Certain it is, the church, though not officially supported by the republic, and had many and bitter enemies in France, was freer under it than she had been since the great Western Schism, and had a fair opportunity to prove to the world that she is wedded to no particular form of government or political organization, and can subsist as well, to say the least, in a republic as in a monarchy. We thought at the time, and we still think, though no enemy to monarchy and no blind defender of republicanism, that the French bishops and clergy committed a graveblunder in abandoning the republic and surrendering French society to the nephew of his uncle—a member of the Carbonari, a known conspirator against the Pope in 1832, and a favorite with the red republicans and socialists. It would be difficult to estimate the damage they did to France and to the cause of religion throughout the world. It will cost, perhaps, centuries of bitter struggle and suffering on the part of Catholics, to repair the sad effects of that blunder. But French Catholics had for ages been accustomed to rely on royal support, and they lacked the robust and vigorous habits under God of self-reliance. The bishops and clergy could easily have marched to a martyrs’ death, but they had with all their experience never learned the folly of putting their trust for the church in princes. They remembered the Reign of Terror; they remembered, also, the flesh-pots of Egypt, and shrank from the hunger, thirst, and fatigue of the desert.
The new emperor found the French people divided into three principal parties—the church or Catholic party, which included the Bourbonists and the better part of the Orleanists; the republican party, properly so-called; and the socialistic or extreme radical party, represented in the recent civil war by the communists of Paris and of all Europe. His policy on commencing his reign was avowedly to keep the control of all these parties in his own hands, by leaving each party something to hope from his government, and allowing no one to gain the ascendency, and, as far as possible, engrossing the whole nation in the pursuit of material goods. He acknowledged the sovereignty of the nation, professed to hold from 1789, and favored universal suffrage, which was in accordance with the views of the republican party; headopted measures to secure employment to the working-men of the cities and towns, among whom was the great body of the socialists, or communists, by his encouragement of expensive national and municipal works; and, to retain his hold on them and to protect himself from the assassins of the secret societies, he made his Italian campaign, drove the Austrians out of Italy, and prepared the way for Italian unification, and for despoiling the Holy Father of his temporal possessions and sovereignty; raised the salaries paid to clergy as servants of the state, and repaired churches and abbeys as national monuments at the national expense, to please and secure the church party. But he suppressed the freedom the church had enjoyed under the republic, maintained the “organic articles” of his uncle, and all the old Gallican edicts and legislation against the freedom and independence of the church in full force, trusting that she would see a compensation for her loss of liberty in the increased pomp and splendor of her worship or the gilded slavery to which he reduced her.
The recrudescence of infidelity, atheism, or materialism was a marked feature under the Second Empire, and the influence of religion daily and hourly declined; and all the wisdom and energy of the government seemed exerted todespiritualize, if we may be allowed the word, the French nation, to extinguish whatever remained of its old chivalric sentiments and its old love of glory, once so powerful in every French heart, and to render the nation intent only on things of the earth, earthy. His policy, being always that of half-measures, disguised as moderation, was not suited to make him true friends. His Italian campaign against Austria was pushed far enough tomake Austrians his enemies, but not far enough to make friends of the Italians. His consent to the annexation to Sardinia of the Italian duchies, the Neapolitan kingdom, and the Æmilian provinces of the Holy See, was enough to alienate the friends of international law, and to offend all conservatives and Catholics who had any sense of right or religion; but not enough, so long as he protected the Holy Father in the sovereignty of the city of Rome, to gain him the good-will of the infidels, communists, secret societies, or of the partisans of Italian unity. His policy of never pushing matters to extremes, and of winning and controlling all parties, by leaving each something to hope from him, but never what any one specially desired, necessarily resulted, as might have been foreseen, in offending all parties, and in gaining the confidence of no one. He had by his half-and-half measures succeeded in alienating all parties in France, and, by his Crimean war, his Italian policy, and his half-league with Bismarck to drive Austria out of Germany and increase the territory and power of Prussia, had succeeded equally well in losing the confidence of all the European nations with which he had any relations, and in finding himself without an ally or a friend.
The elections of 1869 disclosed the very unsatisfactory fact that he really had no party in France, and no support but his own creatures, and if he still retained a feeble majority in the popular vote, say of five hundred thousand votes out of an aggregate of six millions and a half, it was from a dread of another revolution, rather than from any attachment to him personally or to his government. This led him to a new line of policy, to abandonpersonalgovernment, to make large concessions to what iscalled self-government, and to throw himself into the arms of the apparently moderate liberals, as distinguished on the one hand from the church party, and on the other from the socialists, communists, or destructives, that is, of the feeblest and least popular party in France, and consented to the war against Prussia as his only chance of recovering, by military success, if he gained it, his popularity with the nation. His military expedition having failed, because he had, so to speak,unmartializedhis empire, and because he was not really backed by the French people, he was obliged to surrender himself a prisoner of war with his army at Sedan, and his dynasty was expelled by a mob. He had abandoned the Holy Father in order to serve the liberals at home and abroad, deserted the cause of God, and God, and even the liberals, deserted him.
France is to-day not only prostrate under the iron heel of the Prussian, but is without any government in which any party in the nation has any confidence, and, if she recovers at all, her recovery must be slow and painful, and subject to numerous relapses. Prussia, as we have said, will not readily let go her hold, and never, so long as she can help it, suffer her to rise from her present condition. The remote cause is 1789, or rather the causes that led to that uncalled-for and most disastrous revolution; but the proximate cause we must look for in the lack of wise and practical statesmanship in Louis Napoleon, who sought to govern France according to a preconceived theory, worked out in his closet or his solitary studies. When he took the reins of government, the Catholic party were really in the ascendant; and, had he been a wise and practical statesman, he would have seen that the only chance of reorganizingand governing France was not in laboring to maintain an equilibrium of parties, but in throwing himself resolutely on the side of the party, in studying and sustaining, without any compromise with the enemies of God and society, real Catholic interests, and in surrounding himself by thorough-going Catholic statesmen. Catholicity alone offered any solid basis for the state or for authority, order, or liberty. The other parties in the nation were all, in varying degrees, the enemies alike of authority and liberty, and none of them offered any solid basis of government. He should, therefore, have placed his whole confidence in Catholic France, and set them aside, and, if they rebelled, have suppressed them, if necessary, by armed force. Had he done so, and acted in concert with the Holy Father and the religious portion of the nation, he would have reorganized France, given solidity to his power, and permanence to his throne. But from policy or from conviction he chose to hold from 1789, and was incapable of understanding that no government that tolerates the revolutionary principle, or is based on infidelity or the rejection of all spiritual or supernatural authority above the nation, can stand. So-called self-government, without the church of God, teaching and governing all men and nations in all things spiritual, is only a delusion, for the nation needs governing no less than the individual.
