DEPORTATION DAYS
I
Rupert Alvin would have worried more about his runaway daughter, if he
had not had so many troubles at home to keep him occupied. It seemed
as if all the devils in Puritan New England broke loose that summer
of 1919. There were a couple of million soldier boys turned out of
the training camps, and flotilla loads returning from France, and no
jobs to go round. They took to crime, to bootlegging, to striking, to
demanding bonuses, to all kinds of behavior which kept bankers lying
awake at night. The war-orders, the great prop of prosperity, had been
pulled from underneath, and business was like a man waking up on the
morning after a celebration.
The cost of living had been going up all through the war, but now it
went faster than ever; there was a shortage of everything, and nobody
could live on his salary. Out in Seattle there was a general strike,
almost a revolution; while close at home, in Lawrence, a strike of the
mill-workers had to be put down by kidnaping the leaders and beating
them insensible with brass “knucks” and blackjacks. And then, in
Boston, the most incredible event of all--a strike of policemen! Of the
safest “cops” in the whole of civilization, Irish-Catholics trained in
humility and obedience in parochial schools especially established for
the purpose! Truly, it seemed the end of Rupert Alvin’s world.
The policemen had been grumbling about their wages all through the
year. Some were getting as low as ninety-two dollars a month, and how
could a man keep a family on that? They grumbled about the way they
were housed--many of them in that old Joy Street station, which had
been built before the Civil War, and was dirty and verminous. They went
on grumbling, and the authorities went on putting them off--for if you
paid living wages to policemen, what would be left for politicians? In
August the grumblers formed a union, and joined the American Federation
of Labor. Treason and red rebellion under the very shadow of Bunker
Hill monument, on the very steps of “Funnel” Hall!
There were at this time two great banking groups competing for the
mastery of Boston’s affairs; like the wars of the Guelphs and the
Ghibellines in ancient Florence. Parker, Jones and Company, one of
these concerns, stood in with the city administration, and their
Democratic mayor appointed them as a committee to sit down with the
leaders of the union and work out a settlement. The policemen were to
get their “raise,” and everything would be polite. But they had omitted
to consult Rupert Alvin and the Pilgrim National crowd; and Rupert
was incensed that his dignity should thus be flouted. Also, he had
religious convictions on the subject of labor unions. For policemen to
organize and wring concessions by threats was a challenge to the very
being of the state. If a Democratic mayor were allowed to bargain with
Democratic Irish-Catholic labor leaders, and pay out the city’s money
under duress, the Republican Rupert might as well retire from his job
of running Massachusetts and Europe.
He consulted first with Henry Cabot Winters, as was his custom; then
he got his associates together and told them his plan. Never would
there be another such opportunity to teach a lesson to the forces of
disorder. The policemen’s union must be broken, its leaders driven
from the force, and not a man who went on strike should ever again
be employed by the city. Rupert carried his point, and the heads of
the Chamber of Commerce were called in and won over, and the police
commissioner was summoned and told of the decision. Fortunate indeed
that this official was appointed by the governor and not by the mayor,
and so was a “blue-blood” and not a demagogue!
The business men of the city had rallied to defend their property.
The president of Harvard had offered a thousand students, and all
these volunteers were ready to go on patrol-duty the moment they were
called. The policemen had given ample notice; they would strike at five
forty-five o’clock on the afternoon of September ninth; and moreover
they left four hundred of the old men to protect property. But it was
Rupert’s plan to teach the city, and indeed the whole country, a lesson
by a demonstration of what it meant for policemen to form a labor
union. To that end the old policemen were kept shut up in headquarters,
and the volunteers were not summoned until nine o’clock the next
morning. For one whole night Boston was to be without any police
protection whatever; and to make assurance doubly sure, one of the
big detective agencies supplied a few men to throw bricks through the
windows of department-stores and start things moving. That the plotters
had actually done this was never proved, but you would meet many
“blue-bloods,” familiar with the gossip of the clubs, who were certain
that it had been done; and several years later, when Boston saw its
leading bankers on the witness-stand in the case of Jerry Walker, and
heard them lying about how they had got possession of the felt-industry
of New England--then Boston was ready to believe anything about bankers!
II
Whoever started it, the windows were smashed, and men and boys jumped
through the holes and helped themselves to what they wanted; you saw
women sitting on the curb-stones, fitting themselves with expensive
shoes. There were many hold-ups that night, and some rape; more
horrifying yet, there were crap-games going on the Common--on the very
steps of the State House with its golden dome. It is characteristic
of Boston that this breach of decorum was the thing which stamped
itself upon the public mind, and stands out in unwritten history. Three
hundred crap-games in broad daylight--that shows you what the mob is
like, and what would happen if there were no hickory clubs to hold it
down!
The merchants of the city were in a panic, putting up barricades in
front of their shops, arming their clerks and spending the night in
a state of siege. The picture of Boston in the hands of its criminal
element had gone all over the country; Boston papers had made a fearful
panic, and the faithful press agencies had spread it; so Rupert’s
lesson had been taught, and it was time for the city to be saved. The
mayor called out some of the state militia--under an old law he had
the right to call the part which belonged to Boston. He wanted to call
the rest, but for this an order from the governor was needed; and here
came an unexpected hitch in the program of “law and order.”
The representative of Anglo-Saxon superiority in the State House
happened to be a gentleman by the name of Calvin Coolidge, whose
story is one of the oddest ever invented by that Great Novelist who
makes up history. A thin-lipped, tight little man, a petty lawyer
and bill-collector from the western part of the state, “Cal” had
got elected to the legislature, and attracted the attention of the
Republican boss because he always did exactly what he was told, and
never said a word that could be left unsaid. If a politician has an
opinion he is bound to offend somebody; so, obviously, the wise course
is to have no opinion on any subject. Strange, that no one ever thought
of it before “Cautious Cal”!
The man who ran the Republican state machine through this period
was a multimillionaire senator by the name of Murray Crane. He
had established for his good political boys what was known as the
“escalator system,” or the “Massachusetts ladder.” So long as they
took orders, and kept themselves presentable to the voters, he would
promote them regularly, step by step. It was a slow process, and you
were old when you got to the top, but Massachusetts liked that, it is
old itself. In this case, however, there developed a phenomenon known
as “Coolidge luck”; as if the fates were amusing themselves by boosting
this feeblest man in the state machine. Among the legislators aspiring
to the state senate there existed a “rotation agreement”; there was
never any competition at the primaries, each town took its turn. But
the man ahead of Coolidge died, and he jumped into the place. Then, as
a state senator who had never made a speech, he learned that the man
in line for president of the senate had attacked woman suffrage. When
the suffragists asked the views of Calvin, he shut the tightest and
thinnest pair of lips in Massachusetts. The women attacked the other
man and beat him at the polls, and Calvin presented his claims to the
boss, and became president of the senate. Clear the way!
Next it happened that the man who was scheduled to become
lieutenant-governor made the mistake of speaking in favor of
prohibition. Again Calvin kept his masterly silence, and the liquor
interests switched to him, and he was nominated. He served two terms as
lieutenant-governor, at a time when everybody was sick of politics,
and was pleased with a man who said nothing and did nothing. As a
reward they made him governor; and now here was a crisis, and two big
groups of bankers pulling him this way and that! There was nothing for
him but physical flight, and for twenty-four hours no one connected
with the government knew where the governor was to be found.
