CHAPTER XIX.

HALCYON DAYS.

Having given their consent to Edith’s engagement, the Yorkes immediately adopted Dick Rowan as their own. They were not people to be friendly by halves. Even Melicent was propitious, and, when she saw with what pleased surprise he met her advances, became still more amiable. Clara, who lived in a rarer atmosphere, effervesced more readily, and could not enough praise her cousin’s _futur_. Hester insisted that he should leave the hotel, and stay at her house. She was completely won by the almost boyish affection and respect with which he treated her husband, his first and only former friend in Seaton, and by his fondness to her children.

Mrs. Yorke, beginning by talking with, in order to study him, and know thoroughly what sort of man she had promised her niece to, found herself growing affectionate toward him, and not only probing his mind, but unfolding her own. In after-years she remembered these confidential interviews as an honor, which, at the time, she had scarcely appreciated. The young man told her all his hopes and plans, asked her advice in everything concerning Edith, and listened eagerly when she explained to him the needs and habits of a delicately bred lady.

“My poor mother is the only woman I have ever lived in the house with,” he remarked; “and, of course, she was not able to be dainty.”

He said this rather sadly, but without a taint of humility. Mrs. Yorke was impressed by the dignity of that character which would not be ashamed of anything but its own wrong-doing.

One confidence led to another, and Dick was afterward surprised on recollecting that he had related the story of his whole life to Edith’s aunt, and spoken more freely to her of his early struggles and sufferings than even to Edith herself. Not only this; but, seeing tears in her eyes when he told of his father’s despairing efforts to reform himself, and hearing the pitying word she spoke for him whom others had mocked, he told her the end of it all, and where that father’s desolate grave had been made.

“You poor, dear boy!” she exclaimed, holding out her kind hand to him, “I don’t wonder that Edith loves you!”

“I do not pretend to understand the designs of God,” Dick said unsteadily. “When I think of my father, all is a mystery. But for myself, I think I can see that suffering was good. My nature is to go straight to any end which I propose to myself, without much regard for the wishes of others, and no regard for ordinary obstacles. I might have been cruel, I should have been selfish; but suffering has taught me to be more tender of other people.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Yorke said; and, recollecting her own early trials, thought that they had helped her to be more pitiful of his.

Then, led on by her sympathy for him, she told her own past, there on 474 the spot where it had occurred.

These confidences drew the two together, and formed a bond which was never broken.

A man’s manliness can scarcely bear a severer test than when he becomes the pet of woman. One is sometimes astonished to see how characters, apparently fine, deteriorate under that insidious influence. But Dick Rowan was too grateful and modest, and too little selfish or vain, to be injured.

“He is not quite like us,” Mrs. Yorke said, “but he is more natural and original, and is, altogether, a remarkable young man. Edith has reason to be proud of his homage. He certainly behaves exquisitely toward her.”

Mr. Yorke, refusing to be influenced by feminine raptures, was fain to take the young man out of the house, in order to talk with him uninterruptedly. He displayed the improvements he had made in the place, his avenues, now as hard as cement, his terraces, smooth and green with turf of velvet fineness. There were vines here and there, disposed for effect, like drapery in an artist’s studio, and many a flower which bloomed now for the first time under Seaton skies. They stopped at last beside a clover-plot, thick with crowded trefoils and blossoms. Its surface was unsteady with bees, musical with a low hum, and all the air was sweet with the breath of it.

“If I were not disgusted with Seaton,” Mr. Yorke said, “I should like to spend my summers here, and carry out my plans for the place; but when we go away, probably in October, I shall never wish to see the town again. There is no security here.”

Dick leaned thoughtfully on the fence, and watched the bees come and go over the clover, and took off his hat to shake his hair loose in that fragrant air. “I think, sir, that Seaton may be in future all the better for this trouble,” he said slowly. “The tone of the place is low, I know that well, but it is in a fair way of becoming ashamed of itself, and so, of mending. When people have wrong ideas, and stand by them stubbornly, I like to have them go on, and find out for themselves what their principles lead to. Conviction reaches them then through their own experience, and so you hear no more about the matter. It is, of course, a slow way, but it is sure.”

