The Art of Disappearing Part 24

So that's how we saw the Pope. Ye can see now the terrible determination of Anne Dillon, though she was the weeniest wan o' the family."

In the early morning the steamer entered the lower bay, picking up Doyle Grahame from a tug which had wandered about for hours, not in search of news, but on the scent for beautiful Mona. He routed out the Dillon party in short order.

"What's up?" Arthur asked sleepily. "Are you here as a reporter----"

"As a lover," Grahame corrected, with heaving chest and flashing eyes.

"The crowd that will gather to receive you on the dock may have many dignitaries, but I am the only lover. That's why I am here. If I stayed with the crowd, Everard, who hates me almost, would have taken pains to shut me out from even a plain how-de-do with my G.o.ddess."

"I see. It's rather early for a G.o.ddess, but no doubt she will oblige.

You mentioned a crowd on the dock to receive us. What crowd?"

"Your mother," said Doyle, "is a wonderful woman. I have often speculated on the absence of a like ability in her son."

"Nature is kind. Wait till I'm as old as she is," said the son.

"The crowd awaits her to do her honor. The common travelers _will land_ this morning, glad to set foot on solid ground again. Mrs. Montgomery Dillon and her party are the only personages that _will arrive from Europe_. The crowd gathers to meet, not the pa.s.sengers who merely land, but the personages who arrive from Europe."

"Nice distinction. And who is the crowd?"

"Monsignor O'Donnell----"

"A very old and dear friend----"

"Who hopes to build his cathedral with her help. The Senator----"

"Representing the Dillon clan."

"Who did not dare absent himself, and hopes for more inspiration like that which took him out of the ring and made him a great man.

Vandervelt."

"Well, he, of course, is purely disinterested."

"Didn't she inform him of her triumph over Livingstone in London? And isn't he to be the next amba.s.sador, and more power to him?"

"And John Everard of course."

"To greet his daughter, and to prevent your humble servant from kissing the same," and he sighed with pleasure and triumph. "Where is she? Shall I have long to wait? Is she changed?"

"Ask her brother," with a nod for the upper berth where Louis slept serenely.

"And of course you have news?"

"Loads of it. I have arranged for a breakfast and a talk after the arrival is finished. There'll be more to eat than the steak."

The steamer swung to the pier some hours later, and Arthur walked ash.o.r.e to the music of a band which played decorously the popular strains for a popular hero returning crowned with glory. His mother arrived as became the late guest of the Irish n.o.bility. Grahame handed Mona into her father's arms with an exasperating gesture, and then plunged into his note-book, as if he did not care. The surprised pa.s.sengers wondered what hidden greatness had traveled with them across the sea. On the deck Sonia watched the scene with dull interest, for some one had murmured something about a notorious Fenian getting back home to his kind. Arthur saw her get into a cab with her party a few minutes later and drive away. A sadness fell upon him, the bitterness which follows the fading of our human dreams before the strong light of day.

CHAPTER XIX.

LA BELLE COLETTE.

After the situation had been discussed over the breakfast for ten minutes Arthur understood the mournful expression of the Senator, whose gaiety lapsed at intervals when bitterness got the better of him.

"The boys--the whole town is raving about you, Artie," said he with pride, "over the way you managed that affair of Ledwith's. There'll be nothing too good for you this year, if you work all the points of the game--if you follow good advice, I mean. You've got Livingstone in a corner. When this cruel war is over, and it is over for the Fenians--they've had enough, G.o.d knows--it ought to be commencing for the Honorable Quincy Livingstone."

"You make too much of it, Senator," Grahame responded. "We know what's back of these attacks on you and others. It's this way, Arthur: the Senator and I have been working hard for the American citizens in English jails, Fenians of course, and the Livingstone crowd have hit back at us hard. The Senator, as the biggest man in sight, got hit hardest."

"What they say of me is true, though. That's what hurts."

"Except that they leave out the man whom every one admires for his good sense, generous heart, and great success," Arthur said to console him.