At last Rupert dug him out, on the farm of Murray Crane, who had pushed
him up the escalator. They had a night session, and Calvin heard such
things as never will be printed in any history-book. When the time came
to call out the state guard, he did what he was told; the machine-guns
went into action on Boston Common, and fired a whole volley of shots
heard round the world.
As for Calvin, he waited several days, until it was evident that
Rupert’s strategy had been successful; public sentiment had turned
against the strikers. Then Calvin rushed forward, waving in his hand
a telegram to Samuel Gompers, proclaiming in clarion tones: “There is
no right to strike against the public safety, by anybody, anywhere, at
any time!” That was, of course, what the capitalist press wanted at
the moment; the governor’s proclamation took the front page all the
way from Boston to Seattle--where there had been a rival strike and
a rival hero. One of these two masterful men was destined to become
vice-president and then president of the United States on the basis of
his heroism; while the other was destined to become a super salesman
of real estate, unloading ten thousand subdivision lots upon admiring
“come-ons.” Which hero was to be which was a matter of a toss-up in a
hotel-room, at the tail end of a long-drawnout political convention.
It may have been “Coolidge luck”--and again, it may have been the fact
that the Massachusetts leaders were able to certify that here was a
man who had never once expressed an opinion in twenty years of public
life, and had never once questioned an order from Murray Crane, who had
pushed him up the escalator.
III
This police strike cost the community three million dollars; nor did
the community make it up out of policemen’s wages, because it granted
to the new men more than it had refused to the old. But that was all
right to Rupert Alvin. In the first place, it wasn’t his money; and in
the second place, it was not a question of money, but of what he called
“principle”--meaning the bankers’ right to have their way. The “mob”
really had learned a lesson; there would be no more crap-shooting on
the Common, and no more labor unions among public servants.
Neither Rupert nor any of his crowd reckoned the dumb resentment
smoldering in the hearts of fourteen hundred men, who had thought
themselves guardians of law and order, and now discovered that they
were pawns in a game of power. These men had been pleading for a living
for themselves and their families; they had been polite enough, humble
enough--until they saw these qualities unheeded. They had served the
city faithfully--some for twenty or thirty years; even the Back Bay
admitted the virtues of those whom it knew. You would hear ladies of
the Sewing Circle exclaim, “What do you suppose has become of that
lovely policeman who used to help us across Boylston Street in front of
Trinity Church? The one that got books from the library, and asked for
something about the Æneid!” That story, told by the librarian, had been
a tradition of the Back Bay forever after. So appropriate to Boston,
to have a policeman who got books from the library, and actually
appreciated the Æneid!
Cornelia Thornwell came back from Russia to find her city in a grim
mood, with armed soldiers patrolling all the streets. The time for
nonsense was past, the Bolshevik menace was going to be put down. The
word “nonsense” included the fact that an elderly woman, once of high
respectability, but now badly “cracked,” had run away from her family
and spent two months in Soviet Russia. Cornelia found that no newspaper
in Boston manifested interest in what she had done; none desired to
tell its readers about the condition of women in that city of Saratov
where the “nationalization” story had started. No, the Boston papers
wanted highly flavored horrors, invented by tsarist refugees in Riga
and Helsingfors and Warsaw and Bucharest and Constantinople; they would
pay the tolls to have such inventions cabled, but they wanted no facts
which could be got by sending a reporter to an apartment on the north
side of Beacon Hill.
Privately, of course, some of the “blue-bloods” got a tremendous
“kick” out of Cornelia’s story. Henry Cabot Winters came to dinner and
spent a most interesting evening. Quincy Thornwell came, and loaded
up with stories to tell to the guests at Mrs. Jack Gardner’s. That
was gossip, and gossip has always been the privilege of good society.
But when it came to public utterances--to a newspaper interview, or a
speech at some meeting--that was a different matter; that was Bolshevik
propaganda, undermining the bases of American civilization. The word
Bolshevism had become the worst of all terms of abuse, and covered
everything in the modern world you did not like. The Massachusetts
Chamber of Commerce issued a pronouncement to the effect that the new
prohibition amendment was a Bolshevik conspiracy!
Rupert Alvin declined to meet his mother-in-law. He might have got
from her first-hand information as to the outcome of his enterprise to
overthrow the communist régime in Hungary, but he would not sacrifice
his dignity by admitting that Cornelia’s crazy jaunt could have
even that much use. Rupert proposed to handle his mother-in-law and
his daughter as he had handled the policemen’s strike. The time for
nonsense was past.
Deborah came to see her mother, and listened with painful reserve while
Cornelia assured her that Betty was perfectly all right, and there was
no need to worry. Betty was turning into a very fine woman, the best
of the lot of them; she was doing a useful work in Buda-Pesth, and was
justified in ignoring her father’s cablegrams. Nor would she suffer
because Rupert had cut off her funds. Her salary of thirty dollars a
week was quite regal for any part of Central Europe. As for Cousin
Letitia, she might become the wife of the elderly Hungarian playwright,
Hubay, if the family would put up one or two thousand dollars for a
“dot.” Cornelia herself had had a most instructive experience; the
world was changing, and her children would have to learn, as she had
learned, to adjust their minds to new ideas.
Deborah pressed her tight lips together--for she had come with a stern
resolve not to wrangle with her poor distracted mother. “We have done
considerable adjusting of our minds this fall,” she said. “We have
seen crap-games on the Common, and machine-guns also. We have known
what it feels like to lie awake all night in fear of the murderous
mob.” And that was true--for Rupert had not been able to convince his
wife of his complete mastery of the situation. Not even four private
policemen guarding her home had sufficed. Like most of the ladies on
Commonwealth Avenue, Deborah had looked under all the beds that night,
and had visions of her treasures being looted and her dignified person
“nationalized.”
IV
But if the capitalist press did not care to hear about the adventures
of Mrs. Josiah Quincy Thornwell in Russia, rest assured that there
were plenty of socialists, communists and anarchists who did. Cornelia
was besought to come and talk to this group and that; she was urged
to write down what she had seen, and let it be printed in a pamphlet;
and when she consented, it meant that she had definitely committed
herself as a “Red,” and was listed in the card-files of the Department
of Justice as an active Bolshevist. In the month of November “red
headquarters” in Boston was raided, with much uproar, and everybody
in it arrested and “held for deportation.” Among the truckloads of
literature confiscated were some of Cornelia’s; and although Rupert was
able to keep it out of the papers, he brought the story home to the
horrified family, and Deborah conveyed to her mother the warning that
she stood within the shadow of arrest, and that her family’s influence
would not again be used in her behalf.
Vanzetti spent an evening in the little apartment, and heard all that
Cornelia had to tell, and asked a hundred questions, and carried
her answers to the “gruppo” in Plymouth and the “clooba” in East
Boston. There were fierce debates going on among the anarchists as
to the attitude they should take to the rapidly spreading soviet
movement. Some were disposed to weaken in their anti-state principles.
Government was a bad thing, so long as it was an instrument for
suppressing workers; but when it became an instrument for suppressing
counter-revolution, then it was no longer so easy to decide. But
“individualistas” like Vanzetti stood immovable, and as a result, many
of them were in trouble in Russia; some had been shot, and others were
in jail. So Vanzetti hated the Russian government as much as he hated
the American, and was grieved by any good word that Cornelia had to say
about it.
