"My curiosity was disturbed," she admitted frankly, and her heart beat, for the terrible hour had come. "I felt that your life had some sadness and mystery in it, but it was a surprise to hear that you were not Anne Dillon's long-lost son."

"That was pure guess-work on Colette's part, you know. She's a born devil, if there are such things among us humans. I'll tell you about her some time. Then the fact of my wife's existence did not disturb you at all?"

"On the contrary, it soothed me, I think," she said with a blush.

"I know why. Well, it will take my story to explain hers. She told the truth in part, poor Colette. Once I had a wife, before I became Anne Dillon's son. Will it be too painful for you to hear the story? It is mournful. To no one have I ever told it complete; in fact I could not, only to you. How I have burned to tell it from beginning to end to the true heart. I could not shock Louis, the dear innocent, and it was necessary to keep most of it from my mother, for legal reasons. Monsignor has heard the greater part, but not all. And I have been like the Ancient Mariner.

Since then at an uncertain hour That agony returns; And till my ghastly tale is told, The heart within me burns.

* * * * *

That moment that his face I see I know the man that must hear me; To him my tale I teach."

"I am the man," said she, "with a woman's curiosity. How can I help but listen?"

He holds him with his glittering eye— The wedding-guest stood still, And listens like a three years' child: The mariner hath his will.

The wedding-guest sat on a stone, He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, That bright-eyed mariner.

"Do you remember how we read and re-read it on the Arrow years ago? Somehow it has rung in my ears ever since, Honora. My life had a horror like it. Had it not passed I could not speak of it even to you. Long ago I was an innocent fool whom men knew in the neighborhood of Cambridge as Horace Endicott. I was an orphan, without guides, or real friends. I felt no need of them, for was I not rich, and happily married? Good nature and luck had carried me along lazily like that pine-stick floating down there. What a banging it would get on this rocky shore if a good south wind sprang up. For a long time I escaped the winds. When they came.... I'll tell you who I was and what she was. Do you remember on the Arrow Captain Curran's story of Tom Jones?"

He looked up at her interested face, and saw the violet eyes widen with sudden horror.

"I remember," she cried with astonishment and pain. "You, Arthur, you the victim of that shameful story?"

"Do you remember what you said then, Honora, when Curran declared he would one day find Tom Jones?"

She knew by the softness of his speech that her saying had penetrated the lad's heart, and had been treasured till this day, would be treasured forever.

"And you were sitting there, in the cabin, not ten feet off, listening to him and me?" she said with a gasp of pleasure.

"'You will never find him, Captain Curran ... that fearful woman shattered his very soul ... I know the sort of man he was ... he will never go back ... if he can bear to live, it will be because in his obscurity God gave him new faith and hope in human nature, and in the woman's part of it.' Those are your words, Honora."

She blushed with pleasure and murmured: "I hope they came true!"

"They were true at that moment," he said reflectively. "Oh, indeed God guided me, placed me in the hands of Monsignor, of my mother, of such people as Judy and the Senator and Louis, and of you all."

"Oh, my God, what suffering!" she exclaimed suddenly as her tears began to fall. "Louis told me, I saw it in your face as every one did, but now I know. And we never gave you the pity you needed!"

"Then you must give it to me now," said he with boldness. "But don't waste any pity on Endicott. He is dead, and I look at him across these five years as at a stranger. Suffer? The poor devil went mad with suffering. He raved for days in the wilderness, after he discovered his shame, dreaming dreams of murder for the guilty, of suicide for himself——"

She clasped her hands in anguish and turned toward him as if to protect him.

"It was a good woman who saved him, and she was an old mother who had tasted death. Some day I shall show you the pool where this old woman found him, after he had overcome the temptation to die. She took him to her home and her heart, nourished him, gave him courage, sent him on a new mission of life. What a life! He had a scheme of vengeance, and to execute it he had to return to the old scenes, where he was more alone——

Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony.

