Longing is God's fresh heavenward will
With our poor earthward striving;
We quench it that we may be still
Content with merely living;
But, would we learn that heart's full scope
Which we are hourly wronging,
Our lives must climb from hope to hope
And realize our longing. J. R. Lowell
Perhaps it was only natural that there should be that winter a good deal
of communication between the secularist's house in Guilford Terrace and
the clergyman's house in Guilford Square.
From the first Raeburn had taken a great fancy to Charles Osmond, and
now that Brian had become so closely connected with the memory of their
sudden bereavement, and had made himself almost one of them by his
silent, unobtrusive sympathy, and by his numberless acts of delicate
considerateness, a tie was necessarily formed which promised to deepen
into one of those close friendships that sometimes exist between two
entire families.
It was a bleak, chilly afternoon in March, when Charles Osmond,
returning from a long round of parish work, thought he would look in for
a few minutes at the Raeburns'; he had a proposal to make to Erica, some
fresh work which he thought might interest her. He rang the bell at the
now familiar door and was admitted; it carried him back to the day when
he had first called there and had been shown into the fire-lit room,
with the book-lined walls, and the pretty little girl curled up on the
rug, with her cat and her toasting fork. Time had brought many changes
since then. This evening he was again shown into the study, but this
time the gas was lighted, and there was no little girl upon the hearth
rug. Erica was sitting at her desk hard at work. Her face lighted up at
the sight of her visitor.
“Every one is out except me,” she said, more brightly than he had heard
her speak since her return. “Did you really come to see me. How good of
you.”
“But you are busy?” said Charles Osmond, glancing at the papers on the
desk. “Press work?”
“Yes, my first article,” said Erica, “it is just finished; but if you'll
excuse me for one minute, I ought to correct it; the office boy will
call for it directly.”
“Don't hurry; I will wait and get warm in the meantime,” said Charles
Osmond, establishing himself by the fire.
There was a silence broken only by the sound of Erica's pen as she
crossed out a word or a line. Charles Osmond watched her and mused. This
beautiful girl, whose development he could trace now for more than two
years back, what would she grow into? Already she was writing in the
“Idol Breaker.” He regretted it. Yet it was obviously the most natural
employment for her. He looked at her ever-changing face. She was
absorbed in her work, her expression varying with the sentences she
read; now there was a look of triumphant happiness as she came
to something which made her heart beat quickly; again, a shade of
dissatisfaction at the consciousness of her inability to express what
was in her mind. He could not help thinking that it was one of the
noblest faces he had ever seen, and now that the eyes were downcast it
was not so terribly sad; there was, moreover, for the first time since
her mother's death, a faint tinge of color in her cheeks. Before five
minutes could have passed, the bell rang again.
“That is my boy,” she exclaimed, and hastily blotting her sheets, she
rolled them up, gave them to the servant, closed her desk, and crossing
the room, knelt down in front of the fire to warm her hands, which were
stiff and chilly.
“How rude I have been to you,” she said, smiling a little; “I always
have been rude to you since the very first time we met.”
“We were always frank with each other,” said Charles Osmond; “I remember
you gave me your opinion as to bigots and Christians in the most
delightfully open way. So you have been writing your first article?”
“Yes,” and she stretched herself as though she were rather tired and
cramped. “I have had a delicious afternoon. Yesterday I was in despair
about it, but today it just came--I wrote it straight off.”
“And you are satisfied with it?”
“Satisfied? Oh, no! Is anybody ever satisfied? By the time it is in
print I shall want to alter every sixth line. Still, I dare say it will
say a little of what I want said?”
“Oh, you do want something said?”
“Of course!” she replied, a little indignantly. “If not, how could I
write.”
“I quite agree with you,” said Charles Osmond, “and you mean to take
this up as your vocation?”
“If I am thought worthy,” said Erica, coloring a little.
“I see you have high ideas of the art,” said Charles Osmond; “and what
is your reason for taking it up?”
“First of all, though it sounds rather illogical,” said Erica, “I write
because I MUST; there is something in me which will have its way. Then,
too, it is part of our creed that every one should do all in his power
to help on the cause, and of course, if only for my father's sake, it
would be my greatest pleasure. Then, last of all, I write because I must
earn my living.”
“Good reasons all,” said Charles Osmond. “But I don't feel sure that you
won't regret having written when you look back several years hence.”
“Oh! I dare say it will all seem crude and ridiculous then, but one must
make a beginning,” said Erica.
