Boston a novel
And even that was not the end! A dreadful idea flashed through the mind
of Clara, and she rushed into the rear reception room, which the ladies
of the family used for their tea-parties. In the center of this room,
upon the seldom-trodden floor, had reposed the Shah of Persia’s rug;
and now it was gone! Clara gave one glance, and fled back to her older
sister. “Deborah Thornwell, you have stolen my rug!”
Deborah drew herself up to her utmost height of amazement. “I have not
touched my rug!”
“But it’s gone!”
“It has not been taken by me.” Still whispering, of course.
Clara looked, and saw that Deborah’s elder daughter, Priscilla, was
missing. She asked no more but turned to Addicks, the perfect servant,
who never in his fifty years of devotion had encountered an emergency
like this, nor in his maddest nightmare had dreamed it. “Addicks, Miss
Priscilla has taken the Shah of Persia’s rug. Search for it and bring
it to me. Run!”
In the two hundred and eighty-five years of Boston’s history, no such
un-Bostonian thing had ever been known to happen, so there could be no
Bostonian way of dealing with it. Clara Thornwell Scatterbridge became
an ordinary woman in a rage. With tears in her china-blue eyes she
appealed to her husband, to her mother, even to her older children and
the governess. Ignoring her husband’s efforts to restrain her, she ran
from room to room, flinging open doors and looking into cupboards and
behind sofas. As it occurred to her to look outside, she rushed through
the doorway, breathless, red of face, forgetting her stoutness, her
laboring heart, her varicose veins, forgetting even that institution
which through so many generations had stood inviolate, the Thornwell
dignity. A civilization in ruins!
The mystery was solved at last. Word spreading among the servants, a
chauffeur reported that he had seen Miss Priscilla with the rug in her
arms, going towards the apple-orchard. So across the fields marched
Clara, followed by Deborah, at Clara’s insistence. The other members of
the family, suddenly realizing that this was a scene which must not be
admitted, ordered the lawyer to begin the reading of the will.
Out under an old apple-tree, in the exact geographical center of the
priceless Persian rug, sat the new generation, “young Boston,” which
was going to think and act for itself--and bring back the days of the
pirates and privateersmen.
“Priscilla!” commanded Clara. “Get up!” And then: “Priscilla, you hear
me speak to you! Get up off that rug!”
Silence. And Clara turned to her sister. “Deborah, will you order your
child to obey?”
Would she? There was a pause, while history hung in the balance.
“Priscilla, I disapprove of what you are doing. Please get up.”
And so the rug-sitting sphinx revealed a voice. “Mother, I am the
person who will inherit this rug and I have made up my mind what to do.
I shall sit here until Grandfather’s will has been read. If he gives
it to us, as he promised, all right. If not, Aunt Clara may call the
police to remove me from it.”
“Priscilla! You defy your mother?” Clara’s voice was trembling.
“Deborah, make her obey you!”
“Priscilla, obey me,” said the mother. Was it possible that the voice
lacked just a little of its usual firmness? Anyhow, Priscilla Alvin
continued to sit, her eyes fixed on space.
“Obey your mother!” commanded Clara.
“Priscilla, obey me!” echoed Deborah.
“Mother,” said the rug-sitter, “I was twenty-one years of age last week
and I have taken legal advice and learned that I am no longer compelled
to obey any one but the law. I am here and I shall stay here, and I
serve notice now that if any one but a policeman removes me I shall get
a warrant for the person’s arrest.”
“Oh!” cried Clara. “What is this new generation coming to?”
“Aunt Clara,” said the rug-sitter, “you will save time if you go back
and hear the will, because you won’t accomplish anything meantime. Do
not worry, I shall stay right here till the question is decided. I
could have gone farther if I had wanted to, but I like this orchard,
which you got away from us.”
XV
And meantime Cornelia had gone to her rooms and locked the door behind
her; and then into her bedroom and shut that door, to make doubly
certain. She was pacing up and down, beset by a storm of emotion. As
they say a drowning man lives over the experiences of his whole life,
so she was living the repressions of forty years. All the rages she
had felt and never voiced! All the disappointments, the despairs! The
experiences she had longed for, and never dared to have, and now could
never have, because it was too late! She had been caught, a wild young
thing in a trap; she had lived, a prisoner in a cell. She had had
dreams, and seen them suffocated; she had had children, and seen them
taken from her, and made into strangers. Forced into the mold of this
family--this solid phalanx of iron people--with iron souls, iron wills
which broke you!
This crowning indignity, this outbreak in the very presence of
death--this was an accident, Cornelia told herself. They had never
done anything like this before, nothing so open, so undignified. They
would repudiate it themselves, they would be ashamed of it to-morrow.
This was not “Boston”! But to Cornelia, who had been on the inside of
“Boston,” it seemed an outbreak of reality, a revelation of hidden
natures. Petty jealousy, petty greed, masked with dignity, and wearing
the solemn costumes of historical tradition! Other people, living
people, would quarrel over real things; the Thornwells quarreled over
the dead rags and relics of their ancestors!
