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 passengers 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 assistance 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 associated 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 circumstances brought to bear on a noble 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?”
He went out into the hall to dismiss the cab, and Haeberlein seized the opportunity to correct his words.
“He thinks I shall get better, but it is impossible, my Herzblattchen; it is only a question of weeks now, possibly only of days. Was I wrong to come to you?”
“Of course not,” she said with the sort of tender deference with which she always spoke to him. “Did you think father would let you go anywhere else?”
“I didn't think about it,” said Haeberlein wearily; “but he wouldn't, you see.”
Raeburn returned while he was speaking, and Erica went away quickly to see to the necessary preparations. Herr Haeberlein had come, and she did not for a moment question the rightness of her father's decision; but yet in her heart she was troubled about it, and she could see that both her aunt and Tom were troubled too. The fact was that for some time they had seen plainly enough that Raeburn's health was failing, and they dreaded any additional anxiety for him. A man can not be involved in continual and harassing litigation and at the same time agitate perseveringly for reform, edit a newspaper, write books, rush from Land's End to John O'Groat's, deliver lectures, speak at mass meetings, teach science, befriend every unjustly used person, and go through the enormous amount of correspondence, personal supervision, and inevitable interviewing which falls to the lot of every popular leader, without sooner or later breaking down.
Haeberlein had come, however, and there was no help for it. They all did their very utmost for him, and those last weeks of tender nursing were perhaps the happiest of his life. Raeburn never allowed any one to see how the lingering expectation, the dark shadow of the coming sorrow, tried him. He lived his usual busy life, snatching an hour whenever he could to help in the work of nursing, and bringing into the sick room the strange influence of his strength and serenity.
The time wore slowly on. Haeberlein, though growing perceptibly weaker, still lingered, able now and then to enter into conversation, but for the most part just lying in patient silence, listening with a curious impartiality to whatever they chose to read to him, or whatever they began to talk about. He had all his life been a man of no particular creed, and he retained his curious indifference to the end, though Erica found that he had a sort of vague belief in a First Cause, and a shadowy expectation of a personal existence after death. She found this out through Brian, who had a way of getting at the minds of his patients.
One very hot afternoon she had been with him for several hours when about five o'clock her father came into the room. Another prosecution under the blasphemy Laws had just commenced. He had spent the whole day in a stifling law court, and even to the dying man his exhaustion was apparent.
“Things gone badly?” he asked.
“Much as I expected,” said Raeburn, taking up a Marechal Niel rose from the table and studying it abstractedly. “I've had a sentence of Auerbach's in my head all day, 'The martyrdom of the modern world consists of a long array of thousands of trifling annoyances.' These things are in themselves insignificant, but multiplication makes them a great power. You have been feeling this heat, I'm afraid. I will relieve guard, Erica. Is your article ready?”
“Not quite,” she replied, pausing to arrange Haeberlein's pillows while her father raised him.
“Thank you, little Herzblattchen,” he said, stroking her cheek, “auf wiedersehen.”
“Auf wiedersehen,” she replied brightly and, gathering up some papers, ran downstairs to finish her work for the “Daily Review.”
A few minutes later Brian came in for his second visit.
“Any change?” he asked.
“None, I think,” she answered, and went on with her writing with an apprehensive glance every now and then at the clock. The office boy was mercifully late however, and it must have been quite half an hour after she had left Haeberlein's room that she heard his unwelcome ring. Late as it was, she was obliged to keep him waiting a few minutes for it was exceedingly difficult in those days to get her work done. Not only was the time hard to obtain, but the writing itself was a difficulty; her mind was occupied with so many other things, and her strength was so overtasked that it was often an effort almost intolerable to sit down and write on the appointed subject.
She was in the hall giving her manuscript to the boy when she saw her father come downstairs; she followed him into the study, and one look at his face told her what had happened. He was leaning back in the chair in which but a few weeks before she had seen Haeberlein himself; it came over her with a shudder that he looked almost as ill now as his friend had looked. She sat down on the arm of his chair, and slipped her hand into his, but did not dare to break the silence. At last he looked up.
“I think you know it,” he said. “It is all over, Erica.”
“Was Brian there?” she asked.
“Happily, yes; but there was nothing to be done. The end was strangely sudden and quite painless, just what one would have wished for him. But oh, child! I can ill spare such a friend just now!”
His voice failed, and great tears gathered in his eyes. He let his head rest for a minute on Erica's shoulder, conscious of a sort of relief in the clasp of arms which had so often, in weak babyhood, clung to him for help, conscious of the only comfort there could be for him as his child's kisses fell on his lips, and brow, and hair.
“I am overdone, child,” he said at length as though to account for breaking down, albeit, by the confession, which but a short time before he would never have made, that his strength was failing.
