Chapter VI: White Terror (1)

I

The day of glory, sung in the “Marseillaise,” had arrived; the American troops stopped the first German onslaught, and began their counter-advance which was to end the war. The whole country thrilled with it--all but a few perverse persons, so constructed that they could not think of glory, but only of boys crawling about in burning forests, dragging shattered limbs and protruded entrails. “Ah, but the broken bodies, that drip like honeycomb!”

Cornelia and her grand-daughter went to Plymouth to rest for a week, Betty staying with her friend, Lucile Walker, and Cornelia with the Brinis. The little room which had been Cornelia’s for a year and a half now belonged to Fay, but she was glad to vacate it. Vanzetti had a room with a neighbor, but came in for his meals, and stayed to do his studying in the evening. He was digging more ditches, and reading diligently the few radical papers he could get. There had been a revolt in the Italian armies; it had been suppressed, but more was coming, and he watched for every scrap of news.

Also he told Cornelia of his experiences in Mexico: what a fine fellow that Nick Sacc’ had proved to be, and how they had settled down with a colony of Italians, all draft-evaders, living upon a rough communistic system. Bart had helped to feed them, baking bread, and also he had fed them “anarchista propaganda”--bread for the spirit. There had been several in the group whom Cornelia knew: Boda, the little macaroni salesman who had driven them to see the drama; and Coacci and Orciani, two others whom she had met on that same occasion.

Nonna, like Christmas, came but once a year, so it was a holiday for everybody. Papa Brini showed his garden, and Cornelia recited the Italian names, and he tried to say the English names, and the children laughed at his blunders. They had their walk in the woods on Sunday, and gathered bunches of flowers, and Fay and Trando remembered things about nature which Bart had taught them, and were proud of it. Bart had resumed charge of the boy’s development, and would give him advice and help. One day Trando had a cold, and Bart said the way to cure it was to sweat; so he got down on his knees, which made him about a match for a nine-and-a-half-year-old boy, and the two of them had a wrestling match, in which the big man was floored several times, and the small boy whooped with delight. Pretty soon he was perspiring profusely, and Bart put him to bed with no supper but a drink of hot lemonade. In the morning he would be all right, said the amateur doctor.

Trando wanted a violin, and had worked all last summer to earn the money; but then he had had to spend it, because the family went down with “flu.” Cornelia wanted to give him a violin, but Bart said no, that would spoil it all; let the little fellow earn it, and then he would really value it; the achievement would give him courage, a sense of power. This was the time for berries, and there was nothing better for youngsters than to wander in the fields all day.

Trando’s relations with the boys of the neighborhood made a problem. They would not play with him, because the priest had warned them to have nothing to do with a bad boy who did not go to church: there was a place in hell for such as he. The other boys called him “socialist,” and when he went off and read a story-book, or played with his sister, they called him “sissy.” It was hard to please them. Bart told him to make of his persecution a source of strength. Many a great man had done that, and those who had spurned him in boyhood would see him leap above their heads when they were grown.

Vanzetti told him what was true about religion. There was a great and good God, the God of nature, whose laws we must understand if we would be happy. This God loved all human beings alike, and it was not His will that some should be slaves to others. We might pray to Him for courage and strength; but we did not need any priest to intervene for us. The priest was nothing but a man like other men; he might be good, or he might be bad, like Father O’Brien--but in any case he represented a system which helped to keep the poor in subjection to the rich, and so was a trap for their minds.

Then Trando wanted to know about how we got born, and how we got married. It is the custom of Italian parents to say they buy the babies; but Bart explained those things seriously to Trando; and he talked to Cornelia about it, and asked her to talk to Fay, because children ought to know the truth, and parents had a foolish shyness about talking to their own little ones. All the questions of children ought to be answered; they should connect the idea of shame only with actions that were harmful to themselves or to others. A wise man speaking, always; a man gentle, full of spiritual insight--yet turning into a lion at a moment’s notice when confronted with “injoostice.” Some of the bigger boys found that out when they undertook to torment the “sissy.”

II

Betty Alvin’s relations with the Walker family were peculiar. They were all extremely patriotic, and shocked beyond utterance by the opinions and behavior of Betty and her grandmother. But they were fond of Betty, and if she had come to Plymouth and not stayed with them, it would have been emphasizing an estrangement. Of course Betty’s mother put the worst construction on their invitation, saying that the Walkers would rather know a “red” blue-blood than none at all. But Betty would not believe that, and kept up the friendship with Lucile at Radcliffe and at home, carefully avoiding any utterance that would displease her hosts.

Mr. Walker appeared only once during the visit. He was in greater trouble than ever, and showed it in every line of his features--a really terrible example of what the fierce pace of business can do to its victims. Mrs. Walker was silent and preoccupied, and Lucile hesitated to say anything; but Betty got it out of her finally--Mr. Walker was convinced that there was a determination on the part of a Boston banking-group to put him out of business, and the man who was at the head of the campaign was Betty’s uncle, Henry Cabot Winters. This information was coming to Mr. Walker from many different sources: in all the troubles of the felt industry, it was Mr. Winters who stood behind the scenes and pulled the strings.

