But that one man should die ignorant who had capacity for
knowledge, this I call a tragedy. Carlyle
Not what I think, but what Thou art, makes sure. George MacDonald
A wave of strangely varied feeling swept through the country in the next
four-and-twenty hours.
From the Raeburnites came a burst of mingled wrath and grief, and a
bitter outcry against the religion which inevitably they thought tended
to produce such fanatics as Drosser. From the poor and oppressed came a
murmur of blank despair; they had looked upon Raeburn as the deliverer
from so much that now weighed upon them, and were so perfectly conscious
that he understood their wants and difficulties in a way which others
failed to do, that his death in the very prime of manhood simply stunned
them. The liberal-minded felt a thrill of horror and indignation at
the thought that such deeds as this could take place in the nineteenth
century; realizing, however, with a shudder that the rash act of the
ignorant fanatic was, in truth, no worse than the murder of hatred, the
perpetual calumny and injustice which thousands of professing Christians
had meted out to Raeburn. In nothing had the un-Christlikeness of the
age been more conspicuous than in the way in which Raeburn had all his
life been treated.
The fashionable world felt a sort of uncomfortableness. The news reached
them at their laziest time of year; they came in from shooting parties
to read the account in the papers; they discussed it in ball rooms
and at evening parties at Brighton and Greyshot and the other autumnal
resorts. “So he was dead! Well, really they were tired of hearing his
name! It was rather horrible, certainly, that his daughter should have
seen it all, but such infamous creatures as Raeburn had no business
to have daughters. No doubt she would stand it very well anything, you
know, for a little notoriety. Such people lived for notoriety. Of course
the papers had put in a lot of twaddle that he had said on his death bed
'always had tried to work entirely for the good of humanity,' and that
sort of nonsense. This coffee ice is excellent. Let me get you another,”
after which the subject would be dropped, and the speakers would return
to the ball room to improve upon Raeburn's life, which they presumed so
severely to criticize, by a trois temps enlivened by a broad flirtation.
Here and there a gleam of good was effected inasmuch as some of the
excessively narrow began to see what narrowness leads to. Mr. Cuthbert,
coming home from his annual Swiss tour, was leaning back sleepily in
a first-class carriage at the Folkestone station when the voice of a
newsboy recalled him to the every-day world with a slight shock. There
was the usual list of papers; he was sleepy and thought he would not get
one, but then came the loud voice, not a couple of yards from his ear,
“Death of Mr. Raeburn! Death of Luke Raeburn this da-ay!”
Mr. Cuthbert had his head out of the window in a moment.
“Here, paper!”
“These boys will call anything to sell their papers,” he remarked to his
companion; “I dare say it's nothing more than a rumor.”
“Precious good thing for the country if it was true,” replied the other,
a young fellow of two-and-twenty who dawdled through life upon an income
of 5,000 pounds a year, and found it quite possible to combine the
enjoyment of lax living with the due expression of very orthodox
sentiments.
Mr. Cuthbert did not answer; his eye was traveling down a column of the
newspaper, and he felt a curious pricking of remorse as he read. He had
once been rude to Erica Raeburn; he had all his life retailed dubious
stories about her father, knowing all the time that had any one believed
such stories of himself upon such shaky evidence, he would have used
very strong language about them. And now this fellow was dead! Curiously
enough, Mr. Cuthbert, who had many times remarked that “Raeburn ought
to be shut up, or better still, hung,” was now the one to wish him alive
again. Ugh! It was a horrible story. He quite shivered as he read the
account of those days of torture.
But in a room at the Park Hotel, Ashborough, two very different men were
discussing the same subject. Mr. Fane-Smith, with all his faults, had
always been well-intentioned, and though frightful harm may be done by
people with good intentions, they can never stand upon the same level
as those who wilfully and maliciously offend. All too plainly now he saw
how grievously he had failed with regard to Raeburn, and patiently did
he listen to Donovan's account of the really good work which Raeburn had
effected in many instances.
“Much as you may hate his views, you must at least see that, as some one
has well expressed it, 'It takes a high-souled man to move the masses
even to a cleaner sty.' And I say that a man who worked as he worked,
striving hard to teach the people to live for the general good,
advocating temperance, promoting the spread of education, and somehow
winning those whom no one else had ever touched to take an intelligent
interest in politics, in science, and in the future of the race, that
such a man claims our respect however much we may disagree with him.”
“But that he should have died ignorant like this!” exclaimed Mr.
Fane-Smith with a shudder.
“'Tis in truth a tragedy,” said Donovan, sighing. “But I can well
believe that in another world the barriers which he allowed to distort
his vision will be removed; the very continuance of existence would
surely be sufficient.”
“You are a universalist?” said Mr. Fane-Smith, not in the condemnatory
tone he would once have assumed, but humbly, anxiously, like one who
gropes his way in a dark place.
“Yes,” replied Donovan. “Believing in a universal Father, I am naturally
that. Upon any other system, what do you make of the good which exists
in so many of those who deny all in which you believe? Where does the
good go to? I stood beside the death bed of that noble man this morning.
