Boston a novel
only large sum in sight was what Cornelia could raise on her income
and lend to the committee. She had discovered by talking to bankers
that she could not raise very much, because her life expectancy at
sixty-five was limited. If she had wanted fifty thousand dollars for
an orphan asylum, or for a house to live in, or even for a string of
pearls to hang about her withered neck, she had three daughters and
three sons-in-law, any one of whom would have written her a check, and
been glad to get such a hold upon her. But when it was a question of
imperiling the Commonwealth by aiding and abetting anarchism, Cornelia
did not have to ask for the money, she could hear in advance the polite
but firm rebuke.
The problem of a lawyer was settled by the Italians. It happened that
Lee Swenson was in New York, recuperating from the labor of saving a
bunch of I.W.W. from jail in Kansas, and swearing to himself by all the
gods he disbelieved in that never again. But Carlo Tresca came to see
him, and Swenson knew Carlo from the Ettor-Giovannitti case. Carlo told
the pitiful story of two anarchists in jail in Massachusetts, who had
the skids under them, all ready to be slid into the electric chair; he
told what a fine fellow Bart was, and how he had all but had tears in
his eyes because he missed seeing the Statue of Liberty, and now maybe
he would never see it; and about Nick’s wife and little boy, and the
new baby expected in a month or two. Carlo came again and again, and
appealed to Lee Swenson’s friendship, until finally he said he would go
up to Boston and look things over.
Lee Swenson was of Swedish descent, and came originally from Minnesota.
He had been in practically every big criminal case which involved
labor during the past fifteen or twenty years. As a cub lawyer he had
helped to get evidence for Moyer and Haywood in Idaho; he had helped to
defend the McNamaras in Los Angeles and Tom Mooney in San Francisco,
and several groups of the I.W.W. in Chicago and the middle west. He
stood six feet and a couple of unnecessary inches, and was badly put
together; he did not know what to do with his big hands and feet, nor
in fact with any part of himself; he liked to sit on his neck, and his
feet liked to get up off the floor. He had a thick shock of yellow
hair, and when it was not arranged it looked as if one of those western
windstorms had hit it, and when it was arranged it appeared to be done
with vaseline.
Lee Swenson was too intelligent a man not to know the disturbing
effect he produced upon the respectable citizens of New England. Was
he really rattled by them, as he pretended, or did he enjoy the effect
he produced, somewhere back in the deeps where he kept his laughter
until it came rumbling forth like thunder from the mountains? After
he had been nosing into the case for a couple of weeks, he asked
for a conference with Cornelia, and she invited him to her little
apartment to dinner, on an evening when Joe and Betty were scheduled
for a hearing before the carpenters’ union. Before they went into the
dining-room, Lee Swenson sank into Cornelia’s one Morris-chair, and
then slid most of the way out of it, and said, “Will you be shocked if
I cross my legs?”--and did it without waiting for an answer.
“Not at all,” said Cornelia, hastily.
“Not even when you discover that I wear woolen socks?”
“I know you are making fun of Boston, Mr. Swenson.”
“My God,” said he--“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Thornwell, but this is a
terrible place for a man that grew up in a sod hut. I realized when we
were defending Ettor and Giovannitti in Salem that I didn’t fit, but I
never had time to go into details, and never happened to meet the right
person. But I believe you are it.”
“Is that why you wanted to talk with me?”
“No, but you can do it on the side. Tell me how to avoid shocking
judges and juries who talk through their noses.”
“Do you really want me to tell?”
“I said it.”
“Well, why do you wear a broad-brimmed black felt hat such as nobody
ever saw in Boston?”
“But it’s what I had when I came to town, and I can’t afford another.”
“Are you really that hard up?”
“Maybe you don’t know how it is with a radical lawyer. Imagine a score
or two of cases, each like this one. There is two dollars and fourteen
cents in the treasury to-night. They offer to pay me a hundred and
fifty a week while the case lasts, but you know how it will be, they’ll
be seventeen weeks behind in their payments at the end of eighteen
weeks, and when I get a check, there’ll be some emergency next day that
I’ll pay out of my own pocket. You see, I’m not really going to be a
lawyer--that will be merely incidental; I’m going to be organizer,
propagandist, press agent and promoter; any money I get, I’ve first got
to raise, and understanding that the committee will begrudge me every
cent I take.”
“Surely it won’t be as bad as that, Mr. Swenson!”
“You are a newcomer, Mrs. Thornwell; but this is my twentieth
committee, and believe me, I know them. It won’t be their fault, they
will be sincere and devoted, most of them; but they will be poor, and
narrow-minded--not used to spending money with the magnificent abandon
of us privileged persons. They won’t see what I need with so much, and
when the newspapers and the outside public begin to tell how I have got
away with one or two hundred thousand on the sly, they will think maybe
it’s the truth. I tell you this in advance, because, when it’s over, my
one chance of getting arrears of salary will be by vamping some of the
rich ladies, your friends who will be interested in the case. And then
I’ll get my new hat.”
“Meantime,” said Cornelia, hastily, “you can at least get a haircut.”
But the other replied, “If I did, the hat would be bigger than ever,
with nothing to hold it but my ears.”