Just think of it, exclaimed Lucile--here were enterprises that had made a million and a quarter dollars in net profits last year, and were going even higher this year; yet the owner could not get half a million dollars’ credit from any bank in Boston or New York! They all stood together; if the banks where you had your accounts, your banks of deposit, as they were called, refused to “check your paper,” why, then no other bank would accept it. The felt-industry was peculiar, in that the sales were made early in the year, but payments were not made until the fall, which meant that the business was helpless without credit; the bankers knew that perfectly well, and Mr. Walker had always had the credit, year after year, as a matter of course. This year he had to have more, because of his war contracts, and the increased production; the wicked thing the bankers had done was to make promises, and lure him along from month to month, giving him no hint there was anything wrong until the last moment, when one or two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of notes came due, and suddenly he was told that he must “take them up.” There must be some reason for such things, said Lucile; and Mr. Walker was convinced that it was Henry Cabot Winters plotting to ruin him.

The bankers had put accountants on Mr. Walker’s books, and insisted that he would need three million dollars to carry him until the fall. They were going to make him pay twenty-seven per cent for the use of that money. He didn’t mind that so much--his profits could stand it; but he didn’t believe he was really going to get the three million. When the time came, there would be more excuses and delays, and he would be compelled to turn the stock of his companies over to the bankers. He had twenty big plants of one sort or another, all working day and night, employing more than eight thousand men; he was doing what was supposed to be patriotic war-work--but the government wouldn’t help him with a dollar, and wouldn’t protect him against these banking conspiracies.

Betty took that story to Cornelia. “Can it possibly be true, Grannie? Can Uncle Henry be doing such a thing?”

“I’m sorry to say, dear, he has that reputation.”

“But Grannie, he doesn’t seem that kind of man!”

“Men have different standards for their friends, and for outsiders. Uncle Henry has grown rich, and he has never produced anything that I know of.”

“But Grannie, that would be a wicked thing to do to Mr. Walker!”

“It’s the way of the business world. I watched it, and held my peace--for forty years. I used to hear things that Henry and James and your father would talk over with your grandfather. Josiah did it to others--and then at last somebody did it to him. He trusted the big bankers in New York--the Morgan crowd, because they had such a respectable name. He put everything he had into the securities of the New Haven Railroad, and those New York bankers simply gutted it, they stole every dollar, and the stock fell from two hundred and forty-six to sixteen, if I remember. I’ve heard your grandfather say, he had enough New Haven paper to fill up the music-room, but it wasn’t enough to pay his debts.”

“Is that why Uncle James has the mills and ‘Hillview’?”

“That’s the reason. There were tens of thousands of people left in worse plight, widows and children and old people. All this decline of New England industry that you hear about really dates from that time when we trusted the Morgan crowd; for they took something like five hundred million dollars away from this part of the country.”

“But Grannie, if Uncle Henry is doing that to Mr. Walker, it is really the same thing as banditry!”

“Yes, of course; but you mustn’t say it to your father or your uncles; they wouldn’t take it kindly from a twenty-year-old girl.”

“I’ll be older some day,” said Miss Betty.

III

The first thing when Cornelia got back to town, she went to call at her son-in-law’s office. “Henry, what is this I hear about you and Jerry Walker?”

“What do you hear, Mother?”

“That you are taking his plants away from him.”

“Has Jerry told you that?”

“No; but Betty has been visiting Lucile, and naturally hears about their troubles.”

“Jerry tells his wife, and she tells Lucile, and Lucile tells Betty, and Betty tells you, and you tell me!” Henry laughed.

“Is it true, Henry? Are you after him?”

“It is absolutely untrue, Mother.”

“You’re not interested in his affairs?”

“I didn’t say that. Jerry comes to certain bankers--including Rupert and John Quincy--and tries to borrow money. The bankers are my clients, and ask me to investigate, and draw up papers, and perform other legal services, which I do. Because the decisions of the bankers don’t please Jerry, he takes up the notion that I’m an arch-conspirator, plotting his ruin. But that’s all rubbish.”

“Henry, you have the reputation of not being a very gentle enemy.”

The other laughed again. “Well, Mother, have you come to convert me to pacifism? But seriously, I got through with Jerry Walker years ago. I was a stockholder in two of his felt-companies, and a director. I found that his way of doing business didn’t agree with mine, so I let him buy me out at a fair price, and washed my hands of him. But he’s been afraid of me ever since--because he knows I know too much about him.”

“Henry, I’ve always had an interest in Jerry, ever since he was an errand-boy at the hospital, a bright little fellow that I saw had a future. Josiah helped him to get a start, you know.”

“Yes, of course. But he’s grown up now, and learned many tricks, and he plays the business game pretty roughly.”

“I can’t pretend to know all about his affairs--”

“Naturally not, Mother; only an expert accountant could do that--and he’d have trouble, because Jerry has hidden some things cleverly. It’s a complicated matter, I assure you, and you make a mistake if you let the Walkers use you, or even worry you. Nobody can believe a word Jerry says.”

