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?