CARL SEES HIMSELF IN A GLASS DARKLY.
The summer we are thinking of was 1851, and in the June of it Edith
had her sixteenth birthday duly celebrated by the family, and Clara
published her first book, an event of still greater consequence to
them.
In the June of this year, also, the Hon. Mr. Blank came down to
delight and instruct the voters of Seaton. Mr. Yorke was highly
pleased by this announcement. He had known the gentleman in Boston,
and thought him eloquent. It would be pleasant to see and hear a man
of note once more. "Come to think of it, Amy," he said, "we have
been buried here four years, seeing nobody outside of the town. It
will be truly refreshing. We must have him here to dinner or tea,
and we must all go to hear the address. It is to be in a tent on the
fair-grounds."
Mr. Yorke was quite bright and interested. He had been living in
seclusion long enough to appreciate the value of a little excitement.
He called on Mr. Blank at his hotel, the evening of his arrival,
and had a very cordial and agreeable half-hour, talking chiefly of
personal matters, and old friends. Two or three other gentlemen
who were paying their respects to the senator withdrew after a few
minutes, to Mr. Yorke's satisfaction. They were persons whom he did
not at all like.
"I am worn out," Mr. Blank said, leaning back in his chair, and
poising his heels on the back of another chair. "I have made forty
speeches in thirty days. But it pays. The excitement is immense."
Mr. Yorke was rather ashamed to ask what particular issue created
this excitement and palaver. The truth was, he was a little behind
the times. His four years had been years of vegetation, and he
scarcely knew what his old friends were about. He had been so much
engaged in filling up the maw of his avenues, coaxing exotics to
bloom for the first time in his gardens, and reading novels--actually
reading novels--that he was politically in the position of a man
who had had a four years' sleep. He was mortified and astonished
to realize at this moment that he had been going over the Waverley
novels again, when he should have been reading the papers and keeping
the state of the nation in view.
His embarrassment was relieved by a loud shout that rose from a crowd
collected in front of the hotel. The gentleman for whom this applause
was intended took no notice of it, except by an impatient shake of
the head. He sipped a little from a tumbler at his elbow, and calmly
lighted a cigar.
The shouting ceased, and the Seaton band--not the cast-iron band this
time--broke out in their finest style.
"Confound them!" ejaculated the senator. "Do they think I want to
hear their noise? I am tired of Dodworth's and the Germanians; but
this! Why, it's all trombones."
The music ceased, and the shout went up again.
"They will have me out," groaned the hero of the hour. "I've a great
mind to be taken sick. Couldn't you go out and say I'm sick?"
"No, sir," Mr. Yorke said decisively, "I could not."
"Well, couldn't you go out and make a speech for me? You're about
my build. It's easy. I could say it in my sleep. Honored--free and
intelligent people--your beautiful town--glorious cause, etc. Fill it
in as you like."
Mr. Yorke laughed. "I'm about half your build, and my voice is as
much like yours as a crow's is like a nightingale's. Go along.
When you've embarked in this sort of thing, you must take the
consequences."
As another and still more imperative call came up, the honorable
gentleman rose with a yawn, and the two stepped out into the balcony.
"My dear friends," began the speaker in silvery-clear tones, "words
fail me to express the feelings which move my heart when I listen to
this generous welcome." (Applause.)
"Well for you that they do," parenthesized Mr. Yorke.
"Your approval honors you more than it does me," resumed the senator.
"For what am I but the mouthpiece by which you speak, as the
thunder-cloud speaks by the lightning? The mass of the people gather
the truth, and it is their fire which informs the leader, and incites
him to utter it forth. They are the--" (Immense applause.)
"The idiots!" exclaimed the orator. "They have broken into my best
paragraph where it can't be mended. I must wind up."
"The fame of your town has reached me," he went on. "I have heard of
it as a place where freedom is not only loved, but adored, where
oppression is not only hated, but trampled on; and to-day, when
I drove over the distant hills, and saw the white spires of your
churches rising out of the forests, they seemed to me like warning
fingers pointing heavenward, as though the genius of the place bade
me remember that the angelic hosts were witnessing if I and if you
were faithful to the sacred trust placed in our keeping." (Tempests
of applause).
