LA BELLE COLETTE.
After the situation had been discussed over the breakfast for ten
minutes Arthur understood the mournful expression of the Senator, whose
gaiety lapsed at intervals when bitterness got the better of him.
"The boys--the whole town is raving about you, Artie," said he with
pride, "over the way you managed that affair of Ledwith's. There'll be
nothing too good for you this year, if you work all the points of the
game--if you follow good advice, I mean. You've got Livingstone in a
corner. When this cruel war is over, and it is over for the
Fenians--they've had enough, God knows--it ought to be commencing for
the Honorable Quincy Livingstone."
"You make too much of it, Senator," Grahame responded. "We know what's
back of these attacks on you and others. It's this way, Arthur: the
Senator and I have been working hard for the American citizens in
English jails, Fenians of course, and the Livingstone crowd have hit
back at us hard. The Senator, as the biggest man in sight, got hit
hardest."
"What they say of me is true, though. That's what hurts."
"Except that they leave out the man whom every one admires for his good
sense, generous heart, and great success," Arthur said to console him.
"Of course one doesn't like to have the sins of his youth advertised for
two civilizations," Grahame continued. "One must consider the source of
this abuse however. They are clever men who write against us, but to
know them is not to admire them. Bitterkin of the _Post_ has his brain,
stomach, and heart stowed away in a single sack under his liver, which
is very torpid, and his stomach is always sour. His blood is three parts
water from the Boyne, his food is English, his clothes are a very bad
fit, and his whiskers are so hard they dull the scissors. He loves
America when he can forget that Irish and other foreign vermin inhabit
it, otherwise he detests it. He loves England until he remembers that he
can't live in it. The other fellow, Smallish, writes beautiful English,
and lives on the old clothes of the nobility. Now who would mourn over
the diatribes of such cats?"
The Senator had to laugh at the description despite his sadness.
"This is only one symptom of the trouble that's brewing. There's no use
in hiding the fact that things are looking bad. Since the Fenian scheme
went to pieces, the rats have left their holes. The Irish are
demoralized everywhere, fighting themselves as usual after a collapse,
and their enemies are quoting them against one another. Here in New York
the hired bravos of the press are in the pay of the Livingstone crowd,
or of the British secret service. What can you expect?"
"How long will it last? What is doing against it?" said Arthur.
"Ask me easier questions. Anyway, I'm only consoling the Senator for the
hard knocks he's getting for the sake of old Ireland. Cheer up,
Senator."
"Even when Fritters made his bow," said the mournful Senator, "they made
game of me," and the tears rose to his eyes. Arthur felt a secret rage
at this grief.
"You heard of Fritters?" and Arthur nodded. "He arrived, and the
Columbia College crowd started him off with a grand banquet. He's an
Oxford historian with a new recipe for cooking history. The Columbia
professor who stood sponsor for him at the banquet told the world that
Fritters would show how English government worked among the Irish, and
how impossible is the Anglo-Saxon idea among peoples in whom barbarism
does not die with the appearance and advance of civilization. He touched
up the elegant parades and genial shindys of St. Patrick's Day as
'inexplicable dumb shows and noise,'--see Hamlet's address to the
players--and hoped the banks of our glorious Hudson would never witness
the bloody rows peculiar to the banks of the immortal Boyne. Then he
dragged in the Senator."
"What's his little game?" Arthur asked.
"Scientific ridicule ... the press plays to the galleries, and Fritters
to the boxes ... it's a part of the general scheme ... I tell you
there's going to be fun galore this winter ... and the man in London is
at the root of the deviltry."
"What's to be done?"
"If we only knew," the Senator groaned. "If we could only get them under
our fists, in a fair and square tussle!"
"I think the hinge of the Livingstone plan is Sister Claire, the escaped
nun," Grahame said thoughtfully. "She's the star of the combination,
appeals to the true blue church-member with descriptions of the horrors
of convents. Her book is out, and you'll find a copy waiting for you at
home. Dime novels are prayer-books beside it. French novels are virtuous
compared with it. It is raising an awful row. On the strength of it
McMeeter has begun an enterprise for the relief of imprisoned nuns--to
rescue them--house them for a time, and see them safely married. Sister
Claire is to be matron of the house of escaped nuns. No one doubts her
experience. Now isn't that McMeeter all over? But see the book, the
_Confessions of an Escaped Nun_."
"You think she's the hinge of the great scheme?"
