Boston a novel
and particularity, to deprive the plaintiff of his shares in the
above-named companies.” The “yellow” newspapers smacked their lips
over the promised feast, while the dignified ones put the news away in
the financial columns, as if to say that these abusive words were used
in a technical sense, and did not mean what the ordinary reader would
suppose.
Already families had been broken up over this issue, and wives were
not speaking to one another. Mrs. John Quincy Thornwell, wife of
the president of the Fifth National Bank, was telling everybody
that Rupert Alvin had drawn her husband into the mess without his
knowledge. Mrs. Rupert Alvin, wife of the president of the Pilgrim
National, was outraged because her sister, Mrs. Henry Cabot Winters,
was taking the affair with flippancy, having said to her intimates that
it would be an excellent thing if some of these gentlemen were sent
to jail, so that their wives would know where they were! Slanders
and recriminations--bitter feuds starting--a whole kettle of Back Bay
codfish!
In the Sacco-Vanzetti trial one of the lawyers fell ill, and Judge
Thayer put off the trial over the week-end. Cornelia was planning to
write a lot of letters and raise some money which was badly needed;
but Deborah telephoned from her place at the North Shore, her mother
must meet her in Boston at once, something about Alice, very serious.
Cornelia assumed it was more of the Jerry Walker quarrel. “You know,
Deborah, I consider the Walkers as my friends, and I am not going to
have anything--”
But Deborah broke in: “It has nothing to do with that, Mother. It is
something personal, something desperate--I can’t give you any hint over
the telephone. Come to the house at once.”
So Betty drove her grandmother to Boston. Betty had work to do at
defense headquarters. She was going to get out a rush circular about
events at the trial, and she wasn’t going to let Joe have anything to
do with it. Under the very strict laws of Massachusetts, Judge Thayer
had the right to call it contempt of court, and if he tried to, the
defendant was going to be a young lady with the very bluest blood in
New England; old “Judge Fury,” as Betty had taken to calling him, would
get a sure enough front-page story if he tried it! Joe was going to
stay in Dedham and write newspaper and magazine articles, which would
be published outside the state, and so beyond “Judge Fury’s” reach.
“I know what you’ll find,” said the young lady Bolshevik--“another of
Aunt Alice’s geniuses gone wrong. I hear she’s going wrong with him.”
And so it proved. Alice had got the love of art and the art of love
mixed up. A chaotic Bohemian pianist had cast temperamental glances
at her, and she proposed to accompany him to Europe, and had notified
Henry that she expected to get a divorce. “And right now!” cried
Deborah--“while Rupert and Henry are driven nearly to death with this
Jerry Walker affair, and the Elevated Railway business, too--and Betty,
and you--Mother, we simply cannot have another scandal now!”
So the family phalanx must gather about the frantic woman, and guard
her with their spears, and frighten away “that impossible man,” as
Deborah called him. Cornelia, the mother, and only woman member of
the old generation, must take most of the burden. She must face her
second daughter’s hysterics yet again--she had lost count of the
times, it had been more than twenty years of melodrama; first frantic
jealousy of Henry, then bitter hate, then indifference, with various
stages of romantic thrills for this, that and the other great or
some-day-to-be-great poet or painter or musician. This time was the
most terrible of all; this time all bars were down, all reserves thrown
away--it was most decidedly not “Boston,” not to be believed.
For twenty years Alice had sought something, and the women and the men
of the family had formed the phalanx about her, and held her captive.
“Now look at me!” she cried. “I am an old woman! My skin will soon be
parchment, and my chance is nearly gone!”
“Your chance at what?” asked Cornelia, quietly.
“Love!” cried the other, with unaccustomed clarity.
The mother felt a sudden uprush of pity. “Does love depend on
complexion?”
“What else?” cried Alice, wildly. “And look at me!”
Cornelia looked, and realized. It was true that her vain and beautiful
daughter was showing her years; no longer the wild rose complexion,
the girlish charm, the serenity and security of young matronhood.
Alice’s skin was getting dry, there were lines that no beauty doctor
could take away, those fatal tight strings under the chin which nothing
can hide. Deborah’s neck had been like that for years, she had worn a
black velvet band about it. But such a device would make Alice “look a
fright”--she grabbed up a ribbon and wound it into a halter, to show
her mother what she would be like!
She loved Franz Cezak! He was not a “strolling Bohemian,” as Deborah
had basely insinuated; he was no common musician at all, but the
younger son of a great family, who had been received as a house guest
in Back Bay homes. Alice loved him, and she didn’t love Boston, and she
was going to be happy!
Would she really be happy? asked the mother, and began the brutal task
of undermining poor Alice’s castle in Bohemia. Did this love-artist
know that she had very little money in her own right, and that it is
not the custom for American husbands to subsidize the art-romances
of their wives? Was it true that the man was some years younger than
Alice, and if so, did art-lovers behave like other men in the matter of
women’s age? Was Alice expecting to come back to Boston, the morning
after her nuit d’amour?
