Boston a novel
extremes of emotion with many words and gestures. An odd turn of fate
that so many of these should have come to Massachusetts, to annoy the
stern and forbidding ghosts of Puritans!
XV
Lee Swenson had decided that he would take the case. He said no more
to Cornelia, but evidently there had been some understanding with
Betty and Joe, for the young couple sat in at long conferences, and
covered half the state in Betty’s runabout, interviewing witnesses and
tracing clews. Cornelia succeeded in raising five thousand dollars
by pledging one-half her income--which meant that a money-lender was
willing to gamble that she would live more than two years, in spite
of all her worries and labors. She brought in this money, after which
the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee had an office, and a post-office
box, and no less than two second-hand typewriters clicking away on
envelopes. There was a pamphlet telling about the case, mailed out to
lists of radicals all over the country. Articles appeared in socialist
and labor papers, both in America and Europe; for Joe and Betty
wrote long letters to Pierre Leon, and he would translate them into
French and publish them in his paper. So the readers of anarchist and
communist and socialist papers all over Europe began to hear about two
Italians who had fallen victims to the White Terror, in what had once
been the sweet land of liberty, but was now the banking-headquarters of
reaction for the whole world.
Also Cornelia’s labors among the blue-bloods were not without fruit.
Many of these people knew the corruption of their political parties,
and the alliance between the politicians and the exploiting interests.
They had heard of the Ettor-Giovannitti frame-up, and had watched
another strike in Lawrence, a little more than a year ago, with several
near-murders committed by thugs in the mill-owners’ employ. They had
seen the “Reds” paraded down State Street in chains, and had seen
the government forced to turn most of them loose, having not even a
pretense of evidence against them. So a few well-to-do persons began
to take an interest in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. This gave an air of
prosperity--and brought a new development, highly characteristic of the
great Puritan city. One afternoon Lee Swenson called Cornelia on the
phone. “How are you to-day? Nerves fairly strong?”
“What has happened?”--for Cornelia knew his way of teasing her.
“Do you remember the talk we had in your apartment, when I told you
there might be a way to put our boys on the street?”
“I remember.”
“Well, can I drop in for tea and tell you about it? Send the maid out
if you can--it’s a time for being alone!”
The lawyer came, and this is what he had to report. Felice Guadagni,
journalist, who was one of the mainstays of the committee, had had
several visits from an Italian woman named De Falco, an interpreter
for the district court at Dedham, in Norfolk County. She claimed to
come from the district attorney’s office, and offered to have the
men released at the price of sixty thousand dollars. There had been
several conferences, and Felicani, the printer, had met the woman,
and when he pleaded poverty, she had offered to get the price reduced
to fifty thousand. The sum was to be disguised as a retaining fee for
the brother of an official, who was to be hired by the defense. The
Commonwealth would then decide that there was not enough evidence
against the pair, and they would be turned loose. “So there’s your
righteous and law-abiding Boston!” said Lee Swenson--and looked at
Cornelia with a twinkle in his wild western blue eyes.
“You think it’s really genuine, Lee?”
“Lawyers tell me it’s a common procedure in other counties. The woman
undertakes to give us satisfactory assurances.”
“What would they be?”
“She has already given Felicani the names of other cases she claims to
have settled in the same way, and we can investigate them. But first we
have to decide the question--do we want to buy the boys off, or do we
want to trap the rascal politicians and get something on them?”
Said Cornelia: “It seems to me it all depends on whether we are sure
our boys are innocent. I believe they are. Do you, Lee?”
He answered:
“Yes, I do. But that is not the only point. Even though innocent, they
may be convicted; and the problem is, do they want to risk their lives
for some propaganda?”
The lawyer would be allowed to see his clients in the evening, so he
said that he would run out to Charlestown and ask Bart about it. “I’ll
make my guess,” he added, “if no ladies are present, he’ll say, tell
them to go to hell.”
CHAPTER XI
THE GRAFT RING
I
Quincy Thornwell was dining with his Aunt Cornelia. He called her that,
scrupulously, though he was only two years her junior; he had done it,
scrupulously, for forty-five years, since he had been a freshman at
Harvard, and she had married into the older generation. Every so often
he came to dinner, as a mark of respect, and because family solidarity
must be maintained, as the last trace of order in a disintegrating
world. For the same reason he put on his honorific clothes; a matter
of ritual, a symbol of membership in a group which did the right thing
always, as a matter of course and without discussion.
Cornelia also did her part. Her dinner-gown was years out of fashion,
but that was a sign that she was superior to fashion. Her little
apartment was in a tenement, but that did not matter, because everybody
knew it was eccentricity, not necessity. Visiting members of the
family had brought boxes now and then, quite casually, and almost
without mentioning it; so now she had silver, and shining crystal, and
old family china, and linen with strawberry designs, lighted by four
tall thin tapering candles. There were flowers in the center of the
table--sent with Quincy’s card. The Negro maid wore a white cap and
apron, and had learned how to serve a meal, because Deborah had sent a
real servant to give her lessons. No matter how “red” your poor mother
may turn in her old age, she must be kept in touch with the decencies
of life.
