalia,
with his gray hair composed in a graceful wave and held there by a
cylinder of stiff and shiny black silk. And while she fed him, she
told him her adventures as a runaway grandmother, her work in the
Plymouth cordage plant, and how she had lived on six dollars a week,
and about the Italian anarchists who made bombs of pistacchio, and
the rebel saint who had been the cause of Betty Alvin’s reading Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin on the rights of women. Impossible to imagine a
more diverting story--and especially the climax, which had come only
last week--Cornelia’s meeting with Mr. J. Lawrence Perry, and telling
that elderly philanthropist how it felt to be an unskilled worker in
his mighty plant, and be chased off the picket-line by his special
policemen!
And later on, when dinner was over and the maid dismissed, the great
lawyer settled himself in an easy chair with an ash-holder on the arm,
and with the utmost tactfulness steered the conversation onto the
subject of German propaganda; with the result that his mother-in-law
put him on the griddle. “Tell me, Henry, how much do the Boston banks
stand to lose if the Germans win?”
“Is this for publication, Mother?” The cloud of cigarette smoke did not
obscure the twinkle in Henry’s fine dark eyes.
“Your name is not for publication, Henry. I’m told it’s a hundred
million dollars.”
“Round figures are generally exaggerated. As a matter of fact it would
be everything the Boston banks have, because when a panic like that got
started, nobody could say where it would stop.”
“And that’s why we have to go in?”
“We live under a system, Mother. Maybe you know how to change it, I
don’t.”
“And what’s this I hear about you and Rupert taking over the Haupt
electric works?”
“Jehoshaphat! Where did you get that?”
“Well, I have sources of information. I suppose that is the system
too--our leading bankers getting back the cost of their war-propaganda!”
“Well, Mother, we can’t expect the Germans to pay it for us; and if we
do go in, we surely can’t leave the manufacture of our war-supplies to
the enemy!”
“The fact that you and Rupert and James are getting your lines on Haupt
Electric means we really are going in, then?”
“Of course, Mother, we’re going in; that is what I want to tell you--it
is unwise of you to waste your strength and happiness trying the
impossible. You know, I don’t fret about appearances like the rest of
the family; but I’m fond of you--we used to have jolly little chats,
and I missed them when you ran off. I thought maybe, if you wanted to
blow off steam, you might blow it at me, instead of at an audience.
Believe me, public life is wearing--not all the millions of all the
Boston banks could get me into it! I imagine you’ve found that out,
since you put your name on a letter-head, and set yourself up as a
target for all the cranks in New England. How many begging letters have
you received this week? How many associations have you joined to reform
our spelling and put a stop to vaccination and vivisection?”
That was Henry Cabot Winters, genial, shrewd, playfully cynical. But
do not let his social charm fool you; underneath the “Harvard manner”
there was a wolf. He would nose among the banking secrets of Boston--he
called the biggest bankers in the city by such names as “Ted” and
“Winnie” and “Jimmie”; he had been to college with them, and met their
wives and daughters in the evenings; he had access to their records,
he could call up on the telephone and ask how much so-and-so was
borrowing, and what were his assets and connections; and presently
he would catch a scent of blood, and put himself upon the trail of a
wounded caribou, and track him down--for years, maybe, never resting
till he had drunk the last drop of blood from his veins. Both bankers
and industrialists dreaded him, yet they could not get along without
him; there was vigorous competition between two big banking groups in
New England, and Henry’s crowd needed his cunning, at any price he
chose to ask. His fee was seven hundred dollars a day, but that was
merely for overhead; his real reward was part of the carcass of each
caribou.
Now he lounged in a faded Morris chair out of a second-hand shop, and
lighted one cigarette after another and gazed at the feeble art-effects
which Cornelia had been able to produce without spending money. He
sounded like a schoolboy as he said, “Gee, Mother, I wish I could get
off by myself and live the simple life!”
“Why not, Henry?”
“Well, I’ve got a costly wife, and a son to put through the education
mill--”
“Rubbish, Henry, you know you laugh at Alice and her elegance, and your
money will probably ruin your boy. There is some real reason.”
“Well, I guess it’s a game, Mother; you have to do something. When I
rowed on the Harvard eight--it wasn’t really so important, but we’d
have broken a heart-valve to keep six inches ahead of the Yale boat.
Life is like that. If you stop to ask for a reason, you spoil the fun,
so you just shut your eyes and pull the stroke.”
“So that’s how we’re going into the war, and kill one or two million of
our boys--to win a game we don’t really believe in!”
“No, Mother, it’s different there. Some fellows won’t play the game
according to the rules, and we’re going to put them out.”
“Who made the rules, Henry?”
The great lawyer laughed. “You ought to come into my office, and learn
to cross-examine witnesses. That would be a new stunt for a runaway
grandmother--to become a lawyer at the age of--what would it be, about
sixty-five!”
“But answer my question--who made the rules of the game?”
Henry laughed again. “England, I suppose; she has made the rules of all
the games, hasn’t she?”
III
Mrs. Josiah Quincy Thornwell sat at a long table, running lengthwise
across the head of a room, and raised up a foot or so like a dais. The
seat at the center was occupied by an elderly gentleman, with Cornelia
at his right, and at his left a Chinese lady with slit eyes and
coppery skin. The rest of the table was occupied by a dozen persons of
prominence in Boston intellectual life. The great room was filled with
tables, running at right angles to the head-table, and occupied by four
or five hundred members of the Twentieth Century Club.
Luncheon was in progress, with colored waitresses hurrying here and
there, amid a rattle of knives and forks and a subdued murmur of
conversation. But every now and then each of the four or five hundred
pairs of eyes would steal a glance at the head-table, and particularly
at Cornelia. As a matter of mathematics, it is obvious that this meant
a number of eyes upon her all the time, and she was aware of it, and
her answers to the president’s remarks were absent-minded, and her
efforts to consume a proper quantity of lamb chop, peas and potatoes
were intermittent.
