The Fall of a Nation

CHAPTER II

VIRGINIA HOLLAND, at her desk preparing an address on the Modern Feminist Movement, dropped her pencil and raised her head with a look of startled surprise at the cry of a newsboy in the street below. The whole block seemed to vibrate with his uncanny yell:

“Wuxtra! Wuxtra!”

A sense of impending calamity caught her heart for a moment. It was a morbid fancy, of course, and yet the cry of the boy kept ringing a personal warning.

Work impossible, she opened her door, called and asked her brother Billy to get a copy of the paper.

Before he returned her anxiety had increased to the point of pain. She rapidly descended the stairs and waited at the door.

Billy entered reading the headlines announcing Vassar’s new programme of military preparation. Virginia flushed and gazed at the announcement with increasing excitement. The name of John Vassar had caused a flush before the announcement of his bill had made an impression. Her handsome Congressman neighbor, though they had never formally met, had for some months past been a disturbing factor in a life of hitherto serene indifference to men. That he should have antagonized in this bill her well known position as the uncompromising advocate of peace and of universal disarmament was a shock. His proposal to arm the American Democracy came as a slap in her face. She felt it a personal affront.

Of course she had no right to such feeling. John Vassar was nothing to her! She had only seen him pass her window three times during the year. And yet the longer she gazed at the announcement the more furious she became. At least he might have consulted her as the leading public-spirited woman in his district on this measure of such transcendent importance. He had not done so, for a simple reason. He knew that she opposed militarism as the first article of her life faith. Her hand closed on the paper in a grip of resentment. She made up her mind instantly to force his hand on the suffrage issue. She would show him that she had some power in his District.

Her mood of absorbed anger was suddenly broken by Billy’s joyous cry:

“Hurrah for John Vassar, sis. Me for West Point! Will you make him appoint me?”

She turned in sudden rage and boxed her young brother’s ears, smiled at his surprise, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. She boxed his ears for crying hurrah for Vassar. She kissed him for the compliment of her supposed power over the coming statesman.

To hide her confusion she began at once a heated argument over the infamies of a military régime. The quarrel broke the peaceful scene of a game of checkers between the father and mother in the sitting-room, and brought the older people into the hall:

“In heaven’s name, Virginia!” her father exclaimed. “What is the matter?”

“Read it” – she answered angrily, thrusting the paper into his hand.

The Grand Army veteran read with sparkling eyes.

“Good!” he shouted.

“That’s what I say, father!” Billy echoed.

“It’s absurd,” Virginia protested. “War on this country is impossible. It’s unthinkable – ”

The old soldier suddenly seized her hand.

“Impossible, is it? Come with me a minute, Miss!”

He drew her into the library followed by Billy – the mother striving gently to keep the peace.

Holland led his eloquent daughter to the rack above the center bookcase and took from its place his army musket.

“That’s what they said, my girl, in ’61. Here’s the answer. That’s what your grandmother said to your grandfather. That’s why we’ve bungled every war we ever fought and paid for it in rivers of blood!”

The family row started anew – the father and boy for preparation against war, the daughter and mother for peace – peace at any price.

The quarrel was at its height when Waldron’s car arrived.

Old Peter, the stately negro butler of the ancient régime, closed the folding doors to drown the din before ushering the distinguished guest into the parlor. Waldron was a prime favorite of Peter’s. The millionaire had slipped him a twenty-dollar gold piece on a former occasion and no argument of friend or foe could shake his firm conviction that Charles Waldron was a gentleman of the old school. Besides, Peter was consumed with family pride in Virginia’s hold on so distinguished a leader of the big world.

The old butler bowed his stateliest at the door of the parlor with the slightest hesitation on his exit as if the memory of the twenty-dollar gold piece lingered in spite of his resolution to hold himself above the influence of filthy lucre.

“I tell Miss Virginia, right away, sah – yassah!”

