Henry Scoville had been a member of the Sacco-
Vanzetti defense committee. Because he was Ed-
ward Peyton's closest friend in college and the years
immediately following, he visited Edward and Helen
in Maine, in the late spring of 1927. He and Ed.
ward talked of sailboats. With the aid of the old
captain, they picked up an old sailing ship's yawl
boat, rigged her as a ketch, built a cabin with two
berths, painted her topsides black, the deck buff, and
the cabin sides a glistening white. The old c;aptain
was proud of the little vessel he had created, with
the help of his two assistants.
"She's young," he said, referring to the fact that
she was but twenty-two feet long. "But she's got the
lines of a yacht. And those yawl boats, they'll go
anywhere. Yessir, they're fast, and they'll take any-
thing."
Henry Scoville and Edward shared expenses on
the boat equally. Helen complained that it was fool-
ish to spend so much money. The boat was so small
that she was frightened at the idea of sailing in it.
But on the day she walked down the lane to the
tidal inlet from the river, carrying in her hand a
bottle of Prohibition red wine with which to christen
the boat, she felt that perhaps it was really worth it.
For the first time since his illness, Edward
pey_
ton had good color in his cheeks. His eyes sparkled
with happiness and pride in the little ship. Three or
even four hundred dollars would not be thrown
away on a boat if it helped him back to health.
When they reached the landing, Helen looked
with genuine admiration at the boat, riding so proud-
ly, her lines and proportions making her look almost
a model of a sixty-footer. Then Helen saw her name
on the stern.
She turned and looked from Edward to Henry,
both of whom were eyeing her, waiting for this dis-
covery. Helen felt very happy, and somehow seem-
ed to look upon Henry with more friendly warmth
in her eyes than ever before. The boat was half his,
and the boat was the
Helen.
Edward Peyton, nine years later, gazing at the
wreck of this beautiful small boat, remembered this
with jealous bitterness. Then he realized that such
intense feeling was unreal-it
was not of this present
year, it was of long ago. It was of the time when
his great friend, Henry Scoville, was a crusading
liberal, an admirer of Felix Frankfurter,
a writer
of articles in defense of two Italian anarchists.
Peyton walked completely around the boat. The
blocks had been removed from the mastheads, the
cleats all were pried loose from the decks. He had
hoped that coming to look at the boat would help
him solve a problem which began bothering him
when the N.R.A. first seemed to be failing to carry
out its promises to the hard-pressed people. This
problem became of even greater importance when
the N.R.A. was declared unconstitutional, and Ed-
ward Peyton left his temporary government job in
PARTISAN
REVIEW
Washington. He left it with the feeling that law-
makers and men in power were not competent to
work out the. problem of supplying society with its
needs. This problem, he had came to believe, would
have to be solved by the majority, acting in the
interests of those whose needs were greatest. When-
ever such thoughts crossed his mind, Edward Peyton
found mixed with them the memory of Sacco and
Vanzetti, and back of this the memory of his wife,
blurred and indistinct, accusing him of possessing a
bloodless, legal mind.
Peyton noticed that the tide had turned. It was
now rushing up the inlet, eddying around the piles
of the wharf. He recalled how few times Henry
Scoville had been able to sail the boat. He had to
go to Boston, rush to New York, to Washington, in
those last months of the lives of the two anarchists,
in an effort to win support for their defense, to
spread publicity about the case, to confer with the
committee.
Then he again came to Maine for a few days to
work on an article and took just a small amount of
time off to sail the boat. Finally in July he left for
good, saying he must remain in Boston night and
day until the end.
When he left, he told Edward, "The boat is
yours. I won't get another chance at it, I give you
my share." Edward accepted gladly and offered to
pay for the share, but Henry refused to take any
payment.
N ow it almost seemed to Peyton, reviewing this
time that Henry had, in giving him the boat, taken
Helen in return. For from that time onward, Helen
was so absorbed in the defense of the anarchists
that Edward felt compelled to argue. the case for
the State of Massachusetts when discussing it with
her.
While Helen eagerly read the pamphlets and
articles sent her by Henry Scoville, all of which
seemed to Edward of a decidedly radical and un-
American trend, he had developed an attitude of
pugnacious conservatism. His knowledge of the
Constitution and laws of the country upset and con-
fused Helen in argument, made her back up against
a wall and argue on grounds of hunger, joblessness,
ignorance; and led her to oppose, with a plea for
human rights, those sacred rights of individual
property which Edward Peyton upheld with logical,
keen argument.
It was now with a feeling of shame that Peyton
thought of those arguments, but they were of the
past and could p..otbe recalled. For on the morning
after the execution, when he and his wife went to
a restaurant for breakfast, she told him she was
going to Boston that day, she intended to march
in the funeral procession. That much, at least, she
would do.
Then it was that Peyton destroyed what future
peace of mind the memory of his wife might have
