Boston a novel
never believe Bart’s promises again. Surely I could testify to that
conversation!”
“They might call it hearsay,” said Joe Randall. “And anyhow, the jury
would say it was a put up job--to fool you and prepare an alibi. The
Italians are cunning, you know!”
They comforted themselves with the thought of the law’s delay.
Criminal cases took a long time to get on the calendar in
Massachusetts; and meantime, since bail was refused, there was nothing
Cornelia and Betty could do. But the law is like a sleeping tiger,
capable of swift and deadly leaps when it is roused. The second week
in June there came a cablegram; the situation was very bad, and Bart
was to be tried for the Bridgewater crime in less than two weeks.
There was just time for Cornelia and Betty to get a steamer; so the
little radical party broke up at an hour’s notice. Pierre Leon would
go back to his desk, and Joe Randall decided that he knew enough about
the White Terror in Europe, and his book ought to have a chapter on
Massachusetts!
IX
Their steamer came in to New York one afternoon, and there on the pier,
waving handkerchiefs, were Deborah and Priscilla. Betty’s sister was
engaged to be married to a young mountain of copper; an enormously
important alliance, which had already supplied a column of genealogy
to the _Transcript_. The ladies were going to plunder the Fifth Avenue
shops of their treasures; also the father, Rupert Alvin, was in
town, on business connected with Jerry Walker’s felt-plants, now in
his care. They were going to a musical comedy that evening, and had
planned diversions for several days. Betty had been away a whole year,
and any normal rich girl would have brought home several trunk-loads
of presents for relatives and friends. But here was this madcap
pair, returning precipitately, with no purchases whatever--and very
mysterious about it, obliged to decline diversions, and take the night
train for Boston. After much nagging, Deborah got it out of them--they
were hurrying to attend the trial of an Italian anarchist bandit! And
they did actually go--Betty in spite of mother, father, and sister,
Cornelia in spite of daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter.
Bart was in the County Farm Jail at Plymouth, and during the afternoon
was brought from his cell into the reception room. He had on a coarse
gray shirt and trousers, badly shrunken; his outdoor color was gone,
he was haggard and thin, and his walrus mustache drooped mournfully.
But, oh, so glad he was to see them! His face lighted up, and he came,
half running, holding out his hands; the messages of his soul leaped
to them, love and pity and heart-breaking grief. Poor old Bart--the
greatest lover of freedom Cornelia had ever known--shut up behind steel
bars! Tears started into the eyes of both the women, and the prisoner’s
voice broke as he tried to speak. “Oh, Nonna, I so sorry for spoiling
your holiday! Oh, Betty, I so sorry for bringing you to sooch place!”
“It’s all right, Bart, we had a good holiday, and now we’re here, and
we’re going to get you out in short order.” It was Betty speaking,
brave little soul--no melancholy while she was in charge! “Cheer up,
old pal, it’s going to be easy. This is Comrade Joe Randall, who has
followed me all the way from Italy because he thinks I am going to be
silly enough to marry him.”
Bart turned quickly to the good-looking young fellow. “I glad for
meeting you, Comrade Jorandall. If Comrade Betty marry you be very
lucky feller.”
“Oh, I’m not sure yet,” said Betty. “I’ve got to make a real Red out of
him. Now he’s nothing but a pale pink, one of those riformistas that we
don’t trust. But he’s going to help get you off, and that will educate
him.”
Their feeble effort at jollity came to a speedy end, and they talked
about the trial, only two days away. “My enemy have got me,” said Bart;
and they knew without asking who this enemy was, the profit system,
embodied in Plymouth by the great cordage company from which Bart
had helped to extort two hundred thousand dollars every year, in the
form of higher wages to its workers. “I think the go-vérnment not let
me ever get away,” said Bart, and Betty’s cheerfulness could make no
impression on this firm distrust.
“You see what they do,” he said. “They cannot prove Nick and me at
South Braintree, have not got evidence for sending two men to electric
chair. So they think, first we take Vanzett’, we fixit him for
Bridgewater job, we make him convicted. So when it come trial for South
Braintree job, jury will say, one of them fellers is bandit, he is
convicted, it is not so hard for believing they both should die.”
“But Bart, it’s crazy to try to prove that you were in Bridgewater that
morning!” It was Cornelia speaking.
“They have got it fixit, Nonna, they prove what they want. I tell all
friend not fool self. They have got everything, they are friends with
our lawyers.”
“Oh, Bart!”
“I sure of it. Come big feller, lazy, smoke big cigar--is what for
Italian worker pay money, buy him big cigar. He is funny man, he make
joke, he whistle. I say, ‘I am innochent.’ He make funny face, he say,
‘Very bad, they put you wit’ Sacc’!’ He stick up finger in air, he make
it go round, so”--Bart made a spiral motion, his index finger going up.
“He say, ‘Pfist!’ Is hardest work he ever do for poor wop.”
“I thought they had an investigator getting witnesses!”
“Have got Italian feller--he is spy for go-vérnment. He get all
comrades put up money, buy him automobile, so he can go look for
witness. But it pass many days, he not bring witness. Is plenty
witness in Plymoot’, but it must Brinis find them. Is maybe witness in
Bridgewater, could find people say I not look like bandit, but cannot
get them.”
