“I had reserved higher honors for you!” he shouted. “You’re not worth it—go with your man!”
MRS.HOLLANDrallied from her swoon and Marya helped her to rise as Zonia shouted joyfully: “Come quick! He’s alive—he’s alive!”
Billy opened his eyes feebly and raised his hand to the ugly wound in his breast. Zonia caught it, bent and kissed him.
Mrs. Holland staggered to the group and knelt by their side.
“Oh—my boy—you’ll live—I feel it—I know it. God has heard my prayer—”
She paused and turned to Marya—
“Go, darling, quick—bring some water and tell Peter to come.”
Marya darted across the lawn, entered the house, summoned Peter and seized a glass of water.
In ten minutes the faithful old butler had carried Billy from the lawn and was leading the stricken group toward the road for New York.
Vassar’s trick succeeded. He reached his post without interference, thrust Virginia into the edge of thedense hedgerow and waited until the guards had returned to their places. Not a moment was to be lost.
He seized her hand and rushed down the street lit by the glare of burning houses.
“Play your part now!” he commanded. “It’s the only way and it’s safe. It’s the order of the night’s work.”
They pushed through mobs of panic-stricken fleeing refugees and groups of drunken soldiers revelling in every excess. Again and again they passed brutes with captive girls as their prey. Some had them tied with cords. Others relied on a blow from their fists to insure obedience.
They waved their congratulations to Vassar and his captive as they passed.
They reached the outskirts of the town without accident and ran into the stream of horror-stricken humanity that was pouring now toward New York.
A great murmur of mingled anguish, rage and despair rolled heavenward. It seemed a part of the leaping flames and red billowing smoke of the burning city behind them.
Lost children were crying for their parents and trudging hopelessly on with the crowd.
A farmer with a horrible wound across his foreheadwas pushing a wheelbarrow bearing his mangled child. Beside the body sat a little three-year-old girl clutching a blood-smeared doll.
A big automobile came shrieking through this crowd of misery. Beside the chauffeur sat an officer in glittering uniform, behind two soldiers, their bayonets flashing in the glare of the conflagration. In the rear seat alone, in magnificent uniform with gold epaulets and cords, sat the Governor-General of the fallen nation.
Waldron saw Virginia with a look of surprise and rage and lifted his hand. The car stopped instantly. The guard sprang out and opened the door of the tonneau.
“Quick!” Virginia whispered. “He has seen me. He will recognize you—run for your life!”
“I’ll not leave you to that beast’s mercy—”
“Run—run I tell you, if you love me!” she cried in agony. “I can take care of myself now. I’ll manage Waldron—and I know how to die!”
He gripped her hand fiercely.
With sudden resolution, she tore from his grasp and rushed to meet her rescuer.
Vassar no longer hesitated. She had made it impossible for him to linger a moment. He leaped the fence and disappeared in the shadows.
Waldron grasped Virginia’s hand in genuine surprise and distress.
“My dear Miss Holland,” he said with a touch of royal condescension, “what does this mean?”
“I was a prisoner,” she gasped.
“A prisoner?”
“The brute who ran had seized and dragged me from the lawn and through the streets.”
“I’m proud and happy in this chance to prove to you my devotion. You have treated me cruelly. I show you tonight my generosity.”
“Thank you,” she murmured gratefully.
With a lordly bow he handed her into the car and ordered his chauffeur to drive down the turnpike toward the Holland house.
The home was in flames. The Colonel had fired it in revenge for the death of his Lieutenant and sought new headquarters for the night.
Virginia found her mother, Zonia, Marya—with old Peter nearby holding Billy in his lap—standing in dazed horror watching the flames leap and roar and crackle.
Waldron helped the stricken mother and girl into his car.
Virginia lifted her white face.
“My father was shot—”
“Tonight?”
“Yes—”
Waldron turned sharply to a guard.
“Find his body. It can’t be far and bring it to New York for burial.”
“If you will permit me, Miss Holland,” Waldron said with a stately bow, “I will take you and your mother to your house on the Square. I fear it has been looted by the soldiery who got out of hand for a few hours. But you will be safe there from tonight. I will place a guard at your door. You are under my protection now—”
“Thank you! Thank you,” Virginia answered in low tones.
The Governor-General drove by the army headquarters, spoke for a moment to the Commander-in-chief, arranged the programme for the triumphal entry into the city, secured a cavalry escort and leisurely drove back into New York through miles of weary plodding, stunned and maimed refugees still fleeing before the savage sweep of the imperial army.
He placed Virginia and her mother in their wrecked home and stationed a guard at the door.
With lordly condescension he took her hand in parting:
“Please remember, Miss Holland, that I’m the mostpowerful man in America today. My word is law, and I am yours to command.”
“You are generous,” she answered softly.
He lifted his hand in protest, bowed and took his seat again in his automobile.
Virginia stood beside a broken window and watched the swiftly galloping horses of his escort sweep past the little park toward Broadway.
She walked with wide staring eyes through the litter of broken furniture, a dim resolution slowly shaping itself in her soul. It came in a moment’s inspiration—the way of deliverance at last. Her heart gave a cry of joy. The nails of her slender fingers cut the flesh as she gripped her hands in the fierce decision.
“I’ll do it—I’ll do it!” she breathed with uplifted head and chalk-white face.
VASSARsucceeded in making his way to Fort Hamilton and joined General Hood. He had cut his way through Waldron’s garrison which had mobilized in Brooklyn to join its levies with the invading army.
General Hood disbanded the handful of surviving officers and men and ordered each individual to join him at a secret rendezvous on the plains of Texas. He kept intact two companies of cavalry for an escort. He would take his chances with these by avoiding the fallen cities.
He placed final orders to his faithful secret service men in New York in Vassar’s hands.
“You wish to stay a few days in New York. All right. Disguise yourself, travel by rail and join me later. Tell our people everywhere to play the fox, submit, take their oath of allegiance, and wait my orders. They’ll come in due time. I’m going to retreat to the Sierra Nevadas if necessary and get ready.”
Vassar pressed the General’s hand.
“You will surrender the forts?”
“Certainly. I shall leave them intact. We’ll need them again.”
“I could blow them up. It would be foolish. The city they were built to defend is lost for the moment. The submarines are already lying in the harbor and hold the Navy Yard.”
