Boston a novel
sleeping, and counted twenty-one round black objects on her newspapers,
and in the morning some of the women’s ankles were so swollen that they
could not get on their shoes. Also sleep was interfered with by the
constant bringing in of drunken women, who howled in loud voices what
appeared to be a popular song, “I love you as I never loved before.” In
the morning they filed out to a rusty iron sink to wash, and everyone
had to answer the question, “Are you a drunk or a suffragette?” But
these woes vanished in a blaze of glory when they discovered that
they had got a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of publicity on
the front pages of the morning newspapers--while the respectable lady
suffragists, who had presented a dignified petition, had got one inch
in each paper!
Now they were going to be taken into court, and would refuse to
employ lawyers, and would make twenty-two eloquent suffrage speeches.
So they thought, but their captors thought otherwise. For these
publicity-seekers the constitution of the Commonwealth was to be
suspended, and trials were to be in secret in one of the rooms of the
prison! When they learned this, there was a hasty consultation among
the prisoners, and an agreement not to recognize such an illegal
tribunal. Until they were in open court, no woman would say a word.
Their enemies had a still more dastardly scheme; they were going to
deprive the little band of their most brightly shining star. A jailer
came in and demanded, “Which is Elizabeth Alvin?”--and of course all
the prisoners knew instantly what that meant. Papa Banker had got busy
and pulled some political strings, and his daughter was to be bailed
out, or spirited away, or something--a vile plot! Betty made no sound
or sign, and neither did any one else; and presently came the young
Irish policeman who had arrested and “booked” her. He had been ordered
to pick her out of the bunch--and a fine mess he made of it!
It so happened that in the course of a year and a half, Betty was to be
deeply concerned with the problem of identifications. To what extent
was it possible for bystanders, witnesses of a crime, to describe the
men who had committed the crime, and to recognize them some time later?
Human lives have depended upon this problem, and not for the last time.
Whenever Betty and her grandmother thought about the matter, the first
thing that came to their minds was this experience in the Joy Street
police-station. Here was a policeman who had arrested Elizabeth Alvin
on the street, and marched her along for some distance, in the meantime
having a considerable argument with her as to his right to destroy her
banner, and his right to squeeze and hurt her arm. He had put her into
a patrol-wagon, and sat opposite her during a ride of several blocks
through crowded streets, meantime gazing at her and speculating, what
kind of crazy loon was this that wanted a vote, when so many people
that he knew were glad to sell theirs for two dollars. Arriving at the
station-house, he had stood at the desk and booked her for sauntering,
loitering, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest--enough offenses to
keep her in jail until President Wilson’s successor had been elected.
And now, next morning, came this young policeman to pick that young
person out of a group of twenty-two, most of whom could not possibly
be the right one, because they were old like Cornelia, or large and
matronly, or tall and masterful, or in some other obvious way not the
young and sweet and lovely Betty. She was the youngest in the crowd,
and there were not more than half a dozen others near her age. All
she had done to make the policeman’s task harder was to take off her
brown coat with beaver fur trimmings, and appear in a blue silk dress.
What all the women did was to stand or sit, completely unaware of the
policeman’s existence, while he wandered about, peering into one face
and then into another, obviously perplexed. He had all the time he
wanted, he had everything his own way--and he got the wrong woman!
He picked out a fashionable young matron, mother of two blossoming
babes, and said, “That’s the one.” The jailer commanded, “Come with
me, Miss”--and when the young matron remained unaware of his existence,
he stooped in front of her, and put one sturdy arm about her knees,
and lifted her over his shoulder, and carried her like a sack of meal,
out of the room and upstairs into the presence of the secret judge. He
arrived there, somewhat red and out of breath, and the young matron
no less so. Set down upon her two feet, she stamped one of them, and
glared at the judge and the jailer, and clenched her two fists. “I will
say just this and no more--I am _not_ Betty Alvin!”
VIII
The night that Betty and Cornelia spent in jail there was a gathering
of the Thornwell clan: not summoned, but just happening, because every
Thornwell who got the report knew instantly that it was his duty to
repair to the Alvin home on Commonwealth Avenue to offer aid and
counsel.
There was a general agreement that it would be useless to get the two
renegades out of jail until the President was out of the city, because
they would only get in again and make another scandal. There was also
agreement as to what should be done with Betty; she must be shipped
abroad by the very first steamer. The war was over now, and while
passports were not being given for any but official purposes, it would
be an easy matter for Rupert to get what he wanted, and Betty would be
put in charge of some elderly respectable relative, and subjected to
the refining influences of Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London
and the National Gallery and the Nelson Column, and later on to the
Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, and would doubtless come back at the end
of a year a lady like all the other ladies who lived on Commonwealth
Avenue, home of the least common and most exclusive wealth in America.
