Boston a novel
the importance of himself as host. Not for a million dollars would he
have said it in words, but his manner made clear that “Hillview” was
no longer “Thornwell,” it was “Scatterbridge.” Deborah, stately in a
creation of purple velvet; Rupert, with complexion to match his wife’s
dress, and a manner of impeccable cordiality to Cornelia, as if such
a thing as a quarrel with a mother-in-law had never been heard of in
Boston. Alice Thornwell Winters, whose elegance and grace paid no
tribute to the passing years; Henry Cabot Winters, dapper and genial;
their son, Josiah, still growing length ways, and pale--perhaps from
overstudy, as his fond mother said, perhaps from what the savage Betty
described as “woman-chasing.” Also there was Deborah’s older daughter,
Priscilla, tall and dignified; it had been four years and more since
she had raped the rug, and the crime was forgotten.
Not a word about Betty, nor anything else to humiliate Cornelia, or to
remind her of her fall from grace. Unless you count Great-uncle Abner,
poring over the _Transcript_, and commenting on a wireless dispatch
from the “Soviet Ark,” now four days at sea. “Says it’s stormy, and the
passengers are seasick.” The deaf man’s voice of Abner boomed from the
library and filled all downstairs. “Well, I’d cure their seasickness if
I had my way!”
“They say there’s no cure for it known!” shouted Abner’s son, Quincy.
“No cure?” Abner’s voice broke into a hoot. “I can tell them a
cure--dump the two hundred and forty-nine beggars overboard, and
they’ll be cured in a couple of minutes!”
There was a pause while the old man turned over the paper. When he
broke loose again, it was the “crime wave,” unfailing topic at all New
England gatherings. “Country going clean to the dogs! See that story
about the holdup in Bridgewater yesterday? Coming to a fine pass when
a shoe-company can’t bring its payroll from the bank without having
shot-gun battles in the middle of the street! Read that?”
“Yes, I read it,” said Quincy.
“Right out in the middle of Broad Street, corner of Hale--you know the
place?”
“I know it.”
“Big wide street, trees on both sides, trolley-car down the middle.
And, by jingo, if two bandits in an automobile don’t pop out and open
fire on the pay-truck, just after daylight, half-past seven yesterday
morning! _Transcript_ says the police have no clew to the bandits.
Wonder what police are for!”
“To go on strike, father.”
“It’s these foreigners!” And Uncle Abner leaned closer to his son’s
ear, which was not in the least deaf. “Infernal foreigners we’ve
let come in and ruin the country! Sixty years I kept telling it to
Josiah--ought to have stopped them. First Irish, then Jews, then
Dagoes, then Hunkies, then God knows what. They’ve taken the country
from us--the old stock might as well move out, they steal everything
we’ve got. Ought to take every steamer that brought ’em over and make
’em take ’em back free, that’s what I say!”
Did Uncle Abner know that Cornelia was in the music-room with the
children, and hearing every word he shouted? Maybe so, for he was a
shrewd old rascal, and you’re only supposed to be polite when you
know it. “Ought to ship ’em back where they came from, and all those
sentimentalists that encourage ’em go along!”
VI
Cornelia left the palace of Thornwell-Scatterbridge, and went to the
humble tenement in North Plymouth. Here too was Christmas, but on a
minor scale. The tree was not quite up to Cornelia’s shoulder, and
the decorations were half a dozen red and yellow baubles, two for
five cents at the grocery-store, a few strands of tinsel, some red
ribbon off a package Cornelia had sent, and finally, long strings of
snow-white “corns,” with three pairs of small-sized but ravenous jaws
waiting until Cornelia should have seen the spectacle before commencing
the work of destruction. The presents, ranged under the tree for her
inspection, were few and cheap--with the single exception of three
fine story-books which had come from Boston. They were now set up
conspicuously, and three children clamored their happy thanks.
The Brinis had long ago found out who Cornelia was; they knew that
she came from a great rich family; yet not all the cruel “class
consciousness” in the world could weaken their trust in her. It seemed
to Cornelia that this offered some hint of how to avoid the stresses of
the war between capital and labor; also for the bitter strife between
the old Yankees and the new foreigners, and for the “crime wave,” and
many other troubles of the time. But when she told that theory to her
friends of the great world, they called it “sentimental,” and went on
with their wiser and more practical plan of jailing and deporting and
killing. Also most of the so-called “class-conscious” revolutionists
would have agreed that Cornelia’s program was “sentimental”; so
apparently the jailing and deporting and killing had to continue.
They had a grand supper that Saturday night. Alfonsina had made
bean-soup, which Vanzetti was “crazy about”--he admitted it; and
budino, a kind of custard pudding, and tortellini, a dish of meat
cooked in noodles. Vanzetti was a vegetarian on principle, because
he thought it wicked to kill animals for food; but once in a while
he fell from grace, and the occasion was apt to be tortellini. The
animal was already dead, said Trando; but Bart would not permit
that sophistry--when we ate meat, he said, we caused another animal
somewhere to be killed, it was the law of supply and demand. He spoke
of animals as his “fellow creatures,” and this gave the children great
glee; they would bring home a crab, or perhaps a big spider, and
refer to it as “Bart’s fellow creature.” But that did not trouble the
philosopher; he made it the occasion for a lecture on the wonders of
nature. All these strange beings did really have a life like us, at
least the beginnings of it; each one knew all the things it needed to
know in order to take care of itself--and many a man was not so wise.