With a quick pressure of hand the men parted. The General embarked his cavalry on a small army transport that lay under the guns of Fort Hamilton, slipped to sea at night and sailed for Galveston.
Vassar reached New York disguised as a Long Island truck farmer. He drove a wagon loaded with vegetables, circled Stuyvesant Square next morning and called his produce for sale.
He looked for an agonized moment at his battered house, snapped the iron weight strop on his horse’s bridle and rushed up the stairs.
The wreck within was complete and appalling.
He hurried across the Square to the Holland house. He was sure that Waldron would give his protection.
He could kill him for it and yet he thanked God Virginia was safe. Waldron loved her. He knew it by an unerring intuition. He would use his wealth and dazzling power again to win her. He knew that too by the same sixth sense.
He couldn’t succeed! If ever a woman loved, Virginia Holland loved him. With her kind it was once for life.
And yet he trembled at the thought of what such a brute might do when every appeal had failed. Would he dare to use his power to force her to his will? Such things had been done by tyrants. A new day was dawning in a world that once was the home of freedom—the day of the jailer, tyrant, sycophant, and soldier who asks no questions.
It strangled him to think that he must leave her here. He wouldn’t! He would make her come with Marya, Zonia and her mother into the West and take her place in the field by his side.
The thought thrilled him with new life.
In ten minutes he was holding her in his arms—war and death, poverty and ruin lost in love’s mad rapture.
“You must come with me, my own!” he breathed. “I will find a tent for you on the great free plains—you, your mother, and Marya and Zonia. You can follow when I send you the word—”
She shook her head sadly.
“No, my lover, I cannot surrender to our enemies like that—my place is here.”
“Your life is not safe in Waldron’s hands.”
“I’m in God’s hands. I have work to do. You shall do yours on the plains training our brave boys for the day that shall surely come. I must do mine here—”
“I can’t leave you!” he protested bitterly.
“You must. My mother can’t live. I know this. The shock of a journey would kill her. Marya and Zonia shall be my sisters.”
For half an hour he pleaded in vain. There was but one answer.
“My work is here. I’ve thought it out to the end. I shall not fail. I’ll tell you when I’m ready and you will come then—”
There was an inspiration, a lofty spirit of exaltation, in her speech that hushed protest.
He pressed her lips.
“I will not see you again,” he said at last. “My coming is dangerous to us both. My work is done today. We may be watched by other eyes than Waldron’s guard on your block—”
“I am grateful for his help. I shall be sorry for him when the day I dream comes. But it must come. I have betrayed my country by folly beyond God’s forgiveness. I shall do my part now to retrieve that error—”
Vassar moved uneasily.
“You shall know and approve—and I shall not fail!”
She paused and held his gaze with a strange, glowing light in her eyes—the light of religious enthusiasm. It filled him with fear and thrilled him with hope. Her faith was contagious.
“You cannot work here—“ she went on, “a price is on your head.”
He left her at the door, the same dreamy brilliance in her sensitive face. She stood as if in a trance. He wondered what it meant—what her mysterious work was going to be?
THREEdays later the magnificent imperial army entered the fallen metropolis, its scarlet, gold-embossed standards flying, its bands playing.
Waldron marched to meet them at the head of twenty-five thousand picked men of his garrison. His division more than made good the losses of battle.
When the grand march began at the entrance of the Queensboro Bridge—one hundred and sixty-five thousand men were in line. The immensity of the spectacle stunned the imagination of the curious thousands that pressed close to the curbs and watched them pass. When the German army entered Antwerp in the world war, the streets were absolutely deserted save for stray dogs and cats that howled from wrecked buildings. New York was consumed by a quenchless eagerness to look on their conquerors.
All day from seven o’clock in the morning until dark the torrent of brown kahki poured through Fifty-ninth Street and down Fifth Avenue. When the Avenue was filled by the solid ranks from Central Park to theWashington Arch, the imperial host at a given signal raised their shout of triumph.
“For God and Emperor!”
Until this moment they had moved in a silence that was uncanny. Their long-pent feelings gave the united yell of a hundred and sixty thousand an unearthly power. They shouted in chorus first from every regiment in one grand burst of defiant pride. And then they shouted by regiments, beginning with the first. The shout leaped from regiment to regiment until it swept the entire line far out on the plains of Long Island. Each marching host tried to lift the note higher until the frenzied bursts came with the shock of salvos of artillery.
And then they sang the songs of their grand army on the march. For an hour their voices rang the death knell of freedom while conquered thousands stood in awed silence.
Waldron moved at the head of the column on his white horse in gorgeous uniform. Beside him rode in service suit the Commander-in-chief on a black Arabian stallion with arched neck and sleek, shining sides.
The ceremonies at the City Hall were brief. The grand procession never paused. Timed to a dot, the lines had divided as they passed the cross streets leading to our great tunnels. At Forty-second Street adivision swung into the Grand Central Station to entrain for service in the interior. The cars were waiting with steam up and every man at his place under the command of army officers.
At Thirty-fourth Street another division swung into the Pennsylvania Station. At Twenty-third Street another swept toward the Lackawanna and the Erie. At Fourteenth Street another swung toward the Chelsea piers, where transports were waiting to bear them to Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, New Orleans, Jacksonville and Galveston.
These transports had been seized in the harbor. The great armada was already loading the second division of a hundred and sixty thousand more men at the wharves of Europe. The imperial army of occupation would consist of a million veterans. They would be landed now without pause until the work was done. A fleet of a hundred submarines lay in wait for our Pacific fleet in the Straits of Magellan. Its end was sure.
The conquest was complete, overwhelming, stunning. The half-baked desperate rebellions that broke out in various small towns where patriotism was a living thing were stamped out with a cruelty so appalling they were not repeated. At the first ripple of trouble the town was laid in ashes, its population of males massacred, itswomen outraged and driven into the fields to crawl to the nearest village and tell the story. One short-lived victory marked the end.
The Virginians raised an army of volunteer cavalry, led by a descendant of Jeb Stuart raided and captured Washington. The garrison were taken by complete surprise at three o’clock before daylight. The fight was at close quarters and the enemy was annihilated.
