THE HOUSE OF YORKE.
CHAPTER XV.
VOILA CE QUI FAIT QUE VOTRE FILLE EST MUETTE.
Madame Swetchine says: “The wrongs which the heart resents most keenly are impalpable and invisible.” We may parody this, and say, with equal truth, that the troubles most difficult to bear are frequently those which, to indifferent observers, seem scarcely worth mention. There is dignity, and a certain stimulating excitement, in great affliction and great wrong; but a petty persecution, which we would fain treat with contempt, but which, in spite of us, pierces with small, envenomed points to our very hearts, is capable of testing our utmost endurance. Who does not know how one malicious, intriguing woman can poison a whole community, break friendship that would have stood the test of death, and destroy a confidence that seemed as firm as the hills? The smiling malice, the affected candor, the smooth insinuation, the more than infantine innocence—happy he who has not learned by bitter experience these tactics of the devil’s sharpshooters!
Of such a nature was the earlier stage of the persecution suffered by the Catholics of Seaton. Servants were daily insulted by mistresses less well-bred than themselves. They had to swallow a gibe with their Friday’s eggs or fish; they were entertained with slanderous stories regarding the priest they loved and reverenced. This was, of course, without provocation. Who ever knew an Irish servant-girl who attacked the religion or irreligion of her employers? Workingmen could not go
through the streets to and from their work without being forced to listen to revilings of their church. This was carried to such an extent that they soon found themselves obliged to relinquish their open-air lounging-places, where they had smoked and talked after the day’s work was done, and shut themselves into their houses. Nor were they allowed to remain in peace there. Nearly all the Irish lived on one street, running from the bridge up the west side of the river, and called Irish Lane. When it was found that they would not come out to be insulted, the mob that gathered in the streets every evening marched up this lane, calling out to the Irish, challenging, taunting them. But not one word or act of retaliation could they provoke to give them an excuse for the violence which they were thirsting to commit. Father Rasle had given his people stringent orders to remain in their houses, and make no reply, no matter what was said to them, and to defend themselves only if their houses were broken into. They obeyed him with astonishing docility.
When, later, the people of Seaton found themselves covered with disgrace before the country for their outrages on Catholics, they strove to throw the odium on “a few rowdies,” or on workingmen from other towns employed in the Seaton ship-yards; and in a sketch of the town in the History of Maine, written since that time, the Catholics are accused of being themselves the cause of their own troubles. Both these statements
are false. In the town-meeting, which endorsed and even suggested every outrage that was committed, ministers and town-officers made inflammatory speeches from the same platform with any ignorant adventurer who might hope to raise himself to notice by reviling the church. Those of the townspeople who were not active members of the mob were, at least, passive lookers-on; and when, at length, acts of violence began, some of the most prominent citizens went to see the windows of the Catholic church and of the priest’s house broken, as they would have gone to any other amusing show. But we anticipate.
The prime instrument in this movement was the Seaton Herald, which Carl Yorke had left in a sinking condition. The Know-Nothings, wanting an organ, bought it for a song, and put into the editorial chair a man well fitted for the work. Under such superintendence, the paper rose to an infamous popularity. It was no longer a question of religious freedom, and law, and order, but of common decency. Every week the names of quiet, respectable people were dragged into its columns, that festered with lies—their names only enough veiled to escape the law, but not enough to conceal the identity. In a city, there is some escape from this disgusting notoriety—one can hide from it; but in a small town there is no escape. Everybody is known to everybody, and one lives as in a glass case.
Mr. Yorke looked over one of these papers—“looked holes through it,” Clara said—then threw it into the fireplace, dropped a lighted match on it, and watched its burning with his nostrils compressed, like one who smells a noxious scent. “Don’t send another number of your disgraceful paper to me,” he wrote to the editor;
but vainly, for the paper came as before, and was regularly taken in the tongs and put into the kitchen fire, except when Betsey or Patrick slyly rescued it for their own private reading.
“I don’t care for their lies,” Patrick said, when Mr. Yorke reproved him; “but I want to know what they mean to do. If a pack of thieves were planning to break into your house, sir, wouldn’t you stop to listen to their conversation?”
The Catholic children had also their cross to bear. The teachers of the public schools, anxious to have their part in the “great work,” were zealous in enforcing the Bible-reading, and careful to see that no Catholic child omitted the doxology which Martin Luther chose to add to the “Our Father” of the Son of God.