"She has the public eye and ear," said Grahame, thinking out his own
theory as he talked. "Her book is the book of the hour ... reviewed by
the press ... the theme of pulpits ... the text of speeches galore ...
common workmen thump one another over it at the bench. Now all the
others, Bradford, Fritters, the Columbia professors, Bitterkin and his
followers, seem to play second to her book. They keep away from her
society, yet her strongest backing is from them. You know what I mean.
It has occurred to me that if we got her history ... it must be pretty
savory ... and printed it ... traced her connection with the Livingstone
crowd ... it would be quite a black eye for the Honorable Quincy."
"By George, but you've struck it," cried Arthur waking up to the
situation. "If she's the hinge, she's the party to strike at. Tell me,
what became of Curran?"
"Lucky thought," shouted Grahame. "He's in town yet. The very man for
us."
"I'm going to have it out with Livingstone," said Arthur, with a clear
vision of an English prison and the patient woman who watched its walls
from a window in the town. "In fact, I _must_ have it out with
Livingstone. He's good game, and I'd like to bring him back from England
in a bag. Perhaps Sister Claire may be able to provide the bag."
"Hands on it," said Grahame, and they touched palms over the table,
while the Senator broke into smiles. He had unlimited faith in his
nephew.
"Lord Conny gave me an outline of Livingstone's program before I left.
He's worried over the effect it's going to have on his alliance scheme,
and he cursed the Minister sincerely. He'll help us. Let's begin with
Sister Claire in the hope of bagging the whole crowd. Let Curran hunt up
her history. Above all let him get evidence that Livingstone provides
the money for her enterprise."
Having come to a conclusion on this important matter, they dropped into
more personal topics.
"Strangely enough," said Grahame cheerfully, "my own destiny is mixed up
with this whole business. The bulwark of Livingstone in one quarter is
John Everard. I am wooing, in the hope of winning, my future
father-in-law."
"He's very dead," the Senator thought.
"The art of wooing a father-in-law!--what an art!" murmured Grahame.
"The mother-in-law is easy. She wishes her daughter married. Papa
doesn't. At least in this case, with a girl like Mona."
"Has Everard anything against you?"
"A whole litany of crimes."
"What's wrong with Everard?"
"He was born the night of the first big wind, and he has had it in for
the whole world ever since. He's perverse. Nothing but another big wind
will turn him round."
Seeing Arthur puzzled over these allusions, Grahame explained.
"Think of such a man having children like the twins, little lumps of
sweetness ... like Louis ... heavens! if I live to be the father of such
a boy, life will be complete ... like my Mona ... oh!"
He stalked about the room throwing himself into poses of ecstasy and
adoration before an imaginary goddess to the delight of the Senator.
"I've been there myself," Arthur commented unmoved. "To the question:
how do you hope to woo and win Everard?"
"First, by my book. It's the story of just such a fool as he: a chap who
wears the American flag in bed and waves it at his meals, as a nightgown
and a napkin; then, he is a religious man of the kind that finds no
religion to his liking, and would start one of his own if he thought it
would pay; finally, he is a purist in politics, believes in blue glass,
drinks ten glasses of filtered water a day, which makes him as blue as
the glass, wears paper collars, and won't let his son be a monk because
there are too many in the world. Now, Everard will laugh himself weak
over this character. He's so perverse that he will never see himself in
the mirror which I have provided."
"Rather risky, I should think."
"But that's not all," Grahame went on, "since you are kind enough to
listen. I'm going to wave the American flag, eat it, sing it, for the
next year, myself. Attend: the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers are
going to sit on what is left of Plymouth Rock next spring, and make
speeches and read poems, and eat banquets. I am to be invited to sing,
to read the poem. Vandervelt is to see to that. Think of it, a wild
Irishman, an exile, a conspirator against the British Crown, a subject
of the Pope, reading or singing the praises of the pilgrims, the grim
pilgrims. Turn in your grave, Cotton Mather, as my melodious verses
harrow your ears."
"Will that impress John Everard?"
"Or give him a fatal fit. The book and the poem ought to do the
business. He can't resist. 'Never was Everard in this humor wooed, never
was Everard in this humor won.' Oh, that Shakespeare had known an
Everard, and embalmed him like a fly in the everlasting amber of his
verse. But should these things fail, I have another matter. While
Everard rips up Church and priest and doctrine at his pleasure, he has
one devotion which none may take liberties with. He swears by the nuns.
He is foaming at the mouth over the injury and insult offered them by
the _Confessions_ of Sister Claire. We expose this clever woman. Picture
me, then, the despised suitor, after having pleased him by my book, and
astounded him with my poem, and mesmerized him with the exposure of
Claire, standing before him with silent lips but eyes speaking: I want
your daughter. Can even this perverse man deny me? Don't you think I
have a chance?"