"That always takes," remarked the senator to his companion. "Spires
are trumps."
"My friends, to-night I am but a voice to you, but to-morrow we shall
meet face to face. Let not a man be missing. Seaton expects every
voter to do his duty. Again I thank you for your kind welcome, and
wish you one and all good-night."
"What do they think a man is made of when they call him out to speak
in a fog thick enough to slice and butter?" grumbled the orator,
getting into his chamber again, and dropping the curtain between him
and a second burst of music from the band.
Mr. Yorke raised his eyebrows slightly, and pursed out his under-lip.
"What glorious things have you heard of Seaton, and where?" he
inquired. "I was not aware that it was famous."
The senator finished the contents of his tumbler, and wiped his
moustache carefully. "I have heard that it is an infernally rowdyish
little hole," he answered. "I didn't care about coming here, but it
was in my stumping programme."
Mr. Yorke took leave, and went homeward very soberly. He was
disappointed and depressed, and nature seemed to sympathize with
his mood. The road was muddy, and in the thick fog and darkness
he could scarcely see the path at the side of it. When he turned
into the private way that led to his own house, the trees crowded
about, dripping, uncomfortable, and threatening, as if they had
met to impeach the clerk of the weather, and concert measures for
the putting down of this Scotch mist that was presuming to befog a
free, enlightened New England forest. When he reached the gate, Mr.
Yorke leaned on it a moment. "Oh! for the laws of the Locrians!" he
exclaimed.
"Charles, is that you?" asked a soft voice near.
"Why, Amy!" returned the gentleman, starting.
"I was looking for you," Mrs. Yorke explained, taking her husband's
arm. "I hate to have you come up this road alone."
Her thin dress was damp, her hands cold, her heart fluttering. She
had been walking up and down the avenue for the last hour, listening
for her husband's step. How did she know what might happen to him?
The people were violent, and he was uncompromising and bold. Oh! why
had she consented to return to that place where her youth had been
blighted? No good had ever come to her there, nothing but sorrow.
"O woman, woman! how you do torment yourself!" Mr. Yorke ejaculated.
"You will have it that we are in danger. You will have it that we are
being hanged, drawn, and quartered, if we are ten minutes beyond the
time."
"Would you rather we should care nothing about you?" his wife asked
tremulously.
"No, dear," he answered; "for I know that your fears are in
proportion to your loving."
The next day Mr. Yorke and his daughters went to hear the address.
Edith remained at home with her aunt, who never went into a crowd.
The road, the tent, and all about it were full of people. The
enthusiasm was immense. When the speaker appeared, the audience stood
up, the men shouting, the women waving their handkerchiefs--what
for it would be hard to say. Probably they did not know themselves,
unless they meant to express thus their admiration for success. For
this man was the very embodiment of worldly success. Wealth and
honors had come to him, not unsought, but without toil, and with
little deserving. Success showed forth from his smooth, handsome face
with its bright eyes and ready smile, even from the plump white hand,
at whose wave thousands of voters said yea or nay. His expression
was one of pleasant excitement and self-complacency, such as a man
like him may naturally feel in such circumstances. He was a fluent
speaker, had a musical voice, and a graceful manner.
Mr. Yorke listened to his exordium with great and anxious interest,
and, as from generalities the orator gradually became more specific,
his face darkened. It was, in fact, nothing more than a Know-Nothing
tirade, with the usual appeal to the passions instead of the reason,
and the old hackneyed abuse of the clergy.
Mr. Yorke rose like a tiger. "Come, girls," he said quite audibly. "I
can't listen to any more of this trash."
His daughters followed him quietly; but, their seats being prominent,
they could not get out without exciting attention, and the first to
see them was the speaker. He faltered a little in his speech, and a
faint color rose to his face; but he recovered himself immediately,
and waved his hand to stop the hisses that were beginning to rise.