“I just want to ask you to give him a square deal, Henry. Give him what you give other business men.”

“Well, Mother, it’s up to the bankers, and you are talking to a lawyer. There are many bankers interested in the Jerry Walker problem, and they all agree that he wants much more than any other business man--he wants everything in sight. There’s only so much credit to go round--only about two per cent of what people holler for--and Jerry is getting more than his share, and using it without any sort of scruple.”

“He’s paying a high price for it, I understand.”

“He thinks so, naturally. It seems a simple matter to him, for the banks to check all the paper he can sign. He never figures on the risks the banks may be running.”

“Is it true he’s paying twenty-seven per cent, Henry?”

“That is a question you’ll have to ask the bankers, Mother. I can’t discuss my clients’ affairs. But I’ll say this as a general principle--two men seldom agree about the value of a horse, when one of them is selling and the other is buying.”

“Henry, I want to ask it straight. You’re not planning to take over Jerry’s business?”

“Absolutely not, Mother!”

“You’re telling me the truth?”

“When have I told you anything else?” And the telephone rang. Henry took down the receiver, listened, and said, “Yes, Rupert, I’ll be right over. I’m having a consultation on the matter with Mrs. Thornwell, and I’m telling her you are the banker, and the real villain in the case.”

So later in the day Cornelia went to call on this “real villain,” and found him, a large island completely surrounded by statistics and charts relating to the felt business. He was polite, but reluctant to give her his precious time. If she had come to ask about investing a thousand dollars of her own, he would have taken an hour off to advise her--he would do that any day for any member of the family, even the poorest fifth cousin. But when she came about Jerry Walker he told her frankly that she was letting herself be used by a family of adventurers. She was deceived if she thought that Rupert had anything more to do with the matter than a score of other bankers; it was a council of the financial leaders of Boston who were deciding the future of the felt industry, and even if Rupert were to go before them and say, “Gentlemen, I have promised my mother-in-law that out of my affection for her we will agree to let her former errand-boy have all the money he wants”--still the other bankers might refuse to assent. “And I don’t carry three million in my own wallet, Mother.”

IV

Both Henry and Rupert had told Cornelia what was not true; and only two or three weeks later she found it out. Mrs. Jerry Walker came to Cornelia’s apartment, and broke down and wept, and told the terrible story of what was happening. Jerry Walker was being stripped of every dollar he owned in the world; and it was Rupert Alvin and Henry Cabot Winters who were driving the other bankers to the job, sometimes against their will, and even without their knowledge. The loan for three millions had been agreed upon, and Mr. Winters had been instructed to prepare the papers; but instead of doing so, he had got one of the big banks in New York to call a loan suddenly, and Mr. Alvin had brought up demands that the other bankers had not known about--in short, everything had been tied up for a month.

Finally, in order to get half a million dollars in a hurry, poor Jerry had had to turn over to the bankers all the stock of all his companies. It was supposed to be a trusteeship--he had the right to get the properties back any time within two years by paying a million and a quarter; but the very day they got the securities, the bankers, with Mr. Winters at their head, had set to work to plunder the properties. They put in their own directors, and barred Jerry Walker from access to the books, and even barred him physically from the plants. They were disposing of all the assets of the subsidiary companies, and loading them up with debts and claims--everywhere Jerry turned he found that some unknown lawyer had mysteriously appeared with liens and suits. Everything was tied up, so that the real owner of the properties could not get a dollar, and was going to have to sell his home to get money to live.

So that was that. The caribou was down, and his blood was being drunk. Cornelia might wring her hands, and be very sorry; she might shout at the wolves and scold them--whereat they would lift their bloody jaws for a moment and grin at her. “Of course, Mother,” said Henry, quite blandly and good-naturedly, when next she met him--“of course, I told you an untruth. What did you expect me to do?”

“I expected you to have a sense of family loyalty.”

“You have too good a mind to fool yourself with such an argument, Mother. I have plenty of Thornwell family loyalty, but not the least particle of Walker family loyalty. If you had come to me for the truth about affairs of your own, you would have had it; in case of need you might have had the last dollar I own in the world. But when you let yourself be used by Jerry Walker, to try to pull wires for him in the midst of a business crisis--then you haven’t the least reason in the world to expect me to give you any information to be carried back to him!--Yes, of course, you didn’t mean to carry it back, but I assure you Lucile expected to get it out of Betty, and Mrs. Walker expected to get it out of Lucile. They have been cultivating an intimacy with Betty for several years for exactly that purpose, and I didn’t intend to let them succeed. When I told Rupert and James about it, they agreed that I had done exactly right to stall you.”

“So you’re going to put Jerry Walker out of the felt business!”

“Not at all, Mother. He knows felt well, and if he wants a job as manager of one of the plants, we’ll pay him a good salary. What he doesn’t know is finance, and we’re going to fix him so he can’t lead the Boston banks into a smash.”

“He was making a lot of money, Henry.”