But as we have already hinted, there are remoter causes of the present condition of France, and, we may add, of all old Catholic nations; and Catholics must not throw all the blame of that condition on the governments or the revolutionary spirit of 1789, still so rife. They have been and still are the great majority in all these nations, and why shouldthey not be held responsible for the prevalence of the revolutionary spirit, and for the bad secular governments they have suffered to oppress the church? Why have they suffered an anti-Catholic public opinion to grow up and become predominant? Why have they suffered the rights and interests of religion to be sacrificed to the falsely supposed rights and interests of the secular order? Can they pretend that no blame attaches to them for all this?
France has, at least since the death of Philip the Second of Spain, been the foremost Catholic nation of the world, and for a much longer time the leader of modern civilization; and in her we may see the causes that have produced her own fall and that of the other old Catholic nations. France, in this her supreme moment, has not, we believe, a single Catholic in the administration. The president is a believer in no religion; the minister of foreign affairs is no Christian, and besides is a man of very small abilities; the minister of worship and instruction says he is moral, but he is certainly no Catholic. The transition government, opposed as it is by all the other parties in the nation, of course must at present seek to gain the support of the bishops and clergy, or what we call the church party. In Spain, though the majority are Catholics and have votes, the government is in the hands of the enemies of the church. In Italy, a handful of infidels and miscreants are able, though the great body of the people are Catholics and have votes, to control the nation, to violate with impunity every principle of private right and of international law, to confiscate the property of the church and of religious orders, and to despoil the Holy Father, take possession of his capital, and hold him a prisonerin his palace. Why is this suffered? Why is France and every other old Catholic nation ruled by men who have no regard for the church and are opposed to her freedom and independence? Whence in modern times comes this undeniable political inanity of Catholics? Why is it that popular literature, science, and public opinion are throughout the world decidedly anti-Catholic?
Certainly this is not owing to the inaptitude of Catholics as such; for, through all the ages from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the taking of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century, Catholics were the governing class, and in no period of human history have civilization and the progress of society so rapidly advanced as during this period, which Digby calls the Ages of Faith. It is not, again, owing to any loss of life or vigor in the church herself, as is evinced by the success of her missions in Protestant nations and among savage and barbarous tribes. It is only in old Catholic nations that the church loses ground, and this proves that the cause is not in her. It can be traced to no Catholic cause, but must be traced to some defect in the Catholic administration in these old Catholic nations themselves. Catholics protect Catholic interests better, and have more influence in public affairs in Prussia, in Great Britain and Ireland, in Holland, and the United States, than in Austria, France, Spain, or Italy. Why is this?
One reason we may perhaps find in the failure of pious and devout Catholics to consider the difference between their duties in a Catholic state and what were their duties in the early ages under the pagan emperors. Under the pagan emperors, power was in the hands of their enemies, as it is in infidel, heretical, andschismatical nations now, and they had no political responsibility. All that was incumbent on them was to cultivate the private virtues, to do their best to sanctify their souls, to obey the constituted authorities in all things not contrary to the law of God, and, when the laws of the empire or the edicts of the emperors commanded them to do what the Christian law forbids, to refuse obedience and submit cheerfully to the penalty of disobedience, which in most cases we know was martyrdom. But when the empire became Christian, and especially when Christendom was reconstituted by the conversion of the barbarian nations that succeeded to the empire, the position and duties of Catholics or Christians in some respects changed. Power passed to their hands, and they became responsible for its exercise, and it was their duty to keep it in their own hands, and conform the national legislation and administration to the law of Christ. Catholics then incurred as Catholics a political responsibility which they had not under the pagan emperor, and which they were not free to throw off. The popes always understood this, and acted accordingly; but the ascetic discipline which enjoined detachment from the world was by many devout and earnest souls construed to mean detachment from all part or interest in the political order or the government of Christendom. In consequence, the affairs of state fell, as under the pagan empire, into the hands of Cæsar, or of those who were more ambitious to acquire honors and power than to protect and promote the interests of religion.
This has been more especially the case since the opening of modern history or the rise of Protestantism; and we find among devout Catholics intent on saving their own souls a feeling that there is an incompatibilitybetween politics and religion, and that he who would serve God must leave the affairs of state to men of the world; which is, in effect, to deliver them over to the control of men who are servants of Satan rather than servants of God. The state has, therefore, been given over to the Enemy of souls, because Catholics were led, through a one-sided asceticism, to neglect to keep it in their own hands, and the church has been suffered to be despoiled, her pontiffs, priests, and religious have been suffered to be massacred, for the lack of a little resolution and energy on the part of Catholics to defend their religion and the sacred rights of their church and of society entrusted to their courage and fidelity. Thus a handful of Jansenists, Protestants, Jews, and infidels in France were permitted to establish a reign of terror over twenty-five millions of Catholics, exile their bishops, massacre or banish their priests and religious, suppress religious houses, close the churches, prohibit Catholic worship, abolish religion itself, decree that death is an eternal sleep, and substitute for the worship of the living God the idolatry of an infamous woman, placed upon the altar and adored as the goddess of Reason. All this time, while all these horrors were enacted in the name of the nation, the twenty-five millions of Catholics, except in Brittany and La Vendée, made hardly a show of resistance, and suffered themselves to be led as sheep to the slaughter, forgetful that they owed it to France and to Christendom to sustain and govern their country as a Christian or Catholic nation. It is a duty to pray, and to pray always, but sometimes it is a duty for Christians to fight, and to have not only the courage to die in the battle for a holy cause, but to generous souls the far more difficult courage, the courageto kill. We have observed among French Catholics no lack of courage against a foreign foe, even in a war of more than doubtful necessity or justice, but a fearful lack of courage against the domestic foe, as in the late communist insurrection of Paris. They seem restrained by scruples of conscience.
Another reason may probably be found in the fact already hinted, that the mass of Catholics have been trained and accustomed to rely on external authority; to look for protection and support not to God and themselves, but to the secular government. They have not been accustomed to rely on spiritual authority alone, but on the secular sovereign as a sort ofepiscopus externus. This had no evil consequences so long as the secular sovereign was faithful, and acted only under the direction and authority of, and in concert with, the Supreme Pontiff; but it had a most disastrous effect when the sovereign acted in ecclesiastical matters in his own name, and when he turned against the Pope, and sought to subject the church in his dominions to his own control or supervision, which was not seldom the case. But the clergy and people, accustomed to look to the secular authority to guard the fold against the entrance of the wolves, became slack in their vigilance and remiss in acquiring habits of self-reliance, and, with the inspirations of the Holy Ghost, of self-defence. Consequently, when kings and princes ceased to keep guard, or when they turned wolves themselves, as in the Protestant revolt, the flock was powerless, knew not to whom to look for support, and had no resource but to yield themselves to be devoured by schism, heresy, or apostasy. This is now the case with the great body of the Catholic people in all old Catholic countries. With the vain hopeof conciliating the revolution and preserving their thrones, the sovereigns of Europe, without a single exception, have abandoned or turned against the church, and there is not one on whom the Holy Father can count. He is alone, with the kings and princes of the earth either hostile or indifferent to him, while the old habit of relying on the secular authority for support, for the moment at least, paralyzes nearly the whole body of Catholics in all old Catholic nations.
