We Two Part 65

It was perhaps old memory which made her waiting so anxious that evening. Moreover, she had at first no one to talk to, which made it much worse. Aunt Jean had gone to bed with a bad toothache, and must on no account be disturbed; and Tom had suddenly announced his intention that morning of going down to Brighton on his bicycle, and had set off, rather to Erica's dismay, since, in a letter to Charles Osmond, Donovan happened to have mentioned that the Fane-Smiths had taken a house there for six weeks. She hated herself for being suspicious; but Tom had been so unlike himself since Rose's visit, and it was such an unheard-of thing that he should take a day's holiday during her father's absence, that it was scarcely possible to avoid drawing the natural inference.

She was very unhappy about him, but did not of course feel justified in saying a word to any one else about the matter. Charles Osmond happened to look in for a few minutes later on, expecting to find Raeburn at home, and then in her relief she did give him an account of the unfortunate Sunday though avoiding all mention of Tom.

"It was just like you to come at the very time I was wanting some one to talk to," she said, sitting down in her favorite nook on the hearth rug with Friskie on her lap. "Not a word has been said of that miserable Sunday since though I'm afraid a good deal has been thought. After all, you know, there was a ludicrous side to it as well. I shall never forget the look of them all when Rose and I came down again: Mr. Fane-Smith standing there by the table, the very incarnation of contemptuous anger, and father just here, looking like a tired thunder cloud! But, though one laughs at one aspect of it, one could cry one's eyes out over the thing as a whole indeed, just now I find myself agreeing with Mr.

Tulliver that it's a 'puzzling world.'"

"The fact is," said Charles Osmond, "that you consent patiently enough to share G.o.d's pain over those who don't believe in Him; but you grumble sorely at finding a lack of charity in the world; yet that pain is G.o.d's too."

"Yes," sighed Erica; "but somehow from Christians it seems so hard!"

"Quite true, child," he replied, half absently. "It is hard most hard.

But don't let it make you uncharitable, Erica. You are sharing G.o.d;'s pain, but remember it is only His perfect love which makes that pain bearable."

"I do find it hard to love bigots," said Erica, sighing. "They! What do they know about the thousand difficulties which have driven people into secularism? If they could but see that they and their narrow theories and their false distortions of Christ's Gospel are the real cause of it all, there would be some hope! But they either can't see it or won't."

"My dear, we're all a lot of blind puppies together," said Charles Osmond. "We tumble up against each other just for want of eyes. We shall see when we get to the end of the nine days, you know."

"You see now," said Erica; "you never hurt us, and rub us the wrong way."

"Perhaps not," he replied, laughing. "But Mr. Roberts and some of my other brethren would tell a different tale. By the bye, would you care to help another befogged mortal who is in the region you are safely out of? The evolution theory is the difficulty, and, if you have time to enter into his trouble, I think you could help him much better than I can. If I could see him, I might tackle him; but I can't do it on paper.

You could, I think; and, as the fellow lives at the other side of the world, one can do nothing except by correspondence."

Erica was delighted to undertake the task, and she was particularly well fitted for it. Perhaps no one is really qualified for the post of a clearer of doubts who has not himself faced and conquered doubts of a similar nature.

So there was a new interest for her on that long, lonely evening, and, as she waited for her father's return, she had time to think out quietly the various points which she would first take up. By and by she slept a little, and then, in the silence of the night, crept down to the lower regions to add something to the tempting little supper which she had ready in the green room. But time crept on, and in the silence she could hear dozens of clocks telling each hour, and the train had been long due, and still her father did not come.

At last she became too anxious to read or think to any purpose; she drew aside the curtain, and, in spite of the cold, curled herself upon the window seat with her face pressed close to the gla.s.s. Watching, in a literal sense, was impossible, for there was a dense fog, if possible, worse than the fog of the preceding Sat.u.r.day, but she had the feeling that to be by the window made her in some unaccountable way nearer to her father, and it certainly had the effect of showing her that there was a very good reason for unpunctuality.

