The Art of Disappearing Part 11

"No, Baby," corrected Marguerite, the little mother, "but he is going to be one sometime."

The wonderful garments enchanted them, they feared to touch him, and protested when he swung them high and kissed them on the return flight.

The boy's departure for the seminary stirred the region of Cherry Hill.

The old neighbors came and went in a steady procession for two days to take their leave of him, to bless his parents, and to wish them the joy of seeing him one day at the altar as a priest of G.o.d. They bowed to him with that reverence which belonged to Monsignor, only more familiar and loquacious, and each brought his gift of respect or affection. Even the Senator and the Boss appeared to say a parting word.

"I wish you luck, Louis," the Senator said in his resonant voice, and with the speaker's chair before his eyes, "and I know you'll get it, because you have deserved it, sir. I've seen you grow up, and I've always been proud to know you, and I want to know you as long as I live.

If ever you should need a hand like mine in the ga ... I mean, if ever my a.s.sistance is of any use to you, you know where to call."

"You have a hard road to travel," the genial Sullivan said at the close of his visit, "but your training has prepared you for it, and we all hope you will walk it honorably to the end. Remember we all take an interest in you, and what happens to you for good or ill will be felt in this parish."

Then the moment of parting came, and Arthur thought less of his own grief than of the revelation it contained for him. Was this the feeling which prompted the tears of his mother, and the tender, speechless embrace of his dear father in the far-off days when he set out for school? Was this the grief which made the parting moment terrible? Then he had thought it nothing that for months of the year they should be without his beloved presence! He shivered at the last embraces of Mary and Mona, at the tears of the children; he saw behind the father's mask of calmness; he wondered no more at himself as he stood looking after the train which bore the boy away. The city seemed as vacant all at once as if turned into a desert. The room in the attic, with its bed, its desk, and its altar, suddenly became a terrible place, like a body from which the soul has fled. Every feature of it gave him pain, and he hurried back with Mona to the frivolity of Anne in her villa by the sea.

CHAPTER X.

THE HUMORS OF ELECTION.

When the villa closed the Senator was hopelessly enmeshed in the golden net which had been so skilfully and genially woven by Anne during the summer. He believed himself to be the coming man, all his natural shrewdness and rich experience going for naught before the witchery of his sister's imagination. In her mind the climax of the drama was a Dillon at the top of the heap in the City Hall. Alas, the very first orders of the chief to his secretary swept away the fine-spun dreams of the Dillons, as the broom brushes into obscure dirt the wondrous cobweb.

The Hon. John Sullivan spoke in short sentences, used each man according to that man's nature, stood above and ahead of his cleverest lieutenants, had few prejudices, and these n.o.ble, and was truly a hero on the battle-ground of social forces, where no artillery roars, no uniforms glare, and no trumpets sound for the poets. The time having come for action he gave Arthur his orders on the supposition that he understood the political situation, which he did in some degree, but not seriously. The Endicotts looked upon elections as the concern of the rabble, and this Endicott thought it perhaps an occasion for uproarious fun. His orders partly sobered him.

"Go to your uncle," said Sullivan, "and tell him he's not in the race. I don't know where he got that bee in his bonnet. Then arrange with Everard to call on Livingstone. Do what you can to straighten the Mayor out. He ought to be the candidate."

This dealing with men inspired him. Hitherto he had been playing with children in the garden of life; now he stood with the fighters in the terrible arena. And his first task was to extinguish the roseate dreams of Anne and her gladiator, to destroy that exquisite fabric woven of moonlit seas, enchanting dinners, and Parisian millinery. Never! Let the chief commit that sacrilege! He would not say the word whose utterance might wound the hearts that loved him. The Senator and Anne should have a clear field. High time for the very respectable citizens of the metropolis to secure a novelty for mayor, to get a taste of Roman liberty, when a distinguished member of the arena could wear the purple if he had the mind.

Birmingham forced him to change his att.i.tude. The man of money was both good-hearted and large-minded, and had departed from the ways of commerce to seek distinction in politics. Stolid, without enthusiasm or dash, he could be stubbornly great in defence of principle. Success and a few millions had not changed his early theories of life. Pride in his race, delight in his religion, devotion to his party, increased in him as he rose to honor and fame. Arthur Dillon felt still more the seriousness of the position when this man came to ask his aid in securing the nomination.

"There never was a time in the history of the city," said Birmingham, "when a Catholic had such a chance to become mayor as now. Protestants would not have him, if he were a saint. But prejudice has abated, and confidence in us has increased since the war. Sullivan can have the position if he wants it. So can many others. All of them can afford to wait, while I cannot. I am not a politician, only a candidate. At any moment, by the merest accident, I may become one of the impossibles. I am anxious, therefore, to secure the nomination this year. I would like to get your influence. Where the balance is often turned by the weight of a hair one cannot be too alert."

"Do you think I have influence?" said Arthur humbly.

"You are the secretary," Birmingham answered, surprised.