* * * * *

O wedding-guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide, wide sea; So lonely 'twas that God Himself Scarce seemed there to be."

The wonder to Honora, as he described himself, was the indifference of his tone. It had no more than the sympathy one might show toward a stranger whose suffering had been succeeded by great joy.

"Oh, God grant," he broke in with vehemence, "that no soul suffers as did this Endicott, poor wretch, during the time of his vengeance. Honora, I would not inflict on that terrible woman the suffering of that man for a year after his discovery of her sin. I doubted long the mercy of God. Rather I knew nothing about His mercy. I had no religion, no understanding of it, except in a vague, unpractical way. You know now that I am of the Puritan race ... Livingstone is of my family ... the race which dislikes the Irish and the Catholic as the English dislike them ... the race that persecuted yours! But you cannot say that I have not atoned for them as nearly as one man can?"

Trembling with emotion, she simply raised her hands in a gesture that said a thousand things too beautiful for words.

"My vengeance on the guilty was to disappear. I took with me all my property, and I left Messalina with her own small dower to enjoy her freedom in poverty. She sought for me, hired that detective and others to hound me to my hiding-place, and so far has failed to make sure of me. But to have you understand the story clearly, I shall stick to the order of events. I had known Monsignor a few days before calamity overtook me, and to him I turned for aid. It was he who found a mother for me, a place among 'the mere Irish,' a career which has turned out very well. You know how Anne Dillon lost her son. What no one knows is this: three months before she was asked to take part in the scheme of disappearance she sent a thousand photographs of her dead husband and her lost son to the police of California, and offered a reward for his discovery living or dead. Monsignor helped her to that. I acknowledged that advertisement from one of the most obscure and ephemeral of the mining-camps, and came home as her son."

"And the real Arthur Dillon? He was never found?"

"Oh, yes, he answered it too, indirectly. While I was loitering riotously about, awaiting the proper moment to make myself known, I heard that one Arthur Dillon was dying in another mining-camp some thirty miles to the north of us. He claimed to be the real thing, but he was dying of consumption, and was too feeble, and of too little consequence, to be taken notice of. I looked after him till he died, and made sure of his identity. He was Anne Dillon's son and he lies in the family lot in Calvary beside his father. No one knows this but his mother, Monsignor, and ourselves. Colette stumbled on the fact in her search of California, but the fates have been against that clever woman."

He laughed heartily at the complete overthrow of the escaped nun. Honora looked at him in astonishment. Arthur Dillon laughed, quite forgetful of the tragedy of Horace Endicott.

"Since my return you know what I have been, Honora. I can appeal to you as did Augustus to his friends on his dying-bed: have I not played well the part?"

"I am lost in wonder," she said.

"Then give me your applause as I depart," he answered sadly, and her eyes fell before his eloquent glance. "In those early days rage and hate, and the maddest desire for justice, sustained me. That woman had only one wish in life: to find, rob, and murder the man who had befooled her worse than she had tricked him. I made war on that man. I hated Horace Endicott as a weak fool. He had fallen lowest of all his honest, able, stern race. I beat him first into hiding, then into slavery, and at last into annihilation. I studied to annihilate him, and I did it by raising Arthur Dillon in his place. I am now Arthur Dillon. I think, feel, act, speak, dream like that Arthur Dillon which I first imagined. When you knew me first, Honora, I was playing a part. I am no longer acting. I am the man whom the world knows as Arthur Dillon."

"I can see that, and it seems more wonderful than any dream of romance. You a Puritan are more Irish than the Irish, more Catholic than the Catholics, more Dillon than the Dillons. Oh, how can this be?"

"Don't let it worry you," he said grimly. "Just accept the fact and me. I never lived until Horace Endicott disappeared. He was a child of fortune and a lover of ease and pleasure. His greatest pain had been a toothache. His view of life had been a boy's. When I stepped on this great stage I found myself for the first time in the very current of life. Suffering ate my heart out, and I plunged into that current to deaden the agony. I found myself by accident a leader of a poor people who had fled from injustice at home to suffer a mean persecution here. I was thrown in with the great men of the hour, and found a splendid opponent in a member of the Endicott family, Livingstone. I saw the very heart of great things, and the look enchanted me.

