“I have seen the sheriff and Dr. Willis, this morning,” Mr. Yorke said, after his niece had left the room, “and they both agree in thinking that Father Rasle will not be molested for coming here to stay over one Sunday. They are probably right. The great objection is to his settling here. Besides, he comes so quietly, his being here will not be widely known. Half of his own people do not know that he is coming.”
The two gentlemen named by Mr. Yorke were among the few who secretly condemned the conduct of the town, but did not publicly avow their sentiments, possibly because they knew that such a proclamation would harm themselves without doing any good to Catholics. Aside from the risk of violence to person or property, the physician would be accused of bartering his principles for an increase of practice, the politician of intriguing for the Irish vote. That any one could speak a good word for the church or the Irish from a disinterested motive, was not for a moment admitted.
The day was overcast, threatening rain; but to Edith Yorke it was as though spring and sunshine were at the door; for Mother Church, long exiled, bent once more toward her bereaved children.
“What I do not tell him voluntarily, he will ask,” she said to herself,
thinking of Father Rasle. “He will point out what has been wrong in me, and reprove me once for all, and have done with it; and the fault that is not mine, he will lift off my shoulders. It is very heavy!” she whispered tremulously, and for a little while could say no more.
Edith was not breaking under her burden, but she was bending wearily, and the constant weight of it had taken away all her elasticity, not of spirits alone, but of body. While making her last examen of conscience, she felt too weak to kneel, and sank into an arm-chair instead, dropping her head back against the cushion, and closing her eyes. So seen, the change in her face was startlingly evident. Her manner was always so fresh, and her eyes and teeth lighted up her smile so brilliantly, whether she spoke or listened, or only looked, that one could not see that she was pale and thin. But the face that lay against the chair-back was very pallid, and even the hands stretched out on the arms of the chair looked sick.
“There are six sins that I am sure of, besides all the doubtful ones,” she said presently, sitting up. “That takes all my right hand, and the forefinger of my left hand. And now it is time to go.”
The shortest way to the house where Father Rasle was to stop led through the wood-path that Edith and Dick had taken when he left her after his first visit to Seaton. She recollected that walk as she passed again through the forest, and murmured a tearful “Poor Dick! where are you now?”
The trees were not, as then, bright with a prodigal splendor of color, and steeped in mellow sunshine. The gold was tarnished, the reds looked dark and angry, and the lowering sky seemed to press on the
branches. That silence which, in the glory of autumn, expresses contentment with finished work and wishes fulfilled, seemed now to mean only suspense or endurance. No leaf came floating trustfully down to give its earth to earth, and free the imprisoned gold into its native air; no gray squirrel was discovered gathering its store of beech-nuts for the coming winter; no bird flitted about to take one more look at its summer haunts. All was silent and deserted.