Chapter X: The Legal System (2)

There was a sound in the hall, and Cornelia turned her head. A key in the latch, and the door opened. There was Betty, rosy, shining from a walk in the chill night air. “Why, Grannie! You waited up for me! You shouldn’t have done that!” She closed the door, and came to Cornelia, brimming over with affection and concern. “You poor dear, you let the fire die down, you are cold!”

Betty herself was warm; the blood flooded her cheeks and throat, it came and went, like northern lights in the winter sky, a lovely thing to watch. Her eyes shone--something must have happened to-night, they were so much alive. Such an eager face, a smile with two rows of white teeth, even and smooth, almost translucent. She wore a soft brown coat, with a neckpiece of fur, matching her hair, her eyes--a picture that people turned to look at on the street. So delicate, so quick and sensitive--and she knew about this wickedness, she could face it and not quail from it, not feel old and chilly, ready to die!

“Grannie dear, what is it? You’re worried about something!” She could read Cornelia’s mind as if she entered it. “What is bothering you? Has Lee Swenson been telling you something discouraging?” Then quickly, “Don’t let him frighten you, my dear! We’re going to get those boys off! Is he afraid about them?”

“No, dear--”

“Then what did he say? Tell me, what?”

“We talked about many things, this case and others. It is a terrible world, Betty dear.”

“Yes, they frame people; and then sometimes, people have done something, too! It’s hard to tell which is which, and your poor dear head is addled with trying to know it all! Is that it?”

“Mr. Swenson didn’t want me to talk--”

Betty laughed gayly. “The old rascal! He thinks he’s going to keep secrets from Joe and me! I know, it’s very dangerous, and we mustn’t whisper. But you tell him, I know what’s in your head before you do, and he can’t run this case without Joe and me. This is a young folk’s job, believe me!”

Betty shed her coat, and the little brown bowl of a hat trimmed with fur, and knelt down and put her warm cheek against her grandmother’s cold one. “The idea of worrying a nice old Victorian lady with secrets and mysteries! I suppose he told you that government witnesses don’t always tell the truth, and defense lawyers sometimes fight the devil with fire. Is that what you’re worried over?”

“Where were you so late, dear?” countered Cornelia--the only evasion she could think of in a hurry.

“Never you mind--that’s more secrets and mysteries, I’ll tell you in the morning. Now you go to bed, before your old bones turn to ice.” She led Cornelia into her bedroom, and turned down the covers, and brought her a glass of hot milk, describing her as “seecka kitten,” from the days when Cornelia had been worn out with the work in the cordage-plant, and Bart had nursed her so tenderly. When she had drunk the milk, Betty tucked her in like a baby, and kissed her good-night and put out the light, and raised the window, and said, “Now be a good child, and in the morning you shall hear some nice gossip!”

XIII

Bright sunlight, and the Negro maid building the fire, and Cornelia in her dressing-gown in the big chair before the grate, drinking her coffee and nibbling her toast. Betty sat by her in a blue silk kimono, and when she was through eating, took the tray and set it one side, remarking, “So you won’t upset it or anything in your excitement.” Then she closed the door, and took a seat close to her grandmother, and pushed her bobbed hair back from her forehead, and said, “Now, bless your old dear heart, get yourself together and don’t faint dead away--Joe and I are married.”

Cornelia’s hands went limp in her lap. “Married!”

“Yes, dear.”

“But Joe has a wife!”

“Yes, that’s an old story.”

“But then--but--you can’t marry a man who is already married.”

“We can, Grannie dear, we arranged it; you see, we married ourselves.”

Something inside Cornelia quit working for a moment--heart, or lungs, or solar plexus which controlled them both--and her voice failed her altogether. Betty’s voice was steady, but one of those waves of color flooded her neck and face, right up to the bobbed brown hair. “You see, Grannie, since the law won’t be sensible, we took matters into our own hands. Joe’s wife is in Reno, but it takes a lot of time, one can’t be sure how long; and it was too silly that we who love each other should sit around waiting for some politician to give us permission to live our lives.”

There was a pause. Cornelia’s voice had not yet come back.

“Let me say right away, Grannie, this isn’t any free love foolishness. You’ll be thinking about Mary Wollstonecraft and all that, but I was only a child then, I was using a lot of romantic words. But now I’m twenty-two, and I’m in love, and I want my man, and I want him for life, and he knows that--I’ve told him that if any other woman tries to take him away, I’ll scratch her eyes out. So you see it’s perfectly respectable and conventional.”

“Y-yes,” said Cornelia, feebly.

“I have waited--I’ve been a good six months and more making up my mind I wasn’t making any mistake. Now that I’m sure, I’d be perfectly willing for any judge or clergyman to say the magic words that would change it from immorality to the holy bonds of matrimony; but you see how it is, the judge won’t do it for an indefinite time, and the clergyman never will, because Joe’s wife has not committed adultery--at least, she has, her man is out there with her, but it isn’t going to be legally proved, so the curiosity of the Episcopalian clergymen will not be satisfied according to canon law. I have looked all this up in the library, and I’ll explain it if you don’t know what I mean.”

“No, I understand,” said Cornelia--still feebly.