But he felt the defection. He knew well that he was a politician, not
a statesman, and he would rather have had Mr. Yorke's countenance
than that of any ten other men present.
Mr. Yorke did not dine with the senator that day as he had promised
to. "When I made the engagement, I did not know that you had become a
wire-puller," he wrote briefly, in making his excuse.
Mr. Blank's face paled slightly as he read the note, but he crushed
it carelessly the moment after. "Charles Yorke was always a hunker,"
he remarked.
"Carl, I want you to print a leader from me, this week," Mr. Yorke
said to his son that evening.
We have not said that Carl, having finished his law-studies, instead
of practising, had undertaken the editorship of the Seaton _Herald_.
"I am afraid, sir," the young man replied, "that, if you print your
leaders in the _Herald_, you will have to pay the expenses of the
paper, and insure the office against fire and mobs. At present the
circulation is very small, and I dare not say a word against the
party in power."
This paper was not, indeed, a very prosperous sheet; for the editor
could not lower himself to the majority of the people, and they could
not raise themselves to him. His politics were too little violent,
his tone too gentlemanly, his literary items and extracts too pure
and high in tone.
Major Cleaveland and Hester were taking tea at the homestead, and,
when after tea Edith went up-stairs to read a letter she had just
received from Dick Rowan, there was quite a warm discussion of the
events of the day.
"After all, Mr. Blank is a strong speaker," Major Cleaveland said.
"A strong speaker!" exclaimed his father-in-law. "He is rank, sir!"
The ladies interposed a little.
"I'm not a Know-Nothing," Hester's husband said; "but neither do I
condemn them. Their charges are not all false. The Catholic party
proclaim their theory, which is very fine, and say nothing about
the abuses which creep into their practice; their enemies denounce
the abuses, and give them no credit for their principles. I think
that the gist of the trouble is this: neither party will distinguish
between the church and the clergy. When the body of Catholics will
check their priests the minute they step out of their province or
abuse their power, and when non-Catholics learn not to condemn a
religion for the sins of individual professors, then we shall have
peace."
The ladies and Carl went out into the garden, and left the two
gentlemen to their discussion.
"I often wonder, Carl, that you express no opinion on these
subjects," his mother said. "You must have opinions. I almost wish,
sometimes, that you would argue."
"Which side do you wish me to prove?" he inquired listlessly. "I can
prove either."
She sighed. "How you do need rousing!"
He put his arm around her as they walked up and down the piazza. "My
opinion is, little mother," he said, "that opinions are a bore. Who
wants to be always listening to what other people think on subjects?
Not one thought in a milliard is worth putting into words. I am sick
of words, of gabble, of inanities."
"Yes, my son," she said gently. "But one expects a man to give his
opinion once for all on religious questions."
"It is not a religious question, mother: it is a question of
religions," the young man replied with a sort of impatience. "There
is no greater bore than that same question. Why does not each person
believe what suits him, and hold his tongue about it, and let every
other do the same?"
"But truth! but truth!" said the mother.
Carl shrugged his shoulders. "Everybody thinks he has it shut up in
his cranium."
"What! you renounce religion?" she exclaimed.
"Not at all," he said. "They are so many spiritual gymnasiums where
people exercise their souls. They are very pretty and amiable for
women, and for men who need them; but there are those who do not need
them."
"Carl, you break my heart!" his mother cried out, gazing through
tears into her son's face. The boyish look had gone out of it. There
were weariness and sadness in it, and hardness, too.
Carl was in a bitter mood that day, but he tried to soothe the pain
he had given. "I'll do anything," he said laughingly. "I'll turn
Catholic. I'll go to hear John Conway. I'll read the _Dairyman's
Daughter_. I'll teach a Sunday-school class."
Edith came smiling out through the door. "Such a nice letter from
Dick!" she said, giving it to her aunt. "And see, Carl, here is a
little handful of sand from the Sahara, and here is an orange-blossom
from Sorrento. It looks quite fresh."
