THE HOUSE OF YORKE.
CHAPTER XI.
POLEMICS AND THE WEATHER.
It is trite to say that error is most dangerous when mingled with truth; but never was this saying more applicable than in the case of the Native American or Know-Nothing party. "America for Americans" was not all a cry of bigotry and exclusion: the hospitality and freedom of the nation had been abused, and a reform was needed. But, unfortunately, it was possible to make the question a religious one. The fact that the greater part of the crime in cities is committed by foreigners, and that the majority of foreigners in the country are at least nominally Catholic, could easily, by a lame syllogism, be turned against the church. But what matter how lame the syllogism, when prejudice props it on the one side and malice on the other?
Beside this, the masses of any people crave an occasional popular commotion to vary the monotony of a peaceful national existence, and nothing else offered at the time. The advent of this party was, therefore, à propos.
How it used its power, we all know. It was, indeed, less a party than an army, for its measures were violent, invasive, and illegal. Its street-preachers, from Gavazzi downward, its pulpit-preachers, who countenanced their brethren of the mob by more decent but not less malicious attacks, its floods of foul literature penetrating to every nook and corner of the land, duping and inflaming the ignorant while it filled the pockets of irresponsible writers, editors, and publishers—the "canaille de la littérature," as Voltaire called such—its mobs and riots, its churches destroyed and clergymen maltreated, its committee of Massachusetts legislators, senators, and volunteers invading and insulting a community of defenceless women, all are matter of history. The spectacle was a strange and revolting one, and it was one which the country is not likely to see repeated with the same results; for it is incredible that American Catholics would ever again submit to such a persecution. It is more probable that, should we once more find our liberties threatened and our sacred places desecrated, there will be
"Thirty thousand Cornish men
To see the reason why."
In this movement, the ambitious town of Seaton was not to be left behind; but certain circumstances conspired to check for a while any great demonstration. The utter peacefulness of Father Rasle, and the undeniably good influence he exercised over his flock, gave no pretext for overt attack, and the fact that he was prospering and had built a church could only be cited as dangerous indications. Besides, Edith Yorke was, quite unconsciously, a shield to the church in her native town. Her uncle's family assumed steadily that no person who hoped for any countenance from them would say or do anything offensive to her. This assumption on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Yorke would not have had so much effect, but their children were more powerful. Carl was the idol and hero of the young ladies of the town, and not for worlds would one of them have seen directed to her that flashing gaze with which he regarded any person who even remotely reflected on his "cousin Edith." It did not take much to freeze that beautiful, laughing face of his when Edith was in question. Melicent also had a fair, and Clara a large, share of the gallantry of the town, and the former could disconcert by her haughtiness, the latter scathe by her passion, any offender against the family dignity. Major Cleaveland was also a powerful ally. Edith was to him an object of romantic admiration. He insisted that she ought to have a title, and used playfully to call her Milady and the Little Countess, and to say that, though he did not like the Catholic religion for himself or his family, he liked it for her.
"I naturally associate the thought of her," he said, "with incense, and lighted altars, and dim, rich aisles." And he quoted:
"Why, a stranger, when he sees her
In the street even, smileth stilly,
Just as you would at a lily.
"And should any artist paint her,
He would paint her, unaware,
With a halo round her hair."
Evidently, Major Cleaveland would not countenance anything likely to insult the dignity or hurt the feelings of this "radiant maiden"; and Major Cleaveland's countenance was of consequence in the town of Seaton.
Edith and Edith's religion had yet another protector in Mr. Griffeth. This gentleman was by far the most popular minister in town, and drew to himself all the explosive elements there. His manner of speaking was lively and theatrical, the matter amusing. Those progressive spirits found it delightful to have a pastor who, when he did condescend to draw from the Bible, took piquant texts, such as, Ephraim is as a cake that is half-baked. It provoked a smile, and that was what they wanted. Mr. George MacDonald had not then been heard of; but Mr. Griffeth already amused his hearers by holding up for their derision "old granny judgment."
"Do not believe," he said, "that God gives all the pain, and the devil all the pleasure. Indeed, I do not insist on your believing that there is any devil whatever."
All this was charming to his hearers, so charming that they did not absolutely require him to abuse Catholicism. Once only a member of his congregation gave him a hint on the subject, but the minister's answer was ready:
"I do not like to say the same things which everybody else is saying. If you wish to hear anti-Catholic sermons, go to Brothers Martin and Conway: they will satisfy you. I do not suppose that my silence on the subject will be interpreted as a leaning toward the Church of Rome."
"No, sir!" the gentleman answered dryly. "It is more likely to be looked on as a leaning toward the house of Yorke."
Mr. Griffeth colored, but did not deny the "soft impeachment." It would have been useless to deny it, for his partiality to the family was evident, though to which member of it his especial regard was directed, was not so easy to say. Well for him that it was not, or he would not, perhaps, have been forgiven.
So Edith stood, surrounded by a guard of devoted hearts, between the church and harm.
The physical and mental growth of this girl was fair to see. It was like the slow, sweet unfolding of a rose from the bud, with its baby lip pushed through the green to the rich and gracious beauty of the bursting flower. That morning look which belongs to the eyes of ingenuous youth still shed its calm, clear lustre over hers; her hair had darkened in tint, so as to be no longer a shadowed gold, but a gilded shadow; and she shot up like a young palm-tree, slender, but with the rounded, vigorous strength of an Atalanta. She had that perfect health which makes mere existence a delight, and she was perfectly happy, for all her wants were satisfied, and all her wishes were winged with hope. Friends she took as a matter of course. She did not think much about them, but loved them quietly, as people do who never wanted for friends. It is need or the fear of losing which develops intensity of affection.
What she did think of was: How does the wind blow and the sun shine? What are the names of those worlds in the sky, and how do they move? How does the seed sprout and grow, and what makes the flower unfold? Where do the birds go when they disappear in winter, and how do they know when to return? How does the snow-flake gather itself into a star-shape, and what shapes and colors the rainbow?
Her interest took in also another subject kindred to these: What distant people live on the earth? What do their eyes see? How do they live? How do they speak? Her mother's native land having been far away, made all far-away lands seem fair to her; and customs and speech different from those she had known did not repel, but attracted.