Another reason, growing out of the last, may be found in the habit that has grown up since the rise of Protestantism, of relying on the external almost to the exclusion of the internal authority of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost dwells in the church, and teaches and governs through her as his external organ; he dwells also in the souls of the faithful, and inspires and directs them, and gives vigor, robustness, and self-reliance to their piety. Protestantism assailed the external authority of the church, and made it necessary for Catholics to turn their attention to its defence, and to show that no spirit that disregards it, or that does not assert it and conform to it, can be the spirit of truth, but is the spirit of error, in reality anti-Christ, who, the blessed Apostle John tells, was already in his time in the world; yet it may be that the defence of what we call the external authority of the Holy Ghost, or authority of the church as a teaching and governing body, has caused some neglect in the great body of the faithful of the interior inspirations and guidance of the Holy Ghost in the individual soul. No Catholic will misunderstand us. We appreciate as much as any one can the external authority of the church, her supremacy, her infallibility; we acceptex animothe supremacy and infallibilityof the successor ofSt.Peter in the See of Rome, as defined in the recent Council of the Vatican, and should be no better than a Protestant if we did not; but that external authority is not alone, or alone sufficient, as every Catholic knows, for the soul, and its acceptance is not sufficient for salvation. The Holy Ghost must dwell in the individual soul, forming “Christ within, the hope of glory.” We do not mean to imply that any of our ascetic writers or spiritual directors overlook the need of the interior inspirations and guidance of the Holy Spirit, or fail to give it due prominence, but that its authority has not had due prominence given it in our controversial literature and in our expositions of Catholic faith intended for the public at large.
All these reasons have combined to reduce France, so long the foremost Catholic nation in the world, to her present pitiable condition, hardly more pitiable than that of Italy, Spain, Austria, and the Spanish and Portuguese states of this continent. What is the remedy, or is there none? We do not believe there is no remedy. We do not believe it, because the church proved her power in France under the Republic of 1848, which originated in hostility to her still more than to monarchy; we do not believe it, for we see Catholicity still able to convert the heathen; we do not believe it, because we see Catholicity vigorous and flourishing, and every day gaining ground in Protestant nations, where the church has no external support, and receives no aid from the state, and is thrown back on her own resources as the kingdom of God on earth, as she was under the pagan emperors. These facts prove that she is by no means effete, or incapable of making further conquests. Her decline in old Catholic nationsis no sign of weakness or decay in her, but is due to the imperfect training, to the timidity and helplessness of her children, deprived as they are of their accustomed external supports.
The remedy is not, as De Lamennais contended, in breaking with the sovereigns and forming an alliance with the revolution; but in training her children to those interior habits and robust virtues that will enable them to dispense with the external props and supports of civil society, and in asserting for herself in old Catholic nations the freedom and independence she has here, or had in pagan Rome, though it be done at the expense of her temporal goods and of martyrdom. The people of God, under the Old Law, sought support in an arm of flesh; the arm of flesh failed, and they were carried away into captivity. The arm of flesh fails the people of God again. There are Christians, but there is no longer a Christendom. Modern society is hardly less pagan than the ancient society the church found when she went forth from Jerusalem to convert the world. There is no reliance to be placed in the horsemen and chariots of Egypt. The whole world is to-day, as in the time of the apostles, amissionaryworld; and, perhaps, the greatest embarrassment of the Holy Father is encountered in the fact that Catholics in old Catholic nations cannot see it, but persist in being trained and governed as they were when there was a Christendom. Everywhere the church is by the defections of the governments become again in all nations a missionary church, and her bishops and priests need everywhere to be trained and formed to be wise, persevering, and effective missionaries. Catholics must everywhere be made to understand that it is not the church that needsthe state, but the state that needs the church.
France without the church has no power to reorganize the state. She has not yet subdued the revolutionary elements which have so confused her, nor loosed the hold of the conqueror upon her throat, and her present improvised government deserves the confidence of no party in the nation. In itself, the Thiers government is utterly powerless. It needs the church, and cannot stand without her. French Catholics should understand this, and boldly assume the lead of public affairs, if they are men and love their country, and make, as they now can, the republic, under an emperor, king, or president, it matters not much which, a truly Catholic republic, and France, now so low and weak, may become again the nucleus, as under Clovis andSt.Clotilde, of a reconstructed Christendom, constituted differently as to politics, it may be, but unchanged as to religion from that which has now passed away. The church never dies, never changes, and cannot be other than she is; but the political organization of Christendom may change with time and events. It changed when the barbarian nations displaced the Roman Empire; it changed when Charlemagne closed the barbarous ages, and opened the way for the feudalism of the middle ages; it changed again when, through the revolution inaugurated by Luther, absolute monarchy succeeded to feudalism in Catholic hardly less than in Protestant Europe; and it may change again when order succeeds to the present revolutionary chaos. It is not likely that Christendom will be reconstructed on its old political basis, whether it is desirable that it should be or not, and, for ourselves, we think that all who hope to see it so reconstructed are sure to be disappointed.We think it not improbable that, when Christendom is reconstituted, it will be politically, on a republican and anti-monarchical basis. Pure absolutism, whether that of Cæsar or that of the people, is incompatible with the recognition of the divine sovereignty, and consequently with religion. Neither form of absolutism can form the political basis of a reconstructed Christendom; but the probabilities are that, when things settle into their places, and the new order begins to emerge, it will be based on some form of republicanism, in which the organic people will take the place of the monarch.
The present condition of things is certainly sad; but we see nothing in it that should lead us to despair of the future. Catholics in old Catholic nations have needed, and perhaps still need, to learn that this church can subsist and conquer the world without any external support of the secular government, but that secular government cannot subsist and discharge properly its duties to society without the church. We who live in Protestant countries, and see society daily dissolving before our eyes, have no need to be taught that lesson; we have already learned it by heart. But the mass of Catholics in old Catholic nations, even of the educated as well as the uneducated, as yet only imperfectly understand it, and consequently render it difficult, if not impossible, for the church to adopt fully and promptly the measures she might judge the most proper to meet the wants of the times. They do not see that the old Christendom has gone, beyond the hope of recovery. Providence, it seems to us, has permitted the present state of things as necessary to disembarrass the church of their inopportune conservatism, and to force them to learnand profit by the lesson which every day becomes more and more necessary for them to heed, if the prosperity of religion is to be promoted, the salvation of souls to be cared for, and the preservation of society assured. The measures taken are severe—very severe, but there are scholars that can be made to learn only by the free use of the ferula. Especially do the Catholics of France need to learn this lesson, for in no other country have Catholics made their religion so dependent on the secular order.
The fall of France, notwithstanding the faith, piety, and charity of so large a portion of her people, will probably prove only a temporary injury to Catholic interests. France has fallen because she has been false to her mission as the leader of modern civilization, because she has led it in an anti-Catholic direction, and made it weak and frivolous, corrupt and corrupting. Providence is severely punishing her; but he has not, we trust, cast her off for ever. She has in her bosom still millions of Catholics, and these have only to come forward in the strength of their religion, displace the enemies of God, take themselves the management of the affairs of the nation, and show the wisdom and energy they did in 1848, when they put down the red republicans and socialists. They will then enable France, in spite of the grasp of the conqueror and the fierce opposition of the destructives, to recover, slowly and painfully, it may be, but nevertheless to recover, and to prove herself greater and more powerful than ever. When France becomes once more a really Catholic nation, the revolution will be extinguished, infidelity will lose its popularity, atheism will no longer dare show its head, and a reaction in favor of the church will take place, sostrong and so irresistible that the whole world will be affected by it, and the nations that have so long been alienated from unity will be brought back within the fold.
