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, hoarsely. “No bad news, I hope?”
“She's gone and turned Christian,” said Tom, in a tone of deep disgust.
Brian started.
“Thank God!” 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 association 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 analogy 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 nobody can deny that he is a grand fellow. When one bears in mind all that he has had against him, his nobility 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.”
Brian sighed heavily, but made no answer. Presently he took up his hat and went out. He walked on and on without the faintest idea of time or place, occupied only with the terrible struggle which was going on in his heart, which seemed only endurable with the help of rapid and mechanical exercise. When at length he came to himself, he was miles away from home, right down at Shepherd's Bush, and he heard the church clocks striking twelve. Then he turned back, and walked home more quietly, his resolution made.
If he told Erica of his love, and she refused him now, he should not only add to her troubles, but he should inevitably put an end to the comfort of the close friendship which now existed between the two families. He would keep silence.
Erica and her father returned on the Saturday, and then began a most trying time. Tom seemed to shrink from her just as he had done at the time of her mother's death. He was shy and vexed, too, and kept as much out of her way as possible. Mrs. Craigie, on the contrary, could not leave her alone. In spite of her brother's words, she tried every possible argument and remonstrance in the hope of reconvincing her niece. With the best intentions, she was often grossly unfair, and Erica, with a naturally quick temper, and her Raeburn inheritance of fluency and satire, found her patience sorely tried. Raeburn was excessively busy, and they saw very little of him; perhaps he thought it expedient that Erica should fight her own battles, and fully realize the seriousness of the steps she had taken.
“Have you thought,” urged Mrs. Craigie, as a last argument “have you thought what offense you will give to our whole party? What do you think they will slay when they learn that you of all people have deserted the cause?”
The tears started to Erica's eyes, for naturally she did feel this a great deal. But she answered bravely, and with a sort of ring in her voice, which made Tom look up from his newspaper.
“They will know that Luke Raeburn's daughter must be true to her convictions at whatever cost.”
“Will you go on writing in the 'Idol'?” asked Tom, for the first time making an observation to her which was not altogether necessary.
“No,” said Erica “how can I?”
Tom shrugged his shoulders, and made no further remark.
“Then how do you mean to live? How else can you support yourself?” asked Aunt Jean.
“I don't know,” said Erica. “I must get some other work somewhere.”
But her heart failed her, though she spoke firmly. She knew that to find work in London was no easy matter.
“Offer yourself to the 'Church Chronicle,'” said Mrs. Craigie sarcastically, “or, better still, to the 'Watch Dog.' They always make a good deal of capital out of a convert.”
Erica colored and had to bite her lip hard to keep back the quick retort which occurred to her all too naturally.
By and by Mr. Masterman and another well-known secularist walked in. They both knew of Erica's defection. Mr. Masterman attacked her at once in a sort of bantering way.
“So Miss Raeburn, now I understand why some time ago you walked out in the middle of my lecture one evening.”
And then followed a most irritating semi-serious remonstrance, in questionable taste. Erica writhed under it. A flippant canvassing of her most private and sacred thoughts was hard to bear, but she held her ground, and, being not without a touch of her father's dignity, Mr. Masterman presently beat a retreat, not feeling quite so well satisfied with himself as usual. His companion did not allude directly to her change of views, but treated her with a sort of pitying condescension, as if she had been a mild lunatic.
There was some sort of committee being held in the study that evening. The next person to arrive was Professor Gosse and almost immediately after came Mr. Harmston, a charming old man, whom Erica had known from her childhood. They came in and had some coffee before going into the study. Mrs. Craigie talked to Mr. Harmston. Erica, looking her loveliest waited on them. Tom watched them all philosophically from the hearth rug.
“I am sorry to hear you have deserted your colors,” said the professor, looking more grave than she had ever seen him look before. Then, his voice softening a little as he looked at her, “I expect it all comes of that illness of yours. I believe religion is just an outgrowth of bad health mens sana in corpore sano, you know. Never mind, you must still come to my workshop, and I shall see if science won't reconvert you.”
He moved away with his good-humored, shaggy-looking face, leaving Erica to old Mr. Harmston.
“I am much grieved to hear this of you, Erica,” he said, lowering his voice, and bringing his gray head near to hers “as grieved as if you were my own child. You will be a sore loss to us all.”
Erica felt this keenly, for she was very fond of the old man.
“Do you think it does not hurt me to grieve you all?” she said, piteously. “But one must be honest.”
“Quite right, my dear,” said the old man, “but that does not make our loss the less heavy. We had hoped great things of you, Erica. It is grievous to me that you should have fallen back to the miserable superstitions against which your father has fought so bravely.”
“Come, Mr. Harmston,” said the professor; “we are late, I fancy.”
And before Erica could make any reply Mrs. Craigie and the two visitors had adjourned to the committee room, leaving her alone with Tom.
