Then Mr. Andrew Copping suddenly thrust himself into the front.
'No you don't—you bet you don't!' he exclaimed. 'You are a coward and a traitor, and you shall never give Queen's evidence or any other evidence against me.'
Those who stood around thought he was going to strike Professor Flick. Some ran between, but they were not quick enough. Copping made one clutch at his breast, and then, with a touch that seemed as light as if he were merely throwing his hand into the air unpurposing, he made a push at the breast of Professor Flick, and Professor Flick went down as the bull goes down in the amphitheatre of Madrid or Seville when the hand of the practised swordsman has touched him with the point in just the place where he lived. Professor Flick, as he called himself, was dead, and the whole plot was revealed and was over.
By a curious stroke of fate it was Ericson who caught the dying Professor Flick as he fainted and died, and it was Hamilton who gripped the murderer, the so-called Copping. Copping made no struggle; the police took quiet charge of him—and of his weapon.
'Well, I think,' said Sir Rupert with a shudder, 'we have case enough for a committal now.'
'We have occasion,' said the Coroner with functional gravity, 'for three inquests; three?—no, pardon me, for four inquests, and for at least one charge of deliberate murder.'
'Good Heaven, how coolly one takes it,' Sir Rupert murmured, 'when it really does happen! Well, Mr. Coroner, Mr. Inspector, we must have a warrant signed for Mr. Andrew J. Copping's detention—if he still prefers to be called by that name.'
'Call me by any name you like,' Copping said sullenly, but pluckily. 'I don't care what you call me or what you do to me, so long as I have had the best of the traitor who deserted me in the fight. He'll not give any Queen's evidence—that's all I care about—now. I'd have done the work but for that coward; I'd have done the work if I had been alone!'
Yet a little, and the silence and quietude of a perfectly serene and ordered household had returned to Seagate Hall. The Coroner's jury had viewed the dead, and then had gone off to the best public-house in the village to hold their inquest. The dead themselves had been laid in seemly beds. The Sicilian and the victimised serving-man were not allowed to be seen by anyone but the Coroner and his jury, and the police officials, and of course the doctors. Almost any wound may be seen by courageous and kindly eyes that is not on the head and face. But a destruction to the head and face is a sight that the bravest and most kindly eyes had better not look upon unless they are trained against shock and horror by long prosaic experience. The wounds of Soame Rivers happened to be almost altogether in his chest and ribs—his chest was well-nigh torn away—and when the doctors and the nurses made him up seemly in his death-bed he might be looked upon without horror. He was looked upon by Helena Langley without horror. She sat beside him, and mourned over him, and cried over him, and wished that she could have better appreciated him while he lived—and never did know, and never will know, what was the act of treachery which had stirred him up to remorse and to manhood, and which in fact had redeemed him, and had caused his death.
Silence and order fell with subdued voice upon the house which had so lately crashed with dynamite and rung with hurrying, scurrying feet. The Coroner's jury had found a verdict of wilful murder against the man describing himself as Andrew J. Copping of Omaha, for the killing of the man describing himself as Professor Flick, and had found that the calamities at Seagate Hall were the work of certain conspirators at present not fully known, but of whom Andrew J. Copping, otherwise known as Manoel Silva, was charged with being one. Then the whole question was remitted into the hands of the magistrates and the police; and the so-called Andrew J. Copping was sent to the County Gaol to await his trial. The Dictator had little evidence to give except the fact of his distinct recollection that two men, whose names he perfectly well remembered now, but whose faces he could not identify, had been relieved by him from the death penalty in Gloria, but had been sent to penal servitude for life; and that he believed the men who called themselves Flick and Copping were the two professional murderers. The fact could easily be established by telegraph—had, as we know, been already established—that the real Professor Flick, the authority on folk-lore, had not yet reached England, but would soon be here on his way home. Not many hours of investigation were needed to foreshadow the whole plan and purpose of the conspiracy. In any case, it did not seem likely that the man who called himself Andrew J. Copping would give himself any great trouble to interfere with the regular course of justice. No matter how often he was warned by the police officials that any words he chose to utter would be taken down and used in evidence against him, he continued to say with a kind of delight that he had done his work faithfully, and that he could have done it quite successfully if he had not been mated with a coward and a skunk, and that he didn't much care now what came of him, since he didn't suppose they would let him loose and give him one hour's chance again, and see if he couldn't work the thing somewhat better than he had had a chance of doing before. If he had not trusted too long to the courage and nerve of his comrade it would have been all right, he said. His only remorse seemed to be in that self-accusation.