"I shall have to use it in behalf of my uncle then."

"And if your uncle should not run?"

"I should be happy to give you my support."

Birmingham looked as blank as one before whom a door opens unexpectedly.

"You understand," continued Arthur, "that I have been absent too long to grasp the situation clearly. I think my uncle aspires...."

"A very worthy man," murmured Birmingham.

"You seem to think he has not much of a chance...."

"I know something of Sullivan's mind," Birmingham ventured, "and you know it still better. The exploits of the Senator in his youth--really it would be well for him not to expose himself to public ridicule...."

"I had not thought of that," said Arthur, when the other paused delicately. "You are quite right. He should not expose himself. As no other has done me the honor to ask my help, I am free to help you."

"You are more than kind. This nomination means election, and election means the opening of a fine career for me. Beyond lie the governorship, the senate, and perhaps higher things. To us these high offices have been closed as firmly as if they were in Sweden. I want the honor of breaking down the barriers."

"It is time. I hope you will get the honor," said Arthur gravely. He felt sadly about the Senator, and the shining ambition of his mother.

How could he shatter their dreams? Yet in very pity the task had to be done, and when next he heard them vaporing on the glory of the future, he said casually:

"I know what your enemies will say if you come into contrast with Livingstone."

"I've heard it often enough," answered the Senator gayly. "If I'd listened to them I'd be still in the ring."

Then a suspicion overcame him, and he cried out bitterly:

"Do you say the same, Artie?"

"Rot. There isn't another like you in the whole world, uncle. If my vote could do it you'd go into the White House to-morrow. If you're in earnest in this business of the nomination, then I'm with you to the last ditch. Now when you become mayor of the first city in the land"--Oh, the smile which flashed on the faces of Anne and the Senator at this phrase!--"you become also the target of every journal in the country, of every comic paper, of every cartoonist. All your little faults, your blunders, past and present, are magnified. They sing of you in the music-halls. Oh, there would be no end to it! Ridicule is worse than abuse. It would hurt your friends more than you. You could not escape it, and no one could answer it. Is the prize worth the pain?"

Then he looked out of the window to escape seeing the pain in his mother's face, and the bitterness in the Senator's. He did not ill.u.s.trate his contention with examples, for with these the Senator and his friends were familiar. A light arose on the poor man's horizon.

Looking timidly at Anne, after a moment's pause, he said:

"I never thought of all that. You've put me on the right track, Artie. I thank you."

"What can I do," he whispered to Anne, "since it's plain he wants me to give in--no, to avoid the comic papers?"

"Whatever he wishes must be done," she replied with a gesture of despair.

"The boy is a wonder," thought the Senator. "He has us all under that little California thumb."

"I was a fool to think of the nomination," he said aloud as Arthur turned from the window. "Of course there'd be no end to the ridicule.

Didn't the chap on Harper's, when I was elected for the Senate, rig me out as a gladiator, without a st.i.tch on me, actually, Artie, not a st.i.tch--most indecent thing--and show old Cicero in the same picture looking at me like John Everard, with a sneer, and singing to himself: a senator! No, I couldn't stand it. I give up. I've got as high as my kind can go. But there's one thing, if I can't be mayor myself, I can say who's goin' to be."

"Then make it Birmingham, uncle," Arthur suggested. "I would like to see him in that place next to you."

"And Birmingham it is, unless"--he looked at Anne limp with disappointment--"unless I take it into my head to name you for the place."

She gave a little cry of joy and sat up straight.

"Now G.o.d bless you for that word, Senator. It'll be a Dillon anyway."

"In that case I make Birmingham second choice," Arthur said seriously, accepting the hint as a happy ending to a rather painful scene.

The second part of the Chief's order proved more entertaining. To visit the Mayor and sound him on the question of his own renomination appeared to Arthur amusing rather than important; because of his own rawness for such a mission, and also because of their relationship. Livingstone was his kinsman. Of course John Everard gave the emba.s.sy character, but his reputation reflected on its usefulness. Nature had not yet provided a key to the character of Louis' father. Arthur endured him because Louis loved him, quoted him admiringly, and seemed to understand him most of the time; but he could not understand an Irishman who maintained, as a principle of history, the inferiority of his race to the English, traced its miseries to its silly pride, opposed all schemes of progress until his principle was accepted, and placed the salvation of his people in that moment when they should have admitted the inferiority imposed by nature, and laid aside their wretched conceit. This perverse nature had a sociable, even humorous side, and in a sardonic way loved its own.

"I have often wondered," Arthur said, when they were discussing the details of the mission to Livingstone, "how your tough fiber ever generated beings so tender and beautiful as Mona, and Louis, and the Trumps. And now I'm wondering why Sullivan a.s.sociates you and me in this business. Is it his plan to sink the Mayor deeper in his own mud?"

"Whatever his plan I'd like to know what he means in sending with me to the n.o.blest official in the city and the land, for that matter, the notorious orator of a cheap banquet."