Part 7 — CHAPTER VIII. FATHER RASLE.

One summer morning, Mr. Yorke appeared at the breakfast-table with a very sour face. He was bilious, and he had not slept well. Even Hester's cooing ways failed to mollify him.

"Why, you are feverish, papa," she said. "Your hand is hot and dry."

He moved his chair impatiently. "Yes, your mother insisted on my taking charcoal instead of calomel, and I think she must have slily administered a lucifer-match with it: I radiate heat."

Mrs. Yorke took these complaints very quietly. She knew that nothing could be further from her husband's heart than to be dissatisfied with anything she did. "We were disturbed by that fearful noise," she said quietly, taking her place at the table.

Owen began to laugh. The Seaton "cast-iron band" had been out the night before, and the young man found himself very much amused by it.

"Do you like lawlessness, sir?" demanded Mr. Yorke.

"That depends on what the law is," the son replied pleasantly.

"Well, sir, in this case it is the law of common decency, of respect for the clergy, and courtesy to strangers. Father Rasle, the Catholic priest, came here yesterday, and that Babel of cow-bells, and sleigh-bells, and mill-saws, and tin trumpets, and wooden drums, and I know not what else, was before his door. I call it a shameful outrage."

"So do I," Owen replied promptly. "I had no idea what it meant."

The young ladies all exclaimed indignantly; but Edith dropped her eyes and was silent. Theology was nothing to her, and as yet her faith had no life in it. She was deeply ashamed of that religion which all seemed to scoff at save those who tolerated it for her sake. Only her promise held her to it. That the voice of the people is not always, is very seldom, the voice of God, she could not be expected to know; neither could she be expected to love that church which as yet she had heard spoken of only by its enemies. She did not dream of forsaking the religion of her mother; but her constancy to it seemed to her of the same nature as Mrs. Rowan's constancy to her drunken husband.

After breakfast, her uncle bade her dress to go with him to call on Father Rasle. She obeyed, though with a shrinking heart. She had heard priests spoken of in the street and by the school-children with contempt and reviling, and her impression was that they must be very disagreeable persons to meet. But the religion was hers, and she must stand by it, never confessing to a doubt nor allowing any one to reproach it unchallenged by her. And if she stood by the religion, she must stand by the priest.

Father Rasle, being only a missionary there, had no house in Seaton, but stopped with a decent Irish family. It was a poor place, and the room in which he received Mr. Yorke and his niece was as humble as could well be imagined. But there needed no fine setting to show that he was that noblest object on earth, a Christian gentleman. His age might have been a little over forty, and his manner was almost too grave and dignified, one might think at first; but it soon appeared that he could be genial beyond most men.

Mr. Yorke presented his niece, and, before explaining their errand, apologized for the insult that had been offered the priest the night before.

"Oh! I certainly did not expect the honor of a serenade," said Father Rasle, laughing pleasantly. "But, if it gratified them to give it, I am not in the least offended. It is, perhaps, a loss to me that I did not care; for I might have derived some profit from the mortification. On the contrary, I own to you, sir, that I enjoyed that concert. It was the most laughable one I ever heard."

Mr. Yorke looked at the speaker in astonishment. Here was a kind of pride, if pride it could be called, which he could not understand. In such circumstances, his own impulse would have been to shoot his insulters down instantly. What he despised he wanted to crush, to rid the earth of, to spare himself the sight of; what the priest despised he pitied, he wished to raise, to excuse, to spare God and the world the sight of. It was admirable, his visitor owned, but inimitable by him.

Not being able to say any more on the subject, he then stated Edith's case. "You will know what she needs," he concluded, "and I shall see that she follows your directions."

The father questioned his young catechumen, and found her in a state of the most perfect ignorance. "The child is a heathen!" he said, in his odd, broken English, his smile taking the harsh edge off the words. "She must study the catechism—this little one—and see how much of it she will have to say to me when I come here again in a month. I will then prepare her for her first confession."

Edith uttered not a word, except to answer his questions. She was not sure whether she liked him or not; she was only certain that he did not offend her.

