Boston a novel
comrade, and this comrade got drunk and talked! Did he talk to Governor
Fuller?”
“That is not the way I heard it.”
“Hardly! There are automobile salesmen who get people drunk, I suppose,
but not ardent Baptists, with Sunday school inclinations. We have to
assume that some government spy got the anarchist comrade drunk, and
then the anarchist comrade talked, and the spy told the Governor about
it. Or maybe even that is too undignified for a Governor--surely it
would have been for Mr. Lowell! Deborah, do you think Mr. Lowell would
stoop to listen to a spy?”
Deborah understood that this was a rhetorical question, and prudently
made no reply; Cornelia went on, working herself into a cold fury.
“Our dignity requires us to assume that the spy talked to some police
official, whose business it is to know spies. So then we have this:
Sacco or Vanzetti or Coacci or Orciani or Boda told an anarchist
comrade that they were guilty; this comrade got drunk and told a police
spy; this spy told the police; the police told the Governor; and the
Governor told Mr. Lowell and Mr. Stratton and Judge Grant! So they
have ‘confidential information,’ and decide that ‘on the whole’ they
think Vanzetti was guilty! That is how our laws are enforced, that is
our police system and our legal system and our judicial system and our
political system and our educational system! Such are the masters of
our youth and the guides of our intellectual life!”
“Mother--” began Deborah; but Cornelia exercised the privilege of age,
to do the talking when she wanted to.
“There is a saying--all three of our educated commissioners know it,
and possibly told it to our Governor--‘in vino veritas.’ But proverbs
are false more often than they are true. Think how many circumstances
there might be under which you would get falsehood from drunkenness,
instead of truth. Suppose there was some personal grudge; or some
vainglorious fool, taking pride in knowing a secret that was baffling
the whole world! Suppose it was some one who had heard a rumor, and
turned it into knowledge; suppose the talker were a Fascist agent,
a spy himself--such things have happened. Anything in the world can
happen, where men make their living by betrayal, and their rewards
depend upon the tales they bring in. I know enough about the anarchist
movement to say that you will find every sort of disordered mind in it;
also, you will find every kind of rascal among the men who are trying
to destroy it. From such a situation there arises a poisonous mist,
a gas cloud of gossip and scandal. I thought that the whole purpose
of our judicial system was to deliver men from such terrors; to force
accusers to come out into the daylight, in open court! But here our
great Commonwealth has proved itself worse than one of the Sewing
Circles!”
V
Cornelia sat up, with an announcement which terrified her family. “I am
going to see those boys before they die!”
“Mother! Mother!” All three of them started to protest at once.
Impossible! Not to be thought of!
“I went Saturday, and the warden wouldn’t let me see them. I wrote them
letters; but that is not enough, I refuse to accept it. I am not going
to let them go out of this world without bidding them good-by.”
“Mother, the strain would kill you!”
“It is less than the strain of lying here doing nothing. I am only two
or three miles from them--”
“A difficult two or three miles, Mother.” It was Henry speaking. “The
bridge is closed, and the streets roped off--”
“Governor Fuller can write a dozen words, and the road will be clear.
He is going to do it for me! I am going to have a talk with Bart--and
ask him to tell me the truth! I know that I can help him, and Nick,
too. I am going to see the Governor--phone for me, Henry, and make sure
he is still at his office.”
Cornelia got up, in spite of all protests, and began to arrange her
hair and put on her hat. Henry phoned, and got the information; then,
when he saw that all argument was futile--that she was going to call
a taxicab and go alone if necessary--he said: “Stay here, Mother, and
rest. I will go and get the pass for you--if Fuller will give it.”
“He _must_ give it! I will not take a refusal! It will cost him
nothing, it will do nobody any harm. Deborah, you go with Henry; you
gave that creature a dinner party, now make him pay for it!”
All right, Deborah would go; anything to keep the poor soul quiet for
another half hour. “It is a mad idea, Mother, but I will do the best I
can.”
“I know that you can do it! Promise me that you will do it, Henry--I
will never forgive you if you play me a trick.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Mother--”
“You might think it was for my good. But I know myself better than
you. I have a right to say good-by to those friends who have taught me
so much. Tell the Governor that maybe they will confess to me--he’ll
be fool enough to believe that, I am sure! Tell him that you are
very important persons, that he will shine by your reflected light!
Telephone me the moment you get the answer--because I am coming myself
if you fail!”
The State House lies just over the top of Beacon Hill, and it took
Henry’s car only five minutes to get there. Being large and expensive,
it went past the guards without delay, and very soon there was a
ring of the telephone by Cornelia’s bed; she took the receiver with
trembling hands, and heard the voice of her son-in-law: “All right,
Mother. The Governor has been so kind as to give his consent.” She
could tell by the phrasing and the tone of his voice that he was
speaking from the great man’s office.