"You know how I worked for my friends, for your father, for the people, for every one and everything that needed help. For the first time I saw into the heart of a true friend. Monsignor helped me, carried me through, stood by me, directed me. For the first time I saw into the heart of innocence and sanctity, deep down, the heart of that blessed boy, Louis. For the first time I looked into the heart of a patriot, and learned of the love which can endure, not merely failure, but absolute and final disappointment, and still be faithful. I became an orator, an adventurer, an enthusiast. The Endicott who could not speak ten words before a crowd, the empty-headed stroller who classed patriots with pickles, became what you know me to be. I learned what love is, the love of one's own; of mother, and friend, and clan. Let me not boast, but I learned to know God and perhaps to love Him, at least since I am resigned to His will. But I am talking too much, since it is for the last time."

"You have not ended," said she beseechingly.

"It would take a lifetime," and he looked to see if she would give him that time, but her eyes watched the lake. "The latest events in my history took place this summer, and you had a little share in them. By guess-work Colette arrived at the belief that I am Horace Endicott, and she set her detective-husband to discover the link between Endicott and Dillon. I helped him, because I was curious to see how Arthur Dillon would stand the test of direct pursuit. They could discover nothing. As fast as a trace of me showed it vanished into thin air. There was nothing to do but invent a suit which would bring my mother, Monsignor, and myself into court, and have us declare under oath who is Arthur Dillon. I blocked that game perfectly. Messalina has her divorce from Horace Endicott, and is married to her lover. There will be no further search for the man who disappeared. And I am free, Monsignor declares. No ties bind me to that shameful past. I have had my vengeance without publicity or shame to anyone. I have punished as I had the right to punish. I have a noble place in life, which no one can take from me."

"And did you meet her since you left her ... that woman?" Honora said in a low voice half ashamed of the question.

"At Castle Moyna ..." he began and stopped dead at a sudden recollection.

"I met her," cried Honora with a stifled scream, "I met her."

"I met her again on the steamer returning," he said after a pause. "She did not recognize me, nor has she ever. We met for the last time in July. At that meeting Arthur Dillon pronounced sentence on her in the name of Horace Endicott. She will never wish to see me or her lost husband again."

"Oh, how you must have suffered, Arthur, how you must have suffered!"

She had grown pale alarmingly, but he did not perceive it. The critical moment had come for him, and he was praying silently against the expected blow. Her resolution had left her, and the road had vanished in the obscurity of night. She no longer saw her way clear. Her nerves had been shaken by this wonderful story, and the surges of feeling that rose before it like waves before the wind.

"And I must suffer still," he went on half to himself. "I was sure that God would give me that which I most desired, because I had given Him all that belonged to me. I kept back nothing except as Monsignor ordered. Through you, Honora, my faith in woman came back, as you said it would when you answered the detective in my behalf. When Monsignor told me I was free, that I could speak to you as an honorable man, I took it as a sign from heaven that the greatest of God's gifts was for me. I love you so, Honora, that your wish is my only happiness. Since you must go, if it is the will of God, do not mind my suffering, which is also His will...."

He arose from his place and his knees were shaking.

"There is consolation for us all somewhere. Mine is not to be here. The road to heaven is sometimes long. Not here, Honora?"

The hope in him was not yet dead. She rose too and put her arms about him, drawing his head to her bosom with sudden and overpowering affection.

"Here and hereafter," she whispered, as they sat down on the bench again.

* * * * *

"Judy," said Anne in the shade of the trees, "is Arthur hugging Honora, or...."

"Glory be," whispered Judy with tears streaming down her face, "it's Honora that's hugging Arthur ... no, it's both o' them at wanst, thanks be to God."

And the two old ladies stole away home through the happy woods.



CHAPTER XXXIX.

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.