My dear Mr. Vassar:I’m heartily ashamed of myself for losing my temper last night. Please call for me at ten o’clock. I wish a little heart-to-heart talk before we go to your Flag Festival. Please answer by the bearer.Virginia Holland.
My dear Mr. Vassar:
I’m heartily ashamed of myself for losing my temper last night. Please call for me at ten o’clock. I wish a little heart-to-heart talk before we go to your Flag Festival. Please answer by the bearer.
Virginia Holland.
Vassar drew Marya into his arms and kissed her rapturously.
“You’re an angel—you’ve brought me a message from the skies. Run now and tell the big black man—Miss Holland’s butler—to thank her for me and say that I’ll be there promptly at ten. Run, darling! Run!”
The child refused to stir without another kiss whichshe repeated on both his cheeks. She stopped at the door and waved another.
“Hurry, Uncle John—please—we’re all starved.”
“Down in five minutes!” he cried.
The weariness of the night’s fitful sleep was gone. The world was suddenly filled with light and music.
“What the devil’s come over me!” he muttered, astonished at the persistent grin his mirror reflected. “At this rate I can see my finish—I’ll be the secretary of the Suffragette Campaign Committee before the week’s over—bah!”
Old Peter, the black butler, ushered him into the parlor with a stately bow.
“Miss Virginia be right down, sah. She say she des finishin’ her breakfus’—yassah!”
Vassar seated himself with a sense of triumph. She must have written that note in bed. He flattered himself someone else had not slept well. He hoped not.
Her greeting was gracious, but strictly business-like—he thought a little too business-like to be entirely convincing.
She motioned him to resume his seat and drew one for herself close beside. She sat down in a quiet determined manner that forbade sentimental reflections and began without preliminaries.
“We lost track of our subject last night, Mr. Vassar, in an absurd personal discussion. I’ve asked you to come back this morning to make a determined effort to win you for our cause—”
She paused, leaned forward and smiled persuasively.
“We need you. Your influence over the foreign-born population in New York would be enormous. I see by this morning’s paper an enthusiastic account of your work among the children. You are leading a renaissance of American patriotism. Good! So am I—a renaissance of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal! that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure those rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ Come now, I appeal to your sense of justice. What right have you to govern me without my consent? Am I not created your equal?”
Her eloquence was all but resistless. The word of surrender was on his lips, when the voice of an honest manhood spoke within.
“You’re not convinced. The magnetism of a woman’s sex is calling. You’re a poltroon to surrender yourprinciples to such a force. In her soul a true woman would despise you for it.”
She saw his hesitation and leaned closer, holding him with her luminous eyes.
“Come now, in your heart of hearts you know that I am your equal?”
Something in the tones of her voice broke the spell—just a trace of the platform intonation and the faintest suggestion of the politician. The voice within again spoke. There was another reason why he should be true to his sense of right. He owed it to this woman who had moved him so profoundly. He must be true to the noblest and best that was in him.
He met her gaze in silence for a moment and spoke with quiet emphasis.
“If I followed my personal inclinations, Miss Holland, I would agree to anything you ask. You’re too downright, too honest and earnest to wish or value such a shallow victory—am I not right?”
The faintest tinge of red colored Virginia’s cheeks.
“Of course,” she answered slowly, “I wish the help of the best that’s in you or nothing—”
“Good! I felt that instinctively. I could fence and hedge and trim with the ordinary politician. With all respect to your pretensions, you’re not a politician at all. You’re just a charming, beautiful woman enteringa field for which God never endowed you either physically, temperamentally or morally—”
Virginia frowned and lifted her head with a little gesture of contempt.
“I must be honest. I must play the game squarely with you! I’m sorely tempted to cheat. But there’s too much at stake. You ask if you are not my equal? I answer promptly and honestly. I know that you are more—you are my superior. For this reason I would save you from the ballot. It is not a question of right, it is a question of hard and difficult duty. The ballot is not a right or a privilege. It is a solemn and dangerous duty. The ballot is force—physical force. It is a modern substitute for the bayonet—a device which has been used to prevent much civil strife. And yet man never votes away his right to a revolution. The Declaration of Independence embodies this fact—‘Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it—’ There you have the principle in full. Back of every ballot is a bayonet and the red blood of the man who wields it—”
“But we will substitute reason for force!”
“How, dear lady?Government is force—never was anything else—never can be until man is redeemed and this world is peopled by angels. Man is in the zoologicalperiod of his development. Scratch the most cultured man beneath the skin and you find the savage. Scratch the proudest nation of Europe beneath the skin and you find the elemental brute. I do not believe in forcing our mothers, our sisters, our wives and sweethearts into the blood-soaked mud of battle trenches. That work is the dangerous and difficult duty of man. So the ballot, on which peace or war depends, is his duty—not his right or privilege—”
“Give us the ballot and we will make war impossible,” Virginia broke in.
“How? If women vote with their men, their voting will mean nothing. We merely multiply the total by two. We do not change results. If women vote against the men on an issue of war or peace, will men submit to such a feminine decision? Certainly not. Force and force alone can decide the issue of force. Back of every ballot is a bayonet or there’s nothing back of it. The breath of revolution will drive such meaningless ballots as chaff before a whirlwind—”
“We’ll stop your blood-stained revolutions!” Virginia cried.
“All right. Do so and you stop the progress of humanity. The American Revolution was blood-stained. It gave us freedom. The Civil War was blood-stained. It freed this nation of the curse of slavery and sealedthe Union for all time. There are good wars and bad wars. True war is the inevitable conflict between two irreconcilable moral principles. One is right—the other wrong. One must live—the other die. Wrong may triumph for a day. Right must win in the end or else the universe is ruled by the Devil, not by God. You cannot abolish war until the Devil is annihilated and God rules in the souls and lives of men and in their governments as well.”