All through the dreary days that followed, Erica was haunted by those words. The work had to go on just as usual, and it seemed to tell on her father fearfully. The very cay after Haeberlein's death it was necessary for him to speak at a mass meeting in the north of England, and he came back from it almost voiceless and so ill that they were at their wits' end to know what to do with him. The morrow did not mend matters for the jury disagreed in the blasphemy trial, and the whole thing had to be gone through again.
A more trying combination of events could hardly have been imagined, and Erica, as she stood in the crowded cemetery next day at the funeral, thought infinitely less of the quixotic Haeberlein whom she had, nevertheless, loved very sincerely than of her sorely overtasked father. He was evidently in dread of breaking down, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he got through his oration. To all present the sight was a most painful one and, although the musical voice was hoarse and strained, seeming, indeed, to tear out each sentence by sheer force of will, the orator had never carried his audience more completely with him. Their tears were, however, more for the living than for the dead; for the man who was struggling with all his might to restrain his emotion, painfully spurring on his exhausted powers to fulfill the duty in hand. More than once Erica thought he would have fainted, and she was fully prepared for the small crowd of friends who gathered round her afterward, begging her to persuade him to rest. The worst of it was that she could see no prospect of rest for him, though she knew how sorely he longed for it. He spoke of it as they drove home.
“I've an almost intolerable longing for quiet,” he said to her. “Do you remember Mill's passage about the two main constituents of a satisfied life excitement and tranquillity? How willingly would I change places today with that Tyrolese fellow whom we saw last year!”
“Oh! If we could but go to the Tyrol again!” exclaimed Erica; but Raeburn shook his head.
“Out of the question just now, my child; but next week when this blasphemy trial is over, I must try to get a few days' holiday that is to say, if I don't find myself in prison.”
She sighed the sigh of one who is burdened almost beyond endurance. For recent events had proved to her, only too plainly, that her confidence that no jury would be found to convict a man under the old blasphemy laws was quite mistaken.
That evening, however, her thoughts were a little diverted from her father. For the first time for many months she had a letter from Rose. It was to announce her engagement to Captain Golightly. Rose seemed very happy, but there was an undertone of regret about the letter which was uncomfortably suggestive of her flirtation with Tom. Also there were sentences which, to Erica, were enigmatical, about “having been so foolish last summer,” and wishing that she “could live that Brighton time over again.” All she could do was to choose the time and place for telling Tom with discrimination. No opportunity presented itself till late in the evening when she went down as usual to say good night to him, taking Rose's letter with her. Tom was in his “den,” a small room consecrated to the goddess of disorder books, papers, electric batteries, crucibles, chemicals, new temperance beverages, and fishing rods were gathered together in wild confusion. Tom himself was stirring something in a pipkin over the gas stove when Erica came in.
“An unfallible cure for the drunkard's craving after alcohol,” he said, looking up at her with a smile. “'A thing of my own invention,' to quote the knight in 'Through the Looking Glass.' Try some?”
“No, thank you,” said Erica, recoiling a little from the very odoriferous contents of the pipkin. “I have had a letter from Rose this evening.”
Tom started visibly.
“What, has Mr. Fane-Smith relented?” he asked.
“Rose had something special to tell me,” said Erica, unfolding the letter.
But Tom just took it from her hands without ceremony, and began to read it. A dark flush came over his face Erica saw that much, but afterward would not look at him, feeling that it was hardly fair. Presently he gave her the letter once more.
“Thank you,” he said in a voice so cold and bitter that she could hardly believe it to be his. “As you probably see, I have been a fool. I shall know better how to trust a woman in the future.”
“Oh, Tom,” she cried. “Don't let it—”
He interrupted her.
“I don't wish to talk,” he said. “Least of all to one who has adopted the religion which Miss Fane-Smith has been brought up in a religion which of necessity debases and degrades its votaries.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she new that Christianity would in this case be better vindicated by silence than by words however eloquent. She just kissed him and wished him good night. But as she reached the door, his heart smote him.
“I don't say it has debased you,” he said; “but that that is its natural tendency. You are better than your creed.”
“He meant that by way of consolation,” thought Erica to herself as she went slowly upstairs fighting with her tears.
But of course the consolation had been merely a sharper stab; for to tell a Christian that he is better than his creed is the one intolerable thing.
What had been the extent of the understanding with Rose, Erica never learned, but she feared that it must have been equivalent to a promise in Tom's eyes, and much more serious than mere flirtation in Rose's, otherwise the regret in the letter was, from one of Rose's way of thinking, inexplicable. From that time there was a marked change in Tom; Erica was very unhappy about him, but there was little to be done except, indeed, to share all his interests as much as she could, and to try to make the home life pleasant. But this was by no means easy. To begin with, Raeburn himself was more difficult than ever to work with, and Tom, who was in a hard, cynical mood, called him overbearing where, in former times, he would merely have called him decided. The very best of men are occasionally irritable when they are nearly worked to death; and under the severe strain of those days, Raeburn's philosophic calm more than once broke down, and the quick Highland temper, usually kept in admirable restraint, made itself felt.
