Boston a novel
cold one. “The idea of worrying a nice old Victorian lady with secrets
and mysteries! I suppose he told you that government witnesses don’t
always tell the truth, and defense lawyers sometimes fight the devil
with fire. Is that what you’re worried over?”
“Where were you so late, dear?” countered Cornelia--the only evasion
she could think of in a hurry.
“Never you mind--that’s more secrets and mysteries, I’ll tell you in
the morning. Now you go to bed, before your old bones turn to ice.”
She led Cornelia into her bedroom, and turned down the covers, and
brought her a glass of hot milk, describing her as “seecka kitten,”
from the days when Cornelia had been worn out with the work in the
cordage-plant, and Bart had nursed her so tenderly. When she had drunk
the milk, Betty tucked her in like a baby, and kissed her good-night
and put out the light, and raised the window, and said, “Now be a good
child, and in the morning you shall hear some nice gossip!”
XIII
Bright sunlight, and the Negro maid building the fire, and Cornelia
in her dressing-gown in the big chair before the grate, drinking her
coffee and nibbling her toast. Betty sat by her in a blue silk kimono,
and when she was through eating, took the tray and set it one side,
remarking, “So you won’t upset it or anything in your excitement.”
Then she closed the door, and took a seat close to her grandmother,
and pushed her bobbed hair back from her forehead, and said, “Now,
bless your old dear heart, get yourself together and don’t faint dead
away--Joe and I are married.”
Cornelia’s hands went limp in her lap. “Married!”
“Yes, dear.”
“But Joe has a wife!”
“Yes, that’s an old story.”
“But then--but--you can’t marry a man who is already married.”
“We can, Grannie dear, we arranged it; you see, we married ourselves.”
Something inside Cornelia quit working for a moment--heart, or lungs,
or solar plexus which controlled them both--and her voice failed her
altogether. Betty’s voice was steady, but one of those waves of color
flooded her neck and face, right up to the bobbed brown hair. “You see,
Grannie, since the law won’t be sensible, we took matters into our own
hands. Joe’s wife is in Reno, but it takes a lot of time, one can’t be
sure how long; and it was too silly that we who love each other should
sit around waiting for some politician to give us permission to live
our lives.”
There was a pause. Cornelia’s voice had not yet come back.
“Let me say right away, Grannie, this isn’t any free love foolishness.
You’ll be thinking about Mary Wollstonecraft and all that, but I was
only a child then, I was using a lot of romantic words. But now I’m
twenty-two, and I’m in love, and I want my man, and I want him for
life, and he knows that--I’ve told him that if any other woman tries
to take him away, I’ll scratch her eyes out. So you see it’s perfectly
respectable and conventional.”
“Y-yes,” said Cornelia, feebly.
“I have waited--I’ve been a good six months and more making up my
mind I wasn’t making any mistake. Now that I’m sure, I’d be perfectly
willing for any judge or clergyman to say the magic words that would
change it from immorality to the holy bonds of matrimony; but you
see how it is, the judge won’t do it for an indefinite time, and the
clergyman never will, because Joe’s wife has not committed adultery--at
least, she has, her man is out there with her, but it isn’t going to be
legally proved, so the curiosity of the Episcopalian clergymen will not
be satisfied according to canon law. I have looked all this up in the
library, and I’ll explain it if you don’t know what I mean.”
“No, I understand,” said Cornelia--still feebly.
“Well, Grannie dear, in your marrying time no one did his own thinking,
but now the world is changing, so my dear blessed old chaperon has got
to sit down and ask herself this plain question: Do you think that my
love for Joe, or his for me, would be in any way more sanctified or
purified by any formula that any judge or clergyman could pronounce
over us? Do you really believe that?”
Cornelia had to think.
“Be sure, now.”
“No, I guess I don’t.”
“All right, then. And do you think we’d be apt to be more true to each
other if we had dressed up in party clothes, and spent several thousand
dollars for flowers in Trinity Church, and had four organs play the
Lohengrin wedding march going in and the Mendelssohn wedding march
going out, and had the rector say a formula which seems absolutely
superfluous to both of us? Do you believe that?”
“No, dear, I suppose I really don’t. Only--we always have done it in
our family.”
“Most of the time,” said Betty. “But this is a special case, and Joe
and I talked it out and decided that it is just too silly that our
love-life should be maimed for we can’t tell how long. We decided that
the law is an imposition, and we have taken the liberty of being our
own clergy, that is all.”
“Yes, dear. But--suppose you get into trouble?”
