THE PAULINE PRIVILEGE.
For a week at the end of July Arthur had been in the city closing up the Curran episode. On his return every one felt that change of marked and mysterious kind had touched him. His face shone with joy. The brooding shadow, acquired in his exile, had disappeared. Light played about his face, emanated from it, as from moonlit water, a phosphorescence of the daylight. His mother studied him with anxiety, without which she had not been since the surprising visit of Curran. The old shadow seemed to have fled forever.
One night on the lake, as Louis and he floated lazily towards the island, he told the story. After enjoying a moonlight swim at the foot of the bluff, they were preparing to row over to Valcour when Honora's glorious voice rang out from the farmhouse on the hill above, singing to Mona's accompaniment. The two sat in delight. A full moon stood in the sky, and radiance silvered the bosom of the lake, the mystic shores, the far-off horizon. This singer was the voice of the night, whose mystic beauty and voiceless feeling surged into the woman's song like waters escaping through a ravine. Dillon was utterly oppressed by happiness.
When the song had ceased, he stretched out his arms towards her.
"Dearest and best of women! By God's grace I shall soon call you mine!"
Louis took up the oars and pulled with energy in the direction of Valcour. "Is that the meaning of the look on your face since your return?" said he.
"That's the meaning. I saw you all watching me in surprise. My mother told me of it in her anxiety. If my face matched my feelings the moon there would look sickly besides its brightness. I have been in jail for five years, and to-day I am free."
"And how about that other woman ...?"
"Dead as far as I am concerned, the poor wretch! Yesterday I could curse her. I pity her to-day. She has gone her way and I go mine. Monsignor has declared me free. Isn't that enough?"
"That's enough," cried Louis, dropping the oars in his excitement. "But is it enough to give you Honora? I'm so glad you think of her that way.
Mona told her only yesterday that some lover was pursuing her, not mentioning your name. I assured her on the contrary that the road to the convent would have no obstacles. And I rebuked Mona for her interference."
"You were right, and she was right," said Arthur sadly. "I never dared to show her my love, because I was not free. But now I shall declare it.
What did she think of Mona's remarks?"
"She took them lightly. I am afraid that your freedom comes at a poor time, Arthur; that you may be too late. I have had many talks with her.
Her heart is set on the convent, she has fixed the date for September, and she does not seem to have love in her mind at all."
"Love begets love. How could she think of love when I never gave any sign, except what sharp-eyed Mona saw. You can conceal nothing from a woman. Wait until I have wooed her ... but apart from all that you must hear how I came to be free ... oh, my God, I can hardly believe it even now after three days ... I have been so happy that the old anguish which tore my soul years ago seemed easier to bear than this exquisite pain. I must get used to it. Listen now to the story of my escape, and row gently while you listen so as to miss not a word."
Arthur did not tell his chum more than half of the tale, chiefly because Louis was never to know the story of Horace Endicott. He had gone to New York at the invitation of Livingstone. This surprising incident began a series of surprises. The Currans had returned from California, and made their report to Sonia; and to Livingstone of all men the wife of Horace Endicott had gone for advice in so delicate an affair as forcing Arthur Dillon to prove and defend his identity. After two or three interviews with Livingstone Arthur carried his report to Monsignor.
"All this looks to me," said the priest, "as if the time for a return to your own proper personality had come. You know how I have feared the consequences of this scheme. The more I look into it, the more terrible it seems."
"And why should I give up now of all times? when I am a success?" cried the young fellow. "Do I fear Livingstone and the lawyers? Curran and his wife have done their best, and failed. Will the lawyers do any better?"
"It is not that," said the priest. "But you will always be annoyed in this way. The sharks and blackmailers will get after you later...."
"No, no, no, Monsignor. This effort of the Currans and Mrs. Endicott will be the last. I won't permit it. There will be no result from Livingstone's interference. He can go as far as interviews with me, but not one step beyond. And I can guarantee that no one will ever take up the case after him."
"You are not reasonable," urged the priest. "The very fact that these people suspect you to be Horace Endicott is enough; it proves that you have been discovered."
"I am only the twentieth whom they pursued for Horace," he laughed.
"Curran knows I am not Endicott. He has proved to the satisfaction of Livingstone that I am Arthur Dillon. But the two women are pertinacious, and urge the men on. Since these are well paid for their trouble, why should they not keep on?"
"They are not the only pertinacious ones," the priest replied.
"You may claim a little of the virtue yourself," Arthur slyly remarked.
"You have urged me to betray myself into the hands of enemies once a month for the last five years."
