The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: A New England Legend (18 page)

Having read this, the Judge was at first not so much upset as disconcerted, and he ruffled through the magazine angrily, eager to see which red, communist, radical, socialist or anarchist journal had taken this irritating tack. To his amazement, he discovered that the passage he had just perused, had been printed in the national journal of a Protestant sect, one closely allied to his own. Somehow or other, this discovery was so disturbing and so very annoying that it fixed itself in his mind, and plagued him and troubled him until he could no longer endure it. That was when he phoned his own local pastor and asked him whether the Pastor could visit and spend a little time with him. The Pastor, having a busy day, asked whether it would not be all right to postpone the visit until late in the afternoon. The Judge agreed that the Pastor should come at five o'clock and remain to dinner with them. This was still in the forenoon, and the Judge did not think that the remaining hours would impose any new difficulties upon him which he could not engage and surmount himself.

The actuality of the afternoon was somewhat different from what he had anticipated. Life did not leave the Judge alone today, and all day long there was a succession of messages, telegrams, special delivery letters and phone calls. Clothe himself though he might in his own righteousness, the Judge was nevertheless distraught and shaken. Now, at five o'clock, he was a troubled man who needed urgently the counsel of a friend and a minister; whereupon, his relief at hearing a step on the walk outside can be understood, and it can also be understood why, when the Pastor stepped into the twilight of the porch, the Judge greeted him eagerly and more gratefully and enthusiastically perhaps than their past relationship warranted. However, the Pastor understood that this must be an unusual day in the Judge's life, and was thereby prepared to be most tolerant of any and all unusual if not unexpected actions which the old man might take.

The Judge shook hands warmly with the Pastor and invited him to sit in one of the big wicker chairs. The Pastor did so gratefully, placing his straw hat and his stick carefully on the low table which held a pile of newspapers and periodicals. When the maid came out, carrying a tray of glasses, lemonade and cookies, the Judge poured a glass of lemonade for each of them, and the Pastor wiped his brow and drank the cool liquid gratefully. Then the Pastor picked up one of the nut cookies, bit into it, and smiled with pleasure as he pronounced it excellent.

“And I do like your wife's lemonade,” he said. “It tastes fresh—not like something she made last week and kept around. So many people make lemonade in the summer time, and so rarely does it have that fresh, good taste of the newly squeezed lemon. I have always held that lemons are a valuable repository of healthful humors—if one may be permitted a rather old fashioned expression. I believe that drinking lemonade is an excellent way to ward off distempers of the summer time. I have also heard that it is good for dropsy and for dizzy spells—”

Thus the Pastor chatted while he drank lemonade and munched cookies. He was measuring up to his reputation as a cheerful person who liked to look always at the best and brightest side of things. He made considerable contrast to the Judge's worried gauntness; for the Pastor was a roly-poly figure, with a little round pot-belly, and cheeks as plump and shiny as new apples.

For a while, the Judge listened to him patiently, but at last could endure the flow of senseless chatter no longer, and reminded the Pastor that he had desired to talk with him about certain fairly disturbing matters.

“Disturbing?” the Pastor queried, raising his brows. “I do think that right here at the beginning we should pause and inquire and perhaps set certain unhappy notions at rest. You, of all people, sir, have little reason to be disturbed. Judgment, like a. ministership, must be considered as an extension of God's will. Without judgment, there is anarchy. Without ministerial tending, there is atheism. We are both shepherds, and in effect, our likenesses and callings rest upon opposite sides of the same coin. Would you not say so, sir?”

“I have never considered it in just that fashion,” the Judge replied.

“Do so now. By all means, do so,” the Pastor urged, sipping his lemonade.

The Judge said, “Nevertheless, you can understand my predicament. For seven years, this case has dragged on. I have become an old man since it began. My peace of mind has fled. Now, wherever I am, they point to me and whisper about me, and say,
Him? Oh, yes, he is the one who passed sentence on the anarchists
.”

