Chapter XI: The Graft Ring (2)

A heavy strain upon Rupert, and a strange freak of fate! Or could it be that there actually was some intelligence overseeing the universe, and that Betty’s revolt was a punishment visited upon a great banker who had left undone those things he ought to have done, and had done those things he ought not to have done? Rupert could not escape this idea, because he had been brought up in Trinity Church in the City of Boston, and had heard it--not exactly preached, but skirted on the edge of, every Sunday morning for fifty years. He would have liked to ask his rector, or some other clergyman: could there be a God perverse enough to object to Rupert’s having taken the felt-plants of Jerry Walker, which Rupert could finance and Jerry couldn’t? Could any God have wanted him to let the Boston Elevated stay on the rocks and be pounded to pieces? Could any God be so silly as the fanatics and agitators who denounced Rupert for having loaned money to legislators--when it was perfectly obvious that it was not Rupert who had elected these legislators, and that lending them money was the only way to get a raise of fares and make the stock of the Elevated worth anything? No, God was not going to punish the president of the Pilgrim National Bank for having protected the people who had trusted their fortunes to him! But then, how could God be letting Rupert’s lovely young daughter be seduced by anarchist free love, and exposed to the furies of scandal, at such a trying moment of her father’s life?

X

One by one the members of the family received “poison pen” letters. Clara Thornwell Scatterbridge came to her mother, incredulous of the scandal, because her maternal soul had never desired an impropriety. Alice Thornwell Winters came, elegant and precious, regarding her virtue as a hard-won possession, deserving of commensurate rewards. No use expecting others to live up to one’s own standards--“though I do think, Mother, Betty is beginning rather young. I must say I am aghast at this new generation, they don’t even trouble to apologize for their indiscretions. And I don’t know what to make of you, Mother--I thought you believed in the old standards. I heard that these radicals practiced free love, but somehow I didn’t think of it in relation to my own mother.”

“Well, Alice,” said Cornelia, “you must consider my life. I was faithful to the old standards, I lived my life without love, and where did it get me?”

The carefully cultivated features of Alice Thornwell Winters wore a puzzled look. Alice prided herself upon being sensitive to all ethical and esthetic values--they were the same thing, she always insisted--beauty was truth and beauty was goodness--but of course beauty must be recognized by a discriminating intelligence--it was something that could not be explained--it was a gift, very rare, but Alice had it. “Really, Mother, how can you feel that you have had such a hard life? Your children love you, and your grandchildren would, if they saw more of you. Josiah was saying to me only yesterday it was hard to understand why you found so much in Italian anarchists, and so little in your own people.”

“Well, my dear, perhaps I know the Harvard values too well, and have got bored with them. Tell Josiah to come to dinner, and tell me what new things he has learned and accomplished. That is, unless you are afraid to expose him to my free love ideas.”

That was a nasty stroke of a cat’s claws, and the sensitive Alice winced. For everybody in the family had heard about the “wild oats” of “Young Josiah,” only son of Alice and Henry--known as “Josie” to his boyhood playmates, and as “Si” to the members of “Porcellian” and of “Alpha Delta Phi.” Alice allowed for him, because he was a man, and that was the way men did, apparently; they got over it in time, and settled down. But nowadays the girls were doing it, too, and how would there be any esthetic standards, if the women did not maintain them? That was what shocked Alice in the episode of Betty and Joe--it was so unesthetic, to come to the apartment where Betty’s grandmother lived! To which Cornelia answered that she had never been to a roadhouse, and could not judge, but it might be, of course, that some of them were fixed up esthetically. Look out for the cat’s claws of this gentle-seeming old woman!

Alice went away, and Josiah Thornwell Winters called up, and made an appointment to dine with his grandmother, and tell her what he had learned and accomplished as a Harvard senior. But when he came, he did not mention the subject--because meantime the current of his thoughts had been diverted. The grandson and namesake of the stern old governor had fallen the newest victim to the calamities which were raining upon his conspicuous family.

Cornelia happened to drop in at the office of the defense committee, and Lee Swenson gave her the first news of the event. “I don’t like to repeat gossip, Nonna, but my guess is, your latest family trouble is a result of what you and Betty are doing, so you need to know about it.”

“What do you mean, Lee?”

“There’s a story all over town--last night the political gangs were roaring drunk in their bootleg-joints, and when they had a round of drinks, they would say, ‘Have one on Young Josiah!’”

“What has he done?”

“Well, they caught him in a hotel room with a woman. Undoubtedly she lured him there--it’s a regular system they have. They took a flashlight photograph of him, and Henry Cabot Winters paid seventy-five thousand dollars to kill the story.”

Cornelia, the “Red,” was supposed to be lacking in shame; but now she looked down, instead of at her friend. “Can it really be true, Lee?”