The old square was as quiet as death. Once a policeman raised her hopes for a minute by pacing slowly up the pavement, but he pa.s.sed on, and all was still once more except that every now and then the furniture in the room creaked, making the eerie stillness all the more noticeable. Erica began to shiver a little, more from apprehension than from cold. She wished the telegram had come from any other town in England, and tried in vain not to conjure up a hundred horrible visions of possible catastrophes. At length she heard steps in the distance, and straining her eyes to penetrate the thick darkness of the murky night, was able to make out just beneath the window a sort of yellow glare. She ran downstairs at full speed to open the door, and there upon the step stood a link-boy, the tawny light from his torch showing up to perfection the magnificent proportions of the man in a s.h.a.ggy brown Inverness, who stood beside him, and bringing into strong relief the ma.s.ses of white hair and the rugged Scottish face which, spite of cold and great weariness, bore its usual expression of philosophic calm.

"I thought you were never coming," said Erica. "Why, you must be half frozen! What a night it is!"

"We've been more than an hour groping our way from the station," said Raeburn; "and cabs were unattainable." Then, turning to the link-boy, "Come in, you are as cold and hungry as I am. Have you got something hot, Eric?"

"Soup and coffee," said Erica. "Which would he like best?"

The boy gave his vote for soup, and, having seen him thoroughly satisfied and well paid, they sent him home, and to his dying day he was proud to tell the story of the foggy night when the people's tribune had given him half of his own supper. The father and daughter were soon comfortably installed beside the green room fire, Raeburn making a hearty meal though it was past three o'clock.

"I never dreamed of finding you up, little son Eric," he said when the warmth and the food had revived him. "I only telegraphed for fear you should lock up for the night and leave me to shiver unknown on the doorstep."

"But what happened?" asked Erica. "Why couldn't you lecture?"

"Ashborough had worked itself up into one of its tumults, and the fools of authorities thought it would excite a breach of the peace, which was excited quite as much and probably more by my not lecturing. But I'm not going to be beaten! I shall go down there again in a few weeks."

"Was there any rioting?"

"Well, there was a roughish mob, who prevented my eating my dinner in peace, and pursued me even into my bedroom; and some of the Ashborough lambs were kind enough to overturn my cab as I was going to the station.

But, having escaped with nothing worse than a shaking, I'll forgive them for that. The fact is they had burned me in effigy on the 5th and had so much enjoyed the ceremony that, when the original turned up, they really couldn't be civil to him, it would have been so very tame. I'm told the effigy was such a fearful-looking monster that it frightened the bairnies out of their wits, specially as it was first carried all round the place on a parish coffin!"

"What a hateful plan that effigy-burning is!" said Erica. "Were you not really hurt at all when they upset your cab?"

"Perhaps a little bruised," said Raeburn, "and somewhat angry with my charitable opponents. I didn't so much mind being overturned, but I hate being balked. They shall have the lecture, however, before long; I'm not going to be beaten. On the whole, they couldn't have chosen a worse night for their little game. I seriously thought we should never grope our way home through that fog. It has quite taken me back to my young days when this sort of thing met one on every hand; and there was no little daughter to cheer me up then, and very often no supper either!"

"That was when you were living in Blank Street?"

"Yes, in a room about the size of a sentry box. It was bearable all except the black beetles! I've never seen such beetles before or since twice the size of the ordinary ones. I couldn't convince the landlady that they even existed; she always maintained that they never rose to the attics; but one night I armed myself with Cruden's Concordance and, thanks to its weight and my good aim, killed six at a time, and produced the corpses as evidence. I shall never forget the good lady's face!

'You see, sir,' she said, 'they never come by day; they 'ates the light because their deeds is evil.'"

"Were the beetles banished after that?" asked Erica, laughing.

"No, they went on to the bitter end," said Raeburn with one of his bright, humorous looks. "And I believe the landlady put it all down to my atheistical views a just retribution for harboring such a notorious fellow in her house! But there, my child, we mustn't sit up any longer gossiping; run off to bed. I'll see that the lights are all out."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII. Dreeing Out the Inch

Skepticism for that century we must consider as the decay of old ways of believing, the preparation afar off for new, better, and wider ways an inevitable thing. We will not blame men for it; we will lament their hard fate. We will understand that destruction of old forms is not destruction of everlasting substances; that skepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, is not an end but a beginning.

Carlyle

One June evening, an elderly man with closely cropped iron-gray hair, might have been seen in a certain railway carriage as the Folkestone train reached its destination. The Cannon Street platform was, as usual, the scene of bustle and confusion, most of the pa.s.sengers were met by friends or relatives, others formed a complete party in themselves, and, with the exception of the elderly man, there was scarcely a unit among them. The fact of his loneliness would not, of course, have been specially remarkable had it not been that he was evidently in the last stage of some painful illness; he was also a foreigner and, not being accustomed to the English luggage system, he had failed to secure a porter as the train drew up and so, while the others were fighting their way to the van, he, who needed a.s.sistance more than any of them, was left to shift for himself. He moved with great difficulty, dragging down from the carriage a worn black bag, and occasionally muttering to himself, not as a peevish invalid would have done, but as if it were a sort of solace to his loneliness.

