We Two Part 49

Hazeldine bore traces of having lived from his childhood a hard but sedentary life. He was under-sized and narrow chested. But the face was a very striking one, the forehead finely developed, the features clearly cut, and the bright, dark eyes looking out on the world with an almost defiant honesty, a clearness bordering on hardness.

Raeburn, entirely putting aside for the time his own affairs, and giving to his visitor his whole and undivided attention, saw in an instant that the man was in trouble.

"Out of work again?" he asked. "Anything gone wrong?"

"No sir," replied Hazeldine; "but I came round to ask if you'd seen that circular letter. 'Twas sent me this morning by a mate of mine who's lately gone to Longstaff, and he says that this Pogson is sowing them broadcast among the hands right through all the workshops in the place, and in all England, too, for aught he knows. I wouldn't so much as touch the dirty thing, only I thought maybe you hadn't heard of it."

Without a word, Raeburn held out his hand for the printed letter. Erica, standing at a little distance, watched the faces of the three men Tom, grave, yet somewhat flushed; Hazeldine, with a scornful glitter in his dark eyes; her father? Last of all she looked at him and looking, learned the full gravity of this new trouble. For, as he read, Raeburn grew white, with the marble whiteness which means that intense anger has interfered with the action of the heart. As he hastily perused the lines, his eyes seemed to flash fire; the hand which still held the measuring tape was clinched so tightly that the knuckle looked like polished ivory.

Erica could not ask what was the matter, but she came close to him. When he had finished reading, the first thing his eye fell upon was her face turned up to his with a mute appeal which, in spite of the anxiety in it, made her look almost like a child. He shrank back as she held out her hand for the letter; it was so foul a libel that it seemed intolerable to him that his own child should so much as read a line of it.

"What is it?" she asked at length, speaking with difficulty.

"A filthy libel circulated by that liar Pogson! A string of lies invented by his own evil brain! Why should I keep it from you? It is impossible! The poisonous thing is sown broadcast through the land. You are of age there read it, and see how vile a Christian can be!"

He was writhing under the insult, and was too furious to measure his words. It was only when he saw Erica's brave lip quiver that he felt with remorse that he had doubled her pain.

She had turned a little away from him, ostensibly to be nearer to the gas, but in reality that he might not see the crimson color which surged up into her face as she read. Mr. Pogson was as unscrupulous as fanatics invariably are. With a view of warning the public and inducing them to help him in crushing the false doctrine he abhorred, he had tried to stimulate them by publishing a sketch of Raeburn's personal character and life, drawn chiefly from his imagination, or from distorted and misquoted anecdotes which had for years been bandied about among his opponents, losing nothing in the process. Hatred of the man Luke Raeburn was his own great stimulus, and we are apt to judge others by ourselves.

The publication of this letter really seemed to him likely to do great good, and the evil pa.s.sions of hatred and bigotry had so inflamed his mind, that it was perfectly easy for him to persuade himself that the statements were true. Indeed, he only followed with the mult.i.tude to do evil in this instance, for not one in a thousand took the trouble to verify their facts, or even their quotations, when speaking of, or quoting Raeburn. The libel, to put it briefly, represented Raeburn as a man who had broken every one of the ten commandments.

Erica read steadily on, though every pulse in her beat at double time.

It was long before she finished it, for a three-fold chorus was going on in her brain Mr. Pogson's libelous charges; the talk between her father and Hazeldine, which revealed all too plainly the harm already done to the cause of Christianity by this one unscrupulous man; and her own almost despairing cry to the Unseen: "Oh, Father! How is he ever to learn to know Thee, when such things as these are done in Thy name?"

That little sheet of paper had fallen among them like a thunderbolt.

"I have pa.s.sed over a great deal," Raeburn was saying when Erica looked up once more. "But I shall not pa.s.s over this! Pogson shall pay dearly for it! Many thanks, Hazeldine, for bringing me word; I shall take steps about it at once."

He left the room quickly, and in another minute they heard the street door close behind him.

"That means an action for libel," said Tom, knitting his brows. "And goodness only knows what fearful work and worry for the chieftain."

"But good to the cause in the long run," said Hazeldine. "And as for Mr.

Raeburn, he only rises the higher the more they try to crush him. He's like the bird that rises out of its own ashes the phenix, don't they call it?"

Erica smiled a little at the comparison, but sadly.

"Don't judge Christianity by this one bad specimen," she said, as she shook hands with Hazeldine.

"How do Christians judge us, Miss Erica?" he replied, sternly.

"Then be more just than you think they are as generous as you would have them be."