A very confusing situation! However, Cornelia had been watching the
radical movement for four years now, and could talk the language of
the different groups, and understand their reactions. That was more
than the capitalist press could do, or the police, or the department of
justice agents, or the courts, or any others who had the public ear in
this crisis.
The job of “mopping up” the Reds was on in earnest. Congress had
appropriated a couple of million dollars--which is the way to make
things happen in America. All the big detective agencies were feeding
at the trough, and the card-file of suspects now counted a total of
two hundred thousand names--so the Attorney-General told a committee
of Congress. This gentleman, oddly enough, was a Quaker, and under the
combined banners of William Penn and Jesus Christ was instituting a
campaign of wholesale terror, the like of which had not been known in
America since the Iroquois Indians had been routed from upper New York
state.
The prisoners taken in the November raids, together with a number of
anarchists such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were loaded onto
an old government transport, the “Buford,” and on the twenty-first of
December this vessel, known to the newspapers as the “Soviet Ark,”
set forth for Russia. It was a beginning of the program recommended
by all patriotic orators, “If they don’t like this country, let them
go back where they came from.” Here and there you found one even more
ardent--such as the statesman who said that he “would send them in a
ship of stone with sails of lead”! Such was the “Christmas spirit,” as
manifested in America a year after the ending of the war to end war!
V
“Dear Nonna,” wrote Vanzetti from Plymouth, “come to see us little bit
for Christmas. All Italian anarchista is unhappy and fear will come
truble for us after finish Russian. Is no more Cronaca, and no leader
in New England since Galleani is deport. Would be good have you come
for letting us know one American lady understand worker and is not
afraid for speaking. Vincenzo got bottle good Dago Red in cellar,
it is not prohibitioned, for was there before. Trando has learn new
melody by violin, it is ‘When you and I were young, Maggie.’ Fay is
putting corns on string for decorate, it is word not in book, but is
white corns which produces noise on stove. Alfonsina is working now by
cordage and I have expection of much business for Christmas, it is time
for all Italian eating eel and I have order for barrel of living to be
deliver from Boston. Your esteeming friend, Bartolomeo Vanzetti.”
Christmas Day was on Friday, and Cornelia wrote that she could not come
on that day, but would come Saturday morning and stay over Sunday. Not
all the witch-hunts in New England could keep the Thornwell family from
inviting her on Christmas Day, and from having their feelings hurt if
she failed to appear. Clara, who had a monopoly on young children, was
naturally the hostess, and “Hillview” the place. It was one of those
great family reunions, when the clan say by their presence those things
which are never said in words. Three faces were missing since last
Christmas. Ahab would never be seen again; the spine of Great-aunt
Priscilla had become solidified to such an extent that not all the
pride in New England could bring her to a Christmas party; and Betty
was in Buda-Pesth, handing out loaves of bread to the children of
war-refugees.
“Hillview” was much changed from the day, now four and a half years
past, when Cornelia had run away from it. James had kept his promise to
leave the old part intact, but he had put on a monstrous new building
in the rear, for the eight young ones and their numerous nurses and
governesses and servants, as well as for guests--it was a luxurious
hotel. The children were all over the place, racing about, shouting,
bumping their heads on the hardwood floors, tramping nuts and raisins
into priceless rugs, smearing chocolate candy on white brocaded
upholstery. Christmas came but once a year, and one must not find
fault; one must exchange sticky kisses, and admire a tree so tall that
it went up to the second story, standing in the curve of the winding
stairway. It shone with a myriad little lights, red, blue, green and
yellow, and was piled around with enormous quantities of expensive
toys, really marvels of ingenuity and workmanship, all of which would
be broken and thrown on the junk-pile, or forgotten in the attic a
month from now.
Also there were the grown-ups to be greeted: Clara, rounder than ever,
lamenting that no arts of any specialist helped to reduce her; James,
solid and matter-of-fact, expanding with his vast prosperity, and with
the importance of himself as host. Not for a million dollars would he
have said it in words, but his manner made clear that “Hillview” was
no longer “Thornwell,” it was “Scatterbridge.” Deborah, stately in a
creation of purple velvet; Rupert, with complexion to match his wife’s
dress, and a manner of impeccable cordiality to Cornelia, as if such
a thing as a quarrel with a mother-in-law had never been heard of in
Boston. Alice Thornwell Winters, whose elegance and grace paid no
tribute to the passing years; Henry Cabot Winters, dapper and genial;
their son, Josiah, still growing length ways, and pale--perhaps from
overstudy, as his fond mother said, perhaps from what the savage Betty
described as “woman-chasing.” Also there was Deborah’s older daughter,
Priscilla, tall and dignified; it had been four years and more since
she had raped the rug, and the crime was forgotten.
Not a word about Betty, nor anything else to humiliate Cornelia, or to
remind her of her fall from grace. Unless you count Great-uncle Abner,
poring over the _Transcript_, and commenting on a wireless dispatch
from the “Soviet Ark,” now four days at sea. “Says it’s stormy, and the
passengers are seasick.” The deaf man’s voice of Abner boomed from the
library and filled all downstairs. “Well, I’d cure their seasickness if
I had my way!”
“They say there’s no cure for it known!” shouted Abner’s son, Quincy.
“No cure?” Abner’s voice broke into a hoot. “I can tell them a
cure--dump the two hundred and forty-nine beggars overboard, and
they’ll be cured in a couple of minutes!”
There was a pause while the old man turned over the paper. When he
broke loose again, it was the “crime wave,” unfailing topic at all New
England gatherings. “Country going clean to the dogs! See that story
about the holdup in Bridgewater yesterday? Coming to a fine pass when
a shoe-company can’t bring its payroll from the bank without having
shot-gun battles in the middle of the street! Read that?”
“Yes, I read it,” said Quincy.
“Right out in the middle of Broad Street, corner of Hale--you know the
place?”
“I know it.”
“Big wide street, trees on both sides, trolley-car down the middle.
And, by jingo, if two bandits in an automobile don’t pop out and open
fire on the pay-truck, just after daylight, half-past seven yesterday
morning! _Transcript_ says the police have no clew to the bandits.
Wonder what police are for!”
“To go on strike, father.”
“It’s these foreigners!” And Uncle Abner leaned closer to his son’s
ear, which was not in the least deaf. “Infernal foreigners we’ve
let come in and ruin the country! Sixty years I kept telling it to
Josiah--ought to have stopped them. First Irish, then Jews, then
Dagoes, then Hunkies, then God knows what. They’ve taken the country
from us--the old stock might as well move out, they steal everything
we’ve got. Ought to take every steamer that brought ’em over and make
’em take ’em back free, that’s what I say!”
Did Uncle Abner know that Cornelia was in the music-room with the
children, and hearing every word he shouted? Maybe so, for he was a
shrewd old rascal, and you’re only supposed to be polite when you
know it. “Ought to ship ’em back where they came from, and all those
sentimentalists that encourage ’em go along!”
VI
Cornelia left the palace of Thornwell-Scatterbridge, and went to the
humble tenement in North Plymouth. Here too was Christmas, but on a
minor scale. The tree was not quite up to Cornelia’s shoulder, and
the decorations were half a dozen red and yellow baubles, two for
five cents at the grocery-store, a few strands of tinsel, some red
ribbon off a package Cornelia had sent, and finally, long strings of
snow-white “corns,” with three pairs of small-sized but ravenous jaws
waiting until Cornelia should have seen the spectacle before commencing
the work of destruction. The presents, ranged under the tree for her
inspection, were few and cheap--with the single exception of three
fine story-books which had come from Boston. They were now set up
conspicuously, and three children clamored their happy thanks.
