The Art of Disappearing Part 43

When he is dressed for a part and playing it, the sharpest eyes, even the eyes of hate, may not be able to escape the glamour of the disguise.

The actor asleep is more like himself. You shall look into his face, and turn it from side to side with your own hands. If you do not catch some feeling from that, strike a resemblance, I shall feel like giving up."

"La, but you are an audacious creature," said Sonia, and the triviality of the remark sent Edith into wild laughter. She would like to have bitten the beauty.

The detective consented to Edith's plans, in his anxiety to bring the farce to an end before the element of danger grew. Up to this point they might appeal to Arthur for mercy. Later the dogs would be upon them. As yet no sign of irritation on Arthur's part had appeared. The day after the oration on the sorrows of Erin he sent a note to Curran announcing his intention to call the same evening. Edith, amazed at her own courage in playing with the fire which in an instant could destroy her, against the warning of her husband, was bent on carrying out the scene.

Dearly she loved the dramatic off the stage, spending thought and time in its arrangement. How delicious the thought of this man and his wife meeting under circ.u.mstances so wondrous after five years of separation.

Though death reached her the next moment she would see it. The weakness of the plot lay in Sonia's skepticism and Arthur's knowledge that a trap was preparing. He would brush her machinery aside like a cobweb, but that did not affect the chance of his recognition by Sonia.

Dillon had never lost his interest in the dancer and her husband. They attracted him. In their lives ran the same strain of madness, the madness of the furies, as in his own. Their lovable qualities were not few. Occasionally he dropped in to tease Edith over her lack of conscience, or her failures, and to discuss the cause of freedom with the smooth and flinty Curran. Wild humans have the charm of their wilderness. One must not forget their teeth and their claws. This night the two men sat alone. Curran filled the gla.s.ses and pa.s.sed the cigars.

Arthur made no comment on the absence of Edith. He might have been aware that the curtains within three feet of his chair, hiding the room beyond, concealed the two women, whose eyes, peering through small gla.s.ses fixed in the curtains, studied his face. He might even have guessed that his easy chair had been so placed as to let the light fall upon him while Curran sat in the dim light beyond. The young man gave no sign, spoke freely with Curran on the business of the night, and acted as usual.

"Of course it must be stopped at once," he said. "Very much flattered of course that I should be taken for Horace Endicott ... you gave away Tom Jones' name at last ... but these things, so trifling to you, jar the nerves of women. Then it would never do for me, with my little career in California unexplained, to have stories of a double ident.i.ty ... is that what you call it?... running around. Of course I know it's that devil Edith, presuming always on good nature ... that's _her_ nature ... but if you don't stop it, why I must."

"You'll have to do it, I think," the detective replied maliciously. "I can do only what she orders. I had to satisfy her by running to the priest, and your mother, and the Senator----"

"What! even my poor uncle! Oh, Curran!"

"The whole town, for that matter, Mr. Dillon. It was done in such a way, of course, that none of them suspected anything wrong, and we talked under promise of secrecy. I saw that the thing had to be done to satisfy her and to bring you down on us. Now you're down and the trouble's over as far as I am concerned."

"And Tom Jones was Horace Endicott," Arthur mused, "I knew it of course all along, but I respected your confidence. I had known Endicott."

"You knew Horace Endicott?" said Curran, horrified by a sudden vision of his own stupidity.

"And his lady, a lovely, a superb creature, but just a shade too sharp for her husband, don't you know. He was a fool in love, wasn't he?

judging from your story of him. Has she become reconciled to her small income, I wonder? She was not that kind, but when one has to, that's the end of it. _And there are consolations._ How the past month has tired me. I could go to sleep right in the chair, only I want to settle this matter to-night, and I must say a kind word to the little devil----"

His voice faded away, and he slept, quite overpowered by the drug placed in his wine. After perfect silence for a minute, Curran beckoned to the women, who came noiseless into the room, and bent over the sleeping face. In his contempt for them, the detective neither spoke nor left his seat. Harpies brooding over the dead! Even he knew that!

