Chapter XXIII: The Last Enemy

I

In a room in the Hotel Bellevue, adjoining the State House, five lawyers from New York, all volunteers in the case, had worked all Sunday night and part of Monday, eighteen consecutive hours, concocting legal formulas and having them typed. On the roof of the hotel were detectives, and in the windows of the State House opposite; for the spectacle of lights burning all night in a room known to be occupied by Reds exercised an irresistible spell upon the authorities. “What are they doing now? Where are they going?” Half a dozen automobiles waited outside the hotel, and whenever one of the lawyers took a taxi, the august Commonwealth of Massachusetts trailed behind.

Now the Boston lawyers had failed, and admitted their failure; the New York lawyers had the field, with seven or eight hours to go. They asked for a hearing before Federal Judge Lowell, and he set the hour of six o’clock. A court session consisting of one judge, five lawyers, and a score of newspapermen. The judge resented the intrusion of “foreigners” into this case, and took occasion to say what all ruling-class Boston was thinking. He accused the strangers of “trying the case in the newspapers”; he interrupted them again and again to demand “law, not eloquence.” When William Schuyler Jackson, ex-Attorney General of New York State, was showing the conspiracy carried on by Katzmann to deceive the jury at the Dedham trial, the judge broke in: “Did you ever see a Norfolk county farmer?” The lawyer, disconcerted, had to admit, “Not in reality.” Whereupon the judge snapped out: “Well, if you had, you’d have a better opinion of that jury.”

It made magnificent copy for the newspapers; the _Herald_ put it in a “box”--“Judge Lowell Praises Norfolk County Farmers”--and all patriots swelled with pride. Wonderful beings were Norfolk county farmers, and wonderful also the Lowells, who spoke only to Cabots, who spoke to God. It was the hard luck of the ex-Attorney General of New York State that he was not familiar with the details of the case; otherwise he might have made answer to the arrogant judge: “The Sacco-Vanzetti jury consisted of two real estate men, two machinists, a grocer, a mason, a stockkeeper, a clothing salesman, a mill operative, a shoemaker, a lastmaker, and _one_ Norfolk county farmer!”

The lawyers loaded themselves into an automobile, together with Isaac Don Levine, journalist, and set out for Beverly, to make a last appeal to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Detectives trailed behind them, and more detectives met them at their destination. The very old gentleman sat in his parlor, talking with two very old ladies; a chaste New England home, everything antique, in the taste of a bygone age. The lawyers presented their petition, and the judge sat himself down to peruse it--four thousand words of “law, not eloquence.” A dead silence; and Levine sat in the hall, listening to the ticking of a “grandfather’s clock.” “Life-death, life-death, life-death,” it said; the listener shivered.

The old gentleman looked up. “I appreciate the general force of your argument,” he said--and their hearts leaped. He was famous for the so-called “judicial mind,” his ability to consider legal principles in a vacuum completely freed of human emotion. He went on: “I am of the opinion that the petition is covered by the principles stated in my decisions upon the former applications for habeas corpus and certiorari, and therefore I am compelled to deny the writ.”

The lawyers excused themselves, and got into the car again, and whirled back to Boston. One more hope; Federal Judge Anderson, who was not quite so free from human emotion. Seven years back, he had condemned the Red raids in an exhaustive and scorching decision. Now he was attending the Institute of Politics at Williamstown, two hundred miles away, and Tom O’Connor had arranged at the East Boston naval airport to charter an airplane to take John Finerty, a leading lawyer of Washington, formerly assistant counsel for the U. S. Railroad Commission. It would be a risky journey at night, but they had worked for eighteen hours over those four thousand words of “law, not eloquence,” and wanted to make it count if they could.

The nearest landing field was in Albany, New York, fifty miles from Williamstown. O’Connor had arranged with a taxi company to have a cab waiting at the landing field. All was ready; but alas, some one tipped off the authorities at the airport as to who these nefarious persons were, and a naval officer ordered them off the premises. “It would give me pleasure to shoot you,” he said to the ex-Attorney General of New York State; and next day the newspapers reported that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been asked to put a special guard over the airport, threatened with seizure by the Reds!

II

From a window of the Hod Carriers’ Union in Salem Street, Ella Reeve Bloor was explaining the case as an episode in the class struggle to a crowd of some hundreds of solemn-faced workers. “Mother” Bloor, they called her; sixty-five years old, she had raised a brood of five children, and turned them loose in the radical movement, and so was free to wander over America, wherever workingmen on strike called for a martyr. A little round jolly figure, full of laughter, brown as a hickory nut and as solid, she said her say, until the policemen forced their way into the union headquarters and dragged her out. “Inciting to riot,” was the charge.

At the same time Paula Holladay was getting arrested in her red “slicker” again; they took it away from her this time! Over near Charlestown prison another group were preparing to walk into the den of blue-coated lions; their leader was Helen Peabody, one of those “with a background,” who conceived it her duty to be in jail when the execution took place. In an obscure hall near defense headquarters, Betty and Joe were speaking to a somber crowd. It would not save Sacco and Vanzetti, but it would save their message, as Joe pointed out. Let the workers learn, and organize to defend themselves against ruling class murder.