Sarrasin recovered consciousness in a few hours. As his plucky wife said, it took a good deal to kill him. His story was clear. The Sicilian—the Saffron Hill Sicilian—came into his room and tried to kill him. Of course the Sicilian believed that he was trying to kill Ericson. Sarrasin easily disarmed this pitiful assassin, and then came the explosion. Sarrasin was perfectly clear in his mind that the Sicilian had nothing to do with the explosion—that it was made from without, and not from within the door. His own theory was clear from the beginning, and was in perfect harmony with the theory which the Dictator had formed at the time of the abortive attempt at assassination in St. James's Park. Then a miserable stabber of the class familiar to every South Italian or South American town was hired at a good price to do a vulgar job which, if it only succeeded, would satisfy easily and cheaply the business of those who hired the murderer. The scheme failed, and something more subtle had to be sought. The something more subtle, according to Sarrasin, was found in the rehiring of the same creature to do a deed which he was told would be made quite easy for him—the smuggling him into the house to do the deed; and then the surrounding of the deed with conditions which would at the same moment make him seem the sole actor in the deed, and destroy at once his life and his evidence. The real assassins, Sarrasin felt assured, had no doubt that their hireling would get a fair way on the road to his business of assassination, and then a well-timed dynamite cartridge would make sure his work, and would make sure also that he never could appear in evidence against the men who had set him on.
Thus it was that Sarrasin reasoned out the case from the first moment of his returning senses, and to this theory he held. But one of the first painful sensations in Sarrasin's mind—when he realised, appreciated, and enjoyed the fact that he was still alive—that his wife was still alive—that they were still left to live for one another—one of the first painful sensations in his mind was that he could not go out with the Dictator to his landing in Gloria. It was clear to the stout old soldier that it must take some time before he could be of any personal use to any cause; and, despite of himself, he knew that he must regard himself as an invalid. It was a hard stroke of ill-luck. Still, he had known such strokes of ill-luck before. It had happened to him many a time to be stricken down in the first hour of a battle, and to be sent forthwith to the rear, and to lose the whole story of the struggle, and yet to pull through and fight another day—many other days. So Sarrasin took his wife's hand in his and whispered, 'We may have a chance yet; it may not all be settled so soon as some of them think.'
Mrs. Sarrasin comforted him.
'If it can be all settled without us, darling, so much the better! If it takes time and trouble, well, we shall be there.'
Consoled and encouraged by her sympathetic and resolute words, Sarrasin fell into a sound and wholesome sleep.
Helena had often before divined the Dictator. Now at last she realised him. She had divined him in spite of her own doubts at one time—or perhaps because of her own doubts, or the doubts put into her mind by other minds and other tongues. She had always felt assured that the Dictator was there—had felt certain that he must be there—and now at last she knew that he was there. She had faith in him as one may have faith in some sculptor whose masterpiece one has not yet seen. We believe in the work because we know the man, although we have not yet seen him in his work. We know that he has won fame, and we know that he is not a man likely to put up with a fame undeserved. So we wait composedly for the unveiling of his statue, and when it is unveiled we find in it simply the justification of our faith. It was so with Helena Langley. She felt sure that whenever her hero got the chance he would prove himself a hero—show himself endowed with the qualities of a commander-in-chief. Now she knew it. She had seen the living proof of it. She had seen him tried by the test of a thoroughly new situation, and she had seen that he had not wasted one moment on mere surprise. She had seen how quickly he had surveyed the whole scene of danger, and how in the flash of one moment's observation he had known what was to be done—and what alone was to be done. She had seen how he had taken command by virtue of his knowledge that at such a moment of confusion, bewilderment, and danger, the command came to him by right of the fittest.
