“But it’s genuine!” he cried. “You’ll have to admit that!”
He looked in vain for his father and Marya.
“Zonia may go with us?” he asked.
“Indeed she can! Everybody has tried his hand to draw out our young statesman and she succeeds. She’s my little mascot!”
Virginia pressed her arm around the girl and she blushed with pride.
“Come; it’s only a short walk to Stuyvesant Square – we spend most of our time now at our country place at Babylon, but we’re in for this week’s rallies.”
Vassar looked for Zonia and discovered her in deep converse with a smiling blond youth of fourteen, the sparkle of whose eyes made no secret of their interest.
“My infant brother Billy – “ Virginia explained.
“Indeed!”
“They’re old friends.”
“Evidently!” he laughed.
“Come,” Virginia said in quick business-like tones, “the kids will follow. I want you to meet my father and mother before they’re off to bed. In spite of modern progress they are the most pig-headed and persistent pair of fossils with whom I have to contend – ”
“I’ve often seen your father at the soldiers’ reunions – the youngest and finest looking man of the Old Guard, I’ve always thought.”
“He is – isn’t he?” she said thoughtfully.
“I wonder that the daughter of a soldier should take seriously all this talk about universal peace – ”
“Perhaps that’s the reason – ”
“Nonsense!”
“Seriously. I’ve listened by the hour to his stories of the war. When I was very young I saw only the glamour and the romance and the glory and then as I grew older I began to think of the blackened chimneys of Southern homes and feel the misery and the desolation of it all. And we began to quarrel about war.”
“Your father was in Sherman’s army, I believe?”
“Yes – he ran away from his Western home at fourteen and joined the colors. Think of it! At eighteen he was mustered out in Washington a veteran of twenty-six pitched battles. He’s only sixty-odd today with every power alert except a slight deafness – and by the way – “ she paused and smiled – “I should tell you that his hobby just now is the immigration question. Don’t mind anything silly he may say, will you?”
“Certainly not!” Vassar agreed. “I too am fighting against the invasion of this country by a foreign army – ”
“Yours a dream – my father’s grievance quite real you must admit.”
“Seeing that a Pole is his Congressman neighbor – ” Vassar admitted good-humoredly. “It must get on the nerves of the old boys who can’t see our point of view. The man or woman born in free America inherits it all as a matter of course. He rarely thinks of his priceless birthright. To my old father every day of life is a Fourth of July! To me it is the same. A frail half-starved little orphan clinging to his hand thirty-one years ago, I stood on the deck of a steamer and saw this wonderful Promised Land. You are American by the accident of birth. You had no choice. We are American because we willed to come. We love this land because it’s worth loving. We know why we love it. We lifted up our eyes from a far country – amid tears and ashes and ruins – and saw the light of liberty shining here across the seas. We came and you received us with open arms. You set no hired spies to watch us. You made our homes and our firesides holy ground. We kiss the soil beneath our feet. It is our country – our flag, our nation, our people as it can’t be yours who do not realize its full meaning – can’t you see?”
“Yes,” she answered softly. “And I never thought of it in that way before.”
She glanced at the tall, straight, intense figure with new interest. They walked in silence for a block and he touched her arm with a movement of instinctive chivalrous protection as they crossed Second Avenue.
She broke into a laugh in spite of an effort at self-control when they had reached the sidewalk.
He blushed and looked puzzled.
“Why do you laugh?” he asked in hurt surprise.
“Oh, nothing – ”
“You couldn’t have laughed at the little confession I just made to you – ”
She laid her hand on his arm in gentle quick protest.
“You know I could not. It was too sincere. It was from the depths of your inmost heart. And I see you and all your people who have come to our shores in the past generation through new eyes after this revelation you have given me – no, I was laughing at something miles removed – ”
Again she paused and laughed.
“Tell me” – he pleaded.
“Come in first – we can’t stand here on the sidewalk like two spooning children – this is our house – ”
CHAPTER VII
WITH light step Virginia mounted the low stone stoop, fumbled for her keys, unlocked the massive door and ushered John Vassar into the dimly lighted hall.
“Come right into the sitting-room in the rear and meet my father and mother,” she cried, placing her little turban hat on the rack beside his, man-fashion.
Vassar smiled at the assumption of equal rights the act implied. She caught the smile and answered with a toss of her pretty head as he followed her through the hall.
The older folks were bending over a table deeply absorbed in a game of checkers. The picture caught Vassar’s fancy and held him in the doorway, a pleasant smile lighting his dark strong face.
“Mother,” Virginia began softly, “it’s time for children to quit their games. I want you to meet Mr. John Vassar whom I’m trying to dragoon into our cause – ”
The prim aristocratic little woman rose with dignity and extended her hand in a gesture that spoke the inheritance of gentle breeding. She was a native of Columbia, South Carolina. Her stock joke of self-pity was the fact that she had married a Sherman Bummer who had helped to burn her native city. She excused him always with the apology that he was so young he was really not responsible for the bad company in which she found him. As a matter of fact he had driven a gang of drunken marauders from their house and defended them single handed through a night of terror until order had been restored. It was ten years later before he succeeded in persuading the fair young rebel to surrender.
“Delighted to meet you, I’m sure,” Mrs. Holland said quietly. “You must be a Southerner, with that tall dark look of distinction – ”
Vassar bowed low over her hand.
“I wish I were, madam – if the fact would win your approval – ”
“To look like a Southerner is enough to win Mother on sight,” Virginia laughed.
The father extended his hand in a cordial greeting without rising.
“Excuse me, young man, for not getting up,” he said. “I’m lame with the gout. You’re a suffragette?”
Vassar looked at Virginia, smiled and promptly answered.
“I’ll have to confess that I’m not – ”
Holland extended his hand again.
“Shake once more! Thank God for the sight of a sane man again. I thought they’d all died. We never see them here any more – ”
Virginia lifted her finger and her father took the outstretched arm and drew it around his neck.
“I have to put up with the nincompoops for Virginia’s sake. But I’m going to explode some day and say things. I