Those who persecuted them supposed of course that they were
defending Christianity, but Christianity can be defended in
no such way. It forbids all persecution all persecution for
the sake of religion. Force cannot possibly propagate the
truth or produce the faith, or promote the love in which the
gospel consists.... Persecution can never arise from zeal
for the Gospel as truth from zeal for the Gospel properly
understood. If ever due to zeal in any measure, and not to
pride, selfishness, anger, ambition, and other hateful lusts
... It must be to a zeal which is in alliance with error.
... The men (atheists) therefore, who, by their courage
and endurance were specially instrumental in convincing
their countrymen that persecution for the avowal and
advocacy even of atheism is a folly and a crime, have really
rendered a service to the cause of Christian truth, and
their names will not be recorded without honor when the
history of our century is impartially written. Baird
Lectures, 1877. R. Flint, D.D., Professor of Divinity,
Edinburgh.
A few days later the brief holiday ended, and father and daughter were
both hard at work again in London. They had crossed from Antwerp by
night and had reached home about ten o'clock to find the usual busy life
awaiting them.
Tom and Aunt Jean, who had been very dull in their absence, were
delighted to have them back again; and though the air was thick with
coming troubles, yet it was nevertheless a real home coming, while
Erica, in spite of her hidden sorrow, had a very real enjoyment in
describing her first foreign tour. They were making a late breakfast
while she talked, Raeburn being more or less absorbed in the “Daily
Review.”
“You see, such an early newspaper is a luxury now,” said Erica. “Not
that he's been behaving well abroad. He promised me when we started that
he'd eschew newspapers altogether and give his brain an entire rest; but
there is a beguiling reading room at Florence, and there was no keeping
him away from it.”
“What's that? What are you saying?” said Raeburn, absently.
“That very soon, father, you will be as absent-minded as King
Stars-and-Garters in the fairy tale, who one day, in a fit of
abstraction, buttered his newspaper and tried to read his toast.”
Raeburn laughed and threw down the “Daily Review.”
“Saucier than ever, isn't she, Tom? Well, we've come back to a few
disagreeables; but then we've come back, thank man! To roast beef and
Turkey towels, and after kickshaws and table napkins, one knows how to
appreciate such things.”
“We could have done with your kickshaws here,” said Tom. “If you hadn't
come back soon, Erica, I should have gone to the bad altogether, for
home life, with the cook to cater for one, is intolerable. That creature
has only two ideas in her head. We rang the changes on rice and stewed
rhubarb. The rhubarb in its oldest stage came up four days running. We
called it the widow's curse! Then the servants would make a point of
eating onions for supper so that the house was insufferable. And at last
we were driven from pillar to post by a dreadful process called house
cleaning in which, undoubtedly, life is not worth living. In the end,
Mr. Osmond took pity on me and lent me Brian's study. Imagine heretical
writings emanating from that room!”
This led the conversation round to Brian's visit to Florence, and Erica
was not sorry to be interrupted by a note from Mr. Bircham, requesting
her to write an article on the Kilbeggan murder. She found that the
wheels of the household machinery would need a good deal of attention
before they would move as smoothly as she generally contrived to make
them. Things had somehow “got to wrongs” in her absence. And when at
length she thought everything was in train and had got thoroughly into
the spirit of a descriptive article on the Irish tragedy, the cook
of two ideas interrupted her with what seemed, in contract, the most
trivial matters.
“If you please, miss,” she said, coming into the green room, just as the
three villains in black masks were in the act of killing their victim,
“I thought you'd wish to know that we are wanting a new set of kitchen
cloths; and if you'll excuse me mentioning it, miss, there's Jane, miss,
using glass cloths as tea cloths, and dusters as knife cloths.”
Erica looked slightly distracted, but diverted her mind from the state
of Ireland to the state of the household linen, and, when left alone
once more, laughed to herself at the incongruity of the two subjects.
