Chapter IV: Young America (2)

The family discussed all this as they drove home. It was late and the children went sound asleep, but the grown-ups never wearied of talking, and explaining matters to Cornelia. Vanzetti told more about that wonderful fellow “Sacc’”--who was, in real life, exactly as he had been on the stage. “He come America same year like me. Was young feller, seventeen. Got brudder wit’, brudder no can stand, is too hard work, musta go home Italy. Nick, he work water-boy, carry water for gang all day. He work Hopedale, is beeg strike by foundry-shop--you read about heem maybe. Police is rough, mooch bad. Nick he is on picket-line, get hit plenty time. Is way for make red, make anarchista--you see, joosta like dramma. Nick is not speaker, but gooda man for organize. Work now by little shoe-factory, is good friend wit’ boss, do day-work, night watchman too, make plenty money. But never he change, stand always by worker. Some day it come odder beeg strike, Nonna, you see Nick Sacc’ be leader, he do joost what you see for make rivoluzione. He cannot fear, is brave--like what you say--leone--lion.”

And Bart went on to tell about something which had happened a month or two ago, when the young hero’s mettle had been tested. “He get arrest--he musta go jail for hold meeting. It is protest for beeg strike in copper country--you know maybe--Mesaba range--out West. Is plenty rich people in Boston own copper-mine not like for have worker hear how they beat people, t’row in jail. Try for stop meeting, shut-up Nick and not let him tell about it.”

Cornelia said nothing: but a procession of “bluebloods” began to move with stately dignity through her thoughts: the Paynes, the Shaws, the Agassizs--yes, she knew “coppers,” and the owners thereof. She remembered a scandal that had made awe-stricken whispers in the Sewing Circle--an old man had died, and it appeared that for twenty years or so he had been keeping eight thousand shares of his copper stocks hidden under a dummy name in New York, signing the name of this dummy. The executors of his estate failed to report these shares to the government, to avoid paying taxes on them; they had been caught, and some of the brightest legal lights of Boston were nearly disbarred. Nobody had gone to jail, of course--only “Nick Sacc’,” who had tried to tell the Italians of Massachusetts how the “copper kings” were beating and killing their Michigan miners.

XI

The grapes on the Brini arbor had become dark purple globes, and had been harvested and converted into “Dago red.” The leaves had turned, first yellow and then brown, and had dropped off and been blown into the corners of the garden. The cabbage and turnips were stored in the cellar, and the tomato-vines grew mushy after frost, and then dry and hard. All that beautiful garden was a wreck, and the sun was going away on his long pilgrimage. Very soon Cornelia would be getting up by lamplight, and shivering while she dressed, and being pinned up in her shawl for the journey to the cordage-plant. Could she stand another of these winters?

Betty was back at Miss Wilson’s school, and begging her grandmother to come to Boston. Surely she ought to be taking part in the campaign to reëlect Woodrow Wilson, who had kept us out of war, and said we were too proud to fight. How Boston--the Boston of State Street and fashionable society--loathed that phrase, and how they jeered and raged in their _Transcript_! But there was another Boston, which had crossed the seas a generation ago to escape the potato famine; it had found an abundance of potatoes in New England, and had converted them into a crop of young Irish voters, pledged to the worship of the Virgin Mary and the extermination of the British lion. In vain did “Pro Bono Publico” and “Hundred Percent American” write letters to the _Transcript_, summoning the new world to the rescue of down-trodden Belgium. Irish-Catholic Boston did not read the _Transcript_, and it thronged to the polls and elected an Irish-Catholic mayor, who would see to it that Irish and Germans and pacifists might hold all the peace-meetings they wished, and parade through Park Street and spit when they passed the Union Club.

Wilson was reëlected; and it seemed that the war-danger was over. He would go on writing notes to the Germans, as he had been doing for a year or two, and the Germans would go on ignoring them. Cornelia decided that she would not be needed as a pacifist agitator, nor would Vanzetti have to take refuge in Mexico, as he had made up his mind to do in case America should enter the war. “Capitalist I will fight some day,” said Bart, “but never will I kill German worker, Austrian worker, for make good no banker bond.” Cornelia had not mentioned the highly confidential subject of Boston high finance and its commitments to the allied cause; but apparently the “reds” had their own sources of information, for the “Cronaca Sovversiva” was full of talk on the subject, and details of the intrigues of State Street and Wall Street.