“Bart,” said Betty, “we are not spies for the government, and we’re
going to rent a car right away, and take the Brinis this evening and
see if we can find some witnesses in Bridgewater. Cheer up now, we’re
really going to help you. Joe here is an expert investigator; he is
writing a book on the White Terror in Europe.”
“Is same terror here, Comrade Joe, is plenty people could tell I am
innochent, but will not dare speaking. Is polissman saw me on street,
talk wit’ me in morning, ask for price of eel, but will not tell. Is
express office man, he knows I got barrel of eel, but he will not let
us look for paper--what you call it, receipt. Is superintendent of
cordage plant, you know him. He know I was in Plymoot’ that day--but
see if he come for witness! You saw him, Nonna, always, ever since
strike, four year, he walk across street when I come, is not willing
for meet me. Is may be hate, may be fear--but see if he help me getting
out from jail! No, it is price I pay for eight year I try to educate
worker. What is it they have said about Gesu, Nonna?”
“‘He stirreth up the people.’”
“Joosta so! And I am joosta same age, Nonna, I am thirty-two, like it
was Comrade Gesu when his enemy put him in jail! I have readed about
him--it is book what they give for wop to read in jail, because all
church people have not know how bad rivoluzionario was Gesu!”
This was one of the themes Bart liked to talk about; he forgot his own
desperate peril for a few minutes. When the three visitors went out,
Joe Randall said, “This much is certain whatever happens, the police
have given us a good martyr!”
X
The little party set out in a car that evening, and going from house
to house at the scene of the Bridgewater hold-up, they found two
Italians who had witnessed the crime, and had told the police that the
bandit who stood on the street and fired a shotgun was a short man
with a closely cropped mustache. These witnesses had been rejected
by the police, as not fitting the “theory,” and they were willing to
appear for the defense. There were other witnesses who might have been
found, if there had been more time, and if the seekers had realized
the urgency. But Cornelia was hugging her notion that the case of the
prosecution was bound to break down in court; and what human mind could
have conceived that ghastly eccentricity of the laws of Massachusetts,
which amounted in effect to this: that whatever evidence was presented
to the jury at this coming trial would count, while everything that
was found out later might as well have been left in the darkness of
oblivion? To quote the words of the Supreme Judicial Court of the
august Commonwealth, handed down in the Sacco-Vanzetti case: “It is not
imperative that a new trial be granted, even though the evidence is
newly discovered, and if presented to a jury would justify a different
verdict.” Such is the law of the Brahmins and Blue-bloods, which
altereth not!
_O fates that hold us at your choice
How strange a web ye spin!_
How strange the plight in which you have placed us--that we walk
backward into our lives, with eyes that see the past, but are blind to
the future! With ears that hear the past, but are deaf to the future!
Betty rented a car, and Joe drove her and Cornelia and Vincenzo and
Alfonsina to Bridgewater, and along with that little party went a vast
throng, made up of twenty-six hundred and nine days, each one with a
separate burden of griefs and regrets. Days, black-clad and somber,
waving black veils unseen! Days wailing and moaning, shouting alarms
unheard! Cornelia and Betty and Joe and Vincenzo and Alfonsina got
out of the car, and separated and walked up and down streets, and
rang door-bells and went into houses asking questions of strangers;
and into every house with them went ten million mourners, ten million
protestants marching, singing, carrying banners in a hundred foreign
tongues. Mobs roared their fury, shrieked their imprecations; bombs
exploded, sheets of plate glass were shattered; cavalry charged, clubs
fell on human heads, sabers clove human flesh, men fell and bled and
died--and of all that tumult not one sound reached the deaf ears, not
one glimpse penetrated the blind eyes!
Voices, ghostly voices calling, up and down the streets of the little
town of Bridgewater, all through that warm spring night! Run, Betty,
run, on your swift young limbs that have been trained by climbing
mountains! Run, and rest not, until you find those other witnesses
who will testify that the bandit had a closely cropped mustache! Run,
Cornelia--one last effort of those old legs, shrunken and withered so
that you do not like to see them--find some one who can bring you to
those Pinkerton men who interviewed the witnesses of the prosecution,
and heard them say they could not identify the bandits! Joe Randall,
driver of the car, don’t go back to Plymouth to-night! Turn your
headlights to Boston, an hour or two away, and use your newspaper
introductions to find the reporter who was first upon the scene, and
will testify to what all the witnesses said! Cornelia, put your family
influence to work, get the shoe-company and the insurance company to
give up those Pinkerton reports--now while they will count, and not
later, when they will be thrust into a pigeon-hole and forgotten by a
governor’s secretary, who is paid a double salary to see that the great
man’s mind is not burdened with details!
Look, Cornelia! Look, Betty and Joe, look at that man, waiting in the
future; a man with a smile made of marble, with eyes like two agates,
cold, expressionless, a supersalesman of automobiles who will play the
part of final jury, and will politely accept your evidence, and remain
of his own opinion! Joe Randall, “expert investigator,” now is your
hour! Drive to Atlantic Avenue, where the wholesale fish-dealers have
their stores, and find that Italian who shipped the barrel of eels!
Pull off your coat and climb into the attic and search the boxes of
records--it will not be so hard now as seven years later, for there are