Now, for two or three days Erica had been enduring Tom's coldness and Mrs. Craigie's unceasing remonstrances; all the afternoon she had been having a long and painful discussion with her friend, Mrs. MacNaughton; this evening she had seen plainly enough what her position would be for the future among all her old acquaintances, and an aching sense of isolation filled her heart. She was just going to run upstairs and yield to her longing for darkness and quiet, when Tom called her back. She could not refuse to hear, for the coldness of her old playmate had made her very sad, but she turned back rather reluctantly, for her eyes were brimming with tears.
“Don't go,” said Tom, quite in his natural voice. “Have you any coffee for me, or did the old fogies finish it?”
Erica went back to the table and poured him out a cup of coffee, but her hand trembled, and, before she could prevent it, down splashed a great tear into the saucer.
“Come!” said Tom, cheerfully. “Don't go and spoil my coffee with salt water! All very well for David, in a penitential psalm, to drink tears, but in the nineteenth century, you know—”
Erica began to laugh at this, a fatal proceeding, for afterward came a great sob, and the tears came down in good earnest. Philosophical Tom always professed great contempt for tears, and he knew that Erica must be very much moved indeed to cry in his presence, or, indeed, to cry at all; for, as he expressed it: “It was not in her line.” But somehow, when for the first time he saw her cry, he did not feel contemptuous; instead, he began to call himself a “hard-hearted brute,” and a narrow-minded fool, and to feel miserable and out of conceit with himself.
“I say, Erica, don't cry,” he pleaded. “Don't, I say, I can't bear to see you. I've been a cold-blooded wretch I'm awfully sorry!”
“It's very cowardly of me,” sobbed Erica. “But—but—” with a rush of tears, “you don't know how I love you all it's like being killed by inches.”
“You're not cowardly,” said Tom, warmly. “You've been brave and plucky; I only wish it were in a better cause. Look here, Erica, only stop crying, and promise me that you'll not take this so dreadfully to heart. I'll stand by you I will, indeed, even though I hate your cause. But it sha'n't come between us any longer, the hateful delusion has spoiled enough lives already. It sha'n't spoil ours.”
“Oh, don't!” cried Erica, wounded anew by this.
“Well,” said Tom, gulping down his longing to inveigh against Christianity, “it goes hard with me not to say a word against the religion that has brought us all our misery, but for your sake I'll try not when talking with you. Now let us begin again on the old footing.”
“Not quite on the old footing either,” said Erica, who had conquered her tears. “I love you a thousand times more, you dear old Tom.”
And Tom, who was made of sterling stuff, did from that day forward stand by her through everything, and checked himself when harsh words about religious matters rose to his lips, and tried his best to smooth what could not fail to be a rough bit of walking.
The first meeting between Charles Osmond and Erica, after her return from Codrington, did not come about till the morning after her conversation with Tom. They had each called on the other, but had somehow managed to miss. When at length Erica was shown into the study, connected in her mind with so many warm discussions, she found it empty. She sat down in the great arm chair by the window, wondering if she were indeed the same Erica who had sat there years before, on the day when her “prophet” had foretold her illness. What changes had come about since then!
But her “Prophet” was unchanged, his brisk, “Well Erica!” was exactly what it had been when she had come to him in the days of her atheism. It had always been full of welcome and sympathy, and now the only difference was that a great happiness shone in his eyes as he came forward with his soft, steady tread and took her hand in both his.
They sat silent for awhile, then talked a little but reservedly, for both felt that the subject which filled their thoughts was at once too sacred and too personal to be altogether put into words. Then by and by they began to discuss the practical consequences of the change, and especially the great difficulty as to Erica's means of supporting herself.
“Could you not try teaching?” said Charles Osmond.
“The market is already overstocked.”
“True, but I should think that your brains and certificates ought to secure you work in spite of that.”
“I should like it in many ways,” said Erica, “but, you see, except at the night school it is out of the question, and I could not live upon my grant even if every one of my class passed the examination. For any other sort of teaching who do you imagine would have the courage to employ any one bearing the name of Raeburn? Why, I can't give an order in a shop without being looked all over by the person who takes the address. No, governessing would be all very well if one might assume a nom de guerre, but that would not do, you see.”
“You couldn't find work of that sort among your own set, I suppose?”
“Not now,” said Erica. “You see, naturally enough, I am very much out of favor with them all.”
“Falling between two stools,” said Charles Osmond, half to himself. “But don't lose heart, Erica: 'A stone that is fit for the wall will not be left in the way;' there is work for you somewhere. By the way, I might see old Crutchley he knows all the literary folk, and might get you an introduction to some one, at any rate.”
Just as Erica was leaving Brian came in from his rounds, and they met at the door. Had he known her trouble and perplexity as to work, no power on earth could have induced him to keep silence any longer; but he knew nothing. She looked a little pale, but that was natural enough, and in her eyes he could see a peace which he had never seen there before. Then deep unselfish happiness filled his heart again, and Erica recognized in his greeting a great deal more than an ordinary by-stander would have seen. She went away feeling bettered by that handclasp.
“That is a downright good man!” she thought to herself. “Perhaps by the time he's fifty-five, he'll be almost equal to his father.”
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