A battle cruiser promptly swept up the Potomac from the Chesapeake Bay, opened with her huge guns and reduced our capital to a pile of broken stone. Incendiary shells completed the work and two days later the most beautiful city in America lay beneath the Southern skies a smouldering ash-heap. The proud shaft of shining marble to the memory of George Washington was reduced to a mass of pulverized stone. A crater sixteen feet in depth gaped where its foundations had rested.
An indemnity was levied on New York that robbed the city of every dollar in every vault and sent its famous men into beggared exile. Waldron’s list of proscription for banishment included every leader in the world of finance, invention and industry.
He had marked every man with a genius for political leadership for a term of ten years’ imprisonment.Exile was too dangerous an experiment for these trouble-makers. They were safer in jail. Ten years in darkness and misery would bring them to reason.
The world’s war had cost the Imperial Federation a staggering total of thirty billions. Waldron promised his royal master to replace every dollar of this loss within five years by a system of confiscation and taxes. His first acts of plunder sent treasure ships to Europe bearing fifteen billions. The revenue from all the confiscated railroads, mines, and great industries taken over by the new government would reduce taxation in Europe to a trifle.
When the conquest was complete the net result was that Imperial Europe had fenced in a continent with bristling cannon. Inside the inclosure were a hundred million of the most intelligent and capable slaves the world had seen since the legions of Rome conquered Greece and enslaved her artists and philosophers.
There was no pause in the ruthless work until the last spark of resistance had been stamped out.
By one of the strange ironies of fate the fiercest of the futile rebellions broke out on the East Side of New York, where the attempt was made completely to disarm our half-baked foreign population. The men who sulked in the tenement districts below the Bowery had been accustomed to fight constituted authority in theOld World from habit. The first squad of soldiers sent into this quarter to disarm them had never returned. Not one of their bodies were found.
When a regiment with machine guns rushed in they found the side streets below Fourteenth barricaded with piles of trucks and lumber. From every window they received a hail of bullets.
A battery of artillery cleared the barricades and the slaughter began. After four hours of butchery in the streets, the commander discovered that the old Tenth Regiment Armory was crowded. More than a thousand women and children accustomed to attend Vassar’s school of patriotism had sought refuge there.
The children had found the flags and their mothers in foolish superstition had pinned them on their breasts for protection—the flag they had been taught to love!
The Imperial Guard turned their artillery on the armory and tore the flimsy front wall into fragments. When the screaming children and frantic women rushed through the breach, a withering fire from the pompoms piled their writhing bodies on the blood-soaked pavements.
Benda had been killed in the second intrenchments on Long Island. Angela faced the storm of lead at the door, holding her boy behind her back to shield him from the bullets.
A shell exploded inside and a fragment buried itself in the child’s breast. The mother felt the stinging shock and heard the thud of the iron crash into the soft flesh.
The boy made no cry. The iron had torn through his heart. The little hand was lifted feebly and clutched the tiny flag that covered his breast.
With a cry of anguish she clasped the bleeding bundle of flesh in her arms, ran through the building and found her way into the darkened basement.
When the building was cleared the commander entered with a squad of soldiers, lighted a cigarette and inspected the ruins.
On the blackboards still were standing in clear white chalk the sentences and mottoes Vassar had written:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
The Commander laughed and wrote beneath it:
BUT YOU COULDN’T STOP A SIXTEEN-INCH SHELL WITH HOT AIR!
The men cheered.
On the next blackboard stood the words:
LIBERTY—EQUALITY—FRATERNITY.
The officer struck a line through each word and wrote beneath:
AUTHORITY—OBEDIENCE—EFFICIENCY.
“A battery of artillery cleared the barricades and the slaughter began”“A battery of artillery cleared the barricades and the slaughter began”
Again the soldiers cheered.
Within three months the fallen nation had been completely disarmed and rendered helpless.
The penalty of death was enforced against everyone who dared to conceal a pistol, rifle, shotgun or piece of explosive. The manufacturing plants making arms and ammunition were under the control of the invaders.
They not only controlled these gun and shell factories, they took possession of every chemical laboratory and every piece of machinery that could be used to make explosives. It was no more possible to buy a piece of dynamite for any purpose than to buy a forty-two centimeter siege gun. All blasting for building and commercial purposes was done by an officer, who charged well for his services.
Every street railway and trunk line was manned by the army. The ammunition factories were all working with double shifts of American laborers, compelled by their conquerors to turn out shells for future use against their fellow-countrymen.
Every newspaper, magazine and publishing-house had installed an Imperial censor. Not a line was allowed to be printed under penalty of death except by his order.
Freedom of speech and press was relegated to the dust heap as dead heresies against constituted authority.The people were only told what their masters permitted them to hear. Our press, of course, was unanimous in its praise of the new Imperial régime. “Law,” “Order,” and “Efficiency” were the new watchwords of America. The people were not asked to do any thinking. Their masters did it for them, their part was to obey.
Waldron determined to make Virginia Holland the leader of a new woman’s party to proclaim the blessings of the imperial and aristocratic form of government.
He honored her with an invitation to his palace to discuss his scheme. When Virginia received the perfumed, crested note, her cheeks flushed with joy.
“Thank God!” she murmured fervently.
VIRGINIAhad just dressed in dead black for her visit to the palace of the Governor-General on the Heights. Waldron insisted on sending a state automobile. The machine was at the door with liveried flunkies standing in stiff servant attitudes.
A slender Italian woman passed them with a listless stare and rang the bell of the Holland house.
Virginia answered. She had seen the somber figure from the window.
“Angela!” she cried in surprise.
“Si. Signorina, I may see—you?”
“Yes”—was the quick, sympathetic answer.
The drooping figure shambled to a seat and dropped.
“Tell me—what has happened?” Virginia urged.
“You see the papers?”
“About the riots on the East Side—yes—the people were very foolish—”
The woman leaned close—her breath coming in deep quivering draughts.
“They kill my bambino—signorina! The shell torehis little heart all out—see! I bring the flag he wore—all red with blood. And now I come to you—you speak so grand, I want my revenge—”
She paused, strangled with emotion.
“I keep this flag and I love it too! I will kill and kill and kill! You will tell me how? They kill your father—they kill your brother—you tell me, Signorina! We fight now—you and me—we fight for this flag—is it not so?”
She held in her hand the blood-stained emblem.
Virginia took the stricken mother in her arms and sobbed with her.