Mr. Yorke made a grimace, and quoted President Mann: “God Almighty is not in a hurry, and I am.”

Carl had gone to Bragon. He went quite unexpectedly, the day Dick Rowan came, and did not see Edith’s lover till he had been a week in Seaton. He came home one evening after tea, when the young people were in the cupola, looking down the bay, for the _Halcyon_. They waved their handkerchiefs to him, and his mother ran out to meet him.

“My dear son!” she exclaimed, embracing him as joyfully as if he had been gone a year. “I would not watch for you, lest I should be disappointed. I pretended I did not expect you. But you may know what a hypocritical pretence it was when I say that your supper is all ready, though, to be sure, breakfast, dinner, and supper have been kept for you every day.”

While speaking, she led him into a little northern parlor, which was their summer dining-room.

Carl looked at his mother with a smile, but tears rose to his eyes. He was not one to take even a mother’s devotion as a matter of course, and just now he found it peculiarly touching.

Mrs. Yorke looked very frail and lovely as she sat opposite her son. 475 Her snowdrop of a face, the pale blue scarf knotted loosely about her neck, with fringed ends hanging over her white dress, the fall of lace fastened to her hair by a rosebud--all made a pretty picture. To the inherent loveliness of the mother, she added the charm of the exquisite lady.

“If you do not need that apostle behind your chair--” her son suggested.

She immediately dismissed Paul Patten; and Carl was free to say, “Now tell me the state of affairs. The engagement I take for granted; but have I got to endure the spectacle of a pair of cooing lovers? I would rather leave the country.”

For a moment Mrs. Yorke was too much occupied to give any reply but a smiling shake of the head. Eating was one of the fine arts with her, and she made a point of having the circumstances of that odious operation as artistic as possible. Having placed an accurate square of currant jelly on a glass plate, where it lay like a ruby block stolen from Solomon’s hidden treasures, and filled a gorgeous Japanese cup with coffee, into which she put a tiny cube of loaf-sugar and a spoonful of cream, she was ready to speak.

“There is no necessity for any such banishment, my dear. Edith is very friendly to him, but she surrounds herself with a fine reserve which he could not break through if he would. I could as soon fancy a gentleman approaching familiarly the Queen of Sheba. They are very little alone together.”

“What delicious coffee!” Carl exclaimed, and immediately began to tell some incidents of his journey.

When they heard the others coming down-stairs, they went to meet them. Melicent came first, with Mr. Rowan, and all saw with pleasure that the two young men met not only with courtesy, but friendliness. Carl’s invariable, haughty silence whenever Dick Rowan’s name was mentioned had given them some uneasiness regarding the meeting. Indeed, could they have found fault with him for anything, it would have been for what they considered this excess of pride.

The two passed on, Clara following, and, quite in the rear, came Edith, alone. She was half-smiling, and came slowly down, step by step, with a touch of feminine coquetry as innocent and natural as the tricks of a playful kitten, lingering as he waited. Yet her bright cheeks and shining eyes told that the approach was a delight.

But for some reason, Carl chose to be displeased all at once, and, by a slight change of attitude and expression, to be waiting, not to greet her, but to go up-stairs.

“Pardon me for being so slow,” she said, becoming instantly a courteous lady. “I think I am getting old and dignified. The wings have gone from my feet.”

The _Halcyon_ had come, and the Yorkes immediately made the acquaintance of its master. Dick and Edith went down to the ship to see him, and persuaded him to go home to tea with them. The big, bashful sailor was not accustomed to the society of ladies, and had the impression that there was something cabalistic in good-breeding. But he found himself quite at ease with the family, after a while, and was convinced that they were not aware of the few blunders he committed in the first embarrassment of meeting them. Some diversion had always taken place at precisely the right moment to screen him, and soon his self-possession was quite restored. He left the house 476 that night highly pleased with his visit.

“They seem to me perfectly kind and natural people,” he said to Dick, as they walked through the woods together. “Your Edith, it is true, is rather grand, but in a sweet, child-like way, and Miss Melicent seems disposed to be a little on the high horse once in a while, but not much. I always thought that accomplished ladies were more airy, but I don’t see that these do any great things.”