By some happy providence in her nature or her education, or in both, the girl's curiosity and love of the marvellous and beautiful took this direction, and therefore her delights did not wither like weeds when childhood passed: they grew for ever.
But what was best in Edith Yorke's growth was that she began to perceive the glories of the church of God, and, as her knowledge touched here and there at remote points, to guess at the grandeur, the symmetry, and the perfect finish of the whole structure. She had been ashamed of her religion, even while she clung to it, because all the professors of it whom she knew were poor and ignorant, and because she had seen it mocked by a higher class. She soon learned that all Catholics were not like those she saw, and that some of the noblest of earth, persons excelling in rank, wealth, learning, and virtue, had been devoted children of the church. It was a mean reason for being better satisfied with it, but it was better than no reason, and it led upward. What was it that these people found to love and reverence? She looked to see, and, seeing, she also loved and reverenced, not because the great did, not because any one else did, but because what she saw was worthy of such homage. Once attaining this elevation, it was easy for a nature like hers to be entirely and enthusiastically on the side of God, and to find a beauty and delight in the fact that had before repelled her, to rejoice that the poor and the ignorant, as well as the rich and the learned, had a place in the arms of this bountiful Mother, and that, while human science built a laborious track on which to crawl toward the heart of God, simple human love flew straight there, as the bird flies to its nest.
Father Rasle instructed her thoroughly, particularly in controversy. She must be able not only to defend herself when attacked, but to attack, if necessary. As yet, of either attack or defence she had had no need to think. That there was strife in the world, she almost forgot. The memory of all that had been miserable in her past life became as a dream, or was only real enough to keep fresh her love and gratitude toward her early friends, and to bar all intercourse between her and the village people. She saw them only when they came to her uncle's house.
Her life was simple—books, music, and drawing, a little gardening, and a good deal of riding on horseback. Major Cleaveland had given her a beautiful saddle-horse, and Carl was her teacher and constant companion in these rides. Mrs. Yorke, gentle soul! would have fainted with terror had she seen the reckless manner in which these two flew over the ground when they were out of her sight.
"You have had no exercise till your cheeks grow red," Carl would say; and at that challenge Edith would chirrup to her prancing Thistledown, and they were off on the wings of the wind. Thus cloistered and fostered, she grew up strong, sweet, and happy, and with the glance of her clear eyes kept back yet a while many a shaft that would have been aimed at the church.
One marksman, however, was not dazzled by her. Mr. Conway cried aloud, sparing not. Denunciation was this man's forte, and he improved the occasion. It was about this time that Miss Clara Yorke commented on the astringent qualities of the gentleman's character.
"Why, mamma," Hester Cleaveland said, "he had even the impudence to come to my house, and exhort me, and to say that we were all in danger from the influence of Father Rasle and Edith. I got up at that, and said that, since he had taken the liberty to speak to me in such a manner of my own family, I should not scruple to excuse myself from any further conversation with him then or in future. And I made him one of my most splendid bows, and left him alone; didn't I, you beautiful creature?"
This question was addressed to a lovely, gray-eyed infant that lay in the speaker's lap, and was followed by a long and interesting conversation between the two, the young mother furnishing both questions and answers, and in that delightful intercourse quite forgetting Mr. Conway and his impudence. What were all the crabbed old ministers in the world in comparison to mamma's own baby? Nothing at all! "Come, Melicent, and see how intelligent his expression is when I speak to him. He looks right in my face."
"I do not see how he could well help it, if he looks anywhere, since your face is within an inch of his nose," remarks Melicent dryly.
Hester had at this time been a year married, and was triumphantly, we must own, a little selfishly happy. There was not in her nature a particle of malice, but she lacked that sensitive and delicate regard for the feelings of others less favored than herself, which makes unselfish persons cautious not to display too much their own superior advantages. As her father had predicted, Major Cleaveland was to her the most wonderful man in the world, and as to Major Cleaveland's youngest son, words could not express his perfections. Their house was, in some occult way, finer than any other house whatever, their furniture had a charm of its own, their horses had peculiar qualities which rendered them more valuable than you would think, their very bread and butter had an uncommon flavor which distinguished it from the bread and butter of less fortunate mortals.
The Cleavelands remained in Seaton the first winter after this baby's birth, greatly to the joy of Hester's family. The winters passed rather heavily for them, and it was a pleasant break in their daily life to see Hester's horses turn into the avenue, with a great jingling of sleigh-bells, and Hester's pretty face smiling out from her furs behind them. Even Clara, absorbed as she was in the glorious work of putting the last finishing touches to her first novel—a novel actually accepted by a publisher, and to be brought out in the spring—even this inspired person would start up at that cheery sound, and run down-stairs to chat with her sister, and embrace her nephew, if he were of the party.
But there were times when no one could come to them, and they could not go out, but were as close prisoners as though walls of stone had been built up around them. One might as well have been in the Bastile as in a solitary country-house in one of those old-fashioned, down-east snow-storms. One could see them gather on winter days in a steady purple bank about the horizon, waiting there with leaden patience for a day or two, perhaps, till all their forces should come up, or till the air should moderate enough for a fall. There would be no visible clouds, but a gradual thickening of the air, the blue losing its brilliancy under the gray film, a flake sidling down now and then in so reluctant a manner that it seemed every moment on the point of going up again. Another follows, and another, they coquette with the earth, seem to talk the matter over in the air, finally, with a good deal of hesitation, one after another settles, and presently the storm comes on steadily, and what was a fairy star of whiteness becomes a thin white veil, then an inch-deep of swan's-down, then a pile that clogs the feet of men and beasts, and the wheels or runners of carriages, then an alabaster prison.
It is possible to be in a state of desolation under such circumstances, and it is possible not to be: that depends on the people, and on the mood they are in. Some groan over the trial; some, scarcely less agreeable, sit down and endure it with a most depressing patience; some shut the world out, and invent expedients to forget what sort of world it is; others, wider of mind and heart and clearer of sight, take the storm as it comes, and see all the enchantment of it. In that vast lily-flower that has curled down over them, and shut them in for a time, they find a honey that sparkles like wine. Lean out and catch a flake as it falls; it is a star, a flower, a fairy dumb-bell, a cross, a globe, always a wonder. Think, then, of the lavish millions of them!
