The Art of Disappearing Part 14

"He's all man," said the father.

"True, but a man who is playing a part."

He laid down his pipe in his surprise, but she smiled a.s.suringly.

"Well, it's fine acting, if you call it so, my love. In a little over a year he has made himself the pride of Cherry Hill. Your great friend,"--this with a sniff--"Monsignor O'Donnell, is his sponsor. He speaks like the orator born and with sincerity, though he knows little of politics. But he has ideas. Then did you ever meet a merrier lad?

Such a singer and dancer, such a favorite among boys and girls! He seems to be as lovable as his uncle the Senator, and the proof of it is that all confide in him. However, I have faith in your instincts, Nora. What do they say?"

"He looks at us all like a spectator sitting in front of a stage. Of course I have heard the people talk about him. He is a popular idol, except to his mother who seems to be afraid of him. He has moods of sadness, gloom, and Miss Conyngham told me she would wager he left a wife in California. While all like him, each one has a curious thing to tell about him. They all say it is the sickness which he had on coming home, and that the queer things are leaving him. The impression he gives me is that of one acting a part. I must say it is fading every day, but it hinders me from feeling quite satisfied about him."

"Well, one thing is in his favor: he listens to me," said Ledwith. "He is one of the few men to whom I am not a crazy dreamer, crazy with love of Erin and hate of her shameless foe."

"And I love him for that, father," she said tenderly. "There is no acting in his regard and esteem for you, nothing insincere in his liking for us, even if we cannot quite understand it. For we _are_ queer, Daddy," putting her arms about him. "Much love for our old home and much thinking how to help it, and more despair and worry, have shut us off from the normal life, until we have forgotten the qualities which make people liked. Poor Daddy!"

"Better that than doing nothing," he said sadly. "To struggle and fight once in a while mean living; to sit still would be to die."

Arthur was ushered in just then by the servant, and took his place comfortably before the fire. One could see the regard which they felt for him; on the part of Ledwith it was almost affection. Deeply and sincerely he returned their kindly feeling.

He had a host of reasons for his regard. Their position seemed as strange to the humdrum world as his own. They were looked on as queer people, who lived outside the ruts for the sake of an enslaved nation.

The idea of losing three meals a day and a fixed home for a hopeless cause tickled the humor of the practical. Their devotion to an idea hardly surpa.s.sed their devotion to each other. He mourned for her isolation, she mourned over his failures to free his native land.

"I have almost given the cause up," he said once to Arthur, "because I feel my helplessness. I cannot agree with the leaders nor they with me.

But if I gave up she would worry herself to death over my loss of hope.

I keep on, half on her account, half in the hope of striking the real thing at the end."

"It seems to be also the breath of her life," said Arthur.

"No, it is not," the father replied. "Have you not heard her talk of your friend, Louis Everard? How she dwells on his calling, and the happiness of it! My poor child, her whole heart yearns for the cloister.

She loves all such things. I have urged her to follow her inclinations, though I know it would be the stroke of death for me, but she will not leave me until I die."

"You must not take us too seriously," she had once said, "in this matter of Irish liberties. My father is hopelessly out of the current, for his health is only fair, and he has quarreled with his leaders. I have given up hope of achieving anything. But if he gives up he dies. So, I encourage him and keep marching on, in spite of the bitterest disappointments. Perhaps something may come of it in the end."

"Not a doubt of it," said Arthur, uttering a great thought. "Every tear, every thought, every heart-throb, every drop of sweat and blood, expended for human liberty, must be gathered up by G.o.d and laid away in the treasury of heaven. The despots of time shall pay the interest of that fund here or there."

A woman whose ideals embraced the freedom of an oppressed people, devotion to her father, and love for the things of G.o.d, would naturally have a strong t.i.tle to the respect of Arthur Dillon; and she was, besides, a beautiful woman, who spoke great things in a voice so sweetly responsive to her emotions that father and friend listened as to music. The Ledwiths had a comfortable income, when they set to work, earned by his clever pen and her exquisite voice. The young man missed none of her public appearances, though he kept the fact to himself. She was on those occasions the White Lady in earnest. Her art had warmth indeed, but the coldness and aloofness of exalted purity put her beyond the zone of desire; a snowy peak, distinct to the eye, but inaccessible.

When they were done with greetings Arthur brought up a specific subject.

"It has gone about that I have become a Fenian," he said, "and I have been called on to explain to many what chance the movement has of succeeding. There was nothing in the initiation which gave me that information."

"You can say: none," Ledwith answered bitterly. "And if you quote me as your authority there will be many new members in the brotherhood."