At the very last I saw most touching proofs of his strong sense of
justice, his honesty, his desire to promote the good of others, his
devotion to his child. Can you believe that all that goodness, which of
necessity comes from God, is to go down into what you call everlasting
punishment? Don't mistake me. Thank God there is a punishment which no
one would wish to forego, such punishment, such drawing forth of the
native good, such careful help in the rooting out of what is evil as all
good fathers give to their children.”
They were interrupted by the opening of the door. Mr. Fane-Smith started
and almost trembled when, on turning round, he saw Erica. She was pale,
but preternaturally calm looking, however, they all felt, as if in her
father's death, she had received her own death blow.
“I thought I heard you,” she said in that strangely “gravened” voice
which is sometimes one of the consequences of great and sudden trouble.
“Has Donovan taken you into the next room? Will you come?”
For his life Mr. Fane-Smith could not have refused anything which she
asked him; there was something in her manner that made the tears rush to
his eyes though he was not, as a rule, easily moved.
He followed her obediently though with a sort of reluctance; but when he
was once there he was glad. Ever since the previous day he had not been
able to rid himself of that stern, hard look with which Raeburn had so
terribly rebuked him; it had persistently haunted him. There was nothing
stern in this dead face. It was still and passionless, bearing the
look of repose which, spite of a harassed life, it had always borne in
moments of leisure. He hardly looked as though he were dead. Erica could
almost have fancied that he was but resting after the toils of a hard
day, having fallen asleep for a few minutes, as she had often seen him
in his arm chair on a Sunday evening.
Mr. Fane-Smith did not say a word, his eyes wandered from the calm face
to the still hands which clasped some sprigs of his native heather, the
heather which Donovan's children had sent only the day before, but just
in time to win one of his last smiles. Donovan and Erica spoke together
in low tones, but something in the sound of that “gravened” voice
arrested Mr. Fane-Smith's attention. He had not heard what had passed
before, and there was nothing special in the words that fell now upon
his ear; it was rather that his own soul was in a state of receptivity,
and so through the first channel that came to hand he was able to
receive a new truth.
“I am only his child; God is his Father.”
And there, by the lifeless body of Luke Raeburn, one, who during his
life had judged him with the very hardest judgment, learned for the
first time what Fatherhood means.
As long as there was anything to be done, Erica struggled on although
the days were terribly hard and were rendered infinitely harder by
the sort of publicity which attended them. There was the necessity of
appearing at the inquest; there was the necessity of reading every
word that was written about her father. She could not help reading the
papers, could not keep her hands off them, though even now most cruel
things were said. There was the necessity of attending the great public
funeral in London, of seeing the thousands of grief-stricken people, of
listening to the professor's words so broken with sobs that they could
hardly be heard. A week later there was the necessity of going down to
the Ashborough assizes to appear as a witness in the trial of Drosser.
“What do you feel toward this man?” some one asked her once.
“A great pity,” she replied. “It is not nearly so hard for me to forgive
this poor fanatic as to forgive those who have taught him his dark
creed, or to forgive those who, while calling themselves Christians,
have hated my father with the hatred that is quite as bad as murder.”
But when the trial was over and there was no longer any necessity to
do anything, Erica suddenly broke down. She had never till now yielded
though not a night had passed in which she had not been haunted by the
frightful recollections of that Sunday evening and the days following.
But the evening she returned from Ashborough she could hold out no
longer.
Very quietly she bore that sad return to the empty house, going into all
the familiar rooms and showing no sign of grief, because those she loved
were with her, watching her with the anxious solicitude which people
cannot help showing at such a time though it is usually more of a trial
than a comfort. Erica longed inexpressibly to be alone, and when at
length, deceived by her unnatural calm, they were persuaded to leave
her, she crept down to the study and shut herself in, and no longer
tried to resist the inevitable, the mere surroundings were quite
sufficient to open the flood gates of her grief; the books which her
father had loved, the table, the empty chair, the curious cactus which
they had brought back from Italy, and in the growth of which they had
taken such an interest! the desk at which her father had toiled for
so many long years. She hid her face from the light and broke into a
passionate fit of weeping. Then exhausted, nerveless, powerless, she
could no longer cope with that anguish of remembrance which was her
nightly torment. Once more there rose before her that horrible scene in
the Ashborough market place; once more she could see the glare of light,
the huge crowd, the sudden treacherous movement, the fall; once more she
heard the crash, the hushed murmur; once more felt the wild struggle to
get through that pushing, jostling throng that she might somehow reach
him. That nightmare recollection only gave place to a yet more painful
one, to the memory of days of such agony that to recall them was almost
to risk her reason. She had struggled bravely not to dwell upon these
things, but this night her strength was gone, she could do nothing, and
Brian, coming at last to seek her, found that the climax he had long
foreseen had come.
“Oh,” she sobbed, “if you love me, Brian, be willing to let me go! Don't
pray for me to live! Promise that you will not!”
A shade came over Brian's face. Was the dead father still to absorb all
her love? Must he even now resign all to him? Lose Erica at last after
these long years of waiting! There was a look of agony in his eyes, but
he answered quietly and firmly:
“I will pray only that God's will may be done, darling.”
A sort of relief was apparent in Erica's flushed, tear-stained face as
though he had given her leave to be ill.
After that, for long, weary weeks, she lay at the very gate of death,
and those who watched by her had not the heart to wish her back to life
again.