One whom nature holds close to her heart has sung the snow-storm:
"Every pine, and fir, and hemlock,
Wore ermine too dear for an earl;
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch-deep with pearl."
One such snow in Seaton fell all day quietly, and all night, with a rising wind, and the next morning they woke in chaos. There was no up and down out of doors, but only a roundabout. There was a whirl, and a whiteness that dimmed off into grayness; there were no fences nor posts; a ghost of a pyramid stood where the barn had been; what had been trees were white giants coming toward them, apparently. They opened their windows to brush away the snow that piled up on the sill, and were blinded and baffled; they opened their doors to go out, and a solid Parian barrier was laid across the step, knee-high; they tried to shovel a path, and an angry wind and a myriad of little hands filled it in again. Patrick and Carl made a desperate effort to reach the village, and, after struggling as far as the avenue gate, were glad to get back to the house without being suffocated. At the door they found Edith catching snow-flakes to look at the shapes of them, and watching with wonder and delight certain thin, sharp drifts that a breath would have shaken from their airy poise, but which the wild wind never stirred even to a tremor.
"If one could only see the shapes of the wind!" she said. "Or is it, Carl, that the shape of the snow is the shape of the wind?"
Clara shook the snow from her brother's coat, and slyly dropped a snow-ball down his back; even Melicent forgot her dignity so far as to sit down in a bank, which enthroned her very prettily. Carl thereupon called her Mrs. Odin, and Melicent smiled involuntarily at the idea of being Mrs. Anybody. The mother and father, standing side by side, watched them smilingly from the window, and remembered how they used to play in the snow when they were children, and felt young again for a brief moment.
"But the spectres of rheumatism and sore-throat stand between me and all that folderol now," Mr. Yorke says, with a half-sigh.
"Yes, dear; but it is pretty to look at," says the wife cheerfully. "And we elders have the fire, which is more beautiful yet."
They pile wood on the fire. It blazes up, and reddens all the dusky room, and presently Mrs. Yorke wraps a scarlet mantle about her, and goes, with a little shiver, almost to the door, and calls out in the sweetest little bird-call: "Come in, children, come in! You'll take cold."
"Mother looks and sounds like an oriole in there," says Carl. "Come, girls!"
They all come in with very red cheeks and bright eyes, Edith running to show her aunt a large star-flake before it melts. Mrs. Yorke, bending to examine it, breathes on it, and it changes instantly to a spot of water on Edith's dark-blue sleeve.
The two young Pattens, who have developed into clever scapegraces, are pushing each other into drifts at the back-door, and pretending not to hear Betsey's stern calls to them to come to their work. When she appears at the door with her hands all ready to administer summary chastisement, they elude her with the skill of practised gymnasts or of children used to dodging blows, run under her very elbows into the kitchen, and are busily and gravely employed by the time she has turned about and come back. Patrick sets his face resolutely toward the barn, where are certain quadrupeds to be cared for, and flounders as if he were himself a quadruped, and becomes a lessening speck, only the head visible, and finally, when they begin to think that he is lost, triumphantly pushes the barn-door open, and is greeted by a neigh from the horse, a shake of the head from the cow, and a welcoming cackle from the hens.
That evening they had music. Melicent played brilliantly, and Clara sang them an elfish old song:
"'Wha patters sae late at our gyle-window?'
'Mither, it's the cauld sleet.'
'Come in, come in,' quoth the canny gude-wife,
'An' warm thae frozen feet.'"
When it came time for prayers, Mr. Yorke read that exquisite chapter in Job wherein God speaks of the incomprehensible mysteries of power and wisdom hidden in the things that he has made.
Carl, finding himself bored, leaned back in his chair, and clasped his hands over the top of his head. The leaning back brought within his range of vision the fold of a dark-blue gown, the toe of a small shoe, and a pair of lovely folded hands. He turned his face a little, and looked at Edith, who had drawn her chair near his, and as he looked his face softened, and he unconsciously changed his careless position to one more respectful. He saw her profile, with the lustrous eyes steady as she listened, and so uplifted as to show their full size. The firelight played over her quiet face, and made shine a curve or two of the large braid of hair wound round her head.
When Mr. Yorke read: Hast thou entered into the store-houses of the snow, or hast thou beheld the treasures of the hail? etc., she glanced at Carl, and smiled. She had known that he was looking at her, and was pleased that he should. Carl had a particularly pleasant way of looking at his cousin which she felt as a flower may feel the sun. It was as though they were talking together without words, and he knew her thoughts without the trouble of speech.
When the reading was over, Edith said good-night to each one, kissed her aunt on both cheeks, and went up to her chamber. The last good-night was to Carl, who opened the door for her.
"He has beautiful manners," she said to herself as she went up-stairs. "He says so much without speaking a word. He seemed to say good-night, but he did not speak. I think that, when we go to heaven, we shall all talk in that silent way. How odd that Carl and I should begin now!"
She wrapped a shawl about her, and stood before her crucifix, looking at it, and recollecting herself before saying her prayers. "When I am going to speak to Carl or to Dick, or to any one, I think of him. If I were going to speak to a king, I should think of nothing else, and my heart would beat quickly. I am going to speak to the One who makes kings."
She bowed her head with a calm reverence. But that was not what she wanted. Her heart craved emotion. "I am going to speak to the Son of God. He was poor, he was despised and rejected. When I was the poorest, I had my little attic to sleep in, but he had not where to lay his head. O dear Lord! it was pitiful. I will never, never turn you out in the cold!"
When Melicent softly entered her room, next to Edith's, and stopped a moment, hesitating whether to speak to her cousin, she heard her breathe out as she laid her head upon the pillow, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I lie down to sleep!"
Melicent stole noiselessly away from the door. She could not address any trivial word, even any word of common affection, to one who had just lain down to sleep in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It made sleep seem awful and sacred as well as sweet. It made guardian angels seem possible, even necessary. "How beautiful the Catholic religion is in some of its forms!" she thought, and, after a moment, knelt, and said a short prayer that she also might be guarded during the night, and that the Lord would not refuse to let her also rest in his name. She felt a sense of safety in having her cousin near, and the door of Edith's chamber seemed to her like the door of a shrine.