It is a bad thing to eat solid food when you are excited, but Cornelia
had not yet learned that lesson so important to orators. As “first
lady” of the Commonwealth she had now and then been compelled to say
a few words of thanks to the lady chairmen of visiting delegations;
but this was the first time she had been a “headliner,” her début as
pacifist and rebel. The story of her adventure had of course been
whispered all over by this time; and not ten generations’ training in
austerity and reticence could keep the four or five hundred pairs of
eyes from manifesting interest. There was not a vacant seat at any
table; after the dessert and coffee had been served, and the tables
piled back out of the way in a corner, there were not folding chairs
enough for the throng, and all the doorways were packed with standers.
The lady with the slit eyes and the coppery skin was a native graduate
of a Chinese mission school supported by Boston money. She was
introduced, and told them about life in this school--employing a pure
and perfect Bostonese, with the broadest possible “a” and no “r” at
all; she even referred to “that cradle of liberty, Funnel Hall”--just
as if her name were Cabot or Lowell, instead of being Wang-Sin-She!
American school-histories tell about a place called “Fanueil Hall,” and
you know how it looks, but unless you visit “old Boston,” you don’t
know how it sounds.
Every Saturday through the fall and winter the Twentieth Century Club
held these luncheons, and you would hear the head of a Negro school
in Mississippi or maybe in Liberia; a woman who had been studying
the opium trade in the Orient, or white slavery in the Argentine;
a physician who had been curing the Eskimos of trachoma, or a
strike-leader who had been jailed in Colorado. It did not matter where
you came from or what you had, so long as it had to do with making the
world better. This was the only organization of elderly liberals in the
whole world; they were always ready to join something new, and if you
were persuasive enough they would write you checks. Nowhere else in the
world were appearances more deceptive; nowhere did fine feathers so
fail to make fine birds. The old lady in front of you, dressed in rusty
black silk and carrying an umbrella frayed at the edges, might be the
owner of a mountain of copper in the Northern Peninsula of Michigan, or
of six city blocks of tenements in East Boston.
Cornelia saw many persons whom she knew, and others whose faces were
familiar--perhaps because they were types. The very same kind of old
ladies made up the “Sewing Circle”; but there they had made long yellow
flannel petticoats for the poor, while here they remade the world. Old
ladies with little round faces, like Cornelia herself; old ladies with
long faces; dimply faces, wrinkly faces with mouths drawn down at the
corners; little bustling ladies, large ample ladies, timid shy ladies,
grim determined ladies--row after row of them, with eyes fixed upon
the copper-colored speaker. It would not have been polite for Cornelia
to look at any one of them too long, so her eyes moved from one face
to the next. She saw hair drawn up in tight little topknots, hair
pitifully thin, with pink scalps showing through; hair in curls, hair
in waves, hair neatly plastered down at the sides. An old lady with a
benevolent boy’s face, and one with bulgy rosy cheeks; one with deeply
graven mouth and double lines at the side, one with wide outstanding
ears, one with round white forehead, one shiny in new silk and ropes
of pearls, one tinkling with chains and medallions.
And scattered in between, old gentlemen! Bald ones whose scalps were
pink, and bald ones whose scalps were white; some with thin white hair,
some with bushy gray hair; some with neatly trimmed military mustaches,
with droopy mustaches, with grandfatherly beards, with chin-whiskers,
round like a quarter-moon, relics of old New England. Old gentlemen
with saggy cheeks, or portly, like bishops, or military and erect;
rosy clubmen; earnest, ascetic preachers with clerical collars; one
with a red nose; one very fashionable, with glasses hanging from a
black silk cord; one famous scholar with no hair on top of his head,
but covering his collar in back. These, no more than the ladies, could
be judged by appearances; the poorest-looking might be the richest,
the mildest-looking might hold the most revolutionary opinions. One
thing alone was certain--you could never voice an idea too strange, a
course of action too dangerous, for some of these elderly idealists to
applaud! There would even be one or two ready to follow you, to act
upon their convictions, even to the death. It was “old Boston”!
IV
Cornelia made her little speech; very gently and quietly, even humbly.
She found many who were with her; and many, of course, furiously
opposed to her--though etiquette forbade them to show it except by
looking stern and grim. Next morning the newspapers reported the event,
briefly but with dignity; yes, even the most rabidly patriotic were
respectful--it was the right she had acquired on the day she became a
Thornwell. Nothing she could do, short of murder, would forfeit that
immunity. If she became a maniac, and had to be shut up in an asylum,
the papers would decorously cease to mention her; but no opinion held
or expressed would ever cause them to insult a sacred Brahmin.
And curiously enough, the rest of the clan were proud of that fact; in
a perverse kind of way they gloried in the eccentric old lady who had
told the world to go to the devil. Much as they hated her ideas, they
would have been ready to stamp their heels hard on any miserable shrimp
of a journalist who dared to deal impolitely with her. The fact that
no such shrimp appeared, helped to reconcile them to what had happened;
they realized, as families frequently do, that the reality was not so
bad as the anticipation. So, after a week or two, Betty was permitted
to take her grandmother to a symphony concert.
But Cornelia did not succeed in preventing the war. The great machine
rolled on, flattening out all opposition. The Irish of Boston might
parade and spit, they might hold meetings that turned into riots, they
might make the city a scandal throughout the nation--but the great
machine would flatten them out in the end, their mayor, their police
force, and their cardinal. It would do the same with socialists and
anarchists, pacifists, sentimentalists, all other varieties of cranks.
Clear the way for Juggernaut!
And meantime Rupert Alvin, Henry Cabot Winters and their “crowd” were
busy taking possession of the electrical manufacturing plant of Haupt.
All this “crowd” were active Republicans, and this was a Democratic
administration; its promise to be non-partisan and patriotic was a kind
of chaff that would not catch old birds like Rupert and Henry. They got
hold of a prominent Democratic statesman, close to the administration,
and took him in with them, on the basis of a ten per cent “cut”; and
he had a nephew whom he installed in the office of the “Alien Property
Custodian,” who had charge of robbing the enemies of America at home.
So Rupert and Henry got possession of the great property for
one-twentieth of its market value, and turned out the German-American
executives, and put in some younger sons of the “blue-bloods,” and were
ready to manufacture war supplies and sell them to the government at
the highest possible prices. And the government was ready to buy with
patriotic fervor. If the business men of the country made big profits,
they could pay high wages, and enlarge the plants, and increase the
product, and there would be prosperity for every one except the Kaiser.