“A chimpanzee could make money right now, with the government buying everything at any price you ask. But the war will be over soon, and then will come the storm, and we’re going to have a safer man than Jerry Walker at the helm of the ship.”

So Cornelia went away, and watched the events of the next few months, and decided no longer to think of her son-in-law as a wolf. From now on she would see him as a large, black, witty, urbane and charming spider. He lurked in a hole and watched the business flies, and once in a while he made a pounce, and sunk his fangs into a victim, and wove him round and round with a ton or two of legal nets, until he could not move a finger; after which he would be sucked dry of his financial juices.

In the case of the too enthusiastic manufacturer of felt, what happened was that he struggled in the nets until his health broke down; his hands trembled so that he could not hold a cup of coffee, and he had to go to North Carolina for the winter and play golf. While he was gone, the bankers sat down with his lawyers, and convinced them that the victim stood not a chance in the world, so the lawyers advised him to sign a release, forgiving his enemies for all they had done to him, in consideration of the sum of six hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. For this price he gave up properties which earned a million and three-quarters net profit that year, and were worth about ten millions on the market. The six hundred and twenty-five thousand paid a part of his debts, and he sold his home to pay more, and his family gave up their social ambitions and moved into a cottage, and his daughter quit going to Radcliffe and went to work.

“Isn’t it nice, Grannie?” said Betty. “When I get older, if I behave, I’ll get a lot of Lucile’s money, and I can hire her--perhaps to be a governess to my children. And Priscilla will have a share of it too, and can found a charity home to take care of Mr. and Mrs. Walker when they are old. And Cousin Josiah”--that was Henry Winters’ one son--“he’ll have a bigger share than any of us, to spend on women-chasing--I understand that’s what he’s doing now. Aunt Alice will be able to retain her adolescence--”

“My child! Don’t say things like that!”

“I’m talking in the family, Grannie. We members of the new generation are going to be what you call hard-boiled. They are raising us in war-time, and we’re getting used to plain language and messy sights. I read in the paper that Mrs. Henry Cabot Winters is planning a ‘little theater,’ in which her mystical poet’s works are to be shown to the world as soon as the war is over. If Aunt Alice wants to subsidize genius, why does she have to pick out literary lounge-lizards and music-box monkeys?”

Cornelia said, “Dear me, I am really getting old! The new generation shocks me!”

V

There came a day when every able-bodied person in America rushed out of his house, and fell on the necks of passersby and danced and laughed and shouted and sang. Men threw their hats into the air, or tied tin cans to the tails of automobiles and drove up and down the streets. Three days later they all turned out and did it again, because the first time had been a mistake, some news agency had been in too much of a hurry. But it was a big enough war to deserve two armistice days, and even in State Street one saw “blue-bloods” celebrating with bootblacks, and high-hatted bankers forgetting their dignity for the first time in their eighty years.

This was a celebration in which even the pacifists could join. The nation would have one or two hundred thousand cripples to take care of--but at least you didn’t have to think of new thousands being made every day! You could again expect people to listen to reason, and could work at stopping the next war without danger of arrest. The Kaiser had fled to Holland, and there seemed a real prospect of that newly-promised world. Such wonderful promises--a world fit for heroes, a world made safe for democracy, a world in which the last war had been won by the forces of justice! So we had been told in a golden glowing speech at least once a week for a year and a half; and now we were to see it made real. As a first step President Wilson packed up his typewriter and his fourteen points, and went over to Europe to oversee the making of a world charter. His packing appeared to be careless, for he lost one of the points in England--that providing for the “freedom of the seas”--and had only thirteen when he landed in France.

The American people had been told to trust him; he was the President, and had sources of information not open to the rest of us--so Deborah had assured her mother. But now it turned out that he hadn’t any sources of information, or if he had, he hadn’t used them. He had made no bargains whatever with the allies, he had not made them give up a single one of their greedy demands. And now, of course, it was too late; the danger was over, the allies were no longer afraid, and would do exactly what they pleased.

It was a disillusioning experience, and was to produce ten years of cynicism and corruption in every department of American life. The climax came when the President capitulated to the diplomatic ravens, and let them have their prey, and came home and told the public that that was what his fourteen points had meant. He did more than that--he went before a committee of the Senate, and stated that he had not known about the secret treaties until he went to Paris; which one had to take as Pascal took the doctrine of his church, and believe it because it was impossible.

VI

There were a few groups in America whose demands did not depend upon the diplomats at Versailles; and among these were the women. France might grab the Rhine, Japan might grab Shantung--but what was to prevent American women from having their rights at home? Surely the men were not making such a success with their votes that they could spurn the help of wives and sisters! Let us have a world made fit for heroines! So the campaign of votes for women leaped into life in a score of cities. In Washington the ladies began besieging senators and congressmen, and elderly statesmen took to physical flight from urgent feminine tongues. The militant suffragists began carrying placards in front of the White House, and got themselves arrested over and over again. It was most embarrassing, because the jails in the national capital had been made for street-walkers and Negro drunks, and had no accommodations for ladies.