Vincenzo had given his wife a tiny glass bowl with three gold-fish
for a Christmas present; and this stood now on a table in the little
parlor, by the window, where the light shone through it. Bart was
fascinated by these creatures, he would stand watching them literally
for an hour at a time. He was wondering what it was like to be a
gold-fish. If you dropped a bit of food into the bowl, the fish would
know it and take it into their mouths; if it was not the right food,
they would spit it out again. What told them that? What had taught
them not to flee from a man’s hand--though fish in the wild state would
do so? Did the fish know that man existed, and what did they think
about him? Strange questions one could ask about life!
Trando got out his violin, and played “When you and I were young,
Maggie.” So many sweet songs made you sad! The little boy played it
several times, and Bart hummed the words which the children had taught
him. A wonderful act of creation, making a melody out of the chaos of
all the scratchings that were possible on four violin strings! The
Brinis were so proud, something fine was coming out of their lives,
something better than “working by cordage” all your life, better than
“living like pigs,” as the Yankees phrased it.
“Some day maybe we get piano,” said Bart. “Fay she learn play, we have
grand music.”
“Oh, yes, we’ll get a piano!” said Trando, and added, in school-boy
dialect, “I don’t think!” He was twelve years old now, and America was
teaching him to be a little “fresh” at times. “It’ll be like that horse
you were going to get me!” He explained to Cornelia, “He promised me
a horse to drive the day before Christmas. He had a barrel of eels to
deliver, and I was to help him, and for two weeks he was telling me I’d
have a horse and wagon, and I didn’t think about nothing else all the
time. But when the day come it was the same old push-cart.”
“It is baker got horse and wagon,” explained Bart. “He promise for rent
heem one day, but then he cannot, so must pusha da cart. Trando he
see--what you call it, visione--heemself sit in seat, make noise with
whip, ‘Gittup!’--granda gentleman, all little Italian girl come look,
say what is this, something wonderfool! But instead to crack whip, he
musta carry basket with package eel. He is little scare, for eel he is
live and make move--what you say?”
“Wiggle,” put in Fay.
“Mooch wiggle!” said Bart. “Little boy tink maybe he come out from
paper, make bite!”
“No, I wasn’t scared,” said Trando, “but I knew they were my
fellow creatures and I didn’t like to have them killed.” They all
laughed--even Vincenzo, who did not understand jokes in English. Bart,
with his vegetarian scruples, was hard put to it to justify his conduct
in having a barrel of his living fellow creatures shipped to him by
express, and turning them over to the murderous fury of two score
Italian housewives, who had skinned them alive and put them in salt for
the next day’s feast, as much a tradition with the Italians as turkey
in all Yankee homes.
VII
Sunday morning they went for a walk--on the street, because the woods
were full of snow. Coming home, Vanzetti bought a Boston newspaper,
because he wanted to know what was happening in Italy. Cornelia read
him a brief item, how the Italian workers were forming shop-councils,
preparing to take over industry from the capitalists. They talked about
this, and how it would happen in different countries. Vanzetti had made
a speech in a hall in Plymouth. “I force-èd be spikker,” he explained,
because the man who was supposed to be “spikker” had such wrong ideas.
Bart knew that any one who discussed anarchist ideals in public in
these critical days ran risk of arrest, and of deportation or worse.
But he would not be silenced, and Cornelia knew that he would not, and
did not even suggest it. “Anarchista musta make propaganda!”
The children had got hold of the comic supplement, and were devouring
it, laughing over the jokes and explaining them to their mother. This
humor dealt with incipient young criminals, who perpetrated every
indignity upon their elders. And meantime the elders were reading about
the product of a previous decade of comic papers--the “crime wave” and
its latest manifestations. There was more news about the Bridgewater
hold-up, which Cornelia had heard Abner Thornwell discussing.
Bridgewater was only twenty-two miles from Plymouth, and in the same
county, so the attempted robbery had been much talked about. Now the
shoe-company was offering a thousand dollars’ reward for the bandits,
and Vanzetti remarked, “You offer plenty money, you catch plenty
feller. Is always polissmen, witness, for swear poor feller in jail.”
He went on to say, how stupid for people to be surprised by the crime
wave. “You send million feller to Europe, you put heem in army, give
gun, teach heem keell; you bring heem back, he go home, find some odder
feller got his job, got his girl; he look for job, cannot find, he is
hungry--you think he don’t steal? Is foolish for not onderstand, is
people do not want onderstand.”
“You think the cause of crime is always economic?”
“Shoore, Nonna, I not think all men alike. Some men is strong, is got
what you call--carattere--”
“Character.”
“He will not do crime, he will die before do crime. But nodder man, he
is weak, is too much tempt, he sees friend do crime, get plenty money,
he try sometime, maybe get caught, he go jail. Is worst place for make
criminal, is jail, is like school, learn how to do it. You go like me,
Nonna, you work one job, work nodder job, meet onderd, meet thousand
worker, you meet plenty young criminal, young feller vanaglorioso for
what he do, think he is smart feller; I hear heem talk, I know what