Dick Rowan had that delightful way which so few letter-writing
travellers know of making their descriptions more vivid by sending
some illustrations of them. Writing from the south, he would say,
"While you are in the midst of snow, there is a rose-tree in bloom
outside my window. Here is one of the buds." He had emancipated
himself from the letter-writers, and succeeded perfectly in his own
way.
The next afternoon Mrs. Yorke sent for Mr. Griffeth, and saw him
alone. "What have you done to Carl?" she exclaimed. "Are you making
an infidel of him?"
The minister, confounded, tried to excuse Carl and defend himself.
The interview was not a pleasant one, and Mr. Griffeth was glad when
it was over. He went out into the sitting-room where Melicent and
Clara sat; but their constrained manners did not encourage him to
stay long. They suspected the subject of the conversation he had been
holding with their mother.
Edith sat on the piazza outside, studying. Her person was not in
sight as he looked from the window, but a flutter of drapery on
the breeze betrayed her presence. Mr. Griffeth merely bowed to the
sisters in passing, and went out on to the piazza. Edith sat in a low
chair with a book of German ballads on her knees. By her side were a
grammar and dictionary. She was translating, watching thought after
thought emerge from that imperfectly-known language, as stars emerge
from the mists of heaven.
She glanced at the minister with a smile that was less for him than
for the stanza she had just completed.
"Salve!" he exclaimed, bowing lowly.
"I am translating a song from the German," Edith said. "Is not
translating delightful? It is like digging for gold, and finding it.
I have just got a thought out whole."
The song was that beautiful one which has been rendered:
"The fight is done: and, far away,
The thundering noise of battle dies;
While homeward, glad, I wend my way,
To meet the sunlight of her eyes."
Edith was looking very lovely. The vines curtaining the end of the
piazza where she sat shut her into a green nook to which only the
finest sprinkle of sunshine could penetrate. The light, moving
shadows flecked her white gown, and all the floor of the piazza about
her,
"Making a quiet image of disquiet,"
and a flickering in her hair. Carl, who was always dressing her out
in some fanciful way, had fastened a drooping bunch of white lilies
in her braids, and the petals, lying against her neck and cheek,
showed the difference between silver-white and rose-white. Her
beaming face made a light in the place.
Mr. Griffeth, stooping to see the poem, laid his hand on the book she
held, and she released it so suddenly that it had nearly fallen to
the floor.
"It is beautiful," he said, reading it aloud. "Can you not fancy
yourself that golden-haired lady, and that some warrior is coming
home to lay his honors at your feet and claim his reward?"
Edith looked away quickly, and let the air take the brightness of her
face. He gazed steadily at her, and wondered for whom the brightness
was, or if it were only a girl's vague romance.
"I like soldiers," she said after a moment, and, though quiet, there
seemed a slight stateliness in her manner. "My grandfather was a
soldier all his life, and was as used to a sword as I am to a fan.
Mamma said that one of his mottoes was, 'Never reckon the forces
of an enemy till after the victory.' It was written in one of her
letters to papa. If I were a man, I should wish to be a soldier."
"I also am a soldier; I fight the devil," the minister said, with a
slight, bitter laugh.
"Do you conquer him?" she asked simply, but with the faintest little
mocking smile.
Mr. Griffeth ignored the question. "You have golden hair, like the
lady of the song," he said hastily. "If I were a soldier, Edith, and
came home to you from battle, would you welcome me as that lady did
her lover?" He touched her hair with his hand as he spoke.
A bright crimson color swept over her face, and she stood up
instantly, drawing away from him, her eyes sparkling. Edith Yorke's
innocence was not of that kind which is divorced from dignity and
delicacy, and smiles at freedoms from everybody.
"Pardon me!" the minister stammered, and at the same moment, to
complete his discomfiture, perceived that the curtain to the window
directly behind them had been drawn aside, and that Mrs. Yorke stood
there, flushed and haughty, with a look in her eyes which he had
never seen there before.
His case was desperate, he knew, but he made an effort to recover. "I
forgot myself," he said; "but I assure you I meant no harm."
"What harm could you have meant, sir?" said the lady, drawing herself
up.
It was not an easy question to answer.
