Boston a novel
Cornelia Thornwell, in December, 1916, while the German government was
preparing its new submarine policy, which was to rouse all the warlike
elements in America, and force all the pacifist ladies of Boston to
make public speeches, and break with their families, and be raided by
mobs and arrested by the police! With the Bolshevik revolution less
than a year in the future, and the “white terror” following close upon
its heels!
CHAPTER V
THE SAVING MINORITY
I
Cornelia declined three invitations, to live in three different
mansions, and got herself an apartment on the north side of Beacon
Hill, where the poor live near enough to the rich to come as servants,
and to be visited as objects of charity. She had three rooms and a
tiny kitchen and bath; one room being planned for her grand-daughter,
in the hoped-for course of events. Cornelia did not mention this, but
announced that she was going to live alone, to the great dismay of her
family. Betty was in the secret, and helped fix up the little room,
which was a great joke, because it had perhaps the twentieth part of
the floor-space she enjoyed at home. But what is floor-space, compared
with adventure, romance, the tasting of forbidden fruit? “Oh Grannie,
it’s so cute! And it’s going to be such fun! Do you suppose they will
really ever let me come?”
“I don’t know, dear; if we’re both very good and proper--if you don’t
have any more love-affairs--”
“Oh, Grannie, I am off for life! That horrible little monster of
propriety, Roger Lowell--it makes me blush just to think of him!”
“The same effect that you had upon him,” said Cornelia.
They discussed the technique of self-suppression, so fundamental to
life in Boston. For forty years Cornelia had gone about her daily
affairs, thinking her own thoughts, and seldom even venturing to make
jokes about what the others did. Now Betty must learn the art. She must
say, “Yes, Mother,” and “Certainly, Father,” and let it go at that.
In an extreme case she might say, “I think, Mother, it would be wiser
if we did not discuss that question.” She might be firm and say, “I
really think, Mother, you ought to excuse me from saying any more.” If
she would do that, politely but persistently, her family would have
a great respect for her; and some day, she might remark casually,
“Mother, I think I will invite Grannie to go to the symphony to-morrow
afternoon.” Later she might phone and say, “Mother, I’m having supper
with Grannie, and spending the evening with her.” It would be hard for
a mother to say, “No, you must come home at once”; or even to ask, “Are
there going to be any anarchists present?”
Of course it all depended upon Cornelia’s “behaving herself.” But alas,
the imperial German government announced its new policy--the submarines
were going to sink passenger vessels without warning; and forthwith
the Back Bay declared war on Germany, while South Boston, the Irish
quarter, declared war on Britain. There was a symbolical insurrection
when the Irish paraded down Beacon Street; the Back Bay shut up its
houses and drew the blinds, but the cooks and dining-room girls and
parlors-maids and chambermaids threw wide open the basement doors and
windows, and stood in the area-ways and cheered themselves hoarse. For
a generation it had been one of the diversions of the “Sewing Circle,”
to whisper harrowing stories of the conduct of these Irish maids
with Irish policemen in the kitchen; but now it was even worse--the
policemen were replaced by German spies, and nobody was safe any more!
Among the activities of the Kaiser and his agents was to persuade
deluded sentimentalists into organizing groups with high-falutin names
to preach pacifism. There was a “Fellowship of Reconciliation,” and a
“Women’s League for Peace and Freedom,” and a “People’s Council for
Peace and Democracy,” and a “Jackasses’ Association for Flubdub and
Buncombe”--so Rupert Alvin described it in one of his purple-faced
rages. The _Transcript_ had been publishing atrocity stories in twelve
editions every week for a hundred and twenty weeks, and the Back Bay
had believed every word it read; so now imagine the sensation when one
of these organizations of long-haired men and short-haired women listed
among its abettors a former “first lady” of the Commonwealth!
And Mrs. Josiah Quincy Thornwell was going to make a public speech
in favor of America’s taking it lying down! When that announcement
appeared, the entire family came, one at a time or in groups, to argue
and plead and scold. Clara wept, in the name of her whole precious
brood; if the Germans took Boston, they would cut off all sixteen of
those sweet chubby hands. Alice used the arts which she had practiced
for forty years, ever since she had made the discovery that her
beautiful face would cause others to yield their will to hers. Deborah
had never had a beautiful face, so she had gone in for character, and
now declared that she must consider her duty to her children, and
protect Betty from the contagion of German and anarchist propaganda.
II
Also Henry Cabot Winters gave his mother-in-law an entire evening of
his socially precious time. She was pleased at that, because Henry had
a sense of fun, and would talk about realities. She got in a Negro
maid, and prepared him a good dinner, and he came in full regalia,
with his gray hair composed in a graceful wave and held there by a
cylinder of stiff and shiny black silk. And while she fed him, she
told him her adventures as a runaway grandmother, her work in the
Plymouth cordage plant, and how she had lived on six dollars a week,
and about the Italian anarchists who made bombs of pistacchio, and
the rebel saint who had been the cause of Betty Alvin’s reading Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin on the rights of women. Impossible to imagine a
more diverting story--and especially the climax, which had come only
last week--Cornelia’s meeting with Mr. J. Lawrence Perry, and telling
that elderly philanthropist how it felt to be an unskilled worker in
his mighty plant, and be chased off the picket-line by his special
policemen!
