It Can't Happen Here (47 page)

She drew from the pockets of her flying-jacket the
three Mills hand
grenades she had managed to steal from the school yesterday
afternoon. She had not been able to get away with any heavier
bomb. As she looked at them, for the first time she shuddered; she
became a thing of warmer blood than a mere attachment to the plane,
mechanical as the engine.

“Better get it over before I go ladylike,” she sighed, and dived at
the cabin plane.

No doubt
her coming was unwelcome. Neither Death nor Mary
Greenhill had made a formal engagement with Effingham Swan that
morning; neither had telephoned, nor bargained with irritable
secretaries, nor been neatly typed down on the great lord’s
schedule for his last day of life. In his dozen offices, in his
marble home, in council hall and royal reviewing-stand, his most
precious excellence was guarded
with steel. He could not be
approached by vulgarians like Mary Greenhill—save in the air,
where emperor and vulgarian alike are upheld only by toy wings and
by the grace of God.

Three times Mary maneuvered above his plane and dropped a grenade.
Each time it missed. The cabin plane was descending, to land, and
the guards were shooting up at her.

“Oh well!” she said, and dived bluntly at a bright
metal wing.

In her last ten seconds she thought how much the wing looked like
the zinc washboard which, as a girl, she had seen used by Mrs.
Candy’s predecessor—now what was her name?—Mamie or something.
And she wished she had spent more time with David the last few
months. And she noticed that the cabin plane seemed rather rushing
up at her than she down at it.

The crash was appalling. It
came just as she was patting her
parachute and rising to leap out—too late. All she saw was an
insane whirligig of smashed wings and huge engines that seemed to
have been hurled up into her face.

Speaking of Julian before he was arrested, probably the New
Underground headquarters in Montreal found no unusual value in his
reports on M.M. grafting and cruelty and plans for apprehending
N.U. agitators. Still, he had been able to warn four or five
suspects to escape to Canada. He had had to assist in several
floggings. He trembled so that the others laughed at him; and he
made his blows
suspiciously light.

He was set on being promoted to M.M. district headquarters in
Hanover, and for it he studied typing and shorthand in his free
time. He had a beautiful plan of going to that old family friend,
Commissioner Francis Tasbrough, declaring that he wanted by his own
noble qualities to make up to the divine government for his
father’s disloyalty, and of getting himself made Tasbrough’s
secretary. If he could just peep at Tasbrough’s private files!
Then there would be something juicy for Montreal!

Sissy and he discussed it exultantly in their leafy rendezvous.
For a whole half hour she was able to forget her father and Buck in
prison, and what seemed to her something like madness in Mary’s
increasing restlessness.

Just at the end of September she saw Julian suddenly arrested.

She was watching a review of M.M.’s on the Green. She might
theoretically detest the blue M.M. uniform as being all that Walt
Trowbridge (frequently) called it, “The old-time emblem of heroism
and the battle for freedom, sacrilegiously turned by Windrip and
his gang into a symbol of everything that is cruel, tyrannical, and
false,” but it did not dampen her pride in Julian to see him trim
and
shiny, and officially set apart as a squad-leader commanding
his minor army of ten.

While the company stood at rest, County Commissioner Shad Ledue
dashed up in a large car, sprang up, strode to Julian, bellowed,
“This guy—this man is a traitor!” tore the M.M. steering-wheel
from Julian’s collar, struck him in the face, and turned him over
to his private gunmen, while Julian’s mates groaned,
guffawed,
hissed, and yelped.

She was not allowed to see Julian at Trianon. She could learn
nothing save that he had not yet been executed.

When Mary was killed, and buried as a military heroine, Philip came
bumbling up from his Massachusetts judicial circuit. He shook his
head a great deal and pursed his lips.

