Skepticism for that century we must consider as the decay of
old ways of believing, the preparation afar off for new,
better, and wider ways an inevitable thing. We will not
blame men for it; we will lament their hard fate. We will
understand that destruction of old forms is not destruction
of everlasting substances; that skepticism, as sorrowful and
hateful as we see it, is not an end but a beginning.
Carlyle
One June evening, an elderly man with closely cropped iron-gray hair,
might have been seen in a certain railway carriage as the Folkestone
train reached its destination. The Cannon Street platform was, as usual,
the scene of bustle and confusion, most of the passengers were met by
friends or relatives, others formed a complete party in themselves, and,
with the exception of the elderly man, there was scarcely a unit
among them. The fact of his loneliness would not, of course, have been
specially remarkable had it not been that he was evidently in the last
stage of some painful illness; he was also a foreigner and, not being
accustomed to the English luggage system, he had failed to secure a
porter as the train drew up and so, while the others were fighting their
way to the van, he, who needed assistance more than any of them, was
left to shift for himself. He moved with great difficulty, dragging
down from the carriage a worn black bag, and occasionally muttering to
himself, not as a peevish invalid would have done, but as if it were a
sort of solace to his loneliness.
“The hardest day I've had, this! If I had but my Herzblattchen now, how
quickly she would pilot me through this throng. Ah well! Having managed
to do the rest, I'll not be beaten by this last bit. Potztausend! These
English are all elbows!”
He frowned with pain as the self-seeking crowd pushed and jostled him,
but never once lost his temper, and at length, after long waiting,
his turn came and, having secured his portmanteau, he was before long
driving away in the direction of Bloomsbury. His strength was fast
ebbing away, and the merciless jolting of the cab evidently tried him
to the utmost, but he bore up with the strong endurance of one who knows
that at the end of the struggle relief awaits him.
“If he is only at home,” he muttered to himself, “all will be well.
He'll know where I ought to go; he'll do it all for me in the best way.
ACH! Gott in himmel! But I need some one!”
With an excruciating jerk the cab drew up before a somewhat grim-looking
house; Had he arrived at the himmel he had just been speaking of, the
traveler could not have given an exclamation of greater relief. He
crawled up the steps, overruled some question on the part of the
servant, and was shown into a brightly lighted room. At one glance he
had taken in the whole of that restful picture so welcome to his sore
need. It was a good sized room, lined with books, which had evidently
seen good service, many of them had been bought with the price of
foregone meals, almost all of them embodied some act of denial. Above
the mantel piece hung a little oil painting of a river scene, the sole
thing not strictly of a useful order, for the rest of the contents of
this study were all admirably adapted for working purposes, but were the
reverse of luxurious.
Seated at the writing table was the master of the house, who had
impressed his character plainly enough on his surroundings. He looked
up with an expression of blank astonishment on hearing the name of his
visitor, then the astonishment changed to incredulity; but, when
the weary traveler actually entered the room, he started up with an
exclamation of delight which very speedily gave place to dismay when he
saw how ill his friend was.
“Why, Haeberlein!” he said, grasping his hand, “what has happened to
you?”
“Nothing very remarkable,” replied Haeberlein, smiling. “Only a great
wish to see you before I die.” Then, seeing that Raeburn's face changed
fearfully at these words, “Yes, it has come to that, my friend. I've a
very short time left, and I wanted to see you; can you tell me of rooms
near here, and of a decent doctor?”
“Of a doctor, yes,” said Raeburn, “of one who will save your life, I
hope; and for rooms there are none that I know of except in this house,
where you will of course stay.”
“With the little Herzblattchen to nurse me?” said Haeberlein with a sigh
of weary content as he sank back in an arm chair. “That would be a very
perfect ending; but think what the world would say of you if I, who
have lent a hand to so much that you disapprove, died in your house;
inevitably you would be associated with my views and my doings.”
“May be!” said Raeburn. “But I hope I may say that I've never refused
to do what was right for fear of unpleasant consequences. No, no, my
friend, you must stay here. A hard life has taught me that, for one in
my position, it is mere waste of time to consider what people will say;
they will say and believe the worst that can be said and believed about
me; and thirty years of this sort of thing has taught me to pay very
little regard to appearances.”