"Not with Everard," said the Senator solemnly. "He's simply coke."
"You should write a book, Doyle, on the art of wooing a father-in-law,
and explain what you have left out here: how to get away with the dog."
"Before marriage," said the ready wit, "the girl looks after the dog;
after marriage the dog can be trained to bite the father-in-law."
Arthur found the _Confessions of an Escaped Nun_ interesting reading
from many points of view, and spent the next three days analyzing the
book of the hour. His sympathy for convent life equaled his
understanding of it. He had come to understand and like Sister Mary
Magdalene, in spite of a prejudice against her costume; but the motive
and spirit of the life she led were as yet beyond him. Nevertheless, he
could see how earnestly the _Confessions_ lied about what it pretended
to expose. The smell of the indecent and venal informer exhaled from the
pages. The vital feature, however, lay in the revelation of Sister
Claire's character, between the lines. Beneath the vulgarity and
obscenity, poorly veiled in a mock-modest verbiage, pulsated a burning
sensuality reaching the horror of mania. A well-set trap would have easy
work in catching the feet of a woman related to the nymphs. Small wonder
that the Livingstone party kept her afar off from their perfumed and
reputable society while she did her nasty work. The book must have been
oil to that conflagration raging among the Irish. The abuse of the
press, the criticism of their friends, the reproaches of their own, the
hostility of the government, the rage and grief at the failure of their
hopes, the plans to annoy and cripple them, scorched indeed their
sensitive natures; but the book of the Escaped Nun, defiling their holy
ones so shamelessly, ate like acid into their hearts. Louis came in,
when he had completed his analysis of the volume, and begun to think up
a plan of action. The lad fingered the book gingerly, and said timidly:
"I'm going to see ... I have an appointment with this terrible woman
for to-morrow afternoon. In fact, I saw her this morning. I went to her
office with Sister Mary Magdalen."
"Of course the good Sister has a scheme to convert the poor thing!"
Arthur said lightly, concealing his delight and surprise under a
pretense of indifference.
"Well, yes," and the lad laughed and blushed. "And she may succeed too.
The greater the sin the deeper the repentance. The unfortunate
woman----"
"Who is making a fortune on her book by the way----"
"----received us very kindly. Sister Magdalen had been corresponding with
her. She wept in admitting that her fall seemed beyond hope. She felt so
tangled in her own sins that she knew no way to get out of them. Really,
she _was_ so sincere. When we were leaving she begged me to call again,
and as I have to return to the seminary Monday I named to-morrow
afternoon."
"You may then have the honor of converting her."
"It would be an honor," Louis replied stoutly.
"Try it," said Arthur after thinking the matter over. "I know what force
_your_ arguments will have with her. And if you don't object I'll stay
... by the way, where is her office?"
"In a quiet business building on Bleecker Street, near Broadway."
"If you don't mind I'll stay outside in the hall, and rush in to act as
altar-boy, when she agrees to 'vert."
"I'm going for all your ridicule, Arthur."
"No objection, but keep a cool head, and bear in mind that I am in the
hall outside."
He suspected the motive of Sister Claire, both in making this
appointment, and in playing at conversion with Sister Magdalen. Perhaps
it might prove the right sort of trap for her cunning feet. He doubted
the propriety of exposing Louis to the fangs of the beast, and for a
moment he thought to warn him of the danger. But he had no right to
interfere in Sister Magdalen's affair, and if a beginning had to be made
this adventure could be used effectively. He forgot the affair within
the hour, in the business of hunting up Curran.
He had a double reason for seeking the detective. Besides the task of
ferreting out the record of Sister Claire, he wished to get news of the
Endicotts. Aunt Lois had slipped out of life two days after her return
from Europe. The one heart that loved him truly beat for him no more. By
this time her vengeance must have fallen, and Sonia, learning the full
extent of her punishment, must now be writhing under a second
humiliation and disappointment. He did not care to see her anguish, but
he did care to hear of the new effort that would undoubtedly be made to
find the lost husband. Curran would know. He met him that afternoon on
the street near his own house.
"Yes, I'm back in the old business," he said proudly; "the trip home so
freshened me that I feel like myself again. Besides, I have my own home,
here it is, and my wife lives with me. Perhaps you have heard of her, La
Belle Colette."
"And seen her too ... a beautiful and artistic dancer."
"You must come in now and meet her. She is a trifle wild, you know, and
once she took to drink; but she's a fine girl, a real good fellow, and
worth twenty like me. Come right in, and we'll talk business later."
