THE END OF A MELODRAMA.

Louis kept his bed for some weeks, and suffered a slow convalescence. Private grief must give way to public necessity. In this case the private grief developed a public necessity. Arthur took pains to tell his story to the leaders. It gave point to the general onslaught now being made on the Irish by the hired journals, the escaped nun, and, as some named him, the escaped historian. A plan was formulated to deal with all three. Grahame entered the lists against Bitterkin and Smallish, Vandervelt denounced the Confessions and its author at a banquet vis-a-vis with Bradford, and Monsignor pursued the escaped historian by lecturing in the same cities, and often on the same platform. Arthur held to Sister Claire as his specialty, as the hinge of the Livingstone scheme, a very rotten hinge on which to depend. Nevertheless, she kept her footing for months after her interview with him.

Curran had laid bare her life and exposed her present methods nicely; but neither afforded a grip which might shake her, except inasmuch as it gave him an unexpected clue to the Claire labyrinth. Her history showed that she had often played two parts in the same drama. Without doubt a similar trick served her now, not only to indulge her riotous passions, but to glean advantages from her enemies and useful criticism from her friends. He cast about among his casual acquaintance for characters that Claire might play. Edith Conyngham? Not impossible! The Brand who held forth at the gospel hall? Here was a find indeed! Comparing the impressions left upon him by these women, as a result he gave Curran the commission to watch and study the daily living of Edith Conyngham. Even this man’s nerve shook at a stroke so luckily apt.

“I don’t know much about the ways of escaped nuns,” said Arthur, “but I am going to study them. I’ll wager you find Claire behind the rusty garments of this obscure, muddy, slimy little woman. They have the same appetite anyway.”

This choice bit of news, carried at once to the escaped nun, sounded in Sister Claire’s ear like the crack of doom, and she stared at Curran, standing humbly in her office, with distorted face.

“Is this the result of your clever story-telling, Dick Curran?” she gasped.

“It’s the result of your affair with young Everard,” he replied sadly. “That was a mistake altogether. It waked up Arthur Dillon.”

“The mistake was to wake that man,” she said sourly. “I fear him. There’s something hiding in him, something terrible, that looks out of his eyes like a ghost in hell. The dogs ... Jezebel ... that was his threat ... ugh!”

“He has waked up the whole crowd against you and frightened your friends. If ever he tells the Clan-na-Gael about young Everard, your life won’t be worth a pin.”

“With you to defend me?” ironically.

“I could only die with you ... against that crowd.”

“And you would,” she said with conviction, tears in her eyes. “My one friend.”

His cheeks flushed and his eyes sparkled at the fervent praise of his fidelity.

“Well, it’s all up with me,” changing to a mood of gaiety. “The Escaped Nun must escape once more. They will all turn their coldest shoulders to me, absolutely frightened by this Irish crowd, to which we belong after all, Dick. I’m not sorry they can stand up for themselves, are you? So, there’s nothing to do but take up the play, and begin work on it in dead earnest.”

“It’s a bad time,” Curran ventured, as she took a manuscript from a desk. “But you know how to manage such things, you are so clever,” he hastened to add, catching a fiery glance from her eye. “Only you must go with caution.”

“It’s a fine play,” she said, turning the pages of the manuscript. “Dick, you are little short of a genius. If I had not liked the real play so well, playing to the big world this rôle of escaped nun, I would have taken it up long ago. The little stage of the theater is nothing to the grand stage of the world, where a whole nation applauds; and men like the Bishop take it for the real thing, this impersonation of mine. But since I am shut out ... and my curse on this Arthur Dillon ... no, no, I take that back ... he’s a fine fellow, working according to his nature ... since he will shut me out I must take to the imitation stage. Ah, but the part is fine! First act: the convent garden, the novice reading her love in the flowers, the hateful old mother superior choking her to get her lover’s note from her, the reading of the note, and the dragging of the novice to her prison cell, down in the depths of the earth. How that will draw the tears from the old maids of Methodism all over the country!”

She burst into hearty laughter.

“Second act: the dungeon, the tortures, old superior again, and the hateful hag who is in love with the hero and would like to wreak her jealousy on me, poor thing, all tears and determination. I loathe the two women. I denounce the creed which invents such tortures. I lie down to die in the dungeon while the music moans and the deacons and their families in the audience groan. Don’t you think, Dicky dear, I can do the dying act to perfection?”

“On the stage perfectly.”

“You’re a wretch,” she shrieked with sudden rage. “You hint at the night I took a colic and howled for the priest, when you know it was only the whisky and the delirium. How dare you!”

“It slipped on me,” he said humbly.

“The third act is simply beautiful: chapel of the convent, a fat priest at the altar, all the nuns gathered about to hear the charges against me, I am brought in bound, pale, starved, but determined; the trial, the sentence, the curse ... oh, that scene is sublime, I can see Booth in it ... pity we can’t have him ... then the inrush of my lover, the terror, the shrieks, the confusion, as I am carried off the stage with the curtain going down. At last the serene fourth act: another garden, the villains all punished, my lover’s arms about me, and we two reading the flowers as the curtain descends. Well,” with a sigh of pleasure, “if that doesn’t take among the Methodists and the general public out West and down South, what will?”

“I can see the fire with which you will act it,” said Curran eagerly. “You are a born actress. Who but you could play so many parts at once?”

“And yet,” she answered dreamily, giving an expressive kick with unconscious grace, “this is what I like best. If it could be introduced into the last act ... but of course the audiences wouldn’t tolerate it, dancing. Well,” waking up suddenly to business, “are you all ready for the grand coup press, manager, all details?”

“Ready long ago.”

“Here then is the program, Dicky dear. To-morrow I seek the seclusion of the convent at Park Square isn’t seclusion good? To-night letters go out to all my friends, warning them of my utter loneliness, and dread of impending abduction. In two or three days you get a notice in the papers about these letters, and secure interviews with the Bishop if possible, with McMeeter anyway ... oh, he’ll begin to howl as soon as he gets his letter. Whenever you think the public interest, or excitement, is at its height, then you bring your little ladder to the convent, and wait outside for a racket which will wake the neighborhood. In the midst of it, as the people are gathering, up with the ladder, and down with me in your triumphant arms. Pity we can’t have a calcium light for that scene. If there should be any failure ... of course there can’t be ... then a note of warning will reach me, with any instructions you may wish to give me ... to the old address of course.”

Both laughed heartily at this allusion.

“It has been great fun,” she said, “fooling them all right and left. That Dillon is suspicious though ... fine fellow ... I like him. Dicky, ... you’re not jealous. What a wonder you are, dear old faithful Dicky, my playwright, manager, lover, detective, everything to me. Well, run along to your work. We strike for fortune this time for fortune and for fame. You will not see me again until you carry me down the ladder from the convent window. What a lark! And there’s money in it for you and me.”

He dared not discourage her, being too completely her slave, like wax in her hands; and he believed, too, that her scheme of advertising the drama of The Escaped Nun would lead to splendid and profitable notoriety. A real escape, from a city convent, before the very eyes of respectable citizens, would ring through the country like an alarm, and set the entire Protestant community in motion. While he feared, he was also dazzled by the brilliancy of the scheme.

It began very well. The journals one morning announced the disappearance of Sister Claire, and described the alarm of her friends at her failure to return. Thereupon McMeeter raised his wonderful voice over the letter sent him on the eve of her flight, and printed the pathetic epistle along with his denunciation of the cowardice which had given her over to her enemies. Later Bishop Bradford, expressing his sympathy in a speech to the Dorcas’ Society, referred to the walling up of escaped nuns during the dark ages. A little tide of paragraphs flowed from the papers, plaintively murmuring the one sad strain: the dear sister could not be far distant; she might be in the city, deep in a convent dungeon; she had belonged to the community of the Good Shepherd, whose convent stood in Morris Street, large enough, sufficiently barred with iron to suggest dungeons; the escaped one had often expressed her dread of abduction; the convents ought to be examined suddenly and secretly; and so on without end.

“What is the meaning of it?” said Monsignor. “I thought you had extinguished her, Arthur.”

“Another scheme of course. I was too merciful with her, I imagine. All this noise seems to have one aim: to direct attention to these convents. Now if she were hidden in any of them, and a committee should visit that convent and find her forcibly detained, as she would call it; or if she could sound a fire alarm and make a spectacular escape at two in the morning, before the whole world, what could be said about it?”

“Isn’t it rather late in history for such things?” said Monsignor.

“A good trick is as good to-day as a thousand years ago. I can picture you explaining to the American citizen, amid the howls of McMeeter and the purring speeches of the Bishop, how Sister Claire came to be in the convent from which her friends rescued her.”

“It would be awkward enough I admit. You think, then, that she ... but what could be her motive?”

“Notoriety, and the sympathy of the people. I would like to trip her up in this scheme, and hurl her once for all into the hell which she seems anxious to prepare for other people. You Catholics are altogether too easy with the Claires and the McMeeters. Hence the tears of the Everards.”

“We are so used to it,” said the priest in apology. “It would be foolish, however, not to heed your warning. Go to the convents of the city from me, and put them on their guard. Let them dismiss all strangers and keep out newcomers until the danger appears to be over.”

The most careful search failed to reveal a trace of Sister Claire’s hiding-place among the various communities, who were thrown into a fever of dread by the warning. The journals kept up their crescendo of inquiry and information. One must look for that snake, Arthur thought, not with the eyes, but through inspiration. She hid neither in the clouds nor in Arizona, but in the grass at their feet. Seeking for inspiration, he went over the ground a second time with Sister Magdalen, who had lost flesh over the shame of her dealings with Claire, the Everard troubles, and the dread of what was still to come. She burned to atone for her holy indiscretions. The Park Square convent, however, held no strangers. In the home attached to it were many poor women, but all of them known. Edith Conyngham the obscure, the mute, the humble, was just then occupying a room in the place, making a retreat of ten days in charge of Sister Magdalen. At this fact Arthur was seized by his inspiration.

“She must give up her retreat and leave the place,” he said quietly, though his pulse was bounding. “Make no objection. It’s only a case of being too careful. Leave the whole matter to me. Say nothing to her about it. To-night the good creature will have slipped away without noise, and she can finish her retreat later. It’s absurd, but better be absurd than sorry.”

And Sister Magdalen, thinking of the long penance she must undergo for her folly, made only a polite objection. He wrote out a note at once in a disguised hand, giving it no signature:

“The game is up. You cannot get out of the convent too quick or too soon. At ten o’clock a cab will be at the southwest corner of Park Square. Take it and drive to the office. Before ten I shall be with you. Don’t delay an instant. State prison is in sight. Dillon is on your track.”

“At eight o’clock this evening where will Miss Conyngham be, Sister?”

“In her room,” said the nun, unhappy over the treatment intended for her client, “preparing her meditation for the morning. She has a great love for meditation on the profound mysteries of religion.”

“Glad to know it,” he said dryly. “Well, slip this note under her door, make no noise, let no one see you, give her no hint of your presence. Then go to bed and pray for us poor sinners out in the wicked world.”

One must do a crazy thing now and then, under cover of the proprieties, if only to test one’s sanity. Edith and Claire, as he had suggested to Curran, might be the same person. What if Claire appeared tall, portly, resonant, youthful, abounding in life, while Edith seemed mute, old, thin, feeble? The art of the actor can work miracles in personal appearance. A dual life provided perfect security in carrying out Claire’s plans, and it matched the daring of the Escaped Nun to live as Edith in the very hearts of the people she sought to destroy. Good sense opposed his theory of course, but he made out a satisfactory argument for himself. How often had Sister Claire puzzled him by her resemblance to some one whom he could not force out of the shadows of memory! Even now, with the key of the mystery in his hands, he could see no likeness between them. Yet no doubt remained in his mind that a dual life would explain and expose Sister Claire.

That night he sat on the seat of a cab in proper costume, at the southwest corner of Park Square. The convent, diagonally opposite, was dark and silent at nine o’clock; and far in the rear, facing the side street, stood the home of the indigent, whose door would open for the exit of a clever actress at ten o’clock, or, well closed, reproach him for his stupidity. The great front of the convent, dominating the Square, would have been a fine stage for the scene contemplated by Sister Claire, and he laughed at the spectacle of the escaped one leaping from a window into her lover’s arms, or sliding down a rope amid the cheers of the mob and the shrieks of the disgraced poor souls within. Then he gritted his teeth at the thought of Louis, and Mary his mother, and Mona his sister. His breath came short. Claire was a woman, but some women are not dishonored by the fate of Jezebel.