The only obstacle to this grand result which we see is in the timidity, in the lack of energy on the part of Catholics in the assertion and defence of their religion, or in their want of courage to confide alone in God for success. Adversity, we think, can hardly fail to reform and reinvigorate them, and to direct their attention to their true source of strength as Catholics or the children of God. They will learn from it to adhere more closely to the Chair of Peter, and to rely more on the internal direction of the Holy Ghost, and less on the aid of the secular order. No doubt, the present state of things imposes additional labors as well as sufferings on the bishops and clergy in old Catholic nations, and requires some modifications of the education of the priesthood now given in our seminaries. Our Levites must be trained for a missionary world, not for an old Catholic world; but this need alarm no one; for the greater the labors and sacrifices in the service of God, the greater the merit and the reward.
’Twas only a prayer I heardIn that vast cathedral grim,Where incense filled the airAnd vesper lights burnt dim.’Twas only a woman’s form,Kneeling with upturned face,That looked through the pictured altarUp to the throne of grace.Clasped in her small white handsAn amber rosary telling;While from her glorious eyesTeardrops fast were weelling.No thought for the world without,No thought for the stranger near,As pausing and sobbing she murmured,“O Mother of sorrows, hear!”And I, in a land of strangers,Joined in the pleader’s prayer:Praying for her that I knew not,To Her who I felt was there.
’Twas only a prayer I heardIn that vast cathedral grim,Where incense filled the airAnd vesper lights burnt dim.
’Twas only a woman’s form,Kneeling with upturned face,That looked through the pictured altarUp to the throne of grace.
Clasped in her small white handsAn amber rosary telling;While from her glorious eyesTeardrops fast were weelling.
No thought for the world without,No thought for the stranger near,As pausing and sobbing she murmured,“O Mother of sorrows, hear!”
And I, in a land of strangers,Joined in the pleader’s prayer:Praying for her that I knew not,To Her who I felt was there.
[77]By one who is not a Catholic.
“Most characters are too narrow for much variety,” says Walter Savage Landor; and, we add, so much the better for them! for that variety is often a bitter dower to its possessor.
A man of one idea may be called an acute sector of humanity. He is clear-willed, prompt, and uncompromising; he walks over people who stand in his path, and will not listen to the opinions of others, except in order to controvert them; and he usually accomplishes something that you can see. The man of two ideas widens his arc a little, and turns out for and listens to people now and then. The man of three or more ideas lives and lets live, believes that some good may come out of Nazareth, and not only listens to others, but is sometimes convinced by them; and his path curves somewhat, hinting at an orbit. In him you first perceive that growing humanity aims at the circle; and as, with the crescent moon, we may see the full moon faintly outlined, so this man perceives more than he is. For it is not true, at least not here, what Carlyle says, that “what a man kens, he can.”
But there is another kind of man, rarely seen, who rounds the circle. He has eyes and sympathies for zenith and nadir, sunset and sunrise, and every starry sign. His thought enters at every door, feeds at every table, and listens to every tongue. Nevertheless, to the few of one idea and the few of two ideas, and the countless throng of those who neverhad an idea, he is, oftener than not, a fool, or a knave, or a lunatic. He is eccentric, inconsistent; worse than all, unpractical. Doubtless, he is wicked as well, since he is likely to eat of all the fruits in the garden. For, though original sin may have touched them with blight on the one cheek, on the other, to his eyes still lingers that paradisian bloom it caught on the sixth day, when the Creator looked, andsaw that all was good. This perfected nature, therefore, which needs only thefiat luxof faith to make it a sun, is appreciated and hailed by him only from whose one limit to the other stretches the connecting glimmer of prophetic half-knowledge.
We do not pretend to say that Carl Yorke had one of these universally sympathizing natures; but he was various enough to be hard to get attuned, especially since his programme had once been interrupted, and his harmony temporarily disconcerted.
When a man has looked upon happiness as his first object in life, he finds it hard to give it the second place, or to leave it quite out of his plans. Moreover, we do not repent till we have transgressed, and it must, therefore, be far more difficult to save the tempted than the sinner. Of actual, heinous transgression, Carl was innocent; but he had slipped around the outer circle, where first you lay the oars aside, and the smooth-backed waves become your coursers. Then a man fancies himself a god: not Neptune himself seems greater. Onemay more easily tear himself out from the central whirl than draw back from that smooth outer circle.
Besides, there was doubt. He who can do many things must needs choose, and, where circumstances are passive, choice may be difficult. Carl inherited his father’s talent, and had more than his father’s force. He sketched and painted exquisitely, and, when he drew the portrait of one he loved, the picture breathed. Many a lady, disappointed with the stiff presentment of her beauty achieved by other artists, had entreated him in vain to become her limner.
“Ransome paints my nose, and hair, and shoulders all right,” one said. “I cannot find fault with a line. But for all the soul he puts into them, my head might as well be a milliner’s block. I suppose it is because he thinks that a fine body does not need any soul. Such a contrast as I saw in his studio, the other day! He had two or three portraits of Mrs. Clare, painted in different positions, and he displayed them to me, going into ecstasies over her beauty. ‘Yes, yes,’ I answered; but I was not enchanted. ‘She is one of the few dangerous women,’ he said, meaning that the power of her loveliness was irresistible; but I could not understand his enthusiasm. Presently, I espied, in a corner of the room, on the floor, half-hidden by other pictures, a face that made me start. I did not think whether or not the features were perfect, the hair profuse, the tint exquisite. I saw only a luring, fascinating creature, who, with head half-drooping and lips half-smiling, gazed at me over her shoulder. There were no red and white. The face looked out from shadows so profound, they might be of a midnight garden at midsummer, when the moon and stars are hid in sultry cloud, or from the shroudingarras of a lonely chamber in some wicked old palace, or from the overhanging portal of the bottomless pit. I would walk through fire to snatch back one I love from following such a face. ‘It is wonderful!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why do you hide it? It is by far superior too anything else you have here.’ I thought that Mr. Ransome did not seem to be much delighted by my praise. ‘I did not paint it,’ he said. ‘Carl Owen Yorke did.’ Of course, I could not say any more. The situation was embarrassing. ‘Would you think that face the same as these?’ pointing to his portraits of Mrs. Clare. I could see no resemblance. ‘They are the same,’ he said, looking mortified. And then I knew what he meant in saying that she was a dangerous woman.” “Why did you paint that, Mr. Yorke?” the lady asked abruptly, turning upon Carl.