“It is what is being told. You can find out, of course.”

“They can do that kind of thing in Boston, and not be punished?”

“It’s the punishers who are doing it, Nonna. It’s a blackmail ring, and the district attorneys get a share of the loot. There is an aged millionaire in this town--perhaps you know him--old man Barbour?”

“I have met him.”

“Well, they got him in the same kind of jam, and soaked him to the tune of three hundred and eighty-six thousand. You can hardly believe that, but I got the amount from one of his lawyers. And then young Searles--he inherited a fortune from his uncle, I think it was, and the gang got him in an apartment with a couple of girls and cleaned him out. Over in Woburn they got a bunch of moving-picture people in a roadhouse for a wild party, and it cost those celebrities a hundred and five thousand.”

“One might expect it of people like that,” said Cornelia. “But it is something new for the Thornwells, unless I am mistaken. I’m glad that my Josiah is not here to see what has become of his name.”

XI

So it was that when Josiah Thornwell Winters came to dinner two or three days afterwards, his grandmother did not chat about the polite nothings of the Harvard curriculum and of “Porcellian” and “Alpha Delta Phi.” Throwing aside those reticences which are supposed to be the crown of womanhood, she talked in plain language about unspeakable things--“man to man,” as she put it. And “Young Josiah,” who had never dreamed of such a thing from an old lady, turned pink to the roots of his hair and looked as if he wanted to grab his hat and run; but after a while he got used to it, and found it a relief to talk about realities. He had come very close to shooting his head off, and neither the horrified grief of his pure mother, nor the withering scorn of his successful father had been of the slightest use to him.

He was twenty-two years old, and at the age of seventeen he had sprung up to the Thornwell height of six feet and more, but had never filled out his lean figure. His shoulders were stooped and his complexion pale, and his fingers yellow with nicotine; but he had the most elegant Harvard drawl, and a complete equipment of skepticism and boredom, applied to matters about which he knew nothing, as well as to those about which Harvard had taught him everything. His manner was “right,” his clothing had the proper shade of carelessness, and his apartment on the “Gold Coast” contained shelves of exquisite smut, beginning with Petronius and ending with James Branch Cabell, in numbered editions at from fifteen to fifty dollars a volume.

But now all that solemn pose of maturity had fallen like a cheap actor’s cloak, and Cornelia confronted a raw, weedy youth with vicious habits and a sick sense of shame. “I’m a rotter,” he said, “but I could tell you things to show you it wasn’t entirely my fault. The Pater gave me the razz--he all but told me I’d oblige him if I’d eat a chunk of cyanide--and I said nothing. But you must know, Grandmother, he hasn’t been any saint.”

“I know he keeps a woman,” said Cornelia, grimly.

“More than that. There’s a tradition on the crew--you know, after he was graduated, the Pater coached the crew for a couple of years--and he told the fellows they would have to go with prostitutes, or they’d lose their virility. That made the church crowd hot, and they got rid of him, but the story stayed on, and a lot of the fellows think he was right. Now, of course, the Pater says I’ve gone too far, but then, who is to do the measuring? It was my hard luck that I knew too much about both my father and my mother. Do you want me to talk about Mother?”

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

“Well, Mother has wonderful emotions, but she’s a little short on brains, and I rarely got anything useful from her. When I was about fifteen, I heard a terrible quarrel between her and the Pater, they told each other all the dirt they knew. I was behind a curtain, and had to stay there, because I was ashamed to let them know I’d heard the beginning. You know Mother’s way, she has platonic thrills, but she doesn’t go the limit, so that makes it all right. The Pater had got a story on her--her friends were talking about how she had traveled to New York with one of her poets, and had lain in his arms all night in the sleeping-car berth, but not parted with her virtue; that was her remarkable spirituality, and the fellow was supposed to enjoy it, too. The Pater called her some rotten names, and then she told what she knew about him, and that was my introduction to the subject of love. It wasn’t exactly helpful, was it?”

Cornelia accepted the plea.

“Well, when I was sixteen, I was visiting a fellow from St. Mark’s. It was a place on the North Shore, and he had an aunt--one of these up-to-date ladies who had divorced one husband and was getting rid of another, and her lover was in Europe, and she was bored. She came from New York, and they are ahead of us--but not more than a year or two, I have found--perhaps because they get the new shows a season earlier. Anyhow, this was good family, a country club crowd, no end of money, and it seemed all right. She came to my room at night--all fixed up, very beautiful and sweet-smelling, and what chance did a kid stand against a proposition like that? She stayed around a while, and taught me a lot--until her lover came back from Europe, and then we said good-by. But it was only a week before a young widow took me on. You can’t imagine how it is, Grandmother--I know it wasn’t that way in your time. The women know what they want, and they just go to it.”

“Are they trying to marry you?”

