The Art of Disappearing Part 23

"You have nothing to do but pack your trunk and get away," he said.

"There is to be no trial, you know. Your father will go straight to the steamer, and the government will pay his expenses. It ought to pay more for the outrage."

She thanked him, but did not seem to be comforted. She made no comment, and he went off to get an explanation from Captain Sydenham.

"I meant to have written you about it," said the Captain, "but hoped that it would have come out all right without writing. Ledwith maintains, and I think he's quite right, that he must be permitted to go free without conditions, or be tried as a Fenian conspirator. The case is simple: an American citizen traveling in Ireland is arrested on a charge of complicity in the present rebellion; the government must prove its case in a public trial, or, unable to do that, must release him as an innocent man; but it does neither, for it leads him from jail to the steamer as a suspect, ordering him out of the country. Ledwith demands either a trial or the freedom of an innocent man. He will not help the government out of the hole in which accident, his Excellency the Minister, and your admirable mother have placed it. Of course it's hard on that adorable Miss Ledwith, and it may kill Ledwith himself, if not the two of them. Did you ever in your life see such a daughter and such a father?"

"Well, all we can do is to make the trial as warm as possible for the government," said Arthur. "Counsel, witnesses, publicity, telegrams to the Minister, cablegrams to our Secretary of State, and all the rest of it."

"Of no use," said the Captain moodily. "You have no idea of an Irish court and an Irish judge in times of revolt. I didn't till I came here.

If Ledwith stands trial, nothing can save him from some kind of a sentence."

"Then for his daughter's sake I must persuade him to get away."

"Hope you can. All's fair in war, you know, but Ledwith is the worst kind of patriot, a visionary one, exalted, as the French say."

Ledwith thanked Arthur warmly when he called upon him in jail, and made his explanation as the Captain had outlined it.

"Don't think me a fool," he said. "I'm eager to get away. I have no relish for English prison life. But I am not going to promote Livingstone's trickery. I am an American citizen. I have had no part, direct or indirect, in this futile insurrection. I can prove it in a fair trial. It must be either trial or honorable release to do as any American citizen would do under the circ.u.mstances. If I go to prison I shall rely on my friends to expose Livingstone, and to warm up the officials at home who connive with him."

Nor would he be moved from this position, and the trial came off with a speed more than creditable when justice deals with pirates, but otherwise scandalous.

It ended in a morning, in spite of counsel, quibbles, and other ornamental obstacles, with a sentence of twenty years at hard labor in an English prison. To this prison Ledwith went the next day at noon.

There had not been much time for work, but Arthur had played his part to his own satisfaction; the Irish and American journals buzzed with the items which he provided, and the denunciations of the American Minister were vivid, biting, and widespread; yet how puerile it all seemed before the brief, half contemptuous sentence of the hired judge, who thus roughly shoved another irritating patriot out of the way. The farewell to Ledwith was not without hope. Arthur had declared his purpose to go straight to New York and set every influence to work that could reach the President. Honora was to live near the prison, support herself by her singing, and use her great friends to secure a mitigation of his sentence, and access to him at intervals.

"I am going in joy," he said to her and Arthur. "Death is the lightest suffering of the true patriot. Nora and I long ago offered our lives for Ireland. Perhaps they are the only useful things we could offer, for we haven't done much. Poor old country! I wish our record of service had some brighter spots in it."

"At the expense of my modesty," said Arthur, "can't I mention myself as one of the brighter spots? But for you I would never have raised a finger for my mother's land. Now, I am enlisted, not only in the cause of Erin, but pledged to do what I can for any race that withers like yours under the rule of the slave-master. And that means my money, my time and thought and labor, and my life."

"It is the right spirit," said Ledwith, trembling. "I knew it was in you. Not only for Ireland, but for the enslaved and outraged everywhere.

G.o.d be thanked, if we poor creatures have stirred this spirit in you, lighted the flame--it's enough."

"I have sworn it," cried Arthur, betrayed by his secret rage into eloquence. "I did not dream the world was so full of injustice. I could not understand the divine sorrow which tore your hearts for the wronged everywhere. I saw you suffer. I saw later what caused your suffering, and I felt ashamed that I had been so long idle and blind. Now I have sworn to myself that my life and my wealth shall be at the service of the enslaved forever."

They went their different ways, the father to prison, Honora to the prison village, and Arthur with all speed to New York, burning with hatred of Livingstone. The great man had simply tricked them, had studied the matter over with his English friends, and had found a way to satisfy the friends of Ledwith and the government at the same time.

Well, it was a long lane that had no turning, and Arthur swore that he would find the turning which would undo Quincy Livingstone.

