Boston a novel
old gipsy woman, or poison-leaflets distributed in the pews--it had
happened once in Boston history. There was a moment when the hearts
of Rupert and Deborah jumped into their throats--when the rector
pronounced the bold challenge: “If any man can show just cause, why
they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else
hereafter for ever hold his peace!”
A dreadful silence, during which Rupert and Deborah heard a voice shout
out that the younger sister of the bride was living in adultery, and
therefore the family was not “eligible.” But no one else heard a sound,
and the ceremony was completed; six immaculate ushers from Harvard
marched out with the six bridesmaids, and the little flower girls
carried the bride’s train. The bride and groom were whisked away to
the Alvin home, where an elaborate breakfast was served to the family
and intimate friends. The bride, now attired in traveling costume,
was kissed on both cheeks by relatives male and female--her pure
white forehead was stained by the red lips of adultery, and she did
not know it! Yes, Betty hugged and kissed her good old sister several
times, and wished her all the respectable luck which so respectable a
young lady was bound to have; and if there were tears in Betty’s eyes,
they were not tears of shame, because Betty was lost to shame, and
only her poor mother had to blush for her, and weep for the dreadful
hidden secret--and tremble, because the danger was not yet over--there
might be poison-leaflets thrown into the departing bridal-car, in
place of the rice and old shoes which Boston society had abandoned as
undignified.
But again the fears proved baseless, and the young couple departed
in blissful certainty that everything had happened exactly as it had
always happened, and as it ought to happen--one and the same thing in
Boston. They took the train to New York, and from there to Palm Beach,
where they stopped at the most expensive hotel, and dressed themselves
three times a day in the proper summer costumes, and innumerable
attendants rushed this way and that to anticipate their needs, and no
one embarrassed them by a smile or hint that they were suspected of not
being entirely accustomed to the intimacies of holy matrimony.
So, in secrecy and retirement, a young creature who was to bear a
string of honored names began his career; and the conscientious
young progenitors had nothing in the world to worry about except the
inescapable problem which dogs the footsteps of Boston blue-bloods
en voyage--whom is it safe to know and whom not? If people hail from
Seattle or Oshkosh, it may be rather amusing to talk to them, because
they will not presume to expect to know you at home; but if they come
from New England, then you have to speculate anxiously as to who they
are, and wish you had Mother or Aunt Alice to advise you. Can they
be the “right” Cabots? Do any of the “real” Lowells come from New
Hampshire? Are the Adamses of Scituate the ones who are cousins of the
Adamses of Concord, or can they be those dreadful people that were
divorced some years ago? Better to walk the esplanade in solemn dignity
by yourself, than take the risk of making such a serious misstep!
VII
An odd experience for Cornelia and Betty--to take part in this orgy
of hand-shaking and kissing--to be dipped, as it were, into an ocean
of propriety and perfume, to be transported to a fairy-land of white
veils and roses, frock-coats and silk hats and kid gloves, crystal and
silver and pearl and diamond wedding-presents--and then to step into a
motor-car and be carried along the Back Bay and across the river, and
find themselves within the gates of an ancient stone dungeon, stained
dark by factory smoke, with steel bars on the windows and steel doors
clanging, and faces of grim command, and faces of lowering hate, faces
brutalized and degraded, marked by disease, fear, cruelty--a thousand
evils which poverty, ignorance and neglect inflict upon the tormented
human race. Church doctrine teaches that between heaven and hell
there is an abyss across which none may travel; but Cornelia and her
granddaughter crossed it at least once, and sometimes two or three
times a week; they went back and forth between celestial and infernal
regions, associating freely with both angels and devils--and finding
them not so different one from the other as their fears and hates
caused them to believe!
Bart came, with the coal-dust hastily washed from his face and hands,
but not from his neck and wrists. He greeted them with his smile of
joy, and asked to sit near the window, in the sunshine, so rare in
his life. He saw the white roses they were wearing, and learned that
they were bridal roses; he traveled in fancy to the River Magra, where
weddings meant fiddles and dancing and wine, in addition to flowers and
white veils. Such lovely country, such happy people--if it were not for
landlord, for padrone, for wicked go-vérnment, taking boys away from
home to make soldier, to make cruel war!
They talked about the case, and Bart with tact and gentleness strove to
convey to his dear friends the unhappiness which was tormenting him.
Never had he thought it could happen that he would be the means of
sending any human being to prison, a place of wickedness and suffering
like this. “Is something should not be attempting, Nonna, it is not
according with filosofia anarchica. Mrs. De Falco is criminal, yes,
but is poor victim, is ignorant, is not blam-èd for what she do. It is
principle for me--it is wrong ever to call law, to punish wit’ judge
and sooch thing.”
“But, Bart, you told Lee you would leave it to his judgment.”
“I know, I have shame for that. I am stranger, poor man, have not
mooch knowledge. I think, friend have bring lawyer, he is educate, he
onderstand, he try hard for helping--how can I make contraddizione? But
then come Italian friend, they say, ‘What is this, Vanzett’, you are
anarchista, you make woman be arrest? You have deny principle of whole
living?’ And I say, ‘It is true, I have done wrong, I would better be
convict of any crime in world!’”