“True,” Dick answered; “but mark the things which they do not do.”

They were much together after that, and Mrs. Yorke and her daughters went on board the _Halcyon_, and were entertained there. Carl had been afraid to have his mother venture on board the ship, and had charged himself especially with the care of her, but his solicitude was not needed. He was both pleased and amused by the simplicity and tenderness with which their gigantic host smoothed every smallest obstruction from her path and spared her every exertion. There had been a momentary flash of angry surprise when he saw his mother lifted over an obstructing timber in Captain Cary’s arms; but the sailor’s face was so absolutely anxious and kind, and Mrs. Yorke laughed so merrily over the _naïf_ gallantry, that he instantly perceived the folly of resenting it.

“My dear,” Mrs. Yorke whispered to Clara, “he is like one’s grandfather, grandmother, and all one’s aunts and uncles, in one. It’s a pity he hasn’t a wife, he would be so good to her.”

Clara blushed slightly. She had been thinking some such thought herself.

The intercourse gave the Yorkes a fresh and novel sensation. It was so different from anything they had ever had before, and, at the same time, so pleasant. It came like a breath of pure sea-air into a warm and scented drawing-room. They were not so mummified by convention that they could not appreciate this simple, unconventional nature, in which they found a noble delicacy.

Captain Cary listened with indignation to the story of their Seaton experiences. An autocrat on board ship, and completely his own master everywhere, he could not comprehend how one part of a community could exercise such tyranny and coercion over the other. “It seems to me that the Catholics must have done something out of the way,” he said. “There’s usually fault on both sides, you know, though no fault would justify such a persecution.”

“There is just the trouble,” Mr. Yorke replied, rather impatiently. “It is so easy for people, who wish to be fair, and, at the same time, not put themselves to the inconvenience of investigating, to say that there is probably fault on both sides, and then fancy that they have done justice. On the contrary, they may have done great injustice, and have, certainly, rendered a careless and slipshod judgment. For there are cases where the fault is all on one side, and other cases where, though in the end there may be fault on both sides, the responsibility really rests on the one who was the aggressor, and provoked the other beyond endurance. I am not blaming you, sir; but I am always anoyed by that off-hand way of saying, ‘There’s probably fault on both sides.’ If people don’t know, let them say they don’t know, and not give any judgment at all. I do know, and I say that no provocation was given, and the Catholics have been only too supine.”

“There have been times, Captain Cary,” Edith said, “when I have wished 477 that you were here. I know you would have been on our side.”

“That I would!” he answered heartily, looking at her with a kind smile. The two were great friends. “And I would have left my mark anywhere you told me to strike.”

“It was a shame to waste you on a merchant-ship,” Clara said to him. “You should have been an admiral.”

The sailor gave one of his great laughs, which always made Mrs. Yorke jump and flush. “We big fellows are not always fond of fighting,” he said. “When I was a boy, I had two younger brothers about half my size, and either of them was a match for me. I was so peaceable that I was called Mother Cary’s chicken, and I believe it was that nickname that first put it into my head to go to sea. No, I’d rather fight wind and wave than men. I could attack a man if he were doing anything absolutely wrong; but to kill him because he belonged to a foreign nation, and carried a different flag, that would be too cold-blooded for me.”

The two sailors, with Edith and Clara, visited the Catholic school, carrying gifts for the children and encouragement to the teacher.

“You look so worn, dear friend,” Edith said. “I wish you would give up, and come to Boston with us.”

The teacher shook her head. “I cannot give up,” she said.

Captain Cary complimented Miss Churchill in his own fashion: “We call that a pretty sharp ship that will sail within four points of the wind,” he said. “But I hear that you have been making way with the wind in your teeth.”

“I have not made much headway,” she answered, smiling, “but only held my own. I am anchored.”

Carl accompanied them up Irish Lane, on Sunday afternoon. They called at several houses, and talked with and encouraged the inmates. It was a help to these poor souls to have some one to tell their troubles to. “But what shall we do when you are all gone?” they asked mournfully. To them, the expected departure of the Yorke family from Seaton was a misfortune second only to the banishment of their priest.