Shortly after ten o’clock a small, well-wrapped figure turned the remote corner of the Home, came out to the Square, saw the cab, and coming forward with confidence opened the door and stepped in. As Arthur drove off the blood surged to his head and his heart in a way that made his ears sing. It seemed impossible that the absurd should turn out wisdom at the first jump. As he drove along he wondered over the capacities of art. No two individuals could have been more unlike in essentials than Edith Conyngham and Sister Claire. Now it would appear that high-heeled shoes, padded clothes, heavy eyebrows, paint, a loud and confident voice, a bold manner, and her beautiful costume had made Sister Claire; while shoes without heels, rusty clothes, a gray wig, a weak voice, and timid manner, had given form to Edith Conyngham.

A soul is betrayed by its sins. The common feature of the two characters was the sensuality which, neither in the nun nor in her double, would be repressed or disguised. Looking back, Arthur could see some points of resemblance which might have betrayed the wretch to a clever detective. Well, he would settle all accounts with her presently, and he debated only one point, the flinging of her to the dogs. In twenty minutes they reached the office of the Escaped Nun. He opened the door of the cab and she stepped out nervously, but walked with decision into the building, for which she had the keys.

“Anything more, mum?” he said respectfully.

“Come right in, and light up for me,” she said ungraciously, in a towering rage. He found his way to the gas jets and flooded the office with the light from four. She pulled down the curtains, and flung aside her rusty shawl. At the same moment he flung an arm about her, and with his free hand tore the gray wig from her head, and shook free the mass of yellow hair which lay beneath it. Then he flung her limp into the nearest chair, and stood gazing at her, frozen with amaze. She cowered, pale with the sudden fright of the attack. It was not Sister Claire who stood revealed, but the charming and lovely La Belle Colette. The next instant he laughed like a hysterical woman.

“By heavens, but that was an inspiration!” he exclaimed. “Don’t be frightened, beautiful Colette. I was prepared for a tragedy, but this discovery reveals a farce.”

Her terror gave way to stupefaction when she recognized him.

“So it’s three instead of two,” he went on. “The lovely dancer is also the Escaped Nun and the late Edith Conyngham. And Curran knew it of course, who was our detective. That’s bad. But Judy Haskell claims you as a goddaughter. You are Curran’s wife. You are Sister Magdalen’s poor friend. You are Katharine Kerrigan. You are Sister Claire. You are Messalina. La Belle Colette, you are the very devil.”

She recovered from her fright at his laugh, in which some amusement tinkled, and also something terrible. They were in a lonely place, he had made the situation, and she felt miserably helpless.

“You need not blame Curran,” she said decisively. “He knew the game, but he has no control over me. I want to go home, and I want to know right away your terms. It’s all up with me. I confess. But let me know what you are going to do with me.”

“Take you home to your husband,” said Arthur. “Come.”

They drove to the little apartment where Curran lay peacefully sleeping, and where he received his erratic wife with stupor. The three sat down in the parlor to discuss the situation, which was serious enough, though Arthur now professed to take it lightly. Colette stared at him like a fascinated bird and answered his questions humbly.

“It’s all very simple,” said she. “I am truly Edith Conyngham, and Judy Haskell is my godmother, and I was in a convent out West. I was expelled for a love caper, and came back to my friends much older in appearance than I had need to be. The Escaped-Nun-racket was a money-maker. What I really am, you see. I am the dancer, La Belle Colette. All the rest is disguise.”

Curran asked no questions and accepted the situation composedly.

“She is in your hands,” he said.

“I place her in yours for the present,” Arthur replied, glowering as he thought of Louis. “Detectives will shadow you both until I come to a decision what to do with you. Any move to escape and you will be nipped. Then the law takes its course. As for you, La Belle Colette, say your prayers. I am still tempted to send you after Jezebel.”

“You are a terrible man,” she whimpered, as he walked out and left them to their sins.