UNDER THE EYES OF HATE.
Edith's inference from the interviews with the Monsignor and Anne did
justice to her acuteness. The priest alone knew the true personality of
Arthur. From Anne all but the fact of his disappearance had been kept,
probably to guard against just such attempts as Curran's. The detective
reminded her that her theory stood only because of her method of
selection from his investigations. Nine facts opposed and one favored
her contention: therefore nine were shelved, leaving one to support the
edifice of her instincts or her suspicions. She stuck out her tongue at
him.
"It shows how you are failing when nine out of ten facts, gathered in a
whole day's work, are worthless. Isn't that one fact, that the priest
knew Horace Endicott, worth all your foolish reasonings? Who discovered
it? Now, will you coax Sonia Endicott down here to have a look at this
Arthur Dillon? Before we start for California?"
He admitted humbly that the lady would not accept his invitation,
without stern evidence of a valuable clue. The detectives had given her
many a useless journey.
"She'll be at the Everett House to-morrow early in the morning," said
Edith proudly. "Want to know why, stupid? I sent her a message that her
game had been treed at last ... by me."
He waved his hands in despair.
"Then you'll do the talking, Madam Mischief."
"And you'll never say a word, even when asked. What! would I let you
mesmerize her at the start by telling her how little you think of my
idea and my plans? She would think as little of them as you do, when you
got through. No! I shall tell her, I shall plan for her, I shall lead
her to the point of feeling where that long experience with Horace
Endicott will become of some use in piercing the disguise of Arthur
Dillon. You would convince her she was not to see Horace Endicott, and
of course she would see only Arthur Dillon. I'll convince her she is to
see her runaway husband, and then if she doesn't I'll confess defeat."
"There's a good deal in your method," he admitted in a hopeless way.
"We are in for it now," she went on, scorning the compliment. "By this
time Arthur Dillon knows, if he did not before, that I am up to
mischief. He may fall on us any minute. He will not suffer this
interference: not because he cares two cents one way or the other, but
because he will not have us frightening his relatives and friends,
telling every one that he is two. Keep out of his way so that he shall
have to come here, and to send word first that he is coming. I'll
arrange a scene for him with his Sonia. It may be sublime, and again it
may be a fizzle. One way or the other, if Sonia says so, we'll fly to
the west out of his way. The dear, dear boy!"
"He'll _dear_ you after that scene!"
"Now, do you make what attempts you may to find out where he keeps his
money, he must have piles of it, and search his papers, his safe...."
"He has nothing of the kind ... everything about him is as open as the
day ... it's an impertinence to bother him so ... well, he can manage
you, I think ... no need for me to interfere or get irritated."
Then she had a tantrum, which galled the soul of Curran, except that it
ended as usual in her soft whimpering, her childish murmuring, her sweet
complaint against the world, and her falling asleep in his arms. Thus
was he regularly conquered and led captive.
They went next day at noon to visit Sonia Endicott at the Everett House,
where she had established herself with her little boy and his nurse. Her
reception of the Currans, while supercilious in expression, was really
sincere. They represented her hope in that long search of five years,
which only a vigorous hate had kept going. Marked with the
characteristics of the cat, velvety to eye and touch, insolent and
elusive in her glance, undisciplined, she could act a part for a time.
To Horace Endicott she had played the role of a child of light, an elf,
a goddess, for which nature had dressed her with golden hair, melting
eyes of celestial blue, and exquisite form.
The years had brought out the animal in her. She found it more and more
difficult to repress the spite, rage, hatred, against Horace and fate,
which consumed her within, and violated the external beauty with unholy
touches, wrinkles, grimaces, tricks of sneering, distortions of rage.
Her dreams of hatred had only one scene: a tiger in her own form rending
the body of the man who had discovered and punished her with a power
like omnipotence; rending him but not killing him, leaving his heart to
beat and his face unmarked, that he might feel his agony and show it.
"If _you_ had sent me the telegram," she remarked to Curran, "I would
not have come. But this dear Colette, she is to be my good angel and
lead me to success, aren't you, little devil? Ever since she took up the
matter I have had my beautiful dreams once more, oh, such thrilling
dreams! Like the novels of Eugene Sue, just splendid. Well, why don't
you speak?"
He pointed to Edith with a gesture of submission. She was hugging the
little boy before the nurse took him away, teasing him into baby talk,
kissing him decorously but lavishly, as if she could not get enough of
him.
"He's not to speak until asked," she cried.
"And then only say what she thinks," he added.
"La! are you fighting over it already? That's not a good sign."
With a final embrace which brought a howl from young Horace, Edith gave
the boy to the nurse and began her story of finding Horace Endicott in
the son of Anne Dillon. She acted the story, admirably keeping back the
points which would have grated on Sonia's instincts, or rather
expectations. The lady, impressed, evidently felt a lack of something
when Curran refused his interest and his concurrence to the description.