For the moment the woman was swept from the moorings of her pet arguments. She quickly recovered.
“We are going to make America the moral and spiritual leader of mankind!” she cried with elation.
“Yes, I know. In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World—your poet’s dream as far removed from the beastly realities of life today as Heaven is from Hell—”
“We are going to make this dream a living fact in the world—and free America shall lead the way—”
“And how will you begin?”
“By setting the proud example of building our national life on spiritual realities first, not on guns and forts. We will begin the disarmament of the world—”
“And end your movement by surrender to the armed bullies of Europe!”
“At least my dream is a dream,” Virginia laughed,“yours a silly nightmare. But I give you up for the present. I see that Ephraim is joined to his idols. My mission is a failure. At least I thank you for your candor. I shall have to turn you over now to the tender mercies of Mr. Waldron and the Executive Committee. Come, we’ll see your flags and the children. The sight will be restful after our battle.”
She rose quickly, led the way to the hall, adjusted the little turban on the mass of auburn blond hair and opened the door.
Vassar passed out with a queer sense of defeat. He had vanquished her in the argument. But the trouble was she had not argued. She had merely demanded his submission without argument.
ANOTHERthing that had upset Vassar’s equanimity was the baffling quality of Virginia Holland’s character. The more honestly he had tried to approach her in friendly compromise the more bristling her mental resistance had become. She held him at arms’ length personally.
He was surprised at her final decision to go to the Armory. No doubt only an uncompromising honesty had caused her to fulfil a promise. Clearly she was bored.
As a matter of fact she was anything but bored. She was lashing herself at every step with reproaches at her idiotic inconsistency in accompanying an East Side politician on a fool’s errand. No doubt the whole thing was a scheme to pose before enraptured constituents. Why had she consented to come? She asked herself the question a hundred times and finally accepted the weak lie that she was studying his eccentricities to make his defeat the more sure.
With each moment of her association she had become more and more clearly conscious of his charm. Itsstrength and its antagonism were equally appealing. It would be sweet to demonstrate her own power in his defeat at the polls and then make up to him by confessing her admiration.
She began to receive striking evidence of his popularity. At every street-corner and from almost every door came a friendly nod or wave of a hand.
Schultz, the fat German who kept a delicatessen store on the corner, waved to him from the doorway.
“Mein Frau und der kids—all dere, gov’ner. I vish I could be!”
On the next block Brodski gripped his hand and whispered a word of cheer.
“They all seem to know you down here, Mr. Congressman,” Virginia laughed.
“Yes, it’s my only hope—if we fight—”
“You’ll need help if we do,” she answered quietly.
He didn’t like the tone of menace in her words. There was no bluster about it. There was a ring of earnestness that meant business.
“Perhaps I’m going to win you to my cause before you know it,” he ventured. “I’m going to show you something today that’s really worth while—”
“Meaning, of course,” she interrupted, “that the cause in which I am at present expending my thought and energy is not worth while—”
“I didn’t say that!” he protested. “And I most humbly apologize if I implied as much—”
“All the same you think it, sir—”
She stopped short in amazement at the sight of her brother Billy standing straight and fine beside Zonia at the door of the old Armory, a marshal’s sash across his shoulder, arrayed in a captain’s uniform of the Boy Scouts of America.
Zonia grasped her outstretched hand in loyal greeting, her eyes sparkling with pride at her uncle’s triumphant march beside her heroine.
Virginia’s gaze fixed Billy’s beaming countenance.
“Well, Mr. Sunny Jim!” she exclaimed, “will you kindly give an account of yourself. How long have you been a marshal of the empire?”
“Oh, ever so long, Virginia—Mr. Vassar didn’t know I was your brother, that’s all. I’m a captain now. I didn’t let you know ’cause I thought you might raise a rumpus. Father and mother know. They don’t care. I like it.”
He turned abruptly to Vassar and saluted.
“Everything ready, sir!”
Virginia shook her head and smiled at Zonia. She too wore a marshal’s sash.
“I want you to meet some of the mothers, Miss Holland,”she whispered eagerly. “I made a lot of them go to our meetings.”
“With pleasure, dear.” She smiled at Vassar. “We’ll take occasion to mend some of our fences in this benighted district today!”
The young Congressman turned his guest over to his niece and hurried away with Billy to inspect the assignment of kids for the ceremonies of the Flag.
Virginia was surprised to find the hall packed with women and children, more than a thousand, of all ages and nationalities. They were chattering like magpies—a babel of foreign tongues—German, Italian, Polish, Bohemian, Russian, Greek, Yiddish.
“I must introduce you first,” Zonia whispered, “to my favorite mother, an Italian with the cutest little darling boy you ever saw. She heard you speak in the Square—”
She darted into the crowd and led forth a slender, dark-haired young Italian mother with a beautiful boy of five clinging to her skirts.
“Miss Holland, this is my good friend Angela Benda and Mr. Tommaso!”
Angela bowed and blushed.
“Ah, Signorina, I hear you speak so fine—so beautiful! I make my man Tommaso vote for you or breaka his neck! I done tell him so too—”
“And did he promise?”
“Si, si, signorina—I mak him—”
Virginia stooped and gathered the child in her arms. Shy at first, he put his hand at last on her shining hair, touched it gracefully, and looked into her face with grave wide eyes.
Virginia pressed him suddenly to her heart and kissed him.
“You glorious little creature!” she cried. The act was resistless. In all her career she had never before done so silly and undignified a thing in public. She blushed at her folly. What crazy spell could she be under today? She asked the question with a new sense of uneasy annoyance as her eyes swept the room in search of the hero of the occasion.