AN ESCAPED NUN.

CHAPTER XVIII.

JUDY VISITS THE POPE.

He used the leisure of the voyage to review recent events, and to measure his own progress. For the first time since his calamity he had lost sight of himself in this poetic enterprise of Ledwith's, successful beyond all expectation. In this life of intrigue against the injustice of power, this endless struggle to shake the grip of the master on the slave, he found an intoxication. Though many plans had come to nothing, and the prison had swallowed a thousand victims, the game was worth the danger and the failure. In the Fenian uprising the proud rulers had lost sleep and comfort, and the world had raised its languid eyes for a moment to study events in Ireland. Even the slave can stir the selfish to interest by a determined blow at his masters. In his former existence very far had been from him this glorious career, though honors lay in wait for an Endicott who took to statecraft. Shallow Horace, sprung from statesman, had found public life a bore. This feeling had saved him perhaps from the fate of Livingstone, who in his snail-sh.e.l.l could see no other America than a monstrous reproduction of Plymouth colony.

He had learned at last that his dear country was made for the human race. G.o.d had guided the little ones of the nations, wretched but hardy, to the land, the only land on earth, where dreams so often come true.

Like the waves they surged upon the American sh.o.r.e. With ax and shovel and plow, with sweat of labor and pain, they fought the wilderness and bought a foothold in the new commonwealth. What great luck that his exit from the old life should prove to be his entrance into the very heart of a simple mult.i.tude flying from the greed and stupidity of the decadent aristocracy of Europe! What fitness that he, child of a race which had triumphantly fought injustice, poverty, Indian, and wilderness, should now be leader for a people who had fled from injustice at home only to begin a new struggle with plotters like Livingstone, foolish representative of the caste-system of the old world.

Sonia Westfield, by strange fatality, was aboard with her child and Aunt Lois. Her presence, when first they came face to face, startled him; not the event, but the littleness of the great earth; that his hatred and her crime could not keep them farther apart. The Endicott in him rose up for a moment at the sight of her, and to his horror even sighed for her: this Endicott, who for a twelvemonth had been so submerged under the new personality that Dillon had hardly thought of him. He sighed for her!

Her beauty still pinched him, and the memory of the first enchantment had not faded from the mind of the poor ghost. It mouthed in anger at the master who had destroyed it, who mocked at it now bitterly: you are the husband of Sonia Westfield, and the father of her fraudulent child; go to them as you desire. But the phantom fled humiliated, while Dillon remained horror-shaken by that pa.s.sing fancy of the Endicott to take up the dream of youth again. Could he by any fatality descend to this shame? Her presence did not arouse his anger or his dread, hardly his curiosity. He kept out of her way as much as possible, yet more than once they met; but only at the last did the vague inquiry in her face indicate that memory had impressions of him.

Often he studied her from afar, when she sat deep in thought with her lovely eyes ... how he had loved them ... melting, d.a.m.nable, false eyes fixed on the sea. He wondered how she bore her misery, of which not a sign showed on the velvet face. Did she rage at the depths of that sea which in an instant had engulfed her fool-husband and his fortune? The same sea now mocked her, laughed at her rage, bearing on its bosom the mystery which she struggled to steal from time. No one could punish this creature like herself. She bore her executioner about with her, Aunt Lois, evidently returning home to die. That death would complete the ruin of Sonia, and over the grave she would learn once for all how well her iniquity had been known, how the lost husband had risen from his darkness to accuse her, how little her latest crime would avail her.

What a dull fool Horace Endicott had been over a woman suspected of her own world! Her beauty would have kept him a fool forever, had she been less beastly in her pleasures. And this Endicott, down in the depths, sighed for her still!

But Arthur Dillon saw her in another light, as an unclean beast from sin's wilderness, in the light that shone from Honora Ledwith. Messalina cowered under the halo of Beatrice! When that light shone full upon her, Sonia looked to his eye like a painted Phryne surprised by the daylight.

Her corruption showed through her beauty. Honora! Incomparable woman!

dear lady of whiteness! pure heart that shut out earthly love, while G.o.d was to be served, or men suffered, or her country bled, or her father lived! The thought of her purified him. He had not truly known his dear mother till now; when he knew her in Honora, in old Martha, in charming Mona, in Mary Everard, in clever Anne Dillon. These women would bless his life hereafter. They refreshed him in mind and heart. It began to dawn upon him that his place in life was fixed, that he would never go back even though he might do so with honor, his shame remaining unknown.

It was mere justice that the wretched past should be in a grave, doomed never to see the light of resurrection.