“Well, Grannie dear, in your marrying time no one did his own thinking, but now the world is changing, so my dear blessed old chaperon has got to sit down and ask herself this plain question: Do you think that my love for Joe, or his for me, would be in any way more sanctified or purified by any formula that any judge or clergyman could pronounce over us? Do you really believe that?”

Cornelia had to think.

“Be sure, now.”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“All right, then. And do you think we’d be apt to be more true to each other if we had dressed up in party clothes, and spent several thousand dollars for flowers in Trinity Church, and had four organs play the Lohengrin wedding march going in and the Mendelssohn wedding march going out, and had the rector say a formula which seems absolutely superfluous to both of us? Do you believe that?”

“No, dear, I suppose I really don’t. Only--we always have done it in our family.”

“Most of the time,” said Betty. “But this is a special case, and Joe and I talked it out and decided that it is just too silly that our love-life should be maimed for we can’t tell how long. We decided that the law is an imposition, and we have taken the liberty of being our own clergy, that is all.”

“Yes, dear. But--suppose you get into trouble?”

“Well, we’ll do our best to keep it from happening. We have taken the best advice. But if there should be an accident, we’ll face the consequences. I promise you I won’t have what they call a ‘curettage’--as you remember Aunt Alice did not so long ago. You didn’t know I knew about that, I suppose! And neither will I have an appendicitis operation, like Cousin Julia. I wouldn’t mind a bit having a baby by the man I love, and telling the world exactly what I had done and why; only, of course, the family would die, so if the worst comes to the worst, you and I and Joe will take another trip to Europe, and stay there till we can marry. And meantime you must be a good sensible soul, and tell yourself that Joe and I are married before God and you, and when he comes in you are to kiss him on both cheeks and welcome him as your grandson-in-law. Because, you see, he’s quite embarrassed about it, knowing how eminently respectable you are. Indeed, he’s that way himself, coming from Virginia--he’s almost as bad as Roger Lowell, and I had to take matters into my own hands, and do all the marrying, so to speak. But now it’s done, and I want you to feel comfortable and happy about it, so that we can be comfortable and happy too. The sensible thing is for you to chaperon us, and let us meet here, because it’s very disagreeable having to go to third-rate hotels, and besides, it’s dangerous, because the politicians in this pious Puritan city are preying on the free lovers--those who happen to be rich and prominent. Joe says they have a regular blackmail ring, they catch some man in a hotel room with a woman, and it costs him anywhere from twenty to two hundred thousand dollars--that is, of course, unless he can show the card of a United States senator and presidential candidate!”

There was a pause. “That’s all, Grannie.” Then another pause.

“You are putting a heavy responsibility on me, dear.”

“One more secret to keep!” Betty stood up, looking like a new-risen sun with laughter and joy and health. “Bless her dear old frightened soul!” She stooped and put a kiss on each of Cornelia’s cheeks, and one on her forehead; then, laughing again, “You don’t have to carry the burden if it’s too heavy. I’ll take it all off your blessed shoulders.”

“How, dear?”

“Say the word, and I’ll move into an apartment with Joe, and write a note to Mother, telling her all about it. What do you say?”

This time there was no pause. Cornelia said instantly, “No! No!”

XIV

“Bring me good choosing book,” wrote Bart. “I will get the fundament which I have so long needing.” So whenever Cornelia went for a visit, she would take two or three volumes from her little library: Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and Paine’s “Rights of Man,” the letters and speeches of Jefferson, Thoreau’s “Walden” and Emerson’s essays, a life of Garrison and one of John Brown. She thought he ought to know that New England in which he was to fight for his life, and he agreed with her in this. He had the most intense interest in history, and the lives of men who had played a part in it, especially in the cause of liberty and “joostice.” He identified himself with these great characters, he lived their lives, finding comments on his case in their words, and vindication in history’s verdict upon them. He read every minute that the prison regulations permitted, and at Cornelia’s request he would write comments on the margins of the books, and many pages of pencil notes. It was a regular college course in New England culture, and each time they met there was progress to report.

The old Charlestown prison is built in the form of a cross, and in the center is a large airy room, in which the prisoners are permitted to see visitors. Cornelia would come, with her books and her one flower. She would have to wait while he washed his hands and face--because he was shoveling coal now, and wheeling it in a barrow for the prison furnaces; he would apologize for the condition of his clothes, which he could not help. Cornelia had interceded with the warden and got him this job, instead of the work in the tailor shop, which fitted him ill. Outdoor labor was what he had been used to during his ten years in America, and it kept him in physical condition.

He was a model prisoner, except that he would not stand indignities from his keepers. Once when Cornelia came she was told that she could not see him, he was in “solitary” upon bread and water, because he had refused to do his work. There followed sessions with the warden, and it transpired that Bart considered that the guard had addressed him in a way injurious to his dignity. It took tact on Cornelia’s part to patch up this situation; for the American prison system does not allow for dignity, and it is not easy to persuade authorities that an anarchist has a soul. But they could understand that it was unwise to exasperate a man who received visits from ladies of high social station, and who might cause a fuss in the newspapers.