Vassar could scarcely walk for the crowds of joyous women and children who pressed about him and tried to express their love and pride in his leadership.
A fight suddenly broke out between the Benda and Schultz kids close beside Virginia.
Zonia tried in vain to separate them. Vassar saved the situation by picking up Angela’s boy by his suspenders, and the German kid by the seat of his pants. He lifted them bodily out of the scene and carried them into a quiet corner.
Virginia laughed heartily.
Vassar demanded mutual apologies.
“He called me ‘Sausage,’ ” complained the Schultz kid.
“He calla me a Dago,” answered the Italian.
“Now salute each other with a handshake!” Billy commanded. “And remember that you’re good Americans.”
“He made them both take off their caps and yell:
“Hurrah for Uncle Sam!”
Virginia looked about the old hall with increasing amazement at the effective way in which the interior had been decorated. Around the walls in graceful festoons the beautiful red, white and blue emblems hung an endless riot of color. From the ceiling they fell in soft, billowing waves stirred by the breezes from the open windows. The eye of every child kindled with delight on entering.
The exercises began with a song.
A band of six pieces led them. Everybody rose and sang one stanza. John Vassar first wrote it in big plain letters on the blackboard where all could read:
MY COUNTRY, ’TIS OF THEE,SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY,OF THEE, I SING!
They sang it with a fervor that stirred Virginia’s soul.
Vassar took the chair as presiding officer and directed the exercises, Billy acting as his chief lieutenant to Virginia’s continuous amusement.
“Now, children, give me the cornerstone of the American nation—let’s get that in place first. Now everybody! All together!”
From the crowd came a shout that stirred the big flags in the ceiling:
“ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL!”
Again he wrote it on the blackboard and asked them to repeat it.
They did it with a will.
“Now, children,” he said, “I’ve a distinguished artist here today who gives us this valuable hour of his useful life to draw a picture on the board. Watch him closely and don’t forget the message.”
With quick, sure stroke the cartoonist drew a wonderful symbolic Stairway of Life for the American child.
On the left of the scene appeared Uncle Sam holding the lamp of knowledge to light the way to success for the crowd of eager boys and girls at the bottom of the hill. In sharp outline he drew the steps upon which they might mount—each step a book they could master. The first step was marked—Primer, the next FirstReader and then came Elementary Arithmetic, Second Reader, Grammar, Geography, History, Physiology, Rhetoric, Algebra, Physics, Latin, Greek, Geometry, Political Economy and Trigonometry. The last step faded out in the blazing light of the Sun of Success at the top of the hill. He drew the figures of little boys and girls on the lower rounds, bigger boys and girls on the middle ones, young men and women mounting the hill crest. At the bottom of the cartoon he wrote:
“Uncle Sam invites all his children of every race and kindred and tongue to come up higher!”
“Now, once more, children,” Vassar cried, “tell me on what this country’s greatness rests?”
Again the shout came as from a single throat:
“All men are created equal!”
“Good! Now give me the passwords!”
“Liberty!”
“Equality!”
“Fraternity!”
The three shouts came as three salvos from a battery of artillery.
On another blackboard he wrote the words in huge capitals and left them standing.
“Now, children, I want you to think for just one minute every day of your life what it means to be acitizen of this mighty free Democracy—where men are learning to govern themselves better than any king has ever done it for them. I want you to realize that the inspired founders of this nation made it the hope and refuge of the oppressed of all the world. And I want you to love it with all your heart—”
He lifted his hands and the crowd rose singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” They sang it with a swing and lilt Virginia had never heard before. For the first time in her life it had meaning. Her eyes unconsciously filled with tears.
At a wave of Vassar’s hand the crowd sank to their seats.
Vassar stooped over the platform and motioned to Angela to hand to him her boy.
The mother proudly passed the child to the leader. Vassar lifted the smiling youngster in his arms and held him high. In ringing tones he cried:
“Don’t forget, my friends, that the humblest boy here today may become the president of the United States!”
A ringing cheer swept the crowd.
Vassar passed the child back to the mother and continued his address. The rest of it was lost on Angela. A new light suddenly flashed in her brown eyes.
She sat down, flushed, and rose again. Tommasotugged at her dress and begged her to sit down. Her soul was too full. The act of the speaker was a divine omen. She must know if he really meant that her little Tommaso might be the president of a great free nation. The thought was too big. Her heart was bursting. She tried timidly to attract Vassar’s attention.
Tommaso, alarmed, drew her back to the seat.
Angela looked across the side aisle and saw Virginia in the front row. Bending low she approached and whispered:
“My own bambino—he may be president—yes?”
Virginia nodded tearfully.
Angela darted back to her seat, snatched the head cloth from her rich brown hair and seized one of her husband’s earrings. The fight was brief. The Italian struggled to save his ornaments but the wife won. He also lost a gay sash about his waist. The mother pressed the boy to her heart and whispered passionately to her man:
“We Americano now—our bambino be bigga de boss president!”
Tommaso succeeded finally in quieting her before Vassar noticed the disturbance.
“Now, Captain,” Vassar called to Billy, “give us the order of the day for the Boy Scouts of America.”
Billy sprang on the little platform, lifted his smiling face, his hands tightly gripped behind his back and spoke in firm, boyish tones:
“My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country!”
“And what do you say to that, children?” Vassar shouted.
“Three cheers for Uncle Sam!” they answered. Three times three they gave it without the need of a prompter.
Vassar waved a signal to the right and from the dressing-room slowly marched a procession of children of all nations, dressed in their native costume, each child bearing the tiny flag of their old-world allegiance. The line of floating color circled the open space in front of the platform, and, as they passed Vassar surrendered the old flag and received from his hand the Stars and Stripes which each waved in answer to a cheer from the crowd.
