Boston a novel
pore over the testimony and appeal to a court without a heart; they
wanted to dramatize the case, to find new evidence, to break down the
witnesses of the government, above all to catch the real criminals,
who had done the murders. They wanted to have mass-meetings in the
cities, to have the story of this Massachusetts “frame-up” told to
labor audiences. Naturally, it occurred to them, what an impression
if a lady of Mrs. Thornwell’s respectability and prestige would take
the platform! They wanted Cornelia to go to New York and address a
meeting; and when she realized that there was no other way to get the
indispensable money, she consented.
So then, more distress among the Thornwell clan. They had thought the
limit was reached when the head of their family defended “anarchy” at
home; but to go outside the Commonwealth, and attack its courts among
strangers--that was really treason. Deborah came and protested with all
her dignity; when that was in vain, Alice quit her “rest-cure,” and
threatened to go completely insane; when this too failed, there was a
family conference, fully as agitated as those of war-time. Great-uncle
Abner insisted upon being brought. Because it was no longer possible to
make him hear a word, they had to write out the proceedings for him;
and every now and then he would punctuate the debate with his booming
formula: “Lock her up!”
They turned the matter over to Henry Cabot Winters, because of his
sense of humor, which they did not understand or like, but which they
knew was the only hope. Rupert would put the information department of
the Pilgrim National Bank at Henry’s service, and would himself call
upon the representative of the Federal secret service in Boston. Henry
would see the district attorney, and all together they would make a
real effort, and pull the poor distracted old soul out of this mess.
Henry went to the telephone and called up Cornelia, who was not
supposed to know about this conspiracy, but could guess. When she heard
that her son-in-law wanted to be invited to dinner about a week from
now, she laughed. “Are you going to bring that information you have
been promising?”
“If it isn’t too late, Mother. I know, I have neglected you--but I’ve
been so frightfully busy! Now we’ve got another extension on the Jerry
Walker case, so I have a little breathing space. If it’s not too late,
I really would like to take a week off and see what I can find out
about your friends and their problem.”
“That’s very good of you, Henry; but you know we have no way to pay for
such distinguished legal services.”
“You pay with your company, Mother. We are growing some dewberries on
our place that are as long as your thumb, and I will send you a supply
in the morning, and you can have them made into a short cake or a
cobbler or whatever you fancy; and I’ll bring a bottle of Madeira--the
real thing, because I am the only person that knows the combination to
the vault!”
IV
Cornelia did her own shopping. She got a live and lively lobster,
done up in a strong paper bag, with two holes in it so that he might
breathe; like a condemned man, he must be kept alive till the moment of
his execution. She got a small chicken, and some green peas, and a head
of lettuce, and climbed the hill with them in a little basket, smiling
to herself--it was old, _old_ “Boston”! The Negro maid was a-flutter,
and Cornelia was a-flutter--treating Henry as if he were royalty. The
remarkable dewberries had been brought by the chauffeur, each wrapped
separately in tissue paper, to keep it from a bruise; they now reposed
in whipped cream and sugar, on top of a thin flaky cake.
Exactly at the moment of seven-thirty came the great lawyer, dressed as
if he were the principal orator at a banquet of the bar association.
Treating Cornelia as if she were royalty; and yet smiling at himself,
and at her--it was a game you played, and you did not take it too
seriously, yet you must take it seriously enough; it was a way to make
life worth living, to save yourself from beastliness, cruelty, and
despair--the latter, especially, always reaching after you. Cornelia
did everything a perfect hostess must do, and thinking to herself, “I
have not escaped from the family! I never will escape from the family!”
Henry liked a good dinner, just enough to make it worth while to fix it
for him, yet not enough to be gross. He praised everything, purposely
while the maid was in the room, so that she stood, transfigured into
a double row of shining white teeth. It was picturesque to have a
mother-in-law who lived in a tenement; it was elegant to know that
she was just as completely a lady, and served just as good a dinner,
as if she were on the other side of Beacon Hill. All this stayed in
the background of your thoughts, and upheld you in the hours when
you thought about your hysterical wife, and your son who had the
constitution and structure of a marshmallow, and your money-making,
which brought you law-suits and scandals.
They sipped the real Madeira, and gossiped about amusing aspects of
family life. Quincy Thornwell, incorrigible bachelor, had been smitten
by the widow of a banker, killed in the war; would she have him, and
what would they do with her three children, and what about the family,
the new cousins and “in-laws” that would be added to the Thornwell
clan? Andrew Alvin had been thrown from his polo-pony and got a broken
shoulder; a man in his forties, Andrew’s one idea of happiness was to
ride a horse as crazy as himself; they had made him master of the hunt
in one of the suburban towns, where the smart set dressed themselves
in pink coats and shiny leather boots, and rode at daybreak on autumn
mornings to the music of horns, and paid enormous bills for damages to
farmers’ crops. A certain fast-riding young lady was “setting her cap”
at Andrew; her father had made many millions out of war-contracts, and
now they were trying to “break in” upon the blue-bloods. Would Andrew
condescend or wouldn’t he? It was typical blue-blood conversation.