“Not often. Some have husbands, but they’ve been reading Freud, and have got the idea that all their troubles are repressions. And the young girls are worse.”

“All of them, Josiah?”

“No, of course not--there are plenty of girls like Priscilla and Betty--I suppose they are straight. What happened to me was, I got a reputation, so I drew the wild ones. I was supposed to be a lady-killer. I don’t imagine I’m abnormally attractive, but family counts for a lot, and Harvard, of course--the high-hat stuff. Anyhow, I assure you I never had to do any seducing, and I never made any promises I didn’t keep. I’ve spent a lot of money, but always in respectable ways, I mean entertainments and presents and so on. I never got stuck for blackmail but this once.”

Cornelia smiled. “You remember Æsop’s fable,” she said, “about the lioness who had only one cub, but that one was a lion.”

XII

Young Josiah skirted around the cage of this “lion” for quite a while. It didn’t seem really decent to tell such “dirt” to one’s grandmother. But Cornelia pinned him down. “I have other grandchildren coming along, and I need to know about my city.”

“Well, it’s a rotten hole,” said the youth. “I think this blackmail business is a result of the fact that Bostonians have to pretend to be so much better than they can be. Or maybe it’s the Irish, bringing us Yankees off our high horses.”

“Who was the woman?”

“She belongs to what is known as ‘Larry Shay’s stable’--not a very elegant name, but you say you want to know Boston. She looked like a society girl, and I really thought she was.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“I had seen her around Harvard Square for a week or two, and I thought she lived in the neighborhood--a neglected young wife or something. She can’t be over nineteen; she was dressed up to the minute, and looked like springtime. I suppose she was watching me, finding out about my habits. Anyhow, she passed me now and then, and always looked willing, but not too eager. This time I was sitting in my car, waiting for a fellow, and she came along smiling, and naturally I was smiling, and she walked up and said, ‘You are Josiah Winters, aren’t you?’ She said, ‘I know your cousin, Betty Alvin, but I’m not a “Red” like her, so don’t be afraid of me.’ She had got posted about Betty, and of course I thought Betty knew lots of people that the rest of the family wouldn’t know. I laughed, and asked her if she’d like to ride, and she got in, and we rode all over, and I kissed her a few times, and she said she had never done anything like this before, and paid me a lot of compliments, but she wouldn’t go to a roadhouse, and when we came back to town we had supper, and a little champagne, and--the upshot of it was, she knew a hotel where a girl-friend of hers lived, and she wouldn’t be afraid to go there. So we went to a room; and about ten minutes after we got in, somebody put his shoulder to the door, and there were half a dozen men, and one of them held a camera, and another set off a flashlight, and they said they were county detectives, and I was under arrest, and the picture would be in the Boston ‘Telegram’ the next afternoon. The girl went into hysterics--she was a good actress, I must say--or maybe she liked me and was sorry--I’m fool enough to wonder, because she was so young. But there it was, and the Pater pungled up seventy-five thousand bucks, and took it out by telling me what he really thought of me. It took quite a while, and went into details.”

Cornelia was moved to say, “You must allow for the financial strain.”

“No, it is what he really thinks; he’s been cherishing it up for a long time. He is disappointed in me, I’m a weakling, and he needs a strong man for his successor. He might stop and think, what has there been in my life to develop strength--assuming I had the possibility? When the Pater got through Harvard he had to pitch in and fight his own way; but I never had to, it was no good trying to fool myself with the idea that I was anything but a millionaire’s son. Of course Mother’s spoiling me was from affection, but that didn’t change the result. I have enough of the Pater’s brains to understand what happened. I never had to do anything but call somebody else. If the car was out of order, tell the chauffeur; if I wanted a bunch of flowers, tell the gardener. So many servants to wait on one kid; so many courtiers, to make you think you’re the top of the heap--so why should you climb any higher? And then the women come, and after that, it is impossible to break through. I don’t mean merely sex--I mean all the things they want to do--tea-parties and dances and motoring and yachting. Honest truth, Grandmother, except for things like this blackmail, there’s nothing to choose between the fashionable girls and the ones you pick up; they want to do the same things, and the only difference is where you go, and how much it costs. The one thing none of them will let you do is any serious work.”

There was more to this revealing story, and Cornelia listened to it all and asked many questions. “I ought to have known these things many years ago,” she said. “I might have helped you a great deal.”

“Yes, of course. Nobody talks straight to us fellows. Mother doesn’t know much that is real, and the Pater has been so busy making money--too busy to think what good it will do anybody. He must be pretty sick, because I show so few signs of solving the problem for him.”

“Wouldn’t you like to come and see me now and then? Perhaps Betty and I could bring you in touch with people who are doing worth-while things.”

“Well, Grandmother, of course, I’ll meet anybody you say, but I don’t see much hope in that crowd of yours. The way it looks to me, you and Betty have got a little money, and family position, and they are using you for what you are worth.”

