A paleness took the poet's cheek;
“Must I drink here?” he seemed to seek
The lady's will with utterance meek.
“Ay, ay,” she said, “it so must be,”
(And this time she spake cheerfully)
“Behooves thee know world's cruelty.” E. B. Browning
The trial of Luke Raeburn, on the charge of having published a
blasphemous libel in a pamphlet entitled “Bible Miracles,” came on in
the Court of Queen's Bench early in December. It excited a great deal of
interest. Some people hoped that the revival of an almost obsolete law
would really help to check the spread of heterodox views, and praised
Mr. Pogson for his energy and religious zeal. These were chiefly
well-meaning folks, not much given to the study of precedents. Some
people of a more liberal turn read the pamphlet in question, and were
surprised to see that matter quite as heterodox might be found in many
high-class reviews which lay about on drawing room tables, the only
difference being that the articles in the reviews were written in
somewhat ambiguous language by fashionable agnostics, and that “Bible
Miracles” was a plain, blunt, sixpenny tract, avowedly written for the
people by the people's tribune.
This general interest and attention, once excited, gave rise to the
following results: to an indiscriminate and wholesale condemnation of
“that odious Raeburn who was always seeking notoriety;” to an immense
demand for “Bible Miracles,” which in three months reached its fiftieth
thousand; and to a considerable crowd in Westminster Hall on the first
day of the trial, to watch the entrance and exit of the celebrities.
Erica had been all day in the court. She had written her article for
the “Daily Review: in pencil during the break for luncheon; but, as
time wore on, the heated atmosphere of the place, which was crammed
to suffocation, became intolerable to her. She grew whiter and whiter,
began to hear the voices indistinctly, and to feel as if her arms did
not belong to her. It would never do to faint in court, and vexed as she
was to leave, she took the first opportunity of speaking to her father.
“I think I must go,” she whispered, “I can't stand this heat.”
“Come now, then,” said Raeburn, “and I can see you out. This witness
has nothing worth listening to. Take notes for me, Tom. I'll be back
directly.”
They had only just passed the door leading into Westminster Hall,
however, when Tom sent a messenger hurrying after them. An important
witness had that minute been called, and Raeburn, who was, as usual,
conducting his own case, could not possibly miss the evidence.
“I can go alone,” said Erica. “Don't stop.”
But even in his haste, Raeburn, glancing at the crowd of curious faces,
was thoughtful for his child.
“No,” he said, hurriedly. “Wait a moment, and I'll send some one to
you.”
She would have been wiser if she had followed him back into the court;
but, having once escaped from the intolerable atmosphere, she was not
at all inclined to return to it. She waited where he had left her,
just within Westminster Hall, at the top of the steps leading from
the entrance to the court. The grandeur of the place, its magnificent
proportions, terminating in the great, upward sweep of steps, and the
mellow stained window, struck her more than ever after coming from the
crowded and inconvenient little court within. The vaulted roof, with its
quaintly carved angels, was for the most part dim and shadowy, but here
and there a ray of sunshine, slanting in through the clerestory windows,
changed the sombre tones to a golden splendor. Erica, very susceptible
to all high influences, was more conscious of the ennobling influence
of light, and space, and beauty than of the curious eyes which were
watching her from below. But all at once her attention was drawn to a
group of men who stood near her, and her thoughts were suddenly brought
back to the hard, every-day world, from which for a brief moment she had
escaped. With a quick, apprehensive glance, she noted that among them
was a certain Sir Algernon Wyte, a man who never lost an opportunity of
insulting her father.
“Did you see the fellow?” said one of the group. “He came to the door
just now.”
“And left his fair daughter to be a spectacle to men and angels?” said
Sir Algernon.
Then followed words so monstrous, so intolerable, that Erica, accustomed
as she was to discourtesies, broke down altogether. It was so heartless,
so cruelly false, and she was so perfectly defenseless! A wave of
burning color swept over her face. If she could but have gone away
have hidden herself from those cruel eyes. But her knees trembled so
fearfully that, had she tried to move, she must have fallen. Sick and
giddy, the flights of steps looked to her like a precipice. She could
only lean for support against the gray-stone moldings of the door way,
while tears, which for once she could not restrain, rushed to her eyes.