Suddenly an outcry was raised by the Know-Nothings. The pretext they had longed and worked for was given, and great was their joy. The incident was simple enough. The boy who lived with Father Rasle was found by his teacher to have a Douay Bible. He was ordered to take it away and buy a Protestant Bible. “I shall not buy you a Protestant Bible,” Father Rasle said. “Use your own, or go without.” The child was threatened with punishment if he did not bring one. The priest immediately removed him from school, fitted up the building formerly used as a chapel for a school-house, and employed a young Catholic lady, recently come to town, as teacher. The Catholic children gladly left the schools, where they had, perhaps, suffered more than their parents had elsewhere, and placed themselves under the care of Miss Churchill. How beautiful, how strange it was to kneel down and say an Our Father and a Hail Mary at the beginning of their studies! How
delightful to go out at recess and play without being assailed by blows or nicknames! How proud they were when Father Rasle came in to give them his weekly instruction in religion! It was quite different from their accustomed ideas of school-life.
Mrs. Yorke was much disturbed by this arrangement. “Edith will have to give up her new friend,” she said decidedly. “I honor Miss Churchill for acting up to her principles, even when it is sure to bring her into a disagreeably conspicuous position; but there is nothing that obliges us to share her danger. When a person comes out of the ranks for conscience’ sake, let her stand alone, and have the glory of it.”
Edith objected at first, but her aunt insisted, and the girl soon saw that, though it went against her feelings, it was right to obey.
“We are not Catholics, my dear,” Mrs. Yorke said; “but it is our duty and wish to protect you from insult. We have suffered in doing so. You know we have given up going to meeting, the sermons were so pointed, and given up the sewing-circle, because we could not go without hearing something offensive, and your cousins find it unpleasant to go into the street even. As to your uncle, his defence of the religious rights of your church exposes him to actual danger. Our life here is nearly intolerable, and this will make it worse if you and Miss Churchill continue to visit each other.”
Fortunately, Miss Churchill anticipated this, and herself put a temporary end to their acquaintance—“till better times,” she wrote.
“She has behaved well,” Mrs. Yorke said, after reading the note. “And now, Charles, I wish that you would show a little prudence, and
let events take their course without interfering. Why should you say anything? It does no good.”
“From which motive would you wish me to be silent,” her husband asked quietly—“from cowardice or selfishness?”
She made no reply, save to wring her hands, and wish that she had never come to Seaton.
“Now, Amy dear, listen to reason,” her husband said.
“You know, Charles, it is very disagreeable to have to listen to reason,” she objected pathetically.
He laughed, but persisted. “I have heard you say many a time that disinterested and intelligent men were to blame in withdrawing from public affairs, and leaving them in the hands of dishonest politicians. You said, very sensibly, that, if such men were not strong enough to prevent abuses, they should at least protest against them, and let the world see that patriotism was not quite dead. Perhaps, you added, such a protest might shame others into joining you. Oh! you were eloquent on that subject, little woman, and quoted from Tara’s Halls. The idea was that even the indignant breaking of a heart in the cause of truth showed that truth still lived, which was some good. What do you say, milady? Was it all talk? Are you going to fail me? ‘I appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.’”
Mrs. Yorke was smiling, and her face had caught a slight color. The repetition of her own sentiments had encouraged her, as the recollection of our own heroic aspirations often does help us in weaker moments.
His wife pacified, Mr. Yorke went out to work off his own irritation. He would not have had her know it, but he had been attacked in the street that very day when stopping to speak to Father Rasle. The
priest seldom went into the street unless absolutely obliged to, and would gladly have avoided subjecting any one to annoyance on his account; but Mr. Yorke would as soon have denied his faith as have shrunk from stopping to greet the priest cordially—would have so greeted him, indeed, if a hundred guns had been aimed at him for it. But it was not pleasant. He was a fastidious gentleman, accustomed to respect, and the impertinence of the rabble was to him peculiarly offensive. He had come home fuming with anger, which had not abated while restrained. Fortunately, he found something to scold at the minute he went out. A grapevine, which he had coaxed to grow in that unaccustomed country, had this year put forth its first clusters; by some mistake, Patrick had clipped the leaves off, and left the green bunches exposed to the sun.
“Pat, what fool told you to do that?” his master demanded angrily.
“Yourself, sir!” answered Patrick, without flinching. He had his cause of annoyance also.
Mr. Yorke denied the charge with emphasis:
“It is no such thing, you—you vertebrate!”
Patrick drew himself up with an air of dignified resolution. “Sir,” he said, “I’ve done my duty by you, and you’ve done your duty by me, and I’ve taken many a sharp word from you, and made no complaint. But I’m an honest man, if I am not rich nor learned, and I won’t stand and let any one call me such a name as that.”
Mr. Yorke laughed out irrepressibly. “Well, well, Pat,” he said, “I beg your pardon. You’re not a vertebrate.”
“All right, sir!” Pat answered cheerfully, and went about his work satisfied.
Mr. Yorke, his good humor quite restored, went into the house again.
“Poor Pat!” Edith said, a little zealously, when the others smiled over the story.
“We are not scorning him for his ignorance, my dear,” her uncle replied. “With Charles Lamb, ‘I honor an honest obliquity of understanding,’ and I also honor an honest ignorance of books; but sometimes they are amusing.”
“What did I hear you saying to Mr. Yorke, Pat?” Betsey asked the man that evening. “It seemed to me that you were impudent.”
“The fact is, I was really mad,” Patrick owned. “I’d been downtown, and there I came across the editor of the Herald, and the sight of him roiled me, especially as he grinned and made believe bless himself. I’d like to meet him alone in a quiet bit of woods. I’d soon change his complexion to as beautiful a black and blue as you ever saw—the dirty spalpeen, with his eye like a buttonhole!”
Betsey sat on the door-step, and looked up at the stars. “If I’d had the placing of ‘em,” she remarked presently, “I’d have put ‘em in even rows, like pins in a paper. It would look better. They’re dreadfully mixed up now.”
Patrick looked into the skies a little while, but his mind was on other things than the marshalling of stars into papers of pins. “I’m sorry Mr. Yorke went to that town-meeting to-night,” he said.
Mr. Yorke was, in fact, at that moment rising in the town-hall to speak. The Rev. John Conway had uttered a bitter tirade against the Catholic clergy, with a fierce recapitulation of the affair of Johnny O’Brian, the priest’s boy, and his Douay Bible. Dr. Martin had followed with cooler, but not less bitter, denunciation,
and another reference to Johnny O’Brian. A Portuguese barber had made an idiotic speech, and various town-officers, and prominent Know-Nothings, all more or less illiterate, had spoken, and all had seasoned their discourse with Johnny O’Brian. Finally, the Rev. Saul Griffeth had held his hearers spell-bound while he described, in glowing phrases, the inevitable and complicated ruin of the country in case Catholics should be admitted to equal rights, or any rights at all, and had painted a dazzling picture of the country’s future glories should Catholics be excluded. And here again the perennial Johnny O’Brian figured.
In the midst of a cold and threatening silence, Mr. Yorke got up. Never was his voice more rasping, his mouth more scornful, his glance more full of fire. “It was happy,” he said, “for one man that the Reverend Mr. John Conway was not Calvin; for, instead of being content to burn Servetus, he would first have tortured him, till even the flames would have been a relief. As for the Reverend Mr. Griffeth’s companion pictures of the country’s future, they were daubs such as no sensible man would receive as true representations, and the young man who painted them probably believed in them no more than he had believed in the precisely contrary views which he had expressed within a few years in the speaker’s own hearing. With regard to the other orators, he did not know what that illiterate and idiotic Portuguese barber had to do with the town affairs of Seaton, and he congratulated
the rest on the possession of Johnny O’Brian, who had certainly been a godsend to them. So long as a shred of that devoted child was left, they would have something to say. But the reasoning in the most of the speeches to which he had listened had reminded him of the Latin of Sgarnarelle, le médecin malgré lui. They had put their premises in the middle ages of Europe, and their conclusion in a little New England town of the nineteenth century. ‘Voilà ce qui fait que votre fille est muette.’ What, in fact, are we here to talk about?” He then went on to state his own views.
It is said of the French legitimists under the first empire, that in their scorn of the emperor, and their determination to regard him as a foreigner, they used to pronounce his name so that it seemed to be a word of twenty syllables. Mr. Yorke had that faculty. His enunciation was clear, and the letter r very prominent, and the mere pronouncing of a name he could make an insult. At first his manner had commanded silence—no one liked to be the first to hiss; but it became too scathing presently, and when one gave the first faint sound of disapproval, the storm broke out. He tried again and again to speak, but they would not hear him. Shouts and jeers arose, and cries of “Put him out! Down with him!”
“Touch me if you dare!” he said, facing them, and lifting his cane. They stood aside, and he walked out, and went home, not very well pleased.
CHAPTER XVI.
BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM.
