JUDY VISITS THE POPE.
He used the leisure of the voyage to review recent events, and to
measure his own progress. For the first time since his calamity he had
lost sight of himself in this poetic enterprise of Ledwith's, successful
beyond all expectation. In this life of intrigue against the injustice
of power, this endless struggle to shake the grip of the master on the
slave, he found an intoxication. Though many plans had come to nothing,
and the prison had swallowed a thousand victims, the game was worth the
danger and the failure. In the Fenian uprising the proud rulers had lost
sleep and comfort, and the world had raised its languid eyes for a
moment to study events in Ireland. Even the slave can stir the selfish
to interest by a determined blow at his masters. In his former existence
very far had been from him this glorious career, though honors lay in
wait for an Endicott who took to statecraft. Shallow Horace, sprung from
statesman, had found public life a bore. This feeling had saved him
perhaps from the fate of Livingstone, who in his snail-shell could see
no other America than a monstrous reproduction of Plymouth colony.
He had learned at last that his dear country was made for the human
race. God had guided the little ones of the nations, wretched but hardy,
to the land, the only land on earth, where dreams so often come true.
Like the waves they surged upon the American shore. With ax and shovel
and plow, with sweat of labor and pain, they fought the wilderness and
bought a foothold in the new commonwealth. What great luck that his exit
from the old life should prove to be his entrance into the very heart of
a simple multitude flying from the greed and stupidity of the decadent
aristocracy of Europe! What fitness that he, child of a race which had
triumphantly fought injustice, poverty, Indian, and wilderness, should
now be leader for a people who had fled from injustice at home only to
begin a new struggle with plotters like Livingstone, foolish
representative of the caste-system of the old world.
Sonia Westfield, by strange fatality, was aboard with her child and Aunt
Lois. Her presence, when first they came face to face, startled him; not
the event, but the littleness of the great earth; that his hatred and
her crime could not keep them farther apart. The Endicott in him rose up
for a moment at the sight of her, and to his horror even sighed for her:
this Endicott, who for a twelvemonth had been so submerged under the new
personality that Dillon had hardly thought of him. He sighed for her!
Her beauty still pinched him, and the memory of the first enchantment
had not faded from the mind of the poor ghost. It mouthed in anger at
the master who had destroyed it, who mocked at it now bitterly: you are
the husband of Sonia Westfield, and the father of her fraudulent child;
go to them as you desire. But the phantom fled humiliated, while Dillon
remained horror-shaken by that passing fancy of the Endicott to take up
the dream of youth again. Could he by any fatality descend to this
shame? Her presence did not arouse his anger or his dread, hardly his
curiosity. He kept out of her way as much as possible, yet more than
once they met; but only at the last did the vague inquiry in her face
indicate that memory had impressions of him.
Often he studied her from afar, when she sat deep in thought with her
lovely eyes ... how he had loved them ... melting, damnable, false eyes
fixed on the sea. He wondered how she bore her misery, of which not a
sign showed on the velvet face. Did she rage at the depths of that sea
which in an instant had engulfed her fool-husband and his fortune? The
same sea now mocked her, laughed at her rage, bearing on its bosom the
mystery which she struggled to steal from time. No one could punish this
creature like herself. She bore her executioner about with her, Aunt
Lois, evidently returning home to die. That death would complete the
ruin of Sonia, and over the grave she would learn once for all how well
her iniquity had been known, how the lost husband had risen from his
darkness to accuse her, how little her latest crime would avail her.
What a dull fool Horace Endicott had been over a woman suspected of her
own world! Her beauty would have kept him a fool forever, had she been
less beastly in her pleasures. And this Endicott, down in the depths,
sighed for her still!
But Arthur Dillon saw her in another light, as an unclean beast from
sin's wilderness, in the light that shone from Honora Ledwith. Messalina
cowered under the halo of Beatrice! When that light shone full upon her,
Sonia looked to his eye like a painted Phryne surprised by the daylight.
Her corruption showed through her beauty. Honora! Incomparable woman!
dear lady of whiteness! pure heart that shut out earthly love, while God
was to be served, or men suffered, or her country bled, or her father
lived! The thought of her purified him. He had not truly known his dear
mother till now; when he knew her in Honora, in old Martha, in charming
Mona, in Mary Everard, in clever Anne Dillon. These women would bless
his life hereafter. They refreshed him in mind and heart. It began to
dawn upon him that his place in life was fixed, that he would never go
back even though he might do so with honor, his shame remaining unknown.
It was mere justice that the wretched past should be in a grave, doomed
never to see the light of resurrection.
His mother and her party shared the journey with him. The delay of
Ledwith's trial had enabled them to make the short tour on the
Continent, and catch his steamer. Anne was utterly vexed with him that
Ledwith had not escaped the prison. Her plain irritation gave Judy deep
content.