“Well, we’ll do our best to keep it from happening. We have taken
the best advice. But if there should be an accident, we’ll face
the consequences. I promise you I won’t have what they call a
‘curettage’--as you remember Aunt Alice did not so long ago. You
didn’t know I knew about that, I suppose! And neither will I have an
appendicitis operation, like Cousin Julia. I wouldn’t mind a bit having
a baby by the man I love, and telling the world exactly what I had done
and why; only, of course, the family would die, so if the worst comes
to the worst, you and I and Joe will take another trip to Europe, and
stay there till we can marry. And meantime you must be a good sensible
soul, and tell yourself that Joe and I are married before God and you,
and when he comes in you are to kiss him on both cheeks and welcome
him as your grandson-in-law. Because, you see, he’s quite embarrassed
about it, knowing how eminently respectable you are. Indeed, he’s that
way himself, coming from Virginia--he’s almost as bad as Roger Lowell,
and I had to take matters into my own hands, and do all the marrying,
so to speak. But now it’s done, and I want you to feel comfortable
and happy about it, so that we can be comfortable and happy too. The
sensible thing is for you to chaperon us, and let us meet here, because
it’s very disagreeable having to go to third-rate hotels, and besides,
it’s dangerous, because the politicians in this pious Puritan city are
preying on the free lovers--those who happen to be rich and prominent.
Joe says they have a regular blackmail ring, they catch some man in a
hotel room with a woman, and it costs him anywhere from twenty to two
hundred thousand dollars--that is, of course, unless he can show the
card of a United States senator and presidential candidate!”
There was a pause. “That’s all, Grannie.” Then another pause.
“You are putting a heavy responsibility on me, dear.”
“One more secret to keep!” Betty stood up, looking like a new-risen sun
with laughter and joy and health. “Bless her dear old frightened soul!”
She stooped and put a kiss on each of Cornelia’s cheeks, and one on her
forehead; then, laughing again, “You don’t have to carry the burden if
it’s too heavy. I’ll take it all off your blessed shoulders.”
“How, dear?”
“Say the word, and I’ll move into an apartment with Joe, and write a
note to Mother, telling her all about it. What do you say?”
This time there was no pause. Cornelia said instantly, “No! No!”
XIV
“Bring me good choosing book,” wrote Bart. “I will get the fundament
which I have so long needing.” So whenever Cornelia went for a visit,
she would take two or three volumes from her little library: Benjamin
Franklin’s autobiography and Paine’s “Rights of Man,” the letters and
speeches of Jefferson, Thoreau’s “Walden” and Emerson’s essays, a life
of Garrison and one of John Brown. She thought he ought to know that
New England in which he was to fight for his life, and he agreed with
her in this. He had the most intense interest in history, and the lives
of men who had played a part in it, especially in the cause of liberty
and “joostice.” He identified himself with these great characters, he
lived their lives, finding comments on his case in their words, and
vindication in history’s verdict upon them. He read every minute that
the prison regulations permitted, and at Cornelia’s request he would
write comments on the margins of the books, and many pages of pencil
notes. It was a regular college course in New England culture, and each
time they met there was progress to report.
The old Charlestown prison is built in the form of a cross, and in the
center is a large airy room, in which the prisoners are permitted to
see visitors. Cornelia would come, with her books and her one flower.
She would have to wait while he washed his hands and face--because he
was shoveling coal now, and wheeling it in a barrow for the prison
furnaces; he would apologize for the condition of his clothes, which
he could not help. Cornelia had interceded with the warden and got him
this job, instead of the work in the tailor shop, which fitted him ill.
Outdoor labor was what he had been used to during his ten years in
America, and it kept him in physical condition.
He was a model prisoner, except that he would not stand indignities
from his keepers. Once when Cornelia came she was told that she could
not see him, he was in “solitary” upon bread and water, because he had
refused to do his work. There followed sessions with the warden, and it
transpired that Bart considered that the guard had addressed him in a
way injurious to his dignity. It took tact on Cornelia’s part to patch
up this situation; for the American prison system does not allow for
dignity, and it is not easy to persuade authorities that an anarchist
has a soul. But they could understand that it was unwise to exasperate
a man who received visits from ladies of high social station, and who
might cause a fuss in the newspapers.
Also Cornelia visited Mrs. Sacco, in the village of South Stoughton.
The new baby had arrived, a lovely little girl, and Cornelia and
Betty took this news to the prisoner in the county jail at Dedham, and
received a warm welcome. Poor Nick required a great deal of cheering,
because he was a man who had lived by physical activity, and could not
read and study and think like Bart. He had to learn to spend about
twenty-two hours a day in a cell, with nothing whatever to do, and he
did not want to wait for a trial, he did not want lawyers to fool with
his case and waste the money of the anarchist movement--he wanted to be
killed and have it over with. Cornelia and Betty would argue with him,
in patient half-English and half-Italian, finding ways to appeal to his
pride, reminding him of revolutionary heroes who had managed to endure
prison. Why not work out a régime for himself--do gymnastics, of both
body and soul? Why not study English, so as to do better work for the
cause if he got out, and to write his message to the world if he failed?
The next time they came, they would find that he had shaved himself
meticulously, and wore one of the flowers they had brought him. He
was practicing walking about the cell on his hands, and counting the
number of times he could “chin” himself on his cell-door--he had got
up to forty-something, which was remarkable for any man. He was proud
of that, and when they told him about the lovely eyes of the baby,
his spirit bounded as high as previously it had sunk low. Two races
comprise the Italian nation: those of the north who are descended from
Teutons and Gauls, and are capable of reflection, like Vanzetti; and
those of the south, descendants of Greeks and Carthaginians and Moors,
brown and excitable people, who live their lives outside, and utter