How can man love but what he yearns to help? R. Browning
During the year of Erica's illness, Brian began to realize his true
position toward her better than he had hitherto done.
He saw quite well that any intrusion of his love, even any slight
manifestation of it, might do untold harm. She was not ready for it yet
why, he could not have told.
The truth was, that his Undine, although in many respects a high-souled
woman, was still in some respects a child. She would have been merely
embarrassed by his love; she did not want it. She liked him very much as
an acquaintance; he was to her Tom's friend, or her doctor, or perhaps
Mr. Osmond's son. In this way she liked him, was even fond of him, but
as a lover he would have been a perplexing embarrassment.
He knew well enough that her frank liking boded ill for his future
success; but in spite of that he could not help being glad to obtain any
footing with her. It was something even to be “Tom's friend Brian.” He
delighted in hearing his name from her lips, although knowing that it
was no good augury. He lived on from day to day, thinking very little
of the doubtful future as long as he could serve her in the present.
A reserved and silent man, devoted to his profession, and to practical
science of every kind, few people guessed that he could have any
particular story of his own. He was not at all the sort of man who would
be expected to fall hopelessly in love at first sight, nor would any one
have selected him as a good modern specimen of the chivalrous knight
of olden times; he was so completely a nineteenth-century man, so
progressive, so scientific. But, though his devotion was of the silent
order, it was, perhaps for that reason, all the truer. There was about
him a sort of divine patience. As long as he could serve Erica, he was
content to wait any number of years in the hope of winning her love. He
accepted his position readily. He knew that she had not the slightest
love for him. He was quite secondary to his father, even, who was one
of Erica's heroes. He liked to make her talk of him; her enthusiastic
liking was delightful perhaps all the more so because she was far from
agreeing with her prophet. Brian, with the wonderful self-forgetfulness
of true love, liked to hear the praises of all those whom she admired;
he liked to realize what were her ideals, even when conscious how far he
fell short of them.
For it was unfortunately true that his was not the type of character she
was most likely to admire. As a friend she might like him much, but he
could hardly be her hero. His wonderful patience was quite lost upon
her; she hardly counted patience as a virtue at all. His grand humility
merely perplexed her; it was at present far beyond her comprehension.
While his willingness to serve every one, even in the most trifling and
petty concerns of daily life, she often attributed to mere good nature.
Grand acts of self-sacrifice she admired enthusiastically, but the more
really difficult round of small denials and trifling services she did
not in the least appreciate. Absorbed in the contemplation, as it were,
of the Hamlets in life, she had no leisure to spare for the Horatios.
She proved a capital patient; her whole mind was set on getting well,
and her steady common sense and obedience to rules made her a great
favorite with her elder doctor. Really healthy, and only invalided by
the hard work and trouble she had undergone, seven or eight months' rest
did wonders for her. In the enforced quiet, too, she found plenty
of time for study. Charles Osmond had never had a better pupil. They
learned to know each other very well during those lessons, and many
were the perplexing questions which Erica started. But they were not as
before, a mere repetition of the difficulties she had been primed with
at her father's lecture hall, nor did she bring them forward with the
triumphant conviction that they were unanswerable. They were real,
honest questions, desiring and seeking everywhere for the true answer
which might be somewhere.
The result of her study of the life of Christ was at first to make her a
much better secularist. She found to her surprise that there was much in
His teaching that entirely harmonized with secularism; that, in fact, He
spoke a great deal about the improvement of this world, and scarcely at
all about that place in the clouds of which Christians made so much.
By the end of a year she had also reached the conviction that, whatever
interpolations there might be in the gospels, no untrue writer, no
admiring but dishonest narrator COULD have conceived such a character as
that of Christ. For she had dug down to the very root of the matter. She
had left for the present the, to her, perplexing and almost irritating
catalogue of miracles, and had begun to perceive the strength and
indomitable courage, the grand self-devotion, the all-embracing love of
the man. Very superficial had been her former view. He had been to her
a shadowy, unreal being, soft and gentle, even a little effeminate,
speaking sometimes what seemed to her narrow words about only saving the
lost sheep of the house of Israel. A character somehow wanting in that
Power and Intellect which she worshipped.