The Brinis had long ago found out who Cornelia was; they knew that
she came from a great rich family; yet not all the cruel “class
consciousness” in the world could weaken their trust in her. It seemed
to Cornelia that this offered some hint of how to avoid the stresses of
the war between capital and labor; also for the bitter strife between
the old Yankees and the new foreigners, and for the “crime wave,” and
many other troubles of the time. But when she told that theory to her
friends of the great world, they called it “sentimental,” and went on
with their wiser and more practical plan of jailing and deporting and
killing. Also most of the so-called “class-conscious” revolutionists
would have agreed that Cornelia’s program was “sentimental”; so
apparently the jailing and deporting and killing had to continue.
They had a grand supper that Saturday night. Alfonsina had made
bean-soup, which Vanzetti was “crazy about”--he admitted it; and
budino, a kind of custard pudding, and tortellini, a dish of meat
cooked in noodles. Vanzetti was a vegetarian on principle, because
he thought it wicked to kill animals for food; but once in a while
he fell from grace, and the occasion was apt to be tortellini. The
animal was already dead, said Trando; but Bart would not permit
that sophistry--when we ate meat, he said, we caused another animal
somewhere to be killed, it was the law of supply and demand. He spoke
of animals as his “fellow creatures,” and this gave the children great
glee; they would bring home a crab, or perhaps a big spider, and
refer to it as “Bart’s fellow creature.” But that did not trouble the
philosopher; he made it the occasion for a lecture on the wonders of
nature. All these strange beings did really have a life like us, at
least the beginnings of it; each one knew all the things it needed to
know in order to take care of itself--and many a man was not so wise.
Vincenzo had given his wife a tiny glass bowl with three gold-fish
for a Christmas present; and this stood now on a table in the little
parlor, by the window, where the light shone through it. Bart was
fascinated by these creatures, he would stand watching them literally
for an hour at a time. He was wondering what it was like to be a
gold-fish. If you dropped a bit of food into the bowl, the fish would
know it and take it into their mouths; if it was not the right food,
they would spit it out again. What told them that? What had taught
them not to flee from a man’s hand--though fish in the wild state would
do so? Did the fish know that man existed, and what did they think
about him? Strange questions one could ask about life!
Trando got out his violin, and played “When you and I were young,
Maggie.” So many sweet songs made you sad! The little boy played it
several times, and Bart hummed the words which the children had taught
him. A wonderful act of creation, making a melody out of the chaos of
all the scratchings that were possible on four violin strings! The
Brinis were so proud, something fine was coming out of their lives,
something better than “working by cordage” all your life, better than
“living like pigs,” as the Yankees phrased it.
“Some day maybe we get piano,” said Bart. “Fay she learn play, we have
grand music.”
“Oh, yes, we’ll get a piano!” said Trando, and added, in school-boy
dialect, “I don’t think!” He was twelve years old now, and America was
teaching him to be a little “fresh” at times. “It’ll be like that horse
you were going to get me!” He explained to Cornelia, “He promised me
a horse to drive the day before Christmas. He had a barrel of eels to
deliver, and I was to help him, and for two weeks he was telling me I’d
have a horse and wagon, and I didn’t think about nothing else all the
time. But when the day come it was the same old push-cart.”
“It is baker got horse and wagon,” explained Bart. “He promise for rent
heem one day, but then he cannot, so must pusha da cart. Trando he
see--what you call it, visione--heemself sit in seat, make noise with
whip, ‘Gittup!’--granda gentleman, all little Italian girl come look,
say what is this, something wonderfool! But instead to crack whip, he
musta carry basket with package eel. He is little scare, for eel he is
live and make move--what you say?”
“Wiggle,” put in Fay.
“Mooch wiggle!” said Bart. “Little boy tink maybe he come out from
paper, make bite!”
“No, I wasn’t scared,” said Trando, “but I knew they were my
fellow creatures and I didn’t like to have them killed.” They all
laughed--even Vincenzo, who did not understand jokes in English. Bart,
with his vegetarian scruples, was hard put to it to justify his conduct
in having a barrel of his living fellow creatures shipped to him by
express, and turning them over to the murderous fury of two score
Italian housewives, who had skinned them alive and put them in salt for
the next day’s feast, as much a tradition with the Italians as turkey
in all Yankee homes.
VII
Sunday morning they went for a walk--on the street, because the woods
were full of snow. Coming home, Vanzetti bought a Boston newspaper,
because he wanted to know what was happening in Italy. Cornelia read
him a brief item, how the Italian workers were forming shop-councils,
preparing to take over industry from the capitalists. They talked about
this, and how it would happen in different countries. Vanzetti had made
a speech in a hall in Plymouth. “I force-èd be spikker,” he explained,
because the man who was supposed to be “spikker” had such wrong ideas.
Bart knew that any one who discussed anarchist ideals in public in
these critical days ran risk of arrest, and of deportation or worse.
But he would not be silenced, and Cornelia knew that he would not, and
did not even suggest it. “Anarchista musta make propaganda!”
The children had got hold of the comic supplement, and were devouring
it, laughing over the jokes and explaining them to their mother. This
humor dealt with incipient young criminals, who perpetrated every
indignity upon their elders. And meantime the elders were reading about
the product of a previous decade of comic papers--the “crime wave” and
its latest manifestations. There was more news about the Bridgewater
hold-up, which Cornelia had heard Abner Thornwell discussing.
Bridgewater was only twenty-two miles from Plymouth, and in the same
county, so the attempted robbery had been much talked about. Now the
shoe-company was offering a thousand dollars’ reward for the bandits,
and Vanzetti remarked, “You offer plenty money, you catch plenty
feller. Is always polissmen, witness, for swear poor feller in jail.”
He went on to say, how stupid for people to be surprised by the crime
wave. “You send million feller to Europe, you put heem in army, give
gun, teach heem keell; you bring heem back, he go home, find some odder
feller got his job, got his girl; he look for job, cannot find, he is
hungry--you think he don’t steal? Is foolish for not onderstand, is
people do not want onderstand.”
“You think the cause of crime is always economic?”
“Shoore, Nonna, I not think all men alike. Some men is strong, is got
what you call--carattere--”
“Character.”
“He will not do crime, he will die before do crime. But nodder man, he
is weak, is too much tempt, he sees friend do crime, get plenty money,
he try sometime, maybe get caught, he go jail. Is worst place for make
criminal, is jail, is like school, learn how to do it. You go like me,
Nonna, you work one job, work nodder job, meet onderd, meet thousand
worker, you meet plenty young criminal, young feller vanaglorioso for
what he do, think he is smart feller; I hear heem talk, I know what
is make crime wave. Is great reech men, spend beeg money--automobile,
gooda dress, fine lady--what you say, lusso--luxury. Poor feller, he
look, he like to live sooch life, have plenty money, plenty girl. He
say, ‘How come it reech man he get it, how come in bég-ginnin’”--Bart
accented the word on the first syllable--“how come in bég-ginnin’ he
make the money? Is reecha man honest? Is it sistema honest? He see
everywhere beeg thief get plenty money, not ever punish. He see, you
steal thousand dollar, you call-èd bandit, you steal million dollar,
you call-èd banker. Is it not true, Nonna?”
Cornelia thought of Jerry Walker and his felt-plants. “It is sometimes
true, Bart.”