"It's but a working-day world, miss, and I'm but a working-day man. I can't set up to be generous to them who treat a man as though he was the dirt in the street. And if you will excuse me mentioning it, miss, I could wish that this shameful treatment would show to you what a delusion it is you've taken up of late."

"Mr. Pogson can hurt me very much, but not so fatally as that," said Erica, as much to herself as to Hazeldine.

When he had gone she picked up the measure once more, and turned to Tom.

"Help me just to finish this, Tom," she said. "We must try to move in as quickly as may be."

Tom silently took the other end of the tape, and they set to work again; but all the enjoyment in the new house seemed quenched and destroyed by that blast of calumny. They knew only too well that this was but the beginning of troubles.

Raeburn, remembering his hasty speech, called Erica into the study the moment he heard her return. He was still very pale, and with a curiously rigid look about his face.

"I was right, you see, in my prophecy of rocks ahead," he exclaimed, throwing down his pen. "You have come home to a rough time, Erica, and to an overhara.s.sed father."

"The more hara.s.sed the father, the more reason that he should have a child to help him," said Erica, sitting down on the arm of his chair, and putting back the ma.s.ses of white hair which hung over his forehead.

"Oh, child!" he said, with a sigh, "if I can but keep a cool head and a broad heart through the years of trouble before us!"

"Years!" exclaimed Erica, dismayed.

"This affair may drag on almost indefinitely, and a personal strife is apt to be lowering."

"Yes," said Erica, musingly, "to be libeled does set one's back up dreadfully, and to be much praised humbles one to the very dust."

"What will the Fane-Smiths say to this? Will they believe it of me?"

"I can't tell," said Erica, hesitatingly.

"'He that's evil deemed is half hanged,'" said Raeburn bitterly. "Never was there a truer saying than that."

"'Blaw the wind ne'er so fast, it will lown at the last'" quoted Erica, smiling. "Equally true, PADRE MIO."

"Yes, dear," he said quietly, "but not in my life time. You see if I let this pa.s.s, the lies will be circulated, and they'll say I can't contradict them. If I bring an action against the fellow, people will say I do it to flaunt my opinions in the face of the public. As your hero Livingstone once remarked, 'Isn't it interesting to get blamed for everything?' However, we must make the best of it. How about the new house? When can we settle in? I feel a longing for that study with its twenty-two feet o' length for pacing!"

"What are your engagements?" she asked, taking up a book from the table.

"Eleventh, Newcastle; 12th, Nottingham; 13th and 14th, Plymouth. Let me see, that will bring you home on Monday, the 15th, and will leave us three clear days to get things straight; that will do capitally."

"And you'll be sure to see that the books are carefully moved," said Raeburn. "I can't have the markers displaced."

Erica laughed. Her father had a habit of putting candle lighters in his books to mark places for references, and the appearance of the book shelves all bristling with them had long been a family joke, more especially as, if a candle lighter happened to be wanted for its proper purpose, there was never one to be found.

"I will pack them myself," she said.

CHAPTER x.x.xI. Brian as Avenger

A paleness took the poet's cheek; "Must I drink here?" he seemed to seek The lady's will with utterance meek.

"Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be,"

(And this time she spake cheerfully) "Behooves thee know world's cruelty." E. B. Browning

The trial of Luke Raeburn, on the charge of having published a blasphemous libel in a pamphlet ent.i.tled "Bible Miracles," came on in the Court of Queen's Bench early in December. It excited a great deal of interest. Some people hoped that the revival of an almost obsolete law would really help to check the spread of heterodox views, and praised Mr. Pogson for his energy and religious zeal. These were chiefly well-meaning folks, not much given to the study of precedents. Some people of a more liberal turn read the pamphlet in question, and were surprised to see that matter quite as heterodox might be found in many high-cla.s.s reviews which lay about on drawing room tables, the only difference being that the articles in the reviews were written in somewhat ambiguous language by fashionable agnostics, and that "Bible Miracles" was a plain, blunt, sixpenny tract, avowedly written for the people by the people's tribune.

This general interest and attention, once excited, gave rise to the following results: to an indiscriminate and wholesale condemnation of "that odious Raeburn who was always seeking notoriety;" to an immense demand for "Bible Miracles," which in three months reached its fiftieth thousand; and to a considerable crowd in Westminster Hall on the first day of the trial, to watch the entrance and exit of the celebrities.

Erica had been all day in the court. She had written her article for the "Daily Review: in pencil during the break for luncheon; but, as time wore on, the heated atmosphere of the place, which was crammed to suffocation, became intolerable to her. She grew whiter and whiter, began to hear the voices indistinctly, and to feel as if her arms did not belong to her. It would never do to faint in court, and vexed as she was to leave, she took the first opportunity of speaking to her father.