“And are you sure you have thought out these great questions so
thoroughly and fairly that you are capable of teaching others about
them?”
“Ah! Now I see what you mean!” exclaimed Erica; “you think I write in
defense of atheism, or as an attacker of Christianity. I do nothing
of the kind; father would not allow me to, he would not think me old
enough. Oh! No, I am only to write the lighter articles which are needed
every now and then. Today I had a delightful subject--'Heroes--what are
they?'”
“Well, and what is your definition of a hero, I wonder; what are the
qualities you think absolutely necessary to make one?”
“I think I have only two absolutely necessary ones,” said Erica; “but my
heroes must have these two, they must have brains and goodness.”
“A tolerably sweeping definition,” said Charles Osmond, laughing,
“almost equal to a friend of mine who wanted a wife, and said there were
only two things he would stipulate for--1,500 a year, and an angel. But
it brings us to another definition, you see. We shall agree as to the
brains, but how about goodness! What is your definition of that very
wide, not to say vague, term?”
“I don't think I can define it,” she said; “but one knows it when one
sees it.”
“Do you mean by it unselfishness, courage, truthfulness, or any other
virtue?”
“Oh, it isn't any one virtue, or even a parcel of virtues, it will not
go into words.”
“It is then the nearest approach to some perfect ideal which is in your
mind?”
“I suppose it is,” she said, slowly.
“How did that ideal come into your mind?”
“I don't know; I suppose I got it by inheritance.”
“From the original moneron?”
“You are laughing at me. I don't know how of course, but I have it,
which, as far as I can see, is all that matters.”
“I am not sure of that,” said Charles Osmond. “The explanation of that
ideal of goodness which more or less clearly exists in all our minds,
seems to me to rest only in the conviction that all are children of one
perfect Father. And I can give you our definition of goodness without
hesitation, it is summed up for us in one word--'Christlikeness.'”
“I cannot see it; it seems to me all exaggerated,” said Erica.
“I believe it is only because people are educated to believe and
predisposed to think it all good and perfect that there are so many
Christians. You may say it is we who are prejudiced. If we are, I'm
sure you Christians have done enough to make us so! How could I, for
instance, be anything but an atheist? Shall I tell you the very first
thing I can remember?”
Her eyes were flashing with indignant light.
“I was a little tiny child--only four years old--but there are some
scenes one never forgets. I can see it all as plainly as possible, the
room in a hotel, the very doll I was playing with. There was a great
noise in the street, trampling, hissing, hooting. I ran to the window,
an immense crowd was coming nearer and nearer, the street was black with
the throng, they were all shouting and yelling--'Down with the infidel!'
'Kill the atheist!' Then I saw my father, he was there strong and
fearless, one man against a thousand! I tell you I saw him, I can see
him now, fighting his way on single-handed, not one creature brave
enough to stand up for him. I saw him pushed, struck, spit upon, stoned.
At last a great brick struck him on the head. I think I must have been
too sick or too angry to see any more after that. The next thing I
remember is lying on the floor sobbing, and hearing father come into the
room and say: 'Why, little son Eric, did you think they'd killed me?'
And he picked me up and let me sit on his knee, but there was blood on
his face, and as he kissed me it dropped upon my forehead. I tell you,
you Christians baptized me into atheism in my own father's blood. They
were Christians who stoned him, champions of religion, and they were
egged on by the clergy. Did I not hear it all then in my babyhood?
And it is true; it is all fact; ask anybody you like; I have not
exaggerated.”
“My dear child, I know you have not,” said Charles Osmond, putting his
strong hand upon hers. He could feel that she was all trembling with
indignation. Was it to be wondered at? “I remember those riots perfectly
well,” he continued. “I think I felt and feel as indignant about them
as yourself. A fearful mistake was made--Mr. Raeburn was shamefully
treated. But, Erica”--it was the first time he had called her by her
name--“you who pride yourself upon fairness, you who make justice your
watchword must be careful not to let the wrong doing of a few Christians
prejudice you against Christianity. You say that we are all predisposed
to accept Christ; but candidly you must allow, I think, that you are
trebly prejudiced against the very name of Christian. A Christian almost
inevitably means to you only one of your father's mistaken persecutors.”
“Yes, you are so much of an exception that I always forget you are
one,” said Erica, smiling a little. “Yet you are not like one of
us--quite--you somehow stand alone, you are unlike any one I ever
met; you and Thekla Sonnenthal and your son make to me a sort of new
variety.”