The suffragists were divided into two groups, the respectable ones, who made dignified speeches and circulated petitions and got an inch in the newspapers once a month; and the militants, who set themselves the goal of a front-page story twice a day, and made it most of the time. Each of these two groups was active in Boston--a city full of ladies who felt themselves competent to take charge, not only of America, but of the world. Each group laid siege to Cornelia Thornwell and her grand-daughter, and the militants won. Another scandal in the Sewing Circles, and another grief for a great family!

Cornelia’s oldest daughter, Betty’s mother, was a vigorous “anti.” Her enemies told a story about her, that one day when company was expected, and many duties were clamoring, she had locked herself in her study and made no response, and when subsequent complaint was made, the answer was that she had been writing an article on “Woman the Home-maker.” Jokes like that gave annoyance to the “antis,” because it was so obvious to them that nothing but the wicked activities of the suffragists were dragging them out from the homes they loved, and compelling them to become examples of the evil they feared. Yes, the “wild women” had that power, and rejoiced in it; when the “antis” hired a house on Park Street and opened up offices, what should they see but a group of women marching back and forth before their door, carrying a banner with a strange device:

_They say that home is woman’s sphere.
What are the antis doing here?_

The true “anti” was Cornelia’s youngest daughter, Clara Thornwell Scatterbridge, who stayed at home with her eight babies, and loved them and petted them and scolded them and wept over them and saw that their various nurses and governesses kept their noses wiped. Clara had no idea what a vote looked like; but, alas, that didn’t get even an inch in the papers! Nor did it have any appreciable effect when Alice Thornwell Winters shrugged her beautiful white shoulders and lifted her haughty eyebrows in scorn at the idea of sacrificing her feminine charm. Neither did it help when she wrote more and larger checks to pay for the “little theater” which was to produce the plays of Chauncey Duvillier, dealing with ancient Erse legends about dusky-haired promiscuous queens. The productions came off, and were at once very “high-brow” and very “high-hat,” but they did not seem to reduce the attendance at suffrage meetings.

President Wilson had set his stern Presbyterian face against the program of national suffrage. It was a question for the individual states; thus spoke Sir Oracle, and when the female dogs barked, he said it again. But such a thing had been known as a great statesman changing his mind when made uncomfortable enough. It was a fact that the women out west had got the vote and were using it; Woodrow could not forget that it was California which had elected him the last time, and might defeat his party and his world policies the next time. A terrible thing to contemplate having women vote, but a still worse thing to contemplate having them vote Republican!

The President came back from Europe in February, and the suffragettes prepared a hearty welcome for him in New York. It was more than he could face, in his nervous condition, with that incredible statement he had to make to the Senate; so at the last moment the route of his ship was changed, and it landed at Boston. That put the burden onto the Boston suffragettes, who had to organize a demonstration almost overnight. They came rushing to Cornelia and Betty; would they help? Banners must be got ready, asking urgent witty questions, and these must be carried by ladies of absolutely indigo-colored blood; they must be carried as close to the President as the police would permit, and then a little closer; also the great man’s latest anti-suffrage speech was to be burned in effigy on Boston Common.

VII

“Old Boston” is a city which has been laid out by cows. They made tracks, and these became lanes, and the lanes have now become narrow canyons of concrete and steel, made immutable for all time by a court-house full of deeds with intricate specifications. You may still see on Beacon Hill a house which has a narrow archway built under one room--because in selling the land the owner specified that access must for all time be left for his cow to reach the Common. Now, instead of a cow, there was coming a high-powered automobile bearing a long-featured Presbyterian gentleman in frock coat and silk hat, under military escort, with all the trappings of glory, and that unending roar of applause which he had heard even from the billows in mid-ocean. Patriotism in Boston was to have its day of rapture; Democratic patriotism, taking in even the Irish-Catholics, and marred only by the antics of twenty-two contumacious females, who refused to accept a great statesman’s own definition of what he meant by democracy.

Among these twenty-two lady-pests was the widow of Josiah Quincy Thornwell, former governor of the Commonwealth; also Elizabeth Thornwell Alvin, daughter of the president of the Pilgrim National Bank. But the names of these two were not on the list furnished to the press; in that case the two would have been spotted by the police, and denied the honor they craved. They sallied forth with the other women, carrying placards aloft, in the route of the procession; and promptly they were snapped up, and hustled into a patrol wagon, and landed in Joy Street police-station--most beautifully named of public institutions in the home of the bean and the cod.

The police had them--and what was to be done with them? The police had no idea. The one thing desired was to keep them out of the newspapers; which was the one thing impossible to achieve. They spent the entire day sitting in a room in the police-station, with no food--save the knowledge that they would be on the front page of all the afternoon newspapers! In the evening they were taken to the “House of Detention” under the Court House, where they slept on board benches covered with black oil cloth. They rolled up their coats for pillows, and spread newspapers to cover the dirt--but alas, the worst part of the dirt had powers of locomotion. Cornelia, sitting up awake, watched Betty sleeping, and counted twenty-one round black objects on her newspapers, and in the morning some of the women’s ankles were so swollen that they could not get on their shoes. Also sleep was interfered with by the constant bringing in of drunken women, who howled in loud voices what appeared to be a popular song, “I love you as I never loved before.” In the morning they filed out to a rusty iron sink to wash, and everyone had to answer the question, “Are you a drunk or a suffragette?” But these woes vanished in a blaze of glory when they discovered that they had got a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of publicity on the front pages of the morning newspapers--while the respectable lady suffragists, who had presented a dignified petition, had got one inch in each paper!