“Come with me,” she said in low tones, leading the way to the sitting-room in the rear. She closed the doors, and pressed Angela to her knees.
Into the ears of the kneeling woman she whispered an oath.
“You swear?”
“By the mother of God and all the Saints!” came the quick answer.
For ten minutes Virginia gave instructions in tones so low that they could not be heard even by the keenest ear at her door.
There was a light of wild joy in the swarthy face as she rose.
“Now—I live—I breathe—Signorina! Si—si. Iunderstand! I take the little organ and monkey. I go. I see all the people. I whisper to those I trust. We meet. I go again to West Side and do the same. I go everywhere and I tell you. Si—si. Iliveagain!”
She threw her arms about Virginia, held her in silence and left with quick, eager step—the light of purpose flashing in her dark eyes.
THEGovernor-General received Virginia in royal state. His manner was gracious and genial. He led her to a seat in his great library and closed the doors. The royal guard took his stand outside.
“I told you, Miss Holland,” he began eagerly, “that I had high ambitions. You see that I am a man of my word. Of course, the thing that happened was inevitable. It was written in the book of Fate. Had I not seized the reins—another would. Conditions made my coup possible. For the excesses of the Imperial Conquering Army I have no words in palliation. Such is war. Had I known the peril of your father and mother, I assure you I would have hurried to their rescue—you believe me when I say this?”
“I am sure of it, now,” she answered promptly.
“I hurried to Babylon the moment I learned that the defense had collapsed and our troops were victorious—”
He paused and leaned closer.
“I want to apologize for the unpardonable blunderI made the last time we met in this house. I did not realize then how deeply and madly I love you. In anguish I learned it too late. But I have bided my time. I have lived to prove my devotion in the hour of your peril and I have only begun what I wish to do for you—”
Again he paused, his eyes devouring her pensive beauty.
“I had rather win you than rule the Empire that’s mine. I would win as a man woos and wins the one woman he loves—you believe me when I say this?”
“Yes,” was the frank reply. “I believe now that you are in dead earnest.”
“Good. I don’t ask if you love me. I know that you do not. I do not ask you to marry me immediately. I know that I must first win your regard. I prize you all the more for this reason—”
“Man-like, of course,” Virginia interrupted with a smile.
“First, I wish to pay you personally the highest tribute a man in my position can give to any man or women. I am going to offer you the second highest place in the Empire next to mine. Your fortune has disappeared in the wreck of war. You shall rebuild it tenfold through the work I shall place in your hands.My first ambition now is really to pacify the mind of the States. It can be done through our women.
“I appeal to your reason. Here is the situation. The last hope of successful rebellion has been stamped out. The millions of America, completely disarmed, are helpless to resist our army of occupation. I wish, not only to complete the crushing of the last hope of insurrection; it is my ambition to convince the people that the central monarchical and aristocratic form of government is the only natural order of life and therefore a divine law.
“The quick intuitions of women have been always more open to this truth than the more brutal and anarchistic male mind. Women have always been the bulwark of aristocracy and imperial monarchy. Man is an anarchist—woman a royalist by instinct.
“The American democracy was only an accident of time and space. The oceans are now the King’s highway and he owns them by right of eminent domain. Democracy can never survive this bringing of the ends of the earth together. Democracy cannot live because when brought face to face with the monarchical form it is not worthy to live. The United States of America gave the human race the one supreme example of a weak, corrupt and contemptible government. The like of it was never known before in the history of man.
“Democracy is a disease—a form of crowd egomania which drives millions of people mad with the insane delusion that they have been called of God to do something for which they are utterly unfitted.
“All government worthy of the name must be conducted by a few brilliant minds—divine leaders—presided over by a supreme leader whom we call emperor or king. This is true in so-called democracies. The people only pretend to govern—imagine that they govern. They do not. A few master minds and brutal wills do it for them. Hence the system of bosses whose foul record we have ended forever.
“No nation can have an art or literature unless monarchical and aristocratic—America has never had a literature. It will have one only when its conscious life is reincarnated in the soul of a sovereign who takes his crown from God, not man.
“The people of this country were never fit to govern themselves. They got the kind of government they deserved. In Central Europe government has long been reduced to a science. Their cities are clean—their life as orderly as the movement of the stars.
“The monarchical form of government only can answer the questions of Socialism. Germany did this a generation ago. When the world-war came theSocialists were as loyal to the Emperor as the proudest prince of the blood.
“The conquest of America has been the best thing that could have happened. Its battles were of minor importance. Had not a powerful Imperial government come to our rescue we would have been deluged in blood by a second French Revolution within this generation.
“The noblest minds in this country have felt this for years. They have gradually been turning in disgust from our corrupt legislatures, our corrupt courts, our corrupt municipalities, our rotten boroughs, our corrupt Congress. I tell you this to show you that I have been led by no weak or vulgar ambition into a betrayal of the liberties of a people. I believe in what I have done—believe in it with every ounce of my manhood. We owe the progress of the human race to aristocracy, not democracy. Democracy is the great leveler of the world—the destructive force that presses humanity downward and backward. Aristocracy is the inspiring power that leads, uplifts, creates and beckons onward and upward.
“All the achievements of thought and science are by the chosen few. The herd merely eats and sleeps and reproduces its kind. But for the pressure from their superiors the masses would all lapse to elemental savagery within a few brief generations—”
Waldron stopped suddenly and gazed on the placid waters of the Hudson.
Virginia watched him with genuine astonishment. He had revealed a new side of his strong character. She had not dreamed that his philosophy of life had been so logically wrought. She had not believed since his betrayal of his country that he had a philosophy of life at all.
“You astonish me beyond measure,” she said at last.
He smiled coldly.
“I understand. You did not think me capable of such sweeping thoughts or such close reasoning—confess it!”
“It’s true, I didn’t—”
“You know now that I am in earnest in my political ambitions also?”
“I’m thoroughly convinced—”
“Good! You are a woman of rare intelligence and high ambitions. It is therefore easy for me to speak, now that you know that I am sincere—”
He held her gaze in a moment’s searching silence.
“I may trust you now I’m sure with a secret that is not a secret if I should be accused.Youwill know that I mean something very definite when I say that this nation is too great, its resources too exhaustlessto remain forever a conquered province of Imperial Europe. Am I not right?”
“At least I hope so,” was the diplomatic reply.
