Kitabı oku: «The Fall of a Nation», sayfa 6

CHAPTER XII

VASSAR determined that every day of the two weeks at Babylon should be red lettered in his life. He had never taken a vacation; nor had his father. It was time to adopt this good custom of the country. It was mid-July. The campaign would not really be under way until October. There was nothing to worry about. Neither the suffragettes with their organization nor Waldron with his money could break his hold on the hearts of his people.

He gave himself up to the sheer joy of living for the first time in life. Through the long glorious early days he drove with Virginia in her little dogcart about the beautiful country roads of Long Island. He had never dreamed the panoramas of ravishing landscape that stretched away in endless beauty. He found gentle hills and valleys, babbling brooks and shady woods and always seaward the solemn white sand dunes of the beach and the changing mirror of the bay reflecting their shining forms. On days when the wind was right the far-away roar of the surf could be distinctly heard.

Each day alone with the charming and brilliant woman by his side had led him deeper and deeper into the mazes of a fascination that had become resistless. They talked with deep earnestness of the great things of life and eternity. She made no effort to conceal her keen personal interest in the man she was studying.

With deliberate purpose she had abandoned herself to the romantic situation of being sought and courted by a handsome, fascinating man. He wondered vaguely if she were experimenting with her own character, and merely using him for the moment for the purpose of chemical reaction? He shivered at the uncanny idea. It was disconcerting. She might be capable of such a gruesome process. For the life of him he couldn’t make out as yet whether such a woman was capable of real passion.

There was no longer any doubt about his own situation. He had faced the fact squarely. He was in love – madly, passionately, hopelessly – the one grand passion of mature manhood. Its violence frightened him. He was afraid to put it to the test with a declaration. He must wait and be sure of a response on her part. There was too much at stake to bungle such an issue. If he could win her by surrender on the suffrage question, he would give her two ballots if she wanted them. He knew her character too well to believe that such ignoble surrender of principle merely to please could succeed. She would accept his help in her cause and despise him for a weakling in her heart.

As the time drew near that he must go he knew with increasing fear the supreme hour of life had struck. He must put his fate to the test. He took his seat in a rowboat facing her and drifted into the silver sea of moon, fully determined. An hour passed and he had only spoken commonplace nothings. With each effort his courage grew weaker.

If she were like other girls he would have dared it. “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady,” he kept repeating as he tried in vain to screw his mind up to the point of speech. It was no use. She was not the fair lady of song and story. She had a disconcerting way of demanding the reason for things.

He gave it up at last and spent an evening of supreme happiness drifting and listening to the soft round flute-like notes of her voice. He would speak tomorrow. They had two days more. Tomorrow they were to take a long ride down the smooth road to Southampton in her little runabout. She was an expert at the wheel of an automobile and they had explored the whole south side of Long Island in the past five days.

He had grown to love the peace and charm of this wonderful isle – homes – homes – homes – everywhere! laughing children played beside the roadways. Smiling boys and girls made hill and valley ring with joy.

He had promised Zonia and Marya to take the cottage across the turnpike in front of the spacious lawn of the Holland homestead and let them spend the summer there. His father had joined in their clamor and he had consented. The cottage was furnished and a power launch went with it for a reasonable rent. They were to move down next week. There would be but two days’ break in the new life they had begun in this fairyland of sun and sky, trees and flowers, laughing waters and shining seas.

Why should he press his suit? He would wait and see more of her. And then the crisis came that hurled him headlong into a decision.

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 —

Tommaso Benda.

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:

 
My Country, ’tis of thee
I cutta the cherry-tree,
Sweet land of libertee
My name is George Wash!
 

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.