"What do you wish me to do?" said she.
"To see this Dillon and to study him, as one would a problem. The man's
been playing this part, living it indeed, nearly five years. Can any one
expect that the first glance will pierce his disguise? He must be
watched and studied for days, and if that fetches nothing, then you must
meet him suddenly, and say to him tenderly, 'at last, Horace!' If that
fetches nothing, then we must go to California, and work until we get
the evidence which will force him to acknowledge himself and give up his
money. But by that time, if we can make sure it is he, and if we can get
his money, then I would recommend one thing! Kill him!"
Sonia's eyes sparkled at the thought of that sweet murder.
"And wait another five years for all this," was her cynical remark.
"If the question is not settled this Fall, then let it go forever," said
Edith with energy.
"The scheme is well enough," Sonia said lazily. "Is this Arthur Dillon
handsome, a dashing blade?"
"Better," murmured Edith with a smack of her lips, "a virtuous sport,
who despises the sex in a way, and can master woman by a look. He is my
master. And I hate him! It will be worth your time to see him and meet
him."
"And now you," to Curran.
Sonia did not know, nor care why Edith hated Dillon.
"I protest, Sonia. He will put a spell on you, and spoil our chances.
Let him talk later when we have succeeded or failed."
"Nonsense, you fool. I must hear both sides, but I declare now that I
submit myself to you wholly. What do you say, Curran?"
"Just this, madam: if this man Arthur Dillon is really your husband,
then he's too clever to be caught by any power in this world. Any way
you choose to take it, you will end as this search has always ended."
"Why do you think him so clever? My Horace was anything but clever ...
at least we thought so ... until now."
"Until he has foiled every attempt to find him," said Curran. "Colette
has her own ideas, but she has kept back all the details that make or
unmake a case. She is so sure of her instincts! No doubt they are good."
"But not everything, hey?" said the lady tenderly. "Ah, a woman's
instincts lead her too far sometimes...." they all laughed. "Well, give
me the details Colette left out. No winking at each other. I won't raise
a hand in this matter until I have heard both sides."
"This Arthur Dillon is Irish, and lives among the Irish in the
old-fashioned Irish way, half in the slums, and half in the swell
places...."
"_Mon Dieu_, what is this I hear! The Irish! My Horace live among the
Irish! That's not the man. He could live anywhere, among the Chinese,
the Indians, the niggers, but with that low class of people, never!" and
she threw up her hands in despair. "Did I come from Boston to pursue a
low Irishman!"
"You see," cried Edith. "Already he has cast his spell on you. He
doesn't believe I have found your man, and he won't let you believe it.
Can't you see that this Horace went to the very place where you were
sure he would not go?"
"You cannot tell him now from an Irishman," continued the detective. "He
has an Irish mother, he is a member of Tammany Hall, he is a politician
who depends on Irish voters, he joined the Irish revolutionists and went
over the sea to fight England, and he's in love with an Irish girl."
"Shocking! Horace never had any taste or any sense, but I know he
detested the Irish around Boston. I can't believe it of him. But, as
Colette says truly, he would hide himself in the very place where we
least think of looking for him."
"Theories have come to nothing," screamed Edith, until the lady placed
her hands on her ears. "Skill and training and coolness and all that rot
have come to nothing. Because I hate Arthur Dillon I have discovered
Horace Endicott. Now I want to see your eyes looking at this man, eyes
with hate in them, and with murder in them. They will discover more than
all the stupid detectives in the country. See what hate did for Horace
Endicott. He hated you, and instead of murdering you he learned to
torture you. He hated you, and it made him clever. Oh, hate is a great
teacher! This fool of mine loves Arthur Dillon, because he is a patriot
and hates England. Hate breeds cleverness, it breeds love, it opens the
mind, it will dig out Horace Endicott and his fortune, and enrich us
all."
"La, but you are strenuous," said the lady placidly, but impressed. She
was a shallow creature in the main, and Curran compared his little wife,
eloquent, glowing with feeling, dainty as a flame, to the slower-witted
beauty, with plain admiration in his gaze. She deserves to succeed, he
thought. Sonia came to a conclusion, languidly.
"We must try the eyes of hate," was her decision.
The pursuit of Arthur proved very interesting. The detective knew his
habits of labor and amusement, his public haunts and loitering-places.
Sonia saw him first at the opera, modestly occupying a front seat in the
balcony.
"Horace would never do that when he could get a box," and she leveled
her glass at him.
