We Two Part 23

"Don't be afraid," said a voice, which she knew to be Brian's though a black mist would not let her see him. "He was conscious a minute ago; this is only from the pain of moving. Which room?"

"The study," she replied, recovering herself. "Give me something to do, Brian, quickly."

He saw that in doing lay her safety, and kept her fully employed, so much so, indeed, that from sheer lack of time she was able to stave off the faintness which had threatened to overpower her. After a time her father came to himself, and Erica's face, which had been the last in his mind in full consciousness, was the first which now presented itself to his awakening gaze. He smiled.

"Well, Erica! So, after all, they haven't quite done for me. Nine lives like a cat, as I always told you."

His voice was faint, but with all his wonted energy he raised himself before they could remonstrate. He was far more injured, however, than he knew; with a stifled groan he fell back once more in a swoon, and it was many hours before they were able to restore him.

After that, fever set in, and a shadow as of death fell on the house in Guilford Terrace. Doctors came and went; Brian almost lived with his patient; friends Raeburn had hosts of them came with help of every description. The gloomy little alley admitted every day crowds of inquirers, who came to the door, read the bulletin, glanced up at the windows, and went away looking graver than when they came.

Erica lost count of time altogether. The past seemed blotted out; the weight of the present was so great that she would not admit any thought of the future, though conscious always of a blank dread which she dared not pause to a.n.a.lyze, sufficient indeed for her day was the evil thereof. She struggled on somehow with a sort of despairing strength; only once or twice did she even recollect the outside world.

It happened that on the first Wednesday after the Hyde Park meeting some one mentioned the day of the week in her hearing. She was in the sick-room at the time, but at once remembered that her week's work was untouched, that she had not written a line for the "Idol-Breaker." Every idea seemed to have gone out of her head; for a minute she felt that to save her life she could not write a line. But still she conscientiously struggled to remember what subject had been allotted her, and in the temporary stillness of the first night-watch drew writing materials toward her, and leaned her head on her hands until, almost by an effort of will, she at length recalled the theme for her article.

Of course! It was to be that disgraceful disturbance in the church at Z______. She remembered the whole affair now, it all rose up before her graphically not a bad subject at all! Their party might make a good deal by it. Her article must be bright, descriptive, sarcastic. Yet how was she to write such an article when her heart felt like lead? An involuntary "I can't" rose to her lips, and she glanced at her father's motionless form, her eyes filling with tears. Then one of his sayings came to her mind: "No such word as 'Can't' in the dictionary," and began to write rapidly almost defiantly. No sooner had she begun than her very exhaustion, the lateness of the hour, and the stress of circ.u.mstance came to her aid she had never before written so brilliantly.

The humor of the scene struck her; little flashes of mirth at the expense of both priest and people, delicate sarcasms, the more searching from their very refinement, awoke in her brain and were swiftly transcribed. In the middle of one of the most daring sentences Raeburn stirred. Erica's pen was thrown down at once; she was at his side absorbed once more in attending to his wants, forgetful quite of religious controversy, of the "Idol-Breaker," of anything in fact in the whole world but her father. Not till an hour had pa.s.sed was she free to finish her writing, but by the time her aunt came to relieve guard at two o'clock the article was finished and Erica stole noiselessly into the next room to put it up.

To her surprise she found that Tom had not gone to bed. He was still toiling away at his desk with a towel round his head; she could almost have smiled at the ludicrous mixture of grief and sleepiness on his face, had not her own heart been so loaded with care and sadness. The post brought in what Tom described as "bushels" of letters every day, and he was working away at them now with sleepy heroism.

"How tired you look," said Erica. "See! I have brought in this for the 'Idol.'"

"You've been writing it now! That is good of you. I was afraid we should have to make up with some wretched padding of Blank's."