“Well, Bart”--it was Betty speaking--“you should have an anarchist
lawyer.”
“Is not many soocha t’ing, Betty, is hard for be. Should not have no
lawyer. Anarchista should stand in court, should say, ‘Is wicked place,
is wicked sistema. You have power, you have victim in hand, you can
crush him, but you cannot crush his soul, his doctrine it live, will
spread to whole umane kind.’”
“Then you really don’t want to be saved, Bart?”
“I want for anarchismo be sav-èd.”
“Joe has gone to Maine, to try to get the record of one of the
witnesses for the prosecution, that we have heard has been convicted
of crime. Now, if we find it is so, do you want us to use the fact? It
will hurt the man’s feelings, no doubt.”
Vanzetti sat with brow furrowed in thought. “I not know. I have said
always, it is good for speak truth. I think anarchista can speak what
is truth.”
“Yet you might be the cause of the man’s being sent to jail again. It
might turn out he is wanted by the police for something else.”
Time was needed to answer that! It was a complicated world, and often
it would happen that Vanzetti would agree to the proposals of Betty
and Joe and Lee Swenson, and then think it over, or hear the protests
of his comrades, and decide that it was not according to “filosofia
anarchica.” All he could say now, having brooded over the problem of
Mrs. De Falco through long hours in his cell, was that he did not want
her sent to jail, not even to save his life. Anyhow, he was sure the
move against her would not help his cause; rather it would embitter
the go-vérnment, it would make them redouble their efforts for a
conviction. It was difficult to explain this in a foreign language, but
Bart’s idea was that the authorities would consider Lee Swenson was
not playing the game. The law, from the point of view of a politician
in power, was an opportunity for graft, and the most dangerous person
in the world was not the bandit, but the man who threatened the graft
system.
“He is not so mooch fraid for bandit, he know plenty bandit, is us-èd
him, do plenty business with him. It is big bandit put up money for
election him. But man what expose, man what tell newspaper, tell
people, he is real nemico--what you say, enemy, he is one you musta
keell. I think he keell me for teach Lee Swenson he cannot break graft
in Massachusett.”
“I am sorry if we have made things worse, Bart.” It was Cornelia
speaking, and her words brought tears into the prisoner’s eyes. He
laid his hand upon her arm, and begged her pardon for his bad way of
saying things, it was hard to express these complicated ideas. He was
not afraid to die, and whatever happened, they must not grieve. He was
a poor, unknown man, he had talked for years unheeded; to be executed
for his beliefs was perhaps the one way he could make them known. But
he wanted to die with a clean conscience--not having caused a mother
of several children to be sent to jail, for trying to get her pitiful
share of that loot which the rich and powerful ones of the community
tried to keep for their own.
VIII
Lee Swenson had obtained a postponement of the Sacco-Vanzetti case
until the month of June, to give him time to prepare. The law of the
Puritans, otherwise stern and parsimonious, would be prodigal only
of delay. Sacco would sit in his cell in Dedham--when he grew bored
with standing on his head or walking on his hands--and wonder by what
malicious turn of fate it had happened that he who despised the law was
tangled in a legal net, denied even the boon of swift, uncomplicated
death. Now and then there would be papers he would have to sign on his
own behalf; invariably he would refuse to sign them, and there would
begin a campaign of diplomacy.
Visits from his wife, carrying the newly born infant, surely a reason
to make a fight for freedom! Visits from committees of this “gruppo”
and that, bringing messages and resolutions, a newspaper article, a
cablegram from Italy. You could never tell what odd circumstance might
turn the trick with Sacco: a bouquet of flowers, a chat about what was
to be planted in the garden this spring, or questions as to what would
be blooming in Torremaggiore at this time of year--and suddenly the
hard shell of anarchistic principle would melt, and the tormented man
would smile, and stretch out his hand for the paper, saying, “Is crazy
t’ing, but you say it, I sign heem.”
Meantime typewriters were clicking, and circulars and pamphlets going
out, and a scrapbook filling with clippings about the case. Throughout
labor and radical circles in America the names of Sacco and Vanzetti
were becoming known as the latest victims of the “frame-up” system.
Money was coming in, and several investigators were at work, and the
busy brain of Lee Swenson was spinning counterplots like a nest of
caterpillars in a pine tree. Under the law of the Commonwealth he had
the right to a list of the witnesses to be used by the prosecution; and
part of his preparation of the case was interviews with these persons,
and efforts to get their stories from them, to break them down, to
delve into their past and find out anything that would discredit them,
or frighten them, or cause them to swing over to the other side.
Under this system, a legal case became a miniature war, a contest of
sappers and miners, of spies and counterspies; some witnesses would
sell out more than once, and change their stories back and forth--one
statement to the Pinkerton detectives, a different one to the friends
of the defense, yet another to the district attorney, another to the
lawyers of the defense--and which one finally got to the jury was a