Boston a novel
were white faces at the windows, and now and then a chorus of cries:
“Let them out! Let them out!” Wild beasts, barking, howling, roaring in
their cages!
To Cornelia it was as if she had taken Dante’s place, in a journey
through the various stages of hell: all this elaborate display of
killing power, a thousand intricate and ingenious inventions, all the
arts and sciences which civilization had contrived, applied to the
wholesale and instantaneous wiping out of human life. The fact that
this military force was for Cornelia’s protection, that it gave back
respectfully before the magic of her name, only filled her with the
greater abhorrence, only proved her thesis, that its purpose was not
justice, but the comfort and safety of the rich.
The death-house: a square brick building, immediately under the prison
wall, a highly unstrategic position, which in part accounted for the
need of a miniature army. Upon the wall with its wooden walk stood a
line of machine gunners, and men were lined up several deep upon the
sidewalk of Rutherford Avenue below the wall. Across the street were
firemen with four high-pressure hoses.
There was a group of guards at the door of the death-house, and the
warden came out, and took over the task of escorting the privileged
old lady. A dreadful ordeal: Cornelia had to pass through the
execution-chamber, and the canvas cover was off the chair; the heavy
leather straps at the hands and feet dangled and called for their
victims. One glance, and then the warden half lifted Cornelia and
walked her swiftly on. He had had to do that same thing for many women,
relatives of the condemned. It was not a jolly job this plump and
round-faced old Scotchman had found himself.
The death cells, three in a row, opening upon a corridor; each cell a
narrow little room with steel-barred door; in each a cot, a table, a
little bureau. A neat, white-tiled floor, and on the outside, running
the length of the corridor, a painted line, six feet from the cells,
beyond which no visitor might step. Cornelia knew the lay-out, the
lawyers having described it to her. In the first cell was Madeiros, in
the second Sacco, in the third, the farthest from the death-chamber,
Vanzetti. It was the order in which they were to “go.”
Cornelia tottered to the last cell. A light inside; the occupant was
sitting on his cot, with the table drawn up before him, writing one
of his farewell letters. He heard a faint cry, “Bart!” and started
and shoved the table away. “Nonna!” A second more and he was at the
door, his arm through the bars; Cornelia ran to him--it was automatic,
no way to help it--and anyhow, the warden was holding her, and not
trying to hold her back. She clasped the outstretched hand and wrung
it; that hand which so many times she had held in friendship, which
had performed for her so many services of love; a hand toil-worn and
bruised, now emaciated, but still warm with life. Three hours more and
it would be cold, a piece of death and corruption. She let it go, and
sank into the chair which had been placed for her, behind the painted
line.
“Bart, I had to see you to say good-by!”
“I am so glad, Nonna! It is the one more thing I wanted.”
“We have done everything we could, Bart, but it is no use.”
“I know. Mr. Thompson was here, he has just been going. We had a long
talk.”
“I have an hour to stay with you, Bart; the Governor granted me that
favor.”
“I will leave you, Mrs. Thornwell,” said the warden. “I will have to
ask you not to cross the line again. You understand, we have rules, and
they must be enforced.”
“I know,” said Cornelia; “I will respect your wishes.” She had heard
the prison stories--they had permitted one condemned man to receive a
roast chicken from a relative, and it had contained a loaded revolver.
“Thank you, Mr. Hendry.” She was as sorry for him as for his captives.
VIII
A guard sat at the entrance to the corridor, fifteen feet from
Cornelia’s chair. He could hear everything that was said, but neither
she nor Bart heeded him. This was like being alone with God; this was
different from human life, where people met, and would meet again by
and by. “We have failed, Bart,” she whispered, and he said, in a voice
without a quiver: “Do not worry for me, Nonna, I am ready. Nick also is
ready. We will die as anarchists should.”
The light in Sacco’s cell had been out; he turned it on, and lay on his
cot with his face to the bars, so that he could hear the conversation.
“Hello, Nick,” said Cornelia. He answered, with his quick sympathy and
consideration for others: “You are too unhappy for us, Nonna. Take it
more easy! Plenty fellow have die.” She imagined the twinkle in his
eyes--even though now she could see only one eye through the narrow
slits. She could see Vanzetti’s whole face, because he was standing at
the door, and at that height there was a bend in the bars, making an
opening through which he could look.
“Nonna,” he said, “it is more easy to die than to look out through bars
like a beast for seven years.”
“Bart, I am going to fight for your good name the rest of my time.”
“Fight for the workers, Nonna; fight so they be free, that other people
do not live idle on their hard toil.”
“I will surely do that,” she answered; “but most of all I want to be
able to tell people about this case. Tell me the truth, Bart, now that
it is the end.”
Said Vanzetti: “I will speak like I would if it was God. I am an
innocent man, Nonna; I was never at the South Braintree crime, I was
never at the Bridgewater crime. I tell you that in solemn words, for
you to say to all the world, all the time, forever. And Nick, he is
innocent, he was never at South Braintree like they said. This is the
truth, as I hope for joostice, I did never take a umane life, I did
never anything that would take umane life, and I work with all my soul
for those day when it will not be possible ever for one umane being to
kill any other, when all such wickedness and machines for killing lives
will be destroyed from the earth. It is because I know that the class
system and exploiting of labor is what make such machines to be that I
am anarchist. I am against all government, because I know it is tool of
exploiting classes, it is not to make joostice in this world, but to
make slaves, and to punish the libertarians--as they prove this night
upon the bodies of Nick and me.”