The heart of the girl swelled with pride; and she felt a pride even in herself, because she had so instinctively recognised and appreciated him. She told herself that she must really be worth something when she had from the very beginning so thoroughly appreciated him. Of course, a romantic girl's wild enthusiasm might also have been a romantic girl's wild mistake. The Dictator had, after all, only shown the qualities of courage and coolness with which his enemies as well as his friends had always credited him. The elaborate and craftily got-up attack upon him would never have been concerted—would never have had occasion to be concerted—but that his enemies regarded him as a most dangerous and formidable opponent. Even in her hurried thoughts of the moment Helena took in all this. But the knowledge made her none the less proud.
'Of course,' she thought, 'they knew what a danger and a terror he was to them, and now I know it as well as they do; but I knew it all along, and now they—they themselves—have justified my appreciation of him.' All the time she had a shrinking, sickening terror in her heart about further plots and future dangers. Some of Ericson's own words lingered in her memory—words about the impossibility of finding any real protection against the attempt of the fanatic assassin who takes his own life in his hand, and is content to die the moment he has taken the life of his victim.
This was the all but absorbing thought in Helena's mind just then.Hislife was in danger; he had escaped this late attempt, and it had been a serious one, and had deluged a house in blood, and what chance was there that he might escape another? He would go out to Gloria, and even on the very voyage he might be assassinated, and she would not be there, perhaps to protect him—at all events, to be with him—and she did not know, even know whether he cared about her—whether he would miss her—whether she counted for anything in his thoughts and his plans and his life—whether he would remember or whether he would forget her. She was in a highly strung, and, if the expression may be used, an exalted frame of mind. She had not slept much. After all the wildness of the disturbance was over Sir Rupert had insisted on her going to bed and not getting up until luncheon-time, and she had quietly submitted, and had been undressed, and had slept a little in a fitful, upstarting sort of way; and at last noon came, and she soon got up again, and bathed, and prepared to be very heroic and enduring and self-composed. She was much in the habit of going into the conservatory before luncheon, and Ericson had often found her there; and perhaps she had in her own mind a lingering expectation that if he got back from the village, and the coroner, and the magistrates, and all the rest of it, in time, he would come to the conservatory and look for her. She wanted him to go to Gloria—oh, yes—of course, she wanted him to go—he was going perhaps that very day; but she did not want him to go before he had spoken to her—alone—alone. We have said that she did not know whether he cared about her or not. So she told herself. But did not an instinct the other way drive her into that conservatory where they had met before about the same hour of the day—on less fateful days?
The house looked quiet and peaceful enough now under the clear, poetic melancholy of an autumn sunlight. The musical Oriental bells—a set the same as those that Helena had established in the London house—rang out their announcement or warning that luncheon-time was coming as blithely as though the house were not a mournful hospital for the sick and for the dead. Helena was moving slowly, sadly, in the conservatory. She did not care to affront the glare of the open, and outer day. Suddenly Ericson came dreamily in, and he flushed at seeing her, and her cheek hung out involuntarily, unwillingly, its red flag in reply. There was a moment of embarrassment and silence.
'All these terrible things will not alter your plans?' she asked, in a voice curiously timid for her.
'My plans about Gloria?'
'Yes; I mean your plans about Gloria.'
'Oh, no; I have not much evidence to offer. You see, I can only give the police a clue—I can't do more than that. I have been to the inquest and have told that I remember the crimes of these men and their names, but I cannot identify either of the men personally. As soon as I get out to Gloria I shall make it all clear. But until then I can only put the police here on the track.'
'Then youaregoing?' she asked in pathetic tone. The truth is, that she was not much thinking about the chances of justice being done to the murderers—even to the murderers of poor Soame Rivers. She was thinking of Ericson's going away.
'Yes, I am going,' he said. 'My duty and my destiny—if I may speak in that grandiose sort of style—call me that way.'
'I know it,' Helena said; 'I would not have it otherwise.'
'And I knowthat,' he replied tenderly, 'because I know you, Helena—and I know what a mind and what a heart you have. Do you think it costs me no pang to leave you?' She looked up at him amazed, and then let her eyes droop. Her courage had all gone. If the women who constantly kept saying that she was forward with men could only have seen her now!
'Are you really sorry to leave me?' she asked at last. 'Shall you miss me when you go?'
'Am I sorry to leave you? Shall I miss you when I go? Do you really not guess how dear you are to me, how I love your companionship—and you—you—you!'
'Oh, I didnotknow it,' she said. 'But I do know——'. She could not get on.
'You do know—what?' he asked tenderly, and he took one hand of hers in his, and she did not draw it away. The moment had come. Each knew it.
'I know that I love you,' she said in a passionate whisper. 'I know that you are my hero and my idol! There!'
He only kissed her hand.
'Then you will wait for me?' he asked.
'Wait for you—wait here—withoutyou?'
'Until I have won my fight, and can claim you.'
'Oh!' she exclaimed in passion of love and grief and fear, 'how could I live here without you, and know that you were in danger? No, I couldn't—couldn't—couldn't! That wouldn't be love—not my love—no—notmylove!'
For a moment even the thought of a rescued Gloria was pushed back in the Dictator's mind.
'Since it is so,' said the Dictator, not without a gasp in his throat as he said it, 'come with me, Helena.'
'Oh, thank God, and thankyou!' the girl cried. 'See here—this is your birthday, and I had no birthday-gift ready to give you. Ah, I have been thinking so much about you—aboutyou, youyourself—that I forgot your birthday. But now I remember; and here is a birthday-gift for you—the best I can give!' And she seized his hand and kissed it fervently.
'Helena,' the Dictator said, with an emotion that he tried in vain to repress, 'let me thank you for your birthday-gift.' And he lifted her head towards him and kissed her lips.
'I am to go with you?' she asked fervently, gazing up into his eyes with her own tear-stained, anxious, wistful eyes.
'You are to go with me,' he answered quietly, 'wherever I go, to my death, or to yours.'
'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'how happy I am! At last at last, Iamhappy!'
She was clinging around his neck. He gently, tenderly, lifted her arms from him, and held her a little apart, and looked at her with a proud affection and a love before which her eyes drooped. She was overborne by the rush of her own too great happiness. What did she care whether they succeeded or failed in their enterprise on Gloria? What did she care about being the Dictatress, if there be any such word, of Gloria? Alas! what did she care in that proud, selfish moment for the future and the prosperity of Gloria? She was only thinking thatheloved her, and that she was to be allowed to go with him to the very last, that she was to be allowed to die with him. For she had not at that moment the faintest hope or thought of being allowed to live with him. Her horizon was much more limited. She could only think that they would go out to Gloria and get killed there, together. But was not that enough? They would be killed together. What better could she ask or hope? Youth is curiously generous with its life-blood. It delights to think of throwing life away, not merely for some beloved being, but even with some beloved being. As time goes on and the span of life shrinks, the seeming value of life swells, and the old man is content to outlive his old wife, the old wife to outlive the husband of her youth.
'You are fit to be an empress!' the Dictator exclaimed, and he pressed her again to his heart. He did not overrate her courage and her devotion, but, being a man, he a little—just a little—misunderstood her. She was not thinking of empire, she was thinking ofhim. She was not thinking of sharing power with him. Her heart was swollen with joy at the thought that she was to be allowed to share danger and death with him. It is not easy for a daring, ambitious man to enter into such thoughts. They are the property, and the copyright, and the birthright of woman.
But Helena was pleased and proud indeed that he had called her fit to be an empress. Fit to behisempress: what praise beyond that could human voice give to her? Her face flushed crimson with delight and pride, and she stood on tiptoe up to him and kissed him.
Then she started away, for the door of the conservatory opened. But she returned to him again.
'See!' Helena exclaimed triumphantly, 'here is my father!' And she caught the Dictator's hand in hers and drew it to her breast.
This was the sight that showed itself to a father's eyes. Sir Rupert had not thought of anything like this. He was utterly thrown out of his mental orbit for the moment. He had never thought of his daughter as thus demonstrative and thus unashamed.
'Was this well done, Helena?' he asked, more sadly than sternly.
'Bravely done—by Helena,' the Dictator exclaimed; 'well done as all is, as everything is, thatisdone by Helena!'
'At least you might have told me of this, Ericson,' Sir Rupert said, turning on the Dictator, and glad to have a man to dispute with. 'You might have forewarned me of all this.'
'I could not forewarn you, Sir Rupert, of what I did not know myself.'
'Did not know yourself?'
'Not until a very few minutes ago.'
'Did you not know that you were making love to my daughter?'
'Until just now—just before you came in—I did not make love to your daughter.'
'Oh, it was the girl who made love to you, I suppose!'
The Dictator's eyes flashed fire for a second and then were calm again. Even in that moment he could feel for Helena's father.
'I never knew until now,' he said quietly, 'that your daughter cared about me in any way but the beaten way of friendship. I have been in love with Helena this long time—these months and months.'
'Oh!'
This interrupting exclamation came from Helena. It was simply an inarticulate cry of joy and triumph. Ericson looked tenderly down upon her. She was standing close to him—clinging to him—pressing his hand against her heart.
'Yes, Sir Rupert, I have been in love with your daughter this long time, but I never gave her the least reason to suspect that I was in love with her.'
'No, indeed, he never did,' Helena interrupted again. 'Don't you think it was very unfair of him, papa? He might have made me happy so much sooner!'
Sir Rupert looked half-angrily, half-tenderly, at this incorrigible girl. In his heart he knew that he was conquered already.
'I never told her, Sir Rupert,' the Dictator went on, 'because I did not believe it possible that she could care about me, and because, even if she did, I did not think that her bright young life could be made to share the desperate fortunes of a life like mine. Just now, on the eve of parting—at the thought of parting—we both broke down, I suppose, and we knew each other—and then—and then—you came in.'
'And I am very glad you did, papa!' Helena exclaimed enthusiastically; 'it saved such a lot of explanation.'
Helena was quite happy. It had not entered into her thoughts to suppose that her father would seriously put himself against any course of action concerning herself which she had set her heart upon. The pain of parting with her father—of knowing that she was leaving him to a lonely life without her—had not yet come up and made itself real in her mind. She could only think that her hero loved her, and that he knew she loved him. It was the sacred, sanctified selfishness of love.
Helena's raptures fell coldly on her father's ears. Sir Rupert saw life looking somewhat blankly before him.
'Ericson,' he said, 'I am sorry if I have said anything to hurt you. Of course, I might have known that you would act in everything like a man of honour—and a gentleman; but the question now is, What do you propose to do?'
'Oh, papa, what nonsense!' Helena said.
'What do I propose to do, Sir Rupert?' the Dictator asked, quite composedly now. 'I propose to accept the sacrifice that Helena is willing to make. I have never importuned her to make it, I never asked her or even wished her to make it. She does it of her own accord, and I take her love and herself as a gift from Heaven. I do not stop any longer to think of my own unworthiness; I do not stop any longer even to think of the life of danger into which I may be bringing her; she desires to cast in her lot with mine, and may God do as much and more to me if I refuse to accept the life that is given to me!'
'Well, well, well!' Sir Rupert said, perplexed by these exalted people and sentiments, and at the same time a good deal in sympathy with the people and the sentiments. 'But in the meantime what do you propose to do? I presume that you, Ericson, will go out to Gloria at once?'
'At once,' Ericson assented.
'And then, if you can establish yourself there—I mean when you have established yourself there, and are quite secure and all that—you will come back here and marry Helena?'
'Oh, no, papa dear,' Helena said, 'that is not the programme at all.'
'Why not? Whatisthe programme?'
'Well, if my intended husband waited for all that before coming to marry me, he might wait for ever, so far as I am concerned.'
'I don't understand you,' Sir Rupert said almost angrily. His patience was beginning to be worn out.
'Dear, I shall make it very plain. I am not going to let my husband put through all the danger and get through all the trouble, and then come home for me that I may enjoy all the triumph and all the comfort. If that is his idea of a woman's place, all right, but he must get some other girl to marry him. "Some girls will,"' Helena went on, breaking irreverently into a line of a song from a burlesque, '"but this girl won't!"'
'But you see, Helena,' Sir Rupert said almost peevishly, 'you don't seem to have thought of things. I don't want to be a wet blanket, or a prophet of evil omen, or any of that sort of thing; but there may be accidents, you know, and miscalculations, and failures even, and things may go wrong with this enterprise, no matter how well planned.'
'Yes, I have thought of all that. That is exactly where it is, dear.'
'Where what is, Helena?'
'Dear, where my purpose comes in. If there is going to be a failure, if there is going to be a danger to the man I love—well, I mean to be in it too. If he fails, it will cost his life; if it costs his life, I want it to cost my life too.'
