We Two Part 29

"I made a deep calculation," said Raeburn, smiling, "and found that the sale of the plant and of all my books would about clear off the last of the debts, and that I should die free. After that I thought of Cicero's case of the two wise men struggling in the sea with one plank to rescue them sufficient only for one. They were to decide which of their lives was most useful to the republic, and the least useful man was to drop down quietly into the deep. It struck me that you and I should hardly come to such a calculation. I think we would have gone down together, little one! What did you think of?"

But Erica's thoughts could not so easily be put into words.

"For one thing," she said, "I thought we should never be divided any more."

She sighed a little; for, after all, the death they had so narrowly escaped would have been so infinitely easier than the life which lay before her.

"Clearly we are inseparable!" said Raeburn. "In that sense, little son Eric, we can still say, 'We fear nae foe!'"

Perhaps the gentle words, and the sadness which he could not entirely banish from his tone, moved Erica almost more than his pa.s.sionate utterances in the morning.

The day was no bad miniature of her whole life. Very sad, very happy, full of danger, conflict and strife, warmed by outside sympathy, wounded by outside insolence.

CHAPTER XXI. What it Involved

Stronger than steel Is the sword of the spirit; Swifter than arrows The life of the truth is; Greater than anger Is love, and subdueth. Longfellow

The two or three days at Codrington lengthened out into a week, for both Raeburn and Erica felt a good deal exhausted after the eventful Monday.

Raeburn, anxious to spare her as much as possible, himself wrote to Mrs.

Craigie, and told her of Erica's change of views.

"It is a great grief," he wrote, "and she will be a serious loss to our cause, but I am determined that we will not enact over again the course of action which drove both you and me from home. Odd! That she should just reverse our story! Anyhow, you and I, Jean, have been too much persecuted to turn into persecutors. The child is as much in earnest for her delusion as we for our truth. Argument and remonstrance will do no good, and you must understand, and make Tom understand, that I'll not have her bullied. Don't think that I am trying to make her mistaken way all easy for her. She won't find it easy. She will have a miserable time of it with our own set, and how many Christians, do you imagine, will hold out a hand to Luke Raeburn's daughter, even though her views have changed? Maybe half a dozen! Not more, I fancy, unless she renounced us with atheism, and that she never will do! She will be between two fires, and I believe between the two she will be worried to death in a year unless we can keep the peace at home. I don't blame Osmond for this, though at first I did suspect it was his doing; but this has been no cram-work. Erica has honestly faced the questions herself, and has honestly arrived at this mistaken conclusion. Osmond's kindness and generosity of course influenced her, but for the rest they have only had the free discussions of which from the first I approved. Years ago he said to me plainly, 'What if she should see reasons to change her mind?'

I scouted the notion then, it seemed and still seems almost INCREDIBLE.

He has, you see, acted quite honorably. It is Erica's own doing. I remember telling him that our name of freethinkers was a reality, and so it shall still be! She shall be free to think the untrue is true; she shall be free to confess herself a Christian before the whole world, though it deal me the hardest of blows."

This letter soon spread the news. Aunt Jean was too much vexed and not deeply grieved enough to keep silence. Vexation finds some relief in talking, deep grief as a rule prefers not to speak. Tom, in his odd way, felt the defection of his favorite cousin as much as anybody, except Raeburn himself. They had been play-fellows, they had always been like brother and sister together, and he was astounded to think that Erica, of all people in the world, should have deserted the cause. The letter had come by one of the evening posts. He went out and paced up and down the square in the soft midsummer twilight, trying to realize the facts of the case. Presently he heard rapid steps behind him; no one walked at that pace excepting Brian, and Tom was quite prepared to feel an arm link itself within his.

"Hallo, old fellow!" exclaimed Brian. "Moonlight meditations?"

"Where did you drop from?" said Tom, evasively.

"Broken leg, round the corner a public-house row. What brutes men are!"

exclaimed the young doctor, hotly.

"Disappointing world altogether," said Tom with a sigh. "What do you think we have just heard about Erica?"

Brian's heart almost stopped beating; he hardly knew what he feared.

"How can I tell?" he answered, hoa.r.s.ely. "No bad news, I hope?"

"She's gone and turned Christian," said Tom, in a tone of deep disgust.

Brian started.

"Thank G.o.d!" he exclaimed, under his breath.

"Confound it!" cried Tom. "I'd forgot you'd be triumphant. Good night,"

and he marched off in high dudgeon.

Brian did not even miss him. How could he at such a time? The weight of years had been lifted off his soul. A consuming happiness took possession of him; his whole being was a thanksgiving. By and by he went home, found his father in the study, and was about to speak, when Charles Osmond put an open letter into his hand. While Raeburn had written to his sister, Erica had written to her "prophet" a sad, happy, quaint letter exactly like herself. Its straightforward simplicity brought the tears to Brian's eyes.

"It will be a fearful life for her now!" he exclaimed. "She will never be able to endure it. Father, now at last I may surely speak to her."

He spoke very eagerly. Charles Osmond looked grave.

"My dear old fellow, of course you must do as you think best," he replied, after a minute's pause; "but I doubt if it is wise just now."

"Why, it is the very time of all others when she might be glad of me,"

said Brian.