Mr. Yorke went home from that first town-meeting, and opened his Bolingbroke to look for a sedative. He found this: “The incivilities I
meet with from opposite parties have been so far from rendering me violent or sour to any, that I think myself obliged to them all. Some have cured me of fears, by showing me how impotent the world is; others have cured me of hope, by showing how precarious popular friendships are. All have cured me of surprise.”
Mr. Yorke readjusted his glasses, and read the passages a second time; but it was not the sedative he wanted. There was something the matter with Bolingbroke; his was a worldly and selfish philosophy; and it was, moreover, a discouraging one; for the reader wished to believe that it was possible to awaken and keep alive in the popular mind an enthusiasm for justice. Mr. Yorke was not aware that in this warfare he had drawn nearer to God, and that what he missed in his old favorite was that final, heavenly motive which, running like a golden chain through the simplest human actions, strings them into jewels, lacking which the noblest human thoughts and deeds crumble like sand on the sea-shore.
Closing his book with a feeling of disappointment, his thought glanced down to later times, and he remembered a noble sentiment uttered by one whom he admired, indeed, but half-unwillingly—one of the purest and most heroic men of our time, a man who lacks nothing but faith.
“With God, one is a majority!” said Wendell Phillips.
The thought came down on Mr. Yorke’s heart like a hammer upon an anvil, and sent sparks up into his eyes and brain.
“I take back all that I have said against that man,” he exclaimed, starting up and walking to and fro. “A man who has a vision of absolute honesty cannot help being impatient of policy. Strong conviction never is, never can be, tolerant.” He ran
his fingers through his hair as he paced the room, and combed it up on end. He would have liked to go directly back to the town-hall, and perhaps would have done so but for the probability that it was now dark and empty.
“It is not pleasant to be insulted by such people,” he muttered; “but it would be still less pleasant to think that the rascals could silence me. I will be heard at the next meeting,
‘Though hell itself should gape,
And bid me hold my peace.’”
It was some time before Mr. Yorke had the opportunity he desired, though scarcely a day passed in which he did not speak some word for the truth. There was no other town-meeting that summer. The people contented themselves with the weekly scandalous battery of the Seaton Herald, and with a small domestic persecution. A few pious church-members were especially active. This was a kind of missionary labor which suited them well, for it gave the pretext of zeal to their bigotry and uncharitableness. If a lady could have persuaded her Irish servant-girl to eat meat on Friday, she would have gloried in the triumph.
“I will not eat of flesh on the day when the flesh of Jesus Christ was hacked and mangled for the sins of the world,” said one faithful girl.
“But nobody knows on what day of the week he died,” the mistress urged. “That is one of the lies of your priests. Now, Bridget”—laying a gold half-eagle on the table—“this money shall be yours if you will eat that piece of meat.”
The servant looked at her mistress with that dignity which a scorn of meanness can give to the lowliest. “Mrs. Blank,” she said, “you remind me of the devil tempting our Saviour when he was fasting.”
The temptation and the occasion
were trivial, but they called out the spirit of the martyrs.
Cold weather seemed to cool the zeal of the Know-Nothings; but with another spring it kindled again, making the Catholic school its principal point of attack. Anonymous letters were written to the teacher, threatening her if she did not give it up. The Herald contained, week after week, insulting and scarcely veiled references to her; and the children could not go through the streets unmolested. But no notice was taken of these annoyances, and the school prospered in spite of them. The children came unfailingly, not, perhaps, without fear, but certainly without yielding to fear. They were deeply impressed by the position in which they found themselves. All their childish gayety deserted them. They gathered and talked quietly, instead of playing; they drew shyly away without answering when the Protestant children attacked them. “Keep out of their way, and never answer back,” was the charge constantly repeated in the ears of these little confessors of the faith, and they obeyed it perfectly. Dear children! may they never lose in later years that faith by which they suffered so early in life. Herewith, one who watched and admired their constancy sends them loving greeting.
When the first examination for prizes took place in this school, Mr. Yorke was present, and made an address; and when it was over, he and Father Rasle walked away together.
“I am obliged to go away, to be gone a month,” the priest said. “I must go to-night. But I do not like to leave my flock to the wolves. There is no help for it, though. The bishop wishes to see me at Brayon, and I must visit the Indians on Oldtown Island.”
“I advise you, sir, to go as quietly as you can, and let no one see you go or know that you are going,” Mr. Yorke said.
Father Rasle looked surprised. “Why, you do not imagine that any person would molest me?”
“I do not imagine, but I am sure that the Know-Nothings would do anything,” was the reply. “It is not safe to give them an opportunity for mischief.”
Still the priest looked incredulous.
“I cannot see why they should touch me,” he said. “I have done nothing to provoke them. They insult us, they tell lies, and I do not resent it. Do you know the stories that have been brought to me this week? I find them amusing.” He laughed pleasantly. “See how they represent the church! A Catholic man, they say, wanted to steal a hundred dollars. Now, to take so much at once would be a mortal sin; but to steal ten cents would be only a venial sin. So my brave Catholic steals ten cents, and, after a week, ten cents more, and so on, till he has the hundred dollars. By this means, he secures his money, and is guilty only of a thousand venial sins, which he gets forgiveness for by giving the priest fifty dollars. That is one of Mr. John Conway’s stories. Here is another that was published in the Herald, with my name and the others in full. You know that Mrs. Mary O’Conner’s husband lately died in California. Well, the Herald says that the poor widow came to me, weeping and lamenting that she had not even the consolation of seeing her husband’s grave; and I told her that, for thirty dollars, I would have him buried here. She had saved thirty dollars, earned by washing, and she brought it to me. Three days after, I told her that her husband’s body had been miraculously
brought, and I pointed out the spot where it was buried, down here behind the church. But I warned her that she must not dig there, as it would be a sacrilege, and that, if she did, the body would disappear. Here’s another: Patrick Mulligan confesses some sin to me, and, for a penance, I tell him to give himself twenty-five blows with the discipline. Patrick goes home, gets ready for his penance, and suddenly remembers that he has no discipline. It is late at night. He puts his head out the window, and sees that Mrs. Mahony, next door, has forgotten to take in her clothes-line, and a fine new clothes-line it is. Pat blesses the saints, creeps down-stairs, steals the clothes-line, and, going back, cuts it up into a beautiful discipline. After he has piously beaten himself, he burns the cord all up, that he may not be known as a thief, goes to bed with a clear conscience, and sleeps the sleep of the just.
“Now, sir,” the priest concluded, “it is not likely that I am to be attacked for such stories as that. Of course, no sensible person believes them; or, if people should doubt, they can easily find out the truth.”
“The truth, my dear sir, is precisely what they do not wish to find out,” Mr. Yorke replied. “They want to be exasperated, and, since you will not afford them a pretext, they will welcome any lie, and no questions asked. Moreover, you are not to think that such slanders originate with the low only, and influence only the low. I came upon a book the other day written by Catherine Beecher. You have heard of the Beechers, of course? The title was Truth Stranger than Fiction: a Narrative, she calls it, of Recent Transactions involving Inquiries in regard to the principles of Honor, Truth, and Justice which obtain in a distinguished
American University. That university is in Connecticut; and the affair was one which created a good deal of stir among the Protestant clergy a few years ago. Miss Beecher seems to prove clearly in her book that certain eminent doctors of divinity, and professors, with ladies of their families, ruined the reputation of a distinguished and innocent woman. But what does Miss Beecher herself do, in the preface to this very book wherein she appears as the champion of ‘honor, truth, and justice,’ spelt with capital letters? She goes out of her way to speak of the Catholic clergy, and asserts that, since their ministrations are efficacious, no matter what their characters may be, ‘there is no special necessity, on this account, to limit admissions to this office to those only who are virtuous and devout.’ Now, the sentence is artfully worded to evade the charge of slander; but almost all non-Catholics interpret it, as the writer wished they should, to mean that, in ordaining a Catholic priest, it is not considered of any consequence whether he is a man of good character or not. It has been so interpreted by every person whom I have asked to read it. I give you another instance: Doctor Martin took upon himself to send Edith some anti-Catholic books, which I returned to him without letting her see them. I glanced into one, and found it divided into paragraphs, each containing a charge against your church, illustrated by an anecdote. I read one paragraph, headed A Church without a Holy Ghost. Of course, you were charged with not believing in sanctification; and the anecdote was of a man who became a Protestant after having been a Catholic forty years. When his new teachers told him of the Holy Ghost, he exclaimed, ‘Holy Ghost! What
is that? I have been in the Catholic Church forty years, and I never heard of a Holy Ghost.’ Now, sir, this, of course, seems to you idiotic; but a Protestant doctor of divinity keeps such books, and gives them to people to read, and repeats such falsehoods in his sermons. You see what you have to expect.”
“Shall I, then, publish a card denying the truth of these stories?” Father Rasle asked, with an expression of face which showed his distaste for the task.