There was a little more talk, then Mr. Yorke rose to go, cordially inviting the priest to visit him. As they were going, "I think, Edith," he said, "that you should kneel and ask Father Rasle's blessing."

She knelt at once, for her mother's and her uncle's sake, with a murmured, "Please to bless me, sir!" But when he had given the blessing, laying his hand upon her head, and looking down into her face with that expression of serious sweetness, she felt a dawning sense of reverence and confidence, and perceived dimly some sacredness in him.

She went to Mass the next day in the little chapel that had been desecrated. The picture-frames still hung on the walls, with the rags of the stations in them. There was enough left to show how Christ the Lord had suffered, and this new insult was but a freshening of the original text. Mr. Yorke sat on the bench beside his niece, and she stood, or knelt, or sat with the rest, not in the least understanding what it all meant, but impressed by the gravity and earnestness of those around her. When Mass was over, the priest, who had seen them, sent for them into the sacristy. He had some books for Edith, and wanted to point out the lessons she was to learn first.

"And I have a present for you," he said, giving her an ormolu crucifix, with a broken foot that showed marks of violence. "This is the crucifix that was torn from our tabernacle. I want you to keep it; and whenever you are called upon to suffer, and feel disposed to complain, look at this, and remember that our Lord was not even allowed to hang upon his cross in peace."

She took the crucifix from his hand silently, and held it against her breast as she went out. She did not propose to endure suffering; she desired and looked for happiness; but something in this relic stirred her to a strange pity, mingled with anger. The idea that lay behind it was to her dim and vague; but, failing to grasp that, she would have defended with her life the symbol of that monstrous wrong and that heart-breaking patience. Reaching home, she went directly to her own chamber and hung the crucifix beneath the picture of her father, then stood and looked at it awhile. There was a wish in her heart to do something—to offer some reparation to the real Sufferer behind this image of pain. She kissed with soft lips the broken foot of the cross, and a tear fell where she kissed. She took it down, and pressed the rough edge against her bosom till the sharp points pierced the skin and brought a stain of blood. Then, hearing some one call her, she hastily replaced it, and brought as an offering to it a precious bouquet of ribbon-grasses, that Carl had gathered that morning to fasten in her hair. She had meant to keep it because of some sweetness with which it was offered, but now she gave it up to that unseen Patience and Love. Her instinctive action proved that the feeling and precept of the church only sanctifies, but does not change the impulse of a pure and tender nature.

Meantime, the child was being discussed down-stairs.

"I observe that Edith has an inclination to stay alone a good deal," Mr. Yorke said, "and I do not wish to have that encouraged. It is not a wholesome disposition. Her father was a visionary, her mother was a visionary, and she is—"

"A vision!" concluded Mrs. Yorke, as Edith appeared, with the thoughts of the last few hours still in her eyes and on her lips.

About that time, Carl received a letter from Miss Mills which he read many times. "You ask my advice," she wrote, "and you tell me that I know better than you know yourself. I would not claim so much as that, but I think I may tell you something more clearly than you yourself perceive it, or confirm you in some thought which you doubt or wish to doubt. As to your choice of a profession and staying in Seaton for the present, you might well try the experiment; but I cannot express any great confidence as to the result. It is almost a disadvantage to you that your powers are so various. There are a good many things which, with application, you could do excellently; whether you have any specialty remains to be proved, and will be hard to prove; for, in order to find that out, you must concentrate your powers, and that you hate to do. If this world were but a playground, then you would have nothing to do but follow in the trail of every new beauty which calls you; but life is earnest, and you must work, or you not only lose what you might accomplish, but you lose yourself. You are one of those whom the devil finds worth fighting for, and, lacking faith to your armor, you have all the more need of labor. Qui laborat orat, might have a sort of truth even for one without faith.

"Let me warn you against two dangers: one is, that you may be injured by flatterers. Not that you like flattery in itself, but it will soothe your painful sense of not having reached your own ideal. It will seem to you that your best must have transpired at least, and that you must have done better than you thought. Not so; receive that soothing praise only when you have striven hard, even though you failed, but never when you have tried weakly or not at all. What the flatterers like in you is not your best, but your worst. They have no wish for you to rise above them; they praise you to keep you low.