A curious instance, then going on, to illustrate Joe’s message. Everywhere in Boston the workers had been dragged to jail for attempting to voice their protest; but in the town of Peabody, some twenty miles away from Boston, there was now going on a meeting in the public square, at which ten thousand workers were voicing their feelings unmolested. How came that? Quite simple; the workers of Peabody had taken the precaution to elect themselves a Socialist mayor. Yesterday, Sunday, the chief of police had broken up a mass meeting, in the regulation Mike Crowley style; the mayor had been on vacation, and hearing the news, had hastened back, and removed the chief of police from office, and taken charge of to-night’s meeting himself, and introduced Alfred Baker Lewis as the principal speaker. Would the workers of Boston learn anything from that?

Governor Fuller was in session with Congressman La Guardia, who had flown all the way from Washington in an airplane; an Italian, he pleaded for mercy for two men of his race. Musmanno, having presented four new affidavits in vain, waited outside for a chance to present one more. He argued with Attorney General Reading, counsel for the Decimo Club and the “L.A.W.,” seeking to persuade him that it would be a discourtesy to the United States Supreme Court, to take the life of two men, when their appeal was actually on file before that high tribunal. Mr. Reading did not answer Musmanno’s argument; neither did he say what he would advise the Governor. Death was only three or four hours away.

Over in the death cells, Sacco was bidding a last farewell to his wife, and Vanzetti to his sister. The men stretched their arms through the bars; the women broke down, and had to be carried out, sobbing wildly. They belonged to a demonstrative race--one of the reasons why stern New England did not like them. Nevertheless, New England would read about it--column after column in the next morning’s papers--“sob stuff,” that sold best of anything.

Rosina and Luigia decided to try one last appeal to the Governor. They had not intended to do it; they knew in their hearts that they would fail; but they had several hours to pass, and it was easier to do anything than to do nothing. Friends telephoned and made the appointment, and at nine o’clock they arrived at the State House, a fortress surrounded by armed men, the searchlights which usually illuminated the golden dome now turned upon the crowds in the streets. They ascended in the elevator, and Rosina walked ahead, through the rows of silent newspapermen; Luigia followed hesitatingly, bewildered by this strange environment. Musmanno was there to act as interpreter, and they were shown into the private office, where so many had sat and poured out eloquence in vain.

Rosina Sacco spoke first, in English. She told of her faith in her husband’s innocence. She told about the trial; about Lola Andrews, the hysteric; about Captain Proctor, who had admitted his trick; about Goodridge, the many-times convicted crook; about Mary Splaine, and what the Pinkerton reports had revealed about her. She told about Judge Thayer; over and over, she insisted that the trial had not been fair. She asked for mercy. The Governor was a father, and he was sentencing two children to lose their father, and to wear a dreadful brand all their lives.

The great man listened with politeness--his store of the commodity was inexhaustible. He turned to the frail worn sister of Vanzetti, who began speaking in soft musical Italian, the young lawyer translating sentence by sentence. She had just come from her brother in the gloomy deathhouse; his protestations of innocence were ringing in her ears. He had asked her to convey a message to the Governor. Some weeks ago Bartolomeo had shaken hands with the Governor in the prison, and he thought that he had demonstrated his innocence; the Governor had given him that impression; now he could not understand how the Governor would let the death sentence stand. If he could have one more chance to talk with the Governor and answer his objections, he, Bartolomeo, was sure the death sentence would not be carried out.

For more than an hour the salesman of motor-cars listened, without interrupting. At last the two women said that they were through; and then, leaning forward slightly in his chair, he gave his answer. He appreciated the feelings of both of them, and was sorry for them. But he had taken an oath to uphold the constitution and laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and his conscience dictated that he should permit the law to take its course.

But still, he would be polite. Excessively so; as if he were paying compliments at a social function; or as if he were selling a Packard limousine. To some final argument of Musmanno’s he replied: “What you have said impresses me greatly. But even that is nothing compared with the eloquence of these ladies’ presence.” Was this one of the dreadful perversions of Puritanism? A kind of sadistic pleasure in inflicting torture with a smile? Whatever it was, it failed to make a hit with Rosina Sacco. “Let us go,” she said, coldly, and they rose, and walked slowly from the room.

The newspapermen besought Musmanno to tell them what had happened, and he tried to do it; he touched upon a few of the arguments which the women had presented, but before he had got very far the tears began to run down his cheeks, and he had to stop. He went over to a chair and sat down and buried his face in his hands and sobbed. It was then half past ten, and the grandfather’s clocks which kept the time for all Massachusetts were ticking steadily, with fifty-four hundred seconds still to go.

III

At six o’clock Cornelia had gone back to her home. The chauffeur had to help her up the stairs; and there were Deborah and Clara with the Negro maid, ready to come running, and lead her to the bed, and make any amount of fuss; to bring her tea or coffee, or a glass of milk, or a poached egg on toast. No, she could not eat; they pleaded, and wanted to phone for Dr. Morrow. The tears ran down their cheeks; they would do anything, abase themselves, agree with her wildest words, in the effort to quiet her, and persuade her that their love meant something. They were terrified at her appearance and her attitude; ashamed because they had shown so little sympathy in the past. Yes, no doubt there were very fine and good qualities in anarchists--anything, anything--so that their mother would stop killing herself!