"You have probably made the mistake of supposing that the young
ladies in my family are as free in their manners as those in some
other families you may know. It is a mistake. I have taken care that
their education shall second and confirm what is always the impulse
of a refined nature: to regard such freedoms as offences when coming
from any one but the one chosen to receive all favors."
Mr. Griffeth might apologize, and the apology be civilly received,
but, when he walked away from that house, he felt that he would not
be welcomed in it again. And so the church in Seaton lost a friend
and found an enemy. The next Sunday the most bitter anti-Catholic
sermon of the season was preached from the Universalist pulpit.
A few weeks after came a peremptory letter from Miss Clinton. She
wanted Carl to come up to see her. What was he burying himself in
the country for? Was he raising turnips? Was he going to marry some
freckled dairy-maid? If he was, she did not wish to set eyes on him.
What did they mean by leaving her to die alone, without a relative
near her? It was unnatural! It was a shame! Let Carl come at once. If
he pleased her, she would provide for him.
Miss Clinton's promises were not very trustworthy in this respect,
for she had successively endowed and disinherited every one of her
relatives and friends. But that was no reason why her request should
be refused. She was a lonely old woman, and Carl must go to her.
He consented rather reluctantly, protesting that he would only stay a
week. But, when he got there, it was not so easy to tear himself away.
"A newspaper to edit?" cried the old lady. "What signifies a
newspaper in a little country town? Nobody ever reads it."
"Not when _I_ edit it?" says Carl with a laugh. He found the old lady
amusing.
"No, not even then, Master Vanity," she replies. "Stay here, Carl. It
is miserable to be left alone so. I sha'n't keep you very long. You
shall have any room you choose, and money enough to be respectable,
and you may smoke from morning to night. There is only one thing you
may not do. I won't have a dog in this house, for two reasons: he
might go mad, and he might worry my cat. Will you stay? Old people
live longer when they have young ones about them; and, besides, I'm
lonely. Bird torments me. She hints religion, and reads the Bible
when she thinks I don't see her. I know she is searching out texts
that she thinks will fit my case. I am getting old, Carl, and I
forget a little the arguments against all this superstition. They are
true, but I forget them; and sometimes in the night, or when I feel
nervous, the nonsensical religious stories I have heard come up and
frighten me, and I have nothing to oppose to them. Alice torments
me, too. She is so sure, she _looks_ so much, she goes about with
her religion just like a little child holding its mother's hand,
while I am sure of nothing, and have nothing to lean on but this
stick"--holding out a cane in her shaking hand.
"It must be comfortable to believe so," she went on, after two or
three gasping breaths. "I envy the fools who can. But I can't. My
head is too clear for that. And I want you here, Carl, to remind me
of the arguments that I forget, and to talk to me when I am nervous.
They tell me that you are a free-thinker, and I know that you are
clever. Stay, for God's sake! I suppose there may be a God."
Carl shrank from the wild appeal in that frightened old face; shrank
yet more from the horrible task assigned him. Unbelief, as he had
contemplated it, looked gallant, noble, and aspiring; but this
unbelief seemed like a glimpse into that perdition which he had
denied. In this old scoffer he felt as if contemplating a distorted
image of himself. It was as if he had been asked to commit a crime, a
sacrilege. There was such a crime as sacrilege, he saw.
But he could not refuse to stay.
"Perhaps it would be better for us both to look for arguments against
than for our theories," he said gravely.
Anything, so that he did not leave her, she insisted. Indeed, she
wanted his masculine strength more than anything else. Every one
about feared her, or was tenderly careful of her, but this young man
had already more than once good-naturedly scouted her notions. He was
one to be fearless and tell the truth, and she felt safe with him.
Besides, he was a man, and clever, and it would not hurt her pride
to be influenced by him. If her insensible and selfish heart felt no
longer the necessity of loving, it still felt the equally feminine
necessity of submission and sacrifice. Already in the bottom of her
heart was a faint hope that Carl might insist on having a dog in
the house, and that she might show her dawning fondness for him by
consenting--a greater concession than she had ever yet made in her
life.