As he spoke he took up the end of a speaking tube which communicated
with the green room, Haeberlein watching his movements with the placid,
weary indifference of one who is perfectly convinced that he is in the
right hands. Presently the door opened and Erica came in. Haeberlein
saw now what he had half fancied at Salzburg that, although loving
diminutives would always come naturally to the lips when speaking of
Erica, she had in truth lost the extreme youthfulness of manner which
had always characterized her. It had to a great extent been crushed out
of her by the long months of wearing anxiety, and though she was often
as merry and kittenish as ever her habitual manner was that of a strong,
quick temperament kept in check. The restraint showed in everything.
She was much more ready to hear and much less ready to criticize, her
humorous talk was freer from sarcasm, her whole bearing characterized by
a sort of quiet steadfastness which made her curiously like her father.
His philosophical calm had indeed been gained in a very different way,
but in each the calmness was the direct result of exceptionally trying
circumstances brought to bear on a noble nature.
“Herr Haeberlein has come here to be nursed,” said Raeburn when the
greetings were over. “Will you see that a room is got ready, dear?”
He went out into the hall to dismiss the cab, and Haeberlein seized the
opportunity to correct his words.
“He thinks I shall get better, but it is impossible, my Herzblattchen;
it is only a question of weeks now, possibly only of days. Was I wrong
to come to you?”
“Of course not,” she said with the sort of tender deference with which
she always spoke to him. “Did you think father would let you go anywhere
else?”
“I didn't think about it,” said Haeberlein wearily; “but he wouldn't, you
see.”
Raeburn returned while he was speaking, and Erica went away quickly to
see to the necessary preparations. Herr Haeberlein had come, and she did
not for a moment question the rightness of her father's decision; but
yet in her heart she was troubled about it, and she could see that both
her aunt and Tom were troubled too. The fact was that for some time
they had seen plainly enough that Raeburn's health was failing, and they
dreaded any additional anxiety for him. A man can not be involved
in continual and harassing litigation and at the same time agitate
perseveringly for reform, edit a newspaper, write books, rush from
Land's End to John O'Groat's, deliver lectures, speak at mass meetings,
teach science, befriend every unjustly used person, and go through the
enormous amount of correspondence, personal supervision, and inevitable
interviewing which falls to the lot of every popular leader, without
sooner or later breaking down.
Haeberlein had come, however, and there was no help for it. They all did
their very utmost for him, and those last weeks of tender nursing were
perhaps the happiest of his life. Raeburn never allowed any one to see
how the lingering expectation, the dark shadow of the coming sorrow,
tried him. He lived his usual busy life, snatching an hour whenever he
could to help in the work of nursing, and bringing into the sick room
the strange influence of his strength and serenity.
The time wore slowly on. Haeberlein, though growing perceptibly weaker,
still lingered, able now and then to enter into conversation, but for
the most part just lying in patient silence, listening with a curious
impartiality to whatever they chose to read to him, or whatever they
began to talk about. He had all his life been a man of no particular
creed, and he retained his curious indifference to the end, though Erica
found that he had a sort of vague belief in a First Cause, and a shadowy
expectation of a personal existence after death. She found this out
through Brian, who had a way of getting at the minds of his patients.
One very hot afternoon she had been with him for several hours when
about five o'clock her father came into the room. Another prosecution
under the blasphemy Laws had just commenced. He had spent the whole day
in a stifling law court, and even to the dying man his exhaustion was
apparent.
“Things gone badly?” he asked.
“Much as I expected,” said Raeburn, taking up a Marechal Niel rose
from the table and studying it abstractedly. “I've had a sentence
of Auerbach's in my head all day, 'The martyrdom of the modern world
consists of a long array of thousands of trifling annoyances.' These
things are in themselves insignificant, but multiplication makes them a
great power. You have been feeling this heat, I'm afraid. I will relieve
guard, Erica. Is your article ready?”
“Not quite,” she replied, pausing to arrange Haeberlein's pillows while
her father raised him.
“Thank you, little Herzblattchen,” he said, stroking her cheek, “auf
wiedersehen.”
“Auf wiedersehen,” she replied brightly and, gathering up some papers,
ran downstairs to finish her work for the “Daily Review.”