Their situation was, indeed, a cruel one. It was not alone the contumely to which they were subjected, and the being unable to hear Mass, but their sick and dying were deprived of the sacraments, and their infants were unbaptized. Yet no harsh word escaped them. Scarcely one seemed to recollect their persecutors. They were suffering for the faith, and it was God’s will--that was their view of the position. The instruments which God used to try them, they thought but little of. Carl Yorke went home thinking that he had heard better sermons that afternoon than he had ever before heard in his life.

Father Rasle’s continued absence was not voluntary. He would fain have returned to his flock, in spite of Mr. Yorke’s and Miss Churchill’s letters, but his superior added a command to their advice, and he was forced to restrain his zeal.

“Tell my people that I never forgot them,” he wrote to the teacher. “Every day at Mass I pray for their deliverance. It cannot be long before I shall visit them. Meantime, let them give their enemies no pretext for further injury.”

To Edith he wrote:

“Your desire to _act_ in behalf of these persecuted people is natural, but I must forbid you. You may safely follow the advice of such good people as Mr. and Mrs. Yorke. But do not fear that, because you are inactive, you therefore are useless. I visited once, in Europe, a 478 spot where a temple had stood. Nothing was left of it but a few broken fragments lying about, and a single beautiful pillar that stood alone. Was that pillar useless? No; in its way, it was very eloquent. No one could look upon it without trying to fancy what the whole edifice might have been; and you may be sure that the traveller’s imagination did its best in rebuilding that temple. So, now, you shall be the little caryatid of the church in Seaton. You have the gift of silence: use it. Be as obedient and quiet as that solitary column, and let the world guess from you how fair must be that structure of which you are a part.”

Edith turned from the window, where she had stood to read her letter, folded her arms up over her head, and said to Dick Rowan, sitting there, “Can you fancy me supporting an entablature?”

“No,” he answered; “for then there would have to be others like you.”

Edith blushed, and dropped her arms; for they were all looking at her, and their faces, as well as Dick Rowan’s answer, reminded her that she was beautiful. She gave him her letter to read, and went to sit on the window-sill beside Clara, and listen to the talk of the three gentlemen on the piazza. The two families were dining together that day, and Mr. Yorke, with his son-in-law, and Captain Cary, were smoking their cigars outside. Inside the window nearest her husband, Mrs. Cleaveland sat in a low, broad arm-chair. A nurse in a white cap had just placed on her knees Hester’s second son, an infant of six months old. As it lay slowly and deliciously waking up, both nurse and mother gazed down upon it with adoring eyes. Master Philip, this baby’s predecessor, was hiding his face in one arm of his mother’s arm-chair, being in temporary disgrace. Original sin was very strong and active in this child. He was full of vitality and determination, and just at that age when will is pretty well developed, and memory and understanding still dormant--the age for childish atrocities. There were moments when the child’s life was a burden to him, by reason of the great number of things which he wished to do, and meant to do, and could not remember that he must not do. He had a chronic desire to pull out the baby’s eyelashes, “eye-winkeys,” he called them, and to make it smile in season and out by violently drawing the corners of its mouth round toward its ears. Whenever an infantine shriek was heard, it was always understood that Master Philip was in some way accountable. Another fancy of his was to poke holes in paper, or any delicate and easily perforated fabric, with his plump forefinger. He could have no greater pleasure than to seat himself, with some precious volume before him, and go gravely and industriously through it in this way, leaf by leaf, from cover to cover. There was, indeed, a long list of indictments against this unhappy child. The two little forefingers tied together behind his back, and a dilapidated book lying on the carpet, showed plainly enough what his offence was at this time.

In the background, Carl was telling marvellous stories to the culprit’s half-brother, Eugene; and Mrs. Yorke and Milicent, in the centre of the room, were coaxing some account of his adventures from Dick Rowan. He had to be persuaded before he would speak much of himself.

“Isn’t he magnificent?” Clara whispered to Edith, meaning Captain Cary.

The sailor had been describing an arrowy little craft, the 479 _Humming-bird_, in which he had once darted in and out of the Chinese coast, smuggling opium in the very teeth of an English man-of-war. Seeing the addition to his audience, he threw the end of his cigar away, and moved his chair nearer the window.