Oh! If Tom or the professor, or some one would but come to her! Such
moments as those are not measured by earthly time; the misery seemed to
her agelong though it was in reality brief enough for Brian, coming into
Westminster Hall, had actually heard Sir Algernon's shameful
slander, and pushing his way through the crowd, was beside her almost
immediately.
The sight of his face checked her tears. It positively frightened her by
its restrained yet intense passion.
“Miss Raeburn,” he said, in a clear, distinct voice, plainly heard
by the group below, “this is not a fit place for you. Let me take you
home.”
He spoke much more formally than was his wont, yet in his actions he
used a sort of authority, drawing her hand within his arm, leading
her rapidly through the crowd, which opened before them. For that one
bitter-sweet moment she belonged to him. He was her sole, and therefore
her rightful, protector. A minute more, and they stood in Palace Yard.
He hastily called a hansom.
In the pause she looked up at him, and would have spoken her thanks, but
something in his manner checked her. He had treated her so exactly as
if she belonged to him, that, to thank him seemed almost as absurd as
it would have done to thank her father. Then a sudden fear made her say
instead:
“Are you coming home?”
“I will come to see that you are safely back presently,” he said, in a
voice unlike his own. “But I must see that man first.”
“No, no,” she said, beginning to tremble again. “Don't go back. Please,
please don't go!”
“I must,” he said, putting her into the hansom. Then, speaking very
gently. “Don't be afraid; I will be with you almost directly.”
He closed the doors, gave the address to the driver, and turned away.
Erica was conscious of a vague relief as the fresh winter wind blew
upon her. She shut her eyes, that she might not see the passers-by, only
longing to get away right away, somewhere beyond the reach of staring
eyes and cruel tongues. One evening years ago, she remembered coming out
of St. James's Hall with Tom, and having heard a woman in Regent Street
insulted in precisely the same language that had been used to her today.
She remembered how the shrill, passionate cry had rung down the street:
“How dare you insult me!” And remembered, too, how she had wondered
whether perfect innocence would have been able to give that retort. She
knew now that her surmise had been correct. The insult had struck her
dumb for the time. Even now, as the words returned to her with a pain
intolerable, her tears rained down. It seemed to her that for once she
could no more help crying than she could have helped bleeding when cut.
Then once more her thoughts returned to Brian with a warmth of gratitude
which in itself relieved her. He was a man worth knowing, a friend worth
having. Yet how awful his face had looked as he came toward her. Only
once in her whole life had she seen such a look on a man's face. She had
seen it in her childhood on her father's face, when he had first heard
of a shameful libel which affected those nearest and dearest to him.
She had been far too young to understand the meaning of it, but she well
remembered that silent, consuming wrath; she remembered running away by
herself with the sort of half-fearful delight of a child's new discovery
“Now I know how men look when they KILL!”
All at once, in the light of that old recollection, the truth dashed
upon her. She smiled through her tears, a soft glow stole over her face,
a warmth found its way to her aching heart. For at last the love of
seven years had found its way to her.
She felt all in a glad tumult as that perception came to her. It had, in
truth, been an afternoon of revelations. She had never until now in the
least understood Brian's character, never in the least appreciated
him. And as to dreaming that his friendship had been love from the very
first, it had never occurred to her.
The revelation did not bring her unalloyed happiness for there came a
sharp pang as she recollected what he had gone back to do. What if
he should get into trouble on her behalf? What if he should be hurt?
Accustomed always to fear for her father actual physical injury, her
thoughts at once flew to the same danger for Brian. But, however sick
with anxiety, she was obliged, on reaching home, to try and copy out her
article, which must be in type and upon thousands of breakfast tables by
the next morning whether her heart ached or not, whether her life were
rough or smooth.
In the meantime, Brian, having watched her cab drive off, turned back
into Westminster Hall. He could see nothing but the one vision which
filled his brain the face of the girl he loved, a lovely, pure face
suffused with tears. He could hear nothing but that intolerable slander
which filled his heart with a burning, raging indignation. Straight as
an arrow and as if by instinct, he made his way to the place where
Sir Algernon and three or four companions were pacing to and fro. He
confronted them, bringing their walk to an enforced pause.
