"Don't mention my name an thou lovest me!" said
Laurance Donovan, and he drew me aside, ignored my
hand and otherwise threw into our meeting a casual
quality that was somewhat amazing in view of the fact
that we had met last at Cairo.
"Allah il Allah!"
It was undoubtedly Larry. I felt the heat of the
desert and heard the camel-drivers cursing and our
Sudanese guides plotting mischief under a window far
away.
"Well!" we both exclaimed interrogatively.
He rocked gently back and forth, with his hands in
his pockets, on the tile floor of the banking-house. I
had seen him stand thus once on a time when we had
eaten nothing in four days-it was in Abyssinia, and
our guides had lost us in the worst possible place-with
the same untroubled look in his eyes.
"Please don't appear surprised, or scared or anything,
Jack," he said, with his delicious intonation. "I
saw a fellow looking for me an hour or so ago. He's
been at it for several months; hence my presence on
these shores of the brave and the free. He's probably
still looking, as he's a persistent devil. I'm here, as
we may say, quite incog. Staying at an East-side lodging-house,
where I shan't invite you to call on me.
But I must see you."
"Dine with me to-night, at Sherry's-"
"Too big, too many people-"
"Therein lies security, if you're in trouble. I'm about
to go into exile, and I want to eat one more civilized
dinner before I go."
"Perhaps it's just as well. Where are you off for,-
not Africa again?"
"No. Just Indiana,-one of the sovereign American
states, as you ought to know."
"Indians?"
"No; warranted all dead."
"Pack-train-balloon-automobile-camels,-how do
you get there?"
"Varnished ears. It's easy. It's not the getting there;
it's the not dying of ennui after you're on the spot."
"Humph! What hour did you say for the dinner?"
"Seven o'clock. Meet me at the entrance."
"If I'm at large! Allow me to precede you through
the door, and don't follow me on the street please!"
He walked away, his gloved hands clasped lazily behind
him, lounged out upon Broadway and turned
toward the Battery. I waited until he disappeared, then
took an up-town car.
My first meeting with Laurance Donovan was in Constantinople,
at a café where I was dining. He got into
a row with an Englishman and knocked him down. It
was not my affair, but I liked the ease and definiteness
with which Larry put his foe out of commission. I
learned later that it was a way he had. The Englishman
meant well enough, but he could not, of course,
know the intensity of Larry's feeling about the unhappy
lot of Ireland. In the beginning of my own acquaintance
with Donovan I sometimes argued with him, but I
soon learned better manners. He quite converted me to
his own notion of Irish affairs, and I was as hot an
advocate as he of head-smashing as a means of restoring
Ireland's lost prestige.