Quincy--continue to pronounce him like a disease of the throat--was
dieting under a doctor’s orders, and shrinking up rapidly in the
process, so that there were more wrinkles in his face every time
you met him. He had become almost entirely bald, and with a bright
pink scalp. His nose and cheeks were red, with fine little veins of
purple--his blue blood showing through, he would say, mockingly. The
extraordinary thing was that when he opened his mouth in laughter,
which he did frequently, you saw a cavern of exactly the same color; it
seemed unhuman, and when you knew him well you realized that it was.
No more canvas-backs, cooked a quick brown on the outside and deep
purple inside, according to the fastidious taste of an habitué of the
Somerset Club! No more good honest roast beef, not even any more Boston
beans, since they too were high protein, and suspected of uric acid!
You must have fish for Quincy, and then chicken--white meat, if you
please; and no mayonnaise on the salad--the devil of it was it made you
talk about food, and started other people telling their diets, and the
women with their everlasting reducing. Thence the company got onto the
subject of drink, and after that there was nothing but the private life
of their bootleggers. Good conversation was dead in Boston.
What Quincy meant by good conversation was gossip about the hundred or
two persons he knew, and the thousand or two he knew about. They were
always doing queer things, or getting into trouble, and he would tell
the tales with comical embellishments, and throw back his head and
chuckle. He had been a widower for the greater part of his life, so no
woman had felt free to point out to him how queer he looked when he
revealed his dental plates. But his mother or some one had taught him
very young that it is bad form to laugh, so he had a series of chuckles
which became convulsive, and turned his face a deeper red, but never
became audible.
He talked about the family. Poor old Father was failing fast; he had
to have a man to go about with him. He still insisted on riding a pony
along with the Scatterbridge children, so the attendant had to have
a pony too--impossible to imagine a more comical spectacle than that
family procession, riding all over the estate but never going off it,
for fear of automobiles. Impossible to play chess with Father any more,
yet it was necessary to pretend to play, to avoid breaking the old
man’s heart. The universal curse of life, that our ambitions exceed our
abilities! Nothing of that sort for Quincy, he had found out what he
could do, and confined his wishes to the possible. He might never be
heroic, but he would be a lot safer.
James Scatterbridge was one of the unsafe ones. Tried to do too much
with those enormous mills. It seemed there would never be any market
for cotton goods again. Rupert and John Quincy--that was Quincy’s
older brother--were having the devil’s own time pulling James through.
Both of them were showing the strain of running all the finance of New
England. To the devil with it, said Quincy; enough for him if he could
watch the beast, and judge the right moment, and step in and slice off
a juicy chunk. Rupert and John scolded him because he didn’t produce
anything; and he chuckled--a fine mess they had produced!
The maid brought in a pitcher of steaming hot water, with a couple
of glasses; and Quincy took from his hip-pocket a silver flask,
comfortably curved to fit that portion of the anatomy. He understood
that he had to “bring his own” when he came to Aunt Cornelia’s, because
she was engaged in more serious kinds of law-breaking, and could not
afford to expose herself to the lesser risks. Quincy mixed himself a
mild dose of rum and sugar and water, and Cornelia took a sip, in order
to be good company. “My ancestors used to smuggle in molasses to make
this stuff,” said the old gentleman. “Now the stuff itself is smuggled,
and a new aristocracy is emerging, that will dine on spaghetti from
gold plate.”
So he talked about prohibition! They were bringing it in by the
schooner-load, everywhere along the coast, every night that didn’t
happen to be moonlit or stormy. Yet the prices got higher and higher,
and the quality worse and worse. You might get ever so good a
bootlegger, and investigate his ancestry, his police record, his church
affiliations and all that, and still you couldn’t be sure, because
the rascal dealers would fool him. They were making synthetic stuff
in the cellars of Boston slums, putting it onto boats, unloading it
on the shore, and selling it for Canadian Scotch. The “booties” were
being held up all along the line, they would pay the police where they
started from, and then the police would send a motor-cycle cop after
them to hold them up and get some more.
It was a good thing for labor, Quincy admitted; made it possible to
get work done on Monday, so for that reason the law would probably
stay. But it was mighty demoralizing; graft was spreading so fast,
you hardly knew the old New England. Quincy had been talking that day
with a politician in a boardroom, watching the course of stocks, and
this politician had quoted the value of the pickpocket, burglary, and
confidence men concessions of Suffolk and Middlesex counties. “What
do you think of that?” said Quincy, and had one of his convulsions of
chuckling.
“It makes me think of something I want to ask you,” said Cornelia. “I
also have connections with the underworld nowadays.”
“I know,” said Quincy, “those two wops of yours.”
“No,” said his aunt, “not the wops, but the officials who are
prosecuting them. I need a lot of advice, provided it can be
confidential.”