Billions of money and millions of men--such was the slogan. Congress
passed a conscription act, ordering all men between the ages of
twenty-one and thirty to register for the draft: soon after which there
was a ring at Cornelia’s doorbell, and when she answered, she saw her
friend, the maker of pistacchio bombs. She had sent him her address,
but not telling him of her change of name. Sooner or later he would
find out who she was, but meantime she would put both names on the door
of her apartment, and let her Italian friends go on using the name they
had learned.
So there stood Bartolomeo Vanzetti, hesitating a little, not sure
if she would want to see him, since she had given up being a
working-woman. “I come for say good by, Nonna.”
“Where are you going?”
He came in. “Anybody here for hear me?” Then he told her, “I go Mexico
for keep out from war. I go wit’ Nick--you know, young feller you see
in dramma one time, Nick Sacc’. Is good feller, we go Mexico togedder
for not get draft. Never will fight for capitalista, Nonna.”
“Of course not, Bart.”
“You no t’ink I am coward for run away, Nonna! You see me and Nick, we
fight when time come, but is not yet. You see worker get in war, he get
his eye open, he learn what is capitalismo. You see great t’ing come
when dissa war is done, Nonna. Come greata change, come rivoluzione.
I know, you cannot believe, joosta wait, you see what I tell. Come
bad time, come unemploy-èd, come big strike, lika war. Maybe it come
great richa countree, like Britain, maybe it come poor countree like
Russia--go what you say--cannot pay debt--bancarotta--”
“Bankrupt.”
“Maybe come Russia, you see tsar get kill-èd, grand duke run away.
Maybe come Italy, plenty chance for Italian anarchista make fight. I go
Mexico, wait soocha time.”
“How will you get along, Bart?”
“I get along, all time. Got two good arm, good back, worka picka
shov’, make living. Some odder Italian come, we not get lonely. I
write letter some time, maybe get book, learn write Eengleesh, get
educate, shoore! I never forget you, Nonna, besta friend, good lady,
help workingman--onderstand heem. It is best t’ing of all, Nonna, it is
better for onderstand as if you give million dollar. It is t’ing what
come from heart. I want you know”--and here the maker of pistacchio
bombs laid his hand gently on her shoulder--“I want you know, Nonna,
I have for you the sentiment. I not know to say Eengleesh--is Italian
word, sentimento--mean kinda feeling.”
“I understand, Bart.” There were tears in Cornelia’s eyes. “I shall
think of you often. You have taught me more than you realize--perhaps
more than I realize myself.”
A curious circumstance, that neither Vanzetti nor Sacco needed to
run away to Mexico. As Italian subjects, they were not liable to
the draft. But they believed they were--and so did Cornelia. They
became draft-dodgers in thought, which to New England, home of
Transcendentalism, was exactly the same thing as draft-dodgers in
reality.
They went; and a few days later Cornelia picked up her morning paper,
and there on the front page was a startling story: a revolution in
Russia, the tsar a prisoner, and a democratic, popular party in
control! An amazing, an incredible event; making it possible once
more to have hopes, to believe that changes were possible, that evil
systems, entrenched for generations, might at last be broken down.
Also, it raised Bartolomeo Vanzetti from the status of a dreamer to
that of a prophet. Cornelia had listened to his phrases, and smiled
gently at his peasant simplicity of mind; but here suddenly his ideas
became reality, made known upon the front pages of every newspaper in
the world!
V
The pacifists had failed to keep America out of the war, but there was
still the question of peace terms, upon which depended the duration of
the fighting. So the agitation in Boston went on--until July, when the
marines at the navy yard took matters out of the hands of the Irish
mayor. There was a parade organized by the socialists, in support
of their program of no conquests and no indemnities; the police had
given the necessary permit, but all the same, the marines raided the
parade and broke it up, tearing the banners away from the marchers.
They finished by raiding the socialist headquarters, and dumping its
contents into the street. Cornelia was in this parade, and once more
encountered violence; but now she was panoplied in her dignity as a
“blue-blood,” and did not have to run.
Also--most dreadful circumstance--Elizabeth Thornwell Alvin, daughter
of the president of the Pilgrim National Bank, was in that riot! She
did not get into the papers, and it was a couple of days before some
thoughtful friend brought the news to her father. There were more
scenes, and Betty, in spite of all tears and protestations, was again
forbidden to visit her runaway grandparent. A program was proposed to
keep her in remote country places during the summer; but she vowed that
she would not go to that foolish Camp Putnam. “You might as well give
up, Mother; there’s no chance in this world of my marrying one of those
dull young men!”
“Betty, don’t be vulgar!”
“I am being honest, Mother. You know what Camp Putnam is for. But
you’ll have to realize once for all--my opinions make it impossible for
me to be a social success--there, or anywhere else.”
“What is it you want to do, child?”
“I want to go stay with Grannie--all the time.”
“But you wanted to go to college!”
“I’ve changed my mind. I realize that you don’t learn anything at
college.”
“Betty! What a silly thing to say!”
“Well, you don’t learn the things I want to learn. I got more from
being in that one parade than I did in a whole year at Miss Wilson’s.”
“So you want to study to be a leader of street-mobs!”
“Grannie is trying to find out the causes of modern war, and found a
society to teach them. It’s too late this time, she says, but next time
perhaps we can avoid being caught. And Mother, you must know that is
important--just as much so as the feminine endings in Shakespeare’s
plays, and whatever else you learn in college. And it’s the right kind
of thing for Boston people to do. When you’ve succeeded, then people
recognize it, and build a monument to you.”
“Oh! So you’re going to have a monument in Boston!”