“In order not to be attracted by it,” he replied gravely. “Did it not leave on you the impression of something snakelike? In painting that, I broke the spell. Alice Mills told me to paint it. She said, ‘You are fascinated only by that which you cannot analyze. Catch the trick, and the power is gone.’ She was right. She is always right. Nothing is so shallow as an evil fascination.”
Yet, in spite of every promise of success, Carl turned aside from art. He had found out that the artist, above all, needs happiness. One can study, think, and work, when the heartstrings are strained to breaking; but he who, with his hand upon the pen, the brush, the chorded string, or the chisel, waits till those subtile influences which he is gifted to perceive shall move him, must have every pulse stilled by a perfect content. Pain distorts his work. It untunes his music, blurs his color, deadens his thought, and makes his chiselswerve. Nor is this in purely natural art alone; for the artist whose struggling soul ignores all else to grasp the supernatural gives only a blunted ray through a turbid medium.
The pencil failing, there was diplomacy, and literature, particularly journalism. Something must be done. His idle and aimless life had become a torture. Therefore he studied, and read, giving much time to languages. “Languages,” he was wont to say, “are as necessary to a man who would always and everywhere have his forces in hand, as a string of keys is to a burglar.”
A conversation which Carl held with Edith, just before she left Boston, may have been instrumental in arousing him. The two stood together, in one of the lance-windows that lighted Hester’s library. Hester and her mother were up-stairs, and there was no one else in the room but Eugene Cleaveland and his little brother, Hester’s child. The little one was gravely and patiently striving to pick up, with dimpled fingers, a beam of pink light that fell on the floor through a pane of colored glass in the window-arch, and Eugene was as gravely explaining to him why he could not.
“And so,” said Carl, after a silence, “Mr. Rowan is your ideal man.”
It was his way of intimating his knowledge of existing circumstances, and he spoke carelessly, watching the children.
“I have no ideal of man,” Edith replied briefly; and, after a moment, added: “A person maybe excellent, without being ideal.” She thought a moment longer, then said: “Men and stars have to be set at a certain distance before they shine to us. I am not sure but Tennyson could make a fine hero of a poem of Dick. He has heroic qualities. I do notanalyze nor criticise my friends, but I perceive this in him: he is capable of proposing to himself an object, and following it steadily. Every one is not.”
Carl Yorke’s countenance changed. And yet he knew well that she had not dreamed of reproaching him.
“What are you studying Spanish for?” Miss Clinton inquired fretfully, one day. “You might as well learn to dance the minuet.”
“When one has so many castles in a country, one would like to know the language,” he said.
“Pshaw!” exclaimed the old lady. “Don’t waste your time. No language with a guttural in it is fit for a well-bred person to speak. Besides, to speak Spanish properly, you must wear a slouched hat and a stiletto, or a ruff and feather. I have no patience with this mania for tongues. English and French are enough for any sensible person. Italian is boned turkey. What book is that you have brought in?”
“De Maistre,Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg.”
Miss Clinton laughed disagreeably. “‘The prophet of the past,’ is it? Who is it says that he has ‘une grande vigueur, non pas de raison, mais de raisonnement’? Are you studying sophistry or Ultramontanism?A propos, there are pretty doings in that absurd little town where your people live. That ungrateful paper which you used to edit has been abusing your father like a pickpocket, on Edith’s account, I suppose. You wouldn’t tell me, but Bird found out; and she says that he doesn’t dare stir outdoors.”
“It is not true that he is afraid,” Carl said; “but he is insulted. In Seaton, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword,’ without doubt. I would like to see it tried if the horse-whip mightnot in this case be mightier than the pen.”
“You see, now,” the old lady said, “what mischief all these religions make. The basis of every so-called religion is hatred of every other so-called religion. And here you are poring over De Maistre! Pshaw! ReadThe Age of Reason. Here it is.”
Carl was silent a moment, struggling with himself. Then he said, “I have gone round the circle, and come back to a faith in faith, and the sneers or arguments of the atheist have no more effect on me. I have found that mocking is neither noble nor manly, still less womanly; and I look back on my days of scepticism as on the freaks of a presumptuous child, who fancies itself wiser than its parents, when it is only more foolish. I have done with Tom Paine and his brotherhood.”
It is always hard to even seem to exhort our elders, and especially so when they are our intimates; and Carl spoke with such an effort that his words seemed to be a passionate outburst.
Miss Clinton looked at him a moment in silent astonishment, then laughed shrilly. “‘What is this that hath happened to the son of Kish?’” Then changing suddenly, she rang her bell. “Bird,” she said, when that person appeared, “I want you to read the paper to me. There is a beautiful case of poisoning, this evening. Young Mr. Yorke is too pious for secular reading. He has turned preacher, Bird. You and he can sing psalms together.”
“Alice, I accept one dogma of your church,” Carl said afterward to his friend. “I must believe in purgatory, for I am in it.”
“I am rejoiced to hear it,” she replied, yet looked at him sadly. She would so gladly have spared him any pain. “Purgatory is the high-roadto heaven. Of course, while you are getting your moral perspective arranged, you must feel uncomfortable; but once started in life, all will arrange itself.”
“Suppose that I should fail?” he asked.
“I dare say that you will fail, in one sense,” she replied. “Men who propose to themselves great ends always do meet with a sort of failure, as the flower fails in order to give place to the fruit. Each great success,being uniqueof its kind, comes in its own way. You cannot count surely, but success must come, sooner or later.”
“You speak as if I had all eternity,” he said, not without impatience.
She looked up vividly. “You have all eternity, Carl!”
He made no reply.
“Let me quote a favorite of yours,” she said:
“‘That low man goes on adding one to one,His hundred’s soon hit.This high man, aiming at a million,Misses a unit.That, has the world here—should he need the next,Let the world mind him!This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed,Seeking, shall find him.’”
“I understand you,” he said, with a slight shrug. “But, do I look an apostle?”
“You might be,” she answered. “You could influence a class which the preachers cannot reach. Religion has been too much confined to ascetics, or to those who underestimate the power of the beautiful. What we want most now are Christians who can outshine sinners in grace, fascination, and learning. In these reckless days, people will not receive a check from those whom they know would gladly impose an utter prohibition; but one of their own might put a limit. We want scholars who will acknowledge thatthere is a point beyond which speculation should not go and reason cannot. We want accomplished leaders in society who are not ashamed to prostrate themselves before God; and we want gentlemen to encourage modesty in women. You see there is a large field.”
“I am glad,” Carl exclaimed, “to hear a Catholic own that a rich and cultivated person can do some good in the church besides giving money. From all the sermons I have heard with you, the impression I have received is that clean linen and a knowledge of the alphabet are obstacles to grace. Never once have I heard talent or culture spoken of except with reprobation.”
“Oh! you exaggerate!” she said. “It is true, the poor need constant comfort, and the rich constant warning; and it is equally true that the greatest ignorance, combined with charity, must be more pleasing to God than the finest intellect and learning without charity.”
“There is precisely the point,” Carl said eagerly. “And my experience and belief are that the finer the mind and the culture, the greater the charity, andvicè versa. ‘Tout comprendre c’est tout aimer.’ I like Sir Thomas Browne’s thought: ‘Those highly magnify him whose judicious inquiry into his works returns him the homage of a learned admiration.’”
