AN ENDICOTT HEIR.
Meanwhile what of the world and the woman he had left behind? A year had
passed, his new personality had begun to fit, and no word or sign direct
from the Endicott circle had reached him. Time seemed to have created a
profound silence between him and them. Indirectly, however, through the
journals, he caught fleeting glimpses of that rage which had filled
Sonia with hatred and despair. A description of his person appeared as
an advertisement, with a reward of five thousand dollars for information
that would lead to the discovery of his whereabouts, or to a certainty
of his death. At another time the journals which printed both reward and
notice, had a carefully worded plea from his Aunt Lois for letter or
visit to soothe the anxieties of her last days. He shook over this
reminder of her faithful love until he analyzed the circumstances which
had probably led to this burst of publicity. Early in July a letter had
informed Sonia of his visit to Wisconsin; two months later a second
letter described, in one word, her character, and in six her sentence:
adulteress, you shall never see me again. A week's work by her lawyers
would have laid bare the fact that the Endicott estate had vanished, and
that her own small income was her sole possession.
A careful study of his motives would have revealed in part his plans,
and a detective had probably spent a month in a vain pursuit. The
detective's report must have startled even the lawyers. All clues led to
nothing. Sonia had no money to throw away, nor would she dare to appeal
too strongly to Aunt Lois and Horace Endicott's friends, who might learn
too much, if she were too candid. The two who loved him were not yet
really worried by his disappearance, since they had his significant
letter. In time their confidence would give place to anxiety, and
heaven and earth would be moved to uncover his hiding-place. This
loving notice was a trap set by Sonia. On the road which led from
Mulberry Street to Cambridge, from the home of Anne Dillon to the home
of Lois Endicott, Sonia's detective lay in wait for the returning steps
of the lost husband, and Sonia's eyes devoured the shadows, her ears
drank in every sound. He laughed, he grew warm with the feeling of
triumph. She would watch and listen in vain. The judgment-seat of God
was the appointment he had made for her.
He began now to wonder at the completeness of his own disappearance. His
former self seemed utterly beyond the reach of men. The detectives had
not only failed to find him, they had not even fallen upon his track by
accident. How singular that an Irish colony in the metropolis should be
so far in fact and sympathy from the aristocracy. Sonia and her
detectives would have thought of Greenland and the Eskimos, Ashanti,
Alaska, the court of China, as possible refuges, but never of Cherry
Street and the children of Erin, who were farther off from the Endicotts
and the Livingstones than the head-hunters of Borneo. Had her detectives
by any chance met him on the road, prepared for any disguise, how dumb
and deaf and sightless would they become when his position as the nephew
of Senator Dillon, the secretary of Sullivan, the orator of Tammany
Hall, and the pride of Cherry Hill, shone upon them.
This triumph he would have enjoyed the more could he have seen the
effect which the gradual change in his personality had produced on
Monsignor O'Donnell, for whom the Endicott episode proved the most
curious experience of his career. Its interest was discounted by the
responsibility imposed upon him. His only comfort lay in the thought
that at any moment he could wash his hands of the affair, before
annoying or dangerous consequences began to threaten. He suffered from
constant misgivings. The drama of a change in personality went on daily
under his eyes, and almost frightened him by its climaxes, which were
more distinct to him than to Endicott. First, the pale, worn, savage,
and blood-haunted boy who came to him in his first agony; then the
melancholy, bearded, yet serene invalid who lay in Anne Dillon's house
and was welcomed as her son; next, the young citizen of the Irish
colony, known as a wealthy and lucky Californian, bidding for honors as
the nephew of Senator Dillon; and last the surprising orator, the idol
of the Irish people, their devoted friend, who spared neither labor nor
money in serving them.
The awesome things in this process were the fading away of the Endicott
and the growing distinctness of the Dillon. At first the old personality
lay concealed under the new as under a mask; but something like
absorption by degrees obliterated the outlines of Endicott and developed
the Dillon. Daily he noticed the new features which sprang into sight
between sunrise and sunrise. It was not only the fashion of dress, of
body, and of speech, which mimics may adopt; but also a change of
countenance, a turn of mind which remained permanent, change of gesture,
a deeper color of skin, greater decision in movement; in fact, so many
and so minute mutations that he could not recall one-tenth the number.
