We Two Part 72

"Come nearer, Eric," he whispered "nearer!"

Then came a long pause.

There was stillness that fearful stillness when the watchers begin to hush their very breath, that they may catch the last faint breathings.

Poor Tom could stand it no longer; he just buried his face in his hands and sobbed. Perhaps Erica envied him. Violent grief would surely have been more endurable than this terrible sinking, this dread of not keeping up to the end. Was she falling with him down those horrible steps? Was she sinking with him beneath the cold, green waves? Oh, death cruel death! Why had he not taken them together on that summer day?

Yet what was she saying? The death angel was but G.o.d's messenger, and her father could never, never be beyond the care of One who loved him infinitely eternally. If He the Father were taking him from her, why, she would trust Him, though it should crush her whole world.

"Nearer, Eric nearer." How those last words rang in her ears as she waited there with her hands in his. She knew they would be the last for he was sinking away into a dreamily pa.s.sive state just dying because too tired to live.

"Nearer, nearer!" Was this agony indeed to heal the terrible division between them? Ah, mystery of evil, mystery of pain, mystery of death!

Only the love of the Infinitely Loving can fathom you only the trust in that Love give us a glimpse of your meaning.

She felt a tightening of the fingers that clasped hers. He was still conscious; he smiled just such a smile as he used to give her when, as a little thing, she had fretted about his leaving home.

She pressed her quivering lips to his, clung to him, and kissed him again and again. There was a sigh. A long interval, and another sigh.

After that, silence.

CHAPTER XLI. Results Closely Following

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 fas.h.i.+onable 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-cla.s.s 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 p.r.i.c.king 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 ma.s.ses 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 a.s.sumed, 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d, is to go down into what you call everlasting punishment? Don't mistake me. Thank G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionless, bearing the look of repose which, spite of a hara.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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; G.o.d 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 a.s.sizes 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pus.h.i.+ng, 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 G.o.d'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.

CHAPTER XLII. A New Year's Dawn