“Not for myself--but for Grannie, yes indeed! Look at that Shaw
Memorial, Mother--people come from all over the United States to see
it. Those Negro troops are dead and turned to bronze, so they are safe
and respectable; but when they were live Negro troops, and Colonel
Shaw marched them down Beacon Street, the members of the Somerset
Club pulled down the shades. That was how the Union Club came to be
founded--some of the people on Beacon Hill were loyal to the Union
cause, and Grandfather Thornwell was one of them. That is history,
Mother; but I didn’t learn it at Miss Wilson’s, and I wouldn’t learn
it at Radcliffe. The Union Club is top-hole now, and it pulls down the
shades on us. But we shall have a ‘Peace Club,’ or something like that,
and fifty years from now we’ll be the highest high-hat in town, and
there’ll be an oil painting of Grannie in the lobby, and the family
will be proud as Punch!”
Thus Betty, citing precedents, according to precedent. It all seemed
so reasonable to her--and to her mother raving nonsense. Was it not
obvious that Colonel Shaw had upheld the hands of Abraham Lincoln--the
president, even though nothing but a vulgar rail-splitter! Now here
was Woodrow Wilson--a gentleman and a scholar, even though he did come
from the wrong university--here he was fighting for civilization, and
Cornelia and Betty were trying to stab him in the back.
“Yes, Mother”--for Betty had not yet learned Cornelia’s technique of
self-suppression. “It all depends on what history decides about this
war. Did we have to get in? Or could we have brought the nations to
better terms if we had stayed out?”
So they wrangled, until the tempers of both were frayed, and Deborah
exclaimed, “Your Father has lost all patience with you! You run a grave
risk that he will cut you off!”
“But, Mother, do you seriously think I should spend my life sitting
round waiting for you and father to die?”
“Oh, what things you do say!”
“But that’s what _you_ said! I’m not to do any thinking of my own
until you are dead and I’ve got the money. But what good would it be
to me then? I wouldn’t know any better to do with it than to make
yellow flannel petticoats for the poor--so ugly that the poor can’t be
persuaded to wear them!”
That was a dreadful utterance--a jeer at the most sacred institution
of feminine Boston, the “Sewing Circle”: a group of ladies of the
highest social rank, who met for luncheon at one another’s homes, and
afterwards sewed for the poor and gossiped for the rich. A fresh layer
was recruited every year out of the débutante set, and they constituted
the basis of selection for all other social activities; if you didn’t
get into the Sewing Circle, you never got into anything. And it was
really true that up to quite recently they had made yellow flannel
petticoats for the poor, and had stopped because it was no longer
possible to find any one to wear their product. Mrs. Rupert Alvin was
indignant at the presumption and ingratitude of the inhabitants of
East Boston and South Boston slums, and had favored going on making the
petticoats according to tradition, and sending them to Europe, where
the lower classes knew their place in life.
VI
Betty went to Plymouth, to spend a couple of weeks with her friend
Lucile Walker. She wrote, begging Grannie to come, and Mrs. Walker
added a formal invitation. But Cornelia did not want to visit rich
people; to her Plymouth meant Italians and the simple life. She wrote
to the Brinis, and found they had no boarder, so she went down for a
few days. A strange sensation, reëntering that so different world! She
would keep it as a place of refuge, a stimulus to the imagination, a
cure for the mental diseases of affluence. Here people said what they
meant, and it was possible to understand what they were doing. When
Vincenzo Brini got up at dawn and shoveled and raked and grubbed in the
dirt, he did not have to tell you, like Henry Cabot Winters, that life
was a game, and you must play it without thinking; no, Vincenzo would
say, “Moocha gooda vegetable!”--and escort you from row to row of his
treasures, and tell you the Italian names, and remember the English
names--after you had reminded him! Alfonsina wanted a wash-tub, for
perfectly sound economic reasons. Beltrando wanted a violin, and some
one to teach him to play it, and was going to earn the money by picking
berries.
The boys were playing baseball on top of Castle Hill, and the birds
sang, and the sun sparkled on the bay, and the pleasure-boats made
diverging tracks on the water. There were flowers in the woods
again--but alas, no Vanzetti to explain them and explore nature’s
mysteries. Incessantly they talked about him, the things he had said
and the things he had liked. He had gone away without saying good-by to
Trando and Fay, afraid lest their children’s prattle might reveal his
secret. Their mother had explained matters later--but it was hard for
them to be reconciled to his lack of trust.
Alfonsina had got a letter. Both Sacco and Vanzetti were in Mexico, and
the latter had found work as a baker. The Mexicans came to America for
jobs, and the Italians took what they left behind. Then came a letter
for Cornelia, and the family sat round the table and read and discussed
it. “I have obtained book for English education. I shall be greatly
cultured. Each word as I investigate in dictionary I secure in mind.”
They could picture him, sitting in a laborer’s hut, patiently looking
up long words by the light of a candle, and putting them together, not
always in the right order.
“It is primitive country, much hospitality of people, much to approve,
but not developed industrial. The great America has depraved us, we
feel in nature’s wildness lonely. I will be glad for receiving English
books for education reading, it is great limitation to obtain Italian
reading. Nick and me endeavor for improvement our companions of exile.
It is necessary for information of world developments. You have seen
Russian rivoluzion, but is necessary for explanazion that such is
lacking in true rivoluzionairy significance. It is of bourgeois nature,
for making country like capitalistic America. It is not of workers or
peasants, but Kerensky is tool of business men, and you will see that
the desires of Russia for acquirement of Constantinople will not be
abandoned, and the participating of Russia in the war will have this
significance. I will not proceed in this discussing because is possible
for letter to be censured, but will say that all nation in most cruel
conflict have imperialist ambition which will not abandon for beautiful
sentiments. I have long walk for obtaining stamp for letter so will
conclusion with expressing of sincere esteem, your Bartolomeo Vanzetti.”
VII
Cornelia went to call on the Jerry Walkers--she could not fail to do
so, being no longer in hiding. They lived in a big remodeled house on
a hilltop looking over the bay, and you would have thought them very
fashionable, if you had not known the dreadful fact that Mrs. Walker
was the daughter of a Pittsburgh steel manufacturer. Startling to
realize how one could have all this comfort, and even elegance, and
yet be totally non-existent from the social point of view. Mrs. Walker
was a fair, buxom lady, her manner to Cornelia a curious mixture of
deference due to a “blue-blood,” modified by the need of not seeming
too eager for social promotion. A strange world, in which a motor-ride
of six minutes brought you from Suosso’s Lane, where things were
simple and natural, to this hilltop mansion from which simplicity and
naturalness had been banished as by an enchanter’s spell.