The next morning when they waked, the windows were all of a glitter with sunshine, and wrought over by the artisans of frostland with samples of every landscape under the sun—cliffs with climbing spruce-trees, silvery-sanded deserts with palms, an infinite variety. The sky was a dazzling clearness. The earth was like a stormy sea that had suddenly been enchanted into a motionless and ineffable whiteness; the wave curled over, with the spray all ready to slide down its back; the hollows were arrested in their sinking, the ripples frozen in their dimpling.
Then when evening came there was a grand display of northern lights, that pitched their tents of shifting rose and gold, with flags flying, and armies marching, and stained the snow with airy blood.
Carl stood in the cupola with Edith and Clara clinging to him, both a little uneasy, and told them stories of Thor, Odin, the Bifrost bridge, and Valhalla. What they saw was the Scandinavian gods carousing, he said; or, no, it was a repetition of that fierce battle of olden time, when, at night, spectators saw the dead arise from the field, float up into the air, and fight their battle over again in the sky, that wild legend that Kaulbach painted on canvas.
"Carl," Edith said hesitatingly, "I think that the truth is more beautiful than any legend."
"But we do not know the truth about northern lights," he replied, taking a scientific view of the matter.
She hesitated a moment. She was not used to speaking of what came nearest to her heart. But Father Rasle had given her a charge: "Whenever you have a chance to say anything beautiful about God, say it. That is your duty."
"We know that God made them," she faltered.
"Oh! that spoils the poetry of it!" Carl exclaimed involuntarily. "Pardon me! but to speak of God is to remind me of long, sanctimonious faces and disagreeable ways, and of a frowning on everything graceful and grand and beautiful."
"It isn't right!" she said eagerly, forgetting herself; "for it is God who has made everything grand and beautiful and graceful. When you see a fine picture, or a piece of statuary, or read a good book, you think of the artist, and admire him. Reading a play, the other day, you said, 'What a soul Shakespeare had!' and I heard you say once that Michael Angelo was a god; and last night, when Melicent played a sonata you liked, you exclaimed, 'That glorious Beethoven!' Why not say, 'That great God!' when you see the northern lights? Besides, God made Beethoven, and Michael Angelo, and Shakespeare, and taught them everything they knew. I do really think, Carl, that the truth is more beautiful than any legend. Why isn't it as fine to say, 'The God of glory thundereth,' as to talk about Jove throwing thunderbolts? I don't see anything very admirable in Jove. And why isn't it as sublime for the sun to hang and shine, and the world to go whirling about it, because God told them to, as for Phœbus to drive the chariot of the sun up the East?"
She turned her face, rosy with earnestness and northern lights, and looked at him with her shining eyes.
"Why, Edith," he said, "you're going to be a poet!"
She shook her head, and hung it a little bashfully. "No, I am not. But King David was a poet."
And so the matter dropped. But Edith had spoken her word for God, and may be it had not been entirely lost.
Perhaps we may be allowed here to say a word in defence of the weather as a subject of conversation. The assertion that Americans, and especially New Englanders, commence all acquaintanceships and all social conversations with an atmospheric exordium, has become classical, and to mention that on any given occasion the weather was the subject of conversation is to intend to be facetious. But let us question the good sense of this mockery. Are not the countless phases of the many-sided weather as noble, as beautiful, as profitable, and as harmless topics of conversation as ninety-nine out of a hundred things which people do talk about? Is a dull or a wicked speech, a dull or a wicked book, a fashion, a horse, your neighbor's character, a caucus, a candidate, even a song, or a bit of weather on canvas, a finer topic?
Ah, the weather!—skies of infinite changes, inexhaustible palette in which the painter's imagination dips its brush; calms, nature holding her breath; winds, the nearest to spirit of any created thing; clouds, the aerial chemists of light; showers, overflowing spray from fountains suspended in air; rains, the asperges of the skies; fogs, filmy veils which all the king's men cannot tear aside; droughts, continents in a fever; cold, the horror of nature, at which the small streams stiffen and die, the mountains whiten to ghosts, and even iron shrinks; heat, nature's angel of the resurrection blowing through the golden sunshine, and calling the flowers out of their graves, and bringing the birds from afar—would that all the bad, the uncharitable, the silly, the cold, the complaining talk that on this earth vexes the ear of heaven could be changed to sweet and harmless talk of the infinitely-varying weather, and of him who planned its variety!
After this protest and aspiration, it can be said of the Yorkes, without any intention of reflecting on their intelligence, that the weather had a good deal to do with their entertainment, from the spring round through the circle of flowers and snows, till beside the melting drift they found the first May-flowers making their rosy act of faith in the coming summer.
CHAPTER XII.
CARL SEES HIMSELF IN A GLASS DARKLY.
The summer we are thinking of was 1851, and in the June of it Edith had her sixteenth birthday duly celebrated by the family, and Clara published her first book, an event of still greater consequence to them.
In the June of this year, also, the Hon. Mr. Blank came down to delight and instruct the voters of Seaton. Mr. Yorke was highly pleased by this announcement. He had known the gentleman in Boston, and thought him eloquent. It would be pleasant to see and hear a man of note once more. "Come to think of it, Amy," he said, "we have been buried here four years, seeing nobody outside of the town. It will be truly refreshing. We must have him here to dinner or tea, and we must all go to hear the address. It is to be in a tent on the fair-grounds."
Mr. Yorke was quite bright and interested. He had been living in seclusion long enough to appreciate the value of a little excitement. He called on Mr. Blank at his hotel, the evening of his arrival, and had a very cordial and agreeable half-hour, talking chiefly of personal matters, and old friends. Two or three other gentlemen who were paying their respects to the senator withdrew after a few minutes, to Mr. Yorke's satisfaction. They were persons whom he did not at all like.
"I am worn out," Mr. Blank said, leaning back in his chair, and poising his heels on the back of another chair. "I have made forty speeches in thirty days. But it pays. The excitement is immense."
Mr. Yorke was rather ashamed to ask what particular issue created this excitement and palaver. The truth was, he was a little behind the times. His four years had been years of vegetation, and he scarcely knew what his old friends were about. He had been so much engaged in filling up the maw of his avenues, coaxing exotics to bloom for the first time in his gardens, and reading novels—actually reading novels—that he was politically in the position of a man who had had a four years' sleep. He was mortified and astonished to realize at this moment that he had been going over the Waverley novels again, when he should have been reading the papers and keeping the state of the nation in view.