Waldron seated himself with confidence. Virginia Holland lingered a few minutes merely to show the great man that she was not consumed with pride at his attentions. That she appreciated the compliment of his admiration she would not have denied even to John Vassar. Waldron had made the largest single contribution to the Woman’s Movement it had received in America. She had gotten the credit of winning the great man’s favor and opening his purse strings.

That the millionaire was interested in her charming personality she had not doubted from the first. He left no room for doubt in the eagerness with which he openly sought her favor.

And yet it had never occurred to her to think of him as a real lover. There was something so blunt and material in his personality that it forbade a romance. She could imagine him asking a woman to marry him. But in the wildest leap of her fancy she had not been able to conceive of his making love. In her strictly modern business woman’s mind she was simply using her influence over the great man for all it was worth in a perfectly legitimate way and always for the advancement of the Cause.

She greeted him with a gracious smile and he bowed over her hand after the fashion of the European courtier in a way that half amused her and half pleased her vanity.

He held a copy of the evening paper.

“You have read it?”

Virginia nodded.

Waldron went straight to the point in his cold, impersonal but impressive way.

“You are the most eloquent leader of American women, Miss Holland. Your voice commands the widest hearing. You stand for peace and universal brotherhood. Will you preside at a mass meeting tomorrow night to protest against this infamous bill?”

Virginia Holland had given her consent mentally until he used the word “infamous.” Somehow it didn’t fit John Vassar’s character and instinctively she resented it.

She blushed for an instant at her silly inconsistency. But a moment ago she had herself denounced the young statesman with unmeasured violence. In the next moment she was resenting an attack on him.

Waldron watched her hesitation with surprise and renewed his plea with more warmth than he had ever displayed.

Virginia extended her hand in a quick business-like way.

“Of course I’ll preside. We are fighting for the same great end.”

Waldron made no effort to press his victory. He rose at once to go, and bowed low over her hand.

“Au revoir – tomorrow night,” he said in low tones.

Virginia watched him go with a mingled feeling of triumph and fear. There was something about the man that puzzled and annoyed her – something unconvincing in his apparent frankness. And yet the truth about his big life purpose never for a moment entered her imagination.

CHAPTER III

WHEN Meyer reached the quarter of the East Side where eager crowds surge through a little crooked thoroughfare leading from the old Armory on Essex Street he encountered unexpected difficulties.

He ran into a section of John Vassar’s congressional district saturated with the young leader’s ideals of a new Americanism. He was coldly received.

Benda, the Italian fruit-dealer on the corner, Meyer had marked finally as his opening wedge in the little clannish community. The Italian was the most popular man on the street, his store the meeting-place of the wives and children for three blocks.

Meyer entered the store and to his surprise found it deserted. The sounds of laughter in the little suite of living-room and kitchen behind the store told of festivities in progress. He waited impatiently for the proprietor to return.

Benda was presiding at a function too important to be interrupted by thoughts of trade. With Angela, his wife, and the neighbors, he was celebrating the fifth birthday of their only boy, Tommaso, Jr. The kids from far and near were bringing their little presents and Pasquale, his best friend, who was returning to Italy by the next steamer, had generously given his monkey and hand-organ. Benda himself had escorted Pasquale into the room and had just sprung the big surprise on the assembled party.

Pasquale was putting the monkey through his tricks amid screams of laughter when Meyer’s dark face clouded the door leading from the store.

He beckoned angrily to Benda.

“May I see you a minute?”

Benda sprang to meet the unexpected apparition in his doorway while Angela led Pasquale and the children into the street for a grand concert. Meyer’s tense face had not passed without her swift glance.

She left the children dancing and entered the store from the front. Meyer had just offered Benda good wages for his services in the cause and the Italian was tempted and puzzled.

Angela suddenly confronted Meyer. His suave explanation that the alliance which he had invited Benda to join was a benevolent order for self-protection was not convincing.

The wife swung her husband suddenly aside and stepped between the two. She fairly threw her words into Meyer’s face.