She made no reply. They had been out walking, and they now reached Miss Mills’s door. “Are you ill?” Carl asked, noticing that she looked unusually pale.
“I am rather tired,” she answered faintly. “Good-by!”
When he turned away, she stood looking at him through the side-light, and, when he was no longer visible, she went up-stairs to her chamber. She was very tired, and very ill. Her impulse was to lie down, but shehesitated, then refrained. “All is ready,” she said, looking about her. “I do not think that there is anything to do.”
She put up a small trunkful of clothing with feverish haste, rang her bell, and ordered a carriage. “Drive to the Hospital of the Sisters of Charity, in South Boston,” she said to the driver. And, sinking back, knew no more till she had reached her destination.
“I think I have come here to die,” she said to the sister who received her. “And I have a few wishes. Send back word immediately where I am. I did not tell them, for I could not bear any struggle. My worldly affairs are all in order, and I have no last words to say to any one. Let no person come near me but the sister and the priest, and do not mention any person’s name to me, nor tell me who comes to inquire. I know they will all be kind; but all my life has been a sacrifice to others, a sympathizing with and loving of others, while my own heart starved, and these last hours must be given to God alone. No earthly being has any claim on them.”
Perhaps in all her life she had never before spoken so bitterly, but her words were true. She had given to the poor, and worked for them, and their gratitude had been but the ‘lively sense of favors to come.’ She had been solicitous for friends, had mourned over their sorrows, and sympathized with them always, and their selfishness had grown upon her unselfishness. So sweet had been the sympathy and love she lavished upon them, they had never stopped to inquire if she were impoverishing herself, or if she also might not wish sometimes to receive as well as to give.
But the thought of how keen would be the revenge of this utter withdrawalat the time when they must have been startled into thinking of her in some other way than as pensioners, never entered her mind. Besides that momentary and almost unconscious complaint, she had but one thought: God alone had loved her, and she must be alone with him. She could no longer do anything for any person; and since no one belonged to her more than to any other, nor so much as to others, no one had any claim to intrude now.
The sisters were faithful to their charge. Of the many who came with tardy devotion, she heard nothing; of Miss Clinton, sitting in her carriage at the door, with two men waiting to carry her up-stairs in a chair as soon as she should have permission, the attendants did not speak to her; of Carl Yorke, haunting the place, and sitting hour after hour in the parlor, waiting for news, she never knew.
One day, when Carl had sat there long, with only one prospect of news before him, the priest came down, and entered the room. Carl lifted his face from his hands, and looked at him, but could not speak.
“Let us think of heaven!” said the priest.
Of some actively religious persons, we might think that they parody the paradox, and say, Give us the luxuries of piety, and we will dispense with the necessities; but this woman had been other. No great work could be pointed to that she had done or attempted: her life had flowed like an unseen brook, that, hidden itself, is only guessed at by the winding line of verdure which betrays its presence. She was one of those piteously tender and generous souls whom everybody makes use of, and nobody truly thanks. Seldom, indeed, do we find one so just and truly kind as to think forthose who do not demand their thoughtfulness. It is the clamorous and the pushing who possess the land.
A part of Miss Mills’s fortune was given to the church, the rest was left conditionally. She knew Miss Clinton’s caprice well enough to think it possible that Carl might be left unprovided for at the last moment. In such a case, he was to be her heir, after a few legacies had been paid. But if Miss Clinton’s will should be favorable to him, then all was to go to Edith.
On Miss Clinton, the effect of this death was terrible. She alternately refused to believe that it had taken place, and reproached them for telling her of it. When Bird tried indiscreetly to draw a pious lesson from it, the old lady flew into such a paroxysm of rage that she frightened them. She seemed to be on the point of having convulsions. Carl went to the funeral without saying where he was going, and the name was never again mentioned in her hearing.
But that silence was not forgetfulness, they saw plainly; for, from that time, Miss Clinton never allowed herself to be left alone a moment. Bird read to her till far into the night, watched her fitful slumbers, and was ready with cheerful inquiries whenever the old lady opened her frightened eyes. The light never went out in her room, but was kept brightly burning—a small shade screening the face only of the sleeper. By day, Carl had to read to her amusing stories or tell the gossip of the town.
When spring came again, she was unable to leave her room, and, in a short time, was confined to her bed, and from querulous became light-headed.
Carl made a desperate effort oneday to induce her to see a priest or a minister, using every argument in his power, even begging her to consent for his sake. He was not sure that she heard or understood all that he said, for, though she sometimes looked at him with intent, wide-open eyes, her glance often wandered.
“Are you afraid?” she asked sharply, when he paused for a reply.
“Yes; I am afraid,” he answered. “There is no bravery in defying God.”
She half-lifted herself from the pillows, her brows contracted with an anxious frown, and she looked about the room as if in search of some one. He was startled by the change in her face. “Do you want anything?” he asked gently.
“Carl,” she called out, as if he were far away and out of her sight, “who was it said, ‘O God!—if there is a God—save my soul—if I have a soul’?”
She did not look at him, but leaned out of bed, staring wildly round the room. He tried to soothe her, and coax her back to her pillows again.
“Was it I said it?” she asked excitedly, resisting him, and sitting upright. “Was it I said it? It sounds like me, doesn’t it?”
He rang the bell, and Bird came in. But they could do nothing with her. She pushed them aside, leaned from the bed, and searched the room with her wild eyes, then looked upward,and seemed to shrink, yet continued looking. “Was it I said it, Alice?” she cried out breathlessly. “It sounds like me, doesn’t it? ‘O God!—if there is a God—save my soul—if I have a soul!’”
“She is gone!” Carl whispered, and laid her back on the pillow.
So Carl Yorke was at last rich and free, with the world before him. There was but little for him to do at present. When winter should be near, the family were to come up and take possession of their old home, which would then be ready for them. Now that it was summer, he would go down and stay with them a while. If rest and pleasure were to be had there, he would have them. He felt like one who has travelled over a dusty, sultry road, and longs to plunge into a bath, and wash all that heat and dust away. He wanted to hear again at the home gatherings gentle voices, to see tender, thoughtful ways, to refresh his soul in that quiet yet rich atmosphere.
“I will not turn my back upon delight, and invite dryness of life by looking for it,” he thought. “If the Bible does not proclaim my right to pursue happiness, the Declaration of Independence does, and I will give myself the benefit of the doubt. When the summer fails, I must look about me, and think of work, and remember the curse of Adam; but I will give myself a few weeks of lotos-eating—if they are to be had.”
“Now that the priest is gone, we have peace,” said the Seaton paper.
In fact, having driven the priest away, so that these poor souls were deprived of their consolations and restraints of religion, having destroyed their school-house, so that there seemed no possibility that the school could continue after the cold weather should set in, there appeared no more mischief to do. Catholicism was, apparently, dead in Seaton.The Catholics did not raise their voices. Those who mourned their deserted altar, mourned in silence; the rest went back to their whiskey-drinking, their quarrelling and stealing. That was what the atheists meant by peace. “The lion and the lamb had lain down together,” but the lamb was inside the lion.