It was nearly a fortnight before Brian returned from Switzerland. Erica
knew that he was in the well-known house on the opposite side of the
square, and through the trees in the garden, they could see each the
other's place of residence. It was a sort of nineteenth-century version
of the Rhine legend, in which the knight of Rolandseek looked down upon
Nomenwerth where his lady love was immured in a convent.
She had rather dreaded the first meeting, but, when it came, she felt
nothing of what she had feared. She was in the habit of going on Sunday
morning to the eight o'clock service at the church in the square. It was
nearer than Charles Osmond's church, and the hour interfered less with
household arrangements. Just at the corner of the square on the morning
of Trinity Sunday, she met Brian. Her heart beat quickly as she shook
hands with him, but there was something in his bearing which set her
entirely at her ease after just the first minute. He looked much older,
and a certain restlessness in look and manner had quite left him, giving
place to a peculiar calm not unlike his father's expression. It was the
expression which a man wears when he has lost the desire of his heart,
yet manfully struggles on, allowing no bitterness to steal in, facing
unflinchingly the grayness of a crippled life. Somehow, joining in that
thanksgiving service seemed to give them the true key-note for their
divided lives. As they came out into the porch, he asked her a question.
“You are an authority on quotations, I know; my father wants to verify
one for his sermon this morning. Can you help him? It is this:
'Revealed in love and sacrifice,
The Holiest passed before thine eyes,
One and the same, in threefold guise.'”
“It is Whittier, I know,” said Erica, promptly; “and I think it is in a
poem called 'Trinitas.' Come home with me, and we will hunt for it.”
So they walked back together silently, and found the poem, and at
Raeburn's request Brian stayed to breakfast, and fell back naturally
into his old place with them all.
The following day Raeburn had to attend a meeting in the north of
England; he returned on the Tuesday afternoon, looking, Erica fancied,
tired and overdone.
“Railway journeys are not quite the rest they once were to me,” he
confessed, throwing himself down in a chair by the open window while she
brought him some tea. “This is very beguiling, little one; but see, I've
all these letters to answer before five.”
“Your train must have been very late.”
“Yes, there was a block on the line, and we stopped for half an hour in
the middle of a bean field bliss that a Londoner can't often enjoy.”
“Did you get out?”
“Oh, yes, and sat upon the fence and meditated to the great delectation
of my olfactory nerves.”
Erica's laugh was checked by a knock at the door. The servant announced
that a gentleman wanted to see Miss Raeburn.
“Some message from Mr. Bircham, I expect,” said Erica to her father.
“Ask him upstairs, please. I only hope he doesn't want me to write
another article at the eleventh hour. If it's the little Irish
sub-editor, you must be very polite to him, father, for he has been kind
to me.”
But it was no message from the “Daily Review” office; a perfect stranger
was shown into the room.
He bowed slightly as he entered.
“Are you Miss Erica Raeburn?” he asked, coming toward her.
“I am,” she replied. “What is your business with me?”
“I have to place this document in your hands.”
He gave her a paper which she rapidly unfolded. To her dying day
she could always see that hateful bit of foolscap with its alternate
printing and writing. The words were to this effect:
Writ Subpoena Ad Test, at Sittings of High Court. IN THE HIGH COURT OF
JUSTICE, QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION. Between Luke Raeburn, Plaintiff, and
William Henry Pogson, Defendant VICTORIA, by the Grace of God, of the
United kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the
Faith, To Erica Raeburn, greeting. We command you to attend at the
sittings of the Queen's Bench division of our High Court of Justice to
be holden at Westminster on Tuesday, the Twentieth day of June, 18__, at
the hour of half past Ten in the forenoon, and so from day to day during
the said sittings, until the above cause is tried, to give evidence on
behalf of the Defendant. Witness, etc., etc.
Erica read the paper twice before she looked up; she had grown white to
the very lips. Raeburn, recognizing the form of a subpoena, came
hastily forward, and in the merest glance saw how matters were. By no
possibility could the most malicious of opponents have selected a surer
means of torturing him.
