Boston a novel
trouble and expense to be brought to nought, while the Governor carried
on a debate with a bunch of “meddlesome Matties” in secret sympathy
with terrorists! In the formula which had been current in the sporting
world when “Allie” Fuller was a bicycle-racer: “Not on your tin-type!”
II
At a quarter before midnight William G. Thompson came out from the
Governor’s chamber, and to the waiting reporters expressed his solemn
conviction that innocent men were about to be executed. A strange
event--a great lawyer breaking the rule of his lifetime, defying Boston
legal proprieties and “trying the case in the newspapers!” He would
give a long interview, defending his clients, and telling the Vahey
episode, and much of what Vanzetti had said to him in prison.
Meantime--even at that hour--one more protest! Francis Fisher Kane,
former U. S. Attorney for Pennsylvania, had been waiting for two hours
to see the Governor to make one last appeal concerning the Department
of Justice files. He persuaded the doorman to take in his card, and the
Governor granted five minutes. Mr. Kane presented a fact which had just
come to his knowledge; President Lowell had stated to a friend that the
files were of no significance, and could not have affected the decision
of his Commission. Mr. Kane now strove to make this matter clear to the
Governor. The files would show that the Department of Justice had been
watching Sacco and Vanzetti by means of “informers,” considering them
as dangerous anarchists. Mr. Kane himself knew exactly what that meant,
having been a Federal prosecutor, in charge of the watching of certain
anarchists; he had resigned his position, in protest against the things
he saw being done during the “Red raids.” He could certify that Sacco
and Vanzetti had had good reason to be afraid for their lives on the
night of their arrest; and thus that famous “consciousness of guilt”
theory of Judge Thayer was knocked out. The arrested men had a kind of
guilt to be conscious of, entirely different from that of the South
Braintree crime!
So the lawyer argued; and it was like water falling upon a granite
stone. For seven years the authorities of Massachusetts had had these
facts before them, and had resolutely shut their eyes; the reason being
that, in their secret hearts, they desired the death of anarchists
quite as ardently as the death of bandits.
The telephone ringing; the group of New York lawyers who had set out
to try to reach Williamstown by motor-car, but realized that it was
too late. John Finerty on the wire, to beg the Governor, in the name
of common decency, to put off the execution for just a couple of
hours, until they could reach Judge Anderson and see if he would act
upon their appeal. The Governor’s answer was that Mr. Finerty should
communicate with Attorney-General Reading, who was in charge of legal
matters that night. Mr. Finerty called Mr. Reading’s office and learned
that Mr. Reading had gone to the Governor’s office about the matter.
He called the Governor’s office and learned that Mr. Reading had gone
back to his own office. He called Mr. Reading’s office and learned
that Mr. Reading had not arrived. Astonishing agility on the part of
a high official, in spite of his pockets being stuffed with the money
of the Decimo Club and the “L. A. W.” and other corporations which
feared trouble from the legal department of the great Commonwealth! Mr.
Finerty was not able to hear Mr. Reading’s voice.
The weary Governor rose from his desk, and put on his hat. It had been
a strain; his face was drawn with exhaustion--impossible to conceal
it now. “No statement, boys,” to the newspaper men. His guards closed
about him, and he went down to his Packard car, under the Mt. Vernon
Street arch of the State House, closed all that day to traffic. The
guards saluted, they fell back and dropped the ropes; a police-car
in front, another in the rear, with riot-guns ready for instant
action--the little procession rolled out into the night, on its way to
the summer home in New Hampshire.
III
Cornelia, returned to her apartment, found Betty waiting. So she sent
off her daughters and son-in-law. “I am perfectly all right now. That
visit was what I needed. No use to keep you up. Thanks for what you
did, it made everything all right.” She lay on the bed, and told Betty
about her visit, and every word that had been spoken. Betty told about
the meeting she had attended, and how the crowds were behaving. It was
like war time, tens of thousands of people in front of the bulletin
boards; and when some item of bad news came, you would hear a moan, a
sob of mass-agony. Apparently the public was beginning to realize--at
the last moment--too late!
“I am going to be able to stand it, Betty. I have got to stand it, for
Bart’s sake.” Betty was glad to hear it; she was prepared to carry her
own burden, but no more. “Yes, yes, it’s all right,” the old woman went
on. “It is what Bart and Nick wanted.” But even as she said it, there
was a trembling at the lips, and a look of terror in her eyes.
An hour and more still to be passed. Betty began hastily to tell the
news. She had stopped at headquarters: she told who was there, but
dodged away from describing the weeping and anguish. Powers Hapgood
had been missing for hours, and word had just come that he was shut up
in “Psychopathic”; Joe Randall had hurried off to fetch Dr. Myerson,
to get Powers out. Creighton Hill had made a trip to Maine, with two
clergymen, to get another clergyman to make an affidavit concerning
Thayer’s prejudice. But Fuller wouldn’t pay any attention to it, of
course.
Cornelia was only half hearing. “Betty, do you suppose the Governor can
be meaning to put it off again?”
“I don’t know, Grannie. How can you tell, with that beast?” Never if
they lived a thousand years would the women of the defense forgive
him for the night of anguish he had caused them, by withholding the
reprieve until twenty minutes before the time for the execution.