XII

The first snow of the year was in the air, and Cornelia came hurrying home in the darkness, with half an inch of snow melting upon her shoulders. She was surprised to see a large limousine in front of the Brini door, its two long streams of light making day in Suosso’s Lane, and revealing the million-footed dance of the snowflakes. As she came nearer, the door of the car opened and a bulky man stepped out; Cornelia could not see his face, but his voice caused her to stop dead in her white tracks. “Is that you, Mother?” It was Rupert Alvin!

In a certain musical comedy it is set forth how the founder of Columbus Day landed in the new world, and the Indians came eagerly, inquiring, “Are you Christopher Columbus?” When he admitted his identity, they exclaimed, “At last we are discovered!” So now it was with Cornelia. The jig was up, she knew--and took but a moment to get herself together. “Hello, Rupert!” she said, with an air of nonchalance--there are times when the Thornwell training comes in handy! She accepted her son-in-law’s outstretched hand, and let him help her into the limousine, where sat her eldest daughter, Deborah.

“Oh, Mother! Mother! How could you?” Yes, even the stately Mrs. Rupert Alvin wept when she saw those bowed shoulders and that pitiful working-woman’s shawl covered with a load of snow. She had snapped on the light in the limousine; but Rupert snapped it off again quickly.

“Control yourself, Deborah,” he commanded--having in mind the chauffeur, who would overhear, in spite of the glass partition. “Mother, we want to have a private talk with you. Will you not please come home with us--at least for a day or two?”

“I can’t, Rupert. I have a job.”

“Can’t you get excused temporarily?”

“One does not get excused from jobs, one gets fired.”

“But Mother, you have a little income from the estate!” It was Deborah, breaking in.

“Wait, Deborah!” insisted the husband, again. “Mother, will you let us take you to some hotel here in Plymouth, where we can discuss matters quietly?”

“Certainly I will do that. But first I must tell my friends. They will be expecting me to supper and will worry.”

“I will see to that,” said the man, quickly, and he got his majestic bulk out of the car, and Cornelia wondered vaguely, was he afraid she might make her escape? Was she being kidnaped? Inside her something fluttered like a bird in a trap. “Don’t be caught! Don’t let them get you!”

“Oh, Mother, you are all wet!” Deborah was lamenting. “Take off that shawl!” She drew it off, and began to wrap Cornelia in a big fur robe. Cornelia submitted, because it was easier than to argue. Her mind was busy with another problem: how had they found her? Could it have been Miss Mehitabel? Impossible to believe that Betty had revealed the secret!

Rupert returned, and gave his orders to the chauffeur, and got into the car, which began to sway on luxurious springs down the unpaved and rutted lane. It turned onto the main street, and sped to a hotel, where they got out, and Rupert engaged a room, and Deborah hurried her mother through the lobby. Presently they were locked in a place where family secrets might be safe--after Rupert had stepped to the door once or twice and opened it, to make sure there were no eavesdroppers.

“I am perfectly all right,” said Cornelia, in answer to her daughter’s clamor that she was wet and that she was cold and that she was exhausted. “I have been very happy,” she declared, in answer to laments about the state of her shoulders and her hands. And when Deborah had got to the question of how her mother could have been so cruel as to treat them this way, Cornelia broke in with the demand, “How did you find me?” She had to repeat the question before Deborah answered, “We got your address from Betty.”

“You mean she told you? I can’t believe such a thing, Deborah!”

“I don’t mean that. She wrote you a letter, and we got it.”

“Oh, I see.” A great load was lifted from Cornelia’s heart. After a moment she said, “I would like to have the letter.” Seeing them hesitate and look at each other, she said, “Give me my letter, please.” So Rupert took from his pocket an envelope, which Cornelia could see at a glance was very bulky.

Balancing the letter in his hand, the great man began, in his most solemn tones, “Mother, I wish to explain that when we opened this letter we did not know it was to you. If we had known that, we should have brought it unopened. But you will see, it is addressed to Mrs. Nonna Cornell, and that meant nothing to us, except that our unhappy daughter was communicating secretly with some unknown woman. Only when we opened the letter, did we discover that it was to you.”

“Neither of us read it, Mother,” added Deborah. “It may be we had a right to, but we didn’t feel sure.”

“I will read it to you at once, my child.”

“I don’t think it will be necessary. We had a talk with Betty, and I think we know the situation.”

Cornelia held the letter in her hands. How pathetic seemed the little joke, “Mrs. Nonna!” She took the letter from the envelope, and saw why Deborah had suggested not hearing it--the last page was numbered forty! But Cornelia had to read only two sentences to know the whole story.

