The Art of Disappearing Part 18

"You do the same for me."

"There is more likelihood in your case," said Curran, "for your age is nearer that of Tom Jones, and youth has resemblances of color and feature."

He studied the photograph and compared it with the grave face before him.

"I have done this before," said Curran, "with the same result. You are ten years older than Tom Jones, and you are as clearly Arthur Dillon as he was Tom Jones."

The young man and the Captain sighed together.

"Oh, I brought in others, clever and experienced," said Curran, "to try what a fresh mind could do to help me, but in vain."

"There must have been something hard about Tom Jones," said Arthur, "when he was able to stay away and make no sign after his child was born."

The Captain burst into a mocking laugh, which escaped him before he could repress the inclination.

"He may never have heard of it, and if he did his wife's reputation----"

"I see," said Arthur Dillon smiling, convinced that Captain Curran knew more of Sonia Westfield than he cared to tell. At the detective's request the matter was dropped as one that did him harm; but he complimented Arthur on the shrewdness of his suggestions, which indeed had given him new views without changing his former opinions.

CHAPTER XV.

THE INVASION OF IRELAND.

One lovely morning the good ship sailed into the harbor of Foreskillen, an obscure fishing port on the lonely coast of Donegal. The _Arrow_ had been in sight of land all the day before. A hush had fallen on the spirits of the adventurers. The two innocents, Honora and her father, had sat on deck with eyes fixed on the land of their love, scarcely able to speak, and unwilling to eat, in spite of Arthur's coaxing. Half the night they sat there, mostly silent, talking reverently, every one touched and afraid to disturb them; after a short sleep they were on deck again to see the ship enter the harbor in the gray dawn. The sun was still behind the brown hills. Arthur saw a silver bay, a mournful sh.o.r.e with a few houses huddled miserably in the distance, and bare hills without verdure or life. It was an indifferent part of the earth to him; but revealed in the hearts of Owen Ledwith and his daughter, no jewel of the mines could have shone more resplendent. He did not understand the love called patriotism, any more than the love of a parent for his child. These affections have to be experienced to be known. He loved his country and was ready to die for it; but to have bled for it, to have writhed under tortures for it, to have groaned in unison with its mortal anguish, to have pa.s.sed through the fire of death and yet lived for it, these were not his glories.

In the cool, sad morning the father and daughter stood glorified in his eyes, for if they loved each other much, they loved this strange land more. The white lady, whiter now than lilies, stood with her arm about her father, her eyes shining; and he, poor man, trembled in an ague of love and pity and despair and triumph, with a rapt, grief-stricken face, his shoulders heaving to the repressed sob, as if nature would there make an end of him under this torrent of delight and pain. Arthur writhed in secret humiliation. To love like this was of the G.o.ds, and he had never loved anything so but Agrippina. As the ship glided to her anchorage the crew stood about the deck in absolute silence, every man's heart in his face, the watch at its post, the others leaning on the bulwarks. Like statues they gazed on the sh.o.r.e. It seemed a phantom ship, blown from ghostly sh.o.r.es by the strength of hatred against the enemy, and love for the land of Eire; for no hope shone in their eyes, or in the eyes of Ledwith and his daughter, only triumph at their own light success. What a pity, thought Dillon, that at this hour of time men should have reason to look so at the power of England. He knew there were millions of them scattered over the earth, studying in just hate to shake the English grip on stolen lands, to pay back the robberies of years in English blood.

The ship came to anchor amid profound silence, save for the orders of the Captain and the movements of the men. Ledwith was speaking to himself more than to Honora, a lament in the Irish fashion over the loved and lost, in a way to break the heart. The tears rolled down Honora's cheek, for the agony was beginning.

"Land of love ... land of despair ... without a friend except among thy own children ... here am I back again with just a grain of hope ... I love thee, I love thee, I love thee! Let them neglect thee ... die every moment under the knife ... live in rags ... in scorn ... and hatred too ... they have spared thee nothing ... I love thee ... I am faithful ...

G.o.d strike me that day when I forget thee! Here is the first gift I have ever given thee besides my heart and my daughter ... a ship ... no freight but hope ... no guns alas! for thy torturers ... they are still free to tear thee, these wolves, and to lie about thee to the whole world ... blood and lies are their feast ... and how sweet are thy sh.o.r.es ... after all ... because thou art everlasting! Thy children are gone, but they shall come back ... the dead are dead, but the living are in many lands, and they will return ... perhaps soon ... I am the messenger ... helpless as ever, but I bring thee news ... good news ...

my beautiful Ireland! Poorer than ever I return ... I shall never see thee free----"

He was working himself into a fever of grief when Honora spoke to him.