“I am here to demand an apology for the words you spoke just now about
Miss Raeburn,” he said, speaking in a voice which was none the less
impressive because it trembled slightly as with a wrath restrained only
by a great effort.
Sir Algernon, a florid, light-haired man of about thirty, coolly stared
at him for a moment.
“Who may you be, sir, who take up the cudgels so warmly in Miss
Raeburn's defense?”
“A man who will not hear a defenseless girl insulted,” said Brian, his
voice rising. “Apologize!”
“Defenseless girl!” repeated the other in a tone so insufferable that
Brian's passion leaped up like wild fire.
“You vile blackguard!” he cried, “what you said was an infernal lie, and
if you don't retract it this moment, I'll thrash you within an inch of
your life.”
Sir Algernon laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“'Pon my life!” he exclaimed, turning to one of his companions, “if I'd
know that Miss Raeburn--”
But the sentence was never ended for, with a look of fury, Brian sprung
at him, seized him by the collar of his coat, and holding him like
a vise with one hand, with the other brought down his cane upon the
slanderer's shoulders with such energy that the wretch writhed beneath
it.
The on-lookers, being gentlemen and fully aware that Sir Algernon
deserved all he was getting, stood by, not offering to interfere,
perhaps in their hearts rather sympathizing with the stranger whose
righteous indignation had about it a manliness that appealed to them.
Presently Sir Algernon ceased to kick, his struggles grew fainter. Brian
let his right arm pause then, and with his left flung his foe into the
corner as if he had been a mere chattel.
“There!” he exclaimed, “summons me for that when you please.” And,
handing his card to one of Sir Algernon's companions, he strode out of
the hall.
By the time he reached Guilford Square he was almost himself again, a
little paler than usual but outwardly quite calm. He went at once to
No. 16. The Raeburns had now been settled in their new quarters for
some weeks, and the house was familiar enough to him; he went up to the
drawing room or, as it was usually called, the green room. The gas was
not lighted, but a little reading lamp stood upon a table in one of the
windows, and the fire light made the paneled walls shine here and there
though the corners and recesses were all in dusky shadow. Erica had made
this the most home-like room in the house; it had the most beguiling
easy chairs, it had all Mr. Woodward's best pictures, it had fascinating
little tables, and a tempting set of books. There was something in the
sight of the familiar room which made Brian's wrath flame up once more.
Erica's guileless life seemed to rise before him the years of patient
study, the beautiful filial love, the pathetic endeavor to restrain her
child-like impatience of conventionalities lest scandalmongers should
have even a shadow of excuse for slandering Luke Raeburn's daughter. The
brutality of the insult struck him more than ever. Erica, glancing
up from her writing table, saw that his face again bore that look of
intolerable pain which had so greatly startled her in Westminster Hall.
She had more than half dreaded his arrival, had been wondering how they
should meet after the strange revelation of the afternoon, had been
thinking of the most trite and commonplace remark with which she might
greet him. But when it actually came to the point, she could not say a
word, only looked up at him with eyes full of anxious questioning.
“It is all right,” he said, answering the mute question, a great joy
thrilling him as he saw that she had been anxious about him. “You should
not have been afraid.”
“I couldn't help it,” she said, coloring, “he is such a hateful man! A
man who might do anything. Tell me what happened.”
“I gave him a thrashing which he'll not soon forget,” said Brian. “But
don't let us speak of him any more.”
“Perhaps he'll summons you!” said Erica.
“He won't dare to. He knows that he deserved it. What are you writing?
You ought to be resting.”
“Only copying out my article. The boy will be here before long.”
“I am your doctor,” he said, feeling her pulse, and again assuming his
authoritative manner; “I shall order you to rest on your couch at once.
I will copy this for you. What is it on?”
“Cremation,” said Erica, smiling a little. “A nice funereal subject for
a dreary day. Generally, if I'm in wild spirits, Mr. Bircham sends me
the very gloomiest subject to write on, and if I'm particularly blue, he
asks for a bright, lively article.”
“Oh! He tells you what to write on?”
“Yes, did you think I had the luxury of choosing for myself? Every day,
about eleven o'clock a small boy brings me my fate on a slip of paper.
Let me dictate this to you. I'm sure you can't read that penciled
scribble.”