"In this case would it not be better to get an advantage by declaring yourself, before Livingstone can bring suit against you?"
"There will be no suit," he answered positively. "I hold the winning cards in this game. There is no advantage in my returning to a life which for me holds nothing but horror. Do you not see, Monsignor, that the same reasons which sent me out of it hold good to keep me out of it?"
"Very true," said Monsignor reluctantly, as he viewed the situation.
"And new reasons, not to be controverted, have sprung up around Arthur Dillon. For Horace Endicott there is nothing in that old life but public disgrace. Do you know that I hate that fat fool, that wretched cuckold who had not sense enough to discover what the uninterested knew about that woman? I would not wear his name, nor go back to his circle, if the man and woman were dead, and the secret buried forever."
"He was young and innocent," said the priest with a pitiful glance at Arthur.
"And selfish and sensual too. I despise him. He would never have been more than an empty-headed pleasure-seeker. With that wife he could have become anything you please. The best thing he did was his flight into everlasting obscurity, and that he owed to the simple, upright, strong-hearted woman who nourished him in his despair. Monsignor," and he laid his firm hand on the knee of the priest and looked at him with terrible eyes, "I would choose death rather than go back to what I was.
I shall never go back. I get hot with shame when I think of the part an Endicott played as Sonia Westfield's fool."
"And the reason not to be controverted?"
"In what a position my departure would leave my mother. Have you thought of that? After all her kindness, her real affection, as if I had been her own son. She thinks now that I am her son, and I feel that she is my mother. And what would induce me to expose her to the public gaze as the chief victim, or the chief plotter in a fraud? If it had to be done, I would wait in any event until my mother was dead. But beyond all these minor reasons is one that overshadows everything. I am Arthur Dillon.
That other man is not only dead, he is as unreal to me as the hero of any book I read in my boyhood. It was hard to give up the old personality; to give up what I am now would be impossible. I am what I seem. I feel, think, speak, dream Arthur Dillon. The roots would bleed if I were to transplant myself. I found my career among your people, and the meaning of life. There is no other career for me. These are the people I love. I will never raise between them and me so odious a barrier as the story of my disappearance would be. They could never take to Horace Endicott. Oh, I have given the matter a moment's thought, Monsignor. The more I dwell on it, the worse it seems."
He considered the point for a moment, and then whispered with joyous triumph, "I have succeeded beyond my own expectations. I have disappeared even from myself. An enemy cannot find me, not even my own confession would reveal me. The people who love me would swear to a man that I am Arthur Dillon, and that only insanity could explain my own confession. At the very least they would raise such a doubt in the mind of a judge that he would insist on clean proofs from both sides. But there's the clear fact. I have escaped from myself, disappeared from the sight of Arthur Dillon. Before long I can safely testify to a dream I had of having once been a wretch named Horace Endicott. But I have a doubt even now that I was such a man."
"My God, but it's weird," said Monsignor with emotion, as he rose to walk the room. "I have the same notion myself at times."
"It's a matter to be left undisturbed, or some one will go crazy over it," Arthur said seriously.
"And you are happy, really happy? The sight of this woman did not revive in you any regret...."
"I am happy, Monsignor, beyond belief," with a contented sigh. "It would be too much to expect perfect happiness. Yet that is within my reach. If I were only free to marry Honora Ledwith."
"I heard of that too," said the priest meditatively. "Has she any regard for you?"
"As a brother. How could I have asked any other love? And I am rich in that. Since there is no divorce for Catholics, I could not let her see the love which burned in me. I had no hope."
"And she goes into the convent, I believe. You must not stand in God's way."
"I have not, though I delayed her going because I could not bear to part from her. Willingly I have resigned her to God, because I know that in His goodness, had I been free, He would have given her to me."
Monsignor paused as if struck by the thought and looked at him for a moment.
"It is the right spirit," was his brief comment.
He loved this strange, incomprehensible man, who had stood for five years between his adopted people and their enemies in many a fight, who had sought battle in their behalf and heaped them with favors. His eyes saw the depth of that resignation which gave to God the one jewel that would have atoned for the horrid sufferings of the past. If he were free! He thought of old Lear moaning over dead Cordelia.
She lives! If it be so, It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows That ever I have felt.
"It is the right spirit," he repeated as he considered the matter. "One must not stand in the way of a soul, or in the way of God. Yet were you free, where would be the advantage? She is for the convent, and has never thought of you in the way of love."
"Love begets love, father dear. I could light the flame in her heart, for I am dear to her as a brother, as her father's son."
"Then her dream of the convent, which she has cherished so many years, cannot be more than a dream, if she resigned it for you."