THE HOUSE OF YORKE.
CHAPTER XXI.
AMONG THE BREAKERS.
When the boat had slipped away from Indian Point, at one side, and Carl Yorke had strode off through the woods, at the other, Captain Cary lifted again the dingy canvas, and entered the wigwam that Edith had just quitted. In doing so, he was obliged to stoop very low, for the opening scarcely reached as high as his shoulders, and, had he stood erect inside, he would have taken the whole structure up by the roots.
Dick still lay with his arms thrown above his head, and his face hidden in them.
His friend bent over him, and spoke with an affectation of hearty cheerfulness which was far from his real mood. “Come! come! don’t give up for a trifle, my boy. You’re more scared than hurt. All you need is a little brandy and courage. Everything will turn out rightly, never fear!”
“Don’t talk to me!” said Dick.
Captain Cary’s heart sank at the sound of that moaning voice. When Dick Rowan’s spirit broke, there was trouble indeed, and trouble which could neither be laughed nor reasoned away.
“Do take the brandy, at least,” he urged; “and then I won’t talk to you any more till the boat comes back. You must take it. You’re in an ague-fit now.”
Dick was, indeed, trembling violently.
But, more to relieve himself from importunity, it would seem, than for any other reason, he lifted his head, swallowed the draught that was offered him, and sank back again.
His friend leaned over him one instant, his breast, strongly heaving, and full of pity, against Dick’s shoulder, his rough, tender cheek laid to Dick’s wet hair.
The poor boy turned at that, threw his arms around Captain Cary’s neck, drew him down, and held him close, as a drowning man might hold a plank. “O captain, captain!” he whispered, “I’ve got an awful blow!”
When the sailor went out into the air again, all the Indians had retired into their wigwams, except Malie, and her father and mother. The child, wide awake, and full of excitement, was swinging herself by the bough of a tree, half her motion lost sight of in the dark pine shadow, half floating out into the light. Now and then, she stretched her foot, and struck the earth with it. When the stranger appeared and looked her way, she began to chatter like a squirrel, and, lifting her feet, scrambled into the tree, and disappeared among its branches.
Mr. and Mrs. Nicola crouched by the fire, and sulkily ignored the intruder. When he approached and stood by her side, the woman did not turn her head, but tossed a strip of
birch-bark into the coals, and watched it while it writhed, blackened, turned red, shrivelled, and disappeared.
“I wonder if she would like to serve me that way?” he questioned inwardly; and said aloud, “I am going up to meet my man at the ship, and come back with him. It may save a little time, and I don’t like to keep you up any longer than I must.”
The man uttered a low-toned guttural word, the woman nodded her head in reply, but neither took any notice of Captain Cary.
“I am sorry to intrude,” he added stiffly; “but when a man is sick, he must be taken care of. Captain Rowan, in there, doesn’t half know where he is, nor what he is about. I will get him away as soon as I can. You shall be paid for your trouble.” He tossed a silver piece down between the two. “When I come back, you shall have more,” he said, and, turning his back upon them, walked off into the woods.
Neither of the two elders stirred till he was out of sight; but Malie slipped from her tree, darted at the money, and snatched it up. She was escaping with it, when her father seized her, took the money from her hand, and put it into his pocket. She only laughed when he let her go. She had no use for money, except to wear it on a string around her neck, and a string of beads was prettier. Besides, she had her treasure—the book the lady had given her that day. She threw herself on the ground, near the fire, drew this book from the loose folds of her blouse, and turned the leaves, reading here and there. The page looked like all sorts of bird-songs written out. Doubtless the birds and beasts had had a good deal to do with making the language of it. Who would not think that k’tchitbessùwìnoa was a
verse from a feathered songster? Malie would tell you that it means a “general.” Probably the birds call their generals by that name. One looks with interest on a child who can read this chippering, gurgling, twittering, lisping, growling “to-whit, to-whoo!” of a thought-medium.
While she read, Captain Cary, tramping through the strip of woods between the encampment and South Street, recollected for the first time that his clothes were dripping wet. “What a queer, topsy-turvy time we are having!” he muttered, wringing the water from his cravat, as he hurried along. “The whole affair reminds me of that fairy play I saw last winter. There must be something unwholesome in this moonshine.”
The play he meant was Midsummer-Night’s Dream. But there was now no clamor of rustic clowns in a hawthorn brake, nor sight of Titania sleeping among her pensioners the cowslips. There were but his own steps, muffled in moss, and the lurking shadows, creeping noiselessly away from the pursuing light.
By that short road across the Point, it was less than half a mile to the wharf where the Halcyon lay, and in ten minutes Captain Cary had reached his ship. His crew were all on board, and, as he walked down the wharf, he heard the refrain of one of their songs:
“And they sank him in the lowlands, low.”
The verse ended in that mournful cadence that sailors learn from the ocean winds—those long-breathed, full-throated singers!
At sound of the captain’s step, silence fell, and at his call a little imp of a Malay cabin-boy appeared, stood with twinkling eyes to take his orders, then shot away to execute them. When the sailor who had gone up to the bridge with the ladies
came back to the ship, the yawl was out, and Captain Cary sat in it waiting for him.
“Major Cleaveland wants to see you when you come up, sir,” the sailor said, as they sped down the river. “He says you’d better bring Captain Rowan right up to his house. He will send the carriage down for you. He is obliged to leave town at four o’clock in the morning, in the Eastern stage, something about a trial of his in a court somewhere, so he can’t see you in the morning.”
“Did anybody else say anything?” the captain asked.
“Mr. Carl Yorke said that, as soon as he had gone home with the ladies, he would come back to see Captain Rowan. He got up to the bridge just as we did.”
Captain Cary bent low over his oars, and muttered a word he did not choose to speak aloud. Plain men are almost always ready to have a jealous dislike of accomplished men, and a simple nature like Captain Cary’s can never do justice to a complex one like Carl Yorke’s. At that moment the sailor was thinking that, had Carl been the one to fall overboard, he would not have cared to wet his skin for the sake of saving him. And yet Carl had treated this man with friendly courtesy, and had admired and appreciated him thoroughly.
“Well, did any one else say anything?” he asked presently.
“Miss Edith felt pretty bad, sir. She leaned over the rail, and looked back to the Point, wringing her hands all the way, as we came up. She told me to say to you that she was sorry she had left Captain Rowan. I guess, sir, she is pretty fond of him, after all,” the sailor said confidentially.
“What business have you guessing or thinking anything about it?” demanded
his superior, with a haughty sternness that would have delighted Clara Yorke. “Keep your opinion till I ask for it!”
“All right, sir!” responded the sailor, and shut his mouth. If he was angry, he did not venture to show it.
“Well?” said the captain sharply, after waiting a minute.
“Why, sir, there isn’t much of anything else,” the man answered. “Miss Yorke said that they ought to have taken Mr. Rowan up with them, and that she did not understand how they had allowed themselves to be sent away in such a manner. And Miss Clara she said that you—isn’t there a boat ahead, sir?”
“No. What if there is? Go on.” He could not help being impatient.
“Well, Miss Clara she said that you knew best, and she wasn’t afraid of leaving Mr. Rowan to your care.”
The captain sat with his oar suspended, and stared straight ahead. The seaman hesitated, then returned good for evil. “Miss Clara was mightily taken with the way you went overboard, sir. She thought that you did it in a very splendid fashion. I told her I didn’t know any other way you could have done it, unless you had gone over back’ards, like Captain Rowan. She tossed up her head at that, and marched off, and got into the carriage.”
The captain’s oars flashed down into the water, and he gave a pull that made their boat skim the wave like a bird.
When they reached the Point, the fire was out, and no person was in sight. Captain Cary hastened up the bank to the wigwam where he had left Dick Rowan, but as he laid his hand on the fold of canvas a gruff voice inside challenged him.
“I want Captain Rowan,” he called out.
A brief “He not here!” was the reply.
“Where is he, then?”
“Don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” cried the sailor. “None of your nonsense, sir! If any harm has come to him through you, I will hang you all to the branches of these trees. Come out here, and tell me where he has gone, if you don’t want to be dragged out.”
He tore open the canvas, as he spoke, and in the dim light saw a swift, dark pantomime acted inside. One shadowy figure was springing forward, with the flash of a blade in the uplifted hand, when another caught him round the neck, and a slim arm ran up his arm, that held the weapon. The knife flashed an instant in that silent struggle of the two to possess it, then Mrs. Nicola pushed her husband back, and, leaning forward, caught the canvas from the sailor’s hand.
“The young man took Philip Nicola’s canoe, and went down the bay in it,” she said angrily. “That is all we know about him.”
It was not likely, indeed, that they would do him any harm: whatever their feelings might be, they would not dare to. There was nothing to do but return to the boat, and row down the bay in search of Dick. The light was still radiantly clear, and the whole surface of the bay plain to be seen. The group of islands showed like ashen blotches on that mirror. The sailor pointed out to his captain a black speck that floated away from among these islands.
“It is a boat, sir,” he said; “but there is no one in it.”
“Make for that nearest island,” the captain ordered; and muttered to himself, “Dick wouldn’t do it! he wouldn’t.”
No, Dick would not, in any depth of misery, have thrown his life away. They found him there, lying prone in the sand, where, years before, he had buried his father. What attraction had drawn him to that spot would be hard to tell. Possibly, now that he knew the meaning of failure, there was some blind feeling of compunction toward one whose failures he had reproachfully thought of.
Dick made no resistance when Captain Cary lifted him, and, after a moment, walked to the boat with him. He sat there, with his head bowed forward, while they rowed back to the ship. He was like one who is but half-aroused from sleep, and has a mind to fall back into it. He submitted to all that was required of him, took what they gave him, did what they bade him. It was not much they prescribed—only dry clothes and a bed.
There is a power of instinctive recoil by which some natures are saved from being destroyed by the shock of a great blow. The senses shut their inner doors at the jar of the enemy’s approach, and the soul, in some remote privacy of its being, arms itself before coming forth to see who knocks at its portal and bids it to battle. But for this merciful interposition, it would have fared hard with Dick Rowan, when, struck by the lightning of a glance, the framework on which all his life had been built up gave way without a moment’s warning.
His friend left him after awhile, and went up to the Cleavelands. Hester had expected Dick, but was too much occupied with her husband to be very curious regarding the accident. The young man had been knocked over by the boom, she had been told, and the result was nothing worse than a wetting. A wetting was bad, to be sure; she was so sorry;
she hoped that Mr. Rowan had put on dry clothes at once, and taken something hot. He must really take care of himself. But—and here Mrs. Hester evidently considered herself returning to the subject in hand—was there ever anything more provoking than this journey? Why could not that tiresome case have been tried at Seaton instead of Machias? Why did not the judge see about it? Why did not her husband’s lawyer let him know in season, so that he could have driven through in his own carriage by day, and not be obliged to post over the road by night in those horrible coaches?
“In short,” laughed the husband, “why is not all the machinery of civilization regulated with an eye single to the convenience of Mrs. Hester Cleaveland’s husband?”
When no one else was present, the gentleman could take these absurd cares with an equally absurd complacency, and really seem to believe that he was a pining invalid instead of a stout, rubicund man; but the grave and wondering face of his visitor made him a little ashamed of such coddling.
The business did not take long to settle. All the preliminaries had been fully arranged before, neither gentleman being prone to leave his affairs at loose ends. In a few minutes they shook hands, dissolving all connection, except a friendly one, and wishing each other very heartily success and happiness. The Halcyon, which they had owned together, was sold, and, if the sailor went to sea again, he had a mind to go in a new ship of his own, and be quite independent.
Hester also took a kind leave of her guest, hoping to meet him again before long, since, for the present, he was going no further than New
York. “You know we all go to Boston soon,” she said, “and it would not be very hard for you to come on purpose to see us.”
Then he went. Everything was quiet as he walked down through the town. It was late, and only two lights were visible. One, burning red, a cyclopean eye, close to the ground, showed that the incentive to any and every possible sin was to be sold by the bottle or glass, mixed or neat, according to the taste of the person having a soul to lose.
The other light was in three windows, at the top of a building, where the Know-Nothings held their secret meetings. Captain Cary knew what that light meant. He stood awhile on the bridge, and watched it, wondering how a nation was to preserve its honor if governed by such men and such means. A secret conclave, met with closed doors and pass-word, and not one man of proved integrity inside!
“If they are patriots, then Washington was not one,” was the conclusion the sailor came to; and, having reached it, he walked on, and left that nest of slanderers and plotters to do their evil work. “I’d like to clean out that hall!” he mused as he went.
When he reached the ship, he found that Dick Rowan had roused himself sufficiently to have one wish, and that an imperative one. “Take me away from here, Cary!” he begged. “There is nothing to keep you now. Clark says that you have seen Major Cleaveland, and that all is ready to sail. Don’t wait. Sail early in the morning.”
It was true. There was nothing to keep them till noon, except their engagement with the ladies of Mr. Yorke’s family, and it was certainly for Dick to say whether that should be kept. There was some discussion
on the subject, but Dick was inexorable, and the captain yielded. He wrote a note of explanation and apology to Mrs. Yorke; and so it happened that, when that lady’s messenger reached the wharf in the morning, the Halcyon was miles below, standing out through the Narrows, with a blue, sunny sea stretching in front of her straight to the South Pole. On the deck sat Dick Rowan, leaning on the rail, and watching the foam toss and drop, toss and drop, with a lulling motion, like the to-and-fro of white, mesmerizing hands. And the face that watched that motion looked half-mesmerized, pale and dreamy, with only a groping of thought in it.
The ship went well, and within a few days they saw the rising sun shine on the masts and spires of New York. The evening of that very day, Father Fitspatrick, of Boston—Father John, his friends called him—coming in rather late from a lecture, was told that a gentleman was waiting in his room to see him. He went in, and found Dick Rowan sitting there, but not the Dick Rowan he had baptized the year before, and welcomed home, and talked gayly with within a few short weeks. This man might have been Dick’s elder brother, and a stern, pale man, too.
“Father,” Dick said faintly, “I want you to keep me a little while. I have come here for sanctuary. If there is any help in religion when other help fails, I want to know it now.”
“But what has happened? What is the matter?” the priest exclaimed.
Dick sank back into the seat from which he had risen. “I’ve lost Edith, sir, and my life has all gone to pieces.”
“Is she dead?” the priest asked.
“No, sir; but she loves some one else.”
Father John drew his chair close to the young man’s side, and took his hand. “My dear son,” he said, “are you going to despair because a woman has been false to you?”
Dick looked up as though not sure that he heard aright. What! any one call Edith false?