On the surface of these halcyon circumstances, Carl Yorke found his lotos-flower growing. Everybody was smiling and conciliatory. Congratulations, not always overdelicate, on his accession to fortune met him at every hand, and callers became more frequent, in spite of a reception as cool as politeness would allow. In fine, the Yorkes, having suffered a temporary eclipse, shone out again with dazzling lustre, regilt by their new prosperity. If they bore themselves rather haughtily in the face of this subservience, we can scarcely blame them. We can forgive, we may not care for, the frowns that darken with our adversity; but the smiles that brighten when fortune brightens, must, in a noble nature, awaken a feeling of involuntary disgust.
Dr. Martin and his wife called a few days after Carl came home. It was rather an embarrassing call, for there was scarcely a non-explosive subject on which they could speak, but by dint of careful management on the part of the ladies, and a determination on the part of each gentleman that he would not be the aggressor, no accident happened. Mr. Yorke and the minister exchanged a few remarks on agriculture, Clara hovering between them, and volubly smoothing the asperities of their uphill talk. Mrs. Martin and Melicent were kindred souls on the subject of worsted work, and grew quite intimate over a new pattern and a rainbow package of wools. Mrs. Yorkeacted as presiding deity, and dropped a smile or a word at the right time, and Carl was somewhat cynically amused by the situation, and therefore amusing. The visitors had asked for Edith, but she declined to come down. When they had gone, however, she spoke kindly of Dr. Martin.
“He asked me once,” she said, “if, when I came to die, I should need any one but Christ. I could not answer him, for I did not understand then that he was attacking the doctrine of extreme unction, and intimating his belief that Catholics think only of the priest, and not at all of God. But I noticed that he showed a great deal of feeling, and when he said, ‘If you have Christ, you need no one else,’ there were tears in his eyes. Since then, I have liked him. I think he is mistaken, rather than malicious.”
Mr. Yorke looked gravely at his niece. “I sometimes think,” he said, “with Pope, ‘that there is nothing needed to make all rational and disinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they should talk together every day.’ If people would ask what you believe, and listen to you, instead of telling you what you believe, and abusing you, much strife might be avoided.”
“I think that Dr. Martin’s motive in coming here was good,” Mrs. Yorke said. “He knows that we are going away, and wishes to part in peace.”
“Carl, have you settled what you are going to be?” Edith ventured to ask when he joined her afterward in the garden.
“No,” he answered, with hesitation. “Something depends. I am at the north pole, and all roads lead south. Meantime, I am not idle.”
She waited for him to continue,but he said no more, and she felt chilled, and mortified at having questioned him. No one in the world was less curious concerning the private affairs of others than Edith, and she never asked a question, except from a feeling of tender interest. Therefore she considered herself repulsed.
“What are you studying now?” Carl asked, after a moment, the silence becoming awkward.
“I have almost given up books,” she replied quietly, and the hands with which she was weaving a morning-glory vine into its trellis were not quite steady.
Oh! if he would only question her, and insist on knowing everything. She was in deep waters, and she longed to tell him all, and ask the solution of her doubts. With a fine, unerring instinct which she felt, but did not understand, Edith could tolerate the thought of no other confidant. Yet a great barrier stood between them. She could go frankly to Dick, if she had anything to say to him, but Carl was different. She could tell him nothing, unless he asked her. Besides, he never told her anything. Now she thought of it, except these silent motions of sympathy, their intercourse had been very exterior. She knew nothing of his real life; and yet he, too, was at the point of choice in some things, and must have much to say to one he cared for and trusted. She waited a moment, then walked toward the house, and they separated rather coldly.
Edith had, indeed, dropped the study of physical science, but she had taken up another, and it perplexed her sorely. Within the last year she had been striving, with but little help, to learn something of the science of the heart. What was this love that had started up in her path,and demanded to be listened to, and returned? She had written as frankly as she could to Father Rasle, telling him of her promise to Dick Rowan, and his answer had disappointed her. She read some of the moralists, and her soul recoiled. If that was love, why were the stories of Jacob and Rachel, and Esther and Assuerus, told without sign of reprobation? She went to the novelists, and they pleased her but little better. In despair, then, she went to the poets. Eureka! Here was what she wanted: the affection at once pure and impassioned, heroic and tender, demanding all, yet sacrificing all, proud yet humble, inexplicable save by the poet and the lover. It was fitting that the poets should be its interpreters, for it was above common life, as song is above speech. Grapes were not sour because they grew high, nor things impossible because rare.
“Dear Mrs. Browning!” she whispered, as she readAurora Leigh. “What a pity she had not faith! Her nature is glorious. How she spurns the low!”
She read Tennyson, and sighed with delight over the faithful Enid, and wept for Elaine dead, and floating down the river to Launcelot, her letter to him in her hand.
So, with the help of the poets, Edith escaped the danger of being contaminated by the efforts made to save her from harm. With her intuitive beliefs confirmed by these prophetic singers, she refused to let that yet unfolded blossom of her life trail in the mire, but held it up with a proud, though trembling hand. To her, loving was a very holy and beautiful thing.
But she longed to know what Carl thought of it.
Carl kept up his regular hours of study, and he set up his easel, andmade a crayon group of his father, mother, and sisters. Mrs. Yorke insisted that he should paint his own portrait separately for her. Being in a bitter mood one day, he sketched himself as Sisyphus standing on the hill-top, and watching the great stone, which he had just rolled painfully up hill, roll down again of itself. Edith sat by him, saying a word now and then, and watching his work.
When his hand paused to let his imagination picture first the dull misery in the face of the dazed and baffled giant, she said quietly, “What great bovine creatures the Titans were, after all! I did not admire them much, even when you read me the translation of thePrometheus. All that splendor of soul was Æschylus, not the fire-stealer. But wasn’t it a beautiful verse: ‘Stately and antique were thy fallen race’?
“Still, the mastodon is stately and antique, too. The Titans were too easily conquered. They cut like great melons. If their spirit had been equal to their size, they would have snapped the Olympians like dry twigs beneath their feet.”
Carl knew full well that she was talkingathim, but he was in no mood to be either shamed or inspired. He wanted to be coaxed. The manliest man has his time of not only wishing, but needing, to be coaxed, if only he would own it.
She stretched her hand, and softly, inch by inch, drew the porte-crayon from his yielding fingers. “Please, Carl! The picture would haunt me, though it were out of sight.”
It was better than a wiser word. Carl’s face cleared.
“I am going to paint your portrait in oil,” he said, “and keep it myself. Shall I?”
“I will be your rich patroness, and you a poor artist,” she said. “I order my portrait of you, and willpay—let me think what! It shall be a red gold medal of the Immaculate Conception, or a little ebony crucifix, with the figure in gold, whichever you choose. Then I will be a poor lady, and you a rich artist, and you shall buy the picture back, and—what will you give me for it? I know what I like that you have.”
“What do you like?” asks Carl, placing a large sheet of drawing-board on his easel.
