Boston a novel
spoiling me was from affection, but that didn’t change the result. I
have enough of the Pater’s brains to understand what happened. I never
had to do anything but call somebody else. If the car was out of order,
tell the chauffeur; if I wanted a bunch of flowers, tell the gardener.
So many servants to wait on one kid; so many courtiers, to make you
think you’re the top of the heap--so why should you climb any higher?
And then the women come, and after that, it is impossible to break
through. I don’t mean merely sex--I mean all the things they want to
do--tea-parties and dances and motoring and yachting. Honest truth,
Grandmother, except for things like this blackmail, there’s nothing to
choose between the fashionable girls and the ones you pick up; they
want to do the same things, and the only difference is where you go,
and how much it costs. The one thing none of them will let you do is
any serious work.”
There was more to this revealing story, and Cornelia listened to it
all and asked many questions. “I ought to have known these things many
years ago,” she said. “I might have helped you a great deal.”
“Yes, of course. Nobody talks straight to us fellows. Mother doesn’t
know much that is real, and the Pater has been so busy making
money--too busy to think what good it will do anybody. He must be
pretty sick, because I show so few signs of solving the problem for
him.”
“Wouldn’t you like to come and see me now and then? Perhaps Betty and I
could bring you in touch with people who are doing worth-while things.”
“Well, Grandmother, of course, I’ll meet anybody you say, but I don’t
see much hope in that crowd of yours. The way it looks to me, you and
Betty have got a little money, and family position, and they are using
you for what you are worth.”
“Yes, my boy,” said Cornelia, gently, “but what I thought was, you
might forget those Harvard ideas. I will take you to Charlestown prison
and introduce you to one of my wops, who has never had either money
or family position, and no education except what he picked up after
washing dishes fourteen hours a day. He cannot express himself in
English very well, yet he has managed to impress me as a very great
man. It is possible he might impress you also, and make you realize
what it means to men who lose the money that you get.”
“I don’t understand just what you mean by that,” said Young Josiah from
Harvard.
XIII
The trial of Mrs. De Falco came up in a Boston police court, and
Cornelia extended her knowledge of the “blackmail ring” and its power.
A long-haired Swede from the West had come into Massachusetts to
tell them how to run their system of justice; a “Red” and an enemy
of society, who would not play the game as other lawyers played it,
but tried to throw sticks into the machinery! Well, they would show
him--and they did.
The magistrate was an Irish-Catholic, an ardent patriot, and these
were the days of most bitter prejudice against anarchists, atheists
and wops. The lawyer representing the defendant was an aggressive
and loud-mouthed Jew, and the way he and the judge collaborated was
a prophecy of an immortal drama of the emotions called “Abie’s Irish
Rose.” When Felicani, and Lopez, a Spanish anarchist, explained
their conscientious objections to taking an oath, the devout Hebrew
gentleman went after them hammer and tongs, and the devout Catholic
gentleman beamed with delight. After that, it ceased to be the trial
of an alleged bribe-seeker, and became the trial of two self-confessed
free-thinkers. The judge actually ordered Lopez under arrest, and it
took a lot of persuading to change his mind.
The two stenographers took the stand, and the fact that one of them
had served with the A.E.F. in France did not help them in the least.
Did they know the voice of Mrs. De Falco? If not, how could they be
sure that the voice they had heard over the dictaphone was the voice
of Mrs. De Falco? To be sure, others had seen Mrs. De Falco talking in
the room; but maybe these others were lying, maybe somebody had staged
a performance to fool the stenographers and make them think they were
listening to Mrs. De Falco, when in reality they were listening to
some other Italian woman making a bribe proposition! Who could set a
limit to the rascalities that atheists and anarchists might contrive,
in order to discredit the legal system of the great Commonwealth of
Massachusetts?
And then Mrs. De Falco herself, an alert and capable young woman, whose
wits had been sharpened by years of battle for life in the police
courts. She sturdily denied every charge; and especially she denied
any trace of connection between herself and any officials. The high
officials of Norfolk and Plymouth counties were upright and honorable
gentlemen, and never had made any proposition to let criminals escape
for a money consideration, and never had the employment of a relative
as counsel for accused criminals, had anything to do with subsequent
dismissal of proceedings against such criminals. That was, of course,
the real issue being tried in this police court; to find the Italian
woman guilty meant to find the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts
guilty, and how could a patriotic judge do that? When the testimony
about the officials began to come in, the judge ordered everybody out
of the court-room except the witness and the counsel.
The defendant was acquitted; and Lee Swenson, feeling very blue, went
off by himself, and sat down at a luncheon table in a restaurant--when
who should come in but the aggressive and loud-mouthed Jewish lawyer!
He was feeling good, naturally, and joined his victim at the table,
and “kidded” him a bit, after the fashion of lawyers--and incidentally
talked about the case, as one sensible man to another. Mrs. De Falco
had hung around the courts for so many years, she of course knew both
the high official and his brother, and she had tried to capitalize
her knowledge and get some money out of the Sacco-Vanzetti defense.