She got up and got herself ready, with Clara’s help, and in a few
minutes Henry’s chauffeur was at the door, ready to assist her down the
stairs. Clara went along--they would all go, expecting her to collapse,
fearing she might die of the strain. Since opposition only made things
harder, they must turn themselves into slaves of her whim; at the same
time agreeing in their hearts with the Governor, they would be glad
when this was over!
VI
There sat a strange man in the seat by the chauffeur; a police official
in civilian clothing, who had been at the State House, and whom the
Governor had assigned as an escort. They came quickly to Prison Point
Bridge, across the Miller River to Charlestown, where the old prison
stands. At the bridge entrance the lights of the car fell upon officers
waving the traffic to a detour; behind them a solid line of blue-coats,
with riot-guns in hand; behind these latter a group of mounted men,
and behind them iron gates. A couple of motorcycle officers shot out
towards them, blowing a shrill warning to bring them to a halt.
So began the tedious process of breaking down the barriers which the
stern Commonwealth had set up against anarchists and bomb-throwers that
night. The police official produced the paper with the golden crest
at the top and the magic signature at the bottom. “To police officers
of Boston and Charlestown: You will permit Mr. Henry Cabot Winters
and party to drive to Charlestown prison this Monday evening. Warden
Hendry will permit Mrs. Thornwell to converse with Sacco and Vanzetti
for one hour, subject to his convenience, and without interference with
his plans. Alvan T. Fuller, Governor.” It was a signature familiar to
all Bostonians, being regularly attached to advertisements, telling
the eagerly expectant motor-world the latest wonders which “Packard”
had to impart. “This will prove to be the most popular model which
Packard has ever offered to sons and daughters who may have their own
cars.... When may we show you this latest offering?” It did not seem to
the Commonwealth at all humiliating to have a Governor who wheedled;
neither did it trouble the sons and daughters of the rich who were able
to have their own luxury cars that the same signature was attached to
advertisements and to death warrants.
The fact that the police official was not in uniform may have accounted
for the delay. One of the motorcycle men took the order back to the
group, to show to his superior; after which he rode out to the car
again and ordered it forward. The blue-clad lines gave way, the gates
swung open, and the car rolled through. But half way across the bridge,
there was another pair of gates, with another line of guardians,
and the same procedure to be repeated. It was like the German
entrenchments--the Hindenburg line, the Siegfried line, the Wotan line.
In the river, below the bridge, were speed-boats of the harbor-patrol,
their searchlights sweeping the docks and the tracks of the Boston and
Maine Railroad. Along the tracks were searchlights, three in a group,
weaving futurist patterns on the night.
A third line, strongest of all, at the Charlestown end of the bridge.
The military formalities were complied with, and the car started up
Austin Street, when the revolving searchlight on the prison tower
picked it out, and seemed to be a signal to a score of mounted troopers
to come galloping from every direction. Other searchlights, mounted on
the prison wall and sweeping up and down the streets, brought out their
figures, shining white for moments, then lost in semi-darkness.
“Why don’t you send a man to pass us through?” demanded the police
official, with some irritation; but apparently they hadn’t intended to
pass any one through. They had a deadline, three hundred yards from
the prison walls, blocking every street, and running over the tops of
houses, where men sat with machine-guns, and stores of tear-bombs. The
inhabitants of houses within the barred area were confined indoors, not
even permitted on the steps; they could lean out of windows, and the
searchlights shone upon rows of faces, staring white.
The instructions had been for the car to go to the warden’s home,
which constituted a separate entrance to the prison enclosure. “No
publicity, if you please, Mr. Winters,” the Governor had said; and
this was to the taste of a blue-blood family. The warden would be
notified by telephone to expect them, and would smuggle them in, with
no reporters crowding about, and no picturesque stories in the morning:
“Widow of Ex-Governor Visits Condemned Men in Last Hours!” The car had
to make a part circle of the aged fortress, and it gave even high-up
Brahmins a realization of their importance, the favor which was being
granted to them. Eight times they were halted and investigated; every
foot of the way the searchlights followed them suspiciously, revealing
bright bayonets and heavy riot guns, firemen with high pressure hoses
ready for action, rows of horsemen drawn up against the prison walls,
and motorcycles darting suddenly forth. Once a bomb went off--but
not a dangerous one; only newspaper photographers taking photographs
of the line of cavalry defending the main gate of the prison. Earth,
water, even air were being guarded; searchlights played in the sky--a
spiritualist medium having called at the prison, announcing that she
had had a vision of an airplane dropping bombs. The Sacco-Vanzetti case
had started from crystal-gazing, so it was reasonable that it should
end with clairvoyance.
VII
They came to the warden’s home and drew up at the curb. More parleys,
after which the police official assisted Cornelia out of the car. The
chauffeur was told to stay in his seat--no unnecessary chances taken.
Deborah and Clara and Henry would sit where they were. The armed men
stepped back, and the door opened, and prison guards met the visitors,
and silently led them through the house and into the yard, past the
cell-blocks, oblong brick buildings with rows of narrow barred windows.
The lights were out, and the prison was supposed to be asleep, but the
searchlights made the scene as bright as day, and nobody slept. There