“Exactly,” Waldron answered confidentially. “In other words the day will come when a political leader of supreme genius will win the utter loyalty and confidence of the soldiers who hold these millions in hand. The man who does that will ascend a throne in Washington in a palace worthy of a Continental Empire washed by two oceans—you understand?”
“I see!” Virginia breathed.
“Remember then, dear young lady, that I am your servant from today. If I have high ambitions and glorious dreams for my people and my country, I dream new glories for you—”
“And the commission you would offer me?” she asked steadily.
“That you organize the women of America into loyal legions who will sustain the government against the possible forces of anarchy and rebellion. If you will consider the offer I will place unlimited money at your command. The old régime is gone forever. You can help me now to organize a nobler one on its ruins.”
“And my reward?”
“I shall lay at your feet all that I am and have andever hope to be. I offer it now without condition if you will accept my hand in marriage—”
“Your commission I accept at once,” was the prompt reply. “If I succeed we shall meet on terms more nearly equal.”
Waldron sprang to his feet, seized her hand and kissed it.
Could we have seen the expression of her white face when his lips touched her flesh he would not have smiled as he led her to the waiting car.
THEjails were crowded with our leading statesmen. The President and his Cabinet had been transferred to Fort Warren at Boston before the Capitol was destroyed.
The Honorable Plato Barker, for reasons deemed sufficient by the Governor-General, was placed in the United States penitentiary at Albany. In spite of his mania for peace, Waldron thoroughly mistrusted him. His passion for oratorical leadership he knew to be insatiate. What fool scheme he might advocate in secret could not be guessed. In vain Barker offered to take the iron-clad Imperial oath. Waldron was deaf to all entreaties even when the petition was borne to him by the officer of the army who had captured the silver-tongued leader and made him a scullion. Villard, the Commanding General, had allowed Barker to deliver Sunday lectures to his soldiers on harmless themes of Chautauqua fame. The Commander had grown to like the orator as a harmless sort of court jester. He was particularly fond of his illustrations and jokes. He declared that Barker had missed his calling—he should have been an evangelist or a clown.
Failing to release his favorite captive the General interceded to save his reason.
Barker could not endure the silence to which he had been doomed. His mind began to break under the strain. He was saved from madness by an order which permitted him to preach to the prisoners on Sunday.
His first discourse was on “The Extraordinary Food Value of Grape Juice.”
The men who were living on bread and water didn’t like it.
The lecture was interrupted by an incipient riot. He was compelled to drop the subject and stick to historical religion. He switched to a discourse on Saul of Tarsus, which was well received. It in no way mocked the appetites of his hearers.
Pike proved to be another proposition for his captor. He became so peevish and sullen that his taskmaster went out of his way to make his life unendurable. The bow-legged Commander not only continually repeated Pike’s former expressions on the dangers of being armed and the wickedness of being prepared for defense in the presence of the preacher while he danced attendance as a waiter at his headquarters, but he added insult to injury at last by forcing the advocate of peace to become an expert shot by daily target practice.
When Waldron ordered the doughty cavalry leader to St. Louis, he dragged Pike with him to continue his systematic torture. He piled the last straw on the little man’s back the day after their arrival in the new quarters by ordering him to don the uniform of the Emperor, join a firing squad and shoot a deserter.
The preacher refused point blank. To have his fun the General ordered two guardsmen to bring the rebel to his room and force him into the uniform—his horse was standing at the door saddled and ready to gallop to the field and watch Pike faint at the ordeal.
The General roared with laughter when he finally stood forth arrayed in the brown uniform of the army. The guardsmen in their shirtsleeves were laughing too. He had struggled manfully to prevent the outrage and they had only drawn the clothes on him by main force. It took the hostler at the door finally to win the contest.
“Cheer up, Cuthbert, you’ll soon be dead!” the officer cried.
The boys roared.
With a sudden panther leap Pike was on the General, snatched his automatic from his belt, shot him dead and killed the three men before they recovered from the shock.
With a second leap he was on the waiting horse and calmly galloped through the camp before the guards discovered the incident.
He found his way to General Hood’s headquarters in the Sierra Nevadas and reported for duty.
“Keep your uniform!” Hood laughed. “We’ll need it for scout work.”
“Sure I’ll keep it,” the preacher snapped—“and use it myself, sir! I’ll show them that my name’s Pike—not Piker!”
The General despatched him to the Coast on an important and dangerous mission.
VIRGINIAHOLLAND’Sconversion to the open advocacy of the principles of monarchy and aristocracy was Waldron’s first sensation in the campaign in which he began to destroy the American conception of liberty.
Her confession of faith was a liberal outline of the ideals which the Governor-General had proclaimed in his library. Waldron was elated at his complete triumph.
Her brief statement and appeal to the women of America to support her movement of loyalty he ordered printed in every newspaper in the country. It duly appeared on the front pages, accompanied by a portrait of the distinguished young convert.
Her first year’s engagements in organizing the Woman’s Imperial Legion of Honor covered the principal cities of every state.
Her appeal had been received by the women of America with secret rage, amazement and horror. The Government had commanded their attendance on her lectures. Her reception at first had been cold andformal. But her magnetic personality turned the tide. Within a month there was no hall large enough in America to hold the breathless throngs of women who hung on her words. And strangest of all, they cheered her with an enthusiasm that amazed Waldron.
His agents reported this enthusiasm with oft-repeated praise of her uncanny genius.
The secret of her popularity they had not dreamed. In each town she took into her confidence but one woman on whose love for country she could depend with absolute certainty. This woman she swore in secret to organize an inner circle whose name to them was the Daughters of Jael. The spies who followed her tour to report to the Governor-General never reached this inner circle. In it were taken under solemn oath those whose love for liberty was a religion.
The Daughters of Jael comprised only the wisest women leaders, and with them the strongest and most beautiful girls in the glory of youth from twenty to thirty years of age.
They were taught in secret two things—to keep their lithe young bodies hard and sun-tanned and learn to wield a steel knife whose blade was eight inches long, slender and keen. When a million had been sworn and trained the order would come to strike for freedom. The rank and file knew nothing of this purpose. Onlytheir leaders knew. Each had sworn to lay their souls and bodies a free offering on their country’s altar and to obey their commander’s word as the law of God.