“No, sir, she was not false,” he said. “It was something that she couldn’t help. She would marry me now, if I would let her.”
“Why, then, do you not marry her?” the father asked. “This is probably a fancy, which will pass away; and if she is good and true, she will do her duty by you.”
Dick stared at the priest in an almost indignant astonishment. “What, sir!” he exclaimed, “do you think me mean enough to marry a woman who loves another man? I always feared this, at the bottom of my heart, though I would not own that I did. And it was always true, I suppose, only she did not know it. I made a great mistake. I thought that, if I tried to be good to God and to her, she would love me. But I have been thinking it all over during the last week, and I have found out that we choose by our hearts, not our heads, and that we do not really love a person when we can tell the reason why. I had no right to buy her. She belonged to some one else.” He shivered, looked down a moment, then said huskily, “Yes, Edith was true!” and, dropping his face into his hands, burst into tears.
“My dear son!” Father John said, putting his arm around Dick’s shoulder, “don’t give up so! You have youth, and health, and friends, and a work to do in the world. Don’t let this discourage you. She is only a woman.”
“And I am only a man!” said Dick.
“What about your ship?” the priest asked, after a little while.
Dick raised his face, and controlled himself to speak. “Captain Cary is to take charge of her,” he said. “I couldn’t sail in the Edith Yorke again, sir. I would not trust myself off alone in her, with nothing else to think of, and no escape, unless I jumped into the ocean. It is haunted by her. Every plank, and spar, and rope of that ship is steeped in the thought of her. I have fancied her there, speaking, and laughing, and singing, just as I expected she would some day, and asking me the names of everything. When I used to walk up and down the deck, I’d imagine her beside me. I could see her dress fluttering, and the braid of hair, and two little feet keeping step. Why, sir, it was so real that I would sometimes shorten my steps for her sake. I never neglected my duty for her; but I looked at everything through a little rosy thought of her, and that made hard work pleasant. No, I can never again sail in the Edith Yorke. Have patience with me, father. Recollect, I have to overturn all that was my world, and have not a point to rest my lever on.”
“You a Christian, and say that!” the priest exclaimed. “Where is your faith? Where is your reason?”
Dick started up fiercely, and began to walk the floor. “I cannot bear it! I will not bear it!” he exclaimed. “You preachers, with your reason, that tramples on all feeling, are as bad as the scientists, whose science tramples on all faith. God made the tide, sir, as well as the rock, and the storm as well as the calm, and it is for him to say whether either is a foolishness. People who are wise, when they sit in their safe homes, and hear the wind howling, pity the sailor, and tremble for him; but, when you see a soul among the breakers, you scorn it. I tell you, I will not bear
such scorn! What do you think this loss is to me?” he demanded, stopping before the priest, who sat looking steadfastly at him. “It means that all the brightness and sweetness of life, everything that is dear to human nature, are torn away from me for ever. If I were a dissolute man, I could find a miserable substitute; if I were fickle, I could fill her place; but I am neither. I stand here, twenty-eight years old, and—I call God to witness!—as stainless as when I was an infant in my mother’s arms. It was Edith who kept me so. ‘Only a woman,’ you say; but that may mean more than an angel. She was my guardian angel incarnate. ‘Only a woman;’ but that woman’s shape walked with me through paths that might have led to perdition, and kept me safe. If, in anger, an oath rose in my teeth, I felt her hand on my mouth, and did not utter it. If I was tempted with wine, I remembered her, and pushed the glass away. I can be bloodthirsty, sir, if I am provoked, but many a sailor escaped the lash and irons for her sake. Once I had my hand at a man’s throat, with a mind to wring his vile life out of him, but I thought of her, and let him go. The memory of this is not to be reasoned away. Do you remember, sir, the time when you first thought of your vocation, and sat down to count the costs? When you called up the vision of your life before you, and stripped from it, one after another, wife, children, and home, and all that they mean, did you want any one to preach to you, in that hour, of common sense and reason? Didn’t you feel that you must let nature have way a little while, and didn’t you find it go over you like a wave?”
While Dick Rowan, bold with passionate feeling, poured forth this torrent of words, the priest sat perfectly
motionless, and looked at him. There was no sign of anger, no consciousness of insulted dignity, in his face, but only a profound sadness. This was no haughty churchman, as his many lovers know, but a worthy follower of that lowly One who said, “The servant is not above his master.” When Father John towered in the pulpit, or spoke from the rostrum, with his “Thus saith the Lord!” and “I am Peter, and James, and John!” there was an authority which could not be defied, and a loftiness which would not have bent before Cæsar; but in things temporal, and when winning and comforting souls, his was a charity most tender, and a humility most imposing.
Something in that face, now sleeping with Abraham and the fathers, arrested the young man’s impetuous speech. He faltered, and stopped; and, when the arms were stretched out to him, dropped on his knees, and leaned his face against that kind bosom.
“Forgive me, dear father!” Dick said. “I did not mean to be rude, nor to forget the reverence due to you. I know that all you would say to me is true; but—I die hard!”
CHAPTER XXII.
EXPLANATIONS.
Meantime, what had been going on in the Yorke family at Seaton? Mrs. Yorke had not feared that there was any serious trouble till she learned that Dick Rowan had gone away. She was in bed when her young people returned the night before, and knew only what Clara came to her door to say:
“We have had a delightful sail, mamma, and are all well. I hope that you have not been anxious. Mr. Rowan fell overboard, for a diversion, and, of course, got wet; but Captain Cary got him out, and he is all right now. Good-night, mamma, for me and the girls, and Carl. We are all here.”
However late her children might be out, Mrs. Yorke could not close her motherly eyes till she knew that they were safe under the home-roof again. Then she turned upon her pillow, and dropped asleep, giving thanks. She felt a slight uneasiness when Melicent, before breakfast the next morning, asked her to send Patrick down to enquire for Dick.
“Why, was he hurt? Is he not coming up, this morning?” she asked.
“I presume that he is very well, mamma,” the daughter replied. “But it would look pleasant to be attentive.”
This was said with an air of reserve, and the young woman evidently did not wish to say any more. In an equally diplomatic manner, she announced that Edith had a headache, and was not coming down to breakfast. Melicent was one of those persons who, when in possession of a secret, as James Russell Lowell has said, “will not let the cat out of the bag, but they give its tail a pull to let you know that it is there.”
Mrs. Yorke said no more. She found this manner annoying. But she observed at breakfast that Carl ate nothing, and that Clara kept up a constant stream of talk, that seemed designed to cover some embarrassment. She noticed, also, that no mention was made of Dick Rowan or their sail of the day before. When she arose from the table, and went
toward the entry-door, her eldest daughter interposed, with an air of being in the charge of affairs. “I would not disturb Edith now, mamma.”
“Melicent!” exclaimed her mother haughtily, and waved the young woman aside.
Edith was lying on her bed, dressed as on the day before, her face hidden in the pillow. She started when her aunt spoke to her, and turned a pale and tear-wet face. It did not need this to tell Mrs. Yorke that her niece’s headache came from the heart.
“My head does ache, Aunt Amy,” Edith said. “But I am distressed about Dick. He is displeased with me. I do not wish to speak of it to any one but him.”
“I have sent Patrick down, my dear,” her aunt said; “and you shall know as soon as he returns.”
Mrs. Yorke and her two daughters sat together, pretending to read and sew, but all watching the avenue gate for the return of their messenger. When he had delivered his news, and gone, the mother spoke with authority.
“Girls, I insist on knowing, at once, the meaning of this!”
“You had better ask Carl, mamma; he is the one to explain,” answered Melicent. “But I must say that Mr. Rowan has behaved ill. A young man whom one of our family has promised to marry should at least act like a gentleman.”
“Send Carl to me,” Mrs. Yorke said, rising. “And, Clara, say to Betsey that I shall see no one to-day, then go up and tell Edith.”
Carl was pacing one of the garden paths, and, for the first time that day, his manner showed agitation. He had already heard Patrick’s news, and his first thought was to echo Melicent’s opinion that one who had
been connected with their family should at least act like a gentleman. This sudden withdrawal not only gave occasion for gossip, but it was rude to Edith. That it left him in the position of a culprit, Carl would not allow himself to care.
“I thought the fellow had more spirit!” he muttered. “But it isn’t in him to act like anything but a rustic.”
As he said this, an inner voice made answer; not the voice of conscience, for that acquitted him, but the voice which he expected to hear from without: “Neither is it in him to speak or sing love to another man’s promised wife, though silence should break his heart.”
“And what if it broke hers?” asked Carl, as though he had been spoken to.
He glanced up at the window of Edith’s chamber. The curtain was down, hanging in close, white folds, shutting her in.
Then came Melicent to call him.
Carl found his mother in a tiny room, where she always took her siesta in summer, and where she held all her private conferences. It was a cosy, shady nook, with only a sofa, and table, and chair in it, and seemed intended as a place for confidential communion. In that room, with nothing to save him from her steady eyes, Mr. Griffeth had stammered out his apologies to Mrs. Yorke for misleading her son; there, her daughters came for advice and admonition; and there she herself retired when she wished to be alone. It was a place where a rebel could be brought to submission, or a penitent comforted. It is almost impossible to be confidential in a large, well-lighted room.
“Have you had any quarrel with Mr. Rowan, Carl?” his mother asked, the moment he appeared.
“Not an unpleasant word has passed between us, mother,” he answered.
She had been standing, but sank back into the sofa as he spoke, and he closed the door, and came and stood before her, doubting, at first, what the tone of their interview would be. Her question had been imperative, and that he could not bear. There are times in the life of the most dutiful when they feel that there is for them then no legitimate human authority outside themselves. But he saw that her face was pale, though the red curtain lowered over the one window behind her warmed all the light that entered; and her voice was entreating when she spoke again:
“My son, have you nothing to tell me?”
