Boston a novel
“Have you read the record?” If you answered “No,” then you were
disqualified. The Governor had read the record, so he said. If you
answered, “Yes,” the question would be, “Where did you get it?”--for
the defense had only two transcripts of the full testimony, and two
or three copies of the “bill of exceptions,” usually called “the
record.” If you were able to convince him that you had had access to
any of these, he would say, “Have you interviewed the witnesses?”
And of course that would “stump” you; how could any one interview
the witnesses, when the lawyers for the defense couldn’t even get
the Governor’s secretary to give them the names and addresses of the
witnesses? You would answer, “No,” and the Governor would reply, “Well,
I know about this case, and you don’t.”
All that mass of complications--a million words of printed testimony,
and many times that much spoken into one human ear--and he really
thought he could carry it all! Serene, even jaunty, he would come into
his office, wearing his automatic smile, and greeting the reporters,
“Good morning, boys, a fine day!” He did not ask for help, and gave no
thanks when it was offered. Hjalmar Branting, a lawyer from Sweden, son
of the prime minister, came over to study the case, and devoted a month
to it, becoming certain that the men were innocent. He was granted
an hour, and the Governor spent five minutes talking about Sacco and
Vanzetti, and the rest talking about the market for automobiles in
Sweden. A thrifty supersalesman, making hay even while the thunder
rolled and the lightning split the sky!
The floods of mail poured in. Trucks came, bringing masses of
petitions; some thirty packages, registered, from France, representing
three million signatures, patiently collected at workingmen’s meetings.
They were burned in the basement furnaces, at night, when the heat
would not be troublesome. Messenger boys brought telegrams by the
bundle; they were sorted out, one kind for the newspapers, the other
for the fires. Said the private secretary: “Everybody wants those wops
executed, except people who don’t know how to spell their names.” He
gave out the letter of the Reverend Llewellyn E. Darling, of Grace
Evangelical Church of Everett, reporting that a vote had been taken
among his Sunday congregation, and it was unanimous in demanding
that the convicted men should die. “We believe,” wrote this Darling
Reverend, “that the source of the petitions for their release is
un-American and would eventually destroy the government of the United
States.” Comrade Jesus, on his golden throne above, rose up and gave
three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue.
XVI
Cornelia had put off visiting the State House; she would see what
happened to others, and judge the best way of proceeding. Now she asked
Henry Cabot Winters to arrange an interview; and he offered to go
along--a notice to a politician that she was still a member of a great
family, in spite of all her vagaries. The supersalesman would be polite
to her, but also he would be grim, for she was a dangerous woman. He
held her to blame for a great part of the publicity which this case
had obtained; he had visions of her spending secretly the Thornwell
millions in an effort to get her own perverse way.
Cornelia had never met him; he had been a name to her so far. Now she
sat in his chamber and studied those eyes, so cold, expressionless--a
curious thing, they made you think literally of agates. His face was
round, his head partly bald, his costume immaculate, his smile as it
were dead. He sat with his back to the window, so that in the matter of
vision he had the advantage over his visitors. A large mahogany desk;
a green blotter, with a few papers, a fancy bronze ink-stand, and a
little state flag on a standard for patriotism. A large room, done in
white, with large white doors and heavy carpet and a fireplace never
used. “I guess you have seen all this many times, Mrs. Thornwell,” he
said, respectfully.
Yes, Cornelia had seen it. “When I was a little girl, the old home of
John Hancock stood out there in front.” So they talked “Boston,” and
perhaps she would have done better if she had talked nothing else;
her social prestige was really the only thing that stood any chance.
In a chair at one side sat Mr. Joseph Wiggin, the Governor’s private
counsel, a Harvard man and a blue-blood, smiling and quizzical; he
would have conspired with her in that kind of enterprise, if she had
put it up to him in the right, “old Boston” way. To charm an automobile
salesman and persuade him to make a concession as a matter of social
favor, the right of an aristocratic old lady to have her feelings
spared!
Cornelia set out to tell about Vanzetti, and how well she knew him,
and what a fine man he was. The Governor listened, but soon tired of
it. “I haven’t the time to deal with backgrounds and psychology, Mrs.
Thornwell.” She tried to show him what backgrounds and psychology
meant. “Consider Nick. They tell us he went out and stole sixteen
thousand dollars, and then came back to his shoe factory and earned
thirty-seven dollars and eighty cents!” But she was rousing his male
combativeness. “They had to go on working in the factory,” he argued.
“They couldn’t have afforded to change their habits.”
Cornelia was studying the bland face and the strange expressionless
eyes. What sort of man was this? What motives would sway him? A
business man, of a simple type, used to facing simple problems, like
those of price; the proper rental for a building, or wages for an
employee, easy to decide; a man of action, not a thinker. Now he had
to weigh the souls of idealists, he had to estimate social forces--and
they were completely beyond his comprehension. “I am a plain man, Mrs.