About Cornelia there was a sharp difference of opinion. One group
declared that the thing to do was to excommunicate her and ignore her
existence; while the other group wanted to have her committed to an
institution, where she would be treated with the utmost kindness and
consideration, but prevented from bringing further disgrace upon an
honorable family. The head of this group was Uncle Abner, whose deaf
man’s voice would boom out in the drawing-room at intervals, “Lock her
up!” The others would try to explain objections to this plan, but he
would only say again, “Lock her up!” There are some advantages to being
deaf, it is so much easier to keep your opinions unchanged.
Great-aunt Priscilla joined Abner’s group. She was tall and thin, and
suffered from anchylosis of the spine, which made it painful for her to
sit erect, but she never sat any other way in public. She had the long
lean face of her dead brother, Josiah, and of Betty’s mother, Deborah;
it sagged now, but the pouches disappeared as she set her jaw in anger
and declared, “It is the proper thing to do in such cases. Everybody
will agree that we are justified.”
“Not quite everybody, Aunt Priscilla,” said Henry Cabot Winters.
“Surely not the suffragettes.”
“I am talking about people one mentions,” said the old lady.
“But the suffragettes would say it was persecution,” objected Deborah,
“and they would make a great fuss.”
“We should have them picketing this house!” added Rupert.
That horrible idea silenced all of them but Abner. “Lock her up!” said
he; and when his son Quincy shouted into his ear, “The suffragettes
would object,” he answered, in good old Puritan style, “Lock ’em all
up!”
There were many precedents that could be cited for this procedure,
and the old people did not fail to cite them. All you had to do was
to find a judge and a couple of doctors who sympathized with the
family predicament--and it would be easy enough for Thornwells to do
that. Great-uncle Ahab had become violent at one time, due to his
disappointment in love, and had spent ten years alone in a wing of the
Thornwell mansion, with a keeper by day and another by night; he still
had spells of brooding, when similar action had to be contemplated.
Such emergencies arose in all “blue-blood” families--it was one of the
mysteries of the Lord’s mercy--and all physicians to the rich were
accustomed to signing certificates, and judges to issuing commitments.
Some such action might have come of this conference, had it not been
for Henry Cabot Winters, that witty, urbane and charming black spider.
He was nothing but an “in-law,” and not really entitled to speak,
but he did it none the less. “Cornelia is eccentric, but she is not
insane, and we all know it; she has many friends who know it, and one
of them is Morrow.”
“Morrow?” said Great-aunt Priscilla. “Who brought Morrow into it?”
“Well, Morrow as Cornelia’s physician would naturally expect to be
consulted; and I’m pretty sure you’d have him against you.”
“What makes you think that?” It was James Scatterbridge, the great
mill-owner, who had made some millions of yards of bandages for
soldiers who were not going to be wounded, and was now very busy making
clear to the government that he was not going to give up his profit on
these contracts. He had postponed an important conference this evening,
and if his mother-in-law was going to be locked up, he wanted it done
quickly.
Said Henry, “Cornelia told me that Rupert dropped a hint of something
of the sort to her, and she decided she would take the precaution to
have a chat with Morrow, and tell him her story, and all her ideas.
He was very much amused, of course--at least that is what Cornelia
reported.”
“Oh, yes, it is _most_ amusing!” snapped Great-aunt Priscilla. “The
newspapers are finding it so, and no doubt their readers. But is that
what we have been paying Morrow for--some fifty years, I believe?”
“Well,” said the lawyer, “you certainly can’t offer to pay him to
declare Cornelia _non compos_; at least, I don’t think he would take
the money. So it looks as if we’d have to forget our black sheep.”
“Well, at least let her take her own Irish name!” This parting shot
of the old lady made Deborah and Alice wince--because, after all,
the black sheep with the Irish name was their mother. That is the
difficulty in these family councils--there are so many toes to be
trod upon! It was safer to be deaf, like Great-uncle Abner, and go on
saying, over and over, “Lock her up!”
IX
Three days after this conference Great-uncle Ahab was walking home on
a stormy night, and fell and struck his head. He lay in the snow for
some time before he was found, and a few hours later he was ill with
pneumonia, and next day was in a critical condition. The family came
in haste--including his brother Abner, somewhat embarrassed after
fifty-three years of estrangement. He tried to refer to the matter, but
Ahab was in a delirium. That was “old Boston’s” idea of drama--an old
man who could hear very little shouting to another old man who would
never hear anything. They talked about it in the clubs for quite a
while.
Also they talked about the funeral, which was an imposing affair,
the same as Josiah’s--for after all, Thornwells were alike in the
eyes of the Lord, even though in the eyes of the world one might be a
governor and the other a manic depressive. The ceremony was held in
the house which Ahab had sawed in half in order to get away from his
brother; and all through the ceremony you heard the dead man’s half
dozen hairless Chinese dogs howling their heads off in an upstairs
room--it was most uncanny. When the will was read the family kept it
secret--which of course put everybody on tiptoe with curiosity, and
caused the newspapers to give it special prominence when it was filed
for probate. One provision read, “I leave my beloved dogs to my sister