“All right, is injoostice. So long you have injoostice, is crime; more
injoostice, more crime. Is like something you make in chimica--it come
all time the same way. But reech man he not like to hear sooch thing,
is better for heem call bad name, make polissman, put heem in blue
clothe, give heem big cloob, send heem out to hit poor feller on head,
put heem in jail. Big crime come, all right, get more polissman, make
thousand dollar what you call it--reward--get plenty stool-pigeon, you
onderstand?”
“Yes, I know what you mean.”
“Is always rotten feller, swear anything for money, send somebody to
jail. All polissman want is catch somebody, all newspaper want is
catch somebody, fill up jail, so reecha man is happy, is what you call
law and order. You wait, Nonna, you see--thousand dollar will make
sure--catch plenty Bridgewater bandit!”
Strange and awful are the fates that dispose of mortals--leading us
blindfolded through curtains of black fog. How could it happen that
Bart could speak such words, and no shaft of lightning split the fog,
no warning finger pierce the curtain, no voice shout in thunder-tones,
“You! You! You!” They sat chatting casually, criticizing each other’s
theories; the children laughed, bringing them pictures of the Goofy
Googles; Alfonsina washed the dinner dishes, and Vincenzo, not being
able to share in the argument, fell asleep in his chair; the gold-fish
wiggled their silken-filmy tails, and the Powers that sent the universe
on its course, benevolent or heedless, omniscient or omninescient, sent
no smallest hint of the fact that Bartolomeo Vanzetti was himself that
“poor feller” whom the thousand-dollar reward was to bring down for the
Bridgewater crime!
VIII
Cornelia went back to Boston, and found a letter from Betty:
“I have been having so many adventures, I hardly know where to
start telling. I have been experiencing very eloquent and romantic
love-making from one of the sons of ‘Archie.’ That is our nickname
for the Austrian arch-duke who came in with the Roumanian armies
and put himself on the throne, to the great dismay of the allies.
This son is tall and somber and splendidly-idle. I can understand
how it is that American husbands are found unsatisfactory. I try
to imagine Father or Uncle James making such speeches! He pays
endless compliments in carefully perfected English; but the trouble
is he doesn’t really know me at all. He is content that I am the
daughter of a rich American banker; he doesn’t guess my political
opinions, and I dare not tell him, because I might lose my job! But
it will be a good thing for His Highness to have his self-assurance
reduced. He says that American girls are made of marble, and I
smile and tell him it is his first contact with a social equal.
Then I have to explain about the Back Bay!
“Also there is an undersecretary at the legation who is eating
his heart out over me. He is quite different, rather tongue-tied,
but serious, I fear. He comes from the middle west, and doesn’t
really know me either--though of course it is possible for him to
understand how I can be virtuous though unchaperoned. I am also
causing misery to a young lady of our mission, who is in love with
the undersecretary. Apparently not all the troubles in Europe are
enough to keep people from entanglements of the heart. I think
it is rather the contrary, the general disorganization upsets
everybody, and leaves the fancy roaming.
“While I am on the subject, I might mention that I was violently
besieged by one of the Bolshevik agents before he took flight to
Switzerland disguised as a chauffeur. He told me I was not truly
a free woman at all, but a wretched little Puritan that would dry
up and blow away at an early age. I showed him Cousin Letitia, who
is still capable of being thrilled, but not of being seduced, even
by the elderly playwright Hubay. There is something inside our
marrow-bones, deeper than we realize, and stronger than our ideas.
Roger Lowell would be surprised to hear that about me! Anyhow, I
am sure there will be no love-affairs for me until I get back to
America; it would be like a romance in a morgue.
“The suffering here is dreadful beyond words. I suppose you get
news in the papers, but probably not true, because everything is
propaganda for somebody or something. It really was the charitable
Mr. Hoover who overthrew the Reds here in Hungary. I don’t know
if it is published at home, but here all his aides are proud of
it, and tell the details and boast. We are managed by a California
lawyer, one of Herbert’s intimate friends, and they not merely
blockaded and boycotted Red Hungary, but they bought some of the
labor leaders to overthrow the Bolsheviks.
“It has been like a kaleidescope; you never know when you wake up
in the morning who is governing you--till you get to the office
and hear what happened during the night. The Reds went out, and
then came the Roumanian army with ‘Archie,’ and we had to drive
him out and get a White régime--which is rapidly turning into a
dictatorship. Those poor fool labor-leaders who let themselves be
used to turn out the Reds have mostly been shot or had their skulls
cracked, and I wonder what our noble-minded Herbert thinks about
it. There ought to be some way to make the White gentlemen come sit
in the pools of blood, as we relief-workers have to do.
“It has taught me my lesson; ‘law and order’ talk will never fool
me again. It really seems as if our master-minds want to teach
labor that there can be no middle course, and no honesty or decency
in the class struggle. The Reds here fell because they were too
gentle, and let their enemies plot against them. The Russians made
a clean sweep, so they survive. And don’t let any one fool you
about the amount of killing they did; don’t let any one frighten
you with talk about the ‘mob.’ From this time on I take the dear
‘mob’ to my heart; I am only afraid of dashing young gentlemen
in gaudy uniforms, and elderly diplomats and business men in
dinner-jackets. There isn’t a country in Central Europe where the
Whites haven’t killed ten for every one the Reds have killed, and
in many cases it has been a hundred for one.
“And the worst is, Grannie, these White dictatorships are all
American-made--with guns and uniforms from our army and dollars
from our bankers. They have got an American loan here in Hungary,
and I am wondering if father is in on it. He probably won’t tell
you, but ask Uncle Quincy--he knows. If it’s true, I’ll never take
another dollar from Father--and I’ll tell him so.
“Dear Grannie, do please take care of yourself, because if anything
were to happen to you, what would I do, with not a soul to
understand me? Sometimes I get frightened, and get alone in my room
and have a good cry; because, after all, it is absurd to think that
a girl not yet twenty-one should know more than all her family put
together. You know what Great-aunt Priscilla says, so very calmly:
‘You will be wiser when you are older.’
“Maybe the ‘antis’ were right, Grannie--women are not meant to
meddle in politics! Maybe we ought to stay at home and look after
the babies, like Aunt Clara. But when we get the babies raised, the
old men step in and send them off to the battle-field, so what’s
the use? I go over and over it in my mind, and the only conclusion
is that this generation of girls must go on strike, and refuse to
have babies until the men stop killing. So I shall stick it out,
and when I come back the family will find me worse than ever.
I suppose you are having troubles enough at home; tell me all,
but write as if I did not agree with your ideas. I have a way of
getting this letter smuggled out, but your letters to me may be
opened, and I don’t want to lose my job quite yet.”
IX
Yes, Cornelia had her troubles. The day after New Year’s there burst
upon Boston and the whole country a storm known as the deportations
delirium. To the Quaker Attorney-General had come a brilliant idea; he
would win the Democratic nomination for the presidency, upon the basis
of his heroic services in deporting the Reds. The two million dollars
which Congress had voted him would be turned into a campaign fund for
the glory of Jesus Christ and William Penn.
The ingenious Quaker arranged to lure his victims into public meetings,
and have the police appear suddenly and bar the doors, and sort out
all the foreign ones, and load them into patrol wagons. The problem of
getting the Reds all over the country to come to meetings on the same
night was comparatively simple, because the government had put so many
spies into the radical organizations that they had elected themselves
to office, and were in position to call meetings whenever they pleased.