When the last nation had surrendered allegiance the procession marched again around the circle to the continuous cheering of the crowd and took their places about Vassar who held aloft the regimental standard of the nation with its golden eagle gleaming from the staff. The little children crowded close and about them gathered a ring of Boy Scouts and beyond them the mothers of the kids.
He lifted high the flag and every Scout and grown up and every child saluted it with uplifted hands and cheered.
“Now, boys and girls!” Vassar cried to the outer circle.
They solemnly responded in chorus:
“I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands—one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
“Now, kiddies!” he shouted to the little ones.
The answer came in straggling unison:
“I give my hand and my heart to God and my country. One country, one language, one flag—”
“And now!” the leader cried:
“Hurrah for the President of the United States!”
With a shout they gave the cheers and the ceremony ended again in a babel of joyous polyglot chatter.
Vassar found Virginia surrounded by a mob of mothers struggling to shake hands under the guidance of Angela.
“I must say,” he laughed, “that your methods are quite up to date.”
“I assure you I’m not trying to take advantage of my host to seduce his constituents. I’m only doing my best to make Angela happy by meeting her friends—”
“Si, signor—we will vote for the signorina—and you, too, is it not so?”
“Apparently they need no seduction,” Vassar laughed.
Virginia blushed and lifted her hands in protest.
“Well,” the young leader asked in conciliatory tones, “how did you like it?”
“I’ve been charmed beyond measure,” was the quick answer. “I’ve got a new view of my country. I’ve a new view of the possibilities of political leadership. I’m more determined than ever to wield a ballot—”
“You’re not willing to trust me with that duty?”
“No. We can add something you can never give to these people. These mothers know instinctively that I can understand them as you could not.”
“And I had hoped,” he said regretfully, “that I might win you for a helper in this work. You’re determined to be my rival—”
“Not unless you fight—”
“Can’t you see,” he persisted, “that what America needs today is not the multiplication of her voting population by two—but the breathing of a conscious national soul into the people and giving that soul expression. What we need is not more millions of voters but a deeper sense of responsibility developed in those who already vote. We must show the world that democracyis a success, that democracy means the best in government, the best in commerce, the best in art and literature. I grant you that many of our new foreign voters are ignorant, but, dear Miss Holland, their wives and mothers are far more ignorant. Why add to this sum total of inefficiency? New York is in reality a foreign city set down here in the heart of America. More than one-half of the men of voting age are foreign-born. Only thirty-eight per cent of them are naturalized. More than half a million of these men are in no way identified with our political life. Twenty thousand a year in our city claim their right of citizenship and become voters. We have before us a gigantic task to teach these men the meaning of true Americanism. This work has not been done. It has been left to chance. We must break up these foreign groups. Eighty per cent of our foreign population live in groups and take no interest in any problem which does not directly affect their group life. They neither know nor are known by American-born citizens. Men like your father should get acquainted with these people. They are yet speaking a foreign tongue, living within the narrow ideals of their European origin. In time of supreme trial if this nation should call on them, what could one expect? What have we a right to expect?”
Virginia shook her head in hopeless protest.
“Always your nightmare of an imaginary impossible attack by a foreign foe!”
“I wish it were imaginary,” he answered thoughtfully. “Do you think for a moment that there is a foot of soil in the old world of Northern and Central Europe on which I could stand and dare to write the sentences and mottoes on that blackboard? Do the rulers of Europe believe that all men are created equal? Remember, dear lady, that Democracy is a babe not yet out of swaddling clothes. The might of kings is as old as the recorded history of man. The kingly conception of government and its divine right to govern is inbred into the human race through thousands of years until it is accepted without question. The idea becomes as fixed and automatic as the beat of the human heart.
“The American Republic is but a little over a hundred years old. We reckon in years, they reckon by centuries. The founding of this nation was one of the happiest accidents in the history of the world. But it was an accident. The kings were too busy fighting one another in the stirring years of the American Revolution to give their attention to you. Your fathers won on a lucky fluke. And thanks to the barriers of two vast oceans you grew and waxed strong with incrediblerapidity. You were safe as long as these oceans protected you and no longer. The genius of man has abolished the ocean barrier. There is no more sea. The ocean is now the world’s highway and transport by water is swifter and safer than by land. The oceans no longer protect you. They are a constant menace to your existence—”
“You are assuming that the world is not civilized—that we are still living in the Dark Ages,” Virginia interrupted.
“I am assuming only the facts of modern life: that force still rules the world; that government is force; that there are two forms of government and only two, and that they are irreconcilable—government by the people and government of the people by imperial masters. These systems can no more mix than fire and water. The world must yet be conquered by one of them. You assume that we have settled our form of government for all time. We have—provided we are ready to demonstrate to the imperial rulers that we can defend it against all comers—”
Virginia threw up her hands in a gesture of despair.
“You’re hopeless!”
“Can you not see this?” he pleaded.
“I refuse to see it. I still have faith in God and my fellow man.”
He looked at her flushed exquisite face with deep tenderness—lifted his eyes and saw Zonia and Marya the center of an admiring group of children.
“You like my little Zonia?” he asked in apparently irrevelent tones.
“I love her—”
“Her father, my elder brother, lived in Poland’s happiest tomb—in German Poland—”
He stopped abruptly and gave a bitter little laugh.
