The Art of Disappearing Part 35

"Owen, your generous but short-sighted crowd have fought England briefly and unsuccessfully a few times on the soil of Ireland ... but the children of the faith have fought her with church, and school, and catechism around the globe. Their banner, around which they fought, was not the banner of the Fenians but the banner of Christ. What did you do for the scattered children of the household? Nothing, but collect their moneys. While the great Church followed them everywhere with her priests, centered them about the temple, and made them the bulwark of the faith, the advance-guard, in many lands. Here in America, and in all the colonies of England, in Scotland, even in England itself, wherever the Irish settled, the faith took root and flourished; the faith which means death to the English heresy, and to English power as far as it rests upon the heresy."

"The faith kept the people together, scattered all over the world. It organized them, it trained them, it kept them true to the Christ preached by St. Patrick; it built the fortress of the temple, and the rampart of the school; it kept them a people apart, it kept them civilized, saved them from inevitable apostasy, and founded a force from which you collect your revenues for battle with your enemies; a force which fights England all over the earth night and day, in legislatures, in literature and journalism, in social and commercial life ... why, man, you are a fragment, a mere fragment, you and your warriors, of that great fight which has the world for an audience and the English earths for its stage."

"When did you evolve this new fallacy?" said Ledwith hoa.r.s.ely.

"You have all been affected with the spirit of the anti-Catholic revolution in Europe, whose cry is that the Church is the enemy of liberty; yours, that it has been no friend to Irish liberty. Take another look at that cathedral. When you are dead, and many others that will live longer, that church will deliver its message to the people who pa.s.s: 'I am the child of the Catholic faith and the Irish; the broad shoulders of America waited for a simple, poor, cast-out people, to dig me from the earth and shape me into a thing of beauty, a glory of the new continent; I myself am not new; I am of that race which in Europe speaks in divine language to you pigmies of the giants that lived in ancient days; I am a new bond between the old continent and the new, between the old order and the new; I speak for the faith of the past; I voice the faith of the hour; the hands that raised me are not unskilled and untrained; from what I am judge, ye people, of what stuff my builders are made.' And around the world, in all the capitals, in the great cities, of the English-speaking peoples, temples of lesser worth and beauty, are speaking in the same strain."

Honora anxiously watched her father. A new light shone upon him, a new emotion disturbed him; perhaps that old hardness within was giving way.

Ledwith had the poetic temperament, and the philosopher's power of generalization. A hint could open a grand horizon before him, and the cathedral in its solemn beauty was the hint. Of course, he could see it all, blind as he had been before. The Irish revolution worked fitfully, and exploded in a night, its achievement measured by the period of a month; but this temple and its thousand sisters lived on doing their good work in silence, fighting for the truth without noise or conspiracy.

"And this is the glory of the Irish," Monsignor continued, "this is the fact which fills me with pride, American as I am, in the race whose blood I own; they have preserved the faith for the great English-speaking world. Already the new principle peculiar to that faith has begun its work in literature, in art, in education, in social life.

Heresy allowed the Christ to be banished from all the departments of human activity, except the home and the temple. Christ is not in the schools of the children, nor in the books we read, nor in the pictures and sculptures of our studios, nor in our architecture, even of the churches, nor in our journalism, any more than in the market-place and in the government. These things are purely pagan, or worthless composites. It looks as if the historian of these times, a century or two hence, will have hard work to fitly describe the Gesta Hibernicorum, when this principle of Christianity will have conquered the American world as it conquered ancient Europe. I tell you, Owen," and he strode to the window with hands outstretched to the great building, "in spite of all the shame and suffering endured for His sake, G.o.d has been very good to your people, He is heaping them with honors. As wide as is the power of England, it is no wider than the influence of the Irish faith.

Stubborn heresy is doomed to fall before the truth which alone can set men free and keep them so."

Ledwith had begun to tremble, but he said never a word.

"I am prouder to have had a share in the building of that temple,"

Monsignor continued, "than to have won a campaign against the English.

This is a victory, not of one race over another, but of the faith over heresy, truth over untruth. It will be the Christ-like glory of Ireland to give back to England one day the faith which a corrupt king destroyed, for which we have suffered crucifixion. No soul ever loses by climbing the cross with Christ."

Ledwith gave a sudden cry, and raised his hands to heaven, but grew quiet at once.

The priest watched contentedly the spires of his cathedral.

"You have touched heart and reason together," Honora whispered.

Ledwith remained a long time silent, struggling with a new spirit. At last he turned the wide, frank eyes on his friend and victor.

"I am conquered, Monsignor."

"Not wholly yet, Owen."

"I have been a fool, a foolish fool,--not to have seen and understood."

"And your folly is not yet dead. You are dying in sadness and despair almost, when you should go to eternity in triumph."

"I go in triumph! Alas! if I could only be blotted out with my last breath, and leave neither grave nor memory, it would be happiness. Why do you say, 'triumph'?"

"Because you have been true to your country with the fidelity of a saint. That's enough. Besides you leave behind you the son born of your fidelity to carry on your work----"

"G.o.d bless that n.o.ble son," Owen cried.