His mother and her party shared the journey with him. The delay of Ledwith's trial had enabled them to make the short tour on the Continent, and catch his steamer. Anne was utterly vexed with him that Ledwith had not escaped the prison. Her plain irritation gave Judy deep content.

"She needs something to pull her down," was her comment to Arthur, "or she'll fly off the earth with the lightness of her head. My, my, but the airs of her since she laid out the amba.s.sador, an' talked to the Pope!

She can hardly spake at all now wid the grandher! Whin Father Phil ... I never can call him Mounsinnyory ... an', be the way, for years wasn't I callin' him Morrisania be mistake, an' the dear man never corrected me wanst ... but I learned the difference over in Rome ... where was I?...

whin Father Phil kem back from Rome he gev us a grand lecther on what he saw, an' he talked for two hours like an angel. But Anne Dillon can on'y shut her eyes, an' dhrop her head whin ye ask her a single question about it. Faith, I dinno if she'll ever get over it. Isn't that quare now?"

"Very," Arthur answered, "but give her time. So you saw the Pope?"

"Faith, I did, an' it surprised me a gra'dale to find out that he was a dago, G.o.d forgi' me for sayin' as much. I was tould be wan o' the Mounsinnyory that he was pure Italian. 'No,' sez I, 'the Pope may be Rooshin or German, though I don't belave he's aither, but he's not Italian. If he wor, he'd have the blessed sinse to hide it, for fear the Irish 'ud lave the Church whin they found it out.'"

"What blood do you think there's in him?" said Arthur.

"He looked so lovely sittin' there whin we wint in that me sivin sinses left me, an' I cudn't rightly mek up me mind afterwards. Thin I was so taken up wid Mrs. Dillon," and Judy laughed softly, "that I was bothered. But I know the Pope's not a dago, anny more than he's a naygur. I put him down in me own mind as a Roman, no more an' no less."

"That's a safe guess," said Arthur; "and you still have the choice of his being a Sicilian, a Venetian, or a Neapolitan."

"Unless," said the old lady cautiously, "he comes of the same stock as Our Lord Himself."

"Which would make him a Jew," Arthur smoothly remarked.

"G.o.d forgive ye, Artie! G'long wid ye! If Our Lord was a Jew he was the first an' last an' on'y wan of his kind."

"And that's true too. And how did you come to see the Pope so easy, and it in the summer time?"

The expressive grin covered Judy's face as with comic sunshine.

"I dunno," she answered. "If Anne Dillon made up her mind to be Impress of France, I dunno annythin' nor anny wan that cud hould her back; an'

perhaps the on'y thing that kep' her from tryin' to be Impress was that the Frinch had an Impress already. I know they had, because I heard her ladyship lamentin', whin we wor in Paris, that she didn't get a letther of introduction to the Impress from Lady Skibbereen. She had anny number of letthers to the Pope. I suppose that's how we all got in, for I wint too, an' the three of us looked like sisters of mercy, dhressed in black wid veils on our heads. Whin we dhruv up to the palace, her ladyship gev a screech. 'Mother of heaven,' says she, 'but I forgot me permit, an'

we can't get in to see his Holiness.' We sarched all her pockets, but found on'y the square bit o' paper, a milliner's bill, that she tuk for the permit be mistake. 'Well, this'll have to do,' says she. Says I, 'Wud ye insult the Pope be shakin' a milliner's bill in his face as ye go in the dure?' She never answered me, but walked in an' presented her bill to a Mounsinnyory----"

"What's that?" Arthur asked. "I was never in Rome."

"Somethin' like the man that takes the tickets at the theayter, ou'y he's a priest, an' looks like a bishop, but he cuts more capers than ten bishops in wan. He never opened the paper--faith, if he had, there'd be the fine surprise--so we wint in. I knew the Pope the minnit I set eyes on him, the heavenly man. Oh, but I'd like to be as sure o' savin' me soul as that darlin' saint. His eyes looked as if they saw heaven every night an' mornin'. We dhropped on our knees, while the talkin' was goin'

on, an' if I wasn't so frikened at bein' near heaven itself, I'd a died listenin' to her ladyship tellin' the Pope in French--in French, d'ye mind?--how much she thought of him an' how much she was goin' to spind on him while she was in Rome. 'G.o.d forgive ye, Anne Dillon,' says I to meself, 'but ye might betther spind yer money an' never let an.' She med quite free wid him, an' he talked back like a father, an' blessed us twinty times. I dinno how I wint in or how I kem out. I was like a top, spinnin' an' spinnin'. Things went round all the way home, so that I didn't dar say a word for fear herself might think I had been drinkin'.