But, a spell for ladies only! Jerry Walker, who had begun life as an
errand-boy, liked to talk with Cornelia about those days; and how the
Governor had helped him to a start. He liked to talk about his enormous
business, which he was organizing upon a new system. Not content with
owning all the felt-plants of New England, he had got a chain of
establishments to manufacture the things that were made of felt--shoes,
hats, hospital supplies; he had a jobbing business to distribute them,
and was not going to stop until he had retail stores, and even the
sheep to make the wool. He was eager about all this--a bouncing little
man with bristly yellow hair, standing up like a bull-dog’s. He was
extremely self-confident, a great business organizer, who knew it, and
frequently said it, adding prophecies. A highly dangerous state of
mind in New England, where all is secrecy, and instinctive repugnance
toward anyone who talks. Cornelia remembered that last discussion she
had heard between her husband and Rupert Alvin, when Jerry Walker and
his felt-plants had been the subject. It was easy to understand why
Rupert was so antagonistic to this talkative outsider, and resented his
control of a great New England industry, accusing him of all crimes in
the business list.
Just now Jerry Walker needed to expand his business for war purposes,
and needed to buy stocks of raw material for government contracts. He
ought to buy quickly, because the price of wool was leaping day by day;
but he could not get the banking credit. Everybody else was getting it,
all along the line, but from him the bankers demanded practically the
taking over of his business.
It was the working out of a situation which Cornelia understood
clearly; but she did not have the right to talk about it, not even to
Betty. The latter had learned of Mr. Walker’s troubles from Lucile, and
was embarrassed, because among those who held the whip-hand were her
own father and her uncle, John Quincy Thornwell, president of the Fifth
National Bank. “Grannie, I don’t know much about banking, and I don’t
suppose you do, but I can’t help thinking it seems to go by favor. Mr.
Walker never wore the hat-band of a Harvard club, and his wife isn’t in
the Sewing Circle! Do you suppose that is why they say such bad things
about him?”
Cornelia answered, “I once heard Great-uncle Abner say that banking is
the private preserve of the blue-bloods, a feeding-crib for the sons
and nephews and cousins.”
“But, Grannie, that isn’t fair! There’s Father and Uncle John, who can
get all the money they need from their own banks--”
“No, dear, they can’t do that--it would be against the law.”
“It wouldn’t be against the law for them to lend to each other, would
it? Or to Uncle James, or other members of the family? Certainly you
never hear of the Thornwell mills having to scuffle for credit. And Mr.
Walker is a capable man, who has built up his business by hard work and
not by family favors. I would talk to Father about it, if I thought it
would help.”
“No, dear, you’d better not meddle. Your parents would say the Walkers
were trying to use you.”
“I suppose that’s why they hate to have me come here. I must only know
the people who come to our dinner-table.”
Cornelia laughed. “Dear child, it is embarrassing to know those who are
coming to your dinner-table on a platter!”
VIII
The fall of 1917. All about Cornelia a gigantic stir of war
preparation, but very little intellectual preparation to match it. She
did not have to go far in her studies to learn that the various peoples
of Europe had been fighting among themselves for centuries, and in this
fighting had frequently shifted partners. Whatever enemy they had at
the time, they hated that enemy just as heartily, and accused him of
atrocities, and did not hesitate to have priests and bishops invoke
the aid of God to overcome him. Always the real cause of the war was a
desire to take land from the other nation; plus the fear that the other
nation would reverse the procedure--as indeed it would.
Could the same situation exist in this greatest and most cruel of all
conflicts? To have that question answered, Cornelia had to get in the
Negro maid, and invite Quincy Thornwell to dinner. Do not confuse
Quincy with his older brother, John Quincy, for these two sons of
Great-uncle Abner were very different beings. John, the banker, had the
reputation of being the closest-mouthed person in Boston, which was
like being the tallest mountain in the Himalayas. But Quincy lived by
gossip, quite literally; for twenty years he had listened to the talk
of his family and friends, and turned their advance knowledge into a
comfortable fortune on the stock-market. His wizened features were
set in mockery, and if you were in the family he would tell you most
outrageous and delightful anecdotes.
Quincy went everywhere, and met everybody. He could tell you what
the British ambassador had said to Major Higginson last week. The
evening before last he had dined at Fenway Court, the palace of the
eccentric but brilliant Mrs. “Jack” Gardner, and had there met Sir
Leslie Buttock, the latest of the procession of British propagandists
who were coming to fascinate and thrill the American plutocracy. Sir
Leslie was making the transcontinental tour, and after he had praised
the champagne of a Minneapolis banker, or the cigars of a Seattle
ship-builder, each of these provincials was an insider and social
equal for the rest of his life, and the price was five--ten--twenty
billions--no one knew just how much--to be used in doubling the area of
the British empire.
A generation or more ago “Mrs. Jack” had set out to cut a swath through
Boston society with the millions of a big department store. A vivid
little creature, with the continental standard of manners and morals,
she had horrified the Back Bay beyond utterance; when she lost her
temper, she would break into cursing like any British aristocrat. But
she went abroad and hobnobbed with royalty, and was cabled back home;
she bought famous paintings, and built herself a palace in what was
then the suburbs of the Fenway, and thumbed her nose at the prudes.
Now she was an old lady, with decades of notoriety behind her, the
acknowledged leader of the smart set.
A British diplomat once gave the official definition of a lie--a
falsehood told to a person who has a right to the truth. All diplomats
and propagandists who came to Boston did “Mrs. Jack” the honor of
admitting her into the inner circle. At her dinner-parties you took
off your propaganda-coat, so to speak, and lounged in your military
shirt-sleeves. So Quincy Thornwell could tell his aunt exactly why the
war was lasting so long. The price of Italy’s repudiating her alliance
with Austria and Germany had been the Trentino and Trieste, which meant
the mastery of the Adriatic. Japan’s price was Shantung from China.
