THREE SCENES.
Anne might have been the bitterest critic of Honora for her descent from
the higher to the lesser life, but she loved the girl too well even to
look displeasure. Having come to believe that Arthur would be hers alone
forever, she regarded Honora's decision as a mistake. The whole world
rejoiced at the union of these ideal creatures, even Sister Magdalen,
from whom Arthur had snatched a prize. Honora was her own severest
critic. How she had let herself go in pity for a sufferer to whom her
people, her faith, her father, her friends, and herself owed much, she
knew not. His explanation was simple: God gave you to me.
The process of surrender really began at Louis' ordination. Arthur
watched his boy, the center of the august ceremony, with wet eyes. This
innocent heart, with its solemn aspirations, its spiritual beauty, had
always been for him a wonder and a delight; and it seemed fitting that a
life so mysteriously beautiful should end its novitiate and begin its
career with a ceremony so touching. The September sun streamed through
the venerable windows of the cathedral, the music soared among the
arches, the altar glowed with lights and flowers; the venerable
archbishop and his priests and attendants filled the sanctuary, an
adoring crowd breathed with reverence in the nave; but the center of the
scene, its heart of beauty, was the pale, sanctified son of Mary
Everard.
For him were all these glories! Happy, happy, youth! Blessed mother!
There were no two like them in the whole world, he said in his emotion.
Her glorified face often shone on him in the pauses of the ceremony. Her
look repeated the words she had uttered the night before: "Under God my
happiness is owing to you, Arthur Dillon: like the happiness of so many
others; and that I am not to-day dead of sorrow and grief is also owing
to you; now may God grant you the dearest wish of your heart, as He has
granted mine this day through you; for there is nothing too good for a
man with a heart and a hand like yours."
How his heart had like to burst under that blessing! He thought of
Honora, not yet his own.
The entire Irishry was present, with their friends of every race. In
deference to his faithful adherent, the great Livingstone sat in the
very front pew, seriously attentive to the rite, and studious of its
significance. Around him were grouped the well-beloved of Arthur Dillon,
the souls knit to his with the strength of heaven; the Senator,
high-colored, richly-dressed, resplendent, sincere; the Boss, dark and
taciturn, keen, full of emotion, sighing from the depths of his rich
nature over the meaning of life, as it leaped into the light of this
scene; Birmingham, impressive and dignified, rejoicing at the splendor
so powerful with the world that reckons everything by the outward show;
and all the friends of the new life, to whom this ceremony was dear as
the breath of their bodies. For this people the sanctuary signified the
highest honor, the noblest service, the loftiest glory. Beside it the
honors of the secular life, no matter how esteemed, looked like dead
flowers.
At times his emotion seemed to slip from the rein, threatening to unman
him. This child, whose innocent hands were anointed with the Holy Oil,
who was bound and led away, who read the mass with the bishop and
received the Sacred Elements with him, upon whom the prelate breathed
solemn powers, who lay prostrate on the floor, whose head was blessed by
the hands of the assembled priests: this child God had given him to
replace the innocent so cruelly destroyed long ago!
Honora's eyes hardly left Arthur's transfigured face, which held her,
charmed her, frightened her by its ever-changing expression. Light and
shadow flew across it as over the depths of the sea. The mask off, the
habit of repression laid aside, his severe features responded to the
inner emotions. She saw his great eyes fill with tears, his breast heave
at times. As yet she had not heard his story. The power of that story
came less from the tale than the recollection of scenes like this, which
she unthinking had witnessed in the years of their companionship. What
made this strange man so unlike all other men?
At the close of the ordination the blessing from the new priest began.
Flushed, dewy-eyed, calm, and white, Louis stood at the railing to lay
his anointed hands on each in turn; first the mother, and the father.
Then came a little pause, while Mona made way for him dearest to all
hearts that day, Arthur. He held back until he saw that his delay
retarded the ceremony, when he accepted the honor. He felt the blessed
hands on his head, and a thrill leaped through him as the palms, odorous
of the balmy chrism, touched his lips.
Mona held up her baby with the secret prayer that he too would be found
worthy of the sanctuary; then followed her husband and her sisters.
Honora did not see as she knelt how Arthur's heart leaped into his eyes,
and shot a burning glance at Louis to remind him of a request uttered
long ago: when you bless Honora, bless her for me! Thus all conspired
against her. Was it wonderful that she left the cathedral drawn to her
hero as never before?