Gossip wouldn’t do, Betty realized; she must tap the deeper layers
of the human soul. “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity,” so the
evangelists tell us; now Betty Alvin, hard and grim little realist,
must become a prophet and a saint, like Bart! She must point out that
stone walls do not a prison make, and how they that kill the body
only glorify the soul. She must make real to both her grandmother
and herself what this night’s events would mean to the future; a
consecration to the radical movement, a purifying of the faith of all
of them, a spiritual rebirth for Boston. “Oh, Betty, is it really so?
Won’t they forget all about it, and go back to their radios and their
jazz?”
“Some will, Grannie; but some of us aren’t going to forget this long
fight.”
“Seven years!” Cornelia whispered. “Seven years!”
Betty answered that it had taken those years to make the case; to get
public attention centered on it, to get the great ones of Boston to
notice two wops. “Don’t you see what it’s for, Grannie--to dramatize
the class struggle! To make it so plain that every child can see it!
To make it into a formula, that you can say in three words, and have
everybody understand it--everywhere, all over the world, for all future
time! ‘Sacco and Vanzetti!’ And right here in our great and prosperous
America, that is making so many automobiles and bathtubs and books of
etiquette! Right here in Boston, that is so moral! Don’t you see how
important it is to have the capitalist class electrocute its own lies?”
“Betty! Betty! When will men stop killing?”
“When we end exploitation, Grannie dear; and Bart and Nick are doing
the job! Don’t you see the glory of this case--it kills off the
liberals! Before this, it was possible to argue that injustice was
an accident, just an oversight--in a country that was so busy making
automobiles and bathtubs and books of etiquette! But now here’s a
test--we settle the question forever! We take our very best--not merely
cheap politicians, but our great ones! Our biggest business man! Our
most cultured university president! Our supreme court judges--even the
liberal ones! We prove them all alike--they all know what flag they
fight under, who serves out their rations! They all take their places
in the ranks, with every button in position, and all of them washed
behind the ears! They all obey the great capitalist drill-sergeant, and
not a man deserts to the enemy--not one single man!”
A quarter to twelve. “Betty, if they were going to put it off, they’d
have had to say so by now.”
“Yes, blessed dear, I’m afraid so.”
“And somebody would have let us know!”
“Yes, surely they would.”
“They’ll let us know when it’s over?”
“Joe promised he’d phone at once.” Then, in desperation: “Grannie, did
you hear about the necklace which Bart gave to Mr. Thompson? He took
the ten dollars you sent him, and bought some things the prisoners had
made, and gave Mr. Thompson a necklace of beads for his wife, and Mr.
Thompson broke down and cried. They say he can’t talk about it without
crying. It’ll ruin him as a lawyer.”
“Bart and Nick were right about it all along,” said Cornelia. “They
knew more about Boston than we did.”
“That is something that touched Mr. Thompson. Nick had insisted he’d
never get anywhere with the courts, and to-day Mr. Thompson thought
that Nick would remind him of it. But Nick didn’t say a word; he knew
how much it would hurt.”
Twelve o’clock. Cornelia, white-faced, her hands clasped together, and
her voice a faint whimper. “Betty, they must be in the death-chamber
now.”
“Yes, I suppose so. Remember what you promised Bart!”
“I know, I know--but I wonder--how long does it take?”
“Not very long, dear, they make it quick, they are as polite as Fuller.”
But somehow that wasn’t the right thing to say. Betty caught the poor
trembling hands, and began to whisper: “Grannie, dear, don’t let
yourself go! We all need our strength, we have a whole world to change.”
“All right, I won’t, I won’t! How long does--how long do they keep the
current on?”
“I don’t know, two or three minutes. But the victims don’t know it, so
what’s the use thinking about such things!”
“They must be doing it now! Oh, Betty--tell me something to think
about!”
“They are brave men, Grannie. They have lived the life they wanted to
live, and they don’t want us crying over them. Think of all the people
who get killed--so many in needless ways--that we can put a stop to
when we have learned what Bart and Nick have to teach us.” So Betty,
rushing on, a little stump-speech--but all in vain. She had to keep
squeezing the poor frail hands, and saying over and over again the
simple elemental idea, that Bart had forbidden Cornelia to grieve, and
she had promised not to. After all, Bart’s life was his own, and if he
chose to become one of the world’s great martyrs, who had a right to
object?
IV
Cornelia could be got to listen to that, to sit staring, like a
hypnotized rabbit. The trouble was that the clock on the mantel-piece
became hypnotized, too, and the hands refused to move; all time stood
still, there was no way to get it past. The world hung suspended in
a void of suffering--that very hell which Father Murphy, the prison
chaplain, had been telling about, where pain endured forever.
Some magic spell had been woven over the minds and souls of tens of
thousands, perhaps millions of persons, scattered over every part of
the earth; never had there been such a phenomenon since the world
began. They sat in rooms and stared at each other, they stood in front
of bulletin boards and clenched their hands, or maybe bit their
finger-nails; they went walking blindly about the streets, not knowing
where. In whatever part of the world they might be--in Boston or Los