Chapter XVIII: Choosing the Path (1)

“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 312 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. Yorke acted 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 313 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 read _Aurora 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, and made a crayon group of his father, mother, and sisters. Mrs. Yorke 314 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 the _Prometheus_. 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 talking _at_ him, 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 will pay--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 look at it before, but now its beauty was apparent. 315

“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 that foliage, 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 expressed it; their best clothes, 316 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 their _protégés_. 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 they should be. 317 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.

Paul and Sally were still at “the hall,” where Melicent considered them her especial subjects, and taught them in season and out of season; but, alas! there were still nine children at home. Polly, the baby of six years ago, is now a stolid lassie of seven, and there are two younger, the last only six months old.

One hot Sunday in July, Edith found the feminine procession without its head. Everything else was in order, but Mrs. Patten sat in a corner of the room, holding her sick baby. It had been sick all the week, and Edith had visited it, and sent the doctor, but this morning it was worse.

“We need not interrupt your discourse, though,” Mrs. Patten said. “He doesn’t notice anything.”

In these Sunday lessons, usually consisting of Bible instructions, histories of the saints, and explanation of Christian doctrine, Edith had instilled a good deal of Catholic truth, without alarming her hearers. She had even obtained permission to teach the children to bless themselves, and say the Hail Mary; only Mrs. Patten had wished that _Mother of Christ_ should be substituted for _Mother of God_.

“But was not Christ God?” asked the young teacher.

“Yes, Miss Edith,” the woman replied. “But Mary was the mother of his human nature only, not of his Godhead.”

“You cannot separate them,” Edith said. “He was not born a mere man, and deified afterward: his birth was miraculous, and God was his Father. She was the mother of all that he was. To be a mother is not to create. You did not make that child’s soul, yet you are his mother. You would not stop to say that you are the mother of his body, and that his soul came from God. You are his mother, because you gave him human life; so Mary did for Christ. Besides, you will always be your child’s mother, though his body will turn to dust, and be regathered again at the last day. But the body of Christ never was destroyed. It sits now at the right hand of the Father, the same human form that Mary cherished, as you do that child.”

Boadicea was silent “They shall say Mother of Christ, then, if you prefer,” Edith said softly. But the next time she came, they said Mother of God. She made no verbal comment on the amendment, but bent and, for the first time, kissed the forehead of the child who gave the title, tears of joy shining in her eyes.

On this July day, after taking her seat, and watching the family arrange themselves to listen, Edith hesitated on what subject she should speak. She had one prepared, but presently concluded to change it.

“I will tell you what baptism is to-day,” she said; and then gave them a clear and simple explanation of the sacrament.

Joe sat on a low stool, with a child in his arms, tears dropping down his cheek now and then, as he glanced from the speaker to his sick child. Mrs. Patten’s face showed only a quiet endurance.

“So necessary is baptism,” Edith concluded, her voice slightly tremulous, “that even a baby must not die without it. If one should be in danger of death, any person who knows how can baptize it.” 318

She said no more, but, after distributing some little presents to the children, as her custom was, and sitting by the baby a few minutes, went home. The mother was very pale. She sat looking at her child, and seemed indisposed to speak. There was even a sort of coldness in her manner when she took leave of her visitor.

The children went out, and looked after the lady as long as they could see her, then gathered in a whispering group about the door. They felt, rather than knew, the impending sorrow. Joe went, stool in hand, and sat down by his wife. Her lips began to tremble. She was only a woman, poor soul! and wanted comfort, not only for the grief before her, but for the new and terrible fear that had risen up in her heart while Edith Yorke spoke.

“Joe,” she said unsteadily, “that girl is very learned. Dr. Martin can’t equal her. She makes everything awfully clear. She leaves no hole for you to crawl out. If baptism isn’t what she says, then there isn’t any sense in baptism.”

“Yes,” sighed Joe, “she’s a mighty smart gal.”

“Then,” the mother whispered sharply, “if what she says is true, what’s become of our other children, Joe?”