“His home took fire one night and burned to the ground. By decree of his Imperial master he was not permitted to build a dwelling on his own land. He loved this land, poor fool. His wife and babies loved it. He couldn’t be dragged away. He took refuge in a barn. Through the summer they managed to live without a fire inside. They cooked in the open. But when the winter came and the snows fell, he was forced to smuggle a little stove into the barn to boil some eggs and cabbage and make tea for his children. He hid the stove in a deep hole under the floor. Ten days later an officer of the Imperial government, passing, saw the smoke, forced his way in and uncovered the secret. The stove had made the barn a dwelling and he had forfeited his estate and his liberty. He fought—as any man with a soul must fight—for his own! The end was sure. He shot the officer. But there werelegions of these Imperial soldiers. They assaulted his frail barricade and riddled his body with bullets. His faithful wife died with him. And little Zonia and Marya were sent to me in free America. And so you see I lack faith in some men—”
He stopped abruptly at the sight of Waldron’s heavy face with its arctic smile.
The millionaire lifted his hat, bowed slightly and disappeared from the doorway.
“Come with me to Mr. Waldron’s house, we must have a final conference there—”
“Waldron’s house?” he asked incredulously.
“Certainly. His library has become our campaign headquarters—”
“You’ll have to excuse me—”
“But I won’t excuse you. We’re going to fight this thing out today.”
“I’ve nothing to say to Waldron.”
“But he has something very important to say to you—”
“All right—he knows where I live—”
Virginia laid her hand on his arm in a gesture of appeal that was resistless.
“Won’t you come with me?”
The frown slowly faded, and he smiled an answer.
“With you—yes.”
BILLYvolunteered to take the children home, Vassar waved his farewell to the crowd and hurried to the waiting automobile.
Virginia presented him to the banker.
“Our irreconcilable foe, Mr. Waldron!”
The millionaire merely touched his hat with the barest suggestion of a military salute and Vassar bowed. It was not until they were seated in the car that Waldron spoke—the same cold smile about his lips.
“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Mr. Vassar—”
“I’m surprised to hear that,” was the light reply. “Our views could hardly be the same on any subject within my scope of knowledge—”
Waldron smiled patronizingly.
“Anyhow, let us hope that we’ll get together today—”
“We must,” Virginia responded.
The one thing Vassar couldn’t endure was patronage. The tone Waldron assumed was offensive beyond endurance. If he tried it again the young leader hadmade up his mind to find an excuse, stop the car and go back to his office.
To his relief the man of money made no further attempt at conversation, save for an occasional whispered order to his liveried chauffeur. Vassar’s eyes rested on the military cut of this chauffeur’s clothes with new resentment. The gilded coat of arms on the door of the tonneau had not escaped him as he took his seat beside Virginia. Nor was the lordly manner in which the new master of men condescended to talk with his servant at the wheel lost on the young leader of democracy.
He wondered what Virginia Holland could see in such a man. He refused utterly to believe that she could love him. Elemental brute strength and stark physical courage he undoubtedly possessed. The solid mass of his bull neck and the cold brilliance of his gray eyes left no doubt on that score.
There could be but one explanation of her association with Waldron. He had generously loosed his purse strings and given her cause the unlimited credit needed under modern conditions to conduct a great political movement. No one could blame her for that. It was good politics.
All the same he would give a good deal just now to know whether she cared for the man. He must yieldthe devil his due. Waldron was the type of domineering brute that appealed to many women. He wondered if Virginia Holland had felt the spell of his commanding character.
For the hundredth time he asked himself the question why should he care. There was the rub. Devil take it, he did care. He had never been so foolishly happy in his life as in the hours he had spent by this girl’s side. It infuriated him to think how easy had been his conquest. But yesterday he had scorned her name. They had met and talked a few hours and he had become her lackey. At her bidding he was now on his way to the house of the man he hated.
He caught himself grinning for sheer joy to find himself seated close beside her in the smooth gliding car of his enemy. He could have enjoyed this wonderful ride had they been alone.
The afternoon was one of glorious beauty. The rains of the first days of July had swept the city clean. The sun had broken the clouds into billowing banks of snow-white against the dazzling azure of the skies. A brisk inspiriting breeze swept in from the sea and rippled the waters of the North River into little white lines of foam. The trees along the Drive flashed in splendor.
The temptation was all but resistless to touch herhand. He started with terror at the crazy thought. She was anything but an Amazon, but he could see her pitching him headforemost into the road for daring the impertinence. He glanced at her furtively, alarmed lest she had read his thoughts.
Well, there was no help for it now. He was in for a fight for his life with this demure, quiet, dangerous little woman, who could sit calmly by his side mistress of her thoughts and no doubt perfectly conscious of her power over his.
Anyhow she was worth a fight. It was worth any man’s best to win the heart of such a woman and to make her his own. Could any man really do it? Of course he could! With the next breath he doubted it, and trembled at the happiness he felt bubbling in his soul when he felt the nearness of her exquisite figure.
“Why so grave, Mr. Congressman?” she asked banteringly.
“To tell you the truth, I’m scared,” he answered in low tones.
“Of the great man in front?” she whispered.
Vassar’s jaw closed with decision.
“Far from it, I assure you!”
“You’re not afraid of an automobile?”
“One more guess—”
“You couldn’t be afraid of little me?” she asked demurely.
“Yesterday I would have said no with a very loud emphasis. I’m free to confess the more I’ve seen of you the more I dread your opposition—”
She laughed in his face with a deliberate provoking challenge.
“Now that’s unkind of you! I expected a much more gallant answer from a tall handsome apostle of romance and chivalry.”
“Perhaps I was afraid you’d laugh at me—”
“No. I hold that the age of true chivalry is only dawning—the age in which man will honor woman by recognizing her as worthy to be his pal and best friend as well as his toy.”
There was something so genuine to the appeal of her personality that the man who intellectually disagreed with her philosophy yet found himself in foolish accord with every demand she made.
Vassar was silent a moment, and glanced at her to see if she were chaffing or sparring to uncover his defenses.
He was about to say too much—to confess too much and do it clumsily in the presence of the man he hated when the machine suddenly swung toward the cliff, swept up to a massive iron gate and stopped.
