The Fall of a Nation

CHAPTER XIII

THE idea that her child might attain the highest honor within the reach of any man on earth had stirred Angela to the depths and given new meaning and dignity to life. She lifted her head. She had borne a child whose word might bend a million wills to his. The world was a bigger, nobler place in which to live.

She was stirred with sudden purpose to leave no stone unturned to bring this dream to pass. She bought books of the lives of the presidents. Twice she read the life of Abraham Lincoln, the humble backwoodsman rail-splitter who became president.

But her vivid Italian imagination loved the stories of George Washington, the first president, best. He was nearest in history to Columbus, the Italian who discovered America. She read the legends of little George Washington’s adventures and began to play the mighty drama of her own son’s career by guiding his feet in the same path.

She had laughed immoderately over George cutting his father’s cherry-tree. She was sure her bambino was capable of that! If George cut cherry-trees, of course his father had cherries to eat. She got at once a lot of cherries and fed them to the boy, laughing and nursing her dream.

She found a picture of Washington in his Colonial dress. The style pleased her fancy. She went forthwith, bought the material and made her boy a suit with cockade hat exactly like it.

Tommaso was amazed on entering the living-room from the fruit store to find the kid arrayed in the strange garb. Angela was stuffing some cotton under the cockade hat to make it fit, studying the picture to be sure of the effect.

When she explained, Tommaso joined in the play with equal zest.

When the boy had exhausted the admiration of his father and mother he sallied forth into the street to meet his little friends and show his clothes.

He had scarcely cleared the door when “Sausage” emerged from the Schultz delicatessen store and the two met halfway. No hard feelings had lingered from their fight in the old Armory. Sausage’s admiration was boundless. He had just persuaded little Tommaso to go home and show them to his own mother when they turned and saw Meyer unloading a truck filled with curious looking long boxes.

They ran up to investigate just as a case fell and a gun dropped to the pavement.

The kids rushed to Benda’s to tell Angela and Tommaso.

“I told you that man was no good!” Angela exclaimed. “Go – and see quick and we tell Vasa’ – ”

Tommaso hurried across the street and found Meyer standing over the broken case. Meyer faced the Italian without ceremony:

“Cost your life to open your yap about these guns – see?”

Tommaso snapped his finger in the other’s face:

“Go t’ell!”

He turned on his heel to go, saw his wife and the children near, rushed back and snapped his finger again in Meyer’s face:

“Go t’ell two times – see – two times!”

Meyer merely held his gaze in a moment of angry silence and turned to his work.

Tommaso rushed back into his flat, pushed things from the table, seized a pen and wrote a hurried note to his leader.

Congressman Vasa:

Men unload guns in our street. He say killa me if I tell. I tell him go t’ell. I tell him go t’ell two times. I Americano. My kid he be president – maybe —

He hurried Angela into her best new American cut dress and sent her with the boy to Long Island to tell Vassar.

The visit all but ended in a tragedy for poor Angela. While searching the spacious Holland grounds for her leader, the boy suddenly spied a hatchet with which the master had been mending a box in which he was cultivating a precious orange-tree that had been carefully guarded in a hothouse during the winter months.

The kid saw his chance to emulate the example of George Washington. He lost no time. The tree was well hacked before Holland pounced upon him.

The old man had him by the ear when Angela dashed to the rescue. She saw the scarred tree with horror and her apologies were profuse.

“Ah, pardon, signor! You see his little suit – he play George Wash – and cutta the cherry-tree – ”

She paused and shook the boy fiercely.

“Ah – you maka me seek!”

Holland began to smile at the roguish beauty of the boy glancing up from the corners of his dark, beautiful eyes.

Vassar, Virginia, Zonia and Marya hearing the commotion, rushed up.

Angela extended her apologies to all.

“You see, he really think he’s leetle George Wash – I mak him speak his piece – you like to hear it?”

Her offer was greeted by a chorus of approval.

Angela fixed the child with a stern look.

“Speeka your piece!”

The boy shook his head.

“Speeka-your-piece!” The order was a threat this time and little Tommaso yielded.

Bowing gracefully, he faced the group and recited with brave accent:

He bowed again as all laughed and applauded. Virginia took him in her arms and kissed him. While she was yet complimenting the boy on his fine speech Angela whispered to Vassar:

“My man Tommaso – he want to see you, signor! He send this – ”

She slipped the note into Vassar’s hand, repeated her apologies and hurried from the lawn, shaking Tommaso:

“Ah, you leetle mik! You maka me seek – ! I tella you play George Wash and cutta the cherry-tree – and oh, my Mother of God! You play hell and cutta the orange-tree!”

Little Tommaso took the scolding philosophically. Orange or cherry-trees were all the same to him. He merely answered his mother’s dramatic rage with a twinkle of his eye until she stooped at last and kissed him.