“Dear Grannie:

“I am in the most dreadful predicament you can imagine, because
Roger Lowell, the tenth descendant of a line of theocrats, spent
three months laboring with his conscience and finally made up his
mind that he must save my soul by telling father of the indecent
proposition I had made at Camp Putnam! So now here I am shut up
in my room and forbidden to go out, until I have promised to
reform--and so I am forced to smuggle this letter to you by one of
the maids.”

XIII

The antagonists squared off for battle--two against one. It would be none the less deadly, because it would be carried on under the forms of courtesy, even of love.

The first thing was for Deborah to weep some more. This was not easy, for she was haughty, self-contained--the last word in aristocratic reticence. But there was that pitiful figure--gray-haired, bowed and bent, in wretched shapeless clothing wet with melted snow--that was her mother! And even though she told herself that her mother had become insane, it was none the less terrible. Also, impossible to forget that certain scenes which Deborah forbade herself to remember had had something to do with her mother’s mental disorder. So the tears streamed down Deborah’s cheeks--and she had one of those long, half-masculine faces, which are not improved by weeping.

In Cornelia’s own being the trapped bird was still fluttering. “Fight! Fight! Don’t let them get you!” She had had a year and a half to think matters over, and she knew all the devices of families to break people down. She remembered Cousin Amelia Quincy, who had sought to marry the wrong man, and how Cousin Amelia’s mother had fallen violently ill--a complete nervous breakdown--which had lasted until the wrong man had given up and married some other girl.

So now Cornelia made her voice stern, and said, “It is silly for you to behave that way, Deborah. There is nothing the matter with me, and I assure you my children are not going to get their way by tears.”

Then Deborah drew herself to her full height. “I will not annoy you any further. I have of course no right to object to your living your own life--”

“None whatever, my child.”

“But I have a right to object to your ruining the mind and character of my young and impressionable daughter.”

“I hope I have not done that.”

“Unless our daughter tells us what is not true, you introduced her to a band of anarchists and atheists--”

“Not atheists, Deborah, you have got the wrong word.”

“You mean that Italian man, whatever his name is, is not an atheist?”

“He has explained to me carefully his beliefs. He worships one God, the God of nature, of love and justice. He worships only one, so perhaps that constitutes him an infidel.”

Deborah declined this challenge to theological controversy. “And free-lovers!”

“That is still less accurate. I doubt very much if Vanzetti has ever been any kind of lover in his life. He is a saint who believes in free love.”

“Is that one of your jokes, Mother?”

“It sounds like it, I know, but you will have to learn that there are new ideas loose in the world, and it is not practicable to keep people from knowing about them--not even by shutting them up in their rooms and confiscating their mail.”

Rupert Alvin was silent, considering that free love is not a theme for mixed conversation; and anyhow, in family disputes the less an “in-law” has to say, the safer for him. When the two ladies began exchanging views upon the efficacy of a church ceremony as a purifier of lust, Rupert arose and went to the door and opened it and peered out. It was a delicate hint, and the ladies took it, and discussed anarchism. Or rather, Cornelia discussed anarchism, while Deborah discussed anarchy, and refused to recognize the difference. Cornelia asserted that she had lived among Italian anarchists for a year and a half, and had not seen a single bomb--except those which Brini described as “bombe di pistacchio.”

They were on the subject of foreigners and their alleged resemblance to pigs, when Rupert decided that it was time for a man to interpose his authority. “Mother,” he said--and went on, in spite of his wife’s angry signals--“we are not getting anywhere by arguing over subjects like this. The question is, what are we going to do. I know that our mutual esteem and affection will bring us to an understanding in the end; so what I am hoping is to persuade you to come home and stay with us a while. I know you will be able to induce Betty to--well, to moderate her expressions. That is all we ask, and I am sure you agree that we do not want an open scandal in our family.”

“Certainly not, Rupert.”

“Well, then, come with us, and in time we can work it all out happily.”

“That is easy to say, Rupert, but it seems to me you are taking a serious risk. Suppose that while I am your guest I should consider it my duty to appear on some public platform and say that the effort to bring America into the war is a crime against civilization, and that the motive power behind it is our big bankers, who have loaned so much money to England and France and Italy that they cannot face the prospect of losing their investments?”