“A tiny brooch, that you never wear, with a carbuncle in it. I confess to you that I have longed for it. It is like a coal of fire. It is most beautiful. You know I have a passion for gems. Flowers make me sad, but gems are like heavenly joys and hopes that never fade. There is no object in nature that delights me like a beautiful gem. They are the good acts of the earth. A ruby is an act of love, a sapphire an act of faith, an emerald an act of hope, a diamond an act of joyful adoration. Pearls are tears of sorrow for the dead, opals are tears of sorrow for sin. The opal, you know, is the only gem that cannot be imitated.”
“So you wanted the carbuncle,” Carl said, much pleased. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
“I waited till I knew that you cared nothing about it,” Edith answered.
“But I do value it very much now, young woman; and if you know where it is, you will bring it to me at once. I am impatient to see it.”
She went out and got the brooch. It was a smooth, oval stone of a deep-red color, with a tiny flame flickering in it. The lapidary had been too true an artist to spoil the stone with facets, and the result was a little crystallized poem. Edith laid it on black velvet, and held it out for Carl to see. “There!” she said. It had never occurred to him to lookat it before, but now its beauty was apparent.
“I am delighted to give it to you, dear,” he said affectionately, and pinned the velvet ribbon round her neck with it.
They smiled at each other, well pleased; then she sat down by him, and watched while he began to sketch.
“Isn’t it odd, Carl,” she said, “that you and I should be rich people, when we were so poor a short time ago? Only I did not know that we were poor. I always felt rich after I came here.”
“I half remember a fairy story,” Carl said. “It is of a fairy who wove pearls around a sunbeam, or a moonbeam, to prove to her lover her miraculous power. I am going to paint you as that fairy. Shall it be a sunbeam or a moonbeam, milady?”
“Make it a tropical full moonlight, Carl, and give me a palm-tree to stand under. It would be refreshing to stand in the midst of such a scene, even on canvas.”
The artist sketched lightly and swiftly. “Here, at the right, a troop of fairies shall dance, only half seen. Near them, a thin arch of a waterfall shall leap, and drop, and lose itself in spray, and gather so slowly, and flow away so slowly, that the stream shall look like a vein of amethyst damaskeened into the turf, not a ripple nor a bubble to be seen. The orchestra, blowing on flower-trumpets, and shaking campaniles of bluebells and lilies-of-the-valley, are hidden by their instruments beside this waterfall, and their music makes the thin sheet waver as it drops. The palm-tree lifts itself against the moon, and seems to be on fire with it, and droops in a verdant cascade above you, every feathery plume fire-fringed with light. But only one beam, like a shaft of diamond, shall pierce thatfoliage, and there you stand, with your arms uplifted, braiding pearls around it. You are smiling softly, your hair is down, and filmy sleeves drop back to your shoulders. As you braid, the light prisoned inside changes the pearls to opals.”
“You will never be able to make me look like a fairy,” Edith said. “I see a moral in everything. Fairy stories and myths always seem to me Christian truths in masquerade; as though the truths, jealously wishing us to prize them, put on dress after dress, to see if we would recognize them in each. ‘If you really care for me, you will know me through any disguise,’ that is what they say. Why, Carl, if you and I were at a masquerade, and you did not know me, I should feel hurt.”
“We will try that some night in Venice,” Carl said, smiling to himself.
“Yes. But this moonbeam hid in pearls—to me it is like a true thought well spoken; or, no, it is the Immaculate Conception. And now, good-by. I must go to my school.”
Since she could not be permitted to instruct Catholic children, Edith went four times a week, and every Sunday, to the Pattens, and taught them whatever they seemed to be most in need of. The town-schools were far away, and the mother too hard-worked to do more than feed and clothe her children, and these ministrations were thankfully received. Edith held her school on a large flat rock near the house, so as not to interfere with Mrs. Patten, and embarrass her in her work. Only on Sundays did the young lady enter the house, and then there was a grand dress parade, to which the family looked forward all the week. On these occasions the children were all washed “within an inch of their lives,” as Mrs. Yorke’s Betsey expressedit; their best clothes, given by Mrs. Yorke, were donned; and their hair combed down so smoothly that it seemed to be plastered to their heads. Woe to that child who should rumple a hair or disturb a fold when all was done! Since her accession to fortune, Edith had given the family, among other things, a clock—they had formerly reckoned time by the sun—and, at precisely half-past nine, Joe sat himself in the south window to watch for the teacher. According to Mrs. Patten’s notions of propriety, it would be indecorous for any of them to be seen outside the door on Sunday till after the instruction. The house was as clean and orderly as such a place could be made; the sacks of straw and dry leaves that answered for beds were made into two piles, in opposite corners, and used as sofas; the calico curtains that divided the bedrooms were artistically looped; a vast armful of green boughs concealed the rocks of the rough chimney, the sticks laid there to be lighted to get dinner by, and the pots and pans in which that dinner was cooked. Green vines and flowers and moss were placed here and there, and the door by which Edith entered was always made into a sort of triumphal arch, where she stood a moment to exchange her first salutation with the family. They were drawn up in two lines, to right and left, the girls headed by their mother, the boys by their father, and as that pretty creature appeared in the door, with her air of half-conscious shyness, and wholly unconscious stateliness, like a young queen appearing to her subjects, the feminine line dropped a short courtesy, and the masculine line achieved a simultaneous bow, both so crisp that they gave a sensation of snapping. What a beautiful salutation was that low, deliberate“Good-morning!” of hers; and what could equal in grace that slight bending, half bow, half courtesy, with which she greeted them! Opposite the door was a little stand, with a chair behind it, and the whole company stood till Edith had taken her seat there. She never did so without a blush of humility.
To one less earnest, and less preoccupied by the real work she had to do, this ceremony would have seemed sufficiently ludicrous. Or, perhaps, we should say, rather, to one less tender of heart. But Edith Yorke saw only the eager gratitude and desire to do her honor, the simple earnestness and good faith, and that mingling of poverty and taste which silently showed all the misery of poor Mrs. Patten’s life. For all that was done was hers. Without her, the children and their father would have been almost as clods.
There is a certain arrogance of affability with which the rich sometimes approach the poor, as though wealth and education constituted an essential difference which they are elaborately anxious should not too much humiliate theirprotégés. This the intelligent poor are very quick to perceive, and inwardly, if not outwardly, to resent. Others assume the rude manners of those whom they would benefit, in order to set them at ease—a good-natured mistake, but one which inspires contempt, and weakens their influence. Edith Yorke’s quick sympathies and delicate intuitions rendered it impossible for her even to make either of these missteps. She carried herself with perfect dignity and simplicity, was kind, and even affectionate, without lowering herself into a caressing familiarity, and thus gave them a sample of exquisite demeanor, and, at the same time, set them as much at their ease as it was well theyshould be. If people of rude manners were always perfectly at ease, they would never improve. Mrs. Patten, who was often on her guard with Melicent, pronounced Edith to be a perfect lady; and when an intelligent poor person gives such a verdict, without hope of favor from it, it is, perhaps, about as good a patent of social nobility as a lady can receive.