Russia was to have Constantinople. France was to have Alsace-Lorraine,
and if possible the Rhine. Britain was to have all the German colonies,
an empire in themselves. When you talked to Quincy about any of these
powers giving up their spoils because of the beautiful speeches of
Woodrow Wilson, he showed his good manners by pretending it was your
idea of being humorous.
And yet there were a hundred million or so of good Americans who
really believed that their President was somehow going to achieve
that miracle! Deborah, for example, and her serious elder daughter,
Priscilla, who was going in for Red Cross work of the higher,
administrative kind. When you talked to them about peace terms, you
discovered that they were trusting the country entirely to a man who
was a Democrat, and came from the wrong university! If you mentioned
the secret treaties, they would say that these matters were too
delicate for public discussion; the President of course had sources of
information that were not open to us--
“But why not?” cried Cornelia, and could get no convincing answer.
Either the allies were going to give up their predatory aims or they
were not. If they were, why not publish the fact? Such declaration
would save millions of lives and billions of treasure--for manifestly,
one reason for enemy resistance was fear of the consequences of defeat.
But if you tried to point this out, you were called pro-German, and
people turned their backs on you. They had adopted a slogan, “Win the
war!”--which meant that they found it easier to fight than to think.
And Cornelia, who had gone out into public life, now had the duty
of laboring with them, and suffering because of their blindness. No
more could she be content with the troubles of three daughters--their
diseases in childhood, their moral training, their love-affairs and
marriages, their fourteen pregnancies and eleven children. Now she had
a million sons in France, and must agonize with them all--even when
they were wayward sons and spurned their foster-mother’s care!
IX
Betty was going to Radcliffe. It was a compromise that had worked
itself out with her parents; provided she would put herself under
respectable instructors, and read the sound and wholesome books they
would indicate to her, she might go and live in the apartment with
her grandmother, and meet anarchists and socialists and atheists and
pacifists and German agents in her off hours. It had been a losing
fight for Deborah and Rupert, because they had other things they must
think about, while Betty had nothing but the determination to get with
Grannie. After all, what could be more respectable than a grandmother?
What more laudable desire for a young girl than to comfort an elderly
widow, alone and poverty-stricken? It was really a scandal to balk such
an impulse; it was advertising to the world that Cornelia was a shady
character!
So Betty installed a few of her books and her clothes in the little
room, and the pair of them were as happy as honeymooners--they gave
each other a hug every time they met. The Negro maid came every
day--because the Alvins insisted on Betty’s paying half the household
expenses. Betty’s runabout was in a garage nearby, and any time it
was raining or snowing, a man from the garage would bring it over,
and Betty would drive Grannie to anarchist or socialist or atheist
or pacifist or pro-German meetings. Or they would sit at home in the
evenings and study subversive books with red bindings, of which there
were now a hundred or so on Grannie’s shelves--Mr. Longfellow and Mr.
Emerson and Dr. Holmes having been relegated to a box under the bed.
Betty would give her college studies “a lick and a promise,” and then
take up Bertrand Russell on world imperialism. Most convenient to have
a respectable aristocrat, brother of an earl, to quote against Sir
Leslie Buttock and Sir Syphon Scotch!
It was well that this idyllic menage had got definitely under way
before the second, or Bolshevik, revolution in Russia. Possession is
nine points out of ten in family affairs, as in revolutions, and it
was no more possible to get Betty out of Grannie’s apartment on the
north side of Beacon Hill than it was to get Lenin and Trotsky out of
the Kremlin. But what agony of soul for the Alvin family, and for the
Winters and the Scatterbridges, and the whole Thornwell clan! The
face of the war changed in ten hideous days! The eastern front gone
all to pieces, and a million or two of Germans set free to overwhelm
the western front! Russia out of the war, and no one but America to
take her place! And red revolution on the rampage over a sixth of the
surface of the globe! Insolent, low-down workingmen daring to take
possession of a great government, and calling on their fellows in other
lands to follow suit!
Every property interest throughout the civilized world rallied against
that peril, and the greatest machine of propaganda in history went
into action. To meet the immediate emergency, Lenin and Trotsky must
be German agents; so a mass of documents were forged, endorsed by the
state department, and spread upon the front pages of the newspapers.
Then came the atrocities--for which little Belgium had been a dress
rehearsal. Bureaus for the construction of horrors were set up in
every border city from Helsingfors to Vladivostok, and the cruelty
and bloodshed inevitable to a great revolution were magnified a
thousand fold. It was St. Bartholomew’s Eve in Russia every time an
American newspaper went to press. The Soviet government collapsed
once a week, and Lenin jailed Trotsky, or was murdered by Trotsky, in
alternating afternoon editions. The “free love” element became the
basis of the most obscene hoax of the ages, and fifty million women
were “nationalized” in one colossal orgy. Every decent woman in America
believed it--and so it was possible for President Wilson to begin his
private war upon the Russian people, in defiance of the Constitution
which he had spent his life in expounding.
From that time on the advocacy of reasonable peace-terms ceased to be
a society function, a diversion of after-luncheon orators, and became
a criminal conspiracy, conducted by little groups in upstairs rooms
with the shades drawn and admission by pass-word. It became, in short,
“Bolshevik plotting.” Did not the Bolsheviks prove it by proceeding
themselves to make peace with Germany, an act of treason to democracy
and liberty? Did they not make matters worse by ransacking the archives
of the tsar, and publishing the secret treaties whereby the allies had
agreed to divide large sections of the earth, without any democracy or
liberty for the inhabitants thereof? There is a story of a Kentucky
colonel who was asked why he had knocked a certain man down. “Did he
call you a liar?” “Worse than that, he proved it.”
With one exception the American newspapers ignored these treaties,
and to Cornelia and the pacifists that seemed treason to the national
welfare. But what could the pacifists do? For any group to circulate
them meant to have offices raided and property destroyed; for
individuals to agitate them meant to be mobbed, to be jailed and held
“incommunicado,” tarred and feathered, beaten with blacksnake whips, in
a few cases strung up to telegraph-poles.
