Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and maker Thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from Thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?
And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
For the fullness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
R. Browning
Early on the Monday morning three anxious-looking travelers arrived by the first train from London, and drove as fast as might be to the Park Hotel at Ashborough. They were evidently expected for the moment their cab stopped a door on one of the upper floors was opened, and some one ran quickly down the stairs to meet them.
“Is he better?” asked Aunt Jean.
Erica shook her head and, indeed, her face told them much more than the brief words of the telegram. She was deathly white, and had that weighed-down look which people wear when they have watched all night beside one who is hovering between life and death. She seemed to recover herself a little as her hand rested for a moment in Brian's.
“He has been asking for you,” she said. “Do go to him. The faintness has quite passed off, and they say inflammation has set in; he is in frightful pain.”
Her lips grew a shade whiter as she spoke and, with an effort, she seemed to turn away from some horrible recollection.
“There is some breakfast ready for you in here,” she said to her aunt. “You must have something before you see him. Oh, I am so glad you have come, auntie!”
Aunt Jean kissed her and cried a little; trouble always brought these two together however much they disagreed at other times. Tom did not say a word, but began to cut a loaf to pieces as though they had the very largest appetites; the great pile of slices lay untouched on the trencher, but the cutting had served its purpose of a relief to his pent-up feelings.
Later on there was a consultation of doctors; their verdict was perhaps a little more hopeful than Erica had dared to expect. Her father had received a fearful internal injury and was in the greatest danger, but there was still a chance that he might recover, it was just possible; and knowing how his constitution had rallied when every one had thought him dying three years before, she grew very hopeful. Without hope she could hardly have got through those days for the suffering was terrible. She hardly knew which she dreaded most, the nights of fever and delirium when groans of anguish came from the writhing lips, or the days with their clear consciousness when her father never uttered a word of complaint but just silently endured the torture, replying always, if questioned as to the pain, “It's bearable.”
His great strength and vigor made it seem all the more piteous that he should now be lying in the very extremity of suffering, unable to bear even the weight of the bed clothes. But all through that weary time his fortitude never gave way, and the vein of humor which had stood him in such good stead all his life did not fail him even now. On the Monday when he was suffering torments, they tried the application of leeches. One leech escaped, and they had a great hunt for it, Raeburn astonishing them all by coming out with one of his quaint flashes of wit and positively making them laugh in spite of their anxiety and sorrow.
The weary days dragged on, the torture grew worse, opium failed to deaden the pain, and sleep, except in the very briefest snatches, was impossible. But at last on the Thursday morning a change set in, the suffering became less intense; they knew, however, that it was only because the end was drawing near and the life energy failing.
For the second time Sir John Larkom came down from London to see the patient, but every one knew that there was nothing to be done. Even Erica began to understand that the time left was to be measured only by hours. She learned it in a few words which Sir John Larkom said to Donovan on the stairs. She was in her own room with the door partly open, eagerly waiting for permission to go back to her father.
“Oh, it's all up with the poor fellow,” she heard the London doctor say. “A wonderful constitution; most men would not have held out so long.”
At the time the words did not convey any very clear meaning to Erica; she felt no very sharp pang as she repeated the sentence to herself; there was only a curious numb feeling at her heart and a sort of dull consciousness that she must move, must get away somewhere, do something active. It was at first almost a relief to her when Donovan returned and knocked at her door.
“I am afraid we ought to come to the court,” he said. “They will, I am sure, take your evidence as quickly as possible.”
She remembered then that the man Drosser was to be brought up before the magistrates that morning; she and Donovan had to appear as witnesses of the assault. She went into her father's room before she started; he had specially asked to see her. He was quite clear-minded and calm, and began to speak in a voice which, though weak and low, had the old musical ring about it.
“You are going to give evidence, Eric,” he said, holding her hand in his. “Now, I don't forgive that fellow for having robbed me of life, but one must be just even to one's foes. They will ask you if you ever saw Drosser before; you will have to tell them of that scene at Greyshot, and you must be sure to say that I said, as we drove off: 'No doubt the poor fellow is half-witted.' Those were my words, do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said, repeating the words after him at his request. “I remember quite well.”
“Those words may affect Drosser's case very much, and I don't wish any man to swing for me I have always disapproved of the death penalty. Probably, though, it will be brought in as manslaughter yes, almost certainly. There go, my child, and come back to me as soon as you can.”
But the examination proved too much for Erica's physical powers; she was greatly exhausted by the terrible strain of the long days and nights of nursing, and when she found herself in a hot and crowded court, pitilessly stared at, confronted by the man who was in fact her father's murderer, and closely questioned by the magistrate about all the details of that Sunday evening, her overtasked strength gave way suddenly.
She had told clearly and distinctly about the meeting at Greyshot, and had stated positively that in the Ashborough market place she had seen Drosser give her father a heavy blow and then push him down the Town Hall steps.
“Can you recollect whether others pushed your father at the same time?” asked the magistrate. “Don't answer hurriedly; this is an important matter.”
All at once the whole scene came vividly before Erica the huge crowd, the glare of the lights, her father standing straight and tall, as she should never see him again, his thick white hair stirred by the wind, his whole attitude that of indignant protest; then the haggard face of the fanatic, the surging movement in the black mass of people, and that awful struggle and fall. Was it he who was falling? If so she was surely with him, falling down, down, endlessly down.