He looked up with startled eyes. He had been thinking of their present sorrow, not of the past. It is only the mother who for ever carries her children in her heart.

“There are three children gone, Joe,” she said imploringly.

He dropped his eyes, and considered anxiously, not so much the fate of his lost children as the fact that Sally looked to him for help. A shallow head goes with a shallow heart, and his first thought was merely how he should evade the weight of his wife’s dependence.

“Oh! you broken reed!” she exclaimed, with suppressed passion.

Thus apostrophized, Joe became desperate, and that desperation imparted to him an air of unwonted decision and authority.

“I tell you what it is, Sally,” he said, “these rules and regulations are very well for learned folks, and they’re to blame if they don’t keep ‘em. But I don’t believe that the Lord is going to punish us nor our young ones for what we don’t know nothing about. He knows well enough that we’d a had ‘em, every soul of ‘em, baptized, if we’d a thought he wanted us to. I’m sure I don’t begrudge the young ones being baptized. So don’t you believe, Sally, but he’ll sly ‘em in somehow, poor little creters! Why, do you s’pose that, while we were sitting here and crying over our dead babies, and saying, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord,’ that just at that time he’d got ‘em out of sight somewhere, and was pinching on ‘em and hurting on ‘em for his own amusement, with their scared little faces looking up at him? It don’t stand to reason, Sally.”

The first tears she had shed started from the mother’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. “Joe,” she said gratefully, “you’ve got some gumption in you, after all.”

Edith went home that day with a troubled heart. Two or three times on the way she stopped, having half a mind to turn back, but did not. She was too agitated to keep quiet or to eat. One thought filled her mind: a soul just slipping away from earth waited on the threshold till she should open for it the gate of heaven. The thought was overpowering.

In the afternoon, Mrs. Yorke and Melicent went to see the sick child, 319 carrying everything they thought might be needed. Edith had sent for the doctor again, and he came while they were there, and accompanied them home. She listened to their talk, and heard them say that the child could not live more than twenty-four hours longer. They spoke kindly, and they had acted kindly, yet it all jarred terribly on her. Of the highest interest at stake, of the miraculous possibility that she saw, they knew nothing. Dared she wait?

After tea her resolution was taken. She came down-stairs, and found Carl pacing to and fro at the foot of the terrace. He threw the end of his cigar away as she approached him, but did not take any further notice of her till it became evident that she wanted him.

“Carl,” she said, “I want you to go over to the Pattens’ with me.”

“Certainly!”

He did not annoy her with questions, nor exclamations, nor expostulations; he simply and promptly started. They avoided the family in going. When one is in suspense, it is distressing to have to explain to those who cannot help and do not understand the need.

“I am going to baptize the baby, if they will let me,” Edith said, when they entered the wood.

He only answered, “Yes!” He knew enough of Catholic doctrine to understand the importance which she attached to the ceremony.

The sun had gone down in a splendor of rose-color, and all the forest was steeped with it. The silver stems of the birches flickered like rubies, and all the streams and springs blushed as if they had newly been changed to wine for some great marriage feast. A brook ran toward them all the way beside their path, like a breathless messenger bidding them hasten at every step. Then that airy flood of light ebbed down the west, and left a new moon stranded there, and stars sprinkled all through the blue. When they came out into the clearing, it was deep twilight. The cabin window shone out red through the dusk, and from the open door a lurid path of light stretched across the garden-plot and plunged into the woods opposite.

Like most people who live in the woods, the family kept early hours, but to-night none of them had gone to bed, nor were the beds prepared for them. The children were huddled together near the fireplace, whispering, and casting frightened glances to where their father and mother crouched on the floor beside the cradle, in which lay their dying babe. They had no lamps nor candles, but a pine-knot, fixed in the fireplace, sent a volume of inky smoke up chimney, and made a crimson illumination in the room. In that light every face shone like a torch.

The sick child lay in a stupor, sometimes holding its breath so long that the mother started and caught it up. Thus partially recalled, it breathed slowly again. There was no sound in the room but that low breathing, and the hissing of the flame in the chimney.