Nor was it protection that you lived within sight of Bunker Hill
monument and “Funnel” Hall. The grandsons of that “broadcloth mob”
that had dragged William Lloyd Garrison through the streets with
a rope about his waist were now out to preserve their French and
British bonds. Nor was it any longer of avail that your city had an
Irish-Catholic vote; the Catholic church was one of the property
interests which had rallied against “Bolshevism.” City policemen,
federal secret agents, and an army of spies and informers in the pay of
wealthy patriots, would break into offices and homes at any hour of the
day or night, and spirit people away and hold them for as long as they
saw fit; in short they would commit all the crimes they were trying to
prevent, and destroy beyond repair the Constitution they professed to
worship.
X
Into this valley of midnight shadow walked Cornelia Thornwell and her
grand-daughter, clasping each other’s trembling hands. They were in no
personal danger, as it turned out; the patrioteers would seldom trouble
rich people, especially those who had “family” behind them. Seen from
the outside this “white terror” appeared a mad frenzy, and it was hard
at first to understand that there were cunning brains guiding it, that
mob-outbreaks were planned by shrewd gentlemen in swivel-chairs. These
gentlemen would be glad to scare the widow of Governor Thornwell and
make her shut up; but failing in that they would not advertise her
treason by arresting her. The reason was that the decision rested with
Henry Cabot Winters and Rupert Alvin, who were contributing large sums
to the defense societies, and sat in at the councils where lists were
gone over and policies determined.
No, what would happen to Cornelia was that her janitress would be
instructed to preserve the contents of her trash-basket every night;
and one of her old-time friends of the Sewing Circle would turn up and
announce herself as a convert to pacifism, and join all the societies
to which Cornelia belonged, and go to meetings with her, and get on
the executive committees, and turn in a detailed report of everything
that went on there, with lists of the members and subscribers, and
manuscript copies of what was being considered for publication.
Included in this mass of information appeared the fact that Mrs. Josiah
Quincy Thornwell was in touch with Italian anarchists of Plymouth, and
exchanged letters with one of the group, a draft-dodger--though so far
there was no evidence that she had helped him to get away. He wrote
to her under the code name of “Nonna,” and a letter she had received
from him, entered in the secret service files under the index number of
1842T36, read as follows:
“Dear Nonna:
“It will be great rivilation for you to see the coming of my
prophecy, the real rivoluzion prevail in Russia. This is greatest
event of history and is to be recognize for beginning of epoch.
It is first opportunity for liberty for worker and peasant of
world. It is hope which can be very brief to endure, and will
depend entirely what shall happen in other country. If will come
rivoluzion in Germany, Austria, Italia, France, England, then will
be possible for building worker society without exploitation; but
if is impossible for achievement rivoluzion in other country, is
little hope for freedom for Russia, and you will see ending of
worker’s control. When Russia must defend self in war, it will
be militarismo, and is impossible for liberty with militarismo.
It will then become Russia government of force like all other
gouvernment, and rivoluzion will be perished. Whatever you can do
for rivoluzion of American worker, that is only way for assistance
of proletarian power in Russia. In Mexico is not much activity, for
lack of language speaking, so Nick and me will make secret return
for propaganda. With sincere esteem and fraternal greetings, Your
friend, Bartolomeo Vanzetti.”
XI
It was in the spring of 1918, with the last German drive in France
under way, that this stolen letter was placed in the hands of Rupert
Alvin. It caused great mental disturbance in a loyal citizen, and
he came to the apartment and, standing in the middle of the floor,
announced that Cornelia stood in great danger of a term in state’s
prison for persistent and contumacious disloyalty; also that Betty
would bundle up her things and accompany her father to his car
immediately. Whereupon occurred one of those scenes which are so
essentially un-Boston that all Bostonians deny they ever happen.
Perhaps they would not have happened, had not old Josiah married
a bog-trotter’s grand-daughter, and thus introduced an element of
hysterics into the family.
Betty declared that she would not, could not desert her Grannie. The
more sternly she was commanded to obey her father, the louder she
wept and the tighter she clung; even when Grannie herself advised
her gently to go, she relaxed her grip no particle, but sobbed, how
could they demand such a thing of her? The greater the peril in which
Grannie stood, the less possibility that she, Betty, would desert her!
So it appeared that Rupert had overspoken himself, and he hemmed and
hawed and admitted that the danger of arrest and imprisonment was not
immediate, his influence had been able to avert the calamity; whereupon
Betty said that if that was the case, what was the reason for her
going? And what can a man do in the face of logic like that?
What Rupert did was worthy of his Puritan ancestors, and proved
that the old stock was still sound. He adjudged his daughter guilty
of domestic sedition, and pulled out his watch and gave her three
minutes in which to capitulate; at the end of that time he would go
home and write a will in which she would have no share, and would be
forever forbidden entrance to his home. For three minutes he held the
watch, and Betty clung to her grandmother with such frenzy that not a
finger could be pulled loose. Rupert snapped to the watch--it was the
old-fashioned kind with a gold case and a lid on a hinge--and stalked
out of the room without a word. And Betty wept for an hour or two,
fully convinced that her father meant every one of those cruel words,
and that she was forever an outcast.
Until the doorbell rang again, and there came Deborah, and behind her,
silent and somewhat sheepish, the ponderous and impressive president of
the Pilgrim National Bank. From which it appeared that the old stock
was degenerating in spots! Rupert could rule a board of directors with
an iron rod, but he could not rule the tongue or spirit of his wife.
She declared that he would not do the cruel thing he had threatened;
his sense of patriotic loyalty had caused him to forget the love they
all bore for one another. What Deborah would do was to throw herself
upon the mercy of her mother and her child, and implore them to spare
the family the horror of having either go to jail. So, of course,
there was more weeping--still that Irish blood. Betty cried, what was
the use of trying to talk about it, when they didn’t know what they
were supposed to have done? How could they promise not to do it, until
they knew what? So Rupert had to give hints which nearly betrayed the
secret; he told them they were known to be consorting with anarchists
and draft-dodgers.