His embarrassment was relieved by a loud shout that rose from a crowd collected in front of the hotel. The gentleman for whom this applause was intended took no notice of it, except by an impatient shake of the head. He sipped a little from a tumbler at his elbow, and calmly lighted a cigar.
The shouting ceased, and the Seaton band—not the cast-iron band this time—broke out in their finest style.
"Confound them!" ejaculated the senator. "Do they think I want to hear their noise? I am tired of Dodworth's and the Germanians; but this! Why, it's all trombones."
The music ceased, and the shout went up again.
"They will have me out," groaned the hero of the hour. "I've a great mind to be taken sick. Couldn't you go out and say I'm sick?"
"No, sir," Mr. Yorke said decisively, "I could not."
"Well, couldn't you go out and make a speech for me? You're about my build. It's easy. I could say it in my sleep. Honored—free and intelligent people—your beautiful town—glorious cause, etc. Fill it in as you like."
Mr. Yorke laughed. "I'm about half your build, and my voice is as much like yours as a crow's is like a nightingale's. Go along. When you've embarked in this sort of thing, you must take the consequences."
As another and still more imperative call came up, the honorable gentleman rose with a yawn, and the two stepped out into the balcony.
"My dear friends," began the speaker in silvery-clear tones, "words fail me to express the feelings which move my heart when I listen to this generous welcome." (Applause.)
"Well for you that they do," parenthesized Mr. Yorke.
"Your approval honors you more than it does me," resumed the senator. "For what am I but the mouthpiece by which you speak, as the thunder-cloud speaks by the lightning? The mass of the people gather the truth, and it is their fire which informs the leader, and incites him to utter it forth. They are the—" (Immense applause.)
"The idiots!" exclaimed the orator. "They have broken into my best paragraph where it can't be mended. I must wind up."
"The fame of your town has reached me," he went on. "I have heard of it as a place where freedom is not only loved, but adored, where oppression is not only hated, but trampled on; and to-day, when I drove over the distant hills, and saw the white spires of your churches rising out of the forests, they seemed to me like warning fingers pointing heavenward, as though the genius of the place bade me remember that the angelic hosts were witnessing if I and if you were faithful to the sacred trust placed in our keeping." (Tempests of applause).
"That always takes," remarked the senator to his companion. "Spires are trumps."
"My friends, to-night I am but a voice to you, but to-morrow we shall meet face to face. Let not a man be missing. Seaton expects every voter to do his duty. Again I thank you for your kind welcome, and wish you one and all good-night."
"What do they think a man is made of when they call him out to speak in a fog thick enough to slice and butter?" grumbled the orator, getting into his chamber again, and dropping the curtain between him and a second burst of music from the band.
Mr. Yorke raised his eyebrows slightly, and pursed out his under-lip. "What glorious things have you heard of Seaton, and where?" he inquired. "I was not aware that it was famous."
The senator finished the contents of his tumbler, and wiped his moustache carefully. "I have heard that it is an infernally rowdyish little hole," he answered. "I didn't care about coming here, but it was in my stumping programme."
Mr. Yorke took leave, and went homeward very soberly. He was disappointed and depressed, and nature seemed to sympathize with his mood. The road was muddy, and in the thick fog and darkness he could scarcely see the path at the side of it. When he turned into the private way that led to his own house, the trees crowded about, dripping, uncomfortable, and threatening, as if they had met to impeach the clerk of the weather, and concert measures for the putting down of this Scotch mist that was presuming to befog a free, enlightened New England forest. When he reached the gate, Mr. Yorke leaned on it a moment. "Oh! for the laws of the Locrians!" he exclaimed.
"Charles, is that you?" asked a soft voice near.
"Why, Amy!" returned the gentleman, starting.
"I was looking for you," Mrs. Yorke explained, taking her husband's arm. "I hate to have you come up this road alone."
Her thin dress was damp, her hands cold, her heart fluttering. She had been walking up and down the avenue for the last hour, listening for her husband's step. How did she know what might happen to him? The people were violent, and he was uncompromising and bold. Oh! why had she consented to return to that place where her youth had been blighted? No good had ever come to her there, nothing but sorrow.
"O woman, woman! how you do torment yourself!" Mr. Yorke ejaculated. "You will have it that we are in danger. You will have it that we are being hanged, drawn, and quartered, if we are ten minutes beyond the time."
"Would you rather we should care nothing about you?" his wife asked tremulously.
"No, dear," he answered; "for I know that your fears are in proportion to your loving."
The next day Mr. Yorke and his daughters went to hear the address. Edith remained at home with her aunt, who never went into a crowd. The road, the tent, and all about it were full of people. The enthusiasm was immense. When the speaker appeared, the audience stood up, the men shouting, the women waving their handkerchiefs—what for it would be hard to say. Probably they did not know themselves, unless they meant to express thus their admiration for success. For this man was the very embodiment of worldly success. Wealth and honors had come to him, not unsought, but without toil, and with little deserving. Success showed forth from his smooth, handsome face with its bright eyes and ready smile, even from the plump white hand, at whose wave thousands of voters said yea or nay. His expression was one of pleasant excitement and self-complacency, such as a man like him may naturally feel in such circumstances. He was a fluent speaker, had a musical voice, and a graceful manner.
Mr. Yorke listened to his exordium with great and anxious interest, and, as from generalities the orator gradually became more specific, his face darkened. It was, in fact, nothing more than a Know-Nothing tirade, with the usual appeal to the passions instead of the reason, and the old hackneyed abuse of the clergy.
Mr. Yorke rose like a tiger. "Come, girls," he said quite audibly. "I can't listen to any more of this trash."
His daughters followed him quietly; but, their seats being prominent, they could not get out without exciting attention, and the first to see them was the speaker. He faltered a little in his speech, and a faint color rose to his face; but he recovered himself immediately, and waved his hand to stop the hisses that were beginning to rise. But he felt the defection. He knew well that he was a politician, not a statesman, and he would rather have had Mr. Yorke's countenance than that of any ten other men present.
Mr. Yorke did not dine with the senator that day as he had promised to. "When I made the engagement, I did not know that you had become a wire-puller," he wrote briefly, in making his excuse.