Thornwell, not an intellectual.” She had started to tell him about
Bart’s studies, the books she had seen him mastering by patient toil in
the night; but she realized that this was an affront to a merchant of
motor-cars who had been studying markets and prices. Neither would it
do any good to praise the unselfish motives of the two social rebels.
That, too, would give offense to the man of money. “These men who don’t
believe in private property must be depraved,” he had said.
She told him about the two trials, and what she had learned about the
various prosecution witnesses. The Governor praised these latter;
“clear-eyed,” was his word. Said the old lady, “Their eyes may be clear
from the outside looking in, but assuredly they were not clear from
the inside looking out.” She told the long story of the prevarications
and waverings of these witnesses, as proved by the records of the
preliminary hearings, and by the Pinkerton reports. The Governor knew
of these reports now, but he did not know what was in them, and was
puzzled by details. He did not even know the names of some witnesses.
She spoke of Behrsin, and the Governor said, “Cursin, who is Cursin?”
But everything polite, according to good form; he heard her to the end,
giving few signs of impatience. “I will give careful consideration
to what you tell me, Mrs. Thornwell. I have great respect for your
sincerity, and thank you for coming to see me.” Bows and smiles all
round, a pleasant hour--and utterly, utterly futile.
“The case is completely indigestible to him, he can’t hold it in his
mind.” Such was the judgment of Henry Cabot Winters, legal expert,
as he walked with his mother-in-law down the long marble corridors.
“You have to know a great deal about it in order to know anything, and
Fuller doesn’t know anything.”
“What will he do, Henry?”
“He’ll take somebody’s word for it. He’ll think he is deciding, but his
mind will make itself up without his realizing it. That’s the way he’s
gone through life--landing on his feet like a cat. What I’m afraid is,
he has landed already, and facing the wrong way.” As he said this, the
great lawyer put his arm under the old lady’s, and held her steady as
they walked towards his car. “It comes to this, Mother--what I said to
Rupert last night: you can make a chauffeur out of a governor, but you
can’t make a governor out of a chauffeur!”
CHAPTER XX
THE DECISION
I
On July twenty-ninth it was announced that the decision would be
given out on the third of August. That was a Wednesday, the day the
Governor’s council met; and this fact might have significance, because,
if he were going to grant clemency, the council would have to assent.
Shreds of evidence like that caused hope to rise in the balance. Rumors
would come, one way or the other; the Governor had said this, he had
asked that.
Joe Randall never wavered in his pessimism. “Fuller has no idea but
death; he never has had it for an instant, and he never will.” But some
of the other newspaper men thought differently; said one: “You can’t
tell me that a man so happy would send two human beings to the chair!”
Others had talked with members of the council, who told, in confidence,
of definite statements the Governor had made. The New York _Times_
correspondent sent his paper a detailed story to the effect that the
Governor meant to postpone the execution, and ask the legislature to
pass a special act providing for a new trial. The New York _World_ had
the same story; the _Herald Tribune_ followed.
On the day before August third a peculiar development. Calvin Coolidge,
President of the United States, was spending his summer vacation in the
Rockies, catching trout with worms, and having himself photographed in
ten-gallon hats and other moving picture appurtenances. He received the
newspaper “boys” on his front porch and handed them a typewritten slip
of paper reading, “I do not choose to run for President in nineteen
twenty-eight.” This economical sentence caused a thrill in the bosoms
of great numbers of public men; and enemies of Alvan T. Fuller imagined
that it decided the fate of Sacco and Vanzetti. Careful newspapers
like the New York _Times_ and _World_ do not often let themselves be
fooled as in this case--so these suspicious ones argued; something must
have changed the mind of the supersalesman on the night of the second
of August, causing him to give up the idea of clemency. Could it have
been a vision of himself, following the footsteps of “Cautious Cal”
up the political ladder; sweeping the next Republican convention in a
storm of enthusiasm for another hero who had “crushed the Reds”?
Whether there was any truth in this wild guess, none could say, except
Fuller himself. But this much is certain, he desperately wanted
that nomination; and it is interesting to note what happened in the
following year, when the Republican convention assembled. The name of
Alvan T. Fuller was put before the little group of rich men’s agents
who meet in a hotel room and determine nominations for president and
vice-president. The Governor’s friends set forth the heroic deed that
he had done, and the storm of fervor which this deed would rouse in the
bosoms of all patriots. But the politicians of 1928 remarked coldly
that this was not 1920. “The Republican party cannot afford to debate
the Sacco-Vanzetti case from now until the end of the campaign!”
There was not a single vote for the supersalesman; and so furious was
he in his disappointment that he refused to let ex-Governor Cox of
Massachusetts have the nomination in his place. To Senator Butler,
over the long-distance telephone wire, he said: “It will be Fuller or
nobody!”
II
August third, the day of the decision. The State House press room and
Governor’s office were not big enough to hold the mob of reporters, and
for the first time in Massachusetts history the legislative chamber was
turned over to their use, and the press gallery equipped with telegraph
wires. More than eighty men, like hunting-dogs held in leash, leaping