Arthur's face lay in profile, its lines all visible, owing to the strong light, through the disguise of the beard. The melancholy which marks the face of any sleeper, a foreshadow of the eternal sleep, had become on this sleeper's countenance a profound sadness. From his seat Curran could see the pitiful droop of the mouth, the hollowness of the eyes, the shadows under the cheek-bones; marks of a sadness too deep for tears. Sonia took his face in her soft hands and turned the right profile to the light. She looked at the full face, smoothed his hair as if trying to recall an ancient memory.

"The eyes of hate," murmured Edith between tears and rage. She pitied while she hated him, understanding the sorrow that could mark a man's face so deeply, admiring the courage which could wear the mask so well.

Sonia was deeply moved in spite of disappointment. At one moment she caught a fleeting glimpse of her Horace, but too elusive to hold and a.n.a.lyze. Something pinched her feelings and the great tears fell from her soft eyes. Emotion merely pinched her. Only in hate could she writhe and foam and exhaust nature. She studied his hands, observed the fingers, with the despairing conviction that this was not the man; too lean and too coa.r.s.e and too hard; and her rage began to burn against destiny. Oh, to have Horace as helpless under her hands! How she could rend him!

"Do you see any likeness?" whispered Edith.

"None," was the despairing answer.

"Be careful," hissed Curran. "In this sleep words are heard and remembered sometimes."

Edith swore the great oaths which relieved her anger. But what use to curse, to look and curse again? At the last moment Curran signalled them away, and began talking about his surprise that Arthur should have known the lost man.

"Because you might have given me a clue," Arthur heard him saying as he came back from what he thought had been a minute's doze, "and saved me a year's search, not to mention the money I could have made."

"I'll tell you about it some other time," said Arthur with a yawn, as he lit a fresh cigar. "Ask madam to step in here, will you. I must warn her in a wholesome way."

"I think she is entertaining a friend," Curran said, hinting plainly at a surprise.

"Let her bring the friend along," was the careless answer.

The two women entered presently, and Edith made the introduction. The husband and wife stood face to face at last. Her voice failed in her throat from nervousness, so sure was she that the Endicotts had met again! They had the center of the stage, and the interest of the audience, but acted not one whit like the people in a play.

"Delighted," said Arthur in his usual drawling way on these occasions.

"I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Endicott before."

"Indeed," cried the lady. "I regret that my memory...."

"At Castle Moyna, a little fete, mother fainted because she saw me running across the lawn ... of course you remember...."

"Why, certainly ... we all felt so sorry for the young singer ... her father...."

"He was in jail and died since, poor man. Then I saw you coming across on the steamer with a dear, sweet, old lady...."

"My husband's aunt," Sonia gasped at the thought of Aunt Lois.

"Oh, but he's letter-perfect," murmured Edith in admiration.

"And you might remember me," said the heartless fellow, "but of course on a wedding-tour no one can expect the parties to remember anything, as the guide for a whole week to your party in California."

"Of course there was a guide," she admitted, very pleasant to meet him again, and so on to the empty end. Edith, stunned by her defeat, sat crushed, for this man no more minded the presence of his wife than did Curran. It was true. Arthur had often thought that a meeting like this in the far-off years would rock his nature as an earthquake rocks the solid plain. Though not surprised at her appearance, for Edith's schemes had all been foreseen, he felt surprise at his own indifference. So utterly had she gone out of his thought, that her sudden appearance, lovely and seductive as of old, gave him no twinge of hate, fear, repugnance, disgust, horror, shame, or pain.

He took no credit to himself for a self-control, which he had not been called upon by any stress of feeling to exercise. He was only Arthur Dillon, encountering a lady with a past; a fact in itself more or less amusing. Once she might have been a danger to be kept out like a pest, or barricaded in quarantine. That time had gone by. His indifference for the moment appalled him, since it showed the hopeless depth of Endicott's grave. After chatting honestly ten minutes, he went away light of heart, without venturing to warn Edith. Another day, he told her, and be good meanwhile.