Mr. Blank's face paled slightly as he read the note, but he crushed it carelessly the moment after. "Charles Yorke was always a hunker," he remarked.
"Carl, I want you to print a leader from me, this week," Mr. Yorke said to his son that evening.
We have not said that Carl, having finished his law-studies, instead of practising, had undertaken the editorship of the Seaton Herald.
"I am afraid, sir," the young man replied, "that, if you print your leaders in the Herald, you will have to pay the expenses of the paper, and insure the office against fire and mobs. At present the circulation is very small, and I dare not say a word against the party in power."
This paper was not, indeed, a very prosperous sheet; for the editor could not lower himself to the majority of the people, and they could not raise themselves to him. His politics were too little violent, his tone too gentlemanly, his literary items and extracts too pure and high in tone.
Major Cleaveland and Hester were taking tea at the homestead, and, when after tea Edith went up-stairs to read a letter she had just received from Dick Rowan, there was quite a warm discussion of the events of the day.
"After all, Mr. Blank is a strong speaker," Major Cleaveland said.
"A strong speaker!" exclaimed his father-in-law. "He is rank, sir!"
The ladies interposed a little.
"I'm not a Know-Nothing," Hester's husband said; "but neither do I condemn them. Their charges are not all false. The Catholic party proclaim their theory, which is very fine, and say nothing about the abuses which creep into their practice; their enemies denounce the abuses, and give them no credit for their principles. I think that the gist of the trouble is this: neither party will distinguish between the church and the clergy. When the body of Catholics will check their priests the minute they step out of their province or abuse their power, and when non-Catholics learn not to condemn a religion for the sins of individual professors, then we shall have peace."
The ladies and Carl went out into the garden, and left the two gentlemen to their discussion.
"I often wonder, Carl, that you express no opinion on these subjects," his mother said. "You must have opinions. I almost wish, sometimes, that you would argue."
"Which side do you wish me to prove?" he inquired listlessly. "I can prove either."
She sighed. "How you do need rousing!"
He put his arm around her as they walked up and down the piazza. "My opinion is, little mother," he said, "that opinions are a bore. Who wants to be always listening to what other people think on subjects? Not one thought in a milliard is worth putting into words. I am sick of words, of gabble, of inanities."
"Yes, my son," she said gently. "But one expects a man to give his opinion once for all on religious questions."
"It is not a religious question, mother: it is a question of religions," the young man replied with a sort of impatience. "There is no greater bore than that same question. Why does not each person believe what suits him, and hold his tongue about it, and let every other do the same?"
"But truth! but truth!" said the mother.
Carl shrugged his shoulders. "Everybody thinks he has it shut up in his cranium."
"What! you renounce religion?" she exclaimed.
"Not at all," he said. "They are so many spiritual gymnasiums where people exercise their souls. They are very pretty and amiable for women, and for men who need them; but there are those who do not need them."
"Carl, you break my heart!" his mother cried out, gazing through tears into her son's face. The boyish look had gone out of it. There were weariness and sadness in it, and hardness, too.
Carl was in a bitter mood that day, but he tried to soothe the pain he had given. "I'll do anything," he said laughingly. "I'll turn Catholic. I'll go to hear John Conway. I'll read the Dairyman's Daughter. I'll teach a Sunday-school class."
Edith came smiling out through the door. "Such a nice letter from Dick!" she said, giving it to her aunt. "And see, Carl, here is a little handful of sand from the Sahara, and here is an orange-blossom from Sorrento. It looks quite fresh."
Dick Rowan had that delightful way which so few letter-writing travellers know of making their descriptions more vivid by sending some illustrations of them. Writing from the south, he would say, "While you are in the midst of snow, there is a rose-tree in bloom outside my window. Here is one of the buds." He had emancipated himself from the letter-writers, and succeeded perfectly in his own way.
The next afternoon Mrs. Yorke sent for Mr. Griffeth, and saw him alone. "What have you done to Carl?" she exclaimed. "Are you making an infidel of him?"
The minister, confounded, tried to excuse Carl and defend himself.
The interview was not a pleasant one, and Mr. Griffeth was glad when it was over. He went out into the sitting-room where Melicent and Clara sat; but their constrained manners did not encourage him to stay long. They suspected the subject of the conversation he had been holding with their mother.
Edith sat on the piazza outside, studying. Her person was not in sight as he looked from the window, but a flutter of drapery on the breeze betrayed her presence. Mr. Griffeth merely bowed to the sisters in passing, and went out on to the piazza. Edith sat in a low chair with a book of German ballads on her knees. By her side were a grammar and dictionary. She was translating, watching thought after thought emerge from that imperfectly-known language, as stars emerge from the mists of heaven.
She glanced at the minister with a smile that was less for him than for the stanza she had just completed.
"Salve!" he exclaimed, bowing lowly.
"I am translating a song from the German," Edith said. "Is not translating delightful? It is like digging for gold, and finding it. I have just got a thought out whole."
The song was that beautiful one which has been rendered:
"The fight is done: and, far away,
The thundering noise of battle dies;
While homeward, glad, I wend my way,
To meet the sunlight of her eyes."
Edith was looking very lovely. The vines curtaining the end of the piazza where she sat shut her into a green nook to which only the finest sprinkle of sunshine could penetrate. The light, moving shadows flecked her white gown, and all the floor of the piazza about her,
"Making a quiet image of disquiet,"
and a flickering in her hair. Carl, who was always dressing her out in some fanciful way, had fastened a drooping bunch of white lilies in her braids, and the petals, lying against her neck and cheek, showed the difference between silver-white and rose-white. Her beaming face made a light in the place.
Mr. Griffeth, stooping to see the poem, laid his hand on the book she held, and she released it so suddenly that it had nearly fallen to the floor.
"It is beautiful," he said, reading it aloud. "Can you not fancy yourself that golden-haired lady, and that some warrior is coming home to lay his honors at your feet and claim his reward?"
Edith looked away quickly, and let the air take the brightness of her face. He gazed steadily at her, and wondered for whom the brightness was, or if it were only a girl's vague romance.