The chauffeur sounded his horn and an old man dressed in the peasant costume of the lodge-keeper of a feudal estate of Central Europe emerged from the cottage built into the walls of the cliff and opened the gates without a word. He bowed humbly to the lord of the manor. Waldron nodded carelessly.
The banker’s medieval castle, perched on the highest hill on upper Manhattan, was one of the sights of the metropolis. Vassar lifted his eyes and caught the majestic lines of the granite tower thrusting its grim embattlements into the skies. An ocean-going yacht lay at her anchor in the river like a huge swan with folded wings. The Italian boathouse which he had built at the water’s edge was connected with his castle by an underground passage bored through the granite cliff into a hall cut out of the stone a hundred feet beneath the foundations of the structure above. A swift elevator connected this hall with the house.
The machine shot gracefully up the steep winding roadway and stopped beneath the vaulted porte-cochère.
Liveried flunkies hurried down the stone landing to greet their master and his guests. There was nothing for them to do but open the door of the tonneau with obsequious bows.
“Will you kindly make our prisoner as comfortableas possible, Miss Holland,” Waldron said in his even metallic voice, “while I give some orders outside. You’ll find the library at your disposal.”
“Thank you,” Virginia answered, mounting the steps without further ceremony.
A feeling of resentment swept John Vassar. How dare this bully assume such familiarity with Virginia Holland! She had met him as a patron of the cause of woman’s suffrage. One would think he had the right to her soul and body by the way he asked her to act as the hostess of his establishment. The thought that enraged him was that the banker was so cocksure of himself, his position. No robber baron of the Middle Ages could have felt more irresponsible in the exercise of his power. The consciousness of this power oozed from the fat pores of Waldron’s skin. He exuded the idea as he breathed.
Vassar’s first impression on entering the great house confirmed his idea of the man’s character. The whole conception of the place rested squarely on the royal splendors of the Old World. The lines of the huge building were a combination of two famous castles of medieval France, both the homes of kings. The great hall was an exact copy in form and decoration of the throne room of Napoleon in the palace at Versailles.
His library walls above the bookcases bristled witharms and armor. Anything more utterly undemocratic could not have been found in the centers of Europe.
The atmosphere of the place was stifling.
Vassar turned to Virginia with a movement of impatience.
“You like this?” he asked.
“I think it very imposing,” was the diplomatic answer.
“So do I,” he snapped, “and that’s why I loathe it. Such ostentation in a democracy whose life is just beginning can mean but one thing. The man who built this castle to crown the highest hill of a city is capable of building a throne in the East Room of the White House if the time ever comes that he dares—”
Virginia shook her head good-humoredly.
“I’m afraid you’re prejudiced against our patron saint.”
“No,” Vassar answered steadily, “I’m not prejudiced. I hate him with the hatred that is uncompromising—that’s all. There’s not room for the two things for which we stand in this republic. One of us must live, the other die.”
“I suppose a woman doesn’t look on such a house as this with your eyes,” she answered smiling.
“No, that’s just it—you don’t—and it’s one of the reasons why I’m afraid of you—”
Vassar turned to examine the collection of chain armor at the end of the room without waiting for her answer. He was in a bad humor. The place had gotten on his nerves.
When he returned again, regretting his curt speech, she was standing at the entrance talking in low tones to Waldron. His footstep had made no sound on the cushion of oriental rugs which covered the inlaid marble floor.
Without so much as a look his way she passed Waldron and left the library.
The banker walked briskly toward Vassar and waved his short, heavy arm toward a chair.
“Won’t you sit down, sir?” he asked coldly.
With mechanical precision he opened a jeweled cigarette box and extended it.
“Thanks,” Vassar answered carelessly, “I have a cigar.”
He struck a match on his heel, lit the cigar and seated himself leisurely.
Waldron sat down opposite and began his attack without delay.
“Miss Holland has just informed me that you are unalterably opposed to woman’s suffrage?”
“Until I see it differently, I am,” was the tense reply.
“I take it then that it will be a waste of words for us to discuss that question?”
“Yes—and before we waste words on any other question I must ask whom you represent in this conference concerning my career?”
“I’ll tell you with pleasure,” was the quick answer. “I am perhaps the largest contributor to the cause of woman’s suffrage—”
“Do you believe in it?” Vassar interrupted sharply.
Waldron weighed his answer and spoke with metallic emphasis.
“Whether I do or do not is beside the mark for the moment. You have settled that issue between us, and my views are of no importance. I am pressing for a woman’s victory for a more important reason than my faith in her ballot or my lack of faith in its ultimate effects. The immediate result of women’s vote will be to make war remote. My big purpose is to prevent this nation from sinking into the abyss of militarism in which Europe now flounders—”
“In other words,” Vassar broke in, “you mean to prevent this country from preparing to defend herself from the power of Imperial Europe?”
Waldron searched his opponent for a moment of intense silence and slowly answered:
“If you care to put it that way—yes. I representthe combined forces of peace and sanity in this nation. We have determined that America shall not be cursed by the military caste. We are determined that our country shall not follow in the mad blind race of the Old World in building armaments with which to murder our fellow men. I have made no secret of my purpose and I am going to win. I am going to defeat your bill to place our army and navy on the footing of war-cursed Europe—”
“My bill does not propose to establish a military caste,” Vassar protested. “It only demands a trained citizen soldiery for adequate defense, armed and ready to enter the field, an effective wall of patriotic fire if we are assailed. I ask a navy that will be absolutely sure to sink the fleet of any power that may attack us. I do not ask that this fleet shall be in constant commission, only that it shall be built and ready for service.”
“Your demand is preposterous,” Waldron coldly answered. “You ask for a bond issue of $500,000,000 for naval purposes only—”
“Anything less will be inadequate. We are behind the world in guns, behind the world in aircraft, behind the world in submarines. We invented the aeroplane. We invented the machine gun. We invented the iron-clad. We invented the submarine. We must lead theworld in these arms of defense—not follow, the last lame duck in the march! Aninadequatenavy no matter how great its size is worse than none. It will merely lead us into trouble and murder our defenders. War is now a merciless science. Skill, not physical courage, wins. The machine has become the master of the world—”
“Please!” Waldron cried with hand uplifted in a gesture of impatience. “I know your speech by heart. It’s old. It doesn’t interest me. Come to the point. If you’ll agree as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs to modify your bill to train and arm a million citizen soldiers, and reduce your naval programme to two battleships, four cruisers, twenty-four submarines and twenty-four aeroplanes, we can come to terms—”
Vassar rose, fixed his opponent with a searching look and said:
“I’ll see you in hell first—”
“All right,” Waldron snapped. “I’m going to wipe you off the map. There’ll be a new chairman of your Committee when Congress meets in December—”
Vassar held his enemy with a steady gaze.
“You haven’t enough dirty money to buy my district, Waldron,” he answered. “We’re a humble people on the East Side, but I’ll show you that there are some things in this town that are not for sale—”
A smile of contempt played about the banker’s cold lips as he rose.
“I’ll be there when you make the demonstration,” he responded with careful emphasis.
“You’ll excuse me now?” Vassar said politely.
“Certainly. My car will drop you at any address you name.”
“Thank you, I prefer the subway.”
“As you like,” the metallic voice clicked.
VASSARturned with a quick movement, passed into the hall and ran squarely into Virginia who was about to enter the library.
“Your interview at an end so soon? I took a turn in the garden for only five minutes. I was to join your conference. You have quarreled?”
“No—just agreed to fight, that’s all—”
“A compromise is impossible?”
“Utterly—”
“I am sorry,” she answered gravely.
The iron doors of the elevator softly opened with a low click and two slender young men of decidedly foreign features stepped briskly out, accompanied by the tall, straight figure of Villard. They crossed the hall and ascended the broad stairway as if at home. The clothes of the younger men were fitted with extreme care. The waist line was gracefully modeled. It was evident that they both wore corsets. They walked with the quick, measured tread of the trained soldier. From their yachting caps it was evident they had just entered the house through the tunnel from the river landing.Their slight waxed mustaches particularly caught Vassar’s attention and brought a smile of contempt. Undoubtedly they were the pampered darlings of a foreign court, friends of Waldron’s whom he was cultivating for some purpose. The Congressman wondered what the devil they could be doing in America when all the Old World was at war? He also wondered who Villard was—Villard with his fierce upturned mustache after the style of von Hindenberg. They might be South Americans or from the Balkan states of course. Waldron’s banking house was one of the international group and his agents came from every corner of the globe.
When they had passed Virginia quietly asked:
“May I go downtown with you?”
In the tumult of anger that still raged within over Waldron’s challenge the incongruity of the proposal struck him with new force. The offer seemed almost brazen. Under conditions of a normal environment it would have meant nothing more than a pretty attempt to console him in an hour of disappointment. Coming at the moment of his departure from the sinister establishment of the man he hated, it struck him as suggestive of a secret understanding between the two.
His one desire now was to be alone and breathe clean air.
“You’ll not like the long rough walk to the subway I’m afraid,” he protested.
“You will not return in the car?” she asked in surprise.
“I prefer to walk—”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” she answered firmly. “You’ll go with me—and I’m not going to walk.”
“You must excuse me”—he persisted.
“I will not. And I’ll never speak to you again unless you obey my orders for this one afternoon at least.”
He searched her face to see if she meant it, caught the look of determination and answered in quick tones of apology.
“Of course, if you really wish it, you know that it will give me pleasure—”
Virginia returned to the library, spoke to Waldron and in a few minutes they were again seated by each other’s side swiftly gliding down the Drive.
“Stop at the Claremont,” she called to the chauffeur. “I’m starved. We would have had lunch served in the library if your lordship had not been so proud and particular—”
“I couldn’t eat at Waldron’s table. I’d choke,” he answered in low tones.
“I’m afraid you’re not a good politician after all,”she observed. “You are too emotional. You allow your temperament to betray you into errors of diplomacy. You should have cultivated Waldron, flattered his vanity and studied his character—”
“I know it already—”
“I thought so at first myself,” she answered thoughtfully. “The more I see of him the less I know him. He’s a puzzle—”
“He’s merely an ape of foreign snobs—that’s all.”
“You utterly misjudge him,” Virginia protested. “He has too much strength for that. His ambitions are too great.”
“Then he’s more dangerous than I have thought.”
“What do you mean?” she asked in surprise.
“Nothing that I could put into words without making myself ridiculous in your eyes perhaps, yet the idea grows on me—”
Virginia laughed.
“You can’t do an opponent justice, can you?”
“No—can you?”
The car swept gracefully up the roadway to the rose-embowered white cottage on the hill. They leaped out and found a table in the corner overlooking the majestic sweep of the river and Jersey hills beyond.
Vassar was moody in spite of the inspiring view and the radiant face opposite. Again and again he triedto pull himself out of the dumps and enjoy this wonderful hour with the most fascinating woman he had ever met. It was no use. Waldron’s frozen smile, his royal establishment, his corseted pets, his big friend with the fierce mustache, his white yacht and the soft click of the doors of that elevator filled his mind with sinister suggestions.
“I’m so disappointed in you,” Virginia said at last.
“Why?”
“I’d planned to relax a little this afternoon. It’s Saturday you know. I thought you might be human enough just to play for a few hours. I wanted to find the real man side of you—not the statesman or the politician—”
“To study me under the microscope as another specimen of the species and plan my extermination?”