Clara’s precious youngest had got poison ivy all over him, and was shut up in the house with a poultice over his eyes; her oldest, who was just out of Harvard, was suspected to be on the verge of getting engaged at Bar Harbor; the oldest little fat treasure of Priscilla had got a bee sting over one eyelid, otherwise his mother would have been here. Quincy Thornwell had won a chess match--such items of family gossip Clara poured out, in a premeditated torrent--only to discover that her mother was not hearing a word. “Please, Clara, I can’t think about anything now. Let me be quiet.”

Deborah had taken the precaution to get a prescription from Dr. Morrow; it was his advice that Cornelia should take a strong sleeping powder and forget the ugly world and everything in it for at least twelve hours. But Cornelia said no. When her oldest daughter tried to insist, she said, “I was talking with one of the lawyers from New York, and he offered me a quart of whisky. If all hopes fail, he will retire to his hotel room and get drunk.” The silence of Deborah and Clara said plainly, it was what everybody in Boston had known about that New York crowd! Cornelia, reading their thoughts, remarked grimly: “The whisky might give him pleasure, so that is immoral. But a sleeping powder is strictly business!”

The women decided to call in Henry, who understood the insides of this crisis so much better than they. So Henry put off dinner with an important banker from New York, and came over to sit by the bedside and tell his mother-in-law how it was possible for Boston to do this dreadful deed; how it was possible for such wickedness to be organized, and in control of society. “With all that new evidence before them, Henry! And with an appeal to the United States Supreme Court actually docketed!”

“Docketed doesn’t mean anything, Mother. It simply means that you have put your request on file; it doesn’t mean that it will get anywhere. In this case I assure you it wouldn’t.”

“Henry, if we could manage to keep those boys alive until October, we could really get the public to understand about this case, and they would never dare to execute them.”

“Well, I guess that’s just it, Mother. Fuller can’t afford to let the case go on growing and growing.”

She pondered that. “I have just heard that Quincy has won a chess match; and now the Governor is winning one, with human lives for pawns!”

IV

She told about her last interview, and the things that had been said. She told about the trip to Rye Beach; it was quite a story, and helped to pass the time without whisky or drugs. Deborah and Clara refrained from breaking in; there must be no arguments, nothing to excite the patient; each minute that passed was a danger escaped. Deborah ventured to make some remarks on the subject of Mrs. Fuller, and the problem of Catholic wives and Protestant husbands. The Governor was such an ardent Baptist, he wanted to teach a Sunday school. Was he letting his children be brought up as Catholics?

But no use; Cornelia could not be diverted from the main topic. “Henry, did you find out what is that ‘confidential information’ that Mr. Lowell and the Governor are talking about?”

“There’s a lot of it, Mother; they keep quoting the Italian colony and what it thinks about the case.”

“The ‘Italian colony’! Do you stop to realize what the words mean? There are as many differences inside the Italian colony as in any other part of New England. The ruling group is Fascist; they hate Sacco and Vanzetti exactly as Judge Thayer does--only more so, because they know them better. The majority of the colony is Catholic; and when Bart was arrested he had on him a letter in which one of their priests was described as a ‘pig.’ Of course all the Italians know who that priest is. Does the Governor take the opinion of the priest? Or of his parishioners?”

“The story runs something like this, Mother: one of the Italian anarchists got drunk and talked, and admitted that Sacco had been in the bandit car at South Braintree.”

“I’ve heard that,” said Cornelia. “I’ve heard many such stories. But of course I couldn’t guess which one the Governor of our Commonwealth and the President of our University would elect to believe. What do they say about Bart?”

“They don’t think Bart was in the car, but they think he knew about it, which made him an accessory before the fact.”

“Before, or after, Henry--are they sure which?” A pause. “And so that is what Mr. Lowell meant when he said that he thought Vanzetti was guilty ‘on the whole’! I am solving the riddles which have tormented me for weeks! Who do they say was actually in the car?”

“Boda and Coacci and Orciani.”

“Mike Stewart’s theory complete! Have they overlooked the fact that Orciani punched a time clock that day in the foundry where he worked?”

“The story is that he got somebody else to do it for him.”

Cornelia sat, gazing with her inner eye into the face of Massachusetts statesmanship. “So that is why our boys have to die! Somebody got drunk and talked, and the talk came to the ears of our great men! Stop and think what this means, Henry--the breakdown of our legal system and our moral codes! Was it one of the guilty men who got drunk and talked?”

“No, that is not what I understand.”

“It couldn’t very well have been Sacco or Vanzetti, since they have been in jail, and couldn’t get liquor in our model prisons, and anyhow, they don’t drink. It couldn’t have been Coacci, who was deported before the arrests took place; nor Orciani, nor little Mike Boda, who are sitting out on a barren rock somewhere in the Mediterranean, as prisoners of the Fascist government.”

“Fuller doesn’t claim it was the guilty ones who talked; it was one of their comrades.”

“That is what I am trying to get straight. One of the bandits told a comrade, and this comrade got drunk and talked! Did he talk to Governor Fuller?”

“That is not the way I heard it.”

“Hardly! There are automobile salesmen who get people drunk, I suppose, but not ardent Baptists, with Sunday school inclinations. We have to assume that some government spy got the anarchist comrade drunk, and then the anarchist comrade talked, and the spy told the Governor about it. Or maybe even that is too undignified for a Governor--surely it would have been for Mr. Lowell! Deborah, do you think Mr. Lowell would stoop to listen to a spy?”