“How I should like to be a sailor!” exclaimed Clara with enthusiasm.

Captain Cary leaned forward, with his arms on his knees, in order to bring himself more on a level with the young ladies. “And how would you like to be a sailor’s wife?” he asked.

Although he had the greatest possible admiration for Miss Clara Yorke, and considered her by far the cleverest young woman he had ever known, it would be safe to say that the thought of going any further than that had never entered his mind, till he saw the flash of eyes and color with which she received his question. The effect was electrical. He straightened himself up again, and, in the first break of that possibility, did not hear her saucy but rather tardy reply: “That depends on who the sailor is.”

The man was confounded between terror, rapture, and astonishment. Clara’s look had seemed to show that such a consummation was not impossible to, at least, think of--that it had, perhaps, occurred to her own mind. True, she was most likely to scorn the thought; but, for all that, a momentary vision danced before his eyes of what his life would be if he had a woman of his own to love and serve. That the wife of his choice should serve him, never occurred to this generous soul. He could at any time have married a common person, whom most people would have thought good enough for him; but there was in his nature a capacity for tender worship which made him shrink from such an alliance.

Presently, Edith’s cool voice stole through the chaos of his mind. “You can go to sea with Dick and me, Clara.”

The sailor started, and fell from the clouds. His face became overcast, and, with a deep sigh, he seemed to renounce a long-cherished hope.

With a laugh and a toss of the head, Clara rose from her lowly seat, and, stepping out through the window, began to promenade up and down the garden-walk. She saw through this great, transparent creature perfectly, and was amused, and she knew not what else. One could not be angry with the fellow, she said laughingly to herself. She had been looking up to him with enthusiasm, as to some antique bronze or marble Argonaut, or other hero of simpler times. Now that was changed, and she was on the pedestal, to be worshipped by him. It was preposterous, but not altogether disagreeable.

Meantime, Captain Cary was confiding his distress to Edith. “I hope that your cousin didn’t think I was fool enough to dream of her being my wife,” he said, looking down. “What I said was a slip of the tongue, and I didn’t know the drift of it myself till I saw how she took it.”

“Oh! never mind,” Edith answered. “Clara is always jesting, and twisting people’s meaning. She knew you meant no such thing.”

He sighed, and said no more.

If Clara had expected the sailor to watch her, she was disappointed. He went into the parlor, and when, later, she entered, brilliant with exercise and mischief, he was sitting by Carl, and listening with as sober a face to the stories that young man was telling Eugene Cleaveland as if he were listening to a sermon. Clara passed near them, to hear what it might be which produced such solemnity in the 480 man and such a trance of interest in the child.

“Then,” Carl was saying, “Taurus sent to the Great Bear to say that he should like to have something out of the golden dipper about the middle of the next month, for all the little stars would grow dim about that time, and need something to polish up with. And the Bear said, ‘All right! but the dipper hangs so high on the celestial pole that you will have to pay me a good deal to climb up to it.’ And Taurus answered, ‘All right!’ And then the Bears set slyly to work to grease the pole, so that the dipper should slip down, and they get their pay without work; and Taurus he set to work to push the dipper higher up, so as to get more work than he had agreed to pay for; and, meantime, all the poor little stars languished, and grew dim. And then Orion got mad, and brought a lot of little dippers, and gave each of the little stars a full one. And the stars grew bright and glad. But the Bulls and Bears, finding that they were both beaten, didn’t feel glad. The Bear began to bite his own paws, and the Bull went for Orion, and tried to toss him. But Orion laughed, and put up his shield, and called his dogs, and--”

“Upon my word, Carl,” says Clara, “I think you put the stars to base uses when you set them to gambling in stocks. Have you told Captain Cary of our projected sail down the bay?”

“Poor Clara!” Melicent said, joining them. “We are planning some little pleasure-trip to distract her mind. You do not know, perhaps, that the Philistines are upon her?”

The sailor did not understand, but looked so inquiring and solicitous that Clara explained to him.