But presently there was a sound outside of steps coming nearer, and as they looked at the door Edith appeared on the threshold, all her whiteness of face, dress, and hands changed to pink in the light, as Charity might look hastening on her errand. Her eyes were wide-open and startled; her hair, which had fallen, caught in the low bough of a tree as they came, was drawn over her left shoulder, and twisted about her arm.

After the pause of an instant, she came swiftly in, and knelt by the 320 cradle, leaving Carl standing in the doorway.

“Thank God! I am in time,” she exclaimed. “I have come, you dear parents, to baptize this child, if you will permit me. You were not to blame for the others, because you did not know. But now you know. Consent quickly; for it is almost gone!”

“Yes, yes!” said the mother. “Make haste!”

Edith called the children, and made them kneel about the cradle, with their hands folded, palm to palm, and she scarcely noticed that Carl came in and knelt behind them.

“I am so anxious to do it rightly,” she said, with one swift glance round the circle. “I never did it before, but it is very simple. I am very unworthy, and am afraid. All of you must say an Our Father for me.”

Edith put a crucifix in the father’s hands, and, as he held it up, bowed herself, and kissed the floor before it. Then she lighted a wax candle she had brought, and gave it to the mother to hold. Lastly, she knelt by the head of the cradle, and poured out a little vase of holy water.

“What is the child’s name?” she asked, quite calm by this time.

Mr. and Mrs. Patten looked at each other. There had been many discussions between them on the subject, and at this moment neither of them could call to mind a single desirable name which had not been appropriated by their children, living or dead.

“I would like to name him for my father,” Edith said. And they consented.

The words were spoken, then Edith leaned quickly, with a triumphant smile, and kissed the new-made saint, and whispered something to it.

The child had been lying in that stupor for several hours, but at her whisper he opened his eyes, and fixed them in a solemn and steady gaze on her face. There was something in the look significant and unchildlike; and, so looking at her, he calmly died. Only a sigh, and the lids half-drooped, that was all on earth. But who shall say what it was in heaven?

It was quite dark when the two went home again. The sultry air was still, and perfumed with sweet fern and wild violets, and the brook ran along with them now with a sound like a child talking to itself. They walked hand in hand, guided by that sound.

“I am very, very happy!” said Edith.

Carl said nothing, but stopped short.

“Have you lost the track?” she asked.

There was still a moment of silence, then he said in a stifled voice, “I have found it again.”

Poor Carl! his finding of that path was heroic. For an instant, a flower-wreathed wicket had seemed to swing across his way, and a path of delight to lead from it. He closed it, and walked on.

After a minute, Edith recollected that she had brought a second candle. They stopped and lighted it, then resumed their walk. She held the candle in her right hand, her left she placed in Carl’s again. The air was so still that the yellow flame waved only with their motion, and the light of it made a halo about them, and brought out leaves and flowers, and drooping branches, that shone a moment, then disappeared.

That ancient forest had arched over many a human group during the unknown centuries of its life, dusky hunters in the chase or on the war-trail, pale-faced pioneers, glancing right and left for the savage 321 foe, the Catholic missionary, armed only with the crucifix, yet with that weapon and with his pleading tongue conquering the hatchet and the tomahawk, children and youths going a-maying, yet never did it overshadow a fairer group than this.

Looking down at Edith, Carl renounced the thought of painting her as a fairy; he would paint her walking through a dark forest, with a candle in her hand. “Perish civilization!” he said suddenly. “I wish there was not a house between here and Massachusetts Bay!”

Edith smiled, but said nothing. She did not speak till, too soon, they reached the house. There she stopped to enter by the side door. “I will go in this way,” she said. “I do not wish to speak to any one else to-night. Please tell them what I have done.”

He was going, when she softly called him back. “After he was baptized,” she said hurriedly, “I whispered, and told him to pray for you and me when he reached heaven. Good-night, Carl!”

The next forenoon Edith went up to her chamber to dress before dinner. She braided her hair, put on a rose-colored lawn, and fastened a velvet ribbon around her throat with the precious carbuncle. She was blissfully happy, she scarce knew why. Never had she been conscious of such delight. “How sweet, how beautiful is life!” she said to herself. “Thanks, dear Lord! I am so happy!”

