The Clansman Part 23

"I see," said Stoneman, pulling his bristling brows down until his eyes were two beads of white gleaming through them. "Tell Wade to summon every member of the party in his room immediately and hold the Senate in session."

When the group of Senators crowded into the Vice-president's room the old man faced them leaning on his cane and delivered an address of five minutes they never forgot.

His speech had a nameless fascination. The man himself with his elemental pa.s.sions was a wonder. He left on public record no speech worth reading, and yet these powerful men shrank under his glance. As the nostrils of his big three-angled nose dilated, the scream of an eagle rang in his voice, his huge ugly hand held the crook of his cane with the clutch of a tiger, his tongue flew with the hiss of an adder, and his big deformed foot seemed to grip the floor as the claw of a beast.

"The life of a political party, gentlemen," he growled in conclusion, "is maintained by a scheme of subterfuges in which the moral law cuts no figure. As your leader, I know but one law--success. The world is full of fools who must have toys with which to play. A belief in politics is the favourite delusion of shallow American minds. But you and I have no delusions. Your life depends on this vote. If any man thinks the abstraction called 'honour' is involved, let him choose between his honour and his life! I call no names. This issue must be settled now before the Senate adjourns. There can be no to-morrow. It is life or death. Let the roll be called again immediately."

The grave Senators resumed their seats, and Wade, the acting Vice-president, again put the question to Stockton's expulsion.

The member from New England sat pale and trembling, in his soul the anguish of the mortal combat between his Puritan conscience, the iron heritage of centuries, and the order of his captain.

When the Clerk of the Senate called his name, still the battle raged. He sat in silence, the whiteness of death about his lips, while the clerk at a signal from the Chair paused.

And then a scene the like of which was never known in American history!

August Senators crowded around his desk, begging, shouting, imploring, and demanding that a fellow Senator break his solemn word of honour!

For a moment pandemonium reigned.

"Vote! Vote! Call his name again!" they shouted.

High above all rang the voice of Charles Sumner, leading the wild chorus, crying:

"Vote! Vote! Vote!"

The galleries hissed and cheered--the cheers at last drowning every hiss.

Stoneman pushed his way among the mob which surrounded the badgered Puritan as he attempted to retreat into the cloakroom.

"Will you vote?" he hissed, his eyes flashing poison.

"My conscience will not permit it," he faltered.

"To h.e.l.l with your conscience!" the old leader thundered. "Go back to your seat, ask the clerk to call your name, and vote, or by the living G.o.d I'll read you out of the party to-night and brand you a snivelling coward, a copperhead, a renegade, and traitor!"

Trembling from head to foot, he staggered back to his seat, the cold sweat standing in beads on his forehead, and gasped:

"Call my name!"

The shrill voice of the clerk rang out in the stillness like the peal of a trumpet:

"Mr. Roman!"

And the deed was done.

A cheer burst from his colleagues, and the roll-call proceeded.

When Stockton's name was reached he sprang to his feet, voted for himself, and made a second tie!

With blank faces they turned to the leader, who ordered Charles Sumner to move that the Senator from New Jersey be not allowed to answer his name on an issue involving his own seat.

It was carried. Again the roll was called, and Stockton expelled by a majority of one.

In the moment of ominous silence which followed, a yellow woman of sleek animal beauty leaned far over the gallery rail and laughed aloud.

The pa.s.sage of each act of the Revolutionary programme over the veto of the President was now but a matter of form. The act to degrade his office by forcing him to keep a cabinet officer who daily insulted him, the Civil Rights Bill, and the Freedman's Bureau Bill followed in rapid succession.

Stoneman's crowning Reconstruction Act was pa.s.sed, two years after the war had closed, shattering the Union again into fragments, blotting the names of ten great Southern States from its roll, and dividing their territory into five Military Districts under the control of belted satraps.

When this measure was vetoed by the President, it came accompanied by a message whose words will be forever etched in fire on the darkest page of the Nation's life.

Amid hisses, curses, jeers, and cat-calls, the Clerk of the House read its burning words:

"_The power thus given to the commanding officer over the people of each district is that of an absolute monarch. His mere will is to take the place of law. He may make a criminal code of his own; he can make it as b.l.o.o.d.y as any recorded in history, or he can reserve the privilege of acting on the impulse of his private pa.s.sions in each case that arises._

"_Here is a bill of attainer against nine millions of people at once. It is based upon an accusation so vague as to be scarcely intelligible, and found to be true upon no credible evidence. Not one of the nine millions was heard in his own defence. The representatives even of the doomed parties were excluded from all partic.i.p.ation in the trial. The conviction is to be followed by the most ignominious punishment ever inflicted on large ma.s.ses of men. It disfranchises them by hundreds of thousands and degrades them all--even those who are admitted to be guiltless--from the rank of freemen to the condition of slaves._

"_Such power has not been wielded by any monarch in England for more than five hundred years, and in all that time no people who speak the English tongue have borne such servitude._"

When the last jeering cat-call which greeted this message of the Chief Magistrate had died away on the floor and in the galleries, old Stoneman rose, with a smile playing about his grim mouth, and introduced his bill to impeach the President of the United States and remove him from office.

CHAPTER VIII

A DREAM

Elsie spent weeks of happiness in an abandonment of joy to the spell of her lover. His charm was resistless. His gift of delicate intimacy, the eloquence with which he expressed his love, and yet the manly dignity with which he did it, threw a spell no woman could resist.

Each day's working hours were given to his father's case and to the study of law. If there was work to do, he did it, and then struck the word care from his life, giving himself body and soul to his love. Great events were moving. The shock of the battle between Congress and the President began to shake the Republic to its foundations. He heard nothing, felt nothing, save the music of Elsie's voice.

And she knew it. She had only played with lovers before. She had never seen one of Ben's kind, and he took her by storm. His creed was simple.

The chief end of life is to glorify the girl you love. Other things could wait. And he let them wait. He ignored their existence.

But one cloud cast its shadow over the girl's heart during these red-letter days of life--the fear of what her father would do to her lover's people. Ben had asked her whether he must speak to him. When she said "No, not yet," he forgot that such a man lived. As for his politics, he knew nothing and cared less.

But the girl knew and thought with sickening dread, until she forgot her fears in the joy of his laughter. Ben laughed so heartily, so insinuatingly, the contagion of his fun could not be resisted.

He would sit for hours and confess to her the secrets of his boyish dreams of glory in war, recount his thrilling adventures and daring deeds with such enthusiasm that his cause seemed her own, and the pity and the anguish of the ruin of his people hurt her with the keen sense of personal pain. His love for his native State was so genuine, his pride in the bravery and goodness of its people so chivalrous, she began to see for the first time how the cords which bound the Southerner to his soil were of the heart's red blood.

She began to understand why the war, which had seemed to her a wicked, cruel, and causeless rebellion, was the one inevitable thing in our growth from a loose group of sovereign States to a United Nation. Love had given her his point of view.

Secret grief over her father's course began to grow into conscious fear.

With unerring instinct she felt the fatal day drawing nearer when these two men, now of her inmost life, must clash in mortal enmity.

She saw little of her father. He was absorbed with fevered activity and deadly hate in his struggle with the President.

Brooding over her fears one night, she had tried to interest Ben in politics. To her surprise she found that he knew nothing of her father's real position or power as leader of his party. The stunning tragedy of the war had for the time crushed out of his consciousness all political ideas, as it had for most young Southerners. He took her hand while a dreamy look overspread his swarthy face: