A voice grows with the growing years;
Earth, hushing down her bitter cry,
Looks upward from her graves, and hears,
“The Resurrection and the Life am I.”
O love Divine,--whose constant beam
Shines on the eyes that will not see,
And waits to bless us, while we dream
Thou leavest us because we turn from Thee!
Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed Thou know'st,
Wide as our need Thy favors fall;
The white wings of the Holy Ghost
Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all. Whittier
It was the eve of the new year, and great excitement prevailed in the
Lemerciers' house. Many of the girls whose homes were at a distance had
remained at school for the short winter holiday, and on this particular
afternoon a number of them were clustered round the stove talking about
the festivities of the morrow and the presents they were likely to have.
Erica, who was now a tall and very pretty girl of eighteen, was sitting
on the hearth rug with Ninette on her lap; she was in very high spirits,
and kept the little group in perpetual laughter, so much so indeed that
Fraulein Sonnenthal had more than once been obliged to interfere, and do
her best to quiet them.
“How wild thou art, dear Erica?” she exclaimed. “What is it?”
“I am happy, that is all,” said Erica. “You would be happy if the year
of freedom were just dawning for you. Three months more and I shall be
home.”
She was like a child in her exultant happiness, far more child-like,
indeed, than the grave little Ninette whom she was nursing.
“Thou art not dignified enough for a teacher,” said the fraulein,
laughingly.
“She is no teacher,” cried the girls. “It is holiday time and she need
not talk that frightful English.”
Erica made a laughing defense of her native tongue, and such a babel
ensued that the fraulein had to interfere again.
“Liebe Erica! Thou art beside thyself! What has come to thee?”
“Only joy, dear Thekla, at the thought of the beautiful new year which
is coming,” cried Erica. “Father would say I was 'fey,' and should pay
for all this fun with a bad headache or some misfortune. Come, give me
the French 'David Copperfield,' and let me read you how 'Barkis Veut
Bien,' and 'Mrs. Gummidge a Pense de l'Ancien.'”
The reading was more exquisitely ludicrous to Erica herself than to her
hearers. Still the wit of Charles Dickens, even when translated,
called forth peals of laughter from the French girls, too. It was the
brightest, happiest little group imaginable; perhaps it was scarcely
wonderful that old Mme. Lemercier, when she came to break it up, should
find her eyes dim with tears.
“My dear Erica--” she said, and broke off abruptly.
Erica looked up with laughing eyes.
“Don't scold, dear madame,” she said, coaxingly. “We have been very
noisy; but it is New year's eve, and we are so happy.”
“Dear child, it is not that,” said madame. “I want to speak to you for a
minute; come with me, cherie.”
Still Erica noticed nothing; did not detect the tone of pity, did not
wonder at the terms of endearment which were generally reserved for more
private use. She followed madame into the hall, still chattering gayly.
“The 'David Copperfield' is for monsieur's present tomorrow,” she said,
laughingly. “I knew he was too lazy to read it in English, so I got him
a translation.”
“My dear,” said madame, taking her hand, “try to be quiet a moment. I--I
have something to tell you. My poor little one, monsieur your father is
arrived--”
“Father! Father here!” exclaimed Erica, in a transport of delight.
“Where is he, where? Oh, madame, why didn't you tell me sooner?”
Mme. Lemercier tried in vain to detain her, as with cheeks all glowing
with happiness and dancing eyes, she ran at full speed to the salon.
“Father!” she cried, throwing open the door and running to meet him.
Then suddenly she stood quite still as if petrified.
Beside the crackling wood fire, his arms on the chimney piece, his face
hidden, stood a gray-haired man. He raised himself as she spoke. His
news was in his face; it was written all too plainly there.
“Father!” gasped Erica in a voice which seemed altogether different from
the first exclamation, almost as if it belonged to a different person.
Raeburn took her in his arms.
“My child--my poor little Eric!” he said.
She did not speak a word, but clung to him as though to keep herself
from falling. In one instant it seemed as though her whole world had
been wrecked, her life shattered. She could not even realize that
her father was still left to her, except in so far as the mere bodily
support was concerned. He was strong; she clung to him as in a hurricane
she would have clung to a rock.
“Say it,” she gasped, after a timeless silence, perhaps of minutes,
perhaps of hours, it might have been centuries for aught she knew. “Say
it in words.”
She wanted to know everything, wanted to reduce this huge, overwhelming
sorrow to something intelligible. Surely in words it would not be so
awful--so limitless.
And he said it, speaking in a low, repressed voice, yet very tenderly,
as if she had been a little child. She made a great effort to listen,
but the sentences only came to her disjointedly and as if from a great
distance. It had been very sudden--a two hours' illness, no very great
suffering. He had been lecturing at Birmingham--had been telegraphed
for--had been too late.
Erica made a desperate effort to realize it all; at last she brought
down the measureless agony to actual words, repeating them over and over
to herself--“Mother is dead.”
At length she had grasped the idea. Her heart seemed to die within her,
a strange blue shade passed over her face, her limbs stiffened. She
felt her father carry her to the window, was perfectly conscious of
everything, watched as in a dream, while he wrenched open the clumsy
fastening of the casement, heard the voices in the street below, heard,
too, in the distance the sound of church bells, was vaguely conscious of
relief as the cold air blew upon her.
She was lying on a couch, and, if left to herself, might have lain there
for hours in that strange state of absolute prostration. But she was not
alone, and gradually she realized it. Very slowly the re-beginning of
life set in; the consciousness of her father's presence awakened her,
as it were, from her dream of unmitigated pain. She sat up, put her arms
round his neck, and kissed him, then for a minute let her aching head
rest on his shoulder. Presently, in a low but steady voice, she said:
“What would you like me to do, father?”
“To come home with me now, if you are able,” he said; “tomorrow morning,
though, if you would rather wait, dear.”
But the idea of waiting seemed intolerable to her. The very sound of the
word was hateful. Had she not waited two weary years, and this was the
end of it all? Any action, any present doing, however painful, but no
more waiting. No terrible pause in which more thoughts and, therefore,
more pain might grow. Outside in the passage they met Mme. Lemercier,
and presently Erica found herself surrounded by kind helpers, wondering
to find them all so tearful when her own eyes felt so hot and dry. They
were very good to her, but, separated from her father, her sorrow
again completely overwhelmed her; she could not then feel the slightest
gratitude to them or the slightest comfort from their sympathy. She lay
motionless on her little white bed, her eyes fixed on the wooden
cross on the opposite wall, or from time to time glancing at Fraulein
Sonnenthal, who, with little Ninette to help, was busily packing her
trunk. And all the while she said again and again the words which summed
up her sorrow: “Mother is dead! Mother is dead!”
After a time her eyes fell on her elaborately drawn paper of days.
Every evening since her first arrival she had gone through the almost
religious ceremony of marking off the day; it had often been a great
consolation to her. The paper was much worn; the weeks and days yet to
be marked were few in number. She looked at it now, and if there can be
a “more” to absolute grief, an additional pang to unmitigated sorrow, it
came to her at the sight of that visible record of her long exile. She
snatched down the paper and tore it to pieces; then sunk back again,
pale and breathless. Fraulein Sonnenthal saw and understood. She came to
her, and kissed her.
“Herzbluttchen,” she said, almost in a whisper, and, after a moment's
pause: “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.”
Erica made an impatient gesture, and turned away her head.
“Why does she choose this time of all others to tell me so,” she thought
to herself. “Now, when I can't argue or even think! A sure tower! Could
a delusion make one feel that anything is sure but death at such a time
as this! Everything is gone--or going. Mother is dead!--mother is dead!
Yet she meant to be kind, poor Thekla, she didn't know it would hurt.”
Mme. Lemercier came into the room with a cup of coffee and a brioche.
