Kitabı oku: «The Fall of a Nation», sayfa 2
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.
Sincerely,
Virginia Holland,Pres’t National Campaign Committee.
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:
PEACE! PEACE! PEACE! PEACE!
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.
Vassar listened to the man whom he had once cheered and followed with growing wonder and weariness. With pompous pose and high-sounding phrase he inveighed against arms and armament. In the next breath he denounced his old opponent for the attempt to abolish armaments by an international organization to enforce peace through a central police power. He demanded that America should stand alone in her purity and her unselfish glory. He believed in America for the Americans. But he would not fight to maintain it – nor would he permit an entangling alliance with any nation which might make safe the doctrine without a fight. We would neither fight nor permit anyone else to fight for us. He demanded that we should not arm ourselves for defense and in the next breath declared that he was not in favor at present of dismantling the forts we now possessed or of disbanding the army. He denounced all arms and all wars and yet favored being half armed and half ready for an inadequate defense. He asked that we stand absolutely alone in the world and half armed maintain the guardianship of the Western Hemisphere against the serried millions of veteran soldiers of armed Europe. He demanded that we uphold international law and order and yet ridiculed any organization for that purpose.
Each empty platitude the crowd cheered. Each preposterous demand for the impossible they cheered again with redoubled power.
His last proposition was evidently his favorite. He dropped his voice to low persuasive tones:
“Even suppose the unthinkable thing should happen. Suppose that some misguided nation in an hour of madness should send a hundred thousand soldiers across three thousand miles of sea and attempt to invade this country – what then? This country, mark you, peopled by a nation of vastly superior numbers, equal intelligence, mechanical genius and political organization – ”
He paused and thundered:
“What would happen?
“Those hundred thousand invading soldiers would never see their old homes again – ”
Tremendous cheers rent the air.
“And what’s more, dear friends, they would never desire to see their homes again. We would march out to meet them with smiles and flowers. We would bid them welcome to our shores. We would give to them the freedom of our city and greet them as brethren!”
Again the cheers leaped from the throats of thousands.
To John Vassar with the bitter memories of the might of kings that yet shadowed the world the scene was sickening in its utter fatuity. He mopped the perspiration from his forehead and hurried on.
He passed the platform on which Jane Hale stood repeating in monotonous reiteration the plea for peace which she vainly spoke into the ears of Europe on her tour during the war. The speakers’ stand was draped in red and behind Miss Hale’s solid figure the young statesman recognized the familiar faces of the Socialist leaders of the East Side.
How vain this Socialist symbol of the common red blood that pulses from every human breast! How pitifully tragic their failure in the hour when the war summoned the world to the national colors. The red flag faded from the sky. It was all talk – all wind – all fustian – all bombast – all theory. Men don’t die for academic theories. Men die for what they believe. And yet these American Socialists were as busy with their parrot talk as if nothing had happened in the world since that fatal day in July, 1914, when old things passed away and all things became new.
Vassar pressed past the crowd around the Socialist stand and saw beyond the platform from which the woman leader of the new Anti-Enlistment League was haranguing the mob. She too was a suffragette for peace purposes – an aggressive fat female of decisively militant aspect. Her words were pacific in their import. Her manner and spirit spoke battle in every accent and gesture. She was determined to have peace if she had to kill every man, woman and child opposed to it.
She waved the pledge of the League above her head and recited its form in rasping, challenging, aggravating notes.
“I, being over eighteen years of age, hereby pledge myself against enlistment as a volunteer for any military or naval service in an international war, and against giving my approval to such enlistment on the part of others.”
She paused and shouted:
“The Anti-Enlistment League does not stand for puny non-resistance! We appeal to the militancy of the spirit – ”
John Vassar looked at his watch.
“We’ve yet time to hear brother Debs. I like his kind. You always know where to find him.”
“No-no – Uncy,” Zonia urged, “we must hurry to our stand – ”
“Our stand, eh?”
“Yes – you mustn’t miss a word Miss Holland says. She doesn’t speak long – but every word counts – ”
“She has one loyal follower anyhow,” Vassar smiled.
“I’m going to win her for you, Uncy dear – ”
“Oh, that’s the scheme?”
“Yes – ”
“I don’t think it can be done, little sweetheart. I never could like a hen that crows – ”
Zonia waved her arm toward the big platform of the Woman’s Federated Clubs.
“There they are now!” she cried – “Marya and Grandpa – they’re sitting on the steps – ”
“So I see – “ Vassar laughed.
Old Andrew Vassar was beaming his good-natured approval on the throng that surged about the stand, his arm encircling his little granddaughter with loving touch.
The younger man watched him a moment with a tender smile. His father was supremely happy in the great crowd of strong, healthy, free men and women. He knew nothing of the meaning of the meeting. He never bothered his head about it. The thing was a part of the life of America and it was good. He was seventy years old now – lame from an old wound received in Poland – but had a fine strong face beaming generous thoughts to all men. He had landed on our shores thirty years ago broken, bruised and ruined. He had dared to lift his voice in Poland for one of the simplest rights of his people. A brutal soldier at the order of their imperial master had sacked his home, murdered his wife and daughter before his eyes, robbed him of all and at last left him in the street, bleeding to death with a baby boy of five clinging to his body. His older son had smuggled him aboard a ship bound for New York. He had prospered from the day of his landing. A tailor by trade he had proven his worth from the first. For ten years he had been head cutter for a wholesale clothing house and received an annual salary of ten thousand dollars. Ten years ago the might of kings had gripped the son he left behind. His goods too were forfeited, his life snuffed out and his children orphaned. Big free America had received them now, and the old man’s strong arm circled them. The little terror-stricken boy, who had clung to him the day the soldiers left him in the street for dead, was the Honorable John Vassar, the coming man of a mighty nation of freemen.
Old Andrew Vassar made no effort to grasp the current of our social or political life. It was all good. He went to all the political meetings, Democratic, Republican, Socialist, Woman’s Suffrage. He liked to test his freedom and laugh to find it true.