Also they had been able to vote resolutions and adopt manifestos of
such violence as to make the deportations legally possible. As Federal
Judge Anderson of Boston said when the facts came out in his court: “It
is perfectly clear on the evidence before me that the Government owned
and operated a part, at least, of the Communist Party.” It was one time
when all business men believed in government ownership!
The raids were scheduled for the night of January second, 1920, and
netted some four thousand prisoners. Twenty cities and towns in New
England contributed a thousand--including thirty-nine who had met for
the purpose of organizing a cooperative bakery. The prisoners were
lined up against the walls of police-stations, searched and beaten by
detectives, denied counsel, denied reliable translators, and sentenced
on the spot by officials of the Department of Immigration. They were
loaded into vans and taken to the immigration station in Boston, and
thence to Deer Island prison. In order to make the utmost possible
amount of campaign material for the Quaker Attorney-General, the
victims were chained together in pairs, and paraded down State Street,
past the old State House, and over the rings of cobble-stones that
mark the site of the Boston Massacre. Such a novelty brought newspaper
photographers in swarms, and the story stayed on the front page for
several days. Never such advertising for a presidential candidate.
Also the Department of Justice agents saw to it that good reading
matter was supplied for the pictures. Four bombs had been found at one
meeting, said the report; they were taken to a police station and put
into a pail of water--and apparently dissolved in the water, for they
were never heard of in court. Among the organizations raided was an
amateur dramatic society, which had rented some old guns for use in
a play; so the newspapers reported a “red arsenal.” Apart from stage
properties, the police acquired a total of four firearms: this by a
search of four thousand persons, and raiding their homes and breaking
into their trunks. Apparently they had selected for deportation the
least military group of individuals in America.
Here were the troubles for Cornelia Thornwell. Four hundred men and
women jammed into cells in Deer Island prison, with broken window-panes
in the midst of New England winter, with no blankets, no mattresses,
and no adequate toilet facilities. Husbands torn from wives, mothers
separated from their babies--and all held according to the genial
Spanish custom known as “incommunicado,” denied lawyers, denied any
information as to their fate. One woman, attending a meeting with her
little girl, had been dragged to jail, and the child left to wander
alone through the streets of Boston all that January night. One man
flung himself over a railing five stories above the ground, and dashed
out his brains in sight of the rest of the prisoners. Another went
insane, and several others were on the verge. And concerning all this
mass of misery no mention in the newspapers, and vilification for any
one who dared to protest.
So Cornelia must sit at the telephone for hours, and argue and plead
with her friends, and rush off to committee meetings, and get a
stenographer and dictate letters, and pay for long telegrams to
congressmen and senators and officials in Washington and New York. She
must besiege club-women, and plead for opportunities to speak. She
must meet newspaper reporters and give long interviews which never saw
the light. She must haunt the doors of officials, and waylay them on
the street when they would not see her. She must start a subscription
list, and go round like a Salvation Army “lassie,” irritating bankers
and lawyers and merchants, and their wives and daughters in the Sewing
Circle, abusing her social position in shameless fashion to get at
people, and tell them such harrowing stories that they would put
up good Brahmin money to buy blankets for Bolsheviks, and milk for
starving babies whose mothers and fathers had committed the crime of
belonging to political parties owned and operated by the Department of
Justice.
And this no job of a few days, but of months. The Quaker presidential
candidate was slow to realize that he could not produce evidence
against eighty per cent of all those he had seized. In Boston, through
an unfortunate oversight, there was a Federal judge who believed that
law-enforcers ought to obey the laws they enforced. He declared from
the bench that a mob was a mob, even when it was made up of Department
of Justice agents. He would issue writs for one prisoner after another,
and when the prisoner was able to prove that he was an American
citizen, or that he hadn’t actually joined the Department of Justice
party, the victim would be turned loose. But all that took time--and
meanwhile there were a thousand or two children to be fed, and as many
falsehoods to be refuted, and only a small group of rebel ladies to do
it.
X
Almost every Sunday during that winter Vanzetti came up to Boston. He
was doing well with his fish-peddling, and in between times shoveling
snow or cutting ice, so he had money for the trip and for propaganda.
In the midst of all this repression he had made up his mind that the
anarchistas must have a paper, and he was raising the seven hundred and
fifty dollars needed to buy a linotype machine; he had even written a
couple of articles to appear in the new paper, and was working hard to
“culture himself,” studying both Italian and English. He came to have
supper with Cornelia one evening, and when she ventured to point out
the dangers of his course, he answered that you could never accomplish
anything if you quit in times of danger. The times of accomplishment
were bound to be times of danger--trust the capitalistas for that.
Many of the Galleani group had been deported; Coacci had been
arrested--one of those two men who had brought a package of books to
Bart--Cornelia had met him. The gruppo had raised a thousand dollars’
bail for him, and now he was under sentence of deportation. Also Nick
Sacco was making his plans to take his family back to Italy. Great
events were coming this next summer--perhaps the real revolution--and
Nick as a man of action wanted to be there.
Yes, it would not be bad to be sent to Italy just now; but alas, you
didn’t always get there! Bart told the terrible story of Compagno
Marucco, who had been put on a steamer and never heard of again. All
the anarchistas believed he had been pushed overboard on the way,
because he had detected some of the government spies working among the
group. Another man had hanged himself in his cell; had he really done
that, or had somebody done it for him? You needed nerves of steel to go
on with propaganda in the midst of events like that!
Bart talked about the spies. One had been exposed by Carlo Tresca in
New York: Ravarini, who had posed as an anarchista for many months, one
of the violent kind, a follower of Ravachol. One of his plans had been
to revive “La Cronaco Sovversiva”; he had offered to get the money, and
had suggested Bart for editor. But Bart had been too modest, he did not
consider himself a well enough educated man.
This Ravarini had been seeking to fasten the bombings onto the Galleani
group; for the government agents had apparently convinced themselves
that this group was guilty. Bart discussed the idea, and he said there
was no such great nonsense in the whole world. He pointed out what had
happened--the police had arrested hundreds of anarchistas, and searched
their homes, and had never found a bomb, nor anything having to do with
a bomb. Some day the truth would come out--the guilt lay with detective
agents, “feller get rich by hunting anarchista.”
“You think they would kill innocent people?” asked Cornelia.
“Is not many people keell-èd, Nonna! Bombe blow up little piece of
house, sometime when people is out, or sleep upstair and not get
hurted. You want keell somebody, is not sooch difficultee, plenty
people keell-èd all time, plenty Italian keell you cheap--what you call
it, black hand. I know sooch feller, plenty, hear heem talk in café,
vanaglorioso for what he do. He say, ‘No sooch great keeller in whole
state Massachusetts; nobody shoot so queeck, so straight.’ You pay heem
onderd dollar, next night your nemico he die. What for make big bombe,
big noise?”
“But they sent bombs by mail, Bart!”
“Shoore, send mail--but he not put on stamp enough--the mail do not
go! What follia, Nonna! Think, amica mia, how easy to find out what is
postage! You not need take bombe to post-office, no sooch reesk--no,
you go any post-office, any town, you say, what postage for take five
pound, ten pound, twenty pound, what you like to send. You say, got
package for New York, for Chicago, any place. You not go self, send
odder man, send child, you get stamp, million people buy stamp. But
see, Nonna--anarchista is sooch fool, he get dinnameet, he pay money,
make twenty bombe, get address, send to this man, to odder man, send to
Boston, New York, Lawrence, Passaic, all place--but not got sense for
finding out ow mooch stamp! Is crazy thing, Nonna, is imbecillità!”