There was a pause. When Cornelia spoke again her voice was grave, and
her words came slowly, carefully. “Bart, I mean to write what you tell
me, so the world will know it. May I say that with reflection and these
many years of study, you have changed your views about violence in the
class struggle?”
Vanzetti’s answer also came slowly. “You may say I do not wish
vee-olence, Nonna. All my life I suffer torture when I think of
vee-olence committed upon one body or one soul. But I read the history
of all, and this I see, never have the slaves been free because the
master was generous; always it is because the slave made some struggle,
he made fight for his right. Is it not so?”
“It has been so in the past. But may we not hope for some better way?
Think, Bart, before you answer that.”
“I think always, Nonna, it is one thought that I have all my life.
I look at the great cruel capitalism--do I think that will give way
without fighting? Look this night--Mr. Thompson has told me what he
see outside. They make so many thousands, millions--machine-guns,
bullets, gas bombs, artilleries--every day new inventions--you think
they do not use them? You wish me to say to the worker, ‘You need no
fear, you need no preparing for slaughter?’ Shall I say to the young
worker, ‘You do not need arming your souls for martyrdom, like Sacco
and Vanzetti; Sacco and Vanzetti will be the last martyrs’--can I say
that? No, Nonna, I have to say, it will be thousand of martyrs, perhaps
millions, it will be most bloody slaughter, before the master class is
thrown down, before the workers own the tools and the riches without
any master.”
“So that is what I must tell, Bart?”
“That is what all must tell, else I would be traitor, and not good
guide for workers; else they would say, ‘Vanzetti has lost his nerve,
they have broke him.’ Never will they say that, for me or for Nick.”
“Never!” cried Nick, with his mouth to the bars. “They say we died
anarchista.”
“There may be some who wish to avenge your death, Bart, and that would
be a dreadful thing, nothing would set back the cause so much. What
shall I say about that?”
“Say that I want no such thing, Nonna, we are not such a man to be
revenged; we are humble for our cause. What we want is joostice for
the worker, freedom for all men on this earth, and we want every
libertarian work for that, and not for us, nor for vengeance, which is
a wicked thing.”
“May I say that you forgive your enemies, Bart?”
There was a long silence. “Is it a thing that should be forgiven,
Nonna--what men has been doing to us?”
“Men are ignorant, Bart--”
“These men are not ignorant, Nonna! Do you think that Judge Thayer is
ignorant of what he did? When he call us foul name such as I not like
to say before lady, is he ignorant?”
“I think so, Bart; he is one of the most pitiable of human creatures.
Think if I were to put it to you, would you have your body free, and
be shut up in the narrow dungeon of that man’s mind? Would you consent
to be mean, to be a cheat, and eaten up with hatred? When you realize
what a blessing has been yours in life, to have the vision, to know
the future as you do--can you not pity the poor wretch who lives in
darkness of the soul, and behaves like some cruel animal, not a man?”
There was a long silence. Cornelia looked at the face, with its frame
of steel bars; it was emaciated, deeply lined by suffering; the
dark-brown walrus mustaches drooped, and were partly hidden by the
bars. “Remember, Bart, what Comrade Jesus said. He forgave the men who
nailed him to the cross.”
“Sure, Nonna, that I can do! Poor fellows in this prison, who are
workers too, they have maybe wife and children, how can they stop the
evil thing? Many man in this prison knows what I believe, many do not
like to take life for the big capitalistas.”
“But the big capitalistas, the men who give the orders, Bart? The
judge, the governor, the college president?”
Again a long pause. “I will think about it, Nonna. I would not tell you
anything but truth, and it is not easy thing for me to say what you
want to hear.”
IX
They talked about the fearsome yet fascinating question of where Bart
was to be in two or three hours. “I don’t know, Nonna,” he said. “It is
strange idea. If I wake up somewhere, I be very much surprised. What
you think?”
“I cannot guess,” she said.
“I think we go back where we come from. It is like a bubble that go
back to be water again. This face, this voice, this what you call
Vanzetti, I do not think it will be like that anywhere.”
There came a voice from between the next row of bars: “That is all
bunk!” (Sacco had not been in America for nineteen years in vain.)
“When you are dead, you are dead, you no wake up. For us it come
quick, I like quicker. It is what I beg them long time ago.”
Cornelia turned to the speaker. “Is there anything I can do for you,
Nick?”
“Take care of wife and kids.”
“You may be sure of that; they will not suffer want.”
“I don’t worry for that,” said Nick, the free-spoken. “If all I want
was easy time for them, I would made it myself. Teach the kids what we
die for, make them some sense. That is it.”
A pause, and then from the far cell a timid voice: “Good-by, lady.”
“Good-by, Madeiros. Can I do anything to help you?”
“I am not like these fellows,” he said. “I done what they got me for,