“No one will read it if you do,” was the reply. “You must leave all to time. At present, for you to be accused is to be condemned. Who was it—Montesquieu?—who says, ‘If you are accused of having stolen the towers of Notre Dame, bolt at once’? That is your case. Whatever they may charge you with, consider yourself convicted.”
They had by this time reached the priest’s house, a little cottage close to the corner of the two streets. Mr. Yorke declining an invitation to enter, they leaned on the gate a few minutes to finish their talk.
“You must not judge our country by what you see here,” Mr. Yorke said. “What you complain of is merely the abuse of a good gift. A priest of your church has expressed himself very well concerning these difficulties. ‘It always pains me, in such periods,’ he says, ‘to hear men express doubt concerning our institutions. As for me, I would rather suffer from the license of freedom than the oppression of authority. War is better than a false peace; riot better than servitude; heresy better than indifference. But none of these things,’ he adds, ‘is to my liking. And may the good God preserve us from them all!’ That was Father John, an American priest.”
“Ah! I know him,” Father Rasle
said brightly. “I happened to travel once in his company. We were in a steamboat, and some minister entered into controversy with him. Catholic Christianity degrades the man, the minister said. The Catholic cannot hold any communication with God. If he should be cast away on a desert island, he would be without God. All must come to him through the church. He has in himself no power to reflect the divine motions. ‘You mistake,’ says Father John; ‘and I can show by a familiar figure; Suppose that every man in the world should insist that his timepiece was correct, and should refuse to regulate it by any other. Of course, the chronometers would all wag their several ways, no two alike, and there would be a ceaseless wrangling as to what was the time of day, and every man would think that he carried the sun in his pocket. To the dogs with the meridian and the almanac! my watch is right! That is Protestantism. Now, the Catholic has his spiritual dial also; but since he knows that it is a fallible instrument, he keeps it regulated by the great clock of the church. The consequence is truth and harmony. Every Catholic conscience ticks alike; and, when the meridian-gun of the great regulator is fired, every man says, ‘It’s twelve o’clock. Amen!’”
Mr. Yorke’s warning was well-timed, for the event proved that Father Rasle would scarcely have been allowed to leave the town without molestation had it been known that he was going. No one knew it, however, but the priest’s housekeeper, Mr. Yorke, and the man who drove him over to Brayon that night.
“I do not think that any precaution was needed,” Father Rasle said to his companion, as they drove through the dewy woods by starlight. “But since it was as easy to come
away quiet, why, I have. I have no wish or right to throw my life away.”
Mr. Yorke did not know what had happened till Patrick told him the next morning. The crowd had gathered in the streets, it appeared, and taken their usual promenade up Irish Lane, with the usual result. No one came out or answered them, and they could not see a face in the windows, even. But if the patience of the Irish was not worn out, that of their persecutors was. Since they could not provoke an attack, they would make one. From Irish Lane they had marched to the priest’s house, arming themselves with stones and brickbats.
“There isn’t a whole window left in the house, sir,” said Patrick; “and there’s a stone lying on Father Rasle’s bed, where it was thrown through the window, that would have killed him if he had been there, as they thought he was.”
We trust that certain expressions which Mr. Yorke made use of on hearing this story will not be remembered against him on the day of final reckoning. They were not pious expressions, nor mild, nor, indeed, very polished ones; but they were strong. He put on his hat with an emphasis which left a large dent in the crown, refused to take any breakfast, and started for the town.
“What does he mean to do?” cried his wife, wringing her hands. “I must go after him. Oh! if Carl were here. Girls, it is of no use to oppose me. I must know what goes on.”
The breakfast was left untouched, and the whole household gathered about the mother, coaxing and soothing her. Patrick should go down, they said, and keep his master in view.
“What protection would an Irish
Catholic be to him?” cried the lady.
Betsey would go, she declared, standing with arms akimbo and her fierce head raised. She would like to see the man that would stand in her way when she was roused!
But, no; Betsey was too pugilistic. If Mr. Yorke were to see her, he would be irritated. Some one more conciliating and politic was wanted.
Clara cut the matter short by appearing in walking dress. She would go down and see what the trouble was, and send a messenger home immediately.
Meantime, Mr. Yorke was in no danger whatever. People were, indeed, more good-natured than usual after the success of the night before. He encountered mocking smiles, but no threats. His first visit was to one of the selectmen. “What are you going to do with the rascals who broke Father Rasle’s windows, last night?” he demanded, without any ceremony of greeting.
The man assumed an air of pompous indifference. “I do not propose to do anything,” he said. “If they were brought before me, as a justice, I should try them. But I am not called on to take any step in the matter.”