“You think government agents did it?”
“Not go-vérnment, but what you call private agent--big feller, make
million dollar. He make big scare, Congress vote money, big banker
get bad fright, he spend money, he say, you sava my life, you catch
anarchista, you put heem in jail, so he not blow up the bank, he not
keell me. Look, amica mia, you read paper, you see this morning, big
banker make--what you call--notizia--avviso--”
“Advertisement.”
“Avvertisament, whole page, scare people, say polissman must catch the
red, the bomber, the anarchista, musta deport, must put in jail. Is
patriottismo, militarismo--you see in paper?”
Yes, Cornelia had seen it, and not for the first time; it had become
quite the fashion for groups of leading citizens, bankers, merchants,
the Chamber of Commerce or other civic groups, to publish full-page
advertisements warning the public of the imminent danger of red riot
and insurrection. “Yes, I read it,” she told Bart--but was ashamed
to add that among the signers that morning was Rupert Alvin, her
son-in-law, and John Quincy Thornwell, her nephew-in-law!
XI
Almost a year had passed since the mailing of those “May Day bombs,”
and still the police had not succeeded in catching any of the senders;
so naturally there was dissatisfaction on the part of patriots. What
was the purpose of a huge secret service agency, built up at enormous
expense? The loyal newspaper publishers forbore to express impatience
in print, but privately they were outraged. A first-class red scare
meant millions in increased sales, but how could the most ingenious
editors and reporters keep excitement alive without a few facts?
The Department of Justice had one set of clews. A bomb had blown out
the front of the home of the Attorney-General, the Quaker gentleman who
was planning to move to the White House, and the man who carried this
bomb had apparently himself been blown up. The authorities claimed to
have identified the fragments as belonging to an Italian anarchist by
the name of Valdinoci, one of the Galleani group. He had worn sandals,
and in his pockets had been some leaflets in crude English, proclaiming
anarchist ideas. The purpose for which the spy Ravarini had been set to
work was to find the printing office in which this circular had been
set up.
Ravarini sent contributions of money to Malatesta in Italy, and got
letters from him, and then appeared among the comrades in Boston and
New York, a very ardent Red, with literature to be printed, and precise
ideas as to how it was to look. He would hang about an anarchist
print-shop for several weeks, and have his stuff set up many times,
or would come and set it up for himself. In this way he tried all the
type in several printing offices; and at last in a shop in Brooklyn he
found, or claimed to find, what the Department of Justice believed was
the type from which the Valdinoci leaflets had been printed. It was the
office of an anarchist paper called _Il Domani_--“To-morrow”--and the
printers of this paper, two Italians by the name of Salsedo and Elia,
were arrested and taken to the offices of the Department of Justice in
the Park Row Building in lower New York.
The genial custom of holding prisoners without allowing them to
communicate with their friends or even with an attorney is one for
which we have neglected to invent an American name. But for the custom
of torturing prisoners to make them confess, we have our jolly slang,
“the third degree,” and all judges and lawyers in America know that it
is employed, and all pretend not to know it, and when evidence obtained
by torture is produced in court, all judges and lawyers solemnly accept
it, and at the same time go on believing in the constitutional rights
of accused men. It is obvious that in no other way can the system of
inequality of property be maintained, and any one who denounces the
“third degree” is liable to suspicion of “redness.”
Salsedo and Elia were held for three weeks in the Department of Justice
offices with no warrant of law. At last Salsedo succeeded in smuggling
out a letter to Vanzetti, who took it to the anarchist group in Boston.
They knew without being told that the two men were being tortured, for
the purpose of forcing them to implicate other anarchists in bombing
plots. On Sunday, April 25th, there was a meeting of the group and
it was decided that somebody must go to New York to consult with the
comrades there and see what could be done for the victims. The choice
fell upon Vanzetti, and he went, and called upon Carlo Tresca, editor
of _Il Martello_, whom he had never seen before. “Don’t you know me,
Carlo?” he said, gently. “I am Vanzetti.” He had been sending in
collections for the support of the paper, and occasionally writing
articles. Tresca embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks, Italian
fashion.
The two of them set out down the street: Vanzetti no small man, but
outtowered by his companion, whom the strike-police used to call “the
bull.” In Mesaba, where the Back Bay families of Boston were holding
onto their hills of copper, they framed him for first degree murder,
and kept him in jail for nine months. They put three bullets into him,
at different times. One side of his face was disfigured, and during the
Paterson strike a newspaper published his picture with the caption,
“Who Will Be a Good Citizen and Make the Two Sides of This Face Alike?”
Seven times they arrested him during this desperate strike of the
silk-workers. Now the Department of Justice was anxious to get him
again, and was soon to do it--for the crime of demoralizing Italian
Catholic women by a two-line advertisement of a pamphlet on birth
control!
Carlo and Bart were going to see an Italian lawyer who had been
hired to help Salsedo and Elia; he had offices directly underneath
the Department of Justice rooms--an arrangement that Carlo found
suspicious. But it was a problem how to change, because Carlo could
not get to the prisoners, and Salsedo’s wife had been so terrified by
the detectives that she did not know what to do. They saw the lawyer,
and Carlo wrote a note for the prisoners, and the lawyer took it
upstairs, and came back and reported that Elia had refused to read it,
and Salsedo was “getting crazy” and would not answer any questions.
This confirmed their worst fears, so they consulted an American lawyer,
connected with the Civil Liberties Union, who agreed to seek an
interview. Bart said he would go back to Boston and send fifty dollars
of his own money, and raise more to pay the lawyer.
There was one other thing Bart wanted to do in New York--to see the
Statue of Liberty. He had missed the sight when he had come to this
country, because his steamer had arrived in a fog. And while it was
true that America was not living up to this statue, still it was a
world symbol of the cause to which Bart was dedicating his life. But
they were too late for the boat which goes out to Bedloe’s Island, and
Bart was so much disappointed he almost had tears in his eyes. “All the
years I have wanted to see it!” he said to Carlo.
XII
The day Vanzetti went to New York Cornelia spent packing two trunks.
There had come a quite amazing telegram from Betty in Vienna: “Letitia
married Hubay my color discovered job flooey tired need recreation come
immediately positively summer Italian lake reply Hotel Royal.” Cornelia
called up Deborah, and first read the message and then translated it;
and after Deborah had voiced indignation at the treason of a poor
relation, and horror at the idea of her daughter unchaperoned in a
center of notorious gayety, she asked what Cornelia was going to do,
and actually hinted for her to join Betty. So much had four years of
defeat tamed the family!
Cornelia had been exerting herself beyond her strength. She was
sixty-five years old now--as her daughters never failed to remind
her--and for four months she had not rested a day. A summer on an
Italian lake with Betty for company sounded very good, and she said she
would go, and Deborah undertook to have her husband use his influence
to get some kind of special passport immediately, and to engage passage
on a steamer, and even pay for it. Cornelia and Betty would be taken
back into the family again, and have the services of all-powerful males
to make smooth their paths in whatever part of the world they chose to
roam.
The _Floritania_ was to sail from New York on Saturday afternoon, and
on Friday morning Vanzetti telephoned to Cornelia, still in Boston.