He sat down on the hassock at her feet, and leaned on her lap; and she knew all before he had uttered a word.
“My child,” she whispered, leaning toward him, “your happiness is my dearest wish; but there is honor!”
He took her trembling hands, and met her look firmly. “Yes, mother, there is honor,” he said. “But listen to me, before you conclude that it should be mentioned here in the subjunctive sense. You know, mother, I could not speak of love to a child. I did not wish to. It was enough for me to see that Edith was surely, though unconsciously, drawing toward me. If you had a rare plant, with a single bud on it, would you thank the one who would pluck that bud open before its time for blooming? And what flower is so delicate and sacred as a young girl’s heart? Besides, such a thought comes to a man also, when it comes first, with a feeling of silence. To my mind, it would have been rude
and indelicate to speak hastily. There was time, and, meanwhile, I guarded myself and her. Of course I saw what Rowan wanted and meant, and he also understood me; I am sure of that. I never dreamed, though, that he would succeed. I was not prepared for that passion of pity and gratitude which Edith has shown for him. When I knew, last year, that he had proposed, it was all I could do to control my anger. I knew that he must have seen in her some instinctive recoil at first, and yet have appealed to her pity. He did not leave her free to choose. I do not say that he realized that. He is an honest, noble-souled fellow, and he loves her deeply; but he lacks a certain fineness which should have told him when urging was proper, and when it was coarsely selfish. I am willing to admit that it may have been only a mistake on his part; but people who make mistakes have to suffer by them, and, if they are not to blame, no one else is. I, too, made a mistake then, mother, and I have suffered for it. I had a thought of saying to Edith, ‘Since you are to think of him as a suitor, think of me also, and choose between us.’ Two motives prevented me. One was pride. I would not enter into competition with him; and there I was selfish. But the other was better. I saw that she was incredibly childish, and looked upon his proposal rather as a request that she should go and live with him and his mother, as she had lived with them before, than as a proposal that she should be his wife. I waited till she should perceive the difference, and this summer I thought that she was beginning to. The night before he came, I wanted to speak to her. I could hardly help it. I would have spoken but for him. But no, I thought. Let her answer him fairly first. I supposed I knew
what that answer would be; and when she came down-stairs the next morning to meet him, I felt sure that it was to refuse him. I stood in the entry when she passed, and she knew that I was there, but would not look at me. She was very pale, I saw, and I thought it was for his sake. It seems it was for her own sake. No matter what I felt when I heard the words with which they met. I went away, you know; I did not choose to make a scene. When I came back, I had made up my mind to speak to him clearly, and as friendly as I could, and ask that he should give her back her promise, and leave her free to choose again. He would have done it, mother; I am sure he would. Had he been too loverlike, I should have made no delay; but, as it was, I thought best to wait till his visit was over. You could scarcely expect me to be perfectly cool and reasonable always. Under the circumstances, I think that I have shown as much fairness as any one has a right to require of me. I meant to see him last night, after the girls had come home—went to the sail with that intention. But he made me angry at starting. He stood there, and sang that ballad from Le Misanthrope,
‘Si le roi m’avoit donné’
—sang it before me, and with such an air of triumph and certainty as made me feel anything but pitiful toward him for a little while. Edith was offended, too. I saw her color with resentment. ‘Ma mie!’ It was too public a claiming. When we came back—you know what a night it was, mother.” Carl stopped, his face growing very red. “There are some things not easy to tell,” he said.
Mrs. Yorke put her arm around him, and drew his head to her bosom.
“Not even to your own mother, dear?” she whispered, with her cheek resting on his hair. “It was my heart that taught yours to beat, Carl.”
In that sweet confessional, he went on with his story. “It was such a scene as gives one that faint swaying of the brain that just shows the points in our prudent resolutions. The moonlight, the music, the air, the water, our very motion, were intoxicating. And Edith was there, and so beautiful!—an Undine, drooping over the boat-side, as though she might any moment slip into the water, and disappear, if I did not stay her. I sang what I would have said. I called her, and she turned to me!”
Carl lifted his head, caught his mother’s hands, and kissed them joyfully, then stood up before her with an air as triumphant as Dick Rowan’s own. “The time had come, and she was mine!” he exclaimed. “Edith belongs to me, mother!”
For the moment, everything else was forgotten; and the mother forgot, too, till she saw his face cloud over.
“Poor fellow!” said Carl, and knelt on the hassock again. “My heart aches for him. When he saw Edith look at me, he fainted. It seems cruel to be so happy at such a cost. I went up to Hester’s, last night, to see him, but he was not there, and it was too late to go to the ship. I would have borne any reproach from him. I would have been patient, and have explained everything to him. I think, mother, that I could even have made a friend of him. He is generous. But it is too late now.”