A few minutes later Brian came in for his second visit.
“Any change?” he asked.
“None, I think,” she answered, and went on with her writing with an
apprehensive glance every now and then at the clock. The office boy was
mercifully late however, and it must have been quite half an hour after
she had left Haeberlein's room that she heard his unwelcome ring. Late
as it was, she was obliged to keep him waiting a few minutes for it was
exceedingly difficult in those days to get her work done. Not only was
the time hard to obtain, but the writing itself was a difficulty; her
mind was occupied with so many other things, and her strength was so
overtasked that it was often an effort almost intolerable to sit down
and write on the appointed subject.
She was in the hall giving her manuscript to the boy when she saw her
father come downstairs; she followed him into the study, and one look at
his face told her what had happened. He was leaning back in the chair
in which but a few weeks before she had seen Haeberlein himself; it came
over her with a shudder that he looked almost as ill now as his friend
had looked. She sat down on the arm of his chair, and slipped her hand
into his, but did not dare to break the silence. At last he looked up.
“I think you know it,” he said. “It is all over, Erica.”
“Was Brian there?” she asked.
“Happily, yes; but there was nothing to be done. The end was strangely
sudden and quite painless, just what one would have wished for him. But
oh, child! I can ill spare such a friend just now!”
His voice failed, and great tears gathered in his eyes. He let his head
rest for a minute on Erica's shoulder, conscious of a sort of relief in
the clasp of arms which had so often, in weak babyhood, clung to him
for help, conscious of the only comfort there could be for him as his
child's kisses fell on his lips, and brow, and hair.
“I am overdone, child,” he said at length as though to account for
breaking down, albeit, by the confession, which but a short time before
he would never have made, that his strength was failing.
All through the dreary days that followed, Erica was haunted by those
words. The work had to go on just as usual, and it seemed to tell on her
father fearfully. The very cay after Haeberlein's death it was necessary
for him to speak at a mass meeting in the north of England, and he came
back from it almost voiceless and so ill that they were at their wits'
end to know what to do with him. The morrow did not mend matters for
the jury disagreed in the blasphemy trial, and the whole thing had to be
gone through again.
A more trying combination of events could hardly have been imagined,
and Erica, as she stood in the crowded cemetery next day at the funeral,
thought infinitely less of the quixotic Haeberlein whom she had,
nevertheless, loved very sincerely than of her sorely overtasked father.
He was evidently in dread of breaking down, and it was with the greatest
difficulty that he got through his oration. To all present the sight
was a most painful one and, although the musical voice was hoarse and
strained, seeming, indeed, to tear out each sentence by sheer force of
will, the orator had never carried his audience more completely with
him. Their tears were, however, more for the living than for the dead;
for the man who was struggling with all his might to restrain his
emotion, painfully spurring on his exhausted powers to fulfill the duty
in hand. More than once Erica thought he would have fainted, and she
was fully prepared for the small crowd of friends who gathered round her
afterward, begging her to persuade him to rest. The worst of it was that
she could see no prospect of rest for him, though she knew how sorely he
longed for it. He spoke of it as they drove home.
“I've an almost intolerable longing for quiet,” he said to her. “Do you
remember Mill's passage about the two main constituents of a satisfied
life excitement and tranquillity? How willingly would I change places
today with that Tyrolese fellow whom we saw last year!”
“Oh! If we could but go to the Tyrol again!” exclaimed Erica; but
Raeburn shook his head.
“Out of the question just now, my child; but next week when this
blasphemy trial is over, I must try to get a few days' holiday that is
to say, if I don't find myself in prison.”
She sighed the sigh of one who is burdened almost beyond endurance. For
recent events had proved to her, only too plainly, that her confidence
that no jury would be found to convict a man under the old blasphemy
laws was quite mistaken.
That evening, however, her thoughts were a little diverted from her
father. For the first time for many months she had a letter from Rose.