But on a really deep study she saw how greatly she had been mistaken.
Extraordinarily mistaken, both as to the character and the teaching.
Christ was without doubt a grand ideal! To be as broad-hearted as he
was, as universally loving it would be no bad aim. And, as in daily life
Erica realized how hard was the practice of that love, she realized at
the same time the loftiness of the ideal, and the weakness of her own
powers.
“But, though I do begin to see why you take this man as your ideal,” she
said, one day, to Charles Osmond, “I can not, of course, accept a great
deal that He is said to have taught. When He speaks of love to men, that
is understandable, one can try to obey; but when he speaks about God,
then, of course, I can only think that He was deluded. You may admire
Joan of Arc, and see the great beauty of her character, yet at the same
time believe that she was acting under a delusion; you may admire the
character of Gotama without considering Buddhism the true religion;
and so with Christ, I may reverence and admire His character, while
believing Him to have been mistaken.”
Charles Osmond smiled. He knew from many trifling signs, unnoticed by
others, that Erica would have given a great deal to see her way to an
honest acceptance of that teaching of Christ which spoke of an unseen
but everywhere present Father of all, of the everlastingness of love,
of a reunion with those who are dead. She hardly allowed to herself
that she longed to believe it, she dreaded the least concession to that
natural craving; she distrusted her own truthfulness, feared above all
things that she might be deluded, might imagine that to be true which
was in reality false.
And happily, her prophet was too wise to attempt in any way to quicken
the work which was going on within her; he was one of those rare men
who can be, even in such a case, content to wait. He would as soon have
thought of digging up a seed to see whether he could not quicken its
slow development of root and stem as of interfering in any way with
Erica. He came and went, taught her Greek, and always, day after day,
week after week, month after month, however much pressed by his parish
work, however harassed by private troubles, he came to her with the
genial sympathy, the broad-hearted readiness to hear calmly all sides of
the question, which had struck her so much the very first time she had
met him.
The other members of the family liked him almost as well, although they
did not know him so intimately as Erica. Aunt Jean, who had at first
been a little prejudiced against him, ended by singing his praises more
loudly than any one, perhaps conquered in spite of herself by the man's
extraordinary power of sympathy, his ready perception of good even in
those with whom he disagreed most.
Mrs. Craigie was in many respects very like her brother, and was a very
useful worker, though much of her work was little seen. She did not
speak in public; all the oratorical powers of the family seemed to
have concentrated themselves in Luke Raeburn; but she wrote and worked
indefatigably, proving a very useful second to her brother. A hard,
wearing life, however, had told a good deal upon her, and trouble had
somewhat imbittered her nature. She had not the vein of humor which had
stood Raeburn in such good stead. Severely mater-of-fact, and almost
despising those who had any poetry in their nature, she did not always
agree very well with Erica. The two loved each other sincerely, and were
far too loyal both to clan and creed to allow their differences really
to separate them; but there was, undoubtedly, something in their
natures which jarred. Even Tom found it hard at times to bear the strong
infusion of bitter criticism which his mother introduced into the home
atmosphere. He was something of a philosopher, however, and knowing that
she had been through great trouble, and had had much to try her, he made
up his mind that it was natural therefore inevitable therefore to be
borne.
The home life was not without its frets and petty trials, but on one
point there was perfect accord. All were devoted to the head of the
house would have sacrificed anything to bring him a few minutes' peace.
As for Raeburn, when not occupied in actual conflict, he lived in a
sort of serene atmosphere of thought and study, far removed from all
the small differences and little cares of his household. They invariably
smoothed down all such roughnesses in his presence, and probably in
any case he would have been unable to see such microscopic grievances;
unless, indeed, they left any shade of annoyance on Erica's face, and
then his fatherhood detected at once what was wrong.
It would be tedious, however, to follow the course of Erica's life for
the next three years, for, though the time was that of her chief mental
growth, her days were of the quietest. Not till she was two-and-twenty
did she fully recover from the effects of her sudden sorrow and the
subsequent overwork. In the meantime, her father's influence steadily
deepened and spread throughout the country, and troubles multiplied.