Edith mentally dubbed her a fool. However, her study of the face and
figure and behavior of the man showed care and intelligence. Edith's
preparation had helped her. She saw a lean, nervous young man, whose
flowing black hair and full beard were streaked with gray. His dark
face, hollow in the cheeks and not too well-colored with the glow of
health, seemed to get light and vivacity from his melancholy eyes.
Seriousness was the characteristic expression. Once he laughed, in the
whole evening. Once he looked straight into her face, with so fixed, so
intense an expression, so near a gaze, so intimate and penetrating, that
she gave a low cry.
"You have recognized him?" Edith whispered mad with joy.
"No, indeed," she answered sadly, "That is not Horace Endicott. Not a
feature that I recall, certainly no resemblance. I was startled because
I saw just now in his look, ... he looked towards me into the glass ...
an expression that seemed familiar ... as if I had seen it before, and
it had hurt me then as it hurts me now."
"There's a beginning," said Edith with triumph. "Next time for a nearer
look."
"Oh, he could never have changed so," Sonia cried with bitterness of
heart.
Curran secured tickets for a ball to be held by a political association
in the Cherry Hill district, and placed the ladies in a quiet corner of
the gallery of the hall. Arthur Dillon, as a leading spirit in the
society, delighted to mingle with the homely, sincere, warm-hearted, and
simple people for whom this occasion was a high festival; and nowhere
did his sorrow rest so lightly on his soul, nowhere did he feel so
keenly the delight of life, or give freer expression to it. Edith kept
Sonia at the highest pitch of excitement and interest.
"Remember," she said now, "that he probably knows you are in town, that
you are here watching him; but not once will he look this way, nor do a
thing other than if you were miles away. My God, to be an actor like
that!"
The actor played his part to perfection and to the utter disappointment
of the women. The serious face shone now with smiles and color, with the
flash of wit and the play of humor. Horace Endicott had been a merry
fellow, but a Quaker compared with the butterfly swiftness and gaiety of
this young man, who led the grand march, flirted with the damsels and
chatted with the dames, danced as often as possible, joked with the men,
found partners for the unlucky, and touched the heart of every
rollicking moment. The old ladies danced jigs with him, proud to their
marrow of the honor, and he allowed himself ... Sonia gasped at the
sight ... to execute a wild Irish _pas seul_ amid the thunderous
applause of the hearty and adoring company.
"That man Horace Endicott!" she exclaimed with contempt. "Bah! But it's
interesting, of course."
"What a compliment! what acting! oh, incomparable man!" said Edith,
enraged at his success before such an audience. Her husband smiled
behind his hand.
"You have a fine imagination, Colette, but I would not give a penny for
your instinct," said Sonia.
"My instinct will win just the same, but I fear we shall have to go to
California. This man is too clever for commonplace people."
"Arthur Dillon is a fine orator," said Curran mischievously, "and
to-morrow night you shall hear him at his best on the sorrows of
Ireland."
Sonia laughed heartily and mockingly. Were not these same sorrows, from
their constancy and from repetition, become the joke of the world?
Curran could have struck her evil face for the laugh.
"Was your husband a speaker?" he asked.
"Horace would not demean himself to talk in public, and he couldn't make
a speech to save his life. But to talk on the sorrows of Ireland ... oh,
it's too absurd."
"And why not Ireland's sorrows as well as those of America, or any other
country?" he replied savagely.
"Oh, I quite forgot that you were Irish ... a thousand pardons," she
said with sneering civility. "Of course, I shall be glad to hear his
description of the sorrows. An orator! It's very interesting."
The occasion for the display of Arthur's powers was one of the numerous
meetings for which the talking Irish are famous all over the world, and
in which their clever speakers have received fine training. Even Sonia,
impressed by the enthusiasm of the gathering, and its esteem for Dillon,
could not withhold her admiration. Alas, it was not her Horace who
poured out a volume of musical tone, vigorous English, elegant rhetoric,
with the expression, the abandonment, the picturesqueness of a great
actor. She shuddered at his descriptions, her heart melted and her eyes
moistened at his pathos, she became filled with wonder. It was not
Horace! Her husband might have developed powers of eloquence, but would
have to be remade to talk in that fashion of any land. This Dillon had
terrible passion, and her Horace was only a a handsome fool. She could
have loved Dillon.
"So you will have to arrange the little scene where I shall stand before
him without warning, and murmur tenderly, 'at last, Horace!' And it must
be done without delay," was her command to Edith.
"It can be done perhaps to-morrow night," Edith said in a secret rage,
wondering what Arthur Dillon could have seen in Sonia. "But bear in mind
why I am doing this scene, with the prospects of a furious time
afterwards with Dillon. I want you to see him asleep, just for ten
minutes, in the light of a strong lamp. In sleep there is no disguise.
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 circumstances 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 glasses and passed 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
glasses 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 identity ... 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
analyze. 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 coarse 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.