"But can't you see," returned his father, "that Erica is the last girl in the world to marry a man because she was unhappy, or because she had got a difficult bit of life in front of her? Of course, if you really think she cares for you, it is different; but--"

"She does not care for me," said Brian quickly; "but in time I think she would. I think I could make her happy."

"Yes, I think you could, but I fancy you will make shipwreck of your hopes if you speak to her now. Have patience."

"I am sick of patience!" cried Brian desperately. "Have I not been patient for nearly seven years? For what would you have me wait? Am I to wait till, between our injustice to secularists and their injustice to Christians, she is half badgered out of life? If she could but love me, if she would marry me now, I could save her from what must be a life of misery."

"If I could but get you to see it from what I am convinced is Erica's point of view!" exclaimed Charles Osmond. "Forget for a minute that you are her knight and champion, and try to see things as she sees them.

Let us try to reverse things. Just imagine for a minute that you are the child of some leading man, the head and chief of a party or a.s.sociation we'll say that you are the child of an Archbishop of Canterbury. You are carefully educated, you become a zealous worker, you enter into all your father's interests, you are able to help him in a thousand ways. But, by slow degrees, we will say that you perceive a want in the system in which you have been educated, and, after many years of careful study and thought, you are obliged to reject your former beliefs and to accept that other system which shall most recommend itself to you. We will suppose for the sake of a.n.a.logy that you become a secularist. Knowing that your change of views will be a terrible grief to your father the archbishop, it takes your whole strength to make your confession, and you not only feel your father's personal pain, but you feel that his pain will be increased by his public position. To make it worse, too, we must suppose that a number of people calling themselves atheists, and in the name of atheism, have at intervals for the last thirty years been annoying and insulting your father, that in withstanding their attacks he has often received bodily injury, and that the atheists have so often driven him into the law courts that he has been pretty nearly beggared.

All his privations you have shared for instance, you went with him and lived for years in a poky little lodging, and denied yourself every single luxury. But now you have, in spite of all these persecutions carried on in the name of secularism, learned to see that the highest form of secularism is true. The archbishop feels this terribly. However, being a very loving father, he wisely refuses to indulge in perpetual controversy with his child. You agree still to live together, and each try with all your might to find all the possible points of union still left you. Probably, if you are such a child as I imagine, you love your father ten times more than you did before. Then just as you have made up your mind to try to be more to him, when all you care about in life is to comfort and help him, and when your heart is much occupied with your new opinions, a friend of yours a secularist comes to you, and says: 'A miserable life lies before you. The atheists will never thoroughly take up with you while you live with your father the archbishop, and of course it is wretched for you to be surrounded by those of another creed. Come with me. I love you I will make you happy, and save you from persecution."

In spite of himself Brian had smiled many times at this putting of an Archbishop of Canterbury into the position of Luke Raeburn. But the conclusion arrived at seemed to him to admit of only one answer, and left him very grave.

"You may be right," he said, very sadly. "But to stand still and watch her suffer--"

He broke off, unable to finish his sentence.

Charles Osmond took it up.

"To stand still and watch her suffer will be the terribly hard work of a brave man who takes a true, deep view. To rush in with offers of help would be the work of an impetuous man who took a very superficial view.

If Erica were selfish, I would say go and appeal to her selfishness, and marry her at once; for selfishness will never do any good in Guilford Terrace. But she is one of the most devoted women I know. Your appeal would be rejected. I believe she will feel herself in the right place there, and, as long as that is the case, nothing will move her."

"Father," said Brian, rather desperately, "I would take your opinion before any other opinion in the world. You know her well far better than I do. Tell me honestly do you think she could ever love me?"

"You have given me a hard task," said Charles Osmond. "But you have asked for my honest opinion, and you must have it. As long as her father lives I don't believe Erica will ever love a man well enough to marry him. I remember, in my young days, a beautiful girl in our neighborhood, the belle of the whole county; and years went by, and she had countless offers, but she rejected them all. People used to remonstrate with her, and ask her how it was. 'Oh,' she used to reply, 'that is very easily explained.. I never see a man I think equal to my own brothers!' Now, whatever faults Raeburn has, we may be sure Erica sees far less plainly than we see, and n.o.body can deny that he is a grand fellow. When one bears in mind all that he has had against him, his n.o.bility of character seems to me marvelous. He puts us to shame. And that is why he seems to me the wholesome though powerful medicine for this nineteenth century of ours, with its great professions and its un-Christlike lives."

"What is the use of patience what is the use of love," exclaimed Brian, "if I am never to serve her?"

"Never! Who said so?" said his father smiling. "Why, you have been serving her every blessed day since you first loved her. Is unspoken love worth nothing? Are prayers useless? Is it of no service to let your light shine? But I see how it is. As a doctor, you look upon pain as the one great enemy to be fought with, to be bound down, to be conquered.

You want to shield Erica from pain, which she can't be shielded from, if she is to go on growing.

"'Knowledge by suffering entereth!'

No one would so willingly indorse the truth of that as she herself.

And it will be so to the end of the chapter. You can't shut her up in a beautiful casket, and keep her from all pain. If you could she would no longer be the Erica you love. As for the rest, I may be wrong. She may have room for wifely love even now. I have only told you what I think.

And whether she ever be your wife or not and from my heart I hope she may be your love will in no case be wasted. Pure love can't be wasted; it's an impossibility."