The next day Arthur told her with pride and tenderness, as they drove to
the church where Father Louis was to sing his first Mass, that every
vestment of the young priest came from him. Sister Magdalen had made the
entire set, with her own hands embroidered them, and he had borne the
expense. Honora found her heart melting under these beautiful details of
an affection, without limit. The depth of this man's heart seemed
incredible, deeper than her father's, as if more savage sorrow had dug
depths in what was deep enough by nature. Long afterward she recognized
how deeply the ordination had affected her. It roused the feeling that
such a heart should not be lightly rejected.
* * * * *
Desolation seized her, as the vision of the convent vanished like some
lovely vale which one leaves forever. Very simply he banished the
desolation.
"I have been computing," he said, as they sat on the veranda after
breakfast, "what you might have been worth to the Church as a nun ...
hear me, hear me ... wait for the end of the story ... it is charming.
You are now about twenty-seven, I won't venture any nearer your age. I
don't know my mother's age."
"And no man will ever know it," said Anne. "Men have no discretion about
ages."
"Let me suppose," Arthur continued, "that fifty years of service would
be the limit of your active life. You would then be seventy-seven, and
there is no woman alive as old as that. The oldest is under sixty."
"Unless the newspapers want to say that she's a hundred," said Anne
slyly.
"For the sake of notoriety she is willing to have the truth told about
her age."
"As a school-teacher, a music-teacher, or a nurse, let me say that your
services might be valued at one thousand a year for the fifty years,
Honora. Do you think that a fair average?"
"Very fair," said she indifferently.
"Well, I am going to give that sum to the convent for having deprived
them of your pleasant company," said he. "Hear me, hear me, ... I'm not
done yet. I must be generous, and I know your conscience will be tender
a long time, if something is not done to toughen it. I want to be
married in the new cathedral, which another year will see dedicated. But
a good round sum would advance the date. We owe much to Monsignor. In
your name and mine I am going to give him enough to put the great church
in the way to be dedicated by November."
He knew the suffering which burned her heart that morning, himself past
master in the art of sorrow. That she had come down from the heights to
the common level would be her grief forever; thus to console her would
be his everlasting joy.
"What do you think of it? Isn't it a fair release?"
"Only I am not worth it," she said. "But so much the better, if every
one gains more than I lose by my ... infatuation."
"Are you as much in love as that?" said Anne with malice.
They were married with becoming splendor in January. A quiet ceremony
suggested by Honora had been promptly overruled by Anne Dillon, who saw
in this wedding a social opportunity beyond any of her previous
triumphs. Mrs. Dillon was not your mere aristocrat, who keeps exclusive
her ceremonious march through life. At that early date she had perceived
the usefulness to the aristocracy of the press, of general popularity,
and of mixed assemblies; things freely and openly sought for by society
to-day. Therefore the great cathedral of the western continent never
witnessed a more splendid ceremony than the wedding of Honora and
Arthur; and no event in the career of Anne Dillon bore stronger
testimony to her genius.
The Chief Justice of the nation headed the _elite_, among whom shone
like a constellation the Countess of Skibbereen; the Senator brought in
the whole political circle of the city and the state; Grahame marshaled
the journalists and the conspirators against the peace of England; the
profession of music came forward to honor the bride; the common people
of Cherry Hill went to cheer their hero; Monsignor drew to the sanctuary
the clerics of rank to honor the benefactor of the cathedral; and high
above all, enthroned in beauty, the Cardinal of that year presided as
the dispenser of the Sacrament.
As at the ordination of Louis the admirable Livingstone sat among the
attendant princes. For the third time within a few months had he been
witness to the splendors of Rome now budding on the American landscape.
He did not know what share this Arthur Dillon had in the life of Louis
and in the building of the beautiful temple. But he knew the strength of
his leadership among his people; and he felt curious to see with his own
eyes, to feel with his own heart, the charm, the enchantment, which had
worked a spell so fatal on the richly endowed Endicott nature.
For enchantment there must have been. The treachery and unworthiness of
Sonia, detestable beyond thought, could not alone work so strange and
weird a transformation. Half cynic always, and still more cynical since
his late misfortunes, he could not withhold his approbation from the
cleverness which grouped about this young man and his bride the great
ones of the hour. The scene wholly depressed him. Not the grandeur, nor
the presence of the powers of society, but the sight of this Endicott,
of the mould of heroes, of the blood of the English Puritan, acting as
sponsor of a new order of things in his beloved country, the order
which he had hoped, still hoped, to destroy. His heart bled as he
watched him.
