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CHAPTER XXXV

MRS. HOLLAND rallied from her swoon and Marya helped her to rise as Zonia shouted joyfully: “Come quick! He’s alive – he’s alive!”

Billy opened his eyes feebly and raised his hand to the ugly wound in his breast. Zonia caught it, bent and kissed him.

Mrs. Holland staggered to the group and knelt by their side.

“Oh – my boy – you’ll live – I feel it – I know it. God has heard my prayer – ”

She paused and turned to Marya —

“Go, darling, quick – bring some water and tell Peter to come.”

Marya darted across the lawn, entered the house, summoned Peter and seized a glass of water.

In ten minutes the faithful old butler had carried Billy from the lawn and was leading the stricken group toward the road for New York.

Vassar’s trick succeeded. He reached his post without interference, thrust Virginia into the edge of the dense hedgerow and waited until the guards had returned to their places. Not a moment was to be lost.

He seized her hand and rushed down the street lit by the glare of burning houses.

“Play your part now!” he commanded. “It’s the only way and it’s safe. It’s the order of the night’s work.”

They pushed through mobs of panic-stricken fleeing refugees and groups of drunken soldiers revelling in every excess. Again and again they passed brutes with captive girls as their prey. Some had them tied with cords. Others relied on a blow from their fists to insure obedience.

They waved their congratulations to Vassar and his captive as they passed.

They reached the outskirts of the town without accident and ran into the stream of horror-stricken humanity that was pouring now toward New York.

A great murmur of mingled anguish, rage and despair rolled heavenward. It seemed a part of the leaping flames and red billowing smoke of the burning city behind them.

Lost children were crying for their parents and trudging hopelessly on with the crowd.

A farmer with a horrible wound across his forehead was pushing a wheelbarrow bearing his mangled child. Beside the body sat a little three-year-old girl clutching a blood-smeared doll.

A big automobile came shrieking through this crowd of misery. Beside the chauffeur sat an officer in glittering uniform, behind two soldiers, their bayonets flashing in the glare of the conflagration. In the rear seat alone, in magnificent uniform with gold epaulets and cords, sat the Governor-General of the fallen nation.

Waldron saw Virginia with a look of surprise and rage and lifted his hand. The car stopped instantly. The guard sprang out and opened the door of the tonneau.

“Quick!” Virginia whispered. “He has seen me. He will recognize you – run for your life!”

“I’ll not leave you to that beast’s mercy – ”

“Run – run I tell you, if you love me!” she cried in agony. “I can take care of myself now. I’ll manage Waldron – and I know how to die!”

He gripped her hand fiercely.

With sudden resolution, she tore from his grasp and rushed to meet her rescuer.

Vassar no longer hesitated. She had made it impossible for him to linger a moment. He leaped the fence and disappeared in the shadows.

Waldron grasped Virginia’s hand in genuine surprise and distress.

“My dear Miss Holland,” he said with a touch of royal condescension, “what does this mean?”

“I was a prisoner,” she gasped.

“A prisoner?”

“The brute who ran had seized and dragged me from the lawn and through the streets.”

“I’m proud and happy in this chance to prove to you my devotion. You have treated me cruelly. I show you tonight my generosity.”

“Thank you,” she murmured gratefully.

With a lordly bow he handed her into the car and ordered his chauffeur to drive down the turnpike toward the Holland house.

The home was in flames. The Colonel had fired it in revenge for the death of his Lieutenant and sought new headquarters for the night.

Virginia found her mother, Zonia, Marya – with old Peter nearby holding Billy in his lap – standing in dazed horror watching the flames leap and roar and crackle.

Waldron helped the stricken mother and girl into his car.

Virginia lifted her white face.

“My father was shot – ”

“Tonight?”

“Yes – ”

Waldron turned sharply to a guard.

“Find his body. It can’t be far and bring it to New York for burial.”

“If you will permit me, Miss Holland,” Waldron said with a stately bow, “I will take you and your mother to your house on the Square. I fear it has been looted by the soldiery who got out of hand for a few hours. But you will be safe there from tonight. I will place a guard at your door. You are under my protection now – ”

“Thank you! Thank you,” Virginia answered in low tones.

The Governor-General drove by the army headquarters, spoke for a moment to the Commander-in-chief, arranged the programme for the triumphal entry into the city, secured a cavalry escort and leisurely drove back into New York through miles of weary plodding, stunned and maimed refugees still fleeing before the savage sweep of the imperial army.