“You have a long journey before you, my little one,” she said; “you must
take this before you start.”
Yes, there was the journey; that was a comfort. There was something
to be done, something hard and tiring--surely it would blunt her
perceptions. She started up with a strange sort of energy, put on her
hat and cloak, swallowed the food with an effort, helped to lock her
trunk, moved rapidly about the room, looking for any chance possession
which might have been left out. There was such terrible anguish in her
tearless eyes that little Ninette shrunk away from her in alarm. Mme.
Lemercier, who in the time of the siege had seen great suffering, had
never seen anything like this; even Thekla Sonnenthal realized that for
the time she was beyond the reach of human comfort.
Before long the farewells were over. Erica was once more alone with her
father, her cheeks wet with the tears of others, her own eyes still hot
and dry. They were to catch the four o'clock train; the afternoon was
dark, and already the streets and shops were lighted; Paris, ever bright
and gay, seemed tonight brighter and gayer than ever. She watched the
placid-looking passengers, the idle loungers at the cafes; did they know
what pain was? Did they know that death was sure? Presently she found
herself in a second-class carriage, wedged in between her father and a
heavy-featured priest; who diligently read a little dogs-eared breviary.
Opposite was a meek, weasel-faced bourgeois, with a managing wife, who
ordered him about; then came a bushy-whiskered Englishman and a newly
married couple, while in the further corner, nearly hidden from view
by the burly priest, lurked a gentle-looking Sister of Mercy, and a
mischievous and fidgety school boy. She watched them all as in a dream
of pain. Presently the priest left off muttering and began to snore,
and sleep fell, too, upon the occupants of the opposite seat. The little
weasel-faced man looked most uncomfortable, for the Englishman used him
as a prop on one side and the managing wife nearly overwhelmed him
on the other; he slept fitfully, and always with the air of a martyr,
waking up every few minutes and vainly trying to shake off his burdens,
who invariably made stifled exclamations and sunk back again.
“That would have been funny once,” thought Erica to herself. “How I
should have laughed. Shall I always be like this all the rest of my
life, seeing what is ludicrous, yet with all the fun taken out of it?”
But her brain reeled at the thought of the “rest of life.” The blank of
bereavement, terrible to all, was absolute and eternal to her, and
this was her first great sorrow. She had known pain, and privation, and
trouble and anxiety, but actual anguish never. Now it had come to her
suddenly, irrevocably, never to be either more or less; perhaps to be
fitted on as a garment as time wore on, and to become a natural part of
her life; but always to be the same, a blank often felt, always present,
till at length her end came and she too passed away into the great
Silence.
Despair--the deprivation of all hope--is sometimes wild, but oftener
calm with a deathly calmness. Erica was absolutely still--she scarcely
moved or spoke during the long weary journey to Calais. Twice only
did she feel the slightest desire for any outward vent. At the Amiens
station the school boy in the corner, who had been growing more restless
and excited every hour, sprung from the carriage to greet a small crowd
of relations who were waiting to welcome him. She saw him rush to
his mother, heard a confused affectionate babel of inquiries,
congratulations, laughter. Oh! To think of that happy light-heartedness
and the contrast between it and her grief. The laughter seemed
positively to cut her; she could have screamed from sheer pain. And, as
if cruel contrasts were fated to confront her, no sooner had her father
established her in the cabin on board the steamer, than two bright
looking English girls settled themselves close by, and began chatting
merrily about the new year, and the novel beginning it would be on board
a Channel steamer. Erica tried to stop her ears that she might not hear
the discussion of all the forthcoming gayeties. “Lady Reedham's dance
on Thursday, our own, you know, next week,” etc., etc. But she could not
shut out the sound of the merry voices, or that wounding laughter.
Presently an exclamation made her look and listen.
“Hark!” said one of her fellow passengers. “We shall start now; I
hear the clock striking twelve. A happy new year to you, Lily, and all
possible good fortune.”