CHAPTER XIV

VASSAR looked at the scrawled note and saw that he must return to the city. The incident probably meant nothing and yet it brought to his mind a vague uneasiness.

He instinctively turned to Virginia who was looking at him with curious interest. She spoke with genuine admiration:

“I had no idea that any politician in America could win the hearts of his people in the way you hold yours – ”

“It’s worth while, isn’t it?”

“Decidedly. It makes my regret all the more keen that you will not accompany me on my tour of the state – ”

“You go soon?” he asked.

“I leave Monday morning for a month. It has been one of my dreams since we met that I’d win you – and we’d make a sort of triumphal tour together – ”

“You’re joking,” he answered lightly.

“I know now that it is not to be, of course,” she said seriously.

He hadn’t thought of her being on such a fool trip. Waldron no doubt as her campaign financier would meet her at many points. The thought set the blood pounding from his heart.

“Shall we sit down a moment?” he suggested.

“By all means if I can persuade you,” she consented.

Behind a rich fir on the lawn stood a massive marble seat. They strolled to the spot and sat down. Hours of debate they had held here and neither had yielded an inch. A circular trellis of roses hid the house from view and sheltered the seat from the gaze of people who might be crossing the open space. The hedge along the turnpike completely hid them from the highway.

By a subtle instinct she felt the wave of emotion from his tense mind.

A long silence fell between them. Her last speech had given him the cue for his question. He had brooded over its possible meaning from the moment she had expressed the idea. He picked a pebble from the ground, shot it from his fingers as he had done with marbles when a boy.

Lifting his head with a serious look straight into her brown eyes he said:

“Did you believe for a moment that I could go with you on such a campaign tour?”

She met his gaze squarely.

“I thought it too good to be true, of course, and yet your unexpected sympathy and your – your – shall I say, frankly expressed admiration, led me into all sorts of silly hopes.”

“And yet you knew on a moment’s reflection that such a surrender of principle by a man of my character was out of the question.”

“It has turned out to be so,” she answered slowly.

“Could you have respected me had I cut a complete intellectual and moral somersault merely at the wave of your beautiful hand?”

“I could respect any man who yields to reason,” she fenced.

He smiled.

“I didn’t ask you that – ”

“No?”

“You’re fencing. And I must come to the real issue between us. I do it with fear and trembling and with uncovered head. I had to be true to the best that’s in me with you for the biggest reason that can sway an honest man’s soul. I have loved you from the moment we met – ”

He stopped short and breathed deeply, afraid to face her. His declaration had called for no answer. She remained silent. From the corner of his eye he noted the tightening of her firm lips.

“I’ve tried to tell you so a dozen times this week and failed. I was afraid, it meant so much to me. I had hoped to be with you another month at least in this beautiful world of sunlight and flowers, of moon and sea. I hoped to win you with a little more time and patience. But I couldn’t wait and see you go on this trip. I had to speak. I love you with the love a strong man can give but once in life. It’s strange that of all the women in the world I should have loved the one whose work I must oppose! You’ll believe me when I tell you that the fiercest battle I have ever fought was with the Devil when he whispered that I might win by hedging and trimming and lying diplomatically as men have done before and many men will do again. At least you respect me for the honesty with which I have met this issue?”

He had asked her a direct question at last. Her silence had become unendurable. Her answer was scarcely audible. She only breathed it.

“Yes, I understand and respect you for it – ”

His heart gave a throb of hope.

“I don’t ask you if you love me now. I just want to know if I’ve a chance to win you?”

The impulse to seize her hand was resistless. She made no effort to withdraw it and he pressed it tenderly.

A wistful smile played about the sensitive mouth and she was slow to answer.

“Tell me – have I a chance?” he pleaded.

Her voice was far away but clear-toned music. He heard his doom in its perfect rhythm before the words were complete.

“I can’t see,” she began slowly, “how two people could enter the sweet intimacy of marriage with a vital difference of opinion dividing them. I couldn’t. Your honesty and intellectual strength I admire. This honesty and strength will keep us opponents. Such an union is unthinkable – ”

“Not if we love one another,” he protested eagerly. “There is but one issue in human life between man and woman and that is love. If you love me, nothing else matters – ”

She shook her head.

“It isn’t true. You love me – but other things matter. Otherwise you would give them up to win your love. I claim to be your equal in brain and heart if not in muscle. You say that if I love nothing else matters and yet you say in the same breath that you risk your love to save your principles. In your heart you know that other things do matter, and with me they matter deeply. I believe with every beat of my heart that the progress of the world waits on the advent of women in the organization of its industries, its politics and its thinking. This consciousness of her mission in the modern woman is the biggest fact of our century – ”

She paused and faced him with a look of iron purpose.