To Rupert Alvin, president of the Pilgrim National Bank of Boston, and directing head of the most powerful financial group in State Street, it was as if his mother-in-law had taken a sharp rapier and brought the point of it close to one of his waistcoat buttons. The many large bulges which composed Rupert’s face and neck became still larger, the pink ones turning red, and the red ones purple. His large round eyes opened wide, and the hands which clutched his large round knees tightened until they showed the tendons. Either Rupert’s tongue refused to make a sound, or else Rupert’s brain did not know what sound to tell it to make.

XIV

“My children,” said Cornelia, “I want to be fair, and make myself understood if it can possibly be done. For forty years I did what I was told was my duty, and let other people guide my life. I was very unhappy--how unhappy I did not realize until Josiah was dead, and I had begun to do what I wanted to do. Now for the rest of my life I am going to be an individual, and not a cog in the family machine. And while that will seem terrible to you, you can comfort yourself with the fact that it is real ‘Boston’--‘old Boston,’ the very best there is. Everything that is glorious in our history has been made by people who have ‘come out,’ and fought some prevailing sentiment. I never realized that until I got alone and thought it over. Take Wendell Phillips--you cannot say anything against his ancestry, there was never any one more completely ‘Back Bay.’ Yet he turned into an abolitionist and labor agitator, the same as a pacifist and ‘red’ at the present time. It has always been that way, and the ones you honor now, the ones whom the rest of the world knows about--Samuel Adams and John Quincy Adams, Emerson and Thoreau and Phillips and Garrison and James Russell Lowell--yes, there was even a Lowell, Deborah--and Thomas Wentworth Higginson--even a Higginson, Rupert, tell that to State Street! Boston history has been made by the ‘saving minority.’ You must know that is true?”

“Yes, but Mother”--it was Deborah protesting--“that was all in the past!”

“And now the world is perfect, and we don’t need any more changes! Well, my dear, all I can tell you is, I have looked the world over and made up my mind that it has never been worse than right now--with some ten or twenty million men lined up on opposite sides, using all the machinery and brains of civilization to slaughter one another. No, I think we need changes, and there is going to be a Thornwell among the ‘come outers,’ and you will have to put up with the humiliation of it. I don’t think I shall be lonely--I’ve been able to recollect the names of a number of old ladies who have left their families and are living in apartments and hotels, interesting themselves in one queer cause or another. I never paid much attention, because Josiah wouldn’t have approved of my associating with them. But now I shall look them up--I suppose I shall join the Twentieth Century Club.”

“Oh, Mother! How horrible!”

“And the suffragettes, whatever they call their organization--there are two, I believe. And the socialists have a local--I am not an anarchist, Deborah, comfort yourself with that--and anyhow, the anarchists don’t have any organizations. I suppose the pacifists have one; I hear that Mrs. Abigail Webster Adams has come out for them, and that Rupert thinks she ought to be locked up in an asylum. Well, Rupert, that has been the idea of the comfortable people for a long way back--I remember they accused Socrates for corrupting the youth. But even though you put people in an asylum, their ideas get out--you cannot always be sure that the maid will turn their letters over to you.”

Cornelia paused; and then, seeing the look on her daughter’s face--“Yes, my dear, that was a mean one. But you must realize that Mother is going to fight from now on; Mother holds her convictions with just the same intensity that you hold yours, and something inside her compels utterance. It is that stern terrible thing we call our Puritan conscience. It is out of fashion at the moment, but it takes new forms, it has a rebirth, and does not rest until it has made some impression on the world--some change such as the independence of the colonies, or the abolition of slavery, or the outlawing of war, or the setting free of labor. And then the next generation forgets about the conflict, and says how famous Boston is, what great people it has produced! And their grandchildren become the aristocracy, and want everything to stay as it is!”

XV

Cornelia had her own proposition, which she had been thinking over for several months. “I will come up to town at once and get a little apartment, and Betty can come live with me. That will be respectable--it will even tend to make your runaway grandmother all right. And I’m sure I can guide Betty and keep her from going to extremes. It is what she herself has been begging me to do, and I know she will be happy.”

“Thank you,” said Deborah, with a touch of sarcasm. “To make the children happy is the one duty of parents under the new dispensation. But some of us parents are old-fashioned, and think about our children’s souls.”

