We Two Part 58

He bowed slightly as he entered.

"Are you Miss Erica Raeburn?" he asked, coming toward her.

"I am," she replied. "What is your business with me?"

"I have to place this doc.u.ment in your hands."

He gave her a paper which she rapidly unfolded. To her dying day she could always see that hateful bit of foolscap with its alternate printing and writing. The words were to this effect:

Writ Subpoena Ad Test, at Sittings of High Court. IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE, QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION. Between Luke Raeburn, Plaintiff, and William Henry Pogson, Defendant VICTORIA, by the Grace of G.o.d, of the United kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith, To Erica Raeburn, greeting. We command you to attend at the sittings of the Queen's Bench division of our High Court of Justice to be holden at Westminster on Tuesday, the Twentieth day of June, 18__, at the hour of half past Ten in the forenoon, and so from day to day during the said sittings, until the above cause is tried, to give evidence on behalf of the Defendant. Witness, etc., etc.

Erica read the paper twice before she looked up; she had grown white to the very lips. Raeburn, recognizing the form of a subpoena, came hastily forward, and in the merest glance saw how matters were. By no possibility could the most malicious of opponents have selected a surer means of torturing him.

"Is this legal?" asked Erica, lifting to him eyes that flashed with righteous indignation.

"Oh, it is legal," he replied bitterly "the pound of flesh was legal. A wife need not appear against her husband, but a daughter may be dragged into court and forced to give evidence against her father."

As he spoke, such anger flashed from his eyes that the clerk shivered all down his backbone. He thought he would take his departure as quickly as might be, and drawing a little nearer, put down a coin upon the table beside Erica.

"This fee is to cover your expenses, madame," he said.

"What!" exclaimed Erica, her anger leaping up into a sudden flame, "do you think I shall take money from that man?"

She had an insane desire to s.n.a.t.c.h up the sovereign and fling it at the clerk's head, but restraining herself merely flicked it back across the table to him, just touching it with the back of her hand as though it had been polluted.

"You can take that back again," she said, a look of scorn sweeping over her face. "Tell Mr. Pogson that, when he martyrs people he need not say: 'The martyrdom will make you hungry here is luncheon money,' or 'The torture will tire you here is your cab fare!'"

"But, madame, excuse me," said the clerk, looking much embarra.s.sed. "I must leave the money, I am bound to leave it."

"If you leave it, I shall just throw it into the fireplace before your eyes," said Erica. "But if indeed it can't be sent back, then give it to the first gutter child you meet do anything you like with it! Hang it on your watch chain as a memento of the most cruel case your firm every had to do with!"

Her color had come back again, her cheeks were glowing, in her wrath she looked most beautiful; the clerk would have been less than human if he had not felt sorry for her. There was a moment's silence; he glanced from the daughter to the father, whose face was still pale and rigid.

A great pity surged up in the clerk's heart. He was a father himself; involuntarily his thoughts turned to the little home at Kilburn where Mary and Kitty would be waiting for him that evening. What if they should ever be forced into a witness box to confirm a libel on his personal character? A sort of moisture came to his eyes at the bare idea. The counsel for the defense, too, was that Cringer, Q. C., the greatest bully that ever wore silk. Then he glanced once more at the silent, majestic figure with the rigid face, who, though an atheist, was yet a man and a father.

"Sir," he said, with the ring of real and deep feeling in his voice, "sir, believe me, if I had known what bringing this subpoena meant, I would sooner have lost my situation!"

Raeburn's face relaxed; he spoke a few courteous, dignified words, accepting with a sort of unspoken grat.i.tude the man's regret, and in a few moments dismissing him. But even in these few moments the clerk, though by no means an impressionable man, had felt the spell, the strange power of fascination which Raeburn invariably exercised upon those he talked with that inexplicable influence which made cautious, hard-headed mechanics ready to die for him, ready to risk anything in his cause.

The instant the man was gone, Raeburn sat down at Erica's writing table and began to answer his letters. His correspondents got very curt answers that day. Erica could tell by the sound of his pan how sharp were the down strokes, how short the rapidly written sentences.

"Can I help you?" she asked, drawing nearer to him.

He hastily selected two or three letters not bearing on his anti-religious work, gave her directions, then plunged his pen in the ink once more, and went on writing at lightning speed. When at length the most necessary ones were done, he pushed back his chair, and getting up began to pace rapidly to and fro. Presently he paused and leaned against the mantel piece, his face half shaded by his hand.