Now they were going to be taken into court, and would refuse to employ lawyers, and would make twenty-two eloquent suffrage speeches. So they thought, but their captors thought otherwise. For these publicity-seekers the constitution of the Commonwealth was to be suspended, and trials were to be in secret in one of the rooms of the prison! When they learned this, there was a hasty consultation among the prisoners, and an agreement not to recognize such an illegal tribunal. Until they were in open court, no woman would say a word.

Their enemies had a still more dastardly scheme; they were going to deprive the little band of their most brightly shining star. A jailer came in and demanded, “Which is Elizabeth Alvin?”--and of course all the prisoners knew instantly what that meant. Papa Banker had got busy and pulled some political strings, and his daughter was to be bailed out, or spirited away, or something--a vile plot! Betty made no sound or sign, and neither did any one else; and presently came the young Irish policeman who had arrested and “booked” her. He had been ordered to pick her out of the bunch--and a fine mess he made of it!

It so happened that in the course of a year and a half, Betty was to be deeply concerned with the problem of identifications. To what extent was it possible for bystanders, witnesses of a crime, to describe the men who had committed the crime, and to recognize them some time later? Human lives have depended upon this problem, and not for the last time. Whenever Betty and her grandmother thought about the matter, the first thing that came to their minds was this experience in the Joy Street police-station. Here was a policeman who had arrested Elizabeth Alvin on the street, and marched her along for some distance, in the meantime having a considerable argument with her as to his right to destroy her banner, and his right to squeeze and hurt her arm. He had put her into a patrol-wagon, and sat opposite her during a ride of several blocks through crowded streets, meantime gazing at her and speculating, what kind of crazy loon was this that wanted a vote, when so many people that he knew were glad to sell theirs for two dollars. Arriving at the station-house, he had stood at the desk and booked her for sauntering, loitering, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest--enough offenses to keep her in jail until President Wilson’s successor had been elected.

And now, next morning, came this young policeman to pick that young person out of a group of twenty-two, most of whom could not possibly be the right one, because they were old like Cornelia, or large and matronly, or tall and masterful, or in some other obvious way not the young and sweet and lovely Betty. She was the youngest in the crowd, and there were not more than half a dozen others near her age. All she had done to make the policeman’s task harder was to take off her brown coat with beaver fur trimmings, and appear in a blue silk dress. What all the women did was to stand or sit, completely unaware of the policeman’s existence, while he wandered about, peering into one face and then into another, obviously perplexed. He had all the time he wanted, he had everything his own way--and he got the wrong woman!

He picked out a fashionable young matron, mother of two blossoming babes, and said, “That’s the one.” The jailer commanded, “Come with me, Miss”--and when the young matron remained unaware of his existence, he stooped in front of her, and put one sturdy arm about her knees, and lifted her over his shoulder, and carried her like a sack of meal, out of the room and upstairs into the presence of the secret judge. He arrived there, somewhat red and out of breath, and the young matron no less so. Set down upon her two feet, she stamped one of them, and glared at the judge and the jailer, and clenched her two fists. “I will say just this and no more--I am _not_ Betty Alvin!”

VIII

The night that Betty and Cornelia spent in jail there was a gathering of the Thornwell clan: not summoned, but just happening, because every Thornwell who got the report knew instantly that it was his duty to repair to the Alvin home on Commonwealth Avenue to offer aid and counsel.

There was a general agreement that it would be useless to get the two renegades out of jail until the President was out of the city, because they would only get in again and make another scandal. There was also agreement as to what should be done with Betty; she must be shipped abroad by the very first steamer. The war was over now, and while passports were not being given for any but official purposes, it would be an easy matter for Rupert to get what he wanted, and Betty would be put in charge of some elderly respectable relative, and subjected to the refining influences of Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London and the National Gallery and the Nelson Column, and later on to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, and would doubtless come back at the end of a year a lady like all the other ladies who lived on Commonwealth Avenue, home of the least common and most exclusive wealth in America.

About Cornelia there was a sharp difference of opinion. One group declared that the thing to do was to excommunicate her and ignore her existence; while the other group wanted to have her committed to an institution, where she would be treated with the utmost kindness and consideration, but prevented from bringing further disgrace upon an honorable family. The head of this group was Uncle Abner, whose deaf man’s voice would boom out in the drawing-room at intervals, “Lock her up!” The others would try to explain objections to this plan, but he would only say again, “Lock her up!” There are some advantages to being deaf, it is so much easier to keep your opinions unchanged.