"You are forgetting, father, that this is the moment to thank Mr. Dillon in the name of our country----"

"I forget everything when I am here," said Ledwith, breaking into cheerful smiles, and seizing Arthur's hand. "I would be ashamed to say 'thank you,' Arthur, for what you have done. Let this dear land herself welcome you to her sh.o.r.es. Never a foot stepped on them worthier of respect and love than you."

They went ash.o.r.e in silence, having determined on their course the night previous. They must learn first what had happened since their departure from New York, where there had been rumors of a rising, which Ledwith distrusted. It was too soon for the Fenians to rise; but as the movement had gotten partly beyond the control of the leaders, anything might have happened. If the country was still undisturbed, they might enjoy a ride through wild Donegal; if otherwise, it was safer, having accomplished the purpose of the trip, to sail back to the West. The miserable village at the head of the bay showed a few dwellers when they landed on the beach, but little could be learned from them, save directions to a distant cotter who owned an a.s.s and a cart, and always kept information and mountain dew for travelers and the gentry. The young men visited the cotter, and returned with the cart and the news. The rising was said to have begun, but farther east and south, and the cotter had seen soldiers and police and squads of men hurrying over the country; but so remote was the storm that the whole party agreed a ride over the bare hills threatened no danger.

They mounted the cart in high spirits, now that emotion had subsided.

All matters had been arranged with Captain Curran, who was not to expect them earlier than the next day at evening, and had his instructions for all contingencies. They set out for a village to the north, expressly to avoid encounters possible southward. The morning was glorious. Arthur wondered at the miles of uninhabited land stretching away on either side of the road, at the lack of population in a territory so small. He had heard of these things before, but the sight of them proved stranger than the hearing. Perhaps they had gone five miles on the road to Cruarig, when Grahame, driving, pulled up the donkey with suddenness, and cried out in horror. Eight men had suddenly come in sight on the road, armed with muskets, and as suddenly fled up the nearest timbered hill and disappeared.

"I'll wager something," said Grahame, "that these men are being pursued by the police, or--which would be worse for us--by soldiers. There is nothing to do but retreat in good order, and send out a scout to make sure of the ground. We ought to have done that the very first thing."

No one gainsaid him, but Arthur thought that they might go on a bit further cautiously, and if nothing suspicious occurred reach the town.

Dubiously Grahame whipped up the donkey, and drove with eyes alert past the wooded hill, which on its north side dropped into a little glen watered by the sweetest singing brook. They paused to look at the brook and the glen. The road stretched away above and below like a ribbon. A body of soldiers suddenly brightened the north end of the ribbon two miles off.

"Now by all the evil G.o.ds," said Grahame, "but we have dropped into the very midst of the insurrection."

He was about to turn the donkey, when Honora cried out in alarm and pointed back over the road which they had just traveled. Another scarlet troop was moving upon them from that direction. Without a word Grahame turned the cart into the glen, and drove as far as the limits would permit within the shade. They alighted.

"This is our only chance," he said. "The eight men with muskets are rebels whom the troops have cornered. There may be a large force in the vicinity, ready to give the soldiers of Her Majesty a stiff battle. The soldiers will be looking for rebels and not for harmless tourists, and we may escape comfortably by keeping quiet until the two divisions marching towards each other have met and had an explanation. If we are discovered, I shall do the talking, and explain our embarra.s.sment at meeting so many armed men first, and then so many soldiers. We are in for it, I know."

No one seemed to mind particularly. Honora stole an anxious glance at her father, while she pulled a little bunch of shamrock and handed it to Arthur. He felt like saying it would yet be stained by his blood in defense of her country, but knew at the same moment how foolish and weak the words would sound in her ears. He offered himself as a scout to examine the top of the hill, and discover if the rebels were there, and was permitted to go under cautions from Grahame, to return within fifteen minutes. He returned promptly full of enthusiasm. The eight men were holding the top of the hill, almost over their heads, and would have it out with the two hundred soldiers from the town. They had expected a body of one hundred insurgents at this point, but the party had not turned up. Eager to have a brush with the enemy, they intended to hold the hill as long as possible, and then scatter in different directions, sure that pursuit could not catch them.

"The thing for them to do is to save us," said Grahame. "Let them move on to another hill northward, and while they fight the soldiers we may be able to slip back to the ship."