“Yet isn't that obvious?” the Pastor said soothingly.' “If not you, then another. But fate, as directed by the Almighty God, chose you. Someone had to sit in judgment, and you were chosen. It was not you, but the jury, who found them guilty, and once the jury had done this, then you were only carrying out your solemn and sworn duty by passing sentence upon them. There are people of gross materialism in this materialistic age,” the Pastor added, helping himself to another cookie and nodding his thanks to the Judge who poured another glass of lemonade, “who will say that there is no judgment after yours. However, the final judgment is still to be rendered. There is another bar before which these two men must stand, and there is another who will sit in judgment and hear their arguments and pleas. You, sir, have done your duty. Can anyone do more than that?”

“It is very comforting to hear you say that. However, just look at this,” and the Judge handed him the crayon-circled passage in the religious journal.

The Pastor read it and snorted with justifiable anger. “Ha!” he cried. “I would like to confront the man who wrote that. I would like to see and know some facts about him—just what sort of a Christian he is. That's what I would like to know. Judge not, he says, yet in the same breath he judges. I question both his calling and his holiness!”

“Then you don't think it can be regarded as any sort of an official position?”

“Official position? My word, no, not at all, sir.”

“Do you know,” the Judge said, “I have been sleeping badly, dreaming very bad dreams, some of them monstrous things. It is not a bad conscience, however. Such a thought I reject as absurd.”

“You should reject it,” the Pastor agreed, reaching toward the cookies again. “You do rightly.”

“My conscience is clear. I have no regrets about what I have done. I examined the evidence and I weighed it very thoughtfully; but it went deeper than the simple problem of evidence. I tell you, Pastor, when I first looked at those two men, I knew that they were guilty. I could see it in the way they walked, in their manner of speech, in the way they stood before me. Guilt was written all over them. For seven years, their lawyers have entered motions and pleas and exceptions and arguments of every sort conceivable under the sun. Could anyone have listened to the arguments more patiently, heard the motions more patiently? Was there ever a motion which I refused to hear? But how could I alter my original concept?”

“If no evidence appeared to controvert it, then most certainly you could not.”

Now the Judge leaped to his feet and began to pace back and forth on the porch. “Of course there is something else,” he said with considerable agitation. “Do you know what I am thinking? Do you know how it seems to me? It seems to me that these two men welcome death, seek death for their own dark purposes. In the beginning, they had only one thought, one desire—to destroy, to overthrow, to set aside all that we have built up, and treasure and venerate. When I look about me at this old New England of ours, at its tree-shaded houses, its green lawns, and its clear-eyed, open-faced children, then I shudder at the thought of all this passing away by fire and torch. Something has happened here in this old land of ours. Alien people have come to it, slinking, scurvy, dark-skinned people, people afraid to look you straightforwardly in the eye. They come with their own language and live in hovels and cast a pall of darkness all over the land. How I hate them! Is it wrong for me to hate them this way?”

“I am afraid it is wrong to hate,” the Pastor said, almost regretfully.

“I see your point of view.” The Judge nodded, continuing his pacing. “But what does one say to communists and socialists and anarchists? Suppose they were in power in the courts? How much justice would, there be for people like you or me, or for any of our people of the old stock? They would only have to hear a clear voice or face a straightforward pair of blue eyes, and they would launch into their own dance of death. They come here with their cursed agitation, with their “leaflets and their pamphlets, sowing discontent, agitating, disturbing the plain working people, setting brother against brother, whispering everywhere,
More pay! More wages! Your employer is evil! Your employer is a devil! Why shouldn't what is his belong to you?
Where there was peace and contentment before, there is only hatred and strife now. Where a garden bloomed before, they have made a desert. When I think that we could have here in this blessed New England of ours, the cursed ignorance and hatred, the slave camps and the famine and the forced labor of Russia, then my blood boils and my heart stops beating. Is it wrong, then, for me to hate those who violate my land, those who hate the name of America and the past of America?”

“It is never wrong to hate the servants of the devil,” the Pastor said, grateful that he was able to bring comfort again “You can rest assured on that point. How else can we struggle with the Prince of Darkness?”