'You might have thought a little ofme, Helena,' her father said reproachfully. 'You might have remembered that I have no one but you.'
Helena burst into tears.
'Oh, my father, I did think of you—I do think of you always; but this crisis is beyond me and above us both. I have thought it out, and I cannot do anything else than what I am prepared to do. I have thought it over night after night, again and again—I have prayed for guidance—and I see no other way! You know,' and a smile began to show itself through her tears, 'long before I knew that he loved me I was always thinking what I ought to do, supposing hedidlove me! And then, papa dear, if I were to remain at home, and to marry a marquis, or an alderman, or a man from Chicago, I might get diphtheria and die, and who would be the better forthat—except, perhaps, the marquis, or the alderman, or the man from Chicago?'
'Look here, Sir Rupert,' the Dictator said, 'let me tell you that at first I was not inclined to listen to this pleading of your daughter. I thought she did not understand the sacrifice she was making. But she has conquered me—she has shown me that she is in earnest—and I have caught the inspiration of her spirit and her generous self-sacrifice, and I have not the heart to resist her—I dare not refuse her. She shall come, in God's name!'
Before many weeks there came to the London morning papers a telegram from the principal seaport of Gloria.
'His Excellency President Ericson, ex-Dictator of Gloria, has just landed with his young wife and his secretary, Mr. Hamilton, and has been received with acclamation by the populace everywhere. The Reactionary Government by whom he was exiled have been overthrown by a great rising of the military and the people. Some of the leaders have escaped across the frontier into Orizaba, the State to which they had been trying to hand over the Republic. The Dictator will go on at once to the capital, and will there reorganise his army, and will promptly move on to the frontier to drive back the invading force.'
There came, too, a private telegram from Helena to her father, concocted with a reckless disregard of the cost per word of a submarine message from South America to London.
'My darling Papa,—It is so glorious to be the wife of a patriot and a hero, and I am so happy, and I only wish you could be here.'
When Captain Sarrasin gets well enough, he and his wife will go out to Gloria, and it is understood that at the special request of Hamilton, and of some one else too, they will take Dolores Paulo out with them.
For which other reason, as for many more, we wish success and freedom, and stability and progress to the Republic of Gloria, and happiness to the Dictator, and to all whom he has in charge.
'In Mr. McCarthy's novels we are always certain of finding humour, delicate characterisation, and an interesting story; but they are chiefly attractive, we think, by the evidence they bear upon every page of being written by a man who knows the world well, who has received a large and liberal education in the university of life. In "The Dictator" Mr. McCarthy is in his happiest vein. The life of London—political, social, artistic—eddies round us. We assist at its most brilliant pageants, we hear its superficial, witty, and often empty chatter, we catch whiffs of some of its finer emotions.... The brilliantly sketched personalities stand out delicately and incisively individualised. Mr. McCarthy's light handling of his theme, the alertness and freshness of his touch, are admirably suited to the picture he paints of contemporary London life.'—Daily News.
'"The Dictator" is bright, sparkling, and entertaining.... Few novelists are better able to describe the political and social eddies of contemporary society in the greatest city in the world than Mr. McCarthy; and this novel abounds in vivid and picturesque sidelights, drawn with a strong and simple touch.'—Leeds Mercury.
'This is a pleasant and entertaining story.... A book to be read by an open window on a sunny afternoon between luncheon and tea.'—Daily Chronicle.
'Mr. McCarthy's story is pleasant reading.'—Scotsman.
'As a work of literary art the book is excellent.'—Glasgow Herald.
'"The Dictator" is bright, sparkling, and entertaining. The book might almost be described as a picture of modern London. It abounds in vivid and picturesque sidelights, drawn with a strong touch.'—Leeds Mercury.
'In "The Dictator" the genial leader of the Irish party writes as charmingly as ever. His characters are as full of life, as exquisitely portrayed, and as true to nature as anything that is to be found in fiction, and there is the same subtle fascination of plot and incident that has already procured for the author of "Dear Lady Disdain" his select circle of admirers.... The nicety of style, the dainty wholesome wit, and the ever-present freshness of idea that pervade it render the reading of it a positive feast of pleasure. It is the work of a man of the world and a gentleman, of a man of letters, and of a keen observer of character and manners.'—Colonies and India.