"Then why keep up the movement, if nothing is to come of it?"

"The fighting must go on," Ledwith replied, "from generation to generation in spite of failure. The Fenian movement will fail like all its predecessors. The only reason for its continuance is that its successor may succeed. Step by step! Few nations are as lucky as this to win in the first fight. Our country is the unluckiest of all. Her battle has been on seven hundred years."

"But I think there must be more consolation in the fight than your words imply;" Arthur declared. "There must be a chance, a hope of winning."

"The hope has never died but the chance does not yet exist, and there is no chance for the Fenians," Ledwith answered with emphasis. "The consolation lies for most of us in keeping up the fight. It is a joy to let our enemy, England, know, and to make her feel, that we hate her still, and that our hate keeps pace with her advancing greatness. It is pleasant to prove to her, even by an abortive rising, that all her crimes, rogueries, and diplomacies against us have been vain to quench our hate. We have been scattered over the world, but our hate has been intensified. It is joy to see her foam at the mouth like a wild beast, then whine to the world over the ingrat.i.tude of the Irish; to hear the representatives of her tax-payers howl in Parliament at the expense of putting down regular rebellions; to see the landlords flying out of the country they have ravaged, and the Orangemen white with the fear of slaughter. Then these movements are an education. The children are trained to a knowledge of the position, to hatred of the English power, and their generation takes up the fight where the preceding left it."

"Hate is a terrible thing," said the young man. "Is England so hateful then?"

Honora urged him by looks to change the subject, for her father knew no bounds in speaking of his country's enemy, but he would not lift his eyes to her face. He wished to hear Owen Ledwith express his feelings with full vent on the dearest question to his heart. The man warmed up as he spoke, fire in his eyes, his cheeks, his words, and gestures.

"She is a fiend from h.e.l.l," he replied, hissing the words quietly. Deep emotion brought exterior calm to Ledwith. "But that is only a feeling of mine. Let us deal with the facts. Like the fabled vampire England hangs upon the throat of Ireland, battening on her blood. Populous England, vanis.h.i.+ng Ireland! What is the meaning of it? One people remains at home by the millions, the other flies to other lands by the millions. Because the h.e.l.l-witch is good to her own. For them the trade of the world, the opening of mines, the building of factories, the use of every natural power, the coddling of every artificial power. They go abroad only to conquer and tax the foreigner for the benefit of those at home. Their harbors are filled with s.h.i.+ps, and their treasury with the gold of the world. For our people, there is only permission to work the soil, for the benefit of absentee landlords, or encouragement to depart to America. No mines, no factories, no commerce, no harbors, no s.h.i.+ps, in a word no future. So the Irish do not stay at home. The laws of England accomplished this destruction of trade, of art, of education, oh, say it at once, of life. d.a.m.nable laws, fas.h.i.+oned by the horrid greed of a rich people, that could not bear to see a poor people grow comfortable. They called over to their departments of trade, of war, of art, to court, camp, and studio, our geniuses, gave them fame, and dubbed them Englishmen; the castaways, the Irish in America and elsewhere are known as 'the mere Irish.'"

"It is very bitter," said Arthur, seeing the unshed tears in Honora's eyes.

"I wonder how we bear it," Ledwith continued. "We have not the American spirit, you may be sure. I can fancy the colonists of a hundred years back meeting an Irish situation; the men who faced the Indian risings, and, worse, the subduing of the wilderness. For them it would have been equal rights and privileges and chances, or the bottom of the sea for one of the countries. But we are poetic and religious, and murderous only when a Cromwell or a Castlereagh opens h.e.l.l for us. However, the past is nothing; it is the present which galls us. The gilding of the gold and the painting of the lily are symbols of our present sufferings.

After stripping and roasting us at home, this England, this h.e.l.l-witch sends abroad into all countries her lies and slanders about us. Her spies, her professors, her gospellers, her agents, her sympathizers everywhere, can tell you by the yard of our natural inferiority to the Chinese. Was it not an American bishop who protested in behalf of the Chinese of San Francisco that they were more desirable immigrants than the sodden Irish? G.o.d! this clean, patient, laborious race, whose chast.i.ty is notorious, whose Christianity has withstood the desertion of Christ----"

Honora gave a half scream at the blasphemy, but at once controlled herself.