Also Cornelia visited Mrs. Sacco, in the village of South Stoughton. The new baby had arrived, a lovely little girl, and Cornelia and Betty took this news to the prisoner in the county jail at Dedham, and received a warm welcome. Poor Nick required a great deal of cheering, because he was a man who had lived by physical activity, and could not read and study and think like Bart. He had to learn to spend about twenty-two hours a day in a cell, with nothing whatever to do, and he did not want to wait for a trial, he did not want lawyers to fool with his case and waste the money of the anarchist movement--he wanted to be killed and have it over with. Cornelia and Betty would argue with him, in patient half-English and half-Italian, finding ways to appeal to his pride, reminding him of revolutionary heroes who had managed to endure prison. Why not work out a régime for himself--do gymnastics, of both body and soul? Why not study English, so as to do better work for the cause if he got out, and to write his message to the world if he failed?

The next time they came, they would find that he had shaved himself meticulously, and wore one of the flowers they had brought him. He was practicing walking about the cell on his hands, and counting the number of times he could “chin” himself on his cell-door--he had got up to forty-something, which was remarkable for any man. He was proud of that, and when they told him about the lovely eyes of the baby, his spirit bounded as high as previously it had sunk low. Two races comprise the Italian nation: those of the north who are descended from Teutons and Gauls, and are capable of reflection, like Vanzetti; and those of the south, descendants of Greeks and Carthaginians and Moors, brown and excitable people, who live their lives outside, and utter extremes of emotion with many words and gestures. An odd turn of fate that so many of these should have come to Massachusetts, to annoy the stern and forbidding ghosts of Puritans!

XV

Lee Swenson had decided that he would take the case. He said no more to Cornelia, but evidently there had been some understanding with Betty and Joe, for the young couple sat in at long conferences, and covered half the state in Betty’s runabout, interviewing witnesses and tracing clews. Cornelia succeeded in raising five thousand dollars by pledging one-half her income--which meant that a money-lender was willing to gamble that she would live more than two years, in spite of all her worries and labors. She brought in this money, after which the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee had an office, and a post-office box, and no less than two second-hand typewriters clicking away on envelopes. There was a pamphlet telling about the case, mailed out to lists of radicals all over the country. Articles appeared in socialist and labor papers, both in America and Europe; for Joe and Betty wrote long letters to Pierre Leon, and he would translate them into French and publish them in his paper. So the readers of anarchist and communist and socialist papers all over Europe began to hear about two Italians who had fallen victims to the White Terror, in what had once been the sweet land of liberty, but was now the banking-headquarters of reaction for the whole world.

Also Cornelia’s labors among the blue-bloods were not without fruit. Many of these people knew the corruption of their political parties, and the alliance between the politicians and the exploiting interests. They had heard of the Ettor-Giovannitti frame-up, and had watched another strike in Lawrence, a little more than a year ago, with several near-murders committed by thugs in the mill-owners’ employ. They had seen the “Reds” paraded down State Street in chains, and had seen the government forced to turn most of them loose, having not even a pretense of evidence against them. So a few well-to-do persons began to take an interest in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. This gave an air of prosperity--and brought a new development, highly characteristic of the great Puritan city. One afternoon Lee Swenson called Cornelia on the phone. “How are you to-day? Nerves fairly strong?”

“What has happened?”--for Cornelia knew his way of teasing her.

“Do you remember the talk we had in your apartment, when I told you there might be a way to put our boys on the street?”

“I remember.”

“Well, can I drop in for tea and tell you about it? Send the maid out if you can--it’s a time for being alone!”

The lawyer came, and this is what he had to report. Felice Guadagni, journalist, who was one of the mainstays of the committee, had had several visits from an Italian woman named De Falco, an interpreter for the district court at Dedham, in Norfolk County. She claimed to come from the district attorney’s office, and offered to have the men released at the price of sixty thousand dollars. There had been several conferences, and Felicani, the printer, had met the woman, and when he pleaded poverty, she had offered to get the price reduced to fifty thousand. The sum was to be disguised as a retaining fee for the brother of an official, who was to be hired by the defense. The Commonwealth would then decide that there was not enough evidence against the pair, and they would be turned loose. “So there’s your righteous and law-abiding Boston!” said Lee Swenson--and looked at Cornelia with a twinkle in his wild western blue eyes.

“You think it’s really genuine, Lee?”

“Lawyers tell me it’s a common procedure in other counties. The woman undertakes to give us satisfactory assurances.”

“What would they be?”

“She has already given Felicani the names of other cases she claims to have settled in the same way, and we can investigate them. But first we have to decide the question--do we want to buy the boys off, or do we want to trap the rascal politicians and get something on them?”

Said Cornelia: “It seems to me it all depends on whether we are sure our boys are innocent. I believe they are. Do you, Lee?”

He answered:

“Yes, I do. But that is not the only point. Even though innocent, they may be convicted; and the problem is, do they want to risk their lives for some propaganda?”

The lawyer would be allowed to see his clients in the evening, so he said that he would run out to Charlestown and ask Bart about it. “I’ll make my guess,” he added, “if no ladies are present, he’ll say, tell them to go to hell.”