“Yes, my boy,” said Cornelia, gently, “but what I thought was, you might forget those Harvard ideas. I will take you to Charlestown prison and introduce you to one of my wops, who has never had either money or family position, and no education except what he picked up after washing dishes fourteen hours a day. He cannot express himself in English very well, yet he has managed to impress me as a very great man. It is possible he might impress you also, and make you realize what it means to men who lose the money that you get.”

“I don’t understand just what you mean by that,” said Young Josiah from Harvard.

XIII

The trial of Mrs. De Falco came up in a Boston police court, and Cornelia extended her knowledge of the “blackmail ring” and its power. A long-haired Swede from the West had come into Massachusetts to tell them how to run their system of justice; a “Red” and an enemy of society, who would not play the game as other lawyers played it, but tried to throw sticks into the machinery! Well, they would show him--and they did.

The magistrate was an Irish-Catholic, an ardent patriot, and these were the days of most bitter prejudice against anarchists, atheists and wops. The lawyer representing the defendant was an aggressive and loud-mouthed Jew, and the way he and the judge collaborated was a prophecy of an immortal drama of the emotions called “Abie’s Irish Rose.” When Felicani, and Lopez, a Spanish anarchist, explained their conscientious objections to taking an oath, the devout Hebrew gentleman went after them hammer and tongs, and the devout Catholic gentleman beamed with delight. After that, it ceased to be the trial of an alleged bribe-seeker, and became the trial of two self-confessed free-thinkers. The judge actually ordered Lopez under arrest, and it took a lot of persuading to change his mind.

The two stenographers took the stand, and the fact that one of them had served with the A.E.F. in France did not help them in the least. Did they know the voice of Mrs. De Falco? If not, how could they be sure that the voice they had heard over the dictaphone was the voice of Mrs. De Falco? To be sure, others had seen Mrs. De Falco talking in the room; but maybe these others were lying, maybe somebody had staged a performance to fool the stenographers and make them think they were listening to Mrs. De Falco, when in reality they were listening to some other Italian woman making a bribe proposition! Who could set a limit to the rascalities that atheists and anarchists might contrive, in order to discredit the legal system of the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts?

And then Mrs. De Falco herself, an alert and capable young woman, whose wits had been sharpened by years of battle for life in the police courts. She sturdily denied every charge; and especially she denied any trace of connection between herself and any officials. The high officials of Norfolk and Plymouth counties were upright and honorable gentlemen, and never had made any proposition to let criminals escape for a money consideration, and never had the employment of a relative as counsel for accused criminals, had anything to do with subsequent dismissal of proceedings against such criminals. That was, of course, the real issue being tried in this police court; to find the Italian woman guilty meant to find the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts guilty, and how could a patriotic judge do that? When the testimony about the officials began to come in, the judge ordered everybody out of the court-room except the witness and the counsel.

The defendant was acquitted; and Lee Swenson, feeling very blue, went off by himself, and sat down at a luncheon table in a restaurant--when who should come in but the aggressive and loud-mouthed Jewish lawyer! He was feeling good, naturally, and joined his victim at the table, and “kidded” him a bit, after the fashion of lawyers--and incidentally talked about the case, as one sensible man to another. Mrs. De Falco had hung around the courts for so many years, she of course knew both the high official and his brother, and she had tried to capitalize her knowledge and get some money out of the Sacco-Vanzetti defense. She knew the details of other court cases, enough to be able to make it appear that she was able to “swing” deals; she had gone to meeting-places with officials, to talk about other matters--knowing that she would be followed by the defense, who would thus conclude that she had a “pull.”

Maybe so, said Lee; but it seemed to him a little strange that a lawyer should be saying such things about his client, and making so elaborate a defense of two other persons who were not his clients! Could it be that any of the officials were paying for this legal victory? The lawyer denied it, and Lee smiled his patient Swedish smile. Of course, you could never be sure; it might be that it had all happened as the other said; sometimes truth really was stranger than fiction. It might be that the officials had happened in while Mrs. De Falco was there, purely as a coincidence; or again, it might be that all of them had met there to say their prayers.

The judge had been of that opinion, and the case was history. The one thing Lee Swenson had accomplished--he realized it, now that it was too late--was to exacerbate the prosecution, to give to all officials having anything to do with the Sacco-Vanzetti case a reason for bitter and personal animus. The name of Lee Swenson became a byword to all politicians and officials; the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee became a nest of active and dangerous foes, and the task of sending two wops to the electric chair became one with the defense of every criminal-in-office in the entire community. Which was exactly as Vanzetti, lying through those endless hours in his prison cell, had figured out and predicted. Always it happened, sooner or later, that everything turned out as Vanzetti had figured out and predicted!