Boston a novel
shawl!” She drew it off, and began to wrap Cornelia in a big fur robe.
Cornelia submitted, because it was easier than to argue. Her mind was
busy with another problem: how had they found her? Could it have been
Miss Mehitabel? Impossible to believe that Betty had revealed the
secret!
Rupert returned, and gave his orders to the chauffeur, and got into
the car, which began to sway on luxurious springs down the unpaved and
rutted lane. It turned onto the main street, and sped to a hotel, where
they got out, and Rupert engaged a room, and Deborah hurried her mother
through the lobby. Presently they were locked in a place where family
secrets might be safe--after Rupert had stepped to the door once or
twice and opened it, to make sure there were no eavesdroppers.
“I am perfectly all right,” said Cornelia, in answer to her daughter’s
clamor that she was wet and that she was cold and that she was
exhausted. “I have been very happy,” she declared, in answer to laments
about the state of her shoulders and her hands. And when Deborah had
got to the question of how her mother could have been so cruel as to
treat them this way, Cornelia broke in with the demand, “How did you
find me?” She had to repeat the question before Deborah answered, “We
got your address from Betty.”
“You mean she told you? I can’t believe such a thing, Deborah!”
“I don’t mean that. She wrote you a letter, and we got it.”
“Oh, I see.” A great load was lifted from Cornelia’s heart. After
a moment she said, “I would like to have the letter.” Seeing them
hesitate and look at each other, she said, “Give me my letter, please.”
So Rupert took from his pocket an envelope, which Cornelia could see at
a glance was very bulky.
Balancing the letter in his hand, the great man began, in his most
solemn tones, “Mother, I wish to explain that when we opened this
letter we did not know it was to you. If we had known that, we should
have brought it unopened. But you will see, it is addressed to Mrs.
Nonna Cornell, and that meant nothing to us, except that our unhappy
daughter was communicating secretly with some unknown woman. Only when
we opened the letter, did we discover that it was to you.”
“Neither of us read it, Mother,” added Deborah. “It may be we had a
right to, but we didn’t feel sure.”
“I will read it to you at once, my child.”
“I don’t think it will be necessary. We had a talk with Betty, and I
think we know the situation.”
Cornelia held the letter in her hands. How pathetic seemed the little
joke, “Mrs. Nonna!” She took the letter from the envelope, and saw why
Deborah had suggested not hearing it--the last page was numbered forty!
But Cornelia had to read only two sentences to know the whole story.
“Dear Grannie:
“I am in the most dreadful predicament you can imagine, because
Roger Lowell, the tenth descendant of a line of theocrats, spent
three months laboring with his conscience and finally made up his
mind that he must save my soul by telling father of the indecent
proposition I had made at Camp Putnam! So now here I am shut up
in my room and forbidden to go out, until I have promised to
reform--and so I am forced to smuggle this letter to you by one of
the maids.”
XIII
The antagonists squared off for battle--two against one. It would be
none the less deadly, because it would be carried on under the forms of
courtesy, even of love.
The first thing was for Deborah to weep some more. This was not easy,
for she was haughty, self-contained--the last word in aristocratic
reticence. But there was that pitiful figure--gray-haired, bowed and
bent, in wretched shapeless clothing wet with melted snow--that was
her mother! And even though she told herself that her mother had
become insane, it was none the less terrible. Also, impossible to
forget that certain scenes which Deborah forbade herself to remember
had had something to do with her mother’s mental disorder. So the
tears streamed down Deborah’s cheeks--and she had one of those long,
half-masculine faces, which are not improved by weeping.
In Cornelia’s own being the trapped bird was still fluttering. “Fight!
Fight! Don’t let them get you!” She had had a year and a half to think
matters over, and she knew all the devices of families to break people
down. She remembered Cousin Amelia Quincy, who had sought to marry the
wrong man, and how Cousin Amelia’s mother had fallen violently ill--a
complete nervous breakdown--which had lasted until the wrong man had
given up and married some other girl.
So now Cornelia made her voice stern, and said, “It is silly for you to
behave that way, Deborah. There is nothing the matter with me, and I
assure you my children are not going to get their way by tears.”
Then Deborah drew herself to her full height. “I will not annoy you any
further. I have of course no right to object to your living your own
life--”
“None whatever, my child.”
“But I have a right to object to your ruining the mind and character of
my young and impressionable daughter.”
“I hope I have not done that.”
“Unless our daughter tells us what is not true, you introduced her to a
band of anarchists and atheists--”
“Not atheists, Deborah, you have got the wrong word.”
“You mean that Italian man, whatever his name is, is not an atheist?”
“He has explained to me carefully his beliefs. He worships one God, the
God of nature, of love and justice. He worships only one, so perhaps
that constitutes him an infidel.”
Deborah declined this challenge to theological controversy. “And
free-lovers!”
“That is still less accurate. I doubt very much if Vanzetti has ever
been any kind of lover in his life. He is a saint who believes in free
love.”
“Is that one of your jokes, Mother?”