Deborah understood that this was a rhetorical question, and prudently made no reply; Cornelia went on, working herself into a cold fury.

“Our dignity requires us to assume that the spy talked to some police official, whose business it is to know spies. So then we have this: Sacco or Vanzetti or Coacci or Orciani or Boda told an anarchist comrade that they were guilty; this comrade got drunk and told a police spy; this spy told the police; the police told the Governor; and the Governor told Mr. Lowell and Mr. Stratton and Judge Grant! So they have ‘confidential information,’ and decide that ‘on the whole’ they think Vanzetti was guilty! That is how our laws are enforced, that is our police system and our legal system and our judicial system and our political system and our educational system! Such are the masters of our youth and the guides of our intellectual life!”

“Mother--” began Deborah; but Cornelia exercised the privilege of age, to do the talking when she wanted to.

“There is a saying--all three of our educated commissioners know it, and possibly told it to our Governor--‘in vino veritas.’ But proverbs are false more often than they are true. Think how many circumstances there might be under which you would get falsehood from drunkenness, instead of truth. Suppose there was some personal grudge; or some vainglorious fool, taking pride in knowing a secret that was baffling the whole world! Suppose it was some one who had heard a rumor, and turned it into knowledge; suppose the talker were a Fascist agent, a spy himself--such things have happened. Anything in the world can happen, where men make their living by betrayal, and their rewards depend upon the tales they bring in. I know enough about the anarchist movement to say that you will find every sort of disordered mind in it; also, you will find every kind of rascal among the men who are trying to destroy it. From such a situation there arises a poisonous mist, a gas cloud of gossip and scandal. I thought that the whole purpose of our judicial system was to deliver men from such terrors; to force accusers to come out into the daylight, in open court! But here our great Commonwealth has proved itself worse than one of the Sewing Circles!”

V

Cornelia sat up, with an announcement which terrified her family. “I am going to see those boys before they die!”

“Mother! Mother!” All three of them started to protest at once. Impossible! Not to be thought of!

“I went Saturday, and the warden wouldn’t let me see them. I wrote them letters; but that is not enough, I refuse to accept it. I am not going to let them go out of this world without bidding them good-by.”

“Mother, the strain would kill you!”

“It is less than the strain of lying here doing nothing. I am only two or three miles from them--”

“A difficult two or three miles, Mother.” It was Henry speaking. “The bridge is closed, and the streets roped off--”

“Governor Fuller can write a dozen words, and the road will be clear. He is going to do it for me! I am going to have a talk with Bart--and ask him to tell me the truth! I know that I can help him, and Nick, too. I am going to see the Governor--phone for me, Henry, and make sure he is still at his office.”

Cornelia got up, in spite of all protests, and began to arrange her hair and put on her hat. Henry phoned, and got the information; then, when he saw that all argument was futile--that she was going to call a taxicab and go alone if necessary--he said: “Stay here, Mother, and rest. I will go and get the pass for you--if Fuller will give it.”

“He _must_ give it! I will not take a refusal! It will cost him nothing, it will do nobody any harm. Deborah, you go with Henry; you gave that creature a dinner party, now make him pay for it!”

All right, Deborah would go; anything to keep the poor soul quiet for another half hour. “It is a mad idea, Mother, but I will do the best I can.”

“I know that you can do it! Promise me that you will do it, Henry--I will never forgive you if you play me a trick.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Mother--”

“You might think it was for my good. But I know myself better than you. I have a right to say good-by to those friends who have taught me so much. Tell the Governor that maybe they will confess to me--he’ll be fool enough to believe that, I am sure! Tell him that you are very important persons, that he will shine by your reflected light! Telephone me the moment you get the answer--because I am coming myself if you fail!”

The State House lies just over the top of Beacon Hill, and it took Henry’s car only five minutes to get there. Being large and expensive, it went past the guards without delay, and very soon there was a ring of the telephone by Cornelia’s bed; she took the receiver with trembling hands, and heard the voice of her son-in-law: “All right, Mother. The Governor has been so kind as to give his consent.” She could tell by the phrasing and the tone of his voice that he was speaking from the great man’s office.

She got up and got herself ready, with Clara’s help, and in a few minutes Henry’s chauffeur was at the door, ready to assist her down the stairs. Clara went along--they would all go, expecting her to collapse, fearing she might die of the strain. Since opposition only made things harder, they must turn themselves into slaves of her whim; at the same time agreeing in their hearts with the Governor, they would be glad when this was over!

VI

There sat a strange man in the seat by the chauffeur; a police official in civilian clothing, who had been at the State House, and whom the Governor had assigned as an escort. They came quickly to Prison Point Bridge, across the Miller River to Charlestown, where the old prison stands. At the bridge entrance the lights of the car fell upon officers waving the traffic to a detour; behind them a solid line of blue-coats, with riot-guns in hand; behind these latter a group of mounted men, and behind them iron gates. A couple of motorcycle officers shot out towards them, blowing a shrill warning to bring them to a halt.