"I warn you, too, against your excessive love for the beautiful, in which you are an ultra-pagan. The infinite beauty is alone worthy of that passion with which you seek and admire; and infinite beauty is infinite truth. Seek truth first, and you will always be rewarded by the vision of beauty; but, if you seek beauty first, you will find to your sorrow, possibly to your ruin, that it is often but the mask of falsehood.

"Lay aside some of your fastidiousness, my dear friend, and take up your life strongly with both hands. Do something, even if it should prove to be the wrong thing. Wrong work done honestly prepares us for right work. Strengthen your will, and be manly, as a man should be. Discipline yourself, and you will escape much pain and loss of time, for, let me assure you, Carl, you need either an immensity of resolution or an immensity of suffering.

"My lecture is done, and I am Minerva no longer. My thoughts follow you with solicitude and indulgence. On the night after you left, which you spent on the sea, I went to the quiet chapel near me, and placed you under the protection of Stella Maris. But life has waves and gulfs more fearful than those of the sea, and my prayers for you do not cease with the end of your journey.

"Look well at Robert Yorke's child, remembering what the story of my life is; and then, if you think that I could love her, kiss her on the forehead for me, and tell her that I send a loving greeting."

Owen folded the letter, and hid it in his bosom. He had been walking in the woods, and he returned thoughtfully homeward. The afternoon was sultry and still. The low brooks hissed along like white flames, the branches drooped over the birds that murmured, and the flowers hung wilted. All about the house was silent as he entered. Going through the kitchen, he saw Betsey sitting in the northern window reading a novel. Betsey was the most romantic soul alive, and, having got hold of David Copperfield, was crying her eyes out over poor little Dora. Passing on to the sitting-room, he found his father sitting asleep in a deep wicker-chair, a copy of Religio Medici lying open on his knee. The quiet tone of the book, familiar by many readings, had lulled him into a pleasant slumber, and his hand had dropped with the finger pointing to a passage on which he had closed his eyes: "I love to love myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an O altitudo!" From that the reader had gone out into the mystery of sleep with a smile lingering on his face.

"It is the castle of indolence," muttered Owen, stepping noiselessly on. He paused at the foot of the stairs and listened. No sound came down. His sisters, in white wrappers, each with a pillow under her head, were lying on the cool matting in the north chamber, too much exhausted to talk. He went out into the portico, and stood there a moment, seeing no one. Then, turning, he beheld Edith asleep on a bench in the shadow of the vines, her arms thrown up over her head. Smilingly he approached her, literally to obey the command of his friend, and look well to see if his uncle's deserted mistress could love his uncle's child. She was fair enough to love, for all the roughness of her former life had passed away. The bloom of the lily was in her face, warmed now to a rose by the heat, and her hair had a shine of gold.

"Dear little cousin," he said, "a friend of yours sends loving greeting."

She stirred, her face grew troubled, and she started up with a cry: "Dick, come back. I did not mean to!"

She sighed on seeing Owen. "I was dreaming that I had hurt Dick, and he was going away angry," she said.

"Are you, then, so fond of him?" Carl asked, seating himself by her.

"O Carl!" she said earnestly, "you have no idea how fond he is of me."

"And you of him, then, of course," said Carl.

"Why, of course!" she echoed, with a look of surprise. "If I were to do anything to Dick to make him unhappy, I should never forgive myself, never! I have written him a letter to-day, and told him I want him to be a Catholic."

"You have!" said Carl with a faint smile. "Do you think he will obey you?"

"Oh! yes," she said confidently; "I told him some good reasons why he should."

And may I ask what the good reasons were, Edith?" was the smiling question.

"Why, in the first place, I want him to."

"Excellent!" laughed the young man. "The doctors couldn't do better."

Edith blushed deeply. "No; the good reasons were the reasons why I wanted him to," she said.

TO BE CONTINUED.