The suggestion came too late. The troops were in full sight. Their scouts had met in front of the glen, evidently acting upon information received earlier, and seemed disappointed at finding no trace of a body of insurgents large enough to match their own battalion. The boys on the top of the hill put an end to speculations as to the next move by firing a volley into them. A great scattering followed, and the bid for a fight was cheerfully answered by the officer in command of the troops. Having joined his companies, examined the position and made sure that its defenders were few and badly armed, he ordered a charge. In five minutes the troops were in possession of the hilltop, and the insurgents had fled; but on the hillside lay a score of men wounded and dead. The rebels were good marksmen, and fleet-footed. The scouts beat the bushes and scoured the wood in vain. The report to the commanding officer was the wounding of two men, who were just then dying in a little glen close by, and the discovery of a party of tourists in the glen, who had evidently turned aside to escape the trouble, and were now ministering to the dying rebels.

Captain Sydenham went up to investigate. Before he arrived the little drama of death had pa.s.sed, and the two insurgents lay side by side at the margin of the brook like brothers asleep. When the insurgents fled from their position, the two wounded ones dropped into the glen in the hope of escaping notice for the time; but they were far spent when they fell headlong among the party in hiding below. Grahame and Ledwith picked them up and laid them near the brook, Honora pillowed their heads with coats, Arthur brought water to bathe their hands and faces, grimy with dust of travel and sweat of death; for an examination of the wounds showed Ledwith that they were speedily mortal. He dipped his handkerchief in the flowing blood of each, and placed it reverently in his breast. There was nothing to do but bathe the faces and moisten the lips of the dying and unconscious men. They were young, one rugged and hard, the other delicate in shape and color; the same grace of youth belonged to both, and showed all the more beautifully at this moment through the heavy veil of death.

Arthur gazed at them with eager curiosity, and at the red blood bubbling from their wounds. For their country they were dying, as his father had died, on the field of battle. This blood, of which he had so often read, was the price which man pays for liberty, which redeems the slave; richer than molten gold, than sun and stars, priceless. Oh, sweet and glorious, unutterably sweet to die like this for men!

"Do you recognize him?" said Ledwith to Grahame, pointing to the elder of the two. Grahame bent forward, startled that he should know either unfortunate.

"It is young Devin, the poet," cried Ledwith with a burst of tears.

Honora moaned, and Grahame threw up his hands in despair.

"We must give the best to our mother," said Ledwith, "but I would prefer blood so rich to be scattered over a larger soil."

He took the poet's hand in his own, and stroked it gently; Honora wiped the face of the other; Grahame on his knees said the prayers he remembered for sinners and pa.s.sing souls; secretly Arthur put in his pocket a rag stained with death-sweat and life-blood. Almost in silence, without painful struggle, the boys died. Devin opened his eyes one moment on the clear blue sky and made an effort to sing. He chanted a single phrase, which summed up his life and its ideals: "Mother, always the best for Ireland." Then his eyes closed and his heart stopped. The little party remained silent, until Honora, looking at the still faces, so young and tender, thought of the mothers sitting in her place, and began to weep aloud. At this moment Captain Sydenham marched up the glen with clinking spur. He stopped at a distance and took off his hat with the courtesy of a gentleman and the sympathy of a soldier. Grahame went forward to meet him, and made his explanations.

"It is perfectly clear," said the Captain, "that you are tourists and free from all suspicion. However, it will be necessary for you to accompany me to the town and make your declarations to the magistrate as well. As you were going there anyhow it will be no hardship, and I shall be glad to make matters as pleasant as possible for the young lady."

Grahame thanked him, and introduced him to the party. He bowed very low over the hand which Honora gave him.

"A rather unfortunate scene for you to witness," he said.

Yet she had borne it like one accustomed to scenes of horror. Her training in Ledwith's school bred calmness, and above all silence, amid anxiety, disappointment and calamity.

"I was glad to be here," she replied, the tears still coursing down her face, "to take their mother's place."

"Two beautiful boys," said the Captain, looking into the dead faces.

"Killing men is a bad business anywhere, but when we have to kill our own, and such as these, it is so much worse."

Ledwith flashed the officer a look of grat.i.tude.

"I shall have the bodies carried to the town along with our own dead, and let the authorities take care of them. And now if you will have the goodness to take your places, I shall do myself the pleasure of riding with you as far as the magistrate's."

Honora knelt and kissed the pale cheeks of the dead boys, and then accepted Captain Sydenham's arm in the march out of the glen. The men followed sadly. Ledwith looked wild for a while. The tears pressed against Arthur's eyes. What honor gilded these dead heroes!

The procession moved along the road splendidly, the soldiers in front and the cart in the rear, while a detail still farther off carried the wounded and dead. Captain Sydenham devoted himself to Honora, which gave Grahame the chance to talk matters over with Ledwith on the other side of the car.