So began the tedious process of breaking down the barriers which the stern Commonwealth had set up against anarchists and bomb-throwers that night. The police official produced the paper with the golden crest at the top and the magic signature at the bottom. “To police officers of Boston and Charlestown: You will permit Mr. Henry Cabot Winters and party to drive to Charlestown prison this Monday evening. Warden Hendry will permit Mrs. Thornwell to converse with Sacco and Vanzetti for one hour, subject to his convenience, and without interference with his plans. Alvan T. Fuller, Governor.” It was a signature familiar to all Bostonians, being regularly attached to advertisements, telling the eagerly expectant motor-world the latest wonders which “Packard” had to impart. “This will prove to be the most popular model which Packard has ever offered to sons and daughters who may have their own cars.... When may we show you this latest offering?” It did not seem to the Commonwealth at all humiliating to have a Governor who wheedled; neither did it trouble the sons and daughters of the rich who were able to have their own luxury cars that the same signature was attached to advertisements and to death warrants.

The fact that the police official was not in uniform may have accounted for the delay. One of the motorcycle men took the order back to the group, to show to his superior; after which he rode out to the car again and ordered it forward. The blue-clad lines gave way, the gates swung open, and the car rolled through. But half way across the bridge, there was another pair of gates, with another line of guardians, and the same procedure to be repeated. It was like the German entrenchments--the Hindenburg line, the Siegfried line, the Wotan line. In the river, below the bridge, were speed-boats of the harbor-patrol, their searchlights sweeping the docks and the tracks of the Boston and Maine Railroad. Along the tracks were searchlights, three in a group, weaving futurist patterns on the night.

A third line, strongest of all, at the Charlestown end of the bridge. The military formalities were complied with, and the car started up Austin Street, when the revolving searchlight on the prison tower picked it out, and seemed to be a signal to a score of mounted troopers to come galloping from every direction. Other searchlights, mounted on the prison wall and sweeping up and down the streets, brought out their figures, shining white for moments, then lost in semi-darkness.

“Why don’t you send a man to pass us through?” demanded the police official, with some irritation; but apparently they hadn’t intended to pass any one through. They had a deadline, three hundred yards from the prison walls, blocking every street, and running over the tops of houses, where men sat with machine-guns, and stores of tear-bombs. The inhabitants of houses within the barred area were confined indoors, not even permitted on the steps; they could lean out of windows, and the searchlights shone upon rows of faces, staring white.

The instructions had been for the car to go to the warden’s home, which constituted a separate entrance to the prison enclosure. “No publicity, if you please, Mr. Winters,” the Governor had said; and this was to the taste of a blue-blood family. The warden would be notified by telephone to expect them, and would smuggle them in, with no reporters crowding about, and no picturesque stories in the morning: “Widow of Ex-Governor Visits Condemned Men in Last Hours!” The car had to make a part circle of the aged fortress, and it gave even high-up Brahmins a realization of their importance, the favor which was being granted to them. Eight times they were halted and investigated; every foot of the way the searchlights followed them suspiciously, revealing bright bayonets and heavy riot guns, firemen with high pressure hoses ready for action, rows of horsemen drawn up against the prison walls, and motorcycles darting suddenly forth. Once a bomb went off--but not a dangerous one; only newspaper photographers taking photographs of the line of cavalry defending the main gate of the prison. Earth, water, even air were being guarded; searchlights played in the sky--a spiritualist medium having called at the prison, announcing that she had had a vision of an airplane dropping bombs. The Sacco-Vanzetti case had started from crystal-gazing, so it was reasonable that it should end with clairvoyance.

VII

They came to the warden’s home and drew up at the curb. More parleys, after which the police official assisted Cornelia out of the car. The chauffeur was told to stay in his seat--no unnecessary chances taken. Deborah and Clara and Henry would sit where they were. The armed men stepped back, and the door opened, and prison guards met the visitors, and silently led them through the house and into the yard, past the cell-blocks, oblong brick buildings with rows of narrow barred windows. The lights were out, and the prison was supposed to be asleep, but the searchlights made the scene as bright as day, and nobody slept. There were white faces at the windows, and now and then a chorus of cries: “Let them out! Let them out!” Wild beasts, barking, howling, roaring in their cages!

To Cornelia it was as if she had taken Dante’s place, in a journey through the various stages of hell: all this elaborate display of killing power, a thousand intricate and ingenious inventions, all the arts and sciences which civilization had contrived, applied to the wholesale and instantaneous wiping out of human life. The fact that this military force was for Cornelia’s protection, that it gave back respectfully before the magic of her name, only filled her with the greater abhorrence, only proved her thesis, that its purpose was not justice, but the comfort and safety of the rich.

The death-house: a square brick building, immediately under the prison wall, a highly unstrategic position, which in part accounted for the need of a miniature army. Upon the wall with its wooden walk stood a line of machine gunners, and men were lined up several deep upon the sidewalk of Rutherford Avenue below the wall. Across the street were firemen with four high-pressure hoses.

There was a group of guards at the door of the death-house, and the warden came out, and took over the task of escorting the privileged old lady. A dreadful ordeal: Cornelia had to pass through the execution-chamber, and the canvas cover was off the chair; the heavy leather straps at the hands and feet dangled and called for their victims. One glance, and then the warden half lifted Cornelia and walked her swiftly on. He had had to do that same thing for many women, relatives of the condemned. It was not a jolly job this plump and round-faced old Scotchman had found himself.