He placed Virginia and her mother in their wrecked home and stationed a guard at the door.

With lordly condescension he took her hand in parting:

“Please remember, Miss Holland, that I’m the most powerful man in America today. My word is law, and I am yours to command.”

“You are generous,” she answered softly.

He lifted his hand in protest, bowed and took his seat again in his automobile.

Virginia stood beside a broken window and watched the swiftly galloping horses of his escort sweep past the little park toward Broadway.

She walked with wide staring eyes through the litter of broken furniture, a dim resolution slowly shaping itself in her soul. It came in a moment’s inspiration – the way of deliverance at last. Her heart gave a cry of joy. The nails of her slender fingers cut the flesh as she gripped her hands in the fierce decision.

“I’ll do it – I’ll do it!” she breathed with uplifted head and chalk-white face.

CHAPTER XXXVI

VASSAR succeeded in making his way to Fort Hamilton and joined General Hood. He had cut his way through Waldron’s garrison which had mobilized in Brooklyn to join its levies with the invading army.

General Hood disbanded the handful of surviving officers and men and ordered each individual to join him at a secret rendezvous on the plains of Texas. He kept intact two companies of cavalry for an escort. He would take his chances with these by avoiding the fallen cities.

He placed final orders to his faithful secret service men in New York in Vassar’s hands.

“You wish to stay a few days in New York. All right. Disguise yourself, travel by rail and join me later. Tell our people everywhere to play the fox, submit, take their oath of allegiance, and wait my orders. They’ll come in due time. I’m going to retreat to the Sierra Nevadas if necessary and get ready.”

Vassar pressed the General’s hand.

“You will surrender the forts?”

“Certainly. I shall leave them intact. We’ll need them again.”

“I could blow them up. It would be foolish. The city they were built to defend is lost for the moment. The submarines are already lying in the harbor and hold the Navy Yard.”

With a quick pressure of hand the men parted. The General embarked his cavalry on a small army transport that lay under the guns of Fort Hamilton, slipped to sea at night and sailed for Galveston.

Vassar reached New York disguised as a Long Island truck farmer. He drove a wagon loaded with vegetables, circled Stuyvesant Square next morning and called his produce for sale.

He looked for an agonized moment at his battered house, snapped the iron weight strop on his horse’s bridle and rushed up the stairs.

The wreck within was complete and appalling.

He hurried across the Square to the Holland house. He was sure that Waldron would give his protection.

He could kill him for it and yet he thanked God Virginia was safe. Waldron loved her. He knew it by an unerring intuition. He would use his wealth and dazzling power again to win her. He knew that too by the same sixth sense.

He couldn’t succeed! If ever a woman loved, Virginia Holland loved him. With her kind it was once for life.

And yet he trembled at the thought of what such a brute might do when every appeal had failed. Would he dare to use his power to force her to his will? Such things had been done by tyrants. A new day was dawning in a world that once was the home of freedom – the day of the jailer, tyrant, sycophant, and soldier who asks no questions.

It strangled him to think that he must leave her here. He wouldn’t! He would make her come with Marya, Zonia and her mother into the West and take her place in the field by his side.

The thought thrilled him with new life.

In ten minutes he was holding her in his arms – war and death, poverty and ruin lost in love’s mad rapture.

“You must come with me, my own!” he breathed. “I will find a tent for you on the great free plains – you, your mother, and Marya and Zonia. You can follow when I send you the word – ”

She shook her head sadly.

“No, my lover, I cannot surrender to our enemies like that – my place is here.”

“Your life is not safe in Waldron’s hands.”

“I’m in God’s hands. I have work to do. You shall do yours on the plains training our brave boys for the day that shall surely come. I must do mine here – ”

“I can’t leave you!” he protested bitterly.

“You must. My mother can’t live. I know this. The shock of a journey would kill her. Marya and Zonia shall be my sisters.”

For half an hour he pleaded in vain. There was but one answer.

“My work is here. I’ve thought it out to the end. I shall not fail. I’ll tell you when I’m ready and you will come then – ”

There was an inspiration, a lofty spirit of exaltation, in her speech that hushed protest.

He pressed her lips.

“I will not see you again,” he said at last. “My coming is dangerous to us both. My work is done today. We may be watched by other eyes than Waldron’s guard on your block – ”

“I am grateful for his help. I shall be sorry for him when the day I dream comes. But it must come. I have betrayed my country by folly beyond God’s forgiveness. I shall do my part now to retrieve that error – ”

Vassar moved uneasily.