"I take that back, child--it was only madness," Ledwith said. "You see, Dillon, how scarred my soul is with this sorrow. But the bishop and the Chinese! Not a word against that unfortunate people, whose miseries are greater even than ours, and spring from the same sources. At least _they_ are not lied about, and a bishop, forsooth! can compare them, pagans in thought and act and habit though they be, with the most moral and religious people in the world, to his own shame. It is the English lie working. The Irish are inferior, and of a low, groveling, filthy nature; they are buried both in ignorance and superst.i.tion; their ignorance can be seen in their hatred of British rule, and their refusal to accept the British religion; wherever they go in the wide world, they reduce the average of decency and intelligence and virtue; for twenty years these lies have been sung in the ears of the nations, until only the enemies of England have a welcome for us. Behold our position in this country. Just tolerated. No place open to us except that of cleaning the sewers. Every soul of us compelled to fight, as Birmingham did the other day, for a career, and to fight against men like Livingstone, who should be our friends. And in the hearts of the common people a hatred for us, a disgust, even a horror, not inspired by the leprous Chinese. We have earned all this hatred and scorn and opposition from England, because in fighting with her we have observed the laws of humanity, when we should have wiped her people off the face of the earth as Saul smote Agag and his corrupt people, as Cromwell treated us. Do you wonder that I hate this England far more than I hate sin, or the devil, or any monstrous creature which feeds upon man."

"I do not wonder," said Arthur. "With you there is always an increasing hatred of England?"

"Until death," cried Ledwith, leaping from his seat, as if the fire of hate tortured him, and striding about the room. "To fight every minute against this monster, to fight in every fas.h.i.+on, to irritate her, to destroy a grain of her influence, in a single mind, in a little community, to expose her pretense, her sham virtues, her splendid hypocrisy, these are the breath of my life. That hate will never perish until----"

He paused as if in painful thought, and pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead.

"Until the wrongs of centuries have been avenged," said Arthur. Ledwith sat down with a scornful laugh.

"That's a sentence from the orations of our patriotic orators," he sneered. "What have we to do with the past? It is dead. The oppressed and injured are dead. G.o.d has settled their cause long ago. It would be a pretty and consoling sight to look at the present difference between the English Dives and the Irish Lazarus! The vengeance of G.o.d is a terrible thing. No! my hate is of the present. It will not die until we have shaken the hold of this vampire, until we have humiliated and disgraced it, and finally destroyed it. I don't speak of retaliation.

The sufferings of the innocent and oppressed are not atoned for by the sufferings of other innocents and other oppressed. The people are blameless. The leaders, the accursed aristocracy of blood, of place, of money, these make the corporate vampire, which battens upon the weak and ignorant poor; only in England they give them a trifle more, flatter them with skill, while the Irish are kicked out like beggars."

He looked at Dillon with haggard eyes. Honora sat like a statue, as if waiting for the storm to pa.s.s.

"I have not sworn an oath like Hannibal," he said, "because G.o.d cannot be called as a witness to hate. But the great foe of Rome never observed his oath more faithfully than I shall that compact which I have made with myself and the powers of my nature: to turn all my strength and time and capacity into the channel of hate against England. Oh, how poor are words and looks and acts to express that fire which rages in the weakest and saddest of men."

He sank back with a gesture of weariness, and found Honora's hand resting on his tenderly.

"The other fire you have not mentioned, Daddy," she said wistfully, "the fire of a love which has done more for Erin than the fire of hate. For love is more than hate, Daddy."

"Ay, indeed," he admitted. "Much as I hate England, what is it to my love for her victim? Love is more than hate. One destroys, the other builds."

Ledwith, quite exhausted by emotion, became silent. The maid entered with a letter, which Honora opened, read silently, and handed to her father without comment. His face flushed with pleasure.

"Doyle Grahame writes me," he explained to Arthur, "that a friend, who wishes to remain unknown, has contributed five thousand dollars to testing my theory of an invasion of Ireland. That makes the expedition a certainty--for May."

"Then let me volunteer the first for this enterprise," said Arthur blithely.

"And me the second," cried Honora with enthusiasm.

"Accepted both," said Ledwith, with a proud smile, new life stealing into his veins.

Not for a moment did he suspect the ident.i.ty of his benefactor, until Monsignor, worried over the risk for Arthur came to protest some days later. The priest had no faith in the military enterprise of the Fenians, and, if he smiled at Arthur's interest in conspiracy, saw no good reasons why he should waste his money and expose his life and liberty in a feeble and useless undertaking. His protest both to Arthur and others was vigorous.

"If you have had anything to do with making young Dillon a Fenian," he said, "and bringing him into this scheme of invasion, Owen, I would like you to undo the business, and persuade him to stay at home."