“Perhaps you were one of them,” Mr. Yorke said bitterly.
The man’s face reddened. “I shall not take any notice of your insults,” he said. “It is well known that those windows were broken by a few rowdies who cannot be found out. The town is not responsible for them. And even if they were known, the feeling of the community is such that they would not be punished. People are so much excited against the abuses of popery, and the interference of the priest in our public schools, that they are willing to
see every Catholic driven out of the town.”
If there was ever a moment in Mr. Yorke’s life when he regretted being a gentleman, it would be safe to say that this was that moment. To talk with such a man was folly. But if some muscular Christian had entered the scene opportunely, and applied to the town-officer’s back a score or so of such logical conclusions as he was fitted to understand, or had enlightened his cranium by propounding to it an argument from an unanswerable fist, Mr. Yorke would, doubtless, have left the office with a smile of serene satisfaction, and a conviction that the dramatic proprieties had been sustained. No such person appearing, he went away with anything but an amiable expression.
His next visit was to the Rev. John Conway. The minister had just finished his breakfast, and came into the room with a comfortable, deliberate air, rather exasperating to a man who was not only indignant, but fasting. His guarded look showed that he expected an attack.
By an effort, Mr. Yorke greeted him courteously, then began: “I come, sir,” he said, “to ask you to raise your voice and use your influence to put a stop to such outrages as were committed last night, and bring the perpetrators of that to punishment.”
Mr. Conway seated himself with dignity, cast down his eyes, puckered his mouth accurately, put the tips of his right-hand fingers to the tips of his left-hand fingers in an argumentative manner, and spoke slowly and solemnly:
“I am sorry that any violence has been done. But when a community becomes incensed by encroachments which threaten their most sacred interests, and when they find that the laws are not stringent enough to afford
them security from an insidious foe, we cannot expect that they will act with that calmness and deliberation which is to be desired. I deprecate—”
“You are not in your pulpit preaching to blockheads!” Mr. Yorke burst forth. “I came here to talk common sense.”
A cold glimmer showed under the minister’s lower eyelids, and a flush went over his face; but he had more self-control than his visitor, or he had not that sense of outraged justice and decency which, to that visitor’s mind, made forbearance a vice, consequently he said nothing for a moment. There was, indeed, no more to be said. Mr. Yorke rose and went to the door, but stopped there. Though appeal was vain, warning might not be.
“I warn you, sir,” he said—“I, a Protestant—that your course is not only dishonest, but impolitic. You are working so as to secure the final triumph of those you hate, and to bring about your own ruin. These anti-Catholic mobs are not Protestant, except as they protest against all religious restraint. They hate Catholicism most, simply because it is the strongest religion. You ministers think, perhaps, that you use them; but you mistake. They use you, and they despise you. They speak you fair now, because you stand between them and the law and give them a certain respectability. Indeed, their only power is derived from you. But when they shall have crushed Catholicism, if they ever do, they will have the same weapons you have placed in their hands against you. Do not hope that by the course you are taking you are going to make Baptist, or Congregational, or Methodist church-members; you are going to make infidels.”
A sense of the utter uselessness of
his mission had restored Mr. Yorke to calmness. He spoke firmly, but without any excitement, and, having ended, left the house, and walked quietly homeward. Clara, coming down East Street, and looking anxiously right and left, saw him, and dodged out of sight. With her foot propped on a door-step, she made a writing-desk of her knee, hastily pencilling a line to her mother. While she wrote, three several families peeped and wondered at her through their blinds. She looked about for an Irish boy—saw one, and sent him with her message.
“Run like the wind till you come in sight of the house,” she charged him, “but walk slowly up the avenue, or they will think that you bring bad news, and be frightened.”
“All right, mamma!” Clara had written. “Everybody I meet is as quiet and innocent-looking as a cat that has been stealing cream. I saw papa this minute; I am going up to see Hester, and will be back before dinner.”
Mrs. Yorke kissed and feasted the boy who brought the news; Melicent searched for old clothes, and sent him home with garments enough to last him a year, and both nearly cried over him, “Poor little persecuted dear!” Betsey bestowed on him a pie, and the two Pattens, having nothing of their own to give, stole each of them a cucumber, which they slyly slipped into his pocket. People who lived with the Yorkes always thought as the Yorkes did. There was never more than one party in their house. Their domestics were partisans, their dependents adorers.