He took the sheets from her and began to read. Laughter is often only one remove from grief, and Tom, though he was sad-hearted enough, could not keep his countenance through Erica's article. First his shoulders began to shake, then he burst into such a paroxysm of noiseless laughter that Erica, fearing that he could not restrain himself, and would be heard in the sick-room, pulled the towel from his forehead over his mouth; then, conquered herself by the absurdity of his appearance, she was obliged to bury her own face in her hands, laughing more and more whenever the incongruousness of the laughter occurred to her. When they had exhausted themselves the profound depression which had been the real cause of the violent reaction returned with double force. Tom sighed heavily and finished reading the article with the gravest of faces. He was astonished that Erica could have written at such a time an article positively scintillating with mirth.

"How did you manage anything so witty tonight of all nights?" he asked.

"Don't you remember Hans Andersen's clown Punchinello," said Erica. "He never laughed and joked so gayly as the night when his love died and his own heart was broken."

There was a look in her eyes which made Tom reply, quickly: "Don't write any more just now; the professor has promised us something for next week. Don't write any more till till the chieftain is well."

After that she wished him good night rather hastily, crept upstairs to her attic, and threw herself down on her bed. Why had he spoken of the future? Why had his voice hesitated? No, she would not think, she would not.

So the article appeared in that week's "Idol-Breaker", and thousands and thousands of people laughed over it. It even excited displeased comment from "the other side," and in many ways did a great deal of what in Guilford Terrace was considered "good work." For Erica herself, it was long before she had time to give it another thought; it was to her only a desperately hard duty which she had succeeded in doing. n.o.body every guessed how much it had cost her.

The weary time dragged on, days and weeks pa.s.sed by; Raeburn was growing weaker, but clung to life with extraordinary tenacity. And now very bitterly they felt the evils of this voluntarily embraced poverty, for the summer heat was for a few days almost tropical, and the tiny little rooms in the lodging-house were stifling. Brian was very anxious to have the patient moved across to his father's house; but, though Charles Osmond said all he could in favor of the scheme, the other doctors would not consent, thinking the risk of removal too great. And, besides, it would be useless, they maintained the atheist was evidently dying.

Brian, who was the youngest, could not carry out his wishes in defiance of the others, but he would not deny himself the hope of even yet saving Erica's father. He devised punkahs, became almost nurse and doctor in one, and utterly refused to lose heart. Erica herself was the only other person who shared his hopefulness, or perhaps her feeling could hardly be described by that word; she was not hopeful, but she had so resolutely set herself to live in the present that she had managed altogether to crowd out the future, and with it the worst fear.

One day, however, it broke upon her suddenly. Some one had left a newspaper in the sick-room; it was weeks since she had seen one, and in a brief interval, while her father slept, or seemed to sleep, she took it up half mechanically. How much it would have interested her a little while ago, how meaningless it all seemed to her now. "Latest Telegrams,"

"News from the Seat of War," "Parliamentary Intelligence" a speech by Sir Michael Cunningham, one of her heroes, on a question in which she was interested. She could not read it, all the life seemed gone out of it, today the paper was nothing to her but a broad sheet with so many columns of printed matter. But as she was putting it down their own name caught her eye. All at once her benumbed faculties regained their power, her heart began to beat wildly, for there, in clearest print, in short, choppy, unequivocal sentences, was the hideous fear which she had contrived so long to banish.

"Mr. Raeburn is dying. The bulletins have daily been growing less and less hopeful. Yesterday doctor R______, who had been called in, could only confirm the unfavorable opinion of the other doctors. In all probability the days of the great apostle of atheism are numbered. It rests with the Hyde Park rioters, and those who by word and example have incited them, to bear the responsibility of making a martyr of such a man as Mr. Luke Raeburn. Emphatically disclaiming the slightest sympathy with Mr. Raeburn's religious views, we yet--"

But Erica could read no more. Whatever modic.u.m of charity the writer ventured to put forth was lost upon her. The opening sentence danced before her eyes in letters of fire. That morning she met Brian in the pa.s.sage and drew him into the sitting room. He saw at once how it was with her.

"Look," she said, holding the newspaper toward him, "is that true? Or is it only a sensation trap or written for party purposes?"