“You must go away at once, Carl,” Mrs. Yorke said presently. “It is the only proper thing to do. The family are pledged to Mr. Rowan, and, till all is settled between him and Edith, you must have no intercourse
with her here. My position is one of great delicacy. I cannot even advise Edith.”
While they talked, Edith had risen, and written two letters, one to Dick Rowan, the other to Father Rasle. Both were short, the former only a line.
“You have no right to treat me so,” she wrote. “If you go away without seeing me, never call yourself my friend again!”
It seemed hard; but she had said to herself: “If he leaves me here with Carl, I shall not be able to be true to him.”
She dressed herself to go out and post these letters, and had just come down-stairs, when she met Carl in the entry. She stopped abruptly at sight of him, and a deep crimson mantled her face as she waited for him to let her pass.
It was a new blush for Edith, for she knew why she blushed. But the Spartan spirit he had admired in the child was not dead, and she was herself the next moment. She bade him a quiet “Good-morning, Carl!” and was passing on, when he asked to see her in the parlor.
“Certainly!” she said, too proud to shrink.
Carl smiled as he held the door open for her to pass, and closed it after them. He was pleased with her dignity.
“I have been talking with my mother,” he said, “and she tells me that I must go away immediately. Do you agree with her?”
Possibly she had seen, and misunderstood his smile, for she chose to be very high with him. “I do not know why you should go,” she said coldly.
“Shall I tell you why it seemed to us that I should?” he asked.
Her look changed at the tone of his voice, which seemed reproachful.
Why should she assume with him what was not true? When had he ever shown himself unworthy of her confidence?
“No, Carl,” she said, “you need not tell me, and you must say nothing to me that you would not say to a married woman. I trust you, Carl. You have always been honorable. You are very dear to me, and I trust you perfectly. It is best that you should go.”
The last words were spoken rather faintly, and she had turned from him, and opened the door.
“I shall go to Boston,” he said, “and stay there. In a few weeks you will all come up, and I shall see you.”
She stood in the door now, with her face half turned, and her forehead resting against the door-frame, so that he saw only her profile. And, so leaning, as though from faintness, she put her hand back, and held out her letters to him, and he took them.
“Read them both,” she said, “and mail them for me. And, Carl, I shall not see you again before you go. And”—she stopped, as though her voice had failed her.
“I will not ask you to,” he said.
“And, afterward,” she went on, “I shall not see you in Boston. If you are at home, I shall go to stay with Dick’s mother.”
She did not look round again, but went up-stairs quickly, and shut herself into her room. It is not for us to intrude in that privacy wherein a young heart fought its first battle.
No one saw her that day; but the next morning she came out, and went about her usual employments, much in her usual manner. Whether, like that Russian empress, she was “too proud to be unhappy,” or she had been soothed by that trust in God which makes every yoke easy
and every burden light, or the elasticity of youth made continued pain seem impossible, we do not pretend to say. Human motives are not always easy to be read by human eyes.
Everybody tried to act as though nothing were the matter, and there was enough for all to do. Many things had to be planned and arranged in preparation for their leaving Seaton, and Edith had her own business to attend to. There were the Pattens needing double care since they were so soon to lose her; and the Catholic school to visit, that being permitted now; and a great deal of shopping to be done for her little flock of pensioners.
Within a fortnight came a letter from Carl to his mother, taken up chiefly with business details. But he wrote: “I called yesterday on Mrs. Williams to ask for her son. He was not at home, and I have not seen him yet. He has given up his ship, for this voyage, to Captain Cary.”
Carl could have added, but did not, that the call had not been a pleasant one. Mrs. Williams had just seen Captain Cary, and gleaned from him all that he had thought best to tell, which was, merely, that there seemed to be a slight misunderstanding between Dick and Edith. Her suspicions pointed at once to Carl, and she had not scrupled to express them to him when he came to her house.
“I am sorry not to see Mr. Rowan,” he had said, when he got a chance, ignoring her accusations and reproaches; and, with that, had taken a ceremonious leave.
“A pretty mother-in-law for Edith!” was his conclusion.
A few days after came a letter from Mrs. Williams to Edith. It was what might have been expected from
her. Dick had not been to see his mother; was stopping with a priest, and had refused to see her. What had Edith and those proud Yorkes done to her son, that he gave up everything and everybody, and went to hide himself in a Catholic priest’s house, instead of coming to his own home?
Poor Dick! could he have foreseen that such a letter would be written, he would have sacrificed himself a good deal in order to prevent it.
Edith dropped the letter at her feet after reading it, and said, not for the first time since Carl went away, “Oh! that Father Rasle would come!”
As she said it, and for a moment let slip the leash that held her hidden feelings, one could see that, however calm she might have been outwardly, there had been an inward gnawing all the time. A smile and bright words can mask a good deal. When she dropped them, there was visible a whiteness about the mouth, shadows under the eyes, and even a thinning of the cheeks—the work of that short time.
Hearing her aunt’s voice at the chamber-door asking admittance, Edith caught the letter up again, and her self-control with it.