So it was a question of their giving up Vanzetti! But they did not
agree with Vanzetti’s ideas, and Vanzetti knew they did not, they had
tried to argue with him, to persuade him to a more American point
of view! Was that treason? Were they forbidden to try to reform the
anarchists, or even to know what anarchists thought? If so, who was to
answer their arguments? Rupert snapped out that the way to answer such
dogs was to string them up to lamp-posts; and then, of course, the fat
was in the fire. What was the use of a Constitution if it didn’t work
in war-time? What was the use of free speech if it applied only to
the things you wanted said? If public questions were to be settled by
stringing people up to lamp-posts, who was to be strung, and who was
to string--how could you decide? Betty cried, and Cornelia cried, and
Deborah cried. Ideas are extremely trying things, devastating in their
effect upon the female nervous organism; there is something to be said
for the point of view of the Clara Scatterbridges, who have nothing to
do with ideas, but stay at home and have eight babies.
Betty and Cornelia laid down their joint program. They had never
advocated violence and never would; but neither would they support
a war. They would advocate the ending of this present war upon terms
of justice to all parties, which included the rights of those peoples
whose lands were going to be handed over as spoils of battle. If it
had become a crime in America to advocate such ideas, then there would
be an old Thornwell lady and a young one in prison. Rupert and Deborah
took their departure, as solemn as if it were an execution they had
attended; and five minutes after they left, the doorbell rang again,
and there stood a humble Italian laborer, wearing a worn suit of
clothes two sizes too big for him, and droopy walrus mustaches equally
out of proportion. That very anarchist draft-dodger who had been the
cause of the family scene!
XII
He stood embarrassed. “I not know if should come--”
“Of course you should come!” and they drew him in.
“Could make trooble for ladies.”
“We are not afraid of trouble,” said Cornelia; and Betty chimed in,
“You are a sight for sore eyes!”--that was the way the new generation
was learning to talk, in spite of Radcliffe.
Vanzetti’s face lighted up--so glad he was to see them, so pathetically
eager for friendship. He was haggard from his wanderings, more somber
than ever with the pressure of the war upon his spirit. His age at this
time was thirty years, but unconsciously Betty took him for old enough
to be her father, while Cornelia took him for her equal. At the same
time he was a little of the child to them--the way of every woman with
a poet and a dreamer, who cannot get himself adjusted to a harsh world.
He had been a wanderer for a year, and had not liked it. He was going
to make propaganda, and take whatever came to him; going back to
Plymouth, to live near the Brinis--not in his old room, because the
children were growing up and would need it. One could not be sure,
but he thought he would not be arrested; the government had plenty of
soldiers, but needed laborers for war construction.
They discussed the world situation. The propaganda for intervention
to put down the Russian revolution was on the point of success. A
shameful thing, said Cornelia. But to her surprise she found that
Bart had already given up interest in Russia; the revolution there
was lost, he said. “Is joost like I write, Nonna--is militarismo,
is one more go-vèrnment for rule worker. Maybe you do not read what
soviet have done for anarchista in Russia? They stop propaganda,
shoot heem, put heem in jail--is joost like capitalista--is what you
say--tirannia--make worker obey, make work, make fight in army--”
“But, Comrade Vanzetti, aren’t the soviets to defend themselves?” It
was Betty breaking in.
“Must defend, Comradda Betty, but defend like free men. If man not want
fight, nobody got right for make heem fight. Nobody got right for make
heem slave, for stop hees mind, hees right for speak.”
“Wouldn’t it be hard to keep an army going on that basis?”
“If you got joostice, will find plenty men for fight, plenty free men.
You wait, Comradda Betty, you see Italy, you see somet’ing happen!
Is poor countree, Italy, if war stop, will be much bad time, much
trooble--will come rivoluzion, I t’ink shoore. Italian is not so easy
man for control, like Russian peasant, he is man will fight for right,
will be free man. You see different kind revoluzion, different sistema
for manage countree. It is our job now, make money in America, make all
money we can, send home Italy for anarchista propaganda.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have trouble,” said Cornelia. “They have spies, they
know what everybody is doing, and they get rougher every day. I fear
you’ll be arrested.”
“Is no matter, Nonna, no worry for me. Is business of anarchista make
propaganda, musta make, wherever go. You get putted in army, all right,
make propaganda wit’ soldier. You get putted in jail, make propaganda
wit’ jailer, wit’ prisoner--is all same, is men, like me, like you.
Sometime he come out, is always some way for new idea spread--is no way
for stop, not jail, not bullet! In whole world is notting can stop--is
biggest, most strong dinnameet.”
He sat in his chair, half out of it, with the eagerness of his emotion.
His face wore a strained look, and his eyes had that light of stubborn
fanaticism which Cornelia had come to know. He turned to Betty, the
younger one, guardian of the future. “Wit’ anarchista is lika dis,
Comradda. He say: Capitalismo is injoostice, I will not stand heem!
Say, I will break heem, will fight heem, will never stop--never what
you say, surrender. I will speak--will say strong word--shock person,
make heem t’ink. Will speak all time, everywhere--make men hear--even
when he not want hear!”
Suddenly Vanzetti stopped, a little embarrassed. Even an anarchist must
be a gentleman! And perhaps so much vehemence was not in order in a
lady’s drawing-room. “It maybe seem like crazy talk?” he asked.
Cornelia said, “Wait.” She went to the bookcase, to a shelf which
contained a few old books, not yet stowed under the bed. She took one
out. “I will read you something, Bart. We had a young New Englander,
of old Puritan stock, who took up the notion that chattel slavery
was wrong, and set out to preach it, and very nearly got lynched in
Boston. His name was William Lloyd Garrison--learn it, Bart, a good
name to quote in this part of the world. He started a paper called the
‘Liberator’--that was in 1831, eighty-seven years ago. In the first
issue he stated his program. Listen.” And she read:
“I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice.
On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with
moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a
moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the
hands of a ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her
babe from the fire into which it has fallen--but urge me not to
use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest--I
will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a
single inch--and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is
enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the
resurrection of the dead.”
Said Vanzetti: “What is name?” He said it over, so as to remember
it--William Lloyd Garrisoon. “I never hear heem before, but I feel heem
brudder; am joosta sooch man like heem!”