“Yes, my dear, and it may be that the saving of Betty’s soul depends upon her believing everything that is preached at Trinity--even though, as I suspect, the preacher does not believe it himself. But let us be practical about the matter. What will you do with the child? Ordinarily, when daughters threaten to run wild you send them off to Europe with an aunt, and they look at cathedrals and paintings for a year, and that is cultural. But now your war is in the way, so the only place to send her is out west, and she would see only rocks and rivers, which are not so cultural. Of course you can keep her shut up--make a prisoner of her by force--but that would only harden her spirit and drive her to extremes. Also, it would mean an open scandal, because your servants would know, and it would be all over the Back Bay in a night, and everybody would be certain the child had done something far worse than talk radicalism. Moreover, you can only keep her for a short while--then she will be of age, and you will lose your hold on her.”

“We can disinherit her.”

“Yes, of course; but she would have my property--”

“I think, Mother, you ought to be informed about that.” It was Rupert breaking in--since it was a banker’s affair. “You have no property, only an income of five thousand a year from the estate.”

“Well, Rupert, I have lived upon four hundred a year for the past year and a half--”

“Mother, you don’t mean it!” Impossible for the most reticent daughter to encounter such a statement with silence!

“What else have I had? I have lived on it, and even saved a little. And now if I come up to town and take my income of five thousand a year, with what has been accumulating, Betty and I will be rich.”

“You would not be able to pay for the child’s clothes!”

“Well, Deborah, maybe you know your daughter better than I, but my guess is Betty would learn to make her own clothes quite cheerfully. Will you give me a chance to ask her?”

“Most certainly not! In spite of your ridicule, I believe in my religion, and in a little decency and decorum. I shall not give up my daughter to become an anarchist and atheist--nor even a socialist and infidel--nor yet a saint who believes in free love.”

“Well put, Deborah--we are both of us developing what Broadway would call the ‘punch.’ But put yourself in my place just a moment. I served your father faithfully for forty years, and conscientiously refrained from doing any of the things which made him angry. I gave life to three of you girls, and helped to find you husbands of the sort I knew your father wanted you to have. If you have any complaint as to your share in husbands, you have been too proud to make it to me. Have you, Deborah?” Cornelia paused, and looked at the solemn Rupert with a twinkle in her eye. Then she continued, “You both have what you want. But I have very little; I am old and lonely, and an object of sympathy. There are eleven grandchildren--no one of whom would have been in the world except for me. I put it to your sense of justice--may I not ask for one of the eleven to keep me company in my old age?”

It was turning Deborah’s own weapons against her, and Deborah could not help being disturbed. “I think you would have shown better judgment if you had chosen one of Clara’s eight, rather than one of my two.”

“Perhaps that is so. But I did not choose Betty--she chose me; or rather, some fate did it, there is an affinity between us. I assure you, Deborah, upon my honor, I had no thought of causing this to happen. But it has happened, and we have to admit it.”

“Never!” cried Deborah. Her lips were set in that expression which Cornelia had seen ten thousand times upon the face of Josiah Quincy Thornwell. It was recorded for all time in the paintings of four governors in the music-room at “Hillview.”

Cornelia turned to her son-in-law. “Is that your decision also?”

Rupert hung on to that caution which is such an excellent thing in “in-laws.” “Mother, I hope you will not go to any extreme--”

Cornelia laughed. “First I have to make sure what you and Deborah plan to do to Betty.”

“We plan to do our duty as parents, to compel our child to behave herself!” It was Deborah, with great vehemence.

“Do you mean that she must believe what you believe--even though she doesn’t? Or do you mean that she must say that she believes what she doesn’t believe? Or will you be content if she agrees to say nothing about her beliefs?”

“That is what we commanded her to do, and she refused.”

“Are you sure you made the distinction? Are you sure you didn’t ask her to stop believing? I suspect you were so horrified and angry, you didn’t know exactly what you were demanding.” And Cornelia rose, saying, “I will try to supply a little wisdom and good temper for you. To-morrow I will go up to town and put up at a hotel, and get some clothes, so as not to disgrace you, and in the evening I will call at the house, and have a talk with my grandchild, and persuade her to be more fair than her parents.”

“You must not feel that way about us, Mother!” It was Rupert, still trying for a compromise.

“There is no sense in saying any more to-night, Rupert. We have argued too much, for Thornwells. It is because I am not really ‘Boston,’ that I do this vulgar thing of trying to talk things out. But I love Betty, and cannot bear to see her spirit bruised. I will do the best I can, and advise her to suppress her eager young ideas on marriage, and private property, and war, and whatever else you object to--until she is of age, and her own legal mistress.”

