Boston a novel
the victim stood not a chance in the world, so the lawyers advised
him to sign a release, forgiving his enemies for all they had done
to him, in consideration of the sum of six hundred and twenty-five
thousand dollars. For this price he gave up properties which earned a
million and three-quarters net profit that year, and were worth about
ten millions on the market. The six hundred and twenty-five thousand
paid a part of his debts, and he sold his home to pay more, and his
family gave up their social ambitions and moved into a cottage, and his
daughter quit going to Radcliffe and went to work.
“Isn’t it nice, Grannie?” said Betty. “When I get older, if I behave,
I’ll get a lot of Lucile’s money, and I can hire her--perhaps to
be a governess to my children. And Priscilla will have a share of
it too, and can found a charity home to take care of Mr. and Mrs.
Walker when they are old. And Cousin Josiah”--that was Henry Winters’
one son--“he’ll have a bigger share than any of us, to spend on
women-chasing--I understand that’s what he’s doing now. Aunt Alice will
be able to retain her adolescence--”
“My child! Don’t say things like that!”
“I’m talking in the family, Grannie. We members of the new generation
are going to be what you call hard-boiled. They are raising us in
war-time, and we’re getting used to plain language and messy sights. I
read in the paper that Mrs. Henry Cabot Winters is planning a ‘little
theater,’ in which her mystical poet’s works are to be shown to the
world as soon as the war is over. If Aunt Alice wants to subsidize
genius, why does she have to pick out literary lounge-lizards and
music-box monkeys?”
Cornelia said, “Dear me, I am really getting old! The new generation
shocks me!”
V
There came a day when every able-bodied person in America rushed
out of his house, and fell on the necks of passersby and danced and
laughed and shouted and sang. Men threw their hats into the air, or
tied tin cans to the tails of automobiles and drove up and down the
streets. Three days later they all turned out and did it again, because
the first time had been a mistake, some news agency had been in too
much of a hurry. But it was a big enough war to deserve two armistice
days, and even in State Street one saw “blue-bloods” celebrating with
bootblacks, and high-hatted bankers forgetting their dignity for the
first time in their eighty years.
This was a celebration in which even the pacifists could join. The
nation would have one or two hundred thousand cripples to take care
of--but at least you didn’t have to think of new thousands being made
every day! You could again expect people to listen to reason, and
could work at stopping the next war without danger of arrest. The
Kaiser had fled to Holland, and there seemed a real prospect of that
newly-promised world. Such wonderful promises--a world fit for heroes,
a world made safe for democracy, a world in which the last war had been
won by the forces of justice! So we had been told in a golden glowing
speech at least once a week for a year and a half; and now we were
to see it made real. As a first step President Wilson packed up his
typewriter and his fourteen points, and went over to Europe to oversee
the making of a world charter. His packing appeared to be careless, for
he lost one of the points in England--that providing for the “freedom
of the seas”--and had only thirteen when he landed in France.
The American people had been told to trust him; he was the President,
and had sources of information not open to the rest of us--so Deborah
had assured her mother. But now it turned out that he hadn’t any
sources of information, or if he had, he hadn’t used them. He had made
no bargains whatever with the allies, he had not made them give up a
single one of their greedy demands. And now, of course, it was too
late; the danger was over, the allies were no longer afraid, and would
do exactly what they pleased.
It was a disillusioning experience, and was to produce ten years of
cynicism and corruption in every department of American life. The
climax came when the President capitulated to the diplomatic ravens,
and let them have their prey, and came home and told the public that
that was what his fourteen points had meant. He did more than that--he
went before a committee of the Senate, and stated that he had not known
about the secret treaties until he went to Paris; which one had to take
as Pascal took the doctrine of his church, and believe it because it
was impossible.
VI
There were a few groups in America whose demands did not depend upon
the diplomats at Versailles; and among these were the women. France
might grab the Rhine, Japan might grab Shantung--but what was to
prevent American women from having their rights at home? Surely the
men were not making such a success with their votes that they could
spurn the help of wives and sisters! Let us have a world made fit for
heroines! So the campaign of votes for women leaped into life in a
score of cities. In Washington the ladies began besieging senators and
congressmen, and elderly statesmen took to physical flight from urgent
feminine tongues. The militant suffragists began carrying placards in
front of the White House, and got themselves arrested over and over
again. It was most embarrassing, because the jails in the national
capital had been made for street-walkers and Negro drunks, and had no
accommodations for ladies.
The suffragists were divided into two groups, the respectable ones, who
made dignified speeches and circulated petitions and got an inch in
the newspapers once a month; and the militants, who set themselves the
goal of a front-page story twice a day, and made it most of the time.
Each of these two groups was active in Boston--a city full of ladies
who felt themselves competent to take charge, not only of America,
but of the world. Each group laid siege to Cornelia Thornwell and her
grand-daughter, and the militants won. Another scandal in the Sewing
Circles, and another grief for a great family!
