Boston a novel
hide the truth, he had gone to the extreme of preparing a doctored
version of the record, and trying to palm it off on a reporter!
XI
The funds of the defense had run out. A collection was taken among the
sympathizers at the trial, and six hundred dollars raised; but that was
not enough. Cornelia wrote letters and sent telegrams; then, in one of
those moods of mischief which had always been incomprehensible to the
Thornwells, she called up her daughter, Deborah, at the North Shore
place. “Deborah, there is some trouble, very serious--something I must
see you about at once. No, I can’t talk about it over the telephone,
you must come here to Dedham.” She used, as nearly as she could
remember, the words by which Deborah had summoned her to Boston. The
daughter, of course, thought instantly of Betty and Joe, having always
this scandal hanging over her head.
It was a drive of two or three hours, and she arrived about lunch-time.
Her mother was waiting at the Dedham Inn, and there was Betty, looking
very lovely, though pale and tired--no visible trace of a scandal. But
there was a trace of tears in the child’s eyes--one does not so easily
sever family ties--even during the class struggle! “What is it?” asked
Deborah, of her mother.
Cornelia replied that they couldn’t talk about it here. “Wait until the
afternoon session is over.”
“You mean of the court?”
“Yes, my child, I cannot miss this afternoon, there is to be some
important testimony. You come with me.”
“To a murder-trial, Mother!”
“Surely, if I can stand a murder-trial, my daughter can!”
Mrs. Rupert Alvin had never done such a thing in her life. She
regarded courts as vulgar places, and attending them as evidence of
sensation-seeking. She might get her name into the papers; she looked
around for reporters, in the same spirit as her ancestors in this
neighborhood had looked for wild Indians with tomahawks. She met some
of the ladies, old and young, who were aiding the defense, and managed
to find something wrong, either socially or sartorially, with every one
of them--though she kept her thoughts to herself. “Mother, is there
anything wrong about Betty?” she whispered. Cornelia said no, it wasn’t
that.
They sat in the court-room: Deborah straight as a ramrod, motionless
for three hours. Her manner said, Do not assume that I have any
interest in this, or that I give it my sanction. She heard Guadagni,
journalist and lecturer, telling the story of his lunch with Sacco
in Boston on the day of the South Braintree crime. The murders had
been committed at a little after three; and from one to two, or
later, Guadagni had been chatting with Sacco, discussing the banquet
being given by a group of Italians, in honor of the editor of the
Boston _Transcript_, who had been decorated by the King of Italy in
recognition of his services in getting America into the war. The affair
took place that same day--which was how Guadagni fixed the date; Fred
Katzmann strove in vain to make him admit that it might have been some
other day.
“You know, Mother,” said Deborah, when it was over, “those Italians
don’t think anything at all of telling lies to help one another out of
trouble.”
“Yes, my dear, I know,” said Cornelia. “It’s just like the men of our
own family, sitting up nights fixing their stories for the Jerry Walker
case.”
And when they were outside again, apart from the crowd, and the danger
of reporters, “Well, what do you think of our boys, Deborah?”
“You mean those two prisoners? Mother, I don’t see how you can force
yourself to tolerate such people! Dark, sinister-looking--”
“Most Italians are dark; but that doesn’t make them murderers.”
Deborah shuddered. “I feel the hate in them--something frightful! Those
set, intent faces--”
“My child, they are intent upon the question of whether they are going
to the electric chair. It seems really important to them.”
XII
They went to Cornelia’s room in the hotel, and she lay down to rest.
Deborah sat up straight. “Now, Mother, what is it?”
So Cornelia told her: “My dear, I have to pain you, I must sell my
jewels.”
“Mother! What do you mean?”
“The defense has run out of funds, and I am not going to let those boys
lose the chance for their lives. I must have some cash, and there is
nothing I can think of but to sell my jewels.”
“But Mother, how dreadful!” Deborah was shocked into incoherence.
The family heirlooms--they were priceless--treasures with spiritual
associations--surely the children had some rights!
“You miss the point, my child,” interrupted Cornelia. “I want to sell
them to _you_.”
Deborah said, “Oh!” She looked at her mother--no trace of a smile on
the little round face, no twinkle in the soft brown eyes! Deborah said,
“Oh!” again, and began to realize that this was another manifestation
of that sense of humor which her father had found so untimely. A bit
of maternal whimsy had brought a big limousine rolling its stately way
from the North Shore to Dedham!
Cornelia proceeded with entire gravity. “Of course I know that some
day you will have these jewels, you and Clara and Alice. But meantime,
I have to have money for this case. You know Queen Isabella sold her
jewels to finance Christopher Columbus--at least, the legend says so.
I want to sell mine in a still worthier cause, and I offer you a third
share.”
“How much money do you have to have, Mother?”
“Five thousand dollars. I have no idea what those jewels are worth--it
must be thirty or forty thousand--”
“We are not going to give up our family jewels, Mother, you know
that, so don’t be foolish. If the money was for you, none of us would
hesitate a moment; but it seems so dreadful to us to have you throwing
everything away on these anarchists--men who hate our country--”
“Now, my daughter, let us not go into that. I am making you a strictly
business proposition. I offer to sell you one-third of my jewels for
five thousand dollars. I will give you a formal receipt, and go to the
bank and get them the first day I am in town.”