It was to announce her engagement to Captain Golightly. Rose seemed very
happy, but there was an undertone of regret about the letter which was
uncomfortably suggestive of her flirtation with Tom. Also there were
sentences which, to Erica, were enigmatical, about “having been so
foolish last summer,” and wishing that she “could live that Brighton
time over again.” All she could do was to choose the time and place for
telling Tom with discrimination. No opportunity presented itself till
late in the evening when she went down as usual to say good night to
him, taking Rose's letter with her. Tom was in his “den,” a small
room consecrated to the goddess of disorder books, papers, electric
batteries, crucibles, chemicals, new temperance beverages, and fishing
rods were gathered together in wild confusion. Tom himself was stirring
something in a pipkin over the gas stove when Erica came in.
“An unfallible cure for the drunkard's craving after alcohol,” he said,
looking up at her with a smile. “'A thing of my own invention,' to quote
the knight in 'Through the Looking Glass.' Try some?”
“No, thank you,” said Erica, recoiling a little from the very
odoriferous contents of the pipkin. “I have had a letter from Rose this
evening.”
Tom started visibly.
“What, has Mr. Fane-Smith relented?” he asked.
“Rose had something special to tell me,” said Erica, unfolding the
letter.
But Tom just took it from her hands without ceremony, and began to read
it. A dark flush came over his face Erica saw that much, but afterward
would not look at him, feeling that it was hardly fair. Presently he
gave her the letter once more.
“Thank you,” he said in a voice so cold and bitter that she could hardly
believe it to be his. “As you probably see, I have been a fool. I shall
know better how to trust a woman in the future.”
“Oh, Tom,” she cried. “Don't let it--”
He interrupted her.
“I don't wish to talk,” he said. “Least of all to one who has adopted
the religion which Miss Fane-Smith has been brought up in a religion
which of necessity debases and degrades its votaries.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she new that Christianity would in this
case be better vindicated by silence than by words however eloquent. She
just kissed him and wished him good night. But as she reached the door,
his heart smote him.
“I don't say it has debased you,” he said; “but that that is its natural
tendency. You are better than your creed.”
“He meant that by way of consolation,” thought Erica to herself as she
went slowly upstairs fighting with her tears.
But of course the consolation had been merely a sharper stab; for to
tell a Christian that he is better than his creed is the one intolerable
thing.
What had been the extent of the understanding with Rose, Erica never
learned, but she feared that it must have been equivalent to a promise
in Tom's eyes, and much more serious than mere flirtation in Rose's,
otherwise the regret in the letter was, from one of Rose's way of
thinking, inexplicable. From that time there was a marked change in
Tom; Erica was very unhappy about him, but there was little to be done
except, indeed, to share all his interests as much as she could, and to
try to make the home life pleasant. But this was by no means easy. To
begin with, Raeburn himself was more difficult than ever to work with,
and Tom, who was in a hard, cynical mood, called him overbearing where,
in former times, he would merely have called him decided. The very best
of men are occasionally irritable when they are nearly worked to death;
and under the severe strain of those days, Raeburn's philosophic calm
more than once broke down, and the quick Highland temper, usually kept
in admirable restraint, made itself felt.
It was not, however, for two or three days after Haeberlein's funeral
that he showed any other symptoms of illness. One evening they were all
present at a meeting at the East End at which Donovan Farrant was also
speaking. Raeburn's voice had somewhat recovered, and he was speaking
with great force and fluency when, all at once in the middle of
a sentence, he came to a dead pause. For half a minute he stood
motionless; before him were the densely packed rows of listening faces,
but what they had come there to hear he had not the faintest notion. His
mind was exactly like a sheet of white paper; all recollection of the
subject he had been speaking on was entirely obliterated. Some men would
have pleaded illness and escaped, others would have blundered on.
But Raeburn, who never lost his presence of mind, just turned to the
audience and said quietly: “Will some one have the goodness to tell me
what I was saying? My memory has played me a trick.”
“Taxation!” shouted the people.
A short-hand writer close to the platform repeated his last sentence,
and Raeburn at once took the cue and finished his speech with perfect
ease. Every one felt, however, that it was an uncomfortable incident,
and, though to the audience Raeburn chose to make a joke of it, he knew
well enough that it boded no good.
“You ought to take a rest,” said Donovan to him when the meeting was
over.
“I own to needing it,” said Raeburn. “Pogson's last bit of malice will,
I hope, be quashed in a few days and, after that, rest may be possible.