Cornelia’s oldest daughter, Betty’s mother, was a vigorous “anti.”
Her enemies told a story about her, that one day when company was
expected, and many duties were clamoring, she had locked herself in her
study and made no response, and when subsequent complaint was made,
the answer was that she had been writing an article on “Woman the
Home-maker.” Jokes like that gave annoyance to the “antis,” because
it was so obvious to them that nothing but the wicked activities of
the suffragists were dragging them out from the homes they loved, and
compelling them to become examples of the evil they feared. Yes, the
“wild women” had that power, and rejoiced in it; when the “antis” hired
a house on Park Street and opened up offices, what should they see but
a group of women marching back and forth before their door, carrying a
banner with a strange device:
_They say that home is woman’s sphere.
What are the antis doing here?_
The true “anti” was Cornelia’s youngest daughter, Clara Thornwell
Scatterbridge, who stayed at home with her eight babies, and loved
them and petted them and scolded them and wept over them and saw that
their various nurses and governesses kept their noses wiped. Clara had
no idea what a vote looked like; but, alas, that didn’t get even an
inch in the papers! Nor did it have any appreciable effect when Alice
Thornwell Winters shrugged her beautiful white shoulders and lifted
her haughty eyebrows in scorn at the idea of sacrificing her feminine
charm. Neither did it help when she wrote more and larger checks to pay
for the “little theater” which was to produce the plays of Chauncey
Duvillier, dealing with ancient Erse legends about dusky-haired
promiscuous queens. The productions came off, and were at once very
“high-brow” and very “high-hat,” but they did not seem to reduce the
attendance at suffrage meetings.
President Wilson had set his stern Presbyterian face against the
program of national suffrage. It was a question for the individual
states; thus spoke Sir Oracle, and when the female dogs barked, he said
it again. But such a thing had been known as a great statesman changing
his mind when made uncomfortable enough. It was a fact that the women
out west had got the vote and were using it; Woodrow could not forget
that it was California which had elected him the last time, and might
defeat his party and his world policies the next time. A terrible
thing to contemplate having women vote, but a still worse thing to
contemplate having them vote Republican!
The President came back from Europe in February, and the suffragettes
prepared a hearty welcome for him in New York. It was more than he
could face, in his nervous condition, with that incredible statement
he had to make to the Senate; so at the last moment the route of his
ship was changed, and it landed at Boston. That put the burden onto
the Boston suffragettes, who had to organize a demonstration almost
overnight. They came rushing to Cornelia and Betty; would they help?
Banners must be got ready, asking urgent witty questions, and these
must be carried by ladies of absolutely indigo-colored blood; they must
be carried as close to the President as the police would permit, and
then a little closer; also the great man’s latest anti-suffrage speech
was to be burned in effigy on Boston Common.
VII
“Old Boston” is a city which has been laid out by cows. They made
tracks, and these became lanes, and the lanes have now become narrow
canyons of concrete and steel, made immutable for all time by a
court-house full of deeds with intricate specifications. You may
still see on Beacon Hill a house which has a narrow archway built
under one room--because in selling the land the owner specified that
access must for all time be left for his cow to reach the Common. Now,
instead of a cow, there was coming a high-powered automobile bearing a
long-featured Presbyterian gentleman in frock coat and silk hat, under
military escort, with all the trappings of glory, and that unending
roar of applause which he had heard even from the billows in mid-ocean.
Patriotism in Boston was to have its day of rapture; Democratic
patriotism, taking in even the Irish-Catholics, and marred only by the
antics of twenty-two contumacious females, who refused to accept a
great statesman’s own definition of what he meant by democracy.
Among these twenty-two lady-pests was the widow of Josiah Quincy
Thornwell, former governor of the Commonwealth; also Elizabeth
Thornwell Alvin, daughter of the president of the Pilgrim National
Bank. But the names of these two were not on the list furnished to the
press; in that case the two would have been spotted by the police,
and denied the honor they craved. They sallied forth with the other
women, carrying placards aloft, in the route of the procession; and
promptly they were snapped up, and hustled into a patrol wagon, and
landed in Joy Street police-station--most beautifully named of public
institutions in the home of the bean and the cod.
The police had them--and what was to be done with them? The police had
no idea. The one thing desired was to keep them out of the newspapers;
which was the one thing impossible to achieve. They spent the entire
day sitting in a room in the police-station, with no food--save the
knowledge that they would be on the front page of all the afternoon
newspapers! In the evening they were taken to the “House of Detention”
under the Court House, where they slept on board benches covered with
black oil cloth. They rolled up their coats for pillows, and spread
newspapers to cover the dirt--but alas, the worst part of the dirt
had powers of locomotion. Cornelia, sitting up awake, watched Betty