"Of course one doesn't like to have the sins of his youth advertised for two civilizations," Grahame continued. "One must consider the source of this abuse however. They are clever men who write against us, but to know them is not to admire them. Bitterkin of the _Post_ has his brain, stomach, and heart stowed away in a single sack under his liver, which is very torpid, and his stomach is always sour. His blood is three parts water from the Boyne, his food is English, his clothes are a very bad fit, and his whiskers are so hard they dull the scissors. He loves America when he can forget that Irish and other foreign vermin inhabit it, otherwise he detests it. He loves England until he remembers that he can't live in it. The other fellow, Smallish, writes beautiful English, and lives on the old clothes of the n.o.bility. Now who would mourn over the diatribes of such cats?"

The Senator had to laugh at the description despite his sadness.

"This is only one symptom of the trouble that's brewing. There's no use in hiding the fact that things are looking bad. Since the Fenian scheme went to pieces, the rats have left their holes. The Irish are demoralized everywhere, fighting themselves as usual after a collapse, and their enemies are quoting them against one another. Here in New York the hired bravos of the press are in the pay of the Livingstone crowd, or of the British secret service. What can you expect?"

"How long will it last? What is doing against it?" said Arthur.

"Ask me easier questions. Anyway, I'm only consoling the Senator for the hard knocks he's getting for the sake of old Ireland. Cheer up, Senator."

"Even when Fritters made his bow," said the mournful Senator, "they made game of me," and the tears rose to his eyes. Arthur felt a secret rage at this grief.

"You heard of Fritters?" and Arthur nodded. "He arrived, and the Columbia College crowd started him off with a grand banquet. He's an Oxford historian with a new recipe for cooking history. The Columbia professor who stood sponsor for him at the banquet told the world that Fritters would show how English government worked among the Irish, and how impossible is the Anglo-Saxon idea among peoples in whom barbarism does not die with the appearance and advance of civilization. He touched up the elegant parades and genial shindys of St. Patrick's Day as 'inexplicable dumb shows and noise,'--see Hamlet's address to the players--and hoped the banks of our glorious Hudson would never witness the b.l.o.o.d.y rows peculiar to the banks of the immortal Boyne. Then he dragged in the Senator."

"What's his little game?" Arthur asked.

"Scientific ridicule ... the press plays to the galleries, and Fritters to the boxes ... it's a part of the general scheme ... I tell you there's going to be fun galore this winter ... and the man in London is at the root of the deviltry."

"What's to be done?"

"If we only knew," the Senator groaned. "If we could only get them under our fists, in a fair and square tussle!"

"I think the hinge of the Livingstone plan is Sister Claire, the escaped nun," Grahame said thoughtfully. "She's the star of the combination, appeals to the true blue church-member with descriptions of the horrors of convents. Her book is out, and you'll find a copy waiting for you at home. Dime novels are prayer-books beside it. French novels are virtuous compared with it. It is raising an awful row. On the strength of it McMeeter has begun an enterprise for the relief of imprisoned nuns--to rescue them--house them for a time, and see them safely married. Sister Claire is to be matron of the house of escaped nuns. No one doubts her experience. Now isn't that McMeeter all over? But see the book, the _Confessions of an Escaped Nun_."

"You think she's the hinge of the great scheme?"

"She has the public eye and ear," said Grahame, thinking out his own theory as he talked. "Her book is the book of the hour ... reviewed by the press ... the theme of pulpits ... the text of speeches galore ...

common workmen thump one another over it at the bench. Now all the others, Bradford, Fritters, the Columbia professors, Bitterkin and his followers, seem to play second to her book. They keep away from her society, yet her strongest backing is from them. You know what I mean.

It has occurred to me that if we got her history ... it must be pretty savory ... and printed it ... traced her connection with the Livingstone crowd ... it would be quite a black eye for the Honorable Quincy."

"By George, but you've struck it," cried Arthur waking up to the situation. "If she's the hinge, she's the party to strike at. Tell me, what became of Curran?"

"Lucky thought," shouted Grahame. "He's in town yet. The very man for us."

"I'm going to have it out with Livingstone," said Arthur, with a clear vision of an English prison and the patient woman who watched its walls from a window in the town. "In fact, I _must_ have it out with Livingstone. He's good game, and I'd like to bring him back from England in a bag. Perhaps Sister Claire may be able to provide the bag."