“You go now! My man stick to his beesness. He mak good mon. We got our little home.”

Meyer attempted to argue. Benda tried to edge in a word. It was useless. Angela’s shrill voice rose in an endless chorus of protest.

Benda threw up his hands in surrender and re-entered the store. Meyer angrily turned on his heel and crossed the street to see Schultz, the delicatessen man on the opposite corner.

Schultz proved impossible from the first. His jovial face was wreathed in smiles but his voice was firm in its deep mumbling undertone.

“No – mein frient – no more drill for me – I fight no more except for the flag dot give me mein freedom and mein home!”

The two men held each other’s gaze in a moment of dramatic tension. The menace in Meyer’s voice was unmistakable as he answered:

“I’ll see you again!”

CHAPTER IV

JOHN VASSAR’S triumphant return to his home on Stuyvesant Square, after the introduction of his sensational bill in Congress, was beset with domestic complications. Congratulations from his father, nieces, and Wanda had scarcely been received before the trouble began.

“But you must hear Miss Holland!” Zonia pleaded.

John Vassar shook his head.

“Not tonight, dear – ”

“I’d set my heart on introducing you. Ah, Uncy dear – please! She’s the most eloquent orator in America – ”

“That’s why I hate her and all her tribe – ”

A rosy cheek pressed close to his.

“Not all her tribe – ”

“My Zonia – no – but I could wring her neck for leading a chick of your years into her fool movement – ”

“But she didn’t lead me, Uncy dear, I just saw it all in a flash while she was speaking – my duty to my sex and the world – ”

“Duty to your sex! What do you know about duty to your sex? – you infant barely out of short dresses! Your hair ought to be still in braids. And it was all my fault. I let you out of the nursery too soon – ”

He paused and looked at her wistfully.

“And I promised your father’s spirit the day you came to us here that I’d guard you as my own – you and little Marya. I haven’t done my duty. I’ve been too busy with big things to realize that I was neglecting the biggest thing in the world. You’ve slipped away from me, dear – and I’m heartsick over it. Maybe I’ll be in time for Marya – you’re lost at eighteen – ”

“Marya’s joined our Club too – ”

“A babe of twelve?”

“She’s going to be Miss Holland’s page in the suffrage Pageant – ”

John Vassar groaned, laid both hands on the girl’s shoulders and rose abruptly.

“Now, Zonia, it’s got to stop here and now. I’m not going to allow this brazen Amazon – ”

His niece broke into a fit of laughter.

“Brazen Amazon?”

“That’s what I said. This brazen Amazon is my enemy – ”

The girl lifted her finger laughingly.

“But you’re not afraid of her? John Vassar, a descendant of old Yan Vasa in whose veins ran the royal blood of Poland – ten years in Congress from this big East Side district – the idol of the people – chairman of the National House Committee on Military Affairs” – she paused and her voice dropped to the tensest pride – “my candidate for governor of New York – you positively won’t go to the meeting in Union Square tonight?” she added quietly.

“Positively – ”

“Then, Uncy dear, I’ll have to deliver the message – ”

She drew a crumpled note from her bosom and handed it to him without a word.

He broke the seal and read with set lips:

Hon. John Vassar, M. C.,

16 Stuyvesant Square,

New York.

Dear Sir: Our committee in charge of the canvass of your congressional district in the campaign for woman’s suffrage have tried in vain to obtain an expression of your views. We are making a house to house canvass of every voter in New York. You have thus far side-stepped us.

You are a man of too much power in the State and nation to overlook in such a fight. The Congressional Directory informs us that you are barely thirty-six years old. You have already served ten years in Washington with distinction and have won your spurs as a national leader. A great future awaits you unless you incur the united opposition of the coming woman voter.

I warn you that we are going to sweep the Empire State. Your majority is large and has increased at each election. It is not large enough if we mark you for defeat. I have sincerely hoped that we might win you for our cause.