The death cells, three in a row, opening upon a corridor; each cell a narrow little room with steel-barred door; in each a cot, a table, a little bureau. A neat, white-tiled floor, and on the outside, running the length of the corridor, a painted line, six feet from the cells, beyond which no visitor might step. Cornelia knew the lay-out, the lawyers having described it to her. In the first cell was Madeiros, in the second Sacco, in the third, the farthest from the death-chamber, Vanzetti. It was the order in which they were to “go.”

Cornelia tottered to the last cell. A light inside; the occupant was sitting on his cot, with the table drawn up before him, writing one of his farewell letters. He heard a faint cry, “Bart!” and started and shoved the table away. “Nonna!” A second more and he was at the door, his arm through the bars; Cornelia ran to him--it was automatic, no way to help it--and anyhow, the warden was holding her, and not trying to hold her back. She clasped the outstretched hand and wrung it; that hand which so many times she had held in friendship, which had performed for her so many services of love; a hand toil-worn and bruised, now emaciated, but still warm with life. Three hours more and it would be cold, a piece of death and corruption. She let it go, and sank into the chair which had been placed for her, behind the painted line.

“Bart, I had to see you to say good-by!”

“I am so glad, Nonna! It is the one more thing I wanted.”

“We have done everything we could, Bart, but it is no use.”

“I know. Mr. Thompson was here, he has just been going. We had a long talk.”

“I have an hour to stay with you, Bart; the Governor granted me that favor.”

“I will leave you, Mrs. Thornwell,” said the warden. “I will have to ask you not to cross the line again. You understand, we have rules, and they must be enforced.”

“I know,” said Cornelia; “I will respect your wishes.” She had heard the prison stories--they had permitted one condemned man to receive a roast chicken from a relative, and it had contained a loaded revolver. “Thank you, Mr. Hendry.” She was as sorry for him as for his captives.

VIII

A guard sat at the entrance to the corridor, fifteen feet from Cornelia’s chair. He could hear everything that was said, but neither she nor Bart heeded him. This was like being alone with God; this was different from human life, where people met, and would meet again by and by. “We have failed, Bart,” she whispered, and he said, in a voice without a quiver: “Do not worry for me, Nonna, I am ready. Nick also is ready. We will die as anarchists should.”

The light in Sacco’s cell had been out; he turned it on, and lay on his cot with his face to the bars, so that he could hear the conversation. “Hello, Nick,” said Cornelia. He answered, with his quick sympathy and consideration for others: “You are too unhappy for us, Nonna. Take it more easy! Plenty fellow have die.” She imagined the twinkle in his eyes--even though now she could see only one eye through the narrow slits. She could see Vanzetti’s whole face, because he was standing at the door, and at that height there was a bend in the bars, making an opening through which he could look.

“Nonna,” he said, “it is more easy to die than to look out through bars like a beast for seven years.”

“Bart, I am going to fight for your good name the rest of my time.”

“Fight for the workers, Nonna; fight so they be free, that other people do not live idle on their hard toil.”

“I will surely do that,” she answered; “but most of all I want to be able to tell people about this case. Tell me the truth, Bart, now that it is the end.”

Said Vanzetti: “I will speak like I would if it was God. I am an innocent man, Nonna; I was never at the South Braintree crime, I was never at the Bridgewater crime. I tell you that in solemn words, for you to say to all the world, all the time, forever. And Nick, he is innocent, he was never at South Braintree like they said. This is the truth, as I hope for joostice, I did never take a umane life, I did never anything that would take umane life, and I work with all my soul for those day when it will not be possible ever for one umane being to kill any other, when all such wickedness and machines for killing lives will be destroyed from the earth. It is because I know that the class system and exploiting of labor is what make such machines to be that I am anarchist. I am against all government, because I know it is tool of exploiting classes, it is not to make joostice in this world, but to make slaves, and to punish the libertarians--as they prove this night upon the bodies of Nick and me.”

There was a pause. When Cornelia spoke again her voice was grave, and her words came slowly, carefully. “Bart, I mean to write what you tell me, so the world will know it. May I say that with reflection and these many years of study, you have changed your views about violence in the class struggle?”

Vanzetti’s answer also came slowly. “You may say I do not wish vee-olence, Nonna. All my life I suffer torture when I think of vee-olence committed upon one body or one soul. But I read the history of all, and this I see, never have the slaves been free because the master was generous; always it is because the slave made some struggle, he made fight for his right. Is it not so?”

“It has been so in the past. But may we not hope for some better way? Think, Bart, before you answer that.”

“I think always, Nonna, it is one thought that I have all my life. I look at the great cruel capitalism--do I think that will give way without fighting? Look this night--Mr. Thompson has told me what he see outside. They make so many thousands, millions--machine-guns, bullets, gas bombs, artilleries--every day new inventions--you think they do not use them? You wish me to say to the worker, ‘You need no fear, you need no preparing for slaughter?’ Shall I say to the young worker, ‘You do not need arming your souls for martyrdom, like Sacco and Vanzetti; Sacco and Vanzetti will be the last martyrs’--can I say that? No, Nonna, I have to say, it will be thousand of martyrs, perhaps millions, it will be most bloody slaughter, before the master class is thrown down, before the workers own the tools and the riches without any master.”

“So that is what I must tell, Bart?”