"And a daughter whose prayers will mount from the nun's cell, to bless your cause. If you could but go from her resigned!"

"How I wish that I might. I ought to be happy, just for leaving two such heirs, two n.o.ble hostages to Ireland. I see my error. Christ is the King, and no man can better His plans for men. I surrender to Him."

"But your submission is only in part. You are not wholly conquered."

"Twice have you said that," Owen complained, raising his heavy eyes in reproach.

"Love of country is not the greatest love."

"No, love of the race, of humanity, is more."

"And the love of G.o.d is more than either. With all their beauty, what do these abstract loves bring us? The country we love can give us a grave and a stone. Humanity crucifies its redeemers. Wolsey summed up the matter: 'Had I but served my G.o.d with half the zeal with which I served my king, He would not in mine age, have left me naked to mine enemies.'"

He paused to let his words sink into Ledwith's mind.

"Owen, you are leaving the world oppressed by the hate of a lifetime, the hate ingrained in your nature, the fatal gift of persecutor and persecuted from the past."

"And I shall never give that up," Owen declared, sitting up and fixing his hardest look on the priest. "I shall never forget Erin's wrongs, nor Albion's crimes. I shall carry that just and honorable hate beyond the grave. Oh, you priests!"

"I said you were not conquered. You may hate injustice, but not the unjust. You will find no hate in heaven, only justice. The persecutors and their victims have long been dead, and judged. The welcome of the wretched into heaven, the home of justice and love, wiped out all memory of suffering here, as it will for us all. The justice measured out to their tyrants even you would be satisfied with. Can your hate add anything to the joy of the blessed, or the woe of the lost?"

"Nothing," murmured Owen from the pillow, as his eyes looked afar, wondering at that justice so soon to be measured out to him. "You are again right. Oh, but we are feeble ... but we are foolish ... to think it. What is our hate any more than our justice ... both impotent and ridiculous."

There followed a long pause, then, for Monsignor had finished his argument, and only waited to control his own emotion before saying good-by.

"I die content," said Ledwith with a long restful sigh, coming back to earth, after a deep look into divine power and human littleness. "Bring me to-morrow, and often, the Lord of Justice. I never knew till now that in desiring Justice so ardently, it was He I desired. Monsignor, I die content, without hate, and without despair."

If ever a human creature had a foretaste of heaven it was Honora during the few weeks that followed this happy day. The bitterness in the soul of Owen vanished like a dream, and with it went regret, and vain longing, and the madness which at odd moments sprang from these emotions. His martyrdom, so long and ferocious, would end in the glory of a beautiful sunset, the light of heaven in his heart, shining in his face. He lay forever beyond the fire of time and injustice.

Every morning Honora prepared the little altar in the sick-room, and Monsignor brought the Blessed Sacrament. Arthur answered the prayers and gazed with awe upon the glorified face of the father, with something like anger upon the exalted face of the daughter; for the two were gone suddenly beyond him. Every day certain books provided by Monsignor were read to the dying man by the daughter or the son; describing the migration of the Irish all over the English-speaking world, their growth to consequence and power. Owen had to hear the figures of this growth, see and touch the journals printed by the scattered race, and to hear the editorials which spoke their success, their a.s.surance, their convictions, their pride.

Then he laughed so sweetly, so naturally, chuckled so mirthfully that Honora had to weep and thank G.o.d for this holy mirthfulness, which sounded like the spontaneous, careless, healthy mirth of a boy.

Monsignor came evenings to explain, interpret, put flesh and life into the reading of the day with his vivid and pointed comment. Ledwith walked in wonderland. "The hand of G.o.d is surely there," was his one saying. The last day of his pilgrimage he had a long private talk with Arthur. They had indeed become father and son, and their mutual tenderness was deep.

Honora knew from the expression of the two men that a new element had entered into her father's happiness.

"I free you from your promise, my child," said Ledwith, "my most faithful, most tender child. It is the glory of men that the race is never without such children as you. You are free from any bond. It is my wish that you accept your release."

She accepted smiling, to save him from the stress of emotion. Then he wished to see the cathedral in the light of the afternoon sun, and Arthur opened the door of the sick-room. The dying man could see from his pillow the golden spires, and the shining roof, that spoke to him so wonderfully of the triumph of his race in a new land, the triumph which had been built up in the night, unseen, uncared for, unnoticed.

"G.o.d alone has the future," he said.

Once he looked at Honora, once more, with burning eyes, that never could look enough on that loved child. With his eyes on the great temple, smiling, he died. They thought he had fallen asleep in his weakness.

Honora took his head in her arms, and Arthur Dillon stood beside her and wept.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE FALL OF LIVINGSTONE.

The ending of Quincy Livingstone's career in England promised to be like the setting of the sun: his glory fading on the hills of Albion only to burn with greater splendor in his native land: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court! He needed the elevation. True, his career at court had been delightful, from the English point of view even brilliant; the n.o.bility had made much of him, if not as much as he had made of the n.o.bility; the members of the government had seriously praised him, far as they stood from Lord Constantine's theory of American friendship.

However pleasant these things looked to the Minister, of what account could they be to a mere citizen returning to private life in New York?