“I swear,” he said to Emma and Sissy—though actually he did
nothing so wholesome
and natural as to swear—”I swear I’m almost
tempted to think, sometimes, that both Father and Mary have, or
shall I say had, a touch of madness in them. There must be,
terrible though it is to say it, but we must face facts in these
troublous days, but I honestly think, sometimes, there must be a
strain of madness somewhere in our family. Thank God I have
escaped it!—if I have no other virtues,
at least I am certainly
sane! even if that may have caused the Pater to think I was nothing
but mediocre! And of course you are entirely free from it, Mater.
It’s you that must watch yourself, Cecilia.” (Sissy jumped
slightly; not at anything so grateful as being called crazy by
Philip, but at being called “Cecilia.” After all, she admitted,
that probably was her name.) “I hate to say it,
Cecilia, but I’ve
often thought you had a dangerous tendency to be thoughtless and
selfish. Now Mater: as you know, I’m a very busy man, and I simply
can’t take a lot of time arguing and discussing, but it seems best
to me, and I think I can almost say that it seems wise to Merilla,
also, that, now that Mary has passed on, you should just close up
this big house, or much better, try to rent it, as
long as the poor
Pater is—uh—as long as he’s away. I don’t pretend to have as big
a place as this, but it’s ever so much more modern, with gas
furnace and up-to-date plumbing and all, and I have one of the
first television sets in Rose Lane. I hope it won’t hurt your
feelings, and as you know, whatever people may say about me,
certainly I’m one of the first to believe in keeping up the old
traditions, just as poor dear old Eff Swan was, but at the same
time, it seems to me that the old home here is a little on the
dreary and old-fashioned side—of course I never
could
persuade the
Pater to bring it up to date, but—Anyway, I want Davy and you to
come live with us in Worcester, immediately. As for you, Sissy,
you will of course understand that you are entirely welcome, but
perhaps
you would prefer to do something livelier, such as joining
the Women’s Corpo Auxiliary—”

He was, Sissy raged, so damned
kind
to everybody! She couldn’t
even stir herself to insult him much. She earnestly desired to,
when she found that he had brought David an M.M. uniform, and when
David put it on and paraded about shouting, like most of the boys
he played with, “Hail Windrip!”

She telephoned
to Lorinda Pike at Beecher Falls and was able to
tell Philip that she was going to help Lorinda in the tea room.
Emma and David went off to Worcester—at the last moment, at the
station, Emma decided to be pretty teary about it, though David
begged her to remember that they had Uncle Philip’s word for it
that Worcester was just the same as Boston, London, Hollywood, and
a Wild West Ranch put together.
Sissy stayed to get the house
rented. Mrs. Candy, who was going to open her bakery now and who
never did inform the impractical Sissy whether or no she was being
paid for these last weeks, made for Sissy all the foreign dishes
that only Sissy and Doremus cared for, and they not uncheerfully
dined together, in the kitchen.

So it was Shad’s time to swoop.

He came blusteringly calling on her,
in November. Never had she
hated him quite so much, yet never so much feared him, because of
what he might do to her father and Julian and Buck and the others
in concentration camps.

He grunted, “Well, your boy-friend Jule, that thought he was so
cute, the poor heel, we got all the dope on his double-crossing us,
all right!
He’ll
never bother you again!”

“He’s not so bad. Let’s forget him…
 . Shall I play you
something on the piano?”

“Sure. Shoot. I always did like high-class music,” said the
refined Commissioner, lolling on a couch, putting his heels up on a
damask chair, in the room where once he had cleaned the fireplace.
If it was his serious purpose to discourage Sissy in regard to that
anti-Corpo institution, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, he was
succeeding even better
than Judge Philip Jessup. Sir William
Gilbert would have said of Shad that he was so very, very
prolet-ari-an.

She had played for but five minutes when he forgot that he was now
refined, and bawled, “Oh, cut out the highbrow stuff and come on
and sit down!”

She stayed on the piano stool. Just what would she do if Shad
became violent? There was no Julian to appear melodramatically at
the nickoftime
and rescue her. Then she remembered Mrs. Candy, in
the kitchen, and was content.

“What the heck you snickerin’ at?” said Shad.

“Oh—oh I was just thinking about that story you told me about how
Mr. Falck bleated when you arrested him!”

“Yeh, that was comical. Old Reverend certainly blatted like a
goat!”

(Could she kill him? Would it be wise to kill him? Had Mary meant
to kill Swan? Would
They be harder on Julian and her father if she
killed Shad? Incidentally, did it hurt much to get hanged?)