Her delicate lips were closed with their hardest expression, her eyes only looked grave and questioning. She watched his face as he read, lost her last hope, and with the look of such anguish as he had never before seen, drew the paper from him, and caught his hand in hers in wild entreaty.

"Oh, Brian, Brian! Is there no hope? Surely you can do something for him. There MUST be hope, he is so strong, so full of life."

He struggled hard for voice and words to answer her, but the imploring pressure of her hands on his had nearly unnerved him. Already the grief that kills lurked in her eyes he knew that if her father died she would not long survive him.

"Don't say what is untrue," she continued. "Don't let me drive you into telling a lie but only tell me if there is indeed no hope no chance."

"It may be," said Brian. "You must not expect, for those far wiser than I say it can not be. But I hope yes, I still hope."

On that crumb of comfort she lived, but it was a weary day, and for the first time she noticed that her father, who was free from fever, followed her everywhere with his eyes. She knew intuitively that he thought himself dying.

Toward evening she was sitting beside him, slowly drawing her fingers through his thick ma.s.ses of snow-white hair in the way he liked best, when he looked suddenly right into her eyes with his own strangely similar ones, deep, earnest eyes, full now of a sort of dumb yearning.

"Little son Eric," he said, faintly, "you will go on with the work I am leaving."

"Yes, father," she replied firmly, though her heart felt as if it would break.

"A harmful delusion," he murmured, half to himself, "taking up our best men! Swallowing up the money of the people. What's that singing, Erica?"

"It is the children in the hospital," she replied. "I'll shut the window if they disturb you, father."

"No," he said. "One can tolerate the delusion for them if it makes their pain more bearable. Poor bairns! Poor bairns! Pain is an odd mystery."

He drew down her hand and held it in his, seeming to listen to the singing, which floated in clearly through the open window at right angles with the back windows of the hospital. Neither of them knew what the hymn was, but the refrain which came after every verse as if even the tinies were joining in it was quite audible to Luke Raeburn and his daughter.

"Through life's long day, and death's dark night, Oh, gentle Jesus, be our light."

Erica's breath came in gasps. To be reminded then that life was long and that death was dark!

She thought she had never prayed, she had never consciously prayed, but her whole life for the past three years had been an unspoken prayer.

Never was there a more true desire entirely unexpressed than the desire which now seemed to possess her whole being. The darkness would soon hide forever the being she most loved. Oh, if she could but honestly think that He who called Himself the Light of the world was indeed still living, still ready to help!

But to allow her distress to gain the mastery over her would certainly disturb and grieve her father. With a great effort she stifled the sobs which would rise in her throat, and waited in rigid stillness. When the last notes of the hymn had died away into silence, she turned to look at her father. He had fallen asleep.

CHAPTER XVIII. Answered or Unanswered?

"Glory to G.o.d to G.o.d!" he saith, "Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death." E. B. Browning

"Mr. Raeburn is curiously like the celebrated dog of nursery lore, who appertained to the ancient and far-famed Mother Hubbard. All the doctors gave him up, all the secularists prepared mourning garments, the printers were meditating black borders for the 'Idol-Breaker,' the relative merits of burial and cremation were already in discussion, when the dog we beg pardon the leader of atheism, came to life again.

"'She went to the joiners to buy him a coffin, But when she came back the dog was laughing.'

"History," as a great man was fond of remarking, "'repeats itself.'"

Raeburn laughed heartily over the accounts of his recovery in the comic papers. No one better appreciated the very clever representation of himself as a huge bull-dog starting up into life while Britannia in widow's weeds brought in a parish coffin. Erica would hardly look at the thing; she had suffered too much to be able to endure any jokes on the subject, and she felt hurt and angry that what had given her such anguish should be turned into a foolish jest.

At length, after many weeks of weary anxiety, she was able to breathe freely once more, for her father steadily regained his strength. The devotion of her whole time and strength and thought to another had done wonders for her, her character had strangely deepened and mellowed. But no sooner was she free to begin her ordinary life than new perplexities beset her on every side.