Edith went out into the garden, and gathered some flowers for the lad, talking with him meanwhile. It was a calm June day—after a rain-storm. The sky had started to clear away—got so far that there was
nothing left but a pearly fleck of cloud that just netted the sunshine—then had forgotten all about itself. A lovely, dreamy softness overhung the scene, and the drops of rain that lay on every leaf and flower shone, but did not flash.
The boy gazed at Edith with admiration. Her head was bare, and she wore a blue dress, with loose sleeves, and a little crisp white ruffle close around the throat. She stood on tiptoe, and stretched her arms to reach a branch of red roses. As she caught it, a shower of drops fell over her head and face. “Asperges me!” she whispered.
“Oh! she’s real pretty,” the boy said afterward to his mother. “She has dimples in her elbows just like baby.”
When the wreath was made, Edith hung it round the child’s neck, his arms being full, and walked down to the gate with him. “Try to be a little saint, and not be angry, no matter what may be said to you,” she said. “If you are afraid, say the ‘We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God,’ and she will take care of you. Good-by, dear.”
She leaned on the gate, and looked after him. Her cheeks were as red as the roses she had gathered, and her expression was not, as formerly, one of sunny calmness. She was as quiet in manner and speech as ever, but it was the quiet of a strong and vivid nature fully awake, but not fully satisfied, perplexed, yet self-controlled. So much had happened to her in the last year! She had been called away suddenly from childhood, and study, and vague, bright dreams to confront a positive and quite unexpected reality. Unless she should make a vow never to marry, then she was to marry Dick Rowan, that was her conclusion; and having once made up her mind in
that respect, she thought as little about it as possible. Perhaps her only definite thought was that Dick might have waited awhile before speaking, and let her study more; for study had now become impossible. She wanted to be in continual motion, to have work and change. A deep and steady excitement burned in her cheeks, her eyes, her lips. Her piety, instead of being tender and tranquil, had grown impassioned. To die for the faith, to suffer torments for it, to be in danger, that seemed to her desirable. She almost regretted that she had home and friends to bind her. If she were still with Mrs. Rowan, in the little house that was under that clay-bank, then she would be free, and perhaps they would kill her. She had scarcely been to Mass that year without thinking how glorious it would be if a mob would break in and kill them all. Her imagination hovered ceaselessly over this subject.
Seeing her uncle coming, she waited for him. “We must make up our minds that we have not seen the worst that they will do, little girl,” he said. “There is no law.”
She smiled involuntarily.
“Why, are you pleased at that?” he exclaimed.
“There might be a worse fate than dying for one’s faith, Uncle Charles,” she said, clasping her hands over his arms.
He laughed, and patted her cheek. “Is that your notion?” he asked. “If it is, remember that I have a word to say about it. I shall fight hard before you are made a martyr of. I see what you have been reading—Crashaw’s St. Theresa:
‘Farewell, house, and farewell, home:
She’s for the Moors and martyrdom.’
Do I guess and quote rightly, mademoiselle?”
She only smiled in reply. But well she knew that she had been reading from a deeper book than Crashaw.
A few nights after, the Catholic school-house was blown up with gunpowder, and left a perfect wreck. “Of course!” said Mr. Yorke.
“The teacher has taken the children into the galleries of the church,” Patrick said.
“The church will be destroyed, then,” replied his master.
It was not destroyed altogether at once, however, but every window in it was broken. This was done in broad daylight, just after a summer sunset.
Mr. Yorke put himself before the mob, entreating them to forbear, even trying to push back the foremost ones, but without avail. “Don’t listen to him! His niece is a Catholic,” they cried. “To the church!”
Two or three gentlemen drove up in their buggies, and sat at a safe distance while the work of destruction went on, and several women lingered on the outskirts of the crowd. In a neighboring street, out of sight, Edith Yorke stood with Clara, and listened to the sound of breaking glass. For a moment, natural indignation overcame piety in her heart. “Oh! if I were a thousand men on horseback,” she exclaimed. “I’d like to ride them down, and trample them under foot!” Then the next moment, “Oh! how wicked I am!”
“You are not wicked!” Clara said angrily. “I won’t have you talk such nonsense.”
Clara was in that state of mind when she must scold somebody.
Of course the authorities took no notice of this affair. The teacher had the glass reset, and continued her school. Mr. Yorke wrote to Father Rasle, advising him not to return to Seaton for a while, and a lull succeeded.
And now the Yorkes took breath, and felt not quite alone, for Carl was coming home, and Dick Rowan would soon be there, and Captain Cary was coming down.
TO BE CONTINUED.