La Belle Colette! The dancer at a cheap seaside resort! The wild
creature who drank and did things! This shrewd, hard fellow, who faced
death as others faced a wind, was deeply in love and happy in her
companionship. What standard of womanhood and wifehood remained to such
men? However, his wonder ceased when he had bowed to La Belle Colette in
her own parlor, heard her sweet voice, and looked into the most
entrancing eyes ever owned by a woman, soft, fiery, tender, glad, candid
eyes. He recalled the dancer, leaping like a flame about the stage. In
the plainer home garments he recognized the grace, quickness, and gaiety
of the artist. Her charm won him at once, the spell which her rare kind
have ever been able to cast about the hearts of men. He understood why
the flinty detective should be in love with his wife at times, but not
why he should continue in that state. She served them with wine and
cigars, rolled a cigarette for herself, chatted with the ease and
chumminess of a good fellow, and treated Arthur with tenderness.
"Richard has told me so much of you," she explained.
"I have so admired your exquisite art," he replied, "that we are already
friends."
"Que vous etes bien gentil," she murmured, and her tone would have
caressed the wrinkles out of the heart of old age.
"Yes, I'm back at the old game," said Curran, when they got away from
pleasantry. "I'm chasing after Tom Jones. It's more desperate than ever.
His old aunt died some days back, and left Tom's wife a dollar, and
Tom's son another dollar."
"I can fancy her," said Colette with a laugh, "repeating to herself that
magic phrase, two dollars, for hours and hours. Hereafter she will get
weak at sight of the figure two, and things that go in twos, like
married people, she will hate."
"How easy to see that you are French, Colette," said Arthur, as a
compliment. She threw him a kiss from her pretty fingers, and gave a
sidelong look at Curran.
"There's a devil in her," Arthur thought.
"The will was very correct and very sound," resumed the detective. "No
hope in a contest if they thought of such a thing among the West ... the
Jones'. The heirs took pity on her, and gave her a lump for consolation.
She took it and cursed them for their kindness. Her rage was something
to see. She is going to use that lump, somewhere about twenty-five
thousand, I think, to find her accursed Tom. How do I know? That's part
of the prize for me if I catch up with Tom Jones within three years. And
I draw a salary and expenses all the time. You should have seen Mrs. Tom
the day I went to see her. Colette," with a smile for his wife, "your
worst trouble with a manager was a summer breeze to it. You're a
white-winged angel in your tempers compared with Mrs. Tom Jones. Her
language concerning the aunt and the vanished nephew was wonderful. I
tried to remember it, and I couldn't."
"I can see her, I can feel with her," cried La Belle Colette, jumping to
her feet, and rushing through a pantomime of fiendish rage, which made
the men laugh to exhaustion. As she sat down she said with emphasis,
"She must find him, and through you. I shall help, and so will our
friend Dillon. It's an outrage for any man to leave a woman in such a
scrape ... for a mere trifle."
"She has her consolations," said the detective; "but the devil in her is
not good-natured like the devil in you, Colette. She wants to get hold
of Tom and cut him in little bits for what he has made her suffer."
"Did you get out any plans?" said Arthur.
"One. Look for him between here and Boston. That's my wife's idea. Tom
Jones was not clever, but she says ... Say it yourself, my dear."
"Rage and disappointment, or any other strong feeling," said the woman
sharply, with strong puffs at her cigarette, "turns a fool into a wise
man for a minute. It would be just like this fool to have a brilliant
interval while he dreamed of murdering his clever wife. Then he hit upon
a scheme to cheat the detectives. It's easy, if you know how stupid they
are, except Dick. Tom Jones is here, on his own soil. He was not going
to run away with a million and try to spend it in the desert of Sahara.
He's here, or in Boston, enjoying the sight of his wife stewing in
poverty. It would be just like the sneak to do her that turn."
She looked wickedly at Arthur. What a face! Thin, broad, yet finely
proportioned, with short, flaxen locks framing it, delicate eyebrows
marking the brow and emphasizing the beautiful eyes. A woman to be
feared, an evil spirit in some of her moods.
"You tried the same plan," Arthur began----
"But he had no partner to sharpen his wits," she interrupted. Arthur
bowed.
"That makes all the difference in the world," he said sincerely. "Let me
hope that you will give your husband some hints in a case which I am
going to give him."
He described the career of Sister Claire briefly, and expressed the wish
to learn as much as possible of her earlier history. The Currans
laughed.
"I had that job before," said the detective. "If the Jones case were
only half a hundred times harder I might be happy. Her past is unknown
except that she has been put out of many convents. I never looked up her
birthplace or her relatives. Her name is Kate Kerrigan along with ten
other names. She drinks a little, and just now holds a fine stake in New
York ... There's the whole of it."