"I like soldiers," she said after a moment, and, though quiet, there seemed a slight stateliness in her manner. "My grandfather was a soldier all his life, and was as used to a sword as I am to a fan. Mamma said that one of his mottoes was, 'Never reckon the forces of an enemy till after the victory.' It was written in one of her letters to papa. If I were a man, I should wish to be a soldier."
"I also am a soldier; I fight the devil," the minister said, with a slight, bitter laugh.
"Do you conquer him?" she asked simply, but with the faintest little mocking smile.
Mr. Griffeth ignored the question. "You have golden hair, like the lady of the song," he said hastily. "If I were a soldier, Edith, and came home to you from battle, would you welcome me as that lady did her lover?" He touched her hair with his hand as he spoke.
A bright crimson color swept over her face, and she stood up instantly, drawing away from him, her eyes sparkling. Edith Yorke's innocence was not of that kind which is divorced from dignity and delicacy, and smiles at freedoms from everybody.
"Pardon me!" the minister stammered, and at the same moment, to complete his discomfiture, perceived that the curtain to the window directly behind them had been drawn aside, and that Mrs. Yorke stood there, flushed and haughty, with a look in her eyes which he had never seen there before.
His case was desperate, he knew, but he made an effort to recover. "I forgot myself," he said; "but I assure you I meant no harm."
"What harm could you have meant, sir?" said the lady, drawing herself up.
It was not an easy question to answer.
"You have probably made the mistake of supposing that the young ladies in my family are as free in their manners as those in some other families you may know. It is a mistake. I have taken care that their education shall second and confirm what is always the impulse of a refined nature: to regard such freedoms as offences when coming from any one but the one chosen to receive all favors."
Mr. Griffeth might apologize, and the apology be civilly received, but, when he walked away from that house, he felt that he would not be welcomed in it again. And so the church in Seaton lost a friend and found an enemy. The next Sunday the most bitter anti-Catholic sermon of the season was preached from the Universalist pulpit.
A few weeks after came a peremptory letter from Miss Clinton. She wanted Carl to come up to see her. What was he burying himself in the country for? Was he raising turnips? Was he going to marry some freckled dairy-maid? If he was, she did not wish to set eyes on him. What did they mean by leaving her to die alone, without a relative near her? It was unnatural! It was a shame! Let Carl come at once. If he pleased her, she would provide for him.
Miss Clinton's promises were not very trustworthy in this respect, for she had successively endowed and disinherited every one of her relatives and friends. But that was no reason why her request should be refused. She was a lonely old woman, and Carl must go to her.
He consented rather reluctantly, protesting that he would only stay a week. But, when he got there, it was not so easy to tear himself away.
"A newspaper to edit?" cried the old lady. "What signifies a newspaper in a little country town? Nobody ever reads it."
"Not when I edit it?" says Carl with a laugh. He found the old lady amusing.
"No, not even then, Master Vanity," she replies. "Stay here, Carl. It is miserable to be left alone so. I sha'n't keep you very long. You shall have any room you choose, and money enough to be respectable, and you may smoke from morning to night. There is only one thing you may not do. I won't have a dog in this house, for two reasons: he might go mad, and he might worry my cat. Will you stay? Old people live longer when they have young ones about them; and, besides, I'm lonely. Bird torments me. She hints religion, and reads the Bible when she thinks I don't see her. I know she is searching out texts that she thinks will fit my case. I am getting old, Carl, and I forget a little the arguments against all this superstition. They are true, but I forget them; and sometimes in the night, or when I feel nervous, the nonsensical religious stories I have heard come up and frighten me, and I have nothing to oppose to them. Alice torments me, too. She is so sure, she looks so much, she goes about with her religion just like a little child holding its mother's hand, while I am sure of nothing, and have nothing to lean on but this stick"—holding out a cane in her shaking hand.
"It must be comfortable to believe so," she went on, after two or three gasping breaths. "I envy the fools who can. But I can't. My head is too clear for that. And I want you here, Carl, to remind me of the arguments that I forget, and to talk to me when I am nervous. They tell me that you are a free-thinker, and I know that you are clever. Stay, for God's sake! I suppose there may be a God."
Carl shrank from the wild appeal in that frightened old face; shrank yet more from the horrible task assigned him. Unbelief, as he had contemplated it, looked gallant, noble, and aspiring; but this unbelief seemed like a glimpse into that perdition which he had denied. In this old scoffer he felt as if contemplating a distorted image of himself. It was as if he had been asked to commit a crime, a sacrilege. There was such a crime as sacrilege, he saw.
But he could not refuse to stay.
"Perhaps it would be better for us both to look for arguments against than for our theories," he said gravely.
Anything, so that he did not leave her, she insisted. Indeed, she wanted his masculine strength more than anything else. Every one about feared her, or was tenderly careful of her, but this young man had already more than once good-naturedly scouted her notions. He was one to be fearless and tell the truth, and she felt safe with him. Besides, he was a man, and clever, and it would not hurt her pride to be influenced by him. If her insensible and selfish heart felt no longer the necessity of loving, it still felt the equally feminine necessity of submission and sacrifice. Already in the bottom of her heart was a faint hope that Carl might insist on having a dog in the house, and that she might show her dawning fondness for him by consenting—a greater concession than she had ever yet made in her life.
CHAPTER XIII.
A RIVAL FOR EDITH.
Dick Rowan came home in the spring of '52 to begin a new life. In the first place, he was to have a ship of his own. Mr. Williams had a beautiful ship almost ready to launch, and he was to be the master of it. He was to name it, too, that had been promised him; but what name he meant to bestow was as yet a secret to all but himself. What could it be but the Edith Yorke? He had other matters to settle, too; he must become a Catholic. He had promised Edith that he would, if, on reading, he found he could do so conscientiously. He had read a good deal, more than he liked, indeed, and saw nothing to object to. Besides, the fact that it was Edith's religion and the religion of his father's boyhood was a strong argument in its favor. There was one other affair to settle, the thought of which made the color drop out of his cheeks, and his heart rise in excited throbs. He had studied it over and over during this last voyage, and his mind was made up. Edith was almost seventeen years old, and he meant to speak to her. She must know now, if she ever would, whether she was willing to be his wife.
Perhaps something said to him by Captain Cary had hastened his decision. The captain had seen what his studies were, and been vexed by them.