"She needs something to pull her down," was her comment to Arthur, "or
she'll fly off the earth with the lightness of her head. My, my, but the
airs of her since she laid out the ambassador, an' talked to the Pope!
She can hardly spake at all now wid the grandher! Whin Father Phil ... I
never can call him Mounsinnyory ... an', be the way, for years wasn't I
callin' him Morrisania be mistake, an' the dear man never corrected me
wanst ... but I learned the difference over in Rome ... where was I?...
whin Father Phil kem back from Rome he gev us a grand lecther on what he
saw, an' he talked for two hours like an angel. But Anne Dillon can on'y
shut her eyes, an' dhrop her head whin ye ask her a single question
about it. Faith, I dinno if she'll ever get over it. Isn't that quare
now?"
"Very," Arthur answered, "but give her time. So you saw the Pope?"
"Faith, I did, an' it surprised me a gra'dale to find out that he was a
dago, God forgi' me for sayin' as much. I was tould be wan o' the
Mounsinnyory that he was pure Italian. 'No,' sez I, 'the Pope may be
Rooshin or German, though I don't belave he's aither, but he's not
Italian. If he wor, he'd have the blessed sinse to hide it, for fear the
Irish 'ud lave the Church whin they found it out.'"
"What blood do you think there's in him?" said Arthur.
"He looked so lovely sittin' there whin we wint in that me sivin sinses
left me, an' I cudn't rightly mek up me mind afterwards. Thin I was so
taken up wid Mrs. Dillon," and Judy laughed softly, "that I was
bothered. But I know the Pope's not a dago, anny more than he's a
naygur. I put him down in me own mind as a Roman, no more an' no less."
"That's a safe guess," said Arthur; "and you still have the choice of
his being a Sicilian, a Venetian, or a Neapolitan."
"Unless," said the old lady cautiously, "he comes of the same stock as
Our Lord Himself."
"Which would make him a Jew," Arthur smoothly remarked.
"God forgive ye, Artie! G'long wid ye! If Our Lord was a Jew he was the
first an' last an' on'y wan of his kind."
"And that's true too. And how did you come to see the Pope so easy, and
it in the summer time?"
The expressive grin covered Judy's face as with comic sunshine.
"I dunno," she answered. "If Anne Dillon made up her mind to be Impress
of France, I dunno annythin' nor anny wan that cud hould her back; an'
perhaps the on'y thing that kep' her from tryin' to be Impress was that
the Frinch had an Impress already. I know they had, because I heard her
ladyship lamentin', whin we wor in Paris, that she didn't get a letther
of introduction to the Impress from Lady Skibbereen. She had anny number
of letthers to the Pope. I suppose that's how we all got in, for I wint
too, an' the three of us looked like sisters of mercy, dhressed in black
wid veils on our heads. Whin we dhruv up to the palace, her ladyship gev
a screech. 'Mother of heaven,' says she, 'but I forgot me permit, an'
we can't get in to see his Holiness.' We sarched all her pockets, but
found on'y the square bit o' paper, a milliner's bill, that she tuk for
the permit be mistake. 'Well, this'll have to do,' says she. Says I,
'Wud ye insult the Pope be shakin' a milliner's bill in his face as ye
go in the dure?' She never answered me, but walked in an' presented her
bill to a Mounsinnyory----"
"What's that?" Arthur asked. "I was never in Rome."
"Somethin' like the man that takes the tickets at the theayter, ou'y
he's a priest, an' looks like a bishop, but he cuts more capers than ten
bishops in wan. He never opened the paper--faith, if he had, there'd be
the fine surprise--so we wint in. I knew the Pope the minnit I set eyes
on him, the heavenly man. Oh, but I'd like to be as sure o' savin' me
soul as that darlin' saint. His eyes looked as if they saw heaven every
night an' mornin'. We dhropped on our knees, while the talkin' was goin'
on, an' if I wasn't so frikened at bein' near heaven itself, I'd a died
listenin' to her ladyship tellin' the Pope in French--in French, d'ye
mind?--how much she thought of him an' how much she was goin' to spind
on him while she was in Rome. 'God forgive ye, Anne Dillon,' says I to
meself, 'but ye might betther spind yer money an' never let an.' She med
quite free wid him, an' he talked back like a father, an' blessed us
twinty times. I dinno how I wint in or how I kem out. I was like a top,
spinnin' an' spinnin'. Things went round all the way home, so that I
didn't dar say a word for fear herself might think I had been drinkin'.
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 goddess."
"I see. It's rather early for a goddess, 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 passengers 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 ambassador, 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
ashore 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 nobility. 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
passengers 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.