"Not much to build upon, if one wished to worry Claire, or other
people."
"Depend upon it," Colette broke in, "that Kate Kerrigan has a pretty
history behind her. I'll bet she was an actress once. I've seen her
stage poses ... then her name, catchy ... and the way she rolls her eyes
and looks at that congregation of elders, and deacons and female saints,
when she sets them shivering over the nastiness that's coming."
Curran glanced at her with a look of inquiry. She sat on the window-sill
like a bird, watching the street without, half listening to the men
within. Arthur made a close study of the weird creature, sure that a
strain of madness ran in her blood. Her looks and acts had the grace of
a wild nature, which purrs, and kills, and purrs again. Quiet and dreamy
this hour, in her dances she seemed half mad with vitality.
"Tell him what you learned about her," said Curran, and then to Arthur,
"She can do a little work herself, and likes it."
"To hunt a poor soul down, never!" she cried. "But when a mean thing is
hiding what every one has a right to know, I like to tear the truth out
of her ... like your case of Tom Jones. Sister Claire is downright mean.
Maybe she can't help it. But I know the nuns, and they're God's own
children. She knows it too, but, just for the sake of money, she's lying
night and day against them, and against her own conscience. There's a
devil in her. I could do a thing like that for deviltry, and I could
pull a load of money out of her backers, not for the money, but for
deviltry too, to skin a miser like McMeeter, and a dandy like Bradford.
And she's just skinning them, to the last cent."
She took a fit of laughing, then, over the embarrassment of Sister
Claire's chief supporters.
"Here's what I know about her," she went on. "The museum fakirs are
worshiping her as a wonderful success. They seem to feel by instinct
that she's one of themselves, but a genius. They have a lot of fairy
stories about her, but here's the truth: Bishop Bradford and Erastus
McMeeter are her backers. The Bishop plays high society for her, and the
bawler looks after the mob. She gets fifty per cent. of everything, and
they take all the risks. Her book, I know you read it, chock-full of
lies, thrilling lies, for the brothers and the sisters who can't read
French novels in public--well, she owns the whole thing and gets all
the receipts except a beggar's ten per cent., thrown to the publishers
... and they're the crack publishers of the town, the Hoppertons ... but
all the same they dassent let their names go on the title-page ... they
had that much shame ... so old Johnson, whom nobody knows, is printer
and publisher. The book is selling like peanuts. There's more than one
way of selling your soul to the devil."
After this surprising remark, uttered without a smile, she looked out of
the window sadly, while Curran chuckled with delight.
"It takes the woman to measure the woman," he said. Arthur was delighted
at this information.
"I wish you would learn some more about her, Mrs. Curran."
She mimicked the formal name in dumb show.
"Well, La Belle Colette, then," he said laughing. She came over to him
and sat on the arm of his chair, her beautiful eyes fixed on his with an
expression well understood by both the men.
"You are going to hunt that dreadful creature down," said she. "I won't
help you. What do you know about her motives? She may have good reason
for playing the part ... she may have suffered?"
"One must protect his own," replied Arthur grimly.
"What are we all but wolves that eat one another?--lambs by day, wolves
in the night. We all play our part----"
"All the world's a stage, of course----"
"Even you are playing a part," with sudden violence. "I have studied
you, young man, since you came in. Lemme read your palm, and tell you."
She held his hand long, then tossed it aside with petulance, parted his
hair and peered into his face, passed her hands lightly over his head
for the prominences, dashed unexpected tears from her eyes, and then
said with decision:
"There are two of you in there," tapping his chest. "I can't tell why,
but I can read, or feel one man, and outside I see another."
"Your instinct is correct," said Arthur seriously. "I have long been
aware of the same fact, peculiar and painful. But for a long time the
outside man has had the advantage. Now with regard to this Sister
Claire, not to change the subject too suddenly----"
Colette deserted his chair, and went to her husband. She had lost
interest in the matter and would not open her lips again. The men
discussed the search for Endicott, and the inquiry into the history of
Sister Claire, while the dancer grew drowsy after the fashion of a
child, her eyes became misty, her red lips pouted, her voice drawled
faint and complaining music in whispers, and Curran looked often and
long at her while he talked. Arthur went away debating with himself. His
mind had developed the habit of reminiscence. Colette reminded him of a
face, which he had seen ... no, not a face but a voice ... or was it a
manner?... or was it her look, which seemed intimate, as of earlier
acquaintance?... what was it? It eluded him however. He felt happy and
satisfied, now that he had set Curran on the track of the unclean
beast.