We Two Part 71

She remembered protesting that that was impossible, that she should always be miserable; at which he had only smiled.

Then it came to Erica that the life upon earth was, after all, as compared with the eternal life, what the day is in the life of a child.

It seemed everything at the time, but was in truth such a fragment. And as she lay there in the immeasurably greater agony of later life, once more sobbing: "I had hoped, I had planned, this is more than I can bear!" a Comforter infinitely grater, a Father whose love was infinitely stronger, drew her so near that the word "near" was but a mockery, and told her, as the earthly father had told her with such perfect truth: "One day you will understand, child; one day you will be glad to have shared the pain!"

In the next room there was for some time quiet. Poor Tom, heavy with grief and weariness, fell asleep beside the fire; Raeburn was for the most part very still as if wrapped in thought. At length a heavy sigh made Brian ask if he were in pain.

"Pain of mind," he said, "not of body. Don't misunderstand me," he said after a pause, with the natural fear least Brian should fancy his secularism failed him at the near approach of death. "For myself I am content; I have had a very full life, and I have tried always yes, I think I may say always--to work entirely for the good of Humanity. But I am wretched about Erica. I do not see how the home can be a very happy one for her when I am gone."

For a minute Brian hesitated; but it seemed to him when he thought out the matter, that a father so loving as Raeburn would find no jealousy at the thought that the love he had deemed exclusively his own might, after all, have been given to another.

"I do not know whether I am right to tell you," he said. "Would it make you happier to know that I love Erica that I have loved her for nearly nine years?"

Raeburn gave an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of astonishment. There was a long silence; for the idea, once suggested to him, he began to see what a likely thing it was and to wonder that he had not thought of it before.

"I think you are well suited to each other," he said at last. "Now I understand your visit to Florence. What took you away again so suddenly?"

Brian told him all about the day at Fiesole. He seemed greatly touched; all the little proofs and coincidences which had never struck him at the time were so plain now. They were still discussing it when, at about five o'clock, Erica returned. She was pale and sad, but the worn, hara.s.sed, miserable look had quite gone. It was a strange time and place for a betrothal.

"Brian has been telling me about the day at Fiesole," said Raeburn, letting his weak, nerveless hands play about in her hair as she knelt beside the bed. "You have been a leal bairn to me, Eric; I don't think I could have spared you then even though Brian so well deserved you. But now it makes me very happy to leave you to him; it takes away my only care."

Erica had colored faintly, but there was an absence of responsiveness in her manner which troubled Raeburn.

"You do still feel as you did at Fiesole?" he asked. "You are sure of your own mind? You think you will be happy?"

"I love Brian," she said in a low voice. "But, oh, I can't think now about being happy!" She broke off suddenly and hid her face in the bed clothes.

There was silence in the room. In a minute she raised herself and turned to Brian who stood beside her.

"You will understand," she said, looking right into his eyes. "There is only one thing that I can feel just now. You do understand, I know."

With a sudden impulse she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.

And Brian did understand. He knew, too, that she wanted to have her father to herself. Even in the very fulfillment of his desire he was obliged to stand aside, obliged even yet to be patient. Never surely had an impulsive, impetuous man a longer training.

When he had gone Raeburn talked for some time of Erica's future, talked for so long, indeed, that she grew impatient. How trifling now seemed the sacrifice she had made at Fiesole to which he kept on referring.

"Oh, why do you waste the time in talking of me?" she said at last.

"Why?" he said smiling. "Because you are my bairn of what else should I speak or think? For myself, I am very content, dear, though I should have liked a few more years of work. It was not to be, you see; and, in the end, no doubt this will work good to the cause of--" he broke off, unwilling to pain her.

"Ah, child!" he said after a pause, "How miserable you and I might have been for these two years if we had not loved each other. You are not to think, little one, that I have not known what your wishes have been for me. You, and Brian, and Osmond, and of late that n.o.ble fellow Farrant, have often made me see that Christianity need not necessarily warp the intellect and cripple the life. I believe that for you, and such as you, the system is not rooted in selfishness. But, dear, you are but the exceptions, the rare exceptions. I know that you have wished with all your heart that I should come to think as you do, while I have been wishing you back into the ranks of secularism. Well! It wasn't to be. We each of us lost our wish. But there is this left, that we each know the other to be honest; each deem it a case of honest mistake. I've felt that all along. We've a common love of truth and a common love of humanity. Oh, my child! Spite of all the creeds, we are very near to each other!"

"Very near," she whispered. And words which Charles Osmond had spoken years ago returned to her memory. "I think death will be your gate of life. You will wake up and exclaim: 'Who'd have thought it?'"

After all, death would in a sense make them yet nearer! But human nature is weak, and it is hard for us to realize the Unseen. She could not then feel that it was anything but hard, bitter, heart-breaking that he should be leaving her in this way.

The pain had now almost entirely ceased, and Raeburn, though very restless, was better able to talk than on the previous day. He asked for the first time what was pa.s.sing in the world, showed special interest in the accounts of the late colliery accident, and was greatly touched by the gallant efforts of the rescuers who had to some extent been successful. He insisted, too, on hearing what the various papers had to say about his own case, listening sometimes with a quiet smile, sometimes with a gleam of anger in his eyes. After a very abusive article, which he had specially desired to hear, he leaned back with an air of weariness.

"I'm rather tired of this sort of thing!" he said with a sigh. "What will the 'Herald' do when it no longer has me to abuse?"

Of Drosser and of the events of that Sunday evening he spoke strangely little. What he did say was, for the most part, said to Professor Gosse.