It was two years from the beginning before Virginia ventured to meet her lover in a deep mountain gorge of the inner Sierras.
Their embrace was long and silent. They spoke at last in low, half-articulate sounds that only love could hear and know.
When the first wave of emotion had spent itself, she asked him eagerly:
“Your last invention—the aerial torpedo?”
“A failure like the rest!” he answered sadly. “Great inventions that revolutionize warfare have all required years to perfect—the iron-clad a generation, the submarine ten years, the aeroplane ten years. They required the genius of hundreds in their experiments and the lives of thousands. The hope of miraculous inventions in an hour of crisis is only the vain dream of the novelist. We have ceased to hope for such deliverance. We are training men to master the already perfected mechanism of the submarine—thousands of them. Lake, the inventor, is an admiral. We have a model at work six thousand feet above the sea. I command the Eagle’s Nest, the camp on a great mountain plateau where we are training thousands ofaviators. On another peak among the stars we are teaching men to use the range finders and swing big guns to strike a target at twelve miles. Most important of all we are teaching each and every man how to use cold steel at close range—”
“You fully accept my scheme then?” she interrupted.
“As an inspiration of God! The staff has tested it with a hundred hostile suppositions. It is sure to win if you can train a million girls to co-operate with us in the uprising, win to our cause one man in ten in the Imperial Army, and wield a knife with deadly power. The only question is, can you get those girls?”
“I have them already—”
“A million?”
“And more—I had to stop. I could have sworn another million.”
“We will be ready in three months—”
“You can have four—”
“You have fixed the date?”
“Yes. There can be but one—the Emperor’s birthday—”
Vassar clasped Virginia in his arms.
“Dearest—you’re inspired—I swear it!”
“I have positive assurance,” she went on eagerly, “that our girls have already won more than twohundred thousand soldiers of the enemy who will join us the night we strike. Every officer will be in his cups that night. A Belshazzar’s feast, with Waldron as their toastmaster!”
“And not merely in New York—“ he added, “but in every city in America—on every ship—in every aviation hangar and on board every submarine—once their guns are in our hands—!”
“We’ll take them—never fear—“ she cried.
“If we can only get our hands on half their rifles, half their machine guns, half the ships and half the aircraft we’ll win! The fiends of hell never fought as we shall fight! We’ll get them too—“ he stopped overwhelmed with emotion. “It’s the knife at close quarters in the dark, man to man, muscle and steel, and dauntless hearts, that will turn the trick. How little we’ve traveled after all our boasted science! All your girls will have to do is to get them drunk that night, rally your converts, strike down the outer guards—smuggle in a few guns and we’ll do the rest.
“We’ll give your men more than half their rifles,” Virginia promised. “And what’s more we will put their trained artillerymen, aviators and submarine experts out of commission to a man that night. We will detail two girls for each of these men—there’ll be no blunder—”
“There’s just one thing I don’t like—“ he broke in with clenched fists.
“Yes, I know, my lover!” she smiled.
“You’ve got to make love to those brutes, flatter and cajole them for weeks. You are risking what we hold more precious than life—”
“We have sworn to give as God has given us—all—”
“I don’t like it—I don’t like it!” he protested bitterly.
She slipped her arms about his neck. Her eyes sought his with yearning in their depths.
“Never speak or think that thought of me again, my own,” she whispered. “I, too, know how to die as well as you. This is the third and last lesson we shall teach the Daughters of Jael before the Day dawns! Those who give their honor will scorn the cheaper gift of life. The new sun will rise on a clean and glorious womanhood, redeemed by sorrow and humbled by a divine passion for country we could learn in no other school but this!”
She held him at arm’s length and slowly slipped her hands from his and waved him back.
“No more—until the Day dawns!”
“Until the Day dawns, my love!” he breathed tenderly.
She leaped on her pony and galloped into the solemn night alone—to deliver her orders to the Daughters of Jael for their third and final lesson.
THEpreparations for the grand celebration of the Conqueror’s birthday by the people of America were complete to the last detail at noon on the day preceding.
The Governor-General was determined to make this event an example in promptness, glorious display and perfect efficiency. How prompt and efficient its real managers were going to make it he could not dream!
Every suspicion of disloyalty had been put at rest by the eager enthusiasm with which the Woman’s Legion of Honor, with its five thousand chapters, had taken the lead in preparation under Virginia’s brilliant direction. For three months the most beautiful girls in America had vied with one another in courting the favor of the army for the approaching festival. From the Governor-General down to the sailors of the fleet our girls had eyes only for the Imperial Army uniforms.
The artillerymen, the aviators, and the submarine experts were the favorites. The conquerors began tofeel a contemptuous pity for the poor native devils their charms had put out of the running.
Even the chauffeurs and railroad officials were everywhere courted and fêted by the fair ones. Every railroad agent, conductor, dispatcher, and superintendent was an officer in the Imperial Army. These men, who had rarely shared the glory of the regular army, were particularly elated over their triumphs with the girls.
When the Day dawned every terminal and every train in America was decorated with the royal flags. The spirit of abandonment to joy in a strange, subdued mania swept the nation. Beneath it beat the throbbing hearts of a million Sons of the New Revolution and a million Daughters of Jael who had offered their souls and bodies a living sacrifice for the glory of the Day. The contagion of earnestness from these eager millions of young men and women set every heart to beating with expectant awe.
Angela received her final instructions at the Holland house at six o’clock. The magnificent display of fireworks would begin at eight-thirty, the dancing at nine-thirty, the banquet at eleven-thirty.
“You have a girl with every chauffeur?” Virginia asked sharply.
“Si, signorina—“ Angela paused and smiled.“And they have learned to drive, too—yes—they have had some fun these three months!”
“At the Seventy-first Armory, a girl for every sailor of the fleet?”
“For every one—”
“At the Twelfth Regiment?”
“For the birdmen’s chauffeurs—I have two—very prettiest girls—two for each—”
“At the Seventh Regiment?”
“A girl for every waiter to help them serve. My girls they help the waiters everywhere—”
A look of fierce triumph overspread the dark features of the little mother. Her eyes grew misty. She fumbled in her bosom and slowly drew out the blood-stained flag her boy had worn on his breast.
“And I have the flag, signorina! When I tear the red crown from the staff I wave this one and shout for my bambino.”
Virginia merely nodded. Her mind was sweeping the last possibility of accident.