The lovely mother, the high-hearted father, lay in their grave. Here
stood their beloved, a prince among men, bowing before the idols of
Rome, receiving for himself and his bride the blessing of the archpriest
of Romanism, a cardinal in his ferocious scarlet. All his courage and
skill would be forever at the service of the new order. Who was to
blame? Was it not the rotten reed which he had leaned upon, the woman
Sonia, rather than these? True it is, true it always will be, that a
man's enemies are they of his own household.
* * * * *
A grand content filled the heart of Arthur. The bitterness of his fight
had passed. So long had he struggled that fighting had become a part of
his dreams, as necessary as daily bread. He had not laid aside his armor
even for his marriage. Yet there had been an armistice, quite
unperceived, from the day of the cathedral's dedication. He had lonely
possession of the battle-field. His enemies had fled. All was well with
his people. They had reached and passed the frontier, as it were, on
that day when the great temple opened its sanctuary to God and its
portals to the nation.
The building he regarded as a witness to the daring of Monsignor; for
Honora's sake he had given to it a third of his fortune; the day of the
dedication crowned Monsignor's triumph. When he had seen the spectacle,
he learned how little men have to do with the great things of history.
God alone makes history; man is the tide which rushes in and out at His
command, at the great hours set by Him, and knows only the fact, not the
reason. In the building that day gathered a multitude representing every
form of human activity and success. They stood for the triumph of a
whole race, which, starved out of its native seat, had clung desperately
to the land of Columbia in spite of persecution.
Soldiers sat in the assembly, witnesses for the dead of the southern
battle-fields, for all who had given life and love, who had sacrificed
their dearest, to the new land in its hour of calamity. Men rich in the
honors of commerce, of the professions, of the schools, artists,
journalists, leaders, bore witness to the native power of a people, who
had been written down in the books of the hour as idle, inferior,
incapable by their very nature. In the sanctuary sat priests and
prelate, a brilliant gathering, surrounding the delicate-featured
Cardinal, in gleaming red, high on his beautiful throne.
From the organ rolled the wonderful harmonies born of faith and genius;
from the pulpit came in sonorous English the interpretation of the scene
as a gifted mind perceived it; about the altar the ancient ritual
enacted the holy drama, whose sublime enchantment holds every age.
Around rose the towering arches, the steady columns, the broad walls,
lighted from the storied windows, of the first really great temple of
the western continent!
Whose hands raised it? Arthur discovered in the answer the charm which
had worked upon dying Ledwith, turned his failure into triumph, and his
sadness into joy. What a witness, an eternal witness, to the energy and
faith of a poor, simple, despised people, would be this temple! Looking
upon its majestic beauty, who could doubt their powers, though the books
printed English slanders in letters of gold? Out of these great doors
would march ideas to strengthen and refresh the poor; ideas once
rejected, once thought destructible by the air of the American
wilderness. A conspiracy of centuries had been unable to destroy them.
Into these great portals for long years would a whole people march for
their own sanctification and glory!
Thereafter the temple became for him a symbol, as for the faithful
priest; the symbol of his own life as that of his people.
He saw it in the early dawn, whiter than the mist which broke against
it, a great angel whose beautiful feet the longing earth had imprisoned!
red with the flush of morning, rosy with the tints of sunrise, as if
heaven were smiling upon it from open gates! clear, majestic, commanding
in the broad day, like a leader of the people, drawing all eyes to
itself, provoking the question, the denial, the prayer from every
passer, as tributes to its power! in the sunset, as dying Ledwith had
seen it, flushed with the fever of life, but paling like the day,
tender, beseeching, appealing to the flying crowd for a last turning to
God before the day be done forever! in the twilight, calm, restful,
submissive to the darkness, which had no power over it, because of the
Presence within! terrible when night falls and sin goes forth in purple
and fine linen, a giant which had heaved the earth and raised itself
from the dead stone to rebuke and threaten the erring children of God!
He described all this for Honora, and, strangely enough, for
Livingstone, who never recovered from the spell cast over him by this
strange man. The old gentleman loved his race with the fervor of an
ancient clansman. For this lost sheep of the house of Endicott he
developed in time an interest which Arthur foresaw would lead agreeably
one day to a review of the art of disappearing. He was willing to
satisfy his curiosity. Meanwhile, airing his ideas on the providential
mission of the country, and of its missionary races, and combatting his
exclusiveness, they became excellent friends. Livingstone fell deeply in
love with Honora, as it was the fashion in regard to that charming
woman. For Arthur the circle of life had its beginning in her, and with
her would have its end.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Art of Disappearing, by John Talbot Smith