She looked smilingly over her shoulder toward the door, for Clara had come running up the stairs and burst into her room.

“Edith,” she said breathlessly, “he has come! Mr. Rowan has come! He is down in the parlor with papa, and mamma, and Melicent.”

Edith did not change her position nor say a word. She looked steadily at Clara, and waited.

“He is as handsome as a prince,” her cousin went on with enthusiasm. “He gave me this slip of paper for you. Will you be right down?”

“Go and tell him that I will come down in a minute,” Edith said quietly, and still looked at her cousin till she went out of the room and shut the door. Then, overcome by a sudden weakness, she dropped on her knees.

“I am very glad,” she said solemnly, and lifted her eyes. “I thank thee for bringing him safe home again. Help me!”

She unfolded the slip of paper, and read the line it contained: “Don’t come down, Edith, if you are going to say no to me.”

She had never thought of saying no to him.

A minute later she stood in the door of the parlor, where they all were. She was very white, but her lips wore a sweet and resolute smile.

Dick came to meet her, his face in a fine flame, and she placed her hand in his. “It is yours, with their consent,” she said.

For a moment he was unable to speak. He looked at her searchingly, his eyes full of tears. “Are you willing, Edith?” he asked.

“I am more than willing,” she replied.

He led her to Mr. and Mrs. Yorke. “I would not dare to ask you for such a precious gift,” he said, “if God and herself had not already bestowed it.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

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AN ENGLISHMAN IN CHINA.[78] 322

In November, 1867, Mr. T. T. Cooper, an English gentleman who describes himself as a “pioneer of commerce,” undertook an overland journey from Shanghai to Calcutta with the hope of discovering some shorter and more direct line of communication between India and China than that lying through the province of Su-tchuen and Eastern Thibet, the only route at present open. The undertaking was not a successful one, Mr. Cooper having been stopped and imprisoned at Weisee-foo, in the province of Yunnan, in July of the following year. This detention was the work of the Thibetan lamas, who have no desire for a free trade which will interfere with their monopolies, and who are, as a matter of course, violently opposed to the introduction of a religion which will weaken their own hold upon the people. Mr. Cooper, although an English Protestant who was contented to describe himself on his travels as a disciple of Confucius, and who took pains to inform the lamas that he could readily sympathize with their dislike of foreign innovations in religious matters, did not fail to share the effects of that distrust of foreigners which is so carefully kept alive in China by the governing classes, the literati, and the priests. While imprisoned at Weisee-foo, his interpreter, a Chinese Catholic, overheard the following conversation between two Mandarins, one of whom was Mr. Cooper’s jailer, which was, to say the least of it, not reassuring:

“Just as Philip took his place under the window, Tien asked the Atenze Mandarin if he had seen the foreigner who had passed through Atenze on his way to Tali-foo, adding, ‘We have him here in the Yamun.’ His guest replied, ‘No; the cursed barbarian! what is he? I heard he was writing all the time he was in my town, and drawing the country. The son of a dog, too, writes with a pen that requires no ink. I suppose he has come to see the country; and his people will come to take it by-and-by. You have got him here; why don’t you kill him?’ To this my friend Tien replied, ‘Why, it’s no use to kill him; he has no money. We have searched him; he has nothing; and now we are considering what to do with him.’ When Philip had got thus far, he was so completely overwhelmed that it was several minutes before he could proceed: when he had recovered a little, he went on to relate what the Atenze Mandarin said in reply. The ruffian evidently hated foreigners, for he said, ‘Oh! kill him. You dispose of him; and when I return from the fight, I will kill those sons of dogs, the missionaries on the Lan-tsan-kiang: they are fast converting the Lu-tsu, and they will very soon be masters of the country, and we shall be killed; so kill them all, I say.’”