He is of opinion that 'there are mony ways of killing a dog though ye
dinna hang him,' and, upon my word, he's not far wrong.”
He was besieged here by two or three people who wanted to ask his
advice, and Donovan turned to Erica.
“He has been feeling all this talk about Herr Haeberlein; people say the
most atrocious things about him just because he gave him shelter at the
last,” she said. “Really sometimes the accusations are so absurd that
we ourselves can't help laughing at them. But though I don't believe in
being 'done to death by slanderous tongues,' there is no doubt that the
constant friction of these small annoyances does tell on my father
very perceptibly. After all, you know the very worst form of torture is
merely the perpetual falling of a drop of water on the victim's head.”
“I suppose since last summer this sort of thing has been on the
increase?”
“Indeed it has,” she replied. “It is worse, I think, than you have any
idea of. You read your daily paper and your weekly review, but every
malicious, irritating word put forth by every local paper in England,
Scotland, or Ireland comes to us, not to speak of all that we get from
private sources.”
On their way home they did all in their power to persuade Raeburn to
take an immediate holiday, but he only shook his head.
“'Dree out the inch when ye have thol'd the span,'” he said, leaning
back wearily in the cab but taking care to give the conversation an
abrupt turn before relapsing into silence.
At supper, as ill luck would have it, Aunt Jean relieved her fatigue
and anxiety by entering upon one of her old remonstrances with Erica.
Raeburn was not sitting at the table; he was in an easy chair at the
other side of the room, and possibly she forgot his presence. But
he heard every word that passed, and at last started up with angry
impatience.
“For goodness' sake, Jean, leave the child alone!” he said. “Is it not
enough for me to be troubled with bitterness and dissension outside
without having my home turned into an arguing shop?”
“Erica should have thought of that before she deserted her own
party,” said Aunt Jean; “before, to quote Strauss, she had recourse to
'religious crutches.' It is she who has introduced the new element into
the house.”
Erica's color rose, but she said nothing. Aunt Jean seemed rather
baffled by her silence. Tom watched the little scene with a sort of
philosophic interest. Raeburn, conscious of having spoken sharply to his
sister and fearing to lose his temper again, paced the room silently.
Finally he went off to his study, leaving them to the unpleasant
consciousness that he had been driven out of his own dining room. But
when he had gone, the quarrel was forgotten altogether; they forgot
differences of creed in a great mutual anxiety. Raeburn's manner had
been so unnatural, he had been so unlike himself, that in their trouble
about it they entirely passed over the original cause of his anger. Aunt
Jean was as much relieved as any one when before long he opened his door
and called for Erica.
“I have lost my address book,” he said; “have you seen it about?”
She began to search for it, fully aware that he had given her something
to do for him just out of loving consideration, and with the hope that
it would take the sting from her aunt's hard words. When she brought
him the book, he took her face between both his hands, looked at her
steadily for a minute, and then kissed her.
“All right, little son Eric,” he said, with a sigh. “We understand each
other.”
But she went upstairs feeling miserable about him, and an hour or two
later, when all the house was silent, her feeling of coming trouble
grew so much that at length she yielded to one of those strange, blind
impulses which come to some people and crept noiselessly out on to the
dark landing. At first all seemed to her perfectly still and perfectly
dark; but, looking down the narrow well of the staircase, she could see
far below her a streak of light falling across the tiles in the passage.
She knew that it must come from beneath the door of the study, and it
meant that her father was still at work. He had owned to having a bad
headache, and had promised not to be late. It was perplexing. She stole
down the next flight of stairs and listened at Tom's door; then, finding
that he was still about, knocked softly. Tom, with his feet on the
mantel piece, was solacing himself with a pipe and a novel; he started
up, however, as she came in.
“What's the matter?” he asked, “is any one ill?”
“I don't know,” said Erica, shivering a little. “I came to know whether
father had much to do tonight; did he tell you?”
“He was going to write to Jackson about a situation for the eldest
son of that fellow who died the other day, you know; the widow,
poor creature, is nearly worried out of her life; she was here this
afternoon. The chieftain promised to see about it at once; he wouldn't
let me write, and of course a letter from himself will be more likely to
help the boy.”