Great-aunt Priscilla joined Abner’s group. She was tall and thin, and suffered from anchylosis of the spine, which made it painful for her to sit erect, but she never sat any other way in public. She had the long lean face of her dead brother, Josiah, and of Betty’s mother, Deborah; it sagged now, but the pouches disappeared as she set her jaw in anger and declared, “It is the proper thing to do in such cases. Everybody will agree that we are justified.”

“Not quite everybody, Aunt Priscilla,” said Henry Cabot Winters. “Surely not the suffragettes.”

“I am talking about people one mentions,” said the old lady.

“But the suffragettes would say it was persecution,” objected Deborah, “and they would make a great fuss.”

“We should have them picketing this house!” added Rupert.

That horrible idea silenced all of them but Abner. “Lock her up!” said he; and when his son Quincy shouted into his ear, “The suffragettes would object,” he answered, in good old Puritan style, “Lock ’em all up!”

There were many precedents that could be cited for this procedure, and the old people did not fail to cite them. All you had to do was to find a judge and a couple of doctors who sympathized with the family predicament--and it would be easy enough for Thornwells to do that. Great-uncle Ahab had become violent at one time, due to his disappointment in love, and had spent ten years alone in a wing of the Thornwell mansion, with a keeper by day and another by night; he still had spells of brooding, when similar action had to be contemplated. Such emergencies arose in all “blue-blood” families--it was one of the mysteries of the Lord’s mercy--and all physicians to the rich were accustomed to signing certificates, and judges to issuing commitments.

Some such action might have come of this conference, had it not been for Henry Cabot Winters, that witty, urbane and charming black spider. He was nothing but an “in-law,” and not really entitled to speak, but he did it none the less. “Cornelia is eccentric, but she is not insane, and we all know it; she has many friends who know it, and one of them is Morrow.”

“Morrow?” said Great-aunt Priscilla. “Who brought Morrow into it?”

“Well, Morrow as Cornelia’s physician would naturally expect to be consulted; and I’m pretty sure you’d have him against you.”

“What makes you think that?” It was James Scatterbridge, the great mill-owner, who had made some millions of yards of bandages for soldiers who were not going to be wounded, and was now very busy making clear to the government that he was not going to give up his profit on these contracts. He had postponed an important conference this evening, and if his mother-in-law was going to be locked up, he wanted it done quickly.

Said Henry, “Cornelia told me that Rupert dropped a hint of something of the sort to her, and she decided she would take the precaution to have a chat with Morrow, and tell him her story, and all her ideas. He was very much amused, of course--at least that is what Cornelia reported.”

“Oh, yes, it is _most_ amusing!” snapped Great-aunt Priscilla. “The newspapers are finding it so, and no doubt their readers. But is that what we have been paying Morrow for--some fifty years, I believe?”

“Well,” said the lawyer, “you certainly can’t offer to pay him to declare Cornelia _non compos_; at least, I don’t think he would take the money. So it looks as if we’d have to forget our black sheep.”

“Well, at least let her take her own Irish name!” This parting shot of the old lady made Deborah and Alice wince--because, after all, the black sheep with the Irish name was their mother. That is the difficulty in these family councils--there are so many toes to be trod upon! It was safer to be deaf, like Great-uncle Abner, and go on saying, over and over, “Lock her up!”

IX

Three days after this conference Great-uncle Ahab was walking home on a stormy night, and fell and struck his head. He lay in the snow for some time before he was found, and a few hours later he was ill with pneumonia, and next day was in a critical condition. The family came in haste--including his brother Abner, somewhat embarrassed after fifty-three years of estrangement. He tried to refer to the matter, but Ahab was in a delirium. That was “old Boston’s” idea of drama--an old man who could hear very little shouting to another old man who would never hear anything. They talked about it in the clubs for quite a while.

Also they talked about the funeral, which was an imposing affair, the same as Josiah’s--for after all, Thornwells were alike in the eyes of the Lord, even though in the eyes of the world one might be a governor and the other a manic depressive. The ceremony was held in the house which Ahab had sawed in half in order to get away from his brother; and all through the ceremony you heard the dead man’s half dozen hairless Chinese dogs howling their heads off in an upstairs room--it was most uncanny. When the will was read the family kept it secret--which of course put everybody on tiptoe with curiosity, and caused the newspapers to give it special prominence when it was filed for probate. One provision read, “I leave my beloved dogs to my sister Priscilla, whom they remind of newly born mice.” Another said, “I leave my half house to serve as a home for elderly gentlemen of good family who can prove that they have been robbed by their relatives.” Finally, his income from stocks and bonds of the Thornwell Mills Company was to be used to establish a chair at some New England theological seminary which would agree to have a course of lectures delivered every year under the auspices of “The Ahab Adams Thornwell Foundation for the Precise and Final Refutation of the Lyman Beecher Interpretation of the Doctrine of Infant Damnation as Expounded in Holy Writ.” Ahab had heard Lyman Beecher at the age of twenty-five, and had waited sixty years to have him precisely and finally refuted.