There was a sudden stir and commotion in the court, a murmur of pity, for Luke Raeburn's daughter had fallen back senseless.
When she came to herself, she was lying on the floor of an office-like room, with her head on Mrs. MacNaughton's lap. Brian was bending over her, chafing her hands. A clock in the building struck one, and the sound seemed to recall things to her mind. She started up.
“Oh!” she cried, “why am I not with my father? Where have you taken me to?”
“It's all right, dear,” said Mrs. MacNaughton soothingly; “you shall come back directly you are well enough.”
“I remember it all now,” she said; “did I finish? Must I go back there?”
It was some relief to know that Donovan had been able to supplement her evidence, and that the examination was in fact over, Drosser having been remanded for a week. She insisted on going back to the hotel at once, and spent the whole of the afternoon and evening with her father. He was not in great pain now, but very restless, and growing weaker every hour. He was able, however, to see several of his friends, and though the farewells evidently tried him, he would not refuse to see those who had come hundreds of miles for that last glimpse.
“What does it matter if I am exhausted?” he said when some one remonstrated with him. “It will make no difference at all as far as I am concerned, and it will be a happiness to them for the rest of their lives. Besides, I shall not die today, perhaps not tomorrow; depend upon it, I shall die hard.”
They persuaded Erica to rest for the first part of the night. She left Tom and Brian to watch, and went to her room, making them promise to call her if there were any signs of change.
At last the full realization had come to her; though she hated leaving her father, it was yet a sort of relief to get away into the dark, to be able to give way for a moment.
“Anything but this, oh, God,” she sobbed, “anything but this!”
All else would have been easy enough to bear, but that he should be killed by the violence and bigotry of one who at any rate called himself a Christian, this seemed to her not tolerable. The hope of years had received its death blow, the life she most loved was sinking away in darkness, the work which she had so bravely taken as her life work was all but over, and she had failed. Yes, in spite of all her efforts, all her longings, all her love, she had failed, or at any rate apparently failed, and in moments of great agony we do not in fact can not distinguish between the real and the apparent. Christ Himself could not do it.
She did not dare to let her sobs rise for it was one of the trials of that time that they were not in their own home but in a busy hotel where the partitions were thin and every sound could be heard in the adjoining rooms. Moreover, Aunt Jean was sleeping with her and must not be disturbed. But as she lay on the floor, trying to stifle the restrained sobs which shook her from head to foot trying to check the bitter tears which would come, her thoughts were somehow lifted quite away from the present; strange little memories of her childish days returned to her, days when her father had been to her the living incarnation of all that was noble and good. Often it is not the great events of a child's life which are so vividly remembered; memory seems to be strangely capricious and will single out some special word or deed, some trifling sign of love which has stamped itself indelibly upon the grain to bear its golden harvest of responding love through a life time. Vividly there came back to her now the eager happiness with which she had awaited a long promised treat, as a little thing of seven years old. Her father was to take her on some special excursion, she had long ago forgotten what the particular occasion was, only it was something that could come but once, the day lost, the treat would be lost. But the evening before, when she was on the very tiptoe of expectation, a celebrated action for libel had come to an end much sooner than was expected, and when her father returned in the evening he had to tell her that his case was to come on the next day, and that he could not possibly take her. Even now she could recall the bitterness of the disappointment, but not so vividly as the look in her father's face as he lifted her off the floor where she had thrown herself in the abandonment of her grief. He had not said a word then about the enormity of crying, he had just held her closely in his arms, feeling the disappointment a thousand times more than she felt it herself, and fully realizing that the loss of such a long-looked-for happiness was to a child what the loss of thousands of pounds would be to a man. He had been patient with her though she had entirely failed to see why he could not put off the case just for that day.
“You'll understand one day, little one,” he had said, “and be glad that you have had your share of pain in a day that will advance the cause of liberty.”
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 ejaculation 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, harassed, 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 noble 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 passing 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 nobility 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 passively listening to an impassioned 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 superstition. 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, sparsely 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 passed, and the golden-red dawn was just breaking when once more the silence was broken.
“Come nearer, Eric,” he whispered “nearer!”
Then came a long pause.
There was stillness that fearful stillness when the watchers begin to hush their very breath, that they may catch the last faint breathings. Poor Tom could stand it no longer; he just buried his face in his hands and sobbed. Perhaps Erica envied him. Violent grief would surely have been more endurable than this terrible sinking, this dread of not keeping up to the end. Was she falling with him down those horrible steps? Was she sinking with him beneath the cold, green waves? Oh, death cruel death! Why had he not taken them together on that summer day?
Yet what was she saying? The death angel was but God's messenger, and her father could never, never be beyond the care of One who loved him infinitely eternally. If He the Father were taking him from her, why, she would trust Him, though it should crush her whole world.
“Nearer, Eric nearer.” How those last words rang in her ears as she waited there with her hands in his. She knew they would be the last for he was sinking away into a dreamily passive state just dying because too tired to live.
“Nearer, nearer!” Was this agony indeed to heal the terrible division between them? Ah, mystery of evil, mystery of pain, mystery of death! Only the love of the Infinitely Loving can fathom you only the trust in that Love give us a glimpse of your meaning.
She felt a tightening of the fingers that clasped hers. He was still conscious; he smiled just such a smile as he used to give her when, as a little thing, she had fretted about his leaving home.
She pressed her quivering lips to his, clung to him, and kissed him again and again. There was a sigh. A long interval, and another sigh. After that, silence.
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