“You haven’t been able to reach a single man among the wireless operators of the Woolworth tower?” she asked dreamily.
“Not one, signorina. The old devil up there don’t like the girls. He is not human—”
“There’s no help for it then,” she answered. “We’lltry another way. When all is ready attend me at the palace of the Governor-General. When the signal flashes from the Metropolitan tower I want the car I always drive at the door instantly—”
“Si, signorina—my chauffeur he like me very much—I must think of my bambino when I strike!”
“You will not fail?” Virginia sternly asked.
Angela touched the little flag and shook her head.
“Do not fear—I shall not fail!” She paused, bent close and whispered, “My chauffeur join our men, signorina—the Sergeant of the big guns, too. He swear to me the guns shall be ours!”
With a quick pressure of her hand Virginia hurried to enter the car of state which was already standing at the door.
The streets were thronged with thousands who talked in subdued tones. They had felt the iron hand on their throats too often during the past three years to abandon themselves to the occasion.
There were no screeching horns, no riotous boys and girls hurling confetti. Such crude expressions of liberty were forbidden.
Beneath the outer quiet slumbered the coming volcano.
Virginia drove to the Waldorf-Astoria, sent her cardto a distinguished guest and was ushered into his parlors.
The dark foreigner with a Van Dyke beard bowed over her hand.
“Your Lordship had a pleasant trip across I trust?” she asked.
The door closed and they were alone.
With a smothered cry she was in Vassar’s arms murmuring foolish, inarticulate sounds.
She freed herself with quick decision.
“There’s not a moment to be lost,” Virginia whispered. “I’ve failed to reach a single man in the Woolworth tower.”
“It must be taken then!” he answered firmly. “I have ordered the other stations destroyed. We must hold that before we strike in the banquet halls. I’ve made my plans to call our cavalry and automobile orders from there. Our first line of men must mobilize and be on their way within five minutes after the searchlight signals from the Square—”
He paused thoughtfully.
“There’s not a moment to be lost. I’ll take that tower myself. Send three of your girls to meet me there at nine o’clock dressed as country folks on a sight-seeing trip to the city—”
“Armed of course?”
“Yes—with automatics if you have them—I’ll find a way to get them up to see the fireworks.”
At nine o’clock a noisy group of country louts succeeded in reaching the room that led by a narrow winding stairs to the upper room of the Woolworth tower. They were singing loyal songs for God and Emperor! Their pilot was drunk but good-natured and determined to show them the pinnacle.
The cautious red-faced Captain in charge of the wireless, who had been celebrating a little on the quiet, had thawed to a genial mood.
“T’ree cheers for Zemperor!” the jovial pilot from the country shouted.
The Captain laughed and joined the chorus. He glanced contemptuously at the giggling girls.
“Say, Cap,” the leader cried, leaning heavily on his shoulder—“my girls gotter see the fireworks—from the top—tip top! I promised ’em I’d take ’em to the very tip top—gotter make good—”
His legs wobbled and his breath was heavy with beer.
The Captain laughed.
“Think you could climb these winding stairs?”
“Surest thing you know.”
The drunken man staggered to the steps, rushed half way up, slipped and fell, sprawling to the floor.
The Captain roared.
“Try again!” he shouted. “I’ll let you go but not these women!”
The girls joined in the laughter while he made another ludicrous effort and slipped again.
The two operators left their instruments and peered down the shaft.
“Go back to your places—this is my show!” the Captain called.
The drunken countryman watched them withdraw with wagging head but keen eye. He saw there were only two. He knew his task now.
He made another desperate effort to climb the spiral, turned a complete somersault and came down headforemost.
The Captain slipped to a sitting posture weak with laughter.
“Shay, pardner, help me!” the drunken one pleaded.
“No—this is my show—it’s too good to lose—I’m the audience—help yourself!”
The drunken countryman tried it backward this time, holding first to the rail.
The Captain wiped the tears from his eyes and bent again to laugh as the fool reached the last step and waved in triumph. He turned and staggered against the wall feeling his way to the door beyond.
The girls crowded about the Captain.
“Please let us go too!” they chimed in chorus.
The Captain was adamant. They kept up their parrot cries until the crash above came. They heard the blow that felled the first operator—the shuffle of feet, the tiger spring, the smothered cry.
It was all over with the Captain before the cry. Three fierce, athletic girls bore him to the floor and held his writhing body until it was still.
“All right!” Vassar called. “Stand guard now at the door leading from the elevator—inside the door. Let no one pass!”
The leader of his guard touched her hat in salute. He took his place at the operator’s table and answered a call from the tower of the Governor-General’s palace.
“Your wireless stations have all answered?” the machine sang.
“All”—was the brief answer.
“I’ll give you the signal for the Emperor’s toast on the stroke of twelve.”
“Good!” Vassar answered with a grim smile.
BEFOREeleven o’clock the Daughters of Jael, accorded the place of honor at every banquet hall, had succeeded in slipping from drunken soldiers and sailors thousands of arms. Swift automobiles, commandeered by their persuasive voices, or taken by direct attack from maudlin chauffeurs, were speeding with these guns to the appointed places. More than two hundred thousand soldiers of the Imperial Army have deserted to our colors.
Ten thousand rough riders from the Western plains had been smuggled into the suburban districts of New York since the embargo on horses had been lifted. They were armed with lances and only awaited the advent of revolvers to lead the attack.
Each soldier from the Far West had reached the Eastern seaboard as an individual and reported secretly to his commander. They were in their brown kahki suits tonight stripped for action, awaiting the signal to strike.
Billy Holland, a captain of infantry, had been chosen by Vassar to lead the assault on Waldron’splace. His sweetheart and sister were behind the walls of the Governor-General’s magnificent house and the division leader knew the boy’s mettle. That he would give a good account of himself Vassar was absolutely sure.
As Waldron entered the grand ballroom, accompanied by Virginia, Marya, Zonia and a group of young admiring officers, Billy led his men cautiously through the underbrush toward the house.
On the signal of the toast to the Emperor, the Daughters of Jael had agreed to join their lovers, extinguish the lights, strike down the sentinels and the rest would be easy.
The men in the palace were joyously drunk before eleven. Only a few officers survived the siren call of the cup urged by the charming girls in their white and gold uniforms.
