coast from Maine, aiming to bring the boat near
New York. Helen was almost in frenzy that last
night, watching the haze of light in the sky over
Boston, looking repeatedly at her wrist watch,
counting the hours and minutes before the Italian
anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, were to be electrocut-
ed for a murder she was certain they had not com-
mitted.
"They will be killed for believing the world could
be made better," she said. "If only millions of people
would protest, would break open the walls of the
jail. It is too late, I know it is. We should be there
marching tonight."
Edward told her that, guilty or not, the law had
found them so, and were the penalty of the law not
carried out, the nation's whole legal structure would
be weakened. For the sake of the law and to pro(ect
the intricate workings of the country's legal ma-
chinery, it would be harmful to put obstacles in the
way of a smooth, harmonious working out of justice.
Even were these two men by chance innocent, a
failure to carry out the decisions of the courts, Ed-
ward foresaw, might open the way for truly guilty
men later to escape punishment for their crimes.
"Bosh," was Helen's answer to his argument.
"They are punished because they wanted to turn the
millowners'
excessive dividends into higher wages
for millhands. I can never forgive you for being so
cold and legal-minded. Wi th your brain, if there
were only some warm human blood in it, you could
have helped with the defense. I would have been so
proud."
Helen finally looked at her watch and said, "They
are dead now, surely they are dead." Then she start-
ed sobbing, and Edward sat opposite her in the
cockpit. The sky over Boston seemed to have grown
more fiery. Not knowing what to do to comfort
Helen, Edward looked over his shoulder, watching
the progress of a freighter, steaming quietly, Ullcon-
cer"nedly out to sea.
The light breeze was insufficient to fill the sails.
Slanting in the oily swell, the sails crackled in a
somber rhythm and Edward then felt the impassably
wide gulf separating his wife from himself. Though
still his wife, and alive, and sitting across from him,
so near that their knees almost touched, a feeling
that should have been a premonition, told him he
must not touch her, must not make a move in her
direction.
Her sobbing increased. Not only did she bewail
the death of the shoemaker and fishpeddler, she
cried for the death of a dream which she had hoped
would be realized with Edward.
Now, years later, Edward Peyton knew that this
mmt have been so. The faraway look in his eyes,
grown watery in the cold January wind, as he stood
half-way between his car and the boat, was a result
of remembering her sobs and the way she suddenly
stood up in the cockpit and then went into the tiny
16
cabin, still crying, and remained there until the
morning breeze blew"them to the yacht club mooring
at Hull.
During those long, starlit morning hours Edward
Peyton had built up a justification for his attitude.
It was, that law must be preserved as sacred, even
at the expense of an occasional miscarriage of
justice. How otherwise could the structure of society
be held together, he asked himself.
That morning in Hull, Helen sat with him at the
breakfast table reading morning papers, refusing
to eat, while he sat opposite her, glumly stowing
away ham and eggs, toast, fruit, and coffee. He did
not care to read the papers.
To Edwnrd Peyton, that day now seemed far
more than nine years behind him, and what took
place in his life before that day seemed almost to
belong in another existence. He thought of his child-
hood in Virginia, his widower father, the lawyer of
his small home town, his sister who had since mar-
ried and taken her bankrupt father to live with her
in North Carolina.
He remembered his college days, where the fact
that his family claimed General Lee and General
Gordon as kinsmen could not make up for the short-
ness of his monthly allowance. That was all very
long ago, much further in the past than the date of
the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.
Even in 1927, I was still a child, he thought. He
shook his head back and forth, jerkily, raising his
chin, closing his eyes, shaking out of his mind,
momentarily, his memories of the past.
He walked on, over the hard, black, frozen mud
and the dead, brown grass. Once abreast of the boat,
he stopped and noticed that the gar-board strakes
were rotted clean through. Johnson must have let
her lie
in
the wet mud, he thought; and then, re-
membering his failure to send money or even a word
to the lobsterman regarding what should be done
with the boat, he merely added the fault of her
decay to what seemed the already staggering burden
of his own past failings.
The lights in the cabin top were broken, the masts
were cracked and warped, seams were wide open,
and her portside lay buried two feet in mud. Peyton
walked on and turned to look at her wineglass-
shaped stern. There he saw the aluminum letters of
her name. Only the "N" of "HELEN" was missing,
but the outline of this letter was still faintly visible.
A wave of jealousy swept over him, making his
head feel as though encircled in a steel band, and
the figure of his one time dearest friend seemed
standing before him. In Peyton's mind, Henry
Scoville was there, grinning contemptuously at him.
It was Henry Scoville who suggested naming the
boat for Peyton's wife. It was also Henry who im-
planted in Helen the strong feeling that Sacco and
Vanzetti were innocent, and that justice for such men
a~ these was dead.
MAY,
,1936