“Is this legal?” asked Erica, lifting to him eyes that flashed with
righteous indignation.
“Oh, it is legal,” he replied bitterly “the pound of flesh was legal. A
wife need not appear against her husband, but a daughter may be dragged
into court and forced to give evidence against her father.”
As he spoke, such anger flashed from his eyes that the clerk shivered
all down his backbone. He thought he would take his departure as quickly
as might be, and drawing a little nearer, put down a coin upon the table
beside Erica.
“This fee is to cover your expenses, madame,” he said.
“What!” exclaimed Erica, her anger leaping up into a sudden flame, “do
you think I shall take money from that man?”
She had an insane desire to snatch up the sovereign and fling it at the
clerk's head, but restraining herself merely flicked it back across the
table to him, just touching it with the back of her hand as though it
had been polluted.
“You can take that back again,” she said, a look of scorn sweeping over
her face. “Tell Mr. Pogson that, when he martyrs people he need not say:
'The martyrdom will make you hungry here is luncheon money,' or 'The
torture will tire you here is your cab fare!'”
“But, madame, excuse me,” said the clerk, looking much embarrassed. “I
must leave the money, I am bound to leave it.”
“If you leave it, I shall just throw it into the fireplace before your
eyes,” said Erica. “But if indeed it can't be sent back, then give it to
the first gutter child you meet do anything you like with it! Hang it on
your watch chain as a memento of the most cruel case your firm every had
to do with!”
Her color had come back again, her cheeks were glowing, in her wrath she
looked most beautiful; the clerk would have been less than human if he
had not felt sorry for her. There was a moment's silence; he glanced
from the daughter to the father, whose face was still pale and rigid.
A great pity surged up in the clerk's heart. He was a father himself;
involuntarily his thoughts turned to the little home at Kilburn where
Mary and Kitty would be waiting for him that evening. What if they
should ever be forced into a witness box to confirm a libel on his
personal character? A sort of moisture came to his eyes at the bare
idea. The counsel for the defense, too, was that Cringer, Q. C., the
greatest bully that ever wore silk. Then he glanced once more at the
silent, majestic figure with the rigid face, who, though an atheist, was
yet a man and a father.
“Sir,” he said, with the ring of real and deep feeling in his voice,
“sir, believe me, if I had known what bringing this subpoena meant, I
would sooner have lost my situation!”
Raeburn's face relaxed; he spoke a few courteous, dignified words,
accepting with a sort of unspoken gratitude the man's regret, and in
a few moments dismissing him. But even in these few moments the clerk,
though by no means an impressionable man, had felt the spell, the
strange power of fascination which Raeburn invariably exercised upon
those he talked with that inexplicable influence which made cautious,
hard-headed mechanics ready to die for him, ready to risk anything in
his cause.
The instant the man was gone, Raeburn sat down at Erica's writing
table and began to answer his letters. His correspondents got very curt
answers that day. Erica could tell by the sound of his pan how sharp
were the down strokes, how short the rapidly written sentences.
“Can I help you?” she asked, drawing nearer to him.
He hastily selected two or three letters not bearing on his
anti-religious work, gave her directions, then plunged his pen in the
ink once more, and went on writing at lightning speed. When at length
the most necessary ones were done, he pushed back his chair, and getting
up began to pace rapidly to and fro. Presently he paused and leaned
against the mantel piece, his face half shaded by his hand.
Erica stole up to him silently.
“Sometimes, Eric,” he said abruptly, “I feel the need of the word
'DEVIL!' My vocabulary has nothing strong enough for that man.”
She was too heartsick to speak; she drew closer to him with a mute
caress.