It was not, however, for two or three days after Haeberlein's funeral that he showed any other symptoms of illness. One evening they were all present at a meeting at the East End at which Donovan Farrant was also speaking. Raeburn's voice had somewhat recovered, and he was speaking with great force and fluency when, all at once in the middle of a sentence, he came to a dead pause. For half a minute he stood motionless; before him were the densely packed rows of listening faces, but what they had come there to hear he had not the faintest notion. His mind was exactly like a sheet of white paper; all recollection of the subject he had been speaking on was entirely obliterated. Some men would have pleaded illness and escaped, others would have blundered on. But Raeburn, who never lost his presence of mind, just turned to the audience and said quietly: “Will some one have the goodness to tell me what I was saying? My memory has played me a trick.”
“Taxation!” shouted the people.
A short-hand writer close to the platform repeated his last sentence, and Raeburn at once took the cue and finished his speech with perfect ease. Every one felt, however, that it was an uncomfortable incident, and, though to the audience Raeburn chose to make a joke of it, he knew well enough that it boded no good.
“You ought to take a rest,” said Donovan to him when the meeting was over.
“I own to needing it,” said Raeburn. “Pogson's last bit of malice will, I hope, be quashed in a few days and, after that, rest may be possible. He is of opinion that 'there are mony ways of killing a dog though ye dinna hang him,' and, upon my word, he's not far wrong.”
He was besieged here by two or three people who wanted to ask his advice, and Donovan turned to Erica.
“He has been feeling all this talk about Herr Haeberlein; people say the most atrocious things about him just because he gave him shelter at the last,” she said. “Really sometimes the accusations are so absurd that we ourselves can't help laughing at them. But though I don't believe in being 'done to death by slanderous tongues,' there is no doubt that the constant friction of these small annoyances does tell on my father very perceptibly. After all, you know the very worst form of torture is merely the perpetual falling of a drop of water on the victim's head.”
“I suppose since last summer this sort of thing has been on the increase?”
“Indeed it has,” she replied. “It is worse, I think, than you have any idea of. You read your daily paper and your weekly review, but every malicious, irritating word put forth by every local paper in England, Scotland, or Ireland comes to us, not to speak of all that we get from private sources.”
On their way home they did all in their power to persuade Raeburn to take an immediate holiday, but he only shook his head.
“'Dree out the inch when ye have thol'd the span,'” he said, leaning back wearily in the cab but taking care to give the conversation an abrupt turn before relapsing into silence.
At supper, as ill luck would have it, Aunt Jean relieved her fatigue and anxiety by entering upon one of her old remonstrances with Erica. Raeburn was not sitting at the table; he was in an easy chair at the other side of the room, and possibly she forgot his presence. But he heard every word that passed, and at last started up with angry impatience.
“For goodness' sake, Jean, leave the child alone!” he said. “Is it not enough for me to be troubled with bitterness and dissension outside without having my home turned into an arguing shop?”
“Erica should have thought of that before she deserted her own party,” said Aunt Jean; “before, to quote Strauss, she had recourse to 'religious crutches.' It is she who has introduced the new element into the house.”
Erica's color rose, but she said nothing. Aunt Jean seemed rather baffled by her silence. Tom watched the little scene with a sort of philosophic interest. Raeburn, conscious of having spoken sharply to his sister and fearing to lose his temper again, paced the room silently. Finally he went off to his study, leaving them to the unpleasant consciousness that he had been driven out of his own dining room. But when he had gone, the quarrel was forgotten altogether; they forgot differences of creed in a great mutual anxiety. Raeburn's manner had been so unnatural, he had been so unlike himself, that in their trouble about it they entirely passed over the original cause of his anger. Aunt Jean was as much relieved as any one when before long he opened his door and called for Erica.
“I have lost my address book,” he said; “have you seen it about?”
She began to search for it, fully aware that he had given her something to do for him just out of loving consideration, and with the hope that it would take the sting from her aunt's hard words. When she brought him the book, he took her face between both his hands, looked at her steadily for a minute, and then kissed her.
“All right, little son Eric,” he said, with a sigh. “We understand each other.”
But she went upstairs feeling miserable about him, and an hour or two later, when all the house was silent, her feeling of coming trouble grew so much that at length she yielded to one of those strange, blind impulses which come to some people and crept noiselessly out on to the dark landing. At first all seemed to her perfectly still and perfectly dark; but, looking down the narrow well of the staircase, she could see far below her a streak of light falling across the tiles in the passage. She knew that it must come from beneath the door of the study, and it meant that her father was still at work. He had owned to having a bad headache, and had promised not to be late. It was perplexing. She stole down the next flight of stairs and listened at Tom's door; then, finding that he was still about, knocked softly. Tom, with his feet on the mantel piece, was solacing himself with a pipe and a novel; he started up, however, as she came in.