He had just arrived from New York and wanted to tell her the news.
She asked him to lunch with her, and heard from his lips the terrible
story of Salsedo and Elia. She knew the former of these two men, who
had worked as a printer in Boston, and had come to the “picanics”: a
frail little fellow, suffering from tuberculosis--“he very bad now,”
said Bart; “wife she think they keell heem.” Bart had been to the
savings-bank that morning and drawn out fifty dollars and sent it to
Carlo, according to his promise; and Cornelia said she also would
contribute fifty, and wrote a check. She felt quite rich that day,
having several of Rupert’s handsome and impressive bank-drafts.
It seemed a shame to be going away for a holiday in a crisis like this.
But Bart said instantly that Cornelia must not think of it; he agreed
with her daughters that she was an old lady, and needed a rest, and
nothing should interrupt it. He talked about the Italian lakes, not
very far from where he had been born. “Sooch lovely countree! Gooda
people, work hard, live simple, naturale. You be happy, live outdoor,
walk in wood, pick little flower, send to me. I pick you mayflower,
send heem in letter.” Then he added, “Maybe I come, we take little boat
in Italian lake, Comrade Betty she sing little song! I think I like be
deport!”
“Take care of yourself, Bart!” said Cornelia. “If you want to come, pay
your fare, so then you can return.”
Bart laughed, and made his usual answer: “Anarchista musta make
propaganda!” She learned that even in the midst of these perils he was
organizing meetings and distributing literature. He was working with
that Italian, Boda--“you know heem, little feller, macaroni salesman,
he drive us one time for see dramma when we go Nick Sacc’.”
“I remember him.”
“He is got same little car. Is go bust in winter, but now he get
heem fixit, pretty soon he drive heem, we distriboot the books!” And
Bart laughed, like a bad boy. “Book wit’ red cover what so scare
polissman--you remember book is bring Coacci and Orciani one time in
Plymouth?”
“Yes, very well.”
“Is very bad book, molto pericoloso, is red anarchista cover, ‘Faccia à
Faccia col Nemico.’ Is reason for deporting Coacci--they find six copy
by heem, he say is the reason. He is gone two week now, maybe is Italy.
I get hees what you say--address--he got wife and children leav-èd
behind in Brockton. You maybe see heem in Italy.”
“Have you got any of those books in your house, Bart?”
“Shoore, two, t’ree copy, sell heem sometime. Nick Sacc’ is got more.
Nick he is not ’fraid, he go anyhow, is got passport, ticket, all
fixit. You not see Nick in Italy, he live in Sout’, way down in what
you call boot. He is happy feller, go Italy. Is got fifteen onderd
dollar save in bank--wife, she make heem sava ten dollar all week. Now
he go see rivoluzione, maybe help. Is young feller, can not stay here
when sooch great time come, can not be happy for trim edge of pretty
shoe for fine gentleman!”
“You really think there’s a revolution coming in Italy?”
“You watch, maybe see heem! Great sight for Yankee lady--nobody
harm you. Italian worker, he think America is free countree, good
countree--he think he make Italy be countree like America! He do not
know what happen to poor wop in Massachusett, he not read in paper how
Department of Joostice agent take poor seeck printer, torture heem,
beat heem, to make heem tell what Joostice agent want to be tell-èd!”
So it was with Bart--difficult to make jokes, or to plan for a holiday,
because all brain-paths led to these dreadful cruelties and sufferings.
Impossible to enjoy a luncheon, neatly served by a much-puzzled Negro
maid! No, Bart would begin to twist bread-crumbs into little pellets,
which was very bad manners; his look would grow abstracted and far
off, and Cornelia would understand that he was up in the fourteenth
story of the Park Row Building in New York, where two comrades might at
that moment be hanging by their thumbs, or having their arms twisted
behind their backs.--As a matter of fact they were being beaten in the
face with blood-stained shoes, said to have been worn by the bomber
who had been blown to fragments in front of the home of the Quaker
Attorney-General. It was a refinement of imagination difficult for an
uncultured Italian to foresee.
XIII
That night there was a theater-party, given by Rupert Alvin to
serve notice upon the world that all was well between himself and
his departing mother-in-law. They sat, very conspicuous, in a box,
Cornelia, Rupert and Deborah, their daughter Priscilla, Cornelia’s
nephew-in-law, Quincy Thornwell, and her second daughter, Alice
Thornwell Winters, who had given up her latest adorer in deference to
the family’s demands, and was now being rewarded in this public manner.
They saw an expensive and highly sophisticated comedy from New York,
dealing with people of their own social station who did not have to
give up anything, not even one another’s wives. After which the Alvin
limousine rolled to the station, and Cornelia and Deborah took the
midnight train to New York.
Next morning they drove in a taxi-cab, and inspected the fashionable
shops, and Deborah bought a few things, but Cornelia did not buy,
because everything would be so much cheaper abroad. They lunched at one
of the fashionable hotels, and took another taxi to the steamer; and on
the way Cornelia said to the driver, “Where is the Park Row Building?”
“Way downtown, ma’am, by City Hall Park.”
“We don’t go near it?”
“Not unless you want to make a trip.”
“Never mind,” said Cornelia; and her daughter asked, “Why are you
interested in the Park Row Building?”
“Oh, nothing; a couple of friends of mine have been tortured there for
the past three weeks.”
It was like that with Cornelia nowadays--impossible to carry on polite
conversation, to enjoy any sort of holiday. Deborah had to shut
her lips tight together, and pretend she had not heard. And pretty
soon there was the mighty steamer; the crowds, and the partings,
and the waving of handkerchiefs, and the promises to take good care
of yourself, and to write often, and to give my love to So-and-so;
and then a tear or two, and the gangways coming up, and the great
steamer sliding out into the river, and the tugs straightening it for
the journey. And then the long panorama of towering white and gray
buildings, the magical sky-line of Manhattan--
_Did ever a dream-city rise from the sea
That was fairer, more fleeting and fragile than she?_
But Cornelia missed all the poetical ecstasies, because she was
thinking, “Which is the Park Row Building? And which is the fourteenth
story?”
But there was no one to ask, and soon the sky-line faded, and there
was the Statue of Liberty, and she thought of Bart, and what it meant
to him. Then came the ocean, and the rolling of the ship, and she was
in her state-room for two days. When she came on deck again, there was
the daily newspaper, published from wireless reports for the benefit of
the vessel’s leisure class; and Cornelia read that at three o’clock on
the morning of the third of May, an Italian anarchist by the name of
Salsedo, held by the Department of Justice for complicity in the bomb
explosions of a year ago, had committed suicide by throwing himself
from the fourteenth story of the Park Row Building in New York.
No more details of such a horror, to trouble the sleek and contented
passengers of the _Floritania_. But two more days passed, and the
ship’s newspaper contained another item, this time from Brockton,
Massachusetts. Two Italians, leaders of a bandit-gang, had been nabbed
by the police, charged with the murder of the paymaster and a guard
of the Slater and Morrill shoe factory of South Braintree, and the
theft of a payroll of sixteen thousand dollars. It was believed that
this band had been responsible for numerous payroll hold-ups in
Eastern Massachusetts during the past year, and the police expected to
nab the other members within a few hours. Cornelia read this, but it
meant nothing special, for there was hardly a day that papers did not
report hold-ups from some part of the country; and in this case the
news-service had not thought it worth while to mention that the names
of the two arrested men were Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.