Mrs. Yorke came in with an air of quiet decision, and took a seat by her niece. “I saw the outside of your letter, my dear girl, and know whom it was from,” she said; “and I have no intention of allowing you to be killed by others, or to kill yourself. I understand and respect a mother’s feelings, Edith, and I respect the obligation of a promise. But there are common sense and justice to be taken into account. Feelings, and, especially, the feelings of a young person who has scarcely learned to know herself, are not to
be weighed and measured, like iron and lumber, and stored away, and left unchanged, till called for. You know, my dear, that I have a great affection for Mr. Rowan, and would do him no unkindness nor injustice, do you not?”
“You were very kind to him, aunt,” Edith replied quietly. “I am not afraid of anything that you will say or do.”
“You need not be,” Mrs. Yorke said. “I will not ask you if you have learned to think that promise of yours a hasty one; but there are certain points which I wish to insist upon. They are of general application. Honor does not require that one should keep a bad promise. The fault, if fault there be, is in the making, not the breaking. Also, a woman cannot make a worse promise than one to marry a man whom she does not love. Many very good and pious people will tell you that esteem is enough, and that you will grow to love your husband after a time. That is false. You may learn to endure him, but it will be after all the bloom is wiped from your feelings, and love and delicacy both are dead in you. Let no one make you believe that your feelings are romantic folly. Believe, rather, that your adviser is coarse, though honest. One other dictum: there is no favor, nor obligation, nor affection which a man can confer on you, for which your hand is not too high a price to pay. Give gratitude, affection, even service, but not yourself. Do not sell your hand for any price: it should be a free gift. This is all that I can pronounce positively upon. For the rest, do not act hastily and without advice; for, aside from the question of your personal good, you might bitterly wrong some one else. If you have been hasty, it is a pity; but that cannot be helped now, and
should not be too deeply mourned. There must have been some doubt in Mr. Rowan’s mind that you did not know what you were promising, for his first word to you was, ‘Are you willing, Edith?’ Your answer was, ‘I am more than willing.’ If you deceived him then, unconsciously, from a loving and generous feeling, it was pardonable. But do not deceive him nor yourself again. He deserves from you a perfect frankness, and he has too fine a nature to take your hand if it is reluctant.”
“But, Aunt Amy,” Edith said, after a moment’s thought, “if a woman, out of gratitude, and from an utter impossibility of allowing herself to give such pain to a friend, should promise never to marry any one else, would that be right?”
“A man worthy of inspiring such a resolution would not accept the promise,” was the reply; “and the woman has no right to make it. But if she should offer to wait till he is reconciled, that might be soothing to both. Is there anything else you wish to say?”
“Nothing now, thank you, aunt. You are very kind.”
This conversation soothed Edith; but, still, she returned to her wishing for Father Rasle; not entirely for his own sake, though that was much, but because her need of confession and communion had become a great longing.
Her wish was destined to be speedily gratified; for the very next day, when Mr. Yorke came home to dinner, he brought his niece a letter from the priest.
She read it immediately, in presence of the family, and her face brightened. “How delightful!” she exclaimed. “He will say Mass here next Sunday. He is to come Saturday, that is, the day after to-morrow He sends his regards to you all. Let
no one know that he is coming, he writes, but Miss Churchill, and Mr. and Mrs. Kent, at whose house he will stop. There will be time enough to notify the people when he has arrived. How glad they will be! That was a letter worth bringing, Uncle Charles!”
Looking up with her smile of thanks, she saw his face clouded. “Is there any trouble?” she asked anxiously.
“If he had come while Carl, and Rowan, and Captain Cary were here, I should have been better pleased,” Mr. Yorke replied evasively. “He has, however, the right to come whenever he chooses. Answer his letter to-day, Edith, and invite him to stop with us.”
“Dear Uncle Charles!” murmured Edith, and glanced enquiringly at her aunt.
“Tell him, for me, that we should all be very happy to have him as a guest,” said Mrs. Yorke.
A smiling nod from Melicent and from Clara confirmed this assertion.
“Dear me!” Edith sighed out, wiping her eyes, “I do think that you are the most beautiful people I ever knew.”
They all laughed at her way of saying it, and the little cloud disappeared. Mr. Yorke did not think it best to tell them that the Know-Nothings had called a public meeting for the next evening. There had been no such meeting for several months, and this might not be of any consequence.
The invitation was written, and sent, and on Saturday morning the answer came, only a few hours preceding Father Rasle.
He thanked them for their kindness, but found it necessary to decline their invitation. He must be where all the Catholics could come to him, bringing their infants to be baptized, and going to confession themselves. Besides the distance, he could not think of subjecting their house to such a visitation, which was likely to continue till late in the evening. His flock needed every moment of his time.
But, meanwhile, between the letter and its answer, the public meeting had taken place, and it had been of consequence.
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE NEW “OUTSPOKEN STYLE.”
We looked for dewy flower, and sunny fruit:—
He serves us up the dirt that feeds the root.
Aubrey De Vere.