VI
After they had dined, and were back in the little living-room, in
front of the coal grate-fire, the lawyer asked if he might close the
door. He drew his chair close to Cornelia, and slid down into it and
began: “Mrs. Thornwell, I have been digging into this case, and I am
completely baffled, and don’t know what to do. The last time I talked
with Vanzetti, he told me that you were the one American he would
trust. He admires your granddaughter, but he’s afraid she would be
shocked if I talked straight to her.”
“He is mistaken,” said Cornelia, smiling in spite of herself. “I am far
more easily shocked than Betty. The younger generation is taking life
into its own hands.”
“Well, if you don’t mind, I prefer the old ones. You and I have
suffered, and we have a deeper foundation under us. Do you mind if I
ask for your confidence?”
“Not at all, Mr. Swenson. I will tell you anything I can. But I fear it
won’t be much.”
“First, all you know about these two boys--everything that will help me
to judge them.”
“Sacco I hardly know at all. I only met him two or three times prior
to the arrest. I have been to see him three times in Dedham, partly
because I wanted to make up my mind about him.”
“And what are your conclusions?”
“He is a difficult man to know, under the circumstances. He has a
primitive mind, I judge. He does very little thinking; he is satisfied
with a formula, that the rich exploit the poor, and are the enemies
of the poor, and always have a self-seeking motive in relation to
them. And of course I don’t fit into that formula. Why should a rich
woman, who might have everything she wants, burn up gasoline and
tires traveling down to Dedham to visit an anarchist in prison? He is
instinctively polite, and affectionate to his friends, I am told. He
hasn’t given me any hint of a suspicion, but he probably fears that I
may be another trap the enemy has set for him. You know, of course,
they put a spy in the cell next to him soon after his arrest?”
“Yes, he told me that.”
“Also they wanted to get one into his home, to try to board with his
wife. I’m told the district attorney had that bright idea. I suppose
it is too much to expect those gentry to have delicate sensibilities,
but you’d think they might have guessed that a woman who was deprived
of her husband, and was expecting another baby in two or three months,
would rather have a woman-boarder than a man. Anyhow, somebody found
out about it, and naturally the Saccos are very suspicious. So I
haven’t tried to talk about the case with either of them. When I have
seen Nick, I have talked about his garden, and the wonderful tomatoes
he used to have--those tomatoes were like so many babies to him. I take
him a bunch of chrysanthemums--they let him have flowers, though they
won’t let Bart have any.”
“Oh, surely not!”
“It’s a regulation at Charlestown, I suppose that a saw or a knife
might be hidden in them; or maybe drugs. I get round it by wearing
one flower, and when I ask the guard if I may leave it with Bart,
he is ashamed to say no. I am trying to win the hearts of all of
them, because it seems to me the jailers are in jail as much as the
prisoners.”
“We are all in jail, Mrs. Thornwell. Take it from one who has been
playing the game twenty years--we are prisoners of the system. I walk
about with a chain on my wrist, and at the other end are fastened so
many lies that it seems like the population of all seven of Dante’s
hells. That is a part of what I want to talk to you about.”
VII
It took Cornelia a good hour to tell the story of how she had come into
the Brini home and what she had seen there. She told about Bart’s ideas
and dreams, his work and his play and his personal habits. She told
about the sick kitten he had refused to have killed, and the rabbits he
had brought home in a sack, and kept in pens for several months--until
the sorrowful realization was forced upon him that there was no earthly
way to keep those creatures from getting out and gnawing the vegetables
of his Catholic neighbor, Mrs. O’Dowd. She told about the lost purse
he had refused to take from the policeman, and the boots he had let
the poor laborer keep, and the lessons in hygiene he had given to the
“riformista,” Compagno Culla--all those incidents which were destined
to become Vanzetti legends, and be repeated whenever his Italian
friends mentioned his name.
Also, because a lawyer had a right to the whole truth, she told him
about the fights; and how the anarchist youths had come armed to the
Galleani meeting, vowing to defend their hero to the death; and how
Bart had got a gun and declared that he would never let himself be
taken and put through the third degree.
“Now you are getting to what I want,” said Swenson. “Do you know
whether that gun is the same one that he had on when he was arrested?”
“I believe he gave it away,” said Cornelia. “From what I know of him,
he wouldn’t keep any piece of property as long as four years.”
“Well, I can’t get them to tell me where they got those guns; at least,
I can’t get them to tell me the truth. That’s why I’m so up against it.
They are afraid of me, afraid of everybody.”
“They have reason to be cautious. But won’t they take Tresca’s word for
your reliability?”
“I suppose if I could get them both together with Carlo, we could come
to an understanding; but as it is, they go on repeating the stories
they told to the police; and their friends outside do the same.
Orciani has been driving me about, looking for evidence, and I’ve been
appealing to him. Do you know him?”
“Only slightly.”
“He has the courage of a man with the mind of a child: a simple Italian
peasant, picked up off the countryside and dumped into the maelstrom of
America. I have managed to win his affection, and he will talk to me
frankly about everything in the world but this case. I point out his
contradictions, but it doesn’t make any difference. It is a peculiarity