He was yawning, “Well, Sis, ole kid, how about you and me taking a
little trip to New York in a couple weeks? See some high life.
I’ll get you the best soot in the best hotel in town, and we’ll
take in some shows—I hear this
Callin’ Stalin
is a hot number—real Corpo art—and I’ll buy you
some honest-to-God champagne wine!
And then if we find we like each other enough, I’m willing for us,
if you are, to get hitched!”

“But, Shad! We could never live on your salary. I mean—I mean of
course the Corpos ought to pay you better—mean, even better than
they do.”

“Listen, baby! I ain’t going to have to get along on any miserable
county commissioner’s salary the rest of my life! Believe
me, I’m
going to be a millionaire before very long!”

Then he told her: told her precisely the sort of discreditable
secret for which she had so long fished in vain. Perhaps it was
because he was sober. Shad, when drunk, reversed all the rules and
became more peasant-like and cautious with each drink.

He had a plan. That plan was as brutal and as infeasible as any
plan of Shad Ledue for making
large money would be. Its essence
was that he should avoid manual labor and should make as many
persons miserable as possible. It was like his plan, when he was
still a hired man, to become wealthy by breeding dogs—first
stealing the dogs and, preferably, the kennels.

As County Commissioner he had not merely, as was the Corpo custom,
been bribed by the shopkeepers and professional men for protection
against the M.M.’s. He had actually gone into partnership with
them, promising them larger M.M. orders, and, he boasted, he had
secret contracts with these merchants all written down and signed
and tucked away in his office safe.

Sissy got rid of him that evening by being difficult, while letting
him assume that the conquest of her would not take more than three
or four more days. She cried
furiously after he had gone—in the
comforting presence of Mrs. Candy, who first put away a butcher
knife with which, Sissy suspected, she had been standing ready all
evening.

Next morning Sissy drove to Hanover and shamelessly tattled to
Francis Tasbrough about the interesting documents Shad had in his
safe. She did not ever see Shad Ledue again.

She was very sick about his being killed. She
was very sick about
all killing. She found no heroism but only barbaric bestiality in
having to kill so that one might so far live as to be halfway
honest and kind and secure. But she knew that she would be willing
to do it again.

The Jessup house was magniloquently rented by that noble Roman,
that political belch, Ex-Governor Isham Hubbard, who, being tired
of again trying to make a living
by peddling real estate and
criminal law, was pleased to accept the appointment as successor to
Shad Ledue.

Sissy hastened to Beecher Falls and to Lorinda Pike.

Father Perefixe took charge of the N.U. cell, merely saying, as he
had said daily since Buzz Windrip had been inaugurated, that he was
fed-up with the whole business and was immediately going back to
Canada. In fact, on his desk he
had a Canadian time-table.

It was now two years old.

Sissy was in too snappish a state to stand being mothered, being
fattened and sobbed over and brightly sent to bed. Mrs. Candy had
done only too much of that. And Philip had given her all the
parental advice she could endure for a while. It was a relief when
Lorinda received her as an adult, as one too sensible to insult by
pity—received
her, in fact, with as much respect as if she were an
enemy and not a friend.

After dinner, in Lorinda’s new tea room, in an aged house which was
now empty of guests for the winter except for the constant
infestation of whimpering refugees, Lorinda, knitting, made her
first mention of the dead Mary.

“I suppose your sister did intend to kill Swan, eh?”

“I don’t know. The Corpos didn’t seem to
think so. They gave her
a big military funeral.”

“Well, of course, they don’t much care to have assassinations
talked about and maybe sort of become a general habit. I agree
with your father. I think that, in many cases, assassinations are
really rather unfortunate—a mistake in tactics. No. Not good.
Oh, by the way, Sissy, I think I’m going to get your father out of
concentration camp.”

“What?”

Lorinda had none of the matrimonial moans of Emma; she was as
business-like as ordering eggs.

“Yes. I tried everything. I went to see Tasbrough, and that
educational fellow, Peaseley. Nothing doing. They want to keep
Doremus in. But that rat, Aras Dilley, is at Trianon as guard now.
I’m bribing him to help your father escape. We’ll have the man
here for Christmas, only kind of late,
and sneak him into Canada.”