“I published a story ages ago,” she said, “and the editor of the _Cosmic_ has just become aware of it. He found it lately among the _débris_ of his writing-table. The authoress, he says, has shaken up a few fancies in a kaleidoscope, and calls them life. They are about as much like life, he adds, as Watteau’s shepherdesses are like real shepherdesses, or as Marie Antoinette’s housekeeping at the Petit Trianon, with ribbons tied round the handles of silver saucepans, was like real kitchen-work. Still, he concludes, the story is amusing, in spite of its pinchbeck ideal, and, when the writer is older, she will, doubtless, do better. The musty old metaphysician!” exclaimed Miss Clara, warming with the subject. “I once read a paragraph in one of his articles, and found it comical. I had never seen any of the words before, except the articles and prepositions. My first impression was that he had made them up, for fun. I found them all out in the unabridged dictionary, though. They were real words, but I have forgotten what they mean.”

“So much the better!” said Melicent. And then followed a controversy on the subject of learned women. Melicent denounced them as unwomanly; but Melicent was neither a student nor well read, and there might be a difference of opinion as to cause and effect in her case. Mr. Yorke mocked _les savantes_; but Mr. Yorke adored a wife whose literary acquirements were of the most modest kind, and he had once, in a never-forgotten argument, been worsted by a clever woman. Captain Cary was of opinion that clever and learned women were not fit wives for common men. At that, Clara took up the gauntlet with great spirit.

Clever women did not wish to marry common men, she said. And there were plenty of uncommon men who were not jealous of them. She disliked 481 all this hypocritical talk about the beauty of simplicity and humility and submission in women. The real meaning of it was not Christian, but Mohammedan.

“For me,” Mrs. Yorke interposed, “I think that some women should be learned, in order to appreciate learned men. If the wife of a scholar could not understand and sympathize in her husband’s love of books and what they teach, she would soon grow jealous of them, and he would miss what should be his sweetest homage.”

“Now, is not there an orthodox woman?” Mr. Yorke exclaimed with delight. “The sole use she can conceive of a woman’s having for learning is that she may be better able to appreciate her husband.”

Edith glanced past Carl, and looked with arch inquiry at Dick Rowan.

He was perfectly self-possessed, and spoke even with a slight air of authority. “I believe the true superiority of woman to be in religion,” he said; “and, if she has that, it is no matter whether she is learned or not.”

“But is not your view somewhat ascetical?” asked Carl Yorke. “We are supposing that this life is something. Looking at the question in that light, I would say that no one has the right to dogmatize one way or the other. Let each woman follow the bent of her own mind, and be as learned as she will. I only stipulate that she shall not be loud-voiced nor disputatious, but wear her learning with a grace, as an ornament, not a weapon, though she may use it as a weapon when there is need. I would have woman wear erudition, as Mrs. Browning says men wear grief who have worn it long:

‘As a hat aside, With a flower stuck in it.’”

“And while your erudite wife is gracefully adjusting her ologies, who is to see to the bread and the buttons?” Melicent asked, rather sneeringly.

“Oh! those everlasting buttons!” Clara cried out, and put her hands over her ears.

“The servant, probably,” Carl replied to Melicent. “If a woman could give some thought to those things also, well and good, but I should not choose a wife for such a service. I would rather have her help me to polish a sentence or pose a figure than cook my dinner or mend my stockings, unless we were so poor that labor was absolutely necessary. I should be ashamed to see my wife performing menial services for me. I would as willingly see her at work in the field as bringing me my slippers.”

Carl had scarcely time to see the look of beaming approval in Edith’s eyes, before his sight and hearing were both temporarily lost in Clara’s rapturous embrace. “You are perfect!” she cried, kissing him. “You are of the progeny of Apollo! I am so glad to have that slipper theory upset; for I never saw a woman bringing her husband’s slippers for him without feeling a contempt for her. I don’t believe that any one ever admired such a piece of mean servility, except the lazy Turk who allowed it to be done for him.”

While they laughed at Clara’s enthusiasm, Dick Rowan said to Edith, “I quite agree with your cousin. I mean all that he means, and more.”

“By the way,” Carl said carelessly, as he went toward the door, “I am not Edith’s cousin, nor in any way related to her.”