Charles Osmond laughed, and changed the subject. “You are busy with your
examination work, I suppose?” And the question led to a long talk about
books and lectures.
In truth, Erica had plunged into work of all kinds, not merely from love
of it, but because she felt the absolute need of fresh interests, the
great danger of dwelling unduly on her sorrow. Then, too, she had just
grasped a new idea, an idea at once noble and inspiriting. Hitherto she
had thought of a happy future for herself, of a home free from troubles
and harassing cares. That was all over now, her golden dream had come
to an end, “Hope dead lives nevermore.” The life she had pictured to
herself could never be, but her nature was too strong to be crushed by
the sorrow; physically the shock had weakened her far more than any one
knew, but, mentally, it had been a wonderful stimulant. She rose above
herself, above her trouble, and life began to mean something broader and
deeper than before.
Hitherto her great desire had been to be free from care, and to be
happy; now the one important thing seemed not so much to be happy, as
to know. To learn herself, and to help others to learn, became her chief
object, and, with all the devotion of an earnest, high-souled nature,
she set herself to act out these convictions. She read hard, attended
lectures, and twice a week taught in the night school attached to the
Institute.
Charles Osmond could not help smiling as she described her days to him.
She still retained something of the childishness of an Undine, and as
they talked she had taken up her old position on the hearth rug, and
Friskarina had crept on to her knee. Here, undoubtedly, was one whom
ignorant people would stigmatize as “blue” or as a “femme savante;” they
would of course be quite wrong and inexpressively foolish to use such
terms, and yet there was, perhaps, something a little incongruous in
the two sides, as it were, of Erica's nature, the keen intellect and the
child-like devotion, the great love of learning and the intense love
of fun and humor. Charles Osmond had only once in all his long years of
experience met with a character which interested him so much.
“After all,” he said, when they had talked for some time, “I have never
told you that I came on a begging errand, and I half fear that you will
be too busy to undertake any more work.”
Erica's face brightened at the word; was not work what she lived for?
“Oh! I am not too busy for anything!” she exclaimed. “I shall quote
Marcus Aurelius to you if you say I haven't time! What sort of work?”
“Only, when you can, to come to us in the afternoon and read a little to
my mother. Do you think you could? Her eyes are failing, and Brian and I
are hard at work all day; I am afraid she is very dull.”
“I should like to come very much,” said Erica, really pleased at the
suggestion. “What sort of books would Mrs. Osmond like?”
“Oh, anything! History, travels, science, or even novels, if you are not
above reading them!”
“I? Of course not,” said Erica, laughing. “Don't you think we enjoy
them as much as other people? When there is time to read them, at least,
which isn't often.”
Charles Osmond laughed.
“Very well then, you have a wide field. From Carlyle to Miss Bird,
and from Ernst Haeckel to Charles Reade. I should make them into a big
sandwich if I were you.”
He said goodbye, and left Erica still on the hearth rug, her face
brighter than it had been for months.
“I like that man,” she said to herself. “He's honest and thorough, and
good all through. Yet how in the world does he make himself believe in
his creed? Goodness, Christlikeness. He looked so grand, too, as he said
that. It is wonderful what a personal sort of devotion those three have
for their ideal.”
She wandered away to recollections of Thekla Sonnenthal, and that
carried her back to the time of their last parting, and the recollection
of her sorrow. All at once the loneliness of the present was borne in
upon her overwhelmingly; she looked around the little room, the Ilkley
couch was pushed away into a corner, there was a pile of newspapers upon
it. A great sob escaped her. For a minute she pressed her hands
tightly together over her eyes, then she hurriedly opened a book on
“Electricity,” and began to read as if for her life.
She was roused in about an hour's time by a laughing exclamation. She
started, and looking up, saw her cousin Tom.
“Talk about absorption, and brown studies!” he cried, “why, you eat
everything I ever saw. I've been looking at you for at least three
minutes.”
Tom was now about nineteen; he had inherited the auburn coloring of the
Raeburns, but otherwise he was said to be much more like the Craigies.
He was nice looking, but somewhat freckled, and though he was tall and
strongly built, he somehow betrayed that he had led a sedentary life and
looked, in fact, as if he wanted a training in gymnastics. For the
rest he was shrewd, business-like, good-natured, and at present very
conceited. He had been Erica's friend and playfellow as long as she
could remember; they were brother and sister in all but the name, for
they had lived within a stone's throw of each other all their lives, and
now shared the same house.