Endicott for instance had possessed an eloquent, lustrous, round eye,
with an expression delightfully indolent; in Dillon the roundness and
indolence gave way to a malicious wrinkle at the outside corners, which
gave his glance a touch of bitterness. Endicott had been gracefully slow
in his movement; Dillon was nervous and alert. A fascination of terror
held Monsignor as Arthur Dillon grew like his namesake more and more.
Out of what depths had this new personality been conjured up? What would
be the end of it? He said to himself that a single incident, the death
of Sonia, would be enough to destroy on the instant this Dillon and
resurrect the Endicott. Still he was not sure, and the longer this
terrible process continued the less likely a change back to the normal.
Morbid introspection had become a part of the young man's pain. The
study of the changes in himself proved more pleasant than painful. His
mind swung between bitter depression, and warm, natural joy. His moments
of deepest joy were coincident with an interesting condition of mind. On
certain days he completely forgot the Endicott and became the Dillon
almost perfectly. Then he no longer acted a part, but was absorbed in
it. Most of the time he was Endicott playing the role of Dillon, without
effort and with much pleasure, indeed, but still an actor. When memory
and grief fled from him together, as on St. Patrick's Day, his new
personality dominated each instant of consciousness, and banished
thought of the old. Then a new spirit rose in him; not merely a feeling
of relief from pain, but a positive influence which led him to do
surprising and audacious things, like the speech at the banquet. It was
a divine forgetfulness, which he prayed might be continuous. He loved to
think that some years of his life would see the new personality in full
possession of him, while the old would be but a feeble memory, a mere
dream of an impossible past. Wonderful, if the little things of the day,
small but innumerable, should wipe out in the end an entire youth that
took twenty years in building. What is the past after all but a vague
horizon made emphatic by the peaks of memory? What is the future but a
bare plain with no emphasis at all? Man lives only in the present, like
the God whose spirit breathes in him.
Sonia was bent on his not forgetting, however. His heart died within him
when he read in the journals the prominent announcement of the birth of
a son to the lost Horace Endicott, whose woful fate still troubled the
short memory of editors. A son! He crushed the paper in his anguish and
fell again into the old depression. Oh, how thoroughly had God punished
the hidden crimes of this lost woman! A child would have saved her, and
in her hatred of him she had ... he always refused to utter to himself
the thought which here rose before his mind. His head bent in agony.
This child was not his, perhaps not even hers. She had invented it as a
trap for him. Were it really his little one, his flesh and blood, how
eagerly he would have thrown off his present life and flown to its
rescue from such a mother!
Sonia did not hope for such a result. It was her fraudulent mortgage on
the future and its possibilities. The child would be heir to his
property; would have the sympathy and inherit the possessions of his
Aunt Lois; would lull the suspicions concerning its mother, and
conciliate the gossips; and might win him back from hiding, if only to
expose the fraud and take shame from the Endicotts. What a clever and
daring criminal was this woman! With a cleverness always at fault
because of her rare unscrupulousness. Even wickedness has its delicacy,
its modesty, its propriety, which a criminal respects in proportion to
his genius for crime. Sonia offended all in her daring, and lost at
every turn. This trap would catch her own feet. A child! A son! He
shuddered at the thought, and thanked God that he had escaped a new
dishonor. His blood would never mingle with the puddle in Sonia's veins.
He would not permit her to work this iniquity, and to check her he must
risk final success in his plan of disappearance by violating the first
principle of the art: that there be no further connection with the past.
The detectives were watching the path by which he would return, counting
perhaps upon his rage over this fraudulent heir. He must give them their
opportunity, if he would destroy Sonia's schemes against Aunt Lois, but
felt sure that they would be unprepared to seize it, even if they
dreamed it at hand. He had a plan which might accomplish his object
without endangering his position; and one night he slipped away from the
city on a train for Boston, got off at a lonely station, and plunged
into the darkness without a word for a sleepy station-master.
At dawn after two hours' walk he passed the pond which had once seemed
to him the door of escape. Poor old friend! Its gray face lay under the
morning sky like the face of a dead saint, luminous in its outlines, as
if the glory of heaven shone through; still, oh, so still, and deep as
if it mirrored immensity. Little complaining murmurs, like the
whimperings of a sleepy child, rose up from the reeds, sweeter than any
songs. He paused an instant to compare the _then_ and _now_, but fled
with a groan as the old sorrow, the old madness, suddenly seized him
with the powerful grip of that horrid time. In fact, every step of the
way to Martha's house was torture. He saw that for him there were other
dangers than Sonia and her detectives, in leaving the refuge which God
had provided for him. Oh, never could he be too grateful for the
blessing, never could he love enough the holy man who had suggested it,
never could he repay the dear souls whose love had made it beautiful.