“I am not saying that I am without fault,” the Judge cried, whirling suddenly to face the Pastor. “In some matters I acted foolishly and thoughtlessly. But must I pay for such small lapses for the rest of my life? It is quite true that I said something in irritation about what I did to those two anarchist bastards. Strong language, you will say, but I had some strong feelings at the moment it passed my lips, and I thought that I was saying it in the company of gentlemen. However, I found out that the case was very different, and that my listeners were hardly gentlemen. The next day my words were all over, everywhere, and now they claim that I acted on the basis of personal hatred and malevolence. Nothing could be further from the truth. I tell you, Pastor, nothing could be further from the truth. This case has taken an awful toll from me. I have given my very life blood to it. When will I know peace again?”

The Pastor nodded, hastily swallowing the cookie he had been chewing. “One should never despair on that score. Time is the great healer—the great healer. All things but God Almighty succumb to time. We look around us today, enduring the great burden of our trials and tribulations of the moment, and we understandably say to ourselves that this will never pass and that there will never be any surcease from this. But that is a human point of view, and to err is human. God heals in his own way. Time is the staff of God. Time is a very great healer, sir, you can be sure of that.”

“It is most comforting to hear you say that.” The Judge ceased his pacing and reseated himself now in the big wicker chair. “Very comforting, indeed. So few people have any idea of what we have endured, myself, the District Attorney, the members of the jury, yes, and even many of the witnesses for the State. We have been accused of hating foreigners, of having biased feelings toward Italians. These people come to our countryside and lust through it and dirty it and rob and commit murder without restraint, and if we take exception to these deeds, we are told that we are filled with bias and prejudice and hatred. It has been a burden, believe me, Pastor. And of course every evil, subversive and un-American element in the whole nation has seized upon this case. They have used it to undermine authority and to hold people like myself and his Excellency, the Governor, in contempt. They even slander the venerable President of the University, whose inquiry into the case confirmed the very findings we made, and whose decision was that these men were justly sentenced.”

“A brave man always pays a price,” the Pastor nodded. “But you have this consolation, that you have done your duty uprightly and well.”

The Pastor reached into his pocket, took out his fine, thin, gold watch, and peered at the face. “Dear me,” he said.

“But you will stay for dinner?” the Judge protested.

“I am afraid not,” the Pastor sighed. “I know that I did say something about it, but I must get back to my study and to work.”

As a matter of fact, the Pastor was full of impatience now, for in the course of the conversation, the whole pattern of a sermon had come to his mind, and he felt that there was an obligation on his part to write down his thoughts before they fled. The Judge expressed his regrets, but repeated that his talk with the Pastor had been very consoling. He accompanied the Pastor to the gate, and then returned to the coolness of the porch.

Chapter 13

A
FTER THE PASTOR HAD DEPARTED,
the Judge settled himself in his wicker chair as comfortably as he could, and put his feet up on a footrest. In the hope of diverting his thoughts, he picked up a mystery novel and tried to read, but the light was too poor on the porch, and after he had read only a few lines, he dozed. If the truth be told, cumulative tensions of the day had wearied him greatly, and the release that the Pastor had given him allowed him to fall asleep easily and quickly. But while the act of falling asleep was quick and gentle, the sleep itself was short and restless. As had happened so often lately, he was disturbed by dreams, and more often than not, the dreams recreated situations of the past.

Now in his sleep, his thoughts go back to that day not so long ago, Saturday, the ninth of April, of this same year, when he had passed sentence upon the two anarchists. That was almost five months ago, but the incident was deeply engraved upon his memory, and once again in his half-sleep, he sits at the bench in the crowded courtroom, his papers spread out before him, ready to impose sentence for a crime committed seven long years ago, upon two men who had spent those seven long years in prison. How strangely he looks at them as they walk into the courtroom! And how strange they seem to him! He has almost forgotten who they are and what they look like. Somehow, after all these years, they seem neither so ragged nor so desperate as they were in his memory, even though they take their places in that peculiar and barbaric apparatus of New England justice, the cage where prisoners sit when they are tried or sentenced.