“Eric!” he said, holding her hands between his, and looking down at her
with an indescribably eager expression in his eyes, “Eric, surely NOW
you see that this persecuting religion, this religion which has
been persecuting innumerable people for hundreds of years, is false,
worthless, rotten to the core. Child! Child! Surely you can't believe in
a God whose followers try to promote His glory by sheer brutality like
this?”
It was the first time he had spoken to her on this subject since their
interview at Codrington. They had resolved never to touch upon it again;
but a sort of consciousness that some good must come to him through
this new bitterness, a hope that it must and would reconvince his child,
impelled Raeburn to break his resolution.
“I could sooner doubt that you are standing here, father, with your arm
round me,” said Erica, “than I could doubt the presence of your Father
and mine the All-Father.”
“Even though his followers are such lying scoundrels as that Pogson?
What do you make of that? What do you think of that?”
“I think,” she replied quietly, “that my father is too just a man to
judge Christianity by the very worst specimen of a Christian to be
met with. Any one who does not judge secularism by its very best
representatives, dead or living, is unfair and what is unfair in one
case is unfair in another.”
“Well, if I judged it by you, perhaps I might take a different view
of it,” said Raeburn. “But then you had the advantage of some years of
secularism.”
“Not by me!” cried Erica. “How can it seem anything but very faulty when
you judge it only by faulty people? Why not judge it by the life and
character of Christ?”
Raeburn turned away with a gesture of impatience.
“A myth! A poetic creation long ago distorted out of its true
proportions! There, child, I see we must stop. I only pain you and
torture myself by arguing the question.”
“One more thing,” said Erica, “before we go back to the old silence.
Father, if you would only write a life of Christ I mean, a really
complete life; the one you wrote years ago was scarcely more than a
pamphlet.”
He smiled, knowing that she thought the deep study necessary for such an
undertaking would lead to a change in his views.
“My dear,” he said, “perhaps I would; but just see how I am overdone. I
couldn't write an elaborate thing now. Besides, there is the book on the
Pentateuch not half finished though it was promised months ago. Perhaps
a year or two hence when Pogson gives me time to draw a long breath,
I'll attempt it; but I have an idea that one or other of us will have
to be 'kilt intirely' before that happy time arrives. Perhaps we shall
mutually do for each other, and reenact the historical song.” And, with
laughter in his eyes, he repeated:
“There once were two cats of Kilkenny, Each thought there was one cat
too many, So they quarreled and spit, and they scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails and the tips of their tails, Instead of two
cats, there weren't any.”
Erica smiled faintly, but sighed the next minute.
“Well, there! It's too grave a matter to jest about,” said Raeburn. “Oh,
bairn! If I could but save you from that brute's malice, I should care
very little for the rest.”
“Since you only care about it for my sake, and I only for yours, I think
we may as well give up caring at all,” said Erica, looking up at him
with a brave smile. “And, after all, Mr. Cringer, Q. C. can only keep me
in purgatory for a few hours at the outside. Don't you think, too, that
such a cruel thing will damage Mr. Pogson in the eyes of the jury?”
“Unfortunately, dear, juries are seldom inclined to show any delicate
considerateness to an atheist,” said Raeburn.
And Erica knew that he spoke truly enough.
No more was said just then. Raeburn began rapidly to run through
his remaining correspondence a truly miscellaneous collection. Legal
letters, political letters, business letters requests for his autograph,
for his help, for his advice a challenge from a Presbyterian minister in
the north of Scotland to meet him in debate; the like from a Unitarian
in Norfolk; a coffin and some insulting verses in a match box, and
lastly an abrasive letter from a clergyman, holding him responsible
for some articles by Mr. Masterman, which he had nothing whatever to do
with, and of which he in fact disapproved.
“What would they think, Eric, if I insisted on holding the Bishop
of London responsible for every utterance of every Christian in the
diocese?” said Raeburn.
“They would think you were a fool,” said Erica, cutting the coffin into
little bits as she spoke.
Raeburn smiled and penciled a word or two on the letter the pith of a
stinging reply.