At family funerals the hardest hearts are softened and the fiercest prides are humbled. Betty remembered that Great-uncle Ahab had once given her a pony, riding it all the way to her home, with his long legs reaching to the ground. So it was a good time for her mother to plead with her. Yes, Betty would promise to engage in no further public disturbances until she had finished that year at Radcliffe; and thereafter she was willing to spend a year abroad and become cultured--could Grannie go with her? The little minx asked it quite soberly; and Deborah, equally without trace of a smile, explained that the family was under great obligations to Cousin Letitia Adams Quincy, who had nursed Betty once as a little girl, while Deborah herself had been in Europe.

Cousin Letitia was a third or fourth cousin--one of those who had arrived too early for the funeral of Josiah, and got out and walked about the estate for half an hour, in order not to make herself conspicuous. Because of such behavior she was known as a perfect lady, and now was to receive the poor relation’s ultimate reward. Deborah had interviewed her and ascertained that she had read nothing since “The Marble Faun”--except the “Sunday School Examiner’s Bulletin” and the religious and genealogical pages of the _Transcript_. She was judged immune to the contagion of redness, and the right person to chaperon Betty’s grand tour. The girl accepted her with a meekness which would have made Deborah suspicious, if the latter’s natural shrewdness had not been smothered under a heavy load of self-sufficiency.

X

It was high time to get excitable young rebels out of the country; the family realized that more and more clearly every day. For it appeared that the signing of the armistice was not going to mean peace; not even the signing of a treaty would mean it. Our troops were to stay in Germany; worse yet, they were to stay in Siberia and Archangel, and wage President Wilson’s private war upon the Russian people. The American army and navy were to serve as a world police-force for the capitalist system. Exactly what Cornelia had seen the Boston police do in Plymouth, the national police were going to do all over Europe and Asia, sometimes under our command, sometimes under British command. And any persons at home who objected to this program would be hit over the head with the so-called espionage act; a law enacted to punish enemy spies, and now serving to jail American citizens for protesting against attacks upon a friendly people without a declaration of war.

It was the White Terror. Conducted partly by mobs, and partly by police and government agents acting as mobs, it had for its aim the destruction of every means through which the American people might learn how their blood and treasure were being wasted. It stopped at no crime; the law-enforcers of city, state and nation became the leading criminals. In New York four Russian boys and a girl, all of them under age, attempting to distribute a circular protesting against the invasion of Russia, were seized by the police and tortured until one of them died; the rest were prosecuted in the federal courts and received sentences of twenty years’ imprisonment.

Such things were happening all over the country, and made trouble for well-meaning persons like Cornelia, who sought to argue for constitutional methods. How could she ask her friend Vanzetti to settle the grievances of the workers by political action, when again and again socialist candidates were thrown off the ballot, or, when elected, were denied their seats? How could she urge him to obey the law, when the law-makers and law-enforcers themselves defied it? A year or two ago Vanzetti had made to her the statement, “Capitalist is most fighting man in whole world”; and never did the capitalist work harder to prove that the anarchist was right.

The victims of this White Terror would strike back; and if they struck blindly, it was the way the lesson had been taught them. May Day was an occasion for celebration of the Russian revolution by all who believed in it; and on the day before May Day, a package arrived by mail at the home of a United States senator in Georgia, especially conspicuous for his “red-baiting.” The package was opened by a Negro maid, and exploded and blew her to pieces. That led to hurried searches, and the finding of a score or so of bombs in the New York post-office, addressed to various persons of prominence, and detained because they had not enough postage paid.

May Day came in Boston, with that terrible news upon the front page of the papers. The socialists had several meetings scheduled--and they were a legal party, not advocating violence in any form. But this was a distinction the newspapers and those who controlled them were anxious to conceal. When the audience emerged from one hall, and attempted to march down the street to another hall where there was another meeting, they were set upon by three hundred policemen and a mob of soldiers and sailors, thoroughly “americanized” by a year in Europe. The socialists, and many innocent passers-by who happened to look foreign, were chased through the streets, hunted out in stores where they sought refuge, and pummeled and clubbed into insensibility. The police loaded them into patrol-wagons, and then beat them over the heads while in the wagons; they loaded them into trucks, and permitted the soldiers and sailors to beat them--there were even cases of policemen lending their clubs to members of the mob who thought some victim insufficiently mishandled. They raided the second hall and beat up the audience; the fighting went on for two or three hours, until four persons were killed, and a hundred and sixteen dragged off to jail. Among them was a son of Boris Sidis, of Harvard, and H. W. L. Dana, a grandson of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and of Richard Henry Dana.

So once more Cornelia heard the thud of hickory clubs on human flesh and bone. This time Betty heard it too, and both of them had to run for their lives. They got into a cab and drove home, both trembling so that they could hardly use their hands, both white and tearful, with a mixture of fear and rage. They spent hours of anguish together, telephoning to find out who had been killed and who had been hurt and who was in jail; then to get lawyers, and persons with property for bail-bonds--all the routine so familiar to the seasoned “radical,” and so startling to the newcomer who still believes in his country.