“No matter if I did love you – I’d tear that love out of my heart if it held me back from the fulfilment of the highest ideal of duty to my sex – ”

“What higher ideal can any woman hold than her home?”

“For the woman whose horizon is no larger there can be none. She can only see the world in which she moves. To some of us God has given the wider view. What is one life if it is sacrificed to this higher ideal? You are leading the renaissance of America. So am I. Our beautiful country with her teeming millions must rise in her glory and live forever when you and I have passed on. The soldier sees this vision when he dies in battle. So I see it today.”

He stooped again and gathered a handful of pebbles, rolling them thoughtfully in his hand. His eyes were on the ground.

“It isn’t Waldron?” he asked.

She smiled with a touch of mischief.

“No. But I confess such a man might tempt me – ”

He threw the pebbles on the ground with a gesture of impatience.

“It’s not true!” he cried, facing her suddenly. With a fierce resolution he seized her hand.

“I won’t take any such answer,” he breathed desperately. “You’re not playing this game fairly with me. I’ve torn my heart open to you. You’re hedging and trimming. I won’t have it. You haven’t dared to deny your love. You can’t deny it. You love me and you know it and I know it – ”

She lifted her free hand in a gesture of protest.

“You love me! I feel it! I know it!” he repeated fiercely.

With quick resolution he swept her into his arms and kissed her lips again and again. For just an instant he felt her body relax.

The next minute she had freed herself and faced him, her eyes blazing with anger. Her anger was not a pose. He saw to his horror that he had staked all on a mad chance and lost.

He stammered something incoherent and mopped his brow lamely.

“I suppose it’s useless for me to say I’m sorry – ”

“Quite,” she said with cold emphasis.

“All right I won’t. Because I’m not sorry I did it. I’m only sorry you resent it. I love you. True love is half madness. I won’t apologize. If I must die for that one moment, it’s worth it.”

“There can be nothing more between us after this,” she said evenly.

He bowed in silence.

“Please play the little farce of polite society before my father and mother as you leave tonight. It’s the only favor I ask of you.”

“I understand,” he answered.

CHAPTER XV

THE perfection with which Virginia played her part in the little drama of deception at their parting was a new source of surprise and anger to Vassar. Her acting was consummate. Neither the children nor her parents could suspect for a moment that there had been the slightest break in their relations.

Self-respect compelled him to act the part with equal care in detail.

The old soldier had grown very fond of Marya. He held her in his arms chattering like a magpie.

“Now don’t you go back on me when you get to town and fail to take that cottage!” he protested.

“Oh, we’re coming on Tuesday – aren’t we, Uncle John?” she cried.

Virginia watched his face. He caught the look and answered its challenge by an instant reply.

“Certainly, dear. Everything’s fixed. I can’t be with you much but grandpa’ll be here every day.”

The child clapped her hands.

“You see” —

“All right,” Holland answered. “I’ll meet you at the station! The fact is – “ his voice dropped to confidential tones – “between you and me – I haven’t any little girl. My girl’s grown clean up and out of my world. She’s going on a wild goose chase over the country and leave her old daddy here to die alone. But you’ll be my little girl, won’t you, honey?”

Marya slipped her arms around his neck and whispered:

“I’d like two granddaddies. I never had but one you know – ”

Virginia wondered at Vassar’s audacity in persisting in the plan of thrusting himself and his people under her nose. She had thought he would have the decency to change his plans now that any further association between them had become impossible. She listened in vain for any protest on his part against the plans of happiness between her father and his little niece. His face was a mask of polite indifference.

She had worked herself into a rage when he extended his hand in parting. The others were looking or he would have omitted the formality. He made up his mind to part without a word.

The children and his father turned to enter the coach. Billy was saying good-bye to Zonia assuring her for the tenth time that he would drive with his father to the train for them on Tuesday.

With the touch of her hand Vassar’s angry resolution melted. Soul and body was fused suddenly into a resistless rush of tenderness. If she felt this she was complete mistress of her emotions. There was no sign.

In a voice of studied coldness she merely said:

“Good-bye.”

His hand closed desperately on hers in spite of her purpose to withdraw it instantly.

“I won’t say it,” he answered fiercely. “I won’t give you up. You haven’t treated me fairly. I won’t submit. I’m coming again – do you hear?”

She stared at him a moment with firmly set lips and answered:

“There is nothing in common between us, Mr. Caveman. We live in different worlds. We were born in different ages – ”

He dropped her hand and sprang to the platform of the moving train without looking back.

CHAPTER XVI

ARRIVING at Stuyvesant Square, Vassar decided to go at once and see Angela’s husband.

The door of his tiny apartment opened on the little crooked street before the old Armory. He caught the gay colors of Angela’s dress at the window. She was leaning far out over the flower boxes, and gesticulating to her man in the street below.