“I never heard you come in,” she said, smiling a little. “You must have
been very quiet.”
“I don't believe you'd hear a salute fired in the next room if you were
reading, you little book worm! But look here; I've got a parody on the
chieftain that'll make you cry with laughing. You remember the smashed
windows at the meeting at Rilchester last week?”
Erica remembered well enough, she had felt sore and angry about it, and
the comments in the newspapers had not been consolatory. She had learned
to dread even the comic papers; but there was nothing spiteful in the
one which Tom produced that evening. It was headed:
Scotch song (Tune--“Twas within a mile of Edinboro'town”)
“Twas within a hall of Rilchester town,
In the bleak spring-time of the year,
Luke Raeburn gave a lecture on the soul of man,
And found that it cost him dear.
Windows all were smashed that day,
They said: 'The atheist can pay.'
But Scottish Raeburn, frowning cried:
'Na, na, it winna do,
I canna, canna, winna, winna, munna pay for you.'”
The parody ran on through the three verses of the song, the conclusion
was really witty, and there was no sting in it. Erica laughed over it as
she had not laughed for weeks. Tom, who had been trying unsuccessfully
to cheer her ever since her return, was quite relieved.
“I believe the sixpence a day style suits you,” he said. “But, I say,
isn't anything coming up? I'm as hungry as a hunter.”
Their elders being away for a few days, Tom and Erica were amusing
themselves by trying to live on the rather strange diet of the man who
published his plan for living at the smallest possible cost. They were
already beginning to be rather weary of porridge, pea soup and lentils.
This evening pea soup was in the ascendant, and Erica, tired with a long
afternoon's work, felt as if she could almost as soon have eaten Thames
mud.
“Dear me,” she said, “it never struck me, this is our Lenten penance!
Now, wouldn't any one looking in fancy we were poor Romanists without an
indulgence?”
“Certainly without any self-indulgence,” said Tom, who never lost an
opportunity of making a bad pun.
“It would be a great indulgence to stop eating,” said Erica, sighing
over the soup yet to be swallowed.
“Do you think it is more inspiriting to fast in order to save one's soul
than it is to pay the chieftain's debts? I wish I could honestly say,
like the little French girl in her confession: 'J'ai trop mang.'”
Tom dearly loved that story, he was exceeding fond of getting choice
little anecdotes from various religious newspapers, especially those
which dealt in much abuse of the Church of Rome, and he retailed them
CON AMORE. Erica listened to several, and laughed a good deal over them.
“I wonder, though, they don't see how they play into our hands by
putting in these things,” she said after Tom had given her a description
of some ludicrous attack made by a ritualist on an evangelical. “I
should have thought they would have tried to agree whenever they could,
instead of which they seem almost as spiteful to each other as they are
to us.”
“They'd know better if they'd more than a grain of sense between them,”
said Tom, sweepingly, “but they haven't; and as they're always playing
battledoor and shuttlecock with that, it isn't much good to either.
Of course they play into our hands. I believe the spiteful ultra-high
paper, and the spiteful ultra-low paper do more to promote atheism than
the 'Idol-Breaker' itself.”
“How dreadful it must be for men like Mr. Osmond, who see all round, and
yet can't stop what they must think the mischief. Mr. Osmond has been
here this afternoon.”
“Ah, now, he's a stunning fellow, if you like,” said Tom. “He's not one
of the pig-headed narrow-minded set. How he comes to be a parson I can't
make out.”
“Well, you see, from their point of view it is the best thing to be; I
mean he gets plenty of scope for work. I fancy he feels as much obliged
to speak and teach as father does.”
“Pity he's not on our side,” said Tom; “they say he's a first-rate
speaker. But I'm afraid he is perfectly crazy on that point; he'll
never come over.”
“I don't think we've a right to put the whole of his religiousness down
to a mania,” said Erica. “Besides, he is not the sort of man to be even
a little mad, there's nothing the least fanatical about him.”
“Call it delusion if you like it better. What's in a name? The thing
remains the same. A man can't believe what is utterly against reason
without becoming, as far as that particular belief is concerned,
unreasonable, beyond the pale of reason, therefore deluded, therefore
mad.”
Erica looked perplexed; she did not think Tom's logic altogether good,
but she could not correct it. There was, however, a want of generosity
about the assertion which instantly appealed to her fine sense of honor.