"The hardest day I've had, this! If I had but my Herzblattchen now, how quickly she would pilot me through this throng. Ah well! Having managed to do the rest, I'll not be beaten by this last bit. Potztausend! These English are all elbows!"

He frowned with pain as the self-seeking crowd pushed and jostled him, but never once lost his temper, and at length, after long waiting, his turn came and, having secured his portmanteau, he was before long driving away in the direction of Bloomsbury. His strength was fast ebbing away, and the merciless jolting of the cab evidently tried him to the utmost, but he bore up with the strong endurance of one who knows that at the end of the struggle relief awaits him.

"If he is only at home," he muttered to himself, "all will be well.

He'll know where I ought to go; he'll do it all for me in the best way.

ACH! Gott in himmel! But I need some one!"

With an excruciating jerk the cab drew up before a somewhat grim-looking house; Had he arrived at the himmel he had just been speaking of, the traveler could not have given an exclamation of greater relief. He crawled up the steps, overruled some question on the part of the servant, and was shown into a brightly lighted room. At one glance he had taken in the whole of that restful picture so welcome to his sore need. It was a good sized room, lined with books, which had evidently seen good service, many of them had been bought with the price of foregone meals, almost all of them embodied some act of denial. Above the mantel piece hung a little oil painting of a river scene, the sole thing not strictly of a useful order, for the rest of the contents of this study were all admirably adapted for working purposes, but were the reverse of luxurious.

Seated at the writing table was the master of the house, who had impressed his character plainly enough on his surroundings. He looked up with an expression of blank astonishment on hearing the name of his visitor, then the astonishment changed to incredulity; but, when the weary traveler actually entered the room, he started up with an exclamation of delight which very speedily gave place to dismay when he saw how ill his friend was.

"Why, Haeberlein!" he said, grasping his hand, "what has happened to you?"

"Nothing very remarkable," replied Haeberlein, smiling. "Only a great wish to see you before I die." Then, seeing that Raeburn's face changed fearfully at these words, "Yes, it has come to that, my friend. I've a very short time left, and I wanted to see you; can you tell me of rooms near here, and of a decent doctor?"

"Of a doctor, yes," said Raeburn, "of one who will save your life, I hope; and for rooms there are none that I know of except in this house, where you will of course stay."

"With the little Herzblattchen to nurse me?" said Haeberlein with a sigh of weary content as he sank back in an arm chair. "That would be a very perfect ending; but think what the world would say of you if I, who have lent a hand to so much that you disapprove, died in your house; inevitably you would be a.s.sociated with my views and my doings."

"May be!" said Raeburn. "But I hope I may say that I've never refused to do what was right for fear of unpleasant consequences. No, no, my friend, you must stay here. A hard life has taught me that, for one in my position, it is mere waste of time to consider what people will say; they will say and believe the worst that can be said and believed about me; and thirty years of this sort of thing has taught me to pay very little regard to appearances."

As he spoke he took up the end of a speaking tube which communicated with the green room, Haeberlein watching his movements with the placid, weary indifference of one who is perfectly convinced that he is in the right hands. Presently the door opened and Erica came in. Haeberlein saw now what he had half fancied at Salzburg that, although loving diminutives would always come naturally to the lips when speaking of Erica, she had in truth lost the extreme youthfulness of manner which had always characterized her. It had to a great extent been crushed out of her by the long months of wearing anxiety, and though she was often as merry and kittenish as ever her habitual manner was that of a strong, quick temperament kept in check. The restraint showed in everything.

She was much more ready to hear and much less ready to criticize, her humorous talk was freer from sarcasm, her whole bearing characterized by a sort of quiet steadfastness which made her curiously like her father.

His philosophical calm had indeed been gained in a very different way, but in each the calmness was the direct result of exceptionally trying circ.u.mstances brought to bear on a n.o.ble nature.

"Herr Haeberlein has come here to be nursed," said Raeburn when the greetings were over. "Will you see that a room is got ready, dear?"