Benda, the center of a group of children, was playing the hand organ which Pasquale had given the boy. The kids were dancing.

He stopped short his music at the sight of his leader, waved the children aside and hurried to meet him.

“Ah, you come so soon, signor!” he exclaimed. “I am glad. Angela – she tell you?”

“Yes. What’s the trouble?”

“You see the house over dere?”

He pointed to the low apartment across the way.

“Yes.”

“Well, signor, men unload and swing boxes – beeg – long boxes inside. One of them fell and brak – ”

He stopped and looked about.

“It was guns, signor! – all bright, new. I ask them what for they put so many guns in the old house. The boss say I must join his Black Hand Alliance – “ Benda laughed. “I tell him go t’ell —

“He say it’s war and I die unless I do – I tell him go t’ell two times. And I send word to you, signor. What you tink?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find the owner of the building and tell you. Thanks, Tommaso,” he added cordially. “I appreciate your confidence. I’ll see about it.”

“Si, si, signor!”

With another wave of his hand to the children Benda resumed his concert.

Vassar walked to the door and glanced at the building. There was nothing to mark it from a number of dingy structures along the East River. A speculator was probably buying old guns from our government for their transfer in secret to the agent of a faction in Mexico or South America. Naturally the trader must use the utmost caution or a Secret Service man would nip his plans in the bud. He was so sure of the explanation that he took it for granted, and dismissed the incident from his mind.

He was destined to recall it under conditions that would not be forgotten.

CHAPTER XVII

VASSAR plunged next day into his fight. Waldron had moved rapidly. His opponents had already nominated an Independent Democrat of foreign birth, a Bohemian of ability, whom he knew to be a man of ambition and good address.

The women had begun a house to house canvass of voters and the number of fairy-tales they had started for the purpose of undermining his position and influence was a startling revelation of their skill in the art of lying.

Virginia Holland was booked for a canvass of each election district the last week in October. He knew what that meant. Waldron had held his trump card for the supreme moment.

The depths of vituperation, mendacity and open corruption to which the campaign descended on the part of his opponents was another revelation to Vassar of woman’s adaptability to practical methods. Never since the days of Tweed’s régime had the East Side seen anything that approached it.

He steadfastly refused to lower his standard to their level. That Virginia Holland knew the methods which Waldron had adopted was inconceivable. Vassar watched the approach of her canvass with indifference. If his people were weak enough to fall for Waldron and his crowd of hirelings, he had no desire longer to represent the district.

He ceased to worry about results. He foresaw that his majority would be reduced. He decided to let it go at that.

The gulf which separated him now from the woman he loved was apparently too deep to be bridged. On the last night of the canvass he slipped into the meeting at which she spoke just to hear her voice again. He half hoped that she might say something so false and provoking about his record that he might hate her for it. Her address was one of lofty and pure appeal for the redemption of humanity through the trained spiritual power of womanhood. She even expressed her regret at the necessity of opposing a man of the type of John Vassar.

A hundred of Vassar’s partisans were present and burst into a fierce round of applause at the mention of his name. He watched the effect with breathless interest. The cheers were utterly unexpected on the part of the speaker, and threw her for the moment off her balance. She blushed and smiled and hesitated, fumbling for words.

Vassar’s heart was pounding like a trip hammer. He could have taken the boys in his arms and carried them through the streets for that cheer. No one knew of his presence. He had slipped into a back seat in the gallery unrecognized in the dim light.

Why had she blushed when they cheered his name? The crowd, of course, could not know of the secret between them. Would she have blushed from the mere confusion of mind which the hostile sentiment of her hearers had provoked? It was possible. And yet the faintest hope thrilled his heart that she cared for him. He had played the fool to lose his head that day. He realized it now. Such a woman could not be taken by storm. Every instinct of pride and intellectual dignity had resented it.

He went home happy over the incident with the memory of her scarlet cheeks and the sweet seriousness of her voice filling his soul. His managers brought glowing reports of the situation in his district. It didn’t matter if he had a chance to win Virginia.

The results proved that his guess of a reduced majority was correct. He barely pulled through by the skin of his teeth. His margin was a paltry seven hundred and fifty. At the election two years before it had been more than six thousand.

When Congress met in December he was confronted with a situation unique in the history of the Republic. A lobby had gathered in Washington so distinguished in personnel, so great in numbers, so aggressive in its purpose to control legislation, that the national representatives were afraid of their shadows.

The avowed aim of this vast gathering was the defeat of his bill for the adequate defense of the nation. The outlines of his measures had been published and had the unanimous backing of the Army and Navy Boards, the National Security League and all the leaders of the great political parties.

Both of our ex-Presidents, Roosevelt and Taft, had endorsed it and asked for its adoption. It was known that the President and his Cabinet approved its main features. And yet its chances of adoption were considered extremely doubtful.