A day or two later, our traveller, who seems to be very plucky and full of courage, managed to effect his escape, but only to retrace his steps to Shanghai. His account of his travels is most entertaining, 323 and as it contains a great deal which will be interesting to the general reader, as well as much which is especially so to Catholics, we propose to make copious extracts from it. The book itself has not been reprinted here, and the English edition is so expensive that it is hardly likely to be as generally read as its merits deserve.

The project of undertaking this long and perilous journey had suggested itself to our traveller’s mind so long ago as 1862, but various circumstances rendered it impracticable to begin it until 1867, when the promised support of influential Shanghai merchants made Mr. Cooper again cast about him for ways of surmounting the still remaining difficulties. These were the well-known jealousy manifested by Chinese officials toward strangers; the wild tribes dwelling in the mountains; utter ignorance of the language of the country; and the danger of carrying so large a sum of money as would be necessary for the expenses of the journey. After a month of perplexity, Mr. Cooper concluded to address himself to M. Lamonier, the procurator of the Catholic missions at Shanghai. “I knew,” he says, “that the posts of the French missionaries extended in an unbroken chain to beyond the western border of China; and I felt convinced that only by their help could I hope to pass through the empire. M. Lamonier, ever ready, as are all the Catholic missionaries, to forward all useful projects, soon dispelled my anxiety about the carriage of specie, for he arranged to give me a letter of credit for six hundred taels (£180, the sum he considered sufficient for travelling expenses), addressed to the mission stations in Yunnan, Sz-chuan, and Eastern Thibet; so that it would not be needful to carry a large sum in silver, until after passing beyond their posts. He also proposed a feasible plan for surmounting the difficulty of the language. A party of young missionaries were expected to arrive from France toward the end of the year; if I accompanied them to Sz-chuan, I could hire a house in some village containing a mission station, and, under the protection of the missionaries, set to work and acquire a sufficient mastery of the language. This arrangement would prolong my journey by six months; but the delay was unimportant, so long as the difficulty of the language was got over. And thus, before leaving M. Lamonier, the two great obstacles which seemed for a time to render my journey impossible were disposed of.”

A part of this plan, however, was not destined to fulfilment. The French consul at Hankou, whose dignity had been touched by some remarks made upon him in the Hankou _Times_ by its English editor, resolved to avenge himself by preventing our Englishman from availing himself of the services of the missionaries, and compelled them to leave Hankou without him. The French consul-general at Shanghai, Vicomte Brenier de Montmorend, on being appealed to, found means to soothe his subordinate’s ruffled temper, and although he lost the promised escort of the young missionaries, Father de Carli, the head of the missions at Hankou, obviated this difficulty by providing him with two native Christians to serve as interpreter and guide. These were both trustworthy men, who joined him rather for the sake of the missionaries than for any liking for the journey, but who, for that reason, served him so much the more faithfully. One of them, George Phillips, whose name Mr. Cooper contracted into Philip, for 324 convenience’s sake, was the eldest son of a family which had been Christians for several generations. “His superior education rendered him, save in dress and manner, quite different to ordinary Chinamen, whose natural superstition and prejudice were replaced by intelligence, strengthened by the study of European philosophy and theology, while a knowledge of the Latin, English, and Chinese languages made the term of interpreter in his case no empty title. Such was my interpreter, who proved, as I expected, a useful servant and intelligent companion.”

Having procured the services of these men, however, Mr. Cooper found it impossible to induce them to start from home until after the Christmas holidays were over; so that it was not until the 4th of January, 1868, that he finally left Hankou for the interior. He had previously taken the advice of the English secretary of legation at Pekin to conform himself in all respects to the line of conduct pursued by the missionaries, and had, during his month of enforced inaction, been trying to accustom himself to the pigtail and petticoats in which he was to introduce himself to the Chinese public. He had also been obliged to relinquish the idea of making scientific observations while on his journey, in order to avoid shocking the inveterate prejudices of the people against the use of instruments for that purpose. Even in keeping a daily record of his travels, he found it necessary to be constantly on his guard against their suspicious curiosity. One amusing instance of his caution in this respect, characteristic alike of our traveller and of his friendly enemy, is worth quoting:

“Round the fire of the little courier hut where we put up for the night, we were joined by a lama, who was, he said, _en route_ for Bathang. Since the unwelcome addition of the soldier spies to our party, it had become necessary for me to wait till all were asleep, to write up my journal. I was hard at work about midnight, when the lama returned to the room, pretending to have left his prayer-book behind; and seeing me engaged in writing, he became very curious to know what I was doing. Had I owned to recording a simple narrative of the day’s journey, he would have reported that I was taking notes of the country for some sinister purpose, so I replied that I was writing my prayers, a ceremony which I performed every night. This is a very common occupation of the lamas themselves, but he was surprised that a merchant should write prayers; so I told him that I always recited them after they were written, and would commence as soon as I had finished. He waited, and I soon commenced to read my journal over in a monotone like that in which the lamas recite their litanies. After reading thus for nearly half an hour, I stopped and asked my friend to recite his prayers for my benefit, promising to pay him for the service--and off he started and kept it up without ceasing until daylight next morning, when he awoke me, and received his fee of one rupee. He declared that I must belong to the Yellow religion, but I assured him to the contrary, merely saying that my religion much resembled his own. He was evidently puzzled, but pleased at my having made use of his services as a priest, and begged me to allow him to keep under my escort to Bathang.”

His inability to serve the interests of science was perhaps not a trouble of a nature to be very seriously felt by our traveller, whose chief object in undertaking his journey was a commercial one, and 325 whose quick perceptions and readiness to adapt himself to circumstances were a fair guarantee that he would neither run unnecessary risks nor let any available source of information pass unexplored. His book, which is very free from anything like unpleasant self-consciousness, shows him, notwithstanding, to have plenty of English pluck and determination, accompanied by a very un-English freedom from prejudice. One could find it in one’s heart to wish that in passing through scenery so impressive as that of Eastern Thibet, he might have added to his other good qualities as a narrator something more nearly approaching artistic perception than he anywhere exhibits. The absence of anything of the kind has, however, the effect of making his narrative singularly free from any appearance of conventional book-making--a result which is very like a perfect compensation.

At Sha-su, which he reached toward the middle of January, after a week or more of rather unpleasant boating experience, Mr. Cooper made his first acquaintance with real Chinese society, which he describes very well, and with some characteristic reflections:

“After breakfast, I paid a visit to the Catholic mission agent, Cheesien-sin by name, a wealthy merchant engaged in an extensive trade with Sz-chuan, with whom I had to arrange about funds for our journey to Chung Ching. We were shown into a little room next the counting-house, where we found several Christians, merchants from Chung Ching, smoking their pipes, each with his cup of tea on a small table before him. As soon as I seated myself, a little boy placed a tea-cup before me, and, throwing in a pinch of fragrant tea, poured in boiling water from a large kettle, which he took from a little stand over a charcoal fire burning in an iron brazier in the centre of the room; having thus helped me to tea, he took my long Chinese pipe, and, filling it with tobacco, handed it to me with a light, and then took up his place behind my chair. Nothing could exceed the quiet politeness and quickness with which this little fellow served me; to every one in the room I was a perfect stranger and a foreigner, yet, being in a house of business, no distinction was made between me and any of the Chinese present.... After waiting about half an hour, the merchant came from the counting-house, and, saluting me very courteously, apologized for having kept me waiting, and after a few remarks on the crops and weather, inquired my business. On learning the object of my visit, he appeared quite pleased, and expressed himself delighted to be able to do anything for a friend of the fathers, and, leading me into his office, he paid me over the sum I required, merely taking from me a receipt for the amount. We then went back to the waiting-room, where he introduced me to several of the Chung Ching merchants, and explained to his guests that I was a foreign merchant undertaking a great journey to open up commerce, and complimented me on my courage in starting alone on so great an enterprise. We all sat smoking and drinking tea for nearly two hours, when I rose to go; but my host said that dinner was just ready, and he would be glad if I would join himself and guests, apologizing at the same time for his homely fare, saying that, if he had known I was coming, I should have had a proper dinner.