“That is what all must tell, else I would be traitor, and not good guide for workers; else they would say, ‘Vanzetti has lost his nerve, they have broke him.’ Never will they say that, for me or for Nick.”

“Never!” cried Nick, with his mouth to the bars. “They say we died anarchista.”

“There may be some who wish to avenge your death, Bart, and that would be a dreadful thing, nothing would set back the cause so much. What shall I say about that?”

“Say that I want no such thing, Nonna, we are not such a man to be revenged; we are humble for our cause. What we want is joostice for the worker, freedom for all men on this earth, and we want every libertarian work for that, and not for us, nor for vengeance, which is a wicked thing.”

“May I say that you forgive your enemies, Bart?”

There was a long silence. “Is it a thing that should be forgiven, Nonna--what men has been doing to us?”

“Men are ignorant, Bart--”

“These men are not ignorant, Nonna! Do you think that Judge Thayer is ignorant of what he did? When he call us foul name such as I not like to say before lady, is he ignorant?”

“I think so, Bart; he is one of the most pitiable of human creatures. Think if I were to put it to you, would you have your body free, and be shut up in the narrow dungeon of that man’s mind? Would you consent to be mean, to be a cheat, and eaten up with hatred? When you realize what a blessing has been yours in life, to have the vision, to know the future as you do--can you not pity the poor wretch who lives in darkness of the soul, and behaves like some cruel animal, not a man?”

There was a long silence. Cornelia looked at the face, with its frame of steel bars; it was emaciated, deeply lined by suffering; the dark-brown walrus mustaches drooped, and were partly hidden by the bars. “Remember, Bart, what Comrade Jesus said. He forgave the men who nailed him to the cross.”

“Sure, Nonna, that I can do! Poor fellows in this prison, who are workers too, they have maybe wife and children, how can they stop the evil thing? Many man in this prison knows what I believe, many do not like to take life for the big capitalistas.”

“But the big capitalistas, the men who give the orders, Bart? The judge, the governor, the college president?”

Again a long pause. “I will think about it, Nonna. I would not tell you anything but truth, and it is not easy thing for me to say what you want to hear.”

IX

They talked about the fearsome yet fascinating question of where Bart was to be in two or three hours. “I don’t know, Nonna,” he said. “It is strange idea. If I wake up somewhere, I be very much surprised. What you think?”

“I cannot guess,” she said.

“I think we go back where we come from. It is like a bubble that go back to be water again. This face, this voice, this what you call Vanzetti, I do not think it will be like that anywhere.”

There came a voice from between the next row of bars: “That is all bunk!” (Sacco had not been in America for nineteen years in vain.) “When you are dead, you are dead, you no wake up. For us it come quick, I like quicker. It is what I beg them long time ago.”

Cornelia turned to the speaker. “Is there anything I can do for you, Nick?”

“Take care of wife and kids.”

“You may be sure of that; they will not suffer want.”

“I don’t worry for that,” said Nick, the free-spoken. “If all I want was easy time for them, I would made it myself. Teach the kids what we die for, make them some sense. That is it.”

A pause, and then from the far cell a timid voice: “Good-by, lady.”

“Good-by, Madeiros. Can I do anything to help you?”

“I am not like these fellows,” he said. “I done what they got me for, I deserved it. But they don’t, they are good men; some day it will be known.” The voice was slow and drawling, marred by only a slight accent. Cornelia did not see the speaker, but she had met him before: a thin, undernourished young fellow with a weak but amiable face and small dark mustache. He was only twenty-one, and the doctors said he was a half-wit; the job for which he was to die was the killing of a bank-cashier in a robbery. He admitted it, and some other crimes.

Had he really been at South Braintree, or had he just climbed onto the Sacco-Vanzetti band-wagon at the last moment, with a faint hope of respite? Cornelia had never been able to make up her mind about that. She had watched a curious little drama going on--Madeiros looked up to Sacco and Vanzetti, as to social superiors; they were great men, celebrities, and he was proud to be associated with them. Sacco accepted his homage, but Vanzetti was extremely reserved. The young Portuguese never stopped insisting that both were innocent, and that he was the only guilty man.

Vanzetti spoke about Luigia, and what a joy it had been to see her--but hard for her; such crowds, such excitement, and a terrible end. He had tried to explain to his sister what it was to die as a martyr, not the same as a criminal. She ought to have been able to understand, because she believed in Jesus; but Jesus to her was something far away and terrifying, to be dealt with by the priests. A wicked thing, that ecclesiastical system, which enslaved the minds of the poor, and made the name of God something which libertarians could not speak.

The prison authorities had been pleading with Sacco and Vanzetti to let a priest or some kind of clergyman administer to them. It seemed to the authorities dreadful to kill men and have their souls go to hell! It was the first time the thing had happened in eighteen years, so they said. But the three men stood firm--Madeiros taking a chance with the others. They would never surrender the integrity of their minds. “Giammai!” cried Nick; and added: “That says, ‘Not on your life,’ Nonna.” He was gay, being soon to get the freedom which he had craved for so many years. Impossible to crush that spirit of steel springs; and for the body, even though weakened by confinement and fasting, they would need an extra voltage.