And later on, when dinner was over and the maid dismissed, the great
lawyer settled himself in an easy chair with an ash-holder on the arm,
and with the utmost tactfulness steered the conversation onto the
subject of German propaganda; with the result that his mother-in-law
put him on the griddle. “Tell me, Henry, how much do the Boston banks
stand to lose if the Germans win?”
“Is this for publication, Mother?” The cloud of cigarette smoke did not
obscure the twinkle in Henry’s fine dark eyes.
“Your name is not for publication, Henry. I’m told it’s a hundred
million dollars.”
“Round figures are generally exaggerated. As a matter of fact it would
be everything the Boston banks have, because when a panic like that got
started, nobody could say where it would stop.”
“And that’s why we have to go in?”
“We live under a system, Mother. Maybe you know how to change it, I
don’t.”
“And what’s this I hear about you and Rupert taking over the Haupt
electric works?”
“Jehoshaphat! Where did you get that?”
“Well, I have sources of information. I suppose that is the system
too--our leading bankers getting back the cost of their war-propaganda!”
“Well, Mother, we can’t expect the Germans to pay it for us; and if we
do go in, we surely can’t leave the manufacture of our war-supplies to
the enemy!”
“The fact that you and Rupert and James are getting your lines on Haupt
Electric means we really are going in, then?”
“Of course, Mother, we’re going in; that is what I want to tell you--it
is unwise of you to waste your strength and happiness trying the
impossible. You know, I don’t fret about appearances like the rest of
the family; but I’m fond of you--we used to have jolly little chats,
and I missed them when you ran off. I thought maybe, if you wanted to
blow off steam, you might blow it at me, instead of at an audience.
Believe me, public life is wearing--not all the millions of all the
Boston banks could get me into it! I imagine you’ve found that out,
since you put your name on a letter-head, and set yourself up as a
target for all the cranks in New England. How many begging letters have
you received this week? How many associations have you joined to reform
our spelling and put a stop to vaccination and vivisection?”
That was Henry Cabot Winters, genial, shrewd, playfully cynical. But
do not let his social charm fool you; underneath the “Harvard manner”
there was a wolf. He would nose among the banking secrets of Boston--he
called the biggest bankers in the city by such names as “Ted” and
“Winnie” and “Jimmie”; he had been to college with them, and met their
wives and daughters in the evenings; he had access to their records,
he could call up on the telephone and ask how much so-and-so was
borrowing, and what were his assets and connections; and presently
he would catch a scent of blood, and put himself upon the trail of a
wounded caribou, and track him down--for years, maybe, never resting
till he had drunk the last drop of blood from his veins. Both bankers
and industrialists dreaded him, yet they could not get along without
him; there was vigorous competition between two big banking groups in
New England, and Henry’s crowd needed his cunning, at any price he
chose to ask. His fee was seven hundred dollars a day, but that was
merely for overhead; his real reward was part of the carcass of each
caribou.
Now he lounged in a faded Morris chair out of a second-hand shop, and
lighted one cigarette after another and gazed at the feeble art-effects
which Cornelia had been able to produce without spending money. He
sounded like a schoolboy as he said, “Gee, Mother, I wish I could get
off by myself and live the simple life!”
“Why not, Henry?”
“Well, I’ve got a costly wife, and a son to put through the education
mill--”
“Rubbish, Henry, you know you laugh at Alice and her elegance, and your
money will probably ruin your boy. There is some real reason.”
“Well, I guess it’s a game, Mother; you have to do something. When I
rowed on the Harvard eight--it wasn’t really so important, but we’d
have broken a heart-valve to keep six inches ahead of the Yale boat.
Life is like that. If you stop to ask for a reason, you spoil the fun,
so you just shut your eyes and pull the stroke.”
“So that’s how we’re going into the war, and kill one or two million of
our boys--to win a game we don’t really believe in!”
“No, Mother, it’s different there. Some fellows won’t play the game
according to the rules, and we’re going to put them out.”
“Who made the rules, Henry?”
The great lawyer laughed. “You ought to come into my office, and learn
to cross-examine witnesses. That would be a new stunt for a runaway
grandmother--to become a lawyer at the age of--what would it be, about
sixty-five!”
“But answer my question--who made the rules of the game?”
Henry laughed again. “England, I suppose; she has made the rules of all
the games, hasn’t she?”
III
Mrs. Josiah Quincy Thornwell sat at a long table, running lengthwise
across the head of a room, and raised up a foot or so like a dais. The
seat at the center was occupied by an elderly gentleman, with Cornelia
at his right, and at his left a Chinese lady with slit eyes and
coppery skin. The rest of the table was occupied by a dozen persons of
prominence in Boston intellectual life. The great room was filled with
tables, running at right angles to the head-table, and occupied by four
or five hundred members of the Twentieth Century Club.
Luncheon was in progress, with colored waitresses hurrying here and
there, amid a rattle of knives and forks and a subdued murmur of
conversation. But every now and then each of the four or five hundred