“It sounds like it, I know, but you will have to learn that there are
new ideas loose in the world, and it is not practicable to keep people
from knowing about them--not even by shutting them up in their rooms
and confiscating their mail.”
Rupert Alvin was silent, considering that free love is not a theme for
mixed conversation; and anyhow, in family disputes the less an “in-law”
has to say, the safer for him. When the two ladies began exchanging
views upon the efficacy of a church ceremony as a purifier of lust,
Rupert arose and went to the door and opened it and peered out. It was
a delicate hint, and the ladies took it, and discussed anarchism. Or
rather, Cornelia discussed anarchism, while Deborah discussed anarchy,
and refused to recognize the difference. Cornelia asserted that she
had lived among Italian anarchists for a year and a half, and had not
seen a single bomb--except those which Brini described as “bombe di
pistacchio.”
They were on the subject of foreigners and their alleged resemblance to
pigs, when Rupert decided that it was time for a man to interpose his
authority. “Mother,” he said--and went on, in spite of his wife’s angry
signals--“we are not getting anywhere by arguing over subjects like
this. The question is, what are we going to do. I know that our mutual
esteem and affection will bring us to an understanding in the end; so
what I am hoping is to persuade you to come home and stay with us a
while. I know you will be able to induce Betty to--well, to moderate
her expressions. That is all we ask, and I am sure you agree that we
do not want an open scandal in our family.”
“Certainly not, Rupert.”
“Well, then, come with us, and in time we can work it all out happily.”
“That is easy to say, Rupert, but it seems to me you are taking a
serious risk. Suppose that while I am your guest I should consider it
my duty to appear on some public platform and say that the effort to
bring America into the war is a crime against civilization, and that
the motive power behind it is our big bankers, who have loaned so
much money to England and France and Italy that they cannot face the
prospect of losing their investments?”
To Rupert Alvin, president of the Pilgrim National Bank of Boston, and
directing head of the most powerful financial group in State Street,
it was as if his mother-in-law had taken a sharp rapier and brought
the point of it close to one of his waistcoat buttons. The many large
bulges which composed Rupert’s face and neck became still larger,
the pink ones turning red, and the red ones purple. His large round
eyes opened wide, and the hands which clutched his large round knees
tightened until they showed the tendons. Either Rupert’s tongue refused
to make a sound, or else Rupert’s brain did not know what sound to tell
it to make.
XIV
“My children,” said Cornelia, “I want to be fair, and make myself
understood if it can possibly be done. For forty years I did what I
was told was my duty, and let other people guide my life. I was very
unhappy--how unhappy I did not realize until Josiah was dead, and I
had begun to do what I wanted to do. Now for the rest of my life I am
going to be an individual, and not a cog in the family machine. And
while that will seem terrible to you, you can comfort yourself with the
fact that it is real ‘Boston’--‘old Boston,’ the very best there is.
Everything that is glorious in our history has been made by people who
have ‘come out,’ and fought some prevailing sentiment. I never realized
that until I got alone and thought it over. Take Wendell Phillips--you
cannot say anything against his ancestry, there was never any one
more completely ‘Back Bay.’ Yet he turned into an abolitionist and
labor agitator, the same as a pacifist and ‘red’ at the present time.
It has always been that way, and the ones you honor now, the ones
whom the rest of the world knows about--Samuel Adams and John Quincy
Adams, Emerson and Thoreau and Phillips and Garrison and James Russell
Lowell--yes, there was even a Lowell, Deborah--and Thomas Wentworth
Higginson--even a Higginson, Rupert, tell that to State Street! Boston
history has been made by the ‘saving minority.’ You must know that is
true?”
“Yes, but Mother”--it was Deborah protesting--“that was all in the
past!”
“And now the world is perfect, and we don’t need any more changes!
Well, my dear, all I can tell you is, I have looked the world over and
made up my mind that it has never been worse than right now--with some
ten or twenty million men lined up on opposite sides, using all the
machinery and brains of civilization to slaughter one another. No, I
think we need changes, and there is going to be a Thornwell among the
‘come outers,’ and you will have to put up with the humiliation of it.
I don’t think I shall be lonely--I’ve been able to recollect the names
of a number of old ladies who have left their families and are living
in apartments and hotels, interesting themselves in one queer cause
or another. I never paid much attention, because Josiah wouldn’t have
approved of my associating with them. But now I shall look them up--I
suppose I shall join the Twentieth Century Club.”
“Oh, Mother! How horrible!”
“And the suffragettes, whatever they call their organization--there are
two, I believe. And the socialists have a local--I am not an anarchist,
Deborah, comfort yourself with that--and anyhow, the anarchists don’t
have any organizations. I suppose the pacifists have one; I hear that
Mrs. Abigail Webster Adams has come out for them, and that Rupert
thinks she ought to be locked up in an asylum. Well, Rupert, that has
been the idea of the comfortable people for a long way back--I remember
they accused Socrates for corrupting the youth. But even though you put
people in an asylum, their ideas get out--you cannot always be sure
that the maid will turn their letters over to you.”
Cornelia paused; and then, seeing the look on her daughter’s
face--“Yes, my dear, that was a mean one. But you must realize that