“Yes, I can,” said Brian. “You go and rest.”
She obeyed him, thankful enough to have a moment's pause in which to
think out the questions that came crowding into her mind. She hardly
dared to think what Brian might be to her, for just now she needed him
so sorely as friend and adviser, that to admit that other perception,
which made her feel shy and constrained with him, would have left her
still in her isolation. After all, he was a seven years' friend, no mere
acquaintance, but an actual friend to whom she was her unreserved and
perfectly natural self.
“Brian,” she said presently when he had finished her copying, “you don't
think I'm bound to tell my father about this afternoon, do you?”
A burning, painful blush, the sort of blush that she never ought to have
known, never could have known but for that shameful slander, spread over
her face and neck as she spoke.
“Perhaps not,” said Brian, “since the man has been properly punished.”
“I think I hope it need never get round to him in any other way,” said
Erica. “He would be so fearfully angry, and just now scarcely a day
passes without bringing him some fresh worry.”
“When will the Pogson affair come on?”
“Oh! I don't know. Not just yet, I'm afraid. Things in the legal world
always move at the rate of a fly in a glue pot.”
“What sort of man is Mr. Pogson?”
“He was in court today, a little, sleek, narrow-headed man with cold,
gray eyes. I have been trying to put myself in his place, and realize
the view he takes of things; but it is very, very hard. You don't know
what it is to live in this house and see the awful harm his intolerance
is bringing about.”
“In what way did you specially mean?”
“Oh! In a thousand ways. It is bringing Christianity into discredit,
it is making them more bitter against it, and who can wonder. It is
bringing hundreds of men to atheism, it is enormously increasing the
demand for all my father's books, and already even in these few months
it has doubled the sale of the 'Idol-Breakers.' In old times that would
have been my consolation. Oh! It is heart-breaking to see how religious
people injure their own cause. Surely they might have learned by this
time that punishment for opinion is never right, that it brings only
bitterness, and misery, and more error! How is one to believe that
this is right that God means all this bigotry and injustice to go on
producing evil?”
“Surely it will teach the sharp lesson that all pain teaches,” said
Brian. “We Christians have broken His order, have lost the true idea of
brotherly love, and from this arises pain and evil, which at last, when
it touches our own selfish natures, will rouse us, wake us up
sharply, drive us back of necessity to the true Christ-following. Then
persecution and injustice will die. But we are so terribly asleep that
the evil must grow desperate before we become conscious of it. It seems
to me that bigotry has at least one mortal foe, though. You are always
here; you must show them by your life what the Father is THAT is being a
Christian!”
“I know,” said Erica, a look of almost passionate longing dawning in her
eyes. “Oh! What a thing it is to be crammed full of faults that hinder
one from serving! And all these worries do try one's temper fearfully.
If they had but a Donovan to live with them now! But, as for me, I can't
do much, except love them.”
Brian loved her too truly to speak words of praise and commendation at
such a time.
“Is not the love the crux of the whole?” he said quietly.
“I suppose it is,” said Erica, pushing back her hair from her forehead
in the way she always did when anything perplexed her. “But just at
present my life is a sort of fugue on Browning's line
'How very hard it is to be a Christian?'
Sometimes I can't help laughing to think that there was a time when I
thought the teaching of Christ unpractical! Do you mind ringing the bell
for me; the others will be in directly, and will be glad of tea after
that headachy place.”
“Is there nothing else I can do for you?” asked Brian.
“Yes, one thing more help me to remember the levers of the second order.
It's my physiology class tonight, and I feel, as Tom would express it,
like a 'boiled owl.'”
“Let me take the class for you.”
“Oh, no, thank you,” she replied. “I wouldn't miss it for the world.”
It was not till Brian had left that Erica, taking up the article on
cremation, was struck by some resemblance in the handwriting. She must
have seen Brian's writing before, but only this afternoon did she make
that fresh discovery. Crossing the room she took from one of the book
shelves a dark blue morocco volume, and compared the writing on the fly
leaf with her MS.
“From another admirer of 'Hiawatha.'” There could be no doubt that Brian
had written that. Had he cared for her so long? Had he indeed loved her
all these years? She was interrupted by the maid bringing in the tea.