"You are going too far, Dick," he expostulated. "A man never should change his religion for a girl's sake. She won't like you any the better for it. Besides, Dick, I can't help saying it, you are making a fool of yourself. She will marry Carl Yorke."
Dick stared, reddened, then grew pale. "I think not," he said decidedly. "Don't say that again, captain."
The first thing to be attended to, then, was his religion. He must be a Catholic when he met Edith. Besides, if religion gives strength, he would feel better prepared to put his fortune to the test. He went, therefore, to a clergyman immediately.
"I do not wish to read any more, sir," he said. "I do not like the way in which learned men prove their arguments to be true. It is too ingenious. It always seems to me that the other side could be just as well proved, if one were clever enough. I am willing to believe whatever is true. I cannot swear to any doctrine, except the existence of a God and the divinity of Christ. Those two truths I would stand by with my life. For the rest, I can only say that I place my mind and heart passively in the hands of God, and ask him to direct them. I can do no more, except to say that, if I do not believe, neither do I disbelieve anything that has been proposed to me. Perhaps my head isn't a very good one; I dare say it is not. I certainly do not like subtleties. It seems to me that all necessary truth may be known and believed by a very ordinary intellect with very moderate study. What I want in religion is what I find in the faces of some of the poor people whom I see here at Mass in the early morning, and I don't believe they got that out of books, or got it themselves in any way."
"You are right," the priest said. "What you saw in their faces was faith, a pure gift of God. But you believe baptism to be necessary to salvation?"
"I am inclined to think so, but not sure," was the reply. "If I were sure, then I should already have faith, which is what I come to ask for. If it is necessary, I wish for it."
The priest mused. This was not a very fervent penitent certainly; but he was a sincere one, and in his fine, earnest face the father read a latent fervor and power of strong conviction which would be all the more precious when aroused.
Dick mistook the father's silence for hesitation, and his real impatience broke out. "I am uneasy, sir," he said; "I wish to be one thing or another."
The priest looked at him. "What do you mean?"
Dick paused a minute, resting his head on his hand, then raised his bright, clear eyes.
"What I say to a priest goes no further?" he said interrogatively.
"Your confidence is safe with me."
"Edith said that I should tell you everything," Dick muttered, half to himself, and for a moment his dreamy eyes seemed to contemplate the picture his mind held of her saying so. A smile just stirred his lips, and he went on. "I was born an outlaw, sir. The conventionalities which keep many people straight had nothing to do with me. Then I like adventure, and am hard to frighten. I have been about, and seen all sorts of people believing all sorts of things, and one sort was as good as another, as far as I could see. The effect of this is, of course, to make one liberal; but such a liberality, if a man has not a settled religious belief, unhinges the principles. There have been times when I have thought that it wasn't much matter what I did. I had half a mind to run away with Edith, and turn privateer."
"Who is this Edith?"
"She is a little Catholic girl who was brought up with me, sir. I'm going to ask her to marry me, and I think she will. She is the only person in the world whom I depend on, or who has any influence over me. I believe in her. She is as true as steel. And she believes in me. I can't fail her, sir. That thought has kept me from harm so far."
"It is a poor reason for being a Catholic," the father said in a dissatisfied tone. "It is a weak hold on virtue when your motive is an affection like this."
The young man smiled with a sudden recollection.
"When we were at St. Michael's, last winter, there was a great storm, and a vessel was wrecked close to the coast. We went down to the shore to see, but nothing could be done. One man swam to or was washed to a little rock not far from the shore. There he lay clinging, with the waves breaking over him. He couldn't have held on long, and we could not get to him any way. But Captain Cary brought out a big bow and arrow of his that always reminded me of Ulysses', for no one but the captain, I believe, could bend it, and, in a lull of the wind, he shot a little cord over to the man, and the man drew it out. Hope revived his strength, I suppose, and it seemed as if the tempest waited for him. We tied a rope to the cord, and a larger rope to that, and he drew it out, and tied it to the rock, and we saved him."
The priest smiled. "Very true. We rise, we are saved sometimes by degrees, and this little hold may be tied to a stronger. Go out into the church, and make the prayer of the blind man, 'Lord, that I may receive my sight.' To-morrow morning I will baptize you. I find you sufficiently instructed."
That evening Dick made a request of the priest. "When men were to be knighted, in olden times," he said, "they used to keep a vigil in the church. Now, if by baptism I am to be made fit to enter heaven at once, changed from a child of the devil to a child of God, why, it is worth thinking about. It is a great thing to happen in a man's life, and it happens but once. I would like to keep a vigil in the church. I could think there better than anywhere else."
The priest hesitated. He hardly knew what to think of this mingled coldness and fervor.
"Besides," the young man added, "you say that Christ is there bodily. I would like to watch with him one night. It seems to me wrong to leave him alone there now, when he is to do so much for me to-morrow."
The priest consented. "But do not fancy that the Lord is alone, though his earthly children forsake him," he said. "Doubtless the place is crowded with angels and archangels."
Dick gazed steadfastly at the priest, and for a moment lost himself.
"Then, perhaps," he began hesitatingly, but broke off there. "No, if he had preferred the company of angels, he would have remained in heaven," he said. "It will be no intrusion. He comes here to be with man."
Night came on, the church was locked, and all was dark save a small golden flame that burned suspended in air. A watcher sat far back in one of the seats, but after a while drew nearer, still sitting, not kneeling. The whole place was full of silence and a sense of waiting. In the shade, the stations hung unseen, but not unfelt. He had seen them that day, and they spoke through the dark, "Here he fell! Here he was struck! Here he was nailed to the cross!"
There was in this darkness and silence such a vacuum of the earthly, that the heavenly seemed to break through the thin wall of sense and flow around the soul.
When the priest came in at daybreak, he found his penitent prostrate before the altar. After Mass was over, the baptism took place.
The father was struck by the countenance of his convert. It wore a rapt and exalted expression, and he appeared to see nothing of what was visibly before his eyes.
"God bless you!" he said to Dick on going out of the church. "Come to see me. And for a while try to think of God entirely, and not of Miss Edith Yorke."
"Sir," said Dick quietly, "I have thought of Edith Yorke but once since I entered the church last night; and then it was as though the Blessed Virgin put her aside and stood in her place."
TO BE CONTINUED.