“But it's after one o'clock,” said Erica, shivering again; “he can't
have been all this time over it.”
“Well, perhaps he is working at something else,” said Tom. “He's
not been sleeping well lately, I know. Last night he got through
thirty-three letters, and the night before he wrote a long pamphlet.”
Erica did not look satisfied.
“Lend me your stove for a minute,” she said; “I shall make him a cup of
tea.”
They talked a little about the curious failure of memory noticed for the
first time that evening. Tom was more like himself than he had been for
several days; he came downstairs with her to carry a light, but she went
alone into the study. He had not gone up the first flight of stairs,
however, when he heard a cry, then his own name called twice in tones
that made him thrill all over with a nameless fear. He rushed down
and pushed open the study door. There stood Erica with blanched face;
Raeburn sat in his customary place at the writing table, but his head
had fallen forward and, though the face was partly hidden by the desk,
they could see that it was rigid and deathly pale.
“He has fainted,” said Tom, not allowing the worse fear to overmaster
him. “Run quick, and get some water, Erica.”
She obeyed mechanically. When she returned, Tom had managed to get
Raeburn on to the floor and had loosened his cravat; he had also noticed
that only one letter lay upon the desk, abruptly terminating at “I am,
yours sincerely.” Whether the “Luke Raeburn” would ever be added, seemed
to Tom at that moment very doubtful. Leaving Erica with her father,
he rushed across the square to summon Brian, returning in a very few
minutes with the comforting news that he was at home and would be with
them immediately. Erica gave a sigh of relief when the quick, firm steps
were heard on the pavement outside. Brian was so closely associated with
all the wearing times of illness and anxiety which had come to them in
the last six years that, in her trouble, she almost forgot the day at
Fiesole regarding him not as her lover, but as the man who had once
before saved her father's life. His very presence inspired her with
confidence, the quiet authority of his manner, the calm, business-like
way in which he directed things. Her anxiety faded away in the
consciousness that he knew all about it, and would do everything as
it should be done. Before very long Raeburn showed signs of returning
consciousness, sighed uneasily; then, opening his eyes, regained his
faculties as suddenly as he had lost them.
“Halloo!” he exclaimed, starting up. “What's all this coil about? What
are you doing to me?”
They explained things to him.
“Oh! Fainted, did I!” he said musingly. “I have felt a little faint once
or twice lately. What day is it? What time is it?” Tom mentioned
the meeting of the previous evening, and Raeburn seemed to recollect
himself. He looked at his watch, then at the letter on his desk. “Well,
it's my way to do things thoroughly,” he said with a smile; “I must have
been off for a couple of hours. I am very sorry to have disturbed your
slumbers in this way.”
As he spoke, he sat down composedly at his desk, picked up the pen
and signed his name to the letter. They stood and watched him while he
folded the sheet and directed the envelope; his writing bore a little
more markedly than usual the tokens of strong self-restraint.
“Perhaps you'll just drop that in the pillar on your way home,” he said
to Brian. “I want Jackson to get it by the first post. If you will look
in later on, I should be glad to have a talk with you. At present I'm
too tired to be overhauled.”
Then, as Brian left the room, he turned to Erica.
“I am sorry to have given you a fright, my child; but don't worry about
me, I am only a little overdone.”
Again that fatal admission, which from Raeburn's lips was more alarming
than a long catalogue of dangerous symptoms from other men!
There followed a disturbed night and a long day in a crowded law court,
then one of the most terrible hours they had ever had to endure while
waiting for the verdict which would either consign Raeburn to prison
or leave him to peace and freedom. So horrible was the suspense that to
draw each breath was to Erica a painful effort. Even Raeburn's composure
was a little shaken as those eternal minutes dragged on.
The foreman returned. The court seemed to throb with excitement. Raeburn
lifted a calm, stern face to hear his fate. He knew what no one else in
the court knew, that this was to him a matter of life and death.
“Are you agreed, gentlemen?”
“Yes.”
People listened breathlessly.
“Do you find the defendant guilty, or not?”
“Not guilty.”
The reaction was so sharp as to be almost overpowering. But poor Erica's
joy was but short-lived. She looked at her father's face and knew that,
although one anxiety was ended, another was already begun.