“Mr. Bircham's boy is here, miss, and if you please, can cook speak to
you a minute?”
Erica put down the Longfellow and rolled up “Cremation.”
“I'm sure she's going to give warning!” she thought to herself. “What a
day to choose for it! That's what I call an anti-climax.”
Her forebodings proved all too true. In a minute more in walked the
cook, with the sort of conscious dignity of bearing which means “I am no
longer in your service.”
“If you please, miss, I wish to leave this day month.”
“I shall be sorry to lose you,” said Erica; “what are your reasons for
leaving?”
“I've not been used, miss, to families as is in the law courts. I've
been used to the best West End private families.”
“I don't see how it can affect you,” said Erica, feeling, in spite of
her annoyance, much inclined to laugh.
“Indeed, miss, and it do. There's not a tradesman's boy but has his joke
or his word about Mr. Raeburn,” said the cook in an injured voice. “And
last Sunday when I went to the minister to show my lines, he said a
member ought to be ashamed to take service with a hatheist and that I
was in an 'ouse of 'ell. Those was his very words, miss, an 'ouse of
'ell, he said.”
“Then it was exceedingly impertinent of him,” said Erica, “for he knew
nothing whatever about it.”
After that there was nothing for it but to accept the resignation, and
to begin once more the weary search for that rara avis, “a good plain
cook.”
Her interview had only just ended when she heard the front door open.
She listened intently, but apparently it was only Tom; he came upstairs
singing a refrain with which just then she quite agreed:
“LAW, law Rhymes very well with jaw,
If you're fond of litigation,
And sweet procrastination,
Latin and botheration,
I advise you to go to law.”
“Halloo!” he exclaimed. “So you did get home all right? I like your way
of acting Casabianca! The chieftain sent me tearing out after you, and
when I got there, you had vanished!”
“Brian came up just then,” said Erica, “and I thought it better not to
wait. Oh, here comes father.”
Raeburn entered as she spoke. No one who saw him would have guessed that
he was an overworked, overworried man, for his face was a singularly
peaceful one, serene with the serenity of a strong nature convinced of
its own integrity.
“Got some tea for us, Eric?” he asked, throwing himself back in a chair
beside the fire.
Some shade of trouble in her face, invisible to any eye but that of a
parent, made him watch her intently, while a new hope which made his
heart beat more quickly sprang up within him. Christians had not shown
up well that day; prosecuting and persecuting Christians are the most
repulsive beings on earth! Did she begin to feel a flaw in the system
she had professed belief in? Might she by this injustice come to realize
that she had unconsciously cheated herself into a belief? If such things
might win her back to him, might bridge over that miserable gulf between
them, then welcome any trouble, any persecution, welcome even ruin
itself.
But had he been able to see into Erica's heart, he would have learned
that the grief which had left its traces on her face was the grief of
knowing that such days as these strengthened and confirmed him in his
atheism. Erica was indeed ever confronted with one of the most
baffling of all baffling mysteries. How was it that a man of such grand
capacities, a man with so many noble qualities, yet remained in the
darkness? One day she put that question sadly enough to Charles Osmond.
“Not darkness, child, none of your honest secularists who live up to
their creed are in darkness,” he replied. “However mistakenly, they do
try to promote what they consider the general good. Were you in such
absolute blackness before last summer?”
“There was the love of Humanity,” said Erica musingly.
“Yes, and what is that but a ray of the light of life promised to all
who, to any extent, follow Christ? It is only the absolutely selfish who
are in the black shadow. The honest atheist is in the penumbra, and
in his twilight sees a little bit of the true sun, though he calls it
Humanity instead of Christ.”
“Oh, if the shadows would but go!” exclaimed Erica.
“Would!” he said, laughing gently. “Why, child, they will, they must!”
“But now, I mean! 'Here down,' as Mazzini would have said.”
“You were ever an impatient little mortal.”
“How can one help being impatient for this,” she said with a quick sigh.
“That is what I used to say myself seven years ago over you,” he said
smiling. “But I learned that the Father knew best, and that if we would
work with Him we must wait with Him too. You musn't waste your strength
in impatience, child, you need every bit of it for the life before you.”
But patience did not come by nature to a Raeburn, and Erica did not gain
it in a day even by grace.