Cornelia took her shawl and started to put it on. “Mother! That thing is all wet! Let me give you my coat!”

“It is quite all right, there will be a good hot stove where I am going.”

“But Mother, you must have dinner with us!”

“My friends will give me something to eat when I get home. I could not eat now.”

She saw tears start in Deborah’s eyes again, and that was as it should be. When Rupert labored to persuade his mother-in-law to ride to Boston with them, she answered that she had reasons for preferring the train; then she started towards the door. “Good-by, my children.”

Rupert took up his coat and followed her. “At least you will let us drive you to where you are living, Mother.”

“Thank you, but I am able to walk.”

“But Mother, that is absurd--it is storming!”

“I have walked to my work for a year and a half, through every sort of storm--at six-thirty in the morning, and again in the evening--and have not yet missed a day.”

So Cornelia unlocked the door and went out; Rupert and Deborah both following, arguing and pleading with her in low, decorous tones, all the way to the street. But she set her lips tight, and when Rupert tried to take her hand and lead her to the car, she withheld it, saying once more, “Good-by, my children,” and hurrying away into the snow-haunted darkness.

XVI

The next evening, according to her promise, Cornelia called at the Alvin mansion on Commonwealth Avenue, dressed like a nice, quiet old lady of the social reform or “blue-stocking” type. She rang the bell with some trepidation, not quite certain whether she would be admitted; but she found an amazing situation--the family rows all settled, Betty out of prison and back at Miss Wilson’s, and the entire Thornwell clan assembled to welcome home the runaway grandmother! To overwhelm her with kindness, with beauty, tact and charm, to afford her a demonstration of respectability, and make her realize its advantages over anarchism, atheism and free love!

There was Clara, in the radiance of her eighth maternity, and her husband, James Scatterbridge, shining with the extra millions he had made; and Alice, never more elegant, never more gracious, with no trace of a scandal or a hysteric about her; her husband, Henry Winters, jewel upon the finger of the legal profession; Deborah and Rupert, all courtesy and smiles; Betty, a little pale after a cyclone of emotions, but none the less lovely for that; Betty’s older sister, Priscilla; Great-uncle Abner, and his son, Uncle Quincy--pronounced as if he were a disease of the throat. All of them in their most honorable costumes, all so amiable--not one hint of rebuke or complaint, not even a tactless slip--unless you count Great-uncle Abner, whose deaf man’s voice boomed through the drawing-room; “Well, well, Cornelia, they tell me you’ve been making money!”

They had learned their lesson, that was the long and short of it; they would return to dignity and reserve and good manners--to “old Boston”; and Cornelia would return with them, and Betty also. There would be no more quarrels, no more scenes, no more scandals and “talking out” of things, no more anarchism, atheism, or free love!

There was a buzz of conversation, family news, compliments and courtesies. When would Cornelia come to see her new grandson? Had she heard of the fine record Alice’s son had made at St. Mark’s? Would she hear about Uncle Quincy’s chess wonder? “How is your gout, Abner?” “How is the new wing coming on, James?” So many polite and pleasant things to talk about, that it was only near the end of the evening that she got a few words alone with Betty.

“Oh, Grannie, how on earth did you do it?”

“I don’t know, dear--what did I do?”

“You completely tamed Mother and Father. They came back this morning as nice as pie.”

“I guess they just had a little time to think things over, and realize how much they loved you.” Cornelia was going to be tactful too!

“Well, yesterday Mother wouldn’t hear to reason at all: I must promise to never believe anything she disapproved of, I must never talk about such things to anybody, and must never look at such a book! Of course I couldn’t promise all that, could I, Grannie? You can’t imagine how dreadful I felt, to have to tell Mother and Father that I wouldn’t obey them! So I thought I was going to have to stay in my room till I didn’t know when. But after they had talked with you, all they wanted was for me not to disgrace them publicly.”

Cornelia was tempted to say that Rupert and Deborah had found the older generation so much worse than the younger, that it had frightened them. But no, she was going to be tactful! “I plan to get a little apartment, dear, and you can come see me, and we’ll keep our thoughts to ourselves, and not give the family anything more to worry over.” Thus Cornelia Thornwell, in December, 1916, while the German government was preparing its new submarine policy, which was to rouse all the warlike elements in America, and force all the pacifist ladies of Boston to make public speeches, and break with their families, and be raided by mobs and arrested by the police! With the Bolshevik revolution less than a year in the future, and the “white terror” following close upon its heels!