Curran became thoughtful, and the women irritable after he had gone.

Edith felt that her instincts had no longer a value in the market. In this wretched Endicott affair striking disappointment met the most brilliant endeavors. Sonia made ready to return to her hotel. Dolorously the Currans paid her the last courtesies, waiting for the word which would end the famous search for her Horace.

"I have been thinking the matter over," she said sweetly, "and I have thought out a plan, not in your line of course, which I shall see to at once. I think it worth while to look through California for points in the life of this interesting young man, Mr. Dillon."

When the door closed on her, Edith began to shriek in hysterical laughter.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

THE HEART OF HONORA.

While Edith urged the search for Endicott, the little world to be horrified by her success enjoyed itself north and south as the season suggested, and the laws of fas.h.i.+on permitted. At the beginning of June, Anne settled herself comfortably for the summer in a roomy farmhouse, overlooking Lake Champlain and that particular island of Valcour, which once witnessed the plucky sea-fight and defeat of dare-devil Arnold.

Only Honora accompanied her, but at the close of the month Louis, the deacon, and Mrs. Doyle Grahame joined them; and after that the whole world came at odd times, with quiet to-day and riot to-morrow. Honora, the center of interest, the storm-center, as we call it in these days, turned every eye in her direction with speculative interest. Would she retire to the convent, or find her vocation in the world? She had more than fulfilled her father's wish that she remain in secular life for a year. Almost two years had pa.s.sed. He could not reproach her from his grave.

One divine morning she came upon the natural stage which had been the scene of a heart-drama more bitter to her than any sorrow. Walking alone in the solemn woods along the lake sh.o.r.e, the path suddenly ended on a rocky terrace, unshaded by trees, and directly over the water. Raspberry bushes made an enclosure there, in the center of which the stumps of two trees held a rough plank to make a seat. A stony beach curved inward from this point, the dark woods rose behind, and the soft waters made music in the hollows of the rock beneath her feet. Delightful with the perfume of the forest, the placid sh.o.r.es of Valcour, sun, and flower, and bird filling eye and ear with beauty, the sight of the spot chilled her heart. Here Lord Constantine had offered her his love and his life the year before. To her it had been a frightful scene, this strong, handsome, clever man, born to the highest things of mind, heart, talent and rank, kneeling before her, pleading with pallid face for her love, ... and all the rest of it! She would have sunk down with shame but for his kindness in accepting the situation, and carrying her through it.

Why his proposal shocked her his lords.h.i.+p could not see at first. He understood before his mournful interview and ended. Honora was of that cla.s.s, to whom marriage does not present itself as a personal concern.

She had the true feminine interest in the marriage of her friends, and had vaguely dreamed of her own march to the altar, an adoring lover, a happy home and household cares. Happy in the love of a charming mother and a high-hearted father, she had devoted her youthful days to them and to music. They stood between her and importunate lovers, whose intentions she had never divined.

With the years came trouble, the death of the mother, the earning of her living by her art, the care of her father, and the work for her native land. Lovers could not pursue this busy woman, occupied with father and native land, and daily necessity. The eternal round of travel, conspiracy, scheming, planning, spending, with its invariable ending of disappointment and weariness of heart, brought forth a longing for the peace of rest, routine, satisfied aspirations; and from a dream the convent became a pa.s.sion, longed for as the oasis by the traveler in the sands.

Simple and sincere as light, the hollow pretence of the world disgusted her. Her temperament was of that unhappy fiber which sees the end almost as speedily as the beginning; change and death and satiety treading on the heels of the n.o.blest enterprise. For her there seemed no happiness but in the possession of the everlasting, the unchangeable, the divinely beautiful. Out of these feelings and her pious habits rose the longing for the convent, for what seemed to be permanent, fixed, proportioned, without dust and dirt and ragged edges, and wholly devoted to G.o.d.