“You shall know and approve – and I shall not fail!”

She paused and held his gaze with a strange, glowing light in her eyes – the light of religious enthusiasm. It filled him with fear and thrilled him with hope. Her faith was contagious.

“You cannot work here – “ she went on, “a price is on your head.”

He left her at the door, the same dreamy brilliance in her sensitive face. She stood as if in a trance. He wondered what it meant – what her mysterious work was going to be?

CHAPTER XXXVII

THREE days later the magnificent imperial army entered the fallen metropolis, its scarlet, gold-embossed standards flying, its bands playing.

Waldron marched to meet them at the head of twenty-five thousand picked men of his garrison. His division more than made good the losses of battle.

When the grand march began at the entrance of the Queensboro Bridge – one hundred and sixty-five thousand men were in line. The immensity of the spectacle stunned the imagination of the curious thousands that pressed close to the curbs and watched them pass. When the German army entered Antwerp in the world war, the streets were absolutely deserted save for stray dogs and cats that howled from wrecked buildings. New York was consumed by a quenchless eagerness to look on their conquerors.

All day from seven o’clock in the morning until dark the torrent of brown kahki poured through Fifty-ninth Street and down Fifth Avenue. When the Avenue was filled by the solid ranks from Central Park to the Washington Arch, the imperial host at a given signal raised their shout of triumph.

“For God and Emperor!”

Until this moment they had moved in a silence that was uncanny. Their long-pent feelings gave the united yell of a hundred and sixty thousand an unearthly power. They shouted in chorus first from every regiment in one grand burst of defiant pride. And then they shouted by regiments, beginning with the first. The shout leaped from regiment to regiment until it swept the entire line far out on the plains of Long Island. Each marching host tried to lift the note higher until the frenzied bursts came with the shock of salvos of artillery.

And then they sang the songs of their grand army on the march. For an hour their voices rang the death knell of freedom while conquered thousands stood in awed silence.

Waldron moved at the head of the column on his white horse in gorgeous uniform. Beside him rode in service suit the Commander-in-chief on a black Arabian stallion with arched neck and sleek, shining sides.

The ceremonies at the City Hall were brief. The grand procession never paused. Timed to a dot, the lines had divided as they passed the cross streets leading to our great tunnels. At Forty-second Street a division swung into the Grand Central Station to entrain for service in the interior. The cars were waiting with steam up and every man at his place under the command of army officers.

At Thirty-fourth Street another division swung into the Pennsylvania Station. At Twenty-third Street another swept toward the Lackawanna and the Erie. At Fourteenth Street another swung toward the Chelsea piers, where transports were waiting to bear them to Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, New Orleans, Jacksonville and Galveston.

These transports had been seized in the harbor. The great armada was already loading the second division of a hundred and sixty thousand more men at the wharves of Europe. The imperial army of occupation would consist of a million veterans. They would be landed now without pause until the work was done. A fleet of a hundred submarines lay in wait for our Pacific fleet in the Straits of Magellan. Its end was sure.

The conquest was complete, overwhelming, stunning. The half-baked desperate rebellions that broke out in various small towns where patriotism was a living thing were stamped out with a cruelty so appalling they were not repeated. At the first ripple of trouble the town was laid in ashes, its population of males massacred, its women outraged and driven into the fields to crawl to the nearest village and tell the story. One short-lived victory marked the end.

The Virginians raised an army of volunteer cavalry, led by a descendant of Jeb Stuart raided and captured Washington. The garrison were taken by complete surprise at three o’clock before daylight. The fight was at close quarters and the enemy was annihilated.

A battle cruiser promptly swept up the Potomac from the Chesapeake Bay, opened with her huge guns and reduced our capital to a pile of broken stone. Incendiary shells completed the work and two days later the most beautiful city in America lay beneath the Southern skies a smouldering ash-heap. The proud shaft of shining marble to the memory of George Washington was reduced to a mass of pulverized stone. A crater sixteen feet in depth gaped where its foundations had rested.

An indemnity was levied on New York that robbed the city of every dollar in every vault and sent its famous men into beggared exile. Waldron’s list of proscription for banishment included every leader in the world of finance, invention and industry.

He had marked every man with a genius for political leadership for a term of ten years’ imprisonment. Exile was too dangerous an experiment for these trouble-makers. They were safer in jail. Ten years in darkness and misery would bring them to reason.