“Happy new year!” echoed from different corners of the cabin; the
little Sister of Mercy knelt down and told her beads, the rest of the
passengers talked, congratulated, laughed. Erica would have given
worlds to be able to cry, but she could not. The terrible mockery of her
surroundings was too great, however, to be borne; her heart seemed like
ice, her head like fire; with a sort of feverish strength she rushed out
of the cabin, stumbled up the companion, and ran as if by instinct to
that part of the deck where a tall, solitary figure stood up darkly in
the dim light.
“It's too cold for you, my child,” said Raeburn, turning round at her
approach.
“Oh, father, let me stay with you,” sobbed Erica, “I can't bear it
alone.”
Perhaps he was glad to have her near him for his own sake, perhaps he
recognized the truth to which she unconsciously testified that human
nature does at times cry out for something other than self, stronger and
higher.
He raised no more objections, they listened in silence till the sound
of the church bells died away in the distance, and then he found a more
sheltered seat and wrapped her up closely in his own plaid, and together
they began their new year. The first lull in Erica's pain came in that
midnight crossing; the heaving of the boat, the angry dashing of the
waves, the foam-laden wind, all seemed to relieve her. Above all there
was comfort in the strong protecting arm round her. Yet she was too
crushed and numb to be able to wish for anything but that the end might
come for her there, that together they might sink down into the painless
silence of death.
Raeburn only spoke once throughout the passage; instinctively he knew
what was passing in Erica's mind. He spoke the only word of comfort
which he had to speak: a noble one, though just then very insufficient:
“There is work to be done.”
Then came the dreary landing in the middle of the dark winter's night,
and presently they were again in a railway carriage, but this time
alone. Raeburn made her lie down, and himself fell asleep in the
opposite corner; he had been traveling uninterruptedly for twenty hours,
had received a shock which had tried him very greatly, now from sheer
exhaustion he slept. But Erica, to whom the grief was more new, could
not sleep. Every minute the pain of realization grew keener. Here she
was in England once more, this was the journey she had so often thought
of and planned. This was going home. Oh, the dreariness of the reality
when compared with those bright expectations. And yet it was neither
this thought nor the actual fact of her mother's death which first
brought the tears to her burning eyes.
Wearily shifting her position, she looked across to the other side of
the carriage, and saw, as if in a picture, her father. Raeburn was a
comparatively young man, very little over forty; but his anxieties and
the almost incredible amount of hard work of the past two years had told
upon him, and had turned his hair gray. There was something in his
stern set face, in the strong man's reserved grief, in the pose of his
grand-looking head, dignified, even in exhaustion, that was strangely
pathetic. Erica scarcely seemed to realize that he was her father.
It was more as if she were gazing at some scene on the stage, or on a
wonderfully graphic and heart-stirring picture. The pathos and sadness
of it took hold of her; she burst into a passion of tears, turned her
face from the light, and cried as if no power on earth could ever stop
her, her long-drawn sobs allowed to go unchecked since the noise of the
train made them inaudible. She was so little given to tears, as a rule,
that now they positively frightened her, nor could she understand how,
with a real and terrible grief for which she could not weep, the mere
pathetic sight should have brought down her tears like rain. But the
outburst brought relief with it, for it left her so exhausted that for
a brief half hour she slept, and awoke just before they reached London,
with such a frightful headache that the physical pain numbed the mental.
“How soon shall we be--” home she would have said, but the word choked
her. “How soon shall we get there?” she asked faintly. She was so
ill, so weary, that the mere thought of being still again--even in the
death-visited home--was a relief, and she was really too much worn out
to feel very acutely while they drove through the familiar streets.
At last, early in the cold, new year's morning, they were set down in
Guilford Square, at the grim entrance to Persecution Alley. She looked
round at the gray old houses with a shudder, then her father drew her
arm within his, and led her down the dreary little cul-de-sac. There
was the house, looking the same as ever, and there was Aunt Jean coming
forward to meet them, with a strange new tenderness in her voice and
look, and there was Tom in the background, seeming half shy and afraid
to meet her in her grief, and there, above all, was the one great
eternal void.
