CHAPTER IX—THE NEW AMERICA
ANOTHER year of struggle and suffering, hope and fear, Gaston had passed, and still he was no nearer the dream of realised love. If anything had changed, the General’s pride had added new force to his determination that his daughter should not marry the man who had defied him.
His chief reliance for Gaston’s defeat was on time, and the broadening of Sallie’s mind by extended travel. He had sent her abroad twice, and this year he sent her to spend another three months in Europe.
These absences seemed only to intensify her longing for her lover. On her return the General would burst into a storm of rage at her persistence. She had ceased to give him any bitter answers, only smiling quietly and maintaining an ominous silence.
He had a new cause now of dislike for the man of her choice. Gaston had become a man of acknowledged power in politics and was the leader of a group of radical young men who demanded the complete reorganisation of the Democratic party, the shelving of the old timers, among whom he was numbered, and the announcement of a radical programme upon the Negro issue.
Radicalism of any sort he had always hated. Now, as advanced by this young upstart, it was doubly odious. The General had never given much time to his political duties, but his name was a power, and he gave regularly to the campaign committee the largest cash contribution they received.
He tried in a clumsy way to put Gaston off the State Executive Committee, but failed. He saw Gaston quietly laughing at him. Then he opened his pocket book and worked up a machine. It was a formidable power, and Gaston feared its influence in the coming convention.
While this fight was in progress, and Sallie was in Europe, the destruction of the Maine in Havana harbour stilled the world into silence with the echo of its sullen roar. There was a moment’s pause, and the nation lifted its great silk battle flags from the Capitol at Washington, and called for volunteers to wipe the empire of Spain from the map of the Western world.
The war lasted but a hundred days, but in those hundred days was packed the harvest of centuries.