Once there had been real people in this family! Once there had been men
and women who had acted, who had dared to think for themselves--and to
care about something else than rags and relics! Memories surged into
Cornelia’s mind, of the old days when the Thornwells had been smugglers
and privateers--not thinking about the proprieties then! There had
been revolutionary leaders among them--men who had gone into the
“pot-houses” and incited mobs! There had even been women who had dared
to think, and to act, instead of obeying the men! Didn’t they worship
the memory of a Great-great-aunt Deborah, who had been one of the
anti-slavery pioneers? Not frightened by the horrible name of “Black
Abolitionist”--no indeed, she had made her home one of the stations in
the “underground railway” which had carried fugitive slaves to Canada!
She had taught Negroes to read and write--not only black women, but
black men! Such was the tradition they thought they worshiped; but
really they only worshiped the rags and relics of it!
Suddenly this storm of emotion culminated, and Cornelia, who had been
pacing back and forth in her room, suddenly stopped still. What was the
reason women were always bound by fear? Because they were afraid! Why
were they obedient? Because they obeyed! When they wanted to act, they
did not know enough; and when they knew enough, then they were too old!
But who could say you were too old to act, if you acted?
Cornelia, trembling with excitement, but at the same time calm inside,
went to her desk and sat down, and took pen and ink and began to write.
“My dear Children:
“For forty years I have been doing what other people wanted me
to do, and I have never had any fun. Now I think I have done
everything I can for you, and that you can get along without me. I
hope that I am old enough to take care of myself. I am going away
for a while, to remain until I choose to return, if ever. I am not
taking any property, because there has been too much of it in my
life, and I believe I shall be happier without it. I am going to
prove to myself, for my own satisfaction, that I can take care of
myself, without any advice or assistance from any one. I have only
one request, that you will waste no time or money in efforts to
find me. It will only irritate me and do no good whatever, because
I shall continue to do exactly what I please. I have heard of
runaway children; I am going to be the runaway grandmother.
“With best wishes,
“Mother.
“P.S. I enclose a respectable letter which you may show to our
friends.”
And the second letter:
“My Dear Children:
“Your father’s sudden death has shocked me deeply, and after the
strain of the funeral I realize that I am run down and in need of
rest. I have received a telephone call from an old school friend
who is starting on a camping trip and begs me go along. I think
such a complete change will help me, so I am taking a night train,
and write this to explain and leave you my dearest love and wishes
for a happy summer.
“Affectionately,
“Mother.”
Having sealed these two letters in one envelope and marked it “For
Deborah, Alice and Clara,” Cornelia laid it in the middle of her bed.
She then changed her mourning garb for an ordinary street-dress, and
took her handbag with some ready money in it, and unlocked the two
doors, and slipped down a back stairway, and out by a rear door, and
down the path which led to the main road. There was a trolley stop, and
a car labeled “Boston,” and she stepped aboard.
CHAPTER II
PLYMOUTH ROCK
I
The “jitney bus” from Boston came speeding down the highway, and when
it got into North Plymouth it stopped in front of the cordage company’s
plant. There climbed out a little old lady, carrying a straw suitcase,
and dressed in humble working-woman’s clothing, with a worn gray shawl
over her head. From beneath the shawl peered a pair of twinkling brown
eyes, and these remained, taking in the landscape, after the bus had
rolled on its way.
There was a two-story brick building, seeming to extend forever along
the bay-front; built in the fashion of a fortress, with a steel fence
in front, and a pond which had been turned into a moat in medieval
style. High up in the blue sky floated an American flag, to let you
know that this was not a Rhine castle of the middle ages, but a center
of industry in the land of the Pilgrim’s pride. The old lady stood
wondering what to do next. Finally she approached the steel gates and
inquired of the keeper, “Please, Mister, where I go for job?”
The man pointed to a building on the other side of the highway.
“There’s the employment office,” he said. “But you’re too late; we’re
closing in five minutes. Come to-morrow.”
The old lady looked at the red brick walls and the blue sky and the
white clouds and the starry flag, all made to go upon a picture
postcard. The windows of the long factory were open, and she heard
the roar of spinning-machinery, and saw the figures of men and women
moving about. Suddenly a siren boomed; and as if by magic, the various
buildings began to belch human figures. Apparently they had been lined
up just inside the doors, like runners at the start of a race; they
behaved as if the building were on fire, or full of poison gas. More
and more dense grew the throngs of escapers, until the roadway was
gray and blue with the shirts of men and the multi-colored dresses of
girls. For the most part they were foreigners, Italians, Portuguese,
and other dark peoples. They were small and stunted, the older ones
bent with toil, walking mechanically, looking neither to right nor
to left. The younger ones chatted in twos and threes, and some had a
friendly smile for the little old lady with the brown eyes peering from
under the shawl.
Two thousand or more came through the gates, and then gradually the
procession thinned out, and the old lady turned back to the highway