They rose up before him as he hurried down the road, the lovable,
humorous, rollicking, faulty clan; and he would not have exchanged them
for the glories of a court, for the joys of Arcady.
The sun and he found Martha busy with household duties. She did not know
him and he said not a word to enlighten her; he was a messenger from a
friend who asked of her a service, the carrying of a letter to a
certain woman in Boston; and no one should see her deliver the letter,
or learn her name, or know her coming and going; for her friend, in
hiding, and pursued, must not be discovered. Then she knew that he came
from Horace, and shed tears that he lived well and happy, but could not
believe, when he had made himself known, that this was the same man of a
year before. They spent a happy day together in perfecting the details
of her visit to Aunt Lois, which had to be accomplished with great care
and secrecy. There was to be no correspondence between them. In two
weeks he would come again to hear a report of her success or failure. If
she were not at home, he would come two weeks later. She could tell Aunt
Lois whatever the old lady desired to hear about him, and assure her
that nothing would induce him ever to return to his former life. The
letter said as much. When night came they went off over the hills
together to the nearest railway station, where he left her to find her
way to the city, while he went on to a different station and took a late
train to New York. By these methods he felt hopeful that his violation
of the rules of disappearing would have no evil results for him, beyond
that momentary return of the old anguish which had frightened him more
than Sonia's detectives.
In four weeks old Martha returned from her mission, and told this story
as they sat in the pleasant kitchen near a cheery fire.
"I rented a room in the neighborhood of your Aunt Lois' house, and
settled myself to wait for the most natural opportunity to meet her. It
was long in coming, for she had been sick; but when she got better I saw
her going out to ride, and a little later she took to walking in the
park with her maid. There she often sat, and chatted with passing
children, or with old women like herself, poor old things trying to get
life from the air. The maid is a spy. She noted every soul about, and
had an extra glance for me when your aunt spoke to me, after I had
waited three weeks for a word. I told her my story, as I told it to you.
She was interested, and I must go to her house to take lunch with her. I
refused. I was not used to such invitations, but I would call on her at
other times. And the maid listened the more. She was never out of
hearing, nor out of sight, until Aunt Lois would get into a rage, and
bid her take a walk. It was then I handed her the letter under my shawl.
The maid's eyes could not see through the shawl. I told her what you bid
me: that you would never return again, no more than if you were dead,
that she must burn the letter so that none would know a letter had been
received and burned, and that she would understand many things when she
had read it; most particular that she was surrounded by spies, and that
she must go right on as if nothing had happened, and deceive as she had
been deceived.
"I met her only twice after that. I told her my plan to deceive the
maid. I was a shrewd beggar studying to get money out of her, with a
story about going to my son in Washington. She bid the maid secretly
find out if I was worthy, and I saw the maid in private, and begged her
to report of me favorably, and she might have half the money, and then I
would go away. And the maid was deceived, for she brought me fifty
dollars from your aunt, and kept thirty. She would not give even the
twenty until I had promised to go away without complaint. So I went
away, and stayed with a friend in Worcester. Since I came home I have
not seen or heard of any stranger in this neighborhood. So that it is
likely I have not been suspected or followed. And the letter was burned.
And at the first fair chance your Aunt will go to Europe, taking with
her her two dearest relatives. She called them Sonia Endicott and her
child Horace, and she would keep them with her while she lived. At the
last she sent you her love, though she could not understand some of the
things you were doing, but that was your own business. And she never
shed a tear, but kept smiling, and her smile was terrible."
He could believe that. Sonia might as well have lived in the glare of
Vesuvius as in the enlightened smile of Aunt Lois. The schemer was now
in her own toils, and only at the death of the brave old woman would she
know her failure. Oh, how sweet and great is even human justice!
"If I do not see you again, Martha," said Arthur as he kissed the dear
old mother farewell, "remember that I am happy, and that you made me
so."
THE GREEN AGAINST THE RED.