I ask for a declaration of your position. You must be for us or against us. There can be no longer a middle course.

I should deeply regret the necessity of your defeat if you force the issue. Your niece has quite won my heart and her passionate enthusiasm for her distinguished uncle has led me to delay this important message until the introduction of your bill for militarism has forced it.

John Vassar read the letter a second time, touched the tips of his mustache thoughtfully and fixed his eyes on Zonia.

“And my little sweetheart will join the enemy in this campaign!”

A tear trembled on the dark lashes.

“Ah, Uncy darling, how could you think such a thing!”

“You bring this challenge – ”

“I only want to vote – to – elect – you – governor – ”

The voice broke in a sob, as he bent and kissed the smooth young brow.

She clung to him tenderly.

“Uncy dear, just for my sake, because I love you so – because you’re my hero – won’t you do something for me – Just because I ask it?”

“Maybe – ”

“Go to Union Square with me then – ”

He shook his head emphatically.

“Against my principles, dear – ”

“It’s not against your principles to make me happy?”

He took her cheeks between his hands.

“Seeing that I’ve raised you from a chick – I don’t think there ought to be much doubt about how I stand on the woman question as far as it affects two little specimens of the tribe – do you?”

“All right then,” she cried gayly, “you love Marya and me. We are women. You can’t refuse us a little old thing like a ballot if we want it – can you?”

She paused and kissed him again.

“So now, Uncy, you’re going to hear Miss Holland speak just to make me happy – aren’t you?”

He smiled and surrendered.

“To make you happy – yes – ”

He couldn’t say more. The arms were too tight about his neck.

He drew them gently down.

“This is what I dread in politics, dear – when the women go in to win. We’ve graft enough now. When the boys run up against this sort of thing – God help us! – and God save the country if you should happen to make a mistake in what you ask for! Well, you’ve won this fight – come on, let’s get up front and hear the argument. I hate to stand on the edge and wonder what the hen is saying when she crows – ”

Zonia handed his hat and cane and, radiant with smiles, opened the door.

“I suppose we’ll let Marya stay with Grandpa?” he asked.

“They’ve been gone half an hour!”

“Oh – ”

“I had no trouble with Grandpa at all. He agreed to sit on the platform with me – ”

“Indeed!”

“But I don’t think he really understood what the meeting was about – ”

“Just to please his grandchick, however, the old traitor agreed to preside at my funeral – eh?”

“He won’t if you say not – shall I tell him to keep off? Marya will be awfully disappointed if we make them get down – ”

“No – let him stay. Maybe he can placate the enemy. They can hold him as hostage for my good behavior.”

The hand on his arm pressed tighter.

“It’s so sweet of you, Uncy!”

“At what hour does this paragon of all the virtues, male and female, harangue the mob?”

“You mean Miss Holland?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, they’ll all be there tonight. Miss Holland is the principal speaker for the Federated Women’s Clubs of America – she’s the president, you know – ”

“No – I didn’t know – ”

“She won’t speak until 9:30. We can hear the others first. There’ll be some big guns among the men too – the Honorable Plato Barker and the Reverend A. Cuthbert Pike, the president of the American Peace Union – and Waldron, the multi-millionaire, he presides at Miss Holland’s stand – ”

“Indeed – ”

“Yes – they say he’s in love with her but she doesn’t care a rap for him or any other man – ”

John Vassar had ceased to hear Zonia’s chatter. The name of Charles Waldron had started a train of ugly thought. Of all the leaders of opinion in America this man was his pet aversion. He loathed his personality. He hated his newspaper with a fury which words could not express. It stood squarely for every tendency of degenerate materialism in our life, a worship of money and power first and last against all sentiment and all the hopes and aspirations of the masses. He posed as the Pecksniffian leader of Reform and the reform he advocated always meant the lash for the man who toils. His hatreds were implacable, too, and he used the power of his money with unscrupulous brutality. He had lately extended the chain of banks which he owned in New York until they covered the leading cities of every state in the Union. His newspaper, the Evening Courier, was waging an unceasing campaign for the establishment of an American aristocracy of wealth and culture.