V
With Madeira warming his stomach and the smoke of a cigar warming his
head, Henry Cabot Winters sat by the open window, the sound of children
shouting in the street below helping to make privacy for conversation.
“Well, Mother, I have been making a few inquiries about those adopted
sons of yours. I’ve brought some documents.” He pointed to a leather
brief-case, stuffed to capacity, which lay upon the sofa.
“Well, Henry, what did you find?”
“They had a cache of dynamite, and on the night of the arrest they were
getting Boda’s car to move the stuff to a safer place.”
“How did you learn that, Henry?” Cornelia tried to keep her tone
playful.
“Needless to say, men who make and plant bombs to destroy their enemies
do not invite me to their meetings. I have no first-hand knowledge of
the fact--”
“Let’s cut short the preliminaries, Henry. You have been talking to the
police, and that is what their under-cover agents have brought them.
Did they tell you that Rosina Sacco once had her husband in court for
failure to support her?”
“No.”
“That’s another of the stories they are circulating; I can tell you a
dozen, if you’re interested. They say the fifty dollars poor Bart sent
to Tresca to help pay Salsedo’s lawyer was part of the loot of the
South Braintree crime. But I happened to know that Bart had saved up
about four hundred dollars out of his fish business. Tell me, do your
police friends know what became of the sixteen or seventeen thousand
dollars those bandits got?”
“They tell me it went to Italy, Mother.”
“I see! When they started out, they were sure it was in Coacci’s trunk.
When they didn’t find it there, they decided it was buried in Sacco’s
garden. Now, they say it went to Italy. Have they given you any real
evidence about it?”
“No, Mother.”
“Well, then, the situation is this: all the resources of state and
Federal secret service have been used, and they have never been able
to find that the group or any individual connected with the group has
had any unusual amount of money, or has spent much money for anything;
they have not one trace of a clew. Poor little Boda, whom they call a
payroll bandit, had a car that was in hospital all winter--”
“That wasn’t the car he drove, Mother.”
“Can you prove that he drove any other car?”
“There is reason for believing it.”
“Well, it wasn’t a good enough reason to be put before a jury. Web
Thayer threw Boda out of the case--but now you bring him back! I knew
him well, a friendly little fellow, a salesman of macaroni--”
“Is that what he told you, Mother? He was a salesman of whisky.”
“Really? Well, that explains one mystery in the case--why Mike
Stewart couldn’t find any of Boda’s macaroni customers! That was
why Mike became suspicious. But now we have a perfectly respectable
explanation--surely you, Henry, cannot blame Boda, since you buy
whisky!”
“Not Boda’s kind, Mother!”
“Well, you haven’t come to argue about prohibition, so let me see what
you’ve got in your brief-case.”
VI
There was a reading lamp on the table beside Henry Cabot Winters, and
it threw strong shadows on his fine dark features and thin, sensitive
hands. Cornelia noticed that the hands trembled as they drew out the
documents. Was it the toll the competitive game was taking from the
great lawyer? Or was it that he cared so especially about rescuing his
mother-in-law from a career of crime? Cornelia watched with curiosity
what came out of the brief-case: quantities of typewritten stuff bound
together, reports and correspondence. Henry would no doubt be able to
get access to secret service records; or Rupert would get them for him.
Would it be ethical to ask him for answers to some of the problems
which had been tormenting the defense?
Cornelia saw some red-bound pamphlets, then a red-bound book. “Is that
some of the literature Vanzetti had? Or some they got at Sacco’s house?”
“They didn’t get much at Sacco’s, Mother; somebody had burned most of
it. I am told the defense lawyers wanted some, and all they could find
was a four-volume technical work on the chemistry of explosives. Is
that so?”
“You have come to bring me things, Henry, not to get them.”
“Yes, but you ought to meet me half way. You don’t really _want_ to be
fooled, do you?”
“Not in the least, Henry. I want all the real knowledge I can get.”
“Let me ask you, did you ever sit down and think seriously and honestly
whether it might be possible that these men had connections with the
fighting crowd?”
“Are you talking about bombs now--or about banditry?”
“Let us begin with bombs.”
“I have lain awake many a night debating it with myself. About Sacco
I have to say that I don’t know; I never knew him well enough--and of
course I can’t find out now; one does not talk about such things to him
or to his friends. But I really knew Bart, and I try to imagine him
committing an action that would destroy human life. He would have done
it in a moment of rage against social injustice; he talked violently,
and he would have fought the police on the picket-line, I am sure,
and killed them. But to prepare in cold blood to blow a man up with a
bomb--I try to imagine it, and it simply cannot be done--it is not my
Bart any longer. I never knew a man who had more tenderness and pity.”
Said Henry, searching among the papers, “I have a curious document, a
letter from Vera Figner, the Russian terrorist, in her own handwriting;
I can’t read it, of course, but there’s a translation attached. She is
telling about her days in the Schlues-selburg Fortress, and how she
walked with another girl prisoner in the courtyard, and noticed that
this girl would turn aside now and then from the path. When Vera Figner