Captain Cary complimented Miss Churchill in his own fashion: “We call that a pretty sharp ship that will sail within four points of the wind,” he said. “But I hear that you have been making way with the wind in your teeth.”
“I have not made much headway,” she answered, smiling, “but only held my own. I am anchored.”
Carl accompanied them up Irish
Lane, on Sunday afternoon. They called at several houses, and talked with and encouraged the inmates. It was a help to these poor souls to have some one to tell their troubles to. “But what shall we do when you are all gone?” they asked mournfully. To them, the expected departure of the Yorke family from Seaton was a misfortune second only to the banishment of their priest.
Their situation was, indeed, a cruel one. It was not alone the contumely to which they were subjected, and the being unable to hear Mass, but their sick and dying were deprived of the sacraments, and their infants were unbaptized. Yet no harsh word escaped them. Scarcely one seemed to recollect their persecutors. They were suffering for the faith, and it was God’s will—that was their view of the position. The instruments which God used to try them, they thought but little of. Carl Yorke went home thinking that he had heard better sermons that afternoon than he had ever before heard in his life.
Father Rasle’s continued absence was not voluntary. He would fain have returned to his flock, in spite of Mr. Yorke’s and Miss Churchill’s letters, but his superior added a command to their advice, and he was forced to restrain his zeal.
“Tell my people that I never forgot them,” he wrote to the teacher. “Every day at Mass I pray for their deliverance. It cannot be long before I shall visit them. Meantime, let them give their enemies no pretext for further injury.”
To Edith he wrote:
“Your desire to act in behalf of these persecuted people is natural, but I must forbid you. You may safely follow the advice of such good people as Mr. and Mrs. Yorke. But do not fear that, because you are inactive,
you therefore are useless. I visited once, in Europe, a spot where a temple had stood. Nothing was left of it but a few broken fragments lying about, and a single beautiful pillar that stood alone. Was that pillar useless? No; in its way, it was very eloquent. No one could look upon it without trying to fancy what the whole edifice might have been; and you may be sure that the traveller’s imagination did its best in rebuilding that temple. So, now, you shall be the little caryatid of the church in Seaton. You have the gift of silence: use it. Be as obedient and quiet as that solitary column, and let the world guess from you how fair must be that structure of which you are a part.”