X

Cornelia wore a wrist-watch, and every now and then her glance would be drawn towards it. The minute-hand seemed to be stealing time from her, it would take jumps when she was not watching. Vanzetti sat on his cot, and peering with one eye through the bars, saw a tear stealing down the old woman’s cheek. “Nonna,” he exclaimed, quickly, “I want you do something for me.”

“What is it, Bart?”

“Something very great, a last thing--something hard.”

“Tell me.”

“I want you to not be sad.”

“Oh, Bart!”

“It is easy to die. It is little thing--only for friends, for so many women, grieving, weeping. It is--what you say, futile. Is most futile thing in the whole world to have grief. Is it not so?”

“Yes, Bart--but--”

“Listen. I speak for all three. We are soldiers. It is our business to die. What for do you weep? It is our job.”

“I will try, Bart.”

Vanzetti’s voice had taken on a note of sternness that Cornelia had heard a few times, when in his imagination he was going to battle with the capitalist class. “You remember, Nonna, we publish book, our gruppo, ‘Faccia à Faccia col Nemico.’ All right. It is what we are now. It is our dream, it is our life. What for do we ask you to weep? Coraggio! Coraggio!” He went back to his childhood language when he was deeply moved; and his voice stiffened Cornelia’s bent spine.

“Amica mia, you have been good soul to us. You have done more than help, you have onderstood. Now onderstand once again--is it too much?”

“I will do my best.”

“We choose this death. Long ago we know it, we see him come. You be anarchista militante, you die. You die by hangman of capitalist class. All right, we choose. Every man have got to die, it is no great news, it happen each day. Poor workingmen, rich capitalistas, all. But to live forever, that is not so easy; to speak to all the world--how many time do it happen to poor workingmen? To a couple of wops? Did ever you hear such thing?”

“No, Bart, you are right.”

“Our life, it has been success; it is victory, like never we have dream. Men stop, they say, ‘What is this anarchist? What is this men believe, that they die so glad? What is this joostice? Have I got it? Have I got freedom, or am I slave like they tell me?’ He ask, and he begin to think--million men begin to think--it is something your great Go-vérnor give us, something he cannot take! Our crown, our victory! Is it not so?”

“Yes, yes, Bart!”

“Viva l’anarchia!” came the voice of Nick.

“Our bodies they kill, they make our souls immortal. Young workers take up our cry--you see, Nonna, only wait, it grows all over the world, the revolt of the worker, the message that men be free, that they work for joostice, not for parasite. And we have helped, we have done a part. Only one thing more to do, is to die brave; to walk to the chair, smile, speak the truth to the end. So, amica mia, help us; no sad thought, only coraggio! Tell our friends it is joy, not grief, it is success, not failure.”

There is a contagion that spreads in human souls, and shakes the thrones of emperors and kings. Cornelia’s hands were clenched and her teeth set. “All right, Bart, I will do what you say. I will be with you to the end, and afterwards.”

The warden stood in the doorway; and Cornelia rose to her feet, not waiting for him to help her. “All right, Mr. Hendry, I am ready. I have had a worthwhile hour. May I shake hands with my boys once more?”

“Yes, Mrs. Thornwell.” He came to help her, but she did not wait for him. She took Vanzetti’s hand in a firm, strong grip. “Good-by, for the last time, Bart. You have taught me more than any of the great persons I have met in my life. I shall remember every word you said to me.”

“Good-by, Nonna. I thank you. Thank you for the good help.”

“Good-by, Nick. You have been a brave fellow. You have done your job.”

“Good-by, Nonna. Good-by to wife and kids. Teach them for me--what I believe.”

Then Madeiros. He put out his hand, and Cornelia made no difference between a hero and a criminal. “Good-by, my son. I hope the next world treats you better than this one.”

“Good-by, lady.” He was a timid bank robber, who found this an incomprehensible world. Anarchists sought to overthrow the rich, and then the rich came to shake their hands!

Cornelia went to the door. The guard had risen, ready to help her if need be; but she was doing her stunt. “Thank you, Mr. Hendry, these three soldiers have given me back my strength.” She turned, and called: “Good-by, dear friends! Good luck to you--and to your cause!” To a chorus of good-by shouts in English and Italian she walked through the death-chamber, past the chair with the gaping arms and the dangling leather straps; her little head held high, her steps firm and proud. Through the prison yard she went, steady, amid the beams of the drunken searchlights, staggering this way and that; past the cell-blocks, with white faces looking out, eight hundred and eighty-one human beasts, roaring now and then, “Let them out!” Into the warden’s home, and through the front door; through the group of policemen, and into the waiting car with the anxious women.

“Mother! Mother!” They started to make a fuss, after the fashion of families. She sank back in the seat and whispered, “Let me be quiet! I have been talking with God.”

That happens also to families in Boston now and then. They thought, “It has been too much for her mind!” and were frightened into silence. They could not realize how this strange idea would haunt the minds of men all over the world in this dreadful hour. John Haynes Holmes, a clergyman, formerly of Boston, was writing at that moment a “Ballad of Charlestown Gaol”:

_There’s a chair for you, Vanzetti,
In a cold and empty room;
A chair aloof and lonely,
Like a spectre in the gloom;
A chair with open arms and wide,
To welcome you to doom._

_They’ve made this chair, Vanzetti--
Good men, and strong, and true--
To manifest the will of God
On poor men such as you;
To show the Lord Christ lives again--
And dies, the Lord Christ, too!_