"You say I was rash to go alone," he replied when the professor had opened the subject. "Well, that may be. It is not, perhaps, the first time that in personal matters I've been lacking in due caution. But I thought it would prevent a riot. I still think it did so."

"And what is your feeling about the whole matter?" asked the professor.

"Do you forgive Drosser for having given you this mortal injury?"

"One must bow to necessity," said Raeburn quietly. "When you speak of forgiving I don't quite understand you; but I don't intend to hand down a legacy of revenge to my successors. The law will duly punish the man, and future atheists will reap the benefit of my death. There is, after all, you know, a certain satisfaction in feeling that I died as I have lived, in defending the right of free speech. I can't say that I could not have wished that Drosser had made an end of me at nine-and-seventy rather than at nine-and-forty. I shall live on in their hearts, and that is a glorious immortality! The only immortality I have ever looked for."

In the afternoon to the astonishment of all, Mr. Fane-Smith came over from Greyshot, horrified to hear that the man who he had once treated with scant justice and actual discourtesy was lying on his death bed, a victim to religious fanaticism. Spite of his very hard words to her, Erica had always respected Mr. Fane-Smith, and she was glad that he had come at the last. Her aunt had not come; she had hesitated long, but in the end the recollection that Greyshot would be greatly scandalized, and that, too, on the very eve of her daughter's wedding turned the scale.

She sent affectionate messages and a small devotional book, but stayed at home.

Mr. Fane-Smith apologized frankly and fully to Raeburn for his former discourtesy and then plunged at once into eager questions and eager arguments. He could not endure the thought that the man in whom at the last he was able to recognize a certain n.o.bility of character, should be sinking down into what he considered everlasting darkness. Bitterly did he now regret the indifference of former years, and the actual uncharitableness in which he had of late indulged.

Raeburn lay very pa.s.sively listening to an impa.s.sioned setting forth of the gospel, his hands wandering about restlessly, picking up little bits of the coverlet in that strange way so often noticed in dying people.

"You are mistaken," he said when at length Mr. Fane-Smith ceased. "Had you argued with me in former years, you would never have convinced me, your books and tracts could never have altered my firm convictions.

All my life I have had tracts and leaflets showered down upon me with letters from pious folks desiring my conversion. I have had innumerable letters telling me that the writers were praying for me. Well, I think they would have done better to pray for some of my orthodox opponents who are leading immoral lives; but, insofar as prayers show a certain amount of human interest, I am very willing that they should pray for me though they would have shown better taste if they had not informed me of their supplications. But don't mistake me; it is not in this way that you will ever prove the truth of your religion. You must show justice to your opponents first. You must put a different spirit into your pet word, 'Charity.' I don't think you can do it. I think your religion false. I consider that it is rooted in selfishness and superst.i.tion.

Being convinced of this when I was still young, I had to find some other system to take its place. That system I found in secularism. For thirty years I have lived as a secularist and have been perfectly content notwithstanding that my life has been a very hard one. As a secularist I now die content."

Mr. Fane-Smith shuddered. This was of course inexpressibly painful to him. He could not see that what had disgusted Raeburn with religion had been the distortion of Christ's teaching, and that in truth the secularist creed embodied much of the truest and loftiest Christianity.

Once more he reiterated his arguments, striving hard to show by words the beauty of his religion. But Christianity can only be vindicated by deeds, can only be truly shown forth in lives. The country, the "Christian Country," as it was fond of styling itself, had had thirty years in which to show to Raeburn the loving kindness, the brotherhood, the lofty generosity which each professed follower of Christ ought to show in his life. Now the time was over, and it was too late.

The dying man bent forward, and a hard look came into his eyes, and a sternness overspread his calm face.

"What has Christianity done for me?" he asked. "Look at my life. See how I have been treated."

And Mr. Fane-Smith was speechless. Conscience-stricken, he knew that to this there was no reply that HE could honestly make, and a question dawned upon his mind Was his own "Christianity" really that of Christ?

As evening drew on, Raeburn's life was slowly ebbing away. Very slowly, for to the last he fought for breath. All his nearest friends were gathered round him, and to the end he was clearly conscious and, as in life, calmly philosophical.

"I have been well 'friended' all my life," he said once, looking round at the faces by his bedside.

They were all too broken-hearted to respond, and there were long silences, broken only by the laboring breath and restless movements of the dying man.

Toward midnight there was a low roll of distant thunder, and gradually the storm drew nearer and nearer. Raeburn asked to be raised in bed that he might watch the lightning which was unusually beautiful. It was a strange, weird scene the plainly furnished hotel room, spa.r.s.ely lighted by candles, the sad group of watchers, the pale, beautiful face of the young girl bending over the pillow, and the strong, rugged Scotchman with his white hair and keen brown eyes, upon whose face death had already set his pale tokens. From the uncurtained window could be seen the dark outline of the adjacent houses and the lights lower down the hill scattered here and there throughout the sleeping city. Upon all this the vivid lightning played, and the distant thunder followed with its mighty crash, rolling and echoing away among the surrounding hills.

"I am glad to have seen one more storm," said Raeburn.

But soon he grew weary, tired just with the slight exertion of looking and listening. He sighed. To a strong, healthy man in the very prime of life, this failing of the powers was hard to bear. Death was very near; he knew it well enough knew it by this slow, sure, painless sinking.

He held Erica's hand more closely, and after that lay very still, once or twice asking for more coverings over his feet. The night wore on.

After a long silence, he looked up once more and said to Tom:

"I promised Hazeldine a sovereign toward the fund for--" he broke off with a look of intense weariness, adding after an interval "He'll tell you. See that it's paid."

The storm had pa.s.sed, and the golden-red dawn was just breaking when once more the silence was broken.