“So there is,” Mr. Yorke replied promptly. “The devil is there.”
“Charles, the devil, or human weakness, lurks under the surface of every side of every question,” his wife said with earnestness. “Good men are not entirely good, nor bad men utterly bad. There are men, and not ignorant ones, either, who have engaged in this movement from an honest conviction that there is need of it. They may be prejudiced and short-sighted, but they are” worthy of a patient, if not a respectful,
hearing. My wish is that to-night you would be in no haste to speak, and that, when you do speak, you would address the real meaning of the trouble, and not the miserable froth on the surface.”
What man likes to be told that he is not reason personified, especially by his wife? Not Mr. Charles Yorke, certainly. But the little lady was not one to be scouted, even by her liege lord, and he heard her respectfully to the end. Manhood must be asserted, however, and he compensated himself for the mortification after a manner that is often adopted by both men and women: he first absurdly exaggerated the charge made against him, and then answered to that exaggeration.
“I am much obliged to you, my dear, for explaining the matter to me,” he said with an air of meekness. “I am afraid that I cannot stop to hear more, for it is time to go. But I will remember your warning, and try not to make a fool of myself.”
Nine women out of ten would have made the reply which such a pretence is calculated to call forth—a shocked and distressed denial of having had any such meaning, a senseless begging pardon for having been so misunderstood, and a final giving up of the point, and temporary utter humiliation and grief, followed later, on thinking the matter over, by a mental recurrence to their abandoned position, and a disenchanting
conviction that men are sometimes artful creatures, after all, and only to be pleased by flattery.
Mrs. Yorke was not to be so entrapped. She accepted her husband’s submission with perfect tranquillity, as though she believed it both proper and sincere, and laughed a little as he went away. “My poor Charles!” she said, looking after him with tender indulgence.
Those little faults are so endearing!
The hall where the meeting was held was filled in every part; a dense mass of people struggled up or down the two flights of stairs leading to it, and a throng of men obstructed the street outside. Edith Yorke had been in the lane to see a sick woman, and, hearing that Miss Churchill also was in the neighborhood, had lingered longer than was prudent, hoping for her company home. Starting off alone, at last, she soon found herself in the midst of this crowd. They surged about her, muttering insults and maledictions on “that Catholic Rowan girl,” and seemed every moment on the point of stopping her. Not far in advance was Miss Churchill. An enthusiastic boy threw a stone at her, and the teacher wiped from her cheek a stain of blood where it struck. Edith held her head up, and walked straight on, looking neither to the right nor left, and, whatever ruffianly intention any one may have had, those who looked in her face stood aside, and kept silence while she passed. If the spirit that hardened her brow to the likeness of marble, shone in her eyes, and curved her red lips with a still scorn, was less Christian humility than natural loftiness, it was at least no petty pride, and it needed but the sense of actual personal danger to change it to supernatural lowliness. Her conviction, “They dare not