“You know I don’t care about that, Mother.” Deborah sat, gazing in
front of her for a minute. It was clear that she was in a trap, no
way out. So with no more ado she went to her handbag, took out her
checkbook and fountain-pen, sat at the desk, and created five thousand
dollars.
She possessed the power to do that magical thing; she did it
frequently--at the board-meetings of orphan-asylums, in homes for the
halt and the deaf and the blind, in vestry-rooms and parish-houses
of Episcopal churches. The fact that she had such power, and was
willing to exercise it, caused a kind of halo of glory to exist about
her; it affected the souls of charity workers and superintendents of
institutions, of curates and clergymen, so that a trembling seized
them when the great Mrs. Alvin swept into the room, their knees went
weak under them and almost gave way. Deborah knew of this, and while
she pretended to be unaware of it, the pretense was highly artificial;
in reality this sense of power was what she lived for and by, and she
watched the persons with whom she dealt, and expected them to pay her
exactly the right tribute of deference and excitement, and if any one
of them failed, then Deborah was incensed against that person--though
she always found some other reason for it, the person was too
talkative, self-assertive, overdressed or underdressed, anything that
wasn’t “Boston.”
Betty, shrewd little minx, had learned to analyze these manifestations:
a fascinating study in psychology, a mingling of worldly glory with
Christian humility, a checker-board pattern, black and white, in a
woman’s soul. To be proud of your money and what you did with your
money was the very acme of vulgarity, it was the thing which marked you
as the wife of a “lumberman,” or a “Pittsburgh millionaire.” So you
were never proud of your money, you were proud of your lack of pride,
of the distance which an assured breeding put between you and your
money. You associated yourself with the poor and lowly, because that
was your Christian duty; and if the poor and lowly looked up to you, it
was because of your Christian virtue, and not because you had the power
to turn them out to starve and freeze. If they were really refined and
worthy poor, they understood this, and so everything was upon a high
plane; it was God who had appointed all things, and assigned to each
his station and form of conduct, and each did what God wished, and
felt the emotions which God inspired. Such was the collective soul of
Trinity Church in the City of Boston.
XIII
Other witnesses testified to the alibi of Sacco, supporting Guadagni.
Dentamore, a bank department manager, had joined them in Boni’s
restaurant, and taken part in the talk about the banquet which the
Italians were giving to the editor of the Boston _Transcript_. A Boston
grocer testified that Sacco had paid him a bill on that day; he had
his notebook, with the payment entered. Also there was a deposition of
a clerk in the consulate, now in Italy, telling how Sacco had applied
for a passport on that day; Eugene Lyons had gone to Italy to get that
evidence.
There was more alibi testimony for Vanzetti. His friend Alfonsina Brini
took the stand and told how he had sold her fish that morning, and
brought Rosen to sell her cloth that afternoon. The district attorney
was so angry in his cross-questioning that he made her cry; it seemed
to him unpardonable that she should have made an alibi for Bart on
two separate days, for two separate crimes; he would not realize that
Bart had been practically a member of the Brini family, ever since his
coming to Plymouth nine years back, and that all the Brinis saw him
every day. The district attorney made Mrs. Brini stand up while he read
into the record a stipulation to the effect that she had testified to
an alibi for Vanzetti on another occasion. The jury was not supposed to
know anything about the Plymouth trial and conviction, but of course
they did know all about it, and smiled to one another while this
statement was read. The lawyer fellows were trying to tie red tape over
their eyes, but they would not be blinded!
Another legal hocus-pocus: in order to avoid having the Plymouth
conviction brought into evidence, the defense had had to agree not to
introduce character witnesses for either defendant. Now the prosecution
came forward with a demand that the jury be instructed to disregard
all evidence as to the good character of either defendant. So Cornelia
Thornwell heard one of those voices which had cried to her in vain in
Plymouth county-jail: not the voice of a ghost, but of the far-seeing
Vanzetti! The very trick he had explained to her--his enemies had made
a convict of him, and now were using his conviction to cast a cloud
over both him and Nick, to send them to their deaths. Mr. Katzmann put
on his sternest manner and read to the jury the stipulation:
“The Commonwealth assents to the request of both the defendants
that all evidence heretofore offered in the course of this trial to
the effect that one or both of said defendants bore the reputation
of being peaceful and law-abiding citizens, be stricken from the
record of this trial, and that such evidence heretofore offered be
entirely disregarded by the jury so that the result of striking
same from the record there is no evidence before the jury that
either or both of said defendants bore the reputation of being a
peaceful and law-abiding citizen.”
All in vain the years that Nicola Sacco had worked for the Three-K
Shoe Company, earning from forty to sixty dollars a week as expert
edge-trimmer, with extra pay as night-watchman for long periods! All in
vain those annual gardens full of ripe red tomatoes, and the surplus