The world’s war had cost the Imperial Federation a staggering total of thirty billions. Waldron promised his royal master to replace every dollar of this loss within five years by a system of confiscation and taxes. His first acts of plunder sent treasure ships to Europe bearing fifteen billions. The revenue from all the confiscated railroads, mines, and great industries taken over by the new government would reduce taxation in Europe to a trifle.

When the conquest was complete the net result was that Imperial Europe had fenced in a continent with bristling cannon. Inside the inclosure were a hundred million of the most intelligent and capable slaves the world had seen since the legions of Rome conquered Greece and enslaved her artists and philosophers.

There was no pause in the ruthless work until the last spark of resistance had been stamped out.

By one of the strange ironies of fate the fiercest of the futile rebellions broke out on the East Side of New York, where the attempt was made completely to disarm our half-baked foreign population. The men who sulked in the tenement districts below the Bowery had been accustomed to fight constituted authority in the Old World from habit. The first squad of soldiers sent into this quarter to disarm them had never returned. Not one of their bodies were found.

When a regiment with machine guns rushed in they found the side streets below Fourteenth barricaded with piles of trucks and lumber. From every window they received a hail of bullets.

A battery of artillery cleared the barricades and the slaughter began. After four hours of butchery in the streets, the commander discovered that the old Tenth Regiment Armory was crowded. More than a thousand women and children accustomed to attend Vassar’s school of patriotism had sought refuge there.

The children had found the flags and their mothers in foolish superstition had pinned them on their breasts for protection – the flag they had been taught to love!

The Imperial Guard turned their artillery on the armory and tore the flimsy front wall into fragments. When the screaming children and frantic women rushed through the breach, a withering fire from the pompoms piled their writhing bodies on the blood-soaked pavements.

Benda had been killed in the second intrenchments on Long Island. Angela faced the storm of lead at the door, holding her boy behind her back to shield him from the bullets.

A shell exploded inside and a fragment buried itself in the child’s breast. The mother felt the stinging shock and heard the thud of the iron crash into the soft flesh.

The boy made no cry. The iron had torn through his heart. The little hand was lifted feebly and clutched the tiny flag that covered his breast.

With a cry of anguish she clasped the bleeding bundle of flesh in her arms, ran through the building and found her way into the darkened basement.

When the building was cleared the commander entered with a squad of soldiers, lighted a cigarette and inspected the ruins.

On the blackboards still were standing in clear white chalk the sentences and mottoes Vassar had written:

ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL

The Commander laughed and wrote beneath it:

BUT YOU COULDN’T STOP A SIXTEEN-INCH SHELL WITH HOT AIR!

The men cheered.

On the next blackboard stood the words:

LIBERTY – EQUALITY – FRATERNITY

The officer struck a line through each word and wrote beneath:

AUTHORITY – OBEDIENCE – EFFICIENCY

Again the soldiers cheered.

Within three months the fallen nation had been completely disarmed and rendered helpless.

The penalty of death was enforced against everyone who dared to conceal a pistol, rifle, shotgun or piece of explosive. The manufacturing plants making arms and ammunition were under the control of the invaders.

They not only controlled these gun and shell factories, they took possession of every chemical laboratory and every piece of machinery that could be used to make explosives. It was no more possible to buy a piece of dynamite for any purpose than to buy a forty-two centimeter siege gun. All blasting for building and commercial purposes was done by an officer, who charged well for his services.

Every street railway and trunk line was manned by the army. The ammunition factories were all working with double shifts of American laborers, compelled by their conquerors to turn out shells for future use against their fellow-countrymen.

Every newspaper, magazine and publishing-house had installed an Imperial censor. Not a line was allowed to be printed under penalty of death except by his order.

Freedom of speech and press was relegated to the dust heap as dead heresies against constituted authority. The people were only told what their masters permitted them to hear. Our press, of course, was unanimous in its praise of the new Imperial régime. “Law,” “Order,” and “Efficiency” were the new watchwords of America. The people were not asked to do any thinking. Their masters did it for them, their part was to obey.

Waldron determined to make Virginia Holland the leader of a new woman’s party to proclaim the blessings of the imperial and aristocratic form of government.

He honored her with an invitation to his palace to discuss his scheme. When Virginia received the perfumed, crested note, her cheeks flushed with joy.

“Thank God!” she murmured fervently.