“I can't argue it out,” she said at last, “but it doesn't seem to me
fair to put down what we can't understand in other people to madness; it
never seemed to me quite fair for Festus to accuse Paul of madness when
he really had made a splendid defense, and it doesn't seem fair that you
should accuse Mr. Osmond of being mad.”
“Only on that one point,” said Tom. “Just a little touched, you know.
How else can you account for a man like that believing what he professes
to believe?”
“I don't know,” said Erica, relapsing into perplexed silence.
“Besides,” continued Tom, “you cry out because I say they must be just a
little touched, but they accuse us of something far worse than madness,
they accuse us of absolute wickedness.”
“Not all of them,” said Erica.
“The greater part,” said Tom. “How often do you think the chieftain
meets with really fair treatment from the antagonists?”
Erica had nothing to say to this. The harshness and intolerance which
her father had constantly to encounter was the great grief of her life,
the perpetual source of indignation, her strongest argument against
Christianity.
“Have you much to do tonight?” she asked, not anxious to stir up afresh
the revolt against the world's injustice which the merest touch would
set working within her. “I was thinking that, if there was time to
spare, we might go to see the professor; he has promised to show me some
experiments.”
“Electricity?” Tom pricked up his ears. “Not half a bad idea. If you'll
help me we can polish off the letters in an hour or so, and be free by
eight o'clock.”
They set to work, and between them disposed of the correspondence.
It was a great relief to Erica after her long day's work to be out in
the cool evening air. The night was fine but very windy, indeed the
sudden gusts at the street corners made her glad to take Tom's arm.
Once, as they rather slackened their speed, half baffled by the storm, a
sentence from a passer-by fell on their ears. The speaker looked like a
countryman.
“Give me a good gas-burner with pipes and a meter that a honest man can
understand! Now this 'ere elective light I say it's not canny; I've no
belief in things o' that kind, it won't never--”
The rest of the speech died away in the distance. Tom and Erica laughed,
but the incident set Erica thinking. Here was a man who would not
believe what he could not understand, who wanted “pipes and a meter,”
and for want of comprehensible outward signs pooh-poohed the great new
discovery.
“Tom,” she said slowly, and with the manner of one who makes a very
unpleasant suggestion, reluctantly putting forward an unwelcome thought,
“suppose if, after all, we are like that man, and reject a grand
discovery because we don't know and are too ignorant to understand! Tom,
just suppose if, after all, Christianity should be true and we in the
wrong!”
“Just suppose if, after all, the earth should be a flat plain with the
sun moving round it!” replied Tom scornfully.
They were walking down the Strand; he did not speak for some minutes, in
fact he was looking at the people who passed by them. For the first
time in his life a great contrast struck him. Disreputable vulgarity,
wickedness, and vice stared him in the face, then involuntarily he
turned to Erica and looked down at her scrutinizingly as he had never
looked before. She was evidently wrapped in thought but it was not the
intellect in her face which he thought of just then, though it was ever
noticeable, nor was it the actual beauty of feature which struck him, it
was rather an undefined consciousness that here was a purity which was
adorable. From that moment he became no longer a boy, but a man with
a high standard of womanhood. Instantly he thought with regret of his
scornful little speech--it was contemptible.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, abruptly, as if she had been following his
whole train of thought. “Of course one is bound to study the question
fairly, but we have done that, and all that remains for us is to live as
usefully as we can and as creditably to the cause as may be.”
They had turned down one of the dingy little streets leading to the
river, and now stood outside Professor Gosse's door. Erica did not
reply. It was true she had heard arguments for and against Christianity
all her life, but had she ever studied it with strict impartiality? Had
she not always been strongly biased in favor of secularism? Had not Mr.
Osmond gone unpleasantly near the mark when he warned her against
being prejudiced by the wrong-doing of a few modern Christians against
Christianity itself! She was coming now for special instruction in
science from one who was best calculated to teach; she would not have
dreamed of asking instruction from one who was a disbeliever in science.
Would the same apply in matters of religious belief? Was she bound
actually to ask instruction from Charles Osmond, for instance, even
though she believed that he taught error--harmful error? Yet who was to
be the judge of what was error, except by perfectly fair consideration
of both sides of the case. Had she been fair? What was perfect fairness?
But people must go on living, and must speak and act even though their
minds are in a chaos of doubts and questionings. They had reached
Professor Gosse's study, or as he himself called it, his workshop,
and Erica turned with relief to the verifiable results of scientific
inquiry.