She knew the details of other court cases, enough to be able to
make it appear that she was able to “swing” deals; she had gone to
meeting-places with officials, to talk about other matters--knowing
that she would be followed by the defense, who would thus conclude that
she had a “pull.”
Maybe so, said Lee; but it seemed to him a little strange that a lawyer
should be saying such things about his client, and making so elaborate
a defense of two other persons who were not his clients! Could it be
that any of the officials were paying for this legal victory? The
lawyer denied it, and Lee smiled his patient Swedish smile. Of course,
you could never be sure; it might be that it had all happened as the
other said; sometimes truth really was stranger than fiction. It might
be that the officials had happened in while Mrs. De Falco was there,
purely as a coincidence; or again, it might be that all of them had met
there to say their prayers.
The judge had been of that opinion, and the case was history. The one
thing Lee Swenson had accomplished--he realized it, now that it was
too late--was to exacerbate the prosecution, to give to all officials
having anything to do with the Sacco-Vanzetti case a reason for bitter
and personal animus. The name of Lee Swenson became a byword to all
politicians and officials; the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee
became a nest of active and dangerous foes, and the task of sending
two wops to the electric chair became one with the defense of every
criminal-in-office in the entire community. Which was exactly as
Vanzetti, lying through those endless hours in his prison cell, had
figured out and predicted. Always it happened, sooner or later, that
everything turned out as Vanzetti had figured out and predicted!
CHAPTER XII
SHADOWS BEFORE
I
Springtime in New England! Not all the giant factories with belching
smoke, not all the dingy tenements, billboards, hot-dog stands and
filling stations could conceal the fact that something magical
was happening to the land. Even to prisoners in jail, there was a
difference in the air which crept through the corridors. Just as boys
know when to fly kites, with no outsider to remind them--so Nick Sacco
knew it was time for the garden to be spaded, and when you went to see
him, he would ask who was going to do it, and what was to be planted.
It was good form to insist that he would be out in time to weed the
garden, and to eat the first tomatoes.
Vanzetti, who spent fifteen and a half hours in a cell with only a slit
in the top for light, and worked in a yard blackened with coal dust and
smoke of near-by factories--even he knew that it was spring. You took
a bunch of mayflowers when you went to see him, and the guard could
not refuse to let you give him one. A pitiful thing, a frail blossom,
but--“flower in the crannied wall”--it was a symbol, it meant a whole
springtime; it meant those beautiful woods about Plymouth, and the
walks which Bart had taken with Nonna and the children. “How happy we
been, Nonna! We not know what happiness we have, till we los-èd him!”
He would talk about the things they had done and seen; it was all
alive in his memory, it came like a vision, shining with a light that
never was in any springtime. He fed his soul upon such memories, lying
through the long hours in his cage. Friendship, kindness, beauty--he
had had these “blassings” in his life; not a full share--but then, he
had observed that people who had a full share did not appreciate so
much their “blassings.” “Plenty people go in sunshine, they not think.
But I got little time for seeing, I make notice!” He would move nearer
to the window.
Betty had occasion to go to Plymouth, and she brought back Beltrando
Brini in her car with her. Another kind of springtime, a musical talent
putting forth buds! The little boy came to the prison, and after
Cornelia had interceded with the warden, he was brought into the big
reception room, and unlimbered his fiddle and tuned it up. Bart sat
watching every move, bursting with pride, as if he were the child’s
mother. Trando was scared, of course, for he was only thirteen and a
half, and this was a terrible place, slouchy brown figures gliding here
and there, watchers with hard faces and eyes. But he tucked the fiddle
under his chin, and quavering notes stole on the air--“When you and I
were young, Maggie”--the tune which Bart had heard him struggling to
play, back in those happy days at home!
He had learned other tunes now--“Old Black Joe,” and “Home, Sweet
Home.” He could almost play Drdla’s “Serenade”--he would try it, if
Bart would excuse mistakes; Bart sat with tears running down his
cheeks, no use trying to hide them. The convicts stole to the doors
of their cells and strained their ears; even the hard-faced keepers
listened, and were reminded suddenly that they, too, were in jail,
victims of the hatreds they themselves engendered. All the prison drew
together, realizing its shame; the steel bars were melted--and the
harder and tougher moods which had made the steel. Oh, man, how strange
a fate--to make jails for yourself, and be led out by a little child
with a magic wand--and then find yourself afraid, and obliged to run
back and shut yourself in! A clock struck, and visitors must leave, and
magic cease.
II
Such holidays of the spirit were rare in the life of Cornelia and Betty
these days. For the most part their talk was about harsh reality. The
trial loomed near, a portentous event, a battle of armies; no longer a
mere matter of two wops accused of crime, but a contest over the good
name and dignity of the august Commonwealth. A lawyer had come from
the wild west and opened an office and started a propaganda campaign,
slandering the good name of Massachusetts all over the world. He was