To watch beside the dying must be anguish, and yet surely not such keen
anguish as to have missed the last moments, the last farewells, the last
chance of serving. For those who have to come back to the empty house,
the home which never can be home again, may God comfort them--no one
else can.
Stillness, and food, and brief snatches of sleep somewhat restored
Erica. Late in the afternoon she was strong enough to go into her
mother's room, for that last look so inexpressibly painful to all, so
entirely void of hope or comfort to those who believe in no hereafter.
Not even the peacefulness of death was there to give even a slight, a
momentary relief to her pain; she scarcely even recognized her mother.
Was that, indeed, all that was left? That pale, rigid, utterly changed
face and form? Was that her mother? Could that once have been her
mother? Very often had she heard this great change wrought by death
referred to in discussions; she knew well the arguments which were
brought forward by the believers in immortality, the counter arguments
with which her father invariably met them, and which had always seemed
to her conclusive. But somehow that which seemed satisfactory in the
lecture hall did not answer in the room of death. Her whole being seemed
to flow out into one longing question: Might there not be a Beyond--an
Unseen? Was this world indeed only
“A place to stand and love in for an hour,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it?”
She had slept in the afternoon, but at night, when all was still, she
could not sleep. The question still lurked in her mind; her sorrow and
loneliness grew almost unbearable. She thought if she could only make
herself cry again perhaps she might sleep, and she took down a book
about Giordano Bruno, and read the account of his martyrdom, an account
which always moved her very much. But tonight not even the description
of the valiant unshrinking martyr of Free-thought ascending the scaffold
to meet his doom could in the slightest degree affect her. She tried
another book, this time Dickens's “Tale of Two Cities.” She had never
read the last two chapters without feeling a great desire to cry, but
tonight she read with perfect unconcern of Sydney Carton's wanderings
through Paris on the night before he gave himself up--read the last
marvelously written scene without the slightest emotion. It was
evidently no use to try anything else; she shut the book, put out her
candle, and once more lay down in the dark.
Then she began to think of the words which had so persistently haunted
Sydney Carton: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” She, too, seemed
to be wandering about the Parisian streets, hearing these words over and
over again. She knew that it was Jesus of Nazareth who had said this.
What an assertion it was for a man to make! It was not even “I BRING
the resurrection,” or “I GIVE the resurrection,” but “I AM the
Resurrection.” And yet, according to her father, his humility had been
excessive, carried almost to a fault. Was he the most inconsistent man
that ever lived, or what was he? At last she thought she would get up
and see whether there was any qualifying context, and when and where he
had uttered this tremendous saying.
Lighting her candle, she crept, a little shivering, white-robed figure,
round the book-lined room, scanning the titles on every shelf, but
bibles were too much in use in that house to be relegated to the attics,
she found only the least interesting and least serviceable of her
father's books. There was nothing for it but to go down to the study;
so wrapping herself up, for it was a freezing winter's night, she went
noiselessly downstairs, and soon found every possible facility for
Biblical research.
A little baffled and even disappointed to find the words in that which
she regarded as the least authentic of the gospels, she still resolved
to read the account; she read it, indeed, in two or three translations,
and compared each closely with the others, but in all the words stood
out in uncompromising greatness of assertion. This man claimed to BE the
resurrection, of as Wyclif had it, “the agen risying and lyf.”
And then poor Erica read on to the end of the story and was quite thrown
back upon herself by the account of the miracle which followed. It was
a beautiful story, she said to herself, poetically written, graphically
described, but as to believing it to be true, she could as soon have
accepted the “Midsummer Night's Dream” as having actually taken place.
Shivering with cold she put the books back on their shelf, and stole
upstairs once more to bear her comfortless sorrow as best she could.