Waldron led the dancing with Virginia Holland. He moved with the easy grace of a master, never missing for an instant the perfect rhythm of her lithe, graceful body.
The surprise of the evening for the Governor-General had been the appearance of every American woman wearing the shining helmet of the soldier of the ranks in token of their full surrender to Imperial authority.
“A beautiful idea—those helmets!” he whispered as they swept through the throng.
“You are pleased?”
“I am more than pleased, I am happy tonight. I know that only your brilliant imagination could have conceived so graceful a tribute to my Imperial Master—”
He paused.
“You are closer to me tonight than ever before,” he said softly. “I feel it, I know it.”
She turned her head and breathed her answer:
“Yes—”
The dancing ended at eleven-thirty. Waldron gave his arm to Virginia and led the way to the banquet tables. A band of stringed instruments, concealed in bowers of roses, filled the room with exquisite music. The waiters moved with swift, noiseless tread.
The revelry steadily grew faster, the drinking deeper, the dancing more exciting.
Billy’s men had dropped flat and were crawling toward the open space in front of the palace when a light footfall was distinctly heard approaching. Billy lifted his head and saw Zonia. She halted with quick precision and gave the countersign.
In a moment she was in his arms.
“What on earth’s the matter, little girl?” he whispered excitedly.
“Virginia fears that Waldron suspects,” was the quick answer.
“Nonsense”—
“He has doubled the guard—Virginia says you’d better retreat until a full division comes up—”
“I’ll not do it,” Billy broke in. “Four to one, or ten to one, I’m going to take that house—”
“She’ll give the signal if I don’t return,” Zonia warned.
“All right—I’m ready,” was the firm response. In quick business fashion Billy led Zonia back of his lines. “Wait here and report if I fail”—
The young Captain crept back to his place and watched for the flash from the Madison Square tower and the signal of lights out from within.
On the stroke of twelve, Waldron rose, lifted his glass and gave the toast—the exact form of which he had sent to every toastmaster in America:
“To the Lord of War—master of the world—the Emperor!”
Virginia’s left hand clasped the glass, her right was lifted with nervous intensity giving the sign of the Daughters of Jael to Marya whose hand was on the electric switch. The searchlight on the Madison Square tower flashed and every whistle in the city and harbor screamed its tribute.
With a sudden click the lights went out. In total darkness again and again the blows of the dagger found their mark on the sentinels at the door. Over the curses, groans and shouts rang the shrill battle cry of the Daughters of Jael:
“ForourGod and country!”
Waldron’s keen eye caught the tremor of Virginia’s fingers as she gave the sign to Marya. The uplifted glass came down with a crash and his iron fist closed on her right hand.
“So!” he growled.
She fought with tigress strength to free her hand and reach the knife concealed in her bodice.
Waldron shouted through the darkness, “Lights! Lights!”
His servants threw the switch in vain. The current had been cut.
With muttered curses he choked Virginia still, carried her in his arms into his library, tore the knife from her bodice and flung her across the room.
“Move a muscle now—damn you! and I’ll blow your brains out.” He had found a pair of automatics in his table drawer.
He called from the doorway and two guards who had rushed in from the lawn answered.
He pointed to Virginia.
“If she moves, shoot her dead in her tracks. Stay until I return.”
He sprang up the narrow steps to the wireless tower. His operator sat lifeless in his chair.
He seized the keys and called central in the Woolworth tower.
“The Garrison to arms! At once—every man to his place and every ship’s deck cleared!”
The tower answered O. K.
Vassar sprang to his feet trembling with alarm.
She had failed at the Palace. What did it mean? Her life was in peril. There could be no doubt of it.
He called every wireless station of the enemy on the North Atlantic. Not one answered.
“Good!” he muttered.
He summoned the nearest operator to his relief in the tower:
“Come, for God’s sake, quick,” he called to Brooklyn, “and bring me a car—there’s trouble at the Palace—”
“Coming!” the answer sang.
In fifteen minutes an automobile dashed across the bridge and drew up on the curb at the Woolworth building.
The new operator took his instructions and Vassar turned to the chauffeur:
“Quick now—to theSixty-ninthRegiment Armory. We have men and guns there.”
Angela had waited in the machine for her leader to leap from the Palace and drive to the first cavalry rendezvous in Westchester. Her chauffeur sat by her side, smiling, his belt and automatic about her waist.
She heard the shout of Waldron for the guards and knew that the complete plan had failed. Billy’s men had been crushed by superior numbers and driven to the foot of the hill. The great man’s servants were trained soldiers. They would fight like devils inside.
With quick wit she threw in the clutch and the big touring-car shot down the road and flew over the smooth open way of Riverside Drive. In fifteen minutes she overtook the first division of horsemen on the outskirts of the city galloping to their appointed rendezvous.
“To the Palace of the Governor-General! Quick!” she shouted to the Captain. “Take my car—I can take your horse—quick! Quick! Our leader’s a prisoner—or dead—they fight and fight. Quick!”
The Captain sprang from his horse, called to the chauffeur, leaped into the car and gave his horse to Angela. She had learned horsemanship too in these two years of training.
“You know the rendezvous?” the Captain called.
“Si, signor!” Angela answered. “I know. I have been to every spot. I was to drive my leader there. I go! I tell them. You go to her quick—for God’s sake—quick!”
Urged by her low, nervous voice the horse dashed down the roadway through Yonkers and on to summon the men.
Waldron returned to the banquet hall—an automatic in each hand. He was a man of dauntless courage. The lights were on again. His assistant engineer had found the break and hastily repaired it.
The magnificent hall was deserted. Only the dead sentinels lay in pools of blood on the slippery floor. The Daughters of Jael had done their work and gone—their task to disarm the enemy and deliver the equipments to our waiting men. Every sword and automatic had fallen into their hands except those worn by the sleeping guard in their quarters and the half-dozen men who were scattered over the lawn.
Waldron quickly brought order out of chaos, barred his doors and found that he held his castle still with eighty faithful soldiers and a dozen wounded servants.
He entered the library and took his place as the special guard of Virginia.
He deliberately took her in his arms and kissed her lips. Her mind was still stunned by the anguish ofher failure. There was no longer feeling in body or soul. Nothing mattered.
“You’re mine!” he cried fiercely. “I hold you Cossack fashion now!”