“No—to get acquainted in the simplest kind of old-fashioned way. But I see it’s no use today. You’re a greater enigma to me than Waldron. But I’m not going to be beaten so easily. I’m going to find you out now that I’ve made up my mind. I’ve a proposal to make before we begin the scrap in your district—”
“A proposal?” he asked mischievously.
“Yes! It’s hardly decent I know. Anyhow, I’m not wholly responsible for it. You’ve made a wonderful hit with my old soldier Dad. He has talkednothing else but your bill for an adequate national defense. He has positively ordered me to make you our guest for a couple of weeks at our country place on Long Island—”
Vassar blushed like a schoolboy.
“I should be only too happy—”
“I warn you that the Old Guard will talk you into a spell of sickness about war and the certainty of this country being captured by the Germans or Japs—”
“He can’t say too much to me on that subject,” Vassar declared.
“And if you’ll bring your father and the children I’m sure we could keep you until I’ve wormed the last secret out of you—”
“It wouldn’t be imposing on you?”
“You would do us a favor. Zonia would keep Billy at home. Marya and your father would be an endless source of joy to my mother. We’ve a big old house and a lot of vacant rooms. You’ll bring them all?”
“My dear Miss Holland,” he answered gratefully, “you overwhelm me with your kindness. My father and the kids have never been so honored. You will make them supremely happy—”
“You see,” Virginia interrupted, “I’ve a scheme back of this invitation. I’ve not only determined to find you out, but I’m a politician whether you like it or not.I’m going to make it just as difficult as I possibly can for you to fight me. You’ll walk into the trap with your eyes wide open—”
“I absolve you from all responsibility for my ruin,” he laughed.
“You’ll join us at Babylon on Sunday?”
“Tomorrow?”
“The sooner the better. We go down this evening—”
The clouds suddenly lifted. Vassar couldn’t keep his face straight. He was so happy it was absurd. An hour ago he was in the depths of despair. The foundations of the nation’s life were sinking. The sky had cleared. The sun was sparkling on the waters of the river in dazzling splendor. The world was beautiful and the country safe.
His mind was planning absurd programs for each day. He wondered for just a moment if she could be capable of plotting with Waldron to remove him from the district for two weeks, to lay the foundations of a movement to wreck his career—
He looked into the depths of her brown eyes and threw the ugly thought to the winds.
VASSARdetermined that every day of the two weeks at Babylon should be red lettered in his life. He had never taken a vacation; nor had his father. It was time to adopt this good custom of the country. It was mid-July. The campaign would not really be under way until October. There was nothing to worry about. Neither the suffragettes with their organization nor Waldron with his money could break his hold on the hearts of his people.
He gave himself up to the sheer joy of living for the first time in life. Through the long glorious early days he drove with Virginia in her little dogcart about the beautiful country roads of Long Island. He had never dreamed the panoramas of ravishing landscape that stretched away in endless beauty. He found gentle hills and valleys, babbling brooks and shady woods and always seaward the solemn white sand dunes of the beach and the changing mirror of the bay reflecting their shining forms. On days when the wind was right the far-away roar of the surf could be distinctly heard.
Each day alone with the charming and brilliantwoman by his side had led him deeper and deeper into the mazes of a fascination that had become resistless. They talked with deep earnestness of the great things of life and eternity. She made no effort to conceal her keen personal interest in the man she was studying.
With deliberate purpose she had abandoned herself to the romantic situation of being sought and courted by a handsome, fascinating man. He wondered vaguely if she were experimenting with her own character, and merely using him for the moment for the purpose of chemical reaction? He shivered at the uncanny idea. It was disconcerting. She might be capable of such a gruesome process. For the life of him he couldn’t make out as yet whether such a woman was capable of real passion.
There was no longer any doubt about his own situation. He had faced the fact squarely. He was in love—madly, passionately, hopelessly—the one grand passion of mature manhood. Its violence frightened him. He was afraid to put it to the test with a declaration. He must wait and be sure of a response on her part. There was too much at stake to bungle such an issue. If he could win her by surrender on the suffrage question, he would give her two ballots if she wanted them. He knew her character too well to believe that such ignoble surrender of principle merely to please couldsucceed. She would accept his help in her cause and despise him for a weakling in her heart.
As the time drew near that he must go he knew with increasing fear the supreme hour of life had struck. He must put his fate to the test. He took his seat in a rowboat facing her and drifted into the silver sea of moon, fully determined. An hour passed and he had only spoken commonplace nothings. With each effort his courage grew weaker.
If she were like other girls he would have dared it. “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady,” he kept repeating as he tried in vain to screw his mind up to the point of speech. It was no use. She was not the fair lady of song and story. She had a disconcerting way of demanding the reason for things.
He gave it up at last and spent an evening of supreme happiness drifting and listening to the soft round flute-like notes of her voice. He would speak tomorrow. They had two days more. Tomorrow they were to take a long ride down the smooth road to Southampton in her little runabout. She was an expert at the wheel of an automobile and they had explored the whole south side of Long Island in the past five days.
He had grown to love the peace and charm of this wonderful isle—homes—homes—homes—everywhere! laughing children played beside the roadways. Smilingboys and girls made hill and valley ring with joy.
He had promised Zonia and Marya to take the cottage across the turnpike in front of the spacious lawn of the Holland homestead and let them spend the summer there. His father had joined in their clamor and he had consented. The cottage was furnished and a power launch went with it for a reasonable rent. They were to move down next week. There would be but two days’ break in the new life they had begun in this fairyland of sun and sky, trees and flowers, laughing waters and shining seas.
Why should he press his suit? He would wait and see more of her. And then the crisis came that hurled him headlong into a decision.