Erica stole up to him silently.

"Sometimes, Eric," he said abruptly, "I feel the need of the word 'DEVIL!' My vocabulary has nothing strong enough for that man."

She was too heartsick to speak; she drew closer to him with a mute caress.

"Eric!" he said, holding her hands between his, and looking down at her with an indescribably eager expression in his eyes, "Eric, surely NOW you see that this persecuting religion, this religion which has been persecuting innumerable people for hundreds of years, is false, worthless, rotten to the core. Child! Child! Surely you can't believe in a G.o.d whose followers try to promote His glory by sheer brutality like this?"

It was the first time he had spoken to her on this subject since their interview at Codrington. They had resolved never to touch upon it again; but a sort of consciousness that some good must come to him through this new bitterness, a hope that it must and would reconvince his child, impelled Raeburn to break his resolution.

"I could sooner doubt that you are standing here, father, with your arm round me," said Erica, "than I could doubt the presence of your Father and mine the All-Father."

"Even though his followers are such lying scoundrels as that Pogson?

What do you make of that? What do you think of that?"

"I think," she replied quietly, "that my father is too just a man to judge Christianity by the very worst specimen of a Christian to be met with. Any one who does not judge secularism by its very best representatives, dead or living, is unfair and what is unfair in one case is unfair in another."

"Well, if I judged it by you, perhaps I might take a different view of it," said Raeburn. "But then you had the advantage of some years of secularism."

"Not by me!" cried Erica. "How can it seem anything but very faulty when you judge it only by faulty people? Why not judge it by the life and character of Christ?"

Raeburn turned away with a gesture of impatience.

"A myth! A poetic creation long ago distorted out of its true proportions! There, child, I see we must stop. I only pain you and torture myself by arguing the question."

"One more thing," said Erica, "before we go back to the old silence.

Father, if you would only write a life of Christ I mean, a really complete life; the one you wrote years ago was scarcely more than a pamphlet."

He smiled, knowing that she thought the deep study necessary for such an undertaking would lead to a change in his views.

"My dear," he said, "perhaps I would; but just see how I am overdone. I couldn't write an elaborate thing now. Besides, there is the book on the Pentateuch not half finished though it was promised months ago. Perhaps a year or two hence when Pogson gives me time to draw a long breath, I'll attempt it; but I have an idea that one or other of us will have to be 'kilt intirely' before that happy time arrives. Perhaps we shall mutually do for each other, and reenact the historical song." And, with laughter in his eyes, he repeated:

"There once were two cats of Kilkenny, Each thought there was one cat too many, So they quarreled and spit, and they scratched and they bit, Till, excepting their nails and the tips of their tails, Instead of two cats, there weren't any."

Erica smiled faintly, but sighed the next minute.

"Well, there! It's too grave a matter to jest about," said Raeburn. "Oh, bairn! If I could but save you from that brute's malice, I should care very little for the rest."

"Since you only care about it for my sake, and I only for yours, I think we may as well give up caring at all," said Erica, looking up at him with a brave smile. "And, after all, Mr. Cringer, Q. C. can only keep me in purgatory for a few hours at the outside. Don't you think, too, that such a cruel thing will damage Mr. Pogson in the eyes of the jury?"

"Unfortunately, dear, juries are seldom inclined to show any delicate considerateness to an atheist," said Raeburn.

And Erica knew that he spoke truly enough.

No more was said just then. Raeburn began rapidly to run through his remaining correspondence a truly miscellaneous collection. Legal letters, political letters, business letters requests for his autograph, for his help, for his advice a challenge from a Presbyterian minister in the north of Scotland to meet him in debate; the like from a Unitarian in Norfolk; a coffin and some insulting verses in a match box, and lastly an abrasive letter from a clergyman, holding him responsible for some articles by Mr. Masterman, which he had nothing whatever to do with, and of which he in fact disapproved.

"What would they think, Eric, if I insisted on holding the Bishop of London responsible for every utterance of every Christian in the diocese?" said Raeburn.

"They would think you were a fool," said Erica, cutting the coffin into little bits as she spoke.

Raeburn smiled and penciled a word or two on the letter the pith of a stinging reply.

CHAPTER x.x.xV. Raeburn v. Pogson