Clara Scatterbridge, the youngest daughter, came in; having all
the future of her many sons and daughters, coming one by one to
marriageable age, to weep and plead for. Rupert Alvin came, leaving
all his cares of state. He had put into action the machinery which the
ruling classes have established for the quick and efficient collection
of scandal; just as he could tell his mother-in-law all the gossip of
the “Italian colony” concerning the anarchist “gruppo” of East Boston,
so he could tell his sister-in-law about a Bohemian pianist, who had
an art-love in every concert town. He had been knocked down and almost
killed by a well-known cricket player of Philadelphia, and in Paris he
had run away from a duel with the exiled Russian Prince Dolgorovitch,
“or whatever it is,” said Rupert, with Anglo-Saxon contempt for a name
with such termination.
And then young Josiah Thornwell Winters, Alice’s only son, who was to
get his “sheepskin” from Harvard in a few days. Young Josiah’s own
behavior didn’t give him much standing in court, he admitted, but he
was promising to settle down and make a man of himself, and it would
certainly be easier if he had a mother in blameless Boston, rather than
following a pianist about Bohemia. The rest of the family withdrew
while this intimate episode in the drama was played out.
IX
Cornelia went to see the husband, and found that Henry was taking a
most un-Bostonian attitude. “Mother,” he said, “it seems to me Alice
had better have it out, and see whether there’s anything in this
romance business for her. You, as a Bolshevik, ought not be shocked by
that.”
“Mine has been a revolt with a purpose,” said Cornelia; “and if Alice
has a purpose I don’t know what it is.”
“Well, I have said for years that Alice ought to have a divorce. If she
had a husband, she might settle down--”
“But this man won’t be a husband, Henry!”
“I know; but something has got to pull her loose from the family. I
haven’t said it to them, because after all, it’s a Thornwell affair.
But it’s been plain to me, ever since I realized that I wasn’t the man
for Alice. The misery has been because the family couldn’t make up its
mind to face a divorce; they’d rather have a fit of hysterics once a
month for twenty years. I don’t want to talk about Alice, for she’s
your flesh and blood--”
“Go on, Henry, say what you think. I’ve got to understand you all.”
“Well, Mother, fundamentally it’s that Alice hasn’t got any brains. Why
didn’t you teach her some of your sense of fun?”
“You forget, Henry, I didn’t do the teaching. The house was full of
Josiah’s sisters and aunts, who knew what ought to be done always. I
waited too long before I fought.”
“Yes, Mother, we’ve all made mistakes. I ought to have given more time
to my son. I left him to his mother, while I made the money, and now
I’ve got too much money, and no wife, and a son who has the structure
and constitution of a marshmallow. That’s my reward for hard work--not
much reason for going to the office in the morning, is there?”
“I know, Henry, you’ve talked like that before; but you go to the
office in the morning, and go on doing what you did the day before.
We’re all of us like so many ants--we do what the others do. Because I
have tried to think for myself, you decide I am cracked in the head.”
“No, Mother, not at all!” Henry’s gallantry came to the rescue. “I
really have a great admiration--you should hear me boasting about you
in the clubs--nobody can sport such an exciting mother-in-law! Truly,
you’re the talk of the town--they tell me you have assumed the moral
leadership of all the Bolsheviks at the trial.”
“They tell you something very foolish, like all the other tales about
the Sacco-Vanzetti defense. What became of the evidence you promised to
get me, Henry? Have you forgotten it?”
“No, Mother--”
“You didn’t find it so easy as you thought?”
“Not that; but fifteen million dollars is a lot of money, and Rupert
is terrified as to what he has to admit in the Jerry Walker case.
Also he’s had to take charge of the Bar Association--the job they are
planning, to oust our district attorney. I suppose you’ve heard about
that?”
“No, Henry, I’ve been out of touch with the criminal world of late.”
She laughed, and he laughed, too--they always had a good time. If only
Alice had had her mother’s ability to laugh!
“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you about it some day. When the blackmail
ring got after the Thornwell family, Rupert insisted that we had to
put them out of business; he’s a sterner moralist than I, you know. We
started work through the Bar Association--you are reading about this
Mishawum Manor case, of course.”
“Did you and Rupert start that?”
“The episode happened four years ago. Didn’t it strike you as peculiar
that it should be taken up now?”
“To tell the truth, I’ve been too busy to think about it.”
“Well, so has the public! The fact is, I got detectives and got the
story for Rupert.”
“Why did you start in Middlesex County?”
“Well, you see, the district attorney there happens to be an American,
and we thought it would be good policy to show impartiality. After we
have put Tufts out, nobody can kick if we come over here to Suffolk and
tackle Joe Pelletier!”
“I see!” said Cornelia. She knew that she was being admitted to the
inside of Boston public life--the center of the center and hub of the
hub! “Joe” Pelletier, district attorney of Suffolk County, comprising
Boston proper, was a leading Catholic orator and hero, National
Advocate of the Knights of Columbus, knighted by the Pope for his
services to the holy cause. Incidentally he was one of the tools of
the “blackmail ring,” and may have got a share of that seventy-five
thousand dollars which Henry had “pungled up” to pay for the flashlight
picture of his son in the hotel room with a woman. So now the
Thornwells were out to “get him”!
It was one more crisis in the unending struggle between the blue-blood
and the Irish-Catholic elements of the city. Cornelia had watched it
all her life, so she did not have to ask many questions. “It seems