Vassar was cudgeling his brain over the mystery of this man’s sudden enthusiasm for woman suffrage and the Cause of Universal Peace. It was a sinister sign of the times. He rarely advocated a losing cause. That this cold-blooded materialist could believe in the dream of human emancipation through the influence of women was preposterous.

Zonia might be right, of course, in saying that he had become infatuated with the young Amazon leader of the Federated Women’s Clubs. And yet that would hardly account for his presence as the presiding genius of a grand rally for suffrage. There were too many factions represented in such a demonstration for his personal interest in one woman to explain his activity in bringing those people together. His paper had, in fact, led the appeal to co-ordinate Demagogery, Labor, Peace Propaganda, Socialism, and Feminism in one monster mass meeting.

The longer Vassar puzzled over it, the more impenetrable became Waldron’s motive. His leadership in the movement was uncanny. What did it mean?

CHAPTER V

IT was barely seven when they reached Union Square. It was already packed by a dense crowd of good-natured cheering men and women. Seventy-five thousand was a conservative estimate. The air was electric with contagious enthusiasm.

“We’ll hear the apostle of peace first,” Vassar said to Zonia, pushing his way slowly through the crowd toward a platform with three-foot letters covering its four sides:

The Reverend A. Cuthbert Pike, president of the Peace Union of America, was delivering the opening address as the chairman of his meeting. He was a funny-looking little man of slight features, bald and decorated with a set of aggressive side whiskers. His manner was quick and nervous, electric in its nervousness, his voice in striking contrast to the jerky pugnacity of his body. The tones were soft and dreaming, as if he were trying to subdue the tendency of the flesh to fight for what he believed to be right.

He leaned far over the rail of the platform and breathed his words over the crowd:

“Two great powers contend for the mastery of the world, my friends,” he was saying. “The spirit of Christ and the spirit of Napoleon. The one would overcome evil with good. The other would hurl evil against evil. One stands for love, humility, self-sacrifice. The other stands for the hate, pride and avarice of the militarism of today – ”

Vassar lost the next sentence. His mind had leaped the seas and stood with brooding wonder over the miracle of self-sacrifice of a thousand blood-drenched trenches and battlefields where millions of stout-hearted men were now laying their lives on the altar of their country – an offering of simple love. They had left the selfish pursuit of pleasure and wealth and individual aggrandizement and merged their souls and bodies into the wider life of humanity – the hopes and aspirations of a race. Was all this hate and pride and avarice? Bah! The little fidgety preacher was surely crazy; the thing called war was too big and terrible and soul-searching for that. Such theories were too small. They could not account for the signs of the times.

The preacher was talking again. He caught the quiver of hate in his utterance of the name of the great German philosopher.

“In Nietzsche’s words we have the supreme utterance of the modern anti-Christ in his blasphemous rendition of the Beatitudes. Hear him:

“ ‘Ye have heard how in olden times it was said, Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth; but I say to you, Blessed are the valiant, for they shall make the earth their throne – ”

“Militarism, my friends, is the incarnate soul of blasphemy! It is confined to no country. It is a world curse. The mightiest task of the times in which we live is to cast out this devil from the body of civilization. We demand votes for women because we believe they will help us in the grim battle we are fighting with the powers of Death and Hell – ”

Vassar turned with a sigh and pressed toward the next platform. The Honorable Plato Barker, silver-tongued orator of the plains, was soaring above the heads of his enraptured listeners. His benevolent bald head glistened in the sputtering rays of the arc light. He was supremely happy once more. He had resigned the cares of office to ride a new hobby and bask in the smiles of cheering thousands. He had ridden Free Silver to death and grown tired of Prohibition. He had groomed a new steed. His latest hobby was Peace. He too was demanding votes for women because they would save the world from the curse of war.