“What's the matter?” he asked, “is any one ill?”
“I don't know,” said Erica, shivering a little. “I came to know whether father had much to do tonight; did he tell you?”
“He was going to write to Jackson about a situation for the eldest son of that fellow who died the other day, you know; the widow, poor creature, is nearly worried out of her life; she was here this afternoon. The chieftain promised to see about it at once; he wouldn't let me write, and of course a letter from himself will be more likely to help the boy.”
“But it's after one o'clock,” said Erica, shivering again; “he can't have been all this time over it.”
“Well, perhaps he is working at something else,” said Tom. “He's not been sleeping well lately, I know. Last night he got through thirty-three letters, and the night before he wrote a long pamphlet.”
Erica did not look satisfied.
“Lend me your stove for a minute,” she said; “I shall make him a cup of tea.”
They talked a little about the curious failure of memory noticed for the first time that evening. Tom was more like himself than he had been for several days; he came downstairs with her to carry a light, but she went alone into the study. He had not gone up the first flight of stairs, however, when he heard a cry, then his own name called twice in tones that made him thrill all over with a nameless fear. He rushed down and pushed open the study door. There stood Erica with blanched face; Raeburn sat in his customary place at the writing table, but his head had fallen forward and, though the face was partly hidden by the desk, they could see that it was rigid and deathly pale.
“He has fainted,” said Tom, not allowing the worse fear to overmaster him. “Run quick, and get some water, Erica.”
She obeyed mechanically. When she returned, Tom had managed to get Raeburn on to the floor and had loosened his cravat; he had also noticed that only one letter lay upon the desk, abruptly terminating at “I am, yours sincerely.” Whether the “Luke Raeburn” would ever be added, seemed to Tom at that moment very doubtful. Leaving Erica with her father, he rushed across the square to summon Brian, returning in a very few minutes with the comforting news that he was at home and would be with them immediately. Erica gave a sigh of relief when the quick, firm steps were heard on the pavement outside. Brian was so closely associated with all the wearing times of illness and anxiety which had come to them in the last six years that, in her trouble, she almost forgot the day at Fiesole regarding him not as her lover, but as the man who had once before saved her father's life. His very presence inspired her with confidence, the quiet authority of his manner, the calm, business-like way in which he directed things. Her anxiety faded away in the consciousness that he knew all about it, and would do everything as it should be done. Before very long Raeburn showed signs of returning consciousness, sighed uneasily; then, opening his eyes, regained his faculties as suddenly as he had lost them.
“Halloo!” he exclaimed, starting up. “What's all this coil about? What are you doing to me?”
They explained things to him.
“Oh! Fainted, did I!” he said musingly. “I have felt a little faint once or twice lately. What day is it? What time is it?” Tom mentioned the meeting of the previous evening, and Raeburn seemed to recollect himself. He looked at his watch, then at the letter on his desk. “Well, it's my way to do things thoroughly,” he said with a smile; “I must have been off for a couple of hours. I am very sorry to have disturbed your slumbers in this way.”
As he spoke, he sat down composedly at his desk, picked up the pen and signed his name to the letter. They stood and watched him while he folded the sheet and directed the envelope; his writing bore a little more markedly than usual the tokens of strong self-restraint.
“Perhaps you'll just drop that in the pillar on your way home,” he said to Brian. “I want Jackson to get it by the first post. If you will look in later on, I should be glad to have a talk with you. At present I'm too tired to be overhauled.”
Then, as Brian left the room, he turned to Erica.
“I am sorry to have given you a fright, my child; but don't worry about me, I am only a little overdone.”
Again that fatal admission, which from Raeburn's lips was more alarming than a long catalogue of dangerous symptoms from other men!
There followed a disturbed night and a long day in a crowded law court, then one of the most terrible hours they had ever had to endure while waiting for the verdict which would either consign Raeburn to prison or leave him to peace and freedom. So horrible was the suspense that to draw each breath was to Erica a painful effort. Even Raeburn's composure was a little shaken as those eternal minutes dragged on.
The foreman returned. The court seemed to throb with excitement. Raeburn lifted a calm, stern face to hear his fate. He knew what no one else in the court knew, that this was to him a matter of life and death.
“Are you agreed, gentlemen?”
“Yes.”
People listened breathlessly.
“Do you find the defendant guilty, or not?”
“Not guilty.”
The reaction was so sharp as to be almost overpowering. But poor Erica's joy was but short-lived. She looked at her father's face and knew that, although one anxiety was ended, another was already begun.
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